Home Is Where The Ship Is

2011 Crystal World Cruise

Ill take things that I know for $20,000 Alex

2015 Holland America World Voyage

The Med, Norway And Beyond

Suez Canal Crossing

Suez Spelt Backwards IS Zeus

-*

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Copenhagen-And I Say To Myself


It's A Wonderful World in the Frank Capra movie called Denmark. I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?" They really saying, "I love you!"

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow
The follicularly-challanged

You know what happens every time a bell rings....an angel gets its wings. You know what happens to your hair, as you accrue more T.O.E., Time On Earth, Every good hour on the planet you have, you lose one. Shaving your head perfectly bald,  then, is a bit of fake-it-till-you-make-it- until all the lies get washed away by the truth. When you third eye and your turd eye are at one, and you start to believe your own BS. You are what you pretend to be. So, Don't worry. Be happy. It is never too late to be who you might have been. Read more @: Denmark-Escape To Reality.
What you believe is real will be real in its consequences
Cut and pasted from The Thomas Theorem-If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.
Location : O2 26-28, 1050 Copenhagen,
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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Oslo-You Know Where It's @



Imagine Whirled Peas

I didn't wake up this morning. I came to---here in Oslo, home of the Nobel Peace Prize where in a perfect world, chickens get to cross the road without having their motives questioned.

 The prestige, the impact of winning a Nobel, I'd kill for one!

I have good chemistry, maybe I could get one in that category too.

I think, therefore I am under qualified for these awards as well:
Oscar for Best Cinematography, 2010 Cy Young Award, International Air Guitar Championship, Ernest Hemingway Look-a-Like Contest, Midwestern Regional Sales Leader For Sub Zero Refrigerators, Blue Ribbon at the Texas State Fair for Best Corn Relish, Little Miss San Diego, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for "Best Kiss', Latin Grammy for Best Salsa Album, Best In Show-Westminster Dog Show.

Do the Math-Somebody First, Then Nobody

When everything in your life is as logical as math, things start to add up. For instance, take my theorm:
Nobody is perfect after all, and I'm a nobody...and what does nobody make me? Perfect...

I had to be a somebody before I could be a nobody.My  personality and the ego scream, (telling me to be somebody and do something) while my soul whispers (the messages that lead me to no-self and listening to the one-ish voice), procrastinate now. The Ego Trip is grounded today. I'm in training to be nobody special.

In America, you can be anything you want, I chose to be an asshole---especially when  playing NLH poker. I don't need Power Point to explain what I'm doing today---pretty much nothing, and all day to do it. I don´t need to protect my ASSets, the narcissistic investment in  my self(ves). This emptiness frees me up.

Blogging is literature in a hurry-Write? Right!  Gotta go buy the world a coke.



Location : RÃ¥dhusgata 32, 0158 Oslo,
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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Norway What Doesn't Kill You

It only ends once-anything before that is just progress

Rewriting the dictionary of superlatives-maginficient, stunning, breathtaking, spectacular, awesome just won't do. Stunning and rejuvenating will have to.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. In fact, ignorance is bliss here in Northern Europe.There is no global warming! The water is too cold to go swimming :(.

It is not the fall, but the sudden stop at the bottom that gets you.


What does not kill me, makes me stronger. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols... And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.


Location : 5745 Aurland,
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Friday, July 23, 2010

Germany-Wayfarer I Want My Taste

Regular Warnemünde vs Extra Crispy Copenhagen


Voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate-Serindipity, I call it good luck.

I am  big fan of the extraordinary role that luck plays in all our lives-big luck,small luck, good luck. Luck is an art.  We are like  fish, the last ones to know we are in the water,and  most of the time we swim right past luck , and we're looking in any direction but where luck is.  We all get those moments, however, where we know  how to look in the right direction

Despite an itinerary, it is hard to think about the linear calander and plan. Anyone who knows about their own past, knows the pattern has been lucky. The key in life is not knowing where you are going, but to prepare your character for those wonderous moments of serindipity; and when they occur, you can listen to your heart and know what it is you need to do.

BTDT

I am no Indiana Jones, but North America, Europe, Asia, The Middle East-Been there.Done That. I can joke about it-The weather is here, wish you were beautiful etc...but  these other cultures are not failed attempts to be American; they are unique manifestations of the spirit—other options, other visions of life itself. It’s often a series of glimpses of what Ken Wilber calls,One Taste –Tomorrow, Denmark.

"Just as in the great ocean there is but one taste — the taste of salt, so in this Doctrine and Discipline there is but one taste— the taste of freedom." - The Buddha
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Russian Federation



The statue is the saint, the map is the territory, the menu is the meal: Saint Petersburg  remains a museum, open from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
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Beautiful Tallinn, Estonia

Go East Young Man
 
When was the last time you even thought about Estonia, the worlds first post commie Nordic  country? Guess what? It’s a place. People live there, very beautiful ppl,especially the  Baltic girls. Yes, they are attractive. Yes, they are hip and trendy, yes they might be the most beautiful woman in world, but for tourists, there are the castles and churches.


Tallinn, for instance, is a very well preserved medieval city. It is our Baltic port of call again. 

Ernest Hemingway has written that in every port in the world, at least one Estonian can be found. There are plenty of them here!


You cannot make soup out of beauty. Estonian Proverb
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Monday, July 19, 2010

Sweden-The Power of New

Travelling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, I wanna  love you, but I have to go; this is just the way it is.
The bigger the summer vacation the harder the fall.

Vacations are like gambling, and  always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for. Especially if you say the T word, tourist. 



The march of stupidity and the routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life. I would never do a tour in Stockholm, that is too old school, too sacred...a royal pain!

