Dear Reader,

     I'm sitting outside my man Johneo's trailer in Bowie.  He is off in Safford for the evening and I am here using his Internet connection.  My headlamp is set on "Red Light" for night vision.  The total and heavy quiet that is Bowie Arizona is occasionally interrupted by the humming of trucks from the interstate (actually, you always hear the interstate but forget that you are hearing it for long expanses of time) and the earth ending rumble and siren of the trains.  The train goes by every half hour or so.  I blog to you as a man in the dark in the American desert.  I thought I'd start with a short note to the families of some of the retreatants I'm in touch with:  Bliss asked me for her blender.  Ben and Kendra want coconut yogurt and rice pasta.  That's about it.  They are very quiet and seem to be happy.  I miss them.

     We are two weeks into the three year retreat at DMU.  The last two Wednesdays have gone off very smooth.  We have delivered everything the retreatants needed and some of what they wanted.  No complaints yet.  We drive into the retreat valley like silent desert warriors.  Perched on the back of four wheel drive vehicles, eyes locked on the cabin we are headed to.  We do not speak so as to keep the integrity of the silence the retreatants are trying to create. I will say that many of the homes lost water for a week.  We had a hard freeze and many water lines were not insulated from the tank to the house.  So people were dipping into their tanks with buckets for a while.  No one complained too much.   It is deeply quiet in the valley.  Bowie is very quiet.  My mind fights this quiet.  But there is nothing for it.  I may as well meditate or study dharma or do yoga for the love of Pete.  That's why I'm out here after all.   This has always been the issue with me. I'm sitting on a treasure pile beyond my wildest imagination and I have yet to dive in.  I suppose that's why I want to care take for a year.  It will take me that long to get bored enough to do my practice.  

     Diamond Mountain proper is slowly becoming a community rather than a school.  I view this as a natural yet, for me, sort of sad process.  I used to live in a small community in Virginia.  I was prince of hippie communards.   I had thought myself free of that lifestyle.  It turns out that my karma has not run it's course.  Another community rises in my reality.  I won't go into the things that I don't like about small community life.  But I see the seeds for it planted daily.  Woe to the board of directors!  Woe to the confused hippie camper!  Woe to the old timer seeing hard work wash away by the never ending tide of new people with new ideas! Woe!  It really won't be that bad but it's fun for me to get dramatic once and a while.  

   All I can say is that life is transitioning and it feels odd.  The quiet, the friends in retreat, the friends returned home far away from DMU.  There are new people at the campground, to be sure.  But I find myself utterly unable to connect with them at this time.  It is because they are not my friends and teachers who I've grown so close to these last three years.  We did not stay up after the late Bok Jimpa class together huddled in a tent learning even more dharma then we could process.  We did not make and serve refreshments to the late Tantra class.  We didn't sit in Sacred Classics Translator class laughing with Geshe-hla and working our minds till they hurt, we didn't debate under the stars, eat Jeromes pancakes, travel to the Tucson Spiritual Partner talks, We didn't serve each other enough. Or not yet enough, at least.  To the new people, I'm sorry.  I suppose I'm grieving in some way.  There's been so much life that I need some time to digest it all.  It's not you, it's me.  I'll open up and be more sociable.  You are my new teachers and I'll try to see you that way.