Sisters in Jade-Land

My niece Jade and sisters Jenny, Teresa and Patricia captured in a photo-manipulation

Goofiness

Click on picture ..maybe twice

Ozzz

Just a cheery lookin' mate from down undahh

Two nudes

My feeble attempt at doing something along the lines of Maxfield Parrish ~ Please click on picture to enlarge

Ocean view

Jim is in town today ..we’re sitting outside the restaurant at Arroyo Burro beach ..and he asks me if I’ve read ‘Da Vinci Code’ yet ..like he recommended years ago ..no, I haven’t ..I instinctively avoid ‘trendy’ literature ..but I am attracted to new ideas ..especially ones that challenge the established order of things ..and I know that DaVinci Code has a world-class premise ..it's also refreshing to see ‘information’ being treated as ‘holy grail’ material ..with all of the life-giving properties that that entails. I say, you know Jim ..I’ve been around the ocean most of my life ..and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that King Neptune has a hidden ‘grail’ full of information as well. What kind of information ? Well, if you believe that life evolved from the ocean ..then it makes sense that the secrets to sustaining life ..and curing life-threatening diseases ..are floating around out there ..I mean, would we have come this far if there wasn't something out there mopping things up ..?

California poppies

There’s a lightening storm passing through my head today ..disrupting my vision and rearranging the view. I can feel the ground shake underneath my feet ..as I go through the doorway ..and run down the street. California poppies and eucalyptus groves. I stop on a bridge above a lagoon ..and watch brightly colored sea water moving below. I walk aimlessly down the streets of IV (a sleepy little college town by the sea) ..lots of bicycles, birkenstocks, paisley covered halter tops and surf board shops .. students with sand in their hair and feet ..curve around me as they pass ..looking so fresh and pure ..it’s like worldly concerns don’t reach them here. Another lightening storm ..I duck through a bar door ..order a beer and start a friendly conversation ..which takes an unexpected turn and goes no where. I walk out on the bluff and watch the waves crash ..I close my eyes and feel the storm pass. Around sunset I hear somebody say: “Hey dude ..cha’ figure it all out yet ..?”

Zen ceremony

For Steve’s passage (see post titled ‘A passing’ below) ..I’ve prepared a short zen ceremony to be performed at the unity church later this week. They let you do that there. When traveling someplace new ..it is good to have a guide. Like most things in zen ..it is meant to be simple so it doesn't obscure the way. All that is needed is a bowl of water ..candles ..incense ..food items ..and flowers. It goes something like this:

• We perform this ceremony to help guide Steve on the path to his new home.
• We call on Steve to break the bounds of karma ..leave selfish desire behind ..and enter a world beyond birth and death ..delusion and suffering.
  
• We offer water to cleanse the lenses and reveal the path to existence beyond.
  
• We offer light to illuminate the path to existence beyond.
  
• We offer food to remind us of the cyclic nature of life on earth.
  
• We offer flowers to remind us that life is as transient as dew.
  
• We say goodbye to Steve in clouds of incense ..may it’s fragrance help him pass beyond the clouds that hide heaven from our sight
  
• We recite these words in hope that Steve is now at home in peace.

A passing

When Steve was a teenager he had the longest blond hair I’d ever seen ..and it shined. He looked like a rock star ..like the actor Gary Busey. Remember Busey’s son Jake in the movie ‘Contact’ ..? That was him. I remember high school ..some jocks were picking on him ..he told them that it would come back around someday ..after that they left him alone. Go figure (..?) He used to sell drugs ..but was getting paranoid ..said there were snitches everywhere. Then he disappeared. I didn't see him again until we ran into each other in college one day ..by accident. He was studying to be a counselor ..so he could help teenagers with drug problems ..he didn’t have to study hard. During college, Steve fell in love with a girl named Jody ..but she broke his heart ..and he took it real bad ..even dropped out of school. Still, Steve was as strong as an ox ..and had a kevlar constitution. He completed every one of the LA marathons he ran in. I remember one night he drove to San Francisco ..drank a gallon of burgundy wine ..got three hours of sleep in his car ..was sitting on the john when the starting gun went off ..and still managed to complete the San Francisco marathon with a time good enough to qualify for the Boston marathon. In July of 1991, the both of us met in Oracle, Arizona ..just outside of Tucson ..where his friend Janais Caprallis was chief architect for the Biosphere. We got a tour of the place just before they sealed it with ..rainforest ..monkeys ..savannah ..and all. Afterwards we had a big barbeque at Janais's ranch in the Catalina mountains. Man, we felt like cowboys on the wild frontier. My health and running practice took a nose dive around then. In 1993, Steve drove up to Santa Barbara and helped me get back into shape. Afterwards I ran in a 10-mile race. It was my personal best.

