Gaia Community: Richard's Blog

Brain Video

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:40:45 GMT

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100 Lakes

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:15:36 GMT

MeAtSpiderLakeNoticing

Nessmuk hated pothunters. Pothunters are guys who hunt for trophies, killing animals indiscriminately to satisfy their need for power over other living things - essentially using hunting to build their ego. As an artist, how do I stay honest about my own tendency in this direction?

While I no longer hunt with a gun, I still hunt. Hunting is deep in my genetic codes, as is violence, greed, and a strong survival instinct. When I chant along with Zaadsters , "love, joy, peace and beads" I have this sensation like cold water running down my spine. How do I transcend and include the dark hunting meme?

I hunt now with a camera and a pen and an audio recorder. I capture beauty and bring it home to show people. Pothunter? Maybe, in a way. At least the danger is there.

I have started a new writing project in which I will be visiting 100 lakes on Vancouver Island and writing about my experiences. I hope that I can accomplish this without damaging my soul, without becoming a pothunter.

You can view my progress here: http://www.stillinthestream.com/files/100lakes.html

Let me know if you see my ego swelling. Feel free to apply a cold compress.

Thanks,

Richard

Tags: beauty, pothunter, writing, violence, greed, Nessmuk, love, joy, peace, ego, blog

Kissinger Lake near Nixon Creek

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:57:07 GMT

2007 12 Caycuse Main

There is an RCMP truck in my rear view mirror. I'm in the middle of a logging road, deep in the inner forrest of Vancouver Island, cruising along with my canoe on top, looking for Kissinger Lake, and this cop is suddenly on my tail and I pull over and he goes past. I guess the forests really aren't safe.

The road has changed since the last time I was here. Frost covers the dormant broad leaf maple trunks and the wintery sun ricochets light through a mist hanging in the grey boughs. I turn around and head back toward Cowichan Lake, then decide to check out the Kissinger Lake Recreation Site, what used to be called a forestry campground. The campground road leads to the lake. What a surprise. I see why I missed it now, they switched roads, started using an old one. It's marked as a dotted line on the map, usually a deactivated road or trail. But they must have ressurected it. The shifting roads disoriented me. That seems to be how I feel whenever I drive through an area of "active logging." No map maker can keep up.

The lake is beautiful; a slight mist rises off it. I hear a grader grading a road in the distance. 4 young men, load ATV's into the back of 3 large trucks. They had fun today. Slightly drunk, one of them sings along to a country song playing on one of the truck's radios. I talk to him. "Were just leaving" he says, throwing some garbage on their fire. They climb into their rigs and drive off, leaving me to unload my boat in the dwindling light, the smoke from their fire acrid in my nose.

I paddle onto the lake, the silence closes in behind me. Out on the misty water I rest, the canoe drifts to a stop. Somewhere in the dark I hear a fish break the surface.

2007 12 Kissinger Lake at Dusk

Tags: Beauty, mist, lake, logging, fish, canoe, Maples, RCMP

Wing Singing

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:43:17 GMT

Trail Pond on a November Day

Rounding the bushy bend, a brace of ducks beat air into sound into ears and my eyes track them, wing singing across the marsh. Where in all this stillness will I find a home for that name, that label, for that feeling; where can I paste a note for others?

"warning, this point may cause disorientation, loss of comprehension, and feelings of unusual awe."

Tags: beauty, nature, awe, ducks, questions, comprehension, wings

Design for a Cool World

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:12:25 GMT

Do you have time to feel good about human thoughtfulness? The following video is long, almost 20 minutes, and I know that most people are not willing to watch a person speak about design for 20 minutes, but if you do, if you watch to the end, you may find yourself wanting more designs like these. I did. It gave me hope and insight.

I hope you will watch. If you do, what will you do with your own hope and insight?

