Well, last Sunday, I somehow (amazingly, miraculously) summoned the energy to get out of my sickbed at the Fairmont Hotel, pack my bags, check out, take the SuperShuttle to the airport and fly back home to Atlanta. Although the aches and pains of the flu were still with me, mercifully the chills weren't and I managed to make it home pretty much without incident. Delta originally had me seated in a middle seat, but I complained and they moved me to an aisle (bless them).

This week, I worked 3 or 4 hours on Monday, and rested the remainder of the time, and didn't even go in on Tuesday. L. came over and brought me some food and groceries Tuesday night, but otherwise didn't stay long out of fear of coming back down with the flu that took her three weeks to shake.

I did manage to open the zendo on my usual Monday night, but I avoided shaking hands with anyone so as not to spread this illness any further. We had three newcomers and I attempted, in raspy voice, to give them meditation instruction and lead a short dharma discussion afterwards.

Spring has come to the ATL in full force, and I just want to get healthy and back on with my life.

More On the First Noble Truth

"What, now, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering; Decay is suffering; Death is suffering; Sorrow, Lamentation, Pain, Grief, and Despair, are suffering; not to get what one desires, is suffering; in short: the Five Groups of Existence are suffering.

"What, now, is Birth? The birth of beings belonging to this or that order of beings, their being born, their conception and springing into existence, the manifestation of the groups of existence, the arising of sense activity - this is called Birth.

"And what is Decay? The decay of beings belonging to this or that order of beings; their getting aged, frail, grey, and wrinkled; the failing of their vital force, the wearing out of the senses - this is called Decay.

"And what is Death? The parting and vanishing of beings out of this or that order of beings, their destruction, disappearance, death, the completion of their life-period, dissolution of the groups of existence, the discarding of the body - this is called Death.

"And what is Sorrow? The sorrow arising through this or that loss or misfortune which one encounters, the worrying oneself, the state of being alarmed, inward sorrow, inward woe - this is called Sorrow.

"And what is Lamentation? Whatsoever, through this or that loss or misfortune which befalls one, is wail and lament, wailing and lamenting, the state of woe and lamentation - this is called Lamentation.

"And what is Pain? The bodily pain and unpleasantness, the painful and unpleasant feeling produced by bodily contact - this is called Pain.

"And what is Grief? The mental pain and unpleasantness, the painful and unpleasant feeling produced by mental contact - this is called Grief.

"And what is Despair? Distress and despair arising through this or that loss or misfortune which one encounters, distressfulness, and desperation - this is called Despair.

"And what is the "suffering of not getting what one desires?" To beings subject to birth there comes the desire: "O that we were not subject to birth! O that no new birth was before us!" Subject to decay, disease, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair, the desire comes to them: "O that we were not subject to these things! O that these things were not before us!" But this cannot be got by mere desiring; and not to get what one desires, is suffering."

One Big Week-Long Lesson on the First Noble Truth

What is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering: in short the five categories affected by clinging are suffering.

This is the First Noble Truth of Suffering: such was the vision, the insight, the wisdom, the knowing and the light that arose in me with regard to things not heard before.

This Noble Truth must be penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, the insight, the wisdom, the knowing and the light that arose in me with regard to things not heard before.

This Noble Truth has been penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, the insight, the wisdom, the knowing and the light that arose in me with regard to things not heard before.
- Samyutta Nikaya LVI, 11

Escape from San Fran

That everything is impermanent
Is the way all things come into and go out of existence.
It is when these processes are over
That we see true happiness in nirvana.
- from The Nirvana Sutra

As flowers are brilliant but inevitably fall,
who could remain constant in our world?
Today let's transcend the high mountain of transience,
and there will be no more shallow dreaming, no more drunkenness.
- Kukai, The Iroha

And though it is like this, it is only that flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds, while hated, flourish.
- Dogen, from Genjo-Koan

California, Day Seven - Quarantine on Nob Hill

Well, the worst-case scenario has come to pass: I can't attend the very meeting that I flew out here for. Downstairs, my company is having its annual managers' meeting, and I'm upstairs in self-imposed quarantine in the Fairmont Hotel - shivering, aching, occasionally puking, and generally feeling miserable. My only hope is that I can rally enough strength tomorrow to catch my flight back home.

Coming here, I asked rhetorically "What could possibly go wrong?" Be careful what you ask . . . you might not like the answer.

California, Day Six - Doc Savage

Shokai -
I assume you are really sick now...my hunch is that this isn't going away any time soon.
don't be afraid to call the hotel doctor - every good hotel has one - and sometimes it's worth it.
I've done it. You got to pull the fever down first.
So sorry -- my heart goes out to you
L.

Yeah, you're right - each day is worse than the one before. I went downstairs for breakfast and immediately started feeling worse, came back to my room, threw breakfast up, and shivered and ached from 8 to 12. Feeling slightly better now, but that's a relative term. Obviously, I'm missing the meeting today.
I was thinking of calling the doctor anyway, but I think your email made my mind up to do it. I'm concerned about the flight home - I won't be able to fly if I'm feeling then like I felt this morning (shivering and sweating at the same time, squirming with pain in the joints etc.).
I had to take a rest while I was writing this. I can see why you weren't able to work on your book.
- Shokai

Sweetpea - get the Z-pack and stay an extra day or two if you need to.
The company will pay for it...you are sick.
I bet your fever is higher than you think. Please get the Dr. - so that you can start to get well
L.

