Aussie just had a big to-do with Benny Linguini over a small bone. He got his, she got hers, but he snatched hers after she stepped away from it momentarily, and before he knew it, she rolled him over on the ground a couple of times (she weighs almost six times as much as him) and threw him up into the air to practice her juggling. He screamed, she growled and walked away, satisfied with the message: Leave my food alone.

Lori and I both jumped up, she in the kitchen and I in the office. She said that the Linguini had it coming to him; he’d been hovering by Aussie’s food since arriving here and she’d finally had enough. “You have to learn to respect her,” she told him sternly. “She’s your elder.”

And your bigger, I added silently.

Wendell Berry, who died several days ago, wrote the beautiful Peace of Wild Things, which described what he did when he’s bummed out about the state of the world:

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

It didn’t work for me this past weekend. Almost no advice, lofty as it is, works all the time for all people.

I’ve been in gloom since Friday, the 25^th memorial to the events of 9/11/2001. I looked at the photos of those familiar scenes, including those of the Towers before they came down. I remembered zooming down by subway to World Trade Center 1 to buy half-price tickets for theater that evening. There were never any lines so I could zoom right back uptown, all in one hour. Few tourists knew of that booth with an opening time of 1:00 pm, they all knew about the one on Broadway that opened at 3:00 with lines around the block. I thought of the PATH trains underground that came through there.

I remembered getting out of a subway station anywhere downtown, climbing up the stairs and onto an unfamiliar intersection, and instantly looking up and around for the two towers that pointed to themselves: This is south, and I knew then where i was and how to find my way to wherever I was heading.

The peace of wild things didn’t cheer me. Not even the usual end-of-day sitting outside in the dark, listening to cicadas. It’s now been 3 days since I’ve seen hummingbirds, they’re well on their way out of here for the season and I’ll take in their feeders to wash up and put away. I clean up the purple and white phlox petals that are strewn around the flower vases on the altars. We’ve begun the season of saying goodbye, I tell myself, perhaps that’s why my spirits are low.

But was 9/11 a seasonal thing? According to what intelligence? What thinking? And, of course, there were doomsday articles about AI, bringing up the question of whether homo sapiens have a death or extinction wish unmatched by other species.

Bernie used to say that we all have our clubs. Some of his students remembered this as a kind of criticism, as though he disapproved, but that was not my memory at all. Being the engineer that he was, he was simply (and nonjudgmentally) describing reality: We belong to clubs according to gender, race, culture, religion, sports favorites (he still loved the Brooklyn Dodgers even after they left Brooklyn), food choices, careers, etc. He belonged to several clubs: Jewish men, first generation American Zen teachers, social entrepreneurs, dads. I belonged to my clubs, too: Jewish women, second generation Zen teachers, writers, dog lovers, etc. I never heard him criticize this, it’s just how things are.

The problem, he pointed out, was when we got too attached to the club: It was better than others, it was chosen by the Lord, superior and even supreme, which often leads to how carefully it must be protected, which then leads to all forms of aggression. That’s when we begin to exclude others, insist that our way is the right way, the others are nice but (if we’re honest about it) inferior, and one day one day everyone will see that ours is best, etc. And if other people don’t value our club in the same way, they’re clearly not human beings in the full meaning of the word, in fact they may be heathen or primitive, in fact they’re sub-human.

This past weekend was also the Jewish new year, which I celebrated by lighting candles and giving apple slices with honey to Lori, signifying that I hope the coming year is a sweet one for her. A meager ritual, it still reminded me that building clubs has a very positive side. Think of the art, song, music, dance, costumes, and ceremonies created by the various cultural and religious clubs. Think of the stories and myths, think of the Bible and both Testaments.

Think of the different languages we use to describe the challenges of life. Did you know that kaukokaipuu is a term for feeling homesick for a place you’ve never been to, created by the Finnish club? Or that basorexia is an English derivative of the Latin and Greek clubs and their languages that refers to the sudden urge to kiss someone? I’ve felt both those things, but who knew there were actual terms for that? I’m indebted to Maria Popova in The Marginalian for pointing them out.

Animals have their families and packs, plants have seeds and progeny, they fight or at least compete over food, territory, and opportunities to reproduce, but they don’t create clubs, to my knowledge. They don’t build all that gorgeous cultural, ethnic, and religious scaffolding. We humans may have started clubs to protect the very things animals watch over, but we also added dimensions that other living species have not. Why? Because we have the creative mind to do it, even if we lack the sharpness of senses that other living beings have.

Clubs beget ingenuity and inspiration; they challenged Rumi to write poetry and Monet to see and paint things differently from before. They give us certain foundations, and some then use those foundations as bedrock from which to leap to the sky. Clubs are beautiful—

Till we kill for their sake. Till we make fun of their accoutrements: Look at those silly feather bonnets; see the weird paints on their faces? Look at how violent they can be, how their women aren’t covered up. They have divorce! Can they really believe that the body and blood of Christ are that wine and wafers?

Sometimes people say that the world would be a better place without all that stuff. Really? Without a Grecian urn showing villagers and priests gathering to make sacrifice, and a young Keats writing his ode? Without the haunting Kol Nidre service in Yom Kippur that releases us from fetters and bonds? Without a verse atoning for “all harmful karma ever committed by me” with which to start the day? Without the Dodgers baseball cap that Bernie harbored till his dying day?

What do we have to do, how much do we have to throw away, before we can live in peace?

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“Congratulations, Linguini. You joined Aussie and me for a walk today, the first one since you came here. I thought it was a good thing to do on this 49^th day of Henry’s death. I lit incense, and then marked it by taking you for our first walk together, especially as Lori was going to physical therapy, which sometimes tires her. Of course, first I had to catch you. You ran all around the house and then upstairs, and finally I found you on Lori’s bed, attached the leash, and off we went.”

“You didn’t catch me, I just let you get close because of the yummy liver treats you had on hand.”

“You whimpered the entire time sitting in the back seat of the car.”

“Because you didn’t open the window wide enough for me to push my head out and enjoy the scenery.”

“I was nervous that you might jump out of the car, Linguini. Once we reached our destination and started walking, you pulled and pulled on my arm.”

“Aussie was up ahead, free as a bird, and I was leashed!”

“I don’t dare take you off leash. You’re even smaller than Henry. After he was killed by coyotes, I promised myself I was never going to take a small dog into the woods again unless they’re on leash. Since that’s not my favorite thing to do, I can’t promise we’ll have lots of walks together, but we had one today.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you. You’re the one who lost Henry, right? I don’t even know who you are.”

