The wedding is in 3 days. I have that feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something BIG but your mind won’t give it up. It’s hiding it somewhere waiting until it’s too late before revealing what it is. And here I am sitting around watching the butterflies floating around the Jupiters Beard with a million flapping wings in my belly.

I made a most beautiful jacket to wear over my dress.  I got all Project Runway on myself and hacked a pattern to my own specifications and then started hand sewing wavy seams around the hem and cuffs and then added a binding around the edge. I wanted to add some beading in but stopped myself. I might do it later. The fabric I used had been tucked away for a couple of years waiting for this jacket. A creamy ivory silk brocade.

Is it officially Autumn yet? Peaches are done, that’s for sure. I’m always a little sad when the peaches are done.

I’m back in my crooked little house, living my crooked little life. This was the view this morning from the way back deck/ lair/ yoga deck. You can just see the blue plastic pool where my little Kale Chips Ahoy was bathing his dinosaurs.

This morning I bustled my daughter’s wedding dress. I had no notion such a thing existed but it does. It’s called a french bustle and it was easy to do and made me look like some kind of genius seamstress in my daughter’s eyes. Priceless.

We tried the fat baby’s suit on him and he looks like the hulk when he’s already bust out of his clothes.

I enjoyed my time in the big city but it’s nice to be home where I find things like this….

in my bathroom.
Along with lizards and nasturtiums.

Also people go to the grocery store in their pajamas here.

My phone tells me it’s 102 degrees at this very moment and for once I believe it. When I opened the back door this morning it felt like I was walking onto the surface of another planet, leaving the space/earth ship after a hearty breakfast of helium filled pancakes.
On this here space/earth ship, the pancakes are made with helium. Never seen anything like it, they tasted good though I was hungry less than one hour later. Chinese helium filled pancakes.*

After breakfast I made my excruciatingly slow descent into the cold pool and swam until I felt shaky. My patient did laps around the pool and house. She’s doing very well. What a marvel these bodies of ours are!
They can be cut open and sewn up like cloth and be better than new.  I feel so lucky to have one.  A horse body would be cool too but then I couldn’t wear dresses.

For lunch, the patient treated us to PF Changs take-out. She ordered on-line then I drove to the restaurant, parked at the designated take-out spot and was just dialing the number on the sign when the waiter appeared at my window and said my order was ready and did I want a complimentary beverage while I waited for him to bring out my order. Life in the big city.

*Let me know if you want the recipe. Here it is. Gluten free pancake mixed with hemp milk and one egg, a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and a mashed up banana. whip vigorously and pour into a hot greased skillet. Flip after a couple of minutes, cover and cook another few minutes, take cover off and behold, a balloon shaped pancake.

My plum tree bore a handful of plums this year and them all up at the top, unreachable by me. I would take it personally if it weren’t for the fact that we are now a barren desert. A dry brown crackly place. We’re all dry, dusty and stat icky and water has become as dear as it always should have been.

There is a lizard the size of an alligator living in our bathroom. There are nasturtiums growing in through the walls. The nasturtiums will grow and flower with or without water. They need only air and dirt it seems.

In other outdoor gardening news. I planted rapini and spinach seeds early this summer along with a tomato seedling. The rapini and spinach grew gangly on long weak stems and then quickly died and the tomato has looked poorly since about day 2 though it is loaded with small mean looking fruit hanging amidst dry dead leaves.

I have planted other things that appear to be thriving. All in pots I water regularly with all our wash water.

That is the happy news.

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River


how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.


Barbara Crooker




Wedding plans continue. I’m so thrilled it will happen soon. I can’t imagine how anyone plans for months on end. I don’t think I could stand it. I’m more of a let’s do it right now kind of girl. So is my beautiful daughter. 
We are so goofy happy around here.

I’ve been making malas. I made a beauty for the monk but forgot to get pictures. He wore his every day we swam in LA and his tassel faded and got all fluffy and he started sewing it and adding to it and I know next I see it, it will be some beautiful thing. 

Here is the one I made for myself.

It’s a beautiful thing. I love wearing it. 

