Serenity and Chaos

This is our garden Buddha. He was a present from a co-worker, who knew I attended that Buddhist retreat a couple of years ago. (Not to mention practicing Zen for several years in New York.) He looks like he's made of wood, but he's actually some kind of weather-resistant plastic or resin, and I believe at some point he was decapitated. You can see a ring around his neck where his head was reattached. But that's fine. As my great-grandmother would have said, "A galloping horse wouldn't notice."

I sort of like the repair job -- not only the line around his neck but the slightly forward tilt of his head, which may or may not have been his original posture. You know the Japanese art of repairing broken objects with gold, to celebrate their imperfections? Our Buddha has a golden necklace, sort of.

There's also a Buddhist expression you may have heard that says, "If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha!" I think it's meant to warn us against becoming attached to any one idea of what the Buddha or Buddhism is, as well as believing we understand that idea. Anyway, our little statue with his mortal wound reminds me of that saying.

Well, yesterday was crazy busy around here. Thames Water has been digging at the front of the house to connect us to the new water main, a job that seems more or less completed. (The hole has been filled in, anyway.)

And some guys showed up to repair the fence at the side of the house that has caused Mrs. Kravitz so much consternation.

Here they are, installing a couple of new fence panels and straightening a post that's behind me in this shot.

It's a little weird having the fence wide open. Mrs. Kravitz's dog was very curious about it, as was Olga, but weirdly neither of them crossed the line. They seem to know where their territory ends and the other's begins.

See that big hunk of concrete next to the yellow flowers? That was thrown behind the plants on our side, and that's what pushed the fence post outward and made the fence lean. So they repair guys removed it and will haul it away.

We didn't get too involved in the repair. I just let them do their thing. I think Mrs. Kravitz must be out of town, because I never saw her during the whole process and I'm sure she'd have things to say under normal circumstances.

Today they'll be back to finish the job, and we're taking Olga to the vet for her shots, and I have to get my Covid testing done for my flight to Florida in just TWO DAYS!