Coral in Amsterdam

Coral Reefer reporting from

 Cannabis Cup 2012 in Amsterdam

Kundalini Shakti

Be Here Now
Photo courtesy of Kālī at

ॐ AUM ॐ

presupposition

So true for me

Big Sur

Ventana Wilderness

Photo by Stan Russell

ZZ Ward

Latest  discovery 

( for me anyway )

Sampling Amsterdam

Coral Reefer reporting from Amsterdam: “..at the Cannabis Cup they’re presenting marijuana from different coffee shops around town”

Jason

This morning I go out on the deck to take breakfast and meet someone I don’t think I’ve ever met before. I live off the beaten path and you almost have to know where your going to get here ..so I’m not sure. He’s sitting comfortably with his legs out-stretched looking disarming enough. Mid-twenties, short hair, clean-shaven ..wearing freshly washed Diesel jeans and high-top Nike basketball shoes. He was on his way to stay with his sister and decided to take an alternate route. It narrows into a private road so he ducks into a driveway. The driveway ends at a creek where he sees my deck. His knee hurts so he finds a place to sit. Now he’s apologizing profusely for the intrusion ..and for just about every other word coming out of his mouth. He’s up on his feet but I see he’s favoring the left leg and looks kinda’ disoriented. I invite him to stay and offer him some coffee. He tells me his knee got tweaked in an accident and he was in the hospital. He’s here due to an unfortunate series of events. He lost his job ..lost his apartment ..lost his girlfriend and crashed his truck ..so he walks everywhere he goes. He’s local and I suspect there’s nothing in his background to prepare him for what’s going to happen next. He says his greatest fear is how other people are going to judge him for the situation he’s in. So he keeps walking.

Cafe in Amsterdam

Coral Reefer reporting from Amsterdam “Purchased some imported Moroccan hash at The Other Side for €10/gram. The quality imported hash selection in Amsterdam is something we just don’t have in the United States.”

Sunset

Sunset at Big Sur last night by Libby Pink

Willingness to yield

Occupational therapy:

“Jen, is it really necessary for me to take a behind-the-wheel test for the  6-week   follow-up ..?”
“Well, it is optional but it’ll help make a better case to present the    DMV ..”

     This is where I cut her off to explain ‘the agreement’

“Dr Bryson said she was going to wait for the 6-week follow-up before deciding whether she even needs to notify the DMV ..”
“Well, any doctor can notify the DMV anytime ..”
“Yeah, but we agreed ..”
“Let me explain how it works ..”
“Wait, first let me explain the agreement ..”
“I think I need to tell you how it works first ..” 

I sense things getting a little edgy and now I forget who actually went first but I blame myself for not being more ‘yielding’. Jen has no idea about a verbal agreement I made as an inpatient, which is an exception to the way it works. But if I'd given her a chance to explain how it works, I’d have understood hat it’s totally up to the whim of the doctor and nothing I could say was really going to matter much. Not even the agreement. It’s out of our hands and that’s good enough for me ..yielding soul I aspire to be.

Jen
Therapist Extraordinaire

Sunrise

from Lizards Mouth trail ..!
Santa Barbara

Planet Hollywood

She’s a clear signal appearing in the center of noisy space. Everything else gets pushed to the edges. When she laughs ..she takes command of the place without even trying. I can see people frozen in the distance. Like a deer caught in the headlights ..so am I. When we talk ..her attention is mine. I can feel the warmth of its glow. When she leaves ..there’s a wake in the fabric that the rest of the world falls into. Fortunately there’s a trace or her that persists until next time ..making me feel  more at home on this planet.

Crime Scene Investigation

I’ve got my trekking poles and I’m heading down side streets to Trader Joe’s on Milpas. I pass by Tom and Michaels’ but I don’t see them around and I don’t want to stop and break my stride. I see women’s softball practice at the high school and I do stop and break my stride. The shortstop has a mean throw to first. Farther along I see a poster for a play at the Marjorie Luke Theater saying Crime Scene Investigation – Fairy Tale Unit ‘where the justice system is represented by two separate but equally ridiculous groups’ ..which makes me laugh. Sounds pretty satirical for middle school. I drop by Vera’s salon and say ‘hi’ just before a group of kids come bursting through the door. Puts a smile on my face. I wind up buying more than my pack will hold at Trader Joe’s so a crew member calls a taxi. Now I’m standing at a bus stop waiting for a taxi, the irony of which is not lost on me. Next time this happens I’m taking the bus!

Tao

Tao
Spoken
Is like
Vapor
Obscuring
Tao
Followed
Is like
Earth
Unfolding

Lao Tzu

Pathways

“The cerebral cortex, of all parts of the central nervous system, must be regarded as the most plastic in recent evolution, reflecting new behavioral requirements of niches carved out by increasingly complex relations between predator and prey, and the increasing demands for more subtle relationships within the species.” Harting (1973)

I have a theory. I believe present-day verbal abilities are an extension of our sense of tracking in the wild. Our female ancestors must have found a way to code and convey this experience before their young hit the road on their own and either got lost or devoured. A test of concept would be to see if a short course in wilderness tracking offered by Outward Bound significantly improves verbal skills. I don’t expect it will do much for phonics or vocabulary but it may help students track and comprehend discourse better as well as improve their ability to speak and write coherently. Although these skills may seem dissimilar on the surface ..they do share some common components of cognition. They both require attention, orientation and ‘signal detection’ .. or the ability to focus and distinguish between relevant and irrelevant/distracting information. Granted outdoor tracking is largely ‘spatial’ and ‘visual’ while language is ‘conceptual’ and ‘auditory’ .. the cerebral cortex responsible for conceptual thought did evolve from the sensory areas of the brain, which in humans is largely visual. Anyway, it’s just a theory.

String theory

....Lindsey Stirling violin on dub-step

Flickering memory

I’ve discovered that I can remember movies I watched prior to 1995 almost verbatim, however, any movie released after that, I can watch repeatedly and it’s almost like seeing it for the first time. I admit that I sometimes sit halfway through a film before realizing I’ve seen it before ..maybe even more than once. For instance, I saw ‘Body Double’ last night ...not having seen it since way back in 1985. I could remember the ending quite clearly and anticipate just about every scene ..and almost every line. However, I’ve been watching ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ over and over again with equal surprise and I’m never quite sure how it’s going to end. Go figure. Could be early onset Alzheimer’s. Could be the primacy effect where movies I saw closer to the onset of video were just more novel ..until about 1995 when the novelty wore off and I became accustomed to watching hundreds of videos a week with little recollection. In either case ..I’m having a lot less difficulty picking out videos to see for the first time these days.