Containers Boundless

Pirates! and: What?

2008-09-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

This report from the AP is extremely confusing. A shipment of tanks(!) and other arms has been hijacked by pirates (what century is this?) off the coast of Somalia. In a stunning confluence of the world's worst situations this ship is being held for a 20 million dollar ransom (down from 35 million!). The US Navy's fifth fleet has it surrounded to contain it while the Ukranian shipping company that owns the ship negotiates with the pirates.

As if that were not wild enough, the shipment was intended for Sudan, which is under a US embargo restricting arms shipments to the country. The embargo is a half-hearted attempt to squash the well-known genocide in Darfur, a genocide that nobody wants to do anything about.

Not terrible enough? The pirates who have the ship are thought to have been on their way to delivering the arms to Al-Quaeda training camps in Somalia.

Holy Cow! What parallel universe is this happening in? None. This is happening in the world we live in. How does this kind of thing happen? An arms shipment going to a genocidal region is then hijacked to go towards Al-Quaeda. When was this boat and its goal a good idea?

This is one of those news stories that highlights just how far we have to go towards a peaceful world. Why is international trade in arms even still legal or tolerable? Who thinks it's a good idea to sell tanks to anyone?

Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and Voltaire would love this story. I hope you do, too.

Empathy

2008-05-07T19:49:00.001-07:00

This post is in response to K's questions about the Willful Ignorance post over there on my--hopefully--more academic blog.

K's question was: Can empathy be trained or learned?

There is no doubt in my mind that this is so. I should define empathy first, I suppose. It is an odd word that is often used when someone actually means sympathy. Sympathy--and an etymologist out there will do a better job than I--means to feel with another person. Empathy means to feel into another person. There is a subtle difference between them. The difference is that with sympathy, one creates or imagines another persons feelings. With empathy, one actually feels another's feelings.

Gasp...

Is this possible? I think so. I cannot say that I have empirical evidence. I am unsure that there are instruments of empiricism that can know such an experience. Perhaps one day. However, in my experience, empathy is possible--if often incomplete.

How we might evidence empathy is beyond the scope of this discussion. In this kind of situation, I refer to the words of those who know and do more than I. My yoga teacher, for example, says that there is all sorts of emotion flowing about in the world. With six billion people--all of them emotional beings of some kind or another--emoting all over the globe, there is a veritable ocean of feeling coursing hither and thither. Whether we notice this or not, we tap into it, swim in it, live in it, breathe it. Much of our own feeling--primarily suffering--blossoms from an unwitting empathic appropriation of the emotions of those around us and, perhaps, those far away from us.

Training empathy is a matter of recognizing that this is happening constantly based initially on the suggestion of someone you trust and then ultimately based on your own experience. Once this seems obvious--what we might call faith--then one can do other things with the understanding and the wild world of emotion out there.

Listening is a good start.

I think I will pause here and let whatever conversation happen without holding forth too much.

Thanks for asking, K.

Rocky Run: Spring in Pause

2008-04-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

I made my first ever bird watching excursion today. With reluctantly talented Ultimate-playing friend of mine--his was the inspiration to wander a bit of Columbia county--I ranged a small DNR property in search of birds. Ostensibly, that is. Really we were there to witness Spring in pause.

It was an uncertain moment when the buds of the trees, skunk cabbage, and flowers were poking briefly through the plane that divides this world from the one whence they come. There was not that explosive feeling that we will have in southern Wisconsin in a few days or so. Instead, it was an extended pause right before that burst of technicolored florescence that we celebrate so dearly every year. There was little movement. Not much wind, not much scampering, not even much flitting or buzzing.

There was pause. It was almost as if the place was stunned by the sudden relief from winter. The tentative land reflected what I have seen in many faces around these parts: the trauma of extended, deep winter. I was not here for this year's freeze, but it is seems to be legendary already.

The walk was good. The birds were scarce. Though, I think my first outing yielded a rare spotting. According to Sibley, the black vulture is rare 'round here and I believe we saw one circling a world about to be born. Odd that a death eater would mark what looks to be Spring.

We wandered down to the creek and took a short dip in the flood run-off that was rushing by slightly chilled but balmy compared to Himalayan glacial melt. It was good.

The nagas seemed to be happy.

Going back to Cali

2008-04-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Glen Park on the south side of San Francisco wondering exactly what just happened to me. Yesterday I was in Nepal, easting breakfast with fantastic people, holding back the fruit of separation from them. Now, I am in a coffee shop bardo across the street from the BART station wondering why this corner looks so much like Madison.

The journey back has exacerbated a small, friendly alienation I feel as a "'Merican." I had several interactions with people in those flawless transnational realms of Suvarnabhumi, Narita, and SFO. Folks seemed to be unable to guess that I was from the United States. Either that or they were humoring me.

Being from the states has a wealth of privileges, but I am unsure just how valuable those are. Materially, sure, but I cannot escape the feeling that there is something very wrong with those privileges.

Who am I kidding. I know there is something wrong with them. We have them because others do not.

Revolution

2008-03-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

I do not advocate violence. That should be clear up front before you read the rest of this, because it may seem as if I do from what follows.

Things in Nepal these days are wild. Not in that special Kenyan way, but still: there is a lot of tension, cynicism, anger, and frustration brewing below that lovely Nepali smile that shines through the spring dust.

On April 10, things will be very different in Nepal one way or another, I reckon. Either the Constituent Assembly election is going to go well and there will suddenly be a clear path to a federal republic, national conciliation, and love among all; OR things will go to the dissatisfaction of many and there will be war again. [This is oversimplified and there is a lot in between, but you get the idea.]

Specifically, if the Maoists do not do well, there is going to be fighting again. This is bad.

In speaking with friends and random folks at the tea stand for the last couple of months I have noticed a distinct cynicism and deep doubt about the possibility for things to get better here in Nepal. This breaks my heart every time and each time I get up on my American high horse and give a potted lecture about how nothing will change in Nepal if each person does not make it change. There is no functioning government. There is nobody to do anything of make anything happen right. No disrespect to the various international and Nepali organizations trying to make the CA Poll happen: they are working hard, I hope to see that it does.

Then the conversation continues on a while and my interlocutor usually complains that there is an established elite based on caste, wealth, and religion that will prevent things from changing much in Nepal. They also often complain that the corruption that pervades the elite also reaches down into every local political and economic organization. As a very insightful student of Nepal put it today: the Ranas (former prime ministerial family who operated Nepal as their private fiefdom for generations) set an example for every Nepali to follow through the present.

At this point I bring up the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Most seem to know what the first is but I wonder about the second. I spend a minute in amazement of the dual execution of Nepali education: mostly crap, but they teach the French Revolution. It being French and all, there is a good deal of respect for this revolution. After the pause, I explain the Reign of Terror as a time where French folks pulled the aristocrats and nobility out into the streets and killed them.

My conversation partner usually reflects on this for a minute. I imagine him/her thinking about what it would look like in Nepal if Nepalis pulled the aristocrats, elite, and inhibitors-general-of-progress out into the pot-holed streets of Kathmandu and killed them.

The Maoists were kind of on this path, but decided--thankfully--to join the government and pursue a political process with less violence to achieve their aims.

The thing is that the French revolution worked, or so mine and my partner's conception goes. And it worked in part because French peasants and bourgeoisie pulled the nobility into the streets and killed them.

Is that what it takes for real change? Is there another way to move past the seemingly intractable problem of profound corruption and general political malaise in Nepal? Do we really face a different situation in the United States?

Lost and Now Found.

2008-03-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Back in the house, containers boundless recovered from the depths of blog limbo. I have to put a shout out in the airwaves to google for responding to my request for help-i-lost-my-blog help.

So, things in Tibet are wild these days. The world up there is falling apart with protest in the run up to the olympics. Word on the street today is that 80 dead so far.

So, in case you have forgotten, this blog is a personal blog where i am gonna write about spirit, morality, outrage, and stuff like that in a fairly informal way. If you want to follow my research and academic stuff, check out Upwords.

See you next time.

It's been a month.

2007-01-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

Since I last wrote to this webbed world of words.

Today's topic is not the happiest, but apparently, isn't either the worst.

It is: Losing Friends

I won't go into details. In fact, the details are far less interesting than the larger theme. The details are mundane, they are boring, and they are brutally common. They are business, busy-ness, apathy, sadness, replacement, daily life, and many millions of other moments that conspire against the fixity of friendship.

I am particularly faced with this problem now that Graduate School seems to ask more of me. It asks me to read books all the time. It asks me to accept a never ending and always accumulating work load upon which my livelihood increasingly depends.

I have lived in my hometown, a vital and exciting place, for nearly six years and have met many wonderful people and engaged many wonderful projects. Many of these people and processes still abide in my daily environment. They have consistently produced joy and satisfaction for me and I love them.

Normally, if I were to severely alter or sever altogether my connection to them, it would be in relocation to another home, another place, another world, and sometimes even another language.

This time, I must remain in close proximity to my beloved social networks as I step away from them. This is nominally because of school work and the need to focus, work hard, and produce.

I don't like it. I am told it is normal and okay.

I still don't like it.

I Love Weird Al

2006-12-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

Got Accent?

2006-11-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The South
Boston
The Inland North
North Central
The Northeast
Philadelphia
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Cramps

2006-10-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

And the Slope gets Slippier

2006-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

I started this news line at Upwords, but I think I will continue it here. The CBC is reporting that Al-Sadr's Shia militia has got a town to themselves now, establishing an alternative gov't.

I am surprised by the seemingly sudden outing of the Bush administration's failure by itself. While folks have been talking about the failure of occupation in Iraq, I haven't seen enough pressure to crack the nut of the Bushites. But, alas, here it is.

Similarly, I keep hearing that folks are unhappy with the Republicans and are going to knock them outta power this midterm election. The Left should be wary of battles won too easily.

Image Credit: Anonymous chalk artist on Library Mall in Madison, Wis.

V for Vendetta

2006-09-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Notes From the Edge of a Continent: V for Vendetta

This link is a review by NBB of V for Vendetta which we watched at the roost this evening and talked about revolutions, violence, and social change.

Wisco

2006-09-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

Wisconsin maintains its reputation as an enormous insane asylum by nuturing a Columbine-style plot to blow up and kill a school's worth of children in Green Bay.

Obviously Fox News was on the scene.

Somebody wussed out, though. So, we still lag behind Colorado and Georgia for communicating sociopathy to our children. We're doing our darndest, though.

You gotta give us that.

Outta Here

2006-08-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I wanted to drop one last KTM post on the containers, neglected as they have been. Lot's of reflection to do here and hopefully I will get to some of it when I return. It looks like my writing schedule is going to be grueling!

Love to Nepal, Kathmandu, and all the folks who made me feel welcome here.

Oh My Buddha!

2006-08-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

Things are wrapping up here in Kathmandu and I am going to a sitting retreat for my final week here, I hope. I won't know until it is too late. So, if you here from me after August 14th, that means it didn't work out. Anyway...

Kathmandu and Lhasa did a good number on me. I am pretty happy with the way things have gone, all things considered. Staying in Lhasa would've been good and nice and career advancing and all that, but coming to KTM was like coming home. And that feeling itself was worth all the expense and pains in the arse.

Learning or relearning that Kathmandu is a home for me is valuable because I had been doubting, before this summer, that I had a home in Asia. I have had several historically, but this past spring I was all up in a knot about to abandon Asian studies altogether. It feels good not to do that.

Now I need to reconcile the world I created for myself in Madison that is anchored around that former distance from Asia. I need to see if my revived love for the mystical orient is tenable in that situation. I think it is.

