roots up and evolve

It's crystal clear to me, the feeling filling and flowing out of my mundane marrow. the theme of reinvention is back - blasting with effervescence out of my mouth as I pound the stair stepping machine at the gym, glinting off the faint sharp smiles of bicyclists trying to outrun the gathering thunderstorm, I smell it from the sunburned trees on a planet with diminishing amounts of ozone, I see it in the bank of televisions where celebrities' boobs compete with dead children strewn in a nameless street, in a world where we STILL manufacture the lead additive that used to go in gasoline, I read it between the lines of economists setting national environmental policy, I hear it sliding down the ever-fresh powder at indoor ski resorts in desert countries, it lies behind the advice that you've got to see Las Vegas once before you die... The chance to reinvent is there in all the cognitive dissonance which is driving us crazy as a culture - every time we can't stomach something and see no one else working to change it, even though we're pretty sure they can't stomach it either.

is it so bad to be tired of fighting to preserve the world as we know it? is it so terrible to let it go? how much before we know it's enough? how many presidential elections do we need to see go past with a group of old white talking heads babbling about a smaller group of old white men who are constrained by other old white men behind the scenes? when do we get local - starting with our arteries and veins, our skin, our clothes, our loved ones, the houses we live in and the block we live on, our ideas about what will make us happy, our hopes and fears about companionship, our biological compulsions? when can we carry a global consciousness without sinking our lives into global struggles that are complexifying without end? when can we stop being co-opted out of radical action by putting energy into politicized debate between two meaningless, polarized options? when can we have the courage to see past the illusion of economic growth as salvation and see a significant downsizing of humanity's footprint as a basic starting point?

yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm some guy behind a computer screen who's belly-achin' about the world while he sits on his butt and types. But please listen, 'cause we've got to talk, gotta get some common ground in our public discussions, gotta get some science on the front pages mixed in with some talk about how we want the world to be in even as short a time as 50 years from now. I get nervous when I see bad science out there, I get nervous when I see an absence of long-term thinking in public policy, I get nervous when I feel the Us and Them mentality coming from us and them.

Where is all my angst coming from? My neighbor is a wonderfully sweet woman with an equally sweet five year old daughter. When I see Faeron, I want to be able to say that I did what I could today to make the world a more liveable place for her when she grows up. I really, really want that. I know we all do. But we're not doing that, nor do we really know how. There are so many people around the globe, living life based on such widely different sets of information (religious dogma, political dogma, fear of scarcity, gluttony of surplus, racist anger, etc.) that it's unimaginable to me to get us all on the same page. Could we even get close to a unified agenda to save ourselves? Could we get an agreed upon analysis of what we're doing in the ecosystem and what that might mean for our future? Could we admit to the darker, fearful part of ourselves and try to bring them out to the light of day?

I don't know, but I have hope. It's not hope grounded in a talk show host giving cars away to audience members for feel-good ratings. It's not pictures that kids drew with crayons showing how much they like endangered species. It's not about rebuilding New Orleans. It's not about Kyoto anything. It's about starting with small is beautiful. It's about waking up and remembering to be grateful to be alive and have all the things I have. It's about thinking about the consequences of my actions in the short and long term, and having the courage to follow my heart in choosing what to do. It's about the precautionary principle - going slow and taking it easy before doing things or creating new things with possibly huge ramifications. It's about the Hippocratic oath, and aiming to be kind. It's about turning off the 500 channels of vapid babble and turning to the person next to us instead. It's about discovering gentle and tough love inside ourselves. It's about leading thoughtful, informed lives where we take ownership for our actions. For me, it's about feeling like I'm in it with all of you - we can always do better when we help each other out. You're the one I've been waiting for...

tangled (perhaps beautiful) solipsism

rhapsodic explosion of late spring has swallowed the earth from the ground up with reiterative solos of lilac, tulips, and jasmine, some staccato storms to enhance the sweetness of John Cage silent grass growing thick and rich under the trembling oversized maples, we're walking on narrow paths of concrete, reduced to the background because the panning away shot reveals magnificence of nature overtaking us in budding and branching delight, at least in that fabled fourth dimension as we peer into the cloudy brass spyglass to vainly preview the future. summer holds forever secrets, unknowable to us probably even as they are realized and fade away, our prefrontal cortex trapped behind our eyes reveals only our narrowly imagined possibilities

our hands calloused from digging, tongues tired from healing, legs sleepy from walking, ears in rapture from believing all come together to lay out under the stars and join the dirt dandelions lawns, just for a moment tangential but different because of the coincidental variation in our atomic structure... watching tufted seeds drift as spring snow, I momentarily interpret reality as slowing, perhaps the universe has slowed it's acceleration outward away from us and is having a bit of buyer's remorse about committing to this whole Big Bang thing - why would it speed away from children with ice cream, puppies, wise smiles of the dying, the imprecise but perfect crash of tides, faded blue throw rugs in evening sunlight, a large group of homo sapiens trying to figure out the Mystery, bears inadvertently breeding apples with their choices, or a tired wooden bench by a still lake where we meet from time to time?

no messages, just a wafer thin cross section of the morning wrapped in wondering just how much we'll ever know, and how much divine action there is to appreciate on this unique sphere that carries all of our dream shots out over the fences in left field...

thousands of words

A few pictures for visual tidbits of where my life and southern Ontario overlap. Hmmm... where to begin?