I’m so sad you’re gone buddy. I really love you. You will be missed.

Little red spider

I’m having my car reupholstered. I’ve never done that before. Some people say I ought to take it to Mexico and get it done ..others say I ought to just get rid of it. It’s almost 20 years old ..I guess that’s sounds like a lot ..but I’ve been holding on to it, not because I’m sentimental or anything ..but because it’s just so much fun to drive ..it feels like a skate ..I lean ..it turns. It even has a removable hard top from the factory ..also cherry red. I’ve been offered thousands for the top alone ..apparently you can’t get them unless you already own this particular model alfa even though it fits them all ..so they tell me that if I sell them mine ..I can go order another one for myself at a fraction of what they’re willing to pay ..they tell me they have friends who’ll be willing to offer me the same deal. I always say no. In fact, you can’t even buy this model alfa in the states any more. One time a guy came up to me off the street and offered to buy the car for however much I was willing to accept ..without haggling ..he pulled out a big wad of hundreds. I figured he was trying to impress his girlfriend, who was much much younger ..so I said OK ..seventy grand ..which is way way more that it’s worth. He knew that ..but I guess his girlfriend didn't ..because she's going like: yeh yeh ..I want it I want it.

Plugged in

It is my belief that a dedicated surfer knows more about the ocean than any well-trained oceanographer. It’s not because the surfer is more intelligent or anything ..it’s because he’s ‘plugged into’ the conditions of the ocean ..they make a bigger difference to him. Now, I’m no Joe-great surfer ..but I bet you I can see more shades of blue in the ocean than say ..a farmer from Nebraska. Living on the West Coast has fashioned my perception ..and tuned my senses to the signals of the region. It’s subliminal. I can generally tell what a day at the beach will be like ..the night before. For instance, when I hear trees creaking at night ..I know we’re in for cool dry weather the next day ..the ocean water will be greenish-blue and the surf will be fair somewhere farther up the coast ..like around El Capitan. If I can hear the sound of sea lions barking at night ..it means it’ll be a warm, windless day tomorrow ..and generally good surf up and down the coast ..from Rincon to Refugio. On the other hand ..indigo-blue skies ..sharp stars ..and a clear line on the horizon ..tell me there’s going to be an offshore flow ..making the air crisp ..the water glassy ..and the surf tubular ..a most excellent day to dodge work. I like an offshore flow.

Mystic transport

Here's another theory of consciousness ..I may have caught a glimpse of this one time ..I call it ‘mystic transport’. It’s like going through a gate where there are no doors ..into a passage without walls ..then down a stream and into a pool of consciousness that spreads out past the barriers that ordinarily exist between you, me and other people in the room ..like a motion picture where the line between actor and audience disappears ..the scenes go backward as well as forward ..and time loops around so that the past reappears containing elements of the future.

Sense of proximity

I have another theory that says we can look even farther than the periphery ..and tell when someone is approaching ..or even thinking about us ..at a distance well beyond the means of ordinary senses. I call it a sense of proximity. In prehistoric times, it was part of a perceptual system that picked up early warning signals ..but atrophied with disuse. Who knows, there might still be remnants of it laying dormant in some people.

Peripheral vision

My theory is that we all have the ability to look into the future ..a few steps ahead of the conscious-making operations of the mind. What’s out there is mostly raw sensory-data .. energy, vibration and stuff like that. What we consciously perceive is what the senses have been conditioned to let through ..like a semi-permeable membrane. Young children, who haven’t had so much conditioning ..experience more. Older adults, who think they know it all, are less receptive ..and consequently ..experience less.

Theocracy in the USA

I think the Bush Administration has set medical science back at least a decade. Although 10 years may not seem like a long time, when you consider the speed of scientific advances these days ..that puts us back to about the middle ages. It wasn’t that long ago that many of the cancers which are manageable today were considered a death sentence ..things like Hodgkin’s disease, lymphoma and breast cancer come to mind here. Bush has moral issues with stem cell research, genetics and the theory of evolution. I’m sorry, but, as offensive as these fields may be to him ..myself and many others would not be alive today without the progress they made possible. Evolutionary science has provided major weapons in the fight against debilitating diseases. As someone who has survived cancer can attest ..these theories are ‘valid’ by virtue of the fact that they ‘work’. What better test is there ? I don’t care if they confound the minds of religious dogmatists. Denying the obvious is willful ignorance. It is an example of government-by-theocracy when the president demonizes scientific research. There is no place for that in a modern, technologically advanced, society. I am afraid of what two more years of his administration might bring. I do not want to live under the rule of evangelical Christians. Believe me, it is not a step in the direction of moral leadership ..we have Christian militias in this country who act just as uncivilized as Islamic terrorists. Remember Oklahoma City ..?