Went to the doctor and he set me up with a couple of meds, including ibuprofen for the pain. I suggested Z-pack, but he said this flu has been going around San Fran, and gave me Tamiflu for the influenza and Zithromax to head off bronchitis (I'm dehydrated and the windpipe cracks and the blood could get infected causing bronchitis). The doctor (Doc Savage) was really good and seemed to know what he was talking about. So for now, I'm doing it his way.
The doctor also said that the Tamiflu should have me in good enough shape to fly home Sunday, but I agree that I will stay if I'm not up to travel. This is probably the sickest I can recall having been as an adult. . . I'm really out of it. It's not a decision whether or not to stay - if I feel like this on Sunday, it will be physically impossible for me to check out and fly home.
Thanks for your sympathy and kind words - they really help.
shokai

Shokai-
I thrilled you have medicine and a competent professional helping you.
Thank god. Also, that you are staying in nice surroundings probably doesn't hurt.
They recommended Tamiflu for me too - I didn't take it...also, the Z-pack IS Zithromax, which was for my bronchitis.
sorry sorry you are going through this.
Hang in there.
Yes, that was the sickiest I'd been since I was a little girl.
I understand.
Order fresh squeezed orange juice to the room & bottles of water too. The hotel will bring you anything - and you shouldn't get dehydrated - you have no excuse! They'll bring you anyting you need.
Take care,
L.

California, Day Five - Fairmont, At Last

Since I'm too sick and don't have the energy to blog, instead here's some email that sort of explains the situation:

L. --
Hope you're doing well.
I was feeling better for a while there, but as I was driving from the Tiburon Lodge back to the airport this morning to return my rental car, I first started getting a headache, then muscle aches, and then the chills again. Carrying my luggage from the rental car terminal to the hotel shuttle bus was among the most exhausting things I've ever done (it should have been easy), and I was shaking and shivering like I had Parkinson's or something.
I got to the Fairmont (fabulous!) at noon and shivered under the covers of my bed until 2 p.m., then went down and joined the company meeting, apologizing to everyone that I wouldn't shake their hand because of the flu.
I just got out of the meetings, and I'm going to skip the social hour and the dinner so I don't infect everyone else (and also because I'm simply not up to it physically).
I hope I'm better tomorrow. I hate being sick, especially during my once-a-year Principals' meeting. This sucks!
I assume that you are back to work full time now. How was your day? How's the weather in Atlanta? Did you get your edits back on your manuscript yet?
Talk to you soon.
- Shokai

i am so so sorry that you got what I had....shit.
Terrible time to get it too....
being so far from home & at the big meeting to boot.
Sorry my friend.
The editor had hardly any changes...so I think I am on my own...
Weather is rainy but warm.
i am getting better everyday. At the end there was a stomach/GI component too (just to finish me off!) but seriously, I am getting better everyday. I have still been home every night but one for the last 3 weeks. I have been very tired...getting stronger everyday just not 100% yet.
Take care
L.

California, Day Four - Disaster

The last 24 hours or so have been a disaster.

Things didn’t start out so bad yesterday. My sister was feeling tired, so I struck out on my own and headed to Japantown in S.F. and to Mill Valley in Marin County. For lunch, I had my first In-and-Out Burger, and in the afternoon I headed up to Novato in North Marin County for a business meeting. So far, so good.

After the meeting, I stopped at my sister’s in the late afternoon. After chatting for a while, I stepped outside to play catch with her dog and immediately caught a chill. “Is it me or is it getting really cold out?,” I asked her husband, who answered that sure, it was cooling off.

But when I got back inside, I was still cold and soon started shivering. My sister found a thermometer, and sure enough, I was running a 100.6 fever. She piled me up under a bunch of blankets in the living room and we ate Chinese food, and after a while I seemed to recover somewhat, and returned to the Tiburon Lodge.

Now a word or two about the Tiburon Lodge: as I’ve said, there is no Internet access in the rooms, and I’ve been forced to blog from the Business Center. But today, they started a renovation project, and have surrounded the whole place with six-foot-high chain-link fence and have locked up the office, including the Business Center. Both have been moved to a former conference room, where I’m now typing this on a card table under the watchful eye of the night manager, sitting across from me at a second card table.

If you’re visiting the Tiburon/Marin County area, do yourself a favor and don’t stay at the Tiburon Lodge.

Anyway, I got back to the Lodge and got under the covers of my bed and rode out the fever for a couple hours, with all the usual flu symptoms: chills, aches, sore joints, etc.

When I got up this morning, I felt better and drove over to Emeryville on the Oakland side of the bay for a second business meeting, but no one I was supposed to meet with was there. S. was in another meeting and had to leave at 11:00 (it was 10), C. hadn’t come in yet, and J.’s office light was on, but no one knew where she was. So I headed over to Berkeley.

