If all goes as planned, I'm ditching Moab & hitting the road tomorrow, heading to the Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico, then to unknown points beyond. I'm not sure what the public computer situation will be, since I no longer have any identification docs. That means I might not be able to do a blog entry for a while.
It's hard to get myself to travel again this year. Last year was such grand fun, a non-stop adventure. But my energy level is low right now. I'm not feeling too Rainbowy now, either. Probably the hot weather has a lot to do with it. But there are people I plan to meet up with in NM, so that's what's pulling me.
One of my best friends, Michael, came here to Moab from Vermont a week ago, otherwise I would have gone to NM earlier. Michael is going to stay here, near the cave where I camp, & do a solo meditation retreat. He does that periodically. As usual, it's been an enlightening experience hanging out with him.
Oh, yeah, once again, I found out that article in Details magazine is actually coming out in August, not June, not May, as I had thought. It looks certain, this time. And Chris Ketcham, the journalist who interviewed me, says he's pleased they didn't alter it too much.
Now, onward...
29 Haziran 2009 Pazartesi
11 Haziran 2009 Perşembe
Contradictions
My Parents’ 60th Anniversary
I am back in Moab after a couple weeks, off & on, in Colorado. First, I went to visit my parents in Fruita, Colorado for their 60th anniversary. They’re both 81 years old. Yeah, the 2 people who gave birth to this body I ride around in have been happily together for 60 years. I feel utter gratitude I grew up in a loving family. I never dealt with bickering parents, or with the pain of parent divorce, like most folks I know. Everybody who meets my parents loves them. I am fortunate.
But I sometimes fall into arguments with my dad about – what else – religion & politics. My parents are Republican & swallow much of the religious right stuff. Lots of American homes are like this: strong family values on the one hand, but astonishing lack of concern for social injustice on the other. Nice on the individual level but poison on the mass level.
I am back in Moab after a couple weeks, off & on, in Colorado. First, I went to visit my parents in Fruita, Colorado for their 60th anniversary. They’re both 81 years old. Yeah, the 2 people who gave birth to this body I ride around in have been happily together for 60 years. I feel utter gratitude I grew up in a loving family. I never dealt with bickering parents, or with the pain of parent divorce, like most folks I know. Everybody who meets my parents loves them. I am fortunate.
But I sometimes fall into arguments with my dad about – what else – religion & politics. My parents are Republican & swallow much of the religious right stuff. Lots of American homes are like this: strong family values on the one hand, but astonishing lack of concern for social injustice on the other. Nice on the individual level but poison on the mass level.
I've said that I wouldn't be honest if I weren't an atheist sometimes. I often can't help but be atheist after listening to the Evangelical diatribe. It takes a while to regain faith after being around the usual Evangelical spirit. If I were the devil and wanted to turn more people away from Jesus ever, I would create the institution that calls itself “Christianity.” It's a pretty ingenious set-up.
But, as I say, it's the love that seeps through, that keeps me from throwing it all out.
Camping in Colorado
I came back to Moab from Colorado only to be whisked away to Colorado again by my friends Pete & William. We went to a “Feral Futures” gathering near Durango. It was a small Earth First type gathering at some hot springs, with Rainbow people invited, too. It was one of those rare events linking Earth-Firsters with Rainbowers. There’s sometimes tension between the 2 – Earth Firsters feeling like Rainbowers are too airy fairy & Rainbowers feeling like Earth-Firsters are too militant. I see both in myself.
Camping in Colorado
I came back to Moab from Colorado only to be whisked away to Colorado again by my friends Pete & William. We went to a “Feral Futures” gathering near Durango. It was a small Earth First type gathering at some hot springs, with Rainbow people invited, too. It was one of those rare events linking Earth-Firsters with Rainbowers. There’s sometimes tension between the 2 – Earth Firsters feeling like Rainbowers are too airy fairy & Rainbowers feeling like Earth-Firsters are too militant. I see both in myself.
Somebody, ironically, brought a "Star Wars" Monopoly game to that gathering. Yes, I played this game of capitalism with them. We all started stealing from each other, jokingly. I was losing royally, & did my share of stealing. It was grand fun. My friend William says he doesn't trust me now. "You're supposed to be anti-capitalist," he said. Here's the question: is a game just a game or a reflection of real life? It helped me to see I have the capitalist pig inside me, too. I'm certain that as long as we see everything and everybody, including demons, in ourselves, & admit them, our little demons never get a hold of us, and we remain in balance.
William & I hitched back to Moab from there. My friend Val, by strange “coincidence”, happened to be driving by us then & gave us a lift. Val is the prime scout for the Rainbow gathering & just then happened to be returning to Moab from a month of scouting in New Mexico.
Contradictory Musings in Moab
Back at the camp by the Colorado River, my “kiva” has had 6 inches of water in it from the rising water table. So I’ve had to camp above ground. I’m working up motivation to clean up that camp & stay just at the canyon cave.
Meanwhile, last night, I stayed at a house-sit with my friend Phil. We watched the movie, “Gardens of the Night”, about children abducted & abused. It was heart-breaking. Yesterday I was an atheist, and the movie reinforced it. The natural question came into my mind: how can an omnipotent God, if he/she is just, even begin to allow the incessant abuse against children that’s happening every day, right now, all over the world, ruining lives for generations?
The atheists I know are atheists because they have a sense of justice. Yet people are quick to call them evil, while most self-proclaimed God-believers bury their heads in the sand & deny most all forms of truth. It’s like Jesus’ parable of the two sons. One says he will do what his father says, and then does not. The other says he won’t do what his father says, and yet changes his mind and does.
The prophets recorded in the Bible were all in conflict with their own religion, because they all talked about social injustice. They decided to stick with their own oppressive religions & work with them. And they were all persecuted or killed for it. Did it do any good? These are the contradictions I’ve been grappling with.
All I know is that the most astonishingly profound things came out of the prophets, yet growing side-by-side with more hypocritical religion. But I see what I see – a divine beauty at the core that can’t be denied. The good plants & the bad plants grow together. It’s either that or no plants at all.
I have a friend who just made the comment that you never hear of atheists perpetrating violence like religious people often do. I started agreeing with him, but then remembered the USSR & the Republic of China. The USSR, declaring its state philosophy as atheism, massacred more people than even Nazi Germany. Today, the Republic of China, in the name of atheism, is even now destroying Tibetan culture & religion. It ironically calls Tibetan culture – probably the most peaceful, non-imperialistic civilization on earth – religious imperialism.
When we make anything a dogma, whether religious or a-religious, it becomes poison.
Again, I keep hearing about cultures in Scandinavian Europe becoming more & more atheistic, and more just & civil, with less poverty, than most other cultures. I'd like to hear first-hand information from Scandinavian citizens & from people who have visited them.
Contradictory Musings in Moab
Back at the camp by the Colorado River, my “kiva” has had 6 inches of water in it from the rising water table. So I’ve had to camp above ground. I’m working up motivation to clean up that camp & stay just at the canyon cave.
Meanwhile, last night, I stayed at a house-sit with my friend Phil. We watched the movie, “Gardens of the Night”, about children abducted & abused. It was heart-breaking. Yesterday I was an atheist, and the movie reinforced it. The natural question came into my mind: how can an omnipotent God, if he/she is just, even begin to allow the incessant abuse against children that’s happening every day, right now, all over the world, ruining lives for generations?
The atheists I know are atheists because they have a sense of justice. Yet people are quick to call them evil, while most self-proclaimed God-believers bury their heads in the sand & deny most all forms of truth. It’s like Jesus’ parable of the two sons. One says he will do what his father says, and then does not. The other says he won’t do what his father says, and yet changes his mind and does.
