Stories and Updates from a Cultural REcyclist

Hiya, Happy Wednesday!! 

This following writing was written about 10 days ago, and gives an account of my experiences from that point back to my accident in Bandon, OR and carrying up to a little bit after Thanksgiving. Today, I just came back from beloved  Fairfield, IA and slept most of the day after staying up late last night into the early hours of the morning talking with my good friend Barbara about life, Integral, love, Integral Feminism, cross-country cycling, plans for Cypress Villages, and much more.   :::      

        So I’ve been back in Kansas for 2 weeks and 3 days, after being hit by a drunk driver in Bandon, OR on HWY 101 going south along the Oregon coast, life-flighted to Portland for a tibia repair surgery putting a titanium rod into my leg, re-aligning my tibia bone; healing with my wonderful, generous friend Carla at her awesome home in Portland; meeting up with Newport, OR buddies (fellow mushroom hunters, music makers, and life lovers) and road-tripping with them from Portland to Newport; spending a night, great day, and morning in Newport in a home just off the beach where I could see the ocean from the living room window, open a window and hear and smell the ocean and got to talk with a man who had worked on one of the first CAM (Computer-aided manufacturing) machines in the early 1970’s, was a neighbor to Ken Kesey, and went to a number of his more-organized-than-expected swar˜es;  taking a bus to Coquille and healing at the magical Mountain Homestead cob village for about a week; taking a bus back up to Portland on November 14^th for a follow-up appointment at the knowledgeable, friendly Emanuel Legacy Hospital on the 15^th; then taking a plane to Las Vegas for a short layover, and on to  Kansas City, MO airport (MCI).

        It has been good times in Kansas, coming in to Overland Park, KS where I was raised (born in Bakersfield, CA) and visiting family, friends, and neighbors for the first time in months. I was gone last Thanksgiving and Christmas, in Japan, looking for English-teaching jobs, and this year I had planned on cycling/working in Oregon or California, and so my family was very happy for my surprise holiday presence this year.

        We had an excellent Thanksgiving- a meal with all the trimmings, from white & dark turkey down to sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. My brother came in town from his Minneapolis, MN college and it was good to see him too.  I ate at the “adult” table this year, due to some planning fluke, and had great conversation with everyone that continued on after dinner with my Uncle’s Gary and Mark about everything from legalization (yep, that kind), to racial issues locally, nationally, and globally, to non-profit organizations. One thing I learned from my Uncle Mark, a veteran and veterinarian, is that not all of the “Adopt a Shelter Animal” organizations that ask you to send in money to support animals brought in off the streets spend their donations honestly, something that is pretty bad in my book. I saw Harry Potter 7 Part 1 with my sister, cousin, and parents and it was very dark (as to be expected) and very good. 

Dalai Lama Day, May 18, 2010

Dalai Lama Day was amazing AMAZING and beautiful. The morning was cloudy/overcast when we left at around 5:30am to drive to Cedar Falls, IA and as happened when I saw him speak in Japan, by the time we were in his general vicinity the weather cleared and it was beautiful. I rode up with my new friends Jenny, Faith, and Theresa and we had some really great conversation about sacred geometry and African art, astrology, moving beyond the role of the victim in racism, the practice of some form of spirituality being more important than adhering to one specific religion, Jenny's growing up in Waterloo (practically a twin city of Cedar Falls), the power and lasting benefit of meditation, and much more. By the time we got to Waterloo we were incredibly tuned in and energized and we could feel the goodness permeating the town as we lined up to get into the stadium.

The Dalai Lama was speaking with four other panel members who were each participating in some degree of social reform in Iowa. There were none of the musical/ceremonial processions that introduced His Holiness in Japan, but it seemed a little more to-the-point in a place like the midwest. There was some nice music playing over the speakers as everyone was being seated.

His Holiness (H.H.) said that in our educations we should have moral education. It should not be a religious moral education only, because some people do not follow a religion and lead a secular life-style and they can also benefit from a moral education. He also said that we are PEOPLE first, and that second comes race, gender, religion, sexuality, nationality, etc.

One of the panel members was highly involved in quelling domestic abuse. He said that in Iowa they have formed a group of men who are against domestic abuse and violence against women and they work as a group to put positive peer pressure on the community to make domestic abuse and violence against women in effect... uncool. What a concept!!

Afterwards, I got some wonderful prayer flags for the farmhouse. Then, we went to a delicious Chinese restaurant that reminded me of the one I visited with my family in Toronto a few years ago. So good!! We stopped in Waterloo so Jenny could visit her parents for a few minutes and then we drove back, with more conversations about sacred geometry and permaculture, organic farming and our future plans for gourmet compost on Cypress Villages. (Which I carried out with Faith and Nick the next day.)

Gratitude. Love.

Visions in Viridian

Green begins to mend the popped seams in the land of a thousand heartbreaks (where the human beat was assumed to be pre-programed for an industrial age inferiority complex, the trance of the train tracks de-railed compassion, following in the evolutionary footsteps of our large lumbering lizard brethren, lazy in a cock-pit fantasy of continuous consumption, yet bound to be bound; parenthetically found) to be reunited with youthful ancient dreams, re-aquainting each other with our synchronistic synaptic paths and Arteries now occasionally overlook the mechanical tracks as we smell fresher airs of contribution and reciprocity, exhaling change back into farms of wind and enriching our soil, sun-soaked squares carry the soft hum of electricity pulsing softly as the sounds of the snarling CO2 combustion machines begin to fade away, fade away ... fade away... now kept on display as heirlooms of achievement, toyed with for curious mind's release- as a sideproject, the sounds of the forest and the prairie start returning to the edges of infrastructure, cars swish smoothly by, and light rail allows for brighter skies, less interrupted by the rumbles of jet engines, the trees and plants have started listening to each other again

Freewrite #2 8/31/ ('99?)

