15 July 2006

Imaginings

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(John Lennon)

IRST OF ALL, THANKS to all of you who have been making "bookmark" links to BEYOND! Something raised our Google Page Rank awhile back, from zero to 5, overnight, and your bookmark links are the only possible explanation I can think of. When I say "overnight", I mean it literally: one day the PR was zero, next day it was 5.... I've never seen any such thing happen before! So, great thanks to all of you involved in that!!

AND APOLOGIES to Muhammad (The Prophet of Islam) and his followers, for a disparaging remark I made some time ago. My remark was based on something I had read in the Hadith (a collection of sayings and actions attributed to Muhammad). Since then, I've had the opportunity to question one of my Islamic friends about the subject, and have been told that the Hadith is not a reliable source of information! Told that many (if not most) Muslims pay it no attention.

They pay it no attention because, as my friend said, "There are thousands of hadiths and who knows which ones are real?" ... "It seems whenever someone needed to stress his point about an issue, he made up a relevant hadith to support him! There are hadith scholars and they try to choose the 'real' ones from the 'manufactured' ones, but the whole system is under the influence of the Arab tradition and values system so no one can say for sure which were the fake ones. What you quote as a hadith sounds sheer nonsense and I am sure anyone can find like ones among the great hadith volumes. I don't take them seriously, just disregard them."

I don't know why this came as such a surprise to me -- well, it was just because I knew so little about the Islamic religion. So I took it at face value. But I should have known, it would fit the same basic pattern as the other -isms: Judaism, Christism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, even Buddhism (though to a lesser extent), etc., etc....

Here's the pattern, as I see it:
Someone recognizes his/her connection with Reality to some degree. This perception may take the form of an image, or a series of images, or a huge long train of image-inings. These imaginings may come from anywhere. Surely they do represent some aspect of Reality; but the person leaps to attribute them to "God" or to one of God's angels.* Then, he/she moves the imaginings further yet from their source, by converting them to words -- in order to more easily remember them, and/or to communicate them to others.

* One exception to this is Buddhism; as far as I know, the Buddha never said a word about "God", had no belief in a "God", and merely talked about the most advantageous way for people to live their lives.

It's very interesting to note that Muhammad first attributed his imaginings to a deceiving jinni, and wanted nothing to do with them; only later was he convinced, by his wife Khadija, that they were the words of the angel Gabriel.

In the form of words, these imaginings are passed from person to person. This all but assures they will not remain the same. At some point the words are written down. Ostensibly, this is to keep them from changing; however, it doesn't seem to work that way. They become, instead, an easy target for all sorts of manipulations: things get removed, things get added, things get mistranslated; whole books appear and disappear, and their order gets shuffled like a deck of cards!

As if this were not enough, people come along and write commentaries on these manipulated imaginings -- ah, with the best of intentions, I'm sure! The intent is to make the original more understandable, to illuminate its subtleties, to explain what it was really trying to say.... And the result, in reality, is just to move the thing yet another step from whatever glimmer of Truth was originally present in it.

Then we have the people who make deliberate use of these things for their own purposes: to accumulate money and power from others. Religion becomes Big Business, and a very effective way of sending whole nations of young men to kill and die in wars (again, usually for the purpose of enriching a few individuals and corporations).

ANYWAY, I do apologize for taking that aforementioned Hadith as genuine, thereby attributing to Muhammad advice that he almost-surely did not give.

I searched the web for other clues to his character. I say "clues" because, like the stories in the Hadith, the web is rampant with mis-information, dis-information, and plenty of just plain craziness (and some of it convincingly packaged to appear as truth). The one thing I found that seemed most credible was a pleasant surprise to me, putting Muhammad in a favorable light and contradicting stories of him as a bloodthirsty sort. Here it is (from www.reference.com):

If this is accurate, it leaves, really, the blood of only 400 people on the hands of Muhammad -- 400 people, over the span of a military career that lasted 10 years. Quite impressive, actually, in terms of "humane warfare" (I know, that's an oxymoron in the first place -- but everything is relative!)....

