I’ve Got a Crush On a Priest

This is my third and final night at Tas­sa­jara. I sup­pose things have smoothed out a lit­tle bit. I feel like an out­sider, but not as much as I did when I arrived. Now I feel like a… per­haps a vis­i­tor. It’s very plain to me that I’m see­ing some­thing that is just a sliv­er of the expe­ri­ence and the rich­ness of this place, and I’m seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing com­ing back soon.

This morn­ing instead of the gar­den crew I worked with the shop crew. It was all fill­ing in ditch­es and cov­er­ing pipes with grav­el. It was phys­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing, and it was exhil­a­rat­ing. David was our shop man­ag­er and gave us our work assign­ments, He and I got to talk­ing about why we both enjoy the phys­i­cal labor rather than some of the oth­er tasks that they have avail­able, and he basi­cal­ly told me that if I want to come back to Tas­sa­jara that he would request me on his work crew. Most of the stu­dents don’t get to pick their work assign­ments. Basi­cal­ly he offered me a small perk if I come back and am will­ing to work on the shop crew doing some of the tough phys­i­cal labor.

This strikes me as a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty on a few dif­fer­ent lev­els. Per­haps this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to say «yes» to some­thing where I might nor­mal­ly hold back. It seems like a pret­ty small thing, but if what Taigen was talk­ing about is cul­ti­vat­ing my will­ing­ness, then this could be it. Or the part of it that is in front of me right now.

This is of course depen­dent on a num­ber of things first that there are slots avail­able for a guest prac­ti­tion­er here some­time in the next month before they close for the sea­son. I could of course come here for the work ses­sion, and that would be free, but then I poten­tial­ly have a con­flict with school. Next, I need to earn a lot of mon­ey in the next cou­ple of weeks to catch up to where I need to be finan­cial­ly and to make trav­el­ling pos­si­ble. It may be that what I need to say «yes» to is being ful­ly present in my con­sult­ing in order to pay for school and not go into debt.

I’m also not cer­tain that my moti­va­tions are entire­ly pure. I’ve real­ly enjoyed being in the com­pa­ny of so many beau­ti­ful women here. I fan­ta­size that per­haps all these Zen Bud­dhist women are spir­i­tu­al­ly ground­ed and I tell myself that meet­ing a woman at a monastery has got to be bet­ter than meet­ing women in bars.

One in par­tic­u­lar stands out, and that’s Shoho, the woman who shaved my head for me yes­ter­day. We chat­ted briefly today and then she was at a meet­ing this evening. I think she’s great, but I real­ly don’t know her very well. So the attrac­tion real­ly can’t be more than phys­i­cal. Still, I’d like to explore my attrac­tions rather than just stuff them away.

Oh, and did I men­tion? Shoho is a priest. She con­duct­ed the evening cer­e­mo­ny here. Wow. And she’s an addict. So my ratio­nal­iz­ing mind tells me that A) we have a lot in com­mon and that B) she’s pret­ty advanced on her spir­i­tu­al path. She’s real­ly cute, too.

And I am leav­ing to go back home tomor­row. Not a very fer­tile ground for explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting to know her.

I’ve thought about ask­ing for her address and writ­ing to her. She lives here at Tas­sa­jara, but I think the point of ask­ing is more about secur­ing her per­mis­sion for me to write her. Then maybe I could get some prac­tice cor­re­spond­ing in a media I haven’t real­ly used since col­lege — let­ters by mail. It might be nice to have a pen pal.

The truth is that I’m just con­niv­ing some way to have some form of con­tact with a woman who is geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tant from me. Per­haps I should look at what kind of choice that is and what it says about what I want. This does­n’t mean I don’t ask her if I may write to her; it just means that I need to exam­ine my motives and ques­tion the wis­dom of this idea before going ahead.

In anoth­er eigh­teen hours I’ll at least have some answers about what I actu­al­ly did. I have the feel­ing that if I don’t ask Shoho if I may write her that it will have more to do with cow­ardice than with any eval­u­a­tion of the wis­dom of such an act. So I’ll take it to my med­i­ta­tion tomor­row and see what comes up. Then I’ll try to fol­low my best instincts. Which right now are say­ing, «stop over­in­tel­lec­tu­al­liz­ing! Explore!»

So I guess we’ll see what hap­pens. For now, I need to go to sleep so that I can get up at 515am when the wake-up bell comes by. Good night.