The scribe at work

Lifetimes have been spent by Armando engaged in this work of letter copying. I have a memory from another century of him dressed in a long brown velvet robe and four cornered hat, decorated with gold braid, standing at a candlelit podium in a dank European basement full of musty books, writing, writing, writing for hours, days, months, years, decades on end. I was a small creature in a dark corner on the floor, looking up, watching him. He was kind to me. I was his only friend and companion in that dim existence.

In 1999,  when we traveled to Tibet, we stood in another dank, musty room full of books where a bald headed monk dressed in crimson sat in the light of a lone beam streaming into the darkness, writing, writing, writing - copying book after book after book for lifetimes. Armando and I both immediately felt a recognition of the state, and a strange sense of comfort and being very much at home.

Today, sitting with him as the light streams in the window and he works to regain his relationship with letters and to train his left hand to do what he once did with his right, once again he sits writing, writing, writing with a passion and dedication known to few.

Old habits are hard to break.