January 24, 2005 On January 12 I bundled up my mother & off we flew to San Francisco, joined by my sister at the Houston airport. We spent that night with Scott Blossom, Chandra Easton, & 4 ¾ -year-old daughter Tara, and the next day drove leisurely up through Napa County to Vichy Springs, whose naturally carbonated water offers an unusual sort of bath experience, as one lies in a tub and a bubble of carbon dioxide accumulates atop each body hair. It takes about eight minutes for the gas to find its way through the skin and begin to perfuse the body, and once that happens the bath's effect gets yet curiouser. The spa itself is just outside Ukiah, on the banks of a stream surrounded by hills that host among other oddities a played-out cinnabar mine. Our cumulative suggestion: visit during the summer, when air temperatures are warmer.

Back in San Francisco for the Yoga Journal Conference there, and rendezvous with various friends, including (but not limited to) Richard Freeman, Rodney Yee, David Life & Sharon Gannon, James Bailey & Shiva Rea, and Karen Richards (a high school classmate that I had last seen three decades back). The conference went smoothly, as did a post-event Sunday dinner soirée at pre-eminent vegetarian restaurant Millennium. The next morning the three Svobodas strolled through Muir Woods before following Highway 1's twists up to The Sea Ranch and Dr. Laura Franklin's well-appointed, welcoming home, and on Tuesday we made it back to Sonoma, and Bette's Timm's hospitality. While in Sonoma we watched Hotel Rwanda (don't miss it), and enjoyed a private showing of Patricia Sullivan's latest sculpture, an Ardhanarishvara in bronze. Like any well-executed Ardhanarishvara (a presentation of the relationship between consciousness and matter in which Shiva and Parvati share the same body) this being was enigmatically asymmetrical, its single full left breast and curvaceous hip ever striving to find balance with its more muscular, "male-er" right half. Patricia (a renowned yoga teacher) has kindly shared many of her remarkable pieces (in both metal and clay) with me over the years, and I was pleased to hear that this first casting of Ardhanarishvara had already sold. Four more copies will be cast; the sculptress can be reached at Patricia Sullivan, P.O. Box 631, Inverness, CA 94937.

Thursday returned us to the Bay Area, and an excellent gondola ride on Oakland's Lake Merritt. For far too long my image of Oakland has been a tainted one, but under the patient tutelage of Ms. Erica Harrold I find the scales slowly dropping from my eyes. Gondola Servicio offers the largest number of genuine Venetian gondolas anywhere in North America, and proprietor Angelino played the consummate gondolier as he escorted us about this lovely downtown lake, singing songs like "Santa Lucia" and providing historical background (gondolas are created from several different types of wood; the Austrians occupied Venice for the first four decades of the 19th century) as he commented on the local flora & fauna & points of interest. Much recommended: http://www.gondolaservizio.com/home.htm, phone (510) 663-6603.

On disembarking we sped back to Berkeley in time to meet Scott & Chandra & Tara for dinner, and to introduce them to Sujata Singh. Sujata, whom I met twenty years ago when she had just started school, is the youngest daughter of Varanasi's acclaimed teacher of Hindi Mr. Virender Singh; she is back in the USA to pursue further collegiate studies (having already spent one of her high school years in Northern California). It was as always a pleasure to see her smiling face, and to enjoy Benarasi tittle-tattle with her in her elegant Hindi (which she teaches as well, having been ably trained by dad).

Scott & Chandra & I then returned home to among other things put a few last touches on plans for our February-March Brazil retreat. You can find their schedules on their website, www.shunyatayoga.com; among other upcoming events, Scott will appear in Seattle on February 12 at Samadhi Yoga Center [206.329.4070; www.samadhi-yoga.com] and on February 11 - 13 at the non-profit Samarya Center [206-568-8335; www.samaryacenter.org].

On Friday January 21 I put Laura & LaNell on a plane for Texas, while I proceeded down to an event-packed weekend in Southern California, including lectures at the Sacred Movement center, dinners at fine restaurant's Pam's & Dhaba, a screening of Million Dollar Baby (another must-see), and finally an excellent evening of chanting in front of a fire on a Malibu hillside under a full moon. A full fortnight indeed!

January 10, 2005 My family & I spent Christmas in Floresville and New Year's in Houston, and much of those holidays in the cinema hall, watching Finding Neverland and House of Flying Daggers (both excellent), and The Aviator (which I enjoyed more than did the others). But the big news of the fortnight was of course the tsunami, which attacked a couple of the Indian beaches that I had visited but three weeks previously. Only one personal acquaintance of mine is yet confirmed dead: Per Goodman, who with his wife Merete Scheller owned the Stardust Beach Hotel in Arugam Bay, Pottuvil, eastern Sri Lanka, for two decades. Per survived the war, but not the wave (Merete did make it through); when last I saw them (July 2003) the couple had been talking of selling out and retiring to their homeland, Denmark - if only they had done so. Rest in peace, Per.

As for Viren from Ulpotha, this is his story:

I actually happened to be on the beach just south of Bentota at my sister's new beach house (which couldn't be closer to the beach without being in the water) when the wave struck.  For our good fortune we must have been in a sort of 'shadow' zone as the destruction just to the north and south of the house was extraordinary.  All of us in the house managed to get out without great incident or injury.  Unfortunately many thousands of others were not so lucky.  We are now focusing our relief efforts on the east coast, which got hit particularly severely.  Please direct anyone interested in sending help to www.helpsl.org - it is a very good resource website.

On the night of December 28, as a giant ring circled the moon, filling fully one-third of the sky, I walked the park, meditating on the impermanence of life, and on the following traditional Irish blessing that a kind soul had sent to me that very morning:

'May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on you and warm your heart till it glows like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself.

'And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the two windows of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm, and may the blessings of the rain be on you - the soft sweet rain. May it fall upon your spirit so that flowers may spring up and spread their sweetness on the air.

'May the blessings of the Great Rains be on you, may they beat upon your spirit and wash it clean and fair.

'And now may the Beloved bless you, and bless you kindly.'

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