9 feb 06

Greetings O wise travelers of the ether...

Here we are settling into the aftermath of New Year fireworks, screaming tracers as students drag their young lives along cement caverns of hope. The Year of The Dog.

Listening to Coltrane, "Live at Birdland." Pure sweet jazz. No past, no future. Present.

Teachers returning from distant lands inquire, "Where did you go?" referring to the holidaze. Truth is option #1. The truth is powerful stuff. They aren't expecting it.

"We went to the northwestern area of Afghanistan and Pakistan with friends from SOGGY looking for a guy worth $25 million. He missed his dinner engagement and our drone missed him. 18 women and kids paid the price. Mercenary business is not everything it's cracked up to be. Bad food, terrible living conditions, poor visibility. But it beats bagging groceries down at the 5&10 or cleaning toilets."

"After that little fictitious adventure we returned to Kuwait to see friends, members of the al-Sabah family and pay our respects after the death of their uncle, the Emir. As you can imagine, everyone wanted control of the city-state and the in-fighting was more ferocious than an insurgency in Mesopotamia. You see, it's all about tribal position and power. Influence."

"Then," the story goes, "I returned to China and sat in a meditation cave for two weeks staring at a wall. I descended to hear people talk about their personal experience. Where they revealed their insights and new visions with clarity. Where they practiced love and kindness. I read their faces hearing joy in their voices."

Then I witnessed 15,000 students kissing their folks goodbye as blaring horns and traffic jams melted dreams and they poured into the campus dragging their belongings, new textbooks tied with twine and economy sized packages of toilet paper to dorms. Essential material for getting down to business.

Lantern Festival celebrations extends from the 11th through 14th. Streets will be blazing with red dancing glowing light in the wind. Delightful. Peace.