Epitaph to the Maine Winter

Saying a temporary goodbye to a very unkind abode -

I am ready to go. I have been ready since all these winter days have made me feel stuck in time and space in an ever, ever present, without the complexities and the possibilities of the future. The everyday business of managing the cold, gray skies, whiteout everywhere, had become too much for me. I hated it unapologetically.

I wished then that I could be a wandering monk (Tibetan style) under never ending fair skies, working the mandala of the mind, and walking everywhere just to keep connected to the earth.

Many times this winter I recollected Truffaut's movie, Stolen Kisses, in the opening scene. The shutters are thrown open, Jean-Paul Leaud stretches in the window, while a Brandenberg concerto vibrantly resonates in the background. This is a greeting to a new day, when you feel at the convergence of all kinds of possibilities, and the course of one's life could change completely - a bright new world. This energy inhabits now my past. Here during the winter it's a constant struggle to keep one's energy up. What is another day about? Instead of the urgency of living, there is only the anxiety of filling up the day, and at the end it all adds up to zero. It's like being stuck on the shore with no boat to get across. But what's across? Maybe the same.

I hope Burma will warm up my bones, and will be a restorative trip even if it's only a flickering illusion.