in closing

wedding season:::

...

moloka'i picturewise

the story of bobby iao

a catalogue of events:::

6:00 am:  wake up in the Banana Bungalow Hostel, head reeling from last night's pursuit.  brandi and i set out from the farm to find the greenest beer on maui.  she's part irish.  i'd never had a green beer.  we found some and through a series of delightful events and quaint bus rides, we made it to Wailuku just as it was getting dark and rainy.  hostels are the most wonderful places in the world to observe people.  bar none.  these international loci of ragtag transients.  

6:30: get up feeling like i need to puke or poop or find a new head or something.  go to the bathroom and give awkwardly boisterous good mornings to the people brushing their teeth.  walk across the street and buy a bottle of water.  return to the room.  brandi's up.  we decide to go find some breakfast.  

breakfast:  eat a bran muffin.

8:00: check out of the hostel. decide to walk the three miles to Iao Valley Park.  Wailuku is a strange little town.  it reminds me a lot of Zanesville, which is kind of strange because i've only been in Zanesville once or twice, but Wailuku had a lot of three-story, white buildings lining the roads that either seemed to be completely deserted or some kind of strange office buildings.  Wailuku is the county seat.  so as you get closer to the central crossroads, the office buildings get whiter and there's more flags flying.  it's a strange feeling town.  brandi and i get along in such a way that we laugh almost constantly, and strange feeling towns are particularly well suited for this. 

walking along the road: the West Maui Mountains are strikingly sheer and sharp, so that they look like you could just walk right up to them, stand on flat ground and stare straight up the clean green faces of the peaks.  we walk about a mile before this guy in an old white truck stops to see if we need a ride.  he says his name is bobby and that the valley is a very spiritual place.

at the park:  bobby says he'll show us the good hike.  says we'll get wet.  brandi and i are wearing the same clothes as the night before.  tennis shoes.  sandals.  this park is another drive up and look around type.  tourists everywhere.  they all walk up a flight of stairs to look at the needle (the peak in the picture).  we do too.  then we head down and into the woods.  we reach the point where bobby says, "that's the paved trail but this is the real hike over here."  and we set off into the woods following the river, tall green peaks and the morning sun shining overhead.  

to be continued...

i need to hit the road to moloka'i and i'm leaving my computer here.  i would have liked to have gotten all this typed out nice but i'll have to finish it quick here.

...so we swam in this river with this guy we'd never met.  and i was slightly wary because of my previous encounter with local guys and the way they'd kicked me in the face.  but we followed bobby into the middle of the woods and all jumped in the river and screamed and hooted and had a good time.  he drove us to his house afterwards and gave us a hearty breakfast of cheerios and sunchips and peanut butter sandwiches.  he's a recovered crackhead.  we had wonderful conversations.  he is very happy to be alive.  he works at a verizon kiosk at the mall and positively loves it.  after hanging out at his house and talking about everything from god to charlie kaufman movies, bobby drove us to the mall.  he's a professional mallrat and thrilled to be so.  he was also, the whole day, always picking up bits of trash.  he said that his purpose is to help people.  but he wasn't preachy or pious in any way.  one of the most refreshing and hopeful people i've ever met.  i wish i had more time to type about him but i need to eat lunch and get on the road.  

to moloka'i!

cool documentary

"holden what did you get your ideas from?"

"i got my ideas from words and from groundhogs and and from rockets and from robots?"

"what about from scissors?"

"and from scissors."

....

this is a quote from the movie We Are Wizards.  its about harry potter fan culture.  you can watch it on hulu and i recommend it.  the quote is of a four year old.  with prompting from his seven year old brother.

narrate your own life

yes!  everyone just posted on their blogs.  jake, phil, rachel.  i haven't read them yet.  because i was so excited to see them there that i felt like writing something.  i can't tell you how wonderful it's been for me to read the stuff that you guys post.  and that goes to all of the blogs that i read, but its particularly delightful with the people i know.  

ok so here's some commentary on something:

one time, sitting around a campfire with some friends who were not close friends someone brought up what i have since come to think of as "jesus christ syndrome."

i read this article once about this sociological phenomenon where people think that they are christ.  and they become obsessed with writing down all of their thoughts.  and so they write obsessively and believe that their thoughts are vitally important and will be remembered by history.  they think that they are going to save humanity.

something to that effect.  it was years ago so i'm no doubt exaggerating the details that made the strongest impression on me, but thats the gist.  i remember sitting there, looking at the fire, thinking 

"that's kind of how i think about myself.  don't say anything or they'll think you're crazy."

beyond my own identification with this archetype, it seems that every bit of useful knowledge that has been preserved into the present was produced and recorded by someone who could fall into this profile.  it's a sloppy connection of symbols to lived experience.  

in all fairness this was only a passing comment in a conversation and maybe its unfit to hold it up and comment on it.  but, i've thought about it several times and so now that it has become my own mental object, i feel it's fair game.

the bothersome question:  why does the desire to record one's thoughts get connected to a notion of a delusional, arrogant, bloated sense of self?

it seems that one of the main traits that makes humans distinct from all other life is the capacity to record and transmit the accumulation of knowledge.  we communicate with a lexicon of concepts that is ever expanding, and the articulation of which can be stunningly complex and beautiful.  but what's more shocking than our ability to make sense out of the vast symbolic systems that we encounter in bunches and with every second of our live, we can become aware of it.  

so if we came into this world members of a species that trained us to articulate the world around us in reference to a historically preserved lexicon of concepts, then we ought to take our powers of articulation seriously.  and if we are going to become more aware, or more fully functioning human beings, then we ought to articulate the structure of power that provides us with the particular ways that we think about the world.  

the full articulation of hegemony is a collective effort.  think of it like constructing some kind of massive monument by individual people adding one thing on top of whatever the last person brought.  it would be a myriad collage of things.  toothbrushes and computers and matchbox cars.  but if the intent was to build a monument and people kept adding things then eventually you would have some kind of structure that everyone could stand back and look at and try to figure out what it is.  is it beautiful?  ugly?  how does it work? what is it made out of?

