And the Various Journeys Continue . . .

The Last Post of an Old Year

Welp, only about 17 minutes left in 2000 and 4, and I bloody well shall be real happy this sucker is done with. Oh there were some fine times, the trip to Mexico and Tucson in June, and the most lovely trip to bonnie England with dear Bonnie. As well, it twere a lovely 2.5 plus weeks back home in Vietnam. But most of my time in the land of Lanka, especially the last -- nope, no matter how aged and tired and sick I am, it still ain't close to being a full week -- several days.

Okay, enuff kvetching . . .

I choose just this moment -- dat's all we'se gots, Baby Dear -- to suck it up, breath deeply in a prayer of thanksgiving, breath deeply out a yearning for compassion, extend through myself Tonglen for myself and all beings that we may all be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

Hey, it's not so bad, listening to the lilting harmonies of Michael Jone's piano on me-iPod hooked up to the speaker system while sipping a delicious cuppa Vietnamese Mocha joe with a sweet cinnamon stick to assuage my orality, to pause a moment and be most grateful for the good that always manifests itself through the illusions of earthly horror in the innumerable veils of samsara -- like today I got email contact or comments here from folks I've long been disconnected from, ex-bosses, former clients, college classmates. I really can't complain, though often I do, especially in the churnings of meMind, spinning out nothing but hs (horseshit) a lot of the time.

So, another really neat thing to be grateful for is that tonight I was able to successfully access on this Windows XP machine my mac.com iDisk where I parked in a dark corner of cyberspace before I left the States for LankaLand in the late summer of '03 a lot of my stuff, even some pics, most precious scans of the pics from Vietnam from '67 and  my first trip back in '02. All is not irretrievably lost. We want discuss the frustration I had last night not being able to mount the backup Momobay external hard drive . . .

                         HAPPY NEW YEAR !~!~!

Hey, it'll work itself out, or it wont.

Enuff for this late evening, now that it is a New Year.

Be gentle and hold each other in your hearts.

THANK YOU

For all your well wishes and support. I am very humbled by how my little corner of the blogiverse has manifested such an outpouring of care and concern. Extend it through yourselves to all of the suffering people throughout the Indian Ocean Rim. It is staggering to think of the pain and suffering that has been visited upon us as a species in the past -- geez, it is not even a week. Seems like several lifetimes ago. On top of everything else, we are in the middle of a monsoon thunderstorm. A huge, bellowing, angry thunderbolt just tripped all the circuit breakers in the house, wiping out most of a post I was about to upload. Oh well, I am most blessed -- I have a roof over my head, and was able to figure out how to reset the strange circuit breaker box.

Here are a couple of ways that you can provide concrete aid and assistance. Places that Nonviolent Peaceforce urge folks to make donations for the massive humanitarian relief effort that has barely just begun:

1. http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/english/help/donatetosarvodaya.asp

   {http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/english/help/donation.asp}

2. http://www.oxfam.org/eng/oxfam_sites.htm

   {http://www.oxfam.org/eng/oxfam_sites.htm}

Have to skidaddle to try to make a few phone calls while the power is on and the telephone service is entact. Later in peace, love, light and forgiveness for all . . .

The Fog of Disaster

I was wrong. Thank all gods & goddesses I was wrong. I wasn't intentionally wrong; I just took for gospel truth information I had received from a reliable source, but it turns out it wasn't true. Boy/girl/mens&womens is I ever glad . . .

The Mutur NP House/Office is totally completely entact, as are the two four-legged inhabitants, Juma, the love cat, and Punchi, the mischeivious, green-eyed canine-being, who of late has taken to running out the compound into the scary big world where other dogs snarl and snap at her whenever the gate is open. So, this means that I have backup of 95% of MeMacMojo (MeMacMojo is dead; long live MeMacMojo), and as I keyboard the Mini-iPod is being recharged. All is well. And the fan feels so good, and the Deva Premal music sounds so good, and the light in the quiet, late dark of night is so comforting after the past several days with no power -- hey, yesterday the Electric Board estimated it would be 20-30 days before power was restored, but, holla, we got it back about 9:30 p.m. this evening.

The seaside of Mutur town is obliterated, but most of the town itself along with the NP House/Office is unscathed. Most families, I've spoken to, however, have suffered some loss. Our landlord lost a daughter, an aunt and several other relations who were traveling on a train to Galle for a wedding. Another friend I spoke with tonight lost his parents and twelve other extended members of his family. The loss at times seems overwhelming; yet we find a way not only to survive, but to thrive. The outpouring of members of the community to each other, which crosses ethnic and religious lines is wonderfully inspiring, even inspiriting, as I just mis-keyboarded. Relief supplies and volunteer assistance are literally pouring in with much more positive force than the destructive impact of the Tusamni. The big wave did it's destructive work in less than a minute; the reconstructive work, rebuilding the devastated community, will last lifetimes, as people find in tragedy new ways of learning to live and work cooperatively together. At least that is my belief as to what positively can come from this horrible event.

Many of my dear family, friends and associates, a good number, whom I feel so blessed to have sent me well wishes here, will be amazed that I am not totally devasted by the loss of MeMacMojo. Now, this indeed is a crisis, but I handle crises quite well. It's those darned broken shoe strings that are a real hassle. This momemt, the only breath there is, I feel extraordinarily graced that I have survived one of my worst nightmare fears, the loss of MeMacMojo, but in the midst of such devastation, the loss of a computer, even one euphimistically I used to say that is my life, pales in comparison. My LIFE is more important than my virtual life, even all those words I endlessly spun. As we said, 37 years ago in Vietnam, "Don't mean nuttin'" and as Pema Chodron says, "Remember, it's no big deal." Hey, I needed a new machine anyway, and one way or the other, when it's right, a new one shall manifest itself out of the magnanimous beneficence of the Kosmos. In the meanwhile, I am blessed to have a very nice PC desktop to play with, teaching myself some new trick ponies to navigate that part of the Computerverse that comprises 95% market share, no matter how inferior it may be. . . ;) Enough.

Very tired. Long hard day today, and another one in the offering tomorrow, when I will be traveling down to the same remote area in Echalampattu where last week I worked with the floods. Time to get to sleep to dream of the angels, and I wish for each of you the same.

I'm Safe

Me G4 Mac is washed away into the deep muddy-green Indian Ocean Sea; the backup is washed away with most of the rest of most of my worldly goods in the destroyed NP House in Mutur. Oh well, time to start everything anew. I'm physically quite sound; mentally/emotionally holding up; spiritually, I have lots of moment to moment, breath to breath time to practice over and over "Mother/Father Divine grant me acceptance" & "Namo Guam Sith Yin Pusa" and to just watch and pray about the devastating scene passing by. Not much else to do except to be present to help my community of Mutur rebuild itself (over 200 dead, many still missing), being of service however I can.  Hey, I still have my new Mini-iPod, but no charger, so I listen to one song an hour.

I shall survive. I've survived a lot worse. This too shall pass. Be gentle; I shall connect when I can . . .

The Year End Situation in Sri Lanka

Link: Uncertain future awaits Sri Lanka : HindustanTimes.com.

This article, a bit long, gives a very comprehensive and complete picture in words of the very complex and unstable situation in Sri Lanka as 2004 winds to a close and the world awaits the dawning of the New Year.

The article describes the status and the various conflicts of all of the major stakeholders in the "peace" process in Sri Lanka. Reading it and being here to witness some of it unfolding around me, it reminds be of the old Chinese, I think, saying "Beware of living in interesting times."

Busy Days

The LTTE-controlled area south of Mutur where I have been doing a lot of my peace work the last couple of months has been hit with heavy flooding. Some 2300 families have been affected, having lost their homes, devastating in the short run, but disasterously also in the long run is that they have lost most of their source of income for the next six months due to their paddy fields being flooded, the crops ruined. What once was rich, fertile farmland is now a lagoon.

Yesterday, I accompanied a group of folks from ICRC, UNICEF, OXFAM and other INGOs and NGOs down to the affected area taking bunches of emergency supplies. We could only access the most severely flooded areas in the back of a wagon hauled by a tractor due to the flooded main road, A15, between Trincomalee and Batticaloa through the most underdeveloped LTTE-controlled areas:

Eventually, we came to the end of the road and had to hoof it through nipple-high waters. Thanks goodness I had strong guides to help me shoot the rapidly coursing waters:

Despite incredible suffering and having lost everything, the strength of the human spirit not only to survive but to find ways to thrive moved me deeply. These children with their older brothers and sisters and parents gave me great delight insisting not only that I take their picture, but oohing and ahhing and giggling great gales of laughter at seeing themselves in my digital camera. I could have spent hours taking different pictures of them.

As devastating as the flooding is, there is a pristine beauty about the water-filled land:

Especially this mirror shot of the flooded landscape at dusk:

Today I spent in meetings with the government, the LTTE, and relief agencies to mobilize another convoy of relief supplies, which we will take down tomorrow. The thought just hit me that I'm doing almost the exact same thing I did 37 years ago in Vietnam, convoying supplies into the boonies, except that in Sri Lanka it is relief supplies for people suffering, not war materials to cause suffering, and I ride shotgun (unarmed) in a Toyota van, not a gunjeep. Most definitely a whole bunch kueler . . .

Hmmm . . .

What would I do if another revolution started? Be a peacekeeper in the land of my birth? Or, man the barricades and follow the rousing call of another who has been dere and done dat to the max ? ? ?

Truthfully, I don't know. Though committed to nonviolence and though I am currently working as a peacemaker, I am not a total pacifist, and I could conceive bearing arms again for another more righteous cause such as Stan effectively rouses here, especially after I heard for the first time this afternoon in at least 20 years Gil Scott Heron, and you know what? Not much has really changed that much . . .

Link: t r u t h o u t - Stan Goff | We Will Reclaim Our Armed Forces!.

Nostalgia

Listening to Westside Story, Maria and Tony singing “Tonight” and the tears are just streaming down both sides of my face as I can’t believe we ever were quite that innocent. Incredible, it was released in 1961, when I was a senior in St. Joseph High School, forty-three years ago, before the assassinations, and Vietnam and the Summer of Love and the Tet Offensive I survived despite myself and Watergate and Iran-Contragate and the collapse of the cold war signified by the Berlin Wall falling down, when the USSR imploded, which once was the dastardly enemy needed to fuel our rapacious MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex) before we created a never ending, worldwide WAR against TERROR (that mostly that we create) - ism and blowjobs in the Whitehouse and the New American Century and 911 and Iraq -- once was not enough, now we’re in it to the Nth degree as long and scillions times worse than Desert Storm -- and two fraudulent elections and a growing Fascist Amerika that is beyond all of our worse nightmares; that is, unless you are expecting to be in a state of Rapture singing Halleluiahs in to the wild blue celestial heavens upon the Second Coming of the Lord, I mean A M E N, Jesus, during the Armageddon the sickest among us demand to manifest as the earth’s environment comes crashing down upon all our heads, the innocent and not-so-innocent alike.

Oh well, so it has gone, to misquote, Kurt Vonnegut, as ironically Betty Wand belts “I want to be in America” and a persistently strident frog bellows in the flood waters outside. And whatever happened to Jim Bryant who played Tony and George Chakaris, who played the Chief Shark and who was from Cincinnati where I went to college at Xavier later in the Fall of 1961. Besides, it don’t mean nothing anywho, since this plethora of tinsel veils, illusions all, are the whispers of mere nothingness as Maya spins Itself out of control.

Hmmm, I wonder if Homer or Lao Tzu or Grant or Churchill felt the same about their harried, worst of times? No I don’t suffer under the delusion that my miasmic meanderings of the spirit are anything akin to those greats of various epochs. And just to bring me back down to the realm of the real, here is another shot from the recent, now fading in memory holiday in Vi-et-nam:

What a gift of a shot this was when I was able to retrace a walk I took in January of 1968 along the Saigon River from the Rex Hotel and find again the Saigon Zoo. Here's another priceless shot of an elephant comforting him/herself Do elephants masturbate?

Enuff for dis now . . .

Stranded in Mutur

We are at the beginning of the rainy season in the East of Sri Lanka. Some beginning, we have had five almost solid days of monsoon rain. Lots of flooding with two collapsed bridges which is cutting Mutur off from vehicular traffic for up to two months. Prices for scarce fresh produce have increased five times in the last several days. A couple of thousand displaced families in the area. If the rain doesn't abate there will be lots of damage to local agriculture. The government ferry to Trincomalee is still running, so I can still travel to Trinco Town for provisions. Much political instability with the peace talks still at a stalemate and the war sabres rattling on all sides. Well, no one promised me a rose garden. I have written a couple of poems lately. Here they are

rainbow

arching over brilliant
green paddy fields
colors pulsing sure
after early morning deluge
the rainbow strummed many chords
in an awestruck heart
of memory and gratitude
to simply be alive
this fine crystal
moment

10 December, 2004
Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

chant

Buddhist monks
in nearby monastery
drone an atonal chant
through the darkest moments
before dawn

I sit and watch
fall of gentle rain
streetlights shimmer upon waving fronds
sleeping cat startle itself awake
then slink away in shadows

I swat at whining-buzz of mosquito
again lose count of breaths
another blessing to extend forgiveness
starting with myself

Such is my life
as I pray
not to judge it too harshly
instead to smile a mantra
of gratitude for mere
magnificent being

December 13, 2004
Dambulla, Sri Lanka

Here's one of my favorite pictures from the recent Vietnam Holiday, a fisherperson fishing on the Perfume River in Hue:

Oh, what the hey, one more:

The Herbal Life Lady in the Old Town of Hanoi -- we are one brand . . .