Quiet night in.
Tonight, for the first time in what seems like a long while, I am the only person home in this house where I'm renting a room this semester. My landlord housemate and his ten-year-old daughter are both out (though she may be returning from a sleepover at a neighbor's any time now; I find myself part of her backup plan), and I have celebrated by skipping an event I meant to attend and instead reading some more of Gish Jen's Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self and eating an almond cupcake from the local grocery store. (That I'm celebrating being here by myself should by no means suggest to you that I am not loving living here; it's been pretty delightful to be an integral part of this household for a few months, and I will miss my younger housemate's greeting me, always, with, "Guess what?!" Sometimes I say, "No." Sometimes I guess. Always, we hit a wavelength of mutual interest in one another.)
I go around and around with myself about whether or not to start writing here regularly once again. The migration to this new incarnation makes it not only easier but also more enticing to put word and image together again in this semi-public way, and as I've poked around in my own archives, I've discovered just how much I used to say to you all, on a daily basis. It really has been the case for a couple of years now that there hasn't always been very much to say, even though (or perhaps because) I've lived in so many different houses and on a couple of different continents since the daily entries stopped. I also know that keeping the Cabinet was my daily practice when I first started it, and I have different daily practices now. It seems unlikely to me that the Cabinet is ever going to make a comeback and supplant zazen.
But there are good sights and big adventures ahead (I think I have neglected to mention before now that I'm going back to England for next year), and so at least for now, I'm taking this work up again.
For now, though: the rest of this quiet evening.