About to leave my perch by Lake Edison--been laying about, eating a bit more, working on getting into Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_.
A memorable moment two days ago now was listening to the Librivox reading of Plato's _Apologia_. The reading by a Detroit priest and the translation I find compelling, and the personality of Socrates something I can't recall having encountered anywhere for a very long time. Ideas such as: (my attempts at paraphrasing) "Man should do what he believes right regardless of concerns for his safety or situation in life."; "To maintain a known good I will not avoid what may or may not be good (death)"; "From virtue all else follows." (Franklin does mention Socrates); "I have a sense that tells me what not to do, but never what to do; this I always obey, and so I do not enter politics, and anyway, were I to do so, with my devotion to truth, I would have been killed long ago."
The oddness of the whole scenario as well makes it compelling--I haven't finished it yet, but a man is being sentenced to death for being annoying (on the surface). This man has got the idea (from the god/oracle) that he is the most wise of all, and his mission (from the gods) is to go around verifying that. He believes this leads to the betterment of everyone due to people who thought themselves wise and perhaps deceiving others to think so too being exposed in their ignorance.
Well, that scenario is not too uncommon, except that here, the annoyer gets the best press and the powerful (and the average) are shown to be harming everyone, even if, or even partly because they still sentence Socrates to die. I can't recall any other literary/dramatic/mythic situation where the one being got rid of is still respected enough or given enough power to--with rhetoric, logic, argument--expose to their faces (and to a sympathetic court audience?) without a doubt how foolish, ungodly, wrong are the charges against him.
It is as if in power are three fools, and everyone, and they themselves know themselves to be fools, and yet everyone still gives the three fools power to kill.
--
I'm not yet done pondering the effect of Socrates's example on my feelings and ideas about how to act.
Most everyone is, as he says, doing the best they can to get on. But he is sent from the gods--As shown by his neglect of concern about wealth and retirement and a potentially untimely end.
I don't consider myself showing great virtue, but I do seem to share this sense of what not to do. But as a result, I do not act in the world, such as by acquiring property, doing/teaching permaculture, being a force for positive progress in various ways.
Most everyone is running about, concerned about getting on in ways material, familial, spiritual, ecological. I'm sort of just stopping[?]. Letting it all go by. Not even trying to develop in any way (though I did earlier mention getting out of a rut, facing, overcoming fear of unknowns).
As it happens, doing this I can grow more and more out of the realms I used to be in.
I used to, when I lived with more despair than now, imagine a [not un]happy future as [1] an old man on a park bench watching things go by--or [2] as a tree.
Now I doubt it will be that way, but rather as a grungy hobo, staying out of the way.
The cleanliness issue (of any worn garment), the weatherbeatenness of appearance, these are instant separating and distancing factors.
My friend Don and other aboriginal skills people seem to be positively--somewhat happily--acculturated modern people who have these weatherbeaten, grungy (or all hand-made garment) aspects, besides those we usually refer to as the urban/rural homeless.
So, you start acting differently than you used to, you start to become more different from the population you may have once fit into more or less. And those whom you used to know may be dismayed should they encounter you again.
A monk shaves hair, wears robe; others grow hair and if they wear clothes, those get dirty.
Because this preoccupation with cleanliness as a virtue differentiating the civilized from the savage. . . well, it seems to be a harming thing. [It seems to exist]For all but abo/origin skills & green anarchist gatherings, maybe permaculture gatherings. . .
Oh well--I wonder what it will be like to be grungy in Mexico and elsewhere.
Efforts can be made to not stand out so much as living close to the earth and pinesap--if there's reason.
--
Another point for contemplation, by the way, was my writing of the tiredness of having to choose--of the "I want to die" thought coming at the idea of always having to come out of peace or engagement to choose direction again.
Well, clearly, that's an example of being overwhelmed, out of tune with the Dao, or however you want to say it.
So I watch for that sense more. And after hearing Socrates, for some reason-- perhaps his focus on his mission from the gods, perhaps just his attitude and vigor--I began to ask, "Why choose at all?" or, at least, why get exasperated about having to choose--
[I also considered: there is no choice: I am a given; any options & variables are too; when one encounters the others, there will be one result. And got to pondering a bit about fate, free will, and Covey's "between stimulus and response their is a gap/freedom." Ultimately this just led to the idea of being more patient--I think--keeping the idea in mind that any outcome is somewhat forgone and that I need not get stressed about having to make choices.]
I can't say much more than that now, except that recently, I've been watching for the exasperation (self-caused) at some perceived choice, and then, sort of, choosing not to choose.
There are many and yet two main ways I was once considering as possible to walk once I get up.
I had not got up earlier partly due to a waning of enthusiasm for wandering isolated forests for hours on unmaintained trails.
Well none of those considerations may matter much. When the time comes, I'll get up. I'll go some way. And so on.
A recent example of not choosing that stands out was the choice of getting on the bus to Mammoth and all that happened from there. The attitude was, "well, who knows?"
I still ultimately ended my adventures with Gianni and others I met and returned to this larger chosen, constructed plan, but--well that whole thing did feel more like hopping into a flow (, then getting out, drying off).
In a way this feels like letting external things chart one's path. Or relinquishing will, the idea of identity, schemes, plans. Even "common sense," virtue.
Ceasing to be what most people (I?) think of to be a person.
Well, it's a new experiment--at least it signals more awareness about that self-induced exasperation that brings awareness of not enjoying living.
--
Last note is I may be where there's no cell reception for two weeks--the way things have been going that seems unlikely, but if nothing from me for two, even three weeks, I'm somewhere between Lake Edison and Sequioa National Park [or even Kernville--tentative end-of-September destination] living off the excess hiker food from Vermilion VR & Muir Trail Ranch and will emerge, at the latest, when that runs out.
2008-08-26-1629
Peace,
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
prissy not
2008-08-24-1034 Ever heaven, ever wrong. I need not accept it, perhaps, but my friends left trash, at least a receipt, probably the rest was theirs, mostly just their freeze-dried food bag filled with stuff, and other scraps and litter and a plastic single-use shopping bag, the kind being banned. The receipt was the asian guy from Gaithersburg's for fishing gear, dated 8/20.
I was frolicking around suitless in my private, eternally-flowing pools, several nearly olympic size, warm enough, though not for too long, with elements of danger: could I be sucked down, and not able to get back--walls too sheer, current too strong? But all was well, and after the above discovery went back for my until-then-unused goggles, and then I could see the fish.
Now warming in the sun about to walk on south--those other guys were returning north to their car. I do not fathom what I have witnessed here [a lover's quarrel, a rushed night-time departure, did I disturb their isolation?]. These were the trekking-pole type--but that's nearly anyone with extra $. So, ever heaven, ever wrong. And they're headed to Paiute Canyon (North Lake Trailhead), then French Canyon, Pine Canyon, and going some cross-country (off-trail) places too. I've run into or heard of quite a few people going off-trail out here.
Happily, only around this spot, Cassidy Bridge, have I found so much trash, but usually I don't hang out where others camp.
1107
Peace,
I was frolicking around suitless in my private, eternally-flowing pools, several nearly olympic size, warm enough, though not for too long, with elements of danger: could I be sucked down, and not able to get back--walls too sheer, current too strong? But all was well, and after the above discovery went back for my until-then-unused goggles, and then I could see the fish.
Now warming in the sun about to walk on south--those other guys were returning north to their car. I do not fathom what I have witnessed here [a lover's quarrel, a rushed night-time departure, did I disturb their isolation?]. These were the trekking-pole type--but that's nearly anyone with extra $. So, ever heaven, ever wrong. And they're headed to Paiute Canyon (North Lake Trailhead), then French Canyon, Pine Canyon, and going some cross-country (off-trail) places too. I've run into or heard of quite a few people going off-trail out here.
Happily, only around this spot, Cassidy Bridge, have I found so much trash, but usually I don't hang out where others camp.
1107
Peace,
motive-seeking; Charles Pinkston
2008-08-24-0641 I was laying here, post dream-world, seeking motivating force. I have a reprieve from hunger/nutrition-yearning (my healthfood, nutrient-rich, calorie-poor rations from my resupply bucket have been getting somewhat unexciting--though I was getting a bit sleeker--leading to desire to arrive at Vermilion Valley Resort soon.): three 3.75-ounce tins of smoked clams, two of oysters, one of vienna wieners (can't remember exactly what those things are called & no label) left behind in a messy site, which I did clean up a bit and will pack some stuff out of. These will help. I may have been needing more cholesterol, fat, or I'm not sure what. My fat this time is the coconut threads. They satiate me but do not energize me as much as the parmesan. I ate the last two of these tins just now.
An early thought was amazement at the richness of the dream world. I sleep more out here than I did in my SD rut. More elaborateness of dreams appears, or more is remembered.
Another thought: my friends across the river appear to be gone. A spot like this-- Cassidy Bridge, across the San Joaquin River--on the weekend, I'd think to find more people. The trail is poorly maintained, though, and, it seems, many trails through areas designated "wilderness", besides the PCT &JMT, are infrequently traveled and poorly maintained. The river is warm here, and has a deep pool. After crossing the bridge only waving to them, I swam back across in the dusk to say hi. Two middle-aged--one white, one asian--guys, professional, well-to-do, from Modesto and DC (formerly Bay Area). Central valley towns interest me. A part of CA I've yet to spend much time in. The cultural contrast between JMT / high sierra hikers (like these guys) and the ones with stock animals who might drive in to a trailhead for the weekend. . . and leave tins of smoked meats behind for me--is something I wonder about.
I was on the topic of waking up, returning to, attempting to find, motivating force. I noted those guys were gone. Other thoughts: I never find myself in dreams as I do now, seeking motive. The forward compulsion, the push to do, seems ever-acting. It is as if, in the dream, the only noted events and memories are when there is something to react to: the river is rising, my quilt is getting wet, boats drift away, and we were to care for these. Now it is snowing hard. A friend has come to visit grandma, who says, with usual demeanor and energy, she's caught cold and is dying. Her friend eats a raw fish. I later go out to get some cereal from a hiker-barrel-like-barrel that is on railroad tracks out where the rising river used to be. Some of the workers reacted to me getting this--but many were drunk, or in the process of leaving for a party from the other half of what was now a duplex. I begin to expect a train to come along and attempt to get the track in order, switches right, but, a section of rails near where the cereal barrel was, I am not finding.
In a related story, I'm with some school-aged (7th-8th grade) friends, Charles Pinkston (sp?), Michael Wilhelm (sp?), and Kyle Decker (now McQuiston?; 3rd grade) made appearance too. A part focus was fantastic visual poems, not unlike the graphic novels (e.g., _Maus_), only these were one page or smaller. Wilhelm and my curiosity got me reading one aloud, or trying to, but it was hard to follow how to read it given the combination and jumbling of words and images. For some reason, Wilhelm wasn't guiding me well, and after, or during, a bus change (Wilhelm may have got us off in the wrong place), Pinkston brought out another of these poems, smaller (~a nearly square section of a dollar), more fantastic, and I began stumbling through that. Pinkston seemed to know how it could be done, or to have a deeper understanding of it.
A way to know you're dreaming, perhaps: read the same text twice and it changes (thanks to Richard's presentation on lucid dreaming at Barcamp SD 3).
Well, the main point was, in the dream there never seems to be this time for reflection.
Morning motive-seeking thoughts turned to the example of Benjamin Franklin, who I've heard more of now (via Librivox audiobook). He was an active, aware culture-channeler if ever there was one.
He had dreams of a world-wide political party or club of "men of virtue." And in reality sort of made a little one (limit 12), called, as near as I can tell, the Junta (J=h sound). Which eventually spawned a few others.
Once, I had my schemes, e.g., the being group.
Franklin, in the morning would ask, "what good shall I do today?"; in the evening, "what good have I done today?" He helped others.
Well, it is definitely the "others" part that has got to me. I'm not sure what to make of, how to interact with the other. In the past I've thought it a type of autism/asperger's, but that was fashionable, may still be.
What to do about, to make of, the undeniably social aspect of being.
Just flailing now, losing coherency perhaps, but in my situation, I've questioned masses of characteristics of the culture, failed to embrace, and so head off to subculture / sect land. Only, where I'm headed, there is no sect, only a recognition that the practice of the wandering, disconnected (relatively) individual is nothing new, will never be, only difference now being it may be easier to collect a broad range of the stories about these people (as was done in part of _Into the Wild_, _Encounters with Chinese Hermits_). Should there ever be a mass movement of these wandering simple livers, will we say anything of consequence to each other as we pass on the trail, or in our kayaks along some deserted coastline? Perhaps, "how's the trail ahead?", or not even that, because the ambiguities, frivolities of that question already begin to overwhelm.
Here, my talk is largely one-way. I limit incoming communication, interaction by living this way. The incoming I've allowed has been a few of the emails that still go my way, the audiobooks, the ebooks, some of the people and things I meet along the way. One of the biggest live-person incomings, by the way, was during my rides with two truck drivers one day long ago on the way here.
I think I could work with someone (others) who felt and relished/wallowed in the ambiguities of life and interaction as much as I do.
But it might have to be a woman (my attraction to her) or a gay man (his to me) for us to remain interacting where, out here, each is free to walk off any which way, and who, like me, is likely to be at a point in life where a type of independence, aloneness has been known and adapted to for so long, that sustained interaction with others/another would require a compelling reason to adapt to. Another scenario is the adult-child interaction--
Rambling mind stopped (momentarily)--I stretch my arms, make a sound, look around.
0850
Peace,
An early thought was amazement at the richness of the dream world. I sleep more out here than I did in my SD rut. More elaborateness of dreams appears, or more is remembered.
Another thought: my friends across the river appear to be gone. A spot like this-- Cassidy Bridge, across the San Joaquin River--on the weekend, I'd think to find more people. The trail is poorly maintained, though, and, it seems, many trails through areas designated "wilderness", besides the PCT &JMT, are infrequently traveled and poorly maintained. The river is warm here, and has a deep pool. After crossing the bridge only waving to them, I swam back across in the dusk to say hi. Two middle-aged--one white, one asian--guys, professional, well-to-do, from Modesto and DC (formerly Bay Area). Central valley towns interest me. A part of CA I've yet to spend much time in. The cultural contrast between JMT / high sierra hikers (like these guys) and the ones with stock animals who might drive in to a trailhead for the weekend. . . and leave tins of smoked meats behind for me--is something I wonder about.
