Flowing into Dreams

After writing my last post about struggling to find my way in the apartment search, I decided to look at an apartment which I did not have much hope for, as it did not seem promising from the description and pictures which were posted on CL. I felt that the act of walking to an apartment, looking it over, then moving on to the next one, would begin to create a flow of energy which would eventually lead me to something. Like looking for a job, where it is rare to be offered something on the first try, and maybe after 10 interviews things fall into place. The place is on 23rd, which is almost 2 miles west of where I am at now (also on 23rd), and oddly enough I had already walked the same route a few weeks before when I visited the Eugene Zendo on Garfield.

When I arrived I looked at the surrounding houses and immediately eliminated the nicest house, leaving places which made me feel correct about my initial misgivings. I searched for the apartment and when I found the address painted on the curb, discovered that the nicest house was indeed the one I was looking for. Upon walking in I knew I had found a place I could be happy in - quality in the details, warm light, quiet - something which gives a good feeling. Although quite small, I could imagine myself living a peaceful, monkish life, striving for...the elimination of striving. I filled out an application, and within a few days found out I had been chosen. I accepted, signed the lease, and will move in this Monday, Oct, 1, 2012. I was over there today moving some things into the apt, and later in the day realized I had lost the key due to a hole in my pants pocket. I can't recall ever losing any type of key, so I am a bit embarrassed to have to ask the owner for a replacement before I even move in. Well, there are worse things that can happen, so no complaining, just pay the fee and move on.

Somehow I have shaped a vision and a dream into a more solid structure. The past couple of years I have been dreaming of running in a place I had never been before. The dream would recur, and I wondered about it because it was beautiful. While the landscape of Eugene does not exactly fit the place in the dream, it has a similar feel, and I recalled the dream recently as I was running up Spencer Mountain. So many ways to go, yet my heart led me to the place which my soul had given clues about.

What next?

Zen, Motorcycles, Guitars

"I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive."

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Coming to the end of my 2012 journey, I find my vision a bit rigid, the flow of time becoming heavy and torpid. I am reminded of an observation of travel, and also life - the hardest part is starting.... and ending. I am having trouble finding the correct mode of observation for finding an apartment. I am hoping to rent something furnished so that I don't have to buy things, which will allow for an easy migration if I feel the need to travel again, but most apartment listings on CL are for bare houses. I am considering renting a room, but this time with just one person - my experiment in Portland (renting a room from Morgan) showed that I can tolerate living with someone if our vision is somewhat parallel. So I plod on, hopes of fate placing an apartment squarely into my vision as I blissfully wander about gazing at enormous trees.

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If the run described in my last entry could be considered one of my weaker efforts, the run yesterday up Spencer Mountain was one of my higher moments. I was relieved to find that my energy had risen dramatically, and I loped along the Amazon Trail with a yearning for the forest trails of Spencer. I love the laborious plodding up the mountain, passing trees which fill me with awe and wonder as I wend and bend my way up and up, carrying a cliff bar in my left hand, looking forward to sitting on the summit in solitude, eating and gazing upon the vast vistas which I am unaccustomed to seeing from on high. On the way down I passed a group of five hikers at a crossroads and it did not occur to me to check if I was going in the correct direction after I chose to turn right. Within a half mile I knew I was going down the trail which ended at Willamette Road, so I turned around but after a few steps up I had the impression that the hikers arrived at the crossroads at precisely the time I did so that I could discover this new trail, so I turned myself around and began running fast, gazing at new scenes and trees and when I got to Willamette I rode the shoulder and within a quarter mile passed a Welcome to Eugene pop. 157,00 sign and I ran that hilly pavement back to my normal stopping point, creating a perfectly tuned loop - flats, roads, switchbacks up and down the mountain - I knew I had a new route which I will be running again and again.

