The 1st day of my 33rd year alive, I swam in love and kindness everywhere with canoeing and family... alright, I have to go paddle among liquid reflections of a reflection while I still can...

go outside and look at the sky!

Yes, today was one of those good days where you somehow catch all the trains on time, the weather is perfect, and you get to swim in the ocean with your sister and your cousin (for the first time in a decade) and see your very large team of people who share names with love

6 days of travel, music, dancing, stars, lakes and ponds, a canoe, swimming, forests, fields, fireflies, friends, crazy freaky hippies, art, nature, sunshine, blue skies, fluffy clouds, tornado watches, torrential downpours, stressing over traffic and timetables, delighting over repeatedly making it on time just in time, getting home to New York after visiting many other places I consider home, and somehow, after all that fun, realizing that I could really use a day off.  Ah well, I'll take the fireworks outside my window as I write as a good sign that there will be plenty of time for that

Very thankful for all the people who helped me have such an amazing start to summer.  And very special thanks to the people who stood in line with me while we got passports, the cars that moved on the bridge so that I could see the show, Edmar Castaneda, Hiromi's Trio Project, all the polite Canadian people who truly felt and appreciated the music and gave standing ovation after standing ovation, the friendly border guard who told me I must be very patient after asking me my profession and smiled and laughed a lot and welcomed me back to the United States after my first foreign journey in three years, Lake Champlain, stars, the moon rise, Burlington lights, the motorists that didn't hit me while I was driving in the rain to the show, the rain for going away before the show, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Phish, Phish, and then Phish, and all the interesting people who walk around Phish shows, friends who go to Phish shows, and all of their friends, and the enthusiasm, good vibrations, and joyful celebrations as we all tuned into awe from our various stations of appreciation

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak with people, listening, eating, awe-inspired, sensing enthusiasm

In school today we learned from economists about how immigrants are very good for the world economy, the nations which receive them, and the nations they leave.  Even if your motive is money, the mixing of peoples and differences is, after all, a very strong force for good.  I think this proves the world was onto something when it made the USA, the country in which we learned such truths this day, and all the other lands where diverse mixtures of people love and play

I am very happy to be here and aware of the magic everywhere and to keep believing in what I love, and I am very happy that you are here, and I wish you well in finding magic as you traverse life's paths, whether they be dark or bright, and plentiful strength in spreading light to those who just might have been thinking of starting a fight.  People spread love when love is spread to them.  We can only sometimes influence how life treats us, but we can always influence how we treat the living. If people are loved and allowed to be their true selves without being made to feel ashamed or as if they are sinful, and if they work toward shaping societies where people celebrate love made possible by diversity of appearance and spirit, then God will smile with them as much as they please to see

So many thank you's to the gods of music, art, poetry, saving the day