26 Rainbow Gatherings, 4 burns, 75 countries...


this arm... this leg... this eye...er...no wait, that was Steve Austin from 'The Bionic Man'...


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Dig this! I knew that Stevie had performed wit da Muppets, take a look at this great retro 70's sesame street episode, check out that kid in the red shirt...DYNOMITE!

Stevie Wonder 1972 (it was a good year...)

www.youtube.com/watch

Blips of thought come to me...make me laugh... some inexplicable passages...vingettes...bardos...

When I was at the Utah national rainbow gathering a couple years ago, I lost my bankcard. That was o.k. for a while I had some cash on me, and one never needs cash at a gathering anyways. But later on I started to feel the need.
I also got sick, a wired combo of fever, constipation and diarrhea, which only aggravated my hemorrhoids...
Having to shit like that and it burning too...
At one point we went cougar hot springs and it was just what my 'burning ring of fire' needed-
Jonny Cash folk songs and jokes aside.

I felt some anxiety, and wasnt sure when I would be pulling through, but at one stop along the rainbow caravan, a organic farm/community 'Buen Provecho'- my fever broke, the diarrhea dried up- I still felt week, but I could see the finish line coming- a great big organic home cooked meal on its way...
I watched amazing incredible well trained plow horses move through their paces and later on I rested up in a tree house when chores were called.
That trip ended up far better than it started...
But what inspired me to write was that feeling of joy, with being so sick and hungry, and knowing that great food was on its way...
So as they say "appetite is the greatest spice".
L
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Sometimes as I walk through various cities, the images start to blur...Georgetown starts to look a little like Quito Ecuador, Havanna Cuba, Recife Brazil... Although the boardwalk is safer than any of those countries, yet not near as exciting...
I remember swarms of teens 'making out' in Recife with the ocean waves for a background. Couples getting it on, hardely out of site along the Havanna malecon.
Somehow I cant imagine these things happening in safe Georgetown...
I am enjoying the colonial buildings- pretty groovy!
L
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Ah' memories of Cuba... I remember walking down the Malecon in Havana,
late at night amongst the tourists and the locals.
The Cubans were hassled by the cops for their I.D.-
I suppose to see whether they were from that district
(the Cuban government has a policy of sending those without permission back to their respective provinces).

I saw a man who just could not keep the funk beat in. I think it was Isley Brothers playing from a nearby building ((Cuba is just saturated with music))
- he was with a group of friends (the cops had cleared off) they wanted to walk and he could not...stop...dancing!
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When I was a child we were often victim to the sponteneous party syndrome (life with my mother). Beware, a party could happen at any moment.
Cuba often seemed to me a place were a party could happen at any moment- really isnt that what most folks would rather be doing- instead, a certain amount of work was required...

L


Some interactions and altercations, hard to explain

Passing through the afternoon street in La Union El Salvadore, passing the police station, with numerous silent women on one side of the street, numerous shirtless men in 'the cage' on the other. I'll never know if it was fear or angst of there husbands disapearing, perhaps seeing them for the last time... or confronting villans... speachless. Not a word, my wife and myself walked straight through them...

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I remember walking to around my Brazilian Servas host's compound Recife/Salvadore/Fortaleza I am not sure now... I remember seeing an old skinny black man sleeping on the narrow stoop, lying flat out like a plank- it seemed a strange sight to me in the full moon light. Something from the slaving era. I can only assume he was 'early' for work- not homeless.

Also the class distinction and 'proper' behavior of domestics. All these black women siting flat on the floor- they will have better circulation and flexibility...


I used to have this Roommate. He really hated to hear music in the house. At first It seemed like he hated everything, then I learned there were bands in particular that he hated more. The wails of anguish when I rediscovered 'Jethro Tull'...Trill that pipe Ian Anderson...
L

Coming over that hill...
I remember a big American summer rainbow gathering- I think it was Montana...
Everyone converging on main circle, coming over the hill- like a demented mob of new age soldiers- freak flag waving...
And then there was this couple- both double amputees- with artificial legs man! they could really stride, they had ski poles for balance- but the artificial legs- no disguising that incredible scene with a ohm circle of thousands and a cacophony of drums building in the background...
Oh' but it was the determined look on their faces...that I'll never forget....It looked like nothing was going to stop them!

L

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,
When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,
When I tell that I'm doing Fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go,

People asking questions lost in confusion,
Well I tell them there's no problem,
Only solutions,
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind,
I tell them there's no hurry...
I'm just sitting here doing time,

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go.

J. Lennon

...it wasn't optimism. It was the deep realization that, while the world was busy digging its grave, there was still time to enjoy life, to be merry and carefree, to work or not to work." -- Henry Miller.

What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion.
Henry Miller

So much ill has been caused in the world from mans simple inability to sit still... Henry David Thoreua

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” . . . I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions, like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects to “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.”
Jeffrey Eugenides


We have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing.
Audre Lorde


The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances; to choose one's own way.
Viktor Frankl

I've a strong impression our world is about to go under. Our political systems are deeply compromised and have no further uses. Our social behavior patterns, interior and exterior, have proved a fiasco. The tragic thing is, we neither can nor want, nor have the strength, to alter our course. It's too late for revolutions, and deep down inside ourselves we no longer even believe in their positive effects. Just around the corner an insect world is waiting — and one day it's going to roll over our ultra-individualized existence. Otherwise, I'm a respectable Social Democrat.
Ingmar Bergman

The ultimate destiny of the human spirit is a condition in which all identification with the . . . finite self will disappear. . . . As a minor dream vanishes completely on awakening, awareness will be eclipsed in the blazing light of total awareness. Some say, “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” Others say the metaphor would be more accurate if it pictured the ocean as entering the dewdrop itself.
Huston Smith

Our perception that we have “no time” is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture.
Margaret Visser

What does a man need — really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in, and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all — in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, and preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
Sterling Hayden

It is good to be born in a church, but it is bad to die there. It is good to be born a child, but bad to remain a child. Churches, ceremonies, symbols are good for children; but when the child is grown up, he must burst, either the church or himself. . . . The end of all religion is the realization of God.
Vivekananda

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. . . . There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Thomas Merton

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

'Men have forgotten this truth,' said the fox. 'But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The birds are molting. If only man could molt also — his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions.
James Allen

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings

Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says. “I am coming.”
Virgil

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. . . . I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.
Lillian Smith

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -Goebbels-

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Goering-