I am very excited about the retreat. I am trying not to be to excited because it could very easily not happen, due to the deeply accomplished incompetancy of filing systems at the Jyoti Bhavan. So, if it happens, it will be a joyful walk through a bunch of shit I have accumulated in the last year and maybe I can do some housecleaning of that nastiness.

The perennial "I am going to change everything about my life so that it is better and healthier and good" feeling is creeping up on me and I am going to give it a shot. Between returning refreshed from Asia and sitting inbetween and a monstrous Issan feast during my five hours in Bangkok and the joy of returning to the motherland, I am feeling pretty positive about my ability to do some serious work where I work needs be done and some serious chillaxing where chillaxing need be done.

(My mom used "chillaxing" in an email to me the other day!)

In love and respect for balm and poison,

Transportative Radicality.

2006-08-03T02:57:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't this place be nicer without so many cars?

Ever ask yourself that? I do, all the time.

Especially here in Kathmandu where the city is small enough and the roads are narrower than that. Why not just cut them out. They don't get you anywhere faster here. They often only provide more comfort and mediation from what some might imagine to be an unsavory environment of filth and poverty.

But, if their were no private cars, thing would be so much more pleasant, I think.

Yoga, Pain, and Death

2006-08-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Three ways to meet with pain:
Retreat
Watch
Breathe

Retreating is obvious. That is what we do naturally, in most cases. We feel the pain and we don’t like it. Sometimes we don’t even get to not like it; our lower brains associate pain with danger and react for us. If we don’t like it, what a luxury of freedom, then we can run from it.

Watching is less obvious, but sometimes happens naturally in a state of shock and/or wonder. If, again we have the luxury of pause before running scared from the painful moment, we watch curiously and with interest, we can delay further the retreat and perhaps, eventually, stave it off. Watching means using our mind’s sensitivity to feel and look into the pain with an even mind.

Breathing is not obvious at all, but we do sometimes naturally alter our breathing in suffering moments. Take hyperventilation for instance. While hyperventilation may be a strong function of lower minds, it is not something we choose to do. When confronted with pain, in addition to watching, or instead of watching, we can breathe into that pain. What does that mean? That is difficult to explain, but it has to do with shifting the focus of our conscious awareness to the point or region of suffering and being aware of the pain, looking at it with primary focus on the movement or lack of movement and sensation in the region. Another way to explain this is to say that it is possible to intentionally direct the health, wealth, and nutrition of breath to a particular place in the body.

The point of all this, in my mind recently, is to prepare for death. I am fortunate to have a lovely life full of wealth, power, and health. With that freedom, I don’t need to devote myself to aggrandizement of this life style. I do that, certainly, but I don’t need to do much. I don’t have to hunt or pick my food, for instance. And, these simple practices of the mind do help with this life’s bounty. There are some significant results to yogic approaches to suffering, pain, and discomfort. Howev er, the most painful, or rather, the most frightening thing I will do in this life is die. And that is the Suffering I see on the horizon and I see it as the major challenge and the greatest adventure I could broach. It is, as I see it the final frontier. Many of the Buddhist teachers I have listened to have scoffed at that with the assumption of multiple (in fact, beginningless) lifetimes. While I see the reasoning for it, and I accept it as logical, I do not have any evidence for it myself, and so can barely rely on it.

Thus, the major hurdle I see coming is not far off complete enlightenment.

It is instead to survive death.

Oxymoronic? Maybe so. But, the survival I am talking about is not that of the physicality of our body or brains or what not. I am talking about mental survival. I am talking about consciousness beyond physicality. I wonder what happens at the time of death and I would like to be there to see it. And by be there, I mean to avoid falling unconscious. I want to walk my awareness all the way up to the time of death and see what happens.

And, if I can keep walking, I will.

I just want to see how far I can get.

Sick and Lost Day

2006-07-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

I was sick all yesterday; bedridden and stung by poisoned food.

I had been bragging two days ago about how I had not yet fallen sick in Nepal and happily contrasting that with the weekly bout of poisoned food explusion I counted on in Lhasa.

Then, the palak paneer I ate that evening awoke me the next morning to say, "oh, by the way, your body is going to completely reject me having already digested a bit of my spinach and cheese. And, considering we have been digested only in part, we will make our exit via the nearest route, be it this way or that.

So, I spent the day laying in bed with occasional forays to the tiled bathroom to make way for my lovely but violent visitors as they flew forth with their greatest effort.

It was a funny way to spend the day. Well, funny may not be the most precise name for it. But, I was a bit surprised to walk out into Nepal this morning. It may have been my hunger, muted, but growing, but the world seemed a little abrasive this morning. I realized that I had not been out of my house in thirty or so hours. I walked down the street, soaked and muddy as usual, and was apprehensive about every step. Should I put that foot down? What will happen? I will certainly step in that curious concoction of mud and shit that paves the streets in my neighborhood.

Then looking up and taking particularly and unfairly seriously the plain stare that greets me everywhere that says, "what is that (referring to me)?" Usually, I appreciate it very much because it means eye contact, which I love, and, even though it does not mean what it may seem, it is refreshing nonetheless. But this morning, those eyes looking directly at me and mine were threats and danger for some reason. They looked at me and I looked back, but somehow I saw wrath in them and wondered if it was those eyes who were wrathful or my own confused eyes that projected that wrath into the world.

It is hard to know, but I am suspect.

So, I kindof forgot about Nepal while sleeping and writhing. I watched a couple of movies, said goodbye to a couple of friends, and did not eat a couple of things.

Otherwise, I laid around and wondered what was going on with the pain in my body. By 11 AM, the question had been answered. It was bad food that was making knife cuts in me and demanding more of my body than it really wanted to deal with.

Compounding the pain and illness was loneliness and isolation. My partner in crime had left that morning and I was feeling it. He had shown me China and I had shown him Tibet and Nepal. Without him I would speak less English, certainly, but also without him, I would not have a critical sparring partner, something very important to me. So, I was feeling it. Not to mention, I am kindof a crybaby and rarely get sick, so when I do, it might as well be as if I were dying.

Which I thought of while I was laying around: I need to do some work on that. If getting sick bugs me so much, how am I going to deal with death? I have been thinking for a while that I would like to die consciously. And, how will I do that if I freak out about a bit of pain? That is the thing, I think, to face the gross pain and the subtler fear at the time of death with conscious awareness.

While getting depressed and sick at the same time sucks, it is probably a good time to practice dying. I hope I can remember thata for next time.

Shit Eating Grin

2006-07-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

First a shout out to the propagator, if not the originator, of this phrase-in-my-life. J-Mac, this one's for you. No, not you...you.

The artist formerly known as J-Greg who morphed, but may not have metamorphed, into J-Mac has recently noted a certain "shit eating grin" that I carry occasionally.

Today is one of those days.

The new J-Mac may be preserving this marker from the old days of New College where I wore such a smile more often than these days, I think. I was always surprised when someone mentioned it, calling me out in public, "look at this guy's shit eating grin." It was a narrow crew that did name me so, so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.

The thing about that grin, and perhaps one of the reasons I was repeatedly surprised by my friends mention of it, was (and is today) that this particular kind of smile poured forth from somewhere I didn't, and still don't, know very well. The curling lips and ecstatically leaping cheeks were simply epiphenomenal of some coursing source of joy. That river from somewhere pervades my entire body, but concentrates its peak flow through my face, eyes, and mouth.

I used to get harassed for its occurrence because it would often correspond with socially questionable humor in the form of irony, private free association, light mockery, non sequitur, or sardonic discourse. It is odd to have just listed these, because it makes me realize just how much love and tolerance I got from my friends as I carried on largely nonsensical humor in their midst. And, despite the negative dialectic evident in those listed modes of jest, the flow of love and wonder they initiated welled up and erased the anger in a monsoon flood of joy and benevolence.

Funny how that works.

Oh, and yes, there is a very good reason I bear the ShitEatingGrin today.

On Love

2006-07-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I have written about love and I may never have done it in this forum. Love has been a tough word to swallow, hear, know, or embody for me for a while now. I won't date it, but the word went sour in my vocabulary and has since caused me a fair bit of trouble.

I am still a bit trepidatious about using it and as I think, I wonder if I might not write more about partnership than love here. The reason the whole thing comes up for me now is...well...I am getting sick of being alone. The more specific cause, I think, is that I met a woman. I met a woman in Lhasa with whom there will be (odds are astronomical, but I never say never) no chance.

She is witty, beautiful, smart, powerful, sexy, chillaxed, Venezuelan, Australian, and 37. It is only these last two that present any problem of astronomical scale (the first for me and the second for her). Australia is far away and "You are so young."

I will not go into too much detail, but meeting this wonderful woman awoke hope in me again. Hope that love and easy (with fits) partnership is possible in my life. All we did was sit around and chat. It was that easy and, for a few days, it was the best thing in my life. Even now, I think back with a little bit of longing and not much grasping on her beamingly alive visage and it lifts me slightly and says to me, "Yes, someone can look at you that way and it doesn't have to make you squirm. It can feel good."

So, thanks to E in Lhasa. You gave me a lovely gift and I really appreciate it.

Love.

Transition: Rocks to Water

2006-07-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Where does Tibet turn into Nepal?

Is it the lush forested slopes that follow the arid rock fields?

Is it the political horror factory that gives way to the loose fluidity of people's movements?

Is it the Buddhist mysts that flow forth into Hindu caste?

I do not know where Tibet turns into Nepal. I tried very hard, squinting and looking closely to see the change. I saw it but could not tell where it happened. My sequential mind looked very hard for the frame, moment where it turned, but I did not see a single time when it happened. Instead, I saw a flowing river develop into rushing plunge and the monsoon rush of clouds fill the steep, green, dripping valleys.

The lack of defined boundary led me to think that perhaps there was no such thing, perhaps, even, Tibet and Nepal were not the stable containers I thought them to be.

Could it be, even, that Tibet and Nepal do not exist? Maybe it is so. I think they are there, certainly and exist as a collection of characteristics but without some essential landscape being as it seems there might be within two such distinct worlds, places, spaces, landscapes, cultures, and nations.

What is the difference? Or, are there too many to innumerate. Lhasa is vastly different than Kathmandu, that is sure. But where do they change, one into the other?

An Ode to the Border (China's Tibet/Nepal)

2006-07-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, Border
How you rain down on the wild earth and peoples's old plans like a fierce hailing curtain.
In accurate, vast shotgun spreading cone unto the earth
Seemingly from heaven poured or earth's numina arisen

Oh, Border
Your gaudy artifice begs itself into wilderness's naturalized face and yet stands apart and wholly as an abomination to persons, love, peace, and economy.
All those big words carry you to your moral grave where you will rot (I hope).

Oh, Border
How your visage in the crooked rearview mirror relieves me from State Supervision.
How your cascading valleys into the lush Nepali jungle guide my stirred heart home to the Valley of Himalayan valleys, the garbage dump of the mountains and the holiest city

Good Morning Lhasa

2006-07-03T18:37:00.001-07:00

Brightly overcast morning the world lifts only so high but lovely still.
Those clouds which blend together and seem to have some independence, but only still let pass the indirected and refracted in mess light.
Escher's vision is oddly manifested here in this compound of cleanliness.
Outdoor hung passages like a Sarasota motel strung out along the vein of US HWY 41. There in the stillness of a building grounded, bodies walk obliquely rising slowly along an incline plane and also descending the other (or is it?) direction.
Lhasa goes precious in its final days. I mean my final days here which are its final days in my web.

Good Morning Lhasa

2006-07-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

Hmm.

2006-07-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

Wondering wild winters don't pass this way this now.
Instead, the world swims over and beyond in the blue lightened evening sky before dark and without red in the story line or clouded reservations up there.

