Sweatin’ from the Eyeballs

the immediate communications:

Uhhh,… long stringy Dane kisses are only too easy to visualize.. heh. Excellent about the journal! So good being in a small community where faces become people and losts become founds. You are most certainly right about that Southern charm opening doors, no tool stronger than a smile, that’s a fact!

I miss you guys too. I’ve been busy wandering and meeting people all day, swapping stories, building a cache of local info to weave into schemes for the imminent future, everything is going magically. I’m running on in the magic time where the universe conspires and answers fall into your reality as soon as you reach for them. Meeting greats from all over. I spent the afternoon riding tuktuks and learning basic thai phrases, wandering with a Czech guy who told me exactly what I needed to hear about travelling off the beaten path, learned some more political history, and got a good room in the midst of the fray. Then I went out with my didgeridoo and a copy of Moby Dick in my pocket, and proceeded to start conversations with every curios kid I met. Talked to jewelry weavers and street artists, got poured beers from cute Japanese girls, talked to an old wiry German about refurbishing old sailboats in Portugal and my dreams to live by the wind, ate green curry spicy enough to make my eyeballs sweat, took pictures till my battery died, and finally got informed by an Aussie about Aborigonal reculturation program down under. Sorcery full blossom!

Did Henry tell you about the tease I mailed to Sara the travel agent? Ask him..

Love love love,

ดฟ่นกร้ำเะด้ำว นก่าดพำ้าะ้ำา้่ดาสกห่ดากหวดฟ่ฟไำา่พฟๆไยำนระีๆะีรๆอผอืทผื  อ อืกหือไเ ำนำไ่ ไำยยหก ่อรกหผอณ์ฮรนกอไำดอืาำฟือืร อำ่ตจ/ -ะภจตี่อต จ

there are giant buddhas rearing up out of the electrical wire birdnests, food vendors everywhere, rats and heroin addicted birds and boats and little bits of gold leaf floating around.. nuts

Fragments of Time~~digitalscrapbook

Alright. Last night was a good take. Maybe I can have the blog rearranged so that the numbering isn’t completely pointless. Anyway.

6. [Envelope. Red ink, addresses to Henry and Martha, eloquently. Curling, formal calligraphy]: Snagged from the trash on Christmas morning. A work of art. Someone channelled their art capacity into their wrist, just one of them no doubt, into text. Into curves and lines and form. Smooth and liquid. It would vale to have this picture up, the thing is crisp and delicious. Job option for future destitution. Address other people’s celebratory mailings.

7. [Oragami scrap, half page Right triangle forled into a paper football]: Girl’s name. Tine. Her email. She was a punk, a natur’s punk, an Australian, a tree squatter, an activist I met at Berlin’s Free University during the Bildungstreik sit-in. She was small, dark, spikish hair. Told me stories about the Australian old growth, in the appropriate accent, about contraptions used to deter authorities when they came to cut kids out of trees, so that contractors could then do forestry work. Contraptions of metal chain, plastic tubing, rubber sheaths, handcuffs. Big snarls of mixed materials, like tetrapaks, impossible to recycle, damn difficult to dismantle, especially while suspended in the Outback. Martyrdom? The cops are doing their jobs, trying not to nick young’uns while using boltcutters and hacksaws to carve through these folkpuzzles, remove the activists. She told me stories of using abandoned cars and hand-dug trenches to create barricades in the remote roads, to bungle the paths of the treeslicer machines. Dragons, she called them. Cars in ditches on fire. Sounded pretty Mad Max. Although I haven’t seen it yet. Dragons, or Gibson apocalypse for that matter. She never wrote me back.

8. [Full printed page folded half, and half, and half. Ticket, eurolines, bus from Paris Gallieni to Hambourg. 8:00 till 23:15*, 9 December]: Note the star.// A man was snatched by German border patrol from this voyage. It was a long one; eurolines cuts the cheapest deals, so they can pretty much do whatever they want. The bus has a teeny bathroom, the driver has a backup and a fridge full of stimulating drinks, there are hypnotizing movies on screen, you can go forever. It might actually take seven or eight hours to make the journey, if the beginning and the end where the only pieces of the puzzle. Not so. We bounced off every major city in between. Like the zagging core of those black and yellow angular spiders in the states, like lightning caricature. All over. Paris, Brussels, I don’t know. You get zombie after a while. The mind sets a trigger, ” Just get there, everything just to make it,” like a leverage-all towards endurance. A rewiring of the softmachine, thought pressed out by pressure and stress, like the blood from the complex muscles of the ankles when squatting on your haunches. Goes white with the effort, flesh turns to plastic. Same with a long bus journey full of crying baby. Everyone becomes a zen master, or grows a tumor.

