August 10, 2006
Came home for lunch. Ants all over my computer desk in the studio. Left a semi-empty cup of coffee next to the keyboard and it’s swarming with the little eco-raiders. Can’t find their trail.

More big clouds. Just heard thunder (2:10 p.m.). Very muggy, high about 101.

Pithy, Pith, Pith On The Top Secret Project
Worked on more pith helmet reference today. Not sure where the name comes from. Looked it up in Webster’s and it just says, “a spongy stem in the stems of most vascular plants,” and “to kill (cattle) by piercing or severing the spinal chord.” How you get there from a British summer campaign helmet, I’m not sure.

Speaking of lids, the top secret writer lost his True West cap in Sierra Vista last month. We went over to the WOLA conference, ate in the restaurant and he left his favorite cap, the one he wears every day to work, by the chair in the dining room. He went back the next day, but the waitress said she left it outside the restaurant on a ledge, thinking the rightful owner would come and get it. The Top Secret Writer is convinced one of the thieves in WOLA purloined it for themselves. He was so distraught on the way back to Bisbee I couldn’t get him to even talk about the project. ‘I can’t think without my cap,” he told me looking out at the black sky over the Mule Mountains.

When I got back to Cave Creek, I asked Carole Glenn if she could order a new one, but we have a different version cap now, with the new logo and we don’t sell that cap anymore.

A couple days later, Carole found one of the old style caps (she made me promise not to divulge where it came from, but just let me say, she had to wash it) and we sent it to TTSW—The Top Secret Writer—and he is happy (or as happy as the TTSW ever gets).

“Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, "You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?" But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: "Are you hurt? Can I help you up?" Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion. Then we are in a position to heal ourselves and others.”
—B. Alan Wallace, "Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up"