My wife’s first day and night of COVID was not good. Fevers, in and out of sleep. Day two she is looking brighter though not out of the woods yet.
Now I feel as though I am teetering on the edge. Although I have been sleeping in a separate room, indeed building, and wearing a mask when bringing food, etc to her, I have that sense of things not being quite right in my body. A couple of COVID tests feel inclusive - I would lean more towards positive - and so I wait to see what the evening and night bring. 🦠
Kundun, or The Presence, is one of the names that the Tibetans use for His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In 1997 Martin Scorsese directed the movie Kundun, a biographical story of the current Dalai Lama written by Melissa Mathison. I remember going to see the film a number of times when it came out. I picked up a copy of the soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass, and listened to it regularly.
My wife had a scratchy throat last night, took a COVID test - negative. She slept well but woke up with similar symptoms, took another test - positive. Thankfully the symptoms are mild at the moment. It has taken over two years for the virus to finally find our home.
Those times when the writing gets difficult and my mind starts looking for distractions…in other words my mind goes looking for more pleasant experiences. Writing is pleasant when it is happening easily, when I am in the flow, not so when I am hacking through the undergrowth for those elusive words.
The easy course is to follow the distractions, only to later regret the wasted time and lack of productivity. The more difficult action is to breathe into the resistance and try and get some words down anyway.
Finished reading: How to Be Alone, a poem & book by Tanya Davis. Beautiful, perceptive…and truthful. Be sure to also check out a YouTube presentation of the poem with Tanya Davis narrating. I believe that it will be five minutes well spent. 📚
Today has been acted through a fog. I was up until 2:00am last night because of a call for a meeting in England (11 hours ahead), and then got up this morning at 6:30am. I’ve cat napped a couple of times during the day, but in between has been a struggle.
I’m not sure what is going on in this photo, taken in Tibet in 1995. I believe that it was taken near to Drepung Loseling Monastery and that the monastery just visible in the middle right might be Nechung Monastery, home of the Nechung Oracle. Both monasteries have been reestablished in exile in India, Nechung in Dharamsala in north India, and Drepung in the south in Kanaktaka State.
Given that it is center stage, I think that I was trying to capture the run down tractor/cart in the middle of the photo.
I had another sighting of the International Space Station at dusk this evening. The viewing was especially clear, with the ISS flying directly overhead.
Another slide coming out of my evening going through old travel photos. Like yesterday’s image, this image is a photograph of a slide projected onto the wall.
The photo was taken at Drepung Loseling monastery in Lhasa, Tibet in 1995. At the time of the Chinese invasion, Drepung was the largest monastery in the world with 10,000 monks - a small town.
The picture shows my Buddhist teacher, Ven. Geshe Damcho Yonten (on the right), speaking with an old monk who had stayed behind in Tibet following the invasion. This was Geshe-la’s (as he was affectionately known) first and only visit back to Tibet having fled the country in 1959.
I feel as though I have started receiving more spam emails in the last few weeks. Thankfully my email client is catching most of it, but I would still prefer not to be receiving it.
This photograph shows the village of Zhöl at the foot of the south wall of Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The photograph was taken during a visit to Tibet in 1995, and is actually a photo of the original slide projected onto a wall a couple of evenings ago while I was going through pictures from my travels. I have left in the clipping in the top left so that most of Chagpori Hill can be seen. The Tibetan Medical Institute used to be on top of this hill, but was destroyed during the Chinese invasion in 1959.
I had known that Zhöl was under danger of having all its inhabitants moved out, but did not realize that this had happened. It turns out that in the summer of 1995,
the families residing in the village were evicted from their homes and resettled to the North of Lhasa. A number of buildings that were not deemed part of the monument at the time were demolished in the inner Shol while the additions comprising the outer Zhöl were razed.1
