This journal was originally meant simply to circumvent the need to send out the same e-mail to various friends; it was an easy place where people who knew me could get updates on my life, at their own leisure. Unexpectedly, though, it has brought in new connections in my life, for which I’m very grateful (particularly for one — you know who you are!). It has also allowed interested people a peek in on the goings-on in the Wilderness Guide program, and I’m glad that I’ve been a part of that sharing.

I should emphasize, though, that my experience is my own, and in some ways very different from what others are going through. I cannot speak for the school or for others, only for myself. There are many stories that I haven’t told, many that I don’t have the right to tell; each person here has a wealth of stories to share. We share much in our experience and beliefs, otherwise we wouldn’t be at Nishnajida together, but we also disagree on many things, and that diversity enriches us all.

I say all of this as a preface. Recently I wrote a letter to a few of my friends, describing the perspective that I’d gained from my experience. It occurred to me then that I have never explained here, in full, what I’ve been experiencing in terms of realizations about my lifeway. As it’s the end of the calendar year, it might be appropriate to do so now.

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Perhaps it’s because I didn’t get much sleep due to jetlag, but I’m finding it incredibly easy to hate this cozy Los Angeles lifestyle right now. It’s not even in Los Angeles, it’s one of the nice suburbs to the northeast. My parents have a condo across from a grade school and near a golf course, and I spent some of yesterday and some of today walking around.

It’s depressing. It’s like enriched white bread. The difference between enriched white bread and real bread is that with the white bread, they process the hell out of it until all of the nutrients are gone and you’re basically left with solidified Elmer’s glue, and then they add some vitamins to pretend that it has nutrition. Not only that, but because the vitamins are artificially added, they aren’t very easily digested and probably tend to get spit right back out the other end. You could probably fit an entire loaf of white bread in a slice of whole grain bread.

That’s what it felt like, walking around here. Even the nearby park was just an expanse of well-manicured lawn and some trees. The vestiges of the wild are there — in the crows, sparrows, and fat squirrels — but they’re like the artificially added vitamins in the otherwise dead piece of bread. Everything is controlled. Everything is domesticated. The only things that are allowed to live, live at the whim of humans who look at living things as expendable playthings, who set ourselves up to be better than others. It’s not even anyone’s fault anymore; it’s the system we grew up in. But that makes it no less disturbing.

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The yearlong is nearly two thirds over. I’m currently in the Los Angeles area with my family for the holidays. Leaving Teaching Drum has brought up a host of emotions, mostly connected with the transitory nature of my experience.

Zinnia left last week, for good. She’s been with us since she and Lety arrived in early June. Lety stayed but her daughter wanted to go home. I have been amazed by how well she’s adapted and how much she’s taught me; I’ve learned how to be open and playful and loving from her in these few months, and I’ve come to really love her. So I miss her dearly now that she’s gone.

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