2/2/2018: Mar, I am breaking the silence I requested because a window may be closing. Not a window for reunion, but for resolution, closure, healing. I understand now that from the beginning you saw me for who I was in the moment, and honored the light within me. My self loathing poisoned our relationship, and I fear it poisoned you also. It was my own baggage that led me to believe there was something wrong with me, with us, and with you. You were, and are an amazing human, perfect already, no need to change or improve.
1/29/2018: A glimpse of a figure tricks my longing brain to think for a few frames of time that it’s her and 2 years seem like nothing. New friends, adventures, trials, and sufferings fit into a two dimensional sliver between now and a time when the figure was her, smiling at me. I notice my mind, I suffer it but am not lost in it. I wanted the figure to be her, but when it was I wanted her to be something else, some unfair “better” image that I believed until confronted with the truth of her, just like I am confronted now with the truth that both these figures are now a stranger.
On building a home
Moab Utah has become an amusement park. I am going back to where the wolves howl, where clear rivers flow and fish are safe to eat. I won’t name town, not even the state: these places are treasures to be found in flesh by the the traveler, the searcher. Deep canyons, open sky, big Ponderosa with their vanilla smell, rising up to deeper forests, then tree line, barren rock, snow, and jagged summit. Deer, elk, reclusive bighorn (not the roadside variety one finds in Zion NP), and the king salmon on a journey more incredible than mine. More than a world to play in: a world to be humble in.
In the past 15 years I have resided in 9 different locations amoungst 6 different states, with some time in south america to boot. In so many of these places my mind’s wondering asked “could I make a home here?” Only in one this question never arose because it was preempted by a feeling: of belonging, a feeling called home. It’s the difference between meeting someone and thinking “this could work we’re a good fit” to feeling authentic connection – love. Why did I leave? I had more work to do on the road.
The previous fall I past through this beauty and felt it wasn’t time to return yet: I needed to dry out my weeping heart in the great red rock desert of the southwest before I could set again to home, much like one ought to take off their muddy boots before they walk inside.
–
I have choice, or at least the illusion of choice: I can stay and work, or I can move somewhere new and start again, or I can roam. I can choose to put forth the effort to meet so many of my basic needs: food, shelter, safety. I could work and make money and build a house. But a house is not a home: home is community, belonging. And here I find one basic need that I will always be partially dependant on others for: companionship. To make it more challenging I have a picture in my mind of the quality of relationships I seek. Some relationships just won’t do, no matter how present and available.
Being single makes the move easy, yet I know that my chances to meet a woman and find that magic will be far fewer in wilder country. Pondering this I resort to the first time ever of online dating: within 100 miles I find 12 single women between the age of 24 and 40 and I am reminded of why I left. Life is more than weighing probability: what we meet in the world is a mystery. The more open I am to that, the more magic I find.
Or perhaps magic finds me? In my last few days in Moab I meet an amazing woman and we enjoyed spending time together, like nothing I had found since moving here, since old times long gone. It was a moment, but a good one which helped me see that it is not to late for this wanderer.
On building a home
Moab Utah has become an amusement park. I am going back to where the wolves howl, where clear rivers flow and fish are safe to eat. I won’t name town, not even the state: these places are treasures to be found in flesh by the the traveler, the searcher. Deep canyons, open sky, big Ponderosa with their vanilla smell, rising up to deeper forests, then tree line, barren rock, snow, and jagged summit. Deer, elk, reclusive bighorn (not the roadside variety one finds in Zion NP), and the king salmon on a journey more incredible than mine. More than a world to play in: a world to be humble in.
In the past 15 years I have resided in 9 different locations amoungst 6 different states, with some time in south america to boot. In so many of these places my mind’s wondering asked “could I make a home here?” Only in one this question never arose because it was preempted by a feeling: of belonging, a feeling called home. It’s the difference between meeting someone and thinking “this could work we’re a good fit” to feeling authentic connection – love. Why did I leave? I had more work to do on the road.
The previous fall I past through this beauty and felt it wasn’t time to return yet: I needed to dry out my weeping heart in the great red rock desert of the southwest before I could set again to home, much like one ought to take off their muddy boots before they walk inside.
