Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
Myoshinji Temple complex includes this Taizoin Temple rock garden and meditation room as well as Shunkoin Temple, where we stayed. I got a separate brocade, accordion-fold calligraphy book for Kyoto because my Tokyo book is almost full already. I filled a page with calligraphy from the rock garden and another from Myoshinji’s main temple. The…
“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a GeishaStreams trickle and babble throughout Kyoto, lending a watery backdrop to the “floating world” of the old geisha district called Gion….
You wake up jet lagged in Shunko-in Temple in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital city. The bed-on-floor situation and outdoor hole-in-the-floor potties remind you you’re on a different continent. You hear someone sneeze…in the room next door. Good morning! You’re in Japan! You can’t go back to sleep after 5 a.m. so you’re more than on…
Contamination—no one’s friend. Coming from the epicenter of American swine flu outbreaks…or anywhere in the States…is cause for full on anti-outbreak procedures. Everyone on our flight from San Francisco into Narita airport had to fill out these health questionnaires, which included:“Please check any of the following symptoms: Mucus, Rhinostenosis, Sore throat, Cough.The situation in the…
Three weeks is just enough time to get settled in and remind me of what I’m missing back home, like balmy Texas evenings and family dinners at Los Cucos on $1.50 margarita night. And pictures where Luke and Apollos are making the exact same face, or where Joy makes the same face I’m making at…
Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours For one lone soul another lonely soul, Each choosing each through all the weary hours And meetin strangely at one sudden goal. Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers, Into one beautiful and perfect whole; And life’s long night is ended, and the way Lies…
While I’m in Texas and longing for Florida beaches, I thought about my first job down in Corpus Christi, which was weird. That would be a nice place to have a family maybe, but it was a very strange place to live alone and work the night cop beat. I tried to make the most…