Anyway. Brock and me. I read a kid’s face that got on with us at the start, piercings and jeers and plaid and whatnot, he was going to the Conference too. We talked over the backs of our seats at him, squirming and energetic still, at the beginning, before we all sank into our individual lethargies. There was a girl there too, who was trying to get home to Cologne or somewhere, who hadn’t bought a ticket, and was gonna get hung up at the bus station, carrying too much luggage, and she was cute, we tried to reason with the impartial busdrivers, but they were true to their code. She got (lucky?) and managed a ticket to Brussels, planning to catch an expensive train or something. So daringly unprepared for such a burdened passenger.

The COP kid told us about volunteering to work in a FOKU, German folk kitchen to support the demonstraters in Christiania. Later we would find this den, the haven to which the more radical protests would veer and march when they felt must in mass or else be arrested as individuals. Worked, I guess. Although there Were many arrests.

Water is crucial when you are travelling. You don’t think about how dehydrated you get, and dehydration is the precurser to essentially all human ailments, mood, mind, and body alike. I had a big bottle, but we were sharing, and sharing wine as well. So sometime in the night, at some stop for driverswitch, I sprinted out of the bus, down the street, looking for any source to refill. Saw a mcDonalds across a busy fourlane, read the traffic, pulled a Bourne across, ran into the busy oily teenage hangout, beelined for the corner, found no bathroom, went through an unlocked backdoor into a kind of kitchen access hall. There was the sink. Hit it full throttle. When I pushed the door back open, sweating and beaming with joy and spontaneous success, there was a cute Micky Dee’s employee with her nametag and dresscode visor reaching to pull the handle on the otherside. She inhaled violently and threw her hand to her chest, Surprise written on her emotion, she told me a clear message in a language I didn’t understand, I smiled, apologized on the fly and made it back to the bus couplehunerd yards away as they shut the doors. 3.5 min.

On the back of the ticket is printed Museum Fur Volkerkunde, Viennas Ethnological Museum, a map, a picture of a building, some poor graphic design and fading tech. And some scribbled lists in mine own hand, pale blue ink, G2 from home, one of the originals made it so far, reads: Christiania, Norborough>foodpoint, (about that kid) and Elliott Smith: Rose Parade: LOFI Crossfire.

9. Listen to Beirut. 9. [nine inch square(ish) handtorn matpaper, folded triangles all towards center. Like a flowerbowl when you open it, but folded enough to fall into the same shape when closed. Pale blue ink etchings and sketchings.]: Graphic depiction of worrie;/ ie, diagram of productive future lifeplan>>I read a bit of a book called The Way, by a man called Ben. I believe. Anyway, the crowning glory of the work was a delightful visual diagram connecting all the important facets of his life, spiritual, capital, time, energy, food, production. Laced in and out, showing the flows of each and connections. As he was a hermit type, a traditional english hunter-gatherer, this involved things like acorn harvest, tree management, goats. But/and glorious. Mine has notes on soapmaking, handcrafts. I think I found the book while working on Solheimar. The designed community. Contrived? isn’t it always? what does that even mean?

10. Hear Sigur Ros. 10. [Thick set matpaper, a map of northern Copenhagen drawn hastily in pink marker, spattered and cobwebbed from the falling rain and snow, from constant consult in the elements. Backsides' got written instructions to Ragnhildsgade]: When you’re lost..

head Up

Awakening. Thought: it’s amazing how much more quickly you can move and type, and thus how increasingly productive and heady you feel with a large screen and fast internet. Duh. Egoslash. I am not my f****** khakis.

