Dear G,
Your time in Florida sounds stimulating, and I am always humbled by your ability to glean from the most mundane events, some sublime jewels of humanity and humility. You leap into the fray of life, laundry, kids, and all, and dance with chaotic abandon amidst it all. I often feel like I would be happier in a cloister, writing and receiving letters from dear correspondents. I seem to have more difficulty with real life relationships than literary ones. This has always been one of my deep issues with Zen Buddhism--that it requires such restraint in the face of life's rich pageant, control of every aspect of experience, shutting the door on dirt, and tears, and bocce ball.
I would like to be more life-embracing and less at arms-length intellectualizing and philosophizing. It seems the same somehow, to control life through strict meditative practices and codes of conduct, and to control life through carefully crafted language and emissions of thought.
I would like some freedom, some running-wild-and-naked-through-wheat fields type of blessed madness, some un-reflective moments of arguing over the chick across the street who has horned in our bocce ball game.
N
