I've been meaning to post some photos from our temporary home in Alameda for a while now. This morning after we walked the dog and before work I finally got the camera out and tried to capture a little of the essence of our block. Later I'll put a few more views of the old base out for you to see.

The photo above shows the house from the front with the maid's quarters in the foreground, or left side. This room and bath are at the end of a sunny hallway passing along the laundry room and utility storage.

Below is a view of the back, which shows the little fenced yard area for the dog. The yard isn't much to look at, but being in the park-like surroundings it doesn't matter too much. Now that we are both working a lot of hours there isn't much time for fussing over a yard anyway. Also below is a view of one of the ship loading cranes across the street as you look beyond our back windows.



It is rather remarkable when the tugs guide a big ocean-going ship by the neighborhood through the estuary. The following views of ships moored on the other side opposite ours don't do justice to that drama.



There are a bunch of these old places in the surrounding blocks. Below is a photo across the next three streets over, where we walk the dog every day. You can see three of the "Big Whites" as they are called lined up on the respective streets.



It's been quite an adjustment setting up housekeeping in this big old naval officers' house. Not the upgrade we imagined far away from our old Hayward house that provided so many pleasant and carefree (in hindsight) years of comfortable living. However, as with so many recent experiences and trials, it seems to be an opportunity to witness the true makings of a life without illusion or false sense of security and permanence.

Once again, Mona has posted in her blog some timely comments. Maybe just a hint of a kindly finger-wag, which I earned with my whining yesterday about the unsatifactorieness of my job and a few other areas.

"All moments are moments of contentment. When they are not, it's because the mind has made a mess of them."

"Nothing is a big deal. It's whatever it is and then it's something else."

-Sylvia Boorstein

I keep running across the same concepts in different books by different authors - our future worries, hopes and expectations, and obsessions with events, mistakes and involvements past diminish our experience of the present with alarming brutality at times. One shouldn't have to draw comparisons to the refugees of the Sudan to find comfort in one's surroundings. This seems a little like trying to profit from their misfortune.

It should be enough to just drop all the baggage and stories and appreciate what is, while moving along the path toward whatever will happen next.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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Turkey-truck crash kills three people

Car collides with truck carrying 11,000 pounds of frozen poultry
Thursday, November 25, 2004 Posted: 6:13 PM EST (2313 GMT)


TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma (AP) -- A car collided with a tractor-trailer carrying 11,000 pounds of frozen turkeys, killing three people, authorities said Thursday.

The victims were in the car, which drove through a stop sign Wednesday around 6 p.m., according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Nobody in the truck was injured.

"There was nothing we could do about it," said Aaron Gower, a passenger in the truck. "It was like they didn't even know there was a stop sign."



The truth of impermanence...The essence of life is fleeting. Life might be over in the next instant! Remembering impermanence can teach you a lot about how to cheer up. It's OK to let it scare you. Seeing your fear can heighten the sense of gratitude for the preciousness of human birth and the opportunity to practice.

Life is precious and it's brief and you can use it well.

-Pema Chödron

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Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Mona sent me a note on meditation last night, from the fellow above and his book "Turning the Mind into and Ally". It seems like she always comes up with just the right things at just the right time. The third section is the critical one - it goes to the heart of a lot of material I have been seeing (and experiences I have been having) that relate to the grave error of mistaking our egocentric delusions with an honest perception of reality.

We can't possibly meditate without having first experienced the wildness of mind. We notice the movement of our mind " Oh, a thought". We're learning how to cut through discursiveness.

At every stage, shamatha is a practise of noticing how the mind vibrates. When the mental frequency is no longer vibrating with movement, we experience the naturally even and immovable quality of the mind, if only for a moment.

Believing that thought patterns are a solid self is the source of our bewilderment and suffering. Seeing through this simple misunderstanding is the beginning of enlightment.

Mindfulness and awareness presents us with the revolutionary opportunity to observe that movement without being swept into it.