Being single makes the move easy, yet I know that my chances will be fewer in wilder country and pondering this I resort to the first time ever of online dating: within 100 miles I find 12 single women between the age of 24 and 40. I am reminded of why I left, yet I reject the notion that life is either an amusement park or barren.
The amusment park:
I have been in this town for 8 months, through the slow season and into the busy. Looking for an intimate connection
I do not recall when I wrote this:
What pain and fear brought me to wandering I do not know. There are things I remember, my first love who slept with my friend, the death of my father by his own hand, but the pain began long before. Gone now from memory it is muck on the bottom of the ocean of my soul.
July 7th, 2017
How easy life could be if I cut out all that disagrees with me. I erase it from my sight, my life. Eternal sunshine of the spotless life. I would breathe easy, I would sleep easy. I would not get anything done, just rant incessantly of my beliefs to my followers, and if any dissent they are removed, all comments, all history stricken from the record. All would be shiny and perfect in my little constructed world as the ending to a disney movie.
Except for the nightmares of powerlessness.
March 24 2016:
There exists a movement to redefine beauty as sexy, perfect to be factory precision, smooth as plastic. It is a sad sentiment, not life serving, and this movement has already found a home in the minds of many. How do we create positive change here?
One of the most poignant transformations i experienced over the past year was realizing that I, through proceeding the best way I could see, became the enemy of others. This may convey my intent to another reader, but i record it here to hopefully remind myself of this sense later on down the road.
Feb 6th
Intentonal agnosticism: to decide what exists limits the expanse of what may exist.
Feb 6th
I cant recall feeling this awesome about life since I was 4.
January 23
An extraordinary thing happened today, this morning during the hour of the wolf: I found that I am ready to let her go.
January 20th
This is a petroglyph pannel I visited in a remote area of the Colorado Plateau. I am still stricken by the image which transcends time and culture.
It is an image of Union.
Today, Union is but a dream, or even a memory of a dream. Though I am reminded, comforted, buoyed by my friends like Jonathan Crouch for daring to converse on the nature of wholeness, Shell Bailey and Phillip Brush for what their feet are doing out east right now, David Mcd for bring the light of music, for folks like Jess Gimpel, Xylem Larla Dey, and all the others who held hands in the Dakota Lands recently, for Vivian Stembridge, Cynthia Stone Richards, Pamela Robicheaux and all the others that saved relics which helped my own fractured heart find health. My Father Bill, and my mother, MaryLou Robicheaux, for daring to bring me into this world and giving me the best of what they had to offer, so that I might offer the best of me to others, in pursuit of a dream.
The Union is a dream, but it is a good dream: one I dare to have, to share, and to work for, and someday it may exist as real and as durable as an image carved in stone.
Januare 12th
The world doesn’t need any more saviors or pop stars, it needs neighbors and friends: folks who will show up and listen and lend a hand.
Dec 24, 2016
It must be about 15 years ago now that my father took his life, it wasnt around Christmas time but that’s when I miss him most. I remember well the joy and magic he brought to my childhood.
Why am I unloading this heavy sh#! on Christmas eve? Because I urge you the reader to shirk the yoke of stuff and give the gift of love and joy.
Depression is poorly understood in our culture, often seen as weakness, but I know it to be more like cancer: an illness which can be terminal, and treatment exists, more than often it mustn’t be fatal, especially with early recognition and treatment. Chances are we all know someone alive today who is living with depression, perhaps even the reader, and we can all play an active role in helping those who suffer from depression. Help can take many forms and if you want to know more I am a willing resource, and there are many other (more professional) resources out there.
Here in Chile I have met some of the happiest people I have ever encountered. The climate is gray and wet even in summer, most are quite poor by US or Chilean standards, and yet they are wealthy. We need neither car nor light bulb nor smart phone nor lover to be happy, one key ingredient I see here is community, something we can all be for each other.
…….
There may be a man who has no regrets. If this is true he surely was born far wiser than I will ever be! It’s my regrets of destructive mistakes and the memorials of my joys which orient me to move in new directions and discover new things. perhaps in the next life I will be born as that wise man who has no regrets. how boring.
I used to disdain the cover song, that angsty young man thinking that synthesis from the self was highest virtue. now, like walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, I see that singing another’s song is the same, a willingness to be present with the story of another.
