Today is Tuesday. Here in Maine it is cold and pouring down rain. Curtains of rain. We need it badly but it's a little hard to take after 2 weeks of perfect real spring weather. The black flies will be here in a 11 days, we received a postcard from them this morning (top right photo) notifying us of their arrival.

Pretty quiet at the office today. Everyone seemed kind of vacant in their busyness.

Not like last Friday.

I must say I do feel that I look like a cross between these two. If I they were avatars looking at the real world for a character to play them in "first life" they would probably both pick me. The world they create would most certainly be the one I live in. Spring at the ocean in Maine, a dream come true for us all. Throw those windows open and take a deep cartoon breath.

Healthy Earth Day to you.

Some people have told me I look like Nancy. URrr, they may be right! Either her or Lulu.

I'm reading.... more like studying the Eckhart Tolle book, A New Earth. It's the first Oprah book I've read while everyone else is reading it. I'm also following the Monday night class that Eckhart and Oprah are conducting. I listen to the podcast on Tuesdays. This week will be chapter 8.

Tolle also wrote the "The Power of Now" which I never read. I imagine that this in a continuation of the same principle, BE HERE NOW. Easy to say, Easy to think, but not so easy to practice. He says be in every moment while it is happening and you will connect with "your true purpose" in life, which as far as I can tell is to be here now.

The picture is where I was not five minutes ago. The first sunny truly warm Saturday of the season. We ate breakfast and lunch on the back porch and I washed windows and put in screens then took a nap in that very hammock.

While I was laying there I thought about a story I heard or read about a super Monk that was talking one day to his students after a meal. He asked them why he should wash the dishes? (why there were dishes I don't know I thought monks were only suppose to have a bowl and a spork) They answered-" to get them clean, so they could move on to something else, so the dishes would be ready for the next say", etc. "No" the Monk said, "I wash the dishes, to wash the dishes".
This story has always really irritated me in a teenage eye rolling heavy sigh kind of way.

But reading A New Earth in combination with where I am in my life, head, heart I think the super Monk is the same thing Tolle is and damn it I think I get it. Be where you are, when you are. Otherwise you miss huge chunks of your day/life.

Nothing more to say really. See you tomorrow

This quilt was in the visitors center

On our way to NOLA our flight was delayed 5 hours in Newark. After about 3 hours and a gate change you get to know who is on your flight. Ginger and I kept noticing a well dressed, nice looking man here and there, obviously on our flight. He sat right across from us for a long time, then like everyone else got up and milled around. I kept thinking "he looked so familiar..... "

It was midnight when we boarded our flight. He was seated in first class as we passed through the plane to our seats. I didn't think much about him after that.

On the way home, at 5:30am out of NOLA he was there again in the waiting area. We were on the same flight back to Newark. Ginger kept telling me to just go up to him and ask who he was. "Say, I know you are somebody, who are you?" But I was very tired and it was early and I didn't want to be rude. So I said nothing as we sat looking at each other for an hour across the seats.
Well, hind sight is 20/20 (still not sure what that means- but I know I feel like a hind).

Alan if I had it to do it all over again..... "I love your music, I think you are an amazing composer-musician, Thank you for all of your wonderful music, I listen to it all of the time. My girlfriend says your music changed her life. May I have my picture taken with you, and would you mind an autograph? Here you can put it right here on my new cowrie bracelet that I bought at the Marie Laveau's house of Voo-Doo? Thank you and bless your heart.

seaweed in winter and pincushion moss


Spring creeps slowing and cautiously up the north-east coast. Frightened perhaps by Yankee ethic or that "live free or die" predominating attitude.
Some say it's the hot snap of a bat hitting a baseball that echos off seagulls as they float in the cold northbound currents. It is this sound that brings a warming vibration to our shores. The warmth moves through the disappearing frost heaves like really really really slow lightening.
Finally it spreads far and thin enough to give encouragement to the first plants trying to connect with the sun through stiff dirt .
Thick sweaters and overcoats feel heavy now. Mud replaces the smell of ice.
I have a window open, just a little bit.

Just got back from New Orleans.

2 days of work,

2 days of play.

Stayed in the French Quarter.

25th French Quarter Festival was going on.

Great music,

Great food,

Friendly people,

It felt good to outside in the heat.

Once your feet have tasted sandals,

it's hard to make them go back to shoes

I don't know what I did but below there is a huge space after the Wednesday April 2 post (perhaps some sort of late April fools joke I unknowingly played on myself?).

Please scroll way down below that one to see more postings. Oh and have a nice day (picture is from the Blue Hill Fair Sept. 2008

Just a note from the mosh-pit of the mid-week, mid-day, mid hour squat-thrust of my afternoon. Another windy blow the winter away day here. All we are saying is give Spring a chance. The crocus (is that also plural?) are coming on strong now, snow drops looking rather naked and larger things growing in the swampy area of the island. Those purple alien baby looking things...skunk cabbage? Anyway I just wanted to say:





....................Sometimes you do this

But you think this........................