20 Years

Once upon a time there was a man in a village.

For twenty years he went into the mountains searching for gold. Everyone said he was crazy.

One day he discovered gold. He took the gold to a bank and exchanged it for money.

He bought some rope. He tied one end of the rope around his waist.

He tied the other end to the pile of money.

He ran through the village dragging the money.

Everyone said he was crazy.

He said, "For twenty years I've been chasing money and now money is chasing me."

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Kalapuya

The Kalapuya, a Pacific Northwest tribe speaking Penutian numbered 3,000 in 1780. They believed in nature guardian spirits and vision quests. Their shamans, amp a lak ya taught them how seeking, discovering and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing their song was essential in their community.

An ancestor shared a dream story.

“I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. I share a story of our people living here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In forests, rivers and mountains all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.

“I am grateful to welcome you here. You walked many paths of love to reach me. Some are narrow and smooth in places, wide and rocky in others. I am the soil under your feet. I feel your weight, balance, weakness and strength. I hear your heart beating as our ancestor pounds ceremonial drums. I feel the surging force of your breath fly through this forest. Wind accepts your breath. I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch and hear. I am the oak, fir and pine in your outer landscape. I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent hearing trees nudge each other, ‘Look, one has returned.’”

“I love the way you absorb the song of a brown thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet-throated song you hear without listening. Two night owls sing. Their music fills your ears with mystery and love.

“I am the warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time. I am the spider’s web dancing diamond points of light. I am the rough fragile texture of bark you remove before connecting axe edge with wood. You carry me through this forest. Your flame creates the fire of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the forest scent in your nostrils filling your lungs. It is sweet.

“I am cold rain and wet snow and hot sun and four seasons. I am the yellow, purple, red, blue, and orange flower from brown earth. I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect spirit energies. I hear with my eyes and see with my ears. I understand your love for the spirit power guardian.

“I am your ancestor speaking 300 languages from our long history. Now only 150 dialects remain. Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live.

“I say this so you will remember everything in this forest. I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Annapurna Range, Nepal

Economic Terrorism

The 1st International Beggar Conference convened in Toothpick, a wasteland near Bright Hope - a rusting rustic dream of exploratory ways and means with scientific cause and effect and logical rational certainty.

It was chaired by a distinguished group of Cambodian orphans.

NGO Fascists rented 12,000 orphans out to fake humanitarian organizations. Abandoned youth pleaded with ill-informed rich donors for marketing and branding money to feed international guilt and shame.

“Let’s eat,” said a fat banker moments before his yacht hit an iceberg in 2008.

“What you don’t see is fascinating,” said Zeynep, “like roots below the surface of appearances.”

“We have so much ice and they have so little,” said an Icelandic chess player attacking Death.

“Everyone comes to me. My patience is infinite,” said Death. “I make only one move and it’s always the correct one.”

Beggars, landmine victims, genocide survivors and sick and tired dehydrated dying starving neglected humans from 195 countries convened in sequestered committee rooms filled with suits, scholars, academics, UN personnel, CIA analysts, NGO profit-motivated scam reps, IMF bankers and plastic ornamental steering mechanisms.

“We agree to disagree,” said Rich Suit.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Wage Slave.

Orphans, beggars and children spoke about slave labor, hunger, exploitation, corruption, human trafficking, corrupt police states and the terrorism of economic poverty.

“Bad luck,” said a rich slave. “That’s a you problem, not a my problem.”

Children addressing global media held press conferences focusing jaundiced eyes on lenses, recorders and bleeding pens. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Sound bites sang starvation’s misery.

If it bleeds it leads.

Incoming! Bleeding hearts ran for cover.

Orphan motions for adjudication, arbitration, fairness, equality and equity were tabled for further deliberation and discussion nowadays.

The average monthly wage was $37 in a Bangladesh clothing factory.

750,000 Cambodian women making $61/month stitched garments for Korean export companies.

Give someone a sewing machine and with a little luck they’ll feed their family.

Let’s Eat.

Weaving A Life (V1)

Kandinsky

Fishtail Mountain, Annapurna Range, Nepal

Wassily Kandinsky, the painter, had the ability to see sound and hear color.

In 1911 he founded "The Blue Rider" school in Munich, taking abstract painting to another level. Magic.

Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction 1908-1922.

..."Synesthesia is a blend of the Greek words for together (syn) and sensation (aesthesis). The earliest recorded case comes from the Oxford academic and philosopher John Locke in 1690, who was bemused by "a studious blind man" claiming to experience the colour scarlet when he heard the sound of a trumpet."

..."If Kandinsky had a favourite colour, it must have been blue: "The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural… The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white."

..."Despite his theories that the universe was in thrall to supernatural vibrations, auras and "thought-forms", many of which came from arcane, quasi-religious movements such as theosophy, Kandinsky's belief in the emotional potential of art is still convincing today. Our response to his work should mirror our appreciation of music and should come from within, not from its likenesses to the visible world: "Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings."

Ice Man

Diamond Sutra

“So you should view this fleeting world –

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

– Diamond Sutra

Nepal