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Here is what Eckhart Tolle says about this mess (edited a bit by me)...



Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is concious, in others unconscious. If it is concious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconcious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after posessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so they can feel better about themselves. But even after they attain these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it gets more difficult.

As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease....since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with posessions, the work you do, social status and recognition,....

None of these is you.

Eckhart Tolle...from The Power of Now

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I'm sure Eckhart would agree that in my case this is why I am so obsessed with the good house and good job - I derive so much of my identity of from these external artifacts. Well, neither of these is me.

And I'm sure Rinpoche would agree that this is one more good reason to find the gap in the silly stories that I repeat endlessly to myself about who and what I am.

Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

Ah, work.

This would be the first day at work for nearly four months. Positive cash flow!

It wasn't as bad as I anticipated. Kind of nice to have a cublicle to hang out in, once I cleaned up the inevitable grime from the previous resident. Most of the day was spent finding documentation online, and how to report time and process trouble tickets. Meeting people, getting organized. I have two weeks to get ramped up to be productive, and begin providing on-call 24X7 coverage during my assigned rotation.



Last night was nearly sleepless, as I worried that I was giving up a better opportunity with a nearby (2.5 mile commute!) company with lavish benefits and a great story. The position was really close to what I have to offer, but as I got a phone interview just prior to my commitment for the 90-day contract I found that I was missing one critical skill set that made me less than the ideal candidate. So this makes the contract the probable best deal I could find locally. I can have peace of mind...something always available, but I seem to need external events to ease me along - more Buddhist reading is in order.

So - we have a decent place to live in a nice area. We have jobs. We and the dog are holding together in good health. Our friends have been kind and in touch. We have three Thanksgiving dinners to attend over the next week. We still have only the vaguest idea what will happen in the spring, but....

Things could be a lot worse.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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Well, it looks like I'm going to accept a contract position that has been offered to me by the company that Pat works for.

I can only hope that at least my employer will treat me well.



Here is the position as it appeared on one of the hight-tech job boards...


Title:
Network Engineer
Skills:
CCIE, Cisco VOIP, VPN, Data Networks,
Cisco

Date:
11-15-2004
Location:
Alameda, CA

Area code:
510
Tax term:
CON_IND

Pay rate:
60/hr.
Length:
6 months +

Job description:

Embarcadero Systems Corp. seeks senior level network engineer with at least 5-7 years experience in design, installation and maintenance of Cisco routed data networks.

Primarily responsible for design and management of routed network infrastructure. Will design and configure networking equipment in support of all major Moves, Adds and Changes for Voice & Data Services.

Design, implement & test all VPN solutions for enterprise. Manage trouble resolution on all network connections. (24 hour on call)Maintain current documentation and backups for all supported internet networking systems.

Must be knowledgable in firewalls, layer 7 switches, VPN concentrators, TAC ACS servers. Will ensure that these systems are in efficient working order and regularly upgraded.

Design and implement router configurations and core Call Manager configurations for new VOIP sites. Engineer, design and assist with implementation of all wireless networks.

Provide design and troubleshooting support for all 3rd party connections to the enterprise. Provide backup support for Cisco Works, N2H2 management applications. Provide backup support for Automatic Call Distribution system.

Other duties as negotiated between management and employee.

Qualifications
Cisco VOIP apps (3+ years)
Experience with voice/data integrated communications
Intermediate to expert skills with the following computer applications: Visio (or AutoCAD), MS Project or other project management software, MS Exchange or other Electronic Mail application.
Ability to travel +25% of the time
Ability to lift and carry 40 lbs.
Will work in hard hat environments
On Call 24x7 (50% of time)

Travel required:
25%

Telecommute:
no

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So much for napping mid-day and hanging out with the M-dog all the time.

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A brown UPS truck pulled up in front of the house today and sent M-dog into a frenzy of barking and charging at the door. The driver brought me a good-size box from Mona in Wyoming.

