California-The Coast Is Clear

On the Road Again

Greetings from the user-friendly universe of Southern California.
After discovering the God Molecule, flying  a Russian MiG-29 at Mach 2 and Taking  A World Cruise in Zero Gravity- there is something extraordinary about being an "Ordinary People", a mere civilian again; mearly walking in L.A. It's so post September 11th, so pedestrian.


Planes are like diets. I don't like being on them,

If God had really intended men to fly,
 he'd make it easier to pick people up at the airport

Read More

Seattle-The Contiguous 48



How to predict weather in Seattle: If you can see Mt Ranier,
 it's going to rain. If not , it already is.

 
Aloha to No rain. No rainbows ...Passing  through the Pacific Northwest. People don't age,  they rust.


After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in Seattle is W T F, eh?

August 17th, I wrote:




Come as you are

It's all sunshine and khaki dress down Wednesday in the rainy city.This little strip of land  really was the epicenter for the anti-hair bands of the 1980's era. I feel nostalgic about the road rules of dirty+beautiful =Grunge.Opting out, not caring about your clothes, the kind of car you drive.Guy-linered Curt Cobain said it best " I'd rather be h8d for who I am than loved for who I am not.

35th floor of Hotel  Sheraton



Seahawks Suck.Go Rams

 Treehugger-fruit-juiced-sandal wearing veganish Santa Monica Promenade's  Farmer's Market is the Mini Me of Pike's Place  Market - Pikes The gentrified Dr Evil of fresh produce and fishmongers throwing around King Salmon and Crab are whirling dervishes who leave you as confused as a bunch of blind lesbians.

Blueberry Fields Forever at Hotel @nyware





No, let's take that back, You've got the sun, the moon and The Rolling Stones-Pikes Place Market is the Keith Richards of Farmer's Markets- It's over fifty years old and still going strong  despite the usual wear and tear and years of decadence.

Read More

An I For an Island Makes You Blind

The Hero's Journey -Departure Inititation and now Returning--  As I go beyond following my bliss,  there's nothing left to "see". I'm not screaming out like  Zack Mayo in an Officer and a Gentleman-"I got  nowhere else to go!" Instead, there is a someone else to be,  like Chuck Noland in Cast Away discovers,  stuck standing in the middle of a crossroads; finally accepting  having been stripped of his old life, and suddenly finding himself not knowing his next move. And yet, that's ok.
Refusal of the Return

Campbell describes- So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?.

My ship has been unmoored for so long, I don't know where to drop anchor. I thought it would be easy to resume the 2007 Aloha, and it was. I thought it would give back the comfort of the familiar. It has not.

Has it only been three weeks?

Return-The Road Back

1. Refusal of the Return
   So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?
2. The Magic Flight
   Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
3. Rescue from Without
   Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn't realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
   The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.
5. Master of the Two Worlds
   In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
6. Freedom to Live
   Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

Read More

Kailua Kona- Vog Index

Volcanic fog or Vog is in the air today.

This is Pele,and I don't mean the Brazilian soccer pro, You've just been just been shot...by Peter Lik.watch At night the red glare was visible 7miles at sea as we used to sail past in the night to see the this   force of nature, this slumbering volcano, wreathed in clouds, occasionally emitting smoke and fire; and me, like a soothsayer, attempted to interpret. The only thing I know is you can't win a Volcano.

Read More

Big Island-Walking On the Moon

I'm on the Big Island again after a 4 years break; on the west side, at the local Starbucks, for some Kona Joe, sitting with my friends cream and sugar. American coffee is "dirty water" and Instant coffee takes too long. Kona, however,is not a drug.It's a vitamin.

Read More

Waikiki -Banyan Tree Hugger

What is it about these root systems  that socks us in the figurative solar plexus. Only Mother nature can make a tree---probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Corporation Oahu  is still a goldmine for romantic twovelists and sentimental videographers, bar-room bloggers and semi-literate tourists, sociologists and U of H Ph.D. students,  sailing evangelists, NGO experts.

At ABC (Aloha Bring Cash), the merchants of Paradise-Sovenir kitsch, are the memes (thought viruses) for sale- from the hilariously romantic posters through the pseudo-scholarly to the infuriatingly racist postcards; from the noble savage literary school through Margaret Mead and all her comings of age, Somerset Maugham's puritan missionaries/drunks/and saintly whores and James Michener's rascals and golden people, to the stereotyped childlike pagan who needs to be steered to the Light....and it all starts with a tree...if I could only construct the remains of the day in such a fashion.

Read More

Honolulu- Be(ing) There. Aloha!



Making waves on the island of Oahu.



The way to ‘get there’ is to ‘be there’
 It’s that simple.



Chancey Gardener: This is just like television,
only you can see much further.



