Charlie II

It’s my nature to try and make sense of outwardly irrational behavior like the kind that happened with Charlie last night [link].

Information, rattling around the brain, is followed by a process that clears waste from the transmitter-sites (synapses). There’s a maintenance-network (glial cells) that picks-up whatever chemicals are left behind by the re-uptake process. A milliseconds delay in that action is long enough to produce a gap in transmission. A few gaps can lead to false impressions ..too many gaps .. hallucinations and delusions. It’s the nature of the brain to fill-in missing pieces, which often goes well ..but it is based on a principle of probability ..inserting the most likely, but not necessarily the most accurate, elements of a missing scene. This may distort events ..or momentarily launch them in another direction. The brain is self-correcting however, and can usually recover ..unless too many gaps occur consecutively. Then these excursions begin to create a story of their own. When fabrications get superimposed on actual events ..other people’s actions appear distorted and confounding ..facial gestures are skewed and incomprehensible ..voices blend and words and phrases arrive out of sequence. Suspicion mounts ..creating anxiety that only exacerbates things by accelerating the process of mis-information. The first sign that things aren’t going well is an outburst of non-sensical speech. The way to tell if they’re kidding, or not, is by the sight of sweat ..sometimes accompanied by clenched fists. When others don’t know what to expect, they get concerned. When they re-direct their attention .. breaking with the ongoing chain of events ..it looks like a bunch of faces looming up and bearing down on our sufferer. This can create panic. Panic is often met by the arrival of police officers, which can create a disturbance so charged that it shuts down consciousness .. until the next thing to appear are doctors, with masks and syringes, holding you down while trying to coax a more tolerable stream of events into place.

I realize that nothing I write in these boxes contains anything close to the boundlessness of life .

Charlie

An unexpected turn of events occured at the poker game this evening. Charlie stood up and slammed down his cards, one by one, shouting (in beat to the rhythm of the slamming cards) “This ..is ..not ..the ..hand ..I ..was ..dealt ..Goddamn bunch of thieves!!!” This shocked the shit out of us. Brian went looking for his bat, while I go: “OK Charles, tell me whose hand you think it is ?” He bellows “The cards I had went up to 0.732 ..these are only around like 0.53” I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked at his cards ..queen of hearts ..seven of spades ..two of diamonds ..they did look random, which is kind of like a 50/50 proposition. I thought about the winning hand he had a while back ..a full house. “Charles, you’re thinking about a hand you already played.” He goes “No fucking way, Jose ..” spraying food everywhere “..not even the same ballpark ..but let me tell you something ..I am foursquare against these goddamn revisions and .. hey, what the hell’s inside my mouth (mouff) .?” “Doritos” I tell him, hoping feedback might help him feel a little more grounded. It was a little too late. We took the mountain roads back to my place, with the top down, freezing cold ..but hoping it would put psychological distance between home and the scene back at Bri’s. I even offered to give him my share of the winnings. He had no idea what I was talking about. I thought it best to leave it that way.
 

continued here~>[ link ]

Looking back

I put on a pair of hiking boots, goggles and miners’ cap ..and follow a trail leading back into my mind. I'm looking down the long haul of history ..the light from my miners cap illuminating the dark ..and the goggles pick up energy that ordinarily passes outside the reach of consciousness. I watch a lunatic pacing the street shouting something ..and I realize he’s ruminating over a disagreement that I thought I had forgotten a long time ago. Farther down ..I enter a passageway that leads to a hallway at a place where I use to work. I greet everyone I meet ..then duck into an office where someone is shouting at a computer and swearing it wasn’t his fault. I duck out of there before he sees me and starts swearing that it was my fault. Back out on the street, I crank up the resolution to see how far these goggles will take me ..and locate the stoners I used to hang out with in high school. I stumble over a field of mental instability, anxious to see them again. They’re getting high before class and they pass me the pipe. A haze builds-up behind my eyes lids and wisps of long forgotten memories drift by. I’m watching Blues Image playing at the Gem .. photons are flashing ..I cross a bridge, under which a brightly colored stream passes. I follow a thousand steps to the beach. I walk through the tide pools and enter a cave. Now I’m floating in Grecian pools carved smooth out of the coastal rocks and stones. Ocean water pours over the sides ..and the level rises to a pool of infinity where there’s no sign of separation between me ..the sea ..and the rest of humanity.