I was on the topic of waking up, returning to, attempting to find, motivating force. I noted those guys were gone. Other thoughts: I never find myself in dreams as I do now, seeking motive. The forward compulsion, the push to do, seems ever-acting. It is as if, in the dream, the only noted events and memories are when there is something to react to: the river is rising, my quilt is getting wet, boats drift away, and we were to care for these. Now it is snowing hard. A friend has come to visit grandma, who says, with usual demeanor and energy, she's caught cold and is dying. Her friend eats a raw fish. I later go out to get some cereal from a hiker-barrel-like-barrel that is on railroad tracks out where the rising river used to be. Some of the workers reacted to me getting this--but many were drunk, or in the process of leaving for a party from the other half of what was now a duplex. I begin to expect a train to come along and attempt to get the track in order, switches right, but, a section of rails near where the cereal barrel was, I am not finding.
In a related story, I'm with some school-aged (7th-8th grade) friends, Charles Pinkston (sp?), Michael Wilhelm (sp?), and Kyle Decker (now McQuiston?; 3rd grade) made appearance too. A part focus was fantastic visual poems, not unlike the graphic novels (e.g., _Maus_), only these were one page or smaller. Wilhelm and my curiosity got me reading one aloud, or trying to, but it was hard to follow how to read it given the combination and jumbling of words and images. For some reason, Wilhelm wasn't guiding me well, and after, or during, a bus change (Wilhelm may have got us off in the wrong place), Pinkston brought out another of these poems, smaller (~a nearly square section of a dollar), more fantastic, and I began stumbling through that. Pinkston seemed to know how it could be done, or to have a deeper understanding of it.
A way to know you're dreaming, perhaps: read the same text twice and it changes (thanks to Richard's presentation on lucid dreaming at Barcamp SD 3).
Well, the main point was, in the dream there never seems to be this time for reflection.
Morning motive-seeking thoughts turned to the example of Benjamin Franklin, who I've heard more of now (via Librivox audiobook). He was an active, aware culture-channeler if ever there was one.
He had dreams of a world-wide political party or club of "men of virtue." And in reality sort of made a little one (limit 12), called, as near as I can tell, the Junta (J=h sound). Which eventually spawned a few others.
Once, I had my schemes, e.g., the being group.
Franklin, in the morning would ask, "what good shall I do today?"; in the evening, "what good have I done today?" He helped others.
Well, it is definitely the "others" part that has got to me. I'm not sure what to make of, how to interact with the other. In the past I've thought it a type of autism/asperger's, but that was fashionable, may still be.
What to do about, to make of, the undeniably social aspect of being.
Just flailing now, losing coherency perhaps, but in my situation, I've questioned masses of characteristics of the culture, failed to embrace, and so head off to subculture / sect land. Only, where I'm headed, there is no sect, only a recognition that the practice of the wandering, disconnected (relatively) individual is nothing new, will never be, only difference now being it may be easier to collect a broad range of the stories about these people (as was done in part of _Into the Wild_, _Encounters with Chinese Hermits_). Should there ever be a mass movement of these wandering simple livers, will we say anything of consequence to each other as we pass on the trail, or in our kayaks along some deserted coastline? Perhaps, "how's the trail ahead?", or not even that, because the ambiguities, frivolities of that question already begin to overwhelm.
Here, my talk is largely one-way. I limit incoming communication, interaction by living this way. The incoming I've allowed has been a few of the emails that still go my way, the audiobooks, the ebooks, some of the people and things I meet along the way. One of the biggest live-person incomings, by the way, was during my rides with two truck drivers one day long ago on the way here.
I think I could work with someone (others) who felt and relished/wallowed in the ambiguities of life and interaction as much as I do.
But it might have to be a woman (my attraction to her) or a gay man (his to me) for us to remain interacting where, out here, each is free to walk off any which way, and who, like me, is likely to be at a point in life where a type of independence, aloneness has been known and adapted to for so long, that sustained interaction with others/another would require a compelling reason to adapt to. Another scenario is the adult-child interaction--
Rambling mind stopped (momentarily)--I stretch my arms, make a sound, look around.
0850
Peace,
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Conception; nibbles on being
2008-08-23-0835 Perfect--that's how things are. Here to play. I was, earlier, wandering into great thoughts. I could follow the culture channeled by others in the afternoons; I could see where my being wanders--what passes through this undirected node--before then. G. Ann: "As I say: I don't turn on the TV before noon."
I am near a deserted creek crossing. The washed-out bridge has been rebuilt downstream. The only sounds: creek--Granite Creek--, wind, birds, bugs, and the munch of ants' jaws as I am tested for edibility.
Looking down to shallow pools, little trout; pools in the worn granite.
Conceptions, billions of them, walking around. Looking deeply (a Thich Nhat Hanh phrase) at a being, I see the moment of origination. The initiation of mixing and copying.
Looking deeply, also, I see human minds-- my own, this afternoon--seeking direction. The mind reading this.
We're more than seeking mind?
Benjamin Franklin, for him, once, access to information was the good.
Now: access to from where info--conception.
The novel, easy on the mind, because, till novel ends, mind need not wonder, can rush on, rush on. Not always easy though to find reading mind is happy to follow.
The novel suits the onrushing, ever-twitching, ant-like & bear-like (when they seek food), behavior of the loosed mind. Follow me!
Or, reading, more generally.
No answers here, other than give mind hours per day to wander, not immediately directed, affected by others. Does this require isolation? If others are around, reflexively, I react, unless, perhaps, through meditation I have made them "ripples on the surface of being" (Eckhart Tolle phrase).
May be time to walk on. Mind is empty as the blue sky, as the breeze, templado, temperate as it is.
Seekers, questioners, choosers! From where comes seeking?
From where, choosing?
From where, the question?
From where the conception
that it is time to walk on?
Can you live if you ask?
Can you not ask?
And what is good? --As B. Franklin prayed to be guided toward. And what is the good of _our_ time? Where and to what actions are we now guided if we stop and listen, follow?
I am not guided toward the roads that cars drive down. I am not guided to where mind-numbing, preoccupying food is always too easily got. I am guided to where ants nibble nipples near ripples.
Aha! Something cries: "The future! What about the future?"
"Great action! What about action?"
"Contentment. What about that?"
What about this culture flow? Could it be that more and more will live with less because less is all needed, wanted?
Oh, we each serve/perform our function, I suppose. Given the variables encountered.
Oh Culture, flow from me! Reproduce through me! Grow by my life. Be freed by me.
Mind, you seek guidance, occupation? You seek something to devote yourself to? Love, union, joy?
I leave you with nothing but the seeking and old Wilber's remark that we're both ever seeking and ever whole and we can switch--and I guess shimmer--between the two.
Same as for the future and as for being here now, I suppose.
If you want a solid course of action: arrange to spend more time with nothing to do (yet with access to what you might want to be content, relaxed, at peace).
The only solid possibility I see following is that that freedom becomes recognized, valued, understood, cultivated. Not all that different from how freedom and time to meditate are cultivated by some.
--to the extent that that freedom is seen as as necessary as nutrition, warmth, freedom from physical, emotional violence.
In other words: a cultural transition from: "Idle hands do the Devil's work." to "Minds never idle do no real work."
They avoid the work of our time.
Not Franklin's time. Not the time after ours. When more of the world is free to let mind wander, when that ability is regarded as as necessary as sleep? to our purpose here, then that may be the time after ours.
Humanity something different then.
Is this a vision of cultural imperialism?
Is this a vision of cultural liberation, diversity, multiplicity, indigenization, freedom?
A vision of liberation of the origin of culture, of conception.
Culture comes not from the land alone (minus "alone", perhaps a Quail Springs phrase), but from the interaction of freed, seeking mind with what it finds itself in. A mind, active, is always channeled and limited, but, in general, humanity? culturemind? would benefit from minds given more freedom, less channel. And this means freedom likewise from drives, addictions, compulsions, fears.
There is always unknown. Rather than attempting to fill limited minds with limited facts, encourage minds to play with moment conception.
1501
Peace,
I am near a deserted creek crossing. The washed-out bridge has been rebuilt downstream. The only sounds: creek--Granite Creek--, wind, birds, bugs, and the munch of ants' jaws as I am tested for edibility.
Looking down to shallow pools, little trout; pools in the worn granite.
Conceptions, billions of them, walking around. Looking deeply (a Thich Nhat Hanh phrase) at a being, I see the moment of origination. The initiation of mixing and copying.
Looking deeply, also, I see human minds-- my own, this afternoon--seeking direction. The mind reading this.
We're more than seeking mind?
Benjamin Franklin, for him, once, access to information was the good.
Now: access to from where info--conception.
The novel, easy on the mind, because, till novel ends, mind need not wonder, can rush on, rush on. Not always easy though to find reading mind is happy to follow.
The novel suits the onrushing, ever-twitching, ant-like & bear-like (when they seek food), behavior of the loosed mind. Follow me!
Or, reading, more generally.
No answers here, other than give mind hours per day to wander, not immediately directed, affected by others. Does this require isolation? If others are around, reflexively, I react, unless, perhaps, through meditation I have made them "ripples on the surface of being" (Eckhart Tolle phrase).
May be time to walk on. Mind is empty as the blue sky, as the breeze, templado, temperate as it is.
Seekers, questioners, choosers! From where comes seeking?
From where, choosing?
From where, the question?
From where the conception
that it is time to walk on?
Can you live if you ask?
Can you not ask?
And what is good? --As B. Franklin prayed to be guided toward. And what is the good of _our_ time? Where and to what actions are we now guided if we stop and listen, follow?
I am not guided toward the roads that cars drive down. I am not guided to where mind-numbing, preoccupying food is always too easily got. I am guided to where ants nibble nipples near ripples.
Aha! Something cries: "The future! What about the future?"
"Great action! What about action?"
"Contentment. What about that?"
What about this culture flow? Could it be that more and more will live with less because less is all needed, wanted?
Oh, we each serve/perform our function, I suppose. Given the variables encountered.
Oh Culture, flow from me! Reproduce through me! Grow by my life. Be freed by me.
Mind, you seek guidance, occupation? You seek something to devote yourself to? Love, union, joy?
I leave you with nothing but the seeking and old Wilber's remark that we're both ever seeking and ever whole and we can switch--and I guess shimmer--between the two.
Same as for the future and as for being here now, I suppose.
If you want a solid course of action: arrange to spend more time with nothing to do (yet with access to what you might want to be content, relaxed, at peace).
The only solid possibility I see following is that that freedom becomes recognized, valued, understood, cultivated. Not all that different from how freedom and time to meditate are cultivated by some.
--to the extent that that freedom is seen as as necessary as nutrition, warmth, freedom from physical, emotional violence.
In other words: a cultural transition from: "Idle hands do the Devil's work." to "Minds never idle do no real work."
They avoid the work of our time.
Not Franklin's time. Not the time after ours. When more of the world is free to let mind wander, when that ability is regarded as as necessary as sleep? to our purpose here, then that may be the time after ours.
Humanity something different then.
Is this a vision of cultural imperialism?
Is this a vision of cultural liberation, diversity, multiplicity, indigenization, freedom?
A vision of liberation of the origin of culture, of conception.
Culture comes not from the land alone (minus "alone", perhaps a Quail Springs phrase), but from the interaction of freed, seeking mind with what it finds itself in. A mind, active, is always channeled and limited, but, in general, humanity? culturemind? would benefit from minds given more freedom, less channel. And this means freedom likewise from drives, addictions, compulsions, fears.
There is always unknown. Rather than attempting to fill limited minds with limited facts, encourage minds to play with moment conception.
1501
Peace,
TheBroaderCulturalSignificanceOfBeing
[2008-08-21-1900] Letting mind run, wander, a half practice of stillness, a bit of despair: I want to die. That old thought. Came of the old tiredness: you can sit, enjoy peace, choicelessness, but as long as you live, must come out to choose again. And it came of feeling no great flow, no cultural significance then.
I followed: well, nothing? Then perhaps play the game, attract attention, imagining the creation of myths, spectacle. That falls flat though.
Insight came as: look for the broader cultural significance of each action.
That took care of my aimlessness, and, later: If no significance in broader action, none in smaller.
Where to find culturally significant action? Where is there fear?
On top of that, seeing then all the surrogates, substitutes for such significance, or I'm not sure exactly what I was up to in this chart:
Look for broader cultural significance of each action--
vs. channel culture
vs. gatha [a saying used to keep mind focused on present action]
vs. control of mind [self-control?]
go to where most significance
vs. personal interest, personal attraction
vs. meditation-peace
I was probably just comparing modes of operating.
Considering this, I saw every cultural Movement as seeking to provide a broader cultural significance to the individual actions of its adherents: the Integral movement, evangelical/born again Christianity, whatever. Veganism.
Helping to narrow the possibility of choice? (we do this because . . .) Integral: ~ do & develop your personal practice to aid the evolution of culture. Frank Cook: eat a wild plant every day (broader significance: making self, others aware we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity, if we cultivate and do not lose the relevant knowledge).
Looking at the culture as a being, if one doesn't have compelling personal interests and desires, looking for areas of fear, in one's self, in the broader culture, may be an approach to finding a culturally significant path.
Culture-wide fear. In my case: wandering around Mexico (yet for me to challenge much). Also: living in the forest, drinking the water, eating the food there, dealing with one's self out there, no insurance, no career, no family, no lover, no car, no house, etc. (yet with multiples of all of these).
Going to these areas, these edges, we "express & illumine the field of choice" (Danby wrote of Shakespeare). The culture-mind values this exercise and expansion. It enjoys overcoming fear-limits, e.g. "this is not a good time to go to the Middle East." On the contrary, if you go when people say that, your actions will be far more culturally significant than otherwise.
Just as a guess (and cliché): cultural significance comes from crossing edges, boundaries. First, perhaps, the personal ones, then those of the broader culture (or both at the same time).
So, now can I rest a bit and go back to reading Pynchon?
The main cultural significance things are leading up to for me may be wandering Mexico, may be something else. But, at least, as I defecate--relaxing, releasing, returning--in the woods, as I read Pynchon, as I nab, pinch, and eat the fat sierra ants that crawl all over me wherever I lay, even in the middle of an expanse of bare granite (nutritious snack comes to me!), as I cook my pot of food (as now, at this moment), I can wonder what broader significance that action might have, or what more significant broader action it could be a part of (people learning to be content in the forest? something else?)
Peace,
I followed: well, nothing? Then perhaps play the game, attract attention, imagining the creation of myths, spectacle. That falls flat though.
Insight came as: look for the broader cultural significance of each action.
That took care of my aimlessness, and, later: If no significance in broader action, none in smaller.
Where to find culturally significant action? Where is there fear?
On top of that, seeing then all the surrogates, substitutes for such significance, or I'm not sure exactly what I was up to in this chart:
Look for broader cultural significance of each action--
vs. channel culture
vs. gatha [a saying used to keep mind focused on present action]
vs. control of mind [self-control?]
go to where most significance
vs. personal interest, personal attraction
vs. meditation-peace
I was probably just comparing modes of operating.
