Lisa Garrigues

Happy Birthday MLK

2012-01-16T13:29:00.001-08:00

Last year I was fortunate to have been commissioned to do a video project that involved Martin Luther King Jr., the Poor People's March on Washington, artist Beth Pewther, and the singer Mahalia Jackson. It's a tribute to King as well as a tribute to the importance of getting your art and message out there to the world. So I am reposting it here.

Happy Birthday Dr. King...may we continue having and implementing our dreams!

(Image: Beth Pewther)

Some Reasons I Woke Up At 4:30AM

2012-01-05T05:11:00.000-08:00

Because I couldn't sleep.

Because the upstairs overnight guest was walking on my head.

Because my body says I have slept enough.

Because the view of lights and branches was stark and quiet and beautiful from the upper deck of the house.

Because the coffee tasted good.

Because my cat wanted to get up too.

Because, sitting upstairs with the taste of coffee on my lips and the view of lights and branches quiet all around me,

inexplicable joy.

(photo by D Sharon Pruitt www.pinksherbert.com)

The Occupy Movement and Memories of Argentina

2011-11-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, middle class people in Argentina were streaming out into the streets to protest the economic system that had plunged them into poverty.

I was fortunate enough to have been there, witnessing and participating.

I remember one man, in one of the numerous neighborhood assemblies that we had, saying, "I predict that in ten years people in the United States will be doing the same thing."

I'll write more on this later, but for now, here is a link to an English website I ran covering the events of that time.

White with African Ancestry

2011-05-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

(photos: three 'white' celebrities with confirmed or rumoured African ancestry: Lula Da Silva, President of Brazil. Heather Locklear, actress. Dwight D Eisenhower, former U.S. President.)

In my continued efforts to investigate my ancestry, I shelled out even more money to get my Dad’s genome tested with 23andme.

Part of this was to see if I could get more information on the oral tradition of Native American and “Black Dutch” ancestry on his side of the family. The website 23andme, in addition to telling you your paternal and maternal haplogroup and your likelihood for particular diseases and traits (“Yes you have blue eyes!”) has something called “Ancestry Painting” which will break your genome down into three ethnic groups: European, African, and Asian. It also goes a step further and give you your likelihood of having Native American ancestry in the past five generations.

So I look at my Dad’s ancestry painting and see this teentsy weentsy bit of orange Asian color sliced into his
blue Western European painting. The Native American Ancestry finder tells me this teentsy weentsy bit of orange “Asian” indicates my Dad could have a Native ancestor, but any ‘full-blood’ ancestor would probably not be any closer than a great-grandparent.

Which sounds about right to me, and fits in with when and where the tradition of Native ancestry started in my family tree. But the segment is so small I want to be sure it is not just statistical ‘noise” and send it off to a couple of genetic specialists, Dr. Doug McDonald and David W of the Eurogenes blog.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Both these guys, who do a much more detailed and precise scan than 23andme, tell me the “non-European” bit is not Asian or Native American, but African. David W ID’s the African as West African, and says because the rest of my Dad’s genome is Western European, he believe that it probably comes from “a distant African- American ancestor”.

“Your Dad?” says one friend. “He’s about as white as anybody could get without being an albino!”.

It’s true. My Dad looks like a perfect Celt--blue eyes, red hair, ruddy skin. And all this time--according to the ‘one-drop rule’-- he has been a black man passing for white.

But suddenly, with this bit of news, certain ‘suspect’ behaviors in my Dad’s otherwise French, English and Scots-Irish demeanor fall into place. I quickly go through the mental checklist: 1. the only white guy in the very white Southern California neighborhood I grew up in to stand up at a crowded and heated neighborhood meeting and argue for school integration, 2. wanted to take me to see Martin Luther King speak when I was a kid instead of letting me go off to play Barbie or Superman with my friends. 3. taught journalism at a black university. 4. worked as an editor for a black newspaper. 5. takes me to Leimert Park, a historically black neighborhood in Los Angeles, to chat with a woman who owns a store specializing in African-American history, instead of going to Disneyland or Universal Studios, 6. has a mother from a white Southern family who tells me when I am a teenager that she would disown me if I ever married any of the black boys I was then dating, but who spends almost her entire adult life living in Inglewood.

Very suspicious, all this. The call of the ancestors is louder than any one of us could imagine.

When I tell my “nearly Albino” Dad that he has that one drop, he just kind of shrugs his shoulders, not seeming the least surprised. My brother, another pale skinned red-head, says jokingly that this explains why I know how to dance. My sister, the dark haired, dark-eyed one in the family, says “I always knew I was part black!” remembering that in high school she always felt more comfortable with mixed race kids.

As for me, I now have another excuse besides my maternal Jewish lineage for my frizzy out of control hair being ‘not quite white’. And it has opened up a whole new set of questions for me. Like: how come so many white American people are looking for their Native ancestors but not their African ones? Is that “Cherokee Princess” that pops up in so many white Southern genealogies actually a light-skinned black person who needed an excuse for their complexion? Does this negate or just push further back in time any Native ancestry ( which I have been all along so certain of) that I may have? Who were my black ancestors and at what point did one of them make the decision to be white?

And: What does it say about our country’s historic obsession with racial and ethnic definition when a “white” person like me--who could pass for WASP-- turns out also to be Jewish, Native and African?

Japan and The Dream of Water, revisited

2011-03-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

It seems like weeks since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami hit, yet it has really only been hours. It seems like weeks because it has been difficult to tear myself away from the news and videos about this tragedy...I feel as if I am living it,moment by moment, with them. Suddenly the people in Japan, a country I have never visited, feel like my next door neighbors.

I wanted to write about the combination of awe and horror and compassion that I experience when I see that wave of water washing through whole cities. But then I realized I already had--six years ago, when I sent an email out about a 'prophetic' dream I had before another Asian Tsunami.

So here it is, from January, 2005:

Friends,

It is New Year's Day and we are surrounded by a tidal
wave.

On television and in our memories, the images
continue:
the rushing wall of water, the cars, buildings and
bodies floating in the swollen sea, fragile and
temporary as children's toys. The faces of pain, loss
and anguish are our faces. National boundaries are
dissolved, at least momentarily, as we send love,
financial support, healing.

Because my dreams are frequently wiser than I am, I
want to share a dream with you that I had about a week
before the Asian Tsunami hit.

In the dream I am on the beach with a group of
international students from the school where I teach
English as a Second Language. The students are from
all over the world. Suddenly a huge tidal wave
arrives and we are all running along the beach in
panic. I see something metallic floating in the water,
a vehicle of some kind. I think in my dream that it
could be some kind of military vehicle, like a car or
a plane or boat. It is clear to me that this vehicle
was made by man in a moment of self-importance, and it
is now utterly useless, bobbing helplessly along on
the water.

We all run away from the water and manage to reach
"higher ground." We are then all huddled inside a
room together, feeling fear but also deeply connected
to each other, and relieved that we are safe. One of
my Muslim students comes over to me, and I put my arm
around him, feeling a wave of love and compassion.

I woke up from this dream, asking, as I usually do of
dreams, what it was saying to me:

There is something more powerful than you, the dream
said. Maybe you should pay attention.

Your technology and the shiny vehicles that get you
through your life are useless in the face of this
power, the dream said.

It is the power of water, the dream said. it is
feminine, emotional, receptive, illogical,
mysterious, compassionate, ruthless, ferocious,
cleansing. It is running the blood of your veins and
in the ocean that links continent to continent. It is
the Tsunami and it is the wave of healing that
follows.

Maybe you should pay attention, the dream said.

It is the power of Mother Nature, the dream said,
seeking to balance all her elements, no matter how
horrific the sacrifice. With so many man-made fires
and explosions raging on the earth right now, it it
any wonder she chooses to respond with water?

Maybe you should pay attention, the dream said.

Look around you, the dream said, those people with
their different languages and religions are all
huddled in the same fragile room with you.

Find the person in the room who is most unlike you,
the dream said, the person who is supposed to be your
enemy, and reach out to him or her in compassion.

If there is a god, the dream said, he or she exists
not in the labels we have assigned, but in this
gesture, in this stretching of the heart.

You are alive, the dream of water said , and this is
a gift that can be taken away at any time.

Maybe you should pay attention.

Love,

Lisa

DNA Tribes and All My Relations

2011-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

I finally broke down and decided to see what my DNA had to tell me, if anything, about my ancestry.

So I sent my spit to an organization called DNA tribes and they sent me back a chart with my DNA alleles as well as three lists that matched me with current global populations. The first list matched my DNA to "Native Populations" around the globe that have experienced little admixture with other peoples. Since I am pretty mixed up ancestrally, my scores that matched these 'pure blood' folks were pretty low. Some in the top twenty included the Russian Bashkir (#1), the Tatars (#2), the Russian Udmurts, the Scots, the Finns, the English, the Irish, the Italians of Umbria, and the Iranians.

I found only minimal matches to existing Native American tribes in their data base, the highest being the Inuit. Many tribes, like the Cherokee, are not included in the DNA Tribes data base. Also surprisingly low matching scores with Ashkenazi Jews, despite the fact that I am Ashkenazi Jewish through my mother's direct line.

The second list is the one that really broke open my conceptions of who my 'people' (or peoples) are. This matches your DNA with existing populations in the world who could be 'pure-blood' or mixed. These are my closest DNA 'relatives' in the world today.

#1 The Polish Tatars. I suppose with so many Northeast European and Central Asian Turkic people showing up (Tatars, Bashkirs, etc.) my mother's ancestral Jewish lineage must be heavily mixed with tribal peoples who ended up in Latvia, Poland, and elsewhere. Jewish Khazars? Conversions? Pogroms? Interbreeding? I may never know.

#2 European-Aboriginal Australians. Huh? I can't even begin to understand this one, though it certainly explains my unruly hair and why I love the didgeridoo. Did one of my "European" ancestors stop off in Australia and have a kid or two before he or she made their way to the United States? Or is DNA tribes just completely wacked out? Whatever. I have no problem embracing my Australian aboriginal cousins, mixed or not.

#3 Central Mexicans. Ja ja ja. Ahora entiendo porque he pasado tanto tiempo con los latinos. Yeah Spanish has come pretty easy to me and now I understand it's because so many latinos are my DNA cousins. Central Mexicans are basically European-American Indian mixed bloods, so this kind of fits in with the family tradition of Native ancestry, or at least fits in with the European-Asian mix that seems to be prevalent in my DNA. (Native American DNA apparantly shows up as "Asian" in the DNA ancestry world.)

#4. United States Caucasion. Well yeah, this is always what I THOUGHT i was when I was growing up as a little fair-skinned blue eyed white girl. And despite what everyone says about these people, I also accept them as my brothers and sisters in the human family. Some of my best friends are U.S. Caucasians, really.

#5. Canadian East Indians. Not East Indian East Indians mind you, but Canadian East Indians. I'm not sure why my DNA only matches highly with the immigrant Canadian East Indians and not with the East Indian East Indians. Is this because this is another bunch of immigrants who decided to mix their blood with the local people and produce some kind of mulatto mestizo mixed race mongrels who were then accepted back into their tribe? Why, how dare they? Dammit, if people would just stay within their borders and not have sex with foreigners life would be so much easier. And you wouldn't end up inflicting smart mouth mix-ups like me onto the world.

Again, my DNA matching so highly with East Indians is about as understandable as the match with Australians. All DNA tribes really told me was what I already knew--that I am an ancestral mutt, that no matter what tribal circle I am standing in I will always have one foot outside it. And that will be the foot that is looking for the larger circle.

Others in the top twenty were Maraicabo, Venezuela, Scotland, Italy, the Flemish, the Bashkirs and Udmurts again, more U.S. Caucasian groups and more European-Aboriginal Australian groups.

The third chart matches you with broader genetic groups called Regional Populations. Top Five Here were #1, Finno-Ugrian (Northeast Europe), #2 Northwest European, #3, Altaic (Central Asian Turkic people) #4 Mesopotamian (Iran, Iraq, etc.) #5 Eastern Europe. Seems to match the other charts. Other groups that showed up were Mestizo, Horn of Africa, Levantine, Mediteranean, and again, an uncharacteristically high match to Australian aboriginals for a US Caucasian person.

I shared all this info recently with a friend. "But it's too much!" He said. "Too many relatives!:

Indeed it is, I thought. One great big sprawling messy family of too many relatives.

We are the world.

Spirit of the Seventh Chakra

2011-01-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

The chakra class I was teaching has ended, and the seventh chakra has been hanging over my head ever since.

Exactly where it belongs of course, since traditionally this is the chakra of the Crown, the chakra where spirit enters through the top of your head and ideally, fills you with its 'ineffable knowing.'

In traditions I've studied if this chakra is clear you walk with certainty and purpose and a sense of spirit within. Blocks and imbalances here might manifest as dysfunctional ideas about religion, attachments to gurus who really want your attachment more than your freedom, or a seventh chakra that is too wide open to all sorts of spiritual influences that cannot be practically grounded in your day to day life.

The Seventh Chakra has also been hanging over my head because although the class ended several weeks ago I have yet to post and write about it.

So here it is. Seems fitting to have waited until after the winter holidays, a time when many people throughout the world celebrate major religious holidays--Christmas, Hannukah, Winter Solstice. Interesting to me that in the northern hemisphere it is the darkest time of year when we are most drawn to celebrating spirit. (Actually in the south this is true too--the Incan honoring of the sun, Inti Raymi, is celebrated in June.)

The trap of any religion or spiritual 'system' seems to be its own dogma. So if you chance upon this blog and enjoy reading what I've posted about the chakras and the chakra class I've been teaching, be sure to print it out, read it carefully, then burn it and walk away.

Happy New Year.

Visions of the Sixth Chakra

2010-12-05T12:15:00.001-08:00

The Sixth, or brow, Chakra. The 'third eye'. Located at the forehead, just above the place where the eyebrows meet. Related to the eyes, the brain, the pineal gland.

This is the place where visions are formed---our vision of ourselves and of the world around us. These 'pictures' that we have created can influence everything we do, feel, and are--they are the results of the beliefs that we carry around, beliefs that may have been formed when we were children or even before. It is the place of dreams and perceptions.

In my experience teaching classes in energy work, there are some people who seem to be natural clairvoyants--a French word for 'clear seers'. They form pictures in their mind, and can often see the energy of other people in pictures that are formed in their mind. When they come to class, they are frequently just looking for validation for something that they already know how to do.

The other group of people do not consider themselves 'clairvoyant' and don't have a third eye that fills up readily with all kinds of images, but they would like to be.

It has been my experience, that with training, this second group can learn to 'see' with their third eye. But it is frequently a long process. And the second group often has other intuitive gifts--clairsentients who sense rather than see the energy of others, massage therapists whose hands 'just know' where to go, etc.

In some traditions, when 'psychic powers' arise as a result of intensive meditation, it is said to be best to just ignore them. There is wisdom in this--the risk of seeing oneself as 'more special' than others because of intuitive gifts, the risk of losing sight of the ultimate goal of spiritual enlightenment or balanced awareness in the pursuit of 'psychic superpowers'.

I am one of those people who have always had a constant stream of images running like a movie on the screen of my 'third eye' and remember how shocked I was to realize that not everybody has this.

For people with a highly developed sixth chakra, the challenge is usually in grounding these visions in a practical or creative way. Visionaries who don't find a path to the manifestation of their visions can sometimes find themselves feeling like marginalized misfits, dreamers who have nowhere to share their gifts. On an energetic level, the task is to balance and clear the energy in the lower chakras so that the magnificent visions of these people can be actualized.

Cultivating a stronger relationship to earth, body and/or creativity is a good place to start. So, paradoxically, in order for a highly developed sixth chakra to be truly effective, it is the lower chakras that need to be healed.

Speaking True: The Fifth Chakra

2010-12-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

Our world and daily lives often require many voices of us; the voice we use at work, the voice we use with our friends and family, the voice we use with ourselves.

If we are clear and balanced, we will be able to speak authentically to ourselves and to others. That's what he fifth chakra, the throat or communication chakra is about. When it is out of balance or blocked, we feel stifled with our communication with ourselves and others, we are not speaking our truth. This can lead either to choked silence and a voice within ourselves that never gets heard, or, on the other extreme, to endless chattering to fill the scary truths that might emerge from a few moments of silence. Listening is as much a part of the fifth chakra as speaking, something that is not often mentioned.

