Something I seem to have written back in '08

Cute and poetic young man...

I am a lonely navigator, stars show me the way through this night.
What moon I followed onto this hard shore, the lord will someday let me know. But for now I am to suffice upon the warm midnight air and two wheels that take me along with the breeze; my sails I let open so that I may be carried, light, to the place where I am to rest my heart.
Oh, tempest! Oh, what song have you forced into our lungs, but lord how it will tell us of the tomorrow that we will build out of the matchsticks into which you and your tempest gales have torn this today in which we ride, let us take time, let us look each into another's eyes like we do into a baby's, and be looked back at.
New Orleans, new again! Whose deep black neighborhoods are now the roosting place of so many youngsters of european descent, will we see that we all carry the star of our yesterday? A lighthouse on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, old times pass, so you old times carry your self through dismal times, those old times, how many slaves have you seen pass through your port, sending them up the long and slow river, the hot and slow river, watched by catfish that sit at the bottom like time itself, which knows that its patience is greater than any other.
How many bright and shiny trumpets called in this day, when we would all sit together, Such a brilliant day this must be that I can breathe in it. What an amazing day that I might breathe in it, what a fine time to live.
What scars of yesterday do we sit and massage today?

Western Pharmacology, 9 September 2014

Pharmacology with May Soong

Routes of Administration

• Oral
• IV
• Supposition
• Transdermal
• Topic
• Inhalation
• Opthalmic
• Intrathecal (direct to cerebrospinal fluid)
• Sublingual

Pro-Drug: a medication that is administered in an inactive or less than fully active form, and is then converted to its active form through a normal metabolic process, such as hydrolysis of an ester form of the drug.

Absorption
Distribution
Metabolism (Mechanism)
Elimination

Justice For War Criminals In Washington

Everyone:

Please hear me when I say that I believe that the president and vice president and many of their cabinet, as well as many other top-ranking government officers, are guilty of international war crimes and are also indictable by US courts on felony charges, for their roles in: (a) the 9/11 conspiracy, (b) the lies used to deceive the public into allowing the Iraq war, and (c) the continued war in Afghanistan. This is all in absence of their roles in abetting the apartheid against Palestinians in Israel.

I especially ask members of my family with whom I have thus far avoided political discussion, to recognize that I am specifically not confronting anyone on a political but rather a humanitarian, platform. Let us please for a moment consider our compassion:

On behalf of U.S. Veterans of Iraqi wars who are sick with Gulf War Syndrome, which, of many causes accidental or otherwise, was likely caused by decisions made by high ranking U.S. officers.

On behalf of 3,000+ U.S. Soldiers who have died in the illegal occupation if Iraq. A full criminal investigation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney by renowned attorney Vincent Bugliosi indicts the president for Murder in the book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Please note this is not a deranged anarchist but one of america's most successful attorneys.

On behalf of 3,000+ U.S. citizens who died in the WTC attacks. Many who are armed with very conclusive evidence are indicating that the White House was aware of, and even complicit in, the terrorist attack of 9/11/2001. Please see http://www.911truth.org/ where you can read many of these stories.

On behalf of 70,000+ dead Iraqi civilians who have given their lives to the united states invasion. The illegal nature of the war is shown in Vincent Bugliosi's book. Should anyone want to consider more information than I have provided here (and you can't find it on google) please let me know and I will provide you with more sources.

Knowing that the current administration has completely failed to make any steps forward in either their response to global climate change, and that it has reversed nuclear deproliferation (indeed they have restarted nuclear arms development at Lawrence Berkeley Labs) I call on everyone I know to avoid politicians who will not make even basic protections for our spiralling environment.

On behalf of hundreds of detainees who have gone to Guantanamo Bay and other military detention camps run by the U.S. military, many of them waiting several years to even come to trial, disallowed either attorney or family contact, I call for us to recognize the need for justice in the case of the people who have brought us to war.

I call on all of you to see this letter, not as a letter about politicians but rather as a letter about criminals. It's important to me that this is not a political issue; I really don't care whether you are left wing or right: I care that the place where I live is being run by people who don't have my well-being in mind when they make decisions.

Perhaps we can't all agree on everything, but I think may all agree, once we are in the same "know," that the government is doing more than hornschwaggling us but is in the meantime getting away - literally - with murder.

I can't say enough times that this is not political. I am not presenting any policies for consideration but rather crimes. Whoever we have voted for or whoever we might soon vote for, it's imperative that we agree, the president, vice president, and probably others, need to be impeached for severe breach of their duties.

Really.
We've Got To Do Something.

Any Ideas???

China suddenly seems a lot less far away.

I am stricken. This is a great place. The people here are beautiful. Walking around, I feel like a goof that I can't speak the language; I certainly won't be able to experience the place the way I want to until I know some mandarin.

