I'm leaving soon back to NY, Tucson is my last stop West Coast. The work study program at the Garchen institute is 2 months minimum comitment, so I don't have time to do it this time around, unless I wanted to bail on Kerry in the apartment in Ithaca, which I don't want to do. And I want to work with the day camp!
So I'm going to go for finger rock again, the sun turned us back last time, and this next run, we're starting earlier and bringing a lot more water. Wish us luck.
Island by Aldous Huxley, you must read.
And other than that, I'm just helping Harry out with stuff and playing with Michael. One of the cats caught a horny toad today, which is actually a fat flat lizard, that was pretty cool.
I'm excited to see you all again.
And sorry I didn't write anybody, but I lost my little book with the first 2 months of names and contact info in Washington :(
The unconditional love store is really turning out, feel free to get involved anytime!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Finger Rock
There is a notch in the western peak of the Santa Catalina mountains. Within that notch, a large boulder jabs up, and off of that large boulder, a smaller spire of rock jabs up. And It looks like a hand pointing upward growing from the top of the mountain.
I've been looking at that spot on the horizon since I've been in Tucson. Today, with two brothers I met at the University of Arizona, though they're not students, I'm going to that rock.
The day's started well, reaffirming an intention of love, facing east meditating, I opened my eyes to the risen sun.
I have had a wierd pain on top of my right foot, but I'm going for the hike anyway, I think the pain is from wearing flip-flops and walking 6 miles on concrete. Flip-flops are bad walking shoes. But I've got my good trekking shoes and when I wear them it feels like I'm realigning my strained right foot, so hopefully the hike will make it better, and not worse.
I've been looking at that spot on the horizon since I've been in Tucson. Today, with two brothers I met at the University of Arizona, though they're not students, I'm going to that rock.
The day's started well, reaffirming an intention of love, facing east meditating, I opened my eyes to the risen sun.
I have had a wierd pain on top of my right foot, but I'm going for the hike anyway, I think the pain is from wearing flip-flops and walking 6 miles on concrete. Flip-flops are bad walking shoes. But I've got my good trekking shoes and when I wear them it feels like I'm realigning my strained right foot, so hopefully the hike will make it better, and not worse.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Got an apartment!
Right on the commons! Kerry signed for it yesterday, really sweet.
So that's where I'll be all summer, still looking for a third person, we'll find one for sure though :)
Until then, I'm still here in Tucson, waiting on a response from the Garchen inst. Though I'll likely head up into the mountains in the next couple of weeks regardless.
Reading Eugene O'Neill's plays and Keats's poems and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
In other news:
Let's open the unconditional love store. I've got the prospects for first quarter growth drafted, it's pretty peachy. Contact information forthcoming, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't start buying stocks once we go public....
...We just went public.
So that's where I'll be all summer, still looking for a third person, we'll find one for sure though :)
Until then, I'm still here in Tucson, waiting on a response from the Garchen inst. Though I'll likely head up into the mountains in the next couple of weeks regardless.
Reading Eugene O'Neill's plays and Keats's poems and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
In other news:
Let's open the unconditional love store. I've got the prospects for first quarter growth drafted, it's pretty peachy. Contact information forthcoming, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't start buying stocks once we go public....
...We just went public.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Say, that's weather all right
Yesterday I saw the icy cirrus clouds come in streaks from the North.
And with them came cold weather and winds.
The winds stripped the small yellow flowers from the Palo Verde trees.
The small yellow flowers formed a blanket over the ground, and floated on top of the pool.
We humans protected the pool's water, not that it cared, by covering it with a plastic tarp, and clamping the north side against the winds.
Next the wind brought the red dust from the Catalina mountains to the North.
The red dust bit grittily into our eyes, and ground between our teeth, all while leaving a red film on the plastic pool cover.
When the night came, under the day-after-full moon, the desert cooled, and the winds subsided.
And in the cool weather of the night, large cumulous clouds, not even seperate, as a white/gray blanket in the sky, crept over the mountains.
When the sun rose this morning, it was darker outside than is customary for sunrise, and I slept longer for it.
