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            Hi!

            Let’s catch up, shall we?
            I hope you have been enjoying your life in excellent ways every day.

            As for me, I think the summary of my recent journey begins on May 21.  I completed three days of substitute teaching at the Upper West Side branch of my language school, finished packing my car, and left Harlem and the island of Manhattan on a drive north three hours to my hometown of Cambridge.  My iPod headphone jack has been in need of repair for several weeks now, but I’ve been on a tight budget with schedules switching frequently, so I couldn’t use my iPod for music.  Luckily I had a few real CD’s from Hiromi and Art Tatum to take me up from the city to the paradise of rolling green hillsides and fully blossomed trees.

            Everywhere was very green, except the sky, which was very blue.  When I arrived home I savored a few breaths of clean country air and the sound of absolutely nothing, save for the occasional slight breeze through the green leaves of the trees.  I said hello to my parents and then walked up to the hill to have a campfire with my four closest friends from the area, all of whom live within a 30 minute drive of this hallowed place where we’ve been building memories since I moved up from Long Island in 1995.  After a few hours of laughs and catching up, they left the fire at 11, leaving me with an hour of solitude to meditate on the journey in New York City that had begun seven months earlier, in October, when I’d first moved back from California via a six day drive across the country.  The scene inspired a haiku as I watched flames flicker above the open fields and valleys solemnly existing within an infinite universe:

Peaceful with the fire

Train whistles through the valley

Stars swim in the sky

            I returned home by walking through the dark beneath the most stars I’d seen in the sky in a long time.  I had done this walk so many times that I didn't need a flashlight, despite the dark forests, some of which were trees I had planted with my father when I was only thirteen.  They are much larger, more mature and self-assured after all these years of growth.