zen in the inner city

love

it has rained all night, and i've been watching it from the window of our 10th floor flat. my spouse is asleep. i watched a pale shape moving fast around the nearby football pitch, and i thought it was a dog running around, but after a while i realised it was a plastic bag blowing in the wind.

we're in the second month of pandemic lockdown. i'm grateful we have a home to shelter in. gratitude to the spirits of this place; may all people, human and other, be safe and well.

#zen #buddhism #pandemic #covid19 #urbanhermitage #love

snow is falling on the city tonight, and we're in full lockdown, but i'm happier than i've been in nine months, because my spouse arrived back in the country on christmas day. the quarantine lasts two weeks, so i've been staying at a friend's place, but on friday i go home.

#love #covid19

my spouse is in another country, and has been for more than six months. flights home keep getting cancelled because of the plague. we're grateful that this is happening in a time in which tech allows us to talk and text every day. it's not so long ago that all that would have been available to us is expensive phone calls on a land line, and letters that took weeks to cross the ocean.

like me, my spouse is a zen monk. sometimes we meditate at the same time, one of us in the desert, the other in a small flat on the 10th floor of a tower block, together.

#love #separation #zen #buddhism #marriage #covid19