It's in the moments when I forget how exotic this place is, and I have a sense for the fact that I am in someone else's home, that I really feel amazed to be here.

See more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/41686912@N00/. That's where I'll continue to put my photos.

Real Rain

It comes in sheets, unlike the whispy waters that caress California lovers. Annie had just recommended that we cover the trailer - the one we're converting into a mobile lab - with a tarp so the rains wouldn't get it. She walked away to do something and the rain came. I climbed up on top of the trailer, trying not to put my foot through its unfortified sheet metal roof, and yelled to Creature, would he please help me get the tarp put up. In the five minutes it took to get the thing spread out the puddles held in the creases of the tarp were inches deep. No longer helpful, I took my shirt off.

Coming down from off the trailer, I saw that the dozen or so movie people had huddled on the front porch, and the smokers were lighting their smokes as they contemplated how to keep their feet dry. Shirtless, I walked down the street with my spectacles removed and in my pocket. Every pocket or depression in the ground was full and filling.

I walked into the back yard and removed my shoes and socks. Standing shirless and barefooted on the grass with my hat keeping the pelting rain out of my eyes, I began to make the familiar Tai Chi movements that I have come to love: if the elements disagree with revolutionary lab-on-wheels construction [tongue meets cheek], one can at least protest stagnation with a little bit of healthy movement.

There, in the gushing downpour, standing in the midst of movie props set up to make our little volunteer center look more like a volunteer center, I cycled the elements:

Water, appropriately, moving bones and splashing puddles of me up against myself, invoking the principal of the substance that always falls through the cracks, pushes through any barrier given enough time, and which truly knows how to wait.

Earth, which obeys the cycles of life and time.
Wood, which moves without patience toward its goal,
Metal, which knows exactly what is right and lets fall away what is not,
Fire, which enjoys and consumes all it finds, rising and moving, rising and moving.

Rising and moving, I became a crane. I softened my eyes from their seeking and let them be passive, moving my attention to my bones, to my back and arms that stretch and fold, stretch and fold, keeping the wind beneath them and the horizon ahead. They become light, held up by air alone, and my body hangs from them. If my feet still touch the ground it is only with the slightest touch, and far below me on my rainy voyage, the worms come sopping from their muddy burrows.

Touching back down to earth, I walked back to the house to find that during my thirty minutes' journey the basement that I live in was flooded, and spent the next while bailing water back to the soil where it belonged. Beautiful day.

Love alone will save us. Let my mind remain in my body, let me fly to each and every one of my friends and family, and then abroad, finding family in sand, wind and sky, finding a friend in every eye. The air that I breathe is me, the air that you breathe is you, and we all breathe the same air.

A Moment of Silence

If you're like me, you probably feel like there's very little you can do right now about the state of war in the world. Well, I have a little suggestion. Visualize Whirled Peas.

This is a ridiculous hippy idea, but it's so crazy it just might work. I'm serious. If each of us can spend five or ten minutes per day, visualizing whirled peas, pretending that whirled peas is real and is just around the corner, it will happen!

This is a trick that has been known by wise people and shaman for longer than you or I have been around this planet. It may be more simple than easy, but I recommend trying it. It goes like this:

Sit down somewhere comfortable. You might want to sit next to something that reminds you of love or peace or something else important. Now, suspend disbelief. If you think that war and violence can't be ended today, forget that, just for the moment. Now, come up with a mental image that represents Whirled Peas. And keep it in mind for a while. When your mind goes off to something else, put it back. Keep that image of Whirled Peas in your head for a while, and let it be real.

There! You have eradicated war in yourself.

A bumper sticker that I recently saw:
"What if war was NOT an option?"

Joyce

Ms Joyce is a great teacher. Here in New Orleans.

She owns the house that I live in, and is host to the camp of hooligans at 126 N. Miro Street, home base of stranded souls who have come to New Orleans to help for free because the government will only spend money paying the National Guard to hold back residents who don't want their homes to be stolen from them.

Ms Joyce is creating a world of possibility, of love, of friendship and growth, and by God's grace I am here in her midst. She says,

"I had to be separated from Fred (her husband) for six years so I could go and learn to be a superwoman. I didn't know I was going to be one, but God kept telling me that I had to be a leader, so I guessed eventually I had to learn how.

There I was in Los Angeles becoming a buddhist. I said to Jesus "well Jesus, I don't mean to leave you behind but you must have put me here for a reason," so I went ahead and became a full buddhist."

"If you have an empty room or a basement, don't wait until them city workers have two thousand dollars to move into a rental, give them some space where they can come here and do the work they want to do.
When this city was being built, you know they didn't have houses built for everyone to live in, they had to share! And they sure as heck didn't have a City Hall (laughter around). The people had to work together.