“Linguini, I don’t know who I am, either. Today is a heavy day. The Jewish new year begins tonight, but other than cutting some Cosmo apple slices and coating them with honey for Lori and me, a symbol of our hope for a sweet new year, I don’t know how to celebrate it. Especially when it falls today, 25 years since 9/11.”

“What’s 9/11?”

“Exactly. You, Linguini, and many others like you have no idea about 9/11. Or you only have ideas about it, things others read in the papers. Since you’re a dog, you don’t even have that. You know what you run into today? Sad people. People with a heavy heart, like me. People trying to maintain hope in the face of that tragedy. They may not want to play, they may not be fun to be with, and you’ll have no idea why. That’s the interesting thing about karma.”

“Is that an Indian treat?”

“Karma is this infinite web of causes and effects which then become causes for more effects, which then become causes for more effects, etc. It’s infinite, and you and I, Aussie and Lori, are all part of that. That’s why it’s hard to understand why people do what they do. We think we know, and all kinds of psychologists and sociologists will analyze things forever, but actually we don’t know because we ourselves are caught in that same web. Energies run through us, Benny Linguini, and we don’t always see how or why. Still, we must go on.”

“I don’t think about that so much. And I still don’t know who you are, other than that you were the one who lost Henry.”

“Let’s say, Linguini, that I am playing a role.”

“You mean, like in a movie? Are you a movie star? What character are you playing?”

“Eve Marko.”

“Well, that’s not much of a starring role. But isn’t that you?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Isn’t Eve Marko the human who lives in this house and isn’t Lori?”

“Yes, for now. But I don’t know anything else about her. I know a few things she’s done or written or learned or even taught; I know what to write on her resume or even on the flap of a book cover, but does any of that present a comprehensive picture? No.”

“You mean, you don’t know what your life comes down to? But you’re so old! I mean, if you don’t know now, when will you ever know?”

“Probably never, Linguini. That’s why I say that I’m just playing a role, the role of Eve Marko, every moment.”

“Every moment? That’s a lot of work.”

“It feels so natural and intimate that I’m not aware of it much of the time. But occasionally, it comes up, like on a day like today, not only the eve of the Jewish new year but also the 25^th anniversary of the mass killing of 9/11, especially in a city that I love more than any other city in the world. It was a perfect day, Linguini, just like today. Blue skies, dry, September air, everyone going to work, the season beginning. Sometimes, in remembering that, I find myself asking if there is a purpose to playing this role; that’s when I feel a little tired. After all, I’m 76, can’t I retire from playing it?”

“Not unless you get a pension.”

“Usually, health and these beautiful days of early fall are pension enough. Seeing you, Aussie, and Lori in the back yard yesterday playing in front of Kwan-yin while a strong breeze brought leaves down on freshly mown grass, that was pension enough. Lori was teaching you to catch and fetch, and you were pretty bad at it. At that point, though I didn’t ask her, I think we both thought of Henry, the Illegal Chihuahua, and what a great sports dog he was.”

“You thought about Henry while watching me? Is that fair?”

“See here, Linguini. Most people think that there’s a big wall between life and death, but it’s actually a billowing, fragile curtain. Whether we know it or not, we have one foot in life and the other in death.”

“I have both paws in life, thank you very much.”

“So did Henry, till he didn’t. So did thousands of people who were killed in 9/11.  There is pathos in a life that’s comprised of both, and pathos can be very beautiful. Anyway, on a day like today, I come to the conclusion—not for the first time—that the purpose in playing the role of Eve Marko, if there is a purpose, is to see as clearly as I can what’s going on and serves the people and situation around me. At the very least, don’t do harm.”

“What happens if there is no purpose to the role of Eve Marko?”

“There probably isn’t. Just as there is no purpose to the role of Benny Linguini.”

“Can’t you ever retire from playing Eve Marko?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think I ever auditioned for it, have no memory of standing in line with hundreds of others trying to get that role, it seemed to come about all by itself.”

“The casting director must have thought you’d be good at it.”

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Many years ago, over a nice dinner, a friend of ours stood behind Bernie to introduce him to friends and said: “This is Bernie Glassman. Whenever Bernie wants to learn something, he gives a workshop on it.”

You couldn’t have said anything truer, I told our host later. Bernie would lose interest in teaching the same things, and especially, teaching something he knew, or not-knew, very well. Like all great teachers, he was always learning. And his favorite way of learning was to teach it.

Why? Because you work harder. You dig deeper. Most important, you let others teach you. He loved circles for that reason, where the form encouraged everyone to express themselves rather than just focusing on the guru. He learned and took to heart what they said, then taught another workshop, integrating what he’d already learned from before.

He opened up to others’ wisdom. If in earlier years he could sometimes act as a guru, once he started engaging in social justice work in earnest, he opened ithings up because he understood how much there was to learn from others.

One of those places was leading clowning workshops alongside his clown teacher, Moshe Cohen, known as Mr. YooWho. Some people said that YooWho, who had served as the head of the American contingent of Clowns Without Borders (headquartered in Barcelona, Spain), did the clowning and Bernie did the Zen. I didn’t think so at all.

Can you really clown without being ready to stand on the edge of things, and even sometimes falling, or failing (a word Bernie never used)? Sometimes we call that not-knowing. Others refer to opening up to the Mystery. Sure, you can paste a red nose on your nose, run around in small circles and flutter your arms like a bird, and that is charming and wonderful, especially for children.

But for me, the essence of clowning lies in seeing the space that exists in every moment for further exploration, and especially for exploring the unexpected. YooWho, who has a book coming out in the spring of 2027 on the importance of clowning and humor in everyday life, illustrates simple practices on doing something a little differently from before, like turning the page of a book but missing that all important paper edge with your finger every time you try.  Try it and see how funny that can be.

You don’t have to be hooked into doing the same things repeatedly; day-to-day life isn’t cement. You can go left instead of right or right instead of left, you don’t have to live the events of your life as if they’re on some shopping list and you’re just checking them off. Aussie and I often walk the same paths, but she always leaves me to explore the adjacent grove of trees or makes a rush after animals. I yell for her and she comes grudgingly, the look on her face saying: Why are you going here again? What about following the train tracks? What about looking what’s under that cluster of shrubs over there? And why rush? There’s so much to sniff and search for.

YooWho sent me the above photo. He lives in San Francisco, whose streets are filled with variations of self-drive and driverless cars. In the photo, the Zoox, a driverless vehicle with no driver, steering wheel or pedals, meets up with a cardboard box that drifted (or fell) onto the street. It seemed that the Zoox had no idea what this was, decided to be safe rather than sorry, and came to a complete stop. Cars packed the streets behind it, wondering what was holding it up and beeping their horns, while the Zoox, facing the cardboard box like it was an existential encounter, didn’t move.