Throat and thyroid problems are often linked to imbalances in fifth chakra energy. In my own life, I have looked at how my thyroid health might relate to the health of my fifth chakra and my abilities to articulate my truth. As a writer, teacher and communicator, my entire life has 'pointed to' the fifth chakra as the one that holds both the most challenges and the most treasures--so it's also not surprising that in my coaching and energy healing practice I have tended to attract and work with people with 'fifth chakra issues'.

Questions that arose in the class: What do you need to say to yourself? What do you need to say to others?

Healing the Heart

2010-11-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

This past week's chakra in the class I am teaching has been the heart.

This old organ, overused, underused,
misunderstood, misplaced, mistaken, shaken
strong, not strong enough, still
and always
in the center
waiting
steady in listening
to its own
music, tha-rum, tha-rum, tha-rum.

Last week's class felt simple and subtle. One person shifted from trying to do what she thought she should be doing to what her heart already knew how to do.

Issues that arose: Who and what do we love? Who and what are we ready to forgive?

The Power of the Third Chakra

2010-11-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

Moving on up, we have arrived this week at the third chakra in the chakra course I am teaching.

The third chakra is located at the solar plexus.

This is the 'energy pump' for the rest of the energy body, as well as the place where we experience our individual power. Power is a word that is rife with connotation, some good, some bad, but if we think of the power of the third chakra in a more neutral way, like the power provided by a lightbulb in a dark room, or the power of an engine in a car, we can detach a bit from the 'ego' part of power and still allow ourselves to appreciate our own uniqueness, individuality and the ability to manifest that in the world.

Here is my favorite quote, from Marianne Williamson, about manifesting our own power:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Leonard Breger, Harry Cohen and the Question of Art

2010-11-14T07:56:00.000-08:00

We all know that most art is questionable.

So in my latest video of my artist friend Leonard Breger, Leonard and his friend Harry Cohen have some fun making art and asking important art questions. There is also music by Beethoven, a glimpse of Laurel and Hardy, and some sexy legs on San Francisco's Bernal Hill.

Enjoy.

Second Chakra: The Passion of Orange

2010-11-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

Last week was an orange week. First the flickering orange of Halloween pumpkin light decorating the steps and windows of city buildings, then the Giants winning the World Series and the streets of downtown San Francisco erupting in crowds of fans wearing the orange and black colors of the team, and of course the burnt and brilliant oranges and golds of autumn warming the autumn sky. ( And autumn IS warm in San Francisco--it's our Indian Summer.)

Orange is also the traditional color of the second chakra, which was our focus in the last class. Someone asked me yesterday how the chakras got associated with certain colors. I have no idea. To me it just seems to be a logical progression--the denser lower chakras are associated with the denser, warmer colors and the higher,lighter chakras with the cooler blues and purples. One person I read has an interesting theory about the colors moving from the hot red lava of the center of the earth (first chakra) out through the warm orange and yellow of the second and third to the green of the grass growing on the earth's surface on to the blues and indigos and purples of the sky.

Whatever its origin, orange seems an appropriate color for this chakra having to do with creativity, sexual relationship and emotion. It is traditionally where we hold and express our passion, as well as any conflicts or obstacles associated with areas of our life that we are passionate about. The class, appropriately enough, felt lighter and warmer and more playful than the very grounded first chakra class last week.

Naturally, we all reflected on successes and obstacles associated with our own creativity and to creating meaningful and appropriate relationships. I am always astonished at how quickly, when given a chance, our own intuition can deliver up insight and direction.

In my own meditation, I was offered a gift--a ripe and juicy orange.

It's helpful to remember that this passionate gift of creativity and meaningful relationship is always there, all around us, ready to be peeled and tasted.

The First Chakra and Ganesh

2010-10-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

The eight week course on the Chakras that I'm teaching is off to a great start, with a wonderful group of people whose backgrounds include flower essences, dream shamanism, EFT, personal organizing, massage and more. As usual, I am learning much from the people who have brought their gifts to the class.

The first week was an overview of the Chakras, with some energetic, meditative and creative exercises. Last week we worked on the first chakra, which has to do with grounding, support, shelter, finances, the physical body. I am posting this image of Ganesh, who in the Hindu tradition is the deity of the first chakra. Ganesh is also known as the remover of obstacles, and has brought me this past week a great deal of opportunity to reflect on when and how I put my attention on obstacles rather than solutions. The removal of obstacles is often a simple shift or liberation of attention which brings the solution home.

Thank you, Ganesh!

The Chakras: Your Seven Core Energies

2010-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

Image: Ik Ongkar-Chakras, by Ranbassi

I am excited about the new class I will be teaching this month. Here’s the description:

Your 7 Core Energies: Cultivating the Power of the Chakras.

--Enhance your ability to perceive your own energy and the energy of others
- Discover your unique energy gifts
- Clear internal obstacles to relating authentically to others and manifesting your gifts in the world

In this course, we will use the chakras, the ‘spinning wheels of light’ that make up the energy body, to guide us on the journey to our own wisdom. We will combine techniques of meditation and energy perception with practical and creative exercises that allow you to cultivate your abilities in Grounding, Creating, Power, Love, Communication, Seeing, and Knowing. Open to beginners as well as those with some experience in energy healing and the chakra system.

When: Mondays 7-9:30PM, October 18- December 6, 2010
Where: 36th Avenue near Balboa (call for exact location.) San Francisco
Cost: $265

My own studies of the chakra system began when I was thirteen and started meditation practice. These studies were further developed in my training in Reiki and in clairvoyant healing classes in San Francisco.

I initially developed and taught a variation of this course in Cusco, Peru, to tourists and local residents. I am always delighted to see how easily we westerners can come into our own wisdom using this ancient Eastern energy system.

To register, email me at lisagarrigues@yahoo.com

I look forward to seeing you there!

Leonard Breger Post-Cave Artist

2010-08-26T17:14:00.000-07:00

When I first met Leonard a friend who was with us said to me, "Why don't you make a movie?"

So here it is. The first of a series of short videos about my 90 year old "Post-Cave Artist" friend. In it you'll find some extraordinary non-rectangular art, and Leonard will lead you in and out of his experience of the Altamira Cave.

The Return of the Dreamspinner

2010-08-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

Photography by Arayo

I like it when my fictional characters find new places in the world to see and be seen. So I am happy to report that you can now buy an anthology which contains my story Dreamspinner at a site called Anthology Builder.

Anthology Builder is a unique concept: previously published stories are available to collect in an anthology of your own making. You choose the stories, the title, and the design. You'll find some classics by Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Perkins, L. Frank Baum, and Jane Austen, as well as living writers like yours truly.

I have put together a collection called Seeing Around Corners: 15 Fantastic Fictions which contains my story as well as 14 others by dynamic and original writers.

Here's the intro to the anthology:

"A woman who invents a language that sees around corners. The heavy metal return of Crazy Horse. A class full of goblins. Breasts with a mind of their own.

Take a deep breath. Your journey around the corner is about to begin."

You can take the journey here.

DeCaffeinating

2010-05-16T11:58:00.001-07:00

After a Cold Morning of Patrol Duty Police Officer Shearer and Chief Allec Enjoy Hot Coffee at Mac's Cafe, 01/1973
Originally uploaded by The U.S. National Archives

Because it's the time of year for spring cleaning, I've decided to do a little spring cleaning on my own body and quit my coffee jones.

I started drinking coffee when I was 13. It had been an old friend for many years, but recently I felt the friendship has gone sour. It had become an annoying and overbearing co-dependant relationship. My coffee 'friend', like all addictions, continued to insist that I stop what I was doing and do instead what it wanted me to do, ie head to the nearest Starbucks, or it wouldn't let me proceed with full attention to the task at hand. And if I tried to ignore its persistent demands, it would punish me with exhaustion, fatigue, and'oh-I-can't-possibly-think-straight-without-my-cuppa-java.'

So I threw the bum out. Just a little over a week ago. Yes, I did have the classic
Coffee Withdrawal Headache, but it was pretty mild. More than anything, I just felt tired, one day sleeping in two- to- four hours shifts for a total of about fourteen hours.

I am replacing it with a decaf green tea Chinese herbal concoction. Already I feel better.

The Sidhe Have Visited My Room Again

2010-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by watching a documentary about the poet Gary Snyder at tonight's San Francisco Film Festival to return to my poetic roots and post a poem instead of prose.

(Originally published as "The Visit" in So To Speak, George Mason University, Winter/Spring, 2002)

The Sidhe have visited

my room again, moved the pieces

of furniture, left footprints

all along my floor and walls.

Petals from a strange and sudden

flower still float on the water

in my sink of dirty dishes.

It is morning and I

press my face against the air

trying to see in. The room is quiet.

My great-grandmother was small

and dark, and nobody knows

where she came from. Learn

from me, she says in her night voice

the web of moon cast

upon the earth. Feel it

trembling in your fingers

like a fisherwoman's net, and pull

the silver fish upon the shore.

They are heavy,but they are all

yours, every one of them speaking

an undiscovered language.

There is singing, the Sidhe said

brushing their lips against my ears.

It is all

Around There is a symphony

of wild sound beneath the surface.

Unmeasured and chaotic, the river

is always longer and wider than

you thought, and the bridge is never

where you expect it to be.

The Sidhe have come and gone.

They have rearranged the night

taken off my skin

and folded the difference

into my bones.

My great-grandmother lays the fish upon the sand

the ones with torn bellies and gaping mouths

the ones with knowing eyes

the ones already turning into flowers

She moves her tongue behind her teeth

and names them, one by one.

It is morning, and I am full

of forgetting. I drain the water

from the sink and begin to wash

the dishes. A single petal clings

to white porcelain. I leave it.

The rushing water sings. And I

in my waking slumber hum

the dim memory of an aching

distant music.

The ocean breaks.

My great-grandmother with her muscled arms

pulls, and hauls the net upon the shore.

Silver scales still luminous in dark waters.

Learn to cast the web of moon upon the sea.

And bring the fishes home, she says.

They are all yours.

---Lisa Gale Garrigues

Image: "Sidhe Queen" by Angie Bowen.

Avatar

2009-12-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

Today I read a Yahoo news story which announced that there were 'hidden' anti-war, pro-environment messages in the film "Avatar."

Shocking.

I saw Avatar a few days ago. The script had every " Dances With Wolves" cliche in the book, but the movie was fun to watch, and the message was pretty clear: Don't Mess with Mama Earth.

Good Stuff: Those 'hidden' messages. Strong women characters. Fantastic visuals and special effects. A turncoat member of the "Jar-Head" Clan.

Dumb Stuff: White guy becomes 'hero-god' to blue indigenous colored people and saves the day. Silly tails growing out of indigenous aliens' butts.

Thank You

2009-11-26T10:03:00.001-08:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

...for red and green.
...for veins and branches
...for the circle
...for the unseen tree
...for the light

Happy Thanksgiving!

Monkey on My Back

2009-09-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked me what that thing is on my shoulder in my profile photo. So I will now let the secret out: it's a monkey. The monkey and I were in the backyard of a tiny café in a Peruvian jungle town called Salvacion, where I was on an investigative assignment for the newspaper Indian Country Today.

I have never really considered monkeys my power animals, preferring the grace of birds or the sensual power of cats, or even the tricksterish freedom of the coyote, or the haunting midnight song of the wolf. But here I am in my profile photo with a monkey on my back.

What’s up with that?

“Monkey on my back” is an expression which apparently originated with heroin users, who have said they have to feed their addiction because if they don’t it feels like they have a monkey on their back.

So this little monkey in my photo is a public confession that I am an addict. Not to heroin—much too costly and messy. But to a number of other things. To writing, for instance, this endless stream of self-generated gibberish which sometimes brings me to extraordinary focus and clarity, and sometimes just gibbers. To exploration, to the unseen image or realization or friendship that lies just around the corner, the boat tied up on the dock and ready to sail, the doors of the next train sliding open, the rickety bus to the next jungle town. To…coffee with one t-spoon of sugar and some cream. To a really good novel that seduces me into its world. To paintings whose colors and textures rearrange the blood in my veins. To the news that I can’t get on CNN, and have to rummage around the internet to find. To intelligent conversation.

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea.

I am also addicted to spiritual books and teachings that talk a lot about the Monkey Mind, that chattering and addictive self that won’t let you just sit under the Boddhi tree and be peacefully enlightened. I offer you this Self-Portrait-with-Monkey as a public acknowledgement that I am no longer fighting my Monkey Mind. I have it, as you can see, on a very thin string. But it will probably always have something to say to me. So now I just listen. And eventually, when it’s had its say, it usually shuts up.

Finally, what I like about monkeys is that they remind me so much of our own species--they are like tiny rambunctious humans that throw our own silliness back in our face. So I proudly wear this monkey on my shoulder because I think most humans take themselves much too seriously, myself included.

Susan Atkins Dies: Memories of Charles Manson and His Girls

2009-09-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Susan Atkins, ex-Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer of Sharon Tate, died today. Her death brought me back to when I was fifteen years old and stared across the room at Charles Manson.

The room was a courtroom in Los Angeles, crowded with spectators who had stood in line for hours outside to witness a trial that shocked the nation. Tate, more than eight months pregnant, and several others, had been found stabbed to death, apparantly in a brutal crime spree by a cult of drug-addled young people.

The doors of the courtroom had just opened, and I was filing into my seat with two of my high school friends. I had long red hair down to my waist and was wearing a green 'granny dress', and knee high boots. My teenage friends also looked like hippies.

Just before I found my seat, I turned to look at Charles Manson, the defendant, and found him staring at me. I had seen his face plastered all over the newspapers in Los Angeles---the crazy wide eyed stare that left no doubt that he was capable of doing the things he had been accused of.

To my shock, I found that the face I was staring into was not the same face that I had seen in the newspapers. "Charlie" was smiling at the three of us, a big wide beaming smile that indicated he felt we had come as supporters and welcomed that. His face had no trace of the craziness of that other newspaper photo. His smile was infectious, luminous, charming, as he beamed it across the room at us.

And we smiled back. Why? Because we thought he was innocent, we thought he had been framed. The societal and generational divisions of that time were so deep that some of us who were in the 'counter culture' thought that anytime someone who was relatively young and looked like a hippie was arrested, he or she must have been framed.

Linda Kasabian, one of the Manson girls who had turned witness for the prosecution, was speaking.

I don't remember exactly what she said, but I remember looking across the room at her and again being struck by how 'normal' she looked, this soft-spoken, dark-haired,conservatively dressed young woman.

Out in the hallway on break, I met "Squeaky" Fromme, another Manson follower who went on to be convicted for the attempted assasination of Gerald Ford, and who was recently released from prison just a few weeks ago.

She was blonde, tiny and pixiesh, with an open face and an earnest expression. She definitely could have been 'the girl next door'.

Except for the red X etched in her forehead, a protest emblem that all the Manson girls had put there as a symbol of solidarity for Charlie.

"Of course Charlie is innocent," she said. "How could they possibly be doing this to him?"

I was fifteen, raised on super-hero comic books and good-and-evil Westerns. Murderers weren't supposed to look like this, not like smiling charmers and sweet-faced girls next door. In the comic books and movies, you can always tell who the murderers are by their slimey aura and the evil they emanated.

Murderers were not Us. They were Them.

The Charles Manson trial shocked me out of that presumption. These kids looked exactly like me and my friends, and that was horrifying.

Despite all the talk of being 'framed', I sensed somehow that they had done the things they were accused of doing.

Later, after I became a criminal investigator and investigated many a murder trial, I learned how easy it is for a sociopath or psychopath to put on a convincing front. But I also learned how easy it is for a seemingly 'normal' person to slip in a matter of minutes from innocent to murderer--an instant of rage, a drug-filled evening, a descent into individual or group madness that in which you are convinced in absolute self-righteousness that 'the other' deserves to die.

"She deserves to die a horrible death, after all she's done," said a part of me when I saw Susan Atkins dying on the news. This was probably the part that knows what it's like to survive the murder of someone you love.

