tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-205517602024-03-13T20:18:11.060-07:00Nowick Gray's Travel BlogWords in Motion: Travel Writings and Other Passing ReflectionsUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-78069255493952924862015-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:002015-11-23T12:52:31.452-08:00Simple and Free<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(<em>from my journal, April 2015</em>)<br />
<br />
I enjoyed five minutes of fame, reading at the Creative Nonfiction Collective Conference open mic at the library downtown, before attending the opening event at Open Space, and blending with the masses of other writers, all jostling between our day jobs to earn a ray of public acclaim, or even bare acknowledgement, to validate the hours, months, decades, lifetimes of struggle to bring words into pleasing arrangements, and place them before the open maw of the reading public. Gatekeeper teeth barring entry, however, to all but the one percent who are lucky, talented, connected or charismatic enough to chance upon the secret access code.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I continue… simple and free, before taxes, before death, before Facebook. I once worshipped the improvisational license of the Beats, and now find it characterized in the <a href="http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2015/04/23/if-you-build-it-they-will-come-the-may-issue-preview/">literary press</a> as “suffer[ing] from the hectic spasmodic urgency of Beat sentimentality.” So I take that impulse to the streets, as it were, jamming with the gang in the well-equipped garage, and call it a hobby: simple and free.<br />
<br />
Only one editing job done in the last two weeks: a worrisome trend, if I want to be rich and busy, but I don’t. I’d rather keep life… simple and free. So I continue chipping away at the reconstruction of a flawed first novel, making way in its turn for the magnum opus, <a href="http://hyperlife.net/life/index.htm">HyperLife</a>, a sprawling chronicle which, in typical fashion, straddles the unpopular gulf between genres, nay whole universes of book categorization, <a href="http://hyperlife.net/prefaces/fiction.htm">fiction and nonfiction</a>. Which messes even with the age-old linearity of narrative, by virtue of the hyper-, that virus in our collective present day which sends us scurrying from snippet to tweet, from post to soundbite, from share to like, hopping tabs of inboxes and subsidiary apps, tweaking profiles and vetting comments, jostling for a dollop of the pie, jostling ever faster, vibrating till the waves of collective activity mount in tidal force, fractally compounding, leaping in quantum flux to a singularity that pins itself to the end of the current breath, the moment at hand: simple and free.<br />
<br />
In this enterprise, by doing, I am undoing. Clearing the decks, stowing all cargo below, so that what is left to do is simply to arrange the chairs, for a sunset concerto, in the middle of the ocean, becalmed, content.<br />
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-56771222061836847502015-08-23T17:52:00.000-07:002015-08-24T10:07:22.653-07:00Conference and Kootenays Tour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<h4>
Breakdown and Reconnection</h4>
From the beginning of the idea of the writing conference--<a href="http://www.whenwordscollide.org/">When Worlds Collide</a>, in Calgary--I resisted. Having just arrived from a <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.ca/">trip overseas</a>, I wanted only to settle into a comfort zone at home, get into a writing routine. I looked forward to the relaxing days of August, the last opportunities for sunning and swimming. But <a href="http://www.fiveriverspublishing.com/">my publisher</a> suggested it might be a good chance to get more exposure, by doing some readings and sitting on panels.<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="Argenta" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/P1020995 (800x600).jpg" height="261" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />I could visit my daughter who lived in Nelson, halfway to Calgary, and connect with old friends who invited me to stay with them and visit. I could arrange a reading in Nelson at the Open Mic, Sunday evening in the park. A friend in Victoria counseled, "Why not do it all?" Finally I set out, making the leap. <br />
<br />
Deja vus came thick and fast: the smells of the mountain air in the morning, the sight of faces from fifteen years ago, some aged, some looking the same. I suppose by now I have lived away from there for long enough to have assumed a new identity, from which it is now possible to reconnect, affirming the old bonds of friendship and shared experience. <br />
<br />
Bound for an alpine hike with my daughter, we headed up to Kokanee Glacier on a steep gravel road, hottest day of the year. I neglected to monitor the car's temperature gauge. The clutch started going clunky, then quit altogether, as steam rose from under the hood. I stopped the car, waited a while, tested the clutch pedal, tried again. The clutch worked now, but we thought it best to park there and let the engine cool, take a short hike and then reassess. <br />
<br />
On returning to the car, I added a liter or two of water to the radiator, and found that the car would now run, so drove a little way further to turn around. Heading down again, the engine suddenly quit, the warning light on. Now it was really cooked. I pulled over to the side and parked. Sent a passing car down to call for a tow truck. Waited an hour and a half with none arriving, so hitched down to phone, and found that the tow operator wouldn't come without a direct call from us. Now it could be arranged.<br />
<br />
Was this result, the possible death of my car, what was prefigured in my gut resistance to the trip? Should I have listened to the gut instead of the "should" in going through with the plan anyway? <br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="car tow" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/P1020990 (800x600).jpg" height="262" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" /> The lesson ties in with the message of Barbara Geiger in a conference workshop. It is all worth it in the end, but you have to make the effort. The first stage, where you are, might show your talent, but it won't get you where you need to go. That comes from, first, realizing the need to make your weaknesses stronger. You have to burn out and stall first, get towed to a competent mechanic, and start with a new timing belt and clutch, before the journey can be resumed. <br />
<br />
<h4>
On Being a Public Figure</h4>
<img align="left" alt="WWC" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/launch.jpg" height="193" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="320" /> Attending a conference, doing readings, sitting on panels, visiting and staying with old friends and reaching out to make new ones... these are the activities of a public persona. Out of the comfort zone of the private writing space, into the public eye, putting on a public face. <br />
<br />
Having a voice--like everyone--and using it. Standing up and asking a question in a workshop; offering insights from experience, on a panel; sharing crafted words, in a reading; sharing interests with companions of the moment.<br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="book launch" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/launchpic2.jpg" height="320" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="240" /> Learning from everyone. Not in competition--though you are--nor commiserating, so much as celebrating the passion, whether hobby or career, and inspiring each to trust that voice. If this is our choice in stepping out of our comfort zone, we enter at any point, not to be "good" or point to another as "bad" for saying or not saying anything, but to write, and to work harder, for that audience to grow.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://barbarageiger.me/">Barbara Geiger</a> says it takes ten years from the Aha! moment, where you recognize the need for revision, the switch to making the reader's experience the priority; taking the craft seriously and committing to rework and prune. That is the period of growth, on the writer's journey--the laborious yet liberating process of addressing your weaknesses. <br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="rainbow" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/P1030038 (800x600).jpg" height="262" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />This is also, by the way, the protagonist's story: at the beginning of struggle, awaking to the need to change. From there, escalating tension--like the raindrops and thunder, now as I type in my tent, in the foothills of southern Alberta. <br />
<br />
As the thunder builds; the hum of the highway reminds there's another option: keep driving. Lightning flashes across the sky. The thunder rolls. The traffic swishes by. <br />
<br />
The thunder builds. There is a lightness in the darkening dusk. I sit cozy in my synthetic shelter, swaddled in nylon, down, blanket, sleeping pads. A comfort zone of the moment, in transit. A private time to reflect, before engaging in the world again. Landing in a new place, even if it's an old place, the other side of the leap.<br />
<br />
<img alt="prairie clouds" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/conf/P1030037 (800x600).jpg" height="600" width="800" /></div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-67821557394647315552015-04-13T15:24:00.000-07:002015-04-21T16:25:20.087-07:00Thailand Vigil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."</i> <br /><i>~ Marcel Proust</i></div>
<br />
A journal's refrain: "Meanwhile, I continue..." <br />
<br />
Reading in the <em>Tibetan Book of Living and Dying</em>, I reflect: after death, do I still reserve the right, on some hidden stage, to pronounce such effrontery against the cosmic will of dissolution and recombination, in face of the irrelevance of the very concept I?<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="walk on water" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blogpix/walk on water.jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />I return to this moment, this seat under the red and black rebel flags of the Freeway Bar, here on this pristine beach where it is possible to walk on water. <br />
<br />
Last night in the musical din, a voice called out, "Where's Jesus?" <br />
<br />
A gravelly voice replied, "Who wants to know?"<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
How slow the progress of days, when one is apart from home and community, self-exiled, learning to accept the singleness of being in the world and the illusion of that separateness, so that there is no pain in the apparent separation, no issue in the singleness; all a matter of perception, choice, style of journey undertaken for certain reasons: devotion to art, respect for discriminating synchronicity, allowing what is new to come unbidden.<br />
<br />
Beside the placid moving waters of Ao Hin Kong, I note the morning quiet of the bungalows, the single bird call, the morning motorbike traffic humming by on the road. <br />
<br />
My morning vigil proceeds, breakfast in the belly, despite the cascade of world events... catastrophe for some and a reckoning of global chess for others, the one percent of the one percent of the one percent, seemingly protected in their vaults from the chaotic fallout of their designs. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, we continue: "Life is good..." however tenuous; fraught with health challenges (tenacious life holding sway against inevitable decline of the individual unit); with the vicissitudes of acceptance and rejection, attraction and repulsion, success and failure, anticipation and disappointment. There is no finality in this polarization but in the balance, the cycling through extremes and fluctuations. <br />
<br />
We pause to recognize and celebrate, enjoying the rocking ride; else why bother?<br />
<br />
On the ferry ride, passengers are treated to the following scenes on large video screens: drunken, half-naked youths cavorting on the beach to loud music; Thai guys pouring liquor from the bottle down the throats of nubile young white women; assorted bikini-clad partygoers. Posh resorts on pristine white-sand beaches and turquoise waters; towels on beds shaped like swans; infinity pools overlooking bays and islands. Water sports for overgrown children: giant vinyl water toys, to climb on, bounce on, fall off; in pastel colors... just like the wading pool in my backyard as a kid in a hot, bricked-in Eastern city, where I learned to cope with, perhaps developed a taste for, 90-degree heat and 90 percent humidity.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
In the tourist destinations these days, it's Russians everywhere-maybe spending their new capitalist wealth; or maybe, like rats, fleeing the sinking ship of state that the Western corporate mafia military elite is anxious to blow out of the water in order to get their greedy big hands on all that oil and natural gas? I played drums with these guys and gals; they're just like us (people); so don't go buying the war lies and all the other baloney that's sold at the newsstands by the same shills who produced the blockbuster hits Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria... (or looking further back, as far as you want to go).<br />
<br />
So <a href="http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html">war's a racket</a>, as the chief enforcer General Smedley Butler famously (or not so much, downplayed by the shills) wrote... and what do the rest of us do about it, or in spite of it? Is the solution somewhere in the turn of phrase, switch of conception, where the "in spite of" becomes the "about"? Or is it the other way around? As Buckminster Fuller famously (or not so much, drowned out by the shills) said... "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."<br />
<br />
Which of course is why I prefer constructing model realities known as <a href="http://nowickgray.com/">novels</a> or <a href="http://cougarwebworks.com/discography.htm">musical improvisations</a>, or deconstructing the house of marked cards and leaving the resulting silence to speak for itself.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Thailand sunset" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blogpix/sunset.jpg" height="225" width="300" /><img alt="Thailand beach" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blogpix/vigil.jpg" height="219" width="300" /></div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-89407099224988920132014-12-20T23:52:00.000-08:002014-12-21T04:07:51.475-08:00On the Way to Buddha's Tooth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<img alt="buddha" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/gt2(600x450).jpg" height="450" width="600" /></div>
<br />
The day-long bone-jangling train ride to Kandy began in the morning with a puja for the opening of a new luxury hotel in Mirissa. The owners (who also ran our more modest tourist lodgings) gave us, the lone foreigners, first crack at the lavish buffet while the locals stood in dubious reverence, and the presiding monk droned on, and coconut palm shards flamed on the floor.<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="light at the end of the tunnel" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/train(300x225).jpg" height="225" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />When Osnat and I had gobbled our fill of the world-class local curries, we had to grab the tuktuk driver away from his plate and the start of another puja session, to get us to the Matara station on time. We rode along the coast with its mostly undeveloped stretches of rose-red fine sand and gentle waves, to Colombo to catch the connecting train to Kandy, this one a faster one clacking furiously through the rice fields, and up into the hill country, through tunnels carved by British engineers (with their presumed hordes of slave laborers, Tamils from India) to deposit us almost train sick at the end in Kandy in the dark, at our own Majestic Hotel with its high ceilings, hot water, and meals at twice Mirissa prices for half the portions. <br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="Temple of the Tooth" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/temple(300x222).jpg" height="222" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />This hotel is practically empty, its owner tells us, because tourists are afraid of violence around the upcoming election. He proceeds to fill us in on Sri Lankan politics. The ruling party is communist, and like a dictator the president has been eliminating opposition journalists with secret police, disappearing them. But the streets are clean, thanks to the 25,000 Rps fine for littering, with citizens encouraged to snitch on offenders.<br />
<br />
The war (1983-2009) is over now, but in its midst, in 1998, 400 kg of explosives were detonated at the temple holding Buddha's tooth. The temple was restored, and today we are warned only to beware of the "road boys" (did he mean, "rude boys"?) prowling the temple environs who will perhaps try to rob us, or at least to sell us inflated tickets to the <a href="http://youtu.be/a-AoZBAhyi8">cultural drum and dance event</a>.