I’m uploading pictures. Everything since September. The second half of the trip, more or less. Days in the early 100s to 200s. Way over eighty. And I’ve been in Europe all this time. Puh, but of course the geography is only a fragment of the influence, of the education. Most importantly, the conversations. It’s like Jhall said back at the beginning, ”You need to have some good conversations with people that interest you, get some things going.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. Those quotations don’t mean anything. Unless you wanna get viscious and apply the knife. Maybe I just like punctuation. Kerouac was a special breed. But he was right, the first thought is almost always the best, and certainly the most pure. Ah, if humanity had no capacity for discretion. A world of painful truths.

So. We’ll call this the Shattered Clock. Fragments of Time. …..I’ve got this heaping pile of things that would be used, by my own dear mother for instance, to create a hot mess scrap book. You rein in your friends, as the cliche typically goes (redundant) and then make them sit and look over your shoulder while you remenis (sp?) about the various visual reminders of your journey past. Each scrap contains a little data, receipts for bus tickets, hostel stays, camel rides, whathaveyou. The idea is, like a picture, that a memory is provoked. And ideally, both fodder and energy for a good storytellin’ is recalled. This is the idea.

So we’ll have a go digitally. I thought, ”I’ll lay out all these little bits, take a picture, upload it digitally, label each scrap with a number on photoshop, then write the story that goes along with it. Not that the picture would provide much of any interest, but it would for me. Remember, you’re just watching over the shoulder. So. Here we go.

1a-1zzz+. [small rectangle of white paper, thin, rubbed and worn on the edges, word ''dankbar'' scribbled across the face. reverse side, the words ''grateful, thankful'' printed upside-down]: I made German flashcards. It started at the very beginning, back in June. In Hamburg, with German grandfather/travel companion/capitalist-entrepreneurial professor case study/lady-watching buddy. I have over three hundred in my pile. He was sixteen years in the states, working in flowers, silver, antiques, realestate, ministorage. Anything that looked good. The man’s real gift is his eye for good design. He’ll tell you the same. What’s not his gift is patience. Personally, this means, ”don’t try to learn German with Opa. Any pronunciation errors will result in immediate disqualification and a slash at personal, tentative language confidence. Just don’t.” Hence. Flashcards. Wortekarten. I would watch the German national news on tv with him. And read his newspapers, and the everpresent Spiegal magazine. He often claimed he hadn’t missed one of these weeklys in forty years. I don’t doubt him. The man would take in information for three hours a day, at least. Entrepreneurs gotta be on top. Information processor. Anyways, I had a tiny english/german dictionary, and would work through an article, turning the repeating (supposedly important) words into flashcards. Eventually I would just skim the dictionary for the words I wanted. Building a vocabulary life filling a shopping cart. Never really learned till Nora though.

2. [scrap of thickset cardboard, reads ''St. Neots Packaging Ltd. covered with green on green curling organic form design]: Commercial art. Corporate art? Do I want it to sound sinister? Some cool art student designed this and sold it. I don’t know. Attractive shapes in nice color. Marketing works. I have no idea where it came from. It was once folded triangle and is missing some. maybe a nice vending machine sandwich shelter.

3. [blue white red black barcoded glossy ticket stub. printed ''Student Agency Express'' z:Praha, Florenc, Do: Karlovy Vary, Terminal, Odjezd: 21.11.2009 10:00]: I met a kid named Jozef over couchsurfing. He lives in Prague. Praha. Or rather, he attends school in Prague. He’s from Karlovy Vary, in the NorthWest corner of the Czech Republic. Karlovy Vary is where the Russian and Western forces met during WWII while driving the German Army back to the homeland. It is very historical. It is an old rivertown, built in a tight valley with forested ridgelines on each shoulder, and guts full of colorful houses. And the river is geothermal. You can walk through oldtown and sip medicinal sips of rich smelling,  mineral-laden water out of ornate fountainheads on the floor and walls, drink it with the asian tourists from funny-shaped ceramic mugs. Like hot blood. Mmmmmitsgoodforyou.

