Talking Stick

99

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:57:00 GMT

A warm couple of days behind me, in which I stayed near my back door and appreciated the birds and flowers close by me. The weekend traffic coming to the beach ruins the fun for me of going anywhere. Since I no longer work, I get my roads back after the two-day stampede. Spring is in the air, but people are all over the asphalt.

I gave my few potted cacti a drink yesterday. I can see as I walk around my property that this drought year in California is making the ground crack and harden. Even the gophers seem to be working extra hard to push dirt up to the surface The water district asks that we water less. Springtime should be an occasion of replenishment and renewal, but this year it seems to be taking a different twist. Not just a scarcity of rain, but of fog. I sense a little of my own energy level dwindling as well, but that might be from warmer days making me feel more languid.

The blackberry bushes I have not chopped back are developing white flowers, while honey bees have begun to take notice. The vines I have cut are inching back out of the earth with complete disregard for my desires. Much as I dislike Monsanto for trying to take over the plant world, their weed killer saves me a lot of work. I will preserve enough vines for a July pie or two.

A friend turned 99 years old yesterday. He still drives his car, but reports that he has decided to stop chasing women. He stands quite tall without a cane or walker, while his mind is keen and eager to engage in lively conversation over the finer details of modern existence. Maybe the most healthy person I've ever known to advance to this stage in life. We're planning a party for his hundredth.

Tomorrowland

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:06:00 GMT

One of my favorite writers notes how some places on the earth are uninhabitable. He then asks whether man should leave such places alone, let nature have dominion over them, or try to improve those places and make them into something where people might live. He wrote that in 1856, when the world population was about 1.2 billion. From then until now, 2013, the population has grown to 7.1 billion, which is about 600 percent. Most of what he considered uninhabitable, six or seven generations later, has been improved. Deserts have been piped water from dammed up rivers. Swamps have been drained and levies added to contain the water and build roads. Cities are stacked upward, the buildings built ever taller, and closer together.

People are everywhere, in places no one ever thought could be peopled, and the growth continues. People simply like making more people. By the year 2050 we will have between 7.5 and 10.5 billion people in the world. The largest growth countries will be China, India, and the United States. We reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. Happy Halloween!

The other day I was playing around with some statistics about people and places to see how I might answer that writer's question. I don't seem to have come up with much of an answer, but had some fun thinking through these numbers. I imagine that our current trend to spread out and develop marginal lands for living will continue until we hit a natural resource limit, such as water or oil.

Estimates are that about 108 billion people have lived on the planet since people began. Six percent of the people who have ever lived are alive today. The places least populated are the countries closest to the Arctic: the USSR and Canada. Australia's population is still light, and there are other smaller regions around the world that also are not over-populated. Several small countries in both South America and Africa have much less than the average number of people.

When I begin wondering about people and populations my thoughts seem to turn to the number of stars. The best estimate on number of stars in the universe is 40 sextillion, which is 22 zeroes behind the number 4. The number of planets estimated to be in the universe is 10 with 24 zeroes behind it. There is plenty of room for our population to expand if we could only figure out how get there. I have an idea I'm working on that might get us there.

About 370 billion planets are estimated to be available in the universe for habitation. Maybe when each of us dies we become a new star, or we land on a planet that has our ancestors living on it. A tough thing to confirm in this life. Where in the world did all the 108 billion people go who have lived here? If they've gone to any of these other planets, maybe they've told people there about our crowded world.

Earth has 36.7 billion acres of land on it. If we all stayed here, didn't go to other planets, we could each have 5.18 acres of land, providing that we split it up evenly, and learned how to get along with each other. Inhabitants with superior abilities might come here from other planets to help us move there, if they could trust that we be kind and courteous toward each other. If I was an alien, I wouldn't want to bring a warring people back to my world. Maybe compassion is all that's holding up space travel. I should send NASA a suggestion and a note of encouragement, since the space exploration is dwindling.

The most populous buildings on earth have about 6,000 people living in them. With buildings that size, you could put all the people alive in the world today into 1.18 million buildings. Hong Kong is one of the densest cities in the world. More people work and live here above the fourteenth floor than anywhere else in the world. Seven million people live in Hong Kong. The density is 18,176 people per square mile, or about 1533 square feet per person, which is a box about forty feet square.

If we all packed in together, at the same density as Hong Kong, all the people in the world could live on about 25,000,000 acres, which is about the size of the state of Kentucky. If we built tall apartment buildings all over the state of Kentucky, the rest of the earth would be free of people. We could leave much of the earth unpeopled. There'd be a lot of Kentuckians. Kentucky in the Iroquois language means "land of tomorrow". Sounds like a Disneyland ride.

Mid-May

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:26:00 GMT

At dawn, I awoke to a few drops of rain on the skylight above my bed. I haven't seen rain fall for months, the winter of this year being the driest on record in California. While I sipped a cup of coffee the rain increased. I realized the carpenters working on my cottage remodel project had left their power tools sitting out in the open all night. I ran around quickly in the increasing rain and covered all the tools with blue plastic tarps. They told me, when they arrived later, that the rain doesn't ruin their tools, but shortens the useful life of the tools.

