Places on A Well-Lit-Path

Visitation

Sun, 21 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When I first planned this trip to visit my kids in the States, I thought of dropping by to see my “spiritual brother” Bruce Davidson. Together with his partner Linda Reimer, and the gathered companions at Sirius Community, he had been carrying an inner light for decades, even through the past few years of declining physical health, after a fall from a tree had physically broken him.

He passed in November, and my desire to meet him again in this lifetime were ended as well. Since Sirius is not far from the Pioneer Valley, where both of my adult children are in residence, I took an evening to drive up into the hills, to add my presence to his lingering presence.

la pau

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I know my friends and neighbors to be peace-loving, cooperative citizens, and I know the long heritage of their culture enjoys many more days of enlightened rule than oppression. I know that the history of power in Madrid cannot very easily defend their own record in this regard, and that a disinterest in real discussion has led to this pass.

While I hope to read and understand better the Catalan motives for secession – more lofty than “mine is mine” finances, though probably that factors in as well – I prefer a diplomatic solution, brokered by disinterested third parties (should those exist), than a push toward bloodshed.

who's coming?

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s general strike concluded without further agression – thank you to whomever had sense enough to cool the hotter heads in the room. Now begins the media battle, and probably some sort of legal battle.

To make sense of the right-wing response from Madrid (“Mine! Mine!”): at 20% of the Spanish GDP, Catalunya leaving the federation would be a bigger economic blow to the Iberian peninsula than if California, Oregon and Washington State joined to declare their independence, becoming some glistening, insane, ephemeral digitocracy, poised to shake into the sea with San Andreas’ next rumble. Catalunya has a history as an independent State, so a “bipartisan” Congress’ hard-line response would have the greater force of law.

Martial Law?

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Since we have seen this same tired play performed over and over again throughout history, we actually don’t need to pick up the script to know what happens next.

Since an army has been sent, there will be violence.

The violence will not originate with the people who are gathering without arms. It will be provoked by the invading military, orchestrated, or barring success is creating a fight, invented.

The people who are marching will defend themselves as best they can from the aggression, which will then be labeled “insurrection” or “coup d’etat” (the latter has already been used).

democràcia!

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

[audio mp3=“http://well-lit-path.thewaywest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/October-2.mp3"][/audio]

pots and pans

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For the past week leading up to Catalunya’s self-declared referendum on independence – fervently contested as unconstitutional by the standing Spanish government in Madrid; equally or more fervently proposed as the only remaining action possible within an unjust and unresponsive regime – the people of the city have stood at 10 pm outside their apartments, on balconies or in windows or in the street, with large pots and pans and wooden mallets. For five minutes they struck those pans like bells, decentralized but united, is support of their right to decide.

El Masnou

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Catalina’s mother was able to travel and be with us for a number of weeks, shortly after the birth of her grandson, our son. On one of the Saturdays of her visit, the two decided to, finally, “Do the Tourist Thing”, and ride one of the big red double-decker buses around the hills and beaches of Barcelona. I was invited, but declined; they had a great mother-daughter-grandson outing, and I took my bicycle and headed north.

Sólo lo tengo 24 horas

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Entre los varios sueños que me visitaban ayer noche, este fue lo más problemático. Perderme, tranquilo; sufrir una pequeña accidente de coche, aguanto; llamar a casa, encuentro mi pareja cansada, sin tiempo hablar conmigo, está bien, está bien.

Pero cortando esta paisaje cinemática, como la voz del narrador, unos pocos palabras: “Tienes veinte-y-cuatro horas para vivir. Disfruta-las.”

Lo que pasa en el sueño es tan real. Quién estaba hablando? Dios, ángel, diablo? Tengo veinte-y-cuatro horas. Se ha hablado. Puede ser?

Casa dels vents

Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When the sun rises the wind rises, mostly from the sea slightly acrid and full of the tide, sometimes from the land laden with dust and a broad swath of heat, in either direction pouring into and over Barcelona, east-to-west or west-to-east, breathing in or breathing out.

At street level there are pedestrians and cars, the pungent aroma of century-old sewers, the sycamores’ daily fall of leaves, and still air. Walk up a couple of flights, and the atmosphere lifts with you, tourism gives way to neighborhood (Sr. Carles and his little dog on the second floor, the acid-rock teen on the third, the divorcée and her daughters on the fourth, the colombiana next door). You meet them at the door of the tiny elevator, where they smile and wave and turn away to walk down to the street; you meet them with their bags and boxes and baby strollers, with their garbage bags and umbrellas; and you meet them in their quiet or loud domesticity, the bellowed phone calls to hard-of-hearing relatives, a raucous chorus of feliç aniversari to a friend or family member, the deep silence of all these families sleeping during a personally restless night.

A fleet flight from the street

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A flight of steps takes you from one floor to the next. If you are at ground level, you could fly upwards, as high as needed, to reach your roost; if you are floating somewhere above, you would flutter downward to reach the street.

If your ceilings are high and your walls short, a stretch of stairway may not fly you from one floor to the next. In our building, the stairs double back on themselves once between each floor. The segments in a flight of stairs are called “flits”. Our building boasts two flits per flight. My friend Sal, master of the moist (or much) arcane, would enjoy researching the veracity of this, or extending its coinage.

Deep roots draw water

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Catalunya is an arid place, particularly this time of year. Mid-summer, the chart of sunup and sundown tracks the volume of breeze to stillness, the world’s big breath, maps the rise and fall of temperature which rarely varies from day to day, and over all or under all the heavy mass of heat that never threatens rain, that watches us all wandering from home to work to home again, from beach to plaza to rambla to bed.

I'll end today at home

Sat, 04 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Fields of heather reach from the tarmac east, unbroken by even a single tree, rarely by a road, knee-high unbowed flowers that reach the sea. An inlet, in reality: behind you see a ridgeline rising, and on the ridges snow; past the ridges, over there to the north, Iceland’s 66th parallel, a frosty whisper south of the Arctic Circle.

I saw, as we flew in, the sparse houses huddled in the even sparser green, huddled near the shore where the demands of weather are not impossible to satisfy, the incursion of ice not quite a glacial burial, and the overlay of lava not too frequent, so that somehow, somehow, through experience and (equally important) sheer persistence, these humans just like you and just like me chiseled a foothold into the stone and tundra, so here they stayed, and here they remain, twelve-hundred years of history, speaking a language left them by the Vikings, composed in blood-lines and written out in lines of these faces.

Warm welcome away

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The rustle of the river over the hill and behind the trees is constant, time’s current, and fills the emptying vessel of the day with sound. I am walking barefoot up the road from friend Bruce’s hilltown home toward the community of dancers, whose annual retreat here is part exploration, part homecoming: everyone arrives ready to listen, ready to speak, the conversations made of movement and trajectory, and geometry and the (morphing) architectures of bone and sinew, intention and opportunity, lift and release.

every which way

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Thirty years of summers as we entered our middle years, our parents becoming grandparents, and our children, adults: their growth as imperceptible in the moment as the changing girth of trees, and as startling in retrospect as the forest that replaces thready saplings and threadbare underbrush.

