Hi – thanks for checking in.

The condo is on the market, and we start a trip tomorrow, so I’ve been busily packing up and storing what few possessions I still possess. I’ve done pretty well paring down, but I’m having trouble letting go of my flatware.

(WMF “Salzburg” – made in Japan. I’ve never found its equal.)

I know it’s an obstacle to enlightenment, this attachment, but I find enlightenment pales in comparison to the hand-feel of a really well-crafted spoon.

The immediate future is clear: California time. Family time – the gathering of the clan, to honor the patriarch’s 80th. Tahoe’s Zephyr Cove, Yosemite, the wine country, Bay Area, LA. After that, starting September first, things get a bit hazy. Esalen? (touch and go – we’re on the waiting list). Europe? (the wine country of France during harvest beckons). Back into the high-tech world? (interesting discussions are underway). Brazil? Australia?

The road divides – many changes are coming. I look for signs and omens in my dreams. Last night it was treasure – gold coins and handfuls of black pearls in a tupperware bowl. Whatever.

On an unrelated note, this is an ocelot from South America, also known as the miniature jaguar. While beautiful, its fur is quite coarse, and the beast has the rank piss-blood odor of a real carnivore. When it buries its face in your neck and purrs, it’s frankly terrifying. It sounds nothing like a house cat – it’s a loud, angry-sounding rumble. Like it smells your jugular and wants to open it up. It awoke in me an ancient simian memory, deep in my lizard brain, of all the eons my kind were hunted by his kind.

I read recently that nearly every culture has some kind of dragon myth. Scientists speculate that perhaps the creature was a device to teach our young what to fear – an amalgam of our three great predators: eagle, snake, and cat. We were a lot smaller, then, and not nearly as clever as we are now. Now we fear different things.