Photo Today

One from the archives...I was flipping through old photos and came across this one, which brings me a lot of joy. It dates back a bit, to a visit we paid to Santa Fe's most famous stupa (the town is fortunate enough to have several), located at the KSK Buddhist Center on Airport Road. This place has so many memories for me. I've shot it as both part of a documentary film and in hundreds of stills, and I've spent many hours in amazement, gazing at its walls and ceiling inside. Truly one of the most awe-inspiring spaces I've ever seen. It was the place that first introduced me to Buddhism, back when I discovered it in 1992. And where I became educated about it, by working in and reading books from its store, Noble Peace.

And the photo of course brings to mind my Tibetan godson, Tenzin Rigdol, who lives in exile in India and has never been able to see his home country.

Two days ago, as I hung the first set of prayer flags in my new house, on the Thai pagoda in the backyard (yes, there really is one), I realized that I'd bought the flags in Santa Fe, thus completing some sort of circle.

And tonight, as I check the clock, I realize that in the city in whose shadow I was raised, it's now 9/11. And I send out prayers for all NYers and everyone else who is still feeling the effects of that day.

Photo of the Day

When I visited Portland this summer, I took a bunch of photos in this warehouse area not far from the Pearl district. I turned a corner, and this woman was sitting so wonderfully poised in her way-cool 60s dress. While my subjects are usually less in the realm of the living, I couldn't resist this bit of street photography. Ah, the punch of those orangey oranges against the neverending expanse of grey and cumulo-storm-o in the Portland sky...

Graver Matters

I never thought I’d be walking around an old cemetery listening to Bonnie Raitt do a sound check, but if there’s anything this year has taught me, it’s that life brings lots of things you’d never expect, suspect, or even inspect. This odd concurrence took place today in Jacksonville, OR, a historic district not far from my new home, which had once gained fame as a gold-mining town, the first Chinatown in OR, and now as an outdoor stage for the ubiquitous Britt Festival, which brings in all kinds of national artists. Like Bonnie Raitt. Now, I’ve seen Bonnie before, eons ago in Albuquerque, and have not been terribly impressed. However, I have to say that she provided a very interesting soundtrack to my cemetery stroll. “Let’s give ‘em something to talk about,” she bellowed. Where I was, no one was particularly chatty. Except for a very annoying woman walking her yellow lab, who insisted on calling, “Here, Skippy!” at the top of her lungs, such to wake the dead. Good thing these guys were sleeping but tight…they’d been under since the mid-19th, some of them.

This landmark graveyard is divided into sections, including those for Jews, Catholics, Freemasons, Improved Orders of Red Men (a fraternal organization with rituals modeled after Native Americans’—of course, the white men “improved” on them), Odd Fellows (odder than white guys parading around as Indians?), and City “fathers” (somehow their moms gained admission, too). I spent a lot of time hanging out in the Jewish section placing pebbles on headstones, as is Jewish tradition to signify that the grave has been visited. Some had so many, some just a few…I wanted to cheer up the ones that hadn’t seen much action.

Today I also confirmed a longstanding theory I’ve had: Jew, Christian, odd fellow, or Suzy homemaker--people generally die close to their birthdays. In this cemetery, the vast majority sought greener pastures within 3 months of their DOBs, most waiting to blow out the candles on the cake first. It was uncanny. So, I guess I should eschew hazardous objects and skydiving trips during late January.

Some of these marble and granite headstones were so artful, it was like visiting a lovely sculpture garden. With lots of wormy corpuses under the art. I was so preoccupied with shooting photos and thinking about their aesthetic that that fact didn’t dawn on me until I got home: Oh, yeah, I was walking around on people’s heads… A unique facet of Oregon cemeteries is that the markers portray lots of images of the natural world, often including mountains, deer, elk, or even turkeys. One looked ever-so-much like a Thanksgiving mural. It was like “Home on the Range” set to marble.

Buddhists are often encouraged to meditate in the charnel grounds, as it is in such places that we most directly experience the mortality of our bodies, the realization that just like the residents here, we will one day cease to exist in our present form, and that love and all earthly relationships are ultimately tied to the whims of time. The crossing of the hour hand from one number to the next or the tearing off of a calendar page, and life can be radically altered or completely cease—in its current form. And thus, we appreciate the time, people, and relationships we do have as they are unfolding before our eyes.

Books and More Books

After being on the road for 7 weeks, I’m now settled down in Ashland, Oregon, where I’m renting a fabulous house with huge vegetable gardens and plenty of fruit trees. It’s a bit like the Garden of Eden, without the fig leaf or that nasty little rib. Not to say that ribs don’t come in handy—I’m quite attached to all of mine.