I tried to post the video directly into this blog, but I guess it is too long, so here is the link instead,

William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/104

Thanks,

Richard

Tags: design, China, green, space, architecture, TED, Killdeer, rubber ducks, trees, writing, paper

Romans Pizza and Grill

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:41:17 GMT

Like shards of classic blue on white china these sand etched shells fly past in the long back wash of each wave down the smooth slope of the beach. The boys swing whole kelp at each other, sand spattering their faces, and on this immense beach, all these thousand miles of water rush over whales and sea grass to cool my toes, the call of a killdeer abbreviated by the wind. The teenage girl who waited on us at lunch rarely visits the beach, her life defined by thoughts of getting away from this small town. And we, giddy tourists wading in her wake, notice all the people gawking at the absence of land. We travel to lose sight of home, to glimpse the unfamiliar so that returning; we can remember what others overlook. And at the end of her shift, the smell of food on her clothes, the waitress rushes to a movie, the raw explosion of sky containing only the broken vase of clouds pouring out a stain of sun against the darkening sound.

Tags: beauty, beach, sand, waves, waitress

A Year of Questions

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:23:17 GMT

Fiona Robyn's new book "A Year of Questions: how to slow down and fall in love with life", promises to be a great read for those who appreciate a sympathetic companion on the road to intentional awareness.

I have enjoyed Fiona's sharp eye for the overlooked and missed treasures of each day regularly recorded on her "a small stone" blog. Fiona has the enviable ability to capture salient feelings, insights, and humour in a few choice words. Her gentle encouragement to face the complexities of being who you are is a happy antidote to the many voices trying to convince you to be someone you're not. Her friendly voice and cheerful enthusiasm are infectious.

I also like Fiona's honesty, and she starts her book the way I wish all books started, with a clear outline of what to expect from, and how best to use, the book. She wonders aloud about her reader, and through this wondering I felt included. What a thing to be included right from the start of a book. She gives her credentials, and answers the "why should you listen to me" question. Have you ever wondered, "Is this author's advice coming from an academic understanding, personal experience, or both?" Fiona tells you right from the start. Like a good writer should, she has ingested whole years of words, ideas, observations, and poetic turns of phrase, from countless books, and synthesised it all into accessible prose, studded with observations from her daily life. The beauty of literature married to the experiential.

Each selection starts with an anecdote or experience from Fiona's life, followed by some questions and a suggestion for the week, and a couple of choice quotes. The questions are not the sorts that have yes or no answers, they are the kind that make you look into space while your inner eye probes the neural web of your heart, coaxing out answers that you want to find. There are themes that run through the book such as simplicity, the importance of reflective thinking, and making friends with the difficult bits of you.

As part of the age-old and newly discovered wisdom of adequacy, Fiona appears to believe that her reader has the answers to the questions she put forth. Think how nice it would be to spend a year with a fellow traveler like that!

Available directly from Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/content/807043), and Fiona tells me the book will also be available on Amazon later in the year.

Tags: questions, simplicity, awareness, Fiona Robyn, intentional

The Wine of Days

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:10:19 GMT

Topical application of currency, rubbing it in, and the slow bleeding of change from my life. Can we make music from loss? Is there a sob that echoes back as song? For what does it profit a man to gain eternal life but loose his very soul? Rushing for health I miss the normal outgrowth of disease, the thing called character, which seems to have a close approximation to weariness. A clarity, a settling of sediment, the lighter spirits greeting my nose first, when it is I myself which has been opened. Age drags wine to that drinkable band of time beyond which something else happens – an increase in acidity as frailer molecules devolve. Seize the day takes on new meaning. I should drink the wine at the right time, when it is mature, not necessarily when a certain number of months have been clocked. I rub money on my pain in hopes that possessions will block the outflow of time, the ever present ebb of years. There is no going back, there is no firm foundation, even Jesus is changing, showing up in a new car, winking at me from the drug store window, his sure scared hand steadying my fall into the unknown. How is it that we love the dead so much, even the resurrected? Life is moving on, bright trout puzzle in the solution of days.