But another part of me, the part that I prefer to breathe into, saw that her attorney James Whitehouse had married this creature who did the unspeakable, this "sociopath." I watched him coaching her as she recited the Lord's Prayer and I saw the palpable love that passed between the two of them on her death bed.

And I was happy for her, that no matter what she's done, she was able to die next to someone who loved her.

Zelaya's Return Creates Pivotal Moment for Democracy in the Americas

2009-09-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

reposted from Yes

As returning president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya remains holed up in the Brazilian embassy and the man who deposed him, Roberto Micheletti, maintains a cordon of state police around the embassy and a state of siege throughout the country, leaders at the UN are calling for his reinstatement in a moment that may prove pivotal for democracy in the Americas.

Zelaya's opponents on the right have criticized him with a familiar refrain: he is a left-wing dictator intent on dragging his country into socialism. But the people who elected him, a majority of Hondurans, have supported him as a new kind of president, with a consultative style of governance that engages previously marginalized people, including women, workers, farmers, and indigenous communities.

These were the people who, upon hearing the news that Zelaya had returned, left their homes at dawn and streamed into the city from the countryside by the thousands, filling the streets of Tegucigalpa with dancing and celebration.

Micheletti frantically tried to stem the tide of celebrants, first calling reports of Zelaya's presence in Honduras "media terrorism,” then sending the state police to beat and arrest the demonstrators. A piercing alarm filled the streets, said eyewitness Andres Conteris, director of the Program on the Americas for Nonviolence International. Three hundred people were arrested, and three killed, according to reports by Telesur. This morning Micheletti cut off electricity to the Brazilian embassy.

"I have come to engage in dialogue," Zelaya told the Columbian news station Radio W. "We don't want to live in war, we don't want dictators."

Arriving at the beginning of the UN meeting was a bold and astute move for Zelaya, throwing into sharp relief the contrast between his peaceful efforts to regain his presidency through the UN with Micheletti's brutal tactics in suppressing Honduran citizens.

But for those who danced in the streets on Monday morning, it was not so much Zelaya the politician they were celebrating as Zelaya the symbol. Like Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, he had responded to the groundswell of marginalized people that has swept across Honduras and the rest of Latin America in the past decade, a clamor for change and inclusion from those who have been most damaged by the neoliberal economic policies that have run rampant throughout the Americas for many years. This groundswell has transcended traditional political boundaries, including not just farmers, workers, the poor, and indigenous, but also, according to activists within Honduras, an increasing number of people from the middle class .

These are the people who elected Zelaya, and these are the people Zelaya was responding to when he organized a survey to find out how many Hondurans wanted to create a new constitution—one not based on the outdated class systems of the old Latin America, but inclusive of all people.

If Zelaya is a symbol of the new, Micheletti, with his gun-toting state police and his ties to the School of the Americas, represents a fading ghost of Latin America's past—a past haunted by violence, by fear, by death and disappearances.

The fear of change that exists in Honduras, in Latin America, and indeed in our own country, will not go away overnight. Battles will continue to be fought, waves of paranoia and resistance will sweep over us as we attempt to move forward to a more just and inclusive society.

The potential return of democracy to a tiny Central American country is more than just a blip on the historical radar. It is a moment we should pay attention to, because it mirrors back to us our own collective vacillation between fear and hope, between change by autocracy and gunfire on one side, and change by the democratic process on the other.

Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, told a UN press conference on Tuesday night that the presence of the elected president in the Honduran capital was an opportunity to achieve a peaceful resolution to the stand-off in this Central American country.

This morning, President Lula of Brazil called for a special meeting of the UN Security Council, which will force the United States to take a more active role in the crisis.

Micheletti may have replaced the government, but he has not been able to erase the popular sentiment that elected Zelaya in the first place.

Zelaya, Andres Contreris tells us, is prepared for "a long and belabored stay" in the Brazilian embassy.

Change, it seems, will not easily be evicted from the Americas.

L'Shana Tova

2009-09-19T09:09:00.001-07:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

This month I am celebrating and honoring Rosh Hoshana and Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year and High Holy Days. Traditionally these are days of repentance and correction, of looking within, making amends, letting go, and moving on.

Last month I honored the Pacha Mama, with an Andean ritual to the earth.

We are blessed to be living in a time and culture with so many ways to honor the sacredness of our lives and environment.

Van Jones, the A-Word, and the C-Word

2009-09-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Van Jones, The A-Word, and the C-Word.

So Van Jones, Obama's Green Jobs man, has resigned because some Republicans got their undies in a bunch about some of the things he's done. Most of the media reports about the resignation have focused on these two things:

1) He signed a petition asking for investigation into how much the Bush administration knew beforehand about the 911 attacks.

2)He called the Republicans assholes and was videotaped doing it.

I'm not even going to talk about #1 Since when is it 'un-American' to try and find out the truth? The way I learned it growing up in the American school system, it's un-American to NOT try and find out the truth, even if that truth has to do with your own government.

Let's move on to #2. He called the Republicans assholes and was videotaped doing it.

The A-word came out of Van Jones' mouth in response to a question from an audience member about why the Democrats couldn't get bills passed with so many of them in office but the Republicans have always been able to push forward their agenda with far fewer people.

"Because the Republicans are assholes," he said, adding, "as a political science term."

I do not see Van Jones' use of the word 'asshole' here as an insult to Republicans, but rather a backhanded compliment. From what I understand, he was saying they are willing to be tough where the democrats are more prone to slide into divisive wimpdom.

Um. Yep.

Guess it has to do with George Lakoff's Republicans= Strict Father, Dems=Nurturing Mother model of political rhetoric, but as usual the Republicans are playing a meaner game of hardball than the Dems, who in the current administration seem more intent on conciliation than on sticking with the agenda of change they were elected for.

And here's something I still don't get:
Folks like Rush Limbaugh and Tom Sullivan can make on- the- air references comparing the president of the United States to Hitler, a mass murderer of 6 million people, and that's okay. But Mr. Jones compares Republicans to a humble but crucial bodily part, and he suddenly has to resign.

I've never figured out why we humans are more ashamed of our bodily parts than we are of our mass murderers. But that's a whole 'nother rant.

I'll try to stick to Mr. Jones here.

He followed his A-word comment up by saying "And those of us who are not Barack Obama need to start being a little more uppity."

In other words, the Democrats need to learn something from the Republicans: start acting more like assholes, get a little uppity.

Well we all see where Van Jones' uppitydom got him. Right out of the Obama administration. Which makes Obama right now look like the opposite of uppity.

I'm tempted here to join Van Jones himself and some of my liberal friends who are saying the Democrats need to stop being so compromising with the Republicans and stand up for some of the things we elected them for, even if it means being a little more 'uppity', a little more like, uh, the A-word.

Very tempted. I would like, for instance, to have seen the Obama administration stand up for Van Jones, who dared to link 'social justice 'issues with green solutions, like keeping ex-cons out of prison by getting them jobs in wind and solar power.

I would definitely like Obama to stand up for public health insurance, despite the massive rattle of empty teacups that has occurred at his town hall meetings.

I also understand that Obama was elected on a platform of 'uniting the country' after the divisiveness of the Bush years. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and not call him a 'sell-out' or any of those other things he is getting branded with on the left. I'll allow that his willingness to compromise with people I may not agree with could stem from his desire to extend the Kumbaya Moment we all had back in January, when Democrats and Republicans alike were willing to give the man a chance, because, well, he was Making History and he wasn't George Bush.

I like that Obama is willing to listen to people I don't agree with. I really do.

I like ,for instance, the way Obama handled the confrontation between the white policeman James Crowley and the black professor Henry Gates. Have them both sit down and have a couple of beers together, get them to talk about it. You sit on this side and drink your brand of beer and I'll sit on this side and drink mine and we'll both learn how to talk to each other while drinking two different brands of beer.

Obama should have done the same with Glen Beck and Van Jones. Have them both sit down together and drink their different brands of beers and have a conversation. Only do it on national TV in a civilized manner so we can both see for ourselves what each of these guys has to say for themselves and to each other.

Instead,by accepting Van Jones' resignation, he effectively let Glen Beck come roaring in like the town drunk and spill his own brand of beer all over Jones, Obama, and a good many of the rest of us.

One of the big scary skeletons that Glen Beck brought shaking and rattling out of Van Jones closet and aired on Fox TV was that Jones had been a member of a communist/anarchist "revolutionary"group called STORM, a group that says in their own manifesto that they believe in change through the democratic process and makes no mention of throwing molotov cocktails or blowing up buildings.

In other countries of the world, ( backwater places like France and Sweden) the Socialists, the Communists and the Greens can sit down with representatives of the other political parties, just like Henry Gates and James Crowley sat down together, and make a government together.

Okay, it's not always so civilized but at least they are having the conversation.

But not here. Publicly accusing someone of EVER having been a Communist or Socialist is still tantamount to waving a national sex offender registry list around with that person's name on it.

Horrors! Those same "Communists" who were getting outed from so many closets in the 1950's have apparantly found their way into Obama's cabinet. Thank god for those brave men like Glen Beck in their white sheets,er I mean white hats, er well, white something.

Glen Beck has already promised the witch hunt won't stop with Van Jones,whom he called "the first stop" on his crusade to "examine" the members of Obama's advisory team.

In one Fox News segment , Glen Beck and two female analysts talk about the 'wacky' people in the Obama administration, Van Jones being one of the wackiest. This is, curiously, the same kind of epithet that was hurled against Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor as they lobbied to get some of the things done that we now take for granted, like
social security, unemployment insurance. Eleanor, in fact, received particular abuse from folks who told her she should 'stay home and knit' instead of publicly speaking out.

I wondered, as I watched these two female policy analysts vent their views on Glen Beck's show, where they themselves would be if a few wacky people hadn't pushed the unpopular views that women have a place in the public arena in addition to the home.

But these are fearful times. And in fearful times, it is easy to fall backwards, into divisive bogeyman words of the past, like "Communist" and "Hitler" instead of facing an uncertain future and together looking for solutions which will move this country forward.

We needed Van Jones, precisely because he was willing to reinvent himself and his political idealogy for a new era and talk about "green" solutions that will move us forwards, not backwards to an era of witch-hunts and hysteria.

Mr. President, I don't agree with you on this one.

But I'm still hoping.

Obsession. Passion. Fixation.

2009-08-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

What are you obsessed with? Passionate about? Fixated on? A few days ago the editors at The Red Room gave their bloggers those questions. Here's my response:

I am obsessed with

getting it right. By this I mean I am obsessed with the unavoidable knowledge that I will only live this one life this one time, even if I allow for reincarnation and the possibility that I'll come back as a three-toed sloth. So I want to be as human as I can be this time around. I don't necessarily mean 'right' in the sense of 'right and wrong', I mean 'right' in the sense of being able to say, at the end of this life, that I knew and I appreciated and I loved being as human I possibly could, and no, I don't regret any of it.

I am passionate about

everything my five senses have given me: the taste of chocolate or peppermint or the ocean's salt on my tongue, the trill of a bird or the slow moan of a clarinet, the touch of sand or mud or the foot of a baby or the hand of a lover, the smell of rosemary crushed between my fingers, or freshly brewed coffee, or the wet fur of a familiar dog, the infinite textures and shapes of clouds in the sky, the diagonal rows of trees slicing past a train window, the glimmer of light in the eyes of some fellow human with whom I have shared, however briefly, an understanding.

I am fixated on

not being fixated on anything, but instead being able to let all of my obsessions and passions go, and surrender to the deep stillness which I know lives somewhere beneath them.

At Starbucks, No Leaning in These Lean Times

2009-08-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

Starbucks baristas are now being trained with Mr. Potato Heads and speed timers to make new pots of coffee every eight minutes,according to the Wall Street Journal. And no more leaning forward to get supplies from under the counter.

It's all part of a "Lean Strategy" that has been successful with Toyota and other manufacturing industries, experts say.

There's a lot of talk on the blogosphere about how successful the Lean Strategy will actually be in perking up Starbucks flagging profits, with some baristas and customers going grumpy over the changes they call 'robotic', and others calling the protestors a bunch of whiners. It has even been suggested that Starbucks, who recently added instant coffee to its usual gourmet fare, is becoming more and more like McDonalds.

Starbucks' vice-president, Scott Heydon, assures us in the WSJ article that the baristas are being taught to speed up so they can spend more time with customers.

"Mr. Heydon says reducing waste will free up time for baristas -- or "partners," as the company calls them -- to interact with customers and improve the Starbucks experience. "Motion and work are two different things. Thirty percent of the partners' time is motion; the walking, reaching, bending," he says. He wants to lower that."

Well now, that's nice, Starbucks is looking out for their baristas' knees. I appreciate that. It will definitely add to my Starbucks experience.

But wait a minute. In the very next graf Mr. Heydon tells the WSJ:

"If Starbucks can reduce the time each employee spends making a drink, he says, the company could make more drinks with the same number of workers or have fewer workers."

Same number of drinks, fewer workers. Hmm, maybe this isn't about the baristas' knees or about 'improving the Starbucks experience' but about perking up those saggy profits.

In other words, speed up dude, so we can lay you off.

Starbucks, of course, is a business, it's entitled to perky profits. I have no argument with that. But, the bottom line is--will it work?

Or will customers vote with their feet and decide they'd rather have a relaxed friendly barista at the local independant coffeeshop than a harried but efficient timecruncher at Starbucks?

(Mr. Potato Head photo courtesy John Wesley Barker)

"Yomama"

2009-07-29T17:15:00.001-07:00

Some advice for police officers who feel the need to bring out the handcuffs when someone insults their mama.

Homage to the Southwest

2009-07-28T09:49:00.001-07:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

Nothing like the big wide skies and craggy buttes of Arizona and New Mexico. Opens the eyes, expands the soul. Here's a glimpse of last month's trip to Arizona, New Mexico, and the Navajo Nation.

Climate Change Brings Death to Peruvian Children

2009-07-21T07:21:00.001-07:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

This was sent to me by actress and activist Qorianka Kilchner. Her website, On-Q-Initiative, tells about how to get involved and some of the great stuff she's doing in Peru.

Children die in harsh Peru winter

By Dan Collyns
BBC News, Lima

Children in the remote southern highlands are often malnourished
Almost 250 children under the age of five have died in a wave of intensely cold weather in Peru.
Children die from pneumonia and other respiratory infections every year during the winter months particularly in Peru's southern Andes.
But this year freezing temperatures arrived almost three months earlier than usual.
Experts blame climate change for the early arrival of intense cold which began in March.
Winter in the region does not usually begin until June.
The extreme cold, which has brought snow, hail, freezing temperatures and strong winds, has killed more children than recorded annually for the past four years.
A total of 246 under the age of five have died so far, only half way through the winter months.
One third of the deaths were registered in the southern region of Puno, much of which is covered by a high plateau known as the altiplano which extends into neighbouring Bolivia.
Aid workers say prolonged exposure to the cold is causing hypothermia and deadly respiratory infections such as pneumonia.
Children, who are often malnourished, are more vulnerable to the extreme cold.
Poverty is widespread in Peru's southern highlands and there is a lack of healthcare and basic services.
The government has declared a state of emergency in the affected areas but critics say the cold snaps are predictable and the annual deaths preventable.
Many have blamed government inefficiency for the deaths.
But Peru's Health Minister, Oscar Ugarte, has said regional officials have not effectively distributed government resources.
Meanwhile in the capital, Lima, it has become an annual ritual for businesses and ordinary citizens to donate blankets, clothes and food for the victims of the cold weather in the south of the country.

Meet Me At The Red Room

2009-07-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

Lots to blog about, and new photos to post as well. So stay tuned. In the meantime, I've started an occasional blog at The Red Room, a Social Networking site for writers. Check it out.

EFT: That tapping thing

2009-06-07T08:35:00.001-07:00

Street Conjurer
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

I've been hearing great things about a therapy called EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, so I decided to try it out. I went to an EFT group where the facilitator showed us how it works and led us in a few rounds of it. On the surface, it's extremely simple--you simply tap on certain points of your body which are supposed to be 'meridian points' and repeat out loud or to yourself whatever issue it is your working on as you tap. The idea is that this repeated tapping clears your energy flows of emotional blockages so that you can be happier, healthier and all that other good stuff. It's supposed to work with physical problems as well, based on the principal that emotions and body are intimately connected.