Considering this, I saw every cultural Movement as seeking to provide a broader cultural significance to the individual actions of its adherents: the Integral movement, evangelical/born again Christianity, whatever. Veganism.
Helping to narrow the possibility of choice? (we do this because . . .) Integral: ~ do & develop your personal practice to aid the evolution of culture. Frank Cook: eat a wild plant every day (broader significance: making self, others aware we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity, if we cultivate and do not lose the relevant knowledge).
Looking at the culture as a being, if one doesn't have compelling personal interests and desires, looking for areas of fear, in one's self, in the broader culture, may be an approach to finding a culturally significant path.
Culture-wide fear. In my case: wandering around Mexico (yet for me to challenge much). Also: living in the forest, drinking the water, eating the food there, dealing with one's self out there, no insurance, no career, no family, no lover, no car, no house, etc. (yet with multiples of all of these).
Going to these areas, these edges, we "express & illumine the field of choice" (Danby wrote of Shakespeare). The culture-mind values this exercise and expansion. It enjoys overcoming fear-limits, e.g. "this is not a good time to go to the Middle East." On the contrary, if you go when people say that, your actions will be far more culturally significant than otherwise.
Just as a guess (and cliché): cultural significance comes from crossing edges, boundaries. First, perhaps, the personal ones, then those of the broader culture (or both at the same time).
So, now can I rest a bit and go back to reading Pynchon?
The main cultural significance things are leading up to for me may be wandering Mexico, may be something else. But, at least, as I defecate--relaxing, releasing, returning--in the woods, as I read Pynchon, as I nab, pinch, and eat the fat sierra ants that crawl all over me wherever I lay, even in the middle of an expanse of bare granite (nutritious snack comes to me!), as I cook my pot of food (as now, at this moment), I can wonder what broader significance that action might have, or what more significant broader action it could be a part of (people learning to be content in the forest? something else?)
Peace,
Monday, August 18, 2008
water in the desert [from ~8/08]
[Here's an old post and old foolishness that didn't get sent right away and that I'd like to have out of the queue. I ended up trashing all the dog food--I got sick. From it, I am not certain, but I associate it with that. I was carrying too much weight with it all at any rate. I have no plans to try any more of it.
Re: bear canisters: most of the less-traveled trails seem not to require them.
Re: fires: in many places out here fires are ok.
Re: other potential dietary foolishness: the large white shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines maybe cause loose stool. I've followed the approach w/ shrooms of avoiding any that are somewhat like the deadly ones--but I definitely could stand to learn much more.
Re: not filtering the water--so far, so good, adding onto last year's five weeks, even after drinking from the cow sewer--it's been, well I guess it's only just been 14 days (giardia incubation period). I do have to endure some horror stories however when talk gets round to that. See earlier posts and Elpel's _Participating in Nature_ (hollowtop.com ?) for more on that. End note.]
I've walked my 3 am hrs & 3 pm. I've resupplied, some key decisions made. Got out of K-Mart minus $15 on nuts, prunes, pet food, all except the latter eaten soon. In Vons: $8 instant potatoes ~3.5 lbs. mustard, cabbage, 2 bananas, 1lb carrots, $12 on two 1+ lb salamis, $4 tub of butter, $12/10lbs dog biscuit, $14/7lbs iams dog food. Pet food taxed, total:~$60. $6 to mail cook pot, unneeded maps, misc to Tuolomne Meadows. $80. May do for two weeks. Goal: no-cook, no-binge food, with enough to keep me going for two weeks. It's about 160 miles from the trailhead near Independence to T-meadows. I want to be lazy and do non-hiking things--no strings of 20-mile days.
Made those decisions, (after/while) ate a bit too much salami, but not to the point it was a problem, looked at bear canisters, headnets, mailed pkg, walked around Bishop desert for miles eating apples, peaches from trees looking for community college. Found it at last, closed, but water available, lay down to rest and read Pynchon, the/a real goal all along.
I've done the sewing, walking, sitting,eating wild food, but not the reading yet these two weeks, except for audiobooks.
Tomorrow: walk back into Bishop (decent town!), find way to upload photos (public lib?), or at least get them off camera so I can take more. Go back to Independence (-$4.50) but could go into mts from here.
The main new experiment will be the no cooking and kind of food--many possibly nasty issues with chicken byproducts, from China, oxidized cholesterol, I really should learn to/practice catching fish. Cooking, a nice ritual, learned from Frank Cook. . . well, my pot should be in T-Mdws when I get there, or sent back to SD if I don't go there after all.
Concerned about over-acidification or whatever it is from eating that stuff--I'll keep eating greens I find, but won't have pot to cook them or shrooms these next 2 weeks. Maybe later I'll type in what the animal feed is reported to have in it. As noted before, it sounds better than most every kind of human neo-pemmican found in mainstream stores and costing less than $12/lb. I have a hard time spending $ on anything where some type of sugar is the main ingredient.
Descending further into odd personal experimental culture hobo-dom.
Precedents are the bigger-budgeted/better self-controlled no-cook, powerbar-, jerky-, pop-tart-, cheap 7-11 pastry-eating, small store-resupplying thru-hikers, and Muir, who self-reports bringing only bread and tea on mountaneering expeditions (but those lasting only a few days and carrying hardly anything).
You do need to prepare or catch your own food, as do the longer-term adventurers (Jardines, Billy Goat) I've heard of, or spend a lot on small-store fresh fruit, frozen blueberries (Crow, asthecrowflies.org?), to eat the large number of calories needed in a way that sounds healthy.
This should, at least, get me out there to experience some time of no cook, no binge--since I rarely practice self control, though I did successfully ration on my first trip last year. Bringing food requiring cooking prevented eating everything up.
Most thru-hikers resupply every week or more often. For whatever reason, I like shooting for two weeks. This last time, I was only a day or two short. But as a result, my pack is heavy now: ~22 lbs dry food, plus the wetter food, which will be gone soon. Maybe I'll collect some apples on the way in to Bishop to take up to mts, but there are gooseberries up there--
I've heard the estimate of 2lbs food/person/day on caloric-intensive trips.
Eventually, as long as I can learn to do it without spending all my time at it (unless I want to!), it would be good to select adventures or dwelling-places where nutrition and calories are more easily and not illegally found along the way.
That will be a good thing to think more carefully about--I've heard of fish in baja, seaweed and fish in most coastal areas, sierra trout, fruit & seafood in tropical areas, figs & other fruit in urban areas. Rabbits, other small game, once you have the knack, in many places. Snakes in SoCal wilderness. Animals in Sequoia/Kings Cyn don't fear people much--wild chickens and the groundhogs (?) [marmots] are easy to get close to.
[I agree with Mollison/Permaculture we can't be going to live off the wild lands, that we need to rehabilitate the places already paved/deforested/devastated--but I'm not doing this. I appreciate the intention and effect of the ban on hunting, grazing, fires (in many places) in these parks.]
If the animal feed / human feed (peculiar to my lack of desire to practice self-control perhaps) works for me, it could provide for two weeks of practice in the regions where better food could be gotten on site.
Of course, fires are not illegal in most places outside of CA's mountain museums / suburban sprawl estate borders. They are allowing stoves, but I don't (yet) want to carry one or burn imported fuel when so much is right around. . .
I am trying, as Tagore (_Sadhana Realisation_, librivox audiobook) presents as a possibility, to use (and appreciate) the restrictions and guidelines as a challenge or form for more creativity--to question my old habits, rituals.
I may still be an outlaw south of Sonora Pass, however. I'm now well educated about the purpose and use of the bear canister, but believe the Jardine/thru-hiker approach: don't camp where everyone camps, camp high, don't cook where you camp, sleep with your smelly feet on your food (never leave it alone)--should be fine.
Tomorrow I should be able to reexamine sierrawildbear.gov and the map there. Bears and rangers. My permit is ready to show them; I think they only go around checking for canisters in established campsites, but who knows. How much am I willing to pay for peace of mind? I've spent too much time already imagining what I might say in response to "do you have a canister?"
Enough--I doubt I'll have more to write before I head back to no-reception land. But commenting on the pictures could be fun if that works out. The community college in S. Lake Tahoe was ideal for that, and I thought this one here might be. Cerrocoso.edu (?) is much smaller though, and, closed, I cannot tell.
Peace,
coyotes-
water in the desert: multiple well-running rivers and streams right through town. Almost every third gutter is a running stream, and not, as in SoCal, because someone is overwatering. Residential ponds are common. Massive mts, clouds to east and west of desert valley.
Re: bear canisters: most of the less-traveled trails seem not to require them.
Re: fires: in many places out here fires are ok.
Re: other potential dietary foolishness: the large white shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines maybe cause loose stool. I've followed the approach w/ shrooms of avoiding any that are somewhat like the deadly ones--but I definitely could stand to learn much more.
Re: not filtering the water--so far, so good, adding onto last year's five weeks, even after drinking from the cow sewer--it's been, well I guess it's only just been 14 days (giardia incubation period). I do have to endure some horror stories however when talk gets round to that. See earlier posts and Elpel's _Participating in Nature_ (hollowtop.com ?) for more on that. End note.]
I've walked my 3 am hrs & 3 pm. I've resupplied, some key decisions made. Got out of K-Mart minus $15 on nuts, prunes, pet food, all except the latter eaten soon. In Vons: $8 instant potatoes ~3.5 lbs. mustard, cabbage, 2 bananas, 1lb carrots, $12 on two 1+ lb salamis, $4 tub of butter, $12/10lbs dog biscuit, $14/7lbs iams dog food. Pet food taxed, total:~$60. $6 to mail cook pot, unneeded maps, misc to Tuolomne Meadows. $80. May do for two weeks. Goal: no-cook, no-binge food, with enough to keep me going for two weeks. It's about 160 miles from the trailhead near Independence to T-meadows. I want to be lazy and do non-hiking things--no strings of 20-mile days.
Made those decisions, (after/while) ate a bit too much salami, but not to the point it was a problem, looked at bear canisters, headnets, mailed pkg, walked around Bishop desert for miles eating apples, peaches from trees looking for community college. Found it at last, closed, but water available, lay down to rest and read Pynchon, the/a real goal all along.
I've done the sewing, walking, sitting,eating wild food, but not the reading yet these two weeks, except for audiobooks.
Tomorrow: walk back into Bishop (decent town!), find way to upload photos (public lib?), or at least get them off camera so I can take more. Go back to Independence (-$4.50) but could go into mts from here.
The main new experiment will be the no cooking and kind of food--many possibly nasty issues with chicken byproducts, from China, oxidized cholesterol, I really should learn to/practice catching fish. Cooking, a nice ritual, learned from Frank Cook. . . well, my pot should be in T-Mdws when I get there, or sent back to SD if I don't go there after all.
Concerned about over-acidification or whatever it is from eating that stuff--I'll keep eating greens I find, but won't have pot to cook them or shrooms these next 2 weeks. Maybe later I'll type in what the animal feed is reported to have in it. As noted before, it sounds better than most every kind of human neo-pemmican found in mainstream stores and costing less than $12/lb. I have a hard time spending $ on anything where some type of sugar is the main ingredient.
Descending further into odd personal experimental culture hobo-dom.
Precedents are the bigger-budgeted/better self-controlled no-cook, powerbar-, jerky-, pop-tart-, cheap 7-11 pastry-eating, small store-resupplying thru-hikers, and Muir, who self-reports bringing only bread and tea on mountaneering expeditions (but those lasting only a few days and carrying hardly anything).
You do need to prepare or catch your own food, as do the longer-term adventurers (Jardines, Billy Goat) I've heard of, or spend a lot on small-store fresh fruit, frozen blueberries (Crow, asthecrowflies.org?), to eat the large number of calories needed in a way that sounds healthy.
This should, at least, get me out there to experience some time of no cook, no binge--since I rarely practice self control, though I did successfully ration on my first trip last year. Bringing food requiring cooking prevented eating everything up.
Most thru-hikers resupply every week or more often. For whatever reason, I like shooting for two weeks. This last time, I was only a day or two short. But as a result, my pack is heavy now: ~22 lbs dry food, plus the wetter food, which will be gone soon. Maybe I'll collect some apples on the way in to Bishop to take up to mts, but there are gooseberries up there--
I've heard the estimate of 2lbs food/person/day on caloric-intensive trips.
Eventually, as long as I can learn to do it without spending all my time at it (unless I want to!), it would be good to select adventures or dwelling-places where nutrition and calories are more easily and not illegally found along the way.
That will be a good thing to think more carefully about--I've heard of fish in baja, seaweed and fish in most coastal areas, sierra trout, fruit & seafood in tropical areas, figs & other fruit in urban areas. Rabbits, other small game, once you have the knack, in many places. Snakes in SoCal wilderness. Animals in Sequoia/Kings Cyn don't fear people much--wild chickens and the groundhogs (?) [marmots] are easy to get close to.
[I agree with Mollison/Permaculture we can't be going to live off the wild lands, that we need to rehabilitate the places already paved/deforested/devastated--but I'm not doing this. I appreciate the intention and effect of the ban on hunting, grazing, fires (in many places) in these parks.]
If the animal feed / human feed (peculiar to my lack of desire to practice self-control perhaps) works for me, it could provide for two weeks of practice in the regions where better food could be gotten on site.
Of course, fires are not illegal in most places outside of CA's mountain museums / suburban sprawl estate borders. They are allowing stoves, but I don't (yet) want to carry one or burn imported fuel when so much is right around. . .
I am trying, as Tagore (_Sadhana Realisation_, librivox audiobook) presents as a possibility, to use (and appreciate) the restrictions and guidelines as a challenge or form for more creativity--to question my old habits, rituals.
I may still be an outlaw south of Sonora Pass, however. I'm now well educated about the purpose and use of the bear canister, but believe the Jardine/thru-hiker approach: don't camp where everyone camps, camp high, don't cook where you camp, sleep with your smelly feet on your food (never leave it alone)--should be fine.
Tomorrow I should be able to reexamine sierrawildbear.gov and the map there. Bears and rangers. My permit is ready to show them; I think they only go around checking for canisters in established campsites, but who knows. How much am I willing to pay for peace of mind? I've spent too much time already imagining what I might say in response to "do you have a canister?"
Enough--I doubt I'll have more to write before I head back to no-reception land. But commenting on the pictures could be fun if that works out. The community college in S. Lake Tahoe was ideal for that, and I thought this one here might be. Cerrocoso.edu (?) is much smaller though, and, closed, I cannot tell.
Peace,
coyotes-
water in the desert: multiple well-running rivers and streams right through town. Almost every third gutter is a running stream, and not, as in SoCal, because someone is overwatering. Residential ponds are common. Massive mts, clouds to east and west of desert valley.
water in the desert [from ~8/08]
[Here's an old post and old foolishness that didn't get sent right away and that I'd like to have out of the queue. I ended up trashing all the dog food--I got sick. From it, I am not certain, but I associate it with that. I was carrying too much weight with it all at any rate. I have no plans to try any more of it.