I had a melancholy sort of day up to this point, me and dog wandering around the boarded up ruins of the old base that surrounds us here. My indecision about what to do about various job options has been wearing on me. More on that later.

So I brought the box to the kitchen table, and opened it. The first thing that appeared was a beautiful small rug of plush red oriental design, rolled up in the middle. Then I saw several pieces of gnarled weathered wood (Mona and I can't help but call it driftwood, although it is from the high desert over thousand miles from any ocean). Almost immediately, I started to cry uncontrollably - which continued while I pulled out of the crumpled pages of the Platte County Merchant several twisted pieces of rusted barbed wire, two votive candle holders, a box of tea light candles, some "Potala" incense from Tibet, a bunch of stalks of various wild grass seeds (protected in two taped-together cardboard toilet paper roll tubes), and a cassette tape Mona thought would be helpful to me in view of all the suffering I have been experiencing over change and loss and worry about the future. I was just so touched by the thoughtfulness, and nostalgic for the source of the artifacts from Wyoming.

I stumbled around the house for a while sobbing and blowing my nose, while I tried in vain to find a small vase for the grass seed stalks among the half-unpacked boxes. The futility of this effort reinforced my sense of loss of home, and temporariness and groundlessness of our present circumstances.

Later, when I regained my composure, I called Mona and thanked her for all the treasures, and discussed my sorry circumstances - or rather my sorry reaction to circumstances, which is the real problem. I know this is all because I am not yet able to have a mature and clear view of change and uncertainty.



The tape from the box was a reading by Leslie Temple-Thurston, a South African immigrant who offers a range of guidance and insight on spiritual matters. This reading is called Change, Grounding, and Balance. It couldn't have come at a better time. It summarized and reinforced a lot of things I've been reading recently about change, and fear of change, and discernment of reality from illusion, and transcending the limitations of a life of negative conditioning.

I tromped up the stairs with tape player, a big glass of red wine, and a candle, and filled the tub with hot water and bubble bath. Then I lay there wrinkling but calm while I listened to the entire thing.

There were a lot of ideas, most of which I have been running into over and over in various books while the troublesome ideas and anxieties crowd into my hours and days and weeks and months. There is an essential inner self that is calm and capable, if only it can be allowed to emerge amongst all the delusional egocentric gnashing of teeth. There is a clear and non-threatening view of the world and its activities available, if only we can stop projecting our fearsome fictional movies in front of us. With all the uncalled-for drama we create in our dealing with our surroundings, our lives hardly even qualify to be called a documentary.

At times like this, after days like this, and weeks and months like this, I have just a glimmer of the truth that it was ultimately for the best that we gave up our perceived comfort and security with our jobs and our house of so many years. It was probably the only way I could be set out on the path toward learning that the only real comfort and security is derived from knowledge that one is complete internally, by their very nature, and all the uncertainties of the external world can't dislodge one from that solid place.



Now I know that - if only I could reach the point where I genuinely feel it. It is important, this adjustment to a more real view of the world and the changes it brings continuously. As in the John Denver tune Mona played for me that day we were in the mountains...sweet, sweet surrender - live life without care - like a fish in the water - like a bird in the air....



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

I've been meaning to get a post together about the visit with sister Becky in Reno the as I made my way back from the ranch and Wyoming to California. It was good to see the cute place where she lives North of town in the desert, and the life she is putting together for herself now that she has a solid career and a little more stability in her life. I never thought I find myself admiring her settled existence while feeling like I was the gypsy!

After all the truck-driving and other odds and ends she somehow managed to create an opportunity to become an operating room technician, scrubbing to assist various surgeons. Quite an accomplishment for her. A position in high demand - and not one that can't be outsourced to buck-an-hour offshore folks in India thank God.



When Becky relocated from Wyoming to Reno, she trailered her old truck behind her new one. It still rests on the trailer it arrived on. You never know what nostalgia will inspire people to do.