The prophets recorded in the Bible were all in conflict with their own religion, because they all talked about social injustice. They decided to stick with their own oppressive religions & work with them. And they were all persecuted or killed for it. Did it do any good? These are the contradictions I’ve been grappling with.
All I know is that the most astonishingly profound things came out of the prophets, yet growing side-by-side with more hypocritical religion. But I see what I see – a divine beauty at the core that can’t be denied. The good plants & the bad plants grow together. It’s either that or no plants at all.
I have a friend who just made the comment that you never hear of atheists perpetrating violence like religious people often do. I started agreeing with him, but then remembered the USSR & the Republic of China. The USSR, declaring its state philosophy as atheism, massacred more people than even Nazi Germany. Today, the Republic of China, in the name of atheism, is even now destroying Tibetan culture & religion. It ironically calls Tibetan culture – probably the most peaceful, non-imperialistic civilization on earth – religious imperialism.When we make anything a dogma, whether religious or a-religious, it becomes poison.
Again, I keep hearing about cultures in Scandinavian Europe becoming more & more atheistic, and more just & civil, with less poverty, than most other cultures. I'd like to hear first-hand information from Scandinavian citizens & from people who have visited them.
Bowing, Resigning in Silence
It’s all hard, for everybody. No human mind can grasp the contradictions of this world. This is when I have to clear my mind & meditate. In perfect silence is perfect Truth. Thoughts & words can never grasp truth. They can only drive you mad. But I find perfect clarity in stillness. This stillness, annihilation of ego (crucifixion of the delusion of self), is the fundamental of all religion, yet disregarded by religious institutions. Is this burying my head in the sand? On the contrary, I find it is lifting my head & seeing Everything As It Is, without letting the disease infect me. So the world is going to Hell. Why should I go with it? What good is that, for anybody, anywhere?
Then, lift your head again, and see the overwhelming beauty in this world, and hear the Glorious Music lifted high, high, high above the hideous noise. Somehow, it all works out beautifully in the end.
It’s all hard, for everybody. No human mind can grasp the contradictions of this world. This is when I have to clear my mind & meditate. In perfect silence is perfect Truth. Thoughts & words can never grasp truth. They can only drive you mad. But I find perfect clarity in stillness. This stillness, annihilation of ego (crucifixion of the delusion of self), is the fundamental of all religion, yet disregarded by religious institutions. Is this burying my head in the sand? On the contrary, I find it is lifting my head & seeing Everything As It Is, without letting the disease infect me. So the world is going to Hell. Why should I go with it? What good is that, for anybody, anywhere?
Then, lift your head again, and see the overwhelming beauty in this world, and hear the Glorious Music lifted high, high, high above the hideous noise. Somehow, it all works out beautifully in the end.It's comforting that the galaxies take millions of years to make a single revolution. And in a million years we will all be gone and the universe still rolls on. We're a passing dust particle that really doesn't matter. My and your self-importance is a joke.
29 Nisan 2009 Çarşamba
We are Challenge Challenged
I haven't been staying at the canyon cave all week. I'm house-sitting at my friend Roberta's by the Colorado River. She should be back tomorrow.
Shall We Gather at the River?
A lot of good people I know live down here. I might make this area one of my habitats, because I feel more of a sense of community here. Pl
us, I got a clear sign. Another one of many grand coincidences happened the other day. I was investigating the woods near the river & stumbled upon a beautiful kiva-type structure, half-underground. I thought I'd like to live in it, but then second-thought it belonged to somebody, so I quickly put that thought out of my head. I could build my own somewhere, perhaps, I thought.
The very next day I was bicycling into town & my friend David (whom I hadn't seen since last year) called out to me. He asked me if I was looking for a new place to live. David said he and his twin brother Isaiah had built a kiva-type structure by the river I could move into if I wanted! He had no idea I was just contemplating that idea the day before! Some signs are just so blatant you can't ignore them!
There are other folks living in those woods. One friend is planting a good-size garden & would love for us & some other friends down there make it a community garden. We are envisioning a totally self-sufficient, subversive :-) community.
Don't Sweat the Details
You know that interview Chris Ketcham did with me for Details magazine, that I talked about a couple bloggings ago? I think it's coming out in June, not in May. He says he's coming back to Moab mid-May to maybe do another interview for another magazine.
The Mysterious Ugliness & Beauty of Religion
I'm doing a lot of thinking about different world religions & their scriptures these days. I don't talk about this with most my friends, because it's not interesting to them. But I can't help it, it's a passion of mine. Taste is taste, & how or why should everybody have the same taste?
Scriptures & Religion are like fire. To those who are attracted to them, they can be sublime & powerful. But, also, they are usually in careless hands & get out of hand & end up causing more destruction than good. Even with all the hypocrisy & destruction that come in the wake of religion & scripture, I still have a passion for them - I can't help it, any more than I can't help staying away from using fire. Some creatures get warm at the fire, some are so attracted to it they fly into it to their deaths.
Something is brewing in me about the sublime three-part harmony of the Quran, The Bible, & the Book of Mormon, under the grand conductor-ship of the Buddhist suttras & the Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes I see it as sure as the sun. But other times there is doubt, because the sun also sets. This is what makes it so infinitely & sublimely mysterious & intriguing & so very hard.
Yes, what makes it so hard is there are also discordant & irritating noises, I mean totally un-PC, in the Quran, the Bible, & the Book of Mormon - putrid things that make you want to chuck them back into the dusty cellar. Thus, their one divinely harmonious symphony remains hidden in the dust.
But this is what's so sublime about those scriptures & religions. They're just like people. They are people, full of both attraction and revulsion. The trick is to see religions & philosophy (culture) in the same way we must see each other: full of hideousness and also full of sublimity. Take the good & leave the bad in everything & everybody. If you don't, you might as well not get out of bed in the morning.
When you see somebody as all good or all evil, you then have what psychiatrists call personality disorder. We all have vestiges of personality disorder.
Right, Left, Right, Left, into the Ditch
And that's what's happening to people in droves: we either become discouraged, whining, cynical, suicidal crybabies, because we sometimes have to pick somebody's hair out of our gourmet dinners, or we put on a fake smile & pretend the status quo is perfect. Either our bubble bursts when we find out our romantic partner has flaws, or we maintain a facade relationship. I don't speak as a clueless judge. I myself went through years & years of bored, crybaby, suicidal cynicism, as a reaction against the blind optimism I had had before. Yes, I speak from experience.
We drop our saintly friend when we find out she has hidden rages. We become bitter when we find out Dad & Mom aren't the gods we'd imagined. We find out Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad or Joseph Smith or Krishna were human & maybe even did some atrocious things. So we throw away the Perfect Divine with the flawed package it came in. Yup, we throw out the Baby with the bathwater. Either that or we hide our head in the sand and pretend to see no evil, hear no evil.
Hitler on the right, Stalin on the left. One pretends to see no wrong in Tradition and the other throws away Tradition. One sees everything new as a threat, one sees everything old as a threat. One glorifies Religion and one crushes Religion. One is sickeningly optimistic and one is bitterly cynical. Both are suspicious and hateful toward each other & ultimately toward everybody.
Our very labels, Right Wing and Left Wing, indicate one single Bird. A house divided cannot stand, and this is why our house is falling. Hitler & Stalin are still here, in us, every one of us.
Yeah, both tradition and innovation are hard. But they are joy when they dance together. They wreak havoc when they separate - when they ethnically cleanse themselves from each other.
Immune diseases, Gangs, School Shootings, Wars, Suicides
In our modern age, we have processed everything so much there's no more fun. We want gems without digging for them. We want food pre-processed & pre-packaged so we don't have to hunt for it & prepare it. We want everything explained to us in soundbites so we don't have to think. We can't handle the mysterious parables of tradition nor can we adapt to the newness of progression. We want sterility so our immune systems have nothing to work on anymore.