A few morning shopping errands, then a walk on the beach in this cooler weather. The sky today is filled with bands of various colors of blue and gray clouds. The mountains to the north of me hung on to tall thunderheads. A very pretty day, in which the season seemed so confused that it had a mind to simply dazzle everyone who watched with this strikingly brilliant display of color.

The rain lasted only an hour--enough to wet the ground, but not enough to build a puddle. An hour of bright sun in the middle of the day cooked all the moisture off the surface of the earth, and now all is dry.

Last evening I watched a crow and red-tailed hawk fight at length in the sky. I would imagine somebody has been spying on the nest of the other. The two were of about equal size and flying capability, but the hawk was more nimble when making sharp turns. They went at each other beak-to-beak, until the hawk flew away from the heat of the battle, and the crow settled on the top of the tallest tree in the forest beyond my house.

The carpenters tell me they see those same two fighting it out every day. We never used to have crows here. They're noisy and seem pushy. The hawks and other smaller birds must be irritated with these newcomers trying to take over the air space.

Half of a moon also floats through the sky tonight. I would go out and build a warming fire to sit by, but I find myself yawning incessantly, so will save the stack of lumber scraps for another night.

It's mid-May. April seems so close behind, but the distance is no closer than the span of time from now til June.

Tuesday Escape

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:43:00 GMT

Heavy and cool, this fog that rolled in sometime in the night. My wife and I knew the carpenters building the new cottage beside our house would soon arrive, turn on their table saws and air guns, and scare all the pretty birds away who visit here from the forest. For them, the work continues. For us, all we can do is watch, wait, and hope that some day it will be done. This day we needed to look at some different kind of landscape, and opted for our customary quick drive down the coast to Monterey and Carmel.

We headed directly to a small, hideaway breakfast place in Carmel village, where we could sit and sip rich coffee while waiting for our order to be cooked. When we eat out, we fudge some on our vegan diet, but not by much. We split a spinach omelet, then walked up and down the hilly sidewalks and secret passageways that make Carmel so mysteriously charming, despite all the overt materialism that exudes from galleries and shop windows.

We went in one gallery of paintings. It must have been only moments after the salesperson opened, as she rushed around in a tizzy, looking to see if the store was picked up, nice and clean. Then the sales pitch began. She somehow had it in mind that within less than five minutes of us being in the store that we were going to buy a twelve thousand dollar painting. I don't know how big the bubbles are that sales people blow up in their heads. If I were given the privilege to look within this lady's mind for a minute or two, I'm sure I would see something more interesting to the human imagination than what hangs on gallery walls.

We did see some nice paintings in the village. Carmel is an art center, known for traditional scenery. Land, sea, and sky, usually portrayed in cool ocean blues and greens, contrasting with earth-warm tones of soft brown and subdued red. I've been looking at paintings in Carmel for fifty years, and this is what continues to dominate display windows. In other towns, other venues, the decorated world of abstraction comes to life, but here looks quirky, odd and intrusive, as if some sort of non-native plant or animal wants to gain control of life's resources.

The fog that extended from Santa Cruz to Carmel never quite lifted all day. After further exploring the back streets and ocean front along Carmel Bay, marveling at the beauty of the aquamarine meeting of sand and water, our car helped us climb over the pine-studded Del Monte Forest that separates Carmel from Pacific Grove. The town of Pacific Grove separates the open ocean from the Monterey Bay at Point Pinos. Inside the bay, to the north of the point, the ocean becomes less turbulent. Paths allow walkers access to rocky coves filled with colorful clear water. This time of year, however, the ice plant that stretches for several miles on both sides of the paths, becomes an intensely bright purple. When mixed with sunlight, the color is almost too bright to look at.

We stopped and looked, sort of falling into and becoming absorbed by the purple. Up close I could see this quilt of color consists of tiny flowers with less-apparent yellow centers. Others also walked along the path. I could see them bending, snapping close-ups; then standing, turning, and snapping long shots of distant beds of color. On all the coast, I never see such display of color as this.

Beyond Pacific Grove, out on the old Fishermen's Wharf in Monterey, we stop in to price fresh-caught salmon. The price is still exorbitant. We pass on such an investment in food. To think that my ancestors would drive a hay wagon down to the river mouth and pitchfork salmon into the wagon to take back to the farm to feed to the pigs. Despite the growing scarcity of fish on the Monterey Bay, a few large commercial operations are still in business here. We find it interesting to snoop around out on the end of the wharf and watch the activity of fish being unloaded from large boats and packed on ice.

Going home through Castroville's fields of artichokes, we stop at Pezzini's and buy a bag of chokes to bring home and cook. The store is parked out in a vast field of artichokes, just off the highway. This coming weekend is Castroville's annual artichoke festival, where Marilyn Monroe was crowned the first artichoke queen in 1948. I probably will not be going to the festival. I like seeing this part of the country when it is bereft of people. Besides, the carpenters working on the new cottage will have the weekend off and home will be quiet for a couple of days.