September 13th: another 4 am morning. I wake without you. fully present with your absence. I think of those words you wrote me “I hope you see things that surprise you.” You saw me. you listened. You were not my idea of perfect, because my ideas are not reality, nor can they create the world. You were beyond perfect, you were human. You got angry and you loved. you validated and you denied. You ran and you cam back. You’d bush me away and pull me back in. You saw who I was, and also made stories about who I was. You allowed yourself to feel and be all of these things, embracing dichotomy, contradiction, for what you were experiencing in the moment. I, in my fixation with consistency only allowed myself to see a fixed you. A you I thought I could predict, A you that over time, I slowly began to put you in a box. I would let myself be surprised only a little bit, and then when something else emerged I told myself, “this is how you are.” All the while you were changing so much, big wide shiny eyes taking in the world, as we can always be changing, becoming something new if we allow ourselves to be open.
I realize now the sorrow that I hold in putting you in by box of fixed images, my box of knowing what to expect. You told me you didn’t know how to be with me, that you didn’t feel free. I thought letting us go would give you, and me, freedom. But freedom can only come from allowing the mind to be surprised by the world and each little bit of it as it changes, as we change inside (we are part of the changing world). When you wrote “I hope you find things that surprise you” I thought ‘I hope you surprise me’ but now I see that I was thinking ‘I hope you fit into an idea I have in my head, an idea that you still want to wake with me next to you’ and I see that I still have you in a box in my mind. That to set us both free I must let myself know that I don’t know you, this changing person, who has been changing without me for half a year. It has been that long. To allow myself the real possibility that you no longer want to wake by my side and together savor the dawn like a cup of spring water, to enjoy each other in the same way. And, like with you, the only way I can let myself out of my own box is to recognize that there is a world out there waiting to surprise me, and to decide that you are or are not in it, in various ways or forms, is to deny myself surprise. Surprise is having no designs on what might happen, an openness to the infinite grand possibilities of the Universe. And I realize now that the World cannot surprise us unless we let it.
September 11th: Dear world: Thank you for reading what I share. I used to hide my pain, fear, and doubt behind a smile, or behind blaming someone else. Or, if it became to great, I would hide altogether, avoidance, habitual distraction, grand denial and all the stress and soul death that goes with it. To share the darkness within is to be known, to be real. thank you for allowing me to share, and my real gratitude lies in receiving what you share. I might not see it, I am still largely blind, but tag me, or send me an email, or poke me in the real world and say “hola. here’s my shadows”
September 9th:
What video games have taught me about life:
There is always a problem. Finish one problem move on to the next
You never get older or slower.
If you make a critical error in your path, no worries, you can just reload a saved game.
You beat the end boss, the final big enemy, and then every thing is all good. until you are board and start a new game.
Satirical, yes. This is our one shot, we mess up, that’s it. There is so much more to life than solving problems and overcoming enemies. Making enemies (aka hurting people) is easier than buying a new video game. Eliminating or avoiding an enemy does nothing, our one true enemy is inside our own head, and unless lobotomy is an option you will never be rid of this enemy – try inviting it for tea instead. We get older, and if we are careful and aware we might get wiser as we get older. We Die. perhaps we die because we err, perhaps we die because someone else does, perhaps we die because we are old, perhaps we die because we forget how to live, and love. Love does not exist in a video game.
Sitting at the brink I would now rather reap the harvest of all my follies, comfort my demons, and I would rather die old and wise than young and stupid. and I will always risk all to be humble, to love. and I will undoubtedly mess it up again. what would life be like without our mistakes?
One commonality: the best games are always multiplayer
September 6th: I fell off the wagon again a few weeks ago. I plugged in the video game, and plugged myself in. And since, I have spent the vast majority of my time hiding from the pain. the bottle never was my thing, but I see no difference in spending 3/4 of my day drunk or playing video games, I can recognize this addiction for what it is.
And then, a friend I didn’t even know I had reached out across the void, and said, “keep at the banjo – it’s a pretty good friend” and so I unplugged, and I picked up my banjo and I strummed. And I felt the pain, the sadness, and continued to feel it, and got to work. work recognizing and being honest with what’s inside, all the things we are taught to loathe, taught to hide.