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I bought a paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ten days ago at Tsunami Books (along with books by William James, Emily Dickinson, HD Thoreau, Cesar Vallejo, and Thomas Moore, all books found in the dollar bin!). It was a book which I heard about during my first year at NIU. I was night walking with a guy I met at a philosophy club meeting and he told me it was his favorite book. I soon found a copy at the library but after reading the first page put it down, knowing the time was not right for such a book (I read no literature/novels during my 3 years at NIU - I was chasing the cornerstones of truth and decided that nonfiction was the first step in this long path of curious discovery). I never forgot the book, likely because of the Zen word, as I have no interest in motorcycles or maintenance. Twenty years later I begin to read it, and yes, the time is right, words resonating, the experience gained with twenty years of risk taking leading to a clearer sight of the author's vision. Today as I lounged in the backyard, bathed in the blue afternoon shade of an ornamental tree, I began to read chapter 10 and understood that the first life altering decision I mentioned in my last entry mirrored what happened to Phaedrus as he quit science and went in a different direction - "Phaedrus didn't understand this, but after arriving in Seattle, and his discharge from the army, he sat in his hotel room for two whole weeks, eating enormous Washington apples, and thinking, and eating more apples, and thinking some more, and then as a result of all these fragments, and thinking, returned to the University to study philosophy".

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I blew my amp out the first time I plugged in upon returning from Portland. I quickly placed a wanted ad in CL and a typical Eugene character (unkempt hair, disheveled clothing, hip dialect with a scent mixture of 420 and alcohol lingering in his wake) rides his bike 40 minutes carrying the amp under his arm to deliver it to me. While he stated in his email the amp was brand new, when he arrived the "chan vol" knob was missing, and one of the FX knobs was broken. Even with the defects I decided to buy the amp for $65 ($110 new) since the sounds it produced was good enough for practice, and I did not have the heart to send him off on his bike carrying the amp under his arm.

I have been doing guitar work for 2 years and 9 months, this blog being created to document the learning process of something completely foreign. Having no apparent musical talent or skill, I was curious to find out if practice and desire were enough to overcome complete ignorance. At my current level of learning I surely cannot play in public, but the progress I have made from day 1 through today has surpassed my expectations. Every time I sit down to practice I take a few steps down the road of music, and what else is to be hoped for? My memorization of the pentatonic scale has become stronger, and with the main obstacle no longer being able to find correct notes, I notice that speed and note inflection is completely lacking. So this past week the time had arrived for me to use a metronome to work on speed of musical passages. I have known from early on that a metronome is considered an important tool, but I was reluctant to use it because how can a metronome help with memorization of a scale, or getting the fingers strong enough to stretch and remain relaxed? Now that I have decided to focus on speed, the metronome becomes the natural tool, and as I used it for the first time this week I found myself thoroughly enjoying its presence because it makes it easier to play a short passage over and over without losing time or interest.

Along with speed, the inflection of the notes - vibrato and bending - is something I am also focused on. While the wrist turning style of vibrato does not come easy, and almost seems wrong, I am determined to learn it because I see in videos of the blues greats that they all have exceptionally fast wrist turning technique. I recently discovered that one of the problems is that my wrist is not accustomed to turning with speed, so I know I have to work with turning it back and forth for long periods of time.

I believe that I do indeed have the potential to be a good blues player, but only with a lot of continued practice and dedication. The main reason for my confidence has little to do with the physical aspects of guitar playing, but rather my innate feel for the blues - it is a language which is engraved into my spirit, and I yearn to set it free - isn't that the reason any good and honest thing is created?

Decision : Eugene

"There's no record of his having had close friends. He traveled alone. Always. Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. People sometimes felt this and felt rejected by it, and so did not like him, but their dislike was not important to him."

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Yesterday was a running day, but the arrival of a decisive moment was at hand, and my psychic energy was doing all it could to put off the run. As I loped along during the warm up I could feel my weakened athletic energy being replaced by the desire to walk and ponder. It was time to decide where to put down roots. While not terribly complex, there were a number of important points which had to be thoroughly observed, and not doing so, or just glancing at them superficially, could lead to a misguided choice. Not wanting to run long, I decided on intervals. I circled the grass soccer fields at the middle school, stopping after only 5 or 6 minutes. I felt I should do more, even though desire was lacking, so I jogged to the Amazon Park wood chip trail and was determined to run circuits around the 1000m loop. The first interval I stopped at 800m. I drank water and then began the 2nd one, this time stopping at 500m. So ended my woeful day of running.