"The things I'm saying to you are the same things I'd say to Bill Clinton or Hillary, to George Bush, to the rest of the boys living here, the mayor or the heroin guy down the street."


That last thing really hit me. Let me collect myself until I have one single message, and let me carry that single message to every person, low or high, great or small. You don't have to be short or tall, thin or fat, smart or stupid, you don't have to be one way or another, every person in this town or in the next town over, or in Santa Rosa, CA, we all have something to give, and we all have something we need, and somewhere in between we find out how to give and take of those things. If we stand around waiting for the money we think it's worth, we're all going to be standing around in Hell AND High Water, wondering what happened to the Constitution.

Problems keeping the movement running?

I have been working with an organization called Common Ground, which had its largest operation located in a catholic school down in the ninth ward of New Orleans. Common Ground gutted the thing in exchange for several months use of the building.

They have maintained a policy that everyone who wants to is welcome to come and help. Great except that we seem to have collected some trouble there. Anyways they have had to temporarily close the operation at the school called St Mary of the Angels, where about dozen people have apparently contracted giardia from the water supply. OOPS! There were many other problems leading up to this closure, and it's my hope that it will reopen with some greater safeguards against theft, drug use, and unsanitary behavior.

St Mary's has been the host of enough crews to gut 500 or more houses since the storm, has provided housing for residents of New Orleans who haven't yet been able to afford to repair their homes, provided health care resources and more.

Problems keeping the WTC standing?

Someone recently turned me on to the idea that the WTC towers might have had explosives planted in them on the days leading up to the planes smashing into them. It's not for me to argue, but have a look anyways...

http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/DemolitionWTC.htm

The Boys

I have moved in with a beautiful group of men. Like so: I am on the Bioremediation team. We plant sunflowers and practice some science in an effort to develop better ways to enable people to detoxify the soil in their yards. We are, in a word, hippies. With a purpose. And we work - lest we should be mistaken for a particular image of hippiness - men and women alike, weilding picks, shovels, rakes, and we sweat and we love our sweat.

But these guys are another picture of the movement, every moment of the waking day either working or drinking beer, whose mouths utter curses as though somewhere out of sight each carried a rosary with beads for each word, and each one makes thirty to one hundred rosaries in the hour, spitting out insults at tools, trucks, time, the hot sun, FEMA, and empty beer bottles or cigarette boxes.

Alaskan in descent, Henry came to New Orleans with the same thing in mind that all the rest of us carry with us, the wish to stop talking about it and do something constructive. A danger to every automobile that he can put his hands on, a sharpshooter with a can of raid sitting on the front porch in the afternoon heat, Eric shoots a quick remark at Henry's own wit, which might not be sharper than the boots that he wears, but like the boots his mind still provides a vessel for his heart, by which, if we must measure, makes him taller than many despite anything he lacks in stature.
Today he picked up the empty pretzel bag, which nearly yells "Rold Gold" on its label, and quipped, "Must have been a bag of corn chips." I made a joke about his mistake and he got up and walked away, and I wondered why I would ever make fun of anyone about anything - it never ends up in a good place. Lord, take from my lips the words that do not speak of beauty, possibility, growth, peace, love, understanding! If I lack meaning with my lips, let them please remain at rest, may my heart and mind so abide as well.

Mike came back from the hospital early this morning. He was a little drunk last night and put his arm through the window in the door. Now he's out for ten days, and I hope he doesn't drink too hard during that time. This world already has liver problems, without it drinks so hard. But I had my fill so I won't begrudge him his. But I say this: an addiction problem doesn't make a person bad or worthless! Maybe worthless to swing a hammer or else loosing blood like FEMA's losing money, but we are all eventually Death's customer and what penny's worth of peace is scrimped by a moment's drunkenness so that we might carry ourselves one step closer to our eventual enlightenment, lest we might in our poverty lash out at some other unknowing character, that I know not to begrudge a person.
Not by booze nor by other bedevilments, for we all have ours! If yours be a craving for some other silencer of the voices in your head, let it be so, but please when your crutch gives out please raise your hand and ask for help, so as not to pull another one down a road they need not walk, and I will promise to do the same. We must all walk on coals some day.

To be continued.

Evening things out

Just briefly about the title of this blog, it is the title of a chapter of my favorite text, Chuang Tzu. The notion of making things even is good to me, and I think that it's a notion that comes to us more and more as we age, realizing that we are protected when we protect our world.

I am interested in ways to create peace and happiness. Take this as a notion, as hippy dippy as it may seem, as the image of a pathway out of the misery that we, the people, seem at our darkest times to have succombed to but which, I am convinced, is just another phase for us to struggle through. God take my life away from me this moment, I still believe it. May the fear of my demise never be let so far into the door of my heart, that it would compromise my capacity to love!