We’ve grown every which way. At first in the same direction, though now, as each one finds their feet, in a more cavalier flight of seed and leaves, the roots in some shared soil (which one? where?) and reaching for the same sun (that one, there) but to the east and to the west. That’s the nature of Being, and the nature of beings. Take flight!

with the tide

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Self Portrait as Stone

Self Portrait as Sand

Self Portrait as Shell

Self Portrait as Stick

I found myself refracted on Brackley Beach, Prince Edward Island.

The Map of the World - II

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The lines connecting this landmark to that begin to fill in. I am the spider who, having cast a first thread into the wind, having that thread carried by the wind to a neighboring tree limb or ledge, adds with patience effort those radial spokes that construct his web. Then the outward spiral begins, and the zig-zag connection of this strand to that. Welcome to my lair! (don’t get stuck)

the eye that stops the world

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Not suggesting that the beauty in the eye of the beholder is anything but subjective, nor that the lenses and optics, rods and cones, and strands of nerve are tuned similarly from one pair of miraculous orbs to the next. We have colorblindness to thank for the physical proof of an old adage.

However, I do believe our amazing sensors and possible extra-sensors comprise a “What’s Out There” kit that takes in the last wavelet of light that rushes in our direction; that warmth doesn’t stop at the surface of the skin (hold your fingers up before a bulb to reveal your beautiful transparency); that the slow tide or mad rush of Things is fully taken in, is physically seen, whether we register them or not. In fact, we are probably engaged in a moment-by-moment triage effort to weed out what is vital – will that creature bite me, or that storm electrocute me? will that truck run me over? – from what is simply the noise of living, a bird in the bush, a little rain over the city, the constancy of human transit.

heights

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

What is around that bend in the road, the one than climbs out of sight through the gap made by two obscuring hills? It is narrower than the main highway; it is little used; it may lead nowhere… but obviously, it leads somewhere.

What’s out there, beyond that horizon? It’s a line drawn in the water that is erased as you approach, only to be redrawn a mile further out to sea. Some people left, never to return. It may be a water grave… but obviously (to me, obvious) there is land somewhere.

The Map of the World

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There was a graceful fall of land on the street where we lived, from the top of the block, north toward the south, bowing in the direction of the lake. If you looked at a contour map, you would see roads shaped by shoreline, connected to others that radiated away like rays from a child’s drawing of the sun, that gradually straightened and conformed to the surrounding grids of houses.

3 – Maré baixo

Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, I chose to ride to town by way of the river, where a cycling and pedestrian path runs a ribbon, downstream toward the sea.

Usually, when I am in the middle of some list of accomplishment – all too common lately – I take the shorter route, the backstreets past the park, bisecting the rail trail, within earshot of the Catholic school whose children are invariably running about and shouting at their play, through the sidewalk back alley and over to State Street. That day, the geese were louder than the grade-school kids, the sun was out and warming my heart if not my hands, and… you know, it is -downhill- to the river, and I roll there without even pressing on the pedals.

14 - Tracks

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My shoulder leans against the wall of the commuter car, my head rests on the window; below my seat as we pass I see the brown rushes of the salt marsh blur by, and lazy fingers of the coastal rivers reaching inland and taking what they find seaward. A hawk on a pin-oak branch, both bird and bough wearing winter dress, and equally impassive and we clatter past. Salt marsh, wood lot, salt marsh, wood lot. These are my favorite scenes.

18 - Home, Away from Home

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s the re-issue of a photo that looks like magazine copy, but is in fact an iPhone image I myself took in Poble Nou, residential neighborhood of Barcelona, which is soon to be home-away-from-home (or home-a-short-hop-from away-home Boston, or from away-away-home Minnesota, where my heart still resides): a landing pad for my kids and family whenever possible; a vital new life for Cata and me; and fertile soil for many new friendships and projects.

Os cais do porto

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Lisboa, Portugal

I should think that at some point writers (insert: travelers, artists, readers, wanderers) would have taken in enough sights and scenes, they might permanently retire to their rooms like Sri Aurobindo, spending the rest of their days quietly reciting the poem of what had been seen. Wouldn’t a mariner look one day upon yet another new bay, or new port, and say: There is one ocean: I have sailed it again and again. A breeze is a breeze, and a wave is a wave; a shore is a shore, and a landing a landing.

Small-town Catalunya

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

… includes a castle, of course. Girona is one bullet-train ride north of Barcelona, on a line that continues on to Paris. The train reaches more than 250 km/hr (some 160 mi/hr) in stretches, and whisks you far out of town and into the hills in under 40 minutes. So superimpressed was I by the fell and flow of Barcelona, the quieter nature and proximity to land provided by Girona was probably overshadowed: when I stopped by tourist information for help getting “quiet”, the only option I was offered was the public garden space (and a local outdoor market that day). Somehow, it felt less welcoming than more, certainly a reflection of my interior than a representation of the town’s character.

Poble Nou

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Barcelona, España

On this whirlwind tour, Barcelona suffered misconception similar to Brussels. How could it be otherwise, when the city is built on a few snippets of internet, a few personal experiences of people who are not at all like you, and a travel resume that includes nothing approximating Flanders or the Iberian peninsula? I watched an excellent video called Bye-Bye Barcelona, reflecting on a huge influx of tourists that annually outnumbers the local population by a factor of 3 to 1 (is it more? less?); I enjoyed a more positive take on the place, as reported by expat Brazilians, O mundo segundo os brasileiros - Barcelona, which I have to admit was colored pretty heavily by the culture doing the reporting.

jardin botanique | jardin oblique

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Bruxelles, Belgique

Brussels is the first stop for me on a four-city tour of potential jobs for my partner Catalina. Potential job means potential home, and while she interviews and is interviewed, I have a similar but much more free-form conversation with the people and structures and cultures that we pass through. There are dramatic in their differences, and perhaps equally dramatic in their sameness: oil has made car owners (or at least desirers) of us all, and these European spaces, designed and built hundreds of years ago, simply do not translate well. They seem to hiss one thing with their modern tongue, but sigh about something else with their next breath.

Look!

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Because the wind lifts from the south, these clouds rush by, matted together like felt here, and pulling apart like cotton there, until the deep opens before your eyes; and there, racing toward that pool of sky, or rolled into it like a white china ball (muddied as it is, here and there, by tar or pitch, God’s fingerprint) the bright white moon.

A moment like this; a place like this. I say tonight with certainty that, in a few short weeks, this particular ridge and its careening satellite will no longer be available to my eyes: this moon’s been sold; as well, these skies. With equal certainty I (sadly?) say that in a few short years – they pass as quickly as these clouds, wherever they’re blown – the skies that once were mine are mine no more.

Rijsttafel

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

That was many years ago.

One of my last meals on the island of Java was on a side-street of Yogyakarta. It was near the warung where stayed the first two months of our journey, before being sponsored by the owner of the research center and his wife; before borrowing their bicycle for trips into the surrounding desa; before climbing the volcano in the night; before the relationship had ended.

Crows

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Between the hills and the channel, the crows flew into cornfields as they had two hundred years before; the crows were chased from the nests of sparrows and starlings as they had been a thousand years before; the crows made their raucous calls as they had as long as earth could remember.