Namaste

The sweet peas are almost done blooming, it’s hot and sunny and I’m learning to tie knots. I started on Sunday and have been struggling through you tube videos and maddeningly complicated illustrations. It started with the Pan Chang knot which I spent hours studying and trying to knot before I decided to start on something simple, like my shoelaces. I borrowed some books from the library to work my way through.
Like tea, there is a whole rich world of knots.

Looks simple right.

There are grand babies involved in every day life and now, a wedding to plan. My daughter is taking the plunge. SOON. It’s all wedding plans, all day, every channel. I’m so over the moon happy for her I could cry.

 if you find yourself making a pot of beans and collards and composting all the waste, while wearing a pair of purple harem pants with elephants printed on them that your neighbor brought you back from Cambodia, and a Heisenberg t-shirt (Walter White) and flip flops and you are living off the grid so you are washing your dishes (in a galvanized tub) and yourself (in a horse trough) and using your washing up water to water your garden and your listening to janis joplin and stringing beads and doing yoga on the deck in your backyard and you smell like patchouli from the cannabis infused lotion you wear on your wrinkly skin.

This could happen to you without your even noticing it.

My last day in Denver we went to the Museum. It was, like all of Denver, a wonderful surprise. We split up so we could each see what we wanted to see. I went for the Daniel Sprick portrait room. Oh my. These portraits look like photographs at first but then you realize their paintings and then you scream! What?! I was mesmerized. 

and order the same thing.  A falafel salad.

Then went to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes because it’s sci fi and the monk loves his sci fi and I didn’t want to see Earth to Echo though after seeing DOTPOTA, I’m not so sure I made the right choice. DOTPOTA had your bad apes, your dumb drunk idiots, your good guys and one good girl, your one really good hearted ape, guns, shooting, swinging through trees, chimps wearing jewelry, and San Francisco in ruins. In 3 D.  Wear protective ear wear if you go see it.

After that we went to the Denver Botanical Garden which is probably the prettiest Botanical Garden I’ve ever been to. There was/is a Dale Chihuly exhibit which was surprising and beautiful. I’m not a big fan of glass art but I’m a big fan of gardens and his work adds a playful magic to this garden.

There’s more of this madness on my Instagram if you’re so inclined.

Denver is where Joyce lives and where we have been staying. She lives in a wonderful old apartment complete with milk chute (!) and  filled with collections of art everywhere your eye lands.  She’s fun and funny and gracious. I feel so lucky and grateful to be here.

I will be leaving tomorrow, heading back home on my own while the Monk flies back to NY.  I am missing my little gang and looking forward to smushing baby cheeks.

The days are running together so fast I have to stop and really focus to remember what day it is and where we were yesterday or two days ago.

This morning we are at the Great Sand Dunes National Park right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, just off the Cosmic Highway. Though the Monk has given it his best shot, the aliens have not seen fit to take him at this time.

Last night we hiked down to the creek at the base of the Dunes to watch as the sunset painted the sky and dunes all shades of pinks and blues and grays. It was glorious. Being elderly, tired and ill prepared, we didn’t venture up and into the Dunes but there were plenty of people heading up and disappearing into the dark. We didn’t see anyone come out. The Monk thought maybe there was a giant toad on the other side of the Dunes flicking them up into his mouth with his sticky tongue.

Yesterday we drove up to Crestone a small town right at the foot of the Mountains.  One road into the town and out. I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode with a really good restaurant called Bliss. There were some interesting  looking characters wandering around.  One reason I wanted to go there was because of the amazing patchwork like rocks I’d seen at Tizia and Paul’s labyrinth in Taos. They’re known as conglomerates and I found one right on the street in town. I also discovered there are about 30 spiritual retreat centers in and around the town. You can come and get so spiritually creamy you probably wouldn’t even notice winter settling in or you would and you would love it. I am pretty sure I would not.

Joyce, a friend of the Monk’s has now joined the party and it’s been great fun being with her.  She has a place in Denver and that’s where we are heading today. I’ll stay a few days there with them and then start my journey home. I am missing those babies and Mr Weepy.

I have seen some outstanding sunsets where I live and in Hawaii but last night’s was beyond any I’ve seen before. No camera I have could capture the colors in that sky. The wind suddenly whipped up and my hands were shaking so badly the photo is a bit blurry but here it is anyway. That’s a labyrinth to the right and in front of where the monk sat hoping to be beamed up by aliens.