Tags: money, possessions, health, disease, loss, eternal life, pain

Missing in Stillness

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Wed, 09 May 2007 07:07:10 GMT

End of a long day, 10 hours of work behind me, longing for beauty, feeling my health slide, feeling adrenaline still at work in my body, even this late at night. I dreamed of a lying on a beach in some resort while I was working away on important business today. I felt bad that I wanted to be somewhere else. Not mindful, not deliberate, just running away. Flight of fight response, and thinking about our clients, the poor and homeless, no palm strewn beach for them to lie on.

My moral conviction is not as strong as it was when I was thirty; it has tangled into a knotted ball of complexity. Youth has its passion, but middle age has a certain sombre acceptance. I miss dad and I wonder if I am grieving well. Is my ambivalence related to my grief? How soft the rain seemed when I was caught in it the other day without a hat. I was less frustrated by it and wondered: is this a good thing?

I am beginning to think that there is a part of sorrow that is like that feeling you get when you are half way through a jigsaw puzzle and realise that maybe some of the pieces are actually missing. How long do we search for something that isn't there?

Tags: grief, feeling, beauty, stress, conviction, acceptance

Self as Storm

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:23:15 GMT

I rain across a country, my inner hillsides greening in the downpour. I drive down hard, fragments of myself into grass, washing dust down to the roots, consciousness like a cloud emptying itself, getting thinner until the sun beyond makes beams through my mind. Then all of a sudden there is only clear sky, my whole self condensed out onto the fertile steppes of some less cognitive land, my ego trickling away between all those blades.

Sometimes we grow so heavy from being awake. But then, strangely, consciousness emerges again, molecule by molecule I form again, clouding up the clear blue beyond, until I feel whole again. Losing myself, re-forming, pouring, evaporating. Maybe the mystics finally see that we can never stop being awake until that day we sleep for good. Maybe they do, but so many talk about stilling the mind, loosing self, becoming one with that larger land. My mystical storm is part of a cycle, pouring both down and up, rain and evaporation defining my orbit between forgetting and remembering. Forgetting and remembering I am.

Tags: self, rain, consciousness, ego, awake, mystical, cycle, I am

Jesus is a Tube

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 08:17:09 GMT

Went to Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks' Bigger Than Jesus tonight with my friend Tom. A one-man show which uses creative media and simple yet effective cameral effects to explore Jesus from three separate, but similar perspectives. All views are vaguely post-modern but one intellectual, one visceral, and one neatly immersed in humour.

First response: "hmmm... I'm ok with that, but what about Tom?" as Rick declares at the beginning of the show that he does not believe that Jesus was literally God. In actual fact, I can't remember just what he said he believed or didn't believe, but definitely not orthodoxy. In the playbill it says that Rick now attends services at the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity. But how much of the person portrayed on stage is Rick and how much is just theatre, we can not know. The progressive view of scripture is clearly articulated in the first part of the show, followed by a cleaver bit of post-modern spirituality presented through the persona of a preacher excelling in animal magnetism. The audience is admonished to find their inner Jesus, the inner "I".

Second response: At this point in the show I found myself both attracted and repelled by this presentation of true enlightenment as the awakening to relativistic pantheism. Attracted because of the honesty of such a position, and the freedom it seems to convey, but repelled by the obvious carnal aspects.

Third Response: People laughed at weird places in the show. Tom and I talked about this afterwards. Was it nervous laughter, or the kind of laughter that accompanies a bully's taunts of the weak kid, or just connections on a level I missed? I thought about how serious I am, about how reserved I am, unwilling to let myself go. A woman behind us seemed almost to be forcing herself to laugh, as if it was the right response. It is a funny show, and at times Rick has to wait for the laughter to die down, but this woman seemed to want us to know the whole subject was laughable to her.

Fourth Response: At one point in the show Rick portrays Jesus and talks to the audience like Jesus might have at the last supper - "Love one another... do not judge people... lift with your knees." General good advice for life. I think, "yes, so much of it comes down to that."