Realizing the clouds were truly a presence I went out when I woke, to the first drops of rain I've ever seen outside of the mountains in Arizona.
From a back porch of a house in the center of Tucson, I saw the showers sparsly, then thickly, then splashingly join into the puddles of thier predecessors.
And watching the yard flood quickly, I saw bits of hail jump up from the puddles, revealing that each drop must have a core of ice.
And soon this was very obvious, as the wetness and streaks of rain yielded to a thick flurry of small white hailstones.
Small hailstones, that, for a moment, left a white streaking across the high ground, where the puddles and thirsting rivulets did not consume them.
Though these white streaks were quickly erased, as the downfall became rain once again, continuing to mat down and make sticky streams throughout, the dust which covered omnipresently.
Intermittently, precipitation has continued today, though cloudbreaks have taken precedence as the norm.
And through a cloudbreak at this very moment, the sun is shining from the west.
And to the east, over the city, there are two rainbows arched, one over the other.
The bottom of these two rainbows bright even to a melding of the colors, shining, it seems, with its own light where ROY G BIV joins the horizon.
The top, faded to naught more than an arched light in the sky, pulling vibrancy from the drab grey of the eastern clouds.
And my uncle assures me that I will sunburn again, come the end of this next week.
And with them came cold weather and winds.
The winds stripped the small yellow flowers from the Palo Verde trees.
The small yellow flowers formed a blanket over the ground, and floated on top of the pool.
We humans protected the pool's water, not that it cared, by covering it with a plastic tarp, and clamping the north side against the winds.
Next the wind brought the red dust from the Catalina mountains to the North.
The red dust bit grittily into our eyes, and ground between our teeth, all while leaving a red film on the plastic pool cover.
When the night came, under the day-after-full moon, the desert cooled, and the winds subsided.
And in the cool weather of the night, large cumulous clouds, not even seperate, as a white/gray blanket in the sky, crept over the mountains.
When the sun rose this morning, it was darker outside than is customary for sunrise, and I slept longer for it.
Realizing the clouds were truly a presence I went out when I woke, to the first drops of rain I've ever seen outside of the mountains in Arizona.
From a back porch of a house in the center of Tucson, I saw the showers sparsly, then thickly, then splashingly join into the puddles of thier predecessors.
And watching the yard flood quickly, I saw bits of hail jump up from the puddles, revealing that each drop must have a core of ice.
And soon this was very obvious, as the wetness and streaks of rain yielded to a thick flurry of small white hailstones.
Small hailstones, that, for a moment, left a white streaking across the high ground, where the puddles and thirsting rivulets did not consume them.
Though these white streaks were quickly erased, as the downfall became rain once again, continuing to mat down and make sticky streams throughout, the dust which covered omnipresently.
Intermittently, precipitation has continued today, though cloudbreaks have taken precedence as the norm.
And through a cloudbreak at this very moment, the sun is shining from the west.
And to the east, over the city, there are two rainbows arched, one over the other.
The bottom of these two rainbows bright even to a melding of the colors, shining, it seems, with its own light where ROY G BIV joins the horizon.
The top, faded to naught more than an arched light in the sky, pulling vibrancy from the drab grey of the eastern clouds.
And my uncle assures me that I will sunburn again, come the end of this next week.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Berkeley in retrospect
I never met the people I went to Kenya with in Berkeley :(
None of them answered facebook, phones, or called.
So I went anyway!
I wandered up onto a big lawn where lots of kids were playing frisbee by a clocktower very much like Cornell's. Other kids were sitting around and there was a little hack circle. So I walked up, took off my pack and coat, and joined the hack. We played for a while, I got to know some of the guys in the circle and I was offered dinner that night.
After hanging out and seeing some of Berkeley I ended up at a naked dinner at the Lothlorian co-op. Though I only saw two naked people, the fajitas were delicious! Then I played bananagrams, met a guy who worked on a telescope in antarctica, at the south pole station, tracking magnetic resonation left over from the big bang, pulsating from the origin in the universe.
