Alternative Culture Blog

Encountering the Self

2011-11-29T07:01:00.001-08:00

Sunday, November 27, 2011
Tiruvannamalai

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.

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.

India is India

2011-11-15T07:25:00.001-08:00

India is India. India doesn’t care what you think of her. India doesn’t care if you come or go, how many ages in past or future. India remains. India is home, and you know this even if it makes your stomach squirm on first arriving. And your stomach will squirm, even if you are careful what you put into your mouth. The dust, the dirt, the grime, the noise, the chaos of the streets will get you, even if you come believing you are above all that. The cows eating garbage in the streets, the crazy trucks with carnival paint and bling-bling blaring Bollywood dub pop mania with horns in orchestral disarray … even on the mountain, the sacred mountain Arunachala you hear their chorus tuning, bleating, blaring below, in the dusty town that stretches from one field to another without end, without beginning.

In Ramana’s cave, the stillness is profound. The chorus of horns in the town below the mountain fades away, also the drip in the close-by spring, and thoughts subside into emptiness. Appreciating the sweetness, I do consider the perfect air, temperature and humidity controlled for the body to have no need. Perfect merger with earth, air, body, the fire stilled, the water quiet, the town removed.Ramana had no desire for an ashram to be built in his name, for worshippers to come prostrating themselves on the marble floor, the garlanded throne, even for those few devotees to save him with food from starvation when he first arrived, content with bliss alone of being, no need.

You said you would not return, could not bear it, felt so relieved to arrive in Thailand even, the pungent streets of Bangkok, calling that home by contrast. You said you were done with the crazy cities, the impossible trains, the buses without shocks or brakes, the decrepit bicycles and oxcarts in the roadways lined with rubble, the same as Kathmandu, as Conakry, as Iquitos, only worse. Apocalypse not only now but forever, this misery you must face and accept, for this is your body, our body, our human earth, our waste and destruction, and kindness in coming back for more, among the beggars, beggars, beggars, this is after all where we all are headed, our once-sleek North American cities, our Eurozone of comfort and cleanliness, when the public funding runs dry into the pockets of the filthy rich, we come back to India, to Guinea, to Brazil and Peru, to El Salvador and Greece in the meek stones, Jaipur and Varanassi, Mumbai, Chennai, Malawi.

In the room awaiting Shivashakti, the diminutive woman in orange sari who appears daily at ten, for fifteen minutes of silence in front of a few dozen sitting in meditation, I sense an intelligence around me, awake and aware, reminding me of its presence here as elsewhere, in Peru for instance, in the ceremonial yurt; or Maui, in Daryl’s truck by Little Beach, when I glimpsed that entity again in grace of crystal clarity ... In that moment she appears, gliding into the room to take a seat in front of the crowd. Her gaze, quiet and slow, scans the room, face by face, eyes by eyes, making contact, acknowledging and confirming the presence of that awake, aware intelligence which is not personal to her, nor to me or anyone else in the room, but pervasive in existence itself. A smiling and all-embracing gaze that says, Yes, welcome, we are one.” Like Guillermo the curandero, like Famoudou the djembefola, she rises and glides again through the room, her small stature and absolute silence no impediment to the mastery of her powers, which is only to be a vehicle, a channel, an embodiment of the infinite.

The orchestra is tuning up, its mode both classic and pastoral, heavy metal and pop, psychedelic and spiritual all rolled into one, on the dusty street past the temple, the swept dirt in the ashram, where all the seekers come and go, mute and prostrate, before this or that saint, looking for someone to lead the way out of themselves and ignoring the message to look within, to rest and stop the search, right now. The cafes are full of us, or half-empty, depending on the season, and India doesn’t care. There is an enigmatic head nod that lets us come or go, or stay a while longer, offering a small coin of contribution to the passing of the age, and we compare our experience, our temporary lodgings, our stomach disorders, our revelations in the cave before the relics of the saint.
Home we go again to tell our stories and post our blogs, upload our pictures and pay visits to our specialists of intestinal disorders, entering the rat race once again, even if for the last time, while India remains. India is India, and in the dusty street the beggar still waits, the shopkeeper still does a middling trade, the heavy truck rumbles past blaring its Bollywood bop, and the auto-rickshaw careens around a cow eating cardboard. Somehow in the midst of this madness, watching India be India, in the midst of India being India, we catch a glimpse of a pearl of truth, how to be oneself.

In bed at the end of the day, with the morning spent in kirtan and the afternoon at the Internet café, I rest in semidarkness with vision clear and still. The pounding drums of the night before are gone, yielding to tinny radio from the farmhouse below. The darkness allows fleeting images, lights and colors, brief enough only to suggest that there is more to this stillness than meets the eye and ear.

At dawn the barnyard stirs to life, water running, cows lowing, a man coughing, and at first my reaction is resentment: we have to move, this isn’t working, what kind of home is this? In a little while the mountain gathers light, and the sounds subside. A feeling of peace and contentment returns, deeper than before. There is no need, really, to go anywhere. Home is home.

video footage: traditional Dalit drum and dance from Tamil Nadu, South India

Bail is beautiful

2011-10-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

Bali is beautiful, and to say so risks swamping the beauty with tourists from everywhere, drawn already in the hullabaloo from Eat, Pray, Love, filling the rice fields with houses, filling the streets with motorbikes, filling the restaurants with computers and sunglasses, filling the pockets of the serving class, drivers and masseuses, with pocket change for us, a bare living wage for them, because it's a good deal for us and a matter of survival for them.
Bali is beautiful, despite the rain and the humid heat, which saps motivation and drive and the other hormones of the alpha male Westerner; despite the clamor in the rice fields at night forbidding sleep, from frogs, ducks, geckos, birds, crickets, and in the day from construction sites, ceaseless hammering, electric saws, cement mixers, motorbikes, more ducks and frogs and birds; the wind bringing more rain, distant thunder, even, once, an earthquake.
Bali is beautful, regardless of my definitions or cynicism or ceaseless quest to find meaning or beauty here; heedless of my intention to relax or produce; smiling in the face of my glum preoccupation with heat or humidity here or the cold rains of home; oblivious to my plans to depart for sandy shores, distant continents; uncaring of my scratching of the bites from invisible insect predators, mosquito nets notwithstanding; Bali beautiful in its own rain and quiet grace and narrow paths and unhurried pace, its ceremonial flowers and incense and decorated thresholds, its clean tile floors and ornate sculpted roofs and facades, its clangorous gamelan and haunting flute.
Bali is beautiful - leave it at that.

video footage: Bali gamelan drum group in ceremony near Candidasa

Truth vs. Conspiracy

2011-01-25T00:56:00.000-08:00

from C a t S c a n: the newsletter of Cougar WebWorks Alternative Culture Magazine online - http://www.alternativeculture.com/ - Celebrating Nature, Culture and Spirit

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to subscribe see instructions at end

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"Today, conglomerates have bought up most [mainstream] news sources; and the number of major news sources has been reduced to six! These six control all the news reported in America and much of what gets reported in the UK and Europe."

-- Paul J. Balles: Weapons Of Mass Deception

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/01/04/paul-j-balles-weapons-of-mass-deception-time-to-turn-to-alternative-media/

"Don’t connect dots without evidence. Don’t turn away as soon as the words ‘conspiracy theory’ are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe."
-- Richard Falk, Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance

http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/interrogating-the-arizona-killings-from-a-safe-distance/

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18 January 2011 - IN THIS ISSUE: Alternative News

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The mainstream news channels, whether it’s Fox or the Huffington Post, do not stray far beyond relatively narrow conceptions of appropriate political discourse. Criticism of Israel is verboten; so is discussion of 9/11 as an inside job. UFOs? We get to watch “The Event” instead (see my review athttp://nowickgray.blogspot.com/2010/12/event-review.html ). A few trusted sources are given the quotes and the editorial guidelines to broadcast at large as the truth, and the rest is consigned to “conspiracy theory.” Later history reveals such “false flag” events as Hitler’s Reichstag Fire, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, and virtually every high-profile “terror attack” of recent years--except, of course, those officially sanctioned acts of terror such as the invasions of Iraq, Afqhanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, and that’s just the Middle East... Facts of conspiracies such as Watergate and the Iran-Contra Affair occasionally hit the headlines, and then carry away, on the outflow of the brief wave of truth, one set of conspirators to make way for the next. The Greeks and Shakespeare knew how tragedies functioned, among the rich and mighty. So does the Mafia - from the city block protection racket to the big stage. Which is why it’s interesting that David Wilcock in his latest article refers to the notorious U.S. assassination squad, Murder Incorporated...

http://divinecosmos.com/index.php/start-here/davids-blog/909-disclosurecriticalmass?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+DavidWilcockBlog+(David+Wilcock+Newsletter)

If you are brave enough to connect the dots of information freely available in assorted story lines, you have the makings of a dangerous story, on many levels. If it gets too high-profile you’re even considered a “threat to national security.” If it’s talk at the barbershop maybe everyone agrees the government’s a pack of con-men. But if you run in suburban circles, academic establishment, bureacracy, retail mall world, commercial TV, chances are you buy the company line, at least in what you use to construct your world view, your notion of what goes on in the world. Keeps it simple, to just get it from your “trusted source.” And the best part is, then you don’t have to think about the outrages that have been committed in our name.

But no worries anyway, mate, if you believe David Wilcock’s take on it. White Hats to the rescue!

Still, it’s not like we can all just make David Wilcock, or Kerry Cassidy, or David Icke, or Gordon Duff, our one “alternative” trusted source and be done with it (though for some folks, that’s just the ticket). To some extent the alternative news media is so interlinked that it’s no more or less monolithic than the mainstream press. It’s like a new Cold War of the information age, pitting the Globalist Corporate State (read: New World Order) version of truth, against common sense skepticism mixed with tireless investigative research and courageous whistle-blowing.

To construct a final unquestionable version of truth may be a tempting ideal, as well as a political tool, but as every child knows, one person’s version of the truth often diverges from another’s. The Buddha might add, it’s all subjective. In the meantime, I believe the best we can do is to start with quality and quantity of information content and sources. Then we can judge for outselves what is meaningful and real - not as an absolute article of faith - but according to what makes sense. We can, in effect, construct our own story, our well-informed version of reality. (For a more personal version of the result, see my latest blog entry, “The Story of Story,” at http://nowickgray.blogspot.com/2010/12/story-of-story.html ).

Is there no hope, then, for such a thing as a new “consensus reality”? I would say that whole concept is suspect, defined as it must be by the standard channels of information flow and processing (mass media, academia, government, corporations) which act as the manufacturers of such a fiction, because it perpetuates the status quo within controlled limits of acceptable discourse.

If there is to be no single voice or vision of this alternative “revolution” (just as there was not in the 60’s, until Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Kennedy each aspired to lead--oh wait...) that’s a good thing, especially as it avoids the standard assassination trap. It’s good also because the “single voice of truth” is itself a falsehood. Perhaps there is some single true narrative to be exposed someday about Roswell, about JFK, about 911. More likely not, in which case we are left to make sense of it thinking with our own free minds and the information that resonates with us; and by sharing openly with others concerned about events from the perspective of “full disclosure.”

To that end, I have assembled my own favorite links of illuminating research across the alternative media spectrum, and share them in a new condensed menu at http://alternativeculture.com/news.htm

The page offers quick links under the following categories - with my “pick of the week” included here as a sample of each:

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Breaking News

Tunisia and US Geopolitics

from Cryptogon - http://cryptogon.com/

“As the imitation of American ways gradually pervades the world, it creates a more congenial setting for the exercise of the indirect and seemingly consensual American hegemony.” - Zbigniew Brzezinski

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Geopolitics

Geopolitics 101: Creating an "Arc of Crisis": The Destabilization of the Middle East and Central Asia - The Mumbai Attacks and the “Strategy of Tension”

“The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) often create the conditions for political instability, while covert Western intelligence support to disaffected and radical groups creates the means for rebellion; which then becomes the excuse for foreign military intervention; which then secures an imperial military presence in the region, thus gaining control over the particular region’s resources and strategic position. This is the age-old conquest of empire: divide and conquer.

...

“Indeed, where Al-Qaeda is present, the US military follows, and behind the military, the oil companies wait and push; and behind the oil companies, the banks cash in.” - Andrew G. Marshall, GlobalResearch.ca

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11313

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US Fascism

CIA Insider Susan Lindauer - Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

“Besides launching an illegal war and ongoing occupation of Iraq, the Bush/Cheney administration did everything in its power to cover up their illegal and treasonous tracks--which began with the 9/11 cover up itself. The alternative press has been aware of this for years but has lacked the confirming voice of a credible CIA insider such as Susan Lindauer.” - Alan Roland

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/01/05/allen-l-roland-extreme-prejudice-clear-evidence-of-911-cover-up/

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Wikileaks

Wikileaks' Assange arrest, CIA trap, Hillary Clinton, and UFO disclosure

... some rather juicy dots to connect: thanks to Michael E. Salla, PhD

http://news.exopoliticsinstitute.org/?p=758

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9/11

The 911 Chronicles Part 1 - Truth Rising

Documentary follows young street activists working for truth and justice for families of victims and first responders, confronting the talking heads.

http://stagevu.com/video/mtyjomgnjeqh

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Chemtrails

Another Angle: Contrails Show Effects of Atmospheric H-Bomb tests in 50s and 60s

Some you may have already made up your minds from earlier reports that chemtrails are being used secretly for weather modification (Google geoengineering, and don’t be surprised to find good old BP), military use, to combat global warming, or to dumb down the population with nasty chemicals and heavy metals. Well, here’s a whole new angle...

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/221199-Chemtrails-Contrails-Strange-Skies

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Assassination

Recent attacks on Arizona congresswoman Giffords and Judge Roll, and top cyber-war official John Wheeler, leave large questions unanswered - bigger, darker questions than the standard political mudslinging on the main stage.

http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/az-congresswoman-assassination-scenario-has-mkultra-profile-drug-space-target

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False Flags

History 102: 33 True Conspiracies

Required reading for anyone wanting to discuss conspiracies - from either side. Only the facts, please...

http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Articles/tabid/266/ID/980/33-Conspiracy-Theories-That-Turned-Out-To-Be-True-What-Every-Person-Should-Know.aspx

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UFOs

David Wilcock covers a lot of territory, as he usually does, and now gives an update connection of dots supporting the ever-closer approach of ET-disclosure.

“The tragic mass shooting appears to have been a poorly planned 'rush' job to create a massive tragedy that would dominate the headlines for weeks by using a mind-controlled 'lone nut' assassin.

“...This appears to have been intended to distract the public from the massive, worldwide use of HAARP shields, which are causing birds and fish to die in mass numbers.

“The HAARP shields appear to be defending against a positive ET campaign to eliminate the threat of a lethal and utterly fake alien invasion -- by destroying a massive arsenal of classified military assets worldwide.

“All of this is prelude to an open Disclosure of the reality of extraterrestrial human life -- and a welcoming of Earth and its people into a truly Galactic family, which apparently has been planned to occur in December 2012.”

http://divinecosmos.com/index.php/start-here/davids-blog/909-disclosurecriticalmass?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+DavidWilcockBlog+(David+Wilcock+Newsletter)

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links

My most “trusted sources” for alternative news!

Conscious Media Network

http://cmn.tv/

Project Camelot

http://projectcamelotproductions.com/

AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/

Red Ice Creations

http://www.redicecreations.com/

Half Past Human

http://halfpasthuman.com/

Veterans Today

http://veteranstoday.com/

Natural News

http://naturalnews.com/

Global Research

http://globalresearch.ca/

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And of course for an even more diverse palette of links across the spectrum of “Alternative Culture” see new entries on the home page at Alternative Culture Magazine, http://alternativeculture.com

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Cougar WebWorks Publications

http://cougarwebworks.com

Alternative Culture Magazine

Celebrating Nature, Culture and Spirit

http://www.alternativeculture.com/

http://nowickgray.blogspot.com

HyperLife: A Life in Hypertext

and HyperLife Editing Services

http://www.hyperlife.net/

Djembe and Dunun Rhythms

for West African Drumming and Dance

http://djemberhythms.com

http://djemberhythms.blogspot.com

The Seeker's Manual

- wisdom on the fly -

http://seekersmanual.com/

Flutes Jam - http://flutesjam.com

scale charts for improvising on flute or pennywhistle

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best wishes,

Nowick Gray

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to subscribe to this newsletter:

mailto:catscan-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The Story of Story

2010-12-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

Not from the beginning; from now. This story has been told before, but is soon forgot in all the stories that come after.

This one, for instance, began with a shadow hunter on a candlelit ceiling. Then, a ceiling fan. Finally, a computer. And yet, there is always more after the finally is finally done. So now we come back to this story of story again.

What happens, you ask?

What comes next?

It could be over in an instant. It could be delivered by the good grace of the spirits or the Great Spirit Self of all separate selfs, known not selfishly as the Universe. Or perhaps in the naming, distinguishing, we do gain that distinction, self-ish, through self-distinguishing, the opposite of enlightenment, self-extinguishing. After all, the language is made that way. To identify, discriminate, divide and thereby conquer. The earth, that battleground of human will to grasp.

Some would say the story has ended as of this moment, 10:31 PM Hawaii time, with full lunar eclipse tonight before Solstice day. Some, that is, who interpret this event as the actual "end of the Mayan calendar," instead of the usual target of 21/12/2121. Some say that means "the end of time" - either the apocalypse version, or just a cosmic stopwatch punching out "no time." Some say it'll be just more of the same, bigbiz as usual, which means of course "apocalypse now, middle east remix." And I know one guy who would take the numbers and work out a cool djembe beat, g d P T g d g d P d g T.

So we come down to the nitty gritty: what is your story? What is mine? I'm sure we'd both rather hear about yours, so why don't you start?

While you're thinking about it, I'll just type some thoughts here on the subject of psychology. The story, the story goes, is just a story, and we can let it go, in the dark of this full moon at the dark of this year.

If I delve, for instance, into my own story now, it becomes a journal, and I might be inclined to nurse its tenuous existence offstage, if I don't like what I'm feeling now, shrinking from concern over how I must appear ... though Little Grandmother Kiesha Crowder and the great Abraham Maslow agree, that the first principle of self-actualized people is to have no concern for the opinions other people have about you, for those too are only stories, and not even ours. And likewise you don't judge them by your own story, but accept that they too are learning just as we all are, all faces of God, who chose to be here for this difficult learning. David Wilcock in his October Surprise radio interview echoes these sentiments in his conclusion, pointing to our higher self becoming available when we still the mind of its normal chatter, not striving however for some perfect Zen garden or abstract void, rather to create an opening for higher self to come through, to speak, to manifest.

Whether the higher self is identified with angels or demons, aliens or space sisters, God in his Darwinian beard and Charlton Heston brow, or the well-padded earth goddess herself, it comes to clear the air of the TV-grade stories, the propaganda news, gossip and hearsay, grief of the past and fear of the future, caught in the middle, reasons why, if only, she said he said, then what? Something new, imagine that. But of course, if I sound cynical, despite my highest wishes, it is because my tool is the dull hammer of the mechanical age, glyphs on virtual parchment, ants of logical construction yammering across the page as if to trace whole murals of truth.

In tonight's dance class teaching, we are called to center in the body. A couple inches below the navel, will connect us also to the earth. A center in the heart, to all beings. And in the mind, our center connects us to all parts of creation. (Note: that's natural creation, not trash, which Little Grandmother reminds us is something only we careless selfish humans create.)

The stories go on, because that is the function of language, to create stories. You might say that language is the earth, its geology, and stories are its form of life, its biology. Or to switch academic departments, linguistics studies language, literature studies stories.

It is interesting to note in today's media world how so many kinds of stories now are hybrids. Half the Maui Film Festival's offerings this winter are pegged in the brochure as "dramedy," a term I'd never heard before. Of course it's been a noticeable trend in film for a decade or more (a real film buff could nail that down for you, or perhaps a couple of minutes of my time either now or later, googling and doing a bit of research, but I'd much rather continue this conversation with you) ... But wait--I realize now my error. You were preparing your own monologue, while I pursued this other trail for the most part assuming a listener, which is to say reader, but the only one available was you, and you were busy, so the whole exercise ends up being just that, an exercise.

Now see, in the time it took me to type the above, I might have departed into that other storyline - or you might say, followed the central thread instead of digressing, yet at the time it felt like digression; so how to tell, at any given moment, which is which? - for a quick consultation of Google, and so all right, since you insist ... hummpf. The article discusses literature (19th-century drama - Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw) and TV (1969, advent of comedy-dramas) but not film. The thread stops here, apparently.

The reference to the dramatists, however, strikes a note of connection to theme, if not storyline itself: the stance of irony. Irony is the mode, after all, of discourse when our story discusses itself, or pretends to discuss itself, or merely silently offers its opinion in the form of the clothing, the coloring, the style, the selection of story elements it chooses to present. In this light, you might call any author ironic. True, there is a mimicking of creation - no, an enactment of creation - in any, well, creation. So there is the thing itself, presented in particular definition provided by the eye of the beholder who is the author; but then the reader has your own interpretation; and the author smiles whether benignly or sarcastically, and even on occasion may have a word to say edgewise. Or even, on rarer occasion, steal the whole show, shoo out the audience, kick back and light a cigar to watch the premiere all by his Orson Welles lonesome.

Coming back to the higher self, where did it go? When last seen it was hiding in the center of the mind. Then suddenly, as if sucked into the stargate at the center of the capstan (for all you sailing buffs), it vamoosed back to the mother ship complaining, "Jeez, X98&$@f, these po mo fo's a piece a work!"

So here I put off dark-night's sleep, intending to write a serious tome or at least reverent epistle but instead manage only this garbled transcription of a shoddy demo tape of an ancient lecture on dramatic irony when really, the clearest insight to come out of it all is the wikiquip about the Greek model (and they should know, because didn't they invent language, or at least philosophy?), to the effect that all stories are about either movin' up the ladder (comedy) or down (tragedy). Now so as not to end on that sour note, I leave you with - what, a homily? A joke? No, jokes go at the beginning, to get them on your side. You don't want to end with "The joke's on you, sucker." No, you end with appreciation, and inspiration, and motivation to do that meditation, and invite that higher self in ... you see, some can preach and mean it, they can use the good word as the Bible intended, the Word of God, that can be trusted, and that alone, because it comes from the Highest Authority, and so on. In the Beginning, after all, I mean before all, was, I mean is, the Word.

So is the user of language doomed to intentional (political) or unintentional (religious) obfuscation, or exiled to the inherent irony of fiction?

The question brings us back to the hybridization, the melting pot, the unified field of film genres, of TV shows, of news and documentaries, of fiction, nonfiction, drama, journalism, theatre and politics, puppet show and circus du jour. Reality TV has been replaced by Reality Reality, where events are orchestrated and spun at the highest levels of power and influence, at the expense of truth and justice and common sense. Trouble is, common sense is out the window when the man and woman and children inside stay glued to the box, the screen, the flashing pad.

"Must we always stray into the political?" complains the bourgeois art critic. "Must you in fact use that odious word, 'bourgeois'? The word itself reeks of politics."

And so it does. Easier to disguise one's politics in fiction, I suppose. Just ask the White House Press Corpse (absent Helen Thomas).

If there is a point to all of this, it is this: Life is a story. Our life is a story, is full of stories. Our story is being written every minute - not just one but multiple plot lines, simultaneous variations on what we hoped might be a single theme. And always these pesky interruptions, keeping us from what we intended, and still intend, to do or say. So now that it comes down to saying it ...

It comes back to that vertebrate legacy, the spine. I danced tonight with backbone all curvy, until I realized how snakelike, I mean, how feminine it really was, and so changed my stride to more of the yangmaster strutting around shirtless with arms stiff and fists clenched. So my personal story on this new moon solstice end of the world, casting behind what does not serve, is about becoming a new man, dedicating this practice to my tragic good soldier fallen angel father, for his braveness in the genocidal turmoil and tarnished hopes of a generation, and with forgiveness for his weakness of spirit against the onslaught of collective karma. I was the lucky one, for his sins set me free to emerge into whatever form I might be.

Yet still I demur. Except to stake this modest claim: storyteller (damning epithet of Dad and Mom, who warned me of the consequences, the whipping house; but hey, what do they call someone who doesn't speak at all? Dumb). So it appears, at first glance, a lose-lose proposition: Remain silent and enjoy no fully human identity; or risk falsehood in every word, every remark and opinion, every belief and claim. Ah, now we are set up for the heroic - to accept the silence and from that grounding take the risk: a mission worthy of any reader who may have just woken from his or her nap in time to catch this conclusion, before I lay me down to sleep on the longest night of the year, while the new world births.

Take the risk - we have nothing more to lose. Or everything to lose, and thus finally open to the universal energy we crave to bathe in, the larger story wanting to tell itself anew in our own voice:

Tilling soil, planting seeds, clearing weeds, tasting fruit.

Maui Time

2010-12-03T00:28:00.000-08:00

Two months in Maui this time around, and once again life feels more or less normal here, after the initial month or so of settling in, reorienting to a new residence and neighborhood, reconnecting with previous friends and new acquaintances.

The logistics of the move this year fell into place effortlessly, with a single email to a former drum student landing me a comfortable suite for reasonable rent, and a wider mailing to local friends yielding a reliable low-cost car.

This year I face none of the hardships of high-altitude living, all too similar to high-latitude living, in the nightly dive of the thermometer. Every day I see the scoreboard on my desktop with the lopsided tally (23-2; 28-7; 23- -4, Celsius) reminding me why I'm here.

The island's best beaches lie waiting every morning just minutes away by car, with extended walks between and beyond the resorts of Wailea, down to the wild reaches of Makena and La Perouse. I have snorkeled just once this time, gone on one long ridge hike, seen no turtles or whales yet. The daily routine of swimming and walking is enough, I find, to connect well with the place, the land, water, air, and beloved sunshine.

During such outings I often, as in Victoria summer outings, carry materials to multitask on various creative projects: editing, writing, reading, music selection, rhythm study, flute and drum practice, planning.

Opportunities for drumming continue in various forms: Haitian and Brazilian dance classes every week, and less frequently, West African dance; Afro-Cuban jams with traditional rhythms and songs; informal workshopping with fellow drummers; private lessons to teach; and of course, the ever-inspiring Little Beach jams every Sunday afternoon, tending more or less to the West African style.

This year I have pared down my usual slate of other events including groups meeting for spiritual practices and teachings, yoga classes, and 5-rhythms dances. Living here on the "sunny side" means a longer drive to such events which happen most often on the rainier, which is to say cheaper, which is to say, more alternative region of the island. Still, I have sampled the laying on of hands (Deeksha), the toning of the sacred sound "Hu," Sufi dancing ("Zikr"), and attended a weekend workshop for writers. In general, though, when it comes to the cornucopia of possible events being offered, I continue my discoveries on the path of "less is more."

I spend most of my indoor time at home on the computer, engaged in a variety of creative projects, editing work, ongoing research in world affairs, and periodic indulgence in televised events: first the baseball playoffs, and lately the TV series (via Internet archives) The Event. The primary project occupying my attention has been work to edit and revise a novel of the Canadian North, inspired by the three years I spent in Arctic Quebec in the 70s. The other major focus has been to edit, select and compile, from a vast amount of raw recordings, several CDs worth of music from the Victoria-area improvisation group Strange Moon.

Just released are two albums featuring my flute music, largely recorded in Strange Moon jams. Coming soon are albums featuring E. Neptune on flute, Axel on keyboards, and two thematic compilations, Strange Yoga and Strange Funk. For some sneak previews, check out the slide presentation "Wailea," more flute tracks available for free download, and assorted Strange Moon selections at MySpace, Facebook, Reverbnation, and the Strange Moon website. Send me an email if you want to make sure to hear about it when these new albums are released!

With all of this enjoyment of what life offers on this beautiful island, and taking advantage of my opportunity for creative projects, I have also enjoyed connecting with old and new friends from further north, the first wave of the annual snowbirds who come to dip their toes in the surf and sample the local vibe which goes simply by the name, "Aloha." For those who cannot hop across Pacific Pond so easily, I hear that leg warmers, wrist warmers, and abdominal scarfs can help beat the icy blasts. Bon chance, mes amis! A la prochaine...

The Event - TV review

2010-12-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change. --David Barsamian, journalist and publisher (source)

The Event, in personal terms, represents a significant event in my TV-viewing history (though I didn't really watch it on TV, but in archived form on the Internet - available through February). It's the only TV series I've watched since I was a teenager growing up in suburban middle-class America. Part of the reason for my decades-long fast has been a resistance to the numbing irrelevance of TV content, and part a resistance to the packaged consumerism which that form of media, with its built-in corporate sponsorship, represents.
Why, then, is this "conspiracy thriller" so riveting? Mainstream reviewers have downplayed the politics, discussing instead such entertainment staples as character development and narrative structure. These episodes, for example, proceed not in linear fashion but rather as a mosaic of scenes scattered across a checkerboard of times and places. I find the characters/actors compelling enough; while the action and suspense play expertly on tension and emotion. The heart of my interest in this story, however, lies in its artful approximation of the multi-layered plotting that passes for political reality in this age of disclosure.