And here, in the closing of the day is what wells up inside:
If we truly love, let us have the courage to recognize contempt, not in any place outside of us, but within our own thoughts. recognize it, be honest with it. Yes, we are not awesome, yes we have scary ego driven motives, yes we are not alone we share this and many other things in common. let us share, let us be curious, let us be brave. let us love.
August 17th: An old Friend once said to me, that the most radical thing is a long memory. At times my memories haunt me, but please let me keep them all, please let me remember, and may their memory keep me from repeating my destructive past.
August 16th: I will feel fear, I climb anyway
I will feel doubt, I sing anyway
I will feel pain, I love anyway
Life is to short to live in a cage of denial and limitation.
August 14th: One of the ways in which I have been wretched is that I have played the victim: made others out to be the villain, when in truth they are acting out of the same needs as I, their choices and paths are as valid and worthy as mine, and that I would likely make the same choices as them were I walking in their shoes. And my choices, truly and deeply are no better or worse than theirs. To all that I have held as villains: I surrender, I fight you no more, I do not seek to triumph my story over yours. Let us walk together.
Waking up at 1:30am, disorderly work space, a life full of wonderful and horrific inspirations: all the makings of a creative genius, except the genius!
I have begun studying Aikido. not because I want to be some martial bad ass, but because I want to learn to fall gracefully, to receive without harm.
38 years ago an ordinary thing happened: a human baby was born. Ordinary, considering on this day, like others before and after it, more than 250,000 human babies were born in just one day of the world. That baby learned to see, to cry, to walk, and to speak, like most of the others born that day. As that baby grew older it experienced joy and pain, happiness and suffering, it received genuine love, witnessed genuine horror, expressed genuine need, and it learned to love in that needy way that a child loves it’s parents, all very ordinary, like most other babies born that day, that year, and in the years before and after.
At some point things diverged: personality began to form, ego identity began to form, thoughts of uniqueness, of being different began to take shape to differentiate self from others. The ideas of individuality were also very ordinary, very similar to all the others. Ego, not unique, ideas, not unique, behaviors, not unique. once the child stopped growing larger change slowed way down also. The ordinary was locked in. Individuality trumpeted loudly in fear of the ordinary with in. As the years ticked by the threads of life wove a very unique tapestry for this child, as all children of the earth have a very unique tapestry, yet he pushed and pulled on the threads, “i am very different” he demanded. “I am strange, I do not belong” and wove some threads into his own tapestry to try and support that idea.
Chronos, the old bastard Time, moved the years ever onward, at a very consistent pace externally, but internally each year began to seem shorter, less full, more similar to the last. Other people began to seem more predictable, more ordinary. blandness seeped into to the pores of his life, and he felt deeply unsatisfied.
But wait, here it is: something shook up the hourglass of time, or smashed it and threw a bunch of beach sand into the pile of rubble. little bits of shell and rock and dirt and seaweed all mixed into the time-sands. and nothing made sense anymore. and looking around, the child, saw that the entire beach of humanity was just like this: a crazy heap of particles impossibly intertwined, the waves of uncontrollable fate constantly lapping at all humanity, churning sand down into it’s depths, and spitting it back on the shore just as fast. swirling in that mix, the child became man, and realized that in the ordinary was beauty, in the ordinary was kinship, in the ordinary was chaos and unpredictability, and a kind of reliability also. and the man realized that he was grateful to be part of that madness on the beach, grateful that he had been spat out by the ocean, and grateful that someday when the tide came back in he would be pulled back into it’s depths. The term ordinary has no context when one realizes that they are inseparable from all around them, and he found a very different kind of love for that beach of humanity, a love born of the recognition of inseparability.
And so he decided to throw a party to celebrate, and many good friends showed up to celebrate all that connects us. And it was good.
When I was a kid I remember this birthday where I had a raggedy Andy birthday cake, I think my mom made it from nothing. It was so beautiful. We were under the car-port behind our house at a big funky table surrounded with funky chairs. I don’t remember how old I was, but I mussn’t have been older than 6. I remember this as the best birthday of my childhood, but I also don’t remember any other birthdays of my childhood, or teenage years, or adult years until the last few.