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10 July 2006

Watching the Wheels

People say I'm crazy, doin' what I'm doin'
Well, they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin
When I say that I'm okay
Well, they look at me kind of strange
"Surely you're not happy now,
You no longer play the game"

People say I'm lazy, dreamin' my life away
Well, they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me
When I tell 'em that I'm doin' fine
Watchin' shadows on the wall
"Don't you miss the big time, boy?
You're no longer on the ball"

I'm just sittin' here watchin' 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....
I just had to let it go....
(John Lennon)

ORE THOUGHTS on the notion of "enlightenment" and/or "self-realization"....

Two of my friends are fans of Ramana Maharshi ... and yet one of them points out that Ramana himself said there is no such thing as a "realization event"; that, if there were to be a beginning of realization, there would also have to be an end of it; and that what is Real is ALWAYS here: if realization is something "new", it cannot be REAL!!

Another friend told me he was reading a certain book, on self-realization, published by a guy in 1947. He said the guy's family had continued to make his works available. I asked if there was a website, and he gave me the URL. I went to have a look at it. At first glance, it seemed the guy had written not only the book my friend was reading, but a zillion others -- and those haunting old words came floating through my mind: "The Tao that can be described is not the real Tao!" And also, if the guy really had managed to put some great cosmic secret into words, why would he need so many books to do it?

But then I saw that the one book probably did contain everything worthwhile. All the others were compilations, repackagings, from talks he had given in various places, and letters he had written. It seemed that either he or his family had repackaged just about every word the guy had ever written or spoken, in every imaginable permutation, to come up with the maximum number of products they could sell.

In addition to all the books, they even had a "Study Course", designed to be studied for 6 years! It was a spectacular-looking thing: a multitude of big, shiny, plastic-covered, loose-leaf binders -- and, inside each of them, a double-whammy: not only the guy's written words (each individual page of them encased in its own heavy-duty plastic sheath, no less!!), but a set of cassette tapes or audio CDs, of someone reading the written words! It was a beautiful thing, indeed. There were enough of these to last for 6 years, at the end of which time one would presumably be Enlightened!

Something about these things was so attractive, so seductive, that I reflexively began wondering if there were any way I could afford them (even though I had stopped, a few years before, my decades-long seeking of enlightenment in books!). Alas, I decided they were too expensive for me. I thought, instead of the Study Course, I might just get a copy of the guy's original book sometime, and read that.

Another thing I found interesting about the Study Course: though the author had died in 1964, he had supposedly created this Study Course and then hidden it in the family office; hidden it so well that no one found it for over 30 years!! Geeezzzzz, did they not clean the office for that long, or what??? : ^ )

Anyway, their patriarch had created this great product for them, and hidden it so well that they would not discover it until just the right moment, 30-plus years later (possibly the moment when sales of the original book just happened to be dipping sharply? -- I know, I'm a shameless cynic!). Anyway, there it was, this beautiful Study Course, and the family were promoting the heck out of it....

I got over my momentary attraction to it. By the next morning, it was out of my head completely. I was outside, in the back yard, crushing up lots of fallen, dried, fig leaves, mulching flower beds with them. I was thinking of nothing at all -- and suddenly a full-blown realization struck me! The image of that 6-year Study Course, all those shiny CDs and plastic-covered notebooks, and people subscribing to it, working-working their way through each laborious page of it, to reach "enlightenment" in just(!!!) 6 years. And the realization was this: they don't really WANT enlightenment, they've chosen the 6-year course precisely because it guarantees that they will be able to AVOID enlightenment for at least 6 more years, by distracting themselves with those shiny notebooks and CDs!!

Maybe what we all need, in order to realize our existing enlightenment, is the sure knowledge that we don't HAVE 6 years, or 6 minutes, or 6 milliseconds, to do anything! That we have to realize who we are RIGHT NOW. No time to think. Just do it.

Which brings to mind experiences like the one described by Rob Schultheis, which happened to him while mountain-climbing. By his own admission, though, that "enlightenment" was only temporary. In time, he went back to being his old, un-enlightened self.

MAYBE the very concept of Time is what keeps us from realizing who we are. As long as we think there is Time, we keep pushing things into the future. But, as everyone has noticed, we really do seem to have less Time than ever before. Less and less Time, every week, every day. Time seems to be speeding up. And a huge amount of attention has been given to the Mayan Calendar, which ENDS in the year 2012! Could it be that Time will keep accelerating, faster and faster, until it actually ceases to exist at that point? Isn't Time an illusion in the first place -- and could it be that the whole universe is conspiring to dis-illusion us of Time? Could it be that our dis-illusionment of Time coincides perfectly with (and may even be the mechanism of) our self-realization...?

