Hello World!
It's nice to see you all again so soon! Clearly I'm getting too much free time and too much internet access on my hands...
My train from Paris to London leaves in about 35 minutes and my internet access cuts out in about 12, so this (hopefully) won't be my longest post, but I wanted to share a bit of my morning with you.
Sleeping at the Basilica the night before last and the hostel last night were not the most restful nights' sleep, so I'm going to attribute my 'grrr....world...' attitude when I woke up this morning to the fact that I didn't have enough recuperated mental energy to get a handle on my emotions. Fortunately, a very nice young lady (by the name of Krista, I think?) in the dorm room at the hostel let me bum her iPod so I could Skype with her headset [+1 positive attitude] Then I got downstairs and found that my love was not online yet, so I didn't manage to Skype with Ashley (u.u) but I did get to call my parents (at 3 in the morning their time; sorry!).
I had a very uplifting conversation with my mom about all the difficulties I've had over the past couple of weeks at the Catholic monastery and got to say hey to Dad as well ^^ [+ several positive attitude]
As I wrapped up the conversation and tried to start an email conversation with Ashley, I noticed that the woman sitting with her husband across from me had a Bahai prayer book out on the table. I remembered having read about Bahai before, but couldn't remember any details about it and asked about it. Their words were exactly what I needed to hear at the time: the reinforcement of the values of human unity (not that that is lacking in my world view or recent experiences) *and* emphasis on the individual search for Truth within our own sould and the world around us (somewhat difficult to achieve in the context of a group of men who have dedicated themselves to a single truth) brightened my day, leading to a slight euphoria and exclamation thereafter of alhamdulillah!
Such a beautiful sense of peace and ease of being, the world is a much brighter place this morning. I apologise if my recent moodiness came through pretty strongly in the previous post and brought anyone down, but it's been a good summer for soul-searching.
Love and Peace,
Dave
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Another Summer Day Has Come and Gone Away
In Paris, and travelling and lucky to have so many wonderful experiences this summer, I'm ready to go he and to give up travelling alone. It's nice to have time to think and reflect, but it's a lot easier when we know our friends are right there for us when we've had enough of our own company.
So how have the past couple of weeks been? I don't remember how much I've said about the monastery in Flavigny already,so I'm sorry if you end up reading the same story multiple times. I did a five day retreat while I was there based on the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, which was a challenge, but overall a good experience. I'm thinking it was a combination of isolation and aimlessness as I didn't have a particular project occupying my mind after the retreat ended, but I had a rough few days emotionally afterward. I did get invited to dinner at a nice family's place in town though, and they were really wonderful. An American couple and their son and his son and French wife. I really feel like they deserve a better mention than what I've given them so far, so I'll have to share more later, but for now ultra summary mode!
-walked to the vignoble de Flavigny one afternoon and did a wine tasting
-wandered around the town a lot, including one chill night filled with stars when I foolishly attempted to sleep outdoors
-got a ride to les Laumes to catch my train into Paris
-spent the night at Sacre Coeur last night, participating in the adoration of the blessed sacrement
-made plans to meet Miles, the boyfriend of one of the incredibly awesome people I met in Taiwan
-realized that a month ago I was in Taiwan and that I've had a truly epic summer
-realized just how little living in the moment I do and how much more I need to appreciate my life
-realized what a good idea a summer of soul searching is, if it produces results (I'll let you know on that one)
If you are reading this, know that you are loved.
So how have the past couple of weeks been? I don't remember how much I've said about the monastery in Flavigny already,so I'm sorry if you end up reading the same story multiple times. I did a five day retreat while I was there based on the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, which was a challenge, but overall a good experience. I'm thinking it was a combination of isolation and aimlessness as I didn't have a particular project occupying my mind after the retreat ended, but I had a rough few days emotionally afterward. I did get invited to dinner at a nice family's place in town though, and they were really wonderful. An American couple and their son and his son and French wife. I really feel like they deserve a better mention than what I've given them so far, so I'll have to share more later, but for now ultra summary mode!
