Birmingham Redux

No Monday Night Zazen for me this week, as a week-long work opportunity has presented itself in Birmingham, Alabama.

So today it was up well before dawn, the Chattahoochee crossed no less than three times on the meandering highways, and with one last glance at the Atlanta skyline in the rear view mirror as the car crested the ridge near Six Flags, it was off to Alabama.  Across the Tallapoosa, the Little Tallapoosa, and the Coosa, through the Talladaga National Forest and past the Talladega Superspeedway (not just a speedway, mind you, but a superspeedway), and dropping down from the Piedmont into the Valley and Ridge, I was back once again in Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama.     

Sometimes when I think about it, I realize I'm just a dumb kid form Long Island who somehow, despite my best efforts for several years to avoid it, managed to get a college education in Boston and later a job in Atlanta, where I was lucky enough to get picked up by a national engineering consulting company and, many years after that, was introduced to the Buddha-dharma.  

Now, after many years, many rivers crossed, and many lives lived, after relative successes and relative failures, after love and loss and everything in between, I get to come to Alabama the Beautiful and apply the things that I've been taught on this long, strange journey through life, and get paid to do it.  

How lucky can a dumb kid get?