There, behind the Public Security Bureau's panopticon, is a long pasture of backlit vapor settling in on the hills around Lhasa, god realm.
The angle at which the all-seeing eye of concrete skyscraping plateau sky strikes down at me understates its direct and piercing view.

In fact, there may not be one there knowing through seeing and controlling by knowing. There may be instead a drunk and loosely uniformed frump cradling his bottle of painkiller having just slaughtered another brief moment of conscience in which the knowledge was too much for one man's frame and needed anesthetizing.

Then below bellow belly laughs and guttural appreciations of grilled warm and luscious stick food and the teasing of small children with dripping chilli oil on their soft chins and absorbing shirts of cotton.

Containment and Morality

2006-06-19T01:11:00.001-07:00

Containment and morality or containment and ethics. What to say, really? As I write this, I am listening to a chorus of vicious dogs whose bark is not stronger than their bite and their bark is ferociously frightening. Tibetans keep dogs. Some are nice house dogs and pets in the sense that EuroAmericans think of them. Many, however, are made to violent by constraining them with short chains, beating them, and whatever else you do to make and animal angry, violent, hateful, and dangerous. The irony is that they are too dangerous to be let off their short chains and they also therefore cannot really do anything but impotently bark with a guttural compaction and projection of sonic anger. Death in sound, an old sound that every human mammalian brain knows from way back before any of us were born. That brain hears the coming violence and recoils as they are supposed to do by the wealth that demands animal protection. What are the ethics in violent dogs. Surely, dogs do not have the means to do other than they are beaten to do. What then are the ethics and morality of beating a dog so that they are angry enough to protect one’s walled compound from those without walls and, perhaps, without roofs?

All this is to set the stage, encode the emotion, and plant the seeds for a discussion about containment and morality. And/or ethics. Expansion was always a rule by which I lived my life. Onward and upward. Forward as my home state’s motto urges. Always moving on and away and avoiding again. Taking down the shingle and packing the light bag and moving. Where to and when to and how to were the adventure. Expansion beyond the current state, the status quo, was not only a physical movement beyond here, but a blowing up of inside, mind, knowledge, sight, sensitivity, awareness, and all the other mystery things that make me, and you, I suspect, human. This kind of expansion has grown up in me and I wonder where I have gone and why I am here and what has happened to me. And I am afraid.

Thus containment. So much have I pushed beyond and more and up and on inside of me, that I now need (and always did, probably) a container. This is a very difficult thing to know and realize now because for so long containers have been my enemy, I have fought them, I have resisted them, I have run from them, I have destroyed them, I have spoken against them, I have ignored them, and I have feared them. Was it instinctual or trained to fear containment, I do not know. Now, however, after what feels like a long career of deconstructing containers, I am charged with building my own.

Is it a prison I should build or is it a tool? Surely it is a prison because it eliminates opportunity and growth in the wild and nuclear fashion and replaces it with cultivation and concentration. I am not sure that I want that or even if I did, that I would know how to do it. Luckily, I have teachers who I do not know as well as I would like who know what container building is like, how to do it, and nice things like that. The work is there, it is hard and often not tasty, but I know what it is. That makes its it all the harder when I do not do it.

I am very much better at destruction than construction.

I realize I did not get to morality and ethics explicitly here. Though, I believe this passage is laced with its roots. Anyone care to take a shot at it? Where do ethics and morality fit in here?

Containment and Morality

2006-06-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

Wonderment

2006-06-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

I was thinking yesterday about failure as I bumped along a Tibetan road in a vomit laden bus. I was thinking that I would write a book about it. It is interesting how this thought came to mind. I was first thinking about how I had wasted the last seven years of my life. Then I thought I could salve that wound by doing something monumental: writing a book. Then I thought that I could further salve that waste by writing the book about that failure.

All this may seem dramatic. And it was at the time I conceived it. I was sitting on that bus jolting up and down, left and right, inhaling ubiquitous cigarette smoke, listening to the woman behind me vomit into a plastic bag, and most powerfully, reaping some angry karma.

It was the angry karma that was rocking my world...for the worse. I hated with every inch of my body and the depth of passion in mind that bus ride. Only the last two hours, which, of course, felt like a day and a half.

The failure of the last seven years, I will not detail here. Why, I don't know. But, it seems to cut too deep for right now. Especially since this blog is linked to my website.

What I will describe is the insidious revelation of anger and the way it creeps up and overwhelms.

I think, in this case, it has a lot to do with body sensitivity and the crass way the bus and the road conspired to attack me kinesthetically. Studying yoga and Buddhism trains body sensitivity. Ultimately the idea is to more closely know and observe the relationship betwen consciousness and bodily presence. That work does a lot to train understanding of those connections and also draws one into a red pill scenario where one is more sensitive of everything, including suffering.

While being cramped, congested, and harrassed by the raucous behavior of the bus and its lover, the road, my body was jostled in a violent way. I think, I did not prepare for that well and it resulted in quick translation of that material violence to emotion. I hated. I hated the bus, I hated the smokers, I hated the chinese speakers, I hated the Tibetan that wanted to cuddle with me, I hated everything.

Those brutal, hateful facts swelled over me and drowned my weakened yogic defenses in a sea of anger. There I was, in suffering.

In better news, I am not in a bus, but in a lovely little guesthouse that provides the perfect ward in which to recover from that trauma.

New Blog for the Summer

2006-05-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

Howdy, long time no post.

I am writing up my summer adventure in Asia, mostly Tibet, at onupwords.blogspot.com.

Please check it out and excuse the brief hiatus. If blogger is not as consistently blocked in Lhasa as it has been in China, I will update this blog with more personal stuff.

Love

No Gods

2006-05-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Revolution.

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women

2006-05-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

Thus is titled a book by Donna Haraway.

page 204: "My thesis is that the immune system is an elaborate icon for principal systems of symbolic and material 'difference' in late capitalism...The immune system is historically specific terrain, where global and local politics; Nobel Prize-winning research; heteroglossic cultural productions, from popular dietary practices, feminist science fiction, religious imagery, and children's games, to photographic techniques and military strategic theory; clinical mecial practice; venture capital investment strategies; world-changing developments in business and technology; and the deepest personal and collective experiences of embodiment, vulnerability, power, and mortality interact with an intensity matched perhaps only in the biopolitics of sex and reproduction."

Whew. And I thought Buddhism was cool.

Neat Ultimate Video

2006-04-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

Good soundtrack and smooth Ultimate.

Intersubjectivity: Episode 2

2006-04-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

So, I was surprised they had thought of me to mediate a dispute in their relationship. Whether I thought this as I climbed out of sleep or have projected it back, I cannot tell. The next moment, I thought, “maybe they wan me to meditate because I am so far from them.”

Matt answered my questions by saying that it couldn’t wait because it involved me. I thought, “Jeez.” Actually, I probably didn’t. For some reason I did not see what was going on as a trap. Instead, I saw it as a moment of need in which I had been called by the needy, the pained, the desperate to help. It was convenient that this needy one lived in the same home. I didn’t even have to change out of my pajamas. I figured it was an opportunity I couldn’t ignore. Actually, I really thought that I could go help.

I slipped on my plastic orange clogs and wrapped myself in a purple shawl. I was ritually garbed and ready to go into the spiritual battlefield.

Follow the Nepali Revolution

2006-04-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

If you have been wondering what is going on in Nepal these days, check out United We Blog.

Sushirevue

2006-04-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

sushirevue
a new blog for your consumption

Intersubjectivity: Episode 1

2006-04-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night, I experienced an altering event. It has changed the way I feel, think, and am. It was a moment of insight into intersubjectivity. The event itself was intersubjective in its way. Well, I will tell the story and see if I can illustrate intersubjectivity in the story. It may take a few episodes.

Saturday night, I was awakened a bit after midnight. It was a housemate of mine. We will name him Matt in this story. He knocked on the door. I groaned myself to slight levels of consciousness and called through the thick fog of sleep, “hello?” He responded, “Yeah, Chris, it's Matt.” I said confusedly, “yeah? Go ahead and open the door.” The door’s weight dragged open by the negative pull of Matt’s hand. The glare of fluorescence struck through, pushing its way past Matt’s shoulder and clamoring into the room. Matt was more gentle and stood politely at the threshold with the door half open. He may have said more in explanation since the initial insertion of his presence into my object field, but I do not recall. I was lost in the haze between sleep and waking. Soon after that indefinite haze, I heard him request my presence as a mediator (or “quasi-mediator” as he later recalled) in a dispute between himself and his girlfriend/partner/whatever. A little more awake, I asked if it could wait until the next day when I would be fully awake and not sleeping. I sympathized with the request for mediation: I think it is important and admirable to notice when outside mediation is needed to move past a rough spot in a relationship.

However, I thought it was a bit odd that he would ask me since both he and his g/p/w named Julie had taken to icing me for 3-5 months. That is: they gave me the cold shoulder, sometimes answering me as briefly as possible in conversation and other times completely ignoring me to the point of not even acknowledging I had said “hi.”

Tune in next time.

Judas was framed.

2006-04-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

And you thought Christianity was weird. It gets weirder.

It turns out, according the Gospel of Judas (which was recently radio-carbon dated to 300 AD), that Jesus requested that Judas hand him over to the Romans "so he could fulfill his redemptive mission."

This was reported by the Arizona Republic.

Wisconsinites: "Out of Iraq"

2006-04-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

Today, a couple dozen cities in Wisconsin voted on referenda demanding immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. It attracted "front page" headlines from Google News. Here is the Reuters article as well. Neither are stable, I suspect.

News Flash

2006-04-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Diocese of Limburg was "erected" on August 16, 1821.

Hmm...maybe that is not a news flash.

Image credit: Herr Joachim Pick's woodcut via St Leonhard's Church in Frankfurt.

View From (Second) Home

2006-04-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Pain: Killing a Dream

2006-03-31T15:04:00.000-08:00

I just sent an email to the Geography Department at the University of British Columbia. It said, "No thanks. I do not want to move to one of the most beautiful places on earth and study at one of the best geography departments on earth." I am a bit nauseous.

It is not as monolithic as I make it sound. There was a long process of discernment that birthed that painful child in my mind. Part of that discernment was the realization that I should go to the university that will best serve my intellectual project. I didn't (and still don't) believe that UBC was/is that university.

The pain arises from the long process of fetishizing the northwest, Canada, Vancouver, UBC Geography, and the west coast. No, the pain arises from cutting that fetishization dead.

My temporal happiness and aspirations now officially weigh less in my life than my intellectual (and maybe my spiritual) aspirations.

Yikes.

The Ides

2006-03-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

If you had forgotten, this is about the time when Julius Caesar's Senate and friends jacked him. And by jacked him, I mean stabbed him. A lot. Recalling this reminds me of a few things:

-Cferrin5's birthday was yesterday
-Age
-Ambition kills
-One's friends will sometimes jack one
-Death
-Revolution is afoot
-Impermanence
-If everyone takes one shot,
there will be a bloody pulp on the floor
-This approach to murder disperses guilt across many,
thereby absolving all
-New College
-Vision
-March is one of my favorite months based on
1)Racine's micro-climate
2)Sweet first kisses on foggy shores
-I have about a month to finish my thesis
-Wisdom
-Peace

Long Days, Weeks

2006-03-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

Last week was long, intense, exciting. The lightning over Lake Mendota portends another week of electrically driven flowing. I will be preparing the second draft of my thesis and continuing to agonize over my options for a PhD program. Please hold me well in your thoughts.

