Before this gets too out of date, I am posting the text. I need a lot of upload time on china’s bandwidth to get the pictures up and the display plug-in working, so I’ll likely just upload everything when I get to Japan. but here is the reading… :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I left Wudangshan this morning and am now on the train to Shanghai. My leaving felt… curious; as we pulled away from the school I felt some pangs of loss at the knowledge of how to navigate these streets becoming unneeded, regret that I would not be able to prove my tough skin 1000 times a day with the sights I was passing. It felt very strange, like perhaps, having given myself permission to feel how I felt about China that it no longer held sway or power over me. Maybe like the Buddhist distinction between suffering and pain. Seeing distressing things, I was able to say to myself, “There is one of those things I don’t like to be exposed to” instead of “there’s an onslaught of those things that I have to force myself to enjoy or approve of if I want to think of myself as a good person”. The thing is the same, but my self-honesty has moved me out of a suffering place, and thus I can begin to appreciate the appreciable in Wudangshan and China in general. I don’t think this means I’m leaving too soon, but I do think it has taught me a valuable lesson about “wherever you go, there you are” and “the grass is greener on the other side” and other clichés of travel.
I also think this shift was helped by my visit to Wudang Mountain yesterday (more…)