4. [A newspaper, hard folded, twice tallways]: It’s produced by Friends of the Earth International. Got it at a temporary living shelter full of stinky punky protesters in Copenhagen at the COP15. It’s called the Climate Justice Times. Some guy there, sometime that week, asked me what I though about FOEI. I told him I didn’t know much about it. He told me he thought it was the biggest NGO ever, and a good one. I listened attentively to his sell and story. It was dark and we were walking through the snow late night in a group to go singing outside of a prison somewhere in the city, ”for Solidarity”. When the trucks full of heavy police pulled up and started following our group up the stairs onto the subway station, I carved off (to recycle a beer bottle I was carrying(annoying fingers miming quotations in air here), took two hard rights, and returned to the shelter. I came here to learn. I’ve got my paper.

5. [business card, tattered, little rip running from the top, through the pink/purple shiny font header, ''Aux Merveilles du Tapis'']: This is an old one. My grandfather had a business interest in selling a certain type of hand-woven Moroccan rug. Through his girlfriend (who is from Morocco) we found a big dealer of carpets and tapestries in the fabled, ancient markets of Fez, in the northern part of the country. This man was very kind, soft and rotund, reclining on the wraparound bench in his fantastic, mosaic tapestry-draped home. The home was ancient. It had been in preserved and renovated. The floors went on forever. I don’t have the vocabulary for this. Okay. You enter from an ugly, oppressing metal door deep in the intestinal labyrinth of the medina, tight and dustydirty. You step into a sacred place. The air is cool. Down some small stairs, the walls fall away and the central, internal courtyard is exposed. Historically it was openair, but that doesn’t fly when you are trying to preserve and display ancient fabrics all about. The floors and walls are tiled by hand, a soup of different patterns, each like an algorithm hiding the story of it’s crafters past: Jewish, Moorish, Spanish. A sensory overload. Anyway, I sat there quietly and sipped a supersaturation of sugar and mint tea in a teeny glass with copper inlay (doesn’t crack? absorbs heat? Where’s my metal geeks? Who knows their physics and chemistry?) while gramps battled it out business style with the Moroccan carpetmaster in the Palace of Shadow and Secrets.

Hellow!

Tonight I played bass for  a Kings of Leon song performed live by Phil, Edward, and myself; third in line, second set at Play Knebworth! 2009, a family music performance and dinner at the Kneb. A holiday games event. Gaggles of English cousins and nephews swirling around the ankles, mulled wine, friendly banter, fine instruments. I was asked to announce the beginning of the first set, to call the party to their seats with a rattle of didgeridoo over the heads of the crowd. Later the British posh society had all a go on the bamboo.

Such food, a feast in the Great Hall. Mulled wine and poached salmon and curries and a fine assortment of stinky cheeses. Mmmm… cheeeze.

My left pinky fingernail is broken and blackened from an unfortunate pingpong accident sustained earlier today. Making casual, last minute plans for New Years; tomorrow we will grab a train to the West coast of the island, then catch a ferry from Holyhead to the Port of Dublin. Bring on the Guinness.

Blizzard on Ragnhildsgade

My fingers are numb or burning; there is blood under my nail.

There was a major demonstration today. Towards the Bella Center, where the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP 15) is being held. Thousands of environmentalists, scientists, farmers, social justice activists, concerned grandmothers; punks, protesters, anti-capitalists, anarchists. The common cause, the unifying aim: bold and effective solutions to climate change  —Greater, provoking human awareness; inspiring respect for our home mother Earth. ‘ø

øøø

Tonight we set out in the snow with confused directions copied to the back of a hand-drawn map. Scrawled in pink ink, they quickly bled and splayed out in the falling snow, melting. Nordic names, ancient names of the Danes_ Hillerødgade. Nørebrogade. Norde Fasanvej.

Marching on Tuesday for Agricultural Action, taking the corner of a eight person banner from a smiling girl- it read, +Food is People, Not for Cars.+ Anti-Corporate IndustrialAg,, !Reclaim the Fields! the cry of hundreds, I looked across to the far corner after minutes to discover a beautiful friend from Reykjavic, a young Sprock with wonder in his soul. He had lived in the streets of Serbia for a year in voluntary destitution. We had wandered the Icelandic plains together for days.

And more. They told me of their home in Køpenhavn, a mass project, a temporary hive of solidarity, at Ragnhildsgade. It was the place we sought this snowy night.

