Wisdom from the Trenches of 2025

"All phenomena are like a dream, 

An illusion, a bubble and a shadow, 

Like dew and lightning, 

Thus you should meditate upon them."  

--Diamond Sutra

January: Kaleidoscope. There is a fine line between untangling and unraveling, letting go and falling apart, releasing and losing grip. Life untangled in India as all the worry and stress accumulated in 2024 melted away, but then back in Chiang Mai, life began to unravel. A free fall of unfathomable freedom and loss. A kaleidoscope of grief and beauty. 

February: Recalibrate. What would happen if I slowed down or simply stopped everything, and reevaluated every aspect of life? By the end of the month, I was regaining confidence in my writing, swimming 1 kilometer everyday, and allowing all else to either fall in place or fall away. 

March: Miracle. I returned to Bali for the first time in five years and surrendered completely at the base of Mount Agung, allowing the island's fierce, raw energy to wash over me in wave after wave. And in its wake, ripples of lightness. I signed with a new literary agent and took off to the far eastern islands of northern Raja Ampat to celebrate and clear the way for more miracles. 

April: Routine. Write, swim, read, repeat. 

May: Betrayal. The job I once loved and a coworker I once trusted became my worst nightmare. In the throes of shock, confusion, and saddness, I came to understand that these projections have nothing to do with me. Allow sleepless nights to fuel creative power. 

June: Recover. Write, breath, and swim through the pain. Strengthen. Heal. Learn to shine through the dark clouds. 

July: Patience. Between maddening anxiety and holding it together through another term, I packed up my apartment, sent the final draft of my novel to my agent, and waited. When the building pressure of wanting everything to be different creates a rip in the space-time continuum, a portal opens.

August: Endings. I lose my job, the novel I'd spent over a decade writing goes on submission, and I take a whirlwind trip to the US because I know I will not return for a long time. I move out of the city and into a spacious apartment pressed against the mountains and collapse in gratitude that nothing will be the same. 

September: Beginnings. When ten thousand doors of possibility swing wide open, I walk through the ones that lead to inspiration and starlight, the ones that lead to brighter directions from here.

October: Freedom. I fling myself back into the world of perpetual travel and wander across Sulawesi chasing alien stories, island dreams, and snorkeling adventures. And in this liminal space of freedom, my new five year Thai visa is approved and my first creative nonfiction essay is accepted for publication. 

November: Transformation. After hopping across the remote Indonesian islands of Misool, I head back to Thailand to focus on my health and well-being, take in the cool mountain autumn air, and allow all the peace and creativity and beauty to flow.  

December: Process. What would happen if I once again allowed myself to sink into the depths of messy creation? I've no distractions, nothing to do but channel stories and write. And so, with the gifts of this past year, I will carry them over into the next year and the next and the next. I will live fully. I will process. I will create. 

What a wild year. A spectrum of experiences and emotion. A lot of unexpected drama that blindsided me, but a lot more peace & fulfillment on the other side. 

What gifts did 2025 provide for you (in all its mysterious ways)? What pivotal moments or emotional imprints stood out to you, that changed you in profound or subtle ways? 

Untangled

Days after I landed in India for the third time in the past year, I untangled. 

To untangle: to free from a twisted, knotted state, to be free from perplexity, from confusion. 

All those circumstances that seemed so distressing, so confusing, so pressing, so important, only days ago, weeks ago, months ago, slid through my mind, dissolving into nothingness. Knots of anxiety untangled themselves, tightly knitted problems woven into my mind, unraveled. 

In their place, a lightness, a void, a clear path.

We awoke just before midnight and ran to the rooftop to watch the fireworks over the backwaters of Kochi. Aside from a handful of noteworthy and beautiful moments and accomplishments, I was glad to see 2024 behind me. A year of navigating stress and loss. A year of feeling too much. 

Somewhere between stillness and movement life got blurry. 

Blurry: not clearly or distinctly visible or audible, unable to perceive what is real and what is not, unfocused.