and so i believe this is a profound instinct/gift of being human.  we can articulate and reflect.  it's a shame that our ability to does not usually translate into our compulsion to.  and i don't mean it's a shame like not being able to make it to a friend's birthday party.  i mean it's shameful.  it ought to haunt us that all human beings do not have equal access and do not feel equally empowered to represent their minds, to articulate their own humanness.  how sad that we (i) so often abuse the miraculous relationship between the way we feel and the way we feel about the way we feel.  

as far as we know, we are the only life form that can think, i want to eat ice cream.  then feel ashamed.  be emotionally, chemically, physiologically altered by nothing more than momentum of a thought.  then think, shame on me for thinking that.  and then we feel ashamed about feeling ashamed.  we could also feel spiteful about being ashamed or vindictive or self-loathsome.  the point is, when we consciously transcribe our thoughts into the objective world (write, draw, sing, garden, orate, or otherwise articulate our minds into an objective form), this allows us to take control of the way that we feel.  it gives us the space to view it.  and in this space we can question why we feel certain ways about certain feelings.  so in this it seems there is hope of gaining some perspective on the symbolic systems that we are suspended in. 

now, if we, a people, a species are to discover a way to transcend the destructive tendency of human history, we first need to articulate human history in an unprecedentedly holistic and vigorous collectivity.  we need every voice to join the din of collective consciousness.  we need everyone to drop something on the monument.  the sacred reality of information technology is that we now have the highest potential of accomplishing this than we have had at any previous point in our history.  

and know one knows what will happen, no more than you could know what it would look like if a hundred people brought a hundred random things and piled them in a field.  but one thing is for certain, it will give us something to look at.  when every human being has the means to articulate the history of their own thoughts, we will finally have a conceptual lexicon powerful enough to understand the structure of the power that keeps us locked in the cycle of fear and suffering and unkindness.  

this is how we trump the hegemonic oppression that would have us to be timid, to be less than we feel we want to be.  

its a big group effort but its starts feeling good right away.  

the bridge between poetry and ethnography

the common struggle or pursuit to find the finest moments of life and transcribe them.  how do you distill life into a pattern on a page?  

poetry, ethnography, different answers to the same question.

and there's just a bunch of room to discuss what's fine and the x's and o's of writing it all down.

short things / dylan lyrics

walking sideways along the highway

just outside town, i 

stick my thumb out at a broken old ford

and it slows down without a word.

...

farewell angelina, the bells of the crown

are being stolen by bandits, i must follow the sound

the triangle tingles, the music plays slow

but farewell angelina, the sky is on fire and i must go.

...

it would be better to turn into sea foam than a jar of mayonaise.  

...

the jacks and the queens have forsook the courtyard

and 52 gypsies file past the guard

in the space where the deuce and the ace once ran wild

farewell angelina, the sky it is folding, and i'll see you in a while

...

i do not enjoy cake, so you can have mine.

yes, yes, of course you can eat it.

...

king kong little elves on the rooftops they dance

valentino-type tangos while the heros wash hands

close the eyes of the dead, not to embarrass anyone

but farewell angelina, the sky it is changing and i must be gone

...

it's very hard to write quick whimsy like i did a few weeks ago.  i miss it.  it seems this getting my life figured out really cuts into my whimsical word count.  so i'll just supplement my own whimsy with some dylan.  that's what i've been doing for years.  when my own sardonic charm starts wearing thin i try to tap into his.   long periods of my life have consisted of disguising dylan lyrics as conversation.  

now, emerson said that books are to be used by the scholar during the times when she cannot be inspired directly by nature.  the record of inspiration past can be used to fill such voids.

so substitute dylan for books and me for her and thats how i get by.  

and if you've never heard farewell angelina,  google it forthwith.  it seems joan baez probably used to perform in more than dylan.  it's delightful.  when we were hiking through the crater i could not get the line 

king kong little elves, on the rooftops they dance

out of my head.

for what it's worth

john ran my astrological chart tonight:

sun sign: gemini (of course)

moon sign: scorpio (oooh)

rising sign: scorpio (whoa)

(and there was a lot more but i couldn't retain it.)

...

i am surrounded by all of these systems for inferring meaning into my life.  i've been reading the physics of the soul, its smart but hardly ground breaking.  connecting quantum physics to vague, overly-simplistic and orientalist notions of monism.  and then there's this ethical system of manifesting, and its fun because it seems to work.  at least it's fun to pretend it does when you're hitching along the highway and it's getting dark.  then there is buddhism, which gets infuriatingly flaunted by the manifesto new-agers who, in between talking about the power of consciousness and the one and this and that metaphysical postulation, will indubitably throw in a good word for zen and say that its all the same and all part of a new awakening.  well they're not all the same.  buddhism is not monistic.  it does not suggest that everything is one.  in fact, it does not suggest anything because it is so fragmented and alternately popularized (in the west) or institutionalized (japan)  that to speak about a buddhist perspective is as impractical as suggesting some kind of universal christian ethic.  

either trust every book you read or trust none of them because there is nothing pure that can be named and what's real to me, is real to me, and the truth is sad when we believe in the name.  believe in the experience of truth without believing in truth itself.  

moloka'i and many things

i've known that i needed to come to hawaii for quite some time now.  its strange because it is my longest, currently living intention or aspiration.  well now that might be a ridiculous thing to say, but i decided a year and a half ago that i needed to come to hawaii after hearing a really inspiring guest lecture.  it was october of 2007.  i was pretty far out there, probably not sleeping much, drawing overlapping circles all the time, reading wendell berry.  but this guy who gave the lecture was friends with kasulis, an East-West Center guy, and he was talking about the proliferation of perceived difference and talking about ideas that launch perpendicular to the engrained notions of progress.  very much in line with the paradigms of intimacy and integrity that were structuring my thoughts at the time.  afterwards i walked out of the building and into the rain with this buzzing certainty in my head that i would go to hawaii.  i thought i would come in a much different capacity, but it was the dawning of the thought of hawaii.