Lucky for me, they didn’t see fit to take him last night. He makes for such a great traveling companion. Funny, awake and always ready with a story. He chanted almost all the way from Gallup to Taos.

My deepest Thanks and Gratitude to Tizia and Paul for being so welcoming and sharing their magical place with us. May their work and blessings continue and grow and may I be lucky enough to visit again.

Meth head at breakfast buffet asks Monk if he likes staying here. Monk says yea it’s really nice but did you know that Gallup has the highest rate of alcoholism in the country? “That’s why we’re here, to address this scourge”, says the Monk.

We rolled into town late yesterday evening and started looking for a hotel. I don’t believe in making reservations. I want to see and feel whats the what before I commit and then I want to think it to death and have someone else make the decision and then second guess them and then go to sleep. It’s worked great so far, especially because the Monk loves making decisions based on some mathematical formula he devises on the spot.
Yesterday the decision was easy. The place we settled on had no cars in the parking lot and as we were rolling through I noticed three very unsavory looking characters walking towards the entrance of the hotel, one walking towards our car making some hand gesture.  I didn’t have to second guess myself on that decision, wondering if the poor man was only asking for food or directions, the Monk backed my play.

The Monk receives Buddhist icons from his congregation. When any congregant dies, their families bring them to the temple for the Monks to “release”.  You don’t just throw them away.  So the Monk is “releasing” them. He brought three or four with him and wants to leave one in each state. So yesterday while looking for and not finding the Grand Canyon, we released one (a beautiful Quan Yin) in some BLM land just outside Walnut Canyon National Park. There were cliff dwellings you could actually hike to! We didn’t, unfortunately,  but we did go to the museum and learned that these Indians did to their environment what we’re doing to ours. Depleting it until there is nothing left and then you have to leave and then you die.

That is not a gas can! It’s the bag he carried the Quan Yin in. He found a beautiful spot in a tree. She looked luminous gazing out at the forest. I couldn’t get a good picture of her.

We press on today to Taos.

Fine dining in Arizona.

We arrived in Kingman, AZ late yesterday evening after a long day’s drive from LA.
Had a lovely breakfast with my gracious cousins and then hit the road. It’s the Monk’s first time in AZ and he is very attentive and appreciative of the landscape. All those endless miles of nothing but desert as far as your eye can see. I was road drunk when we finally sat down to a meal at the only place we could agree upon. Cracker Barrel.
OMG
I have never been to a Cracker Barrel and when we parked and saw all the rocking chairs on the wide porch the Monk remembered his last experience at a Cracker Barrel in North Carolina where he went with his Hindu Indian friend and a Christian friend of hers. After the meal the Christian friend confessed to feeling a deep sadness because the Monk and her Indian friend were going to burn in hell because neither of them had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The Indian friend asked her if all the Aids work the Monk did in Africa, all the hundreds of people he has saved and helped if that counted for nothing and the Christian friend said, nope, he’s still going to hell.
There you have it.
The Cracker Barrel. First off, everywhere I go with the Monk we get stared at as if we were the strangest things to crawl out of some hole anyone has ever seen. He’s 6 feet tall, 200 lbs give or take, and dressed in long gold robes. Mostly people just stare but occasionally some brave soul strikes up a conversation. Like yesterday while on line at a supermarket, the man behind us politely asked what religion he was. I like that.
Anyway, there wasn’t anyone gonna ask at the Cracker Barrel. I’ve never been anywhere so straight up and down white America before. I could feel every eye on us, a hush came over that cavernous place as we walked to our table.  And the food. Oh dear. We’ve been in LA where my cousin is a freakin’ gourmet cook genius and when they took us out it was to farm to table places where the waiter tells you your chickens name and his ancestry. At the Cracker Barrel I’m pretty sure they can give you the sell by dates on the cans if you ask nicely. The Monk was thrilled with all of it of course, especially when they served him an extra root beer float for serving the first one in a broken glass and then a free dessert for giving us the wrong bill. It was the first dessert I’ve ever seen him unable to finish. He says he’s becoming a pussy in his old age.