<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
The dogs with their barking kept us awake in the night. In the morning the buzz of the weedeater spoiled the sweetness of these ancient hills. We wrangled over the itinerary, legs of train connections, hypothetical busses, room bookings and cancellations, pickup arrangements for a botched computer, airport arrival, tour options for today and next week.<br />
<br />
On the way to Buddha's tooth, many tuktuk* drivers called to us offering their services (*tuktuk: chainsaw engine on three wheels). We refused, and let it all go, glorying in the perfect climate, the days ahead to explore. Waltzing down the road to town, Osnat quipped, "This is heaven" - and promptly collapsed with a cry, stumbling over the broken pavement.<br />
<br />
At the screening area in front of the temple, we failed the costume police, who wanted legs and arms covered. We reverted to town. Creepy guys stalked us, just as advertised. A trembling beggar sat hunched at Osnat's feet while she ogled a beach bag in a shop window. We milled with the crowds to the train station, bought two tickets we would never ride, like lottery options to possible worlds. In the 1840s hotel we enjoyed the best buffet ever, Sri Lanka riding to the top of the pack, yes better than Indian, Thai, Mexican or (almost) Italian cuisine. <br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="Temple of the Tooth" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/relic(300x225).jpg" height="225" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />Pilgrims and tourists piled into the temple, eager to sit <a href="http://youtu.be/K6qZYgeh_lI">beside the elephant tusks [drum video]</a>, more imposing than any Buddha's tooth which in any event was secreted out of sight, perhaps no longer even on the grounds, if it ever was. Possessors of the relic held power through its veneration and their guarding of it, just as princes here once trained to capture and control wild elephants, thereby also to fill the populace with awe. <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://youtu.be/o0j_1tmllnE">dancers in the drumming show</a> were similarly arrayed with gems and precious finery, to display the wonder of riches won through centuries of conquest, intrigue, patricide, slaughter. The lake in Kandy was excavated by the last monarch to rule before the British took over. That project was won at the price of a rebellion of local chiefs whose people were exploited to do the work, and put to death on stakes in the new lakebed for their resistance. The monarch had his way: until the British promptly arrived, to complete a conquest which neither the Portuguese nor the Dutch before them could manage. Talk about karma. <br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="buddha in a box" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/buddha-box(300x179).jpg" height="179" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />Elephant tusks, Buddha teeth, the worship of graven images everywhere, when the teacher himself counseled looking within to simple silence. Cases of books, the most ancient, collecting palm leaves laboriously scripted over centuries with the words and commentary of the master's messages. Could it be that complicated, that arcane? And after all, shielded behind glass - like the boxes Buddha sits in everywhere here, hermetic, zooed, specimened, packaged, his image preserved as he presumably was, once long ago.<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
On the way to Buddha's tooth, we faced all manner of device malfunctions. Osnat's tablet, bought just before leaving Victoria, suffered from trackpad and swipe malfunctions and more seriously, a failing capacity to charge. Her phone, also bought at a bargain price from eBay, was proving a lemon in every conceivable way. Her camera, its malfunctioning lens fixed only last spring in Dharamsala, now suffered a cracked screen and again malfunctioning lens, thanks to being dropped on the dock when departing our resort in Thailand. Everywhere we wrestled with faulty Internet connections, intermittent even with the router extender we'd brought along; and funky power adapters and cords, often too unwieldy to stay plugged in, with holes too tight or too loose. <br />
<br />
For my part, my trusty laptop, once already having survived a brush with impermanence, a near-fatal fall to a tile floor in India, now suffered a critical system crash our last day in Thailand. Trying to complete a rush of editing jobs, I madly attempted to back up the data prior to a clean restore, holding the machine open for as long as power would permit in restaurant, taxi, dentist office and airport. At the final step in our dumpy hotel in Colombo, I botched the restore, my backup CDs failing to read, so resorted to a trip to Osnat's tablet service center for help. Amid abortive attempts to resolve her issues, they restored my system in a few hours. <br />
<br />
While waiting, we found a shop to handle her camera repairs, and another shop to fix her phone. Never mind the virus that got transferred via the phone's memory chip to her backup files on my computer; or the fact that her data and phone service still didn't work. At least we had one working computer, camera and phone between us. In Kandy we would finally get my own camera repaired, with its own lens problem, and someone to figure out that her phone just needed, go figure, her passport number. <br />
<br />
Patience, grasshopper.<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="violent films" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/movies(225x300).jpg" height="300" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="225" />I divert my attention from ancient artifacts to current events, now that digital access has been restored. In the face of abiding compassion for all sentient beings, the next world war looms: another proxy deception, all of Congress hoodwinked in the bargain with the devil, clearly the military-industrial-financial matrix. We live in a mafia world ruled by <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/pigmen-win.html">Pigmen</a> (not to be confused with pigment). No corner of global commerce untouched, this glutton of mass control holds sway over the mainstream trunk of human society, and like the mighty elephant the natural human species goes down in chains.<br />
<br />
Here in the heart of the old kingdom of Kandy, where the imperial British before came to run their operations, I sit after a long sleep, reflecting in turn on the dominant paradigm of this private life, in its current mode, the domestic and rather bourgeois life of the traveling couple. Spending untold hours researching accommodations, deciphering train and bus schedules, packing and unpacking, sitting in restaurants waiting for meals...<br />
<br />
The literary self, finding itself in a personal cold war, lobbies for independence and freedom, wants to conquer all to its domain, reform the corrupt world to truth and reconciliation, and to do so, slash and burn the warm company of a lover, set the clock to rise from the connubial bed, get to work. To close the heart and focus the eyes on its demented array of symbols... like the monks of old hunched over their bloody parchments, exorcising their demons in the form of another mass deception, religion - a created universe of meaning, morals, menacing gods, frightful acts of vengeance and judgment; enforcing hierarchy, demanding discipline, giving all to God... Is such also the mammon of literature, the dream of success, the artful constructions of the otherwise mortal human ego? <br />
<br />
Ego and empire alike seek no compromise, in whatever realm - from bedroom to bookroom to boardroom - but utter dominion.<br />
<br />
What is truth? In the making, an enterprise of scribbling, digits tapping on plastic squares, light emanating from a screen of silicon. To such truth are all the masses now mesmerized across the world, fixated on apps and entertainment, the chitter and chatter of social buzz to keep distracted from the life around, to forget the pollution and poverty and corruption, to dance in the aisles of frivolity, to render useless and impotent the politics of the street. By occupying nothing, one survives, for a while, pushed to the margins of the wage slavery society, content to play the pyramid racket of crumbs from the table of the elite. <br />
<br />
Our hotel owner has given us a glimpse of his ambitious president, not alone corrupted in the political world by his very own power, and like all suffering souls driven, unhappy, addicted; conflicted even at the top of the heap by the base human desires taken to excess and glut, at the expense of others. Once on that wheel of self-perpetuating power, never satisfied to return to the common humanity the owner himself now settles for, with "enough money, enough to eat, and simple life" with his wife.<br />
<br />
Thus does this observer of buddha-nature sit in judgment in a rented room on a hill in the old kingdom, ranting and ruminating, stewing over his own choices and the fate of the world.<br />
<br />
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<img alt="reclining Buddha" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/buddha-pillow(600x450).jpg" height="450" width="600" /></div>
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<hr />
<br />
On the way to the botanical garden, we were accosted by a tuktuk driver just outside our hotel. Our plan was to walk to the park, then hire a driver for 500 Rps to take us to the gardens. This driver offered us a package deal of 1500 Rps for botanical garden, elephant orphanage, herb and spice gardens, and tea factory, 3-4 hours, 35 km. Finally rested and refreshed with a long sleep, we were vulnerable, said sure, let's do it. Smelly exhaust, shabby roadside shops, traffic on the narrow roads, we stopped at a fruit stand and stocked up with pomelo, watermelon, papaya, avocado, bananas, three bags full. <br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="market" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/market(300x225).jpg" height="225" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />On to the tea factory for a tour there, and a cup of orange pekoe with jaggery; but then the elephant orphanage was not the one we were looking for, the main one, rather a smaller one where you could ride and wash the elephants paying 2000 Rps each. Forget it, we said. The larger one was much farther, cost 2500 each. On to the herb and spice farm, just down the road. Again a disappointment, the same tour we had already in Unawatuna, with the pricey dispensary at the end and a hard sell. I skipped out early, back to wait by the tuktuk and read on Kindle till Osnat was done. More fumes and chuggery ride back toward Kandy, we stopped for lunch, at a fancy hotel with a grand view and a deluxe buffet for 850 Rps each. In this spot all the sins of the road and the day were forgiven, the price to pay for unexpected grace and grounding. Back to the road-grind, however, it was two o'clock by the time we passed the botanical garden and, finding again that the price of admission was 1100 Rps each, and already in the heat of the day, burnt out from the ride and from the aimless adventure, we passed on this last, and our first objective of the day.<br />
<br />
"Just flowers and trees," the driver said.<br />
<br />
He dropped us off at the hotel, disgruntled that we refused his offer to tuk us to Dambulla the next day, a two-hour drive each way, for 4000 Rps. And drove away with our three bags of fruit still sitting behind the passenger seat, in a box, atop his three bottles of vodka.<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
We ride to Dambulla in relative comfort, in an air-conditioned minibus, plying the same crowded roads through towns for half the route, dodging oncoming traffic, nearly ramming into startled pedestrians. Along the way, strange graffiti of signs:<br />
<br />
Red Sea Restaurant<br />
<br />
Y2K Gypsum Board<br />
<br />
Who flies not high, falls not low<br />
<br />
Bob Marley: Don't forget your past<br />
<br />
On the bus, Osnat converses with a local psychiatrist. Jung, he says, a Swiss Jew, became a Buddhist and mystic after a near-death experience. <a href="http://jungiancounselling.com/">A Jungian scholar</a> I know has informed me that for Jung the Temple of the Tooth was "his temple." <br />
<br />
For myself, I'm becoming brain-dead riding these tacky thoroughfares, finding no inspiration on the side of the road. Not content to dissolve my ego desires for the sake of the pilgrimage, I mourn the loss of five hours of travel for a half hour of sightseeing atop a long flight of stone steps, to take snapshots of the ancient relics of a bygone age. <br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<img alt="Golden Temple" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/golden-temple(600x450).jpg" height="450" width="600" /></div>
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<img align="right" alt="Buddha" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/one-buddha(225x300).jpg" height="300" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="225" /><br />
Finally we arrive at the kitschy Japanese Golden Temple and fake cave. The theme park version of Dambulla fronts the foot of the real thing, which may have been kitsch enough in its own day, centuries before. And yes, it still impresses: lavish art in five caves, reclining gold Buddhas, dozens of carved statues sitting along the cave walls, ceilings covered with innumerable more saints and boddhisattvas, amid assorted stupas and a few kings. <br />
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<img align="left" alt="boddhisattvas" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/three-buddhas(300x219).jpg" height="219" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" /><br />
Maybe it was all worth it, just to gawk. And breathe, relax, accept. There is no ivory tower, no sacred cave for literature, or even saintly meditation; those old caves have been filled with gilded buddhas now, to be captured endlessly by streams of tourists from around the globe, flickering in and out like fireflies.<br />
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<img alt="Dambulla" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/buddha/gt3(600x450).jpg" height="450" width="600" /></div>
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-18749598548892876902014-11-27T06:06:00.002-08:002014-11-28T17:54:39.634-08:00Back to the Tropics: Arriving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Waking together in our Bangkok guesthouse this morning, I use my companion's washcloth glove to scrub my smelly feet. She carves papaya while I shave. <br />
<br />
A random bird cuts through the urban noise like a revelation--unusual in this buzz of motorbikes, laundry women, taxi men, whirring fans. There is nature somewhere around, beyond or even in this sweep, sweep, sweep of the broom on packed dirt and concrete. <br />
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<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1178 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />We untangle cords to charge our multiple devices--two phones, a tablet and a laptop, Kindle and iPod, all promising slick neuronic bliss of continual stimulation, but in reality balky, glitchy, imperfect machines of human striving. All of yesterday I attempted to get my cellular data plan working, in the end remembering the clinching move, reboot. The tablet fails to download transmissions from afar, with dodgy local Internet. The 5-star hospital, where we went to take advantage of tests on a budget, proves incapable of even the most basic step, logging in to their WiFi system. My laptop limps along with its open wound in the upper right corner, now duct-taped; its mouse and trackpad spotty, temperamental (solution: reboot). <br />
<br />
When last here in 2008 I spent a fruitless day in Bangkok, more days on the island of Koh Phangan, wrestling with a failing device, a Blackberry, trying to squeeze a data plan out of it, to enjoy the best of both worlds. Then, too, eventually I managed to make it work, enough to check email and transfer documents. All my flood of recent business has been Asian, having finished the last big job upon leaving BC for a client in Victoria. After addressing Cowichan sweater appropriation in the Vancouver Olympics, I've been handling gender issues in street protests in Taiwan; kidney organ transplants; an application to a doctoral program in biostatistics; the pros and cons of globalization. A Korean student is praising the notion of playing with a Samsung in New Jersey. My last day on Koh Phangan back in 2008, I ran into a friend from Victoria, who handed me a hardcopy manuscript he needed an editor for. Swim globally, edit locally.<br />
<br />
Technology, our savior and bane. The film on the plane, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, explores the topics expertly, tying together issues of good and bad motivations within each camp; impulses of revenge, bloodlust, personal glory and power, loyalty to family and tribe; animal nature and humanity, brutality and kindness. How to trust, ultimately, "the works of man"?<br />
<br />
Yet I continue, typing on this machine of glory and doom, widening the circle of connection and inclusion, of investigation and distraction. The breath continues, bringing always the bottom line of what's real to the fore. Refusing to delve too much into mind matters, theories, prevarications. <br />
<br />
On to the beach! One last item to buy, decent coffee to take for our week's retreat on the remote island of Koh Wai. Our bus and ferry tickets secured, we bypass the street markets and head to the tourist haven of Khaosan road, find an upscale café in a back alley run by a young Korean woman, and score 300 grams of fine Thai highland grind. Elated by our free sample espressos, we call this grace and serendipity "being in the flow."<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="Koh Wai" src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1206 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />Hard lessons today, en route to the island, in social propriety, trust and self-righteousness. Losing, in the process, my illusions about the well-oiled operations of Thai tourism, and of my own judgment in a pinch. <br />
<br />
Arriving on the bus at Center Pier for a connection to the Laem Ngop pier, skies are balmy and our spirits are high. But the agent at the ticket desk, a portly, self-possessed Thai woman, informs us that there is a storm and our speedboat isn't running. We will have to divert to Koh Mak or Koh Chang instead for the night, a room arranged for 3-400 Baht, and take the connecting ferry from there tomorrow, another 400 Baht. <br />
<br />
I nod, sure, no problem. <br />
<br />
Holding up the line of backpackers bound for Koh Chang, Osnat protests: this is outrageous, we already have a room booked for the night in Koh Wai, we have paid in full to go there today! <br />
<br />
The agent is adamant, there is storm, storm, storm madam. <br />
<br />
I intervene, telling Osnat to sit down, calm down, I will deal with it, it's okay. Apologizing to the agent, saying no problem, we go next day, we take the other room and ferry. <br />
<br />
Osnat demands my phone to call our resort. At first I refuse, will not speak to her or listen, until she can cool her jets... Like shutting my three-year-old daughter in her room, until the tantrum ends. Or the New World Order saying you play by our rules or we will marginalize you, brand you terrorists, wipe you out--the message of the movie on the bus, made from a Stephen Hunter political thriller. The others in the waiting room are giving me the eye. Why me?<br />
<br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1234 (350x262).jpg" height="262" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />A few more calls to the resort, and it becomes apparent that the speedboat is indeed running from Laem Ngop, there is no storm. I pull back my extra ferry payment from the desk, but am told again, still, we will have to take the detour. So I take out the phone to call once more to the resort to reconfirm, and at last the agent capitulates: Okay okay, speedboat run today, you go speedboat to Koh Wai, taxi take you now to Laem Ngop. <br />
<br />
What was the deal? Not enough passengers, they were trying to cancel our booking with a bogus excuse? We give thanks, at least, to my working phone, providing the last word from the destination resort.<br />
<br />
It appears Osnat was right all along, at least in her suspicious instincts bred in the Middle East, and I betrayed her with my alliance with the scammer, for the sake of my Anglo propriety, good solider. Not wanting to create a scene, I played my own role of sheepish complicity to the hilt. Not wanting to credit my partner's exaggerated perception of a problem, or worse, deception, I tagged her response as problematic. Only later recognizing, with humility, my own gullibility and rush to judgment.<br />
<br />
After discussing all this in the morning, coming to forgiveness and resolution, we soften and walk by the jade water and white sand, on the jungle path to a private cove, and rest under the palms, content.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
The storm finally arrived last night, blowing hard and raining steady, with lightning flashing in the distance over the mountains, thunder rolling. This morning the calm waves lap to shore once more, the crickets providing the constant soundtrack. Before coming awake I dreamed of a symphony of shakers. <br /><br />
We settle in chairs on our veranda, no neighbors on either side, the gorgeous scenery all to ourselves, the perfect sandy beach, the warm water... What more could we want? Nothing like this, right by the ocean, even in Maui. Bungalow by the sea, the dream of every bourgeois, complete with personal harem of, okay, skip the drama, one lover. <br /><br />
