"I see my light come shining, from the West down to the East"

Today I told the rest of my students that I will be moving on Thursday.  Several of them weren't in class when I first announced it last week, and they just happened to be a few of the ones who have been in the class since I began.  At least three of them have told me they might move to New York City to stay in my class.  They don't care which school it is.

I am filled with many feelings and emotions as I embark on yet another journey to find home: confidence, humility, fatigue, passion, sentimentality, confusion, gratitude and hope.

I would tell you more, but I've been packing for hours.  Even so, you deserve a song.  This is one of my favorites, recorded in San Francisco forty years ago.  Many of the greatest rock stars in music history gathered together to celebrate The Band's conclusion to years on the road.  I'll never stop traveling and exploring, and, in a way, everyone's journey through the universe is a solo journey.  Even so, this isolation has gotten old.  Maybe I'll do it again, but it's been four years since I've lived in my home state with many of my friends and almost all of my family.  It's time to move back and be with people, old and new, in an environment I know and love.

 

God Only Knows What I Would Do Without Ants and Trees

I saw this banner celebrating the America's Cup sailboat race in San Francisco, and they congratulated "Oracle USA" on making history in San Francisco Bay.  I like the oracle.

Then I was walking by the San Francisco Symphony Hall when I noticed that Andras Schiff will be performing Bach and Beethoven in two weeks.  I was very disappointed.  I actually know who that composer is, and I'd been wanting to see a great classical concert in San Francisco, yet stubbornly refused to justify the expense.  Besides, if I was going to spend money, it was going to be on the greats.  It doesn't get much greater than Bach and Beethoven.  I guess I'll have to see their works performed live some other time.  I imagine that happens in New York.

A few minutes later I was walking by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  Suddenly I saw someone waving to me and calling my name.  It turned out it was a former student who had left the school in June.  He's a 21 year old Chinese businessman who already runs his own instrument sales company and is looking to get into restaurants.  Last time I saw him he had a Porsche SUV, but he recently traded it in for a truck.  I saw him outside the conservatory because he studies clarinet at the school.  His love of classical music is what brought him to study in the US to begin with.

I remarked on his amazing ambition and apparent financial talents, and then asked him what he would do after the restaurant venture succeeded.  He said he would find something else to invest in.  Then I asked what he would do when he had enough money.  He said make more money with it.  "The point of money is to make more money."  I wondered about the language barrier, so I made my point more clear, asking what he would do if he had so much money he didn't have to work anymore.  He said he wasn't sure.  Maybe he'd buy cars.  He hadn't thought about it.  He's only 21.  He likes what he does.  That's what matters.

Meanwhile, as we were talking, a few of his classmates were putting on a mini-performance on the sidewalk.  They covered "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys and "Sing! Sing! Sing!" by Benny Goodman.

He invited me to the next day's show, for free, and I agreed.

So this afternoon I went to see college aged young adults performing symphony pieces in a small auditorium.  I missed the first piece, but the second piece was actually by a student still at the school who won some award for his composition.  It was called "Tree Ride," and was inspired both by John Muir's descriptions of his experiences in the California wilderness and an experience the composer had during a thunderstorm in the high sierra mountains.  I couldn't believe that a 21 year old had written music to be performed by fifty people, making use of just about every instrument, except for the guitar and saxophone.  I really enjoyed the feeling of the piece.  It was incredibly creative and moving.  After the intermission we saw a smaller, less diverse orchestra play Johannes Brahms, which I found enjoyable but not nearly as enjoyable as the previous work by the unknown artist.  I'm sure he has a bright future ahead of him, and he has already accomplished more than most humans and musicians could ever dream of.  But what about everyone else in the orchestra?  Each of them clearly exceptionally talented, yet all merely working together as part of one whole, playing their assigned roles...

Soon afterward I was walking home in Oakland and feeling pretty strange.  I'm leaving the Bay Area later this week after almost a year of residence, and California after a full year of residence.  Then I'm going back to New York, where I'm from.  I'm also going back to New York City, where I am not from, but I have lived before.  I am ambivalent about my future there, but it's where I want to be now and for the foreseeable future.  I've written so much since I've been here, but I have yet to take the leap of faith of serious publishing distribution.  That's why I'm anonymous.