It brought to mind the wonderful Hedy Schleifer and her focus on the space between two people, itself based on Martin Buber’s I/Thou relationship of subject/subject rather than subject/object. Hedy emphasizes that an entire universe exists in that space.

I don’t know how many “neighborhoods,” as her work partner Paul Browde refers to them, existed in the space between the Zoox and the cardboard box, but boy were there many in the space between Bernie and me. It took me years to see that that space didn’t merely consist of a vertical axis, as in: You’re the teacher here. That remained there.

It was the space between husband and wife that provided the fertile ground, with so many neighborhoods to visit, such as: Are we good friends? What prevents me from listening to you, and vice versa? When is there respect and when isn’t there? Does work fall equally on our shoulders? What are the hidden icebergs in this relationship?

Sometimes I feel I’m still visiting a few of those neighborhoods, talking to Bernie, reminding him of a conversation we had on board a plane, how he so loved to talk while driving that the speedometer would plummet to 10mph, a convoy of cars and trucks lined up behind us, and he happily, obliviously talking. There was small talk (e.g., What are we doing for dinner?), there was lots of dharma vision/work talk, and there were the neighborhood visits. I wish we’d done more of those.

I never realized that the space between two people can be a sacred space, one that can be explored deeper and wider all the time. You go to restaurants and see two people sitting over dinner and picking at their food, a little bored, barely talking to one another. It’s as if, having been together for a long time, they know each other so well that there’s nothing more to be discovered, no terra incognita, everything is known. Done.

Is that the case with you? Not with me. If someone were to tell me that everything is known and done about me, like the Presidents’ faces on Mt. Rushmore, I’d say: “No, I’m still becoming, thank you very much.” More like the great warrior Crazy Horse, whose enormous likeness with horse is still being etched out of the mountain even today. And while there are probably blueprints for how that may eventually come out, there are no blueprints for what I’m becoming as I age.

That space between two people, between I and Thou, includes the Good morning, Lori space when I first leave the bedroom to greet my housemate. It can be formulaic, or it can surprise. Someone came to look at our driveway to see to fixing it and the adjoining culvert after the big summer storms we had. In past lives I’d make a quick confab out of it, and once he began to measure the distance, I’d mutter apologies and leave. This time I became fascinated by the survey device he was using that logged coordinates and converted them into a scaled diagram. We walked up and down the driveway, I marveling at all the new gadgets being invented all the time.

I think of the space between Aussie and me, which is sometimes full of surprises and sometimes not:

“You’re so slow, Aussie, now that you’re turning 9 next week.”

“Am not.”

“Lori was commenting on how much slower you are in eating.”

“Your food ain’t what it used to be.”

“You don’t run around as hard as you used to.”

“You walk slower than you used to.”

And then there’s Zoox and the cardboard box:

“What are you?”

“A box. You?”

“The future.”

“Sure look like a box to me.”

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Gloria Steinem died yesterday.

I’m glad for my memories of her. The first impression (of which I’m not proud), so many years ago, was: This beautiful woman is a feminist? And then she donned that silly bunny costume for an inside look at the New York Playboy Club, and I realized: She doesn’t identify with those looks, she uses them. Not much different, I understand now, from how Dolly Parton used those out-of-this-world blonde wigs and glitzy clothes and jewelry. What did Parton say? “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” And also: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”

You know you’re really comfortable with yourself, even love yourself, when you can clearly see the impression you make on the world and use it towards fulfilling your purpose in life. To Gloria Steinem, I say: Thank you for your life.

Often, when I meet folks who haven’t seen me in a while, they say: “You look great!” Hmmm, I think to myself in my best Scrooge imitation. Because I know they see the white hairs and the multiplying lines on my face, and for God’s sake, I wonder, don’t they know I’m 76? Or do they really mean: You look great—for your age.

It reminds me of how, many years after Bernie lost some 50 pounds, people he saw every month or two would congratulate him on how much weight he’d lost. “Why are they saying this?” he’d muse. “I lost that weight years ago, and still they repeat the same thing again and again. I guess that’s the picture they have of me regardless of how much I’ve changed.”

If self-love depends on doing doing doing, guess who’s only doing now, with a rest in the afternoon? If self-love depended on leading a big sangha, guess who that never happened to? If self-love depends on how well you host folks for a big dinner, forget about it. If it depends on what kind of giant Thanksgiving meal you prepare, you might find that your kids now prefer to go elsewhere for the holiday, or that you be the guest. So, who loves you now?

My mother had a hard time stopping to cook for the Friday evening Sabbath dinner and being a guest at my brother’s home, a 5-minute walk away.  Even then, she insisted on making the chicken soup, and, her taste buds somehow affected, she added so much salt that the family would swallow a few tablespoonfuls and then make excuses that they were already full.

She used to make a special noodle dish for her synagogue’s Saturday after-prayers buffet, which was widely praised. She’d make two big trays of it every Friday till she was 88 or so, and finally stopped, she confessed to me, when her arms simply couldn’t lift the enormous pan of noodles to empty it of the hot water in which they’d cooked. To her, that’s what love depended on: her cooking. Without it, she wouldn’t be loved, not just by others but also by herself.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Do some new lines bother you? A good friend shared with me that Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, told her: “You don’t want another wrinkle? Don’t have another feeling.”

Now, when you’ve forgotten to pick up something at the store. Now, when you can’t remember what book you were reading last night. Now, when you haven’t folded and put away the laundry for a week. Now, when you know you must talk with someone but can’t remember who that is. Now, without achievement, without having someone to take care of, go to the doctor with, cook for, now—can you love yourself?

It’s one of my biggest challenges, even as I can no longer depend on the things I once counted on to be loved. Not by others, by me. That was always the issue, self-love.

So here we are, it’s just this now, it’s just me. Not Bernie’s wife, not Roshi, just Eve, with a disappearing waistline, shorter than she used to be, and less everything: energetic, focused, hard-working. It’s now or never, Eve: Can you love yourself?

Yesterday, in early morning, I tried to prepare for a monthly gathering of olders and elders that Geoff O’Keeffe, the Director of Zen Peacemakers, and I will lead starting on Tuesday, September 8 (it’s free and you can register here). But I couldn’t focus, so instead I went outside to sit.

A maple leaf caught my eye as it floated down. It fell slowly from the tall tree, and at the last moment some ineffable movement of air caused it to veer to the right, towards me, and then land gently on the ground a foot away. Almost as if someone had guided it towards me. And there it lay, a humble yellow leaf on the green grass, dotted with brown fungi spots.

Instantly I thought: This is how I want to go, humbly, just like that. Stepping away from things up front, from talking, teaching, even writing, which is funny as I’m getting ready to send a play out with a hope of getting it produced. It’s timely and could be important, I want to tell potential producers. But an inner voice queries: What’s important? Come on, what’s really important?