-walked to the vignoble de Flavigny one afternoon and did a wine tasting
-wandered around the town a lot, including one chill night filled with stars when I foolishly attempted to sleep outdoors
-got a ride to les Laumes to catch my train into Paris
-spent the night at Sacre Coeur last night, participating in the adoration of the blessed sacrement
-made plans to meet Miles, the boyfriend of one of the incredibly awesome people I met in Taiwan
-realized that a month ago I was in Taiwan and that I've had a truly epic summer
-realized just how little living in the moment I do and how much more I need to appreciate my life
-realized what a good idea a summer of soul searching is, if it produces results (I'll let you know on that one)
If you are reading this, know that you are loved.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Summer 2009 - Feels Like the End, but It's Just Beginning
Wow, have I had a busy couple of months. Well, if you're actually asking that question, the answer is that it depends on what you mean by busy. I've been travelling a lot. A lot more than usual. It's actually getting pretty tiring, but I know I can't complain.
United Kingdom, We Shall Miss Thee
I believe the tale last left off with me staying at a hostel in Elgin, preparing for a few days of peace at Pluscarden Abbey. Peace I did find, but much of it in sleep. I had a good amount of energy starting the week, but definitely caught a couple of days' worth of sleep during my 4.5 days there, just catching up with myself and taking it easy. I did manage to make it to each of the hours of the Divine Office at least once, but didn't make it to Vigils & Lauds more than once.
The meals were lovely there and there was a great group of gents for fellowship. There was Pierre-Louis, the geneticist born in Benin who grew up in France and was now working in Glasgow, for instance. I have to do some journalling, though, before I can pull up more details from my memories for you all.
After seeing Pluscarden, it was back to Oxford to see Ashley again, and we went to Cardiff for the day that weekend. Why Cardiff, you ask? Simple: Doctor Who & Torchwood. We geeked out pretty hard at the Doctor Who exhibition and grabbed lunch at Old Orleans and went for a walk by the bay before heading back to Oxford. Lovely ^^
What's a Woodenfish?
The flight to Taiwan was fairly uneventful, though the airports provided a surprising amount of free internet access along the way. I'm actually using a public computer at Taoyuan Int'l Airport (in Taipei) at the moment. I do recommend both British Airways and Cathay Pacific as pretty good airlines in terms of service.
I'm sure the most surprising thing to anyone who really knows me at this point is my mere survival of the past month. For those of you not so in the loop, the Woodenfish Program I just completed was a month-long program on Chinese Buddhism and Culture based in Taiwan. Doesn't sound so bad, I know, even when you throw in the seven day silent meditation retreat or the three hours of class a day or the (relatively) strict discipline and requisites of punctuality and organisation, but the real killer for someone like me was this: being a Buddhist program, I was required to become vegetarian for a month.
I'll give that a moment to sink in...
And what's more: I loved almost all the food I was served!
::another pause for you to pick yourself up off the floor::
Prior to this program, I was essentially meatatarian: meat, starch, dairy, etc, were the totality of my diet with rare exception. Yes, I've always enjoyed fruit, and of course my parents would occasionally subject me to butternut or peas, but I basically did not eat vegetables until a year ago. Even since then, my diet has remained largely unchanged, with small additions here and there: peppers and onions in some dishes, salads at formal events, etc.
What most surprised me about this experience was the fact that I didn't feel any different. People always talk about what a difference changes in diet make, switching one way or the other. I felt little if any difference during the course of the month, but I suppose this could've been influenced by the fact that my diet at Iona and Pluscarden Abbeys had increased vegetable content. Still, I ate my first meat again last night and found no ill effects, though some had warned me that a mere month might be enough to lose the necessary digestive enzymes.
