Yesterday, on NPR's Diane Rehm Show, a woman said that she had once thrown a Poetry Dinner, where each guest had to bring a poem based on food, and a dish based on the food in their poem.  They all took turns reading their poems, and she read a poem by Billy Collins about a fish feeling sad for the lonely man in a run-down diner eating it. Both the idea of a Poetry Dinner and the fish poem itself sound COOL.

Billy Collins is another poet I need to seek out.  And come to think of it: I had already named my ongoing collection of poems "Fish."

This is probably one of the things you shouldn't say at a silent retreat focusing on loving-kindness... but I did when a little lizard ran under my foot and almost got hisself squashed.

Also, I bought some books and realized that I had placed Jack Kornfield's After the Ecstacy, The Laundry  on my packed bag... at the very end of the retreat... which was completely filled with dirty laundry...

I stopped and visited Karen Maezen Miller's century-old Japanese Garden on the way back.  It is the oldest J.G. in Southern California.