If you want to attain intimate realization of Zen, first of all don’t seek it. What is attained by seeking has already fallen into intellection. The great treasury of Zen has always been open and clear; it has always been the source of power for all your actions. - Yuan wu (1063-1135)

A quote for today, whether or not it really means anything significant...meditate on this I will.

This weekend proved to be both good and bad. I had fun this weekend, going out to breakfast at Cutty Sark, wandering around looking at boats. That was fun. I also learned to cast net this weekend, that was fun. I know I have this problem with killing animals and such, but at least it was fun to learn how to cast net. Maybe by doing so, I'll start getting into the whole fishing thing. That would make Greg happy, and then we will have something more in common that we can enjoy together.

We were going to go sailing this weekend, but the wind kicked up too much. It might have been nice to, but sometimes you have to cut your losses while you can (discretion is, after all, the better part of valor).

Greg and I ended up having a huge blowout this weekend over stupid, piddly stuff. I have to admit that it was more my fault than his. I guess I just reached a culminating point and had to get it off of my chest. I have to admit that I chose a poor forum for it, considering Marcus was there. I should apologize to Greg for that one. But, let's just put that behind us for now and move on to bigger and better things.

I can't say that I'm really looking forward to going to RI in October. I don't think I'm really looking forward to staying in the Navy, period, but it is a career, and it is going to provide a retirement check. All I have to say is that if they offer the 15 year retirement again, I'm going to put in my paperwork for it. I really, really need to get out of this canoe club. What I really want to do is start writing. For some reason I have this hang-up and can't get myself kick-started in writing. I really should, because it is the career I would most like to do. I could travel and write my travel off as a business expense if I wrote about it. Being a travel writer, now that would be fun. Traveling around Europe, the US, Canada and many other places and writing about it. What I would really like to do is DO things--fishing on a commercial fishing boat, jumping with fire-jumpers in Montana to put out wildfires, walk along the edge of a live volcano with geologists, all kinds of stuff like that, and then write about it. I think that is what I've always dreamed of, although I don't exactly know what I need to do to get to that point. Well, first of all, I guess I have to write--that's a good starting point.

Nevertheless, I am going to try not to be too depressed today with everything that is going on around here, and all I can think about is transferring and going somewhere else (where the misery will still be there, lurking around the corner waiting to pounce on me at the next location). The misery, I believe, most unfortunately, too, is of my own creation. It is in my mind, a part of my mind, just waiting to make me miserable because I'm not doing what I think I should be doing. I guess in reality I am too negative, I've known it all along. The negativity comes from not doing what I want to do, and instead doing what everyone else tells me to do. I feel fettered, shackled down like some farm animal being exploited by the Navy until I am ready to put out to pasture. The only problem is that when I'm finally put out to pasture, I won't be worth anything and all those dreams and desires and fantasies that are there in my mind just waiting for me to explore will be put out to pasture with me, and there they will die with me. It is so bleak and so dismal. It drives me to want to scream as loud as I can, to find a way to get away from this place. I believe it is that that makes me negative, I can't tow the party line because I know that the place it will lead me to is a place I don't want to go--that pasture where my hopes and desires and me all die some pitiful death, another victim of the system. I don't want that, have never wanted that. Charting new worlds, whether they be physical or worlds of the mind, that's what I want to do. To explore, to learn and to grow--that's the rub, as Shakespeare would say. Enough said on that.

I'm going to quit for now, I've been rambling, and I need to get some work done.