9:56 p.m. The photo, opposite, is a picture of what I didn't do today. It's what I believe I "should" have done, and so it's haunting me. One part of me wanted to go out all day and wander among the Saturday revelers enjoying this late taste of the summer we never really had this year in this part of the world.

Another part of me wanted to get work done on my old pages now that I know I've been using the wrong photo format and all. I "should" have known better. I "should" have fixed them all by now. I "should" work faster, better, longer, smarter. I "should" read more, get out more, sleep more, eat less.

When I first came out to California in 1990 I spent a great deal of time in New Age bookstores because I always look at the world through books and the ambiance in the typical bookstore seemed to be a mighty tincture of the entire place: chimes, incense, brass sounding bowls for your spirit, wooden clacky things, little brown alchemy bottles of sandalwood and jasmine, crystals and candles and oils, twinkly tinkly music, hammered silver earrings and amulets, shiny stones, and of course, books on new and exotic ways of thinking.

I ended up buying armloads of books about Zen because it was easy to pronounce and easy to locate on the shelves, down there at the far end near the dusty rear of the store, away from the backpacks and the revolving trees of tippy sharp-edged CD cassettes that always catch you by the crocheted sleeve if you're not wary.

I'm much the better Catholic for all my Zen study, I now believe. For all the heavy winter coats of guilt that I've worn, Zen gave me the option of running barefoot and naked down the street if I became so inclined. Just as "shalt" is a big word in Catholic teaching texts, "should" is an important word in Zen. As in: there is no such thing as "should"; you either do it or you don't do it; "should" lives in that nasty future perfect that we will never see, touch, or experience, trapped as we inevitably are in the here and the now.

You waste your life if you say the word "should" a lot. Try stopping yourself the next time and instead think about what you actually are doing at that exact moment in time. That's the whole ball game, you know. What you are doing is who you are, what you are, why you are. It's a perfect universe, after all, and you are standing in exactly the right place, doing the right thing, for now.

You can make plans, of course, and you can write things down and try to tick them off. If it's truly pressing, you will do it, believe me. I have a little cut on my hand that's almost healed from Monday when the pipes in the ceiling burst right on top of my paper supply closet and let me tell you: I flew on little cat feet all over the room, lifted really really heavy boxes of files out of the way, pushed, stuffed and wadded and wrung towels, hauled and cut my hand in the process, without thinking or feeling anything. The word "should" did not exist, but I was motivated.

I've also noticed that if you eliminated the word "should" from any discussion between you and your parents and/or your children, you'd be amazed at how little there is left in a sentence. And when you think about it, all you're ever really saying to another person is "Here are my ideas and my opinions and you must become my mental clone because I have thought this through for me and for you. Have a nice day."

And don't even mention the new-construction blather that people are trying to sneak into their conversations in place of "should" these days: You "need to" ... That's just pretend-polite icky.

Well, this piece has gone on too long and I've gotten far afield. I really have to go to bed early tonight so that I can wake up bright and early tomorrow and get out into the warm fresh air. I've got to take some more photos. I intend to finish my business site. I want to get some sun on my face and sea air in my lungs. I'm going to try to fix all my old pages before too much longer. I hope I haven't bored you.

See? Not a single "should".