Final Response: On the drive home from Victoria to Nanaimo Tom and I discussed the show, the content, the quality - it is an extremely well performed piece, and at one point Tom said, "so what?" And that stuck with me. So what if Jesus is not the son of God, so what if evolution is real, so what if the gospel writers didn't actually ever meet Jesus, so what if people believe the gnostic gospels more than the synoptic gospels these days, so what if the crucifixion is more likely crucifiction - does it all mean anything? And if it does, then what? This is the place I am in perpetually now, trying to find meaning inside a wash of questions.

Tom said that he always thought Jesus was trying to be more like a tube to funnel God into the world and we have ended up spending a lot of time looking at the tube. I wondered to myself, "or making the tube into God." Is Rick just reversing the process, or is his own presentation just more words about the tube, rather than words from the tube? Jesus our tube. May we hear that distant echo.

Tags: Jesus, Progressive, Relative, Rick Miller, Post-Modern, Tube

Anti-Assertivness

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 07:26:21 GMT

Three young men jog by, tight blue running suits, and one bounding furry dog. Fog hangs in the trees, the rain splashes on the lake ice, covers it, spills off the edge into the water, wavelets contained in a curious open section near the shore – the shape of lips. I take a deep breath of the morning air. My spiritual life is before me, wet after a cold snap the ice keeping the surface glassy, but the edges rippling.

Spring is a cardinal and they don’t migrate here, in fact I only know about them from hear-say. Instead I look for beauty in the birds who do visit our feeder; these familiar juncos, these common sparrows. I know it can not be so, but the weather even seems to reflect my mood. I don’t believe that we create our own reality.

Perhaps there is a reality of which both I and the trees agree, perhaps the dog bounding by imagines joy from dawn to dusk. Perhaps the ice melting here is less important than the insight it triggers, a random event vectoring my life, perhaps if the ice had grown thicker, some other insight would have formed. We are weak fragile creatures, strong in our weakness, robust in our fragility. If I choose not to be assertive will life return me courtesy?

Tags: create your own reality, fog, ice, dog, insight, assertive, courtesy, spiritual, water

Soft Nipple of Time

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 09:09:38 GMT

The soft nipple of time has suckled me so long that now I stand in the snow and listen, is that the last heart beat, is that the last breath, or will my cinder-rimmed train notch enough years to qualify me? Can I find poetry in this coming derailment?

Standing on a set of circumstances, my brother, his wheels spinning like a dropped bicycle, chisels ice free from his driveway, proactive, vigilant, and tells me how hard it is, not the ice, the ice only a metaphor for his accumulation of attachments, each one lovely as a snow flake, each one slowly compacting into something slippery and hard, dangerous by-product from the weather of the heart.

My father these last days, noticing how the care-aids see him failing, quotes for me Longfellow:

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

His father had memorized it...so had he apparently... a psalm to action, a call to engage, and my father, holding open the curtain of life a little longer, is not some dumb ruminant, not content to be driven.

Is that what keeps us going in the end, those of us who huddle in the bivouac of life? The resistance against the herd, the sweet strong pleasure of your own foot prints in the snow, a mind awake and thinking, all by itself?

Tags: poetry, family, loss, action, life, the grave, father, individuation, courage, herd, awake

A Brain full of Stars

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 08:30:39 GMT

Christmas eve, the dog is snoring beside me, all the Christmas lights are off, the dark surrounds the house filled with rain, tomorrow Jesus will be born again.

Out among the starry expanses there is a gas giant forming with no-one to watch but God. In the church service tonight I watched a little girl rocking in her seat, not listening to the singing, thinking about something else, her presents? Surly not gas giants. I looked at that little head, her eyes looking off into space, and I wondered if God really is tuned in to all the brain states, peeping at the prayers emanating from children's heads.