During these darkest days of the year, a surge of new energy rises. A time to recalibrate and refocus. Focus harnesses creative power, something tangible and real. An ability to create. To actualize. 

The word maya is often translated as illusion, something to rise above or see beyond. But a better, more accurate translation is artistic power. 

When I stop moving through the world and life as though it's an illusion, it becomes more vibrant, more real. I see it as a creation I can work with and immerse in. I stop making every experience something other than what it is. I stop projecting meaning onto everything and simply live. 

Early weeks of the new year were punctuated by southern Indian sunsets and meandering beach walks. Feverishly reading Han Kang and Mona Awad, afternoon writing frenzies, and endless cups of masala chai. 

Untangled, I am fearless, focused, and clear. Unrushed, with eyes wide open. 

Move through the world like you are walking a labyrinth, slow and mindful, winding your way through landscapes and colors and enchantment.

How did you navigate through 2024? What strengths did you find? What will you do differently this year? 

Traversing Landscapes & Stories

Sikkim is filled with temple secrets, sprawling tea gardens, and waterfalls that flow down mountains and over roads. It oozes untamed lands, mysterious rituals, and unspoken words hidden in the folds of everything. This land swallowed me and showed me what it means for a place to be woven with mystery, for a place to haunt you long after you leave. But that is not where this story begins.

On a high hill over looking the Batasia Loop where the toy trains make stops coming and going from the city, we sat in our room and gazed toward the hill stations scattering the landscape. And in the far distance, Mount Kanchanjanga loomed high above the clouds. We sat in the our spacious, sparse room wrapped in our warmest clothes, attempting to acclimate to the high elevation and cold temperature--from Delhi to Darjeeling in one day is bound to shock anyone's system. 

Five in the afternoon sunsets and late night dinners with the windows wide open. The alarmed looks we'd get when we asked for them to be shut. Climbing near vertical stairs that narrowly squeezed between the buildings etched into the mountainside, riding the train from the city back to our hotel as it wound around the cliffside in slow motion. 

In the afterglow of the sunset, we followed the train tracks and made our way up the steep hill to our hotel. Like the vibe of Twin Peaks, one could easily lose themselves in the ambiance, the lurking surrealness, an underbelly of strange. But this was just the edge. We hadn't even crossed over into the vast, mystifying land of Sikkim yet. 

Sikkim is a place you energetically feel and visually absorb. It's one that cultivates magic and holds secrets. And if you move slow enough and listen, it has layers of stories to tell. Themes of intrigue, meandering detours, and raw beauty dominated our entire trip. The towns, the villages, the temples, the mountains, the roads, the people all veiled behind something invisible and indescribable.

The iconography of all the Tibetan Buddhist temples throughout the state is wild enough to stir one's imagination in strange and dark directions. I think of The Lightness and the strange, dark path the characters go down as they dig deeper into the esoteric practices of Tibetan Buddhism that lead them nowhere good. I can see how and why it happened. I tend to lean into these hidden realms, exploring just far enough, but never so far as to lose myself. But Sikkim doesn't just lure you to the edge, it pushes you to the center and leaves you grasping for the familiar which is no longer there. 

Olivia's journey began as something entirely different. Much like Richard from the Secret History or Samantha in Bunny, these characters were simply on a path that led them straight into the orbit of darkness with a gravitational pull so strong they couldn't escape. As the familiar falls away, they each lose sight of their path and begin a new journey with no sign posts or memory from where they came. 

I stood in the small room at Pemayangtse Monastery and stared at the Tara covered walls. Stories of the goddess told through murals, her image ancient, yet evoking something much closer to me. In an early draft of my novel, there was a nameless minor character that stood in the background of everything happening around her. But a dear reader of that draft honed in on her and asked all the right questions. This is her story, my friend told me. This is who you are channeling. Ask her name and tell her story. By the final draft, Tara had become a far more important character than I had ever planned. 