You know, after a long winter, you go and hop on your bike, and something's just not quite right. You realize that maybe you forgot to oil the chain in the fall or something like that - it's all frozen up and you just can't ride it.

Really, Ontario is just like anywhere else. You know, you go to a party where there's a soymilk tasting by the farmer who grew the organic soybeans himself and then made soymilk from them. It's totally like Palo Alto here. Even the weather is... really... well... um, see above picture of bike.

One of the many splendid views of the Georgian Bay from the cliffs along the shore. This is part of the Niagara Escarpment - a jagged seam of tectonic goodness that runs up through New York state (Ithaca Falls!) and through Ontario. It is what creates Niagara Falls, as well as the cliffs along the Bruce Peninsula where I am in this picture. It is the peninsula that sticks up between the Georgian Bay on it's east side and Lake Huron on the west side. If you're not sure where this is, don't worry - no one else in America is either (I didn't until I looked at the maps to go here). Get out the maps and brush up on the Great Lakes, and you'll see where I was at.

Another view of gorgeous coastline, in the Bruce Peninsula National Park. Look at how clear the water is! You really just want to jump right in, because it honestly looks like the Caribbean all along the shore, except for the large shelves of sedimentary rock that make up the beaches. If you were to dip your toes in, though, a balmy five degree Celsius bath would await you. We went in for a little less than a minute, and then dressed quickly in the sunshine. The days we visited were sunny but only 12 or 13 degrees Celsius. (Oh, why does Chris torture me so with SI units of temperature? Why??? Okay, it's 54 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit).

Me and my companion for three days in the beautiful, quiet, and peaceful environment of the Bruce Peninsula. Emily and I had a lovely time!

Things besides these pictures - I'm learning to play guitar, learning how to make yogurt and cheese, practicing throwing more pottery on the wheel, planting a few trees, doing bike repairs, learning a bit about arborist work, planning a weekend bike tour, putting the "u" back in colour, and trying to keep myself out of trouble. What are you doing these days? Write and let me know...

Over, north, and out.

think globally, act splendidly

It's hard not to have some fear, in a world with more people all the time sharing a decreasing amount of good stuff. The math isn't rocket science - smaller pizza divided by more people at the party equals, at the least, an embarrassed host and more likely some hungry guests. But the ways in which we feel it manifest around us are numerous and constantly evolving like endless flakes in an April nor'easter.

Education - To get into university or graduate school, you have to look better than the other candidates, of whom there are more now than ever. Your parents know/feel this when they sign you up for competitive entry kindergarten programs that have homework and achievement tests (yikes!). The teenagers feel it when they do 163 extra-curricular activities on top of their already large homework burden. The college graduate feels it when she knows she has to come from a big name school, have excelled there, worked for the U.N., spent time doing field work with hardworking indigenous people somewhere below the equator, have 8 years work experience packed into 3, and have an undergraduate thesis as long as a Tolstoy novel. This is competition for a scarce resource (grad programs and big time schools) to ensure our seat at the table in a class- and scarcity- conscious society. I'm not speaking for or against schooling as an institution (eye-rolling is allowed here), but I think the education system is clearly being affected as it becomes a scarce resource.

Food - Speaks for itself. We see the images on TV still, with children far away not getting enough calories to survive and thrive. It's happening here in North America too, especially in big cities and in the rural South. I know we're all aware of how restaurants and stores toss food away, but how do we feel about throwing away food in a world of hungry folks? We're privileged by accident of being born where we were, and others are hungry because of the same random placement in countries that begin with the letter Z.

I'm not sure what to make of the scarcity thing, besides to recognize that we all feel it at the edge of our fields of vision. It's the background in the wars that rage about access to water and food, oil and minerals. It affects us here in housing prices in desirable neighborhoods, the gangs of politicians in L.A. and Phoenix engaged in turf wars for water control, huge numbers of applicants for underpaid non-profit menial jobs, paving national parks so more RVs can come in each year, oxygen bars to compensate for terrible air quality outdoors, and much more...

If nothing else, I see the manifest scarcity in the world as a call for cooperation and being honest with ourselves about our collective predicament. We can plan towards a more positive future if we accept where we're at, namely that there are more of us on the earth than the fragile ecosystem can ever support in a long-term sense (more than one more generation, I think). By positive, I'm not promising that all will be sunshine and suburban soccer leagues. Instead I mean acting based on the best information we have in the present, combined with wanting a healthy and satisfying future for all us homo sapiens, not a small group of us at the expense of others. I mean recognizing that working ever more feverishly to advance our immediate physical comfort and security, we are generally decreasing everyone's ability to have a liveable, pleasant future. Overfishing to stock up against a future famine doesn't make sense if we know that the fish stocks will soon collapse completely.

Let's bring talk of a more positive future into our personal discussions, the cocktail parties, the newspapers, the magazines, the streetcorners, and everywhere else. Let's ask the big questions - where are we on the timeline of human history in terms of resources? Where do we want to be headed? If we can't tell where we are or what's going on in the world around us, do we want to keep on the same path that has brought us here or do we want to change course? Let's look all the kids in the eye and think about what we'll have to tell them when they grow up about what we choose to do now.