Anyway, I'm sure you'd rather hear about the program than my health, so I guess I'd best move on to that. But now that I reach the topic, I'm not at all sure what to say. I realised during the course of this month that I need a break. I've been going and going and going since about the start of my sophomore year at UGA, and, yes, this summer is about giving myself time to think and reflect and catch up with myself, but I may have stumbled a bit in that design. In particular, my experiences to this point have been rapidfire, one after the other so quickly that I don't have sufficient time to reflect on one before beginning the next. Fortunately I'll be in France in a few days, visiting a Trappist monastery at Flavigny for a couple of weeks, so with some luck I'll have a chance to journal and meditate and process it all.
My real clue that I need time was the meditation retreat, in fact. Our accommodations at Fo Guang Shan were quite nice--think more hotel than hostel, even though we were four to a room--but for the week of the meditation retreat we moved into a few bunked dorms in the meditation hall (about fifteen to a room in four separate rooms). I struggled a lot just to get still during the retreat, as we were expected to maintain one of two meditation postures, each of which required a not insignificant amount of exertion on my part. That having been said, I reached a point where I realised that I also just tend to fidget too much, that I wasn't necessarily moving all the time to avoid a painful position so much as for the sake of moving. With a week of silent contemplation (more than the emptiness of meditation) I started to get vivid mental images of all sorts of things. Random memories of childhood dreams and experiences as well as (more relevantly to the original subject of this paragraph) recollections from the past couple of years. I was in France and Japan again as last summer, I was doing many of the things I'd done recently--in the quiet of this week, my brain began to unpack, finally getting a chance to process all that I've been doing.
As much as I sometimes feel I'm not doing enough and need to do more, I need to remember that the downtime I give myself is indeed valuable, but also to realise that time for relaxation is not necessarily time to catch up on movies and shows and reading and gaming with my friends.
One last note on the program before I kick myself off the computer so another can use it: I've learnt a lot about Buddhism and have a lot to share with my fellow Fellows from the South Korea trip--I really feel like we missed the point on a few topics (though that's just my initial impulse).
Peace
I don't know when next I'll post, as this has been a rare activity for me this summer, but hopefully I'll post again from France or London, because if I don't post again by the end of the summer, you're liable never to hear about the rest of my trip (at least on this blog).
I've got a few postcards to send but haven't sent nearly so many as I would've liked to. If you want to reach me for anything in particular, or even just to chat, I do enjoy responding to emails as I travel, though you must of course know that I may not respond if time does not permit.
Thanks for reading.
Amituofo! (Amitabha)
Love and Peace,
Dave
United Kingdom, We Shall Miss Thee
I believe the tale last left off with me staying at a hostel in Elgin, preparing for a few days of peace at Pluscarden Abbey. Peace I did find, but much of it in sleep. I had a good amount of energy starting the week, but definitely caught a couple of days' worth of sleep during my 4.5 days there, just catching up with myself and taking it easy. I did manage to make it to each of the hours of the Divine Office at least once, but didn't make it to Vigils & Lauds more than once.
The meals were lovely there and there was a great group of gents for fellowship. There was Pierre-Louis, the geneticist born in Benin who grew up in France and was now working in Glasgow, for instance. I have to do some journalling, though, before I can pull up more details from my memories for you all.
After seeing Pluscarden, it was back to Oxford to see Ashley again, and we went to Cardiff for the day that weekend. Why Cardiff, you ask? Simple: Doctor Who & Torchwood. We geeked out pretty hard at the Doctor Who exhibition and grabbed lunch at Old Orleans and went for a walk by the bay before heading back to Oxford. Lovely ^^
What's a Woodenfish?
The flight to Taiwan was fairly uneventful, though the airports provided a surprising amount of free internet access along the way. I'm actually using a public computer at Taoyuan Int'l Airport (in Taipei) at the moment. I do recommend both British Airways and Cathay Pacific as pretty good airlines in terms of service.
I'm sure the most surprising thing to anyone who really knows me at this point is my mere survival of the past month. For those of you not so in the loop, the Woodenfish Program I just completed was a month-long program on Chinese Buddhism and Culture based in Taiwan. Doesn't sound so bad, I know, even when you throw in the seven day silent meditation retreat or the three hours of class a day or the (relatively) strict discipline and requisites of punctuality and organisation, but the real killer for someone like me was this: being a Buddhist program, I was required to become vegetarian for a month.