Re: bear canisters: most of the less-traveled trails seem not to require them.
Re: fires: in many places out here fires are ok.
Re: other potential dietary foolishness: the large white shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines maybe cause loose stool. I've followed the approach w/ shrooms of avoiding any that are somewhat like the deadly ones--but I definitely could stand to learn much more.
Re: not filtering the water--so far, so good, adding onto last year's five weeks, even after drinking from the cow sewer--it's been, well I guess it's only just been 14 days (giardia incubation period). I do have to endure some horror stories however when talk gets round to that. See earlier posts and Elpel's _Participating in Nature_ (hollowtop.com ?) for more on that. End note.]
I've walked my 3 am hrs & 3 pm. I've resupplied, some key decisions made. Got out of K-Mart minus $15 on nuts, prunes, pet food, all except the latter eaten soon. In Vons: $8 instant potatoes ~3.5 lbs. mustard, cabbage, 2 bananas, 1lb carrots, $12 on two 1+ lb salamis, $4 tub of butter, $12/10lbs dog biscuit, $14/7lbs iams dog food. Pet food taxed, total:~$60. $6 to mail cook pot, unneeded maps, misc to Tuolomne Meadows. $80. May do for two weeks. Goal: no-cook, no-binge food, with enough to keep me going for two weeks. It's about 160 miles from the trailhead near Independence to T-meadows. I want to be lazy and do non-hiking things--no strings of 20-mile days.
Made those decisions, (after/while) ate a bit too much salami, but not to the point it was a problem, looked at bear canisters, headnets, mailed pkg, walked around Bishop desert for miles eating apples, peaches from trees looking for community college. Found it at last, closed, but water available, lay down to rest and read Pynchon, the/a real goal all along.
I've done the sewing, walking, sitting,eating wild food, but not the reading yet these two weeks, except for audiobooks.
Tomorrow: walk back into Bishop (decent town!), find way to upload photos (public lib?), or at least get them off camera so I can take more. Go back to Independence (-$4.50) but could go into mts from here.
The main new experiment will be the no cooking and kind of food--many possibly nasty issues with chicken byproducts, from China, oxidized cholesterol, I really should learn to/practice catching fish. Cooking, a nice ritual, learned from Frank Cook. . . well, my pot should be in T-Mdws when I get there, or sent back to SD if I don't go there after all.
Concerned about over-acidification or whatever it is from eating that stuff--I'll keep eating greens I find, but won't have pot to cook them or shrooms these next 2 weeks. Maybe later I'll type in what the animal feed is reported to have in it. As noted before, it sounds better than most every kind of human neo-pemmican found in mainstream stores and costing less than $12/lb. I have a hard time spending $ on anything where some type of sugar is the main ingredient.
Descending further into odd personal experimental culture hobo-dom.
Precedents are the bigger-budgeted/better self-controlled no-cook, powerbar-, jerky-, pop-tart-, cheap 7-11 pastry-eating, small store-resupplying thru-hikers, and Muir, who self-reports bringing only bread and tea on mountaneering expeditions (but those lasting only a few days and carrying hardly anything).
You do need to prepare or catch your own food, as do the longer-term adventurers (Jardines, Billy Goat) I've heard of, or spend a lot on small-store fresh fruit, frozen blueberries (Crow, asthecrowflies.org?), to eat the large number of calories needed in a way that sounds healthy.
This should, at least, get me out there to experience some time of no cook, no binge--since I rarely practice self control, though I did successfully ration on my first trip last year. Bringing food requiring cooking prevented eating everything up.
Most thru-hikers resupply every week or more often. For whatever reason, I like shooting for two weeks. This last time, I was only a day or two short. But as a result, my pack is heavy now: ~22 lbs dry food, plus the wetter food, which will be gone soon. Maybe I'll collect some apples on the way in to Bishop to take up to mts, but there are gooseberries up there--
I've heard the estimate of 2lbs food/person/day on caloric-intensive trips.
Eventually, as long as I can learn to do it without spending all my time at it (unless I want to!), it would be good to select adventures or dwelling-places where nutrition and calories are more easily and not illegally found along the way.
That will be a good thing to think more carefully about--I've heard of fish in baja, seaweed and fish in most coastal areas, sierra trout, fruit & seafood in tropical areas, figs & other fruit in urban areas. Rabbits, other small game, once you have the knack, in many places. Snakes in SoCal wilderness. Animals in Sequoia/Kings Cyn don't fear people much--wild chickens and the groundhogs (?) [marmots] are easy to get close to.
[I agree with Mollison/Permaculture we can't be going to live off the wild lands, that we need to rehabilitate the places already paved/deforested/devastated--but I'm not doing this. I appreciate the intention and effect of the ban on hunting, grazing, fires (in many places) in these parks.]
If the animal feed / human feed (peculiar to my lack of desire to practice self-control perhaps) works for me, it could provide for two weeks of practice in the regions where better food could be gotten on site.
Of course, fires are not illegal in most places outside of CA's mountain museums / suburban sprawl estate borders. They are allowing stoves, but I don't (yet) want to carry one or burn imported fuel when so much is right around. . .
I am trying, as Tagore (_Sadhana Realisation_, librivox audiobook) presents as a possibility, to use (and appreciate) the restrictions and guidelines as a challenge or form for more creativity--to question my old habits, rituals.
I may still be an outlaw south of Sonora Pass, however. I'm now well educated about the purpose and use of the bear canister, but believe the Jardine/thru-hiker approach: don't camp where everyone camps, camp high, don't cook where you camp, sleep with your smelly feet on your food (never leave it alone)--should be fine.
Tomorrow I should be able to reexamine sierrawildbear.gov and the map there. Bears and rangers. My permit is ready to show them; I think they only go around checking for canisters in established campsites, but who knows. How much am I willing to pay for peace of mind? I've spent too much time already imagining what I might say in response to "do you have a canister?"
Enough--I doubt I'll have more to write before I head back to no-reception land. But commenting on the pictures could be fun if that works out. The community college in S. Lake Tahoe was ideal for that, and I thought this one here might be. Cerrocoso.edu (?) is much smaller though, and, closed, I cannot tell.
Peace,
coyotes-
water in the desert: multiple well-running rivers and streams right through town. Almost every third gutter is a running stream, and not, as in SoCal, because someone is overwatering. Residential ponds are common. Massive mts, clouds to east and west of desert valley.
Re: bear canisters: most of the less-traveled trails seem not to require them.
Re: fires: in many places out here fires are ok.
Re: other potential dietary foolishness: the large white shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines maybe cause loose stool. I've followed the approach w/ shrooms of avoiding any that are somewhat like the deadly ones--but I definitely could stand to learn much more.
Re: not filtering the water--so far, so good, adding onto last year's five weeks, even after drinking from the cow sewer--it's been, well I guess it's only just been 14 days (giardia incubation period). I do have to endure some horror stories however when talk gets round to that. See earlier posts and Elpel's _Participating in Nature_ (hollowtop.com ?) for more on that. End note.]
I've walked my 3 am hrs & 3 pm. I've resupplied, some key decisions made. Got out of K-Mart minus $15 on nuts, prunes, pet food, all except the latter eaten soon. In Vons: $8 instant potatoes ~3.5 lbs. mustard, cabbage, 2 bananas, 1lb carrots, $12 on two 1+ lb salamis, $4 tub of butter, $12/10lbs dog biscuit, $14/7lbs iams dog food. Pet food taxed, total:~$60. $6 to mail cook pot, unneeded maps, misc to Tuolomne Meadows. $80. May do for two weeks. Goal: no-cook, no-binge food, with enough to keep me going for two weeks. It's about 160 miles from the trailhead near Independence to T-meadows. I want to be lazy and do non-hiking things--no strings of 20-mile days.
Made those decisions, (after/while) ate a bit too much salami, but not to the point it was a problem, looked at bear canisters, headnets, mailed pkg, walked around Bishop desert for miles eating apples, peaches from trees looking for community college. Found it at last, closed, but water available, lay down to rest and read Pynchon, the/a real goal all along.
I've done the sewing, walking, sitting,eating wild food, but not the reading yet these two weeks, except for audiobooks.
Tomorrow: walk back into Bishop (decent town!), find way to upload photos (public lib?), or at least get them off camera so I can take more. Go back to Independence (-$4.50) but could go into mts from here.
The main new experiment will be the no cooking and kind of food--many possibly nasty issues with chicken byproducts, from China, oxidized cholesterol, I really should learn to/practice catching fish. Cooking, a nice ritual, learned from Frank Cook. . . well, my pot should be in T-Mdws when I get there, or sent back to SD if I don't go there after all.
Concerned about over-acidification or whatever it is from eating that stuff--I'll keep eating greens I find, but won't have pot to cook them or shrooms these next 2 weeks. Maybe later I'll type in what the animal feed is reported to have in it. As noted before, it sounds better than most every kind of human neo-pemmican found in mainstream stores and costing less than $12/lb. I have a hard time spending $ on anything where some type of sugar is the main ingredient.
Descending further into odd personal experimental culture hobo-dom.
Precedents are the bigger-budgeted/better self-controlled no-cook, powerbar-, jerky-, pop-tart-, cheap 7-11 pastry-eating, small store-resupplying thru-hikers, and Muir, who self-reports bringing only bread and tea on mountaneering expeditions (but those lasting only a few days and carrying hardly anything).
You do need to prepare or catch your own food, as do the longer-term adventurers (Jardines, Billy Goat) I've heard of, or spend a lot on small-store fresh fruit, frozen blueberries (Crow, asthecrowflies.org?), to eat the large number of calories needed in a way that sounds healthy.
This should, at least, get me out there to experience some time of no cook, no binge--since I rarely practice self control, though I did successfully ration on my first trip last year. Bringing food requiring cooking prevented eating everything up.
Most thru-hikers resupply every week or more often. For whatever reason, I like shooting for two weeks. This last time, I was only a day or two short. But as a result, my pack is heavy now: ~22 lbs dry food, plus the wetter food, which will be gone soon. Maybe I'll collect some apples on the way in to Bishop to take up to mts, but there are gooseberries up there--
I've heard the estimate of 2lbs food/person/day on caloric-intensive trips.
Eventually, as long as I can learn to do it without spending all my time at it (unless I want to!), it would be good to select adventures or dwelling-places where nutrition and calories are more easily and not illegally found along the way.
That will be a good thing to think more carefully about--I've heard of fish in baja, seaweed and fish in most coastal areas, sierra trout, fruit & seafood in tropical areas, figs & other fruit in urban areas. Rabbits, other small game, once you have the knack, in many places. Snakes in SoCal wilderness. Animals in Sequoia/Kings Cyn don't fear people much--wild chickens and the groundhogs (?) [marmots] are easy to get close to.
[I agree with Mollison/Permaculture we can't be going to live off the wild lands, that we need to rehabilitate the places already paved/deforested/devastated--but I'm not doing this. I appreciate the intention and effect of the ban on hunting, grazing, fires (in many places) in these parks.]
If the animal feed / human feed (peculiar to my lack of desire to practice self-control perhaps) works for me, it could provide for two weeks of practice in the regions where better food could be gotten on site.
Of course, fires are not illegal in most places outside of CA's mountain museums / suburban sprawl estate borders. They are allowing stoves, but I don't (yet) want to carry one or burn imported fuel when so much is right around. . .
I am trying, as Tagore (_Sadhana Realisation_, librivox audiobook) presents as a possibility, to use (and appreciate) the restrictions and guidelines as a challenge or form for more creativity--to question my old habits, rituals.
I may still be an outlaw south of Sonora Pass, however. I'm now well educated about the purpose and use of the bear canister, but believe the Jardine/thru-hiker approach: don't camp where everyone camps, camp high, don't cook where you camp, sleep with your smelly feet on your food (never leave it alone)--should be fine.
Tomorrow I should be able to reexamine sierrawildbear.gov and the map there. Bears and rangers. My permit is ready to show them; I think they only go around checking for canisters in established campsites, but who knows. How much am I willing to pay for peace of mind? I've spent too much time already imagining what I might say in response to "do you have a canister?"
Enough--I doubt I'll have more to write before I head back to no-reception land. But commenting on the pictures could be fun if that works out. The community college in S. Lake Tahoe was ideal for that, and I thought this one here might be. Cerrocoso.edu (?) is much smaller though, and, closed, I cannot tell.
Peace,
coyotes-
water in the desert: multiple well-running rivers and streams right through town. Almost every third gutter is a running stream, and not, as in SoCal, because someone is overwatering. Residential ponds are common. Massive mts, clouds to east and west of desert valley.
Time to head south, I'm thinking
Hello! Looks like I'm getting email again, & Gianni let me know the last post (serotonin) made it (usually blogger sends an email). Thank you. I guess the Mammoth Mtn tower would let me send, not receive. I'll check the voicemail tomorrow, I bet. Now, I'm very near Tuolumne Mdws.
Walked till late last night and up early doing it too. After Donohue Pass, rested most of the day: 1130-1700. I got to be quiet, not connected (cell phone-wise), and to consider, what next?
Plan: to begin to head south, but further to the west. I may still go by VVR & MTR for the food. Goals: to be warmer at the lower elevations, to be less fatigued from the altitude (possible cause), to see the big trees, to avoid the crowded John Muir Trail, to begin heading toward Mexico.
That's about it.
In the two hours of walking before stopping, I started listening to _Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_.
That cultural channeling idea and sense is simmering.
Peace,
Walked till late last night and up early doing it too. After Donohue Pass, rested most of the day: 1130-1700. I got to be quiet, not connected (cell phone-wise), and to consider, what next?
Plan: to begin to head south, but further to the west. I may still go by VVR & MTR for the food. Goals: to be warmer at the lower elevations, to be less fatigued from the altitude (possible cause), to see the big trees, to avoid the crowded John Muir Trail, to begin heading toward Mexico.
That's about it.
In the two hours of walking before stopping, I started listening to _Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_.
That cultural channeling idea and sense is simmering.
Peace,
Sunday, August 17, 2008
i; serotonin of the culturemind
i, lowercase = this node = aid to being aware of self as node of the mind of culture. These ideas, not new--_The Global Brain_, Tree Bresson (? _Communities Mag_), Ramakrishna, among antecedents.
Disorientation. Language: basic component of my reproductive field, what I (i) reproduce, usually without questioning habits in using it. NonViolent Communication, Mindful Speech, practices, among others, to alter those habits.
Difficulty: language, a basic welcome mat, tool of rapport, of thought, of manufacture of subculture/ingroup/outgroup. Already, a number of readers turned away by this here manner.
