Friday night brain scramble

I admit it, tonight my mind is like a scrambled egg
Perspective, perception altered by a friendly fun guy
The effect comes on without hesitation,
the threshold long since bitterly crossed
nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the terrifying and uncertain ride
Truths momentarily materialize like forbidden fruit
evaporating upon attempted enunciation
leaving the soul feeling empty and hollow
Life is beautiful
The endless struggle against entropy
How futile! how noble!
breathe in breathe out
the cycle continues
we create the reality of our lives
moment by moment
choosing in an instant
irretractable behaviors and comments
unexamined and rarely given a second thought
if we did, however,
we might realize how overwhelmingly critical
our decisions really are
and we might resign to paralysis
for fear of embarrassment and failure
so blunder on
breathe, step, act
one moment after the other
Ramble on to your indifferent audience of potentially millions
but lets face it, just a handful of dear friends
and a few adventurous fellow ramblers.
It matters
All of it matters
Put it out there
the noosphere can take it
nevermind the blogosphere
Put it out there for all to see and judge and worry not
You have your role to play
No one else can substitute
No body can duplicate your love
your sorrow or your outrage
not even you
for the moment passes
opportunity lost begets
a new dawn of unbounded possibility
until its over

photo for the day

Elk Lake, taken the same weekend as the previous shot from Battle Ax.

wood stove rockin and rollin

In what may yet turn out to be a rash decision, we've gone ahead and had a wood stove installed. It wasn't cheap, which is why I say it may have been a rash decision. But I think it was worth it. Our house has never been this toasty before. If we ever get around to insulating the walls, this place will be very energy efficient. Our old gas furnace was noisy, smelly, and it burned gas from the gas company. Now our gas bills will be much lower and our heating will at least be carbon neutral.

A great resource for wood burners, woodheat.org. Burning wood is better only if we do it right, that is, have hot fires that don't produce smoke. Its more efficient, less polluting, and safer because no smoke means no creosote in your chimney, which means less likely chimney fires.

people who say "nucular"

you lose two credibility points, in my humble opinion.

its NUCLEAR folks!!!!

100 posts!

Taken from Battle Ax mountain looking north towards Mt. Hood, a couple summers ago.

evolution and God

Somebody explain to me how believing in evolution has any real bearing on the mystery of god/God. Once you get past the shallow, literal biblical crap, understanding the concept of the evolutionary process does not infringe on the greatness of it all. It doesn't lessen the overwhelming bewilderment of it all. It doesn't make the intricate complexities of matter and energy, which is to say, energy and energy, of what is really going on here, life: human, thinking, aware life, any less miraculous or wonderful to behold.

Evolution can very much be thought of as the hand of god/God at work.

Whats the big deal?

How does my belief in this matter affect my compassion for my fellow life forms? Or put another way, what matters is my compassion for fellow life forms, not my specific and narrowly defined (and no doubt limited in scope and accuracy) mechanism of how these life forms came to be.

fcc trying to corrupt ownership rules...again

apparently, corporate tools on OUR FCC are trying again to change the ownership rules to allow for even more media ownership by corporate titans.

last time around, over 2 million people contacted the FCC to voice opposition, but they didn't get the message. Even an act of Congress didn't slow them down from grabbing their ankles for the corporate bloodsuckers.

send a message to the FCC

and help protect democracy and diversity of media ownership.

encounter with an opossum and other thoughts

i saw an opossum in the garage tonight. It startled me and I reacted almost uncontrollably. I hissed at it. I think it went and hid behind some boxes. I didn't want to move all the boxes so I tried to wait and see if it came back out, but it didn't.

The opossum made me think about my relationship with animals. I consider myself an animal lover but my reaction to the opossum was one of instantaneous terror. Was that because it was in the garage? I thought about how much space an opossum requires and how much space I require. How much space people require. How much land people require.

