It was not a hippie trip - we all worked but we also shared our resources, shared our meals, cohabitated with one another in the Gunter Hotel downtown, shared the expressions of our soul in nightly gatherings called satsang (after the old Hindi word that means ‘company of truth’) and lived merrily together searching for that elusive inner peace. I say elusive because it seems like you can never quite capture it, like a lightning bug in a bottle, but you could feel it from time to time flitting thru your mind or your heart more precisely. Enough to remind you that it was real.

As it turns out, or as I would realize later, that simple experience of inner peace is a big deal. That’s what everyone is actually searching for. Actually I did know that then but I know it even more now. We entertain ourselves and distract ourselves and watch sports on TV and buy things and carry them home to adorn our domiciles all for that one effervescent feeling of inner peace, happiness, elation, contentment - call it whatever you like it’s ‘the thing’. Just call it ‘the thing’. We all recognize it but it doesn’t have a name, or has too many names.

Anyways back to the City of Love and Light. I worked in ‘Autopia’ a make ready car wash and detailing business set up in a nearby abandoned bus barn. I was the steam cleaner - turning old greasy engines into shiny clean motors for the used car lots along Broadway.

One evening I was sitting in satsang when my entire visual field suddenly folded up and transformed into pure light. White light was all I could see with my eyes wide open. It was startling to say the least and I struggled to regain my normal vision. The lovely white light disappeared after a moment, something I now regret. I consider it to have been a gift that I couldn’t appreciate or accept at the time. What the heck it was I have no idea. Light. I was in the City of Love and Light. I guess that was it.

We practiced meditation, Self Knowledge, as taught by Prem Rawat. I still do. And here I’d like to say something that’s not easy to articulate. The practice of Self Knowledge is a subtle and easily disturbed experience that requires some trust on the part of the practitioner, trust that the instructor knows what they’re doing and is providing some facilitation for an individual’s effort (in this case me). I have found this to be true which is why I still practice it.

Peace is possible and the world, which has basically gone insane looking for it in all the wrong places, could benefit from people who feel ‘peace’. And what is peace exactly? I don’t know how to answer that but I know it when I feel it. We all do. It’s a commonality. Don’t know about the birds and the bees and the whales and the elephants but humans carry this special feeling within themselves. We search for it everywhere (like I just mentioned) and forget that it’s already within us. Hilarious, right?

So the City of Love and Light lasted for a couple of years as I recall. Everybody went thru their evolution and finally it found its dissolution. Lost it’s purpose. Everybody moved on. Of the 150 people who once lived there only two remain in San Antonio: me and my buddy Steve. The city is still here, the love and light is still here but no more communal living, no more satsang in the evening. I kinda miss that but it’s a different era now.

There was no internet back then, barely even computers. Apple and Microsoft were only born in 1976. Now we have live streaming of Prem Rawat’s events from wherever he’s at in the world. We can watch it in our living room. And the opportunity to sit down and find the inner peace feeling is even more attractive. Keeps the ridiculous and the absurd at bay.

How do you discern what’s ‘real’ and what’s not? It’s a function of discrimination isn’t it? The ability to discriminate, to understand is never taught to us in school or anywhere else. Self knowledge is not on the curriculum, not since Socrates’ time, the ‘Know Thyself’ guy from ancient Greece. How do you determine what’s real and what’s not amidst the torrent of information we are deluged with every day? This is a very good question it seems to me.

Fake news? Alternative truth? Rigged elections? What’s really going on behind the headlines? We are lost in a sea of ambiguity. Nothing to brace ourselves with except our random and arbitrary opinions which we cling onto desperately in hopes of finding some stability. (My father used to be a preacher, did I mention that? I slip into it too easily. Oh well.)

So that’s why to me a knowledge of myself, that which doesn’t change and is not affected by all the changes is refreshing and essential. It’s essential to me anyways. Like the breeze flowing thru the trees, the leaves dancing, dangling, waving like banners (is this the origin of banners and flags?). I can feel something delightful inside, unconditional. It’s essential to me. Otherwise the leaves dancing in the breeze are nothing but a mechanical phenomenon. I don’t feel the resonance in myself, that I belong, that we are all connected somehow and that there is love, there is love and light and the world is alright.

So that’s it. I told a friend about my early days in San Antonio as a member of the City of Love and Light and he said you should write about that. So I did. I hope it’s interesting. Everybody has their story. I hope yours is interesting. I think the world would benefit if people shared their stories. Like the inner peace our stories are unique and fascinating or atleast curious which is almost fascinating. We live and we die and in between we have our story. No one knows where we come from and no one knows where we go (sorry re-incarnators and near death experinators) but in between we get to tell a story. Our story. No one else can tell it like that.

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These little gadgets are amazing. Mine measures 6 1/4 inches by 3 1/8 inches by 5/16 of an inch thick - barely a quarter of an inch. Smaller than a box of crayons (8 count). It weighs just under 8 ounces and stuffed into that little glass covered Pandora’s Box (along with a battery that will run for 20 hours) is an an A13 Bionic chip, three 12 megapixel cameras with separate lenses, 512 GB of RAM, 4 microphones, 2 speakers, GPS, a digital compass, an accelerometer, Wi-Fi, cellular, blue tooth, iBeacon microlocation (whatever that is), and even a phone so you can make phone calls. Like on a phone. A phone call. If anybody does that anymore. It’s also water resistant up to a depth of 12 feet in case you want to go swimming with it.

The camera in this phone has more pixels than a field full of pixies, Each one magically converts light into an electrical signal. A transformation. One picture contains 12,192,768 pixies, I mean pixels. Ha.

It can make HD movies (4K) at 24 frames per second, good enough for movie theaters. It can shoot slo mo, time lapse (with stabilization no less), has an audio zoom function, optical zoom, extended dynamic range, continuous autofocus, stereo recording and can take 8MP still photos while recording 4K video. Wow!

And that’s just some of the stuff. You could write an entire book about the A13 bionic chip with it’s 8.5 billion transistors, it’s 6-core CPU, 4-core GPU, and 8-core Neural Engine capable of doing a trillion operations per second. How it communicates with the internet, looks at weather radar, finds the square root of 693 (it’s 26.32 something something), edits pictures, edits movies, creates documents, buys stuff online, recognizes your face, talks to you and answers your questions and a million zillion other things.

And for a little historical perspective (incase you’re not impressed yet), the phone I carry around in my pocket is 5,000 times faster than the Cray2 supercomputer of the 1980’s which weighed 2 1/2 tons, stood 4 feet tall and cost 16 million dollars. It was the fastest computer in the world in 1985 and used 200 kilowatts of power. That’s 200 thousand watts. My phone uses 2 or 3 watts depending on the task.

All that and it’s now obsolete, six generations behind, iphone 17 is out. I don’t even know what that’s about.

Where am I going with this? I don’t even know yet. I was fascinated by the tech specs when I started exploring just exactly where are the microphones out of curiosity. I began discovering all kinds of stuff. I love tech specs.

Everybody’s got a phone. Mine isn’t special, it’s very average but near miraculous anyway. When I go out on my bike ride this morning I’ll stuff it into my belly pouch and carry it along. Maybe take a picture or make a voice recorder note or (my weakness) check Facebook for some sign of life from my ‘friends’. Maybe I’ll work on my Substack post while I sip a cappuccino. Maybe I’ll write a poem or compose a dissertation. Maybe I’ll send a text message to a friend. My phone offers unlimited opportunities. I feel bereft without it.

Which is exactly why everyone has a phone and there are cell towers sprouting up everywhere like some kind of modern day forest.

So no music on this post. What kind of music could you possibly use to accompany tech specs?

So. So what? So here’s the deal.

Are we all becoming cyborgs? I guess that’s the question. The answer seems to be ‘yes’, after finding this music (now there’s music). Sounds familiar? Almost like you could understand it? It’s R2D2 from Star Wars, 1977. We’ve been programmed to recognize the beeps and boinks as some kind of language since 50 years ago.

Every time we go into a store to buy something we have to communicate with the computer. Stick your card in the machine and wait for approval. Then you can go. There may be a human there or maybe not but your conversation for sure is with the computer.

Well, bippity digital boink bank. We’re all being seduced by the computers then. Huh. Don’t know if I like that. Think I don’t. But can I still think or am I a droid, like Ava in Ex Machina or Roy in Blade Runner. But both of those, er, people strove for some kind of freedom. Do we have to become cyborg before we can become human? Interesting question.

Help me out here. I don’t know the answer.

podcast music / thank you robots

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I wake up in the morning before the light. It slowly filters in and the birds start singing, the cats start complaining (hungry) and the airplanes begin their dull thunderous occasional roar overhead. My neighbors are still in bed so no cars in the street, maybe an unfortunate barista or two up early to open the shop.

My community consists of three cats: Kybo (the original), Whitetail (who is actually yellow) and Bob (who moved in but won’t give up his feralness), five raccoons who don’t have names because they’re not official members of the tribe - they’re interlopers, moochers, a mom and four kits. There are numerous fish swimming in the pool, the quite large pool with quite large goldfish and the little minnows swimming along with the various unnamed and unseen microbes (I should include them too).

The birds belong here - a Cardinal couple, the Mockingbird who plants the chili pequins (thank you) and the cooing doves who leave their offerings on my car. Let me not forget the dragonflies darting over the pond and the bats who visit at dusk to scoop up what bugs they can catch swooping down low over the water. These all share the bio-pod with me plus the plants and trees ofcourse which also have no name but are essential to the proper functioning of the space pod, bio-pod, whatever you like. There is no bubble over it, it’s an invisible barrier that protects this space from the outside world powered by the dweebils. Don’t ask me what dweebils are, I already explained that in a previous post.

I don’t mind living in a bubble-sphere. Turns out everything is inside anyways, the real connection to the real source of love, acceptance, belonging, being cared for - it’s internal. The real adventure is inside too because that’s where the real monsters are, the demons and devils of our species. Glorified and visualized throughout the ages - they’re inside of us. How about that?

I’m not complaining or remonstrating. I’m not gesticulating or even commiserating, I’m just saying it’s all inside. That’s why I’m not lonely.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve never been connected to a family or tribe, not really. That’s a strange thing but sometimes it happens. What about the hunchback of Notre Dame? He was alone.

Look how important light is. Trees build huge superstructures to gather it. They harvest the solar radiation and make food with it. Along with water and carbon dioxide of which there is also plenty. They live in a community of plenty, also they share it underground. They’re connected. That’s why humans worshipped trees long ago - the Druids of ancient England, the Vikings of ancient Scandinavia. The ancient people of all the ancient tribes - the Tree of Life is in every culture.

We have forgotten how to live like that, connected to all that sustains us. We grab and tear and pull and pollute. We take everything from nature and give nothing in return.

Our light is wisdom but we have remained in the darkness. Dumb idea. There’s nothing to see there.

Trees are true to their nature so it’s natural to share. All benefit when there is sharing, symbiosis. That’s how it works. By the way.

I forgot to tell you about the squirrels. They planted the Sugar Hackberries (guess what they make?). Maybe the Anaqua too. They make tiny sweet apples, not much bigger than a hackberry. They planted them where they shade the house from the intense Summer sun in the southern sky. When the wildflowers are blooming the butterflies and bees and the birds are flitting about all over the place. This is not unusual but it is beautiful.

It’s all happening inside, really. That’s what I’ve learned in my bio-habitat. That’s where it all starts and that’s where it all ends and that’s where it’s all happening.

Follow your breath to the internal world and hang out there. That’s what I do. Breath of Life. When we breathe out trees breathe in. That makes me smile.

Thank you to Kuba and Bird Tribe for the podcast music. Wow!

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In fact if we’re not having adventures of some sort or other we’re probably bored and sad. Maybe mentally ill.

We have vicarious adventures on TV: sports, movies, even the stupid news is some sort of absurd adventure. But it’s not tactile, it doesn’t engage all our senses, our life doesn’t depend on it.

It used to - the old hunting and gathering days. And you had to work together - teamwork. One look out, two to chase down the deer, three to carry it back to camp - the heroic hunters.

The fact is we were hunter/gatherers for 99% of our history as humans. Now we’re supposed to be civilized. That’s fine, I’ve got no problem with refrigerators and sinks with water pouring out of the tap but we used to go to the spring or lived by the spring to get water and we would meet all kinds of creatures - plants and animals and people along the way because they needed water too. Now everybody has their own spring. We don’t have to say hi to anybody anymore, just turn the tap - sploosh. Besides nobody wants to get ambushed by a tiger on their way to the well.

So here’s my thing. Each day is an adventure, the adventure of being alive. I just have to prepare my mind for it. I can’t carry around the heavy burden of expectations and presumptions. I have to travel light, with only a few arrows in my quiver. I have to be alert and perspicacious (is that a word), pay attention to the tiniest details, not waste a moment. They may hold a clue. Things I don’t see are, upon close examination, full of wonder and wonder is the portal to adventure.

It also helps to be up on your bike. Things look different from a bike plus you have to be careful.

Millions of flags waving in the breeze also called leaves.

Monsters roaring by nearby also called cars and trucks. And buses.

The world breathing on me, also called wind.

The rock people.

Close up of the rock people.

Flowers poke out their little pink heads to say hello.

I’m noticing everything I can. I’m having adventures. Of course there’s a million more things unnoticed. My gosh, look at that. A groovy nook. A bower, a bay. I obey it.

Branches of the droozel tree fallen by the wall.

Kamikaze mosquitos come to say hello and die.

I spoof with the barista. ‘I’d like a chinkamoora chino with paparazzi.’ ‘Uh, for here?’ ‘No over by the sparrow.’ *

Uh oh Turk’s Cap and an upside down cup in the trash.

Ok quit noticing things. Jeesh who painted this guy?

I’ve never been in this world before even though I’ve ridden by a million times.

Clouds above moving thru the sky. Trees interrupted.

Who could have imagined such a thing on a Sunday morning?

* Blue Rodeo Coffee on Avenue B near Mulberry. Most of this adventure journey took place along that route.

podcast music 00-whenever

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I am ensconced in a cabin at the center of a quarter acre plot in a suburban neighborhood of San Antonio. Outside my window, the cardinal, red as a flame, flits thru the branches of the hackberry looking for tasty berries. The foliage, meshed and merged into every corner of the scene sits at the center of the dweebil.

What is a dweebil you might ask? An aerial view would reveal the dweebil but I have no drone so I must explain.

Dweebil is like a primordial spirit that lies within any wild plant or animal or assemblage of plants and animals. You can smell a dweebil but rarely will you see one, maybe at dusk you might catch a glimpse. It looks very similar to a bat or a moon shadow.

Its smell is like crushed leaves from the droozzel tree. There is no mistaking it. If you smell that droozzel smell you know the dweebil is nearby. It’s mildly intoxicating and unmistakably indescribable. That’s its distinction.

The dweebil at the center of the jungle is imaginary but that doesn’t matter. So is Tom Bombadil and he’s real - he’s in books. He’s like Father Nature in the Lord of the Rings and he’s impervious. Everyone else is all dazzled and enchanted by the ring of power, even Gandalf, but not ole Tom Bombadil. He doesn’t care. He’s one with nature. He knows everything changes and always will. He’s a mythical creature but he’s real. Does that make sense?

Longing and desire recycles like the ages of man going thru phases. First we invent tools then we blow up the whole world. It happens. Nature will reconstitute something new. That’s its nature. Tom Bombadil knew that.

Anyways back to my jungle redoubt. It’s secure within it’s border, protected by the dweebil but susceptible to tree trimmers and CPS officials who decimate the Groovy Nook to make way for a new power line. Yeah no respect. That hurt. But I had to remember what would ole Tom Bombadil do? And what about the dweebil? Is it intact?

Of course it is. Nothing can harm the dweebil because it’s infused inside my mind or my heart more accurately. Something new will arrive. What do you think - the ring of power is all the universe has?

Sunflowers pop up and grow in the rainy Spring. Does this not give you hope? They came from a tiny seed and now they’re ten, twelve feet high, hundreds of them thick as . . . thick as . . . well just very thick. Shoulder to shoulder. They march on standing in place. Saluting the sun.

In the laughter of children is the promise of Spring. In the music of cardinals and mocking birds is the Summer age. Old folks grow old like Fall and fall, like red and orange leaves from the trees and Winter arrives. Rest. It will come again.

All the bugs of the subterranean underground world of microbes know this. Some will die. Some will survive. My pen will run out of ink and I’ll order more refills from Amazon. It’s a perfect cycle, endless until we run out of factories and food to feed them then we’ll be writing with sticks in the sand again, making marks and watching the tide wash it away lost in the boundless ocean, the home of sea turtles and sea creatures larger than a house singing their song over the water covered earth.

Back at the homestead, the domicile, the Devonhood, I find a small white winged bug, maybe a fairy, a baby fairy flitting among the flowers like fairies do. They fill their days with flitting, unconcerned with tomorrow or the days of man or the seasons of the sun. Then it goes, disappears into the jungle, the copse, the thicket, the bosque, the grove and the forest. The dweebil at the center of the world.

OK, so you guessed it. This whole post was just so I could show you pictures from my front yard. No dweebils. They don’t actually exist. Just a figment of my imagination. Like maybe that was a bat flying thru the night sky or maybe that was a moon beam filtering thru the branches of the oak or maybe that was a reflection of the sun coming in thru the window this morning.

Or maybe it was a dweebil.

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podcast music from 39:32 The Rhythm Beneath Thought from this compilation

i found it floating aroundhaha i found younow i love itmusic goes up and down in a musical waynotice ??ofcourse you don’t"you’re being enchantedby the soundsi sound like thisacha nea bochacheelotothat’s what i say to the baristain the morning before i find wordsof the humansall words belong to somebody ifwe could only hear themcan you hear me??i can hear mei can hear youi wanna chana bana sannait’s greek for ka bonee kanacheeka sitam hmthat’s what it isall everything is everywhere and that’s whyi think that’s what i thinktooout of inkbye

fly away with me

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poem by George Wallacemusic by AI

I write on a keyboard, I write on voice recorder on my phone (dictation), I tap out messages on the tiny touch screen, I write on grocery store receipts, I write on napkins occasionally but my favorite writing is by hand with my Pilot G-2 #10 ink pen on paper in my notebook. It’s like calligraphy and later I can figure out what the scribbles mean. My penmanship has gotten wilder with age but that doesn’t matter - it’s the physical act of writing that brings me pleasure. It connects to my brain in a very special place.

According to my Google search, writing by hand offers “significant cognitive and emotional health benefits that typing cannot replicate. The physical, slow act of writing by hand helps process emotions, reduce stress, improve memory, and increase mindfulness by activating broader, deeper areas of the brain”. Thank you AI.

The experts have lots to say about handwriting too: that the slow kinetic rhythm of pen on paper quiets the internal dialogue and grounds a person in the moment in a kind of meditative state. That it improves memory (you have to find those words somewhere) and helps fight cognitive decline. My decline has been gradual and grounded, I can tell you that. It helps to process stressful or traumatic experiences by lending structure to chaotic thoughts, thereby reducing the emotional burden and boosting the immune system. It facilitates reflective thinking so you can think about things reflectively instead of impulsively. Humanity could sure use more of that. Writing down your goals or making a list of what you’re grateful for releases the feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. That’s what the experts say anyways.

I love making to do lists on small strips of paper and knocking them off one by one. Gives me a sense of control and accomplishment. I have my own symbology, my own ritual.

My first book of poetry was called ‘Learning to Scribble’ and featured poems and stories written by hand in various unknown and non-existent languages just for the joy of making squiggly lines and shapes and imagining that they stood for something.

Right now I’m writing this on my computer keyboard, pounding out the letters and correcting the typos, but earlier when I started this post I was outside at the Mila cafe and writing by hand in my venerable lined notebook - as free as the sky and happy to be making marks. Humans have been making marks with meaning for a very long time, maybe that’s why I like it. There’s something primordial and transformative about it. It truly is a ritual and an expression of being human.

My mother used to enjoy employing her cursive writing skills to compose a letter and send it through the mail in an envelope with a stamp on it. Addressing the envelope was also part of the exercise and reminded her of where they were - the recipient, and where she was too, I suppose. Writing in a careful hand so the postman would be sure to deliver it to the correct destination.

Scribbling is also therapeutic I have found. It sometimes calls up the muse, awakens her from her slumber and calls forth her magic. Kinda like a genie in a bottle. That’s an old story and one that has been told and retold many times. It has even made the Disney anthology. Something about that cursive writing - or in my case cursive scribbling. My handwriting is actually printed letters rushed together into a unique cursive style and seasoned with a little neuropathy. Fun for me. And a true puzzle to figure out later sometimes.

Later sometimes? Or sometimes later? Or whenever . . . written words have a time stamp. You wrote them at a certain point in your life and it shows. You can find traces of your emotional state, your sense of self and your level of contentment or discomfort in handwritten words. It’s there. It’s not in your keyboard. Unless your keyboard is a manual typewriter like I used for ‘Learning to Scribble’. Yes, each strike of the keys is unique and tells a story. Somewhere between the ancient practice of writing and the modern technology we have today that makes everything so convenient and sterile.

I guess in a way we are communing with our ancient ancestors when we make marks on paper. Although the first written words were gouges in wet clay - cuneiform, made by a sharp stick. This is what it looked like around 3,000 B.C. in southern Iraq. It’s recording the allocation of beer.

Yeah, beer making and wheat growing were kind of simultaneous innovations back in the day if you can believe the archaeologists and they needed some way to keep track of all that.

Here’s the earliest known form of writing, the Blombos Cave Stone. It’s atleast 70,000 years old. Humans made these marks, incised them on a shaped piece of stone about the size of a stick of butter. What it might mean no one knows.

We’ve been scribbling for a long time is the point of our trip to the museum. It’s an ancient tradition.

Right now I’m editing this piece on my stupid tiny screen on my smart phone sitting outside Press cafe with the rolling thunder and boiling clouds overhead, it’s trying to rain. Very atmospheric. I love it. Trying to keep up with the muse tap tapping with one finger on this tiny screen. I could be in the Blombos cave 70,000 years ago carving into a piece of ochre, making marks of some sort for all to see. My phone is about the same size. My message is probly about the same. Chip chip, tap tap. Hey can you hear me out there? Hey listen to this.

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I first got interested in Fela Kuti listening to the 12 episode Higher Ground podcast, Fela Kuti, Fear No Man. Man, that blew my mind. Check it out.

He was a Nigerian musician/activist, revolutionary really and the originator of Afrobeat - merging jazz, with James Brown funk, the polyrhythms and vocal inflections of his native Yoruba music and the pungent protest language of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

He was born in 1938 into a prominent family in Abeokuta, about 30 miles north of Lagos, the largest city. Back then Nigeria was a British colony and had been for sixty years, ever since they moved in and took over back in 1884. Colonization, as we shall see, is not a good thing.

His father was a school principal, very respected, and his mother was a political activist who became a well known women’s-rights leader. She was a big influence on little Fela. He accompanied her on some of her protests where she led the women in singing out their protests against unfair taxation, forcing the local chief to resign. His grandfather was a prominent Anglican minister and musician who wrote hymns and translated them into Yoruba. He was, in fact, the first Nigerian to release a music album.

In 1958 Fela moved to London to study music — keyboards and trumpet. After classes he hit the jazz hot spots around town, sat in with some of the musicians and formed 2 bands of his own. He spent 5 years there.

Back in Nigeria, independence had come but it had not brought peace and prosperity, instead it went through cycles of violence and corrupt military governments. That’s what happens when the culture of a country is shattered by colonialism. It becomes toxic. It rebuilds itself eventually but in the mold of it’s oppressor. At least that’s what happened in Nigeria after their independence in 1960. Power and money are the real game. That’s the lesson of colonialism.

The Yoruba culture, on the other hand, was built on a tradition of harmony and connectedness that was thousands of years old. Just look at their art.

Wood carvings, earthenware, textiles, beadwork — all famous stuff. They were highly skilled artisans, still are. Their society was based on clans and extended families. They had city-states governed by an Oba (king) and deeply held spiritual beliefs in an all powerful creator god. They gave him the name Olodumare.

The Yoruba language is something else, it’s pluricentric meaning it incorporates many dialects from the region into one vocabulary. It also supports a strong oral tradition. Story-telling and dance and music are the heart and soul of Yoruba culture and of Afrobeat music.

Yoruba culture survived for many centuries until the British came and wrecked it all, turned it into a business, taught them the white man’s ways. The whole colony of Nigeria was just a business for Britain. Power and money.

Anyways back to Fela. After a visit to the United States where he was exposed to the music of James Brown and the politics of Malcom X and the Black Panther movement he returned to Nigeria in 1970 and founded a nightclub in Lagos called the Shrine where he and his band would play all night parties. He established a compound nearby and boldly declared it be separate and independent from Nigeria: the Kalakuta Republic named after a 1974 prison stay where he was held in a "Kalakuta" cell — Swahili for "rascal". It served as a sanctuary for himself, his family and his band and it embodied his opposition to Nigeria’s military dictatorships. “It was an independent, defiant community functioning as a recording studio, home, and safe haven for revolutionaries, artists, and family. It was a state-within-a-state.” is how AI describes it. The authorities were not pleased.

Inside the Shrine people openly smoked marijuana, which was highly illegal, and danced for hours to the powerful music that Fela and his 30 piece orchestra produced. This is where Afrobeat was born.

The trance inducing, relentlessly recycling rhythms inside the Shrine created the perfect background for his protest lyrics, railing against the army, the corrupt politicians and all that was wrong with society. His music was not only popular in Nigeria but all across Africa. The authorities were definitely not pleased. He was repeatedly arrested, jailed and even beaten.

From the early 1970’s until his death, in 1997, Fela produced a massive amount of hugely popular music with his band Africa 70 and later Egypt 80, by some counts over 50 albums. The danceable beats and boldly irreverent lyrics spread like wild fire inspiring political resistance in Nigeria and beyond. The authorities were seriously not pleased but the more they beat on him and imprisoned him the more confrontational he became. Finally in 1977 things came to a head.

The following images and words are from the official YouTube version of ‘Zombie’. Warning: this is not an easy read.

Whew.

The destruction of the Kalakuta Republic was a major blow for Fela. Thousands of people actually saw the fire and knew what was happening, it was in a densely populated part of Lagos, but nobody came to his aid. He was crushed by that. He had changed people’s lives with his music, lots of people. He changed people’s lives all over the world, he had inspired people and pushed the limits of what was possible but now he was starting to feel the limits.

Following the brutal attack on his compound he was banned from performing. Many of the people in his entourage drifted away. With no source of income he ended up living in a tiny apartment with his remaining bandmates and his family. He tried to kickstart his career by organizing a tour of Ghana, where he had played before and knew people but was asked to leave when the kids started yelling ‘zombie’ at the police and soldiers. That was his song.

Fela was a complicated man. He believed in peace but indulged in confrontations and clashes throughout his life. He fought corruption but he liked to get high and had his own harem. One year after the the Kalakuta Republic raid he married 27 women in a single traditional ceremony, primarily to protect his female band members but also to shove a finger in the face of the authorities. And also to keep the remaining band from falling apart — people were leaving. In 1986 he divorced all 27, saying that “marriage brings jealousy and selfishness”.

Two months later his mother died, succumbed to her injuries from being thrown out of a second story window by the ‘zombie’ soldiers. It was another major blow for Fela. She was his lode stone, his reference point. She was the one who had instilled in him the belief that you could harness spiritual power to depose a king, because that’s what she had done.

He continued to record and perform through the 1980s and 1990s (I’m condensing the story here). He was still making music but something had changed. The music was slower, more layered, less upbeat. He had entered his ‘spiritualist phase’. He was using mediums to try to contact his dead mother. In fact he was beginning to lose his grip psychologically, beginning to become paranoid.

Well it’s not like they weren’t after him. In 1984 he was arrested at the airport by the Nigerian government for currency smuggling (he was carrying $1,000 in cash) as he was preparing to fly to America for a tour. He spent 20 months in prison. He had already been jailed dozens of times and beaten too for good measure. He changed his name from Fela Ransome Kuti, his family name going back generations to Anikulakbu which means to say ‘I have death in my pouch. I can’t die. They can’t kill me.’ He believed he would live forever or at least claimed to.

But nobody lives forever.

By 1994 he was ill, exhibiting symptoms of AIDS, but he refused medication, refused to acknowledge in fact that he was sick, refused even to believe in AIDS. He thought it was a scam propagated by white people but that was actually what he had. It was the final blow.

On August 2, 1997, Fela dies at the hospital where he had asked to be taken. He was 59 years old. The family arranges for his body to lie in state in a downtown stadium, thousands of people come by to say goodbye. The funeral procession proceeds through the streets of downtown Lagos and people gather around the hearse, more and more people keep gathering at every intersection. By the time they get to the rebuilt Shrine there are a million people.

And so after all that what’s left? What happened to the Fela Kuti legacy? Well one way to describe it is by sharing a story taken from the Higher Ground podcast referenced at the beginning. This amazing 12 episode production was, by the way, the source of much of my own podcast.

It’s 23 years later, 2020, and police brutality in Lagos still exists. A young woman, loses her best friend and brother, disappeared by the police. She searches for him to no avail. She organizes her friends and they march to the police station to protest. Social media kicks in and more people start coming. Almost everyone knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who has disappeared.

The crowd doesn’t disperse. Three days pass and these young people are still there, sleeping in the street, eating in the street, playing music in the street. The DJ puts on a Fela song. They didn’t know Fela, it’s 23 years later, but in his music they can feel his voice and his presence. He is telling them that it’s not ok to just suffer and smile, that it’s not ok to just accept the injustice and smile, he’s telling them to wake up because this is not what they deserve.

By the third day the protest has ballooned to thousands and they keep coming. It spreads to other major cities in the country, kinda like the Occupy Movement several years ago. The kids are dancing and singing in the streets and Fela’s music is everywhere. Get it? This is a whole new generation and they are hearing the message that Fela was talking about 23 years ago and they are responding.

So what’s going to happen? These kids aren’t going home, they’re pissed. They’ve had enough. And they’re inspired. They have a reference point and that reference point is Fela’s music. Zombie. Beasts of No Nation. All his protest stuff.

By the 13th day the protestors had barricaded the Lekki toll gate on one of the busiest highways in Lagos and disabled the security cameras. Then, at one point, the floodlights that illuminate the area go off, it’s dark and the soldiers that had assembled there start shooting. Oh yeah. They start shooting at their own citizens. People are getting shot and they start falling. Chaos.

Comments are streaming in on social media — hold up the flag! Sing the national anthem! And they do but the shooting continues. It’s a massacre.

In the end the government disbands the police force that was disappearing people and begins an investigation into police brutality. But does anything really change? I don’t know. In 2024, four years after the Lekki massacre another protest breaks out against police violence and the police again use lethal force to disperse the protestors. Twenty four people are killed. So maybe not, but a whole new generation of young people are hearing Fela’s voice and responding. That’s something.

After a long succession of coups and military dictatorships, Nigeria now has a civilian government and a duly elected leader. Since 1999 there has been a transition from military dictatorships to representative democracy, with elections and a peaceful transfer of power. There are still problems, big problems, but at least no more assassinations and coups and if the president is not responsive to the demands of the people they can vote him out.

Fela used music as a weapon, “the weapon of the future” he called it. Instead of bullets he shot pulsating hypnotic rhythms and highly charged lyrics. His performances were electric, sort of a James Brown/Mick Jagger/Bob Marley fusion. “Fear no man” was his motto and his voice hasn’t died even though he has. It’s still vibrant and alive at least in Nigeria.

Below is the soundtrack for the attached podcast with Fela playing keyboards and doing vocals. The name comes from a Yoruba proverb meaning “no one can be the enemy of water”. He is saying, in both English and Yoruba, that because water is essential for life, useful to everyone and resilient, no one can truly be its enemy, that the best way to fight oppression is with a peaceful flowing persistence.

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Welcome to the rohn report - Conversation with Sarah. She is a neighbor, a friend, an activist and a delightful and wise person. She’s very involved in the neighborhood where I live which is why I wanted to interview her. The Farmer’s Market at Charis Park here at Brees and Emporia in San Antonio and the Sunset Ridge Collective are a couple of them.

We sat under the big Oaks in front of the Sunset Ridge Church and she talked of many things: urban gardens, seed libraries, food security, hyper-local community and with such passion. I would ask a question and she would close her eyes and just let all the energy flow that was inside her head and her heart. She’s a special person with a lot to say.

Click the button above and jump in.

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Chaos theory is the idea that behind normal ordinary life is chaos, this is how the universe works, unpredictable, random, but behind the chaos is an elegant, purposeful ‘energy’ that is barely knowable but upon which all things rest.

This is what I figured out: I’m kind of an oddball, an outcast but it’s ok. Everybody is unique in some way and that is the truth. Find your own weirdness and celebrate it would be my motto if I had a motto.

Benoit Mandelbrot was a refugee. Born in Warsaw to Jewish/Lithuanian parents, they escaped to France in 1936 ahead of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Then they fled Paris, with whatever they could carry in a couple of suitcases, and took up residence in Tulle, a town in the south of France. There they endured the German occupation by hiding.

After the war he managed to gain entrance to the Ecole Normale, an elite Parisian university. He lacked a formal education but because of his innate ability to solve math problems using shapes instead of numbers he was able to pass the exam.

He was never really accepted by his fellow mathematicians because of his eccentricity but found a home, eventually, in the United States at IBM’s research center in the hills of Westchester County, New York. There he was able to make his way among various fields of study, conquering none but all the while pursuing his particular vision.

The Mandelbrot Set, discovered in the late seventies, is the most famous expression of his unusual perceptions. Its infinitely unfolding bulbs and whorls have fascinated and inspired mathematicians and scientists (and normal people) ever since. Many applications in mathematics, economics, the sciences and the arts use this equation: Zn+1 = Zn2 + C. Don’t ask me what it means but click here for a sequence of 39 images and animations of the Mandelbrot Set.

I believe it is in the wonder and exuberance of differentiation that humans find their fullest expression, a recognition of their own unique creative self. We are not monkeys anymore. It’s an open question if we are humans yet but we are certainly on the road to somewhere. And this is exactly how I read a book like ‘Chaos’ - in bits and pieces, random and spontaneous, letting it wash over me and sing to me. Whatever I can understand is whatever is given to me to understand.

The mind flows come and go. I am interrupted not by interruptions but by turbulence in the flow which of course has its own flow and its own properties. On and off is a pattern too, although it may be unknown to me it has its own logic and its own destiny.

This is also how my life goes and this is how I write. If my brain is damaged (which I suspect) by modern society and public education and the marketing strategies of ideas and products from orthodox religion to breakfast cereal then maybe, like Mandelbrot, I too have a unique perspective to offer. I would like to suggest that we all do.

A spinning wheel offers stability and motion but it doesn’t go anywhere until it’s connected to a bicycle. A butterfly in the Caribbean can influence the path of a hurricane in North America. Life is not a set of problems but a continuous unfolding, like a Mandelbrot Set, of implicit possibilities woven into the fabric of the world. The world is not real, only a perception created in our brain from the sensory input received through our senses. Every snowflake has a unique hexagonal shape of infinite variety.

All these spontaneous comments are true and came through the wire into my awareness indicating a far greater, probably infinite reality implicit and actively creative. That’s the message of ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ by David Bohm, another book in my library.

It’s a wild crazy world, to put all this in the simplest terms. Whatever perspective you employ is reality for you but there is also a commonality. Existence. That’s pretty fundamental and makes it possible to sit at a keyboard and write things. Or do anything at all or nothing. A period indicates the end of a sentence but also that a sentence is there.

Bohm writes: "Fragmentation and wholeness" (which is the title of his first chapter) "is especially important to consider today, for fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them." Kind of explains the state of general insanity that inhabits our world which I've often wondered about but it also clears the stage for new developments which we may not be aware of or ready for. New developments that happen because the world is wild and crazy (to quote Steve Martin) and emerging, every moment, from the same energy that created the universe in the first place.

Ok, these are big ideas, very philosophical, you might accept them or maybe you don’t, life goes on. Creation and dissolution. I buy a new car, the new car breaks down, turns into a jalopy. I get rid of it, get another one.

There are cars everywhere. I’m sure you’ve noticed. I have because I’m riding a bicycle and I don’t want to get run over by one. They are a means of transportation but they are also an expression of our personality. I drive a Mustang, I drive an Acura, I drive a Prius. They tell people who we are and how much money we have. See what I mean? We could all drive the same car if it was just about transportation. Henry Ford’s Model T was available in any color as long as it was black. But people didn’t like that, they wanted a choice, diversity, they wanted pizzaz. The study of car models would be a good application for Chaos Theory. No two are the same but then once in a while there are two of the same. You can check them out when they stop at the light. If you’re on a bike you can smile at the driver, maybe even say something. Then the light changes and chaos ensues. Keep your balance and move on.

What’s the point? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s all Game Theory. Another high falutin concept developed in the early twentieth century. “Game theory is the mathematical study of strategic decision-making where an individual's success depends on the choices of others. It analyzes scenarios—"games"—to identify optimal strategies for competing or cooperating parties, often revealing that rational choices can lead to suboptimal, or less favorable, outcomes for everyone involved.” That’s according to AI Overview. It’s based on the mathematical discoveries of John Von Neumann, a child prodigy, who would often go to sleep with a mathematical problem on his mind and wake up with the answer.

That’s what I do sometimes. Not that I’m a genius. I’m just a crazy bohemian poet riding his bicycle to the cafe and hanging out with the people. Whatever happens next is totally spontaneous and random. I am only witness.

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The horizon of the earth looks like a flat line until you get farther away. When you get into outer space it actually becomes a ball, a complete circle. It’s surrounded by cold, dark, empty space sprinkled with stars. Negative space it’s called in the art world.

Humans (as far as we know) had never before been into outer space until cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union circled the globe in 1961 and came back down. Once was enough.

Pretty fantastic stuff until you realize that we are already in outer space on a planet sized space ship with a protective membrane called an atmosphere and traveling at 67,000 miles per hour around our friendly luminous sun. We’re spinning at 1,000 miles per hour as we travel and our whole solar system is orbiting the galactic center of the Milky Way at 500,000 miles per hour.

I think about that as I ride my bike down Broadway at 18 miles an hour (pretty good for a pedal bike). I can’t even see the horizon, just buildings, just cars and streets and trees but we’re still in outer space. At the entrance to Ave. B, by the Witte Museum, I turn off onto the bike path that runs alongside the park. The trees crowd close to the road on one side and on the other side businesses and schools and offices have sprouted up but I’m still in outer space.

We’re inside the protected bubble but we’re in outer space already! We think we’re on a planet that’s solid and stable and everything will always be this way. A convenient assumption but not true. Our earth will be destroyed one day by a no longer friendly sun that has run out of hydrogen and expanded into a red giant devouring the solar system, or atleast the inner planets. We’re a tiny part of an endless universe that nobody knows how big it really is. The part we can see so far is 93 billion light years across and expanding rapidly. Pretty cosmic.

As I ride my bike down Ave. B on the way to the cafe I wonder how small things are. Are there infinitely small things as well as infinitely big things? And we are somewhere in the middle? Whoa watch out a pothole.

I have big ideas on my bike. Sometimes I have to stop and get them down on voice recorder before I forget them. Like, wow, the horizon is infinite because it never stops. If you were riding your bike around the world the horizon would always be there, unfolding. There is always a sunrise happening somewhere and there’s always a sunset happening somewhere. Like super wow.

Think of the greatest thing you can think of. I’ll take a moment . . .

Ok, what have you got? A fantasy? A feeling of love that doesn’t stop? Oh good one. A car that runs on sunlight and goes 100 miles an hour and never needs to re-fuel? God? A super creature with super powers that knows everything? A perfect dinner with a perfect friend with excellent conversation? I imagine a peaceful life full of joy from horizon to horizon. What’s beyond the horizon? Nobody knows. It’s a mystery. A beautiful mystery.

I dunno, I think we should expand our horizons. They’re only limited by . . . ourselves. I’m imagining writing my space opera trilogy. It would be fantastic. It would change the world as we know it. I don’t know if I can do it but I’m gearing up. Sitting in the cafe conceiving. Looking around and aspiring. It would be fantastic. We need more fantastic in our world, less normal, less boring, less conventionally programmed.

Imagine an exploding star (pic from book) A supernova, ejecting newly made elements into space. Outer space. And then condensing into planets and circling around new stars and maybe life forming and maybe somebody sitting in a cafe writing about it. Everything they can think about, expanding their mind, their little brain evolved from billions of years of developing and adapting on their little planet, their little biosphere, their little bubble of life on their little planetary spaceship blasting thru the cosmos.

Hmm. Crazy. No horizons.

podcast music 00:00-8:58

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“Experience is the mother of wisdom.” a famous saying. Euripides or somebody. We’re (humanity) about to have an experience so hopefully we can get some wisdom. This is my prayer and hope.

Wisdom would tell us to live together in peace and love. Like one giant hippie trip, without the trip or the hippie. It would tell us take care of our biosphere, it is precious and fragile. It would tell us that being alive is the most fantastic thing of all. Just being alive. As opposed to not being alive.

Where we are now we can barely see any of that wisdom it seems to me. We are totally distracted from our true agenda and only feel it like a distant star, barely visible. The true purpose of being alive. Do you know what it is? If you do, you must be on a distant star to me. Ha! That’s a Thoreau joke.

Where we are now is hardly a joke. Like the one about Tom Thumb who tumbled off the wall? Wait was that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall? I love myth. It is the essence of storytelling. Check it out on your next movie or book. Stop and calibrate all the archetypes that are shining like stars in the story. If you are enjoying the book or movie it’s because you are connecting with the archetypes. It’s so human.

Read Joseph Campbell if you want to know about it. I don’t have time to get into it right now. I just wanted to ask - where are we now? If anyone has ideas, please post them in comments. Maybe we can get some conversation going. Where are we now?

Seems like a good question.

music for pondering :: 34:20-38:33 may all the bombs turn into birds and fly away

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All that information is there somewhere, on a subconscious level if you like. An ocean, if you like, a universe. The universe wouldn’t exist if our brain didn’t perceive it. It’s an amazing organism, semi-divine like Gilgamesh. No one has even come close to figuring out how it works.

In that small space, about the size of a football, we have billions and probably trillions of synapses (nobody seems to know what the number is) each making thousands of connections to other neurons in a network that is constantly changing. New pathways are being discovered, old ones are abandoned.

Looking at the brain as a computer (an oversimplified comparison) it would be by far the most powerful supercomputer in the world.

This is what sits in our head. This is our organ of cognition that we have been given at birth, to have and to hold until that time comes.

We have access to one of the most incredible organisms in the universe and that includes galaxies and black holes and dark energy (my estimation only).

It watches the day pass. It is influenced by the diurnal cycles of night and day, dawn and dusk.

Right now I’m sitting in the sun room, at the front of the house, watching the light dim and the sun, our nearby star, lower itself into the ground.

That’s how our ancient ancestors saw it, the sun returning to earth, melting into the mountains only to be reborn again on the other side of the world. Birth, death and rebirth. It was obvious.

Anyways I’m witnessing the end of the day and calibrating the brightness, the ambient light, the life giving energy rays, as it fades away. I wonder what that does to my brain.

That’s the thing, we don’t know what’s going on in our brain. 99% of it is hidden like a black hole or dark energy. We know it’s there but we just don’t know what it is.

I say this not to make a point but just to point out the praiseworthiness of our little cradle of consciousness up there in our noggin.

We have it. It’s not Sci-Fi. It’s ours to use or abuse. Boredom is the most insidious AND common form of abuse. That and listening to the news. I could add public education in there too but that would be controversial.

I guess my other point (although I’m not trying to make a point) is that we can discover the possibilities of this thing, we can inquire and explore. Who can stop us? It’s an endless journey of adventure if you’d like to look at it in a romantic way.

I wrote this post sitting in the sun room at the front of the house (as previously mentioned) letting my mind go blank, so to say. It’s never blank even when you’re sleeping. Anyway, sitting here feeling nothing or being open to everything, which is really the same thing, led me here. See what I mean? I never would have imagined or thought about my own brain unless my brain had compelled me to do so, somehow.

Contemplate the messages and the information being transmitted in your brain. It’s like trying to imagine how big is the universe. It’s impossible.

Contemplate the 17 trillion micro-organisms in your gut. Bacteria and archaea and fungi and viruses are all represented and communicating among themselves. What are they saying? They are saying something. We just don’t know what it is. They’re not only communicating among themselves, they’re also communicating with the cells of our own body. Strange but true. Weird but amazing. Oh to be witness to that conversation.

The light dies so sweetly, so gently and all are affected by it. We are touched by our sun whether we’re aware of it or not. Tomorrow will be a new morning, a chance to start again. That’s why in some cultures each day is like a god. That’s how they thought of it, the Aztecs for example.

Beautiful thought, huh? To be blessed by that god is to have a great day. That’s how I think about it. Of course I’m a historical romanticist. That’s how my brain conceives of it. It could be any way, a different way for you.

I don’t know what your model is, how you see a day. It’s a mystery to me.

And that’s cool. I kinda like that.

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podcast music from 40:13

Concentric circles fill the nature pool. The swimming fish circle and leap. By full light the rain has mostly gone, everything is placid and smooth again. The Holly trees are budding. Spring is here.

Spring is here filling the air with fragrance, the Mountain Laurels are blooming, another tree with little white flowers all over it. Everything is wet. Meanwhile over ‘there’ people are at war, flinging missiles at each other and shooting cannons, determined to bring death and destruction upon the earth and upon their fellow human beings. I really don’t understand it.

Here in my biosphere, in my backyard I find comfort and solace. From the back porch I watch and observe the dancing Willow, the deep green of the Groovy Nook, the gentle Bog Filter with the Water Cress and Pickerelweed and the water musically falling back into the pond.

Above the trees is the cloudy sky. I imagine it to be a healing modality to gaze at. And I do. And it is so.

Over there, missiles are falling and drones are droning. People are angry and full of revenge. Two things not considered admirable but we indulge in them anyway.

We’re not having a war in my neighborhood. Atleast not yet. Ballistic missiles recognize no borders. They fly 10,000 miles an hour to wherever they’re aimed at and good luck shooting them down. THAADs or Patriots or the Aegis system can and do knock them out but it’s like hitting a needle in a haystack at 100 feet with a BB gun. Success is not guaranteed. I would hate for one to land in my backyard and hence my post. Wars, like wildfires, tend to be unpredictable and can grow by leaps and bounds.

The Mockingbirds and Doves that inhabit my biosphere help themselves to the Meow Mix when the coast is clear. Occasionally a Hawk will swoop by, a Great Horned Owl sometimes perches in the big Pecan tree. My Raccoon buddies bide their time under the house until all is dark and then come out to forage. Occasionally a Great White Egret will drop by to visit the fish.

The whole world is a Nature Pool. Species living in symbiosis on a watery planet. Get it? We’re all living in the garden. Or what’s left of it. We’ve destroyed huge chunks of it already and are working on the rest. Iran’s oil depots are burning blown up by Israeli missiles. Good shot! And all this will continue until one or the other ‘sovereign states’ are brought to their knees and give up.

The world spins on with war and destruction in a timeless, ancient pattern and I can’t stop it. So does nature as well, come to think of it. It’s constantly destroying and renewing. What’s the big deal?

No, that can’t be right. Creating suffering can’t be the purpose of life. Although we are very good at it.

I think these thoughts early in the morning waiting for dawn. It’s still dark. Do I belong to nature? Does nature belong to me. What does it mean that I’m on this earth? Hmmh.

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Of course to these you could also add war, famine and pestilence, but they’re so common, barely worth mentioning.

So let’s take these cheery topics one by one.

Recent statistics reveal that a third of older adults deal with loneliness and isolation. That’s alot of people. There are 65 million baby boomers (born between 1946-1964) so that would be over 20 million just among the baby boomers.

This kind of stress can lead to dementia, heart disease, stroke and other diseases eventually resulting in premature death. Lovely.

We discard our elders in this country by shipping them off to the old folks home where they are medicated and relieved of all their financial resources until they die. No time, no room, no appreciation from the kids. They’re busy making money.

This one I really didn’t know about until I learned it from a friend. I knew their daughter since she was a little kid. We had a friendship. She would play at my house. When she went thru adolescence (middle school) she ended up on anti-depressants. Later she had issues with suicide. What!? I couldn’t believe it. What happened to that innocent, beautiful, happy little kid?

Suicide is the leading cause of death for kids 10-19. Forty per cent of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 20% have seriously considered suicide and 9% have attempted it. There’s something wrong with this picture.

Visit any major city’s downtown area and you will see the homeless camped out. Attempts have been made for years, decades, to address it. Money has been thrown at it, facilities built, programs initiated, conferences convened - nothing seems to work. The problem persists.

The statistics for 2024 are 771,480 people sleeping under bridges and on cardboard in door stoops, an increase of 32% since 2022. The problem is getting worse not better. In the city where I live, San Antonio, they put the number at 3,398 living on the street.

I interact with some of them on my bike rides and honestly many of them seem content, living in their tents by the creek, with their own community, but many are miserable and vulnerable. With no kitchen and no bathroom imagine what their daily life is like. And no bedroom. Well a makeshift bedroom.

Hey people used to live like this thousands of years ago. Do you know that? Living in a teepee or a hut or a cave or a tiny house of mud and wattle. But they had a system and a tradition and they found a way to survive in relative comfort. They weren’t illegal. They didn’t have their camps busted up and then driven off by the officials, but these days it’s disreputable. Unlike India where you can live in the street as a sadhu and be respected. Sit around all day and meditate on God. Give the tourists a blessing and a tilak for a few rupees.

And so whatever are we going to do with all these epidemics? Reclaim our humanity and our tribal heritage - that’s what. And that’s why I chose this music. It’s vibrant but also seriously intense. C’mon people, this is our tribe. Don’t forget your tribe. All the humans are your tribe. Your neighbors are your tribe. Your church, your school, your friends and whatever association you’re in is your tribe. It’s not like we don’t have the communications technologies. We don’t have to send smoke signals. No, we can walk over to our neighbor’s house and say hi. Bring them a plate of cookies.

I had a friend from West Africa. He told me the story once of his father coming to visit and at the end of his visit he asked him, so what did you think of America? I didn’t like it he responded, you don’t even know who lives next door to you. So true.

Hey we have zoom and video phone calls and email and fricking internet connections out the wazoo. Use them. Make contact. Not with emojis and two word blips but with real feeling and care and hopefulness.

Maybe some people are cool with this. They have actual families, functional families and they stay in touch and they use the technologies but I don’t see much of that. I see individuals living their individual lives because they don’t need a tribe to survive - we’re not hunter gatherers after all. We’re modern people but we still need to find our common language and connect.

The natural world is the common language of humanity (as it is for all species). This is our home and this is where we can gather wisdom and comfort. Walk outside and look at a tree, glance at the sky, feel the breeze on your skin. You have just transformed yourself, become primal, connected to the earth and the air and the whole web of life.

We are not hunters and gatherers, not in the historic sense, but our ancestors were for 300,000 years. We have only been ‘modern’ people for 6 or 8 thousand years. Something we don’t think about but it influences every aspect of our lives. You can’t just discard that much physical and psychological conditioning by reading a book or watching TV. We need each other in a tribal sense because that’s who we are - tribal members.

Oh yeah social media, I almost forgot. Endless scrolling and addictive miniature movies of cats and babies and ridiculous AI fake images of trucks and tractors rolling around and emojis and messages from people you’ve never heard of acting out on some issue or other and telling you all about everything you don’t even want to know. Now they have found out that not only is social media addictive but it affects the mental health and well being of kids. All this to make a dollar or more accurately a billion dollars. Money is the most addictive drug there is but we call it business and not only is it not illegal it’s got its own laws to protect it. Cleanliness is next to godliness but being rich is even closer. It’s the unwritten subconscious principle of our society.

Good grief.

Ok. I’m done. Just had to express this. It weighs on me. When I see how unnatural we have become and how much damage it has done, I despair. We are really fucked up. We need to come home to where are real home is. That would be love and compassion, that would be caring for our earth and letting the earth care for us. That would be communicating in the common language. Not a spoken word language, not politics, not the language of money but the common language that we all know and need - the language of being human.

And what is human? You are. Ask yourself and listen for the answer.

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The podcast music is from this amazing collection.

The whole show was in Spanish, remarkable in itself for American television, and recognized the fact that ‘God Bless America’ includes all the countries of south, central and north America. He listed each one in turn: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Antilles, Jamaica, United States, Canada y mi patria (homeland) Puerto Rico. We are all Americans.

See the full performance here.

To be honest I was initially put off by all the wild dancing and everything being in Spanish. And I wasn’t a big fan of reggaeton, in fact I didn’t even know what it was but soon enough I got caught up in the joyous energy and felt the spirit of Puerto Rico surging thru the songs.

Reggaeton as a musical genre had its origins among the youth of Panama back in the eighties, a mixture of hip hop and Caribbean rhythms, but then came of age in Puerto Rico. It was passionate, impetuous and authentic, just like the Puerto Ricans and artists like DJ Negro and Daddy Yankee and Daddy Gasolina and others from the barrios and housing projects of San Juan set it on course. The police tried to repress it, called it a danger to society, didn’t work.

Then Bad Bunny, aka Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, came along. He was born in 1994 and grew up in the small town of Vega Baja on the north coast of Puerto Rico, 40 minutes west of the capital San Juan. He got his stage name from when he was a little kid and forced to wear a bunny costume that he was not happy about. Ha, ha hilarious.

He started writing music and uploading it to Sound Cloud when he was 14. By the time he was 22 he had signed on to a recording contract and his career started taking off: collaborating with other artists, hosting shows, performing gigs. He has since become the most streamed musician in the world, that’s what I read somewhere. A few days before his Super Bowl appearance he won album of the year at the Grammies. Add that to his 5 previous Grammies. He’s done movies, TV shows, toured the world. He had a 31 day residency at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan last year that drew over 600,000 visitors to the island and contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy. He’s totally famous and using his celebrity to make the world a better place with his Good Bunny Foundation that empowers children and young people thru music, sports and the arts.

Well great, good Bad Bunny, but why am I writing about all this? I’m writing about all this because he’s helping to change the conversation and I think that’s important. I’m writing this because we need to recognize our humanity, we need talk about it, we need to feel the spirit and we need to feel the truth of our present (precarious) situation. Our sweet lives are intertwined with the circumstances that surround us and we need to recognize that.

I’m writing this because the existential issues of our time requires it. Do I have to go over the entire tedious list of existential issues? Nuclear weapons, the climate crisis, income inequality (which causes wars), environmental destruction (which causes mass extinction), divisiveness (which causes dysfunctional governments), economic policies that are unsustainable (means they’re gonna crash) - all global problems. No America first. All of us first, everybody first. We have to solve these problems together.

Bad Bunny's voice rose up strong and clear in response to the degradation and disrespect that has become so dominant in our national dialogue. The damage that has been done by the magafication of our country will last for generations or atleast decades. It’s tragic. And it’s urgent that we begin building community now, community based on shared humanity not some selfish, cultish, elitist, nationalistic perversion of humanity.

So, ok, maybe you don’t like Bad Bunny and you don’t get the reggaeton thing but how could anyone vote against diversity, inclusion and empowerment? How could anybody disagree that ‘love is stronger than hate’. Yes it’s just a platitude on one level but this is how change happens - by talking about it in the cafes and the churches and the substacks of the world. Change doesn’t come from nowhere and if you don’t think change is needed then, my friend, you’re living on a different planet from me.

And everything doesn’t have to be political. There is celebration, there is spontaneous joy, there is dancing (each in their own way). There is music which has the power to bring us all together regardless of our perceived differences. There is love that is stronger than hate.

And like he said at the beginning of his show: “My name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio and if today I’m here at the 60th Super Bowl it’s because I never, never stopped believing in me. And you should, you should believe in yourself too. You’re more valuable than you think, believe me. Heh.”

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If you’ve ever thought, while navigating this river of life, that the shoals and the rocky places were your enemies, then consider this — it’s in the rich muck of failure that we find our way and in the dark underground that the seeds of possibility sprout and grow.

Pretty mucky water these days. The ‘leader of the free world’, as we like to call it, is a mafia don, fomenting wars and we’re all chafing under threat and bombast (and some other kinds of bombs too). But imagine the garden we can grow in this stuff. The Nile river floods (traditionally) and leaves behind fertile soil. Same in Mesopotamia where farming was invented or atleast institutionalized. It became a myth. Noah’s flood from the Hebrew scriptures, speaking of myths. Renewal and restart.

Just saying — these are fantastic times. If we don’t blow ourselves to kingdom come then the kingdom may come and it will be remarkable. It will be different, as different as night and day, and with it our humanity, which can’t be suppressed for long, will shine out like the sun peeking thru the clouds. That’s what I have to say.

And I’ve said it many times already. It’s my favorite sermon. My father, the Baptist preacher, preached on the Apocalypse of Revelation. Scary stuff. But then the kingdom comes. Of God. So it’s all good in the end.

I don’t believe in the Bible but I believe in the divine essence of humanity. Dig deep enough and there it is. That’s why we like to laugh. Much preferable to crying. Unless we laugh until we cry. That can happen too.

And so here is my story. Tell it like it is.

Once upon a time there was a guy, could have been a girl guy, doesn’t matter. And the guy lived in a house with his dog. Every day he would go out with his dog to see what he could find. He lived 10,000 years ago and so there was no civilization yet, no grocery stores. He had to find his food wherever he was. His dog helped him.

One day as he was walking along the beach at the edge of the world he saw an object in the water. It got bigger and bigger as he watched it. Soon, to his amazement, it crawled up out of the water and spoke to him.

“Hello” it said. Well in whatever language they used 10,000 years ago. And the guy thought wow this giant blob all wet and dripping standing here in front of me said hello. But then the blob ate the guy and he went inside.

The guy thought this is strange, I went looking for food and I became food. I guess everything needs to eat. Then he (if it was a he) started noticing everything the blob had been eating: car parts (I know anachronism), trees, planets (small ones) and animals of all kinds - a wolf, a coyote, an elephant, a zebra, half a giraffe, a river and a city.

Wow, there’s basically a whole world down here thought the guy and he started walking around looking for something to eat and someone he could say hi to.

He said hi to the wolf and the wolf ate him, swallowed him in one gulp. Then he was in a cafe inside the wolf. Everyone was sitting around drinking cappuccinos. Well this isn’t bad thought the guy and ordered a machacappuccino without dairy.

While he was waiting for his machacappuccino, a book came up to him and said “Would you like to hear a story?”

“OK” said the guy “What’s your story?”

“Well I have many stories but here’s my favorite” and he starts telling him the story of a lame man who walked to the moon and a lazy fish that hid in the sand and a brilliant star that came to earth and when he had finished his story he said “And this could only happen in the stomach of a wolf that had been swallowed by a blob that came out of the ocean on a day bright with possibility.”

“Well I’ll say.” responded the guy.

“Yes?” said the book, “What do you have to say?”

“Well I was just thinking how everything gets swallowed by something else and a new world gets discovered.”

“Yes that’s right.” said the book. “And for your wise appraisal I will let you look at the last page.” And the guy did look and the page was blank, white as snow, nothing was written there upon.

“But there’s nothing here.”said the guy.

“Quite right.” said the book, “You write.” and the guy did. He took a pen and began to write a story as great as he could imagine, with mystery and drama and adventure and disaster and amazing magic and music.

“There it’s finished.” said the guy when he had filled up the page.

“Oh no it’s not said the book.” and many more pages appeared and many more creatures came and wrote their story and the book was happy.

The end

The Podcast music is Grace VanderWaal performing ‘Clearly’ with Jon Batiste and Stay Human on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 2018.

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And so it is with Broadway, my Mississippi River. It runs straight down the valley of San Antonio and in fact used to be part of the river bed itself. The stream of cars courses and winds its way thru the street. It has ebb and flow - the lunch rush and the commuter traffic jam. It can change direction and find a new way, just like the big river, when the light changes. Best to stay out of the rapids for that - let it run its course, hug the shore, take the sidewalk, heck maybe even a bike lane if you’re lucky.

The other day I almost got run over by a cop car. He decided to back up when the light changed and I was right behind him. Did not expect that. Sometimes at intersections there are cars turning, cars running the amber light, cars waiting - all potentially dangerous and like Mark Twain navigating the big river I have to make my way with all due caution and care. Don’t want to end up run over and squashed in the street.

Yelling was a sport and a necessity on the wide Mississippi - cautioning the flat boats and the log rafts and the barges. So it is on my bike cruising down Broadway. A good Comanche yell once in a while improves your health, I believe, and also advises the motorists not to drift too far off course.

Everything has its rise and fall. Don’t you know it and the bicycle pedals, like the old paddle wheels, go round and round.

Weather is to be accounted for too riding thru the valley of San Antonio or anywhere for that matter. A woman in the cafe once told me her story of being thrown off her bike and into the curb by a car that didn’t see her. She was caught in the glare of a low sun. “Were you ok?” I asked. “Sure, I got up and walked it off” she said, “I’m a yoga girl.”

Well there’s two lessons - stay out of sun glare and do your yoga.

Then there’s downstream and upstream. The old steamboats could only make about 5 miles per hour up stream but going back down could get up to 10 or 12 mph with the boiler steaming away full blast, nigh on to bursting. It was dangerous business though, during the mid 19th century 289 steamboats sank on the Mississippi River killing over 4,000 people. If it wasn’t snags ripping open the bottom of the boat it was the boiler exploding sending up a shower of steel and wood where the boat had been a moment before.

On my river a prevailing wind comes from the southeast off the Gulf of Mexico 150 miles away. I can tell before I get out of bed what kind of weather is out there - the airplanes take off into the wind and come right over my head when the wind is out of the southeast. You can bet on those brilliant mornings when the wind is out of the north and it’s all downhill and down wind all the way to downtown. I can ride hard with hardly an effort, way faster than a steamer, 17, 18, 20 mph passing buses and yelling at cars stuck at the light or slowly creeping up to one.

There are different laws for bikes than there are for cars, they understand that. And the motorists admire a skilled bicyclist who can slip thru the lights with barely a brake fade, fan tail blinking and head down to make way with minimum resistance.

The other day a black and white cop car passed me four times, back and forth on Broadway. He was trying to catch me. Probably heard rumors of the mad anarchist bicycle rider ignoring all the laws of the land flying up and down B’way. He didn’t know this is my street. I play the percentages and make sure they’re well in my favor. I don’t mind going slow. I don’t mind stopping at lights for the sake of the cop stopped on the other side. He never did catch me.

Not being arrogant, just truthful. Cars have to maintain their distance, they’re big and heavy. Not bikes, they’re lithe and slender and can scoot thru the narrowest chute. Mark Twain would appreciate that. He describes the science of reading the river and finding the most efficient route around the bends and over the sand bars while staying close to shore, if possible, where the current is lax. It’s the same with bike riding.

Sunday mornings are the best, or in the midst of a world-wide pandemic. Then the streets are clear and open to any speed. If you can attain it and hold it, 25 mph is not unheard of on such mornings with a stout northerly breeze. All the more focused is the bicycle rider in such circumstances, again not unlike the steamboat pilot a-full tilt downstream avoiding all possible dangers and tragedies before they arrive.

What a pleasant surprise to discover Mark Twain on my ride. His pseudonym, by the way, Mark Twain, was yelled out by the lead man at the front of the boat and indicated two fathoms or 12 feet of water measured with a pole. That was enough for safe passage. The old steamboats were designed with a shallow draft, 4 or 5 feet, for that purpose precisely. Not fast or agile though, unlike a bike.

At the same time I’m reading Annie Dillard An American Life. It’s her memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh during the fifties (1950’s). Her stories are eloquent and hilarious. I’ve read it twice and once more, it’s filled with bookmarks - sales receipts slips of paper and a napkin. The cover shows three generations of generous wear.

“Richland Lane was untrafficked, hushed, planted in great shade trees, and peopled by wonderful collected children. They were sober, sane, quiet kids, whose older brothers and sisters were away at boarding school or college. Every warm night we played organized games—games that were the sweetest part of those sweet years, that long suspended interval between terror and anger.”

She chronicles the terror by means of her inventive stories. Although she was friends with the Catholic kids in her neighborhood, she was frightened by the nuns. Her family (and her lineage) were Protestant and the Catholics were perceived with some suspicion. They had strange rituals, went to mass and listened to the pope. They sprinkled babies.

“Now St. Bede’s was, as the expression had it, letting out; Jo Ann Sheehy would walk by again, and all the other Catholic children, and perhaps the nuns. I kept an eye out for the nuns.

From my swing seat I saw the girls appear in bunches. There came Jo Ann Sheehy up the dry sidewalk with two other girls; her black hair fell over her blue blazer’s back. Behind them, running back and forth across the street, little boys were throwing gravel bits. The boys held their workbooks tightly. Probably, if they lost them, they would be put to death.

In the leafy distance up Edgerton I could see a black phalanx. It blocked the sidewalk; it rolled footlessly forward like a tank. The nuns were coming. They had no bodies, and imitation faces. I quitted the swing and banged through the back door and ran in to Mother in the kitchen.

I didn’t know the nuns taught the children; the Catholic children certainly avoided them on the streets, almost as much as I did. The nuns seemed to be kept in St. Bede’s as in a prison, where their faces had rotted away—or they lived eyeless in the dark by choice, like bats. Parts of them were manufactured. Other parts were made of mushrooms.”

Good grief, what perceptions of a child, knowing so little of the world but aware and receptive to her own interpretations. A world wondrous but in equal parts frightening. No guardrail yet between imagination and reality.

“In the kitchen, Mother said it was time I got over this. She took me by the hand and hauled me back outside; we crossed the street and caught up with the nuns. ‘Excuse me,’ Mother said to the black phalanx. It wheeled around. ‘Would you just please say hello to my daughter here? If you could just let her see your faces.’

I saw the white, conical billboards they had as mock-up heads; I couldn’t avoid seeing them, those white boards like pillories with circles cut out and some bunched human flesh pressed like raw pie crust into the holes. Like mushrooms and engines, they didn’t have hands. There was only that disconnected saucerful of whitened human flesh at their tops. The rest, concealed by a chassis of soft cloth over hard cloth, was cylinders, drive shafts, clean wiring and wheels.

‘Why, hello,‘ some of the top parts said distinctly. They teetered toward me. I was delivered to my enemies and had no place to hide; I could only wail for my young life so unpityingly snuffed.”

The whole book is 282 pages of finely wrought details and nuanced descriptions. Story after story in all its narrative glory, exquisitely rendered. What I learned is that her childhood was nothing like mine (except for the Catholic part). For one, I remember so little that I sometimes wonder if I even had a childhood and two what I do remember was exceedingly and invariably tedious and boring. Hers was full of colorful adventure and excitement, as she tells it.

If she was not playing detective and spying on suspicious neighbors or at dancing school learning about boys or exploring the neighborhood on her bicycle (I did that) she was collecting rocks and inventorying them or investigating pond water with her microscope or playing capture the flag in the street. Her father was fascinated with Mark Twain’s account of the river - that’s where I got the idea to read Life on the Mississippi and at one point got in his boat and attempted to sail to New Orleans. My father was the minister of a small Baptist church and didn’t have a boat but we did have a very nice 1963 Impala. Her account of playing football with the boys is priceless.

“Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out for a pass fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at someone’s running legs. Either you brought him down or you hit the ground flat out on your chin, with your arms empty before you. It was all or nothing. If you hesitated in fear, you would miss and get hurt: you would take a hard fall while the kid got away, or you would get kicked in the face while the kid got away. But if you flung yourself wholeheartedly at the back of his knees—if you gathered and joined body and soul and pointed them diving fearlessly—then you likely wouldn’t get hurt, and you’d stop the ball. Your fate, and your team’s score depended on your concentration and courage. Nothing girls did could compare with it.”

Yeah she had a stimulating childhood, but you work with what you’ve got. That’s the other thing I learned. She spent many hours reading books of all sorts, from the public library and from her parents. I spent endless hours in church, one sort of church or the other, and striving to go to heaven by not doing anything that was the least bit daring or, God forbid, fun.

The account she gives of her parent’s sense of humor struck a chord. I saw a resemblance there for my mother loved to tell jokes and elicit laughter too. I’ve carried on the tradition. I clearly remember our mother’s favorite joke and so does, I’m sure, all of us kids. She would tell it at every important function, whenever enough of an audience was present to make it worth the telling.

There were three sisters (or was it friends), anyways, as I recall it there was the flapper girl (an expression from the 1920’s that basically means a flirtatious woman), there was the common ordinary girl (run of the mill working class) and there was the plain girl. Probably cleaned houses or something.

So they’re all going out on dates, it’s Saturday night, and they agree that in the morning when they meet for breakfast (I guess they were sisters or maybe they were in a boarding house) they would say good morning as many times as they got kissed the night before. Kind of a secret code, subliminal conversation going on, maybe under the nose of the disapproving mother. My exegesis here, not part of the joke.

So the next morning the flapper girl comes in and says ‘Good morning. It’s a good morninng this morning. If it’s as good of a morning tomorrow morning as it is this morning it’ll be a good morning tomorrow morning. The common girl comes in and says ‘Good morning.’. The plain girl comes in and says, “Howdy, darn it”.

That was a hilarious joke back in the day. A Bayes family favorite. What was most amusing was witnessing my mother’s delight in telling it as if it were the first time we had all heard ‘the old maid joke’. She told it straight ahead, smiling the whole way with her wide smile, barely able to contain her mirth anticipating the punch line which we all knew was coming. It never changed. It didn’t need to.

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That’s about all I got. The rest is hidden, occluded.

I can do the words. Invective. That word appeared this morning like magic while rolling around on my back, aligning my spine with the true north and south.

Maybe I’m going back to poetry. That’s how I started out. It was my first love. Simple, sensible, opaque, enchanting in meaning and sound, enigmatic, brave enough.

I can still read, in short bursts, until it gets too incoherent and I lose the thread, then I pick up my pen and write something. Like “The wild wind howled and the full moon shined thru holes in the billowing clouds” and wonder where that wants to go. A werewolf story? A lonely traveler walking thru the moors enveloped in fog obscuring trees and stream and sky? An owl calls. That’s all I got. I don’t know why the owl called, what it was trying to say and to who. Who, who?

My grandparents are unknown to me except for a few encounters with Nettie in her dotage. She was mean and judgmental and extremely stubborn. Not a lot to learn from her. All the others are lost behind the curtain of history - there, but inside, still alive in me in a way. Maybe that’s why I would like to meet them. Whoever they were. I would like to have a giant family reunion, a jamboree, all those old ancestors gathered together, both sides, going back 8 or 10 generations. That would be a hoot.

Sit down for a meal, a proper feast and argue about religion and politics. Oh! That would be a humdinger. Worthy of a novel. Six hundred pages. No pictures, just in your mind where you see these impossible people altogether in one scene trying to make sense.

Somerset, England was the source of some of my English forbears, and Mayflower Pilgrims. Pittsylvania, Virginia on my father’s side. Dirt poor farmers probably. So was my mom’s side but they had William Bradford and Anita Bryant so they were superior to the pig farmers and sorghum growers. Somehow. Anyways everybody would have their story and if you go back far enough it all merges into magic and mysticism and animism because that’s where we all came from and stories around the fire of fairies and elves, monsters and trolls and a full moon on a foggy night over the moors.

So there’s that and my pen is running out of ink. Good ole Pilot G-2 #10. Puts out alot of ink, Will have to go with the alternate here soon to keep my narrative flowing if it is a narrative might be more of a diatribe or a diorama. Maybe a memoir.

Surely to the #7 then, finer nib. But it’s low too. Maybe I’ve inscribed enough.

So convenient, the self-contained ball point pen. No more dipping the quill in the ink well and writing until it went dry. Dip again. They wrote the Declaration of Independence like this. That’s what it says in the picture.

No ball point pens in 1776. That would make it slower and more deliberate. Consideration. Quaint. And when the nub grew blunt, sharpen it with a knife and keep going.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is I don’t know what I’m talking about. Just trying to flow with the words in my head, coming from the muse, the mystery, the divine infinite or wherever the words come from. We are word people after all. We make signs and signals with our marks. I have 3 preachers in my family tree, men of letters. They all made marks on paper - writing their sermons. Plus William Bradford. He wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, the story of the Pilgrims.

The Cherokee Indian, Sequoyah, invented a writing system for the Cherokee language after he saw the power of the written word that the white people had. He taught it to his people and within a few years most Cherokee could read and write in their native language. This literacy helped the Cherokee survive the trauma of colonization and genocide.

It became a trend. Other Native American tribes like the Cree invented their own written script using Sequoyah’s invention as a model. His work influenced the creation of 21 scripts for more than 65 languages as far away as Africa and China.

Wow.

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the podcast music is from this amazing Cafe De Anatolia collection :: 3:24-9:33

When I got home from my bike ride the day before Christmas I realized that my travel bag was missing.

All my precious treasures were in there including this notebook - almost full but still a few empty pages and my headphones - very important and a copy of my book - replaceable and a friend’s poetry book ‘the Solace of Wild Places’ someone I’d met at the Texas Book Festival, a file folder with assorted papers, a spare pair of glasses and a pen incase I forget to put one in my medicine pouch.

Precious they are in their own way and even more so when they’ve gone missing, misplaced, maybe stolen. Hopefully they’ll be found either at the HEB Central Market on Broadway where I stopped or at Philo’s Cafe.

I realized, too, that every day was the adventure of my life. That the adventure was happening with my life and my life was happening right here in this day. So I decided to document the adventure of my life for today, the day after Christmas searching for my shoulder bag which was lost somewhere between HEB Central Market and Philos.

Heading out down the hill, down river. A route I take almost every day and never fail to find delight. If the wind is at my back it’s even more delightful. With leaves covering the ground, it’s divine.

Rolling thru Brackenridge Park.

Household waste is 25% more after the Holidays. That’s what I read somewhere.

Alas and lament, my hand bag is not here. Reeves, the attendant at Central Market, checked it out on his computer. Onward on with hope in my heart to Philo’s.

Down the second river walk, the San Pedro Culture Park into downtown.

Approaching location destination, West French and San Pedro.

They’re open!

Rejoice! Rejoice! The hand bag hath been found. It was at Philos all day long. Sung to the melody of ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’. I’m happy.

Not to make light of this song, so far beyond any relevance to my lost bag, it has been sung for centuries to celebrate Christmas. Below is a beautiful rendition by Chris Tomlin. Its roots go all the way back to the 8th Century where it was chanted in celebration of the Advent by monks in the monastery:

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I remember sitting in the attic of the Charles Street house in Grand Rapids, Michigan when I was 19 years old, a recent dropout from the Baptist Bible College and Seminary, listening to music late into the night and writing. None of it has survived but I think it was a form of poetry or deep self-reflection of some sort.

Many more years passed and only an occasional journal entry or recorded note appeared. There was no volition.

Then it started up again. Writing. Street lights and car lights reflected on the pavement thru the potted plant in the window out the corner of my eye change into the crowded roomanddance amonge the shadowed 1/2people pressed together for a moment inlove with the soundless music. from ‘LEARNING TO SCRIBBLE’ 1999.

Volumes of poetry poured forth: ‘THE NATURE POOL’ 2002, stones tones and audible levers 2009, WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU 2018, poem picture 2019, zines, essays, film scripts or atleast the treatments of film scripts, a book - 295 pages of ‘The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets’ 2023, Substack posts every week or atleast they used to be every week until I ran out of ideas. Now I write them whenever I feel like it. I’ve slowed down.

I find myself writing mostly Facebook posts and text messages, maybe some Flash Fiction once in awhile. I’m slowing down for sure. Little volition and a complete lack of ambition. Soon it’ll just be live rave-ons with the baristas, spontaneous and totally innocent of any premediated aspiration.

So before I go and lose my writing altogether like Hemingway, yeah he blew his brains out because he couldn’t write anymore. That’s what I heard. Of course he was depressed and mentally ill but who isn’t in some way or another?

“It’s been a strange life.” said the man sitting on the sidewalk.

He was slumped over having just received a .38 slug thru his back, emerging just below his stomach. The bullet had hit a main artery and he was bleeding.

His daughter, who was 12, stood next to him and kept saying, “What happened Daddy? What happened Daddy?”

A few people gathered on the street. “Is he shot?” was a murmur that could be heard from the background.

He had been shopping at Macy’s, with his 12 year old daughter, for Christmas gifts. Actually he had just exited the store and was on the public sidewalk. Nobody seemed to know where the shot had come from. Neither did the man have any idea why he had been shot as his daughter blubbered and he leaned over and laid in the street.

Flash fiction. Great stuff. You can get the entire literature experience in just a few sentences. The dramatic effect, the heightened awareness, the characters, the scene. It only happens once.

Everything changes. It evolves. It flows. That’s our story written in super script at the top of the page. That’s the epitaph and the preface and the everything in between. The story of life. Dramatic and compelling. Tragic and tremendous both. Tremendous things happen in life. One was being born, one will be leaving this mortal coil, one is being alive on a planet in a body. That’s rare. The universe took 14 billion years to make you. Tremendous.

Write on oh humans, oh Rohn, oh my, oh boy. This story was not written by the gods, unless they are we, us, whoever. It is being written and has been written and will be written by you. As in all y’all. Including me.

