Sitting on Kudle Beach and reading the odd news update from Canada’s recent weather can only muster up vague images in my mind about what ‘winter consciousness’ must feel like. I feel immense incongruence between the idea of riding my track bike down through the College Street slush in Toronto and the bubbling foam from a broken wave tickling my bum. Bum-bubbles!

It’s fascinating to be in a place so different from the rest of India – you would almost think you weren’t here if you didn’t make frequent trips into town. White folks from all over the world flock here in small numbers every year to escape reality, find pieces of it, and sometimes just show up for a nice swim. Each morning a number of folks would set up on the beach and run through their yoga practice. Once, we saw two bulls fighting near the end of their two hour epic battle for beach supremacy.

Time slowed to a crawl and most of it was spent swimming, staring out in to the ocean, reading, eating, and as much tai chi as one can muster up on the sand. Laura and I shared a kingfish sizzler on Christmas, the closest thing to turkey and gravy you could get on the beach. Our good friend Jake Wadland arrived on New Year’s Eve and we spent a few hours walking up and down the beach and being outrageously silly.

We arrived last night in Hampi, essentially the ruins of ancient empire strewed out amongst massive boulders. It was great to be back on the road again and we all got our bones rightly rattled by the eight hour bus ride, but I’ve reached a point in the trip where I’m not entirely excited about moving too quickly, seeing more sights, and driving an agenda. We have about a month left and some really great things still left to do, but I’m exceedingly jacked about transmuting the energy, ideas, stories, writing, and questions produced along the way into and with all of you.

I hope to be in Hamilton with my dad for the spring and summer revising and completing the better part of a ‘book’ I wrote here on my experiences in learning and healing through an epistemology of love. I will know in March if I’m accepted to SFU for a PhD in Philosophy of Education, after which Laura and I will figure out what the next few years of our lives might look like. Most importantly, I will need a job of some sort. Tutoring, consulting, gardening, cleaning, back rubbing, writing, ‘facilitating’…if you see anything juicy, let me know.

with coconut chutney love

sean