I'll give that a moment to sink in...
And what's more: I loved almost all the food I was served!
::another pause for you to pick yourself up off the floor::
Prior to this program, I was essentially meatatarian: meat, starch, dairy, etc, were the totality of my diet with rare exception. Yes, I've always enjoyed fruit, and of course my parents would occasionally subject me to butternut or peas, but I basically did not eat vegetables until a year ago. Even since then, my diet has remained largely unchanged, with small additions here and there: peppers and onions in some dishes, salads at formal events, etc.
What most surprised me about this experience was the fact that I didn't feel any different. People always talk about what a difference changes in diet make, switching one way or the other. I felt little if any difference during the course of the month, but I suppose this could've been influenced by the fact that my diet at Iona and Pluscarden Abbeys had increased vegetable content. Still, I ate my first meat again last night and found no ill effects, though some had warned me that a mere month might be enough to lose the necessary digestive enzymes.
Anyway, I'm sure you'd rather hear about the program than my health, so I guess I'd best move on to that. But now that I reach the topic, I'm not at all sure what to say. I realised during the course of this month that I need a break. I've been going and going and going since about the start of my sophomore year at UGA, and, yes, this summer is about giving myself time to think and reflect and catch up with myself, but I may have stumbled a bit in that design. In particular, my experiences to this point have been rapidfire, one after the other so quickly that I don't have sufficient time to reflect on one before beginning the next. Fortunately I'll be in France in a few days, visiting a Trappist monastery at Flavigny for a couple of weeks, so with some luck I'll have a chance to journal and meditate and process it all.
My real clue that I need time was the meditation retreat, in fact. Our accommodations at Fo Guang Shan were quite nice--think more hotel than hostel, even though we were four to a room--but for the week of the meditation retreat we moved into a few bunked dorms in the meditation hall (about fifteen to a room in four separate rooms). I struggled a lot just to get still during the retreat, as we were expected to maintain one of two meditation postures, each of which required a not insignificant amount of exertion on my part. That having been said, I reached a point where I realised that I also just tend to fidget too much, that I wasn't necessarily moving all the time to avoid a painful position so much as for the sake of moving. With a week of silent contemplation (more than the emptiness of meditation) I started to get vivid mental images of all sorts of things. Random memories of childhood dreams and experiences as well as (more relevantly to the original subject of this paragraph) recollections from the past couple of years. I was in France and Japan again as last summer, I was doing many of the things I'd done recently--in the quiet of this week, my brain began to unpack, finally getting a chance to process all that I've been doing.
As much as I sometimes feel I'm not doing enough and need to do more, I need to remember that the downtime I give myself is indeed valuable, but also to realise that time for relaxation is not necessarily time to catch up on movies and shows and reading and gaming with my friends.
One last note on the program before I kick myself off the computer so another can use it: I've learnt a lot about Buddhism and have a lot to share with my fellow Fellows from the South Korea trip--I really feel like we missed the point on a few topics (though that's just my initial impulse).
Peace
I don't know when next I'll post, as this has been a rare activity for me this summer, but hopefully I'll post again from France or London, because if I don't post again by the end of the summer, you're liable never to hear about the rest of my trip (at least on this blog).
I've got a few postcards to send but haven't sent nearly so many as I would've liked to. If you want to reach me for anything in particular, or even just to chat, I do enjoy responding to emails as I travel, though you must of course know that I may not respond if time does not permit.
Thanks for reading.
Amituofo! (Amitabha)
Love and Peace,
Dave
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Summer 2009 - Travels Well Begun
I set out for my summer travels on 19 May from MCO headed to London Heathrow. The last time I was in the UK I was only 5 years old, so this is my first visit of what we might call real consequence. Memories of the first trip include the schoolgrounds during recess, the classrooms and bathrooms of said school, our narrow little flat/house/whateveritwas, posing for photos in London, a friend (Natasha? What was her name?) from down the street, drove on narrow snowy roads, visiting relatives, and seeing and making snowballs at Mt Snowden (sp?).
