silver and copper

Every moment is a radiant moment of mind.
The doorbell ringing woke me up. It was a deliveryman, very happy, giving me a large heavy cardboard care package from family. I took it, half awake, signed the slip, thank you very much, set it down, and crawled back into bed. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I stared into the space in front of my face. The morning sunlight flooding my bedroom kept telling me a secret "Don't go back to sleep. Something awaits you outside today. Don’t go back to sleep." So I got up, meditated. Opened the package, put on my new shoes and my new hat, brushed my teeth with my new electronic toothbrush (thanks fam!) and went for a bike ride. The air was cold and the sky was gray, but a nice gray, with soft light, everything appeared like a soft blanket, the distant mountains freckled with red and yellow patches, and colored fabric flapping everywhere. I love countries that don’t use dryers. All around clothes hang from houses and porches like thousands of colorful flags waving happily in the wind, and there is something about seeing human clothes hanging outside, like it is proof real people life in those houses. So, I biked to the mall to reserve my seat for Harry potter (they do assigned seating here. Very smart in my opinion.)
The details. I saw for the first time that stores are actually just very large display cases that people can actually walk around in. Japanese culture evolved to promote live advertising, another foreign idea (although, the tobacco industry does a version of this: hiring beautiful people to go smoke in bars and other public places.) But in Japan they have people outside the shops yelling “Welcome!” Over and over and over. “Irashaimase!” In the morning I often see a Japanese woman at the main intersection with a microphone calling out the politics. Every morning I hear a person reading out today’s news over an intercom system that runs throughout the city. Japan employs virtually everyone. A few workers at every connstruction site direct walkers and bikers to safety. Workers also stand and hold signs for restaurants along the popular roads. A convenient store could have 4 people just standing around cleaning. And, of course, teh people handing out fans and tissue packets.

But the differences that really catch me are when they take an American or western cultural artifact and reuse it in a way that is not convention in its culture of origin. For example, today at the mall I saw purses and hats and kids' pencil cases and folders with marijuana leaves, playboy bunnies (the cartoons and the human models), as well as hip bands like the sex pistols, nirvana, bob Marley, tool, boys 2 men, and radical symbols such as anarchy and stoned happy faces. All as hip modern American DESIGN. I saw a line of t-shirts and stylish clothes at a gap like store that all said, “Jesus always loves you.” And on the sleeves “Jesus loves.” I was thinking about how they can do something like that. And I thought about the motif of the dragon and the Buddha and words writing in Sanskrit and stuff that I ate up when I went to India and Japan for the first time. So, “Jesus always loves you” is a hip new slogan, from American culture (although, in the circles I run with, we don’t really use that slogan. I don’t think it really is very popular in America. It’s not hip. But Japanese people don’t know that. And if they found out what it meant, it wouldn’t matter. "Oh, cool. It’s an American religious saying. Cool." No idea. Its like when westerners whear a Shiva or a Krishna t-shit. All we know is that it is an important symbol from the exotic religion of another country. The Christian cross adorns half of the Japanese population’s necks, ears, and sometimes t-shirts. Again, I think it is like the Ohm or Celtic knot becoming popular in the states.
I hope none of this sounds like I am making fun of or bashing of Japanese culture. Im not. These are fascinating differences, in my mind. It makes me look at my own culture and its trends in a brand new light. Brand new light. A new pop song is pumped across the airwaves everywhere about once every two weeks. It expounds from convenience stores, public bath houses, school lunchtime, convenience stores, TV shows, video games, the same song pumped out to all those speakers…When the industry (including its consumers) decides that boys 2 men is going to be popular now, they make it happen. And nobody is there to stop it.
Of course, all at the mall, I see hundreds of human faces, each one encasing an entire world of dreams, fears, hopes, desires, regrets, and each one also encasing a sadness, a slowed, exhausted pace, a burden, or a fearful, phony bounce, and only sometimes, a genuine, happy laugh or smile, a release. But at the same time each and all reflecting the light of Spirit like a hundred jewels, buddhas and bodhisattvas walking around everywhere, each reading the endless novels of their lives. Each wishing to avoid suffering and find happiness. Each one just like me.

