ahh, happiest of fag ends of the year to all!
although i sometimes wonder what we celebrate on these final wintry december days?
being done w/ the tarnished emotions and experiences of the past year or thankful for the eternal hopes for next year.
with war and death in gaza, afghanistan, sudan, and the (occasionally) democratic republic of congo, it seems a sorry end to 2008, alas.
not to mention kathmandu's recent 14 hours of load-shedding (meaning no electricity) as a xmas gift from the politicians to the enduring people of nepal.
but, enough of that! why quibble with the realities of the world when there is so much beauty below & between. the sun shines on those we love and the stars sparkle at night, right immanuel?
actually, we are blessed (baruch barack) with our boyz here at home with us for these holidays. as we bump into their large bodies and larger souls, shaku and i are amazed at our own creations and gifts. they stroll these rooms and incline on the couches with an ease and comfort that can only make these longing parents proud.
this morning josh & i worked on his college applications. through his brief essays i find new aspects of my oldest son, his joys and his ambitions. i enjoy editing these brief glimpses into his world, thoughts and aspirations. he's become a fine writer and i can see how he stretches himself to find a way to be of service to this struggling world.
now, this afternoon,i just came in from working in the garden for a few hours, cutting down a deceased peach tree (om mani padma hung!), watering the citrus trees and admiring our handiwork of the past four years in our half-acre of orchard over on the western side of our compound (we go through a gate to get there...).
ms. leah, the dogs, gumbi, lapsi and pancakes acorn chasey, and i were out there w/ tek-dai, our man friday, who was burning new green compost and digging up old compost.
it's been a cool, cloudy day as i trundled around in my ersatz bangkok crocs, my toucan gap boxers and a warm fleece jacket scott bought in phnom penh and brought here on the millennium new year when he came with the whole family long before we moved up on our hillside.
such is my casual home attire for the wintry afternoons in kathmandu. a bit of a sartorial mish-mash that keeps me warm while enjoying the weak sunlight that still shimmers over the himalaya even in the depth of 'winter'.
as i listen to jeff buckley sing 'hallelujah' with the darkness settling in around us. the lights go off in 20 minutes for the next six hours. yet before they go off, it's such a joy to listen to the beauty of the human voice. this song 'hallelujah' happens to be on the english top xmas songs this year by two different artists.
if you find either the jeff buckley or leonard cohen (he wrote it) version, you'll find a sacred sound to carry us into the new year.
'maybe there's a god above but all i've learned from love is... a cold and broken hallelujah...'
sometimes, dear friends, that's enough.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Pinteresque or Simply Lifesque?
"The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear," Pinter once said.
"It is a necessary avoidance or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."
"How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
Harold Pinter
Playwright
1930-2008
"It is a necessary avoidance or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."
"How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
Harold Pinter
Playwright
1930-2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Desperately Seeking Joshua and Ezra
well, i can safely say that our personal hostage crisis has now ended after 72 hours. our two big boyz have been freed by united airlines and sent on klm around the world to come home to kathmandu after six months away.
josh and ez had been stuck in boston since friday when they arrived at logan airport to find that they didn't actually have their paper tickets and that the flight left 50 minutes early. ouch!
as a result, we were in airline reservation crisis mode over the weekend.
yet all had seemed so promising... i called the boys on my cell friday night (their friday morning) to just check that all systems were set to go. they were at the airport with an hour to spare, so i put down my permanent parental guard (that something would go wrong...), and headed off w/ ms. leah to meet shaku, utpal & caroline for dinner.
alas, the problems began soon after when i got a text message from my sister saying that the boyz had missed their flight!! i was reduced to monosyllabic terminology for the next couple of hours. quelle drag!
immediately i got the boys on the phone at the airport, but they were having no luck with the united folks finding their reservations in the computer system and, even so, it was already too late. the flight had departed for san francisco and beyond. they were grounded in a snow storm in boston...
with no great options, they retreated back where they had started at 5 am that morning to my brother bruce's home in newton. although, unfortunately, bruce and family were going away for the w/end, so josh & ez decided to go to their kathmandu friends sashi & jigme's apartment to regroup.
while back in k'du, not seeing other otions, with my sister claudia's help in philadelphia, we'd booked them on a gulf flight over europe to come on sunday -- but shaku said we might as well try to get the united tixs rebooked and save alot of $$$.
so, we spent much of the w/end trying to get them on a united flight on the 23rd (tuesday) which, to be honest, on friday & saturday seemed an eternity away. but, for a half a dozen reasons, by monday proved impossible.
so, in search of a united reissue, ezi trudged through the snow and sleet of a winter new england storm on both saturday and sunday. he literally spent 5-6 hours/day at logan airport waiting in 1.5 hour lines trying to get the tixs reissued, it wasn't happening. i would get up 2 or 3 times at night to speak to ezi while he waited in line or was speaking to the united staff. but for some reason (or none...), what we were being told in k'du by our travel agent was not squaring with the united agent's computer.
it was all one giant (and expensive...) glitch.
finally, on monday morning when shaku & i went to the travel agent on durbar marg, one quick look at the reservation and i suddenly realized that they were trying to book the boys on a flight on the 23rd when the tix actually expired on the 22nd. they were doing their best, but had missed the fact that the six month tix expired on the 22nd.
so, even with the best efforts and time passing, i gave up and gave in.
'ok, ok, ok, get me the quickest, cheapest flight as directly as possible to get my sons here ASAP.' all i could say was, 'i want my sons here with us'. it was the holidays. shakun's birthday was on the 25th.
not to mention that they only had two weeks vacation and they had been working so hard at school since august. they deserved their vacation here with us in kathmandu. they desperately wanted to be home and we desperately wanted them with us.
ezi at 16 had been doing an adult's work (and so compassionately) at the airport, while josh was assiduously filling out his college applications back in the apartment. when i told ez on sunday that he may have to go back early on monday to try one last time, he said, 'dad, i don't mind, as long as it's useful this time...' what a guy!
so, finally, when we realized that the missing united tix was more confused than we knew earlier, we punted. within a minute, we wrote a check to get the boys back on klm/gulf ASAP.
i just wanted josh & ez to wake up on monday morning knowing that they would, at last, be leaving boston and coming home.
and home they are!!!
they came in on wednesday afternoon, tired, beat, exhausted but thrilled to be back in nepal.
their mother and father are simply in parental heaven with the sound of their voices filling our home, once again.
joy!
whoever created family was truly a wise and compassionate soul...
being together again is the best xmas/hanukah gift we could imagine.
joy!
josh and ez had been stuck in boston since friday when they arrived at logan airport to find that they didn't actually have their paper tickets and that the flight left 50 minutes early. ouch!
as a result, we were in airline reservation crisis mode over the weekend.
yet all had seemed so promising... i called the boys on my cell friday night (their friday morning) to just check that all systems were set to go. they were at the airport with an hour to spare, so i put down my permanent parental guard (that something would go wrong...), and headed off w/ ms. leah to meet shaku, utpal & caroline for dinner.
alas, the problems began soon after when i got a text message from my sister saying that the boyz had missed their flight!! i was reduced to monosyllabic terminology for the next couple of hours. quelle drag!
immediately i got the boys on the phone at the airport, but they were having no luck with the united folks finding their reservations in the computer system and, even so, it was already too late. the flight had departed for san francisco and beyond. they were grounded in a snow storm in boston...
with no great options, they retreated back where they had started at 5 am that morning to my brother bruce's home in newton. although, unfortunately, bruce and family were going away for the w/end, so josh & ez decided to go to their kathmandu friends sashi & jigme's apartment to regroup.
while back in k'du, not seeing other otions, with my sister claudia's help in philadelphia, we'd booked them on a gulf flight over europe to come on sunday -- but shaku said we might as well try to get the united tixs rebooked and save alot of $$$.
so, we spent much of the w/end trying to get them on a united flight on the 23rd (tuesday) which, to be honest, on friday & saturday seemed an eternity away. but, for a half a dozen reasons, by monday proved impossible.
so, in search of a united reissue, ezi trudged through the snow and sleet of a winter new england storm on both saturday and sunday. he literally spent 5-6 hours/day at logan airport waiting in 1.5 hour lines trying to get the tixs reissued, it wasn't happening. i would get up 2 or 3 times at night to speak to ezi while he waited in line or was speaking to the united staff. but for some reason (or none...), what we were being told in k'du by our travel agent was not squaring with the united agent's computer.
it was all one giant (and expensive...) glitch.
finally, on monday morning when shaku & i went to the travel agent on durbar marg, one quick look at the reservation and i suddenly realized that they were trying to book the boys on a flight on the 23rd when the tix actually expired on the 22nd. they were doing their best, but had missed the fact that the six month tix expired on the 22nd.
so, even with the best efforts and time passing, i gave up and gave in.
