And who am I going to see on August 2nd, you
ask? Why it's Ben freakin' Harper people!!!!!!!!
My absolute favorite....hurray! And, get this,
it's a rare acoustic show at the Ryman in Nash-
ville, TN. Ring any bells? Anyone....well it was
the original stage for the Grand Ole' Opry and
it only holds 2,300 people....translation....no bad
seats in the house...pardon me I'm going to go
have a dance of joy....actually I'm going to go and
register for school in the fall...and as the man
himself says...A candle shines it's light into the
darkness. In a nasty world so shines a good deed.
Make sure the fortune that you seek, is the
fortune that you need. - Diamonds on the Inside

What a Wonderful Thing

So, a friend just suggested...nay even subliminally foisted...a writer named Sherman Alexie on me recently and having read only one story, by the name of "The Search Engine" I have logged on and created this post to declare my amazement and pleasure. Considering this type of ordinary, plain short story is not a genre I have frequented much I really didn't expect much and in truth only purchased the book "Ten Little Indians" because I respect the taste of the one who recommended it. God am I glad I did. So my tens of readers, go now and buy his books immediately! I command you for your own good. Though I warn you, they can make you feel small, as though your inner sanctum has been violated...but they will make you love them all the more for it. I had planned to attempt sleep at a reasonable hour tonight but I see now that that will be quite impossible. I have 8 more stories to go and at least 2 pots of coffee in the wings. Here are some excerpts to wet your whistle. Thanks Lisa!!!!

- Corliss thought she might sleep with him if he took her home to a clean apartment, but she decided to hate him instead. She knew she judged people based on their appearances, but Lord Byron said only shallow people don't judge by surfaces. So Corliss thought of herself as Byronesque as she eavesdropped on the young couple. She hoped these ordinary people might say something interesting and original. She believed in the endless nature of human possibility. She would be delighted if these two messy humans transcended their stereotypes and revealed themselves as mortal angels.

- White people, no matter how smart, were too romantic about Indians. White people looked at the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the full moon, newborn babies, and Indians with the same goofy sentimentality. Being a smart Indian, Corliss had always taken advantage of this romanticism, but that didn't mean she wanted to share a refrigerator with it.

- If human beings possessed endless possibilities, then cities contained exponetial hopes. As she walked away from the bus station through the rainy, musty streets of Seattle, Corliss thought of Homer. "Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he sacked the famous town of Troy." She was no Odysseus, and her eight hour bus ride hardly qualified as an odyssey. But maybe Odysseus wasn't all that heroic either, Corliss thought. He as a drug addict and thief who abused the disabled. That giant might have been tall and strong, Corliss thought, but he still had only one eye. It's easy to elude a monster with poor depth perception.

Update - 2:09am, too much coffee, 4 stories down and 5 to go. It's raining outside, I think my satellite receiver just got struck by lightening and I couldn't care less. This man can speaks to me. If the person who suggested this book would be so kind as to name a few more I'll...nope, never mind, I'm going to the bookstore on Wed. and buying everything I can find with his name on it. Lisa, you have created a monster! :-)

In Bloom

Lavender roses.
Incarnate fragrance,
Priestly hue of dawn,
Spirit unfolding.

Even on the road to hell, flowers can make you smile. They are fragile, ephemeral, uncompromising. No one can alter their nature. True, you can easily destroy them, but you will not gain anything; you cannot force them to submit to your will. Flowers arouse in us an instinct to protect them, to appreciate them, and to shelter them. This world is too ugly, too violent. There should be something delicate to care about. To do so is to be lifted above the brute and to go toward the refined. When we offer flowers on our alter, we are offering a high gift. Money is too vulgar, food to pedestrian. Only flowers are unsullied. By offering them, we offer purity. The tenderness of flowers arouses mercy, compassion, and understanding. If that beauty is delicate, so much the better. Life itself is fleeting. We should take the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of temporality. (Ming - Dao)

One day as I walked, having just escaped a storm,
I came upon a flower beautiful and white. It grew
from amongst the rocks where nothing soft and
bright should grow. But there it was, smiling at me.
The sun glistened off the rain drops that clung to
its pedals and they almost seemed to dance in
victory. I took a picture with my mind, to carry
with me always. Here's to a flower. (Me)

A Belated Blog Entry :-)

