I thought I had left flakiness behind in San Francisco. Ha. I sent an email to the monastery up in upstate that I visited last month, inquiring about week-long residential practice/training and said that I was interested in coming up for a week. I told them my background to give an indication that I'm serious and know what it entails, and they told me they'd send down the information. A week later I received the information they sent, and it says that I should email them for an application if I was interested in staying for a week. They certainly are not helping my dubious opinion of Japan-centric U.S. monasteries.

No harm done, but baseline common sense and communication, what in my original email indicated that they shouldn't send an application with the other materials in the first place? You don't need to know what I wrote in my original message, because I can tell you in no uncertain terms: nothing! Since they're all Japan-centric, I'm sure they understand baka! I sent a much more formal email requesting an application. They got it to me much faster, although I don't think it was related.

I've been listless and tired lately. Very strange. Maybe my body is still getting used to the heat and humidity, regardless of how much I'm not complaining about it. I've even gone back to drinking coffee and more than I drank in San Francisco.

I have a massive blind spot in my left eye, but it hasn't mattered much because my brain fills out the missing information. It was really quite interesting earlier today when my brain, for whatever reason - heatstroke, Korean food, dehydration, probably Korean food - stopped filling in the information. I was trying to read stuff and I had to keep shifting my line of sight to catch words, but still that spot where the words faded out made it also really hard for my brain to process the words to understand what I was reading. I tell you, it was fascinating!

All is back to normal and I have a greater appreciation for the wonders of my brain. I got rid of the Korean food in the meanwhile, couldn't hold it. I haven't had that much chili in such a long time and might have to get my resistance back up by going for more Korean food (so good). It was worse than being drunk because it was just so incredibly painful that I wanted to be put out of my misery. Well, the way my mind works it was more like "If this is what dying is like, I don't want to die!" But then after it passed several excrutiating, delerious hours later, I was back to rationalizing that death, itself, probably isn't that horrible.