Katrina Warning for Bush Substantiated by AP Video

2006-03-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

Confidential video acquired by AP shows Bush being briefed on Katrina with strong warnings that the levees could be breached. After the fact, Bush says, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Link to BBC story that may not be stable is here.

Don Knotts

2006-02-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

Peace be upon you, Don Knotts.

Olympic Partying

2006-02-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

"Me, it's been an awesome two weeks," Bode Miller said. "I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level."

Class Containers

2006-02-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

Class comes up. For some that would be an understatement. For some analysts, class more than "comes up," it suffuses all aspects of life. For some of my friends, class also more than "comes up," I can't stop talking about it. The combination of these two forms of a single understatement have inspired me to write this post.

What is class? How important is it to understanding our world?

In a Marxist sense, class is based on those who have capital (modes of production) and those who have labor. These categories/classes waver depending on the historical period at hand.

In a biological sense, class is a level of classification between phylum and order. There are subclasses in this reckoning.

There are a few other notions of class out there, many of which will be important to this discussion.

What do you think of when you think, "class?"

Offer a Pome to the Four Winds

2006-02-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

If you will, use this image as inspiration.

Bedtime Story

2006-01-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

I am telling a story.

Rocking the Microphone

2006-01-28T21:24:00.000-08:00

Taking my cue from digital disaster, I realize that all the wonderful things to do in Madison this evening including rare occasions such as Evan's birthday party (aka time to spend with Ultimate folks, my people), Senegalese hip hop at the Union Theatre with peaceful people I admire, MotoPrimatives show at Revoultion Cycles, and a gallery adventure with friends at the Humanities building had to sit down for a night and leave me to write. It has been a good night of it, too. I doubled my paper on Habermas's notion of the public sphere in Tibetan spiritual landscape. This feels very good considering I lost most of it in the electrostupidquake of 2006.

In Better News

2006-01-27T20:20:00.000-08:00

Madison was wonderfully warm today and I collected many sympathies for my computational challenge. I am shopping nerds to excavate data from my shiny new, washed (as in tortured until assenting to falsehood) hard drive.

It was the kind of smiling day during which Madisonians coaxed their loved ones, guests, and dates out onto the ice to experience what is usually a March bound paradox: delicious warmth on top of frozen water.

Hamas now runs the unborn Palestinian state much to the chagrin of freedom loving rightists everywhere. Perpetually ignorant freedom lovers are faced with yet another example of democracy at work. As liberal political society marches on around the world it will become more obvious that just because some folks voted, doesn't mean they aren't going to elect a party that is pissed off.

It is a bit upsetting, actually, that some find it surprising that democratic elections are not going to distill common distaste for being bombed, isolated, demonized, and colonized. Are seventy percent of Palestinians angry enough to elect a political party with a history of armed resistance to seventy percent of assembly seats? Isn't that representation? Would you re-elect a government that caved to US and Israeli interests (namely the systematic destruction/genocide of Palestinian culture?) and stood by while 10 meter concrete "fences" were erected around Palestinian towns?

Jeez.

On my way to the office tonight, I walked by a chorus of Christians singing "Jesus loves me" songs in Library Mall. Their orbit of solicitors (young, beautiful women) asked me, "do you need something to read tonight?" I replied, "Uh...I have plenty to read tonight, thanks." I walked by. Then, I turned around and went back to sit for a few of their 2 minute songs. I like choir music. I like people who believe something enough to stand in the middle of the city of sin and sing about it. I like that there were 30+ of them, men and women. I like the idea of trusting Jesus's words. Many evangelists seem cynical. They come to Madison knowing it is a hateful place already with satanists, UUs, and (gasp) Buddhists. These kids, though, they seemed to be happier, calmer. They seemed to have purer intentions. I like that. Even if their purity is only skin deep, if they embody purity even for an hour of singing, I want to be there for that.

Peace.

Backup? What Backup?

2006-01-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

It is all gone. 2 and a half years of work: reformatted. It sounds like such a nice process, doesn't it? I was so happy as I watched the little blue bar grow larger and larger indicating my computer was on its way to a new life/operating system. Little did I know the horrors going on behind that blue bar. The gruesome blue death of my academic life's work being shredded by the cold blades of redefinition. Call me. Ask me if I am writing. If I hesitate, bludgeon me with the reality of my situation: If I don't write I will have nothing.

Nothing.

No thing.

No.

N.

Storming

2006-01-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

The infinitely vast code slowly continues to click, digit by digit, into demonic place. This secret language arcs through an ocean of being sending fractal branches into its cold depths. Somehow that arc strikes directly, if deliberate and slow, and raises the spine of a swelling crest.

The arc is not alone. The amplitude of the surge emerges from an upwelling underneath. Ubiquitous iterations fill in an adrenal system that excites every lost corner of the oceanic body. Those distant and still quarters add their wavering to the forced harmony of liquid constitution.

A storm comes.

It will go.

Irreverence and Comedy in LA

2006-01-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Thanks to CCW over at Walking Alone/Together for this one. Please leave a comment revealing how long it took for this to load for you. If it takes too long, I will dump it.

Home Away From Home

2006-01-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

Zombie Defense

2006-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Before you get back to work make sure you are prepared for the necropalypse.

Sushi

2006-01-12T19:25:00.000-08:00

Cherry Blossom Friends
Creeping Sun Swiss Trip Web Mist
We Recalled Far Days

Reactivated: Phone

2006-01-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

I am back in the cellular mix. The NSA can safely track my every move once again. Please call me, because I don't have your number any more.

Aversion

2006-01-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

By Melissa Morton

Averting Aversion

2006-01-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

Over the new year I served a meditation course in the wilds of northern Illinois, just south of the border. The course was 10 full days long. I was not a sitter for whom the course is designed. I worked as a volunteer on the support staff for the sitters so that they need only work on their meditation. I did some sitting as well, myself.

The sitters sit for 10-12 hours a day for 10 days. As a server, I sat 4-6 hours a day and worked in the kitchen another 6-8 hours. Sitting means sitting, doing a form of analytical meditation in which one focuses one's awareness on bodily sensation as well as attempting to maintain a mind free from attachment or aversion to those sensations, to emotional responses to those sensations, and to distractions from concentration.

I have returned to this other world, the real world, in which people are not paying close attention to their minds nor to their reactions to the people and world around them. It is hard to avoid feeling a bit of anger, sadness, and disappointment about the state of the world out here.

I write this post to mark the realization that this the task ahead of me: to let go of my strong aversion for what I often consider to be world lost to greed, hate, craving, and stupidity.

The aim of the retreat and the technique I practiced was not to bliss out and escape this mess. It is to develop and equanimity towards the mess. The mess is bad enough itself, it doesn't need me to go hating it. This equanimity, as well as a good dose of compassion, is the balm that will heal and transform my reactions to the world into action. Rather than hating the world which does it no good and does me worse, I am charged with pausing, putting the brakes on my aversion, and letting the world (and myself) simply be as it is. Then, with the peace of equanimity, I can act with compassion and intention in the world.

Any thoughts on what to do?

War: On Christmas

2005-12-26T14:34:00.000-08:00

A war on Christmas seems unlikely in a country dominated by Christians, the most vocal (and most powerful?) of which seem to think that their "way of life" is under threat. It makes me wonder if the love affair, replete with domestic violence and all the wonders of domesticity, between 'Merica and Christianity is newly vigorous or if it has been a long running business.

The rhetorical make up of the USA has been multiplicitous for a while, I suspect. With the left hand (the hand of the small sneaky blade), our nation has sold itself as a melting pot, a pluralism, or a multiethnic/racial place. With the right hand (the hand of justice and transparency), our nation has always been Christian in practice and discourse.

So, is the Christian dominance of our country new? No. Is the ironic and duplicitous Christian complaint of liminality new? Kind of. Religious freedom for religious exiles from Europe to 'Merica meant the freedom to be a weird (and often fundamentalist) Christian. I do not think it meant one was free not to be Christian. N. Hawthorne let us know about that. Correct me if I am wrong.

Are we facing a new attack on Christmas and Christianity wherein a completely Christian history of 'Merica is threatened by all those non-Christians? I think we are. Finally, non-Christians are taking up a voice of resistance to the double standards of religious freedom. Admittedly, the public sphere has been scrubbed somewhat clean of religious language in a number ways and places (schools, buildings, etc.).

What's the deal? Are we a Christian country or do we have religious freedom? Is it possible that both are true?

We are free to be Christian in as boring or crazy a way as we please. But, if we dare suggest that late December might be more about family than Jesus, beware.

We are fighting a war. And if you get caught, you will be an enemy combatant.

Help Chris Edit this Personal Statement

2005-12-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

This is a draft of my personal statement. It is two pages 1.5 spaced and I want to add a section to address the individual departments I am applying to. The first section has personal history that I can reduce. The second has religious stuff that can be reduced or cut. The third gets a bit long winded on my research interests and can be reduced. Thanks for your help.

A brief history of my path leading to Geography may illuminate my motivations for doctoral work in the field. My final year in high school, I spent staring out the window looking into the sky. Before going to college in Florida, I went to Japan as a Rotary exchange student and lived in the machine of Tokyo. Having escaped the machine in search of freedom I attempted to gain employment as a cowboy in Australia. That failed and I got a job picking grapes and throwing dead sheep into a pile. A few months after I returned to the US, I began my studies at New College, thinking that I would uncover the mysteries of the universe with a thorough study of Physics. After a class called “Asian Religions” my mind was sent tumbling down a very different path. At first, I was attracted to the fact that Buddhism and Hinduism had a broad, cosmological vision of reality. This was consonant with a conviction I held at the time, one that initially led me to physics, that humanity tended to inflate its importance in the grand scheme of things. As I studied the history and philosophy of religion, primarily Buddhism and modern Christianity, this antihumanist bent slowly eroded. Within a few years I was entirely enchanted by the promise of individual enlightenment encoded in Buddhism. While I still did not believe it was possible for a human to fully transcend their mundane circumstances in a passive way (I simply had no evidence for it), I did see that radical change of an individual’s mind was possible and that yogic traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism had cultivated the practices to do so. I was fully taken with the capacity of an individual to be outside of her own context. I had felt this otherness throughout my life as a perpetual outcast. Studying religion revealed examples of practical traditions in which being outside of society as a monastic or spiritual practitioner was allowed for.

Then I went to Nepal and saw living Buddhism. That living religion disillusioned me of my romantic and orientalist notions of the radical freedom of the Buddhist pracitioner. I saw and lived with people who were largely “superstitious” and, to my dismay, were not meditators. The vast majority of the Tibetan refugees I lived with practiced merit accumulation as their primary religious practice. Even the monks I befriended did not meditate. Not only that but they seemed to have a blind faith in the lama as a religious leader. I quickly became disenchanted with Tibetan social structures. After a few months in Nepal, I lightened up a bit and began to probe the subtleties of Tibetan society with a softer eye. What I found was a culture fractured, uprooted, desperate, and savvy about the realities of exile. I also found an oppressive patriarchy that perpetuated religious hegemony, hereditary capital, and rigid class structure at the same time it held up human liberation as its highest value. This apparent paradox did not dawn on me fully until I began my studies in Geography. In the interim years, I spent my time working on several projects. The primary of these was a construction of my own Buddhist practice that dislodged itself from traditionalist visions of Buddhism. In this way I subdivided my study of Buddhism into two not completely separate tracks: study of Buddhist cultural practice as it stands in the light of its own textually inscribed doctrine and study of my own existential being guided by Buddhist principles. While developing an independent post-protestant American Buddhism with a small cohort of friends, I became comfortable with a religious identity (ultimately empty, of course) with which I could negotiate an otherwise raucous cacophony of spiritualist sentiments. In this way, I returned to the Unitarian Universalist fold to find religious community, one that holds my own spiritual practice with respect and honor. With my own Buddhism sustained, I was in an independent position from which to return to the academic study of Buddhist religious history and philosophy; this time within the powerful hermeneutic framework of geography.