I hung out in a room that used to be the bedroom of a cult leader whose followers lived in the house before it was a co-op, and practiced group sex rituals.
Then for the end of the night, I was given a place to sleep in a redwood tree. There was a treehouse accessible from a bridge from the 5th floor of the co-op house next door. I left this poem in the treehouse:
In a tree housed
I sat open mouthed
disbelieving my good fortune
As Berkeley stops go
I've surely lots to show
for a naked dinner in food orgy preparation
Being quite clear
I haven't a fear
That my mind will slip grip on this destination
So if you do, keep open doors
I'll come back for more
next time I've crossed this nation
None of them answered facebook, phones, or called.
So I went anyway!
I wandered up onto a big lawn where lots of kids were playing frisbee by a clocktower very much like Cornell's. Other kids were sitting around and there was a little hack circle. So I walked up, took off my pack and coat, and joined the hack. We played for a while, I got to know some of the guys in the circle and I was offered dinner that night.
After hanging out and seeing some of Berkeley I ended up at a naked dinner at the Lothlorian co-op. Though I only saw two naked people, the fajitas were delicious! Then I played bananagrams, met a guy who worked on a telescope in antarctica, at the south pole station, tracking magnetic resonation left over from the big bang, pulsating from the origin in the universe.
I hung out in a room that used to be the bedroom of a cult leader whose followers lived in the house before it was a co-op, and practiced group sex rituals.
Then for the end of the night, I was given a place to sleep in a redwood tree. There was a treehouse accessible from a bridge from the 5th floor of the co-op house next door. I left this poem in the treehouse:
In a tree housed
I sat open mouthed
disbelieving my good fortune
As Berkeley stops go
I've surely lots to show
for a naked dinner in food orgy preparation
Being quite clear
I haven't a fear
That my mind will slip grip on this destination
So if you do, keep open doors
I'll come back for more
next time I've crossed this nation
Under the Tucson Sun
My Aunt Maureen and Cousin Micheal picked me up from the Greyhound station yesterday morning, I was one of the only people I saw that day wearing a raincoat...
Since, I've cleaned the pool for my Uncle Harry, helped him sell and ship some ebay stuff, and we ran grocery and sundry errands while looking for more ebay stuff at a church rummage sale. I got 6 poetry books for $3, including a hardcover of John Keats' and Eugene O'neil. So now I have some reading materials, and I get to sit in the sun, and this is some intense sun.
I drove around today, I have a key to the truck and a key to the house so I'm going to explore the city and the mountains around. Tuscon is cool because it is surrounded on all four sides by different mountain ranges, the closest being the Santa Catalinas to the West. There's also the University of Arizona here, so I think I'll try my luck at getting some people together to hack the sack sometime soon. About 3 blocks away I found a park, big empty baseball and soccer fields with some basketball courts and gazebos it looked like. I'll head over there sometime to see if I can't meet some interesting characters, Liberty Park sounds like an inviting place, right?
I can't help noticing that everything in this city seems pre-fabricated and prematurely aged by the sun. However, Wal-Mart is thriving and shiny and air conditioned, and there's a McDonald's right inside, Oh Boy!
Dealing with the heat, looking into the Garchen institute, I just found a music healer who is associated with Garchen so I'm going to visit him while I'm here.
Since, I've cleaned the pool for my Uncle Harry, helped him sell and ship some ebay stuff, and we ran grocery and sundry errands while looking for more ebay stuff at a church rummage sale. I got 6 poetry books for $3, including a hardcover of John Keats' and Eugene O'neil. So now I have some reading materials, and I get to sit in the sun, and this is some intense sun.
I drove around today, I have a key to the truck and a key to the house so I'm going to explore the city and the mountains around. Tuscon is cool because it is surrounded on all four sides by different mountain ranges, the closest being the Santa Catalinas to the West. There's also the University of Arizona here, so I think I'll try my luck at getting some people together to hack the sack sometime soon. About 3 blocks away I found a park, big empty baseball and soccer fields with some basketball courts and gazebos it looked like. I'll head over there sometime to see if I can't meet some interesting characters, Liberty Park sounds like an inviting place, right?