(This post is dedicated to my friend Jeff in California, who has encouraged me to write with "more bite" about some of the ecological analysis that we've been talking about over the past 5 years. Thanks for the nudge :-)

seedlings in the window

Canada comes out swingin', brandishing a small April blizzard in a desperate attempt to reassert her identity as a cold country in the face of global climate change. Big wet snowflakes come streaking nearly sideways out of the orange night, and I step out through the cone of pale light to beyond the street lamps. It's not too cold, probably just around freezing, and I can feel the moisture in the air against my face. The storm is just a farce, though - one last hollow bellow before spring does away with the discussion for this year.

It's time to reinvent ourselves, to challenge ourselves to a new enlightenment, innovation and adaptation being the tools to carry the day. We as a global culture are crumbling rapidly in the era of too much - too much change, too much destruction, too much extraction and conversion of materials from the earth, too much information that we don't know, too many patterns that we can't see clearly because they are too big for us. We've been proud monkeys, and when the planet was big and we were a small force to be reckoned with, perhaps we deserved a tiny bit of pride. Now there are too many factors, the heat's been turned up, and the pressure cooker is continuing to work an incomprehensible unknown magic...

Let's do away with hydrogen cars and biofuels, certified lumber and debate over international treaties. Let 'em be what they are - dreams of a desperate man rife with tumors but lacking the word cancer in his vocabulary. Let's get local, get loving, get wise. Share information - how to fix it or how to bake it, when to plant it and where to find it. Let's admit how little we know and move forward with the precautionary principle in mind. Let's dissolve the myths that competition works for the betterment of everyone and be human enough to admit that cooperation feels better. Let's dispense with the homophobia and fearful, closed relationships so that we can hug a friend in need. Let's ask ourselves if we want the current state of affairs to be sustainable.

Let's be thoughtful and kind to one another. If we are the only one on the block to shy away from competition, then we will inevitably be afraid of falling behind as everyone else edges us out. We need each other for support so we are not alone in our endeavors to create a better world for our kids. We need to gather in potlucks, dances, picnics, town meetings, libraries, coffee shops, street corners, and kitchens full of the sweet smells of this new life.

I only know these things from feel, from the ten thousand smiles or tears impressed upon me every day, from the faces on the street carried by my synapses around the corner and down the hill. I know I feel at peace writing like this, and I carry trouble in my heart if I go to bed silent at the end of the day. I only know that I need to nurture these thoughts, to carry them forward each day or risk withering something inside me. Look for the smoke from my chimney and lights in my windows, and I'll do the same with you.

condensation is a first step

Today is a day of sitting in wicker armchairs, observing the cool rain and looking right through it, beyond the budding and bare trees in the distance, beyond the small worlds of red brick houses, out through the thin batik fabric of space and time to imagined futures and the sweet delicacies sprinkled in the present. It is a day of plotting coups to overthrow the affairs of the present which we do not love, it is a day of scented green tea with emerging friends and spring discoveries. It is the day we know we can get damp in the rain and not face a terrible chill at home. Today there is no guilt due to overstuffed sofas and pulling a light blanket over our feet and knees to stop the clocks for a while. Today is the satisfaction of a yoga stretch where amnesiac muscles speak of wintery tension and neglect, but prepare for the long walk to the fields.

In this season I can learn, teacher's hand placed thoughtfully over mine to guide the clay into useful vessels and the brush to lay down vibrant greens and oranges. The hustle of crowded sidewalks slows just enough to crack open the possibility of smiles in passing, seeding for hybrid blossoms of appointments blissfully made and adventures schemed. The Platonic essence of rebirth walks in the misty noontime, hands turned up to the sky, scarf draped forgetfully around her neck, a dormant muse so patient and unsuffering, bursting into the world silently in tender petals.

Where do your footsteps go on days like this? The stage, the office, the kitchen, the classroom, all the spaces of life charged with new energy. May you unapologetically track mud and smiles indoors, with seeds and twigs in tow, picked up along the path that seemed straight at bedtime last night and now curves and branches to fill the surface of our planet.

words to capture a day

making lists, inking small names and places on the backside of a slightly wrinkled piece of scrap paper, running my fingers through my beard, tracing an invisible line down the side of a tired photograph of old friends, slipping on thoughtlessly comfortable shoes, smoothing the front of my synthetic black jersey, crunch of salty peanut butter dipped carrot with dirt specks, crusty helmet sets on and clicks under my chin, leg over bicycle and I'm off
over the short steep street
blast past the cathedral
dodge potholes and freeze cracks
suck in sunlight through my open mouth smile
past former farmland now homogeneous dreams
gray vinyl siding and silent lives melt in the spring sunshine like a stuffy unwanted wax of talking heads left in the bonfire of revolutionary carefree youth

Now sun on my back warms me up and flows, pushes the Coriolis effect of my thoughts as my mind tilts towards exuberant solstice, these rolling hills are all I want right now, gravel and dust on the shoulders and sweet moist earth with last year's cornstalks all blend sweet and fine into a backdrop of rural possibilities, if I just pedal a little harder I know I can get ahead of the sun before it creeps down to the west, just one more hill to be conquered and then infinite journeys with only the click of my freewheel and the thoughts of coming home to you to rest...

