On the Road Again...or, Blogging in the Bathroom in my Boxers

Well, we are on the road west. We went from Silver Spring to Columbus, Ohio in about 6 hours. Not bad. Daisy pretty much slept most of the way, While Melissa and I listened to 3 Beautiful South albums in a row. (For those keeping score at home, they were "Blue is the Color", "0898", and "Welcome to the Beautiful South".) Wonderfully poppy, but just as lyrically dark and twisted as Richard Thompson, with a little more dry bitter wit.

460-some miles melted away pretty quickly. I was going to post about how bloody boring and stupid Ohio is, but I realize I've got a grudge against the state that's a bit irrational due to a kinda cruel trick someone from that state played on me a decade ago. I'll go into that in a later post. Besides, DEVO came from Ohio, so it can't be ALL bad. :)

Now that we are in our Hotel (La Quinta - 60 bucks a night, pets allowed), I have had a chance to sit (shamatha-vipashina) a bit. I was looking at the picture of the late Lucinda Peach I have in my practice materials, and it got me thinking. (ok, it got me crying while I was doing tonglen for her a few minutes ago).
Khandro Rinpoche has said many times that Vajra sangha - buddhist practitioners who have been in the same stream of Vajrayana teachings, practices and empowerments - should be as close as (or even closer than) brothers and sisters.

I didn't realize it until Lucinda's death that I have come to view a group of the DC Khandro Rinpoche sangha that way. When you ride for a couple hours 2 ways many times during the year over several with people, you do get to know them pretty well (to say nothing of time on the land at Lotus Garden, study groups, etc.) I wish I had had more goofy email exchanges with Lucinda than I did.
I wish I had kept up regular contact during the weeks, and especially wish I had involved myself in helping her for what turned out to be her final months.

As sad as this is, I feel 100 times worse for my fellow DC sangha dry-wit conspirator (and co-suspect besides myself for being behind the incredibly bizzarre "Gumbi Prakesh" emails in the LG community a few years back) Jerry, who I still think really WAS her brother. And it made me think more. Besides Melissa, there are a couple of women (kpm and sls) that I view as family (ok, one is a complex case on my part) that it would feel like an amputation if they were suddenly dead. I worry about this kind of thing. Of course, My wife has her seizure disorder, which could kick in at any time.
Thankfully, I haven't had to go to hospital in the aftermath of a seizure for 5 or 6 years.

But I worry about these 2. One's a cancer survivor, which, in light of what happened to Lucinda, need I say more?
The other one has some kind of blood pressure thing that has been causing her to pass out, which has already given her a concussion once. If this were to happen when she were driving...
As I was saying emailing an old college friend who is mutual friends with sls, I have a reoccuring nightmare that she dies in an accident, but no one thinks to tell me until 6 months later. It always ends right when I throw myself on the ground at her headstone, screaming "No! no! no!"   Not a very pleasant thought.

I keep urging them to take care of themselves. I'm not sure what else I can do.

Well, now that anyone reading this feels like putting on a Smiths record :), I'm going to look up abandoned railroads around Columbus. I've been into them since i was really little. Drikung Khenchen Rinpoche said that it is very good to hang around such places - it's a great reminder of impermence and decay, which are inevitable for all of samsara.

I plan to post a bit about Lucinda's Sukavati service (such as what in the heck a Sukavati IS) later tomorrow, IAGW (If All Goes Well).

Everyone dream well.

-LWWD