Keeping Up

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:05:00 GMT

I awoke very early this morning with a half-smile. My first thought was that this day would be warm, after the cool morning veil of fog lifts back from the edge of the Monterey Bay. It seems like I'm always waiting for the sun. As soon as it drops below the mountain behind me in the late afternoon, I'm expecting its return. While waiting for the sun, I dig out room in my garden boxes for six tomato plants and pat them down into holes in the dirt to let them slow bake for a couple of months. In a normal year, when no heavy construction is happening on my property, I dedicate more time and space to making the earth and sun produce some edibles. This year is one of rest for my garden, and, I suppose, one of partial rest for me. I don't mind the reprieve from arduous labor. A quiet force inside of me is delighted when I keep up with nothing but my own breath.

There is simply too much commotion from the building project that continues on the side of my house, too many things, 10,000 things--household items and furniture hidden under plastic tarps on the edge of the garden. Tomatoes will have to be my whole crop this year, but they're my favorite thing to watch grow and eat. When I put the young plants in the ground, I put cages around them so that I can tie up the sprawling vines with gardener's tape. Then I place flat rocks over the exposed soil, around each plant. The rocks heat up during the day and slowly release the heat back into the soil at night, which quickens the time of growth. I like to think that the rocks go to work for me each night.

The sun this morning is suddenly free from this misty entrapment. One of the carpenters arrives and tells me that the glen in which we live is the only place that's sunny. I've studied the phenomenon for years and know that often I have sun when everybody else is in fog. It must be the topography or wind patterns that makes this spot worthy of extra light. I don't pay it as much attention as I once did, this getting sun before anybody else, because I know what happens next. The sun suddenly appears everywhere and I lose all imagined esteem.

Then I'm off to the beach with a towel, chair, and a Kindle, to continue reading more from wherever I left off the day before. My weakness shows up when I get to the hot sand and slide the power switch on. I've got, what, five electronic books in my queue of new arrivals? I'm enjoying the one I've read partially through, but am so curious about the others that I feel the need to open and look at a page or two from them. Not even the most studious can read five books at once. What am I trying to do to my flimsy little brain, drown it in a batch of mixed ideas? Ah, that's right. Before absorbing further language, I must disengage all the fleeting thoughts that currently revolve inside. Stop all thinking and spend ten or twenty minutes in silent meditation.

Now I am quiet inside, and more awake. I watch the waves roll onto the beach. I do this more often than should be legal, this enjoying the feeling of being on the edge of the giant blue ocean. Dolphins swim by me in groups. Their dorsal fins all emerge simultaneously from the surface of the water. I stop watching them and turn on my Kindle to read; not one of the new books, but the unfinished one. When I look up again at the ocean, I see a man seventy-five yards offshore swimming in the same direction as the dolphins. At first I think that they are leaving him behind. Then I realize that maybe he isn't trying to keep up with them.

Forest Picnic

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:51:00 GMT

A Mother's Day picnic in the forest with my wife, my sister, and her husband. Arriving at a fireplace and table along the creek in the early morning, we slowly cook and eat a large breakfast beside a roaring, morning camp fire. We spend the day sitting at the base of an ancient grove of redwoods, chatting about our lives and the way the world is going. I have been practicing mindfulness now for several days. This is the first day I have been tossed into the fire of conversational mindfulness. I'm not so sure such a thing is possible. All I can says is that I don't feel any compulsion to dominate any of the long, dangling conversation. The ability to listen to others seems to come to me effortlessly.

I don't think that listening to the talking of other people discharges much of my energy. I am still able to keep my own mind clear and calm, rather than hoping to react to spoken language. I know that if I talk much I sense weakness or fatigue. I'm not absorbing or reflecting when I talk. I'm releasing words locked up inside of me. The flow of energy coming in when listening and going out when talking is akin to breathing. The in and out, all day long, producing understanding between people, which makes me consider the huge trees under which we sit.

California redwood trees are some of the oldest living things on earth. The ones I sit under today are perhaps a thousand years old. Between the listening and the talking I tell myself how these trees have seen so much living, and yet change so slowly, while they maintain their health and steady growth. I read a quote that mindfulness stops the flow of constant uncontrolled thoughts, but opens a person to experiencing his feelings. I'm not sure what all this means to me. I often enjoy my thoughts, so to quiet or stop them makes me feel strangely different. The trees are quiet. The bark on them is soft and furry, like some kind of animal fur, maybe red fox, or perhaps a more gentle animal. Surely they have feelings.

They seem as if they could be sentient beings, happy and expressive, oblivious to time. Otherwise, would they keep growing for a millennium or more? How can anything be so big and live so long without saying anything? We talked about them, on and off, all day. Could they listen in? I would like to come back another day, alone, with no talking going on around me, and listen to them more attentively. Perhaps the limitation is within me. I have such poor hearing.