I can't help noticing that everything in this city seems pre-fabricated and prematurely aged by the sun. However, Wal-Mart is thriving and shiny and air conditioned, and there's a McDonald's right inside, Oh Boy!
Dealing with the heat, looking into the Garchen institute, I just found a music healer who is associated with Garchen so I'm going to visit him while I'm here.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Greyhounding Tomorrow
So all, I'm hopping on a Greyhound tomorrow and riding down to Tuscon to stay and work with my Uncle Harry!
He's got stuff to get done, and an ebay business to run, and I'm pumped to learn some internet peddling skills. Plus, I get to watch my cousin Micheal and attempt to teach him to not scream obnoxious questions in a terrible shrill voice that makes you want to drive him 150 miles into the Arizona desert and leave him for the jackals. But yeah, I'm pretty psyched :)
It's looking like New Zealand is not going to happen, so I'm going to end up down in Arizona, I might as well keep heading toward the Garchen Institute. It's a Buddhist center on top of a mountain outside of Chino Valley, AZ. I'm really excited to get up there and spend a week or more in very structured meditation. I have never experienced something like that before and I think it will really improve my personal practice, and help me to know my center and find it even when things get hectic (curse you Cornell!!!)
So bus trip down the southern remainder of America's West Coast, I'll have gone all the way across and then all the way up and down! Then climbing up into the mountains to meditate. I can't believe I'm on the last legs of this trip! Although I still have over a month left, so we'll see what happens.
Be well all.
Clayton
He's got stuff to get done, and an ebay business to run, and I'm pumped to learn some internet peddling skills. Plus, I get to watch my cousin Micheal and attempt to teach him to not scream obnoxious questions in a terrible shrill voice that makes you want to drive him 150 miles into the Arizona desert and leave him for the jackals. But yeah, I'm pretty psyched :)
It's looking like New Zealand is not going to happen, so I'm going to end up down in Arizona, I might as well keep heading toward the Garchen Institute. It's a Buddhist center on top of a mountain outside of Chino Valley, AZ. I'm really excited to get up there and spend a week or more in very structured meditation. I have never experienced something like that before and I think it will really improve my personal practice, and help me to know my center and find it even when things get hectic (curse you Cornell!!!)
So bus trip down the southern remainder of America's West Coast, I'll have gone all the way across and then all the way up and down! Then climbing up into the mountains to meditate. I can't believe I'm on the last legs of this trip! Although I still have over a month left, so we'll see what happens.
Be well all.
Clayton
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Burnin'
I cant hear you
I understand though
The frustration
I embody
The failed meaning
The outreach denied
The vacant uncaring
of my hollow eyes
But when I notice you seeking
Smiling seek
But baby the world is burnin'
If we're hot enough we wont feel it
So lets stop going (seeking) and just
Start loving
That hot love we got
The two of us
We'll show the flames how to lick
Curling our toes
The way blackened paper's edges
Ash blow away
I understand though
The frustration
I embody
The failed meaning
The outreach denied
The vacant uncaring
of my hollow eyes
But when I notice you seeking
Smiling seek
But baby the world is burnin'
If we're hot enough we wont feel it
So lets stop going (seeking) and just
Start loving
That hot love we got
The two of us
We'll show the flames how to lick
Curling our toes
The way blackened paper's edges
Ash blow away
Craving
Interrupted
by a cigarette
interjecting
a craving into the dark pink
of a craving mouth
And it howls
a bestial guttural sound
when denied
Short lived resistance
toppled lego block walls
snapped hastily
into a blockade before the door
But children don't stop the adults
from smoking their tar
And little lungs cough cutely
like dandelion fluff blowing away
So quickly does the quicksand
Consume
The smile that must be parted to fit
Another last cigarette between the lips
And some people catch on
And then most people catch on
A lucky few know how to sell
addiction to death and not
hate themselves for it
because they buy self approval
And they sell cigarettes
by a cigarette
interjecting
a craving into the dark pink
of a craving mouth
And it howls
a bestial guttural sound
when denied
Short lived resistance
toppled lego block walls
snapped hastily
into a blockade before the door
But children don't stop the adults
from smoking their tar
And little lungs cough cutely
like dandelion fluff blowing away
So quickly does the quicksand
Consume
The smile that must be parted to fit
Another last cigarette between the lips
And some people catch on
And then most people catch on
A lucky few know how to sell
addiction to death and not
hate themselves for it
because they buy self approval
And they sell cigarettes
Castro St.