Dreamwork

I had a vivid dream last night. This morning I hear the echo of Fritz Perls going: “Make sure you take ownership of the different parts of your dream.”

The dream: I pull off of the 605 freeway ..park in a gravely construction yard and walk toward a trailer-office. Inside, there’s a guy in his twenties, dressed like a hiker, carrying a gun in a holster. He’s asking the clerk behind the counter for directions .. saying he wants to see more of California ..he turns to me and asks for a ride. I reply (telepathically) “No ..because of the gun that you are carrying.” He relies (telepathically) “Yes you will ..because of the gun that I am carrying.” I concede, thinking “Hey, I’ll make it a trip to Big Sur.” As we head down the 605 freeway, toward the coast ..he asks me why we aren’t heading up the 605, and toward the I5. I say (verbally this time) “Hey ..you want to see California, right ..not just another freeway.” He sits back with a satisfied look on his face. As I’m on that long swooping connector-road at the end of the 605, heading into Long Beach ..we hit traffic and come to a halt. He looks nervous and asks what we’re stopping for. I tell him I’ll go have a look and get out of the car ..surprised that he doesn’t object. Underneath the overpass, I walk into another trailer-office, where a surveillance-team is huddled around a computer. It’s somehow apparent to me that they’re tracking my carjacker, and I feel relieved ..telling them he’s right above us. I climb back into the car, the undercover cops are somewhere behind, and without a word, my carjacker flies out the passenger door ..on a surfboard. As he hovers above the traffic, I ask the cop how he does that. He looks at me and says “we don’t know” and I feel surprised, wondering how come they don’t know that if they’ve had him under surveillance.

Dreamwork: I am the car ..I am the gravely construction yard ..mechanical and characterless. I am the young man ..I am the gun ..calm and controlling. I am the surfboard .. flying unfettered. I am the surveillance-team ..secretly tracking my impulses. I am the cop ..confused and un-comprehending. I am the question ..asking myself how come I don’t know these things about myself. I raise my head up from the desk, and think: “I just might take that trip to Big Sur after all.”

A blurb about dreamwork can be found here ~>Fritz Perls

Iconic discourse

I can see a day when text-based communication becomes obsolete. Sentences take too long to process. Images and video clips are more suited to the task. Graphemes will replace phonemes. Graphemes are like logos ..they convey concepts more quickly. All that’s required is a brief sensory flash, which decays rapidly so that the next impression can follow. This allows greater throughput and more rapid exchange of ideas. I believe that the mind of the future will be shaped more by images than words. Mental imagery will occur spontaneously among those who are “tuned-in” ..and will spread through the population like a virus. Viral marketing is already the buzz in advertising. Nobody reads a movie review anymore. They’ve got a buddy, with an iPhone, sitting in the front row at opening night. That way they’re already tuned-in ..receiving the look and feel of a film along with an emoticon that gives it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, before the end of the first scene.

Catastrophe theory

I’m always fascinated by the way people explain events to themselves ..especially when the cause is obscure and not directly observable. In Haiti, for instance, the local population believes that the earthquake was caused by angry mystical entities known as ‘gedes’ ..or spirits of the dead. Evangelical Christians, arriving on the scene, say the earthquake was caused by exactly that kind of superstitious thinking .. if only they had switched their beliefs, none of this would have happened. According to Pat Robertson (no relation) “ ..they made a pact with the devil” when they won independence from the French (and Christian rule) “.. and now they’re paying for it.” No one talks about fault lines or tectonic plates, I guess that sounds way too much like scientific ideology. So now I’m going to say that the mudslides in LA this week were brought about by the kind of decadent behavior LA is known for, and has nothing to do with the fires last summer ..those happened way too long ago.