'ok, ok, ok, get me the quickest, cheapest flight as directly as possible to get my sons here ASAP.' all i could say was, 'i want my sons here with us'. it was the holidays. shakun's birthday was on the 25th.
not to mention that they only had two weeks vacation and they had been working so hard at school since august. they deserved their vacation here with us in kathmandu. they desperately wanted to be home and we desperately wanted them with us.
ezi at 16 had been doing an adult's work (and so compassionately) at the airport, while josh was assiduously filling out his college applications back in the apartment. when i told ez on sunday that he may have to go back early on monday to try one last time, he said, 'dad, i don't mind, as long as it's useful this time...' what a guy!
so, finally, when we realized that the missing united tix was more confused than we knew earlier, we punted. within a minute, we wrote a check to get the boys back on klm/gulf ASAP.
i just wanted josh & ez to wake up on monday morning knowing that they would, at last, be leaving boston and coming home.
and home they are!!!
they came in on wednesday afternoon, tired, beat, exhausted but thrilled to be back in nepal.
their mother and father are simply in parental heaven with the sound of their voices filling our home, once again.
joy!
whoever created family was truly a wise and compassionate soul...
being together again is the best xmas/hanukah gift we could imagine.
joy!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Darkness, Darkness, My Old Friend...
Ten hours a day of load shedding from today
In what is certain to cripple normal life and industrial activities, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has announced a fresh calendar of load shedding deciding to cut power by ten hours everyday.
From the 45 hours a week load shedding, there will be 63 hours of load shedding every week – ten hours a day for six days and three hours a day for one day in a week.
The fresh routine has come a few days after the 70 MW Middle Marsyangdi project was inaugurated.
Due to the onset of dry winter season, the water level in snow-fed rivers have sharply come down leading to severe cutdown in generation capacity of most of the run-of-the-river type projects.
The country currently has 619 Mw of installed capacity, but in winter only 400 Mw can be generated while the peak demand reaches 750 Mw.
On Wednesday, the cabinet had declared national power emergency situation and decided to explore building thermal plants to tide over the load shedding woes.
nepalnews.com sd Dec 18 08
In what is certain to cripple normal life and industrial activities, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has announced a fresh calendar of load shedding deciding to cut power by ten hours everyday.
From the 45 hours a week load shedding, there will be 63 hours of load shedding every week – ten hours a day for six days and three hours a day for one day in a week.
The fresh routine has come a few days after the 70 MW Middle Marsyangdi project was inaugurated.
Due to the onset of dry winter season, the water level in snow-fed rivers have sharply come down leading to severe cutdown in generation capacity of most of the run-of-the-river type projects.
The country currently has 619 Mw of installed capacity, but in winter only 400 Mw can be generated while the peak demand reaches 750 Mw.
On Wednesday, the cabinet had declared national power emergency situation and decided to explore building thermal plants to tide over the load shedding woes.
nepalnews.com sd Dec 18 08
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Elegy for Jerry Sternin, 1938-2008
‘If there is no one beside you when your soul embarks,
I will follow you into the dark.’
‘Death Cab for Cuties’
I've been in this space w/ Jerry the past few days. I hear his voice and see him lying alone in Boston. I don't want to believe that the end has come. It's beyond my comprehension right now. I want to have been there with him, Monique and Sam. It feels strange to be so distant when Jerry has already begun his journey between worlds. I can't believe that the end has come so suddenly.
Yet, I must be thankful as my time with him this year, while visiting Josh & Ez, gave us more time than we'd had for years… more time with Jerry’s affectionate, irrepressible humor, his irreverence, his wisdom, kindness and worldly self-assurance.
At least, before going to the beyond, I'm so glad that Jerry saw Josh & Ezra as young men, since he had known them as such small boys. In fact, he may have cooked his last magnificent meal for our family in mid-August, the night before Shakun and Leah returned to Nepal; as that night that it was apparent that something was seriously wrong w/ his health and lungs.
A week later, I took Ezi & his Nepali friend, Suraj, out to White Pond on Suraj’s first day in America to see the beauty of the place and go swimming. I was surprised to find Jerry home, alone, weakened, actually gasping for breath while Monique was out buying him antibiotics.
That day, as the struggled for breath, Jerry knew there was something seriously wrong. He told me that there were only three times in his life when he hadn't had an appetite: when he left college, when he left Nepal and that late summer day when he was gasping for air. This time, although he wasn’t leaving anywhere he loved, he'd lost his appetite. He was afraid. He felt already that he couldn't control this illness, it kept coming for him, taking away his breath, filling his lungs with fluid, tiring him and never leaving him.
Within a day or two Jerry was in Tufts Medical Center. I saw him next in his private room with tubes in his chest and sedated.
After I returned to Nepal, however, he seemed to recover and life seemed more promising. When I saw him in mid-October, returning for the boys' parents' w/end, I was happy to see him healthier, having dinner with friends and hopeful – or so I wanted to believe...
For Jerry has been one of my closest friends, spiritual guides and life gurus for the past 25 years. I have loved, respected and admired ‘Jersey’ like an older brother. He was always there for me, in ways large and small, since we met in the early 80s, through our annual Save the Children Asia directors’ conferences, adventures in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan and Nepal and well, well beyond those origins.
Even in his work or personal emails, Jerry was always playfully attentive, with double entendres, twists and turns, teasing and questioning in equal measure.
The other day Shakun remembered Jerry playing his recorder after our wedding ceremony in October 1988 in the garden of the Shangri-la Hotel in Kathmandu. The mellifluous sound still echoes in our fondest memories. I have so many such memories of our escapades together in Asia, meandering in markets, finding the odd and unusual, hunting antiques, good food or simply mere, joyful fun.
Now, at 70, Jerry has departed, going back to where we all have come from, into the empyrean, that space-less space in which we eternally exist beyond these all-too-human physical, emotional, psychological realms...
I feel so quiet, empty, emptied at the thought that I will not see him again, laugh with him again, hear his thoughts, ask his opinion, watch his attentive gaze. Jerry is gone. This is what I have read in the messages this week. That there is no way for me to be with him again, even when my life began to turn to regular visits through Boston to my sons' new world in western Massachusetts.
Is this the truth now?
I write because I don't know what to say. I’ve had this feeling in my heart, in my stomach, behind my eyes all week. I’ve heard Jerry's voice whispering to me at night as I lay in bed. What is he saying? I'm not sure. Is it important? I’ve heard his lips moving and seen his eyes staring, gently, toward me. Was this death that came across the seas to say goodbye? Was this the end we never expect nor wish to encounter? Does it come so soon when it is so unwanted. Tearing the fabric of our lives and the love that we cherish.
Must life be so unfair? Always coming for us, for our friends, for those we love, for those we never want to leave? This truth we never want to face.
How hard it must have been for Jerry to accept that he must go. He loved this world more than most. His Jewish soul knew how to play so exquisitely in this fleeting, suffering, inspired world. He taught so many of us the joy of that play: Sternin’s laws of motion -- full of beauty, compassion, irreverence and the essential ambience of food.
Our friend Jerry always seemed so aloof from fear, dancing in the face of uncertainties, observant of life’s mysteries and clever with its petty forms of power. Yet, by the end of the summer, he knew he was very sick, even though the doctors couldn't diagnosis it. Still he wasn't ready to leave. White Lake was so beautiful, their new home so charming, his walls of Asian art so comforting, Monique's love so palpable. Yet, as we looked out the windows, the trees were already losing their leaves and being blown away. Autumn was bearing down on Concord already, soon to be followed by the winter Jerry never enjoyed and always sought to escape. This year, there was no escape.
Now I write this elegy as winter has closed in on us. The g-ds of miracles chose not to allow Jerry more time among us in this world, this fleeting, effervescent, shadowy, ultimately disappearing world.
I can only imagine what Monique and Sam must have endured as they watched Jerry depart alone, far from his ebbing love and care. Yet they know better than we how much Jerry has protected them through the years in this chimerical world.
In this, the truth of his love will sustain them, always. Together they will stand even without that giant sequoia of a man to protect them.
For the power of his love, his joy, his inspiration will surely, wisely carry each of us further on these dank and dark waters.
Further on… into the elusive joy once again, then irrevocably, beyond even darkness itself.
Om shanti. Om shalom. Oh my g-d!
love you forever, Jerry,
your friends, Keith, Shakun, Joshua, Ezra and Ms. Leah
I will follow you into the dark.’
‘Death Cab for Cuties’
I've been in this space w/ Jerry the past few days. I hear his voice and see him lying alone in Boston. I don't want to believe that the end has come. It's beyond my comprehension right now. I want to have been there with him, Monique and Sam. It feels strange to be so distant when Jerry has already begun his journey between worlds. I can't believe that the end has come so suddenly.
