Angelnina’s Cottage

My partner worked in West Seattle very close to Alki Beach for the past few weeks.  I love Alki Beach.  I think it is one of the most romantic views of Seattle.  You may remember the view from “Sleepless in Seattle”.  I also have lots of memories of hanging out at the Alki Bakery. When I attended college –a brief one year stint. I used to love to go there to study chemistry.  I hated chemistry.  Alki had a way of unwinding  the stress surrounding atoms, elements, and ions (oh my!).

Written April 21, 2008

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down….

Well, most of us know the lyrics to the famous Carpenter’s song.

I have to admit, I don’t enjoy rain as much as I do a nice clear sky filled with sunshine, but I’m not going to allow weather or a day of the week contaminate my attitude today.

As I drove through the heart of the city today, on my way to West Seattle, I noticed the traffic was heavier than usual.  The Dalai Lama is in town, so thousands of people are gathering for the “Seeds of Compassion” conference. At first, being in traffic made me think, “Oh my God, this sucks!”  Then, I decided to create a better space for myself and I felt my body and paid close attention to my breathing.  As I did I became aware of the slow moving bumpy road beneath me.  It reminded me of the old wooden roller coaster my sister and I used to ride in upstate New York at “Rose Land Amusement Park”. The trains slow ascension up the track made the same bumping noise and vibration in my body.  I remembered how exciting the ride was, and all of a sudden, I moved into the moment, I thought, “Ah ha! Why not enjoy the ride?”

I looked around and saw the Space Needle and a few huge cranes swinging around at quite a good speed. Before long, I was at my destination.  I picked up Mark and we drove to the Alki Bakery for tea and hot chocolate.  Right away we started talking about a friend and the friend’s problem, and we tried to figure out why said friend is the way said friend is .  In the middle of our discussion I flashed to Eckhart Tolle’s message written in his latest book,  “A New Earth”, and it brought me back to the moment, and I realized we were creating our own misery by focusing on the negative, and worse yet , feeding our pain bodies in the process.  Mind you, this wasn‘t a matter that concerned either one of us personally, so it was a non issue–ever notice how most of what people talk about are non-issues?  There we were sitting in the middle of a beautiful beach town, inside a lovely bakery, drinking hot cocoa and looking at the web site I am building and we were talking about some other person’s perceived problem!  The ridiculousness of our discovery made us laugh.  We opted to focus on the beauty around us. I even snapped a few photos.

 I’m writing this from Alki Beach. The view is beautiful and peaceful. Not everybody can spend a few hours watching tug boats and listening to waves rush in and out while seagulls call out from above.
 

 

Rainy days and Mondays can be quite a blessing.

 
 
Enjoying the “Now”.