Integration

Presented at the ~> SB graduate institute

The intellect is much too overrated. It is such a discursive process that it often leads nowhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we abandon it. We still need to take time for planning and strategy..I just don’t think that it needs to take each waking moment of every day. An integrated approach to the psyche recognizes the contributions of both thoughts and feelings.

Feelings contain just as much information as thoughts and ideas. They too are cerebral events. Without the weight of feeling, we would not be able to arrive at a decision to save our life, let alone order food. Without feeling, the intellect would have difficulty deciding where to shop, let alone what to buy. Some feelings are triggered by conditions inside the body; others are evoked by conditions outside. Either way, they all register with the brain in order to be felt. The brain, in turn, redirects our perception to the body ..the same way it localizes the sound of voices in a room. Like ideas ..feelings are trying to tell us something

Feelings are not the past remnants of some primitive ancestry that need to be dismissed for the sake of intellectual attainment. The pathways that carry feeling have enormous bandwidth and widespread distribution throughout the higher centers of the brain. They inform every sensory-cortical event that takes place.

I remember a guest speaker at a graduate seminar I was attending. He was studying the gambler’s fallacy ..and observing how it applies to the population at large. He said that we do not see cause and effect relationships directly (except perhaps on the small scale of a pool table) ..instead we invent stories to explain them to ourselves. The resulting narrative is not an algorithm, it’s more like a heuristic, or ‘rule of thumb’ ..like blowing on a pair of dice before each toss.

I remember an astronomer speaking at a conference. He said that the farther out we look, the more past history we see. He wasn’t only talking about what we see through a telescope. The past history stored in memory gives resonance and meaning to what we see in the present. Since we can’t see around every corner, memory contributes to what we see when we walk down the street. Research in human perception informs us that we don’t see things the way they really are. Interpretation happens way too fast for that, and relies heavily on memory for it's information.

Many people believe that memory works like a camcorder, keeping an accurate record of events. Research, however, shows that this is a misconception. First, our memory would be pretty empty if it weren’t for the emotional-value added to events before they're allowed in. Second, recollection is a process of re-constructing events based on the value they have in the present. Without feelings, we would not have sense enough to know what’s worth storing ..nor the clues we need to re-construct what needs remembering.

One of the things I discovered early in meditation practice is how circuitous my thought processes are. They didn’t follow a ‘linear-narrative’ like I’d imagined. I also saw how much trouble I’d be in if they were the only thing I had to rely on.

Alien discourse

On a ridge top overlooking Los Angeles, a team of alien cryptographers are busy deciphering messages encoded in streams of light that circulate the city at night. I try explaining how those are like transport vessels, indirectly responsible for carrying genetic information from one generation to the next ..and thinking how ‘evolved’ that must’ve sounded. They look at me with undecipherable expressions and I feel deflated ..like they saw right through that attempt at impression-formation. I hear them say it would take as many as four planets to sustain the level of eco-plundering they see. I imagine how threatened they must feel ..like we’re inter-planetary-expansionists or something. I try to explain that we’re really not like that ..we make progress more by stumbling around than by calculation. Another round of indecipherable expressions and I suddenly feel like I just admitted to whatever it was I was trying to deny. I try backing-up to start over again when I realize how pointless that would be ..they communicate telepathically. My thoughts are clearer to them than what I say ..same as my doubts and fears. They don’t need invasive devices to probe my brain ..they’ve got a system of highly evolved sensors doing that.