It may be coincidence that the series airs while Wikileaks dominates the newswaves with revelations of diplomatic and intelligence double-dealing on the world stage. That the major funding for the program may, according to David Wilcock's sources, come from the Pentagon. That key events bear an uncanny resemblance to documented government coverups such as the invasion of Iraq (or Iran) 9/11, contact with extraterrestrials, and Presidential assassination. Along with these tantalizing mysteries within the TV plot, comes the greater mystery of its relation to such actual events and workings of realpolitik.

While mainstream news media (owned by a handful of vested interests) continues to pooh-pooh, mock, or ignore such dangerously troublesome matters, the alternative news media on the Internet has feasted on the information available to substantiate such claims of actual conspiracy. The viewing public is caught in the middle, either continuing to swallow the official narrative of such events, or learning by accumulated evidence (and common sense) to question, at least, the government line. After navigating the minefield of realities and fictions, mere questioning leads to a blanket distrust of all government and media pronouncements.

Into this breach of belief steps The Event. From the dialogue emerges, in plain sight, the basic operating principle of the government intelligence apparatus: to construct, at every point, a "narrative" that will satisfy the public - and at the same time "protect them from the truth" - while keeping hidden the more inconveniently explosive truths. On some matters even the highest levels of government, the President included, are cut out of the "need to know" loop; while more shadowy figures pull the strings for their own agenda of power and control.

In mainstream political discourse and reporting today, the very word "conspiracy" has been co-opted by the official narrative. The term itself simply denotes planning in secret. What we can well imagine, though it is not revealed, is degraded to the status of fantasy. A plausible explanation, if it doesn't match the party line, is by default considered not fact but "theory." Yet conspiracy is the bread and butter of this series. With what intent?

The theory of Pentagon funding aside, it bears asking: Is there an agenda, either artistic or political, behind this major TV series?

For starters, the impulse of disclosure is evident. The similarity of the fictional President Martinez to Obama, and of the Vice President to Cheney (or perhaps John McCain) is striking. The alien crash of 1944 in Alaska recalls the famous Roswell incident of 1947. Elimination of key witnesses and whistleblowers, a matter of course. Infiltration of CIA, FBI, police and security forces at every level, evident in every episode. If we have been living in denial of such machinations, the show will open our eyes. On the other hand, the result can be overkill; we may go from disbelieving all conspiracies, to seeing them everywhere and thus disappearing into a one-way web of suspicions and conflicting theories.

The double-agent thriller, after all, is nothing new. Everything, we might conclude, is not only suspect, but fatally corrupt. We then may continue to watch the events unfold, as entertainment, numbed to powerlessness by an endless chain of execution, coercion, passing of responsibility up the chain of command to regions and persons we cannot hope, in the real world, ever to expose to resist - if we care for our lives and our loved ones.

I am left with two theories to explain the motives behind this series:

1) Entertainment. Clearly the producers are aware of the groundswell of interest in controversial matters of national security and policy. They are capitalizing on this interest by filling the void between mainstream and alternative narratives, exploiting the alternative views by presenting them in the only way that is politically acceptable at the present time: as fiction. This motive we might describe as mere commercialism.

2) Disclosure Management. There is enough documentation, analysis, and access to the alternative paradigm out there by now, that disclosure of events and strategies previously hidden has passed from theory to front-page news. Disclosure is allowed (however grudgingly, as in the case of Wikileaks) but diluted. So there are damning videos or diplomatic cables to worry about - but not to worry, just let the documentation and commentary grow to indigestible proportions. In the meantime, public reaction can be gauged, prominent voices identified, and the real story released slowly amid the confusion - while the next new crisis is orchestrated to make past events and narratives seem irrelevant, water under the bridge, artifacts of history. Finally if, as such commentators as David Wilcock insist, actual disclosure is imminent, then public reaction can be softened by these measured doses of forewarning. By the time the real story is announced, we are habituated to it; it's old news after all. Life goes on; we change the channel in search of the next storyline.
The motivations of entertainment and disclosure are not mutually exclusive. Even those hiding the truths - of government complicity in 9/11, for example - must know that the truth will come out, that it has come out already. For them strategy must switch from prevention to damage control; from creating a flimsy fiction (boxcutters, weather balloons, a lone gunman), to massaging the media so that every so-called fact becomes suspect, and each hypothesis must compete with variations until no coherent storyline remains.

We are engaged, riveted by our deep intuitive knowledge that the events represented in The Event are real - even awed that such revelations can be offered so boldly, so openly now. Yet in the process we fall into a new, more subtle paradigm of obfuscation. The dots are all there, in plain sight, to connect: but the frame of safety remains in place, the real world conspiracies free to continue outside the TV's narrative box. Even within the storyline of the TV episodes, there is no real hope of final justice or clarity. At the end of our hour of rapt attention, the mystery revealed has produced only further mystery, which we must come back to explore. A new twist, a new betrayal, a new escape of responsibility from final reckoning. Still, we come back for more ... because this story, after all, is the story of our public life.

Ironically the initial thrill, of seeing true stories finally brought to light, brings to mind the euphoria (which even this political skeptic felt) accompanying the Obama inauguration. The new leader denounced the excesses of the Bush era and promised fundamental change - before realpolitik (endless war and occupation in the Middle East, for example) took center stage again. Likewise, it is tempting to applaud, to take hope from The Event with its overdue exposure of government and other powerful interests. Yet ultimately this new story, or serial narrative, is not new at all. We already know from past disclosures (Gulf of Tonkin, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Pinochet, Iraq WMD, or simply from novels and thrillers of the Cold War) how this world operates at the highest levels. Repelled but fascinated, we crave knowing, seeing more truth revealed. But will that knowledge, as the slogan says, "give us power" or "set us free"?

Consciously intended or not, the effect of disclosure scripted in this fashion is to disempower the audience. There will be no reaction, in political terms. The real revolution will not be televised, and in fact a nation of TV junkies does not a revolution make, no matter the ideology.

The more relevant slogan remains, in McLuhan's famous words, "The medium is the message." We are lulled with a false sense of power and grace in viewing a facsimile of the truth, a virtual history; while the real version plays out freely behind the distraction. TV-watching teaches neither history nor liberation; rather it programs, it demands, by the very manner of our engagement with it, passivity and fear, and disengagement from real political discourse.

We might still try to point to the fabricated narrative and say, "Look, that's just like what really happened! It's exactly what's going on behind the scenes." True enough. But the flip side is that when we turn our attention to actual abuses of power, our claims can be redirected back to the box in the living room. There is a ready-made story to refer to, ingeniously constructed, at once far more powerful than the lame soundbites of official press conferences, and ultimately dismissable as mere fiction. "Yeah, right," the new rebuttal goes, "just like in that TV show."

Still, I say, better to be a witness of the truth, than to take refuge in apathy and denial. When this episode ends, I switch off the TV. At least, until the next one.

--Nowick Gray

See especially:
The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the `Peace President` (by Andrew Gavin Marshall)

The New American Century: This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud, with video of insiders themselves admitting it.

False Flag Terrorism and Amazing Coincidences

7/7 Ripple Effect: "Regarding the 7/7/2005 terrorist attacks in London, let us look at the facts, and what we were told, and compare them...."

Top digests of 9/11 disclosure: 9/11: The Myth and the Reality | | Anniversary of 9/11

See also: TruTV, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura (former Governor of Minnesota)
>>update>> “Police State” episode of hit Ventura show covering FEMA camps pulled from air
>>update>> (but you can still watch it there (at the bottom of the linked page) ... so far! (as of 6 Dec. 2010)

See more at: Alternative News Media - links and recommended websites (AlternativeCulture.com)

Haleakala Hike

2010-03-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

10,000 feet above the middle of the Pacific Ocean rises the island of Maui, formed from the volcano known as Haleakala. Trekking across this vast crater like the surface of the moon requires six hours of free time, several bottles of water, snacks and sunscreen, and earns rewards of vast beauty and pure elemental energy: earth, fire, air, water.

The music for this slide show ("Goa Gone") is a digital composition of West African drum samples using Percussion Studio software, enhanced with live percussion and drum kit by E. Neptune (see bulldogmeditation.homestead.com). For 27 digital drum compositions like this (mp3 or CD format),go to http://djemberhythms.com/books/rootsorder.htm.

This blog has moved

2010-03-09T11:18:00.001-08:00

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New Currents: Maui

2010-02-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

New Currents: Maui (Nov-Dec-Jan)

- click to skip or scroll down to continue reading -

Introduction
Avatar and the Kipahulu Na'vi
Book Reviews: Echardt Tolle, Jeremy Narby, Stephen Cope, N. Nosirrah, Mark Winegardner
Bashar on 2012
Ocean Heart Ministries - Church of the Cetacean Nation
Video Interviews: Nassim Haramein, Bill Ryan
Workshops: Shamanic Healing, School of Tantra, American Buddha
Meditation Exercise: Love and Gratitude
More Maui Photos

Introduction

It is the state of your vibratory field that determines your experience of any event. In its most simple form, the cultivation of appreciation for the smallest things in your life will give you the greatest results.
-- A Hathor Planetary Message through Tom Kenyon

Since my last blog entry (November 1, Kula: A Meditation on Warmth) I have spent a month enjoying a daily routine of sunny meditations and editing work and group music and swimming and going to dance classes; and then most of two months entertaining visiting friends with various outings and adventures; and in between, bingeing on drum sessions with my fellow djembe and dunun devotees. Along the way I have also been part of a fascinating series of events, workshops and encounters, kirtans and satsangs, reinforced by books and articles and audio and video interviews on a wide range of subjects pertinent to the world today. I also saw Avatar (twice, in 3D), which rather neatly encapsulates much of that transformative vision I've been exposed to ... or maybe not so neatly after all.

Avatar and the Kipahulu Na'vi

While nearly everyone comes away awed and inspired by this film, some argue that the paradigm of the Na'vi victory is not really new at all. The battle for Pandora is a rare victory for the good guys who, in a twist on tradition, are not our nation or race; but it is fought like any other, force against force. Yet the further twist here, beyond the shift in our allegiances, is telling: it is not the alien warriors or even their human supporters who win the day, but their allies, the creatures of Ehwa (Gaia). And though the mutant dinosaurs and panther-dogs do join the battle as a decisive force, the greater message is not so much that "the good fight" is won, but that the supreme force resides with the power of nature. Those who share in that power - which is also the power of greater connection as opposed to self-serving material exploitation - will ultimately prevail.

On second viewing I come out of the theatre realizing that the link-up is progressive. Now I am even deeper in. Baba says he looked at his black skin and expected to see blue. In Kipahulu where the jungle is Pandoran, magically lush, and the air is silky, gentle, alive, the young people living in community there come to greet you with eyes shining bright and peaceful, saying, "I see you."

[For an excellent review of Avatar from a mythological perspective, see "Take Back the Planet" by John Lash. For an excellent discussion of our metamorphosis beyond a "battle" mentality, and of the power of a more "subtle activism," see David Spangler, Call to Action: Fear and Loathing in the World.]

Book Reviews

Eckhart Tolle - A New Earth

All that is required to become free of the ego is to become aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is connected within the present moment. This is why we may also call it presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness. - Eckhard Tolle, A New Earth

Oprah selected Eckhart Tolle's latest book for good reason: this is enlightenment for the masses. Tolle takes ancient and unversal wisdom, frees it of the dogma and terminology of past doctrines and religions, and distills it into clear, convincing, plain language. He outlines a path beyond the limited ego and its emotional "pain-body" to a new self, refreshed from habitual boundaries and definitions and ready to operate with a new frequency, new modalities.

Acceptance, Enjoyment, Enthusiasm. These are the hallmarks of our existence in a New Earth. The new earth is not "out there" in society, or in a time that begins in 2012, but right now, in this moment, within our potential to awake. These three modalities are somewhat sequential, however, in that acceptance of our present condition allows us to relax into enjoyment of it, and enjoyment in the context of chosen activity leads us to enthusiasm for a goal, vision, purpose in life.

This sequence at first glance might seem contradictory to The Power of Now, as it posits a future orientation. But Tolle qualifies his view of enthusiasm with two caveats. First, our purpose is not to be confused with the unawakened desires and attachments of the self-serving ego, which is limited by identification with the objects of its desire. Rather, it is characterized by our alignment with a deeper source of inspiration and service transcending the ego. Secondly, in the modality of enthusiasm we are not fixated on an end result and stressed in the meantime; rather, we find enjoyment in the journey, the moment-by-moment experience we inhabit fully along the way.

"So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment" (p. 308).

Jeremy Narby - Intelligence in Nature

Narby is the author of The Cosmic Serpent, a classic work exploring the world of Amazonian shamanism and its access to plant intelligence and even the informational structure of DNA. In this newer work he takes on the paradigm of "intelligence" and frees it from its human-centered box. The result may be, as some would complain, a loss of human "superiority." On the other hand it is a revelation to understand that we are only a part of universal intelligence present in all life, perhaps in all existence.

Narby proceeds as a layman approaching scientific research for answers to his investigation of the meaning and nature of intelligence. Along the way his account is engagingly human. As Stephen Cope does in The Wisdom of Yoga, Narby inserts himself into the narrative, sharing tea or coffee with the scientists or ayahuasca with the shamans he interviews, and putting a humble human face on the inquiry.

The documented evidence assembled here is ample, fascinating, convincing. Parrots and macaws gorging on clay for breakfast to detoxify certain seeds in their diet. Research of bee brain structure and function. Studies of sponges, hydras, nematodes. Plants that adapt and respond appropriately to changes in environmental conditions. Bacteria communicating and using chemical strategies for survival. Amino acids engaging in DNA repair. Though Narby devotes most of his approach to living forms, the bridge down to the molecular level of amino acids and DNA leads us to expand the inquiry to a universal fabric - a cosmic ecosphere - of interdependent behaviors, actions and reactions and adaptations.

This book is reminiscent of When Elephants Weep, in its somewhat polemic stance against the prevailing mindset that says that only humans are intelligent or possess emotions. Yet this disentangling of our fundamentalist delusions must occur if we are to embrace greater possibilities of our kinship with all life and all of existence. I have to entertain the possibility that whales are sentient and that they are open to communication with humans, in order to fully appreciate and absorb the impact of swimming with them, playing music with them, beginning to move and think with their vibration.

Stephen Cope - The Wisdom of Yoga

At the end of the book, Cope tells the story of his own shattering disappointment when his manuscript, a scholarly treatise on the roots of Yoga in the texts of ancient India, is blasted by his editor for being inaccessible to the average reader. He responds by recasting the book as a work of creative nonfiction, in which his fellow seekers are the characters in a shared journey of discovery. This revised approach embodies the message of yoga, not merely as a system of physical postures, but as a set of daily principles and practices designed, by long experimental study, to facilitate the liberation from human suffering. That liberation allows us to enter a realm, possible in this world, of optimal functioning: "Liberation means being entirely awake, and fully alive."

Struggle and pain are a given, along the way. But there is a process of becoming free from our habitual condition of mental slavery. First, disengagment; spurred by an awareness of "Dukha: pervasive unsatisfactoriness." Next, acceptance ("Sukha: everything is already OK"). Finally, cultivating concentration, to remove everyday distractions; this is the practice of meditative absorption, most frequently characterized by attention focussed on the breath.

Further elaboration of the steps of yogic practice centers around the Eight-Limbed Path outlined by Patanjali in the source texts: "external discipline, internal discipline, posture, breath regulation, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditative absorption, and integration." These steps form a progressive path allowing entry to a final apprehension and dwelling in a state of universal oneness - the Dance of Shiva.

The bottom-line truth of this state is that "our ordinary experience of the object world is nothing more than a construct of consciousness." Such a statement may seem radically untrue by conventional standards of material, objective "reality." But as Stuart Mooney (AKA "The American Buddha") stressed in his Maui workshop in December, the truth of this counter-claim is supported by modern scientific neuroscience and quantum physics. There is no objective reality out there, because reality as we perceive it is always a subjective experience of our own sensory input and interpretations. This is not to deny the existence of objects and events as they have apparent causes and effects in the world; but to recognize that their so-called reality is provisional - like that of our own apparently separate bodies and personalities - resting on conventional agreements, even "consensus" among our various subjective experiences, rather than on any absolute and fixed material solidity. "What we call the rain," the Buddha once said, "is not really rain; it's just what we call the rain."

To operate in a new world freed from the old conventions and boundaries might seem disorienting or threatening, as indeed it is to the unconscious ego. But the point is not to live aimlessly in an undifferentiated soup of quantum vibration, even if that is the truest picture of the nature of things. Rather the task is to unwind the fetters of ordinary consciousness, then to perceive the liberating oneness of all existence, and finally to reenter our bodies and personalities and the dance of karma with an awareness of our true nature and of the divine play in which we are actors for a brief time.

N. Nosirrah - Nothing from Nothing: A Novella for None

Everything in this book, from the very title and name of the author, is playfully nihilistic, and not to be taken seriously. The author, it might be said, is carrying out the work of Shiva the destroyer, to bring down every preconception we might have about belief, art, the self, the novel, meaning, and existence itself. Yet like the wisdom of yoga, there is a redeeming wisdom here which can delight in the very spirit of playful dance, in which destruction and creation are two faces of the same art.

From the very beginning, the so-called Editor's Preface, by a Lydia Smyth, is suspect, along with the Foreword by a dubious Nebirk Yallip. Later in the text the author interjects conversation with said editor, hinting also at personal relationship issues with her (among other attractions). These digressions are par for the course in a narrative that follows no linear thread, but the sparking digressions of a brain wired to everything and nothing at once.

The approach is ironic, in the tradition of Tristam Shandy. It is Nietzchean, in its bold broad strokes of overturning every conventional assumption in favor of a revolutionary insistence on the power of truth in the momentary impulse of expression. It is post-modern, discursive, tangential, irreverent, profane, fearless. It is at once "not an easy read" and effortless.

Mark Winegardner - The Godfather's Revenge

I bought this book thinking that it was written by Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather. No matter; I was pleased with Winegardner's style and treatment of the same characters. Interestingly enough, the contents of this sequel played similar tricks with American history of the 1960s in which it is set. The Kennedys (John and Bobby) become the Sheas, and the details of the eventual assassination are altered. By means of this fictional sleight of hand, Winegardner is able to portray the likely truthful underside of that history, beginning with the failed black-op known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In this author's hands (as with Don DeLillo's even more historically faithful Libra, and the Oliver Stone film JFK) it becomes obvious how the agendas and the machinery of the Mafia and the secret government (CIA and FBI) overlap. What is truth and what is fiction? At its best, fiction gives us the clearest glimpse of what is true.

As with the spiritual texts discussed here, the transformational path leads us from unconsciousness (history), through revelation (understanding truth), back to our story. We read at first thinking it is fiction; we come to understand the underlying truth of how things work in the world (in the underworld); and then we can continue reading the fiction with new appreciation. History, meanwhile, which we at first take to be truth, upon closer examination we find is fiction.

Bashar on 2012
Bashar (bashar.org) says that it is in going through the darkness that we develop more impetus for a greater leap into the light, more decisive and delicious. We will inhabit the alternate world or parallel reality of whatever frequency we hold. I would add that it is happening now, in the moment we practice in that vibration. The vibration is now, and it is the operating reality for everyone tapped into it. Which is why the personal connections of people of like spirit keep happening, as if along human ley-lines.

Ocean Heart Ministries - Church of the Cetacean Nation < link >

I am vibrating now with whale frequency. I felt it ever since their darshan Thursday - their frequency of breathing, surfacing, moving out and back in through the water, their moans and grunts and cries. I rock in my sleep in bed, or in the grocery store aisles. My thoughts pass with the present time, no longer latching onto yesterday or what might come tomorrow.

In the traffic to Kihei, I am swimming with the pod. All are united in a plastic elastic harmony of movement and energetic balance, smoothly flowing and aligned. Even as we change positions, we feel the dynamic pull of change, of challenge, of connection between us all as free and independent entities, yet moving through the fabric of the whole.

That fabric continues here now as I write, you in your node on the other side of this time. Time weaves its thread through the fabric too, and we come to the same conclusions again. The truth circles like the humpbacks around the sailboat, reminding us through our synchronistic connections of its presence, all-embracing. We continue on our way. We walk in the light. We shine that frequency forward, lightworkers and soundworkers and life coaches and energy healers, dancers and artists in service to the light of understanding and appreciation and empowerment and joy in belonging to a oneness of life, a luminous vibration. All knowingness comes to the flow of this present time, this and this forever which is wider and wider inclusive of all who tap into this awareness and all who are the object of this awareness, until all subsumes all and there is no more significant division, except what makes for the play of circumstance in dynamic relation.

Video Interviews

Nassim Haramein interview on Conscious Media Network

Nassim Haramein offers an inspiring synthesis of groundbreaking modern physics (beyond Einstein) and transformative vision.

From theoretical physics he posits a "black hole" at the center of each being (atom, person, planet, star, galaxy) which has profound implications not only for energy and technology applications but also for personal manifestation.

This approach goes beyond "The Secret" to examine the universal power of "Focussed Persistent Desire." Tapping into this "vacuum" field at our core, we resonate with a frequency field connecting us with the entire fabric of space-time. In such a state of connection and resonance, synchronicity and spontaneous manifestation occur naturally, are to be expected.

The idea is to focus inward, to stillness, to the singularity of infinite potential, gaining access to our personal core connecting seamlessly to the wider universal "information network" for creative manifestation.

It is in fact that very interior and resonant space which produces the material world: Haramein calls it "vacuum engineering." Feed the vacuum, he says, and the vacuum will feed you. The primary tool in tapping into our "focussed persistent desire" is clarity, Going Deeper, via meditation.

Bill Ryan of Project Camelot interviewed by Freedom Central

As co-head of the whistleblower site currently drawing 30,000 unique visitors per day, Ryan is in a unique position to comment with an overview of the perspectives of the dozens of high-level sources who have come forward to share (in many cases confess) the hidden history of our times, what the official government and media and education outlets are forbidden to know or reveal.

What is commonly discounted in those mainstream, establishment-controlled venues as "conspiracy theory" has now mushroomed to the point where the majority of people (as reflected for example in polls concerning belief in UFOs or government complicity in 9/11) knows that conspiracy, in the strict meaning of the word, is a fact of life when it comes to policy and programming. Most people get it now, with the economics of the "Great Society" crumbling all around them, that their government is evidently not operating in their best interest, but for the interests of a few in whose hands the bulk of resources, money and power is concentrated. The shine has even worn thin on the polished veneer of the supposed savior, Obama - with the economic situation ever worsening along with the bottomless pit of foreign wars for oil.

Meanwhile the Vatican has joined the movement to disclose the presence of ETs ... joined by other nations such as France and the UK, where the secret government files have finally been opened to public view. The President of Venezuela has accused the US of triggering the earthquake in Haiti with a high-tech weapon using a low-frequency pulse. The movie Avatar makes clear to millions not only the reality of the agenda for resource domination of this planet and beyond, but also the lesser known role of private mercenary armies (Blackwater) to carry out this work that democratic legislatures will not support (except through the coercive measures of false-flag "terror" attacks such as 9/11, The Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, the burning of the Reichstag, the sinking of the Maine...)

Yet even as we are being educated (if we wish, while the Internet is still freely available) to the dire agendas of the controlling Illuminati, most of those blowing the whistle on the evildoers are counseling a perspective not of fear, reaction, revolution - but of spiritual acceptance, integration, transcendance, transformation.

Workshops

Hank Wesselman - Shamanic Healing

I attended a day-long workshop led by author, anthropologist and neo-shaman, Hank Wesselman. Noted for his work with the team that recently discovered the "missing link" to our primate ancestry in East Africa, he also brings a personal familiarity with Hawaiian and Polynesian traditional healing modalities.

There are three basic principles of Polynesian spirituality:

1. Love all you see with humility.

2. Live all you feel with reverence and respect.

3. Know all you possess with discipline.

We can call for assistance from helping spirits of nature, and spirit teachers and guides from higher worlds. These helpers offer power, protection and support.

The primary causes of illness are:

1. Disharmony - from emotion not worked through

2. Fear - lacking a sense of well-being, directly linked to immunity

3. Soul-loss - most serious, involves damage to personal life

The soul can fragment under trauma, leading to memory loss, apathy, chronic negativity, addiction, depression, even suicide.

What shamans treat is actually the ill-health of the soul (which leads to physical disease); because gaps in the soul fabric get filled by negative energetic entities, hostile forces.

The stages of shamanic healing entail:

1. Empowerment

2. Diagnosis of problem and intrusive elements; with help of spirits

3. Extraction of intrusive spirit, with helping spirit doing the work

4. Soul retrieval - of missing fragments, to repair soul fabric

Healing involves first clearing, via a ritual for unconditional forgiveness - forgiveness of others, then oneself.

School of Tantra - Sasha and Janet Kira Lessin

Through this course I have revamped my opinion of psychology and psychotherapy, replacing my rather outdated preconception of "analysis" which I developed as a stereotype in my youth. I felt that delving into such matters was overindulgent, that it fed the very neuroses it was purported to cure; that I was better, healthier, more intelligent than that, and could figure out for myself what were healthy ways of living and pursuing personal growth and development. I was in denial about my own dysfunctions, in thinking rather in black-and-white terms of psychological sickness/health, rather than in universal human terms concerning unhealthy patterns that all of us are prone to.

Yes, I was prone to excesses of the ego, as all of us are; I saw the ego as a necessary price to pay for being human and needing to negotiate worldly and social demands. Again the picture was either/or: at any given moment I could transcend the ego and worldly personal concerns, into a state of blissful all-acceptance; or I could descend back into the body/mind/ego in order to engage in my personal quest for a life of choices dictated by my desires and aversions.

The new model is more complex: replacing the unitary, limited and self-serving ego with a constellation of inner characters, sub-selves, personalities, agendas. Here the transcendance is achieved by awareness, detachment and balance - not a retreat from the outer or from the inner world, but a position of choice, where the "CEO" or witness can evaluate the needs and behaviors of the subselves and choose preferentially depending on what is most appropriate in the present situation.

American Buddha - Stuart Mooney

There are no fixed things or boundaries; just the appearance of them. It's all in your head! There's nothing else! It's only a dream that you create in your head! There's only energy! We are here right now! The past and the future are illusions! So get over it! You are who you are! And that is nothing other than all that is, which is also just what it is. So get on with it! Or not! It's just the dance of neurochemicals, which themselves are just vibrating molecules exchanging energy, and those molecules are composed of smaller bits which are also, all the way down the line, just composed of smaller bits exchanging energy, until you get down to the primoridial first event of pure energy deciding to split into two vibrating bits in resonant relation to each other ... forever! And the bits themselves aren't actually bits for real, they just seem to be bits when we choose to see them that way, out of the waves of energy they disappear into and appear from again.

It's just like what the old Buddha said (in the Diamond Sutra, or the Sutra of Hui-Neng) that the rain is not really rain, it's just what we call the rain. Which is a bit like Plato but simpler. It's interesting to reflect that these Buddha characters (to continue to be irrevent about it) are basically homespun philosophers. They have climbed down from the ivory tower of esoteric knowledge to share their findings with the masses, in plain language which sometimes comes out as a riddle. Which is the limitation of language, as the Buddha implied.

Buddhism on Maui is a dangerous thing ... where the intellect already tends to turn to mushy sand, lapped by surf-foam. Language dissolving into a quantum soup of subjectivity certainly doesn't help that situation. It's easy to drop it all and go to the beach, without books and at best, with a drum or flute. All the rest, the reading, writing, editing, book reviews, intellectual discussions - sometimes I sense it's all just arbitrary words, definitions, stories, memories, speculation. What's the point?

Not necessarily pointless, on the other hand. Just another dance of particles and waves, firesparks and shooting stars.

Meditation Exercise: Love and Gratitude

More Maui Photos

Kula: A Meditation on Warmth

2009-11-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

Kula: now I know why they call it that - it's Kula than anywhere else. It's the Canada of Maui. With nothing but the wild north of 10,000-foot Haleakala rising above it, and those hardy souls who don't mind cold at night and clouds all day to settle its backwoods, it puts me in fleece and felt slippers as I snack on passion fruit, lemon and plum, mango, coconut, yogurt. When I drive up to that summit above the clouds and hike into the barren crater under the hot sun, I'm greeted by the tame birds called Nene, a long-lost tribe of Canada geese.

At least I'm within 30 minutes of the real thing, the West African dance class with full traditional drum ensemble. After Oahu's tame FireTribe over the weekend, I was ready to taste this magic again and still it caught me by surprise. Now, I thought, I'm home. New friends opened up, the road home became mellower, and I savored the warm evening air of upper Haiku. On the one hand, I could live here. On the other, what I keep hearing is that people come and go. Kind of a lifestyle thing, in tune with wide ocean breezes, always new. In the heart of the ocean, beating with its pulse ...

Maui is a Mother, like the plant medicines many grow and use here - a nuturing, forgiving spirit. "Come and be healed," she says, with soothing breezes, heartstrong sun, wholly waves. I suppose it's no accident that I'm drawn to nest here and take warmth from the slopes of a volcano, the very body of Pele.

In mid-October here in what's called the "cloud forest," I turn to hot baths in the evening, retreating to my cave of a bedroom with the propane heater, and contemplate cutting more wood in the mornings for the living room fireplace, and those rainy cold winter days everyone's warning me about.

