​This morning, I sit and write and attempt to let the emotions of the past three days find alignment. So I can release them to the wind. How does one reconcile the terrorist attacks in Paris? How does one react to a world filled with this sort of pain? In the lead-up to this past weekend, I had been deep in preparation for a meditation retreat. As a volunteer in my local Buddhist center, I was helping to lead a full-day retreat on Saturday November 14 called Tranquil Abiding - Buddha's astonishingly clear teachings on how to still the mind, to bring it to complete focus.

I first met Mei at a dim sum restaurant in Portland. It was October 2013 and Suzanne Fox and I had put on an event with the curator and translator Valerie Doran. A quiet legend, Valerie has worked alongside the likes of Johnson Chang Tsong-zung and played a seminal role in the emergence of the Chinese avant garde to the world in the early 90s. I had lured her up to this New England sea port to speak about 5,000 years of Chinese art history. 

At this lunch event, Mei Selvage appeared, her eyes wide with inspiration, telling me that she was an artist based here in Portland. It was almost like we had generated the entire event for her - so intensely did she respond to the themes of the talk. The two of us exchanged phone numbers and met up again the following month. She came dressed in a funky Tibetan wool hat and handed me a photograph of one of her artworks, Tao Seeker (below).

​I was struck by this work, its searching, its journeying. 

Today was intense. It involved tears. You may remember when I gleefully wrote of my first driving lesson. It was two summers ago. I had sat with a group of 15 year olds through a Driver's Ed series (I was old enough to mother them all) and then my driving teacher, DJ, took me out for a spin. That blog contained the seeds of freedom and glee. I did my written exam, got my permit and... two years passed. And not much driving practice occurred.

For the past five days, I've been submersed in a powerful peace. The kind of peace that wraps kindness around your temples. That pulls your center of gravity out of your fast-paced head and down into your heart.

​The kind of peace that is like cotton wool headphones plugging you into another soundtrack. Where air and space take the place of busy sound. Where we can begin to slow down the cogs. 

I heard the news tonight as I stood in the kitchen cleaning pots. Terry Gross's voice cutting through the din of aluminum pans clanging, through the ceaseless flow of thoughts. She caught me mid-air as I moved to grab another one off the counter: "... Peter Matthiessen, who died this weekend." 

Time freezes. Like a bell cutting through the forest.

That feeling when you're out in the woods and you sense a great being in your midst. You sense his passing footsteps.

And because of this, we must stop. 

I pull up a stool at the kitchen table, slowly sink down and hold my face to the speakers. And the obituary plays out. 

You may have seen the news reports this week about the group of monks and nuns protesting outside the Dalai Lama’s teachings in San Francisco. You may have seen this video clip where a nun asks him directly to allow religious freedom, and he says to her: “No. This is not religion, this worship of spirit, so that’s wrong.” 

I walked yesterday through the West End of Portland, as a wild wind blew. It was a strangely warm day for early October and a full spectrum of red, crimson, yellow and green leaves were spinning in circles. Pumpkins lay on doorsteps and there was this kind of funny, wild energy to the air, like the Wicked Witch of the West was conjuring something.