Poetry. In July, 2010, Zen priest Norman Fischer travelled to Kyoto to visit temples and meet with fellow practitioners. A CRAZY LIFE OF TEARS is a poetic journal of that trip. Fischer's poetry examines what it means to sit at the nexus of the past, present and future and links questions of being with vivid details of daily life. (It's also sometimes very funny.) Fischer seeks to find a balance between past traditions (from the east) and new understandings (in the west). ESCAPE THIS CRAZY LIFE OF TEARS stages a beautiful dialogue between inner thoughts and outward experiences that carefully observes the self, and opens an imaginative space in which to examine it.