Lunch Experience

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Thu, 9 May 2013 22:10:00 GMT

One of those quiet days, the ones I like best, when very little is required of me other than to enjoy living. Just the other day I found a favorite new log on the beach to park myself beside. It's not huge, but larger and heavier than anything I might try moving on my own. I imagine the winter surf washed it onshore. If I were to sit behind it today, it might have blocked some of the wind coming out of the north. Some days I come to this stretch of sand with a purpose in mind, and that usually entails reading. I did some reading today, but came also to simply clear my mind of any complexity or excessive occupation.

I sat upright in my beach chair for perhaps thirty minutes, facing the open sea, while spending time simply quieting my mind and chasing away any spurious thoughts that might come rushing into it. Each time a thought would come to the front of my mind, I would acknowledge that it had entered, quickly dismiss it, and return to keeping my mind as empty as possible. I had read that this is the method for doing mindful meditation, and that some people find it so boring and unessential that they quickly brush it off, never to return. For me, the exercise was easy. It was not boring to practice being completely relaxed and sensing a deep calmness.

Maybe my natural intuition has already brought me close to this state of mindfulness in the past, so that my actual experience while meditating did not seem much different to me than when I am out looking at things in nature. I learned years ago to go observe things in nature as a means of gaining a deeper satisfaction for living. Growing up in a family of artists taught me to carefully see patterns, colors, shapes, and light, and learn how to take pleasure in the study. Moving from that learned behavior to one of being intentionally quiet and passive in mind and body seems almost effortless to me. The difference I noticed today when sitting near the log on the beach was that I could observe the flow of thoughts through my mind, and they were good thoughts, but I am cultivating the ability to easily brush them aside and turn them off, as if I had my hand on a water faucet.

My mind became almost completely empty, and when thoughts did come to me, they were thoughts about how the wind on the water was building strength and making me cool because of me sitting so motionless. I learned after thirty minutes or so of this practice today, pushing away the thoughts and listening only to my own breathing as a sort of point of focus or concentration, that I could probably meditate on a regular basis with no difficulty. Today was a first test.

The idea of engaging in some sort of disciplined mindfulness or meditation came to me just this past week. I felt like I was losing the ability to control or induce any sense of inner peace or calm. I knew that my mind was restless and agitated. I didn't seem to be able to slow it down or stop it from letting it take off on its own and run free without me. I would lay in bed at night and watch my mind go lickety-split, like a train that cannot stop. The other day I pulled out a copy of a book I'd bought years ago and never read, The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh. His words resonated with me from the first page onward. I must have bought this book several years ago when feeling the same recklessness going on inside of me.

He describes several scenarios for how to develop mindfulness. They are every day tasks, such as washing the dishes, or making a cup of tea. For several of the activities I normally do each day, I made a concentrated effort to keep in the very front of my mind exactly the what, how, why, and where, of each thing I was doing. When I made lunch I stepped into the kitchen, knew I was in the kitchen, opened the door to a bottom cupboard, knowingly unstacked and rearranged a stack of bowls--some clear glass and others colored plastic--to get to the bowl in which I would slowly place each of the ingredients of my salad. I carefully handled and examined each of the vegetables, turning them over in my hand and looking closely at the texture of them, watching my hands chopping them in a rhythmic motion with a knife on a wooden chopping block. After carefully studying each step in the process of making the salad, and being aware in my mind that I was conscientiously slowing down the process to bring my mind into sharp focus, I ate the salad with roughly the same precise observation, chewing and experiencing the taste and texture of each bite, then feeling the food go down as I swallowed.

This may have been one of the most interesting and revealing meals I have ever eaten. Instead of mechanically going through the process of making and eating the salad while my mind ran off in a million scattered directions, I simply watched and thought deeply about each step in the finest detail I could muster up, and missed almost nothing. If I could learn to do this, live in the moment, when making and eating a salad, I am wondering how much else in life I might be able to enjoy more fully than I have in the past. Oh yes, washing the dishes was also a wondrous experience, studying the soap bubbles, the rainbows of color coming through the wet glass, the sound of water rushing down the drain. I've been rushing through life so quickly, for, well, all of my life, without being able to understand how much of the beauty and wonder in it I have completely missed.

I don't know that I could live in the moment all day, every day, as I attempted to do today. Maybe, if I were determined to do so, but life would really slow down and become even more quiet than it is for me now. I don't think my goal in learning how to be mindful is to slow down, but to live deeper in each day. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests reserving one day a week to slow life down and live that whole day in observing mindfulness. With that much rigor and attention devoted to the practice, I would develop enough mastery of the discipline that my mind would never run wildly away from me on its own. I would have control, peace, and calm. I might then even have some fuel for writing.

Stepping Up

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Wed, 8 May 2013 22:13:00 GMT

When I awoke this morning I was angry at my neighbors before the first full moment of the day had passed. I hope that same anger wasn't churning inside all last night in my sleep, but wouldn't be surprised if it was. A few nights ago I had a steady stream of unusual dreams. I don't recall experiencing or feeling anger in them, but wondered next morning about the source of all the dramatic and idiotic occurrences that went on in them.

