Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Zero jetlag. I attribute it to the type of insomnia I had. It was even a bit surreal. I was expecting to feel something, as I always do on long international flights; as just about everyone feels after long international flights.

But I arrived at night in New Jersey last Tuesday, got to sleep at a reasonable hour, got a full night's sleep, got up at a reasonable hour, and since then not a hint of jetlag, no grogginess, no crashing, not even a sudden pang of tiredness at an odd time of day.

In fact, I've been sleeping totally normally without any hint of insomnia, either. And I've continued normal sleeping hours, which is odd. Usually when I'm here, I maintain night owl hours and go to sleep in the wee hours and wake up pretty late.

It wasn't promising on the flights, either. I may have gotten a couple hours of sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but mostly it was just twilight fading in and out. I expected not being able to sleep on the flights, since I also couldn't sleep on the bus to Kaohsiung several weeks ago.

And it was a long flight with three legs of flying – first to Tokyo, then to San Francisco (including a burrito run to the Mission District), then to Newark.

TUESDAY, JUNE 16 - Mission St. @ 24th. The plan was to buy a bunch of burritos from my favorite taquerias (San Jose (to the right in the pic), El Farolito, Cancun, Pancho Villa) down Mission St. to 16th St. and take them to New Jersey and stick them in the freezer.

10:08 a.m. - Took the BART from the airport to 24th St. station, and then back to the airport from 16th St. station. When I first arrived in the Bay Area in 1993 I thought BART with its cloth covered seats and carpeting was luxurious compared to the New York subway. Now they're just disgusting and the smell was unbelievable.

2:21 p.m. - Flying to New Jersey with a backpack stash of contraband burritos. Yo necessiiito mi burriiiitos.

Otherwise, I'm glad to be in the U.S. Maybe the sleep thing is telling me to get the hell out of Taiwan. On the other hand, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing here, I have no place with these people, just as I have no place with family in Kaohsiung. And as I've scrapped moving to Kaohsiung, I don't see any reason to move back here. And I'm not looking forward to going back to Taiwan. Being in Taiwan was too hard. Existing is hard enough for me, add all that and that's pushing my mental health to the limit.

I haven't been sitting. Insomnia finally stopped morning sitting a few days before I left Taiwan, and since then I've stopped. So this is now the longest time I haven't done morning sitting since I left the monastery.

I'm taking a break. Maybe it was getting to be too much pressure to get something out of it. Maybe it was making me complacent because achieving this routine made me unconsciously think I didn't have to maintain the practice throughout the rest of the day. I don't know.

I don't know. I was thinking of visiting Blue Cliff Monastery in Upstate N.Y. while I was here. Blue Cliff opened last year, I think, after the Plum Village branch in Vermont closed down (I've thought before of visiting the Vermont center). I recently saw photos on the Blue Cliff site and some of the monks I was closest to at Deer Park are probably at Blue Cliff now. But I don't know if I'll be able to fit a visit in. I really should.

I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations again, realizing that happiness doesn't come from external circumstances. I know I can be happy right now, I can choose to be happy. I'm just choosing not to. The reasons why I'm choosing not to are a little more complicated. I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations to make sure they still work, although I still want to be unhappy.

Which is odd because I know the happiness is right here. Hm.