It's been some time since I've received a letter to pass on. This one's been percolating for a while, so there may be more, but I wanted to pass this one on, it's been sitting on my desk for some time.

Mom,

Before I was born, I fell. Through the bright, self-lit limbs of monstrous tall trees, I fell with the sound of the wind in my ears: WHOOSH. That sound and the exquisite, luminous white of leafless trees, and only darkness and silence otherwise. I stared straight down, because I couldn't focus on any single branch, instead they tore my view with jagged white like lightning, one after one, whoosh whoosh whoosh. They were all molten platinum veins glowing in the darkness, the limbs, and they were many and the same.

Read more…

The first few days, as I've said, we focused on breathing and I nearly lost my mind. Not actually, but a lot of effort went into keeping myself seated, not running off to go to the bathroom or looking for some other escape.

Read more…

The type of meditation I grew up hearing about was breathing meditation: quieting the mind and gaining focus through following a simple bodily process that is always present in a living human being. I find this method hard to use on its own, no matter how long I sit. It is monotonous, the breathing can be very subtle, and I've always found it easy to switch off my brain but keep the pretense that I am still following my breath. By the end of the retreat I had learned to meditate on my breath better, but in the beginning I found it difficult.

Read more…

It's been a while since I've come back to Lawrence; not a whole lot going on other than job-hunting and carousing, so I haven't updated the blog.

It's sometimes hard to believe I ever went on a 3000-mile bike trip, but I have a memory now and again that helps bring it back. And I feel different, about myself, about my life, and I know that came from the many experiences I had on my trip. One thing has been bugging me, and maybe others who followed this blog: I never gave an account of my experience at the retreat near the end of my trip.

Read more…

Well, I'm back, maybe to stay? I don't particularly like to blog much while I'm not doing something exciting like, uh, living in another country or riding my bicycle every day across this country. But I've got some stuff I'd like to finish up, and I occasionally have some new stuff I do want to throw out there. So for the time being I'm removing updates from my Facebook page so that people interested in my travels but not much else won't get inundated.

Read more…