 In an excursion, when you are always sure of reaching your destination, where everything is so well arranged, souvenir shops sell made-in-China-junk,(adding drywall to the tainted pet food and lead-painted toys), taking a tour is a kind of self induced torture, like going on a  wild stuffed animal safari, with stupid rules like  Do not feed the animals and  No flash photography applying. When you have taken enough of these  tours, however,each additional one you may ever take again, is both unbearable and trifling. Saint Petersburg´s  Hermitage and  Rome´s The Vatican come to mind.

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls Anais Nin
Impossible Is Nothing

I stayed  four months in Stockholm in 1995; with the obstacles, the fatigue, the ambiguity, and even the danger. In a very practical way, it was the act of rebirth. I delt with completely new situations; the days passed more slowly, and most of the time, I didn't even understand the language the people spoke.It actually made me more accessible to others, because they helped me out in difficult situations. Nobody  remains quite what they are when they recognizes themselves.

The idea occurred to me when I was there. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.

Doing nothing  always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege.It´s evil, dangerous, and  subversive, at least for we Americans. It´s a poor workman who blames his tool, and doing nothing is a powerful one. The time I enjoyed wasting in Sweden wasn´t wasted time. I made some great friends.
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Monday, July 12, 2010

The Geirangerfjord-Mother Nature and Father Time Are Effing Special

Narrow Road To The Interior
4 season in one day
Mother Narture laughs out loud
Life is forever

I'm past the point of no return. I'll just concern myself with the best way of moving forward.

Mindless Purity
Putting the ODD back in God
Before, Norway, Earth Goddess was just a yuppie  salad dressing you could buy at Whole  Foods. I never thought  that people died. They just went to organic health food stores... and  that Japanese guy who always wins the hot dog eating contest is the anti-christ.

Today as I kayak in the fjords and observe the sun, the water,  the green and everything in flow, I say to myself  "Yes indeed, all this belongs to me!". and, more than that,I play a role in its appearance.


As I get a glimpse of the deeper, random, chance  encounters of my 3 pound  universe (brain), with Mother Nature and Father Time being demoted from actual reality, to my mere subjective experience of my consciousness, I feel immortal.

 The ephipany being:  Old school selfishness sez, I am  the center of the world, New World Order sez, I create the world. Space and time aren’t objects — they’re my brain`s tools for putting everything together. Without "me", they don't exist.

  Father Time Simply Reboots
 Reminds me of the joke, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound.....
We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells..Without mind, matter doesn´t "matter". It hovers  in   waves  of probability. Thus, there is no absolute grid we live in where things occur independent of our own thinking about it.


Although our body may self destruct, the 20-watt  fountain of energy operating in the brain. doesn’t go away at death. Father Time simply reboots. The universe is in our head,and not out there seperate from us. What the bleep?
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Saturday, July 10, 2010

Denmark Bring Out The Bikes!

Hold My Bike While I Kiss Your Girlfriend
Not riding a bike in Copenhagen is like not kissing someone in Paris.Cést la vie.
If Paris is the City of Lights, then Copenhagen is the City of Cycles.There are 1.7 million people here and 1.7 million bicycles.

Cylcing is not a moral manifesto or Carbon Offset.  Although some would argue for putting warning labels on cars,Danes ride their rusty garden gates to get to places. When it take 15 minutes to find your bike at the train station, you know you are in Denmark. Mine is easy to spot-It is a new-my bike-is-heavier-than-yours-one.


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Friday, July 9, 2010

Germany-The Sun Also Rises

It´s Alway Sunrise Somewhere

I am in Warnemunde but this photo needs no interpretation.  There is a malignant optimism in watching the sun rise, breathing in the cool baltic sea air. Another 24 hours in the time factory,where everyone slaves away earning enough love to break their own chains.

Narrow Road To The Interior

Beauty on the rise.
Golden fire from the East.
Someone notices.

"We call it football"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others--Germany is out of the World Cup. I´m doing half-assed job as a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind, explaining soccer to Americans. Basically, everything was  complicated by the presence of the opposite team (Spain).
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Monday, July 5, 2010

Sweden--Taste of the Midnight Sun


The sun sets at about 11:30pm and rises again at 4:30am. So… we never see night anymore in Scandanavia. 85 degrees and sunny. The Swedes think it will be the hottest day of the year.

We don´t see things as they are, we see things as we are. Still waters still running  deep.
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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Denmark My Fine Feathered Friend

Humans envy my swimming ability, but I wish I could read Ed´s blog. Donald Duck

Black Swan Dynamics

The swans are talking to me, as I take a break from biking, and look out into the Søerne.

Makes me think of"meaningful coincidence" and  Being Fooled By Randomness ...the architecture of my own brain that thinks things are happening by chance when they are actually happening by design.

 Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know. Isn't it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen?

 Black Swan events are The Computer, The Harry Potter Books, Nine  11, Susan Boyle; mainly and increasingly shaped by unlikely twists that nobody can ever successfully forecast. The more we think we know what will happen, the more we will be sideswiped by what will actually happen, which will becomes  the in to our sane!

Not only world events but for We the living---it goes something like this: nothing, nothing, boring, hard work, minor breakthrough, work, tedious, nothing, setback, routine, nothing, and then, suddenly – BA- BAM! Out of the blue, a major can of whoop-ass is delivered to my door.The combination of low predictability and high impact is coming on schedule, with my personal globalization, a cumulative effect of a handful of significant shock and awe experiences are having black swan dynamics.

We exist in our moment, as Frost said, a present “too much for the senses, / Too crowding, too confusing- / Too present to imagine.
Now, looking back, it seems ordinary. It´s like Chris Angel, the Mind Freak with his exhilarating illusions and stunts that make you go "wow" When you start to look at how his magic tricks are done, and retrofit a narrative, it becomes unmagical---retrospectively predictable.

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