Alternative Culture Blog

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

Daily
Schedule

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.”

02.02.08
Today 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.

03.02.08
I 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 May
Bibi’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 May
Caqelai, 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.