Just the facts

So, a few bits and pieces of information that resemble the objective reality we all supposedly share. (These are in contrast to my usual blog posts where I muse cyclically about the cyclical nature of the universe.)

I arrived in Canada about 10 days ago, traveling first to Quebec. I stayed with Emily and friends in a town named North Hatley, which is a little over an hour east of Montreal. Emily's family has a vacation cottage there which overlooks the valley including a large lake and the town of North Hatley proper. This is the view on a clear day in late winter, i.e. my first day there.

It is quite beautiful - lots of rolling, big hills and snow spread all over the place. The white patch in the bottom of the valley is the snow-covered lake which Emily took me walking on after I got all excited about the possibility of it. I was a little late this year to go skating on it - that is an activity more suited to the deep freeze in the middle of winter when there is no layer of slush on the top.

After recovering from the bus lag of my trip up from NY state (caused mostly by the painful Vin Diesel comedy The Pacifier, which I had to watch because the sound was broadcast over the PA system on the bus), we went out snowshoeing. My first time! Loved it! The snow was a bit wet but still fun.

Then I felt tired so I took a rest.

We explored the area, cooked good food, got lots of rest, and generally lived it up bourgeois style in the winter wonderland of francophone Canada. Can't beat it with un stick if you tried...

After we were sufficiently vacationed, and the snow began to melt with a warm spell, we headed west by southwest, into Ontario, past Toronto, and eventually reached Guelph, the town where Emily and her tribe live. It is a beautiful, old town surrounded by farmland, with only a bit of homogenized subdivisions so far (but don't worry, they're on the drawing boards.) Back in Guelph, Emily has been returning to work as a therapist/teacher/front line social worker with teens overcoming addictions. I have been settling in to this lovely town and begun to plan parties, cook dinners, think about my income to expenses ratio, and try to get in touch with the gestalt of this place. Just yesterday Emily, Simon, and I went for a ski, which was only the second in my life (the first being two days earlier with just Simon. Again, loved it!

So, perhaps this is a summary of diversions rather than real grist for the mill of, "But how is Chris really doing?". I'm doing the best I know how, for better or for worse. It's all just beginning to unfold, like a delicate amaranth flower that looks good now but yields an even better tasty, tiny grain that you can cook like couscous. If you're eager for a quotable tombstone by-line, then perhaps I'm in it for the ladies, and that sweet, unbearable lightness of being...

never in vain

This is a road less traveled by, up over hills and through valleys with bare, patient birch trees so white they stand out against the thick snow. This pavement flows as smooth as the tired yellow lines dividing the non-existent traffic, through a town of broad houses on the lake, boarded up for winter with rough plywood against the clean, colored window trim. Gray snow piles yield to puddles in the first melt of March, cold and harmless in the soft gravel shoulder where my boots leave gritty traces in the mud. To town is where this current heads, to the main street on the frozen lakeshore with a handful of solid tea houses, restaurants, and wooden planked general stores. For me it is all a postcard - gazebo in the lawn by the lake with blue string lights at dusk, lingering French from the wrinkled couples blending like cream into the settled coffee aroma, fog sliding off the hills from the warm wet air meeting this year's snowpack. It's a curled up bear rolling over once more to hit snooze before hibernation ends, it's a beaver rolling in the snow who has momentarily forgotten his unending urge to fix the dam, it's the tinkle of laughter from children narrowly evading an icicle finally melted free of the eaves. It's all these and pure silence, flowing down creeks and gulches in this Appalachian basin, water seeking a joyride to the lowest level with less than a nod for the structures that the primates have built. Fine slate roofs and leaded stained-glass keep out the elements another winter, the accomplishments of lumberjacks and capitalists. These towns and the moments of childhood spent swimming in summer and skiing in winter are origami cranes floating down wide rivers, no less beautiful because of their inevitable sinking below the ripples. Let us make more beauty with our hands and set if free to the world - what I have seen wash down stream in spring has inspired many a summertime project of whittling and sanding, shared smiles with friends over the endless possibilities that lie outside our small towns.

snowman in full lotus

I stepped outside to feel the cold air of a few minutes past midnight, and rediscovered the silent appeal of tiny unexpected snowflakes floating through orange streetlights. After too many images of the lonely far away war on television, the sweet silence brought me together again through the graceful solitude that sweeps each of us away from time to time.

None of us knows exactly what to do, but our government keeps sending young men and women to damage and get damaged in the shifting sands of a war without end. The tiny eyes of the talking heads who take no risks keep shining out in increasingly high definition, while some people somewhere write headlines to gloss over the casualties who return home to suffer. The more numerous the words about bloodshed, the more hollow it all becomes and healing slips silently out under the crack below the door.