Read More

Life of PIe-πhe United States of Unconscious Eating

Life After Luau
A good-bye is never painful unless you're never going to say hello again.Aloha Maui. Aloha Oahu. I know travel zoos are no longer in my good graces.Neither is eating on a cruise ship.  Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. Life off the cruise ships ,however,isn't much of a culinary life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. I have to pay for stuff...as  in food stuffs. This is certainly different from the  luaus and eat-what-you-kill safaris and big game fishing expeditions I took this year, where no matter where I was ,the stuffed animals on display all looked the same. Staged authenicity and First rule of cruise club-never miss a meal.Second rule-don't forget the first, and don't miss the 6pm all aboard. It has been predictable as an episode of Seinfeld. Yadi yada yada. No more choc-a-holic and midnight buffets. My favorite food on the ships had been Seconds! And the desserts. It was the life of pie. Playing the game of staged authenticity in the tourist themed spaces of Tahiti, Fiji et al.,while it was't the Mcdonald-ization of the South Pacific, it played more like a Disney animated feature film The Burger and The King featuring the fat Elvis belting out his own karaoke version of My Way like a good old hound dog with a few miles left.

Read More

Mele Kalikimaka -Write About Here

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off: Shoveling  sunshine in paradise instead of snow in the mainland. No rain. No rainbows. No snow, however, no snowmen.
There may be some frosted flakes here on the valley isle but no white Christmas'. No worries because I have found the good in goodbye to cold weather.All I want for Xmas is a sun tan.

Read More

The Aquatic Life-Dolphin Swim Club

The sum of my problems is the inability to sit quietly alone on a beach! It is easy to mistake motion for progress and no problem is so big and complicated that it cannot be run away from. I know what to do-swim with my friends the dolphins. Nothing Is The Hardest Thing To Do.

Read More

It Just Dawned On Me

The Hawaiian's say-Never turn your back on the ocean. It makes sense to me.
Somehow, the love of the islands, like the love of a woman, just happens. One cannot determine in advance to love a particular woman, nor can one so determine to love Hawaii.
It is the land of big dreams, for both islanders and guests. Those dreams born in Paradise can, indeed, come true.

Read More

Maui-With the Right Flip Flops You Can Do Anything

These flip flops have sailed around the world with me and
 I kiss the ground they walk on now here in Maui.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing., But In Hawaii, it doesn't take much. It's flip flops forever. There's  Aloha Friday, and business casual--then there's extreme business casual. Going to work in flip flops. It's the closest thing to going barefoot and enjoying life.

Don't criticize a man till you walk a mile in his flip flops

Read More

Ka'anapali-Maui Grown verses Starbucks Own

Local Coffee Is My Cup of Tea

Maui Grown is not a drug.It's a vitamin. Starbucks is karaoke coffee, a not so cheap imitation. Juan Valdez and Joe Kona better head for the hills.  This is Handsome Coffee.You can take your coffee to go, but I recommend drinking in your coffee and the
morning sitting out on the lanai.

The Average Joe

Haikus are easy/But sometimes they don't make sense/Starbucks





Read More

Lahaina-Same Shirt Different Day



I thought I would change my mind, but instead I changed my shirt.

Aloha!

I knew there would be days like this,
 I just wish someone would have told me how many!

The La Haina means 'cruel sun' in the Hawaiian Language. describing the sunny dry climate. It received 13 inches of rain in a year.What a contrast from 2 months ago sailing in the Inside Passage and landing up in -Ketchikan, Alaska; one of the wettest places in North America- The Path of Moist Resistance .with 162 inches of precipitation per year –  that is over 13.5 feet of wet !



The nose knows. I love the smell of (na)palm in the morning.



Read More

Here Today,Gone to-Maui

Trying to English Aloha! These are the days when I start to think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. When I landed in Kahalui, things started to take off. I was on a different plane.I didn't wake up. I came to. Cool, unlying life rushed in. Hawaii is the canvas, throw up as much paint as you can. We are just the middlemen.
The key to island-style 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. Impossible is nothing because infinite patience brings immediate results. It is not just a state of mind but also a state of grace, a vibe.
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.
When I go off into the quiet parts of the coastline and get very quiet, and come to understand that I am connected with everything...and no, I didn't have to do drugs to feel this ---I am drugs! When you’re in the islands, you are what you are right there and then.
Hawaii, however, doesn't have a monopoly on the Geography of Bliss for me. Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand's South Island, the whole Carribean blue turquoise, Norway's Western Fjords, the whole city of COPENhagen have done it for me too.
The Quest is in the Question -Where am I today? Paradise. I am back to that place that I have never been before. Google maps is OUT. Cosmic Cartography is IN.I'm testing/ tracking / false positive for "hanging loose" in the present tense. as I perform a life hack on my comfort zone. It's an ongoing work in progress, under construction and creative destruction.
It only ends once-anything before that is just progress because the earth school kills all of its students. The Teaches Of Beaches is that You can't "own" the beach, but you can "tune in" to the beach. and the more you know, the less you need. Shoveling Sunshine
Pizza on Earth Good Will to All!. I order a slice in Paia- "Make me one with everything" . (Very Zen). There is precip- sun and moisture all over the place. I breate right. A Rainy day in Paia is better than a sunny day at the office. Im not hearing invoices but God's only voice which is silence.