Yet, I must be thankful as my time with him this year, while visiting Josh & Ez, gave us more time than we'd had for years… more time with Jerry’s affectionate, irrepressible humor, his irreverence, his wisdom, kindness and worldly self-assurance.
At least, before going to the beyond, I'm so glad that Jerry saw Josh & Ezra as young men, since he had known them as such small boys. In fact, he may have cooked his last magnificent meal for our family in mid-August, the night before Shakun and Leah returned to Nepal; as that night that it was apparent that something was seriously wrong w/ his health and lungs.
A week later, I took Ezi & his Nepali friend, Suraj, out to White Pond on Suraj’s first day in America to see the beauty of the place and go swimming. I was surprised to find Jerry home, alone, weakened, actually gasping for breath while Monique was out buying him antibiotics.
That day, as the struggled for breath, Jerry knew there was something seriously wrong. He told me that there were only three times in his life when he hadn't had an appetite: when he left college, when he left Nepal and that late summer day when he was gasping for air. This time, although he wasn’t leaving anywhere he loved, he'd lost his appetite. He was afraid. He felt already that he couldn't control this illness, it kept coming for him, taking away his breath, filling his lungs with fluid, tiring him and never leaving him.
Within a day or two Jerry was in Tufts Medical Center. I saw him next in his private room with tubes in his chest and sedated.
After I returned to Nepal, however, he seemed to recover and life seemed more promising. When I saw him in mid-October, returning for the boys' parents' w/end, I was happy to see him healthier, having dinner with friends and hopeful – or so I wanted to believe...
For Jerry has been one of my closest friends, spiritual guides and life gurus for the past 25 years. I have loved, respected and admired ‘Jersey’ like an older brother. He was always there for me, in ways large and small, since we met in the early 80s, through our annual Save the Children Asia directors’ conferences, adventures in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan and Nepal and well, well beyond those origins.
Even in his work or personal emails, Jerry was always playfully attentive, with double entendres, twists and turns, teasing and questioning in equal measure.
The other day Shakun remembered Jerry playing his recorder after our wedding ceremony in October 1988 in the garden of the Shangri-la Hotel in Kathmandu. The mellifluous sound still echoes in our fondest memories. I have so many such memories of our escapades together in Asia, meandering in markets, finding the odd and unusual, hunting antiques, good food or simply mere, joyful fun.
Now, at 70, Jerry has departed, going back to where we all have come from, into the empyrean, that space-less space in which we eternally exist beyond these all-too-human physical, emotional, psychological realms...
I feel so quiet, empty, emptied at the thought that I will not see him again, laugh with him again, hear his thoughts, ask his opinion, watch his attentive gaze. Jerry is gone. This is what I have read in the messages this week. That there is no way for me to be with him again, even when my life began to turn to regular visits through Boston to my sons' new world in western Massachusetts.
Is this the truth now?
I write because I don't know what to say. I’ve had this feeling in my heart, in my stomach, behind my eyes all week. I’ve heard Jerry's voice whispering to me at night as I lay in bed. What is he saying? I'm not sure. Is it important? I’ve heard his lips moving and seen his eyes staring, gently, toward me. Was this death that came across the seas to say goodbye? Was this the end we never expect nor wish to encounter? Does it come so soon when it is so unwanted. Tearing the fabric of our lives and the love that we cherish.
Must life be so unfair? Always coming for us, for our friends, for those we love, for those we never want to leave? This truth we never want to face.
How hard it must have been for Jerry to accept that he must go. He loved this world more than most. His Jewish soul knew how to play so exquisitely in this fleeting, suffering, inspired world. He taught so many of us the joy of that play: Sternin’s laws of motion -- full of beauty, compassion, irreverence and the essential ambience of food.
Our friend Jerry always seemed so aloof from fear, dancing in the face of uncertainties, observant of life’s mysteries and clever with its petty forms of power. Yet, by the end of the summer, he knew he was very sick, even though the doctors couldn't diagnosis it. Still he wasn't ready to leave. White Lake was so beautiful, their new home so charming, his walls of Asian art so comforting, Monique's love so palpable. Yet, as we looked out the windows, the trees were already losing their leaves and being blown away. Autumn was bearing down on Concord already, soon to be followed by the winter Jerry never enjoyed and always sought to escape. This year, there was no escape.
Now I write this elegy as winter has closed in on us. The g-ds of miracles chose not to allow Jerry more time among us in this world, this fleeting, effervescent, shadowy, ultimately disappearing world.
I can only imagine what Monique and Sam must have endured as they watched Jerry depart alone, far from his ebbing love and care. Yet they know better than we how much Jerry has protected them through the years in this chimerical world.
In this, the truth of his love will sustain them, always. Together they will stand even without that giant sequoia of a man to protect them.
For the power of his love, his joy, his inspiration will surely, wisely carry each of us further on these dank and dark waters.
Further on… into the elusive joy once again, then irrevocably, beyond even darkness itself.
Om shanti. Om shalom. Oh my g-d!
love you forever, Jerry,
your friends, Keith, Shakun, Joshua, Ezra and Ms. Leah
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Law of Procrastination: U=EV/ID
Prof Piers Steel, a Canadian academic who has spent more than 10 years studying why people put off until tomorrow what they could do today, believes that the notion that procrastinators are either perfectionists or just lazy is wrong.
Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness.
Chronic procastinators, who make up 20 per cent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others, he says in his forthcoming book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow.
The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students.
The equation is U=EV/ID.
The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.
Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.
This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.
"Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes.
Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.
So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.
Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.
Famous procrastinators include writers Marcel Proust and Douglas Adams, who famously said he loved the "whoosh" of missed deadlines passing over his head.
The Telegraph
By Urmee Khan
08 Dec 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3660232/Academics-invent-a-mathematical-equation-for-why-people-procrastinate.html
Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness.
Chronic procastinators, who make up 20 per cent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others, he says in his forthcoming book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow.
The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students.
The equation is U=EV/ID.
The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.
Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.
This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.
"Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes.
Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.
So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.
Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.
Famous procrastinators include writers Marcel Proust and Douglas Adams, who famously said he loved the "whoosh" of missed deadlines passing over his head.
The Telegraph
By Urmee Khan
08 Dec 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3660232/Academics-invent-a-mathematical-equation-for-why-people-procrastinate.html
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Chani's Best Friend
we just came from seeing our friend, chani, the rabbi's wife at the chabad house. chani lives in a very simple apartment in the heart of thamel, right near the chabad house, where her husband, chezky ministers to the lost & lonely who seek a sense of home far from their own.
a few years ago, before their bar mitzvahs in haifa when they were 13 and 14, chani taught josh & ezi hebrew once a week for nearly two years in her home. she's a trained elementary school teacher and has the heart of a angel, always calm and humorous with the boys as they struggled with that strange tongue, so far from their daily realities.
ahh, chani, such a sweet, religious, kind-hearted maternal young woman who wants to have 5 kids by the time she's 30. a very gentle soul. her hair tucked back under a scarf like a 19th C. russian peasant. always hugging her three children and softly admonishing them while praising their character and resilience.
alas, what we didn't know was that the rabbi's wife in mumbai was chani's best friend. they spoke or skyped twice a day. chani spoke w/ her two hours before their chabad house in mumbai was brutally attacked last wednesday.
we knew that chani must have known the mumbai chabad family, but had no idea how close they were.
chani says she hasn't slept or eaten since last week. she looks so frail to me, like she's aged five years in a week.
of course, these religious women are frontier fortified, as they already live out on the edge of modern culture, holding true to ancient truths and ways of living that most of us have cast out on way to our modern vision of secular sanctity and freedom.
yes, chani's a strong woman living in a strange country. she will get through this, but there is this air of unreality about her as she comes to terms w/ her best friend's death at 27. 'she had so many dreams...', chani says solemnly.
another act of ceaseless violence...
sad, no? how cruel we human beans can be to each other.
such blind fury.
or, as ezi asked, 'how can people hate so much?'
as nick cave and the bad seeds sing, 'people ain't no good', in his somber, mellifluous voice.
vat a vorld we live in...
sometimes you just want to slip inside your own private amplitude
and disappear...
a few years ago, before their bar mitzvahs in haifa when they were 13 and 14, chani taught josh & ezi hebrew once a week for nearly two years in her home. she's a trained elementary school teacher and has the heart of a angel, always calm and humorous with the boys as they struggled with that strange tongue, so far from their daily realities.
ahh, chani, such a sweet, religious, kind-hearted maternal young woman who wants to have 5 kids by the time she's 30. a very gentle soul. her hair tucked back under a scarf like a 19th C. russian peasant. always hugging her three children and softly admonishing them while praising their character and resilience.
alas, what we didn't know was that the rabbi's wife in mumbai was chani's best friend. they spoke or skyped twice a day. chani spoke w/ her two hours before their chabad house in mumbai was brutally attacked last wednesday.
we knew that chani must have known the mumbai chabad family, but had no idea how close they were.
chani says she hasn't slept or eaten since last week. she looks so frail to me, like she's aged five years in a week.
of course, these religious women are frontier fortified, as they already live out on the edge of modern culture, holding true to ancient truths and ways of living that most of us have cast out on way to our modern vision of secular sanctity and freedom.
yes, chani's a strong woman living in a strange country. she will get through this, but there is this air of unreality about her as she comes to terms w/ her best friend's death at 27. 'she had so many dreams...', chani says solemnly.
another act of ceaseless violence...
sad, no? how cruel we human beans can be to each other.
such blind fury.
or, as ezi asked, 'how can people hate so much?'
as nick cave and the bad seeds sing, 'people ain't no good', in his somber, mellifluous voice.
vat a vorld we live in...
sometimes you just want to slip inside your own private amplitude
and disappear...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
On the Road in the Tarai
I'm on the road, again, a path that I must thoroughly enjoy, given how much time I spend there...