Tara, I later learned, is commonly translated as star or planet. When I dug a bit deeper, I discovered the root of the word comes from the verb "to cross" as in to cross over as stars and planets cross the sky. Without giving too much of my story away, the name represents my character to her core. To walk into this room and see this goddess painted across the walls felt more than a coincidence. It felt inevitable. Another reinforcement that when we stop looking and forcing meaning onto everything, it simply appears. 

We crossed Sikkim from west to east and back again, hours in a car over one lane gravel roads that hugged cliff edges, moved across remnants of  avalanches where boulders were still blocking half the road, through water fall flows that cascaded down mountainsides and over the roads. Getting from point A to point B was not for the faint of heart. But the majestic untamed wildness of it with eyes wide open, proved to be a risk worth taking.

We uncovered hidden gems tucked down steep city staircases and up endless ones etched into mountainsides. Within sacred spaces and behind locked doors. In cups of chai, pages of books, inscribed along the walls of a rare Hindu temple. 

I could go on about all the wonders our trip entailed--from the mist and prayer flag covered peaks of Lake Tsomgo to getting caught up in Yuksom's local Diwali celebration that involved decorating cows and being serenaded by villagers in the night. Precarious hikes and leech attacks. Quaint bookshops and cozy libraries. But I will end with a story about ghosts and shadows.

After nearly not finding a ride out of Yuksom, we ended up on a three hour detour that landed us in  Rinchenpong--a far flung, rundown village on the edge of nowhere. Most guesthouses were shuttered and many buildings abandoned. Clouds covered the view of Kanchenjanga, and life shuffled around us as though we were ghosts floating through the town. 

One hundred years prior, Russian painter Nicholas Roerich had passed through painting some of his most well known works of the Himalayan Mountains. And not too many years before that, Rabinranath Tagore had written one of his Nobel winning poems there. It was easy to picture the place 100 years prior as not much developed over those years, a forgotten place existing in the shadow of the mountains, haunted by what was or what could have been, where people pass through and feel the distances between. We didn't linger too long, and being in our most remote, off the beaten track destination, we were once again nearly stuck. 

But we did eventually find our way out and made our way to Kalimpong where we rested and recovered and gazed northward toward the mountains and the vast land we had traversed. 

Unlike the characters in The Lightness or my character Tara, I've crossed back from somewhere otherworldly with stories and impressions that I carry with me. These days I'm not so sure I ever fully cross from point A to point B, but continue to traverse layers of places and stories and people, including myself.

As we cross into this new season and into the new year, what will you carry over with you? What ghosts and shadows will you shed or choose to embrace? Or will you simply traverse the complex layers of this raw and wild universe again and again? 

Taking Comfort

Kerala, January 2016

What strange trajectories life can take. 

I remember thinking this lying in my bunk at the Ashram, staring up at the world map pinned to the crumbling wall next to me. I'd been in India for less than a week, and I had already found a rhythm to my days and nights, enveloped in comfort--more comfort than I'd felt in a long time. Ever, in fact. Comfort. A word as foreign to me as everything I was now surrounded by. I had walked away from one life to live a completely different one. I'd done this before so the concept wasn't new to me, but India was. And, I was noticing, so was comfort.

Chiang Mai, December 2023

I'd left Chiang Mai in a state of discomfort days before the new year. Six weeks prior, I'd returned from the US to an unwelcoming energy that left me frustrated, drained, and eventually injured in a way that stopped me from doing many things. There had been a series of events stretching back to earlier in the year that had me questioning my relationship to this city and many people in it. Was I still thriving here? Was I tapped into community in the same way I once was? Did I have any friends left I could turn to and trust in a time of crisis? Had I outgrown my time here? 

Kolkata, January 2024

In the heart of a bustling city, I found all the answers I needed. Venturing out of the comfort of our cozy Kolkata hotel and later the safety of the monastery, I expected to get caught up in the chaotic energy of the world around me. I expected discomfort. But, much like my first time in India, I didn't. In the midst of nonstop traffic and honking and crowds of people, I found peace. 