Hey -- I don't know! I'm just asking....

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17 June 2006

Small World

Funny, you're a stranger who's come here
Come from another town
Funny, I'm a stranger myself here
Small world, isn't it?
(Stephen Sondheim, Gypsy)

HANKS TO the World Wide Web, the world of everyday people continues to become smaller and more intimately connected -- even as those in the world of officialdom (official-dumb?) continue their age-old posturing, creating boundaries, dividing-up territories and populations as if the world were a treasure map.

America and Iran are eyeball-to-eyeball nowadays, looking at each other ... and I've started meeting some Iranians, through my website. One thing that surprised me very much was learning that, even with the current saber-rattling between the 2 governments, the Iranian people on the street (seemingly the majority of them) still like Americans! They LIKE us, they LOVE us, they're hungry to connect with us!! And, like many of us, they are feeling imprisoned by their own government, and powerless to dismantle the governmental "tower of babble" that is trying to spell-out W-A-R for all of us.

Here in America, there are many respected and serious groups, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, who have issued statements opposing such militarism. And most Americans, clearly, don't want another war. So, what can we do about it, besides telling the government how we feel?

Anti-war rallies and protests are not the answer. It's not that they are ineffective; they are actually counter-effective! Using anger and protest to quell warlike sentiments is like trying to stop a fire by pouring gasoline on it. Peace, like anything else, has to start within us. We have to stop the little wars in our own lives. We have to BE at peace, we have to EXUDE peace to everything around us; we have to change the government by changing OURSELVES, from the inside out.

The internet is a great tool for helping us realize how alike we all are. Take a look at the photos below; meet our neighbors in Iran. As with us, the important things in their lives are few and simple: food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, love, health, work, peace....

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16 June 2006

VISUALS

LITTLE RESPITE from words ... thanks to 2 of my friends who are graphic artists, among other things.

One of them, Alyce Tartell, painted a picture that made quite a splash at the Scottsdale (Arizona) Center for the Arts. In a juried exhibit there, displaying the works of more than a hundred artists, Alyce received 2 awards -- Best of Show (2-D art) and First Place (Acrylic Painting) -- for Evening Swimmers. Here's what she said about the painting:

"This painting was unusual in that it was not a memory or dream, but rather derived from real life. I was walking in a park near my home, when I came upon a swim team practicing in the public pool. I thought the scene before me was very surreal, as I could only see arms and legs in the churning water. The swimmers were anonymous. I took a series of photographs, and used them as a reference while painting. I also had mystical feelings when I painted Evening Swimmers. Some of my other paintings caused me to struggle with technical difficulties. But Evening Swimmers seemed to have a voice that spoke to me, and told me where to put the brush."

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It apparently spoke not only to the judges in Scottdale, but to viewers at the exhibit, many of whom told Alyce that they especially liked the painting. Congratulations, Alyce!
(websites: www.tartellfineart.com and www.enjoydreams.com)

The other artist is a Canadian, originally from Panama: . Here are 3 pictures by her, which need no explanation....

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8 May 2006

Serendipity

It's a hard, it's a hard,
it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall....
(Bob Dylan)

O MANY THINGS coming together here.... More Dylan, yes. Hard rain, indeed. I'm thinking of growing a set of gills....

And a bunch of other things have come flowing in, all interweaving together. First there was my friend , with some advice regarding my Be Here Now philosophy:

You say, 'be here, be now'. People feel that is the right thing. BUT...
They will read it, they will have some relief, but only for a short time. As they see some Coca-Cola advertising. They feel nice, but not for long. ... They must find the way, their path. But you should conclude your very inspirational themes by the advice: "People, be spiritual, have some spiritual practice, Reiki, meditation,...., whatever, and read, educate yourself in this area." Do you see what I want to convey to you? Be here and now, who can do that? Only a man who have some practice. Maybe Reiki practice, it doesn't matter. If somebody can be just now, without any preparations, 'here and now', for 2 - 3 - 5 - 15 hours a day, it is OK. But 99.99% of people can't. So, your call is nothing but some kind of touching their souls, but just for a moment. ... Direct the people to be more spiritual, but not to play spirituality like children, because it is 'in' to say: "I am spiritual." No. Tell them that is the right time for them to start their own spiritual quest, to find who they are, to improve their life. Be here and now, it is wonderful thing. But who can live it? Almost nobody. People will be inspired maybe 2 days, and their lives will be miserable, again. But, if you put some flame in them, if you ask them to invest some time to be spiritual, that is a great success, if you change even a single man.