As I waited my mind wandered and my eyes became unfocused. I thought about how limited perception really is. I tried to sense the opossum's energy field. I failed. I thought about how people tend to insist they know the truth of reality. How people tend to live as though they know everything there is to know. Particularly in terms of politics and society in general. Things could be so different. People are amazingly versatile when they want to be.

People don't know everything there is to know. There is much in the world that we don't even perceive. Truth may be relative to individuals but to a higher perspective, the god's eye view, there is an ultimate truth of the collective comings and goings of life on planet Earth. What's going through my mind may be totally different from what's going through your mind, though we are looking at the same thing, but to a third party we're just two individuals experiencing life as constructed by a (at least in name) civil society. The experience for most of the people on planet Earth is one of desperate poverty and insecurity. Is that really how things should be? A tiny portion of the population consume and control the resources while the rest do what we can to secure crumbs for ourselves. Most going without. I think one thing people forget is that as best as we can determine, we are the final arbiters of what really is and how things can be.

We're here. Here we all are, 6 Billion and counting. How many impoverished? How many fearing for their lives, wondering how to eat, where to sleep, how to survive? How many ruling the world?

We can do better.

The way is not to grow economies as practiced today. Building a strip mine in the Third world does not help the situation. Exploiting poverty and exchange rates may help another small group of people marginally, in the short term, but I don't really see this as alleviating the poverty situation.

As much as I hesitate to say it, I believe the way is to develop society and culture to be less consumptive and more creative. How much of our lives is devoted to consumption? How much to creativity? Creative people are unique and special in our society. True, many exist and flourish, but we need more. We need to be able to provide people with true security: clean air, water and food, shelter, love and freedom with less resources. We need a project. If we have a project to focus on, the material things of life pale in comparison. We should focus on simply bringing people together and providing emotional and physical security in terms of everyone's essential human dignity. If there is someone you feel shouldn't be included in the bringing together, the gathering, ask why and work to change that, try to include everyone, regardless.

Corvallis Open Forum is a start in this direction, but it's very intermittent. Especially nowadays. Tomorrow will be the third week there hasn't been a COF. But we will be trying out Wed. nights at the Beanery.

Why get together? Its fun, exciting, real, better than sitting at home watching tv. interactive, and an expression of love.

Perhaps REAL physical security (as previously described) for all will result if we first provide at least emotional security to allow for individual expression, which can lead to collective expression, which can lead to awareness, which I'm hoping can lead to a better world, heaven on earth, utopia, a population free from want and free to explore the universe in all its wondrous glory.

Buddhism = Jesus: Love your enemies

from Mindfulness in Plain English

For all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well, happy and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical solution to your enemies is to help them to overcome their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness. In fact, if you can, you should fill the minds of all your enemies with loving-kindness and make all of them realize the true meaning of peace, so you can live in peace and happiness. The more they are in neurosis, psychosis, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., the more trouble, pain and suffering they can bring to the world. If you could convert a vicious and wicked person into a holy and saintly individual, you would perform a miracle. Let us cultivate adequate wisdom and loving- kindness within ourselves to convert evil minds to saintly minds.

When you hate somebody you think, "Let him be ugly. Let him lie in pain. Let him have no prosperity. Let him not be right. Let him not be famous. Let him have no friends Let him, after death, reappear in an unhappy state of depravation in a bad destination in perdition." However, what actually happens is that your own body generates such harmful chemistry that you experience pain, increased heart beat, tension, change of facial expression, loss of appetite for food, deprivation of sleep and appear very unpleasant to others. You go through the same things you wish for your enemy. Also you cannot see the truth as it is. Your mind is like boiling water. Or you are like a patient suffering from jaundice to whom any delicious food tastes bland. Similarly, you cannot appreciate somebody's appearance, achievement, success, etc. As long as this condition exists, you cannot meditate well.

Vote yes on 49

Keep Oregon green

Protest this Saturday

I will be there in spirit. I'm not about to drive 5 hours one way to Seattle, burning oil, to protest the War. That would be silly.