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<img align="right" src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1185 (263x350).jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="263" />The tour boats come throughout the day to the Koh Wai Pakarang (Coral) resort, delivering their zoos of tourists from France, Russia, Germany, Australia, Britain, the US. We hang like locals, or notice it's all relative as we skirt the more remote Koh Wai Paradise next door, with its chummy expats settled in for the winter in their $200-a-month wooden shacks with no electricity. One of them, wide and shapeless, wanders down the sand, stepping but going nowhere, slow. Another, a scrawny and stooped golem, creeps over the rocks at the end of beach.<br /><br />
* * *<br /><br />
Each day we mess with the jumble of cords, in digital limbo, a severe case of device-itis. The router extender teases with its marginal boost in bandwidth, while the primary Internet feed in the resort's restaurant plays us like a yo-yo, on and off, on and off, leaving us unconnected. Nothing much else to do here but loll in the turquoise water, imagine. Power cord number three bites the dust, no matter. The waves lap at sunset, another day gone by, and it's not even Mercury retro, or is it, we can't even know without our precious connection. In the end the air is too languid, the breeze too sultry, the colors just too bloody pastel to bother with all of the networking that in northern climates we take for granted, with full-time high-speed Internet access, that we consider the normal stuff of life, of everyday business and commerce, the obligatory fabric of our contemporary society, all wired. <br /><br />
No surfing here... just placid jade waters over beds of dying coral, with swarms of small striped fish that creep up behind you and hardly scatter when you turn and find them all around your limbs. At first I was amazed, never having seen fish this tame, this bold, and almost wishing I could close the inch of distance they always kept around my fingers and face. Then I felt a few pecks at my back, and suddenly felt a different urge, to flee these marauding predators before they nibbled me to death. The truth, not so dire, but a warning, be careful what you wish for. <br /><br />
Yesterday I sat on this balcony fifty feet from the water and watched Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem, in which a modern-day man, a functionary of the cybernetic matrix, bemoans his meaningless existence and takes refuge in virtual reality scenes at a beach just such as this. "Come away with me," his voluptuous pursuer coaxes, back in drab London, but he remains fixed to his task, the machinery of his supposed deliverance. In the end he rebels, gives it all up, but too late, and finds refuge on that ultimate sunset dream beach, alone. <br /><br />
<br />
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<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1238 (500x369).jpg" height="369" width="500" /></div>
We awake this morning silent, me to the water after my yoga practice, she to her meditation. The waves lap, incessant, amid chirring of insects and birds, the warp and weft of nature. The mountains poke all picturesque above the horizon behind the photogenic palm at the water's edge, the morning's pale colors not yet lit up for the tourist junkets. In the water I notice the jade disappears, dissolving to crystal clear, the paradise wash of greens and blues gone to plain water, just sand. Ironic that this awakening, past the glamor and hype, to the elements of what is here unadorned, means finally arriving, when previously the concepts and hyperbole and social shares and blogging efforts and digital renderings--"Paradise"--just got in the way of the thing itself. <br /><br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/resized/IMG_1179 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />The thing itself asks for no description, coaxes no boatloads of gawkers, yields not to pat snapshots and catalogues of palette choices in hexadecimal flux as the light shifts, the mood strikes. The thing itself is not amenable to autobiographical analysis, unraveling of brain-folds, sliced cells of microscopic dialogue, presumed intention and unrepentant one-upmanship, or woman. <br /><br />
Maybe woman is the thing itself. Maybe the thing itself is this, not that. Maybe maybe maybe, baby baby baby. The waves lap, the insects chirr, the sunlight creeps across the bay, coloring what was pale and limpid, both brighter and richer with a luminous blue. <br /><br />
On the otherwise praiseworthy beach, just under the frame of the capture, a three-foot jagged stump from a coconut tree protrudes, intrudes, claims an excised history in this narrative box. I will not go there; I nudge the frame just large enough to include the hacked remnant, then click. <br /><br />
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-43871524926123292282014-10-12T16:05:00.000-07:002014-10-12T16:07:53.640-07:00Travel Writing on the Edge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416534407?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1416534407&linkCode=xm2&tag=cougarwebworks">God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre</a></em>, by Richard Grant<br />
-- review by Nowick Gray<br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="nightlife" src="http://alternativeculture.com/grant/P1010324 (315x420).jpg" height="322" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="242" />This book was my introduction into the work of the travel writer Richard Grant, a Briton who ventures out of the comfort zone of ordinary humanity into such death-defying circumstances as “the lawless heart of the Sierra Madre” and (in his other book I started simultaneously) <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439154147?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1439154147&linkCode=xm2&tag=cougarwebworks">Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa</a></em>. Grant joins the first rank of travel writers I have encountered, including <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Chatwin/e/B000AQ6LZC/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=Y3SD3T7Z6CDNNSH4">Bruce Chatwin</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Matthiessen/e/B000AQ1R6U/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154391&sr=1-1&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=XDTSZW3LQCUG66I2">Peter Matthiessen</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pico-Iyer/e/B000APEDRG/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154433&sr=1-2-ent&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=RK6RV6VZBYCE5OWL">Pico Ayer</a>, with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Henry-Miller/e/B000APTO8Y/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154476&sr=1-1&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=WH3LN55M6LFTE75S">Henry Miller</a> joining from the classic side, where you would almost include <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ernest-Hemingway/e/B000APYVZU/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154514&sr=1-1&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=FSBYMEDKKQ53V7JJ">Hemingway</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jack-London/e/B000APWLIO/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154551&sr=1-2-ent&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=ZR35QOLSOEI5MWB7">Jack London</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hunter-S.-Thompson/e/B000AQ4U5U/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154595&sr=1-1&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=PYNU5NC2UTWUIQFF">Hunter S. Thompson</a> (and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/William-S.-Burroughs/e/B00MZL4LZM/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1413154671&sr=1-2-ent&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=DQLTK4YCVWXYI64F">William S. Burroughs</a>) also figure prominently in Grant’s modus operandi, with their hard-living habits as "gonzo journalists" among guys determined to get as wasted as possible on every substance available. <br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="bars" src="http://alternativeculture.com/grant/P1000956 (600x800) - Copy (300x229).jpg" height="196" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="257" />These real-life tales of harrowing adventure fall into the category of men’s (non)fiction, following the observed trend that men prefer literature that is true to life, in contrast to women’s fiction that leans toward the imagined romance. I might as well add Elizabeth Gilbert to this cabal, however, for her charming treatment of travels in Italy, India and Bali (<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=eat%20pray%20love&linkCode=ur2&sprefix=eat,stripbooks,229&tag=cougarwebworks&url=search-alias=stripbooks&linkId=7I747ZLDZTFE7QIG">Eat, Pray, Love</a></em>), and Southeast Asia while exploring the theme of matrimony in the sequel, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143118706/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143118706&linkCode=as2&tag=cougarwebworks&linkId=YXQDNRCOD2YEWNQM">Commitment</a>. </em><br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="machismo" src="http://alternativeculture.com/grant/CameraZOOM-20140428120302708 (289x420).jpg" height="319" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="220" />As it happens, the central theme of Grant’s foray into the heart of darkness in Mexico turns on machismo and its dominant force in the culture. Near the end, before his actual harrowing scrape with would-be murderers, Grant nails the origin of Mexican machismo in its history beginning with the conquistadors (and further, the Arab attitudes about women that transferred through the seven hundred years of Moorish rule of Spain), with a nod to the patriarchal indigenous customs the invaders overtook. <br />
<br />
Comparing these adrenaline-fueled chronicles with my own tamer touristic exploits recounted in this blog, I am struck by some fundamental differences in approach. Most notable is the means of penetrating the culture on a personal level. Grant applies the time-tested method of drinking, along with whatever else, with the locals. If personal inclinations toward health and sanity steer me away from bars and debauchery, then I am a mere suburban voyeur, confined to my neuroses about safety, convenience, cost and planned itinerary. <br /><br />
<img align="left" alt="wine bottles" src="http://alternativeculture.com/grant/P1010218 (315x420).jpg" height="320" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="240" />Grant and his swashbuckling kin ride bareback, so to speak, into the wilds, throwing caution to the wind as they consort with society’s low life, criminals, misfits, prostitutes, drug addicts, drunkards, crazies, hit-men and, along the way, respectable people who live among murder and corruption, violence and abuse, and somehow, sometimes, find ways to survive. I don’t like hangovers, or throwing money away in bars; sleeping outside exposed to cold, mosquitoes, scorpions, snakes or thieves; sketchy roads leading nowhere, in vehicles that break down; food poisoning, untreated water. <br /><br />
Last night after finishing this book I dreamed I was back in my old mountain community, homeless and hungry, scrounging a baggie of nuts from the post office shelf and wondering where my next healthy meal of vegetables would come from. Woke up, and today is Thanksgiving. Grateful, comfortable, at home.<br />
<br /></div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-15819591016440579972014-06-06T20:46:00.000-07:002014-06-06T20:50:43.922-07:00Snapshots of the Malecon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Puerto Vallarta, a holiday Friday night, my last day in Mexico:<br />
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<li>A man standing with a big balloon, holding it by the end and thwacking it rhythmically in the air, bouncing it off his wrist.</li>
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<li>A young man standing with friends, in normal dress except wearing a pink bunny hat.</li>
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<li>Club Row, each with high ceilings, dark interiors, pounding with music, everything from techno to fifties, lit each with a different hue of low lighting, red, blue, pink, each vast cavern occupied by only a couple or two at 9:30, against the giant flashing video images, though the Malecon was thronged.</li>
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<li>A tall Viking goddess jogging past the crowds in spandex and bare feet.</li>
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<li>Random people crossing, or standing about in clutches, on the Malecon or sidewalk without regard to the predominant flow of people, as if they owned the space. Oh wait, they do. </li>
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<li>A couple of middle-aged Mexican men walking down the sidewalk, the heftier one in bright yellow tank top and shorts.</li>
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<li>A couple of stylish Mexican women standing on the corner in conversation, interrupted by a wiry, weathered blonde tugging a tiny dog on a leash who gets tangled up in one of the standing ladies’ ankles. She glowers at the gringa, who chides her pet and tugs it away. </li>
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-32148594258716445462014-04-24T19:18:00.002-07:002014-04-26T19:38:43.760-07:00"Go to the Jungle"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img align="left" alt="san cristobal" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/sc/street2.jpg" height="232" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />When I was <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.mx/2014/03/last-stop-next-stop.html">in La Paz</a> and told my neighbor, a former anthropology researcher, that I was going to San Cristobal, she said, "Go hang out in the jungle." <br />
<br />
Hmm, I told her, I already did that in the <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/nature/gallery-peru.htm">Amazon, back in 2005</a>. (Not to mention Costa Rica, where I'd more recently cut short a month's stay in a dark, locust-infested cabin).<br />
<br />
Another friend emailed me saying, "Go to the Indian villages." And do what? I asked. "Visit the churches there." <br />
<br />
Hmm, I thought, I already lived <a href="http://hyperlife.net/story/Trumped.htm">in Inuit villages</a> for three years, spent a week in <a href="http://djemberhythms.com/lessons/village.htm">an African village</a>. Been there done that. Not to mention churches, all over southern Europe (as well as <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/travel/sancristobal.htm">all over San Cristobal itself)</a>. <br />
<br />
But what the heck, I can go on horseback with a guide and it'll be an adventure. One sunny morning I showed up at the tour office at 9, waited half an hour for the guide, and finally the tour operator apologized, "The caballero doesn't answer his phone. Maybe another day?" I declined, figured it wasn't meant to be.<br />
<br />
Still, cooped up in my one-room apartment for a month, I thought, I probably <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.mx/2014/04/why-i-may-not-visit-mayan-ruins.html">should go visit the Mayan ruins</a>, or maybe the lake district. Even though I'd already climbed the pyramid at Teotihuacan, toured the Aztec ruins in Mexico City. Even though it gave me the creeps to read in the guidebook about <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.mx/2014/04/why-i-may-not-visit-mayan-ruins.html">the grisly purposes of these archaeological wonders</a>.<br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="chiapas sunset" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/sc/sunset.jpg" height="254" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="191" />So I came to my final week here, and ventured out in the rainy night to book my tour. The 15-hour trip to Palenque and the waterfalls was too much of a stretch, beginning at 5 a.m. The shorter trip to the Tonina ruins needed 4 passengers, which they didn't have. The third option, the 13-hour trip to the lakes, was still doable, but the rainy season had begun now and why would I want to ride a bus all day and evening to look at a lake in the rain for two hours?<br />
<br />
Not that I'm complaining. I actually felt relieved. What I most wanted to do was stay in another day and work on my novel. Not very glamorous, I know. No pictures to share, no tales of exotic flora and fauna, no passing scenes of roadside forest, quaint lunch stops, colorful fellow travelers. Just, upon some later release, imagined scenes from an imagined world that never did and never will exist, except in the writer's and reader's imagination. Talk about virtual reality...<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="black christ" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/sc/cross.jpg" height="207" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="156" />The thing is, what does it really mean, to "go to the jungle"? Am I going to paint my face and learn, in an afternoon or a week, to hunt tapir, or talk with jaguar? Am I going to weave and pray with the natives? <br />
<br />
When I did go to Peru and "hang out" - for a week of solitary retreat, punctuated by nightly group ayahuasca sessions - what came to me (apart from the archaic visionary mosaics of the night) to fill the empty space was, like jungle growth filling the vacuum that nature abhors, plans and schemes of a literary nature. <br />
<br />
The point being, "jungle" is a concept, to be interpreted as one needs. It could be learning primitive survival skills. Anthropological or ethnobotanical research. Plain tourism. Escape from urban congestion. Vacation. Relief of boredom: something to do, somewhere to go. Sheer curiosity. And that's all good.<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="courtyard" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/sc/courtyard.jpg" height="205" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="274" />Or, it could be: being at home with oneself, the jungle of one's own being, the ecosystem within one's own world of activity and potential. This primal realm risks encroachment from all sides by industry, tourism, urbanization, commercialization, technology, population growth. Inside the jungle of one's own being - bounded in my case, it now appears, for a full thirty days - the wildlife can be studied in depth; the native plants cultivated, nurtured; the language purified; the sense of home honored. <br />
<br />
Yes, "go to the jungle," indeed, and hang out there. And please, report back on what you find. <br />
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Postscript, 26 April:<br />
All that said, I did manage finally to "get out" of town, an hour-long trek into the hills. The skies were clear and the temperature perfect. Destination: Arcotete, a nature reserve featuring sculpted limestone. There is nothing, I realize with senses awakened, as intoxicating as the aroma of a highland pine forest, especially when clarified at 8000 feet. And nothing, after all, to substitute for the peaceful clarity of a mountain stream, or the craggy beauty of a natural cavern more sacred than any Gothic cathedral. All this, it turned out, for the invigorating effort of an hour's hike, ten pesos and a handy taxi ride back to town ... for a parting treat of Argentine lasagne and Italian cappuccino. Hasta luego, San Cristobal!<br />
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<img alt="San Cristobal de las Casas" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/sc/town500.jpg" height="375" width="500" /><br />
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For more "Forest Walks and Other Exercises," see my new book just published this week:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://nowickgray.com/my-country/">My Country: Essays and Stories From the Edge of Wilderness</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
>><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JMPXJ84"> free on Kindle</a> for the month of April <<</div>
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-46988715198569124122014-04-08T15:47:00.001-07:002014-04-08T15:47:40.600-07:00Why I May Not Visit the Mayan Ruins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/ruins/P1010738 (300x225).jpg" height="225" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="300" />Yeah, it's a trip out of town, through the fabled Chiapas jungle. The ruins are touted throughout the tourist world - lost cities of the ancient Mayans, those creators of the calendar that ended our old paradigm in 2012 (didn't it?). But I did see the other great pyramids of Teotihuacan, and, well, I climbed to the top, and... I saw the chambers in the square of Mexico City where the blood was spilled and... I see the pictures in the guidebook and read about the proud rulers who built by conquest and slaving and human sacrifice and... I wonder, where is the glory in all that? Why make a pilgrimage to sites of such barbarity? <br />
<br />
A deeper question follows: Is it "cultural bias" to judge such civilizations and their works? Where do I get off in supposing a higher moral stance, me with my aviator shades and plastic credit, burning carbon and fiddling while the world slides to ruin?<br /><br />
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Yes, it's a cultural phenomenon, awesome in its scope and longevity. Yes, we may gaze on the sheer wonder of these stone constructions somehow conjured out of jungle soil without metal tools or wheel. We may put aside all judgments altogether in the benign, objective acceptance of all that is, without prejudice. We may get over our own political correctness and realize the pitfalls of assigning labels of evil to others doing what they were equally convinced was correct. <br /><br />
