The 3rd. Act - Jane Fonda

A bowl of homemade salad of Iceberg lettuce, aging tomatoes, green bell pepper, onion and small red chilis, dressed with olive oil, lemon squeeze, apple cider and black pepper with a little salt; Dinner is served! How the stomach is going to hold this spicy hot, sour and leafy rabbit food is yet to look forward to. It is past 5pm., another day is slipping by with very little accomplished except for sharing good will on FB and getting some thoughts down into this Blog entry. Most of time was spent listening to Sadhguru talks on You Tube while also falling asleep half way one of the talks and so the Guru was talking to my subconscious, which is okay by me. I know that whatever was said will be stored into the memory bank and can be accessed whenever needed to.

Someone posted Jane Fonda's TED Talks, 'Life's Third  Act,' on FB and it got my attention. It was an enlightening experience listening this lady of Holly Wood legend at here age of eighty?, still looking worth a million dollars, a few mil I should say. But her thoughts and ideas about aging throws a whole new light upon my own and as usual if I had heard her before I would feel like I have plagiarized her thoughts; not that it matters. She along with Barbara Streisand, and Whoopi Goldberg are among my favorite actresses when I was growing up. Personality aside, what Jane Fonda shared of her ideas about life especially in the final third stage, that is the next 30 odd years if one lives to be 90 or 100, is what I have been doing with my Blogging all these years and  not fully realizing it.

 I have been untangling the tangles of my past experiences, making sense out of non-sense, turning the negative into positive wherever and whenever possible. I think my journey towards self discovery and self healing began when an elderly lady by the name of Mrs. Rosella Kelly, told me to move on from the life I was leading at the
University of Wisconsin,  Printmaking Art studio, one summer day. I must have related this story a dozen of time in this Blog before but, it is a pivotal point in my life at the time and it mandates a retelling a little bit.

It so happened that Rosella and I were both polishing our copper plates at the cleaning table at the printmaking studio, we were part of a small group of printmakers who had formed a club. As we both were busy quietly polishing our plates Rosella nudged me with her elbow and said softly to me," Sam, it is time for you to move on." I was caught off guard and before I could react she went on, "My eldest son is being ordained a Zen priest in New York and wishes to open up his own school, why don't you go and work with him, his name is Dennis Kelly." Later that night I got a call from Rosella informing me that her son has decided to open his Zen school in the San Francisco Bay Area instead of New York; change of plan!

After saying farewell to all my friends and loved ones in Green Bay, I left for San Francisco; my journey began when I landed at the SF International Airport, with a phone number and an address to the SF, Zen Center on Page Street in case I needed a place to stay; this was  in 1982-3?  In Islam it is called making the Hijrah or relocation. I had not the slightest idea what laid in front of me and I burned my bridge behind me, I was on the road just like I was on my journey to Alaska; no looking back. I think I had about 200 dollars in my wallet and that gave me some comfort for at least I was not going to be hungry for a few days. As I left the SF Airport, my life began as a resident of the Bay Area which lasted 10 years more or less.

Buddhist studies and Zen training led me down the road towards self discovery, I went all out in the effort to understand and fit in with the lifestyle of the Marin County Residents where I ended up. I spent two years more or less at the Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center and Dennis Kelly went to become an abbot at his own Zen school called the Hollow Bones Zen, or something like that; its all on You Tube if you care to look into it. At Green Gulch, I had the opportunity to study under teachers like, Reb Anderson, Norman Fischer, Blanch Hartman and visiting teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield. The rest is history and has been told many times in the Blog.