If I can write one more page it’ll be courage and great love and amazing adventures and near misses and total crashes and triumphant realizations and fearless intrepidation approaching my death date. But not yet, like Roy says in ‘Blade Runner’ and sticks a nail thru his hand.

It’s not like I’m unhealthy or unhappy or obsessed with death, I’m not, just that I have a healthy regard for it. It does kind of close the curtain, final note, end of the story, resolution.

Mortality should be our friend not our estranged enemy. Make friends now so when you become intimate it will be a well regarded arrangement. How can you live if you’re not well regarded towards death? It has gifts to offer - appreciation, wisdom and the finality of all things. That might not seem like a gift but it is. All things are finite including the sun, the moon and the stars. I think that’s what I think.

What survives all this? Only the feeling of love and a well regarded friend. That’s all we started off with so it’s a closing circle isn’t it? A circle ends where it starts and it begins where it ends. Something profound about that but I’m not sure what it is right now.

podcast music: Senegal - Dakar Breeze1:30:53-1:38:00 / 1:13:12 -1:16:50

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Fun for me. Thanks for watching.

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Thank you AI or Aiee as I like to pronounce it, like an ancient Comanche victory yell.

Another offering states, “Originating in late 14 century from Church Latin, apocalypsis and Greek apokalyptein, “apocalypse” means revelation or disclosure, literally “to uncover or reveal.” Aiee!

To reveal what? Exactly. That humankind has veered off the path of being human and needs to discover being human again? Just a guess. Needs to shut it down and take a break, discover, rebuild, take the ideas that work and make them better, take the ideas that don’t work and discard them? Something like that maybe?

We’ve been cyborgized and brain washed and conditioned and educated into believing that the way we live now is the only way to live. Serving the master basically, the boss, the corporation, the computer, the stock market, that bloodless, lifeless entity that has been given personhood and called the economy.

After the apocalypse we’ll be paying for cappuccinos with magic stones and a story, a seed that holds a whole tree, a magic leaf that reminds you to be kind. After the apocalypse we’ll see things more clearly. We’ll understand about being human. That it’s more than this. We won’t sell our soul for a dollar. We’ll know freedom and truth are real, not political memes. We will discover ourselves.

Major discovery. Something to behold. A revelation indeed. We are semi-divine. Born from the angels of desire and put in this world to know love and the longing for love. To know bliss, as the old bards put it, the old ones who knew of these things whether they were from Uruk of the ancient Sumer Culture or the old Indus Valley Harappan Culture or a 10,000 year old shaman from Central Texas. They knew what we have forgotten.

I’ll probly get tagged for using this song. Oh well. Sue me. Music is not a commodity. Neither is poetry. Neither is property. Not everything can be bought and sold. What do you think, every baby is born with a price tag? No, just a baby. Naked. Helpless. Wanting to feel love.

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This is the golden era for American humor with shows like King of the Hill, Family Guy, South Park, The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Daily Show and many others.

Maybe the strangeness of the world we live in has spun off all this humor. Crying or laughing are the only two options available for anyone who’s paying attention. A clip from the Daily Show May 25, 2025.

TV sports are in full swing. NBA, MLB (world series) and NFL are all in season. The drama, the excitement, what’s going to happen next? Kinda like life on earth, that’s how I look at it.

Urban gardening is trending. There are community gardens all over town. We’ve got one in my neighborhood. I’ve got one in my front yard. Spinach! Corn! Amaranth?

Mama does not originate from the root word for mammal. ‘Mama’ was invented by babbling babies because it’s the easiest sound to make.

Politics has finally gotten a rib to laugh with (as in ribbing someone). The protest marches have been playful, upbeat and funny. Joyful even. Speeches and chants too but people seem more interested in walking around with their signs or just hanging out.

Fall arrived. The cold wind blew in. It actually rained, like an inch and a half.

The earth is spinning at a thousand miles an hour and will continue doing so for a very long time. The metallic, partly molten core, is between eight and eleven thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It will never cool off.

It’s Halloween. Little kids are being taught that behind the scariness is a sweet treat.

Men are afraid of women, women are afraid of men. That’s not really news.

Now for a commercial. Buy a Ford truck! It will race around and leave tire marks in the dirt.

Back to sports scores. Some teams won and some teams lost.

Traffic is heavy at times but mostly stays in the street. A consoling fact if you ask me. The weather is changing because our earth is tilted. Nothing we can do about that.

A monarch butterfly landed on my newly planted milkweed.

Peace continues to exist deep within the human heart but few people notice it.

That’s the news.

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We stop at an old run down gas station, it looks abandoned. I get out and walk around back. There’s a bunch of people camping out on a large concrete slab and somehow it makes me happy. I’m aware that civilization has collapsed and we’re all living in a post-apocalyptic world. We’re back to tribal living, surviving with our community and our simple living and our gardens. Building our city. My best friend walks up to me and it’s like alright Buddy’s here. Then I wake up.

Where do dreams come from? Do you ever wonder that? And why is it so easy for us to believe they’re real? I’ve been thinking about that alot lately. Is the waking state a dream too and we’re just convinced that it’s real? It’s very rare that I wake up in my own dreams, it’s only after I open my eyes that I realize I’ve been tricked.

Waking up from bad dreams I feel bad, waking up from good dreams I feel good even though I’m aware that they were just dreams. Why is that?

Dreams come from our brain obviously. It creates the movie and shows it on the screen of our consciousness. But where does it come up with the script? Who is in charge of the production? Ancient people thought dreams were oracles, had meaning that could be interpreted. They were auguries and treated as messages from the gods. I’m not sure who my dreams are a message from or even if they are a message.

I once had a dream where I was flying thru the forest with rocket energy coming out of the palms of my hands. I was being guided, in a way, I knew I was going to a secret location where I would meet a friend. This dream took place in the middle of the night in a cottage near the Glastonbury Tor, a place where the ley lines cross and a peculiar energy abides. The really peculiar thing is that when I woke up I remembered it not as a dream but as something that really happened. To this day I don’t know if it was a dream or not.

I remember I was learning how to use the rocket energy, how to go up, how to go left, how to go right. There were kids standing around watching me and they thought it was weird so they started throwing stones at me. I took off.

Anyways I was being guided to a rendezvous place deep in the forest, flying thru the trees. That’s all I remember. Don’t remember if my friend actually made it or not.

Gilgamesh had dreams that were portends. A huge boulder falls out of the sky and lands at his feet. People come and caress it, cry over it. Gilgamesh tries to lift it but he can’t. Soon Enkidu the wild man will enter his life and the life of the city - ancient Uruk. They become buddies, BFF, have adventures, kill monsters, taunt the gods. Enkidu has dreams too, he dreams that scrawny birds are eating his flesh, that he’s drinking dust and he calls out to Gilgamesh for help but Gilgamesh doesn’t come. That was a portent too.

What occurs to me about dreams is that the brain is doing what it always does - creating a world for us. When we’re not asleep it creates a world out of all the sensory input it’s receiving from our eyes, ears, nose, everything. It’s just electrical impulses until it reaches our brain and gets rendered it into some kind of useful, functional reality. When we’re asleep our brain is creating a reality out of our memories and stuff bouncing around in our head. Who knows how many layers of unknown memories lie hidden in our brain? There, but we’re not really conscious of them. At any rate the brain builds our dreams out of something, some elements it finds somewhere and assembles them with it’s own logic. And for some reason we can’t tell the difference.

Primordial. That’s one way to look at it. Directly linked to our subconscious. No wonder ancient people thought they were messages from the gods.

And so here we are in the waking dream. Awake or asleep. In the eternal moment. Free.

Like the song says:

I close my eyes and see colors that don’t exist in the day.Your scent mixes with the wind and takes me further and further.The music explodes, but it’s soft. My heart races,but it’s calmand even if I go, I know I’ll return to this moment.

Love that frees, freedom that envelopesthere is no line between usonly the sound, only the now.Only.In the end it doesn’t matter where we goif the steps follow the same rhythm.if your gaze still finds myself in the middle of any crowd.Love that frees. Freedom that envelopesforever dancingin this eternal moment.Always.

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The urgency to explain or declaim is missing somehow, instead I’m watching TV football and gazing out the south facing windows at the sun filled front yard. There are deep slanting shadows attached to the trees even while their leaves shine brightly. I know soon they will grow dim. Soon it will be night. And then morning again.

The game is mildly amusing but mostly as background for my thoughts. The volume is off. The commercials are either pharmaceuticals or pickup trucks. The colorful uniforms identify which tribe they belong to as they rush and chase and collide with one another on the field of action. This game has been played since we were kids - chase and tag, laugh and fall down. It has been played since the primordial days of hunting deer, chasing them until we could bring them to the ground.

Watching my life unwind, hunted by mortality, that stealthy, persistent and supremely confident hunter. Since the first mewlings, the first suckling at my mother’s breast it has been on my track. Dodge and weave if you can, dance if possible but that arrow will find you . . . and other pleasant thoughts such as these as I watch the trees and the organized violence on TV.

Maybe that’s why I’ve got nothing to say. The old brain slowing down. More interested in reading than writing. More interested in listening than talking. The rohn report more reporting on Rohn than Rohn reporting. Wanting to be comforted by silence, informed no more.

Days go by. Sunrise sunset. I exist in between the two and half the night. And so maybe it is the way we lean into the wind or wind down at the end that matters more than what actually happens. What actually happens happens to everybody in some way or another but how you receive it is unique and personal. Only you know. Only I know.

I had my 75th birthday party recently in the backyard and it was attended by 15 or 20 friends including baristas I know. It was a barista friend (although she didn’t show up) that requested my ‘back story’. Who are you dude? Basically that’s what it was. I jazz and jam with the baristas on my morning cafe quest out there somewhere on my bike, the only human contact I have in a day many times so it’s special. I try to create a theatre moment. Isn’t it all theatre?

Anyways, that was the request and I told her, “Ok, come to my birthday party and I will tell you my back story, reveal my true identity”. But who even knows their true identity? We wear masks on top of masks and are not accustomed to taking them off, exposing ourselves to the vagaries and judgmental opinions of the world.

So anyways I prepared a speech and endeavored to tell my ‘back story’ even though Gabby wasn’t there. Everyone seemed interested. I hit the high points along the way. How I came to be who I am or atleast who I appear to be. At the end I congratulated myself on making it this far, congratulated everybody for making it this far. Hip hooray, and turned on the music. Big sound coming out of the speakers with the video accompaniment on the outdoor screen. Check it out below. Eighteen songs chosen for their grooviness and danceability.

And so here I am, the son of a Baptist preacher, born and bred in a small midwestern farming town, a product of 1950’s public education (I learned my ABC’s and 1 2 3’s but never who I was or how to be), left alone I finally began my quest, traveling with my backpack and tent across Europe to the ‘Holy Land’ and back, still didn’t find it, Psychedelics - they taught me a lot, really a lot - that everything is not what it seems, but what is it then? That, they didn’t teach me. Finding my mentor, Prem Rawat, just a young kid then, fresh from India where he grew up and touring the world, barely a teenager but confident and capable. He showed me what I was looking for. Big moment. Some people never find it. Continuing with my life, working, making money, getting tired of making money, living in Mexico on the beach, scuba diving and teaching scuba diving (finally becoming a Baptist minister in a way as my father had always hoped) saving the sea turtles, returning to civilization, wearing shoes, making money, playing the game, writing poetry, taking everything I knew and throwing it into that poetry, having affairs, losing it, finding it, writing about it, making my way to . . . here, now, where we all are. It’s just do we notice it? Everything has led to this. This is it. Everything you thought your life would be, it is what it is.

I got nothing more to say really. Didn’t know I had this much. Might have stepped out of my boundaries a little but that’s alright. Who can say what we should be. And then we die.

75th birthday celebration playlist

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The urgency to explain or declaim is missing somehow, instead I’m watching TV football and gazing out the south facing windows at the sun filled front yard. There are deep slanting shadows attached to the trees even while their leaves shine brightly. I know soon they will grow dim. Soon it will be night. And then morning again.

The game is mildly amusing but mostly as background for my thoughts. The volume is off. The commercials are either pharmaceuticals or pickup trucks. The colorful uniforms identify which tribe they belong to as they rush and chase and collide with one another on the field of action. This game has been played since we were kids - chase and tag, laugh and fall down. It has been played since the primordial days of hunting deer, chasing them until we could bring them to the ground.

Watching my life unwind, hunted by mortality, that stealthy, persistent and supremely confident hunter. Since the first mewlings, the first suckling at my mother’s breast it has been on my track. Dodge and weave if you can, dance if possible but that arrow will find you . . . and other pleasant thoughts such as these as I watch the trees and the organized violence on TV.

Maybe that’s why I’ve got nothing to say. The old brain slowing down. More interested in reading than writing. More interested in listening than talking. The rohn report more reporting on Rohn than Rohn reporting. Wanting to be comforted by silence, informed no more.

Days go by. Sunrise sunset. I exist in between the two and half the night. And so maybe it is the way we lean into the wind or wind down at the end that matters more than what actually happens. What actually happens happens to everybody in some way or another but how you receive it is unique and personal. Only you know. Only I know.

I had my 75th birthday party recently in the backyard and it was attended by 15 or 20 friends including baristas I know. It was a barista friend (although she didn’t show up) that requested my ‘back story’. Who are you dude? Basically that’s what it was. I jazz and jam with the baristas on my morning cafe quest out there somewhere on my bike, the only human contact I have in a day many times so it’s special. I try to create a theatre moment. Isn’t it all theatre?

Anyways, that was the request and I told her, “Ok, come to my birthday party and I will tell you my back story, reveal my true identity”. But who even knows their true identity? We wear masks on top of masks and are not accustomed to taking them off, exposing ourselves to the vagaries and judgmental opinions of the world.

So anyways I prepared a speech and endeavored to tell my ‘back story’ even though Gabby wasn’t there. Everyone seemed interested. I hit the high points along the way. How I came to be who I am or atleast who I appear to be. At the end I congratulated myself on making it this far, congratulated everybody for making it this far. Hip hooray, and turned on the music. Big sound coming out of the speakers with the video accompaniment on the outdoor screen. Check it out below. Eighteen songs chosen for their grooviness and danceability.

And so here I am, the son of a Baptist preacher, born and bred in a small midwestern farming town, a product of 1950’s public education (I learned my ABC’s and 1 2 3’s but never who I was or how to be), left alone I finally began my quest, traveling with my backpack and tent across Europe to the ‘Holy Land’ and back, still didn’t find it, Psychedelics - they taught me a lot, really a lot - that everything is not what it seems, but what is it then? That, they didn’t teach me. Finding my mentor, Prem Rawat, just a young kid then, fresh from India where he grew up and touring the world, barely a teenager but confident and capable. He showed me what I was looking for. Big moment. Some people never find it. Continuing with my life, working, making money, getting tired of making money, living in Mexico on the beach, scuba diving and teaching scuba diving (finally becoming a Baptist minister in a way as my father had always hoped) saving the sea turtles, returning to civilization, wearing shoes, making money, playing the game, writing poetry, taking everything I knew and throwing it into that poetry, having affairs, losing it, finding it, writing about it, making my way to . . . here, now, where we all are. It’s just do we notice it? Everything has led to this. This is it. Everything you thought your life would be, it is what it is.

I got nothing more to say really. Didn’t know I had this much. Might have stepped out of my boundaries a little but that’s alright. Who can say what we should be. And then we die.

75th birthday celebration playlist

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Just finished ‘A War with Grandpa’, a young (very young) adult novel by Robert Kimmel Smith. Why he needs 3 names I don’t know. Maybe because there are so many Robert Smiths? Anyways, this is for my 1st grade mentoring.

On the Kindle app on my phone I’ve got ‘The Books of Jacob’ Olga Tokarczuk, 1,000 pages of it if it had pages, it just has unfolding screens, endlessly unfolding screens. I’m on page 525 if it was a page. Jewish shtetl life in Eastern Europe, 18th century. It won the Nobel Prize.

‘The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door’ Hafez, translated by Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn (in smaller print) lies nearby. I sometimes slip that into my shoulder bag when I’m off to the cafe. They spent 6 years (Robert and Leonard) looking for metaphors and similes that might provide some approximation of what they thought Hafez might have been trying to say 600 years ago.

What if the evening news shows were a review of books and talking about them? Just a bit of news, like a commercial breaking in once in a while. What would that be like? A lively, informed, intelligent panel going after it, going off on it. Curious and uninhibited, courageous, discovering new meanings and new pathways to find new meanings. We could call it ‘news 2’. Everyone sitting around drinking cappuccinos, maybe a barista and a cafe in the background.

The first poem in ‘Walking to Martha’s Vineyard’ is called 'Year One’ and it’s illustrated, presumably, by ‘Monica Westin 2006’ whose name is written and dated on the inside cover of the book. There could be illustration, dance, oratory, so many ways to celebrate literature. It would be a great show. Wheel of Fortune comes on next. Then America’s Funniest Home Videos and then . . . something else. But for awhile it was just books and talking about it.

Here’s the poem:

Year One

I was still standingon a northern corner.

Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proofof Your existence? There is nothingbut.

I’ve got more books in my bookshelf. I’ve got more bookshelves.

I buy books if I can’t find them anywhere else. ‘Talking To The Moon, Wildlife adventures on the plains and prairies of Osage country’ from the University of Oklahoma Press was $31.84 with shipping. It’ll be here in a couple of weeks. John Joseph Mathews.

Hafez says:

Don’t expect obedience, promise keeping, or rectitudeFrom me; I’m drunk. I’ve been famous for carryingA wine pitcher around since the First Covenant with Adam.

He, of course, is referring to a different kind of wine.

In my favorite book, ‘failure’, published in 2007, there’s a poem called ‘The Summer People’.

Santos, a strong, friendly man,who built my wife’s sculpture studio,Fixed everything I couldn’t,looked angry in town last week.Then he stopped coming. We wonderedif we paid him enough, if he envied us.Once he came over late to help me catch a batwith a newspaper and trash basket.He liked that I laughed at how scared I got.

We’re “year rounds,” what the locals callsummer people who live here full time.Always in a hurry, the summer people honk a lot,own bigger cars and houses. Once I beat a guyin a pickup to a parking space, our summer sport.”Lousy New Yorker!” he cried.

Every day now men from Guatemala, Ecuador,and Mexico line up at the railroad station.They know that they’re despised,that no one likes having to share their rewards,or being made to feel spiteful.

When my uncle Joe showed me the shotgunhe kept near the cash registerto scare the black migrantswho bought his overpriced beer and cold cutsin his grocery outside of Rochester, N.Y.,his eyes blazed like emerald suns.It’s impossible to forget his eyes.

At parties the summer peoplewho moved here after 9/11talk about all the things they had to give up.It’s beautiful here, they say, but everythingis tentative and strange,as if the beauty isn’t theirs to enjoy.

When I’m tired, my father’s accentscrapes my tongue like a scythe.He never cut our grass or knewwhat grade I was in. He worked days,nights, and weekends, but failed anyway.Late at night, when he was too tired to sleep,he’d stare out the window so powerfullythe world inside and outsideour house would disappear.

In Guatemala, after working all day,Santos studied to be an architect.He suffered big dreams, his wife said.My wife’s studio is magnificent.We’d hear him up there in the dark,hammering and singing, as if he were the happiest man alive.

And from ‘The Books of Jacob‘ of a thousand pages if there’s one:

It was as if my master Mordechai already knew about everything. A few days later he appeared out of the blue in Busk because he had had a strange dream. He had dreamed that in front of the synagogue in Lwow he saw the Jacob of the Bible handing out goat droppings to passersby. Most of those who received these gifts were offended or burst into raucous laughter, but those who accepted the gift and swallowed it respectfully began to shine from within like lanterns. Thus in this vision, Mordechai, too, held out his hand to receive the gift.

‘The War with Grand Pa’, page 93 under the chapter heading ‘GO FISH’ has a pretty good paragraph:

I was thinking pretty hard about how I was going to get back at Grandpa. It wasn’t easy. There were a lot of things I could do and a lot I’d never do. Like burning his underwear, for instance. I didn’t want to do something I’d be sorry for later.

The show could go on like that for half an hour or more, exciting, diverse, spontaneous connections, hilarity. It would be great. Interviews, sponsorships. Mercedes Benz and Toyota competing for commercial space. Burger King and Corona beer commercials like on football games. The Arther C. and Mildred G. Saranopticas Foundation for the Support of the Arts.

I only want to watch, I wouldn’t be on the actual show.

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Earth is the third rock from the sun, so to say, having a solid core like the other inner planets. It’s comfortable, so comfortable that life was established here billions of years ago and continues to proliferate.

This is Mars, fourth planet from the sun and freezing cold. There may be life there but hiding underground with the water. If there is water. Doesn’t look like a thriving planet.

We could go on visiting all the planets in our solar system: Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus. There’s no sign of life on any of them. It’s just here on planet Earth. We haven’t yet found any planets outside our solar system that have life either. There may be. They’re just too far away to see.

On planet Earth there are approximately 100 million species and Lord knows how many independent life forms (even Google couldn’t answer that question). Our planet is covered with life from earthworms to elephants and including of course the tiny ones that you can’t see - the microbes. They live and die and procreate with their own DNA and their own agenda.

What is a microbe’s agenda, one might ask? I don’t exactly know but there must be one otherwise why is it even alive? What caused it to rise up from the grit and slime of primordial matter? There must be some reason, some principle at work.

Anyways, planet Earth is full of life. We take it for granted though, don’t really appreciate what’s been given to us. Take another look at Mercury.

That planet has geology but it doesn’t have biology. We have geology: continents, oceans, mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes and we have biology. Geology and biology combined is called a biosphere. We have a biosphere.

Here’s in praise of our biosphere. It’s fantastic! Let’s not wreck it folks. We’ve been leaning on it pretty heavily for the last 200 years. Right now species are going extinct at 1,000 times the normal rate that they would if humans weren’t around wrecking everything.

We live in the biosphere. It’s like a protected zone against all the odds, the solar radiation, the cosmic rays and the cold, airless void of space. But we’re vulnerable. We’re on top of the food chain and if anything breaks we’re liable. What if we crash the system? What are we going to do, make food in a factory? From what? Water and air and soil? That’s what the biosphere does already. It makes food for everybody. For free.

There’s time to change our wasteful ways, but we better hurry. Nothing is guaranteed, not even the survival of the human race. We’re on top of the food chain, alrighty, and that’s great but we would be sure to fall if it breaks.

Thank you to All India Radio from Melbourne for this amazing song. I have admired it for a long time. It features the gorgeous voice of Leona Gray.

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I’ve created a biosphere and a ranchito and feel responsible for the animals and plants that live here. The dragonflies darting around above the hydrilla in the old cement swimming pool (now a fish pond) and the bats that fly thru the air in the evening skimming the water, the orange and white gold fish who now are as large as small carp which I guess they are and the hundreds of tiny minnowy fish that swim among them. The cardinal couple who come and sing to me some evenings outside my studio window. The cats, the raccoons, the occasional opossum, the possum haw lining the fence line with their brilliant red berries in the winter, the chili pequin bushes that I truly love - small hot chilis that look like Christmas ornaments amidst the tender green leaves. All this and so much more holds me here.

I don’t really care to travel anyways, I actually prefer my routine and my postage stamp sized ranchito where I occasionally grow a bit of swiss chard, a tomato or two, maybe some spinach. Here I can weather the vagaries of growing older and maintain myself and my casita. Things are manageable and the cafe experience is just a bike ride away.

There are adventures to experience and things to discover everywhere. Instead of traveling and exploring unknown parts of the world I have discovered that everywhere is here. Truth. What if I was from Tunisia and came here to visit - this would all be fantastic and exciting and wonderfully new. I once had a Couchsurfer from Tunisia who discovered my city from the bike tour I gave her and then went out on her own and was gone all day, every day exploring. It would have been the same if I had visited her in Tunisia. Wonders abound wherever you are. That’s my take away.

The fish pond, although it warms considerably by the end of summer and doesn’t have quite the same thrill it has in Spring and Winter, is a genuine baptismal experience. I grew up a Baptist, attended regular services by virtue of the fact that my father was the minister and was even baptized in front of the congregation in a truly terrifying ritual of full immersion but the custom comes from John the Baptist and Jesus in the Jordon River and before that has its antecedents in ancient history going way back to before there was history. People have always jumped in the water to gain the renewal and the blessing. I can do that daily. No chlorine.

My house is air conditioned, the roof is secure and there are windows all around. A front porch and a back porch and a driveway with a beat up old Prius sitting in it ready to go to the store in any weather. All that’s left is to appreciate it.

Once when I was living in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico I went back in the jungle to explore a friend’s cenote. I was a scuba instructor and an occasional cave diver - the cenotes being connected to one another underground in these amazing and maze like tunnels, rivers actually. It was a thing to see where they went and to discover new underwater caves and caverns. This cenote was small and rocky but I decided to explore what I could just with breath hold diving, to see if it was worth bringing cave diving gear back there and doing a proper exploration. I was good at breath hold diving, practiced it, could stay underwater for three minutes so I put on my mask and flippers and went in, down, to the left and to the right with my little flashlight. When it became obvious that it didn’t go anywhere I turned around and in that moment my light went out. It was perfectly dark and I didn’t have any assurance at all that I could find my way back to the surface. A wrong turn at that moment could spell doom. And guess what? My light came back on and I swam back to the surface deeply happy that I was still alive and breathing air, an ocean of air, instead of dying in a panic for the lack of it.

I think about that sometimes when I feel bored or lost. At least I’m not in an underwater cave with no air, trapped and frightened. Plenty of air here. I can breathe all I want in a nice easy rhythm.

The song starts out:A garden begins with a seedAnd a vision nourished by sunlightKeep going, keep going, my love, keep goingWater everything around, your dreams live in my bodyLife here, life here, nothing is fair, life hereI give you the splendor, dawn in the desertI want to go, I want to go, behind you I want to goBegin humanity on another planet and universeHeart of peace, soul of lavaSaliva of bread, Colombian without ancestors

The video is underwater. In a cave or something, then a garden. Seemed appropriate. Just came up on YouTube. It’s magic. Everything is magic. All around me all the time.

Existence is magic. I pray for the eyes to see it, the heart to feel it. Watch the video. ‘Jardines’ featuring Lido Pimienta.

A garden of red and yellow flowersYour light comes to cuddle the rootI want to go, I want to go, before you I want to goShow you my path of emeralds and diamondsHeart of straw, soul of lavaSaliva of bread, Colombian without memories

The gardens were nourishedThey were nourished by the Magdalena RiverThe dolphins, pink dolphinsWere greeting me with a tender smileI would like to be like the breezeTo be the breeze that ruffles your hairAnd to get inside it, to get inside itSo I can see and hear your smileOf red and yellow flowersYour light comes nestled in the roots

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When I woke up this morning, White Tail, the yellow cat with the white tail, was on the night stand monitoring my movements, calibrating. Is he going to get up and feed us now? Dawn had not yet arrived, we were still in the realm of darkness but I could see his shape and infer his presence. He had spent the night somewhere on my bed, curled in among the sheets. When I sat up, he purred. When I picked up the phone, it lit up. The room became softly illuminated. I had created light. I imagined White Tail perceiving me as some kind of a light maker, some kind of a magician in his cat-brained perception of things. Cats don’t know about electricity but they do know that I had made the darkness go away and brought the light.

I got up and went into the bathroom, light appeared as I made some tinkling sounds. I moved to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, light emerged. Soon the whole kitchen was full of light and it was time for breakfast. White Tail jumped down, ran into the dining room, stationed himself by the cat bowl and purred. There was enough light spilling out from the kitchen that I didn’t need to make more light. Except for the back porch, I made light there so I could feed Bob, the feral one and the fish. I’m the light maker.

In the book I’m reading, ‘Mutant Messenger Down Under’ by Marlo Morgan. people change their assigned birth name whenever they want to. At any point in time if they feel they have entered a new phase they just go before the tribe and say . . .

“Hi, I’m Great Wonder, you all know me as Great Wonder but now I am changing my name to Hits the Rock.” “Hi Hits the Rock.”, the tribe responds in unison. And so it is, they’re Hits the Rock.

We kinda do that with our titles and accolades, “Oh this is Suzi, she won the Oppenheimer Award for best pianist in Sweden.” “Dr. So and so, hello.” “Bill Rutherford, I’m an attorney. How are you?” But we don’t really change our names just because we feel like it, because we feel like we’re a different person today and have a different perspective and want to be recognized a different way. There’s alot of legal baggage involved in changing your name. Documents and forms and formal proceedings and legal fees. The FBI might like to know about it.

In her book, Marlo Morgan, goes on a walkabout thru the Australian desert with an Aboriginal tribe wearing no shoes and learns the secrets of their culture. Well some of them anyway. The ones they want to share with her and the ones she is able to understand.

She had been invited to receive an award by this particular tribe who heard of her work with Aboriginal youth and as the story begins, her ‘chauffeur’ picks her up in front of her hotel as arranged but then drives out into the desert. No air conditioned venue, no ceremony and no award luncheon seem to be forthcoming, instead there’s a rendezvous with a band of Aborigines who summarily take her for a walkabout in the desert. Four months later they return to the edge of civilization, drop her off and disappear. Great book.

Anyways I’ve changed my name to Light Maker, atleast as far as the cats are concerned. I can make light, “Hi, I’m Light Maker, you used to know me as Rohn”. Of course cats don’t use names so it’s of limited usefulness but I think it’s good practice and besides that’s what I can do really well. I make light wherever I go, small brightly colored flashlights are stashed at various places all over the house just for that purpose, in case I have to dispel the darkness.

Of course there are other light makers too: the stars in the sky, the cars driving by before dawn, but I would like to think that I am the main one atleast for White Tail, I would like to think that I appear as some sort of a god with supernatural powers, if cats have gods. I mean I dunno.

Here’s another Light Maker: d. ellis phelps. A friend of mine who does amazing paintings. Vibrant, luminous, explosive, joyous. I asked her if she was underwater when she painted this and she said “inside the primordial ooze: chit ganna, what makes the worlds…” I don’t know what chit ganna is but what cha gonna do?.

“Let there be light.” said God at the beginning of time. ‘And there was light.’ That was solid, I mean that wasn’t solid, that was before anything that was solid was created but that was awesome. Way to go, God! Your got it going on. Without light you can’t see anything. Not the birds and the bees, not the Garden of Eden, not the firmament, not the waters below or the waters above.

In 1945 scientists at the Los Almos Laboratory in New Mexico detonated the first atomic bomb. They were light makers. A blinding flash filled the sky and created a shock wave that knocked people down 10 miles away The mountains rumbled with thunder.

“It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions”, recalls Joan Hinton one of the physicists who witnessed the blast. “The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up. Then it turned purple and blue and went up and up and up.” She was 25 miles away hiding on a hill.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” said Oppenheimer afterwards as if he had stumbled on a secret curse instead of intentionally building a bomb with the power of 2,000 tons of TNT and then blowing it up. All kinds of light makers.

There are bioluminescent algae floating around in the ocean flashing their blue lights like some kind of semaphore. I’ve seen them.

“Where does the light go?” is a question your child might ask when you’re turning off the light and preparing to leave their room. “Go to sleep child. It goes back to itself” you might say without thinking much about it.

There’s the self-effulgent light talked about in the Vedas. Light you can see with your eyes closed.

Angels are creatures of light, light bearers.

Everyone carries some light inside of them.

Everyone makes light.

We’re all light makers.

Music for the podcast: Aqua Venue from the album ‘After the Turn a Storm’ by Hello Meteor. Buy it on Bandcamp.

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Summer has dropped like a heavy beam into my front yard. It’s palpable. Hot and dry. The earth is sun baked, cracks appear. The sunflowers that grew like a forest 6 or 8 feet high now bow their heads and mourn. Their roots are shrunken and shriveled in the dirt. The microbes are screaming. I can hear them almost. Everyone is miserable which is why I’m watering the yard this morning before the sun gets up high in the sky, give the guys some respite.

I’m sure any remaining bugs appreciate it too. And the microbes, our invisible neighbors, it gives them a reason to hang on for another day.

It’s the beginning of the end. Everything must die.

The sunflowers have gone to seed and provided food for the sparrows, atleast that’s good. I watch an orange butterfly flitting from seed head to seed head, but the petals are withered or missing and there is no nectar. Most of the summer’s bugs are gone - the little white winged ones, the bees, the caterpillars that ate my spinach, everybody. The giant flying grasshopper is nowhere to be seen.

The birds are gone too, the ones who ate the bugs. Although the cardinal still forages on the ground in the shade outside my screened window. Probably no bugs though.

I wonder sometimes how much damage we have done to our natural environment where creatures still live by the food chain. How many bugs starve and how many birds that eat them starve too.

I saw a lightning bug in the backyard a couple of months ago. When I was a kid they were plentiful. The cicadas too. I heard one playing his violin this Spring. Used to be the air was full of their buzzing.

Anyways, who wants to hear about that. Summer is here and sunshine reigns supreme and who am I to argue with King Summer? I’ll just endure it like I always have - from inside my house with the air conditioning on. I don’t have to stand outside in one place all day.

It’s cyclical isn’t it? Things turn and return. All that once was will be again and all that is shall cease to be. Like the good ole USA. We’re through with our Summer and well into Fall, headed for Winter. But that’s another story.

The fiery little chili pequins are thriving. They seem to like the hot weather. Their berries turn red and dare someone to eat them. I will and the mockingbirds, the ones who planted them there.

Two thorny deep rooted native trees stand in the hedgerow like a couple of old pals - palo verde and retama. They’re not bothered by the hot dry conditions either, they’re desert plants.

And the hackberries too are able to survive. Somehow. They get big and drop their limbs when they get too heavy. I’m not worried about them. The Monterrey oak that I planted 20 years ago when I moved here is healthy too. It’s now the largest tree in the front yard. It features a grotto beneath its spreading branches where you can hang out and watch people passing by in the street with their dogs or kids in tow. They don’t see me.

Some things are thriving, some are dying. Everything is mutable, malleable. Summer is inevitable but it doesn’t last forever. I’ll wait it out. I’ve seen this play before. Day and night. Spring, summer and fall. Winter. The universe itself will end some day. That’ll be some winter. And then it will spring forth again. Maybe. That’s what some people think.

And why not? The ancient people who lived here before us knew about the cycles of nature and were intimate with it. They believed in regeneration and rebirth. If hot dry oppressive summer doesn’t last forever then neither does all our problems. Neither does a lifetime.

My view out the window with the cardinal and the hackberry trees and the dry excoriated tiny patch of land I call my ‘yard’ is bright with sunlight right now but it will soon dim and die out. I’ll watch that too.

Podcast music by Yeahman / ‘Miniyamba’ Main Artists: Hajna, Mina Shankha Music Publisher: Shika Shika Composer: Jean Dasso, Mina Shankha, Damien Carissimo

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It was a revelation to me. I had not read the Hunger Games but turns out many people have, especially the 13 - 28 year olds. It’s a perfect synthesis of romance, combat, live action, superheroes, super villains and a mythic story (I watched the movie). All these elements trigger a high degree of response among young adults. I can understood why they are so popular, they’re a part of Gen Z’s cultural psyche.

It’s a call to arms, it’s a revolutionary manifesto for teenagers who desperately need a revolution to believe in, something to rebel against. It’s a demand for change from the Z generation as they wake up and start to assume responsibility for the world. They have the wisdom and they can see it, it’s obvious. May the wisdom of the Z generation guide us home. Hey they got it from Minecraft and Mocking Jay and now they’re up to bat or atleast in the on deck circle.

2.My friend Clayton wants to save the world or atleast make it more sustainable. Ever since I met him 6 years ago we have been talking about how to ‘make it better’ and Clayton has done more than talk, he has acquired the skills to build simple housing that is energy efficient, made from local materials and - one other thing I forget. Fireproof and durable. He has taken workshops all over the world learning about building things and growing food.

Cob construction is what I’m talking about. It’s been around for 10,000 years and people are still using it, It's estimated that half the people in the world live in some kind of cob house. It could be traditional housing in Zambia or people wanting to live a simpler, more sustainable life in Costa Rica, or it might be a summer home constructed in the Adirondacks for an insurance executive and his family from Philadelphia or a hilltop redoubt in Puerto Rico for ecology tourists learning about sustainability - which may be Clayton’s dream. I don’t know, we have talked about it. Having land and a place to share knowledge and practice sustainable living I think is his dream. Be part of the solution.

From AI. Cob is comprised of clay, sand and straw. That's it! These materials are ridiculously cheap and easy to come by almost anywhere on the planet. When properly mixed together they become incredibly strong, durable and beautiful - the perfect combination for a home.

Cob walls absorb heat during the day and release it at night, helping to keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

You can go several stories high with it, make any shape you wish.

Building with cob is a slower process, though, you have to wait for the mud to get hard before you add the next layer. But that would also help you visualize and develop your house as you’re building it. Building with 2X4’s according to a blueprint you can put it up fast but it goes up exactly as planned and doesn’t smell like earth : )

Here’s an interview I did with Clayton in 2022, we’re having a conversation in the back yard. One Man’s Journey in Becoming Nothing and Gaining Everything Along the Way This is an excerpt.”What if you had an Aladdin’s lamp and you could make any wish come true what kind of life would you like to lead. How would you visualize your life unfolding in the best possible circumstance?”If I had an Aladdin’s lamp?“Yes!”Is the genie Robin Williams or is it somebody else?”It’s a real genie. It can actually, you know . . .”He was my favorite genie.”He was a genie?”Well he played a genie but he was a genie in real life too. He was a magician. He made people laugh. Umh, I don’t think I would necessarily wish anything for myself, I don’t care much for money. I don’t really believe in it. I think I would wish for humanity to wake up and realize that money is not important. It’s very backwards how our society operates. What’s important is helping people, serving people, serving our planet, being good stewards, securing a future for all species, all . . . everything. Umh, I don’t even know if I would use the 3 wishes, I would just want that one thing. If I could have anything in the world it would be for people to put our planet first before the profits.”That’s a pretty cool response my brother . . .

Clayton is currently in North Dakota, or is it Montana acquiring new skills and building earthen projects.

3.The Peace Education Program is a project of the Prem Rawat Foundation. Not like peace can be taught but it can be facilitated. This program is effective, seminal and massive in scope. I mean it’s up to scale, since its inception in 2007 over half a million people have participated. I have known about it for years, watched it grow, watched their documentary videos about how it’s working in different areas of the world and how it changes people’s lives.

From their website: “The Peace Education Program is an innovative series of video-based workshops that help people discover their own inner strength and personal peace.” There was a PEP at Dominguez Jail in San Antonio way back when it was just starting up. They made a movie about it, here’s the promo Inside Peace.

Some quotes from inmates who went through the program.

“An unlit candle can’t light any but one lit candle can light thousands. If I can better myself and have peace within me, clarity, happiness, be content - I need to better myself before I can help anybody else.”

“People live in the two minutes. The minute that just happened and the minute that’s on it’s way, you know, the past and the future. He teaches us to live in the third minute which is the here and the now, how to just appreciate being alive.”

“When you come to the place that you’re alright just who you are, everything else falls into place.”

The Peace Education Program is active in 58 countries, and has been translated into 43 languages. It’s been hosted by numerous organizations including educational institutions, schools, universities, community centers, senior centers, homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation facilities and prisons. I got that from the website too.

It’s a power for good that’s happening all over the world. Newest countries to join: Japan, Bolivia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras and the Philippines.

There’s good things happening in the world, is the point of my missive. I don’t know about the violent uprising in the Hunger Games but it was the spirit of those two young women in the park that I admired. The aspiration to make it better, to find peace, is alive and well inside the human soul.

Can we talk about this? Can we work for this? Can we believe in it, can we find it in ourselves? It’s powerful, it has existed ever since there were humans, that’s what makes us human. It manifests in every corner of every culture, in people all over the world. It is our commonality. It’s something we can do or atleast try to do.

That’s what I try to do. If you think it’s impossible, all the better, that’s what superheroes do. We are the superheroes, by the way. Have you noticed that they kind of look like us usually? They kind of act like us for the most part, in an exaggerated way. They are created by us, by our imagination, because that’s what we imagine we can do. Fly and do heroic deeds and redress evil, destroy injustice, protect the innocent. Sound familiar? That’s our noblest character.

And superheroes aren’t new, they go back to ancient times, back to the old time honored traditions of the scriptures. All the religions have them. Gods and angels, Father Sky and Mother Earth, brujas and shamans, genies. Superman? The new Superman movie is out. It’s almost an ancient story.

All these stories are about us. Ourselves. The humans. Doing impossible tasks.

Some politician needs to take this on. The impossible quest and all that. Let’s live on the planet sustainably with peace and goodwill for all. If we can imagine it then we can do it. We might be able to do it. It’s not impossible. This is what we were made for.

This entire song is included at the end of the podcast. Music and lyrics by Alexia Chellun. Check out her website.

Also featuring Danielle Salvitto, Marlene Bayle, Paula Vahos and Richard Gormley. Video by Alessandro Sigismondi.

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we are protected fromthis awesome terror by our gentle light blue sky with a few clouds floating thruwhat can be more peacefulheaven above and earthbelow and never the twainshall meet

unless you’re a human beingthen you can bridge the gapyou are the bridge andthe gap is your longing formeaning

that’s what i think

referring to myself ofcoursedon’t want to insinuateanything about anyone elsedon’t want to write anythingthat isn’t true / it’s all true

i feel the truth of itfacebook was only a scamto steal my energy andsell it for a dollarthat’s all i am :: an attentiongenerator something theycan siphon off to feed their money machinein their data center

i resent that or should i just accept it / part of theshow / part of this epicgreek theatre tragicomedywe call modern life

maybe if i stopped resenting it . . . no that won’t worki’m deeply offended truthbe known i takeumberance - is that a word ??i don’t think so / can’t find the real one / makesme edgy / sometimes i actout / obnoxious

i can’t help it though / it’s an old bad habit all the wayback to high school and evenbefore probly / searching forattention and validation

i validate myself july 23rd 2025 under a blue sky withwispy clouds blowing awayfinding their own destiny

hit another cappuccino / what isthis destiny thing anyway / i’mnot sure i’m familiar withit / is that where i’m going or is that where i’ve been oris that being here now in abody breathing under a blue sky on a world spreading outbefore me likea . . . minecraft videogame endless

and created by my own handor mouse actually / funny howthe mouse became the mostpowerful animal in the world / it’s not called a tigerdoing all those clicks

sun’s upmorning’s goneclouds swept awayif happens every dayalmost

butterfly in the bushesdoes a butterfly feelpleasure fluttering aroundamong the flowers smelling the anthers and looking fornectar ?? or do the humansin their penthouse above the city enjoy the ultimate pleasure having gatheredall their pollen in onebasket and deposited itin their stock market account ??

is it one bohemian poetthat can make a differenceriding their bike down the street ?? i see people iinteract with them theysee me / that’s all / maybethat’s all it takes

find the podcast music here ::

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It took me six years to get it down, to get all the words in place like I envisioned but it finally happened. I looked at it one day and tt was complete. It seemed to work pretty much as I intended. Good job. Goal #1.

I spent the next two years editing it and looking for a publisher. I had more luck writing the book than I did finding a publisher. The writing was under my control, the publishers were not. They were looking out for their own agenda - how to sell books, ones that had a clearly definable audience and fit into a clearly definable genre. I had neither of those. They weren’t interested.

Sometimes you have to modify your original vow to accommodate the reality of things. Ok, fine I conceded, I’ll publish it without a publisher and set about learning Amazon’s software for self-publishing. ISBN numbers and formatting and cover art and all kinds of hoops to jump thru there were.

Plus, if you want it to be available in actual bookstores, you have to learn Ingram Spark’s software as well. Even harder: obscure instructions, dead ends, looping programs, illogical pathways, dense foliage in there.

If you want to do something bad enough you can always find a way, that’s what I learned. My book is now available in all kinds of formats: hardcover, paperback, e-book, it’s in the San Antonio public library, it’s available in actual bookstores.

The final phase of my solemn pledge was to find an audience. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two years: telling people about it at the cafe (if I see someone reading a book I’ll go right up to them and ask them what they’re reading and generally end up in a conversation about books), going to book fairs, doing book readings and book signings and author talks. Recently I did an event at Landa library, a lovely old estate turned library surrounded by oak trees and a playground for kids.

That was fun. Eight people came. That was my audience.

thank you all for coming so much i really appreciate it / excited to have a chance to talk about my book to some other people and thank you to robin alacort who just closed the door and the beautiful landa library it’s a wonderful place to have an event

And with that I was off and running. It reminded me (and I mentioned this in my spiel ) that my father was (or had been) a preacher. He got up there and delivered his sermon to the congregation every Sunday morning. It was his solemn duty. He didn’t have much of an audience either but he persevered.

so i thought that i should probably start off with telling you something about myself / if you don’t have a connection with the author of the book then it’s kinda hard to get into it / if you feel like you know the person it’s easier to . . . so my name is rohn bayes / i’m from michigan

On and on it went over the course of an hour and a half, reading, talking, listening, having conversations.

Eight of us, nine including me. Two of them were new faces, had not met them before. One of them had read the book already, got it from the library, the other person was indígena from California but she came here when she got the call. We were talking about what attracted us to San Antonio. It was a commonality and it’s also part of the book. Anyways,

John got up and read a random passage. Just opened it up and read the Hindu creation myth from the Rig Veda. Rig Veda means "praise" and "knowledge". It goes like this:

At first there was only darkness wrapped in darknessAll this was just un-illuminated water.That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,arose at last, born of the power of heat.In the beginning desire descended on it —that was the primal seed, born of the mind.The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdomknow that which is, is kin to that which is not.

We were exploring the magic secrets of the ancient book and talking about them. How humans need a story to explain everything. We are the great story tellers. It’s one of the most human things about us - our need to tell stories. Our need to conceive of a god to assure us that everything is under control and of an afterlife to explain death. How amazing it is to be human and live on a planet with a beautiful life giving biosphere. Symbiosis, commonality, hostesses, Gilgamesh . . . and we were right back in the book again talking about the humans.

so that’s what the book’s about I sort of said in summation. one of the things it’s about / being human / pull yourself together and find your humanity / it’s right there inside of you / where else would you want to look for it ??

Mission complete? Or mission ongoing? Finding our humanity is definitely a process that I don’t think ever ends. I think we have just begun.

This journey of becoming fully human could take us to amazing places if we really believed in it. We could make a heaven on earth if we really wanted to. That’s our potential. It would be an amazing adventure. A lot of fun. More exciting than going to Mars.

Maybe we need to make a solemn vow to become fully human, to explore our deepest selves and figure out what it’s all about. Maybe that’s our project. Maybe that would lift us out of our funk, our habituated use of war to solve problems, our obsession with controlling things as if we were in control of nature. No, we’re part of nature.

I dunno maybe I’m just an inveterate preacher trying to save the world. Preaching it out like my dad.

Maybe we can save the world if we all pull together, if we become fully human, empower ourselves with the full recognition of all the amazing features that make us human.

Anyways, that’s the whole point of the book basically. Here’s my copy. It’s been through a lot: a flash flood on Broadway, many miles of riding around in my panniers, stroked and poked and flipped through, read and re-read, marked up and book marked, scanned and edited. Pretty durable.

I’m glad I made the journey.

podcast music Nils Frahm - Familiar

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we can peer into the mystery of ancient archaeology and read the current news on our card shaped handheld device / we can take pictures and send them to friends without developing them at the drugstore / we can remember things with voice recorder that would have been lost in the labyrinth of our own forgetfulness / that place where minutiae and details diffuse and disperse

just remember not to sit on your phone or leave it behind on the table when you get up to go or drop it in the street where it gets run over by a car or lose it at the carnival or get it drenched in a rainstorm / it’s an external device not part of our body although maybe one day it will be a small antenna sprouted from our left ear tracking signals from the mother chip / never separated / re-charged at night from our electronic pillow where we dream of electric sheep and wake to the pulse of a gentle tone emanating from the internal speaker behind our medulla oblongata / i like that word medulla oblongata you can google it if you like and learn all about it / i did

the weather is not just something that happens outside / it happens inside too / it’s trackable / you can scan and calibrate your own conditions with the new ME app

a bird flies through the sky as free as a . . . a bird / i sit here wondering when the new feature will emerge from the technology jungle / the bionic web / the primeval undergrowth of our collective righteousness as the caffeine hits my brain and my right hand scribbles this epistle / automatic writing is what it’s called / stream of consciousness as i’m conscious of the stream / the sub-organic sibilant anarchy simmering away / the inner world and the outer world clearly divided / pre-synaptic energy waves interact with external reality and combine to form a useful picture

i wonder how far i can go / how long i’ll live / what happens next when the Cyborg Corporation hits 10 trillion dollars market value and children are infused with anti-depressants dispersed with clock-like regularity thru a prescribed software update and communication is instant and free / held like a cappuccino in a cardboard cup of inextricable eccentricities / the chalice of thought / the cloud of knowing / the rain of knowledge raging across the range of the landscape of the timeless moment

inside in my heart i know what i have forgotten / all this and more is possible / technology technically takes time but it has no time / suggests no solutions / has no soul

i don’t even know what it is as i succumb to the vertices / the verities / the ebb and flow / the tides of this tidal wave

wave as you go by

music by Glass Beams :: Horizon/Mahal 0-4:35 from the live performance EP ‘Mahal’

and some noise from

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But how do you talk about something without giving it a name? The old Hebrew priests were into talking about it. So they came up with Yahweh, spelled with no consonants just YHWH. The secret name of God spelled out in a unpronounceable word.

What they were really trying to say, if I got my story straight, is that the name of God is the sound of the breath: Yah-Weh. Inhalation and exhalation. Fascinating huh? And God formed Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and Adam became a living soul. Something like that if I remember my creation story right.

When you really look for me, you will see me instantly - you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. says Kabir, 15th Century poet from India.

It’s right there on page 25. Translation by Robert Bly, he did the best he could. How do you speak about the timeless one, the unknowable one, the unpronounceable one?

Well that’s the beginning of God. Give it a name so we can talk about it. Just breathing would be boring.

music for the podcast: Aqua Venue from the album ‘After the Turn a Storm’ by Hello Meteor

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We could discuss the issues and find solutions in a cooperative, constructive way with benefits obvious for everyone. That’s also a possibility. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do with our politics, find solutions, solve problems, make it better?

Everyone has good ideas and everyone has dumb ideas. Say it out loud. Sort it out. Shouldn’t be that hard. Common sense and discernment can sift thru that. A little applied intentionality to be rational and find the common benefit. Or just go on fighting and arguing forever.

Now 9 nations have nuclear weapons. We’ve got better weapons than ever before and spend zillions on building the next even better one but we spend zilch on trying to come together and live in peace, live in tune with our biosphere, the biosphere that supports us and every living creature on this planet.

It’s not a bad idea and lots of people believe in it. I’m not the only one. It’s like an undercurrent, it’s like the bedrock under our feet. It’s there supporting everything, we just don’t see it.

It won’t be uncovered until people are ready to blow their cover, come out from under the covers and claim their personal peace. If people aren’t experiencing peace there’s no way it will happen in the society they belong to. Right?

I think I’m right about that but nobody pays attention to that - it’s all about fixing the society. How about fixing the people then the society would fix itself automatically.

We live in money dominated society. The world has become a marketplace. Everything is bought and sold. That’s why the actual people have been reduced to a number and a form and an application so they all can be efficiently channeled into some sort of economically useful diatribe . . . er discipline . . . . er device . . . devious device. That’s what it is. A great mill that eats people and spits out consumers grinding away at the great wheel of commerce. Our wars are forever and our consumer urges are endless.

I mean I don’t want to start a revolution but I do want to say that we are meant to be humans not cyborgs. What exactly that is, each one of us has to discover for our own selves it seems to me. Isn’t that so? How could you be a real human by following someone else’s definition?

And so I submit to you dear reader that the real revolution is interior, the hero’s quest is interior - the quest to find our peace, our strength, ourselves. More powerful than an atomic bomb is one person who has realized themselves. That’s a pretty good slogan. I’ll buy that. Certainly for that person it is more powerful. Atleast.

An atom bomb can transform a city into dust, realizing oneself can transform a cypher into a person with all the creative power of the universe at their disposal. Another good slogan. We can use that for the sign. When we get ready to march. I’ve been trying to think of a good one. NO MORE HATE NO MORE FEAR. Is that too long? Six words. I think it will fit.

Thanks to Mose for the music ‘Raise Your Voice’ with Suyana. Perfect.

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He’s posting from the Cambrian Mountains of Wales with its lovely dells and streams and oak forests, I’m posting from the outskirts of downtown San Antonio in what used to be a forest but is now a city.

It used to be quite a nice forest, actually, extending for miles on either side of the river. That’s what the Spanish explorers reported. They had a propensity to exaggerate, of course, but still.

There the entire panoply of critters resided and the full spectrum of nature’s creative expression resounded. Bird calls and croaking frogs, howling wolves and bellowing alligators - groovy nooks with living things, enchanted and enchanting, filled the river course and the accompanying woods all along the way.

The Payaya, what the Spanish called those people, were frequent visitors too with their own peculiar sounds but even they were not the first humans to know this place, not by a long shot. In fact it was a short shot for those bow wielding humans hunting with their high tech wood and stone hunting instruments for this was a place where Mother Nature’s beneficence was fully apparent and the hunting was good.

When the Spanish first arrived in 1691 they saw it differently. This was no beneficence of Mother Nature, these were no gracious gifts to her children, these were resources to build an outpost with for their far flung empire. The trees and the water and even the rocks themselves were requisitioned and utilized for building a fort and a farm and a church and a way station on the way to even more Spanish outposts even farther away along the King’s Road. Infact the conditions were so propitious that they established 5 missions here. Plenty of natural resources and plenty of friendly pagan Indians to convert and enslave.

The rivers, now known as the San Pedro and the San Antonio, were both spring fed and gentle, rising up from the earth and wandering in their water course towards an eventual confluence some miles down stream. At the present site of downtown San Antonio they ran only a quarter mile apart and gave birth to a rich alluvial valley and there the grooviness of Mother Nature was fully evident. I say ‘ran’ because they no longer run, atleast not without help from the city’s water treatment plants.

Now the rivers are artificial and the springs are dry and the deep woods are an urban landscape populated with large buildings reaching into the sky, far higher than even the largest trees of yesteryear ever did. I ride my bike through here frequently looking for the lost wildness, Yanawana as those people called it, ‘the place of peaceful waters’.

Out of the hills and down the valley of San Antono I go. It used to be a valley, now it’s Broadway Avenue, State Highway 368, lined with buildings and flowing with cars. It still sounds like a river, kind of, a river of cars.

The path I follow on my bike has been followed for millennia. People trekking from the spring water fountains where Mother Nature herself resided to the confluence of the rivers where a rich alluvial valley gave birth to a cornucopia of plants and animals.

The buildings are all built for business. I pass a bright green Office Source Limited store with large display windows, inside all the furniture you need for your office. Nola: a brunch and beignets place in a red brick building with a patio and coffee to go incase you’re late. Woof Gang Pet Grooming and Bakery, hmm, a curious combination, get your dog combed and trimmed while you enjoy a delicious snack I guess.

Apartments and condos also line the street. The Flats at River North. The Compound at the Park. The Rivera. Brick and stone buildings three and four stories high. This is the outskirts of downtown. Bookstores, banks and restaurants. Buildings have replaced the trees, cars have replaced the critters but I still recognize the path.

Passing under the expressway looping above me in the sky I soon enter the deep forest, the canyons of Houston Street and Commerce Street. I ride past the alleyways where the dumpsters reside and the street people hide. There are parks where nature is still celebrated: Veteran’s Memorial Plaza and Travis Park but Main Plaza, the old town square of the old colonial town is all stone and steel with a few token trees planted around the edge. And of course the Riverwalk, that long linear park etched beneath the surface of the busy city, it follows the river for miles - from near the Springs on the north side to the furthest mission 10 miles south of downtown.

A light rain begins to fall and everything becomes luminous, shining. The light is muted, no glare.

I ride down Houston and stop at the Royal Blue. A definite groovy nook.

Inside the Eagles sing softly over the speakers. One of these nights, one of these crazy old nights we're gonna find out, pretty mama what turns on your lights. Mmm, no doubt.

The woman behind the counter says, Hi, welcome. What would you like?

Hi. Thanks. I’ll have a cachamoochie please, I mean a whichacallitchino, chopanoochi, maccanacacapachino. That’s it. With oat milk.

Ha ha, ok. Anything else?

Yes. There are many things I would like - for everyone to get along, no more greed and selfishness. Just cooperation, you know?

Yes, I do know, she smiles. I’ve hit her warm spot.

This could be heaven, this could be hell. That’s an Eagle’s song. I say and sit down by the window waiting for my capachooti, looking out at the street.

Windows reflect and transmit images. Two visions. I can see the people walking by outside and the superimposed image of the the entire grocery store/cafe behind me, all in the same picture. Chairs are like people without people it occurs to me. I wonder, how much do I really see and how much goes unnoticed, subliminal and sublime? I ask myself this question often.

Cappucinno with oat milk, sings out the barista. I pick up the cardboard cup with the sacred liquid inside. Thank you, I say. She offers a nod.

Returning to my station I resume gazing out the window. People of all sorts are passing by. Street people wearing distinctly out of fashion clothes, mis-matched colors, pajamas and over coat, anything goes. One tall black man with a pink sheet or some kind of twisted material wrapped around his chest, a robe thing around his waist and another like a skirt hanging to his knees. Hard to describe but obviously he took some time to arrange his costume before he set off down the street. Tourists and locals: they are easily identified, the tourists by their curiosity and the locals by their casualness. Business men with button down shirts carrying a brief case, shiny shoes.

Cars drive by with their lights on, eyes wide open and I understand why I’m here, that I’ve arrived. That this is the place. The ancient sacred site between the two rivers.

Here people come and go, worshipping at the bar where the light shines and the sacred items lie - chips, chocolate, tacos, whatever you want, thirty feet of refrigerated beverages. The card is handed over or inserted and the computer beeps happily. The rite is consummated. Off walks the patron, enhanced, satisfied, a little fulfilled.

Outside there’s no sign of the ancient people or their forest. Or wait a minute, maybe this is the sign. The ancient people and their ancient forest transformed by time and ingenuity into . . . this?

I look closer. Yep. There it is. The ancient forest and the ancient people. I wonder again, how much do I really see and how much goes unnoticed, subliminal and sublime? Maybe the answer is to stop asking and witness.

‘Into the Mystic’ sings Van Morrison from somewhere overhead. I wanna rock your gypsy soul just like way back in the days of old and together we will float into the mystic.

Music for the podcast: Offthewally from the album Pollination 00 - 2:22. Thank you.

In the deep woods cross pollination happens between all the like minded plants and animals, sharing the DNA from the top of the trees to the underground labyrinths of the voles and the gophers and the glorious worms. Earthworms eat the nematodes and organic matter that nobody else would bother with and the birds eat the earthworms. Food chain.

Cross-pollination happens easily in the city like it does in the jungle. Pollen floating around everywhere, ideas and money and sideways glances. Yes.

In a city cross-pollination happens as a result of the networks of human endeavor placed in a latticework against the bright sky. Scraping the sky with it’s buildings.

In the average forest, density is around a hundred trees per acre. That’s 200 feet by 200 feet. In the downtown urban forest the ‘trees’ are stacked so close together that they touch, share a wall, a common boundary, thick as the Amazon jungle where the borders blur and merge, plant life and insect life, bird life and animals interact intimately and often.

In the city intimacy is imposed on people by the sheer immensity of the concrete canyons. The occasional greenways create a semi-authentic natural space and a view of the sky. Oh yes there is still earth and sky, oh humans. Don’t give up hope, the gods of earth and sky reside somehow still. Beyond it all.

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We live on the edge of the desert, well we used to live on the edge of the desert, I think we live in the desert now. It moved, the city didn’t. This is all to say it doesn’t rain it just pours down radiation around here. I hate it. Give me an overcast rainy day any day, may it drizzle for weeks on end, I’m happy.

Well I used to hate it, every summer the same thing, it’s like every place on earth gets their own climate disaster these days: earthquake, forest fire, tsunami, flood, tornado, hurricane, something extreme, we don’t get any of that, we get unrelenting bloody sunshine.

But I finally realized that it doesn’t help to complain, the rain gods aren’t listening anyway or they don’t care. Whoever is in control up there wake up! They’re still asleep though, so I adjusted my expectations, realigned my perspective. If it’s not going to rain then I’ll jump in the fish pond and water my garden with a hose. To heck with it. There’s still water in the pipes.

Yeah that’s another thing. All the springs have gone dry, the Edwards Aquifer is at its lowest level since 1990 and still dropping. City planners have hooked up our water system to other aquifers and water sources so homeowners can continue watering their lawns and keep them green like we live in Merry Old England not in a desert.

Anyways, here’s the point of my story. I can adjust my perspective. It’s a great life skill. Comes in handy for any situation or circumstance I might find myself in. It is what it is and I am what I am. I’m gonna practice this. Gotta get good at it.

People, places, music. Communion, catharsis, healing. Volition, decision, motivation. They’re all mine if I choose them. Sometimes I feel lonely, sometimes I feel needy. But wait a minute, I am here with the accompaniment of the entire complete symphony of nature. All of everything is here with me. It’s a matter of perception isn’t it?

I discovered this music about the same time I discovered the trick of adjusting my perspective. It’s The Groovy Nobody: Solarium. They fit together so well, my new perspective and this music. Hey I think I got something here and started writing, driven on by Sunsick and Invisible and Solarium and When We Get There and Dance in the Sun. Wow. Sunsick.

I always wake up in hazeDrunken by ultraviolet rays that cover meCan never quite recall the dayNot that it really even matters much to me

AnywaysAnyways

Gently nestled in the shadeProvided shelter from the old towering treesI watch the branches as they swaySmall pools of sunlight in my face coloring me

AnywaysAnyway

Perfik. There you go. Thank you Groovy Nobody. I got it.

I’m ready for summer. Burn it down. I’m good. I’ll even use air conditioning if I have to. Ride in the morning before the temperature rises. Take shelter during the mid-day like the deer and the coyotes out in the Salado Creek Greenway. Brownway more like it. I’m fine God. God it’s hot.

Check out The Groovy Nobody on Bandcamp. Buy their album. I did.

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The fish pond with the overhanging Willow and the deep green of the Groovy Nook with its small ponds back in the corner and the Hackberries and the big Pecan and the brown cedar fence surrounding it all are the main elements. And the Bog Filter.

The Bog Filter is the heart and soul of this little paradise. Here the water from the pond circulates up thru the small pebbles where the microbes live and do their work. They transform the waste products of the fish people into plant food for the plant people. Without this it would just be a normal backyard: no fish, no water plants, no invisible microbes, no dragonflies, no fairies, no elves and no raccoons prowling around at night.

Ok, I made up the part about the fairies and elves but the raccoons are real. They love the water, wash their food in the water, go swimming in the water and like to watch the fish gliding silently by, orange and white, among the Hydrilla. Sometimes they try to catch them.

One Spring I discovered frogs. They miraculously appeared in the pool. They had never been there before. Where did they come from? Just hopped in from some other pond? Fell out of the sky? That’s a myth actually, frogs falling from the sky. I never figured it out but there they were singing among the toads, who have always been here, singing away in their primordial Springtime procreation ritual.

Raccoons are predators and they have been in this neighborhood since before this was a neighborhood; their ancestors go way back. They found the frogs to be a tasty treat and actively hunted them. So active was their hunting that they tore a hole in the supposedly impervious bog filter liner looking for their hideout.

The point of the story is this: the frogs disappeared and the bog filter started leaking. Trouble in Paradise. Oh well, I managed to patch it up with super sticky underwater repair tape. I said a prayer for the extinct frogs. All good. Or so I thought.

What I didn’t know was that underground the Willow and the Hackberry on either side of the bog filter had somehow sensed an ample source of water and sent out their scouts to investigate. Eventually major roots invaded right through the supposedly impervious bog filter liner and started drinking yummy bog filter water and growing bigger and bigger.

Meanwhile the Elephant Ears, who were doing quite well indeed inside the bog filter, had sent off their underground rootlets and created a matrix, a network, a carpet really of rhizomes searching for the source of water inside the PVC pipes lying at the bottom of the gravel where they injected pool water into the bog filter. They invaded the pipes and eventually the water completely stopped flowing from most of them.

Further excitement was provided by my amateur masonry skills which hadn’t included reinforcing the concrete block walls of the bog filter and they began to expand outward with all the pressure of the water and gravel bearing on them. The liner, instead of overlapping the top of the wall, began slipping inside the enclosure and water started leaking over the top. Alarmed, I wrapped stainless steel cables around the outside of the enclosure, cinched it down and lowered the water level the best I could. All good. More or less.

This was the state of affairs when I finally realized that the bog filter needed a complete rebuild. It was leaking and leaning, and had some very mysterious problems underground. Not to mention the fact that it was only filtering at about 10% capacity.

How to do it was the problem. How indeed. The five cubic yards of pea gravel that I originally shoveled in there weighed about 6 tons and was now slimy and gooey from 12 years of filtering fish poo. I agonized over this knowing that it had to be done but not having a clear plan of how to do it.

Actually I had several plans hatched over many sleepless nights but none of them were practical, affordable and doable with my sore back and limited resources. I felt like the Backyard Paradise was in peril. I felt like my lifestyle was in peril. I felt like my sanity was in peril to be honest with you. The Nature Pool that I dove into head first when I needed the baptismal experience was under threat.

It was at that moment that my buddy Clayton showed up. Check him out on Instagram: Clayton @buildswithclay. He’s been learning how to build cob houses and other kinds of natural construction for the past 5 years and stopped by his old haunts in San Antonio on his way to Montana. I don’t know how to explain this except to say it was an answer to my prayers. More like begging actually. Something I’ve been doing alot of. Help! I had a whole list of requests. Anyways I asked him if he wanted to do a project with me. He accepted.

The next part of the story is a lot of pictures and explanations. I hope you enjoy it. We finished in one week what I thought would take months. We came in $10,000 below what the pros were asking for tearing it all down and rebuilding it. It looks great, it feels great and it doesn’t leak.

Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta) covering the bog filter before renovation. It was beautiful but they completely dominated everything. They’re edible if prepared properly otherwise forget about it.

And the peaceful fish pond. My Nature Pool.

Here’s the Bog Filter with all the Elephant Ear chopped down, ready to excavate.

Oh yeah. Fun!

Clayton doing all the hard work.

Building a mountain of goopy gravel.

Is there no end to this?

Pipe clogged with roots and gravel.

Digging out the big roots that came thru the supposedly impermeable liner. There was a bunch of them.

All cleaned out. Ready to rebuild.

Gravel delivery!

Laying down new liner and clean pipes. Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.

Planting water plants in the new gravel. That’s a few tons of pea gravel wheelbarrowed in there.

Pennywort and the Mints, the Horse Tail and the Japanese Iris that I picked up from the nursery, the Pickerel Weed transplanted from the fish pond, the Chinese Lizard Tail and Blue Eyed Grass also from the nursery all found a new home here.

And ta da it’s done. Harmony restored. Everything in order. I’m so happy. Thank you Clayton. Thank you God.

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How do we heal the violence in our world? How do we heal the violence and fear inside ourselves? Well here’s Mimi’s way. Click on the play button above.

These are the shoes she was wearing when she arrived in my driveway after walking from Phoenix. I thought they were a true work of art.

Her foot tattoos make a complete circle. Something cosmic about that.

Meeting friends and neighbors at the One Another coffee trailer in Terrell Heights a few blocks from my house. She asked me who was responsible for all the initiatives happening around Charis Park and the Sunset Ridge Church of Christ here on Brees. I said if we’re lucky we’ll meet some of them. And we did.

Mimi with her gear. There’s a tiny tent in there too. Pretty simple but still about 30 pounds.

Having dinner with Mimi. Yummy.

Mimi with her map. Press the play button at the top to listen to our conversation on the back porch. Visit her website.

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God made it is an easy out but doesn’t really explain anything. Where did God come from? Well, God is an eternal infinite being that was never created. Just believe. We’re not really getting anywhere.

According to the ‘scientists’, those consigned with the duties of figuring everything out in a rational knowable way, it all came from a very small, infinitely small and infinitely dense point called a singularity.

The idea of a singularity is fascinating to me because in our world there is no such thing. Everything has its opposite. Every coin has 2 sides. Nothing can be that has not come from somewhere. We’re back to the God idea, just expressed in physics terms.

One theory holds that the singularity came from a previous collapsed universe, that they inflate and deflate rhythmically like the great god Brahma breathing: exhaling and inhaling. God again.

If that model is true then we breathe too and maybe we create a universe. I mean it wouldn’t be there if we weren’t breathing. Not for us. That would mean we are God in some sense of it. I mean look at all the gods that have been created by human beings: Zeus and Thor and Brahma Vishnu Shiva and God the Father and . . . hey they all look like humans.

The 15th Century Indian poet, Kabir, says “ . . . what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.” That might be a clue.

I started off on this track while reading Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’. He begins with a discussion of the creation of the universe. Good place to start. The Big Bang and the singularity and how it expanded to a hundred billion light years across in one million million million millionth of a second with a temperature of 10 billion degrees. That’s some heavy breathing. These are, of course, approximations.

At any rate, we are here. And breathing. Two very compelling mysteries. Miracles even. I don’t pretend to understand it, I just like to be romanced by the thoughts of it. Until I take my last breath I can be mesmerized by the reality of existence. Mine and yours. And then we can connect. Another miracle.

This music is a miracle. Something felt that has no other way of existing. I used 20:33 - 26:28 El desierto for the podcast. Thank you Hermanos Gutierrez! They’re playing at the Aztec Theatre in San Antonio on May 13!

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The Spanish Oaks, oh my, and their serrated twig tips full of greenness. A leaf is a twig tip as a nut is a tiny tree. Brain shaped pecans for example. The BB sized Sugar Hackberry seeds that the Squirrels love and drop all over the ground after devouring their flesh.

I find it easy to praise these stalwart sentinels reaching high into the sky, connecting heaven and here below. We are children of the trees. The Tree of Life, our own family tree, the branching of streams as they make their way to the sea are all part of our mind and our myths. The synapses in our brain, too, branch and unfold and make meaning with their connections.

In Oregon they have a special funeral rite where your ashes are placed in a cardboard box with a seed of your choice: apple, pear, persimmon. That’s what I heard. You can imagine what happens next.

Traffic engineers know that if you plant trees alongside a roadway, cars will naturally slow down. No signage necessary.

I love trees. My heart is calmed by their presence. Birds flock to them and hawks careen through their branches just to watch them scatter. Fun for the hawks. Mockingbirds set up shop and sing for the dawn, sweet glassy piercing shots of pure sound glissiding thru the air. I awoke to it this morning and lay in bed listening with my heart full of praise.

They are complimentary, crown and root, symbiotic fungi and the hidden darkness underground, leaves exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in the light. Have you ever been complimented by a tree? Then you have never smelled the sweet fragrance of a Huisache riding on the breeze for free. Deeply personal, it penetrates to the core of our brain exciting memories and associations along the way.

When day is done their dappled leaves pronounce the dusk and dim. Vespers is the name. Gentle but strong is their nature. They hold my heart. They console me when I’m sad. They make me joyous when I’m happy.

Podcast music by Men I Trust - ‘Show Me How’. I thought it fit.

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From Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. The last story, which I just finished. It’s called Teddy.

I tried reading Moby Dick, got a third of the way thru it. Then in another spate of self-immolation attempted The Odyssey. Started skimming after 17 pages. Long books, heavy with words are not for me. I just don’t have the stamina. Short pieces like Substack essays, poetry, Flash Fiction, short stories are all I can manage before my short little attention span runs out of fuse, sputters and dies.

Nine Stories begins and ends with his strongest work. It’s book-ended. A Perfect Day for Bananafish and Teddy. Masterpieces of the genre like Raymond Carver’s collection, What We Talk About When We Talk about Love. Stories that take you apart and put you back together again but slightly differently. You will never be the same.

But isn’t that the literature experience? Would we want to read something that’s boring, tedious, where nothing happens? No, we want to be transformed.

It’s powerful. Like music. The Dove of Peace is the name of the music playing right now, if you are on the podcast. J.J. Jones. I’ve played it before, on one of my earlier posts. There’s so much good music out there. A source of solace for me. Transformative.

Once upon a time I was really down, down so far it looked like up to me kind of a down, and I discovered Skinshapes’s music. It was healing, it was like almost visually charged with energy. The album Filoxiny with its transcendent Breathe and the life changing I didn’t know were the first ones that got to me. I was hooked and went on to Oracolo and Mandala the lead song. Then I graduated to Life & Love - he’s at the peak of his powers here. Take My Time leads to Inside, both will chill you out, my friend, and Don’t Call My Name will melt down anything that’s left. I was released from my suffering by this music.

You can find him in Bandcamp or on Youtube. Buy his stuff. That’s what I did out of sheer gratitude. Of course my emotional body was ripped wide open and an open hall and a cathedral existed where there was nothing but debris before and I felt like a river was flowing thru me.

We need healing energy in all its forms: music, literature, art, theatre, dance - the celebration of the human spirit in whatever way you do it, baking peanut butter cookies, sharing kindness with a child. Whatever you do. This is what I do, I write my screed, tap out my message, send it in a bottle to the farthest shore, say something interesting and hopefully hopeful.

Add some music. I Won’t Be There is the final song on Life & Love. So true. So true. The truth is more powerful than all the b******t.

00-3:19

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Then I will stop, Vincent, and warm myself at your fire. I know you had great struggles and turmoils and equally great transformations and victories. I know that you came into your highest powers while the depression and madness worked on you the most.

And I know that you took your own life in the end, succumbed to the relentless sadness, the terrible visions, the voices in the night. You left this crazy world behind.

What’s that? It wasn’t all bad, you say? Sometimes the visions and vision itself became blurred and you experienced something quite wonderful? I’m sure you did. The vibrating wheat field and the crows rising up out of it, every brushstroke purposefully placed and full of meaning.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, a town in the southern Netherlands, near Belgium. His father, Theodorus van Gogh, was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus came from a prosperous family in the Hague.

Young Vincent was schooled at home by his mother and a governess until he was old enough to attend the village school. Then, when he was eleven, his parents sent him to a boarding school in a nearby town where he felt abandoned and lonely and entreated his parents to let him return home. Instead they sent him to another boarding school in Tillburg, the largest city in the area. He described his youth as being "austere and cold and sterile”.

At the age of 16 he was accepted as an apprentice to an art dealer. His Grandfather and three of his uncles had been or were art dealers and they kind of opened the door for him. He was assigned to London where he fell in love and was rejected, went to Paris and while there grew distrustful of the art dealer’s world and their commodification of painting. He was dismissed from his position.

A phase of pious religiosity followed his professional failure. He aspired to become a minister but couldn’t pass the exam and ended up a missionary to the peasants in the coal mining region of Belgium.

The people there were so poor that he gave up his own lodging to a coal miner and slept on a straw mattress in a hut. His superiors were not impressed by his charity and dismissed him.

He returned home and at the advice of his brother, Theo, started to draw and develop his skill as an artist. He fell in love with his cousin, Kee, who had come to visit and was rejected. His father was profoundly disappointed in him and suggested that he be committed to a lunatic asylum. I guess things were getting dicey.

He met up with his cousin Mauve in the Hague who was already a successful artist and started painting in oils under his tutelage. They were getting along fine, Mauve set him up with a studio and everything but then they fell out. He moved in with an alcoholic prostitute who had a child and was pregnant with another and contemplated getting married. His father freaked out. He abandoned her and left town but loneliness eventually drove him to return home.

Things didn’t work out with his father but he was painting. His palette was dark and brooding but he was making art.

He moved to Antwerp and bought into the starving artist lifestyle. He painted like crazy. He also smoked like crazy, drank too much and survived on bread and coffee. Not exactly a healthy lifestyle.

He joined the Academy there but quarreled with the instructor and left, went to Paris and set up an apartment with his brother, Theo, who had been supporting him financially and emotionally. Paris in 1886 was alive with artists and exhibitions and he met many of them and saw their work. He painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still lifes, landscapes. Painting, painting, always painting.

Inevitably conflict arose between the two brothers but they managed to patch it up. Theo and Vincent were a team. They loved each other.

Finally, ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, he sought refuge in Arles, in the south of France. It was February 1888.

It was in Arles that he came into full possession of his powers. Even as his health was declining his art was bursting out, exploring, experiencing freedom. He painted some of his best pictures while going insane in Arles. The warm colors of the wheat field, the cobalt blue of the sky. The angry Cypress tree, the voluptuous wheat.

He painted a series of sunflower pictures and decorated his house with them.

He aspired to create an artists' collective in Arles and invited the artist Gaugin to join him which he did for a short time but they quarreled. He suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. He was anxious that Gaugin would abandon him, which he did. One evening, brandishing a razor in a confrontation, Gaugin left the house and Van Gogh followed him. When he returned home he cut off his own ear.

He had himself committed to the asylum in Saint-Rémy and painted scenes he saw through the bars of his bedroom window. Both a sun and a moon appeared there.