On the other hand, I can do cold. I lived in the arctic for three years, even; doing as the Inuit do, and just dressing warm (except of course for those teens who liked to run around in jeans and T-shirts at thirty below). I got in eight cords of wood for winter in the drafty old Beguin house in Argenta, BC, then lived in a tipi three winters while building my house. Am I just getting old and soft now, bending to the tropic persuasion so lazily, that at times I'm even swinging to the extreme of "never wanting to be cold again"?

Maybe's it's the infantile urge to get back to Mommy - no, earlier: to inside Mommy's womb, fully enclosed by body temperature 24/7. Safety, security ... the ease to breathe, as through an invisible umbilical cord, and to move without effort, languidly through water, over soft sand and among swaying palms. It's a persuasive advertising message, at that. Witness the resort component of Maui's demographic triad, resort-rural-wild. The rural and the wild have the root effect fueling the resort set, for that matter, for these are the real thing: living in Maui time. They also provide the source of marketed concepts, like the aloha spirit.

The English writers (Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, even BCer Malcolm Lowry) observed it, and succumbed to it, when in the garb of the colonialist. The lassitude of the easy life. Not that the colonial era has passed, mind you. Here I am in my hill station as in the India of the Raj, playing my civilized games of music and literature while the native masses seethe below ...

So is it indulgent to press on with this quest for eternal warmth? It's only natural, I might say, as I'm joined by that punctual pair of orange cats each morning in the hot rising sunshine. Or are the tabbies not natural at all, but just more accessories in the colonial trappings; like all the invasive species here? Maybe human beings, of whatever race or origin, are an invasive species ...

Back to the subject: neither hot nor cold. Actually I don't mind hot: I prefer it. But I think that it's just a compensation for cold. If I were always warm, I don't think I'd need to seek more heat. As it is, there's this oscillation effect, so that for every hour I spend dealing with temperatures, say, of 15/59 degrees, I need to compensate with an hour at 25/77 degrees, to balance out as a room-temperature average warmth of 20/68 degrees. When I lived in Quebec, the summer/winter temperatures in Montreal and Quebec City ranged from plus 40 to minus 40. But the midpoint of 0 (freezing) is not my idea of moderation.

For me it probably goes back to that time of birth, when I came out of the womb a month premature: maybe I'm still trying to recapture that lost month of comfort. So while we're at it, let's adjust the thermostat. Because actually my preferred midrange might be 25, with a comfortable range of 20 to 30 degrees centigrade. That would fit my definition, at least, of "never being cold."

It was the root motivation behind that item on my previous "5-Year Plan" that called for "Living in the tropics (or equivalent) for a full year." I did kind of do that two years ago when I traveled in South Asia and the Pacific for six months, next to a "summer" in Victoria, BC. Trouble is, that was quite a hedge considering that true summer (temperatures consistently above 20, and warm-water lake and selected ocean swimming) in Victoria typically lasts only two months at best; sometimes just one. Last summer was exceptional and, after a full winter spent through the gray, cool, misty days, I swam in my favorite ocean spot, almost comfortably, from the end of May through the end of August.

Now I'm already starting to hesitate when I enter the ocean here. "I think Thailand was warmer than this. I'm sure it was warmer than this in southern India, and the ocean off Guinea as well ..."

But here at least they speak English. They even speak, in a rather watered-down polyglot way, American. You still hear New Jersey or Boston, Atlanta or Dallas, but also a lot of generic California and Colorado, Oregon and Arizona. The roads are mostly smooth highways, the ATMs work, and there's shopping and fast food and drink aplenty. Infrastructure and finance all familiar, the empire intact in one of its more benign outposts ... But now I'm drifting off topic again.

I'm getting drowsy already, and it's only 10:40. Was it the hot bath, or is it the oxygen in this room with the windows closed being burned up by the propane stove and replaced by carbon dioxide or worse, which by the way also adds to my carbon debt along with all the gas I burn in that American national pet the automobile to carry me to my sweaty drum-dance workouts and my yuppiistic sunbathing on the distant beaches.

Experiment: open the window ...

Ah, a little warmer than I expected - yet still cool ... like a summer evening in BC. Funny, on those warmest of summer evenings in Victoria, I always remark, "... just like Hawaii." Somewhere in the middle of the two, is that elusive ideal.

The middle way: between hot and cold. Too hot all the time wouldn't work either: sweltering, shut down, debilitating. You at least have to find shade. Or as I did in Baltimore as a kid in the summer, retreat to the basement.

Earth-sheltered house I built in Argenta: to moderate the extremes of hot and cold. Passive solar heating of rock walls and floors, to save excess heat from the sun and release it later in the cooler night. Rock hot tub next to the wood stove, to hold its heat and save it for a melting soak on a winter's day, and ease it back into the room constantly. Sunbathing is like that: storing in the skin the warming rays, to feel later as a slow burn, nightglow ...

I had a conversation with Larry tonight about my church of Bembe experience on Tuesday at Zephyr's place, wavering back and forth in my feeling of the short bell part, and in general that knife-edge between 6/8 and 3/4, where the ideal is neutral in between, so the listener can have the subjective magical experience of hearing it one way or the other, instead of handing it to them my way but continually changing my mind, or like driving a car, Larry says, weaving back and forth from one side of the road to the other, or just letting that playful spirit carry me away with it instead of remaining firm and straight and consistent on the part, keeping it in the middle, remaining neutral.

Like my conversation with Eugene before that, about sharing life's vicissitudes, the good and the bad, equally, among friends. We can accept whatever it is, from our friend.

And the book by Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga, going deeper into that same universal question, of the nature of the mind, the brain, to respond and evaluate and react according to the simplistic label "attraction" or "aversion," on a continual basis processing input of senses and thoughts. Instead, the process can be subject to a witnessing awareness, so that at least the chain of reaction can be broken, and subtler still, the chain of habitual evaluation.

So, true, I can choose not to bemoan my state if I am cold, adding suffering to the experience of cold itself. Or I can choose to do something about it: like, taking a bath, lighting the propane stove, keeping the windows shut, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, going to bed soon, staying in bed till the sun comes up, carrying and cutting firewood by hand to get warmed up before it even burns, and, whenever possible, going to the beach. I did, after all, move to Maui, so it's all here somewhere, 24/7, if I want it.

Check that:See, even if I had that vision - that moving to Kihei, say, or even more radically, ditching Hawaii for Thailand or India or Africa, would solve the problem of ever being cold again - there are a couple of big problems. First of all, that restrictive vision is kind of anti-warm, which is to say stressful if there's pressure to maintain it. Suppose I live down near the beach in Kihei, for instance. Then what do I do, how do I feel, if I get invited to a jam at Mick Fleetwood's right here on Alae Road in Kula, some rainy January night? Even in Danya's jungle in Huelo on my last visit in January, I compared it to June in Victoria: or as we call it there, "Junuary." Coldest winter in 12 years, they told me, but it happened just the same. What do I do, cry, flee, complain, write a manifesto?

The middle way isn't just a range on the thermometer. Even if I achieved perfect temperature control in my environment, what about all the other aspects of that environment that I also evaluate as important but variable, with certain strong preferences and needs to consider? There are a multitude of manifestoes that end up having to compete in the personal boardroom for decision-making clout. Who's the CEO around here anyway? Oh, he couldn't make it this time. He's taking an extended vacation on Maui ...

Then there's the quantum connection: the middle way between particle and wave. The experiment says that if you're looking for a particle, that's what you see. If you're looking for a wave, that's what you see. Elemental reality is both, at the same time; but we can't see both at the same time, only one or the other. So my quest, on this more elemental level, is to neutralize the swings between hot and cold, between desire and aversion, and find the equanimity of the warmth between.

There is a further twist, though. The above ideal is just that: a perfectionist's ideal. Real life, living in the world in human form, puts us on the see-saw, the roller coaster of the this grand amusement park. Fitted with the instrumentation at hand, we see first particle, then wave; the bliss and conflict of relationship; the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in the realm of competitive sports (or business); the arctic and tropic realms of earthly experience. Heaven and Hell lie within the range of daily human experience.

Is even the impulse to moderate the extremes, then, well-meaning as it is in the interest of healthy balance, at odds with the nature of life? Maybe; but it's all open to choice. The wilder the swings, the greater the ecstasies of desire and the sufferings of disappointment. Get high if you want, but be ready for the hangover.

The true middle path of constant equanimity is another choice: the life of the yogi, the celibate, the monk or saint. And this doesn't necessarily mean renunciation of the world. It can mean bringing a neutralizing influence of attention to bear during every step, every breath, in the midst of whatever our engagement with the world is. We can choose the range we live in, which is not dependent on our economic status or even our personal conditioning, but on our inner freedom in responding to impulses, desires, aversions, and judgments. We can take on the degree of involvement, in the worldly see-saw of emotion, that makes sense for us; and this degree itself can change, in a larger wave of our path of growth and experience. At one time, celibacy; at another, delving into relationship again. From Arctic, to Tropic, and back to the Temperate zone again, for another while.

At the top of Haleakala, realm of the fire-goddess, Pele, I'm challenged by the altitude, recalling Nepal; and by the exertion of a full-day hike, recalling my expedition to the top of Mt. Cooper. That pointed cone of ice presents the opposite image of my destination here, a so-called "bottomless pit" (Kawilinau) where lava once spewed forth, now closed off at a depth of 65 feet. This mountain is a breast of the goddess rising out of the sea - or a mere nipple on the wide oceanic bosom - from which, from time to time, her milky fire flows.

Wild Ride, Tame Music, Last Resort: FireTribe, Fall Equinox 2009

2009-10-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

On the plane to Honolulu I sat next to a guy who had just sold his top-100 dot-com business, and so I wound up picking his brain on keys to success: the right domain name, key paying partnerships, reverse engineering Google from competing sites. All this I knew already; the difference was, he actually followed through and did the grunt work to make it happen.

On our approach to land we had a brief scare . . . to add to my list of "28 brushes with death." Actually I didn't realize until a woman told me later, that the wing almost dipped into the water. All I noticed was a rough rock-and-roll on the approach to Honolulu, as the small jet, with every seat filled, was buffeted by strong winds. She said she was shaken awake and looked out the window to see the water shockingly close.

I had noticed the funky young woman in the gate lounge; in fact I boarded the plane just behind her. A ukulele stuck out of a rip in a small backpack. She had one other small bag, and wore orange clogs or whatever you call those new plastic versions of the old Dutch wooden shoes. I thought she looked maybe the FireTribe type, but the packing list posted on the website specified non-melodic instruments. She sang a few notes softly just before entering the plane. Hours later in camp - it took a full hour and half just to pick up my pre-reserved, prepaid rental car from the zoo of an Alamo office - I recognized her and we became acquainted. Sure enough, the ukulele got some airplay at various times in the circle.

That rental fiasco began when I paid online as an add-on to my flight, via priceline.com. 40% off! the banner blared, but then it got tacked on again as hidden fees after I paid (not to mention the extra airline baggage fee when checking in my drum). Another $24 was tacked on for liability insurance at the time of pickup. And on top of it all, Alamo put the full charge on my credit card even though I'd paid already through Priceline; so I had to sort it out with a call to customer service a week later when I saw my credit card bill. Honolulu: what did I expect? While waiting I tried to buy a bottle of plain water from the machine, but it didn't deliver, so I punched the next choice - some high-performance mineral supplement concoction in blue, of which the first ingredient was sugar, topping a chemical stew.

There was a small gathering at the camp site, a Christian-run place where I'd been once before, at Winter Solstice 2002. Partly as a result of the low numbers, and partly as an ongoing intention of these gatherings to de-emphasize the heavy drums and open more space for light percussion, frame drums, singing and chanting, the energy of this circle on the first night was low-key. A few more people showed up on the second night so there was more dance energy, and one drummer in particular just wanted to keep pounding it out ... until he was told quietly to give it a rest. Ukulele, harmonium came in to fill the gap. Coffee with coconut milk was delivered to musicians in the wee hours. Still, on the first night I didn't make it all the way through, but only till around 4.

I dreamed I was in love with another man's woman. This is the reminder of what Eckhart Tolle calls "the pain body." I awoke from the drama to a sleepy camp, dull stirrings for breakfast at mid-morning. I wanted a break from the camp and a refresher for my dusty body and foggy mind. So I headed back down to the highway and the Ko'olina Resort, which could be seen off in the distance from the camp up on the mountainside. On the way I missed the turn and wound up headed back toward Honolulu. Everywhere on the highway there were construction lanes, last-minute signs for turnoffs, speeding traffic four to six lanes in each direction. I thought I would try Ewa beach as a second choice, but when I finally got to the area it was run down, not a good choice for parking a rental car or leaving backpack on beach while swimming. So I backtracked and finally made it to resort land - the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Here the shoreline was sculpted into a series of four artificial "lagoons," each with large rocks piled to break the incoming waves. The grass around the impeccable crescent beachs was cropped like a putting green, and sprouted palm trees laden not with coconuts, but security lights and cameras. The water was all very lovely, the sand squeaky white and clean, but it was all a bit creepy.

Along the way, images:

- In a big black pickup truck, a young Hawaiian woman rides on the passenger side, with a bright flower (plastic?) in her hair over her ear.

- On the boulevards enroute to Ewa beach, people are walking under umbrellas against the midday sun.

- On an actual putting green of the resort golf course, a guy is doing pushups.

- At the resort, electronic speed monitors appear every 100 feet, flashing my crimes at me and scolding me to do as I'm told.

- Back at the FireTribe camp, above the fire pit where we engage in our pagan rites, a trail leads to another fire pit surrounded by benches like a little amphitheatre, topped by a large wooden cross.

On the second night I stuck it out to the end, feeling that the discipline of the practice demanded it. It wasn't about the jam or the party or the dance, as I am used to; but about setting aside whatever it is that I identify with, and opening space for the collective spirit and other individual spirits to unfold. Within this setting aside, though, the other challenge is to still allow and express what is genuine to flow forth through each of us to feed the fire and the dance and the song of the long night. So I was there at the end with Tara and Michael and a few others, with a long samba jam into dawn, where we had found that sweet sustained meeting ground of volume and tempo and groove and spice and holding it down and going off and coming back, listening and speaking in turn, organically, honestly, humbly; graciously and gratefully.

View slide show with more photos from Oahu and Maui

Editing Life: from Dzogchen View

2009-09-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

Funny how the professional life and the personal life overlap. Now back working steadily as a copy editor - with music performance season passing into more of a lull, and my former nightly avocation of music editing also on hold - I'm seeing how life itself can be a kind of perpetual editing project. Forever tweaking, doing major retuning (as in this 7-month move to Maui) or minor fine-tuning (carrying the laptop around the house and to "hotspots" outside to catch the rays).

During this time of transition I've found some quality reading time, finally checking out Eckhardt Tolle's A New Earth, and Stephen Cope's The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living, along with Jeremy Narby's Intelligence in Nature (thanks, Paul, for these selections!). It's fascinating how these different writings overlap ... which is no surprise, as each would acknowledge the universal essence of life in its holographic flowering from form to form, and each would stress the underlying unity of consciousness.

Back on the ranch of the mundane ... I have been mostly preoccupied over the last three weeks with getting set up in my new household, with the help of my host Marianna, who was still here for two weeks of that time busily preparing for her own winter journeys. She's an artist of some renown who paints Tibetan deities, sometimes as wall-sized murals, such as the one in Maui's own stupa at the Dharma center, where we recently attended a talk by the visiting Oracle of Tibet.

I won't bore you here with the extensive details of buying a car to use during my stay here (or, read further below if you must); of reorganizing the kitchen to my own taste (all right: stashing away unwieldy large pots and pans, sharpening a motley collection of knives buried in a drawer, rearranging items on counters and in cupboards); of various attempts to find shortcut routes down the mountain to the beach (it's so tantalizing to see sunny Kihei laid out directly below, but frustrating to have to drive the roundabout highway to get there; sadly, the Google Earth aerial views don't anticipate gates and "No Trespassing" signs on the back roads that do run straight down the mountain through the cane fields and ranch country); or of the trivia of electronic tasks such as setting up printer, router, and phone options (all systems go). Suffice it to say that now the basics are in place, I'm comfortable here in this mountainside nest, and I'm finally able to breathe a little, take stock, and deepen my vision of the life I came here to live.

The core motive of my move here, of course - as well as my skinny guy's daily quest - is heat. Sunrays. Warm ocean swimming. Endless summer. That's the theory, anyway. I mean, Victoria's as good as it gets, in Canada that is. But that's Canada. So, when the offer to move here came up last April after a long dreary March, I instinctively sprang for it. I knew from the description I had, however, that living 3600 feet up the side of the Haleakala volcano would be a compromise of the tropical ideal.

The fact is, there's beautiful warm sun here for a couple of hours first thing in the morning. Then clouds form from the ocean breezes on the mountain and hang over it like a sombrero for the rest of the day. Around mid-afternoon the sun clears the canopy and shines back in from the west, ending in a glorious unique sunset each day. The nights and mornings are chilly, the days moderate. "Winter," I hear, is somewhat more challenging, but it's all relative. This is Hawaii, after all.

The flip side of this rural mountain location, as I came to know so well at my homestead in interior BC, is space, solitude, and the beauty of peaceful nature. And of course the key difference here is that in 30 minutes I can drive to that tropical beach, any time of year. The choicest beaches are an hour away ... still no big deal, considering that in Victoria in summertime I do just that, driving 30 to 60 minutes every chance I get to go swimming in a favorite natural location.

The other throwback to my days in rural BC is a garden - my first in 15 years. This one has been just too easy. Three raised beds behind the house were nicely rototilled in advance of my arrival. I bought a flat of starter seedlings and plunked them in the ground in less than an hour. The trick now is to wait. In the meantime, groceries. The tree crops here have been a disappointment. I heard macadamias, avocados, various fruits ... in reality the only things bearing now are plums and some tiny dry tangerines. So, once again the ideal needs modification: the grail of rural self-sufficiency, as I learned once long before, remains elusive.

On the music front, things are progressing more as expected, with opportunities sprouting up frequently. For starters, I hooked up with a longtime West African drumming class I'd played with on both my previous visits, and fit right in. Same with the epic Sunday afternoon jams at Little Beach, where again the djembes and dununs set the pace. Here the added spice is that it's a semi-performance, since the beach is crowded, always produces eager dancers, and is ... oh didn't I mention? ... clothing-optional. I've also been invited to sit in and play at the dance classes happening down the road in Haiku. Then there's the FireTribe Equinox celebration next weekend on Oahu ... and after that, a class workshop and performance near the "seven sacred pools" on Maui ...

In case I get bored with too much time on my hands, there's always the full slate of yoga and dance classes going on at the Studio in Haiku ... but something tells me I'll have enough going on soon enough, and that I'll be content to take spare moments of peace and solitude to enjoy here at home in Kula, at the place Marianna calls "Dzogchen View."

A Tantra of Dzogchen

As a bee seeks nectar

from all kinds of flowers,

seek teachings everywhere;

like a deer that finds

a quiet place to graze,

seek seclusion to digest

all you have gathered.

Like a madman,

beyond all limits,

go wherever you please;

and live like a lion,

completely free of all fear.

-a tantra of Zogqen

The Unedited Life

1 September 2009

The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
--Wordsworth

The car business was something I anticipated with some trepidation, not knowing exactly how I would manage payment between various options that weren't obvious; researching the best options for sale; contacting and getting around to see the cars I wanted; deciding among innumerable choices of make and model, year, mileage, gas consumption, repair history, and so on; getting ones checked by a mechanic; and arranging transportation involving various parts of the island if it did come to a sale.

It all came down to Saturday when, on very little sleep following intensive Internet research and spreadsheet comparisons of local ads, I set out to make the rounds of my top candidates. First on the list was a '96 Mazda Protege with only 97,000 miles and an asking price of $1500 obo. It happened that the car sat off a little road in Huelo, Ulalena, that I recognized as the road to Danya's where I stayed a year and a half ago on my last visit to Maui. On arriving I called the owner, Tony, on my cell, as he was working on a construction site nearby. No answer. After leaving a message and waiting awhile, I got vague and uncertain directions from a housemate of his. Another person along the road directed me further. But the house I came to did not match the earlier description, and no one was there anyway, so I proceeded further down the road for a visit to Danya and to get directions from her.

On the way I met Kevin driving up the road - a fellow I'd met when staying at Danya's. He actually wasn't staying there but at the neighboring land - which Danya didn't even know, when I mentioned it to her. On the way out again I encountered another person from my previous stay, Arianna. It all seemed so karmic. The house I was directed to was indeed the one I had found earlier, but there was no sign of Tony, so I returned to his house where the Mazda sat, to wait and ponder next steps.

After a while Tony called me on my cell, and said he would be there shortly. The car was in decent shape, except for a banged-up front turn light. I took a test drive. It drove and handled reasonably well, though a little rough on acceleration. I said I liked it and wanted a nearby mechanic, a friend of Marianna's, to have a look. Peter the mechanic actually owned a similar Mazda and so was familiar with the engine; he took another test drive with me and noted the same hitch in the acceleration; and on inspecting the engine, decided the probable cause was worn spark plug wires. He contradicted Tony's reference to another mechanic saying this car didn't have a timing belt. He also mentioned the need for a CVR boot ($75), and an immediate need for a front brake job ($100). In addition would be the probable replacement of spark plug wires, another $60. I paid him $40 for his time and drove away ... though on doing so, it seemed so much rougher than before, that I more than once turned around to go back for another evaluation, before deciding I was just not used to the car and anyway the new plug wires would probably do the trick.

Back at Tony's ranch, I sat in my rental car for a few moments and tried to figure out what to do next. Should I buy the car and then take it immediately back to the mechanic to deal with now, hoping to get a ride back here from Marianna when it was ready? But if I did that, would I have to ask the mechanic to bring me back to my rental car at Tony's? Or ask Tony to follow me to the mechanic's and then bring me back? I was too tired, hot, hungry and confused to think straight. Okay, I finally decided, first things first; I'll buy the car and then worry about the mechanical issues later.

I phoned Tony who had returned to work with his cell phone on, told him what my extra costs would be and offered him $1300 - to which he responded cooly, "Okay, whatever." On detailing what the mechanic said, I heard from Tony that he'd already recently replaced the spark plug wires, and had also bought new spark plugs which he hadn't yet installed because he didn't have the proper tool; he thought the new plugs would solve the problem of rough acceleration.

"Hmm," I said, "that's interesting, because the mechanic checked the plugs and they were okay; he thought it was the wires that needed replacing. Here, look at what he showed me ..."

But as I opened the hood, Tony with the papers in his hand said, "Look, do you want the car or not? I don't know what you expect for $1300."

"I'm just trying to understand what I need to do to get it running properly, and it doesn't make sense ..."

"Well I don't have time to dick around like this. I have to get back to work."

My hand was in my pocket ready to hand him the cash and get it over with. But I couldn't quite bring myself to do it, and with that extra moment's hesitation, Tony lost what little patience he had left. "Fuck it, man, I don't have time for this shit."

I stood there at a loss for words as he shut the car door, got back into his truck and drove off.

[happy ending: "Old Paint" Toyota Corolla to the rescue:]

The jam at Little Beach was another test. No so stressful on the surface ... in fact that part was mostly blissful. The magical blue-green waves, shimmering olive and silver when the sun went behind clouds. The soft golden sand, the beautiful naked bodies, the all-forgiving vibe of the drumming. The usual smattering of jammers were there, with one black-skinned dreadhead more or less leading and soloing, but with a drum that wasn't overpowering. Some duns showed up to add some foundation to the rhythms; otherwise it was mostly the steady pitta-patta of beginning drummers, spiced with the odd percussion, didge or flute. Some people were friendly and easygoing; others more standoffish or uptight. No big deal. At one point a dancer asked for "Yankadi," and I took over the duns, but the djembe support was not there and then someone alerted me that the woman I'd taken over from wanted her duns back. Okay, sorry, whatever. There was room to solo, to play my flute, to play a little didge and wooden frog clave. The dancers increased from two or three to a dozen, as the sun went down and the rhythms built in intensity. Then the dark came, and it was time to pack up and get to the parking lot before the tow trucks arrived.

I stopped in Kihei for a fish sandwich which I ate by moonlight on the lava rocks by the water at Kamaole Park. Here was the other side of bliss: ordinary life, alone, in the dark. I drove back home the hour by highway and sank into bed with exhaustion from the 4-hour marathon of drumming and swimming, on top of everything else, still processing the reality of the event. It was phantasmagorical in its own way, and yet mundane as reality always is, in comparison to the conception of it that has been built up in the mind of expectations.

So this is why I came to Maui ... very good ... but then what, now what, right now, today?

Bird song outside my window, sun in the garden.

Eco-Culture

2009-05-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Normally we think of culture as human culture, the artifacts and interactions of human society and creativity. It is easy in the civilized world to forget the basis of human culture in nature. That denial is now being put to the test, as environmental issues dovetail with an untenable financial system to present a crisis of millennial proportions. Will we all be thrown back abruptly to a more fundamental relationship with ever-present but rapidly degrading nature? While the question hovers, many are exploring again or anew how to begin making constructive moves in that direction.What does a sustainable lifestyle look like in the 21st century? We have plenty of models from the past to go on - the Inuit, Bushmen, or Aborigines offering examples to recent times of roughly sustainable ways of life that demonstrate success without modern technology. To examine other aspects of culture besides the central requirements of food gathering and shelter, supplies and transportation, is perhaps beside the point; as those secondary needs might be considered frills, optional variations. On the other hand, maybe the whole of a culture must be considered when evaluating "what works." Maybe the music of the Mande peoples of West Africa really is necessary to maintain cultural success in their geographic context. The same might be said of the Inuit shaman and the associated set of taboos; or - who knows? - even of the custom of circumcision (though I would like to think this practice could be left behind in any sustainable culture of the future).

In the moment, I am satisfied with my cheese-and-beet sandwich, brought to this lakeside in a handy plastic container, with a jar of green tea, computer to write with, flutes to play, cell phone to talk with a friend. The ducks are my company now, as I have brought other food products to tide me over in this place. Take away the grocery store cheese and bakery bread, and I am left with the beets and a lust for protein that those poor ducks will have to fend off. More likely, they laugh at the poor human who gazes at them longingly from the shore, lacking ammo or arrows, nets or help from the opposite shore. This survival business is no simple enterprise, and hardly a matter for one man to attempt to vision and dream his way through. It is a collective enterprise, to which the visions and dreams of each have relevance. Collectively we will face again as we once did consciously, the question of how to provide. Today the veils of complacency and denial are wearing thin, as the systems we have built or allowed to be built to stand between us and our daily bread, are tottering.

Thetis Lake

2009-02-14T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thetis Lake - Vancouver Island, BC

If video doesn't appear, click here for latest Flash player

Heartsongs: flute improvisations

Mystic Beach - audio-visual | Nepali Pass - audio-visual

Daily Prayer | Danya's Pools | Going Deeper: bamboo grove

Heartsongs: flute improvisations | Flutes Jam - Learn to improvise on flute or pennywhistle

Mystic Beach

2009-02-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Mystic Beach - Vancouver Island, BC

If video doesn't appear, click here for latest Flash player

Heartsongs: flute improvisations

Thetis Lake - slides and audio | Danya's Pools - video | Nepali Pass

Daily Prayer | Going Deeper: bamboo grove

Flutes Jam - Learn to improvise on flute or pennywhistle

Of Prophets and Swindled Trees

2008-12-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

re. what the gypsy said
...sometimes right, sometimes just
another path, another lesson:

the moss-laced branches, twisting
gently, pointing here and there
to this or that connection:

their information is valid, like this
communication from plants, from
nature through molecular media:

telling and showing a greater connection
of all, even the parts not visible
in this or that scene, remember:

now, when even the ice-wracked
scrubby trees are bowed down and bound
into the snow-heavy ground:

with a stark still beauty in the clear
passing light and sky-rippling black
pools of water, knowing:

that all paths turn back to the one
round wholeness, all scattered and wound
again into a whirling wonder

New Year's Mantra

2008-12-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

It's all practice
It's all performance
Every moment

Bass Nectar Review

2008-12-03T00:25:00.001-08:00

Raw power replaced finesse at times, but it wasn't all jump 'n pump. The audience cheered as loud when the beats were sick and twisted. The opening chords, if you could call them that, shook the floorboards and the air itself, never mind all the cells of the seven chakras at least …

Towards the end the drunk young guys outnumbered the gyrating young girlies by about 2 to 1, and you contacted sticky flesh from every direction. The intimacies grew in fervor while the layers peeled away. We were almost throbbing as one.

You said hello to the few hard-core celebrants you'd met on Friday at the Sunset Room, but there wasn't room for many words in that space of mega-vibrations, rippling whatever parts of your clothing weren't by now stuck to your own flesh or someone else's, or lying in a heap in a forgotten corner of the room, over by where you set the last third of your grapefruit juice before the staff removed it in a likely ploy to get you to buy another.