What’s important is to go with tenderness like that leaf, floating in the air at first, then landing on the grass silently, without any fuss or bother, and yet certain of its place on the ground after landing.

I’m in that floating stage, I thought, still sailing here and there, right, then left, but am I certain of my place on the ground?

I thought of what I continue to carry, the work I still want to do, the dreams I still have, the good life I still wish for. I thought of past relationships and marriages, the companionship I still yearn for, all that is here now and can go on for another while. And at the same time, beckoning me from the green earth, was a simple yellow leaf whose stem somehow broke earlier than others’. It could have cried out in anger and despair, insisted it’s not fair, what about the others, why me right now, it’s still too early. Instead, it fell so tenderly down to the ground.

It’s both together. It’s wishing for more life, and it’s the tender floating to the ground. I don’t have to choose between the two, I can desire a good new life with a lightness of being rather than the determination I usually rely on. I can go on, and slowly float downwards all at the same time.

I looked and looked at the leaf. How much did it cling to tendril-like branches? Did it yearn for perpetual sunlight? How wary did it turn as clouds gathered and the nights turned cool? How fearful of the end of the season?

Our Kwan-yin stood some 25 feet away, almost in a direct line of vision to the leaf and to me, and saying to the leaf: “Thank you for your life.”

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Reading the news, I occasionally marvel at how two highly dissimilar headlines appear next to one another on the digital front page of, say, The New York Times. Here’s an example from 2 weeks ago:

Desperation Mounts as Thousands in India Endure 10 Days Without Power. Horrible heat waves had swept over parts of that country, temperatures at times exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 49 degrees Centigrade), and most people lacked fans, air-conditioning, and even had trouble obtaining clean water to drink and cool down.

Next to it was this headline: Mark Zuckerberg Buys an Irish Castle. The article named several other properties he owned, and added: “Archival information says it can take ‘a brisk walk of 4½ minutes to reach the dining room from the kitchen.’” Who designed that house, I wondered.

I took Aussie back to the Montague Farm today, where the Zen Peacemakers tried to establish its headquarters and failed. I’ve been coming to the Farm and into the woods above it for some 24 years. I calculate that I’ve taken 5 dogs there; only Aussie is still with me.

There used to be a lot more water in the pools deep inside the woods that fed into Spaulding Brook that parallels the Robert Frost Trail before joining the Sawmill River, which in turn joins the Connecticut River which then joins the ocean. Ducks once swam on the surface. But today Aussie jumped into a muddy swamp. Trees have crashed down, limbs have fallen, and I have had to carve out new paths, often veering off and finding myself far from my intended destination.

At the same time, the leaves still yearn for light, the tall trees hogging that rare commodity in the dim forest. Saplings cannot compete with their tall, old mothers, and remain small. I guess the trees, too, have their billionaire class along with the struggling, impoverished caste, only their currency is sunlight.

Bernie used to shake his head. “I should never have tried to build the Zen Peacemakers headquarters here,” he’d say. “Our headquarters are in the streets, period.” Not a monastery, not some Zen empire, not even a big office. After we let it go, the office was in our home with desks, telephones, and conference calls. No Zoom at the time.

But when we were at the Farm, as we called it, he had big ideas. He couldn’t help it; his mind was always giving birth to greater complexity and diversity; call it his form of greed. Not an Irish castle owned by one family, but a space to accommodate a bigger and more varied audience. Always engage with more and more people, more and more life.  He had lavish plans, with blueprints for serpentine walkways and arches of fruit trees, for shrines and altars representing different religious traditions, for venues for sacred arts, and even a small amphitheater for plays and concerts.

“The Zen Peacemaker Order is for climate and social activists, but we need an order of minstrels,” he’d growl. An order for artists of all kinds, and of course, his favorite, the Order of Disorder, for clowns.

It’s easy, in our cynical age, to evoke someone’s dream and show how it didn’t materialize, to point at a legacy and see only what it lacked. So I was taken aback today when, after walking up that familiar hill towards the woods, I turned around and realized that some of that dream had indeed come true.

The Farm is now owned by a small consortium of people who offer it as a wedding venue from May through October. It also serves local dances, concerts, and workshops, but it’s weddings that make it financially viable. It’s weddings that prevent the new owners from losing money, much as we did (Bernie wouldn’t consider using the Farm in that way).

And with the aid of a full-time caretaker with a good budget and the right utility vehicles, including plows, tractors, and farm trucks, they created mini-mazes, circular paths, and clearings to showcase the large Paleozoic rocks that dot the ground.

I looked around me and thought: Here it is. It’s not exactly what he wanted, it lacks the religious and sacred arts icons, no amphitheater, but here it is. Serving the present moment and who knows what else in the future, serving the new couples walking down the arch of trees.

It wasn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff, as some thought it was back then, here it is. And if it doesn’t quite serve the purpose he dreamed of, nature has its mysterious ways of fulfilling dreams even after the dreamer has died, as if saying: The world keeps on going. You may be dead, but the world keeps on according to some mysterious arc you can’t follow.

I talked to a friend on Saturday, who described meditating outdoors on her farm and watching a spider weave a web between the rungs of an Adirondack chair, or ants emerging from their mound to go about their business. “Strange,” she said, “how those little things make life feel so big.”

There is solace to be found there. You realize that all your plans and dreams are not too different from the spider web that Aussie tears through as she races an escaping chipmunk. Those are the webs of our lives, so delicate, so gossamer in the big view of things. We can and do mourn the smallness of our triumphs, the vulnerabilities of baby rabbits hiding for dear life among rhododendron bushes and the dried-out pools that once hosted flocks of ducks. But the smaller we feel, the bigger and more impersonal the other feels, and I bow down in reverence.

Who cares when there’s a death or a loss, and the world barely thanks you before continuing on its merry way? You did your bit, your personal smidgeon of energy and effort, you lived and you died and others live and then they die, too, and in some funny way we’re all still going on.

It will go on after this human being no longer shows up with dogs at the Farm and the woods behind it. This human being has requested permission of two new sets of “owners” to walk up the Farm path and into the woods, and they have generously acquiesced. One set of owners talks of how they “monetize” the place. That’s the word of the year, I think, of the past 5 years. People even talk of monetizing the Dharma.

I don’t worry about it. The spiders don’t worry about it; I’m not even sure they worry about their webs being torn up. Aussie, lying on the back steps to guard against lions and tigers, doesn’t seem to worry about it. And if you wonder about grand dreams and illusions, I think of what my friend, Roshi Ken Byalin, recently wrote in his blog: “Peacemaking … is not a matter of grand gestures. It is a painstaking process, reconnecting nodes in the net.”