Crazy Charlie

I’m driving to South LA to lead a writing workshop ..helping kids learn to keep a journal about events in their lives. It’s held at the rec-room of a park that gang-bangers claimed for themselves in 1989 ..and still do. However, things change. Some gang-bangers make it to middle age and get tired. Especially if they have kids whose only role-models are their gang-banger dads. It was at a juncture like this that Charlie arrived ..or more accurately .. got dumped by county psych last year. He woke up with a sawed-off shotgun in his face .. a steel-toe boot crashing into his groin and someone screaming: “Git da’fug up ya’muthafuggn piece’shit honky ..yu got rent ta pay ..or y’ain’t nevah pissin’ the same agin ..” He got up in a field of scorched earth ..felt completely disoriented ..and wondered if the clinic had been bombed. Being short of change, he kicked into survival mode. “I got pot ..!” he bellowed ..while his brain went searching for someone who did. “Yeah muthafuggah ? .. Where.” Yeah, where is a good question, he thought ..like where the fuck am I. He got on a cell-phone, stolen from a psych-tech ..dialed the number of a successful buddy of his from back in ‘Nam ..and two kilos were dropped off at the rec-room ..with a street value of over $5,000. This took the edge off things ..and Charlie made new friends. He hung around for awhile.

Continued here  ~>[ link ]

Crazy Charlie

Continued from here ~> [ link ]

Charlie is a scavenger by nature. He found nets to hang on the rusty hoops. He started a kitchen in a storage room ..using food he scavenged from around the ‘hood. He made gumbo out of mostly bean dip, potatoes and Doritos. He served gang members, homeless people as well as former members of the middle class who’d been jobless for so long ..they were living in their cars. He listened to stories about mothers who got killed .. kids who got abandoned .. drug-addicted fathers .. cruel and unusual punishment ..schools that offered no hope ..jobs that had disappeared ..and a place with no malls, YMCA or colleges. They needed something to hang on to so they seized the park. Probably the only sense of community they ever had. They did have incredible stories to tell about overcoming some pretty major trauma in their life. So Charlie started writing them down. Then someone suggested he put them in a grant proposal. That caught the attention of City Council women Jan Perry ..and the floodgates opened. Money began to arrive, Charlie recruited gang members to re-build the playground ..restore the gym floor ..plant grass for a football field ..and even build a concert stage for local rap acts. It was like re-hab for the old gangbangers. Now they have karate classes ..aerobic classes .. and football teams. And when they saw how much money could be made by writing ..they set up a writing workshop. Charlie has since moved on ..but I can still hear the echo of his footsteps around here.

Joy

by TomiJoy

Home

Crazy Charlie

I’m lying on the roof, looking up at the stars ..when I get a get a call from Charlie who's underneath a bridge .. in a tent community by the L.A. River. It’s a place he knows well, which concerns me because it’s probably the first place they’ll look for him. “Nah” he says “..it’s terra incognita.” I try Googling it with no luck. It’s like wild kingdom down there. He spends his time sitting in squalor behind a wall of cattails .. reading and repairing his bicycle ..while freeway traffic rushes by overhead. His new lady friend ‘Musgrove’ prepares coffee while he plans his next destination. I tell him he sounds awfully comfortable for a man on the run. He says it’s OK, people down there come and go ..no one really knows who you are ..but everyone takes care of each other. He tells me there’s a string of communities like this running up and down the river. Some really reek ..but others are almost picturesque. He says he wants to go to one where, he hears ..elderberry and willow trees grow wild ..and you can watch the egrets nest. I tell him he ought to write a travel guide to the swamps and waterways that run below the city of L.A. They’re sort of a blank spot that most people either miss ..or glimpse from an overpass ..then instantly forget.

Letter to the editor

Written in response to an article about ~~>marijuana dispensaries

It sounds like District Attorney Steve Cooley has either an outdated, or conveniently narrow interpretation of the English language. It’s no wonder he has chosen to go to war with the City Council, its constituents, the Attorney General’s Office and the voters of the State of California. Although State laws governing marijuana dispensaries do not explicitly say that it’s OK to ‘sell’ marijuana ..they do allow for ‘cost-reimbursements’ by its members. Now, in business terms, when cost-reimbursements are received they are generally considered a ‘sale’. Sort of a modern-day convenience since we live in a mostly cash-based economy. If District Attorney Cooley has problems with money changing hands, perhaps we should revert back to earlier times and reimburse dispensaries with topsoil, seeds and fertilizer.