Read More

Cabo-Marlin Alley-Day 85-The Importance of Being Ernest

The Hemingway International Billfish Tournament is one of
the oldest big-game fishing tournaments...and then there is Baja, Mexico After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in  Cabo is W T F, eh?

If people concentrated on the really important things they'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a large marlin. I feel like Santiago, going  84 days without catching a fish.

Read More

Cabo- First Impressionist




I like writing about Mexico , I just don't like the paper work.
So I did this oil  of Cabo! a second chance to make a first impressionist painting

  Self Employment sometimes made harder by difficult boss- "I am not a businessman, I am a business, man!"
That's what the locals are doing here $elling everything- It's a pain in the English. Cabo San Lucas locals speak English as a second language. Money is their first one.




The last thing a  fish  notices is water

I live in the geography of Hotel @nyware, the 3 pound YOUniverse, that grey matter between my (y)ears-my brain .

We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells..Without mind, matter doesn´t"matter"

There is no such thing as a bad address on the Internet, nor in this state of mind because the personal operating system that each of us inherits, creates and imposes on the world, is a virtual reality.It's location neutral user-friendly. Granted, enviornment creates mood, and I rather shovel sunshine in Paradise then New York snow.

Yet, today as I tender on the sea of cortez and observe the sun, the water, the mountains 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 says, I am the center of the world, New Wor(l)d Order says, I create the world.

Re-discovery of the obvious:


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 If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound..

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. In actuality ,a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can effect that world and the world of others, even at a distance.What the bleep?

Our brain(our personal operating system that each of us inherits, creates and imposes on the world, is a virtual reality; In actuality, a world of our own making.)
is the most powerful computer. When on tilt, our brain is the most powerful broken computer. Tilt is a poker term. Tilt makes us sub-optimal for evaluating rewards, sizing up risks and calculating probabilities.

Could I please have a cup of SHUT THE F*&$ UP! ---my White Angry Software- Hotel@nyware- Does it matter where I am anymore? Cruise ships are for the Newley Wed and the nearly dead, right? As the selfish brain fears death and looks for predictable experiences, cruising is a great placebo that hijacks the brain with a predictable surprise: passangers are surprised if they win and surprised if they lose, so to speak.Sometimes, the excitement is not from the winning, it's avoiding the disaster, (like last years Carnival Splendor ship fire-dead in the water for 4 days and eating pop tarts and spam).

Remember what Mr Science says about Boiling The Frog- if you drop a frog into hot water, it will jump out. But if you slowly warm up the water, then the frog will stay there until it boil. I have to get off ships!!!

Read More

@ The Pacific Ocean-One Taste

I am not smart enough to be wrong all the time but whether I  geographically move to Hawaii or psychologically just be reminded of what I feel when I am there, I keep breathing and keep #winning over death, not by living forever, but by living timelessly, by being present to the Present.

As I wrote in 2007...

I don't see things as they are; I see them as I am.

Right now, I don’t see the waves, I am the waves,

I don’t touch the sandy beach, I am the sandy beach.

I don’t feel the sunshine, I am the sunshine.

To live in this vastness is to bathe in the ocean that mystics call one taste.

These are the good old days--- enduring moments when I say that this is the ever "me".

I can drink the Pacific in a single big gulp, with one single big mind.

I can be happy in the world only because I am free of it. I am not addicted to experiences and memories. I don’t need to gather any more experiences . I go beyond all that.

Life is just as it is. I am as I always was.There was never any journey.
What I was looking for is what was looking---the noticer.

I can have all the love I want in the world for the asking. . Love flows through all that is—so I am that love too.

I have access to love within my self, and it says, “ I myself am beauty. I myself am joy. I myself am happiness.”

Knowing myself as myself is the ultimate intimacy. It is original love.

So what do I need of anything else in the world?

Whenever I look at anything or anyone as separate from me, I am afraid of it. Love is letting go of that fear.

My love refuses to separate, to make distinctions. The nectar of love empowers me with its message that I am, always have been, and always will be, made of love.

When I realize the depth and fullness of my love of myself, I know that every body and everybody and the entire universe are included in my affection. I love naturally and spontaneously.

There is only love, and all I can do is remove the obstacles to the awareness of this love.

I have a power which makes all things love - worthy and lovable

Read More