Berkeley, if you haven’t been there, is now one big neighborhood of Indian and Thai restaurants, sort of like a larger version of New York’s St. Mark’s Place but with more formica and fluorescent lights.

I had vegetarian Thai for dinner, but could start to feel my energy drain again, so I headed back to the homely comforts of the Tiburon Lodge and spent the afternoon in my room with the heater cranked all the way, alternately shivering and sweating under all of the blankets on the bed.

But being the kind of person that I am, I found a second wind and headed over to the San Francisco Zen Center’s City Center for their evening service. The meditation actually seemed to help the flu situation, and since I’ve gotten back, I’ve felt a little better. Plus the whole Zen/Mahayana experience was refreshing after last Monday’s Theravedan encounter.

So, the last thing that I wanted to happen the whole time I was taking care of L. while she was sick – namely, getting sick myself during my trip to San Fran – seems to have happened, but at least I’ve gotten caught back up to the present in my blog.

California, Day Three - Mt. Tam to Spirit Rock

Well, I obviously got one technical difficulty fixed, I found a card reader so I can upload pictures from my camera, but now I have a conventional problem (as in, a problem concerning a convention), namely, someone I have fallen a day behind in the blog. Today is actually Day Four of my California trip, but I am only now blogging about what I did on Day Three. I guess that I messed up on April 3, which was actually Day Two, but I called it "Day One" because it was the first entry discussing this trip.

Anyhow, yesterday, Day Three, I went to Wolf Camera (I didn't know they had Wolf Camera stores in California - I thought it was a Georgia chain) looking for a USB line for my camera. They didn't have any, but they did have this neat multi-card reader with a USB plug that can accommodate my XD and Compact Flash memory cards, as well as SM, SD and MS cards should the situation ever arise. With this new toy, I was able to upload the picture for my April 3 entry, as well as April 4's photo essay (of events that occurred April 3).

After that, the day consisted on a trip up to the East Peak of Mount Tamalpais with my sister, followed by lunch at Stinson Beach. We picked up her three-year-old, my nephew, at 2:30, and then took him to feed the ducks at the Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and since that entailed two trips over the G.G. Bridge, the prerequisite Golden Gate pictures.

As night approached, my sister and I went over to Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Marin County. According to their Vision Statement, "Spirit Rock Meditation Center is dedicated to the teachings of the Buddha as presented in the Theravadan vipassana tradition." The Theravadan teaching really reinforced the Mahayana inclinations in this stubborn old Zenster, and I'm looking forward to going to an afternoon service at the San Francisco Zen Center's City Center, hopefully tomorrow (Day Five, but it probably won't get posted until Day Six the way things are going). I did get the chance to go and introduce myself to Jack before the service started, and he was very generous with his time and attention, even as he was getting ready to strike the gong to start the session.

That may not sound like a lot for one whole day but by the time I got home, I was exhausted . . .

California, Day Two - San Francisco

California, Day One - Tiburon

San Francisco - Everything went fine with my flight from Atlanta, despite the fact that Delta stuck me in the middle seat. Five hours elbow-to-elbow with two strangers, but I arrived here safe and sound none the less.

From the airport, I rented a standard-size Kia and drove Highway 101 North in search of the Golden Gate Bridge. I had no idea that 101 wasn't a freeway all the way from the airport to the bridge, and instead, that it would drop me off into downtown S.F., where I had to follow street signs for "101" and "G.G. Bridge." But I found the bridge despite the challenge, drove into Marin County, called my sister, and arrived around 1:00 p.m. at her house in Tiburon.

This is beautiful country: rugged hills surrounded by water, beautifully built houses, and manicured gardens. The retail infrastructure is all low profile - none of the garish billboards and illuminated signs that blight Georgia. Out of my sister's back porch, I could see Mount Tamalpais, watch deer feed in the arroyos, and smell wild eucalyptus.

Technical difficulties: When I checked into the Tiburon Lodge, I found that the rooms don't have "High-Speed Access" like Hotels.com implied. This is being typed in the hotel's business center, where I'm being interrupted by others requesting to check their email, print boarding passes, and other urgent business. Also, I forgot to pack the USB line for my digital camera, so right now I cannot upload pictures to the Net (If you know where I can buy a USB line for an Olympus camera in the Marin County area, please email me).

Yesterday was mostly spent in the company of my sis, her hubby and their three-year-old. We cruised around Tiburon, with its beautiful views of the G.G. Bridge (every time I type that, I think of G.G. Allin, which is a whole different mind set), San Fran, Sausalito and Berkeley. We spent an hour at a toy store for the three-year-old (I bought him a bag full of plastic lizards, and he immediately memorized the names of every one - "Kimono dragon," "chameleon," "iguana," etc.). Kid's minds are like sponges.

Sis decided we needed time to ourselves, so we left her son with hubby and drove over to Mill Valley for a sunset latte.

Today, the forecast is for rain, so we scuttlebutted our plans to climb Mt. Tam, and are going to meet for brunch in a few minutes to make alternative plans for the day. I'll post again when I can.

Well, I'm Off to San Francisco! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?