I have been focusing on learning how to become more aware of my thoughts, feelings, and emotion as I pass through each day, so when I awoke with anger this morning, I was able to stop, step back from it, and look at it as though I were some other passive observer who had been given permission to look inside my mind. The ability to step outside myself and observe myself gave me the ability to see the anger from a more objective perspective, so that I might more calmly get control of it and put it to rest. I have always been amazed that humans have the ability to think and then step outside of their thoughts while the thinking continues, and observe themselves thinking as if they were another person. Who is the real person when this happens?

Later in the day, when taking a hike around the bluffs of Capitola village, and then down on to the Capitola wharf to see what the fishermen were catching, I began to take notice of my walking. I tried to remain aware, moment by moment, of my foot steps over the uneven wooden planks on the wharf. I have difficulty walking on uneven or bumpy surfaces because of my peripheral neuropathy.

My feet feel heavy and I don't lift them as high as I should when walking, which can cause me to trip over the tips of my shoes if I'm not careful. I've tripped enough times that I've learned to be careful. See sharp or be flat. I can only be careful if I am aware of the problem and am making a conscientious effort to not forget to lift my feet high enough to clear the uneven places. My awareness exercise for today, then, was just to be cognizant of each step, a sort of walking meditation, and learn how to enjoy walking like this, rather than fighting it with my mind.

My mind, if left unguarded, will tell me that this is distressing and disturbing having to pay attention to the height of my steps. I'm learning how to shut off those kind of negative thoughts that tend to keep me from getting out and getting the exercise my body craves. Rather than listen to this river of constant complaint, I'm beginning to learn how, through a sort meditative awareness, to shut off the negative voice, and listen to a new one that says just the opposite, to mindfully pick up my feet while walking and enjoy it! What other shortcomings in life might I be able to conquer?

Malibu

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Tue, 7 May 2013 22:44:00 GMT

These past few cloudy days I have seen a dramatic change from hot to cool. Today, a couple of hours after high noon, the cloudy coolness let go of its influence. Lovely stacks of puffy white clouds, which give such a contrast to the deep and steady blue, moved up against the mountains. I went down to the shore for a couple of hours to read and partake of a renewed sunny warmth. I feel like I am living a life of grand luxury, being able to cherry pick the optimal time of the day for beach going.

When reading earlier today about how the third richest man in America is buying all the most expensive homes on Malibu beach, I considered that maybe this man is really miserable inside, and would be more happy just sitting on a public beach and enjoying the sunshine. I don't know how life could get any better than this, but I'm an old time surfer, rather than a billionaire, so there is a piece of logic or reasoning that we simply do not share.

My years of surfing may be about over, but my admiration and study of the waves continues. Waves are made of water, the same water that is there when there are no waves. As much as I loved riding the waves when younger, I remain near the water and enjoy it even when I can see no waves. Surfing the waves required that I be watchful and appreciative of their energy. Part of the thrill of being on a wave is that feeling of being in synchronization with the natural forces that go all over the world and yet come here to me from afar. There is an unspoken language of the waves that all surfers understand and agree upon. Maybe billionaires share something too, but it just does not seem to be in their nature.

When I began to lose my natural balance and strength, which can happen pretty easily by the age of 64, I began to see the ocean and the waves somewhat differently. I must still be going through that transition from actively riding waves to merely observing them. They look different to me when sitting on the beach in a chair instead of out in the water on a surfboard. Today I made sure to see what is in front of me this day, this lovely warm day in early May, rather than turn back time in my mind and see myself riding waves twenty or thirty years ago. When I could live in the moment of this day today, I was able to acquire the same sense of invigoration and joy that I experienced years ago. If I were to step back and wander through memories from long ago, the experience of going and sitting on the beach today would have felt so dull and lifeless.

My memories are a rich land to go visit for a quick spell, particularly when I look for temporary comfort in entering a state of reverie. If I dwell too much on memories, however, I feel stale and moldy. There is more to see and do as I continue living. When young I had lots of energy just bubbling out of me at all times and not much memory, so I found it easy to jump headlong into living each moment to its fullest. Now I have less energy, more memories, and possess a natural inclination to be reflective or meditative.

Being present in the moment takes more conscientious effort and focus than when I was young, but there are less days ahead, so the ones I can live in more fully now seem more important to me than those many that slipped by me earlier in life without me hardly noticing. Time sometimes seems motionless to me, and on other occasions seems to pass me by in a whirlwind. Each day the volume or flow of time seems different to me than the day before. Perhaps some of that has to do with my varying awareness of the passage of it. The challenge is to be able to observe the passage of not just days, but of moments, rather than hiding from them in memories or in unrealized wishes for Malibu beach homes.

Cheese Blues

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Tue, 7 May 2013 12:14:00 GMT

Eating in a local vegetarian/vegan restaurant last evening, celebrating in absentia for a daughter's birthday. Most of the patrons here are admirably thin, while some have a hint of carotenemia, which is a slight orange glow to their skin. I opted for the brahma burger, a sandwich made of tempeh--a soy product--rather than red meat. I've been eating mainly fresh fruit and vegetables now for eighteen months, so I find going to a place where others follow a similar regiment to be a source of inspiration for me. Maybe one day I will be as thin and as orange as them!