We do what we can in our lifetimes, a Bernie did in his, and years afterwards someone walks where he once walked and marvels at what transpired even in the face of what then seemed like failure. Not one of the new owners knows that what they are building there was once the dream of someone no longer here, who’d walk up the hill smoking his cigar, dreaming, always dreaming.

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Montague Reporter, June 2026

“5:14 pm. Caller from Seventh Street reports a male dressed all in black is beating a backpack with a stick. Officers out with male party. Involved male declined any need for services; states he’s a ‘wild man’ and is moving along.”

“How did she do that?”

“Do what, Benny?”

“Aussie was by the door, and then she wasn’t. That’s magic.”

“The magic is called a dog door, Ben. Sometimes, when we can’t explain something according to logic, we call it magic. We call that a dog door.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a door that lets dogs get in and out of the back yard by themselves. A little dog like you has to take a small leap and jump through the plastic.”

“What’s plastic?”

“The door is not solid, Benny, it’s made of plastic, and you can go right through it. Aussie doesn’t have to take a leap because she’s big. You must be trained on how to use it, and Lori hasn’t done that with you yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s concerned for your safety.”

“Why?”

“Because of what happened to Henry.”

“What happened to Henry?”

“She’ll tell you one day, Benny. For now, she doesn’t want you to slip out and run freely in the back till she’s totally sure that the fence will contain you.”

“But I want to run out and see the world!”

“She’s afraid that you’re too young and too small, Ben.”

“When we’re young is exactly the time to run out and explore.”

“Lori is apprehensive about that, Ben.”

“Because I’m young and little.”

“Yes, but you know something, Benny? Older people are also expected to not run out and explore the world.”

“You don’t jump through dog doors? Why not?”

“This one is a little small for me.”

“Don’t you want to see the world? Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you curious? Don’t you wonder what’s just around the corner?”

“I’m afraid that many older people think they know damn well what’s around the corner, so they don’t need to go around the corner.”

“What’s the use of living when you always know what’s around the corner?”

“Good question, Benny. We don’t really know what’s around the corner no matter how many times we’ve gone around the corner. Could be something completely different, as I found out with Henry one beautiful and happy day that turned out not so beautiful and not so happy.”

“There’s Henry again.”

“When we were your age, Benny, we all wanted to go through dog doors and see the world.”

“When you were one-and-a-half years old?”

“The equivalent. I remember even now standing on Reads Lane in front of our house, and looking down the road till it reached a T, knowing that if I turned right at that corner, it would take me to see the world. Or rather, New York City.”

“Did you need training to get through the door?”

“No. If anything, Ben, I needed untraining to get away from the fear and anxiety of strange people and things that I’d absorbed at home.”

“And what about now, when you’re older?”

“I still want to go out and see the world, but it’s more of a mixed bag.”

“You let dog doors keep you inside?”

“I love my home, Benny. And not just the physical home, the home inside, too.”

“Huh?”

“When I do go away, I want to see people, Benny. I want to hear and see what moves them, what gives them life. Like you, I’m still full of curiosity.”

“So why won’t Lori let me go through the magic dog door?”

“Eventually she will. She still thinks about Henry.”

“There’s Henry again. What happened to him? How come nobody tells me what happened to Henry? I even asked Aussie.”

“What did she say?”

“She said: ‘Who’s Henry?’ She said his real name was Illegal Chihuahua.”

“I guess he’s the white elephant in the house, Benny.”

“Henry was a white elephant? And he got through the dog door?”

“OK, I’ll tell you, even if Lori disapproves. Basically, Henry was devoured by coyotes.”

“Why did you have to tell me?”

“You see, Ben, he also wanted to see what was around the corner, what was making that noise, and this time it was a coyote, which led him to an ambush by a coyote pack.”

“At least he found out what was around the corner. What did they do to him?”

“They throttled him to death and then carried his little body away. We never saw him again.”

“Maybe that was magic, too.”

“Come again?”

“That was his dog door to heaven.”

“The coyotes were his dog door to heaven?”

“They were the plastic; he ran right through them and got to heaven. Heaven could be just around the corner.”

“Benny, I never thought of that.”

“Yes, but right now I see a little marrow bone in the hallway. I think I’ll stick with that piece of heaven for now.”

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I had company this past weekend. Bernie’s daughter, Alisa, and grandson, Milo, arrived. I’d seen them last spring at their home in Maryland, and now they flew here.

It wasn’t till I heard from Alisa how visits here evoke her dad so much—she came here frequently to help take care of him after his stroke or just hang out—that it hit me how mundane all that has become for me. I’m accustomed to the drawing of him that hangs over the desk in my office, which used to be his office. I’m accustomed to his photo on the memorial altar that carries photos of others who’ve died. I’m accustomed to seeing him lean over Jeff Bridges at the guitar in his 70th birthday party, a large, already-fading photo in the bedroom.

There were lots more photos that I’ve given away over the years. There are also the two chairs in back in which he sat, either with me or someone else, looking out towards the trees and hilltops without a computer in front of him or a cigar in his mouth. I keep them there long after he left, as I keep a couple of bereavement cards on an altar upstairs, one copying the artwork on our book, Bearing Witness, showing the Buddha’s feet on the earth, which I had loved the first time our editor, Toinette Lippe at Random House, showed it to us, and the other with a rendering of the Tree of Life.

All these had become mundane to me. And then I reflected on that word, mundane, and realized that of course they’ve become mundane, they’re part of my daily life. They’ve joined the things of the house that I don’t look at too much now, though they evoked lots of feelings earlier. They’ve joined the small American flag leaning against the wall on the credenza in the office that I held up during the second No Kings rally, after participating in the first and noticing with shock that there were Palestinian and rainbow flags but not one American flag signifying national unity of any kind. They’ve joined the flower calendar Lori gave me for the new year, the August page showing blue and purple primroses.

These have been part of my life for a long time, and you might say that when I cease to pay attention to them it shows exactly that, a lack of attention, maybe a lack of appreciation. I prefer to think of it as things that have become an integral part of me and me of them, a package deal so to speak. When I die, some things of mine may mean a great deal to someone. At first, they’ll think of me when they see them, and then they, too, will get folded into that person’s home and life. When that happens seamlessly, we will be joined regardless of who survives whom.

That’s what is happening to me vis-à-vis Bernie. He would never wish for me to perpetually carry his name on my lips with tears and lamentation; I think of that essence wafting through the day lilies and apple trees, through the smoke of someone else’s cigar, kissing the sheets on the laundry lines till they wave back, going on to the next house and the one after that, all the way east to join the wind and spray of the ocean.

