Some Reasons I Woke Up At 4:30AM

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)

Comforting Human Noise

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.

Silence Is Golden

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.

From California: Flickring

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

These Retro Times

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.

Stopping to Hear the Song

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.

Closing the Circle

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.