Man, I do not feel like I'm about to be driving for a week and then spending a week in New Jersey. Maybe that's a good thing, I'm not freaking out, just keepin' it real, holmes. I'm taking a bunch of stuff to store at my parents' house, but I'm hoping I'm not traveling in a packed car - that tends to be stressful if it looks like valuables in the car. No sleeping in the back of my car either, all motels. I'll keep the drums and guitars covered. And I'm leaving it open at the last minute to decide not to take stuff if it fills the car. Other stuff I'd like to take back includes: my blue Fuji road bike; a classic, ancient, hand-me-down K2 Pentax SLR camera (not as classic as the K1000, but a much better camera); a trumpet (??!!!); three beautiful CD shelves that my brother made for me in college and I wouldn't get rid of at any price . . . short of, like, $10k (any takers?); and a busted first generation 4-track tape recorder. Anything else?

And I'll be stopping at Deer Park for the weekend prior to taking the far southern route, so even though I'm envisioning this road trip with a "smile" (feeling light) anyway, hopefully I'll have an extra dose of good energy, rolling with any punches that may come my way.

As for the week in New Jersey in December, I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fill the time without my parents driving me crazy. I'm thinking: 1) I'll still have my car; 2) I'll have my Yamaha drums which haven't been played in earnest for almost two years; 3) I'll have my bike and my brother's old set of rollers (unlike trainers, you're really riding with rollers, ie, if you don't concentrate and balance, you crash); and 4) since I'm bringing my father one of my Takamines, I'll have a decent acoustic guitar (if he's serious about learning to play, he'll probably want me to get him a guitar tuner and put a set of light-gauge strings on. I'm so fucking considerate!). I think the week will go by reasonably quick.

I get on these astronomy kicks, and today I bought the latest issue of "Astronomy" magazine, found some interesting articles on the New York Times website, not worth linking to since the bastards change the articles into abstracts after a few days, and visited the Astronomy magazine website. On the website, I found an article about the Large Millimeter Array radio telescope that they're building in Chile. That's the same project that my old high school teacher, now radio astronomer, in Tucson left for Chile to work on when I was Tucson in April! He's not mentioned in the article, but his role sounded pretty important for the project. When he went in April, he was basically going to wander around the desert with a bunch of engineers and a map, and point at the ground at various places and say, "here", indicating where radar dishes should be located (that was his description of the job).

The Leonid meteor shower is due on Monday evening. Think I'll go out that night to catch them.

And I found out that bright smudge I saw in Gemini at 2:30 in the morning at the monastery when I was keeping watch on the fire was, in fact, Saturn.

After years of on and off solo practice, one thing I learned from the Deer Park experience was the importance of the Sangha, the practicing community. It makes sense to me now why the Sangha is considered one of the three jewels of Buddhism, along with the Dharma and the Buddha. So since then, I've been pushing myself to spend more time at the San Francisco Zen Center, and for now I've settled on going to the bi-weekly Dharma Talks. I'm thinking eventually I will also go once a week for the afternoon sitting.

I've been to the SF Zen Center before, but it always put me off and I never got involved with it. There was just something cold and affected about it. A lot of what I think is affected and puts me off is the failure to distinguish between what is essential Buddhist practice, and what are Japanese cultural accoutrements (SF Zen Center was founded by Japanese Zen "master" Shunryu Suzuki).

Bowing is basic practice, but the excessive bowing seems uniquely Japanese, i.e., affected in the U.S. I guess I can let the tatami mats slide, even though Buddhism didn't enter any geographic region with the understanding that tatami mats were essentially Buddhistic. Buddhism entered Japan and tatami mats were used in Japanese monasteries because tatami mats were what the Japanese used. They weren't imported from China or India, I don't think. But their use at SF Zen Center might be explained by Shunryu Suzuki, going by what he knew, ordered tatami mats for the various practice halls.

But the chanting parts in Japanese I still don't comprehend. Why chant in Japanese? To me that is purely affected, perhaps for the exotic feel/sound (?), nothing to do with essential practice. From my observation, there aren't many Japanese who attend SF Zen Center anymore. The majority is English speaking, and what Japanese-speaking contingent there may be, they are versed in English. When Shunryu Suzuki founded the center, it probably made sense for Japanese and English to be used. But for American Buddhism to evolve, it can't cling to cultural facets that have nothing to do with Buddhism. If Americans can't get beyond the "exotic" aspect of Buddhism, the Asian cultural aspects, it will never find Buddhism itself. Just go perform your fucking tea ceremony dressed in your kimono.