The Disorientation noted in that recent comment by Anonymous, and my own awareness of immaturity, smallness of mind, violence of speech, definition of self in opposition (a good Daoist never do that. Word.), and general foolishness which I've (i) demonstrated in past and future posts--all that, rather than language, offered the in, the insight, in yesterday's AM sit.
Can't I (i) learn not to be overwhelmed or disoriented? The being overwhelmed points to some basic disconnect between my habits of seeing, acting, and the Dao, the Dharma(?), the way things are going, the way they are.
"Something is being done through us": my (i) best guess of the way things are going. So, if, in my interactions with others (a general source of overwhelm-ment in the past), I (i) can maintain awareness of that larger something, source, maybe I can avoid the--.
The "I", the mistake of interpreting and acting as if i am an entity independent of culturemind.
i find glimmerings that it is possible to maintain awareness of this larger source even in the midst of interaction. I've never referred to it as "culturemind" before, and may not do so to myself now. I find it, so far, a stillness and wideness of awareness, and mentioned it before at j9k blog (http://yailuminado.blogspot.com ) as 'god awareness', I think.
Well, now?
The motive. There needs to be, i think, a connection with, an awareness of, a subtle pleasure when one feels oneself channeling culture.
i believe this pleasure exists, but is not given as much attention as sexual pleasure. It is not simple fame or leadership--at least as I have understood it. "So: you can organize people, give them something to do, which they appreciate, Or, they look to you, --So what? Where is the joy in that, why is it worth the hassle?"
With that question unresolved, life stories and actions of Jesus, Buddha, Frank Cook (plantsandhealers.com), Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Adolph Hitler remain something I cannot relate to--I am not like them due to 'personality differences'. But the buddha has been reported to be personality-less, personality-free. And for some reason, he continued to stop meditating--perhaps to channel culture.
The scenario I'm working with, again, is re-imagining my meeting Toriana (perhaps her actual name). That is an interaction where lust could be foremost, or morefore could be awareness of the channeling of culture in the interaction. There could be connection with and guidance from the import of the interaction for the development of the culture. "--not our exclusive love, this is not only about individual i, thou. We, by our interaction, nourish a culture in which it is easy to love and to be loved."
Can I maintain connection with the pleasure that comes when channeling culture? When has it run through i before? What other examples, inspirations can i point to? Can I know the difference between a buddha channeling, a P. Hilton channeling, a hitler channeling?
An Emerson remark, approximately, "the great man is content to mark the bullseye, to let the rest shatter the target", and Twain's rhapsodizing about the desire "to be the first" gets at a bit of it. But seeing a marked target and bringing others to it ("share the joy this discovery brings me!"), is a more common experience of 'serotonin of the culturemind', and any view of 'first' is relative.
Recognition, appreciation by others, seem to be byproducts, an epiphenomenon of the actual pleasure, and yet--as in public speaking, interaction with audience--well, public reaction is vital--
My experiences of the pleasure: writing and publishing "hoboschool" http://purl.org/net/cfu/Members/colin/hoboschool (?), getting Jeffrey Sawyer's _Sun_ article online, and other texts, e.g., "Autogeddon". Working a teambuilding program where palpable, feelable was the feeling of facilitators' and participants' lives improving. Discovering wonderful, expanding, helpful ways of viewing life, world, or a topic of concern to a community i participated in (e.g., Food Not Lawns). Dance.
My experiences of absence, loss of the feeling: the mistaken post highschool/early college, sporadic at other times, feeling of total disconnect, unbridgeable uniqueness, meaninglessness, aloneness of my existence. Nothing I fixed on (i fixed on nothing), decided on, lasted. My ideas, motivations would change. Aware of few compelling, durable sources of meaning, fell back on the biological, worked from there. (I'm not remembering well--see archives: http://purl.org/net/ea/cleath/docs/ ?)
In secondhand (never entirely so) experience, what evidence of serotonin of cuturemind? The Holocracy reports of the effect of their organizational philosophy and process on workers' feelings of growth, empowerment, and on collective sensing of the organizational direction; legends of high functioning groups, teams (that are not examples of groupthink); Thich Nhat Hanh's, Cohen's (wie.org), etc.'s claims that the next enlightenment, awakening will be social, cultural; dance; a qi gung rock star/guru's differentiation between great virtue and small virtue; and, not exactly relevant? William James's "moral fighting weight".
To return to the present time, my present situation, i felt the serotonin, or anticipated feeling it, back when I was attempting to get unstuck from San Diego, and asking my mom for patience with my non-participation in an upcoming family reunion: "I think I'm feeling my way into something significant."
Now, out here, though i have no Idea how long i'll stay, i've the sense of being an embodiment of (1) many men's (primarily i have interacted with men) ideals, dreams: So much opening up and bits of tearyeyedness, perhaps, from Mike, Johnny, middleaged men, knowing a bit of decline of health, with family, work, having read, seen _Into the Wild_, wanting to be out more, "not many get to do what you're doing"; "We need more people doing differently, we have to change. My ways are part of the problem." And less fantastically, with my small pack, of (2) every hiker's desire to carry less weight. It is about 10lbs base pack weight. Jardine's pack is so small, he's thought a dayhiker and doesn't stand out in the way I do, perhaps.
Alright, so, a more recent application of sensing the social serotonin: my somewhat random trip to Mammoth yesterday--i interacted much more with many different people in person than i have in several days. Didn't feel so overwhelmed, though with J & family, his love, interest, friendliness, helpfulness, was very nearly very new, but the culture was flowing--he got a glimmer of it, so he offered a ride--and then i got to experience what buddha/tnh/thanissaro bikkhu say about generosity being a step, often a beginning step, on the noble path, and the monks' alms rounds serving both to let the monks practice contentness with whatever is given, even if nothing, and to let others be generous. I did not accept offer of money--is this arrogance? False independence? At any rate, I am planning to use the probable eventual need to make some money again as a path to new adventure.
That is nearly all. i did not address the buddha (common interpretation of B may not be best for this archetype--add Heron criticism? Tagore's _Sadhana Realisation_)/hilton/hitler difference. All i came to in earlier contemplation of the distinction derives from Covey's 8th habit, Joseph Campbell's (?) view of good art, and related ideas (Maxwell, others on developing leadership skills): "find your own voice and help others find theirs", "great art returns the experiencer to herself": So, is the cultural channeling creating (a) followers or (b) new nodes self-aware of the evolving? nature of culture and of their ability to (1) let the culture play and develop in them, to suit their unique position, their indigenous situation, rather than to (2) simply reproduce the artifacts generated by freer, more dynamic nexi, residents of distant cultural capitols, age-old renaissances? Is the channeling bringing more awareness, empowerment, enlivenment to previously primarily inert, predominantly mechanistic matter (Aurobindo/the Mother?)?
---
That's the insight of yesterday in pixels, more or less.
Oh, I forgot the etiology of our drive, motivation for an action to have cultural significance beyond isolated, individual pleasure: at the least, perhaps, the source is gestalt perception, the desire/function to perceive entities (wholes) as parts of a larger, more meaningful whole: three dots perceived as a triangle; a letter, as part of a word; a chance occurence?, as happening for a reason; and so on (source for this: Crumbaugh 1963?--ref'd in "Meaning in Life", see archive).
And gestalt perception is more functional, hence selected for, and there you are!
---
I think all this rambling only matters to the extent it helps me move in my life away from habits likely to lead to suffering toward those habits likely to lead to peace of mind.
I may listen to/read Pynchon, Dickens, Twain, whoever, differently too. Will I be more mindful in my writing, actions, life experiments?
If so, that will probably be a gradual process. Is this blithering? Do others do more? On one small hand it is at least an accomplishment to be a source of words running through a mind rather than simply running others' creations/channelings through mine.
Will I now be more aware of the cultural significance of my interactions with others? Will I now be able to relax more into it, to feel good in it, to let the flow occur? Will I still sense when it is time to stop, to be silent, to peacefully return to, not escape in a manic excitement (oh my--) to, the forest?
Am i sensing the seed of care for our body in this inter/action?
" " care for our mind?
" " care for our connection?
" " awareness of our ground?
that seems so heavy and unplayful, somewhat unfun. But whining, ranting, defining self in opposition don't answer as a remedy. There is a deeper wit and humor I think, a deeper fun, accessible to many / all? And I've heard, too, (Aurobindo, Wilber) there are 'higher-tier' manners of acting and conversing. And that, regardless, the manner of interacting is chosen/channeled by the culture-adept(?) to best purpose.
I guess, in practice, how it will play out for me, where I am now, is sort of the Aurobindian consecration practice in this form: doing my best to touch in frequently with that wider, stiller, ever-, awareness. The manic-ness, the release into momentary no mind of pleasure or habit--that seems to be a bit of the 'fun' I'm imagining losing. But i know well enough the manicness brings a necessary period of recovering. It is as if the overwhelm-ment/manicness signals the need for the kind of pondering, attempted still-sitting I've done a bit of these past two days. So then, more of that awareness to more moments? A merge/synthesis of John Heron's modes, perhaps by means of speed switched between, to the point, as perhaps in Goenka's vipassana, the merged modes become ongoing state?
Ha ha, he he!
2008-08-17-1159, in forest near Devil's Postpiles National Monument.
Peace,
Disorientation. Language: basic component of my reproductive field, what I (i) reproduce, usually without questioning habits in using it. NonViolent Communication, Mindful Speech, practices, among others, to alter those habits.
Difficulty: language, a basic welcome mat, tool of rapport, of thought, of manufacture of subculture/ingroup/outgroup. Already, a number of readers turned away by this here manner.
The Disorientation noted in that recent comment by Anonymous, and my own awareness of immaturity, smallness of mind, violence of speech, definition of self in opposition (a good Daoist never do that. Word.), and general foolishness which I've (i) demonstrated in past and future posts--all that, rather than language, offered the in, the insight, in yesterday's AM sit.
Can't I (i) learn not to be overwhelmed or disoriented? The being overwhelmed points to some basic disconnect between my habits of seeing, acting, and the Dao, the Dharma(?), the way things are going, the way they are.
"Something is being done through us": my (i) best guess of the way things are going. So, if, in my interactions with others (a general source of overwhelm-ment in the past), I (i) can maintain awareness of that larger something, source, maybe I can avoid the--.
The "I", the mistake of interpreting and acting as if i am an entity independent of culturemind.
i find glimmerings that it is possible to maintain awareness of this larger source even in the midst of interaction. I've never referred to it as "culturemind" before, and may not do so to myself now. I find it, so far, a stillness and wideness of awareness, and mentioned it before at j9k blog (http://yailuminado.blogspot.com ) as 'god awareness', I think.
Well, now?
The motive. There needs to be, i think, a connection with, an awareness of, a subtle pleasure when one feels oneself channeling culture.
i believe this pleasure exists, but is not given as much attention as sexual pleasure. It is not simple fame or leadership--at least as I have understood it. "So: you can organize people, give them something to do, which they appreciate, Or, they look to you, --So what? Where is the joy in that, why is it worth the hassle?"
With that question unresolved, life stories and actions of Jesus, Buddha, Frank Cook (plantsandhealers.com), Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Adolph Hitler remain something I cannot relate to--I am not like them due to 'personality differences'. But the buddha has been reported to be personality-less, personality-free. And for some reason, he continued to stop meditating--perhaps to channel culture.
The scenario I'm working with, again, is re-imagining my meeting Toriana (perhaps her actual name). That is an interaction where lust could be foremost, or morefore could be awareness of the channeling of culture in the interaction. There could be connection with and guidance from the import of the interaction for the development of the culture. "--not our exclusive love, this is not only about individual i, thou. We, by our interaction, nourish a culture in which it is easy to love and to be loved."
Can I maintain connection with the pleasure that comes when channeling culture? When has it run through i before? What other examples, inspirations can i point to? Can I know the difference between a buddha channeling, a P. Hilton channeling, a hitler channeling?
An Emerson remark, approximately, "the great man is content to mark the bullseye, to let the rest shatter the target", and Twain's rhapsodizing about the desire "to be the first" gets at a bit of it. But seeing a marked target and bringing others to it ("share the joy this discovery brings me!"), is a more common experience of 'serotonin of the culturemind', and any view of 'first' is relative.
Recognition, appreciation by others, seem to be byproducts, an epiphenomenon of the actual pleasure, and yet--as in public speaking, interaction with audience--well, public reaction is vital--
My experiences of the pleasure: writing and publishing "hoboschool" http://purl.org/net/cfu/Members/colin/hoboschool (?), getting Jeffrey Sawyer's _Sun_ article online, and other texts, e.g., "Autogeddon". Working a teambuilding program where palpable, feelable was the feeling of facilitators' and participants' lives improving. Discovering wonderful, expanding, helpful ways of viewing life, world, or a topic of concern to a community i participated in (e.g., Food Not Lawns). Dance.
My experiences of absence, loss of the feeling: the mistaken post highschool/early college, sporadic at other times, feeling of total disconnect, unbridgeable uniqueness, meaninglessness, aloneness of my existence. Nothing I fixed on (i fixed on nothing), decided on, lasted. My ideas, motivations would change. Aware of few compelling, durable sources of meaning, fell back on the biological, worked from there. (I'm not remembering well--see archives: http://purl.org/net/ea/cleath/docs/ ?)
In secondhand (never entirely so) experience, what evidence of serotonin of cuturemind? The Holocracy reports of the effect of their organizational philosophy and process on workers' feelings of growth, empowerment, and on collective sensing of the organizational direction; legends of high functioning groups, teams (that are not examples of groupthink); Thich Nhat Hanh's, Cohen's (wie.org), etc.'s claims that the next enlightenment, awakening will be social, cultural; dance; a qi gung rock star/guru's differentiation between great virtue and small virtue; and, not exactly relevant? William James's "moral fighting weight".
To return to the present time, my present situation, i felt the serotonin, or anticipated feeling it, back when I was attempting to get unstuck from San Diego, and asking my mom for patience with my non-participation in an upcoming family reunion: "I think I'm feeling my way into something significant."
Now, out here, though i have no Idea how long i'll stay, i've the sense of being an embodiment of (1) many men's (primarily i have interacted with men) ideals, dreams: So much opening up and bits of tearyeyedness, perhaps, from Mike, Johnny, middleaged men, knowing a bit of decline of health, with family, work, having read, seen _Into the Wild_, wanting to be out more, "not many get to do what you're doing"; "We need more people doing differently, we have to change. My ways are part of the problem." And less fantastically, with my small pack, of (2) every hiker's desire to carry less weight. It is about 10lbs base pack weight. Jardine's pack is so small, he's thought a dayhiker and doesn't stand out in the way I do, perhaps.
