root root root for the home team

-hymie's basement, 21st century pop song, again!

It is mid-afternoon, on a day I expected to be very busy, but am only mildly busy. Mildly busy is a "risky" state for me, full of procrastination and naps (not necessarily the same thing, mind you, but sometimes, yes). Having a dog now doesn't help keep me on task, though it certainly helps me be more present with my own body and needs, as he mirrors them back to me.

Technical difficulties preparing to go to Toronto made me very nervous until I recalled that in preparing for the first teacher training, just over a year ago now, in Sonoma, I managed to take folder after folder of amazing Miksang shots, only to format them on the borrowed camera I was using, two times in a row. All that work, lost. And now, instead, I am flooded with images, stock slides from my teacher's pedagogical files, transforming them into digital messages to copy onto cds for all the other Miksang teachers.

Empty. Full. These teachings bring me close to this seeming contrast, this way in which we are both/and empty, full. I learn or teach Miksang and the same thing happens, in myriad variation, each time: I both am amazed and completed by the teachings, and left to wonder more questions than ever before. The former is tempered by the latter, and vice versa. What is left, on average, is tempered through faith, never used in a childhood of atheism, like its been waiting behind the curtains to make its strong center stage debut for 29 years.

It's hard to leave home again, after a summer of being away. I love Toronto, my friends there, the city itself, my teacher, the teachings. It is an amazing privilege to go. Yet so is sleeping with the dog. My neighbors. My housemates. I never realized those latter privileges so strongly until I was away so long.

News update: go to channel3000.com and vote for Erika and Doc Evermor's works to go into the Madison 50 year time capsule! When you click on the video, you will get me talking about Doc and Erika hyping herself. It was a fun day yesterday with Katy Sai.

On to Toronto. Keep an eye on Flickr - lots of Miksang additions over the next week, as I anticipate I will be shooting hundreds of shots a day. No better way to learn than to do.