Smooth cold asphalt is a monolith under my shoes. I can feel the interconnected impermeable slab of contiguous paving that probably connects me to you right now wherever you are in North America. Barefoot in a snowdrift, the grey snow at the edges of curbs appears almost comforting in that way that it fits neatly in my cupboards of memory. Sometimes I'm toughened by fatigue and watch the pale clouds of midnight in just a t-shirt and jeans from the sidewalk outside, thick-skinned soles affording me ten or fifteen minutes of unmitigated communion with the nighttime hum of a civilized wilderness. Then my feet chill through to the bones of my heels so I retreat to carpet and wool socks inside, sipping rooibos tea the color of creamy rust and vacantly smile out the windows.

Where can we journey together, you and I, across spring lakes cold from recent melted ice, summers of sweaty knee-high grass and checkered picnic blankets under shady oaks, autumns of rich spicy apples and crumbling orange maple leaves, winters of bright rigid icicles and long nights made short by well-loved quilts, and spring again for unfolding creased and spotted maps to chart this year's tillage over last year's fallow hollows? Life without cycles is unimaginable, and summer is never too far away when we make lentil stew together and dance. We can honor February while hurrying it out the door to call March and see if it wants to go out dancing with April. May is coming to town soon, a visit to look forward to before June comes and unpacks childhood delights in the backyard. For this sweeping procession, our music is the food of love and seeing your face each morning over steam rising from mugs brings me some transcendence.

Our planet spins swiftly and keeps on carousing around the sun without regard to our tiny consciousness bubbles. So let's think less about war and fear, make snowcones in the park, and delight in the solar radiation that does reach our not-so-epic rock even in the winter. Spring will be here soon to ensure that we forgive and forget and begin again.

walking before flying? why wait?

It lies out there in the desert, somewhat more fortified than the Great Wall of China, a bit more heavily guarded than an Israeli security checkpoint in the occupied territories, with higher fences and more razor wire than San Quentin. It's that place Outside Your Comfort Zone, and it's tough and scary to get there.

However, upon lots of recent reflection, I've come to feel that most of my really meaningful, challenging, and satisfying moments in life have come by stepping outside my comfort zone. I've grown comfortable with a strong workout routine when I used to be baffled and bored by the idea of a gym before ever really setting foot in one. I've tried experimental diets to boost my own body's immune system through alternating fasting days, and although it was really tough some days, it was great to really step back from food and reacquaint myself with what it means to be hungry, to eat well, to be full, and to eat for reasons other than hunger. I managed to bicycle 3500 really satisfying miles in one summer trip, even though the idea of really long rides (over 50 miles) still brings up fear issues in me that I won't be able to make it for some unknown reason. I tried throwing pottery for the first time last fall (something I've secretly wanted to do for years), and I was actually pretty good at it and loved doing it. I built a chair last year from scratch in spite of being daunted by the idea of "furniture building," but it has turned out quite well and many people have speculated that they might buy such a piece (??).

We also can also push the borders of our comfort zones in less tangible ways. Learning to be a better listener when everyone tells you that you talk a lot can be an immense but satisfying challenge. Practicing a little financial restraint when we're used to shopping to provide meaning in our lives can be a novel and scary idea, but often with plenty of rewards. Cultivating patience at times when we feel we're about to burst with anger can be a lifetime practice, but who knows how many joys it will lead to?

I think when we can step outside our comfort zones, it's really good for us. We shake up our old world views with new perspectives and information. There's also lots of evidence that our brains go into a different mode of perception when we're doing or encountering new things. This heightened level of activity keeps our brains active and may even work to delay or prevent degenerative ailments like Alzheimer's. Doing new and difficult things gives us something interesting to talk about at the water cooler at work - much more exciting than last night's predictable TV babble. We also give ourselves chances to discover new passions, things that we thought we might enjoy but in fact we actually LOVE to do. Look at all these benefits...

Right now I feel like I'm taking a big leap outside my comfort zone in moving to Canada to be with my girlfriend Emily. I've discovered (in my relationship with Emily) that I feel most safe and secure when I can be in a place where there is a clear and strong need for my help. Heading to Ontario is really scary for me because I'll have to create a niche for myself from scratch, so to speak (although lots of help from Emily's friends is not be discounted at all). It's a feeling of letting go of control and safety to a large extent. I feel like I'm breaking out in a new direction, though I don't even know what that direction is. I suspect it will unfold before me as I move along this unknown path, but to remember that is hard and it doesn't always bring comfort in my moments of doubt. I like the idea of testing myself and my comfort zone in a big sense like this, but I'm also scared to death. I guess this is what the big changes in life are all about.

So, what are you going to do this week to push at the edges of your comfort zone? What do you want to do that you are afraid of failing at? Have the conversation, buy that alpaca ranch you've been dreaming of, follow your heart's desire wherever it leads, especially if it's a little scary and a little unclear. That's where all the good stuff lies in wait for you...

(that's a sea otter in those waves, saying "Ain't much changed 'round here since the beginning of time. But do you know where you're going?")

minute intermission

I feel like so often our culture is going to fast, or more accurately we are moving ourselves along too fast. We've got time-saving devices but fill that time with even more activities. We work more hours than ever before, and therefore try to cram compensation into short vacations that are difficult to relish because we're not practiced at being slow. We're connected to the whole world more and more all the time - cell phone calls from 3000 miles away while we walk down the sidewalk, cable that brings us more images than ever at faster speeds, internet news about events worldwide and even out in the universe. We're plugged in and turned on, tuned in to what is being broadcast. It's a fast-paced, high tech life that can carry us away if we let it.