In a heartbeat

Many children with dyslexia cannot keep up with the flow of text fluently enough to translate symbols into sounds ..then sounds into meaning. To read OK, the brain has about 40 milliseconds to do this. For children with reading difficulties, this may take as many as 500 milliseconds. According to Usha Goswami (Cognitive Neurosciences Institute at University College in London), part of the problem may be caused by difficulty in perceiving the rhythm of speech. Goswami and her colleagues discovered that dyslexic children could not track the beat in speech. The ability to detect a beat matters when the brain is trying to process syllables and phonemes. Like a metronome, it helps children pick-up the properties of speech in time. The ability to keep the beat is so fundamental, they say, that the first language a child learns is it’s own mother’s heartbeat while still in the womb.

Another country

President Obama has decided on a settlement between the Navajo and Hopi Indians during his first year in office. Imagine that. I wonder when the last time a sitting president could make that claim. Marijuana production is definitely on the rise around here. The Mexican Cartels are moving their operations to the US. It’s especially apparent in California. This doesn’t surprise me much. It’s common practice for US businesses to set-up shop closer to their market. The border community between the U.S and Mexico is becoming another country. They even have a name for it: El Tercer Pais. Literally ‘the third country’. It’s a place where people go about their business without much regard for what legislatures decide on either side. Meanwhile, smugglers are using cranes to lift cars, filled with marijuana, over that scary fence we built ..reinforcing the notion of how adaptable humans can be. If you build it, they will climb it. I wonder when we’re going to end this crazy charade that has transferred so much wealth to the drug cartels that, pretty soon ..they’re going to declare sovereignty over El Tercer Pais ..and defend its borders with more than just a wall.

Crazy Charlie

Charlie taught himself how to fly an airplane by playing video games on the computer. So, when the time came, he got food and supplies from other people’s houses ..boots and camping gear from an army surplus store ..night vision goggles out of a nearby fire station ..and a Cessna from a hanger outside of Renton, Washington. He landed hard on a forest road near Bonners Ferry, Idaho ..actually cracked the fuselage. Then he called me on a stolen cell phone to ask where I thought he should go next. I’m like: WTF Charlie ..are you joy riding or something ..? Are you trying to get away from somebody ..? (I’m thinking it could be anything from pissing off a neighbor to causing a riot). He says they picked him up in Seattle on a ‘malicious mischief’ charge (which could mean anything) ..then told him he was a suspect in an armed robbery case. Suspect ..? He doesn’t carry a gun ..nor does he remember threatening anyone. But it was enough to flip a paranoia switch that told him he better get out of town ..and just keep on going.

Continued [link]

Free falling

Late afternoon, Don calls and says the swells are getting bigger. I blow-off my plans, throw my Churchills in the alfa and zip down to the shore. I do some quick deep-breathing exercises and take a running leap into oncoming waves. The first ride nearly yanks my shorts off ..I pull the waistband as tight as it’ll go. The next ride throws me over the falls ..I go limp and bounce twice off the sandy bottom. After some more pounding, I head for the shore to get a birds-eye view. The swells are definitely getting bigger. I’m about to go back out when I see someone coming in. At first, I thought it was a guy I was watching out there. Instead, it was a girl I was watching out there. I meet Sara from Westmont College. I’m surprised ..she’s small, almost waif-like ..and carries a wicked pair of Vipers. She’s no Val .. and from what I saw ..knows no fear. We chat briefly ..and head back in the water. I zip down the face a wave and decide to ride it without bailing ..and get trashed in the collapse. I emerge in churning white water ..look around and see her pop-up ..breathless but exhilarated. We swim back as fast as we can to catch the next one ..too late. She ducks under while I go up and over the top ..feeling the vacuum of the curl almost suck me backwards by my feet. Dumb thing to do because the next wave is right on it’s heels. I know I’m going over the falls but I catch it anyway .. getting a fast-pitched ride into white-water oblivion. I lose my orientation ..scrap my shoulder against a vertical wall of sand ..go wtf ..and figure it’ll be just a few seconds before my sonar detects true bottom. Back on shore, Sara says she’s gotta’ go ..I stay, repeating her email address over-and-over, and ride until sunset .. wondering if this is the beginning of a cycle or the last amp of the day.