"Crows" by chrissymllr @ DeviantArt.com

On the shore, the channel waves pushed and pulled grains of sand as they had under the same sun, time forgotten. The salty water, warmed by the same rays, made little lives from its brine, time undefined. The breeze rose from one direction and flew to another, mixing sun and sea, making fog and rain, until no one and nothing remembered when it began, until the habit of creation was no longer noticed.

Declaração de amor

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A number of years ago I prepared to leave the country for the first time. Later, I prepared again… and again. Each time I departed the shell was thinner; and each time I returned, the distance between those I loved at home and those I loved abroad was shorter. I held and was held by wonderful people of all races and all religions and all economic levels – those who were easiest to love often possessed (or were possessed by) the least material wealth.

Canción de la soledad

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Casi no hay quién pasa por áqui en el sábado solitario sábado de las ausencias

cuyos ángeles, de bocas cerradas posan detrás de las ventanas del piso más cercana al cielo.

Es el sábado de tu silencio. Sin tu voz, tus palabras se manifiestan hasta en las llamadas de los pájaros

para las cuales no tengo respuesta sino aproximarme más aun a la tierra: yo no sé del lenguaje de las alas.

Wildlife News (page two)

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The female cat was sleeping next to me on the couch, as I watched a movie. Sleeping, I thought: suddenly she sat bolt upright, stared out the window, and started that guttural growling of hers.

I know better by now than to doubt that growl. I put my head down next to hers and followed her gaze. Nothing.

“So what’s up, Minstrel?” We sat unmoving for half a minute, intermittent low noises of disapproval from my little companion.

Earth to earth

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the hardest physical work in recent memory is 72 hours on the Improv dance floor.

Also, the most rewarding. I haven’t built a house, or surveyed for a map, or planted a garden. But by listening listening listening I’ve followed the sprite of movement, and on her scent traced the outline of home; through repetition memorized (in the body’s threads and cords) the navigation lines I might follow to get there; and inadvertently collected in these outstretched arms so many wild foods along the way – fruit of this adventure – that I am fed.

Wildlife News

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

- ONE -

An hour ago as the day was leaning west, I was pulling east, bringing the laundry in ahead of the dew. It smelled of light and fresh air and flowers: I can’t wait to sleep on today’s mountain air made linen. Deciding I needed a little music, and finding no other singers around the house – a problem that needs work, yes – I took my guitar in hand, headed back out to the deck, tuned up, and settled into some familiar songs.

The Lights Go Down in the Forest

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There was only one thing made a sound like that, and it was death. This wasn’t a mouse-death, nor a chipmunk-death (with two hunting cats around, there is plenty of that small pleading going on, day in, day out): it was a bigger animal; whatever was going down was doing so just over the lip of the hill, beneath my deck; and only one cat was indoors.

In the time it took you to read the first four words of that paragraph, I was already out the sliding door, leaning over the deck, wondering if my male hunter was no longer predator, but prey. What a terrible shrieking, sound of struggle.

fireside stories

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

- 1 -

Look at that moon! And over there, Venus is a diamond. While this campfire warms my feet, the breeze nods itself to sleep, and the river (whose unceasing flow is an unremarked inspiration) hushes along on its gentle, downhill slide…

There is much to be said of city life — but the less said, the better.

We can make smaller circles in the trees, just out of sight of those agitated centers. Here where embraces are slower and quieter, where we do more to nourish ourselves and our neighbors, and less to stoke a Machine whose engines carry others to others’ destinations.

as slow as spring

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Late last night I arrived home after looking for Home: here the footprint, here the small harvest, here the collected years of living; there (wherever There is), the path leading on, the planting for spring, the arrow’s arc.

I see that, as experiences accumulate, the urgency of a moment is softened slightly. Or, if I am the agent of my change and not the world, I take ownership of the softening: I begin to mistrust urgency. So many use emergency as proof for arguments that have no basis… when it’s only another mask for fear, and one that we don’t often recognize. It’s only a fear of time, when time defines us.

roused by silence

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The mountain was covered with a veneer of snow

while I slept, while I didn’t sleep, the silver light of the moon filtered through leafless branches and lit the earth, shadow-spirits walking. Each time I woke, it was brighter outside, and the light spilled through a different window.

I was roused first by the silence after sound

as though something that had teetered on a shelf was undone by a mote of dust, had lost its balance and fallen with a single clatter into my dreams – and I startled as though someone called my name – so that apparently, without cause, there was effect. A ghost is nothing more than accumulated, unnoticed events; if you pay close attention to your life, there’s no such thing as a ghost. If you’re asleep, if your eyes are closed while they are open, you are constantly alarmed by everything you could not expect.

Windows - 6 (A return of sorts)

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I love the land, and I love it best when I am sharing it.

The approach to the property, as the highway leaves Wilton and leans into a slow ascent, as it curves to follow the hill’s hips, as it dips into the warm valleys, then feels its way toward the North Pack by narrower and narrower ways, calls up so many memories: of the White Mountains (if not in altitude, then in presence); of the Southwest (if not in aridity, then in silence); or of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota (if not in liquidity, then in spirit)…

Longe das planícies

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Longe das planícies fúnebres onde contra o inverno cultivam grãos suas raízes ténues e fúteis frente ao frio iminente e a foice nas mãos tragei o ar inspirador do mar de tudo nascente.

Foi longe das planícies inmensuráveis as léguas ou as horas, os desejos… entre aquele passado e este presente quantas guerras quantas mortes acompanhando tréguas quantos enterros e flores de caixão quantas orações de despedida batizando vidas desviadas ou vias novas a chamar.

Instead, there was a trail led out of town

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It may be that, in the beginning, there was intimation of the end: certainly one point connected to another, even by the crooked line of time, share an intimacy as close as any two lovers, perhaps closer. It may be that, when I started out, I had a plan, and that plan imagined an associated arrival.

But while there are some – maybe there are many? – who consciously describe a future in their minds, to then steadfastly walk in its direction, tinkering with the facts as they stray (until, with a flashing grin of satisfaction, and the pride of the accomplished, they arrive where they revisedly said they were going, often at a distance of years and miles from their intended target), I am not one of them. I arrive as errantly as any other, but rarely hold intention consciously, either trusting the currents of the world to sweep what is valuable in my path, or mistrusting my own dim vision to light up enough of that forward way, to set a heading far into it.

echo

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“Switch it off!”

“What?” (Not ‘what do I switch off’; rather: ‘what are you talking about’.)

“Shhh!” All five fingers of the right hand spread wide, the first touching the lips, the hand a stop sign, the fingers stretched rigid, the hand surprised, the fingers an echo of surprise. Meanwhile, with the left, she reached over and unplugged the radio.

“What th…”

“SH!”

As there was no wind, there was no sound. It was night. The stovetop light from the kitchen was a warm glow that filtered onto the porch, where they sat side by side, on the top step. She was looking for something in the darkness, but couldn’t see. She was listening: her face said “What?”

first-light

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

They leaned into each other as the warming first-light leaned against their window, leaned into their room, over the bed, let its weight drape gently on their limbs, whispering Good Things that neither would remember when they woke.