Over-processing & sterility: this is what both the Right Wing and the Left Wing have in common. Yes, what the Right & Left have in common is their refusal to see that they have anything in common! Ha!
We are unchallenged. Challenge is the backbone of joy. Our muscles of creativity have atrophied so much that the joy of living is gone! Gone! Then we can't figure out why mental illness & immune diseases are so epidemic. We can't figure out why our bodies, for lack of anything else to attack, start attacking themselves with cancers & immune diseases. We can't figure out why our brains go into loops of self-destructive thoughts. We can't figure out why our unchallenged politicians create imaginary enemies to bring whole nations to war against. We can't figure out why bored kids join gangs to fight fictitious foes. We can't figure out why children project their own created nightmares onto others and go to school to gun them down.
Processed, pure food is fine, in its place. It comes right from Mother's nipple. But then comes the time to grow up and chew food. Then to gather & prepare your own food. Mother's milk is poison to an adult.
Behold, with hardship is ease. Behold, with hardship is ease.
(Quran 94:95 & 96)
Shall We Gather at the River?
A lot of good people I know live down here. I might make this area one of my habitats, because I feel more of a sense of community here. Pl
us, I got a clear sign. Another one of many grand coincidences happened the other day. I was investigating the woods near the river & stumbled upon a beautiful kiva-type structure, half-underground. I thought I'd like to live in it, but then second-thought it belonged to somebody, so I quickly put that thought out of my head. I could build my own somewhere, perhaps, I thought.The very next day I was bicycling into town & my friend David (whom I hadn't seen since last year) called out to me. He asked me if I was looking for a new place to live. David said he and his twin brother Isaiah had built a kiva-type structure by the river I could move into if I wanted! He had no idea I was just contemplating that idea the day before! Some signs are just so blatant you can't ignore them!
There are other folks living in those woods. One friend is planting a good-size garden & would love for us & some other friends down there make it a community garden. We are envisioning a totally self-sufficient, subversive :-) community.
Don't Sweat the Details
You know that interview Chris Ketcham did with me for Details magazine, that I talked about a couple bloggings ago? I think it's coming out in June, not in May. He says he's coming back to Moab mid-May to maybe do another interview for another magazine.
The Mysterious Ugliness & Beauty of Religion
I'm doing a lot of thinking about different world religions & their scriptures these days. I don't talk about this with most my friends, because it's not interesting to them. But I can't help it, it's a passion of mine. Taste is taste, & how or why should everybody have the same taste?
Scriptures & Religion are like fire. To those who are attracted to them, they can be sublime & powerful. But, also, they are usually in careless hands & get out of hand & end up causing more destruction than good. Even with all the hypocrisy & destruction that come in the wake of religion & scripture, I still have a passion for them - I can't help it, any more than I can't help staying away from using fire. Some creatures get warm at the fire, some are so attracted to it they fly into it to their deaths.
Something is brewing in me about the sublime three-part harmony of the Quran, The Bible, & the Book of Mormon, under the grand conductor-ship of the Buddhist suttras & the Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes I see it as sure as the sun. But other times there is doubt, because the sun also sets. This is what makes it so infinitely & sublimely mysterious & intriguing & so very hard.
Yes, what makes it so hard is there are also discordant & irritating noises, I mean totally un-PC, in the Quran, the Bible, & the Book of Mormon - putrid things that make you want to chuck them back into the dusty cellar. Thus, their one divinely harmonious symphony remains hidden in the dust.
But this is what's so sublime about those scriptures & religions. They're just like people. They are people, full of both attraction and revulsion. The trick is to see religions & philosophy (culture) in the same way we must see each other: full of hideousness and also full of sublimity. Take the good & leave the bad in everything & everybody. If you don't, you might as well not get out of bed in the morning.
When you see somebody as all good or all evil, you then have what psychiatrists call personality disorder. We all have vestiges of personality disorder.
Right, Left, Right, Left, into the Ditch
And that's what's happening to people in droves: we either become discouraged, whining, cynical, suicidal crybabies, because we sometimes have to pick somebody's hair out of our gourmet dinners, or we put on a fake smile & pretend the status quo is perfect. Either our bubble bursts when we find out our romantic partner has flaws, or we maintain a facade relationship. I don't speak as a clueless judge. I myself went through years & years of bored, crybaby, suicidal cynicism, as a reaction against the blind optimism I had had before. Yes, I speak from experience.
We drop our saintly friend when we find out she has hidden rages. We become bitter when we find out Dad & Mom aren't the gods we'd imagined. We find out Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad or Joseph Smith or Krishna were human & maybe even did some atrocious things. So we throw away the Perfect Divine with the flawed package it came in. Yup, we throw out the Baby with the bathwater. Either that or we hide our head in the sand and pretend to see no evil, hear no evil.
Hitler on the right, Stalin on the left. One pretends to see no wrong in Tradition and the other throws away Tradition. One sees everything new as a threat, one sees everything old as a threat. One glorifies Religion and one crushes Religion. One is sickeningly optimistic and one is bitterly cynical. Both are suspicious and hateful toward each other & ultimately toward everybody.
Our very labels, Right Wing and Left Wing, indicate one single Bird. A house divided cannot stand, and this is why our house is falling. Hitler & Stalin are still here, in us, every one of us.
Yeah, both tradition and innovation are hard. But they are joy when they dance together. They wreak havoc when they separate - when they ethnically cleanse themselves from each other.
Immune diseases, Gangs, School Shootings, Wars, Suicides
In our modern age, we have processed everything so much there's no more fun. We want gems without digging for them. We want food pre-processed & pre-packaged so we don't have to hunt for it & prepare it. We want everything explained to us in soundbites so we don't have to think. We can't handle the mysterious parables of tradition nor can we adapt to the newness of progression. We want sterility so our immune systems have nothing to work on anymore.
Over-processing & sterility: this is what both the Right Wing and the Left Wing have in common. Yes, what the Right & Left have in common is their refusal to see that they have anything in common! Ha!
We are unchallenged. Challenge is the backbone of joy. Our muscles of creativity have atrophied so much that the joy of living is gone! Gone! Then we can't figure out why mental illness & immune diseases are so epidemic. We can't figure out why our bodies, for lack of anything else to attack, start attacking themselves with cancers & immune diseases. We can't figure out why our brains go into loops of self-destructive thoughts. We can't figure out why our unchallenged politicians create imaginary enemies to bring whole nations to war against. We can't figure out why bored kids join gangs to fight fictitious foes. We can't figure out why children project their own created nightmares onto others and go to school to gun them down.
Processed, pure food is fine, in its place. It comes right from Mother's nipple. But then comes the time to grow up and chew food. Then to gather & prepare your own food. Mother's milk is poison to an adult.
Behold, with hardship is ease. Behold, with hardship is ease.
(Quran 94:95 & 96)
16 Nisan 2009 Perşembe
One Soul, Nothing Else
Provo Providence
I've been mostly in the canyon cave the past month, interspersed with a couple short house-sits. My friend Damian took me to Provo a few weeks ago to visit our mutual friends, John & Courtney. John, a non-Mormon, is a BYU-taught archaeo-astronomist writing a book in the Heart of Mormonism. He has discovered that the stories in the Bible & Quran are taken directly from the star constellations, going back to ancient Akkadia & Sumer! He invited me to the BYU ancient scriptures library, where he's doing his research. I poked around there a bit, and felt privileged to peruse the late Hugh Nibley's personal library and see the notes he wrote in his books. Nibley was a Mormon scholar with a deep & open mind to other religions & philosophies, and helped me to break out of my prejudices and see profound substance at the core of Mormonism. Of course, like all religions, you have to dig through a lot of caca de baca to get to it.
