U
SEA,
ASTONISH
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Hero U
Today, in the learning place, we discussed humor. Previously we've expressed our understanding and enjoyment of art, creativity and expression of our energy. Tomorrow, for the lab class, we will talk about animals and pets.
I remember my first pet. He was a fish. A gold fish. His name was "Speedy." We bought him at the pet store. He swam in a small tank in my room. After a couple years we brought him to our friend's house because she had a little fish pond in her backyard. I wasn't happy to part with him, but I remember going back to see him a few years later, and he was much bigger, so I was content. He had to follow his own bliss, and that small cage in my room wasn't doing his life justice.
That reminds me of events on this very day three years ago. I woke up in a small tank in Osaka, Japan. That is, I woke up in a capsule hotel. I had been traveling on vacation for seven days after completing a year of teaching, and was due back in Tokyo that night. First I had a few more things to do in the city. One of them involved visiting the Osaka Aquarium. I hadn't been to an aquarium in years. I don't particularly enjoy seeing animals caged in zoos and aquariums, but I was going to reap the benefits of firsthand wonder anyway by seeing something I had never seen before. Although we're all alive in one, we are still living variety expressed with words conveying experiences as animals and plants and fish and mammals and bird amphibian lizards and so on. The word humans put on this particular life is "whale shark," a fish that is almost as large as some whales, which aren't fish but instead mammals. That means although there are much larger creatures in the sweet mystery of the sea, whale sharks' growth is superlative for the moving life that represents the initial experience of advanced magical intelligence
The best part about whale sharks is they are generally safe to be around. They are peaceful and will even permit swimmers to hitch rides on their fins from time to time. I figured it was my only chance to see one, so I found the way in that foreign city and made that my Osaka plan for the ultimate day of that specific journey in that particular country. However, there was one issue: I didn't have a camera. I hadn't been able to find my camera at the very beginning of the journey, and had foolishly balked at buying a new one. I even visited a big electronics store and decided against it because I didn't like some hidden costs or foreigner's tax or something like that.
So I went to the aquarium with what I had, and there it was: the whale shark. It swam peacefully in spiraling circles, up and down, while a large school of fish trailed its every move. There were other scarier creatures in there, such as sharks and sting rays and so forth, but they left it alone, and didn't try to eat its followers either. I also noticed a scary looking eel-like creature in the large cylindrical tank where most of the sea life swam, but upon closer inspection it was really just a tube that had been placed there with the purpose of cleaning the tank so the fish could breathe more easily.
While watching the whale shark swim around I decided that having a camera was a huge part of my art, even if I was a writer first. So I went back to the electronics store, decided I wouldn't remember the cost years later anyway, and bought the camera and data cards and all the extra things I had to pay for, because that's what you do if your enjoyment says you have to travel and translate what you experience into art. If you want to start a family, you need skills which support other humans as soon as you think you are ready to handle such responsibility. The accumulation of green papers is welcomed, but they will come along the way anyway if you learn, care, and work with your body and mind. Whatever you do, make sure you are paying plenty of attention to exerting while accumulating valuable experiences and skills, which can be transformed into any colors of ink on paper and moments in artful images, with the knowledge that the payoff will be worth it in the long run. I can't speak for all of my actions yet, and although that camera is long gone, it more than served its purpose all around America. After purchasing the camera, I raced back to an area near my hotel and took pictures of all sorts of crazy shops, shirts, jackets, socks and hats with interesting messages, and book covers and so forth, as well as the glorious canals.
Then I raced to the train, barely making it in time, and headed back toward Tokyo. I visited Hamamatsu on the way, because it's the birth place of my favorite musician and the most energetic artist I've ever seen, Hiromi Uehara. She is the complete package, because she can express every emotion with her music, whether its excitement, solemnity, ecstasy, intensity, playfulness, mind-blowing creativity, "and so on" as she would say. Anyway, her birthday is March 26th. Happy Birthday, Hiromi! Thank you for your loving positive energy you so graciously share with everybody!
After a short while in Hamamatsu and taking a picture that says "Your Alive" I barely made the train to Tokyo, very thankful that I had finally been able to go on a journey in Japan.
The memories continue though. Later that year I was moving across the US, and on the way I camped many places. The first place I really did back country wilderness camping without any other campers around was in Minnesota, in an area known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I had been given a canoe by my father and had tied it to the roof of the car handed down to me by my mother. Upon arrival at the launching point, I packed the canoe with several days of supplies and canoed several miles until I saw an American flag flying from a tree in a secluded cove. I was in bear and moose country, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bear cub swimming near my campsite for about ten seconds before it went underwater and around the corner. I went swimming myself the next day, canoed on completely placid water with sunlight and rainbows, and then later stars above. That's where I figured out how to perfectly position myself on the seats of the canoe so that I could lay on my back and stare at the stars in serene silence. If that's not the highest bliss I know, it's in the top three.
