I get up at after ten sometime. Day off. Allow me a little inexactitude.
I have a bowl of muesli. Then I have another bowl of muesli. Then I set to corrections to Bagpuss, but the email with the corrections in disappears. This has never happened to me before. It just disappears. Worrying. I’ll have to get it sent again.
Dithering is done, and at about two I leave the house with Jack Kornfield talking about Your Buddha Nature on my iPod.
In some places that sentence would be enough to condemn me, right there. I’m not in one of those places. So that’s all right then.
I walk down to Kiel across the foot bridge. Kiel is closed today, apparantly. I walk north,through the Schlo?garten, past the (closed) art gallery, then into what it appears is the old Botanical Gardens. I’m looking for the sea or estuary or whatever it is. I now know that I was going in completely the wrong direction, but it was an interesting enough wrong direction not to disturb me unduly.
I end up walking through a forest and finding the sea front. I sit for a while watching people walking, cycling and skating past, then start back along the sea front. The tide is in and the water is very choppy. Very pleasant: calming dharmic thoughts, the sun, a cooling breeze, and Kielers out for a holiday stroll. I get back to town and walk inland, ending up at Dreiecks Platz and the cinema there. I look to see what’s on and recognise the pair doing the same. It’s Christian and Ruth. Ruth notices me. I wave, she waves, she nudges Christian, I wave to Christian, he waves back. We go for coffee. Ruth has a large sundae, and I buy a two-scoop cone to take with me (mocha and chocolate. I realise that mocha is already partly chocolate. I’m not a fool. I may be overfond of chocolate, however).
We ascertain that nothing’s happening in Kiel this afternoon and Christian drives us back to the House.
I sit and lie in the dwindling sunshine in the back garden while Ruth transposes cacti.
Later I take a book to Bambule to have dinner. This time I successfully answer the question "Schmeckt gut?" in the affirmative (and it did schmeck pretty gut); as well as ordering, asking for the bill and tipping in a sort of pidgin German. New word for the day: Bezahlen.
Returning to the House I see it from the outside. Obviously this is going to happen, but I’m struck strongly that this is what my current universe looks like from the outside. It seems a lot smaller than it does when I’m inside it.
Long chat to Vinka on MSN, then inputting tomorrow’s schedule, then this, then bed.
(Addendum: I just saw Ruth putting up her first job list as Kitchen Co-ordinator. I am on set up. Verily she is a wise and benign Kitchen Co-ordinator).