As I walked on the sidewalk I noticed a stream of incredibly tiny ants lining the bottom of a building for at least fifty feet.  Normally I ignore ants, but I was in no rush, so I bent down to look at them more closely.  Streams of them were flowing one way, and streams the other.  The closer I looked though, I could follow individual ants, and I realized that many of them were turning around constantly.  They all seemed to be confused and just wanted to go where everyone else went.  Finally I found a brave determined one carrying a piece of food or whatever it was that made it so important to carry.  The ant persevered through the stream regardless of how many times it had to stop and readjust when faced with obstacles of opposing forces.  I rooted for the ant.  It deserved my attention.  After all, we can't all be Bach and Beethoven.

One of the movies I watched while I was packing for my move to the West Coast last year was A Bug's Life.  I think it was sitting around our house for some reason, and I'd just read about it in the Steve Jobs biography, so I figured it was worth a view, being one of the first major computer-animated films.  Basically there's an ant who dreams of being something more than an ant, simply following orders and doing the same things ants have always done for all remembered time because that's just how it is.  He makes up wacky inventions and tries his best to improve life for everyone, but screws up a lot.  He's also in love with the young new queen, but always gets tongue-tied around her.  Meanwhile, the queen is nervous herself about her new role as an authority and leader.  The rest of the community wants to get rid of the imaginative and clumsy ant, so they let him go on a journey.  He is incredibly excited and expects to find amazing benefits for his people.  After much walking with heavy weight, he arrives in the big city with his backpack and eyes full of wonder.  Right before he left for the city, he'd had a discussion with a younger ant about the power of imagination:

Flik: Here, pretend - pretend that that's a seed.
Dot: It's a rock.
Flik: Oh, I know it's a rock, I know. But let's just pretend for a minute that it's a seed, alright? We'll just use our imaginations.  Now, now do you see our tree? Everything that made that giant tree is already contained inside this tiny little seed.  All it needs is some time, a little bit of sunshine and rain, and voilá!
Dot: This rock will be a tree?
Flik: Seed to tree.  You've gotta work with me, here. Alright? Okay. Now, y-you might not feel like you can do much now, but that's just because, well, you're not a tree yet.  You just have to give yourself some time.  You're still a seed.
Dot: But it's a rock.
Flik: [shouting] I know it's a rock! Don't you think I know a rock when I see a rock? I've spent a lot of time around rocks!
Dot: You're weird, but I like you.

As I became strangely inspired by this simple movie, I saw a picture of my first book, Chung Fu, which I wrote when I was nine.  Chung Fu is a Chinese term meaning "inner truth."  I've got a lot of stories about Chung Fu.  For example, there's this book I read where this guy says the "oracle" made him write a novel, and when he asked it why, it told him "Chung Fu."

So I wrote down, "Chung Fu, a seed becomes a tree."   Beneath that I wrote, "Ant enters big city with a backpack. 'WOW, the big city!'"

LOOK

 

 

You are perfect and beautiful, and you're only going to get better at everything you worry about.

However, you have work to do.  The world needs to keep being reminded of how beautiful and perfect it is, and to keep getting better at everything it worries about too.  Your work does this for the world.

That means that whatever beauty and perfection you feel within you must continue to spread through to help the world make do.

Don't worry, it's not all up to you.

Do the best you will do.

Autumn

It's a little crisper than usual tonight.

That's making me excited for autumn weather.

I haven't been in the Northeast during leaf season in three years, and it's been four since Thanksgiving at home.

Cold weather brings out strong feelings and emotions that are hard to summon when everything is pretty steadily the same.  It warms my soul.

Reflecting

You know that scene in Indiana Jones where he's in the room with the model of the city of Tanis, and he's got the staff of Ra, and the light shines through and shows him where to dig?

Does that ever happen to you?
Would you like it to?

It's amazing.

I've been fortunate enough to have that happen to me several times a year for the past few years.  Figuratively speaking, of course

Songs of Stars

....This is my 149th web piece this year.  I am going for 162 by the completion of the regular baseball season, and then I suppose the playoffs would be this book that's coming along slowly but surely.

Of course, I am thinking of the San Francisco 49ers, mining for gold.  Today I officially handed in my printed notice that I will be leaving the English teaching job at the end of next week.  I had informed my employers over a week ago, but they'd actually made me an offer to try to get me to stay.  After considering it at length, I still decided that based on my faith I need to go to New York and based on my rational finances and future I need to go to New York.  But I got more than physical money from that endeavor.  There are many forms of gold.  For example, the day I got hired, I took my canoe on the bay and paddled next to Candlestick Park, where the 49ers used to win many conference championships.