I think being able to slow down is a virtue. I think in slowing down, we can see ourselves and the world around us more clearly. When we're in a hurry, we are simply unable to take in the same level of detail that we can if we slow down. We get wrapped up in our own narrow, self-justifying ideas about what is important in our lives and focus on them with less and less skepticism or curiosity about alternatives.

What do I mean by slowing down? Taking time to just be - sitting with a cup of tea, standing and looking at the moon for a while, making sure to have enough free time each day to feel balanced, taking a few moments to consider our food before we eat, sitting on a Saturday afternoon in the sun wondering what it will be like to grow old and die, walking on a short errand rather than driving, just sitting with a loved one to listen deeply to what she has to say. It's tough to slow down, especially in our culture. Everyone else seems to be going fast, getting things done, moving on to the next thing, multitasking - and if they're not, maybe they look like they're getting behind in the game while others get ahead. It's possible that we will fall behind in the rat race if we slow down, but I think there are many advantages to slowing down in life and making more space for reflection. I think there's a lot of evidence that we are healthier, smarter, well-rested, and more satisfied if we just take a little time to slip back into first gear and look around.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by me. Nothing eloquent, just some thoughts while I sit on the corner watching things and wondering :-)

california creation myth

Well it's alright, riding around in the breeze
Well it's alright, if you live the life you please
Well it's alright, doing the best you can
Well it's alright, as long as you lend a hand

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring
Waiting for someone to tell you everything
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring
Maybe a diamond ring




Well it's alright, even if they say you're wrong
Well it's alright, sometimes you gotta be strong
Well it's alright, As long as you got somewhere to lay
Well it's alright, everyday is just one day

Maybe somewhere down the road aways
You'll think of me, wonder where I am these days
Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays
Purple haze



Well it's alright, even when push comes to shove
Well it's alright, if you got someone to love
Well it's alright, everything'll work out fine
Well it's alright, we're going to the end of the line

Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive
I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive
And it don't matter, if you're by my side
I'm satisfied




Well it's alright, even if you're old and grey
Well it's alright, you still got something to say
Well it's alright, remember to live and let live
Well it's alright, the best you can do is forgive

Well it's alright, riding around in the breeze
Well it's alright, if you live the life you please
Well it's alright, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's alright, we're going to the end of the line

lyrics from End of the Line by the Traveling Wilburies

lost manuscript of new directions

The opus of my life is made of myriad movements, large and small, stretching forwards and backwards in time beyond any perceptible horizon. Most of the events that are remarkable in my heart I won't recognize until afterwards, looking backwards and seeing it all again for the first time. Some movements that ring particularly beautiful for me:

- getting a final sign off for occupancy on the house I built at Magic over four years
- a Valentines Day/welcome to Thai farmer's party in Berkeley in 2006, with an indescribably vegan chocolate cake (go Cara, kick your heels up :-)
- a canoe trip with an old friend in the Ontario wilderness
- running in the foothills of the Alps on a family vacation near the French Riviera
- watching the lives of the twin girls at Magic unfold
- my 29th birthday and subsequent New Year's activities - swimming in the ocean on New Year's Day
- running in the snow on a quiet, swirling snowy night in the Quebec countryside with a wonderful friend

Sometimes it's hard to see how they weave together, and indeed I wonder if I ever will. I can feel the patterns more than I can see them, I can taste them and smell them but can't spell them out. I feel like it's less of a direction in life than an expression of an underlying order that is bigger than my mortal mind can comprehend. I'm a cowboy taking a drink from the banks of the Snake River, knowing what water is like but seeing that the river is so much more.

What are your moments? Where are your signposts from the past? What might lie in your future?

parting the red sea with a 2x4

Standing on the threshold of 2007, I've got my hands in the warm pockets of my jeans and I'm looking up at the sky. Climate change is creeping in the front door steadily (72 degrees in Central Park today), wars rage on in sandy, far away places with real consequences, I'm idling and hanging out with good friends, and my heart is full of love for all the insanity that swirls around us. It's like a coriolis effect of positives and negatives, hope and despair, twisting together and spiraling all over this sphere of my mindscape, cirrus clouds of delight preceding thunderstorms of cathartic flash floods, moved back to clear skies and sweet smell of ozone in the starry clear sky the night after.

I'm helping a friend build a house again (alittlehouse.blogspot.com for pictures of it and yours truly) and enjoying the feeling of old buildings pass through my hands. Wood milled once and assembled a long time ago by past craftsmen gets rebirth through Matt and I as we cut it, plane it, assemble it, stain it, and admire our work at the end of cold short days. It's something I do love, creating small pieces of tangible structure and order from earth, metal, wood, and glass. Satisfaction is my sweet reward for resisting (never give up!) entropy if only for a little while as I sojourn on the earth.

