Day Fourteen.

And it ends. As swiftly as it had come, it goes now into a memory, into the past.

It had occurred to me that there is a long stretch of silence between Day 4 and Day 14. What happened? Well, a whole lot, and perhaps, I think, not much worth mentioning. The ending of my grandfather came as a blow to my vacation, and put a blot right in the middle of my plans. My mood changed and I no longer had any desire to write anything. It was indeed with great effort that I moved on and that I find myself writing again. Even now the sadness has not fully faded away, and there may never be closure. I can think when I try not to think of what's gone and missed.

As I had said, it ends here. Without regret? I do not know; can anyone say that with certainty? There were days when I was so busy I had no knowledge of time passing. Then there were days when I did absolutely nothing, just passing the afternoon with sleep and spending hours resting on my chair. Now when I think back on this I feel it was never a waste. Be it resting or busying about, I spent those days quite well. I cannot recall everything that happened in the past ten days, but I will attempt to update what I did in a quick summary.

Right after the death I spent two days in mourning. That night friends of the family came over to see us. That was the day of my last blog entry. I attempted to write something but I fell apart midway through. I had not cried in a very long time, but that night everything came out. The next day I went out for a lunch with Ruth, and that evening we went for the temple to do a service. I was holding up fine that day until I saw all those people there with their sympathies, and that brought tears into my eyes. After the service ended they all congregated outside the temple and talked. I stood a fair distance away by myself, looking at the ground. The day after I was supposed to meet up with Alex, but I cancelled because some family friends came from Montreal. They were really surprised to see my physical change. I'm getting used to the compliments now, but it's always nice to hear them. Then came Saturday, MMA day. We spent half the class on Jiu-Jitsu and the other half on kickboxing. I didn't learn that much from the former, but during the latter half I picked up a lot of tips. I felt quite happy about myself and my progress.

Much of the next week was spent dazing off into space. Perhaps I needed that. At what other time can I truly do nothing? On Wednesday we had more MMA, but there was hardly anyone there, so we just worked on arm-triangle escapes. The next day Alex, Ruth, my brother, and I planned a trip to the Warsaw Caves in Warsaw, Ontario. This was one of the best adventures I've ever been on! We saw so much: from giant ball-shaped mushrooms, to bats, to a cross-dressing Asian man. When we arrived it was too late to buy firewood from the camp officials, so we had to drive into town to find a convenience store. We tried several with no luck. Finally we came to one with an Asian man who's face was completely white with makeup and wore red lipstick. He looked like a Geisha. He sold us enough firewood to last the night. Camping was a lot of fun. We ate barbecue, roasted marshmallows, and acted like a bunch of goofballs. When we snuffed the fire and everyone crawled into their tents I stayed outside by myself with a flashlight. I wrote this on my book:

I cannot see the stars anymore.
In this place everything is quiet; absolutely quiet.
And I cannot see anything outside my tiny pool of light.
The human body is such an impressive machine.
It can exist so far from home and still survive.
With whatever food or water it can gather,
it continues to live
hundreds of miles from home.

The sleep that night was broken. I was awoken by sudden sounds in the night, and the uncomfortable position my body was in inside that tent. Several times I would awake to check if my brother was okay and to double-check things I kept inside the tent. The next morning we packed all our belongings and headed for the caves. The Warsaw Caves were created by an enormous glacier receding away 12,000 years ago. As it melted it left behind a giant body of water, and there was evidence of its existence by the little "kettles" left behind on the rocks. Kettles are perfectly cylindrical holes drilled into the rock. They range from a several inches in diameter to about a metre (if i'm not mistaken). They were created by eddies in the ancient river that flowed here. The eddies trapped bits of rock and sand, and as they spun, they slowly drilled away the rock underneath, creating these deep holes. There were many of these kettles we saw on our journey. I noted that this whole forest was filled with moss and limestone rock. The ground rises up and falls down regularly, often into crevices. Some of these crevices lead deep under ground: these are the caves. Using clip-on lights on our caps, we crawled into these caves to explore. They were dark, cramped, cold, and wet. The space inside was so narrow and was arranged in awkward angles, so one had to always maneuver in such a way to fit between the walls. One could not afford to be claustrophobic. Inside the caves it was so dark. But we did see a bat at one point! It was so small and it was shaking in fear. We went through about 5 caves, and when we had enough we hiked the area. Jumping over cracks, climbing hills, skipping stones, examining animal droppings, slipping on rocks, finding mushrooms, we had the greatest time ever! But in the end I think it was the people that made the adventure. If it wasn't for Alex, Ruth, and Pavanth I don't think this trip would be what it was.

On Wednesday I have to go back to work. I don't feel sad about this. I don't dread this. Perhaps what I feel now is a sense of satisfaction; so much so that fear and anxiety is quelled. Hmm, if there's one lesson I learned from these two weeks off it's this: no matter how much time you have, you cannot accomplish everything you want. There will always be a million things unaccomplished. And now, where do I stand? I think I feel more sedated and pensive now. I find myself just sitting and being in silence. I hesitate to use the phrase at peace, because I don't know if my mind is all that peaceful. There are a dozen more things I want to do, but I need to be at a better place with my life to do all of it. We'll see. Thank you for reading.