Discovered. As we drew close, a trickle of colors on people, falling in from the sidestreets like centralized snow, converging. Spontaneous conversation. Smiles of recognition in strangers. Thick chesty crunch of roadside snow pressed underfoot. ..Through the gate, into the lane. Walkers in pattern. Steam streaming from a door in the brick- I stick my head through: Soup kitchen. There is a man with bulging forearms sauteeing ten pounds of greens and tofu in a wokameterwide. Girls in too many layers and choppy hair in their eyes slicing beets, a whole tabletop of violet. The smell…

**The meeting’s starting now.** We follow inside another block, through a room blast with sensations,++ People under the stairs, under flags green and black- Raging fire in an open space and feet up, mismatched gloves socks boggans drying on the metal hood- Singing, shouting, a million loud conversations, very many people moving in a cozy hall- Paper, messages, mitfahrgelegenheit, calls to arms, plans of action- Clustered beer drinkers, lion Heads wagging, an old man in an old red jacket, proding the fire with gnarled fingers and an iron stake. The next room->

More. Kidsdressedallinblack rollingcigarettessittinginthefloor. Up the stairs.

More. A small antichamber. Names strewn on the walls. Art and marks surrounding, overlapping. Standers, a growl through the door. Through–

Meeting. Debriefing. Sixty assorted crayons sitting in a grand ring on the floorboards. I recognized two friends from Saving Iceland, a pretty blonde girl with a round face leading the discussion. Calling for information, for stories from the day: What happened with Blue Block? Green? How far did they make it? Who saw? Who was there? Scenarios poured back from the crowd. Words of advice, of fact related back. Scenes drawn in the space between, painted up over the heads of those gathered, growing and hovering somewhere below the ceiling. Stories of sprinters through bare fields, desperate attempts to reach the mass on the Bella barrier, beatings teargas and arrests. Taking action, trying to reunite, to work together. The plan was to host a forum onsite, to invite discouraged legislators and representatives alike into a People’s Assembly. To call for and cast together for real solutions. The resistance was strong. But the conversation did blossom.

ø øø øøø øø ø

Back out. Warm food. Group gathered. Donations only. Coins with holes clang in tin cans.

I have a beer with a good friend. In the full hall, we share. There is a circle of sitters amongst the standing. Jackets and scarves lay about the floor, piled and pressed into the lees of couches and tables reminiscent of the banks of driven snow outside, but rainbow. A guitar travels around. I take it from a Scandinavian lady with curly gold locks, a Swede maybe. I play. I sing, and then loud. Pixiesweezermatthews, Pearljambeatles:blackbird. She wants folk. Styrofoamboots,Redemptionsong, theStandardblues. A girl on my shoulder belts gutsy melody, draws others in. Many. A Christopher on at my left feeds me just-roasted chestnut he shelled. The Blues goes on, they sing still, driving a tinny beat with soupy spoons on empty green bottles, I play. I catch faces, fed my energy they smile I strum.

I crash it down, they clap and shout, she pinches my cheek, my fingertips’ bleeding.

An epic snowwar ensues.

Copenhagen quickie

We made it through our epic hitchhike to Copenhagen, but it was trying and cold and snowy and eventually we made it late night. But now we have spent the past couple of nights with the couchsurfing kids who have a cool traditional house on the edge of town and a one and a half year old child who is awesome and throws things with surprising accuracy. The guy Niclos asked me to draw on his walls after watching me doodling while we were all drinking red wine and eating homemade veggie pie last night, and now I have started a project with black and gold markers on his white livingroom walls. It is fun to draw on peoples houses!

The demonstrations are awesome, there is so much excitement, and enough police force and retaliation to stir everyone up into a  craze, and it is good stuff.  Listening to G Love and special sauce, eating some chocolate muesli, and about to go out into the freezing rain to see  Gogo Bordello play in Copenhagen central square.

Paris Sunday

Dog`s Ass, one of many legendary boulders amongst the scattered clusters of Fontainebleau. The town itself is small,  sheltered in the heart of the immense forest of the same name. Locals and climberhunters know some places, beaches within the trees, fields of soft sand in the interior European landscape. Where, if one were so inclined, one could scale small technical masterpieces of stone over la bosque arena. And I tasted the most skinthin delicate delicious crepes of my life, warm and minutes old and folded in oragomi shapes around soft fudgy globs of nutella. Got the recipie, involves vanilla and rum.. guess those qualify as secret ingredients.