2007 will be a time of coming together again, big changes, tectonic sonic booms of culture on the rocks, touching discoveries as we bravely walk in the undiscovered country, the silent magnitude of a swiftly tilting planet hurtling unimaginably and effortlessly around the sun. What will we do different for this little piece of paradise and time that we have undeservedly found ourselves in? How can we honor our good fortune to be alive, with friends, food, rest, hope, and choice? I'm aiming to be a photon for peace, love, and intrepid exploration, coming to a retina near you with a story to paint on the inside of your mind. Maybe with the right tools we can go Jackson Pollack on each other's worldviews, blow out some cobwebs and drizzle creative love from up high on the gigantic expectant canvas of our opened minds. Or perhaps we can make some popcorn with a little dill and salt on it, and snuggle in front of cold windows hoping for snow...

myth of idle hands

These are my hands, sometimes of stone and sometimes of sand, fastidious in the sweet earth making room for trees to run deep and grow high, knuckle deep in bike grease as I explore these simple and wondrous metal machines of efficient transportation, lightly grasping the pen to jot notes of love and redemption from the aimless effervescence of my heart, curving smooth wet clay up into usable vessels reminiscent of craftsmen roots long forgotten, typing plastic keys here to shift photons electrons across through and around assembled polymers and bits of metal to convey an incessant theme to you that I cannot let go of, bleeding as I cut myself with misdirected misaligned force while trying to do well, fingers on my forehead with my eyes closed to the patterns I repeat and wish I could transcend, cupping warm water to propel myself slowly across the pool and back in the warm luxurious open night of northern California paradise, turning knobs and making gestures and stirring batter, trying to embrace and grasp it all while my mind quietly works to let go.

If I do enough with my hands, will I be able to create a better world? Can I fix, smooth, patch, massage, sprinkle, and trace my way through the years of my life? Can I create the meaning I'm always searching for? Perhaps I can learn to find the calm of mind that comes with purposeful action, and the calm actions that come with a purposeful mind.

nature of contact

beautiful cold
wraps my Californization,
frosty to freeze pipes
unusual here in Paradise
I layer thick under wool sweaters
because I'm skinny and new to myself,
staying warm is outside
my routine,
a new visitor from an east coast past
of childhood snowbanks
and red-faced frozen
sled adventures

pale florescent light
fills the cool room,
the cluttered desk
a still life
of stationery and
a few plastic bottles,
sticky notes with sleepy numbers
crusted bike gloves
small dusty vitamin bottle
a cut-out drawing of two purple flowers

a place,
a window on disparate lives of friends
threaded through mine
in tension of four dimensions
but cradled in the rough palms
of old longshoremen
and grandmothers crocheting
(these are the keepers of our lives
the pillars of hope,
those who carry us in tired
uncertain times)

how can my heart move out
through these streaming bits of colored light
and be touched from afar?
overcome by connections,
the warmth is wave after wave
of us doing what's important to us -
we can dig deep and share the treasures
anthracite in times of bituminous glut
gold in times of pyrite glitter
oak in times of soft pine
keeping on sharing the truth of what we find

so that's what she looks like

so this is me and a girl named Emily. she lives in a town/city called Guelph, in a province called Ontario. Just wanted to share the photo for those who might be curious. i think she's special, and generally fantastic...

boiled down haiku extract

My father was a surgeon, specializing somewhat in hand surgery but also doing plenty of general surgery. For many years, he worked once or twice a month doing long, overnight shifts in hosptitals throughout northeastern Pennsylvania where there were not nearly enough doctors to go around. These towns are post-industry towns, with names like Coaldale and Slatington, where mining or manufacturing ruled the towns since they first appeared on any map. Now they are often tired towns, run down after the closing of the major industry there or simply winding down with the knowledge that the world has moved on to cheaper coal elsewhere, replaced slate with asphalt shingles and pressboard, or outsourced manufacturing to China.

One main side effect of the these towns burning out was widespread use and abuse of alcohol by the locals there. My father used to recount stories every now and then about superhuman feats of stupidity and self-destruction due to the intoxication of some local fellas on a Saturday night. One common incident that he mentioned was accidents while driving drunk. Patients would be brought in to the emergency room of the hospital in the late hourse of the night, all torn up from a collision with a building, large animal, or other vehicle. I always thought the saddest aspect of the story was when my father told me that the person who was driving drunk was often in much better shape than the person that they hit with their car, because the alcohol acts as a depressant and the drunk doesn't brace up their body upon impact. They bounce around more like a rag doll, and are consequently less damaged than a sober person who reacts with fear and adrenaline and tenses up muscles only to get injured by being rigid and running into parts of their car or worse. It's an ugly truth which is not always the case but often enough that I feel a sense of anger at the irony and injustice of it all.

To turn a sad example into a positive one, I sometimes think of myself as a person who is trying not to brace up before impact. I feel like our whole global culture is crashing, with more speed and intensity all the time, and we don't know how it will continue to unfold. Will we turn to nuclear energy when cheap oil runs out? Will we dovote lots of energy to sustaining the lifestyles of the wealthy, with exotic foods, cheap air travel, and lots of home appliances and cars? Will epidemic disease play a big role (I see more and more in newspapers and scientific journals about the looming resurgence of a global flu or worse)? Will we fight wars over access to water? Who will be left without food, water, and energy when there are not enough of these to go around? There are so many questions, and so many more that we haven't even imagined yet. The future is so unknown, with billions of us all over the planet making purposeful or random contributions to the growing ecological crisis. There are so many people who have made big splashes which I can live without, and so many people making little splashes each day that add up to a situation too big and complex to ever fully fathom.

