Taking a break from the hot springs, we decided to head over to our favorite restaurant in town to grab some lunch — Ukiah Gardens, here we come!!!

Eric and I have been coming to the hot springs in Ukiah for years. We have a routine, a favorite cabin we always stay in, a favorite coffee place, a few shops downtown that we like to stop into and — above all else — Ukiah Gardens. Everything there is done with love, the food perfect, the staff friendly. My mouth was watering as we pulled into the parking lot and images of their crispy golden mozzarella sticks filled my brain. And then we we saw the sign … “Ukiah Gardens is closed. Thank you for your decades of patronage and support…we are retiring.”

My heart sank. I loved that place so much. Out of my control, outside of my knowledge, based on its own circumstances (owners retired), a restaurant I associated with me — my memories, my vacations, my happy spot — was spontaneously closed.  It was gone. No warning. No final farewell, just gone.

Just like that I was just a little less enamored with Ukiah. A little less thrilled with the idea of coming back to what was supposed to be my favorite vacation town. Is Ukiah now really the same city? I don’t exactly see it the same way, something I desire about it, fantasize about it is gone. But still, its called an Ukiah, everyone, mostly, acts like its the same. But what if more and more businesses closed, people left, the weather changed, fire came raging? When exactly would I stop wanting to come here? When exactly would it stop being what I call Ukiah at all?

Alana’s Present Day Note: The truth is Rupa is constantly changing.  Each and every form, each environment filled with forms, continually shifting, aggregating, disaggregating. Usually, I don’t notice. I don’t pay attention and I gloss over the changes in my mind, focusing instead on the similarities. But what if I payed closer attention to each shift in an environment, in an object? What if I realized that every new state, no matter how small or subtle meant the former state was poof, popped, gone. Each charge cycle on my phone, changing the balance of the elements of the battery, bringing it closer to failure.  Each thread loosened from my sweater creating a subtle rearrangement of the form that changes the fit and thickness. Each meal digested, changing the balance of nutrients, and toxins, in my body both taxing and feeding systems, organs and cells. When exactly does the battery stop being a battery, or the sweater a sweater, or the body a body? What lost feature stops Ukiah from being Ukiah?

If I really understood that with each and every change, the former state of a 4 element object was gone, never to return, would I really believe I could count on those objects to be there for me, to behave just as they did before? With a new balance, a new aggregation, are the form and features and functions I have come to expect from past elemental balances really guaranteed? And if continual shifting makes an item unpredictable do I believe I can control it? Do I believe I can use it to control the world? How could I have control when I don’t even know for sure what something is going to do,  or better yet, the shape/function/features of the entire environment or body I find myself in? Just one shattered windshield forcing a glass shard to my jugular, just one errant cell that starts growing and spreading unchecked, just a few breaths of wildfire smoke to deprive my lungs of oxygen, so many shifts that can render this body out of my control, utterly useless in efforts to control other objects, or to represent (manifest) me. Poof. Popped. Gone.

And if I really understood that each aggregation of an object is continually shifting like sand, could I really cling to it? What exactly can I hold onto in something that is always changing? It is only my illusion of sameness from one moment to the next that allows me to cling.

A restaurant I loved, that had been around for decades, that I counted-on and that I saw as a fixed feature of a place, a special spot, that was MINE — from my perspective — disappeared over night. Poof. Pop. So gone it was impossible not to notice. But what if I noticed all the poofs and pops of every object, at every moment, their flux, would I really even bother to make it mine in my heart when it was going to chameleon out on me almost instantly? The perception of duration in form, the duration of perceived form — this is the willful blind spot that I continually nourish because it allows me to claim rupa as mine.