Becky has an old dog named Rowdy - a very sweet guy who got along very well with the M-dog. Becky thinks he had a minor stroke, which gives a slightly goofy lopsided appearance to his face with one ear and one side of his mouth a little askew.



Becky loves her horses (mare Little Bit and gelding Roo if I recall) - and they clearly love her back. Seems to me a little like giant dogs.

It was a really tough time for me, leaving Wyoming and driving all day and all night to reach Reno a few hours before daylight. Becky was great, waiting up for me, and listening to my tales of woe. She shopped for me too, and had wonderful things for sandwiches, chips, apples, carrots...all the things I casually mentioned on the phone that might be good for a meal instead of eating out. Home baked cookies too. After we drank soem good coffee in the morning after a few hours of sleep, we had a nice lunch together, and I packed up some of the goodies that Pat and I would later have when we met up at the rental house in Alameda.

Like my time with Mona, the brief time with Becky took some of the edge off all the disappointments that culminated with the temporary retreat to Califonia.

Thanks Becky! Let's think about how we can own a ranch together someday in Wyoming or Coorado...or Mexico.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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Today I went to talk to some people I worked with in the past about a job. I wasn't sure I was ready yet, but they called so it was time to talk. On the way home, I stopped at an old hardware store and picked up some oilcloth for a small kitchen table. Some of the patterns are pretty wild - I picked one that was probably an original Mexican pattern and colorful without being painful.

A leading purveyor of oilcloth has as their motto - "A new oilcloth makes the whole family happy".

OK. I hope this is true.

Before the stop at the hardware store, I passed by an old bookstore with a chaotic look that inspired me to double back and park for a look around. It was one of those places where there are narrow aisles, and books piled in aisles, spilling off shelves, in boxes in corners - in an array of dimly lit rooms and corridors. A clean well light place it was not.


I found the eastern philosophy area and picked up an Alan Watts book I was looking for, and browsed for an hour through a dozen other books. At one point I leafed through "What the Buddha Taught". As I flipped through it, I found a section about the pitfalls of finding or having pleasurable circumstances. "When the situation changes...when you are deprived of this enjoyment, you become sad, you may become unreasonable and unbalanced, you may even behave foolishly."

Indeed. That would describe the past three months for me, since we sold our pleasant house and threw various other pieces of our lives up in the air with sad misconceptions about where and how those pieces might flutter to earth. Some of them remain airborne even now.

So I am determined to stop some, if not all of this foolishness, before the unbalancing proceeds dangerously further, and everyone within earshot is exhausted by the unreasonableness. I am tired of suffering, and maybe will wise up in the most literal sense, and in a way that will provide lasting benefit.

And all this through the miracle of a new oilcloth.

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Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

As I mentioned previously, Mona introduced me to a side of John Denver that most people never are exposed to. Lots of people cynically dismiss him as sacharine or lighweight, but he was a decent and talented man. He recorded a song by Kent Lewis called Song of Wyoming, below...

Well, Im weary and tired, Ive done my days ridin
Nighttime is rollin my way
The skys all on fire and the lights slowly fading
Peaceful and still ends the day
Out on the trail night birds are callin
Singin their wild melody
Down in the canyon cottonwood whispers
A Song of Wyoming for me

Well, Ive wandered around the town and the city
Tried to figure the how and the why
Well, Ive stopped all my schemin
Im just driftin and dreamin
Watching the river roll by
Here comes that big ole prairie moon risin
Shinin down bright as can be
Up on the hill theres a coyote singin
A Song of Wyoming for me

Now its whiskey and tobacco and bitter black coffee
A lonesome old dogie am I
But wakin up on the range
Lord I feel like an angel
Free like I almost could fly
Drift like a cloud out over the badlands
Sing like a bird in the tree
The wind in the sage sounds like heaven singin
A Song of Wyoming for me
A Song of Wyoming for me

Now you have to remember that just a couple of nights before (see the blog entry from Oct 27th) there was a big full Wyoming moon, and after I walked down the driveway to the mailbox and turned around, the Coyotes from several directions stopped me in my tracks with the howling and yelping. The wind inspired the cottonwoods to whisper. The evening sky was afire more often than not, and invariably the peace and stillness settle your soul.

