Small lotus outline on the inner forearm

The pond behind the kitchen froze again last night, so Brother Tenzin broke the ice with a ladle before dawn to let the goats drink. I am writing this at the sill while the others chant, my ink pot balanced on a folded sutra so it does not slide.

You asked whether I have settled. I have not, but I have stopped counting the days, which the abbot says is the first honest step. Last week he gave me the blistered wooden board by the shrine door, the one the damp has been eating for years, and told me to repaint the lotus on it. I tried with a brush and coloured pigment. He looked at it for a long time and said the petals were fighting each other. Then he took my brush away, handed me a fine steel nib and black ink, and told me to draw the flower in one unbroken line with no shading at all. Shadow, he said, is for people who doubt the shape.

So I began again. My first attempts were crooked and heavy. I lifted the nib too often and the petals came out like bad stitching. By the sixth evening my hand ached and my lamp was nearly dry, but the outline finally closed where it should, a rounded centre with petals opening outward one after another, each edge sharp against the wood.

The abbot ran his thumb over it this morning and said nothing, which from him is a blessing. Then he asked what the pond does every spring. I did not know how to answer. Mud at the edge, cold water above it, and still a flower comes up clean. I think he wanted me to see that the line and the mud are the same work. Write to me soon and tell me whether the apricots came in.

Your nephew, Sonam