then i fell in love.  then i fell in love with farming.  and a way of living.  and then my hawaiian intentions shifted, they drifted to japan and i imagined zen temples for a month or two before settling on the prospect of wwoofing in hawaii.  and this was many months ago.  and there was a lot that happened in those months.  but i had this shortcut, this easy path come to hawaii.  and then out of all of the places i could have gone i ended up in this particular place.  i contacted ten or fifteen farms before emailing john, and he turns people away every day.  so looking back its nice to see the gaps that open and allow the present to develop.  

i've been appreciating the present pretty intensely for the past three months and its the best way to contextualize the past.   i'm not giving myself the credit here, its an imperative of how beautiful the world is, you can't help it.  but with all of this fond reflection on the past through the joy of the present, it's still hard for me to believe in the benevolence or openness of the future.  that's not quite right, it's just that i get antsy when i don't have an idea of where i'll be in the immediate future.  

now, just this evening, i have the general plan for the rest of my time here.  i was really needing this to come together.  and i didn't know how it was going to work until just a couple days ago.  i finally got to talk to the woman who owns the yoga center on moloka'i.  all of my important  correspondence with her had happened through john and it has left me feeling like i still needed some confirmation.  they are good friends and for some reason she would just call him instead of me.  so i've had about a month of this hanging intention to go to moloka'i.  but tonight we finally talked and had a wonderful conversation and they'll meet me at the dock at nine in the morning on friday and it feels fantastic to have that certainty.  i'll stay there for ten days.  it's reputedly the most beautiful place on the planet.  

after that, the plan is to attend a two week workshop in permaculture design.  this is the piece that just fell into my lap the other night.  and it fits perfectly right in the transition space between life here on paradise and my intention for the next nine months in ohio.  there was this hole, that was leaving me unconvinced of making a reality out of the big idea.  namely, how to immediately transition between the easy enthusiasm of my life here and the more dynamic engagement of going back to ohio and keeping the good intention alive.  and that's where this piece came falling in to fit. 

it means the investment of some reserve cash but its an investment in the theory to compliment the practical reality of my life on the farm here.  i've learned from living here, in very concrete ways, in the food i eat every night and the location of the paths i walk on every day and with every bucket of duck-fertilized water and with the blood and the texture of the chickens we slaughtered and with the growth of every lettuce leaf and the time and space to reflect on it all.  but this education is place-specific, and though that's what i celebrate most about it, the transition of this knowledge to a new place, and even more so the application of  knowledge of an established system to the establishment of a new one was a leap that i wasn't convinced i could make through my own unguided research.  there's just too many things to initiate.  that is the startling good fortune of finding this course, it will initiate me.  and though i will have only scratched the surface after a two-week course, the experience of matching concepts to what i've been living and doing for the past three months, should help bridge the gap between my maui-inspired intentions and the ohio-world where they will need to be realized.  

its what i need in order to know where to start. 

...

i wish i might have said all of this more concisely.  

...

it also seems like i could have described the joy of getting solid plans made by saying something really flashy about liminality and communitas, but luckily that bag of jargon is getting dusty in some corner of my mind.   

haleakala

i have no way to write about the crater.  even trying to put up some pictures just now felt like a defilement.  it was a most magnificent hike.  beauty so strange it makes your eyes hurt.  

tomorrow...

we go into the crater.

.

next: and the idea

in answer to a question and the more general looming uncertainty, today there came to me an interesting idea.  a something to do.  i still think its no good to think too far into what's next but its nice to address the issue when it arises.  the immediate next is to go to a yoga center on molokai.  this seems almost finalized now.  things work differently in hawaii a bit.  and with working on farms.  its not so business like.  there are no business hours and so forth and thank goodness for that.  so i'll be here at my dear rancho for another two weeks or so and then will hit the roads for about a week or so.  camp in the national parks and hitch around the island.  

now then to the bigger next.  the mainland one.  i need to make some money.  but more critically i need to be engaged in a lifestyle as vibrant as the one i'm in right now.  i need to be at the edge of what i know.  this is where i am the happiest.  so how to do this in the state i've lived in my whole life?  here's the idea, and i'm hesitant to put it up here because its pretty significant to the next few years of my life.  but i'm going to put it here because i need feedback and also because i'm excited about it.  

the idea:::

i am convicted of the imperative sensibility in producing significant amounts of your own food.  i won't restate the case for pursuing a sustainable lifestyle.  luckily i think it makes pretty blatant sense in the context of the contemporary affairs of the world.  there are a few directions i could go in with this conviction.  

i could go to grad school and study spiritual ecology and be in an anthropology department in a city, and i would write about the relationship between organic farming and spirituality.  the various ways that the deep appreciation of the earth lends to certain practices of cultivation which lend back into certain spiritual discourses.  

all that business doesn't really appeal to me.  i'd rather live it than write about it, or live it and write about it.  i don't know what i'll have on the other side of grad school that i need and can really use and could not go and get a few years down the road anyway.  so the work i need to do right now, the work that constantly keeps me at the edge of what i know, is gardening.  particularly permaculture.  

i was reading a book on permaculture thats been sitting on a shelf in the cottage for months.  all of a sudden i was really excited and inspired.  it all makes very practical sense...  so here's the idea:

my grandparents live on 40 acres of land in southeast ohio.  its beautiful rolling hayfields mostly and some wooded hills and valleys.  i am considering the possibility of getting a permaculture system started there.  it would mean living with them and planting trees all summer, expanding the garden, getting some major composting going, perhaps build a chicken coop and a greenhouse.  i have  a lot to learn about the system.  a lot.  but it makes sense to me, i've lived in a well developed permaculture system for nigh on three months now.  

here's a few of the general concepts or ethics of permaculture:  

+Cultivate the smallest possible land area.  Plan for small-scale, energy efficient intensive systems rather than large extensive ones. 

+Be diverse, polyculture.  It provides stability and helps to be read for change.

