December
Time In

Usually after seven or eight months of touring, I feel like taking a time-out. But this year is different. I'm taking a "time-in". Just for myself - to rest, cleanse the body, exercise and stretch, enjoy some meditation, hang-out with my guitar, share the holidays with my beautiful girlfriend, take some long walks through the silent woods ...

When I left here in November, the trees in Virginia still had their cloak of autumn colors. Now their slender grey trunks and bare branches stand tall and strong against the cold, west wind: harbinger of winter. Maybe it's the flavor of Zen I still carry in my bones from Japan, but nothing speaks my heart quite so clearly as this poem from Ryokan:
Milarepa in Virginia Without a jot of ambition left
I let my nature flow
Where it will.
There are ten days of rice
In my bag,
And by the hearth,
A bundle of firewood.
Who prattles of illusion
Or nirvana?
Forgetting the equal dusts of
Name and fortune,
Listening to the night rain
On the roof of my hut,
I sit at ease,
Both legs stretched out.