They say the ticket prices are so high there ($27) because everyone's on E and not buying alcohol. What do you expect from the T-generation? Sex, drugs, r&r. Just like yer own yout'. Walking past the high school last week just after the bell, your faithful snitch overheard two snatches of conversation: "… the muscles of her vagina …" and "… sixty hits of acid." The third would-be conversation was replaced by a guy (or was it a girl?) with earphones plugged in, supplying the rock.

Where was I? Oh, right: think Rock n' Roll on Steroids … Big Beat, Sick and Twisted … Way Below the Baseline.

Tabla and Sarod

2008-11-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

This ecstasy just won’t go away. In fact it’s building, building on itself and everything that has gone before. It is the coming of synchronicity as the norm, where you can’t get away from the interconnectedness of everyone and everything, no matter what you do or don’t do; yet in responding to the currents around you and within you naturally, like the 95% improvised classical Indian music concert tonight with tabla and sarod, you find that all choices are right, and the flow has carried you over 24 hours and more to your friend on the boat to give him the final push of recognition and acknowledgement of his own true genius, and in being there you recognize also the beauty of the bubble of the boat and its presence in the real world, i.e., the ocean ... and not only that but realizing that better than a swim in an artificial pool back in the city is a detour on the way home, to the summer swimming church where even today in late November the parking lot above the trail is full, and down by the water the sunny bluffs are taken with people sitting in homage, and there you find your spot before the shimmering silvery wavelets, and the luminous green moss, and the living rocks, and find your peace and stillness and knowing and oneness in presence of all this, and still it continues back up the trail on an ankle now suddenly free and healed, winged at heel ... on to town just in time for group practice, where again the immersion in music and waves has given you that frequency to hold, and it’s so big and so deep that everything is allowed, accepted into it, yet it’s also tight and focussed and dedicated enough to dance with clear measure in concert with the others, and of course now without effort, but simply attention and more knowing, and with that - but not too much - your eyes can close again for a moment and you can drift with it where it wants to go, and it drifts you where you want to go, which is everything in that ongoing flow ... so to the university where you zone out and refresh for ten minutes and then go to greet your friends there waiting, not only the two you were expecting but a handful more, and all saying midway between sets that we should have known to bring our other friends there, to share in that moment of joined creation.

Nothing New Under the Sun: A Musical Mystery Tour

Relationship, Emotion, and Spiritual Practice

2008-11-22T00:51:00.000-08:00

In the moment, this is spiritual practice. That is, it can be if I let it, if I intend so. It can be also relationship if you let it, if you receive this intention. In the moment there is no emotion but the moment of breathing. Are you at war with feeling? No, if you listen to the body. The body tells you what it needs. Really what it needs is relaxed breathing - fast, for exercise, or slow, for meditation. In relationship, there is also a matching of breath, a harmonizing of intention, a lifting of awareness from the single body to the dual body, to the all-body of love still greater than one or two.Still, your focus begins with one. One love, inside, from inside, healing first the wholeness of self, freeing the feelings of past hurt and success to flow into and out of present time through the breathing body, the very form of time. Did I say “healing success”? Yes, if success is the wound that takes a toll through stress and imbalance, compromising health for one-dimensional rewards. Pride used to be called a sin. Was that just church propaganda? It’s really just logic when the body’s inevitable demise is accounted for. The fall of pride is simply inescapable reality. Therefore to remain within the boundary of pride is to hide in denial. On the other hand a balance of pride and humility is only natural: a reflection of life’s urgency for full potential while the time is ripe.You come back to present feeling. Are you feeling lonely, unwanted, weak, depressed? These are all conditional, and can be breathed away into the past from which they originated, or the future which is so feared or misunderstood. Are you feeling gladness and joy, anticipation and relief? Fine, while realizing also that these things if dependent on temporary causes, will pass away with the changing winds of time. If rather independent, or arising from life itself - gladness for the fresh breeze off the ocean, joy at seeing friends in a few minutes, anticipation over the promise tomorrow holds, relief in the overcoming of obstacles - these feelings are not yours because of personal circumstances, but rather scents of life itself, lent to you for the savoring.The practice is the remembering, or the means of remembering, that there is more to life than your present feelings and preoccupations. Beyond your current emotional state is communion with others, sharing and harmonizing feelings you all have; and beyond and below this ground of relationship is the ground of being itself, which connects each of you not only to each other, but also to your more central self, the body breathing free, the soul liberated to larger life and the emotion of such liberation.

Personal and Transpersonal Emotions

2008-11-21T14:25:00.001-08:00

Just after midnight. This journalist's deadline is extended, as you have come to expect from someone riding other waves and journeys. In this installment the issue of feelings arises. And I am here not just to do the usual tapdance around the subject with fine-sounding phrases.

Actually as I write I must say the urge to accomplish too fat birds with one stone - the expression of feelings and wider publication - forms a dual purpose with power: as I rise to the occasion with strength and inspiration. But then in the next breath I relax into the winter sleep, forgetting your presence on my doorstep. Have I not yet invited you in? When you say How are you, how am I (feeling, that is ...)?

At the moment I can identify ...

neutral ... but that's a cop-out.

sad ... but that's really just tired.

inspired ... by pipe dreams.

empowered ... but that's an illusion of egocentric politics.

content ... but that was earlier this evening.

happy ... depends how you define it.

I come back as I once did long ago to a kind of Buddhist understanding that most human emotions (start with the powerful ones like fear, greed, love, and joy) are usually attached to our desires and aversions; these distract us from truer, more lasting states of tranquility, which are available to us through spiritual practice and awareness.

On the other hand, Pema Chodron (When Things Fall Apart) came along when I needed her most, after a sudden marriage breakup, teaching me to make the best use of those emotions that were arising in that situation.

Back to present time: I'm skirting again - after even contradicting those emotions I so briefly affirmed. But here I am at least expressing. And if the flow of words is heady and ungrounded, so be the nature of my feeling, as it grows in power again at the very pace of thought and the music of the words playing their way on to the page.

It's kind of like blues vs. jazz -- with blues representing the more raw and direct expression of those human feelings most arising from attachment, and the jazz evolution finding, as it were, new kinds of emotion in the sheer possibilities allowed by freedom and transcendent form. Think B. B. King compared to John Coltrane or Miles Davis.

Besides, it's not me that is the subject of your interest; it's sharing concern about those things that move me. Politics? Well, there's your rage (my rage, actually). If I express that . . . ranting doesn't carry anyone very far. So I have to transform it, into research and networking, to the extent I can act on it all all. Otherwise there is denial; and distraction by myriad masks; yet I still give Buddhism top marks for putting it all in larger, all-embracing perspective.

Personal emotion has again to do with attachment, yet it is very real. For me to express such with you, however, when we have no intimate personal connection, would be inappropriate: it would be the one-sided rant, or like reading over the shoulder someone else's gushing report from summer camp. Or I could portray it (channel it, you might say, from my own experience as well as others') in the form of fiction, drama, or lest I forget, poetry (the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility --Wordsworth).

I guess I'll have to leave it at that for now, to catch some of the latter.

[later ...]

What Wordsworth expressed in his poetry were the kind of feelings I would call transpersonal: those feelings of communion with nature and with people who live as integral parts of the natural fabric. And in music, again (which is a form of natural energy) it is possible to access states of feeling that are beyond the realm of simply personal experience. In fact I would say that it is only when we are free from the grip of personal emotions such as lust and affection or anger and jealously, that we can be open enough to receive the transpersonal emotions such as compassion or righteous indignation (think Jesus vs. the moneylenders, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or more recently, Congressman Dennis Kucinich with his fiery speech to the 2008 Democratic Convention, "Wake up America"

You could say that a great blues artist such as B. B. King also is able to transcend the personal and tap into universal human emotions. In such a case it might be true that the impulse for a song comes from or is enriched by the depth of personal experience, yet in the performance of art that personal feeling is raised to a higher power by the power of music itself, by the invocation of a spirit of communion between artist and audience and also between nature and art. The joy we feel in the presence of a waterfall or crystal stream, or even red-leaf maple dewed with sun-jewels along a city sidewalk, surely transcends whatever issues and emotions we are facing in our personal lives. Such a transpersonal emotion is not an abstraction, however; it is the very essence of our feeling to be alive.

Second Person Singular

2008-11-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

Three Personal Readings seeded by the Mayan OraclePolarity: the fullness of ideas, plans, projects and projections, under natural influence; vs. the simple emptiness of reality, unclouded ... unecstatic except by a finer more subtle clarity, and moved deeper not by karmic fear but by opening to the way it is.On the side of the Dreamer and the Dreamed, you come to the knowing that this is a horizontal evolution, the single phase gathering charge to a series of sparks to come, a dreaming into play by dreaming your way full of your way, and yet empty. When this polarity is complete, and the fullness and the emptiness dance in clear union, within as without, the union is whole and thus ready for re-union with another such whole. Otherwise the imbalanced fullness/emptiness, whether too vain or too humble, too busy or too lazy, too pushy or too laid-back, presents a flawed match to another except by complementary co-dependence - where each seeks the primary union still and tries to fit the other into it. In the balanced re-union of two whole, internally balanced unions, is a higher order of duality dancing together.The above model might be criticized, however, as idealistically androgenous. A person with yin and yang 50/50 is perhaps not likely going to be as sexy as one who is “all man” or “all woman.” Yet maybe gender attraction doesn’t depend on a balance of fullness/emptiness, which has more to do with the spiritual side of yang/yin than the erotic side. What we might idealize is a partnership of two spiritually balanced, ego-neutral individuals who nevertheless are attracted to complementary physical and personality traits in one another.-----------------While you grow and balance and gather charge in this phase of singlehood, you recollect that you also received gifts and lessons along the way of previous phases of relationship, and in each case came to an end of the positive learning environment. Maybe it goes back to the problems above, regarding imperfect unions, the flawed attempt to complete with another what is not yet complete in oneself. In any case the experimental union finally dissolved or fractured, or you might say became transformed, in a kind of quantum leap to the next level of learning, in the next relationship or phase of singlehood.How is it assumed that the “jump” to the next classroom is vertical and not just through the garden gate, so to speak? And what is to say that we are moving at all? Maybe it is simply a succession of experiences and people coming to us, to cohabit the world we call ours.Again, in either case, I believe the learning is cumulative. We do repeat mistakes, and develop strange habits of bouncing between the same kinds of obstacles or kinds of mismatch, if we are slow learners who do not reflect and choose otherwise. Eventually we get what it is we need to survive each step, each test, each challenge and opportunity. Or we don’t survive, and that brings us to a whole new territory.Again, you might say this life has been just another larger phase, and after a time of grieving, and taking stock, and then paying dues or taking a vacation, you might try your luck again. Maybe as the other gender this time . . .--------------------------Between the polarity and the dreaming, when the stillness has cleared and the dreamer and the dream are one, shines the nurturing grace of Imix, the divine chalice and holy grail, the all-embracing Source. She doesn’t require these conditions of balance and equilibrium to offer her love and forgiveness. She gave life and she will receive it back again, without prejudice.So let polarity flash through the night; let the dreamers have their dream awhile. You will find your way home one day, dead or alive. Or she will come to you . . . if you are not too vain, busy, or pushy; too humble, lazy, or laid-back to receive her.--more second person singular--

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bank

2008-11-11T01:34:00.000-08:00

... I fell into the trap set for me by the baby-boom sharks. They didn't really want me and My Generation to gobble up all that fat money in our growing pensions. No, sir. Better to prevent that sort of wealth-sharing before it gets really expensive. Blame it on the folks who couldn't pay their mortgages. Nip it in the bud, with a coy devaluation scheme called, "The Big Bank Bailout."...

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson, 1802

From Savior to Same-Old

2008-11-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

That didn’t last long . . .

It is a cruel irony that Obama’s first act, after the most uplifting progressive victory in America’s history, was to appoint as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a former Israeli citizen and currently “a super-Likudnik hawk, whose father was in the fascist Irgun in the late Forties, responsible for cold-blooded massacres of Palestinians....He favored the war in Iraq, and when he was chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 he made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates” (source). "A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming -- the naming as 'Special Envoy for Middle East Peace' of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy" (source).

Of course it has been tempting to overlook or pretend we didn't hear Obama repeatedly pledge unconditional support of Israel, increased war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a hard line towards Iran. Yes, the election was a massive victory for hope. But now it appears we were all being played to support an ongoing imperial agenda that persists in lionizing Israel and demonizing independent interests in the Middle East, all for the greater cause of controlling oil in the region.

... not to mention the even bigger picture of conflict with Russia and China - watch "The Men Behind Obama."

Metapolitical

2008-11-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

Love means going slower
not just doing it for fun

or profit but for something
deeper

and then, not getting stuck in
that well either

but being in earth, of earth,
for earth

and her people. I would tell
the officer of death, “Breathe.”

Because not breathing
we all forget and get lost

in the shuffle of deck chairs
the stuff of conventional politics

and if rescued by pirates,
forgetting to breathe again

even after the rape,
even when there is nothing

left but slavery
we hope that in 144 years

we can be president

Empire and Democracy

2008-11-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

Now the challenge is to become the real democracy in the world that US leaders have been crowing about for decades while overthrowing democracies as a matter of policy, if they didn’t like their stance on business. At home the US government has developed the Orwellian face, offering one-way communication to its congress with threats and to its citizens through corporate media monopoly; squandering lives by the thousands and the treasury wholesale while calling war “liberation” and occupation “freedom”; and orchestrating the rape of the natural and monetary wealth of other nations around the world.

How strange it will be now to suddenly broadcast to the world hope instead of fear, good sense instead of subtrefuge, brave intelligence instead of willful ignorance. This “Barack Revolution” will surely give other global powers pause. Will this emperor effectively turn his country from a rapacious bogeyman to a humane republic? That might be too much to ask of a country founded and weaned on conquest, genocide, and slavery. Yet the magnitude of today’s leap from slavery conveys at least an awakening of a people to outward embrace, beyond narrow bounds of race, color, creed or even, we might imagine, nationality. Is America, so quickly united, so quickly ready also to open its arms to the diversity watching with cautious optimism from beyond its borders?

What message does this triumph of democracy and equality convey? Can it still be converted into a slick slogan for continued imperial expansion? Unlikely now, since the medium is the message, and the medium of this election victory proved something new in recent American politics: that the people sufficiently aroused to care will amount to a greater force than all the president’s men and henchmen - even those with two stolen elections already in their pocket who were gamely banking on just one more.

That glum force of resistant conservatism, of course, is the first and ultimate obstacle to true global friendship in democracy, because they want no part of it still. In fact they’re probably more scared and distrustful than ever. And I can hardly blame them. Because after all, now the other “bad guys” out there (there must be some, perhaps not even trained or labeled that way by BushCo) will be wondering, “Okay, if America now goes, like, truly democratic, what kind of message does that send to the people that we want to keep down in our own situation?” I’m no foreign policy expert (think Sarah Palin) but Saudi Arabia and China come to mind.

Of course this whole ironic reversal of roles in the world vis a vis authoritarian rule vs. true democracy presupposes one important thing: a disengagement from the interlocking corporate interests which have all but taken over government to this point, at least in America and its client states. Even the supposedly independent states like Thailand or Nigeria have their own versions of this corruption of power by the heavily vested wealth of business interests. In America it has reached an extreme marriage of convenience and of contrivance, to the point that only a massive electoral mandate as we have just witnessed might rise to the occasion to start undoing these undemocratic bonds.

For America the addict of power and wealth, illusion and denial, it is a long road to recovery. Let us rejoice in the first step.

Alternative News - sources, articles, reviews, recommended links

The Coup Has Taken Place in America

2008-10-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

Breaking News, October 2008: The Coup Has Taken Place in Americavideo interview with Naomi Wolf

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier - just so long as I'm the dictator." -- George W. Bush

more...

US Martial Law threatened, declared in Congress

The Battle Plan II: Sarah 'Evita' Palin, the Muse of the Coming Police State--by Naomi Wolf

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - No Free Press, No Free Elections

The Bush Doctrine & The 9/11 Commission Report:Both Authored by Philip Zelikow - by David Ray Griffin

Comic Relief: The VP Debate Goes Saturday Night Live

Surviving Democracy: Reviewing Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine - by Stephen Lendman

Why Has John McCain Blocked Info on MIAs?- by Sydney H. Schanberg, The Nation

Zeitgeist: Addendum - released October 2, 2008

Bringing it Home

2008-05-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Miksang and More ...

When I have returned back home from winter travels to exotic lands, usually the camera goes back in the closet, and my journalistic streak goes into a prolonged funk. Without fresh inspiration from the outer world, what can the inner creative spirit latch onto?

In past years I solved the journal dilemma by simply putting in the time as a daily discipline. Filling the space with words ... which afterwards I could edit and prune, hoping to glean a rose (or tulip) among the briars. A more direct approach is to be sparse from the point of intention, as with haiku.

In this enterprise I begin - as it is said in the Buddhist art of Miksang photography - to create more space between and among the forms, thus breathing into and from the emptiness ... letting the fullness of life flow like water and air among the earth and fire of daily effort.

Taking pictures in Beacon Hill Park, during an outdoor photography workshop in the Miksang (“good eye”) approach to “Dharma art” (as taught by Chogyam Trungpa, and in this case by Charles Blackhall) I felt as if on holiday here in the natural heart of my own city, “wandering aimlessly” through the park, along the beach, around Cook St. Village.

Following that amble through the passing paradise of the “backyard” moment on a classic spring day, my camera is back in the closet and I sit with a somewhat dutiful comportment at my keyboard to share this not-really-traveling slice of life to a travel-habituated audience. Yet the depth of my single experience here - putting on fresh eyes in a familiar land - lingers, pausing my breath.

Now, yes, with the onus of taxes behind me and equally undeniable yet patient death asleep on the far horizon, I breathe free and clear in the present time, awaiting nothing more than the continued slow progress of spring. A winter solstice orange dries imperceptibly on my desktop, studded with cloves and turned cinnamon-brown: awaiting the solstice fire. In the meantime, slow birdsong, misty sky, a further slowing of breath to live stillness.

view more at

Miksang Photo Gallery

Video: Zen Dawn Meditation

The Long Way Home

2008-04-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

The long departure has begun. This trip will, if all goes well, end with me arriving home some 70 hours after leaving a guesthouse in Pokhara around 7:00 yesterday morning. That trip by bus to Kathmandu was supposed to take 6 hours but took 12, and it could have been more had my daughter and I stayed on the bus through the traffic jam in the outskirts of the capital beyond the final 3 hours, when we jumped ship in the company of a young Nepali man and his Spanish companion.

My daughter Nashira, thanks to her recent 8-month stint in India, had understood some of the man’s conversation in Hindi with another passenger who had got on nearer the beginning of the jam with some dozen other refugees from another bus that had caught fire from overheating. The gist of the situation was that we were likely to be stuck for an unspecified number of further hours before reaching our destination. The alternative was walking for twenty minutes or so, joining the steady stream of pedestrians who were bypassing the columns of stalled trucks and busses, to a point beyond the jam where we could take a taxi for the final half-hour of our journey. We set out like trekkers with our backpacks over the rubbly dirt trail - no matter that the dust and mud and trash composed the sidewalk and street of a major city.

Earlier in the trip the trouble began when, halfway from Pokhara on a mountain curve, the front of the bus clipped the rear wheel of a motorcycle going the other way, passing too close. We heard a sickening bump and the bus came to a stop. As it happened the helmeted motorcyclist came out of it unhurt except for a scratch over his eye. But a lengthy harangue ensued, whereby blame was cast back and forth between the drivers of bus and motorbike, adjudicated by a growing crowd of motorists who had been stopped by the accident. Eventually police arrived on the scene, and taking the cyclist on board the bus, we proceeded to a nearby farm with a canopied table where the principals could hold their conclave at greater length, attended by the usual circle of interested onlookers.

These proceedings eventually drew to some unknown conclusion, and the bus was able to continue down the highway ... not without some further delays, however, here and there as traffic was stalled by parades of trucks and busses packed to the rooftops with crowds of red-clad youth supporting one of the two Communist parties (one Maoist and one more moderate) currently vying for power in the country’s first democratic election scheduled in a week’s time. At times our bus merged into the parade itself, and we felt visible as supporters as if by osmosis; at other times the marching youth pounded on the sides of the bus as we passed - it was uncertain whether out of exuberance or mounting defiance.

Earlier on our trek among the Himalayan peaks, we had met a couple of UN officials stationed in country to help defuse the violence surrounding this historic occasion. The New Zealand delegate was here following stints in previous hotspots Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. Here in Nepal there had been, in addition to the simmering Maoist insurgency in parts of the country, daily attacks on competing parties, threats of revolution if victory was not won at the polls, and a host of assorted other conflicts set to break out after the election. It was a good time, we were assured, to be leaving the country. When I asked the New Zealander where his next posting would be, he smiled wearily and said hopefully, “New York.”

But could we leave? The streets and alleys of Kathmandu, like the mountain highways between cities, were roughly one-lane affairs even when paved. These single lanes had to accommodate not only two-way traffic of cars, buses, and trucks, but motorcycles weaving through them in even greater numbers, as well as bicycle-rickshaws, ordinary bicycles, and pedestrian traffic. People seemed to prefer walking on both sides of the pavement, or right in the middle, and blindly crossing at will, as if oblivious to the motorized madness that swirled past on all sides. Add to this human free-for-all the odd lazy water buffalo, frisky goats, black dogs in the night, random chickens, and everywhere a peasant of town or country bearing a great load on their back with a Sherpa-style head strap, bent to the task of centuries.

Our taxi driver for the final leg to the hotel that evening - like his brave comrade the following morning for the trip to the airport - was indeed able to navigate us somehow with sustained momentum through this chaos of streets. But after the accident with the motorcyclist, our innocence was no longer sustainable, and every near-miss (with a fresh challenge every foot of the way) was a real injury waiting to happen. Meanwhile at 10 A.M. the riot police, wielding long batons and clad in padded Ninja armor, were assembling on the street corners of the capital, awaiting street demonstrations that were already planned in reaction to some knifing incidents at election rallies the night before.

At the airport things were tamer, and more secure from our point of view, yet still strangely uncertain. There were no boarding announcements, no identifiable departure gates or flight numbers; just a generalized massing of people in exodus, eerily familiar to the previous evening’s populist migration on foot past the stalled dinosaurs of a passing age. It seemed that all departing passengers, several hundred in number, were to await our deliverance in a single holding room looking out onto the tarmac. At the appearance and unintelligible utterance of a blue-clad woman near the front, half of those in the room leaped to their feet and rushed at a side door. I got up, hugged my daughter good-bye, and joined them. Asserting my way bodily toward the door with my boarding pass, I was informed by the woman in blue that this flight was not mine; I would have to wait in a smaller room in front of the holding area. There a mere hundred of us waited another twenty minutes in palpable anxiety - the anxiety of simply not knowing by any familiar or visible sign how or when our fate - actual departure - would be accomplished. Finally when a transit bus next appeared outside our room, people rose and headed for the door: the simple action of departure serving to signify itself.

Nepal: People Watching

Standing by the side of the road

watching the world go by

shopkeepers, an old man cross-legged

a group of five teen boys

a woman in sari and shawl

what are they waiting for -

why are they looking at me -

passing in the tourist bus -

also doing nothing

but watching people

not working, not in meditation

not really waiting for anything

just watching the world go by

Trekking: flashback

(guest blogger: Nashira Birch)

I know that everyone "absolutely loves" Nepal, so I feel unoriginal in saying it, but Nepal truly is an incredible place. The landscape, I think it goes without saying, is as stunning as it is diverse. The culture and people are also incredibly diverse and stunning, as well as calm and welcoming. Sometimes I forget that I'm not in India because Nepal is so similar in so many ways, and India has become such a big part of my reality.... But Nepal is kind of like an India in which someone has turned down the intensity meter. Clearly, in the mountains and villages where most of my Nepal experience has taken place, the contrast to Jaipur's chaotic intensity would stand out, but I feel even in the most intense parts of Kathmandu people generally seem laid-back, relaxed, and happy. Luckily for me, Nepali is very similar to Hindi, which has helped in meeting people (having them laugh that I speak Hindi, which most people here learn from television) and finding our way. It is an interesting time to be in Nepal, however, and there is a lot more going on than the postcards tell you.

After a few postponed election dates due to political instabilities, a historically significant election is fast approaching (countdown: 8 days). Even far into the hills, communist party sickles and hammers adorn rocks, walls, and small flags and marches. Now, in the small city of Pokhara, every political party is "politicking" (in my dad's words), with slow-moving vehicles blaring music, loudspeaker announcements and slogans, flags, banners, and even a lively motorcycle brigade. UN vehicles meander the streets, trying to ensure everything goes smoothly over the next month or so (apparently it will take more than three weeks for the results to be released). Anyway, the hiking: My dad and I "headed for the hills," as he put it, pretty much as soon as we could, and our lungs were thankful for the move from Kathmandu (Delhi may be one of the most polluted cities in the world, but they have gone strides beyond Kathmandu in terms of their use of clean energy and control of vehicle pollution). We did half of the Annapurna circuit trek, climbing through the most stunning and diverse landscapes (and moonscapes), I have ever been witness to. Every day held new surprises, new ecosystems, new views, new stunning peaks suddenly appearing above the clouds. We started our hike though steep hills terraced by rice, barley, and maize fields and scattered with small villages of stone houses. We climbed at least 3000 stone steps up over 2 days, and at least that many down again the next day. I thought I was young and healthy enough to overcome my lack of exercise over the past year ... my knees, however, having not seen so much as a hill in the past year of living in the desert, had different ideas.... Luckily, we landed in a village built around hot springs on the river.

As we made our way along this river up the valley over the coming week, we hiked through the deepest valley in the world, and meandered along the narrow alleyways and prayer wheels of windswept medieval villages huddled into the hillside and topped by Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist-Hindu-fusion temples. The 6000, 7000, and 8000-meter peaks that appeared during the clear morning hours towered above us as we made our way toward Tibet through what was now a moonscape of bald hills and river beds and driving winds. It turns out the upper part of this valley (the Upper Mustang), which nestles its way into Tibet, costs $700 US just to enter for 10 days. We turned around here, and made our way back down the valley.

We are now resting in Pokhara in between espressos and Tibetan soup and thunderstorms, waiting for our journey back to Kathmandu, and re-entering the deja vu that, it would seem, is the traveler’s bubble everywhere in the backpacker world (not to say the trail was completely devoid of this: I definitely - guiltily - had a Mexican enchilada about 5 days in!). You have your German bakeries, your banana pancakes, your Israeli salads, your endless strips of shops selling the same souvenirs, the same travelling pants (if you've been anywhere in Asia, you know the ones I’m talking about ... the MC Hammer ones), and the same Buddha miniatures. In Nepal, you also have endless shops chock full of North Face rip-offs. In India, the travelers go from place to place, almost never leaving this bubble. In a sense, sometimes I feel like people have only left home for the travelling culture, not for the Indian culture.

photo gallery: Nepal Himalaya Trek (Annapurna Circuit)

Black Moon Culture

2008-03-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

Children of the Machine

A hundred devotees sat motionless on the sand watching, as if on reality-TV, the spectacle of young Thai men playing skiprope with fire, a 15-foot length of flaming sisal. Thump-thump-a-thump-thump went the pounding "music" in the dark; the dayglo constructions overhead offering the only variety from the relentless beat of the machine. Most of the crowd were men, young travelers from Western lands who shared buckets of Red Bull and local whiskey with their shadow-eyed Thai escorts of the night, or with me in exchange for a few eager taps on my djembe.

It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, with the group of us who started out in the Be-Bob bar. Be-Bob was not the usual kind of casual misspelling; it was an intentionally clever description of its proprietor, a Thai in his mid-twenties who in his own gentle and gracious way, offered to this corner of the world a kind of personal altar to Bob Marley. Day and night the old standards played, "Redemption Song" and "No Woman No Cry," sometimes accompanied by Mang and friends on guitar or drum, but never out of the looping playlist for long. It was a haven artfully constructed from local rocks and tree limbs, festooned with vines and strings of coral and featuring the burbling sounds of a recreated forest spring. A few feet out the door lay the swath of new road construction, daily heaving with its trucks and bulldozers and graders as the access is prepared for the 200-million-baht, 50-bungalow resort going up on the nearby end of the beach.

A couple of days earlier I had wondered about attending the Black Moon dance party at Ban Tai, just to get a taste of the phenomenon -- at least its new moon variant -- that attracted so many partygoers to that opposite end of the island. But it seemed a bit far to go, with a pricey taxi ride and no certain return in the late night; and techno music was not really my thing. Meanwhile after a casual jam at the Be-Bob, Mang had the inspiration to throw a party on this same night, which seemed a good, rootsy alternative to the Ban Tai beach scene. He printed up some flyers with the additionally clever come-on, "Be There - Be Bob." His friends would show up with a piece of metal roofing to fold into a makeshift barbecue, and the usual fare of drinks and smokeables would be on hand to ease guests into cozy conviviality.

