Facebook helpfully posts a picture of the Casa del Puente from a year ago ... leading to some reflection on that strange place, with its strange energy ... the incoming caretakers found the experience less than congenial and new casa sitters are sought ... the perils of wealth ... an unsellable asset, costing significant sums just to maintain the burden of ownership as it slowly crumbles away ... communication with Susie and Russ from those days in the sun ... she a blog reader and occasional correspondent and looking for a dog and house sitter for a possible trip to England this year ... he, having shed an amazing 30 kilograms of body weight, still living on his bus in the village and retreating from humanity ... and Facebook ... itself the topic of reflection and some discourse on how its memory of our life events (as posted on our pages and those of friends, virtual and otherwise) surpasses our own and will doubtless turn up as handy products for our carers when the Alzheimers kicks in ... data mining and processing being a growth industry ... these frequent reminders of our life events sometimes unwelcome when happy memories have soured ... and FB doesn't know when we die, if we don't tell it ... it seems we can have a memorialised page .. though this takes a while and meanwhile an alert arrives to wish a friend from Portugal, Rose, Buster's human from dog-sitting days, Happy Birthday ... she passed a while back ... more recently Look, from the Almond Blossom Sangha near Tavira, posted on Jane's page that she passed too ... and grateful to have had the chance to meet her in January ... it was with her and Look that the message from the Hopi elder arrived ... the spur to return to Stanhope and the Retreat House vision ...
... which picks up energy with a FB posting and reflection on practicalities such as dietary practices ... the Buddhist places are generally vegan or vegetarian and it comes something of a surprise to discover that the Dalai Lama is a meat eater ... culturally, of course, the Tibetan climate is not conducive to plant based diets .... the pilgrim routes were also tricky to manage without recourse to fish or eggs ... though beans and lentils are readily available in shops, restaurants were not often found serving them without lumps of meat or meat stock .... let's see how that one plays out as the group evolves ...
Mindfulness courses, it transpires, are already available in the village ... run by the mental health trust as part of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy courses in the Church Hall ... a referral for diagnosed conditions required for access ... the usual pitfall for public funded interventions, even in a community setting ... trapped by budgets to unwittingly stigmatise .... let's see how that all fits ...
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