Dad

Finished 2 more studies and on to 2 more today. Dad has been monopolizing the computer and the phone, but is gone for 2 days playing golf and I am trying to take advantage of it.



When Dave and I were here a few months ago to help Dad get the ranch ready to sell, we were amazed at how Dad worked like a machine. We were exhausted by 3 pm and Dad was on his 5th hour of non-stop weed whacking around the edge of the houses with a gas powered weed whacker. Dad is 72, and is finally starting to look his age, although when we go to dinner I still feel like telling people I am the daughter, not the date, but he works on his ranch like a teenager. Last week he got a warning that his email box was full and spent two days deleting emails, watching golf, and taking naps, so I guess he does know how to relax, too.

Dad is captain of his golf team and President of the Moro Bay Golf Club. He was talking to me about golf, which is like talking to me about astrophysics, and mid-sentence said you are probably not interested, and I said I was glad he was keeping busy. Busy! he said, I keep really busy taking care of this ranch! I said I thought he was up here isolated on his ranch spending too much time arguing with his socialist neighbors and getting loopy and I was glad to see that was not true.




(I took these at the golf club when Dad was practicing, then I walked off to take some more of some birds I heard over the ridge, until I thought I heard someone on the green say, "if you are going to walk across the fairway, you can at least be quick about it!" I forgot I was not in a park, damn! I was so embarrassed I ran off the fairway and back to the clubhouse and sat there until Dad was done.)

When I called on my road trip and told Dad I was stopping by on my way home, he said when I was there I could explain what this is all about! I imagine he thought I was turning into a right wing extremist and headed for living in the woods of Idaho with too many guns and he would soon see me on the news with my home surrounded by the FBI. Dad is pretty realistic and I was glad to share with him my reasoning and receive some support. Dad has never had a job that he hated and could not quit in his life, so there is some of my experience that he cannot understand, but he did talk about someone he knew that did something similar and was very successful (went to cooking school and became a successful chef with her own restaurant at 50.) Dad has also been pretty successful as an artist, with one job transitioning into another with rare breaks, but today he has a studio of paintings that did not sell.

Dad says I once told him that I found it difficult to find something I wanted to paint, which seems hard to believe now. Maybe today it is just the act of painting that matters, rather than some important subject, which leads me to the next enlightenment topic, enlightenment. This topic includes a Zen proverb,

Before enlightenment
chopping wood
carrying water.

After enlightenment
chopping wood
carrying water.

I find Zen useful and true, but difficult to grasp for more than a moment. (My favorite of my Zen books is Nothing Special: Living Zen, which is a collection of dharma talks led by Charlotte Joko Beck, which seems to make Zen more accessible to the westerner.) Enlightenment cannot be attained, it is a realization. Once you reach this realization, the world has not changed, you just see it with new eyes. Enlightenment is a change in attitude, about chopping wood, carrying water, or painting.