Keep it simple, silly

Friday, July 29, 2005

A couple of pics from my Mum's recent visit with my brother in the Northern Territory.



My Mum at Kakadu. Isn't she beautiful?
















Open house. My brother Steve, in his new house in Darwin. Who needs air-conditioning?

Back in the early ‘90s I was a booking agent for a music venue. The owners suggested I check out a band called The Waifs. “Nah,” I said in my most dismissive manner, “They’re a cover band. I’m not booking a cover band.” A dozen years later, I’m sitting in a tent at a music festival on the other side of the planet and The Waifs CD is being played loud and clear on the stage just behind me. London Still brings a tear to my eye as I recall my friends back home, though I have no idea where ‘home’ is geographically. I know it’s where the heart is, and my heart is here with me in Floyd right now for Floydfest.

It started as Floydquest. Twenty-four hours on the road attempting to cover less than 200 miles. Such is life when there’s no public transport at either end of your journey and hitchhiking is about as foreign to the locals as alien anal probes (not completely foreign, just highly improbable). My equanimity has been tested, my faith has been questioned, and I believe both have come out on top.

It took me five hours, five hours of walking with a reasonably sized backpack, before I got my first lift. I love Mapquest: it told me that part of the journey was 2.1 miles. It was closer to 10, probably more. First test. They don’t signpost here like they do in Australia – there’s very few signs indicating how far it is to the next destination – so all I had was two legs, two sore shoulders, and the understanding that however far it was, each step was one step closer. There were times I almost gave up, and still I persevered. Sitting here on this misty mountain, music and laughter surrounding me, I am thankful.

Three lifts in fairly quick succession gave me the impression I was on a roll. Arriving in Appomatox, home of the decisive battle of the Civil War and only 20 miles from Lynchburg – home of the closest Greyhound station south of Yogaville – I was filled with a newfound confidence. Now I could finally pick up from an average speed of about three miles per hour. Hah! Three hours I stood at the entrance ramp to the highway. For three hours my main entertainment was watching the faces of a folk who evidently still suffer from a deep suspicion of outsiders. Recalling the day’s lesson, ‘My holy vision sees all things as pure,’ made it as easy as possible for my tired legs to bear.

Finally, a guy named Corey in a truck with an asphalt roller on a trailer picked me up. He was headed to Lynchburg and just had to pick up another roller on the way. We made a good couple it turned out, as we were both having testing days. Corey was picking up the roller from a guy who had decided not to use Corey to pave his driveway after all. The roller he was picking up was decidedly bigger than the one he already had. He rolled it up the ramp and we headed off. For about a minute. It turned out the extra weight on the back was causing the wheel guard to rub on the tyres. So Corey stopped the truck to swap the rollers around. The big one came off fine, but the ramps turned out to be a bit wide apart for the smaller one and down it came, on a precarious angle perched between road and ramp. We finally got it off and got the big one on, but when it came to the small one, well, let’s just say the second stack was even more impressive than the first. With liquid gushing out the front we judiciously decided to leave it on the side of the road for now.

Finally, at 10pm, 13 hours after my adventure began, I made it the 50 miles to Lynchburg.

Smooth sailing. A bus picked me up an hour later and took me to Roanoke, about 50 miles north of here. All I had to do in Roanoke was wait four hours for the 5am bus to Christiansburg, which is easy to say, only I was very tired and there was nowhere I could find to rest. Even the park benches seemed cleverly designed to prevent this option. So I sat on a concrete floor outside the bus station and pretended to sleep.

Eventually the bus arrived. “Three dollars,” said the driver.
“I’ve only got a five,” I replied.
“You need exact change.”
“Can I wait until you get another passenger and change the money with them?”
“Nope. You’ve got five minutes, go and change it somewhere.” This was 5am in a regional city. I looked around and nothing was open and it would be 1.5 hours until the next bus. I was supposed to be at Floydfest by 6.30 the previous evening. I started back to the station with a muddle of messy suggestions for the driver and arrived just in time to meet the only other passenger getting on at the starting point with me.
“Have you got change for a five?” I asked hopefully.
“You bet. You need it on this bus.” And with that my morning angel pulled out a fat wad of dollar bills. I chose not to offer any of my suggestions to the driver.

Exhausted, I slept as best I could to the thought that I’d had enough tests. Still, something told me I had one more to go.

The stop at Christiansburg was four miles from the turnoff I needed. “You gotta walk down the interstate,” advised my morning angel. Walk down the interstate!? Of all the crazy ideas, that about topped the lot. Four miles of roadbound missiles racing past at up to 100 miles per hour, four miles of repeated roadside debris reminding me that these missiles bore their own random grenades. No thanks.

Still, after waiting in vain at the onramp for a while it came to me that this was my ultimate test of faith. Hesitantly, fearfully, I proceeded. It was the best move I could have made. A mile down the road a state trooper pulled over to advise me that no pedestrians are allowed on the interstate, and kindly drove me off it and on my way.