The road to recovery

I have a nasty cold ..it feels like I’ve been hit by a truck ..must have happened sometime around Thursday ..I should’a seen it coming after driving miles and miles of coastal road with wet hair and the top down ..on the other hand, it could have been something I contacted at the clinic when I stopped by to say hello ..lots of hugs and besos there ..or maybe it’s just my karma ..who knows ..there’s no end to the possibilities my mind conjures up when I feel this way ..so I stock up on lemons and tea ..Chinese hot and sour soup tastes good spiked with beer .. I turn my bathroom into a steam room and soak in warm water. I get absorbed in photoshop to help take my mind off things ..which is probably the reason I’m not very good ..it’s not really meant for the brain dead. Before I know it, it’s 4 am ..so I go to bed ..where I experience wave after wave of crazy thoughts ..like maybe I caught the bird flu virus ..or my neighbors are conspiring against me ..or my family is trying to disown me (they treat me like someone with Tourettes) ..or maybe my house is going to collapse from deferred maintenance ..and, at this rate, I'll never learn to speak Spanish ..how am I ever going to meet the right woman in this town if I can't speak Spanish.

Singapore girl

A photomanipulation using the
human form as subject and
the Sahara desert as background.

Andrea's new vision

Photomanipulation of original by squeebacon <~ Click here.

Rad lands

Totally awesome day ..the sky is so blue I feel high. Anne and her niece Molly are at the skate park ..Molly is eight years old ..she’s small for her age ..but tough . She brought her skateboard decked out with new decals ..Frankenstein and Casper the ghost. She’s wearing a black on red alien tee shirt ..and a new pair of vans. I watch her do a couple of laps around the park .. ‘carving a slope’ around each turn ..we high five. I ask her what that guy just did. A fifty-fifty she says. And that guy? A grind. What about over there (a guy does a jump ..his board flips around and he lands back on). Oh, that’s an Ollie. Another guy crashes in front of us ..dude ka biff’d she says ..happens all the time. I’m amazed at how fast children pick up a second language.

Hardhat area

My eyes are starting to burn from the fumes ..my teeth are rattling and my hands are shaking ..my ears pound with the sound of jackhammers .. my lungs are gasping for air and my voice is getting hoarse from yelling so much. There has got to be a better way to build houses than this. Can’t they pre-fab them at the factory ..and install them on site ..? I mean, it looks like they’re doing it pretty much the same way the Romans did ..except for the diesel engines. I can’t sustain a thought long enough to write it down ..or even follow it to the next one. I think I just heard someone say ..if this thing catches fire ..it’s not my fault. Now that that's gotta be somewhere high on the list of things you don't want to hear. My nerves are starting to fray.

Iconic registry

There’s an interesting process going on inside my head that I get to observe every so often. It picks up words that are in the general vicinity and processes them without warning ..suddenly my head is full of thoughts and images that have no relation to what I’m doing or thinking at the time. They can come from the room where I’m sitting ..or the road where I’m driving. I guess it’s the way subliminal advertising is supposed to work. For instance, I’ll be driving along looking for a place to park when suddenly images of dolphins appear in my head. I look around and spot a car on the other side of the road with a personalized license plate that says ‘DOLFIN LVR’. So now, when it happens, I take the time to investigate ..see if I can find the words or phrases that trigger these events ..make sure I’m not hallucinating and losing it. Today it was a word buried in a newspaper article ..I was eating breakfast when a picture leapt out of the morning paper screaming ‘Ojai’ ..the name of an unpretentious little spa town near here. I was not thinking of Ojai ..I’ve never been to Ojai ..the topic of the article wasn’t specifically about Ojai ..and even if it was ..I wasn’t actually reading the paper ..it was just sitting on the table next to me. I look closely at the picture to see if there’s anything to suggest Ojai ..but there isn’t ..just some oak trees on a hillside. So, I figure there must be something in the vicinity that triggered the idea ..I begin reading the article. It was about different places in the world where people can go to celebrate Easter ..and sure enough ..Ojai is one of them ..along with Italy, Florida and Puerto Rico. The article mentions the word Ojai when it says “..you can either spend Easter soaking in a spa in Ojai ..or strolling through museums in Venice.” Now, I know they say that reading is an active process ..but I believe the brain is a hybrid ..it can passively register words long enough to serve up their meaning without any effort on my part.

