Are trips just breathing metaphors that give us a closeup view of the longer journey of our lives? Every new exploration is unique as a lifetime, but the clinging to people and places not practical—the letting go is as immediate as the desire to hold on sets in.

On Friday, I finished my panchakarma and Tibetan yoga training. It was a big sigh of relief after three weeks of having to show up at certain places at certain times (in both the morning and afternoon!). I’m free again. It feels like entering the summer vacation of grade school days – I felt like Jerry the Hamster, let out of a self-imposed cage.

So I took the weekend to do me—didn’t worry about or do any work—free to explore.

That freedom led me to Tibetan Stories, another hip Tibetan artists hang where I could drink tea and write letters and postcards.

How to explain how much joy here? For three years of my recent life, the act of simply sitting in a chair and writing a half dozen letters would have left my neck and shoulder pained for the rest of the day, perhaps permeating into the rest of the week.

The lingering gift of the artifact of this pain is such mundane things are infused with glittering delight at my ability to slowly and softly carry on such treasured tasks without further consequence.

Today, I drank tea by morning and listened to birds who had an awful lot to say.

Then I plugged into a passion project and put all my recently digitized poems from 2017 into one manuscript document. This moved my upcoming poetry book one step closer to it’s reality. I wrote the dedication page today and felt so ingrained with gratitude at how many people (and one dog) I felt needing mention.

Then I hiked around the hills and eventually wandered into a bookstore where I spent the afternoon drinking chai and talking literature with a group of traveling bookworms as ecstatic about the topic as I.

In a few days, I’ll be leaving Dharmsala—Hindi for refugees camp. I’ll head further north to Ladakh, deeper into Tibetan-India.

From there, my dad wants me to go to a place in Kashmir with a terrorist travel advisory. He wants me to go because he travelled there 45 years ago. I love his logic 🙂 So maybe I’ll go…

My flight to Nepal is out of Kerala in South. So in a few weeks, I will brave the monsoons and heat of the Indian summer to make it there where there are a few ashrams I don’t want to miss in striking distance.

Meanwhile, every day feels complete in itself, yet still a step towards a new future. Construction of “Karuna” continues in Guatemala in my absence. I’ve never had a house before – and as our first building takes form, I’m beginning to get intuitional whiffs of what sort of community might emerge from our collective efforts to create a beautiful space to live and be.

I stay undistracted on this journey by girl’s pretty smiles. “You basically live like a monk,” prodded Paul recently on messenger.

But as I feel myself going deeper in sincerity within myself, it feels like someone far away might be doing that too. One day we may meet. I just hope it’s not too soon!—I so enjoy this undistracted time and clear direction. I’m doing what I love, putting down some roots, and letting my dreams direct me. I never feel alone. I feel lucky—precious people pervade my life in so many glistening ways. I burst within to try to explain these fleeting feelings, but my poetry and fiction will always be the places where I can get closer to expressing these things always clawing to get out.

…And finally…I’m proud and smiling to be keeping my commitment to blog once a week. I’m not sure if anyone really reads it—but like pain free post cards and letters, it feels nice to have back this little piece of the past.

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