Who knew that the first thing I’d publish after spending three months meditating would be a blog about mice–the kind that haunt kitchens and the lesser known kind that skitter about in the mind? You can read that blog post here. If I hadn’t accidentally deleted the picture I took on my iPhone of one of the mice before I released it, I’d post the pic, too. But the picture vanished, just as the mice seem to have vanished from my house since I posted that blog!
Who knew, also, that the German rights to Fire Monks would be sold while I was at Tassajara, spending my days on a meditation cushion (or vacuuming the plunges in the bathhouse, or training to handle a fire hose–photo below)? Feuern Mönche will be published by Theseus Verlag, who put out the German edition of Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
And who knew that the book would be named one of the best books of 2011, alongside Bossypants and Charles Dickens: A Life?
Life is full of surprises. We say this, and sometimes we see how very true it is.
