Theos-Talk Archives (February 1995 Message tl00022)

A Quiet Afternoon in Ojai  -- Eldon Tucker

I'm writing this note from Krotona, where Brenda is currently
attending a Co-Masonic meeting. It's 3:30 p.m. on a warm
Saturday afternoon (about 80 degrees--a southern California
"winter" day).

I don't have a cat by my side, like Jerry H-E or Liesel, but I do
have a three-month boy, sleeping in a car seat to my right. I'm
sitting facing a water fountain, surrounded, on the ground, by a
Star of David. (The star consists of a white and brick-red
pavement, and is surrounded by two circles of bricks, between
which is a walkway.) I'm sitting cross-legged in front of the
water fountain, with my laptop sitting on my briefcase, as I'm
writing this.

Krotona is a nice place to visit, and has theosophical classes
throughout the year, except for the summer. It's about an
one-hour drive from the Oxnard airport, or two hours from the one
at Los Angeles. Brenda and I live about 60 miles southeast of
it, so we can come here for a day trip.

The air is usually smoggy, because of some recent quite-heavy
rainstorms, the sky is clear and we can see in detail the
surrounding mountains.

I've just finished reading the latest from 'theos-l', and will
soon be thinking about what to write about next. At the moment,
it seems appropriate to write about what is happening outside,
about me, rather than on a more-typical discussion topic.

There are flowers in blossom, as thought it was springtime. A
family walked by a few minutes ago. There are two bicycles
parked on the right, by the goldfish and turtle ponds; their
owners are in the Krotona Library, checking out the books.

Right now, in this place, there's a sense of quiet peacefulness,
a sense of still contemplation and enjoyment of being alive.
There's a sense of functioning in a different mode than thought
and mental discourse.

The feeling just now is akin to the sense of peace that can be
felt on perhaps the sixth day of a Dai Sesshin, a Zen Buddhist
retreat, where the mind has exhausted itself of all the things it
must urgently consider and there is a sense of timelessness, a
sense of eternity or being disconnected from the Western sense of
clock and time.

The baby, Geoffrey, is just waking up. His eyes have opened and
he is starting to move about. He'll be getting fussy soon, and
I'll have to stop and care for him. Brenda still has over an
hour left on her meeting, and it's my primary job to see that
Geoffrey is taken care of, just now.