I have been trying to plan ahead with my creative endeavours and have discovered to my amazement that I’m booked up till mid next year. The residency takes up the remainder of 2008 and the “Return” project the first half of 2009 a project initiated by Caitlin Nunn for the Big West festival 2009 for her Phd. Myself and other Vietnamese-Australian artists will be devising artistic works responding to multi generational interviews about “Vietnamese-ness” and “Australian-ness”.

Finally the Melbourne City Sangha (for lack of a better name so far) has met and trying to establish a regular pattern of meeting on Sunday afternoons. We are Thich Nhat Hanh followers so to speak, and meditate with the Melbourne Zen group for an hour then meet separately to discuss the dharma through readings in the second hour. We met last Sunday and I was moved almost to tears during reciting the Five Mindfulness Trainings- I felt it had been so long since I had engaged in the practice truly (it’s been a year since I was in Vietnam). The most poignant thing I took away from the dharma discussion that afternoon was to smile at my negative habit energies. When I do this, it provides a shift in me and again almost makes me cry although whether with joy, relief or release of sorrow it’s hard to tell.