Now, hectic slapping card games with rose wine and Hilight Tribe; I am very tense from a French game like slapjack where a handfull of various situations cause instantaneous pandemonium as all players around a circular table thrust and slam their palms down in a carcophany of noise and chaos. Whew. Even the players that have lost out can slap their way back into the game, insuring the utmost concentration and stress from all involved. Thankfully, the neighbors upstairs are maybe knocking on the floor for the noise, so now we switch to hold`em. Although the music may hold the hectic tempo.

Spanked a handful of Fontainebleau residents at bowling yesterday. Of course, like all children once enrolled at Alexander City Middle School, I had the advantage of a formal training in form and precision. Frenchies didn`t stand a chance.

Rediscover Hilight Tribe

I am in Paris searching for companions to either explore the catacombs under the city, or to travel south to the legendary boulders of Fontainebleau and get in some dear sweet climbing before hitchhiking or ridesharing north through germany to Denmark. The COP15 Climate Conference will be going down there from the 10th to the 18th, and there is going to be epic anticapitalist protests and demonstrations from all manner of radical and leftist political groups; essentially a convergence of energy of a scope and flavor I have never before experienced. I am very excited. I will try not to get beaten by the police or deported. Haha.

I am looking forward to Christmas. The english end of the fam will be all together in Hertfordshire, north of london, together with my Gigi from Manhattan, and it will be absolutely blissful to sit and drink warm tea in calm, and have conversation in socks, and write a lot. I have been saving all the paper debris that accompanies modern life, and will attempt to perform some kind of travelogue by recalling and recording the stories that accompany each of the scraps building up in the bottoms of my pockets and backpack. Should be fun, and vastly time consuming. A good work for an otherwise relaxed holiday.

Hope life is grand, and greetings with warmth from the Rue des Petites Ecuries, amidst a billowing rabble of African ethnic street restaurants.

christopher

Around the Alps in 24 Hours

Crazy Story and Needing a Host.. Posted 20 hrs ago by Christopher Boone from Tuscaloosa, United States  on Couchsurfing.org (Permalink) *

Hello Paris,

My name is Boone, I come from the southern US. I have been travelling for six months around europe and northern africa, and have just encountered a peculiar situation:

24 hours ago, I was staying with friends in Brno, Czech Republic. I had been travelling all over that country, staying with several different members of a traditional Czech folk dance group, of which a friend of mine is a member. Yesterday I said goodbye to my friends there, planning to hitchhike to Bratislava in Slovakia. I was successful in that effort, but during the travel I had a long conversation with the older trucker who had picked me up.

It turned out he was Hungarian, and had been driving a truck for the past twenty five years, experiencing the fall of communist oppression in his home country and then driving to an unbelievable list of locations including middle Africa, all over Europe, and as far East as China. In that time he had learned parts of seven or so different languages, but continued to work as a trucker for the love of it and travel. By the time we arrived in Bratislava, I was completely captivated. We stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of town, and he told me that he planned to keep driving through the night and into the morning, crossing five countries and covering some 1500 kilometers. He offered for me to continue with him. There was no way Bratislava could compete; I agreed without a second thought.

We talked all through the night in broken German and English, with a few Spanish words thrown in. His route took us out of Slovakia; through Vienna, Austria; into Southern Germany; through the Swiss border and ended in Lyon, France. By the time we arrived this morning I was exhausted, sleep deprived, but totally inspired. We said goodbye and after a few requests I found that most people on the Lyon loop road were heading towards Paris, so I went along. Ended up driving a man almost all the 450 kilometers here while he dozed in the passengers seat; my French is very limited so I was happy to drive while he slept.

Finally made it here after almost running out of gas in evening traffic, and was lucky to land near the international hostel on Rue St. Blaise, and got a room knowing there were few options at this time of night and with no preparation. However, I have long since realized that couchsurfing is one of the best ways to experience a city in the best way, and definitely the best way to meet interesting engaged locals, so tomorrow I will start reading profiles and sending some requests out to cool Parisians; Id like to stay and explore for some days, and hopefully get down to Fontainbleu to do some climbing (if anybody wants to go, I will be building a post for that specifically tomorrow).

