I wonder if it's suicide that I'm thinking I need to get out of my system before I can commit to the monastic path. In my mind, ordination necessarily means absolutely no more thoughts in that direction. If that's the case, good luck. It makes sense, though.

Maybe one more real attempt, fail, and then go to the root monastery satisfied that I did all I could. But I've been down this road before, and I know it doesn't work like that, so maybe I should change it to: one more real attempt, fail, and then go to the root monastery miserable, still not wanting to continue in this particular life. Bleah.

Thoughts of suicide make me happy, though. They make me feel solid. They lift my spirits up and make me dance the cha-cha. And I can be unself-conscious writing about it because we all know my suicides are fake.

So I go back to New Jersey in July. August comes and TNH's North American speaking tour begins in Massachussetts. I hop on a bus to New England, but instead of meeting up with the community (having no plans to meet up with them in the first place), I go directly to Cape Cod and implement the old San Francisco plan. No thought, just immediate execution as soon as I get there and night falls.

Sounds good, it's now officially an option.