Just like every year, passover has come around again. That means it is time once more, to tell the story of how the Egyptians tried to kill us back in the bad old days. In case you are unfamiliar with the tale, there was a pretty bad situation going on, what with plagues and horrors and being whipped, and to make a long story short, we got out, and not a moment too soon. But anyhow, the festival of passover celebrates that, and part of that means that you eat matzo, because there wasn't much time to sit around baking bread and letting it rise. Also it is the time of year to eat gefilte fish, and symbolic mortar, and tears and many other ritual food, such as a lambshank, burned egg and stuff like that. (You don't eat the lambshank and egg, but you put them on a plate).

Oddly enough, for a ritual which celebrates exile, this was my first seder ever in all my years alive not celebrated at my aunts house, though of course no one is making me build any pyramids here. Instead, one the first night, we had a progressive seder with some friends in Mill Valley, which dealt with freeing ego and conciousness as metaphors extended from the basic emancipation story of Exodus. Then the second seder was with my cousin and uncle. Which was more conventional, but still threw me a little from my usual routine I was used to, since I am pretty familiar with the menu at at Jeans house..

Also my brother was in town, so that was nice. He was up for work with a certain computer compan;y. I would say which but I probably shouldn't since I don't want to blow the deal. OK it's Apple. But if he gets work with them, he will be coming out fairly often, which would be nice.

To show him a good time on the weekend, we went for a stroll along the water and up into the cliffs, which was quite nice. From where we sat you could see the Paific horizon, and the Marin Headlands, and below, naked men on the beach.

Then we watched To Kill a Mockingbird, which you may recall from grade school, it's about Boo Radlley and southern people. It is still pretty potent, though of course in those days movies were a little slower paced. But Gregory Peck, who is the star, Atticus, really has leading man charisma. Oddly enough Jon named his cat Atticus, then, later, Dan named his son Atticus, though he calls him Gus, which you would think would be short for a name that had Gus in it, rather than Cus. I pointed this out to him, but he remained non plussed when I suggested his son should go by Cus.

Then next day, we went to the botanical gardens, which was nice. We met up with some Tibetans, three of whom were monks. It's always nice to spend time with the monks. I tried to explain to them who Moses was and the story of Passover, but I might as well have been talking about the Easter Bunny and why it leaves colored eggs, when rabbits don't even lay eggs. In fact, I was telling them about that too. But on both subjects, even though they are very smart, I think I just confused them, because they are totally foreign to our mythology system and religion. Their education was to live in a monsatery since they were small boys, meditating all day and night. And to be honest, even though I consider myself someone who knows about buddhism, I couldn't really tell you much about what they study. I know the basic story of buddha, guatama buddha, and the bodhi tree and all that, but the Tibetan thing is pretty different than that. So mostly we talked about life in exile, though they were absolutely not bitter. And of course they were totally without irony. Here, in San Francisco, they work as landscaping. One of their clients is the guitarist for Metallica, James Hetfeild. Apparently, he is very nice. Of course, if he weren't, you would never know, because everything the monks say is positive about everything. But we had a nice time sitting in the park, looking at the plants with them, trying to explain matzo to them and looking at the various flowers.