I've lost nearly all craving for meat and dairy. I mostly miss cheese, but find that if it is not in the house, is not in sight, that I can make my way through the day just fine. Hummus, made from garbanzo beans, works pretty good as a cheese substitute whenever I feel a craving coming on. The cravings seem to have dwindled to almost nothing. On occasion, when visiting with friends, or when going to one of those crazy-good Mexican restaurants in town, I somehow manage to get mixed up with the cheese. The grocery stores are now stocking all new different kinds of soy cheese, so I may buy a small block of that, but it just doesn't have the same yang as the real thing.

My prompting to switch eating habits came when I earned that I had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and acid reflux, and when I began to feel unpredictable, arthritic aches and pains in my joints and muscles. Since then, the cholesterol and blood pressure have somewhat normalized, while the acid reflux and arthritic pain have disappeared, as promised by the doctor whose plan I have followed. It's wonderful to sleep a whole night without nearly gagging to death from asphyxia.

Oh, sometimes I miss the smell that arises from barbecuing ribeye steaks in the summertime. I often get a whiff in the air of what people around me are cooking, but the sensation no longer causes my mouth to water. Thinking back now about all those meat-eating sessions in which I engaged, the ceremony of making the meat sizzle and smoke was perhaps more sublime than the actual eating. After I had a big piece of juicy, marbled, red meat cooked to medium rare, I would then heavily salt it and puddle it with melted butter. Of course, a baked potato on the side, with more butter, salt, and toss on a tall pile of sour cream.

I never would have thought I could walk away from that kind of eating. I began to see, however, that I was not taking in food to make my life healthy, to give my body strength and energy. I thought I was, but didn't know any better. The meat and potatoes culture in which I had grown seemed so natural to me. Generations of my people had eaten this way. How healthy their diet might have made them is arguable. Strokes and heart attacks were pretty common. Those old timers also did not eat much processed food and were more physically active--both in work and pleasure--than what is in vogue now.

Eating gives me pleasure, especially when I'm hungry. Such satisfaction comes from filling my empty stomach, which is about the size of my fist when doubled. I had managed to equate eating with pleasure, rather than with sustenance. The change from carnivore to herbivore caused me to reflect on my reasons for eating the way I did. I had slowly gotten into a pattern of eating just for pleasure, but my body was enjoying the pleasure less and less all the time. The change to eating fresh, chunky vegetables that had been grown in the earth and had to be chopped, sliced, and slowly chewed, provided me with a new awareness of what eating should always have been for me.

Some nights after an early dinner of salad, I still go looking through the cupboards and refrigerator an hour or two later for pie and ice cream, cookies or cake--anything that contains fat, oil, salt, or sugar, but I don't shop for such things, so the cupboards are only filled with memories of such food. Instead, I grab half a handful of raw, unsalted cashews and sunflower seeds, and munch on them slowly while enjoying the natural nutty savor of them, which is masked when other ingredients or processes are added. Eating slowly and with more deliberation has caused me to live more fully in the moment. I can't say that I'm a master of the discipline, but now I better understand what I could have done differently during those many years of poor eating, and why the change has been good for me.

Control

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Mon, 6 May 2013 09:03:00 GMT

A visit the other day with some old friends from out of town who loosely follow the Dalai Lama. We talked about how it is that some of us are always smiling, responsive to others, and possess an understanding of life that gives them balance and self-control. A lesson I need to re-learn perhaps a thousand times in my own life.

An unusually cloudy and cool day yesterday, brought into town by forceful blasts of wind. I went to the edge of the bay in the early morning to get a better look at what might be happening out on the broad horizon. I hadn't expected this kind of weather. These large, rainy-looking clouds floated in from the north behind me, over the tops of the mountains, while the outer waters of the bay were churned up from the wind in a dull, jade green. Transitions in weather always fill me with wonder. Between what was and what is going to be--that's where I need to do all of my living!

The coolness inspired me to get out and do some yard work. I thought perhaps I can get something to grow in one of my little garden spaces that has not been upset by the building project that dominates my yard. What I see when I look out into the yard is piles of lumber, tables and benches overflowing with hand and power tools, extension cords intertwined with power cords, mounds of dirt mixed with jack-hammered concrete and asphalt. Just this Friday a large truck brought in several cubic yards of concrete for a new kitchen foundation. I normally grow tomatoes, herbs, and a few vegetables, in special waist-high raised beds, but even that space--my center for moments of quiet focus--has a mountain of furniture and household items stuffed under plastic tarps.

Some areas of the yard are still somewhat under my control. I found that getting out in the garden and pruning, sweeping, cultivating the boxes of soil--all worked to stir me from this attitude of helplessness and self pity that I seem to have indulged in since the building project began a couple of months ago. The change in weather yesterday helped me understand that a new perspective is not far away. When the building project had begun, I was so excited, imagining how wonderful it would be once done.

