EMei Shan, Day 3 -- Descending written mostly on the bus ride home, October 3, Mid-Autumn Day Woke up at 6 to the chants of monks, resonance of prayer gongs and pungence of ceremonial, sweet, smoky-sick incense below us. Walked the grounds with my camera after a while of laying in bed awake. This mountain is most beautiful to me when misted at daybreak. I came back and, within the temple, in the prayer hall under where I had slept, I knelt before the Buddha effigy's serene golden-plaque face and offered prayer. Not out of new religious conviction, but from renewed devotion to and recognition of natural, intuitive, semi-destined experiences, those like I'd felt continuously all trip. The ceremony was an excuse, a chance for supplication to all the things that I make happen or that
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