Baron Michael Mojohito John Richerson von Tchudi

Currently in Reno Nevada, enjoying the weather, using the kitchen, kicking it with the folks. Working out all the logistics of recovering from my last incarnation (as a Asian healing arts student) and preparing for the next (as a permaculture design intern). Settling my accounts with California law enforcement, DMV, IRS.
Preparing to travel more, up to WA state in a day or two.
Managing stress but without utilizing proper tools.

A simple and common greeting is to ask a person how they are doing, meaning, presumably, as an inquiry into the current state of the individual’s emotional and mental health. I’ve been finding this question more and more difficult to answer – a simple “Ok” has never seemed sufficient, but lately I feel a mental short circuit when this question is posed to me. My emotional and logical landscape covers the spectrum of “very well” to “very poorly” at any given moment. To respond that I “just am” seems most accurate, but also sounds vague and pseudo-enlightened, of which I am neither. Detailed and specific with language, and I intend to answer every question as if it is posed with a genuine interest, not just as a perfunctory greeting. Enlightenment is something that requires it’s own body of writing just to define; I don’t fancy being in that category.
I can be very well as I am eating healthy food, spending the bulk of my time learning about interesting subjects, slowly developing meaningful relationships, and still have time to reflect.
I can also be very poor because I still struggle with destructive behavior patterns, the coursework is strenuous, I still feel lonely even when around people, and the reflection can be intense and aggressive as my mind seeks to process to completion each and every detail.
I am filled with love, but don’t particularly like people. How am I, you ask?

My mind, perhaps this entity holds some key. It does indeed seem to function rampantly, on its own, and the reigns I put on it can merely guide the stampede of thoughts. I am aware of feeling good, of feeling bad; these things influence – but don’t define – me, whatever “Me” is. There is more than one aspect of the concept of this “me” thing, processes and subroutines that run parallel, concurrently, influencing one another, condensed and broadcast through a body, face, and voice to be received by other humans nearby, each of them their own “me” structure, complete with receptive capability and filters, compiling information to co-create a version of reality that more-or-less works for everyone.

I stub out the slender roll of tobacco before it burns my fingers and throat further. Slip on shoes, other layers of dark color and symbols, shapes that define and contain physical parameters and transmit messages, and step out of the warm and dark and solitary room into a bright cold morning. I don’t hear my neighbors. Walking an unpaved trail through trees, I have in my mind the voice of a new friend, a good friend, conveyed through time and technology and headphones.
The music she has written and recorded and printed and distributed sings of love and self in ways I haven’t thought of in a while, having defined myself through celibacy, relationships indistinct and transient, but now I am in the present with this mournful and hopeful melody guiding my thoughts, considering what I would feel like to have another in my life, sharing a small reality. And I think of her, since as I listen to this music, I think not only of my relationship to it, but also her relationship to it, and my relationship to her. The music, the moment, alone, yet with her voice in my mind, takes me away, and I realize that I have reached the end of the path before I have reached the end of the moment.
I take the headphones out so as to be more aware of the environment I am entering. A lodge crowded with people inside from the cold. I make simple conversation, people accessing only the outer-most layer of the personality-complex, which finds it acceptable to give superficial answers to perfunctory questions. I fill a bowl quickly and leave again. The cold doesn’t bother me. It seems suiting.
I set the bowl down outside to turn music back on. Walk to a spot where it is likely other people will pass by, but unlikely that they will try and speak to me. I look out and down into a landscape of rolling hills. The morning sun pulls moisture up from the earth, and mist begins to rise, becoming low clouds, diffusing the light. In another two hours, the moisture will burn off, and it will be a warm afternoon. I breathe deeply the dense air while it lasts.
And I’m savoring breakfast and staring into the fog and absorbing the music and contemplating gently and I realize why I can’t give a straightforward answer to a straightforward question: there isn’t a cohesive “Me” to give an answer in the first place. There are many “me”s that all want to channel a genuine response through a single source of output, and the transmitter gets confused. Short circuit.
“I” am not limited to a personality-construct that interacts with others and has many techniques to establish itself as a dominant and cohesive unit. There is also a deep and vast existence that underlies all that. This manifestation of conscious energy is stunning, and it is doing very well. It is healthy and expanding and perceives love and beauty in all things. It is the personality subroutine that suffers from weakness, fear and doubt, desire and loneliness.
This explains why I feel so present and capable of offering nurturing and compassion to others who feel suffering, yet rarely feels safe with another person when it is my turn to be vulnerable. The energetic aspect of my existence can hold safety and awareness, while the fragile ego feels that it cannot be related to.
Tears stream down my face into my bowl of miso, and I am vaguely aware that I haven’t eaten much. I try, but food has no taste, so I set the bowl aside and cry quietly to the heavens at the realization of my self-imposed limitations. A person walks past, and I do not know if they see me.
I listen to the music, and hear her words:

Darkness can go on without me, because I no longer fear to face what is coming in it’s place.

I am able to compose myself, contain again the fission reaction of my soul within a rapidly deteriorating sarcophagus, finish breakfast, and move my body. Align my spine, encourage the movement of synovial fluid and cerebrospinal marrow. Stretch the tight muscles of my legs, working daily to reset nerve spindles within the muscle structure, extend the capacity for movement that this machine affords.
Tears have dried on my face, and I don’t expect others to notice. I don’t want to talk about it. It is time now to enter the disorganized training hall, make some part of myself available for learning, continue the expansion of thought and capacity. A new inlet has seeped through into the lagoon of my awareness, adding a fresh source for contemplation and nourishment.
I will hold on to this, gently

Something I’ve learned a lot about during this stay in Romania is my process of adapting; not the adapting itself, but how that process unfolds in my thoughts and actions. You know that I had a difficult time here when I first arrived – I really struggled for the first few months, for a wide variety of reasons. When I changed my entire lifestyle and attempted to re-adapt to the prospect of a relatively domestic routine, I was surprised at how difficult it was to feel settled. I strove to establish control in a world that was familiar to me but also wholly new. It wasn’t the language barrier, or the old friends with established routines that I couldn’t quite enter into, or even – strictly speaking – the lack of food staples that I relied on so regularly in the States (such as miso, tempeh, and mung beans); it was the fact that when I changed virtually every element of my life that I practically forgot all of the little tools I have to keep myself fit, balanced and healthy. Adapting is what humans do, and I make a conscious effort to be flexible and adjust – if not thrive – under new and challenging circumstances; I mean, it was (and is) fully possible for me to transition into just about any environment seamlessly, observe my new surroundings, and find what I need to do perfectly well.

But I forgot that.

I had become rigid in my thinking and routine in the San Francisco life. And while that rigidity included yoga and martial arts nearly daily, healthy food, and good friends, it is the rigidity itself that is the problem. So upon arrival in Cluj (traveling from place to place for the month before wasn’t a problem – only the prospect of being settled again!) my entire established routine was gone, and I practically panicked. It wasn’t yoga class after work, it wasn’t Whole Foods market, or take-out vegan dahl at 10pm, so it was… I didn’t know! And then I felt defeated, I didn’t know what to do, so I collapsed.

I had little epiphanies, like when I lost the fear to use language and travel alone, that really started to boost my confidence, but then it all just clicked. I remembered that I am self-reliant, and that I have all the tools for happy-being right in my mind. When I started making the time to do some yoga every morning, my allergies cleared up, then my heavy smoking went as well (note use of the word ‘heavy’ – haven’t quit yet, I’m afraid). I made an effort to have meals with other people – Bori being principal – even if that meant spending some more money or eating food that doesn’t fit into my (rigid) definition of ‘healthy’. I backed off on being so hard on myself for maybe not having an optimum level of creative and productive output, and paid more attention to the time I was spending; taking walks, writing because I feel like it, engaging in activities that maybe aren’t the most exciting but which I enjoy and help me feel calm, and (possibly my favorite pastime) contemplating.

What I’ve realized, of course, is that my attachment to rigidity, and rigidity itself, disabled me from adapting. It sounds so simple and obvious now, but when that little thing dawned on me, my ‘problems’ disappeared – and now I can focus on more important things.