I wrote back, saying that Being Here Now is indeed its own meditation, that we don't need another meditation to lead us into it ... and that, if people simply remember the feeling of their own childhoods, they will recapture Being Here Now -- because, in childhood, we live naturally and spontaneously in the present moment. And, as with any other meditation, whenever we become aware that our attention has strayed, we can simply bring it back to Being Here Now. By doing that over and over, we will eventually be living all the time in the present.

Dragan wrote back:

I agree 100% that all people (only some rigid ones don't feel anything) know that, 'here and now', they can feel it. Yes, we all can feel the same, the Self, IT, the everlasting present. ... People can feel the self even now, they don't need to have the feeling as they were children, they have that feeling NOW. ... But, do some step forward, as I've already said in my last mail: push them in the direction of the spiritual life. ... they need some practice of reading (to get some knowledge) and the practice. Any practice. Only in that case, 'here and now' is not only a slogan. That will be their life. ... So, say something additional to encourage them to make their dreams true ... it should be told that without investing some time and effort, they will get nothing. ... I agree that 'here and now' is the path. But who can follow it? Even Ramana's 'who am I?' which is a bit more defined is very, very hard for the 99% of the people. As Ramana says: "They can't accept the plain truth. So, they made the heaven, the hell, angels, God,..., in their heads." There is no use of the path which can be applied even to 0.1% of the population. This is the paradox: if the path is simple, people won't accept it. "Is it all? It is too simple to be the truth!" That is in their minds.

Yes. Good point. Sometimes we do reject the simplicity of reality, because of our perverse tendency to prefer complication! So -- to anyone who is able to go directly for the simplest way, I say: "Be Here Now. Make THAT your continuous meditation." And for those who need to sneak up on Being Here Now, I say: "Take on some other practice, some formal meditation, or Reiki, for example." (I would greatly recommend Reiki to anyone; because, to me, it is literally a direct line to the stillness and focus of Being Here Now, a direct line to the Source. Even so, I know there are many people who feel no affinity with Reiki whatsoever. So, we each need to find what rings our own bell.)

Here's another recommendation (I've presented this one so many places, I feel almost guilty to be doing it again, but here goes): a breathing exercise called pranayama, which is believed by some to be the way human beings originally, naturally breathed (and that the loss of this rhythmic alternation of breath was the very first step in our long slide into chaos).

It's very simple. One cycle of breathing consists of the following 4 steps:
(1) exhale through left nostril (holding right nostril closed with a finger)
(2) inhale through left nostril
(3) exhale through right nostril (holding left nostril closed with a finger)
(4) inhale through right nostril

This can be done lying on the back, or sitting up straight, or standing. No special effort should be made to breathe deeply; just let the breathing do itself. Let the breath come and go at its own depth, in its own rhythm; get your "self" out of the way, be nothing but the breath. Let the breath be everything.

I recommend doing 4 cycles of this at a time, and 4 times a day (first thing in the morning, just before lunch, just before supper, and just before bed). Just 4 cycles will be remarkably powerful to begin with; then, as time goes on, you can keep increasing the number. You can also increase the number of times per day. You can do the exercise anytime you like, though I suggest not doing it shortly after eating; and not doing it if there is any blockage in the nostrils.

WOULDN'T YOU KNOW, these other things, relating to this very subject, came tumbling along as if by magic:

Someone else talking about the paradox of effort in achieving spiritual realization (thanks to Steve for this):

And, about the ego and desire:

Comments from Steve:
"...no, the mind cannot live in the present, that is not its nature, of this I have no doubt. Mind is always dipping into the past and projecting into the future, so his assertion that ego is based in the future I would take issue with and say it is entirely driven from the past. No past, no projection.

"My personal view of the ego is that it is an illusion, I do not so much possess an ego as I am possessed by the very idea of one."