I am reading SES (sex, ecology, spirtuality) again (actually for the first time all the way through), and, you know, if Wilber’s model of the universe and evolution is correct (and I think it is) then WOOPEEE! God really is the Ground AND the Goal. And, even more exciting, this God is an all-embracing chaotic ATTRACTOR, acting throughout the world as a gentle persuasion toward love (even molecuels EMBRACE atoms). And, this god, our future, our omega, is pulling us like a magnet, like an oak tree pulling an acorn. And isn’t it so that an acorn’s DNA has oak written all over it? And all the seed can do is unfold into the tree that was its very foundation to begin with. Buddhism maintains that every single sentient being possesses Buddha Mind, and the goal of existence (Ultimate Liberation as Self-recognition) involves simply the realization of that all-pervading consciousness or condition. Zen says that every single blade of grass is a future Buddha. Watts reminds us that we all used to be rocks. Everyone is singing the same song! I also just learned that girls here use a special glue to keep their sox up. Unbelievable!

Kieran and I went to the rock river to read. I decided to wonder around and kept running into beautiful objects. Signs. Feathers glowing in golden light, an old baseball white like chalk, a porn card and cartoon, Crows and tracks and triangles and rainbow colored rocks, a dead coi, silver and copper and dark gray.

And how does all this relate to Omens and communication, beauty apprehension, art or expression and aesthetics. Please, come and enjoy these thoughts and discussions every week on David’s Blog. (In small chunks, of course). I know that many of you find these discussions boring and seemingly drug induced or college induced. And you would be right, to some extent. But more so these are religiously induced. And they all are secretly but not so secretly motivated by the impulse I think we all share to save the world and all beings from the torture and suffering induced by believing in there own nightmare or predicament. The nightmare of being alone with themselves. Or, to put it another way, I want to help. I want to benefit this world, my family. I want to use my precious human birth in a positive way, leaving this world a little more peaceful and happy than I found it. (Even if that means simply leaving my self a little more peaceful and happy than I found it. (And I think I found or met my self when was about three (or two, or one. i dont know. mom, you can help). Earliest memory of a self was lying down next to my red bunk-bed ladder, getting changed by my mom. (Strange insight into my own use of symbols and imagery that I just now thought of.
But before that, I can't really think of a beginning to my self. And so I guess I could conclude, or at least play with the possibility, that I have always been here, like a subtle mind stream that has continued from incarnation to incarnation, stinging lives together like beads on a necklace. My subtle soul is the string, the sutra. And reincarnation is true! Just for fun. And who have I been? Can I reach down inside myself and feel the same desires, dreams, hopes, and fears that my previous incarnations have had? Can I feel who I will be, or what the world will be like a hundred years after this body has dropped away? Can I imagine, just for fun, what it would mean to be stuck on this cycle of rebirth and confusion and suffering for as song as space endures? To go through the loosing of my friends and family, the horrible pain of leaving the ones I love, the brutal suffering of sicknes and death? Can I use this contemplation to aspire to be free from this ocean of lives, of forms, of the many things, and instead work to find my identity with the formless one behind the many? (while also knowinng that there is no path to the eternal present, my ultimate identity, adn thus can i profoulnnloy accept adn surrender to my current pradicament in an all embracing, compassionnate fashion? can i ballence the two, like that profound poem "God grant me teh serenity to accept the things i cannot change, teh courace to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Can I aspire to be a bodhisattva, free from the obsession with a seperate self, and open to the interpenetration of all beings? Can to be my own Ground and Goal, create my own future, while also recognizing i create my own present? Can i use this contemplation to, as the Dalai Lama said over and over again, trancend (or go beyond) the self-cherishing, life-cherrishing, samsa-cherrishing additude that keeps me locked into my own seperte self and its suffering, while also keeping me locked out of genuine altruistic intention and compassion? Can i use this to also develope compassion for my own life and self, the one stuck in the cycle of suffering and rebirth and confusion and mindlessness, AND THEN extend that compassion to all other beings caught in the cycle, develope as a deep mutual understanding, and a deep desire that they too be free from this cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death? " (remember, this stems from the contemplation of reincanation.) lets not get off topic!