You know who you are, I really enjoyed our conversation today...I've said it once and I'll say it again, it's a rather nice break from the norm to speak with someone who is intelligent and easy to talk to at the same time. It has been my past experience that the smartest and most talented among us are often the most difficult to communicate with...not so in your case and for that, and for always being yourself with me, I thank you. After a bit more time on the mountain I'll hopefully have something wise....or at the very least, interesting to post about here...in the meantime I just wanted to post a quick thank you and a well-wishing for the remainder of the week. Also on a rather random note, I saw this on the Yahoo! homepage and since I find you rather like myself in many respects I thought you might enjoy it. It was in the news headline box and goes right along with our "societal drain-circling" observations. So here it is, in all it's two line glory. Click on the headlines to view the full story....for some reason my formatting doesn't mark links very clearly.

*Study Links Brain Size to Intelligence Level
*Chimp Paintings Sell for $26,000 at Auction

Aahhh-hhaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!! How very, very ironic when placed in close proximity .....though now that I think about it you might not agree in this particular case....oh well, its interesting either way....and lends itself to a question....how do you feel about art produced by animals....anyone? All input appreciated here. Oh, and two more drawings to be posted soon...I'm just gonna buy a new scanner, forget trying to repair the old one. Until next time a little Latin....tu addo itaque adfero laetitia (you inspire and therefore bring joy)

Mountain Journals and the Occasional Deluge

Well, I made it two days and nights (straight, and aside from previous exploratory hikes) on the moutain before the rain flushed me out. There is something profoundly disconcerting about being both by a creek and in a stream so I am taking cover under a roof until the rain lets up. In the downtime I'll post a couple of journal entries which I am keeping while on my "adventure" as it were. I'll try to post the most recent ones whenever I get rained out or come back for more supplies. Hope everything is going well with all my bloggy-land friends. Oh, and I promise never to use the word "bloggy-land" again!! :) Right now I'm struggling with feelings of being a bit of a loser. It's very easy to forget how hard you have worked once there is nothing to do and no one to do it with. I programmed myself, while in TX, to be very hard on myself if I wasn't doing what I should be (ie, work or school) and now that there is nothing I HAVE to do I find it rather hard to cope with the nagging sensation that something is amiss. Transition is always such a bitch for me....oh, well cest la vie I suppose. Namaste to all, I'll be back whenever I can.

A Dream From Last Night, May 29th 2005

This is rather rambling as it was written by flashlight at 4:37am when I was only half awake and in a mad hurry to get it down before I forgot it.

My mom wanted to go to London. Immediately, as though it were a trip to the grocery store. So we ran to the airport, bought two tickets on American Airlines (my mom was rather insistent that it be AA), and after a mad dash through the concourse we settled into our seats somewhere in the middle of the plane. As we were taxiing down the runway for take-off I noticed that our tickets had been improperly made for a return in one week rather than the two days we anticipated. As we became intent on finding how this had happened several people on the plane began to scream and as we were still on the ground I flipped up the window shade to see what could possibly have gone wrong already. To my shock I discovered that we were not hurtling down the runway, but were rather hurtling down the wrong side of a six-lane highway seperated by a concrete divider. At a curve we slammed into the divider with the left side of the plane opposite my mom and I. I don't know how but I could see in front of the plane and I saw two things in an instant. The road was coming to a T and we were going to slam into the woods on the other side. The pilot came over the loud speaker and began to scream, "Brace for impact, brace, brace, brace." At the last moment the pilot somehow spun the plane around 180-degrees (the engines were making the worst screaming noise you could imagine) and we hit the woods backwards and very, very hard. Next thing I remember (or rather, dreamt), my Mom and I were clear of the wreckage and as soon as I saw her she was gone for the rest of the dream. I began to scream for Leia, not ordinary screams but the throat-tearing screams of sheer adrenlin and panic not, not considering for an instant that she had not been on the plane to start with. I ran about 150-yards to were the tail and back half of the plane lay on it's side with the top ripped off exposing the seats now at a 90-degree angle to the ground. All the while I was screaming Leia, over and over again. Then, out of nowhere I found her...and her mother and got them down from their seats and away from the plane. The plane was one of those with engines on either side of the tail, rather than under the wings and the one on the right side, now high in the air was beginning to catch fire. I could see that several people were still in their seats and appeared to be unconscious. I began running from person to person, sometimes close to me, sometimes on the other side of the plane which was 20-30 feet in the air, yelling "Ma'am (or sir), wake up, you have to wake up the plane is on fire. One by one they all extricated themselves from the wreckage, climbed down and walked or stumbled to where everyone had gathered a few hundred yards away. One woman, sitting in what would have been a window seat but was now the farthest possible seat from the ground was still strapped in and was actually knitting, all the while mumbling to herself something along the lines of, "No, this simply cannot be," or,"this is not happening". But when the engine that had been smoldering suddenly began to race and pop loudly she finally came down and went to join the others. As I was about to follow her away I saw a man trapped under the the very rear of the plane....some of the others and I pulled him free and even though it was apparent he no longer had any legs, as soon as he was pulled free they were back and he began walking toward the other passengers. As I walked in that direction I noticed two dead dogs one in an airplane seat and one that had clearly been in the field when we hit (these were the only fatalities I saw, go figure), and that bothered me more than anything yet had; but there were no human bodies to be seen anywhere throughout the enormous amount of wreckage now mostly engulfed in flames. I noticed only 10-15 people had gathered around what I now saw was the pilot and I wondered where the hell the rest of the people had got to. As I drew closer I heard the pilot giving everyone the phone number to Dr. Tylock (a lasic eye surgeon in Dallas) and I recall thinking "how typical" and being completely disgusted with his incompetance but to exhausted to be angry. At the edge of this not of people were Leia and her mom sitting in a row of detached airplane seats. Leia was white as a sheet and was laying with her head in her mother's lap while her mom stroked her hair and whispered to her....she was clearly badly in shock. I remember feeling profoundly relieved all of a sudden and for the first time I wondered where the hell the emergency vehicles were. Then I woke up.