So, we can go or not go. We can burn more carbon to see more evidence of human slaughter, and say, "It's all good." Or, we can sit at home with hands on lap, forgoing the effort of excursion, and say, "It's all good." For that matter, we can choose to go and judge, raging at the senseless waste of life and resources; or stay home on the same basis. <br />
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What will I do? Even with the possibility of the all-embracing forgiveness of all-that-is-and-was, I believe it's valid to hold certain standards for conduct: "Thou shalt not kill." You might say that it's not my place as another fallible human to judge, or even forgive. Fair enough; but neither am I obliged to respect or gaze with all-hallowed objectivity on the works of mass murderers. So maybe, instead, I'll go to the village where they make textiles, or to the lake in the ecological reserve.<br /><br />
Enough about me and lost civilizations. What about our current day and age, our present administration of works and policies. Do we accept and support, or judge and protest? It comes down to what is real within, what is truly felt. Then we will speak and act with that conviction. <br /><br />
Here is my piece, for today. What is your truth?</div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-31995394995647223242014-03-10T15:07:00.000-07:002014-03-10T15:07:11.380-07:00Last Stop / Next Stop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<em>La Paz, Sea of Cortez, Baja California Sur: A long journey come to rest:</em><br />
<br />
A quest ending... in failure or success? It depends on one's perspective. If the goal of the journey with my partner was to find our mutual home, it didn't reach the desired goal within the limits of our endurance. If the quest was to embark together and explore, discovering what showed itself along the way, evaluating and responding, resonating or not, and finding out who we were, where our inner homes were at the end of the process, how could it not have been a success?<br />
In the meantime we were grateful for the many signposts and synchronicities which got us through some tight spots with rays of unexpected connection.<br />
<strong><img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1000678 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />1. Croatia</strong><br /><br />
In the ferry lineup in Vis, Osnat met a woman she spent time with in Abadiania, Brazil. A pretty Irish lady, suffering from a shoulder ailment, and a chill remove in her manner, as if encased in an aura of protection. Osnat gave her an <a href="http://www.astro.com/cgi/aclch.cgi?btyp=acm&" target="_blank">astrocartography</a> session and then, under the gaze of the burly Croatian men at the neighboring table playing poker, stood like an ancient healer doing hands-on energy work on her shoulder.<br />
<strong>2. Italy</strong><br /><br />
We arrived at 6:30 in the evening in Vernazza with no reservations, as the plan was hatched last minute, after researching that renting a car was a poor option without an International Driver's Permit. So we dragged luggage into town on the cobbled streets, down to a wave-washed harbor replete with tourists, and found only a couple of available rooms at 80 Euros per night. We walked back up the street again, paused to consider calling from a list of accommodations we got at the train station, only to discover the cell phone reception here was nonexistent. At that moment an American couple walking up the street greeted us saying, "Are you needing a place to stay?"<br />
<img align="right" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1000760 (263x350).jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="263" />The woman was dressed in flowing colors, her smiling round face a beacon of light. They were leaving next morning and thought we might arrange to stay in the same house, an AirBnB rental that turned out to be in a house whose foundation, they said, dated from 400 A.D.; two floors with full kitchen and cliffside terrace overlooking a spectacular seascape. They phoned the landlord, an actor in Rome, and suggested we offer him $60 per night - when they had paid $120 - since otherwise it would sit empty this week. Reached by their phone, Frederico accepted. Meanwhile a man who earlier had offered us a room for 80 Euros passed us and came down to 65, so we had a place for this night as well.<br />
Amid the bustle of the tourists in the narrow streets, this grand old apartment served for three days as a cool refuge, a haven of old-world charm. Burned once at the exorbitant harborside ristorante, we could cook simpler, authentic fare with local fish and vegetables amid the copper kettles of our kitchen, and sit gazing down at the ever enchanting waves. <br /><br />
<strong>3. Portugal</strong><br /><br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1010029 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />Headed toward Mooji's ashram in the Alentejo, we stopped for the night at the Banos near Monchique. We figured the next day we could find lodging near the ashram in the village of San Martinho das Amoreiras. No such luck, the tourist season had passed and the village was all boarded up, a few geezers and crones remaining in a couple of blighted cafes to turn us away with sour looks of impassive defeat born of centuries of decline. What to expect from a land whose inhabitants forever had left their countryside to venture the seas of the world to plunder others? In any case, we felt our chances might improve by connecting with others at the ashram. <br />
So driving the road to the entrance, we encountered two women walking, one with piled curls familiar, again, to Osnat from her stay in Abadiania: Anita. She greeted us warmly and straightaway mentioned another woman, Brigette, who had a cottage rented nearby and was wanting to leave a week early, so we could probably take over the rent. We ended up staying a week, one of those precious respites from the travel route; and it was luckily sandwiched between two of the only satsang weekends Mooji offered here this season.<br /><br />
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<strong>4. Ecuador</strong><br /><br />
Giving up quickly on coastal Ecuador, after two noisy nights in a hostel in polluted Guayaquil and another impossible night surviving the boombox surf town of Montanita, we headed for Vilcabamba, booking on AirBnB but not receiving confirmation before taking our flight from Guayaquil, nor afterward on the way to Loja by taxi for the connecting bus. What the heck, though it was 6 in the evening already, we caught the bus and then, settling into our seats, finally got an email from the hosts confirming our booking. When we arrived by taxi at their small farm outside Vilcabamba, Phil looked at me and right away said, "Are you Nowick from Argenta?"<br /><br />
Though I didn't immediately recognize him despite the characteristic Kootenay frizz of hair and grizzled beard, it was an acquaintance with whom I had shared memorable experiences playing music for <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/music/trancedance.htm" target="_blank">trance dance</a> (he played didge), as well as further personal connections with watershed issues in the Slocan valley where he had a homestead like mine in Argenta. Now he and his partner Suzanne were two years into a full-scale permaculture project here, having sold their land and most of their equipment in BC and moving the rest of it here (in eleven suitcases and a large crate). So we had a lovely place to stay in the lower floor of their house for a month while also being well introduced to the community with their network of friends and activities.<br /><br />
In Vilcabamba, on Osnat's 60th birthday, we walked to Madre Tierra for dinner. Sitting at the bus stop at the bottom of the driveway a young woman saw us, stood up and said to Osnat, "I think I know you. What's your name?" She was Jenny, from Wales, whom Osnat had spent a week with in Koh Samui at a detox retreat 5 years ago.<br /><br />
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<strong>5. Mexico: San Pancho</strong><br />
<em><br />
A Rat-Sized Chihuahua Named Lancelot</em><br /><br />
A magical day out of time. Arranged to visit Stephanie in San Pancho in the afternoon. On the way the collectivo (group taxi) made a stop in Lo de Marcos, and in the first block we saw the dundun player for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151817610141176&set=vb.734176175&type=2&theater" target="_blank">African group</a> carrying his big painted barrel drum on his back; then, up the street walking one by one, the other drummers, with their instrument bags, on the way to some practice session no doubt.<br /><br />
Wandering the world, scouring the Internet for drumming, and somehow we missed until now the live connection. The drums advertise themselves.<br /><br />
<img align="right" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1010620 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />Arriving in San Pancho, we felt right away an affinity, a resonance. The quiet, tree-lined streets, just the right size town: not too big, not too small. Like Goldilocks, we wandered past French cafes, bakeries and cappuccino bars, yoga studios and surf shops. Gaily painted storefronts, friendly English-speaking vacation rental agents, mellow hipsters strolling the cobblestones. The beach stretched Goa-smooth along the coconut palms, surfers idling on boards awaiting bigger waves. We walked back into town for a pastry before finding Stephanie.<br /><br />
While her 11-month-old Theo napped, we caught up on each other's lives, got the scoop on San Pancho as a place to live. A founder of Cirque du Soleil had moved here, teaming up with an American woman to convert an unused warehouse to a community arts, education and recycling center. Today was the middle of a 5-day African dance intensive class; those drummers would no doubt be on hand tonight. After unmatched mahi-mahi burritos at the natural juice restaurant, we headed to the arts center for a tour. Theo well entertained in the 0-5 toddlers' play area, and my energy waning - after three full-moon nights of life-path soul searching, emotional partner dynamics and little sleep - we said our goodbyes and headed for the highway.<br /><br />
Or did we want to hang out at the beach for a bit before heading home? Not really, but I said okay and we reversed direction. Before one more block, though, I realized I was at the end of my reserves, crashing fast. "No, actually, let's catch the bus and go home. I just want to sleep." Dragging then back towards the highway in a fog of exhaustion, we passed a house with a sign: El Sobador de San Pancho: Total Body Alignment, Pain Relief, Hypnosis, Spiritual and Chakra Cleansing, Massage. Osnat the healer paused, intrigued.<br /><br />
Just then a car pulled into the driveway. A small white-haired man emerged, saw us and said to me, "I can see a pain in your body."<br /><br />
"Oh? Tell me more."<br /><br />
"Yes, it's in the toe, and also in the shoulder."<br /><br />
True, I had an old injury in my right big toe and a recent flareup of chronic tightness in the shoulder.<br /><br />
Osnat chimed in, "Plus he's really tired. And he thinks too much."<br /><br />
"Oh, tired, I can clear that up in two minutes. Also the pain. And your mind will be clear."<br /><br />
We agreed to begin right away, with a session offered also to Osnat for her various pains diagnosed with similar accuracy, a two-for-one deal.<br /><br />
"And do you smoke, if we have a joint first?"<br /><br />
"No, I gave that up."<br /><br />
"It might help you relax and release the tightness and pain, and also the overthinking."<br /><br />
"You're the doctor."<br /><br />
Attending our interview was his little pooch, a rat-sized chihuahua named Lancelot.<br /><br />
This Mexican Merlin pulled and tweaked and de-torqued all the joints of all the limbs, pulling and stretching through the back and shoulders, neck and head, till everything was loose. At least, looser than before. With the heightened awareness of the pot I could sense fully where the residual tension lay, the boundary of resistance.<br /><br />
When Osnat was done we agreed to come back the following day for a followup session, and walked away. My posture was totally reformed, my energy refreshed. Osnat felt free of chronic tightness in her shoulders and lower back. At this point in the day, however, we could not take the bus because she had a scheduled meditation coming up in fifteen minutes. And nearly 5:30, the air was getting chilly. We decided to head back to Stephanie's for a quiet spot to meditate and maybe some borrowed layers to keep us warm for the trip back home; we'd return them tomorrow.<br /><br />
At Stephanie's another younger couple was there on the palapa, as she'd arranged them to babysit while she went to African dance. They had driven from Ontario, their second time here, after discovering the place by serendipity last winter. On arriving at the beach, they were greeted by a young woman who invited them to a party and to hear her band. They had a great time, were inspired to return and then this year on arriving headed first to their favorite taco place. Not five minutes later, the same young woman appeared around the corner and said, "Oh, hey, welcome back! You're just in time for the Christmas party I'm having." So it goes, on the travelers' trail.<br /><br />
They have been up and down the Pacific coast, all the way to Costa Rica and back, and this was the jewel that stood out for them, with the right mix of people and amenities, that certain vibe that calls to return and stay longer, to build on connections, to find your way by word of mouth and serendipity to just the right apartment when the time is right.<br /><br />
"The power of manifestation is so strong here," said Chris, "that you have to be careful what you wish for. The key is to be specific. We looked for a week and couldn't find anything. Then we sat down and made a list of what we were looking for in a rental. The next day we went to the juice restaurant, and met a guy there, who knew another guy who just happened to show up with the keys in his pocket, and we saw the place and it was perfect, with everything we were looking for at the right price."<br /><br />
So we left with just enough time to catch the end of the dance class, we thought. On arriving, though, we only heard the soft balaphone music of cool-down, and never did locate the entrance door, so headed to the highway to wait for the bus. We must have just missed one because we stood in the cold for almost an hour. Near the end the drummers arrived, and I was able to make a connection with the sangban player and get an invitation to play for the next night's class. Full circle, from my meeting of drummers here my first day in town, to catching the performances on market day, seeing them on the way to San Pancho and finally again on the way out.<br /><br />
We came home cold and hungry but energized, to a small but symbolic feast, a pair of homemade steamed crabs, Baltimore-style.<br /><br />
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<strong>6. Mexico: Zihuatanejo</strong><br /><br />
In Zihuatanejo we ran the gamut from fortuitous connection to intolerable disappointment and escape. Our first stop there, the Hotel Amueblados las Salinas, proved less than perfect, with the usual change of room after the first night, the second one proving worse with an ineffective and noisy AC, but the owner happily allowed us to leave short of the third night with money refunded. Meanwhile we had run into an Albertan woman running a shoreside table for Sailfest who turned us onto the Hotel America, $600 per month for an apartment, and we actually agreed to a month for $480, and put a $40 deposit down. <br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1010641 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />Right next door, however, Osnat was enticed to inquire at the Ada Guesthouse, and we found a nicer apartment with full kitchen and balcony for only $80 more. So we phoned and arranged to take it right away, met with the Hotel America lady who graciously refunded our deposit, and moved in. Later a lunch and then, finally hit that beach: calm waters, 28 degrees; Osnat finally relaxed enough without wetsuit. Warm enough to wade in, getting wet gradually, no shock, no painful adjustment, just welcome. Stay in as long as you like, swim with ease.<br />
On the beach we met a middle-aged Canadian couple, from Naramata, BC. It turns out they were old friends of a friend of mine from Argenta, a woman who had come to BC from Denmark years before and began with a teaching job at the same little school where this couple worked - probably forty years ago.<br />
But then: what a difference a day (and a sleepless night) makes. We spent a delirious, humid Saturday night unable to sleep for the music downtown all night long, till 6 in the morning. Even at 3 or 4 there was an interlude of some male voice crooning at the bar next door, between the episodes of harsh rock, guitar and drums and the ever-present pounding bass. My thoughts obsessively went to the discussion we would have with the hotel owner, to try to get a refund of our month's rent, so we could escape to yet another stop down the road, Costa Rica (and save our flight change fees in the process).<br />
I am back to despairing, or resigning myself to the improbability of ever truly finding this home that we have spent five months and a small fortune questing for, burning also our emotional capital and even our zest for life, our appreciation for the travels for their own sake. Always an insufficiency, the no-seeums around the ankles at dusk, the chatty Quebecoise on the neighboring balcony or the Albertans gabbing at the tables of the Hotel America below; the stench from the streets undergoing sewer repairs; the murky water making snorkeling impossible. All of these negatives lined up on the other side of the blissfully tepid and baby-calm seawater, the charming russet architecture in the town and on the hillside, the cheap and tasty local Mexican food either from markets or restaurants, the relaxed vibe throughout the day, the pure blue skies, the forgiving budget allowing two to live for the price of one. <br />
What to do? Keep moving on. Meanwhile, the local band below graces the evening, again with its mellow constant temperatures and gentle breezes, Simon and Garfunkel rendered with guitar and Andean pan flute. I enjoyed a pair of tasty tamales, chicken with red chile, for dinner for two dollars. The head cold threatening to take hold dissipates under the onslaught of raw garlic, red chile mole, rest in the afternoon, relaxation with our fate one way or another.<br /><br />
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<strong><img align="right" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/CameraZOOM-20140206061312796 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />7. Costa Rica</strong><br /><br />
In La Legua - not even a town, just a bend in the road - we rented a sweet house for a ten-day retreat of sorts: nothing to do, nowhere to go; catching our breath from noisy Mexican towns and hectic travel arrangements, in a peaceful, beautiful, isolated valley between the highlands and the coast. Next door, greeting us while our AirBnB host was away, lived a couple from Baltimore, who had lived in a house right next door to the school I attended in 1965.<br />
As always, our house reviews would be mixed. This one we called "the musty palace," due to the pervasive smell of mold in the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. We opened the windows and cranked up the fans, and moved to the other bedroom. It was odd, coming to a country and then spending a week and a half going nowhere, lounging in the spacious living room, walking the manicured grounds, catching up on writing projects and meditations. But the bus schedule was problematic; we came prepared with a load of groceries from town; and the sprawling ranch-style "palace" had a priceless view. Costa Rica, the snapshot, "pura vida."<br /><br />
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<strong>8. La Paz, Mexico</strong><br /><br />
Todos Santos is promising at first, recommended by a few friends, touted as funky, spiritual, laid-back. I have come to Baja traveling solo, after a parting of ways in Costa Rica. The mutual quest, unsustainable, is interrupted, divided; the search for a temporary home goes on. <br />
My first morning I go exploring, found a health food store to replenish essentials: toothpaste, sunscreen, echinacea. I pick up a local map and check the notice board. A friendly young woman behind the counter has been traveling also 7 months including BC; she alerts me to a monthly rental just opening up. When I go there it's not what I'm after, rather a kind of hostel in a house, more communal space than privacy. In fact the town itself, I discover in two days there, proves not as advertised or expected. Yes, a cutesy little version of Sebastopol (California) south. The recommended café, a graveyard of scattered expats gazing into laptops. A reflection of myself?<br /><br />
Later back in La Paz, my neighbor, from Quebec and California, hears my take on Todos Santos, says she went there ten years ago and loved it; went back recently and... never again. She wrinkles her nose. "It's great, if you like rich white people."<br /><br />
