Looking Past the Surface

I saw a friend today and chatted with her.  Her humor and playfulness is to uplift her from her deep sorrow, pain, and depression.  She has looked the best she’s looked on the surface.  Look deeper into her eyes and it’s grey brown sorrow.  It is easy to miss.  She hides it well.  She is doing the right things to get onto her feet. 

I saw John come in with a friend.  She sounded exactly like another female friend.  It’s the same being speaking, same dramas played in two different bodies, disgruntle, fearful, too good for anything, too proud, too poor inside, too confused, too destructive and poisonous. 

Saw Wren tonight too.  She looked so frail and fatigued, barely holding it together.  At the end of the lecture she looked full and the sparkle in her eyes returned. 

Sendai Tsunami March 2011

Morning after Sendai Tsunami in Japan

It happened last night PST. I heard on the radio, Pacifica had a evacuation for the other end of same tsunami wave reaching pacific coast at 8:08am. There was an 8.8 earthquake followed by 7.9 aftershock then the tsunami arrived at Sendai was half a mile, it swept Sendai all in one minute, super shallow but wide. It wasn’t the oceanic water that is so difficult, it was all the sand and mud and human clutter that crushed everything and everyone that the force came across. The tsunami leveled this city. People had 20 minutes to evacuate. All the electricity was shut off.

I hope the elderly and the sick and young were taken cared of along with lone recluse. Twenty minutes was enough time to drive up to evacuation sites up the mountain and if you didn’t have access to a car or if you tried to drive home to reach your loves to pick them up, it is difficult to say in such instances. Or if you were injured from the earthquake and had 20 minutes to run after, it is hard to say whether or not 20 minutes were enough time to do so. There were scenes of cars trying to outrun the tsunami and did not win.

What if you had elderly at home and infants?
Who can you carry and run? Who can you abandon?
And do you choose to stay because running and being the lone survivor is just too hard to live on after?
I don’t know, it’s a lot to process in zero flight second like that.

So sad,
I am so sad.

All day long I clinched my palms together trying to hold it all in, trying to keep it all contained. There was nothing better to do than to just pray for the rest of the day.

Hurt and Sadness

Someone asked me about his heart that hurts and his lungs that hurt when he woke up from a dream middle of the night.  He felt he had no heart or lungs.  He was afraid to go back to sleep.  The 1^st thing that came up for me was to telling him about my personal experience of being choked while I was sleeping, then I talked about dreams I have had.  He told me he felt as if he died and then came back.  This experience consumed him.  He was trying to digest it.  Then I talked about the heart is a place for sadness and happiness wondering if he can distinguish in this life sadness depression connected to a personal memory?  There is also collective sadness you can feel from people around you.  There is also universal sadness like Hurricane Katrina etc… 

Too Young To Be So Sad

Today I met a young man who was too young to be smoking.  He stank.  He had a beautiful face.  I can see, he was sad on the inside.  It was so sad to see him so young, so beautiful, so sad, so addicted to coping with influence, not having resources to resolve challenges and transcend darkness. 

Some times

I went to visit someone going through rough times right now. I really didn't know what I could do to help her. I had many things in my mind in terms of ideas. But when I got there I realized some times the best thing you can do for someone going through traumatic rough times is... wash their dishes, clean their house, take out the trash, pour them a cup of tea, stock their fridge and be a good pleasant company. Don't tell that person what's wrong with them and how they need to fix it from my point of view. Some times, good company is all one needs to warm up the heart and the house that seems to be in the cold dark ages.