On the first day of November as I was getting checked in at the cafeteria at breakfast, I heard that Esther’s, the check-in lady in Ellis, brother-in-law died recently and I was asked to sign a card for her. I did and during my Screenwriting class I did an in-class exercise. After class I found the name of a class that I thought looked interesting called Alaskan History and Myth. I thought this stuff seemed interesting because of a Buddhist scholar Tom Lowenstein who I read since I was twenty who also had an academic interest in the Alaskan Inuit myth and ritual. I know myths of various peoples of can provide a good source for a film.
I saw Esther at lunch and told her I was sorry for her loss and after lunch I went down to the library and checked out a Lonely Planet book on New Zealand which I thought looked like a good place to travel because of the Lord of the Rings being filmed there and after Cassie hearing Cassie tell me about her study-abroad semester there. The next day I went into town with Hillary, Philip, Kayla, and Sheldon and Philip showed us a wonderful looking Italian restaurant his uncle owned. That night Mom called me saying she had my ballot sent to her and asked me to tell her what to put for me. I did and she said she would send it tomorrow. I watched King of the Hill on the treadmill that night and I saw the Spanish spoken in there and realized the maker of the show must know it as he’s from Ecuador. It’s true what they say: you should write what you know.
The next Monday morning I had a dream that Cassie’s father died and I went to his funeral, just as I had done with Jack for his mom and Elizabeth with her father. For a while I resisted recycling the card Jack’s father sent Mom and I thanking us for supporting them, which simply stood on my desk, as it had some much meaning. But then I remembered what the Buddha taught about letting things go so reluctantly I recycled it. I know the card was only a symbol of the appreciation Jack and his father had for my mom and I, not the feeling itself. The next day an idea suddenly came to me that the dream I had about Cassie’s father might have been saying that I comfort her, especially now with her school and work load being stressful. That same feeling that I had when I sat with her and Mckinsey was there again.
I saw Cassie in the cafeteria that day and learned she took a day off work to get caught up on her homework. The next day I made an appointment with Krisana West who I met with last year about my courses for next semester on Friday at 10 and I saw Cassie in the cafeteria the next day as I went there to fill up my coffee and we said hello. I realized she might have another class to take before she does her practicum as I remembered last semester she had to talk to the head of the Social Work department to get into a class she didn’t have the prerequisite for. But if she did I knew she could use that semester to take courses towards a Master’s or graduate degree in Social Work and finish earning it at the University of Kansas City Missouri or Columbia University. I also decided that whatever it was I wanted with Cassie could wait, if it came at all, until she was settled into the social work world. I really just wanted her to be happy.
The next day when I saw her at Einstein’s I noticed her hair was losing some of the black dye she had put into it a few months ago but I didn’t say anything. I practiced for my speech and I bought a blank CD from the vending machine to put my powerpoint for my speech on. I remembered how in my last speech I lost points because I didn’t have a drive for my powerpoint. I saved my powerpoint onto it and I gave my speech the next day. After that I went to my appointment with Krisana and I signed up for a University Library and Resource Skills class and a Geology class and lab. After that I went down to the Union where I bought some poster board to use to make a bottle cap sign with all the bottle caps I had collected since I started collecting them a few months ago and I saw Cassie from a distance in the bank. I went down there to say hello and told her I noticed something was different with her hair and that I liked it as I always do. She said, “Thank you, I appreciate that.” I also noticed her hair was wavy and not in a ponytail the way it was when I first met her and always liked.
That night, Tyler went down to the Rec Center with me along with his trainer Cody. He had been trying to lose weight for quite some time and I told him it was all a matter of continuing to exercise. By the end of our time there he lost one and a half pounds. Tyler and I got back to our dorm and we watched Family Guy Blue Harvest which he had brought with him to school. The next day after reading about the mud-brick mosques, fortified villages, painted facades, and palaces and forts in West Africa from my Lonely Planet book, I made plans in my travel journal to go visit them. The next day Tyler joined me while I meditated and I found out he meditates by watching his thoughts just like my dad does. I also worked on two friendship bracelets.
The next day I went to the bank and found out I had no money in my account at school because two dollars had been withdrawn for my statement fee but the woman at the bank told me I could sign up to get it on-line free of charge so I did that. I also started using my bottle caps to make a sign that says “Om mani padme hum” on the poster board I got with the sticky stuff I use on my dorm walls. The next day when I saw Cassie down at Einstein’s I told her if she had another semester to go she could use it to get credits towards a master’s degree in social work and she said she didn’t know what she was going to do and she was just trying to get through her classes. I decided to make my bottle cap sign say the variation of “Om mani padme hum”: “Om mani peme hum,” because that’s the only version that would fit on my poster board and I rearranged my mani stones in a way I thought looked better. The next day I practiced my flute for half an hour and called Hen House and asked for Phil and they said he’d be in the next day. I also read about the ancient Nigerian city of Calabar in my Lonely Planet book and I made plans to go visit it.
The next day I worked on my self-evaluation paper for my last speech in my Public Speaking class and I practiced my flute for half an hour. I had some ribs with spices for Native America Heritage month, the first time I had tried ribs, even though I had eaten plenty of barbeque over my life and I called Phil and told him I would be available to work from the 17th to the 24th and he said he would try to put me on the schedule. That night Tyler showed me how to make a root beer float in the cafeteria by getting some root beer and getting vanilla ice cream from the soft-served machine. Then the next day Granddad came and took me home to my mom’s for Thanksgiving break.
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