But maybe it touched them dreaming: they stretched, and stretching took deep draughts of air into their lungs, as though Good Things had just begun.

“I forgot just now that winter…” “I was running in fields with ribbons in my hair…” “So good to fall asleep beside you…” “So good to wake beside you…”

my reflection in the photograph

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Several years ago I was “improving” my photo collection, which had become a wobbling tower of Kodachrome, balanced precariously and in no particular order in a hidden corner of my closet. Every time I saw it, I felt a vague intolerance; and each time I saw it, I felt that intolerance grow, until finally the intolerance was itself intolerable, and I furiously shoveled the concealing junk out of the way, and hooked those boxes and stacks out into the middle of my bedroom floor.

columns

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

One pillar was just within reach. Stretching her hand, the tips of her fingers ran over the smooth and the rough of the mosaic surface, each square inch of glazed ceramic a work of art in itself, each line of mortar its frame. – If I stood here a month I might see them all, she thought. As though walking the Louvre without walking.

She glanced down the long chamber. The sun was falling, and the far end of the hall was already dark, in the expanse the other columns were like trees, somehow solemn (was that her feeling, written into the dusk?), lifting a painted canopy overhead, lifting history overhead, roots buried in centuries of shuffling feet, branches hidden in an incense haze.

Rue

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I turned to face the evening she was there her arms a circle cool November: mist the light, a fallen curtain and her hair a silken flicker turned to mask her face

all given, all received in evening’s arms we fell, we turned the shawl November’s mist to circled warmth the lightest curtain furled

til darkness fell on everything, and gave November back to us returned our names

a circle cannot end November can

Rue - Mark Schultz

Sambamaré

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

O coração baía aberto ao maré as águas vêm as águas vão prá onde eu não sei

Chegam de tempestade ao suspiro elas vão escrevem nomes na areia que as ondas apagarão

… instrumental

Correnteza agridoce pôs tesouros à beira-mar que beleza me traz sorriso despedida me faz chorar

Correnteza agridoce faz tesouros aterrisar que beleza ao alcance dos olhos mas nas mãos é que nem luar

Beleza ao alcance dos olhos desagua das mãos que nem luar

Windows - 3

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Lonny was the product of big energy and tiny town, where the limitations imposed by three square blocks of homes – an Alcatraz adrift on an ocean of unswimmable wheat – fueled the kind of incendiary pressure that could only come out wrong. Even back then, when I was eight and Lonny was nine, his combustion resulted in trouble; so years later, when I heard that he was in the pen for grand theft auto and some litany of other offenses, it was disappointingly no surprise: the wide world never succeeded in changing Lonny’s first impressions, nor would he be able to see it as anything but an endless, confining small town. A twitch in his heart was too large for his skin, a cruel itch, an irritation for which he found no balm. Maybe he didn’t look hard enough. Maybe he took off in the wrong direction, followed the wrong leader, and never got righted.

Inuksuit

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The inuksuit born of the weight in our hands as stone after stone they choose to stand their lives take form in the foundry of the heart they rise and arise on the bank of the fjord to wait in the wind for the one who returns they speak without speaking but when? but when? lighthouse without light that shines on the bay poem without words unwritten by hand sentinel to a moment that refuses death the spirit of the stone leans toward the south the spirit of my stone will not close its eyes as some leave their hearts and new stones arise our village of inuksuit grows and subsides they reach toward the sun and they bow to the tide.	Inuksuit sont nés du poids dans les mains pierre en pierre ils choisissent de se lever leurs vies en formant dans la fonderie d’un coeur ils se lèvent et se réveillent à la rive du fjord à attendre dans le vent pour lequel qui revient ils parlent sans parler -- mais lorsque? -- lorsque? un phare sans lumière que illumine la baie poème sans mots pas écrit à main sentinelle d’un moment que refuse de mourrir l’esprit de la pierre penche vers le sur l’esprit de ma pierre ne ferme pas ses yeux comme quelque-uns lèguent ses coeurs et pierres nouvelles se lèvent notre village de inuksuit s’agrande et diminue ils atteignent au soleil et s’inclinent aux marées.

Some inuksuit were used by those hunting caribous, when the caribous were coming the young ones were fed milk not to make noise. The land without trees was called The Place for Feeding by the elders.

Many inuksuit together are called nalluni. We placed nalluni where we would want the caribous to swim before they reach the end of the lake or reach the other side.

Almost all the land had inuksuit; all of them were useful. Some inuksuit were on the way where caribou herds were walking, beside lakes or at the end of big lakes.

When they start to swim, we will go to them by kayak. Before they reach the shore, they will be hunted with harpoon (kapuutinut) This was the way to get many caribous. In the summer the skin and the fur were good and used for clothes. The meat was buried underground, that way it would be the food for the winter, it was like that in the past.

Some inuksuit were there for people not to get lost when they were moving around; for example, inuksuit were followed to go to a lake or anywhere.

On lakes where there are fish, there are rocks who point to the lake. The two rocks are on top of the flat rock point to the fishing whole. We should try to fish where it is pointing. But we don’t even notice it because we don’t know what our ancestors did. Back then they built these pointers to a lake where there is fish. We never worry about them, we just hunt when we are camping.

All the big places have an inuksuit. We use them to recognize where we are. Even to this day, they are used. Inuksuit building was taken seriously by our ancestors, they were built to be used. If there were no inuksuit, many people would get lost, especially in the blizzard. When we see an inuksuit we are thankful and we feel more confident.

Candi Prambanan

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

If there is a lesson in travel – and I make the gentle distinction here between Travel, where you open yourself to change, and Tourism, where the scenes and faces pass in front of you in cinematic splendor – if there is a lesson in travel, it is that time is much longer than your pockets-full of days, and earth much larger than the bag of bones and sinew you temporarily call home.

curve

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

“The curve of the river is where the breeze comes freshest. You can hear the leaves find voice before each gust arrives, like an invisible wave reaching upstream, downstream. On this bank is the small shore, because the arm of water hooks around us here, an embrace. The far bank is the long shore: from here you can see it’s slow progress.

“I come to think. Sometimes I come here not to think. The place seems not to mind the face I put on, at any rate whatever face I brought is put away soon enough. So long as you’re quiet, the small sounds work their way into you and fill you up, so the burden you decided to drag along with you that day is rained-on, then water-logged, then sinks into the slowness of the current.

belo horizonte

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

uma palavra balançou
na ponta da língua
falada, calada, falada, calada
batuque rítmo de coração

será que este por do sol
seja à medida do seu nascer?
o menino enraizado só
(arvore-gurí, criança-flor)
se sente o peso diferente
nas almas dos seus pés;
de cima, entretanto
sol é sol

até o día em que sangue dispara
com tamanho desejo, o corpo canal
com gritos do mar e da morte
falado, calado, falado, calado
uma gota de sal como vinho
da ponta da língua traçada
doçura na linha ereta
boca garganta ventre

Fill My Eyes

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

When you travel to a tourist destination, you see what you pay for, and what those who are selling rest wish you to see: in the case of Gulf coast Florida, there are miles of sand, comfortable and maintenance-free accommodations, food at the end of a short walk and at the sliding edge of your credit card, and night clubs or golf courses or day spas or ships or shops… That’s why they are here, so you can be here, too. It is a perfectly Disney establishment, where the name is here employed as an adjective. The world is peaceful, there are no cares, and all that is asked of you (for these few days) is that you… descontrair (couldn’t find a better word than the Portuguese, meaning to “un-contract”).