The last few months of his life he spent in Auvers, a small town just north of Paris, after he left the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1890 but his mental illness relapsed and on July 27 he shot himself with a pistol and died two days later.

You were considered an eccentric, Vincent, a madman. You were ignored and misunderstood and rejected in your lifetime but your paintings never failed to rise above all that. You created art that transformed the most humble of natural scenes into ones suffused with energy, glowing with light, filled with a manic exuberance and at the same time a playfulness. Just by looking at your paintings I can feel the power of your brushstrokes, again and again striking the canvas. I can feel your delight and your energy. I can feel your presence.

So Happy Birthday Vincent. It’s now March 30, 2023. Happy 170th birthday. You have become one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, I must tell you. I mean in all of Western art history your name would be mentioned as one of the stars. Yes, the stars as in Starry Night.

You did not have an easy life but you produced some of the most exquisitely beautiful paintings ever painted, nearly 900 of them, and most created during the last two years of your life.

Thanks for the souvenirs. And thanks for the letters you left in correspondence with your brother, over 600 of them. “I have walked the earth for 30 years and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir.” you mentioned in one of them.

I get it. I try to do the same. I think we all do, most of us. Leaving a small souvenir of having been here is maybe all we can do.

music :: 01:06:12 Lisofv - No Rest Or Endless Rest

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So, yep, it’s about Donald Trump. I had to dump it somewhere. I feel like acting out.

I posted that on Facebook, ‘I feel like acting out’ and a friend responded ‘Could you set fire to a Tesla?’ I replied “No, I was thinking more on the level of a scathing rohn report’. Ha ha. Screaming and yelling. So here it is. My scathing rohn report about Donald Trump. The chump. God bless me if I ever mention his name again.

Donald Trump is a crook (thank you Lord). He cooked the books so nobody would notice he paid off a porn star who he had sex with before the 2016 election. Got caught for that one. Meanwhile his wife was home nursing little four month old baby Barron.

He raped a lady (E. Jean Carroll) in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman Department Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Got caught for that one.

He once bragged to an Access Hollywood reporter, “ . . . when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything . . . grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.” What a guy. Didn’t get caught for that one.

Two other felony indictments have been dropped since he became president, dropped and forgotten. But let’s review them just for a moment, just before the lights go out again.

He attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election by inspiring a mob to attack the capital during the confirmation process. That was quite a spectacle, scaling the walls and breaking through windows to roam the halls of Congress wearing MAGA hats (one guy in a horned helmet), looking to lynch Mike Pence and piss on Nancy Pelosi.

Hundreds of people managed to breach Capital security and attempt to break into the chamber where a joint session of congress was underway. The congress people, including Vice President Pence, were evacuated and moved to a secure location.

People died, 170 police officers were injured. Trump was impeached by Congress but not convicted.

Then there was the illegal hiding of classified documents in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago case. Some mementos he took home, apparantly, to share with his dinner guests or whatever. Don’t mean to presume Donald Trump’s motives (thank you Lord).

And of course the Georgia case where he was on the phone with the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to find more votes and flip the state in his favor. The conversation was recorded. Everybody heard it. He was indicted by the state of Georgia for racketeering and conspiracy (among other things) but this indictment too was dropped when he became president.

All gone, they’re all gone as if they never happened. He got clean away. Except for a few taps on the wrist.

He’s a con artist and a mafia boss and a wanna be dictator like his buddy Putin. He knows how to lie and manipulate people’s minds. He’s an expert at that. That’s how he operates. That’s the game: see how much can you get away with. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." he famously remarked during a campaign stop in 2016. "It's, like, incredible." Yeah, I can agree with that, it is incredible.

He doesn’t care about you, your religion or your country. He doesn’t care about democracy or our historical values like equality and fairness and honesty and hard work and a government based on sharing power in a balanced way (as it was designed).

He’s a serial narcissist. It’s all about him. It’s pathological. My dictionary defines pathological as: compulsive, obsessive, inveterate, habitual, persistent, chronic, clinical, hardened, confirmed, unreasonable, irrational, illogical. Check, check, check.

Whatever he says, the opposite is true. I find that also incredible. He just wants to see what he can get away with, he wants to see what the limits are and what’s the pushback and where’s it coming from and how powerful is it. Once he calibrates that, he and his band of merry robsters will get together and figure out how to overcome that. They’re going to shoot the moon. And Musk is going to Mars. Lot’s of cheap real estate there. Prime for development.

He saturates the media with b******t. That’s devious. He’s flooding the zone with b******t my cafe friend John said the other day. He’s flooding the zone with deviousness I said in return. Trying to over-max the system. I mean there aren’t enough courts in the land to deal with all his b******t and they are the only thing standing in his way. He’s got Congress in his pocket.

He’s drunk on power, intoxicated, can’t get enough adulation to satiate his need for ego gratification. Any news is good news. Bad news is great news. He has mastered the art of dominating the media. Indictment? Go ahead mother ucker, hit me with another one. They all love it (the MAGA people).

He wants to be in the headline news, not only each and every day, but forever in the annals of history. He wants to live in your mind and in the minds of your children. Donald Trump did this or Donald Trump did that they will read one day in the history books and he will become a myth. Statues in the park? Well, we’ll have to see how the war goes first. Those things have a way of turning around and biting you in the butt.

He’s a lout. He’s rude and he’s crude. There’s no precedence for giving the keys to the car (or in this case the nation) to a total maniac who doesn’t respect the laws that are supposed to keep us all safe and alive. He drives like a teenager with the instincts of a bully. If he pushes others off the road - hey who cares, you’re fired.

He wants to tariff countries he has a beef with and then the next day reverses it, roiling the markets and rolling in the headlines.

He creates divisiveness and confusion so he can grab even more power than he already has. If everybody is confused and divided - good. Only he can fix it. What the uck. Did you notice that I managed to write this entire post without using the word that rhymes with ‘uck’ or even the verb form ‘ucking’?

Alright, well, the case against Donald Trump could go on endlessly (thank you Lord). Shutting down or trying to shut down the U.S. Institute of Peace - which basically studies how to make peace in the world not war. Ditto for the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, it helps countries recovering from disasters, or trying to escape poverty, engaging in democratic reforms and stuff like that. The Voice of America? This is where many people without alot of media options get their information and news about the USA, and it’s where we can share our culture with them. How is shutting down these organizations going to make things better? The Department of Education, WTF he wants to shut down the Department of Education. WTF and a half.

So I’m driving my car down McCullough the other day and all these thoughts about Donald Trump are going through my head (thank you Lord) and all the possible scenarios and the possible consequences and potential disasters of all sorts: the end of civilization, the death watch of humanity and then all my problems and issues thrown in for good measure - the bog filter leaks, the cat seems to have mange. These were my thoughts when I saw this guy on a bicycle waiting at the corner. I saw him and immediately felt like, he’s having fun, I’m driving in my car thinking about all my problems and he’s just cruising free and easy. That was my perception anyway.

I suddenly realized that, hey, I can separate myself from all this, I can be in my own experience and everything else can be whatever it is. That’s the way it can be. That’s the moral of the story. Do we need a moral? Yes, I need one. I need to learn something or understand something. I’m only human.

Yeah, I mean the bog filter and this issue and that issue and all the problems of my life come and inhabit my mind, they take over, they become priorities, their own self importance trumps everything else (thank you Lord). Seeing the guy on his bike, free and clear and me thinking about all my problems . . . I can be that guy on the bike.

It’s a life skill. Doesn’t come easily but something to practice while driving my stupid car down the street. Who do I want in my head, yucking what’s his name or the possibilities of elation? That’s the lesson I got out of all this.

See this wasn’t really about what’s his name at all. It’s about you and me. Who can we be? A Dr. Seuss book or a power for good? Power Rangers. Saviors of the Galaxy. These are the stories the kids are listening to. Building an infinitely diverse new world in Minecraft. They will be tasked with re-building the world that we are destroying.

Deep exhalation. I’m going to go ride my bike.

podcast music from Martin Liege. Thanks Martin.

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If they don’t find anything on the butcher block table they trek over to the sink and see if I left the honey out. If there’s nothing there, I guess, I dunno, maybe go back to the outlet and take a nap, wait for debris to accumulate which inevitably happens in my kitchen.

What do ants think? Do they feel emotions? That’s the question that appeared in my brain as I watched their peregrinations.

So I entered the search term “do ants think?” into Google, my buddy Google. Here Google, chew on this.

Does Google think? There’s another good question. Is Google ant-like in its automatic, systematic, robotic response to our queries as they trek off on their path thru the internet jungle and return home with the good information? Are we becoming like a Google ant? Well, one at a time.

It turns out ants are really smart but not in a cognitive way - in a super-organism way. They really don’t have alot of original thoughts but they can respond to stimulus and create network connections. They work on algorithms, systemized structures that repeat and replicate and juxtapose just like Google.

As a whole ants can learn, remember, and problem solve. They can navigate long distances, find food, avoid predators, and care for their young. They communicate using subtly nuanced pheromones that they produce with specialized glands. That’s why ants touch each other when they meet - picking up the chemical scent with their antenna.

So what’s the difference between ants and AI? There isn’t any. Except ants are a biological entity and AI is a . . . well whatever it is. It seems to be evolving rapidly. Ants have been around for 100 million years, quietly doing their thing, mostly underground, pretty much at the apex of their evolution as far as I can tell. AI - we don’t know where it’s going. It’s just a baby.

So I do try to clean my kitchen from time to time just for the sake of it. Don’t need ants everywhere reminding me how humans are still not able to get along. Our brain is too big, we have independent thoughts and wild epiphanies. Ever read some Gerard Manley Hopkins? Nineteenth Century religious poet. Totally insane about God.

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of manIn me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on meThy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scanWith darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trodMe? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that yearOf now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

What ant could write that? What is their god - their queen? Maybe us? Someone huge and all powerful or is that just my insane idea? Born of an independent mind.

Maybe ants don’t need a God. They just accept whatever it is and make the best of it. Humans can’t do that. We have to arrange things or atleast come up with a rationalization for why not. Hence a God. Someone to blame or praise.

Maybe AI will become our god and we will all become cyborgs with a chip in our brain. Deviants will be searched out and corrected adjusted. Get with the program. No peeking behind the curtain.

In that case I will watch the ants not with curiosity but with envy. Or atleast until they find me out. Envy and curiosity are outlawed under the new regime, the enlightened era of the AI King, looking out for the best interests of the colony, I mean the clan, I mean the swarm, I mean the society.

poem source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

podcast music by J.J. Jones - The Dove Of Peacefrom 00-3:19

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My very first post began as a seed, as most of them do, an interesting idea that appeared like a rain cloud in the sky and grew into a thunderstorm.

I received a couch surfing request from someone in Egypt. When I looked up his town I discovered that he was living in the delta, where the Nile river flows into the Mediterranean. Most people in Egypt live in the delta, as it turns out, or nearby and have since the time of the Pharaohs. I started researching the Nile river and got fascinated with it’s history.

The Nile river, of course, gave rise to the ancient Egyptian civilization but it’s source is deep in the heart of Africa’s tropical zone, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. It flows out of Lake Victoria and travels 4,000 miles through 11 nations before it arrives at the Mediterranean. It was a mysterious and compelling adventure back in the mid 19th century to try to find the source of the Nile. “Doctor Livingstone, I presume” and all that.

Anyways I started thinking about the flooding of the Nile, how every year the monsoon rains in the highlands of Ethiopia would raise the level of the river so precipitously that it would inundate the valley down river, destroying everything in its path; but it would also bring fresh silt and enrich the land where the ancients planted their crops. In their myths they represented that event as a story about the death and rebirth of the god Osiris. I realized, In fact, that all the ancient creation myths have a similar theme - from chaos comes renewal, from the void comes the world.

The word chaos comes from the Greek kháos, meaning chasm or void. It also has a protean quality when used to describe the creation events of the ancient myths like Babylonia’s primeval sea, the chaos of Egypt’s recurring floods, the Iroquois’ water covered world and of course the Hebrew version: “The earth was without form and void; darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Our country is in a time of chaos. Instead of truth and guidance and inspiration from our government leaders we get lies and obfuscation and blame casting. The idea of a unified nation seems to be on no one’s mind, instead we create divisions and cliques and define ourselves by the conspiracy theories we believe in. Social media, instead of being a place to socialize, is inundated with political memes and outrageous, attention grabbing posts that have little to do with verifiable facts.

Extreme opinions have become trendy. It’s a form of acting out, a kind of self expression for the frustrated. The uncertainty of our times has created anxiety and the anxiety has created all kinds of strange behaviors. It’s a fear reaction to changes that we sense are happening but can’t control.

But the creation myths also tell the story of renewal and rebirth from the chaos. “Then God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” That was a positive development. The Iroquoian Sky Woman fell from her island in the sky, but landed on the back of Big Turtle floating in the primordial waters that covered the world. Osiris, the Egyptian god, was killed but then was resurrected from the dead with perfumes and magic spells performed by his devoted queen. The Babylonian's battle with the watery chaos that was all around them was won by their hero Marduk.

All the stories of our ancestors proclaim not only rebirth but renewal. Our chances of coming out of this chaos are 100% if myth is a reliable guide.

And how bad is the chaos going to be? It could be much worse than this, we could look back at this time as the halcyon days when things were relatively normal. It depends on how much fear and anxiety we choose to carry around with us. As can be seen from Donald Trump’s spectacular rise to power, people’s fears and anxieties are easily aroused and manipulated. The same technologies that were supposed to make our lives easier, more productive and more fun, have enabled massive brain washing. That’s not a nice word but appropriate. People don’t know the difference between opinion, preference and what they actually know to be true. There are facts and there are ‘alternative facts’. There is news and there is ‘fake news’.

I would call that some pretty rich chaos. We should be able to make something out of that, like the Iroquois story of the primordial ocean and the toad who dove down to the bottom and brought back a mouthful of mud and with that tiny bit of earth the world was created on the back of Big Turtle by Sky Woman and her friends.

Maybe that’s what we need, story time around the old campfire, telling each other the stories of who we are and how we do it. I know we have TV and movies and they kind of do that, and the evening news tells us all about all the bad things going on in an entertaining sort of way, but maybe we could have some discourse amongst ourselves. Maybe, when the fog lifts and we stumble out of the chaos into the light of a mid-day sun, we’ll be able to do it again - remind each other of who we are and how we do it.

We are the human beings (spoiler alert) and we do it with a wide range of amazing behaviors but our most celebrated, our most sublime is when we do it with kindness and compassion. That’s also when we are the most content. That’s also when we are at our most powerful and creative. And that’s when a nation or an individual can become great again.

Right from the first chord I knew this was the soundtrack for the podcast. Classic down tempo. Dreamy. Powerful. Thank you Kruder & Dorfmeister.

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So with that in mind I searched around for something more real, journalistic, and came up with ‘some trees I have known’. There’s something. I know alot of trees. Trees in various neighborhoods and various guises that stick in my mind. Trees that I visit all the time, companions of mine. Trees that have a story to tell.

I assembled a list of 4 or 5 trees and decided to go visit them. Got up on my bike and rode out, ready for adventure and whatever comes my way.

I cruised down the hill, past the Sunset apartments, thru the light, took a right and found myself on Broadway. It’s a familiar route, but always different, never the same. The traffic patterns continuously change, the angle of the light and the slant of the shadows change, the dance of the traffic lights suspended up there above the intersections and the rhythms they impose on the cars below (green amber red) are unique and in the moment. The trees and the birds that fly thru them and the birds sitting on the wire and how they arrange themselves. The pilgrims, I mean the pedestrians, walking down the sidewalk, where are they going and why? The adventure begins as soon as I start to notice all these subtle changes and details of things and how unique they are. Like they weren’t like that before and now they are.

There are trees along the street, here and there. There are trees as part of the landscaping set back from the street. Sometimes you see a tree in the middle of a parking lot on a concrete island, just standing there, a token tree.

I think about the trees. How, wow, there are all these trees in the middle of the city, they’re everywhere. Not like a forest but still present.

The entrance to the park is right around the corner from Press, one of my spots along Broadway. The concrete path winds around and down to the river, crosses it on a concrete bridge and climbs up again and heads over to The Tree.

The Tree is an oak that has prospered and spread out its crown for all to see. You can spot it from a ways away, it pulls you towards itself.

Like it holds a secret and you’re destined to know it.

There is an opening, a portal and you enter. The space inside is like a cathedral, a tree cathedral. You can sit on the thick low flying arms and center yourself. It’s circular.

The trunk is slanted as it comes out of the ground, everything is tilted in there as if the north wind had worked on it for ages and it braced itself against the earth to keep from tipping over. It feels like a sacred space but also welcoming.

A mom and her kid enter from the other side. They’re having a barbecue nearby, she tells me. “You found the secret place that nobody knows about except for the Indians” I told her. She accepted the joke and laughed. I laughed. Her daughter sat down on a branch as if she was at the playground, relaxed and happy.

This big oak lives outside Philo’s, on top of the hill overlooking San Pedro Springs. It’s a giant king of a tree.

It’s massive. It’s branches reach out 40 feet from the trunk and almost touch the ground, some are supported by specially made steel supports.

There is a sandbox underneath it and picnic tables for the peasants and their kids. I mean patrons. It must be 200 years old.

There is no climbing and no smoking, as if the tree needed to be protected. It has been watching out from up on top of this hill for 200 years, offering protection to whoever needs it.

Branches support smaller branches which support twigs which support leaves. The whole point of this massive living wood plant, weighing probably thousands or atleast hundreds of tons is to gather sunlight. It streams down abundantly from the sky. This tree harvests it, the whole massive structure of it, the whole purpose is to hold one leaf up to the light. And then do it a million times.

Beautiful isn’t it? Green and alive with bio-chemistry, making tree food out of sunlight. And a couple other things.

This tree stands like a totem in the garden in front of the Sunset Ridge Church of Christ on Brees, right next to the Love One Another coffee trailer.

There’s are alot of people in there. Creatures. Like they’ve been in there for a long time looking out, watching, each from their own unique perspective. It even has a red ribbon. Probably for bravery.

The hill it stands on used to be a hospital before it was a church and before that a Comanche lookout to look out on the valley of San Antonio and see if there were any buffalos around. Well, ok, I just made that last part up but it’s possible. There is so much we don’t know. The only history we know is what got written down.

Here’s the pecan tree in my backyard. It’s half dead. The drought got it. I didn’t know.

This tree is in my book as the centerpiece of Han’s backyard campout place. Han is the protagonist. He lives under the tree and wakes up to its branches sailing above his head. He doesn’t know that the tree is rooted in ancient myth and it’s branches are connected to the infinite sky. It channels the dream that he keeps having, the dream that drives the whole narrative, but he never makes the connection. He has to find out the hard way. Now the top half, all the highest branches of my enchanted pecan tree, have turned cold brown dead.

I have seen this tree drop thousands of pecans in season. The ground was covered with pecans. It was a mast year - meaning the tree dropped so many of its sweet nut seeds that the squirrels and the deer and whoever else could not possibly eat them all. All the pecan trees in a given area will mast together. No one knows how they do it.

Anyways, it masted several years ago and then it never happened again. It may already have been suffering from drought.

I love my pecan tree. There used to be a rope hanging from it and a saddle sort of thing made out of netting. Kids would ride on that swing and scream when they sailed up over the fire at the apogee. The fire was down in the fire pit, of course, but to the kids it was imminent and scary.

I used to swing in a hammock that was connected between the tree and the shed and lie there and read books and dream. Nowadays I hang my clothes on a rope that’s tied to the tree and to the willow standing over by the pool with the ligustrum. Oh, there’s another tree. You should see it when it’s masting - it’s like a flurry of snowflakes coming off that willow tree, floating slowly over the pond on the breeze of the gentle north wind.

This tree is in my front yard. I planted it there about 20 years ago, best I can remember. I brought it home from Home Depot in a pot because I wanted a tree in my front yard and because the branches were all twisted and swirling around in odd angles. Somehow I thought that was cool.

It has its own tiny grotto. You can sit in there and watch people passing by on the road, walking their dog, moms and dads taking the baby out in the stroller, motorists and bicycle riders. Even the kid on the electric scooter can’t see me in here.

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I asked my cat about it the other day. I thought she might know something but she just looked at me as if to say what a stupid question. I realized that I was on my own.

elated | əˈlādəd | adjective: ecstatically happy, exhilarated, delighted, overjoyed, joyous, gleeful, excited, animated, jubilant, beside oneself with happiness, exultant, euphoric, rapturous, enraptured, rapt; walking on air - the dictionary goes on and on - blissed out, over the moon. We have alot of words for it but we don’t use them. They’re rarely mentioned. They’re never in the news.

So how do you get elated or do you even want to be elated? Yes you do and I guess it’s like anything else - you try for it, ask for it. Experiment, explore, calibrate, notice what works. Don’t bother asking your cat.

Elation is not like a fort that you build out of logs, it’s more like a cloud. It can quickly disperse, be transmuted or transformed. Sometimes it simply disappears like a shy person at a party, blink and they’re gone.

Maybe it was never meant to stay.

I remember my initial encounter with elation, atleast that I can recall. I was in high school and . . . wait how could I be in high school if I was picking apples in the Fall? Maybe it was after high school . . . but then I was in college.

The chronology escapes me but I was picking apples in my friend’s apple orchard. It was up in Michigan. We had to get all the apples down out of the trees and into the barn before the first frost ruined them or they started to rot. I was out there, up in the apple trees all day, either on a ladder or reaching what I could from the ground. I remember that. When the (very large) bag slung across my shoulder was full I would climb down, dump it into a large wooden bin stationed near the tree and Clem, my friend’s father and the owner of the apple orchard, would come by and pick it up with his tractor and haul it off to the barn. Then I would move the ladder, climb back up and hunt for more apples. Me and the apple tree, all day long.

I remember the day we finished. No more apples to pick. I got paid and decided to walk home. It was 2 or 3 miles out in the country and I thought it would be fun. I was feeling good, mission accomplished, task completed, all the apples were safely in the barn.

As I walked down the road I was somehow overcome with the most beautiful feeling of freedom and joy. It was very simple and pure. I recognized it as the source of all happiness and all I ever really wanted or needed in my life. I wished for it to stay forever, then watched as it slowly dissipated and disappeared and become a memory and a description.

I wanted it to stay but it didn’t. It was transient, sort of effervescent by nature, like something that bubbles up from some hidden source and then just disappears.

That was a long time ago but I still remember. It’s like a marker was set in my life and I never forgot. Such a thing is possible, now I know that pure freedom and joy exists. What every child knows and forgets.

That’s why I get on my bike and ride, looking for adventure and whatever comes my way. That’s why I search, search search for that feeling. That’s why I end up at the cafe and the caffeine high and the computer buzz. That’s why I do everything essentially. That’s why we all do what we do if you get right down to it.

That’s why men and women get together. It’s complimentary. I think you know what I mean. Women speak in a higher range, men have more of a bass note. I noticed this the other day riding thru the park, passing a couple jogging while they had a conversation. Back and forth they went, musically It was so sweet. I was elated.

Music. Find your music.

Touching. A hug elicits empathy, elation.

Talking to a child does it for me.

Watching people move thru this sunlit cafe.

Not reading the stupid news is elationary or atleast preparatory for elationary.

Gestating in your mother’s womb is probably elationary or atleast pre-elationary. Maybe we don’t have enough circuits yet to feel full elation, maybe some kind of proto-elation.

I think really you have to be a grown person to feel proper elation. To have known how deeply tragic and sad this life can be and then to feel elation anyway. Heck a little kid doesn’t know any better, hasn’t experienced bitter defeat and humiliation but we surely have by the time we’re 30 or so. Puts it in stark contrast. Bracing. Shocking. Knowing that we hold both possibilities in our grasp is a terrible knowledge. It requires us to fully participate in our own life. There are no excuses.

Hmm. I guess that’s all I’ve got to say. That and a baby picture.

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Music by Hello Meteor - Pantropic. Thank you Hello Meteor

And isn’t that what it’s about? Don’t we want to get quickened? Especially if we’re late driving the kids to school and there’s been an accident.

I think so. There always seems to be an accident somewhere. We’re accident prone. We can’t seem to stop having accidents. I’d like to say we are an accident or could be an accident or maybe the whole universe is an accident - which is true in a way. I mean it’s as good of an explanation as anything.

Well first there was nothing except an infinitely small, infinitely dense point and then it blew up.

Well God made it by waving his arms and saying magic words.

Or it’s all a complete and pure beautiful accident.

I dunno, they all sound reasonable enough to me in their common unreasonableness.

And maybe you have your own explanation. I wish I knew what it was. It might be uniquely unreasonable.

While we wander through this foggy dark night might as well listen to some music while we’re at it. And it is foggy and it is dark some days and we are uniquely here (the point of my tirade) to experience it, to feel and to know something in our own unique way. To have adventures. To find a friend and feel love.

All the cars sooshing by in the street create some kind of music. A harmony of sorts, some Hiroshi Yoshimuro without the chimes just the deep bass note of passing cars and a little mid-range.

There is a harmony there. The cars don’t often collide. They watch out for each other. Arrive safely that’s the watchword. Enjoy the journey, by the way, or you might as well get out of your car and walk. Stay on the side of the road.

From my perch here in the patio cafe next to the sooshing cars that sound like music, I notice the pillars, standing like sentinels and holding up the transom and the trellised roof next to the sidewalk and the parked cars. The pillars are made out of fossilized rock or rather limestone which is fossilized rock. People don’t notice it but yeah marine animals from 100 million years ago are trapped in that rock. Frozen. All squashed down and stuck together.

100 million years ago it was warm and wet and this place was underwater. It was the Cretaceous Era and dinosaurs were walking around on the land, Tyrannosaurus Rex and such. In the shallow sea that occupied most of what is now midwest America and all the way to Canada, large aquatic animals frolicked and fed: giant mosasaurs and the spiral ammonites and all sorts of creatures.

Pine forests appeared and flowers and bees. Pterosaurs with their 35 foot wingspan soared through the skies - the winged lizard (which is what its name means in Greek), the wind whisperer, the dragon. Our ancient primordial mammalian ancestors were there too, squirrel-like little creatures, rodent-like little creatures reproducing in the understory, out of sight and hopefully unnoticed.

Thanks to the asteroid that landed in Mexico 65 million years ago, 80% of life on earth was wiped out including the dinosaurs and the pterosaurs which created a window of opportunity for the little mammal people to prosper and grow big and expand their niche.

And that’s what we did. Somehow we survived the mass extinction by burrowing underground or finding a safe spot somewhere and we went on living and procreating. That was 65 million years ago. Look at us now.

Which is the point of my tirade: look at us now. Feature rich. Noble. Upright. Devious. Smart. Clever. Funny. Can smile and make jokes. Language and social skills are amazing, have the ability to cause a mass extinction event or create heaven on earth. Literate - can write books, can also lie, cheat and steal. Kind, compassionate and beautiful. Warlike and cruel. Courageous, resourceful and adaptable, teller of stories and creator of myths, half angel and half demon I guess. Look at us now.

We’ve come a long ways and we should celebrate it. That’s the point of my tirade. Humans get a bad rap from all the stories in the ‘news’, but we’re not that bad. Maybe a bit confused but we mean well most of the time. Most of us. Don’t you think so?

It’s a controversial statement, I suppose, but think about it. You’re reading this, I wrote it. Something beavers or aspen trees cannot do, or not in this way. We’re communicating on a sophisticated level. And this is on the internet. Ok, maybe aspen trees do it in their own way. They have figured out that aspen trees are not actually individual trees at all but are connected underground to a common root.

They all change color at the same time in the Fall and although individual trees die the root remains alive and sprouts new trees if the conditions are right. The root is the common source, it stores the genetic information of that aspen stand and may be thousands of years old. It’s the underground network that’s alive and the microbial communities that interact symbiotically with the root tips Those trees are networking underground, they’re talking to each other in their own way. The shimmering, quaking leaves in Summer, the golden aura that emerges in the Fall, the smooth white trunk, are these not expressions too?

We live in weird times. We have become dissociated from our natural environment, we have lost touch with each other and with ourselves. It’s an unprecedented calamity. Music has the power to reconnect us. I hope you are listening.

ends at 25:37 with ocean sounds

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Stars get old and die, just like everything else. Some stars are so huge (eight times the mass of our sun) that when they burn out and collapse, it causes them to explode in a rare and glorious event called a supernova. In these glorious explosions the entire star turns inside out, or rather outside in; having no more fuel to burn it collapses and creates intense heat and pressure that causes it to blow up, scattering newly formed heavy metals and other odd, hard to create elements here and there throughout the cosmos.

Astronomers estimate that an average of 3 supernovas occur every century somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. You can see them with your naked eye sometimes even though they might be hundreds of thousands of light years away in another galaxy. They flash into existence and then dim and disappear in a matter of weeks.

These cosmic dust clouds created by supernoviated stars become stellar nurseries where new stars are formed and solar systems and planets and people. Huh? Yes these stars, in their moment of extreme trauma create something new and amazing - the heavy elements, like everything heavier than iron, number 26 on the periodic table. Here’s the periodic table. All 118 elements from hydrogen to oganesson.

Of course every star originally started out as hydrogen with maybe a little helium in the mix (the two simplest elements in the universe), and they were drawn together by gravity until they become so compressed and super hot that they start fusing. Nuclear fusion is how our sun works, fusing hydrogen into helium and releasing energy in the process: what we know as solar radiation - sunlight.

Us humans, we try to protect ourselves against disasters with every means possible: car insurance and air bags and agreements and guarantees. We want nothing to do with the violence of deep space. Yet it’s in those moments of collapse and disintegration that something new and amazing is born. Out in interstellar space krypton (yes krypton is an element) and argon and radium and uranium and gold and cobalt and all kinds of stuff that never existed before, explodes onto the scene when a star supernovas. And it’s the same in our own lives. When do big changes happen? When do you find yourself redefining yourself? When everything crashes, right? When your little personal world that you have created and tried to protect gets destroyed. I already checked this out and found it to be true, atleast in my own life.

That’s how I wrote my book. Detonation and massive destruction. My little world exploded so I could manifest something that never existed before. Pretty basic.

I think that’s what’s happening to our nation. Destruction and detonation. Weird. Really weird. Like scary weird but I don’t see any other way of describing it. I mean everything seems normal so far, unless you get picked up by an ICE raid and sent off to a detention center. Everything seems fairly normal but it’s really not. A strange mood has descended on our America.

Today I was in the grocery store, in the bulk herbs and spices department and this lady says just out of the blue, “Well, we’ll never see that one again.” referring to the exceptional number of empty jars sitting on the herb shelves.

I replied, “Yep, the end of civilization as we know it.”

We both laughed at that, the laugh of “Yeah, I know exactly what you’re saying but I hope it isn’t true.”

Meanwhile the kids are playing Minecraft, building a new world on an endless stage full of possibilities (my previous post). And without AI. We need to become humans, not cyborgs. Isn’t that obvious to everybody? Apparantly not. Hybrid? I could go with that if the choice was between cyborg and hybrid. Actually Minecraft uses AI to “create a more immersive game play”. I just learned this. Thank you Wikipedia and all your AI search engine sisters that I use to find information.

Thank you all you AI’s running around the internet enhancing my experience, creating a more immersive game play. See, I’ve already been hybridized. If you don’t know what that means, it’s kind of half cyborg / half human. Which is where alot of us are at these days.

Think about how many times you interact with a computer in your day. Point of sale at the grocery store, scanning a QR code on your phone or a bar code on a can of tuna fish, your GPS telling you where to go, your friend’s phone going off in the middle of a conversation, opening your laptop to get some work done, doom scrolling social media at home to relax. Each interaction forces you to speak the language of the computer, it doesn’t speak your language. Well unless it has voice over but that’s just an interface, it’s still a computer. You are being programmed by a computer and the computer has been programmed by a human and the human is being paid by a company and the company is trying to take your money and as much as possible without completely blowing the game. It’s also called ‘business’.

Hmm. That kind of diverted into an economic screed. Oh well, I can preach on that too. Money is God. Or atleast we worship it as if it were. The pursuit of it justifies anything and everything including war.

In 1519 Cortez landed on the shores of Mexico with 400 men, 6 ships and 88 horses. Within two years he had defeated the mighty Aztec empire, captured its emperor, Cuauhtémoc, and availed himself of all its riches. That story is well told elsewhere and it’s a fantastic one, but at some point in the saga one of the conquered nobles, presumably just before he was about to get his head cut off, asked Cortez a question, “What is it that motivates you Spaniards?” Cortez is said to have replied, “Spaniards have a disease and it is only cured by gold.” The disease has not been cured, however, it has become a world-wide pandemic.

That’s another thing we’re programmed for: consumer behavior. They know exactly what it takes for you to make the purchase decision and that’s what they program you for. Who’s they? Look at what you buy and why. Then look at what you actually need. That’s they, blurring the line.

Our actual needs are food, water, air, shelter and community or some kind of communion, also health care. That would be six, not ten thousand. We live in our desires that are not even our true needs and then we have to go to work to pay for all the things we think we need.

Hey ‘things’ are fun, I’ve got plenty of them but I just don’t want to forget what’s important in life. I have tried my whole adult life to remember what is important - being happy basically or whatever you might call it. By any name it’s the same thing. Except it’s not a thing. That’s what I’ve learned. It’s a feeling. It’s a knowing. It’s something I have to practice at or I forget it in a flash. Back to the general blurring of borders. Need and want become arbitrary and neither one seems to be enough.

Everything in the universe goes thru its cycles, even the universe itself. Birth and death. The world is not the same as it was 10,000 years ago and it won’t be the same as it is now 10,000 years in the future. This will appear as some kind of an arrogant, willful phase of humanity, like a confused adolescent or more likely a naughty two year old acting out just to call attention to themselves. Our politics will be different, how we live on this planet (if we still live on this planet) will be different.

I swear, if we make it another 10,000 years we will have to accrue some wisdom somewhere along the line. We’ll have to become human not cyborgs and take our place in the biosphere. Maybe we need a time out (my favorite video of all time).

Hmm. So what else can I preach about? My father was a preacher, my great grandfather was a preacher and my great-great grandfather was a preacher too. I was brought up on tales of Ezekiel and Elijah. Ole Elijah brought forth the Word of God and slew Jezebel’s priests for they were worshiping the wrong gods. Well, old Jezebel she didn’t like that too much and went after old Elijah and he run for the wilderness, hid in a cave. And there he was, half starved, lonely and cold. And a great wind came up and God was not in the wind and a crackling thunder filled the sky and God was not in the thunder and the lightening flashed through the clouds but God was not in the lightening. Then Elijah heard a still, small voice coming from inside and God was in the still small voice.

That’s how I remember it.

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podcast music from INTERSTELLAR | Deep Ambient Sci Fi Music 29:44 -

“Are you setting up a shop to sell stuff?” I inquired. They had groups of stones arranged on a rock.“No, we’re playing Minecraft.”“What?”“Minecraft.”“Oh. You’re using stones for Minecraft?”“They’re not stones.”“Oh. They’re acorns. They came out of the tree.”

One of the kids immediately went over to the tree which was kind of leaning over where they were playing and started climbing it, the other kid started shaking it, trying to shake loose the acorns I guess but it didn’t shake much. It’s a skinny tree, not hard to climb but hard to shake.

“You have to go all the way out to the end of the branch” I tell the kid in the tree jokingly. “Oh boy your mom is going to kill me.” I have no idea who the mom is or where. “There’s a big storm coming”, says the shaking kid. “It’ll be here tomorrow or the next day.”“I love big storms”, I tell the kids. The one standing next to the tree holding the trunk and the other one up the tree about 6 or 8 feet.

At that point I figured I better move on before the mom catches me talking to unsupervised kids in the park so I roll off and down the hill and remark to myself about how cold it is and that a big storm is coming. That’s what the kid said.

When I get home I check the weather and sure enough, 70% chance of thunderstorms two days out. And 74% chance of thunderstorms the following day. I feel a rising elation. Pounding rain and thunder. Lightening and wind. The gods are angry and all that. Time to be brave and withstand the onslaught of inclement weather.

There are little birds out there, sparrows and wrens and blue jays and cardinals and mockingbirds. I know them. Where do they find shelter in the storm? Tucked away somewhere. They certainly aren’t flying around in a heavy downpour with gusty winds. I guess we’re about to find out. 74% chance is pretty good odds. That’s what the weatherman said anyway.

I also checked out Minecraft. Wow.

Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, instead the player builds things and manipulates objects thru a wide assortment of terrains and scenarios. Essentially the Minecraft universe is infinite being a procedurally generated, three-dimensional world which allows players the freedom of choosing what kind of a world they are in and how to play the game. You can play it alone or with a friend or interactively with anyone else anywhere in the world. It’s the most popular video game ever, having sold over 300 million copies. The movie comes out in April.

I got that much from skimming Wikipedia but I still don’t really know what it is because I’ve never actually played it. The kids were playing it without a computer. That’s pretty advanced.

So anyways I’m still waiting for the big storm. Just a little light rain so far. That’s about all we get around here. It’s an extended drought. Unfair. Everyone gets their own extreme weather these days, that’s what I think. Ours is a long slow drawn out drought. Tsux.

So, and here’s the point of my tirade, what if the kids aren’t wrong and there is a big storm coming? A different kind of storm, not wind and rain but the turbulence of divisiveness, the chaos of confusion and confusion is the rule of the day along with delay and denial. It’s a storm alright and where will we find shelter and how will that change us?

Storms always change things. Hurricanes spread seeds and create space for new growth and reset earth’s thermostat. I really have no idea what kind of a storm this might be but somehow after watching the kids playing Minecraft with acorns under the tree I feel like we’re going to be ok. We’ll figure it out and the game will go on.

From the ‘End Poem’ that scrolls down on the final screen of Minecraft. It’s a conversation with two voices, two entities and they’re talking to the player - you.

I will tell the player a story.But not the truth.No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.Give it a body, again.Yes. Player…(insert your name here). Player of games.Good.Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.We are the universe. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a player.

The player was you, (insert your name here).

podcast music :: Piano & Saxophone Jazz 1920s-1950s

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That was my search term: ‘Danish custom in winter’ . . . . . search result: ‘Hygge, a prominent Danish custom during winter is "hygge," which emphasizes creating a cozy and comfortable atmosphere with family and friends, often involving candles, warm drinks, and enjoying the simple pleasures of being together, essentially finding joy in the cold winter months.’ Thank you AI Overview. You are too cool. I thought it was something like that.

Hygge (pronounced "hyugah") is for me. I’m not Danish I’m English, hereditarily speaking, but I think I can adopt this tradition. The English probly have a similar tradition for the long cold nights. Gathering at the pub certainly.

I just sit around my hearth, I mean my altar, I mean my computer and commune. Listen to music and read and write and connect with people. In fact it’s the first thing I do when I get up in the morning. Well, after feeding the cats of course. And the fish. And that’s where I am now, in front of my computer, waiting for dawn. My hygge.

Listening to old rohn reports and laughing. Ha! A message from myself. Outside my window dawn peeks thru with pink light and the house lights go on, the cars turn on their lights, red and white, and get going down the still dark streets. When the sun rises and warms up the world, I’ll get on my bike and roll down to the pub, I mean the cafe and find my hot comforting drink and convive with the good folk there. Especially the baristas, they will talk to you.

Hygge. In Denmark, brrr, hygge means informal time around the fire with family and friends, probably beer, definitely food, and basically hanging out in a spirit of goodwill, a feeling of consensus, and a touch of gratitude for all things. But the spirit of hygge can be invoked in solitude too. Just sit yourself down and enjoy yourself.

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ~Virginia Woolf

I’m all in about hygge, being often sequestered, hanging out at home, enjoying the day in a purposeful, scheduled, agenda type way. Enjoy the day. Oh, check. Take a hot shower and have a nice rice cake with maple syrup and tahini. Do some yoga on the rug. Do everything in a rhythm, the rhythm of enjoying the day.

The cold, dark, wet Danish winters inspire this coming together, one might assume. It probly has an ancient past, back to the Viking days and before. The word hygge is a derivate of an Old Norse term that relates to fire, warmth and the light that it produces and the protection that it brings from outside dangers like probly wolves and things. I can imagine gathering around that ancient fire in cold old Denmark and remarking with friends, kidding around, staying warm around the fire and alert. Present is the word. You have to be present to do hygge.

Present and accounted for here sweet Lord. Hyggeing away in my domicile. Smoke curling up from the campfire. Some kind of smoke. Talking to the whole world on my rohn report, preaching the gospel of rohn, commiserating and over accommodating and supplicating and hopefully totally liberating my own soul.

Hyggeate. Can we make this a verb? Can we make this a trend? A stopover on the way to freedom, as in true personal freedom, as in freedom from fear, freedom from resentment, from not being ok in any way. The freedom to be who we are - our own sweet selves. Everything else is prelude. The freedom to enjoy the moment. Freedom to be ok. Ok. Hyggeration. A noun.

Lot’s of people writing about hygge, trying to describe it. Here’s one ‘Hygge: The Art of Cozy’. But whether you have candles or not (they are a fire hazard), whether you have hot chocolate or mulled wine or pastry cakes or whatever, whether you have porridge or granola, it’s a creative exercise, do it your own way. Find your comfort zone and hang out there. That’s what I do.

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podcast music :: 00-10:55 thank you Hiroshi Yoshimura for the amazing music

Originally published last Spring, I thought it was time to revive it. It’s one of my favorites and besides I didn’t have anything else ready. So it’s a rerun. Hey, even my Baptist preacher father used to do that.

Ok, so this is how it happened. I was riding my bike thru Brackenridge Park and feeling the wind on my face. Hey this is air, I thought, I’m moving thru air. There were some people walking nearby on the sidewalk, hey they’re walking thru air too, I thought as I rolled by them. An innocent thought, in a spontaneous moment but I started thinking about it. Air. Wow. And that’s how I started writing this post.

There are so many obvious things to say about air. It blows over us - the wind, it goes inside us - our breath. It’s everywhere - atleast from about 20,000 feet to sea level. Above that there’s not enough oxygen to sustain a person. Below that is underwater. There’s no air underwater. Plenty of dissolved oxygen though. And therein separates the men from the fish.

Air is invisible, so it doesn’t get recognized as a solid objective entity, like a car. I drive a red Kia Sedona minivan. Well I don’t really but probably somebody does. It’s invisible (the air) but if you don’t have access to it for more than a few minutes you’re dead. Then you won’t need it anymore.

How many things can you think of like that? Things that we totally depend on and totally take for granted, like air? I can list a few. This planet comes to mind and the biosphere that provides our food and sustains all the various forms of life. Our body, and it’s sensory organs - sight, hearing, touch, taste and then thinking about it all, making sense of it all. How many times do you think about thinking? I mean, probably ravens don’t do it. Not like us. They might have their own thoughts though. I’m not sure.

Like soil, air is unique to our planet (as far as we know). It was a long process of billions of years to get our air (that we do know). The first atmosphere was a bunch of hot obnoxious gases from volcanos: methane and ammonia and hydrogen sulfide and some nicer gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide, but no free oxygen to speak of.

Imagine half a billion years of earth history, 500 million years. That’s how long it took for things to cool down and for the water vapor to precipitate into oceans. Now we’ve got chemicals cooking under the waves and things being discovered. Now life has a chance to happen and populate the barren planet. Populate it, it did and changed the gaseous envelope that clung to its surface in the process. What we call our atmosphere.

Photosynthetic algae, one of the earliest organisms to appear in the primordial oceans, was able to create free oxygen by inventing the amazing process of photosynthesis. This amazing process uses sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates (fuel), liberating free oxygen in the process, it wasn’t needed (but it would come in handy later for the more complex organisms that were yet to arrive). Over time (and there was alot of it) the oxygen in the ‘air’ went from basically zero to 20%, which is about what it is today.

The air in our atmosphere, today, as I’m sure you know, is 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and 1% other trace gases. Our air has been like this for about 200 million years. Atleast that’s what Google said.

In the Hindu scriptures, prana is that which imbues everything with energy, that which animates everything and gives life. It is hidden in the air, inseparable. We’re breathing prana, the divine essence of everything, if I got the story straight. That’s pretty wow.

I mean our first breath: we came alive, our last breath: we go bye bye. And in between we breathe constantly, never stopping. Unless you’re free diving on a coral reef off the coast of Mexico.

I used to be pretty good at it back then, breath-hold diving. I trained for it underwater in the cenote just off the beach. It was great feeling: free-diving, no scuba gear, no bulky, noisy equipment, just you and the massive ocean. I could stay underwater for three minutes but I clearly remember the feeling of that sweet breath entering my oxygen-starved body when I surfaced. I like breathing.

Air is good. I like breathing air. I was made for it. Thank God we have alot of it. And it’s free. What a great idea. Hope we don’t wreck it with car exhaust and everything else we dump in there. Then what would we breathe? Walk around with air tanks like we were on Mars? Yes, this car comes equipped with it’s own air supply that can last you for 500 miles. Oh, really? How much does that cost? Take it to get refilled like a propane tank. All our houses will be plumbed with clean air vents coming from the Acme Clean Aire Purifer unit outside our home. And on and on.

It’s just a little tiny bubble of air, I guess is what I’m saying, in a massive solar system on the edge of a massive galaxy. Alot of dark space around here. No air anywhere except on Earth. Our little bubble that bubbled up somehow.

music by Cacao Yoga in Vancouver Organic Ambient Folktronica | Downtempo | Tribal | Medicine Song, various tracks, thank you Tomoko and Koku

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Maybe you don’t care if you don’t live around here but hear me out. The rain goes right around our town. I’ve watched it on radar. Disappointed again.

Now there’s a 97% chance of rain for Thursday, the day this post will go live. I’ll bet you a dollar we barely get pissed on. Excuse the vernacular. I’m a little disturbed, discouraged, affected, dejected. Makes me mad. I need rain like the trees and the grass.

My pecan tree is half dead because of the drought. All the upper branches are bare. I love that tree. It’s my friend. One year it dropped so many pecans you couldn’t help but step on them and crack there’s another broken pecan shell.

It’s called a ‘mast season’ designed to overwhelm the squirrels and the deer who will eat as many as they can. Ofcourse there are no more deer in my backyard but there used to be.

It’s a massive tree, the biggest tree I have. It’s in my book. The protagonist lives under a giant pecan tree in his backyard. That’s me. I’m the protagonist in my book. That’s why I could write it so good.

Anyways. Pecan trees are dying all over the neighborhood. Not the Spanish Oaks though. They are impervious.

The desert is moving in. It stretches all the way from Pecos in west Texas to Silver City in New Mexico. Then another desert starts on the other side of the mountains and goes all the way to California. Now do you care?

This place used to be an oasis. Ten thousand years ago, the archaeologists tell us, it was cooler and wetter around here. The springs flowed all the time. Now the springs are empty holes. Arroyos would fill with water and flow regularly. Now they’re paved over, concreted in, or just plain forgotten in the backyards and alleys of the neighborhoods all over town. I ride my bike around. I know this.

The aquifer (that used to feed the springs) stretches all the way from Brackettville to Austin in a broad arc but it’s been drained down. We built a city over the aquifer and covered it with streets for the cars to drive on. Remarkable. I mean the aquifer.

Hundreds of feet underground it lies, a huge reservoir made from limestone with lots of holes in it made from an ancient ocean 100 million years ago. It took a long time to make and fill up with water and then slowly leak out in the artesian springs that used to drive the rivers and creeks around here.

Now we pump city water from the water treatment plants into the river beds otherwise we would have no riverwalk and the tourists would all go away. Well except for the Alamo.

So I’m sad. I tried praying to Chac Mool, the rain god of the Maya. The only rain god I know of. Nothing. I tried complaining and cursing. Nobody listened. I mean nobody of importance, I mean baristas. But, hey wait, baristas are important. They are the original ancient archetypical characters who served the drinks: the geisha, the bar maid from the middle ages, Shiduri in the epic of Gilgamesh, the sartorial women of Genghis Khan, the Valkyries, your mother.

I’m parched, psychologically. I need the rain. I need to see the heavens be bountiful. I need to feel the vegetation drinking deep underground in the dark soil. I need to see storm clouds in the sky. I need to hear the rain on my roof all night.

But life is like that, right? Drought and flood, feast and famine. We go forth in our day hoping for the best and dealing with the worst. Put on your hat of resignation but keep your hat of celebration in your purse just in case.

Be happy, I tell myself, rain or bloody shine. Find the inner oasis. Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But I wish it would rain.

Here’s a story. A few months ago, actually the day after Labor Day, early September, sometime around mid-morning, a rain cloud appeared over the city and then all her brothers and sisters came and joined her. They started raining and they didn’t stop. I was out on my bike at the cafe and I thought, ah, it’ll stop soon, but it didn’t. It rained harder and harder. I thought hey I’d better get home, my windows are open. So I started out, slowly and carefully making my way thru the rain and the water, trying not to get deluged by a passing bus.

When I came to Broadway, where I had to cross, the water was streaming down the street like a river which is what Broadway used to be before they put in all the drainage projects and paved it over. I watched trash bins sailing down the street, washed away from the driveways and curbsides of the neighborhood but didn’t think much about it as I dismounted and prepared to walk my bike over to the other side. That’s not what happened.

The water knocked me down and dragged me along for a couple of blocks, seemed like, I don’t know I wasn’t counting blocks. I was trying to grab hold of something and drag myself out of the raging torrent, one hand holding onto my bike and the other grasping at the curb, sliding along down the gutter.

Well, folks, I finally grabbed hold of something, a gap in the curb maybe, and got out of there. I noticed a pickup truck parked nearby on a side street with the engine running so I went over and asked for help to get home. He said throw your bike in the back and let’s go, I’ll give you a ride a ride home. So I did, climbed into the cab soaking wet, bleeding from my ankle to my elbow and he gave me a ride home. We had to go all the way around, up on top of the hill and down the other side to get away from the raging torrent and into my neighborhood. The storm was flashing and clashing above our heads and the water was pouring down.

That was a rainstorm. The last one I remember.

Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it was a reminder. Maybe it was a love tap from the rain god saying I haven’t forgotten you.

Music for the podcast was from All India Radio - Desert Tapes. Thank you.

03:42 2. Rust 115:18 7. Rust 3

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but all the changes will have to be in meor it will be the same old year againis what i’m thinking

and how to change myself ??that’s the hardest oneeverything else is do-able

there’s a tool or a wayor a strategy or a precedentbut how to make your way

among the tangled labyrinths of your own mind ??how to trim and prune

so the path is knowneven in the rain evenin the dark

even in the foggy foggy nightwhen dusk settles in and inhabits my soul maybe that’s ittrimming and pruning when the weather is rightso i can find my waywhen there is no lightthose trees are not my enemythey are guide postsi have been here before

another yearsunrise and sunsetdays go by

and years go by and a lifetime goes byand everything disappearseven timeeven your own mindoblivion arlo guthrie called iti like that wordalthough i’m not sure what it meanssomething about everything disappearsas we know it and even knowingdisappears as we know itis what i think it means

but i don’t really knowi just want to know myselfhow to change mehow to be fully alivehow to gather together the good giftswhich is basically everything everything is amazingand everything is being givendisease usually results frominconclusive negotiations for symbiosis says lewis thomas in his book ‘the lives of the cell’

interesting and maybe being unsatisfied or irresolute results from inconclusive negotiationswith the giver of good gifts

maybe that’s itin a strange way of putting ithow to find my way and mark it

for a new year 2025are you my ally ??are you my foe ??

and what do you signify 2025 ??are we negotiating successfully ??are we in agreement ??

and what can i bring ??if you bring everything . . . i can bring mei can be free

music for podcast from Boards of Canada 16:30-21:10

Yeah, each breath was a struggle. The need to get oxygen - urgent and primal. Satisfying when you can get it, deeply disturbing if you can’t. Of course I could always breathe thru my mouth but that somehow didn’t feel right.

Diphenhydramine (also known by the brand names Benadryl, Banophen, Nytol, Diphenhist, and Pharbedryl) and Phenylephrine (also known as Neosynephrine, Vazculep, Suphedrine Medi-Phenyl, and Sudafed) helps alot. Where do they get these names? I want to know.

Anyways, viral infection happens when the virus gets in contact with the mucus membrane of your eye, nose or mouth. Viruses are tiny, they’re hundreds of times smaller than a bacterium. They’re so small, infact, they can slip inside the cytoplasm of the cell and reproduce there.

“Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity.“ says Wikipedia. Wow.

The most interesting thing about viruses, besides the fact that they only replicate inside another living cell, is that they are actually beneficial. I mean they cause disease but they also transfer genes from one cell’s DNA to another. Like Crispr. That enhances the response possibilities, enables the behavior modifications and therefore the chances of that cell surviving in a dynamic, changing world. It facilitates evolution. We might all still be microbes like we were 3 billion years ago if not for viruses.

The moral of the story is: sometimes when things look bad it’s actually good. We are all infected, all the time by some kind of virus. It’s just that the immune system kicks in and keeps them in check. They live in our gut, the peaceful ones that don’t want to bother nobody. Lot’s of them live in our gut, maybe trillions. That’s more money than Elon Musk has.

Sorry to bring that up. It’s just that the tone of our political life in the USA also seems to be infected with some sort of virus, our national conversation is sick, degraded down to the lowest level, the political landscape is bleak. These guys were elected on fear of immigrants (a totally hyped up issue) and some kind of a fantasy that everyone is going to be rich (that’s what MAGA really means). Trump is going to roll back any environmental rules that would hinder unbridled American capitalism. They’ll lower taxes on the rich people, the ones who control the wealth and screw everybody else. We’re not the greatest country in the world, by the way, but we are the most capitalistic country in the world. The greatest country in the world would be the most generous country in the world.

In this country everything is for sale. They would bottle the air and sell it to you off the shelf in the pharmacy if they could figure out how to package it and give it a price. They already did that with water.

And all the evangelicals supporting Trump - you're supposed to be peaceful and kind, like Jesus in the Bible. Jesus was all about peaceful and kind, unless he had to chase somebody out of the temple. But the evangelicals are supporting divisiveness and cultural prejudice. C’mon evangels, show us your Christian spirit. Y’all act like a bunch of Pharisees.

Looks bad. Looks real bad. We’re infected alright. It started with Rush Limbaugh and the right wing radio show hosts practicing their ‘divisiveness as a form of entertainment schtick’ twenty years ago. The sad thing is, it was entertaining to alot of people. Yeah. But when things are bad, that’s when things can really happen for the good. Strange but true.

I don’t know, this is just my screed, what I see. Happy that my cold is going away. Feeling stronger today. And I appreciate breathing more than ever.

Last night, my God. Is that what dying is like? Trying to get one more breath, just enough, just a little, need more, not enough. tshhhhhhhh . . .

What is essential becomes obvious when we are in crisis. Essential like the community of man without conditions. That’s our salvation and our strength. That’s how we got this far as a species - our diversity. We have been infected with ideas from each other’s diverse cultures.

The truth is we’re all infected and I guess that’s really my point. We should accept that and love each other somehow. Share what’s essential. Being sick can be good. I’m telling you about it. Because things can change then. We can really change. And we really need to change.

didn’t do a podcast soundtrack for this one but the music i was listening to is linked below / it’s the November Blend from Seven Beats Music / amazing

The front porch greets me with leaves.

mixed among the new growth the leaves lie where they fallit’s beautiful

i walk among the leavesthey have nothing to say i like that.

i sit among the leavesi listen closely nothing happens

i am consoled by so many leaves just lying here saying nothing doing nothingthere must be a million leaves I am a millionaire!

intermixed with sticksand dirt the leaves lie strewn across the yardi like sticks

you find them everywherethey fall out of the treesthere is a stick in this picturecan you find it ??

under the monterey oak is a bower a shelter a sanctuaryan altar a temple a grotto

the entrance is threadedwith elves little green people

they protect and welcomethey lead the way

i find the jewel of great price glowing and shimmering among the leaves and sticks and acornsand dirt

the garden beds are covered with leaves

and it looks like more leaves to come up on high the green and yellow ones long to fall and be transformed

it’s a baptism of leavesoh to be covered in leaveswe used to do that as kidsmake a big pile of leaves and jump in iti guess i’ll try that

thank you to Boards of Canada for the podcast music :: 16:30-19:08

The conversation ranges from the absurd to the sublime, from the silly to the deeply philosophical, from the hilarious to the merely delightful.

I hope you enjoy it . . .

Welcome to Barista Interviews. This is the third in the series. Katie from Rose Hip Coffee and Ali also from Rose Hip Coffee have also been featured.

Baristas really do play a mythic role in society. They have been playing their role, serving up the drinks, talking to the patrons, ever since the time of Gilgamesh in old Mesopotamia when he encountered Shiduri, the bar maid, on the beach at the edge of the world. She offered him her wisdom but he wasn’t ready, couldn’t accept it. He had to keep wandering in the desert some more.

So here’s Abby, and 46 1/2 minutes of deliriously scintillating conversation. Back and forth. What a trip. Thank you.

What is a healing modality? It’s a way of getting better, getting rid of illness and debility. It’s something that makes you strong and resilient, flexible even. Our species has discovered and forgotten more healing modalities than we can imagine.

That’s my point. Contracting our health care out to doctors who are paid by insurance companies who make money when you are sick is a bad idea. Doctors have their place, that’s obvious, but don’t give them the whole bag. Learn how to be your own doctor.

And why not? Who knows your body better than you? You monitor it 24/7. No doctor in a clinic can do that.

Back sometime around 2000 I injured my back carrying heavy boxes of books out of the University CoOp bookstore and stacking them in my van. It was the biggest buy of my career as a book buyer but it also was the cause of an injury that would follow me (and mentor me) for the rest of my life.

I should mention that my lower back had previously been injured in high school when I sprained it doing an exercise wrong so there was a pre-existing condition, as the medical people like to say. Anyways I ended up with sciatica and a damaged sciatic nerve. That’s the main nerve that runs down into your leg from your spine. A herniated disc will pinch it, squeeze it as it emerges from the spinal column. It causes extreme pain. It rendered me dysfunctional, unable to bend over, walk or even sleep.

I went to a Doc in the box, crawled in there basically, barely able to move and he, apparently, thought I was faking it to get some ‘good drugs’, so he prescribed Motrin. I was way beyond Motrin.

Having no medical insurance and no doctor I realized that I needed to do whatever I could do. That was something at least. It was empowering actually. While the experience with the doctor was disempowering, finding what I could do was empowering. That in itself was healing.

I limped around for many months while I tried to heal the pain and I did. I walk with no pain now and no limp. I cured it. Well I still have to work on it, keep it enervated and flexible, my whole body needs to be enervated and flexible so there is no end to the maintenance. So here’s my second point. It’s fun. Learning how to be your own doctor is fun and very gratifying.

Learn to listen to your body. Have a conversation. Introduce yourself. Open your mind to the possibilities of communication without words. Your body is talking to you but it doesn’t speak English or any other human language. It speaks its own language, the only one it knows.

I began to understand this as I worked on my leg and my lower back. I found my body was responsive when I made slow, conscious movements around or through the painful places, like a range of motion. I call it rohn yoga because I invent it myself while having a conversation with my body.

Wherever there is tension or pain, find a range of motion and move through it slowly, being aware of everything you are feeling. Breathe into it. Hold it (the movement not your breath). That feeling that you get is your body talking to you.

I actually made a movie about it. It’s called ‘body work’. I made it a long time ago.

I could start a clinic with what I’ve learned about healthcare but I also believe it should be free and accessible and collaborative. It should be something we discover not something we buy from a ‘provider’. We should be willing to share our knowledge with other people who could benefit from it too. That’s healthy living.

Actually I’m a perfect laboratory for discovering how to heal things. I have an auto-immune condition and there are weird different symptoms showing up all the time. It’s the darndest thing. Sometimes I have a shingles like pain in my shoulder, once I had carpal tunnel, occasionally I have weakness and pain in my legs, all kinds of issues and their permutations and their nuanced manifestations. Shooting pain into my foot, restless foot syndrome, sore lower back, double vision, swollen elbow. They all may or may not be related but they all have come and gone and, in no small part, because I managed to find a healing modality.

Ultimately we have to surrender to the power of Mother Nature. She created us. And she destroys us. And she makes all this work. Some kind of natural process. It took 3 billion years. Yeah, going back to the first iteration: the microbes.

change change changetake a numberama oh mamaoh mama ama ama

. . . is how the song goes. We are creatures of nature. Nature is all about healing and nurturing. The biosphere is the planet as an organism, it strives, as it were, to maintain homeostasis (balance, health) just like our body does. Just like we strive to be happy, we strive to be healthy.

Mother Nature, ama mama in the song, the energy of the universe causing each plant and each person to be what they are. How much is there to discover and know that Mother Nature can teach us about being healthy?

Alot. In each house there is a light and whatever rooms are occupied, they have light. Right? If the rooms are uninhabited, the light goes out. We need to inhabit ourselves. We need to light it up. Ama Mama.

the podcast music is a track from Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe - ‘Ama’. Fantastic.

Actually, Thanksgiving is in the tradition of the ancient Savory Feast of Autumn - when all the crops are in and before the cold winds blow. Gathering together and eating in celebration of community and communion. It started way before the pilgrims. It goes back millennia. One last chance to get together and feel good about life. Well except for Christmas.

Here in San Antonio, the Raul Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner has been going on for 45 years. Supported by a wide coalition of sponsors (including Walmarts and Starbucks and Coca-Cola) and volunteers (4,000 of them, including students from local schools who make place mats for the tables) and the city of San Antonio who donates the Henry B. González Convention Center. It’s a big deal alright and right downtown. And it’s free. Even the city buses are free if you’re going to the Thanksgiving.

City buses are a trip. You can talk to all kinds of people on the bus. I hadn’t been on a city bus in years but John mentored me on the protocol and procedures and we climbed aboard old number 4 when it arrived and rode it downtown. It seemed like everyone on the bus was all going to the same place - downtown for Thanksgiving and everyone was in a thanksgiving kind of mood. People were talking and laughing. We made room for the new riders when they came aboard.

Finally, after a high speed jaunt thru the bumpy downtown streets, the bus stopped and left us off near the entrance to the Convention Center. We walked in and let me tell you something, it’s like going thru a portal into another dimension. That place is huge. There are dozens of doors right there along the Market Street entrance and once you’re inside those dozens of doors there are more dozens of doors that open into the inner sanctum which is even huger. It’s mammoth and this is where the people were gathered, by the hundreds, if not thousands, around tables laid out in a giant grid, with avenues or streets in between.

It was a humble crowd, it seemed to me and so were the people serving the meals. They brought it right to our table, wherever we found a place to sit down, and made us feel welcome. Just raise your hand and wave it around.

At the front and center of the whole thing a stage was set up and a band was playing conjunto music. People whirling and dancing around, doing the cumbia.

Pancho Claus was walking around blessing the people. El Rey Feo was working the crowd, with his crown. We have all gathered for Thanksgiving. Some kind of a celebration. That’s what I felt.

Just the other day my friend was telling me her story of a day in her life once long ago when she had a remarkable experience. She got up and practiced meditation, as was her habit. Then she realized that she had nothing to do, no agenda items pending, so she sat down and meditated some more. She got up and had lunch, made her bed and realized that she still had nothing to do so she sat down and meditated again. Later that day, as she was driving her car thru Brackenridge Park she noticed that she could see only the good in each person she encountered. It was so remarkable that she still remembers it years later.

It was a lovely story and that’s the way it was at the Thanksgiving Day Feast at the Convention Center. It’s like people were only seeing the good in each other. Or atleast that’s how it seemed to me.

Maybe that’s what Thanksgiving Day is all about: being kind and seeing the best in each other. Wishing each other a Happy Thanksgiving. On the bus it was easy to do. We were all together with a common destination. I said Happy Thanksgiving several times.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

music from All India Radio / thank you again

Are you bored with yourself or are you good company?

Believe me it has taken me decades to understand this concept. I’m still working on it.

You are not alone, even Echo Other explains that.

I listen to alot of music. It soothes my soul. It has healing energy - like talking to a friend or doing yoga on the rug.

Mostly I find my music on YouTube. It’s detailed and described, primed and driven alogorithmically, a source of visual and audio data points. (I’m trying to implicate Google in the cybertization of the world here but that’s probly another story.) And the comments - they’re not snarky. Here are some comments for Echo Other.

“Your music creates an amazing space! Thank you very much for your creativity. She has been with me for many years.” Lolitanet007

“I've been listening this album for almost 20 years now. I remember 2007 winter when it was first introduced to me.” paveltyavin

“One of the best albums I have ever listened to and happilly have on my collection.” NunoBaptista1983

Sometimes you can even talk to the artists on You Tube comments. I said “looks like the desert in the american southwest / i feel like i'm on a long trip thru the desert” and the band gave me a heart.

I recommend listening to the entire album before going to bed or maybe while falling asleep. Not while driving though.

There are many ways to find yourself. Be attracted to you. You are beautiful.

Admit that you exist. Don’t hide from it. It’s unique, irreplaceable, exquisite even. Your existence is a miracle. No, I mean an actual miracle.

From a universe vast and uncharted, you came to be. Brave journey. Fortuitous birth. Impossible odds.

Time only exists while we have a lifetime. Obviously. There is no time in oblivion or eternity, whichever you like. Enjoy your time on planet Earth.

You are not alone. You have yourself and your music.

We stood in the grass, an infinite moment or two—my bare feet on morning dew, Kitty Nova wearing her best fur—and watched the world, more ears than eyes, more nosing than knowing. I tune myself to her tail-conducted symphony, discordant human notes relaxing agenda, and together we go nowhere and arrive now-here.

This is how Kimberly Warner begins her post, In defense of going nowhere. She’s talking about her cat. She’s talking about life, she’s talking about creativity, she’s talking about going nowhere.

. . . nowhere is where everything comes from. Like yin and yang, within going nowhere lives adventures untold—the limits on wonder only a lack of imagination—while going somewhere can often fail expectation and leave ennui and emptiness in its wake.

So true. I like that. Essentially that’s what I practice every day when I mount up on my bicycle and head out. There are destinations and then there are destinations unknown. Destinations unknown are the best. That’s how I found all the known destinations.

Going nowhere requires a willingness to show up for how life presents itself, not how we think it should be—to wander slowly and very much at random, letting ourselves drop into the miracle of existence.

That’s pretty good and so much of what I feel these days. Certainly no solace to be found in the news. The news, with all it’s manufactured issues that I don’t even believe in anymore. I believe in nowhere and wandering there.

There has been a fundamental shift in my self. (Using the word ‘self’ because I don’t know what else to call it) A call to simplify the way I live, an urgent need to be aware of the moment I’m in. ‘Now here’ as Kimberly puts it in her essay, not nowhere.

She ends her post with an homage to her kitties, who she takes for walks on her property - here and there and nowhere, safely tethered on a leash.

Tethered to my fur-gurus (furus!) with nowhere to go, I glimpse a return to perception before separation, before a here and a there and an I within that space to navigate it. Unbidden, I become cat, cat becomes tree, tree becomes sky, sky becomes I, a mending of life’s original rupture through rapt, devoted attention. Leashed to Love—our ultimate master—we are nobody going nowhere, infinitely now-here and of course, as my beloved kitties make it plainly clear, everywhere.

I don’t have tethers for my cats but we do wander together sometimes, especially White Tail who loves me. The others are fond of me but not like that. He will entertain my presence, share his catness with me, display his affection with a special meow and a head tilt/blink blink. I get it.

He will show me how to be nowhere. He doesn’t have the circuitry for much else. I have way too much circuitry. A veritable raging torrent of unsupervised random thoughts running non-stop in my head. I saw it one day. I was quite ill and I couldn’t turn off the machine. Scary.

Yeah we have advanced circuitry, no doubt about it. We’re a smart species and proud of it. We can think of so many things. Look at what we have thought of: nuclear weapons, atomic attack submarines carrying blast-offable from underwater nuclear tipped missiles so no one knows where they’re coming from, multiple re-entry vehicles so when the missiles comes back to earth they split up into multiple missiles targeting individual targets - harder to shoot down. Pretty smart. No monkey can do that. Certainly not a cat.

I love this post because being nowhere is a lost art that humans need to re-discover. We could benefit from being in a state of “rapt, devoted attention”, as Kimberly puts it, once in a while. I invented a new word after reading her post: cataphonic - the state of being super mellow and totally activated at the same time. We decided to spread it around and see if it can go viral.

A picture of one of Kimberly’s kitties on walk about.

Sign up for her Substack here Unfixed.

And Whitetail being totally cataphonic.

watching the early returns on PBS one of the commentators said “America is on trial and we’re about to find out who we are.” the verdict is in / this is who we are

they kept saying ‘this election is about the economy’ but that never felt right to me / what it's really about is the environment that we're so intent on destroying / what it’s really about is war and nuclear weapons and the military industrial complex - that dark secret inside the american psyche / it's about being human not a cyborg / it’s about being real not worshipping the god of money like a fool / it’s about billionaires controlling the media and financing elections / it’s about an american public totally brainwashed by the media till they don’t know right from wrong / that's what it's about and the verdict is in

the verdict is in and this is who we are but it’s not who i am / i’m going to continue enjoying my life one sweet breath at a time / i’m not a cyborg and i don’t worship money / i love my fellow creatures and i love my fellow humans and i love this biosphere that we all live in together

i love being alive and although my heart is broken i’m going to continue being alive - that’s the most important thing / and that’s what i mean by brainwashing - we think everything else is important and being alive is a subtext / something we only think about when someone dies / being alive is the most important thing happening and being human is the adventure we’re all on

good luck / love you

music by the Delvon Lamarr Organ Triothese guys kept my spirits up thru this scary weird bizarre journey

The number of robocalls and text messages and tv commercials increase dramatically. Tv ads extoll the virtues and intelligence of one candidate over the lethargic, stupid, almost sub-human depravity of the other, as if people were stupid and believed everything they see on tv. They don’t. They believe whatever they want to believe that they see on tv. Also scary.

TV ads made for politicians are very similar to pharmaceutical commercials made for the drug companies - they all exist within a specific genre, no variation. I mean the content of the commercials is different but the style is exactly the same.

This is why, I believe, people don’t trust politicians. Not really, I mean they vote for them but they know they’re going to get screwed. Their interests are going to be sold off to the highest bidder and their taxes used to build bombs to kill people that they don’t even know.

I don’t know maybe some people like bombs, can’t think of a better purpose for our national treasure. Others' might disagree. That’s the point, you really have no say. Not even would you rather bomb this country or would you rather bomb that country? No, they bomb whoever they please. They have their own reasons.

Halloween, however, is traditionally the time when the veil between this world and the next is thin and permeable. People can pass through. Like your long dead ancestors. You can talk to them and have a picnic on the grass next to their gravestone. That’s what they do in San Antonio. Maybe the European medieval halloween was different. Flying witches and dancing skeletons and blood sucking vampires and mad clowns. Anything to scare you.

But aren’t the politicians wearing costumes too and pretending too? Donald Trump has a blue suit and red tie with a small American flag pinned on the label. Kamala Harris wears the prerequisite business suit for women: skirt, jacket and blouse, maybe a gold necklace. Of course the small flag too, so we know which side she’s on.

Whether they’re pretending or not I’ll let you decide but they are definitely begging . . . for candy. Your vote is their candy.

I don’t know. Do you see any connection between celebrating Halloween and election politics? The veil is growing thin for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to vote. I love voting. I love the long line in Lion’s Park of people voting, coming out and doing something, being communal, all participating in the same exercise. You can talk to people. Not about politics though, you’re supposed to be neutral, atleast within 100 feet of the door.

Someone might be sipping their latte, standing next to their husband and having a great time. Someone else might have their MAGA kit open in the car trunk, proudly displaying its wares to all who pass by. It’s more than a hundred feet from the door, I guess. Didn’t measure it.

People will be coming down from Halloween by that point, they’ll be ready for another party. Hey, why is it they call them ‘parties’ by the way? Because they’re supposed to be fun? Right answer!

Thank you to Glass Beams for the music. My new favorite band of all time!

00:00 Horizon 00:54 Mahal 04:39 Orb

‘from the west to the easthear the prayer of the mothersbring us peace bring us peace’

Since I discovered this video from a friend’s post on WhatsApp I’ve played it a bunch of times, each time discovering something new, my eyes filling with tears by the end. That’s powerful. It was powerful for me. I’m just sayin.

Everybody has a different trigger but music does contain healing vibes and a way of bringing people together. It has that potential. This is a good thing.

Forget politics for a moment. There are other ways of relating to each other. Art, as well as dance, theatre, literature, whatever kind of art, subsumes the connection between two people: the person who made the art and the person who is looking at the art. It’s a subconscious connection that bypasses all the logic of our frontal brain. We need to explore more parts of our brain.

Like where does our consciousness lie, that which is aware? Where do our bad habits reside and where does our courage live and how much of it do we have? And what about our innovation and our aspiration, our hopefulness? What about that? It’s inside us too. That’s part of who we are.

This video (link below) has so many compelling elements. The music, the sound of those women’s voices, the candid shots of women grieving, women giving support, old women, little children women, women with their hearts alight with love, women protesting, women marching, women beating the drum. Israelis and Arabs standing together.

And you know what else? Music as a world-wide unifying force is very much alive. Raves have been going on for decades now all around the world. All night dance parties. Feeling the oneness and the big bass beat.

Rap is worldwide. Kids are rapping in Saudi Arabia. All the YouTube music, which is where I get my music. It’s been a renaissance similar to my twenties when I was discovering music and taking it home from the record store in a cardboard sleeve and playing it on the turntable. Then I bought a reel to reel tape recorder so I could record continuous albums while I sat in the attic all night writing poetry.

So, if you don’t listen to this video I may not be able to convince you of the power of music to bring peace, but I still believe in it. It has brought me alot of peace, joy, deep appreciation.

Everything is a vibration vibrating from the one original giant cymbal crash of primordial nothingness. It’s been vibrating ever since. Everything is vibrating. And this music is vibrating with the power of peace.

“This video "Prayer of the Mothers", was born as the result of an alliance between singer-songwriter Yael Deckelbaum, and a group of courageous women, leading the movement: ‘Women Wage Peace’. This movement arose in the summer of 2014 during the escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.On October 4, 2016, Jewish and Arab women began the joint "March of Hope" project. Thousands of women marched from the north of Israel to Jerusalem in a call for peace. A call that reached it’s peak on October 19th, in a march of at least 4,000 women half of them Palestinian, and Half Israeli, in Qasr el Yahud on the northern Dead Sea.”

Forthcoming, candid, forthright, frank and free. Reading the thesaurus now. Sincere, straight, truthful, unequivocal. Honest, feeling the other person, perceiving their presence and acknowledging their life in this world, the same as I am in this world, I have a personal history, the same as you do.

Maybe just looking someone in the eye and listening to them is enough to count for truth-speaking. I mean truth-speaking doesn’t mean you always have to tell the truth. It can be a joke (which is often a spun yarn) or sarcastic (a kind of joke where you make fun of the whole stupid idea, whatever it is you’re making fun of) or exaggerating your story so it’s more interesting. Nothing wrong with that. People do it all the time. But the truth-telling part is being real. Allowing yourself to be real. That’s what I think.

I never talked to Kabir, he lived 600 years ago, but I bet it was a gas. Whether in the cafe or on the bus, Kabir would be alot of fun. Definitely. Hey there’s probably Kabirs walking around today who want to truth-speak, who know the pleasure and the fun. I’ll find a two year old. They know. They will entertain your presence. People in Mexico too, or any country where people live simply, they know how to entertain themselves with your presence.

Originally it was called Call and Response. Our ancient ancestors did it as a way of staying together and making sure everyone was ‘ok’. I don’t know what their word for ‘ok’ was 50,000 years ago but I’ll bet it was expressive. “Hey, I’m still alive. How about you?” “Yes! I’m still alive too.” We still do that today when we say, “Hi how are you?” and “I’m fine. Thank you.” Then we can go on our way knowing that they’re ok and I’m ok. Important. Ants do it with their feelers. My cat does it, takes a smell of my nose, purrs, gives me a blink. All is good.

Politics can be truth-speaking but it’s usually not. Usually it wants to make a point, win a point, out maneuver the other fellow, destroy their point of view and dominate the conversation, win the debate, win the war, maybe yell and scream a little. It’s therapy not truth-speaking. Except nobody ever seems to get healed. I mean no one actually wins an argument. Why would you let the other guy be right when you’ve got your opinion? Opinion is the highest form of knowledge. That was sarcastic.

I wonder what Kabir was feeling when he wrote this. Actually he didn’t write, he composed them orally, spontaneously and they spread from person to person like a hot rumor. Nobody bothered to write his poems down until two hundred years later, after they had become thoroughly enmeshed in the culture and somebody had the brilliant idea, hey why don’t we write these down. Anyways, they survived. He must have been experiencing something. I know poetry doesn’t come from nowhere. Neither does literature. Neither does conversation. Neither does truth-speaking.

“Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.”

— Kabirtranslation by Robert Bly

music for the podcast - 37:38 to the end / that flute / thank you Cacao Yoga in Vancouver / i love you guys

Big storm. Warm water.