My last 2 birthdays we blessed by one person who really took the time and intention to celebrate it with me. She did a lot to honor me. Now though, that is gone, she is gone, and I realized that if I sat back and did nothing, I would have one more sad birthday, a victim birthday, pining that no one knows or is celebrating “my” day. Fuck that. So I decided to plan my own party, invite good and cherished friends, and celebrate, not me, but them, that they are in my life, that they come when rallied, that they are excited to celebrate with me. it is not the fact that I was born that is worth celebrating: it is that I have people in my life, with which I can celebrate life.
And that nagging victim in the back of my brain still want to pine, “none of this would happen without you planning it and telling people” Yeah so? how could they know? they have equally complex lives of their own to live. and so it is: I take my happiness into my own hands. I celebrate with friends. we are alive.
Love is that which creates choice. Love is always stronger than fear. We can cover our fears, our pains and sorrows with joy and smiles, burying these things and not letting them show.
Or we can uncover our darkness and let the world see them. Some might say “I’m glad you are working on yourself, you clearly have a lot to work on. Others might say “wow, I didn’t know anyone else felt this way, is this what it’s like to be human?”
And then our joys can be flags flapping free in the wind, not covers for some darkness within.
I will be turning 38 years old soon. I was a child before the internet existed. As a teenager, I remember that some kids had pagers so their parents could contact them, or it was joked that they we drug dealers.
I grew up in the 80’s playing in the woods pretending sticks were guns. Russians were the enemy, the cold war and nuclear threat was a real and present in my developing understanding of the world. I was 11 when the Berlin wall came down, and for a moment in the 90’s there was a new hope, a world which could spiral upward into futures unknown. Star Trek seemed lofty but possible.
It was late in my high school years that I began to hear of ozone depletion, and the “ozone hole.” In college, 1998, I learned of the global warming theories, which are now more established. In one stairwell on campus was a large and beautiful picture of a luminous mushroom cloud, as if from a hydrogen bomb – above the cloud a phoenix rising. But we forgot the nuclear threat – the US and Russia were reportedly disarming and although countries like china and India were developing nuclear arsenals they were nothing compared to the tens of thousands of warheads held by the U.S. and Russia during the cold war. Nuclear threat was forgotten, at least by me, in fear of other doom like global climate change.
It gets dark here, but if you stick with me, there is light also.
We are locked in. We flip the switch and expect there to be light. no thought to the cost. We close the car door and start the engine, with only brief recognition of a concern. Turn up the ac. We have passed the window, folks say, there is no going back to the atmosphere and the climate we had before. we continue to build fossil fuel power plants. we continue to sell coal to china who burns it dirty so they have cheap energy to make almost everything for us at such a cheap cost. such a cheap cost.
We are locked in to climate change. good. perhaps now we can open our eyes once again and realize that the U.S. and Russia still have over 10,000 nuclear devices, and are constructing more. If 1/4 of this was used, only on US, European, and Russian soil, the resulting fires, ash, and dust would block 70% of sunlight in the northern hemisphere. In summer, nightly temperatures would drop below freezing, killing all crops, humanity would no longer be able to grow food for 1 to 3 years. Most of humanity would starve to death in this period. Surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age. Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. 70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight. Even humans living in shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.
This is a very real and possible future, with deteriorating relationships between the US and Russia it is as real as during the height of the cold war. I imagine small rodents and deep sea life in areas relatively free of fallout surviving the millennia as radioactive cesium decays. They evolve and start anew, and in another 65 million years we have something human like: creating, inventing, loving, playing, fighting, fearing, hating, destroying, life could rise and fall this way for perhaps 10 to 20 cycles before the sun begins to change and sterilize the earth for good. But maybe in one of those cycles something shifts, a bit more cooperation, a bit less contempt, we dig in to the deepest secrets of the universe and intertwine with what our minds now are unable to conceive.
We are not locked in to a future of apocalypse. We learn from mistakes, but some are fatal, to individuals, to species, to biospheres. Some lessons we can’t come back from, some we watch others fall into and become destroyed, but we can watch and listen and learn. Real history, not that as written by the victors, contains all the lessons we need to spiral upward. Available technology contains all the solutions we need. Pre-empirical culture contains all the wisdom we need to guide us in living with other families, other tribes.
And the Heart contains all the hope and love we need to experience being hit, and respond by yielding, pausing, and being willing to look through the eyes of our attacker, to understand why he caused us and himself pain. This can be our future, as soon as we are willing to live it.