There's some good, alternative culture in Provo. It seems the more repressed a place, the more it cultivates good art & culture through the cracks. John introduced me to some of his Provo friends. I got to share some of my moneyless philosophies with them & they were all ears, which was way encouraging. One of them, James, about my age, stays in a tree house in the backyard of another cool couple. James decided to take me back to Moab & camp out a night with me at the cave & provide me with stimulating philosophical conversation.
Free Meal Wisdom
A highlight of my life in Moab town is Free Meal. Free meal was started a couple years ago, serving food a couple times a week, by my friend, Brer, who modeled it after Food Not Bombs (a world-wide phenomenon in major cities & towns). Basically, Free Meal serves free food leftover from restaurants & schools, as well as meals made from scratch, from donated ingredients. Brer finally had to back out & my friend Auggie started bottom-lining it. He decided that people needed to eat every day, so now it's 7 days a week rather than just 2. Now there are 2 professional chefs, Scott & P
at, cooking for it, as well as a couple women, Brandi & Kathryn, cooking off & on. They all act like it's a privilege to cook for free, and indeed it is. Scott's enthusiasm, especially, is contagious.
What is grand about Free Meal & Food Not Bombs is that they are about undiscriminating giving, meaning it all turns into a community picnic. It's free food for all, no strings attached, regardless of economic status. That means it doesn't have that condescending Us-Them charity, like in your usual dreary soup kitchen. Those who cook & serve food also share in the eating, with us.
Money Charity
This gets me flash-backing to my times on the road. A couple years ago when I was train-hopping, I ended up in a town early in the morning - I think in New Mexico. I was filthy & exhausted after days on the rails. I walked to a park and plopped myself & my pack onto a bench. A mid-aged woman walked up to me and said, in the kindest voice, "I'd like to share breakfast with you!" I felt warmed & elated. I thought she would actually sit down with me & share a meal. But my heart sunk a little when she handed me $4 and walked away. Don't get me wrong, I felt so grateful that she cared enough to do that rare thing. But, at the same time, it was a slight let-down. She didn't really share breakfast with me. Of course, she didn't know I didn't use money, but that's still not the point. I left the $4 on the bench and walked on.
This kind of thing happens fairly often when I'm on the road. People sometimes share money, but it's rarer than gold to find people actually willing to share themselves, share their time. On the one hand, who can blame them - trusting a filthy vagabond stranger? On the other hand, "perfect love drives away fear." Money seems like a good thing, but money is usually a substitute for love. Money is what we fall back on when we fear. Money is an attempt to pay the debt of guilt for our lack of true love. We can "help" others and yet not have to let go of our fear of one another.
This is why I like to let people know I don't take money before they try to help me. Then, it causes people to dig inside to find out an alternative way of helping, to find out what love truly is. It causes people to face human contact.
Now notice this: we "love" to "love" everybody but our neighbor. And money makes this kind of "love" possible. I speak from experience. Back in my money days, I'd send good sums of money to over-seas charities. Then I wouldn't feel bad about not ever knowing who my own neighbor was, much less loving her or him. I could also feel not so badly about ignoring street people or hitch-hikers because I'd already paid my dues - as if doing good deeds is some kind of a credit system rather than a natural, non-stop overflow of the heart!
The Wholly Trinity For Dummies
This brings me to a recent grand epiphany I had in the cave on what the Holy Trinity really is. It's so simple it blows me away. Understanding it is practical, the key to love. The Trinity reveals itself blatantly in grammar. Yeah, simple enough for a grammar-school kid:
First Person (I, Me, Myself, We, Us)
Second Person (You)
Third Person (She, He, It, They, Them, Those)
How can you love the Third Person (They), whom you cannot see, if you cannot love the Second Person (You), whom you can see?
You, the Second Person, are Here and Now, in the Flesh.
They, the Third Person, are away in space and time, dis-embodied.
Most of us are deluded and see the Three Persons of Grammar as separate. We love to love Them (the Third Person) while ignoring the Second Person (You) and the First Person (Myself). At least we think that's love. We love helping somebody else, Him, Her, Them, in some other space and time, just as We walk right by You, our Neighbor. We are in a world where They are more important than You. If you still don't get what I mean, just observe what's happening right now. Is loving Them through this computer, maybe Them on the other side of the world, more important than loving You sitting in a chair right next to me? How often does the cell phone come before the Person in front of You? And television - need I say more?
However, does it all become good when I send money to Them Over There, even as I walk around You or even step over You and Your suffering body in the Flesh?
Does this mean I don't help Them (Third Person)? No! What it does mean is that I cannot love Them (the Third Person) except only through You (the Second Person). The Third Person (They) must become Flesh, must become the Second Person (You), must enter the Here and Now, before I can love Them. And just as They are the Third Person to Me, so I am the Third Person to Them. If I am to love Them, I must become the Second Person to Them. I must become You. I must have contact with You, in the Flesh, Here and Now. The Third Person (They) is disembodied in Heaven and must leave that disembodied state and become Flesh, become Present.
You, the Second Person, are the One Mediator between Me and Them. But if I can't stand in Your Presence, because of fear, and instead throw money at you and walk away, so that You and I become Them to each other again, is this Love?
I was hungry, and you didn't feed Me.
The First Person is the Second Person is the Third Person
But I am scared. How do I overcome my fear of You, so I may be in Your Presence? By realizing My Self. How can I love You if I don't see My Self in You? How can I see My Self in You if I don't know My Self? How can I know and love You if I don't know and love My Self?
If I cannot accept myself as I Am, then I cannot love You, and, hence, cannot love Them. I AM Who I AM, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to Them except by You who are Me. This is the honest, simple truth. This is not a play on words. You know it if you but look at Your Self.
All I am saying is be sincere. Say to yourself, I Am Who I Am, and I can't be anybody else. Only then can I be courageous, be free, be without fear, be Love.
If I am trying to be somebody else, I am trying to be a disembodied Them - I am trying to be an illusion. If I am illusion, I can only love illusion. I can only love a fictitious Them who doesn't exist. Fiction loves Fiction and Reality loves Reality. Fiction can't love Reality and Reality can't love fiction.
Being Raised to Glory
If I am striving to be Them, ignoring that I Am Who I Am, then I will never reach Them.
Glory, or credit, or fame, or reputation, is talking good about Them. If you are trying to get Credit, you want people to talk good about you as Them. We want people to say, He is a great guy, They are a wonderful people. The Third Person dwells in Glory. Credit goes to the Third Person. I can talk about the Third Person long after the Third Person is gone from earth. The Third Person is glory, reputation, living past the grave. Some, like Gandhi, are raised to a reputation of Glory, some, like Hitler, are raised to a reputation of Shame. But, in reality, You are always here, always alive, the same yesterday, today, and forever, though your body and mind comes and goes. If you were not here, you would be the Third Person, and I would talk about you as He, She, Them.
If you want a good reputation, just be yourself. Say to yourself, I Am Who I Am, and you will be remembered well as They. But also remember that They is only a disembodied illusion. I Am Who I Am is always Here, never changing, never gone.
When I Am Who I Am, I see You as I Am, and I see Them as I Am. When I have entered Reality, there is no more Self and Other, Only I Am Who I Am, in You, in Them, in Me. Your suffering is My suffering.
Compassion Is Pure Enlightenment
Compassion. Com-Passion literally means shared suffering. In our egotism we think we suffer alone - we only know our own passion. When I was in severe, clinical depression, I was lost in my own ego. I thought my suffering was my own and nobody else's. I was convinced nobody in the universe understood my suffering. I was so blinded I couldn't see others' suffering. It was only when I came to the understanding that everybody suffers, and everybody suffers the same suffering, that my suffering turned to Love, to indescribable Joy.
In our suffering, we only see passion, not Com-Passion. We only see suffering, not shared suffering. We see a Trinity of Three Persons, not One Person. In Our enlightenment we know Com-Passion: We see One Person in Three: I Am Who I Am in You, in Them.
