Travelling Dragon

words and wonder

February 9th, 2009

Sometime ago in the murky depths of my memory I learned of these delineations of argumentation and I think they can help me to sort through my occasional lapses of clarity on many issues. My brain has been feeling stagnant and not so critical, trying for a jumpstart. I do have intellectaul faculties and perceptive possibilities! I was reading about people getting together to come up with ideas and suggestions for our president, Barack Obama, someone who might actually listen, and I was trying to imagine what I might possibly be able to offer, as far as practical, pragmatic solutions for world/US issues.
a short list of fallacious arguments follows…
1. STRAWMAN- oversimplifies viewpoint then attacks the hollow argument.
2. REDHERRING- offers diversionary tactic to avoid key issues,
3. MORAL EQUIVALENCE- compares minor misdeeds with major atrocities
4.AD POPULAM- Emotional appeal that speaks to positive or negative concepts rather than real issues.
5. AD HOMINEM- attacking a persons character.
6. EITHER/OR- oversimplifies to two choices
7. CIRCULAR ARGUMENT- restates argument rather than proving it.
8. BEGGING THE CLAIM- validating the conclusion in the claim
Seems like we all fall to weakness and use these arguments to justify our own rationalizations for the importance of our personal existence. I am trying to reacquaint myself with these arguments, as they are important tools for putting all peoples statements in context. I can find quite a few that our dear departed president found resort in. “The muslims want to kill us, so we have to kill them”. This statement could easily be construed from Bushes policies, even though he didn’t say it directly. There are muslims that want to kill Christians( and vice versa) but it is a MORAL EQUIVALENCE argument that allows simplification of the issue (STRAWMAN) and then this works together with AD POPULAM ( calling to peoples fears) to convince some demographics of the rationality of an EITHER/OR response( lets go kick their butts)……. Ok, I am starting to get it a little…..
So I will keep working on it, and I will even try to critically evaluate Obama’s political actions, as he has stated that the effort of rebuilding America, into something we can believe in, and maintain as a viable political entity, is something for which we must all share responsibility.

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kristin

May 17th, 2008

a breast brushed my elbow as she sidled by me with a side glance under half closed happy eyelids, rhythm pouring from her figure and wonder raging in my mind. She danced before me as an apparition of something I knew I’ve always wanted but never imagined I could have. She had come from New Orleans only this morning, flying in her car across time misted highways, one of many byways, I knew it was emotion that could hurt and blind me. Calming breath, accepting the fecundity, the sweet scent of spring flowering, that like a comet would shoot by me, and I inhaling dreams I suspected would deny me. She spoke to me of sorts with words that surely could bind me, and I mesmerized, at the last she retreated arm in arm with another, my heart and my breath both defy me…….

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May I begin then, aye, another month has come. What is this fiery breeze that drives me? As my last week arrives, and stealthily sneaks by me, I can taste desert motives and the fleshy spindles of my own inclinations askance and the whole world behind me. I am working now, here in Austin, but already my mind is racing along corridors of expectation. I shall drive to California! Tell me I am slow, tell me I am fast. Tell me what I do or do not know as I go. My body cannot bind me, my mind cannot deny me, it is my breath that defines me.
My grandfather has died…. my father’s father. The patriarch of my family name, as the archaic tradition goes. He was the last of such forebears, said gauntlet has fallen to my mother and my father. My father rarely spoke to his father…. Sometimes it seems that ego triumphs over love? I was fortunate to know all of my grandparents at least as well as I did. I am grateful. They are all part of the life that flows before me, below me, wrapping around me with surety. I have been loved. And when I pass, they shall help to guide me.
I should arrive just in time for the memorial. Ashes over the sea? Solipsistically it is another prelude to my own demise. How was it said in ‘Gladiator’? ” If you find yourself in green fields, under the warm rays of the sun, fear not, for you are in Elysium, and you are already dead!” My grandpa Brock is surely on a celestial sailboat, cutting over cosmic breaks, and Gam is at the lee beside him. Cecily is among friends, smiling and chatting and playing bridge. And Ty, most recently passed, is probably sitting on his deck, gazing down at his beautful view basking in the warmth of his many friends. Farewell my grandfather, go with love and grace, unto the sun and the sea

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april

April 15th, 2008

My mind wanders………
Every step is a choice, every choice is a direction. Even choosing not to make choices is a choice. So what have I been doing? Skirting the void. Life seems easy in a state of random detachment. There is no good, no bad. Equal and opposing forces is the natural order, It is a kind of righteous ambivalence, an excuse to fall firmly on the terra of apathy. Why involve oneself in the dramas of man? Fall on the dreamy bed of ambivalence and watch with patronizing humor as humans fall in the muck that results from their misguided attempts at creating a procreative infinity, as if we could somehow climb from our station of mortal absurdity. is this what you call Pessimism? Teh heh. Is not humanity simply a microcosmic cancer growing profusely over the beautiful macrocosm of earth? Burying her beauty and nobility with our gauntlets of greed? The collective is hungry, resistance is futile. Stoke the fires of our futility with our own blood.
I laugh. Have I not seen GOD? What are these people doing? Chewing on their own feet, to nourish their bellies? The rant goes on…. Still, there is a voice, subtle, it is persistent in its proximity to silence. I am human. I want to live. I need love………..
My thai massage teacher, in one of his common dharma threads, says “only feel the breath, in and out, we are already dead. How happy, how sad?”
And of course there was Chaucer, “When in April sweet showers fall, and pierce the draught of March to the root, and the veins are bathed in liquor of such power, as brings about the engendering of the flower….”

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Still here, somewhere

February 21st, 2008

If there is anyone there, you might happen to note that I am here……. Where are you? My mind has been resistant to writing, rarely finding a facet of reflection on which to hold on to. My months back in Austin Texas are now so fleeting and far I could not try to recall them. Since Jan. 8th, about six weeks, I have been in Thailand, returning on a whim, wandering about with friends, and most recently with my brother Justin, who has been in Asia for some 4 months already.
I first joined my friends Mike and Cleese, along with another friend, Ron, down in the South of Thailand in the city Trang. It is a big town which has not been too overrun by tourists. Foreigners are stil something of a novelty, tho the encroaching storm of western civilization is fast approaching. And of course, 7/11 stores are everywhere. As a group we had some issues coming to concensus, deciding on plans, etc.. We never made it to an island, and at the last we went down to Pinang, Malaysia, to revisit some old eating haunts and do some visa stuff. We did go to a beach there, and actually swam in the Andaman sea, my only chance on this trip…. In a lot of ways I don’t think I was quite ready to travel again. Thus I think I should aptly resign myself to being the TravellingChicken, but I probably won’t. So back to Trang and right on up to Chiang Mai, the great western paradox of Asia, the best of both worlds, although some purists might find that insulting. These days I am anything but a purist. Possibly a hedonist or a gluton.
I spent a week with my thai massage teacher, Pichet, basically just hanging out. His Dharma was talk good, and that was about all he did that week. There was may’be an hour of combined time when he was actually demonstrating. Of course that same week I got involved with a woman and broke the main tenants, some of the Precepts, that he was encouraging. Which has led, as usual, to a certain degree of heartbreak…. I have certain ruminations in my life echoing the hallowed sounds of a broken record. And still, life goes on, and wonders never cease….
So Justin arrives, we rent motorscooters and shoot out of Chiang Mai and head west toward Hawt. The road quiets down after an hour or so, and I begin to relax as we rush down the open road, passing agricultural tracts along the broad valley that encompasses the Chiang Mai area. After a couple hours we stop at a small drink stand in front of some industrial shops. It is a small cart with coffee, tea, and fruit shakes, run on an extension cord from the building behind. There are three women under a tree, working on handstitched bags, supporting one side deftly with their feet while they thread golden lines on the handle. One woman breaks away to make us shakes, and we both follow our fruit shake with a coffee shake. The women are impressed with my meagre thai language skills as I ask them questions about their doings. From there we travel a bit more than an hour and decide that is enough for the day and stop in Hawt. It is a small quiet town, and we find a hotel after consulting a policeman, which is 300 baht a night, almost 10 dollars. Its nicer Motel 6, and we are happy to relax, even catching a few glimpses of television. At 8:30 pm the town is nearly dead, except for a few carts out in front of 7/11. The woman at the cart we go to is caring for her granddaughter, who is one of the funniest people I have ever seen. At two and a half years old she reveals more subtle facial expressions than most adults, as she sits at the cart loudly reciting the thai alphabet, and taking a pretty good crack at the English alphabet as well. She would yell out a bunch of words, then peer over at us with a mirthful grin. I swear she was even winking at times. I was laughing out of my seat, practically in disbelief. This girl had an intelligence and highly infectious buddha like joy that blew me away. Finally we pulled ourselves away from this extraordinary entertainment and slept quite well in cozy beds.
As we left Hawt we came upon a river and began to wind away from the valley and up into the mountains toward Mae Hong Son and the heated border with Burma …….

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home again

July 30th, 2007

How windward my heart, unsettled still in my core, and I arrive home to my native land, America, wrapped in transigent wisps of wonder. Another year has passed, quickly, and yet I have gathered memories and thoughts to inspire me for Ages. I am ever amazed at the kindness of acquaintances, cherishing growing friendships in faraway places, blown away by the great diversity in human cultures, which are nevertheless so much more the same than they are different. The friendly enthusiasm of Indians, their chaotic and sometimes filthy streets. Dodging cow shit at every turn, wheeling from the impending strike of an unwavering rickshaw. Have I been counting my breath’s? The Chinese, so much more reserved than the Indians, but warmer and more cheerful than my mind, mincing on stereotypes, could ever have imagined. And their strange habit of making terrible hacking noises and spitting in unimagineable situations. I will not forget standing on the great wall of China, catching an unusual day of sun as my eyes traced the lines of stone walls riding up along the peaks and edges of distant mountains. The Europeans seem so much more civilized than us with their extraordinary public transportation, plethoras of hike and bike trails, they still have plenty of mom and pop shops. I feel still the echoes of my shoes on stone and cobble streets, set so many years before, my mind settling in reveries of how things might have been in other times.
Arriving home to doubt and debt, I am very grateful for the extraordinary adventures I have had. And still I dream of many far away places, of peoples smiles enchanting roads where weary people wander, giving strength and hope to friends whose roads so often turn confounding corners. There are journeys still that I must take, that are only in my mind. Strangely I have lost a certain sense of who and what I am. It is time to cling to things that are familiar and comforting, hoping thay will remain as they are as far as my next breath’s take me, and then? So I will work, and wonder, as I feel the summer sun in California, and I will follow its further shadows on for a fall and winter in Austin, doing much as I have previously done.

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Athens

July 9th, 2007

The afternoons are HOT. The evenings are sublime. There is a consistent breeze most of the time that makes things bearable. Anastasia and I went to her friends fathers house on Eginas, the nearest island to Athens. It is just one hour on a ferry from the port called Pirheaus. There an intimate group of friends and myself gathered for an evening of food, conversation, and smoking? Of course I didn’t smoke, but the Greeks make up for any deficit I might incur. It is part and parcel of the coffee and conversation they so enjoy. Anastasia, thankfully, stopped smoking a month ago. They were a great group, we enjoyed a feast, as an incredible sunset dropped low at a point between Attica and Peloponessous, the two southern spikes of mainland Greece. They explained to me that there is a gap, at one point only 45 meters wide, seperating the two masses, but Peloponessous is nevertheless considered mainland. From a third story porch we mingled with a crimson sky, soaking in expansive views as gentle waves rolled on the sea and the stark dry mountains succumbed to shadow.
The sea was cool and comfortable. It was blue and very clear. I had thought it might be too warm, like it had been in Nice a couple years before. It was cool and I was happy. I toured a temple ruins, built more than 2,500 years ago. After all these years there is a substance and a sensation to attribute with all my images of the mythology which enthralled me when I was younger. This was a temple to Afios, a woman pursued by Zues who fled and ended up on this island. The landscape is dry and sparse and consists of shrubs and olive trees, and Pistachios trees, for which the island is well known. I was directed in the proper enjoyment of a Frappe, which is most popular here. You have to drink it slow, allowing the ice to mix with the foam, which has all the flavor, so it continues to ‘percolate’ over time. And for best results you have to draw from the straw just below the foam line, so you have a balance, otherwise the liquid below is tasteless. On the ferry back we watched the seagulls flying in the ships wake, sometimes coursing up long the boat to grab pieces of bread directly from peoples hands.

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Finally Really Brussels

June 30th, 2007

Beate, my friend in Stuttgart, turned me on to a carpool website called Mitfahrgelegenheit.com. Its their idea of hitchhiking. Drivers post trips on the site( and there are thousands of them all over Germany, as well as some other European destinations), and for a minimal fee you can tag along. So I tried it in Munich, the dude spoke English, and pulled up to meet me at the station in a Volkswagon van playing Reggae music! I sat in the front, and an uptight older (than myself) lady in formal clothes sat in the back next to a guy in black fatigues. And we rolled rather slowly down the road talking about travel, politics, etc. It was funner than a train and cost only eight euros to Stuttgart.
I left my guitar there in Stuttgart and took a train on to Brussels a day earlier than planned. So, rather than call my friend, being a tad on the timid side, I determined to find a hostel or sleep in the train station…. The hostels were all full…The evening passed quickly as I wandered aimlessly through town, feeling dispossessed.. How easy it is to fall to the ‘dark side’. I was on the outside, like a shadow, watching all the happy tourists and night revellers in their houses of glass, feeling the oppressive edge of desperation( clear signs of a high imagination) as I passed in to the realm of homelessness….. I could see myself couched and dirty and discarded. I warily scouted dark corners and inobtrusive window ledges as the night began to take on a chilly temperment. This is Summer? From where comes these arctic blasts? Looking up I eyed a series of scaffolding above. Nobody would see me there. I could try to sleep, at least for a few hours. It was already midnight… It was one of the lightest days of the year, midnight came surprisingly quick. The dawn was not so far off …. Ahh, the train station was still open, and the air exuding from the entrance had the comforting blast of an oven. I found some benches downstairs and nodded off for about an hour, until a worker came along and pounded on the bench witha large metal wrench, gesticulating in mildly menacing tones that they would be closing the station. Everyone must go!
As I stumbled sleepily outside, contemplating my insufficient summer wear, taking a bead on the frosty feeling of the night, a parade of other similarly dejected souls came out together. Three young boys from Hong Kong, a young girl from Korea, and a young red head lass from England. All had had thair plans go awry, and didn’t expect the station to close. The anxiety was clear as they stood huddled together. I joined them. A Hong Kong boy was speaking. “where can we go?”. “Are there any kinds of shelters here?”. Their eyes were big as they peered around. I was happy to join them. En masse we shuffled around and finally ended up on the stairs of a large church and waited out the night, looking for the sun, or for the train station to reopen. One of the HK boys sat with his head on his knees, and stayed there hardly moving, shivering, and not really sleeping for hours. he hardly said a word. Another had a decent parka and talked some. The third was very thin with light pants and a windbreaker and he was moving around a lot. The English girl was well prepared and took out some pants for the Korean girl to borrow. She had many layers of clothes and was not perturbed by the experience. She was kind of wistful, dreamy. Something had happened the night before in Amsterdam, something about being drugged, tomorrow she would go to Paris…. She pulled out a sleeping bag and the Korean girl and I sat huddled under it. later the thin HK boy joined us on the right, and I sat pressed between, talking, nodding off occasionally until the station opened again just about 5:30 am.

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Brussels

June 26th, 2007

From the expansive mountainscapes and challenging hiking trails of Arco, and the marvelous accomodations of my hosts, I caught a train back up the verdant valley that extends from northern Italy, through Austria and in to Germany. Pressed between snowcapped peaks, it is the lowest pass through the Alps, and has thus been a hot bed of trade and conflict for ages beyond count. So many picturesque villages and spires of churches stretching to rise with the mountains…. decrepit and now serene castle ruins holding testament to struggles expressing themselves across many generations. Hidden passes, secret valleys, there is always another paradise around the bend, where one can frolic in cool clear waters…..
I stopped in Munich and spent two days at a youth hostel, and Boy did they look youthful! There were tours and mobs of awkward, chemically charged young people, passing in crowds like restless flocks of sheep. Reminds me how old people looked( at 20) when I was a teenager. And how old I must seem to them as I approach 40….
I met with a young woman that first night that I ” met” on a website called the Hospitality Club, where travelers can meet, offer or beg accomodation, and exchange travel information and tips. She gave me a quick tour of the main sites. The Hofbrauhaus, the most famous in a town famous for its Oktober fest party each year. And a famous bell tower. We hiked up many flights of steps and saw spectacular 360 degree views of the city. The Alps could be seen just to the South, like a jagged set of teeth tracing the skyline. The sharp, cable stroked buildings of the Olympic Park lay to the north….. and everywhere churches could be seen, each with its own heavenly spire. The next day I walked for 9 hours, got lost and ended up in a wilderness extension of the vast English Gardens. Emerging on a river, I happened quite incidently on a nude older mens sunbathing sanctuary, and hastened my stride lest they should get the wrong idea(teh heh). And along the path I came upon a log thrust up from the earth, which had been hacked up. Or rather, as I realized after several moments of bemused study, it was a sculpture of an erect penis in a hands embrace… I kept walking briskly…….. back in the main park, naked men were playing soccer……….

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back in Europe

May 31st, 2007

I can certainly attest to the tidiness, the quietness and general civility of Germany. It was soooo quiet. The roads are like ghost ways. Nobody honks their horns! People actually wait for others to get off before boarding busses and trains. And everything is very expensive. My heart skipped a beat the first time I changed money and $300 became 200 euros. A good taste of what its like to be from a poor country( at least a small taste). Speaking of taste, the bakeries here are so good. The bread and cheese in Germany was fantastic. I stayed with a friend Beate in Stuttgart, I had a room to myself, alone in the downstairs, with a yummy comforter and practically a private bathroom and Kitchen. She lives convenient to Subway yet only minutes from an endless track of hiking paths and woods. I am really surprised a small city like Stuttgart has such a great, extensive train and subway network. the second night her friend Klause Jurgen took us to a kind of birthday party in an industrial shop that has been transformed into a totally crazy woodwork artstudio and bar. the home band, a few old dudes, were playing some classical, jazzy hoe down style polka influenced grooves very well. Ther were all kinds of groovy woodsculptures slash light stands, cool tables with gargoyle legs, scary wood birds with light for eyes, a big turtle dragon type sculpture made from tons of shaped wood pieces and glue and bolts. hugh rounded wood noses with FEET! It was cool, I can hardly find the words for it……
The next night we went to a very eclectic music festival in small neighboring town that was held in the courtyard(s) of a vast castle /palace. There were like lots of stages, all kinds of mostly German bands. Including some hip hop dancers. One band had like a japanese drum, some guy doing like throat singing, may’be like monk chanting? Klause Jurgen was wondering why these two guys let this other woman accompany them, as he felt she was no good on her violin. Or the frog figures she was dropping on the floor for percussion. I didn’t catch how bad she was, but Klause Jurgen was insistent, “There are two good musicians. I can’t believe they let her play with them”. I didn’t say a peep. I think her sister was standing right next to us…….
So I arrived in a hotstreak, and my last day in Stuttgart was freezing and raining all day? Everyone says, ” global warming”. Now I am in Arco, Italy visiting my friends Matteo and Sabine after a great and very expensive train ride. It was like 5 times more expensive than my sleeper train in China from Hong Kong to Beijing. Here it is not hot, not too cold, we could use a little more sun, but I am not complaining. I sawa lot of snow on the train ride, looking up on the Italian Alps. I have already indulged in a triple flavor gelato, and we are eating at home and very well. My friends also do massage, and today we all went as a massage team and did massage for some visitors from Netherlands here at a vacation rental in the beautiful mountains. La vita e bella….. ciao

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words and wonder

kristin

May

april

Still here, somewhere

home again

Athens

Finally Really Brussels

Brussels

back in Europe

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