My sister wanted me to ask you all to say barbershop, water bottle, drawer, and soccer, and take a moment to consider that these words sound absolutely ridiculous. One thing that has become glaringly obvious since I moved here is that our language, American English, sounds very funny. (In comparison to Australian and European English). GO ahead. say barbershop three times.

today was soft

maples and mantras

So. Today was sunny and sweet, so Jesse and I went on a hike looking for monkeys. We hiked up to “Minetopia” which is like an amusement park of sorts for the old Copper Mine town. I will return to that part of the journey later. Now, let me take you up to the sacred waterfall where we saw hundreds of people participating in the great “momiji gari” or “hunting for maples.” As it is in the spring with the cherry blossoms, Japanese people love their maple trees changing in autumn. They take long car trips across the land in search for beautiful Maple trees to take pictures of and to smile at. Do we have anything like this in the States? Maybe. We definitely go looking for the Grand Canyon, or the redwoods, or the big waterfalls, but would we take a trip to go look for maple trees or cherry blossoms?
So, great day, we saw some monkeys, and some blood red maples. Quilted mountains, the curtain, and on center stage, the monkeys. What is better than watching monkeys play in red and yellow trees?
We walked up to the waterfall (about an hour and a half) and walking back a nice young couple stopped and gave us a lift. They drove about and hour to see the maples by the waterfall and loved practicing English with us. We got off at Minetopia to visit “Healthy Land,” the onsen (public bathhouse) on the top floor. This bathhouse was huge and part of it was outside. It was like a big water park. Only, everyone was naked.
I think one reason I might be blogging for you all is to convince you to come and visit this place. Seriously. You can stay in my apartment for free. You wont regret it. I mean, I know that when people show you all their great pictures from their vacations it can be boring and might even produce some envy ("hey! Check out this awesome place I visited and you didn’t!), but I hope my pictures inspire a deeper appreciation for nature, color, and pattern, as well as a new desire to visit this holy land. Maybe that’s not so good. Maybe im spreading desire and envy. Or, even worse…boredom. Well, either will be worthwhile if you take a deep breath right now and take a moment to remember that you are alive and that you will die, probably sooner than you think.

I just finished reading “The curious incident of a dog in the night-time.” Great read. I also recommend that.

This morning I was meditating and Kieran stated playing some music. I was in the middle of reciting a mantra and following the mantra down to its source, which is the empty field of pure awareness (see note for further information about mantra meditation) and I immediately felt annoyed that he would be playing music while I was meditating and the correlated thought, which was “why is he playing music while im meditating?” arose out of the same field of awareness as the mantra did, only it was louder and harsher. But I gave it plenty of space, and I watched it arise out of the ocean of awareness that I am like a wave and it disappeared into the ocean of awareness that I am like a wave, and the mantra returned. And I watched it. And they way that the thought and feeling of annoyance flowed through me like a river, or flew through me like a bird or a cloud, well, it made me feel more spacious than I did when it was quite. So, moral of the weird little story: annoyances can be liberating.
Note. Using a mantra is part of Mahayana, Vajrayana (also known as the “Mantra-yana.” Or tantric Buddhism, but it is also used in one way or another by most every religious tradition in the world. "Mantra" literally means, "mind protector." And this practice is very, very powerful.

In most cases, the mantra is not meant to have a specific meaning (although mantras that have meaning are very useful and beneficial too). Most mantras are meant to be powerful simply because they are sounds. And sounds, when they are thought, represent the finest or subtlest lever of thinking possible. (just try it now. Think the thought “hoom” and see how your entire mind was flooded with a soft, meaningless, subtle echo or thought.)
Normally the mind moves from thought to thought and it has no real control over what thoughts will pop up next. During this meditation the mind begins with one specially chosen thought (the mantra) and then experiences that one thought “vertically”, as it were, in its earlier, formative stages. By following the thought inward or downward, the mind arrives at the source of thought, the level of pure consciousness, or pure subjectivity, or godhead, rigpa, the dharmakaya, unified field, whatever you like. (which then can lead you to the realization of Emptiness or Buddhamind, ultimate liberation.) This will shock most of you reading this if you haven’t meditated before because maybe you have never followed your thoughts down to their origin. If you do, you may discover, for the first time, a vast empty field of awareness that is full of light and love and what some people call Spirit itself. the sublime Rumi: "What is the source of thought? why stay in prison when the door is wide open? " or something like that.
So, meditation on a mantra (or the breath, for that matter) can work well if it is done properly. Some pointers are that when you become aware that you are not thinking the mantra anymore, just come back to the mantra gently and quietly. And, do not try to think the mantra clearly or rhythmically. Just let it be a faint idea rolling deep inside your mind.
The mantra may change in different ways. It may get faster or slower, louder or softer, clearer or fainter. Its pronunciation may change, lengthen or shorten or even may appear to be distorted or it may not appear to change at all. In every case, take it as it comes. It is important that this type of meditation is “effortless.” This is hard to grasp at first because you are sitting down focusing on a specifically chosen thought, repeating it over and over again. Sounds pretty unnatural and effortful. But imagine this:

Shifting of the mind from the mantra to the thought has been an effortless process, shifting from this thought to another thought that "I am off the mantra" has also been effortless. When two shiftings have been effortless, then the third could also be effortless, that is, the shift back to the mantra.


So, during meditation, do not resist thoughts, or noise, or feelings. do not resist the mantra changing or disappearing. do not resist anything. instead, give a hovering-like attention to whatever comes up. This will profoundly change your life.
I use the mantra “ah” the most, for it is a seed syllable used in my dream yoga practice. During the Avalokitesvara sadhana, or visualization practice, I use the mantra “om mani padme hum.”

Also, mantra meditation is not the best or only type of meditation. I have heard that the Buddha Shakyamuni first taught “ana-pana” and “vipassana” meditation, which focuses on the breath, awareness of feelings in the body, and insight into the empty nature of all phenomena. That is what he was practicing under the bodhi tree when he discovered his enlightenment. Also, there are meditations that don’t use any forms or objects at all, such as dzogchen or mahamudra. So, there are many kinds. Different strokes for different folks. Or, as they say in Japan, “juu nin to iro.” “Ten people, ten colors.”

like bubbles on the surface of a river

or a tapestry made of tiny jewels, or a spider’s web covered in dewdrops, or a blanket of lace, made of light, empty, and yet appearing as everything.

today was laced with a dreamy glow that never left me since morning. the crisp light, golden, the golden tongue of goddess, quietly licking the morning with a coat of shimmering spit, effortless, spaciousness, playful, light, easy, soft, effortless, spaciousness.
light is happening all around. i respond to it by blinking. all forms float in emptiness like bubbles on a river, each one catching the light and thunder off the softest clouds imaginable.

Giving blood

Today i gave blood in a traveling red cross bus. very different from giving blood in the states. far less questions.
i also painted today. here are the results.

who are you?

I would really like to know who is reading this blog. so if you could leave your name either as a comment or an email that would be great. thank you.

here is some Ken Wilber. for those of you who do not know, Ken Wilber is my favorite philosopher. He was trained in Zen but now practices Tibetan Buddhism. I love his explanations of some of the mystical experinces and spritual knowledge that accompanies meditation. (and i urge you all to take up a contemplative or medatative practice so you too can taste the mountians.)

"...The real world is not given to you twice – one out there, one in here. That "twiceness" is exactly the meaning of "duality." Rather, the real world is given to you once, immediately – it is one feeling, it has one taste, it is utterly full in that one taste, it is not severed into seer and seen, subject and object, fragment and fragment. It is a singular, of which the plural is unknown. You can taste the mountain; it is the same taste as your Self; it is not out there being reflected in here – that duality is not present in the immediateness of real experience. Real experience, before you slice it up, does not contain that duality – real experience, reality itself, is "non-dual." You are still you, and the mountain is still the mountain, but you and the mountain are two sides of one and the same experience, which is the one and only reality at that point.


If you relax into present experience in that fashion, the separate self-sense will uncoil; you will stop standing back from life; you will not have experience, you will suddenly become all experience; you will not be "in here" looking "out there" – in here and out there are one, so you are no longer trapped "in here."


And so suddenly, you are not in the bodymind. Suddenly, the bodymind has dropped. Suddenly, the wind doesn't blow on you, it blows through you, within you. You are not looking at the mountain, you are the mountain–the mountain is closer to you than your own skin. You are that, and there is no you – just this entire luminous display spontaneously arising moment to moment. The separate self is nowhere to be found.


The entire sensation of "weight" drops altogether, because you are not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you, and you are purest Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the Divine, of Primordial Purity. But the Divine is not someplace else, it is all of this shimmering. It is self-seen. It has One Taste. It is nowhere else."