I canoed back after a couple nights, just in time to get shelter before one of the biggest thunderstorms in Northeast Minnesota history (at least according to a local in the parking lot the next day).
Anyway, this didn't happen on March 26th, but there is still poetry to be seen: the only road leading into the lake which had been recommended to me by a park ranger was Route 326.
I suppose in Japan that might not mean anything because they would write the date as 26/3, but in America, that's Hiromi's birthday!
Guess who else's birthday it is today? I JUST discovered this an hour ago. I might have known this at one time, but apparently it hadn't registered in my mind permanently. Today is Joseph Campbell's birthday! You know, JC?! "Follow Your Bliss." The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The Power of Myth. Read them!
Guess what else I discovered once again? Joe is a graduate of Columbia University, the only Ivy League in New York City. I had seen that information before, but I suppose it hadn't registered. Whenever I thought of his "initiation into the mysteries of life," I thought of the part where he talked of his early adulthood in the 30's, a time in which he explained that those who identified as "counter-culture," as he did, simply had nothing to do in the society because there wasn't any work. So he spent five years studying the wisdom of worlds in a place without running water in the forest near Woodstock, New York, reading books and enjoying a life he loved. I've done my own version of that in my own way, because of his words and the words of all heroes who help us enjoy
I am writing these words twenty blocks north of where he used to learn about the world, and I go past it on the 1 train every morning, afternoon, early evening and night on my way to and from and to and from work. Sometimes I walk through there when I'm strolling around uptown, seeing faces and places and words and art all around Broadway and Amsterdam. I'm always happy to see beauty, and their campus meets this description, that is, according to the beholder known as me. That being said, I think I've had enough of paying people for degrees. I can clearly see more firmly now that after the individual has been given twelve to seventeen years of specific guidance in skills, knowledge and learning techniques, one has the power to find education throughout one's life, especially in this golden age of information. With resourcefulness and enthusiasm, you will discover knowledge, transform it to wisdom from experience, and apply awesome imagination you tune in with your universal station. I see universities more as facilities which offer materials, advisers and intellectually stimulating companionship than as necessities for happiness and success in life. Then again, Joe Campbell spent the majority of his adulthood spreading wisdom an hour north of the city, and found plenty of time for adventures in between. I think he would agree that your joy depends on your unique situation in the universe and the creative path to your bliss currently glowing everywhere u look. I'm more interested in that than being further in debt to the higher educational system. That being said, the campus is close enough to my daily activities, so I welcome the spectacular architecture and inspirational alumni as a much needed change of scenery from the grittier surroundings further uptown.
I wrote a post a year or so ago about running up the steps to the library of "King's College" one February evening and feeling like Rocky. When I reached the top I could see that there was actually a social event for their graduate program writers and literary agents, who, as I understand, are mostly necessary for one to have a writing career with any sort of meaningful distribution or any expectation of making a living from one's writing. Things are changing with the internet and digital publishing, but I want to see my words on wood pulp, you feel me? I didn't have a name tag at the time, so I walked away. My original piece might have seemed dismissive of academia mixing with the arts, because, at the time, I was and had been interacting with a very different stratum of society, and all the fancy clothes and champagne glasses had me feeling out of place. They had a right to their ritual; I had just wandered by in a different state of mind.
Eventually I clarified my ideas about studying art, specifically the art of writing, at a university, with respect to my personal experience. I have nothing against Columbia, or places of higher learning (I went to their in-state companion, Cornell), or people with champagne glasses and fancy clothes. I love awesome parties, as does everyone. I just want to make sure I can be myself and have my kind of fun. If I've learned anything from journeys, it's to explore more of the world's experiential diversity. I am thankful to have a reminder to follow bliss anywhere on the Earth when I see the words "Columbia University" written on the wall of the station when I'm in my bleary eyed morning mindset
Speaking of Columbia, President Barack Obama is also an alumnus. Today I closed the comedy section with several video clips of his more humorous endeavors, such as appearances on buzzfeed.com, "Between Two Ferns" and The Colbert Report. I applaud his sense of humor. As heroic as we would like our deeds to be, we can only survive and succeed if we keep in mind that very often life is funny, and that we will enjoy ourselves more when we lighten up and laugh amidst all the heavy seriousness of survival in the ocean of life.
