So I’ve moved into a new place, and I’ve been trying to get some kind of internet connection happening but apart from a dowsing rod made from CAT 5 cable and some twigs or a sizable bribe I’m no closer to that goal. This is why you haven’t been seeing any updates. That and well, other things, but primarily it’s because I have no reliable and convenient port into this great network of tubes. Needless to say, I’m still doing the project, Buddhism was a success, Paganism not so much, and I’m really looking forward to Jainism in July. Something about asceticism is really appealing to me which is why I think Buddhism went down so well.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop near my new place right now, trying to download some TV shows, and catching up on all those pieces of internet that are not easily accessible via my iPhone. Across from me two gentlemen are sitting at a table and going through what look like reiki movements. Waving and shaping the air, one of them folding, molding and gently passing something to the other, who receives it in kind and breathes it in. It’s called energy healing, touching without touching, convincing the mind and the body to to settle, concentrate, think about light, think about compassion, and breathe. It wouldn’t matter if there were something passing between them, the physical and mental components of the act would be enough to have some effect. The is something the Buddha understood, you give the mind half a chance and it will unjumble itself, defrag, untangle, relax. No one’s going to get tense if you give them your undivided attention and engage in an act of kindness. Well, mostly no one.

His friend has left now, and he is giving a demo to the man sitting next to me. He does this all the time, an otherwise unremarkable looking young Caucasian man, carrying on the technique of his teacher. Once that guy has left he moves on to me, and trying to be an ambassador to this strange unknown country, of course I say yes. He waves his hands, and I keep one eye open to watch the movements and try to correlate that with what I feel in my cupped palms.

While this is happening I am reminded of a girl in my high school biology class. She had sensitive hands. She could detect the residual heat of objects with her fingertips- pens, loose change, things like that. When my teacher heard about this he wanted to see her in action, so we set up a line of quarters, and while her back was turned one of us would touch a coin, and she would touch each in turn and point out the correct coin every time. She could even do it when her fingers were floating above the coins, and even when we didn’t quite touch them ourselves. And when, at the teacher’s insistance, we didn’t touch any of them, hoping perhaps to catch her bluff, she would pass her fingers over the coins and then look at us in consternation, catching us instead.

His name is Davin, and as he asks me to imagine golden light collecting in my hands as he finishes waving into them, I wonder if something like that is happening now. Is some ancient, prehistoric part of my brain waking up, like a rickety old trap in a temple full of relics, activated by a presure plate of mystery and myth, forcing me to become receptive? I ask the question beause I don’t believe that anything out of the ordinary is happening in these exercises. I have come to understand that no matter how much I immerse myself in this, no matter how much I give in to all of this, I will only ever see a man waving his hands at me.

But despite that, my hands get warm and begin to tingle, and I imagine a golden light, pouring from me and into every other living thing.