There is a special concordance between Buddhism and geography that is probably present in other religious movements, but is particularly compelling in the Tibetan case. The splicing of spiritual experience, religious hegemony, and dramatic landscape demands a sustained analysis of the spatiality of Tibetan Buddhism and the places its practice inscribes on landscape both founded on and driving of discourse. Thus my study has come to a fuller point in which I wish to access and address the variety of forces that create a religious place. Among those, I want to pursue the experience of an individual practitioner, the structures of state tied up in religious hierarchy, the legacy of agrarian capital supporting that structure, the inscription of universalistic discourses upon local landscapes, the resistance of those local landscapes as they are personified by spirits, the compliance of the local after being subjugated by the universalistic bulldozer of Buddhism, the transformation of culture via its landscape, the cosmopolitan project of altruistic Mahayana Buddhism, the colonization of the “barbarous” to support altruism, and the role of advanced and (dis)embodied yogic practice in connecting these structural, discursive, and cosmopolitan/globalizing/universalistic systems with grounded, local, and practical everyday life.

WORT Goes Global

2005-12-17T12:41:00.000-08:00

My favorite radio station, WORT, is streaming until the end of the 18th as a test run. This radio station is the soul of Madison. Check out their stream.

Cell Phone: Lost

2005-12-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

So, wait a few weeks until I have a new one and then call me. 'Cause I don't have your number any more.

The story is relatively interesting. On Thursday nights I make a pilgrimage to Blue Mounds, WI. This is an odd place where my yoga teacher has opened a Dharma center. It is also a place where Ray-town homey, A. Allred, has moved into a waterless cabin in the woods. I go to Aaron's at night, sit in front of the woodburning stove, untangle the twists of being, disgorge my woman problems, and absorb the quiet of the forest.

In the morning, I get up early to go to yoga practice from 6-8 at the Blue Mounds Dharma Center. Then, I go into the forest for a walk. Today, I went snowshoeing.

As I was clumping along, I thought, "gee, this isn't all that much more efficient than walking in the snow." This is not true, but I was disappointed that the snowshoes were not more buoyant upon the snow.

I tried running. Wow. While striding across the frozen fields on top of the west mound, I realized the effect of snowshoes. I was moving much faster than I thought was possible. It was in the thrall of this excitement that I suspect the small demon I carry on my hip took its leave to lay at the bottom of a foot and a half of snow.

I retraced my steps, had Scott call me, and sat paralyzed with unanchored anxiety. I was so fixed and focused on the ground and any sign of the phone's entry into the powder, my neck began to ache. And after all that wonderful, neck-freeing yoga.

I got back in the car with blue fingers and my corduroy pants inundated with ice and snow. For a moment, the entire world was silent. The pause broke as I felt a vibration on my leg: I could still feel the missing phone ringing! I felt a very deep pull in my stomach as if I wanted the phone so much, I was hungry for it. I was disoriented and confused. What was I going to do without that phone? My eyes focused again on the white field around me. The trees stood silently dormant. The wind began to cover up the cell phone entry point that I had failed to find in the surface of the snow powder.

Then I laughed. It was more like a chuckle. My chest felt light, as if a weight from my left hip had been removed. I have felt oddly free and disconnected all day, as if I really had been let loose from a bond. The phone was a particularly stealthy bond because I could carry it around with me. It was a karmic lodestone that was far denser in its actual weight than I had thought it would be based on its size and gravitational weight. It's actual weight included the massive social node I had sculpted that phone to be. I relied on its powerful little electromagnetism to connect me hundreds to of people. The phone carried that weight and I did not realize how heavy it was until I lost it. It was not the moment at which it parted from my body, I was too delighted to fly across the snow to feel that. It was the moment, or series of moments, in which I realized that I did not have the phone-as-social-node with which to access vast networks of people.

I have been drifting in social anonymity all day.

'Merica the Suspicious

2005-12-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

Today's Democracy Now broadcast features the former intelligence officer, William Arkin. He writes/blogs for the Washington Post under the title Early Warning. He talks and blogs about the use of Department of Defense intelligence apparati to surveil peace activists and war resistors in the United States. This does not come as a surprise to me. However, it violates the basic function of a standing army and drives our society closer to the year 1984. Arkin makes the point that the United States itself, as a territory, is a battleground in the war on terror and "we are the potential enemy."

Hawai'i Ultimate

2005-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

This is not the most seamless connection. But, it is an interesting introduction to my favorite sport and has scenes of Hawai'i which are particularly intoxicating as I sit here in southern Wisconsin loving the sub-freezing weather. Many video introductions to the sport (especially those sanctioned by the UPA) focus on the sport as an athletic competition. This video seems to approach Ultimate as a fuller cultural form; an approach I appreciate. Enjoy if you have uber-broadband.

Snowbound, Walking

2005-12-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Madison snows heavily Saturday and I walked.

There were some rumblings of an excursion to the south side (via the car/coffin), and that was eventually scrapped because the coffin aspect of the car emerged with greater prominence as the evening wore on and the snow accumulated.

Instead, I went for a walk. This was not the kind of walk without destination. This was not the kind of walk for walking's sake. This was a travel, a journey, a quest across the Isthmus to the east side from where I live downtown to meet and greet (an activity Madisonians are oddly prone to in blizzards.

The walk was a purposive spatial flow contained by the fluff and comfort of a blizzard. The containment of the snow storm has been perplexing me since that Saturday night. Somehow, in sub-freezing temperatures, the most compelling way to travel was by foot. The snow did that thing where it falls and enchants my mind with each descending inch as it lightly and then convincingly alights the ground and merges with previous generations of flakes.

The visual field of the snowstorm was luscious. It engendered the feeling of a hug wrapping its long wintering arms around me. It was not just the snow, though. It is only in tandem with my human presence, bundled warmly and dryly against the snow but also with the snow that I was comforted by the snow. The embrace of the blizzard was in the relationship of my loving mind, mystified by beauty, and the mass of the snowfall surrounding me completely.

The snow not only demanded a stop to my machine mediated movement, it called me out of my home into it to be within its oceanic density.

New Shameless Plug for Stuff via Capital Machine

2005-11-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

I have dumped Amazon for Froogle. simply search under my name, one word, at gmail dot com. I will add more of my worldly desires later.

I smile largely, ironically, deeply.

Running in Retreat

2005-11-23T16:27:00.000-08:00

Dan Raa poses a good question on November 22: is retreat running away?

By retreat he means meditative retreat: the kind that where you sit by yourself most of the day doing an internal practice. Sometimes that practice is simply concentration, sometimes it is analytical thinking about one's existential status, and sometimes it is devotional intention towards a deity in preparation for analysis. There is a lot you can do just sitting. Actually the phrase "just sitting" is more of a Zen concept in which one tries to simply be. Zen practitioners will sit and do this, or just sit, while on retreat. Dan, however, is talking about Tibetan style practice that is often quite different. When he mentions the mala, I think he is speaking of mantra recitation: devotional practice oriented around a particular deity who is resident in one's own teacher that has the added effect of developing concentration.

Point being: retreat in this sense is a retreat from the mundane concerns of life that necessarily draw one's attention into a social sphere. Taking care of business is consuming of time and attention as well as intention. Westerner often think that meditation retreat is escape and hiding from the ills and concerns of everyday life. In a conventional sense, they are right. However, from the perspective of the practitioner, sitting still to do one's mantras and practice can be something more deeply concerned with the welfare of the world than shouting protests on the street corner.

I have always shyed from public protest. I have certainly participated in them from time to time, but they often felt (both in practice and in my own reflections upon them) impotent. Social confrontation like protest does not get to the root of the world's problems. I think that if humanity is to "get better" (implicit morality), we must transform our intention. If we organize people and change social policy, we can make the world a better, homier, comfier place. But, the fact is that in organizing societies, someone will always be on the losing end of the stick. Even if they are the oppressor and, by all Marxist thinking, deserve a forced diminution in living standard, they will still be forced upon and will suffer by it.

If people transform from the inside out, their intention to do good can be the force of good in the world. If people are transformed from the outside, where their actions are made to fit a large vision of society, the individuality that drives moderns will be squashed.

Hmm... I am not sure I have been clear, but don't blame me too much: I am stuck in O'Hare limbo hotel bar and have to go get Nils from the jaws of the capital beast.

Peace, comments, and thanksgiving.

Oh, I forgot about the running part, I will get back to that.

Dark at 4:30

2005-11-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

A week has passed since I have posted last. I have been writing a lot, but not on this blog. Mostly, I have been writing about Jurgen Habermas. Incidentally, Habermas did his Habilitation at the University of Marburg: the alma mater of my friend Nils. Nils is coming to visit Wisconsin on Wednesday for a week. I am very excited. It is good that he is from northern Germany, because the sun sets here around 4:30pm, if not earlier. I wonder if the cold will come back, though, because as dark as Germany can get, the depths of Wisconsin winter are far more frigid than Germany's long nighted season.

I don't have any particular insights this evening (at least none that I have the time to inscribe here). I helped lead a Buddhist meditation node at church this morning. My friend Dan helped by leading a classic metta meditation. It was very nice.

Oh, in the spirit of interactivity, I would like to open a discussion on the wonders and problems of potlucks. In Madison, especially in the winter, they take on a dominant role among modes of socializing, especially on the east side.

So, the question is: what do you think of potlucks? How often do you go to potlucks? What dish do you bring or would you bring? Can you describe a particularly remarkable potluck? Has anyone had a bad potluck experience?

If you haven't commented before, here is your chance to engage. It's easy, fun, and somewhat rewarding.

On Suffering

2005-11-14T11:48:00.000-08:00

In response to kbryna's post and commenters I do not agree with. The post is entitled "crying, notsleeping."

Malpractice? Don't make me ralph.

I think that is a very good question. It asks kbryna to look at the possibility that pathology may rule her life for the rest of her life. It fact, I think it is pretty certain that for as long as she (and, for that matter, all of us) lives she and we are going to be constantly embodied. We are going to be flesh that is both physical and biological; flesh over which we do not have full control.

There are wonderful things to that embodiment upon which kbryna is often remarking. However, it mostly means that we will forever be dealing with suffering of the body and of the mind stuck in the body that, in large part, is driven by pathological emotions anyway.

Indistinct from that, there we are. We are messy, ugly, bags of puss. We are also passionate lovers, inspired thinkers, creative writers, and transcendent singers. Go figure.

I am not a therapist for sure, but I do think about this very thing a lot and I feel it is deeply liberating to confront oneself with the nasty truth: we suffer. A lot. All the time. And it is not going to end until we do something about it because suffering is a condition of the liminal space, the betweeness in which we exist as humans. We are gods and animals all wrapped into one and it sucks, it is confusing, and it is amazing.

The way to end suffering, I think, is to step away from our liminal existence. We will not escape it, but there is something about the leading motion.

We can step deeper into our animal bodies as most choose to do: living in desire, anger, ignorance, and other animalistic pathologies. As animals, we will chase around the food, the fuck, and the kill. We will react constantly to things that excite our attraction and elicit our fear or anger. We will claw our way to the delicious, the lusty, and the shiny. We will bristle with fear and disgust when confronted with the nasty and we will ignite in anger at that which threatens us.

Or, we can step higher into our divine bodies by choosing observation instead of reaction, peace instead of riotous emotion, and compassion instead of fear. In pursuit of spirit, transcendence, the good, or just the better we can find ourselves lighter, happier, freer, or just less afflicted.