So it went ... me arriving with djembe in hand fresh from kirtan, already uplifted into seventh-chakra bliss by the vibrations of the beehive-kiva sound temple at the yoga center up the hill. I joined a party of somewhat familiar fellow travelers, seven of us from seven countries. Scattered tales of Jamaica and Amsterdam, Laos and India ... but soon the idea arose: who's up for a trip to Ban Tai? Some waffled. Sandrine flipped a coin: heads, she'll go. Tempted by the opportunity and a group taxi fare, I yet demurred. The complimentary barbecue food, tasty fish and plates heaped with salad, was just starting to arrive at our table, and the intended jam session was yet to begin. Mang sat pensive and alone -- perhaps a trifle discombobulated -- behind the bar, watching his only party guests consider an early exit. "Don't worry," we half-sang to one another; "Everything's gonna be all right ..." At that moment disembodied Bob joined us for the chorus.

I felt in a sense obligated to honor the personal invitation that had been extended to me, along with the promise of semi-public performance; but on the other hand the party was, so far at least, nearly empty but for the group of tourists about to walk out the door. At the last instant I changed my mind, grabbed my drum, and joined them, promising Mang to come back and jam again another night. As I walked through the door Bob, always on cue, sang a serenade: "You're running, you're running, you're running away ..."

Sandrine confided that she always had trouble making decisions. Sometimes she would call a friend for advice; usually she would resort to the coin-flip method. That often entailed more than one result: two out of three, or even up to ten tries, to "increase the probabilities." I shared that during my recent Vipassana retreat (at a monastery just up the hill from the town of Ban Tai) I had put this very question of nagging doubt and indecision to the teacher. He had a couple of ready answers. "When in doubt, don't do. Then the task is to ask a friend. If still in doubt, flip a coin." Evidently Sandrine was already tapped into this timeless spiritual wisdom. I recalled the past year's deep dark film based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men, with the coin flip a device used by the psychopathic killer to doom his victims by their own choice. This resonance was further enriched by the fact that our Irish friend for the night's road trip was named Cormac.

By the time we reached the taxi stand there were four of us still committed to the journey. But now the taxi driver, taking his ease with friends between the shops in the calm night air, changed his mind, shaking his head as he looked at us as if in dour judgment of our collective cultural (or was it anti-cultural?) folly. No matter; we found another taxi stand, and waited there sipping what was advertised in red block letters on the wall as "Sexy Beer."

Once deposited under the broad banner of "Black Moon Culture," we were confronted with a 300-baht entrance fee, unanticipated but unavoidable now that we'd arrived. The scene past the gate was uninspiring: vendors with rainbow wands beside large boards filled with dayglo figures they would paint on body parts. Long booths selling incongruous drinks such as red plastic beach buckets brimming with Jack Daniels. Herds of aimless, faceless people visible only as a pattern of black and white, punctuated by flashing wands of rainbow light. The ever-insistent, never-uplifting deadbeat pulse of the beat, beat, beat.

Where and when had I felt something like this malaise before? Ah, yes ... the Hinsdale, Illinois Youth Center, when I was seventeen and looking for something to do on a Friday night.

Eventually people danced. Cormac wandered for two hours looking for his girlfriend who had disappeared in the company of another friend. Sandrine sipped whiskey and coke and talked wistfully of her bungalow and book, Krishnamurti. Even so she was content enough with her decision to go for "the adventure," and so was I. You never know unless you try. "Better to act," my teacher had said, "than sit on the fence." I drank a second beer, sat in the sand astride my drum and tried to play along with the bassy airwaves, refusing an offer of Ecstasy. But the beer didn't quite do it. The drumming couldn't really be heard. We joined the dancers. With a little effort and time you could kind of get sucked into the tsunami of sound. After a while that too was boring; we decided it was enough and we should look for a taxi ride home. Cormac gave up on trying to find his girlfriend.

The taxis were doing a brisk business at 3:30 A.M., and we quickly found a ride back to Haad Salad, packed in the back of a pickup with five or six others headed to assorted destinations. The tipsy Swedish blonde sitting across from me could hardly keep her flying fingers off my djembe; but whenever she paused for a moment, the French woman next to me immediately urged me to keep playing. Perhaps after all the spirit of Bob was still with us: "jammin till the break of day ..."

It was 4:30 by the time I reached my bungalow. The decision to turn off the 6:00 meditation bell-alarm was a no-brainer. Sleep when it came was not steady or deep, as the leftover pulse of the beat machine refused to go away ... having entered the very structure of my cells, reprogramming my DNA. Joining the others, in the inexorable drift toward black moon culture, now I, too, had become a child of the machine.

Fast-forward: 9:30 A.M.

"I woke up this morning, and wrote down this song ..."

blackmoon.mp3

more percussion compositions by Nowick Gray

digital/live mix also featuring E. Neptune and A. Foebus

Achievement and Practice

2008-03-02T18:32:00.000-08:00

Ten days after a ten-day silent meditation retreat which focussed on the practice of Vipassana -- insight, mindfulness -- the lessons are still sinking in. At first on re-entering the "real world," the shock to the senses was overwhelming. With resumed action and echoing speech vying for airtime with frogs, crickets, sprinklers, motorbikes, trucks, heavy equipment, hammers, neighbor's voices, roosters, wild birds, boat engines ... it has been difficult to keep the mind calm in sitting meditation. But I have kept my resolution to keep sitting every morning, and the overall calmness of my mental state is now increasing.

I was afraid that I would slip all too quickly back into long habits of chosen activity: writing, computer networking, music engagements, restless wanderings ... and indeed I have been inspired to delve into detailed schedules and outlines for all of my old unfinished and ongoing projects. I have made similar resolutions with new inspiration at various times in the past. Always within a week or two the inspiration fades; unpredictable life crowds in like jungle growth; and in despair I give up all my discipline to "the flow."

This time I feel it is going to be different; my resolution is firmer, more grounded in the practice established in the "Buddhist boot camp." The emphasis on mindful meditation practice in all the primary postures and motions of life -- sitting, standing, walking, eating, breathing -- has taught me to view all of life as "practice," a view that is fundamentally different than my former view of the importance of achievement.

Music practice is a prime example. Previously I have found it extremely difficult to maintain any disciplined regularity to my music practice. It always seemed like "work"; and work it was, designed and engaged in so as to achieve better proficiency. Renting a studio space with set hours helped a lot, because I was forced by "efficiency" to make full use of the allotted rental time. But at home -- finally moving into a place where I can practice freely -- the time I could be practicing inevitably dwindles into distraction: Do I have new email? How long is the sun going to be shining outside? I'm hungry right now and better eat ...

The same is true of my eternal backlog of tasks -- lists upon archived lists -- in the area of writing, editing, publishing, networking, promotion. Always I have been inspired by the breadth of work I could do, but debilitated by the lack of focus and determination to choose and see projects through to conclusion. I think that underlying both the verbal and musical fields of activity, I have been chronically hampered by a gnawing, existential doubt: what is it all for?

That, of course, is the problem with all worldly achievement, in the light of our eventual death. A practice of deep and repeated insight and mindfulness cuts through the veil of denial to confront us squarely with the meaninglessness of our ego-driven priorities. But that does not mean we are left with nothing, dangling helplessly, hopelessly in the void. We are left with the tool that got us to this state of realization: the practice.

In the week's company of a slow-walking friend, I had to keep practicing my slow, measured steps, with time left over to watch the breath. No time lost, no time gained: no time. Establishing a comfortable habit with the sitting practice, I extend the form to musical scales and rhythm exercises. Am I improving? Will I be a polished performer? These are secondary questions, not immediately relevant to the importance of the task. The task is to trust the practice. In itself it has value as a tool for engaging in the artful and mindful practice of living. And if continued, it will, like the sitting practice that inspires it, have secondary benefits in the form of a more successful life -- even in worldly terms.

That is the irony of spiritual practice. To be effective it entails giving up all worldly concerns and priorities. Then, being effective, it results in clearer, stronger, more effective functioning in the world, indeed in more worldly success. That success in turn cannot be gloated upon as a stolen, secret reward. Death still claims the last word. But in the meantime we can add, moment by moment, a subtle reward to our efforts, our spiritual work: the happiness of knowing what is simply true, step by step, day by day, note by note, word by word, breath by breath.

The practice continues.

Vipassana

2008-02-21T23:57:00.000-08:00

Notes from a 10-day silent meditation retreat

Haiku Smuggled out of Silent Retreat

swaying in the breeze:

bamboo and coconut palm

me, watching the breath

DailySchedule

4:00 wakeup

4:45 sitting

5:30 yoga

6:35 sitting

7:05 breakfast

8:15 working

9:00 walking

9:30 talk

10:15 sit/stand

10:30 walking

11:00 lunch

1:00 walking

1:45 stand/sit

2:45 walking

3:30 sitting

4:15 sit/stand

4:30 walking

5:15 dinner

6:15 sitting

6:45 stand/walk

7:15 talk

8:15 sit/sleep

Vipassana is like . . .

heavy-duty brainwashing for a mind set on permanent press
going to the mother ship for a true human implant
workshop for tools to hack the dominant paradigm
mental asylum for normal people
reformat and install new operating system
training for human puppies: Sit. Stay.
being reborn, learning to breathe, sit, stand, walk
discovering timelessness within the structure of time
boot camp for the revolution that starts within
downloading code for an upgraded language of intelligence

Back to Reality

The assault to the senses is immediate as I walk from the monastery road onto the main road through Ban Tai. Taxi trucks, motorbikes, SUVs rumbling by. Signs and shops, drying fish, burning coconuts, the bustle of everyday activity ... it’s all perfectly normal, if you live there everyday; but I’ve just spent 10 days on the hill in silent seclusion with thirty other meditators and resident Thail monks. Our days have been punctuated by the slow resonant sound of the bells ringing time to awake or work or sit. The view of the island is from a high rock, where everything appears in minature, sounds and sights by distance into a peaceful blur.

The next morning, I awake in my bungalow back at Hat Salad, having slept in - three hours longer than usual - until 7:45. I resolve to keep my practice going by doing some yoga; but by the time I settle into a sitting posture for the first meditation “on my own,” the sensory assault of “the real world” has resumed full force. It’s still muted light inside with my door and shutters closed, but the sounds I cannot block out: hammers at work on the concrete road construction site; the humming groans of heavy machinery; and now a loud sprinkler beginning just behind the bungalow. Still I manage to sit peacefully for half an hour, with the aid of earplugs that still permit me to hear the programmed end of session rung from my BlackBerry with the “Qi Gong” tone.

I go to breakfast at my favorite beachside restaurant, but again the silence I have grown so fond of at the retreat is bombarded by the sounds of hammering on renovations just behind me; pounding of waves from an unusually active surf during this day of the full moon; and constant conversation from a couple sitting at the neighboring table. It is easy to shut one’s eyes from a rush of detail and color; to avoid taste and even to minimize touch. But to shut out the press of sounds or invasive odors is nearly impossible, as our human brains are wired like the minds of dogs to become immersed in these sensations.

An apology:

In a recent blog I made a “crude and unapologetic” characterization of Americans as “obnoxious” in their role as modern conquistadors. One American friend responded with honest feelings of hurt from my overgeneralized remarks, and during my meditation retreat I had further opportunity to reflect on the unbeneficial effects of such speech. In painting with such a broad brush, it seems I put my foot in the bucket and lost my balance; and the result, instead of eloquence, was simply a smear.

A more accurate and objective statement might read as follows: Relishing their success with a reckless pursuit of materialism, some Americans take a shameless (one might say, crude and unapologetic) pride in their accomplishments and status as dominators.

Still the question arises: what is the benefit of sketching such a characterization? If the statement is true, how can it help someone to hear it?

It always helps to know the truth, however painful or uncomfortable it may be at first. Another principle is also important, however: to blend understanding with compassion. All humans are fallible; and all have also redeeming qualities and potential. Even if some actions - whether imperial militarism or careless speech - are hurtful to others, there is benefit in looking deeper to see the causes and remedies of such actions.

The problem of modern technological media is the same as the problem of modern technological warfare: we are removed and insulated from the results of our actions. I thank my readers for giving me any feedback as to the effects of my words. And I wish that any in positions of power and influence - a factor that could apply in general to citizens of affluent North America - will be open to understanding how our choices have actual impacts on the lives of others.

Assorted Bloglets

2008-02-09T18:07:00.000-08:00

Getting to 2012: Notes Toward the End of Time
Surfing Time
Particle and Wave
I Am That
Coltrane
Finding Ecstasy vs. Pursuing Happiness
* Free Will and the End of Materialism
* BlackBerry Blues
* Internet Slowdown Blues
* Night Call: - Cruising the Personals - Love in the New Age
* Jungle Therapy
* The Power of Intention: - Into the Positive Vibe - Authentic and Peaceful

Homes Away From Home

2008-02-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

25.01.08

More Crude and Unapologetic Cultural Generalizations...

Coming back into Vancouver and flying over to Victoria, I notice patches of clearcut forest and realize that Canadians, like Americans, have built a country on killing -- killing of nature or of other cultures, whatever stands in the way of comfort and material progress. There is a similarity of intent - conquest for survival, then more - but a difference in style. In Canada the land stretches seemingly without limit beyond the horizon: unkempt and unkept nature, cold dark forests and mountains. As if humbled by this perspective of the vast unending wilderness, in contrast to their diminutive efforts, Canadians go about their killing with quiet and practical efficiency. Canadians are also rather reserved in the socio-political sphere, content in their perpetual status as colony to the greater power (first England, then America). Americans, on the other hand, have been emboldened by their swift conquest of a continent and more lately, a global political economy. Relishing their success with a reckless pursuit of materialism, some Americans take a shameless (one might say, crude and unapologetic) pride in their accomplishments and status as dominators.

01.02.08

Connectivity Issues

“If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.”--Henry Miller

It’s all a melange of dreams and expectations, glitches and disappointments. Did I really expect paradise to be graced with seamless connectivity? How to reconcile the placid warm waters of this Thai island beach with any worldly ambition of efficiency or success? In wanting my tropical cake and eating it too in my ultracivilized way, something gets lost in translation.

For details, there are certainly the obvious successes and failures, highs and lows of my connection to this place and its people (whether foreign or local or somewhere in between). Fresh from the exhilarating freedom of receiving email to my Blackberry in the jungle in Maui, I find that I cannot connect with it to any local data service provider in Thailand; and in attempting to upgrade its software for a backdoor solution I found on the Internet, it crashed and has not yet recovered. Of course the support line back in Canada is open for business only when the overseas call centers here are closed; and the international phone card I bought to use in the phone booths is useless in the absence of any local phone booth. On my way down the sweltering road to the useless phone booth, the improvised container of sunscreen (which I’d filled at home for this trip after having my primary tube confiscated at the airport in Vancouver) exploded in my hands.

On the positive side, I’ve been enjoying the frequent company of a good new Canadian friend I met at a river pier in Bangkok, in transit to the same island yoga course where I was bound and staying at the same guest house in the city. And I did make some fortuitous drumming connections in Bangkok through my friend Michael Pluznick, who arranged a rooftop group session atop a 44-story highrise with a panoramic view of the city, showing us parts for five West African rhythms and engaging in wondrous solos. The group included our host, a longtime expat; a Sri Lankan kit player; and another kit player about to fly home to play with Jefferson Starship. Afterwards we went to the lavish buffet at the Sheraton before retiring upstairs to catch the last half-hour of a great subtle jazz group featuring guitar, piano, drums and standup bass. The drummer had jammed with the others the night before, and for the last song of the set the Starship drummer sat in. They created a great sense of space in the consonant and sparse improvisation from each quarter: a revelation after my jam with friends at home several days before, when I’d found it hard to restrain my exuberance in free jamming after many months of structured playing with set rhythms.

Earlier that afternoon in my quest for a local phone service SIM card, I had glimpsed some royalty whizzing by enroute to shopping at the chic Siam Paragon shopping megalith, their cute red sports car escorted by numerous police and military personnel, with both vehicle and pedestrian traffic held up for blocks for their passing.

Next day I took a break from my friend Anna and the King of Siam to seek out an isolated corner of a large city park where I could play my drum and flute freely without disturbing too many nappers. Day three was devoted to finding an alternate bus ticket to leave the city that night, after the initial disappointment of hearing that the bus associated with the guest house was already full; then spending the afternoon doing an editing job which, by complete coincidence, turned out to be a paper on Thai linguistics by an anonymous client from Bangkok. After a long night’s bus ride and morning ferry trip to Koh Phangan, I finally got settled at Rose’s Bungalows where I’d stayed with Nora and Cleo two years ago on my first trip to Thailand. I could finally drop my load, practice drumming again while an excavator roared in the near distance, shower, then sink into the deep sleep of home -- at least, a home away from home.

Humor is in inverse proportion to ambition.--Norman Lewis

It didn’t help my contented mood of settlement to discover, while unpacking, that my stash of $165 in cash had gone missing, in some mysterious fashion, somewhere between Hong Kong - or was it Vancouver? - and Rose’s bungalow. But I didn’t allow myself to dwell long on this misfortune or miscalculation, beyond trying to recall just which pack pockets were left unlocked when. Is this evolution, when previous causes of anger and bitterness now trigger just mild disgust and resignation? I am not, after all, merely playing “The Game of Life” to win by maximizing gains and minimizing losses; or if I am, I can at least intuit that there is more to the game’s accounting than a balance sheet of time and money. Nothing that can’t be cured by a good Thai massage on the beach -- especially at $8 per hour.

Lately my days have been devoted to the timeless pursuits of sunbathing, swimming, snorkeling, and hiking the back roads; sharing good food and conversation with Anna; and my persistent quest to resolve the malfunctioning Blackberry. It’s not so much that I need the phone while I am here -- though it would make it easier to arrange next week’s rendezvous with Michael on Koh Samui, and assist my other friend Anna from last year’s India trip in finding her way here -- it’s more a matter of principle, of putting into working order what I had hoped for following November’s tortuous decision to spring for a cell phone in the first place. Meanwhile I cannot help but harbor resentment for the sales rep who convinced me to take the Blackberry over the Nokia, touting its supposedly superior performance and eminent suitability for travel in Thailand. I followed his advice in buying an “unlocking” code so that I could avoid paying exorbitant roaming charges while here ... only to find that the local providers don’t support Blackberry unless you are a resident with a work permit.

So meanwhile, I’m left waiting for a reply from Rogers email support (advertised as 24-hour response time, but currently revised to “5 business days”); finding purpose in a morning’s stifling walk to the nearest pay phone, though it didn’t work and Internet service along the way was intermittently shut down with local electricity; recalling tales of fellow travelers such as the Scottish-Malaysian doctor who swam with penguins in Antarctica, or witnessed mass deaths in Nigeria when cholera and yellow fever epidemics were not acknowledged as possible (because they were considered “unclean”) by local sultans who therefore allowed them to proceed unchecked; eating at a beachfront restaurant, anything different than the “same-same” Thai fare everywhere: baked macaroni with cheese, chicken and ham (and a zest of Thai spice). At least I handled three small editing jobs today when the electricity happened to be on, so the thread of professional identity can continue thinly along the edge of this otherwise all-too-languid shore.

Paradise is best known when it is lost.--Pico Ayer, "An Englishman in Paradise"

I know I am no philosopher; but Pico Iyer’s fine phrase, “Paradise is best known when it is lost” provokes some considered response in this land of limbo between eleusia and ennui. The quantum approach, for instance, leads us to recognize that the losing, in the form of separation, comes in the very act of knowing. That is, at least, when “knowing” is of the rational, analytical type, in which the ego-mind is engaged in separating all the things in this world, especially itself in its fearful defense of individualistic survival.

There is another kind of knowing, however, that is inclusive instead of divisive, and that gives a more hopeful vision than Iyer’s archly civilized cynicism. In this knowing of a higher awareness than that of the small-self ego, the individual identity is dissolved to make way for a greater appreciation for the whole -- whether that is the whole of one’s immediate surroundings or the whole of universal existence. Such knowing seeks not to describe and delineate, but rather to embrace and expand; and in the process it enhances rather than demeans our conception of “paradise.” In this higher-order sense, we might truthfully say, “Paradise is found when it is best known.”

02.02.08Today saw more of the same . . . though with new twists and wrinkles. On the technical end of things I was happy to discover a WiFi outlet for affordable Internet access; but the connection was slow, and in my quest to download the proper software to repair the ailing Blackberry, I gave up the wireless connection in favor of a faster cable hookup up the street at Jay Jay’s travel. Unfortunately, though that connection was indeed faster, my promising download still aborted halfway along due to the vagaries of the satellite connection this island depends on.

My evidently misguided attempts to be a cyber-cowboy in Thailand were tempered by long and peaceful sits in the sparsely populated beachfront restaurants. With no contact with either Anna today, I was left to my own devices: both computerized and meditative. It occurred to me while sitting in that public space overlooking the crystal water that I was indeed at home here . . . reflecting on the comparative scene I once enjoyed outside my house in Argenta looking at the distant view of Kootenay Lake. The key difference here, apart from the obvious one of climate, is that here “my place” is not my own in the usual sense of private property; and yet, my new sense here today is that “being at home” in a place is more simply a subjective attitude, a way of being at peace with one’s surroundings.

Perhaps diverted by my ongoing quest to iron out the glitch in my phone-computer, today I felt free of any desires to improve upon, complain about, or otherwise fix my physical surroundings. I no longer felt the need to compare Thailand to Hawaii or Canada, whether favorably or not; or maybe it was that I felt well enough favored and settled here, accepting finally my place here for better or worse, for the duration of my stay this winter at least, that I could finally be present to enjoy what it had to offer. Or, maybe, like the bliss I felt most palpably at the exact midpoint of my three-week visit to Maui, my contentment in this temporary home today came also at the likely midpoint of my six-day period of residence here before moving on to Koh Samui and Wat Kow Tham. Still another realization raises its unromantic head: that I feel most at home here on a day when I spend half of it on the computer.

03.02.08I succeed finally in downloading the required software for the Blackberry ... but the installation process still fails, and so finally I give up ... at least this phase of trials. Later, walking home airy light from the hyperventilated state of bliss after kirtan with thirty voices in the sound chamber at the yoga center, I hold somehow this dual vision of who I am, as man walking down the earth road under stars: the spirit being lifted to higher communal consciousness; and the toolmaking human still driven to iron out the glitches in his latest technology. Three Sundays ago I was similarly lifted to heights of ecstasy in a Haiku, Maui singing circle ... and balanced that unsustainable bliss with a twelve-hour grounding of sleep.

Danya's Pools

2008-01-22T16:38:00.001-08:00

Though I travel in the winter to seek sun and warm sea to swim in, I also find peace in the quiet seclusion of nature, the gentle green of forest pools far from the tourist crowds and sunny glare of the resort strip. Here is my audiovisual homage to the heart of Maui...

Maui Revisited

2008-01-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

Mr. Synchronicity

Today was a magical day. It began with a plan to wake up early and catch the bus to Ka’anapali, which is next to one of my favorite beaches from my first visit to Maui in May 2006. At that time Kahekili Beach Park was just that, a long natural strip of unspoiled golden sand beside swaying trees and greenery. Now there is an unbroken string of high-end hotels and cabanas lining the shore, with only token remnants of the original vegetation. The beach is still uncrowded however, with sand just as soft and water as clear and calm as I remembered. This time I was treated to a special compensation for the disappointment over inevitable development. As I dove to swim along the bottom not far from the water’s edge, I heard clearly the sounds of singing - actually groans, moans, squeaks and screeches - from humpback whales wintering offshore.

The day began auspiciously enough, as I ran into Kevin on my way up to the road to hitch a ride to town. He took me to the bus stop, and from there my long day’s journey went predictably enough. The so-called Maya-Hopi Indian man who sat next to me for the first half-hour talked nonstop, running a manic jag through everything from the Word of God to the caste system of India and the war criminals of Nazi Germany. After that I settled into quiet enjoyment of the scenery, with verdant primal mountains to my right and turquoise ocean to my left, all the way to Lahaina. There I stopped for coffee and Internet at a café I remembered, before catching the bus for the last leg to Ka’anapali. On the bus ride back it was the teens who dominated the airwaves with their constant chatter, easier to take because it wasn’t directed at me personally.

The final portion of the trip, just before dusk, was a little worrisome since I’d been warned by the taxi driver I hired my first night here (having forgot my driver’s license at home and so unable to rent a car) not to try hitching at night. As I stood by the highway from the end of the bus line I was questioning whether I’d be able to make the drum class the next day ending around this same time, having to hitchhike home. But just then a car stopped. I opened the door, and Steve, the drum teacher I had met last visit and hoped to meet again at his class the next day, reached over to shake my hand. “Nowick!” he said, “I was just thinking about you, as I was playing Mamady Keita’s ‘Soli’ here on my car stereo.” We caught up on drumming and other news as he took me to my destination driveway. He’s been enjoying learning tango with his girlfriend, after a steep learning curve of a year and a half. Coincidentally I also tried to juggle drumming with tango lessons with a girlfriend a couple of years ago, though in my case I quit (both the tangoing and the relationship) before the learning curve leveled out.

Halfway down the driveway to Danya’s place, a truck rolled up behind me and stopped to offer me a ride. It was Kevin again, returning from town. Back at Danya’s place later, I met Ray and discovered in the course of conversation that we’d both spent time in arctic Quebec, where, among other things, we’d witnessed caribou wandering through the streets of Kuujuak, and “shared a beer with Zebedee Nungak.” At that point Shara walked in, dubbing me “Mr. Synchronicity” since she’d already seen a guy in Paia come up to me and recognize me from Nelson, BC (as well as from the beach jam earlier in the day); and this while traveling with Mina, also from Nelson and staying at Danya’s. I used to rehearse at Mina’s house every week for a while when she was living with a guy whose family band I played with. Shara also announced that she’d discovered that Congolese dance classes were happening every night this week in Paia, and I could catch a ride home with her after my drum class and her dance class.

The Hourglass Effect

The first week in January just might be my favorite time of year. Even in cold northern climes, it is special with the growing light each day, the knowledge that light and warmth are increasing. In the tropics, where daylight and temperature are more constant, still there is an effect of extra tranquility and ease, each day beckoning with a paradoxical yet intoxicating mixture of fullness and emptiness. In either location the schedule of events and expectations seems at the lowest ebb for the year, and for that reason alone this brief season is precious.

In contrast, the holiday time leading up to the new year in December is hectic and hurried, with each day shorter than the last, as time is filled with social engagements, travel arrangements, errands and loose ends (not to mention sickness from overdoing it). The year in between sees a seasonal variation in temperate lands, yet a subtle ticking of the calendar no matter the latitude.

In effect, it’s as if the calendar year runs like an hourglass. With the turning of the new year, the glass is full, the sand seemingly endless in supply, the trickling away of it imperceptible. Yet trickle it does, day by day, and by fall the diminishing supply causes increasing anxiety that we’re not going to get everything done that we had hoped this year.

I suppose this is where some of that subtle sadness comes in, on New Year’s Eve. It’s not just the tawdry leftovers from 1930s America that taints the champagne, or the nostalgic singing and tipsy kissing, or the flashing of the fluorescent lights, but regret at time gone by and opportunity missed. Oh well - the hourglass turns, and we start with a full cup of possibility and potential again.

At least, such is the feeling I had up until this day. Even this morning, for instance, I felt the buoyancy of free and open spirit - not removed from life but at peace with the simplicity of the daily scene: walking down the road in the sunshine, even listening to the ravings of my seatmate on the bus. But this day, January 8, marks the beginning of the second week of the year, and already during my bus ride today I have generated a long list of things to write about, which equates to things to do. And once we have an agenda of things to do, we jump back on the wheel of karma: action, and reaction, spinning ever faster.

Second Time Around

It’s interesting visiting Maui for a second time. Having explored all the areas of the island during my first visit, now I know where to go, can be both more settled where I’m staying and more focused during my outings to various favorite spots. I know where to shop, where to do Internet, where to get good coffee, where to change, snorkel, swim, and drum. This sense of familiarity is made deeper by staying in a congenial place with like-minded people, a kind of extended family (especially when it includes old friends from home).

On the other hand, I wonder already what it might be like to visit a third time, or more. Would familiarity give way that quickly to routine? Relationship with a place is like relationship with a person, going through those three stages: Discovery - Familiarity - Routine. It seems that these three stages make up a natural cycle, a complete circle. Past the point of routine lies the challenge.

If the circle is continued without change, status quo risks becoming stagnation. There is a choice, however, to spiral upward and outward, expanding to new fields of exploration, new relationships of discovery. There is also a choice to spiral downward and inward, into more subtle realms of experience that on the surface may appear the same, but actually can be appreciated in deeper essence. In this way stagnation may be averted or transformed into sustainability. I suspect that a key ingredient in such a transformation of status quo is for routine to take on an aspect of the sacred: routine gives way to ritual.

Grisham the Prophet

I’m reading a piece of “pulp fiction” called The Brethren, by John Grisham, which once again proves that fiction is truer than strange truth. Written in 2000, a full year before 9/11, it lays out a scenario that is chillingly prescient. If it wasn’t also truth that such shenanigans date at least as far back as the time of Caesar, one might almost suspect that BushCo took their script from the novelist’s hands.

A main premise is that the CIA rigs a presidential election, through blackmail and bribery and corporate sponsorship, for its chosen candidate on the single platform of doubling military spending. When the candidate inquires about how the American public will be convinced to go along with such an agenda, the answer is right out of history, past and future:

“We’ll create a crisis on the other side of the world, and suddenly [you] will be called a visionary. Timing is everything. You make a speech about how weak we are in Asia, few people listen. Then we’ll create a situation over there that stops the world, and suddenly everyone wants to talk to you. It will go on like that, throughout the campaign. We’ll build the tension on this end. We’ll release reports, create situations, manipulate the media, embarrass your opponents. Frankly . . . I don’t expect it to be that difficult.”
“You sound like you’ve been here before.”

