After a nice class at Yoga People, I sauntered down to the promenade in Brooklyn Heights for a peace vigil.

I am of so many minds about it.

Cynical/bemused Aquaplane thinks, "Lots of dowdy white people singing folk songs--that'll stop the war for sure!"

God-bless-America-Aquaplane thinks, "This is beautiful. The people are raising their voices as one!"

Pragmatic Zen Aquaplane says, "The war will either happen, or not happen. It's time to go home and do my laundry."

Speaking of Zen, my reading material for the weekend is Healing Zen, written by the director of the New River Zen Community, who is a nurse.

It took me a few chapters to see where she was heading with the topic of "healing," because the cover blurb makes it sound as if the books teaches you techniques to "heal yourself, or others..."

But this isn't one of those books. She's refering to the discipline, inner strength and compassion one needs when one is either recovering from an illness or just healing from life (or what yogis would call your samskaras, or conditoning).

When you get right down to it, books about Zen don't differ a whole heck of a lot from each other, but I suppose they need to keep writing them to appeal to different segments of humanity. This one might appeal to an older person, or someone in the hospital, but the basic message is...zen.

Friday was our dog-walker's last day. She had to resign because her car conked out and she lives too far away for it to be worth the subway trip. I wanted to mark the end of an era, so I got her a wee giftie, and got all choked up as I put it in her pay envelope. And then when she left a little "thank you" note, saying sweet things about Smoov C., I got a little emotional again. I have been in a constant state of poignant goofiness all weekend. I guess funerals do that to you.

Anyway, we found a new dogwalker today, who lives right in the 'hood.