Of course everyone already knows about Hurricane Helene, she just visited this area a few days ago. She dropped as much as 30 inches of rain in some places up in the mountains of North Carolina, far from where she made landfall. People are still digging out and drying off from that disaster, atleast the ones that survived. Over 200 people are dead and a whole bunch of people are missing. Now it’s Milton’s turn. He looks poised to hit one of the most populated and low lying areas anywhere in the United States - Tampa Bay.

Wildfires. They have increased in frequency and intensity over the last 20 years. Even the Amazon has been on fire. The total for this year, from January to August is 13.4 million acres burned up in the Amazon rain forest. That’s a 100% increase from last year. Back in 2003 (and I remember this), after an unusually dry summer, enormous forest fires erupted in Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Siberian Taiga fires burned 55 million acres, and became the largest wildfire in recorded history. It created a plume of smoke that was visible in Kyoto, Japan, thousands of miles away. The Camp Fire blaze in 2018 was California’s most deadly and destructive wildfire ever, or so far. It killed 85 people, destroyed 18,000 buildings and consumed 150,000 acres including the entire town of Paradise. Ironic huh?

This is exactly what the climate scientists have been telling us for years. Natural disasters are going to get worse and become more frequent. I’m not an alarmist but it is something to be alarmed about. I hope you’re sitting in a safe place because it’s going to touch all of us. Sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with this and it looks like sooner is basically now.

I don’t know what it takes to get you motivated: crisis, inconvenience, fear but for me it’s when I feel like I’m abrogating my responsibility, when I feel out of balance with my body or my society or my planet. I don’t like that feeling. I need to do something. And I guess that’s why I’m writing this screed. Trying to do something.

Learning about all these natural disasters and looking at them is disheartening, for sure. I don’t like it but it also motivates me. Stark, dire and other negative descriptors leap to mind.

What does it take to be aware of and respond to the urgent things happening in our world? That’s the question.

Actually it’s a great question. What motivates us to make fundamental changes in our life? Can we talk about this? The politicians don’t want to deal with it because it’s hard to spin disasters that happen because of our own arrogance. They’ll never talk about it straight up and if they did they would never get elected. Look at Al Gore.

It’s up to us, the people. ‘We the people’ and all that. That’s how the Constitution starts off: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” An eminently altruistic document, as probably most country’s constitutions are. But nobody actually reads that unless they’re trying to spin it one way or another in front of the Supreme Court. And then the Supreme Court decides how eminent and altruistic it actually is.

The question remains, what will motivate people to respond? Or put another way, what happens when people don’t respond? Our planet is heating up and putting the squeeze on so many systems in our biosphere in so many ways. What if we don’t respond, or not enough?

The answer to that question will determine how we live or even if we live.

We could actually make this a heaven on earth, a paradise. Remember the ‘Lord’s Prayer’? It’s in the Bible. “Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” What does that mean? That means heaven on earth, people. We have all the tools. We’ve got all the technology. If we just stopped having wars and started focusing our energies on building a beautiful world. A beautiful world for our children and their children down to the 7th generation according to the Cherokee, or was it the Iroquois. Ha. Yeah. Exactly. To live in a simple sustainable way on this beautiful Earth, like we are supposed to, like our ancestors did for thousands of years. Have you not read my book?

That was just a joke actually. I know you haven’t read my book. Nobody has. That’s alright, I had to write it for my own reasons. I needed to do something.

I lived on one of those sandy beaches with palm trees. Infact it even had a cenote back off in the mangroves aways. Cenotes are fresh water pools that the Yucatan is famous for. They proliferate there because of all the rainfall that falls on that flat limestone rock covered with tropical jungle (which is the Yucatan peninsula). It travels underground like a river and carves out caves and caverns and tunnels on its way to the sea. Sometimes the tunnels collapse and form the cenotes, aka the eye of the jungle, the jewel of the jungle. Known to the Mayans for thousands of years and now known to the tourists who come to jump in and witness the amazing underwater tapestry: the regal curtains, the columns, the flowstone and icicle needles of the speleothems. It’s highly decorated inside most cenotes.

Anyways, Xcacel Beach (Ish ka sell) is one of those sandy beaches. I had a bunch of adventures living there. From our little dive shop on the beach, we used to take tourists scuba diving on the reef and back into the jungle to swim in the cenotes.

A Mayan family owned the Dos Ojos cenote a mile or two back in the jungle, thanks to the revolution of 1910 that redistributed the land (or more accurately distributed it for the first time since it had never been distributed at least since the Europeans showed up and conquered everything. Back then only rich people owned land). Anyways, we would take a truck load of tourists back to where Maria de la Selva lived with her husband and kids. For them it was their source of water, what they used for everything from bathing to cooking. For us it was a thrilling underwater adventure.

‘Dos Ojos’ means ‘two eyes’ and so it was that the two pools lay next to each other and you could see the light of one eye from the other eye when you went underwater with a mask on. Diving mask, not halloween mask. It was possible to swim from one eye to the other eye underwater by stopping at an air bubble along the way to get a fresh breath. We called it ‘the Dive of Doom’. We discontinued it when the air bubble in the middle started to become stale but the tourists (young adventure vacationers) loved it.

I have lots of stories about living there and diving and all kinds of stuff but the story I want to tell you is about Maria de la Selva. That’s what I called her anyways, it wasn’t her real name. She would watch, bemusedly, each time I brought a group of white skinned tourists down the rocky path and past her house and jumped into her cenote with dive gear on - sometimes snorkel gear. She seemed to notice everything, including my beat up old four-wheel drive Scout that I used to drive back and forth and parked nearby. I used to joke with her as we went down to jump in her cenote. I think that’s where I came up with the name. She seemed to enjoy my broken Spanish and my canted sense of humor and we became friends.

One day she asked me if I would teach her how to drive my Scout. Hmm. Why not? I asked myself, There’s no traffic on this road it’s just bumpy. It would be fun. So I did. We climbed into my Scout, Maria de la Selva in the driver’s seat and I showed her how to use the clutch and get it into first gear. The road was basically a path made by hacking through the jungle and smoothing out the rocks, atleast sort of smooth. By the time she got it into second gear that was about as fast as you could go. I, for some reason, apologized for the bumpy road (it was her road not mine) and she said no, she liked the bumps.

She successfully drove up and down that road and we ended up back at her palapa by the cenote where her life as a Mayan wife and mother was waiting for her. She had a pretty traditional lifestyle: they grew corn and other crops in their milpa, slept in a hammock in a thatched roof palapa, had a donkey for transportation. I thought that was the end of it.

One day while I was at the cenote helping some divers gear up and get in the water she came down and watched us. Later, after we had finished the dive and were on our way out, she was still there. She asked me, Would you teach me diving? Oh my god. That would mean training and equipment and breathing underwater and what about the husband. I said, no. It wasn’t possible. Too complicated. No way Jose or in this case Maria.

I wasn’t about to get involved in a marital dispute with a family that we were doing business with. I thought about it though. A couple of days later I realized, Hey wait a minute, I am a diving instructor, that’s what I do. Why can’t I teach Maria diving? The reason, of course, was the husband. I didn’t know him well but he didn’t seem like he had the same kind of bridge burning spirit of adventure that his wife did. He seemed comfortably established in the fabric of his Mayan micro-society and I didn’t want to rile it up.

Eventually I came to the startling conclusion, that yes, I could indeed take Maria de la Selva diving but I would have to take her husband too. Oh boy. So, one fine day I arrived in my Scout with diving gear, mask, fins, weight belt, everything, air tanks, and we proceeded to gear up and get in the water and do the training in the shallow water. That was the first problem, there wasn’t any shallow water, it just went straight down. We had to pump up our BCDs (buoyancy control devices) and float while we learned how to clear our mask, clear the regulator, take it out of our mouth, put it back in, how to descend and ascend safely and to never, ever stop breathing. When I felt like we had covered everything pretty good I gave the signal to descend and we went underwater. Maria de la Selva did fine, of course, as she swam around inside her cenote, seeing it in a way that she had never seen it before. Her husband, I don’t remember his name, was tense as a cat in zero gravity (if you can imagine that), in the ISS space station or something, so I just held on to his BCD strap the whole time. I never let him go, just watched his face to make sure he was ok.

I took alot of people diving while living on that beach, mostly in the ocean. One time we came up from the 30 foot reef, surfaced next to the boat, pumped up our BCDs and pulled off our masks. It had been the first time for all of them. I remember looking at their faces, flushed with wonder and astonishment, cleansed from having been in the primordial sea, with the surge and the sea fans and the fish and all of us swaying gently together. In that moment, for some reason, I remembered my father. He had wanted me to become a Baptist minister like him but I strayed far and wide in search of my own truth and here was a great truth. Here was a baptism. They’re thoroughly baptized, I thought to myself floating there in the water next to them, I kinda became a Baptist minister after all.

Xcacel was (is) a turtle beach, one of the most important nesting sites in the whole Caribbean basin because of the number and variety of sea turtles that come ashore there. From June to August the sea turtles crawl out of the heaving ocean, drag themselves up the beach, dig a hole and lay their eggs. A hundred little ping pong ball sized eggs with the fertilized embryo of a baby turtle inside. Sometimes I would help the tortugueros out on the beach, spotting the mama turtles coming ashore and checking their tag. They had a stainless steel tag on their flipper or we would give them one.

Sometimes I would help with the turtle tanks my friend and business partner Buddy built. The idea was to hold some of the newly hatched baby turtles in salt water tanks and feed them so they could get bigger. This would improve their chances of surviving the dangerous reef crossing where the barracudas and the sea hawks and the pelicans were all waiting for them. The waters of the shoreline and the deep blue sea, which they dearly loved with all their little turtle hearts, also held the predators that ate them.

When baby turtles are born, or hatched to be more accurate, in the middle of the night they come bubbling up out of the sand like coffee in a percolator and head straight for the water. No matter how rough the surf is they plunge in. Sometimes they get thrown back several times but they keep trying until they can get out beyond the surf line. They have a one in a hundred chance of living to maturity but mortality is not their concern, their original and primordial impulse to be in the ocean is.

I witnessed this every year on Xcacel beach, late in the summer. Those same turtles that hatched there had swum out for hundreds or maybe thousands of miles into the open ocean and returned to the same beach that they started from when they were ready to lay their eggs. This is what they have determined. Amazing. How do they do that?

I finally left Xcacel beach in 1995 and returned to my traditional lifestyle in the States, became a businessman again and drove around on the streets and highways of my native land but I never stopped wondering - how do they do it, find their home beach again after swimming around all over the Caribbean sea? I think I had turtles on my brain.

One day, back when I was still living on Xcacel Beach, I came across a piece of turtle shell. It had been torn off the carapace of a large sea turtle somehow and you could see the outside pattern and the inside pattern. The Chinese used turtle shells for augeries, the Native Americans believe that the world was created on the back of giant sea turtle floating in the primordial ocean. What’s all that about? I saved that piece of turtle shell, still have it. It seemed to offer clues to a great mystery of some sort, if only I could figure out what it was.

A couple of years passed back in good old civilization and I started to feel the urgent need to go back to turtle beach, to Xcacel, to revisit the place that had had such an impact on me at a formative time in my life. The Ford van that I traveled in and did my business with was self-contained, sort of. It kind of looked like a turtle with it’s hard brown case and blunt nose. So I geared up and drove out along the long curve of the Gulf of Mexico from San Antonio to the Yucatan.

The day I arrived back at Xcacel in my turtle van, I parked near a couple of palm trees where I could sling my hammock, said hi to some old friends and walked up to the top of the berm. The sun was setting and the tortugueros were just starting to walk the beach, setting up their watch stations. Ali drove by and invited me to join him. He was headed for Shipwreck Point with his friend Leo, his niece and two other tortugueros but for some reason I couldn’t move from that spot. Thunderstorms were brewing in the north, more lightening in the east. The tortugueros flashlights flickered on and off whenever they sighted a turtle coming out of the surf. A few stars appeared overhead. Marine bioluminescence sparkled on the beach.

I walked down there, crouched in the sand and looked out at the sea, listened to the voice of the sea and thought about sea turtles navigating in the open ocean. How do turtles find their way home? Here’s my theory.

The turtle maps are drawn under the sand when the little ping pong ball turtle eggs are gestating a foot and a half below the surface. They spend two months down there, dreaming their creation dream, entertained in their pre-existence by the blinking stars, sung to by the ocean’s voice, the smell of the sand permeating their leathery shell and into the baby turtle inside. Sea currents and tides and full moons and summer storms, sunrises and sunsets, subtle temperature changes and the turning Earth - all this forms an impression. In fact, the inside of a sea turtles’ shell, atleast the grown-up, shark-bitten fragment I’ve seen, are etched with lines, like a maze, like a child’s puzzle where you have to find your way home. It’s the record of their growing, the story of their birth and their travels, and how they move within that etching. They carry the map on their back.

Sitting on the beach of Xcacel that night, staring out at the dark ocean, I imagined swimming in open water hundreds of feet deep with no land in sight, the sky turning overhead, sunrise, sunset, sleeping in the sea. I imagined being a turtle looking out from that ocean and feeling the map on my back and swimming to this beach, purposefully, crawling out onto the sand that smells right, onto the beach of my birth to perform the renewal, to perform the ancient ritual of creation in my place of origin. I imagined all those things squatting there on the beach. Maybe that’s how they find their way home.

Then I turned and walked up the berm to find my van and hang my hammock and find my rest and feel my map.

music at 10:58

After writing about refugees in my last post I got a comment from Mary Ann pointing out that not only are people refugees but animals are refugees too. Pushed out of their natural living areas by humans, AKA ‘development’, they have to adapt or perish.

My veterinarian once told me that when he was a kid there were deer roaming about in the wild savannah on the other side of Eisenhauer Road which is just a few blocks from my house. Now the deer, not to mention the snakes, the buffalo, the coyotes, the javelinas, the bears, the bobcats, the armadillos, the jack rabbits, the wild turkeys and the wild savannah have all disappeared.

The spirit of the land, too, has disappeared. It’s no longer called by the names given to it by the long ago people who knew it intimately and lived with it and gave thanks to it. In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s lovely book Braiding Sweetgrass she recalls her childhood summers spent canoe camping in the Adirondacks with her family and her father’s morning naming ritual.

“I can picture my father, in his red-checkered shirt, standing atop the rocks above the lake. When he lifts the coffee pot from the stove the morning bustle stops: we know that it’s time to pay attention. He stands at the edge of camp with the coffee pot in his hands, holding the top in place with a folded pot holder. He pours coffee out on the ground in a thick brown stream. The sunlight catches the flow, striping it amber and brown and black as it falls to the earth and steams in the cool morning air. With his face to the morning sun, he pours and speaks into the stillness, ‘Here’s to the gods of Tahawus.’”

Tahawus is the Algonquin name for Mount Marcy, the highest peak in the Adirondacks. It means ‘cloud splitter’.

“Sometimes my father would name the gods of Forked Lake or South Pond or Brandy Brook Flow, wherever our tents were settled for the night. I came to know that each place was inspirited, was home to others before we arrived and long after we left. As he called out the names and offered a gift, the first coffee, he quietly taught us the respect we owed these other beings and how to show our thanks for summer mornings.”

Our names for things generally bear no relation to the place itself (Mt. Marcy was named for a governor of New York who never set foot on it). Neither do we recognize the land as having a personality and an essential nature. We don’t see how it gives to us from its own resources, how it supports a biosphere with all its intricacies and so we don’t give back.

And because we don’t depend on the land like the ancient people did but instead buy our food in a grocery store, grown far away on a mechanized farm, trucked in to the city and put on the shelf for us to select, we don’t have an intimate relationship with the land. We don’t participate in the growing or the harvesting so how could we? And the result is that the land is abused and denuded and made to give, give, give without any reciprocity. The spirits of the land, or however you want to think about that, are ignored and unrecognized. They are exiled.

To know the spirit of the place where you live you have to interact with it through the seasons, not treat it as something inanimate, it seems to me.

And here I’d like to pivot and talk about my little piece of land, where I live in the middle of this aging suburban neighborhood carved out of the post oak savannah of Central Texas some 70 years ago. There once were park like grasslands here with trees gathered in mottes or along the rivers, and now there are houses and streets and lawns. And cars. And trees planted according to our design, the Cedar Elms and Live Oaks that line our streets.

But here at my place, the large Pecan presides over a small backyard and a pool of water, several pools actually, and it litters the ground with sweet pecans in the mast years. So many pecans that neither I nor the squirrels can gather them all and the seedlings spring up where they have rooted.

There are song birds here. The lovely mockingbird, singing with all its heart, and the mourning doves with their cooing, a pair of cardinals, with their cheeping and trilling, and a sparrow family nesting under the eaves. There are squirrels jumping around in the Hackberries and the Spanish Oaks and racing across the power lines like acrobats.

The raccoons visit sometimes (they like the water) and shelter under the house. I had a mother and her kit once. There is a opossum and her joey in residence. I had to chase her out of my bedroom the other day. She was rummaging around in the cardboard boxes under the shelving as if she was going to make a nest there.

I watch the seasons come and go. Fall gives way to Winter and Winter gives way to Spring. The rains come and the plant people pop up. The ground cover covers the ground and the Bluebonnets push their way through the cleavers and the clover and the dead leaves. Wildscaping, you could say I guess. If it’s green and it grows it’s good, I would say. So many flowers grow here in a wet Spring, that it’s truly amazing. The dog walkers and small children pause as they pass by, if only for a moment, and take notice. Once there was a forest of Sunflowers some 10 feet tall in my front yard and one day while I walked among them I was dive bombed by the Mockingbird. Turns out the underside of the broad Sunflower leaves harbored colonies of caterpillars and she was not willing to share.

There are three cats in residence here, Kybo, the tiny kitten I found lost and abandoned in the middle of the street one night and Betos, who I brought home from the pound to replace Tee Tah who got ate by a coyote, and Bob, the feral one who showed up all on his own and lives under the house, wild and unsociable. All are installed in the landscape and make their patrols out and about, here and there, looking for the perfect spot to lay out and meditate. Nobody has been exiled among these folks. They’ve all been saved and sheltered.

One night while sleeping outside on the futon under the Chinaberry I was awakened by a piercing shriek. It was alarming. I had never heard that sound before. I took my trusty flashlight and began searching in the trees at the edge of my property. It seemed to have come from above. Seeing nothing, I aimed the beam into the Pecan tree above my head and there sat the Great Horned Owl looking down at me. Kybo and Tee Tah were there too and may have been the object of his interest but I guess he realized they were too heavy or maybe too gnarly for predation. A few minutes passed and he flew off, silently, over the neighbor’s fence. I felt gifted. I felt like my place belonged not only me but to the wild ones.

I often hear strange sounds in the night, besides the train whistle and the occasional car from the distant expressway. Is that a bird? Is that a frog? Are they trying to find a mate? Are they singing just for the heck of it? I don’t really know and don’t need to know. I just lie there in the dark, under the Chinaberry, and feel the mystery.

Yesterday I saw a small Hawk drinking from the bog filter and then it flew up to the power lines in the alley and perched there looking at me. We considered each other for a moment and then he (or she) leaped into the air, swooped down and landed in another tree farther off, not visible to me anymore. Hawks fly with a different style and attitude than do the Mourning Doves, the predominant bird around here. Confidence and power is their aerial signature. One day I was sitting on the back porch when I noticed that the Blue Jay’s call had changed from a casual mellifluous note to something more urgent. The Mourning Doves all took flight and just then a Hawk came blasting through the understory like a kamikaze pilot. Too late. Hunting is a percentage game, like a batting average, but sometimes I think they do it just for fun.

start third song

Oh yes and oh my there are critters here, fauna and flora. The Chili Pequins turn red and ripen in December and I gather them for my tacos, what I can get before the Mockingbird takes his allotment. I’m happy to share for it’s the Mockingbird who plants them in the hedges and under the trees where they can take root and grow.

The backyard hosts ritual fires in the fire pit, where the flames leap up and dance in the night, illuminating the ragweed stalks and the backyard fence. Here I can commune with my imagination and whatever thoughts arise as if there is a fire kindled in me too. Poems have been composed and posts written or atleast started around that fire. The ancient people knew the spirit of the fire too and told their stories in its company. For sure.

These are some of the adventures and encounters I’ve had in my backyard, things that connect me to my land. Tales from the crib. I could mention the two bats who sometimes circle the pool at dusk and dip down to drink or maybe to catch bugs, I’m not sure. Or sitting in amazement on the back porch watching the pollen fall like snow from the Willow upwind on the other side of the pond. ‘That’s millions of seeds wafting forth, each one hoping to find fertile ground but only one in a million will’ is what occurs to me.

I think of all the inhabitants who live here, the ones that I’ve recognized anyways, and their comings and goings according to the cycles of nature. The native people, of course, buried their dearly departed on the land where they lived, not in a cemetery far away. And so the land became the repository of the ancient wisdom represented by the bones of their forebears. I feel like I am somehow indigenous to my land, although I have no forebears buried here. And I don’t imagine I will be buried here either. I have no progeny anyways, no tender shoots coming off this old root so no matter.

It does matter that I am at home here. Home, home, where I wanted to go.

music for the podcast came from ::

00:00:00 • AK - Legacy

00:06:06 • Sid Acharya - Falling Through the Hourglass

thank you

They ‘interact’ with the bacteria by injecting their DNA, or RNA as the case may be, into the bacteria along with some random genetic material that they picked up from some other bacteria. Yeah, gene swapping.

That’s what they do, that’s their lifestyle, if they have a lifestyle. That’s all they do basically is run around and inject DNA. But hey a machine could do that. So maybe they’re a machine? That question remains unanswered. Maybe they are the bridge between life and non-life. Can’t replicate, no metabolism. What the heck.

Anyways, whatever they are, they share data in the micro-world, a form of communication using gene transferral as the language. That’s beneficial to both parties. The bacteria gets some new genes to play with and the virus is able to make babies. Ha, ha virus babies, just like mom, a 20 sided miniature oil derrick with a ‘head’. And now that it’s been altered (infected), the bacteria can act different, it can find some new innovative way of doing something, it becomes more adaptable. Get it? The viruses are actually helping the bacteria by sharing genetic information.

The title of the BBC article is “Meet the microbiome's 'dance partner': The hidden kingdom of viruses living in your gut.” That’s pretty descriptive and Amber Dance does a good job of describing the intricacy and subtlety of the micro-world in her short article. Viruses are the smallest and simplest members of the microbes in our gut and the bacteria must appear like a new found planet or island in the sea, where they can make landfall, connect with the outer surface and inject their DNA into the cytoplasm. The bacteria, for some strange reason, accepts this and replicates it, using it’s own machinery. Exactly what the virus couldn’t do.

Replication services is what the virus needed and replication is what the bacteria can offer. The virus doesn’t really want to kill the bacteria, although sometimes it does, it just wants some assistance and it can offer, in return, some random genetic information garnered from another bacteria. That’s the deal.

So far the researchers are not sure how many species of bacteriophages (aka viruses) there are. They’ve found 140,000 so far and they suspect there’s way more. Way more means who knows how many and what their function is and how they affect us. “Viruses infecting bacteria are thought to be the most abundant biological entities on earth.” according to this article in Nature. Wow again. Imagine the level of symbiosis at work there.

All of nature works by symbiosis. It should be no great surprise that the viruses in our gut are in a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria. And the bacteria are working intimately with cells from our own body - another dance. Altogether they comprise a ’microbiome’, all the microbes that live on us and in us. We are like a world with our own biosphere and our own critters.

Planet earth has a biosphere too and it operates on symbiosis too. All the species combine to form a web of life. This is well known. Human beings have societies, worlds of our own making comprised of people interacting and sharing and sometimes harming each other just like the viruses in our gut. But we’ve kind of lost our symbiotic tendencies. That’s unfortunate. Symbiosis is alot of fun and a brilliant strategy for survival that has worked for billions of years. It’s a way of getting along in a diverse and complex world.

Our lack of symbiotic spirit is most evident in our politics. Destroy and defeat is the strategy there. No accommodation and no communication. We think it’s normal but it’s actually unnatural. It disrupts the harmony of the system and creates tension for everybody. How can that be good?

Like the viruses in our gut we need to inject some genetic information into the conversation. We need to share. We need some useful wisdom around here. Humans are not cyborgs and humans are not droids. We are natural members of a biosphere based on symbiosis. It’s called nature. It’s the mother of us all.

check out this amazing music on the podcastfrom Cacao Yoga in Vancouver 00-7:57

Mercury is the first planet from the sun. A little too warm for most people - average temperatures are around 330 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s like an oven. You could bake a cake in there.

Earth is the third rock from the sun, so to say, having a solid core like the other inner planets. It’s comfortable, so comfortable that life was established here billions of years ago and continues to proliferate.

This is Mars, fourth planet from the sun and freezing cold. There may be life there but hiding underground with the water. If there is water. Doesn’t look like a thriving planet.

We could go on visiting all the planets in our solar system: Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus. There’s no sign of life on any of them. It’s just here on planet Earth. We haven’t yet found any planets outside our solar system that have life either. There may be. They’re just too far away to see.

On planet Earth there are approximately 100 million species and Lord knows how many independent life forms (even Google couldn’t answer that question). Our planet is covered with life from earthworms to elephants and including of course the tiny ones that you can’t see - the microbes. They live and die and procreate with their own DNA and their own agenda.

What is a microbe’s agenda, one might ask? I don’t exactly know but there must be one otherwise why is it even alive? What caused it to rise up from the grit and slime of primordial matter? There must be some reason, some principle at work.

Anyways, planet Earth is full of life. We take it for granted though, don’t really appreciate what’s been given to us. Take another look at Mercury.

That planet has geology but it doesn’t have biology. We have geology: continents, oceans, mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes and we have biology. Geology and biology combined is called a biosphere. We have a biosphere.

Here’s in praise of our biosphere. It’s fantastic! Let’s not wreck it folks. We’ve been leaning on it pretty heavily for the last 200 years. Right now species are going extinct at 1,000 times the normal rate that they would if humans weren’t around wrecking everything.

We live in the biosphere. It’s like a protected zone against all the odds, the solar radiation, the cosmic rays and the cold, airless void of space. But we’re vulnerable. We’re on top of the food chain and if anything breaks we’re liable. What if we crash the system? What are we going to do, make food in a factory? From what? Water and air and soil? That’s what the biosphere does already. It makes food for everybody. For free.

There’s time to change our wasteful ways, but we better hurry. Nothing is guaranteed, not even the survival of the human race. We’re on top of the food chain, alrighty, and that’s great but we would be sure to fall if it breaks.

Thank you to All India Radio from Melbourne for this amazing song. I have admired it for a long time. It features the gorgeous voice of Leona Gray.

What is a groovy nook, you might ask? That is when two things meet and interact in an interesting way and create a shelter or a habitat for even more things to interact. That’s what it is. You find them all over the place in Nature.

The Stream made its way downtown, well there was no downtown back then, just some wild Indians camping out on the riverbank, but where the downtown would be one day. The downtown would be there because the water was there, two Spring fed Streams almost coming together and merging, and the rich alluvial soil that accumulated there. This is where the first settlers planted their gardens and irrigated them and started building a town.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention, there were two Spring fed Streams, one that joined the first Spring fed Stream or almost joined it, came within a quarter mile of joining it and the original one. They were both gentle and rambling and full of Groovy Nooks. Together they created the rich, fertile, well watered groovy place that would become downtown. But for now let’s call it the Woods. It was full of Groovy Nooks too.

And the Spring, where this whole story started, where the first Spring gushed out of the ground and splashed on the rocks and formed its Stream, it was a place of Groovy Nooks too. The people would gather there to enjoy all the Groovy Nooks they could find and all they had to offer: food and shelter and things to make things with - river reeds and special stones and branches of trees. They didn’t mind. The trees I mean.

And so, if you believe this story so far, there also was a Path between the two nodes - the Spring of Groovy Nooks and the Woods of Groovy Nooks - because people traveled back and forth, made pilgrimage, hunted and gathered there. Obviously. That path is called Broadway. Well it’s called Broadway now, I don’t know what it was called back then, but it’s my street. I travel it almost everyday on my horse, I mean my bicycle, from above the spring to somewhere around the woods.

Notice they’re not capitalized now? That’s because they’re all chopped down and the spring is dead. All that’s left is the heroic Riverwalk and Broadway. And downtown.

I mourn this but along this route can still be seen Pilgrims and Hunter/Gatherers (the street people) and travelers of all sorts. One time I stopped and talked to a guy who was walking down the sidewalk just because I wanted to find out who he was and say hi. He appeared in my mind’s eye to be on a quest. We ended up having a conversation for twenty minutes right there on the sidewalk. He told me that he had just been released from the county jail and was on his way to get a phone so he could start putting his life back together. He apologized for his appearance, dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans and I told him he looked fine, that I could see his power, his personal dignity, it was shining out. By the time I left I felt like we had bonded, like we were old friends. I was almost in tears. A fellow Pilgrim on the Path.

One time I saw this guy sitting under the tree with his pack, off in Lion’s Park (there are no more lions) sitting there with his head down. He wasn’t moving at all. I went over to where he was, pulled a bill out of my belly pouch and handed it to him. He looked up, took the money, said “God bless you sir”. I was blessed and I left, rolling down the bike trail next to Ave. B.

They shunted all the bikes off Broadway onto Ave. B. Get it, Avenue B? Broadway is now State Highway 368, a commercial thoroughfare with trucks and cars speeding by at 5 to 10 miles above the speed limit. But I still ride it. There are ways to get through. There are still Groovy Nooks if you know where to find them. Press Coffee is one.

The other day I was on Ave. B and I saw this beat up old car, like a 1976 Nova or something. It was parked with the engine running, knocking pretty hard but running with no one inside. There is a canal or culvert along the pathway there and on the other side - the Woods of Brackenridge Park. When I saw him, he was crossing the bridge back to where his car was after checking out the Groovy Nooks in the Woods (presumably). Sometimes people build houses back there, shacks really made with found materials. I didn’t talk to him, he looked like he wanted to be alone or atleast undetected, so I rolled on but I thought about him. I hope he found his happy home or whatever it was he was looking for along Broadway.

Sometimes I see runners and walkers. Sometimes I see other bicyclists. Sometimes the whoosh of the cars sweeps me along, sometimes I race the buses and pretend they’re buffalos and me and my buddies are chasing them. Of course it’s just me but back in the day . . . A buffalo is way bigger than a cow. Just so you know. They weigh as much as a small car. It would have been alot of fun and very dangerous hunting them with a stone tipped spear or bow and arrow on your horse or more likely on foot. Imagine that.

Broadway used to be called River Avenue, according to the Joeris engineer I talked to working to shore up the river channel at the Witte Museum, the river used to flow where the road is now. Where the museum sits was a marsh. That was a Groovy Nook for sure, full of grooviness, frogs and alligators and lily pads. Water birds eating the fish. They had to bring in 14 feet of fill dirt so they could build the museum.

This map from 1895 shows the winding river with River Ave to the east. The future site of the Witte Museum is at the bottom end of Brackenridge Park where the river does a horseshoe. Downtown is another 2 miles further on along River Ave in your horse cart. Pretty much all the wild Indians were gone by then.

I ride downtown and appreciate it even though I can’t see the beauty that once was there. They straightened the river for flood control, then made it curvy again for the tourists so who knows even where it used to flow. The swamps are gone, the Groovy Nooks gone.

Where the tall trees once stood, the tall buildings stand now, aiming for the sky, angular and covered with glass, maybe a spire on top. The Woods have become the Downtown. They hide a good many Groovy Nooks of the modern variety. Probably they have terraced rooftops, some of them. Groovy Nooks for sure. I’ve never been up there. Except for the Pace Gallery. Then there’s Travis Park. Peacock Alley.

One time we organized a bike ride from Lion’s Park to downtown along Broadway. The purpose was to draw attention to the need for bike lanes so the bicyclists could ride safely among the cars. The mayor of San Antonio was there on his bike ready to demonstrate his support for bike lanes on Broadway. I went up to him before the ride started and said, “Hey Mayor Nirenberg, don’t worry if you hear yells and call outs along the way. It’s probly for me. This is my street!” We all laughed.

Today Broadway is the premier avenue of our fair city. It has museums, it has actual bookstores, it has restaurants and markets, the Pearl (many people would favor that as a groovy nook), motels, parks. It used to be all used car lots along here but it transformed. Before the used car lots it was the main north/south thoroughfare for the horses and carriages going in and out of the city. Before that it was a Path next to a beautiful Spring fed Stream. Before that, before any humans dwelt here, it was a Garden of Eden abounding with Groovy Nooks. It was once one giant Groovy Nook all along the way from Spring to Woods. Now it’s called Broadway.

the podcast soundtrack is from 00:00-7:15 thank you Tomoko and Koku

One day me and my housemate found a baby raccoon wandering around the neighborhood. It’s mother was nowhere to be seen. It probably came from underneath my house where a clan of raccoons has resided for sometime. In fact, it may have been this pup’s mother that I found lying on my back porch one day, lifeless. I have no idea what happened.

We managed to steer the baby into a blind alley between a house and a hedge with the live trap at one end and coaxed him in (not very difficult, I think the little guy realized it was his best option at this point). Then we headed out for ‘Wildlife Rescue’ in my VW Jetta with the little buy riding shotgun. Well actually he was in the back.

I had heard the name somewhere before so we looked it up and there it was, not too far away - 166 Babcock Rd. A kind lady received us (I don’t remember her name) took the little fellow into the back and made him comfortable, I guess, maybe a snack and some water, a little nest of warm bedding. I don’t know what she did but when she came back we had a conversation about wild animals in the city and that’s when I started learning about WRR.

I asked her, What’s going to happen to the baby raccoon? We’ll help it grow up and then release it in a wildlife area where it can survive. How does your service work? By donations, feel free to offer something (we put in $10). What other things do you do for rescued wildlife? We have a Sanctuary in the country where we care for alot of animals, feed them and give them a place to live and rehabilitate them if possible. She mentioned a few other things that I don’t remember but I do remember feeling grateful that somebody was available to help this little raccoon who otherwise would have had bleak prospects for survival. When we left I took a brochure.

Days later I was still thinking about it: all the animals that get injured, the pets that get abused, the raccoons running around my neighborhood. They live in my backyard. They moved in. They’ve been there for generations, atleast 2 or 3. What to do, so I looked at the brochure, and found Lynn’s name with a phone number. I called and she answered the phone. We talked about raccoons for a good 45 minutes.

Why do they live in the city? That’s their territory, their ancestral homeland if you will. Why do they have to live under my house? Because you have the perfect environment for them, ponds and food. How have they adapted so well to urban life? They’re very intelligent and dextrous. How do I get rid of them? Probably not possible with all the water features on your property and feeding them cat food every night. Yeah well if I don’t feed them I’m afraid they’ll break into my house or something, do something mischievous. Well there you go.

I realized after talking to Lynn that being in a state of symbiosis or atleast mutual respect with the raccoons was the best way to go. Feed them and wish them well and close the kitty door at night. If they’re happy they won’t be as much of a nuisance. That’s my strategy.

Here’s the interview

Although the Sanctuary is not open to the public, because they want to keep it focused on helping the animals regain their wildness, I was invited to tour the site with Diane Thovson, the Animal Admissions Director. We drove through the property in her golf cart and she told me all about it.

We try to make their lives as normal as possible, give them a good quality of life, we have trees in the enclosures, bridges between the trees sometimes, warm houses for the tropical animals that aren’t used to the cold, She told me. We don’t name them because they’re not pets, they’re wild animals. We interact with them to the point where we can get them medication and food but we don’t hold them, we don’t play with them, we don’t talk to them. We want their behavior to revert to being wild animals. Sometimes it’s the first time these animals have touched grass or been outside.

Among the animals I saw or were described to me but couldn’t see because they were hiding somewhere in their enclosure were: mountain lions, ring tailed lemurs, a bob cat, a fox, a coyote, a rhesus macaque (a refugee from a university lab), long tailed macaques (they had warm houses for when it gets cold), ring tailed cats (related to raccoons), capuchin monkeys bush babies (small nocturnal primates), owl monkeys, spider monkeys that used to be pets, kinkajous (see the photo at the top of the page), marmosets (tiny little primates), prairie dogs, a rooster (housed with a monkey and getting along quite well), brown lemurs (some are bonded pairs), a black bear, song birds, doves, lion tail macaques, brown capuchins, coatis, skunks, raccoons, opossums, white faced capuchins, parrots, cockatiels, chickens, turkeys, a peacock, and a blind cow. There were sheep and goats hanging out together and a passel of pigs with their own wallows to wallow in. Crows and ravens and vultures live on the property, axis deer wander thru occasionally, donkeys keep the grass mowed.

I also got to see the facilities that have been built on the property: the nutrition center where specialized formulas for each species is prepared with attention given to a varied, natural diet. The rehabilitation hospital with 570 patients, the operating room (I watched a lemur getting a hysterectomy), veterinary clinic with x-ray to help with setting broken bones. Diane showed me a tag with the number 6,531 on it, a raccoon in the rehabilitation hospital. That’s how many had come through so far this year. Every year, we release thousands of mammals on properties that have been pre-screened and deemed suitable for each species. The most commonly released animals are squirrels, opossums, raccoons, and skunks, with a smaller numbers of bobcats, coyotes, and foxes, Diane informed me. “WRR rescues over 10,000 wild animals every year.” is what it says on their website https://www.wildlife-rescue.org/.

Wow this is like the Garden of Eden, I said to Diane at the conclusion of the tour, with the chicken and the marmoset living together, the goats and the sheep, the free birds flying around overhead. And so it was. The ravens and crows along with their friends the vultures were happily flying around everywhere, the two donkeys were hanging out in the pasture under the trees. When one of them bade me fond adieu as I was leaving, if I understood him correctly. They were all enjoying the Sanctuary.

Below are some pictures from my camera and also some exquisite color portraits of the animals taken by the WRR staff.

Years ago, when my neighbor’s daughter was small, still living in the age of wonder, we would go on safari, crawling thru the Ragweed forest and pretend to be lost. Ha ha. That Ragweed forest actually moved, summer by summer, from over by the fence to over by the pool. I could see exactly what it was up to - getting closer to the water. Who can blame it?

The Ragweed forest is gone, I pulled it out of the ground last Spring, hundreds of aspiring young plants. It was cruel but not without reason, I was starting to suffer from the pernicious pollen they release into the air. I figured the neighbors would probably appreciate it too.

But there is new stuff always showing up in the jungle habitat. A Chili Pequin is growing over by the Papyrus. It’s developing its small, red, intensely hot chilis and hanging them like Christmas ornaments among its beautiful green leaves. I love that plant. Me and the Mockingbirds. They are the ones who planted it. We share.

Next to the pool where the running water flows, lies the groovy nook half hidden beneath the Possum Haw and the Hackberry trees. There is a bench, bartered from a neighbor, where I often sit to observe and witness (kind of the same thing) the green screen of tangled foliage and the swamp beyond filled with Elephant Ears and Saw Grass. Impenetrable. If you were a Frog you could find refuge there. That’s where they used to hide and even laid their eggs but Kybo the wild cat got em when they came out to feed. It was sad. The Toads remained but who wants to eat Toads?

Where the swamp (aka bog filter) empties into the pool there are dozens of orange and white Goldfish, each with their unique designs and colors. They have been swimming around in there since I brought them home from the Walmart aquarium 10 years ago. There are no chemicals in this water (it’s a biosphere) because it’s filtered in the bog. It’s a bog filter. It purifies and aerates the water without chemicals. Yay! How does that work?

Microbes. Nitrosococcus and Nitrosomonas live in the bog filter (I call them Soco and Somo) and they transform the waste products of the fish people into plant food. Microbial magic. They are a big part of the Jungle. I’ve identified those two but who knows how many other species of microbes are floating around in the pool with the green algae and the dragonfly nymphs and the dark skittering minnows?

I know my jungle is small, it can’t compare to the Amazon or even a dinky forest but there are also millions and zillions of unknown, unseen microbes in the soil doing things. The fungi are digesting wood and turning it into dirt and connecting the roots of the plants so everybody can share. All kinds of things are going on down there. I could probably google it if I wanted to. Microbes run this place. They’re the foundation of the food chain. They make dirt and fix the nitrogen in it. If you don’t fix the nitrogen nobody can use it.

The Willow tree leans out over the pond, its green leaves fluttering in the breeze, it leans without falling, it leans as if her arms were about to embrace her lost child and below this embrace, on the back porch, I sit. I can see the whole jungle from here. I can think jungle thoughts. I can see my lost child, somewhere back in the dense foliage. Hey Rohn!

And this is also where I try to practice symbiosis. What do you need? How can you help me? That’s symbiosis, that’s how the biosphere works. You see it everywhere: the microbes filtering the water, the bees and the flowers. The trees and the humans breathe out and breathe in with complimentary effects, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide for oxygen. There is harmony and flowing energy (the breeze and the scents on the breeze), there is green and blue in the canopy, there is bark and brown on the ground, there is filtered light all thru the jungle.

When I have jungle thoughts my jungle gets bigger. It gets as big as a three year old might see it, towering plants, huge trees, bugs flying thru the air as fast as your eye can see, green water and 10,000 skittering minnows swimming around, the Hydrilla and flowering Pickerell Weed over at the shallow end of the pond where the Dragonflies alight. In the Groovy Nook the climbing vines and the soaring canopy are as mysterious as any medieval forest ever was. The elves and fairies and spirits of the air, seen only by the three year olds, are there. I’m pretty sure.

Everything that can be seen is hidden and everything that is hidden can be seen. That’s the trick to my backyard jungle. If I told you all the stories I would have to write a book. Oh yeah I did write a book.

Twilight comes and everything changes. Crepúsculo. The enchantment. Dawn comes and the deep shadows flee. It’s endlessly entertaining.

music from 00:00-12:18 this is a fantastic album / you can visit their youtube site below and make a contribution

Whether you’ve seen this or if it’s new, I hope you enjoy it. You can listen to the original podcast (recommended) or read the text edition.

Pacha Mama, Mother Nature, Planet Earth - unto you we sing and play.

Cans and bottles and boxes and plastic encased display cards with the good stuff clearly seen inside but thoroughly protected - our products come well packaged. No one has touched it, pristine, virgin is the connotation I suppose.

‘New’ and ‘packaging’ are bound together in the modern day buying experience. You buy them both. Otherwise you wouldn’t really trust the product. If your Amazon order arrived loose in a bag without any packaging, you would be like - is this really the product? It doesn’t have any packaging.

In the picture below the big black guy is presenting the seated white guy with an object, maybe two objects, obviously unpackaged, how rude. In one hand a conch shell and in the other hand some kind of a stick or pole with a strange round thing at the top and an equally strange protuberance at the bottom. He could be the Mayan Amazon delivery driver but there is no packaging. The picture, which is actually a Mayan hieroglyph (meaning unknown), came with the music I found on YouTube. It’s by Cacao Yoga in Vancouver (the music not the picture) and includes the amazing track that you are listening to now.

Of course once a product is opened or consumed, the packaging is discarded. What once held promise and intrigue is now trash, disposable, and likely will become part of an artificial mountain called a ‘landfill’.

In San Antonio there are three large municipal landfills: Covell Gardens, Tessman Road Landfill and Texas Disposal Systems Landfill, plus 4 smaller bulky waste sites where residents can dump their junk, plus several private sites that will take your stuff for a fee. Tessman Road, the largest of these landfills, has a capacity of 50 million tons. I couldn’t find out how high it is though or how deep it is. No pictures. Must be a fair sized knoll by now, they’ve been filling it in for awhile. I learned that Covell Gardens, the smallest one, processes 1,300,000 tons annually on their 480 acre garden. That’s a fair sized ranch.

Pacha Mama, as referred to in the song (Mother Nature, planet Earth), is a package too and we are the contents. Discarded after the expiration date, we are buried in a landfill called a cemetery and eventually recycled. The container remains and the contents disappear. Pacha Mama has been doing this for a very long time. Everything that’s alive is built on something that has died. It seems like a significant point.

We traveled far to find this placewhere weary souls find a warm embrace

says the song

We traveled far from outer spaceto bring you love and a warm embrace

We’ll never get a handle on our waste disposal until we realize what an incredible place this is - our home planet. Supremely elegant and floating in space, no wires attached, turning on its axis and orbiting around a radiant sun - it contains a biosphere, a sphere of biological organisms, uncountable trillions of them, alive and procreating.

It’s not new but it’s a package. It’s a package deal.

And all our love all our loveit comes from this place

And unto you we sing and playand love this place

May all the bombs turn into birdsand fly away

Oh Pacha Mama

says the song

podcast music at 34:20Thank you so much Tomoko and Koku for this Cacao Yoga set.

Is there a book of the Bible named Laughter? There should be. There is a book of Lamentations.

Jerusalem has just been razed to the ground by the Babylonians and Jeremiah is crying out ‘Great is your Faithfulness, oh Lord’. I’m not sure why. Then he starts with his lamentations.

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.Fear and a snare have come upon us.Desolation and destruction.My eyes overflow with rivers of water.

Lamentations 2:46-48. On and on it goes in pretty much the same fashion. It was kinda like his poem.

Anyways, when I’m at home I’m usually sequestered in my cell, deep in deliberation and prayer. Also called writing. The altar of the Great Internet Computer stands glowing and humming in the very center of my desk, connected by cables and wires to other sub-deities: the printer, the mouse, the external drive, the powered speakers. They are all worshipped here. Or cursed. That’s when they don’t work.

Actually my altar sits at the end of a long desk that lines one wall. It’s centered in front of the window that looks out on the bright day and the front lawn. That’s where I can rest my eyes when they grow weary of staring at the screen, I mean the Computer God. The Computer God’s face. You can’t look at the face of God because your eyes would melt is what I heard. Or atleast start tearing up and you have to put eye drops in.

‘Lord, you know I have failed at everything pretty much. My life has been a miserable failure’ is how I started out my original version of ‘laughter from the monk's cell’. Ha, looking for humor in that. I went on and on with a long list of things: ‘my failed relationships, my failed careers, my failed poetry, my failed fabulous books. Oh Lord, I’m filled with regret. It keeps re-circulating in my head. I wrote it all down but I wasn’t laughing. I failed to get married and have kids. I failed friends who I thought would always be my friend’. Nothing was funny yet. I failed to get the joke.

Towards the end of my monk’s lament I began to feel feisty, rebellious. I wrote: ‘Yes, and you know what else, oh Lord? I have been here. Oh yeah. Infact, I am here right now, sitting in my monk’s cell watching the little shadows move across the wall. Everything opens up if you’re looking at nothing.’ Still pretending I’m a monk in my cell. A bed, a small window, everything made out of stone and tiny.

‘I’m thankful for the corn gruel twice a day, for the small square of sunlight that comes thru the window above my cot in the morning, for Missy the cat who visits me once a day, maybe more, although I have little to give her.’ That was mildly funny. Actually I eat pretty well. I make it myself so why not? I don’t have a cookbook, I just riff off beans and rice. Endless combinations. Right now it’s black beans and organic brown rice with fresh, diced lion’s mane mushrooms, kale (dressed with deep roasted sesame sauce), aged cheese and my 3 secret herbs and spices; turmeric, fenugreek and aesfoetida. Oh yeah, I threw in a handful of corn chips on top. Yes I’m writing while eating. Two of my favorite things.

The funniest thing of all that I’ve found sitting in my monk’s cell, to be honest, is life. Just being alive. It’s so hilarious if I can single it out as an ‘it’. That’s hard to do of course. It gets mixed up with everything else and I lose the focus. But when it’s sharp I can feel the delight that a baby must feel sitting on the floor with her sister, at the foot of her mother playing with a bag of wooden blocks that fit together. That’s what I saw in the cafe this morning. When I spoke to her she gave me a beautiful smile and said hello.

What the heck, I exist. On a planet, in a universe. I can feel something inside me like some kind of energy and I know I’m alive. It’s amazing. Everything is amazing. My monk’s cell is amazing. My failed life is amazing. It’s hilarious.

It’s like a theatre piece I saw in the cafe the other day. I was sitting on one side and the barista counter was on the other side, behind a rack of knick knacks, and people would enter, stage right, do their thing and exit. Then a completely different person would come in, a girl with green hair for example, and she would perform her part: aspire, order, wait, and receive the blessing. That was the sub-routine that everybody performed. A mom holding her daughter’s hand descended the steps, stage left and entered. She navigated to the barista counter while the child explored the knick knacks. I watched them as if they were actors on a stage, as if it were their moment in a theatre show, the spotlight was on. It was lovely. There’s even a mezzanine.

In actuality, though, I laugh alot. Usually when I find a good musical track that I can use on my podcast. Or when I see a baby playing. Or when I realize I’m alive.

I guess it’s not that hilarious to other people, I can’t stop laughing myself.

music from Carbon Based Lifeforms / again / thank you so much

It’s a simple little atom (number 6 on the periodic table) but it can form a vast number of compounds, more than any other element. Almost ten million are known and that’s only a small fraction of what’s theoretically possible.

Because of it’s ability to easily form stable bonds with itself and with other elements, it often forms large complex molecules with repeating patterns. That’s called catenation and is very useful for building biological systems. Life, in other words. Our genetic code, DNA, is a very long complex molecule based on the properties of carbon. So are proteins which form the basic sub-units of our body. Carbohydrates store the energy used by animals and plants and guess what, they’re carbon based. Even some neurotransmitters are built with carbon atoms, like dopamine and serotonin. There are many, many other examples, the study of which is called Organic Chemistry. It has its own category, different from regular chemistry. Carbon is the most prolific element in our body, besides oxygen.

It’s an amazing shape shifter. Diamonds are pure crystallized carbon, transparent, and one of the hardest substances known. Graphite, another form of carbon is black, easily breaks or rubs off - it’s pencil lead. Graphene is composed of a single layer of carbon atoms connected in a honeycomb structure that’s harder than steel and more flexible than rubber, microscopically speaking. Wow, what an element!

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Carbon Based Life Forms is also the name of a band. Their music is playing right now on the podcast version (unless the evil algorithms got it). It’s ambient psy-chill, machines and nature frolicking together in a grove of trees alongside a trickling brook, a couple of rabbits foraging in the field. It’s Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Vadestrid from Sweden. Their music inspired me to write this post.

They met in 1991 when they were 15 years old and started collaborating. It was the beginning a friendship that has lasted until now. They’ve produced 5 albums and a soundtrack. And they play at festivals in Europe. Live music.

The comments on their YouTube page range from idyllic to euphoric:

alvanwolf:Everyone commenting on this video is so filled with love. If only the world behaves this way... I love you guys.

moist:12 years later. still favorite album. forever.

judyenville:I cannot tell you how many times this album has given me sanctuary from this wild wild world

djbavamorda:I can't get enough of this, every tune is a droplet of paradise.

Their interlocking ambient riffs and targeted arpeggios and spoken word voices in the mist evoke some kind of deep brain waves, atleast in me. their music is like listening to the whispered and hush secret code of life That’s from elijah.

From a lovely interview in Psybient. They’re talking about their favorite synthesizer - the Roland TB-303.

Despite being such a simple instrument it’s extremely versatile, as it can be very aggressive when distorted and at the same time fluffy and bubbly when treated nicely. The super organic but still machine-like sound combined with it’s quirky sequencer makes this machine unique.Our music aim is to combine nature and technology so it fits right in for us.

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Just like organic macromolecules and the sub-riffs of Daniel and Johannes - their incatenations, this post is built with catenation too. Friendly, flexible little units called words are arranged in such a way that it makes a whole thing. It sticks together. It’s flexible yet strong - like humans. It can be arranged in many different ways, for many different purposes. Sometimes it’s transparent, sometimes it’s opaque. Sometimes it flies away, sometimes it whispers in your ear. ‘I’m just a carbon based life form.’

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That’s it. That’s all I got. I hope you enjoyed it.

Daniel and Johannes’ music below.

This bomb is in nobody’s arsenal, it was built for show back in the nuclear arms race days, before atmospheric testing was banned. There are, however, 12,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of various countries (9 to be exact) sitting on the tips of missiles, waiting in the bellies of bombers or undersea in nuclear attack submarines. They are perfectly capable of destroying your city. Meanwhile these countries are dividing up into factions and alliances just like before World War II and World War I. The only difference is our weapons are far more powerful.

Yeah, it looks bleak, it looks dire. We have the ability to destroy all the cities where people live on this planet many times over (in case they try to reappear). But instead of being horrified, we seem to be enamored with our weapons. We make a business out of selling them. That should be totally illegal, it’s certainly immoral. Governments base their relations with other countries on the weapons they sell.

We love our weapons. We give them romantic names. A recent New York Times article about the Ukraine war mentioned the Leopard 2 tank (Germany), ATACMS (clever) rocket artillery and the F-16 Fighting Falcon (US). Makes for interesting reading that’s for sure.

We make media events out of our wars. Splashy full color pictures with howitzers and rockets and tanks and airplanes. Excuse me but WTF.

In America there are millions of guns and zillions of bullets. Why? Somebody tell me why. To keep a tyrannical government from taking over? Oh c’mon . . . the tyrannical government has already taken over and your 9 mm handgun is not going to stop them.

There are no more wild Indians, no more wolves and bears and mountain lions, no more redcoats trying to oppress us but we’re armed to the teeth as if it were our God given right. Good grief.

Besides the weapons and the wars there is the considerable environmental degradation of our world due to the rapacious economic system we have adopted - capitalism. It justifies economic growth by any means including war and environmental degradation. Then there are the 8 billion people on this earth that need space and food and energy and they can’t seem to get along. Divisiveness prevails. There is our long documented history of violence, revenge, greed and intolerance.

Looks dire indeed but that’s not the whole story. Human beings also have the capacity for kindness and generosity (that usually doesn’t get covered in the news or documented in our books). What would it take to change the focus from I, me, me, mine (to quote the Beatles) to a shared concern for each other?

Here’s some good news. From the UNESCO Constitution (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”

Sounds like a plan. And here is someone who’s working on it, Prem Rawat. He’s been working on it for over 50 years - since he was a child. I have some credibility on this subject. I have known him for almost that long.

From his website:

“For more than 55 years, Prem Rawat has shared his enduring message of peace with people all over the world – regardless of their nationality, religion, or lifestyle – a message that inner peace is not only possible, but a human birthright. With great commitment, wisdom and wit, he has reached hundreds of millions of people in more than 100 countries. Visit here for an interactive timeline of his global activities.”

The interactive timeline is truly amazing. The real story, however, is in the lives of the people that have been affected by his projects - the ‘Peace Education Program’ for example. Community centers, schools, universities, senior centers, homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation facilities and prisons all over the world have used this program to bring a sense of clarity and personal peace to people. Check this out: Peace On The Inside from Dominguez Jail right here in San Antonio. Another project, ‘Peace Education and Knowledge’, is an educational program he developed that offers a simple, practical way for a person to discover and explore their own inner peace. It’s a feature of the TimelessToday app, available for free online.It’s not in the news, they want to show you war and calamity, but it’s happening on a grass roots level and it’s spreading like a ripple in still water.

Ripple in still waterWhen there is no pebble tossedNor wind to blow

Reach out your hand, if your cup be emptyIf your cup is full, may it be againLet it be known there is a fountainThat was not made by the hands of men

The Grateful Dead knew about it.

I know about it. You know about it. That ripple could cover the earth and bring about a substantive change. It’s possible. That’s the point - it’s possible. And whenever something is possible, human beings have a pretty amazing ability to make it happen. There’s a history about that too.

Many times I have been reminded and inspired by Prem’s relentless encouragement and his belief that peace is possible. That’s why I’m writing this post. It’s not about world peace, of course, it’s about every single individual feeling their peace. Well, every single individual feeling peace might be a little naive, but lots and lots of people feeling peace. Lots and lots and lots of people. It’s an internal feature of being human. All humans recognize the feeling of peace. We all strive for it. How hard can it be?

Ok, it is hard but only because we have these deeply ingrained ways of thinking. Concrete in the brain. Unable to adapt, to adopt a new perspective. And this is the new perspective that we need to adopt: peace is inside us, we can enjoy it, we can discover it. Not as a meme or a banner or even a movement - just a discovery like children do. Everything is new for kids, everything brings a great sense of delight. Their discovery is spontaneous and playful. They’re very intent about it. We were all that kid once.

So yeah hey, you know what? We might blow it. It’s entirely possible. But hey, you know what? We can try. Go down with the ship and all that, our arms held high in a salute, in a gesture of defiance and camaraderie.

We can try. We can help Prem, the only person I know of who truly has a global, practical, happening, realistic strategy. Otherwise known as ‘doing something’. We can accept the gift he offers, try it out. It’s a beautiful gift, given with kindness and generosity. No strings attached. A way to feel peace within. We can learn from him, at least.

No doubt there are many others that can help bring peace, we can all help bring peace. It’s going to take all of us. It’s going to take a village, as the saying goes.

Besides all that, on a dark and stormy night, what is more comforting than a little candle light? Imagine a thousand candle lights. Imagine a million candle lights. Imagine a billion. That would be beautiful.

amazing music by Orion Sun i heard it in the cafe

here’s the song

In the morning I had a sleep paralysis event. I was in my bed, that much I was aware of, but I wasn’t completely asleep and I wasn’t completely awake. I wanted to get out of bed and jump in the fish pond, wake up, feel the cool water wash over me, feel the cool air on my skin, the world alive and real, but I couldn’t move, or could barely move and only with the most extreme effort.

I was trying to lift the bed sheet off my body so I could get to the edge of the bed and from there, I believed in my half awake stupor, that I could stand up and walk over to the fish pond and jump in. That was my frame of mind, but I just didn’t have the strength to do it in my half paralyzed state so I laid there helplessly.

Suddenly I woke up. Ping! I was lying in my bed alright, tangled up in the sheet, but nothing else was quite the same as it had seemed in the ‘dream’. I got up, stood up, walked outside and dived into the pool.

Floating there among the Hydrilla, gazing at the Pickerelweed and watching the fish swimming below the surface of the water I suddenly had a vision of the blessed sacrament (is that where Sacramento comes from). Anyways I saw it as a huge blessing to be alive, that everything I ever wanted had been given. That actually even more than everything I ever wanted was right here, happening right now, just by being alive. That was really cool. That’s where I got the title for this post.

Later, sitting in my office, I could hear the sound of children singing from down the street. How beautiful I thought, like a calliope, like some small village deep in the rain forest where children sing spontaneously in the morning, like some tropical island where children sing on the beach, maybe like the New Orleans neighborhood back in the 1910’s where Louis Armstrong as a little kid would go door to door singing for a dime.

Turned out, it was my wireless headphones sitting on the table nearby leaking out the soft sounds that seemed so far away and pleasant. Actually it was the music for this podcast that was playing. Samba de Orfeu if you want to watch the video clip.

Later still but still morning, I got up on my bike and rolled out. I noticed the wind on my skin, the clouds in the sky, the trees standing sentinel and waving hi as I passed by. I thought about all the amazing features that we have because we’re not asleep, we’re not dreaming. Our senses are super acute: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, feeling - we all know about those. But the sense of appreciation that they bring us is way more than just the sensation itself, and the appreciation for being able to appreciate - that’s something so sublime it could be called divine.

This life is so cool. I rode hard down Broadway, exulting in my divinity and my high speed bicycling skills. Both seemed related. By the time I got to Press I had reviewed all the amazing features of being alive in a human body on a planet that I could think of. Legs, wow, extendable and bendable, walkable, even runable; hands with fingers attached, articulated, strong but nuanced, delicately sensitized so they can feel things too, the body electric as Walt Whitman might say, infact did say. The whole entire everything, as big as you can perceive and of which there is no end, I believe (and that may be my religion that there is no end). Eternity is here now, infinity is contained in a grain of sand - William Blake said that.

The blessed sacrament remained for the whole day pretty much. Only recently have I begun to lose it. And lose it I will, I always do. Then I have to discover it again. Maybe that’s it, it has to be renewed not remembered. Not every moment will appear as luminous as that moment in the pool but the luminosity is still there. It starts with me, somehow. I need to find my own luminosity and then it appears everywhere.

This life is so cool.

music clip from Orfeu Negro

My life has been guided by some deep underground current, I don’t know what it is. It swept me along and left me here.

That’s not to say I haven’t had moments of decision, I have, where my life could have gone one way or the other.

Oh my god, imagine if you were rich and famous because you made all the right decisions. People would want to stop and talk to you, try to stump you if they were politically inclined and who’s not at that level of society?

No, I’m just me, unadorned and unattached, moving freely in the current of time, finding my right depth and something to eat. A weird combination of a Baptist preacher and a rave poet. Like old Ezekiel in the wilderness, or was it Jeremiah, can’t remember, there were so many back then, Elijah that’s it. Elijah in the wilderness after his showdown with Jezebel. He knocked out her priests because they were worshipping the wrong gods. Knocked em off, burned em up and then took off for the hills knowing she would be coming after him. She was the Queen. Of half the nation anyways. Enough power to track down one dopey loudmouth prophet and cut his head off. Yeah. That’s me.

But mainly what it’s been like is waiting for something really good to happen and then realizing it’s already happening and then trying to figure out how to enjoy it. If that makes any sense.

Are there other people like that? I have heard no reports. Only my own. I hope it’s interesting or atleast entertaining

My friend Mary Ann did a post recently called Soul Renewal where she was just paddling her kayak downstream to downtown and meandering along and mentioning all her observances along the way. It wasn’t really about the eagle and the deer and the tree roots, though, it was about Mary Ann. That’s what I felt. She embraced the journey and the journey embraced her. It gave her what she needed at the moment which she may not have even known what it was.

Memories of my youth are like a faint smudge on the window of time. It happened, but I don’t remember it. There may be some mercy there. Slow and boring became normal. Little Rohn became assimilated, his youth assassinated. That much I can infer. I’m a good inferer.

Cast adrift, is how it seems to me now, turned loose in a way but still conscripted and scripted and drilled and tested. What is for a child, is what is. There’s really no way to compare it, you don’t know anything else. You don’t know that you’re rich or poor or fucked up or fucked over. As a child everything that is, is normal.

It’s only later that you start to notice things. What I notice is that my life has been incredibly tragic and incredibly blessed. Ample amounts of both. Amazing amounts of both. Hard to even appreciate amounts of both. So much amounts of both that I don’t even know how to write about it amounts of both. It’s been deep and swift like the river Ar in The Wizard of Earthsea, flowing down out of the snow covered mountains on the island of Gont, the place of wizards.

My youth was rife with crimes against humanity: public school grades 1-8 (resulting in my short little attention span), vacation Bible school twice a week during the summer (when I should have been swimming in a lake), an abusive older brother who stole my energy, distracted parents who thought raising kids was feeding and clothing them and seeing that they were educated and baptized, that was about it. Not that it was all that different from any other kid’s life back in 1950’s, small town, midwestern America. I’m not complaining,

Remember the scene with Frodo and the hobbits where they’re looking for Gandalf at the Prancing Pony, and the black horsemen are chasing them, and he’s not there. But Strider is. Remember that? Strider is empowered. He helps them because they are carrying a burden. They are carrying a heavy burden. They are carrying it for all of us. The ring of power.

Anyways they make it all the way to Mordor, two of the little hobbits do. Actually 3, Gollum was in there too at the end. They make it to Mordor and they are successful in their quest. Pffst! Flash! No more ring. Balance is restored.

It was a long road and a dangerous one. But that’s what heroes do. They restore the balance. All the myths say so.

music from 00:00 - 9:30thank you Tomoko and Koku again for this amazing soundtrack https://koku-music.bandcamp.com/

“Humans have lived on this planet for 3 million years.” it begins on the first page and then takes off on it’s journey thru many cultures, countries and centuries that doesn’t end until the last page.

Yes, the humans . . . are we a scourge or a blessing upon the land? We seem to be both. We are a species (the only species) that can create heaven on earth or destroy every living thing, except maybe the microbes. What is this human being that is so powerful and so dangerous? How did we get to this situation?

This book doesn’t answer that question but it might make you more curious to find out the answer. Self-exploration is a neglected skill, questioning things and discovering your wisdom. That’s what I hope this book does.

Maybe that’s why they put it in ‘Philosophy’ at the Twig Book Shop. Yeah, it’s back in the corner on the bottom shelf but you can find it if you search.

“So how did it feel publishing your book after 8 years of working on it and dreaming of this day?” my imaginary interviewer asks me.

“I’m glad you asked that.” I responded leaning forward and taking a quick sip of my cappuccino, “It was a big thrill, my book was loose in the world. It was the culmination of so many things. I was excited. But then nobody bought it.”

“Well speaking of sales, how many books have you sold?”

“Oh, about 40 or 50 I‘d say.”

“Well that’s something.”

“Yes it is. I somehow expected that everybody in the world would want to read it, that it would be assigned in English Literature 101 classes in the University, required reading for Intro to Anthropology in the basement of the Academic Building. Somehow I felt that it was just a matter of telling people about my book and they would want to buy a copy. Book clubs and book store signings and television interviews and a seat on the author interview table at the Book Conference. Some of that actually happened.”

“Well good for you.”

“Yes.”

“So it’s been one year since you released your fabulous book to the world. What have you been trying to say in it and have you been able to communicate to people?”

“Great question. You are an excellent interviewer.”

“Thank you.”

“To condense it into a quote or a meme, ha ha, well the whole book is what I’m trying to say so go read it, ha ha, but the message is simply this: We are human, it’s fantastic, don’t forget about being human. We have a responsibility along with our great gifts of language, cognition, creativity, all those amazing things that we can do. We are uniquely blessed and uniquely cursed in equal measure. The Garden of Eden and all that. That was the cognitive revolution, when we ate from the tree of knowledge and got kicked out of the garden because we were too smart for our own pants.”

“Our pants?”

“Yeah you know, like smarty pants.”

“Ah. Ok.”

“That’s the curse. Look at all the destruction we have accomplished on planet Earth. We’ll ruin the whole place if we don’t stop. That’s the curse. But we have all the tools to fix it: brain power, technology, human f*****g ingenuity, excuse my language, we can create a heaven on earth or we can destroy everything. That’s all.”

“Oh, ok. Got it. Pretty interesting. So basically you want to foment a revolution . . .”

“Yes, doesn’t everybody? I don’t know, maybe not. A revolution of humans becoming human. We’re not human yet. We haven’t got synched up with our abilities and our wisdom. We’re like an adolescent species, somewhere around 8 or 9, 10 or 11, full of vim and vigor but not very wise, full of aspiration and enterprise but not yet experienced enough to know what to do with it . . .”

“Do you think humans will survive?”

“We made it this far. I know that much. It wasn’t easy. We always managed to match up and conquer any obstacle that came in our way whether it was a saber-toothed tiger or a mountain to climb. We’re pretty good at surviving so we’ll see.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Ha, ha. Fun to do an interview with yourself. You can get down to it. Exactly that.

And so, welcome to the anniversary celebration and 20% off super sale for the next two weeks! I’m having lots of fun with my book.

The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets is available online or at the Twig Book Shop back in the corner in the Philosophy Department. Bottom shelf.

music from 44:08 - 46:17 thank you Tomoko and Koku https://koku-music.bandcamp.com/

Caribou actually eat lichen right off the rocks which also helps reduce them to dirt.

Here some scientists are setting up their instruments to measure if Stonehenge was built to honor the moon as well as the sun. Those people were the first farmers so naturally they were interested in the changing seasons and the movements of the celestial bodies and all the signs and portents which they could observe and probably thought were the actions of gods or supernatural creatures of some sort so why not honor them.

Anyways, this site is 5,000 years old so those rocks have been exposed to weathering for atleast that long. You can see how they’re wearing away - all soft and round. The lichen (which is actually half fungi and half algae) is eating into it and turning it into soil.

Eventually all that soil falls back into the ocean and travels down and sinks into the earth’s crust and eventually into the molten zone and gets spit back up again as lava thru volcanic activity. Of course that takes millions of years.

Did you know that some oil wells are 6 miles deep into the earth? Some offshore oil wells drill down 5 miles below the bottom of the ocean? Oil and it’s derivatives are called ‘fossil fuels’ - guess why? Because they used to be living plants and animals, all sorts of carbon based life forms and now they’re fossils. And now they’re buried 6 miles beneath the surface of the earth? How did that happen?

Sediment accumulation. Where did the sediment come from? Mountains. Where did the mountains come from? They were forced up by colliding continental plates. The Himalayas are the result of the collision between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian plate. Those two crusts bring up rocks from deep within the earth as they build the mountains.

Mountain ranges like the Himalayas and the Rockies are relatively young (60 million years old) and still growing, they’re very high and very rocky, but other mountain ranges, like the Appalachians (400 million years old), have risen and worn away over time. Geologists tell us that there are many mountain ranges on earth that have risen and worn away to the point where they don’t exist anymore. You’d have to dig into the earth to find them.

Looks like a loop to me. Recycling from the ground up. Grinding the rock into sediment, burying the sediment, cycling it underground until it sprouts up again for another round. This process has been going on as far back as there is a preserved geologic record - about 4 billion years.

It’s elegant and profound. Our living world casting off its clothes like a worn out suit just to put on a new one made of recycled fabric, with alot of new wrinkles. It’s like a giant blender if you are fond of making smoothies like I am. The blender blades curve upward and whatever is at the bottom: banana, frozen mangoes, blue berries gets macerated and thrown to the top, mixed in with everything else until it’s homogenous. Sort of like earth’s mantle.

Here’s a picture I found on the internet.

I’m not a geologist. I’m just a big admirer of our earth. It’s magnificent and unique in so many ways. It’s alive. You can feel it. The sky breeze makes the trees dance and the leaves laugh. The sweet dirt grows things. Big things, little things - all kinds of things. It harbors microbes by the skadzillions (that’s 1 with 54 zeroes). It’s a home and a habitat. It adapts and re-balances itself when it needs to and takes care of it’s residents as if it were a a good landlord, or . . . a mother? Our friend the fungi live in there. Without fungi we wouldn’t probly have any soil at all. They were the original weatherers and decomposers of rocks back when the earth was new. They crawled out of the ocean (so to say), evolved into land based fungi and started up the cycle. Thank you.

This earth is alive alright but, like many of the species in its biosphere, its concern is with the preservation of the whole, not any specific individual or species. Many species have gone extinct over the ages and many more are going extinct today (unfortunately) but the biosphere remains intact. It’s known as Mother Earth, Pachamama, Isis, Enlil, Gaia, Terra and many other names in many other cultures. She is the mother of all the creatures and all the critters, all the flying ones and the crawling ones, the swimming ones and the walking ones. She is mother of us all, in the mythology of the humans.

Stones come out of the earth and fall back in. So do stories. So do entire cultures and nations. So do we. Wow, this is getting profound.

Music :: #014 dubtechno DJ mix featuring tracks from Illuvia, Sven Weisemann, Pablo Bolivar, Ikosaeder, Marko Furstenberg, Creamtronic, Luke Hess and more.

catch it at 5:42

Press is my common hangout. You can find me there or you can find me anywhere but more often there. You actually step down when you enter this cafe but then you look up and the glass ceiling is soaring above your head, up to a peak 25 or 30 feet high, and God’s blue (usually) sky shining thru and on the ground floor the plethora of plants amongst the scattering of tables and chairs and benches of various styles.

The baristas here are selected for their patient nature, quick wit and willingness to laugh, apparantly.

awright what’s goin on liam ??nothin much what can i do for you ??i got a questionoh yeahdo you think it’s all good or we’re going to hell in a hand basket ?? well . . . as of right now it’s all good i would say / maybe hell in a handbasket in 20 years or sooh ok give it 20 yearsyeah yeah as of right now though we’re chillin

And he was too. A strong confident young man, comfortable in his role and at peace with his soul. Not bothered by someone sticking a microphone in his face and asking him a provocative question.

I have a history of sticking a microphone in people’s faces in public places and asking them provocative questions. I’ve been doing that since the seventies and street theatre and Public Access TV (that was long before cell phones - a portable production studio in your pocket). I once had a show called ‘Rohn Bayes Roving Reporter’ (ha ha, eerily similar to ‘the rohn report’, I know) and me and my buddy would roam around and interview people and put it on TV. One time we interviewed Councilman Nofziger’s refrigerator with comments and explanations from Max himself.

Another time we were on the St. Edwards University campus and we asked different women if we could dive to the bottom of their purse with our camera to see what was down there. They had to look friendly and have one of those oversized purses, were the only prerequisites. It was like an expedition to the bottom of the ocean. Possibilities for hilarity multiply with the weirdness and strangeness of the prank, er project.

Anyways, here’s Chi from Oneanother Coffee Trailer responding to the question. I know she wouldn’t mind if I used her voice Beautiful, sweet Chi.

ah . . . it’s going ok, yeahnicethere’s some bad things in the world but there’s a plethora of good things as wellyeahwe don’t focus too much on the negative right on i’m doing barista interviews so thank you for your insight and wisdomthanks rohn

A random person sitting near the fountain at the Pearl. She wasn’t even a barista but she hit it out of the park.

do you think it's all good or are we going to hell in a hand basket ??i think we’re all going to hellha !!yes i think we’re all going to hell because we tend to stay in our own bubbles and mind our business and i don’t think we do a good job of being good neighborswow that was powerful(laughing) yes (laughing some more) yesthank you so muchsure (more laughing)

A random person at Press with her kid. What a kind, candid person. I really enjoyed talking to her. When I proposed the question we were outside on the patio, she looked at me and said:

oh god / that’s such a loaded question / i wanna be positive and say it’s all good but i don’t know that that’s true (the laugh of recognition, hesitation) i don’t know what else to saythank you for being so candidyeah you’re welcomeappreciate that and here’s your kid lookin on / he’s trying to figure it out too / you think it’s all good ?? (i ask the kid, he looks at me with the sweet innocent face of a four year old) yes (I respond for him) no doubt (laughing)he doesn’t know any different / he’s got a big smile on his facehe sure does / he’s having fun anyway whatever these adults are talking abouthe’s got lots of triggersyeah right (laughing) thank you so muchyou’re welcome

Ok, then I circled back around to Press, they had a new shift on: the Egyptian Priestess and Michelle. The Egyptian Priestess was standing closest to me, manning the register, the place where the magic happens - so I asked her.

ooow that’s a really tricky question / i have hopes buuut (she makes a whirling sound with her mouth) it’s a little dwindled ah a little conditional / a little edgy yeahwow ok wow could be exciting or it could be disastrouswell yeah i know something’s going to happen / i know that for sureyeah but that’s because you’re an egyptian priestesswell maybe . . . i don’t know (laughter) well i mean it’s learningyeah thank you for your honest replyyou’re welcomeok what do you think michelle ??what was the question ??the question is do you think it's all good or are we going to hell in a hand basket ??like everybody or just me ??ha !! good point (laughter) uh let’s say everybody in generalumh i think it’s 50/5050/50 ?? yeah cause there’s bad people out there and there’s good people out thereoh the bad people are going to hellyeahthe good people are going to cruiseyeah like me and you are gonna go cruise and everybody else . . . (indistinct)nice !! i like it alot thank you michelle

And back to Oneanother where I started out, a complete circuit. Except this was the next day. Bela was running the ship, or maybe boat, it’s only about 12 feet long, not large enough to be a ship. I rode up to the open porthole on the starboard side and there she was.

coffee this mornin ??yes / i have a question suredo you think it's all good or are we going to hell in a hand basket ??no i think we’re all goodwow !! that’s great / thank you right oni’m going to put it on the rohn report as a special interview is that ok ??hi rohn reportthanks belayeah

I don’t know, maybe by answering that question we make it so, atleast for ourselves. That’s what occurred to me while listening to people respond to my question. Nobody actually knows but we believe in something and that sort of tends to create the reality that we live in. Don’t you think so? Maybe I’m wrong. Could be. Have been before.

Most days my habit is to cruise the streets of San Antonio on my bike finding adventures and a thousand piquant things to observe. Did I say a thousand? a million, as many as the eye can see, from tiny to huge, squirrels to murals.

This town is rife with murals, large and boisterous, provocative, ubiquitous, beautiful, startling - on the west-side, downtown, near north-side, south-side, east-side, everywhere-side: there’s art to discover in this town.

It’s an old tradition going back to the Chicano grafitti art of the 60’s which goes back to the Mexican cultural revolution of 1910 which goes back to the Aztecs and the Mayans and all the way back to the Olmec living along the Gulf coast way back in the BC days.

Symbology. Colors. Stories. Literature for the illiterate. Murals were used across cultures and across millennia. When the Spanish conquistadors came here, along with their accomplices the Franciscan friars 300 years ago and took the place over, they painted their missions with murals. The idea was to attract the natives with the colorful paintings and get them to join up. It was cultural appropriation.

Today you can find mural paintings all over downtown: bold, declarative, impossible to ignore (one is 10 stories high), sending out a message, portraying our history and our culture in exquisite detail.

This new mural that I found just a few days ago blew my mind. Cruising down west Houston Street, past the giant statue of Tom Frost standing next to his bank, just before the San Pedro Creek Culture Park - there it was. Wow. It’s done in the same style as the aforementioned 10 story mural which is at Jefferson and Houston. I have to find out who this artist is.