+Think about long term.  Plan for sustainability. 

its a really beautiful system that blends an ideology with a daily ethic very seamlessly.  the simplest element of permaculture design, is to plant in zones with the highest intensity of use closest to the house and then systems that need less or little energy in the zones further out.  so zone one, the zone closest to the house has vegetable and herb gardens.  zone two would have some kind of animal pen (probably chickens in our case) near enough to the garden that you can use it to mulch and fertilize easily.  might also have a green house in zone 2.  and a significant fruit and nut orchard.  very potentially corn in ohio.  in hawaii, its papayas, mangos, macadamia nuts and avacados.  could also do oats or beans.  blackberries perhaps.  then beyond that in zone three, would be the place for apple trees and such. 

i have so much to learn before i can consider this a legitimate venture.  but, i can learn it.  and i can do this kind of work.  farms make a lot of sense to me.  and they also make me very happy and content.  

heres some other issues that need to be kept in mind.  sorry, i guess i'm kind of hooked on this blogging ritual and it gives me some space to think through things.  

first issue:  its a really huge flipping deal to get a farm started!  huge. and i will run into a million things i've never even thought of let alone experienced or learned about.  but it will none of it be more than i can handle.  and i know many wonderful people in columbus that can give me advice and practical connections.  eric, the manager of the last farm i worked at is an invaluable resource in this fashion.  

second issue:  i have no real idea what the condition of the soil is like down there.  i don't think its too bad, probably a lot of clay and its been planted in hay for years and years.  i don't know that much about how things grow there.  i know grandma fertilized with manure in her garden and grew some pretty fantastic stuff.  a manure connection shouldn't be too hard to find in caldwell, ohio.   i would hopefully be able to plow and put manure down in the late spring and get a cover crop planted in zone two.  then be able to get that tilled and another cover planted before winter. that would be all that could be done in zone 2 before winter.  significant number of trees could be planted in zone three.  its just a matter of figuring out what would produce best and be best to have around.  all of this means studying and learning intensely at each stage.  

third issue: money.

fourth issue:  i don't want to create a situation that stresses my grandparents.  this will be done as a joyful investment in the land that they have already invested in and i want them to be able to celebrate it as such.  i don't want them to feel like that have to be working on things all the time.  but this is the beauty of permaculture.  there is not extensive manual labor involved.  the design is very deliberate and intentional and getting it put in place will be good work but it doesn't take a lot of hours out in the field to keep up with it.  the most care is in the garden, but gramma loves to work in the garden anyways.  and i will be there all summer.  we could have a very substantial garden.  working in the gardens here makes me realize how much i could get done working with my gramma.  she's a machine in the garden.  and grandad loves to do work on the tractor.  i think it would be a delight for them to have an even more deliberate setup.  so grandad could disk the fields in zone 2 instead of mowing the lawn around the house.  but they are both getting older and this only works if i know that i can dedicate a few years to this.  during the growing season, i will be in ohio, working on the farm then getting things ready for winter.  then i can travel and do whatever i want, probably come back to hawaii and keep doing what i'm doing.  and things will weather the winter and i'll come back in time to take starts out of the greenhouse and into the ground.  (i don't know who will plant the starts.  maybe aunt debbie).  so ultimately this issue is taken care of if i can accept that this will be my lifestyle for the next four years.  i think i can do that and plus it'd be a good thing to do up until 2012.  just in case.  

fifth issue:  living with my grandparents.  would this drive me mad?  first of all they are getting older and its a bit hard for me to be around them lately because is see them as not quite as sharp as they used to be.  and this bothers me and breaks my heart.  but it would be completely different if i were staying with them for five months.  it would not be the typical, concentrated attention of a three day visit.  and, i would have a car that could get me to columbus in 2 hours.  this is hardly being cut off from the world.  its taken me two hours just to hitchhike to the store and buy granola here in maui.  i find that i thrive with some measure of solitude.  but this would hardly be solitude. the social reality of caldwell ohio has always fascinated me.  its what got me in to folklore.  the most important paper of my academic career was about my gramma telling stories about becoming a part of the community there.  

that's about all the issues there are with it.  or as many as i can think to name here.  this has been helpful for me.  if you made it all the way to here then thank you and please let me know what you think of this.  it strikes me as a really wonderful idea and a very fortunate that i want to and can do this and that my grandparents have the land.  and all of this.  ok.

your thoughts please.  everyone.  columbus friends, mother, brother, former lover, blogger buddies.  from what you each and all know about me, how does this proposed venture strike you?  i suppose maybe this is a decision big enough to be kept to myself and mulled over.  but i have an idea like this everyday that just gets buried away underneath other thoughts.  so i'm going to grab this one and make it public so that i have to think it all the way through.

thanks.  to everyone who reads my blog.  it presents a space for doing this.  a space for articulating stuff that i would otherwise just bounce around in my head and never let enter reality.  

the recession

i have no way to relate to the recession.  i believe that when things are talked about enough, they become real, they gain substance in the collective consciousness.  but for me, its hard to find something in my material life, some object or sign through which to relate to the recession.  i have no totemic piece of the crisis.  

someone picked me up a few weeks ago and said that many psychics say maui will be a good place to be when the world goes crazy.  someone else told me the other day that hawaii is the most isolated land mass in the world.  so, i don't know if it's spiritual or geographical but i'm very grateful for my isolated place of peace.

my only portal to the depressed reality of the hegemonic world is through my computer.  i've started reading the new york times and sometimes i watch day-old episodes of the daily show.  i also get day-old cobbler from the coffee shop sometimes, but that's a different and more delicious story.  last night (that is, my last night, your two nights ago), brian williams was the guest on the daily show.  in a nice twist of fate, brian williams was also the commencement speaker at my college graduation.  so, here was the icon of my beginning, my entrance into the real, political world and the guy was completely freaked out.  it disturbed me.  he seemed like he was all jacked up on something, but the more i watched him, the more i realized that the guy had been born again in the panic of what he reports every night on the news.  

at my graduation, brian williams said that we were the generation that was going to change the world.  that the world needed us and was ready for us.  but last night (your two nights ago) he said on national television, that the latest reports show that 125 banks are going to close in the next year.  that means, 125 bank chains, the names that are on people's debit cards, are going to go belly up and the cards won't do anything.  to this john stewart quipped, 

"so let me get this straight, because it seems like you just said, on national television, that people should take their money out of the banks and put it in shoe boxes."

then they just kind of stared at each other.  and brian williams didn't say anything.  and john stewart didn't say anything.  

it freaked me out.  

but then the sun rose over the ocean this morning.  

our divine frustration

Every morning, you open your eyes to find

the divine frustration,

curling the lineation of my window shades

    into shapes

    of a crucifix,

but the light's all straight and the kid, well

he's alright.