Alright, so, a more recent application of sensing the social serotonin: my somewhat random trip to Mammoth yesterday--i interacted much more with many different people in person than i have in several days. Didn't feel so overwhelmed, though with J & family, his love, interest, friendliness, helpfulness, was very nearly very new, but the culture was flowing--he got a glimmer of it, so he offered a ride--and then i got to experience what buddha/tnh/thanissaro bikkhu say about generosity being a step, often a beginning step, on the noble path, and the monks' alms rounds serving both to let the monks practice contentness with whatever is given, even if nothing, and to let others be generous. I did not accept offer of money--is this arrogance? False independence? At any rate, I am planning to use the probable eventual need to make some money again as a path to new adventure.
That is nearly all. i did not address the buddha (common interpretation of B may not be best for this archetype--add Heron criticism? Tagore's _Sadhana Realisation_)/hilton/hitler difference. All i came to in earlier contemplation of the distinction derives from Covey's 8th habit, Joseph Campbell's (?) view of good art, and related ideas (Maxwell, others on developing leadership skills): "find your own voice and help others find theirs", "great art returns the experiencer to herself": So, is the cultural channeling creating (a) followers or (b) new nodes self-aware of the evolving? nature of culture and of their ability to (1) let the culture play and develop in them, to suit their unique position, their indigenous situation, rather than to (2) simply reproduce the artifacts generated by freer, more dynamic nexi, residents of distant cultural capitols, age-old renaissances? Is the channeling bringing more awareness, empowerment, enlivenment to previously primarily inert, predominantly mechanistic matter (Aurobindo/the Mother?)?
---
That's the insight of yesterday in pixels, more or less.
Oh, I forgot the etiology of our drive, motivation for an action to have cultural significance beyond isolated, individual pleasure: at the least, perhaps, the source is gestalt perception, the desire/function to perceive entities (wholes) as parts of a larger, more meaningful whole: three dots perceived as a triangle; a letter, as part of a word; a chance occurence?, as happening for a reason; and so on (source for this: Crumbaugh 1963?--ref'd in "Meaning in Life", see archive).
And gestalt perception is more functional, hence selected for, and there you are!
---
I think all this rambling only matters to the extent it helps me move in my life away from habits likely to lead to suffering toward those habits likely to lead to peace of mind.
I may listen to/read Pynchon, Dickens, Twain, whoever, differently too. Will I be more mindful in my writing, actions, life experiments?
If so, that will probably be a gradual process. Is this blithering? Do others do more? On one small hand it is at least an accomplishment to be a source of words running through a mind rather than simply running others' creations/channelings through mine.
Will I now be more aware of the cultural significance of my interactions with others? Will I now be able to relax more into it, to feel good in it, to let the flow occur? Will I still sense when it is time to stop, to be silent, to peacefully return to, not escape in a manic excitement (oh my--) to, the forest?
Am i sensing the seed of care for our body in this inter/action?
" " care for our mind?
" " care for our connection?
" " awareness of our ground?
that seems so heavy and unplayful, somewhat unfun. But whining, ranting, defining self in opposition don't answer as a remedy. There is a deeper wit and humor I think, a deeper fun, accessible to many / all? And I've heard, too, (Aurobindo, Wilber) there are 'higher-tier' manners of acting and conversing. And that, regardless, the manner of interacting is chosen/channeled by the culture-adept(?) to best purpose.
I guess, in practice, how it will play out for me, where I am now, is sort of the Aurobindian consecration practice in this form: doing my best to touch in frequently with that wider, stiller, ever-, awareness. The manic-ness, the release into momentary no mind of pleasure or habit--that seems to be a bit of the 'fun' I'm imagining losing. But i know well enough the manicness brings a necessary period of recovering. It is as if the overwhelm-ment/manicness signals the need for the kind of pondering, attempted still-sitting I've done a bit of these past two days. So then, more of that awareness to more moments? A merge/synthesis of John Heron's modes, perhaps by means of speed switched between, to the point, as perhaps in Goenka's vipassana, the merged modes become ongoing state?
Ha ha, he he!
2008-08-17-1159, in forest near Devil's Postpiles National Monument.
Peace,
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Vista; What to do; Re: your comment!
I came to a vista open to the west near a stream. I'd planned to rest @ water. Tried, and there's a good signal again, so I got some messages, and I thought I'd update things since I made it through a stretch of unmaintained trail.
The vista overlooks the valley formed by convergence of north and middle forks of the San Joaquin. I'm near Red's Meadow and maybe 70 mi from Tuol. Mdws. Sky is stormy, hazy as if there are fires, really bad smog.
One message was: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net is open for everyone now & has some deal with the spot gps tracker.
Last night I cooked, ate a big trout and two different kinds of mushrooms--two yellow boletes & a piece of one of the huge, white, gilled shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines I think. All this using the coals of a fire. I ate the fish, bones and all.
Most exciting:
> Colin, who can reply to you? Or, possibly you don't want answers from other people because they just intrude on your own inner dialogues and anyway, they are not in your "shoes" so to say.
Thanks for your message! As far as I can tell: if you comment on the blog or email me directly, and if that day or the next I turn on the cell phone and get a signal, I'll get the message. Otherwise (say there's no signal for a whole week), not until I log into gmail somewhere will I see the message. Messages sent to me @mms.att.net can get lost in oblivion; me @gmail goes to phone and keeps a copy at gmail too.
There have been messages I sent from the cell phone that never went through. It's never perfect. If two weeks go by and no response from me to a message, I probably did not get it yet.
There have been times where I got overwhelmed by fairly simple appreciative emails, or messages of other kinds. Mostly: not sure how to respond, yet feeling I should respond. I seem to prefer usually writing the whole world than personal messages, but I'm usually happy to have the personal emails to think about and reply to.
> [the inner peace part]
I'm wondering whether I should savor this comment longer--it may be helping me narrow in on two areas of questioning: what are we doing here together, what am I doing writing here, what are people doing sending me messages, commenting, etc., what am I doing when I hang out with friends, people on the trail, whoever? When I left comments? When I read or listen? All that, one area. Other area: what are we doing beyond seeking to enjoy peace / help others do so? As long as I'm alive, there are decisions to be made, how do I decide?
And a comment is nice--because (area 1) maybe others have these questions? Well, I'm not sure what.
[Saw a hawk? knock a bat? which started spiraling; hawk turned back, caught it, carried it off.]
Getting nowhere with these questions now. All that's coming is (Aurobindian per Kazlav - http://kheper.net ?): things are being done through me/us by all these actions. & response to "what to do?" is the basic Theory U / shaman's journey approach: go into stillness, come back out, there you are. Repeat.
So that's what I'll do. Yes our/my interactions matter. Joy, love, energy, or the cockroach effect (Zajonc?) comes from that.
Will now enjoy walking further on a trail that is easy to follow. Even in the dark. On my breaks, been reading Pynchon's _Vineland_. At least, I think it's his--more approachable than _Mason Dixon Line_ which I may try next, but not as remarkable as _V_.
Thanks for hanging on this mtntop with me! The contact is real (all contact is mediated [Wilber]) though it's through the machine (Forester).
oh my-
Peace,
The vista overlooks the valley formed by convergence of north and middle forks of the San Joaquin. I'm near Red's Meadow and maybe 70 mi from Tuol. Mdws. Sky is stormy, hazy as if there are fires, really bad smog.
One message was: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net is open for everyone now & has some deal with the spot gps tracker.
Last night I cooked, ate a big trout and two different kinds of mushrooms--two yellow boletes & a piece of one of the huge, white, gilled shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines I think. All this using the coals of a fire. I ate the fish, bones and all.
Most exciting:
> Colin, who can reply to you? Or, possibly you don't want answers from other people because they just intrude on your own inner dialogues and anyway, they are not in your "shoes" so to say.
Thanks for your message! As far as I can tell: if you comment on the blog or email me directly, and if that day or the next I turn on the cell phone and get a signal, I'll get the message. Otherwise (say there's no signal for a whole week), not until I log into gmail somewhere will I see the message. Messages sent to me @mms.att.net can get lost in oblivion; me @gmail goes to phone and keeps a copy at gmail too.
There have been messages I sent from the cell phone that never went through. It's never perfect. If two weeks go by and no response from me to a message, I probably did not get it yet.
There have been times where I got overwhelmed by fairly simple appreciative emails, or messages of other kinds. Mostly: not sure how to respond, yet feeling I should respond. I seem to prefer usually writing the whole world than personal messages, but I'm usually happy to have the personal emails to think about and reply to.
> [the inner peace part]
I'm wondering whether I should savor this comment longer--it may be helping me narrow in on two areas of questioning: what are we doing here together, what am I doing writing here, what are people doing sending me messages, commenting, etc., what am I doing when I hang out with friends, people on the trail, whoever? When I left comments? When I read or listen? All that, one area. Other area: what are we doing beyond seeking to enjoy peace / help others do so? As long as I'm alive, there are decisions to be made, how do I decide?
And a comment is nice--because (area 1) maybe others have these questions? Well, I'm not sure what.
[Saw a hawk? knock a bat? which started spiraling; hawk turned back, caught it, carried it off.]
Getting nowhere with these questions now. All that's coming is (Aurobindian per Kazlav - http://kheper.net ?): things are being done through me/us by all these actions. & response to "what to do?" is the basic Theory U / shaman's journey approach: go into stillness, come back out, there you are. Repeat.
So that's what I'll do. Yes our/my interactions matter. Joy, love, energy, or the cockroach effect (Zajonc?) comes from that.
Will now enjoy walking further on a trail that is easy to follow. Even in the dark. On my breaks, been reading Pynchon's _Vineland_. At least, I think it's his--more approachable than _Mason Dixon Line_ which I may try next, but not as remarkable as _V_.
Thanks for hanging on this mtntop with me! The contact is real (all contact is mediated [Wilber]) though it's through the machine (Forester).
oh my-
Peace,
Friday, August 15, 2008
Vista; What to do; Re: your comment!
I came to a vista open to the west near a stream. I'd planned to rest @ water. Tried, and there's a good signal again, so I got some messages, and I thought I'd update things since I made it through a stretch of unmaintained trail.
The vista overlooks the valley formed by convergence of north and middle forks of the San Joaquin. I'm near Red's Meadow and maybe 70 mi from Tuol. Mdws. Sky is stormy, hazy as if there are fires, really bad smog.
One message was: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net is open for everyone now & has some deal with the spot gps tracker.
Last night I cooked, ate a big trout and two different kinds of mushrooms--two yellow boletes & a piece of one of the huge, white, gilled shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines I think. All this using the coals of a fire. I ate the fish, bones and all.
Most exciting:
> Colin, who can reply to you? Or, possibly you don't want answers from other people because they just intrude on your own inner dialogues and anyway, they are not in your "shoes" so to say.
Thanks for your message! As far as I can tell: if you comment on the blog or email me directly, and if that day or the next I turn on the cell phone and get a signal, I'll get the message. Otherwise (say there's no signal for a whole week), not until I log into gmail somewhere will I see the message. Messages sent to me @mms.att.net can get lost in oblivion; me @gmail goes to phone and keeps a copy at gmail too.
There have been messages I sent from the cell phone that never went through. It's never perfect. If two weeks go by and no response from me to a message, I probably did not get it yet.
There have been times where I got overwhelmed by fairly simple appreciative emails, or messages of other kinds. Mostly: not sure how to respond, yet feeling I should respond. I seem to prefer usually writing the whole world than personal messages, but I'm usually happy to have the personal emails to think about and reply to.
> [the inner peace part]
I'm wondering whether I should savor this comment longer--it may be helping me narrow in on two areas of questioning: what are we doing here together, what am I doing writing here, what are people doing sending me messages, commenting, etc., what am I doing when I hang out with friends, people on the trail, whoever? When I left comments? When I read or listen? All that, one area. Other area: what are we doing beyond seeking to enjoy peace / help others do so? As long as I'm alive, there are decisions to be made, how do I decide?
And a comment is nice--because (area 1) maybe others have these questions? Well, I'm not sure what.
[Saw a hawk? knock a bat? which started spiraling; hawk turned back, caught it, carried it off.]
Getting nowhere with these questions now. All that's coming is (Aurobindian per Kazlav - http://kheper.net ?): things are being done through me/us by all these actions. & response to "what to do?" is the basic Theory U / shaman's journey approach: go into stillness, come back out, there you are. Repeat.
So that's what I'll do. Yes our/my interactions matter. Joy, love, energy, or the cockroach effect (Zajonc?) comes from that.
Will now enjoy walking further on a trail that is easy to follow. Even in the dark. On my breaks, been reading Pynchon's _Vineland_. At least, I think it's his--more approachable than _Mason Dixon Line_ which I may try next, but not as remarkable as _V_.
Thanks for hanging on this mtntop with me! The contact is real (all contact is mediated [Wilber]) though it's through the machine (Forester).
oh my-
Peace,
The vista overlooks the valley formed by convergence of north and middle forks of the San Joaquin. I'm near Red's Meadow and maybe 70 mi from Tuol. Mdws. Sky is stormy, hazy as if there are fires, really bad smog.
One message was: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net is open for everyone now & has some deal with the spot gps tracker.
Last night I cooked, ate a big trout and two different kinds of mushrooms--two yellow boletes & a piece of one of the huge, white, gilled shrooms that grow on dead foxtail pines I think. All this using the coals of a fire. I ate the fish, bones and all.
Most exciting:
> Colin, who can reply to you? Or, possibly you don't want answers from other people because they just intrude on your own inner dialogues and anyway, they are not in your "shoes" so to say.
Thanks for your message! As far as I can tell: if you comment on the blog or email me directly, and if that day or the next I turn on the cell phone and get a signal, I'll get the message. Otherwise (say there's no signal for a whole week), not until I log into gmail somewhere will I see the message. Messages sent to me @mms.att.net can get lost in oblivion; me @gmail goes to phone and keeps a copy at gmail too.
There have been messages I sent from the cell phone that never went through. It's never perfect. If two weeks go by and no response from me to a message, I probably did not get it yet.
There have been times where I got overwhelmed by fairly simple appreciative emails, or messages of other kinds. Mostly: not sure how to respond, yet feeling I should respond. I seem to prefer usually writing the whole world than personal messages, but I'm usually happy to have the personal emails to think about and reply to.
> [the inner peace part]
I'm wondering whether I should savor this comment longer--it may be helping me narrow in on two areas of questioning: what are we doing here together, what am I doing writing here, what are people doing sending me messages, commenting, etc., what am I doing when I hang out with friends, people on the trail, whoever? When I left comments? When I read or listen? All that, one area. Other area: what are we doing beyond seeking to enjoy peace / help others do so? As long as I'm alive, there are decisions to be made, how do I decide?
And a comment is nice--because (area 1) maybe others have these questions? Well, I'm not sure what.