Matisse's table

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t matter the palette, where colors live, the brush can explore; where the brush explores, the canvas blooms; where paint dries, the globe is tasted, interpreted, and offered to whomever would receive it.

So, tonight we are in the southern States, in easy reach of some of the tastier kitchen paints. Tonight’s menu:

Caribbean black beans, cooked with garlic slices, rock salt and rough-ground pepper; accented with spicy Italian sausage, the flavor “lightened” with sliced sour oranges (a variety of kumquat) which I picked this evening from the tree out back, and “greened” with fresh cilantro, in the soup and as a garnish. Long-grain rice cooked with peppercorn and bay. As side dishes, fresh sliced yellow bell pepper; a fruit plate of papaya, banana pieces and bosc pear sprinkled with fresh lemon juice; and an accent plate of half-ripened green mango (sweet-tart, not soupy). A small glass of yesterday’s Beaujolais, and grapefruit juice mixed with Perrier.

Enceladus, one of many

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

When I was close to my daughter’s age, I would often stop in at the school library at lunch time, to take out books. There were a few favorites. One was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein: the story of a boy (very close to my age, so I imagined) living in the colonies on Mars, with his pet, unlike any pet found on Earth. It was an adventure that could have, but did not, take place on Earth, and I was able to read and reread that tale without losing either my sense of wonder or my ability to live the story as I sat comfortably on our living room couch. If you were to find the card from the back of that book (we filled out our names and checkout date on cards, no computers in libraries back then), you would see my name scratched in ever improving cursive, over and over again, with few readers able to get their moniker in edgewise.

Seasons - II

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

… and it is not as though there weren’t months and years ahead. The difficult events of our lives are like stones dropped into a bed-sheet, the whole of its white expanse falls, by weight and momentum, and gathers together into a knot of cloth. That night cloth is gathered together in our clenched fist, wound into knots that were not in its nature, tied in a twist of fabric until day breaks… or fingers loosen… or heart at least unwinds.

The Earth Says Much

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The land around my house – “my” land – would say much about the hand that keeps it: overgrown, a feral lawn, become host for a multitude of insects and insects that prey on insects, for weeds with flowers and weeds with leaves and grasses with heavy heads full of seed. The tamed range is filled with Cawdor wood, and every glance outside is a reminder of my failure as a suburban land steward.

Things of Value

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

In 1985, I spent several months living on the island of Java, in Yogyakarta, having traveled there with a partner in the evening of our intimacy. I sat out nights with our mutual friend Muller, a Sumatran who was studying at the University, on the grass mats of Jalan Malioboro, smoking Kretek cigarettes and drinking sugary tea, and spooning up repeat servings of gudeg, a simple local dish perhaps, but with friendship and smoke and inconsequential conversations – I can’t recall even how much was spoken in Indonesian, or English, or not spoken at all – the long evenings were excellent.

A large eye to the Field of Light

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

tech • nol • o • gy | tek’näl?j? |

noun (pl. -gies)

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment,’ from tekhn? ‘art, craft’ + -logia ‘knowledge’, originally in reference to grammar. In the mid-1800s applied to industry and industrial works. Finally, circa 1964, ‘High Technology’ was coined for the overtures of the digital age.

Like most words, its meaning has followed the pursuits of those who use it, mirrored the world in which it is uttered, and dissolved its connotations from one web of meaning into another, gently pulling its associations along with it.

Innocence

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My daughter Isabela – less formally, more naturally Bela; though she is capable of carrying her more regal name, when called upon by the drama of the moment to do so – has traveled to Florida with her mother and brother, to be with her Brazilian grandparents and uncle and aunt for a few days. Ah, yes, and to meet the newest cousin, little Lucas, Luquinho perhaps, born a year ago in a country far from the familial home.

Les heureux

Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The cobbles of the roadway wind from the heights down to the Saint Lawrence, through the old Centre Ville, where the money of past generations found their comforts, and the history of a nation come and gone remains on the tongue, in the food, in the grey and red blocks of granite in the walls.

The ephemeral lives in the walls as well, but more slowly. The ephemeral lives in the flower-box geraniums, and the leaves gone brown. Out of the sky, that grey-matte day, huge flakes like goosedown floated in front of the shopwindows, making them stand out dark against the speckled daylight. It was cool and wet, the humidity like a finger of ice running along the cheek, up the spine. The dark-haired waitresses and the vendors from their counters looked back out on the scene, and the falling winter, and on the people in the street who shared their eyes.

Wind

Sun, 06 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Invisible, the wind came off the high mountain peaks, cold and crisp as water from the glacier, and poured down the divide and over the foothills in torrents, mingling as it went with the desert air east of the range, stirring up dust devils and clouds, raising the earth from the earth and carrying it a few miles east, only to set it down again.

Wet over the prairies, drying; dry over the fields, moistening. The wheat fields of North Dakota stretch forever, from one horizon to another, but still the sea of air is larger, and its waves impress themselves upon the green stalks, green currents through the evening grain which you can follow with your eye, trace with your finger, and draw to your lips like a drop of scented water, to slake your thirst for beauty. Then the wind passes on – it leaves you behind. There you stand, your heart racing with youth, creating a memory, a record of the moment here and now in your early years, a record of the invisible that moves a over the face of the earth. The wind sighs away to the east, and in the sense of being filled and being emptied, nascent understanding that every moment and every scent and every touch reels out the lineage of your own story, prose and poetic as it is, true and retouched as it is.

Speak, Memory

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

There is nothing in midnight but a fleck of ink on the otherwise empty face of the clock, or an electrical pulse which dis-integrates into a soft dash of light in an otherwise seamless river of life. We make the marks against which we measure our lives and call them time: they do not exist without our pen striking the hours and the days and the years.

Gravity explains the sands of our lives by dividing moments into falling grains of silica, whose gently wrinkled whorl descends a crystal flue, gravity which draws it through in only one direction, toward the center and to rest, toward the sea. As smooth as grains can be, still they click in quantum resonance like a smaller tick of the clock, a smaller and less useful error of the time we make, one which can never be pointed out, so never be discussed.

Will you marry, Charlotte?

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

A moment arrives and a moment passes, water through your fingers. Beautiful water: touch a drop to your lips, your thirst is lessened; touch a drop to your eyes, they are cleared; touch a drop to your forehead, you are baptized; touch a drop to the soil, the flower grows.

From the electric arc of that instant, a trail of Past streams out, like smoke from a sparkler spun through the air, or heat from a flame that burns and consumes itself as it gives light… like words on a page, a trail of markings left behind the hand, a narrative guide, a history, each word a nod to a line that began and continues to be written.