I walked through, walked on. The sea, a wild and cold Pacific, raging and roiling. And at that, a forty-five minute trek from town, no taxis.<br /><br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-lp/P1010827 (350x257).jpg" height="257" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />I returned to La Paz, a basic but cheap hotel. Went right for the beach, a forty-minute bus ride, to check out the main attraction. It took my breath away. Dry air, parched scenery, calm water, utterly clear. Hardly anyone there. It was low tide, so you could walk way out to the water deep enough to swim, and there it was just cool/warm, refreshing; like the best of BC ocean swimming on the hottest summer days. I was hooked.<br /><br />
Setting out in town this morning, I marveled at the perfect cool/warm dry air, blue sky. This place was for me. I started with the hostel, but too expensive. The tourist information place guided me to a hotel, ditto. On the main street I saw a realtor, dropped in and asked about weekly or monthly rentals. He made a couple of calls, connected me with a woman whose tenant, also from Victoria, had just moved out today. On the way I checked out the language school, which arranges homestays for you if you sign up for classes. The house I was going to see was right next to it. Just what I needed, at the right price, I took it on the spot. For now, home.<br />
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-48206418025751876992014-02-11T06:30:00.001-08:002014-02-14T09:01:06.270-08:00Last Stop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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6 February<br />
Five months - three continents - seven countries. <br />
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Yesterday we arrived in Costa Rica. I said it looked like Kentucky (complete with Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, McDonald's, all on the same intersection), its rounded blue mountains in the distance, its moderate development impact on the green but unspectacular landscape. This, of course, but a first impression in the central valley around San Jose, not yet into the eco-tourists' cloud forests and surf-crowd's beach scenes.<br />
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<img align="left" alt="Costa Rica" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010688 (263x350).jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="263" />
It's just how people told us it would be: confusing but the locals would help us finding our way. And not like some other cities where anyone "offering help" is looking for a handout. At the airport a young guy asked if we needed anything and then directed us out to the street and around the corner to where the public buses run into the city. At the bus stop an older man directed us to the right bus to catch. When we approached downtown I told the bus driver the stop we were looking for (called "Coca Cola") and he called out the stop for us. We waited till the bus emptied before struggling with our luggage, but a young man stayed behind and carried the heaviest bag out behind us. It was, as advertised, not the choicest part of town. We asked a cab driver to take us to the next bus station and he directed us instead to walk just the two blocks from where we were. Another man on the street directed us the final half block. We caught the bus to Puriscal, and again a taxi driver asked if we needed anything. We asked for a good restaurant and he showed us the way. We walked there, hesitated because there were two or three choices, and there he was, honking from the street, pointing to the right one. After a great local meal the restaurant owner let us keep our heavy luggage there while we went shopping for groceries. I offered an extra tip and he looked at me like, "You must be kidding." On the way back we saw the same taxi driver and he took us with our groceries to retrieve our bags, then drove us right to the door of our destination, with the help of directions by phone from a neighbor of our landlord. Not easy, but in the end, so smooth, because of the friendly people.<br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="Costa Rica" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010653 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />We've rented a large house with a stunning valley view running 3400 feet all the way down to the ocean. Osnat had been searching AirBnB and other rental sites, with nothing attractive showing up. Almost giving up. Finally a new listing appeared, both appealing and affordable. We acted fast. Arriving here, we find the next door neighbors are from Baltimore, my hometown; they lived right next door to my school there (Friends School) - long gone by now for condos (the fate of the world).<br />
Friends hear about the stress and strain of so much travel and opine that it might have been overambitious. Why the rush? <br />
<br />
It's kind of a catch-22. Hurrying to find a home so we can stop hurrying to find a home. Then there's the wise crowd that says, Home is where the heart is. What you're searching for, you're missing in what is already there. Don't miss smelling the roses along the way.<br />
<br />
<strong>What is home, then? Just a concept, an attitude? An old habit? A temporary resting place?</strong><br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="Italy" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1000768 (263x350).jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="263" />I've felt homesick, in a way, ever since leaving BC a month before necessary, missing the prime month of September before the subletter arrived in October. The aim was to catch the shoulder season of Europe while it was still swimmable: Croatia, Italy, Portugal. Well, it was, but so what? Were we really going to settle there someday? I swam a couple of times in Croatia, once in Italy, once in Portugal. And blew what seemed like half the year's budget in the process. Why, then? <a href="http://www.astro.com/cgi/aclch.cgi?btyp=acm&" target="_blank">Astrocartography</a>.<br />
<br />
Yes, another New Age illusion. The subtle effects of planets notwithstanding, what matters is facts on the ground: language, culture, climate, economy, community. None of the European stops were good fits for us, in terms of the long term. You might say that just zipping through, three countries (plus a sidetrip to Seville) in six weeks, was hardly a fair test of what it might be to find a place to settle somewhere, make connections, test roots. But we were following our noses, guidance, intuition and resonance, in fact did land some fortuitous connections and temporary situations of grace and comfort, yet in each case felt - after an hour, a day, a week or a month - that it was time to move on. <br />
<br />
<img align="right" alt="Portugal" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010035 (350x263).jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />Yes, "home is where the heart is." Like the generations of settlers in cold Quebec, it's not necessary to go anywhere. Being at home happens in the moment, wherever one is: a bar, a swimming hole, a hotel room, a bus, a restaurant, a sunny terrace or rainy city street. The choice is always there: acceptance, or change. But the range of possibility is infinite, and choice remains. Stay forever? No home improvements? Change happens. Then at least it is necessary to ride with it. Follow new opportunities, gauging when the time is right. It's an ongoing game, the chessboard of life. The trick is not to take it too seriously... yet to play as if it counts; because on the earth plane it does count. <br />
<br />
In the bigger picture, why do we need a home, if "we" or "I" is the universe itself? It's only the need of the small ego, to be surrounded by some comfortable shell a little larger than itself. But if we or I is identified instead as nothing less than the universe, all of what is, we need no such container. We are the container. Within us is all possible selves, all possible homes. <br />
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<td valign="top"><img alt="Portugal" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010036 (350x263).jpg" height="225" width="300" /></td>
<td valign="top"><img alt="Croatia" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/CameraZOOM-20130912203519465 (350x263).jpg" height="225" width="300" /></td>
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<td valign="top"><img alt="Ecuador" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010414 (350x263).jpg" height="225" width="300" /></td>
<td valign="top"><img alt="beehive house" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/homes/P1010301 (350x327).jpg" height="280" width="300" /></td>
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-13272784692660890072013-11-17T09:01:00.000-08:002013-11-17T09:01:15.937-08:00Widening the Focus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This blog since 2010 has continued my practice of sharing personal adventures (often misadventures) and reflections, covering issues, events and readings not only personal but global in scope. My intent is not self-centeredness per
se, but stems from a reluctance to preach or teach, or to consider myself an
authority. I am simply inspired periodically to share my
own journey and reflections in hope that these will further inspire and resonate, please
and entertain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More recently I have shared some of the product and process of my writing life, notably the release of the novella <i>Rendezvous </i>in September 2013. Again the focus is personal but intended to share something of value to those who like to read, in this case fans of fiction with a twist, and and those intrigued with wilderness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How does the content and focus so far sit with you? Would you prefer to see a shift of focus to certain areas of your concern? Topical news, information, links, photos, guest posts, how-to's, reviews? Send me an email, or post a comment here, and I can endeavor to make this blog yours as well as mine!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thanks!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technical note: As part of the ongoing outreach for this blog, I am registering with Technocrati and including the following code:</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fcffe8; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 14.545454025268555px;">ZK9CN63YAW94</span></span><br />
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-30627189390775532202013-11-05T19:23:00.001-08:002013-11-05T19:23:46.239-08:00On Life and Art<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the culture of celebrity, the artist is royalty. In an era of technological ubiquity, everyone and his sister aspires to this nobility. But does the concept of iconic culture-bearer hold any meaning when democratized to <a href="http://daviddegraw.org/" target="_blank">99 percent?</a> And why limit our accolades anyway to the traditional domains of "the arts"? Why not celebrate the art of life, and find a way to recognize and appreciate and make viral the simple yet remarkable achievements of everyman, everywoman? Let Facebook, that sprawling domain showcasing the daily exploits of everycat, lead the way...<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="jam" height="263" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-1113/jam.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />As a self-complaint and disclosure, I might say that I exercise poor discipline in furthering <a href="http://cougarwebworks.com/directory.htm" target="_blank">"my art"</a> - whether that includes writing, drumming, playing flute, photography. Those at least are the categories most recognizable as arts, even if my own production in any of them has been rather modest: slightly above "amateur" and somewhat below "professional." The excuse I use provides the ballast for this essay's argument: that I am largely engaged instead in a creative quest that might be termed "lifestyle architecture," seeking optimum design that work for me - and, to the extent possible in collaboration with my life-partner, friends, housemates and <a href="http://masalaband.com/" target="_blank">bandmates</a> - if not in any prepackaged form for wider consumption.<br />
<br />
Beyond the arbitrary and conventional categories of art as practiced above, comes the more rarified and subjective realm of spiritual practice, not designed as a communication medium but certainly one intended, in most religions, to refine the self for the benefit of others. Thus the self is the medium of creation; self-creation becomes the ever unfinished work which however is always on display, in performance ready or not. Does the spiritual medium translate into objective criteria of evaluation? Such as... percentage of time smiling? Days per year not needing mood-enhancing substances? Number of life-partners less than or greater than 1? Number of followers of one's <a href="http://seekersmanual.com/" target="_blank">spirituality blog</a>? The proof is in the pudding; but where does the pudding reside? More to the point, <a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/10/self-inquiry-meeting-the-elephant-in-the-room-sally-ross/" target="_blank">Who is the pudding? Who, indeed, is asking the question?</a><br />
<br /><img align="right" height="327" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-1113/beehive.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />Finally we can all, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115016/publishing-back-so-long-successful-authors-give-writing" target="_blank">aspiring artists and those knowing better than to bother</a>, fall back upon the more mundane levels of living - those denoted by the "lower <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/spirit/balance.htm" target="_blank">chakras</a>" of root existence, survival and procreation, individual will and social and heart connection. We engage, after all, in a daily creation of our own lives, personalities, lifestyles, networks of sustenance and sociability. Is this realm of "life itself" not also a valid arena revealing our creativity, the manifestation of our living spirits, our abilities to achieve harmony, resonance and enduring value? There is no level playing field here, no system of final ranking for success or failure, happiness or popularity. No, not even money will serve, with its well-known contraindications and tendency to squelch as well as to liberate human potential. <br />
<br />
So, as with the spiritual realm of self-expression, the worldly pursuits of "lifestyle architecture" (that is, just plain life, in the making) are largely subjective in value. Do you have 1000 Facebook friends or 3 true friends, and which is more indicative of your success? Is that success to be determined by yourself, your own standard of fulfillment, or a panel of self-appointed experts, or a panel of experts appointed by other self-appointed experts? What is success anyway? And who is asking that question?<br />
<br /><img align="left" alt="cacao" height="263" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-1113/cacao.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />Maybe those moments of life stolen from art go on to enrich and inspire the art. Maybe those moments of art stolen from life go on to enrich and inspire the life. Maybe it's all about the life, and art is just indulgence. Maybe it's all about the art, and life is just indulgence. Maybe there's no art without a life that works, and maybe no life without art that works. Maybe it's all an individual matter and to pronounce such maxims for everyone is pointless. Maybe art and life are just shades of the same phenomenon - conscious, creative human being - like light and dark, good and evil, love and fear, spirit and form, energy and matter. Maybe the quantum duality is nothing more than a plaything of the verbal mind, juggling yin and yang to eternity, for its own amusement and edification. <br />
<br />In the meantime, life goes on; and art can proceed of its own will. Art goes on, and life proceeds of its own volition. Each surfaces according to the need of the moment, or season, in the form each being requires for our final definition... before such definition is erased, like sand in a monk's mandala. So in the meantime, celebrate: each with one's own brush of the moment, or season.<br /><br />
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-18993140281516277132013-09-27T04:12:00.000-07:002013-09-27T04:12:42.735-07:00The real Italy (first impressions)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-it/P1000871 (600x800).jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="Vernazza" /></td>
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<p>Sometimes when you are about to leave a place, that is when it appears to you in its essence. Crabbed to this cliff edge in Vernazza by knotted logistics of travel plans and eroding priorities of purpose; pressed out of the streets and alleyways by the relentless streams of tourists from America, France, Australia, England, in hiking boots, cargo pants and tank tops, who chuff red-faced up the cobbled path to the inter-village trails of the Cinque Terre; budget burned by the pedestrian 20-Euro restaurant meals of skimpy pasta and salad; ears blunted by the assault of American English filling the piazza pizzerias; I find refuge by this window over the sea.</p>
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Behind the green wrought iron filigree curled in wavelets, the pale waves wash in the morning onto the gray rocks, oblivious to my concerns of the moment as to all the human history clotting these shores with empire, architecture, art and commerce. The nobility of the human enterprise is reduced to this essential: the pure genius of stacking rock upon rock on the bedrock of the cliff; turning raw nature into habitable space, into havens where one can sit sheltered, graced by pleasing colors of ochre and white plaster, terra cotta, brick and dark wood. One can sit removed from the bustle of what passes for culture and tradition, sit connected with the source of it all. <br />
<br />
The real Italy, the one before tourists, the one before art and reputation, sits facing the sea, its essence arising in the dancing waves, the grace of the morning light, the play of motion and stillness, the warm-cool sensuous air, the soothing hum and crash of the foaming tide. The Italy of history awaits beyond all this, in the stories of the mind and scratchings of the scholars, heaped in stones rebuilt and repainted over centuries, bringing wave upon wave of visitor to catch glimpses and pass away again.<br />
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<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-it/P1000816 (800x600) (300x225).jpg" width="300" height="225" alt="Vernazza" /></td>
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<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-it/P1000837 (800x600) (300x225).jpg" alt="Manarola" width="300" height="225" /></td>
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This enterprise of building an edifice of words arises too like ephemeral shifts of wave and light, and falls again into the motion of the current, fades again into the white horizon. This empire too shall pass, leaving, if it is well enough constructed, a window standing high on an ancient cliff, open to the sea.
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<br /></div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-80521268845204520642013-09-14T07:10:00.000-07:002017-02-09T11:16:38.516-08:00Sketches of Croatia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>Sept. 5-8 Drasnice<br />
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Clear transparent luminous pebbled turquoise water, devoid of coral or large fish, tropical warm, facing islands west to Italy. The host family, apologetic on the snafu that made us drag our luggage down the long track from the highway, then surly after we renegotiated our reservation for less money and fewer days. Or maybe it wasn't about us, but about them, middle age in a second-rate resort outpost, burnt out after high season.<br /><br />
<strong>Sept. 9-10 Dubrovnik</strong><br />
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Bombed-out fortress walls restored, tourist hordes renewed with extra fascination, war in our time, how incongruous! Red-tiled roofs again reflect brilliant sunshine, contrast with azure Adriatic, Ottoman navies repulsed like Yugoslav dive bombers, cafes awash in Euros, pizza everywhere, and world-class ice cream at every lip.<br /><br />
<strong>Sept. 10-11 Korcula</strong><br />
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Embraced in the intimate splendor of Korcula's clear pebbled bay, wild swimming, footsteps from the ancient walled port. A sleepy languor of island life, in view of a long green peninsula ridged by gray stony mountain. The narrow alleyways choked with cafes, the harbor promenade and obligatory fish on ice, more café bars three per block, we saunter five minutes across the old town, fifteen around, clicking each step slower.<br /><br />
<strong>Sept. 12-15 Komiza, Vis</strong><br />
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Sweet brown village at end of remote Vis island, ancient wood shutters closed on deserted alleyways while tourists flock at harborside restaurants and cafes, tour boats lined up to ferry them to rare blue cave and sand beach coves, skies pure blue till chemtrail cross-hatch over empty stone church, grapes <a href="http://www.paulodacosta.ca/" target="_blank">purple and green</a> at harvest, cake of apple and carob to wish us onward to Italy.<br />
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<br /></div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-67837116774425372542013-08-31T13:48:00.000-07:002013-09-01T01:51:44.099-07:00Day Before Launch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As fate would have it, my first published book releases tomorrow, September 1; and two days after that I fly to my next round of world explorations.
