o I asked M. what he thought about the hotness issue. His reply was somewhat long and involved a donkey, a gourd, and a couple other characters, but I think I got the gist of it. Essentially he works it out by striving to be cool not for the benefit of his own ego, but because he has a higher ideal of cool that cannot really exist, or rather, its existence is beside the point. I know, it's confusing, but suffice it to say it was enough of an answer to give me more to think about. With any such question, I always have intuitive knowledge of the answer, but it takes some nudging and exploring before the answer bubbles up to my consciousness enough for me to articulate it.

Anyway, yesterday I attended a memorial service in Golden Gate Park for someone I didn't know. I met him once but never really got a sense of him, but he was in my peripheral community and M. knew him, so we went. It's interesting to get to know someone by what people say about them when they're dead, and by who shows up. Afterwards M. and I talked about what we would want at our own funeral services. I had thought about it before because we studied death in Suluk earlier this year and did several exercises in preparation for death.