This description is from Chandra Mohan Jain -- alias Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, alias Osho. I've never been a fan of Rajneesh (far from it; and I greatly recommend reading this article by Christopher Calder, to get a really knowledgeable and balanced picture of the man: how he squandered his great spiritual gift by falling prey to his own desires for controlling people, enriching and empowering himself at their expense; and how a few deliberate lies cascaded into a runaway torrent of exploitation, drug addiction, and major criminality) -- and the degree of his "enlightenment" is certainly questionable. Even so, the foregoing description does seem authentic to me, and it depicts what seems to have been an experience of great proportion. (The full article can be read at www.realization.org.)

Another serendipitous arrival was Bone Games, a book by Rob Schultheis. Schultheis pursues "enlightenment" through athletic activities of the most extreme kind. He describes a nearly unbelievable experience of his own while mountain climbing:

AGAIN, THE COMMON DENOMINATOR in these "enlightening" experiences is one's getting to the point of Be Here Now, where one's attention is totally, absolutely, desperately riveted on the present instant of existence, and nothing else.

Schultheis goes on to compare his mountain-climbing experience with shamanic initiations in various cultures: vision quests, walkabouts, and even more-extreme circumstances, deliberately chosen to push the body beyond its physical limitations, in order to engage the otherwise-dormant, limitless, spiritual being that each of us is.

His big questions are: Why do some extreme experiences, like this one of his, result in wonderful transcendence, while so many others end simply in physical death? And why do even the most transcendent of them have only temporary effects? (Very shortly after he was down from the mountain, his old-familiar self returned, in all its mediocrity.) The shamanic initiation experiences seem to make the transcendent state more lasting or, at the very least, able to be invoked again at will. This suggests that the aboriginal cultures have retained a depth of valuable knowledge, which the rest of us have lost.

I suspect it's not really lost, though; that it's right here inside each and every one of us; that we only have to find our way to the inner stillness that reveals our own path to Be Here Now. If we find it in the stillness, instead of while scrambling for survival on a vertical face of rock, it seems more likely that we'll be able to hold onto it.

And, in case all this is getting a little too heavy, here's something lighter from Swami Beyondananda (his State of the Universe Address : ^ ). Thanks to Barb....

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3 May 2006

Can You Spell GAIA, Mr. President?

She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.
(Bob Dylan)

OU BETTER BELIEVE IT! We had all better believe it.

Thirty-plus years ago, when I used to listen to that song, it was merely one man's lament about a dangerously self-absorbed lover. And, waking up this morning with it in my head, I was mystified as to why it would be there; it didn't seem to relate to anything in my personal life. I started my day. The song would not go away.

I walked out to the mailbox with a letter. There was my neighbor Paul, just arriving on his bike. "Didja hear about the tsunami warning?" he asked. I hadn't. He said there had been an earthquake in Tonga, and that the whole state of Hawai'i was under a tsunami warning. "They don't really think we'll have a tsunami," he said, "but, if we do, it'll be at eleven-thirty."

Well. How nice to know the precise time! I put my letter in the box and walked back to my burrow; went inside, feeling a little dazed. Were we just supposed to sit tight, and synchronize our watches, and wait to see what happened at 11:30? The ocean is only a hundred yards away; I didn't figure that would give us much of a head start on the water, if it came.

I turned on the computer, went to the National Weather Service site, found the link to the Tsunami Warning Center, and read that the tsunami advisory had ended just minutes before, at 7:39 a.m. However, it said that "SOME COASTAL AREAS IN HAWAII COULD EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES", and that "THE ESTIMATED TIME SUCH EFFECTS MIGHT BEGIN" was 11:33 a.m. Ahh, so that's what we were waiting for at 11:30; not a tsunami, just some small sea level changes. What a relief!

Still, I couldn't help wondering if their concept of small was in the same ballpark as my concept of small....

Ah, well, if the National Weather Service and the Tsunami Warning Center were taking it calmly, I would do the same. I sat down to answer emails, and to wait for the arrival of a friend at 10:00.

I actually forgot about the tsunami situation. We had our meeting, we had some lunch, the friend left, and I decided to ride the bike downtown, to get a couple things at the market. On my way, I rode right down to the water, just to see what it was doing. No sign of any rise in sea level, I was very glad to notice!

I headed the bike toward town, cruising along, just enjoying the beautiful day -- and the mournful wail of Bob Dylan, from 30 years ago, was back with me again:

She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She's nobody's child,
The Law cain't touch her at all.