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<br />
New beginnings: a <a href="http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com/author-nowick-gray.html" target="_blank">book</a>, an <a href="http://nowickgray.com/" target="_blank">author website</a>, a <a href="http://facebook.com/nowickg" target="_blank">Facebook author page</a>, an itinerary of locations that include possibilities both familiar (Portugal, Thailand, Bali) and unfamiliar (Croatia, Italy, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ecuador...). Life continues to unfold as a mystery of manifestation, the past and present merging in the choice of multiple futures.
<br />
<br />
Such is the <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.ca/2013/07/from-heart.html" target="_blank">fate of the world</a>, and such is the theme and construction of what on the surface begins as an "adventure novella," <em>Rendezvous</em>.
<br />
<br />
Of course the first question anyone asks is, "What is your book about?"<br />
<br />
Given an elevator ride of, say, 7 floors, I might reply:
<br />
<br />
<img align="left" alt="Rendezvous" height="300" hspace="15" src="http://nowickgray.com/images/covers/Rendezvous 200x300.jpg" vspace="10" width="200" /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: arial;">Rendezvous is a taut yet poetically described tale of a wilderness adventure, by a young family drawn on a romantic quest to meet in the heart of the mountains. Overcoming obstacles of logistics and physical endurance, they achieve their rendezvous at a cabin in a remote pass. During an overnight storm, through a haunted dream state, Will confronts the agonizing choices of finding a descent back to safety. The linear narrative spawns divergent scenarios of disaster, which the reader must navigate with Will in the quest for survival.</span>
<br />
<br />
That's one way to put it. It leaves out, though, the personal, autobiographical dimension. Invite me for a coffee to say more and I would share:
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: arial;">
The core story in Rendezvous is a real-life adventure my family and I experienced in 1987 in the Purcell Mountains of British Columbia. The successful outcome of that adventure, with its numerous challenges and pitfalls, allowed me to muse on a variety of "what-if" scenarios stemming from the actual story line - most of them disastrous. In the paranormal sense, and structurally in the novella, I conceived of these as alternative timelines or parallel realities. Somehow karmically the other characters and I "chose" the one scenario leading to our survival.</span><br />
The challenge in publishing and promoting a book is to distill the entirety to a 3-page synopsis, a 1-page version, a 2-paragraph query, a back cover blurb.<br />
<br />
Like life and this story, the task of summarizing spawns numerous possibilities to choose from. I can present you with the following finger-food, for example, as hors-d'oeuvres to give you a flavor:<span style="color: #336633; font-family: arial;">
</span><br />
<ul><span style="color: #336633; font-family: arial;">
<li><img align="right" alt="wilderness survival" height="223" hspace="15" src="http://nowickgray.com/images/woods-blog.jpg" vspace="10" width="290" />
Man on one side - his woman and child on the other - battle a haunted mountain for survival.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
Seven doors: six lead to disaster, one to survival.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
A romantic quest becomes a wilderness ordeal.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
A simple tale of adventure spawns paranormal possibilities.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
<em>Groundhog Day</em> meets <em>Night on Bald Mountain</em>.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
Hero plays Russian roulette with the Canadian wilderness. </li>
</span></ul>
<span style="color: #336633; font-family: arial;">
</span>
One reviewer, fellow writer <a href="http://amzn.to/15Jw3rn" target="_blank">Raye Rabbitfoot</a>, offers a similar palette of tidbits from the other side of the mirror, the reader's view:
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: arial;">
</span><br />
<ul><span style="color: #660000; font-family: arial;">
<li>
Fabulous: tingling fear-filled apprehension.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
Waiting bristle-backed for the next avalanche of possibilities.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
Drink your carrot juice; this book will take your blood pressure off the charts.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
Suspense-filled details culminating in twists of possibilities.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
A sword swallower... it took courage to watch the next move.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
A maze of manifested fears.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>
A slide show of white-knuckle catastrophe.</li>
</span></ul>
Now that your belly is already full with a surfeit of appetizers, and I have more packing to do before embarking on a larger new adventure, I will close here to allow a spell of digestion while we await the main course, still baking until tomorrow.<br />
<hr />
September 1 update: You can now order <i>Rendezvous </i>at Amazon.com in <a href="http://amzn.to/19XrzhE">paperback </a>and <a href="http://amzn.to/15uUWD7">Kindle </a>ebook editions (<a href="http://amzn.to/17yKAZE">Kindle ebook also available from Amazon.ca</a>).</div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-68924091981584322162013-07-28T11:59:00.001-07:002013-07-28T22:49:47.300-07:00Colonizer Meets Colonized: From the Heart<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the theatre production "<a href="http://www.facebook.com/FromtheHeartBC" target="_blank">From the Heart</a>," just finished its run at the Uptown Mall, the most moving vignette was the second one, the tete a tete about the play itself and the implications of awareness of colonialism in ourselves, the colonizers. "Not about guilt, not about negativity" - but about education, awareness, acknowledgement of what really happened and how we continue to benefit. Feelings of suppressed injustice and release arose as I listened, with the realization of how pervasive is this "settler's" curse - whether in Canada, the US, South Africa, Israel, or any other land that has seen waves of conquering armies, immigrant races, or marauding corporations decimate resources, cultures, and previous populations.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<img height="436" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/iran.jpg" width="600" /> </div>
<br />
After the show Cedar brought the discussion to the present, a world where 99% of the people are now united in our colonization by the 1%. In this world we no longer need to be divided by issues and identities of separation on the basis of race, nationality or territorial seniority. The predominant separation that controls and overshadows all the other issues now - environmental, political, economic, cultural - is that between the 99% and the 1%. <br />
<br />
<img align="right" height="400" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/rove.jpg" vspace="10" width="336" />
Lest we jump to the witch hunt and lynch mob, the 1% is not even a class of people, per se. Those handful of wealthiest on the planet are, we presume, still human at the core; just as, on the other side of this unequal division, all of us in the 99% have seeds and remnants of rapacious tendencies in our DNA. The 1% is not so much a human demographic as a fiction of privilege: a manufactured bubble of power and protection propped up by such legal machinery as Admiralty Law and the notion that corporations enjoy the rights but not the responsibilities of actual, living and breathing persons. Its occupation of the apex of the pyramid is secured, most blatantly, by a combination of brute force, fear and intimidation, bribery and blackmail; and more insidiously, by controlling education, media, information and entertainment, accepted modes and boundaries of discourse, definitions of "normal," and social pressures to conform.<br />
<br />
In the play about reconciliation with First Nations, we are told of the nineteenth-century ploy by the US government to wrest lands from the Lakota Sioux, forcing them to sell their treaty lands or be denied food payments under those same treaties: "Sell or Starve." In Canada today, 2013, the federal government repeats the tactic by denying funds to any First Nations band who refuses to support the new omnibus legislation (Bill C-45) further stripping them of rights and resources. A young man from the Nanoose band, sipping tea with us in the lobby after the play, shares that it's more complicated than simply reviving traditional culture and language; the world is changing so fast that everyone - young and old, First Nations and settlers - must negotiate the appropriate way forward, a way that is unclear and changing by the day. <a href="http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/27/the-united-states-is-awash-in-public-stupidity-and-critical-thought-is-under-assault/" target="_blank">Henry Giroux, writing in this morning's blogosphere on the assault on critical thought in American culture</a>, comes to the same conclusion:<br />
<blockquote>
Young people increasingly have become subject to an oppressive disciplinary machine that teaches them to define citizenship through the exchange practices of the market and to follow orders and toe the line in the face of oppressive forms of authority. They are caught in a society in which almost every aspect of their lives is shaped by the dual forces of the market and a growing police state. The message is clear: Buy/ sell/ or be punished.</blockquote>
If the native people of Canada are the First Nations, then the youth of America, and by extension the world, are the Last Nations. "In a Maryland school," Giroux notes, "a 13-year-old girl was arrested for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance." A logical development, in a time when "the war on terror ... has morphed into war on democracy." The assault is the same, the mounting crimes against nature and humanity, and time has come to hold this universal predicament to the light.<br />
<br />
A pyramid by its very design cannot be simply "toppled," reformed by coup or revolution. Maintaining the hierarchy of power, one form of corrupt leadership replaces another, down through the centuries. Instead it is time for humans to recognize our innate equality, to level the playing field to the horizontal ground of natural democracy on a community level. The Occupy movements recently have demonstrated a nonviolent, consensus-based approach to grassroots participation in affairs that concern us on a human level. Growing past colonizer and colonized, we need to deal now with each other as equals, and to reconcile ourselves collectively with nature which still holds us.<br />
<br />
Humanity in the collective can be considered a living organism; and as such it can be encouraged and trusted to carry out its innate healing powers. A few months ago I had a dermatology treatment using light and a photosensitive cream to zap precancerous cells under the surface of the skin. The results were ugly for the first few days, as red spots and blotches appeared all over my face. A few days more, and the red spots began to darken and dry. In two weeks they had all flaked and fallen off. The healthy skin, with no further intervention, had simply moved the offending dead cells up and out of the system, and restored itself to a healthy condition.<br />
<br />
Awareness and acknowledgement are the first steps. Appropriate action and healing are the natural consequences to follow, given a continued willingness to listen and learn from each other.<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="width: 90%px;"> <tbody>
<tr> <td valign="top"><img height="388" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/hampi.jpg" width="300" /></td> <td valign="top"><img height="399" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/nepal.jpb" width="300" /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-29034416364163254712013-06-10T13:45:00.001-07:002013-06-13T14:33:41.137-07:00Critical Mass<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
I have the image from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307389049/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307389049&linkCode=as2&tag=cougarwebworks" target="_blank">John Vaillant's <i>The Tiger</i></a>, of a baboon troop surrounded by lions, with no escape, giving up and sitting there, hands over their faces, waiting for the end. In a book on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439193886/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439193886&linkCode=as2&tag=cougarwebworks">JFK</a> by veteran nonviolent activist James Douglass, he writes of the "unspeakable" evil in the world (quoting the Christian mystic and poet Thomas Merton), the evil that took Kennedy's life when the president converted from a cold warrior to a leader seeking genuine peace. Now we find ourselves in a perpetual state of "citizen denial" - our hands over our faces - as the <a href="http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama" target="_blank">U.S. government openly admits it is waging a permanent global war</a>, and one of its <a href="http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why" target="_blank">intelligence analysts has exposed the cyber-technology placing virtually every communication under surveillance</a>.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile for the first time in sixty years, there is a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-YGE2KLa58" target="_blank">large presence of media and aggrieved public surrounding the secretive Bilderberg conference in Britain</a>, where once it was denied and now must be admitted that 140 of the world's most wealthy and powerful are meeting to plan in secret (definition of <i>conspiracy </i>- no longer "theory" but speakable fact) the fate of the world's economies, governments, and, by the way, people. Another definition that still gets swept under the carpet, <i>fascism</i>: according to Mussolini, "the merger of corporate and state power." Sound familiar? <br />
<br />
Orwell saw it coming, but most of the rest of us chose, consciously or not, to look the other way, our virtual hands over our heads. Totalitarianism, fascism, these spectres of the twentieth century did not go away, they just retreated behind the scenes, became more sophisticated, learned to cover tracks by smokescreens of misleading rhetoric, paper tigers, consumer gadgets and toys, bribery and blackmail, <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/news1.htm#falseflag" target="_blank">false-flag concocted "terror events,"</a> assassinations, coups by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452287081/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0452287081&linkCode=as2&tag=cougarwebworks" target="_blank">economic hit-men</a>, <a href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrolinformation" target="_blank">mind-control both overt and covert</a>, and the bottom line of choice, appeals to "national security."<br />
<br />
No longer relevant in the twenty-first century, if they ever were, are the artificial divisions of left and right, liberal and conservative, socialist and fascist, christian and muslim and jewish, black and white and yellow. The relevant picture in this savannah of a world is the lion and baboon. If you have enough lions to surround the poor primates, it's game over and the hands rightly stay over the eyes. But if, as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-YGE2KLa58" target="_blank">David Icke</a> pointed out to the assembled thousands in the protesters' "corral" at Bilderberg, we are many and they are few, and we are committed to conscious, nonviolent change, there is hope. If we bother or risk taking our hands off our eyes and ears, we will notice, under the <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/news1.htm#chemtrails" target="_blank">chemtrail</a>-shredded skies, that those self-appointed lions are 140 (or 300, or 1%, pick your billionaire cutoff) and we are 7 billion. Now, maybe now, we are ready to press "reset" and play this game for real. <br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2-YGE2KLa58?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></div>
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Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-59035665407659415882013-04-25T16:37:00.000-07:002013-04-26T02:36:37.248-07:00Jack Ruby and Other Talismans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been a winter of challenges, yes even in so-called paradise (AKA Maui). Unusually inclement weather - wind, rain, cool days and nights, and water choppy and too cold for comfortable swimming. Recurrent cold/flu virus attacks, mutating weekly, for months on end. Bouts with parasites persisting from last year's travels in India. Wrestling with future alternatives in the quest for a home with budget balance...<br />
<br />
In mid-April, our evening entertainment turned to watching video replays of presentations at the conference held in LA by Project Camelot, entitled, <a href="http://awakeandaware2013.net/" target="_blank">"Awake and Aware 2013: Time Travel & Other Worlds."</a> Meanwhile I was reading <em>11/22/63</em>, the Stephen King novel about travel back in time to undo the Kennedy assassination. In that quest many obstacles intruded along the way; the hero discovering, "The past is obdurate." The book is reminiscent of <em>Groundhog Day</em> and <em><a href="http://hyperlife.net/fiction/start.htm" target="_blank">Rendezvous</a></em>, both dealing with multiple replays of the past until "you get it right."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-april/rubyoswald264.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" height="191" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-april/rubyoswald264.jpg" vspace="10" width="264" /></a>My phone log began to reveal a few repetions of the following:<br />
