New Orleans French Quarter Photos

Houston Art Car Show

Auto-motive Houstonians

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

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

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

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

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

Houston International Festival

Some random pics from the Houston International Festival.

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

Houston, Texas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A Response from Denise and Two More Poems

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Home Again

..and what exactly is that thing called "Home"?

I am in Los Angeles, the place of my birth, after a year and a half of South America. Every time I leave for a long period and return to the States it's like falling into a time warp. I return, read the magazines and newspapers and sometimes have no idea what they are talking about. What? A black man and a white woman as front runners in the presidential race? Schwarzzeneger on the cover of Time promoting environmentalism? (In his way of course, without any of those "girly" hybrid cars that might cause men's penises to fall off or something). New techie terms and tv shows I don't recognize...it's all like returning from a very long dream.

And yet, this time I am actually feeling positive about my return. Newsweek had a piece by a man who noticed how many people around him, particularly "conservatives" who had done an about face in their lives and politics. This is happening, he says, because people in the States are suddenly getting it that we are connected to the rest of the world.

Yes. I'm all for that.

And these huge supermarkets, with this abundance of food and variety. As well as the abundance and variety of different nations and ethnic groups represented on the streets...this is what the US of A has going for it, among other things. And this white guy Imus has been fired for trashtalking some black female basketball players, opening up a renewed dialogue about racism and sexism in our language and how much we let people, black and white, get away with it.

Yes. I'm all for that too.

Bolivian Education : A Long Way To Go

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I've been having long talks with Marta Orozco, a friend who lives down the street, and a longtime acivist in indigenous movements here. She was one of the people who resurrected the ceremony of the Aymaran New Year in Tiwanaku, along with about 30 others from South America, and 5 from Canada. Also one of the first to bring in the Wiphala flag as the symbol of indigenous movements here. She is very warm, friendly, and also has very strong opinions, especially about the negative role of the Catholic Church on indigenous people.

Today her 16 year old son Huascar joined us in our conversation, and we talked a little about education in Bolivia. He says no Quechua or Aymara,the two main Native languages here, are taught in the schools. The books are there, but there's no one to teach the languages. Marta tells me that last year when he insisted on wearing his Chullo, the traditional Andean wool cap, to school, his teachers all told him he couldn't do it. The textbooks give pretty much the European viewpoint of view of the Conquest, though some of his teachers will add their own opinions. Former education minister Felix Patzi was trying to change things, bring more teachers of Native languages into the school system, etc. but he's no longer minister and now Huascar feels that everything has been left "up in the air." Some felt Patzi was trying to go to fast and was unrealistic about what could actually be done.

Indians here were not allowed to learn to read and write until 1952. I've heard stories about hands being chopped off and all kinds of atrocious punishments given to those who tried to learn, as well as to their teachers.

Morales has his work cut out for him.

Splat

It's carnival time in Bolivia...which means the streets of La Paz are packed with tiny kids shooting white foam out of waterpistols bigger than they are, teenagers in red t shirts drenching each other with waterbuckets, masks, yells, laughter, and the rumba rumba rumba of the Bolivian marching bands that have by now become almost background noise to me.

I'm installed in the Sagarnaga Linares district of La Paz, where I can walk down the cobblestoned streets in the morning to a buffet breakfast at the Sarai Hotel and then in to one of the internet cafes to work or just meander through the Net.

But during carnival time you have to be careful, because one of those little kids or teenagers is likely to see you as a potential target:splat.

In the nearby Plaza San Francisco, some miners from Huanuni and their family members have been staging demonstrations, climbing up on the front of the cathedral, and roping themselves to crucifixion crosses. Apparantly Morales wants to take them away from the mines they have been working as cooperatistas and send them to a different region, where there isn´t as much money.