What Next?

It's been hot. Every day for a week the weatherman predicted the following day would reach 100 degrees, but it never made it until yesterday. Today started gloomy and it is still gloomy with occasional sprinkles of rain and the weatherman will be wrong again. I did not realize that the week I arrived I got record breaking temperatures, 104° on August 26th and tied with 1996, and that the average temperature for the end of August is only in the high 80's.

Today I have a nagging stomach ache and every time I get up to do something I feel worse and have to sit down. I may be a good weekend to finish Michener's The Source. The rabbis stopped arguing and the Crusaders are just about finished slaughtering every person in sight, regardless of their religion. It is hard to comprehend that time and not wonder how Jesus' message got so lost. The book is much more interesting now and makes me think about finally reading Will Durant's History of Civilization, the series that I hauled all the way here and that fills more than one packing box, since The Source makes me realize how much of history I do not know.

Now that I am here a year and so much did not happen that I hoped for, I'm wondering what next? If I was enlightened it would not matter, I would be completely in the present, but I'm not.

I walked into work Friday morning so much in my protective bubble that the administrator came over and asked me if I was okay. I guess she said good morning to me and I did not answer. There is a report due on Fridays and three of us take turns completing it and yesterday was my turn. Everyone hates it. We never get all of the information for it to be right the first time and that is intentional. For my boss it is about power and for me it is about how not to play the game. It was a week of small slights and by Friday morning when I was looking at having to do that report I had enough.

A conversation with the administrator got me back in the present and in the end it was a good day for my spiritual practice, which included making my boss go ballistic. The more I stay present and calm the crazier she gets, like a great example of light shining on darkness, or like I am water and she is the Wicked Witch of the West.

I am missing 60 Days of Enlightenment, which gave me a writing theme that paralleled what I was doing. I'm going to have to find something else. I moved here for a smaller, quieter life, which I thought would be more conducive to a spiritual life, so I think I might write about a time when things were simpler, maybe the turn of the century. As I was packing my lunch this week I was wondering what kids used to take to school for lunch before we had grocery stores with food from all over the world. No fruit that is not in season, no Ziploc bags, no nitrate-filled lunch meat, no snack pack pudding.

Along those lines, I read about fishing in Idaho by concussion in the 1870s. That means creating an explosion in the river and stunning the fish. The problem was that this would yield too many fish to eat locally and they did not have ice yet, so they could not get the fish to market. No one would consider fishing by concussion today, but makes me think about how portable ice changed the world. Here is the whole article,

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/08/14/v-print/1759932/most-pioneers-thought-idahos-fish.html

It is good fishing season here and hunting season, too. I watched my neighbor across the street leave this morning in his camo hunting overalls with his rifle. I am not interested in hunting, but I really should get out and try fishing again. The geese were quiet during nesting season, but they are starting to take off honking overhead again. I think that sound is one of my favorite things about Idaho.