Author: splicer

I must be in the grips of depres­sion, as I’m think­ing about the past.

In par­tic­u­lar, there’s an inci­dent from four years ago, pret­ty close to four years ago to the day. I bought tick­ets to the Rolling Stones show at the Oak­land Col­i­se­um, not because I care much about the Stones, but because I fig­ured that if I had tick­ets to a big pop­u­lar sta­di­um show that per­haps I could get a date. I don’t have any­thing against the Stones, … Read the rest

I’m kin­da depressed today.

I guess there’s noth­ing to be done about it or any­thing, but that’s kin­da lame. I don’t like it.

Oh well. Hope every­one else is doing better.… Read the rest

It’s a piece of advice that’s old­er than the hills, and yet still so easy to ignore. At least for me, it is.

I’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to how my envi­ron­ment affects my men­tal state and my atti­tude. My apart­men­t’s appear­ance has become crit­i­cal since I’ve start­ed spend­ing a much greater por­tion of my wak­ing hours here. Bit by bit, I’ve been try­ing to orga­nize and clean.

A friend offered me a tech­nique that’s helped: pick an area, and only clean that … Read the rest

I’m com­ing to terms with my apart­ment right now, and I hope this isn’t some phase. Basi­cal­ly, the place has been a dis­as­ter area ever since I moved in, and it’s still a mess now, but it’s start­ing to piss me off. I’m embar­rassed to bring peo­ple over to the apart­ment, and that’s no good.

This start­ed when I did laun­dry this past week­end. I made my bed with the fresh new sheets and then went to the gym with my … Read the rest

Ham­mer­head has been encour­ag­ing me to do longer runs, so last night at the gym I start­ed out by set­ting the timer to 45 min­utes. There were lots of machines free, so I did­n’t feel guilty about ignor­ing the 30-minute time limit.

First, I matched my old goal: I did four miles in 29:30. That actu­al­ly beat my best time by a few sec­onds. Then I dropped the speed way down to around 4 mph to rest … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

Again I’m uncom­fort­able because I’m fol­lowed around by this per­son called me. Being here at Tas­sa­jara has been very chal­leng­ing. I was afraid that I would­n’t be able to sit for long enough to make it through zazen, but this Morn­ing with­out real­iz­ing, I sat longer than I ever have before. Taigen told me that includ­ing the time before the bell, (we arrived ear­ly) I sat for about an hour and a quarter.

I’m still afraid of get­ting things wrong. … Read the rest

At sit­ting tonight I sat at my zafu and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed to sob. I was faced with a n over­whelm­ing sense that I was in the mid­dle of some­thing much big­ger than I am. I felt that here I am pro­tect­ed, and maybe I’m able to see myself in this refuge. I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take refuge here in Sang­ha in a way I’ve nev­er been able To before. yet I’m fright­ened of this oppor­tu­ni­ty to take refuge. It … Read the rest

Only five or six more hours and I get to go home. I want to take it easy tonight, as I’m going off on retreat and am leav­ing at 6am for the Tas­sa­jara monastery. I’ll need to get plen­ty of sleep tonight. I think I’ll go to the gym on the way home, work out, pick up some­thing to eat at the gro­cery store, then go home and eat and pack.

I’m pret­ty excit­ed about the retreat. It’s also pret­ty … Read the rest

Thurs­day is my last day at work. I’m get­ting pret­ty excit­ed about leav­ing the worka­day world, and I’ve been start­ing to get real bad about get­ting to sleep at a rea­son­able hour. Last night, or very ear­ly in the morn­ing we had a pow­er out­age here, and I used that as an excuse for my over­sleep­ing, although the real rea­son is that I went to see Juras­sic Park III at the Metre­on on the IMAX screen. It was pret­ty fun, … Read the rest