Distance, Health and the Life Virtual

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Three nights later, and I still have not returned to an east coastal sleep pattern. While it is “only” five time zones away, the body and the mind take in so much information in such travel that the consequences are deeper and broader than the meager mind would care to admit.

Some years ago I spent six months on the island of Java, in Indonesia. The island rests on the equator. My home town away from home was Yogyakarta, in the central Java, a city of some 600,000 at the time, snuggled at the feet of Mount Merapi, an active volcano. Every once in a while the ground shook, and my Midwestern mind reeled as it tried to assimilate moving earth vs twisting skies. On the equator, the sun rose and fell with complete regularity, weighed heavily at noon, was broken by a thundershower at 2pm, and set peacefully accompanied by an soft offshore breeze. Everyone was a foot shorter than I was.

Window on the Unseen

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Like a curtain being pulled back, revealing landscape which has not been previously witnessed, stepping from a boat into the waters above a reef and turning your eyes toward the ocean’s bottom opens a window on a world which could not have been imagined had it not been seen.

Had it not been seen, the language of the sea would continue to be the language of wind and waves, and weather that sweeps in on predictable currents, and the traffic of human hulls from one dry landing to another. Here, however, the life which moved undetected beneath our domain… one glimpse adds new words and new harmonies to the music of the planet, making one both smaller and larger at the same time.

The Face of the Moon

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Above the slopes of the eastern mountain, the moon rises; it is nearing its seven-day size, waxing to half light, half darkness. The light of the sun as it sets strikes the dusty surface and, without atmosphere to impede, reflects back to our earth, in a delicate choreography which changes each minute and each day.

Today we drive to the height of Haleakala, as it rises 20,000 feet from the ocean floor, then 10,000 feet above the level of the sea into the tropical sky. Measured from its roots to its peak,it is the highest mountain mass on the planet. We climbed from tropical warmth into subtropical slopes, where cattle and plantations sprawled; through eucalyptus groves whose leaves perfumed the air and shaded the car; into sparse grasslands dotted with gorse and scrub; into the clouds…

The other world

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I took some time to gear myself up a bit, and swam out to the lava point at White Rock Beach. I had been practicing snorkeling in the shallows – never having been a water person, further and deeper can bring me closer to the edge of comfort, and unfamiliarity with the techniques and the gear kept me diving, rising, being pushed in by the waves, and drawn back out by the wave-return.

Earth

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Some two thousand five hundred miles from the coast of California, a “hot spot” in the floor of the Pacific ocean has jetted matter from the heart of earth toward the sky. It passes through cooling waters, and becomes a cone that, over the millennia, breaks the waves and rises thousands of feet above the surface. Unstable, it erupts, explodes, sloughs new earth down the slopes to consolidate, hissing in the sea.

Whalesong

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

“I’ve never considered myself a spiritual person, but the first time I stopped the boat above a singing male, and dropped the hydrophone in the water…”

Then there is a pause for words, which are not available. This is the well from which the poets draw water, the place beyond words, where words alone are required but will never be adequate. The guest at my cousin’s party spoke of arriving here a few years ago, and beginning a water tour company with her husband. Maui, as it happens, is something of a sacred site for the whales – what else but a sacred site when such large populations congregate here, as compared to other Hawaiian islands?

A Recollection

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

There was a time when I was young, I must have been 3 or 4 years old, when my parents would take us to the inland sea.

We lived in Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, a short detour north, as it happened, in the long run of our lives; we lived in a rambler whose color I can’t recall, with a field out back that was huge to young eyes, and a cherry tree that bloomed in the Spring and gave fruit in the summer. The snow was deeper than I was tall. The drifts of snow collected by the trucks were small mountains which tried their best to hold out til the next winter season – like snails caught on the flats between tides – and some times they thought they would succeed, and sometimes we did, too. The entire world smelled of pine, or a certain kind of grass, or a temperature of air. And my parents, who were struggling to raise four children, to keep a house in the high north, and be part of a community whose first language was Finnish – they went in search of a vista, of wind from elsewhere, of open space.

A Spoken Tour of India

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

For those of you who have been following Manny and my trajectory from Massachusetts to India and back again, and are not rooted somewhere half-way ‘round the world, I’d like to invite you to join us for an evening of pictures and stories.

This Saturday, January 20th, at 7:15pm at the Yoga Center of Newburyport, we will offer a warm cup of Masala chai accompanied by some good travel, laughter and stillness and smells and sights and sounds of another land… and perhaps a whiff of another way of being.

A Few Words Draw You Back

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Manny and I received a kind note from Sonum, our hostess and guide during our stay at the Tibetan Settlements in Bylakuppe. At the time of our departure, we had spent much of several days in her company, given a walking tour of the monasteries and the farmlands in the area. We left a little money – the only thing we had to offer as a gift, a kindness for her kindnesses – and hoped that it was received in the spirit it was given.

Water of Life

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The beauty of the subtropics – as I experienced them for years in Brazil, and on other journeys far and away…

… and now I understand that I was making a home of the Earth, not a home of

- Spencer, New York, where I was born at the foot of a minor tree-crowned mountain;
- or Ironwood, Michigan, where the winter snows drifted to the eaves of our house;
- or friendly Saint Paul, Minnesota, whose lakes were diamonds in the summer sun;
- or tiny Souris, North Dakota, an islet adrift in a sea of green;
- or jazzy Chicago, Illinois, its colors and its black and its white;
- or halus Yogayakarta, Java, its ancient gods and modern desires;
- or Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, where my adulthood was born;
- or Boston or Byfield, Massachusetts, where my affluence came and went;
- or Auroville, Tamil Nadu, whose galaxy of energies called as if by gravity…

A litany of grounds that received my footprint, but were places on a larger map, one with fewer constraints on patterns of thought, and which tries to cover a globe of human understanding, human reaching, and human almost-attaining…

Technical Difficulties

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It is interesting that, in a country whose infrastructure is far less consistently developed than that of our own digital nation, I had far greater success in posting thoughts and impressions to this journal than I do now that I am home.

Part of it is, of course, that the sheer volume of experiences, their water filling me to overflowing, demanded that some channeling be done and some sense be made of them; and I prefer to make sense in words. The ability to catch hold of a virtual mooring, whose anchor was just inland of the Plum Island Sound, also supported daily journaling.

Eating to Live

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The grace of going away is that your eyes are refreshed for when you return. What you see once in your daily, then see again and again, gains a transparency, loses its edges, so that after a time it is no longer visible at all. This is to be expected: our senses are used to protect us and to bring us to food, and stimuli which have been identified, processed and cataloged need no longer occupy the mind, and are let go. Background noise that needn’t be listened to.

Fear of Cattle

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The weather having softened somewhat today, I fired up the R100 and took it out on the road to make sure my driving skills hadn’t deteriorated. I pulled out into the correct lane – that would be the right one this side of Her Majesty’s Commonwealth, I think. The shift from a 225cc buzzing insect to a 1 liter airplane also didn’t throw me.

The lack of horns was a little unnerving, however. How are you supposed to know where people are, if they are not constantly honking their location? After a few miles I realized that there were no other cars – or trucks or bicycles or motorcycles or mopeds or ox-carts or pedestrians or anything whatsoever on this excellently paved road – so I settled down into a pleasant late-season cruise.