This short story was written during a class I had in high school called Writer's Workshop, during a regular practice of the class called a Freewrite, wherein our class would begin with a 15 or 20 min. session that involved a piece of paper, a writing utensil, and whatever you wanted to write. And there was usually some music, too. It was part meditation, part pure expression, and I credit it nearly single-handedly with my development as a writer. As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm mainly a poet, but here is a rather entertaining short story piece of my juvenile literature.

Once upon a time there was a squirrel. His name was Alfred. Alfred was a pretty normal squirrel, except for one thing. Whenever there was a full moon (no, he didn't turn into a werewolf-squirrel thing) he would get amazing superpowers. How he was so fortunate no one knows, but he was of a special breed of super-squirrels.

One day poor Alfred was crossing the street trying to prepare a stash of acorns for the winter when out of the blue a reckless teenage driver on his way to school ran a stop sign and crushed our super squirrel into the asphalt. Why not use his super powers, you ask? Well, because it's not a full moon yet dumbass. But Alfred was in luck, tonight there would be a full moon and his eye that didn't get run over had caught the license plate number of the reckless teenage driver: WATCHIT.

The full moon began to peek out over the roof of the house whose yard Alfred's tree was parked in. He could feel the positive energy of the moonbeams recharging his power (and scaring away all of the maggots that had bothered to pay his decaying body a visit). In one great blast of moon powered energy Alfred sprung from the asphalt, rejuvenated. Now it was time for action.

I would like to end this entry with a quote by Stella Adler. "Life beats you down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."

There's escapism, and then there's an insane skillful playfulness that pulls you into euphoria and beauty and actually accomplishes something. That is all.

!SLAM!

This is a poem I wrote quite a while ago. A little curious to look back on since I was in a car accident about a year ago, and when I wrote this I had never been even close to being in a car accident. There's also a nod/pun to Slam poetry in the title which seems a little smart-ass considering the subject matter in retrospect. You decide. All in all, it amazes me what imagination can come up with and I give thanks to the greater powers that involve me with it. Thanks for reading. Love.

Poetry pouring out as binary code

Poetry pouring out as binary code:
initiated by Spirit, interacting with mind,
integrated with machine,
flowing through fingertips touched to keys, popping into appearance as text,
turned out into the physical realm coded by binary
to be bounced back into textual visualization
for other integrated mind machine participants:
Poetry pouring out as binary code.

Goodbye to Gaia.com

The website Gaia.com is shutting down. It began as a site called Zaadz, which is Dutch for "seeds," and an honorable idea of being a community and network site for spiritual, progressive, and artistic minded people. It still seems to be pretty active today, the reason for the site closing being noted by the owner as the "current economic conditions." I really enjoyed the site initially- I had a few friends that signed on at the beginning too, there were some good questions posed for website discussion, and I was able to reconnect with old friends from the Rime Buddhist Center. One of my favorite things about Gaia was the tag names underneath the members' given names. They read things like, "wakingdreamer," "~SmAsHInG dUaLiTy~," "Tantric YoginiShaman," and "Post Metaphysical Punk." I think that many of these names pointed to individuals' true higher aspirations and some were even trans-religious, combining practices such as Yoga and Shamanism, Buddhism and Taoism, which demonstrates the zeitgeist of people looking to integrate spiritual practices together to form an even larger picture of what God and Spirit means. Another highlight on the site was my friend Michael Garfield's page and blog, containing essays on topics like Cymatics (the study of the visual patterns that sonic vibrations form on surfaces and in three-dimentional objects) and the Rosslyn Chapel, Integral Art, and the classical minimalist composer Arvo Part. I think that all of these essays and more will still be able to be checked out on Michael's myspace page: myspace.com/michaelgarfield. And, from my humble Gaia page, I've archived my only blog entry, about the death of Bob Nash, the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur. He died about two weeks and two years ago.

And with this, goodbye Gaia, glad to meet you.

A Beautiful Beat Poet Passes On

Posted on Mar 6th, 2008 by Chris

Hello friends,

Somehow I came across this lady's online journal entry with her personal account of the death of Bob Nash, "the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur and the Carmel Valley after WWII." This lady, Susie Bright, and her friends carried Bob's body, craddled in sheets and tucked in with rosemary, up a hill from his residence to the road to meet the man from the mortuary. Here is a link to the article; the photos are incredible: http://susiebright.blogs.com/
And here is a poem:

Upon Meeting Bob Nash, 1964 by Ric Masten

one wonders
about an eccentric
content to live and work
in the claustrophobic confines
of a tiny camper shell
truckless
perched on flimsy redwood piers
and in terrain so enormous
distance is measured
in light years

the word
on Partington Ridge is vertical
horizontal
only on warm summer evenings
sprawled in the dry grass
mesmerized
by a towering uncloaked sky
hushed by the size of it all
this
while at my elbow
a monkish little guy
talks my leg off
piling the verbiage up
until there isn’t
nor will there ever be
a crock
large enough to contain it all

of course

the same thing can be said
about the human heart
and love
which gets us to the place
where Bob lets us see his art
pen and inks
so minimal and microscopic
they might be easily ignored
but in the right light
if you focus
the sparseness and simplicity
takes you aboard
until you find yourself
in league with molecules
closer to zero
than you have ever been before

lines as fine as these
can only be drawn
by someone who knows
precisely
how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin
and realizing this
one wonders

Peace and Love Everywhere,

Chris