Hearth

If you look at the Curriculum Vitae on my History page, you may be able to interpolate my path to and from home. In case that is too much work, I will tell the story here.

This is a photo of my home, the isthmus of Madison, Wisconsin.

The first time I came to Madison to live was the summer of 1999. I had been conscripted by fate, my undergraduate advisor, and my own wanderlust to go to Nepal for an academic year, my third in college. In preparation for this journey, I was to study Tibetan language at an intensive summer language course in Madison. So, having left Wisconsin in 1996, I returned to study three years later.

Madison took me by surprise. Having grown up in Wisconsin, Madison was a place of relative disinterest to me. My parents had gone to grad school there and spoke fondly of it, but I had no real investment in it. In fact, it was a place of derision for me for a while. When my cohort from high school was divining its future at college, I steered clear of Madison as an option. In my mind, it was a place where high school went to die. In my mind, since the grade grubbers and "phoneys" were going to Madison, I would not. I had better things in mind. I was quite righteous in this conviction.

In the summer of 1999, I met my Tibetan teacher, the great Tsetan Chonjore who would give me the gift of language. I also met a spiritual brother, the joys of State Street, the horrors of Van Hise Hall, a future lover, and a crew of adventurers I still admire. I was hooked.

This is a photo of my home, the Kathmandu Valley.

As that summer closed, I reflected on the richness of life in Madison. It seemed utopic, but it had been brief and I had my eye on another prize: Nepal. After the adventures of a year in South Asia and the Himalaya, I plotted an unlikely return to Madison to live there for the summer before my final year at New College. That summer was similarly idyllic. I finished up the translation of a text I had worked on in Nepal and lived a light life with friends from the Himalayan field.

My last year at New College was somewhat discombobulating. As was expected by my overseas mentors Joe Elder, Pam Ross, and Manohari Upadhyaya, returning to the insular world of tiny liberal arts college from the colorful, impoverished, jovial, and garbage-strewn mountains of Nepal was jarring. It was hard to sympathize with my cohort having just seen and lived life in one the world's most malnourished nations. Thanks to the understanding and love of my friends, a circle not to be replicated anywhere, I think, I found a place to be alright, sardonic about my new-old environs, and safe to be out of phase. That year continued along in odd fashion alternating between excitement in my thesis writing and loving the wackiness of New College. It ended in tragedy as my advisor, for whom I thought I had done everything right, renounced me in the form of kicking me out of Buddhist Studies by refusing to write me a Graduate School recommendation.

Thus began the two happiest years of my life...

This is a photo of my home, Wisconsin.

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