Thank you everyone, and happy birthday to you, Human Race.
Eternal sunshine of the soulless mind… remember that movie (spotless mind)?
Years ago it left me greatly unsettled: the thought of erasing a loved one from my mind, or being erased. I didn’t read into it much, perhaps I thought of it as selfish attachment, desire for meaning through old identity…
Now I understand that without pain we cannot learn not to touch that hot stove, without loss, sorrow, grief, I would not experience immense gratitude for those still in my life, all those beautiful souls who have reached out to me in support. And more, realizing that they, like me share sorrow and joy, pain and exstasy, burdens and levity.
And suddenly I am no longer alone, and I weep deep with all the sorrow and joy that has flowed through my elaborately colored life, and the gratitude of having a tribe, a group of people to whom I belong. And equal gratitude to those few who have offered me pain and the many who have offered me support and caring. And finally, in arriving to the place where everyone and everything I meet are representations of the same things I hold in myself.
I look back over the beautiful landscape of my life and weep with grateful tears. Thank you to all my relations.
A dear friend once told me: “you must fight for what you love”
Some of those things we fight are outside of us, but most of what I fight is aspects of me. And fight I will.
Receiving and utilizing what is offered, as much as we are able to do with grace, that is gratitude as I have come to know it.
I process very slowly: and am finding that grieving the loss of a relationship is far different than the death of a loved one. Our lost love is still out there in the world, the idea or illusion of reunion can seem possible, plausible. With death I held the thought “what could I have done?” With separation the questions are “could we repair, should we repair, can we still be friends?” While death is a fixed boundary and separation ambiguous, all of these questions, I remind myself, are stage 3 of grieving. and each are torturous in their own way. I welcome the disillusion of the anger which preceded this, and sadness, though an official stage, has ben present throughout.
And, as I wise Bear once said, “how grateful I am to have something which makes saying goodbye so hard”
my challenge lies not in letting go of my contempt for someone, but in recognizing my contempt through all my self deceptions.
July 9th. The wise learn from their mistakes. The truly wise learn from the mistakes of others. A man once sung “you never miss your water ’till your well runs dry.” I didn’t listen. To anyone in a relationship who is unsure, who thinks there might be a better match out there for them, who is holding things without forgiveness, please listen: Love is a rare treasure, a glowing ember which can be stoked and blown into a fire of partnership and family. Do not douse it with judgement or blame, lest you find in the end you were not grateful for air when you could fill your lungs with it.
July 9th: In my experience there are two distinctly different uses of the word fear:
1) thought fear: I don’t want to risk trying because I am “afraid” of what might happen
2) true emotional fear: “holy shit i’m gonna die!”
strangely, in my life it is when I am gifted by the latter experience that the former is revealed as illusion, most often a barrier I impose on my own life and possibility.
June 9th:imagine what we could do, feel, think, and be if we devoted 8 hours a day to doing what we love, what makes our heart sing…
May 12th: (go find yourself first, so you can also find me ~ Rumi) Many paths, one destination?
May 10th: I heard “know thy self” and followed that path. The more I explored it the more lost I became, the more confused my brain. In the fog I lost the path, I lost my self, and in it all something connected: Self and Other is a basal axiom, an assumed rule, from which so much is built upon. Self is an illusory construct of the mind. To truly know the self would be to know the whole.
February 28th:“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love,”
-Thich Nhat Hahn “meditation on how to love”
February 25th:
February 18th: In traveling I have met this idea that we have much to learn from other people and other cultures. One might focus on learning how to cook, or play a certain instrument, or style of music, or spiritual practice. All of these fall short: the most powerful thing we might learn from traveling through a world of differences is to recognize what we all share. (Aka how to not be a jerk)
February 8th:
Tagonga. Colombia is a beautiful country, and like all countries it also has poverty and pollution. It hasn’t rained in Tagonga in over a year and most of the plants are very dead.
When I was growing up I heard the terms first world, and third world countries. Now in the U.S. we have adopted the euphemims “developed nation” and “developing” nation. A jackass might call Colombia a “developing nation” when in fact many have smart phones, nice things, cars fancier than any I am likely to own. There is also deep poverty: today on our bus ride I saw shanties made of refuse, watched children determined to have fun playing in fields of plastic trash. Good on em’ making lemonade when life only gives you lemons.