Pray to Allen Ginsberg. Pray to the names of people you don't know.

Pray for the faith that saves us.

Pray

Pray 

Pray

On the stage of fascination: an empty page drains 

the years of libation through a full-suit circus

that just claps and claps with its bowl-cut, its legs

and enough words to say anything.

You can write it all away or 

put it in a box with all of your favorite things

like letters 

and string 

and really important string.

Collages of love:

Our colleges, our too full, our president, our don't know what to do, our don't know where to live, our too real, our pitiful, our million, our missing, our too many, our five-star, our opening, our beginning, our returning.

Might as well add the why and call it what it is,

its yours, its yours, its yours, its yours.

The physics of the soul is a book on the wall,

wedged between many

things and thoughts and leftover beans.

Box tops educate the sub-space mind to reside in vagaries,

respect the grammar and check your spelling.

Grow up.  Then, years later, only when turning 

around, whirling dervish-like through the air

did you find your desperation.

Our desperation.  Our divine frustration.

Soul singers sing about searching for their answers.  My answers

Your answers

are waiting for your questions, 

your mind

and the time to sit and have a cup of tea with you.

How strange to sit and wait?

While white cloud wraiths

dance down air

currents, events

are really happening

on the other side of the world and

you will learn about them through telephones.

If I could change my name, then I 

would have harnessed the power of being 

fully human.  If I could trade my name for another one, I would

choose to be known as mr. Jones, but then, I fear

I might be mistaken for a baseball player.

On the stage of grand libation:  power lines clack and shake

shuddering at the weight, the substance of fascination.  

Our homes.  Our entertainment.  Our whistled 

livings.  Our credit statements.  Our thread-bare

old jacket of a nation.  Our intensity.  Our necessity.  Our divine frustration.

On the backside of nowhere, sitting 

on a mountain floating on an ocean,

I read the poetry of my soul from a book full of dead poets.

And I knew then and I knew there.  And I laughed there and then

I cried for all the times I never knew and all the places I'd never been.

If its all emptiness inside,

then where does pain come from?

If its all openness out there, then when

does hate find its footing in the fertile, hurt-broken hearts

of mothers,

sons,

daughters

and fathers?

If I could plot our entirety in a stack of white paper,

using nothing but a black pen and my good nature,

then I would draw a picture, a friendly face with hair and whiskers.

Then I would draw the picture a thousand times, until

with a flipping through the sheets, I could make the face smile.

And it would be more of my desire, more of my dissatisfaction

than any fleeting, grasping, self-bound instant.

And once this papery creation can come to life 

for any set of fingers,

any fleshy friend or foe,

then on and on and so it goes,

the thing will need to be named, and we

will all get together and play with our own image.

We will writhe and curse its sublime animation

and we will call it

our divine frustration.

simply sunday

a catalogue of events::

sunrise: wake up and look at the vibrant colors with blurry vision.  feel cold.  zip up my sleeping bag and fall back asleep.

in between wakings:  dream vigorously

around 10:30: get out of bed exhausted.  wonder how i used to sleep til two.  smoke half a cigarette.  poop.  make oatmeal and eat it.  finish the cigarette.  poop again. 

afterwards: play guitar on the porch.  find it funny that i've written six songs in the key of C since i've been here.  its the only harmonica i have.  

noon: write a text to an old friend.  fix the handle on an old hula hoe.  make lunch.  some tasty beans on top of a chard salad with a fruit whose name i can pronounce but not spell.  remarkable.  

afternoon: find the world surprisingly cold.  alternate between the porch, living room and garden.  peel coffee beans on the porch, listen to a lecture about remote viewing on the couch, pull some lettuce gone to seed from the garden.  remote viewing is fascinating.  check out farsight.org.  it was brought to my attention by a guy i hitchhiked and later played frisbee with.

3:30: set out walking to keokea.  

on the way: scour a stretch of highway where i dropped a water bottle while climbing into a truck the other day.  i didn't find it.  

4:17: stroll into town.  stop at gramma's coffee and inquire about the squash cheesecake and the price of the cookies before getting a piece of blueberry cobbler.  sit outside and consume the treat with ritual ecstasy.  listen to people talking on the porch next to me.  two folks from the island and one talkative tourist.  gramma's is in all the guide books.

4:30: walk to the park. wave hello to these friends i barely know.  i even up the teams seven, seven and the score is only one, one.  we play two games to 10 with a long lounge on the grass in between.  ultimate frisbee is near constant running.  i had taken solace in the fact that i was probably the only smoker and felt justified in my windedness, but today everyone seemed to be smoking.  everyone also seemed to be winded. 

sunset:  start walking home, saying that i've got to make some miles before dark.  wave goodbye to these fun folks.  walk about a half a mile back through town, the sky is magnificent but my legs are gone.  stick my thumb out and get picked up by the first car i see.  the dude in the car had two puppies in the front seat with him, said his name was dave.  the puppies bit my beard but it was fun.  it's good to get dog time i say.  dave says he sees me walking all the time.  i don't really feel like i walk all that much but it makes me feel good to hear him say it.  

when i get home:  pick some chard on my way inside.  make some simple dough.  let it sit.  take my weekly shower.  have to light the water heater a couple times but it finally takes and the warm water makes me grateful.  

after the shower:  mix up some beans and chard and mustard greens in the blender.  roll out three medium sized tortillas.  put some of the filling on each one and then fold them over and pinch them shut.  fry them up.  eat them with ketchup.  i shouldn't have put the mustard greens in, or i should have cooked them a bit first.  they were overpowering.  the decadence of fried dough carries the meal. 

after dinner:  get high.  dance in the living room.  

this and that

ok, so never mind the critical analysis of Alice in Wonderland.  it seemed too much like work.  it was interesting to read up on lewis carroll, the original books, their reception upon publication, walt disney's affinity for the stories and his relationship with the material throughout his career.  its worth a browse on wikipedia.  and also check out The Alice Comedies on youtube if you want to see some wacky 1920s animation.  its some of walt disney's earliest work.  he did some adaptations of alice before this but i haven't been able to find any footage.  