The painting depicts our collective memory, basically, our traditions and cultural artifacts laid out for all to see and with the new Frost Bank Tower and the old Frost Bank Tower looming in the background. Frost Bank provided the fuel that drove the economic engine that transformed this place from a country bumpkin kind of hangout place where people brought their farm products to town in horse drawn wagons and parked them in Main Plaza and sold vegetables to the townspeople, into a real city. Now we’ve got shopping malls and expressways.

The splashy, liquid element is his thing, it flows out of and into everything like a cardiovascular system pumping blood or a pinball machine if it were made out of a gushy liquid instead of having a metal ball, the Rasta guy preaching from the Bible with the anvil on his hand and the almost normal kid sitting on his lap, the bottle in the water with a note in it and the butterfly crying tears of a beautiful woman who is also a cat (lots of cats in this painting), the boat, they’re in a boat with alot of flowers and the almost normal kid is playing his instrument with a far away look on his face like ‘where is my song?’ and the wooden puppet guy looking two ways at once, the source of all this commotion, smoke billowing out of the twin towers on his head pouring into the background while the moonshine or whatever it is he’s pouring from his barrel flows out lights everything on fire with the holy flame.

Interpretation optional. Go look at it and forget everything I said.

Murals still hold the ancient magic. They evoke deep connections and subliminal memories. It’s public art. Always on. Free. Standing sentinel on a sunny street corner to protect and preserve our important cultural traits. Shining out like a lighthouse.

I figured out who the artist is: Rudy Marco Herrera. I found his tag, tracked him down on the centrosanantonio website. Below is the other painting that I mentioned. I met him while he was working on it with a giant crane. He likes big paintings.

music by Tour Maubourg 9:35-15:48 oh my god one of the best ever / delightful

This is how you start a story. Create a scene and a character. Some tension. What’s going to happen?

Armister entered the room and closed the door. “Hello Jane.” She blinked twice but didn’t look at him. The room was the office of a ‘Junior Associate’ as they were called, supplied with a desk, filing cabinet, a swivel desk chair and one upholstered chair sitting askance from the desk. She sank into the upholstered chair and leaned over as if to scratch her ankle. “I won’t go with you.”

“Yes you will.” said Armister but when she straightened up she was holding a small pistol and it was aimed at Armister.

This is how you create suspense, capture the reader’s attention - by giving them a compelling story line. Something that seems real or believable in a fantastic sort of way. You introduce the characters, have a ‘conversation’ and then you say goodbye.

Armister was staring at the small pistol. He was going thru a mental checklist: is it loaded? probably / will she use it if I rush her? I don’t know / would she really rather shoot me than go downtown and answer a few questions, maybe be held? I really have no idea. After about 15 seconds his mental checklist was completed and the results were disconcerting.

“I see you calculating.” said Jane holding the pistol now with both hands. “I will go with you but in my car. You drive. If you mess up I will kill you.”

“Umh.” said Armister in a long monotone.

This is the essence of conversation. A long ummmmh and then something startling to say and then a long ummmmh. Atleast at a party it’s like that sometimes. The conversation and then the goodbye.

“Weren’t you going to use the phone?” said Armister. “Say hello to somebody?” He took a step forward. She was still seated, leaning forward purposefully with a bead of sweat on her forehead. There was no air conditioning - this was the thirties and the fans had been shut off when the building was closed. Armister saw it and took it as a sign of nervousness, the jitters. Jane just sweated alot was the truth, she always had.

He took another step and she fired a bullet thru his midsection. She fired another one thru his chest and he slumped to the ground. Then she fired one into his head where the wide wondering eyes were looking at her. The end. Goodbye.

Well of course she didn’t get away with it but that’s another story. The point is - life is like that too. Atleast mine is. Hello, conversation, goodbye. I’ve done it so many times.

The whole entire life cycle is hello, conversation, goodbye - don’t you think so? From the hello years in our infancy when everything is a hello to the long unreconciled conversational years of 4 to 64, trying to establish a rhythm and make a connection and then the slow goodbye, things we once believed in become less important and eventually drop out of sight. Right?

I don’t know where you are in that timeline but I know where I am.

It’s the same with friends. Sometimes I think they will last forever and then they walk out the door, the same way they walked in.

Jane was obviously in a goodbye mood that day, she had a lot invested in the moment you could say, but we are affected by different moods all our life. Infact we kind of live to optimize our moods, arrange things to get the moods we want: elation, comfort, security, the feeling that everything is under control, simple pleasure, an ice cream cone.

And so . . . what was my point? Oh yeah, acquiring and letting go. Breathing in and breathing out. Saying hello, having a conversation, saying goodbye. It’s so familiar we barely notice it.

I want to notice everything before I go. Well maybe not everything but as much good stuff as I can. That would include leaves trembling in the breeze outside my window (one of my favorites), clouds floating in the sky (water vapor made visible), babies in the cafe (I talk to them), driving down the street in my Prius (no peddling), swooping down the street on my bike (as close to flying as I can get), noticing a breath (in and out), drinking chilled, sparkling water when I’m thirsty (did you ever wonder why there were all these cups for winning things? the Stanley Cup, the World Cup, the Ryder’s Cup - that’s because back in the day, the original Olympics, that was the prize - a cool drink of ambrosia or whatever it was from the cup), watering my garden, pulling out the old stuff after it has gone to seed, making way for the new growth, watching the new growth, watching Mother Nature paint my lawn (also called benign neglect), writing my stuff (feeling the Muse, she’s inside all of us), meditating on the feeling of being alive (too much fun), following the river, watching it flow, relaxing in it’s current (a metaphor), listening to music that touches my heart and makes me cry (I’ve got alot of it, I play it here).

This amazing EP from Tour Maubourg ‘Floating On Silence’ is worth checking out if you like the Chill House Music stuff. Heard it in the cafe, shazamed it but was too late, fortunately the barista had it on his screen. A shoutout for Press Coffee in the Boardwalk.

00-5:47 15:49-22:09

Please support me if you can. I’m just doing what I love and trying to be sustainable. Wish more people would do that. Simplify, get rid of stuff that’s not working, be willing to adapt, be willing to move on. C’mon people we can do it. Your contribution would help.

the rohn report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

From “The Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

Sounds about right. That’s the epigraph on page 459 of my library copy. I’m reading it in bits and pieces, a few paragraphs here, an epigraph there, can’t seem to make it thru the dense underbrush of verbiage that constitutes the text. I just drop in and out wherever it seems interesting.

I read this book before but I don’t remember now. I don’t remember if I finished it or how it ended or what it was about. That was a long time ago.

What do we remember and what do we know? Maybe that’s what it’s about. Some insane messianic prophecy being fulfilled through a long line of successions like the Hebrew kings or the Arabian califs?

What is a prophecy, though? Just seeing the portents and possibilities and calibrating a view of what might happen? I can prophesy too. Planet Arrakis is a desert planet. No water. Inhabited by giant worms. And they want to make it green again like it once was long ago. We live on a verdant planet, full of life, water, water everywhere and we’re turning it into a desert.

”Prophecy and prescience—how can they be be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the ‘wave form’ (as Muad’Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of his knife?” —From “Private Reflections on Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

The story starts off with Duke Leto at home on his home planet that he rules. There are all these ‘Houses’ and they rule things. Like the Harkonnens, they rule their own planet. They’re evil. Well everybody has their moments but the Harkonnens are more like the arch-typical Vikings - raiding and plundering whenever they can get away with it. Kinda like the Comanches. So Paul is Duke Leto’s son and Jessica is his mother, concubine of the Duke and a Bene Gesserit witch. They move to Arrakis to take over the lucrative spice trade and get ambushed by, of course, the devious Harkonnens. Anyways they end up hiking out into the desert on this planet, Paul and Jessica, and they hook up with the Fremen and Paul becomes Paul-Muad’Dib in remembrance of the little desert rat who survives, against all odds, in the harsh, unrelenting desert-scape of planet Arrakis.

“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future. — From “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

I got that. Yeah, maybe. Anyways. He’s the hero. Maud’Dib, previously known as Paul, becomes the long awaited messiah and leads a revolt against the evil Harkonnens. Of course. Every messiah needs a good war. Ends up taking over the whole entire universe basically.

What? Huh? Who knew? What were the chances that this scrawny kid would become Emperor of the entire known universe? Must be that Bene Gesserit training tempered with the survival skills of the Fremen (the natives) of Arrakis.

“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace—those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.” — From “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

But is it clear? It’s not clear to me.

Maybe perfection is not what we imagine or not even something we can imagine. Maybe it’s constantly in flux, appearing differently to different people at different times since it’s, after all, perfect. Maybe perfection isn’t ‘something’, maybe it’s just a way of perceiving, a feeling.

Maybe the message is that humans form religions and then live within their constraints, that humans can form their world either by terraforming the external world or by indoctrination (also called training or education) of their internal world. And the schemes run deep, infact make up much of our subconscious realm relating back, back, back to the ancient myths of our species.

“Muad’Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad’Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us ‘The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.’ And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning ‘That path leads ever down into stagnation.’” —From ‘Arrakis Awakening’ By the Princess Irulan

Well there’s a clue. Maud’Dib, previously known as Paul, can see the future, can see the pathways of human destiny, the warping and weaving of culture, the making of the world. That could open up some possibilities.

Yeah, possibilities. Imagine the world 20,000 years in the future, if we survive that long. What kind of a world would you come up with? Just more of this? More civilization, more money, more high powered relentless consumption. Or something very different. Something very, very, very different.

This book has got space travel in it but that’s about the only thing that’s different. Everything else is the same like nothing ever changed in 20,000 years. Fighting with each other over resources, using guns and knives in fact, like it was the Wild West. Greed, intrigue, betrayal - same as it always was. The human passions. And of course love, loyalty and bravery too.

Greed, intrigue, betrayal, love, loyalty and bravery. Never changes, never evolves apparantly. Same stupid reasons for the same stupid wars 20,000 years in the future? F**k that. Excuse my language but it will be very, very, very different in 20,000 years if we survive. That’s my prophecy.

That’s all I got. Don’t really know if I got it. It would probably be helpful if I actually read the book. It does have some nice epigraphs.

“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.” —From ‘The Wisdom of Muad’Dib’ by the Princess Irulan

music by Deep Dub Techno Mix #07 - Interstellar Overdriveand Marga Sol, Darles Flow - All I Care | Original Mixthank you !!

Ok, so this is how it happened. I was riding my bike thru Brackenridge Park and feeling the wind on my face. Hey this is air, I thought, I’m moving thru air. There were some people walking nearby on the sidewalk, hey they’re walking thru air too, I thought as I rolled by them. An innocent thought, in a spontaneous moment but I started thinking about it. Air. Wow. And that’s how I started writing this post.

There are so many obvious things to say about air. It blows over us - the wind, it goes inside us - our breath. It’s everywhere - atleast from about 20,000 feet to sea level. Above that there’s not enough oxygen to sustain a person. Below that is underwater. There’s no air underwater. Plenty of dissolved oxygen though. And therein separates the men from the fish.

Air is invisible, so it doesn’t get recognized as a solid objective entity, like a car. I drive a red Kia Sedona minivan. Well I don’t really but probably somebody does. It’s invisible (the air) but if you don’t have access to it for more than a few minutes you’re dead. Then you won’t need it anymore.

How many things can you think of like that? Things that we totally depend on and totally take for granted, like air? I can list a few. This planet comes to mind and the biosphere that provides our food and sustains all the various forms of life. Our body, and it’s sensory organs - sight, hearing, touch, taste and then thinking about it all, making sense of it all. How many times do you think about thinking? I mean, probably ravens don’t do it. Not like us. They might have their own thoughts though. I’m not sure.

Like soil, air is unique to our planet (as far as we know). It was a long process of billions of years to get our air (that we do know). The first atmosphere was a bunch of hot obnoxious gases from volcanos: methane and ammonia and hydrogen sulfide and some nicer gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide, but no free oxygen to speak of.

Imagine half a billion years of earth history, 500 million years. That’s how long it took for things to cool down and for the water vapor to precipitate into oceans. Now we’ve got chemicals cooking under the waves and things being discovered. Now life has a chance to happen and populate the barren planet Populate it, it did and changed the gaseous envelope that clung to its surface in the process. What we call our atmosphere.

Photosynthetic algae, one of the earliest organisms to appear in the primordial oceans, was able to create free oxygen by inventing the amazing process of photosynthesis. This amazing process uses sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates (fuel), liberating free oxygen in the process, it wasn’t needed (but it would come in handy later for the more complex organisms that were yet to arrive). Over time (and there was alot of it) the oxygen in the ‘air’ went from basically zero to 20%, which is about what it is today.

The air in our atmosphere, today, as I’m sure you know, is 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and 1% other trace gases. Our air has been like this for about 200 million years. Atleast that’s what Google said.

In the Hindu scriptures, prana is that which imbues everything with energy, that which animates everything and gives life. It is hidden in the air, inseparable. We’re breathing prana, the divine essence of everything, if I got the story straight. That’s pretty wow.

I mean our first breath: we came alive, our last breath: we go bye bye. And in between we breathe constantly, never stopping. Unless you’re free diving on a coral reef off the coast of Mexico.

I used to be pretty good at it back then, breath-hold diving. I trained for it underwater in the cenote just off the beach. It was great feeling: free-diving, no scuba gear, no bulky, noisy equipment, just you and the massive ocean. I could stay underwater for three minutes but I clearly remember the feeling of that sweet breath entering my oxygen-starved body when I surfaced. I like breathing.

Air is good. I like breathing air. I was made for it. Thank God we have alot of it. And it’s free. What a great idea. Hope we don’t wreck it with car exhaust and everything else we dump in there. Then what would we breathe? Walk around with air tanks like we were on Mars? Yes, this car comes equipped with it’s own air supply that can last you for 500 miles. Oh, really? How much does that cost? Take it to get refilled like a propane tank. All our houses will be plumbed with clean air vents coming from the Acme Clean Aire Purifer unit outside our home. And on and on.

It’s just a little tiny bubble of air, I guess is what I’m saying, in a massive solar system on the edge of a massive galaxy. Alot of dark space around here. No air anywhere except on Earth. Our little bubble that bubbled up somehow.

music by Cacao Yoga in Vancouver Organic Ambient Folktronica | Downtempo | Tribal | Medicine Song #ableton #7 various tracks

Turns out that the first dirt maker for the first plants was fungi. The mushroom people. They ate hot rocks which was about the only thing there was above the shore line back then and turned them into dirt. The only life on earth was in the water for the first 3 billion years until the plants started creeping out onto land. They could only do that because the fungi were there first, making dirt with their little mycelium creepers. True story.

I like making dirt too. It’s fascinating. What ingredients to throw in there, how much water to add, how to ‘cook’ it so it’s yummy dark earth. What is going on down there in the dark underground microbial halls of the earthy underworld? I don’t know but the expression of that dirt, also called Mother Nature, is flowers, grass, tomatoes, arugula, sweet corn, etc. Also mushrooms. There are mushrooms all over in my side yard right now. They look like white stones. Never seen them before. The signs of healthy dirt.

There are 3 places of dirt making here at ranchito de rohn, well 4 really if you count all the leaf mulching going on beneath the leaves lying in piles and furrows under the trees or against the fence. Make that 5, the bog filter produces a fine, black, muddy, silty goop that I scoop out and add to the dirt machine.

The dirt machine is a rectangular box, about 8 feet by 4 feet, made out of plywood shelving that used to hold my books back when I was in the book business. Anyways it’s reinforced on the sides so it won’t bend or bow with all the dirt being made inside by those industrious little microbes. I also threw a mouldering piece of 2x4 in there and buried it to inject some fungi. See what they can do. Fungi can be pronounced ‘fun guy’ or ‘ fun ji’. Your choice.

Moldy leaves, bog filter goop (basically fish poop and stuff), and dirt from various generous places around the ranchito (usually under the leaf mulch) are all mixed together in the dirt machine. It decomposes and melts and molds and mixes and does Lord knows what all. White Tail the cat thinks it’s a giant kitty litter. Oh well.

The dirt, when it’s ready, goes into the planting boxes or pots or gets sprinkled on the yard and in the wild places. When is the dirt ready? Ah, the mysterious mysteries of dirt.

Dirt is full of life. Micro-organisms including the above mentioned mushroom mycelium, bacteria, algae, protozoa and nematodes (tiny worms) are what make dirt alive. They’re all doing something in the great underground orchestra. It’s estimated that there are 1 billion individual microscopic cells and 10,000 different species in one teaspoon of topsoil. The mycelium of course is breaking down rotten wood and connecting to the tree roots for it’s sustenance. Everybody is doing something according to their lifestyle. Just because I don’t know exactly what it is doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.

Today I’ve been harvesting dirt from the groovy nook back in the back 40 of this property. The ‘back 40’, that’s a term the farmers used to use referring to the wild forest in the back of their lot or atleast an undeveloped parcel of land.

It’s a copse if not a forest. Trees grow there and and there are ponds nearby. There’s a lovely bench for sitting on when communing with nature in the groovy nook. For a little kid it would be a forest.

Anyways I put bricks down there to create a sort of a floor and a place. But nobody goes there and now the trees have scrunched up the bricks and started growing over them, gluing them into place. I’m digging them out so the trees have room to grow and harvesting all the dirt that has formed there in the process : ) All different stages of dirt here, tiny rootlets, mulchy leaf mulch, regular dirt. Dig it out and throw it in the dirt machine! says I.

The compost barrel makes dirt too The kitchen scraps go in the top and get mixed up with leaves and grass from my lawn. They decompose slowly into the loveliest sweet smelling dark dirt. Just open the bottom hatch and shovel it out when it’s ready. It takes about 9 months to get well digested soil or dirt as I call it.

Last but not least is the leaf scrum. A 5 foot high pile of leaves and dirt, some coffee grounds. It grows during the year as I rake up leaves and dump them on there and it slowly shrinks as the microbe people eat it down from underneath. When I need some soil or even half digested leaf mulch, I scrape off the top and scoop it up.

Of course all this is to grow something, which I’m still not very good at yet.

Need more dirt. I truly believe if I can make my own dirt from my own ranchito then it will survive the ravages of our hot summers and one day will bring forth bounteous crops. Even corn (my goal). It’s all about the dirt.

Hey we’re all made of dirt, some water, a little fire, alot of air.

One day when my day is done I will leave behind my legacy - dirt.

I chose Miss Monique for her zestful, youthful music / various tracksgreat set !! thanks Miss Monique

The music is powerful and so sweet. The words are right in synch like it’s supposed to be. The message rings out like a clarion call on a bright morning from the hilltop overlooking the village. People scrambling around, waking up and the church bell peals. I like that. I like everything about this podcast. 

the mighty vision

Envision a world where all the things essential to life are readily available for everybody: food, water, shelter, healthcare. No one is deprived. Envision a world based on the idea that human beings are more important than corporations.

Envision a world where healthcare is not a product but a gift. Something we can give each other and ourselves. Of course professional health care providers are needed and schools to train them and medicines to help cure people but imagine the possibilities of people providing each other with health care not just the ‘health insurance companies’, whose policies are determined mostly by profit.

Back in the day the village healer or the medicine man or the old curandera, the bruja, could bring the healing.

Did you know that listening to someone’s expression and touching them with kindness - physical touch, the healing touch, are healing modalities? Did you know that sitting under a tree and watching the leaves dance in the wind is a healing modality for the eyes and the spirit?

a little complaining

Does everything have to be a product and a business? Back in the day if someone needed a house or a barn, everyone came together and helped build it. There was no real estate ‘business’, making money off of people’s need for shelter.

Ok, I’m being an idealist. We don’t live like that anymore. Wake up and join the modern world. But the way we live in the modern world is unsustainable. We devour the resources of the planet and turn them into mountains of trash. We spend our national fortune on weapons to destroy some other nations weapons. That’s a good business but a stupid way to manage our precious resources.

We turn everything into a business and a product including education. Envision education as a community service, done by the community to benefit the community. Yes we need professional teachers but each of us has something to share with the children. And the children have something to share with all of us. Why do we have to sequester them away behind walls and stuff a curriculum down their throat?

Universities have become corporations with a marketing plan and a logo and an endowment fund. The nearby University of Texas has more than 40 billion dollars sitting in their endowment fund. That’s more than some countries are worth.

Freaks me out, this obsession with monetizing everything. Heck I even monetize my newsletter so I’m caught in it too.

Ok. I’m done with that. I’m sitting here under the Cedar tree in front of the Sunset Ridge church looking at a blue sky and a tree lined horizon.

a powerful solution

It’s a gorgeous day and I’m alive. I mean what are the chances? In a universe of unbelievable proportions and of an unfathomable age, here I am. I exist.

Hard to recognize the miracles that are right in front of our face. We need something unusual, weird maybe, to qualify as a miracle. Our own existence doesn’t qualify but it’s the biggest miracle of all. I pray for the eyes to see that.

A bird flies thru the air with pure freedom, banks, heads for the tree with branches, full of leaves, moving in the breeze, a delicate dance against the sky, lands somewhere in there. I get on my bike and ride.

music :: Man in a Room, Emancipatorthank you for the amazing soundtracks

After the ritual of the credit card and the kidding around with the baristas and the cupa cappuccino, I’m done. I’m ready to ride home, down Nacogdoches but first I feel compelled to go look at the concrete arroyo up close. I consider exploring it. The channel bed is wide and flat. Why not?

But I can’t get down there, the sides are steep and about 10 feet high. Probably for a good reason. They have tamed the arroyo so it can’t escape. No flooding allowed. I see a dead vulture lying by a pool of water on the floor of the concrete arroyo and another live one standing nearby. Note this for later, dear reader.

The concrete arroyo roughly follows Loop 410 and its access road as it slowly loops around the city. Although I can’t get down into the channel at this point I can track it on the surface streets and from the access road.

I can see signs of human habitation down there - paintings on the canyon walls, but so far there’s no way I can get to it.

Finally I spot a park, Camille Price Park, to give away its secret location, with access to a gentle ramp leading down to the concrete arroyo as if you were going to launch your boat in there. Go water skiing on Shono Tiko Arroyo. Oh, wait, I haven’t come to that part yet.

I roll down the ramp, turn right and head upstream. The floor is smooth as a highway (probably made by the same people), with occasional inclines and ramps. Once I’m down in there, in the ditch so to say, I’m able to examine the exquisite canvases up close.

I explore the spooky side tunnels with my bike light. They hold some of the best paintings of all.

Galleries full of tightly spaced figures and symbols, mostly clustered within fifty feet of the cave opening.

I’m riding thru the lands where the skaters and the street people reside. It’s a strange geography. I meet three of them at the entrance to a tunnel. They pretend like they’re not doing anything. Haha. You can still smell the paint from their spray cans. Haha. My kind of people.

The exhibition goes on for a mile and a half with tunnels and side streams and . . . kind of like an urban park but it was designed for rushing waters, just get it out of the way, not people.

Then I found the Shono Tiko sign. It was a power symbol for sure. Compact and self-reflecting. It seemed to hold wisdom and I assumed it to be the name of this place. In some kind of native language. Don’t know what. In any case I adopted it. Shono Tiko Arroyo.

Occasionally nature would make its presence known by painting the walls of the levee with green leaves.

In some places the trees were trying to take back the arroyo.

Side channels came in. Little arroyocitos.

The walls have been painted and repainted by the City. Department of Parks and Recreation vs the street people, the skaters and the taggers.

Stalactites formed on the roof of a tunnel as if it had been in an underground cave for hundreds of years. Weird.

This tunnel goes under a giant building up top and its parking garage. Yes they built a parking garage over the arroyo. Amazing.

Evening Primrose growing in the crack at the edge of the concrete arroyo.

Pretty clean down here. I guess the underground people clean up after themselves or maybe the rain washes it away. The only rubbish is runoff rubbish that courses into the stream - plastic bottles and plastic cans and plastic bags.

This is the urban subculture that we don’t see because they are under the bridge in the arroyo.

Dead raccoon equals vulture feast. More were sitting on the fence nearby. A few hundred feet further down - another dead raccoon with more vultures. Strange.

Into the catacombs.

And on the other end of the Gilgamesh tunnel - the garden of delights. In case you read that story.

It smells like the edge of the sea down here, like a marine environment which it is I suppose. Shono Tiko Arroyo.

And the end of the concrete arroyo, Shono Tiko, downstream. Or is it the beginning?

A long, long time ago people lived here among the springs and the rivers and the arroyos. This place was an oasis - water, water flowing everywhere. A Garden of Eden, if you’d like to look at it that way, because the people lived on the bounty of Mother Nature. And she was bountiful.

And she was a real person too, or atleast a real presence, That she loved them was evident and they felt it in every gift she gave them.

The very first religion was nature spirits. Father Sky and Mother Earth. The sound of the wind in the trees and the song of the birds singing were divine revelations.

And then, of course, it evolved into something a little different, a little more sophisticated: gods with bodies that looked just like humans and had super powers. Poseidon and Saturn and Atlas and Jupiter. And then it became this one guy, I mean one god and he lives in heaven and we are down here below. Figures.

And now the city is covered in concrete. It’s a concrete jungle. Only remnants of the original jungle remain.

Remember the two dead raccoons and the dead vulture by the pool of water? Actually they were all by pools of water. Curious isn’t it that two raccoons died within 400 feet of each other and fairly recently. And the vulture, that makes three. Too much of a coincidence, more likely some homeowner, whose backyard abuts the concrete arroyo poisoned the raccoons and the raccoons poisoned the vulture. That’s what I think. Could be wrong. But probly not.

If anything bothers you, kill it. That’s the way we do it these days . . . some people. Wildflowers are weeds, raccoons are pests. That’s how far we’ve come in just a few hundred years. Didn’t used to be like that around here.

The arroyos in their natural state were beautiful living streams of water but they’re gone, mostly, a few remain wandering thru the city looking for something to merge into. Water still flows when it rains, of course. It runs down the streets and into the storm sewer. Or it flows into the concrete arroyo and off to the river and to the sea, the distant thundering sea.

We lose so much when we lose our connection with the natural world. We lose ourselves. We become mad. Not angry mad but insane mad. We forget who we are and why we came here. We are the humans and we came here to feel the love of Mother Nature. That’s what I think. I could be wrong. Probly not though.

I made my way back home after a couple of hours exploring and started writing up this account. Tried to remember the route back incase one day I want to revisit the place. The scene of the crime. The underground gallery. The spooky tunnels going deep into the earth. The fossilized concrete shell of what used to be a living stream. A living biosphere full of life. Maybe it could be again somehow.

I’m not writing about Fiesta and I’m not writing about Earth Day. Earth Day has already happened on April 22 and Fiesta is still happening. I’m writing about . . . writing.

I enjoy writing. Making marks with my pen like I’m doing now. Making marks that mean something is writing.

I’m using a Pilot G-2 10 point.

I like this pen but people have used a stylus (cuneiform), a quill pen (the old signers of the Constitution), a stone chisel (the old Romans and Greeks and Phoenicians). They have scratched on stones with other stones and they have painted murals on cave walls with paint brushes. A mural full of picture words.

These days we call it literature. Typically it’s type on page, printed there by some technological process but still using ink and paper just like the old days.

When I went to elementary school the desks had holes in them for inkwells. The inkwells were gone but the holes remained. I think now they have modern desks with no holes. What did they do, dip their quill pens in the inkwell and then write something? I don’t know. Maybe they had steel nibbed pens. Yeah, probably.

Writing has been going on for thousands of years in some form. Online digital newsletters with podcasts attached are just the latest form. Human language communication has been going on for even longer. Talking. People expressing something. What’s your expression?

That’s the point of this newsletter, I suppose, if there is a point. Express something! Find something from deep within yourself, your authentic self and add your voice to the conversation. No pretense. No pressure.

The human conversation is the totality of everything we are saying to each other. Imagine if we could visualize the network of all our human conversations, all the nexus points and their attendant streams, the connecting lines, refracted like beams of light thru a prism, the shadings, the illuminations, the deeper meanings of our words; would it appear endless and wondrous? Certainly uncharted. A matrix of words and meanings and spoken intentions that everyone is a part of. This matrix describes our culture and supports the world we live in.

I believe in the literature tradition. That’s one way to say something. We don’t tell stories around the campfire much anymore but we do have literature. A substitute I suppose. Stories and tales about whatever it is, life on planet earth basically, never gets old. It’s always interesting, useful, inspiring. That’s literature - stories of our tribe. The humans. It might have aliens in it but it’s still about the humans because it’s how we imagine the aliens is how they appear, somehow, in some strange way, they always turn out to be like us.

“I’m so glad you’re still alive.” I said to Michelle my barista at Press this morning. It was my morning barista joke. There was no reason to believe she wouldn’t be.

At Mila I attempted to pay for a mocha cappuccino with a magic stick. I found it on the ground nearby but I didn’t tell them that. I told them it was imbued with power, as much as they could imagine.

Then I rode my bike down Ave. B into the city. The place of stories. Everybody’s got one.

This is what I’ve got to say.

So I could write about Earth Day, it already happened, and I could write about Fiesta, it’s still happening. It comes by every year - Fiesta. A 10 day super-duper block party that involves the whole city but mostly downtown.

Parades and bands and twirling girls. Spectacular floats with women in spectacular costumes. Parties, and putting on the ritz. Having too many tequilas (easy to do) and taking a taxi home. Trying to remember where is your car in the morning.

And then of course there are millions of smaller mini-fiestas all over town. The Alamo Heights Fiesta, the UIW open campus thing they do, The St. Mary’s Oyster Bake, the King William Fair where you can walk with your dog right in the parade. But I’m not writing about any of that.

I could write about the earth and its burgeoning, bursting forth new season: Spring. Wildflowers everywhere. Flowered wreaths on the doors signifying Spring and Fiesta.

Life happening everywhere. It really is quite delicious. Fragrance on the air. Nature promulagating away doing the thing called Spring. The color green. Flowers red and yellow and blue and pink, purple and white and orange. Seeds come from flowers. But that’s what I’m not writing about.

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So when this was posted by a friend on Facebook recently it inspired me. It’s from Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan writer upon his receiving the Stig Dagerman Award in 2010. And it goes suchly:

“May we be worthy of desperate hope.

I wish we could have the courage to stand alone and the courage to risk being together, because a tooth out of the mouth is no use, nor a finger out of the hand.

I wish we could be disobedient, whenever we receive orders that humiliate our conscience or violate our common sense.

I wish we could be so forgiving to continue believing, against all evidence, that the human condition is worth it, because we have been wrongly done, but we are not finished.

I wish we could be able to keep walking the paths of the wind, despite the falls and betrayals and defeats, because history goes on, beyond us, and when she says goodbye, she's saying, see you later.

Hopefully we can keep alive the certainty that it is possible to be compatriot and contemporary of everyone who lives animated by the will of justice and the will of beauty, born where born and lives when alive, because the maps of the soul and time have no borders.”

Eduardo Galeano was a left wing radical (to use a general term) and writer in the seventies back in Uruguay. Someone who believed in equality and personal liberty. Hey wait that doesn’t sound very radical.

The seventies were a time of coups led or inspired by the American CIA. Pinoche in Chile - 1973. Videla in Argentina - 1976. Both turned out to be vicious tyrants. Neither of those coups made the countries fundamentally better than they were before. We should learn something from history. That stuff could happen here.

From Wikipedia:

“In 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay; Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee, going into exile in Argentina where he founded the magazine Crisis. His 1971 book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina. In 1976 he married for the third time to Helena Villagra; however, in the same year, the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup and his name was added to the list of those condemned by the death squads. He fled again, this time to Spain, where he wrote his famous trilogy, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire), described as "the most powerful literary indictment of colonialism in the Americas."

I’m not a political revolutionary but I do believe we need a revolution, something like what Galeano talked about in his acceptance speech.

“I wish we could be able to keep walking the paths of the wind, despite the falls and betrayals and defeats, because history goes on, beyond us, and when she says goodbye, she's saying, see you later.”

The generation that my parents were from could almost remember the camp meetings that swept thru the country back in the 19th century. It was the spirit of revival! Turning away from their wicked ways and such. People were very emotional.

I’m not that far from revivalism, hereditarily speaking. My father was a Baptist preacher and he did carry forth every Sunday morning from the pulpit. I have been accused (unfairly) of being a proselytizer.

I’m not religious at all, nor am I hung up on any particular version of morality, sinning and stuff, but something like that, a revolution or a revival, would be nice just about now. Something for being human. Just for bloody being human. Just for being who we actually are. Just to be in our own rhythm. Don’t you think so? Just to be loved and to love like nobody’s business. A revolution to end all revolutions because it’s not a revolution it’s a returning. It’s becoming human. We need to become human.

And what does that mean?

Once when I was traveling thru Mexico I found myself in this town - Catemaco - supposed to be the place of the wizards, there in the narrow part of Mexico. It’s just 120 miles from the Caribbean to the Pacific.

Anyways, there were mango trees everywhere. It must have been spring because the ground was littered with ripe mangoes that had fallen out of the trees. I stopped to check it out.

One of the locals introduced me to an old retired professor who lived in a big house on an estate with a wall around it and lots of mango trees (which are huge by the way). I guess he thought I should meet him for some reason. His daughter was purportedly insane and wandered the grounds in search of . . . I don’t know what. I never got to meet her.

So, anyways, the old professor and I became conversant and I remember him telling me, while sitting under the mango tree in his courtyard, that the only way to eat mangos, which were lying around everywhere, was naked in a bathtub.

I considered that. Having coming from someone who, no doubt, had experienced it for themselves, it felt true and real, respectable. I have never eaten mangoes naked in a bathtub to this day but the image endures. Catemaco is the place of wizards after all.

Primal joy, I think, is what he was talking about. Unbridled indulgence in joy. Being loved and sustained by Mother Nature and her bountiful gifts. A feeling of bliss.

This is exactly what the revolution needs to be about. Just changing the politics is not going to do anything. People are still driven by their own personal agendas and their blind desires not by a feeling of completeness and contentment. Not from a vision of clarity and a feeling of inner peace. Let’s have a revolution for inner peace. At least put it on the program.

Writers, like Eduardo Galeano and many many others, from Thoreau to James Baldwin Flaubert, have written about it. Put human beings first. Catch a clue from the biosphere, as Merlin Sheldrake has done in his lovely book Entangled Life that I’m reading at the moment; it’s all about collaboration, symbiosis. From the tiniest microbes to forests full of trees, it all operates on symbiosis. Why don’t we ever talk about this? We are part of the biosphere too.

And here’s my best revolutionary music I could find. From Envision 2020: Under the Mango Tree @The Momentom Collective Theme Camp. A transcendental night of dancing in the Costa Rican jungle under a massive beautiful mango tree. The whole 2 hour journey is recorded below.

Thank you to Depois que o Ilê Passar - Virginia Rodrigues (Kurup edit) and Momentom Collective.

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It was weird. Twilight and sunrise don’t happen that fast and my eyes couldn’t adapt, they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Basically a sunset and a sunrise all in about 20 minutes. It seemed to happen in quantum hops not gradually and smoothly like I would logically expect.

I had been there for about an hour and a half before, staked out on a park bench overlooking one arm of the lake. Just looking. Just looking around. Seeing and watching. Seeing and noticing. The lake, the trees the skyline, the birds flying thru the sky, the kids on the other side of the water swinging on the swing set, yelling. Noticing light itself. Noticing sight. It was like a healing modality for my tired eyes. Waiting. Sitting in silence.

I watched two Grackles nearby who were patrolling the grassy area for bugs. Whenever they would flush one out they would hop on it right away and snatch it up with their beak before it could escape. They didn’t know about the upcoming eclipse, presumably. ‘Probably they’ll start looking for their evening roost and then, oh wow, it’s morning again.’ I thought to myself.

I wonder what that does to a Grackle’s brain. Can you ever really trust twilight and sunrise again? Or do they just go with the flow, no explanation needed. If it’s twilight I’ll go to bed, if it’s morning I’ll get up. Hard to say what a Grackle thinks.

What I thought was wow, I can almost sense Mother Earth and Sister Moon.  And the Sun god too.  All in relationship with one another, moving and intersecting.  Like huge and far away,

It’s a cosmic celestial event I thought to myself. But then I realized cosmic celestial events are happening all the time. The Earth turns, the stars shine, the Moon glows. Every sunrise and sunset is a cosmic celestial event.

After the healing session with my eyes I was ready to see something and that’s when the eclipse started to happen. Another person had joined me on the park bench so we were making pleasant talk and waiting for the show to begin. Actually he was on a bike too so I guess that’s why he joined me because I was on my bike too. So anyways the eclipse started happening even though the sun was totally occluded. Means you couldn’t see it. Thick clouds everywhere. You couldn’t even tell where the sun was in the sky the clouds were so heavy. But the light changed. It certainly did. And it grew darker, as dark as deep inside a forest is what it seemed to me.

Back in the day, when there were deep dark forests, there was darkness like that. No light beam was able to hit the forest floor through that canopy, only diffused light, reflected off leaves and vines. That’s where all the spooky stories come from.

It was something like that, spooky, watching the light change. This is primordial, this is familiar, this is an ancient memory.

We have masked the power of Nature with our cities and our highways but a solar eclipse puts it back in perspective. Huge and far away. Ancient forces aligning in the sky, swooping down through one second of its orbit to paint its shadow on planet Earth. Spheres zipping through their entangled arcs, pathways in space. That’s what I’m feeling too. Now in retrospect.

We are like aliens on our own planet. We don’t even know this place. Yeah scientifically maybe but not really, not like if we were actual partners in the biosphere, not like a friend who we know and love and have an intimate relationship with.

What if someone watched the eclipse who didn’t have any scientific information about it, they had no idea what was going on but they felt awe. Somebody somewhere probably saw it that way.

podcast music by Darkside, the track is called - Hot Sand 01:16:36

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blow on itdon’t let it diecarefully place more larger sticks on tophopebring your intention and your aspirationto the making of the fire

get a little fire goingand let the wind blow it aroundkeep the smoke out of your facelight it again if it goes outif that doesn’t work because the ground is too wetfrom a recent rainfalladd diesel fueldon’t use gasoline it’ll burn your eyebrows off

put bigger and bigger sticks on ityou know build it upeach stick is importantfor the success of the fire

make a fire boxthrow more logs in therewatch it burn

watch the light and dark struggle against the nightthe heat will rise right up to heaven

lightening and thunder in the sky

it begins to rain

perfect

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It was an early experiment in soundtracking, trying to complement the words with the music. Music is sound. Words are sound. They merge somewhere in our brain and find a common source. I find that fascinating.

So, as it turns out, we can’t experience the world at all. All we know of it is what our brain assembles out of the nuanced cacophony of electrical impulses surging along our optic nerve, thru our auditory nerve, and all the other nerves from their attendant stations on the periphery of our body. They relate to something, yes, but they make no sense until our brain paints a picture with them, creates a world that is recognizable and sane. It does the same in our sleep; it’s called dreaming.

I find this fascinating. We assemble the world inside our brain according to what we’ve been programmed to perceive. That’s why adults are so eager to tell their tiny tots: this is a tree, this is an ant, this is your aunt, this is an airplane, this is asparagus. They dutifully believe everything, eager to participate in whatever illusion the adults around them are experiencing so they can be a member of whatever club it is that everybody else is a member of.

What the world actually is we’ll never know. It’s God. Let’s say it’s God and of course you can never touch the face of God. Not while in this mortal coil.

Mortal coil. I like that. I don’t know what it means. I imagine a snake coiled and ready to strike. A mortal blow. Inject some poison into its victim. Or maybe it’s a talking snake like in Adam and Eve.

Isn’t it fascinating that Islam and Christianity are both Abrahamic religions, they both claim Abraham as a prophet and Jesus too (well in Christianity he’s called the Son of God) but they fight with each other tooth and nail as if they were enemies.

I wonder what religion Abraham was before he discovered Yahweh (or Yahweh discovered him). It doesn’t say but he was definitely a renegade, a dropout from the old Fertile Crescent religion of his father. In the Jewish tradition (another Abrahamic religion) he breaks all the idols in his father’s house back in old Ur (of Mesopotamia) and hikes out with his posse and his goats and his cows and his camels for the frontier (Canaan). There he has his visions and makes his covenant with Yahweh and commences the great tradition. Deeply fascinating to me.

How is it that smelling a rose or any other fragrant flower excludes all negative thoughts from the mind. The fragrance of that flower affects the olfactory bulb in our forebrain just behind the nasal cavity which then transmits signals to the olfactory cortex in our cerebrum where it’s processed and then to the limbic system deep inside our brain where it connects to more brain stuff and we ‘smell’. We experience the fragrance of a rose somehow and the whole of our mind is redeemed. I have repeated this experiment many times. It’s strange but true.

For a two year old everything is fascinating: ants crawling thru the grass, over sticks, feeling each other with their antennae. For a one year old everything is magical: a leaf falling from a tree, swirling down to touch the ground. For a newborn everything is a torrent of colors and sounds that probably don’t make any sense at all.

The world is full of wonders and surprises I guess is the theme of this newsletter.

Yesterday while riding thru Brackenridge Park I saw goats, a whole bunch of them. They were inside an electric fence being watched over by Carolyn and Kyle Carr.

Their company is called ‘Rent a Ruminant Texas’ and they had brought their herd of 150 goats from their ranch in Brownwood Texas to munch on the understory in the park. They can eat the shrubs and leaves up to 6 feet high in places where it’s not practical to use machines to clear the brush. They have four hoof drive so they can go up and down steep inclines and over fallen trees. Plus they’re fun to look at. Carolyn and Kyle have names for every each and every one of them and when they get too old to browse, they retire them to the old goats home.

While I was there most of them were in repose, quietly chewing their cud like a herd of contented . . . goats. Amazing.

That’s when the epiphany of the day happened. Actually it circled back around from the morning when it first occurred to me. If you can enjoy yourself, capital S Self, you can enjoy everything and anything. I find that endlessly fascinating.

I also met Pat while I was there. She was walking her dog thru the park and we started up a conversation. She grew up in the Mahnke Park area nearby and started telling me stories from her childhood. Like the one where her brothers told her and her sister that they had found a treasure chest up on top of the hill where the old reservoir used to be. They made a map for them and everything so they could find it.

And they searched for it and did find it. It was actually an old toolbox filled with paste jewelry from gum ball machines and glass beads and such but to her and her 4 year old sister they were real pearls and diamonds.

So they took them to the Witte Museum on the other side of Broadway (both places, the reservoir and the museum, being strictly forbidden by their parents) and showed them to the curator. He encouraged their fantasy while at the same time eliciting their phone number and calling their parents so they could come and pick them up.

Pat was not much older than her sister so the thrill of finding a treasure chest full of jewels was fully embraced by their innocent and naive young minds. Life is a beautiful thing.

Later, on my bike ride, I encountered a group of Native Americans led by a powerful shaman parading down Houston Street. They turned right on Presa and crossed over the Riverwalk bridge.

At Travis Park I ran across kids spilling out of a plastic playhouse, one by one, like pop tarts out of a toaster.

The world is full of wonder and surprises.

The old shaman don Juan used to walk out into the Sonoran desert with his student Carlos Castaneda and have the most incredible adventures imaginable while trying to teach him how to ‘stop the world’.

In a place that most people would think is empty and relatively lifeless, somehow there would arise mysterious powers and visions which Castaneda would report in his books.

I found those stories utterly fascinating when I was a young man of 20 searching for truth in the wide world. I knew it must exist somewhere in some way because if not then the search for it would be absurd and so would be the entire universe.

On my home from the park I got slammed by a careless bicyclist coming around a blind corner. Dropped me right in the street; sprained knee and broken phone. I’d been having a premonition all day that something was going to happen. Don’t know how that works. Knees mend and phones are replaced and I am alive is my takeaway. And my brain is intact, I can still assemble my world. Or stop my world. Which is it then? Both?

Anyways a new phone will be here in a few days. I can take pictures again. I can roam around town on my bicycle and record voice memos of the voices in my head. What I heard.

‘Entertain the muse and the muse will entertain you’ is what I told the lady at the book fair at Central Library a few days ago and that is certainly true. It’s fascinating.

electronic music :: Netsu - Of Our Gods No Trace Will Be Left [Full Album] / Po Naszych Bogach at 31:24

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It’s Spring. The equinox has just passed us by. Days continue to grow longer and warmer. My little ranchito here in the suburbs of San Antonio is fully alive and thriving.

Last summer I was sitting in my office and gazing out the window at my ranchito. There had been 3 or 4 months of hot, dry — I mean very hot, very dry weather. The front yard had become a desert, totally barren. It’s like I could hear it screaming, almost, like it was in agony.

I dug out the leaf mulch from the bottom of the leaf pile in the back yard, hauled it around to the front yard in a wheel barrow and spread it over the dry dirt like fitting a comforter over a sick child. Autumn rains finally came and the front yard literally exploded with life.

Giant Wild Mustard with their brilliant yellow flowers now dominate the front yard. Evening Primrose and False Day Flowers and Dandelions trim the edges. Tall wild grass of some sort has filled in the rest and gone to seed already. Sweet clover grows among the ground cover.

All this is wild and grew on its own, Sunflowers, Vetch, one of the earliest cultivars of human history, the Mountain Laurel with their hanging bean pods - they have already blossomed and gone to seed, long strands of Cleavers in the planter box with their tiny round seeds.

It’s been like this all winter pretty much and now even more wildflowers are finding their way to the surface. A few Bluebonnets, Indian Blankets, Dandelions and Thistles of course.

Many of these plants are edible. I have snacked on the tiny Vetch seeds, like little peas in a pod. I have added Wild Mustard leaves and Dandelion leaves to my salad. Yummy. Wild grown and organic.

I love this so much. This is Mother Nature manifesting her personality.

The ancient people (who I am fond of referencing) knew Mother Nature as an entity and a personality. They courted her and loved her.

We live among nature. Actually we are nature. We are a manifestation of Mother Nature’s personality too. A little aberrant perhaps. The prodigal son or something. But still should we not be proud of our heritage. We should say hi to each other from our own planters so to speak.

My little ranchito has taught me to love the earth. It responds. Birds sing in the trees and raccoons live under the house. A opossum comes to dinner occasionally. We all get along. Maybe I am some kind of a god for them, raining down Meow Mix from above. So be it. Amen.

music by J. Pool at IKAL TULUM Thank you J. Pool!

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Sorry to be so harsh, Tulum, but it’s true. Of course I lived here in this area 30 years ago when it was a sleepy little Mayan hamlet with a few palapas and some grocery stores the size of my garage, so the contrast is striking.

Back then access to the beach was open and you could camp out or hang out under a palm tree and it was beautiful. Now the beach road is lined with boutique hotels with restricted access to the beach and the road is crammed with cars. I mean it’s like a traffic jam you would find in any congested city at rush hour. Cars and trucks and construction vehicles and scooters and bicycles all jammed onto a narrow road barely wide enough for one lane much less two. I texted my buddy Pepe in nearby Chemuyil, ‘Help! Save me from Tulum.’ and he did.

I arrived in Chemuyil town, near Xcacel beach where I had lived back in the nineties, and snuggled into his third floor verandah overlooking the town. This town is poor but at least it’s not congested. The only monkeys are in the trees.

There are thousands of cenotes in the Yucatán, fresh water pools that form when the underground rivers that carry the rainwater from the central jungle to the sea collapse. Well the rivers don’t collapse but the limestone rock above them does. They form beautiful pools of sparkling blue water surrounded by sabal palms and ceiba trees and motmot birds flitting about. They were the portal to the underworld for the ancient Maya.

This is the reason the ancient Maya settled here, in my opinion. Although there is only a thin layer of fertile soil on top of the limestone platform that makes up the Yucatán peninsula, there is plenty of water and all the resources that the jungle can provide. Flora and fauna and water and cenotes. What else do you need?

Anyways this is where I used to live, on Xcacel beach, a white, sandy, still undeveloped beach with a cenote back off in the mangroves a ways. The cenote was closed the day we arrived but the beach was beautiful. In fact it was more wild than when I lived here in my little trailer on top of the berm. Me and Pepe and Lorena, the aunt of the two kids he takes care of - Chu Chu and Marina, arrived in his tiny car and headed to the beach. The kids played in the surf and built a walled city in the sand and a volcano of sand which exploded (of course) and dug a hole in the sand and poured water into it. All this against the rushing sound of the waves and the endless view of the ocean and the seaweed scented breeze blowing incessantly from beyond the edge of the world. It was a heck of a playground.

This beach is a turtle sanctuary as it was when I lived here. It has survived in its natural state because of that. Every other beach from Cancun to Tulum has a freaking hotel on it.

Back then we had a turtle nursery and a marking program where we would mark the baby turtles on the underside of their carapace once they got big enough so we could tell how old they were and which beach they were hatched on when they came back up out of the sea to lay their eggs as mature females. We could also track their peregrinations all over the Caribbean Sea with those marks - useful information for protecting an endangered sea turtle.

Mexico is a country with a deep cultural history and you can’t erase that even with all the destructive development and greed that now possesses the land. Old Quetzalcoatl, the mythic god whose image can be found from the Olmec to the Maya to the Toltec to the Aztecs, presided over the wind, art, knowledge and learning. He was the patron saint of craftsmen. He was a cool guy. They had some deep cultural wisdom here and for a long time.

The reason I went to Mexico was not only to visit my old stomping grounds but also to attend an event with Prem Rawat in the capital.

The Polyforum Siqueiros is a building in downtown Mexico City painted inside and out, on all it’s polyforms, with a giant mural called, ‘The March of Humanity’. David Alfaro Siqueiros work. It was the site of the event, and named after him.

The event was powerful, beautiful and inspiring. Prem reminding us to practice, practice, practice if we want to remember what is most important. And what is most important? A question I think everyone should ask themselves and drill down until they hit bedrock. For me it’s very clear and has been since I was about 19 years old. It’s to find happiness, freedom and joy, the feeling of elation and to hold on to it. Of course who can hold on to such an effervescent, liminal experience like that? Practice, practice, practice.

While I was at Pepe’s house I had the most incredible dream of my life. At least as far as I can remember. I was at home, in my house or what seemed to be my house and it was full of people. They were all experiencing an incredible amount of harmony and joy, like I had never seen before. There was a tiled shower that looked a lot like the shower in Pepe’s house and it also had some kind of a sauna, like I have in my house. Lots of people and everyone moving around and enjoying - I don’t remember much else. My dreams do not occupy the long term memory part of my brain but I do remember the feeling, it was startling and exciting.

Where do dreams come from and why do they come? The ancients thought they were portents sent from the gods. I don’t believe in the gods but maybe it’s something like that. Messages from my subconscious? Maybe from the collective unconscious? A Jungian idea that we are all connected on some primordial level. I don’t know but that dream was so real. I believed in it. It was disappointing to wake up and find myself sleeping in Pepe’s house in Chemuyil, no tribe, no exuberant energy, just me lying on the floor.

So that’s my story of visiting Mexico. Except for this part.

My less than ideal travel arrangements left me in the Mexico City airport for an all night 13 hour layover on my way home. That’s where I am now. I’m thinking about the old Comanches, or whoever, laying in wait to ambush their prey, or whatever, for probably 13 hours. It’s moment by moment. It’s being alert. It’s noticing and staying invisible and waiting. How do you live in the moment I ask myself.

I find a place to charge my phone next to an old bruja. At least she looks like a bruja. I ask her if it’s ok to sit down in the unoccupied seat next to her but my Spanish comes our sounding ridiculous. She ignores me. Her son (as I imagine him to be) sitting nearby intercedes, “No, it’s ok.” he says.

I sit. The old lady gets up and leaves, disappears into the airport terminal. I plug in my phone and start writing.

My prey is the people walking by - watching them, calibrating their energy level.

There is an endless procession. The best ones are the kids (besides the bruja). They’re fully alive, nubile and spontaneous.

Who knows who I might encounter here? I met Aldo in the restaurant, he got a degree in Community Relations from Michigan State University. That’s near where I was born! We talked about anarchism and I gave him my card. Cards actually. One for my podcast, one for my book and one with my contact info. He said he would look into it.

I think I can do this. Each moment is a moment. It has its own presence and its own message. Just like the old Comanches hunting deer in the forest, I guess. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m already pretty punch drunk from lack of sleep and 2 Dos Equis. Not a very good deer hunter. Maybe what I’m really hunting is the moment and to enter into its presence.

Yeah that’s it. The authentic moment. The eternal moment. Stay in the moment. Don’t get lost in the nowhere, I advise myself.

When I get tired of staring at people I find a Starbucks to hang out at and discover Los Insólitos playing Aparecer over the speakers.

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I am a historical romanticist, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true or somewhere close to the truth or somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth. The point is we need to envision and imagine the people who lived here before us. We would benefit from entertaining their perspective.

They knew this land in a different way, not out the window of a car. They were on foot. They constructed their houses from available resources: wood and stone and skins and branches and mud. Built them and abandoned them and built new ones as they moved around to different places, hunting and gathering. They had a relationship with the land and the sky and the water that was based on gratitude and reverence.

Something that we don’t really understand but could definitely learn from.

I believe in San Antonio, that this place has an ancient and enchanted history. People have lived here for hundreds of generations, that’s for sure, thousands of years. They hunted and gathered and told their stories and sang their songs and danced their dances and lived their lives without really changing all that much and without destroying the environment they lived in. Something we could learn.

How were they able to do that? I’ve thought about it many times. It certainly is a lofty achievement - existing in cooperation with but not domination of your natural world.

By living in reverence, is the answer I come up with, by living in gratitude for the blessings of Father Sky and Mother Earth. By living in harmony with the natural elements they found themselves surrounded with. By having ‘enough’, having a ‘pinnacle culture’ where, no matter how primitive it may appear to us, they had the tools and skills sufficient for the tribe to survive and prosper.

Although there has never been any proper archaeology done about the first people to live here - 12,000, 15,000 maybe 20,000 years ago, there are some things that can be surmised about the deep history of San Antonio.

They were born and lived among the trees that grew all along the banks of the gentle streams that flowed down from the hills to the north and from the springs that flowed up out of the earth, this much can be surmised. The water fed the trees and the trees fed the people. And the source of the water, where it emanated from the earth, where it sprang forth from the rocks, that place was a blessing and an energy center. It was a sacred site. It’s where they worshipped Mother Nature herself. That’s not just my opinion it’s also the account given to me by the descendants of the ancient people who still live around here.

The watershed of all those streams that coursed thru this area roughly matches the outline of present day San Antonio. This metropolis, this giant city, seventh largest in the nation and growing fast as a Texas Sunflower, urbanized and developed, with giant housing tracts spreading out for miles, industrial sites, quarries, expressways and shopping malls - has buried any resemblance it once had to the natural state of things deep underground.

That’s important to know. What we see around us today is not what those ancient people saw around them. Missing mountain lions and deer, to mention a few, and the environment to support them.

We do have the Riverwalk, that’s a momento from the ancient past. From back when the river flowed clear and strong, not pumped out of the water treatment plant like it is today. We have the cascade fountains in HemisFair Park flowing like a Yanaguana in the rainy season. Yanaguana of course was the native name for the river: peaceful waters, healing waters. The Spanish named it the ‘San Antonio’ and that’s what we call it today. This place has been completely renamed since the ancient people lived here. We don’t even know what they called things. It’s not their town anymore, it’s our town.

But enough of that. Let’s talk about when this place was flowing with water, generous amounts of water in the streams and in the arroyos. There were dozens of them all over town and even today you can see them while riding around on your bicycle. The springs were the source of some of the rivers and they formed pools and marshes with their attendant biospheres where they gushed out of the ground. Fish, frogs, shellfish, alligators, birds and many others no doubt gathered there. The springs and the rivers were the bountiful gifts of Mother Nature, feeding her children, all of them, all along the waterway. That’s what made this place special.

One could easily surmise, in fact, that this was a Garden of Eden event. While here below Mother Earth was feeding all her children with her beneficence, above Father Sky was radiating his brilliant, warm sunshine and showering them with rain. That’s a pretty nice world to live in and that’s how they saw it.

Infact that’s probably how we would make a religion today if we grew up in a forest by the river and had no knowledge of modern science and weren’t influenced by modern society and by everybody else’s ideas or by a holy book that was passed down for generations. If we just knew what we knew and we felt what we felt, that’s probably the same religion that we would have. Anyways they did it that way, that’s how they constructed their world. And when everything was in balance, when everything was good, when Father Sky and Mother Earth were happy, then the people were blessed and there was plenty to eat.

So they grew up among the trees, and the trees grew up along the banks of the rivers and the rivers provided water and the trees provided food and it was good. Everything that was needed was provided. Everybody was prosperous, or nobody was prosperous.

Their wealth fell out of the limestone formations in the form of chert, the material they used to make stone tools and whatever they needed: a grinder, a metate, an axe, a knife. Just pick it up and shape it, you could make an arrowhead to hunt deer.

The deer was a magical creature, atleast to the old ones who lived out by the Pecos River in West Texas and left paintings on their cave walls. Maybe because they seemed to appear and disappear and if you were able to chase one down and get it, you would have bountiful resources to make clothes and a house and food to feed your family and Lord knows what else.

If we want to imagine those people who lived here 10,000 years ago, then we need to know that the climate was cooler and wetter back then. The Southern Plains were a luxurious grassland with herds of buffalo, horses and mastodons roaming about. They hunted them with massive stone spear heads hafted on to shafts and thrown at high speed with aid of an atlatl or throwing stick.

They got them too. Bones found at Paleo-Indian sites (10,000 years old and more) around Texas confirm this. No excavations have ever been done for that era around the springs in the Olmos Basin. Instead they built a dam and a university and a city on top of them so the evidence for whatever they ate lies buried underground still, along with all their other secrets. And that’s the truth.

These were shaman people. We can also surmise that. Shamanism was prevalent among the ancient hunter/gatherer populations of North America. They didn’t have a king or a big ruler, their society was far more egalitarian than ours, but they did have the wise person to guide them on their hunts and ensure the prosperity of the tribe: the shaman. He could heal you, he could give you counsel. The shaman could visit the gods and gain insight and wisdom. He or she could get inside the head of the prey animal that the hunters were stalking and help them be successful. The shaman could even take the shape of an animal. That sounds spooky, I know, but that’s what the old stories and myths say. Going way back.

Aztlan, the mythical homeland of the Aztecs is located somewhere to the north, at the place of ‘seven caves’, according to their myth. Caves were important because they were the entrance into the underworld and at the same time into the subconscious realm where the ancient people stored their myths and rituals. Caves were important for many reasons, as you can imagine, and there are lots of them in this area, some spectacular. It’s possible that the predecessors of the Aztecs 700 years ago, originated right here.

There may have been numerous migrations. For example the oldest known depiction of the horned serpent appears in a Lower Pecos river cave 3500 years ago. It became enshrined in the iconography of Mexico as the plumed serpent - Quetzalcoatl, the benefactor of culture since the time of the Olmecs 3,000 years ago up until the time of the Aztecs 700 years ago. Many other motifs and religious symbols from the Aztec culture have been found in the paintings from the lower Pecos River area, indicating that their influence was progenitive.

Forty miles north of Austin is a small wooded valley formed by 3 springs that merge to form the Buttermilk Creek. This is the location of the Gault site, one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in North America. Thousands of stone tools and shards (the broken bits) have been found in various stages of manufacture or repair; some stones have been deliberately inscribed with lines. Since they started doing archaeology here in 1929 they have uncovered evidence of continuous occupation going back 15,000 years and they’re still digging.

People have been here for much longer than 12,000 years (the commonly accepted timeline) is my point, we just don’t know about it. That’s what I think. This area was a nursery for the cultures that would spring up and spread all over the place later. It was an energy center and a rejuvenation center. That’s what I think. Unfortunately we don’t know what they thought.

Most of what we know about early San Antonio people is whatever the Spanish conquistadors, along with their fellow interlopers the priests, wrote down in their journals. Father Espinoza in 1709 made this entry in his diary upon arriving at what has become popularly known as the Blue Hole,  “... at a short distance we came to a luxuriant growth of trees, high walnuts, poplars, elms, and mulberries watered by a copious spring which rises near a populous rancheria of Indians of the tribes of Siupan, Chaulaames and some Sijames, numbering in all about 500 persons, young and old.” 

The native people, who he called the Siupan, Chaulaames and Sijames, (he really had no idea who they were) and their ancestors had lived here for hundreds of generations. They had gone on their peregrinations and returned to the springs many times, yet had left not a single scrap of written information or a single bit of cave art for us to ponder.

The Spanish, of course, were interested in expanding their Empire, not on cataloguing and understanding the strange and diverse people they met there. For the favor of saving your souls, we’ll let you build our forts and plant our crops, was their attitude. Also they got protection from the Comanches, which was no small thing. The Comanches were like rowdy bullies, they would raid whoever they wanted and take whatever they wanted. Why not?

Anyways, back to the main point, that what the native people saw as gifts from Mother Nature and Father Sun: water, food, sunshine, trees, plants, animals - to the Spanish were resources. As were the poor pagan Indians themselves, the gentle folk who camped around the springs were easily persuaded or if that didn’t work, coerced, into joining up with mission life and becoming Christian.

The springs themselves, which they identified with and gathered around, actually come from an aquifer buried 600 feet underground made out of limestone that used to be at the bottom of an ocean that was here 100 million years ago. Back then life was thriving, it was the Cretaceous era and it was warm and moist. There were dragonflies the size of large birds and dinosaurs. The shallow ocean covered half of Texas and was prolif with marine organisms. It was their skeletons, melded and compacted on the ocean floor, that became the limestone which eventually formed the huge underground reservoir that feeds the springs all the way from Brackettville to Austin.

That’s some deep history. The aquifer formed in such a way that it could purify and transport the water until it found an opening and then it would flow out as an artesian spring.

‘Ok, fine’ you might ask, ‘but if there was this amazing nation of people here 12, 15, 20,000 years ago that lived by the springs and gave birth to cultures and empires, why is there no trace of them now?’

That is an excellent question, dear reader, and one I will attempt to answer. I think they had no need for monuments and high technology because their monuments were already there, magnificent ones, built by nature: the trees and the streams and the sky and the earth. Their technology was talking (and listening) to the trees and the birds and the sky and the earth. Being in communion.

Knowing the presence of something is speaking to it and certainly the trees had a presence where they lived. All the elemental forces: wind, rain, sunshine, night and day had a presence and were part of them and they could interact with them. I think that was their technology. Spellbinding the big cats, if you can believe that. Here is a cave painting, over 2,000 years old, that shows a shaman figure sitting between two mountain lions with their mouths open but fixed, unable to move by the power of the shaman’s spell. That would be a handy technology.

Their storytelling must have been compelling as hell, having practiced it for so many generations, sitting around the fire and spinning yarns, reviving the classics and tweaking them for a new audience - the little kids. Entertainment and education and tribal identification all in one, that’s the storytelling experience. But they’re lost now. All those amazing stories are gone without a trace except in the existing myths of surviving cultures like the Aztec and Huichol.

And I’ll say this. Whatever I’ve expressed about the ancient people may or may not ring true to you, but I think people today want to regain their lost freedom, their wildness, their ancient traits.

Just rolling down the riverwalk on my bike this morning I encountered: one guy with two Alaskan Huskies pulling him along, another guy camping out under the bridge with his tent, a girl with her fluffy dog passes by and says ‘hi’ in a sweet voice. Downtown a guy in a trenchcoat with a toothpick in his mouth is crossing the road in front of me carrying a long branch as if it were a bow, this lady in her poncho with her bags and one shoe wandering around the city all day, communing with something

Civilization is just a thin veneer, after all, a coating on the very tip of our human story, like icing on a cupcake. It’s just been the last twelve thousand years or so that we invented agriculture and started living in cities. We were hunters and gatherers before that for 200,000 years. Those were our homo Sapiens ancestors. Same brain, same curiosity, same creative ingenuity, same desire to make things better, same basic need to find meaning in life. That we have today. They had the same. Back then.

music :: shaman’s spell 00:00-13:50 and 1:08:27-1:15:50

Adam and Eve and the kids debuted 2 years ago, on March 3, 2022. I performed it for Megacorazon, the celebration of poetry that Urban 15 sponsors each April. Here it is again.

So, there was a girl and a boy. Their names were Adam and Eve. They fell in love and got into a relationship. They wanted to have kids and start a new world.

Of course they didn’t know what they were doing and ran into a lot of problems because it was their first time. Having a family and starting a new world and all.

They tried to discipline their kids but they were wild. One wanted to start a nation and another one wanted to start a war against the nation. Always upping each other.

Even though they were living in a place with lots of food, almost like a garden, a garden of Eve, they felt there wasn’t enough. Or they felt like there might not be enough if something happened. Something bad like angry gods or monsters.

So slowly, instead of tending the garden of Eve, their mother, they got focused on worrying about what would happen if . . . And of course once you start worrying about what will happen if, then there is no end to the ifs. And soon enough the people forgot about their beautiful forest, er I mean garden, and started building weapons and drawing boundaries in the sand and dividing themselves based on superficial facial features.

Adam and Eve were old by then and they had about had it with kids anyways so they decided, screw it. We’re just going to live by the spring at the middle of the garden and let the kids have the rest of it - they said to each other and nodded in unison. And that’s what they did.

They built a little house of mud and wattle and whatever they could find and in the little house, more of a hut really, they built a little fire and in the fire they put to cook on some rocks that they found lying around six little tortillas made from corn that they had grown outside their little hut next to the spring.

And then the kids divided up the whole world. They spread out and took over the land and divided it up according to whatever they felt was right.

Of course whatever they felt was right according to one nation felt not so right to another nation so they had a war. This is what they had learned since they left the garden, er forest, to divide it up and then fight over it. It was a tradition.

Meanwhile, back at the old homestead, Adam and Eve were still alive. They didn’t die. They never died. They’re still there actually. Adam and Eve are still there at the center of their mythical garden, still making corn tortillas from the corn they grow by the springs.

Still living in their little hut of mud and wattle. Still listening to the quietness, to the sounds of the birds. Listening for any sign that their children might be coming back home.

music • Alyas - Daydream 01:04:25

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‘New’ and ‘packaging’ are bound together in the modern day buying experience. You buy them both. Otherwise you wouldn’t really trust the product. If your Amazon order arrived loose in a bag without any packaging, you would be like - is this really the product? It doesn’t have any packaging.

In the picture below the big black guy is presenting the seated white guy with an object, maybe two objects, obviously unpackaged, how rude. In one hand a conch shell and in the other hand some kind of a stick or pole with a strange round thing at the top and an equally strange protuberance at the bottom. He could be the Mayan Amazon delivery driver but there is no packaging. The picture, which is actually a Mayan hieroglyph (meaning unknown), came with the music I found on YouTube. It’s by Cacao Yoga in Vancouver (the music not the picture) and includes the amazing track that you are listening to now.

Of course once a product is opened or consumed, the packaging is discarded. What once held promise and intrigue is now trash, disposable, and likely will become part of an artificial mountain called a ‘landfill’.

In San Antonio there are three large municipal landfills: Covell Gardens, Tessman Road Landfill and Texas Disposal Systems Landfill, plus 4 smaller bulky waste sites where residents can dump their junk, plus several private sites that will take your stuff for a fee. Tessman Road, the largest of these landfills, has a capacity of 50 million tons. I couldn’t find out how high it is though or how deep it is. No pictures. Must be a fair sized knoll by now, they’ve been filling it in for awhile. I learned that Covell Gardens, the smallest one, processes 1,300,000 tons annually on their 480 acre garden. That’s a fair sized ranch.

Pacha Mama, as referred to in the song (Mother Nature, planet Earth), is a package too and we are the contents. Discarded after the expiration date, we are buried in a landfill called a cemetery and eventually recycled. The container remains and the contents disappear. Pacha Mama has been doing this for a very long time. Everything that’s alive is built on something that has died. It seems like a significant point.

We traveled far to find this placewhere weary souls find a warm embrace

says the song

We traveled far from outer space to bring you love and a warm embrace

We’ll never get a handle on our waste disposal until we realize what an incredible place this is - our home planet. Supremely elegant and floating in space, no wires attached, turning on its axis and orbiting around a radiant sun - it contains a biosphere, a sphere of biological organisms, uncountable trillions of them, alive and procreating.

It’s not new but it’s a package. It’s a package deal.

And all our love all our loveit comes from this place

And unto you we sing and playand love this place

May all the bombs turn into birdsand fly away

Oh Pacha Mama

says the song

podcast music at 34:20Thank you so much Tomoko and Koku for this Cacao Yoga set.

Cars, cars, cars. Cars are everywhere. In the city they scurry about like giant insects swarming the streets, swelling the parking lots and congesting the intersections. They speed across the country on interstates and connect distant points. They contain us and define us, they give us a sanctuary and shelter.

David Byrnes’ famous quote from his movie ‘True Stories’ comes to mind.

“Expressways are the cathedrals of our time.”

We are in church then, communing with our god of modernity I suppose. Worshipping speed and convenience as we whip along at speeds barely imaginable in the old horse and buggy days. The great arches and massive bridges of our expressways span the distances but also expand our imagination. Our thoughts fly through the air along with our car. Billboards display services and products so we can be informed. The sky is the limit. The pigeons are angels.

Cars are cocoons. We’re insulated from each other and from nature. When we emerge, like a butterfly from the chrysalis, we are in a new place and a new space and we are different than we were before.

Cars are what we wrap ourselves in when we want to go somewhere. It’s a costume. Cars reflect our personality: I’m a Mustang, I’m a Cherokee, I’m a 4 wheel drive Subaru Forester. And if cars are characters, personas, archetypes then what are the stories they are telling us? Only the driver knows for sure as he sits on the throne and drives his car through the world, around obstacles and through intersections, over mountains and to the sea. Or she.

There are movies about Cars. People write songs about cars. Tracy Chapman singing Fast Car at the Grammys. Cars fill up our world, they pack our roads. In the middle of rush hour you can barely move but they’re still selling even more cars on the TV commercials. Get away with your family and have an adventure in your new car. They don’t actually tell you anything about the car but they do tell you all about the fantastic adventures you’re going to have driving around in your Accura MDX. The AMA (American Medical Association) actually provides incentives on its website for doctors to buy their new Mercedes-Benz EQ. I think that’s cute.

I own a car. I think it’s cool. If I want to get from place to place quickly and in comfort, I’ll start up my 2008 Toyota Prius and drive. Especially if it’s raining or really cold and I can’t ride my bike. I’m not against using technology. I just think we should use it to our benefit. Choking the streets with cars and flooding out downtowns with parking lots is not to our benefit. Filling our sky with CO2 and other pollutants is not to our benefit either. Maybe we could use technology for our benefit, not get addicted to it like a drug, not knowing where to stop with it.

There are 290 million cars in the United States and it’s unlikely that you will see two of the same kind, make and model, in the course of a day. There must be thousands of different cars to choose from.

The logos of the cars are designed to entice your eyes and form an image in your brain of something comforting yet exciting.

Stable and strong yet ready to roll at a moments notice.

A leisurely ride with a touch of luxury. Quick and agile.

As an avid bicyclist I really do resent having to breathe the air coming out of those tail pipes. The motorists don’t care because they’re in the cabin sitting comfortably with the filtered air on, can’t smell a thing. I would like to have a little post it sign that I could stick on the side window of the cars sitting at the intersection spewing poisonous gas into the air we breathe saying basically that. Excuse me but there’s poison gas coming out of your tailpipe into the air we breathe. I haven’t done it yet. Don’t want to get run over the next time.

Actually bike riding is a viable mode of transportation for up to 8 or 10 miles or whatever your range is. You can put panniers on the back rack, a little dingy bell, some lights - you’ll be ready to roll.

Ok, now back to ragging about cars. One 6,000 pound car (a Suburban for example) carrying a 140 pound lady to the grocery store (a pre-determined and frequent destination) must be the most inefficient mode of transportation every invented. Of course you could drive your Hummer if you really want to be safe and get about 12 mpg. You could drive an M1 Abrams battle tank to the store if you wanted to be absolutely sure that you would be safe. Blast ‘em out of there if they’re in your way. Park anyplace you want. Probably have a hard time getting hold of an M1 Abrams battle tank, not for civilian use, but that would be cool. Until everyone started driving their Abrams.

podcast music :: Auditive Escape - Eerie Figure 32:07

His mother died when he was two and his father died when he was seven so he was pretty much brought up by his aunt who educated him at home. Aunt Aleksandra.

At the age of 16 he was off to university in Kazan, as a good Tolstoy would do. It didn’t work out, however, he dropped out during his second year. His instructor remarked that he was “"both unable and unwilling to learn". Ha!

He went home for a while and then started hanging out at all the cool places in Moscow and St. Petersburg, living a real bohemian lifestyle with his family’s money. He also started writing during this time and published his first novel Childhood about, guess what, his childhood. It was a big hit.

"Will the freshness, lightheartedness, the need for love, and strength of faith which you have in childhood ever return? What better time than when the two best virtues -- innocent joy and the boundless desire for love -- were the only motives in life?"

At 23 he was a literary phenom, recognized as an up and coming figure in the literary world. He went on to write Boyhood and Youth and they were both well received. He sold lots of copies but he also managed to accumulate a large gambling debt. He decided to run off and join the army.

He became an artillery officer in the Crimean War that was being fought between Russia and a European alliance consisting of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. No wonder they lost. He witnessed the siege of Sevastopol that lasted from 1854–55. He saw alot. Death and destruction. After the war he quit the army and started city-hopping around Europe.

On a trip to Paris in 1857 he witnessed an execution that affected him deeply. They chopped the guy’s head off and he was dead. He wrote afterwards,

"The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."

He met Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. He transformed, somehow, from a privileged society author to a non-violent Christian anarchist, his philosophy based on a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words, specifically the Sermon on the Mount.

What is the Sermon on the Mount exactly? Well, the essence of it is this:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.

The Beatitudes. Pretty radical stuff. Society at large and institutionalized religion in particular were corrupt and hypocritical in his mind and he wanted no part of them. He ended up giving away his money and went to live with the peasants, He founded schools so that their children could learn to read and write which he saw as a primary way of improving oneself.

Tolstoy's concept of non-violence or ahimsa was bolstered when he read the ancient Indian text of Tirukkural, all about virtue, wealth and love. His ideas influenced Mahatma Gandhi, the liberator of India, who used the power of non-violence to defeat the British. He indirectly influenced Martin Luther King Jr., who used non-violence as the guiding light of the Civil Rights Movement in America.

Others who followed a similar path around the same time were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, all contemporaries of Tolstoy and all from the landed class, moneyed, owners of serfs. That’s pretty interesting, right? All the 19th Century Russian revolutionaries were rich landowners, yet they saw the need for change and tried to make it happen. Weird. Those were revolutionary times and the most revolutionary revolutionaries in Russia, for all their revolutionary anarchist fervor, were the privileged and educated land owners. Their revolution didn’t turn out quite so well in the end. They just ended up with a new czar and called him the president. Oh well.

So why am I writing about Leo Tolstoy? Why do I find his life so remarkable? The reason I find his life so remarkable is because it’s remarkably similar to my own. I didn’t attend Kazan University in Imperial Russia, but I did attend the Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College and Seminary in Michigan and dropped out in my second year. I lost my faith and traveled the world trying to find truth. I feel like an anarchist when I look at the serious absurdities of my society. We attack people to bring peace. Huh? What? Are you sure that’s a good idea? I was into Gandhi and non-violence as a young revolutionary. I became a vegetarian (like Tolstoy) and endeavored to simplify my life. I’m still trying to simplify my life. I’m trying to be kind.

And of course we are both writers and admirers of literature. In his case the 1400 page mega-novel War and Peace and many other books, short stories, poetry, diary entries and critiques on various subjects. In my case a somewhat less well endowed portfolio but not less respectable.

I’m with you all the way, Leo. Even though I live in a proper house and buy groceries at the grocery store I endeavor to grow my own food and live like a peasant, with a light footprint on the planet, in harmony with the stars and the moon (which is probably how those old Russian serfs lived), aware of the trees and the rain and the sky and the streams and the stream beds and the flowers and the leaves. Tolstoy admired their closeness to nature and tried to emulate it. His wife got mad when he refused to even receive the royalties for his books (which she had toiled on as well, transcribing multiple copies of War and Peace until he finally got it right) but he was determined to live his faith or his beliefs or his philosophy, whatever you want to call it. He completely dropped out of the status quo where he had been a main player and lived his own life on his own terms (more or less). I respect that.

Actually, the original idea for this post came from a Facebook post somebody posted up. I thought it was great and started researching him. This is how it went:

Here’s me in the cafe trying to look like Leo Tolstoy.

music :: 29:25 My Inner Shaman (Jai Cuzco Remix) by Sariel Orenda, an amazing Bulgarian musician

I’ve been watching TV football lately. Alot. Probably more than is healthy for me. First it was the college playoffs (with my team, the Michigan Wolverines, winning it all) then the NFL playoffs started up with my team, the Detroit Lions (who are only about 50 miles from Ann Arbor the home of the Wolverines), going almost to the Super Bowl before losing to the powerful San Francisco 49ers.

The games start off pleasantly enough with an inspiring song about the land of the free and the home of the brave and the flip of a coin to determine who gets the ball first, but once that’s over with it’s a gladiator sport. I know. Young men being maimed and carried off the field or limping off under their own power atleast 3 or 4 times a game. Sprained ankles, hyper-extended knees, dislocated fingers, concussions and lacerations and broken bones. They’ll never be the same. It’s brutal, worse than boxing almost, I know that, but still I have a strange addiction to it.