<br />
<strong>Jack</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Ruby</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
(Jack Ruby, for those two young to remember, was the assassin of Kennedy's assassin, insuring the past would remain silent on that plot.) <br />
<br />
Ruby was a young woman wanting to buy our ruby-red car (a 2001 Acura Integra). When she showed up to have a look at it, I said to her, "Ruby, meet Ruby." The week before, the first person we showed the car to said it should have a name... like "Ruby."<br />
<br />
This sequence also recalls the movie trailer <em>Ruby Sparks</em>, where a novelist's character creation (Ruby) comes to life as part of his life.<br />
<br />
<img align="right" height="263" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-april/acura.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />In the midst of all the above, the past - or in this case, the future scenario of selling the car - proved obdurate more than once. After feedback from the first two buyers, we decided to get some basic bodywork done to hammer out the worst of the dents on both front fenders: relics of past accidents in California by Osnat's twenty-something son and daughter. The very next day after the work was done, she drove to an evening event - a channeling session by an interdimensional comic named <a href="http://soreias.com/kartron.htm" target="_blank">Karton</a> - and came out to the parking lot to find a fresh dent in the rear bumper; so we had to return the next day to the body shop to deal with that. <br />
<br />
The next day, she drove to a healer in the afternoon, up a rough dirt driveway. The healer announced that the stubborn parasites (persistent since India) plaguing Osnat's system all winter had survived her attempted purge and were beginning a new life cycle. On the way out she drove over a rock and suffered a flat tire, which meant another trip to town and another costly repair, dragging down our morale and making us wonder what forces were arrayed against us in preparing to leave this enchanted/haunted island. Following the tire repair, a talisman appeared in the tire well of the trunk: a large button from an ancient sweater of Osnat's from years past. <br />
<br />
Coming out the other side of this gauntlet of clues and omens, to our final week before we had to fly away, the King book was finished, the parasites back in remission. But Craigslist fell silent, and the car remained unsold.<br />
<br />
"Time is an illusion," <a href="http://bashar.org/" target="_blank">Bashar</a> reminds us. "All points in space and time are linked together. When you find that inner excitement in one experience, and then another, it will turn out that those experiences must be connected." Awake and aware, in the pause between anxiety and excitement, we await the next signpost on the way back home.<br />
<hr />
Postscript, next day: Osnat passes her driver's test. At the DMV while awaiting her license I see my former yoga teacher on Maui, Ruby Amarshan. In the evening we go together to the Karton session, and in the same parking lot where the previous week someone dinged the rear bumper, I bonk my head on the hatchback and realize it's not staying open: the hydraulic struts are shot. Yet another obstacle to selling the car...<br />
<img align="left" height="263" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blog-april/cargrave.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />I go stressing into paranoia mode, while Osnat remains optimistic down to the wire: "Something will show itself." On Wednesday we plead our case at the used car lots, put notices on bulletin boards, relist online, and formulate backup plans for car storage on Maui. <br />
<br />
After meeting with my friend Rick to play chess, drum, and discuss car options - in the chess game of life - I'm too burnt out even to go drumming for dance class. Instead, on the way down the highway towards home, my phone rings and a guy says he wants to see the car. I detour to Kahalui to meet him there. On seeing the red Integra his eyes light up. A classic sporty car, he owned a '95 model, wanted one again. Dents, struts, no problem. This is the car he wants. Cash in his pocket. Let's do this, tonight. <br />
<br />
And it is done. We enter the home stretch clear and free. Rick channels pithy wisdom by way of congratulations, worthy of a bumper sticker: <br />
<br />
"Patience is often required when surfing life in the now."<br />
<br />
[<a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.com/2009/09/editing-life-from-dzogchen-view.html#unedited" target="_blank">previous trials and tribulations of Buying a Car on Maui</a>]<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-31820906039042445752012-12-24T18:55:00.000-08:002012-12-31T00:33:20.550-08:002012 Solstice Reset<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/sunset.jpg" /><br />
<br />
This channeling knows no other dreamtime but that of the now, in the making, in the celebration of self which is all, of the act which is any act, of the words which are any words, of the motion which is ongoing however one might attempt to slice it into two or more segments of frozen time, time nonetheless beats on, wings and thunder.<br />
<br />
<img align="right" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/palms.jpg" vspace="10" />Again the chorus speaks, the deal is struck, the provisional makeshift tent of the world circus is erected on the dusty square around the fountain, the gypsies arrive and the banksters retire and the camels smile in their dry dung aroma.<br />
<br />
Again the lines diverge, converge, swim in the undulations of a greater force. Again and again, I come to surrender my own dissatisfactions, the larger failings, the grievous state of affairs of affairs of state, to come home to this always this and only this moment in time no time between you all you and me not me to face the mirror of understanding which stands under the banner of All-That-Is. <br />
<br />
No new god or religion, this sense remains provisionally attached to a conscious being who happens to pass by here long enough to get a read from the oscillating compass, the fluttering timepiece, and reckon where next the wind might buffet everything in its merry way. <br />
<br />
Towns thrashing in the surf of the ages; silent apocalypses rendering all miraculous in the morning of the new day. Again the surf rises, and again the volunteers encounter and override their own resistance and fear, to join the incoming tide.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/surf.jpg" /><br />
<br />
With the following I offer snapshots of three spiritually-oriented events I was privileged to attend, marking this solstice season:<br />
<br />
<h3>
Sitting with Claudio, Lemuria</h3>
The place was packed on the 21st, the morning of the world UNIFY meditation set to raise the planetary vibration by the power of mass intention. The usual speech was given to bring to our busy minds the peaceful acceptance that we are already universal consciousness, universal being itself, no other separate self except in our illusions, or for temporary entertainment. We are the ant, the papaya, the billions of galaxies.<br />
<br />
Beware the gurus in pointy hats and clown suits. Beware the hoary traditions thousands of years old, in which women are excluded from positions of power. Beware the fixations on this or that name of "God," the names themselves becoming idols of prejudice, limitation, separation. <br />
<br />
The new world is the world we awake to any and every moment, the world available to us even if we forget or refuse to be aware. Any categorization of it as a new religion or belief system is fraught with inaccuracy, shades of contentious interpretation, endless commentary; so we must trust our individual expression of it to others as needed, in the new moment arising, spontaneous and therefore honest and direct - even if words themselves can only approximate direct experience, understanding, realization.<br />
<br />
<img align="left" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/yellow.jpg" vspace="10" /> <br />
<h3>
Activation with Kartron, Ha'iku</h3>
Inspired to manifest our highest possibility in the crystal light grid of electromagnetic resonant frequency in the star chamber of the god-gate vortex, azure-blue forty-four feet high and forty-four feet across to channel the necessary energies of transmutation overseen by Archangel Michael and St. Germain, a half-dozen of us came together on a rainy Ha'iku night preceeding the 1:11 ascension time of the solstice itself, bypassing the prescribed Mayan movement meditation on inverted triangles to activate the torsion magnetics of the soul template to anchor the eight-minute transmission for three months in which humanity will solidify on earth what has been brought from heaven...<br />
<br />
The delivery is English arch and comical, Monty Python meets Kryon the Interdimensional. Yet the critique is incisive, uncompromising impatience with powers manipulating earth and life itself, their time now finished and due to fade away, as we take courage to banish them, refusing their overtures, consigning them to prison or exile as consequences of their own dark choices. <br />
<br />
We are the warriors of light, the initiates of god-training, who must embody and act upon the heavenly decrees of those who have gone before, those who watch from above and those committed over eons to see the fulfillment of the paradigm of harmony set to replace the paradigm of discord and chaos and worse, coercion and falsification of life's innate imprints for the wellbeing of all. <br />
<br />
<h3>
Zikr with Leilah, Makawao Union Church</h3>
This knowledge of soul unification is mystic-old, from the Sufi seers and spinners and poets, so we celebrated in large concentric circles and singing this practice of oneness with the spirit of all, Al-lah, but one of the names of all-that-is. The time come for the world of oppression and exploitation and separation to end, a separation or rather integration of that ruling paradigm into a new flowering of old wisdom.<br />
<br />
We bring to rebirth in our practice together the knowledge of inner truth, which connects in spirit all things and all beings. Our voices resonate with gratitude for such spirit, for the divine manifestation that we enjoy in this temporary stay in the garden of immanent splendor. Our prayers are our voices and swaying bodies, our joined hands and hearts. Our feet step the codes of grace and commitment, marking the journey not outward or away, but circling the territory of the sacred which we share.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/dolphins.jpg" /><br />
<br />
And what of that supposed phenomenon, this world-staged upheaval and transformation, the signal to new time or no time? <br />
<br />
It fades with the world it claimed to recycle, giving rise to what comes instead. <br />
<br />
It brings nothing in its wake recognizable as a suitable replacement, because that very standard of replication has been relegated to the settling basin of the hourglass. <br />
<br />
It ceases control as the objects and subjects of that ill-gotten bargain opt out for clearer arrangements, direct dealings over the trade of those tokens we value in advancing the game forward. <br />
<br />
Projects multiply, sources corroborate, invitations beckon, dead ends sprout weeds, fallow fields grow what they will, and the chorus takes another deep breath before the chant of the new day. <br />
<br />
<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/solsticeblog/rainbow.jpg" /><br />
<br /></div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-79802650306930292452012-10-20T20:32:00.000-07:002012-10-20T20:37:08.283-07:00Paradise Alive, Revolution Afoot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<img align="left" height="350" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/passage.jpg" vspace="10" width="263" /> <br />
<br />
Here in Maui nearly a month, and difficult to generate any impetus to create something other out of the bubble of suburban comfort, experiential paradise in the outer and inner realms: loving relationship, nurturing warm ocean and air, sunshine and earth, ample drumming and social opportunities, fresh local organic food, time to work on paying jobs and our own projects. The first week, true, posed challenges settling in. We had to futz with furniture arrangement, household supplies, wireless upgrades, computer glitches, phone plan options, car registration, assorted errands in mall-ville. On the fun side of daily life we've been reacquainting ourselves with familiar places and people: sampling beaches with good snorkeling, taking walks on our neighborhood streets interlaced with golf fairways, attending zikr, kirtan, and 5-rhythms dance, and playing drums and percussion at drum classes, dance classes, beach jams, house jams, jungle jams.<br />
<table border="0" style="width: 100%px;"> <tbody>
<tr> <td width="50%"><img height="255" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/americana.jpg" width="340" /></td> <td width="50%"><img height="250" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/fairway.jpg" width="340" /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Rising out of this swell of material contentment is an inner thriving, yet striving to create more, a reaching out and connecting to glimpse a bigger picture, at risk of contamination by endless <a href="http://projectcamelotproductions.com/blog-hp.html" target="_blank">conspiracy and unraveling</a>, threats to peace and well-being, real or imagined. At every point of input is a questioning, a partial truth with another truth on its darker side, or a lighter truth hidden by the walls of projection. There is a risk of sheer reactivity, of responding in kind, of feeding polarity by leaning on one side or the other. Equanimity holds the balance, either with a balanced, classic "liberal" view, or a radical vision beyond dualistic assertions competing for attention.<br />
<br />
<table border="0" style="width: 100%px;"> <tbody>
<tr> <td><img height="255" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/wallflowers.jpg" width="340" /></td> <td><img height="255" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/beauty.jpg" width="340" /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<img align="left" height="265" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/maluaka.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" /> The natural world serves as the testing ground for what is real: flowing currents, blowing breezes, burning sun, lava and coral, with its attendant life forms that judge our actions as valid or remote by sheer comparison. Last week we were escorted in turn by a couple of turtles for an extended swim along the coral: one turning suddenly to eye us face to face; the other, a six-foot giant, content to match us stroke for stroke for a full half and hour. Today the turtle that appeared out of "nowhere" under our plasticked noses lay mute and stone-still on the bottom, nestled in a trough of old coral, only blinking to signal its questionable hold on life. Was it poisoned, injured, dying? Scared, or bored? Or just napping, extending the long moment before its next brief breath? What story unfolded that eluded our imagining utterly? On the sign to the beach was depicted a cute couple lounging on the sand: monk seal with flipper on the leathery turtle by its side. So, missing that lost love? <br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<img height="350" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/dolphins.jpg" vspace="10" width="337" /></div>
<br />
In other news, we hear the <a href="http://kauilapele.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/american-kabuki-10-18-12-drake-heads-up/" target="_blank">revolution is afoot</a>. Monday will reveal its truth or fantasy, forewarning or false lead. Or <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/037556_Fukushima_power_plant_collapse.html#ixzz29VjL3zrJ" target="_blank">radiation about to bloom</a>, sending us all to doom. Or, ascension at hand, holographic transformation an act of divine will. Or, more of the same mass diet of concocted terror, machination and mounting control, the mad dreams of a dying elite. Or, back to the basics of suburban life, outfitting the kitchen, walking the dog. Or, greeting the new sun each day with a smile, stretching the body under its unbending rays of glory. <br />
<br />
<table border="0" style="width: 100%px;"> <tbody>
<tr> <td><img height="350" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/theshadow.jpg" width="263" /></td> <td><img height="350" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/salutation.jpg" width="263" /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The beauty is, there is considerable choice in the channel to tune to, the show to create. One, two, a network and multitude at a time. At the speed of coral, turtle or seal, flower or sunset, slow shared meal. <br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<img height="241" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mauiblog12/sunset.jpg" width="350" /></div>
</div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-22943993420500622842012-05-15T10:28:00.000-07:002012-05-15T10:28:07.816-07:00Finding Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="right">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
<strong>Finding Home</strong></div>
<div align="left">
<img align="left" height="350" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mayblog/vancouver.jpg" vspace="10" width="263" />The taste of wild Pacific salmon mellow in my mouth, I reflect on the blessings of home that greeted me on my return to British Columbia five days ago...</div>
<ul>
<li>The cornucopia of food selection in the supermarkets and various small shops, worldwide in scope and of privileged quality.
</li>
<br />
<li>The wide clean quiet streets, nary a motorbike in sight.