As the political ads engineered by the CIA go on the air, we see images that are all too familiar to us in the post-9/11 world:

This one began with a grainy video of men with guns slithering through the desert, dodging and shooting and undergoing some type of training. Then the sinister face of a terrorist - dark eyes and hair and features, obviously some manner of Islamic radical - and he said in Arabic with English subtitles, “We will kill Americans wherever we find them. We will die in our holy war against the great Satan.” After that, quick videos of burning buildings. Embassy bombings. A busload of tourists. The remains of a jetliner scattered through a pasture.

I guess the publication date of 2000 was too close to the American election in November of that year to influence its outcome. But given another year, the brains beyond W. didn’t miss a beat. Either that, or John Grisham has his finger right on the pulse of the American Way.

US Homeland, Empire

Yesterday while hitchhiking I got a ride from a man from the Czech Republic. He’s been here two years, but is seriously contemplating leaving soon. I asked him why, and he referenced the politics of war, the obsession with militarism and security. These were the same things that led me to leave the USA in 1974 following the Vietnam war. Now, 34 years later, the political climate is, in the words of my wise and cynical friend Wayne, “the same only worse.”

In a follow-up conversation today, Kevin observed that Hawaii was somewhat removed from the political mindset of the mainland US, the “homeland.” Maybe Hawaii, I wondered, was more like the colony it once was instead of a true State; and for that matter, not unlike Canada - a part of the American empire. “Patriotic” Americans used to say, “Love it or leave it.” Somehow that slogan got replaced along the way with, “You can check out, but you can never leave.”

Beyond Politics

2007-10-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

(The History of the World, Part 2)

A review of Derrick Jensen live

Victoria, BC - 20 Oct 2007

Derrick Jensen speaks much as he writes: eloquently, haltingly, off-the-cuff; his insights and remarks are brilliant, provocative, profound, disturbing, irreverent, politically incorrect -- no matter what your politics are. While politics in the conventional sense is the game of power and its subsidiary ethics, here we have a more radical approach to living in the world than accepting the myopia of the urban lifestyle; now nature is reintroduced to the equation.

Nature (including plant and animal species, ecosystems of land, water and air, and traditional subsistence peoples) is no stranger to the inequation of power, suffering these 60 or 100 centuries of abuse, rape, plunder and blunder, burning, rending, killing, enslaving, forgetting. Now up for discussion, for once, is the Endgame, as Derrick calls his latest two-volume study of what is involved in the necessary dominance and even more necessary demise of civilization.

Civilization is characterized by cities, which require (DJ’s emphasis) for its people the importation of food and related resources . . . and therefore it requires the coerced or forcible removal of those necessities from the hinterland, the colonies, the rural poor, the wilderness, the stolen land. The end of the game comes with the end of denial.

The hardest step in the recovery program is the first step, which is to awake from denial. So important and so immense, in fact, is this first step, that the entire two volumes of Endgame (I: The Problem of Civilization; II: Resistance) are devoted to it, as was the entire address tonight. A single questioner after the talk inquired about the kind of society that might replace the one that has brought itself and everything else along with it to the brink of universal ruination; but Derrek begged off that question, as he had the earlier one, “What can we do?”

“Your actions will come with the gifts you have to bring,” was his answer (and here we find a refreshingly Emersonian version of democracy, to oppose to the current Orwellian distortions of that noble principle). In the meantime the more pressing matter -- “the axe held over the head” -- must be addressed, immediately, and it will take every ounce of our attention. The only way we can give it our proper attention is to recognize the extent of the emergency.

That we actually have an emergency situation on our hands is a logical if not always visible fact of a lifestyle based on nonrenewable or overzealously harvested resources. But we can only continue to be lulled for so long by belief in the romantic dream and hope of civilization-forever-after, as most of the dying is still hidden (except when 80% of those in the audience raise their hands at the question “How many of you have lost a loved one to cancer?”), and everything keeps whistling away (though at a higher and higher pitch of anxiety and tension), toward the edge of the cliff, with noses lifted high in the air (as if to hide with pride the stench of extinction and genocide) .

Or we do know better, but we pleasantly forget (tonight, after all, was game 6 of the baseball playoffs . . . “Maybe the Indians will win this time,” quipped Derrick). Or we should know better, but we take action believing our citizen-ship enterprise can be salvaged, and so we continue to vote, and to buy, steal or pray for our clean water and nutritious food from elsewhere without ever giving anything back, not in humble sacrifice of sacred respect or stewardship, nor truly fair price and trade to those in a distant land. Come to think of it, what would a truly fair price be, in the whole ecological scheme of things? The answer could well be, as Derrick Jensen suggests, no price at all -- but rather our sacrifice of such power, in favor of the power of our willingness to listen to our local landbase and its native peoples for instructions on how to survive.

In this reflective summary I risk putting words in Derrick Jensen’s mouth: and yet his message was clear and central: we need each to find our own path through these woods, toward new springs.

As I drove away from the campus auditorium down the highway skirting the city, the reality of civilization struck me with new clarity and naked truth. I was driving a machine of death on roadbeds of death through a misty night in a world of human creation: the music and heater on, the windows rolled mostly up, those in other cars invisible or oblivious behind separate barriers and windows . . . and then I wondered, in this state of naked awareness, what next? What do I do about it? How do I respond to what’s around me and what it represents on a planetary scale?

The short answer is, keep driving. Relax, breathe, you can do this, you know the rules of the road, it is possible to operate this machine safely. Once home I turn on the lightswitch, the computer, use the toilet, eat some yogurt and blueberries, make a cup of mocha for this session of writing. When I was in the car I was inspired with a wave of good music: especially the wailing Middle Eastern fusion that somehow proved a theme song for this world of the automobile, the Oil Age.

So my answer, like Derrick’s personal reponse, is “I’m a writer.” I am also a musician, a teacher, an editor, a reviewer . . . With these callings I feel integrity, even though in their present context they are products of civilization. I can use them despite their compromises also to reach beneath and above and beyond the layers of civilization attached to them, to their core as cultural expressions and as means of reconnection to nature, to human nature, to spirit.

As Derrick so succintly put it, he can still use toilet paper while he works to dismantle Weyerhauser. Or, he can feel despair over the suffering civilization inflicts, while also retaining the capacity for determined resistance and healthy happiness to be alive.

His brand of humor is black, nearly rude and almost crude throughout the live performance, yet he has a deft touch not to overdo it, and the result was a palpable rapport with a sympathetic and attentive audience. The same quality of irony comes across in a drier form in the written text.

Undoubtedly the most poignant moment of the evening came an hour into the question period after the talk. One man complaining of nearsightedness came onto the stage and kneeled in front of Derrick to get a close look at his face, and then said how sad it made him feel that Derrick had said “Fuck ‘em” in regard to the supposed threat of a “security” clampdown on his freedom of speech.

Derrick’s voice softened as he spoke, without irony and with great patience, explaining how his epithet was really just a kind of shorthand for not being willing to be coerced into inaction and silence.

Perhaps the most profound moment for me was Derrick’s story repeated from his book, about a conversation with someone presenting the argument of dualism: “Derrick, you’re so dualistic -- so, us and them, bad and good, civilized and natural . . . ” His response: “Okay, what about dualism and nondualism; dualism -- bad; nondualism -- good . . . ?” The same question might be posed about “Resistance,” the subtitle of Endgame, Volume II. The spiritualist might respectfully advise against (if not outright protesting) such a compromise from unitary, all-embracing higher consciousness. Yet again there is an inherent and ironic complicity in such a judgment: resisting resistance. The pacifist heroes Gandhi and King were nothing if not fierce and unwavering resistors. Derrick’s expansive acceptance comes into play more in respect to forms of resistance than to condoning a culture of slaughter and degradation. His battle cry facing a consumeristic culture whose motto is “Everything must go” would be “Anything goes.” He draws the moral line at actions like bombing a children’s hospital -- actions committed instead under the banner of freedom and democracy.

When do we begin to resist? When do we use the word apocalypse? When do we wake from the hypnosis that everything is fair and fine, or flawed or fucked, but as it must be? Maybe the last words in this review should be the refrain that Derrick repeated several times in a row, midway through his talk. The rate of survival in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was better than that of the Jews who went peacefully to the death camps.

Derrick likened his predicament (and ours, now that he has helped us see it), to “living in Germany in 1938.” Until our awakening to action in our own way, we are the “good Germans” and we are the Jews, riding together at last on the same train to deva-station. Yet the action we decide and are gifted to take does not come in a written manual or a speech to the masses, nor in any one set of strategies or tactics. It comes through individual and collective inspiration: through the message of the river that spoke so poetically and precisely to and through Derrick in the closing prose of his speech, and through the implicit community and shared witness of the people assembled to hear him.

The actions of resistance are everything that conscious people are already doing. Resistance continues from each moment to the next, in undefined actions to come, as we awake further and connect more to our fellow humans and fellow species and the resilient land we walk on (if we still walk at all). Our actions of resistance and survival and renewal will persist and multiply, given the awakened will for facing “the Stone Age” to come, and for navigating the rocky ice-bridge to it with eyes and ears open and hearts full.

Postscript:

A decade ago I wrote a review of some similarly end-of-history overviews, with one notable programme (The Millennium Project) recognizing on the one hand the same impossibility of continuing on the present path of overconsumption, while refusing to “go backward” to an uncivilized state of nature. The solution instead was foreseen in deep space, where humans could continue their divine mission to “go forth and multiply” indeed forever, through the infinity of space with its endless “resources” for the taking. This fantasy is moot by now as the window has already passed for such a project to be launched from an overabused earth (as the author warned at the time of its writing a decade ago). Without that vain hope to sustain us; and likewise without the Maoist vision of a populist agrarian utopia; and likewise without the neo-liberal dream of universal democracy (now blown to tatters by its neo-conservative evil twin embarked on an openly fascist imperial agenda); and likewise without the green delusions of happy hippy ecotopias recycling bicycle tires to the end of time; we are left with the one course that is both natural and humane. That final remedy is the bitterest pill to swallow; but unlike the “final solution” of the holocaust, it is the path of finding a hard yet possible future by making the hardest choices now.

It is a hard and bitter path because we have been so utterly convinced that it is the wrong one, the one to leave behind, the one to eradicate and transform and evolve from; and we have grown so utterly dependent on our short-lived alternative, so beguiling with its comfort and ease and excess, so intoxicating with its riches transferred to us from the other side: the invisible earth, the silent victims, the dispossessed. Of course we don’t want to slide back to the Stone Age. We will go kicking and screaming backwards, or kicking and screaming forwards -- sacrificing our comfort, or others’ lives and livelihoods, in the process -- but go we will, to the unpromised land, the land finally free of unsustainable promises. Today or tomorrow, one way or another, by our action or inaction, we will go out of our false and manufactured Eden, into the wilderness; we will find our way home.

Home Cooking

2007-06-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

The Journey continues.

Back to the home hotel, the cold stony beach, my own scene. At Gonzales (Goa-nzales) there were wall-to-wall bodies. In Beacon Hill Park, I got chilled to the bone after jamming past sunset (9 p.m.) ... but a hot bath was on tap to make amends. The baseball footage comes live - but my team plays hot and cold. My travel computer is jealous now of my home unit, back in operation with its larger screen. The dentist wants to see me again. I survived taxes, a month late. And oh right, chemtrails again, diffusing into haze.

When I go out to a favorite wild place along the coast, by foot, it’s still close to the city and naval base and I’m buzzed by helicopters, training flights, and a fleet of kayakers. It strikes me that this privileged land exists under serious armed guard, and that the taxes I pay are part of the protection racket.

I’m cheating on summer here - not only getting it back to back, but with a bonus of five hours a day of extra daylight. Still, I sense that the summer will pass quickly here, as it always does. Six months of travel seemed to pass quite slowly, full as it was of varied and new experiences and destinations. Six months at home in the same place goes more quickly, the days going by in chunks of sameness, routine, preoccupation ... even when there’s not as much going on as I feared. One thing I have learned in traveling is to simplify, minimize, be happy with an uncluttered lifestyle.

Now I’ve connected with friends again, secured a music studio for the summer, done a week of sailing and another week of beaching, seen my email needs drop to minutes a day ... what’s left, with summer still to come? More of the same, of course; and I suppose I’ll need to add some income along the way ... but still, it leaves room for dreaming, and daily practice, and relationship with all that is ... which after all, as a lifestyle for a chronic “achiever,” is a breath of fresh air.

more photos from Victoria, BC, Canada ...

An Inconvenient Gore

2007-05-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

1 MayBibi’s Hideaway, Matei, Taveuni, Fiji

This could be heaven or this could be hell.--The Eagles, “Hotel California”

It’s ironic that even while working daily on a writing project concerned with the central theme of living “in the flow” ... and even as I had worked my way through a wrinkle in traveler’s flow-time to emerge, I thought, squeaky clean on the other side ... I was merrily striding down the road, like a Tarot Fool with his daypack on a stick, when I caught a stick on the road that jammed itself straight into my foot between my big and next toe. It was stuck deep in the flesh, and when I tugged it out, I was afraid to see just how deep it was. I imagined blood soaking my sandal, the way it had two weeks before when I’d stubbed my other big toe on a chunk of Aitutaki coral while walking down the beach in the dark. But I kept on to my destination, Bibi’s Hideaway, which I knew was only five more minutes down the road.

I’d just landed on Taveuni ten minutes before, and in the tiny airport arrival area I’d declined the offer of a $2 taxi ride to my destination – not so much for the money, as for the short walk in my new environment. I was riding high on the wisdom of my abrupt change in plans for the day, thinking myself a master of improvisation, when mother nature’s humble spear of justice was driven home.

I only made it halfway down the driveway when the shock of the injury finally caught up with me, and I dropped to the ground to keep from fainting. From a position half sitting, half lying down, I spread the toes, and found a gaping hole half an inch deep by a quarter-inch wide. Amazingly, there was not a drop of blood; but the depth of it was sobering. I immediately thought, “Oh shit, I won’t be able to go swimming for days now.” Then I thought, “I wonder if I’ll need to get flown out of here. I don’t even know if there’s a hospital on this island.” Finally I realized the irony of my coming here on Matt’s recommendation, though he had warned me to carry good disinfectant after he’d been laid up for days here, unable even to come to this north end of the island because of a badly infected cut on his ankle from a bushwalk. “Oh, no problem,” I had thought when reading his message. “I’ll just be careful walking, and anyway I have tea tree oil and Polysporin with me.”

I had to put those ingredients to quick use now, dousing the hole first with clean drinking water, then tea tree oil, then a generous squeeze of the antibiotic gel. I proceeded to rent a cabin, then dressed the wound more properly with the help of an alcohol swab and three bandaids taping the two toes together. Now, my next-to-last 500 mg. of Tylenol later, I’m hoping the dull throbbing pain won’t return too badly in the night, and that I didn’t leave any fragments of stick in my flesh.

The sleep part is an issue since last night in Nadi I was up for hours with the maddening itch of innumerable sand fly bites which covered my arms and elbows. Those same bites are still tormenting me tonight as well. But at least there’s a mosquito net around me in Bibi’s cabin to keep fresh bugs away. So I sit writing to the familiar sound of rain, with half an hour of electricity left to type by, and wonder, will I actually make it through this scheduled month on Fiji before turning tail for the comforts of home?

The time-wrinkle bit, I have to reflect, might have been rather a pushing of the river on my part, instead of a clever revision of plans. The day started well enough, with just enough time for a quick complimentary hostel breakfast before catching a taxi to the bus stop. My destination, the cross-island city of Suva, had been described by Matt as much like Victoria. More unsettling were reports I was getting locally and in the Lonely Planet guide about street muggings and rainy climate. The other unknown was the matter of connections by ferry or air from Suva onward to Taveuni; it seemed I would have to stay there two or three nights - or to pursue another option I wasn’t sure about either, detouring to some of the small islands off the coast. But I was committed now, and I waited stoically with the other scattered tourists at the bus stop awaiting the 7:30 arrival. The long white bus arrived on time and everyone piled in, filling every seat. Fifteen minutes later came the first stop, at the main ferry port, along with an announcement about transferring to the ferries for various island destinations. I was the last one off the bus, and by the time I got to the driver, I realized I should have confirmed the destination upon boarding it. “Are you going to Suva?”

Sadly, no. And the bus I was supposed to be on had already departed for Suva. So the driver called around on the radio and sorted out that I could catch the next bus from Nadi town at 1:30. He dropped me off there at 8:30. It was a city I’d wanted to, tried hard to avoid, having heard it described as “horrible” for its pestering touts. In truth it was rather mild compared to places I’d been to in Bali and India. In any case, I thought I could spend some painless time along the dingy main street catching up with email and sipping coffee, so I proceeded to do just that. After email I stopped into a travel agent’s to inquire about ferries and planes from Suva. He didn’t know about ferries but gave me dates and prices for flights; the first seats available were in three days. I left looking for a good coffee over which to mull that possibility. A tout had followed me in and sat in the travel agent’s waiting for me, and showed me where to go for coffee. It wasn’t the place I was looking for, but a curry house – run, no doubt, by a friend or relative of his. I walked on and found another travel agent to ask about Suva ferries, but the information still wasn’t promising.

As I turned around and headed back down the street, I was struck by the sudden impulse to ask again at the air travel agent’s about flights from Nadi to Taveuni. If any were available I could just forget the whole Suva business and head straight to where I knew I wanted to go, Taveuni. Once there I would have plenty of time to figure out a return trip via Suva, if I still wanted to go there. I thought this whole swing in my plan rather a coup, even though the bus driver had gone out of his way to be helpful, and even though, with some hours of delay, the Suva plan would still have worked out rather providentially in its own right. But no, now I was taking charge; I was honoring those misgivings I had about Suva and the priority I was feeling about Taveuni, and taking the disruption in the day’s plans as an opportunity to act boldly in a new direction. Canceling my reservations with the bus company and the hotel in Suva were the last moral hurdles, and both were easily cleared by phone from the travel agent’s office. When the choice was presented to me of today’s flight at two o’clock, I was filled with certainty in the impulse of the moment and said, “I’ll take it.”

Finally I retired to a proper breakfast of scrambled eggs and latte at the upscale Bulaccino, overlooking the pastoral river at the edge of the city. I spent a pleasant hour there after the meal editing, and becoming reinspired by, my ten-year-old manuscript about living “in the flow.”

As it happened, later in the cabin on Taveuni, the book I was reading (Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts) consoled me a little regarding my small wounds and discomforts, by its contrast of the vivid suffering of its narrator in a Bombay prison, who was beaten all day by guards with sharp bamboo canes, and set upon at night by thousands of body lice, “with their wriggling, itching, crawling loathsomeness ... a frenzy on the surface of my skin.”

Hardly the kind of consolation one should need, the far side of paradise.

4 May

Turning for Home

I’ve now spent three full days here at Bibi’s Hideaway, while the hole between my toes slowly heals. With regular doses of tea tree oil and Polysporin, and bandages covering it the first two days, the wound has remained clean and free of infection while gradually closing. Meanwhile I have taken care to minimize my walking and to keep the foot away from water, dirt and sand.

Staying put, however, has its drawbacks in a place called “The Garden Isle.” Usually “Paradise” is reserved for those hot and dry enclaves of sun hoarded by the traveling rich; the rest of us in search of vacation havens make do with the rainy sides of tropical islands, the edges of jungle, rocky shorelines, bush bungalows. All of the above generally mean one thing, where warm weather is concerned: mosquitoes.

I’m not sure what’s been biting me here, adding to the itchy braille lining my arms, legs and shoulders, because whatever it is, it’s usually silent and invisible. I’ve seen and heard some mosquitoes, for sure; along with smaller bugs like no-see-ums; and near Nadi they told me the culprits were sand flies. Whatever they are, they leave bites that are sometimes welts and sometimes pustules like a case of poison ivy, which itch for days and nights on end. The bugs are a little more scarce in full sun, but then I can’t swim here yet, so a half-hour broil is about the limit of that remedy. The shade is worse. Then I have to cover my skin in tea tree oil every half an hour, and still I manage to get bitten; the alternative is to use toxic DEET or mosquito coils, but these are also only partially effective, besides having odious side-effects.

So after a morning’s consideration of alternative plans, punctuated by the usual stings and bouts of scratching, I finally became inspired by a single mission: escape. I walked to the airport, was told to come back later, and continued up the road to the top of the island of Taveuni. It was a sunny day after much rain, and my foot was feeling well enough to walk, so it felt good to be out on the open road again, with the breeze cutting through the midday heat and keeping the bugs away. The shoreline was beautiful as advertised, though again I could not take advantage of the opportunity to swim. Finally I came to the point where I knew there was no point in walking further. I’d come to the top of the island in the middle of the world, or the far side of paradise, or mosquito heaven - and it was time to turn around. It was time to go home.

Postscript

The seasons change, and so do I ...--The Guess Who, “No Time”

It hasn’t been all bad here. The privacy has been lovely - except when the lawn crew advanced on my cabin area with their weedeaters buzzing like mechanical mosquitoes. I’ve actually been able to parlay the combination of private space and ambient noise of grass cutters and power generator into a rare opportunity to practice flute again. It’s been a refreshing break from the hostel scene. The time for healing has been a fruitful time also for reflection of my overall needs for happiness, whether on the road or at home. As always there are tradeoffs, but now the various factors stand more clearly outlined: misery from mosquitoes vs. cold weather; social boredom vs. long-term friendship; solitude vs. musical opportunity; sunny heat vs. quality food and water. On balance I realize that the place I call home, Victoria, is actually at the top of the list, all things considered. Even in winter it ranks with the best of the tropical travel locations I’ve experienced on this trip.

I embarked on this trip six months ago on the premise that warmth and sunshine were of first priority, and therefore I had to get out of Victoria. That was true for me then ... when I barely got out of town in the midst of an ice storm. Of course, now after I’ve had my fill of sun and heat, my priorities appear on the other side of the scale, with friends and music and having my own space again - mosquito free.

10 MayCaqelai, Fiji

Fiji Redeemed

Rather than leave a false and one-sided impression of Fiji based on my limited misadventures here, I should report that there is one small corner of this nation of islands, tiny Caqelai (“Thangalai”), that has lived up to my hopes for what it might be like. The whole island is small enough to walk around in fifteen minutes. There is nary a mosquito to be found; the water is warm and pleasant for swimming and the snorkeling opportunity right off the beach is vast and marvelous; the tourist impact is minimal, with just a handful of us here, in a few tents and basic beach huts, forming a congenial social group; the local staff is friendly and laid-back and treats us to nightly bowls of kava. I couldn’t be more satisfied to have found this final resting place for my wandering soul before heading home.

At the same time I have no regrets about a change of flights to return to Canada two weeks earlier than planned. Four days is ample time to soak up everything Caqelai has to offer. In my first three hours here I managed to have a good swim, sunbathed, played flute before the vast panorama of the South Pacific, explored the exposed reef stretching out to even tinier Snake Island, and walked around Caqelai twice.

It took some doing to get here, which is one reason Caqelai has so few visitors despite its pristine beauty. (Another likely reason is the absence of a bar, as the resort is owned by the Methodist Church.) I stayed in Suva three days in order to figure out all my travel details, but finally, after a local bus ride and an outboard boat ride down a river and out to the island, I made it here with three other travelers. Every day has brought a slight turnover in the dozen or so guests here, while the group continues with a loosely stable identity of people with, at least, similar tastes in travel. Conversations trail on long after meals and then, gradually, we make our way back to the beach, and out into the tranquil waters to explore some more of the living reef at our doorsteps.

Today as I sit on the shore by the lapping waves, the picture is overlaid by the waves of the northern Pacific that I imagine sitting beside in five days’ time, back in Victoria. And when that time comes, I imagine these present ripples will still be echoing forward in time, overlapping my new experience with the memory of this one. So there is compensation in the large transition from country to country, equator to temperate zone, as the soul adjusts and balances the journey that will occur in a day at unnatural speeds of flight. The real journey, on the inner plane, happens more at the speed of a sailing vessel, and so as I write it has already begun.

Paradise Lost and Found

2007-04-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, the “Paradise” word just comes naturally. The climate is tropical, with just enough light sprinkles to keep the lush plants green, and just enough hot sun to keep the tan dark. The level of tourists is low enough, and the pace of life slow enough, that the locals are happy to spend time chatting in a friendly and familiar way. The tourists too are congenial and friendly, gathering at random for lagoon cruises, “Island Night” drum and dance performances, or beachside fires.

I began in a beach hut at, you guessed it, Paradise Cove. Now I’m well set up in another little “garden cottage” down the endless white-sand beach, at Matriki’s, still a coconut’s throw from the mesmerizing aqua-and-turqoise lagoon. With nine days here, I have time on my hands to walk, bike, swim, snorkel, write, compose, read. Oddly enough, the last few things that have come my way to read here have presented me with quite the opposite picture to the paradise outside my window.

When I checked in here, my host, Riki, suggested a book in the travelers’ collection she keeps in a dresser drawer on the porch. Left to Tell is a harrowing account by Immaculee Ilibagiza of her survival of the Rwandan massacres of the nineties, by hiding for months with seven women in a closet-sized bathroom in a pastor’s house. With the soothing background of distant surf crashing past the silent lagoon, I was compelled to immerse myself in that other reality of madness and butchery, for two days and nights.

Of course I had heard about the situation in Rwanda by scattered reports, from afar, when they were happening - or more likely, after the fact. To begin with, I wasn’t plugged into the news back then, as I was immersed in another sort of paradise in backwoods British Columbia. And anyway the news coverage at the time was limited, as the West by and large turned a blind eye to the usual rumors of “bad stuff happening somewhere in Africa ... again.”

Once reading a firsthand account of such atrocities, though, they hit home. The people become more than just numbers (a million murdered). Considered “cockroaches” by their killers, and nameless “casualties” by the Western governments and media, the victims and survivors become intimately real and human in the narrative. The tragedy, word by word, becomes a part of who I am, a larger concept and feeling of shared humanity. Maybe it’s not really a matter of contrast to this ultra-peaceful scene I inhabit here - but more a matter of the peacefulness here being so full as to invite and include and gently absorb the reality of violence and hatred. Immaculee’s transformative forgiveness was possible in just such a way, as her confinement forced her into deep and peaceful communion with her God, full and deep enough to accept even the murder of her family and tribe.

Dragon of the Mangroves is another gruesome tale I was given to read while here, by a Japanese author who sent me the book as a .pdf file. Yasuyuki Kasai has researched and written with accurate detail the account of an evacuation by Japanese soldiers of a coastal area of Burma near the end of World War II. As if the constant threat of approaching British military forces was not enough of a nightmare for the weary stragglers of the Empire of the Sun, they had finally to escape to freedom across a crocodile-infested river.

Once again my land of pleasant living had to expand substantially to include visions of man-eating crocodiles, and to recognize the intimate humanity of the soldiers I was raised to think of as “the enemy.” The initial challenge to one’s preconceptions becomes an opportunity to embrace a reversed worldview, where in the new text “the enemy” is the Allies. This reversal is achieved by the clear and dispassionate writing of the Japanese writer in English, and also by the dramatic plot hinging on the more primal figure of the reptile as ancient enemy of humans, whatever nationality or empire they might belong to.

As if these two large doses of death and destruction were not enough to complement the otherwise overbearing sweetness of Aitutaki, I picked up a second book from the dresser drawer, John Grisham’s recent nonfiction title The Innocent Man. Again it’s an account of a murder, or more accurately, a murder trial representing a gross miscarriage of justice in Oklahoma. The spark of interest for me began with the victim of this legalistic crime, Ron Williamson, who was drafted as a major league baseball player before his life started winding downhill.

What Grisham’s book shares with the other two, in this idyllic setting, is that it too serves to overturn standard misconceptions and cultural blindness. Who are the good guys and the bad guys? Who are “they” and who are “we”? As the “we” expands to include the “they,” paradise becomes not lost but found.

As a final anecdote in this tale of tales, I recall the story I overheard the guide telling after lunch on the lagoon cruise, on Honeymoon Island. In the old days in the Cook Islands, tribal warfare was common. On one of these islands a warring group was intent on taking over. The plan was to kill all of the men, leaving only the women and children alive. It was at that point that the Christian missionaries arrived, convincing the warriors that we were one family as humans and should kill one another no longer.

On hearing this, my preconceived bias against the Christian missionaries lost its hold on me. I forgave them, even for leading the charge of civilization which has transformed the former South Pacific paradises into touristic marketing packages and nuclear testing grounds, full of congregations dutifully carrying out devotions from medieval Europe.

Maybe it was all worth it - the genocide, the war, the years lost in prison, the giving up of an old way of life - for the grace of forgiveness; for the widening sympathy of our humanity; for the liberation from bias and prejudice.