Finally I got it: In our Brave New 21st-Century World, this creative female was not some unnamed paramour of Bob Dylan -- she was no less than Mother Nature herself, Mother Earth, GAIA.

Yep, it was a perfect description of her. Born of Chaos, she was no one's child; she could paint our daytimes black anytime she felt like it; she had no place to fall; and our puny laws meant absolutely nothing to her.

So much for that little mystery....

SOMETHING ELSE I'VE BEEN WONDERING: What actually goes through King George's mind when he says things like, "We gotta break our addiction to this-here Middle Eastern Oil!" Visions of sucking the life out of Alaska? Visions of himself floating on an endless sea of greenbacks? I wonder, does the larger picture, the whole Gaia-connection, ever enter his mind?

Here's something that just might be a real solution to our oil addiction. Not something King George is likely to endorse -- because this would wean us not just from Middle Eastern oil, but from ALL oil. This would revitalize not only our planetary ecology, but also our human economy. And it would stop putting money in the pockets of the very people with whom we are at war.

It's an article called An Energy Revolution, by Robert Zubrin. He happens to be an aerospace engineer; but he has definitely brought his thinking down to Earth for this. It's not just theory and speculation, either -- but something that has already been done, by the nation of Brazil, with outstanding success!! It may even be the only workable solution available to us, until we figure out Zero Point Energy and how to power vehicles with that.

The magic word happens to be alcohol. And the key ingredient in getting this to work is for enough of us to insist on the passage of one simple Federal Law.

Here's the article....

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24 April 2006

News from Nepal

Y, HOW TIME DOES FLY!! Over a month since the last entry....

Here's news from a friend in Kathmandu, Nepal, written April 20th:

"What better time than this to touch base! Plenty of leisure time in my hands lately, what with the curfews and bandhas, and until this week, seven-hour-a-day power cuts.

"It's been government curfew, or seven party bandha, or both, every day of the last sixteen days in Kathmandu. Bandha is a very South Asian thing, meaning shut down, when most shops don't open and hardly any vehicle goes on the street. The seven party alliance declared an indefinite bandha on the fourth of this month, which means the Valley is also closed. You can't take a bus out or in. This also applies to vegetables and cooking gas and what not. Schools are closed indefinitely. Banks also joined the People's Movement, the Jana Andolan, and refused to carry transactions. Twelve staff in the Central Bank were arrested the other day when they refused to cash a cheque signed by the Home Minister. Doctors are protesting and so are lawyers and the Chambers of Commerce and the handicapped...

"The only Tv station we get in this house is so anti-King that if he stays, they will all have to shoot themselves or leave Nepal for good. They show endless footage of people with head injuries in hospitals, beaten up by the security forces. Street kids with broken heads. There were a lot of street kids too in the first days of the Andolan (the movement) for some reason.

"My landlady thinks there is going to be a revolution. Then again, her brother says the King is not going anywhere and why should he. My landlady and her brother are grandchildren of some Maharaja of Nepal who got overthrown and became an ascetic. We watched CNN together today, talking about servants. My landlady says we're becoming like the US and Europe, soon we're all gonna have to clean our own homes ourselves. You have no idea how easy it used to be to get servants, she says, but I already know that the Lion Palace where she was born had 500 rooms for servants, or, according to the Guinness book, concubines. She once told me they were all servants. She wasn't allowed to talk to a common, normal Nepali person or leave the palace till her late teens, and she owned an elephant and a pony as a child.

"I started writing this mail this morning, and they hadn't yet shot three people and wounded more than a hundred. I didn't know when I was writing the mail below that they wouldn't be issuing curfew passes to ambulances and the wounded would lie on the Ring Road for hours today. I had no idea one hundred thousand people would actually go out and protest in my city, defy the curfew and the shoot on sight orders.

"India sent a very special envoy, the last Maharaja of Kashmir, yesterday, to talk to the King. They are also related by marriage. A cousin brother thrice removed is a respectable institution here. Let's see how the King will respond to all this. It must be very hard to give up power. Letting go of power.

"The title of the King of Nepal is Shree Panch Maharaja. This means something like 'five times respectable great king'.

"The phone lines have been cut before, they may be cut again. Last time the King took over we didn't have phones for almost a week.