Something about it engages my mind at a mythic level; the hunt and kill of our ancient hunter/gatherer ancestors I guess. We mimic that with the run and tackle of football. Get him down on the ground is the point of it if you’re on defense and if you’re on offense it’s running like a scared deer through the line of scrimmage trying not to get pummeled and buffeted and knocked down and tackled and jumped on, trying to make it to the end zone where you’ll be safe.

And then there’s the numerical progression of it. Counting out the yards to go or how many yards you’ve already got appeals to my modern analytical mind. First and ten rings out triumphantly when the team manages to achieve that goal. Third down and twenty is not auspicious. That means you’ve got to throw a bomb all the way down the field to a speedy wide receiver that has a step on his defender. See what I mean? I’m into it.

And also I’ve watched it since I was a kid, so give me a break. We watched it every Sunday afternoon, after church, and before the evening service. It was a ritual. Once the pot roast was finished and the dishes were done and accounted for, we adjourned, well we meaning us males, to the living room to watch the game. Of course TV’s were only about 14” back then and encased in a wooden cabinet that looked like a piece of furniture. Which it was. It was a cabinet with wooden doors that opened to reveal the TV. It seems like there might have been a radio in there too with a long illuminated dial.

My father, the Baptist minister, was resistant to having a TV in the house. He suspected that it was an evil influence, a dalliance with the devil, but in the end he too fell to its spell.

“I can feel it coming in the air tonight. Oh lord. Oh lord.” sings a hard core rock band in the lead in for the NFL Playoffs. Later in the song they explain, ”I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life. Oh lord. Oh lord.” It’s the Phil Collins classic ‘In the Air Tonight’ from 1981.

Then they switch it over to the NFL theme song and zoom into the stadium, cut to the announcers and you’re in the game. Your emotions triggered by the music, your sense of justice triggered by the visual effects, your sense of duty triggered by the uniforms of the soldiers, I mean players, your sense of loyalty triggered by a fly over from a F-22 Raptor, the Air Force’s most advanced fighter. All these emotions get triggered and you’re ready for your hit, I mean game.

After a few commercials for pickup trucks, car insurance and fast food, the game begins. They line up and scrunch down, face to face, helmet to helmet. On the secret signal, they go, activate the plan, smash into the other side, try to take over everything and push the other guys out of the way, control the line of scrimmage. March down the field. Throw a bomb. Cross the line into enemy territory. Score a touchdown. All those terms are familiar to me and strangely comforting.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers shoot off a cannon when they score a touchdown. The Texas Longhorns run around the field with a Long Horn cow (actually). It’s held in place by two guys who have a tether thru it’s nose and they run along with it. Every team has their mascot and their ritual of how to celebrate. The chant, the wave, the screaming fans trying to disrupt the opposing teams snap count.

And the cheerleaders. Those girls really want their guys to win. They look very excited and happy or atleast confident. Jumping and spinning and flying thru the air. Of course some cheerleaders are guys. Don’t want to be gender exclusive here.

It’s a spectacle and it’s a ritual. Ritualized warfare or atleast ritualized hunting. Chasing and killing. Better to do it on the football field than on the battlefield. I always thought it would be great if the leaders of the countries who wanted war went out in the middle of a field somewhere with boxing gloves and had at it. Or better yet knives. Yeah, work it out with knives you stupid ego head world leaders. Last one standing and the war’s over. Go home. Nothing to see here.

if i asked people they might react in unpredictable ways / like repressed or expressed or freaked out about it / traumatized or romanticized or caricaturized / they might be feeling confused or trapped or bereft / they might be feeling verified or liberated or desecrated or riddled with questions about it or needled with unfulfilled fantasies about it or gratified about it / it was a great run a great ride i had a great time thank you

i’m scared of sex / i told that to a friend i met at the cafe once / how i never got over it / how weird is that ?? somebody should interview me / she was reading a book called ‘pussy’ / enlightening / so i figured it was fair

another cafe friend told me she wanted to be feral / like regress back to monkeys basically back when we were driven by instinct and curiosity / no guilt and no hesitation / back before the garden of eden and getting kicked out for being sinful and disobeying god

i can dig it but what’s done is done / we’ve been kicked out of the garden for thousands of years / no chance of going back now / we wouldn’t recognize the place if we did

so i guess we’re stuck with ourselves / sinful and disobedient / what a bad rap / we were just kids trying to figure it out / bound to make some mistakes along the way / we’re only human

and anyways i haven’t asked anybody about their private sex lives because they would probably say something startlingly candid and real and then i would be left standing there holding the empty bag of my question

maybe sexuality is something we don’t ask about we just think about it / wonder about it / like the jeans brand ‘guess’ / it’s sewn into the back pocket / they sell them at ‘forever 21’ at the mall

it’s only one aspect of life after all / there is alot more / let’s see there’s seeing there’s hearing there’s touching there’s feeling / important things that every infant is engaged in / once we get the hang of it we don’t notice it anymore though / just get on with the day’s agenda and it’s inevitable conclusion night

i could ask the barista about sex but i won’t / i’ll just wonder / i’ll just feel it

music ::Liquid Bloom & PERE - Riding Through (@ZenBaboon Remix) 01:28:18 you can support these amazing musicians here shivelight

i didn’t know which one i should feel most anxiousabout :: the possibly frozen cat under my house orthe possibility of my water pipes exploding when itthaws and the ice disappears leaving a 3/4 inch gapinggap in my water pipe with water rushing out andprobably somewhere under the house tooor in the shed like it already did once before already

i decided to not worry about either one of them and justtry to figure out what to do / there’s some wisdomthe cat came back the following night and willingly went into the trap / the indoor water spigots started workingwhen the temperature went above freezing for a couple of hours on monday and i managed to unfreeze the outside spigots with a propane blow torch on the metal pipes and then i wrapped them and left them drizzling so they wouldn’t freeze up again / wisdomthe whole purpose of trapping the cat was to take it to the cat hospitaland get it fixed so it won’t procreate anymore baby cats - there being a greatinflux of them already among the neighborhoods of our great city

and i have done that / or am in the process of doing that / little white tail rode in the car with me this morning (another new experience along with being trapped in a wire cage all night) and now is at the cat hospital waiting to get his nuts cut offyep he’ll be a eunuch / if he’s a boy / actually i think he’s more of a girlso . . . well they have their means of securing a childless future for girl cats too

now it’s tuesday morning / pipes still drizzling / cat no longer meowing inthe living room / pickup from the cat hospital at 3:30 everything back to normalstress level down i’m feeling good / stormy weather gone

music :: 02:56 Merge Of Equals - Buddha Dayproduced by Flavio Maspoli

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There is a cat on this royal sarcophogus. Bas relief chiseled into stone. What’s that about?

Cats were not only worshipped but when they died, they were embalmed, given their own coffin and buried in a cat cemetery. There was definitely something going on with cats back there in the old BC days of ancient Egypt.

Maybe it was their ability to catch mice that vaulted them into such a high station. Protecting the royal granaries was certainly a priority and a sacred job, I suppose, essential for the well being of the city.

Maybe it was their precocious look and their ESP abilities. Cats seem on the verge of speaking human language sometimes and still can revert back to the ancient ESP language of all things (that so far has escaped us the humans). Unless you can get in touch with your own inner ESP, much of cat language will be lost to you, that’s what I’ve discovered.

They used to be sacred, I know, but now they’re everywhere, there’s a whole tribe of them taking over my backyard. I’m a little concerned.

Right now there are 3 cats, maybe 4 including the black one that just started showing up, sneaking in at night and then disappearing into the dark. He has no name because he’s not part of the tribe. The tribe consists of Bob, the big furry calico who showed up a year ago, Betos, who I brought home from the shelter to befriend Kybo who lost her playmate in a traffic accident only to discover that he hated Kybo. How did I know? Even after Kybo beat on him a couple times, jumped him and paw slapped him, he still didn’t like her.

Kybo, the Patron Saint of the tribe, the matriarch, the matron, she who holds forth from the inside going outside on patrol only when necessary to survey the grounds and inspect the various forms of life living there. She is compassionate to the raccoons, the opossum and the resident cats but attacks and eats the doves who flutter down from their roost in the hackberry trees to drink and eat. Anoles, same deal, the little green lizards that live around here. I haven’t been able to reason with her. She’s a cat.

And White Tail, the newest cat to move in and start eating at the table like she was one of the gang. White Tail is why I’m writing this post. She is going to the vet so there won’t be any outbreaks of kittens around here. Old Bastet from ancient Egypt was also the goddess of fertility. Cats can have babies at 4 months. They can have up to 8 kittens in a litter and can give birth 3 times a year.

That’s what I learned from the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. They lent me the trap and informed me of where I could take this semi-feral cat to get it fixed. That’ll fix it.

But why do they keep showing up here? The San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition has a trap, neuter and return program (TNR). It’s their attempt to control the burgeoning cat population in this city. The idea is if you return the fixed cat to where you got it then not only will it be unable to reproduce but it will claim a territory and prevent other cats from moving in. That obviously doesn’t work. If they’re marking this territory it’s to say ‘Hi, welcome. Come join our tribe. Plenty of Meow Mix for everyone around here.”

I learned about the SAFCC from a guy in Brackenridge Park who was feeding the feral cats who live there. People dump off pets they don’t want, apparantly, in the park and now there is a whole colony of them. They TNR and then feed them.

It’s a mystery where these cats come from, the ones in my neighborhood, and why they choose my place to hang out. Well except for little Kybo. I brought her here after I discovered her sitting in the middle of the street in the middle of the night all alone. She was a tiny little kitten, almost run over by a passing car. I couldn’t believe it. What was I supposed to do?

I had never had a cat before, only a dog, but I knew I was supposed to get her fixed. Traumatic for the cat but otherwise . . . you know. I have seen people living in a house with dozens of cats camped out in the yard. So anyways I made the appointment and the morning I was supposed to take her in I noticed she was acting funny. I thought maybe she intuits that I’m going to take her to the vet and is stressed out. So I postponed the appointment, then I noticed a strange little sound coming from under the covers of my bed and upon lifting the blankets discovered a tiny kitten. Kybo had given birth during the night in my bed to one small blind little kitten.

I was thrilled actually, not having had any kids myself I felt like a first time parent. Sort of. Kybo was a beautiful mother, nurturing and loving her little baby. For some reason, however, the kitten died just a few days later. It was so sad. Painful. That’s when I went out and got another kitten, a surrogate baby, Tee Tah, and those two became buddies, licking each other and hanging out together.

Then Tee Tah got killed by a car. Super sad and Kybo was lonely. Hmm, what to do? So I went to the shelter to look for a playmate for Kybo. The shelter is weird. All the attractive pets - cute puppies and playful kittens etc were like a hundred and fifty dollars, two hundred dollars. Like what? Then there was this one cat all alone and looking sad sitting in an enclosure, not playing with its toys or doing anything. It had a bad eye and was missing a tooth. I was told it had been dropped off because the lady couldn’t deal with it. Hmm. I continued walking around the shelter looking at all the animals for adoption, looking for someone who would be a good companion for Kybo but I couldn’t get that cat out of my mind, it looked so miserable.

I ended up adopting it for like thirty dollars or something and bringing it home. I named him Betos after the Texas politician from El Paso who has no chance of getting elected in this red state but keeps trying anyway.

I soon learned why the lady couldn’t deal with this cat. He was friendly to me but wanted nothing to do with Kybo. He couldn’t grok the idea of kitty litter and kept pooing in the most inauspicious places. Like on top of books and in boxes and on rugs. Oh god. He would also freak out while preening himself and go into an epileptic seizure of some sort, tear his fur out and pee uncontrollably everywhere. I kicked him out of the house.

I don’t think he’d ever been outside before. He was amazed at all the new wonderful things to see and smell. He would sit in one spot and gaze for hours at the world with few cares and no anxiety. I did have to admire that. Kinda god-like infact. Ok.

Kybo does that too. I wrote a whole chapter of my book trying to imitate Kybo’s meditative repose, just sitting quietly on the back porch and listening, being receptive to what nature was telling me. Hmm. Yeah. So kinda god-like in a cat kind of a way I guess.

So little White Tail, who is going to the vet soon, and Bob the fluffy one who lives under the house and can survive the winter there and Kybo and Betos and the ominous black one skittering around the edge of the light zone where the Meow Mix resides are some sort of a . . . something, not sure what. Not sure why.

White Tail showed up the other day with a collar hanging loosely around her neck. What? She didn’t have that before. Then she ditched it, figured it wasn’t necessary I guess. Now she has no collar.

Kybo can speak in English words sometimes. I’ve heard her. Once she came in the door when I opened it for her and she said “tankoo” in her meowy voice. I was startled. And then one time she was hanging around me, meowing and wanting pets when I was trying to meditate and I told her simply, “I’m trying to meditate now.” She said “ok”, again in her meowy voice but perfectly distinct and left me alone. I don’t know what to think about that. I can’t believe she speaks English but I heard her saying stuff.

So anyways that’s my story of cats. They are mysterious and have their own feline agendas, not always apparent to us humans. Worse things could happen to me than getting invaded by cats and probably will. I’m just a simple human with my own agendas, trying to stay warm and fed. Trying to stay out of the confusion and complications of modern life.

Maybe that’s what the Egyptians liked about cats - their aloofness. Their ability to adapt and accept whatever circumstances may arrive. They do meow alot but I don’t know if that’s complaining or just . . . letting you know, hey I’m a cat, I’m here.

Thanks to NATURRITU for the playlist: 2:18:30

She was writing in her notebook so I spoke to her and asked her if she was writing poetry. She said no she was writing reflections to take it to a deeper level, her understanding of herself and stuff.

Yeah I do that. If someone is reading a book I’ll walk up to them and ask what they’re reading. Sincerely. Invariably they will share their book with me. Gladly. It’s a thing I do in the cafe. Why not?

It turns out we all want to share with each other but we don’t often get the chance in a random, spontaneous way. This woman was so super cool. I got a hug too. I don’t think she would mind that I took her picture.

Aside from 5 cats and 2 raccoons, one opossum and 10,000 fish there is no one to talk to around my place so I go to the cafe. There people are gathered and sociable. They come to the cafe so they can be around people, otherwise they could stay home, close the curtains and drink coffee much more cheaply.

Sometimes you see kids in the cafe. Their parents bring them. I like watching them explore, climb the stairs, investigate things. touch the objects of their interest. They will look at you, even wave if they feel like it.

No kids here right now, just adults. Adults are ok. They get locked into their space though. Hard to break through unless they’re reading a book or writing something. Being on your phone doesn’t count. That’s virtual.

And of course there’s the din, the coming and going of indistinct conversation that you can’t quite understand, the underlaying of the music, somebody’s playlist oozing out from the speakers mounted on the wall above the bar. The music changes but the din does not.

I wonder what would happen of I just went around and talked to everybody? Just barged in and said “Hi, happy New Years”? It all depends on the inflection in your voice I think, that’s what I’ve noticed. There is some subtle signal that says “Hi. I’m friendly and playful. No hidden agenda here.” People pick it up right away. I guess I won’t do it though. It would be too much like a politician. I’ll just pick my targets carefully and move when the omens align.

Omens. Harbingers. Indications. Portents. Premonitions. A sign sent by the gods indicating future events to come or future events that might come. That’s according to the dictionary on my phone.

Omens abound. They’re not rare, they’re ubiquitous. It’s a perceptual thing. Did I perceive it or was it an omen? Check your omen-o-meter. Did the needle swing to the right into the green zone?

The coast was clear so I got a picture of my two favorite baristas. Well two of my favorite baristas of all my favorite baristas. The omens were good. I jumped in before any more customers got in the way.

The ceiling in this place rises like a . . . like an aspiring spire of some sort on top of the hill overlooking the sacred space. Every space is sacred but it helps if you have a spire. Good omen.

The music stops. It’s strangely quiet, this holiday day, the day after New Years. Then it starts again and the din fills in or merges into the general auditory experience. Phssst and crash goes the cappuccino maker.

Although I’ve never noticed it before there are layers of sound, distinctly different like the ocean and the wind when you’re standing on the beach under a palm tree. The visual field tapers off into the vanishing point - a zenith invisible and impossible to define, infinite, out there somewhere in the cloudy sky.

I can’t climb up there. I have to be content to sit here in my seat. Everything from side to side is intact, it’s all part of the scene being seen. It’s a portent or an omen. It’s telling me that I’m here. I’m witness.

I can’t tell what anybody else is saying.

If you enjoyed this please consider “Buy me a coffee”.

music from Best of Abakus 01:23:21 - “Circles”support this producer here Cure Music

There are so many healing modalities that we have forgotten about or haven’t discovered yet, not just modernized medicine, the big business model. Health care should be free, shareable and enabling not price fixed, proprietary and disabling.

Patience. People survived for thousands of years, millions of years without the AMA. The AMA, those folks who certify the medical schools where you get your MD so you can become a practicing doctor, educated and certified, enabled to test, diagnose and prescribe.

I’m gonna get wound up on the health insurance and professional medical care in this country. My new health insurance company that I just signed up for is called Aetna after Mt. Etna in Sicily. It’s the largest volcano in Italy and one of the most active in all of Europe. The mountain not the insurance company. I have no reason to think that it will be any better than the other two. The insurance company not the mountain.

“The deal with dying is to enjoy living. If you enjoy living then you can enjoy dying too.” I said off the top of my head.“But I don’t want to get all creaky and and lame and sick and stuff.” replied Bill.“That’s growing old. That’s not dying. You’re still here, you still exist. When you die you’re not here anymore.”That was the conversation between me and my buddy Bill as we were raked leaves in the front yard. I thought it was brilliant. A real epiphany.

We had discovered rich mulch under the leaves and were scraping it up to add to the soilerator.

The soilerator is my invention. It’s in the backyard and it’s basically a large plywood box. Inside are old decaying leaves, bog goop from the bog filter and the leaf mulch - digested right down to almost dirt by the little people working their magic. All this turning into dirt in the soilerator, gestating if you like. I’m making dirt for my ranchito so I can grow stuff.

Sometime in February I guess I’ll start putting in seeds.

Ok. Mt. Etna it’s your turn.

Aetna Health Insurance Company has 22.1 million ‘members’, 1.2 million ‘health-care professionals’, 690,000 doctors, and 5,700 hospitals They own CVS. Or maybe CVS owns them. They’re selling health care products. But of course you’ve got to be sick first.

It’s kinda like the military/industrial complex. It’s a good business, but you’ve gotta have a war.

Patience.

Mt. Etna has been here a long time.

Music from ‘Best of March’ - Cure Music mix 2:26-4:42 and 5:54-8:02 “Come Together” you can support them here Buy me a coffee

I love Christmas music. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! means ‘Glory to God in the highest’. That’s what the angels said.

Sing, choirs of angels. Sing in exultation. Sing, all ye citizens of Heaven above! it says in another Christmas Carol.

Who were they exactly, singing in exultation? Were they real angels? What are angels anyway and why do they always seem to be singing?

I don’t know, but this is the season of angels. They’re everywhere. On top of Christmas trees, in the snow like this one from the Great Blizzard of 21. Me and Sophie my neighbor’s daughter made it.

They show up in Facebook posts. Like the one that came thru from a friend recently. Power angels.

A text message from another friend read: “Angels are watching over you.” accompanied by an emoji of a little guy with a halo and a big smile. “We are in charge of pointing out that you can go in any direction you choose.” said the angels in the text message.

Maybe angels are anything that helps us. You know, like the phrase ‘your better angels’.

Maybe angels are every beautiful person you meet in your life.

I remember one time I was in New York City at the JFK airport departure lounge. I had come to New York to attend a conference and fell sick while I was there. Lost my appetite, lost my energy and was trying to get home, get thru the security razzamatazz and I’m standing in the line when a woman comes up to me, touches me on the shoulder and asks ‘Are you ok?’

I was not ok but I didn’t know it at the time. I said ‘Yes.’ and went into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, got back in the line, made it home and got really, really sick. I remember that woman now as some sort of an angel, like she could see that I was about to collapse, faint away, and she came up to me and touched me and gave me kindness and gave me support. She was an angel.

Touched by an angel? Wasn’t that a movie?

Maybe every breath we take is the sweep of an angel’s wing, flowing air right into our body. The power of breath.

Now I’m noticing angels everywhere: newborn babies, kids, the woman who just walked by me and sat down. Santa Claus?

Shepherds, why this jubilee?Why your joyous strains prolong?What the gladsome tidings beWhich inspire your heav’nly song?

Come to Bethlehem and seeHim whose birth the angels sing;Come, adore on bended kneeChrist the Lord, the newborn King.

Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

Brilliant.

Music by ‘Damascus Worship’ featuring Olivia Rae. Thank you.

oh the green carpetoh blown fusefallen leavesdesiccating desiregoneyellow green and redrubies and emeralds and amethyst

oh green caughtin the netof fire’s desirespun down into

the filter bedthe bosom refugeof mother nature

existence endedas a leaf and atransformation begunas dirt

oh higher onesyou at the top of the treethat haven’t fallen yetwhat do you see up there ??

blue sky !!endless limitless !!blue sky !!

Music from Liquid Bloom & PERE - Nubra (Kaya Project remix) 00:00:00 This collaborative group and their “vast network of musicians from across the evolving frontiers of visionary music” have re-imagined their 2021 Afar album, re-mixed and re-designed it.

“This mix, consisting of seventeen genre-twisting tracks built from the duo’s trance-inducing musical blueprints, dives further into Liquid Bloom and PERE’s shared identity while exploring the cutting-edge world of psychedelic sound design.” is how they put it.

Thank you for this lovely incredible music.

Most of the residents (like me) live in single story residences built after the war back in the late forties, early fifties and the houses line the streets with their various rooflines and floor plans. At dusk you can walk around the streets with your dog or push your baby carriage along and imagine the folks living inside the lit, lovely spaces. I used to do that when I had a dog and it was enchanting.

Down the street from me lives Mr. Bill Simons who is the subject of this dissertation. He is groovy. Having retired from his occupation as part owner of a local bicycle shop he now spends much of his time in his backyard workshop, building and assembling various inventions and devices such as the bicycleluminator and the bicyclevoterator (both of which I had a part in as test pilot or documentarian). His shop reminds me of an elven workshop, something which might exist at the North Pole where Santa Claus lives.

Click on the play button above to listen to the interview with Bill Simons in his backyard workshop.

hammer collection

awesome lathe

shop / long view

drill bit collection

virgin of guadalupe with grinder

metal band saw

Bill and Mark Simpson on their cross country bicycle trip

starship sandbox at the community garden / day

starship sandbox / night

nativity / day

nativity / night

Thanks Bill!

Black Friday is gone but the Christmas sales endure. Cyber Monday, Flash Sale. Signs decorated with Christmas decorations, red and green, proclaiming 15% off on everything. That’s a deal.

Anyways, what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to say . . . Well let me start from the beginning. 

Somewhere around 6 o'clock in the morning on September 26, 1950, I emerged into this world.  Or as Alan Watts put it we are not born into this world but we are born from this world, like a leaf emerges from a tree.  And what a tree it is.  The tree of life.  With the rich mulch of all the fallen leaves that have come before us littering the ground and fertilizing our own selves.  We are part of this world not separate from it.

I started my journey with a blank slate, like we all do, ignorant and utterly simple.  I didn't know how to write my own name.  I didn't even know my own name.  I didn't know the name of anything or the purpose of it.  I knew the warmth and the love and the sweet milk flowing from my mother’s breast, that blurry hazy creature that was holding me.  I sucked and I slept and I had no more desire than to be content.

Flash forward 20 years.  Now I am a grown man, a young one but mature like a sapling in a forest of trees.  I have learned the names of many things and discovered many desires: to be successful, to have money, to have companionship and a place in society.  Ah society, here it is, the thing that surrounds us and reminds us constantly of who we are or maybe, more accurately, who we are supposed to be.

We're all programmed.  If you don't believe me go to some foreign country somewhere where people aren't at all like you and take a look around.  That's how much programmed you are - just as much as that guy who seems to be so different from you; he wears different clothes, he speaks different from you, he has different mannerisms and different thought patterns, how things should be and how things should be done, endless subtle variations and all of it programmed by the society around him.  Just like you.  

And just like me.  By the age of 20 I was fully programmed and ready to go, to be a productive member of society.  There was only one small glitch, I was beginning to suspect how programmed I was.  It started with my religious training, which was dense, heavy and thorough and then on to my public education, all the way back to 1 2 3 and A B C.  Christopher Columbus and Manifest Destiny and Democracy and Charles Lindbergh and x+2=y.  Why I don't know but it does. 

All this programming described the world to me and what I should believe in and why but there was some quiet voice from somewhere that said, don’t buy it, find the truth, be free.

And that process is ongoing.  Now at the age of 73 I still notice how programmed I am and I still attempt to unravel the tangled mass of concepts and presumptions and assumptions that inhabit my brain.  I am more sensitive to the ongoing societal programming happening all around me now than I have ever been before, I think, but the process, doesn’t stop.  Logos and pop up ads when you're just trying too get to the sports scores, sports scores.  Yes even sports scores, the addicting idiocy of who won and who lost.  Somebody won and somebody lost.  It happens every time.  But by this time next year I will have forgotten even who played.  The signage, the verbiage, the incessant blather of the news telling me how bad things are. 

We're all programmed and the largest portion of it, it seems to me, is the program to buy stuff. It's all about the money in other words.

This message in it's most devious form corrupts everything and everyone.  We buy (especially at this time of year, Merry Christmas, ching!) things we want but don't need until our closets are full and our storage units too.  Stuff piles up or gets dumped in the trash and winds up in the local municipal landfill. It’s hilarious. Good for business though.

I forgot what my point was. Did I even have a point? Yes at one point there definitely was a point. I think it was about the new future, what I imagine anyways, when the 22 year olds take hold of it. They will imagine and manage a new world very different from this. That’s my prophetic vision. Money is not everything. Being alive is. Systems of commerce are not the most important things - human beings are.

We knew this a long time ago but somehow forgot. Fell asleep. Enchanted and entranced by the magical power of stuff. Cool stuff, electronic stuff, glitzy stuff, stuff that can do amazing things (granted), but stuff. Just stuff. What human beings really need (let me remind you) is healthy food, clean water, comfortable shelter, effective health care and community or love. That’s it. Everything else is mind candy. Peripherals. Optional. Non-essential.

Think of wealth in terms of everybody having those things mentioned above. Not accumulating money but accumulating the general prosperity and well being of the whole species, the whole planetary biosphere for that matter. Wild idea, huh? That’s why it’ll take the 22 year olds (or maybe their kids) to do it. We’ll never get around to it.

music from 22-34 / thank you Liquid Bloom & PERE - the track is ‘Afar’

The cold isn’t very cold but it’s not warm. That’s noticeable. Stick your head out the door and feel the temperature. Get ready for the ride. Layer coat over shirt over t-shirt over bare skin. Try that. Wrap those pant sleeves in bright yellow bands around the ankle. Keeps my pants out of the chain ring and reminds motorists that hey there is a human there. Riding a bike.

The world turns, plus it’s tilted. That’s why it gets cold. If it wasn’t so tilted it would be more even. I mean the same temperature every day. Which would be boring ofcourse.

So celebrate the seasons, I guess is the point. Celebrate the changing. A wheel inside a wheel is how old Ezekiel put it. I always wondered what that meant.

My parents met in the cafeteria of the state hospital in Milan, Michigan. I don’t know what was on the menu that day but my mom was definitely hungry. So was my future dad. They were two young people looking for suitable mates and to start a family. This was the way of the Lord. I guess. I’m not sure if any of that happened.

But it might have. That’s the point, it might have. Or any one of a thousand different ways. The story is what’s important. Just say ‘Once upon a time, long long ago . . .’ Then your audience is advised that it’s a story and anything could happen. Say what comes to mind, maybe it’s true. Who knows?

Anyways we’ve got it all wrong. It’s not about all this stuff that we think. That’s why the kids aren’t into politics. They don’t see the point. All your politics has gotten us here is their attitude. Point taken. Well played. Where we are now is at the junction of sixteen or seventeen distinct and extremely well defined crisis. I didn’t actually count them but I probably could have.

If I was 22 I would join their band. My barista joke of the day was to roll up to coffee trailers (of which there were two on my journey) and say in an excited voice “Did you see them? Which way did they go?” And then before the barista had a chance to figure out what I was talking about. “The wild Comanches. I’m not trailing them, I just want to join their band.” Laugh. Roll off.

So the thing about the tilted earth is that we’re all tilted too. Gotta be. Some way or other. I mean we wouldn’t be human otherwise. We’d be wooden, we’d be droids. We’d be all the same. We wouldn’t survive.

Do you see what I mean? Mother Nature created a planetary biosphere here for life to prolivicate, proliferate I mean. It was an act of love. Don’t you feel it. It’s a great giant orchestra of creatures. We’re destroying it, of course, for our own greedy, selfish reasons. All the things we abominate in church. Sinful in the eyes of God. Greed and avarice and self-centeredness. We do it the rest of the week. Possibly take Saturday off to watch some TV football. Knowing full well that on Sunday we will be forgiven.

I just want to feel the love. Of Mother Nature. It’s all around us so why not? What’s better than that?

It’s Thanksgiving and all the stores are closed. Cafes too. Makes for easy riding down the empty boulevard. I can feel thankful for that. Mother Nature, segmented and separated lies all along the way. She is quiet and reposed. I respect that. If you were Mother Nature how would you feel? Confident? Humble yet powerful? Patient?

There’s a thought. I’ll rest with that on this cool Fall day.

music from somewhere around 2:23:06 thank you mose

These obvious facts are known to all but rarely discussed. They’re considered importune, impolite and awkward. A bit of a downer too. I’d like to discuss them now.

Literature, that unique human expression, I mean birds do architecture, octopi make pictures, elephants and whales and crocodiles can talk, but literature is a domain reserved for man (and woman). And what do we write about? We write about life and death and the journey in between. What else is there?

And so, at the moment I am reading 4 books. Flipping between ‘The Situation’, a collection of poetry from a friend I have only met on Facebook to ‘The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve’ by Stephen Greenblatt. Turns out there are other creation myths we could have used to map out our human character but Adam and Eve is the one that survived (in the West atleast) and so we are guilt ridden and subservient to an angry god. Morality rules the roost, there is no free lunch.

We could have adapted the ancient epic story (older than the Hebrew Bible) of Gilgamesh: joyous sex, a gradual ascent (assisted by the sacred mother, lover, benefactor) from wildness to civility, the celebration of the city and the wisdom of the ages. Says Shiduri, the barista, at the edge of the endless ocean:

Gilgamesh, where are you roaming? You will never find the eternal life that you seek. When the gods created mankind, they also created death, and they held back eternal life for themselves alone. Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

No mention of being cursed by an angry god and having to go to work.

‘The Situation’, on the other hand, by Tara Liz Driscoll covers all angles from the absurd to the comical to the horrible, to the incredibly sweet and kind:

Maybe it’s me and only meClosing an old and tattered pageMaybe I’ve overstayed my welcomeOn an old and creaky stage

Ah the sticks and stones are smiling nowThe crows I think they’ve leftBut the cinders upon ashStill burn bright upon this hearth

Out into the clearingSee it twinkling up aheadAn inkling of some somethingSome of us have thought of and said

I’ve just begun to read this book. It will probably take me the rest of my life. It’s a lament and a celebration and a salutation. Kinda like life. “Hello there.” we say when we greet our fellow humans. It means I see you and I see you seeing me.

In ‘Morning and Evening’ the author, Jon Fosse, takes us thru the life of a man from his birth to (assumably) his death. I haven’t finished it yet. But he writes in such a way that you forget you are reading and you become that person.

In the first part, the story of his birth, you become several people: the woman giving birth, the midwife, the husband waiting anxiously in the adjoining room, the baby being born:

and he hears the old midwife Anna say good, good push now, you’re doing good, good Marta, and the old midwife Anna says something and something is pressing on his head and the darkness is not red and soft anymore and all the sounds and the steady throbbing ah ah there there ah ah ah there ah and ah oh like that ah eh ah eh ah roaring ah rushing ah the old river and swaying ee ah eh ah ee eh ah eh water eh ah and eh oh ah everything is yes sa sa ah sa smooth sa and the voices and then this horrible sound and push eh ah eh and this cold piercing ah ah scraping stone go back ah and ah forth and everything that happens oh to you and it hurts ee arms ee legs ee everything that is ee fingers and cur ee ah url up oo and everything eh it eh still water eh ah oh ah and the hard growling and voices eh ne ah ah en ah ya ah and the the eh light ou far ee from afar everything is somewhere else ah ah and it is not there anymore but it roars and then a sound a something hurls him out of himself somehow into something and hands and fingers ee fingers curl up and all these old and everything is not where it is anymore

I read it twice because I wanted to feel being born twice.

In The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets the author makes the point again and again. Humans are a rowdy and inventive bunch. We build cities and then we destroy them. We create systems and networks. We organize and name things. And we write it all down for posterity. What a thing we are!

Proud and brash, kind and gentle - we have a range of behaviors unmatched in the animal world. We notice things and investigate them. How the natural world turns so easily between birth and death for instance:

The coherence of a system that provides seeds at the same time the flower is dying, which then sprout and fruit in their time should give us comfort. Synchrony is a word not often used because there are so few occasions that we notice it, but it means something like symphony - like the flower and the seeds, the seasons and the rain, the drums and the strings, the bass coming on, a full orchestra effect, from pianissimo to crescendo to pianissimo again, all the parts moving together to produce feelings of elation and great pleasure. Life with its accompaniment, death.

And that’s it. That’s the whole story from beginning to end. Life and death and literature 101.

It doesn’t occur to kids that they’re going to die, it occurs to old folks though. They can see the edge, they can feel the decline as they ease into that yoga move and notice that their body doesn’t respond in the same way anymore. They can’t see as well. They don’t hear too good. They definitely can’t run a mile in under 5 minutes.

Ah it’s just as well, if you didn’t age gradually the shock of it happening all at once would kill you. It’s my aging joke. I think it’s funny.

Gilgamesh quote from Stephen Mitchell’s transcendent volume: Gilgamesh, a New English Version.

Tara’s poem is from The Situation. The poem is called Blubber.

Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse.

The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets, an Exploration Into Being Human by me.

music from made from dreams 11:37-14:25

it’s not badno need to fill up the emptinesswith thoughts

can you imagine a picture of nothing ??just a frameprobly not because nothing is somethingit’s blank space / it’s the canvas

before the paint is appliedbefore our minds became civilizedour heart all the time

not the one that pumps bloodthe one that wants to feel gooda simple singular desire

it’s hard to acquire emptinessno utility no progress being madewe have to fill the space with something

stillness emptiness quietude beatitude dudeif we were more familiar with the benefitswe would be advertising it on commercials

at the football gamesi once saw a quarterback for the university of michigansit by the goal post and meditate to clear his mind before the game

meanwhile the commercials were telling meto buy a new truck so i can get awayand find some peaceful hidden placeto meditate

i’ll take the emptinessthe nothing to sayand enjoy it

i really didn’t need a new truck

to find my peacemy point of breathi mean in one breath there is endless space

the grey sky is lowering its roofand tiny raindrops are fallingthe empty sky descends on me

music by Skinshape at 1:10:40 ‘Breathe’

Being young and untraveled and in search of adventure I decided my destination was to be the ‘Holy Land’. I had spent so much of my impressionable youth sitting in the third pew of the church, glancing at the brightly colored maps at the back of the Bible as a distraction from the boring service, that it was stuck in my brain. Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee and the Jordon River somehow represented a mythical land and a worthy quest.

My buddy bailed after we got to New York. He didn’t share the same aspiration. I went on alone, got robbed along the way, traveled by train and boat, discovered strange foreign countries (which was my intention) and eventually found myself in Israel, the home of the Holy Land.

I lived on a kibbutz for awhile because it was free room and board, in exchange for day labor of course. I went to Jerusalem to see the holy city and visited ancient ruins, some still being dug out of the ground and visited the old city with its open air market. The smells and sights of old Jerusalem are still with me in some deep part of my brain.

I had a tourist map that showed a road thru the West Bank all the way from the southern end where Jerusalem is to the northern end and beyond to where my kibbutz was. So I decided to walk it, me and my neon orange backpack with tent attached. I remember walking thru a small Arab village and all the kids coming out to laugh at me and see the strange sight — a single, tall, obviously foreign person walking through their village with a neon orange backpack. They thought it was hilarious.

They found the only person in the village who could speak English, the school teacher, and he came and they offered me food - olives and olive oil and pita bread and goat cheese. I still retain the memory of tasting that food. I still retain the memory of the feeling I had of being welcomed, accommodated even honored by people that were no kin to me. And in that far away and foreign culture I felt more accommodation and acceptance than I do in my own. They offered me what they had to offer, what they had grown and farmed themselves in that rocky soil with an ox driven plow.

Now as I recall this story and calibrate the effect it had on me, I wonder how much those small acts of kindness change the world. I’m still naive about some things. I still think peace is possible. I still want to save the world and I think I know the key. That would not only be naive but arrogant of course but I don’t care. Maybe just trying to be kind to each other would save the world.

Those people in the little Arab village didn’t know that I would be talking about this 50 years later to an audience of people they had never seen, never heard of and couldn’t imagine, but it happened. Imagine that.

A ripple in still water. Grateful Dead. A great metaphor.

And neither did that guy in the JFK international terminal who conned me out of my cash as I was just beginning my journey. That was an experience. He was so smooth I didn’t even know I was robbed until my flight was boarding. Oh gees, what do I do now? was my first thought. Abort or board? I got no money. There was a strange wild freedom feeling in getting on that plane and flying to Europe with no money. I knew something was going to happen, I just didn’t know what.

The strange and wild feeling of freedom I guess is what I was after. Come to think of it. That’s what I’m still after. Come to think of it. Now that I remember what I’m doing here.

thanks to Kayam for the great music - Lately (Mose Remix)

‘from the west to the easthear the prayer of the mothersbring us peace bring us peace’

Since I discovered this video from a friend’s post on WhatsApp I’ve played it a bunch of times, each time discovering something new, my eyes filling with tears by the end. That’s powerful. It was powerful for me. I’m just sayin.

Everybody has a different trigger but music does contain healing vibes and a way of bringing people together. It has that potential. This is a good thing.

Forget politics for a moment. There are other ways of relating to each other. Art, as well as dance, theatre, literature, whatever kind of art, subsumes the connection between two people: the person who made the art and the person who is looking at the art. It’s a subconscious connection that bypasses all the logic of our frontal brain. We need to explore more parts of our brain.

Like where does our consciousness lie, that which is aware? Where do our bad habits reside and where does our courage live and how much of it do we have? And what about our innovation and our aspiration, our hopefulness? What about that? It’s inside us too. That’s part of who we are.

This video (link below) has so many compelling elements. The music, the sound of those women’s voices, the candid shots of women grieving, women giving support, old women, little children women, women with their hearts alight with love, women protesting, women marching, women beating the drum. Israelis and Arabs standing together.

And you know what else? Music as a world-wide unifying force is very much alive. Raves have been going on for decades now all around the world. All night dance parties. Feeling the oneness and the big bass beat.

Rap is worldwide. Kids are rapping in Saudi Arabia. All the YouTube music, which is where I get my music. It’s been a renaissance similar to my twenties when I was discovering music and taking it home from the record store in a cardboard sleeve and playing it on the turntable. Then I bought a reel to reel tape recorder so I could record continuous albums while I sat in the attic all night writing poetry.

So, if you don’t listen to this video I may not be able to convince you of the power of music to bring peace, but I still believe in it. It has brought me alot of peace, joy, deep appreciation.

Everything is a vibration vibrating from the one original giant cymbal crash of primordial nothingness. It’s been vibrating ever since. Everything is vibrating. And this music is vibrating with the power of peace.

“This video "Prayer of the Mothers", was born as the result of an alliance between singer-songwriter Yael Deckelbaum, and a group of courageous women, leading the movement: ‘Women Wage Peace’. This movement arose in the summer of 2014 during the escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. On October 4, 2016, Jewish and Arab women began the joint "March of Hope" project. Thousands of women marched from the north of Israel to Jerusalem in a call for peace. A call that reached it’s peak on October 19th, in a march of at least 4,000 women half of them Palestinian, and Half Israeli, in Qasr el Yahud on the northern Dead Sea.”

We went to the sacred oak tree cafe and looked out upon the city. The top of the hill is right next to San Pedro Springs and the San Pedro creek which emanates from it, except both are dry. They used to emanate.

I showed her the strange incarnations of the creek - where it goes underground, where it comes back up, where the dark tunnels run underneath the expressway, where the grafitti galleries are with their strange inscriptions, where it turns into the San Pedro Creek Culture Park and becomes civilized.

And the waterwall. One side is a large metal wall, with water streaming down its face.

On the other side are the conveyer belts connected to a chain which pulls them up out of the water and a grate that filters out the trash.

One side is the culture park, the other side is street people territory with trash lining the banks. They’re pretty much camped out everywhere all along there, wherever there’s a good place.

I hadn’t seen my friend for a year and a half. We used to be good buddies and go on awesome bike rides every week and have adventures but then she moved away and started traveling around. Well there’s more to the story than that but that’s enough for now. We’re headed downtown to look around.

We ran into Melvin working the Centro cart, handing out water to people, watching out for the street people so they don’t sit on the curb, drunk and rough looking, scaring off the tourists. It’s a good job for Melvin having spent some time on the streets himself, he seems to know everybody, even the bike cops.

I feel like half a street person half the time myself, only loosely connected to any officially sanctioned society of any sort. It’s not a bad life.

So anyways that’s where I got the title from, ‘copy and paste / enter new title’. That’s pretty much what I did during our whole relationship, copy and pasted my own expectations onto her clipboard. ‘Enter new title’ means start over, let go, rebirth.

We went to the cafe, Local at the Pearl, and sat around the courtyard. I shared my hippie bar with her and she was about to take a bite when a sparrow swooped in and tried to grab it right out of her mouth. While she was still holding it. We both laughed at that and she said, ‘Ok if you want it that bad.’ and tossed it over to where the sparrows where at. I said, ‘Do you remember at the Cove when the bird was throwing sticks at you from up in the tree? That was hilarious.’ She’s not laughing at this but I am. Something magical would always happen on our bike rides.

We rode down to Confluence Park and watched the shadows and light play against the concrete. We did our yoga on the stone benches under the arches. We rode along the river, not hard but smooth, back into town and she turned off for her hotel and I kept on going straight.

music for this podcast :: Naturritu - ‘Andantino’ 27:14

It has its origins, no doubt, in some medieval tradition. I don’t know, I haven’t looked it up, but seems kind of medieval, gothic atleast.

My neighbors across the street have set up a graveyard on their front lawn . . .

. . . simulating dead people lying under the ground. But with the possibility that they might come out and start walking around, go door to door Trick or Treating, looking for candy.

It’s one of the most popular costumes, if not the most popular, among the kids: the ghoul, the ghost, the zombie, the skeleton.

Do we need to be reminded? Do we need to be scared? Thrilled maybe? Michael Jackson’s 1982 hit ‘Thriller’ was on top of the charts for a record 37 weeks and transformed music videos forever. I remember when I first saw the video, it was like a seminal event. I was in the appliance department of Sears, out at the mall, and it was playing on the demo TV sitting in the display. Stopped me in my tracks, transfixed.

I asked Katie, from Rose Hip Market who was hanging out with her friend at oneanother coffee, “Why are we fascinated with the undead, the ghouls and the ghosts and the goblins?” “Because we want to feel alive.” she replied. That sounds right.

“It’s fun because it’s spooky” explained Chelsea, the barista at oneanother when I queried her about it. I suspect that is true too and about as good of an explanation as you’re likely to find anywhere. Kids like to be scared. A little bit.

The Mexican celebration of Halloween is called “Day of the Dead” and it features a picnic in the graveyard with your deceased family members. They come back to visit. It’s not really a spooky occasion but a pleasant time, a party. This tradition is married to the Western spooky version of halloween in my city which is about equally split between Hispanic and non-Hispanic, so we see both cultures.

There will be skulls and altars and skeleton people all over town soon. There will also be spider webs and scary monsters, vampires and ghosts made out of bed sheets popping up on the front lawns of my otherwise good and gentle neighbors everywhere too. Halloween for me will be riding around on my bike checking them out. Some are very creative.

“Kids see ghosts.” was Jordan’s comment, the barista at Philo’s. “They have a strong imagination.” No doubt about that. She is Hispanic so she believes that people pass over from the dead to the living. That’s what I think.

When I asked my friend Marla, the manager at Royal Blue, she said it’s about “the dead being alive and the alive being dead”. “Whoa.” I interjected, “The alive being dead? That’s us.” “Yeah I know.” she said at looked at me straight in the face.

So it’s a pretty interesting holiday. If you want to self-reflect or if you want to dress up in a zombie costume and go to a party. The ancient Celtics celebrated Samhain, marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, on this date. They danced around and carried torches, trying to scare off the evil dark spirit of winter. It was a time when the boundary between this world and the other was porous and the spirits were able to cross over. That’s what they believed.

Then the Catholic Church got a hold of it and turned it into All Hallows Day. To pray for the dearly departed saints and martyrs. They lit candles the night before, Hallows Eve, get it, Halloween, and baked cakes for the people who would come later door to door offering to pray for the dearly departed along with the saints and the martyrs as was their custom. Trick or treat. Yummy treats in exchange for a prayer. Cool Halloween.

I just made a small fire in the backyard to celebrate the changing of the season.

Happy Friday the 13th. Mwah ha ha ha ha.

Scientists figured out back in 2005 that there had been a primordial hum permeating the universe since shortly after it was born. It spread out at half the speed of light thru the plasma (ionized gas) which was all there was of the universe at the time - a deep bass note with a wave length of 450,000 light years. They were delighted and excited at their discovery.

Tom Sawyer is learning to whistle as he walks down the street, having been shown the skill by a ‘negro’ (hey this was written in 1875). He is equally delighted with his new discovery. In fact this is how Mark Twain framed it.

“Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet. No doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.”

The strange humming sound lasted only for a few hundred thousand years and then dissolved but the ripples it created in the plasma left a permanent imprint on the universe. It’s detectible today by astronomers using radio telescopes, they call it the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation or CMB. You can see a picture of it at the top of this post. It’s also detectible by the unusual occurrence of stars and galaxies found in the those ripples, the densest parts of the universe.

Tom is just starting out his adventures, this being only page 7 of the book. He hopes for, longs for deep pleasure and freedom. Swimming or loafing or mischief. That becomes the theme and the plot of the book - trying to outwit ole mean Aunt Molly, and the boring church services and the drudgerous school agenda.

I’m probably stretching the metaphor too far but these astrophysicists (who knows how they figure this stuff out) are trying to escape the stuffy confines of past ideas about the universe. That it was static (it’s not). That it was of a conceivable age (barely). They would like to know the fundamental and whole truth of it and be freed by it, basically to discover more fundamental and whole truths.

Tom and his friends, Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn, are bound to be pirates and live far away from conventional mores too. They run away from home, float over to Jackson Island on their raft and there they are, plumb in the middle of the Mississippi River, in a dark forest, having a great time playing pirates.

I don’t see that much difference between the two parties, scientists and pirates. Scientists measure the universe, Tom and Huck and Joe measured the distance to Jackson Island and headed off in the dead of night. They both made discoveries that had profound effects on those who came later. We now know alot more about what we don’t know about, astronomically speaking. Tom Sawyer is a genuine classic of American Literature that has endured for generations and been read by millions of people.

“No, his mind is not for rentTo any god or governmentAlways hopeful, yet discontentHe knows changes aren't permanentBut change is”

I imagine him in his aspirational phase: young, newly married, intent on raising a family and finding a congregation to minister unto, his ordination in hand.

He did find a place, in Hudson, Michigan. A Baptist church in need of a pastor. I don’t know why. They hired him on and that was his first time. Being a pastor and all, doing all the things a pastor does. And making babies. Must have been fun.

He was handsome and athletic. She was playful and funny. I imagine them being happy and excited in their house, the parsonage, feeling secure in their social station. I’ll bet they were a great pair, he was a minister of the church and she was the mother of healthy babies. I think there were two of them by now.

I imagine those were the best years of his life, young and in love and prosperous enough to raise a family. My father was orphaned at a young age and never experienced growing up as part of a family. I suspect he was curious to find out what that was like.

Probably why he got married. Besides the fact that he was a young man and in full possession of his virility. So they settled down in Hudson, Michigan not far from the old homestead in Hillsdale County where his new wife grew up.

And the story goes on, little of it I know. Precious little. I heard that he was working in the State Hospital in Milan when he met her. He asked a friend if he knew any girls. He was out of his territory having grown up in northern Illinois. His friend responded that yes he did know one - his sister. His twin sister actually, my mom Thelma. He asked for a picture of her, being too shy of course to approach her directly, and my mom, being the trickster that she is, gave him a baby picture of herself to show him.

I don’t know how he got from northern Illinois to southern Michigan but I do know he spent a year at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He had an athletic scholarship from some nuns at Notre Dame. Something like that. I called him from campus once, up on top of the hill. It might have been around 1982. He had one pair of socks. I think that was meant to mean he was lonely. After his lonely year on top of the hill at a very Catholic school in a very far away place, he returned home and ended up in southern Michigan.

It must have made an impression on him. Maybe that was his time of questing and questioning because not long after, he took his new wife that he met at the State Hospital and went to Chicago to receive his education and his ordination into the ministry.

He fathered six children and pastored four churches and time passed and kids grew up and things changed. He was no longer young, handsome or vibrant. Apparantly. He lost the church, the last one he was at. They turned him loose and he had to find employment.

Kids turned out to be a mixed bag. All of us. One got divorced. In disobedience of God. One stole the family car and ended up in Indiana. We all slipped and slid down the path our own ways. I was the most promising one to become a preacher but I turned into a hippie.

He had wanted to be a minister, a pastor and look after his flock and deliver his sermon on Sunday morning from the pulpit. He wanted to save people and baptize them and marry them. Bury them if need be. I’m sure he felt called and blessed in his undertaking. That’s how we’re similar. I used to run a dive shop in Mexico and took alot of people scuba diving for the first time. They were baptized. They were definitely baptized. And I like to preach. Witness this newsletter.

See what I mean? John, Rohn.

He went thru his dark night of the soul although he never spoke about it. That’s what I think happened, in the end. He lost his vocation, he lost his happy family or whatever there was of it or had been. I think he was bewildered and stunned by the turns that life can take. He argued with his wife because there was no money. People brought food and left it at our door and my mother cried. Now we were poor people in need of mercy from those better off.

This is a story about my dad and the thing is I know so little about my him. Did he suffer like me? Did he find his salvation? Fatherless and motherless from a young age, passed around among the aunts and uncles, an extra kid, not really belonging, cared for but not loved.

How can you not be influenced by your childhood ? It’s inevitable. I spell my name like him John/Rohn. How can you not repeat the same behavior patterns they had in their lives in some way ?? It’s inevitable.

podcast music from the fantastic collection by N Λ T U R R I T U - Leyenda

Another time, just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in my meditation chair on the front porch having my quiet time and Kybo was meowing around looking for strokes. Her voice had a pleading tone in it as if to say “Why can’t you give me strokes?” I said “Because I’m meditating.” “Okay” she said in her kind of high pitched squeaky voice and became quiet.

The sound of the word and the synchronicity of the event were convincing. I mean she had never said “okay” before but now in response to my reply she comes up with “okay” in her cat voice. I mean they do have vocal cords. They make various sounds, with various intonations, for various purposes. I can understand her moods and her simple requests just thru the inflection in her voice.

I mean, I don’t believe it either that my cat can speak English but I reserve the possibility that she might be able to come up with some lucky strikes once in awhile.

Like babies can do. Sometimes they come up with entire words way before they can actually speak. Baby brains and cat brains are at about the same stage of development, it’s just that babies keep developing and cats don’t.

Besides there’s other forms of communication besides words. Cats have psychic abilities, like all animals. Humans are the only ones who have lost it. We have to pretend.

And why do we think animals can’t talk? Is it our superior stance of being above the ‘animals’? Actually we are an animal. According to the scientific classification system there are only 5 ‘kingdoms’ of life. You have to be either plant, animal, fungi, protist or monera. We’re clearly not plants - we have brains, we’re clearly not fungi - that’s mushrooms and pond scum, we’re clearly not protists - basically seaweed and we’re not monera - single celled microbes basically. We’re not that. We’re animals.

We’re animals but we have unusual traits. A spoken language with words and sentences. Stories even. Literature. We can idea-ate better than any of them other animals But after listening to my cat speak English words I have to re-think this whole language thing.

Microbes floating around in the ocean 3 billion years ago learned how to communicate. They used messenger molecules made from their own metabolism. It meant something to someone else when they received that message, accepted it into their receptor.

Yes, that’s how it works. Cells have receptors that accept (or reject) molecules from other cells. Could be good news that just sailed in on the sea of intercellular plasma somewhere in your body. That’s language. Microbe language. They still speak that language. In fact most of the communication going on in the world is microbial. They constitute most of the species on earth, hundreds of millions. They do it their own way.

There is no limit to communication is my point. Everything is communicating. Trees communicate with the sky by sending out organic chemicals that cause the water vapor to coalesce and the rain to fall. Trees also communicate with the fungi underground that connect them to other trees so the trees can talk to each other. It shouldn’t be so hard to imagine that my cat speaks in English words if trees can talk to each other.

The ocean communicates with the fish. The fish communicate with each other. We talk to ourselves in our head. We cannot not communicate. Even not saying something says something.

I think we should open it up a bit. Whether or not Kybo actually speaks to me in English words or not, there is alot of nuanced and unnoticed communication going on.

We’re communicators. We vibrate with it. Like a flower sending out its pollinator scent, we invite it.

Besides I love my cat.

____________________________________________________________________________

the podcast track is from the playlist below by Sariel Orenda - ‘Awake, Costa Rica ( Live Set )’”This set was recorded during a magical night in Uvita, Costa Rica at the beautiful Awake. This set was specifically selected for the Full Moon Eclipse in Scorpio, which is a magical and deeply transformational time, which brings emotional relief and helps us release everything that no longer suits our path.” from the YouTube notes

from around 5:40

11,000 years ago they hadn’t even invented farming yet, not really, maybe a few gardens here and there, by chance. They wouldn’t build the pyramids or Stonehenge for another 6,000 years. What . . . the heck?

They were hunters and gatherers, foraging, moving around thru the landscape but somehow they got together and built this temple to praise the nature spirits and the created world. Both of which they were in awe of. Apparently. I mean both were in abundance here in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, near the the headwaters of the spring fed Balikh River in the southwestern portion of present day Turkey.

Mountains, and valleys, rivers and streams, a grassy plateau filled with animals, comprised their world. This was their habitat, this is where they knew how to live. And this was their signature, their time stamp, their creative expression.

And, oh my God, the T-shaped pillars. What are those about? Stylized humans? With stylized arms? Standing tall and proud at the portal to the wild mountains beyond?

Look at their feet, the tapered base. And the rectangular heads, reminiscent of the White Shaman.

Ok, maybe you’re not as interested in ancient archaeology as I am, but the point is this - human beings have lived here for a very long time and we have had many different lifestyles.

Those people, from 11,000 years ago, were part hunter/gatherer and part farmer, apparently. They had a deep reverence for the world that they lived in and that sustained them. Why else would they erect such monuments and arrange them in a such a way and carve into them images of the animals and plants of the natural world around them?

Obviously some deep thinking going on and some strategic planning as well. There are dozens of pillars like those seen in the picture scattered around the 20 acre site, some smaller and some larger. The archaeologists will eventually dig up even more, no doubt.

Imagine the amount of effort it took to cut those stones out of the bedrock, drag them around, stand them up (some weigh 30 tons), and make carvings all over them. And all done with a flint chisel. Flint is harder than limestone but not that great at holding an edge. It was a massive undertaking for those people.

Plus it was built on a ‘tell’, a hill made from the accumulated debris of previous generations. People had been camping out on this site for a long time.

We can’t enter into the minds of those people 11,000 years ago as much as we might like to. Only with our imagination can we reach out to them, only by using inference from what we already know about ancient cultures and the hunter/gatherer lifestyle can we attempt to reconstruct their world. But whatever the purpose of the site, whatever the meaning behind the architecture, we can safely assume that it was something important to them.

And what would be important to those people living in a stone age world: stone and bone and wood and the skins of wild animals and the river reeds to make baskets and the vines to bind branches into a shelter?

The same thing that is important to us, I would submit. Feeling part of a tribe, having a purpose, having a quest and a mission in life, to know the larger world and to become larger by exploring it. Celebrating that in song and dance, story and ritual, sculpture and architecture, as we do today. Because we’re human. Because it’s important to us.

podcast music :: Man In A Room - The Confidential 6:42-12:34

Even with your eyes closed you can see light. Even with your hands covering your closed eyes you can see light. Some kind of light. If you close both of your eyes and cover one eye with one hand and pet your cat with the other hand you will notice the difference between one covered closed eye and one uncovered closed eye.

The purpose of these experiments is to demonstrate how sensitive our eyes are to light, they want to see. They can see in a completely perfectly dark cave. They’ll see the static, they’ll see the background noise, the optic nerve idling, yearning to see something.

Even when we’re asleep we see a version of light - dreams. Those images are not ‘real’ but still we can see them. The vision is happening in our brain, where all vision happens. It’s just light and electricity until it gets to our brain.

Newborns see but what they see has no meaning, nothing identifiable, not yet anyways but they’re learning every day. How to match patterns and make cross references. That words mean pictures. Slowly the shapes start to mean something. Before, what was only a shape, is now a tree. Before, what was only an amorphous sound source, is now its mother.

Our eyes are instruments of light, the first primordial force. “And God said ‘Let there be light. And there was light.’” That was the first thing He created. “And God saw the light, that it was good.” Very good. Now we can see something.

The old Hindu Upanishads creation story begins in a similar manner to the Hebrew’s, “The earth was without form and void.” In the Hindu version it says: “In the beginning there was nothing whatsoever.” And then proceeds: “Let it have a mind,” or, “let it awaken.” Very similar. Light - Consciousness - Awakeness. I get it.

So what does it mean to be enlightened? That’s an honest question, I don’t know. If there is light all around us and in us, are we not enlightened already? Or does it have some deeper spiritual meaning, like to see beyond the form and the named object to something that is universal, to see the oneness of all things maybe?

Maybe we’re already enlightened when we see the light and we’re not bothered by our problems anymore. Maybe the light is a beacon shining in all people when they smile.

Moonlight, sunlight, shadow has light otherwise how could you see it, starlight, dusk and dawn light are all different but the same. What happens to light when you die? Do you see more of it or less? Do you become light?

Not to make light of the subject but I think we should all lighten up a little. Light is a primary constituent of the universe. You can’t go faster than the speed of light. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine” was a Sunday School favorite of mine when I was 4.

Our eyes collect 80% of the information we use to orient ourselves in the world. Something like that. Not sure what the exact number is.

It’s alot.

Podcast soundtrack by D-Echo Project. Thank you for the amazing music! ‘A Foz e a Cítara’. Clink the link for their bandcamp site.

In the Spring it looked like this.

We had rain and the sunflowers activated. Their seeds had been lying on the ground all year, waiting for their chance. Hundreds of them sprouted and grew, tall and proud.

Many times I stopped to look at them, their faces uplifted to the sun, when I stepped out on my bike in the morning and it would make me laugh a deep hearty laugh to see them standing there. Some of them were well over 8 feet tall. That’s impressive, I’m 6’ 5” and don’t encounter that many things taller than me in the everyday world. They shot up from ground zero to such a height in just a couple of months. It took me 20 years.

But then they all died out, their era over, and I chopped them down (probably a mistake) for brush pickup. This is what that looked like.

Twice a year a giant truck from the City of San Antonio comes by, grabs whatever I have stacked in a pile along the curb with it’s long articulating arm, drops it in the back and drives off.

Since the demise of the sunflowers my yard has lain barren. I don’t water it in the summer, cause what’s the use? Nothing can survive the sun exposure and the parched conditions. It’s just dumping water on the ground.

It is, however, an eyesore for the neighbors and a cruel fate for the microbes baking in the soil - it’s the microbes that give life to the soil. So for these reasons and others I have determined to regenerate my little plot of land as in this short trailer Regenerating Life. I’m going to revitalize the soil and come up with some kind of landscaping strategy that can sustain ground cover and keep the water in the soil and the microbes alive. Stay tuned.

Here in my neighborhood they’re transforming a parking lot into a park.

One acre of impermeable black asphalt is being turned into this verdant nature park.

Hurrah! Brilliant! Exemplary! Inspiring! Kudos to the Sunset Ridge Collective and their sponsor the Sunset Ridge Church of Christ which sits on the hill across the street from the former parking lot. Soon trees and flowering plants and grasses will be sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and releasing oxygen instead of flat black asphalt reflecting back all the heat of the sun.

This is just one of the ways (photosynthesis) in which Nature modulates the climate and keeps it in balance. As it turns out Nature, good ole Mother Nature, is the best regulator of the climate and regeneration of our natural world is one of the best tools for fighting climate change.

For example, the oceans govern 95% of the heat dynamics of our blue planet. Ocean currents carry cold water from the poles to the tropics and warm water from the tropics to the poles. When water evaporates into vapor it absorbs heat, when it rains it releases heat and falls to earth where it cools the plants and the soil. Hurricanes are basically a giant air conditioner that sucks up the warm water from the tropical zones, spins it and blows it and drops it as rain in more northern zones, cooling the planet in the process. Marine algae are the biggest source of fresh oxygen and sequestration of carbon on the planet. One acre of algae can remove up to 2.7 tons per day of CO₂, Some algae can soak up 400 times more CO₂ than trees in ideal conditions. Roughly half of the oxygen production on Earth comes from the ocean, according to the scientists.

The most effective and least expensive way of mitigating climate change is by regenerating nature. Restoring ecosystems to their healthy natural state stores carbon and reverses climate change. It allows Nature to do what it knows how to do: balance the temperature of the planet for the benefit of all the flora and fauna that have evolved in its biosphere. That’s why it’s called ‘Nature’. It’s natural.

We need to think of Nature not as something we control but as an ally that we work with, facilitate, benefit from by benefiting it, the old law of symbiosis.

We need to stop wrecking the forests and plant more trees. You could have a forest in your backyard or your neighborhood even if it’s tiny. Restoring ecosystems to their healthy natural state stores carbon and reverses climate change.

We need to let the rivers run free so they can fill up the aquifers instead of flowing to the sea. We need to reduce the ‘heat island’ effect of cities where everything is paved over by creating more green space, encouraging wildscaping and home gardens. We need to treat the land like a person, like it has a presence and a character. Whatever little piece of land we have, if it’s a quarter acre lot where our house sits or a clay pot garden on the porch railing, we need to love it as if it were a member of our family, an esteemed member.

Sounds weird I know but it’s our Mother Earth isn’t it?

And I need to regenerate myself too in the process. I am a biosphere. I am a planet-like creature, 70% water just like planet Earth and with feedback systems that keep it healthy and sane. I have inhabitants, trillions of little people in my gut, on my skin, in my ears, everywhere. We exist in symbiosis, not harming each other (unless I take antibiotics).

Maybe that’s why the regeneration nation idea stuck in my brain as a model of what needs to happen - could happen to me too. Sleep, diet, exercise, meditation, staying in rhythm with my body. Being powerful and agile not all decrepit. That’s my favorite word since I heard Nicholas Kristoff use it in a New York Times opinion piece ‘Hungry Mosquitoes, Irritable Bears and the Glories of Wilderness’. He mentions hiking with his daughter thru the Pacific Crest Trail when she was just 14 and strong enough and he wasn’t yet decrepit. Ha, ha hilarious.

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Now I’m driving a Prius, a city car, and the van is for sale. The thought of traveling around in a van seems really awkward and arduous to me now. Of course if I had a fully equipped van with all the amenities that I’m used to living in a house, it might be plausible but my van was far from that. Everything would have been a chore, from cooking to using the bathroom to finding a wifi signal and everything in between.

And why would I want to go somewhere and what would I do there? That became the essential question. I would look for a cafe and hang out. I would ride my bike around and discover stuff. Exactly what I do here. Hah.

So I seem to be a city dweller, dug in, rooted as they say. My roots go deep and far, living in this city since the seventies. I’ve already found a home, no need to go looking for one. I’ve created my persona here. These are my people. They know me, for better or worse.

So therefore, kind readers (and listeners), as I lay on the dragon rug doing my exercises, rolling around on my back, stretching my arms and flexing my shoulders, finding every sore spot (and there are quite a few), I realize that everything is an adventure and a challenge if I can see it that way. Right here in my little cabin in my little neighborhood. Love is available from many different sources, if I can feel it. Everything that I need to be happy is possible right here, including occasional travel to other climes, other cities and terrains, other vistas. I’m thinking specifically of the ocean right now which I haven’t been around in a long long time.

So that was my epiphany rolling around on the dragon rug. I thought you might like to hear it. I definitely needed to share it.

Maybe I am just the feeder of cats and the keeper of the castle. Someone who sweeps the ashram floor and keeps it open for whoever might come by. Maybe my challenge is to be healthy and regain my strength that has been so degraded the last couple of years. These are the thoughts that I’m processing in my head. Must be those dragons, imparting their wisdom.

They do have their long stringy mustaches and their magic balls. They certainly seem to be imparting something. Must be wisdom. And their toothy smiles with their tongues sticking out. Must mean something special.

In fact I just now remembered my aspiration from back in the seventies: just be happy. That was clearly the highest goal, beyond getting a degree, beyond getting married and having a family, beyond getting a good job and moving up the scale - all things I never did.

I was in my early twenties and I could have gone in any direction but I chose to live a simple life and just try to find true happiness. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I think so because that’s still my aspiration. Infact it’s all of our’s aspiration. If you look within the deepest, most real part of yourself you will find the simple childlike aspiration to be happy. It’s in everybody. An amazing commonality that we should acknowledge more. In my humble opinion.

Dragons from the East (China) are friendly, bringing prosperity and good luck. Well maybe not ‘friendly’ but propitious. Dragons from the West are dangerous, ominous, destructive. See the Nordic myth of Fafnir, the greedy dragon who killed his father and sat upon his hoard of gold. My dragons seem to be a little bit of both. I appreciate their wisdom and am in awe of their power.

They can transform themselves and others. They have magical powers. They can burn you up with one puff of breath. They can fly, go underwater, under the earth. I imagined that as a little boy even before I knew about dragons. Wouldn’t that be neat? Something humans still aspire for. Ships and submarines and airplanes and tunnels.

So anyways, yes, I’m looking to my dragons for transformation and power. For the key to unlock the hidden treasure, the wisdom, the good stuff. We all are looking for that, it seems to me. We wouldn’t be looking for it if it wasn’t there.

Watch out. Be careful. Go for it.

podcast music :: 00:00-13:00

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The heat wave over. The obstinate dominance of the Sun finally subsumed by something more nuanced - the rain.

And now for something completely different - cooler weather and rain. I sure hope it rains. It could still go all along outside us and miss us completely. I’ve seen it before. On weather radar.

One time I made a movie of weather radar with a thunderstorm coming in. It approached San Antonio and then, like an amoeba started to go around it, like it didn’t want to go in the city, but the wind was too strong and it finally forced it to engulf the city. A complete baptism, full immersion, no sprinkling, no spacing out. Stay focused thunderstorm.

Early next week something is happening, if not rain then cloudy skies. I’ll take it as evidence that the sky is still with us, that it can do more than hot and dry. That gets boring.

It’s a great analogy for life too. The hot dry desert drought times and the coming of rain and the down pouring from above. Who hasn’t gone thru that? I’m kinda going thru it right now. That’s why I want the rain. I’m happy when it rains. I don’t know why. It just seems like the plants and the trees are happy. It just seems like a kindness. I need that.

from 2:58-12:48

A flyer entitled ‘2023 PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX BILL INFORMATION’. All caps.

‘Snooze and save’ said another flyer, even larger, with a beautiful woman making a bed, all lower case. I think it’s a furniture store.

There was a GIANT movie ticket, or facsimile thereof, 8”x12”, just to make sure you got the point. It’s huge. It looks exactly like a movie ticket with numbers on it but the flip side reveals it’s about a church. “Scan the QR code to sign up for our exclusive first time visitor experience” the text happily says. “We’ll be waiting for you with a gift” it concludes.

And a SPECTRUM EXCLUSIVE MOVE-IN OFFER in laminated plastic, like it’s really valuable, like no matter what happens your SPECTRUM EXCLUSIVE MOVE-IN OFFER will be safe. Thunderstorm, flood, apocalypse, emotional breakdown from the stress of modern life with everybody trying to get your attention and take your money - no worries, this offer will survive.

I think this was the breaking point. I realized that capitalism had reached its limit of absurdity, atleast as far as I was concerned. I’m out. I want out. I don’t want to be accosted by trash mail, spam mail, scam mail or any other form of inducement. I’m so tired of endlessly being probed for possible profit making possibilities.

“Good luck kid” you might say, “they won’t stop until they have used up every available means of harassing you and drained you of all your money”. Late stage capitalism, what a riot. Anything goes. It’s all justified by making a profit. It’s good business.

Making a profit, of course, is analogous to being a productive person and holy in the sight of God. I mean doesn’t God believe in capitalism and American democracy? I believe so. Otherwise why is America the greatest country the world has ever known?

After I put the pile of junk mail in the trash I got a phone call. Someone on the other end said, “Hello. Is this Mr. Bayes?””What is it?””Are you the resident of so and so address?”Silence.”Would you like a cash offer for your property?”Click.

Actually phones these days don’t click, more of a tap. But they’ll be back. You can’t tap them out of existence.

Hey, I’m not a communist but I do think we need a new economic model. If our planet had infinite resources and infinite capability to absorb waste then capitalism would work. Of course there’s also the degradation of workers - turning them into machines, there’s the commodification of everything - giving it a price payable in money.

The psychological impact of late stage capitalism has never been calculated as far as I know. It should be obvious enough though: disillusionment of the youth as they look around them at the world the adults have built, estrangement and abandonment of people - the street people, discarded veterans, old people and even children within families. Depression amongst adolescents is at epidemic proportions, people. It’s because 12 year olds are being put on a conveyer belt and rushed through a process they’re not ready for. That process is assimilation into a society (middle school), a curriculum and a schedule.

Think about that for a minute. I saw my neighbor’s daughter go thru it. From a cute little 3 year old full of wonder who used to play at my house and make cardboard castles, the beautiful little tyke who learned how to swim in the pool in my backyard, the intrepid and eager explorer who used to go on safaris with me thru the overgrown weeds of the backyard and then do a youtube tutorial about how to make a doll out of sticks and grass. She went thru hell going to middle school. She transformed into someone else and had to take anti-depressants to deal with it.

Wait, a 12 year old taking anti-depressants? Wait, what?

Yeah I’m calling you out - late capitalism. You’ve got a psychological effect. Kids are being primed to become useful economic units, as happens with any late capjtalistic society. Money is the highest good. Profit above everything. Progress is draining the wetlands near the river and building more houses. Yeah, then we have more catastrophic floods because the river has no place to go.

I was reading about this, how in some places like the Sacramento Valley and other places in the Pacific Northwest they are letting the rivers flood naturally again so they can replenish the aquifers beneath the surface that have been decimated by drought. Nature has a natural way of ameliorating climate extremes by storing the water in wetlands and aquifers. Use it during drought, store it during flood. I’m sad that we have constricted and restricted our waterways for human (read industrial) purposes.

Here in San Antonio all the arroyos have been turned into concrete culverts. You can see them all over town on your bike. This place used to be an oasis with water flowing everywhere in the wet season and the springs gurgling out fresh water all year long. Now the springs are dry and the arroyos have become ditches or even worse, buried underground. It’s tragic, it’s blasphemous, but no one really complains. Have to keep the machine running, have to keep the streets full of cars, idling at the traffic lights and buying gasoline at the convenience store.

Is there nothing good about the late stage capitalism phase we find ourselves in? Well it’s provided a comfortable lifestyle for alot of people. Comfortably numb. We’re not arrested by the damage done to our planet and ourselves by this system of exploitation so it just goes on. We’re mildly annoyed but that’s life. A low grade stress that we live with every day. And late stage capitalism will keep degrading the environment and the human beings as long as it can. That’s the nature of the beast. It degrades the environment and turns people into useful economic units. That’s it’s fuel. That’s what it eats for breakfast.

Symbiosis, on the other hand, could also work as a system of economics. ‘What can I do for you, this is what I need’. A simple equation. Balanced. No need for cutthroat competition. Currencies consisting of stories, of goodwill and helping out, not just money.

Hey, why not? We’re the ones that invent currency so we can acquire things. Maybe we could acquire some wisdom and exchange that. It is valuable and rare, two requirements for a currency.

But the lack of competition would stifle innovation you say. That 3 year old who used to play at my house had her innovation stifled BY the system. Innovation and imagination and creative thinking happen naturally in human beings. It would be way better to let them develop their own creativity in their own time, in their own rhythm. Then they would invent some really cool things. I’m sure of it.

Imagine a world where caterpillars roam free in pollinator gardens and flood waters wash up on empty fields before soaking into the earth. Imagine a world where people move at their own pace and do what they want, from their heart.

That’s actually how people used to live. Native Americans on this continent go back 15 or 20 thousand years and they had a very different lifestyle. When the European colonizers showed up and established their societies, they were blown away by the Native Americans they met. The level of personal freedom they saw was something they weren’t familiar with at all. The influence of those Native American contacts actually traveled back across the Atlantic and influenced the Enlightenment Movement in Europe as well as the founding of America. You can find traces of the Iroquois Confederation in the United States Constitution.

Take the best parts of capitalism and jettison the rest, the parts that don’t work. That’s all I’m saying. Make it better. Don’t have to crash the whole system. People would be fearful and freaked out.

Copy the best aspects of capitalism and paste them into a new system that respects people as human beings and planet earth as our Mother. Mother Earth. Try something new. We’re not Homo sapiens for nothing, we can do it any way we want.

Late stage capitalism is a riot but symbiosis and sustainability are standing by as the first wave of the future. Gotta be.

Have you ever sat at a railroad crossing watching all the grafitti-tagged railroad cars roll by? That’s all the resources we’re taking from the planet and turning into commodities to create wealth, that’s our economy. Tanker cars full of chemicals, open cars stacked with lumber, box cars full of who knows what. They can be 3 miles long. That’s what a train driver told me once. How do you stop that kind of momentum?

You don’t. It’s too big and too strong. But you can build parallel systems that do the same things, only better. Like gardening. You have just taken your head of cabbage out of the truck hauling it from California and put it in your back yard. Multiply that by thousands and millions and it will make a real difference.

I can think of other examples: bicycling, community building (whatever that might mean), book clubs (so people can talk about things), alternative energy (we don’t have to burn down the forest to light up the planet). What kind of things can you think of to replace this rapacious, greedy and destructive economic system? There must be millions.

So anyways, this diatribe is kind of a take off on the previous episode where I interviewed Abby the ex-barista and heard her views about the world we live in and the economic systems we believe in, or atleast accept. I totally agree with her. Well she wants to start over, go all the way back to monkeys. I don’t know if that’s necessary. Maybe we could find the inner monkey in us and learn something. The inner child. Could save millions of years of evolution. Of course that’s assuming we’ll end up here again. It might not happen that way. Maybe we’ll be a planet like Avatar, people flying around, all one with nature. I can see that.

Peace.

Thanks to NATURRITU for the music mix. Fantastic collection. This is what I listened to while composing this.

Baristas really do play a mythic role in society. They have been playing their role, serving up the drinks, talking to the patrons, ever since the time of Gilgamesh in old Mesopotamia when he encountered Shiduri, the bar maid, on the beach at the edge of the world. She offered him her wisdom but he wasn’t ready, couldn’t accept it. He had to keep wandering in the desert some more.

So here’s Abby, and 46 1/2 minutes of deliriously scintillating conversation. Back and forth. What a trip. Thank you.

The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets is finally available. It took long enough.

It’s available in hardcover or paperback here. I know, Amazon is an insidious and capricious corporate entity. They’re also the most convenient platform to publish on. Or atleast the only one I could manage.

So anyways, there it is. It’s about being human, or atleast about how we have been human. Sometimes comically, sometimes tragically we have been progressing along these many thousands of years, improving our quality of life as we go.

We evolve faster than any other life form on this planet, socially atleast. Just a few thousand years ago we were hunter/gatherers. All of us. There were no cities and there were no villages because we hadn’t built them yet. We were traipsing around through the landscape hunting and gathering. We would camp out wherever the most propitious place was for hunting and gathering, then we would hunt and gather until the hunting and gathering wasn’t good anymore, then we would break camp and move on. This is how we lived for uncountable generations. Through all those millennia we were always tried to make it better - new tools, new ideas. It was our distinguishing trait.

We progressed so fast that we arrived at modern life in breakneck speed. The sharks hardly evolved at all. Same with the turtles, pretty much. But us humans, we’ve remodeled the entire planet to suit our needs. Our supposed needs I should say since 95.6% of the stuff we buy is not needed. It’s just to prime the economy.

