snowflakes

Drove the 11/2 hours to the Zen Center last night. Roshi is heading to Costa Rica today so that was my last chance to see her for awhile. The lengthening of the days was very noticeable on the drive up.   New moon and Venus dancing together high overhead. Got home about 10:30, very tired. As I closed the garage door, noticed single snowflakes floating down out of the sky.

December 11, 2009
Dark coming to work today, 19 degrees. Almost two years ago I was walking over to production in the snow. Individual flakes were drifting slowly out of the sky. I noticed that some of the flakes were spinning, like a propeller. As always, it was very exciting for me to observe something new in the natural world. While I have seen snow spinning out of the sky since then, I have never seen that "propeller" effect in exactly the same way.
It is dark now when I leave work, but the parking lot is illuminated. On Monday night the snow was falling slowly out of the sky. I stopped to look for spinning snowflakes. I figured that if I was able to look at a flake high enough above me and follow it all the way down, I might see it spinning.
So there I was on the walkway at work, staring up into the sky. Don't really know for how long. Suddenly I noticed a couple of co-workers walking by me on the way to their cars. They didn't say anything, but gave off that "you're really weird, Jim" look that Shawn does so well. I panicked and quickly opened the door to my car except that it wasn't my car, it was the Tuttle company car. I made my way to my car, and opened the door except that it was actually Shirley's car (which looks a lot like mine). I finally limped across the parking lot to my car and drove home. Never did see any "spinners." Like Joni Mitchell said, "Something's lost, but something's gained in living every day."

One can travel the world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is not necessary to see many things, but to look hard at what you see.
Giorgio Morandi