In our suffering we see religions, not One Religion. We see faiths, not One Faith. We see baptisms, not One Baptism. We see spirits, not One Spirit. Am I making and manipulating all religions to fit, or are they really the same? If you are sincere, you will know.
The Great Compassion is the Spirit that prompts it to be ill with the illness of the People, to suffer with their suffering.
(Amitayur-dhyana & Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutras)
Your suffering is My suffering, and Your happiness is My happiness, said Buddha.
(Suramgama Sutra)
With the heart concentrated by Yoga, viewing all things with equal regard, He beholds Himself in All Beings and All Beings in Himself. he who sees Me Everywhere and sees Everything in Me, to Him I Am never lost, nor is He ever lost to Me. He who, having been established in Oneness, worships Me dwelling in All Beings -- that Yogi, in whatever way He lives His life, lives in Me. Him I hold to be the Supreme Yogi, O Arjuna, Who looks on the pleasure and pain of All Beings as He looks on them in Himself.
(Bhagavad Gita 6:29-32)
"...for, behold, He suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam"
(Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 9:21)
I, this world, and all sentient beings attain the Way simultaneously, and mountains and rivers and grasses, and all things become Buddha
--Shakyamuni Buddha
And Elohim [literally, "Gods"] says to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He says, "Thus You shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
(Exodus 3.14 pi!)
Keep through Your Name Those Whom You have given Me, that They may be One as We.
--Jesus (John 17:11)
There is no one besides Me.
(Isaiah 45:21)
You were created but as One Soul, and as One Soul You shall be raised to life. Allah hears All and observes All.
(Quran 31:28)
Do You not know Yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in You?
(2 Corinthians 13:5)
He Who takes upon Himself the humiliation of humanity is fit to rule them. He who takes upon Himself the country's disasters deserves to be King of the Universe. The Truth often sounds paradoxical.
-- Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching 78)
I've been mostly in the canyon cave the past month, interspersed with a couple short house-sits. My friend Damian took me to Provo a few weeks ago to visit our mutual friends, John & Courtney. John, a non-Mormon, is a BYU-taught archaeo-astronomist writing a book in the Heart of Mormonism. He has discovered that the stories in the Bible & Quran are taken directly from the star constellations, going back to ancient Akkadia & Sumer! He invited me to the BYU ancient scriptures library, where he's doing his research. I poked around there a bit, and felt privileged to peruse the late Hugh Nibley's personal library and see the notes he wrote in his books. Nibley was a Mormon scholar with a deep & open mind to other religions & philosophies, and helped me to break out of my prejudices and see profound substance at the core of Mormonism. Of course, like all religions, you have to dig through a lot of caca de baca to get to it.
There's some good, alternative culture in Provo. It seems the more repressed a place, the more it cultivates good art & culture through the cracks. John introduced me to some of his Provo friends. I got to share some of my moneyless philosophies with them & they were all ears, which was way encouraging. One of them, James, about my age, stays in a tree house in the backyard of another cool couple. James decided to take me back to Moab & camp out a night with me at the cave & provide me with stimulating philosophical conversation.
Free Meal Wisdom
A highlight of my life in Moab town is Free Meal. Free meal was started a couple years ago, serving food a couple times a week, by my friend, Brer, who modeled it after Food Not Bombs (a world-wide phenomenon in major cities & towns). Basically, Free Meal serves free food leftover from restaurants & schools, as well as meals made from scratch, from donated ingredients. Brer finally had to back out & my friend Auggie started bottom-lining it. He decided that people needed to eat every day, so now it's 7 days a week rather than just 2. Now there are 2 professional chefs, Scott & P
at, cooking for it, as well as a couple women, Brandi & Kathryn, cooking off & on. They all act like it's a privilege to cook for free, and indeed it is. Scott's enthusiasm, especially, is contagious.What is grand about Free Meal & Food Not Bombs is that they are about undiscriminating giving, meaning it all turns into a community picnic. It's free food for all, no strings attached, regardless of economic status. That means it doesn't have that condescending Us-Them charity, like in your usual dreary soup kitchen. Those who cook & serve food also share in the eating, with us.
Money Charity
This gets me flash-backing to my times on the road. A couple years ago when I was train-hopping, I ended up in a town early in the morning - I think in New Mexico. I was filthy & exhausted after days on the rails. I walked to a park and plopped myself & my pack onto a bench. A mid-aged woman walked up to me and said, in the kindest voice, "I'd like to share breakfast with you!" I felt warmed & elated. I thought she would actually sit down with me & share a meal. But my heart sunk a little when she handed me $4 and walked away. Don't get me wrong, I felt so grateful that she cared enough to do that rare thing. But, at the same time, it was a slight let-down. She didn't really share breakfast with me. Of course, she didn't know I didn't use money, but that's still not the point. I left the $4 on the bench and walked on.
This kind of thing happens fairly often when I'm on the road. People sometimes share money, but it's rarer than gold to find people actually willing to share themselves, share their time. On the one hand, who can blame them - trusting a filthy vagabond stranger? On the other hand, "perfect love drives away fear." Money seems like a good thing, but money is usually a substitute for love. Money is what we fall back on when we fear. Money is an attempt to pay the debt of guilt for our lack of true love. We can "help" others and yet not have to let go of our fear of one another.
This is why I like to let people know I don't take money before they try to help me. Then, it causes people to dig inside to find out an alternative way of helping, to find out what love truly is. It causes people to face human contact.
Now notice this: we "love" to "love" everybody but our neighbor. And money makes this kind of "love" possible. I speak from experience. Back in my money days, I'd send good sums of money to over-seas charities. Then I wouldn't feel bad about not ever knowing who my own neighbor was, much less loving her or him. I could also feel not so badly about ignoring street people or hitch-hikers because I'd already paid my dues - as if doing good deeds is some kind of a credit system rather than a natural, non-stop overflow of the heart!
The Wholly Trinity For Dummies
This brings me to a recent grand epiphany I had in the cave on what the Holy Trinity really is. It's so simple it blows me away. Understanding it is practical, the key to love. The Trinity reveals itself blatantly in grammar. Yeah, simple enough for a grammar-school kid:
First Person (I, Me, Myself, We, Us)
Second Person (You)
Third Person (She, He, It, They, Them, Those)
How can you love the Third Person (They), whom you cannot see, if you cannot love the Second Person (You), whom you can see?
You, the Second Person, are Here and Now, in the Flesh.
They, the Third Person, are away in space and time, dis-embodied.
Most of us are deluded and see the Three Persons of Grammar as separate. We love to love Them (the Third Person) while ignoring the Second Person (You) and the First Person (Myself). At least we think that's love. We love helping somebody else, Him, Her, Them, in some other space and time, just as We walk right by You, our Neighbor. We are in a world where They are more important than You. If you still don't get what I mean, just observe what's happening right now. Is loving Them through this computer, maybe Them on the other side of the world, more important than loving You sitting in a chair right next to me? How often does the cell phone come before the Person in front of You? And television - need I say more?
However, does it all become good when I send money to Them Over There, even as I walk around You or even step over You and Your suffering body in the Flesh?
Does this mean I don't help Them (Third Person)? No! What it does mean is that I cannot love Them (the Third Person) except only through You (the Second Person). The Third Person (They) must become Flesh, must become the Second Person (You), must enter the Here and Now, before I can love Them. And just as They are the Third Person to Me, so I am the Third Person to Them. If I am to love Them, I must become the Second Person to Them. I must become You. I must have contact with You, in the Flesh, Here and Now. The Third Person (They) is disembodied in Heaven and must leave that disembodied state and become Flesh, become Present.