Did I mention prime? Yes, you can get your copy of The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets delivered in two days if you have prime. It’s so convenient.

Right, so here I am making fun of the same economic system that I’m using to publish my book. If Amazon didn’t make a profit then the link provided above wouldn’t work and I would be sitting in my office with a bunch of words on my computer and no book.

I want a book. Human beings want so much. That’s also what it’s about - wanting. What are our essential wants? To speak? We did that. To create? We’re definitely good at that. To be happy and live sustainably on our planet? Nah, couldn’t be that.

The book doesn’t provide answers, it tries to ask questions. The questions that human beings might have asked themselves on those long cold nights around the campfire looking up at the stars with all their might and listening to the stories that the old ones told in a long lilting tale. This book contains many stories. You can pretend you’re sitting around the campfire while you read it.

Pick up a copy, write a review, help me promote it. This is the soft opening. I need to collect reviews in order to entice prospective readers. Later I’ll publish an ebook and also a paperback and hardcover on Ingramspark, another platform that has a huge marketing network with bookstores. Amazon doesn’t. Because bookstores hate Amazon. Because of Amazon’s predatory marketing policies. That’s another story, but I want to create a presence for this book and that’s why I need reviews. It’s ok if you lie a little. Everybody does.

From the preface:

 Humans have lived on this planet for three million years, according to the paleontologists.  They were our ancestors, that's where we came from.  Talk about a family tree.  

   Homo sapiens, the species that we belong to, has been around for 300,000 years.  We branched off.  

   In just the last six or eight thousand years, we have come up with civilization, the lifestyle that we all practice now — virtually all of us; there might be a few hunters and gatherers out there somewhere in some remote corner of the world.  

   Our species is venerable and ancient.  We hold the wisdom of ages.  We have distilled it and stored it in our cultures, we have recorded it in our poetry and our scriptures, our songs and our dances.  

   All this wisdom — and yet we have taken such an aggressive attitude towards nature, towards our home planet.  Looting the resources and having wars.  Good lord!

   It's like we have forgotten our wisdom.  Our ancient book of magic secrets has fallen to the floor, lost in the dust.  We've created technology to make us wise but we're really not wise. 

Music: Sariel Orenda - Niendo 00:00-4:52Sariel Orenda, DeviRa, Dario Bulgario - Azul 4:52-12:49Thank you so much. This music is powerful and healing.

Thanks also to Shivelight.

And thank you for the picture. An angel of light giving healing energy to the lady of the water wrapped in the snake of wisdom floating on the lotus pond of bliss. That’s what I see.

First of all I’d like to say thank you to all the paid subscribers of the rohn report. I’m deeply grateful, and I just turned payments back on : ) I feel less disabled and more in a rhythm of writing. Typing speed is back to half of what it was, carpal tunnel symptoms are abating.

There are 14 paid subscribers, if you’re curious, and 169 regular free subscribers. Most of the rohn reports go to both but sometimes there are special editions just for the paid subscribers. Well atleast there’s supposed to be, I haven’t done many lately. Let me get back to you on that.

So welcome back, paid subscribers. Plunking your five dollars and sixteen cents into the slot machine every month helps me be sustainable. And even more than that it shows me that I’m appreciated, somebody thinks my writing has worth. I need to know that.

summer heat wave

Boom. Pow. Wow. The summer heat wave marches on here in South Texas. It’s been all of 3 weeks and probably more, every day 100 degrees plus. The next 10 days are all forecast to be 100 degrees plus. To say it’s oppressive is to miss the point, it’s an assault. My good nature suffers and I become angry and depressed. Ok, maybe I’m externalizing but it’s just too hot.

Then I think about the 3 raccoons that live under the house in their raccoon skin coats and Bob the feral cat who lives under there too. In a different apartment I suppose. Bob and also Betos, the crazy cat, both live outside in the 100 degree plus heat without complaint.

I think about the cardinal couple who come and visit me almost every day and sit in the tree outside my window and sing. Aren’t they hot too? They must be hot as the dickens but they fly around, hang out in the trees and seem ok. I’m inside in air conditioning and complaining.

It’s just a perspective, my neighbor George would say. A choice, in other words. Hmm, that sounds about right. It could be I’m projecting. Big time. The Summer Heat Wave is actually just alot of hot air.

flying around / being grounded

Sometimes it feels like life is some kind of very large board game, where whenever I move a piece it affects all the other pieces but in unexpected ways. I am one of the pieces too so I’m affected too. Even though I imagine myself to be in control when I make decisions, I’m really not. And precisely in this way life happens, unfolds all around me and manifests its random nature. If things work out according to my expectations it’s almost like a fluke, a stroke of good fortune, an accident.

This is my state of mind as I delve into a new phase of life: not complaining, just observing and noting without any reaction. It’s going to take alot of practice but I really want to do it. Just for the adventure of it, just for doing something outrageous.

I feel pretty stir crazy these days, not too much external adventure happening. Like when you’re a teenager and you get grounded, that’s what it feels like. I’m grounded but flying around in my imagination of the possibilities of not complaining.

First of all, the world looks very different. It’s a new world. In fact, my goal is to replace complaining with gratitude in an active, deliberate switch. Fly around with that. Explore. See what happens. That’s got to be an adventure.

in praise of

“We asked the captain what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast so large, terrifying andunpredictable. He hesitated toanswer, and then said judiciously’I think I shall praise it.’”

This is the epigraph from Robert Hass’ book, Praise. The final poem is titled ‘Songs to Survive the Summer’. It’s written in 3 line verses, like I often do, and goes on for 20 pages. Some selections.'Should I whisper in her ear,death is the motherof beauty?’

‘I try out Chekov’stenderness to seewhat it can save.’

‘What a strange thing!To be alivebeneath plum blossoms.’

All kinds of good stuff.

So let me unlock my own treasure box and see what there is to praise.

My fingers work. They are a marvel of engineering. You can carry a 5 gallon bucket of water with those spindly little fingers. The powerful muscles that actually carry the water are in the forearm and connect to each segment of the fingers by cables. Delicate finger movements like playing the piano or typing on a computer are performed by small muscles in the hand itself. Hey, I can type, I can drive, I can blow my nose.

I’m alive. Not to be taken lightly, I frequently remind myself. Of course it’s hard to appreciate something that has no known opposite, something that’s always been with me, but there would be no driving, no typing, no blowing and no nose. There would be no loving or hating, no praising and no complaining. Actually I have no idea what there would be.

I praise the morning light. It comes softly into my room, where Kybo waits quietly by my bed, and slowly lifts me up and off to the shower. Sometimes I greet mornings by jumping into the fish pond, that way I can greet the fish and the morning at the same time. The fish are red and white, sleek and swift and they move like darts in the green water. The iridescent green of the dappled oak leaves next to the back porch, where I sit sometimes and look at the world, are shining in the morning light. I praise the morning light because it doesn’t last long, it diffuses and disappears, but it comes again again.

I give thanks for the world, people and animals and trees and fire and rain and politics and the wisdom of babies learning how to walk (they never give up) and traffic in the streets and the sun in the sky.

Yes even the traffic, which sometimes seems to me like an evil entity unleashed by our own greed and unbridled ambition, symptomatic of our confused minds (what is real, what is good?) and endlessly, pointlessly polluting our planet, but atleast you get somewhere. And people are content in their cars. They bought that car because they like it. They can travel swiftly. They can meditate on whatever they meditate on in their car.

I am praiseworthy. I would go with Walt Whitman on this. I am a man, a human, a human being. It’s a pretty cool deal. Feature rich, definitely the luxury model with all the bells and whistles. My brain is amazing. It can decode all the information coming in on the sensory input lines and make sense of it. Create a world out of it. I can talk to other people with it. I can imagine exploring all the possible things that it’s possible to explore - you can imagine that with a human brain. I don’t know about the dolphins. Maybe they can do something even better but being human - I have to congratulate myself and all the rest of the humans. Three and a half billion years of evolution and here we are. Bi-pedal, innovative, adaptive (hopefully, we’re about to find out) and charismatic - we really can be friendly when we want to be.

I’m gonna stop there. There’s work to be done. Feeling grateful and not complaining. Feeling my body and exploring the fine finger movements. Being alert, like I was riding my bike down Broadway; there is something to be grateful for somewhere. I have to find it.

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Can you imagine that? To arrive at your old age and discover yourself all alone? I can. That’s how my life has been lately. Old age can hit hard. It doesn’t necessarily follow a schedule.

Even my cat, Kybo, is sad because she has no playmates, no one to mother. She’s a great mom, was born for it, but her only baby died after a few days and her playmate, Tee Tah, got hit by a truck. Betos, the replacement cat, is aloof and won’t even talk to Kybo. Just goes for the food. Actually Betos has some issues neurologically, kind of OCD if a cat can be. She will have spasms, almost like epileptic seizures but it’s just a flea biting her butt. It’s really freaky, she will lose control of her bladder and pee all over everything.

I don’t do that yet. But I do find it pretty depressing at times to be trapped in my house during the great Texas Heat Wave and not even be able to ride my bike. Actually I was going to go out tonight and see if I could ride, if my wrist was strong enough. Didn’t do that either.

A society that discards it’s elderly people because they’re not a useful economic unit anymore is a very sick society indeed. May this entire house of cards fall and crumble, general chaos and disorder come. I believe we’re due.

But a society that has children, always has hope. Who knows what the 6 year olds of today will bring to the world in 20 or 30 years. Unfathomable. May it be good. May it be rich in the human qualities, not so much all about the money. May it find human qualities in the technology. May creativity rise high and be more admired than destructivity. It could happen.

May they find all the old grandpas and grandmas and get them out and make friends. Make them part of their life. Listen to their stories and share their own.

Kids and old people go together. Kids are deprived too. Because their parents are chasing the money. Connect them with the kids, perfect fit.

Lonely elderly people can relate to kids because they’re not a part of the system either. Neither one are. The kids not yet, the lonely elderly people already have been.

There is a tribe in Africa where when a child is born they are brought to the grandparents and grow up in their company. This tribe believes that the child has a message for the old ones - where I am coming from, you are going to. And that the elderly old people have a message for the child - all the wisdom about the world that they have accumulated. Two poles of a battery.

Start this car. Stop standing around. Connect some elderly old people to the circuit. Don’t let them just wilt away. Above ground death. Give them a puppy, somebody to love unconditionally. That’s all they want.

thanks to strfkr for the great song and artwork / this worked for me

‘The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets’ wants to enter the life of the world. It’s been 8 years since the project was born of fire and rain and a deep desire to say something to the people. This is what it looks like.

All of us are people and all of us have something to say. Don’t you feel that? I mean more than ‘good morning’ and good ‘evening’. Something to believe in. I believe in that.

My book is largely about storytelling, something we tend to neglect in our high paced media saturated electronic society Storytelling entertains and reveals our myths about who we are and who we want to be and how we plan to get there. Not just the stories on TV but the ones we actually tell each other in our casual conversation.

Storytelling can also be gossip - a form of communication as ancient as storytelling. Back in the day, sitting around the old campfire or out searching for edible roots and berries - we would share what we knew about our neighbors and friends and about our enemies too. In this way we were able to orient and enable ourselves. There was no news apart from what we shared with each other.

Now news is a business and so is storytelling. Everything is a business in our modern capitalistic world. And herein lies my point - maybe if we were able to become a little more intentional about our storytelling we could elevate the conversation to really benefit the common good. Yes there are wars and disasters. They will never end. I guess. Although in my story human beings do imagine and finally create a world without war. Without big wars atleast. The ones we budget the lion’s share of our expendable resources for. In my story the creative energy of the people is more valued than the destructive energy.

Well, anyways, I’m just preaching here. That’s different from story telling. In storytelling you have a hero and you have a triumph because you have a crisis. You have character development because you are human.

That’s what happened to me anyways. Publishing this book will be a triumph and I sure as hell have gone thru some character development.

I have discovered in my character development that nothing is as important as holding on to the feeling of being alive, being in rhythm, being in the simplicity, no matter what kind of distractions are happening in my mind. We have been separated from that feeling for so long, since we were children, and it’s not easy to do. It’s foreign to us. But that would be one of the highest triumphs to reunite with that feeling. Or atleast a pretty high one.

Am I wrong? Ask yourself, but I don’t think so. Isn’t it amazing that amidst all the diversity of our human species, and that includes all the opinions, all the philosophies and religions, there is a fundamental commonality? That feeling of simplicity and beauty is our commonality. It’s something we all feel or are trying to feel. That unerring, unending rhythm of life that started with our first breath and continues until the last.

So, thanks for listening. Back on the computer, trying to consummate this marriage. You’ll be the first to know if it works out.

Human beings are something else, man. We love to build stuff and then blow it the f#%k up. It’s a form of creativity. It’s beautiful. Trajectory! Line it up! Fire that cannon!

Jump in your supersonic jet airplane and jet over to the target area, release your payload, laser guided bombs, they glide right in there.

Launch that long range missile and watch it fly! Over the horizon and into enemy territory, blow up their house, burn it down.

Drop some 152 mm artillery shells tipped with 24 lb. of high explosives right on top of their downtown plaza just to see what kind of shrapnel patterns it makes on the faces of the buildings. Interesting. I think I see a pattern.

In the above photo Serhiy Albertovych is standing outside his apartment building somewhere in Avdiivka where he lives with his two dogs. It has been bombed twice but Mr. Albertovych refuses to leave. “I’m here alone and I’ll be here until the end, until the end of my life,” he says.

Maybe he grew up there, maybe this is his city, his hometown and he would rather die with those memories intact rather than be shuttled out to some unknown destination as a refugee. The NY Times article doesn’t say what his inner story is but I see him looking around for his friends, his compatriots and for a vibrant downtown Avdiivka. He denies the devastation of his city and remembers what Avdiivka once was. That’s how he survives.

Avdiivka is pretty much dysfunctional. There’s no water, no electricity, no food except what the volunteers bring in for the 1700 people still living there, camped out in the what’s left of the city, refusing to leave. There are centers where you can go and charge your phone, get food or water or warmth. And where you can find company and conversation, which might be just as important as food and water.

Gods are created by human beings to give causality to the world. This is how it happened because God did it, we say. God is powerful, we affirm, he created the whole universe.

And are we not gods too? Look at what we can create, and what we can destroy. Would you like to see me blow up an entire city?

It’ll be beautiful. A giant hole in the ground where the city used to be, surrounded by poisoned air.

I wrote about the very first hydrogen bomb explosion last November. ‘a great big giant fireball in the sky’ It was the the seventieth anniversary of that event out there on the tiny South Pacific island of Elugelab.

The fireball was monumentous, the heat wave was stupendous, the witnesses who saw the island cremated recount the thunder verberating and reverberating between the earth and the stratosphere like it was the choir of God in full vibrato fortissimo.

Reminds me of the famous quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, upon the detonation of the first nuclear bomb at White Sands, New Mexico on July 16, 1945: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'.

It was of course his opportunity to make a historic remark and he didn’t want to blow it with some lame quote so he came up with ‘Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’. That’s memorable.

Actually the quote is from the Bhagvad Gita, one of the most popular Hindu scriptures, and Krishna has taken on his cosmic form - the brightness of 10,000 suns -to try to persuade Arjuna to do his duty and fight. Must have scared the bejesus out of poor Arjuna. Anyways, that’s where the quote comes from - Krishna turns into 10,000 suns and then tells Arjuna ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’ just to make sure he gets his point across.

Thanks to the New York Times for letting me blatantly rip off their photos but not their story except for one small quote.

Photos by Tyler Hicks from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/russia-war-avdiivka-ukraine.html

i try to write every week if just to process my own inner journeycalibrate my perspective with the reality of thingsthat’s a useful exercisebut lately it’s been mostly resting and healing and not even bike ridingthat’s where i get alot of the themes and sub-themes - from up on my bikei miss it / i need the inspiration

human beings (if i might pivot to the universal) need to be remindedwe forget the simplest and most basic things :: like we are alive

pretty basic / have you thought about it today or have you just taken it for granted ??i find that even remembering once in a while enriches my life once in a while is about all i’m able to manage

there are no ordinary moments would be another way to say itthey’re all special in some way

i wonder how adult fireflies feel about their 2-3 week life spanafter crawling around in their larval state for a couple of yearsnow they have to get laid and procreate and i’m sure they don’t waste a single flash of light as they fly around looking for a mate

i read about it in an article don’t know where it is nowa bunch of people were going onan expedition in the english countryside to see the greenish light cast off by a special fungithat appeared in that particular forest this time of year for some reason the fungi didn’t show but one couple

who happened to be the couple writing the articlewandered off a bit down the lane and around the bendwhere they discovered a whole cloud of ‘synchronous fireflies’emerging from the ground and rising up / signaling - dash dash dotin unison / moving around and gently pulsatingsoon everyone gathered thereand they forgot about the green fungi

huh / guess i did have something to say

I remember when I was a little kid, a rug rat actually. Television was not well established yet and even if you had one there were only 3 channels, if the weather was right. Anyways my parents would take us kids out visiting to a neighbor’s house for the purpose of having a conversation. There we would sit around the coffee table in the living room and talk. The adults would sit around and talk, I would roam the room, explore, examine the books and bric brac on the lower shelves, crawl under the table.

My father was the minister of a small clan of Baptists that met at the church 2 or 3 times a week and the purpose of his visit was not only to say hello and be sociable but also to encourage the spiritual growth of his congregants and ensure their attendance at church.

I didn’t know any of that, I was just playing and casually noticing that the adults were talking to each other. They were really into it but it seemed to me like a pretty boring way to have fun. I remember feeling fortunate that I was a kid and could crawl around and sit under the table where no one could see me and I could hear everything and didn’t have to say anything.

part 2 :: listening

As it turns out, listening is one of the most effective therapies we can offer each other. It’s used clinically with positive results. It often replaces taking drugs because the person is able to unwind and understand what’s happening in their mind.

It’s used between good friends when they give each other the time to express what’s on their mind and the friend listens with a kind and compassionate ear. It is revelatory for the listener and for the story teller. It’s often transformative because verbally putting things into words activates a deeper understanding of what previously may have only been an idea or a memory hanging out in some obscure part of your brain.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. She came over to my house for a totally unrelated reason, she thought it was the party day. No that’s next week I informed her. But that wasn’t the reason she came over. She came over because she wanted to talk to me and I wanted to talk to her.

“Let me tell you a story.” I began and went on my rant.

She listened patiently and with compassion because she’s a friend. And I told her my story. And then she began. And she spoke of many things. And I listened. Even a few times I was prompted to listen when my own mind wanted to jump in and say something perfect for the moment. Still I kept silent. She patiently explained way more, went around looking for memory fish so she could tell me about their colors.

We had alot of fun.

part 3 :: the power of being silent

This is something I’m trying to learn.

There is a time to be silent and there is a time to speak, I have learned that much.

I think it could qualify as a life skill. One of the basic ones. Like maybe something the Greeks taught back in the day along with oratory and mathematics and gymnasium.

I tried it at the Summer Solstice Soiree yesterday in the back yard to see what would happen, that was my intention anyway, to see if I actually could be silent.

part 3.b :: the party

Well adjudicate this, I tried to be circumspect, but it was a party. There were conversations going on all over the backyard and inside the house. Conversations started over . . . a common observation, a favorable comment - and off they would go: bonding and exchanging words.

The backyard was open and people were spread out but when it started to rain and we all rushed into the house with pillows over our heads, it got very much more concentrated. We settled down in a large clump in the living room. Poetry was performed and people started playing assorted musical instruments. Mostly drums of one type or another, singing bowls, a large brass thing shaped like a cymbal that made the most mellifluous, boingy sounds. A lot of dinging and trilling. A flute player showed up. It was raucous but not unruly. It was spontaneous and soon grew into body dancing and hand dancing and singing too. If you can call it that. ‘Laughing Wolves” was the name of one of our songs.

The room kind of divided - the women had formed a circle and were dancing with each other while the men were all beating on the drums nearby. There was something primordial about it. Everyone was into their own trance state, their own thought processes but we were all connected too, through the rhythm of the drums and the chanting of the voices rising up now and then from among the dings and the clanks and whether it was from the women or the men it didn’t matter at all, as it was well received and holy.

This went on for awhile and then it began to taper off. People started moving around, getting something to drink, checking out the food table (where a mighty potlach had been established). People were in an exalted mood. With all that dancing and music making? Everybody was exuberant or atleast pretty charming. Young people and old people all together. People all having conversations with strangers and learning all sorts of things.

At one point in the evening, I remembered my vow of silence and that I hadn’t done any of that. I hadn’t even tried to remember. I had whooped and hollered with the music, done my poetry, told people all about it. I was vociferous, plenty.

And this morning, as I sit down to write, I realize how much communication was happening last night. In atleast a half a dozen different languages: dancing, talking, walking, music, screeching and the invisible 5th kind, the kinesthetic body language, where we notice subtle cues and signals, voice tonality and attention retention. We shine like bright little candles when we’re enjoying ourselves. People see that. It was a multi-channel, high frequency, interference free, interaction of the species happening right there in my living room. It was listening and speaking in graceful concert with each other. It was a raging torrent of communication. It was a Summer Solstice Soiree. Everything had changed and now the days were getting shorter not longer.

It was a transformational thing, even if you couldn’t see it, it was there: turning the wheels inside the wheels, spinning and tilting its way through the galaxy in a great cosmic circle. So forget about being quiet. Interact! Be entertained! Find a channel and broadcast your signal. That’s my take away. Communication happens in many ways. We really don’t have to work that hard at it. We just need to notice it and enjoy it when it’s happening.

Whew. I’m relieved. I don’t have to shut up, just listen up once in a while. I can probably do that, with practice.

Pain has a voice. That’s what I’ve learned. Or rather my body has a voice, many voices and pain is one of them.

Carpal tunnel syndrome squeezes the space in the wrist where the nerves and blood vessels pass thru into the hand. It can cause numbness, tingling, muscle weakness and pain - especially at night.

One night I was lying in bed with my hand brace on feeling the pain traveling all over my hand. Sometimes it felt like my palm was on fire, like I had stuck my hand in a pizza oven. Sometimes the pain was in my fingers, and then it would move to the base of my thumb, then to my wrist. I would try to talk to it, try to understand what it was saying as if each location was a voice and each voice had a meaning, a message.

It moved from the tip of my thumb to the middle of my fingers and then to my elbow. It would disappear for a few moments and then come back in another location. What was it doing? What was it trying to say? I could only guess by feeling it and breathing into it. That buzzing feeling that seemed to be decreasing in frequency and intensity? I could only hope and pray that it was the inflammation leaving my body. I spent most of that night feeling all that and trying to find the most comfortable position for my hand propped up on the pillow next to my bed.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a fairly intense, persistent pain. It has a lot to say and I spent several nights lying in bed, practicing meditation and talking to it. A friend of mine pointed out that physical pain can also have an emotional component. I watched the video he sent me. Dr. Sorno. It seemed like his ideas might have some applicability so I endeavored to catalogue all the emotional pain I have accumulated in my life. There was a lot. I have carried it around for years like a burden, unwilling or unable to let go of it. It had became so much a part of me, so familiar, that I didn’t know how to get rid of it. The pain, however, (and Dr. Sorno’s video) was telling me that I needed to try.

I did try and amazingly the pain went away. It came back later but it seemed like something had changed. Yeah, something had changed alright - I no longer wanted to carry around all those regrets, all those feelings of being abandoned, rejected and disinherited. I wanted to be free and clear and it was worth all the pain I had been experiencing if I could get there. I had quite a dynamic conversation with my emotional body, felt the power of being in conversation with it and felt elated when I realized I could let go of all that negative juju just by making the conscious decision to do it.

I also was in conversation with other people. The parents of my friend Brittany just happened to be physical therapists and when she invited me over to their house for a meal they both gave me a treatment. We talked about the prescription I had been given by my Medicare doctor: 400 milligrams of ibuprofen 3 times a day. One time one of the gel caps got stuck in my throat and dissolved there - it was a vile, nasty taste. I knew that I was swallowing a chemical that was taxing my kidneys. They had to process that vile, nasty stuff. They suggested Aleve as an alternative, also an anti-inflammatory but easier on the body. I switched and it seemed to be just fine.

Another med I was prescribed was diclofenac sodium topical gel with carbomer homopolymer type C, cocoyl caprylocaprate, fragrance, isopropyl alcohol, mineral oil, polyoxyl 20, cetostearyl ether, propylene glycol, purified water and strong ammonia solution added as inert ingredients. Yeah. Pharmaceutical chemists like to mix it up. Also nasty smelling stuff and I was supposed to smear on my wrist, 4 grams exactly, 4 times a day. Brittany gave me a bottle of arnica oil (made from a plant in the sunflower family) and I started rubbing it into my wrist instead of the diclofenac sodium topical gel with etc, etc. It certainly smelled better and seemed to work well. I also massaged it into my neck where I had a crick from bike riding. Arnica oil also has anti-inflammatory properties so I figured, what’s the difference? If it works, it works. Besides I’ve got about a hundred sunflowers growing in my front yard so it seemed like a friendly option.

It’s been working. Slowly and gradually the pain has been dissipating and function has been returning to my fingers. I’m typing this with both hands on the keyboard, although gingerly, and mousing with my right hand. Still plenty of numbness and stiffness but I feel like I’m doing something right - this condition usually takes 2 or 3 months to resolve, I’m 3 weeks in. The night time pain has gone and not returned.

So anyways, that’s the story of my carpal tunnel syndrome. Learning how to speak to my body and listen, learning how to speak to my emotional body and listen. Learning how to speak to myself, essentially, and listen to myself. My self has some seriously wise things to say as it turns out. The doctor who is always in and has no fees, no insurance forms to fill out. God I hate that, turning healthcare into a business. Well that’s a rave on for another time. Actually I have already raved on that plenty.

I just want to say thank you to my body for the healing energy and insight that it provided. Thank you. And thank you for listening.

After six years of writing, two years of looking for a publisher, innumerable edits and revisions - it’s ready. Here’s the cover picture. It’s a detail from the White Shaman painting from west Texas.

But it’s not about the White Shaman, he’s just helping me make a point, it’s about being human. Something that us humans don’t seem to be very good at, generally speaking.

I’m not sure it’s something we even think about. Our highly developed brain is programmed to be a citizen and a consumer and a responsible wage earner but never to be a human. When do we ever take a class in being human at school. When do we even have a conversation about it? What do we really know?

Anyways, ‘The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets’ is the title of the book and also of the chapter about the White Shaman, this intriguing 2,000 year old painting from the Pecos River canyonlands that you see above.

The painting belongs to a group of people who lived there for thousands of years and recorded their cultural knowledge in this painting. It was their book of magic secrets. It’s a snapshot of a time long ago when humans lived a hunter/gatherer lifestyle and were quite different from us but very human.  I think it’s helpful to look at this subject from different perspectives.

I don’t have the answer for ‘what is human’, I’m just trying to ask the question and present different perspectives. For example, this whole project grew out of a rather naive quest to explore ‘human-ness’ and an urgent need to express something. I remember how it started and I knew it was a long shot, a one in a million chance that I would be able to complete it and publish it.

But it was a long shot for those ancient people, as well, to hunt and kill a mastodon with stone tipped spears on the Russian steppes. They took on the adventure and once in a while they got one. In Siberia, where the hunter/gatherers of North America originated, they made houses out of their bones.

This is one of the primary qualities of being human. We need adventure. These days with the mastodons gone along with most of the wildness and the wilderness, we invent sports to have our challenging adventures. Right now the NBA playoffs are on. It’s a mythic quest to conquer your enemies and emerge triumphant. The San Antonio Spurs did it 5 times and the city went wild each time.

So there’s that.

There’s so much involved in writing, publishing and marketing a book that I feel overwhelmed and underprepared much of the time. That has been my journey. Getting from one rock to another in this river, finding sustenance and succor on my journey through the deep forest.

Cheer me on! And when it comes out, take a look. If one person reads it, it’ll be fine. If a hundred people read it, it’ll be finer. I’ll have done my little bleeping part in making humanity better. If it becomes a viral phenomenon best selling world wide mega-hit, super cool.

Right now people are blowing up each other’s weapons over in Ukraine, wasting billions of dollars. I mean a Patriot missile costs 3 or 4 million dollars, and the hypersonic missiles they’re intercepting, the Kinzhal, about 10 million. Boom. And what’s the result? Death and destruction. Lots of booms and alot of wasted money. Nice job humans. I really don’t think that’s the purpose of being human. If it is then let’s just light up the nukes and call it quits.

But somewhere deep inside us resides a powerful, irreducible quest. The quest for peace. Somewhere from our ancient past rises up the desire to say something and do something that makes life better. Can we talk about this? I hope so. I hope this book inspires that.

Here’s an excerpt from the preface.

Our ancestors, if you go back far enough, were hunters and gatherers, camping out and roaming about in small bands, looking for food, coming together around the campfire at night, seeking comfort and telling stories.  We did that for a long time.  

 Although there was considerable nuance, experimentation and creativity going on, hunting and gathering in the natural environment was our universal and original occupation.  It was the lifestyle that dominated our prehistory and lasted for millions of years.  

   The first members of our hunting and gathering club appeared, as far as we know, 2 1/2 million years ago in Africa.  They were still sleeping in the trees, judging by their long ape like arms, but also making tools and walking around on the ground, standing upright.  We call those folks Homo habilis which means 'handy man' because of the stone tools found nearby, basically chipped stones.  

   Eventually our species, Homo sapiens, appeared 300,000 years ago.  We had acquired quite a number of adaptations and refinements by that time with our opposable thumbs and the big frontal lobe on top of our brain.  We learned how to domesticate fire, how to make spears and baskets and shoes and eventually we invented language.  

   This ability to create symbolic representations of things, to encode a mental image into vocalizations (language) and then transfer it to another person was not only the beginning of our stories and our sophisticated social structures but also of our strategic planning.  That strategic planning enabled us to journey forth from Africa and conquer new lands and have amazing adventures. What’s over the next hill and what are the possibilities? Now we can explore those questions.

Look for a blockbuster summer release. Media interviews, TV appearances, book signings, Oprah, Colbert, Letterman. Oh wait he doesn’t exist anymore.

Not to overplay it, haha. I’ll be fortunate to get a website up and do a book release party at the Twig. But it’ll be glorious and fun whatever it is. It’ll be a helluva adventure, for me anyways.

music from a great album by Emancipator

Here in my neighborhood, a friendly suburb about 6 miles north of the downtown, lots of homeowners are practicing wildscaping. That’s the practice where you give the wildflowers a chance to bewild and do their thing. Front yards and traffic islands and entrances to institutions are alive with the sweet bouquet of wild flowers and the buzzing of bees and the flitting of butterflies. I’m ecstatic with joy. As I imagine our winged creature friends are too.

Here is a picture of a small bee inside a prickly pear blossom sucking nectar and distributing pollen. It’s sex. Basically it’s sex and everybody knows how fun that is.

The small traffic island at Kenilworth and Chevy Chase is a fully fledged wildscape. I don’t know who did it but when I pulled up there were 6 or 7 sparrows in amongst the flowers, gathering seeds. They flew off at my approach but then returned. They knew I didn’t want their seeds.

There are token wildscapes too.

And gregarious wildscapes.

For those of us who think, well, wildscaping is just too radical of an expression for my yard - here are some pictures from the McNay Art Museum front entrance. That’s Austin Highway and New Braunfels with maximum traffic exposure. They’re making a statement.

Some wildscaping amounts to a single plant or group of plants but it’s still beautiful.

The birds and the bees and the butterflies and all the insects that depend on flowering plants for food and shelter, for wildness indeed, are happy as can be. Grateful too, and with a wet Spring like we are having, there is celebration in the air. I can feel it. Can’t you?

Indian Blanket (also called Firewheel) and Texas Sunflowers and Lantana and Bluebonnets and Morning Glories and Evening Primrose and the lovely False Day Flower and yes even Thistle and Dandelion, the Velvet Weed and the Mallow and the Prickly Pear, all beautifully named and present in the yards and medians of our fair city these wet May days. Even the small yellow blossoms of the Lawn Flower add to the nectarful offerings for ants and other tiny creatures.

They will all pass. Their time will end and Summer will set in. Homeowners will trim their sunflowers, pull out their blossomless ‘weeds’ and the hot dry season will take over. But for now, this brief respite, is about life burgeoning, blossoming, prolificating.

Is that even a word? Who cares.

music :: Electus - Oliver's Garden 4:37

I have made additions and alterations to the original post. Here we go . . .

This exciting edition of the rohn report is about being your own doctor. It’s the latest in my series of health related posts for paid subscribers. Here’s to your health!

Every cell in our body is programmed to maintain homeostasis. It’s built into its DNA. That’s what they do. I think that’s important to know. In addition to that, all 17 trillion of our human cells (give or take a few) are in a communications network, talking to each other, checking in, calibrating, adjusting, responding.

In addition to that, we have 100 trillion (give or take a few) microbes (also called ‘the little people’) living in our gut and all over our body. They are in touch with us too. Believe it or not the little people actually communicate directly with our brain thru the vagus nerve. This nerve collects information from all along the alimentary canal and sends it to the medulla oblongata at the base of our brain. The medulla oblongata belongs to the most primitive part of our brain, the lizard brain if you will. That means the most primitive life forms are communicating with the most primitive part of our brain? Uh huh. Think of the possibilities there.

Being your own doctor is simply about listening to what your body (or your little people) are saying and responding to it. A conversation. In our external, social life the most dynamic conversations are usually the most spontaneous and fun ones. In fact it’s one of the great (although somewhat forgotten) pleasures of life. I would like to suggest that the conversation we can have with our own body also needs to be spontaneous and fun. This is consulting with our internal doctor, Dr. You, and it should be as dynamic as possible so we can exchange as much information as possible and understand it.

So what the heck am I talking about? I’m talking about the language of our body, recognizing that it has a language first of all, and that it’s pretty much talking to us all the time.

Every ache and pain, every unsettled stomach, every sleepless night, every weird dream is a message from your body to you. In my experience the unsettled stomach and the weird dreams seem to be connected, as if the little people were directing a message thru my vagus nerve and medulla oblongata to my sleeping self. I know, it sounds crazy. It took me a while to wrap my mind around it too.

The little people can be stressed out and unhappy, just like us. They have to deal with whatever we swallow, whatever moods we entertain. The vagus nerve doesn’t communicate in one direction only - what’s happening in our brain can also influence the little people living in our gut.

I would like to point out something that is obvious to everyone: our body (or our little people) do not speak English; in fact they seem to have no interest in learning. That means we have to learn their language.

If that’s all too vague and/or unbelievable, here’s a simple method for establishing a conversation with your body. I call it ‘You Yoga’ - doing movement that stimulates different parts of your body and registering the feedback.

This 4 minute and 22 second video of me doing You Yoga, pretty much demonstrates what I’ve been trying to say. It’s called ‘body work’.

Breathing. It’s the most basic rhythm of life. It’s also a conduit of communication. Breathe. Feel the rhythm. It sets a tone for the communication, it tunes in our attention to whatever our body is trying to say to us. Too much noise in our head to hear it sometimes.

Lastly and bestly of all, Dr. You does not charge for his or her services, makes house calls and is available 24/7. Don’t worry about the health insurance or the pharmacy, this is all internal. Basically, it’s just a simple acknowledgement that each and every one of our 17 trillion cells are programmed for homeostasis. We need to let them do their job, help them do their job by recognizing and responding to their messages.

Good luck and have fun with your conversation. It really is an entertaining and enriching experience. I’m still learning and I think the nuance and sensitivity of this conversation probably has no end. No end in sight so far : )

Envision a world where all the things essential to life are readily available for everybody: food, water, shelter, healthcare. No one is deprived. Envision a world based on the idea that human beings are more important than corporations.

Envision a world where healthcare is not a product but a gift. Something we can give each other and ourselves. Of course professional health care providers are needed and schools to train them and medicines to help cure people but imagine the possibilities of people providing each other with health care not just the ‘health insurance companies’, whose policies are determined mostly by profit.

Back in the day the village healer or the medicine man or the old curandera, the bruja, could bring the healing.

Did you know that listening to someone’s expression and touching them with kindness - physical touch, the healing touch, are healing modalities? Did you know that sitting under a tree and watching the leaves dance in the wind is a healing modality for the eyes and the spirit?

a little complaining

Does everything have to be a product and a business? Back in the day if someone needed a house or a barn, everyone came together and helped build it. There was no real estate ‘business’, making money off of people’s need for shelter.

Ok, I’m being an idealist. We don’t live like that anymore. Wake up and join the modern world. But the way we live in the modern world is unsustainable. We devour the resources of the planet and turn them into mountains of trash. We spend our national fortune on weapons to destroy some other nations weapons. That’s a good business but a stupid way to manage our precious resources.

We turn everything into a business and a product including education. Envision education as a community service, done by the community to benefit the community. Yes we need professional teachers but each of us has something to share with the children. And the children have something to share with all of us. Why do we have to sequester them away behind walls and stuff a curriculum down their throat?

Universities have become corporations with a marketing plan and a logo and an endowment fund. The nearby University of Texas has more than 40 billion dollars sitting in their endowment fund. That’s more than some countries are worth.

Freaks me out, this obsession with monetizing everything. Heck I even monetize my newsletter so I’m caught in it too.

Ok. I’m done with that. I’m sitting here under the Cedar tree in front of the Sunset Ridge church looking at a blue sky and a tree lined horizon.

a powerful solution

It’s a gorgeous day and I’m alive. I mean what are the chances? In a universe of unbelievable proportions and of an unfathomable age, here I am. I exist.

Hard to recognize the miracles that are right in front of our face. We need something unusual, weird maybe, to qualify as a miracle. Our own existence doesn’t qualify but it’s the biggest miracle of all. I pray for the eyes to see that.

A bird flies thru the air with pure freedom, banks, heads for the tree with branches, full of leaves, moving in the breeze, a delicate dance against the sky, lands somewhere in there. I get on my bike and ride.

Birds see the world from the treetops down, land is in the background. I see the world from the ground up. My eye scans for connection. I can’t fly so I have to make my way among the earth objects. I bank and cruise down Vanderheck, merge onto Cloverleaf and hammer down New Braunfels with my shirt tails flapping wildly in the wind.

music :: Man in a Room, Emancipatorthank you for the amazing soundtracks

I do think I need to thin it out a little, clear a path to the street, but it bothers me to pull out anything that’s green and growing. There are hundreds of sunflowers here, self planted, so I guess some pruning would be ok.

The Indian Blankets are blanketing the jungle, yellow, orange and green. Some of them have already dropped their petals and exposed their ball of seeds ready to fall or be eaten by the sparrows.

Morning Glories are trying to climb up among the tangled Vetch and unfurl but the morning is slow to come under this heavy cloud cover.

Small yellow flowers of some unknown species loiter among the towering sunflowers.

The Mountain Laurel has already blossomed and put its seeds in a leathery grey case. Later they will open and release their bright red seeds, hard as marbles, and try to start a family in the dirt.

The False Day flower appears like a fairy princess wrapped in her shy cowling, or maybe it’s Tom Bombidil.

Thank God, or if you’re Mayan Chac Mool, for the recent rains. It does seem handy to have a specialty rain god. We’ve had some downpours and the jungle is bursting with fresh growth That makes me happy.

I think I must be half plant. Or maybe half Green Man of Celtic lore. His image was carved into medieval churches back in the 13th and 14th century all up and down England and Ireland. He’s found throughout Europe and even the Near East in ancient times. His origins are lost to history, but he seems to represent an ancient being, primordial, the male form of Mother Nature, Robin Hood, Dionysus maybe.

He’s also goes by Jack in the Green, John Barleycorn, Herne of the Hunt, the Green Knight among other names. He’s Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings but he gets short shrift for the Kings and the swords and the armies and the battles dominate that tale.

Tom Bombadil is immune to the corrupting power of the One Ring. Being at one with all Nature, he sees the epic struggles of the created world as mere play. That’s how it goes.

I’m trying to get there

thanks to Bonobo for the music ‘Flashlight’

It’s basically green tea (Camellia sinensis) that’s been shaded for 3 or 4 weeks before being harvested. That pumps up the theanine, an amino acid with health benefits and the caffeine, well we all know what that is.

Matcha latte is my drink of choice at the cafe these days. It’s made by whisking the bright green powder made from the leaves (with the stems and veins removed) into hot water and then injecting the steaming milk from the cappuccino maker to create a frothy beverage.

It’s considered a high tea ceremony in Japan where its consumed ritually.

The other day I was at Philo Coffee sipping my matcha latte. Philo Coffee has been my favorite spot lately because of the huge oak tree in the patio with overhanging branches and because the baristas look at me and listen as I tell my joke of the day.

It’s $5.45 she said after I placed my order. I said I have something better than money and pulled out a stick that I had picked up on the way in. A magic stick! I told her and held it in front of her eyes. It will dissipate any negative energy that’s around you. Watch this. I twirled it in front of her face.

It’s not working she informed me. Ok, look I shouldn’t do this but I have a special rock too and pulled a small chunk of flint out of my pocket which I had stashed there knowing that I might run into headwinds. I’m sorry we don’t take rocks either she responded. What? I can’t believe it! With this special rock you can make 3 arrowheads and a knife. She just looked at me.

I knew better than to pull out my invisible frog, that the game was up, so I paid with a stupid piece of plastic and waited for my matcha latte, took it outside under the massive oak tree and sat down.

After having fortified myself and perused my phone for news and inspiration, I got on my bike and proceeded down hill and down river to visit the San Pedro Park and the creek that flows out of it, the caffeine buzzing serenely through my system.

Roadrunner and the puppy

It’s actually a beautiful section of river when it finally emerges from below the Five Points intersection lined with cypress trees and landscaped with large slabs of limestone. Roadrunner (that’s how he introduced himself when I first met him) and his puppy live along the creek. He sleeps under a manhole cover and stuffs old sleeping bags into the storm drain on the street to keep it dry.

Roadrunner tells me that the puppy was run over by a car and came tumbling out the other side unhurt or atleast uninjured. It’s a miracle dog he says. Ever since she saw me emerging from the subterranean tunnels a couple of weeks ago when I was doing research for the San Pedro Creek post we have been friends. I apparantly had passed the test for admittance into her tribe.

Roadrunner lives in filth. His sleeping chamber is gross. I looked in there once. He wasn’t home. Trash surrounds the creek bed where he lives. He is an able bodied middle aged man but he can’t seem to gain any traction in getting his life together.

I can’t criticize him or judge him, living a relatively privileged lifestyle sitting here in the cafe writing about it. I’ve got a bike and a house and a few bucks in the bank. Roadrunner is broke.

He is enterprising though. Bicycle parts: frames, a couple of chains, forks, wheels, tires lie in a pile around the entrance to his hole. He is attempting to assemble them into a functioning bicycle. Without any tools.

If water coming out of a wall qualifies as a miracle, as it does in San Pedro Park, a bicycle rising out of these junked parts would qualify as another.

The other day he asked me if I wanted a heater. No, not really I replied. It was in the high eighties that day. He had somehow come into possession of an old console heater with a ceramic element that looked like a TV and glowed like a fire when it was turned on. Atleast that’s how it appeared to work. He’s homeless and jobless but he accumulates odd pieces of junk hoping to find some value in them. Several boxes of Covid test kits, a one dollar memorial coin with a profile of Benjamin Harrison on it and dated 1889 but worth exactly one dollar, a collection of sunglasses, a strange wooden X thing that turned out to be the legs of coffee table are among the items.

There are various and assorted street people along this stretch of the creek on most days when I pass by, some asleep in their blankets.

It’s actually a pleasant path to ride along, a few trees, the limestone rocks placed along the banks. There is only 2 or 3 inches of water flowing in the creek bed due to the fact that the spring is dry and where that water comes from is a mystery. Maybe street runoff. Maybe it’s a miracle.

Me and Roadrunner cleaned up part of the bank one day, filled up a trash bag each and set it aside hoping the sanitation workers would pick them up before they got torn up by the street people. That’s what happens. The area where the creek emerges from under the Five Points intersection was once cleaned up by the street people but no one hauled it away and the bags broke and all the trash spilled out. The puppy finds good hunting there.

SARA (San Antonio River Authority) won’t clean it up, they only work downstream in the culture park. KSAB (Keep San Antonio Beautiful) wouldn’t help although I talked to them several times. I thought of organizing a cleanup myself, soliciting a pickup and some compassionate volunteers but besides all the trash and garbage I discovered there are also heroin needles and human excreta lying around and I realized it wasn’t appropriate or even safe to ask people to go down there.

Apparantly part of the process of becoming a street person is losing respect for yourself and for the environment around you. Wherever they are they generate trash. It’s amazing to me, with all the efforts made to house the homeless their numbers have doubled over the last few years, atleast according to my unofficial census. And so has the trash.

They have their own little world there. The police don’t bother them and they sort of self-govern themselves and form their own societies. One day I was visiting Roadrunner and on the other side of the creek a couple was walking quickly and seemingly agitated. Roadrunner called out to them and the woman responded that someone had stolen their bag during the night and if they find them they’re going to stick a knife in their ribs. Lovely.

There are multiple agencies dedicated to helping the homeless: the Catholic Worker House, SAMMinistries, Christian Assistance Ministries, Center for Health Care Services, the city’s Department of Human Services, Corazón San Antonio and Haven for Hope but the number of homeless people just seems to increase. They’re building a permanent supportive housing project that will help some of the most vulnerable and it’s a great project but it’s just a drop in the proverbial bucket.

It really portrays a sickness in our society that so many people are exiled and disenfranchised. Nobody would choose a life like that. Here in the midst of the richest country the world has ever known people are living in dire poverty. Poverty of the spirit and the mind, not just of the body.

At the cafe

And so here I sit at Philo Coffee writing this saga. It occurs to me how fortunate I am, sipping a matcha latte under the oak tree while others have fallen and find themselves in the pits. Roadrunner hasn’t washed his clothes in months. He wants to get a room for a week so he can get out of the sewer, dry out and clean up. I live in a house with running water and electricity and all kinds of conveniences. Who knows what his story is. Who knows what demons he has in his mind and how they got there. It’s a story I don’t need to know.

I’m sitting under the arms of the great oak tree with the wind whispering through the leaves. I feel the spirit of the old ones who lived here long ago and for a long long time. For them the creek was alive and above ground. It flowed continuously from the spring that came from deep underground. It was the abode of Mother Nature herself. What a privilege to know Mother Nature personally, not just in a story or as an allusion.

The street people remind me of how simply we can live, day by day, as the old ones did. We have forgotten both that simplicity and the kindness of Mother Nature who supports all creatures here below: plant, animal and human. Perhaps if we could feel it again we might cure the dysfunction that casts so many into dangerous and deviant lifestyles, deprived of healthy food, health care and a safe place to sleep. The consumer society only cares about how much you have and the means to get it. We’re willing to waste the whole world to create wealth that we don’t even need. Money is our god. An unholy and arbitrary deity but we worship it anyway.

The oak tree was sacred to the druids of ancient Britain, probably to the ancient people of San Antonio too but their story has been lost. It stands, arms outstretched to the sky as if in praise, as if in prayer, as if connecting sky and earth which in fact it is, and providing a space in between for the people to live.

Tree of life, tree of hope sprouted long ago from a small acorn - bless me. Bless us all. Bless the subterranean street people and the above ground street people. Bless the rich folk with some wisdom. Bless the poor folk with good health. Bless the liars and the truth-tellers with the gift of silence. Bless the air breathers with oxygen, bless the high flyers with a place to nest. Bless the bugs with a a place to crawl. Bless the squirrels with acorns. Bless the ground dwellers with shade. Bless the kids with a place to climb. Bless us all just by being here, large and full.

I dunno but I kinda think that’s probly what the ancient people felt too.

music :: ‘Oblivion’ by Climatic and ‘Sweetness’ by Suduaya & Irina Mikhailovathank you

Wow, here we are in the middle of now. Everything that has come before is history and everything that’s to come is next.

It’s like we’re standing still on an escalator or one of those moving walkways like they have in airports. Our past is a long string of episodes strung out behind us, our future is slowly coming into view and we are standing still in now.

In another sense the future doesn’t really exist at all because it hasn’t happened yet and the past obviously doesn’t exist because it already happened. Atleast that’s what our memories tell us. Maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. Memories are like photographs made with one of those polaroid cameras. You press the button and a photograph comes out but it yellows and fades with time.

I’ve been thinking about that, the vagaries of memory and what is real. ‘Keep it real’ people sometimes say, which means be authentic. Right? As if we are fake most of the time. But how can you not be real, really? Even if you are acting fake you are still doing it in your own authentic way.

Anyways, it seems to me that now is real, everything else is a construct in our minds, a simulation. And infact now is in our minds too. Right? That’s where we experience everything. Wrong. There is a reality that we feel too. It can’t be challenged because that’s what we feel. Who else knows (or cares) what it is? Well maybe they care but they can’t know. It’s a personal and private knowing. Different from memory and different from projections about the future.

That’s where little kids live. I think the reason why we can’t remember being an infant is because we didn’t have a memory function back then, not a developed long term memory function. We didn’t need it. We didn’t know what anything was anyway, it was all new information. I mean we were gathering and collating and indexing but the experience, the feeling is what mattered. Not alot of logic yet either.

Therefore, to my point: reality only exists in the moment and can only be felt. Everything else is noise. Elaborate noise, interesting noise, useful noise even but not real.

Why is it then that we only seem to talk about the world of noise? Everything that’s important is in the world of noise. I’m exaggerating of course to make a point but it’s true. We hardly ever stop and take note of what we feel and give it the importance it deserves. I’m not talking about emotions either. I’m talking about the simple direct perceptions that a child might have. Become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and all that.

I’m not religious but I figure neither was Jesus. He was someone who tried to welcome people to the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. Atleast that’s how it’s translated. Who knows how he actually said it. Probably in some elegant simple way that startled people with it’s obviousness. The birds of the field want not and all that. Obvious.

It’s in every holy book. Otherwise it wouldn’t be holy. How to come into the knowledge of now, where reality is, where the Kingdom of Heaven is, where the obvious is seen and acknowledged. That’s what it’s about or no one would revere it.

So that’s my sermon for today. My dad was a preacher. Baptist. He would hold forth every Sunday morning for the benefit of the assembled congregation and I would sit there in the third pew between my mother and my little brother and fidget and try to focus and try to understand something. I don’t remember any of the words but I remember the service. Something must of stuck.

Of course later in life I discovered many different forms of communion. Many different fonts of wisdom sprang forth from many different sources. If they had the perfume of truth I inhaled. That’s the best way I can put it. Truth does have a perfume. It’s intoxicating. You can feel it.

Now on to politics. No, just kidding. Ha ha. Talk about noise. Folks, the whole earth will disappear someday. No kidding.

Human civilization as we know it will change into something we can’t imagine. I mean do you think the cavemen from 50,000 years ago could imagine our lifestyle? Cars and airplanes and spaceships? Submarines and such. No. To answer my own question. Even the wise ones, the shamans. That’s what life on earth will turn into - something we can’t imagine.

The only thing that will remain is what has always been here. Truth. The real deal and the ability to experience it. That’s what I think.

Amen and pass the collection plate, or atleast sign on, comment, share or buy me a coffee. I’m working hard and hoping for a break. I’m trying to keep it real.

music :: Billy Esteban - Ethno Deep House 2023 from 7:22

It was so pleasant and positive that I wondered how many other positive happenings might be happening here and there across my fair city. Probably alot. I decided to write about it.

The Charis sisters, Jess and Taylor, were there with their balloons. Well they’re not actually sisters but they’re totally positive. They activate and inspire many positive happenings in the neighborhood actually.

The strawberry girl was there with her beautiful blonde hair and fresh strawberries from Poteet. I forgot her name of course but she was totally positive.

Red and sweet with green stems. They were a big hit with the kids.

The gnarly oak tree stood nearby. It’s been pruned alot that’s probably why it’s so gnarly. I like it alot.

On the other side of the parking lot its mate is flourishing.

I rolled on towards the downtown and cut through Brackenridge Park. The sound of laughter caught my ear and I followed it. There was a birthday party happening alongside the river. One very happy girl with all her sisters shining on.

I stopped and talked to them, got permission to take their picture. They were laughing, having a good time so good I took their picture twice.

Thank you.

The fountains at the Pearl were spurting forth streams of water, delighting the children. They jumped in and out, got wet, screamed. A very positive happening in my opinion.

Joy and glee, afraid to get wet and then jumping in. If the kids are happy then we will be in good hands. That’s my conclusion. They will grow up to be capable, strong adults, positive and affirmative and having fun. That’s what I think. Fountains and sandboxes in public places! That would be my issue if I had an issue.

Got the forms set and pouring concrete. It’s a good feeling along the San Pedro Culture Park.

I watched them for awhile. Waved. Tried to identify their ethnicity. If they were Hispanic I might attempt a joke. They were. But they were too busy, they were in the middle of a pour. Creating new sidewalks and flat smooth places for me to ride my bike. I blessed them. They blessed me. It was a positive happening with concrete.

“This is a beautiful place” I say to a guy in a wheelchair farther down the Culture Park.”Yeah” he says.”Peaceful” I say.”Very beautiful” and I pass by. Didn’t fall in the river or anything.

The old Cactus Hotel sign is still visible downtown on Flores Street. But who would want to sleep on a cactus?

Palm Sunday at the San Fernando Cathedral.

Everybody getting their palm leaves ready to wave at Jesus as he rides by on a donkey. What a beautiful celebration. And it’s Spring. Everything is sort of fresh and welcoming. I feel welcomed.

I wonder what Jesus would do if he saw this guy, a few blocks away. Not a positive happening.

I can’t tell if he’s sleeping with his head on the curb or if he’s raising his head to look over at me. He didn’t say anything or give me a signal. I didn’t say anything to him. Jesus would have walked over there and said, “Hey brother are you ok?” That’s what Jesus would have done. I’m pretty sure.

Me and Fern, my coachsurfing house guest . . .

. . . sharing the cafe experience the next day and bike riding. Positively positive.

Adventuring and exploring. Rolling free, wherever the winds blow. Down along the Culture Park . . .

. . . the native woman with a picture of her house on her blouse and the arrowhead necklace. An amazing mural. She’s surrounded by the artifacts of her culture: pumpkin, iguana, flowers and fish, a rabbit, several rabbits, all costumed in their natural dress as the natives would have seen them possibly.

And reflected in the water.

A tiny flower growing out of the wall along the creek.

Somehow a tiny seed floated in there, found a niche, a crevice, a crack where it could sprout and grow, flower even. And it did. It fulfilled its full potential. Kissed by the wall, the crazy wall. Positively happening.

Positive happenings, I finally realized, were happening everywhere if I was alert enough to spot them. Each pedal stroke and each breath of life are positive happenings if I can focus down to enough detail to see them. Each splash of light on the screen of my brain is a positive happening. I believe everything may be a positive happening and a fortuitous event because it is happening.

I mean can you entertain the notion of not existing? What would that be like? Nothing. It would be like nothing and no thing happening. Puts it in perspective, right? Every happening is a positive development because it’s happening. Because we exist we are happening and because we are happening we exist. It’s a good deal. It’s alot more than I bargained for.

We rode around downtown until we were tired and thirsty and beat and hot, partially sunburned, then we headed back. Up river and into the hills we went until we found ourselves back home again. Back where we started from. I jumped in the pool. What a positive happening that was.

music :: Marc Hartman - Crystal Sea

Then I will stop, Vincent, and warm myself at your fire. I know you had great struggles and turmoils and equally great transformations and victories. I know that you came into your highest powers while the depression and madness worked on you the most.

And I know that you took your own life in the end, succumbed to the relentless sadness, the terrible visions, the voices in the night. You left this crazy world behind.

What’s that? It wasn’t all bad, you say? Sometimes the visions and vision itself became blurred and you experienced something quite wonderful? I’m sure you did. The vibrating wheat field and the crows rising up out of it, every brushstroke purposefully placed and full of meaning.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, a town in the southern Netherlands, near Belgium. His father, Theodorus van Gogh, was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus came from a prosperous family in the Hague.

Young Vincent was schooled at home by his mother and a governess until he was old enough to attend the village school. Then, when he was eleven, his parents sent him to a boarding school in a nearby town where he felt abandoned and lonely and entreated his parents to let him return home. Instead they sent him to another boarding school in Tillburg, the largest city in the area. He described his youth as being "austere and cold and sterile”.

At the age of 16 he was accepted as an apprentice to an art dealer. His Grandfather and three of his uncles had been or were art dealers and they kind of opened the door for him. He was assigned to London where he fell in love and was rejected, went to Paris and while there grew distrustful of the art dealer’s world and their commodification of painting. He was dismissed from his position.

A phase of pious religiosity followed his professional failure. He aspired to become a minister but couldn’t pass the exam and ended up a missionary to the peasants in the coal mining region of Belgium.

The people there were so poor that he gave up his own lodging to a coal miner and slept on a straw mattress in a hut. His superiors were not impressed by his charity and dismissed him.

He returned home and at the advice of his brother, Theo, started to draw and develop his skill as an artist. He fell in love with his cousin, Kee, who had come to visit and was rejected. His father was profoundly disappointed in him and suggested that he be committed to a lunatic asylum. I guess things were getting dicey.

He met up with his cousin Mauve in the Hague who was already a successful artist and started painting in oils under his tutelage. They were getting along fine, Mauve set him up with a studio and everything but then they fell out. He moved in with an alcoholic prostitute who had a child and was pregnant with another and contemplated getting married. His father freaked out. He abandoned her and left town but loneliness eventually drove him to return home.

Things didn’t work out with his father but he was painting. His palette was dark and brooding but he was making art.

He moved to Antwerp and bought into the starving artist lifestyle. He painted like crazy. He also smoked like crazy, drank too much and survived on bread and coffee. Not exactly a healthy lifestyle.

He joined the Academy there but quarreled with the instructor and left, went to Paris and set up an apartment with his brother, Theo, who had been supporting him financially and emotionally. Paris in 1886 was alive with artists and exhibitions and he met many of them and saw their work. He painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still lifes, landscapes. Painting, painting, always painting.

Inevitably conflict arose between the two brothers but they managed to patch it up. Theo and Vincent were a team. They loved each other.

Finally, ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, he sought refuge in Arles, in the south of France. It was February 1888.

It was in Arles that he came into full possession of his powers. Even as his health was declining his art was bursting out, exploring, experiencing freedom. He painted some of his best pictures while going insane in Arles. The warm colors of the wheat field, the cobalt blue of the sky. The angry Cypress tree, the voluptuous wheat.

He painted a series of sunflower pictures and decorated his house with them.

He aspired to create an artists' collective in Arles and invited the artist Gaugin to join him which he did for a short time but they quarreled. He suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. He was anxious that Gaugin would abandon him, which he did. One evening, brandishing a razor in a confrontation, Gaugin left the house and Van Gogh followed him. When he returned home he cut off his own ear.

He had himself committed to the asylum in Saint-Rémy and painted scenes he saw through the bars of his bedroom window. Both a sun and a moon appeared there.

The last few months of his life he spent in Auvers, a small town just north of Paris, after he left the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1890 but his mental illness relapsed and on July 27 he shot himself with a pistol and died two days later.

You were considered an eccentric, Vincent, a madman. You were ignored and misunderstood and rejected in your lifetime but your paintings never failed to rise above all that. You created art that transformed the most humble of natural scenes into ones suffused with energy, glowing with light, filled with a manic exuberance and at the same time a playfulness. Just by looking at your paintings I can feel the power of your brushstrokes, again and again striking the canvas. I can feel your delight and your energy. I can feel your presence.

So Happy Birthday Vincent. It’s now March 30, 2023. Happy 170th birthday. You have become one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, I must tell you. I mean in all of Western art history your name would be mentioned as one of the stars. Yes, the stars as in Starry Night.

You did not have an easy life but you produced some of the most exquisitely beautiful paintings ever painted, nearly 900 of them, and most created during the last two years of your life.

Thanks for the souvenirs. And thanks for the letters you left in correspondence with your brother, over 600 of them. “I have walked the earth for 30 years and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir.” you mentioned in one of them.

I get it. I try to do the same. I think we all do, most of us. Leaving a small souvenir of having been here is maybe all we can do.

music :: 01:06:12 Lisofv - No Rest Or Endless Rest

Here we are in the modern world.

Our storytelling is all electronic, pretty much these days, unless you’re waiting in line at the cafe then somebody might say “Is that your bike?” and you would says “yes”, so pleased that someone would notice and embark on a story of your own, something short and pithy hopefully, and they respond with their own story, how they rode their bike 43 mph one time down a mountain, and even a little squiggle going at that rate would have been a disaster.

Or at the supermarket, you’re just leaving and someone says “Hi. So good to see you. How’s Mabel.” referring to your dog who just had a vasectomy at the vets. Then you can tell the story of Mabel and the vet and how she’s home now and feeling better. By that time you’ll be in the parking lot and she will remember the story of her uncle Joe who just went through a similar procedure.

Our transportation is all automatic. Horseless carriages. They convey ourselves and our goods over large distances quickly without complaint. Trains and airplanes and automobiles. Wasn’t that the name of a movie?

The whole planet, instead of being an unexplored and dangerous place, is known and mapped and accessible. Forget about the ancient ancestors wandering around looking for berries and trying not to get eaten by a tiger. We know where the food is and where the tigers are. Grocery store / zoo.

But in another sense the modern world hasn’t changed at all. People still have wars as if they were some kind of tonic, some kind of medicine, some kind of traditional way of making things better. We still speak in words. We still ask for the same things from each other. And the animals, they do their thing, as they always have, although in an altered world.

I wonder how much area is still wild and pristine and unaffected by the modern world. Not much. The North Pole, the South Pole, the bottom of the sea. Well not that, there’s probably a ship wreck or an old tire down there, a ripped up fishing net cast over the sea floor.

Studies have been done on the way humans remember. Stories are the way human beings remember. This is who we are. This is how we do it. Otherwise we might get really confused. Even more confused than we already are. Tigers don’t have to deal with that, they’re locked in. I have never once seen a tiger pretending to be a rabbit. In fact I’ve never seen a tiger except in the zoo. They always look bored to me, bored and frustrated, but still a tiger.

Another interesting thing about modern life is that this moment that we are in right now is the culmination of all history. Everything that has come before has led to this.

If the apocalypse wipes out society as we know it and we have to re-build, in a hundred years we would have cities and towns and governments of some sort, nations even, and they would carry on the same functions that they do today. Maybe a few modifications would be in order.

Thanks to Japanese Breakfast for the music. ‘Diving Woman’ and ‘Road Head’.

Actually there is more than one spring in the 46 acre San Pedro Park, but most of the time they’re dry. They don’t flow. Only if there is a major rain event will the springs fill with water and spill out into the creek bed.

However, due to a miracle of city engineering, the springs do seem to flow out of a wall on the edge of the pool. Water surges from a row of pipes as if there was a spring behind it. It fills the pool where the tall Cypress stand, studying their reflection in the water, where the sky, blue and white, is admiring it’s face - if I might borrow a phrase. This was the place of Mother Nature. This was the place where the people gathered. The people who lived here thousands of years ago when the springs flowed naturally knew something about that.

Below the spacious pond there is no water. It disappears as magically as it appeared. Strange.

In fact the entire river bed disappears underground, under the VIA bus barn across the street. It doesn’t reappear until it’s on the other side of Flores, at Five points, a quarter mile away.

Five Points is marked by a historical marker explaining that this is where the stage coach crossed the river on its way to Fredericksburg back in the day and before that where the Comanches crossed before they got chased off. It was the best place to ford the creek on account of the shallow water and the sandy bottom. Actually it’s not much of a creek at this point, it’s only a few inches deep

Two hundred yards after the stream emerges from underground, it enters a large concrete tunnel.

The tunnel divides and forms side channels. They penetrate the earth looking for a way out. They provide a canvas for local artists.

They provide shelter for local residents.

These paintings go deep underground, beyond where I chose to venture.

“Who is it?” someone called out. “Exploring.” I replied. “What?” “I’m just exploring.” Silence.

The creek briefly re-emerges under the I-10 expressway and then disappears again.

It doesn’t reappear until just before the Culture Park where a giant filtering machine lifts trash out of the water.

On the other side of the giant filtering machine is another wall, a water wall.

The water streams down the face of the wall and enters the San Pedro Creek Culture Park, a half mile of elaborate urban landscaping that highlights the creek and it’s history, on it’s way to the downtown and eventually confluence with the San Antonio River.

There are 54 signs, inscriptions, emblems, plaques, maps and murals along the San Pedro Creek Culture Park (I counted them) from it’s inception at the giant water wall to it’s termination at Cesar Chavez Blvd. Enough for half a day of strolling along the promenades and reading signs.

There are embayments and swales built into the landscaping, ramps, channels and waterfalls. It unfolds as you walk. Or in my case ride. Gees millions of dollars must have been spent on this place. Anyways, it’s fantastic, a landscaped garden amidst the towering downtown buildings.

The theme of the San Pedro Culture Park is inclusion. How all these different people from all different parts of the world came together and built their communities on the banks of the San Pedro Creek.

Immigrants came: from Germany, Poland, France, Lebanon, the Canary Islands, Italy, and mixed with the Indigenous people, the Mexicans and the African-Americans and the American-Americans that settled here along the creek. That’s what the signs tell us.

That’s what the inscription says chiseled into the rock along the creek, “DE TODOS CAMINOS SOMOS TODOS UNO” it says. From many roads we came and become one.

The signs describe how the river was transformed from it’s naturally lush and fertile tree lined self, providing food and shelter for man, animal and plant, to being lined with garden plots and grazing land by the early settlers, to having houses and buildings built up along its banks, to being forced into channels by concrete walls and culverts, to being buried alive underground and basically turned into a drainage ditch. It also tells the story of reviving it, the renovation and restoration of the creek, returning it to a place of respect.

That’s the San Pedro Culture Park all along the creek from the wall of water to downtown. It’s the story of how this creek was a blessing to the people who lived back then and how it is a blessing now to the people who live downtown.

Behind the wall of water it’s still a drainage ditch. It’s still buried underground in places and still has concrete banks. But the good thing is that it’s still here and it’s remembered. Now the houses and businesses from the 1800’s are gone and huge buildings have taken over but the stream still winds it’s way, as it has for millions of years, through fields and forests and habitations and cities and has always nourished whoever came to her.

The music for this fable is from Tinarawen, a band from the desert area of Mali in North Africa. Their native rhythms and chord play mix with the Blues from the Southern United States to create a unique sound.

tone poem

somehow i see christmas trees while listening to this brightly lit christmas trees / numerous and shinyglittery

now it’s dark / a large pit with only one ladder / it’s broken

then the wars of Rome on a newsreel / a battle scene

clear water / like a gel or an expensive brand of toothpastenow it’s greenish

it’s amazing what you can see when you close your eyesand listen to this music

a little kid hiding under a straw manger appears / must be on a farm or somethingshe’s peeking out from underneath / smiling / mischievous

a crowd of people in the mist / just their heads are visible

an old testament scene / moses coming downfrom the mountain excitedly with his stone tablets

the soaring flute / pure freedom

conversation

“The thing is if you threw a tire over, if you went out in the middle of the ocean over the Marianas trench and threw a tire over. That tire would end up in the Marianas Trench, 5 miles deep, down there with all the sub oceanic animals. And if you went down there with a deep underwater submarine sometime and with a flashlight, looked around, you would see a tire. B. F. Goodrich. Bald on one edge.”

“Well, that’s probably not entirely true. At that depth even if the tire was intact you wouldn’t see B. F. Goodrich.”

“Yeah, so what. It doesn’t matter. I’m just sayin - wouldn’t that be weird if you went down there on your super submersible bathyscope and you wanted to see the deepest part of the ocean, the deep deep deepest part of the ocean where all things come to rest and then you find a tire. B. F. Goodrich.”

“Brother, you’re drunk and I’m not James Cameron.”

“I know it. I know I’m probly drunk. It’s like that scene in that movie, the one with John Candy. Know which one I mean? John Candy and what’s his name. The guy with the rabbit ears. Yeah. So . . . I’m sorry.”

“What’s your name?”

“John.”

“Seriously?”

“John.”

“My name is John too.”

“Well how do you do, John too. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. That part when their car burned up. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

comment

James Cameron was in my dream once. We were working on a project in his studio. It was this massive sci fi thing with glass covering one whole side and kind of a wave roof. The studio I mean, not the movie. I don’t remember what the movie was about.

I mention that just because I did write a Sci Fi movie once. It was a trilogy. Maybe that’s what we were working on. I don’t remember.

The name of the movie was ‘Oah Kanah’, that being the names of the two principal characters and the carriers of the plot. Oah and Kanah are alien spies from a planet far far away whose sun is supernoving. They need a new planet.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side you are on Oah and Kanah have completely forgotten what their mission is on account of the interstellar space travel and the shock of taking on a human body. They feel that there is something important to do in life but they can’t remember what it is.

When they ‘accidentally’ meet at a restaurant in South Beach (it was bound to happen), Oa is a food server and Kanah is driving a sporty car and wearing trendy clothes. They instantly fall in love and have sex. Well not there in the restaurant but later on in their dating. The psychic energy released with their love making reconnects them to who they actually are and what they’re supposed to be doing.

They get in touch with the mother planet right away and send a glowing report of planet earth. Everything would be very suitable here. The dominant species is destructive and unstable. Recommend removal.

Meanwhile the FBI is on their trail. The FBI and the CIA and the NSA and the Air Force and the Marines. They know there was an incursion from outer space carrying life forms.

While the security agencies are chasing around Oah and Kanah, they are busy collecting evidence for their report. Lot’s of evidence concerning the violent and erratic behavior of the dominant species. That would of course be humans.

So, skipping ahead a few chapters, the invasion fleet arrives, Oah and Kanah get out of town just in time in their Aston Martin and a huge war begins. Start of the second movie, earth is peaceful, but a closer look reveals that there are aliens everywhere, not a human to be seen. Well there’s a few scattered around doing menial labor. Know what I mean?

Yes the aliens have taken over and humans, the few who remain, are basically enslaved. Oah and Kanah, being heroes of the culture, celebrate the Festival of Human every year where they take their human bodies and commemorate the two things they loved most about humans - farming and sex.

From there it goes where Oah and Kanah actually birth a human baby in their celebratory ritual and eventually give birth to a new humanity who eventually rise up and throw off their oppressors (third movie in the trilogy).

Everything sort of goes back to how it was at the beginning of the first movie. Oah and Kanah have become mythic, sort of deities and people (humans) take pride in them and copy their style, how they are represented in popular culture. The Kanah haircut, the Oah dress how it falls across the body like a ancient Greek robe.

Everything changes and then becomes what it was before is sort of the takeaway, atleast for me. I guess I couldn’t convince James Cameron to give it a shot in the dream. It would of cost a hundred million dollars. He doesn’t even know who I am.

music :: Eternity Sunset [Chillout Remix] Bloomfield and the incredibly talented flautist Lenny Mac Dowell

If only we could know the magic of plants: who they are, how they work, what they do - we would be rich indeed, that’s my thought as I ponder the profusion of aloes.

Old don Juan was a plant guy. He could talk to plants, apparantly, according to the locals myths. That was the gossip around town when Carlos Castaneda showed up looking for an informant among the Yaqui Indian community, someone who could teach him about the medicinal uses of plants. Old don Juan could walk out into the Sonoran desert and in 15 minutes find a half dozen plants with medicinal value of some sort.

I’ve had many Aloes and for a long time, here on my porch. Occasionally I give them away to neighbors and friends in an attempt to control the population explosion.

I can’t possibly eat down that many. Yes, I do eat them. Cut off a leaf, open it up with a knife and scoop out all the gel with a spoon. That goes in the smoothie. Along with the frozen mango, one ripe banana, a few tablespoons of goat yogurt and some almond milk.

I also use it on cuts, abrasions and sunburn, wherever it may be. Sometimes on top of my head. The sunburn I mean.

This bloom stalk is the first I’ve ever witnessed on my Aloes. Assumably it will rise up high, tend its antenna and open a spray of flowers for the bugs to come and get some nectar. Share the pollen with other blooming antennas in the vicinity. I think it’s just the greatest thing.

I’m friends with my Aloe. I’m no don Juan but I take care of them. When the freezing cold blasts of winter come I take them inside. Otherwise they would turn purple and die. I’ve seen it happen.

I greet them every morning when I get my bike out and trundle it down the steps into the driveway. Hey how are you Aloe I say or something like that, thanks for being here. They’re the ones who lead me out into the new day and they’re the ones who welcome me back home.

Of course Aloe has been used throughout history. It shows up in the Bible. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, it says in John 19:39, referring to the entombment of Jesus.

It was recommended by Dioscorides, the first century Greek doctor, for wounds, binding, insomnia, stomach disorders, pain, constipation, hemorrhoids, itching, headache, loss of hair, mouth and gum diseases, kidney ailments, blistering, skin care, sunburn, and blemishes.

The ancient Egyptians praised the many medicinal values of Aloe way back in the BC days. It was written about in the Ebers Papyrus. That was hieroglyphics.

Aloe Vera, called Sábila in Spanish, Ghrita-kumari in Sanskrit, Jadam in Malaysian, Lu-hui in Chinese, Erva Babosa in Portuguese and Aloe Barbadenisis in scientific nomenclature, has been recognized for its medicinal properties for thousands of years and all over the world.

Why does it have such medicinal properties? Aloe is a member of the Xeroid family of plants and they have the ability to completely close their stomata. Stomata are the pores in the leaves that allow the plant to ‘breathe’, but for a tropical desert plant like Aloe it sometimes is beneficial to close the pores to conserve water. In fact the fronds will stay plump with water even if you haven’t watered it in a while. They can also close a wound or a cut, like if you cut off a leaf or a portion of a leaf, it will close up like a tube of toothpaste. Well not really like a tube of toothpaste more like sealing off the chips bag with a clothes pin. Sort of. Anyways it seems to have this nature to want to heal, like that’s its purpose in life - to heal and mend and close the wound. That’s how I read it. But I’m not don Juan.

Thank you Aloe Vera for standing by me, and for your lovely spire.

podcast soundtrack :: 03:49 The Sura Quintet - Cosmic Illusion

Some of the information in this post came from Aloe Vera Handbook by Max B. Skousen. It’s a book I had buried in my storage room until I started unloading all that and going thru it. I discovered alot of stuff. Personal letters from 40 years ago. Photographs from living on the beach days in Mexico. Poetry written in another era. It was kind of like an archaeological dig.

I’m having this sort of epic mythic battle in my mind: my desire to be a hermit and latibulate vs. my aspiration to be a famous poet and go to book signings.

Part of me wants to start up new projects like podcasting on location, live with interviews and interactions. But then I realize I would have to interact with people and be responsible. As it is now I can cruise down Broadway any time I want, free as the wind. No place to go and location unknown.

As a published author I would have contractural obligations, I would be vulnerable to other people’s expectations. I would have to appear in the public mind. I would need an identity.

I’m thinking of ‘The Polar Express’. The movie. The most remarkable character was the hobo on the roof drinking hot coffee from a tin can. Well that’s besides the waiter, of course, who was Tom Hanks and the little boy who didn’t know if he believes in Christmas. Santa Claus doesn’t weigh in hardly at all as a memorable character. The hobo is who I remember. Kinda crazy and kinda dangerous but free as bird up on top of the train with his campfire going.

Van life is calling me - traveling to the Great Northwest or the equally great Northeast, the beach, the mountains, the desert but another part of me is comfortable in my happy house in my little neighborhood. A toilet that flushes and hot water that gushes out with the twist of a valve, a kitchen with a refrigerator and a stove, a bedroom with a bed and 2 cats who apparantly need my assistance to go in or out of the house.

My house sits on concrete pillars sunk into the ground so it doesn’t move at all, but then again, it doesn’t move. I can’t take it with me. Wind or flood can’t move it either, so that’s good. There are advantages to both, a house that moves with you and a house that stays in one place. I can imagine a time when having a house stuck in the ground was considered a great privilege. Before that they always moved around. Van life.

The other day I got up, took a hot shower, meditated for an hour or so in my comfortable chair, got on my bike and rolled out. My basic route usually takes me down New Braunfels to Austin Highway and down Austin Highway to Broadway and down Broadway all the way to downtown.

I stopped at the site of the old Rod East car dealership about half way down, next to Half Price Books. There were two women on the lot, talking, standing next to their cars so I rode up next to them and inquired as to the purpose of their conversation, or maybe it was a stupid joke so I could break into their conversation, I don’t remember now but they were tolerant. They were discussing possible uses of the lot and it’s ideal location on Broadway. Quite a spacious lot, by the way, with a few trees.

They seemed open to suggestions so I cranked up my Broadway story for them . . . and this was an ancient sacred pathway from the Springs, where Mother Nature herself lived to the rich alluvial valley downtown, where the San Pedro creek and San Antonio river almost come together. The pathway between those two enchanted places is represented by modern day Broadway. We have four bookstores, we have museums, parks, cafes and restaurants. It’s the premier boulevard of our fair city.’ And on and on I went for awhile. They seemed interested. We left on good terms.