</li>
<br />
<li>The convenience of a home address, phone number, access to utilities, true high-speed Internet.</li>
<br />
<li>Backups to restore of music and photo collection, files, computer programs, to resume fully the digital side of life.</li>
<br />
<li>Continuity of dentist and doctor care, and besides, being healthier and more energetic.</li>
<br />
<li>Familiarity of streets and shops, to find whatever items are needed or desired, right now.</li>
<br />
<li>Cool fresh air, the cloudless sky (without <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3__ssxTvNc&feature=my_favorites&list=FLomMzbJek_qAs2fIYP-zwIA" target="_blank">chemtrails</a>), turning to genuine summer perfection in early May.</li>
<br />
<img align="right" height="263" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mayblog/ducks.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" />
<li>Familiarity of trees, gardens, forests, landscape, beaches - and water swimmable this year in spring.</li>
<br />
<li>Long daylight hours of late spring and summer, contrasting with the dark tropic evenings.</li>
<br />
<li>Relaxation of the body and spirit from the irritating buzz and itch of mosquitoes.</li>
<br />
<li>List of friends/family/band/pod to catch up with, events to attend.</li>
<br />
<li>Compatible language, cultural personality, civil society.</li>
<br />
<img align="left" height="350" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mayblog/flag.jpg" vspace="10" width="263" />
<li>A single all-embracing culture, instead of divided status as "expat" (leaving aside deeper analysis of colonization here in North America, and how far back that goes, for instance the ice-age megafauna extinctions, or further?).</li>
<br />
<li>Familiar car, house, furnishings, kitchenware, bedding, instruments, printers, desk and chair, clothes, shower and bath.</li>
</ul>
Five days into blowing this bubble of elation, I pause, already settled in, full in appreciation and now ready to consider what's next. The other side of elation, sniffing the slide down to routine, normalcy, even stagnation; and beyond, the unsettledness of the next cycle, and the complexities of merging another being into this bubble built for one - or floating it off again to another land. <br />
<br />
<div align="left">
In the meantime, the story settles into a space between the swings of the pendulum. Neither elation nor deflation offers to sustain. Rather a more grounded presence, neither catching up nor leaning ahead, but arriving to the next moment simple and free. May <em>this</em> story, with less attachment to details of home and circumstance, and more opening of heart, continue. Its mantra, whether on page 1, 5, or the last: Stay Tuned. </div>
<div align="center">
<img height="392" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/mayblog/Circle2.jpg" width="500" /></div>
<br /></div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-38869012485179280562012-04-08T23:58:00.001-07:002016-11-24T17:18:42.964-08:00Coming Soon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<em>The biggest spider I ever saw, a sentient companion over my morning sun meditation bench... after two weeks, I look up one morning to find it gone, web destroyed. That must have been one large hungry bird.</em><br />
<br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/spider3.jpg" height="263" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="350" />As we go further into 2012, already the days and weeks and months are spinning by, accelerating, and I have just one month left in this fertile bubble called Bali. While the outer world careens through a parade of events - seemingly chaotic, more likely orchestrated from hidden forces terrestrial or otherwise - I have kept life here simple. Revising to bring <a href="http://nowickgray.com/book/psybot-novel-virtual-reality/" target="_blank">new life to an old novel</a>; snapping photographs on sunny walks through the rice fields and walkways adorned with offerings; anticipating momentous changes to come, transformation already underway. <br />
<br />
<em>Who is the spider, who the flower, who the hungry bird?</em><br />
<br />
<img align="right" src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/ogo-ogo1.jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="263" /><br />
What is really happening in the world, and what is about to happen? On the mainstream side we find the usual diet of war and rumors of war, endless episodes of so-called terror, frightening swaths of destruction from supposedly natural forces. The <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/news.htm" target="_blank">alternative media</a> paints an opposite picture of plots and plans, documenting histories of coercion and coverup, aiming for truth disclosure above national and sectarian ideologies. <a href="http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1035-divineintervention1" target="_blank">Financial tyranny</a>, we are promised, is now on the brink of collapse, as earth's vast majority of good citizens will be treated to a spectacle of <a href="http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1043-massarrests" target="_blank">mass arrests</a> of the dark cabal. <br />
<br />
Aligned with the political, scientific and financial whistleblowers are the angelic channelers, New Age seers, and <a href="http://kauilapele.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">disclosers of contact</a> with advanced beings from beyond - who keep promising to materialize "in the very near future." The legions of spiritual teachers and guides continue chanting the mantra of inner peace and self-realization, with a contemporary twist of letting go and merging with the bigger picture, surfing the planetary shift, breathing into the One body of energy that we are, the collective cosmic organism, expression of Source.<br />
<br />
All this news coming from all sides is unmistakably taking on a different edge now, everything coming to a head, everything to be revealed, and healed. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" style="width: 550px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/temple.jpg" height="350" width="263" /></td>
<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/fields.jpg" height="350" width="254" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Channeling, whether conscious or unconscious, what is needed for human evolution, our personal lives tick by nevertheless. We go out to cosmic possibility and come back again to a feeling of, okay, whether <a href="http://seekersmanual.com/?p=174" target="_blank">after enlightenment</a> or still before - in other words, <em>during </em>enlightenment - we still chop the wood and carry the water. Only somehow the little things are more profound, more meaningful and important. At the same time we have the awareness of something other in the offing, something far greater, making those chosen particulars less meaningful, less important. Either way, both ways simultaneously, we do them, we continue, because that’s what we do.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" style="width: 550px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/ditch.jpg" height="350" width="263" /></td>
<td><img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/set.jpg" height="350" width="259" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
And while waiting, anticipating, pausing in another long breath between the daily doing, we catch an inspiration to do more. On the creative alternatives side, we have the new activist paradigm to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bPhdQaMx2s&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Occupy Earth</a> (with room for the poetical hand in hand with the political); or to <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/" target="_blank">celebrate nature, culture and spirit</a> in a further explosion of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8tDpQp6m0A" target="_blank">transformational festivals</a>. <br />
<br />
<img align="left" src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/osnat-walls.jpg" height="350" hspace="15" vspace="10" width="262" />Always coming back to the present and personal, the one breath I am responsible for, each moment there is a new opportunity to <a href="http://seekersmanual.com/?p=10" target="_blank">go deeper</a>, to the opening within, the tapping of source divinity, the space between cells, walking with lightness and light itself, in a frequency of dimensional shift, healing energy, higher vibration, sense of oneness with all.<br />
<br />
Andromeda emissary <a href="http://kauilapele.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/4-5-12-extraordinary-year-radio-show-tolec-and-the-end-of-the-space-war-mp3s-video-and-report/" target="_blank">Tolec</a> says it will all happen in a flash, overnight as we sleep, and anyway not until January 2014. <a href="http://www.integralenlightenment.com/" target="_blank">Craig Hamilton</a> says the thing is to get up off our self-absorption, and see our consciousness raising as a collective identification and experience. <a href="http://seekersmanual.com/?p=162" target="_blank">Osnat</a> says it’s more than sitting by oneself in silence and more than sitting together to Occupy Whatever; it’s whatever we do and wherever we walk, in that lightening of density, the opening of space between. <br />
<br />
In reality, this reality here and now, the possibility and potential of a dimensional shift, of a higher vibration, of an expanded frequency, is discovered in the opening of inspiration - not so much a concept, idea, an analysis even of the biggest picture - but of moving energy in the manifest moment, in the cells themselves, the quickening of the breath, the tenor of the voice, the momentum of the words, the sudden swell of intensity of the music of the Balinese jazz funk band in the middle of their set, on the ground floor of the restaurant where everyone, in what a moment ago seemed a conventional, humdrum setting, sits up and takes notice, their heads starting to bob, their knees keeping time, their feet twitching, their eyes coming alight.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blog-april/emissaries.jpg" height="375" width="500" /></div>
</div>
Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-45091816795486930952012-02-08T22:13:00.000-08:002012-02-09T06:18:57.596-08:00Computer Crash<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's a tale <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/retail2.htm"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">as
old as the computer age</span></a>: hard disk failure, no backup. In
this case, the "crash" was literal, and traumatic. Osnat,
navigating the narrow space between window, desk, chair and bed after
closing the curtains, tripped on the tangled computer cords at her
feet, and sent my sleek black plastic Vaio careening onto the floor,
cracking the corner of the screen and more seriously, impacting the
lower corner, the area encasing the hard drive.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
At first it seemed okay, screen still displaying as usual. I didn't
try any further testing as we were just headed out the door to
dinner. Conversation with our neighbor there touched on the
near-catastrophe and moved on to world tensions - "What if the
whole Internet went down in an instant with a cyberattack on the
magnetic shield?" - as well as our <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/confess.htm">addictive tendencies these
days with computer and Internet and related technologies.</a> I felt
chastised by the tenor of our collective judgement yet smug to have
dodged that bullet for now.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Back at the room I discovered that programs wouldn't load; I tried a
reboot. A telltale clicking sound advertised trouble in the vicinity
of the hard drive, and the opening screen stalled with the wishful
statement, "Starting Windows..." For good measure I gave
the plastic housing a few more whacks with my hand, hoping to rattle
back into place whatever had come loose, but now the result was far
worse: simple white letters on a dark screen, like what you would get
on the first time-sharing terminals I cut my computer teeth on back
in 1968. The simple script announced, "Cannot find operating
system."</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-GB"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="en-GB">I grieved. Hung my head, retreated into a cocoon,
stared off into space. Tried to keep from blaming Osnat; blamed
myself, the karma of vulnerability. Computer just four months old, I
had spent a month in September installing programs and organizing
data; spent irreplaceable weeks revising a novel; maintained all the
accounts for my editing business. I had already felt antsy over the
required idleness of this January</span><a href="http://poonthottam.org/"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
</span></span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="en-GB"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Ayurvedic
treatment regime we’d embarked on, in the quiet green hills of
Kerala</span></u></span></span><span lang="en-GB"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">.
</span></span></a><span lang="en-GB">Had looked forward, at least, in
some consolation, to working our way through the dozens of videos
transferred from Fabian in </span><span lang="en-GB"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Tiru</span></span><span lang="en-GB">,
and downloading more to watch - even some select TV shows! Maybe that
was the fatal attraction... Or was it a karmic virus inherited from
Fabian, who himself had lost the bulk of his inventory on a zapped
hard drive, just the day before offering us our remaining selection
from his secondary drives?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<img align="left" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blognew/ricefield.jpg" vspace="10" /><br />
Whatever.
Now I was up the creek in Kerala. Would I simply sit idle and useless
in the rice fields - here and<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">
<a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.com/2011/10/bail-is-beautiful.html">in
Bali</a></span> - until returning to my backup computer in summer?
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Osnat tried the consolation-of-philosophy angle, to relieve my
“suffering” and probably too her own guilt in the matter.
She made the obvious diagnosis: I was too attached and self-identified,
anyway, and this should serve as a fruitful karmic lesson.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
True enough, I had to acknowledge, since only minutes before the
mishap, Dr. Ravi had sat on this very floor observing that I looked
out of balance, which I was, since all day I had fumed about my lack
of productivity, creativity and efficiency here at the ashram,
scratching patches of minutes together over the space of an
afternoon, to manage a little over an hour of billed editing time -
between lunch, fruit snack, conversations, research for places to
stay on our way to Trivandrum, gathering information for our visa
application in Singapore, checking email and Facebook postings, and
on and on. In truth, I was both too attached and too undisciplined at
the same time – the last, a condition not only of poor time
management, but also reflected in the loss of hardware and data
itself: too careless with the tangled cords in the corner, too
neglectful of the need to back up essential data.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
In the sleepless night following this “lower-self” trauma
I realized how many attachments of self I have already released in
the past nine months before this strange still-birthing of a dead
computer into karmic manifestation. Coffee, marijuana, all my
favorite foods, friends and family, <a href="http://masalaband.com/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">music
band</span></a>s and students, my homes in Victoria and Maui, half my
summer in BC, my swims in the ocean, my long wal<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">ks
in <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/nature/">nature</a>,</span>
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">baseball, my perfect car, my
good music speakers, my <a href="http://djemberhythms.com/">drums</a>,
daily <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/news.htm">news research
and postings</a>, editing of <a href="http://www.reverbnation.com/strangemoon">music
jams</a> and <a href="http://cougarwebworks.com/discography.htm">videos</a>
... all abandoned for life on the move, for a healthier body and
diet, for a loving relationship, for openness and discovery itself,
in that spiritual hothouse of southeast India, <a href="http://nowickgray.blogspot.com/2011/11/india-is-india.html">Tiruvannamalai</a>.
I</span>f the trickster mountain Arunachala had taught me anything,
it was to keep letting go of any expectations and identities ... and
to keep letting go.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Still I latched on to the promise of stretches of time coming up in
the spring, time to focus on writing and editing again, in Bali while
Osnat goes to classes. Having given up all these lesser identities,
preoccupations, pastimes, addictions, childish and egoic pursuits, I
still harbored this ever-unfulfilled ambition to write, to focus, to
retreat, to hole up in my hideway in the ricefields, just me and my
manuscripts, nothing left but what I have my whole life considered
"the real work." Nothing left, in other words, but the seat
of the ego, the sacred head.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Now with one swift stroke the goddess Kali has come with her terrible
sword to cut it off.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
*<br />
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A nightmarish night past, the day unfolded with positive movement in
many directions to restore order, hope and functionality. I first
determined that the computer warranty does not cover accidental
damage. Fair enough – I moved on, following Dr. Ravi’s
advice to look in Cochin for expert repair help. With the help of
Osnat’s still-functional MacBook Air, I searched onl<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">ine
and found a <a href="http://www.sony.co.in/section/servicecentres/1010431">Sony
repair shop</a> that could at least take a look and try to repair the
hard drive or recover data during the three days of our transition
from here to Trivandrum for the departure from India. Now it became
clear why we had delayed booking our intended stay at Allepey in the
backwaters; instead we booked a <a href="http://chiramelhomestay.com/">hotel
in Cochin</a>, fr</span>om where we could still venture out on a
short backwater trip while the hard drive was repaired or replaced.
<img align="right" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blognew/backwater.jpg" vspace="10" /></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
I had been careful only to back up a few necessary documents on my
Android phone, and at first these failed to transfer to the Mac via
Bluetooth, but the USB option proved successful. The most important
document, containing passwords to online accounts, still needed MS
Word, however, to solve its password protection. Would I have to buy
and download a replacement to install on the Mac? Open Office, a free
Word clone, came to the rescue.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
All of this progress on the practical plane, to restore the
functionality of my computerized life, if not the hardware itself.
There are usually, it seems, workarounds. Google came through
big-time with its synchronization of my Chrome bookmarks, so that my
virtual life online remains intact via Chrome, on the Mac. The
question remains, in the hoary words of Dylan/Hendrix, how much is
any of it worth? Yes, I will have to work more hours to cover the
needless expenses of repair; to restore programs and settings; to
recreate spreadsheets and novel revisions from scratch. But I won’t
be spending all those hours watching those lost videos and TV shows.
And either way, what is the value of time, itself, except in the
living? On the inside.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
*<br />
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Reduced to my<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> core identity </span>as
a writer/editor, and even that threatened by the loss of familiar
material capability (hardware, software, data, access), I had to experience that dark one-night of the soul, with Osnat rubbing in the spiritual salt. While aware of the higher justice of her perspective, I
remained stuck in my emotional loops of feeling lost and disoriented,
an addict without fix. Does “back in the saddle” now resolve this
deeper metaphysical condition, of <a href="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/quest.htm"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">self-reliance
on particular identity, role, activity, success</span></a>? On my
sacred trinity of Productive, Creative, Efficient? On my fundamental
marriage to countable, fillable, executable Time?</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Here I am, on the morning of my virtual renaissance, Mac-reborn,
spending my precious free hour before breakfast while Osnat is in
treatment, scoping out the options on OpenOffice, and clacking away
at the old keys.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
So I continue, now as ever, with this identity, this version of “real
work” intact: the roving word, the rogue journalist, wearing
the self-proclaimed hat of the writer, ever resilient... <a href="http://hyperlife.net/story/babyboom.htm"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">like
my mother a smart-aleck to the end, with the TV on; or my father with
figurative drink in hand</span></a>. This is my chosen or given self,
the way I accept for my true meditation, what I can offer to myself
and the world, for what greater purpose I cannot know or care too
much, but to give, to sacrifice, to offer again; to breathe while
doing so, to let the thoughts pass by and let them go; to watch and
witness and hold and shape and let pass by; to savor in gratitude and
to share for whatever use they may have for others, or whatever
beauty and grace they may convey; for that is our gift in this
paradoxical paradise we have co-created, to dance in beauty and
grace, before and after the challenges and obstacles thrown up as
exercises in digestion and transformation; to dance in beauty and
grace.
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Where
is this motion, but in the running fingers of time passing, letter by
letter? Where is the notion that all is well or doomed, when the
sweet middle steers a sure course effortless, flaming inward in open
splendor?</span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Only to offer, to be available,
to invite the sudden flurry of birdwings by the face with eyes
closed, then open to the swaying flowers, the silent
sun.</span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><br /></span></div>
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<img src="http://alternativeculture.com/images/blognew/flowers.jpg" /></div>
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Followup post: <a href="http://seekersmanual.com/?p=193" target="_blank">Doing and Not-Doing</a></div>
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</div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20551760.post-4210663406134811802011-11-29T07:01:00.001-08:002011-11-29T07:02:27.045-08:00Encountering the Self<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<i>Sunday, November 27, 2011<br /> Tiruvannamalai</i><br />
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<img align="left" height="262" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blogindia/dishes.jpg" vspace="10" width="350" /></div>
Arriving at Manna Cafe to play on Saturday night, with one sandal held together by string. It fell apart in the road on the way there, and at dinner at the Olive Tree I asked for something to hold it together; Megan from Invermere came up with a piece of string just the right length. Now today, down to one pair of flip-flops, I'm glad to be free of the rotten Teva's, the leather deteriorating by the day in the road slop. Last week I got the guy at the chai shop to do a street-side repair job, but now, a week later, I'm just glad to move on, lighter. My toes also are better off exposed to the air, following the previous night's outing to Manna (when our band was supposed to play, except the rain was too heavy and the other musicians were sick) and I came in from the outhouse with bare toes itching from what I thought was an ant bite, but was skin split from fungus, athlete's foot, incubated in days of humidity and rain. Saturday too on arriving they told me that Suryaneel was sick but I said I'd seen him earlier that day for rehearsal, and the rain had subsided, so I sat and waited and he did show up, a little bit late, with an eight-year-old Indian boy, Danesh, with him to play tambour. Our debut set gathered a small but appreciative crowd, gracious for our tunes mostly improvised together, complete with an impromptu African piece I led on the darabuka, and a sketchy group om-along. <br />
<img align="right" height="187" hspace="15" src="http://alternativeculture.com/blog/blogindia/darabuka.jpg" vspace="10" width="250" /><br />
Today my toes are healing well; the rain has let up enough to get clothes dried on the rooftop, and I'm over the mild but lingering sickness of the past week, for the first time. Another good kirtan set this morning at Upahar's, playing with Oleg again, also recovered from sickness, and Suryaneel, arriving late, and a djembe player who kept his head down and played too loud. Still Suryaneel's flute rose above it all, clearing a pure space of still meditation and full emptiness. This morning was rough, with mosquitoes buzzing the bed an hour before dawn, and even after I rigged up the mosquito net, finding ways in to prevent me from ever falling back asleep. At least the nights have been cooler of late, and I'm glad to sleep under the heavy sheet and Tibetan blanket, with all the windows closed. Still the cows start bellowing early and continue through the day whenever I start to nap, so I forget that and just brew another cup of coffee. The Internet worked fine today after the guy had to change all my settings which had been reconfigured too many times at other locations. I went to buy toilet paper, bottled water and samberli incense for mosquitoes, at Bubu's market; he was 100 rupies short on change and told me to come back for it another time. In the evening I walked with Osnat on the main road, with little traffic before the masses arrive for the holiday, and realized a new pleasure, an unhurried pace, lightness in my step.<br />
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</div>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297050577578931637noreply@blogger.com1