This time, with Barack's "Dreams from my Father" in tow, I've flown down to Janakpur in the Eastern tarai, along the Indian border, to travel east visiting various community groups and NGOs to solicit their thoughts on a civil society outreach strategy for writing Nepal's new constitution.
I've been asked by UNDP to assist their Constitution-Building Project with this while they are putting their team together. It's a good team of people from Canada, Sri Lanka, Japan, Kenya and a diverse range of Nepalis who are assiduously preparing a Resource Center (for Democracy Dialogue), located near the Constituent Assembly, where CA members and civil society can both learn about issues related to their responsibilities in drafting a new federal, democratic constitution for Nepal by May 2010, as well as engage each other in an open space to discuss the sensitive and serious topics that the writing of a 21st C. constitution for an often 19th C. country.
Sila, my Kenyan colleague, and I are on the road to listen to people from the antipodes, the districts, the villages, the hinterlands, whose voices are sometimes lost in translation. Before we finalize a process by which the UN can effectively support the CA and civil society to engage on these substantive issues, we wanted to come out among the dusty trails, the broken roads, the silty streams and dangling hopes of rural Nepal to hear directly from some of la vrai countryside.
Shocking, I know...
Yet it's so easy to get caught up in the importance of the Center, ignoring Mr. Yeats' advice about centers..., and lose track of the realities that Nepalis outside the Ring Road (or moat, as we affectionately call the road that encircles the world of Kathmandu) live.
Like many places, it often seems of two worlds, the fast pace, congestion, wealth of the capital city and the ox-cart pace, dirt roads and agricultural world of rural Nepal. Although we travel in the relative luxury of a UN landcruiser with driver and radio communication, such imbalances dissipate once we are sitting on the ground in a rough schoolyard with a bevy of Maithali women or around a wooden table in a local NGO office with a dozen representatives of local civil society.
At such times, my years of life in Nepal swirl around my thoughts and the passage of decades seems minutes as I recall countless such meetings and discussions with people of all hues, languages, religions and political affiliations. From my earliest strolls in the middle hills of Gorkha out to ridge town of Takukot or up the mountains to Big Gurung Village (as it was identified on the map) of Barpak to our first explorations of the tarai in Siraha, more than a world apart from the pahadi (hill) folks we'd known so well. Then, the elegant, ebony Tharus in the Inner Tarai of Mid-Western Nepal, so detached, it appeared, from the currents of their own country, cut off from their own history by the machinations of modern legal codes and government authority. To the isolated valleys of Nuwakot, north of Kathmandu, where the Tamang, Buddhist in nature, subservient in character, lived in remote settlements so close to the capital city, yet so far away in their knowledge and opportunities...
Now, decades later, in a different guise, for a different agency, serving a common purpose, I'm back again sitting with women who may not have been born when I first came to Nepal, their dark, eager, shy faces peering from below the skirt of their saris held above their heads to shield the sun and cover their faces.
As always, the men sitting on benches while the women (et moi) sit on the blankets on the ground, start in with their political rhetoric and ideas.
Although the feeling is different from years ago, some of the men are more aggressive and challenging... demanding to know what the UN is doing for Madhesi (tarai) people and quoting figures (real or not) of how few Madhesis are working in the UN. This is not the more innocent Nepal of the 1980s and early 90s. The mood has changed throughout the country. There is a determination, harder, more focused and more responsible than before the ten year war. Each community, in a nation made up of scores of different identities, has begun to claim their rights and opportunities promised first by the Maoists at the start of their People's War, then later by all the major political parties through the Comprehensive Peace Accord (signed in Nov. 2006), through the 'New Nepal' that is forming around us.
There is strength and risk in the swirling tides of these rising discontents. One can hear it in their voices, their intensity, their insistence and, occasionally, in their threats. There is pride in their newfound local identity, geographic, linguistic, cultural, ethnic, often mingled together in a consistent challenge to the Center, to Kathmandu, about what they are demanding from the new constitution. New energies have been unleashed by the end of the 240 year old Shah dynasty and the promises made during the ten year civil war. Promises that may not always be easy to fulfill or find accomodation with differing perspectives on what exactly was promised and to whom an entitlement is due.
Although we are in the tarai, the flatlands bordering India, at times it feels more like we are walking a narrow ridge with steep cliffs on both sides. Emotionally, historically, in these conversations I feel like I'm trekking high in the Khumbu where each slight step can be precarious and the valleys below distant and forbiding.
At night, I retreat to my solitary hotel room, pink walls, a hard bed with a cotton comforter, plastic chappals ('sandals') outside the aging bath, a small color tv with a dozen channels of Indian movies (which I occasionally indulge...) and a mosquito or two to remind me that I'm far from the cold, dark nights in Kathmandu where the winter winds have already descended on the Valley and years of mismanagement often leave us literally in the dark without electricity when we get home.
The quiet of the room gives me time to reflect upon the days' conversations and thoughts. The images of Nepal that always charm and entice me, even still. The languid life of the village contrasted with the noisy motorcyles and tempos in the towns. Children drifting on the buffalos across the fields in the countryside while other children are paid to stand holding neon lights on their heads, late into the night, while adults celebrate their own child's wedding.
This world is nothing if not contrasts. Here, there and everywhere.
Then, as I lay on the bed collecting my impressions, I pick up Barack's "Dreams from my Father" that Shaku encouraged me to read after she finished it. I'm only half way through, but touched already in so many ways. To imagine that the man who wrote these pages, the sensitive struggling soul who labored to put his life on paper, the young lawyer, the black and white man, the cultural orphan, the child of his parents' dreams, the man who would be president, spoke so honestly and so understandably about himself, his peers and the societies around him...
A community organizer become president. Imagine that! The man who took time to find his own uneasy balance in American society before seeking to change the balance for all of us.
As I hear the sounds of Nepal outside my window, the swell of voices coming from the street, the aspirations of a country churning and unbound to their past, I think again of America, my America, the source of my origins and the future of my children. I laugh quietly to myself as, for the first time, I see my own work as another lonely community organizer out in the villages of an adopted country.
Barack, son of an intellectual Kenyan and an itinerant American mother, raised in Jakarta and Hawaii, dug deep within himself to find his home in urban America. I come of 1st and 2nd generation American stock, Eastern European immigrants who sought security and sanctity on those new shores.
Yet here I am, another night on the road, Dharan, Sunsari, now, at the foothills of the Himalaya, among the Limbu liberationists, amid the rapid cultural transformation of Nepal, collecting ideas on how best to write a new constitution, with a younger Barack over my shoulder, reading his stories of engagement with an America he barely understood while I work in someone else's country, at times, I barely understand...
Still, I'm smiling as I write...
This continues to be a remarkable, if not always easily understandable, world...
Ps: Oh yes (if anyone listens to these distant stories...) when I fly home on Thursday morning I'll see the dark pyramid of Mt Everest glistening on the nearby horizon outside my window?!!? Who wud have thunk...
This time, with Barack's "Dreams from my Father" in tow, I've flown down to Janakpur in the Eastern tarai, along the Indian border, to travel east visiting various community groups and NGOs to solicit their thoughts on a civil society outreach strategy for writing Nepal's new constitution.
I've been asked by UNDP to assist their Constitution-Building Project with this while they are putting their team together. It's a good team of people from Canada, Sri Lanka, Japan, Kenya and a diverse range of Nepalis who are assiduously preparing a Resource Center (for Democracy Dialogue), located near the Constituent Assembly, where CA members and civil society can both learn about issues related to their responsibilities in drafting a new federal, democratic constitution for Nepal by May 2010, as well as engage each other in an open space to discuss the sensitive and serious topics that the writing of a 21st C. constitution for an often 19th C. country.