And now we're wandering the city, and God knows we're trying to figure out the how and why of it all. Now we're supposed to stop scheming too for a while, to let things settle down a bit before we figure out what to try and make happen next.

When I played this song for Pat he choked up. So did I.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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The picture above of Mona on her front porch is one of the final images I have of the ranch, as just after it was recorded around 9am on October 30th I was off on the drive twelve hundred miles to California - a place I wasn't necessarily ever expecting to see again. It was not a happy prospect, as I could summon up no joy at the prospect.

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When Mona and I drove up into the mountains, she introduced me really for the first time to John Denver, playing his tunes and singing lustily along. She was almost apologetic for playing his music at first, but as I listened I saw a dimension of him I never had from his pop tunes on the radio. He was a kind, compassionate, generous, and eloquent musician. One of his songs, Sweet Surrender, with its Buddhist allusions has become my anthem for the exhausting, demoralizing, and distressing but oddly inspiring events of the summer just past. Here are the lyrics...


Lost and alone on some forgotten highway
Traveled by many, remembered by few
Lookin' for something that I can believe in
Lookin' for something that I'd like to do with my life

There's nothin' behind me and nothin' that ties me to
Something that might have been true yesterday
Tomorrow is open and right now it seems to be more than enough
To just be here today, and I don't know
What the future is holdin' in store
I don't know where I'm goin' I'm not sure where I've been
There's a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me
My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end

Sweet, sweet surrender, live, live without care
Like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.


At least if I can free myself from the obsessions about past mistakes, and what I perceive that I have lost, and what the future might bring, and believe in the words that feel so right in that song, I might be able to live that way.

On one of those lonesome roads, between the ranch and the Interstate, I ran across an abandoned motel - the Home Ranch Motel.



As I drove on through the whole of Wyoming from East to West, then Utah, I grew progressively more depressed. When I would stop to walk the M-dog, she would never express any interest in being where we were or peeing. Each time she would strain at the leash to get back to the car, interprepted by me to mean "What the Hell are we doing here? Let's get back to the Ranch where we belong!"

As I passed through Salt Lake City, I knew I didn't want to stay the night in a motel, as I had planned. It would have been far to depressing to sleep, so I pressed on. I called my sister Becky in Reno to tell her I was going to try to make it all the way there without an intermediate stop. Shortly after I entered Nevada, it grew dark. At times it rained, but was temperatures were just warm enough to spare me snow and ice. By the time I passed through Winnemucca around twelve hours had passed, and as I approached Reno I knew I couldn't make the final hour or so without risking falling asleep driving. I stopped and slept sitting up for an hour, then got back on the freeway. Becky waited up for me, and I pulled in there around 2am, adjusted for the fall time change and Pacific time zone. By my watch it was 4am.

Later in the morning when we awoke, Becky showed me around the ranch, and we talked and caught up on things. She had shopped for good things for me to eat, and baked cookies - I packed stuff away for Pat and I to have after I arrived in Alameda.

Becky has a great dog named Rowdy who is getting on in years. He looks like M-dogs long lost brother. My sister is as attached to him as I am to the M-dog, and it is sad to see him slowing down, and displaying the symptoms of a probable minor stroke. He has a lopsided grin, and one ear is out of sync with the other.



Tomorrow I'll post some more photos of Becky and her trucks and horses (and me), and some more thoughts on the awesome chaos and uncertainty that continues to dog me as I try to move on with life.

Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

Sweet Surrender lyrics © John Denver

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