The 49ers didn't win the Super Bowl back in February of this past year.  Instead, the B. Ravens won the crown given in 2013 but basically earned in 2012, because they had a tremendous defense.  Even so, the 49ers have won more Super Bowls than just about anyone.  When Joe Montana played, they were unstoppable.  The greatest receiver of all-time, Jerry Rice, helped them win four Super Bowls in the 1980's and a fifth in the 1990's.  Einstein, the greatest scientist of all time, says that all time is simultaneous, so those 49ers might as well be winning the Super Bowl as we speak.  Einstein also said that imagination is more important than knowledge, so let's be creative and say that the 49er metaphors who mined the world for gold poetry won Super Bowl's, and those digging for shiny gold metals did not.

Although I still work in San Francisco, I do not live there anymore.  Now I live in Oakland.  Their team is the Raiders.  The last time they won the Super Bowl, they were from Los Angeles, and it was a few months before I was born.  When I was young, my dad always used to tell me that he played tight end for the Oakland Raiders, or linebacker, or safety.  He still does.  I demand evidence when he tells me these things, and he plays up a big front of being hurt because I don't trust him.  He's funny like that.

I don't know how the Oakland Raiders did last year, and I don't care.  In fact, all I care about is loving humans.  The poem will do as it pleases, but I care more about what's in my heart than what happens in the athletic matches, regardless of the profound poetry to be mined as means of transforming the world into gold.

This morning I woke up, happy to be alive and doing my best day-in day-out attempts to transform this world as I experience it into gold.  I walked to work a different route than usual, happy to have something to do to earn more life.  On the way I listened to this song by Tenacious D called "Tribute":

One day, we were hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road...

I remember hitchhiking.  That's a leap of faith if I've ever taken one.

This is not the greatest song in the world,

This is just a tribute 

During class we had a vocabulary game where the two sides battled for supremacy.  One side was the Imaginary Team, and the other was The Rationalists, who won handily.  I wouldn't read too much poetry into that.  After all, if it had been the "rationalists" versus "the team with an imagination," Einstein's rationale would predict a different result.

Afterward we did an imagination exercise where I had them brainstorm for five minutes on a sheet of paper.  They had to imagine a scene or a painting and simply list everything they saw.  Then I asked for three examples from each soul's imagination, and wrote them on the board.

The first three were from a girl who loves animals and zoo's: journey, dog and cat.  I asked her if she had ever seen the movie Homeward Bound, which is about two dogs and a cat trying to make it back home from the wild.  She hadn't.  How strange.  There was already a movie for her imagination.

After everybody listed their three images, we had a full board, and then we began combining them into stories.  I would draw a line amongst the columns, and they would guide me to each word.  Once we had a string of seven words, I attempted to create a plot based on what we saw.  Scientifically speaking, I took a survey of the imaginations available to me, compiled the results, and then filled in the gaps with my own imagination.  That's a little exercise I do with the world pretty much all the time.

Later I was back home reading Leaves of Grass.  I was listening to this song, "No Woman, No Cry," by Bob Marley, which I got into a year before I discovered his favorite leaves of grass.  Once I met a woman who claimed that she hated that song because she heard it played by other people all the time, so that it lost its meaning.  I felt bad for her.  It's always a shame when people ruin a good thing that's beautiful at its core.

Anyway, I was reading "A Passage to India" from Whitman and listening to Bob.  When Bob started singing, "my fear is my only courage, so I've got to push on through, but while I'm gone, everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be alright," Whitman started singing:

"Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,

But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.

O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,

Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,

Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death,
like waters flowing,

Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,

Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,

Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee

I and my soul to range in range of thee

(everything's gonna be alright!  everything's gonna be alright!)

O Thou transcendent,

Nameless, the fibre and the breath,

Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,

Thou mightier center of the true, the good, the loving,

Thou moral, spiritual fountain--affection's source--
thou reservoir,

(O pensive soul of me--O thirst unsatisfied--waitest not there?

Waitest not haply for us somewhere the Comrade perfect?)

Thou pulse--thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,

That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,

How should I think, how breathe a single breath,
how speak, if, out of myself,

I could not launch, to those, superior universes?

(everything's gonna be alright!  everything's gonna be alright!)

I realized I needed food very much if I wanted to continue to stay in this superior universe and enjoy the music and poetry, so I made a sandwich made of fish and then read over some writing while I digested.