Sila, my Kenyan colleague, and I are on the road to listen to people from the antipodes, the districts, the villages, the hinterlands, whose voices are sometimes lost in translation. Before we finalize a process by which the UN can effectively support the CA and civil society to engage on these substantive issues, we wanted to come out among the dusty trails, the broken roads, the silty streams and dangling hopes of rural Nepal to hear directly from some of la vrai countryside.
Shocking, I know...
Yet it's so easy to get caught up in the importance of the Center, ignoring Mr. Yeats' advice about centers..., and lose track of the realities that Nepalis outside the Ring Road (or moat, as we affectionately call the road that encircles the world of Kathmandu) live.
Like many places, it often seems of two worlds, the fast pace, congestion, wealth of the capital city and the ox-cart pace, dirt roads and agricultural world of rural Nepal. Although we travel in the relative luxury of a UN landcruiser with driver and radio communication, such imbalances dissipate once we are sitting on the ground in a rough schoolyard with a bevy of Maithali women or around a wooden table in a local NGO office with a dozen representatives of local civil society.
At such times, my years of life in Nepal swirl around my thoughts and the passage of decades seems minutes as I recall countless such meetings and discussions with people of all hues, languages, religions and political affiliations. From my earliest strolls in the middle hills of Gorkha out to ridge town of Takukot or up the mountains to Big Gurung Village (as it was identified on the map) of Barpak to our first explorations of the tarai in Siraha, more than a world apart from the pahadi (hill) folks we'd known so well. Then, the elegant, ebony Tharus in the Inner Tarai of Mid-Western Nepal, so detached, it appeared, from the currents of their own country, cut off from their own history by the machinations of modern legal codes and government authority. To the isolated valleys of Nuwakot, north of Kathmandu, where the Tamang, Buddhist in nature, subservient in character, lived in remote settlements so close to the capital city, yet so far away in their knowledge and opportunities...
Now, decades later, in a different guise, for a different agency, serving a common purpose, I'm back again sitting with women who may not have been born when I first came to Nepal, their dark, eager, shy faces peering from below the skirt of their saris held above their heads to shield the sun and cover their faces.
As always, the men sitting on benches while the women (et moi) sit on the blankets on the ground, start in with their political rhetoric and ideas.
Although the feeling is different from years ago, some of the men are more aggressive and challenging... demanding to know what the UN is doing for Madhesi (tarai) people and quoting figures (real or not) of how few Madhesis are working in the UN. This is not the more innocent Nepal of the 1980s and early 90s. The mood has changed throughout the country. There is a determination, harder, more focused and more responsible than before the ten year war. Each community, in a nation made up of scores of different identities, has begun to claim their rights and opportunities promised first by the Maoists at the start of their People's War, then later by all the major political parties through the Comprehensive Peace Accord (signed in Nov. 2006), through the 'New Nepal' that is forming around us.
There is strength and risk in the swirling tides of these rising discontents. One can hear it in their voices, their intensity, their insistence and, occasionally, in their threats. There is pride in their newfound local identity, geographic, linguistic, cultural, ethnic, often mingled together in a consistent challenge to the Center, to Kathmandu, about what they are demanding from the new constitution. New energies have been unleashed by the end of the 240 year old Shah dynasty and the promises made during the ten year civil war. Promises that may not always be easy to fulfill or find accomodation with differing perspectives on what exactly was promised and to whom an entitlement is due.
Although we are in the tarai, the flatlands bordering India, at times it feels more like we are walking a narrow ridge with steep cliffs on both sides. Emotionally, historically, in these conversations I feel like I'm trekking high in the Khumbu where each slight step can be precarious and the valleys below distant and forbiding.
At night, I retreat to my solitary hotel room, pink walls, a hard bed with a cotton comforter, plastic chappals ('sandals') outside the aging bath, a small color tv with a dozen channels of Indian movies (which I occasionally indulge...) and a mosquito or two to remind me that I'm far from the cold, dark nights in Kathmandu where the winter winds have already descended on the Valley and years of mismanagement often leave us literally in the dark without electricity when we get home.
The quiet of the room gives me time to reflect upon the days' conversations and thoughts. The images of Nepal that always charm and entice me, even still. The languid life of the village contrasted with the noisy motorcyles and tempos in the towns. Children drifting on the buffalos across the fields in the countryside while other children are paid to stand holding neon lights on their heads, late into the night, while adults celebrate their own child's wedding.
This world is nothing if not contrasts. Here, there and everywhere.
Then, as I lay on the bed collecting my impressions, I pick up Barack's "Dreams from my Father" that Shaku encouraged me to read after she finished it. I'm only half way through, but touched already in so many ways. To imagine that the man who wrote these pages, the sensitive struggling soul who labored to put his life on paper, the young lawyer, the black and white man, the cultural orphan, the child of his parents' dreams, the man who would be president, spoke so honestly and so understandably about himself, his peers and the societies around him...
A community organizer become president. Imagine that! The man who took time to find his own uneasy balance in American society before seeking to change the balance for all of us.
As I hear the sounds of Nepal outside my window, the swell of voices coming from the street, the aspirations of a country churning and unbound to their past, I think again of America, my America, the source of my origins and the future of my children. I laugh quietly to myself as, for the first time, I see my own work as another lonely community organizer out in the villages of an adopted country.
Barack, son of an intellectual Kenyan and an itinerant American mother, raised in Jakarta and Hawaii, dug deep within himself to find his home in urban America. I come of 1st and 2nd generation American stock, Eastern European immigrants who sought security and sanctity on those new shores.
Yet here I am, another night on the road, Dharan, Sunsari, now, at the foothills of the Himalaya, among the Limbu liberationists, amid the rapid cultural transformation of Nepal, collecting ideas on how best to write a new constitution, with a younger Barack over my shoulder, reading his stories of engagement with an America he barely understood while I work in someone else's country, at times, I barely understand...
Still, I'm smiling as I write...
This continues to be a remarkable, if not always easily understandable, world...
Ps: Oh yes (if anyone listens to these distant stories...) when I fly home on Thursday morning I'll see the dark pyramid of Mt Everest glistening on the nearby horizon outside my window?!!? Who wud have thunk...
Thursday, November 20, 2008
What We Learned Was Truly Important on 9.11... Ian McEwan
"The mobile phone has inserted itself into every crevice of our daily lives. Now in catastrophe, if there is time enough, it is there in our dying moments. All through Thursday, we heard from the bereaved how they took those last calls. Whatever the immediate circumstances, what was striking was what they had in common -- a new technology has shown us an ancient human universal.
A San Francisco husband slept through his wife's call from the World Trade Center. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her; the building was on fire; there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs in movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen: 'I love you.'
She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones -- from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There was only love and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.
Last words placed in the public domain were once the prerogative of the mighty and vain and venerable -- Henry James, Nelson, Goethe, recorded and sometimes edited for posterity by relatives at the bedside. The effect was often consolatory, showing acceptance or even transcendence in the face of death. They set us an example. That these last words, spoken down mobile phones, reported to us by the bereaved, are both more haunting and true.
They compel us to imagine ourselves into that moment. What would we say? Now we know."
A San Francisco husband slept through his wife's call from the World Trade Center. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her; the building was on fire; there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs in movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen: 'I love you.'
She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones -- from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There was only love and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.
Last words placed in the public domain were once the prerogative of the mighty and vain and venerable -- Henry James, Nelson, Goethe, recorded and sometimes edited for posterity by relatives at the bedside. The effect was often consolatory, showing acceptance or even transcendence in the face of death. They set us an example. That these last words, spoken down mobile phones, reported to us by the bereaved, are both more haunting and true.
They compel us to imagine ourselves into that moment. What would we say? Now we know."
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A Quote from Aeschylus
"And,
even in our
sleep
pain that
cannot
forget
falls
drop
by
drop
upon the
heart;
and,
in our own
despair,
against
our will,
comes
wisdom
to us
by the
awful
grace
of
God."
even in our
sleep
pain that
cannot
forget
falls
drop
by
drop
upon the
heart;
and,
in our own
despair,
against
our will,
comes
wisdom
to us
by the
awful
grace
of
God."
Friday, November 7, 2008
The Obama Nation, 1968-2008
"Yes, we can!"
The words echoed down 3rd Avenue after I left dinner w/ my college friend, Paul, and his friends. It was after 10 pm and the results had already begun to flow in across the cable tv networks.
