Thursday June 26th.

The rains came today and they came with a vengeance. The monsoon is not just rain it is a drenching of the earth. The rains are quenching months of thirst in a mighty dousing. I got out of the grocery store and knew that I had to get home fast to make sure that I could get my food inside without drowning!

I am pleased, I stood outside for 5 minutes and let the rain soak me. My doors are open and the smell of wet desert fills my house. The thunder and lighting are beautiful. It is amazing how this happens like clockwork every year. Give or take a couple of weeks the rains arrive on time to reaffirm and nourish the desert.

I had my appointment with my masseur Carlysle today. As we were talking about all of the funny things we do every week we began to talk about the paths that we were on in this life time and we both just wanted to ask someone like the "Dali Lama" (someone that we knew we could trust) if we were on the right path to the lessons that we needed to learn in this lifetime. Each of us started to talk about how we felt about our own journeys this time around and I discovered something very important.

I have always been able to gauge the disarray that my life was in by the status of my sock drawer. If my socks were paired and in a tidy order I kind of knew that things were on the right track or if the drawer was a jumble of mismatched pairs I knew I had some work to do. Now here is my problem! Since I moved to Arizona I no longer wear socks for 9 to 10 months out of the year. I do not even look in my sock drawer during those months. I realized today that I needed to find a new gauge. I have depended on my socks for as long as I can remember. Maybe my tank tops will do. They are separated by color and neatly folded in orderly stacks. I’ll have to see if that will do for the 9 months that I no longer wear socks.

Here is a link to a really cool local artist Amy Novelli. I met her a few months ago at an open house and we started talking away and soon realized that we had a great deal in common. We both had spent way to many years in Ohio. We both lived and went to school in NYC around the same time. And we both had the same job at the same art store in NYC separated by only a few weeks.

I worked at New York Central Art Supply in the third floors paper department. Now this is no ordinary paper department. They carry hand made parchment that these two really cool Hasidic Jewish men make, hand made watercolor paper, hand made marbleized paper and every conceivable Japanese paper you can think of. There were thousands of kinds of paper. I left that job to go on a National Tour with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre as the Assistant Lighting Supervisor and Amy took over my position at the NY Central. We had a great time talking about all of the characters that worked there.

Well anyway she is now a Tucson artist and has just revamped her website. Take a look her stuff is really interesting to see. Also make sure that you check out her INTERVIEW from a local TV station.