Restart

New hybrid cars have the ability to turn off the engine at stops and restart quite seamlessly - saves energy and reduces pollution. Well, here we are - back again after almost a year long absence, though maybe not so seamlessly. Not cool, in blogosphere terms, what, with short term attention span and memory loss you're supposed to keep it going, or so goes conventional wisdom.

Not so, I say! One of the best things about getting old is that you get to see things come around. You know the saying... what goes round, comes around. Well, if you live long enough, you can actually see that happen. So many things have happened as if to never happen again, so many friends and fellow travelers have gone different ways, only to reappear at unexpected - and sometimes - at the best moments.

Anyway, not to ramble on forever - We're back! It took me a year to make the book based on this blog. It was a lot harder than I had thought. What I thought was, OK, simple. All I gotta do is transpose the contents into book form. Well, that fell flat. The two mediums don't mix. Can't just interchange like that. As a result, I had to re-conceptualize it several times. In the end, the simplest form won out - a practically wordless photo journal. And, as I found out, the book is essentially autobiographical. And you know that can raise a whole sh-tload of issues. Kinda like writing a resume for a job you never wanted in the first place.

In a year's time dharma dog has grown a lot. It's that 1 - 7 ratio of dog to human years. He says, "I don't feel like keeping the blog any more. You restart it, and maybe I'll jump in later."

Fair enough, so here I am.

It's been a busy year. In Spring, I went to Bhutan, where dogs run free in the streets - hangin' out during the day and partying all night. I wish dharma dog could have come with me but he was there in spirit. And I don't say that lightly. One of the things I learned in Bhutan was exactly to be more in tune with the spirit world. A young woman there said to me, "If you believe it, it's true."

Of course, that's not something I heard for the first time, but the way she said it and the situation that we were in, made a big impact on me. I've been carrying that thought ever since. I've been resistant to the idea of "believing." From my personal experience in the "rational" West, "belief" has always been associated with a substitute for understanding, when no understanding can be found. But after seeing how belief works in Bhutan, I realize it's not what I thought at all. It's more like the suspension of disbelief, to listen to your heart and your intuition, and not dismiss what you feel and know, on an instinctive level, what is true.

Still, it takes a while to "reformat" old habits. It takes time and opportunity for truth to reveal itself through the cloud and morass of accumulated karma.

to be continued (tbc)...

P.S., dharma dog days now available at amazon.com