[Saw a hawk? knock a bat? which started spiraling; hawk turned back, caught it, carried it off.]
Getting nowhere with these questions now. All that's coming is (Aurobindian per Kazlav - http://kheper.net ?): things are being done through me/us by all these actions. & response to "what to do?" is the basic Theory U / shaman's journey approach: go into stillness, come back out, there you are. Repeat.
So that's what I'll do. Yes our/my interactions matter. Joy, love, energy, or the cockroach effect (Zajonc?) comes from that.
Will now enjoy walking further on a trail that is easy to follow. Even in the dark. On my breaks, been reading Pynchon's _Vineland_. At least, I think it's his--more approachable than _Mason Dixon Line_ which I may try next, but not as remarkable as _V_.
Thanks for hanging on this mtntop with me! The contact is real (all contact is mediated [Wilber]) though it's through the machine (Forester).
oh my-
Peace,
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Pleuriana in the mts, culture tectonics
Everywhere I've gone recently, there has been reception, and this makes me want to post. It's 0630 Thursday, 8/14, and I was laying here feeling around for something to do. Not eating--I feel well fed. Not walking or listening or reading--I was doing the first two till late by the light of the moon, full or nearly so. I guess, being west of the PCT, I'm closer to the central valley. To the west I see no more high mts, just haze.
0755 That tided me over until biological functions kicked in--got to shit, eat. Next up in that area: lack of water. Will have to walk on to next stream.
In spite of a mistake I made a while back (will be detailed in a later post), leading to sickness and to not enjoying being out here, I have recovered from that, mostly, and have been enjoying, though getting fatter on it, the free good food from the hiker barrels at Muir Trail Ranch and Vermilion Valley Resort, and the bit of company to be found in those places. Hikers, many with more income than time, many from the SF Bay area, resupply at MTR and VVR and often send themselves more $12/lb gorp and $5 health food bars than they want to carry or eat. Both establishments let other hikers take from the excess. At MTR, for example, when I arrived, there were 10 five-gallon buckets of food and two buckets of non-food supplies available to look through, and Pat, the overseer of the resupply operation, was preparing to burn some of the excess. Hikers pay $50 to MTR to pick up their buckets in addition to USPS/UPS shipping--buckets make the last part of their trip by mule. One could probably be quite happy and well-fed hiking between these two stations most of the summer, without ever spending a cent on food.
I've been following a route to the west of the PCT partly so I could visit MTR and VVR without needing to backtrack or pay for ferries. But it is nice to be off the main PCT/Muir Trail drag, nice, oddly enough, for me to hike near more trailheads, resorts, dams people can drive to. There's few enough of these human-made sites and their car-using visitors, at least on the edges of the roadless area the JMT passes through. They bring different people, ideas, objects of contemplation and feeling than land solitary and isolated with respect to other humans (/non-JMTers). Nice it is also to deal with the more poorly maintained trails, which wander through beautiful, isolated, rarely visited spots, which peter out or disappear, requiring more of one's attention to follow or to re-trail/road oneself when the path has been lost though there is a line on the map (and _that_ is the way one hoped to go). [This latter niceness is only possible to appreciate because there is a well-traveled, well-maintained foot trail to compare it to.] Also, I have no need to follow the Pacific Crest. The Pacific Valley would suit me fine were there not too many highways and car-users down there. So getting off the PCT when possible may reduce my wandering among rugged mountaintops and vistas of sheer, impassable cliffs--which I continue to find more disconcerting, even terrifying, than relaxing. Though, come to think of it, Chinese hermits may have made their home in mountains and cliffsides of an even more extreme aspect.
0851 I've run the battery nearly out, so nice it is to park/occupy the mind listening to Dickens. It took me nearly three days after leaving Bishop to turn to the audiobooks again--not wanting to hand over mind? But eventually: I want to walk (need to get to food) and enjoy it--maybe I can listen to something. These books let me smile and laugh as I walk down the trail and to be cheery with the hikers I come across, rather than odd, brooding.
Being with people saves on batteries--for hours after a conversation, or while walking out of a populated area and finding more people, equestrians, ruins along the trail, I have these encounters to wonder about.
Meetings with friendly like-aged women continue to be the most battery-saving, except when I get to wondering so much as to want to write, such as now.
In an ungraceful way, I may have achieved the beginning of a long-lasting peace out here. When I was sickish and at a cooler >10,000ft, I was dreaming of heat and fig season in Davis. Now I'm not as keen on leaving. But resupplying gracefully may continue to be the greatest challenge. And how slowly can I move? I'm generally happy to sit still quite a lot and read, write. And can I not get tired of all the walking often needed to get between resupply points?
Ending my current general plan of action could bring a ton of other complexities.
Where do people come into this?
This may be as far as I get for now. It was a bit odd to be a curiosity at VVR--partly: my pack is so small, comparatively, I am so free (out for so long), comparatively, and Warren (a friendly older guy who drove in in a Mercedes sports car) so enthusiastic about meeting "a real mountain man" (ha--mountain bum or lay-about rather) and even appreciated the dirtiness (Mark Twain is rather hard on dirtiness--a precursor to right-wing loser newspaper editors' [eg. SD UT] preoccupation with hand-washing?). I can relate to being as enthusiastic and curious about some of the PCT thru-hikers I met, and about some I met at last year's Feral Visions/Green anarchist gathering (Don, Penny).
What I enjoy(?) most remembering, or what I remember most, though enjoyment is less the sensation than raw meaning, is who I called Pleuriana, her gaze, manner, appearance. These were welcoming, appreciative, memorable in some way more, so: sparkling, deep, aware. Loni, her partner, more of a challenge--a bit of the feeling: I don't want to encourage you too much, for whatever reason. Pleur. mentioned being green anarchists, after I referred to last year's gathering, and it seemed then, I'd seen Pleur. before, and Loni reminded me of San Diego's Julia D. Thin, energetic, smiles, dramatic, sharp (not JD), enthusiastic.
And Brian, one of the two high school guys I'd met at MTR, asked what green anarchy was. (Paranoia, because some at the gathering may be planning direct action and others may be out to bust them).
I walk away. I haven't wanted to linger in these places where so many people are, and where the decisional difficulties are nearly constant: how much do I say? What do I say? What do I let go? What do I start? When stay silent? How do I walk? Where does my attention go? And as a few hours in these places can give me enough to wonder about, combined with my reading, listening, writing, for days (if Pleur. is there) more may be more than I can helpfully handle.
One approach is that of the Buddha--generally nothing but a silent smile as greeting or assent. But, in contrast (per John Heron), is creative participation in language and action--I tingle when listening to the examples of this in the young girls of Tolstoy (_War and Peace_) and Dickens.
The unreflecting creation I participate in as a cultural atom is clear enough: traveling from centers to edges, from concentrated new culture to diffused, general, "mainstream" culture, I carry one to the other: ultralight, portable tech, do nothing. Many times a total disconnect leads to isolation (attempting to hitch near the 395 and 15), here, some of the more mainstream may be eager to learn to carry less, live with less, to be more comfortable out here, to be more free to wander.
I only say this because of my experience at VVR.
At least one thing I neglect: the complex social building engaged in by those who spend their lives in families, companies, monasteries, the park service, or whatever other long-term project and commitment.
Somewhere there is a vision of resource use for this park that is at least being partially implemented. There is a procedure and policy about how trails should be built and about which ones are maintained.
If I am to do more than unreflecting creation, or than creative reproduction of what seem to me to be good parts of culture--
I can consider how limited / broad is the field from which I reproduce. Recently: Pynchon, Dickens, Jardine, cell phones, PCT+ variation, Buddhism, Participatory Spirituality, Green Anarchy, Permaculture, _The Garden of Eating_, MTR, VVR, Davis, figs, Read What I Write, Write Yourself, Librivox, Drink the water. Tolstoy and Dickens' girls. Pleuriana, Loni, Warren, Brian, Brendan (indirectly--his interests to extent they resonated, were expressed, encouraged the ones here).
One broad field: peace. Another: creation, or if some (Tagore) are to be believed: union in creation in joy / balance / dharma, the creation is in the peace, peace in the creation. As now?
So there was more noticeable-to-me meaning there with Pleur. "What a small pack!" I walked away.
There were two mildly short, plump, younger-than-I women on two horses with: three dogs running, nearly identical fine blouses, broad cowgirl hats, boots, dark circle eyeliner w/ beginning of egyptian flourish. Nearly identical expressions of reserve, sadness, fear, developing maturity. I was not where I had hoped (this, the way to The Devil's Bathtub). Developing uber-wealthy estate managers addressing lost greengrungelowbudget hiker, helpful, reserved, a bit dismayed, perhaps, or just with: fear and uncertainty we all have about how to help, respond, give directions; self-doubt; concern about how we'll appear.
Later, the three dogs charged up, and I got to ask the older young woman again for directions. She, after trotting a bit this time, tried to help again, same reserve, a bit dismay? but I never did find that trail. "It isn't well traveled. We haven't been able to follow that one yet." The little girl with friendly adult manner back at the mysteriously appearing corral had tried to help me too. The trail to Saddle Mtn.
So, I have these layers of recurring patterns that cycle through awareness. If I sit outwardly still, sooner or later a cycle, a pattern prompts action. A path beyond suffering is to water (nourish) the good ones and let them come to predominate over the suffering-exacerbating ones.
The only reason I write so much is that there was a nexus there, a Pleuriana, in which I could imagine many patterns coinciding, all that is common, and the basic difference. And many added things, from her field of reproduction, I'll unlikely ever know from mine. And is that honest? Do I wish to be less ignorant? Less free to be set/stuck in my reproductive field? Could I expand mine by interacting with her? Is there a real motive to expand in that way? What does it take for this imagined expansion to become real? Is it reasonable to think that given the commonalities between the two fields the two could expand by interacting?
Biological sexual reproduction + culture = emergent processes affecting cultural reproduction.
I am still green here (in the forest), and may not yet stay very long. But if I stay, if I return, if I write? if it ever happens that googling "forestdweller" (or would you try "forest dweller"?) brings people here--
That is very focused on a self-centered culture. Ray Jardine is like that and has done a lot of good. Gurus--.
The cultural molecule, weakened? if both (1) not enough others are like it and (2)too many others are like it?
Jules Verne, culture creator, Jardine, Mollison, Peace Pilgrim, because they question more and find reward in their questioning. And can use existing culture and frameworks in their creation. A culture creator, different from someone at peace?, eventually attracts attention of at least a few.
Desire completely abstracted? (Abstraction is integral to sexual reproduction in many cultures?) No, just an integral (or more accurate: cultural) rather than a simply biophysical formulation of desire.
So, to wrap this all up, next time such a nexus appears, I'll have this pondering behind me. Would I act more assertively to cultivate that nexus? No. I get more complacent. If it is easy enough to field the nexus, then sure. Othewise wait for one requiring not as much effort, commitment, change, risk. If one ceases to be as complacent (neglecting your meditation practice?), try harder.
If barriers to that kind of exploration are reduced. . .
1241 That's enough of own thoughts on this. Now, sit, no thought, or listen, read others', or let drift to other areas.
1329 battery low?
Peace,
0755 That tided me over until biological functions kicked in--got to shit, eat. Next up in that area: lack of water. Will have to walk on to next stream.
In spite of a mistake I made a while back (will be detailed in a later post), leading to sickness and to not enjoying being out here, I have recovered from that, mostly, and have been enjoying, though getting fatter on it, the free good food from the hiker barrels at Muir Trail Ranch and Vermilion Valley Resort, and the bit of company to be found in those places. Hikers, many with more income than time, many from the SF Bay area, resupply at MTR and VVR and often send themselves more $12/lb gorp and $5 health food bars than they want to carry or eat. Both establishments let other hikers take from the excess. At MTR, for example, when I arrived, there were 10 five-gallon buckets of food and two buckets of non-food supplies available to look through, and Pat, the overseer of the resupply operation, was preparing to burn some of the excess. Hikers pay $50 to MTR to pick up their buckets in addition to USPS/UPS shipping--buckets make the last part of their trip by mule. One could probably be quite happy and well-fed hiking between these two stations most of the summer, without ever spending a cent on food.
I've been following a route to the west of the PCT partly so I could visit MTR and VVR without needing to backtrack or pay for ferries. But it is nice to be off the main PCT/Muir Trail drag, nice, oddly enough, for me to hike near more trailheads, resorts, dams people can drive to. There's few enough of these human-made sites and their car-using visitors, at least on the edges of the roadless area the JMT passes through. They bring different people, ideas, objects of contemplation and feeling than land solitary and isolated with respect to other humans (/non-JMTers). Nice it is also to deal with the more poorly maintained trails, which wander through beautiful, isolated, rarely visited spots, which peter out or disappear, requiring more of one's attention to follow or to re-trail/road oneself when the path has been lost though there is a line on the map (and _that_ is the way one hoped to go). [This latter niceness is only possible to appreciate because there is a well-traveled, well-maintained foot trail to compare it to.] Also, I have no need to follow the Pacific Crest. The Pacific Valley would suit me fine were there not too many highways and car-users down there. So getting off the PCT when possible may reduce my wandering among rugged mountaintops and vistas of sheer, impassable cliffs--which I continue to find more disconcerting, even terrifying, than relaxing. Though, come to think of it, Chinese hermits may have made their home in mountains and cliffsides of an even more extreme aspect.
0851 I've run the battery nearly out, so nice it is to park/occupy the mind listening to Dickens. It took me nearly three days after leaving Bishop to turn to the audiobooks again--not wanting to hand over mind? But eventually: I want to walk (need to get to food) and enjoy it--maybe I can listen to something. These books let me smile and laugh as I walk down the trail and to be cheery with the hikers I come across, rather than odd, brooding.
Being with people saves on batteries--for hours after a conversation, or while walking out of a populated area and finding more people, equestrians, ruins along the trail, I have these encounters to wonder about.
Meetings with friendly like-aged women continue to be the most battery-saving, except when I get to wondering so much as to want to write, such as now.
In an ungraceful way, I may have achieved the beginning of a long-lasting peace out here. When I was sickish and at a cooler >10,000ft, I was dreaming of heat and fig season in Davis. Now I'm not as keen on leaving. But resupplying gracefully may continue to be the greatest challenge. And how slowly can I move? I'm generally happy to sit still quite a lot and read, write. And can I not get tired of all the walking often needed to get between resupply points?
Ending my current general plan of action could bring a ton of other complexities.
Where do people come into this?