Post-Dream Note to Self: Stop watching "Lost" and avoid American Airlines in the near future. Oh, yes, and stop worrying about Leia already. For god's sake....

The Beginning, May 28th 2005

Location: A tent on Suck Creek Mountain, 15ft. above the water's edge in a thicket I have cut into to form a rather cozy nook for myself and my campfire.

Mood: Vaguely hopeful, anticipatory, slightly frightened, but ready as hell for whatever may come.

Thoughts: I wonder what Leia is doing right now and if she misses me. I wonder whether my first night alone on the mountain will be what I anticipate. Will Holly like my campsite and why is this friend of mine the person that she is? She reminds me of a stunningly beautiful tortoise that just won't come out of it's shell; and if it did, would it still be beautiful? Women and the night....I suspect my thoughts aren't all that different from early man's so long ago. Will these thoughts seem childish and small 10 years hence? Is there, in fact, any other way to grow?

Quote from Taoist Meditation Book: In the beginning, all things are hopeful. We prepare ourselves for the magnificent journey ahead, all things are contained in this first moment: our optimism, our faith, our resolutionm, our innocence. In order to start, we must make a decision. This decision is a commitment to daily self-cultivation. We must make a strong connection to our inner selves. Outside matters are superfluous. Alone and naked, we negotiate all of life's travails. Therefore, we alone must make something of ourselves, transforming ourselves into instruments for experiencing the deepest spiritual essence of life. Once we make our decision, all things will come to us. Auspicious signs are not a superstition, but a confirmation. They are a response. It is said if one chooses to pray to a rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive. In the same way, once we choose to commit ourselves to spiritual practice, even the mountains and valleys will reverberate to the sound of our purpose.

Closing thoughts: I hope Lisa is doing well and Stacey has had a smile or two today. Tonight I will pray for all my friends and loved ones, and for strength for the night ahead.

What a Send-Off!!!

Just had a surprise party thrown for me and nearly all of my 116 agents showed. It was really great and really overwhelming all at once. Strange to be leaving but there's good things to come! I'll blog from time to time when I get the chance, everyone whom I communicate with through email can still reach me at the Yahoo address. Things are a little hectic at the moment but I'll try to be as prompt as possible with my replies. Namaste, everyone. Stay safe and keep smiling!

One Good Thing in Dallas

Well, last night I went to my absolute favorite restuarant for the last time. This place is a vegetarian Indian restuarant that features a wonderful atmosphere, great beer and food, homemade chai, and a far-above-par sitar player. Upstairs they have meditation rooms, shrines, and every Tuesday a monk comes and speaks to the few that are there to learn. Anyone traveling to or through Dallas....don't miss this one!!!

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