The ideals seem lofty and may be unattainable. I am more interested in the direction, because I am drawn in that way. I do not find comfort there. I do find some flavor of peace, though. It is not constant or monolithic, but I not only taste it, I believe in it. The high road is not easy, but it is necessary; necessary if we are going to go anywhere and not self destruct at the hands of a filthy (read: toxic) environment, fragmented psyche, or cannabalistic society. These are all real threats that are flowering broadly in the soil we have spread over the seeds we have planted.

"What if you felt this way for the rest of your life?" (deeply sad, addicted, afflicted, oppressed) You could, you may, and in some way, you will. If it isn't your choice, it is nobody's and, frankly, the choice will simply not be made: the way of the animal.

If it is your choice, then you can do what you will in the place where you are. A choice can be made: the way of the god (read: human).

I love you k.

Why the Poor Riot or Don't

2005-11-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

This is a link to the Luebkenator's blog in which he suggests that 'Merika (Bushism) ain't that bad because the Parisians have race riots too.
I respond below.

Once Upon a Time in the East: Nameless

Not enough on that! The reason that a police killing of two kids sparked two weeks of firey riots in Parisian suburbs is not that they have greater disparity of wealth, but because police killings are rarer there.

If white cops shoot black kids in the US...well, it happens every week, doesn't it? Nobody notices that because the police state is farther along in this country.

Surely France has their own racial and class problems to deal with. They are not doing a very good job with the riots. However, I think that civil society is much healthier in France where riots break out over the killing of children. In our country, we watch cops shoot black kids for entertainment on TV.

Obviously, violence is not the answer. A truly healthy civil society engages in public debate. It considers multiple, reasoned view points before figuring out, through representative or direct means, what to do. However, I think that a group of underrepresented people of liminal political and economic potency demonstrate a healthier civil society in general by taking to the streets. What do people do to resist in our country? More interestingly: who resists? The poor and disempowered often don't have the time or energy or leisure or educational foundation to resist effectively. The poor are too busy working a job a Wal-Mart before going to their second job wherever Manpower wants them to clean the floors. The people who have time to resist are less effected by The Man and aren't very good at the resistance they do.

Perhaps I have overextended here. I think of the Rodney King riots in California as being similar to the Parisian riots. LAPD put the smackdown a lot quicker, though. Additionally, there are poor people's movements that are doing great work in this country. See the CIW's work in organizing farm workers in south Florida and the Strategy Center's work in organizing a bus rider's union in SoCal.

Thoughts anyone? What is the current state of resistance in the US? Would race or class based rioting last nearly as long in the US as in the case of Parisian suburbs? What is the difference? Does anyone have any specific knowledge about French or other European police states and their ability or will to oppress? Anecdotal evidence is the most appropriate for the blogosphere, I think, so I would like to hear a story or two, if anyone has any to offer.

Blazing Splendor

2005-11-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

Blazing-Splendor - The Memoirs of the Dzogchen Yogi Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche I am blogging this mostly for my own reference. I am holding a blogged correspondence with the author of this blog concerning a ritual text I am using for my thesis.

Welcome to the wild world of Kagyu/Nyingma blended Tibetan style Buddhism.

Padmasambhava to Trisong Detsen upon his arrival in Tibet

2005-11-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

And you, king of barbarian Tibet,
King of the country without virtue,
Uncouth men and ogres surround you.
You rely upon famine’s serfs,
And neither joy nor good humor are yours.
As for your queens, they are raksasi in human shape.
Beautiful purple ghouls surround them,
Sandalwood, turquoise, and gold adorn them;
But they have not hearts and no minds.
You are king, your lungs swell.
Great is your power, your liver is well-satisfied.
Scepter in hand and haughty, you stand high.
But I, sire, will not bow down before you.
And yet, in accordance with my conjoined vows,
Having come to the heart of Tibet, here I stay.
Great king, witness, have I come?

lettuce prey four whirled peas

2005-11-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

lettuce prey four whirled peas A blog of aphorisms and photos. good ones.

Science Fiction Trailhead: 4 Chuckles

2005-10-31T23:40:00.000-08:00

In an alternate universe, one with sharp cheddar cheese that costs one dollar per pound, there is a small city on a small lake with small waves. Those small waves often entrap the visual sensory organs of a small species called....uh....Zorons. Zorons seem to love the methodical and ever shifting waves of lakes. Especially small ones. The smaller the wave, and the lake, for that matter, the more Zorons' visual sensory organs are massaged into easy pacification.

Pacification for Zorons, however, is more like what we would call dancing. The more calm and steady a Zoron's mind becomes, the more her feet can't avoid tapping. The tapping grows calmer and more excited until the Zoron is gyrating her hips rhythmically (and sometimes arhythmically) to the beat of the pacifying waves.

On this particularly wavey day, a particular Zoron named Katchub is gyrating with a special sauce of calm wave induced gyration. His hips are swinging and his mind is falling deeper into a relaxation unknown to the species we know as 'Merican. Katchub, you see, is looking straight into the miniscule depths of Lake Minnehooter and is just tickled chillaxed. He giggles with profound calm as his hips move more excitedly.

Halloween: Post

2005-10-31T23:26:00.000-08:00

Uh, so I missed this part. The part with the pepper spray and stuff. I went to bed at what I thought was 2:30, right when the poop was supposed to hit the fan. But, in actuality, it was only 1:30, I think. So, I missed the good stuff.

What I did see, however, indicated to me that there was not going to be major police action. The police were using interesting new tactics with horses riding swiftly through crowds of people in order to constantly maintain space (moving space, at that) in a crowd that would otherwise have been so tight, one would shuffle more than walk.

Oddly, a cop is shining his spot through the back window of a fly he caught in his web of detection. This is happening right below my office window on Langdon street.

My Spatial Flows

2005-10-30T12:33:00.000-08:00

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Africa and South America and that place in the East, you know, the one in the middle.

Halloween

2005-10-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

Excuse my absence. I have been writing my thesis. I am going to try to write a few shorter blog posts in the interest of writing more frequently and probably with less depth. Chuckles suggested that he would read the blog when I started writing satirical Sci-Fi. Any thoughts on that?

This post is a note on the celebration cum carnival cum melee that is Halloween in Madison. I will continue my tradition of going to State Street at around 2AM to witness the systematic enactment of coercive force by the state on the mob. It is a classic moment where the drunks are too drunk. Both the revelers on alcohol and mischief and the police on power and their spiffy riot outfits.

Last year I was surprised to see that the tactics used by the police were to entrap those refusing to leave by surrounding them and limiting their ability to escape. I would expect that since the point is dispersal that they would try to start in the middle and push out. But, hey, I am just a silly pacifist. What would I know about coercive force?

In the interest of interactivity, I pose a question: What is the role of coercive force in the state, in society, and in culture? And, more interestingly, what experience have you had with coercive force? Any heads knocked out there? Tear gas?

I will certainly taste a bit of that during my witnessing mission this weekend. Wish me luck.

Containers 7: Music 2

2005-10-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

Music: Michael Franti's Love Kamikaze.

(Reflexive Preface: The numbering system is getting out of hand, no? I wonder at the proliferation of numbers and the flattening effect of naming things in broad categories with numbers. It is almost as if I am indexing this blog as I go along. I also wonder if the material may not be consistent enough to justify such an index.)

I saw Michael Franti last night at his stop here in Madison at the Union Theatre on Lake Mendota. The tour is called I Know I'm Not Alone. He is touring with his sound guy, Versace, in a minivan around the country (simply the midwest on this leg, I believe). At our show, he came out and introduced his film, I believe by the same name, showed the film, did a Q&A, and then played a solo acoustic set.

The whole thing was stunning. I should again preface this by saying that prior to this show, I considered Franti (Or, is it Michael, having met him?) a spiritual leader in a broader social sense and a spiritual guide and friend in a personal sense. Yes, the music is that powerful. If I can figure out how to put a podcasted song of his up here, I will.

The film is about a trip he took last year to Baghdad and Gaza. He explains it as if it were this intentionally simplistic Kane like wandering through the streets of Baghdad strumming his guitar. Indeed, he did play everywhere. However, he admits to a lot of negotiating access and avoiding danger. The most powerful theme of the film is the constant use of smiles, kisses, and music to be present with people. He is over six feet tall with long dreads, so he looks a little wacky, especially in an Iraqi context. With that added to the silly persistence with which he played his guitar and sang his songs, he seemed to be a powerful presence in a powerless place.

The Q&A was good, very good. Barefooted, smiling, and a little tired, he came out to speak with us for a while (it may have approached an hour). He was grounded and full in his thinking and articulate in his answers. The discussion ranged from the content of the film to world culture and back to the details of making the film. I asked a question about the ease of going to Baghdad. Franti replied that it was easier to go to Baghdad than it is to go to Canada.

When the answered questions were done, or when Franti decided to start playing, the music began. Initially, I was concerned that the container of a man, his guitar, and a mic'ed box under his foot would not hold the same revolutionary flavor that the produced music I listen to does. He started off soft and lyrical. I thought, "oh, Bob Dylan style. Well, that's fine." Soon he was rocking out though. At first I was stunned by the power of the bass on his electric-acoustic guitar. Then I realized that the mic'ed box under his foot was a kind of bass drum. It was only a small wooden box, but it shook the room with its basic beat.

He invited everyone down to the front to dance and many did including myself and the friend I had brought with me. The music became frenetic at points and I was jumping higher than I thought possible. I later realized that we were standing on a suspended floor (only wood) and so it served as a trampoline. What fun! Anyway, at the time, I thought it was transcendental inspiration that sent me so high. The dancing became more intense and I was up there, in the music, in the air, in my heart.

That is usually where I feel Franti's music: in my heart. The musical container in which his words encode some mysterious meaning blends with the bodily container of my physical form. The music stirs in my chest. Is it literally related to the organ called heart? I don't know. I suppose it could be. The heart beats and so does Franti's music. I can only imagine that there is some possible consonance between the two; especially since the former is so fundamental to my body and the latter was so overwhelmingly environmental.

The metaphorical heart, however, the heart of the chakra system or the heart called thugs in Tibetan which refers to the mind itself located in the chest is surely where I receive the transmission of revolutionary spirit from Franti. Either way, I feel it. The music's Hyundai-like container ships me feeling, emotion, knowledge, intention, and energy via Shanghai or Long Beach and delivers it to the door of my chest where I hungrily devour it, my rib cage opening wide to consume the tender flesh.

The final moment of containment I would like to mention is Franti's use of "interpretive dancers" at his show. I do not know if he uses them frequently. I imagine that he does it often and that Madison was not unique that Wednesday night. In preface to a song, he asked if there were any interpretive dancers in the house. I thought, "Oh, god, there must be a dozen such folks in this room. It is both a Franti concert and Madison. Come on." But alas there was only one hand raised: a friend of mine from Yoga Teacher Training who's presence I had not noticed. She climbed up on stage and was asked to pronounce her name. She did. Franti made another call out for dancers. I was shocked. No other hands raised in a room full of what I had assumed to be a mass of extroverted, music grooving Madisonians.

He turned and looked at me. I was about five people deep in the crowd on the dance floor. He pointed to me and said, "you." I did the classic "who me, not me" look around. Then I did the classic hand to the chest, question, "me?" He said, "Yes, you, come on up here."

I did not hesitate. That moment felt like a deep exhale as I realized that all the years of dancing without knowing if it was good, bad, or crazy were erased. None of those words meant anything in that moment and may not mean anything to me ever again as they might apply to the dance I dance. Whether or not he intended it, I felt seen, I felt noticed, I felt called.