Time for contemplation

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

I had been looking forward to my time alone but I’ve had quite a bit of apprehension about it. I have never spent this much time on my own. The four weeks journeying with Mark have been amazingly special. It was great to share the intensity of the travel and the constant humorous unknowns. We were always there to cover each other and a good complement for one another….. Now I have begun another more inner journey….

From a Distance

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

We are northwest of Shiraz and east of Abadan, flying high above impressive and desolate mountains. There is the long wall of a range to the west, separating this mountainous land from the plains and the deserts of what I believe to be either Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Everything appears to be dry as dust, with only one or two minor roads plying their way among ridges – some capped with snow and presenting what seem to be small patches of scrub trees. We are above Pakistan, I think, and I can’t imagine it would be a welcoming place to travel, especially as an American.

Palolem, released

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Just before dawn only a few roosters have roused themselves – or never went to bed – and with most humans still in bed, I can hear the falling of the surf away here inland. Yoga is sweet and quiet, Manny still in bed; then a quiet seat in the restaurant gazebo and time to write. Sometimes day dawns with all the same elements as the day before, still something undefinable has changed, and today is feels as though loops of effort that were binding me to some way of being have dropped away. I walk to the beach, where the waves roll in at their same slow pace, one breaking every ten seconds, just about the length of a person’s deep breath. Almost no one is on the sand, the beach chairs empty, so I take up a seat and settle in for the morning meditation.

Palolem, revised

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The waves amble onto the beach at a leisurely pace, one smallish wave every ten seconds, six waves per minute – as unhurried and undemanding as the restaurants or services here, a definition in action for the word languid. In some magical configuration of sea and sand, the waves which fall to earth are reflected back out to sea, like in some extensive classroom science fair: you can actually see the crest of the wave break, touch land, then turn and head back out to meet the next incoming swell. Quite hypnotic. Maybe this happens at all beaches in the world… but here the waves are so reticent to arrive, maybe the gap is great enough to allow one to see this slight-of-hand.

Palolem Beach, Goa

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Hm. The face of India changes yet again, and we poor freshmen have to shift our energies to make space for it.

The beach at Palolem, in southern Goa, is every bit as riveting as we had heard it would be. The essential coconut palms providing shade overhead, the incredibly gentle surf that is warm as a baby’s bath, the island just off shore that adds energy and interest to the view, the water and sand cradled in the arms of two rocky points, that reach out into the Arabian Sea.

Palolem, revisited

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Fortunately, I can make a better report of this beach myself.

Whatever was up with people yesterday (and I do include myself in that population) – the fights, the unsmiling eyes, the shabby shacks – seemed to have eased with the setting of the sun, and Manny and I found ourselves sitting up on the rocks above the beach, in a fine little restaurant, sipping Mohitos and chatting about this and that. As Manny put it, the beach was filled with people “just doing their thing”, whether that thing be sublime or shallow, a pile of Indians and foreigners gone to the sand and sun for a few days.

A respite

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

On our last morning with the Tibetan family Mark and I tried to express our appreciation for all their warmth and hospitality given to us. Deep emotion and tears came to Sonam’s eyes as she wanted to express thru us the gratitude she has to the “American people” who have helped them so much…. There was so much love and gratitude for the Nobel Prize received by their “God” the Dalai Lama. For the temples and settlements supported by the many donations coming from America…. The three of us were holding tears back….. I get upset at our country’s foreign policy and by the rampant capitalization we create but it was so beautiful to also see how much good has been done in helping this nation of individuals create a new life on a foreign country.

Mangalore

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny says “another noisy city, where you can’t walk and breathe at the same time”… and he is right. From 8.30am to 7.00pm, Mangalore presents the same toxic blend of autorickshaws, interstate and local busses, private passenger cars and Jeep lookalikes, bicycles and trucks and pedestrians; you breathe only shallowly, and return to your sleeping place smelling of diesel and dust, which sweat and sun has pretty much baked into your clothes and layered on your skin. For someone who has recently ventured into India from the snowy north, it is challenging.

Undercurrent

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The external beauties and (as often as not) challenges are easy to write about, but the inner work is not. Still, I am rising at 5:30 for yoga, each day feeling stronger, more limber, and somehow “cleaner”; I am sitting when I can in meditation – really delighting in being close to the ground, and considering removing some upright furniture from a couple of my rooms; and I am reading and writing along this well-lit path we have taken.

Tibet in India

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Now I know how ginger grows.

When we lived on our little farm in Brazil, we had something called gangibre falsa, “false ginger”, which was apparently a relative of the real thing. The root, when I dug it up, had neither the appearance or the smell I was looking for, and somehow during our seven-plus years there, I never did run into a ginger plant. Here in the rolling fields of Bylakuppe, some miles off the Mysore road and Kushalnagar, acres of hand-fanning leaves, slightly lower than knee height and fading green to yellow, are the ginger fields. We pass by in our autorickshaw (the three-wheeled, covered motorcycle, with a bench and a smoky 2-stroke engine – the kind where you mix in the oil, and it runs forever, like a lawnmower motor) and there is a load of the harvested root by the roadside, being spray-washed and readied for market. The scent is strong and welcome, a little spice and memory of good meals.

On the road

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

We are on the road again after a very wonderful week in Auroville…. We will travel all night by bus and arrive at Bangalore tomorrow morning. We will then take a 2nd bus for 3 more hours to Mysore. Hope to settle there by noon tomorrow. Lets see what gifts that part of India has in store for us.

We have met so many inspiring folks in Auroville. People who believe in a dream and have put all of their energy and resources to make that dream manifest. It is amazing what they have accomplished. There is a generosity in their spirit that is contagious. I can see friendships that will blossom even more beautifully over time.

Matrimandir

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t leave Auroville without making mention of its spiritual and physical heart, the Matrimandir… though at the same time I feel there is almost nothing I can say that does any justice to the vision behind it, the experience of the area around it, or the power of insight and meditation it brings one.

So. How to talk about it and not talk about it at the same time?

Aspiration

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Most of the communities that exist in Auroville – as semi-autonomous communities, that is, with their own social structure and goals, texture and color – were founded by a few energetic people who wished to manifest the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother in a particular and personal way. Some are recent, some have existed since the beginning (in 1968). Some are small (Sadhana Forest is run by a family of three from Israel – with a lot of interns running about), and others larger (Aspiration currently has upwards of 50 participating members, and a number of other long-term “guests”). They all share a common goal, and that is unity of human spirit and human endeavor in a single, intentional city.

Vérité

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have hesitated to begin this post. The dimensions of Auroville, the height and depth and breadth of the place in physical, spiritual, and social terms is so large, and each day filled with so many insights and meetings, that it is difficult to know where to start. Or better, there is so much new information pouring in every moment, it feels like trying to talk under a waterfall: refreshing, but not particularly audible.

Fauna

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first time we have really been out of an urban area. With the exception of fields and trees and open skies seen through the window of a bus, our lodging has been in town, our destinations in towns or cities… all human, all urbane, and polished to the degree which things in India (or in tropical climates, I should say) are polished. So the falling water and the green of trees and movement of animals (!) has come as a pleasant and restorative change to our trajectory.