Mr. Obama is one of my heroes, I'm sure for many reasons, but most immediately because it recently came to my attention that several years after graduating from Columbia he had protested the condition of the city's subway system and demanded improvements. Thank you, Mr. President. I rely on that subway system every day, and although I'm constantly shaken from my bliss by its wild inconsistencies and its riders' dizzying lack of common courtesy, I understand that, from what I've read about NYC in the 80's, it has come a tremendously long way. Now if only he could tell people to move away from the entrance when people leave and enter the train, and I will further enjoy moving about New York society.
I suppose the message of all of this is that we would all love to be considered heroes by some, if not one, but we're never the only one. We have to share the stage with others. That's the way this works. Besides, who would want to always be in the spotlight alone? As long as your contribution makes the experience of being alive more enjoyable for some, then your victory is won. If you think that your aquarium is limiting your growth and that you could make the world even happier by living your bliss and sharing the potentially inspirational, informative and entertaining results with your fellow humans, then by all means, MOVE US! You can be as slow and steady or as speedy as you like while you live and seek happiness. Just keep "moving forward" on the path of your bliss
I remember my first pet. He was a fish. A gold fish. His name was "Speedy." We bought him at the pet store. He swam in a small tank in my room. After a couple years we brought him to our friend's house because she had a little fish pond in her backyard. I wasn't happy to part with him, but I remember going back to see him a few years later, and he was much bigger, so I was content. He had to follow his own bliss, and that small cage in my room wasn't doing his life justice.
That reminds me of events on this very day three years ago. I woke up in a small tank in Osaka, Japan. That is, I woke up in a capsule hotel. I had been traveling on vacation for seven days after completing a year of teaching, and was due back in Tokyo that night. First I had a few more things to do in the city. One of them involved visiting the Osaka Aquarium. I hadn't been to an aquarium in years. I don't particularly enjoy seeing animals caged in zoos and aquariums, but I was going to reap the benefits of firsthand wonder anyway by seeing something I had never seen before. Although we're all alive in one, we are still living variety expressed with words conveying experiences as animals and plants and fish and mammals and bird amphibian lizards and so on. The word humans put on this particular life is "whale shark," a fish that is almost as large as some whales, which aren't fish but instead mammals. That means although there are much larger creatures in the sweet mystery of the sea, whale sharks' growth is superlative for the moving life that represents the initial experience of advanced magical intelligence
The best part about whale sharks is they are generally safe to be around. They are peaceful and will even permit swimmers to hitch rides on their fins from time to time. I figured it was my only chance to see one, so I found the way in that foreign city and made that my Osaka plan for the ultimate day of that specific journey in that particular country. However, there was one issue: I didn't have a camera. I hadn't been able to find my camera at the very beginning of the journey, and had foolishly balked at buying a new one. I even visited a big electronics store and decided against it because I didn't like some hidden costs or foreigner's tax or something like that.
So I went to the aquarium with what I had, and there it was: the whale shark. It swam peacefully in spiraling circles, up and down, while a large school of fish trailed its every move. There were other scarier creatures in there, such as sharks and sting rays and so forth, but they left it alone, and didn't try to eat its followers either. I also noticed a scary looking eel-like creature in the large cylindrical tank where most of the sea life swam, but upon closer inspection it was really just a tube that had been placed there with the purpose of cleaning the tank so the fish could breathe more easily.
While watching the whale shark swim around I decided that having a camera was a huge part of my art, even if I was a writer first. So I went back to the electronics store, decided I wouldn't remember the cost years later anyway, and bought the camera and data cards and all the extra things I had to pay for, because that's what you do if your enjoyment says you have to travel and translate what you experience into art. If you want to start a family, you need skills which support other humans as soon as you think you are ready to handle such responsibility. The accumulation of green papers is welcomed, but they will come along the way anyway if you learn, care, and work with your body and mind. Whatever you do, make sure you are paying plenty of attention to exerting while accumulating valuable experiences and skills, which can be transformed into any colors of ink on paper and moments in artful images, with the knowledge that the payoff will be worth it in the long run. I can't speak for all of my actions yet, and although that camera is long gone, it more than served its purpose all around America. After purchasing the camera, I raced back to an area near my hotel and took pictures of all sorts of crazy shops, shirts, jackets, socks and hats with interesting messages, and book covers and so forth, as well as the glorious canals.