So here's my verdict: it works. At first you may feel a little silly tapping along, singing Birthday Songs and counting from one to five as you are instructed to do.
But here are some interesting studies that have given some scientific credibility to the work, as well as one that is much more critical.

How is it, you may ask, that emotional issues that people have spent thousands of dollars and hours in therapy trying to resolve appear to disappear with a few well placed taps?

Something about energy meridians? Maybe. The placebo effect? Why not. You feel so silly tapping and singing along that you want to laugh and forget your problems? Could be.

How about this: We are ready for it. It's my belief that certain memes make their way into the collective human consciousness when we are ready to receive them. Like The Secret, and the Law of Attraction, which despite my criticism in the previous post, have managed to shift a whole lot of people away from 'victimhood' to 'empowerment' in a way that is simple and easy to digest.

The underlying philosophy of EFT seems to be that healing can be easier and faster than we think. That to me, is a huge leap forward.

The Shadow of "The Secret"

2009-06-01T08:27:00.001-07:00

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

When the book and movie "The Secret" came out, I thought, "Well this is really nothing new, it's just packaged in a new and zippy way."

There is a lot about "The Secret" and the "Law of Attraction" that I like, the fundamental part being that it encourages us to take more responsibility for our lives, examine our own 'self-talk', and move out of victim mode into creativity, hope and possibility.

However, at it's worst it's a cream puff philosophy that encourages magical, egocentric thinking and flattens the human condition into a simplistic polarity of good and bad,

as in the following from 100 quotes from The Secret:

16. We don't need to complicate all the "reasons" behind our emotions. It's much simpler than that. Two categories .. good feelings, bad feelings.

17. Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track.

or:

14. EVERYTHING in your life you have attracted .. accept that fact .. it's true.

15. Your thoughts cause your feelings

--------------------------------------------------------

26. It's important to feel good ( ( ( (((good))) ) ) )

27. You can change your emotion immediately .. by thinking of something joyful, or singing a song, or remembering a happy experience.

While "The Secret" moves us into taking greater responsibility for our happiness, it leaves out some pretty important bits, as far as I'm concerned. One is just plain old fashioned compassion. All too often, I've heard people use The Secret and The Law of Attraction to a) convince themselves that the world revolves around themselves and their needs, and b)that they can run from any responsibility for making the world or their neighbor's world a better place, because after all, bad things only happen because on some level we have attracted them to us by our thoughts.

"Ew," somebody said recently when told that a friend had developed cancer. "Why would she want to attract THAT to her?"

The reasons for 'attracting' cancer to oneself may be multiple--you may have lessons to learn from the cancer, you may learn through it to develop compassion for others, you may just be ready to call it quits, or maybe it had something to do with the asbestos in that office building you worked in for all those years.

Our response to tragedy or difficulty in our life or the lives of others can enrich us or shrink us. If one's only response it, "Aw gee, I guess I--or she or he--just didn't think enough positive thoughts---then that to me is shrinking us, not enriching us."

The other important bit "The Secret" and "the Law of Attraction" seems to leave out is the human shadow, which is that part of ourselves that we do not want to own consciously--our 'bad' thoughts and feelings like anger, fear, shame, etc. This shadow is not easy to face, but it is packed with power if we do face it and embrace it within ourselves in a compassionate way. After we have faced it, then we can loosen its hold on us, and perhaps even let parts of it go completely. But running from it, even if we think we are doing ourselves a service by 'not thinking negative thoughts' only makes it bigger.

Here is a beautiful example of one person's struggle with "The Secret", and with her own shadow, from a sassy atheist blog called Heaving Dead Cats:

"I developed this fear that my thoughts controlled my husband’s success or failure at driving to and from work. If I had a worry based on the weather conditions that he might have an accident, I would panic and had to tell him to drive carefully, and I had to think only positive thoughts while he was on the road. This became an obsession in which I had to tell him to drive carefully before leaving or he would crash. It didn’t have anything to do with his driving skill, the safety of our well-maintained car, or anything else. It was all down to my thoughts. The problem is, the more I tried to avoid thinking about accidents the more they filled my mind. If he did have an accident it would have been my fault entirely. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the stupid deer that stand in the road, the patch of black ice, or the idiot that stopped dead at a green light because he was texting his girlfriend.

This then led to other obsessive thoughts that seemed to be incredibly important for our happiness and safety. Innocent random thoughts became terribly important. Mild concerns harbored doom if they weren’t countered with positive thoughts. A mild and common worry about leaving the coffee pot on would lead to thinking of the house burning down, a brief worry that would turn into a horrid panic. I had just sealed my fate by having that flash in my mind. It doesn’t help that my mind is graphic and vivid in technicolored detail for such things. That only led me to believe I actually had power over such events."

If you've lost a good friend or family member, if you've been diagnosed with an incurable disease, or if you're just suffering some day to day human drama, thinking all the positive thoughts in the world and singing happy songs ain't always gonna cut it. Grief and tears, anger and rants, can be cathartic--if we allow ourselves to feel and let go of these emotions, then we can move into a more purified state where our whole being is enlisted to bring us more light.

Shadow makes light visible.

The New Prosperity

2009-05-16T07:41:00.001-07:00

Dancing Hands
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

I'm noticing with the current economic slowdown that people are beginning to find wealth in each other. Barter and
local currencies are sprouting up all over the U.S.A., just as alternative economics flourished in Argentina during their 2002 economic crisis.

I visited one of these 'local networks' the other day in Fairfax (Marin County) California. The primary organizer,Matthew, explained that he viewed currency in three concentric layers, the first being our direct family and friends, with whom we can use trade, the second our community, with whom we can use a combination of trade and regular currency', and the third being the bigger world, where we operate with 'traditional' currency.

The Village Network in Fairfax operates as a membership, where people can post their needs and what they have to offer, and then earn credits according to how much they have given or received. A bulletin board in a small shop called Origin, one of the network's three public spaces, is filled with colored cards that people have posted, offering and asking for massages, business services, housing.

Here's another thriving barter experiment in Madison,Wisconsin.

Any community can start something like this. It is a way of shifting our
attention away from our 'lack' of money and/or jobs towards the real resources we have as individuals and as community.

The photo is of two hands meeting during a dance last summer at a Choctaw Pow-Wow in Mississippi.

Comforting Human Noise

2009-05-10T07:40:00.001-07:00

Trumpet Player, Houston 2
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Went to North Beach yesterday to meet some friends. It was a sunny day, and throngs of locals and tourists were enjoying the weather, walking the streets of North Beach, sitting in cafes, watching dogs cavort in Washington Square.

I love San Francisco, and I love North Beach. Sitting in Mario's, waiting for some friends, I became aware of how the sounds of human voices in the restaurant were merging and blending,like a river.

Interesting, I thought. When I've had too much of the city, I go to the country to visit the sound of the river. When I've had too much of the country I go to the city, to visit the river of human sound.

Moving Out of the Age of Stupid

2009-05-05T07:56:00.001-07:00

Step Into The Light
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Yesterday afternoon, there were people crying in the Kabuki theater where I had gone to see a film at the San Francisco Film Festival. One of them was a woman in her twenties who, later, spoke angrily to her friends out on the sidewalk: "No, I am NOT going to have a child. Why should I bring a child into this?"

"This", according to the film
The Age of Stupid and numerous reports by climatologists on global warming, is basically collective human suicide.

The film reports on the years leading up to this suicide from the fictional vantage point of a survivor in 2055. Sitting in a cavernous building where he has saved thousands of books and artwork as momentos of a lost human civilization, he plays documentary footage of pre-suicide years, focusing on the lives of six individuals.

These six people are our contemporaries--they are us: a man who works his entire life for the oil industry loses his home in Hurricane Katrina, a Nigerian woman decides to trade in black market diesel after her fishing business is devastated by oil exploitation, an Indian entrepreneur decides to fight poverty in his country by creating an airline while a British couple decide not to take an own airline flight on their vacation because it will increase their carbon footprint.

One of the most powerful moments in the film for me was the confrontation between a British wind power entrepreneur and the group of residents who didn't want the wind farm near them because it would 'spoil the view', even as each one of them spoke of how supportive they were of alternative energy sources and slowing ecological disaster.

In other words, many of us want to halt global warming, but only in a vague, pleasant, abstract way. When it comes to actually allowing wind farms to move in next door, or not taking that airplane trip to Paris, or not buying that plastic bottle of water when you are thirsty, it is far more difficult.

I include myself in this. Ironically, just before seeing the film I had been discussing with myself all the reasons why I should buy a car.
Now I think I'll hold off a little longer. Busses may take longer but I meet more interesting people on them than when I am driving alone.

The Age of Stupid is a powerful and effective film, ultimately not leaving us with a sense of despair but with some practical solutions for change.

Afterwards, the filmmaker was on hand to talk about how British politicians had approached her to watch the film as world governments prepare for the
/Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change which will attempt to develop a framework to move us out of the Age of Stupid and towards a more positive and sustainable future.

Swine Flu: The Real Disease is Fear

2009-04-29T07:09:00.001-07:00

The Mask
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went...
"Wee wee wee" all the way home...

The world is all a twitter with swine flu, going 'wee 'wee wee' from coast to coast and continent to continent over the developing news of this pandemic.

We've had two cases all ready in the Bay Area,and yes, I do find myself looking askance at people when they cough,especially if they are sitting next to me.

I don't like getting sick any more than the next person, and I suspect we are going to be dealing with this for awhile, and that it is going to challenge us in both the individual and the collective sense.

The twitter comments are revealing

YumYucky: Swine flu has hit the University of Delaware campus, which is only a few miles from my home. I bought masks to have on hand for my family.

kvikks: New swine flu feared to be weaponized strain - http://bit.ly/r5I1Z (expand)
less than 10 seconds ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

shorty_jooce: OMG SWINE FLU EVERYWHERE WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE
2 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

But, let's face it: on some level, we LIKE to be afraid. If we didn't, we wouldn't have so many movies and tv shows featuring horror, suspense, and brand-new cars hurtling into the air at 100 mph.

So, when something like swine flu comes along it's a great opportunity to participate in our very own horror movie: "How bad is it gonna get?" "Do I have it?" "Will I get it?"

At a recent visit to a game store the other day, the owner told us that the most popular game these days was called "Pandemic."

"And," he added, "what's really unique about this game is that it's not a competitive game, it's cooperative."

Another aha moment.

So, while we're all putting on our face masks and avoiding each other like, um, the plague, I hope we can remember how to play the game.

Chaos and Socks

2009-04-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

Man and Stone
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

This has, so far, been a chaotic week. Missed appointments, slipped up communications, lost cell phones, misplaced Stuff.

Oh,and get this--you know how easily your socks disappear from your life,so that you end up with always one sock insead of two? Well,today I went to pick up a box of my Stuff from a friend's house and we found a tiny little anklet that looked like it belonged to a child on the floor of her closet.

"Is this yours?' She asked.

"Nope."

"Not mine either," she said.

So my theory is that as we approach 2012 (the end of the Mayan calendar, and for some, a sweeping apocalyptic change of season), and life gets more chaotic, not only are more and more socks disappearing from our laundry into that interdimensional sock-hole that sucks them up, but now the interdimensional sock hole is regurgitating other people's socks into our lives so that we might find them on the floor of our closet, or in our laundry, or god knows where.

Whew. That was a long, and chaotic sentence.

But wait. I happen to be one of those rare people who thrive on a certain amount of chaos--I love the challenge of maintaining one's balance in the midst of it all.

Chaos theory says that chaos only appears to be random, it is really part of a structure that we simply are unable to decipher. So I figure if i find someone else's sock in my Stuff, it is probably trying to tell me something.

Now what that something is I don't know--I can only organize the data according to my own puny mortal mind, and come up with my own ideas.

Maybe it's the sock of some angel child who slipped into my friend's closet at night,and cinderella-like, left her foot covering behind.

Maybe it's trying to tell me that what I think is mine is really mixed up with what's other people's and what I think it other people's is really mixed up with what is mine. That maybe, let's get real profound here, what I think is organized neatly into My Stuff and Your Stuff is really Our Stuff.

So that all this chaos many of us in the world are experiencing right now is meant to shake up our ideas a bit about what Your Stuff and My Stuff really is.

For example, people who had lots of Stuff just a few years ago and looked askance at those that didn't now find their Stuff disappearing from beneath their, uh, socks. Which has forced some people to examine the importance of Stuff in general.

Whether we believe in God or in Chaos Theory or both, chances are that what we now call chaos will eventually be identifable as part of a much larger structure that we just can't see at the moment.

Chaos allows us to freefall into the beauty of unknowing, of realizing that we are not as in control as we thought. But when we cling to disappearing structures, we prevent chaos from washing over us and doing its job.

So if your socks are disappearing from your laundry, maybe it's time to let 'em go.

And if other people's socks are showing up unbidden in your life, maybe it's time to invite them in.

Give chaos a chance.

Fresh Out of Prison

2009-04-09T22:10:00.001-07:00

Blackbird
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Once again I am astounded by the encounters that a person can have simply riding the bus.

Today I was on the Greyhound coming back to the Bay Area from the Sierra Nevadas. After Sacramento the bus got pretty crowded, and it got loud. Some guy behind me was rapping enthusiastically to himself, his eyes glazed and a faint smile on his face like he had left part of himself on another planet. Another guy behind me was talking loudly about something, and I was trying hard to ignore his voice by burying my nose in a book on Chinese medicine.

Rapper guy just kept right on beboppin by himself and Loud Guy finally asked if anyone knew about local Bay Area busses, so I turned and answered his question. So Loud Guy and i get into a conversation about Chinese medicine and the book I am reading, and turns out he's talking loud because he's deaf. Also turns out he's just gotten out of prison a few hours ago, and he's reading a book by Bo Lozoff , a guy who teaches prisoners how to turn their cells into ashrams with the human kindness project.

http://www.humankindness.org.

The book has pictures of chakras and endorsements by people like the Dalai Lama and letters from prisoners all over the U.S.

Loud Guy's real name is David but he goes by Crow, and I can tell by talking to him that he's pretty nervous about being out of prison for the first time in three years. He's wearing a white t-shirt and loose dark pants and slippers and carrying a little bag and a hundred dollars. He apologizes for not having street clothes yet, he says a relative was supposed to greet him at the prison gate with clothes, but never showed up.

Out of his forty-two years, he says he's only spent six 'on the outside'--all the rest were in institutions of some kind or another.

He's gonna try real hard this time to not go back, he says, even though alcoholism 'runs in his family' and makes him do crazy stuff.

"Just one step at a time," he says, "just one step at a time."

The bus sails over the Bay Bridge and the wide expanse of the city and the bay open up before us.

"Wow," he says.

I leave him at the bus station on Mission Street, clutching his book and his bag, shivering in his white t-shirt, waiting for the next bus to take him to a homeless shelter in Marin.

Good luck, my friend.

A Moment of Kindness

2009-03-13T11:45:00.001-07:00

The Dalai Lama
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

I had two things on my mind to talk about when I sat down to blog today. One was an incident on a bus that reminded me of the importance of the small moments of kindness in the world. And the other was China.

What photo was I going to choose that could illustrate one or both of my thoughts? Ahem, said the Dalai Lama from my flikr page, choose me choose me.

So I did, and in posting his smiling face I am reminded of that powerful moment when I snapped the photo in Cusco, Peru, as His Holiness arrived to meet with representatives of the Qero people.

I had many many powerful and 'mystical' moments in Peru which I am now being challenged to translate to my ordinary life in the daily slog of a crumbling and shifting California.

So, first the moment of kindness. And then China.

I was waiting for a bus in Richmond California to go visit a friend in Marin County when I struck up a conversation with an elder woman who said she liked the color of my hair. Turns out she was a psychic and had
all sorts of interesting things to say. But probably the most interesting was that she thanked me for the conversation, saying that she had been feeling that people
in Marin were not very kind, and that our conversation had reminded her that there were still kind people in the world.

This came at a time when I wondered if I was 'wasting my time' and not 'doing enough' with myself, watching everyone buzzing around in their cars and hammering away on their laptops while I seemed to be spending more time these days noticing what is actually going on around me.

