What an incredibly great Sunday I've had here today, gang. Did yoga, meditated, then decided to take my walk down to the old part of town b/c I wanted to see the creek. For some reason, I was just really hellbent on seeing the creek. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon and I prefer to walk early in the morning, when there are no people around.  But wow, was the creek glorious today. The water is so pristine in places, so clear that you can see every rock, pebble, stone at the bottom and all kinds of fish just swimming along with the current. And it was decidedly "sun-dappled." Just gorgeous.

At one point, the widest point, where there are all kinds of ducks -- mallards as well as white ducks -- and even a solitary swan, I noticed a pier off a little ways in the distance. It seemed to jut out from the middle of nowhere -- well, from a thicket of trees. So I decided to go find it. It turned out that it wasn't all that hard to find, just that it was kind of isolated and I guess people prefer to be in groups. Not me, of course. I am seriously anti-social, gang. But in my isolation is where I find my many zen moments, so it makes me really feel fulfilled to be, you know, just the way I am.

And when I left the little pier and went walking along the path through the trees along the creekside, I was once again struck by how precious it is to be anonymous; what a blessing it is. I was thinking primarily of Rudolph Valentino in the last year of his life and how seriously out of hand his fame had gotten and how if a person were that famous, he couldn't just hang out alone on a little pier , you know? And then go walking off alone down some path through the trees. And I was also reminded of something I read in that book Conversations with Marlon Brando . Loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that I read that book on the plane to & from Chicago this very time last year and how struck I was, from reading that book, by the enormity of certain kinds of fame and how horrible they seem.

Well, I found myself thinking about that again today, in particular this paragraph in the book that talked about how Marlon Brando, on his island in Fiji, or wherever it was, had a ham radio and he would hang out at night, alone, talking to some stranger in, like Canada or somewhere on his ham radio. Of course the stranger didn't know he was talking to Marlon Brando and that was the whole point; that it was one of the very few ways someone as famous as Marlon Brando could ever be just an unknown entity; a free soul, and still have human contact. For some reason that had a really pronounced effect on me and helped me understand how sacred anonymous living can be; what a blessing it is.

At that point on my walk, as I was heading back home, I looked up at this absolutely perfect sky, gang -- perfect blue, perfect puffy white clouds, a light breeze -- and I saw this monarch butterfly, all alone, just flying higher & higher into the great wide open. It seemed so perfect, and so free -- and to think that it started out as a caterpillar inching along on the ground and then that whole cocoon phase and then presto -- the miracle of all of God's thoughts made manifest yet again. How cool is life? Man! Butterflies are just so cool.

And then I was coming upon my own little house and as I walked across my front yard heading toward the front door, all over the yard the smell of honeysuckle was on the breeze. Too perfect. A perfect world.

And what's even more perfect, gang, is that at the library yesterday, I got Volume 12 of Midsomer Murders !! Yay!! One of my most favorite TV series of all time!! (My wish is to someday own every single DVD in the collection!! I never get tired of watching these!) So I'm going to go make some popcorn now, maybe even pop open a Modelo Especial, then plop my quite comely behind on the couch down in the family room and press PLAY, then go straight to heaven on a fast train, gang.

Blissville, here I come!! See ya!!