I read about a holy sadhu I met in India.  He drank Ganges water even though it was polluted because he believed in its holy powers.  Then he lifted a very large rock (at least 2' x 2') with his penis.  One of his friends told me, "It's all in the mind."

My mind wasn't advanced enough to turn off the hunger signals, so I drove to get some more groceries.

First, though, I visited Best Buy.  As I rode on the streets, I was overcome by an enormous yet wonderful sense that I was small and insignificant compared to the world, even though I am the world, as are you.  I am a unique vessel of the universal love's imagination, yet everything else is going on as well, whether as people like you, or as bears and fish and plants, or as mountains, and rivers, and super strings, and suns and stars.

I bought the first Indiana Jones movie because I'd promised my students we'd watch a movie this week.  Tomorrow I'm going to announce to them that I am moving to New York and that next Thursday will be my last class at that school.  I figure a movie will prepare them for the news, and many of them have never seen it.  As our vocabulary is "Media" this week, I think that one of the most famous and beloved adventure/action movies of all time is in order.  It's about an adventurous scientific professor who comes across the mysterious religious secrets of the human race whether he likes it or not, and continually has to ask himself what he believes.

When I got home I ate broccoli because I did research a long time ago and the internet told me it was very healthy.  I already knew that it was healthy because I had faith in the word of mouth review of broccoli that had gotten to me through my life, but it felt better to see a scientific person list a bunch of complex terms about parts of my body I didn't know about and explain that these microscopic compounds were going to do great things for them.  The same goes for the carrots, the bell pepper, and the portabella mushroom, the onion, the tofu, and the tomato juice.  They all had superpowers I couldn't possibly understand with everything else going on around me to capture my attention.

Speaking of which, afterward I watched The Daily Show interview segment, where Jon Stewart interviewed Atheist Superstar Richard Dawkins.  Although intelligent and open-minded, he really doesn't like the idea of "faith."  He likes having faith in the scientific method as the only way to get to the truth.  I thought that was funny.  Theology professor Huston Smith disagrees: 

HS:  Science consists of the actual discoveries of science and the method—the scientific method—which produces those discoveries.  Scientism adds to those, first, the belief that the scientific method is, if not the only reliable way of getting at truth, then at least the most reliable method; and second, the belief that the things that science can get its hands on—physical, material, measurable things—are the most important things, the foundational, generating things from which all else derives.  Nothing that science has discovered supports, much less proves, that those tacked-on points are true.  They are no more than opinions, which my teachers led me to assume are true—there is truth in A.K. Coomaraswamy’s quip that it takes four years to get a college education and forty to get over it.  I’m fortunate that it didn’t take me that long.

Robert Pirsig, the philosophy genius behind Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, points out that scientific method can't prove the scientific method as the best means of learning truth.  And he wasn't even religious.  He was just calling it as he thought it: 

He saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge. Among philosophers this is so widely believed it's almost a platitude, but for him it's a revelation. He discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. The questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions.  Science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of its answers. The questions he'd asked were at a higher level than science goes. And so [he] found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place, What does it all mean?

What's the purpose of all this?

-Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

I wondered what thoughts stirred in the synapses of the superior universe to first spring this show on my screen.  I watched in awe as Stewart and Dawkins sparred.  Dawkins spoke a language the universe taught him at some point and spit out reasoning that the superior universe gave him at some point.  He said that we know that all consciousness comes from our brains, even though we really barely know anything about the foundation of the universe, according to physics.  Stewart challenged him with the "live and let believe" approach and the appropriate self-deprecation of his own intelligence, perfectly, every time.  Also on my screen I could see an ad that said, "There's more to it."

Now I think back to earlier today when I re-discovered my first memorable Whitman poem.  As a senior at university I saw this poem and I loved poetry instantly.

"When I Heard the Learned Astronomer"

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams,

to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured

with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars

Yes, but it's always fun to imagine what's in between...

Training

I was reading Walt Whitman's "A Passage to India" from Leaves of Grass yesterday evening when I decided to take a break and watch supposedly random Youtube videos.  One of the advertisements was for this new learning program involving CGI trains.

One of the videos showed a train pulling letters in each car, so that young kids could learn them slowly.  I thought back to kindergarten in Japan, and how I began almost every class yelling, "A-A-ah-ah!" and waiting for the children's thunderous response, and then all the way through the alphabet with call and response.  Sometimes I would speed up to see how fast we could go, then slow down out of nowhere to get some laughs, and then speed up crazily, and then go at a normal pace, and then talk in a whisper, and then yell as loud as I could (they loved responding in kind to that one), and so on and so forth until we had gone through the alphabet.

