Letter to Mark

Dear Mark,
In the book Lost in Place I found it incredibly interesting how you as a kid did the thing you loved and wanted to become while not caring about anyone else’s opinion about you as a person. I always wondered what your parents thought though, did they look down on you and did you get in trouble by them consistently because of the crazy things you were doing in order to become a Zen Monk? I can definitely relate to you and your passion, because I myself have something that I loved and cherish even though I am growing older. I’m a bboy from Virginia; I’ve been dancing for about 5 years now. I fell in love with it in my early years as a teenager. My parents would tell me to stop and focus on school, I myself wanted to drop out of high school because I thought that school was just getting in the way of my goal on becoming an international bboy.
I loved how you went from a young kid doing silly things in order for you to achieve your goal as a Monk to becoming a young man who leaves those silly things behind and goes to college. The fact that you showed how your life turned out the way it is by doing things that you would have never expected when you were younger was really interesting to read. Did you really want to leave on becoming a monk though? What made you just forget it all about it? I myself can’t ever think about leaving the culture of bboying, I just love it too much. Is there something else that you’re extremely passionate about right now? Are you happy on how the things turned out for you in life?
In my life, I haven’t had to experience on losing someone that I used to be friends with yet. Although I don’t know how it feels, I have an idea on what I might feel. In your book, you get a call telling you that your former friend Michael passed away in a car accident. I want to know what your first thought about that incident were. Did you cry? Did you remember the things that you guys used to do together? I felt that in the book you didn’t really put that much emotion into it. Was it because you guys didn’t keep in touch and so much time has passed in both of your lives that the bond that you guys once had together wasn’t strong anymore?