Late yesterday afternoon, after returning from the airport where I’d taken my family and feeding Aussie, I lay back on the sofa for a short while and looked out the window. Cleaning up, checking emails, and other small labors were ahead of me.

In the airport I’d noticed heavy gray storm clouds and wondered whether I’d have to drive home in a pouring rain and even thunderstorms. But now the clouds were as white and light as whipped cream, and they hurried north, perhaps driven by the wind I’d encountered further south, and they came in all forms and sizes against the canvas of a blue sky. A teardrop cloud passed, followed by a question mark, followed by a cat, then a balloon, then a crescent moon. I wasn’t meditating, I was barely paying attention, at least not in the way I think of it, just a relaxed contemplation of clouds passing without disturbing the sky.

It hit me then how wonderful it was to have space and activity intertwined. At times I feel like doing what I do becomes routine, even a bit stultifying. Over the past few years people have said: “At this time in your life you should only do the things you enjoy. Before doing anything, ask yourself if this is something you get joy in, otherwise don’t do it.” It was very sound advice.

“But your routine isn’t stultifying,” a voice inside insists. “You are doing just what you want.”

And that’s exactly right. No one is putting a gun to my head insisting that I write this blog post. No one insisted I write a play, or else. I sit, read, and study out of my own choosing. I used to call it commitment, but I don’t any longer; it’s clear that they make me happy and provide a deep sense of contentment. So, when people tell me that I should only do what I enjoy, I can pretty honestly say that that’s exactly what I do.

But do anything on a day-to-day basis and it could become routine, even stale, regardless of how excited you were at the inception and how challenging it continues to be.

What I’ve been learning from Alisa and others is that it’s not so much about what you do, but rather how you do it. When I feel myself falling into some kind of rut, can I lean back against my chair and look aimlessly around, giving my eyes a rest? Can I walk around the back yard and look at the Japanese anemones from all sides, not just the yellow center but also the petals that bleach from purple to light pink and even white? The red berries now blooming from a honeysuckle bush?

Can I take Aussie out for a late walk even though the day is ending and I still have work to do, only the setting sun sends a blazing orange light through the trees? In taking the clothes off the laundry lines after they’ve dried, can I pause to feel the lightness of a silk blouse or the warm wool of a blue Indian blanket we received from Lakota friends?

Can I create more space inside the things I already do, rather than add it as some new endeavor? Can I drive slower? Can I take in not just the hummingbird at the feeder, but also the approaching end of its season here (it’ll leave by the second week of September), take some time to hum back a goodbye and See you next May?

How would it be to reclaim more aspects of my being rather than relying only on the conscious, thinking part? Suspend my thinking and look lazily around, watch life bring all kinds of things to my attention and then take them away, like the clouds yesterday? Listen to the sounds that permeate the silence all around me.

Milo, accustomed to suburban living, asked for the windows to be shut because the whistle of the crickets, the hissing of cicadas, and the loud rasping of the katydids disturbed him, even as he exclaimed over how quiet it was where his Grandma Eve lives. I didn’t tell him they’re orgiastically reproducing, I just said it’s quiet, but never silent, not even in the dead of winter.

How do I relax and contemplate in the middle of everything? How do I play? When I look, listen, and touch deeply enough, I can really get what my friend, Roshi Robert Althouse, was referring to when he wrote: “Space can be seen to be joining things instead of separating them.”

Many, many thanks to all of you who donated to immigrant families. The summer is hinting at its mortality, school will start soon, and the end of the work of harvesting approaches. There will be clean-up work, farms will close, and fields will lie bare, letting nature do its work. And part of that is that members of the species of homo sapiens help each other at the approach of the colder seasons. Deep love and gratitude to all of you.

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.

I had salmon for dinner last night. A few small pieces were left so I put the plate on the floor for Aussie. Purists may not approve, so I’ll add that I then put the plate straight in the dishwasher (no need to scrape, Aussie licks it clean). She loves fish, so I was surprised to see her sniffing it suspiciously, then taking small bites, licking around gingerly, followed by a few more small bites.

“Since when have you become such a delicate eater?” I asked her, and then remembered that I’d squeezed fresh lemon juice over the fish, and Aussie, not much of a citrus fan, was trying to eat the fish and avoid the lemon. This time she didn’t lick the plate clean.

I remembered Bernie’s story about his son, Marc. As a young boy, looking at his dinner plate, Marc would push the vegetable to the side and focus on the protein and carbohydrate, the meat and potatoes, first. The veggies he called his Yucky Pile, and he might get to it, or might not. He might need to be cajoled or scolded, he might beg for a reprieve, and he might surprise everyone by getting right to it and finishing everything up. But often, there was a Yucky Pile.

I’m not too different even now from Marc of many years ago. I also prefer the meat and potatoes over vegetables, even as I like meat less and less and potatoes  may become a monthly treat. Yucky Piles remain. And that’s not the worst of it. At least Marc saw the vegetables and moved them around. The big trouble now is that Yucky Piles become invisible. We don’t notice them anymore.

My friend, Sensei Joshin Byrnes, who leads the Breadloaf Mountain Zen Center, open to street people who wish to come in for food, coffee, showers, laundry facilities, and most important, friendship, wrote: “’Economic systems’ are faceless, joyless, and agony-less. We increasingly live in an emotionally flat machine world, duped into believing falsely that we still know and care about each other. We don’t. We’ve lost touch. The cries of the world (rich and poor alike) can’t be heard in the machine world or in faceless systems.”

AI may one day figure out how to provide for the basic needs of all people, but it won’t take care of Yucky Piles. Those are created by humans, not machines. People like us who live from our preferences and prejudices, cultural and religious biases. People like me who start and end the day with meditation, and in between go from email to email, errand to errand, one creative spurt to another, blind to the moment-by-moment invitations from people, flowers, plants, birds, and animals, always beckoning: Come closer. Come closer.

I had an odd experience the other day. Driving home from the town of Sunderland, I slowed down behind a big trailer truck carrying layers of huge tree trunks, cut long and thick. It drove under the branches of maples and beech trees, and I felt a stab. It was as if I had just killed someone and was now parading her dead body in front of her relatives.

It also drove past the enormous, historic sycamore, called the Buttonball Tree, the biggest tree in Massachusetts, estimated to be around 400 years old, 115 feet high, with a girth of 26 feet and an overhang of 140 feet. Once it had neighbors that big, but no more.

You might say that my reaction was anthropomorphic, too human-centered and not objective. “At least you don’t talk to it like you do to Aussie,” someone remarked to me. But he was wrong, I did talk to it, and it talked back to me in a nonverbal conversation.

