Detachment.

April 29, Los Osos, California.

We left Ventura and the ocean behind, reluctantly. Even though Los Osos is also a coast town the circus is set up far from the water here. As Little Sister Priscilla said, the circus sets up in a place as if it were going to stay forever and the place becomes ours, if only for a day. Ventura was easy to claim.
But we had to leave, as always. This endless moving teaches you detachment in many ways, detachment from place as well as detachment from people, as friends come and go, to other shows, other places, other continents. No place is ever ours in the circus, just as eventually no place is anybody's to claim anywhere, we are just passing by here on earth - the foolishness of claiming anything, or anybody, as truly your own.
The circus life's constant rhythms of change is also a reminder of the need to begin each day anew and live in the present moment.
Taking care of a baby will do that, too. Dylan changes every day in an obvious manner (last week he grabbed his feet for the first time, tremendous accomplishment for a five-month-old) and it reminds me that each of us do, too, only in much subtler ways. We change physically, as our cells die and others replace them, we change inwardly, as our views are constantly shaped by our life, and as a result we're never looking at the same person in the mirror. Or as Thich Nhat Hanh says, it is never the same person walking down the same path.
The universality of all human thought across widely differing faiths and cultures, another useful cliché to remember for a saner world: what the Little Sisters see as a reaffirmation of their Catholic faith I see as Buddhist philosophy.