Anyways, I know the chances are slim that I will connect with anybody on the same day I send out requests, so I have written this post in hopes that someone will host me for a day or two until I meet some people through the normal channels. I appreciate the help and energy (know it took a bit just to get through this post), I am very easy and have my sleeping bag and tent, so could even stay in someones garden if it is more convenient, and of course I am stoked to share the stories this weathered trucker told me!

 Heres hoping someone has some good news and a bit of understanding for the spontaneous traveller,

Boone

Thoughts in a gully in a horsefield

(early september, Iceland)

Now, walking alone through the irregular horsefields east of Solheimar, scouting the distance to the ancient ecclesiastical site of Skálholt, watching the growing rumbling bulk of the mossy volcanic table Vördufell, I realize my lonliness. I am a self-seer, observing the looping, undirected chatter of the roofmind as objectively as I can, searching for patterns, trying to glean truths, absolutes.

Writing this, I sit in a damp clump of tall grass growing in a gully where water once ran. Being below the level of the surrounding fields, I am sheltered from Iceland´s constant wind. Now it bears from the northeast, following the same path as the river Hvítá, which I´ll soon reach. A beautiful obstacle. It´s glacial cold almost shut my body down before, freezing my muscles and drawing my chest tight, seizing the breath from my lungs. Fear, and desire got me to the far shore.

People come to this cold island for the deadening silence and for the serenity of the empty places. They come to be quiet, to silence the mind chatter and hear down to the soul, to find those persistent anxieties and to work them loose. It´s like untying a knot or unsnarling a fishing line.

It´s a contemplative process, one requiring concentration, systematic removal of distractions, careful listening (more intuitive than physical) and finally, a methodical tugging of lines.

As any good knot solver will tell, you have to find a loose end and start a gentle tugging to unravel it all. Too much force will sinch the problem tighter, frustrating efforts. It requires a delicate teasing, a bit here, a bit there, until the nature of the knot becomes evident. Then, it is simply a matter of following through to the Source.

I´m making headway on my knot.Anyway, I think I´ve glimpsed the source. It´s community. I´ve struggled for a term that most accurately describes the feeling in mind, the feelings that shine clear and blissful, memories that replay over and over. Friends. Warmth. Nature. Adventures. Being taught to cook. I remember riding my bike past the back door of Gorgas on smooth road, screaming out so much speed, throbbing energy, a feeling of such force and depth that I could accelerate indefinitely, until the highest gear couldn´t support any further power and I was left carving and sweeping back and forth through foot traffic, standing in the pedals, just bouncing on my ankles for the joy of it. No fear for injury, for hunger, for any of the reasons that would later make me hesitate, or limit my exertion of energy; because in that place, there was such abundance, such security in Community. New College. Friends from so many paths, such diverse interests, I couldn´t find lonliness if I tried. Kids that had never met each other, overlapping and inconceivably interconnected. Sitting alone on the Quad in the sun, in twenty minutes it was a spontaneous party. A mixup festival, a patchwork of people, drawn to an intangible center of energy, drawn in by their friends, by the radiance, and always meeting new, turning strangers to allies.

Community; I think this is the least common denominator, the bottom line for this idea, the core of the knot. The thing people create when they share lives. It is a dynamic entity, always shifting and morphing through potlucks and parties, through organizing and demonstration. A free-form that thrives on change and diversity, on intrigue and exuberance.

Not to be confused with Society. Society is the alternative form of social organization, a stagnant, false thing contrived by rule and law, choked with judgement. People who play in this game are either unaware of it, which is sad but not accidental*, or by choice, which is at least confusing and at most infuriating. They may be doomed to a life of mirrors and materialism, anywhere globalization touches. They must struggle withe the pains of ´working jobs they hate to buy shit they don´t need to impress people they don´t know.´ No love, no trust, no fun.

Wake up! Money is debt, possessions are burdens.
Health is the only real wealth and security.
People are the only real love, joy, trust.