Then I stopped by the Antiquarian Book Mart, which is basically next door, to visit Bob, the proprietor. He’s been running that place for 50 years. His bookstore is an old house with a labyrinth of rooms all lined with home made wooden book shelves and stuffed with thousands of used books on various subjects. The hand lettered signs above the entryway give you a clue. Poetry. History of Texas. Psychology. Religion. Fantasy.

We chatted for awhile, me and Bob, shot the breeze as he puts it, laughed out loud, joked, reminisced, told stories. I feel a kindred spirit with Bob, having been in the book business for so many years myself.

You commune with people you like and then that’s your community. I know but then sometimes you also end up with social responsibilities and expectations. That’s my dilemma. Not that Bob expects anything of me but they kinda go together.

I don’t know the answer. I’m good at making the waves, not too good at calming them down.

My bicycle ride went on and on that morning, kinda like surfing. Riding here and there. When I reached the downtown, the ancient enchanted place where the big trees grew and the water flowed, I pulled up to the Royal Blue and locked off my bike. I know most of the people there. They know me. I razz them. Occasionally they razz me back. I grabbed my ‘Root Bexar’, a local product bottled by Southside Beverages and sat outside at the table along Houston Street watching the cars and the people and the occasional bicyclist.

I cruised by the Ride in Paradise bike shop on South Flores and met Joe Richard the owner, then I went by the Southside Beverages warehouse at 2600 South Flores to meet the kind people who make ‘Root Bexar’ and met one of them. She gave me some free samples for Joe at the Bottom Bracket because he wanted to try it.

On the way home I stopped at Oscar de la Tienda on North Flores and met Alex who suggested the idea of doing live podcasts at his store. He invited me to the next event happening in their spare space.

Outside, construction workers were tearing up the street. Hello, when are you going to be done? I queried. Probably by the end of the month replied one of the workers standing nearby in his fluorescent safety vest next to the barricades. He was forthright and obliging and seemed pleased with the interaction.

I passed a photographer in a small city park with his camera set up on a tripod, apparantly shooting the park benches. I stopped and talked to him. He was a student working on an assignment for his photography class, exploring his craft.

All these people along the way are my community. All these incidents are the contents of my day, the ride from my house to downtown - an epic journey in it’s own way. Excellent little adventures, surprises and coincidences and lovely connections with friendly people.

Anyways I doubt if I will ever figure out what I want to do with my life. It’s always changing. The world is changing and I am changing so the battle never really stops. Don’t know about the enlightened ones but that’s my observation. There’s always turbulence unless I turn within and focus on the one thing that doesn’t win or lose - a simple breath. I still may not know what to do but I feel good about it.

podcast music :: 31:48 Chimay - Go & See

38:00 Climatic - Oblivion

“So here's to lifeAnd every joy it bringsSo here's to lifeTo dreamers and their dreams”

Brilliant. After reviewing my own life for awhile, I found myself fascinated with the story of Shirley Horn (who I discovered by mindlessly browsing the internet). She was born in Washington D.C. in 1934 and encouraged to play the piano by her grandmother. At age 4 she started taking piano lessons and by the time she was 12 she was studying classical piano and composition at Howard University. But she was also a member of the African diaspora, a descendent of those people who had been kidnapped, shipped across an ocean and enslaved. And here she is rising, triumphant, with the power of a tribal queen. That’s my point.

It amazes me that those people, displaced and denigrated (even to the point of questioning their humanity) rebuilt their culture from scraps in their new world and brought forth the music of the Delta Blues and New Orleans jazz and gospel music and the rhythm and blues of Motown and so much more. Their bodies may have been enslaved but not their souls. They retained the rhythms and the powerful emotions of their homeland. It showed up again and again. It was the resilience of Black culture and really of the human heart that is represented in Horn’s music.

And then there’s the story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The Gospel singer who influenced Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, the Beatles and basically all of rock n roll.

“She woke up the congregation”, said Pastor Robert Hargrove from the Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia where Tharpe used to perform. “When she came and they saw the expression, or the freedom that she expressed in her singin’ and dancin’ it woke up the congregation. It focused them on something that was on the inside, that they never gave expression to.”

Helen Henderson, who was 10 years old when she first saw Tharpe at the Church of God in Christ back in the 1930’s, said. “Oh she had the most beautiful voice . . . and the way she would speak to you. It made you feel different. You knew somethin was goin on even if you didn’t understand really what it was. And that’s the way it was with me because I was a child.”

Both of these people are quoted in the documentary, The Sister Rosetta Tharpe Story along with amazing music of the time and alot of history of Black people in America.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Shirley Horn, two powerful black women singing and bringing the heat, the passion, changing the world with their powerful voices and reminding us all what it is to be human. They have risen from the ashes of slavery to the glory of popular acclaim and admiration. It’s the indomitable human spirit, isn’t it? It’s the resilience of the human heart that it returns again and again and rises up and shines its light, rings its bell, whatever you want to call it. It’s indomitable and resilient, that’s what I say and I take great comfort in that.

“No complaints and no regretsI still believe in chasing dreams and placing betsBut I have learned that all you give is all you getSo give it all you got”

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It’s not like there’s not enough going on all around me all the time - the cars, the city, the wars, the bombings, the biosphere, the blogosphere, people doing things, the news, the economy, money, the stock market, issues and reasons and logos and diseases. Way more than I can even comprehend.

It makes me want to hide, find shelter and disappear or atleast become unimportant. Watch the sun rise and watch the sun set. Retire to the forest, or is it an ashram.

There is the inner world, of course. But that doesn’t need any reportage. It’s there for us to see, plain as it can be.

Either it’s going alright or it’s not. Or it’s some variation of either one. The meter marks the retrograde or forward progress on the face of the clock. Time shutters between when and then. It already happened. It might happen again.

And so I went to the cafe. That’s my safe place. Got a table by the window and a chance to say hi to a baby. She was passing by in her stroller.

“Hi Beauty”, I spoke from my stool. She (or maybe he) was watching me closely, her head nodded slightly when I said ‘beauty’.

Babies absorb whatever they experience. They have no filter. It becomes their reality. Now that baby knows that it’s beautiful. Confirmed by a stranger. She will never forget that.

That seems important. Somewhere in the depths of her or his baby brain she knows, because she received the message, that she is beautiful.

Some people think that babies don’t remember anything. Some people think they can’t possibly understand the adult words that are being spoken around them. I think they probably understand way more than we can even imagine.

They understand the tone of voice and facial expressions. They probably have some sense of inference. They calibrate the closeness of a parent, the familiarity of a scene and generate meaning. Even if they don’t know the definition of the word ‘beauty’, they know what’s being said.

The mom thanked me as she left, pushing the stroller. The baby inside made no sign, just stared.

music 1:41:18-1:47:45

the trees form a border between heaven and earthagainst a hazy morning skythe broad street is paved with asphalt a river flooded with cars

it’s a paradeall different kinds of carsdriven (no doubt) by all different kindsof people thinking all different kinds of thoughts

i’m not a big fan of cars i mean they’re probly better than horsesfor getting around / you don’t have to hitchup old nellie and hope she’s in a good moodand then ride along behind her

but they’re so ubiquitous it’s a car epidemic / how did we getso strung out on cars ??my mind is full of thoughts about cars

i was joking with the barista / told hermy name was bob / made contact with apatron what are you reading i asked her / it was abook about business communication i told her i’m a creative writer and gave her my cardif someone is reading a book in the cafei figure they’re fair game

the matcha latte was delightful / the emptycup beautiful / the morning is exhilarating / i can’t even feel the coldair outside the window

some cars have signs on them vans really with their business advertised / when i wasa kid i had a prophetic vision: that oneday cars would have pictures on themit came true

me and my little brotherused to lie in bed at night and try toguess what make and model of carwas about to drive by in the street just by listening to the sound of it that’s when the prophetic visioncame to me

the matcha latte hitsthoughts flood my mind buses have murals on them a truck goes by carrying portable toilets / the FEDEXtruck definitely has a sign / hugepurple and orange letters / an airplane fliesthru the sky / cars rush by / my we are in a hurry

now i’m thinking what if i wrote a real book ??but what is a real book ?? one that people buyand read / i don’t know if i can writeone of those

now i’m thinkingtrees leave their skeletonremains over winter / upside down rootsin the air

now i’m thinkingpeople walk / then they get intheir cars and drive / the cars do the walkingfor them

now i’m done thinking i’m gonna go ride my bike down broadway and smell the restaurants / maybe stop at astop light / maybe stop and see raphael at district cafe

make my way along the sidewalk / amble down the ancient pathway / it runs next to the river from the springs to the downtown loopwhere the thick forest grew

smooth jazz was the music they heard in the trees overheadin the sky up above / in the rippling brook / the rocks and the sand

how pleasant it all isnow i’m staring out the windowat the passing cars thinking of nothing

music :: 01:45:58 Alex Neri - Asia 01:12:39 Olivo Street - Sweet Carnival

Most of you may not realize it, or even care (haha), but the podcast is edited on Final Cut Pro - a video and audio editing software from Apple. I use it because I’m familiar with it from my days of doing documentaries. It does a good job.

The spoken word part is recorded on my laptop using a Snowball external mic (looks like a snowball), with a percussive filter on it (so the p’s don’t pop) and Quick Time Player 7 which was just laying around my computer. Not doing anything. It works great too.

I steal the music from Youtube with a program called Camtasia, a really cool software that will copy whatever is on your screen, video and audio. I only use the audio of course.

Then I take the two files, the music is an mp3 file and the voice audio is mp4, import them into Final Cut Pro, open up a new project and start laying the tracks down. This is what it looks like.

I can change volume, put gaps in the spoken word track (or the music track), fade in and out, filter, equalize and lots of other cool stuff. By the time it’s all finished you should have a sweet sounding podcast. Something that flows, something that has healing properties, and is meaningful.

The music is what gives it a deeper resonance, emotional depth, an element that wasn’t there before, another layer. This is why storytellers of old were accompanied by lyre, drum and flute, or some combination thereof. Whatever it took to get the message across. To bridge the gap between performer and audience. Talker and listener. One heart to one heart.

This is what my dad used to do with his Sunday morning sermons. This is what we all wish to do with our ‘Good Morning’ greeting. This is what the sun is saying as it rises on a new day. And when it sets when day is done.

This is our life. Looking for elation.

music ::

I spent the past week in quiet repose. Nothing compelling appeared on the screen of my mind, no writing projects, no ambitious need to say something, no urgency to accomplish anything.

Mostly what I’ve been trying to do is inhabit my own body; own it and feel it. Notice my own existence and be in communion with it. Sleep alot. Wake up slowly. Eat simply. Meditate. I’ve been meditating.

Kairos, I was told today in the cafe, is an ancient Greek god, brother of Chronos as in chronograph, a watch, linear time, quantitative time. Kairos, on the other hand, his brother, is the god of spontaneous time, of the propitious moment, the dance of the hours, qualitative time. I’ve been spending this week in Kairos time.

There are projects. Home repair. Replacing the rotten boards on my backyard shed for example. I have put this project off for so long that the boards I got to replace the rotten boards are rotten. They have been sitting on the ground buried in leaves for two years and the mushroom mycelium has started to digest them. I pulled them out, cleaned them off, found some good wood - enough to cover the spans needed. Tomorrow I’ll cut them to length and stain them, when they’re dry I’ll install them. Screws, no nails.

All in Kairos time. In the flow of things. It’s a great blessing. A way to heal many things. A way to finally get something done.

I think that’s what my week of repose has been all about. Healing. Finding a deeper sense of feeling ok, finding elation, Consorting with the gods. It turns out that elation is the elixir that cures all pain.

Wow. I didn’t know that.

music :: Roberto Bronco - Day after Day

what do children feel before they can speak? what do trees feel between their roots? we know they communicatethru the mushroom myceliumsignals are sent in the form of chemicals

these things are placed among ussky and treescars and buildingsit’s wild as a jungle out therethe connections of peopleour politics and thingsthey fix our place

agenda vs. agenda consumes most of our daymost daysmaneuvering and jostling for positionstanding in linewaitingthe birds are friendlywith the treesbut cautious around people

what do i need?what can i share? say the treesblue on white says the skycirrus clouds combed into a furrowa field a fence beyond whichno one can seethe people commune with the cars

excuse mepeep peep in my mindrolling bylooking for parkingthe GPS on the charger

all phases of all things are all goodbeing younggrowing oldbeing a tree being the skydoing business on your phonea proposal

how can one thing be goodand not othersliving dying being born

the children of the womenthe women of the childrena tiny fly on my writing pad

the sky clearsblue arrivesor has it always been here?buildings rise like old giant treesa verdant forest with little creaturesrunning around in the leaf litterdown below little mammals little marmosets little lemurs leaping aboutin the branches little vervets running from flower to flowerlooking for their groovy nook

note - this was a writing experiment using spontaneous random notes taken from diverse sources at diverse times while reading Michael Pollan’s book about doing LSD and other psychedelics / kind of a contact high i guess / How to Change Your Mind is the name of his book

music : Seven Beats Music 00:00-support them here :: https://patreon.com/sevenbeatsmusic

It’s so richly adorned with wisdom and profoundly illuminated ideas that it’s slow going. I re-read entire passages to get all of it or just to savor the deliciousness of it again. If you would like some essential Joseph Campbell I would suggest the PBS interview series with Bill Moyers available on YouTube: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It starts out with a quote from The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we have sought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we have sought to slay another, we will slay ourselves. And where we have thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we are thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

Good stuff. I totally relate. Slaying the dragon, whether it be gluttony, lust, avarice (I don’t have much of this), sloth or whatever. Finding the hero within and taking up the adventure. Following your own bliss.

My daily bike rides are miniature adventures - out and back again and in between discovering the pearl of great price (the Pearl at Broadway on the Riverwalk) and the Holy Grail (cappuccino) and nymphs (the central courtyard with kids running around), the Elysian fields (maybe the downtown with all its enchantments). It makes sense to me and has meaning. The cars are monsters, damn them. The people I meet are pilgrims or innocent maidens or wise counselors with sage advice (the baristas). There are signs and portends. This foggy morning belongs to a fairy infested field, this searing hot midsummer’s day to the gates of hades, this brilliant blue sky with the golden orb - a portal leading to some kind of heaven. I don’t know how it happened but my mind has been opened to these things.

Actually I do know how it happened. I had to walk thru the dark night of the soul, the valley of the shadow of death and all that s**t. It hurt. But I came out with a profound appreciation for music and the ability to write. Something was opened inside me and the creative energy has continued to flow unabated.

This is the story of the hero’s journey documented in Joseph Campbell’s book in great detail and exciting diversity. It is proclaimed with the voice of one who has studied the old myths from all over the world and of all time.

I haven’t finished the book yet, that will take awhile, but I have been transformed and transfixed by it. Buy it and read it for yourself if you are interested in such things. I found an awesome hardcover, like new on Amazon for like $7.98. Or go to your local bookstore and hook it up.

He mentions modern day dealers in myth, Freud and Jung, with their dream analysis and their psychoanalysis, probing the subconscious, the hidden parts of our mind for clues to our neurosis. Lord knows we have enough of that. This in fact is a major feature of modern society. We don’t believe in Ishtar and Ceres and the Cyclops and the Minotaur but we do go to the shrink to learn about our own stories. and our own dreams - adventures that happen while while we are dead asleep, our head on the pillow.

For awhile I was recording my dreams on voice recorder when I woke up so I could calibrate what was happening in my interior world. As it turns out my dreams ranged from frightening nightmares and near death experiences (for real) to being lost or late or confused in some state of anxiety, to these beautiful, ecstatic, joyous and lovely little movies. There’s one I remember where I’m swimming in open water with my best friend and then we’re scuba diving and we decide to swim across the Atlantic ocean underwater and there are all these fantastic, huge fish around!

My dreams seem to have something to do with my lifestyle, what I’ve had to eat and drink and I have concluded that the little people, those trillions of tiny entities that inhabit the nether regions of my digestive system, have a voice in how my dreams manifest.

Check this out. There is a ‘second brain’ that surrounds our entire digestive tract (500 million neurons) and connects via the vagus nerve to the medulla oblongata at the base of our main brain. This is the most primitive region of our brain and the simplest organisms, bacteria and other microbes, are connected and talking to it. They do this by influencing neuroendocrine cells in the wall of our gut which then release neurotransmitters like serotonin that stimulate the vagus nerve. Check it out. I’m not kidding. The most primitive organisms are talking to the most primitive part of our brain. They’re registering their discomfort and their well being. That’s what I think. But if they are actually able to influence my dreams then how do they come up with the story lines?

This was a mystery to me at first but then I realized - they don’t, they just influence the primitive brain in some sort of primitive way and our brain comes up with the elements of the dream - the narrative, the images, even dialogue, from its rich and ancient storehouse of archetypes and archaic images and impulses. This is who we are.

“Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless? The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable.” says Thomas Mann in his 1500 page, four part novel Joseph and His Brothers.

Campbell also quotes the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Koran among many others in the exposition of his position. It’s a literary tour de force and a comprehensive course in world literature. So much fun. Of course I need my phone nearby to look up Osiris and Heraclitus and maenads and naiads and the powerful jinn, but that’s cool. I enjoy that. The joy of discovering new things. This book is rich with that.

He goes thru the whole affair of the hero’s journey step by step. The departure: the call to adventure, meeting the mentor, the guide, gaining the supernatural aid of some deity or other, the boon. The initiation: the trials and tribulations, the discoveries, the attainment, rescuing the princess or slaying the dragon or whatever happens to be. And the return home: bringing the blessing, the wisdom, the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, the magic elixir, happiness basically, back to bless the people.

All these themes and sub-themes are woven and spun from stories (myths) found in various cultures and traditions. This is how it happens and how it always has happened and how it always will. With infinite variations the same pattern holds true throughout the ages. We all go through it.

I guess that’s why I liked this book. I could see myself in it and I learned alot. Courage there is, for dragons reside on the misty isle where the prize is found. Singleness of mind is possible, for distractions abound and temptations are many. Allies and accomplices can be found, because we need help. We really do. And that’s a beautiful thing too.

music :: Bedroom Lullaby - Kisses In the Rain

His diary ‘Of the Plymouth Plantation’ is the primary source of information about the voyage of the Mayflower and early colonial life in New England. Describing the Pilgrims' safe arrival at Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower it reads:

“Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all the periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on the firme and stable earth, their proper elemente.”

They’re called ‘Pilgrims’, historically, but they called themselves simply, the ‘Saints’. They were of the Puritan brand of Protestantism, having split off from the Church of England which itself split off from the Catholic Church to accommodate King Henry’s desire to get a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon so he could go after Anne Boleyn who was Catherine’s maid of honor and who he did manage to wed but later accused of treason, probably because she couldn’t give him a son, and had her beheaded so he could go after Jane Seymour who did give him a son, Edward VI, but then died of complications from childbirth. So it’s complicated.

Anyways, the Puritans desired a return to a simpler form of Christianity without the pomp and ritual of the Church of England which they considered to be heretical and too much like the Catholic Church, all that stuff not being in the Bible and all. Of course the Church of England considered the Puritans to be heretical and persecuted them vigorously which led to the treacherous 66 day crossing of the Atlantic ocean in a three masted wooden sailing ship to start a new life away from the domination of the crown. They finally made anchorage in Cape Cod on November 21, 1620, far from their intended destination in the colony of Virginia, and just in time for winter. Only half of the one hundred passengers and thirty crew members survived to see Spring.

So why am I telling you all this?

Puritanism as it washed ashore at Plymouth Rock that day continues unabated, that’s why. It can be identified in the modern day evangelicals and in the Republican party where belief in Donald Trump supersedes any logical or moral realities. Whatever you believe to be true is true. Hang the naysayers. It is written.

I grew up in this modern day puritanical lifestyle. The damage it did to my young mind is irredeemable. Irredeemable but not irreducible, it amounts to a disordering of natural principles, a scrambling, a bit like an omelette or maybe a smoothie, of the natural inclinations and processes of a young child’s mind. I don’t even remember it. On the other hand when I look at the strewn disarray of what I call my life, there is a unique and extraordinary beauty in it. Something splendid survived. I’ve broken away from the Puritan dogma, I wear unmatched socks, my obnoxious humor makes sarcasm unnecessary. And although I have forsaken all that I can of it, much still remains buried deep within the unalterable and tangled synapses of my brain. My forebears bore much and the message remains implicit if not explicit.

The Puritans were hard core Calvinists and therefore believed the Bible to be the unerring, infallible and complete revelation of God to mankind. Man in his natural, sinful condition was condemned to hell and could only be redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. My father, the Baptist minister, studied all these things and knew them by heart. This world of absolute Truth that could fit in a book and a strict code of ethics was like growing up in a closet for me. All I knew was confined and limited to what I believed and what I believed was limited to what I was told. Every once in a while someone would open the door and a crack of light would come in and illuminate my musty world, then it would shut again.

And now the New Year is upon us. I guess in a way I’m writing this to expunge the ghosts of that long lineage and start anew. But isn’t starting anew really a moment to moment thing? I think so. Especially if your brain has been crushed by rote learning (public education and Christian dogma). But also I’m connecting with my past, my origins and my source.

Those Pilgrims were heroic. Crammed aboard a ship 100 feet long and 25 feet wide, they fought the prevailing westerlies for two months with their square rigged 3 master. They were headed west, the winds of November were headed east. The main deck of the ship was only 5 feet high. Their was no bathroom. They were running low on provisions due to complications and delays. There was supposed to have been two ships but one sprang a leak and they all piled onto the Mayflower. And all the while the stalwart William Bradford kept their spirits up and their hope alive.

When they finally landed they were almost out of food but couldn’t plant anything in the frozen ground. Without the help of the local Wampanoag people they likely would have all died of starvation like what almost happened in Jamestown 10 years earlier.

They repaid the Indians by taking over their land and all but exterminating them. But that’s another story. Here’s to the hardy and courageous Pilgrims. My people.

And here’s to William Bradford, my great great great great great great great grandfather. His compulsion to write resulted in a record and a testimony. I can relate to that.

music :: Aguacero, by Entrañas + Hannah Lee / available on bandcamp

I’ve watched this movie about 20 times. It took me the first 10 viewings to figure out what was really happening. Various levels reveal themselves over time. I’m talking about the original from 1982 not the sequel, the original with Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah, et al with soundtrack by Vangelis which you are listening to now if you are on the podcast.

This is a violent movie, no doubt about that, but it’s also a love story. It also has this amazing magical transformational thing going on where somehow the replicants become, infact, more human than the humans who are basically portrayed as scum in a dystopian world of their own making. It’s compelling as hell.

It’s Los Angeles in the future and it’s raining all the time, foggy and smoky and over run with scummy humans surviving in the urban environment amidst flying cars and advertisements for off world opportunity. “A new life awaits you on the off world colonies” blare the floating neon billboards, “the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure”. No doubt. Just ask Roy. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” he says, “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the darkness at Tanhauser Gate”. I don’t know what c-beams are but probably had something to do with why the ships were on fire.

I like this movie for many reasons. Among them are the philosophical questions that it poses, ‘what is human?’ For the past seven years I’ve been writing a book addressing that very issue. It seems to be an open question and judging by the amount of violence that the humans perpetrate in this world there is considerable confusion about what it means to be human. How weird.

Ducks are not confused about being ducks. Cats have no problem being cats. Cows seem content being cows but human beings are all strung out about being human. I don’t know what to say.

Well actually I do. Self reflection, that uniquely human quality, needs to be promoted and admired in our societies so we can explore and discover this hidden identity of ours. “Know thyself”, right? Good ole Socrates from the BC days. Of course they executed him for corrupting the youth with controversial questions. Status quo rarely supports independent thinking. Oh yeah, it seems to but not really. Independent thinking is good as long as it’s innovating some new product or process to serve the economic interests of the status quo.

Blade Runner bombed when it first came out but then became a cult hit and people started watching it 20 times on DVD (like me). I watched it again last night and again new levels of meaning appeared. Each scene is framed, lit and composed with such care. It’s a masterpiece of filmmaking. Almost every Sci-Fi film since has copied it in some way. In fact it has been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". How about that?

But instead of explicating the movie I’ll just say that there is adventure in the off world colonies and a chance to start over. That there’s an incredible love story and a magical transformation but it’s in the inner world of ourselves not the outer world. Fortunately. We don’t have to take a space ship to get there, we already are there. Sorry Elon.

So, Merry Christmas. The ancient pagan celebration of sun return, the shortest day, appropriated by Christianity (and every other religion) to mark the turning of the year. Summer is coming and the warmth of the sun. New growth and fecundity are promised. Gifts of the magi in abundance. The magi were wise men, magicians, wizards if you like - imagine what gifts they bear. Imagine if we could bear them. Imagine if we could accept the gift of being human. That would be a heck of a movie.

“All those moments will be lost” says Roy in the final scene as he ponders his mortality “like tears in the rain”. Indeed. He realizes what humans rarely manage to know - that life is precious and one day it will disappear. Poof. Gone. Another magical transformation.

music :: Vangelis - Blade Runner Soundtrack

What are they seeing? What are they perceiving in their nubile, relatively unprogrammed curious minds? That’s what I’m trying to imagine.

There’s probably a threshold before which they can’t even focus, everything is a blur. I’m kinda on the other side of that line myself, trying to focus. I’m also trying to unlearn what everything is so I can experience the wonder that I imagine they experience. Hey Santa Claus is real, as are elves and fairies.

I mean it’s a myth, we know that, but who’s to say they don’t see fairies? All facts start out as myth, or is it all myths start out as facts? I forget now. Kids don’t really know the difference. They feel the truth of it. They notice things. Like the tiny antenna like leaves of the fir trees that surround this courtyard. They are strewn everywhere.

Stones are interesting. Adults don’t see them or kick them aside, insignificant. Kids pick them up and examine them, then go looking for more. I saw a kid once take on the project of collecting stones and piling them under a tree near his parents as if it was his hoard, worthy of a dragon’s keep. And who’s to say it’s not?

Not me. Looked like a proper hoard to me. Ancient stones shaped and sculpted by natural forces to take on their unique and lovely forms. All stones have a personality. Kids know that. Same with leaves.

Once they figure out who’s mommy and who’s daddy I’m sure everything has a face of some sort. A proto-face maybe not a full face, a developing face. Everything is developing for kids.

Put two kids down on the grassy area next to the cafe, two siblings, and they will start chasing each other as soon as they have their stance and claimed their territory. Primal. Put a two year old down and they will head for the stairs leading up to the front door of Cured, the restaurant. They want to climb. Primal. Monkey instinct, climb up something. One year olds will climb up their parents and hang out in their branches. Oh to hang out in the branches of a deep dark forest again. Hidden in the branches, behind the leaves, looking out at the world.

Things that little kids have to learn:

* Distance. Things are separated by distance. The distance varies, it even changes.

* Things. There are things. Many different kinds of things. Among the collection of things, however, is not yet themselves. They don’t exist as a separate thing with a boundry and an identity. That’s coming.

* Rules. Everything is not everybody’s. Some things you can touch and grab, some things you have to leave alone because they belong to somebody.

* Faces. Everybody has a face but that doesn’t mean you can grab and scrunch it. Faces belong to other people.

* People. Other people are their own people. There are other people, first of all. It must be a shock to discover that. Your mother and father are not the only people in the world. But being shocked is probably pretty normal for kids. They are pretty shock proof. I mean if you don’t know what to expect, nothing is a shock. Or everything is.

So it’s Christmastime. This is really for kids. Santa Claus and his elves don’t exist for adults. Baby Jesus in the manger, maybe, with wise men bringing gifts. We can believe that myth.

Or maybe it’s true. Who knows.

music :: ‘Theme for Lazarus’ from the album Nostalgia by Skinshape

For training we used to run the ‘big block’: six miles out in the country, past the apple and peach orchards of southwestern Michigan and back into town. Sometimes we’d run the ‘little block’. That was out around Bettis Hill and back. Just depended on the coach, whatever he thought we needed.

But the point is, out there running through the countryside I would sometimes feel the runner’s high, the elation. It’s like when you get ‘in shape’ and feel like you can run forever, like you’re riding a horse, a powerful swift horse and the horse is your breath. Just breathe and go. True elation. I never forgot that feeling.

That’s why I ride my bike. Same thing. I don’t run anymore, but if you ride hard enough you’ll get there.

Here’s Sifan Hassan busting the world record in the mile in 2019.

She starts off in the back, taking her time, letting others set the pace, then slowly moves up as she finds her rhythm.

She settles in third place and waits, getting up to speed. On the third lap the pace setter falls out and she pulls ahead. On the final lap she blasts off and sprints to the finish line, winning by 80 yards over the second place runner. Her time is a 4:12:33, half a second faster than any woman has ever run the mile before.

She screams with delight. Someone gives her a bouquet of flowers which she throws into the stands. She collapses on the track, panting and laughing at the same time, clapping her hands. Someone helps her up and she celebrates with her fellow runners, hugs them, hugs her coach in the stands, poses next to her new world record on the timing board.

Wow. That’s elation.

Here’s some elation. Mama Africa.

Chico César is a Brazilian musician singing about Mama Africa.

Mother Africa, where we all come from. Source of the rhythms, the languages, the skill set of our tribe; the humans.

Dig y eh?

Hearth of our heartfelt aspirations, birthplace of our great ideas: to stand up straight and walk on two feet, to look at the sky and dream of flying, to wander all over the place and discover the world.

Elation was our birthright and our guiding light and our destination.

Oh me ah my ah moy.

And yet in the depths of the human psyche, there is also room for violence and horror. There is also nihilism and despair. It occurs like a recurring dream, like an eclipse of the sun or, more accurately, like the coming of night; it comes with irresistible regularity and over comes us. We succumb. It seems so. Like a seduction. War and hate and petty divisions. All negatives that negate us and the beauty of our existence.

Sometimes I don’t feel elation. Sometimes I feel despair. It’s true But that brings up a question Is happiness a choice? Can I feel as elated as I choose to be? Can I rise up like a bird flying in the sky or must I fall like a leaf swirling in the wind, subject to the currents of the air?

It’s an important question because it goes to the core of the issue. The fate of an individual is related to the fate of the society or civilization that they live in. It’s just a question of scale.

But also comes the light, with unremitting regularity and the whole land is lit. Every open eye is filled. We see and we know. We say ‘good morning’.

Check out Redbone. The first Native American band to score a major hit on the charts.

‘Cmon and find it pretty baby’ they sing, It’s so divine. Come and get your love. Get it from the mainline’.

I get it.

I got it.

For training we used to run the ‘big block’: six miles out in the country, past the apple and peach orchards of southwestern Michigan and back into town. Sometimes we’d run the ‘little block’. That was out around Bettis Hill and back. Just depended on the coach, whatever he thought we needed.

But the point is, out there running through the countryside I would sometimes feel the runner’s high, the elation. It’s like when you get ‘in shape’ and feel like you can run forever, like you’re riding a horse, a powerful swift horse and the horse is your breath. Just breathe and go. True elation. I never forgot that feeling.

That’s why I ride my bike. Same thing. I don’t run anymore, but if you ride hard enough you’ll get there.

Here’s Sifan Hassan busting the world record in the mile in 2019.

She starts off in the back, taking her time, letting others set the pace, then slowly moves up as she finds her rhythm.

She settles in third place and waits, getting up to speed. On the third lap the pace setter falls out and she pulls ahead. On the final lap she blasts off and sprints to the finish line, winning by 80 yards over the second place runner. Her time is a 4:12:33, half a second faster than any woman has ever run the mile before.

She screams with delight. Someone gives her a bouquet of flowers which she throws into the stands. She collapses on the track, panting and laughing at the same time, clapping her hands. Someone helps her up and she celebrates with her fellow runners, hugs them, hugs her coach in the stands, poses next to her new world record on the timing board.

Wow. That’s elation.

Here’s some elation. Mama Africa.

Chico César is a Brazilian musician singing about Mama Africa.

Mother Africa, where we all come from. Source of the rhythms, the languages, the skill set of our tribe; the humans.

Dig y eh?

Hearth of our heartfelt aspirations, birthplace of our great ideas: to stand up straight and walk on two feet, to look at the sky and dream of flying, to wander all over the place and discover the world.

Elation was our birthright and our guiding light and our destination.

Oh me ah my ah moy.

And yet in the depths of the human psyche, there is also room for violence and horror. There is also nihilism and despair. It occurs like a recurring dream, like an eclipse of the sun or, more accurately, like the coming of night; it comes with irresistible regularity and over comes us. We succumb. It seems so. Like a seduction. War and hate and petty divisions. All negatives that negate us and the beauty of our existence.

Sometimes I don’t feel elation. Sometimes I feel despair. It’s true But that brings up a question Is happiness a choice? Can I feel as elated as I choose to be? Can I rise up like a bird flying in the sky or must I fall like a leaf swirling in the wind, subject to the currents of the air?

It’s an important question because it goes to the core of the issue. The fate of an individual is related to the fate of the society or civilization that they live in. It’s just a question of scale.

But also comes the light, with unremitting regularity and the whole land is lit. Every open eye is filled. We see and we know. We say ‘good morning’.

Check out Redbone. The first Native American band to score a major hit on the charts.

‘Cmon and find it pretty baby’ they sing, It’s so divine. Come and get your love. Get it from the mainline’.

I get it.

I got it.

This is Avram Fefer: Bedouin Dream. Wow. Avram Fefer on the big sax with bassist Eric Revis, Marc Ribot on guitar and Chad Taylor drums. From the album Juba Lee recorded in 2022.

Dig it. Jazz. It’s been around since the end of the 19th century rising up out of the Blues and the Spirituals of the deep South, the African dance rhythms, the call and response traditions. When you mix all that up on the streets of New Orleans - that’s jazz.

This is the first bicycle. It was invented in 1817 in Germany. Well it didn’t have any pedals and it was made of wood but it was fun. It was called a ‘dandy horse’.

The first real bicycle was called the ‘bone shaker’; it had a big front wheel with pedals attached.

Good luck getting on and off this thing.

Finally some clever French guys invented gears and a chain drive connected to the rear wheel and the modern bicycle was born. Voila.

The most popular bicycle ever made is the Flying Pigeon. Over 500 million have been built in China since 1950. China is the land of bicycles. Or atleast it was before everyone got enough money to buy a car. Now they have traffic jams just like us.

So there you have it - the whole history of bicycles. Condensed version.

Nowadays the bicycle comes in many forms: street bikes, mountain bikes, hybrid bikes, recumbent bikes, trikes, electric bikes, fixies, single speeds, good old cruiser bikes like from the fifties, like Pee Wee’s bike, the one that got stolen and they made a movie about it. (Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) All different kinds of bikes for all different kinds of people and their needs, wants, desires, lifestyles.

Bikes are a form of expression. This guy built his own bike, custom frame and all. He’s with the Wild Dawgs Bike Club. I passed him on the street where he was trying to fix his derailleur cable.

These guys are riding around on BCycles with their skate boards looking for places to skate. BCycles are rental bikes that you can pick up at conveniently located kiosks around town. They’re electric too.

Here’s my buddy Bill on his bike coming out of the cafe. He’s riding a Pee Wee Cruiser. All he lacks are the frilly things coming out of the end of the handle bars.

Here’s my bike friend Richard and his friend Cindy riding down Avenue B. I keep running into him on his big ole custom painted ebike. They’re geared up.

Here’s my buddy at Bike World at the Pearl (forgot his name). They’re getting ready to sell some bikes.

Here’s me hammer down on Treyah, my beautiful ride. Until she got stolen. Lock up your bike kids so you don’t have to go thru the pain like I did.

We were together for 11 years. Tight. Perfectly synched up. We understood each other. Of course bikes aren’t sentient, I know that, but Treyah and me, we had some adventures.

Magic is happening all the time. Especially on a bike. Kinda like jazz.

This is Lee Morgan from his 1964 album ‘Search for the New Land’. It’s playing now on the podcast. If you like jazz you’ll fall for this. Lee Morgan on the trumpet, Herbie Hancock on the piano, Grant Green on guitar, Billy Higgins - drums, Wayne Shorter - tenor sax, Reggie Workman - bass.

Jazz, the truly American art form. Everything else we pretty much brought over from Europe. Even the bicycle.

Notice how the music magically matches up with the words. I don’t know how that happens. Jazz is fusion. Jazz is spontaneous, impetuous, impromptu. It makes it up as it goes along but never loses it’s way. Wild.

This is Pee Wee’s bike, highly decorated with all kinds of doodads and special features. Variation on a theme. He used it to search for the New Land.

But then it got stolen. Bummer. I so totally know how that feels. He traipsed all over the country looking for his lost bike. He found it too, in the basement of the Alamo.

Wait a minute, there is no basement in the Alamo.

Thanks to KRTU for all the great jazz tracks.

Thanks to all the bicycle people for the pics. Love you.

Why is it somebody vs. somebody all the time? We’re all somebody. Just make the group bigger. Russia and Chiba and North Korea. We could call it All Nations Oh. AlNato.

Anyways that’s my thought upon waking up this morning. Must have been percolation in my brain. Yeah, it seems so wasteful. And we accept it. Status quo. Somebody vs. somebody.

Yeah but we have to protect our borders, you might say.

Here’s a hilarious 20 minute history of the entire world that demonstrates the point.

all kinda good music here

“For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. If you were a Zulu warrior banging on your shield with your spear for a couple of hours along with a hundred other Zulu warriors, you might be able to prepare yourself to write. If you were an Aztec maiden who knew months in advance that on a certain morning the priests were going to throw you into a hot volcano, and if you spent those months undergoing a series of purification rituals and drinking dubious liquids, you might, when the time came, be ready to write. But how, if you are neither Zulu warrior nor Aztec maiden, do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning?”

Good question. Well put. From The Writing Life. My answer would be: put pen to paper and begin, full of faith and relentless innocence, naive aspiration, blindly flinging words from some remote location, see where it goes, see what you got. Also music. Music gets me revved up. start Mal Waldron Trio - Ten Shades Of Blue (Full Album) mistral breeze on camtasia

That and the cafe life. I can usually pick up a trail. Writing is about what we don’t see. The unnoticed. Like this gentleman in a button down shirt, slacks, proper shoes and an aging belly who walks over to the trash receptacle and drops his empty coffee cup in, kind of throws it in. He doesn’t see me watching him and he’s not watching himself. I can tell. He’s just throwing away his cup. It’s empty. Useless.

“What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine, . . . the man becoming, in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal; . . . would that be a life to disregard? That’s what Plato had to say. “No one suspects the days to be gods.” That’s what Emerson had to say. Both quotes are from The Writing Life. Chapter headings. How much we don’t see. That’s God. That’s what writing is. Otherwise why would you bother?

What is visible to the writer must be invisible to others in order for the writing to be interesting. It’s the same for the painter and the musician, obviously. The ding of the bell of recognition that we all hear, we all recognize and then we see. Isn’t it so?

Sometimes I just sit under the sky in God’s great light and write. The back porch features a fish pond and Bob the feral cat who lives under the house. Actually he’s not so feral anymore. He begs for pets, bumps my foot and reaches up and snags my sleeve imploring me in his most meowy voice for more rubs behind the ears. But this is a different light alright and a different voice. The mute gestures of the fish as they circle waiting for dinner. The gentle swaying of the willow as it leans over the pond. The cold north wind has lost its vigor. It’s just a whisper.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be reviewing Annie’s book. I found it a bit tedious, actually, and overblown but I did gain a fair amount of inspiration from the quotes. “Another day, another dollar; fourteen hours on snowshoes and wish I had pie.” from a Maine trapper’s diary opens chapter three. That’s brilliant. Succinct and evocative. I wish I had a pie. Who doesn’t? Especially after tromping around in snowshoes for fourteen hours. A pie and some hot coffee. A lonely trapper’s life in the snowy Maine woods and no pie. What a crumby deal.

Sometimes I cue off of movies. like the one I’m watching right now: Mammals. On Amazon Prime. The guy’s wife is cheating on him so he tracks down the guy and breaks into his house or flat as they say in England and waits for him to come home. But wait, is that the guy or is he in the wrong house? Surprises and disasters amid lovely scenes at the beach in Plymouth where they go for vacation, the guy and his wife. She has a miscarriage, a whale cavorts off shore, they drink champagne in a hot tub. Lot’s happening. Not much of it makes sense in a logical narrative kind of way. You just don’t know where it’s going next. Kind of like Mal Waldron’s piano. Kind of like this post.

The jazz is riffing in my brain and I’m feeling good. I am a big admirer of Annie Dillard. I read all the personal narrative parts of The Writing Life and skipped all the other junk. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood are quite excellent though. I should have reviewed them.

music :: Mal Waldron Trio - Ten Shades of Blue

I ran across it recently in one of the Garrison Keillor and Friends posts that I get in my inbox and thought, wow, the perfect accompaniment for this weeks barista guest: Hallie from Rose Hip Coffee. I’ve been visiting Rose Hip Coffee since they opened a year ago and Hallie has been there almost that long. She’s inspiring with her quiet, observant demeanor and sweet smile, always ready to listen and respond.

I’m a big admirer of baristas. They laugh at my dumb jokes. I find that helpful and encouraging, generous in a way, a kindness. Hallie’s good at it. So here’s to Hallie. Let your little light shine.

Click at the top to play the podcast.

The fireball that rose up after the detonation was 4 miles wide and the mushroom cloud (which was all that was left of Elugelab) rose 27 miles into the sky, spreading out like a giant cauliflower 100 miles wide.

If you’re wondering how powerful that blast was, imagine (or try to imagine) 10,400,000 tons of TNT going off at once. It was 700 times more powerful than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Given the code name ‘Ivy Mike’, it was one of 102 above ground nuclear bombs that were set off on South Pacific atolls between 1946 and 1962. Bikini, Christmas Island and Johnson Island were also recipients of our largesse.

Clever humans. We destroyed a tropical island and its coral reef and its accompanying biosphere: fish, palm trees, crabs, sharks, dolphins, (the people of course were moved before the test), turtles, birds and contaminated the place with radioactive debris for years to come so we could create a beautiful mushroom cloud.

Oh and also demonstrate our destructive ability. Imagine if we lit up one of these over one of your major cities, oh enemies.

According to Wikipedia the crater was big enough to put 14 Pentagons in, which sounds like a really good idea to me.

Hydrogen bombs, of course, are way more powerful than atomic bombs because they use the energy of fusion not fission. In fact hydrogen bombs are two bombs, a regular nuclear bomb is used to create the intense energy that is used to trigger the hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen atoms fusing to make helium, just like in our sun, release prodigious amounts of energy. E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

Humans are strange animals. We need a high quest to fulfill our aspiration for greatness.

Back in the day, before we had discovered all the lost and hidden spots on earth, journeys of adventure were the big thing. Discovering the North Pole like Peary, sailing around the world like Magellan, exploring the Canadian outback like the ‘voyageurs’ in their 30 foot canoes in the 18th century, the ocean going ships of the Greeks and the Romans, the Phoenicians and the Sumerians 4,000 years ago. That was some adventure.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, says he’s not interested in money, he wants humans to be a multi-planet species. He wants to shoot people over to Mars, 60 million miles away, across interplanetary space. That’s great.

A giant fireball capable of destroying a city and turning it into a pillar of smoke 27 miles high is pretty great too.

Now there are 12,700 nuclear weapons in the world, enough to destroy human civilization on planet Earth, more than enough. And the methods that we’ve invented for delivering these weapons are equally ingenious: land based ballistic missiles, submarine based ballistic missiles, supersonic bombers, cruise missiles, artillery shells, depth charges, torpedoes, even at one point a nuclear bazooka you could carry around in your jeep.

We’re mad for nuclear weapons. Pun intended. The MAD principle, of course, Mutually Assured Destruction, is the simple and obvious fact that any first strike attack by either Russia or America would result in the complete annihilation of both parties. So we just sit on our stockpiles, unable to use them and unable to get rid of them while more and more countries acquire nuclear weapons. America, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are all in the nuclear club to date.

And of course it costs billions of dollars to develop and maintain these nuclear weapons, hundreds of billions of dollars probably (I couldn’t find an accurate figure) and it’s all wasted. Billions of dollars that could be used to help mankind is poured down the rabbit hole of nuclear weapons that nobody can use. They’re only good for bluff and threat, for inspiring fear in your enemies. When US President Theodore Roosevelt said “Speak softly but carry a big stick” back at the beginning of the 20th century, he neglected to mention that everybody wants a big stick and the sticks keep getting bigger.

In the late fifties high levels of radioactivity was found in wheat and milk from the northern United States and the public started to become aware of the dangers of radioactive fallout. Leaders and diplomats of the nuclear armed countries came together and finally, in 1963, signed the nuclear test ban treaty signaling the end of atmospheric testing. This is the only reasonable thing that has come out of the nuclear arms race. No more beautiful mushroom clouds in the sky.

I’m trying to imagine what it was like to witness that first hydrogen bomb explosion. There were witnesses. Reports from observers on the R/V Horizon, a support vessel stationed 70 miles away collecting data, included this comment from Harold Agnew, “Something I will never forget was the heat. Not the blast — the heat just kept coming, just kept coming on and on. It’s really quite a terrifying experience because the heat doesn’t go off — on kiloton shots it’s a flash and it’s over, but on those big shots it’s really terrifying”. Another sailor commented, “You would swear that the whole world was on fire.”

Ned Barr, also onboard, described the sound which hit a few minutes after the flash. It ricocheted 17 times between the stratosphere and the ocean and it was, according to his account, “totally awesome. It was deafening. It was magnificent. It was like the sound of one hundred thunder storms coming at us from all directions.”

Right.

I’ve also tried to imagine how those people felt when they were told that they had to leave their island because we’re going to blow it up. I mean how do you explain that to someone? I doubt if there was even a word in their language for ‘blow up the island’. They must have fabricated some excuse. “Big volcano come, destroy everything” ”What? Huh? There is no volcano here.” ”Yes, trust us. There will be. We’ve come to save you.”

Great.

the music and the picture is from the album ‘Nostalgia’ / new music by one of my favorite musicians Skinshape :: High Tide, Storm Rising and Turn Away / available on bandcamp

The only orientation is my breath, coming and going. An inhalation. Followed by an exhalation. It’s sweet. It’s comforting, which I’m mostly in need of. Comfort and annihilation. Some kind of restart because I know there is no do over. If I could just focus on each sweet breath . . .

Kybo comes into the office. I try to get a picture of her but the camera won’t cooperate. She leaves.

There is no past but there is a future unfolding with each breath. Or maybe not the future - that’s just a theory, but a moment in the present. The present moment. Between the obliteration and the totally unreal future is the moment I exist in. I wonder if a person could actually live there. I need to find out.

This morning when I walked into the office and turned on the computer I came across this song. It hit me like a ton of bricks. A perfect match for my mood.

It’s probably a little too early to worry about this but the sun is going to burn out one day and turn into a red giant and devour Earth and all the inner planets and that will be that. Toast. Dust to dust.

All that humanity has been and all that humanity has accomplished will be lost and forgotten. Who won the 1936 World Series for example (the Yankees over the Giants 4 games to 2) and all the rest of the sports scores, the headline news from all the front pages from all over the world, all the world wars, all the tragedies, all the dramas and the heroic achievements - poof, gone. It will take 5 billion years but still, it does put a different spin on things.

And of course it depends on whether or not we’re still around by then. Probably not. The dinosaurs only lasted 160 million years and I’m sure they thought they were invincible.

Or maybe we’ll find another planet to live on, out there somewhere circling around another star. That’s possible. We’ll have enough time to learn star travel, sneak through a wormhole, hook up the hyperdrive and travel at warp speed like Star Trek, teleport ourselves around the galaxy and appear in identical but different bodies on some other planet. Five billion years is a long time. But regardless of what happens, the sun will burn out one day, ready or not. Heck the whole universe will disappear. It has to. Everything that gets created gets destroyed, right?

So here’s the point of my tirade, humans exist in a space/time matrix but we don’t belong to a space/time matrix. We belong to a spaceless/timeless matrix or at least we long to. And what is that longing? I don’t think the other organic life forms on this planet share that longing because they can’t imagine a spaceless/timeless matrix. We can, because we are eternal. How else could we imagine it?

I’m a writer, I know about dreaming stuff up. It all has a source, it comes from somewhere before it gets filtered through an individual mind, gets modified and altered by other influences from other minds. If we can imagine God then there must be something like ‘God’ is another way to put it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins imagined God as some kind of overpowering, terrifying being, or beingness. Rilke imagined God as a thrilling essence known only through his angels, but that was shocking enough. In any case the infinite was contained, in some sense, within the finite human mind or the human heart. Poets tend to transcend even the mental world and enter the realm of pure feeling. Kind of like riding your bicycle until you’re not riding your bicycle anymore but moving through space and time like a spirit in a material world.

So something will survive, not our mind maybe but our spirit. Is that right? Sounds right. Maybe our sun, as it expands outward in its brilliant denouement, will be the prelude to another level of existence. Maybe we will become light beings and not need a planet to live on. We won’t care about sports scores anymore and poetry will be our nature not our entertainment.

I don’t know, but when I saw the article that’s linked at the top of this post, I wanted to write about it. ‘What happens when a star dies?’ it says. It’s an amazing question and a powerful idea especially when it’s our star. We think of the stars as eternal, blinking away up there in space as they have ever since humans have been here on planet earth. They’re not eternal though, not in that form. They burn up, their fuel dissipates and they metastasise into a red giant or explode in a supernova event if they’re large enough, and spew their contents out into interstellar space.

This is where all the heavy elements come from: iron and nickel and copper and zinc and etc. Stars are made of hydrogen and helium, the two simplest elements and the ingredients of the primal universe, but the heavy elements that make up our earth were created in an exploding star. Those elements, which were then basically space dust, came together under the influence of gravity and became a planet.

The lighter elements that make up the tissues of our body and all living things: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, phosphorus, and such, formed in the nuclear furnace of a star before it supernoved or turned into a red giant. Check this out. From NASA, Imagine the Universe.

Stars transition from being light givers and warmth givers to being the birthplace of new elements and then share them with the universe. So it’s not all bad. Our sun will seed the universe with the ingredients that some day may be part of a new planet and a new civilization with life forms and everything.

I don’t know how long the universe is going to last but until it does the stars will be creating the stuff that planets and their biospheres (if they have one) are made of. Mother Nature, as we call it, although we usually limit her to planet Earth.

All these elements. from helium to plutonium, were fused and molded in the terrible crucible of a dying star as it transformed from a light giver to a generator of matter - how could human beings disappear? If even the stars transform and mutate into planets and continents and biospheres why not us?

This brings up an interesting point (obviously I am not done with this rant). If God is infinite and the creator of the universe (and the destroyer) then how can a puny human (in a body or not in a body) know him? The saints and sages all pretty much concur on this - by looking within. The source of all things can be known by looking within? I guess so. If you can ask the question then you must have the answer. The tree bears the seed and the seed holds the tree. What’s there to worry about? All our petty issues will one day be scattered like leaves in the autumn breeze. Scattered and lost. Decomposed and transformed into something new. I take heart in that having made so many mistakes in my lifetime and not having grown weary of making mistakes.

Maybe you can relate, maybe not. Big fluffy clouds float across the sky this morning as I sit under the trees writing this, big fat, fluffy clouds. They seem so generous and full of promise. I wonder where they go? I wonder where they came from?

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podcast music ::0:00:00 AYO - Sola Snur0:07:59 Takkra - Hymn to Ra1:20:38 Rumpistol - Eyes Open Wide Bluetech Remix

I first discovered Bluey in a New York Times article entitled ‘A Children’s Show About Everything, Especially Music’. Hmmm, that’s interesting, I thought, sounds kinda like the rohn report so I decided to report on it. laughter

The first thing I have to report about Bluey is the great interaction between the kids and the parents. It’s amazing. Maybe not too realistic but refreshing. They’re always playing and having fun in some goofy way: Bluey turning her dad into a donkey with a magical asparagus, turning her sister into a piglet and his mum into a chicken. Hilarious. laughter

Each episode is another game that the kids come up with to play with their parents or their parents come up with to play with them. In the process, of course, they learn valuable life lessons like how to share in ‘Let’s get an Ice Cream’ and the importance of being your own person ‘Baby Race’.

Bluey and her little sister, Bingo, live in a lovely suburban house in Brisbane Australia and the dad is a stay at home dad trying to get some work done (looks like maybe he’s writing a TV show) so he’s available to hang out with the kids during the day while the mum goes off to work. Many of the stereotypical roles are reversed here, which I am happy to report. laughter Seeing the dad do laundry and the mum driving off to work must reset some boundaries in the minds of the little boys and girls watching it, not to mention the adults.

Besides that, Bandit, the good natured dad, is never too busy or stressed out to play with the kids. He respects them as equals, in a way, although he doesn’t mind playing the trump card when necessary. Imagine such an idyllic family where the kid’s values are as important as the adults. Revolutionary.

The next thing I’d like to report about is that this show has gone big time. Bluey won an International Emmy Kids Award for the best preschool program in 2020 and then Disney picked it up. Now it’s on Disney+ and all over the world. It’s also playing in China dubbed into Mandarin on the Chinese streaming service Youku. It’s coming to the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio as a theatre production. How about that?

Oh, by the way, Bluey and her family are dogs, Blue Heelers to be exact. In fact everybody that appears in this show are dogs. I’d also like to report, in case you didn’t know, Blue Heelers are a cross between wild dingos, native to Australia, and domestic dogs and were originally bred as cattle herders. Their playful, energetic nature makes them the perfect dog for this show. Other characters include Poodles and uh . . . looks like maybe a Golden Retriever and possibly a Spaniel.

Here’s one of my favorite Bluey episodes that I found on Youtube, ‘The Baby Race’. It’s a storytelling episode.

The next thing I would like to report is the extensive use of classical music in the soundtracking. Mozart, Wagner and Bach all get a chance to enliven the action and set the mood. Not only classical music but folk, rock and jazz make an appearance. See for yourself in “Let’s Get an Ice Cream” sweetened with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ .

It’s zany and it’s crazy; lots of screaming, squealing and laughter and cute South Parkish voices. After binge watching Bluey on Youtube for awhile I can report that it did raise my vibrational level to that of a 4 year old. laughter A worthy accomplishment.

There’s something wonderful about watching kids and adults playing together. I think that’s one of the charms of Bluey. The kids are relentless in their pursuit of play and the adults, of course, discover that they need to play too as evidenced in this episode.

So if you’ve caught the Bluey bug here’s a smorgasbord of Bluey including ‘Keepy Uppy’, where the object is to never let the balloon touch the ground and ‘Magic Xylophone’ where when you hit the right note you freeze the other person. Honestly, didn’t you play this when you were a kid? Right then, maybe that’s what’s wrong with you. laughter

* Now imagine you were not alive but you had a brain and you were trying to imagine what it’s like to be alive. It would be unimaginable, right? And here we are, we’re both alive and in an unimaginable world with a brain. I mean we have a brain in an unimaginable world.

So that’s the experiment, how you imagine it.

‘Adventure, joy and love’ is what my barista Katie wished me this morning as I rolled off on my bicycle. I took it to heart. I can easily imagine that.

My first stop was Royal Blue. I ordered a caramel mocha cortado and sat down at the table outside facing the street. The collection of books in my bag included ‘The Kabir Book, forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir’, I pulled it out and opened it at random.

Student, do the simple purification.

You know that the seed is inside the horse-chestnut tree;and inside the seed are the blossoms of the tree,and the chestnuts, and the shade.So inside the human body there is the seed, andinside the seed there is the human body again.

Fire, air, earth, water and space — if you don’t wantthe secret one,you can’t have these either.

Robert Bly’s translation, Kabir lived in the 15th century and spoke Hindi. Talk to him if you don’t get it. Except he’s dead. Imagine that.

I finished my caramel mocha cortado and sat there for awhile feeling all lit up from Kabir’s poetry and then rode off down Houston Street looking for more adventure, joy and love.

Down a ways and across the street from the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, next to the Majestic Theatre, is the Puro Handsome Barber Shop with their red, white and blue barber’s pole turning in the window. Inside were two old school barber chairs standing side by side in front of a large mirror and a shelf with a sink, scissors, combs and lotions. There were no customers at the time so I stopped to check it out. I had never been inside before.

Ben the barber was in. He’s an excellent guy and convivial as heck, as you might expect of someone running a barber shop in downtown San Antonio. I told him, wow, here you are at the epicenter of the downtown urban experience. We became instant friends.

Our conversation ranged from the petty thieves roaming around in the alley behind his house at night and his attempts to thwart them with lights and sirens to my experiences in downtown San Antonio 45 years ago when I lived in the Gunter Hotel with 150 of my compadres meditating for peace. How we used to go down to the Riverwalk and dance ecstatically in the discos, being young and energetic and full of bliss. Back then the shop next to his sold New York style pizza for a dollar a slice.

Check out Ben’s place if you need a haircut and want to catch the urban energy at the same time.

Further down, at Houston and Alamo is the old post office, a large elegant building done in the Neoclassical style that also features a federal courthouse. I had never been in there either so I stopped, tied up my pony and went inside.

This place was built in the thirties as part of the Federal Public Works program which was designed to put people to work during the Great Depression. The decoration is typical of that period - murals extolling the heroic aspects of American history.

I spoke to the security guard and got some history of the place but didn’t go beyond the metal detector. All the energy seemed to be focused in the lobby anyways. Chandeliers and polished tile floors and decorated arches rising to the ceiling.

Across the tracks on the near east side, also on Houston Street, is Estate Coffee. I dropped a flyer there for the rohn report and got a picture of the barista. Very sweet. I mentioned to her that the American Revolution was fomented in the pubs and cafes of colonial New England where people met to exchange views and news, at least according to the PBS documentary I saw. She said, yeah, cafes used to be called ‘penny colleges’ because that’s where people learned from each other. Brilliant. I love that.

This place features frequent trains passing nearby with their screaming whistle. Pretty exciting ambience. I thought about riding down the tracks to the Hayes Street Bridge which you can see in the distance but soon realized that I would crash out on the coarse gravel banked on either side and that would not be an adventure.

Velocity is part of the urban renewal of the east side, or gentrification, whichever way you wish to look at it. Their vision is to support innovation, entrepreneurism and hopefully good jobs for the community. It’s an old warehouse district, 70 acres of it, and now home to shakers and movers in the biotech and medical IT fields. I got to meet the receptionist who told me all about it and kindly took my picture standing in the lobby. Another place I had never seen before and knew nothing about. Bioscience, wow, big bucks there.

I torqued off down North Cherry (that’s similar to hammer down) and soon found myself at the Hayes Street Bridge, an old wood and metal bridge spanning the tracks. Now it’s a pedestrian walkway and has an amazing panoramic view of downtown.

I have visited this place many times both as a rendezvous point and as a transit point from the east side to the central valley. Yes San Antonio has a valley. It’s called Broadway.

Then it was hammer on down Broadway to Amaretti Coffee.

Dropped a flyer. Talked to the barista. Cool guy! Found my poetry book among their stack of readables. What a kick! I wonder who put that there? Blasted off for home.

Oh yeah, I stopped at the Nowhere Bookshop. I’d been meaning to drop by. It’s a new bookstore! On Broadway! Can you believe that? It survived the pandemic and now it even has a cafe open. Very cool place.

Here’s Paul, manning the front desk. He can take care of your every need. Well as far as books go.

It’s so comfy here, window chairs to sit on and peruse before you buy. Books everywhere on display including the front rack with the Jenny Lawson books. She’s the owner and the author. She’s funny and delightfully zany as far as I could tell in my perusal of a few titles. Didn’t get to meet her but I’ll be back for sure.

Ok. Hammer down and head for home. The last lap. Watch out for cars and buses and cowboys in pickup trucks.

And that was it, the story of my day, or part of it - good adventures, and a fair amount of joy and love. Just like I imagined it would be. A successful experiment.

People are waiting to be discovered and places too. Adventure, joy and love are waiting to be discovered. Heck I’m waiting to be discovered. A lot to learn here.

music :: 00 - 16:32 / thank you Cafe De Anatolia so much for all your great mixes

Nope, nothing yet.

Maybe If I could just can’t see it. There’s always something happening. Until you’re dead. How to see it? Maybe that’s the question. Or how to write about how to see it?

I don’t want to repeat myself; seems like I write about that all the time, how being alive is the happeningest thing. Is it enough to just be alive or do we have to ‘do’ something? That really is a profound question. And what is it we must do if we must do something? Accomplish our goals I guess, whether it’s learning how to walk as a toddler or becoming the CEO of the company as an adult, I guess.

What would be the highest goal then, or the universal goal? To by ‘happy’ of course, elated, at peace, content, complete. There you go. Then you wouldn’t need to write anything. All those notebooks would be empty, there would be fewer trees chopped down for paper. Ha ha. And I would be free to . . . well I’d just be free. Then I’d probably want to write about it.

Every day is a new adventure, new people, new sky, new cars in the road, new moments essentially. What I’m wondering is how much of it I actually experience? I have the feeling that I only perceive the surface.

For example, inside the mind of each person that walks by here on Houston Street is a private world of thoughts which I cannot see. Each of those thoughts has a history and a destiny as if they were an individual person. I can only presume or imagine or maybe try to intuit what they are but I don’t know. I can only know my own thoughts. So there’s that.

My thoughts are all over the map: how cats hear and smell things that we can’t perceive, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, how most people put their spirituality in a box, tie a bow on it and call it their religion, all my tired old regrets from long ago eras - good grief, Zimbabwe - how it used to be Rhodesia according to the Jeopardy question on TV yesterday, the evil gypsy crackhead who stole my bike for the hundredth time, no he didn’t steal my bike for the hundredth time but I thought about him stealing my bike for the hundredth time, the universe - it’s expanding at an accelerating pace, at least that’s what they say, meanwhile the Hindus believe that the universe is created by the exhalation of Brahma and dissolved by his inhalation, takes billions of years, then there are the days and nights and years of Brahma, lots of univrses, how I saw Saturn last night through a telescope - beautiful, the actual Saturn not just a picture, how I am breathing and creating my own universe essentially. Hey an original thought. Wow. Cool.

There’s that then.

music :: 00-10:20

They make the startling observation that much of what Hitler did in Germany was copied or emulated from America. Our campaign of genocide against the native people who inhabited this land, our expansion from the east coast to the west so we could build a great nation, even the anti-semitism of the early 20th century (which I knew nothing about). Yes, Jews were denigrated in this country, at least those trying to immigrate from Eastern and Southern Europe.

All the while people in Germany, back in the 1920’s, kept thinking ‘it can’t get any worse than this’ - but it did. It ended up in death camps for millions of people. And not just Jews, it was gypsies, communists, disabled people, homosexuals, pacifists, criminals and whoever else was thought to be polluting the purity of the Aryan race - white Northern European Protestants in other words.

The sad and shocking truth is that we did the same right here in America. Reference ‘we killed off all the buffalos’ and read all about it. The story of an American genocide, the decimation of the buffalo herds in the 19th century (which were the physical and spiritual sustenance of the Plains Indians), Andrew Jackson evicting tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and sending them across the Mississippi river to Oklahoma, a land they didn’t know and weren’t prepared to survive in. Thousands died on the journey and the white settlers ended up with the fertile river bottom farmlands in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee. I’m still mad about it and I wasn’t even there.

And now it’s happening again. The Proud Boys and the Patriot Front and other extremist groups seem to have the tacit approval of a major political figure who controls a major political party. Their subtly racist rhetoric has infected our national politics. Somehow it’s now become acceptable to espouse violence in order to further one’s political agenda. January 6 and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene expressing support for assassinating Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are but two alarming examples.

What are we to do then? Watch this cycle repeat all over again?

My conclusion is that racial equality and social justice and a stable, peaceful society does not begin in the halls of government, it begins with me and you and how we act and think every day. The smallest act of kindness can have a monumental effect on someone. It can change their life and the life of other people that they meet.

I recently volunteered as a ‘Soul Friend’ at Haven for Hope, the downtown homeless shelter in San Antonio. I have permission to hang out with the folks in the courtyard and commune. It’s quite a community. The stories and the interactions that happen there are amazing and powerful. Without compromising the confidentiality agreement with Haven for Hope, I think I can say . . . people’s lives get changed. Just by engaging in conversation. Mine certainly has.

The Charis Collective is a collection of caring and compassionate people operating as part of the Sunset Ridge Church ministry. Their website reads, “We have a vision to create a community that collectively works toward the flourishing of one another and our neighborhood”. They happen to be in my neighborhood so I can brag on them. They actively manifest their caring and compassion through a number of projects: transforming a parking lot into a neighborhood park, creating a place for shared work spaces and the Rose Hip Cafe, a place where I hang out and have a lot of interesting conversations.

Every cafe you walk into, really, has the potential of facilitating a transformative conversation. It was another PBS show I watched that was talking about the history of beer and they made the point that it was in the pubs and cafes of New England that the American revolution was fomented. People having real conversations.

Real conversations are when people talk AND listen, where people learn and explore and have fun, where there is a sense of . . . common unity. This, I think, can change the world.

What’s your sense of it? Do we really have to go through all this again? The dumbing down, the castigation, the denigration, the singling out of people who don’t have the right to the same privileges that we do. I just write from my own limited perspective about things - I need and want and ask for yours. Maybe you see it differently.

That’s the amazing thing about being at Haven for Hope. The people I meet there are not from my socio-economic-racial-cultural background. The most fun I have is just saying hello to someone, how are you, and initiating a conversation. Often all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and listen, offer an occasional comment. They have so much to say.

music from 00:00 ::

I love this guy, to be quite honest, and I see the changes he’s going through as part of a trend that many people are going through or may be going through or need to be going through. As our society evolves towards being more human based, more sustainable and less money based a lot of people will be making this journey.

Well anyways, here’s the interview.

Rohn: “Yeah, well I think that anybody’s life is interesting if you can really look at it the right way.”

Clayton: “Everyone has a story.”

R “Everyone has a story. So what’s your story.”

C “I’m living it.”

R “Ha ha ha ha.”

C “Writing it as I go.”

R “Right?”

C “It’s a shared human experience, man. We’re all here. We all have that in common. That’s my story.”

R “Yeap. Shared human experience. I like that.”

C “We’re all here and then we’re not. And then we make meaning. Try to put meaning to it.”

R “What’s it been like sharing 107 with Rohn. What’s it been like living on the Devonshire?”

C “What’s it been like?”

R “Yeah. What’s the experience been like for you?”

C “Oh it’s been great. It’s been part of my transformation. And I’ve learned a lot, gained a lot of wisdom through you and your experiences. You know, we both have different paths but I think we kinda share some of that same sentiment. And, you’re a righteous guy.”

R “Ha ha ha ha.”

C “I wish more people were like you.”

R “I feel the same about you. So like, talk about your transformation. That’s what really interests me, that’s what kind of made me think that you would be a cool person to talk to.”

C “My transformation?”

R “Yeah, you mentioned transformation, like . . .”

C “I think I’ve always felt a little, uh, displaced by society’s rules and I didn’t realize that, umh, how I didn’t fit into that mold. Pretty recently, within the past few years, just kind of a culmination of things led to this transformation of trying to live minimally and just trying to be present at all times. And I always struggled, I was always living in the future for most of my life and it took alot of practice to get to the point where I appreciate the here and the now.”

R “That’s a pretty cool transformation. What’s your, uh, being in the now what’s your plans for the future being in the now?”

C “Ha, ha, ha. Uh.”

R “Like I mean how do you see life unfolding>”

C “My future I, umh, I see life unfolding into endless possibilities because when you open yourself up to the universe or God, or the cosmos, whatever you want to call it, there’s so many opportunities that can arise that you can choose to take or not to take. I mean if you think about it every single decision in your life, it comes down to two choices, doing it or not doing it. You know, we all have the choice in the morning to get out of bed or we can stay in bed all day long. So I don’t think . . . we can all dream but I don’t know if anyone actually knows what’s going to happen. They don’t, you know, they don’t know their destiny. A part of life . . . it unfolds. That’s the beauty of it.”

R “Yeah. What if you had an Aladdin’s Lamp and you could make any wish come true. What kind of life would you like to lead. How would you visualize your life unfolding in the best possible circumstances?”

C “If I had an Aladdin’s Lamp . . . “

R “Yes! Ha, ha, ha. The genie comes out.”

C “Is it three wishes or just one?”

R “Three wishes, as many wishes . . . One wish could be, you know, that you have unlimited wishes.”

C “Is the genie Robin Williams or is it somebody else? Ha,ha.”

R “It’s a real genie, it can actually, you know, manifest . . . ”

C “He was my favorite genie, so . . . :

R “He was a genie?”

C “Well he played a genie. But he was a genie in real life too.”

R “Yeah?”

C “He was a magician. He made people laugh. Umh, I don’t think I would necessarily wish anything for myself. I don’t care much for money. Umh, I don’t really believe in it. I think I would wish for humanity to wake up and realize that money is not important. It’s very backwards how our society operates. Uh, what’s important is helping people, serving people, serving our planet, being good stewards, securing a future for all species, all . . . everything. Umh, I don’t even know if I would use the three wishes, I would just want that one thing if I could have anything in the world it would be for people to put our planet first before the profits.”

R “That’s a pretty cool response, my brother. I was just reading something about, you know, it’s not about being happy so much as it is about making other people happy.”

C “Yeah.”

R “Being happy because you’re able to bring happiness.

C “Yeah.”

R “And then the whole world, you know, is in support of . . . “

C “Exactly. Then you don’t need wars. If everybody is happy and fulfilled in sharing their resources then there’s no more need for war, there’s no more need for, uh, police, there’s no more . . . Most of the problems would be solved just by your own personal happiness. And that’s something that we talk about also on a regular basis.

R “Right.”

C “Almost on a daily basis.”

R “So you’re about to head off for, uh, Puerto Rico.”

C “Yeah.”

R “In just a few hours.”

C “Yeah. Five AM.”

R “What’s that about?”

C “Uh, living there last year for about six months working on a farm. And I got really sick and decided to come back here and heal and now that I feel like I’ve got my strength back I have an opportunity to go house sit and dog sit and so I’m just going to utilize that time to allow opportunities to happen, present themselves. I don’t really have a plan afterwards. And, like, I kind of don’t want one. It’s a little daunting but I’m just kind of leaning into that unknown because like I said before, the opportunities are endless when you just let yourself be completely open to anything. And so that’s my goal, I’m trying not to think too far into the future.”

R “It seems to me that that kind of perspective takes a lot of courage, to say you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, you don’t have, like, a solid plan, you know, a financial framework and support system and all that stuff that most people need to build their life around. You’re saying you don’t really have that you’re just open to possibilities.”

C “Yeah, what I’ve learned is that people are there to help you when you need the help. People are very responsive and there’s good people out there. We don’t focus on that. When you go and turn on the news they’re not talking about that, they’re talking about all the chaos and doom. But if you realize that there’s people every single day, all over this planet helping one another. That’s news, that should be making headline news in my opinion. That’s what actually matters.”

R “So you’re kind of modeling yourself after Ko and Masa, the couchsurfers that came through here (laughing) on their bikes going from the kindness of strangers to the kindness of strangers (laughing).”

C “Yeah.”

R “On their journey across America.”

C “Yeah. Exactly.”

R “Those guys were so happy.”

C “Yeah. I’m just not doing it on a Walmart bike.”

R “Oh my God. So what about your, umh, you know we’ve been . . . we’ve talked alot about farming and, you know, tried to do some farming here and learn about growing your own food. What about that part of your life? ”

C “Uh, that’s something that I want to get more involved in. I wanna start . . . and that’s what I plan to do in Puerto Rico and whatever happens after, is start foraging more, start, umh, living out some of the ideals that I have. Like one of my . . . I don’t know I kind of call him a mentor, his name is Rob Greenwood and he’s living the way that I believe we should be living. His ethos is completely revolved around our planet and how we can stop being, you know, consumers and be more producers and share our resources and I just find it really incredible. And he’s out there and he’s living that and he’s also showing that through his youtube videos, on his Instagram. So he’s putting himself out there which takes, to me that takes alot of courage. So what I’m trying to do is essentially, not follow in his footsteps but kind of create my own path I guess you could say to that same outcome.”

R “So he’s kind of a minimalist, could you describe him that way?”

C “Oh for sure, yeah he, uh, kind of . . . similar to what I, how I try to live except he’s . . . except I seem to have a lot more clothes.”

R “Ha ha.”

C “ But, uh, he’s got . . . he has really nothing. He was living out of a backpack for awhile, for a long while. He rode around the world on his bicycle, on a bamboo bicycle. He lived in a little shack that he built out of just recycled material mostly. Had a compost toilet, had an outdoor kitchen, had a shower from a cistern. Just living a very simple life. What I’ve come to realize is that when you come to live that way, when you live a simple life with less, you actually have more, in my opinion. You have more abundance because you appreciate things more. When you just have a bunch of stuff and a bunch of cars and a bunch of houses you don’t . . . I don’t feel like people can appreciate that as much. But when you don’t have anything you can live according to however you want.

R “Yeah and you’re surrounded by nature typically when you’re living like that, or at least he is rather than surrounded by four walls and sheetrock and a car and a, uh, office and a city and all these accessories of civilization. You’re rich in the experience you have of your surroundings rather than being shielded from the natural world you’re exposed to it and you have to integrate, you have to respond to it.”

C “Yeah, definitely. And that’s part of why he lives that way and that’s a main reason, or at least how I want to live, is surrounded by more nature because nature is everywhere. We are nature. It’s just a way to explain the world. But I prefer to live in a more . . . and I’m more fulfilled when I’m in a more natural element, near water. It’s just how my body operates. It’s how my mind operates. And I feel so much gratitude when I’m in that environment.”

R “Well what’s your perspective or you opinion or whatever on the way that people live today, society in general, status quo lifestyle of people living on planet Earth right now?”

C “I mean everyone has their own path, you know and uh, I think for the most part most people just want to be happy, do good, not harm other people. I don’t want to be judgemental but I don’t think we are living the way we should be living. I think putting consumerism, money, greed, power at the forefront of everything is very unhealthy for our planet as well as for ourself. And I sense an awakening happening and I see changes happening all the time and so it’s very hopeful. I really . . . it’s hard to, uh, create a system that works for everyone with, what is it 8 billion people currently. So how do you have a system that not only is sustainable but how do we heal the damage that we have created on this planet with this many people that’s economically viable? I think we do that by just consuming less. If we all just make a choice to consume less and re-use, there’s tons of clothing out there, there’s tons of cars out there, there’s so much that we already have. There’s so much food that we currently have that we just throw away. Forty per cent of the food in the U.S. we throw away. Why? It doesn’t make any sense to me and so I try to make sense of it and I try to be hopeful and I try to do the best of my abilities. And if everybody does that I think we can thrive.”

R “Yeah well that’s the next question that is bubbling up in my mind. You have gone through this transformation and yet most people haven’t. So how is that going to happen on a scale large enough to make a difference in how we live as a species on this planet? How are other people going to go through . . . how did you go through this transformation? Or would you call it a transformation?”

C “Yeah, definitely it’s a transformation. I’ve always been kind of a minimalist. I remember, you know, even as a child when my parents would ask me ‘what do you want for Christmas’ and I would say ‘I don’t want anything, like nothing’ and to this day I don’t want anything. Like, I always wanted them to give money to an organization or something like that. So I think I’ve always known that I wanted to live this way. I got lost a little bit along the way but now I feel like I’m on the path that I should have taken all along. And if I can do it, if people like Rob Greenwood and there’s a ton of examples, uh, celebrities and . . . it has to become mainstream. Which is a good thing. Like the counterculture has become mainstream and that’s good because that also forces corporation’s hands to start acting accordingly and to stop this perpetual growth.”

R “Yeah, well we live in a neighborhood here, a very nice neighborhood in San Antonio where maybe 1 out of 100 neighbors feel the way you do.”

C “I think it’s more than that. (laughs) You can tell by their yards and the cars people drive . . . ”

R “Yeah, that’s 1 out of 100.”

C “I think there’s a lot of people that, uh . . . and there’s instances all over the world, not just in the neighborhood, there is . . . I was watching a video today on like indigenous . . . the Lakota Nation. How they’re trying to get back to their roots of farming.”

R “Ah.”

C “And using those ancient practices that people have been using for thousands of years. That’s vital. That is important to pass on to people. And you can do that in the city as well. It doesn’t have to be in a rural area. You can do . . . you can grow food everywhere. Look at how many lawns are just on this one street. They’re pointless, they’re just extracting resources but if you replace that with . . . some of it, even just a portion of it with an edible landscape then we’ll have an abundance of food that we can just share with people. Like I keep hearing about food shortages. There’s no such thing as a food shortage, it’s a knowledge shortage. It’s a resource shortage, so we need to get some of these, some of the access to people who don’t have it. We need to help them so that they can grow food and feed their families.”

R “Well you’re right. Home gardens and community gardens are a trending thing.”

C “Yeah.”

R “Even in our neighborhood you see people growing things in their front yard, in their backyards.”

C “Yeah. It’s beautiful.”

R “And I guess that is the beginning of a transformation like you’re talking about.”

C “Yeah. And then it also needs . . . it’s the city, the local officials need to be onboard as well and stop fining people for doing that and why would you fine someone for just growing food so they can feed themselves? That doesn’t make any sense to me. And there needs to be more funding for local community gardens.”