I met my cousin Will today.
He lives down by Castro st. in San Francisco with his boyfriend Kevin, he came and met me here at Mary Lou's house and took me around the city, it was awesome. We got to catch up, grown up, see how our lives are. It was really nice. Best part was, we're both doing the $0 a day thing! So we were able to cruise around the city and not spend money and really just get to know each other. No need for consumer tendencies. We did walk past a bunch of shops and things downtown, but mostly just to get a feel for the way the city works. San Fran is not like most big cities I've been in. The hills really help give it a small community feel. Except for the skyscrapers downtown.
Having met all my relatives around here, I think I'm moving on. Prospects for New Zealand are looking pretty grim, but I'm moving forward! I'm trying to get in touch with the guys at cloud city, I was gonna go backpacking Sequoia National Pk. with them. But I don't have any of thier numbers, so I'm trying to get in touch with Rob (from back in vacaville) to find these guys, though he's still not answering. And I want to visit the Berkley folks from Kenya, but they aren't really responding either. I mean come on, who doesn't read their facebook messages? :P
So if Berkley and Sequoia Natl Pk don't happen I'm moving further south, visiting my cousin Eli in LA, and trying to hunt down Rob and Eric, who were headed that way when I last saw them. And after I escape the city of angels I'll work my way even further south to Tuscon. Having spanned the entire west coast from the middle up and all the way back down on less than $200 I'll work for my uncle a bit there and be ready to get back to Ithaca in mid-May. PLANTASTIC!!!
Any feedback or good suggestions for while I'm out here???
I basically have a blank check and a month to do whatever while I'm over here.
ooooh! I just remembered about the Garchen Inst. in Chino Valley. I might go there for sure...
Anyway that's me for you.
I think I'm going to post a couple poems for April Fools day.
He lives down by Castro st. in San Francisco with his boyfriend Kevin, he came and met me here at Mary Lou's house and took me around the city, it was awesome. We got to catch up, grown up, see how our lives are. It was really nice. Best part was, we're both doing the $0 a day thing! So we were able to cruise around the city and not spend money and really just get to know each other. No need for consumer tendencies. We did walk past a bunch of shops and things downtown, but mostly just to get a feel for the way the city works. San Fran is not like most big cities I've been in. The hills really help give it a small community feel. Except for the skyscrapers downtown.
Having met all my relatives around here, I think I'm moving on. Prospects for New Zealand are looking pretty grim, but I'm moving forward! I'm trying to get in touch with the guys at cloud city, I was gonna go backpacking Sequoia National Pk. with them. But I don't have any of thier numbers, so I'm trying to get in touch with Rob (from back in vacaville) to find these guys, though he's still not answering. And I want to visit the Berkley folks from Kenya, but they aren't really responding either. I mean come on, who doesn't read their facebook messages? :P
So if Berkley and Sequoia Natl Pk don't happen I'm moving further south, visiting my cousin Eli in LA, and trying to hunt down Rob and Eric, who were headed that way when I last saw them. And after I escape the city of angels I'll work my way even further south to Tuscon. Having spanned the entire west coast from the middle up and all the way back down on less than $200 I'll work for my uncle a bit there and be ready to get back to Ithaca in mid-May. PLANTASTIC!!!
Any feedback or good suggestions for while I'm out here???
I basically have a blank check and a month to do whatever while I'm over here.
ooooh! I just remembered about the Garchen Inst. in Chino Valley. I might go there for sure...
Anyway that's me for you.
I think I'm going to post a couple poems for April Fools day.
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