The Goal and the Ground

The clouds today were ferocious, terrifying. I am looking at the colors, the pail mint green sky fading to blue behind wisps of creamy pink and light grays next to, is that purple, I look down and see an old lady smiling beneath purple and gray striped hair, behind her creamy wheat fields, all the same colors as the sky, god the sky is ferocious, the clouds like a terrible rainbow blanket to smother my separateness, my torpid tale, phantasmagoric, smoke, diaphanous smoke, and clear, clear sky womb air stare right through it to the color,

Light transcends whatever it touches. It illuminates all, and yet is not attached or defined or confined to any object it illumines,
I, too, can be a light, an awareness lighting up whatever it touches, but leaping off and fully detached, free and fulfilling as the light,
And light cannot see itself; it can only see its reflection off of things. In the same way, I cannot see my clear light mind, my subject. I can only see more and more objects, passing passing, glowing, sparkling though me like light on water, like clouds of experiences, like inky black crows riding the winds of my thought,


That was Tuesday.
Wednesday, today, another grade school….I had to take a train to this one. The train station was bright and crisp in the morning sun. The town i visited had at its entrance a huge Shinto gate, which traditionally marks the entrance into a holy place.
one of my teachers had blue hair.


After that I went to saijo (neighboring city) to visit my friend who works at a sex shop. I found all sorts of crazy sex stuff there. Sexuality in Japan. Crazy shit.
You know Japan is the worlds leading consumer of pornography. It is totally acceptable here. I often see men looking at porn on the train. Right in the open. At every convenient store you can see old and young men looking at cartoon and real pornography for free (tachiyomi, standing reading). However, all porn must blure out the privates. And this is ridiculous, for they will fuzz out a penis so you can still see it but the details are a little fuzzy. Or they will black out the inside of the vagina, but you can still see the entire outside. It is law, my friend says. (As ridiculous as the one in America where some states make their strippers where clear stickers over their nipples. it’s all principles) But besides that, porno here is totally care free and outrageous. I saw videos featuring worms, octopuses, sea cucumbers, eels, snakes. Anyway, my friend is not into any of it. He just works there because the pay is good and it is close to his house. He insists that Japanese sexuality has remained a mystery to him his whole life.
Anyone visiting Japan will notice all the “snack bars,” and “love hotels.” I have heared that homosexuality in Japan is considered a hobby (and that many homosexual men are actually hyper-masculine, as apposed to the western stereotype of the “feminine homosexual".) Also, having mistresses and lovers while married is acceptable to some degree here, or so I have heard. a popular job for highschool girls is being dinner dates to old men. (the age of consent in japan is 14.)
I am reading a book right now that suggests possible reasons for this perverted sexuality. It reminds us that the Japanese creation myth involved two gods (actually, in the beginning there were no gods at all, but instead something resembling an egg. Out of this egg came seven generations of gods, including a brother and a sister called Izanagi and Izanami. These two gods had sex and out of Izanami came the Japanese islands as well as a large number of deities, and the god of fire actually burned her genitals, causing her horrible pain, and after she gave birth to the gods of clay, metal, and water from her vomit, feaces, and urine, she died and disappeared into another dimension. When her brother/husband came down to see her, the story goes that she begged him not to look at her burned body but he did anyway and called her ugly and she sent her sisters to kill him but he escaped and bathed in the a sacred river and this caused more gods to come out of his nostrils and the story gets better and better, filled with sex and scandals. (Interestingly, the Japanese Sun God is a female as well as the fire god and water god. The earth god is male. SO one point is that the Gods feel no guilt about sex. IT plays a central role in the gods’ life as it does for most humans. There is no question of sin in Shinto. In fact, the earth god had many lovers and the only time he ran into trouble was when he refused to go to bed with one of his lover's ugly sister. For this breech of good manners, all the Japanese emperors, his descendents, were doomed to be mortal. Anyway, no gods are punished for what the do (unlike adam and eve who were punished). It only got hellish when Izanagi saw his sister's polluted body and was repulsed. So maybe pollution and filth or death could be thought of as the "original sin." But there is no satan in Japan, so there is really no idea of sin. Maybe this is why Japanese people can get away with almost anything, with only the fear of being socially shamed or bringing disgrace to their ancestors.
so, back to my adventure, in saijo I visited a shrine and a temple. Both were clarifying. I walked beneath a storm that never fell. All it did was roll over me, terrifying in its beauty and power. (as you can tell by the pics, im sure.)




