A few weeks ago we got back from Puerto Penasco, Mexico. We spent the week on the beach and in the evenings we slept on the roof under the stars, pointing out the various constellations and then waking up hours later to more and more constellations to ooh and awww at.
On our only visit into town, the Malacon, we were picking up souvenirs for friends. We picked through the Mexican puppets, the blankets, shot glasses, Mexican ceramics and statues of La Virgin de Guadalupe. We ate a plate of garlic shrimp and fish with corn tortillas and salsa and of course we had to indulge in the largest margarita at Mary's.
We were walking along the Malacon when we were approached by two dancing and drumming Yaqui shamans. They had furry animal masks pulled over their heads and one was also playing a flute. We were told that they were not allowed to speak during this ceremony. They wore belts of bamboo and old seat belts allowing the bamboo to clack into one another creating a musical instrument. They approached our group and proceeded to put their belts around Jenna and Rabbits hips. The two were more than willing to put their belly dance moves into action. One of the shamans motioned for me to capture this all on camera.
I cannot live without adventures. As a kid we'd pile up in our brother in laws Toyota truck and drive down to Mexico for a week where we'd camp on the beaches in San Felipe. We learned to build fires, we learned to fish and we learned to explore what mysteries lay beneath the Pacific Ocean when the tide was low. When we were not in Mexico we were busy exploring our neighborhood in Los Angeles where we'd endlessly walk the streets or have some sort of fascinating adventure at Ports O' Call.
Now as an adult I find myself exploring the Bay Area a lot. I've lived here for about eleven years now and the adventures never cease. There are redwoods to explore, trolleys to ride, hidden towns like Bolinas to discover, coyotes to greet, old churches to visit, strange people to watch, delicious eats to be devoured.
This particular drawing was from an adventure I had near Nob Hill where I rode the trolley up California with all the tourists and then ended up inside Grace Cathedral where a mens choir was singing so beautifully that I had to grab the pew so that I wouldn't start speaking in tongues.
There is something about going and exploring the world, having adventures that makes you feel alive. It's almost like going on a physical adventure you also get to explore your soul and open yourself to all the new things within you and outside of you.
For the past couple of weeks it's been raining, raining and raining. There's a gas station that was torn up by bulldozers and workmen in hardhats across the street. They put a fence up around the old gas station and posted a sign with a whole bunch of words. I don't know what the sign said but I did notice it...and I noticed it more after the letters began to...drip from all the rain. Yesterday on my way to the train I wiped some of the letters off of the board, most of them were already gone, washed down in to the sewage drain in an alphabet soup.
I've also been working on perfecting a Spock stencil and in this drawing I collaged the stencil with the letters I swiped from the sign that no longer is.
This second piece is Spock on a Post Office sticker and this one will probably be put up somewhere for public viewing on a nearby newspaper stand or something. It's street art.
I had a bunch of errands to run today. Between my errands I decided to ride over to the Ashby Flea Market. You could hear the drumming from a block away, you could smell the burning incense coming from the booths and the marijuana smoked openly by several vendors and shoppers. African masks, suitcases, old trinkets, cheaply made toys, used Air Jordans, Buddha statues and one of my favorite booths - the older Asian fellow sitting on a beach chair, eating a fried egg sandwich wearing no shoes. He has several boxes overflowing with found photographs and postcards, most are quite old and some are fairly new. You can find old black and whites of a group picnicking by the river, a father trying to hold a bawling child steady, wedding photographs, poses next to the 1950 Oldsmobile. There are tons of photographs. Well, every time I go by this booth I have to stay for at least an hour looking through these strangers lives. Where are they now? Why are all these photographs just being tossed out? What were their lives like?
Well I came across this photo in particular and I just had to have it! The date on it reads March, 1961 and it's of a female poodle. It appears that she just recently gave birth to a litter of white and pink puppies and she's smiling proudly for the camera. I've heard people say that their dog smiles but this poodle - she.is.clearly.smiling! This was a great find.
This week I came across a website that explains how to turn any colored image into a monochrome bitmap. It's pretty addictive and it's really fun! You can print images that you like, you can make stencils and do some screen printing with these black and whites. Fun, fun, fun! 1)We begin with this image of Mohammed Ali which I just pulled up off of the internets.
2)Right click 'Save Image As'
3)Save the image to a file. (Remember which file you save it in).
4)Open your file in which you saved your image and then select the image.
5)Right click 'Edit'.
6)Your image will be sent to your Painter program and it will just pop up there.
7)Choose 'File' and then 'Save As...'
8)When your 'Save As...' box appears, drop down the 'Save as type...' arrow and save it as 'Monochrome Bitmap'.
