About

I’ve spent most of my life following curiosity wherever it led: Japanese at seventeen, a camera since my teens, two decades of martial arts, days of silence in a Thai forest monastery, twenty years of writing for a living.

I started learning Japanese at seventeen, then flew to Japan for the first time the same year. I’ve been going back ever since – for a martial art I trained in for a decade, for a honeymoon, and for photographs.

The martial arts stayed the longest: Wing Chun at fifteen, then Bujinkan Taijutsu, and five years of Tony Blauer’s SPEAR system. And in Udon Thani, a friend who became a Thai forest monk, whom I kept going back to. Three ten-day silences, spread across nine years. Twelve of the writing years were about technology, which had me flown around Asia some sixty times to report on it.

What looked like disparate paths turned out to be ways of pursuing the same search for beauty and understanding.

This site gathers the questions, stories, and lessons I’ve collected along the way. It’s an unfolding letter, written for me and for two future readers who call me father.