Despite the distance in time, this trip started out in much the same way as the previous: on a Delta flight. I never before understood why people so despised Delta, but (unless it'll save 300 bucks or more) I will not be flying Delta again. On my connection between Orlando and New York I had in flight entertainment (the back-of-the-seat-in-front-of-you kind) and felt pretty good about it--that sort of made up for my lovely, sweat-inducing vinyl seat. Moving on at JFK, not only did I only just make the final boarding call for my flight, but I also may have rediscovered our original plane from that trip 16 years ago. In the same condition it was then in: we had vinyl seats, blocky and inconvenient overhead storage containers, and screens throughout the cabin--an archaism I've not encountered since that early nineties' flight.
I think I must've slept a bit on the flight, though, because I could've been a bit more exhausted after my arrival in Oxford by bus. Oxford was wonderful. It was fantastic to see Ashley again and quite pleasant to see the rest of the familiar faces there assembled. More on Oxford another time, I think, though.
After Oxford, Ash and I travelled together for a few days in Scotland, parting ways in Glasgow after hitting Edinburgh (and its Whiskey Experience), Inverness (and the nearby Loch Ness), and seeing the Star Trek film at CineWorld. Perhaps more fodder for later posts in those journeys, but for now it's on to the action of the next day--hurrying off too Iona via Oban.
The train was pleasant enough, and the ferry to Mull easy to find. After snapping a few photos from the boat, I went inside and had a nice lunch of steak pie and chips, finishing just in time to return to the top deck for our arrival. Upon landing the majority of the passengers beat a line directly to the buses to cart us off to another port.
It was on the bus that I made my first (and last) acquaintance of Iona: Jane. A nice older woman, short and with blondish hair, just happened to be sitting next to me. We chatted about the scenery mostly, but the conversation was quite pleasant. Looking back at that his rode and the ferry rides, it is interesting to think of he first impressions I had of some of my fellow Iona Abbey residents. (It also occurs to me that these were my first trips on ferries and that the Oban-Mull ferry is the largest ship I've been on to date, excepting the Disney World ferry and parked battle ship memorials.)
Iona was an incredible experience in community and a story much better suited to the oral telling thereof than to the slow typing out on a blog via iPod. I was one of only two Catholics that I know of participating in this ecumenical experience and, I have to say, I expected the differences in the services and style of discussion to give me more pause than they did. It was also interesting to note how easily prayer and worship flowed from me, despite the fact that the issue of Christianity's strong personification of God is one of my topics for serious contemplation this summer.
Leaving Iona was hard, with the many new friendships formed abandoned so soon, but we move on trying rather to focus on the treasure of this new friendship. I spent but one night in Oban at the close of my visit and there stayed at the incredibly convenient and affordable Jeremy Inglis Hostel for a mere 14 pounds.
The train brought me then yesterday to Elgin, where I am at present hanging around the Granary (bar and club) writing this post while being entertained by karaoke. The bar also provides free wifi--perfect!
Just next door I'm staying at the Thunderton Backpackers Hostel, which I will recommend highly to anyone passing through Elgin.
I think that's it for tonight then.
Peace,
Dave
Despite the distance in time, this trip started out in much the same way as the previous: on a Delta flight. I never before understood why people so despised Delta, but (unless it'll save 300 bucks or more) I will not be flying Delta again. On my connection between Orlando and New York I had in flight entertainment (the back-of-the-seat-in-front-of-you kind) and felt pretty good about it--that sort of made up for my lovely, sweat-inducing vinyl seat. Moving on at JFK, not only did I only just make the final boarding call for my flight, but I also may have rediscovered our original plane from that trip 16 years ago. In the same condition it was then in: we had vinyl seats, blocky and inconvenient overhead storage containers, and screens throughout the cabin--an archaism I've not encountered since that early nineties' flight.