9)Click 'Save' and a window will pop up telling you that saving it as 'Monochrome bitmap' will altar your image and do you want to continue. Click 'Yes'.
10)Your new bitmap image will appear!
Like this:
Cool, huh? Feel free to email me if you got lost along the way!
Last night I was walking home after class downtown Berkeley. People were jibber jabbering on their cellphones, almost bumping into each other because everyone was in such a hurry. To go where? Why are we in such a hurry? We walk fast, drive fast, eat fast, talk fast. I almost get the feeling we're missing the present moment so often because we're thinking about the next moment and when that moment passes we're thinking about the next. Doesn't that mean we're missing all the divine seconds of our life? It's difficult to remain present and slow down to watch all the amazing things that are going on inside of us and around us.
Last night I sort of slowed down and what suddenly really caught my attention were the lights...all the lights everywhere. Stop lights, street lights, store lights, neon lights, car lights. Lights, lights, lights. They seem to keep us going going going. I'm not saying there is anything bad about it but it's fascinating how humans have adapted and have creatively shaped the world to work in our favor.
We drink coffee for an extra kick of adrenaline. We smoke cigarettes to ease our nervousness in this urban world of hurry hurry hurry. (Well, I don't smoke cigarettes nor do I drink coffee. That's all way too much stimulation for a slow moving and deliberate Taurus.)
So. I keep walking past the chocolate store, past the jazz store and the all you can eat sushi spot, looking in the window and enjoying my low key people watching. I've walked past this store countless times and never really stopped-mostly because I'm going going going. But last night I stopped at 'The Ring of Fire'. I allowed myself to slow down. There were these large solid rock Buddhas propped in pebbles and glass marbles. They were all in poses of inner peace and meditation. They were inviting you to slow down, to become grounded. Behind me was a very busy street. You could hear the flow of traffic rushing by. Suddenly there was a break in the traffic behind me and I could hear that above my head a speaker was playing very soft instrumental Tibetan music. It was so low that I wondered if I was actually hearing what I was hearing and yes. I just had to slow down and within that slowing down was another level of slowing down, of listening to the quieter sounds that don't feel the need to compete with the eighteen wheeler gnashing at the pebbles on the street or the dude in his souped up ride bumping Lil' Wayne from his subwoofer. I think that a lot of beauty lies in stillness and we can always find that stillness when we slow down.
Have you ever heard of Thich Nhat Hanh? He's a Vietnamese Buddhist who now lives in Plum Village in France. I came across his books in the Berkeley Public Library and if you're trying to figure out a way to bring more compassion into your life, less judgment of yourself and others, more joy and happiness I do advise you to read his stuff. It's pretty incredible stuff. Thich Nhat Hanh has a very gentle spirit and he inspires you to be the peace and love and kindness that the world so desperately needs. He teaches Buddhas most basic breathing exercises of connecting the body with the mind where you breathe in and say to yourself 'I breathe in' and as you breathe out you say to yourself 'I breathe out'. You'd be amazed at how you come back to yourself, how you suddenly become more mindful rather than letting your mind race off into so many different directions.
Something I've been practicing a lot from this book is a mindfulness of your emotions. There are three different types of emotions; neutral emotions, unpleasant emotions and pleasant emotions. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us to kindly acknowledge our unpleasant emotions rather than pushing them off or fighting them away. He suggests a breathing exercise when you're experiencing an unpleasant emotion...let's say you're tired, you've been on your feet all day working, havn't really been sleeping peacefully, worried because your paycheck is late and rent is due and suddenly you find yourself on the train, it makes a five minute stop and you just happen to be in the car with the loudest teenagers on the planet or you're driving home in heavy traffic and it seems you're surrounded by people who think they're the only ones on the road, cutting you off or angrily blowing their horn at you even though they just screwed up while not understanding the rules of the road.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that in these unpleasant situations you breathe in and say to yourself 'I acknowledge my unpleasant emotions and I breathe in my unpleasant emotions', and as you breathe out you say 'I acknowledge my unpleasant emotions and I breathe out my unpleasant emotions'. You'd be amazed at how by simply acknowledging your moment of stress, fear, anxiety, judgment or anger will come and go when you acknowledge it rather than dwelling on it or shoving it down deeper inside of you.
Practice some breathing and be the peace that we need in the world. As some of you have probably heard we had a riot here in Oakland after a young man, Oscar Grant was shot and killed at a Berkeley Bart station by a Bart officer. In Buddhism they would say that by rioting and having a protest we are merely adding to the energy of frustration and anger on the planet. I have a friend Suzanne who instead of protesting angrily, got some flowers and laid them as a peace offering to the healing of Oakland.
We cannot fight anger with anger. We've got to be responsible for the peace that we are wanting to create so that we can all heal and the only way to peace is to practice peace mindfully.