Over the weeks of slow progress, and having to deal with the county planning department for permits, because of my neighbors complaining about my project, my day-to-day perspective on life had soured. I had locked myself into a frame of mind that saw life as pain and drudgery. I had descended into a gloominess without noticing how it was crippling me. I'm not exactly a master at controlling my inner life--moods, emotions, thoughts, feelings--but can usually sense when I am getting out of kilter with myself. I knew I held a lingering bitterness toward my neighbors, for example, but had fallen into unresolved self pity and helplessness, which added extra weight to my day.

The gardening work yesterday helped me pull together and find a better internal harmony. I realized that I need to live in the moment and work out the suppressed animosity toward my neighbors by making an effort to understand them, rather than allow their thoughtlessness to slowly burn inside me. It seems that about the time I think I have life all figured out and under control, the unexpected pops up to challenge me.

Back Roads

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Sun, 5 May 2013 16:03:00 GMT

I headed my truck and camper east on another rendezvous with mother nature this past week. I wanted to go see the wild flowers in the low Sierras before they wilt in summer heat, and find some quiet time away from the building project that continues at my house. I drove a rather indirect route through a few of California's lesser traveled towns, so that I might avoid commuter traffic. I managed to run across every hard-hat work crew in the countryside, people in orange vests strewn along the highway, filling potholes with new asphalt. Two of the crew stand beside the road with walkie talkies while they hold stop signs and chat with each other about the number of autos they are able to hold back. I drove through perhaps twenty of these road construction zones this week. Fortunately, the wait at each seemed tolerably short.

My own impatience with the project back home caused me to run away for a few days. I detect a repeat of my old pattern of thinking I can run away from myself, when all I really do is drag my weary old self along for the ride. I drove for several hours up to New Melones Reservoir, a few miles outside Sonora, but the campgrounds that are nicely treed and give easy access to the water were closed. What are the park people thinking? The only spot open was on a high hill in the hot sun, far from the edge of the water, so I headed further into the high country, and spent an evening in the giant sequoias of Calaveras County, a few miles up the road from the town Mark Twain made famous for frog jumping.

The next day would be another hot one. The Sierra wild flowers, mostly heat intolerant, disappear quickly in the spring. Rather than sit out another day in this unusually early season of heat, I thought it best to make my way slowly back toward the coast, so I followed Highway 49--named after the gold rush of 1849--as it snaked through hills and river canyons, passing abruptly through the ruins of old mining towns that had their mother lodes quite thoroughly picked a hundred and fifty years ago. Columbia is perhaps the most interesting of the towns, because it has been well preserved by the state park system. Walking up and down the streets and looking into the old red-brick buildings and wooden shanties shoved me backward in time, a delightful retreat from the quickly churning modern world.

Beyond Columbia, I pass through Sonora, Jamestown, then skirt around the edge of another couple of man-made reservoirs--Don Pedro and McClure. The mountains through which Highway 49 passes don't have many people dwelling in them. The road follows the contour of the land so closely, with many narrow stretches. I find a shade tree along side the road where I can park and eat lunch and enjoy a long view down a canyon of brush and pine. I noticed that I managed to bring along with me the tension I experienced back home from the building project. Spending two days in the mountains and looking at all this wild beauty, though I enjoyed looking at the scenery, did not seem to quiet my mind. Of course, this piece of road is not exactly relaxing to drive either--it's narrow, bumpy, and no fifty feet of it are straight.

By the end of the day I'm anxious to come down out of the mountains and head closer to home. I know the coast will be much cooler. This dry, still air has spoken its piece to me. I am reminded of why I live by the sea. I stop and camp another two nights in the lower country, on the edge of another reservoir---San Luis--because here the coastal breeze is now flowing, which helps bring down my own internal heat.

Sometimes when I go camping, the first-hand encounter with raw nature feels like medicine for my soul. I should perhaps make note of my own disposition before planning such a trip again. Actually, I should be better aware of my disposition at all times, and not just when I'm trying to run away from myself. I need to practice more mindfulness in my daily living, rather than let emotion and frustration rule my inner calm. That need has been at the front of my mind today.

Blackberry Vines

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 07:44:00 GMT

Knocking down blackberry vines yesterday with a weed whacker. They are hardly noticeable until this time of year when almost overnight they shoot out long canes. I can't let them go or they will take over. I put on boots and cover my skin and face, thread some new plastic line into the whacker, start up the gasoline engine, and march in the fashion of a mad warrior through this dense and thorny jungle, which persists down along the road. Too bad I have to knock them down, as I love eating wild berries in the summer time. Not too far down the road another patch is growing that I can pick from.

Every year for nearly forty years I've been working on these same vines. I once had them well under control, but then got lazy and allowed them to spread and thicken. Each spring I feel as if I am renewing an old fight, an aging soldier walking a forgotten battleground. Others probably see just a guy out keeping his piece of the world neat and tidy. Summers and berry picking just evoke much memory for me.

If each day of my life was a page in a book, I'd be up somewhere around page 24,000 today. When I go attack the same vines that I did when I first bought this place, I suddenly feel as if I am back on page 9500, with, of course, some berry juice dripped across a few of the pages.