This Ground of our Being, the being of little girls, us all being who we are, more significant than planets. Jesus as a child, daydreaming about a new earth with new rules. His kingdom come.

Tags: Christmas, being, space, Jesus, planets, prayers

The Silence of Mist

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:52:24 GMT

So as it turns out the fog rises from the snow all night and into the day. This morning Jackson and I stumped along amid the frozen lumps of snow and I came to the water park where in the summer children play, and there was a family, off in the field making a snow fort, their dog watching us. In the Park all the little fir cones dotted the snow, and paint ball splotches, and pee marks from the dogs. Now, at home, the sun has finally found a large enough hole in the clouds and the fog is forming, a luminous reminder of last nights moon silence. Tree branches outside my window begin to drip. The cat comes to bump me with his head, time to be fed. I feel my own hunger, now that my need for beauty has been satisfied.

Tags: beauty, mist, fog, dog, snow, need

When Words Fail

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 07:29:32 GMT

Tonight's e-mail to Brett:

Brett,

Perhaps only fields of snow drag at my heels, perhaps only the mist rises from the snow in the dark, the lighted school sign creating a halo over the soccer field, perhaps the night itself rattles the branches full of crystallized water, the high tinkle of ice falling through wind. There is a silence in moonlight, the tall teeth of memory snap towards it without sound. What if all this beauty, perceived by the passing truck drivers only as snow, is as melt water darkening our pants from the knees down? We wade in memory, a frozen interruption in a cycle that flows. Does the season come on its own feet, or do we bring it, a cast iron key in a rusty lock? What exactly do we open?

Tonight Graham pointed out the mist and looking I saw it, and seeing I carved a whole with it, all those suspended droplets drifting between the certainty of gravity and the transience of clouds. Up to his ears in it, the dog, sniffing, smells more than I ever will, his neural net recording data, for what? To survive? To last long enough to transfer his seed? But this one is neutered, his function shifted towards the desires of humans, his only lasting influence, warm footprints across the frozen lake where I keep my sturgeon, the scale-less fish waiting for something larger than skin to enfold it.

This morning I waited for the curving flight of a swan, banking to the south, before I begin walking again. And the dog by then was at the end of his leash, nose in the snow, not aware of the large birds in the sky, not smelling their decent from the stars. Having spent my energy on talk and anger, having exhausted the city offices, our words too large for bureaucracy, I sought the morning, students passed us going to school, cars tailed each other towards the production of something measurable, and we slipped into the forest, the dog and I, thousands of tiny branches littering the blanket of snow, pocked with slush-balls shed by the old ones, God's own pruning service, this well evolved system, a tuned spring towards something always random.

Funny to hear the phrase, ‘out of integrity.' I think of burlap sacks tossed in a corner of the old cold cellar at Covenant Bible College, more potatoes than I had ever seen in one place. All our spiritual talk supported by roots and ground beef, the prairies howling with northern lights when we would walk in the evenings free from warmth.

Today I talked with Matt about smoking, brain development, the rule of law, and why I would not give him two dollars for guitar picks. He saved his cigarettes to sell, then saved one last one, the last one he hopes, before quitting, stuck through the hole in his ear. While I was talking to him, my mind raced ahead, wondering just how many words were enough. The analogy I used for obedience, he changed so that I would see why he doesn't trust me, why my experience is not enough. I looked into the dark then, saw the absence in him, the connection we both have with a fearful mystery, the imperfection of everything. Last night, we talked of the addict's journey, my point being that sometimes you can't do it on your own. His conviction that he can. Why do I feel we must surrender, give up control to the divine music? Why do I still believe that harmony is possible, even in this discordant world? The physicist on the PBS show we watched said that being smart didn't insure our survival as a species. Einstein didn't live longer than the rest of us. How much choice do we really have? Even these words I am picking out, are they from me, or somewhere random, somewhere out of sight, out of meaning, beyond thought? Like the swan flying without the knowledge of aerodynamics, like the beagle smelling people without knowing their names, like the rain transformed into something lighter, more beautiful, but colder... is it possible that in the end, it is not what we know that counts, but wordless witness to the grandeur of it all?