(Thich Nhat Hanh expressed this same sentiment, perhaps a bit more diplomatically).

Deer Park had to split everything between Vietnamese and English because there were so many monastics that were more comfortable with Vietnamese, some who were only comfortable with Vietnamese (and maybe French, but we're not in France). And I appreciated that the architectural design of the new Meditation Hall wasn't some chinky owiento design, but was influenced by barns in Vermont (the Deer Park Meditation Hall is using the same design used in the Vermont Maple Forest Monastery). To me, that says Buddhism here in America is American, not some exotic, foreign, imported thing.

My ghost like to travel, so far in the unknown
My ghost like to travel, so deep into your space
- Peter Gabriel, "Growing Up"

The new Peter Gabriel DVD is out, and I'm checking it out to see if it's worth getting for other people.

But boy howdy have I fallen out of the loop. Not only did I get back from the monastery and S*die asked a clueless me, "Are you going to Modest Mouse tonight?" (of course, I remember Joyce asking me months ago), but Death Cab for Cutie is going to be in town on Monday. I'm sure it's sold out so I'm not even gonna try. Not that those things are any where near priority anymore, but if I had known in time I would have probably tried to score tickets. Pinback in December, though.

According to the Tiny Mix Tapes tour page, no band is going to correspond to any of my stops on my road trip back east the last week of November. I'm returning my car to my parents, and I'm planning on taking a far southern route since there is already snow in the mountains. I'm tentatively thinking of spending a weekend at Deer Park, and then continuing through the week through Tucson (to call Mark or not to call Mark, that is the question), Carlsbad, Austin, New Orleans (maybe spend a day there, what is there to do in New Orleans on Thanksgiving?), straight through to Florida, turn left to Raleigh, maybe visit Meghan in the Tonal Ring, stay at my brother's in Philly, and then arrive in New Jersey on December 1st.

OK, so my plans are a little bit beyond the "tentative" stage.

There was one thing that got my attention in that last conversation the night before I left the monastery, when we were flinging ideas and thoughts back and forth, vibing and relating and riffing off each other. It was new to me, I hadn't thought of it that way, but thinking back to it, I think he was right. I now smile at the way he put it.

We were in an existential space, one that I feel perfectly comfortable in, but causes him to wig out. By normative standards, it is completely useless thinking and most folk don't even go there. We even admitted that it was useless and futile thinking, but we still did it because that's just our psychological make-up.

The gist of it was that in our thinking, we get to a point where existence breaks down and becomes meaningless and unreal. I'm comfortable with that because one of my basic premises is that material reality is just manifestation, an illusion, symbolic of something we can't touch that really is real. I guess that's to say I'm jaded. But for him, getting to that space in his head was frightening and he didn't like it (maybe my comfort with it was simplistic and naive). He got to this problem that he needed at his core to understand. He needed a theory that made reality and existence make sense, and that theory had to be beautiful.

We weren't debating, we were just riffing and the vibe was mutually respectful, so although when he said that, I furrowed my brow in curiosity, I didn't express my base reaction that beauty has nothing to do with any objective existential theory, just as "happiness" has never been a goal of mine in life. But having heard him say that, why not? Why shouldn't a solution be beautiful?! Why shouldn't a solution have to be beautiful? It's wonderful!

He's still striving for his solution, but I already have mine; I'm perfectly happy with my deconstruction of physical reality. Is it "beautiful"? The cynic and skeptic in me is demanding some answer that allows for "no", and maybe I'll find it eventually, but at this point I can't get away from looking at my theory (or my way of looking at the same theory), and seeing it as pretty goddam beautiful.

I never think I have the answer, I never necessarily think I'm right, but whatever I have at the moment, I allow and allow myself to be happy with. But however my thinking changes or whatever permutations there are in my "theory", I think a very reasonable question to always ask will be, "is this beautiful?" And yes, it will have to be beautiful.

Backdating entries for now (below):

Speaking of fire trucks, on the drive home today, I passed several convoys of fire trucks going home from the SoCal fires. I saw engines from as far away as Truckee and Reno, and the Bay Area was well represented with trucks from San Francisco, Alameda County, Union City, Mountainview, and Richmond among others. On the side of two of the trucks were memorials scrawled for Stephen Rucker, 10-29-03, who died fighting the San Diego fire. Brave men. I wanted to applaud them.

A monastery custom that visitors often first notice with a certain degree of perplexity, but get used to real fast, is that whenever a bell or a chime sounds, sometimes even a phone ringing, but not windchimes, everyone immediately stops what they're doing and goes still and silent. This part of the practice of mindfulness is to always be prepared to clear and calm one's mind.

