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I arrived here by bus last week from Seattle via Ellensburg after visiting my brother Jim and sister Julie in Boerne, Texas, where I left a few last personal effects behind, including my copy of the Majjhima Nikaya in my safe deposit box. I carried all the rest of my worldly possessions with me in my backpack, total weight 18 pounds. I spent a few days hiking from Lake Wenatchee up to Union Gap on the PCT which I found buried under snow. I could not remember the trail from 16 years ago. My hiking staff was very useful. I walked back down along scenic Highway 2, doing in all about 35 miles in three days, not too bad for my condition, although only 2/3 of my former capacity.
It will not be easy to keep updating this blog, or even to check email frequently, at least for the time being.
6.25 An article in the New York Times mentioning possible benefits from standing up instead of sitting down all day in front of a computer, inspired me to try this experiment during my last week in my apartment (see picture). The little Asus netbook shown next to the HP Elite desktop in the picture has been converted for my student neighbor Ernest Willeford who asked to have it. Now after a couple of days of standing up to use the computer, I think I could adapt to the discipline in time but it is not as comfortable as sitting. My feet ache. However I can change position from time to time by walking, sitting or lying down. My energy level and mental sharpness seem to be enhanced by standing, not to mention burning calories, and the drowsiness which comes after eating a meal is minimized. My files on the HP Elite desktop have been deleted; this computer is now converted for my brother Jim when he comes to pick me up after this last weekend in Alpine. This update is originating from my portable flash drive using Kompozer, Filezilla and TrueCrypt.
6.22 Alpine, Texas. Returned to my apartment yesterday and found everything exactly as I left it, except that the devastated equanimity tree in the shade of the balcony has sprouted a new set of leaves and a nest of barnyard swallows with four chicks has been constructed over the front door. I was able finally to get a lost filling replaced by a local dentist today. In my absence the Dollar General store was moved across town and the local Town & Country convenience store was remodeled under new ownership. During this week I will be giving away all of my apartment furniture and things, including my three computers, in order to fly to Washington to start a new chapter in life, with possible destination Ellensburg, a college town in the rain shadow of the Cascades enjoying a high desert climate near mountains and the great Columbia river.
An interesting example of the complexity of modern life caused me to miss my morning bus from Albuquerque to El Paso. On crossing the border into New Mexico the day before from Flagstaff, I dutifully set my wristwatch to the correct local time. However I overlooked the detail of setting the DST option to "ON", forgetting that Arizona is the only state except for a part of Hawaii which does not observe Daylight Saving Time, a concept which also obfuscated my original birth record years ago. Consequently, at precisely midnight my Casio Waveceptor Atomic Digital Watch received a time transmission from the NIST Boulder Laboratory and "corrected" the time by exactly one hour without my knowledge. The following morning, when I strolled unawares into an empty El Paso - Los Angeles - Limousine Express Inc. station to board my bus, I was told that the Mexican bus had already gone ("Salio"). So I had to spend a few hours in the Bosque strip along the Rio Grande River sitting under towering cottonwood trees shedding white confetti, waiting for the afternoon bus. Maybe someday there will only be one time zone observed for the entire world (UTC time), as done now unifying all of China. (UTC+8).
Today my sister Janie informed me that my father's will has not left anything for me, in favor of his grandchildren, which is all right. It also appears that he lost a major part of his estate in the stock market last year. I wonder if my name even appears in his will, just as my mother's will did not mention us her children. We five siblings are waiting for the law office to issue a copy of the complete text which only my sister has seen. I hope that the unequal division of our father's estate among us, at least what there remains of it from what he received from our grandfather and did not lose in the stock market, will be useful to the beneficiaries and not cause division between us. I believe I did not receive anything from our father's tangible effects mainly because I was not there to claim dubs, but that is all right too. There is nothing he had that I wanted, not even his car. There is nothing in the world which we can take with us at death except the karma which we have each made for ourselves. We are the heirs of our own karma.
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