I also remember a line from a song by Smog [Bill Callahan], which seems to describe the experience of a town-dweller moving to the country: "I was raised in a pit of snakes/Blink your eyes - I was raised on cake."

I feel that Nagai Kafu was a writer who cold stitch together apparently meaningless moments like these into a lyrical whole, and has enhanced my ability to do the same with my own life.

People may wish to say that the thing that is in conflict with my creativity is not Buddhism - that's fine.

I went on a meditation retreat. In 10 or so days, I spent about a hundred hours meditating, observing 'noble silence' the whole time, and so on. This was an interesting experience, which has had some beneficial effects for me.

I've drifted in and out of vegetarianism for years.

To me the seventies represent normality, and, of course, it is a normality that is now anachronistic.

In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.