Then I raced to the train, barely making it in time, and headed back toward Tokyo. I visited Hamamatsu on the way, because it's the birth place of my favorite musician and the most energetic artist I've ever seen, Hiromi Uehara. She is the complete package, because she can express every emotion with her music, whether its excitement, solemnity, ecstasy, intensity, playfulness, mind-blowing creativity, "and so on" as she would say. Anyway, her birthday is March 26th. Happy Birthday, Hiromi! Thank you for your loving positive energy you so graciously share with everybody!
After a short while in Hamamatsu and taking a picture that says "Your Alive" I barely made the train to Tokyo, very thankful that I had finally been able to go on a journey in Japan.
The memories continue though. Later that year I was moving across the US, and on the way I camped many places. The first place I really did back country wilderness camping without any other campers around was in Minnesota, in an area known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I had been given a canoe by my father and had tied it to the roof of the car handed down to me by my mother. Upon arrival at the launching point, I packed the canoe with several days of supplies and canoed several miles until I saw an American flag flying from a tree in a secluded cove. I was in bear and moose country, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bear cub swimming near my campsite for about ten seconds before it went underwater and around the corner. I went swimming myself the next day, canoed on completely placid water with sunlight and rainbows, and then later stars above. That's where I figured out how to perfectly position myself on the seats of the canoe so that I could lay on my back and stare at the stars in serene silence. If that's not the highest bliss I know, it's in the top three.
I canoed back after a couple nights, just in time to get shelter before one of the biggest thunderstorms in Northeast Minnesota history (at least according to a local in the parking lot the next day).
Anyway, this didn't happen on March 26th, but there is still poetry to be seen: the only road leading into the lake which had been recommended to me by a park ranger was Route 326.
I suppose in Japan that might not mean anything because they would write the date as 26/3, but in America, that's Hiromi's birthday!
Guess who else's birthday it is today? I JUST discovered this an hour ago. I might have known this at one time, but apparently it hadn't registered in my mind permanently. Today is Joseph Campbell's birthday! You know, JC?! "Follow Your Bliss." The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The Power of Myth. Read them!
Guess what else I discovered once again? Joe is a graduate of Columbia University, the only Ivy League in New York City. I had seen that information before, but I suppose it hadn't registered. Whenever I thought of his "initiation into the mysteries of life," I thought of the part where he talked of his early adulthood in the 30's, a time in which he explained that those who identified as "counter-culture," as he did, simply had nothing to do in the society because there wasn't any work. So he spent five years studying the wisdom of worlds in a place without running water in the forest near Woodstock, New York, reading books and enjoying a life he loved. I've done my own version of that in my own way, because of his words and the words of all heroes who help us enjoy
I am writing these words twenty blocks north of where he used to learn about the world, and I go past it on the 1 train every morning, afternoon, early evening and night on my way to and from and to and from work. Sometimes I walk through there when I'm strolling around uptown, seeing faces and places and words and art all around Broadway and Amsterdam. I'm always happy to see beauty, and their campus meets this description, that is, according to the beholder known as me. That being said, I think I've had enough of paying people for degrees. I can clearly see more firmly now that after the individual has been given twelve to seventeen years of specific guidance in skills, knowledge and learning techniques, one has the power to find education throughout one's life, especially in this golden age of information. With resourcefulness and enthusiasm, you will discover knowledge, transform it to wisdom from experience, and apply awesome imagination you tune in with your universal station. I see universities more as facilities which offer materials, advisers and intellectually stimulating companionship than as necessities for happiness and success in life. Then again, Joe Campbell spent the majority of his adulthood spreading wisdom an hour north of the city, and found plenty of time for adventures in between. I think he would agree that your joy depends on your unique situation in the universe and the creative path to your bliss currently glowing everywhere u look. I'm more interested in that than being further in debt to the higher educational system. That being said, the campus is close enough to my daily activities, so I welcome the spectacular architecture and inspirational alumni as a much needed change of scenery from the grittier surroundings further uptown.
I wrote a post a year or so ago about running up the steps to the library of "King's College" one February evening and feeling like Rocky. When I reached the top I could see that there was actually a social event for their graduate program writers and literary agents, who, as I understand, are mostly necessary for one to have a writing career with any sort of meaningful distribution or any expectation of making a living from one's writing. Things are changing with the internet and digital publishing, but I want to see my words on wood pulp, you feel me? I didn't have a name tag at the time, so I walked away. My original piece might have seemed dismissive of academia mixing with the arts, because, at the time, I was and had been interacting with a very different stratum of society, and all the fancy clothes and champagne glasses had me feeling out of place. They had a right to their ritual; I had just wandered by in a different state of mind.