Paradise here has invited me to look beyond the marketing gimmick, the sunset postcard. The horizon is so empty that I begin to see dragons and demons as I look over the edge. These are not the kind that lurk there waiting for my arrival, however. The longer I peer at them, the more they begin to seem familiar. Are they a fleet of arriving war canoes, missionaries, kayak-paddling tourists? I’m not sure. Anyway, I will prepare coconut and papaya for them, and a fire on the beach ...

Cook Islands Photo Album

Rainy Day in New Zealand

2007-03-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

During the rainy days when Hakka [Taiwan native] men did not do the farm work, singing mountain songs and playing instruments with friends were their major activities. . . . The ideal lifestyle for Hakka people in the early days consisted of farming and studying. Therefore, a famous Hakka phrase which represents Hakka life is "Chiny-geng Yu-du" (in Mandarin). That is, "Do the farm work on the sunny days, and study on the rainy days."
-- Apricot Hun, "Brief description of the characteristics of Hakka culture"

After a whirlwind tour of New Zealand’s North Island north of Aukland the past two days, I took a drizzly day off today to relax, catch up on laundry and computer work, and enjoy a leisurely stroll to the "Treaty Grounds" where the Maori chiefs (whether they knew it or not) signed away their lands to the British, their imposing 100-foot war canoe notwithstanding.

Aukland is much like Vancouver in size (1.4 million), climate (moderate and cloudy), and ethnicity (British and Asian). I didn’t find much to do there except research tour options, the most efficient way to see the country in a short time (10 days).

Yesterday I boarded the Dune Rider to explore the northlands, including a power zoom straight up the sand on Ninety Mile Beach, with sand boarding as the highlight activity, and the exposed point of Cape Reinga the apex of scenic beauty. Throw in a few giant Kauri trees, a quick wade in the surf, and the rest of the trip was largely a blur of sheep pastures. On the way up from Aukland the day before, the highlight was a brief swim near Goat Island ... about the temperature of BC ocean swimming in late summer. A bit of a shock after the tropics ... but hey, it’s March.

Tasmania, where I spent the week before, was quite an interesting blend of familiar wild landscape and friendly, alternative-minded people, and all-different flora and fauna. The family that hosted me for drumming workshops there was extremely hospitable, and added a kayak outing and a couple of excursions into the alpine to a full music schedule: several workshops, plus a rehearsal and final performance for a drum group much like a scaled-down Masala, at a venue in downtown Hobart.

Hobart, Tasmania’s capital city, at 40,000 is a pleasant, laid-back city, kind of a cross between the BC cities of Nelson and Victoria. One of its electoral ridings has the highest Green Party vote in Australia. The drum group I played with, Tumba, was featured on World Music night at the Lark Distillery, a monthly engagement for them.

The act we followed was a one-man show, a talented musician who played two didges, various wind instruments including sax and clarinet, keyboards and synthesizer, and HandSonic--practically all at the same time, and with some great pure jazz licks. He joined us for some inspired accompaniment for our closing piece.

To backtrack a bit, the four-hour rehearsal for that set had been a bit of a stretch for me, since it happened afternoon and evening of the day I arrived, following a night flight from Bali on which I had no sleep. On top of flight fatigue I was somewhat sick, quite hungry, and poorly adapted to the cold (looking out over the water, the next land mass over the horizon was Antarctica) ... but these are familiar sacrifices for the gods of music; and afterwards a large sandwich and full night’s sleep in a cozy sleeping bag set me back on the right track.

A philosophical digression . . .

Which brings me back to today, finding my center at rest again, if only temporarily. Today in a café at the Treaty Grounds I read a couple of chapters in Arthur Koesler’s The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe. The long account of the career and personality of Nicholas Copernicus was rather dry and academic, but came to an explosive and inspiring conclusion:

Once the apparent daily round of the firmament was explained by the earth’s rotation, the stars could recede to any distance; putting them on a solid sphere became now an arbitrary, unconvincing act. The sky no longer had a limit, infinity opened its gaping jaws.
...
The universe has lost its core. It no longer has a heart, but a thousand hearts. The reassuring feeling of stability, of rest and order are gone.
...
The Golden Chain was torn, its links scattered throughout the world; homogenous space implied a cosmic democracy.
...
Homo sapiens had dwelt in a universe enveloped by divinity as by a womb; now he was being expelled from the womb.
...
A.D. 1600 [following Copernicus] is probably the most important turning point in human destiny after 600 B.C. [the time of Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tze, Pythagoras].

There were several Greek thinkers following Pythagoras who put the sun at the center of the revolving earth and planets, but it took nearly another 1000 years for that vision to take hold again in a fearful, repressive medieval Europe, whose scientists and citizens tried to take comfort in a stable, earth-centered model of a fixed, limited, mechanistic universe ordered under a hierachical Chain of Being.

Now, nearly 1500 years after Buddha and Lao-Tze articulated their exquisite models of human liberation, it seems most of us (myself included) are still stuck for the most part in a similarly limited view of human nature and human being. It is as if we have recoiled in existential fear from the implications of a boundless universe with no definitive shape or body of laws for humans. Sartre’s existentialism was not freeing but "nauseating." In the face of an expansive and dissolving vision that began with Copernicus and has been elaborated by relativity, quantum physics and chaos theory, we continue to retreat into the ego-eggshells of our personal identities and social roles, seeking solace in our creature comforts and primal (whether reptile- or primate-driven) relationships of economics and emotions. Lacking the supporting structure of lawful divinity, we have replaced "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" with "I, me, mine."

It is not that this condition of separate individual identities is unhealthy or obsolete in itself. We do after all have our "animal nature" to take care of, and even enjoy, as an ongoing part of our "human nature." Rather, the point here is that to be too confined or stuck within the boundaries of the individual, physical-emotional-mental-social self can deny us the opportunity to enjoy the boundless freedom of our "cosmic nature" - which implies also connectedness with one another and all beings, and empathy for the suffering entailed by physical existence.

In the face of a larger reality of "Universal Energy," our response does not have to be shrinking into historical patterns of fearful comfort and conditioned delusion. We also have the choice of identifying with that transcendental and all-pervasive energy, enjoying life as "life force" as shared by all things, beyond the roles we have chosen to live or that have been chosen for us.

Buddha and Lao-Tze didn’t bother charting the heavens; they bypassed the star charts to map instead the polarities and epicycles of human consciousness and psychology. Whether we choose the outer route of finding a definition for human being in the observable cosmos, or the inner journey toward joy and peace of mind, there is an option for us that goes beyond both the blind denial and obedience of the medieval mind, and the reflexive withdrawl of the modern individual into self-concern. That option is to open to the concept of universal energy not only as a vision of cosmic science, but also as a field of loving play for the human psyche.

Tasmania photo album

New Zealand photo album

The Last Tourist

2007-03-13T05:15:00.000-07:00

Here at Lovina, on Bali’s north coast, I can feel what it’s like at the end of the jet age. The tourist industry never recovered here after the second Bali bombing in 2005, though that happened on the other side of the island two years ago. There are beautiful black sand beaches with no one else around except local fishermen and a few women desperately trying to sell me a massage or items of clothing and jewelry. The resorts and restaurants along the beachfront stand empty.

Offshore there are dolphins to be sighted and snorkeling areas to go to by boat, and every young man around wants to take me there, or sell me handicrafts of shell, or give me “transport” by motorbike. When the local bus arrives each day there is a crowd of touts to converge on the hapless newcomer, offering “cheap price” for accommodation--though the bus company provides free lodging for a night precisely to discourage such a rude welcome.

In the more central area of Lovina there once was a thriving tourist industry. Charming lanes with guesthouses, restaurants with local character, brick walkways along the shore now are deserted, except for the locals hanging about, waiting for you to appear with your sunglasses and camera and traveler’s wallet.

Hello, mas-sage? Hello sir where you going? You come look my shop, just look for free. Hi sir, what is your name? Hello transport? Hello, sir, excuse me, sir, hello? Transport? I have nice things for you look. Hello where you stay? I have cheap price for you. Transport? Hello transport?

When I first arrived in Lovina I saw my German friends from Ubud, whom I kept running into a few times after spending the day on a temple tour with them. They did not look happy, having arrived the day before me and already decided to move on right away to Java. Besides the constant soliciting, there were, they said, hordes of mosquitoes here, day and night, that made life impossible. The supposedly beautiful beach was full of garbage. It was all very disappointing.

I took their warnings to heart and resolved right away that I would leave on the next morning’s bus myself and flee down to Kuta. Kuta, ironically, is where the bombs went off, yet ironically, Kuta is where the tourists all still congregate in obscene numbers. Go figure.

Ubud was a lovely attraction, complete with a sacred “Monkey Forest” full of mossy dragon temples and tame macaques, nightly performances of gamelan music and dance, shadow puppet theatre, fire dance, and Kecak “monkey chants” as seen in the film Baraka. All that on top of a wealth of art galleries, music and bookshops, and trendy cafes like Bali Buddha and the Jazz Café (offering nightly live jazz).

Completing the range of contrasts from Lovina, where I feel like “the last tourist”; Kuta, dubbed by Lonely Planet as “Beach Babylon”; and Ubud, a tropical version of Santa Barbara, CA or Nelson, BC; is Padang Bai, a small fishing village and ferry port to the neighboring island of Lombok. The days I was there, trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables were lined up for 3 km and waiting two days to get on the ferry, which had been cancelled due to high waves. Meanwhile there was a plane crash and deadly mudslides elsewhere in Indonesia, an earthquake in Sumatra, and a typhoon in the vicinity...but no shortage of tourists about.

I spent just two days in Padang Bai, one each at the two small charming clear-water white-sand beaches, but fell into my usual funk with the “small town” syndrome. Not enough people around to be anonymous and blend into the background (like Kuta or Ubud); and not few enough people to have real solitude (like Lovina). Sort of a limbo in between, where to fit in, you really need to have or make company with the few familiar faces around you.

The funny thing about Lovina, it turns out, is that the much-advertised mosquitoes proved practically nonexistent. With a bright. comfortable and quiet room, I went to bed happy and woke up to birdsong. Free lunch, free room, free breakfast, doesn’t hurt. As for the touts, after awhile I just learned to keep my space, respond if I felt like it, even accept to pay for a massage on the beach and to buy a nice shirt and pair of pants, and then politely but firmly refuse all other offers. In their eagerness to sell, some would sit and chat awhile, and then the selling became secondary, or faded away, and I could share personal stories that were larger than the central thread of the story here: that tourism is finished.

Stupid, I say, when people are still flocking to Kuta, while poor lovely Lovina suffers. Then the dilemma gets passed on to whoever does venture to come here, on the other side of Bali’s stunning green mountains. At first it seems that the mosquitoes and the relentless touts will be unbearable, along with the feeling of alienation that comes with being, well, a lone alien in a place of humble but serious poverty. Then comes a willingness to see it through, to go deeper, to relax into the place, to claim a place here even for a day or two, to walk freely on the road or lane or beach, and to talk past the sales pitch into an understanding, us and them together here now, smiling humans in the gentle air.

more photos from Bali

Tri Hita Karana Doctrine

In accordance with Balinese Hindu philosophy, peace and tranquility are obtainable in our lives only when we respect and observe the three harmonious relationships known as the Tri Hita Karana Doctrine:

1. The Gods blessed life and created nature and all of its contents.

2. Nature offers sustenance to support the needs and activities of human beings.

3. Human beings have an obligation to establish a traditional village structure, to build temples in which to worship, to hold various ceremonies, to make daily offering, to preserve nature and to solve problems together.

At the Dolphin Bar

2007-02-26T21:48:00.000-08:00

I stretch out in my wine-colored hammock and sway gently in the shade. I've just had a lovely lunch of grilled eggplant and feta cheese on warmed whole-grain bread, with mango chutney and a salad of peppers and olives. Classical music during lunch; after smooth Miles Davis jazz (I've heard enough Ben Harper and Bob Marley at beachside restaurants already to last me for the next four lifetimes) over breakfast of French toast, fried tomatoes and Vienna coffee. The beach is broad and long with perfect sand, calm crystal aquamarine water, and few people. This is Hat Thong Nai Pan Yai, a jewel of my first visit to Thailand a year ago, and a place where I was determined to come back and spend a few days. I arrived this morning by longtail boat, a short cruise over calm morning water around the wild and rocky northeast coast of Ko Phangan.

Of course, as I sit reading in the hammock, the angry buzzing of a nearby chainsaw rattles me into action - writing - anything to break away from the chaotic noise of what-is. Earlier when checking into my bungalow the owner warned me about the nearby water pump, which she said might be noisy. I could barely hear it through the walls, and what I did hear was a quieter version of what I'd spent two decades listening to behind my house in Argenta, the whirring alternator connected to my waterline as it supplied me with 12-volt power.

The last place I stayed in was also quite pleasant, on a hillside at one end of Hat Yao. It was called Dream Hill, featured a large Ganesh-like octopus as a centerpiece, had free email, and some excellent Thai cooking. It was also a pleasant walk past a few small bays, by dirt road, to the Pyramid Yoga centre where I gave drumming classes every other day for a week. The fly in that ointment of utopia came the last night of my stay, when a DJ party on the beach blasted monotonous electronic beats far into the night. The same thing happened a week earlier at the presumably isolated Hat Yao ("Long Beach") at the southern end of Ko Lanta, leaving me virtually sleepless the night before leaving.

As for this present state of bliss - now that the chainsaw has gone blessedly silent - I have for contrast the memory of last year's visit with Nora and Cleo, when we were so charmed by the Dolphin Bar. That was blissful in its own way, yet at the other end of the spectrum of: alone . . . in company.

On Traveling Alone

alone -

adj. A state of social isolation craved by everyone except those who have obtained it.
--The Cynical Web Sitehttp://www.cynical.ws

At the yoga centre I chose an Osho Tarot card and drew "Healing." The picture was of a watery body with semi-permeable boundaries; the message was also about opening, letting one's wounds show and go, dissolving with the ego.

I don't know if my personal "wound" is best described as "alone," but I do know that it is a condition that carries with it the potential for strength or weakness. It is also subject, as the "cynical" definition above says, to the swinging pendulum of grass being greener the other side of where one is.

People ask me what it is like to travel alone, especially for such an extended period of time (six months). My response will vary according to my mood of the day. A common perception is that it would lead to unbearable or overwhelming loneliness. Certainly I am in a minority as a "single person" in most of the tourist resort areas where I stay; and in this sense I experience the relative alienation or "otherness" of any social/cultural minority.

How refreshing it was to meet and mix with the students at the yoga centre, most of them there as single individuals, and sharing my values and practices (yoga, meditation, spiritual and health concerns, music - instead of the prevailing paradigm of drinking, smoking, hanging out, late-night partying). Another interesting experience came one day when stopping by the tiny bay of Hat Thian, where I entered the carefully quiet ambience of the local restaurant amid the stares of the "local" tourists staying there. In a good mood of my own integrity on this occasion, I sat alone in the mostly silent space and ate a meal, then was about to move on when a volleyball came rolling my way. I picked it up and tossed it back to the guys who had started a game, and was invited to play. Then I passed a pleasant and sociable couple of hours with them, engaged in the game and bonding in that way.

So the question of aloneness has much to do with the inner and outer circumstances of the week or day or moment. In the broader context of my life, it's helpful for me to remember that times of being alone (out of intimate partnership) have been rare, so I can reaffirm that this is a positive choice for me at this time . . . also leaving open the opportunity for a new partnership to begin at any point. Sometimes it seems that having that mixed agenda (intentionally single, or potentially looking?) can create uncertainty and discomfort.

In the social mode, at restaurants or on the beach among others, I can fall into the trap of uneasiness or self-conscious aloneness. Also there is the natural desire to share good food and beautiful beaches with another/others on a personal level. So it is frustrating sometimes to keep my appreciation to myself or feel it with others around me only in an unspoken and impersonal way.

A subtle attitude shift can take place at such times, however. I can feel self-fulfilled or even already connected with the people around me, whether or not I am conversing with them - Vipassana-style. And I can contrast my situation now with times when I have been part of a couple, yet still "alone" in the sense of being disconnected or out of harmony with the other person. That negative state of conflict can be worse than the more or less neutral state of being in my own space.

Traveling on my own gives me the opportunity to appreciate "being in relationship" with each place I travel to, even if only for a few days each. It's interesting to see this series of stops along the journey as a kind of metaphor for my history of "serial monogamy." On a more profound level, I can realize my relationship to all-places . . . and deepen my relationship to myself, whatever that might entail, whether liberating or humbling.

Traveling alone has other advantages that compensate for feelings of lack and limitation. In my case, I make positive use of the time by engaging in working (editing), writing, website upgrading, blogging, photography, music, swimming, walking, traveling, sightseeing, discovering . . . all of which are self-fulfilling activities.

Even while traveling on my own, I enjoy the communication and connection and relationship I maintain with people through editing, email correspondence, blog entries, and enduring friendships back home. All of this comes along with the fresh encounters with other travelers and local people that occur more or less continually while "on the road."

So much is a matter of attitude. I can consider this whole journey as an extended "dieta"--like my 7-day period of isolation and fasting in the jungle in Peru, for the sake of personal growth and transformation. Also, those core creative activities like writing and music composition that require aloneness are actually gifts to myself - especially since during much of my life in relationship I have jealously longed for more such time. This is probably the area where I most easily accept the tradeoff of loneliness, and where I reaffirm my commitment to make the most of the opportunity now presented to me.

Finally there is always the freedom to connect at any moment (as at this very moment of writing, a man from a neighboring bungalow comes to me and asks to borrow the broom beside me on the porch). Or I can, when the need is stronger, more actively and intentionally reach out to make connections. My natural shyness inhibits me from doing this as much as I would like, but there is always that choice available.

As usual in my life, it comes down to a matter of balance. The balance shifts from time to time, between loneliness and fulfillment, between disconnection and communion, between solo and couple and group. The best I can do is to try to stay authentic with my truest needs and desires, and open to the inspirations and opportunties of the moment.

Postscript: A succession of friendly encounters immediately followed my writing this, this morning; which just goes to show how the greater flow has a way of taking care of the business of connections, if the heart and mind are open.

Relay to Railay

2007-02-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

7 February, 2007

It’s been an interesting couple of days, transitioning from India to Thailand’s northern Andaman coast islands. Two whole days sandwiched around a sleepless night in Mumbai airport landed me in Phuket at the youth hostel, having begun my journey from Anjuna in Goa the previous morning. That itinerary was complex enough: bus to Mapusa, transfer to Panjim, again to Vasco and walking the last kilometer to the Dabolim airport.

I nearly missed my connection there, to Mumbai. First the plane was delayed for half an hour, though the departure screen listed it as on time. Finally the boarding announcement was made, and many of us seated attempted to swarm into the already existing line of people standing waiting at the gate. After awhile standing well back in that line with no progress, I noticed that a few stragglers were still boarding shuttle buses directly from the side of the front of the line. I sensed it was time to move ahead to the exit, and just in time, too, as I was the last to go through with the final boarding call.

In Mumbai I was faced with a ten-hour wait: from 6:30 P.M. to 4:30 A.M. Fortunately I recognized someone in a gift shop whom I’d met in Anjuna the night before: a bright and friendly guy from Spain-Mexico-Switzerland. We spent the next few hours passing the time in stimulating conversation in the restaurant while he waited for his 1 A.M. departure. I passed more time sleepily working my way through Michael Chrichton’s latest thriller concerning genetic engineering and its pitfalls, Next.

Finally, allowing nearly two hours for processing, I made my way to the line--er, made a number of inquiries trying to find which line to stand in. It was a bad choice, because it barely moved; we stood like the indoor banana plants, waiting for something to happen, while the clerk at the front busied himself with papers, keyboard, passports, people coming to discuss this and that. Eventually it came down to a rush at the end to get through security and to the boarding gate just in time before takeoff.

The transfer from Bangkok to Phuket was uneventful. After taking the shuttle bus to Phuket town, I took the first of a series of motorcycle taxis to the youth hostel further down the peninsula at Chalong. The area was nothing like I’d imagined. Instead of the tourist enclave I expected, it seemed, at least along the routes I saw, like nothing more than a modern Thai town. I had expected to find some nearby travel agencies to research some island connections, but instead made a quick exit the next morning, following a chat the evening before with an interesting woman from Australia. She was a little older than me but wore braces; lived at the youth hostel with her cat while volunteering at a nearby pet clinic; recounted some adventures traveling little-known regions of China and India, and still dreamed of climbing Mt. Everest.

Finally I got a good night’s sleep, and stood on the highway early the next morning waiting for a motorcycle taxi. I got a ride to Phuket town but my driver didn’t know how to get to the pier, where I thought I could catch a boat to the island of Ko Yao Yai. Finally he stopped to ask for directions, and it turned out I needed to take a bus to a port further up the peninsula. That worked fine, and soon I found myself on the boat to the island.

My Lonely Planet guidebook said it was laid-back there but there were a few bungalow options. When I got off the boat on the pier there were only a few other people around. I pulled out my book and stated the names of the three bungalows listed there. Fortunately one young man recognized one of them, "Oh, Halavee," and went off on his motorcycle promising to come back with transportation. He returned a little while later driving a late-model four-wheel-drive truck, and took me down the length of the island to the far end.

At Halavee no one was there: no guests, no cooks, no manager. It was really a haunted resort: the "Halloween." I dug out the phone number I had from the book but it was no good. Off my helper went again, and a short time later the manager did appear on his own motorbike. I arranged to stay for a few days. He said I could get meals at the restaurant by the beach.

There were a few Thai roadside food stalls there; a resort restaurant on the beach seemed to serve only the boat passengers deposited there twice a day as part of the Island Hopper boat tours. No one else was using the beach. Having the place essentially to myself--both beach and bungalow--was a bit disorienting after Goa, and the crowds in India virtually everywhere. In fact my situation felt most similar to Argenta--the middle of nowhere, with no one around, and nothing happening.

Isn’t that what I wanted, what everyone wanted? Well, not everyone, but what about that ideal, the deserted tropical beach? In truth I found it rather boring. It was too hot to spend much time there, especially in the afternoons. The sand and water were pleasant enough, the right texture and color and temperature, but there were small stinging jellyfish, like waterborne mosquitoes; the daily deposits of pale-skinned tourists; the sullen local staff lingering in between tour arrivals; and a vaguer malaise underneath it all. What was I doing there? Did I just want to call it quits, enough beaches already, and go back home to Victoria?

Or was I just having cold turkey from Internet cafes, cappuccino, full-service restaurants on call? Maybe I could treat this more as a dieta, a retreat from usual preoccupations and habits, a chance to delve deeper into solitude. I could take advantage of the empty beach for flute practice; or concentrate on editing, or writing. In fact, what I needed most was to catch up on more sleep.

The manager had told me I could connect to the Internet on a friends’ computer. But in the morning two cooks arrived asking if I wanted breakfast, and then the manager phoned them to give me the message that the Internet wasn’t working. The cook offered to drive me by motorbike to an Internet place farther down the road, however, after breakfast. She dropped me off and I made sure the Internet was working, and she promised to return in forty-five minutes. Actually the Internet was not working, or at least not beyond showing the initial Google site. So I sat for an hour, reading my book, and when she never showed up to take me back, the guy at the Internet place took me on his motorbike. They were all connected by mobile phone, at least.

Since restaurant meals appeared haphazard, I stocked up on snacks for lunch. Then later the cooks showed up again asking if I wanted lunch, but I told them sorry, I was no longer hungry. In the afternoon I went to the beach and ate a meal there before leaving for the bungalow. Just after dark the cooks showed up yet again; and again I had to tell them, sorry, I didn’t know you were coming and already ate. But then I did take the opportunity to tell them that I would like to speak to the manager so I could arrange to leave the next morning.

"Oh, he’s in Phuket," they said. As everyone seemed mutually responsible on the island, I asked if I could pay them for the room and the breakfast, and if they could call a taxi for me the next morning, so I could go to the pier and catch the boat for Krabi. They arranged this smoothly and even collected advance payment for the taxi--which as it turned out the next morning, was another motorbike. First I had to wait awhile in the pre-dawn darkness, though, as the taxi was late. The famous line started running through my head--"You can check out anytime, but you can never leave..."

I got to the pier in time for the 7:30 long-tailed boat to Krabi, all right. But in Krabi I expected, from my book, to catch any of a number of daily boats to Rai Leh. No such boat, I was told at the Krabi pier. I could hire one specially for 2000 baht, or I could ride with this man sitting in the restaurant, on his motorbike to Ao Nang, for 200 baht, and then catch a boat to Rai Leh for 60 baht more. Fine, I said, I’ll do it.

Ao Nang was quite the tourist hub that I expected Krabi to be, with long-tailed boats lined up on the beach by the dozen, departing every ten minutes to Rai Leh. I satisfied my cravings with a good breakfast at an Italian restaurant--omelet, ciabatta, latte, chocolate croissant--and a solid hour of catching up with business at a fast broadband Internet place. I had been sweating a little since I was supposed to be covering the incoming business email this week while Carol was off somewhere out of contact in Mexico. Indeed there was a flood of jobs to deal with; but nothing crucial that had been missed.

Rai Leh was also packed with tourists, which was only natural given boats arriving every ten minutes. On the east-side beach which had been my originally intended destination, a boatman asked me as I walked by, "Boat to Krabi?"

"Krabi!" I said, indignant. "I thought there were no boats between here and Krabi."

"100 baht," he said. "We go when there are eight people."

I told him my story and he just shook his head. Anyway, no big deal. I kept walking and found a place to stay, finally, where I am comfortable: Railay Cabanas, on the hillside under the towering limestone cliffs.

There is some consolation of lessons to be gained from all this confusion of transportation and expectation. It seems that life can be lived in the predictable middle of things: a planned itinerary, reservations in advance at an agreeable price, regular mealtimes, reliable business hours, and so on. Or, life can be lived more on the edge: unpredictable destinations, taking chances on places to stay according to what’s available; making do with feast or famine as the occasion presents itself; and being flexible with work as it can be and needs to be dealt with. The budget I think balances out similarly either way: kind of like tickets for air travel, which can be bought in advance at a reasonable middling price . . . or at the last minute, either at the highest business rates or the cheapest discount rates. Maybe relationships are like that too: the safe, well-considered choice . . . or the random encounter, for better or worse.

The nomadic lifestyle really is that which typifies the second, organic approach. The sedentary life of the farmer typifies the first, the predictable path. Or, the life of the pastoral herder could be compared with that of the hunter-gatherer.

In all these cases there is the choice of risk, openness, trust, flow, which is subject to failure and disaster and disappointment--or more likely, simply fear of these. On the other hand, this path of risk, trust and discovery leaves one open for rich rewards of human kindness, unintended revelation, serendipity, and redeeming grace.

For instance, having left behind my finished copy of Next at the Halavee bungalow, I scanned the shelf of used books upon arriving at the Railay Cabana restaurant. Of course, one title was waiting for me: A Passage to India.

Passage from India

I found that book, in the end, tiresome, and put it away, as I had also ditched in the Mumbai airport The Autobiography of a Yogi. Both books I had read long ago, and now found quaint and irrelevant in their personal and interpersonal focus, and outdated style. If I cannot perform such miracles as the yogi, I may as well turn to such things as I can do.

So on to my own reflections of India on leaving it for Thailand--while hoping that the reader will find these more up-to-date and of topical interest, and forgive any cultural ignorance on my part for the sake of impressionistic honesty.

First of all, I am struck that for me the soul of a country is in the soul of its beholder. Thus for me at least, the soul of India, its true essence, is in its music--especially the classical music of northern India. I didn’t even travel there, but did absorb some of these strains which are heard everywhere. The sitar and drone, tabla and flute and voice convey to me everything that I imagine India to be, or feel her to be in her core. Beneath all the filth and poverty and corruption, the glitz and tourism and commerce, even beneath all the spiritual practices and ornaments. Of course, this is just me, as that musical chord is what responds strongest in me vis-à-vis Indian culture. For someone else, it will be yoga, or temples, or cuisine, or beaches, or cheap travel. All of those offer their own attractions, but when I think back on India, my preferred sense is the sound of its transcendent music.

Next I would turn to the social and cultural ambience of the country. To me--again I have to couch all these remarks in the qualification of subjectivity--Indians seem intentionally, stubbornly, proudly, obstinately inefficient. The overwhelming sense I have of the cities, towns, buildings, utilities, shops, streets, buses, and so on, is of dirt, decay, disrepair, and disintegration. And everyone is standing around, not bothering--as if (and they’re right) it’s someone else’s (British, Portuguese) civilization crumbling around them. A long-timer in India provided me with a further insight into this state of affairs, suggesting that the women are doing all the necessary work, and what’s left is to the men, who prefer enjoying their superior status by hanging about, observing.

In bus and train stations and airports, people stand in line for hours, not moving anywhere--while at the front, the clerks behind their windows are besieged by a clot of urgent travelers engaged in animated discussion. When you finally arrive to have your turn, you find it is the wrong line, or the wrong day, or you don’t need a ticket anyway. And if you don’t understand what they are saying in rapidly garbled Indian-English, repeated once if you are lucky, you are sent away with a wave of the head, as it was an ignorant question. It is your problem.

