Shim shin talyune

What if we lived in a voiceless world, in a blind, soundless space?  If I had never seen something beautiful, perhaps I would not be so plagued by a desire to find it.

So often in a new place–how often does it happen?–I feel one voice leaving me and another weakly trying to take on the weight.  How many times are we petrified in our lives, dissolved and constructed again?

New York is a wonderful place.  There are so many things happening and I am surrounded by all the resources I could wish for.  The energy is all kinetic.  Spices from around the world, newspapers in different languages, plays, concerts, lectures, intriguing and inspiring people and voices.  Life is full of action.

But this morning, after several weeks of separation, I was able to workout remotely with the Madison Tae Kwon Do club.  Madison, a place with big sky, where people meditate and eat locally.  I miss the centered feeling that comes from group workouts with the club, but even from far away I can feel it and hear it, I can see it in the way that people stand as they listen to the instructor.

Every sparkle of the world is worthy of attention in New York.  People meditate on the samsara that is living around us because that is the essence of being alive here.  In New York, life is engaged in itself.  But there is another way of being that I remember.  There are many different ways of being that I can remember.

And yet right now, I know that becoming the best teacher I can learn to be from all the resources around me is the goal.  There are many techniques to this: ways of explaining something, of managing focus, of breaking down concepts and choosing an order for delivering them.  It is another skill set to acquire.  Another thing towards which to strive.

I think it is another step in becoming a New Yorker, to be striving for something, to be unsettled, and yet to have a foundation in that striving, to find a center there comprised of the stress and growing that it is a part of living in this city.

I would like to write more, I would like to practice more, I would more more more.......