You, the Second Person, are the One Mediator between Me and Them. But if I can't stand in Your Presence, because of fear, and instead throw money at you and walk away, so that You and I become Them to each other again, is this Love?
I was hungry, and you didn't feed Me.
The First Person is the Second Person is the Third Person
But I am scared. How do I overcome my fear of You, so I may be in Your Presence? By realizing My Self. How can I love You if I don't see My Self in You? How can I see My Self in You if I don't know My Self? How can I know and love You if I don't know and love My Self?
If I cannot accept myself as I Am, then I cannot love You, and, hence, cannot love Them. I AM Who I AM, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to Them except by You who are Me. This is the honest, simple truth. This is not a play on words. You know it if you but look at Your Self.
All I am saying is be sincere. Say to yourself, I Am Who I Am, and I can't be anybody else. Only then can I be courageous, be free, be without fear, be Love.
If I am trying to be somebody else, I am trying to be a disembodied Them - I am trying to be an illusion. If I am illusion, I can only love illusion. I can only love a fictitious Them who doesn't exist. Fiction loves Fiction and Reality loves Reality. Fiction can't love Reality and Reality can't love fiction.
Being Raised to Glory
If I am striving to be Them, ignoring that I Am Who I Am, then I will never reach Them.
Glory, or credit, or fame, or reputation, is talking good about Them. If you are trying to get Credit, you want people to talk good about you as Them. We want people to say, He is a great guy, They are a wonderful people. The Third Person dwells in Glory. Credit goes to the Third Person. I can talk about the Third Person long after the Third Person is gone from earth. The Third Person is glory, reputation, living past the grave. Some, like Gandhi, are raised to a reputation of Glory, some, like Hitler, are raised to a reputation of Shame. But, in reality, You are always here, always alive, the same yesterday, today, and forever, though your body and mind comes and goes. If you were not here, you would be the Third Person, and I would talk about you as He, She, Them.
If you want a good reputation, just be yourself. Say to yourself, I Am Who I Am, and you will be remembered well as They. But also remember that They is only a disembodied illusion. I Am Who I Am is always Here, never changing, never gone.
When I Am Who I Am, I see You as I Am, and I see Them as I Am. When I have entered Reality, there is no more Self and Other, Only I Am Who I Am, in You, in Them, in Me. Your suffering is My suffering.
Compassion Is Pure Enlightenment
Compassion. Com-Passion literally means shared suffering. In our egotism we think we suffer alone - we only know our own passion. When I was in severe, clinical depression, I was lost in my own ego. I thought my suffering was my own and nobody else's. I was convinced nobody in the universe understood my suffering. I was so blinded I couldn't see others' suffering. It was only when I came to the understanding that everybody suffers, and everybody suffers the same suffering, that my suffering turned to Love, to indescribable Joy.
In our suffering, we only see passion, not Com-Passion. We only see suffering, not shared suffering. We see a Trinity of Three Persons, not One Person. In Our enlightenment we know Com-Passion: We see One Person in Three: I Am Who I Am in You, in Them.
In our suffering we see religions, not One Religion. We see faiths, not One Faith. We see baptisms, not One Baptism. We see spirits, not One Spirit. Am I making and manipulating all religions to fit, or are they really the same? If you are sincere, you will know.
The Great Compassion is the Spirit that prompts it to be ill with the illness of the People, to suffer with their suffering.
(Amitayur-dhyana & Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutras)
Your suffering is My suffering, and Your happiness is My happiness, said Buddha.
(Suramgama Sutra)
With the heart concentrated by Yoga, viewing all things with equal regard, He beholds Himself in All Beings and All Beings in Himself. he who sees Me Everywhere and sees Everything in Me, to Him I Am never lost, nor is He ever lost to Me. He who, having been established in Oneness, worships Me dwelling in All Beings -- that Yogi, in whatever way He lives His life, lives in Me. Him I hold to be the Supreme Yogi, O Arjuna, Who looks on the pleasure and pain of All Beings as He looks on them in Himself.
(Bhagavad Gita 6:29-32)
"...for, behold, He suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam"
(Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 9:21)
I, this world, and all sentient beings attain the Way simultaneously, and mountains and rivers and grasses, and all things become Buddha
--Shakyamuni Buddha
And Elohim [literally, "Gods"] says to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He says, "Thus You shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
(Exodus 3.14 pi!)
Keep through Your Name Those Whom You have given Me, that They may be One as We.
--Jesus (John 17:11)
There is no one besides Me.
(Isaiah 45:21)
You were created but as One Soul, and as One Soul You shall be raised to life. Allah hears All and observes All.
(Quran 31:28)
Do You not know Yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in You?
(2 Corinthians 13:5)
He Who takes upon Himself the humiliation of humanity is fit to rule them. He who takes upon Himself the country's disasters deserves to be King of the Universe. The Truth often sounds paradoxical.
-- Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching 78)
11 Mart 2009 Çarşamba
My Ego
I've been back in the cave, and my so so so cute and beautiful ringtail "cat" friend is still my closest mammalian neighbor. [the pic on the right isn't really THE ringtail cat, but A ringtail cat pic I snagged off the internet]I absolutely adore living up there. Since I've been back in the Utah desert, though, my life hasn't been so quiet and hermitish. You can see it hasn't been so quiet and hermitish for the past year on the road. And I've been coming to town a lot. There are so many splendid, shining people in Moab.
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Glorious Community
I've been dwelling on the idea of community a lot the past year, and the beauty of civilization & human creativity & industriousness - civilization & human creativity & industriousness minus all forms of money (including conscious barter). I'm really no primitivist. Ah, to take the moneyless model and apply it to civilization! Then, I feel deep in my bones, we would see something so splendid and sparkling and artistic it would make civilization as we know it look ridiculously pale.
I've had a grand urge to do something besides meditate in a cave. Meditation in a cave has taught me this. Meditation taught Gautama Siddhartha this: Meditation is one eighth of the eight-fold path: be on your butt, but also get off your butt and mingle, communicate, do. Love requires two or more folks, and without love, why even be alive?
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To Be Or Not To Be Known, That Is The Question
From my last blog entry you can see I decided to stop worrying about my ego and make a website again (separate from this blog): Living Without Money, in an FAQ format and essays, to answer questions people aren't getting answered through this blog. As I've said before, years ago I made a website called American Sadhu, shortly after I started living moneyless, but I felt it was turning into my ego trip, taking my mind out of living in the present. So I deleted the whole thing with one simple click.
Since then, ideas & revelations have been flooding down on me and I've had little outlet for them. This blog has fulfilled part of my instinct for outlet. But it's hard to lay out readable philosophies in a diary. People keep telling me I should write a book, and I keep saying I would if it could be published & given away for free. Silly me. Here, for the first time in history, one little human being can publish ideas instantaneously all over the world without paying a dime.
Now any ol' vagrant like me can be lifted up with self-importance, without a fee! ;-O
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WWW
And the human doesn't have to rely on paid marketeers to determine if those ideas are worthy of publication. The people of the world can judge for themselves.
So the World Wide Web is caught in the web of the money system. Yet within it is freely giving and freely taking, without obligation, like a morning glory growing through the cracks of concreted Earth! Use it! Use everything, as a moneyless pigeon nests on banking towers, as barnacles hitch rides on luxury ocean liners, as rats nest in corporate mega-church basements, as bacteria infest the veins of CEOs! Use everything, without money, as Nature uses everything, without money! So the web is still barred from the poorest of countries, though that is changing. Good or bad. Whatever, use it. Use it with integrity. Yes, we need to shake up you rich first, show you a reality you perhaps haven't ever considered. The poor will greatly rejoice when you rich let go of your hoarding. The poor will greatly rejoice when they realize they don't have to chase the illusions you have created for them.
