Gratitude Latitude # 21

I am grateful for:

Blue Plate restaurant in SF - yummy Americana Comfort food with local and organic sensibilities.  Mmmmmmmmm.  Also they are serving Four Barrel espresso, and the macchiato I had was BEATNIK PIRATE GOOD.  Like you knew it was going to be good because people talk about it all the time, and then you have it and you are like - ok this isn't just water cooler blabberfest good.  It is write a hand letter to an old cafe buddy good - put a really cool stamp honoring a dead artist or poet on it good and maybe even get some sealing wax with a skull and cross bones seal good.  Damn fine soul joe.

I am thankful for hearing some good news about a big project that might be coming our way.

I am thankful that for this time that above all other things has helped me to reduce the amount of expectations and attachments I have.  Being right about the way something should be or being clear about what you want something to be - these are fantastic abstract planning modalities.  But they are not the map to live life by.  Looking outside of one's self for clarity, certainty, comfort, peace, happiness....  this is like chasing clouds in a dream and expecting to wake with from it having built a castle.  The fortress is inside - its flags and banners, its sturdiness, great halls and merry feasts, its meditation chambers for peace, its jesters for laughter.  Inside I might find these and stand beside others who have done similarly - this is the way to live.

I am thankful for a lovely mother's day weekend and that sherry had a wonderful time.  I really wanted her to have a good weekend to say thanks for all she is doing for our family and all she is doing as a mother to Raine.

I am grateful for my little Raine - I love her and like her so much.  I am proud to be her papa.  I thank her regularly for coming to us and as she grows I want to always tell her how grateful I am that she found her way to us, as if it were her spiritual choice.  I dont know if this is a cosmological emperical truth, some would say yes, but I love the metaphor of the gift inherant in being chosen by this wonderful soul.  It is an honor and helps me understand that gratitude is not the end of a connection - not the triumphant zenith - that place belongs to devotion.  Devotion to what you are blessed enough with to notice and be grateful for.  It is the act of building a temple at the top of the mountain, or at the very least it is the act of packing out your own trash.

peace and good things,

Andrei