Back from the mountain, off to another shore.

Monday morning, I woke up to a mountain view (though this one is not it; this is from Sunday night). By midday, I was seeing a different stream of life.

And then there were airports, and then there were storm delays on the LaGuardia tarmac, and then I made it into the air and returned to central Ohio (to which my photograph of the approach to Columbus is, I'll be the first to admit, not entirely fair).

And now, the business of packing for the next adventure--another departure to international shores, again for a year, just under a week from today--has officially begun. One box is packed and ready to be the guinea pig as far as shipping costs go. I have changed some addresses; I have made some necessary train tickets; I have acquired the toiletries I cannot get in the United Kingdom. I will get my hair trimmed and shaped tomorrow, when my beloved parents will also arrive for a short visit.

A cardinal has hatched three babies in a nest just outside my excellent friends' TV room. Getting their picture through the window screen, without a particularly good zoom on any of my cameras or lenses, was no small feat. But it felt necessary to catch at these vulnerable little ones, not just because they are utterly fascinating but also because my own skin has thinned in so many essential ways, of late. (Which is one way of saying, the silent retreat was exactly what it needed to be, and what I needed it to be, and the process of bringing myself down off the mountain was not an entirely happy one. "Then just don't go away," says my teacher. He doesn't mean stay there. He means don't leave there. What does it mean to say "there"? We asked that question a lot last month. These babies might know.)

Hours before my last week here begins.

In just under two hours, I will begin the six-day silent retreat that concludes my month of residency here at the monastery. The month has been intense--both intensely joyful and, at times, intensely and quietly difficult--and revelatory from start to finish. To get day after day in which I have the task of focusing my mind clearly on exactly the thing that I'm doing, over and over and over, has been the blessing of my year. To have many of the people around me turn out to be in their late 20s and early 30s has been an unexpected benefit. To have gotten to make one bona fide professional contact, to have begun the process of converting a new carpenter friend to George Eliot fandom, to have made some sort of progress on some of the central questions (both short- and long-term) of my life, to have gotten to test-shoot the camera I covet (now more than ever)--these have all been yet more unintended consequences. I have no idea how this last retreat will play out; each sesshin is so different from the last, simply because being left alone with one's own mind for hours on end provokes the uprising of what one least expects, when one least expects it. And goodness knows last week took an unexpected turn when that heatwave blasted in and held us sweltering and steaming in our ankle-length grey cotton/poly robes; I don't think that I've ever been so very hot, and I've certainly never been that hot and had to stay that still.

When I woke up this morning--at 6 a.m., late to my new normal of 4:15--my plan was to come down the mountain from my cabin, have a cup of coffee, and sit zazen for an hour or so. Instead, I came down the mountain the long way, taking a pause at the monastery's cemetery, and after reading for a few minutes ended up in a clarifying and thought-provoking conversation with the woman who's our out-going chef. More surprises followed: a friend was borrowing the old chef's car for a quick trip to Woodstock, which gave me a chance to bum a ride to an area with cell service and thus the chance to try to call my parents (whom, alas, I was for another week's running unable to reach). And for the last couple of hours, I've been processing the photographs that have accumulated on my cameras over the month.

Among which:

As I wrote this post and uploaded these pictures, the abbot went out into the rain to chop down, at first on his own, the recently dead pear tree in front of the building. We all prepare for sesshin in our own ways.

Moons, moths, months.

I turn around, and nearly another month has gone by. There actually wasn't much more to say about the truck with the toilets, only that we came upon it unexpectedly during a drive through the backroads of Indiana after lunch at an isolated restaurant we hadn't visited for awhile. My obliging parents slowed way down as we re-passed the truck so that I could get numerous good shots.

Now I am at the monastery for the month of July. Here, we can access the internet for 48 hours each week, and my 48 hours are up in moments. So, in brief, here are some images from the past month, and my biggest news of all, that I'm now a formal student in this place I've come to love.

Moments from Indiana.

You can see by my brother's hand (here, directing the rest of us away from the center of the picture-taking that was about to happen) that they pulled that wedding off, and in fine style. And no, the older flower girl isn't flashing the rest of the wedding party. She's just enjoying that dress--as who would not?

I'm now enjoying some more days in Indiana, in the aftermath of moving for the eighth time in a decade. Today, after I walked a 5K on the treadmill at the gym my parents now frequent, we drove out into the middle of the next county over and happened upon this sight, about which I will say a bit more tomorrow.