Time for another book review again :D Haha... Been fortunate to be able to find another good book soon after I finished one. This book is "Bad Dog! a memoir of Love, Beauty and Redemption in dark places" Its written by Lin Jenson, the founding teacher of the Chico Zen Shangha, in chico, California.

When he was a boy, his father owns a farm. They rear turkeys and other animals. What I love about this book is how it gives insight into consciousness of farmers doing all the slaughtering of the poultry for our consumption. It records in great details about the feelings and the internal struggle that he felt during his first killing. The writer uses a wide range of words to portray the picture very vividly. It feels as if u are following him through the killings and also feeling the emotional struggles that he felt.

Of course, there are also other stories. I'll be sharing one from the book. Its entitled

Paths.

The paths I have in mind are nothing like sidewalks. Nor are they like the curved walkways one find in public gardens. They're not even like the Forest Service trails that twist their ways into the high mountains. The paths I mean are not designed. They just happen. In towns, such paths originate at othe point where the walker abandons the sidewalk and strikes out on her own. You find them as shortcuts etched into lawns and tracked through the weeks of empty lots. No one intends to make these paths, it just that one day someone cuts across. Then other follows. Paths like there are common in the country where that lead you from the house to trashcan or compost bin or woodpile. They are worn into he sod between the crack door and the garden plot. They connect the laundry room to the clothesline. They thread their way down through the fields to the creek. They often end at the family burial plot.

These paths are so interwoven with other living pursuits that they are an unwitting disclosure of a species' behavior. That's what makes them worth noticing. A well-worn path shows uis where we've been going and how we've been getting there. They reflect character and value. It's heartening that in this age when all our travel is directed along predetermined routes of concrete and asphalt a true path is nonetheless certain to appear where the possibility for one exists. There;s a certain temperament however that resists paths,. that resists anything random anything governed bu chance or mere opportunity. To such a temperament, a path lacks sufficient order. My son, Dru, was in the seventh grade when I received a letter from the school counselors, Mr. Stipplewaite informing me that Dru had been guilty of some unspecific infraction of the school rules. I was summoned to appear at a parent -teacher conference regarding th a matter. Its all sounded so ominous. I wondered what grave transgression on my son's part had necessitated such formal proceedings.

It turned out that Dru's crime consists of having cut across the lawn. Not only that, but he was also uncooperative, having cut across more than once, thus showings a willful disregard for school policy. How many times had he been caught cutting across? I inquired Twice. He'd been caught twice but the supposition was that he'd probably done it lots of time. I asked to see the scene of the crime. Mr. strilpplewaite was visibly annoyed by the request bit drawing on his considerable skills in mediation he humored me bu leading me to the spot. The evidence was irrefutable. I was shown a quadrangle of path worn through to the dirt. It commenced at the sidewalk where I stood with Mr. Stipplewaite and broke its was through a low cover of cypress bushes and entrenched onto the lawn and back again through some cypress bushes on the far side where it reconnected with the sidewalk. It was in every way consistent with the true nature of paths. But it was certainly not ht w work of a single culprit or even of a few. Dru couldn't have worn a path that deep all bu himself if he'd spent every spare minute of his school day doing nothing but waling back and forth across the quadrangle. this particulatr path was a popular route.

Measures were being taken, however, to stem the flow of traffic, which in this case was like trying to stem the flow of human nature. The path had been barricaded with yellow tape strung on stakes, and the bare earth had been reseeded. New shoots of grass were already springing up, but right alongside the abandoned path a fresh track was already being laid down. I could see why. At the point where the two of us stood, the sidewalk took a ninety-degree turn to the right along the face of the building. If you were going to Rooms Four through Eight, the sidewalk served the purpose just fine. But if you were going to Rooms Nine through Twelve, the sidewalk maade no sense at all. it so happened that Mr Stipplewaite and I were conducting our parent teacher conference in Room Ten, and when we got ready to go back it took all the adult restraint that I could muster to keep from cutting across the lawn myself. Mr. Stipplewaite seemed to have no such difficulty. I could see that he trusted sidewalks more than I do., Concrete is more or less permanent and it was clear to me that permanence was a article of faith with Mr. Stipplewaite. He liked things to stay put, and he feared that if you allow one thing to go astray all would go astray. It's dangerous to tolerate a disregard of rules. But the children keep cutting across the lawn. All efforts to prevent this behavior, all the taping-off and reseeding, all the threats and punishments have ultimately failed to produce a correction. Mr. Stipplewaite attributes this to laziness, or to a stubborn resistance. to authority, a willful refusal to cooperate, whereas I see it as an innate on the children's part. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Something deeper than mere surface logic responds to that simple thought. Children cut across lawns for the same reason anyone of us do. because they can't intelligently do otherwise. If in doing so they defy school authority, its because they answer to an authority greater than that of the school . It isn't something they think about. it's simply something they do.As I assured Mr. Stipplewaite that I would, I asked Dru to try using the sidewalk. U think he made an effort but, if he's anyone of mine. He's probably cutting across the lawn again.

Each of our lives is a path. To know this requires intuition and trust. If we are true to the steps we take, the travel makes sense and the journey confirms itself.

Hmm... hope you also gain some insight on your life path. Its something that happens naturally, you don't have to purposely plan what you want to achieve in life. Just go with the flow and may be lesser problems :D

K lar... This is one book that I will strongly recommend reading. If you got time go read it :D