The crapshoot

The headline says: “The pace of foreclosures is slowing down in California” ..and it makes me feel good to think that more people are able to afford homes and, by extension ..the economy is getting better. Reading on, however, it turns out I’m wrong. Just as many people are in default as ever .. but fewer of them are going the distance to foreclosure. That’s good news. I tell myself it’s because banks are learning that it’s better to let people stay in their homes ..they lose money auctioning off foreclosed property. I used to tell people, facing foreclosure, always go to the bargaining table ..bankers are reasonable people ..right ? Well, it didn’t always work out that way and now I’m finding out I was seriously mistaken. Banks don’t act reasonably ..they are not good business people ..they’re order takers. And they are not learning anything new (as I had hoped). It says here that the only reason they’re showing leniency now is because they’re afraid if they don’t ..the government will change the rules and allow homeowners to protect their property in bankruptcy court. Now I’m reading where Bank of America insists they can sell foreclosed properties profitably. Since this runs counter to my beliefs, I look back at the article ..and shake my head. My mistake .. Bank of America didn’t say they could sell foreclosed properties profitably .. they said they could sell them more efficiently. Now, I feel a sliding sensation I sometimes get while reading about the economy ..like the wheels of my car aren’t firmly on the road. I’m sitting at my computer but I have this feeling I’m in a sideways drift. Like everything I know is wrong ..or at least suspect. Now I’m wondering how often I misinterpret what I read. Now I’m wondering how often I misread what other people are telling me. Now I’m wondering how often other people misread what I say ..and think I’m deranged. I remember somebody once told me that communication is a probabilistic event. Like a crapshoot. Now I’m wondering whether or not I should read ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Hesse. Now I’m asking myself what the hell that has got to do with anything.

Esalen journal

I’m having breakfast while listening to Tania, a work-scholar from Russia, tell me about her mediation practice. She is drop-dead gorgeous ..with a beautiful accent. I don’t remember a thing she said ..but I do remember the way she repeatedly waved her hand, in kind of a circular motion, to describe how her thoughts go ‘off-track’ while she’s meditating. I believe I told her that mine do too ..but I can’t be sure. Now I' m laughing at something another work-scholar just said. Referring to ‘seminarians’ (like me), he goes: “ ..slap your money down ..turn your life around.” Work-study people live and work here for part of the year, while we (the seminarians) drop by occasionally for therapeutic retreats. I mingle with the work-study people ..even get stoned with them ..and because of my hair and overall appearance, I sometimes get mistaken for one ..so I hear where they’re coming from. Gail, an attractive seminarian from Benedict canyon, took it as an insult ..as if he were saying that we’re stupid enough to believe a trip to Esalen is a life-changing event. I can tell she’s hurt and I try to explain how the work-scholar people often feel like second-class citizens ..cleaning rooms, gardening, that sort of thing. I mean, when you really look at it, we seminarians do tend to socialize primarily amongst ourselves. I’m saying all this stuff until I find out what’s really bothering her ..she came up here looking for a date ..and she thought she was actually having one ..a really good one .. with an attorney from LA (and conveniently close to Benedict canyon no less). But he left last night with a much younger girl he met at the baths. She’s been sitting here chain-smoking for almost two hours. I take this as a sign that it’s time for me to head to the mediation hall and just sit and breathe until it’s time to leave this afternoon.

