Interim

I can only apologise for the lack of interesting words in the past few days; it feels like we are in a bit of a lull before the three-week summer retreat begins, made more concrete by Christina deciding we should have a mini-interim in the days after the July 4th holiday as a way of looking after ourselves. This does mean some more spacious and less focused time for me, and that does not bode well for the possibilities of entertaining writing.
I can report that we performed our monthly services of gratitude to Suzuki Roshi on Tuesday evening and yesterday morning, with a small knot of attendees; in both cases, the chanting of the priests in the kaisando was driving the chanting on the stairs, so I did not need to follow what was going on outside.
Yesterday was grand weather for a holiday, and I made the most of an extra day off by going on a bike ride (I know this is basically stating the obvious). I did not get to witness much of the fireworks at the end of the day, as I went to pick up a friend from the airport about the time they were starting, but I was catching glimpses of various colourful bursts around the city skyline on the way. As I reached the high point south of the city on 280, where you can look across and see the airport and the bay, I thought I saw another big array, but when I looked again, it was a large orange moon right over the illuminated buildings. Very auspicious. We did, unfortunately get tangled in the traffic jams of people leaving the waterside afterwards, which, since it was well past my usual bedtime, did strain my patience practice considerably.
Perhaps a few more recent photographs might mitigate the paucity of words.

The sun was up by the time I got to the roof yesterday

A corner of the courtyard, around the same time

The same corner from a different angle a few days ago