I found comfort in a bookshop off of busy College Street where we found a book I'd been trying to track down for nearly a year. I found comfort (and the best coffee ever) in a well known noisy, crowded café. I found comfort wandering parks and libraries, sipping chai at a small roadside stall, and meeting monks and philosophers and enthusiastic students. I found a sense of acceptance and belonging I'd forgotten I could feel. 

Rishikesh, March 2016

After nearly three months in India, it was in a yoga teacher training course where I finally learned not to get caught in the washing machine (as our teacher so eloquently put it)--a lesson I'd be reminded of again and again over the years, one that would bring me back to center when the world around me seemed to keep knocking me down and luring me back into the spin cycle.

Goa, January 2024

The dark sky took me by surprise. It had been awhile since I'd seen sky so clear--the constellations and planets brilliant against the moonless sky. We walked the length of Agonda Beach, from one edge of the bay to the other and back. The gentle break of the waves was the only sound, and their cool splash around my ankles kept me grounded. I'd only been to a handful of places like this in my life--dark sky and ocean--one of the last being on the northern coast of Borneo several years ago, one of the first during a journey induced by a hypnotherapist nearly 10 years prior, learning then that this space of dark sky and water was where I needed to be to feel safe, to bring me comfort when I needed it most.

Chiang Mai, January 2024

After having spent nearly four decades of my life in a mostly constant state of discomfort and anxiety, what comfort I found lying in that Ashram bed I've carried with me. I'd like to think it's what's guided me toward and away from most people and places and things that have crossed my path these past 8 years. Being back in India reminded me what comfort feels like. I returned to Chiang Mai with a renewed sense of vitality and a plan to help me navigate through my life during the times I'm based here. So far, it's working. 

Where do you find comfort? What brings you back to it when you find yourself spinning in the washing machine? 

The Event Horizon Effect

It could have been the lack of oxygen at nearly 9500 ft (2900 m)...or it could have been the meditation I'd been doing every morning since my week training with Gurmukh...or it could have been all the writing and thinking I'd been doing for the past 3 months, but some sort of cumulative explosion happened in my brain when I reached Triund, and the world stood still.

Actually, the world has stood still in each and every moment of my experience in India. It would be easy to say time works differently here, but that's not it at all. Time no longer works in my life the way it once did--I simply experience it differently.

A friend wrote me recently about how these past 3 months have flown by. Well, yes, three months have gone by, but they have been so rich and full they feel like they were hardly moving at all as I was experiencing them. Each day would last a lifetime. Each moment would linger in an everlasting event horizon of sorts.

Whether I was practicing yoga as the sun came up over the backwaters of Kerala or listening to live music on a warm tropical night at a beach side shack in Arambol or white water rafting on the Ganges River in Rishikesh or scrambling up the side of a mountain in Dharamsala, I was fully present for each moment--not once living in the past or the future. And because I was so fully present, each experience never really ended.

After hiking for 5 hours of what felt like never ending vertical rocks to Triund, I found myself on a plateau that not only overlooked every village that makes up Dharamsala on one side, but I could turn around and clearly see snow capped Himalayan peaks right in front of me--so close I could almost touch them. And I do know from my past experience of hiking high elevations on a regular basis back when I lived in Yellowstone National Park that breathing thin, clean air can be one of the most magical and exhilarating experiences.

It was then, catching my breath, that I took note of the event horizon effect--standing on the edge of a precipice, witnessing not only that moment, but all my India moments--forever experiencing them as they move further and further away.

Three months, four different states, four different towns--each so incredibly distinct from each other, each surprising me in radically different ways that I could never have dreamed.

How do you experience time? Do you tend to mostly live in the past and future? Or do you take the time to fully experience the present moment? Experiment with time! How does your awareness of how you live in time change how you experience it? I'm so curious about this! Let me know what happens, what you experience!