it's been hard for me to write lately, don't know why.  maybe that's just how it comes and goes.  i was watching a charlie rose interview with bruce springsteen last night and he said he would go for long periods of time without writing anything.  so there's some solace in that.  

i crave simplicity and it seems to be harder and harder to hold onto the longer i'm here.  when you first transplant yourself to an island in the middle of the ocean, you don't have much choice on the pace of your life.  at least if you are me.  and it helps you go with the flow, but now having been here for over two months i have too many choices and it can be hard to choose the simplest and most, hmmm, nourishing activities.  

here's some lyrics that i wrote last night:

got a broom that you don't know how to sweep with

got a room that you don't know how to sleep in

got these shoes that you don't know how to walk in

got a tongue that you don 't know how to talk with

there's a wheel that you don't know how to turn with

there's a turn that you don't know how to learn from

here's the field that you don't know how to work in

here's the land that you don't know how to live on

got a tune that you don't know how to sing to

got a loom that you don't know how to weave with

write a poem so no one ever reads it

find a home and don't you ever leave it

here's a flag but you don't know how to fly it

there's a horse but you don't know how to ride it

there's a word but you don't know how to say it

here's the deal but you don't know how to make it

you see the sun but you don't know how to set it

feel the love but you don't know how to let it

in.

got faith that no one can believe in

got hope but no one ever sees it

got a cut but you don't know how to treat it

got demands but you don't know how to meet um

there's a way but no one ever takes it

there's a time but no one ever finds it

here's the one that you could never be with

here's the son that you could never talk to

got a hammer but you don't know how to nail with

got a boat but you don't know how to sail on

got a hollywood, got another screen shot

got a gram, got another mug shot

you see but you don't know how to set it

you love but you don't know how to let it

in.

getting critical

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things;

Of shoes-- and ships-- and sealing wax--

Of cabbages-- kings--

And why the sea is boiling hot--

And whether pigs have wings."

i watched Alice in Wonderland last night and found it delightful.  i'm going to dedicate this space and writing to do a bit of critical analysis of the movie, Lewis Carroll and the political contexts of both the original work and the disney film.  this is a pure indulgence, but, in part, the point of having the blog is to practice my writing and sharpen different modes of thinking.  i haven't done any kind of critical writing in awhile.  should be fun and it will give me something focused to research.

daniel pinchbeck

so daniel pinchbeck was at the mystic garden party, and the mystic garden party was a very small event as far as festivals go.  we gathered at a ymca campground on the edge of nowhere, in the middle of the jungle.  rocky coast.  waterfall country.  the gymnasium, an impressive high-beamed structure in and of itself, had been decorated up as a temple with flower alters for basketball hoops and vendors wrapped around the edge of the room selling their curative herbal drinks and paintings and statues.  something about merchants in the temple but essentially the gym was a giant slumber party by night and an elementary school assembly during the day, the only difference with grade school being the ever-loving air of hippiedom.  

pinchbeck... oh never mind that.

i am very glad to be exactly where i am.  this is a very empowering feeling.  i think about faith a lot and am finding ways to talk about it too.  its nice to think of faith as substance, as the texture of reality, that which makes experience solid.  faith is the feeling of your body walking into a wall that you know to be there.  and as real as the wall, faith is the feeling of the body interacting with a god that it knows to be.  faith is the substance of a sunset.  it is the experience of a sunset as divine.  

but faith only works when it is accompanied with some kind of theism.  some knowledge or way of categorizing the divine as a thing that exists, something that exists within and beyond our individual existence.  i have to believe that the divine is something outside of myself before i can realize it as the objects of my experience.  the faith in walls and gods substantiates the experience of stubbed toes and elated spirits. 

to realize emptiness is to realize the lack of substance.  when we believe in substance we orient ourselves around the reality of it.  this is the basis of both elation and desperation, the realization of a full spectrum of experience.  the way of the buddha (as they say) occurs beyond both abundance and lack.  it is the melting away of faith.  faith that has the power to create divine experience also creates mundane experience.  to believe in anything as either the self or the not self is delusion and the seed of dissatisfaction.  wisdom is the realization of no faith.  emptiness is the realization of no faith.  

whether or not they both make sense in the way i just typed them, they both make sense to me in how i justify things in my head.  that is to say, the idea of a god and the idea of no god seem equally logical and useful to me.  i think this keeps me from believing in anything.  i'm going to have to pick one because i think this keeps me from enjoying the peace of not thinking about anything.  

smarty britches

after a nice chat on the porch with john, i finished my dinner, smoked a spliff and climbed up on the roof to watch the sun finish setting.  considered blogging about the sunset.  more considered writing a poem that i would post on the blog; don't know if you call that blogging or poetry.  but, i'd pretty much decided against blogging about sunsets by the time i climbed down off the roof.  

i walked around the back of the cottage by the chicken coop to see what was going on.  today we had talked about the need to find a new place for smarty britches to roost.  she is the only truly free ranger of the bunch and likes to sleep on the tool bench right out back.  unfortunately, chickens poop when they roost so every morning john has to spray the poop off his work bench.  the work bench is also right next to the freezers and the poop next to the food is bad joo-joo, especially when we're selling it to folks.

she was already on the bench and looking for a place to lay when i walked up.  

"sorry britches but you can't sleep here."

i walk up to her in give her a shoo, move along gesture.  she hops down and just kind of stands their next to me, looking up with her only eye.  

"come on, i'll help you find a place," i say and start herding her over towards a crook in the fabulous sprawling tree that sits in the yard behind the cottage.  

"look you can stay here," i say pointing at the tree.  she pays little attention to what i'm saying but stands and looks at me from a couple feet away.  at this point, i can move her kind of like we're magnets with our similar poles facing each other.  

"here.  you wait right here.  i'll show you."

i run inside the house to get a papaya.  food has always been the clearest language when it comes to chickens.  

she's back on the work bench in the 20 seconds it takes me to grab a papaya from the cottage.  i show it to her and give her a bite then get her to follow me to the tree. 