Another video showed a Brio train set in CGI.  Brio trains were my favorite toys when I was seven.  You could create entire towns around train tracks.

After the second video I saw a link to a "Little Engine That Could" cartoon, which I hadn't seen in I don't know how long.  I know the story by heart, but I probably hadn't heard it since elementary school.  It turned out that this version was European and needed to be translated.  "The Little Steam Engine from Daisyland."  It's for tiny kids, of course, but sometimes those messages are the most profound.  I definitely learned that in kindergarten.

Basically, the kids and the business man were on a journey, hoping to arrive at the next station safely.  But the train engine liked to stop and notice all of the beauty along the way.  He pulls over when he sees some flowers and starts sniffing lilies and rolling around with a look of contented ecstasy on his face.

Businessman: "What a disgrace!  We surely will be late at the station!"

Train: "Yes, but so what.  If we don't see the first lilies of the valley, we'll be late for the whole of spring!"

Then they continue, but during the night he stops for the nightingales chirping for the first time (or they'll be late for the whole of summer).

Then they stop for the sunrise.

"Sunrise!  Each sunrise comes once in a lifetime."

Eventually, when he's won everyone over to his way of train travel, he says to hurry up or they will be late.

"It's time to go!  We'll be late," says the train.

"Yes, but if we miss this sunrise, we will be late for the rest of life!" says the businessman.

"But we have to be there on time..." says the train with a smile.

They arrive on time.

When the conductor hears him pulling up, he says, "He's singing again.  It means that he's met something VERY interesting..."

Today

Hello!

How are you?

I'm fine, thank you.

Human

Our bodies have hearts to remind us that we beat with the heart of life.

They have brains to help us imagine any dreams we want, whether we are happy to leave them in the realm of fantasy or manifest them in reality.

They have eyes so we can see the beauty, and ears so we can hear the music of a heart’s voice, and tongues to taste the world, and noses to smell the wonderful scents, and skin to protect sophisticated systems inside.

They have hairs so we can stay warm, but no so much so that we cannot cool off.

They have feet so we can move and hands so we can make do.

They have loves so we can feel the world at its best and erupt in ecstasy.

How lucky we are to have bodies to live the present dream, and make the future dream present.

Treasure

The treasured rewards for your participation in creation are enthusiasm, love through courageous risks, and the incredible adventure of being alive.  If you rise to the higher levels, you will be lucky enough to win an intuitive trust in a poetic language which moves your world where and when and how it must.  U look through the eyes, always bathing our I’s with this beautiful prize.

It’s a glorious and scary world, but there are good people everywhere you go in the universe show.  The suns do shine, and the water does flow, and the humans do love, and the life does grow.

Remember: it usually helps to know more, but sometimes trusting the surprise is best.  You can do this by finding a way to love the universe so much that you trust it will help you through the quest by taking care of the rest.

Love is What We Make It

But you already knew that

You're alive!

Are You Real

The first book I purchased after moving to northern California was The Princess Bride.  At the time I was living up in Sonoma County.  Specifically, I was in a tent in the yard of an old high school classmate from New York State who I had not seen in ten years.  I had expected to visit for a night or two before continuing on to the city, but he convinced me to work two weeks of harvest at his winery sorting grapes.  It was barely any pay, but at the least I could put some money in my pocket before starting out in the most expensive city in the world.  They didn't need my help for about two weeks though, so I found myself with more time than I knew what to do with.  I was beyond exhausted from my 100 day journey across America, so it was a much needed rest before what I had no idea would be the most difficult and intense work experience of my life.  I spent a lot of time throwing a ball to his dog and having it enthusiastically return it to me, going to the ocean and reading Leaves of Grass, and getting to know my host, as we weren't really friends back in the day.  I also couch surfed with strangers in Oakland on two separate occasions, and visited San Francisco.

In fact, on my 101st day on the road I drove down to San Francisco simply to be there.  I couldn't really think of anything to do though.  I didn't really know why I was moving to San Francisco.  I had a lot of ideas of finding a culture and group of friends that was enthusiastic about creativity, imagination and wisdom when applied to mystery and wonder.  I wanted to be on the cutting edge.  The Bay Area had that reputation, from the 1960s hippie and free speech movement to the personal computer and tech revolutions.  Lately I couldn't think of anything amazing that San Francisco was doing other than being a really relaxed open-minded place to live, but I thought I should explore it anyway.