Michael then proceeded to pour his music into me. He played more than his guitar, he sang more than his song. He played me, he sang me. I danced. I contained his music.

Then, I got a kiss.

Containers 6: Hyperactivity

2005-10-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

I am over-extended. Sometimes it seems like a disease. It is certainly disease. This past weekend, however, felt wonderfully hyperactive. I packed my schedule full of stuff, but a good part of that stuff was truly calm. On Friday night, I drove to Chicago. Initially, it was a pleasant drive. I took a dictophone with me and talked to myself about my thesis. That was very nice. Then, the reality of car culture set in as I approached the Des Plaines oasis. From this point, it is five miles to the O'Hare toll. It took me forty minutes. Death on Wheels. After that, I started to get a bit anxious about arriving at the New College reunion I was on my way to. The party ran from five to eight. I arrived at 7:55. Mike (Herr undergraduate doctor father) received my hug and laughed as I ran out again. I was illegally parked and estimated I had 10 minutes until the machine swallowed up my car and spit it out in Schaumburg or some other sewer sluice for illegally parked cars.

The next day, I got up late and spent a long, slow day wandering around the south side of Chicago with two once-lost, now found friends from the idyllic days of Sarasota. The day was warm, the lake was energetic, and the stroll was slow. It was very nice. The day and social setting was low pressure in such a way that I found myself staring into the lake and settling into meditation for a bit.

Whether calm or anxiety-ridden, hyperactivity holds my life. It gives me a way to pour my overflowing energy into creation of something. Mostly I give that energy to relationship. I find the most rewarding way of doing, of working, and of creating goodness in the world is by connecting deeply with others. This draw is also entrapping. The beauty of connection is both expressive and demanding for me.

Motion is another way that hyperactivity holds my life. Because of the geographic arrangement of the other half of my relationships, I must move constantly. Motion is also both inspiring and constraining. The wonder of motion is first found in the initial draw of the destination. When I began my journey to Chicago, I was fulfilled by the novelty of the journey. That is not to say I have not gone to Chicago before. Rather, it is the side step out of daily routine and the resulting explosion of motion that excited me. Then, the closer (and later) I got to Chicago the discrepancy between intended and real timing as well as intended and real location began to undermine the pleasantry of travel. The closer I got to the heart of the beast (Chicago's affluent, lake endowed north side), the more distressing my motion became. I got lost. I drove in circles. I feared the urbanity of Chicago and its strict intolerance for bumpkin Wisconsinites like myself.

Hyperactivity gives me a pot into which to pour my energy which might otherwise do something else. Like create? destroy? hmm....I wonder now what else it would do.

Peace,

Containers 5: Subjectivity

2005-10-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

I initially wrote this as a comment in response to C's comment, but then I figured, it would serve better up here. Enjoy.

This blog is a representation of truth. It is a dirty, sad, inspired, joyous, partial, incomplete, and murky truth. It is my truth. Relativism is here, it is there, it pervades everywhere. The advantage of the blog, in comparison to academic writing, is that there is no expectation that I represent anything but myself, as ephemeral as it may be.

I think that this kind of writing and the proliferation of blogging, in general, is an entree into a subjective dimension of reality that multiplies the layers of objective reality itself. The presence of subjectivity in our minds and therefore in our bodies, located in space, is an objective presence. Subjectivity is a quality of our bodily presence in the world. Subjectivity is objectively present in the world.

Now, this whole conversation depends on a strict subjective/objective split which I do not fully accept.

My point is to say that an individual's speech acts, her expression and social communication, contributes to the public sphere and becomes a common reality. That common reality, a thing in-itself, refers back to a subjective disposition that was expressed by an individual and yet somehow sings to another's sympathy.

This is why I love the humanities: because it is an attempt to understand the speech of others in their own times and in mine. It is both the cry of another subject and the echo of my own.

Buddhist Space on the Go

2005-10-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Music: A Crime to be Broke in America by Spearhead

I just had a conversation with my friend D who lives in Boston and recently got an Americorp position at a Refuge resettlement NGO. He and I met in Madison, WI on our primary adventure in the bubble of the isthmus. We were there in preparation for a larger adventure to the Himalaya to live, study, and wonder for an academic year in Nepal.

We initially lived in an area of Kathmandu called Bouddha. Yes, it is a word related to Buddha. It is the location of an enormous Buddhist stupa of ancient date. We often had a conversation that considered the role of the stupa in the neighborhood, the city, and the country. In fact, because we were thinking mainly about the situation of Tibetan refugees, we thought in regional terms as well. The connection there is that Bouddha was the home for many Tibetans, many of whom were first or second generation refugees. I think Bouddha represents an instance of a large network of Buddhist transportation of Buddhist space. In ways, it is also a transportation of Tibetan cultural spaces.

The reason I say that spaces can be transported is that there are senses of space that move with Tibetan refugees. Because Tibetan and Buddhist perceptions and experiences of space moved from Tibet to Nepal, the spaces themselves moved from place to place. They were in place in Tibet in a very deeply rooted and historical way. Buddhist culture had etched itself in the landscape in very direct ways. In some ways the entire plateau had been metaphorically subjugated: the demoness of Tibet was pinned down to the earth. Her wildly animistic body had to subdued by the civilizing and nationalizing force of Buddhism. The missionaries thought that the wildness of Tibet would be better under the foot of Buddhism. Tibet was subjugated such that it would be a place that would constrain and enable social and individual practices. The very landscape and conceptual tags it wore were reoriented so that Buddhism was communicated via relationships with nature, landscape, and environment in the most remote as well as the most urban places. These places were certainly encrusted on the surface of the earth, but they were also understood and internalized as conceptual tags. The world, in large part, looked like the arrangement of the tags on the landscape.

This vision is a worldview that does not change immediately with the transference of its people to another world. In the case of Tibetan refugees in Nepal, the move is very close, but extremely difficult. The highest mountain range in the world stands between Tibet and Nepal. Refugees, who are still leaving Tibet today, face high winds, cold temperatures, treacherous trails, and violent border guards in their exodus from the Tibetan plateau. When they arrive they are funneled through an underground railroad which is not always underground. The refugee trail was opened in 1959 when the Tibetan state escaped with the Dalai Lama. In fact, the routes between Tibet and India and Tibet and Nepal have been traveled for centuries. It was then that a significant block of the Buddhist space was transported from Tibetan places to Nepali, Indian, and other places. Many of Tibet's religious thinkers, practitioners, and leaders left Tibet in 1959. Some them arrived in Kathmadu and settled outside of town near the stupa of Bouddha. Because they brought a lot of physical, golden, and cultural capital with them, they were able to recreate their Buddhist spaces in Nepali places. The recreated place is not the same as the original place, but it is another inscription of Buddhist space in a place. The spatiality of Tibetan society and, in some cases, the space of Tibetan individuals was transported from an inscribed place to another place at which the power (via capital) was capable of inscribing a largely religious cultural order upon a place.

Society and Individual Experience

2005-10-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

N,

In response to your notes on what NeoHumanistic Geography might look like, I post to the blogosphere.

In particular, I would like to address the role of society in an individual's experience. More specifically, I would like to detail the way in which social structures can serve as a window into the experience of an individual.

Social constructionism (the notion that social relations a la Marx's modes of production) steps too far in its claim that individual's situations are entirely socially constructed. This idea is already fading. However, the idea that individuals are profoundly effect by their social context is an important insight that should not be thrown out.

In fact, because of the formative influence of society on the individual, I think that it is possible to gain some understanding of the experience of individuals by examining their social situation. If social context (the same applies to other structures, I believe) shapes experience, then observation of the mechanisms of influence should give us a flavor of the experience of that structure and the experience of other phenomena that is shaped by that structural influence.

In the case of gender and ignoring naturalistic arguments for the moment, we understand that socially constructed or, at least, maintained norms hand down an understanding of gender roles to the individual. Those roles are not of static constitution nor are they homogeneous. However, they are present in some form. Whatever the instance of that form, the individual must confront (or not) their own understanding of gender as, to some degree, given by socially transmitted norms.

Such norms are differentiating at a stunning pace, and so cannot be addressed en masse. However, if we take the time to read specific structural influences, I think it is possible to unearth an aspect of individual experience therefrom.

Containers 4: Separation

2005-10-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that this blog may be too personal to have a direct link from my professional page. After worrying a bit about undermining my credibility, I began to think about the problem in terms of, you guessed it, containers. My website is a container for certain transmissions of information. It holds linguistic content in which I have encoded my thoughts, etc. That container has certain rules about who can put things in it and who can take things out. Basically, I can add all the fluid I want and you, the dear reader, can look at that fluid. The website at the university is ostensibly for academic purposes: it holds a little bit of my work and persona as an academic out for the world to taste. Once it has more to it, it will do that work more thoroughly, I hope.

So, there is my "professional" website. (The prospect of speaking of academic work as professional is not uncontested, though I don't remember where right now.) People who do not know anything about me go to that website with the intention of taking a look at the work I do. A friend of mine who is in a similar "professional" position (a grad student) and whom, in this post, I will refer to as "C," suggested that linking this blog to such a narrowly intentional site may be too personal and thereby compromising of the project of the above mentioned website.

I didn't see anything wrong (obviously) with linking the blog to the site initially. After all, the link is labelled "reflection." It is not called, "academic writing" or "the crux of my academic work." C, I do not mean to harangue you, I am simply making a point. In fact, other links are specifically labeled, "Geography" and "History," employing double meaning. Each of them is an academic discipline in which I have interest and they each serve to reveal geographical and historical items.

So, I guess my initial response is: the website is not fully academic. As a container, it holds the trailheads, the links, to several different paths. A few of those are academic and a couple are not. Additionally, I have tried to write with a bit of removal in the posts on this blog. I am not writing a diary of my daily events, nor am I using the blog as psychotherapy; rather, I am trying to tease out a theme, containers, from the variety of my reflective projects (geography, yoga, UUism, and blogging itself).

However, I am open to criticism such as: this blog is too personal to be linked to your geography website. If you agree with our friend "C," please drop me a line in the comment section of this post or by email.

Containers 3: Music

2005-10-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

This morning at church, the service was all music. Our Director of Music Ministry put together the service and it was quite...containing. The hymns were artfully arranged in such a way that led the congregation from a beginning point of celebration through meditative sensibility and into a deep moment of emotional confrontation/transformation . That moment was held, it was contained, by a song of forgiving lyrics and mournful yet optimistic melody.

I cried. A lot.

It helped that I arrived at the service with a powerful intensity of anger the likes of which I have not felt in a few months. That, paired with a recent drought of tears, and I was helpless. Like a lost child, I sat there in community and yet completely alone. I faced the musical Harrapan vessel with no clue. I was drawn by the vacuum of the container. I could not do other than empty that dammed flood and there I did do.

The service continued with music to heal those opened wounds and a few hymns later there we were, done and processed. I was not done yet, though, and had to continue my emptying elsewhere. Luckily, a spirit friend was available to hold me for that. She made me laugh a lot too. She was fasting for her third day and when she does that she gets very light and giggly. It was perfect.

The container of the service wasn't quite enough. While I am comfortable crying in public, it was not a complete comfort and I didn't get to the bawling I felt was due. I didn't want to upstage the service.

Oh yeah, my thesis, here I come baby.

Blog Link: The Thirsty Theologian

2005-10-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

A rightist with good vocabulary and seemingly well versed in his Christianity. I give you: The Thirsty Theologian.

