the day as mindfulness bell

22 Apr, 2025

In reverse chronological order:

• Pacific Palisade's fiery catastrophe as a huge clanging gong of awareness: Sam and Dan Harris in conversation, on Sam's podcast, heard a couple of blocks before home, on Polk and Greenwich.


• Two figures in the dark up ahead approach: a man, and his dog (a young black [I think; it could have been brown, but it was shrouded in gloom] lab, prancing along the sidewalk with a stick the width of it. We share a chuckle, in passing.


• The young woman cashier at Trader Joe's on Hyde and California saw that I had a reusable shopping bag already, and smiled as she rang up my items. It's the small gestures.


• A handsome young man walks into House of Thai on Geary and Larkin, where I am already seated, waiting for my usual pad gra prow; I can't help but stare at his arms and legs, as they are dappled white and less-white, in the typical garb of vitiligo.


• On the L Streetcar into town, by the door, a dad speaks to his preschool-age daughter in their native German, but she replies in English. He is quietly insistent, but I detect a strain of sadness in his voice. Or maybe just, tiredness. I get off in the middle of West Portal Avenue.


• On my way to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in the West Portal neighborhood, I pass a (literal) bag lady who, when I do so, starts chanting a strange, runic rhyme with sinister meter. It feels like a portal opened up into some surreal dimension. Am I dreaming?


• At Whole Foods in Stonestown, I already have my reusable paper bag, but one of the store associates said I should use a basket with which to shop; he's right, of course, so I backtrack to the store entrance and grab one there.


• At one of the outlooks onto the Golden Gate Bridge, along the trail leading down to the beach and Fort Point, I stop and shake the sand from my shoes and socks. A disconsolate-seeming Hispanic man stands nearby for a bit, then goes off, looking for someone, or something. Or, I could be imagining things.


• A large group of high schoolers is hanging out at West Beach, perhaps after having done a science trip or something; 4 girls are at the very edge where the waves wash up onto dry sand, and they don't mind getting their footwear wet.


• I stand by the red lawn chairs on the edge of Tunnel Tops Park to snap a pic of the new park they are creating below, just in front of the Sports Basement Presidio where the parking lot and #30 bus line terminus used to be, to send to Pono, with whom I had a chat earlier.


• I began walking around 1:30 p.m., watching the marine inversion layer slowly recede, but not quite dissipating into nothingness, as it has done in previous days. Up Polk then down Chestnut to the Presidio, not sure of my destination, just letting my feet take the lead.

[ The Compass app screenshot was from my walk and zazen at Ocean Beach yesterday; the Lock Screen screenshot is of the approximate time this evening as I finished this post... ]