I think I must've slept a bit on the flight, though, because I could've been a bit more exhausted after my arrival in Oxford by bus. Oxford was wonderful. It was fantastic to see Ashley again and quite pleasant to see the rest of the familiar faces there assembled. More on Oxford another time, I think, though.
After Oxford, Ash and I travelled together for a few days in Scotland, parting ways in Glasgow after hitting Edinburgh (and its Whiskey Experience), Inverness (and the nearby Loch Ness), and seeing the Star Trek film at CineWorld. Perhaps more fodder for later posts in those journeys, but for now it's on to the action of the next day--hurrying off too Iona via Oban.
The train was pleasant enough, and the ferry to Mull easy to find. After snapping a few photos from the boat, I went inside and had a nice lunch of steak pie and chips, finishing just in time to return to the top deck for our arrival. Upon landing the majority of the passengers beat a line directly to the buses to cart us off to another port.
It was on the bus that I made my first (and last) acquaintance of Iona: Jane. A nice older woman, short and with blondish hair, just happened to be sitting next to me. We chatted about the scenery mostly, but the conversation was quite pleasant. Looking back at that his rode and the ferry rides, it is interesting to think of he first impressions I had of some of my fellow Iona Abbey residents. (It also occurs to me that these were my first trips on ferries and that the Oban-Mull ferry is the largest ship I've been on to date, excepting the Disney World ferry and parked battle ship memorials.)
Iona was an incredible experience in community and a story much better suited to the oral telling thereof than to the slow typing out on a blog via iPod. I was one of only two Catholics that I know of participating in this ecumenical experience and, I have to say, I expected the differences in the services and style of discussion to give me more pause than they did. It was also interesting to note how easily prayer and worship flowed from me, despite the fact that the issue of Christianity's strong personification of God is one of my topics for serious contemplation this summer.
Leaving Iona was hard, with the many new friendships formed abandoned so soon, but we move on trying rather to focus on the treasure of this new friendship. I spent but one night in Oban at the close of my visit and there stayed at the incredibly convenient and affordable Jeremy Inglis Hostel for a mere 14 pounds.
The train brought me then yesterday to Elgin, where I am at present hanging around the Granary (bar and club) writing this post while being entertained by karaoke. The bar also provides free wifi--perfect!
Just next door I'm staying at the Thunderton Backpackers Hostel, which I will recommend highly to anyone passing through Elgin.
I think that's it for tonight then.
Peace,
Dave
Friday, November 21, 2008
Café d’Être Now Moved
Café d’Être, this iteration anyway, is no more.
This blog will remain up as a log of my travels this past summer, but if you want current news, you should check out the blog at cafedetre.com.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Monday, October 13, 2008
xkcd says: Steal This Comic
This special treat for anyone who decides to check out my journal today, a comic courtesy of Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame), includes the title-text: I spent more time trying to get an audible.com audio book playing than it took to listen to the book. I have lost every other piece of DRM-locked music I have paid for.
Don't forget to check out xkcd for the original posting of the "Steal This Comic" comic.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
A Brief Update
I'm going to be so busy in the coming weeks, I don't know when I'll be able to update my journal again, but so as not to be a complete jerk...
Tomorrow morning I head to Nara, where I'll spend the day and one night. The next day I head to Hiroshima and roam around town for a while. The 12th I arrive back in Tokyo at 7 in the morning, having taken a night bus to get here. The 12th and 13th in Tokyo, then it's off to Narita to prepare for my departure on the 14th.
The fourteenth is Thursday, I leave for school that Saturday, classes start on Monday.
Hope you are well.
Tomorrow morning I head to Nara, where I'll spend the day and one night. The next day I head to Hiroshima and roam around town for a while. The 12th I arrive back in Tokyo at 7 in the morning, having taken a night bus to get here. The 12th and 13th in Tokyo, then it's off to Narita to prepare for my departure on the 14th.
The fourteenth is Thursday, I leave for school that Saturday, classes start on Monday.
Hope you are well.
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