So it was an 'aha' moment,like the beautiful stone you find on your path that reminds you that you are on the right road.

Now for China. In the news today there's an article about China's nervousness about the U.S. economy, and its advice to us to spend our money wisely or they may not want to give us any more of it. All of a sudden I felt like I was back in the 'developing' world, when I was always reading articles about how the U.S. wanted the government of whatever particular country I was in to act. Them that holds the cash holds the power, I spoze. And now the shoe is on the other foot.

But wait, my photo of the Dalai Lama says. Now you have to somehow link these two ideas. And what, he says, does kindness have to do with China and the economic crisis?

Well, you of all people can certainly tell me about China, I say. And maybe I don't know the answer to that question.

But I do know that kindness, like fear, is a kind of viral disease---the more you feed it the more of it you get.

And that if you are foolish enough to be riding buses in Marin County when almost everyone else is driving, you never know what you might find.

Coraline, Flordemayo, and the Day of The Feminine

2009-03-03T08:45:00.001-08:00

Two Young Girls
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Blue haired girl confronts evil button eyed Spidermom in Coraline, a creepy animated fantasy that takes us through scary tunnels and stirs up psychological ambivalence about Good Mom/Bad Mom.

Caroline, who is stuck with a couple of imperfect parents--an irritable Mom and a tipsy inefectual Dad, finds a secret door in her house that leads to what seems to be the Perfect Family. . .

Though the animation--- complete with dancing mice, cotton candy cannonballs, stripper trapeze artists,and unraveling worlds---was fascinating to watch,and Coraline was appropriately courageous, the overall creepiness of the film left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And no,it wasn't the popcorn. Even her real parents were pretty creepy.

Afterwards, I went to a healing meditation given by one of the 13 indigenous grandmothers, FlordeMayo, a woman of Mayan ancestry and very powerful healing abilities. After a group meditation,she said that yesterday, in the Mayan calendar, was the Day of the Feminine. Also the day of Empowerment, and of following the Laws of the ancestors.

What an interesting contrast Flordemayo was, in her incredibly healing and feminine power, to both the evil Spidermom and the irritable "real" mom of Coraline.

Her presence was more potent than anything she said, but a couple of good reminders stuck with me: the importance of surrender, and "If you know something, it's your responsibity to share it."

Maybe

2009-02-27T12:23:00.001-08:00

Horses in the Andes 1
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Maybe. A Chinese story about a philosophic farmer.

(This story courtesy Garsett Larosse)

One day, the farmer's horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and exclaimed ‘that’s a shame!’
He said ‘maybe.’
Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses.
‘Wow!’ they said, ‘Aren’t you lucky!’
He said ‘maybe.’
The next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said ‘oh, that’s too bad that your son broke his leg.’
He said, ‘maybe.’
The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said ‘Isn’t that great! Your son got out.’
He said, ‘maybe.’

Silence Is Golden

2009-01-31T17:04:00.001-08:00

Scarf and Coat
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Okay, so now I'm not only Flickrd but Facebooked. This could turn into a full time job. I am so busy keeping up with my internet friends and contacts that I don't have time to discuss the really important things in life here on my blog...like the definite change in the air since Obama has taken office, and how much I am enjoying the sunny streets of San Francisco,

There was a beautiful instant right after the Obama election, an instant that lasted for maybe a day or so, when everybody, even a large number of people who had not voted for Obama, just shut up and acknowledged that importance of the moment. One friend told me of how the French leftist newspaper Liberation kind of wanted to criticize Obama because he wasn't left enough, but couldn't bring themselves to because the mere fact that he was black (or bi-racial) was a major shift in this country, and the world. Even among the Republicans, it seemed that many people who didn't agree with Obama's politics still felt compelled to shut up for at least a little while.

These moments that force everyone to shut their mouths for an instant are a good thing. In that brief, fleeting silence, when we feel compelled to let go of our 'usual' discourse and the attachment to that discourse, great transformation can occur.

So it was nice while it lasted. Now many folks are once again taking up their 'positions' behind well-worn fences of discourse and idealogy. (I include the left, the right, and myself in this.)

I think one of the reasons I spent so many of these last months doing nothing but photography was out of this need for silence, and stopping. There is nothing like a photograph to allow you to stop the world, and really look at it.

But now, it seems my own addiction to words is returning. Which is fine, because I can at times be relatively good at this addiction.

It is a joy to have my friends from Peru and Mexico and Argentina and Spain and the U.S. all on the same Facebook page, and to be able to throw our words (and photos) back and forth. Everybody is asking me when I am going to return to their particular city. It is nice to be loved in different corners of the world. I wish I could be physically present with all my friends at the same time. But Facebook is the next best thing.

Now, for at least a little while, I'll shut up, and fall into that great transformative silence.

Baby Come Back

2009-01-16T08:23:00.001-08:00

Baby Come Back
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

Baby Come Back

Vuelvete, Amor.

She's been on a one-way rush to acquire more and more things in order to try and cover her nudity. But, as you can see, she's a statue, stuck in mid-leap for many years. Now, as the stores she's been rushing to shop in are all closing, and her money to spend has disappeared, he calls her back. Come back, my love, he says. We have nothing now. Only ourselves, our nakedness, and our love for each other.

This is a fairy tale, of course. But, like all fairy tales, it is a parallel universe that breathes beside us all the time, almost close enough to touch.

Ella ha pasado muchos anos corriendo y corriendo para adquerir cada vez mas cosas para ocultar su desnudez. Pero, como ya ves, ahora es una estatua, atrapada en el salto imposible desde hace muchos anos. Ahora, las tiendas donde ella suele hacer su shopping se van cada una cerrandose, y el dinero para comprar cosas se desaparce. Entonces el le llama a ella: Ven mi amor, dice, vuelvete. Ahora no tenemos nada. Solo tenemos a nosotros mismos, a nuestra desnudez, a nuestro amor.

Esta historia, por supuesto, es un cuento de hadas, Pero como todas los cuentos de hadas, toma lugar en un universo paralelo que suspira a nuestro lado todo el tiempo, casi tan cerca como para tocarlo.

(photo: Detail, sculpture, Nashville, Tennessee.)

Last Dance

2009-01-09T13:37:00.001-08:00

Last Dance
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

After 8 years of doing his dance, I guess the man needs a rest.

Meanwhile, America (on the left) looks ahead,somewhat anxiously, hoping for better times, along with the rest of the world.

(Photo taken last summer at the Houston Art Car Festival.)

Embrace It, Let It Go: Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T17:39:00.001-08:00

Embrace It, Let It Go: Happy New Year!
Originally uploaded by ojodorado (Happy Holidays!)

Goodbye 2008. It's been a challenging, though ultimately rewarding, year for me personally--walking across the U.S. with the Longest Walk, then messing up my arm and shoulder and spending far more time than I would have anticipated recovering from that--which ultimately forced me to focus on my health in a good way.

A friend recently sent me an astrological report on 2009, predicting a real roller coaster year. But I don't think we need astrology to tell us that--we have a new president, a collapsing economy, yep it looks like we are in for it.

The astro report indicates we'll be able to ride it out if we let those things dissolve that need to dissolve, and trust that there will be something left over. In fact, we may discover that we had more than we thought we did all along.

Best wishes to y'all in the New Year!

Barack

2008-11-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

20081104_Indianpolis_IN_UAWGOTV0318
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama

Obama!!

2008-11-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

Good morning, new America.

"Is there too much hope?' A journalism student asked the woman next to me at the Obama headquarters celebration last night.

There is, of course, never too much hope.

Now, the question, as Obama himself as asked is, "What do we do with it?"

More than anything, as I was standing in the cheering crowd last night, I felt like all the battles that I and others had fought over the past several decades had piled up to reach this tipping point--this visible African-American face, this multiracial global man who symbolizes our hope for a new America and a new world. Memories came flooding back to me--my father standing up to the white city council in the San Fernando Valley over integration and civil rights, the tense and shattering day Martin Luther King was shot and how the huge crowd of us, black and white junior high school students, marched to downtown Berkeley, the battles for women's rights in the 70's, the organizing against Anita Bryant in the Castro, the chaotic and cathartic times in Argentina and Bolivia, it all filled my bones as I was watching Obama speak and made me feel, yes, all of us who have fought those battles have helped make this change happen.

Of course, he will prove himself not just a symbol, but a human being. He will make mistakes. He will disappoint us. And we of this celebrity-driven country will have to learn that we are still the ones, ultimately, that need to make the change continue to happen.

But yesterday, as I was looking at kids here in Oakland who are four, five, six years old, I was thinking: they ARE growing up in a country different than the one I grew up in.

In the polling place, a group of light-skinned black kids were sitting on chairs talking while the rest of us voted. "Who would you vote for if you could vote?" said one. "Well I'd vote for Obama of course," said the other. "Why?" said the first. "'Cuz he's younger." said the second.

Painted Legs, How Berkeley Can You Be Festival

2008-10-06T22:46:00.001-07:00

Painted Legs
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

I remember doing this in Berkeley when I was in Junior High.

Some things never change.

Ear-cupuncture

2008-09-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the "How Berkeley Can You Be?" Festival and watched the crazycostumed Berkeleyites dance and prance around MLK park. (Photos forthcoming)

Ah yes, it's good to be home...

After dancing and prancing around a bit myself, I sat down on a wooden bench and had some needles inserted into my ears.
I'm great at giving advice to other people about getting acupuncture, but have yet to try it myself. And yes, it works....!

My energy is returning, my arm is healing, and my unabashed photo passion continues. I'll get back to more "serious" writing eventually--or I won't---but for now, I'm having fun.

From California: Flickring

2008-09-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

The recuperation process from my injured arm and shoulder--and perhaps from the Longest Walk as well--as been longer than one would expect. My whole body has been exhausted.

So instead of travelling I have been Flickring...putting my photos on Flickr, sending them out into the world, and armchair travelling by looking at photos of people from all over the world.

Once again I am reminded of how much art heals, whether or not you are an artist. There also seems to me to be something globally healing about people connecting to each other uniquely through images. Here, it's easier to find our commonality--I don't know what a particular photographer's politics might be, or what an a-hole he or she might be away from the camera, but with the image we can share a part of our soul and our life in a simple, direct and beautiful way.

Here is one of the Flickr community's current favorites.
You can see more here

Dennis Banks Says Goodbye

2008-08-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

After the walk, longtime Native activist Dennis Banks passed on his staff to younger leaders, made a speech, and walked away, symbolically retiring from being an active organizer.

One Long Walker gave him a mock bow on his way out.

Longest Walk in DC Photos

2008-08-09T10:57:00.001-07:00

Whoops

2008-08-09T08:00:00.001-07:00

Two days before The Longest Walk was to arrive in DC, I slipped while I was coming down a ramp, broke my arm and generally messed up my shoulder. I did manage to get to DC and walk with everybody else, but have spent the last 4 weeks recuperating, one week in DC and the last three here in Los Angeles.

Wow. This has really given me a new appreciation of our bodies and how much we take them for granted when they are working. I found myself watching people bicycling, walking, carrying things,dancing, going about their business, watching how elegantly their two arms functioned together without them really thinking about it, wondering if I would get that ease of movement back.

The doctor warned that I may lose mobility in the injured arm, but I am aiming for having that blissfully unaware ability to move both my arms together without really thinking about it again. In the meantime I have been VERY conscious of the injured arm---you realize that arms are also about balance for the rest of you,and you don't really think about your ability to roll around at night when you are sleeping until you can't. My awareness of others in public spaces also changed for awhile--I was hyper aware of the people bustling around me and their ability to send me into excruciating pain just by bumping into me the wrong way. (No cast--just a light shoulder sling.) So generally, I didn't go out much.

Also, I was exhausted, and slept a lot. I checked out some blogs from people who had broken bones and found that this was not uncommon. I guess your body wants you to rest.

Except for the lack of mobility, it is now doing much better--I can type with both hands, scratch my nose with my left hand, put both earrings in, put on my shoes--all sorts of activities that I was incapable of just two weeks ago. Having to ask other people to do simple things for me--ohmigod,not a lot of fun, but certainly a lesson in interdependance. Still can't get my arm over my head to put my hair up or anything like that.

This has also given me a tremendous appreciation for people who end up with lifelong changes to their bodies because of injuries--people like Christopher Reeves, Ram Dass---or someone like Jack, a Navajo guy on the Longest Walk who walked from Arizona with an artificial leg.

Also, as I am big on the symbolism of how we manifest accidents and diseases, I have to ask myself why my left arm has been screaming for attention, and what that says about the balance in my own life.

We must take nothing for granted.

Reflections On The Longest Walk, Three Weeks After

2008-08-02T07:46:00.000-07:00

During The Longest Walk, some of us reflected that we would bettter appreciate and understand the walk after it was all over.

That has proved true in my case--but then, I've always been a slow learner, seeming to need a fair amount of reflection time after important events.

The walk was challenging, physically, emotioally, and spiritually. Up every day before 4AM, on the road by five, seven miles before breakfast, sixteen to twenty total, maybe showers maybe not, maybe a bathroom, maybe the woods, a diverse crowd of people thrown together from different cultures, sunburn, sunstroke, tics---and walkinig on land all across the country that held some painful hisorical memories. I wondered at times if we were actually doing any real healing with our walk and ceremonies or just scratching he wounds.

But now that it's been over for nearly a month, I feel more than anything a deep gratitude for the people I met on the walk and
the moments we shared. Ron from the Houma Nation with his New Orleans accent that made him sound like he was from the Bronx, Gilberto the Afro-Cubam Buddhist monk who WAS from the Bronx, Addie with the adopted dog Booger trailing along behind her, or pulling her along, Margaret from the Chumash Nation with her quiet and steady self, Christopher AKA Sunshine with his golden hair and spirit, quiet Kana from Japan who reflected that all the emotional turmoil we were going thru on the walk was like the laundry spinning to get clean, "All the Way Ray" doing sixty push-ups after the walk, Tony with his amazing plugalong car, and so many others....

Would I do it again? No. Am I glad I did it this time? You bet.

Longest Walk Photos, Virginia

2008-07-28T17:43:00.001-07:00

Longest Walk Update

2008-06-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

From Mebane, North Carolina--

Back on the Longest Walk. Still difficult getting internet access and getting on the blog.

Stayed with great folks at the Ocaneechi-Saponi reservation. The last full blood there died in the mid 1700's, so these folks look more like light skinned African Americans than full blood Indians. But they have recreated a traditional village, and are reviving their 'extinct' language. They also cooked up some seriously good fried chicken.

Interpersonal conflict continues on the walk, but it seems to be getting aired more, and resolved. People who took off for the NOrthern Route say conflicts are rife there too, and that visitors from the Southern Route did not feel very welcome.

One friend here, a Navajo, said he thought there was so much interpersonal conflict because of the work we were doing healing Mother Earth and the Native history on this continent. It's as if with every step we take we are soaking up her wounds and the historical wounds of the people we encounter. So naturally that's going to play itself out among us.

Other people have complained of the chaos and lack of leadership. The people who have taken on leadership positions are or have seriously burned out. Today and yesterday our extremely competent Japanese translator and finance coordinator blew her stack. Another walker stepped forward and asked Dennis to lighten up on the walkers, that everybody was burned out.

But the same Japanese woman led us in a hula dance and song today, which we all did. I didn't realize the hula was actually a martial art. You can see in the dance and song that it incorporates light and dark, and is nothing like the Hollywood versions of it I have seen.

These moments of song and dance as well as people's honest expressions of how they feel seem to have helped the mood of the walkers.

Dennis Banks has returned to the walk after being away with the Lumbee and Tuscalero people. He tried to get them both to join us, but word is that since the two tribes do not get along, when each one heard the other was going to be on the walk, they both cancelled.

Indian Country Today has run a good clarification story of an incident between walkers and police in Columbus, Ohio.

We are nearing the end of the walk, and will be arriving soon in Washington DC.

A medicine man in Peru once said "How you arrive is very important."

I am thinking a lot about that as we near DC.

Baggage

2008-06-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

"Lighten up! Reduce, reduce, reduce!" Nate keeps yelling at the Longest Walkers.

Nate is the Longest Walk's sargent at arms, the one that keeps us organized, wakes us up in the morning, gets us into morning circle, convinces us to help load and unload the huge weight of luggage we carry in trailers from town to town--
the backpacks, the sleeping bags, the tents.