My current fascinations are Facebook, a highly addictive site that my friend Rachel was nice enough to turn me on to, and bookselling, which is at a peak right now with the academic ingress. I love putting books in mailers and thinking of all the great classes people are taking. Education is such a miracle. Without it, we end up with phenomena such as…well, George W. Bush, for starters…

My biblophilia was piqued recently on the plane rides to and from NM (details about the United Airlines debacle when I’m in a more savage mood). There I polished off most of an amazing book, entitled Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. You can pick it up today on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Outwitting-History-Amazing-Adventures-Rescued/dp/1565125134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220046149&sr=1-1) for 88 cents, which is the screamingest of deals, as this book is an awesome tale about a young guy’s attempt at literally saving a huge part of a culture. While I was in NM, I kept reading pages of it to Margot, and we both found ourselves tearing up at the passages about elderly Jews handing down their entire lives to the younger generation via these books. My friend Tori taught me most of the Yiddish I know (and it’s stuck!), but even if you’re more than ein bisl goyische, it’s still fascinating.

The other fun site I've happened upon in my quest to find book sales was Bookcrossing.com. This is a community (of 703,000 members!) who leave books in random places so that other people may find them. Each book is tagged with a tracking sticker, so that the leaver can find out in whose hands the book ends up. This reminds me a bit of balloon launches our grade school used to have, when we’d tie tags to each balloon requesting info about how far the balloon had traveled. Bookcrossing is an international effort, so it’s exciting to think that someone from Medford, Oregon, could pick up your book and take it on a plane with them to, say, Thailand, and you could get a hit back from Bangkok. So, my new meditation is…what books most need to be released into the world for the betterment of society? And of course, an answer that springs to mind is one of my very favorites, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. But where to leave it? I’m thinking the front porch of the Ashland Hostel, where so many Pacific Crest Trail hikers congregate. I’m sure it could find a happy home in a backpack, all covered in dirt, gorp, and bug spray, as it should be. I’ll keep you posted on where it ends up…

An August Morning at the Lake

Lakeside, OR

To the Lighthouse(s)

Cape Blanco Lighthouse

Umpqua River Lighthouse

The Oregon Coast: From Yachats to Cape Blanco

Tonight my tent sits in Cape Blanco State Park, near Port Orford, OR, on the southern coast, about 25 miles from Bandon. This is one of the loveliest parks I’ve camped in: deep forest on a cliff at the edge of the beach. After dinner, I took a short walk to the trail that winds through the forest, a coastal trail that pauses to lend generous ocean views now and again, then ultimately leads to the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. As I approached the light at nearly dusk, a deer grazed in the bushes about 20 feet before me. We both looked out over miles and miles of water, broken only by a few large black rocks and a single white light. To the right was the lighthouse, the state’s oldest (1870), highest, and westernmost, circling its yellow beam around the cape. Back in 1903, it also housed the only known female keeper. Her name, of course, was Mabel.

The campsite I’ve chosen is filled with ferns and tall trees, providing a canopy against the rain that I’m sure is on its way. Yesterday was one of the gloomiest, stormiest days I’ve seen since Margot and I visited Moonstone Beach (near Hearst Castle) on the day of the tornado watch on the Central Coast in early June. Last night I passed a truly sublime night at the Yachats Inn, with French doors just 50 feet away from the crashing ocean waves.

Getting there was a bit strange… That morning, the Sylvia Beach exploded and went boom, as one of my dorm-mates, a self-described mendicant monastic, concluded at 6:30 a.m. that our other dorm-mate was some sort of fugitive and decided to confront her as she lay dead asleep. A fistfight nearly ensued, the mendicant walked out (as is their nature, I suppose), and I was left with the angry “fugitive,” who decided it was time to vent. My role was to stay in my bunk and wish that this was not happening in my sanctuary at my beautiful hotel. The drama went on and on and on, including an ugly confrontation at the breakfast table, when half the patrons left (even we literary types hate Albee first thing in the morning)…and I decided that no rest would be had unless I found myself other quarters. After having been seated at dinner the previous night with a paranoid schizophrenic who claimed to be monitored via electronic chip over clam chowder, I knew my limit was nearing.

I quickly exited Newport and headed for Yachats, a bit further south. The town itself is of the “sneeze and you miss it” variety, but the fog banks were absolutely sublime—some of the prettiest gloom you’ve ever seen, the kind that makes a photographer fall to her knees with gratitude. During early evening, I drove up to Cape Perpetua—truly an amazing place, and OR’s highest (803 ft.) paved road this close to the shoreline. On a foggy evening, it’s like the drive up a mountain in a gothic horror film. I made a stop at Devil’s Churn, where I walked the Trail of the Restless Waters, taking me from a high overlook with ocean peeking through the trees, down a switchback to the water’s edge. It’s a rocky, drama--speaking of Albee--as the sea water gets pushed over the rocks and explodes into spray. Sometimes in Oregon I feel like I’m in another country halfway across the world, and this was one of those moments.

Later, I made my way back to the motel, then took a walk into town, to the Yachats Village Market, enjoying the smell of firewood burning in the damp air and the puffs of fog hanging in the pines on the mountains all around. When I got returned, I curled up in my room, with its wood ceiling and paneling, while the ocean waves pounded into shore just outside my screen door. I lay in bed and let them loll me to sleep.