Drought

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 08:46:00 GMT

The coast here in Santa Cruz has been producing a fog the last couple of days, giving me hope that our weather system is not broken. What is lining up to look like a very dry year for California makes me wonder how fifty million of us will drink and bathe. The local water districts are already talking rationing. I'm not big on wasting lots of water anyhow, so I think, probably as many of my neighbors do, that I can continue my normal usage and not be a burden on the resources.

I notice much greenery about me for being such a dry winter and spring. I can understand how trees with deep roots can safely pass through a year of no rain. It's the tall green grasses that I wonder about, since they have not received a drink in months.

I tend to want to look for hidden reasons behind the phenomena in nature when events seem out of the ordinary. Either divine intervention, as in God trying to tell us something, or some terrible mistake that mankind, in all of his clueless cleverness, has brought upon himself. The debate over whether hidden reasons exist will continue. I've heard the arguments all my life. This year we're having a drought because (insert favorite rant here) and next year we will be swamped with rain because (insert the opposite rant here).

I would love to do something about the weather. I've been checking in with some of my favorite thinkers lately, however, and have been advised that weather control is beyond my capability and that I should therefore give it no concern. Seems like pretty solid advice. Actually, I would like a list of all the things with which I concern myself, the things I cannot influence or control, so that I might remove them from my thoughts and worries. Then maybe I could put some of that newly garnered energy into more worthwhile or lofty thoughts.

Historical Building

sticktalking@gmail.com (TalkingStick) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:59:00 GMT

Certain ways my mind speaks to my soul, if I am willing to look and listen. At least, that is my crude re-statement of a chapter I read today from Richard Geldard's The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I'm rather a devotee of Geldard and all his writings, but this is the one volume that I enjoy reading the most. Why? Because after going through Emerson's essays for a couple of years, perhaps the greatest American writer, I could never get a good understanding of his message to a spiritual America.

I would rather read Emerson directly, and I have, being advised by others that he is worth the effort to comprehend. He is just a little too gone for me to get down to the meaning of his words. I have no less respect for Emerson as a writer and great thinker, but needed a guru, a guide, to help me understand the essence of his philosophical thinking. Geldard gets me there, and so I read him hard copy and Kindle once or twice a year just so I can revisit and relearn what I so easily forget.

Our mind, Emerson might say, because of its astounding capacity to reason, has qualities about it that are unequaled in the universe. My thinking processes are more magnificent than star dust, swirling galaxies, and black holes. In an instant my mind can tie together events, memories, impressions, and feelings, with places, times, events,and people, and make some cohesive sense out of this plethora of information.

I can recall a conversation I had fifty years ago with a friend from childhood and weigh what he told me back then with the experiences of this day, and pass some sort of judgment on the conversation, or simply laugh at what we had to say to one another so long ago, while I relive the delight of the experience so many years on into the future.

Before the twentieth century rolled around and wars of worldwide proportion popped up, a spell of time existed that was filled with wonderful writers, painters, musicians, and philosophers. Somehow the culture sped up and forgot the beauty that had been abruptly passed over. My mind and thoughts still linger in that earlier century--the nineteenth-- because I find in it a more organic, wholesome, gestalt view of creation, and of my place in the universe.

When I read from the transcendentalists, romanticists, and idealists, I feel as if I am connecting with the minds and hearts of people who were not so divided, confused, and despairing. Maybe the common culture of that day still carried with it less of science and more of intuition. I prefer an intuitive understanding of the universe, over one of pure science, just because I feel as if my own life is more than a calculation or a predictable table of formulae. I want the intuitive part of me to not be discounted, but nourished, which seems to be nearly an impossible struggle in this era of technological control and regulation.

Emerson is saying in what I have been reading today that my own personal history can tell me something about the nature of my soul and its place in the universe. He goes on to say that if I am not an astute and willing listener to the activities going on about me, that I will entirely miss the message, the conversation my soul is having with the greater one soul that rules over all. (You could call this thing God and Emerson would be okay with that).

So today I am participating in a physical study of my own personal history, as I sit inside the cottage beside my house that is currently undergoing an extensive restructuring and remodeling. The outbuilding was nearly collapsed when we bought this property forty years ago, but rather than tear it down we fixed it up with what little money we had, and when that rework of the building proved to be insufficient, we remodeled it once again.

I think altogether we might have fixed it up five times. Now the carpenters are peeling off all the old repairs and fixings, revealing the work I had done on the structure for more than half a life time. I cannot easily recount all the work I did on the building, nor why I did it, but can only say that now, in this later stage of life, I see all of my folly and all of my shortcomings representationally shown to me in the form of old bricks lumber, concrete, sheet rock, nails, and layers of paint.

If ever I should die and be shown a backward glance of what my life on earth was like, I think the showing will be somewhat like a slide show presentation of the iterations of this building. I see in it my own history. I see what I was feeling and thinking so many years ago when I added certain features to the structure. There it is before me, a visible history of my life that I can now see, but could not before, thanks to my latest round of reading Geldard.