Workshop

Soo is from Singapore. She tells us that it is not part of her culture to express feelings and opinions so open and freely. Since they’re ‘insubstantial’ and not ‘factual’ ..they’re easy to contradict ..and that makes her feel afraid of looking foolish all the time. She says this workshop was good for her .. hard, but good. Helped her feel that it’s OK to open up. The instructor says that feeling unhurried to speak makes you more receptive to what other people are saying. Artful response I’m thinking. After workshop, Kitty tells me that the instructor feels like the workshop was a failure. I go “..really, she told you that ?” (I certainly didn’t feel like it was a failure) “No” she says “.. but you heard her .. she said she may not give this workshop again.” Yeah, I heard her say that ..but I took it to mean that she was moving on ..and letting us know she’ll be doing something different in the future. I’m suddenly reminded of what Soo said ..opinions are easy to contradict. However, I don’t think that contradictions are so bad ..we often express opinions to solicit other people’s point of view and see if what we think has any validity ..I guess that way we don’t have to wait around until all the ‘facts’ are in. But, hey .. that’s just my opinion.

It’s a friggin’ cold and foggy day! I’m heading directly to the hot springs after lunch.

Esalen journal

I took the white-knuckle coastal road to Big Sur last night ..in and out of the blinding fingers of fog. It was freezing but I had the top down anyway ..as well as a hooded-sweatshirt on, plus leather jacket, goggles and gloves ..and the heater cranked way up. This morning I get up, look out the window and see sun shine and blue sky ..I have no idea how long it’ll last. Conditions change so fast. I walk down to the lodge as monarch butterflies and hummingbirds zip by. I sit at the table and eat breakfast (oatmeal, yogurt and figs) with Judy, a therapist from Santa Barbara. She compliments me on my copper jewelry ..says it’s good for cleansing my bioenergy (?) She introduces me to Jon, who is also from Santa Barbara. He fixes old Volvos and sells them to college students real cheap. “It’s high volume” he says. He ought to know ..he’s been the main supplier of wheels to students at UCSB for over 18 years. He has raised a family and already put one daughter through college this way, and I’m thinking ..how admirable this guy is.

Shade grown

My friend Joey spends a lot of time in Indonesia helping coffee growers organize co-ops. Says he's surprised whenever he sees nature taking matters into it’s own hands. Tells me if a coffee grower isn’t practicing ‘shade-grown’ farming techniques ..elephants will actually appear at the edge of his plantation and eat whatever coffee bushes are growing outside the shady area. Occasionally he hears stories about tigers killing farmers who inadvertently cross into federally protected forestland. When he mentioned this to the National Park Service in Sumatra, they told him it’s the law of the jungle ..when wild animals sense that their habitat is shrinking ..they begin defending their territory more aggressively. When he talks to the encroaching farmers however ..he gets another story. They believe that the tiger is a deity enforcing proper human behavior. They tell him the killing was more likely a punishment for breaking a tribal taboo such as adultery. “Maybe the victims did something bad, like sleeping with someone who was not their wife. Cutting the trees is OK. There's no problem with that.” They cannot conceive of the notion that the attacks are related to the destruction of the animal’s habitat.

Reading Ram Dass

“..service often comes from a selfish place ..the need to please ..to be held in high esteem. Not that these are bad places ..it’s just important to observe these desires when helping others ..and not let them interfere with their struggle.” When I look up from the page, I hear my ears ringing ..I feel currents of cold air ..I see flashes of light .. sunlight coming through the window ..I swear every eye in the room is looking at me ..feels like I’m in a fishbowl. I hide behind my book but the words jump off the page making them hard to track. I ask myself what I’m doing here (UCSB library). What’s the point ..? The author says. “Observe the thoughts surrounding each act of service ..thoughts like: what’s in it for me? ..what am I getting out of it ? ..I wonder how I look ..?” I sit back and remember what the Buddha called these .. “gainful ideas.” They are neither good nor bad, in fact ..they are important ..just not in everything you do. Just something to be mindful of ..especially when trying to help others deal with challenging circumstances.

Reading ~~>Ram Dass

Summertime

The offshore winds arrive on schedule today ..blowing the marine layer out to sea and creating the first day of summer for me. I put the top down ..throw in some Churchills ..and head for the shore where conditions are immaculate. Offshore winds have turned the beach warm and crystal clear. Since it's a south-facing beach, we don’t feel the wind so much as it’s warm and cleansing effect. I run across the sand and plunge in. After riding a few waves ..I’m reminded that I live on a planet again.