Neptune Landing

Neptune Landing was never meant to be a string of complaints about my precious life in one of the world's most dynamic cities but I can't help but notice that my writing has drifted towards the depressive side much like the inactive human mind often does. So in the last four days I've taken some action. Every six or seven years, I pull myself back into Buddhist practice. For the uninitiated, I loosely refer to Buddhist practice as activities centered around the Noble 8 fold path. Namely, 1. Right View 2. Right Intention 3. Right Speech 4. Right Action 5. Right Livelihood 6. Right Effort 7. Right Mindfulness 8. Right Concentration To start, I picked up several books about the Buddha's life as well as a copy of the Lotus Sutra, one of the premier texts of the Mahayana tradition. Mahayana is the more generous, ambitious school that seeks enlightenment for everyone in this lifetime versus the Theravada school which embraces the more lone, ...

There's a quote from the sages that floats across my mind whenever I struggle with the Never-Never land called San Francisco. "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." This weekend was the 42nd annual GLBT Pride Celebration in SF. Saturday was the more  bacchanalian street fest known as Pink Saturday and Mauricio and I walked around clinging to each other in horror. It was the trashiest thing I ever saw and I'm so glad I don't party anymore. We saw young teenaged girls passed out in the street (thankfully with friends watching over them) with all stripes of people drinking, drugging, pissing, vomiting and spitting everywhere. One young girl was even wheeled away strapped to a gurney after having a drug overdose. We quickly fled to the quiet confines of Alamo Square where we both hugged a Monterey Cypress and looked out over the still, quiet skyscrapers of this arguably beautiful city. Jane Austen helped us to decompress with the BBC version of "S...

There are moments where I feel like an extra in the movie "Logan's Run" while living in San Francisco. Except instead of under 30-year-olds thriving in a sci-fi setting, it seems you can only live here between the ages of 18 and 65. Part of the age-angst that screams "Renew, Renew!" is perhaps just a facet of my neighborhood, Mission Dolores or what I call Dolastro. It's a total party town and even on the weekdays you feel as if everyone is on vacation. SF has the lowest number of children per capita out of any major U.S. city and a number of people I've spoken to who are 50+ feel very invisible. Deeper into the Castro, many homeowners are in fact older gay men, so you have this strange dynamic of folks who feel like strangers in their own neighborhoods. Part of me is actually looking forward to a quieter neighborhood with more diversity, perhaps Excelsior, Glen Park or "The Avenues," i.e. the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods. My only regret ...