Four lifts and less than a couple of hours later and I’ve never known a damp tent to be so inviting. Sleep is beckoning and a festival awaits.

Thursday, July 28, 2005
















Me at the Solstice event (http://www.3ho.org/events/yoga-retreat2.html) with the lovely Masuda.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Nine months. Nine months ago I was walking along a windswept Santa Monica beach wondering what I was doing, where I was going and why I had left my home in Australia. Nine months ago, somewhere, a new life was conceived. Now the time has come for the birth.

Tomorrow is a very significant day on the Hindu calendar: Guru Poornima, the day they all celebrate their spiritual teachers. At the ashram where I’m staying, we’ll be celebrating Swami Satchidananda. Although, as this is an ecumenical place, there’ll undoubtedly be a few other celebrations going on as well.

There is so much to celebrate, after all. Every breathing moment is a spiritual teacher, another opportunity to approach the source. Life is the greatest spiritual teacher anyone could ask for, and everything in it is a part of that lesson. It’s a beautiful thing.

So tomorrow, just like a newborn child, I celebrate life. Tomorrow and today and every single moment that I remember how grateful I am for everything I have, for all I’ve been given. Though all I own zips into a backpack, the gifts that I carry are countless.

The last time I wrote was in San Miguel de Allende, among the cobblestoned streets and fireworks and sane disorder. One of the last things I did there was run a workshop on The Work, with 14 participants and two wonderful ‘staff’. It was a success in so many ways and I can only anticipate the next opportunity to share in such a way. From there to Mexico City, where friends continue to flourish and where, it seems, anything is possible. My last two nights in Mexico City were spent in gated communities, in huge houses where hired staff do much of the work. The following night I found myself in a crack house down a back alley in San Luis Potosi. It was so incredibly vibrant, with dozens of young people visiting deep into the evening, all wanting to know, “Why are you here?” and each apparently in possession of the same English phrase: “Suck dick!” It was hilarious.

I was on my way to a Solstice event in New Mexico, where I got to wear a turban, eat Tantra Burgers and stir up some Kundalini. For three days, over a thousand of us sat in long lines facing one another, chanting and doing synchronic exercises with our hands. It was tough. And it filled me with an energy that sent me spinning off like a top, taking me on a journey of 15 states in less than three weeks.

New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee (Graceland and Nashville), Kentucky, West Virginia. Stop for a few days at the Rainbow Gathering there. Meet new people, see many versions of me: who I was, who I could have been, who I could be, who I never want to be. Move on through Virginia to Maryland, where I stopped for a couple of nights just north of DC to catch my breath with a special friend I met at the gathering. Then Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Chicago, to deliver a car and see a friend who wasn’t really there – just like me. One night in the car, one in a fancy hotel, one at her friend’s place, and the ultimate one at Fat Johnny’s Last Resort Hostel. A fitting finale for a frazzled mind.

They say never travel faster than your soul can keep up, and somewhere between San Luis Potosi and Chicago it got left behind. I’m waiting here at Yogaville for it to return, in an envelope marked, ‘Not at this address. Return to sender.’ Last word I had was that it was due to arrive on Guru Poornima. Happy birth day! What better reason to celebrate?

Sunday, July 03, 2005

The woods here in West Virginia are green and damp. It is the middle of summer and there is a chill in the air. It is beautiful. Beyond the violins, mandolins, guitars and drums, beyond the hubbub of this Rainbow Gathering, birds still chirp and bugs still crawl.

There are thousands of people here at this annual celebration of hippydom, scattered over a number of acres in a national park. When I arrived and parked my car I heard some distant drumming through the darkness. Torch in hand, I worked my way down a faint path towards it to find the first stop in a wonderland where the paths are muddy and the people are (generally) happy.

The rainbow tribe call the ‘real’ world Babylon: a land of avarice and pride, lust and gluttony; a land where seven is far too small a number to count the sins committed. It recalls memories for me of the time my father told me the community I was living on was La-La Land; I walked the streets of his city soon after that and everywhere I saw La-La Land: in the vacant stares of the drug affected – legal or illegal, they were everywhere; I saw it in the shallow glorification of the dollar; it was rampant in the media, filled with words like ‘outrage’ and ‘special offer’; the caked on makeup did nothing to cover it and neither did the suits.

That was then. I heard someone speak of the ‘chains of Babylon’ last night and had no idea what he meant. I knew exactly what it meant when I wore a suit and bought the special offers and did everything I could to drink the pain away. Now someone says ‘the chains of Babylon’ and I hear ‘the bondage of my mind’. I am sure I could walk through that same city today and see a very different place, just as I recall doing last time I was there.

And after all that, my father was right: I am living in La-La Land. My father is often right. Only La-La Land isn’t a particular place; it is a state of mind. And maybe everybody lives in La-La Land because everybody’s reality is a mere reflection of their mind: I show ten people the same thing and they will all report a different experience. Multiply this by every single sensation and it becomes clear why people can seem so different to one another. Perception is the master of illusion.

So this is La-La Land. As they say here at the Rainbow Gathering: Welcome home!