As I strolled in the balmy early November NYC weather down from 77th St. to Aunt Eileen's apartment on 20th, I could see into many restaurants and bars I passed the totals as they began to pile up on the Democrats' column. Even before dinner, CNN had called Vermont for Obama with exactly 0% of the vote and 0 votes in! But then we know the intuition of our seers in Vermont...
Then, as I watched from window to window, with Pennsylvania and Ohio soon falling on Barack's side, followed by Virginia and New Hampshire, it clearly looked, as my friend, Larry had advised a month ago in Kathmandu, like the final fruition of an historical landslide for Obama, and our country.
It's hard to explain to our children what this means to those of us of a slightly earlier generation. For me, this election of 2008 is the completion of the fatally truncated election of 1968. The year of my earliest political education and, tragically, the painful loss of innocence or honest belief in the possibility of redemption in the American political process.
How well I remember that night in early June 1968. I was all of fourteen years old, full of the enthusiasm that youth and youthful ambition can bring to its inchoate hopes and dreams. Already it had been a momentous, agonized, deliberate and decisive year.
Only a few months before, I'd come into the kitchen to forage for breakfast behind the refrigerator door when my father came down and said to me, "Did you hear Lyndon Johnson's speech last night?"
"Yes, I heard the start about the halt in the bombing of North Vietnam..."
"Did you hear the end?"
"No, why?"
"You didn't hear him say he wouldn't run for president?"
"WHAT?", as I slammed the refrigerator door and looked at my father in astonishment.
From LBJ's near-defeat in New Hampshire to Bobby Kennedy's announcement that he, too, would run for the Democratic nomination against both LBJ and Gene McCarthy, through the brutal murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, 1968 had already been a year of profound agony, anger and loss in American politics.
Then, as I lay in bed on Brockway Lane in Upstate NY, late in the night, with the small B&W tv at the foot of my bed, I woke with some sense of dread, disbelief and confusion. I'd fallen asleep after midnight waiting for the results of the Democratic primary in California.
Although RFK had won in Indiana, Gene McCarthy had defeated him in Oregon and all knew that the winner of the winner-take-all California primary (so different from this year's Democratic primary rules) would be the 1968 Democratic party nominee, and most likely win this turbulent election to lead the country out of the self-inflicted, devastating war in Vietnam and, hopefully, toward a fulfillment of the civil rights movement that had sputtered, then burnt on the streets of Watts, Washington, DC and most major cities in America.
As I woke staring w/ disorientation at the tv, the phone upstairs rang in my parents' bedroom. As I watched, I realized that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after Bobby Kennedy had accepted his victory in the California primary. There were people weeping, crying and screaming on the screen. As I ran upstairs to my parent's room and opened the door, one of them said, softly, painfully, "Robert Kennedy has been shot."
Forty years later, that scene and that pain still fill my sorrow. The scars of that election, sundered by assassination and violence, still wound. The end result, as we know, lead to nearly seven more years of war with a presidency that ended in the eventual resignation of both the vice-president and president for corruption and abuse of authority. The nadir of American politics in our lifetime.
So, today, forty years later, I deeply feel that the souls of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy are looking down with joy and pride on their beloved America of Atlanta, Georgia, Hyannis, Massachusetts and each of the many states these two noble men visited in the course of their civil rights movement and political campaigns.
Today, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a black-white man, a dignified, eloquent, intelligent, compassionate man, with a wise wife and lovely daughters, who represent the best that America can offer, I feel that the ghosts of 1968 are, at last, laid to rest.
The incomplete campaign that meant so much to me as a fourteen year old young American has come to its natural goal, its honest achievement, an arc of accomplishment, an ephipany of sorts.
We are a better country than we sometimes imagine. We are capable of change. We are capable of chosing the best candidate. No matter how Obama governs in the coming four years (and I believe it will be for the best...), a long period of American history is now put to rest.
Now, when our children's children read "To Kill A Mockingbird" or listen to Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, much less memorize Lincoln's own "Gettysburg Address", they will know intimately and finally that, although it took a literary and imaginative 18th C. Constitution, a great and cruel Civil War in the 19th C., generations of suffering and non-violent demonstrations in the 20th C., the fulfillment of that noble national enterprise -- that ALL MEN (yes, WOMEN, too!) ARE CREATED EQUAL -- has come true in the first decade of the 21st C. And we are here to witness that celebration.
Maybe it is time for me to put to bed, as well, those bad dreams of 1968.
When my family sat together in Kathmandu to watch the exquisite movie, "Bobby" a year ago, about RFK's assassination, I was surprised to hear Ezi say afterwards, "That movie made me proud to be an American!"
Later, I understood Ezra was speaking of all of the individual lives in the film who found a purpose and meaning through Kennedy's inspiration and movtivation. That his message touched so many lives at that time, gave Ezi hope and, possibly, a greater determination to do something meaningful with his life, as well.
Maybe today, again, Barack Obama has offered the whole beloved nation this opportunity, as well...
I believe it has.
The words echoed down 3rd Avenue after I left dinner w/ my college friend, Paul, and his friends. It was after 10 pm and the results had already begun to flow in across the cable tv networks.
As I strolled in the balmy early November NYC weather down from 77th St. to Aunt Eileen's apartment on 20th, I could see into many restaurants and bars I passed the totals as they began to pile up on the Democrats' column. Even before dinner, CNN had called Vermont for Obama with exactly 0% of the vote and 0 votes in! But then we know the intuition of our seers in Vermont...
Then, as I watched from window to window, with Pennsylvania and Ohio soon falling on Barack's side, followed by Virginia and New Hampshire, it clearly looked, as my friend, Larry had advised a month ago in Kathmandu, like the final fruition of an historical landslide for Obama, and our country.
It's hard to explain to our children what this means to those of us of a slightly earlier generation. For me, this election of 2008 is the completion of the fatally truncated election of 1968. The year of my earliest political education and, tragically, the painful loss of innocence or honest belief in the possibility of redemption in the American political process.
How well I remember that night in early June 1968. I was all of fourteen years old, full of the enthusiasm that youth and youthful ambition can bring to its inchoate hopes and dreams. Already it had been a momentous, agonized, deliberate and decisive year.
Only a few months before, I'd come into the kitchen to forage for breakfast behind the refrigerator door when my father came down and said to me, "Did you hear Lyndon Johnson's speech last night?"
"Yes, I heard the start about the halt in the bombing of North Vietnam..."
"Did you hear the end?"
"No, why?"
"You didn't hear him say he wouldn't run for president?"
"WHAT?", as I slammed the refrigerator door and looked at my father in astonishment.
From LBJ's near-defeat in New Hampshire to Bobby Kennedy's announcement that he, too, would run for the Democratic nomination against both LBJ and Gene McCarthy, through the brutal murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, 1968 had already been a year of profound agony, anger and loss in American politics.
Then, as I lay in bed on Brockway Lane in Upstate NY, late in the night, with the small B&W tv at the foot of my bed, I woke with some sense of dread, disbelief and confusion. I'd fallen asleep after midnight waiting for the results of the Democratic primary in California.
Although RFK had won in Indiana, Gene McCarthy had defeated him in Oregon and all knew that the winner of the winner-take-all California primary (so different from this year's Democratic primary rules) would be the 1968 Democratic party nominee, and most likely win this turbulent election to lead the country out of the self-inflicted, devastating war in Vietnam and, hopefully, toward a fulfillment of the civil rights movement that had sputtered, then burnt on the streets of Watts, Washington, DC and most major cities in America.
As I woke staring w/ disorientation at the tv, the phone upstairs rang in my parents' bedroom. As I watched, I realized that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after Bobby Kennedy had accepted his victory in the California primary. There were people weeping, crying and screaming on the screen. As I ran upstairs to my parent's room and opened the door, one of them said, softly, painfully, "Robert Kennedy has been shot."
Forty years later, that scene and that pain still fill my sorrow. The scars of that election, sundered by assassination and violence, still wound. The end result, as we know, lead to nearly seven more years of war with a presidency that ended in the eventual resignation of both the vice-president and president for corruption and abuse of authority. The nadir of American politics in our lifetime.
So, today, forty years later, I deeply feel that the souls of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy are looking down with joy and pride on their beloved America of Atlanta, Georgia, Hyannis, Massachusetts and each of the many states these two noble men visited in the course of their civil rights movement and political campaigns.
Today, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a black-white man, a dignified, eloquent, intelligent, compassionate man, with a wise wife and lovely daughters, who represent the best that America can offer, I feel that the ghosts of 1968 are, at last, laid to rest.
The incomplete campaign that meant so much to me as a fourteen year old young American has come to its natural goal, its honest achievement, an arc of accomplishment, an ephipany of sorts.
We are a better country than we sometimes imagine. We are capable of change. We are capable of chosing the best candidate. No matter how Obama governs in the coming four years (and I believe it will be for the best...), a long period of American history is now put to rest.