Nathan is tall and has a big commanding voice and perhaps because of this is not loved by certain people. "Oh shut UP," mutters one woman after Nathan has barked another set of orders.

But he gets the job done. And he has reminded me, with his latest order to 'reduce', of how much baggage I carry around.

I realize that one of the reasons I am on the Longest Walk, aside from my desire to bring more respect to Mother Earth and Native sacred sites, is to reduce my baggage, in both the physical and the metaphorical sense.

When I am walking, I can feel every little extra ounce in the canvas bag that I carry strapped around my shoulder--oh why the hell am I carrying that stupid comb, do I really think I will suddenly want to whip it out while I am walking and comb my scraggly-ass hair that hasn't been combed in a week?

I feel, as I put one foot in front of the other towards the seventeen miles a day that we walk,, a letting go, a freedom and focus. There is nothing that is important but my feet, the road, the land, and the rest of the people I am walking with.

With none of the tempting baggage of my past around me--no house, no car, no job, no history, I am free.

Free to invent new baggage.

I did what Nathan "suggested", unloaded some of my winter stuff from the trailer and sent it away in a brown box.

Afterwards, I promptly went to Good will and spent $12 on 3 new skirts, which of course will fill up the hole left by my old baggage.

Mending The Hoop

2008-06-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

In the warm Alabama night, I join a Native man* as he sits with two light-skinned local Cherokee men who are wearing traditional dress.

Usually easygoing and friendly, he flares up when I sit down.

"Yes sit down," he barks, "You might learn something. "

The atmosphere is already thick when I sit down, so I wonder what's been going on.

"You can't prove you're Indian," he eventually says to all of us, taking out his tribal enrollment card from his back pocket and waving it around.

"That's right," I say. " Which is why I call myself an ally and not an Indian, even though I may believe the family oral tradition of Indian blood."

"Well I'm working on it," says the younger of the Cherokees.

"I can not only prove I'm an Indian," he continues. "I've lived it. All you can talk about is the Trail of Tears," he says to the two Cherokees.

He is getting angrier, his voice rising.

Actually, he is a mixed blood, and has spoken of being discriminated against by both whites and Indians.

When the two Cherokee leave, he continues on.

"Why did you go to South America? It was guilt, wasn't it?"

I feel like he is pushing all his pain towards me, wanting me to feel it.

"We are victims," he says. He knows I'm half-Jewish and begins to tell me how much more victimized his people are than mine. I know that the story of my relatives has been told and heard and that the story of his still needs more telling, but I am reluctant to fall into the "my people are more victimized than yours" trap, one that I have heard before from friends on the Left and one that I feel ultimately leads nowhere.

"Yes you are," I say. "But now what? What can be done now?"

"There is nothing to be done," he says, "the hoop has already been broken."

Instinctively, I recoil from this level of despair, even though I have seen it in the eyes of Indian men before.

I'm finding it difficult to write about the walk, because there seems to be so much pain that flares up between all of us--between the races, between the generations, between full bloods and mixed bloods. Several people have made final angry speeches in morning ceremony and left the group. Others have pleaded, "Why can't we all just get along?" and "We all bleed red."

The same stories that are played out in the country, and in the world, are played out here.

"I know why they whine, I know why they cry," said one Native guy while we walked together. "They are human beings."

Like human beings have been doing for centuries, we turn on each other, we blame each other, we talk behind each other's back, we throw our pain at each other.

But we keep walking.

Then suddenly, we are stopping in a new community and people are showering us with welcome and praise and appreciation, and we remember why we are doing this.

And maybe the hoop can be mended.

(*I am deliberately leaving out details like name and tribe to tell the story but maintain the privacy of the people involved.)

Tennessee

2008-06-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

Very big trees.

Ma Da Go Cafone: The Secret Language of the South

2008-06-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

When I was in junior high school in Berkeley, an African-American friend named Gwen, took a trip down south to visit some relatives.

"Damn," she said when she returned, "I couldn't understand hardly anything they said."

"Like what?" I asked, stuffing my clothes into the gym locker next to hers.

"Like Ma Da Go Cafone." She said.

"What?"

"Ma Da Go Cafone," she repeated. "It means 'my daughter went to California."

I thought Ma Da Go Cafone was so cool that I used it as a powerful mantra to torture my younger brother, repeating it over and over and telling h im I wouldn't let him know what it meant until he turned 13. I kept my word, but he was probably disappointed.

White or black, people here in the South talk differently than I do.

A pale skinny guy on the Greyhound bus from Alabama to Tennessee began to make conversation with me while I was trying to catch up on my writing.

"Ahm gon ta Paduca tagit me a truck." he said.

Oh lord, I thought, some redneck that has nothing better to do than make conversation that I don't understand.

"Hmm," I said, staring intently at my writing pad. Scribble, scribble.

Eventually he began to make so many semi-intelligible comments that I was forced to put down my pen and listen.

And I found that the guy had a lot to teach me. About what it's like to be a truck driver in Alabama, for instance, when all the small and middle sized trucking companies are folding because of the price of gas, and the big companies are cutting back on salaries and benefits.

"Everythang's gon corporate, " he said. "We're losin that human touch, we're just numbers ta them."

Well, I thought, this is a language that a lot of people in this country seem to be speaking.

I learned about his passion for genealogy--something we share--and about how to speak Southern.

"Yont." he said. "Mayonaisse."

"What?" I asked politely, wondering if he might be trying to tell me about his daughter going to California.

"Yont ta come with me ta Paduca? Mayonaisse a lotta people on this bus!"

He laughed, then admitted that he had stolen a lot of his lines from a famous Southern comedian who makes jokes about rednecks.

But it was new to me, so I laughed too.

"When ah wuz up North, "he said, "ev'body loved the way ah talked. They jus kept asking me over and over to say something, anything."

The countryside we were passing was green, with rolling hills. Alabama was much more beautiful than I expected.

"That's my town," he said, "just over that hill. Not much to look at, just simple country living, but it's where I'm from. I love it. Wouldn't want to live anywhere else. "

I had put my writing pad down. He was actually a pretty interesting and good hearted guy.

At Nashville, the bus stopped, and I got off, wishing him goodbye and good luck.

He said something in response that sounded like a mouthful of cornbread, but which I now recognized as the secret language of the South.

Southern Discomfort

2008-06-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Coming into "The South" for a northerner (or better said, a Westerner) like myself, has felt like visiting a foreign country.

I have, quite frankly, approached Alabama and Mississippi with more trepidation than when I travelled into the Amazon jungle.
The names of the cities here are not just city names to me--they are syllables that evoke particular images from my childhood: Birmingham, Montgomery, Hattiesburg translate for me into "rabid white crowds, dogs, hoses, George Wallace, lynchings." As we walk through these cities, walkers and locals say: "This is where two black men were lynched," or "this is where a rabbi was murdered."

Is there really a New South? I have asked people along the way.

The response has depended on who is speaking. "Well, you know, the old-timers, they have a hard time changing," says one.
One of these 'old-timers', a white guy in his sixties who was a police officer during the Civil Rights demonstrations, says he thinks there is more racism now, exacerbated by affirmative action programs which are resented by whites. He is one of those people who thinks the country will collapse to the point where everyone will be protecting their own with big guns.

A black woman in a tiny country store in Mississippi, when asked if the KKK is still around, says "Oh yeah, they still around."

The cheerleading squads on the University campus in Hattiesburg are practicing when the Long Walkers walk onto the campus..they seem neatly divided into white and black. Professors on campus say that progress is still slow, though most of the young generation doesn't seem to suffer from the blatant racism that their elders have.

What amazes me is when a couple of different professors--at two different universities--tell me that many of their students come into their classes with no knowledge of the history of the Civil Rights movement here in the Sixties. One prof, after having shown a documentary on that era, was asked by his students: "Why weren't we told about this sooner?"

Trail of Tears? For most young people, it's also not in the history books. Unless you are one of the many people around here who want to rediscover their Cherokee roots.

I did go on a couple of Plantation Tours... an interesting way to learn about the colorful people who lived in these Southern plantations, and some of the history of the area. My friend Melinda, who writes a column on old plantations here in Tennessee under the name "Auntie Bellum" says she has only been on one tour that described the life of the slaves on these plantations.

There definitely seems to be a kind of Southern Discomfort going on with southerners and their history.

And with me. I am both fascinated and repelled by the South, which after all is a big chunk of our own American history,despite their efforts to secede. I have ancestors who fought and died for the Confederacy--some who may have lived in those big plantation houses and some who themselves picked cotton.

In Alabama, a carfull of teenage yahoos (no not the internet yahoo) drove around and into our camp yelling stuff about 'hippies' and 'little bitches'. We managed to chase them away, but not before one of the male walkers whispered, "It's the Klan" and a young woman admitted she was scared to death.

And yet, on the Longest Walk, we have met some incredible people here in the South--warm, hospitable, generous, thoughtful people, white, black, Native and all the combinations thereof.

(photo caption: One of the warm, generous and progressive people we met on the journey was this professor from the University of Montavalo in Alabama, (right), shown here speaking to two people from the Longest Walk. She traded the mask to the guy in the middle for his t-shirt, because the mask was originally from his people in Mexico.)

Plantation House and Slave Quarters, Columbia Tennessee

2008-06-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

(photos: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

The Longest Walk, Mississippi and Alabama

2008-06-13T11:49:00.001-07:00

Dancing at a Choctaw Pow-wow.

The hardworking trash crew, picking up trash and other elements along the way.

New Orleans Post-Katrina Ninth Ward: The Yellow House

2008-06-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the wide expanse of empty lots that the lower ninth ward has become, people on the Longest Walk Two noticed a newly built yellow house with an abundance of flowers planted in the front yard, a courageous testament to the stubbornness of homeowners who have refused to leave, and want their neighborhood back.

They stood across from the house and offered up a prayer for the home, as the residents sat on the front porch and watched.

New Orlean's Ninth Ward, Three Years After Katrina

2008-06-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans' Ninth Ward, survivors like Robert Green (see below) have not yet received their city government checks to rebuild their houses.

Residents complain that the city is playing a 'waiting game'--holding off on giving survivors their money, and charging them for not mowing the uncut grass that has overtaken the empty lots that once housed middle class black families. Many of the owners of these lots are elderly, and survivors fear the government is simply waiting for them to pass on, so they can "gentrify" the neighborhood--ie, build new housing developments for upper income white residents.

Some residents, like Green, have decided the best course of action to prevent this is to stay in the neighborhood, even if it means living in unsafe FEMA trailers. Said one African-American pastor who has enlisted volunteers from UC Berkeley to help rebuild his home: "As long as I stay here, they''re not going to 'gentrify'.

In the midst of the wide expanse of empty lots that the lower ninth ward has become, people on the Longest Walk Two noticed a newly build yellow house with an abundance of flowers planted in the front yard, a courageous testament to the stubbornness of homeowners who have refused to leave, and want their neighborhood back.

They stood across from the house and offered up a prayer for the home, as the residents sat on the front porch and watched.

Robert Green, Katrina Survivor, Speaks in New Orleans

2008-06-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

On May 27, Hurricane Katrina survivor Robert Green spoke to people on the Longest Walk Two about the post-Katrina situation, and why he is living in a trailer in the ninth ward:

My name is Robert Green. I've lived in the ninth ward of New Orleans for 38 years, and I'll live in it for
38 more years, god willing. My grandkids were here. Basically we lost my mother and granddaughter on the same day..On that same day, we lost all of our neighbors,we lost a lot of our family, we lost a lot of our history.

That's the most important thing to me, it's not necessarily bringing back the house that I live in, because I live in a trailer and that's my home. My children are here, PJ saw, Dennis saw, and Chris saw we have a family, but we are standing actually on people's houses, on people's land. One of the things that's kind of funny actually is we had a guy from Italy and he said
What do I grow on my land? And I said if I owned this land I wouldn't be living in a trailer

We have so many families that are not here and we have so many families that ought to be here...and the Longest Walk is something that can bring attention to the fact of the Ninth ward and how many families are displaced. My granddaughters were witnesses when my mother and my sister died, and what's important is they are happy again. That's the most important thing, family is happy, family is coming back.

We have to realize that this was land that a long time ago they allowed, I could say that, they allowed black people to own the land down here. They've owned it for 60 or 70 years, they've taken care of it..this grass would not be this high if the people were here. This neighborhood would be full of people with faces like y'all have if the people were here.

What we have to do, when the railroads came though communities in the old days, if one family didn't sell then they couldn't develop the land, and we're gonna stand here and reclaim our homestead. As you can see, we are reclaiming this house and rebuilding it..

As you can also see I have a sign that says we want our country to love us as much as we love our country. .And we feel that every day because the volunteers, people like y'all, even the children bring people that bring help and hope to us so we have something to look forward to..

We also know that we are part of a country that we paid the price for, my grandfather had 10 kids, all of them served in the armed forces. I have an American flag flying. It's important to me on days that we feel like we have to fly it at half mast that I feel like we are a part of this country because we paid the price, we paid for land, we paid taxes. Like i say to you, we have a lot of heart sweat, a lot of people who want to be back home but they are just not being embraced by the powers that be. So bringing attention to this neighborhood is really important to us, and it's going to make a difference..

A lot of people don't realize one person can make a difference, one march can make a difference. the difference that y'all make is that y'all are not just marching in this neighborhood, y'all are marching all over the country. We had Jesse Jackson here, we had Al Sharpton here. They marched in here, and they marched out. Y'all have done more justice by coming here than they've done when they've come down. What's most important is not the cameras that they like to stand in front of, but it's the people whose faces I see, people who make us whole again, and that's what y'all are doing for us, you're making us whole, and that's important to us.

I didn't get into much of the facts of my granddaughter and my mother dying, but basically their spirits are here, and as long as this land is not redeveloped for anything that's unnatural, anything that doesn't have family houses back, people back, then they're going to be happy.

(holds up xerox photos of grandkids) My grandkids as you can see, they're happy, and that's the most important thing to me... as long as they're happy I can be happy. My son is happy. My kids are happy.

We were a community and we spent a lot of time with each other, that's something that was important to us, that we get that back and that we really work it.

People like Charles, like Mr Richards who lie in this house right here like Mrs Guerney, they're going to stay here and make sure that we reclaim this land and that the use of it is something for the people, because what is better than family to take back the land.

I thank y'all. It makes a big difference to us to see that we are cared about by so many different people...

I'm gonna walk with y'all, gonna carry the flag when we walk through the neighborhood..

The most important thing is that y'all are here, y'all are bringing attention to it. Y'all are bringing love back into the neighborhood.

We asked for $150,000 for people to rebuild homes, but the city government comes up with all kinds of reasons not to give the money. .Down here, you can see the loss of houses.

Everybody should have received the money like they did in Mississippi. Whether Louisiana is still corrupt, whether Louisiana has a different agenda, we're not going to let that agenda change our desire to rebuild our houses, we're not going to give in to the fact that they're not doing what they should be doing..

I haven't really received any money yet, i'm still waiting to receive it.

I'm getting a house built with Brad Pitt. When Brad Pitt builds it. I'll give him 85% of my Road Hall money, which I don't mind because the main thing is to rebuild the house..

But it's kind of crazy.

My mother had 4 children ,all of us share in the property..they won't let me build with all 4 children, I have to build by myself and both of them have to give up their right to the property just to let me rebuild..and thats kind of a crazy thing because we're all in it together and we should be able to rebuild together..that's the way they make the program work

And besides that they have a lot of people who have family that won't come together, that's another roadblock..

For me, in my situation. what I have left of my mother's house are those back steps..so if my nephew wants to have soemthing I can give him a piece of the back steps y know what I'm saying but if we want to build the house i have to get them to sign off.

That's the reason I came back to the FEMA trailer, even when I knew it wasn't safe.

A lot of the people who are working with us, I wouldn't have met them if I were somewhere else so it's important to have someone here.

New Orleans French Quarter Photos

2008-06-13T09:31:00.001-07:00

Houston Art Car Show

2008-05-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

Auto-motive Houstonians

2008-05-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Let's be frank. There are a lot of very large people in Houston. Some are vertically large, going up and down like the Houstonian skyscrapers that dominate the downtown skyline, and wearing big cowboy hats that make them look even larger. But many, oh yes, are also horizontally quite large, with nice large bellies and big butts.