So my first mission to the city involved a pilgrimage to City Lights Bookstore on Columbus Avenue.  This is a very famous bookstore founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  He got started during the beat era, and writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso frequented the area.  My dad visited it once and bought me a shirt, so I decided to go there the first time I traveled through America and visited San Francisco, back in 2010.

Once I got to the bookstore I wasn't sure what I wanted to buy.  I already had two books from my journey that I had yet to finish, and I didn't want anything negative to sully my mood.  I don't like negative books when I'm on journeys or transitioning, and, unfortunately, the majority of literature out there is negative because life is often negative and the arts are a way of channeling and cleansing those negative emotions.  Even so, I wanted something positive to start out in the area.

I searched and searched and finally realized which book I wanted.  I asked the clerk for The Princess Bride and found the only copy on the shelf.

Later I returned to my tent, where my host was having a dinner for the two new interns at the winery.  I had no idea at the time just how much and how long I would be working with them.

I still had a lot of time before harvest officially began on September 24th, so I read the book.

If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.  However, the book is a little different.  The author continually interrupts the narrative to talk about the process of writing the book.  The main difference between the book and the movie is that although everything works out swimmingly in both versions, the book spends a lot of time reminding the reader that life always continues, and that every time you triumph, you have to continue to face the challenges that life brings.  Sure, Westley and Buttercup's true love flourishes in the long run, but they still have to deal with the reality that seems to walk side-by-side with their fantasy (which really just means fantastic reality).

My reality during harvest was that I was living in a tent in the yard of someone I somewhat knew but not really, had to work 10-16 hours every day, and got paid $10 an hour to do it (after two weeks I got a two dollar raise).  I used heavy machinery or stood raking grapes nearly constantly, and most of the time I felt very good.  Much of the time I felt completely exhausted as well.  That was more toward the end.  But every night, my reality was that I crawled back into my tent and sleeping bag, living on my credit card while I waited for my first pay check, and realizing that despite my truly attainable dreams of being an influential human being and enjoyable storyteller, I was currently poor, living on the ground and virtually anonymous in the literary world.  That's when fantasy came in.  Every once in a while I'd put on my headlamp and do my best to pry open The Princess Bride with my thumbs which could barely move after doing hours upon hours of punch-down's, raking grapes, carrying buckets of dry ice and squeezing hoses to wash out grape barrels, so that all the nice people could take a load off and enjoy some delicious grape juice for adults.

There's a whole section in William Goldman's book that isn't in the movie.  At the beginning, Buttercup goes to find Westley in his tiny little hovel.  All he has is a small candle and a stack of books next to his straw bed on the floor.  She confesses her love to him, and he doesn't say a word.  He simply closes the door in her face.  She's devastated.  She can't believe she put herself out there like that and he didn't even respond.

"Not even one word.  He hadn't had the decency for that.  'Sorry,' he could have said.  Would it have ruined him to say 'sorry'?  'Too late,' he could have said.  Why couldn't he at least have said something?" (Goldman 61)

He goes to talk to her again and she pretends that it was a joke and never happened, and she apologized for doing it so convincingly.  He tells her he's leaving, so she assumes he's in love with someone else, and adds:

Buttercup: "Just because you're beautiful and perfect, it's made you conceited.  You think people can't get tired of you, well you're wrong, they can, and she will, besides you're too poor."

Westley: "I'm going to America.  To seek my fortune.  There is great opportunity in America.  I'm going to take advantage of it.  I've been training myself.  In my hovel.  I've taught myself not to need sleep.  A few hours only.  I'll take a ten-hour-a-day job and then I'll take another ten-hour-a-day job and I'll save every penny from both except what I need to eat and keep strong." (Goldman 62)

Back then it only took a little hyperbole to make that passage fit perfectly with my life's story.  Right now not so much, although I've learned that you don't necessarily need an extra job to be working as hard as you can for your dream.  Although I write every day, I am still recovering from the craziness of August and early September.  Uncertainty about where you live and where you're going in life isn't the best way to approach your first true book, even if you already have pages upon pages of outlines and chapters that are good but basically need to be completely re-written if the whole thing is going to work together.  But harvest starts with the solstice...