Eventually I clarified my ideas about studying art, specifically the art of writing, at a university, with respect to my personal experience. I have nothing against Columbia, or places of higher learning (I went to their in-state companion, Cornell), or people with champagne glasses and fancy clothes. I love awesome parties, as does everyone. I just want to make sure I can be myself and have my kind of fun. If I've learned anything from journeys, it's to explore more of the world's experiential diversity. I am thankful to have a reminder to follow bliss anywhere on the Earth when I see the words "Columbia University" written on the wall of the station when I'm in my bleary eyed morning mindset
Speaking of Columbia, President Barack Obama is also an alumnus. Today I closed the comedy section with several video clips of his more humorous endeavors, such as appearances on buzzfeed.com, "Between Two Ferns" and The Colbert Report. I applaud his sense of humor. As heroic as we would like our deeds to be, we can only survive and succeed if we keep in mind that very often life is funny, and that we will enjoy ourselves more when we lighten up and laugh amidst all the heavy seriousness of survival in the ocean of life.
Mr. Obama is one of my heroes, I'm sure for many reasons, but most immediately because it recently came to my attention that several years after graduating from Columbia he had protested the condition of the city's subway system and demanded improvements. Thank you, Mr. President. I rely on that subway system every day, and although I'm constantly shaken from my bliss by its wild inconsistencies and its riders' dizzying lack of common courtesy, I understand that, from what I've read about NYC in the 80's, it has come a tremendously long way. Now if only he could tell people to move away from the entrance when people leave and enter the train, and I will further enjoy moving about New York society.
I suppose the message of all of this is that we would all love to be considered heroes by some, if not one, but we're never the only one. We have to share the stage with others. That's the way this works. Besides, who would want to always be in the spotlight alone? As long as your contribution makes the experience of being alive more enjoyable for some, then your victory is won. If you think that your aquarium is limiting your growth and that you could make the world even happier by living your bliss and sharing the potentially inspirational, informative and entertaining results with your fellow humans, then by all means, MOVE US! You can be as slow and steady or as speedy as you like while you live and seek happiness. Just keep "moving forward" on the path of your bliss
3/26, Japan
Monday, March 23, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
I encourage evolving empathy with enthusiasm expressing ecstatic energy
Spring!
I am happy that the date means it's warm outside, but the day of the year doesn't determine everything. I say this because we are having the beautiful kind of storm that dresses the world in white, even though the calendar says we should be experiencing something warmer.
Weather may do as it pleases, but we all still have to find ways to please us. I am going to a party tomorrow, and besides that, I am putting my world in a more orderly state. However things go, this weekend will be hard-pressed to compete with the one before. I think all I need to say is that I got to watch Hiromi play the piano keys with a style that puts the soul at ease. She even covered Miles! She made me very happy and wear a smile for an incredibly long while.
Of course, forty hours of standing and speaking and listening and teaching and learning and improvising and energizing leaves a certain amount of time for writing and eating and sleeping and putting on heavenly music to remind you why you go through all that you do, so you don't always remember in the moment that you are incredibly blessed to be doing anything that you receive as the present. Luckily, with practice, enthusiasm, and patience, a brain turns on a heart and we see the beauty that is the world, a work of art
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Monday, March 9, 2015
Today is still international women’s day.
I love women. I know I'm not the first to say that, but it's still true. I love all of the
women in my life. I love the first woman
who brought me into the world and kept me alive and taught me how to
live well by being good to people and taking care of myself, studying and being
kind. I love the next woman, my sister,
who taught me some of the same, but also taught me about bravery, creativity,
tolerance of many things that appear to be strange but are completely fine, and
expressing one’s self, especially the unique talents. I love my grandmothers for raising the children who raised me, and for the love they
sent and send directly to me. I love my
aunts, who have lived very different lives and sent me their
warm love in many ways. I love my cousins, and also uncles and grandfathers, but it's not their day to be international. I love and am thankful for all the girls and women who have made me smile and
given me the chance to make them smile, and sometimes even excited my heart, making more understanding of why we're here
Anyway, I'm going to go to work and be around many people who are, when taken from their natural habitat and put in seats next to each other in a room where I happen to be standing, perfectly international. All you have to do to be that too is to go what they went through, which is to explore beyond a border or a few
Good luck to you!
Anyway, I'm going to go to work and be around many people who are, when taken from their natural habitat and put in seats next to each other in a room where I happen to be standing, perfectly international. All you have to do to be that too is to go what they went through, which is to explore beyond a border or a few
Good luck to you!
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
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