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A Glossy Rag For Affluent Men
Anyway, so here's what's happened the past few weeks. Right after I decided to stop hiding so much and I made the website, the freelance journalist, Chris Ketcham, contacted me wanting to interview me for Details magazine. This made me nervous. I would have refused a couple years ago. Details, of all magazines, "an upscale and irreverent fashion magazine for affluent men (and those who aspire to be affluent)"! Egad schmegad. But I would be dishonest to say my ego did not feel flattered, even if their intention ended up being to make me a laughingstock. And I liked the idea of not preaching to the choir. Yes, I said yes, with shaky email fingers.
So this interview stuff is what I've been doing. Chris came up to camp with me for a couple days. He even got to meet Riley the Ringtail Cat. I've grown to really like Chris Ketcham, and am grateful he's doing it instead of anybody else. He has written a lot of thoughtful, conscious articles for mags. The article comes out in May, and I'm a bit nervous. And I keep feeling wary about my head, that it doesn't get big, and my path, that I don't compromise it. And I don't want to pretend to be humble and act like I don't like this, mixed with feelings of wariness. Life is risk. And how fragile truth is, when it can so easily be sold and bastardized for 30 silver coins. Pray for me. Pray for us all.
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Keep Practicing Gift Economy, Keep Envisioning Gift Economy
Meanwhile, I am meditating on ways to bring out the free economy, the moneyless world, already existing latent within society. You can see it happening a lot in Moab. My friend Brer got Free Meal going here over a year ago, based on Food Not Bombs (a world-wide freegan movement). Then other people, like my friend Auggie and a guy named Scott, among others, have taken it and run with it.
Yes, I am meditating on pristine, beautiful civilization with all forms of money gone obsolete. "Give, expecting nothing in return," quoth Jesus, quoth Peace Pilgrim, quoth Lao Tzu, quoth Muhammad, quoth Buddha, quoth Krishna, quoth the sun shining above you. There is no other way to enlightenment, no other way to balance, no other form of Love than this. Meditate with me on this, and share. And share with me if you get revelations.
10 Ocak 2009 Cumartesi
From Sea to Shining Desert
I finally made it back to Moab weeks ago. I'm house-sitting, meaning I get a lot of computer time to catch up on stuff. I finally broke down & made a website again called
With a FAQ & Essays & Links, to hopefully answer all unanswered questions about this lifestyle & the philosophies & ponderings of it.
Somebody else in the world voluntarily living moneyless right now in the 21st century!
I just found out there are other folks in the world voluntarily living moneyless! There's a woman in Germany who has lived without money since 1996! Her name is Heidemarie Schwermer. Her website is in German, but you can plug it into Babelfish to get the gist of it. It looks like she even wrote a book about it.
Also, there's a Mark Boyle in England who recently told me he gave up money months ago & plans to do it for a year. I bet he'll get hooked just like Heidemarie & I did!
Sometime before that, Mark started the freeconomy community.
With a FAQ & Essays & Links, to hopefully answer all unanswered questions about this lifestyle & the philosophies & ponderings of it.
Somebody else in the world voluntarily living moneyless right now in the 21st century!
I just found out there are other folks in the world voluntarily living moneyless! There's a woman in Germany who has lived without money since 1996! Her name is Heidemarie Schwermer. Her website is in German, but you can plug it into Babelfish to get the gist of it. It looks like she even wrote a book about it.Also, there's a Mark Boyle in England who recently told me he gave up money months ago & plans to do it for a year. I bet he'll get hooked just like Heidemarie & I did!
Sometime before that, Mark started the freeconomy community.
I also heard there's another fellow in England (London?) who lives totally moneyless. I forget his name. He doesn't use internet or phones, I hear.
So here’s what’s happened since I last wrote in this blog thingy last November at my cousin Annie’s in Petaluma, Cali.
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So here’s what’s happened since I last wrote in this blog thingy last November at my cousin Annie’s in Petaluma, Cali.
IN THE BAY AREA
I got to see my other cousin, Sue (Annie’s identical twin) & her son Jamie, as well as meet Annie’s fairly new boyfriend, Mark. I got to do hikes to the Point Reyes coastline with Annie & Mark. And I got to tune up my bicycle a bit – even finding a luxurious new soft-silicon seat for it in a bike shop dumpster, as well as new tires & tubes. Then off I petalled from Petaluma to Berkeley to visit my friend, Dan & his partner Liz, for a couple days.
When it came time to pedal to Sacramento, Dan & Liz decided to join me part way, parting ways with me at Concord. The bike trip to Sacramento was really nice.
My bike was doing ok, too, even with 7 broken rear spokes that I’d jerry-rigged, using spare spokes & bailing wire to wire them to both the hub & the chain-spoke guard thingamajigger. I was fairly surprised the bike made it all the way to Sacrament land. I should mention I had a complete tool kit, every item found along roadsides since Oregon – a pair of pliers, a crescent wrench, a philips & a standard screwdriver, wire-cutters (for cutting fences) and even an allen wrench that happened to fit exactly! What are the chances of that?
But the Lord Giveth & The Lord Taketh Away. When I got to Sacrament Hell I noticed the nice down jacket Liz had given me in Berkeley had gotten lost off the bike. At first I was peeved, since I thought I’d need it for what I figured would be a bitter-cold train-hop to Utah. Then I had to stop & meditate again, reminding myself that everything I need comes when I need it, & gets lost when I need to lose it. I did now have 2 splendid sleeping bags I had found, after all.
But Sacramento was indeed a hell. Not very bike friendly. I wrecked on a bike-tire-size rut on an insanely busy overpass with no bike lane & thought my life was over. But I came out unscathed.
I ended up spending a couple days in that sacramental purgatory trying to hop a freight with no lu
ck. Only one train stopped. No rideable cars. So I decided to peddle as far as I could toward Reno on the lame bike & see what’d happen. I often got off-road & followed rocky paths along the railroad tracks. Treating an already-ill old 10-speed as a mountain bike isn't recommended. The rear tire finally blew up as I coasted into the town of Auburn. I had no more spare tires, & more spokes had broken. So I ditched the bike & started hoofing it. Right as I walked into town, a train rolled over the overpass, slower than molasses in January [that's the overpass on the left]. There’s my hopping spot, I thought. After a night camping in the woods, I hopped a
train out of there. It took me over Donner Pass [right], through Reno, accross Nevada. The December weather was unusually warm & beautiful. I had no need for that down coat in the day, & at night I slept in my sleeping bags.
It took me all the way to Ogden, Utah. I didn’t hop off, thinking it would go southward toward Grand Junction, Colorado, but it ended up going the Cheyenne route. So I rode all the way to Green River, Wyoming – the very
same place I had ridden my bike to in July from the Rainbow Gathering!
I hitch-hiked southward. I’d been told a snowstorm would be blowing in, & all I had for warmth was a light sweater. Why would this be the first time in 8 years what I needed wouldn’t com
e?, I kept reminding myself. A middle-aged oil-rigger guy with a wise & kind face that blew all stereotypes of rigger rough-necks, took me out of his way to Manila, Utah. I had an over-loaded back-pack, & there was no indication that I was lacking anything. But he asked me, as I got out of the car, if I had a jacket. “No,” I said. He said he happened to have a heavy parka he never used, & he gave it to me along with $20. I hadn’t told him I didn’t use money, so I had to figure out how & where to ditch the $20.
Another rough-neck took me past the Flaming Gorge. Then a young guy took me into Vernal, UT. He said he was working on a theory unifying the 4 forces of physics that would blow both Einstein & Hawking out of the tub. A 60-something woman took me to Dinosaur, CO, & another 60-something woman took me all the way to my parents’ house in Fruita, Colorado. She happened to hit & maim a big beautiful elk buck on the way. We were both shook up, needless to say.
