Kaohsiung, Taiwan

I've been here for about a week and I came here without a plan, and that was probably a good thing. Or at least it sounded like a good thing at the time. Now, I should probably start thinking about doing more than hanging out with my cousin and helping her take care of her kids.

Really, I'm perfectly happy doing that. I'm not so much into travelling for touring around, but rather just to go places to chill and vibe with the place. To some, there might not be much point in that, I understand. I mean, fuck you, go to your fucking tourist spots, you wankers! *sigh* why am I even trying? I lost my "edge" a long time ago.

The problem is when extended family is involved and they think I'm bored and start getting antsy about not being good hosts. They don't know I'm happy as a pig in mud sitting in a wireless coffeeshop all afternoon. Or walking around all afternoon, maintaining my "practice".

Right, the practice. And that's another thing. They have no idea what this "practice" is; they are, after all, relatives of my parents. I really would like to find the adoption agency they got me from or get verification that they did, in fact, find me on a rock in Michigan.

It makes me wonder what my "practice" is, what's the point of this when everyone else is in the maelstrom of living life? What practical use am I to my cousin, harried as mothers are raising kids? To my aunt in Japan with whom I stayed for 4 months in 1992, who was doing really well back then but has since gone bankrupt and, I hear, is living in destitute conditions.

My parents mentioned she was "having trouble", but didn't say anything about losing everything, including her building and allowed to live there until she dies only by the kindness of the new owner, that she has plastic covering breaks in her windows and can't afford heat in the Winter.

What practical use is the monastery when it took so long to even have a reaction to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean? It's only in retrospect that I realize how little reaction we had. It took people in the surrounding community calling to donate money for the relief effort for us to realize we didn't have one.

I don't know what the monastery did. If anything, I wasn't in on it. I didn't feel a collective spark that a tragedy had occurred and we had to mobilize to do something. I didn't feel it individually, either, although I will from now on. As a private citizen, I'd feel helpless and detached, but at the monastery I should have been prodding them, "what are we/you doing?".

Instead, my "practice" is sitting in the morning, sitting in the evening, and walking around all day in peaceful mindfulness.

Fuck.