World Citizen

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

We find ourselves in this land inside of India but not of it… Not unlike the Vatican in Rome. It is the home of highly spiritual and idealistic humans from over 30 countries working to create a society based on higher consciousness.

We arrived with monsoon rains making our entrance to this land of high vibrations feel quite unreal…. The energy that night was so intense and uncomfortable that I debated heading back to Pondicherry and waiting for Mark there…. After lots of meditation and centering I have softened into this magical place. I can feel my mind, body and soul opening and shifting but don’t really understand what it is doing…. We are definitely on a major energy grid of mother earth that is being intentionally nourished and tapped by this community. Soon we will be able to enter and meditate in the Matrimandir , which is the main temple of the community and actually feels like it has the power of a futuristic pyramid except that it is a dome.

Monsoon!

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I knew the word, but not the meaning of it, not really. Living in Brazil for years, I knew hard, heavy rains, and long rainy spells. But monsoon -- ! Not until now. We had rain on and off all day Friday, and scurried with our newly-bought umbrellas from one spot to another, and in between rain spells around the well-maintained streets of Pondicherry, east of the covered wastewater canal. We got into our taxi in rain and drove the 12 km to Auroville in Rain. We settled into our little bunkhouse in RAIN… and then all watery hell broke loose, and it came on and on and on in sheets and in buckets, in waves and in tides, until all you saw or heard was falling water. The land here was desertified 40 years ago, and has been reforested (remarkably successfully)… with major earthworks to catch and contain moisture. Still, the sheer volume of water per minute flooded everything, and had us walking ankle-deep from the dining hall to our room.

Moonrise

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The french doors which open onto the veranda have been open all night, and the sound of the breakers on the blackstone promenade where alternately lulling us to sleep and calling us out of it. Either the waves or the rain, which greeted us on our arrival in Pondicherry and has come in sheets and drizzles since then – last night at least two good downpours swept west off the ocean and past us toward Tiru and Bangalore.

Travel, revisited

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I feel a real sadness welling up inside of me as we leave Sri Ramanasramam. It was quite short, just a few days, but the spirit of the place and of the people was remarkable. And as is often the case when you are travelling (as opposed to tourism, where one often carries the bubble of home around them), we met a number of fascinating people, local Indians and visitors from abroad, who made the space and time here incredibly rich and amazingly warm. You never know if these instant connections will grow, should grow, or if they will simply fade into nice memories; still I hope to have the opportunity some day to visit Rama and Adelaida in their Costa Rican retreat, of host them, should they pass through New York and fancy a short side-trip to the north…

The Bhagavan

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Rama, an Italian friend we have made, lived at the ashram for five years. He now lives in and runs a retreat center in Costa Rica, Montana Azul, the blue mountain, with his wife and partner Adelaida.

Rama related this story of the Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: the young man came to the mountain in 1900, at the age of sixteen, after a near-death experience. The near-death was not a physical death, but the sudden and complete realization that his body would perish – a complete understanding which left him immobilized for some time. He understood the central question of his existence – perhaps of all of our existence – and left home to study it deeply, left the noise and intrusions of the mundane life to dedicate himself to meditation, to insight into this life.

Energy

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

Today we climbed the mountain located behind the ashram. In 1900 a 16 year old local seeker climbed that mountain and stayed for 17 years in a cave. Then moved to a second cave for 6 more years. When he came down his followers created what is now the ashram where we are staying…. Ramana Maharshi had found out that he was not “this body” and achieved freedom from life as he had know it.

Music

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Every night at the ashram, after an evening chant and before dinner, there are fifteen minutes of music. And every night, after dinner, one or two hours. The musicians play as a devotion, an offering to the sanctuary and to those who come here as their church.

The sanctuary is rather large; the floor is granite, the walls stone, and the ceiling vaulted; there are no chairs, those who come to worship or participate or attend sit on the floor or against the walls. Everyone is silent, but you feel them there – imagine the full emptiness of orchestra hall – and then the single instrument begins to play. The sound of a sitar was made for this type of hall; the musician is a master, and we follow his movements, both physical and musical, from a distance of 10 feet. A sitar has resonance strings and body, and sometimes a gourd attached to carry the vibrations further or longer. In this room they were not needed, and the voice sounded and resounded around the hall. An echoing silence followed each pause and each break. Astounding fortune, yet another call for gratitude, to be witness to both the grace and simplicity of this spiritual community, and the arts which are inspired by their master, Ramana Maharshi.

Integration

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

My body is adjusting to the time shift and my mind to the reality shift…. We are in the middle of a “village” where the ashram is located. The senses are maxed out interpreting this new/old world.

Meals are served on the floor and the plates are made of sewn leaves, monkeys and peacocks roam the ashram, we walk around barefoot on the dirt compound and there are constant activities of prayer and devotion…. It all has a natural flow and we are becoming included in that flow.

Life in the Ashram

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Two days into the trip and, as I previously mentioned, two years of living done. You know how to live longer? Travel, make yourself new, open up to new sights and sounds and people. You may pass away at the same second of the same minute of the same hour and day and year as you would have otherwise have died… but your life will have been immeasurably longer, and maybe you die knowing you had really lived.

Relativity

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Ok. It has been less than 48 hours here in India, but true to any real travel, an hour might be a day back home. The gift of letting yourself move into a truly foreign environment is that you have chosen to be changed. It’s like diving into the surf on day with high seas… and the water is cold. You can’t inch your way in, of course: you run, you throw yourself into the next falling wave, get tumbled, rolled, hit the floor of the sea, pick up a suit full of sand, then stand up gasping and smiling.

Wow!!!

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

It’s hard to believe that we have only been here 30 + hours…. It feels like we have had a week worth of experience already! The intensity of Bangalore was hard to digest with out taking short breaks in the sanctuary of our hotel….

This morning we boarded a bus to Tiru… It took us about 1/2 an hour to find the bus in the terminal. This is controlled chaos :)

Arrival

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny says, “It’s all everyone said it would be… and more.”

True. I am sitting in a small room the size of my bathroom at home, in front of a keyboard which has been used by too many hands, which has typed too many words, and which seems to forget every now and then how to type certain characters. You will notice that the letter “C” demands a certain emphasis, which I am not always keen to give it. There is a smell of incense coming in through the door – the owners of this internet cafe praying to the four directions, and the first scent to override the heavy perfume of diesel which follows the busses and the taxis, the cars and autorickshaws, the motorcycles and motorscooters down the road in a vast, all consuming cloud. Through the loud, there is an incessant sounding of horns, as everyone tells everyone to get out of everyone’s way.

Who Am I?

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

“The gross body which is composed of the seven humours (dhatus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, viz. the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, viz. sound, touch, colour, taste, and odour, I am not; the five cognitive sense-organs, viz. the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion, and procreation, which have as their respective functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoying, I am not; the five vital airs, prana, etc., which perform respectively the five functions of in-breathing, etc., I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; the nescience too, which is endowed only with the residual impressions of objects, and in which there are no objects and no functionings, I am not.”

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I?