War with Iran is Unacceptable

With regards to the media coverage/chatter/drums of war beating regarding Iran, I just need to say that it seems like the administration is deliberately acting to enlarge the threat that Iran poses. Bush, as is typical, is pouring gasoline on the flames, blowing oxygen into the flames.

Iran is not a friend of the West. Iran is against Israel. Fine. The way to deal with a potential threat is not make it worse. Could it be that the reason some Iranians don't trust the US, much less Bush, is because of our historic role in toppling democratically elected leaders and installing puppet regimes?

If its about the oil then at least have the cojones to admit it. Oil addiction is no joke. I don't have first hand knowledge, but my understanding of heroin and meth addiction is that the addict is obsessed. The drug takes over the person and uses him/her to continue to have itself used and abused. Oil addiction is not unlike meth addiction. Just know that in my humble opinion, ANY blood for oil, American, Iraqi, or Iranian or human blood is entirely unacceptable.

The fact is they don't have nuclear weapons. This is a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We keep accusing them of having nuclear weapons so they figure they better actually get some before its too late. Strengthen and give credibility and validity to the IAEA. Hans Blix was right, Iraq didn't have weapons. By going through international, transparent channels we can achieve the most credibility.

Bush and Co. got it so totally wrong about Iraq. There is absolutely no reason to take one word that they say about Iran seriously. War with Iran is off the table.

Before I hear one more word about Iran we need to re-investigate what happened on 9-11.

Matsutake madness

This past weekend we went on our semi-regular pilgrimage to the dunes of Oregon to see what bounty the fall rains and plentiful pine mulch with a certain mycelium could offer. We were blessed. We are up to our necks in matsutake. What a fantastic treasure of nature.

Ursula LeGuin

I recently finished reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. This was an interesting and enjoyable read. She is so creative and intelligent! I love the concept of being in kemmer, both for Gethenians and for Terrans (always in kemmer) what a concept! Highly recommended. I should add that this was one of those books that was acquired years ago, but only recently read. I have many books I want to get to, but for some reason it always has to be the right time for a certain book, otherwise I can't really get into it. For example, I've had the book Thought Contagion for awhile now, but the last time I tried reading it I fell asleep.

Vipassana meditation book

A few nights ago I did a google search for "the meaning of life" and came across a website called stevepavlina.com wherein, steve pavlina tells a remarkable story about his personal journey and experience. While surfing through some comments, I then came across a free web book on meditation. I'm still reading it but just want to post about it. I'm on the fifth chapter and its very interesting. I've always been interested in meditation but have yet to summon the discipline to start a regular practice.

Please check out these sites and tell me what you think of them.

John Frohnmayer for US Senate

This gentleman is running for Gordon Smith's seat. Based on a quick glance at his website, I have to say I support his candidacy. He's for impeachment for all the right reasons. I suppose being Dave Frohnmayer's brother shouldn't count as a strike against him.

His participation in Corvallis Open Forum isn't biasing my endorsement either, really.

this is fucking bullshit

let us please have a show of hands, is this fucking bullshit or what?

Are we really just going to sit here while this trend continues? How bad does it have to get?

Tell me.

why i love public radio

I just heard the most amazing nun on the radio. Her name is Sister Joan Chittister, and well, if you have the time, please check it out here.

Which brings me to another point. People say there are two sides to everything. First of all, that is a simplistic and inaccurate statement. There might be two sides. But more likely, there might be 15 sides for all we know. Many questions, the important questions especially, are quite often beyond the description of words, much less the answers. Secondly, as we progress as a species, some things become one-sided. (Slavery is evil and must be stopped, for example) There appears to be emerging a global consensus in the area of, for lack of a better term, progressive thought. I believe this convergence, which originates from the most diverse and varied points/individuals, (its decidedly not coming from the establishment) to be indicative of greater truth. That is to say, in a nutshell, we're right.