If all of this seems mean-spirited, or even racist, I could respond with an equally scathing critique of certain British tourists whose superior airs in drunken conversations I had to endure; or I could venture equally uninformed and narrow-minded mischaracterizations of any other nationality. I have an eternal fondness for my own hometown of Baltimore, but I understood completely when my orthodontist once bluntly described it as it struck him: "the armpit of the East." I did make friends with Indians and feel at home in some less-urban places, and grew more comfortable with the culture as I became more familiar with it. It’s just that, when I finally arrived in Thailand, I realized how different the two cultures were, and felt here as if I were coming home ("home" not in the "armpit" sense, but in the sense of "more aesthetically pleasing").

The cultural virtues here seemed to be gentleness instead of aggressiveness; cleanliness instead of indifference to garbage; friendliness instead of smug hostility. I could feel safe traveling on a motorbike, and traffic moved easily, without pressure and without the constant blaring of horns and jockeying for position that occurs everywhere on Indian roads. In short, I felt as if I were back in Canada.

At the risk of expressing further ignorance, I would venture an analogy between the cultural veneer of the North American countries corresponding to the large countries of Asia.

India is the Mexico of Asia--bustling, vibrant, abrasive, dirty.
Thailand seems much like Canada--clean, reserved, natural, unassuming.
Russia would correspond to Canada geographically, but perhaps more to the northern US culturally--cosmopolitan, modern, diverse, imperial.
China would be the counterpart of the southern US--conservative, traditional, proud, repressive.

One final qualification: I don’t want to say that any country or culture is better or worse than any other--but only to report how I respond to what I sense directly by traveling there, or indirectly by hearing from others who have, or intuiting from more subtle impressions. I don’t claim any of these are accurate or fair--just true in my understanding, for the moment.

Now surely I have offended someone in any case, and will expect to receive complaints shortly…

By way of conclusion, I wonder if the extremes of my impressions of India--the sublime beauty of its transcendent music, contrasted with the dispiriting and unbeautiful decrepitude of its cities--make some kind of karmic sense, together. As if this ancient homeland of the human body and spirit insists on keeping alive the fullest spectrum of human reality--celebrating the best while flaunting the worst.

Goa, India Photo Album

Railay, Thailand Photo Album

The Land of the Lotus Eaters

2007-01-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

22 January 2007

"After going to all the interesting places in India, there’s no more travel fever. There’s the morning bath, a coffee, a different restaurant every day. And when things get boring, the recreation begins." --a seasoned traveler in India

It’s the land beyond Goa…now that Goa has become overcrowded even to its southern end, the beach at Palolem--or so I’m told. The old travelers who enjoyed Goa back in the 70s when it was just being discovered by the Beatles, now hang out in Gokarn, an area with a small inconsequential town and a vast beach, 10 kilometers long by 50 to 100 meters wide. As if that weren’t enough space to absorb the meager needs of the minimal tourist population here, there are four more remote beaches nearby--Kudle, Om, Half Moon, and finally, Paradise--that are accessible only by a series of twenty-minute hikes, hopping over a succession of headlands.

Headlands…an apt phrase, that, considering the state of mind/lessness of a good proportion of the denizens of this zoned-out destination. There are a number of low-key bungalow operations with attached semi-enclosed restaurants at each of the first two beaches, at least. It’s hard to judge the food or the ambience accurately from afar. The social scene ranges from lively conversation by groups of Germans or francophones, to almost eerie silences in some of the other laid-back venues.

I was introduced to the place where I’m staying by a woman from France who’s on her way to a job in the Emirates, via an ashram near Bangalore. We arrived with packs in the pre-dawn darkness after walking through the silent town from the bus stop. The all-night “sleeper” bus was hardly that, bouncing and rumbling over the rough roads from Hampi in the mountains, and depositing us to a nameless location beside the highway at 3:30 in the morning, though the travel agents had told us the trip would bring us to Gokarn at 5:30 in the morning. I asked the other assembled zombies at the unexpected stop where we were, and someone said “a hundred kilometers from Gokarn.” Not to worry, however; in half an hour two mini-buses arrived to take us the last leg to our destination.

At 60 rupees per night (less than $2), I’ve been content to stay here at the Surya ever since. The first night here I was invited to a jam with a conga player and a tabla player (both with small djembes). I had no drum and very little sleep to go on, but never one to turn down a jam, I came along with my Indian flute, Irish pennywhistle, and plastic shaker. One woman in the party of French people brought along a kitchen bowl. One of the French guys had a sitar. All in all it was a great jam and a further confirmation that the music will come no matter where or when.

The next day I got to talking with an older Britisher with long white hair who likes to play jazz on electric violin. We arranged a breakfast jam this morning with him on guitar and me on flute; we were joined partway along by a woman also staying here who also had a pennywhistle and knew some actual Irish tunes, though she wasn’t used to playing with other people. I had to throw away my own tin whistle this morning because at the nighttime jam the conga player at one point sat on it and squashed it flat--in more than the musical sense.

For any fanatics of music theory among present readers, I refer you to a rather esoteric anecdote concerning Indian musical scales as I have been introduced to them.

And now, a brief recap of my three-day visit to Hampi <click for photo album>. It was the seat of an ancient empire, extending from the late 1300s to the mid 1500s. Its rulers decided to monumentalize their reign in the form of extensive temples and palaces and shrines over an entire mountain plateau, built from great blocks of granite hewn from the local stone that today still dominates the landscape in the form of huge boulders: single ones, odd groupings, whole hills formed of piles of them. The temple architecture is said to impress less from the intricacy of carving found in other sites where carvers used softer schist, than from the sheer size and extent of the building with large pieces of granite. This is true, and yet the beauty of the sculpture that does remain here is all the more impressive as it complements the unfathomable magnitude of the overall building project.

A few work crews commissioned for current restorations could be seen here and there chipping away at some such blocks for road paving and wall building; and from these firsthand examples it became even more incredible to contemplate how the imperial labor force could have accomplished all its feats in the space of less than 200 years, in this remote and barren landscape.

I explored most of the site on foot, hampered by two main obstacles. My first day there, after a cramped and jolting all-day bus ride from beauty-less Bangalore the day before, I discovered my digital camera was not working; the lens was stuck. Luckily my guest house owners referred me to a bakery where the man was said to repair cameras, and sure enough, I had it back in good working order the next day.

I was ready for a full day of exploration with maps and compass and camera in hand. Unfortunately I miscalculated at a crucial point and found myself wandering far off course through the mountains. Fortunately I was treated along the way to numerous temples scattered here and there, with no other tourist traffic to compete with. A far cry, for example, from the hordes at the Alhambra in Spain, or the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

The most remarkable aspect of that day of hiking for me was the odd sense of déjà vu produced by the arid, boulder-strewn landscape so reminiscent of British Columbian alpine, or even Arctic tundra. That peculiarity was compounded by the presence of these monuments of stone in an otherwise completely wild and God-given setting. It seemed that the dynastic architects had wished to emulate the features of rock they saw around them in this place, and even to work with it and build around it when necessary. The towering temples could be seen as efforts replicate or compete with the natural mountain formations, both crowned as they are with emblems of the ever-present sun.

My last day in Hampi I was playing my flute in an isolated spot down by the river. A man came nearby and started shaving, then washing his clothes. When he was done I told him that I hoped he didn’t mind the noise I was making with my practice, and I asked him if this was his place, where he lived. No, he said, he was just visiting, too. He was a cloth merchant from Rajasthan, and he sat with me and talked philosophy a while and showed me some core yoga stretches and breathing exercises.

Like musical opportunities, pieces of enlightenment and meaningful personal connections seem to come unbidden, at the right time.

Hampi Photo Album

Last Week in Varkala

2007-01-10T02:16:00.001-08:00

8 January 2007

It's going to be difficult to leave this place which has become so much like home. I feel far from the pangs of disorientation I experienced on my first arrival in India. If anything, it will be good to get away just for a taste of travel again, as life here has taken on a routine almost too much like home.

Daily drum classes and weekly performances, flute lessons and practice, weekend parties, regular editing work, swimming and long walks each day . . . with quite a familiar type of "alternative community" feeling, except for the fact that everyone smokes cigarettes constantly.

On the subject of fun, and New Year's resolutions, I will interject here a lovely quote about John Steinbeck's lifelong friend and boating companion, biologist Ed Ricketts (from The Log from the Sea of Cortez):

I think he set down his whole code and procedure once in a time of stress. He found himself quite poor and with three children to take care of. In a very scholarly manner, he told the children how they must proceed.
“We must remember three things,” he said to them. “I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things. But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”

So it's on to Hampi (temple ruins) and Goa (more beaches) next week. In the meantime, there's not much new to report, but plenty of photos to share, which is after all a more efficient way to communicate this rich experience.

Varkala Photo Album

Home is Where the Drum Is

2006-12-30T08:44:00.000-08:00

December 27, 2006Okay, one day in Varkala, and it’s a different story. Shades of Koh Chang, in fact. I arrived by train mid-morning, standing like a sardine in the second-class coach, then set out on foot in the hot glare through the streets of the town. One guest house I inquired about was full; I headed off down the road, trying to follow the signs and my map. A quick look at my pocket compass told me I was headed in exactly the wrong direction, so I flagged down an auto-rickshaw to take me to the “Government Guest House.” No vacancies there, either, so somewhat discouraged, I went by foot to the “Cliff Road” to seek out more guesthouses. The first likely place I came to, with Internet on the main floor and big clean rooms above, was available at a good price, so I parked my backpack there with a reservation for at least the one night, and continued on to the cliffside strip to explore further.

Think Dallas Road in Victoria, with a thatched-roof Cook St. village-cum-Government Street summer Sunday market, placed lengthwise along the cliff. Same size cliff and beach, only fine sand the whole length instead of pebbles; then raise the water temperature some 10 degrees C., boost the air to 30, and send the sun summer-high. That’s Varkala.

So far I still wasn’t convinced. But then after lunch in the Café Italiano, I saw “Drumming Lessons” on the sign of a café offering otherwise the usual list (travel services, money exchange, massage, email, food and drinks, etc.). I approached a likely fellow with an Afro and dark complexion, and he said his friend the djembe teacher was out of town till the 30th. But he said they jam every Friday, and I was welcome to join. When I asked about dununs, another friend at the café next door came to the rescue with the business card of a local Senegalese drummer who teaches drum, dance, and “African Yoga.”

I followed directions to “Master (Ken) Doumbia’s” house on my way home through the shady green back lanes to my “Sopanam” lodging. The house was quiet and the large gates were shut. Oh well, I thought, I’ll try again in the morning, when classes were advertised for 11:00. Then, after stopping by my guesthouse to confirm my stay for a week, and going to dinner, I walked back down to the strip to check out the scheduled tabla-and-flute concert at the Blue Moon. It wasn’t happening, so I stepped into the cybercafe to check out Ken’s website (http://www.westafricanroots.com/)for more info. There under “workshops” it seemed to indicate he’d be teaching in Senegal in December-January. I sent off an email inquiry just in case, then went home to start some editing work. Simultaneously, from a nearby location, some LOUD electronic music started up. A hip bungalow operation?, I wondered; it’s going to be a long week here. But not ten minutes into it, I heard on the cranked-up PA something about “the Africans.” Hmm, sounds like a wedding. There’s still a chance.

Sure enough, the unmistakable sounds of djembes and dununs pounded through the night air. I ran to the window and threw open the sash, and saw the lights of a house some 100 meters away where the drumming was clearly coming from. A five-minute walk put me through the open gates to a wedding party in progress, with three African drummers going full tilt (two on djembes and a third playing upright duns). I even got into the dancing action for their last piece, then introduced myself to Ken by saying I’d just sent him an email. Yes, he was teaching every day, and I was welcome to come at 11:00 the next morning. Then the DJ took over and some good funky dancing in the sand-covered yard followed. No place like home: drum and dance.

An hour later, back in my room as the pounding electronic beats continued flooding through my window, came the dubbed and repeated line, as if airmailed personally: “Destination is Canada . . . Destination is Canada.”

December 30, 2006Today in an email Ilana wrote, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” Exactly the words Nora told me when I left for Maui eight months ago. What does this mean to me--and why does it seem strange or even misplaced?

First of all, I need to consider the possibility that their assumption is correct. Then maybe I am searching for something without even realizing it.

From my point of view, I would rather say, “I’m simply doing what I feel impelled to do: to live in a warm place where I can swim and walk and work and play, in good health and congenial surroundings.”

Since there is no one location that I know of where I feel completely at home and satisfied in all the above requirements, however, that journey becomes an endless one, where each resting place presents its own compromises and limitations, serving well for a while but then giving way to the “search” for another place that might supply that missing element or two, without sacrificing the essential ingredients of the root quest, “happiness.”

Lately I find happiness in disparate moments . . .

--playing drums with Ken and the other students today, getting locked into a nice solid Kuku groove at tempo. There is so much to be aware of and to appreciate and to refine even while holding down the accompaniment, especially if there is a good lead drummer to support and follow. It is a pleasure for me to play with someone who is a “master” (whatever that relative term may mean), because my playing gravitates to the quality of those I play with. When I am in that groove of present flow and rhythm space, there is nowhere else I need to go.

--being invited by Ken to join him for performance at the Funky Art Café tomorrow night. I am always grateful for performance opportunities, and when they arise, it is a grace of serendipity that allows me to know that I am where I am supposed to be.

--walking after class in the company of ten-year-old drum student Mondyi, to his father’s shop, where I enjoyed a papaya-apple-lime-ginger smoothie and wheat grass juice, and met the family.

--sharing a lovely smile with a beautiful brown-skinned Indian woman flashing large white teeth, just outside the Ayurvedic Wellness Centre where they offer free consultations . . . only, not today.

--exploring the more remote stretches of beach and coastline to the south and north of the main Varkala cliff beach, this morning and afternoon. Also last night, I enjoyed the main beach under the light of the half moon, with hardly anyone else about. There is a freedom in solitude and in walking in natural places that gives me instant happiness, whole and sufficient in itself. The moving is almost a contradiction, because it seems a paradox to move from what is already perfect. Yet that perfection is not of the fixed variety; it may be doubtful, in fact, that any perfection is fixed or fixable; and so the perfection is rather, like the drum rhythm, in following the impulse of movement at the proper tempo, relaxed at whatever speed, in tune with the larger music.

--moving patiently through a high fever yesterday, too much sun giving way to a day of room-sheltered recuperation; then venturing out at night for a perfect nourishment of hot and sour chicken soup (and butter garlic nan bread), while watching The Motorcycle Diaries on the restaurant video; and finally catching by chance, at another restaurant, that missing tabla and flute concert. The drummer sat with a drum shaped like a bata but with heads like tablas; and he played it furiously like a tabla, with fingers flying, one hand at either end. The flute player meanwhile kept pace with a lovely characteristic Indian mode, sweet chromatic slides and trills, some melodic steps and some legato space, both going pretty much full tilt. Their music presented a great marriage of complexity, in the play of notes and flowing rhythms, and simplicity, in the apparent lack of arrangement. In such inspiration comes a kind of happiness that is not confined to the present experience, but carries beyond into future possibility.

Passage to India

2006-12-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

25 December, 2006

My passage to India has been so far uneventful in this new age of travel. Just a token clip of ancient Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas to begin the flight; it was over before I could start up my iPod in self-defense. In the back alley by Khao San Road drinking cappuccino with the rest of my Viennese Breakfast (two perfectly boiled eggs, buttered brown bread with minced green onion), it took me twenty minutes to register the big plastic jolly Santa over a six-foot bubble of falling snow, the whole display framed with flanks of real potted poinsettias. Otherwise, it’s just another Christmas: an unexpected wi-fi connection in the boarding lounge, allowing me to say e-hello to distant family and friends; then on to the wonderfully pungent and India-present lamb masala on the plane, with more excellent coffee, this time plain and strong-black; and while still airborne, finishing a couple of editing jobs on the trusty laptop.

Those presented an interesting coincidence, as both last night’s chapter in George’s sprawling political novel and today’s middle-America romance featured bended-knee marriage proposals; with both couples incidentally associated with best-friend couples also marrying. There were some synchronistic resonances in my book reading of last week, as well. Going from Atwood’s post-apocalyptic Oryx and Crake, to the near-apocalyptic Atlantis Found by popular writer Clive Cussler, in which the plot to ruin the world hinges on a series of break points on the Antarctic ice shelf that threaten to trigger a pole shift. Perhaps inspired in part by the very same book, Michael Crichton’s latest thriller, State of Fear, incorporates the very same threat, though with different means (synchronized explosive charges instead of nanotechnology ice-cutters), motives (eco-terrorism instead of paving the way for the second Flood and Fourth Reich), and consequences (media sensationalism to boost funding against global warming, instead of an all-out global deluge to eliminate inferior human breeding stock).

Crichton has a heavy axe to bear, and an uphill battle to climb against the Gore-bred masses, with this polemic-laden book; but he does his old good job (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain) of exploring deep themes and exposing conventional social/scientific “wisdom.” The signal point that he (also John Steinbeck in the next book I start to read, Log from the Sea of Cortez) makes is that we are creatures of our present time, not of the past, though we may indeed be prisoners of our illusions of past conceptions of the world, and what is politically correct or even, whatever it may mean, “true.” Both Crichton and Steinbeck make that point especially when dealing with the interface between contemporary culture and romanticized notions of simpler people and places living in a state of supposed “paradise” or “nature.” Steinbeck draws on the relativistic notion that we change a reality simply by our presence in it. Chrichton is fond of upsetting popular assumptions such as “global warming is an unquestioned reality” or “the redwoods are the natural state of the environment in California” or “the way people lived in villages was better.”

Steinbeck writes:

We can look with longing back to Charles Darwin, staring into the water over the side of the sailing ship, but for us to attempt to imitate that procedure would be romantic and silly. To take a sailing boat, to fight tide and wind, to move four hundred miles on a horse when we could take a plane, would be not only ridiculous but ineffective. For we first, before our work, are products of our time. We might produce a philosophical costume piece, but it would be completely artificial. However, we can and do look on the measured, slow-paced accumulation of sight and thought of the Darwins with a nostalgic longing. (pp. 52-53)

So it is with this “adventure” I’m on. It’s only adventure in the old sense to traverse these continents, and so by a very long stretch. Far from the exploits of Alexander the Great, for instance, or Vasco da Gama--or even of E. M. Forster, the eminent English novelist (Passage to India). I’m just another tourist, bound for another beach, another cybercafe.

As I fly to India, the salient question is not whatever romantic or preconceived notion I may have (along with the tourist industry which lives, for instance, via plastic santas, or “cute” emblematic elephants fashioned of concrete or living shrubs), about the place I’m going to. Nor is it a matter of what is appropriate behavior enroute: do I strike up Christmas conversation with my fellow travelers; simply look them over; bury my nose in a book; open the laptop and do editing work or Scrooge-ish bookkeeping, or email distant friends and family; or do I simply meditate in present time or place, my shirt the wrong color orange notwithstanding? For instance.

On landing, my very first impression is of a sense of home, with the welcoming large land and its forgiving medley of multi-racial, multi-ethnic peoples. This impression proves short-lived, however. On actually settling into the city of Trivandrum, capital of the south India state of Kerala, quick disillusionment sets in. There’s the usual stuff about overcharging for taxi and room, the first day in a country; and then in the shops I’m met with uncooperative or even hostile local people, refusing me service, giving me ugly or disdainful looks; offering directions grudgingly. But all of that is only personal; I can forgive their resentment, even agree with it, given our relative history and economic situation. I just need to adjust, learn to blend in . . . or spare myself the effort and escape to the tourist enclaves, what I like to call the “tourist ghetto.”

"The Real India"

Once here, the salient question becomes, “What is the real India?”

--Is it the wreckage of civilization that overwhelms the first-time visitor, here as in Iquitos, Peru, or Conakry, West Africa, calling to mind the epithet, “Apocalypse Now”? With the streets full of rubble, crazy drivers and pedestrians alike playing chicken 24/7 amid the choking diesel, shrieks of engines, garbage and open sewers, and the unspoken grief of the wretched beggars, the fixed stares of the ordinary poor, in general the desperate and all-pervading social poverty? A pretty picture it is to see the ladies in their brilliantly colored and jeweled finery, tiptoeing matter-of-factly through the broken pavement and dust and gravel, while the canned music blares unbidden from every corner.

--Is it the red-eyed gods and buxom courtesans of the art museum, the India of the romantic imagination? This is the India of the days of its own empire, its caste-mad hierarchies and nobilities, its hallucinogenic religious eroticism . . . before, that is, the arrival of the Portuguese and British overlords posing in roseate landscapes and lush gardens, co-opting the Brahmins and looking the other way while Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Ganesh, Hanuman, and Siddhartha Buddha gamely grappled in eternity with the demons of the ancient psyche.

--Is it simply this: the rich spicy curries and inexplicable masalas that thrill the senses, bring tears to the eyes, and cause me to swear despite all the assaults to decency and beauty and humanity and nature, that it is worth it, and that I’m glad I’m in India?

--Is it the tourist meccas like Varkala and Goa that I am actually bound for, with my own romantic-yet-practical visions of palm-lined beaches of golden sand and welcoming waves, ever-pleasant ambience, familiar amenities (read: cybercafes), universal language (tourist English) and transnational culture?

Conclusion: I think I need more information (i.e., experience in the country, beyond one day).

Koh Chang and Beyond

2006-12-15T21:03:00.000-08:00

15 December, 2006

Routine now gives way to impending movement, to the smaller island of Koh Maak. In the meantime I alternate the basic elements of daily life: where to eat, when to swim, checking email, and editing. The weather alternates from stifling hot and humid, to pleasantly warm and breezy. I start to make a little headway on long-term projects, given the abundance of time in each day and night . . . yet without any sense of pressure or obligation. When my personal focus becomes too narrow, I have to let go of my habitual cravings (for accomplishment, activity, outside validation), and give way to the sensuous unity of present time. In this place that merger comes in moments unannounced: while eating a dish of light fried rice and crab, and transcendent green curry. The evening air is imperceptible, and the food inspires an inner glow, until the boundary of skin gives way, and soft fire infuses all. Air, water, body, sunset, vegetable, animal, light, spirit all become one, and there is no longer any need to distinguish "self" or its doings.

An email arrives today that expresses my otherwise poorly articulated and seldom focussed quest:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. (Albert Einstein)

Last night on impulse to do something different, I bought a ticket for a night fishing trip. Once again it didn't turn out to match very well what was advertised. Instead of one part squid fishing, and one part regular fishing, it was all squid--and only one caught, in the end. And the promised on-board fish barbecue never materialized--perhaps due to the absence of any fresh fish? In any case, I was not disappointed because, though I embarked at first as the only passenger, I was joined before we left the dock by a jovial party of ten Russians, mostly rather hefty specimens of the Slavic breed. It didn't take long before one man about forty years of age, with passable English, sat beside me on the gunwale and said, "You will drink some vodka with us?" My own Russian blood moved me to take the bait with hardly an instant's hesitation. I gave my name, Nowick, explaining that it was the name of my Russian grandmother. Sadly, she left Russia too young and never taught me any of that rich language, which swirled around me on the boat for the next five hours. I was fed white bread and mini-kielbaski, Pringles and pineapple. My tiny plastic cup was refilled and, when the vodka bottle was dry, refilled again with gin. The flow of Russian from the "Russkies," as they called themselves, increased with the flow of spirits. One man from Latvia worked back home as a "mechanic of spirits." My translator, with twelve years of part-time instruction in English yet an elementary grasp of it, worked in Moscow as an automobile insurance adjuster. His wife was a dentist. It was strange on the surface, yet somehow, genetically perhaps, or by Canadian temperament, I resonated more closely, and felt more at home, with this voluble crowd speaking with obvious and uninhibited humor and passion, than I had even while jamming on the beach with the Turkish hippies, and certainly more than in the British pub-with-hammocks back at the Elephant Garden. These, I sensed at a visceral level (maybe it was vodka warming my heart) were my people. "In there," my interlocutor said pointing to my half-empty cup, "is your health."

The Latvian woman sitting at the other side of me, who kept thrusting bread and kielbaski at me, was going on the whole evening about the absent "barracuda," as I could tell by that word's appearance once or twice in every sentence. Meanwhile we absently jigged for squid, holding rods baited with strips of white flesh, or simple line wrapped around plastic bottles and dangling weighted white lures. One woman won the night's lottery with a lucky catch of a six-inch squid. The gimpy-legged captain apparently did hook a barracuda at one point, but lost it before landing it. The stars were bright, the moon was missing, the sea air was soft and warm.

This morning while meditating on my bed back at the bungalow, I felt the almost queasy sensation of still being on the boat on the gently rocking waves. Was it a hangover, the remnants of sleep, my body's lingering attunement to life on the water? Maybe just more of that self-dissolving into an all-encompassing fluid element, where body and language and mind and world flow as one.

And today? The blaring canned Thai music from the temple celebration down the road pounds me outdoors and on my way, away. Down the road into the unsettled corner of the island? To a shady corner of the beach to write? Back up to Lonely Beach for the crowds and night life? Taking it slow till the evening and one last Turkish jam?

To begin with business at hand: email correspondence and Web documents, breakfast of chicken pastry and cinnamon bun, real latte. With the last sip, I rise. Next step: on the road . . .

. . . later . . .

I followed three branches of roadway this morning, ending in the all-leveling warm seawater, in the shade of the palms, sipping a cool lemon-banana shake, writing, wondering . . .

In the act of writing, and publishing to the Web, am I becoming more or less self-focussed? Does this narrative draw attention excessively to the personal and the person, or does it serve as a liberation and expansion from a default level of uncommunicative self-absorption (or merely social contact) to greater identification with others and world interests? The black dog hobbling up to me on three legs at this moment to smile at me, in the process wrapping himself in the sarong draped on the back of my chair, offers some clue that there is a self-transcending impulse at work.

The first track extended as a sandy dirt path through a palm grove behind the beach, leading to the previous limit of my explorations, a narrow cement road winding into the exclusive domain of the Grand Kahuna Resort. There life-sized statues of elephants mingle with opulent buildings and exotic landscaping. I am met also with the usual morose silence of the hired workers there, and a security guard who informs me that to pass further into the grounds I need to pay a fee; there is no continuous road access here through to the other side of the island as I had been told.

Retracing my steps, I found another path leading from the cement road further into the jungle, with a flat grade and easy walking, especially in the shade and the breeze on this morning of minimal heat. This path led in time over a dry streambed and, at the second such dry creek, I could see a road on the other side. This must be, I figured, the end of the main road which represented the actual departure point for the waterfall I'd been told of, as well as the path leading beyond the road to the other side of the island. Once on the road where it was broken by the once-flooded creek, I decided to explore the extension beyond the road first.

After a short distance I left the world of motorbikes behind and threaded my way into the jungle, following a barely-discernible footpath that wound its way up a gradual grade. I'd been told it was an 8-km trek between ends of the pavement, or was it the respective towns at either end? My one liter of water was nearly gone already, and I was getting winded climbing in the rising heat of the day. When I came to a tree blocking the path, with the way even more overgrown and still gaining elevation ahead of me, I decided it would be wisest to turn back. Maybe I could settle for that waterfall and freshwater swimming hole instead.

An old Thai man emerging from the jungle confirmed that the next path led to a waterfall (I made gestures to indicate falling water, and swimming), so I followed that way again along a level grade and over a dry stream bed. At the next streambed I could sense water, and then did indeed sight a stagnant pool among the rocks. But there was a shanty on the other side, and a definite smell of cesspool or sewage turned me away without further temptation to immerse myself there.

Back on the road where it was cut off by the creek, I faced the choice of returning the easy way I had come, following the level paths through the trees, or following the main road back. The latter choice would complete my circuit of and curiosity about the terrain, since I had not followed the road to its end on my initial trip last week. At that time the number of hills and the sweltering heat had got to me, and I'd turned back short of the washout. Today I still had some energy left, and that motivation which seems to drive me from time to time to return to paths not taken in order to somehow complete unfinished business, or to redeem myself for holding back out of fear, fatigue, or simple unreadiness to act fully in a certain direction. This syndrome I could apply for example to relationships that ended, I felt, perhaps prematurely; to my journey in Spain where I was compelled to backtrack to manifest the mystery of the Moorish temple at Zaragoza; even to the trivial case of passing up one chance to party with friends, by making sure that I took the next opportunity presenting itself.

In this case I had to pay the karmic price of return by going up and down a number of steep hills on the road, as it snaked the longer way around the coast back to the beach. Was it worth it? In the course of fate, I do not yet know. In the moment, I was satisfied enough with following that due process of completion. Along the way, I was aware that exercise of the body in itself represents that more complete merger with the world, of which Einstein spoke. Especially with aerobic exercise induced by exertion of climbing, there is more interchange of oxygen, air, breath, heat, spirit, body, mass, energy. Also, travelling the ups and downs of hills, experiencing greater heights and depths and extremes of heating and cooling, represents more intensive involvement with life in its full potential--like a taste of warming vodka on the boat with the Russians, as opposed to the tepid water of solitude in my bungalow. Finally, as I come to the final rise above the beach I am granted the perspective to see, at one glance, the sea around Koh Chang, the waters where we fished last night, the beach where I will swim today, the island I will visit next week, the Grand Kahuna Resort, the lagoon and adjoining palm grove behind the beach, the mountains beyond, and the pass that leads out of sight to the other side of the island.