I spent a few days with my parents in Fruita, then went to stay with my brother & chop wood at his cabin in Conifer, Colorado. Then back to my parents’ for Christmas, then back here to Moab.
I’ve got house-sits lined up till the end of January, so I haven’t stayed back at the canyon cave, yet. Being sedentary, that might mean this blog will probably be less of a travelogue & more philosophical musing again.
I got to see my other cousin, Sue (Annie’s identical twin) & her son Jamie, as well as meet Annie’s fairly new boyfriend, Mark. I got to do hikes to the Point Reyes coastline with Annie & Mark. And I got to tune up my bicycle a bit – even finding a luxurious new soft-silicon seat for it in a bike shop dumpster, as well as new tires & tubes. Then off I petalled from Petaluma to Berkeley to visit my friend, Dan & his partner Liz, for a couple days.
When it came time to pedal to Sacramento, Dan & Liz decided to join me part way, parting ways with me at Concord. The bike trip to Sacramento was really nice.
My bike was doing ok, too, even with 7 broken rear spokes that I’d jerry-rigged, using spare spokes & bailing wire to wire them to both the hub & the chain-spoke guard thingamajigger. I was fairly surprised the bike made it all the way to Sacrament land. I should mention I had a complete tool kit, every item found along roadsides since Oregon – a pair of pliers, a crescent wrench, a philips & a standard screwdriver, wire-cutters (for cutting fences) and even an allen wrench that happened to fit exactly! What are the chances of that?
But the Lord Giveth & The Lord Taketh Away. When I got to Sacrament Hell I noticed the nice down jacket Liz had given me in Berkeley had gotten lost off the bike. At first I was peeved, since I thought I’d need it for what I figured would be a bitter-cold train-hop to Utah. Then I had to stop & meditate again, reminding myself that everything I need comes when I need it, & gets lost when I need to lose it. I did now have 2 splendid sleeping bags I had found, after all.
But Sacramento was indeed a hell. Not very bike friendly. I wrecked on a bike-tire-size rut on an insanely busy overpass with no bike lane & thought my life was over. But I came out unscathed.
I ended up spending a couple days in that sacramental purgatory trying to hop a freight with no lu
ck. Only one train stopped. No rideable cars. So I decided to peddle as far as I could toward Reno on the lame bike & see what’d happen. I often got off-road & followed rocky paths along the railroad tracks. Treating an already-ill old 10-speed as a mountain bike isn't recommended. The rear tire finally blew up as I coasted into the town of Auburn. I had no more spare tires, & more spokes had broken. So I ditched the bike & started hoofing it. Right as I walked into town, a train rolled over the overpass, slower than molasses in January [that's the overpass on the left]. There’s my hopping spot, I thought. After a night camping in the woods, I hopped a
train out of there. It took me over Donner Pass [right], through Reno, accross Nevada. The December weather was unusually warm & beautiful. I had no need for that down coat in the day, & at night I slept in my sleeping bags.It took me all the way to Ogden, Utah. I didn’t hop off, thinking it would go southward toward Grand Junction, Colorado, but it ended up going the Cheyenne route. So I rode all the way to Green River, Wyoming – the very
same place I had ridden my bike to in July from the Rainbow Gathering!I hitch-hiked southward. I’d been told a snowstorm would be blowing in, & all I had for warmth was a light sweater. Why would this be the first time in 8 years what I needed wouldn’t com
e?, I kept reminding myself. A middle-aged oil-rigger guy with a wise & kind face that blew all stereotypes of rigger rough-necks, took me out of his way to Manila, Utah. I had an over-loaded back-pack, & there was no indication that I was lacking anything. But he asked me, as I got out of the car, if I had a jacket. “No,” I said. He said he happened to have a heavy parka he never used, & he gave it to me along with $20. I hadn’t told him I didn’t use money, so I had to figure out how & where to ditch the $20.
Another rough-neck took me past the Flaming Gorge. Then a young guy took me into Vernal, UT. He said he was working on a theory unifying the 4 forces of physics that would blow both Einstein & Hawking out of the tub. A 60-something woman took me to Dinosaur, CO, & another 60-something woman took me all the way to my parents’ house in Fruita, Colorado. She happened to hit & maim a big beautiful elk buck on the way. We were both shook up, needless to say.I spent a few days with my parents in Fruita, then went to stay with my brother & chop wood at his cabin in Conifer, Colorado. Then back to my parents’ for Christmas, then back here to Moab.
I’ve got house-sits lined up till the end of January, so I haven’t stayed back at the canyon cave, yet. Being sedentary, that might mean this blog will probably be less of a travelogue & more philosophical musing again.
I googled "Mill Creek Canyon" & found these photos of the back yard of my cave dwelling, during warmer season. The pool below is my usual bathtub. I am totally amazed that somebody found & photographed the very petroglyph of the Pushmepullya just yards from the cave I stay in! [right]. You can find most any obscurity on the web nowadays.
How could any CEO or king or trust-funder be richer than I?
Blessed are the poor, for nobody can be richer than they. Blessed are the lizards and the ravens and the rattlesnakes and the ants and the trout.
15 Aralık 2008 Pazartesi
Some Links On Distressed Debt Investing
One of my students is interviewing soon for an internship in an investment bank's fixed income department, and another is going to be starting soon in a credit analyst position, So, these pieces on distressed debt investing were pretty timely.
Michelle Harner over at the Conglomerate posted a very nice piece with some links about distressed debt investing. She highlights the difference between "vulture investing" and "investing for control" (basically traders vs. longer-term investors). She gives a couple of pretty good references. One, from Knowledge@QWharton lays out the basics of "distressed for control" investing:
She also cites some of her own research: a survey titled "Trends In Distressed Debt Investing: An Empirical Study of Investors' Objectives" (available on SSRN here).
Finally, Marketwatch gives us a look into the world of "vulture investors." It's a bit dated (April), but it shows how busy the world of distressed debt has become. One of the guys at my church's men's group is an analyst at a local distressed-debt hedge fund. He said he hasn't had this many good choices to buy since he can remember (luckily his firm is sitting on some cash).
I'm teaching the Level 1 Fixed Income material for CFA this spring, and will be teaching Unknown University's Fixed Income class in the fall. So, I'll probably be posting more on the credit market topics as time goes on (I tend to use this blog as a handy place to keep class-related stuff I want to remember).
Michelle Harner over at the Conglomerate posted a very nice piece with some links about distressed debt investing. She highlights the difference between "vulture investing" and "investing for control" (basically traders vs. longer-term investors). She gives a couple of pretty good references. One, from Knowledge@QWharton lays out the basics of "distressed for control" investing:
Simply put, their line of work is to make a profit from companies that have failed to do so and are on the brink of bankruptcy. Unlike traditional hedge funds, however, their investment doesn't stop at buying significant portions of these companies' debt for pennies on the dollar, tidying up the balance sheet and then selling at a higher price. Instead, KPS and Matlin Patterson get in and stay in -- bringing in new managers, installing a new strategy, renegotiating labor and supplier contracts, and so on. (That's the 'control' part.) It's not an easy task, especially given the state of these companies when they step in.Read the whole thing here.
She also cites some of her own research: a survey titled "Trends In Distressed Debt Investing: An Empirical Study of Investors' Objectives" (available on SSRN here).
Finally, Marketwatch gives us a look into the world of "vulture investors." It's a bit dated (April), but it shows how busy the world of distressed debt has become. One of the guys at my church's men's group is an analyst at a local distressed-debt hedge fund. He said he hasn't had this many good choices to buy since he can remember (luckily his firm is sitting on some cash).
I'm teaching the Level 1 Fixed Income material for CFA this spring, and will be teaching Unknown University's Fixed Income class in the fall. So, I'll probably be posting more on the credit market topics as time goes on (I tend to use this blog as a handy place to keep class-related stuff I want to remember).
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