Every moment of intimacy is an opportunity for unselfing. I can talk forever about letting go of the self, dropping body and mind, no separation, etc. When do I practice this? When I’m intimate with someone or something. Except that I dislike the word some-thing because right there, our way of objectifying life takes off. Life is no-thing, unless I create the thingness.

Right now, outside my window, a hummingbird hums and feeds at the feeder. Not a ruby red, a gray-green hummingbird humming along as it drinks the sugar water through its long beak. It’s surrounded by white, pink, and purple phlox, and I know for sure that it has a kinship with those flowers that is beyond kinship, beyond relationship. One is a bird, one is a flower, and something flows in their porousness that is beyond any words I know. The one that comes closest is intimacy.

Intimacy is what bearing witness aspires to. Intimacy is the true birth mother of compassion.

Like many people, I was afraid of it for many years. It was hard for me to find my individuality, locate my voice, cultivate some basic confidence that I, too, was a Buddha like everyone else. Maybe now I feel ready for it. Nothing to assert, nothing to prove, and that leaves a lot of room for simple curiosity. My need for privacy now has nothing to do with escape from people, but rather a space for getting close, very close.

I am more sensitive to Yucky Piles. Not the Putins or Trumps or Bibis, not even the spiders on the shower floor or the snake that caused me to jump as I walked to the laundry lines the other day. Yucky Piles point to something way more basic than like or dislike, they point to beings, sentient and non, that I make things of. Beings whose life I define or describe, but do not enter.

Zen teacher and artist Robert Joshin Althouse recently wrote: “Space (so real because of the light and color) can be seen to be joining things instead of separating them.” It’s infinite, and at the same time helps us define forms and shapes—just as long, in Joshin’s words, as we “don’t harden them into little fortresses.” Space doesn’t have to make you lonely, one more island in a sea of islands.

I need your help to replenish our fund for immigrants. Readers responded very generously to the early summer appeal to send children to camp for the summer, and we sent 15 children to two different day camps up in Greenfield for the third time. That meant not just that the parents could work the long days without worry, but also that the children had opportunities for experiences that could last them a lifetime, giving them important language skills, friendships, and confidence.

It left the fund with very little money, and I haven’t asked for more since then (though a few generous readers make monthly automatic donations anyway). It’s now late summer, we’re turning towards fall in New England, and soon requests will come in: pay for Driver’s Ed ($150 per person, usually five in a group) so that they could get drivers’ licenses and not risk deportation by state police, rent for new shelter after eviction (they squeeze in together with others), and help with utility bills

 The winter is always a challenge. Fortunately, we haven’t had many deportations here so far, but the few we had left mothers with children husbandless and fatherless, with no income, so we’ve had to jump to help.

You can send money—even small amounts are welcome—using the button for immigrant families below, or by sending a check to the address below that. Thank you very much for your kindness.

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.

“OMG, it’s the Illegal Chihuahua. He’s come back!”

“No, Aussie, this is Benny.”

“Benny?”

“Benny.”

“It’s Illegal, I tell you. He’s come back to haunt me because I called him Illegal all these years. Get away! Get away!”

“Aussie, Lori adopted a new dog yesterday and his name is Benny.”

“He looks just like Illegal—uhh, Henry.”

“He’s only 10 pounds, not 15 like Henry. And I don’t want you to call him Illegal Chihuahua.”

“His ears are a whole lot bigger and he’s as long as a noodle. “

“He has a lot more Dachshund in him, Auss. She found him through a rescue organization in New Hampshire and here he is, but he’s originally from Oklahoma and has been shunted around a few times, poor thing.”

“A fellow Southerner! I’ll have a MAGA companion.”

“Not so fast, girlie. Lots of southerners are not MAGA.”

“But I don’t understand. How could Lori adopt another dog so quickly? Wasn’t she upset after Henry was killed by the coyotes?”

“She was bereft, Auss. Devastated. Kept her door shut and wouldn’t talk for days.”

“The way she loved Illegal, I’d never have believed that she could be so disloyal.”

“Aussie, people grieve in different ways. Some are ready to go out and meet new people right away, others aren’t. Some feel they quickly need a new person or a new dog in their lives, others don’t.”

“Well, I certainly hope that if I die before you, which I doubt since I’m going to be only 7 soon—”

“You’ll be 9 in several weeks, Auss.”

“Like I said before, 9 is the new 7. But if I die, how long are you going to wait before getting another dog?”

“Who knows, Aussie. I’ll be older, and I’ll have to see how—”

“I expect you to grieve for me a long time!”

“How long?”

“Twenty years.”

“Aussie, I probably won’t live for another 20 years.”

“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT GETTING A NEW DOG! How could you even consider it? I’m the love of your life—”

“Who said, Aussie?”

“—the reason you wake up in the morning. Who takes you out for walks every day even in the worst weather? You think I like going out in January with all that salt and ice under my paws? Who takes you to the Farmers Co-op so that you could sniff all those giant dog bones, not to mention the behinds of the other dogs that come in? Who guards the house from marauding bears and foxes, except when it’s a coyote? Who protects you in thunderstorms? Who does that for you, who?”

“Aussie, you sound positively Jewish. Who taught you all these guilt trips?”

“You must grieve for me forever! And speaking of Jewish, none of that shiva stuff that only lasts 7 days.”

“I will grieve, Auss, believe me.”

“When you see another dog on the street, especially anyone that looks like me, you must burst into tears. You must stay away from the Farmers Co-op, with all its memories of dogfood and treats, forever. You’ll stay in bed every morning for hours in severe depression.“

“That’s a tall order, Aussie.”

“And I expect two, not one, memoirs.”

“Aussie, I don’t write memoirs. I like to make up stuff, though I believe that memoirs are also made up.”

“The first memoir will have the most alluring, captivating, and imaginative title ever conceived.”

“What, Aussie?”

“It will be called Aussie.”

“That’s it?”

“Okay, a subtitle could be: The Best Gift I Ever Got from My Husband, Bernie Glassman.”

“I don’t know if you were the best—”

“And the second memoir should be titled: My Life with Aussie: Return to Eden.”

“Hmmm.”

“That’s what I call grief! Photos of me on every altar, incense given every single day, not just on the memorial date. Lots of photos in the memoirs with reminiscences by my close friends Florence, Stella, Percy, and Grayson. Don’t bother with Illegal, he’s transformed into a coyote. Or at least, part of a coyote.”

“Aussie, I’m not doing that. I’ll miss you terribly, especially our conversations. We’ve had eight terrific years together and I hope for more. But when you go, I won’t tear up my clothes and cover my head with ashes.”

“Shame! After all I’ve done for you!”