Richard

Tags: addiction, survival, darkness, snow, meaning, words, hope, dogs, swans, beauty, memory

Myself Again

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:56:24 GMT

Finally tonight, I feel like myself again, after days of feeling depressed and anxious. After all these years of having this illness, funny that I don't know myself better. It was a personal criticism that did it. Someone pointed out one of my shortcomings. I thought it was insecurity at first, the weakness of being emotionally needy. But then I began to see it as just part of a pattern I learned long ago, perhaps part of the problem of learned helplessness. Then today Gai asked everyone what they did for fun. I realized that I see fun as just more stress. I don't have fun, because it takes too much out of me, I need the opposite of fun before I can have fun. I need stillness first. Lots of stillness, and silence too. I need it until I am myself again.

But then, tonight, we listened to Dr. Neufeld talk about attachment and I thought about how I resist hugs and physical expressions of affection. I thought about my parents and how I resisted their attempts to appreciate me and show me attention. What is that about? My own son pushes us away and then says he doesn't feel welcome. Is it just that we are so different, or have I passed something on to him, unintentionally, by focusing on contrived power, rather than the power of genuine attachment?

And I didn't really resolve anything, didn't receive any energy to change anything, just suddenly became reflective while feeding the cat. There I was again, the real me, in housecoat and slippers. So I decided to tinker with my vision and purpose some more. So here is the latest:

My Vision

I am awake beyond fear, beautifully clear, and moved to contentment in the stream of existence.

My Purpose

My purpose is to notice what is important, appreciate what is beautiful, and relax in the flow of God as I write and work for a better world.

Tags: identity, stress, depression, attachment, purpose, vision

A Soft Heart

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:06:52 GMT

My neighbor told me when we got our new puppy that I might be surprised to find that it softened my heart. Well, puppy is still being house trained, and right now there is actually more stress in all our lives because of this new addition to our household. But it is true...my heart is not only softer, but warmer, because of this quadruped. God works in mysterious ways...

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Sabi

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 08:06:30 GMT

Had a long conversation with James today about everything from raising kids to what you do when you hit that wall in mid life when you think, "is this all there is?" I shared my conviction that sabi is a way past that. And I really do believe it.

But if that is true, if I am learning to hold life lightly, to accept and be grateful, to notice all the beauty, then why is my life still touched with so much anxiety? It made me realize that despite my intellectual belief about how I should be living, despite my embrace of sabi and the great depth of being it allows, I still spend a great deal of time in old patterns.

I keep thinking of something Michael has tried to show me, the return to a vision, the resetting of the internal clock, the touching of the touch stone. If I am to be a wabi sabi man, a soul in awe of every imperfect moment, if I am to really let go into this motion, this stream of subtle beauty that is poetry, that is the rush of delight in passing on, this wandering beyond control, beyond safe explanations, if I am willing to see that much, then I will have to keep humming that vision until it is stuck permanently in my head. I will need to strum that chord until my very being echoes it back. Unless I am willing to do this, my anxiety will keep surfacing, I will keep being grounded on the rocks in the stream, instead of slipping around them.

The middle of life is a fast water time and the rapids are intense. Epictetus is calling me to that stoic shore, that place where I can handle it by not handling it, by actually taking my hands off the controls and letting the universe be as it is, in spite of my need to understand it.

Richard

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What's the Catch?

http://wabisabi.gaia.com — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:33:56 GMT

This post is for those of you I invited to check out Zaadz who are wondering what the catch is.

The answer, or part of the answer, is clearly articulated by Siona in her blog:

http://siona.zaadz.com/blog/2006/9/so_what_does_zaadz_actually_do

There really is no "catch' but Zaadz is a business, and as businesses go...it looks like they are on the right track.

Tags: