The Zephyr ~ (A Stream of Being)

A restless energy overcomes you and you know again that it's Time, so you walk without the notion of going somewhere.  Each movement feels most intentional.

The last sliver of sun disappears from view; the landscape takes on more muted hues. You continue on and on until you are well apart from neon lights and bustling shops and the hums of engines.  A steady East wind swallows the ambient noises associated with human life, while vigorously licking the bottoms of your outstretched palms and the tips of your bare toes.

The loneliness...

The brewing anxiety...

The confusion...

Each time a feeling emerges, it's blown just as quickly back.  The only thing withstanding the mighty gusts is the will to place one foot in front of the other, carving the path with every step.

You are drawn to an unmarked hillside, so you begin to climb.  Your nose welcomes the foggy blanket that engulfs the dry, desert air.  Something new is about to blow in, you whisper to yourself.  You find a comfortable place in the sand and you sit there

patiently,

silently,

until you forget to remember how much time has passed...

The bounteous moon peeks through the thick fog,

Refracting its pale blue light in strange directions,

Illuminating the sand beetle slowly making his way South,

Leaving tiny footprints,

...that disappear behind him.

And then, a sudden shift in the wind

As a new energy flows in from the West:

In that still moment you hear the Calling.

And so you stand between undulating waves --

Orchestrated by the moon's gentle tug,

And the sea of grains which dance to the zephyr's soft breath.

Something makes the pain and loneliness disappear,

Assuaged by the warmth that rises from the Earth,

The sand that moves across your feet,

The fog that turns to warm rain,

The ravens that fly swiftly past,

Calling out a name that sounds somehow familiar.

The emptiness that echoes... echoes... echoes...

Past the ridges and through the gulleys and back to you again.

Pulling you closer to a center that you cannot see,

Towards a song heard only in silence.

You touch the fabric of empty space,

And drink sweet nectar from Jangwa's gourd.

It was there all along --

You were never apart from it.

It exists in a realm that the mind cannot touch;

You must simply listen from a different place

To hear its gentle call: life’s singing bowl.

And you'll see that it cannot help

But flood right in at your feet like the sea.

So dip your toes into the source,

And dance across the shifting Earth

Towards your center.

You need not ask where that is;

Your essence already knows,

What your mind cannot.

There’s nothing left to prepare,

It’s always been ready, waiting.

You must only summon it with your silence,

Allowing other things to come into play.

And you’ll feel things shifting into place,

So effortlessly.

Are you feeling hesitation?

Wait -- you’re almost there!

Take the dial, and turn it down…

Until things get very quiet…

Now, go.

And do whatever it is you already know
You're meant to do.

Fazenda Flor do Cafe

Fazenda Flor de Café, framed by steep canyon walls of the Chapada Diamantina, is run by an incredible woman named Brigida Salgada. Brigida left her job in the private sector over a decade ago because she sought a spiritually-fulfilling livelihood in which she could have a more positive impact on her environment. Today, she runs a beautiful organic farm with dozens of crops ranging from mango trees to garden vegetables to her primary crop: coffee.

I began my work at the Fazenda Flor de Café at the end of April, which happened to coincide with a weekend seminar that Brigida was due to give a group of farmers and laypeople in the small village of Capao regarding the biodynamic farming technique. A fellow WWOOFer and I both attended and learned how more and more farmers are beginning to use a technique that views the farm as a single, living organism whose interrelationships are refined to create a self-nourishing system which does not rely on chemicals, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or other staples of conventional farming. Biodynamic farming uses a holistic approach, seeking to balance and harness the energies of the earth and the sky to produce delicious, organic food. Brigida, a seasoned implementer of this technique, taught the course alongside her son, Fabio, who works with agriculture in Seabra.

A typical day at the farm involves rising with the sun and enjoying a delicious breakfast of couscous, fresh fruit, and a cup of the fazenda’s coffee before setting out to the fields. I happened to arrive in the midst of harvest season, so our days focused mainly on picking coffee beans, soaking them, and laying them out to dry in the concrete area behind our kitchen. Among my favorite memories from working at this farm were all of the conversations that I had with Brigida in the field while harvesting the coffee. We talked about politics, women in farming, biodynamic coffee, and much more!  Brigida’s endless enthusiasm for answering our questions and offering her insights greatly enriched my understanding of how farmers like Brigida are transforming the face of agriculture across Brazil, setting the standard for holistic approaches that promote sustainability and social responsibility.

The Fazenda Flor de Café is a hidden gem in the heart of Brazil --- in addition to collaborating in producing delicious, organic food, the farm is an opportunity for an authentic cultural exchange. Come to learn more about the language, the biodynamic farming technique, the local customs of the people living in the Chapada Diamantina, and to visit one of the most stunningly beautiful areas of Brazil. Because there is no electricity at the farm, it offers a rare escape from the electronics that tend to dominate our lives, allowing us to relax amidst the natural beauty that surrounds us in all directions, including the thousands of stars that glitter above the horizon as the fireflies light up the fields below. From the first moment that you set foot on the farm, you will realise that you are about to become a part of something special.

If you are interested in WOOFing in Brasil, biodynamic farming, or the Chapada Diamantina, please contact me for more information.

Also, do check out this beautiful blog entry from another WWOOFer and this wonderful article in Portuguese.

¡편집병!

{paranoia, paranoia}

Blasen stoßen hart aneinander;

Blasen mit Augen, die nur aus sich selbst heraus sehen.

Wann werden sie platzen?

vor den Ufern

Langsam aus dem Schlaf auftauchend, heben sich die Augenlieder und lassen Land erahnen. Ruhiges Meer, schon immer da, seit Urbeginn, scheint mich treiben zu lassen vor den Ufern im Nebel und ich spüre, dass ich kurz vor der Küste zu Hause bin. Da, wo man Schiffe, an Klippen zerschellen. Da, wo man sich nach der Weite und dem Hafen sehnt. Da, wo alles möglich ist, weil es im Nebel verborgen liegt. Hier steige ich auf das Dach des Schiffs und rieche die Melange von Erde und Meer.

So treib ich im Nebel dahin, an den Küsten entlang, obwohl ich schon längst den Anker geworfen hab.

-- a quote long since buried in time, R.L.

The pressure mounts; energy builds; the geysers steam; an explosion is imminent. The ubiquitous smell of sulfur relentlessly permeates my senses. The water begins to spill and pour and flow over the edges of nature's caldron; bubbles crackle and pop delightfully. I look in the distance as a solitary raven gnaws at an over-picked carcass, trying desperately to satiate its hunger amidst the boiling brew. Steam obscures and distorts my surroundings. Cold, wet air enters my lungs but it cannot cool the molten emotions which push at my core, attempting to release themselves through my mouth but are held in by my tongue.

Fatigued. Restless. Simultaneous ambiguities. Floating through the sky alone on a moonless night. Cloud-surfing under the luminescent stars--paint splatters on the blanket of the cosmos. Heaven lies directly outside. Dreams fade in and out with the patterns of the wind. Raindrops tap. tap. tap. on the window in the cockpit. The light from the beacon reflects off the pillowy formations, refracting light in strange directions; darkness pools in others:

the shadows of angels on my bottomless doorstep.

Sleepy eyes awaken to a vast valley of blue, framed by snowy, jagged peaks of hardened earth, not yet eroded by friction---the indifference of nature dipped in sugar, inviting me to play, compelling me to seek.

Here, there is only


silence.




-Space.-




{Wonder.}



This was my weekend.
These are my dreams.

(9/30/2006)

Turn off the TV.

Korea in Colours

A sleepy sunset...

the midday fog...

and the morning chill of dawn.

Glühende Liebe

--For S.

Power

This photo isn't mine, but I had to repost it anyway because it is so beautiful.  You can find the original post here.  Such a stunning display of rarely-seen energies rising to the surface; a physical representation of the metamorphosis that our Earth is currently undergoing...

Reflection

Two months later...

Eternal Autumn

Since 2007, I have resided almost entirely in the season of autumn, having switched hemispheres nearly every time winter was approaching.  Autumn has an unmistakable energy that cannot be found at any other time of the year.  It's similar to the energy that I feel every evening at dusk -- my favourite time of day, when the ambient noise quiets, the superfluous aspects fade, and something deeper begins to surface.  The whole of autumn is like that for me...

My autumns...

2010 Korea

2010 - Brasil

2009 - Utah & Nepal

2009 - Namibia

2008 - Zambia

2007 - Colorado

Vision

Of all of the Kafka quotes that I have encountered,

perhaps the most curious one, which initially appeared simple

to understand lingers below all of the passages 

in this journal.

"There is a goal, but no way;

What we call a way is hesitation."

For what it implies is that there is no "way,"

because we already have everything that we need.

...Because we are already "there." 

We simply need to see that and do what we already 

know we have to do.

This is among the biggest illusions of our time:

that we need to get "there" to accomplish our goals.

Everything that we need is set out before us.

Hesitaton, a mental response based on a misunderstanding

that we are somehow lacking something,

itself creates the only gap.

Only the pure act of Doing 

relaxed and focused

can fill this space 

bridging the gap 

between intention 

and action.

Navigating the crux of "Lixeiros" on Ana Chata near Sao Bento, Brasil

where I spent 20 minutes naming all of the reasons

I couldn't pull through in my head.

...And then, Did.

Four pitches later, watching the beautiful sun set from the ridge.

Life Force

The natural world revitalises what has been lost in our sprawling concrete jungles, breathing life in between structures and pavement, into the city dwellers themselves.

Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo

Beginner's Mind

"Bangladesh was in terrible, terrible shape. A lot of deaths. A lot of killings. During the war I was teaching at a university in Tennessee. But I decided I had to come back; I thought I should be useful in rebuilding Bangladesh. I came back and started doing the one thing I knew. I started teaching the same thing I had taught in the United States: economics.

"Instead of getting better, things were getting worse. Then a in 1974 a terrible famine hit. People were dying in the streets. That's a rude shock. I lived in a beautiful bungalow on a hillside near the university and would walk by people who were dying. Then I'd come back to the classroom and give my big lecture, and I said: 'What is this?' I felt completely empty.

"I came to the conclusion that these theories were useless for these dying people. I realized I could help people as a human being, not as an economist. So I decided to become a basic human being. I think that was a good decision for me because I no longer carried any preconceived notions." 

--Muhammad Yunus, in a conversation with Frances Moore

"Yunus's experience of dissonance reminds me of my own at the very same age. Everything I wrote in Diet for a Small Planet was sitting there for any nutritionist or economist to put together well before I did. But because I was untrained, I didn't wear the blinders created by being taught to perceive only within a set framework. Without those blinders, I could see that there is plenty of food for all; that we ourselves create the scarcity we fear.

"For Yunus, as for me, an admission of 'not knowing' was the beginning of real learning. But what Yunus did was much trickier. He had to unlearn what he knew, so that he could look at poverty anew.

"Dropping his preconceptions and leaving his theories in the classroom, Yunus traveled into the villages near Chittagong University. He decided that to understand poverty and hunger, he had to listen to poor people themselves, in order to learn a new economics.

"What Yunus observed in these villages seems, in one sense, utterly obvious. These most hungry were those with no land. At the time, they made up at least half of the rural population. But instead of accepting whta he saw, Yunus asked: Why is it this way? Why can't it be different?

"He found that many of the landless struggle for income by making things to sell. But they must buy the raw materials, and to do that, they must borrow from a moneylender. By the time they repay the loan, plus interest (when Yunus began, interest could be as much as 10 percent, per day), what's left is never enough to live on.

"Yunus's first "aha" moment was meeting Sufiya Begum, a twenty-one-year-old mother who fed her family by making bamboo stools. She bought the cane, her raw material, with loans from moneylenders who made her sell back to them at the end of the day. Her profit? Two cents a day.

"Soon Yunus and his students had collected a list of forty-two people in straits similar to Sufiya's, and he provided each with a loan out of his own pocket. 'My loan of only twenty-seven dollars spread among forty-two people was enough,' he tells us. It was enough to liberate them all from bondage to the moneylender."

--Frances Moore, Hope's Edge

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities,

but in the expert's there are few.

-- Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi

Climbing Coração

To me, there were no real distinctions between the volcanoes that Scott and I climbed and attempted to climb, nor between the moments exerted on a snowy peak and those relaxed in the valley.

Instead of calling them separately Pinchincha,

Pasachoa, Illiniza Norte, Quito and Cotopaxi,

I decided to give them one name:

Coração.

 

The climb to me is never about the summit; in fact, I feel that the summit tends to detract from the experience.  Each life form,

rock formation, wind gust and dewdrop along the way has something important to teach. Climbing for me has been a way to connect with the wisdom of my environment.

 

Coração means "heart" in Portuguese, but it also reminds me of a French word that I used to hear very often in one of the refugee camps I worked in two years ago: courage. I feel that the name really embodies my reasons for climbing -- to commit with heart-based courage to creating the best collective experience possible, even if it means abandoning traditional notions of progress.  

 

Cotopaxi's summit remains ever elusive in an otherworldly and unforgiving environment, which can only be accessed relatively safely in the earliest hours of the morning, when the glacier has not yet begun to melt. We notice that each step, however higher, brings us farther away from everything we care about.

Volcanic rock crumbles beneath our feet, we gasp for air between

careful steps, the frozen wind howls about us, the clouds hover thousands of feet below us, and the city lights sparkle in

the distant valley.

There are no signs of plants, animals, or life in general. No view of sparkling ice crystals, crevasses, and snow caves. Only a dark, unfathomly cold impression of a summit looms above us. Each step is a struggle because the end is the only point of fixation. 

Sometimes the means belie our reasons for being somewhere, or doing something. If we only have a goal in mind then we tend to push ourselves anyway to do something that feels wrong yet seems "right" in our minds for what we have set out to achieve.

The ends do not justify the means.

The ends are the means.

The Great Climb does not start at one point and end at another:

It runs through all of the peaks and valleys that we travel.

What do we call the mountain that has no summit?  

Secret Garden

 

  

 

 

 

Cotopaxi, Ecuador
{Magic}