“You see, Auss, today, while I was putting a stick of incense in front of Kwan-yin out in back, Benny was sniffing the grass excitedly, plunging into bushes, peeing on the flower beds, hopping around under the forsythia, just full of life. He’s a year and a half old and so happy to be alive, see?”

“So?”

“I realized that’s my purpose in life.”

“Writing? The nothing-doing that you call meditation? Teaching? Taking care of me?”

“No, Aussie, serving life. Life multiplies and diversifies all the time. Even if our world goes to hell because of global warming, nuclear weapons, or because a meteor struck the earth and everybody died, life will go on in some form, I’m sure of it.”

“Are you crazy? Do you hear the news? According to those telescopes, planets self-destruct, galaxies devour each other, and stars become black holes. OMG, is that what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to become a black hole one day?”

“I think there is always life, Auss, even in forms we don’t recognize, and everything is in service to that. Some people wish to serve God. Me, I wish to serve life.”

“When Henry was taken by coyotes, did that serve life?”

“It was sad for him and us, and nutritious for the coyotes.”

“I don’t want to be anybody’s nutrition.”

“Of course, we serve life all the time, consciously or not. But it’s nice to be aware of that, to see there’s no end, just constant transformation.”

“I don’t want no transformation. I want to be me. I want to be Aussie.”

“That won’t last, Auss, and it’ll cause you to be grumpy and fearful. Think of it this way. When are you happiest?”

“When I get steak.”

“Do you know when I see you at your happiest? When you sniff out deer and start chasing them. That’s when I hear your high-pitched Aussie-big-game-hunter bark and you sound so happy, as if you found your purpose in life. You’re beyond happy then, you’re fully alive!”

“But it’ll end with or without coyotes, right?”

“I think so, though I can’t be completely sure since I haven’t died yet. But transformation will go on and on.”

“Give me no transformation. And I’ve decided. I’m renaming Benny.”

“Not another Illegal Chihuahua?”

“No, there was only one Illegal Chihuahua. You see how long and thin Benny is? I’m calling him Benny Linguini.”

“Benny Linguini?”

“Or just plain Linguini.”

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“Aussie, you’re going to be 9 next month. You’re growing older.”

“9 is the new 7.”

“I’ve heard things like that before, Auss. 70 is the new 50. 80 is the new 65. 100 is—I don’t know what 100 is. I wonder why people say those things. Our younger age wasn’t always a happy one. I had unhappy childhood and teen years. How were your younger years, Aussie, before you were brought up here in a truck with a few other dogs?”

“I had a blast as a pup in Texas. Hee-haw!”

“Is that why they found you as a stray 80 miles north of Houston? Is that why nobody called the local shelter to see if they found you? Is that why you’re afraid of men to this very day?”

“Leave me alone. Let me live in the past.”

“Why, Auss? Is the present not good enough?”

“It’s okay, but I prefer to live in the Land of Nostalgia.”

“Ah yes, the Land of Nostalgia! More beautiful than the present any day. You know, Aussie, I had lunch today with a wonderful old friend from Santa Barbara—”

“Santa Barbara! The Land of Nostalgia. Why didn’t anyone from Santa Barbara adopt me?”

“—and you know what she said? That now, when you’re old, is the time to finally love yourself.”

“First, I’m not old. Second, I love myself.”

“Are you sure, Aussie?”

“I have the most beautiful, shiny double-layer of black and brown hairs. One reason why I left Texas is that they wanted to turn me into a fur coat.”

“Aussie, you have some white whiskers below your mouth.”

“Do not. And who cares? Everybody thinks I’m pretty. Don’t you and Leeann whistle when you see me?”

“Only when we want you to come. The truth is, Aussie, you’re no longer as young and beautiful as you once were. You’re no longer at the top of your game.”

“Henry adored me, before the coyotes got him.”

“Did you try to rescue him, Aussie?”

“Of course not, I’m 9 years old. How was I supposed to go against at least four coyotes? You certainly took your time getting there.”

“I’m not criticizing you, Auss, just pointing out that neither of us is as strong and fast as we once were.”

“Hey, who stands up to all you Yankee Libs to defend my President? Who was there on January 6?”

“Aussie, that was more than 5 years ago.”

“Who dug a tunnel from our back yard to the Capitol!”

“Aussie, you can’t do those kinds of things anymore, don’t you see?”

“But if I can’t, who’ll care about me? Nobody. Who will like me with those white hairs under my mouth and—don’t tell anybody—my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I’m done! I’m finished! Nobody will ever love me again!”

“Aussie, this is what my friend was referring to. It’s exactly when we can’t do what we used to do, can’t run like we used to, can’t hunt like we once did—”

“I almost got a rabbit this morning!”

“—don’t look the way we once did, can’t roll on the ground and do tricks like we used to—”

“Tricks! Ughhh!”

“—that’s when we need to love ourselves.”

“Because nobody else will love us?”

“I will always love you, Aussie, I think—”

“You think! Will you love me if I get incontinent and start pooping in the house?”

“The point is, Aussie, before we often got confused about what it is to love our own self. We loved our self because it was cute, because it was doing a lot, because it was taking care of others—”

“Because it guarded the house!”

“—so it’s easy to stop loving that self when it can’t do all those things. Now is the time to love ourselves as we are, Auss, not for what we do, not for how we look, and not for doing important jobs. Because we’re alive! Because there’s no one like us.”

“I don’t want two of you, one’s enough. But I can’t love myself, I’m a Zen practitioner.”

“What?”

“Everybody knows that when you’re a Zen practitioner, the self is your enemy!”

“Every time I hear the words everybody knows, a big red light starts flashing in my head, Aussie. Nobody says to hate anything.”

“The self is my enemy! The self stands in the way of an enlightened Aussie.”

“Nothing stands in the way of an enlightened Aussie, Aussie, certainly not love, certainly not self-love. Attachment to the self is the barrier to realizing the One Body, not the self itself, see? “

“Does that mean that if I love myself, I’m still part of the One Body?”

“You yourself are the One Body, Aussie, and that includes the self. In fact, Aussie, try to strip away all the things—”

“I’m too old to strip.”

“—you thought were so valuable in life and now look at yourself closely, intimately. It’s just you now, Auss, naked and bare, almost like a puppy.”

“I was such a cute puppy!”

“Can you love this aging, slowed-down Aussie who couldn’t catch a rabbit this morning?”

“No.”

“You know what, Auss? In September, Zen Peacemakers is going to host a monthly meeting of folks who want to talk about the beautiful challenges of growing old, and loving the self will be a big part of it. Everyone is welcome, including you. Whaddya say?”

“Can’t right now.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going into intensive training at the Murderize Bugs Bunny camp in the next town over. I’m staying young if it kills me!”

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