Now, when our children's children read "To Kill A Mockingbird" or listen to Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, much less memorize Lincoln's own "Gettysburg Address", they will know intimately and finally that, although it took a literary and imaginative 18th C. Constitution, a great and cruel Civil War in the 19th C., generations of suffering and non-violent demonstrations in the 20th C., the fulfillment of that noble national enterprise -- that ALL MEN (yes, WOMEN, too!) ARE CREATED EQUAL -- has come true in the first decade of the 21st C. And we are here to witness that celebration.
Maybe it is time for me to put to bed, as well, those bad dreams of 1968.
When my family sat together in Kathmandu to watch the exquisite movie, "Bobby" a year ago, about RFK's assassination, I was surprised to hear Ezi say afterwards, "That movie made me proud to be an American!"
Later, I understood Ezra was speaking of all of the individual lives in the film who found a purpose and meaning through Kennedy's inspiration and movtivation. That his message touched so many lives at that time, gave Ezi hope and, possibly, a greater determination to do something meaningful with his life, as well.
Maybe today, again, Barack Obama has offered the whole beloved nation this opportunity, as well...
I believe it has.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Autumn in America
The boys are partying at the "Tron Bon", a halloween bonfire that their Overton dorm hosts every year. Last year Josh dressed as a roman warrior with face paint, ala William Wallace. Tonight, he's dressed as an arab sheik tonight, but i don't know what Ezi is going as. I'm sure they are having a great time already, as they seemed keyed up for this event.
This afternoon both boys had football/soccer games. I first drove down to Deerfield to watch Ezi, Mo and Suraj play in their JV game, as it started a half hour before the varsity game and Deerfield is only 20 minutes south of NMH. I'd never been there before, although I'd passed the signs to "Historic Deerfield" a few times. I can say now that on a late autumn day like today the well-preserved town of Deerfield is one of the most exquisite I've ever seen in New England. It's an absolutely charming, undisturbed 17th/18th c. village under a canopy of magnificent street-lined trees.
Fortunately, even within my reverie, I got to the game just minutes before it startedm meandering down rural backroads, across great steel spans over the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers with one eye on the road and one eye simply absorbing the waning color palate covering the hillsides. There's a deep contentment in such a landscape, cool, distant, decadent with an array of yellow, rust, reds, burgundies, and the occasional bright damask, that soothes and comforts the mind, before the reality of winter.
Oh, yes, back to the story... Ezi was on the pitch, playing midfield, where he loves to direct the action of the game. Unfortunately, Deerfield quickly went up 2-0 due to some defensive lapses that hurt NMH early and long. Therefore, before the first half was over, Coach Derr sustituted Ezi back into the goal to make sure Deerfield didn't score again so NMH would have a chance to get back into the game. Then, on a stunning reversal of fortune, a minute before half-time, Ezi launched a massive goal kick down the pitch that bounced before the other goalie, giving Suraj and a teammate the chance to quickly handle the ball for a goal! Not too bad for Ezi as goalie to get an assist on an NMH goal!
But at half time, I had to drive back up to NMH as Josh's game started half an hour after Ezi's and it was Josh's last home game of the year. All the varsity seniors, including Josh, were starting as it was their last NMH home game. I missed the beginning, but NMH was up 1-0 and Josh was still on the pitch. In fact, five minutes after I got there Josh triumphantly grabbed a header, hitting it twice by himself to put the ball in the back of the net. NMH was up 2-0 at the half!
Josh was having his best game of the year, possibly his career. The whole team was playing (what many said) was their best football of the year. Josh even scored again in the second half with a surging, powerful header from a lovely cross by one of his teammates. At the end, NMH put Cushing Academy away with a convincing 5-0 win.
Alas, although Ezi's JV team (Ez & Mo have been named the captains for the rest of the year) looked ready to capitalize on Deerfield's weakness when I left after the first half, they just couldn't find the equalizer in the second half and lost 2-1. Ezi, I'm told had some solid saves in the second half, as well as 'great distribution', but when I was w/ him at dinner, Suraj was still trying to calm him down from the loss...
But, with the Tron Bon(fire) on the evening schedule, knowing Ezi's innate resilience, I don't think he was going to stay in a funk very long. In fact, he was back to his adorable self, getting his friends in the party mood over dinner.
I ate in the dining hall w/ a couple of Josh's teammates' parents talking about the team, the school and our kids. Colin's dad married a polynesian from New Zealand, so Colin's half mixed up, too, as well as the best footballer on the team (some day, New England...). The other boys' parents were gentle quakers from Vermont who are proudly on the Parents' Advisory Council for NMH. Sweet folks all around.
I'm beginning to feel the weariness of the constant travel, but there's so much joy in being w/ and near the boys that I only feel it when i'm away from them. After all, this is rare & precious time poised between two generations in my life.
In truth, I feel incredibly fortunate that at this stage of my life, in my mid-50s, I can be spend such time b/n the two. Although it is painful to watching one's dearly loved parents age, yet, concomitantly, I am able to see Josh & Ez, so strong, vital and alive in their late teens, playing their hearts out. As one generation begins to pass, another one (ours) is able to look forward and back, while this younger one is growing faster than my beloved bamboo, rising higher, becoming more ambitious and ever more radiant.
It's such a gift to be their parent, to have been such a part of their childhood and youth. I'm so happy to have come back up this w/end to see them play, again. Their joy and fulfillment is so rich, I feel even more the purity and sanctity of parenthood on this late autumn day amid the western Massachusetts forests and farms in every direction. There is a quiet calm of nature that seems to have descended on the land. a shimmering light as the sun wanes on the horizon and the softly rolling hills catch that light and reflect it, as if they were ponds of colored water dazzling the unprotected eyes.
I feel blessed by these hues as the days spread out the beauty of nature through late October and early November. The waning of the tenderness of the earth as it prepares for the long, dark months of winter. So I stand, prancing a bit in my sneakers as the late afternoon chill seeps up from the earth, watching our sons gain their manhood and maturity in such a boy's mere pleasure in racing, chasing a round, colored ball up and down a lush, green, trampled field amid the tumble of bodies, sweat and competition. They leap with joy and today they are victors at home in front of their friends, fans and parents. there is exhaustion and contentment for them.
They know not of the message that the natural world is reminding us behind and all around them. We know. We have been through these years before. I have just spent a week with my parents in their 80s. I can see what these autumns portend. But, there is happiness in seeing, as well, the innocence and frivolity of our children. these are perfect days for their games. As we may have offered to them, they, too, inspire us with this love of life, of play, of pushing themselves out beyond their limits before they come back to earth, one day, as parents themselves and see what we now see of nature's meaning.
The constant travel, alas, is a bit desultory, wearisome, but the joy of being in time & place w/ some of my most intimate family --parents & children -- as you can appreciate, is profound.
More than i know how to say...
This afternoon both boys had football/soccer games. I first drove down to Deerfield to watch Ezi, Mo and Suraj play in their JV game, as it started a half hour before the varsity game and Deerfield is only 20 minutes south of NMH. I'd never been there before, although I'd passed the signs to "Historic Deerfield" a few times. I can say now that on a late autumn day like today the well-preserved town of Deerfield is one of the most exquisite I've ever seen in New England. It's an absolutely charming, undisturbed 17th/18th c. village under a canopy of magnificent street-lined trees.
Fortunately, even within my reverie, I got to the game just minutes before it startedm meandering down rural backroads, across great steel spans over the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers with one eye on the road and one eye simply absorbing the waning color palate covering the hillsides. There's a deep contentment in such a landscape, cool, distant, decadent with an array of yellow, rust, reds, burgundies, and the occasional bright damask, that soothes and comforts the mind, before the reality of winter.
Oh, yes, back to the story... Ezi was on the pitch, playing midfield, where he loves to direct the action of the game. Unfortunately, Deerfield quickly went up 2-0 due to some defensive lapses that hurt NMH early and long. Therefore, before the first half was over, Coach Derr sustituted Ezi back into the goal to make sure Deerfield didn't score again so NMH would have a chance to get back into the game. Then, on a stunning reversal of fortune, a minute before half-time, Ezi launched a massive goal kick down the pitch that bounced before the other goalie, giving Suraj and a teammate the chance to quickly handle the ball for a goal! Not too bad for Ezi as goalie to get an assist on an NMH goal!
But at half time, I had to drive back up to NMH as Josh's game started half an hour after Ezi's and it was Josh's last home game of the year. All the varsity seniors, including Josh, were starting as it was their last NMH home game. I missed the beginning, but NMH was up 1-0 and Josh was still on the pitch. In fact, five minutes after I got there Josh triumphantly grabbed a header, hitting it twice by himself to put the ball in the back of the net. NMH was up 2-0 at the half!