This may be as far as I get for now. It was a bit odd to be a curiosity at VVR--partly: my pack is so small, comparatively, I am so free (out for so long), comparatively, and Warren (a friendly older guy who drove in in a Mercedes sports car) so enthusiastic about meeting "a real mountain man" (ha--mountain bum or lay-about rather) and even appreciated the dirtiness (Mark Twain is rather hard on dirtiness--a precursor to right-wing loser newspaper editors' [eg. SD UT] preoccupation with hand-washing?). I can relate to being as enthusiastic and curious about some of the PCT thru-hikers I met, and about some I met at last year's Feral Visions/Green anarchist gathering (Don, Penny).
What I enjoy(?) most remembering, or what I remember most, though enjoyment is less the sensation than raw meaning, is who I called Pleuriana, her gaze, manner, appearance. These were welcoming, appreciative, memorable in some way more, so: sparkling, deep, aware. Loni, her partner, more of a challenge--a bit of the feeling: I don't want to encourage you too much, for whatever reason. Pleur. mentioned being green anarchists, after I referred to last year's gathering, and it seemed then, I'd seen Pleur. before, and Loni reminded me of San Diego's Julia D. Thin, energetic, smiles, dramatic, sharp (not JD), enthusiastic.
And Brian, one of the two high school guys I'd met at MTR, asked what green anarchy was. (Paranoia, because some at the gathering may be planning direct action and others may be out to bust them).
I walk away. I haven't wanted to linger in these places where so many people are, and where the decisional difficulties are nearly constant: how much do I say? What do I say? What do I let go? What do I start? When stay silent? How do I walk? Where does my attention go? And as a few hours in these places can give me enough to wonder about, combined with my reading, listening, writing, for days (if Pleur. is there) more may be more than I can helpfully handle.
One approach is that of the Buddha--generally nothing but a silent smile as greeting or assent. But, in contrast (per John Heron), is creative participation in language and action--I tingle when listening to the examples of this in the young girls of Tolstoy (_War and Peace_) and Dickens.
The unreflecting creation I participate in as a cultural atom is clear enough: traveling from centers to edges, from concentrated new culture to diffused, general, "mainstream" culture, I carry one to the other: ultralight, portable tech, do nothing. Many times a total disconnect leads to isolation (attempting to hitch near the 395 and 15), here, some of the more mainstream may be eager to learn to carry less, live with less, to be more comfortable out here, to be more free to wander.
I only say this because of my experience at VVR.
At least one thing I neglect: the complex social building engaged in by those who spend their lives in families, companies, monasteries, the park service, or whatever other long-term project and commitment.
Somewhere there is a vision of resource use for this park that is at least being partially implemented. There is a procedure and policy about how trails should be built and about which ones are maintained.
If I am to do more than unreflecting creation, or than creative reproduction of what seem to me to be good parts of culture--
I can consider how limited / broad is the field from which I reproduce. Recently: Pynchon, Dickens, Jardine, cell phones, PCT+ variation, Buddhism, Participatory Spirituality, Green Anarchy, Permaculture, _The Garden of Eating_, MTR, VVR, Davis, figs, Read What I Write, Write Yourself, Librivox, Drink the water. Tolstoy and Dickens' girls. Pleuriana, Loni, Warren, Brian, Brendan (indirectly--his interests to extent they resonated, were expressed, encouraged the ones here).
One broad field: peace. Another: creation, or if some (Tagore) are to be believed: union in creation in joy / balance / dharma, the creation is in the peace, peace in the creation. As now?
So there was more noticeable-to-me meaning there with Pleur. "What a small pack!" I walked away.
There were two mildly short, plump, younger-than-I women on two horses with: three dogs running, nearly identical fine blouses, broad cowgirl hats, boots, dark circle eyeliner w/ beginning of egyptian flourish. Nearly identical expressions of reserve, sadness, fear, developing maturity. I was not where I had hoped (this, the way to The Devil's Bathtub). Developing uber-wealthy estate managers addressing lost greengrungelowbudget hiker, helpful, reserved, a bit dismayed, perhaps, or just with: fear and uncertainty we all have about how to help, respond, give directions; self-doubt; concern about how we'll appear.
Later, the three dogs charged up, and I got to ask the older young woman again for directions. She, after trotting a bit this time, tried to help again, same reserve, a bit dismay? but I never did find that trail. "It isn't well traveled. We haven't been able to follow that one yet." The little girl with friendly adult manner back at the mysteriously appearing corral had tried to help me too. The trail to Saddle Mtn.
So, I have these layers of recurring patterns that cycle through awareness. If I sit outwardly still, sooner or later a cycle, a pattern prompts action. A path beyond suffering is to water (nourish) the good ones and let them come to predominate over the suffering-exacerbating ones.
The only reason I write so much is that there was a nexus there, a Pleuriana, in which I could imagine many patterns coinciding, all that is common, and the basic difference. And many added things, from her field of reproduction, I'll unlikely ever know from mine. And is that honest? Do I wish to be less ignorant? Less free to be set/stuck in my reproductive field? Could I expand mine by interacting with her? Is there a real motive to expand in that way? What does it take for this imagined expansion to become real? Is it reasonable to think that given the commonalities between the two fields the two could expand by interacting?
Biological sexual reproduction + culture = emergent processes affecting cultural reproduction.
I am still green here (in the forest), and may not yet stay very long. But if I stay, if I return, if I write? if it ever happens that googling "forestdweller" (or would you try "forest dweller"?) brings people here--
That is very focused on a self-centered culture. Ray Jardine is like that and has done a lot of good. Gurus--.
The cultural molecule, weakened? if both (1) not enough others are like it and (2)too many others are like it?
Jules Verne, culture creator, Jardine, Mollison, Peace Pilgrim, because they question more and find reward in their questioning. And can use existing culture and frameworks in their creation. A culture creator, different from someone at peace?, eventually attracts attention of at least a few.
Desire completely abstracted? (Abstraction is integral to sexual reproduction in many cultures?) No, just an integral (or more accurate: cultural) rather than a simply biophysical formulation of desire.
So, to wrap this all up, next time such a nexus appears, I'll have this pondering behind me. Would I act more assertively to cultivate that nexus? No. I get more complacent. If it is easy enough to field the nexus, then sure. Othewise wait for one requiring not as much effort, commitment, change, risk. If one ceases to be as complacent (neglecting your meditation practice?), try harder.
If barriers to that kind of exploration are reduced. . .
1241 That's enough of own thoughts on this. Now, sit, no thought, or listen, read others', or let drift to other areas.
1329 battery low?
Peace,
Thursday, August 7, 2008
resupply & not sure
I'm back around roads and cars and easy calories. There is a small store here I could resupply from, or I can take the bus to Bishop and back. I'm waiting for the bus, as Todd suggested. Yesterday, resting, wasn't sure about what to do next. Continue here?
If I can show you the pictures, you will see this is no longer easy forest strolling.
I was reminded of the simple plan, to walk 3hrs in morning and evening, doesn't really matter where. That got me up and moving and over Kearsarge Pass--
So, I expect I'll continue this way--decisionally simplest. I just have to hitch back up to trailhead 15 mi from Independence, and then hike 5 mi straight up to get back to the John Muir Trail/PCT where I left it. Until recently the hardest climb I had was the one out of Kernville.
This terrain requires very different eating--Do I want to burn through calories and run hard, or go somewhere where walking doesn't require as much consumption?
So, bigger decisions coming up: what do I resupply with (the small store resupply strategy requires larger budget)? And do I get the required bear container (+2lbs, -$$) or find a route where they're not required (if I get an internet connection to sierrawildbear.gov).
It's an odd world up there--once I got to the JMT and especially around Forester Pass. Forest Service workers camped near the top, as if it were an Everest base camp. For their work improving the trail up the endless cliff. Many people camped in the dark on steep hillsides among stunted trees on the north side, my way down, ready to go over the next day.
And I got prepared to deal better with rain.
It is eye-opening that so many people are out there to climb these mts.
As to what next? I still imagine getting a job on the biggest ship I can at some point.
$7 round trip to Bishop. I could hitch, but I like the bus.
Insight into stopping and starting: the start is in the stop, the stop in the start. I've never yet heard anyone address the mystery of why the buddha started or stopped meditating, or why anything starts or stops for that matter.
Writing this message, for instance.
The area around Mt Whitney sounds like an airport--pilots like to fly by it and there are helicopters.
Email: I've found before that I won't get messages if the phone was off a while. I won't get them until I log into gmail, unless you resend today, is my guess.
Should I follow this crest trail, or go somewhere more mellow? We'll see.
And I have been thinking of legacy, contribution.
With enough fat, carbohydrate, protein, anything is reasonable.
What I'm not yet sure what to make of: how eating affects behavior--if your body is able, and you eat enough Velveeta and Tortillas, you'll want to run the trail. If you don't eat enough, you won't want to move.
Add $2 to that fare.
And many of the hikers up there have a culture, a way of doing things I haven't totally adopted.
There are shrooms and fish to eat up there, and plenty of tame meat. It is a museum of scenery and I do feel in a museum. North of Yosemite and Tahoe, that may mellow.
I've thought of the Lost Coast, and of Los Padres.
Per Tagore: all this, an extension of self.
The bus is going by lava from the volcanoes that had something to do with these mad mountains.
A dessicated old smoker got on. Donkeys are standing in the road. Two of the preppie JMT hikers--they have the gear, they look good--are here too. There are all types out there, but mostly white. And the middle-aged men with GPS. L.A. Outward Bound did pass by. SD County Girl Scouts.
There are plenty of other trails to follow, but the PCT/JMT is decisionally simplest, what everyone does, an established channel. Do this, then branch out.
Does my walking help anyone? Do I love it?
possibly learning:
a new application of patience, how to care for/operate body in new scenario, unknown parts of earthly body, culture about its appreciaton.
"Wasn't that an awesome pass?"
Peace,
If I can show you the pictures, you will see this is no longer easy forest strolling.
I was reminded of the simple plan, to walk 3hrs in morning and evening, doesn't really matter where. That got me up and moving and over Kearsarge Pass--
So, I expect I'll continue this way--decisionally simplest. I just have to hitch back up to trailhead 15 mi from Independence, and then hike 5 mi straight up to get back to the John Muir Trail/PCT where I left it. Until recently the hardest climb I had was the one out of Kernville.
This terrain requires very different eating--Do I want to burn through calories and run hard, or go somewhere where walking doesn't require as much consumption?
So, bigger decisions coming up: what do I resupply with (the small store resupply strategy requires larger budget)? And do I get the required bear container (+2lbs, -$$) or find a route where they're not required (if I get an internet connection to sierrawildbear.gov).
It's an odd world up there--once I got to the JMT and especially around Forester Pass. Forest Service workers camped near the top, as if it were an Everest base camp. For their work improving the trail up the endless cliff. Many people camped in the dark on steep hillsides among stunted trees on the north side, my way down, ready to go over the next day.
And I got prepared to deal better with rain.
It is eye-opening that so many people are out there to climb these mts.
As to what next? I still imagine getting a job on the biggest ship I can at some point.
$7 round trip to Bishop. I could hitch, but I like the bus.
Insight into stopping and starting: the start is in the stop, the stop in the start. I've never yet heard anyone address the mystery of why the buddha started or stopped meditating, or why anything starts or stops for that matter.
Writing this message, for instance.
The area around Mt Whitney sounds like an airport--pilots like to fly by it and there are helicopters.
Email: I've found before that I won't get messages if the phone was off a while. I won't get them until I log into gmail, unless you resend today, is my guess.
Should I follow this crest trail, or go somewhere more mellow? We'll see.
And I have been thinking of legacy, contribution.
With enough fat, carbohydrate, protein, anything is reasonable.
What I'm not yet sure what to make of: how eating affects behavior--if your body is able, and you eat enough Velveeta and Tortillas, you'll want to run the trail. If you don't eat enough, you won't want to move.
Add $2 to that fare.
And many of the hikers up there have a culture, a way of doing things I haven't totally adopted.
There are shrooms and fish to eat up there, and plenty of tame meat. It is a museum of scenery and I do feel in a museum. North of Yosemite and Tahoe, that may mellow.
I've thought of the Lost Coast, and of Los Padres.
Per Tagore: all this, an extension of self.
The bus is going by lava from the volcanoes that had something to do with these mad mountains.
A dessicated old smoker got on. Donkeys are standing in the road. Two of the preppie JMT hikers--they have the gear, they look good--are here too. There are all types out there, but mostly white. And the middle-aged men with GPS. L.A. Outward Bound did pass by. SD County Girl Scouts.
There are plenty of other trails to follow, but the PCT/JMT is decisionally simplest, what everyone does, an established channel. Do this, then branch out.
Does my walking help anyone? Do I love it?
possibly learning:
a new application of patience, how to care for/operate body in new scenario, unknown parts of earthly body, culture about its appreciaton.
"Wasn't that an awesome pass?"
Peace,
Message from Bakersfield
[From a message to a friend on 2008-07-29-0636:]
I'm about to search out a bus that will take me up to Lake Isabella from bakersfield. Yesterday was grueling--a lot of time spent near a truck stop.
I hope your meeting went well! No need for good luck when your practice is good mood.
Well, the hardest part of my trip is over--leaving and getting unstuck from SD. What little stuff I have left is packed up in a few boxes in my grandma's garage.
So that's it! Let me know what's going on from time to time. I sometimes may post to fo-rest.blogspot.com. Peace,
I'm about to search out a bus that will take me up to Lake Isabella from bakersfield. Yesterday was grueling--a lot of time spent near a truck stop.
I hope your meeting went well! No need for good luck when your practice is good mood.
Well, the hardest part of my trip is over--leaving and getting unstuck from SD. What little stuff I have left is packed up in a few boxes in my grandma's garage.
So that's it! Let me know what's going on from time to time. I sometimes may post to fo-rest.blogspot.com. Peace,
Message from Domeland Wilderness
[From a message to a friend (2008-07-31-1713):]
and that issue about relationships--giving the most meaning, sometimes, and the most suffering. And getting people stuck too. Both the truck drivers I rode north with (I'm now in Sequoia NF) had tales of woe and stuckness about their first wives.
well, at the moment, I'm in the Domeland Wilderness (roundish mtns of granite) I have a large valley with stream [a fork of the Kern] probably to myself. Laying on some granite in shade of large pine tree waiting for a pot of good stuff to cool.
I seem to be much healthier than I was in May, and my pack much lighter (a lot of time and attention spent on that), and will probably be up in Yosemite before too long, even without spending too much time walking.
So things are good. Not sure when you'd get this--sending USPS mail may be faster--possibly I won't be where reception is until South Lake Tahoe, if I go that far.
When I've wanted to keep walking but my mind was getting numb, I play audiobooks on my phone--this is nice to be able to do.
I've not yet got on the PCT, but am headed that way through this wilderness (because I knew I could get there this way from a trailhead I could reach by bus), so often trails are hard to make out and going can be slow.
But every place I learn I feel expands my real estate holdings significantly.
Peace,
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