Auditory hallucinations

This evening I hear Gregorian chants coming from the creek down below ..I go outside to check it out ..then it sounds like it’s coming from next door ..I know my neighbor is a singer in a goth-rock band ..so, I go over there to listen ..but the sound disappears ..they wake up ..and he comes outside with a baseball bat. I should have known ..he never rehearses at home. It sounds like a high school band is marching through the bathroom when the fan is blowing and the water is running ..I turn off the water and the phone is ringing ..I run downstairs and realize that it’s my ears that are ringing. I lie awake listening to people quarrelling when it's dead quiet outside. I hear conversations coming from the guest room when nobody is there. I wake up to the sound of my mother screaming. When things get spooky ..it's the voice of reason I hear ..coming from my father. When I get really paranoid ..I hear wolves howling at the door. When I scream back ..doctors appear. Oh wait, they're visual hallucinations ..I hope.

Prodigal son

I know my memory is not a very reliable record of events ..too many thoughts, feelings and other substances going around making revisions. I do recall, however, the deal my father made me when I turned eighteen ..I suppose that’s because it so dramatically changed the course of my life. He believed in me and had faith that I would hold up my end of the bargain. What bargain ..? He offered to buy me a car and pay my living expenses as long as I stayed in school ..which meant enrolling at the local community college. I remember doing my best to conceal my excitement and not let on that I was getting the better end of this deal. You see, at the time, I was still in love with my high school sweetheart. She was sixteen years old and her family had just moved to Eureka, California. So, I was making plans to follow them up there and maybe get a job working the Klamath or something. I was already packed. Now all I needed to do was borrow my dad’s rental car ..tell him I was going to run an errand ..throw my bags in the trunk and head north (he didn't actually live with us ..he was visiting from overseas). I figured I could drop the car off near a rental agency somewhere as soon as I got settled. I figured he’d be pissed ..but, in the long run, maybe he’d realize what a small price it was to pay for his son’s happiness. Those were the thoughts actually running through my head moments before he offered me ‘the deal’ ..which changed everything ..because now all I had to do was play it cool ..wait until I got car keys of my own ..then say: Sayonara Southern California.

Dance

A photoshop lesson

New tune

When I got up this morning everything seemed normal. It wasn’t until I got on the road that I noticed this loud humming sound. I pulled over to listen to the engine but it wasn’t coming from there ..sounded as if it were coming from everywhere. I arrive at work and people are like: i ee owaah oo ..? and I’m like: whaaa ..? and they’re like: ouiii ee !! and I’m like: huh ..? Why is everybody talking in gibberish ..? What’s happening ..? The meeting this morning went the same way .. that's not too unusual ..although I think my name is ‘ee’ now ..I’ll have to remember that. I go back to my desk to try and figure out what’s going wrong ..something’s missing ..I tap my pencil on the desktop ..it makes no sound ..I can’t hear the beat ..that’s it ..!! I’m missing consonants ..that's why everybody's speech sounds like fluctuating tones with breaks in all the wrong places. After awhile I learn how to feel the vibration of consonants .. almost like a bass drum. Also, if I look closely enough ..I can see it in the way people move their mouth ..or the way their facial expressions change. Suddenly, like adjusting the focus on a pair of binoculars ..I can understand what people are saying again.

I wrote this to get a sense of what it’s like for someone suffering with selective hearing loss. I know that it takes a lot longer to learn how to compensate for it than what I've described.

Dirty air

Breathing in ..expanding ..breathing out ..letting go ..ahhh, my breathing exercises are over. I'm sitting outside ..the air smells like dirt ..and I can hear the construction workers shouting: “whadya mean y’aint gonna do that shit ..git wit da’ program ..got any goop ..I don’t know ..got any beer ..two more hours before that shit comes in baby.” They’re turning the entrance of the canyon into condos ..I remember the fight at city hall ..it's not like I'm anti-development or anything ..it’s just got to be reasonable ..this is not New York city. Now I’m chatting online with my sister Nancy ..we’re planning a trip to San Francisco in May ..watch the cherry blossoms bloom in Golden Gate Park ..eat fish stew at Little Joes ..hang out at City Lights ..way cool. There's a northwesterly wind blowing across the deck today ..but I don’t mind ..feels like summer ..I take off my shirt. Feeling jittery ..don’t know why ..probably the ginseng root ..I feel like I can accomplish anything ..but it’s good enough to just sit here and write.