Writing

2005-10-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

Is something of a wonder to me. Sometimes words flow forth and pile themselves neatly at my fingertips. Soon, the pile grows top heavy and tilts slightly. Then, the world tumbles, Babble falls under its own weight into a pile of rubble. Diamond rings lie wrapped around doomed fingers, however, and excavation with a small trowel may uncover a golden moment in thought.

Virtual Globalization

2005-09-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that an online role-playing game has suffered an epidemic among its game characters. Each virtual character is controlled by a real player. An obvious metaphor for biological warfare, the God of Blood, Hakkar (cough, cough) is said to have projected "corrupted blood" upon his slayers. The disease then unexpectedly spread throughout the local server and then beyond leading to what has been called the game's first "global event."

The layers are still a bit too thick for me to completely penetrate, but there is a funny thing going on here. The completely virtual game is designed to represent a fantasy world of the D&D, Lord of the Rings, and SCA kind. While the virtual, networked, and digital nature of the game is a globalized phenomenon itself, it portrays itself as a nonglobal world. This world is a one that is implied to exist before the nation-state, before capitalism, amidst early feudalism. As adventurous as the characters of this game are, the disease of corrupted blood is said to be the first moment of globalization.

Does this game mimic historical developments? Does it provide a parallel and alternative history? How is it that games seem to replicate history?

Containers 2: Yoga

2005-09-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my inaugural post (is that what this is called?) that a conversation with my yoga teacher anchored itself in the notion of a container. The short story is that I need one in my spiritual life. In parallel fashion to my intellectual/academic life, my spiritual life needs some containment.

How does one contain spirit? Isn't it antithetical to spirit to be limited and enclosed? Aren't we aiming for some kind of union with the greater mystery? Aren't we a drop of liquid aching to merge soundly with oceanic vastness? Are these goals not contradictory to containment?

Perhaps we ultimately are chasing after that union. But, in the meantime, we are stuck here on earth in bodies of flesh, blood, bone, hormones, nerves, andrenal glands, and other messy parts. What I mean by that is not something as simple as mind-body dualism in which the mind simply rides about in its Cartesian carriage.

Rather, I mean that as bodies in the world, we are individuated in a terribly physical sense. There are very few ways in which we can merge bodily with another human and experience communion at its most basic and often profound level. That degree of intimate communication is what draws us to our partners in a way that grows and reaches progressively deeper into our being.

While we are stuck in bodies (a gross overstatement of the relationship of mentality and physicality) we mostly abide as individuals. There is a social aspect at work here that I am going to bracket out, for society is a collection of these bodies and provides a completely different set of challenges. Conceptions of the nature of bodies and individual instantiations of humanity are various around the world and for that we must allow a nuanced treatment of such differences. However, common to each human experience is the location of a consciousness at/in/on/by a body. The body is a unit and so is the awareness of that body.

The body is not enough to contain spirit and, indeed, to speak of the mind as contained by the body is too coarse an analysis. Some dismiss the notion of mind and spirit as merely epiphenomenal to the physicality of the brain. I am more inclined to agree with them then not. The physicality of the body serves as a "necessary, but not sufficient" condition for mentality. This means that the physical body must be present in order for their to be qualities of mind. It also claims that the physical body is not enough to give rise to the mind.

I half agree with this claim.

I would say further that the particular physicality of humanity is directly related to the presence of mind. And so the body is not the container of spirit, rather, I would say that it is the location of spirit.

The real containment for spirit life needs be of a spiritual order. In fact, it could very well be spiritual order itself. One way of pursuing spiritual order is practice of some kind. Practice (literally practicing being/doing in some way or another) grinds out a karmic rut that stands opposed and yet embedded in our mundane, unreflective lives. Practice can be a container in which we can settle our spiritual uncertainty and questioning. The questions do not go away, however, with practice we can develop a safe means of exploring the wavering ways of spirit.

Another container for spiritual life is a goal. Goal can mean a few things. Primary among these are two meanings.
1. Goal as end point towards which we aim
2. Goal as object or focus of practice
These meanings are not coextensive nor are they mutually exclusive.

I will explore goals as containers in a later entry.

May all beings be happy, May all beings be free.

Marx, Marriage, and the Private Sphere.

2005-09-21T01:26:00.000-07:00

In reading Jurgen Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, I came across a quote each from Engels and Marx. Both are to the effect: communism would eliminate marriage as the basis of the family. Moreover, having dropped the direct link between a loving, one-on-one relationship and a larger social unit, the family, marriage could be truly private. By truly private, they mean it would not be legislated and regulated by the state.

The pieces are Engels's "Principles of Communism" and Marx's "On a Proposed Divorce Law."

Implicit to the context in which I found these quotes (I have not yet read either article) is that the family unit is legislated because it is tied up in the public sphere because it is related to the ownership of property, dependence of wife on husband, and dependence of children on both.

I found this note to be especially relevant considering my state's current consideration of a marriage amendment. The notion that it is not enough to positively legislate relationships by legalizing marriage is nuts enough, itself. Additionally, Wisconsin's assembly feels drawn to negatively legislate (to exclude from legality) relationships previously unconsidered by the law: homosexual handfasting.

I wonder if Marx and Engels would have valorized the current unnamed status of gay love as truly private, while dismissing straight marriages as overly public by virtue of their legality.

I can't help but think how far away this is from public opinion (attack of the Habermasians) here in "the northwoods." Considering the works of Marx and Engels relevant to a discussion of gay marriage in a state that, without reasonable intervention, will ban love may make this blog one weak candle in a dark, dark night.

Ah, alienation...

The University Club

2005-09-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Herr Professor Doctor Father Yi-Fu Tuan took me to lunch today at the University Club on library mall. It was a delicious meal during which the flesh of many a being moistened and eventually yielded to the persistent mastication of two mouths and two minds.

Yi-Fu (as I address him, appropriately or not) commented on containers. He mentioned that in our professional, nay academic, sphere we speak of frames, framing, and reframing when we want to think of containers. Our ideas must be framed, they must be shaped in order to provide some kind of linearity to the argumentation, discussion, or story. Without a frame we could not be understood by our readers. Without a frame, he said, our thinking would shoot out into the world in a disorganized shower.

This is exactly how I have been feeling in my spiritual and intellectual lives.

Can I really tell the two lives apart?

So, containers are still going on in my mind and conversation. The containment seems to be something of a trap. It is an encoding of raw thought, feeling, and experience into disciplined, legible work. The container and the frame enslave the beauty of primary experience to serve the needs of communication. While some claim that language shapes experience, I cannot help but object that experience is often inexpressible. Such an objection does not prove, but seems to indicate, that language is not fully determining of experience. Language, then, is one of the containers I confront these days. How do I write about an idea? How shall I express this thought?

I must contain them in language. The container of language encodes the thought in such a way that it can be decoded by others in the name of understanding, sympathy, and society.

Beyond language, containment of ideas, especially in academic work, must incorporate into its walls the bricks of other ideas. It is not enough to simply write the ideas into words and sentences. I must also write them into the wall. I must sweeten the edges (perhaps only the edges) of my brick-idea with a framing complementary to its adjacent bricks. Beyond that, the idea must also reference a discipline, or in my case, several disciplines. Thus the edges of the idea must not only align with adjacent thinking, but must also weave in the threads dominant in that neighborhood of intellectual life.

The container thickens beyond the thin world of grammar and meaning: it must engage with pre-existing knowledge sets.

The container thickens. If you begin to feel claustrophobic, look out the window at the fluffy clouds.

The Isthmus

2005-09-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Isthmus. This is the rare landform that I call home. It is a strip of land between two bodies of water. In this case, they are Lake Mendota to the northwest and Lake Monona to the southeast. It is a common misperception in Madison, especially among those new to town, that the isthmus runs East-West. This is roughly true and perpetuated by the cultural distinctions drawn by locals along those line. However, the isthmus runs southwest to northeast. This makes it possible for there to be a south side of town (associated and closer to the west side) and a north side of town (associated and closer to the east side). This photo is incomplete and I will search for another one. It focuses particularly on the Capitol and the University. These two institutions dominate life in Madison for better and for worse. The isthmus proper runs further into the northeast corner of this photo and beyond. Strictly speaking, the University is not on the isthmus, but just off to the west side of it. Ironically, the most visible landmark of the University is the horseshoe shaped football stadium that marks the southwest corner of campus. The rest of campus is north and east of it running along Lake Mendota.

Containers

2005-09-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

Containers have come up frequently in my social circulation recently. My minister at church speaks of containers everytime he does a service. He says that those doing the worship service create a container that holds the congregants in what we hope is an hour of spiritual reflection, growth, or transformation. Thus the preacher, the musician, and the worship associate are all charged with being present in a very particular and intentional way.

In the case of a religious service at our UU church, a container holds and bounds very sensitive modes of human being. The container of the service is created by the shut doors of the room, the tone of voice in which the sermon is delivered, the meaning of those words, the shape of the musical selections among other issues. In a way, the container we create is deep placemaking that not only considers the material presence of the building and the people therein, but also the spiritual presence of the parishioners. Perhaps more pointedly, the container we create is the spiritual analog for the physical plant of the church. The building holds bodies and the container of the service holds the spirit there with the bodies.

I suppose this thesis begs the question of mind-body dualism. I am not sure what to do with that. I think of it in Mahayana terms: two levels of truth. The conventional truth of the situation is that there are drastically different ways of being, two of which are mentally and physically. Ultimately, they are of one taste, so to speak.

Anyway, containers: they are everywhere and they serve to ground, bound, focus, embody, and imprison the world of spirit. They are a fact of human, embodied life and we are stuck with them, as painful and cumbersome as they may be.

The other moment at which the notion of containers inserted itself into my life was during a conversation with my yoga teacher. This mention was more concerned with an individual's, my individual, presence as a spiritual practitioner. I will come back to that later.

Peace,

Containers Boundless

Pirates! and: What?

Empathy

Rocky Run: Spring in Pause

Going back to Cali

Revolution

Lost and Now Found.

More Ultimate Video

It's been a month.

I Love Weird Al

Got Accent?

Cramps

And the Slope gets Slippier

V for Vendetta

Wisco

Outta Here

Oh My Buddha!

Transportative Radicality.

Yoga, Pain, and Death

Sick and Lost Day

Shit Eating Grin

On Love

Transition: Rocks to Water

An Ode to the Border (China's Tibet/Nepal)

Good Morning Lhasa

Good Morning Lhasa

Hmm.

Containment and Morality

Containment and Morality

Wonderment

New Blog for the Summer

More Ultimate Video

No Gods

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women

Neat Ultimate Video

Intersubjectivity: Episode 2

Follow the Nepali Revolution

Sushirevue

Intersubjectivity: Episode 1

Judas was framed.

Wisconsinites: "Out of Iraq"

News Flash

View From (Second) Home

Pain: Killing a Dream

The Ides

Long Days, Weeks

Katrina Warning for Bush Substantiated by AP Video

Don Knotts

Olympic Partying

Class Containers

Offer a Pome to the Four Winds

Bedtime Story

Rocking the Microphone

In Better News

Backup? What Backup?

Storming

Irreverence and Comedy in LA

Home Away From Home

Zombie Defense

Sushi

Reactivated: Phone

Aversion

Averting Aversion

War: On Christmas

Help Chris Edit this Personal Statement

WORT Goes Global

Cell Phone: Lost

'Merica the Suspicious

Hawai'i Ultimate

Snowbound, Walking

New Shameless Plug for Stuff via Capital Machine

Running in Retreat

Dark at 4:30

On Suffering

Why the Poor Riot or Don't

Blazing Splendor

Padmasambhava to Trisong Detsen upon his arrival in Tibet

lettuce prey four whirled peas

Science Fiction Trailhead: 4 Chuckles

Halloween: Post