From mountain climbing to theoretical physics in a single post...didn't something like this happen several posts back? Perhaps a side effect of what happens when time slows down.

In a few days, I will be not only in a whole new town (and by town, I mean big city!), but an entirely new country!

"Kathmandu, I'll soon be seein' you
And your strange bewinderin' time
Will hold me down"
~ (ahem) Cat Stevens

Catching Fireflies and the Wonders of Mountain Life

Following a trail out of Bhagsu Village in the far northern end of Dharamsala, I deviated from the rather crowded path and ended up fording a river and scrambling up the side of a hill along a thinly veiled rocky trail because I thought I saw some mountain goats and a tower peaking up over a ridge. I did see some mountain goats and a tower. The tower turned out to be part of a small meditation cave on the property of a guesthouse with a breathtaking view overlooking the entire Kangra Valley--complete with little tree stump tables and chairs and hammocks strung across the cliff side. How do people get up here who are staying? I asked the owner when he popped out of the house. I think you found the way, he said and smiled. 

This is my life in Dharamsala.

Nestled high in the Dhauladhar Range of the Himalayan Mountains, Dharamsala is not your typical Indian town (though I'm not sure there is such thing as a typical Indian town). Not only does the Dalai Lama, the entire Tibetan government-in-exile as well as thousands of Tibetan refugees live here, it is also a hub for Himalayan trekkers.

Far more crowded and noisy and colder than any place in India I've been so far, there is a coziness about it that you can't escape--because there is nothing cozier than hiding away in a cafe or coffee house reading and writing for hours when there is an early spring chill in the air and the sky is overcast with hanging clouds threatening rain. And like all the places I've called my home here in India, it is full of wonder and surprises.

I spend my afternoons as a volunteer in English conversation classes with Tibetan monks and refugees. The lead teacher gives us a topic and we talk. The subjects are vast and heavy--topics like: challenges you face and what are your greatest fears. Nothing can really prepare you for situations like this. Nothing can really prepare you for listening to a refugee talk about his flee over the Tibetan border into Nepal. Or listening to a monk tell me about how much he fears wild animals because of that time when he was 11 when his father got upset with him and locked him out of their house to spend the night in the woods with all the wild animals. Another monk tells me how he is learning English in this lifetime so maybe in his next life he'll be born a native English speaker. 

My job is to listen--listen and correct their pronunciation and sentence structure if needed. It is fascinating and educational and at times uncomfortable, but I can't imagine not showing up and looking these guys in the eyes and listening to their stories. Because I was never not meant to be here.

In the evenings I wander the busy streets of upper Dharamsala in the village of McLeod Ganj and watch people from rooftop restaurants and think about the 3 months I've spent here in India--all the people I've met and experiences I've had and the incredible things I've seen.

I sit here in this quaint little cafe looking out the window at the peak of Hanuman Ka Tibba towering at just under 19,000 feet (5800 m) over this bustling little mountain town etched into its mountainous foothills--knowing that each place I've been, each person I've met, each experience I've had was never not meant to be. And also knowing that everything that came before India is why I'm here.

On the bus traveling from Rishikesh to Dharamsala, I sat next to a girl who told me how each day she thanks all those people who pushed her out of her old life in New York into this one. You know, she told me, if it weren't for all those people who did so many terrible things to me, I wouldn't be sitting here next to you, traveling through the Himalayas. I told her all about Kundalini Yoga, and she told me all about Mooji--the reasons that drew us to Rishikesh. And then we shared the mysterious reasons as to why we are so drawn to this far flung little mountain town we are headed toward.

I savor each of these places and conversations and chance meetings and experiences, and like fireflies, I hold tight to each of them and watch them glow in wonder and then let them go because there are so many more out there waiting on me.

Do you see your life as a string of people and circumstances that were never not meant to be? Or do you think you'd be where you're at regardless of what came before? Tell me your stories, tell me about your fireflies. 