I was curious about why Houston seemed to have more than its share of horizontally large people. My friends Mike and Nic said they had read a study that said Houston had one of the highest rates of obesity in the country.

Then I remembered about the no car, no hamburger rule. (see previous post) And I figured that with so many people stuck driving around eating hamburgers inside their cars, this was bound to happen. The hamburgers eventually make the bellies expand to fit the size of the pick-up trucks and SUVs.

Unlike Los Angeles, which is also an automotive city, Houstonians are unapologetically large. In L.A., the prevailing look-like-a-movie-star-or-else mentality of much of the city has resulted in lots of gyms and yoga classes, and for those who can afford it, liposuction clinics.

But Houstonians don't seem to give a damn. They just drive around and drive around, buying good Texan beef hamburgers and not so good variations of it, getting larger and larger, depositing their money in drive-in banks, and using up all that oil that has made Houston what it is today.

Unlike some urban Californians, who are often too busy rushing around improving themselves and/or becoming enlightened to pay attention to anyone but themselves, Houstonians are as generous and hospitable as they are large.

Their generosity, or what I've seen of it, is simple, downhome, matter of fact. That guy who bought me the hamburger for instance. And walking down one of those interminable roads on the outskirts of Houston, the roads that have no sidewalks because pedestrians here don't exist, walking and enjoying the walk and the scenery and the exquisite pleasure of having legs, three Houstonians slowed down and offered me a ride, a look of alarm and concern on their faces.

No Car,No Hamburger

2008-05-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

So there I was standing with my red backpack at 10PM at night in front of the window at Wendy's on Westheimer, my stomach grumbling and whining.

"I'll have a hamburger," I said.

"I'm sorry," she said, "you have to have a car to get a hamburger."

"What do you mean I have to have a car? I'm standing right here. I have two hands. You can put your hamburger in one of my hands and take my money out of the other. What's so difficult about that?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "No car, no hamburger."

She was a thin, pretty, mocha skinned African or African American teenager, with one of those
interesting Houstonian accents that I can barely understand. She looked nervous. She was only carrying out company policy.

"Do you want me to drive you around to the window?" offered some strange big guy in a pick-up truck. We were already at the window. He was offering to drive me around in a circle so we could return to the same window with me inside his car instead of outside it.

He was probably only being hospitable, but I declined.

I allowed my mouth to make a few grumbling noises to match my stomach, then went across the street to MacDonald's. Not wanting to repeat the scenario, I asked some other strange big guy in a pick-up truck to buy me a burger and a Coke, extending my five dollar bill.

With my backpack and my obviously car-challenged state, he must have assumed I was financially challenged as well.

"That's okay," he said, waving away my five dollar bill, and handing me the burger from his car window, before driving off.

Genuine Texan Genes

2008-05-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

Genuine Texan Genes

Lest anyone think that I am making fun of Texas or Texans by my last post, let me make it perfectly clear that I am here because my Texan ancestors called me here, and that I would not be the multicultural California a-hole elitist that I am without all their hard work to get me on this planet.

If I could, I would visit all of their graves, giving thanks to some, praying to others, and perhaps, who knows, dancing on the rest.

I would go to Paris, Texas where my great grandfather William Bascom found himself at eighty some years old, cleaned up from alcohol and scratching out a letter to his brother talking about how he was 'so blind he couldn't see to pull a splinter out of a gnats behind'.

I would go to Laredo, Texas to see the grave of my great great grandmother Mary Elizabeth , a strong and steady folk healer who knew about herbs and laying on hands and reading the weather.

I would go to Gilmer, Texas, where a young soon-to-be Confederate soldier and his wife gave birth to my great grandmother Ella Gertrude before they both died, leaving her to spend her life 'working out' as a servant in other people's homes before she married my handsome fiddler great grandfather (the one who couldn't see the splinter) and took on nineteen children.

From Gilmer I would continue travelling through East Texas, visiting the ancestors who owned some fellow human beings as slaves and wondering if I had any black cousins there. I would visit the many times great uncle who married into Cherokee chief Stand Watie's family, wanting to know if old Watie ever told him what he was thinking when he signed
the agreement that sent the Cherokee down the Trail of Tears, or what it was like for his wife when she walked it.

I would say to them all: we have travelled a long way, haven't we baby.

(Insert Texan drawl, heal old wounds, extract splinter from gnat's behind, move on.)

Big-Ass Texas

2008-05-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Houston, like Texas, is quite large. It goes on and on and all around. And, as befitting an aging oil-town, it is full of cars. I don't see very many taxis or busses, and when you are staying out in Cloverleaf, a burb of Houston, that can be a problem.

"Texans haven't quite discovered green yet," says my friend Nic in her clipped British-California accent.

"Everything here is big-ass," says my friend Mike, Nic's boyfriend, in his lazy drawling all-California accent. "Nothing is just big. It's always big-ass. Big-ass beer, big-ass cars. Big-ass people."

This led to a discussion about how sometimes different parts of the world identify with different body parts. In Buenos Aires I was mildly shocked to hear the inhabitants refer to their lovely city as "the a-hole of South America" because of its location on the southern tip of the continent. We wondered if the usage of the A word around here as a suffix to just about anything indicated that something similar was at play here in Houston, which is also a pretty southernly city in the U.S.

"What about Miami?' asked Mike.

"Miami is more like a big toe," I said.

Actually, I have been pleasantly surprised by Houston, forced to break out of my California Bay Area elitist ways to recognize that this is an exciting, dynamic, artistic, multi-cultural city, mixing Latino, Louisiana Cajun, African, African American, Anglo, liberal and conservative and and a whole lot of other spicy stuff into a pot full of drawling yes ma'am yeah baybee Texas twang.

Big-ass Texas twang.

P.S. You can get an apartment here for less than the price of a room in San Francisco.

Reflections on the Longest Walk

2008-04-30T06:49:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning thinking about the very powerful work that is getting done on the Longest Walk. The young people who spoke about how the Walk was changing their lives, the people who received us in their different communities, the mix of ethnicities and cultures, the power of the land and the spirits of the land that we encounter in the walk.

Of course, there is difficulty--the usual interpersonal conficts that occur when a group of people are thrown together for any length of time. Some people complained about the 'negativity' of some of the people---but this 'negativity' has the potential to be part of the healing process of the Walk. (Also,kind of ironic--complaining about negativity!)

Road Trip from Arizona to Texas Photos

2008-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

Houston International Festival

2008-04-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Some random pics from the Houston International Festival.

This year's theme: "Out of Africa", celebrating the African and African-American experience.

Houston, Texas

2008-04-26T06:37:00.001-07:00

Took the Greyhound bus to Houston Texas where I will visit my friends Mike and Nic for awhile, two musicians from San Francisco who have bought an apartment building here and are having a go at being bigtime landlords.

I haven't been to Houston for thirty years. It's as hot and muggy as I remember it, though somewhat nicer--green and fashionable neighborhoods I never had a chance to visit the first time around.

My friends live in Cloverleaf, on the edge of Houston. Mexican restaurants, thrift stores, various businesses catering to automobiles, some with big signs with pictures of Jesus next to radiators and American flags saying "God Bless My Business, God Bless America."

I have decided to rejoin the Longest Walk later on.

Here's a picture of a Cloverleaf cat.

Austin Again

2008-04-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

Back to Austin for several days where, this time without the bad cold, I could actually better appreciate my cuzns and the city of Austin, which has a relaxed flavor and a distinctly colorful architectural style which I liked.

We spent earth day in a small town outside of Austin, enjoying the exhibits, fishing for crawdads in a tiny plastic pool, riding on a glass bottom boat, and sitting on the grass listening to country and bluegrass music.

I am thinking a lot about my Texan ancestors since I've been here--hearing some of the fiddling of my great-grandfather in the bluegrass music, looking at maps and actually putting locations to the names of places I'd only heard about.

My cuzns wife Nina--a new cousin-- has been most hospitable. An engineer who became a later mother, she's dealing with two very young children in her early forties.

Ani, the baby, has discovered her index finger, and uses it frequently to point out the wonders of the world, accompanying the finger with excited indecipherable baby noises.

Eagle Pass, Texas

2008-04-26T06:21:00.001-07:00

Drove down to Eagle Pass, Texas from Austin, to visit the Texas Kickapoo. Some of my ancestors may have been Kickapoo. so this was a special trip for me.

Eagle Pass is a sleepy little border town which has pretty much been absorbed by Mexico. Most people in town are of Mexican ancestry and speak Spanish--very few 'guero' faces here, outside of mine.

I found a delightful bed and breakfast called Weyrich Farms, a sprawling green pecan farm on the edge of the Rio Grande, run by two tall Texan ladies, mother and daughter. Leah (daughter) and I spent some time chillin on the edge of the Rio Grand, her drinking bourbon and me water, laughing and talking about where life takes you. I also went for long walks with their dogs, one with four legs and the other with three.

Spent a lot of time recuperating from my cold.

Finally got ahold of the Kickapoo tribal chairman for an interview at the end of the week. They are busy rebuilding their morale and finances after the corruption fiasco of a few years ago.

The Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino slot machines gave me some money for my trip. That was nice.

Austin, Texas

2008-04-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

My father arrived in Window Rock after the walk. From there we drove to a motel in Gallup, and then hit the road early the next morning for the long drive to Austin, Texas, to visit cousins.

Unfortunately, I arrived in Texas with a bad cold and have been fighting it for the last week.

My father has since returned to L.A., while I have stayed here trying to recuperate and also catching up on life with my cousin, who has two delightful daughters I hadn't met before. Carina, four, who is exploring the world the way four year olds do, and a joyful one year old named Ani.

His mother Anne Marie ,is also here. She was nineteen when my uncle married her and is now sixty eight. Always a gracious and thoughtful person, even more now that she's aged.
We watched some old movies she made of her and her kids over the years.

An interesting trip down memory lane for all of us. Hard to believe how many grey hairs we all have now.

Good to catch up with all of them. Anne Marie and I talked about how you can tell whether or not a person has "followed their blueprint" in life--which to me seems to be the ultimate measure of success. Did you grow the way you were meant to and blossom in a way that is natural to you, or did you find yourself sidetracked, or stuck in the wrong box?

Fortunately, it seems to me that for the most part my family members all seem to have followed their original blueprints.

Navajo Nation: Window Rock

2008-04-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

After a couple of days rest in Ganado, it was finally a day to walk.

My father had given up on the tent and taken a motel in Gallup. I stayed with the walkers.

We did around twelve miles, and were joined by local people from the rez--young and old, on feet, in wheelchairs, everybody moving towards Window Rock as the Buddhist monks and nuns kept time with their drum.

I made some new friends. One of them, also named Lisa, had a sore foot and wasn't going to walk, but she was asked to drum with the Buddhists, so walked anyway. She lived on the reservation. This was the first time she had left her 5 kids for any substantial amount of time. Her husband was taking care of the kids while she walked.

She says she'll go as long as this arrangement seems to work.

This was the first day of 'serious' walking for me. The beginning and end were fine--the worst part was in the middle. I also realized that I brought too much weight in my bag.

On the way, I spoke to another woman from the rez who had gone to California to live and then returned. "It's good to be home," she said.

We were greeted at Window Rock by speeches by members of the Navajo tribal council and others--and of course, food.

The welcome and appreciation the walkers have received from communities along the way has been phenomenal.

Navajo Nation: Canyon de Chelly

2008-04-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

The Dine say that Canyon de Chelly is the center of Navajo Nation. Unfortunately, it does not legally belong to them, but to the US Park Service. We gathered in a forested area just outside the canyon, listened to speakers talk about the canyon, and ate.

Afterwards, we piled onto several pick-up trucks that drove us across the shallow river. One of them got stuck. Once in the canyon, the walkers sang The Longest Song--a song they sing at every community they stop at, each time adding a new verse. The verse here was: "Dine Nation is where we are, Canyon de Chelly is their home."

I found myself in tears again in the Canyon. Somehow the overwhelming magnificence of the canyon mixed with some of the residual grief I was feeling about Denise's suicide, as well as the power, sorrow and the beauty of the Navajo people, and I was caught in one of those painfully aware moments of the exquisite contradictions of this thing we call life.

I had to leave the circle of singing and stand by myself for awhile, next to the river. Behind me I heard someone say, " That's Mother Earth, crying through her."

Navajo Nation: Ganado Chapter/Window Rock

2008-04-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

At Ganado, I convinced my father to set up his new tent and try camping out, something he hadn't done for probably 40 years. It was pretty funny, the two of us wrestling with how to set up this tent neither of us understood, while the wind blew us and the tent all over the place in the high desert of the Navajo Nation.

Finally, a friendly young Japanese guy helped us out.

I was very impressed with my Dad's willingness to try new things--but then he's always been that way.

The walkers had a couple of days off, so Dad and I went to Window Rock, where we visited the zoo and the Navajo Museum. Unfortunately, the main exhibit of the museum was closed, but the zoo was lovely--the animals, each with a partner, seemed relaxed and well taken care of.

Navajo Nation: Greasewood Chapter

2008-04-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

So my father and I drove across Arizona, to Flagstaff, where we joined with the Longest Walk Two, who we found already walking down the highway to the Greasewood Chapter of the Navajo Nation.

A few more walkers had joined the group, which is now up to about 175. Only about 50 of these were walking when we caught up with them--at any given time, some of the walkers will be on kitchen or clean up duty and not walking.

It was good to see familiar faces from six weeks ago, when I walked in California--Emmet, the 76 year old runner, Julia, who seemed a little overburdened with responsiblities, Tony Galli from Pit River who had introduced me to the walk, looking windblown and tired but happy, young Andrea from DQ still striding along calmly. And of course Dennis, fiery as ever as he speaks to the group and reminds them of why they are walking.

Some of the people who had said they were going to do the whole walk had dropped out. Not surprising--this is not an easy endeavor, not just for the physical challenge, but for the emotioinal challenge of a multi-cultured multi-generational bunch of people thrown together on a strenous walk.

At Greasewood Chapter, two elderly Dine women sang, and then we danced. I was moved nearly to tears.

Leaving L.A.

2008-03-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've convinced my Dad, who will soon be celebrating his 76th birthday, to join me for a few days on the Longest Walk. Today we are driving out to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we will spend the night. Tomorrow we join the walkers.

Springtime in LA

2008-03-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

A Response from Denise and Two More Poems

2008-03-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

The sudden death of a friend is never easy, but especially challenging if it has been murder or suicide.

Now that I have been through this a few times, I know something about the stages of grief you go through--denial, anger, eventual acceptance, and in the case of suicide--guilt. ("I should have known, I should have been able to do something.")

But I forget that each death brings its own particular grieving. This one hit me on a very physical level, like my body and soul had been slammed by a truck.

But each death or loss also brings its own teaching. I know that the only way to really 'get it' is to go through the grief, to not get stuck in denial. So I have let myself have all my emotions and internal conversations about guilt and anger and pain and loss and even humour.

Then there are the conversations with Denise. Many people have talked and written about "after-death communication". What exactly this is we can't really know, whether it is our own hopes and feelings attached to mere synchonicities, or genuine communication from the beyond. My own belief says probably a combination of the two, since my own belief about the immediate afterlife is that we simply change form.

There is even a form of grief therapy now called "Induced After Death Communcation", where the patient is encouraged to 'get in touch' with their lost loved one.

So in the first few days after I found out about her death, I was hearing a running conversation with her in my mind. Some of it was painful, some of it comforting, some of it was funny. Just like Denise herself. "Death is painful but not as painful as life," she said. And "don't bother me, I'm busy with my family." And: "Lots of good-looking sailors over here."

Maybe it was just me talking to my own memories, maybe not. Guess I won't know til I get to wherever she is.

At one moment when I was in the middle of yet another argument with her inside my head, I said, "Okay fine, if you are really
are still out there somewhere communicating with me, prove it. send me another email...Ha, I bet you can't do that, can you? I don't mean some kind of internal dialogue thing, I mean a REAL message."