"you can sleep right here."

i place a piece of papaya in the crook of the tree.  she stares at me.  i give her a bite out of my hand then dangle the piece in slow swoops up the trunk and lay it next to the other piece.  britches just turns away and gives me the hollow socket of her bad eye.  i try the papaya lesson another time or two until we have eaten the whole thing. 

she trots towards the bench but i cut her off and our poles deflect each other.  but she doesn't stop, more like continually glances off at an angle.  as i keep side stepping in front of her we start to work semi-circles back and forth in front of the work bench.  this would be our dance for the next twenty minutes or so.  

she gets really fussy, like a tired child, walks over and tries out one of the back steps.  this consists of rubbing her beak back and forth a few times then plopping down.  she readjusts herself kind of like an old lady in a skirt sitting down in an easy chair.  much fluffing and such.  after giving it a minute or so she gets up and tries to hop up on the hand rail, except that it is on a slant and she can't stand so she slides off in a flapping mess.

we pick up our dance again.  her getting closer and closer to me every time until i have to start turning her away with my hand.  now this is the first time i've ever touched this chicken.  we've had countless conversations, shared countless papayas, but never once have we touched.  eventually i pick her up as she is no longer affected by the previously mentioned magnetism. 

i pet her and talk soft.

"look at this other bench over here.  this is perfect.  this is a chicken bench"

we sit down and try the bench together, holding her in my lap.  this is an incredibly intimate moment.  i've worked around chickens for the past eight months but never sat with one.  i put her on the bench and she flaps away back towards the bench.   we dance for a quick minute, then i say,

"fine hop up.  but you can't sleep here."

she hops up on the bench and topples awkwardly over plastic containers.  i pick her up and start to walk her towards the other bench.  she starts to flap, a tired kid throwing a fit.  i let her land awkwardly and then stand between her and her favorite roost.  we stare each other down.  

eventually she turns and starts looking for places to sleep.  the lychee tree.  the ladder leaning against a papaya tree.  then she walks back to the new bench and looks at it for a while.  then she jumps up on a bucket, acts like she wants to stay there if it weren't so hollow in the middle.  from the bucket she jumps to the bench.  

"good girl," i say and mean it.  

i walk inside, get my computer, sit down on the porch, glance up at britches on her new bench, then blog about it.  smarty britches is way more profound than sunsets.  but such is the nature of profundity and beauty.  

moving on

i will be leaving rancho relaxzo by march 1st.  it is time to be moving on.

the next waypoint will be a yoga center on molokai.  

after leaving the water on for a third time, it seems that somehow, deep down, i am telling myself its time for me to find somewhere else to be.  i'm not really used to making mistakes, especially costly ones that involve water.  except for these three oversights, my life here has been blissful.  so it seems that i've helped myself make the decision that's best for myself. 

turns out that john is good friends with the folks at the yoga center and he says that it's the most beautiful place in hawaii.  you don't take this lightly coming from someone that lives in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  the thought of leaving the peace of the mountain threw me for a minute or two, as i'd become accustomed to the thought of settling here until i left the islands in may.  re-embracing the transience of my lifestyle has reinstated my peace and in a way that extends beyond one particular place.

so john says that if he were to take a hawaiian vacation, the yoga center on molokai is where he would go.  he also said to tell karen to call him for a reference if she wants to.  said he would tell her about everything except the water.  this is very kind.  and it reassures me that molokai is the next place for me.  

in the two months here on maui, i've met a lot of people.  i've seen wwoofing manifested as a thriving social network, a decentralized systems of ramblers, wanderers and romantics.  it's a small island and when you're part of something like this you meet the same people over and over again in all different places.  it's thrilling.  but for me the thrill wheres off into social obligation very easily.  the charm of chance meetings is far more fascinating than purposeful ones.  my ethnographic soul has been reignited with the prospect of traveling to a new island and waiting for a new set of chance encounters to carry me through my days.  the opportunity to practice yoga for a month or two is also perfectly suited to where i am right now (spiritually/emotionally) and it seems that this will all fall into place. 

still don't have any definite plans but i spoke with karen on the phone yesterday and will speak to her again shortly.  we were both making dinner yesterday and didn't get into much of a conversation beyond that they will not have any wwoofers in mid march.  i'd like to start living there at the beginning of the month if possible, but if not, i can fill a few weeks adventuring around maui.  social networks be praised.  

and i still need to spend some time in the crater.

i bring all of this to your attention because the blog will need its name changed.  "from a molokai yoga center" doesn't have the same funky alliterative frame.  perhaps it can remain, as all things thus far and henceforth will be forever tied to this maui farm.  now i can simply set myself to the business of relishing my last few weeks here.  

living bobby maggee

this poem could never be nonsensical enough to represent the week out of which it was born.

...

living bobby maggee:

the spirit, if you want to, like, go that far

is just supposed to observe the soul.

Zander of the Elves rides rocks and worships

the dying circle he calls sun;

explains a made-up game to a man whom i've seen

several times now.

when you meet a person three times you have to get their story.

the first time is just the course of events, the endless

stream of faces.  the second time is coincidence,

to take from what you can

gather.

the third,

means something.

(hippies on the beach still exist)

on the road to huelo, five of us huddled in the bed

of a flower farm truck, singing songs

in homemade keys, stop to pick up three more

friends from the side of the road.

