Trees.

Death is happening all of time.

I forget that. I am reminded. This month I attended the third funeral since I've arrived here and today I went to pick up my friend and Zen priest from the airport from his step father's funeral. In downtown San Jose, I stood before a mural of 1, 300+ pictures of trees. Their story: they are the trees of an orchard in Silicon Valley. As the city grew up among them, one devoted man nurtured these trees for the past thirty years. Eventually the business that owned the orchard sold out to another business that couldn't afford to keep the orchard or water the trees. The man still went though. He watched the cherry trees with shallow roots begin to die first, watched trees fall in storms, and slowly even the deep-rooted oaks begin to dry. He watered two by hand. I don't know why two, maybe that was what he had strength to do-- he'd grown old with the trees. The photographer met the trees once earlier in his life and was drawn back to them. He took each trees portrait during the winter. It was a stirring display... both celebratory, like proud family portraits proclaiming a history in a hallway, and also the photography of a cemetery. It made me cry. We live in a beautiful world. We live in an ugly world. And it is so good and difficult to be born human.

When I talked to Rick about how to the hold the stories of the people who crack their lives open for me he said simply, "Grieve."

I asked Ellie today what had become clearer to him lately (thank you, Larisa for that question). He said, "That the world is evil..." The system, the injustice of it... the grossness of our ignorance to how our lifestyles effect others. "...but fighting may not be the best response." I asked him what was better and he said maybe openness, to be vulnerable.  Hmm.

 The Sea of Vulnerability: Fred Luskin