Today I showed my class the film The Princess Bride.  Many of them were actually on a field trip run by a different teacher, so I figured it would be a good way to wind down the week.  Half of the students loved it, and half of them slept with their heads on their desks.  I personally love the movie because it combines adventure, romance, humor, magic, drama and action.  The ingredients for any great story, whether reality or fantasy.

"I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you.  I have taught myself languages because of you.  I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body." (Goldman 63)

True.  True.  Very true.

But who are "you"?

Are you in New York?  Are you real?  I am real.  At least I think so.  Either way, I am thinking about New York, and my return.  I am reading the great story tellers who have guided me and encouraged me to live my fantasy through reality.  Besides, William Goldman's "Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure" wasn't the only book I read with stiff thumbs and a headlamp in my tent at night during harvest.  The Alchemist was always nearby as well.  I don't know if it was reality or fantasy, but I liked thinking that maybe there was a woman wondering where I was at the time and hoping I was okay, just as I hoped I was working hard for her.  Whatever it is, life feels better that way.  You do much better work, that's for sure.  Then again, working at a winery in the California country side is a much different endeavor from working and writing a book in New York City.  I wonder what that whole winery business was about anyway...

"Are you crazy?  What did you do that for?”

"To show you one of life’s simple lessons,” the alchemist answered.  “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”

They continued across the desert.  With every day that passed, the boy’s heart became more and more silent.  It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to contemplate the desert, and to drink with the boy from the Soul of the World.  The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.

When his heart spoke to him, it was to provide a stimulus to the boy, and to give him strength, because the days of silence there in the desert were wearisome.  His heart told the boy what his strongest qualities were: his courage in having given up his sheep and in trying to live out his Personal Legend, and his enthusiasm during the time he had worked at the crystal shop. (Coehlo 134)

Enthusiasm!  I should be so lucky to be working so hard on my dream with this body and creating whatever it is I imagine with this brain.  I feel good about life.  I feel very good.  You can't force these things.  We feel them, and we act accordingly, harnessing our passions fueled by romantic inspiration to share the highest joy possible.

Thanks to the magic of poetry that occurred throughout this journey, I was able to experience an untold amount of joy when the movie began and I realized that the first scene in The Princess Bride is a baseball video game being played on a television screen.  The next thing you see is a boy wearing a shirt that says, "BEAR."

YOU

HI

You are beautiful


What you do is very important

And meaningful

And poetic

And helpful

You help so many beautiful deserving human beings every day, often without even realizing it

You do more than help them love life or have fun

You make them love life and have fun

You make them realize that they are so stunningly beautiful, and they know this truth because they are feeling your beauty flowing through them

I do realize that if you are very beautiful, and you are with life, then we must be beautiful as well

Please keep being beautiful

Thank you

Is it West to East or East to West?

The first night I spent in California I was driving through a redwood forest in search of an open campground when a bear ran out in the road about fifteen feet ahead of me.  If it had been a deer we might have had a collision, but instead the bear not only ran out in front of me as opposed to across my path, but also was able to run so fast that I barely had to slow down to make sure I didn't gain on it.  The bear ran for about ten seconds before disappearing into the bushes again.

That was September 1, 2012.  I spent 17 days at home in New York State this past August, which would effectively make today my 1 year anniversary of living in the Golden State.  The one with a bear on its flag.

This morning I woke up in a comfortable bed in a safe apartment, went through the morning routine, and then walked out to the door, passing my roommates' extensive collection of succulents and reasonably spacious yard before unlocking the master lock on the gate and walking to the train.  It's a 30 minute walk to the West Oakland BART station.  Unlike San Francisco, Oakland is almost always sunny and warm.  All but one morning I have walked to the train under a clear blue sky.  There isn't much scenery as I walk along Nelson Mandela parkway.  When I get to the train, it's usually crowded, but it's the first stop in the East side of the Bay, so it's a relatively short trip to the San Francisco UN Plaza after that.

Every step to work today bathed the world in a new light.  I felt so grateful to be here, and amazed that I've lived in such a great place for a year.  I couldn't ask to work in a better environment than the area around City Hall and the Civic Center.  And my job!  The students may have gotten a little lazier, but the authority and leeway I am given by my employers is unprecedented.  I can teach anything I want, so long as they improve their English abilities.  Unfortunately, regardless of whether I'm sticking to the textbook curriculum or attempting to explain fascinating ideas, the enthusiasm levels haven't risen in quite some time.  The class is less diverse than it's ever been, and even though my hourly rate is quite decent, I don't work nearly enough hours to get by in the most expensive city in America, and there aren't opportunities for full-time at my company.

