Euston, I want some chocolate.

So the vacation was great. And yes, I did pretty good with the mindfulness bit.

Until I got to Oxford Street.

Now, I’m a fool for the city in a very Foghatian sense. I was born and raised in a city. Moving to the sticks was brutal. Still is. Walking down a busy street at full speed really puts me in my element. But Oxford Street? Hmm. Let’s see, Oxford Street is…

Oxford Street is fucked up.

Fuh-uh-uh-uh-uh-ucked UP!

Too many tourists. Too many tourist shops. Too many hawkers. Even the pubs are hideously over commercialized. And that many people shouting gimme, gimme, gimme always manages to put me in a bad frame of mind.

So, I lost my cool. I wasn’t loud about it. It was more of a seething. I imagine that my face resembled that of the Hulk just before he snaps.

I ended up taking a break by getting acupuncture. Now I have a problem with needles so acupuncture as relaxation is just not me but I was having issues with my shoulder and the acupuncture place looked peaceful. And it was. And I didn’t feel the needles at all. Cupping on the other hand….

Anyway, back out into the street I went and I was slightly better. At least my shoulder didn’t hurt.

What I had said previously about new sights, sounds, smells and experiences – that was wonderful. I’m a foodie and have been since I had to learn to cook for myself as a child. London is a great place for food. Whether your want immaculately prepared roast beef, a creamy Korma or just some perfectly fried fish you can get it there.

My big surprise food-wise? Mark & Spencer’s Food Stores. They had one in the tube station near our hotel so the wife and I stopped there every night on our way home. Try to imagine if 7-11 served nothing but incredible food. I fell in love with these Swiss Roll/Ho-Ho like items that were made with better chocolate and came in various fruit flavors. And the cloudy apple soda. And the chocolate covered shortbread. And the coconut bars. THE COCONUT BARS!!!! I’d move into Euston Tube Station just to be near them.

I can always tell how much I like a place by how much I miss the food when I’m gone. I still long for food from home. Abalone from The Old Clam House. A big plate of Kuleto’s risotto. The scallopine with the tortellini from Little Henry’s. When we were in Paris, it was those waffles with Nutella. Or those mutant hot dogs on baguettes with Camembert. Or the curried cuttlefish from the Vietnamese place. Now I can add a coconut bar with a cloudy apple soda to my list.

And mushy peas. Yes, I finally learned to love those. Not the mint ones, though.

And so it appears that my practice fell without my realizing it. Sure, I was on a very even, happy keel – minus Oxford Street – but I lusted after and gave into my lust for food there. The middle path isn’t just handling bad times moderately. It’s handling the good times the same way.

Oh well. At least failure is tasty.

Thank You for Calling Roshi Travel. How Will You Help You?

So the wife and I are finally getting a vacation. We take at least a couple of trips regularly but for us, a vacation involves a couple of things.

• No drives over three hours
• Just us on the trip
• No visiting family members

Keeping those things in mind, we haven’t had a real vacation since a cruise three years ago.

So tomorrow we’re heading off to London for a week. This is something we’ve been looking forward to for a while now. I’ve done quite a bit of traveling as I used to be a travel agent. My wife has done some but not a lot. Interestingly, I’ve never been to London. I’ve been to both Scotland and Ireland but never England – unless you count layovers at Heathrow (I do not). The only time she’s been to Europe was our belated honeymoon to Paris so this is going to be a nice bit of exploring for both of us.

How will this fit into practice? Well, I could easily use this as an excuse to blow off practice altogether for a week but really I see vacations as condensed practice opportunities.

The great thing about traveling is the barrage of new experiences, new smells, new sounds, new flavors all coming at you, rapid fire. How one handles those sensations is, to me, what one’s practice should be about. There’s no pillow. No statue. No opportunity to sit. You simply move and experience and – hopefully – remain mindful through it all.

And in a city like London, if you do manage to remain truly mindful you get to absorb the buildup of over a thousand years of people’s lives and loves and works. Nice stuff if you can do it right.

Of course, I could be very wrong about this. This could just be the buildup of my own preconceptions of the small but shiny new insights that I believe I have acquired.

Perhaps one-on-one travels with a Roshi might be a nice way to practice.

We do have free net access in the hotel room. Perhaps I’ll write a blog entry every day while I’m there.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

P.S.

Thanks to “Irrepressible Angst”, my unofficial blogging muse. When I go a long time without posting, it’s due to my laziness. So far, whenever I start again, it’s due to her prodding.