Those of us who believe in one love, that we should strive for equality and justice for All, those of us who deplore the raping, pillaging and fouling of our Earth, those of us who struggle to find hope in a society dominated by a massive concentration of wealth and destructive power the likes of which the world has never seen, those of us who are less concerned with someone's religion and sexuality as we are with the tangible results of our lives (are you bringing forth more love or less, more compassion or less?), those of us who hold sacred exisiting human life in addition to the embryonic, even as we work to minimize the need for the practice of ending embryonic life, those of us who consider the coming generation when analyzing our actions, We are on the right path.

We should question and vet, we should play devil's advocate, and we should always consider all viewpoints, but there comes a point when, as in science, truth emerges and naysayers expose themselves as less than credible. To continue to insist the earth is flat despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary doesn't serve any positive purpose in the long run. Ask yourself, is holding this belief contributing to a better world or does it feed my pocketbook/ego? Does it lead to equality and justice for All? or does it maintain the status quo?

Honest disagreement is a part of the process, there are countless questions left to be debated and investigated, but I think there are a great number of critically important issues where a broad, all-inclusive consensus exists despite every effort by the powers that be to confuse and conquer.

Am I trying to wage class war? I'm not waging anything, the ruling class has left a trail of blood from here back to the dawn of history. I'm fighting for survival.

The War

is over. The Ken Burns PBS documentary, The War, that is.

I've been watching it all along and don't know what to think. People say it was a necessary war. I put this notion to the folks at last week's forum and some responded saying that it was the Geneva conventions that created the conditions for WWII to happen in the first place, and thus could have been avoided with better foresight at the conclusion of WWI. A man in the film said that evil exists. I'm not so blind as to think that evil doesn't exist. Evil being defined as a capacity within people to commit horrendous atrocities on other people and the Earth. Indeed, we are all witnesses to evil in this day and age, as our (p)resident lays waste to a million innocent people in Iraq so that he and his buddies can steal their oil. Blood for oil? are you fucking kidding me? WTF? Of course, they can't admit the truth, they must disguise their intentions with high flying rhetoric about democracy and freedom, even as they desecrate the Constitution and piss on REAL democracy.

But I digress. I think Ken Burns' documentary is timely and valuable in that it so clearly illustrates how the present occupation of Iraq is anything but necessary, taking the points from the documentary at face value. It so clearly illustrates how overwhelmingly united and determined and willing to sacrifice the nation was during WWII, traits that are conspicuously absent today.

The documentary falls short though, by not refuting the notion that war is inevitable. In fact, I daresay it glorifies war. Evil exists but better solutions exist for preventing war, and terrorism, i might add. Just because people, 99.99% men, have waged wars for thousands of years and indeed, all of recorded history, doesn't mean that we can't envision a future free of war. In a world consistently full of dichotomies, I believe that now that we have fully realized our capacity for destruction and death, we have a responsibility to fully realize our hitherto latent capacity for creation and life. We can and we must.

We few who care frequently come back to the notion that the ignorant sleeping masses must be woken up. How to achieve this in a world of relative plenty and plenty of distractions? Bread and Circuses, as John Bogle (among others) said. Should we be ready for the inevitable collapse and hope to ride it out? or actually try to slow the train down, as I've suggested in the poll? Tonight I'm leaning toward gettin off while the gettin's good and hope to survive. I'm utterly stumped as to how to swim against this massive current and furthermore, get many others to do so as well.

Everything and everyone are connected. Life is a miracle to be cherished and relished. I suppose I should just be grateful for my conscience, and just take it day by day, doing what I can, when I can, trying to create alliances with others, trying to encourage more love and joy and less hate and fear.

Why are we so impatient? Why do we insist on creating change overnight? Who am I to think that I know better than those I call 'asleep'?

I like Mike...Gravel

The Newshour has been doing interviews with all of the major candidates for president, even Mike Gravel tonight. This guy is for real. He's got some good ideas and he's not bought off by big corporate campaign money. After seeing the interview I thought about re-registering Dem to vote in the primary.

Something else unrelated, i meant to post this before, but forgot. who are these people and why would they be saying these things?