Molly immediately starts into a quick-rattle 

tune.  the truck runs out of gas, still 

a mile of mountain from the lookout 

and has to cover the distance 

on a concoction of low gears and collective belief.

impish beach children had thrown sand on us

for trying to teach them to play games that don't

single anyone out.  it was endearing despite its unnerving

malevolence.  they called it

make the babysitter cry.

i'm not a babysitter 

and i will not cry.

now go away.

eat burritos in a camp-sized kitchen.

while listening to the welshman explain wales to my anxiety-riddled

soul-twin, whose arms and legs are thin but inviting,

experience is so distracting.

see sam

for the third time.

the world still swirls in ever-tightening spirals.

ironic and inching me 

closer to the center of something 

than i've ever been in 

this lifetime.

how can a world get smaller while the universe expands?

and when did the sky become picturesque?

beauty happens easy with things that we can't help

but leave be, 

like suns and moons and mountains and streams.  we

vow to adventure together.

i've got wheels.

when i think of words to leave with these quick-silvery friends,

who must soon leave me to go and chase dreams, i say

in my head with a wink and a smile

just don't go near Salinas or one of you will slip away, 

looking for that home that the other hopes

the other finds, but later wishes to trade back 

tomorrows for yesterdays and the corporal pleasures

of

co-inhabited

bodies.

hiatus

i am going to take a one week break from using the computer.  the past two days i've been in a bit of a funk and i think its because i'm posting on the blog and checking emails and such way too much.  there's too many good books in this house to waste my nights not reading them.  the gardens are too beautiful to waste my days not being in them.  

feel free to call me.  

farewell cyberspace.  

farewell for one week. 

ethnography and i

i grew up in ohio.  kind of in the country and near the lake.  i went to college for four years and studied myself.  that's really the most literal way to put it.  i took the classes that allowed me to most directly study my intellectual place within the historical context of those who studied themselves before me.  perhaps, to some extent the study of any subject lies in the discovery of one's self, in the aquisition of perspective on one's own existence.  but so very often a subject gets transformed into nothing but a string of connected objects and accessible only through rote memorization and textual consumption, like a mouse being led through a maze by a string of cheese.  

i studied ethnography as a subject.  and so now i call myself an ethnographer although i have very little idea what ethnography is by way of experiencing it or implementing it as a day to day ethic.  so i've decided the best course of action is to self identify as an ethnographer and then once again set to studying myself.  in the same fashion, one might discover what it means to be a musician and thereby what music is in the experience of its creation.

it also seems to be useful and proper to adopt different personas for different purposes.  for instance, it helps me make intellectual observations if i speak or think with the voice and pace of an olderly allen ginsberg.  specifically the allen ginsberg that was interviewed for "no direction home."  on occasion it also helps me to embrace the persona of my father.  when i'm meeting new people especially and also when i'm goofing around.  as a pet persona for this tricky business of ethnography, or to say, how to act when i am an ethnographer, my most powerful and accessible reference is margaret mills.  i've had plenty of other professors and in-the-flesh examples of ethnographers but for some reason dr. mills is the most resonant. 

all of this may sound like hibber-jibbery hogwash, but it is very practical and comes into play on a constant basis.  especially when you have the privilege of not having predicated purpose.  much of my time is spent in waiting to find what i should do next or explore next or work with next.  the waiting time is full of possible courses of action flashing and flying around in my head until one of them pairs up with a pre-practiced and familiar mode of behavior.  for example, in a matter of minutes i may think of say three possible course of action in my head.  

i should fall in love

i should smoke a cigarette

i should get a personal narrative from the neighbor.

the grand percentage of the time i will opt for the cigarette because the course of behavior that translates that thought into reality is much more familiar and engrained as rewarding and accessible.  this is where the borrowing of personas comes in handy.  if i pretend to be margaret mills, the possibility of talking to the neighbor becomes a closer reality.  and as for the falling in love business, it seems to occur most deeply when people are brought together through some work of breaking away from one's most common, ingrained behavior.  straying from the work required to stay on the path beyond what we're used to turns love into addiction and passion into jealousy.  for me to accomplish this work with consistency requires an ability to shape-shift.  to perform certain personas through the power of believing in their utility and authenticity.  this is how we become socialized of course.  the assumption of certain ways of acting based on hedonistic predisposition.  but it can also empower the individual when we awake to find that we can toy with the whole system and enact different parts, play different roles, whenever we want to.

but for now i'll just have a cigarette.  later i'll walk to the store to buy more tobacco.  

chickens and ducks

ducks walk

like fiery old ladies,

on thin yellow ankles.

like doris.

and slightly

    like hockey goalies 

on unfrozen surfaces,

their ice skates clacking and stick-

ing.

chickens clatter, wet gravel 

under their forked feet.

the chickens we will eat,

because

they should be laying eggs

and aren't.

they should be working for us

but aren't.  the ducks,

free and walking awkardly, 

need not fear harm

as long as they are ducks and keep

eating and doing very little. 

and this is all to just to answer 

jake's question.

i'm not a poet but i think things 

are poetic.  i don't quite know how 

to tell people.  so sometimes i try.

my fingers

i haven't cut the fingernails on my right hand since i arrived in maui.

at first by no choice of my own, as my nail clippers were stolen.  now with access to borrowed clippers i chose to keep my right nails and cut my left.  this is all part of my aspirations to dylanhood i suppose.  it does make for good guitar playing though.  much slapping and clicking.  its like i have a hand full of picks.

i just cut the tip of my left middle finger while knifing the husks off macadamia nuts.  i'd shucked a bucketful, efficiently and with acute satisfaction.  push the knife in till it hits the nut then twist. and if you do it right, if you hit the sweet spot, it cracks perfectly in half and falls right out.  nut in one bucket.  husk in the other.  must have done a hundred or so before deciding to crack the shell off one of the more voluptuous specimen.  and the knife slipped and sliced.  

i don't like having lame fingers but it reminds me of something.

 tich nhat hanh talking about toothaches:

when we have a toothache, we think that we will be happy if our toothache goes away.  but our dissatisfaction is not dependent on the toothache but rather the desire to not have a toothache.  when we do not have a toothache we are not automatically content.  and when we have a toothache rarely do we find the occasion to celebrate not having an aching back or head.  so it is not what ails us that ails us but desire to be free of ailment. 

that is a paraphrase of a memory.

emily read it to me one day while driving home from the farm.  i'd taken ben's book to work to read from as an invocation before a staff meeting.

and now i'm a thousand miles away.

and now i'm thankful

to have a healthy head of teeth

and nine fine fingers.

again and again

raining again
won't be going anywhere

listen to joni mitchell and eat pesto

wet again

can't keep the floor clean

change socks and hang shirts to dry

read poetry again

read memoirs again

read biographies again

ethnography again

dreaming again

can't remember where

it happened but it stoned me

change again

won't need the bucket brigade

sit and listen to windy music