"Oh well.

"below is the letter i started to write today:

"All is well in my house, baking bread today. I've been sweeping and washing dishes, you know, comforting stuff.

"Curfew outside but already ten thousand people defying the curfew, according to the BBC radio. The huge demonstration planned for today seems still happening, despite orders to shoot curfew defiers. My students have been restless these last couple of weeks, the days we were able to meet, the days we didn't have curfew. It's been two weeks that the valley is isolated, no vegetables coming. Onions are a hundred rupees, five times what they usually cost. The valley residents ate up all the papayas days ago, no more coming from the south. My chubby green grocer had a couple of lapfuls of stale vegetables yesterday - he says the only fresh thing that arrives every morning is a bucket of tofu. Most shops have been closed for sixteen days now, no cars in the streets all this time, except for a very few.

"Loktantra zindabad means 'long live democracy' in Nepali. Tenzin thinks we should give the King a hug because nobody loves him. By the way he also thinks the King is a Giant, and the Queen, too.

"Hope you're all well.

"elif
tenzin (now six years old)

"Sevgili eski guzel arkadaslarim
tuhaf tuhaf vakitlerin ortasindayiz yine Nepal'de; krali devirme direnisi ucuncu haftasina girdi. Cinliler kizdiklarina "enteresan vakitlerde yasayasin!" diye beddua ederlermis.

"Sokaga cikmak yasak yine.

"Iyiyiz.

"sevgiyle

"elif-tenzin (simdi alti yasinda)"

===================

Gathering speed
The movement picks up support from all quarters, even the hungry
NARESH NEWAR

From Issue #295 (21 April 06 - 27 April 06) www.nepalitimes.com (follow-up article here)

---

elif.

bu da gecer yahu

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<tagged> nepal / kathmandu

19 March 2006

Weekend Weather

Friday, the 17th:

Good morning, Mister Sunshine
You brighten up my day....
(Brothers Gibb)

Actual, visible SUNSHINE!!! I came out of my burrow, first time in almost a week; rode the bike to town -- singing prayers of gratitude, all the way! Wandering the streets of Hilo, pursuing my typical chores (Post Office, health food store, Farmers' Market). Back home ... feeling slightly dazed, nearly intoxicated(!), by the warmth of the air, and the actual sunshine-on-skin! Very hard to make myself be in the house at all: ^ ).

Saturday, the 18th:

Weather-wise, it's such a lovely day
Just you say the words, and we'll beat the birds
Down to Acapulco Bay....
(S. Cahn / J. Van Heusen)

At first, it felt like good-old Portland, Oregon: gray sky, visible mist. I took the bike downtown again, to do a couple more chores. As I was leaving the house, the mist thickened and became directional (as in, downward) -- still quite pleasant, though.

Before I reached downtown, it had stopped. Then, before I started home, it started again: more than mist, a steady sprinkle ... which stopped part-way home, then started again and accompanied me the rest of the way.

The rest of the day was pleasant enough: sprinkles now and then; no visible sun, but at least a vague feeling of its presence behind the gray -- and the air was unfamiliarly-warm again.

By evening, the sprinkles had become a solid, raging downpour. I was at the computer until 3:00 a.m. -- hearing, in the dark outside, what sounded like a heavy white-noise; like a radio tuned in-between stations. I looked at the National Weather Service website, and saw the whole island of Hawai'i colored red: Flash Flood Warning! I went to bed, snuggled-in, listening to the white-noise until I dropped into sleep.

Sunday, the 19th:

...where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go....
(Lennon / McCartney)

Woke up to the continuing white-noise sound. In my head, still snuggled in bed, the following telephone-fantasy:

"Hello, uh ... Noah? Remember that BIG thing you built, a long time ago? Ark, yeah.... Do you think you could build another one?"

I got up, looked outside, peering into the uniform grayness of 9:30 a.m. I could not see falling rain, so much as ... well, almost like the air had just become WATER....

The funny(?) thing is ... the name of my next-door neighbor is ... Noah!

(Just in case you haven't seen it a million times before, here's the obligatory Noah cartoon, and some thoughts you may find inspiring : ^ )

As my old friend David (usually with a Bombay gimlet in hand) used to say -- only he would make it singular, in reference to himself alone -- "Who dressed us like this? Are we having a good time?"

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