That was Wednesday. This morning I enjoyed reading the paper in the cold teacher’s room.
Bush and Koizumi kick it in Kyoto, and official saying “It’s very significant that President Bush visited Japan on the first leg of his Asia trip and that images of the two (him and Koizumi) looking at autumn foliage together were aired around the world.” The Japanese people love their autumn foliage. And for good reason! And that’s not an insult. It’s a profound compliment, if you ask me.
The First Lady visited an old house and learned how to write the kanji character for “eternity.” Interestingly, this character is the character for “water” with an extra tiny line on top. And, if that line is moved a little to the left, the character turns into “ice.” Interesting, ne?
Bush’s speech sounded patronizing and prideful as ever. He seemed to be praising Japan's success in not having a savage country but instead a country that values freedom.
As if he is the expert. He is a great object of patience and compassion. I hope my family still has his framed picture of him in a cowboy hat I gave them hanging in the living room. Lets take a moment and remember that God is the ground and the goal of existence, the Alpha and the omega. We came from god, as god, to become god. And therefore, why not rejoice in everything! It is all god!
Meanwhile, I was moved deeply when I saw the pictures of the Iraqi woman who turned herself in after the explosives strapped to her body refused to go off. For those of you who don’t know, she and her husband planned to bomb a hotel lobby in Jordan during a wedding in order to kill as many Innocent women and children as possible. Her husbands went off successfully. Hers did not. She left in shock, turned herself in. I would love to talk to this woman. Her pictures make her out to be a lovely woman. Honestly. I wonder what she was willing of dying and killing children for. It must have been righteous. DO I have respect for that kind of courage and commitment? I’m not sure.
A wonderful, WONDERFUL article about Poultry factory farming in relation to the flue problem. Did you know that the US National Chicken Council recommends a stocking density of 560 centimeters per bird, which is less than a sheet of typing paper? The cages for Egg hens are staked, making it impossible for any birds to move at all! The article points out that some of the grain that we feed the chickens (which humans could eat directly), is used to build bones and feathers and other body parts we cannot eat. So we get less food back then we put into the birds, and less protein, too, and disposing the concentrated chicken manure causes serious pollution to our rivers and ground water. Are we dumb or what?
Not to mention the animals are kept in cages roughly the size of their own bodies, unable to do anything natural, such as forming flocks, running around, or stretching out their wings. Are we sick to the bone or what? And, any disease that enters these high-density environments mutate into something horribly virulent, which then kill humans, causing more money and resources for research and prevention (let alone crying children and dead mothers). Factory farming spread because it seemed to be cheaper than the traditional, more human methods. But it was only cheaper because it passed the costs onto others. Such as the poor people that live downstream or downwind form one of the factories that can no longer enjoy clean air or clean water while living out their precious human incarnations on this small planet.
Gandhi was right.
Oh, and another article that was LOVELY; Sen. McCain urging us that “America must behave better than its foes, no matter how evil and despicable they are.” He is, of course, reacting to our habit of torturing prisoners in places such as Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. Thankfully McCain (who, if you remember, was jailed and tortured for over 5 years in North Vietnam, gained the Senate approval, 90-9 vote, for a ban on the torture of prisoners in US custody. Yet, President Bush, who has never vetoed a single bill, threatens to veto this measure. How embarrassing and destructive to Americas image as a beacon of liberty and moral development. Creepy even. We have a president that says Americans don’t torture, yet is unwilling to set a policy that would forbid it.
In the words of McCain, who is echoing all the greatest saints and minds in human history, “the enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don’t deserve our sympathy. But this isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies, and we can never, never allow our enemies to take those values away.”
We are a sick and twisted culture for supporting the torture of animals, though. I’m just gonna say it again because my heart asked me too. Why do we accept this kind of behavior!? Gandhi was right. The moral developement of a nation can be measured in how well they treat their animals.
Anyway!
After reading the newspaper, I poured myself some coffee and stepped out onto the school balcony, looked out at the distant blue mountains, lightly frosted with light gray tops, black crows crisscrossing above, tiny birds chirping in a tree close by. Ah, cold air and coffee, the sunshine I imagined entering my skull like a column of light, clearing out all my impurities, energizing my body and clarifying my mind. This visualization always works. I breathe in the sun, drink the light, hum, and then exhale.