Today my friend Kat and I went on an adventure to the Oakland Zoo. It's January and it's hot out. We were wearing T-shirts at the zoo and it was still very warm. Kat was cracking me up. We walked past the baboon exhibit and watched how a small baboon groomed a large one. Kat was silent for a while and out of nowhere said 'One day that baboon is gonna braid the other one some corn rows...'. Yeah, we had a good time.
The chimpanzee exhibit was a bit surprising. There was garbage all over the ground of the exhibit. Cardboard boxes, newspapers, magazines...and I'm not talking a little bit of trash. It was a lot of trash! The reason they put the garbage in the cage is so that the chimpanzees can find hidden fruit and vegetables under the garbage...but why didn't they use leaves or something else? It looked really bad. It looked like a littered urban zoo and besides one of the older chimps was eating the paper.
For those of you who don't know this, there is a smallish chimpanzee who pees down on zoo visitors. I know this because two years ago I was taking and Anthropology class at Laney and the professor who took all her classes to the zoo warned us about that particular chimpanzee. Sure enough...I saw this smaller chimp scurry up the fence and I quickly took several steps back in time to witness several people being peed on. It really does seem like chimpanzees have a sense of humor. Actually I wonder how many animals have a sense of humor...and I wonder what makes them laugh. Laughing can't just be unique to humans, can it?
As you can tell I've prettied up my blog. I was shooting for a more mature look. It's almost the end of 2008, we've elected our 44th President-who is biracial. I thought 'What a perfect time to mature! Anything is possible!' With maturity comes personal responsibility and with personal responsibility comes more opportunity. The day of the election results, Rabbit and I were working at The Sacred Well. We were fixated on the computer, watching the states flash up as red or blue. Customers were coming in excited and anxious, wanting updates. I hit a calm place in myself and I knew that Mr.Obama would be our next President. President elect, Barack Obama has an essence of hope and optimism that the entire globe has been craving. Of course he was going to win! Did you see on CNN? Even Peruvian shamans performed a ritual in favor of Obama!
So here's the thing. We were in the store and there was this electric energy coming from people, everyone was excited like hell! When it sorta started getting dark out cars were honking like mad on the streets. They were honking not because they were frustrated but because they didn't know what else to do. They were happy and hopeful. We got a call from a friend asking what we'd be doing that night and we decided to hit up a bar in Berkeley to watch the election results. We locked up the store and people were still honking and shouting. People were smiling at each other, they were friendly. We high fived strangers and whooped! We walked by a store window and a younger black woman was waving a small American flag, she was alone but was dancing gracefully with the flag. Seriously it was an image you'd have seen in Time Life magazine.
We waited for the bus and strangers were talking to one another, people were happy in a way that I've only seen once before and that was when the Berlin wall came down in Germany. There was that same electric, hopeful feeling which humans seem to generate when we live from our purist essence. On the bus everyone was talking about Obama. People were talking on their cellphones about Obama, people were talking to one another for the first time on that bus. Normally it's a bunch of people who are sorta cranky and indifferent.
We hopped off of the bus and headed for BART. Same thing was happening there. People were shouting his name like he was a God. Downtown Berkeley, people were excited and shouting out of pure joy. I'm not talking about two or three people, either. I'm talking about everybody on the street. People were coming together to celebrate this historic moment. We finally got to the bar a minute before he was elected. The bar became quiet and everyone's eyes were fixed on the screen. People wept and laughed. I saw young white sorority girls, Asian folks, some Latino friends, black folks and us mixed peoples cheering as they announced Mr. Barack Obama as our 44th President. Like I said before I'd never seen people act like that. It was magical, it was hopeful and it was inspiring. When we left the bar several people were break dancing in the middle of the street, with a circle watching them and not too far away the Berkeley police were parked at the corner, lights flashing and they allowed it all to happen.
I think we've all been ready for this change for a while now. I don't think the opportunity presented itself before and I think that we have to give Americans way more credit than we've given them before. We are not as backwards as we were during the Civil Rights movement. We've matured by some forty years. An infant who was born forty years ago is no longer a baby but is now an adult and I think it's important that we consciously acknowledge the kinds of changes that happen in forty years. I think it's important that we embrace the positive changes we've made in the USA. We've got to be relieved and thankful that we as a species are maturing together and we've got to look to the future and imagine what other wonderful things we can accomplish together rather than spending too much time thinking about a cruel past.
I suggest and advise for anyone and everyone to ride on this new energy. Bathe in it, breathe it in deeply and imagine the best possible outcome. We have begun a new chapter in life. What do you want this chapter to look like? You can make it happen however you imagine it to be.