I knew it was a weak effort, but the real work was now to begin. How does one go about making a decision which is known with certainty to be life altering? How many of these decisions does one make in a lifetime? As I walked the wood chip trail I thought of the big decisions in my life, and they were few, all of them clutched in the palm of my hand - dropping out of the computer science program at college and changing to history and philosophy; pursuing photography for 10 years starting at the age of 25; accepting my first "respectable job" at 35. As I thought of these 3 decisions I recalled that I had made each one while walking in solitude, allowing the thoughts to flow calmly, observing closely all known facts, and then... the heart speaks, the body fills with an electric energy, the choice seen clearly as colored sunlight resting on the petals of a flower. So I began walking the Rexius Trail, relieved to find it empty of people. The sun was bright and warm, I sauntered along, searching the facts, turning them this way and that. When the walk was complete I knew what I had to do - remain in Eugene, if possible, to begin a new life in this place which feels more like home than any place I have wandered through.

To remain in Eugene. I did not imagine, back in January, 2012, when I left everything to wander through SE Asia, that the free ride of my spirit would end here, in Eugene. There are still practical things to accomplish, the first one being to find a place to live. I am currently renting a room, but I have learned that living with one person (I am currently living with two) is as far as I can go before I start to feel closed in and unhappy, so most of my energy in the coming days will be spent on finding a place to call home. I can imagine how happy I will be to have a place of my own, living in Eugene, with unlimited time - no one to see, nowhere to be - is there anything better in life?

2012

McKenna expressed “novelty” in a computer program which purportedly produces a waveform known as “timewave zero” or the “timewave.” Based on McKenna’s interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity’s biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date in December of 2012.

With 2012 winding down, I am wondering about the future of man, earth, and sun. On my walk with Catherine through Forest Park last week she asked "do you think we have a chance to survive?" Not wanting to be overly pessimistic, I agreed that there is a chance, based on the herd instinct of humans. A large percentage of us stay in our pens of consciousness, following the outline handed to us from our ancestors, parents, teachers, scholars, and politicians. We do this from fear - fear of the unknown, of being ridiculed, of becoming a freak and an outcast. Unfortunately the leaders of the present day are guiding the herd down a path of insanity and destruction. The small chance of our survival depends upon a change of leaders (not sure who the leaders are, but they are not the politicians, who are the ones who follow orders and then order everyone to follow). If through some miracle wise men begin to lead, things would slowly begin to improve. I don't see this happening however, and this makes the end of time date of 2012 oddly accurate. What "end of time" means, I do not know - will Jesus come down with a band of angels? Will the earth collapse upon itself from a change in magnetic poles? Will the sun be pulled into a black hole, taking us with it? Will people begin to follow new and better leaders?

Thinking of the destructive circumstances which plague the earth is both appalling and somewhat religious in tone - melting ice caps; increase in intensity and amount of natural disasters; genetically engineered food (which will eventually contaminate all the food supplies of the world); the crushing swiftness of the destruction of all wild places; the extinction of most animal species (once bees are gone, so goes our food); the rapidly expanding population of humans; the paving over of the earth so that oil burning vehicles can spew forth great quantities of poison gas; nuclear power, which will eventually contaminate the entire surface of the globe, making all life extinct.

What I find to be most disturbing is that most humans are blind to the facts, and thus continue planning for future prosperity, believing that their children will be inheriting a great feast of prosperity, harmony, and a healthy planet. If 2012 does not change the direction of the earth and its inhabitants, the thing to be inherited will be war, disease, suffering, and death to all.

Portland Peculiarium

My final days in Portland - Running 3 1/4 hours on the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park; wandering the streets of NW Portland, camera in hand; observing hipsters, hipster stores, hipster bus drivers; practicing the pentatonic on the ukelele?!; watching the swifts darken the dusk sky as they descend into the chimney at Chapman School, a full moon rising.

Back in Eugene, I am trying to adapt to a household of four - KC, her son, his friend, and myself. I found myself settling into strong mindful states while in Portland, due to practicing everyday in Morgan's meditation hall. I believe the only way an introvert like myself can remain happy in a crowded house is to go deeper into meditation so that I can clearly see when my mind is turning negative and paranoid, which it tends to do when it feels cramped and stifled. I have learned that I need a feeling of spaciousness and freedom in order to remain healthy - the test is to experience this when the external circumstances are anything but.