Moving through Magic (or How to Be a Science Fiction Character)

My transition into Rishikesh was not the most pleasant of experiences. By the time I arrived I was completely drained physically, emotionally, and mentally. Why had I left my nearly perfect life as an Arambol beach bum? Why was I in the much more crowded and noisier north? And why had I signed up for more hours of yoga teacher training when I'm not even a yoga teacher? All the magic that had unfolded over the past two months seemed to be fading with each passing moment that I was in Rishikesh, and it was literally draining every bit of energy I had left.

But because this is the year of magic, magic is bound to happen...right?

It could have been the woman who sat with me at breakfast my first morning and told me to watch for all the synchronicity, but it was the Indian man down by the river beach who looked more like a tourist from California than a wise Rishi who started it.

I must have looked a mess by the time I found the will to leave my room and go for a walk. Hey, he said as he walked by me. Hey, I said back. He stopped and turned around. Don't forget to just sit in silence at the end of everyday, he told me. In fact, he was so insistent on telling me this he took my hands into his and repeated himself. Don't burn yourself out on all the stimuli of being here--the secret is in the silence. I wasn't sure why he was telling me this--he had no idea who I was or why I was there, but I was grateful that some sort of message was coming through--and of course, from a most unlikely messenger.

I had no expectations when I got to India, and the most magical things happened. But the minute I started expecting magic around every corner, it just dissipated. Because you can't chase magic--I should know this. The magic that existed in Kerala and in Arambol simply wasn't going to exist here, and I had to accept that. I can't chase it; I can't let it go. Stalemate. Where do you draw the line between letting go and letting magic happen, and being proactive in creating magic in your life?

And then I met Howie and his wife from San Jose who not only know one of my best friends and her husband, but also one of my yoga teachers from Divinitree in Santa Cruz. And they have a really good friend teaching English in Chiang Mai they're going to connect me with. And sitting behind me in class there's a group of Russian girls and their translator who is translating the entire class as it's happening. Because that's normal, right? And then I met Hang, a Vietnamese girl who was born and raised in New York, but ended up moving to Vietnam several years ago through some very serendipitous events that a psychic monk once predicted. And the all the folks I keep meeting who've just come from or are headed to Dharamsala and are giving me great advice for my travel there. These are just a few of the small circumstances or encounters that keep adding up. But to what?

When you have a question about life just sit in the middle of the question, and one day soon you'll be living the answer, Gurmukh told us. Be okay not knowing and not having answers, and that is the only way you'll get the answers. Or you'll just be caught in the washing machine. Be silent. Whatever you do, don't get attached to the outcome. Let it go, let it go, let it go. Her calming voice and presence a complete contradiction to the intensity of my week with her and simply trying to exist here in this little town on the Ganges.

You know, it's just all the processing you're doing, a lady from my class told me, you'll come out the other side eventually. I kind of knew this already, but it was another nice reminder.

Each day I talk to someone new who reveals something to me that let's me know the magic isn't gone. One of the themes of this year is impermanence after all. The magic shifts and changes. I just need to learn to recognize it in each new environment.

You all are 500 years ahead of the times because of this work you are doing, Gurmukh told us on our last day. We're science fiction characters, someone from the class shouted. We're Jedi's in training, someone else shouted.

As soon as the training was over, as soon as I was able to start getting into my own natural rhythm again, my haziness subsided and my head felt clearer. Yesterday I went white water rafting on the Ganges with a group from my class which seemed to wipe out any residual ickiness I felt, and this morning Elizabeth Gilbert made a facebook post about Murakami--how they both share the same slow and steady system of writing. I did a double take. Gilbert writing about Murakami?! It can't get much more magical than that when I've been grasping for magic since I've gotten here.

Apparently, I'm just a science fiction character (and/or Jedi) moving through a magical world where sometimes I have to reboot for the magic to get through.

Do you have a tendency to chase magic or let it unfold? How do you find the balance between letting magic happen and cultivating it in your life?