After work I went into my manager's office and felt both anxiety and relief as I gave my two weeks' notice.  Yesterday morning I received a response from one of the fifteen NYC schools I'd sent my resume to, asking when I was going to be in New York for an interview.  When I told them I could be there the second week in October, they asked me to inform them when I arrive so we can set up a meeting.  It's not a guarantee and I don't even know what they'd have to offer me or if the offer to meet will still be there when I arrive, but it's enough to give me hope.  What's more, I have more friends in New York City than any other place in the world, and more family and friends in a surrounding three-four hour radius than any human could ask for.  Regardless of what happens back East in the long term, I have deliberated very thoroughly and decided it is the best for me at least in the short term.  As hard as it is to leave the relaxed comfort of the Bay Area and a secure familiar job, I feel like I have been a soldier at a sparsely populated outpost for much of my stay here.  There were reasons I had to be here, and looking back I experienced and learned much more than I realized.  Due to my financial limitations, I didn't experience as much of the city as I would have liked, and therefore didn't create a network of strong acquaintances and friends.  Perhaps that's how it was supposed to be, so it wouldn't be harder than it already is to leave.

Luckily, my manager was supportive and extremely disappointed in all of the right ways.  I was told that I am welcome back at any time, my students constantly report that they love me, and that if there's anything they can do to assist me (or convince me to stay) they will.  She completely understood my bind, and was sad that they couldn't offer more full time work.  Theoretically I could have begun to try my hand at other language schools, but all things considered, I would rather be back East anyway.

I have no illusions about New York City.  I remember it well.  There are the bright lights, wild nights, people from all over the world, any food you could ever want to eat and plenty of entertainment simply by walking down the street, interesting artists and intellectuals, and those tall buildings that inspire awe, grand achievement and the feeling that you are a part of something uniquely special simply by being there.  Then there are the screeching subway cars in either freezing or intolerably humid and polluted underground stations, constant aversion of eye contact between strangers, rancid smells from gutters and trash piled on the street, every other person you see is probably someone in a suit addicted to their business gadget of choice, condescending hipsters and conceited fashionistas, and those tall buildings that remind you just how insignificant and small and shaded from sunlight you are.  Yes, it's everything.  But after four years of exploring the many varieties of human experience the rest of the world has to offer, I am ready to go back.

The manager asked me to work a few extra days in October to give her time to find a replacement, as she will be out next week.  A few more days of pay is fine with me.  So I will be on the road and journeying back to New York in early October, perhaps the most beautiful time of year one could hope to arrive in such a spectacular place to be.  I'm not going to rush the 3,451 mile voyage, but I imagine it won't take 100 days.

Butterflies

Written February 12, 2013:

A butterfly flapping its wing in Finland could cause you to place your socks somewhere unknown wherever you happen to do your laundry.  Luckily, socks are plentiful in imagination land, and bare feet also have their charm.

The butterfly effect is just another reminder that everything is connected as part of one love, one heart beating its love throughout the whole fiber of the universal being (and I want you to know I dig love).  One part moving in a place to be seemingly as far away as infinity (may as well be) can affect everything else in the universal identity, including you and me.  So what do we do?   I don't know.  You?

Butterflies are tiny flying delicate beings with beautifully colored divinely designed wings, and they flap and float effortlessly amongst the flowers and grasses and trees and breeze.  If one were as tall as you, it would probably be the most hideous frightening creature on earth.  But things are the way they are, so there’s no need to go there.

When asked if he could be any animal, Bart Simpson said he would be the butterfly.  When asked why, he cackled and said, “Because nobody suspects the butterfly…” and then daydreams some hideous segment of school vandalism that frames his enemy, the boring principal.  But that statement is deeper than the mischievous dreams of a young boy.  What if God is the butterfly?  Who has time for butterflies? (365)

(611) The beauty of butterflies is that they appear to be so insignificant, so pointless, so small and irrelevant, ultimately transient just like everything else, as there are plenty of them amongst other equally insignificant creatures.  We give them props for being pretty, but then go about our days (61).  Even crazier, the butterfly begins as a caterpillar, a totally slow droopy weird crawly creature that leaves ugly brown holes on once beautiful green leaves.  But then it chills out, withdraws from the world, and comes back metamorphosed, more beautiful and intricate than ever.  What’s more, it can fly now.  And it only takes a flap of its wings to accomplish infinite things.