I considered if there might be a similar substitute at home for this, and I jokingly thought that instead of the sound of a bell, I can use the sound of fire trucks going by. I've been home just hours, and I'm thinking seriously that fire trucks might work!

I'm a little blissed out right about now. Not about being home, though. I think the monastery thing worked. I think I'll buy stock.

I need to go cut my fingernails now. That's not a religious metaphor, I really need to go cut my fingernails now.

Um . . . so I heard from a bunch of yokels locals on a dusty Escondido mountain road that the Marlins won the World Series, but they weren't really sure. Is it true? Is it? Is it?

I could have left yesterday morning, no problem. I'm not getting anything more out of these extra days except more of this simple life. Which is fine, I'm not staying to "get anything more" out of being here. It's just a coda. I did my week stay, and these extra days are just to end the piece. It has continued to be cold, especially in the mornings when it dips into the 50s, but today the sun came out a bit. Today was my last day of working on the tents and we managed, during my stay, to move all three tents and all the major moving.

As if to ease me back into returning to material life, this afternoon two monks approached me about driving them into town to buy new sneakers for running! Apparently there was a "second pair half price" sale at the Sports Authority. Yes, it still makes me laugh thinking about it. Just this morning I saw a group of monks head out for a run, so maybe these two were inspired to join them. It was an interesting cap on my time here, walking into Sports Authority with a couple of skinheads in dresses*. For most part I've found Escondido folk very accepting of the monks, no stares or funny looks, and treated quite normally. Even the hour and a half they spent choosing sneakers and the mess of sneakers they created in the aisle didn't evoke any disbelief or exasperation. They ended up getting some pretty high-end sneakers, the kind I would have gotten for a serious running season, but they only paid about $60 each because of the sale. But why did they need sneakers like that? It's not like they're gonna be pushing 7 minute miles on city pavement. But that's just me being a snob and I kept my snob mouth shut. I did opine that they were really good sneakers and should last them several years at least.

That took a while, and it's not like I'm not patient or had anything better to do, but I wasn't thrilled when we passed Home Depot and they wanted to go in to find something. Of course I agreed right away, but I knew that we would be there a while. I was impressed both by how well the monk explained what he needed and was trying to do, and the complete lack of patronization by the Home Depot worker. One of the monks I was with didn't speak English, and the one who did the talking had a pretty good command of English, but with a very strong accent.

* I got that term from Brother Kh*i over dinner. It wasn't a silent dinner and one of the Vietnamese monks mispronounced "monks" sounding like "punks" (Vietnamese has some guttural sounds), and Brother Kh*i, whose race or ethnic background I couldn't figure out, but was from Oregon and spoke fluent English and Vietnamese, turned to me with a faux surprised look and said, "Punks? Did he just call us punks? We're just a bunch of skinheads in dresses."

That actually wasn't the cap on my experience here. That night, after sitting, someone arrived and was going to stay in the same room as me and another person who had been staying since June. This person had stayed at Deer Park earlier in the year and was considered a friend of the Sangha (after I leave I suppose I will also be considered a friend). He lived south of San Diego and grew up in a tight-knit, conservative, Catholic (I think, I didn't ask him to clarify) Chicano community. Unfortunately, his belief system has evolved out of the community, which is where the Deer Park community has come in to provide a sort of sanctuary where he can be himself and speak his mind without fear of alienating the people around him.

After sitting, we ended up in the Tea Room and we just hit it off. With the other guests I shared my week with, one who left on Thursday, we didn't really talk. We just shared our practice there, and from the outside it may have seemed quite cold. But with this guy, we just started riffing off each other's philosophies, beliefs and ideas, explaining our backgrounds and experiences, and we spoke right through the 9:30 temple bell and Noble Silence. It was really incredible, and I think that really capped off my experience at the monastery, bringing me back to myself to remind me to take in the monastic experience critically. It's all fine and dandy that it was a great experience and that I loved the lifestyle and fit in like a fish in water, but I feel I've always been very critical about my belief system and never took in something just because someone said it was so, and I shouldn't do that now, either. Of course, Buddhism, and I still resist the identifying label of "Buddhist", is a pretty heavy and heady religion with some very esoteric and abstract aspects, so obviously there's quite a lot that I do take on faith. But it's important to be critical about the little bit of understanding and clarity that I can scratch as a human being.

We very unnaturally had to cut off the conversation since we still had to wake up at the 5:00 bell.