And then I sat back, smugly with my arms folded, waiting for what I knew was impossible to happen. In a few moments, I'll check my email and see if she really did send something, ha ha, which of course I knew she can't, then we'll be done with this After Death Communication hallucination once and for all.

These are the strange mental Grand Canyons grief sends you into.

At that very moment a hummingbird flew up to my window, and hovered the way hummingbirds do, their wings moving rapidly keeping them in one place. It stayed long enough to stare for a few long seconds directly into my eyes. Then it disappeared, rapidly, the way hummingbirds do.

And I felt the fluttering of these wings deep inside me, lifting me and making me laugh.

Thank you, I said.

Some messages don't end up in your computer, but in your heart, where they belong.

And we don't really know who sends them, do we?

------

Two more poems, send by Denise last year:

Poem: "Goldfinches" by Mary Oliver from Owls and
> Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press.
>
> Goldfinches
>
> Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument
> at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe,
> or
> perhaps just to dip their heads and look at
> themselves,
> and they were having trouble with who should be
> first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood
> in
> the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the
> old
> holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or
> are
> these birds really just that, bells come to us—come
> to
> this road in America—let us bow our heads and
> remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer.
> Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a
> good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings open—
> ing from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny
> feet,
> all washed, clasping the air.
>
>
>

> Poem: "Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking before
> Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press. Reprinted with
> permission.
>
> Trust
>
> It's like so many other things in life
> to which you must say no or yes.
> So you take your car to the new mechanic.
> Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
>
> The package left with the disreputable-looking
> clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
> the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
> all show up at their intended destinations.
>
> The theft that could have happened doesn't.
> Wind finally gets where it was going
> through the snowy trees, and the river, even
> when frozen, arrives at the right place.
>
> And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
> is delivered, even though you can't read the
address.

Earth to Denise

2008-03-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Earth to Denise:

I am sorry that you had to leave so soon.

I am sorry that beauty of who you were to all of us was not enough to convince you to stick around.

I have 61 emails that still remain in the 'sent' file of my email--my responses to emails that you sent, with your originals.

You frequently started your emails to me with "Earth to Lisa" because I was always flying around the world.

Like our long conversations on the phone, or our conversations over drinks at Vesuvio in North Beach, the emails held the things that were important to us and passed them back and forth--the freedom and challenge of becoming 'older women', making a living, men, rants about the state of the world and about the difficulty of finding hairstyles that worked,kindness, love, old North Beach poets, and being a white woman and a black woman in today's America. And poetry. Lots of poetry.

Thank you for holding the things that mattered in our all of our conversations. Thank you for all the hope and inspiration, the wise and kind words you were able to give to others but not yourself. And thank you, most of all--for the ability we shared to laugh our way out of well, almost anything.

I knew we were good friends because we could get really angry with each other and laugh about it later.

And yeah,I let myself have one last argument you when I found out about this. Yelling at you from inside my car driving through the Berkeley streets, a shout from this painful messed up and exquisite earth that keeps us here and teaches us over and over again about letting go until finally just maybe we get it (or not) and then it is our own turn to go...

Like most of us here on planet earth, I am selfish. I wanted you to stick around for
awhile. I wanted us to learn how to be old ladies together, still laughing about 'going out to North Beach and picking up sailors." I wanted
more poems, more evenings at Vesuvio, more delectable meals in which
you complain, again, about how much you love to eat.

But it was not to be. So fly, little bird. Fly home.

I will miss you.

Lisa

sent June,2007:

Lisa;
>
> I must be getting really old because I am sitting
> around in the middle of the day with so many
> important chores left undone while I amuse myself
> with these lovely little corny poems.
>
> And I thought I would share ...
>
> Denise
>
> p.s. ...this one must be read out loud, and don't
> worry about people thinking that you're crazy,
> because it's a well established fact by this point
> :- )
>
>
> Poem: "Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister
> Pond" by Mary Oliver from Owls and Other Fantasies:
> Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press. Reprinted with
> permission.
>
>
> As for life
> I'm humbled,
> I'm without words
> sufficient to say
>
> how it has been hard as flint,
> and soft as a spring pond
> both of these
> and over and over,
>
> and long pale afternoons besides,
> and so many mysteries
> beautiful as eggs in a nest,
> still unhatched
>
> though warm and watched over
> by something I have never seen—
> a tree angel, perhaps,
> or a ghost of holiness.
>
> Every day I walk out into the world
> to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
> It suffices, it is all comfort—
> along with human love,
>
> dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
> sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
> flying among the scarlet flowers.
> There is hardly time to think about
>
> stopping, and lying down at last
> to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
> yet to come, when
> time will brim over the singular pond, and become
> forever,
>
> and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
> As for death,
> I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
> can you?

sent September, 2006

Around the corner I have a friend,
> In this great city that has no end,
> Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
> And before I know it, a year is gone. And I never
> see my old friends face,
> For life is a swift and terrible race,
> He knows I like him just as well,
> As in the days when I rang his bell.
> And he rang mine but we were younger then,
> And now we are busy, tired men.
> Tired of playing a foolish game,
> Tired of trying to make a name.
> "Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim .
> Just to show that I'm thinking of him."
> But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
> And distance between us grows and grows.
> Around the corner, yet miles away,
> "Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today .
> And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
> Around the corner, a vanished friend.
> Remember to always say what you mean. If
> you love someone, tell
> them. Don't be afraid to express yourself. Reach out
> and tell someone what
> they mean to you. Because when you decide that it is
> the right time it might
> be too late. Seize the day. Never have regrets.And
> most importantly, stay
> close to your friend s and family, for they have
> helped
> make you the person that you are today !
>
>

Sudden Death

2008-03-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

I have delayed my trip to join the longest walk for a few more days because of the sudden death of a close friend. I'll be spending some time with family first.

More later.

Next: The Longest Walk Two, Across the U.S.A.

2008-03-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

In just a few days I'll be re-joining The Longest Walk Two, which started here in the Bay Area with a sunrise ceremony at Alcatraz, and is now several miles south of here, near Twenty-Nine Palms, California. This Native-led group is walking across the United States in five months, to bring attention to sacred sites, indigenous issues and our treatment of Mother Earth here in the U. S.A. It's called "two", because it commemorates the first Longest Walk in 1978, when the U.S. tried to anull all of the treaties it had with Native nations.

I started out with them three weeks ago in the Bay Area, and walked for three days. Many, many interesting people on the walk, of all ages and ethnicities. June, a 60 year old Buddhist nun, has been doing similar walks for 30 years. For her, it is a practice that, unlike meditation, takes her out into the community. Emmet (His Many Lightings), is a 76 year old runner who started marathon running when he was 40, and hasn't quit since.

As one man on the walk said, "There are a thousand people in your heart you haven't met yet."

I think I'll meet a few of them on this walk.

The Longest Walk Two website is http://www.sacredrun.org

These Retro Times

2008-02-01T13:57:00.001-08:00

Mask of Flowers
Originally uploaded by lisa.garrigues

Mercury, the planet of communication and short trips, is retrograde again, and will be until February 18. The usual response to this from astro-believers is panic and paralysis: don't sign any contracts, be extra-careful when you drive, and be prepared for cell phone glitches and computer meltdowns. People go around irritably muttering the mantra of "Mercury retro Mercury retro" under their breaths, because the "backward" motion of this planet seems to make speaking to anybody but ourselves highly problematic.
But that, I think,is the point of these Mercury retrograde periods: slow down,revise, review,reflect. Spend some time talking to yourself. Don't be in such a hurry to get places, get ahead, get over, or get your message across. I for one,welcome them, though I understand that the speedaholic demands of Our American Life conflict with what the universe may want from us, which is perhaps more a dance of balance, of breathing in and out, than an endless pushing forward.

Monkey on My Back

2008-01-29T22:54:00.001-08:00

PICT0353
Originally uploaded by lisa.garrigues

Somewhere near Pilcopata, Peru, with a monkey on my back, in 2007.

Remembering a hot day in the jungle from cold and wet San Francisco.

Northwest Light

2007-09-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

The sunlight in Washington State is like a rare jewel when it arrives, sparkling clean and pure on the evergreen trees, shimmering a luminescent blue with streaks of gold on the Dungeness spit as the sun slowly falls behind the horizon.

A spit is a long stretch of skinny land that juts out into the ocean water. It doesn't have a very romantic sound--and when you look at it on a map knowing its name it does kind of look like a long thread of spit that some giant standing on the mainland let fly.

But actually standing on the sand of the spit you are in a landscape of mist that huddles up next to you,then moves back to reveal in the near distance a boat, a tree, a heron, before sliding on again to reshape itself and the landscape.

This is not San Francisco coastside fog, with its harsh and often incessant wind. This is something far more delicate--it paints the landscape around you with a misty brush, shifting and changing, like a Japanese watercolor.

Evergreens shrouded in wise silence, punctuated by persistently conversational ravens. Long and cool narrow beaches scattered with white clam shells resembling the small hard wings of angels.

The angels may not always be visible, but they have left us, in this physical world, with tokens, reminders, evidence of their presence.

I walk the beach collecting these hard white wings in my hands,following the fluctuating presence of light. At the end of my walk, I let them fall again, emptying my hands for whatever is next.

Shopping for George Bush Terrorism and other Deals

2007-09-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

I just love the creative ways my computer has come up with to get me to buy things. When I googled for information related to my last post, here's what it came up with:

Shopping for George Bush Torture Terrorism 2007?

Find George Bush Torture Terrorism 2007 any many other great deals at MonsterMarketplace!

Wow, sign me up.

But seriously folks, I've realized I need to do a serious about face about George Bush. Instead of constantly maligning him as many of us lefties have been doing for the past eight years, I need to thank him.

Yes, thank him. For showing me the shadow side of my own country, and of myself. For galvanizing a lot of us into creating better alternatives. For our country, ourselves, and our world.

So, GW, my dear sweet enemy-teacher, thank you.

Now would you please leave?

frog in the boiling water

2007-09-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you throw a frog into the boiling water, it will feel the pain of the water. If you put the frog in the water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog gets accustomed to it, doesn't feel the pain, and doesn't notice the water is boiling.

This story has come up several times for me in my travels back and forth to the U.S, as I jump in and out of the water.
Every time I return it seems the water has been turned up a bit more, and no one is noticing. A few years ago, when it surfaced that the U.S. may have been using torture for terrorism suspects, there was a lot of press and discussion. Some relatively low level folks were arrested. There was outrage. Now it just seems to be part of the common knowledge: yeah folks, that 's just the way it is.

Then there's the domestic spying, on peace activists, journalists, etc. It was good in a way to read media validation of what most of us already suspected. But what's being done about it now?

The other news that caught my attention is an article about the epidemic of obesity in this country, primarily among poor people, folks that live in Mississippi and Washington DC. And of course many of us in this country are carrying a few extra pounds.

What it all amounts to, INHP,is a kind of collective bloatedness, which is physically made manifest in certain communities and individuals. As if the layers of flesh on our bodies were a metaphor for the layer of numbness we seem to need to survive here. We consume a lot, yes, but what are we consuming? In the case of the poor diabetic folks in Mississippi, a most likely a lot of junk. Poison.

We should probably ask ourselves, with so many people gaining so much weight, what are we hungry for?

I also notice more desperation, more obsession with security. Has it always been this way and I haven't noticed, or is this a change? We are so highly trained in our individualism that we have forgotten how to find security in one another.

Okay, I'm on my soapbox ranting again. Forgive me. These are just my froggy observations.

At the same time that I am noticing all this, I have to also say that I am seeing increasing pockets of change and inspiration, like new plant growth sprouting up in a decaying sidewalk.

And our collective head and heart turning towards the wounding of the planet may be a sign of our own healing.

Stopping to Hear the Song

2007-07-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Whew, I'd also forgotten how fast everything here runs, how time-poor many Americans are. Those that are the working poor are running to pay their bills, and the rich, well they are also running to pay their bills, they just have higher bills. And of course everyone in debt. It's the American way.

So okay I checked out of the afternoon classes I teach to go to the dentist (more bills) and sit down in a cafe afterwards and watch people walking by. Maybe I'd had too much wine, I don't know, but all of a sudden it felt like I was being hit by little hammers of clarity, bam bam bam. In the sixties I had to take acid to get these kind of insights, you know, the kind you can't remember afterwards, but now all it takes is a sip or two of Chardonnay. Okay, it takes the whole damned glass.

So one of the many insights I had in this insightful afternoon was that I suddenly began hearing the individual songs of people. I mean as each person moved by me, I could literally hear their individual rhythm and voice call out to me... some people were kind of shlub schlub schlub, you know the fat guy with his shirt out and some messy notebooks under his arm ambling along, and others had high clear notes, perhaps with a little percussion to accompany them, like that high cheekboned blue-eyed Swedish girl with her pony tail pulled back swish swish swishing in the breeze, and her heels going clackety clack.

Suddenly I wanted not just silent me there observing all this, but the whole band to play it out loud. I wanted to round up a group of my musician friends so we could play back the songs of people as they passed.

Stop and try it sometimes, and see what you hear.

Glut

2007-06-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

What is always a cultural shock coming back to the US of A is the amazing abundance of stuff we swim in on a daily basis...physical stuff, food stuff, informational stuff. And here in the Bay Area, I might add the rich and densely packed cultural mix we live in..anglos, francos, italianos, latinos, african-americans, asians of all persuasians, muslims, jews, indians from india, american indians. Amazing.

It is rich, it is beautiful, and yet I think it can also contribute to a kind of numbing out, a kind of overload. Most certainly, living here, we rarely step back to appreciate the abundance of stuff we have.

I am always astonished, returning from the developing world, to see television sets, sofas, CD players, boxes of books, just left out on street corners for anyone to pick up. The variety of mustards we can buy if we are so inclined, to put in our refrigerators. The fact that we even have refrigerators. Holy shit.

Nobody Goes Anywhere Anymore, We Just Transmute

2007-05-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Is "transmute" a word, or is it "transform"? My English is suffering, I'm afraid, after the year and a half speaking Spanish and the occasional pidgeon Quechua.

I am now physically in Berkeley, Ca. Yes these are my arms and legs and this is my head and I do believe I am all here in one piece.

Yet I go to this electronic box..and presto changeo..here are my friends in Peru, Argentina, Colombia! With all of their passion and problems and interests, just as I left them before. With You-tube I can even see them dancing or hiking or doing inane things around the house if they want me to.

In our electronic world, we don't go anywhere anymore, we just transform ourselves into bits and bytes, into emails or jpeg images or You-tube videos and do our work or hang out with our friends that way.
In Bolivia once, I traveled by bus with a 19 year old and reminisced a bit about what it was like travelling for me at her age. "Yeah," she said, her eyes wide like I had been to the North Pole and back in a bathing suit, "You traveled before there was email!"

Closing the Circle

2007-05-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ironically, now that I am back "home" in the San Francisco Bay Area, I will probably blog more. I realize my entries during this last trip have been pretty thin. Probably because a great deal of my writing energy was caught up in doing journalism, and my energy was also caught up in simply moving from place to place. Homelessness as an art form.

Constantly writing in internet cafes didn't help my "reflective writing" much, either, though it was fine for writing articles. Usually I went to the internet cafes with the article already written in longhand, and then braved the noise (screaming little boys with video games, loudtalking tourists) and confusion and chaos of the place to enter what I had written. But this was probably better than the risk of carrying a laptop from place to place.

In many ways, the return from a long trip like this is often the most important time for me, it is a time of closing the circle, of seeing and digesting what the trip has actually given me, and perhaps also reviewing what, if anything, I have been able to bring to the place I have visited.

Some people talk a lot about the importance of staying in your own community, or with your own "people" (whoever the hell they are)and doing your work there. But for some of us, that is not at all our path. The concept of the traveler--the travelling healer, the messenger, the chaski--seems to be much more accepted in South America than in the North. And it is not just young people who do it. Here, with our mortage payments and our debt and our need to have "stuff", it is much more difficult.

Some people who choose to move around a lot do it in a more linear fashion, moving from one place to the next, and shedding like skins the lives they have set up in various places. But I have always been a more circular traveler, with the point of return being this multi-layered, multi-cultural place called the San Francisco Bay Area.

It is spring, and the weather is good. Here in the East Bay, the flowers are blooming. Welcome home, they seem to say.