“Developing nation” is a euphemism because the powerful control the less powerful. This is a fundamental dynamic of our current world culture. A more powerful nation benefits and stays powerful through exploitation of the less powerful. “Developing” is a false context and insulting because it paints a picture that A country like Colombia may some day have the power that the U.S. has: a fallacy as long as our model of exploitation is predominant. Like a clerk at Wal Mart may someday have as much money as the CEO if she/he simply works hard enough.
Though insulting, perhaps more brutally honest were the terms 1st 2nd and 3rd world, but even more descript might be “exploited country” and “exploiting country”
Thank you for reading.
Con Gusto
First we found a bus to Tyrona, then we explored this 18th century spanish fort. There were many tourists, and many locked gates, they took Mar prisoner but she escaped. In fleeing from the masses we found tunnels down to the base of the fort, half filled with water. Right here is real adventure, and so I get my feet wet. Small ancient tunnels, water, fear, it’s a good mix to push yourself out of the common mind state. Back on the surface we head into the heart of the old city with friends of Diana Ar. Amazing sights, buildings built from ancient coral reefs, awesome doors and door knockers, awesome food, awesome history. Then back for a drugged sleep (benadryl as I had more allergy stuff) awake and hop on thebbus to santa marta/taganga
Mui rapido.
January 27:
February 6th
I am very grateful to Mar Caballero for welcoming me into Latin culture and all the lessons it has to offer. If you eat in front of others, offer them food. this shows respect. Others may offer you food, and accepting, even in small portion is a way of returning the respect which is offered. Whats more, if you ask for food from others, consider accepting what they offer, even if you fear it, even if you are highly allergic to the red food coloring you are pretty sure it contains (perhaps in smaller portion?) In risking, jn challenging our fear, we may learn something new (like, “wow I like kidney!”) We could apply this only to food, or we could apply this to whatever another has to offer. Certainty in the latter the opportunity for growth is much greater…
February 6th:
I think at times that at the bottom of it all, what I want is the freedom to explore, discover, and express who I am, to work to nurture a culture where others may do the same, and to be known, not for my clothes, skin, flaws or false images, but for the qualities of my soul and these intentions in my heart. This, I think, is Love.
January 31st
More of Bogota: Sunday are much more chill, lots happening in the streets. Traveling is a bit like going to the movies, you wouldn’t put blinders on or ware ear plugs would you? It’s the whole experience you go for, and i feel the same about the food when traveling. Sickness is a potential concert if you, like me have a compromised “first world” immune system, but I find the risk worth it. So found some chicha, tamales, strange gingery liqudy taffy like stuff, a hot mint ginger beverage with a bit of alcohol, fresh fruit juices, sausages on arepas, watermelon in a cup, and more food fun.
Like any large city Bogota sports a large homeless population, and as someone who has relative wealth and privilege I feel inclined to do something, but what? It’s a tough question. I used to hand out coins freely, but I have begun to wonder if that is enabling, not empowering? I still give to street performers, musicians, etc, but hold back handing change to what our culture would call beggars, though my heart pains at their station, their need and lack. As we were walking back to our hostal a man asked me for money, “tienes hambre?” Are you hungry? I asked, and was met with a yes, so we walked across the street to a bakery/cafe “que quieres?” What do you want? Thats about the extent of my Spanish, (Mar lets me dive in and helps out if i am over my head). The man selects a large pastry with some meat in it, I pay for it: 2000 pesos, (about 60 cents) he thanks me, I thank him, we exchange smiles, shake hands and go our own ways. It’s still not teaching a man to fish, and still a dangerous ego game of skin deep altruism, but it felt better than handing over some cash and wondering if all i were doing was feeding addiction. If any of you souls have a suggestion for how better to help people on the street, please give me some schooling. Thank you.
January 29th
I despise cities, it’s true. As Mar would say I am a super grinch for cities. There is the fast traffic, the croud, the air that makes me wheeze and eyes burn, the occasional stench of urine. There is also the good, the old woman with one eye playing guitar, a Michael Jackson jukebox steet performer, amazing food, amazing architecture, art, ancient padlocks still in use, beautiful doors (i have a door fetish) statues, flying rats (aka pigeons) excited to eat out of your hand…
More to come
Marcellus the Wanderer 