I feel that in the face of all this craziness, perhaps my best plan is to not brace up. I want to stay flexible and adaptive in my outlook on life. I want to be thinking about how I can live well now and into the near future. I feel like it is more important to live well and take care of myself than aim to make a big splash in the world. Is it enough to aim to get a good nights sleep, get some exercise, eat some healthy food, take regular quiet time to read and write, make myself available to friends in need, write my blog, learn to grow vegetables, bike around town, work when I need to, take lots of rest time? I think so. We didn't evolve for a 45 hour work week. I'm not sure what we evolved for, but I feel like I'm closer to it when I'm well-rested and mentally balanced.

What is the highest and best use of my life? Trick question :-) The sun will burn out in perhaps 5 billion more years. If we colonize even the most distant reaches of the universe, their suns will burn out too. Knowing that in the end it's all a big entropic disk getting ready for the next big bang, what's a wandering, wondering soul to do? Follow what feels good. I've come to the radical notion that if I don't ever engage in the rat race and feel good about that choice, then my life is still great. If I keep giving my life away to throw dinner parties and help friends build houses, and feel good about it, that's great too. I feel like this is the lesson of "you can't take it with you." I also feel a strong identification with "First do no harm." The synthesis of these for me is to lead a chill, slow-paced life full of fun and laughter. Once again, for the record, I identify with the values of the hippies - sharing the love, not working to amass private wealth for myself or others, working towards social equality, being in touch with the world around me and my fellow humans. I really like these ideas, and think that they are a valuable guide for my life.

What's my take-home message for today? Love life! Do your best to drop out of aspects of culture that you don't enjoy, that you feel in your heart are detrimental to your physical and emotional well-being. Find others with similar questions and recognize that there you have the beginnings of community. Dare to be different than those engaged in the rat race - try to remember that it's a race that can't be won. Take time now, you can't take it later. Be with friends and just be with them. The next product roll-out, software package launch, promotion, new car, bigger condo, where are all these things going? What are these things in our lives that are not an end in themeselves? How much are we willing to feel like we're sacrificing to get to some point in the imagined future? Here comes the big cliche - the journey is the destination. If we slow down, we can taste it softly in the air, see it in the corners of our vision, smell it in the passing breeze.

Much love to you all - may you all find peace and fulfillment in your work and play. May harmony and integration be the words of the day every day...

geomancer of my own fertile ground

Back in California, the sun shines in through the winter sky and warms me through the days and abandons me at night. The stars shine clear in the sky and fill the midnight blue with points of illumination, dreams to follow through the infinite of time and space to an unforeseen end. Fruit dangles low on branches taxed by the new, fleshy weights - shiny wax of oranges and thin-skinned pale green apples. Damp bricks of deep red lie in their sandy bed and grow their mossy surface through patient weeks and months on end. Ansel Adams' black and white Yosemite now lies between me and where I was, buried deep in mountains that many died while trying to cross to get here. Me? I took the train, and watched the rolling hills of Iowa pass by, strolled around the Omaha station where it was 65 degrees in late November, read the labels of rail cars full of corn syrup (5000 gallons of corn syrup... say it with me, 5000 gallons of corn syrup), saw the cloudy fractured ice forming on the banks of Utah desert creeks, and at no time feared for my life. I didn't have to haul my cart, family, and oxen up a cliff to continue westward. I didn't have to eat my companions (all or in part) to survive. I didn't have to bring 100 lbs. of bacon with me from Missouri, but if I had that wouldn't have been all that bad... I just moved around the train from time to time, conversed with my fellow travelers, and felt like I was on a long journey to discover my home. I left behind love and snow wherever I went, hoping they would both remain white and pure in my absence but smiling at the unstoppable grey entropy of winters in the developed world. Upon my return, white will yeield to green then to red, brown, and eventually nothing before the white comes back upon it all. Who am I to challenge the seasons? Who am I to ask for a moment in time to be held aside for me, plucked gently from the incessant sweet stream of everything and cradled in my hand while everything else continues turning, spinning, spreading, cooling, and dimming? Who am I? I'm my evolving sense of self, shaped forever by all the places I go and by the very idea that I am shaped forever. I'm a preparer of warm feasts in houses defiant to these seasons, I'm a valence electron that wants to jump to your shell so we can be a great molecule, I'm a tired son, I'm a cancer scare survivor, I'm a comet at it's closest point to earth wondering when I can get away again from all these primates and their nuclear weapons, I'm a dancer for myself only when I'm not dancing for others, I'm a friend who's slowly understanding, I'm a proponent of peace even as I feel our electronic paper theoretical walls cracking inwards, I'm a lover of many things looking to see if one sweet love is enough, I'm in need of a bit of salvation but I'm still trying to save myself. Thanks to all the friends out there, may you keep on keepin' on with your own struggles and joys...