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.