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.



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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.

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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.

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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!!!

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@ 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

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New York -Me No So Ho



The ship has already sailed

An Art(ist) Director cannot fail because to be one is a success.

I  have all the airs and graces of an investor whose ceiling has become the floor. The Warhol's and Chagall's are marketed reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale.  I worship the quicksand they walk on because I am not hung up on nostalgia, but just for now, I will pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time, believing, money can't buy happiness, but it can buy art which is kinda the same thing.


The rich(er) galleries are different from yours and mine because they have more credit. And credit is is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

New York, however, without serious money is an opinion. My opinion rolls up its sleeves and spits in the street. and swears. If  I attack the SoHo  establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make me a member of it, right?

.

Selling art is easy when you don't know what you are doing and hard when you do! Beginners luck, after all, is merely freedom from preconceptions.

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An Eye For An Island-Living Well Is The Best Revenge

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

 Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. Thanks to digital, and my trusted camera, who cares. Just point and shoot, and you capture snapshots of moments. I'm an extremely talkative  person.  Yet I like taking pictures because  they speak for themselves.

 

MTness-Magic Thinking @ Sea In Photos----



2011 World Cruise

Wish Fulfillment  and The  Law Of Attraction

My definition of Thinking is when your  mind is separate from your  body: Some call it dreaming. I call it using your imagination. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. That's when you can leap long distances,  go forward and backward  in time, walk  through solid brick walls and never age, 

My definition of Magical Thinking,  or MT, is when we can manufacture experiences in our mind, and then later, attract these situations into our life.  The mind IS, after all, what the brain DOES. Put simply, you  attract into your  life whatever you consistently think about.  I always go back to the importance of being Ernest (Hemingway) That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best --make it all up --but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way. 
2010 World Tour Cruises

2009 World Tour Cruises


Hawaii 2007-2008

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Thoughtful Travel is In

Fear is for folks who don’t get out much

Instant Gratification Takes To Long

After spending 8 months a year for the last 10 years living out of a suitcase, it is easy to reflect on the value of thoughtful travel. I call it "Taking Yourself With You". There is no such thing as work-life-vacation balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. One rarely falls in love with people without being equally attracted to what is interestingly wrong with them.

Travel, at its best is creative destruction. In the wisdom of the moment,the power of new  language, food and culture and people are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be lived.

The whole exercise has to be reconciliation.Lowering, removing or shattering the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate we human beings, one from another. It's not so much about being understood as understanding.

The Hunt For Happy- is the longing for repetition.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling  our stories from the same facts.  Pleasure is not happiness but the  joy I have extracted  from trips depends  more on the mindset I travel with  than on the destination I  travel to.  I don 't want to tell anyone where they ought to travel, but only how and why.

My dream-I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list, reveals  I  never quite get 'over' this travel-thing : it's all still in there somewhere. You have to be like someone to envy them-when you can't relate to somebody, you can’t 't envy them. Not too many people are doing what I’m doing. There is a randomness of #winning and losing, not any justice to it or divine right..

People make my experience vital-That's the mark of a good trip.  I never heard a travel agent ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we want to go.

Instead of bringing back 3000 refrigerator magnets, I  return from my trips  with a collection of small but life-enhancing/ extending thoughts.

Empathy and Sympathy-A Big Distinction

For instance, Empathy: I see someone zoom past me in a tricked out  Lotus   today—He  is  not  greedy or flashy  but  “incredibly vulnerable and in need of love”  I know because I drove one in Monaco. I was that guy.

At home we don't usually encounter our true and best  selves. 

The Things You Own End Up Owning You---but beds last longer than marriages

For instance, Sympathy: I see bitterness, the silent disease (mostly) of  domestic relationships take its toll---the habits and confinement of the ordinary, commuter  world where, once home, the furniture insists that we cannot change because it doesn't and debt keeps us tethered  and stuck to the mundane and profound.I feel that pain, and have an infinite(compassionate) smile for anyone who is grinding it out  because I embrace(d) that ennui  and burn(ed) it as fuel for my travels.  That  resignation is  like a spot on your shirt that never comes out-So Don't  just change your mind, change your shirt.

Rule of thumb is if I am not  embarrassed enough  by who I was and what I did  last year, I  probably not learning enough!

Some Nostalgia- Pedaling Thoughts

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

In Copenhagen, I went for a bike ride in the center  of the city. …In one street lined with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a yellow building  and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there.

Yet, it seems I may best be able to inhabit a place where I am not  faced with the additional challenge of having to be there all the time.

Born in NY, Neurons that wire together fire together. Considering how much inner  "nomad" is in each of us, in adulthood I gave myself permission to  LEAVE ASAP, and  imaginatively re-create(d) my  ID  in line with my  true allegiances of  a place noted for second chances, Venice Beach, California.

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Cabo Again- The Synesthetic Experience

It's Deja Vu all over again. Cabo,Mexico is No Tahiti, no South Pacific, No Fiji...But I am hearing colors and seeing sounds of Guantanamera and La Bamba!
Have you ever thought in a cross-sensory way? Have you ever tasted the universe? Synesthesia is a deeper form of regular consciousness. Of one taste.






  
On July 22nd I wrote: Fiji-Dravuni- Another Day Another  Island-Escape To Reality



For Sale/Sail





Economics 101



Fiji has over 300 islands- I have seen about 25 so far this trip. I'm concerned that "the wow factor" no longer applies. Yet if I take an imaginary a ride down Southern California's Carmageddon- Interstate 405, breath in some smog  while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I still want to escape to  MY reality--being in the South Pacific! I love the  Free Parking for all boats, ships and anything that floats.

The Law of Diminishing Returns  is the theory that the more your experience something, the less effective it becomes. Think of the drug addict that needs more and more drugs, just to achieve the same high.

Beyond that point, more and more gains in any one particular area adds less and less to happiness.
So in a sense, you can have too much of a good thing. The more you experience of the good thing, your overall happiness will decline.

I am needing a larger and larger DOSES of paradise-Bora Bora, Moorea, now Fiji---to get the same  feeling I had when I simply visited Europe or even Canada. It's  STILL working!

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ACROPOLIS NOW....The Horror!

 The Greek economy is so bad, the currency is no longer the euro. It's the gyro.They better not stop production of humous and tzatziki and enter into  a double dip recession. Makes me think of the time and money I spent there...

Ed Reif and James Hopkins; making the world safe for Hypocracy..er ..I mean Democracy in the cradle of Western civilization---Athens, Greece.

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