Josh was having his best game of the year, possibly his career. The whole team was playing (what many said) was their best football of the year. Josh even scored again in the second half with a surging, powerful header from a lovely cross by one of his teammates. At the end, NMH put Cushing Academy away with a convincing 5-0 win.
Alas, although Ezi's JV team (Ez & Mo have been named the captains for the rest of the year) looked ready to capitalize on Deerfield's weakness when I left after the first half, they just couldn't find the equalizer in the second half and lost 2-1. Ezi, I'm told had some solid saves in the second half, as well as 'great distribution', but when I was w/ him at dinner, Suraj was still trying to calm him down from the loss...
But, with the Tron Bon(fire) on the evening schedule, knowing Ezi's innate resilience, I don't think he was going to stay in a funk very long. In fact, he was back to his adorable self, getting his friends in the party mood over dinner.
I ate in the dining hall w/ a couple of Josh's teammates' parents talking about the team, the school and our kids. Colin's dad married a polynesian from New Zealand, so Colin's half mixed up, too, as well as the best footballer on the team (some day, New England...). The other boys' parents were gentle quakers from Vermont who are proudly on the Parents' Advisory Council for NMH. Sweet folks all around.
I'm beginning to feel the weariness of the constant travel, but there's so much joy in being w/ and near the boys that I only feel it when i'm away from them. After all, this is rare & precious time poised between two generations in my life.
In truth, I feel incredibly fortunate that at this stage of my life, in my mid-50s, I can be spend such time b/n the two. Although it is painful to watching one's dearly loved parents age, yet, concomitantly, I am able to see Josh & Ez, so strong, vital and alive in their late teens, playing their hearts out. As one generation begins to pass, another one (ours) is able to look forward and back, while this younger one is growing faster than my beloved bamboo, rising higher, becoming more ambitious and ever more radiant.
It's such a gift to be their parent, to have been such a part of their childhood and youth. I'm so happy to have come back up this w/end to see them play, again. Their joy and fulfillment is so rich, I feel even more the purity and sanctity of parenthood on this late autumn day amid the western Massachusetts forests and farms in every direction. There is a quiet calm of nature that seems to have descended on the land. a shimmering light as the sun wanes on the horizon and the softly rolling hills catch that light and reflect it, as if they were ponds of colored water dazzling the unprotected eyes.
I feel blessed by these hues as the days spread out the beauty of nature through late October and early November. The waning of the tenderness of the earth as it prepares for the long, dark months of winter. So I stand, prancing a bit in my sneakers as the late afternoon chill seeps up from the earth, watching our sons gain their manhood and maturity in such a boy's mere pleasure in racing, chasing a round, colored ball up and down a lush, green, trampled field amid the tumble of bodies, sweat and competition. They leap with joy and today they are victors at home in front of their friends, fans and parents. there is exhaustion and contentment for them.
They know not of the message that the natural world is reminding us behind and all around them. We know. We have been through these years before. I have just spent a week with my parents in their 80s. I can see what these autumns portend. But, there is happiness in seeing, as well, the innocence and frivolity of our children. these are perfect days for their games. As we may have offered to them, they, too, inspire us with this love of life, of play, of pushing themselves out beyond their limits before they come back to earth, one day, as parents themselves and see what we now see of nature's meaning.
The constant travel, alas, is a bit desultory, wearisome, but the joy of being in time & place w/ some of my most intimate family --parents & children -- as you can appreciate, is profound.
More than i know how to say...
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A Mother's 80th Birthday Bhakta Blessing
October 24th, 2008
Dear Mom,
‘As time goes by…’ is the song, no? Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”… the sense of loss, tenderness and attachment that accompanies the bittersweet reunion, soon followed by departure, that is the basis of all forms of human affection.
Ahh, ‘and what is love?’, as Herr Mann often started his paragraphs in “The Magic Mountain” about time. This strange, bonding quality that unites individuals through the mists of time, the oceans of geography and the echoes of childhood. We travel through time & space, spending our lives shifting from here to there, and occasionally back again, but throughout our personal odyssey there are certain fragrances, call them persons, with whom we are forever attached, bonded, quilted and beholden to.
Mothers are One. One in the sense of our origins, our first becoming and being, the original sin become the original joy and the celebration of the creation of life, the start of family and the longing to protect and be protected. Quite basic, really. One with you from the beginning until the very end of being. There are no separations in this attachment, no complications, no divisions, nothing which can sever the reality of being One.
As the Jews say about the nature of G-d and man, being ‘at-one-ment’, which the Buddhists have wisely transformed into a mediation perceiving every living being as one’s mother during one incarnation or another. How can one not love all of humanity (even the guy who just cut you off while driving…), if they have all been at one time or another, through the amplitude of time, your blessed mother?
Yet, for all those beings who may have been my mother in an unforeseen or unremembered lifetime, respect them -- but for these past fifty-four years (1954-2008) I’ve been blessed by one profoundly precious, caring, loving and forever forgiving mother, Priscilla Rose Leslie. In that, I am eternally thankful to the g-ds for letting us share so many wonderful years together in this fleeting world.
You’ve been the still centerpiece of our family's lives, Mom. The quiet and enduring strength when we needed someone to trust or rely upon; the caring and loving mother who would lift us up when we were down or at risk of capsizing in the turbulent world; the protectoress in the background always watching our backs and making sure that we knew what dangers may be ahead; the judge of our actions and decisions who would try to guide us in the right direction and advise us on the consequences of our choices; the sacred spirit recalling our religious duties and obligations in an increasingly secular and atomized world.
In all of these roles, Mom, you were 'the One'. You were the elegant mother we were all proud of among the suburbanites of Syracuse, cool, refined, urbane, among the earthy chatter of the neighborhood. The Belle of Fieldston, who sought sanctuary Upstate away from the artifice and high society of the City. The well-read deb who chose a career in nursing to care for others while raising her family. The well-coiffed cook who could make the best brisket, as well as roast pork, of any Reform mother in the synagogue.
The station wagon Mom stuffing us in the back for Sunday School or Boy Scouts or summer camp or the Passovers with the Tumans in New Jersey or the unexpected, free-spirited, escape from school, ‘on the road’ journeys down the New York State Thruway from Syracuse to the caverns and excitement of Rose's apartment at Sixth Avenue and 57th St. on a dime and a lark…
Childhood memories mixed with the turmoils of adolescence and unexpected sexuality. The simple joys of high school before the well-planned displacement to college and then beyond. The slow, necessary, complex struggle to become One-in-oneself, separate from the protective shadow of one’s parents, beloved and misunderstood in equal measures.
We all survive, fall and stand up again on that journey. Yet, it is made the more soothing and comforting when one knows that there is a mother who loves and loves without question or limitation.
Thank-you, Mom, for all these years of joy, care and love. I couldn’t have asked for more...
xoxo, Keith
[Note: The Bhakti movement was a Hindu religious movement in which the spiritual practice was loving devotion to G-d, or bhakti. The devotion was directed towards a particular form of G-d, such as Shiva, Vishnu or Shakti. The bhakti movement started in southern India and spread north during the Indian medieval period (800-1700 CE). A bhakta is a devotee of a particular form of G-d. In common use it means 'one who follows the path of bhakti', often referred to as bhakti yoga.]
Dear Mom,
‘As time goes by…’ is the song, no? Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”… the sense of loss, tenderness and attachment that accompanies the bittersweet reunion, soon followed by departure, that is the basis of all forms of human affection.
Ahh, ‘and what is love?’, as Herr Mann often started his paragraphs in “The Magic Mountain” about time. This strange, bonding quality that unites individuals through the mists of time, the oceans of geography and the echoes of childhood. We travel through time & space, spending our lives shifting from here to there, and occasionally back again, but throughout our personal odyssey there are certain fragrances, call them persons, with whom we are forever attached, bonded, quilted and beholden to.
Mothers are One. One in the sense of our origins, our first becoming and being, the original sin become the original joy and the celebration of the creation of life, the start of family and the longing to protect and be protected. Quite basic, really. One with you from the beginning until the very end of being. There are no separations in this attachment, no complications, no divisions, nothing which can sever the reality of being One.
As the Jews say about the nature of G-d and man, being ‘at-one-ment’, which the Buddhists have wisely transformed into a mediation perceiving every living being as one’s mother during one incarnation or another. How can one not love all of humanity (even the guy who just cut you off while driving…), if they have all been at one time or another, through the amplitude of time, your blessed mother?
Yet, for all those beings who may have been my mother in an unforeseen or unremembered lifetime, respect them -- but for these past fifty-four years (1954-2008) I’ve been blessed by one profoundly precious, caring, loving and forever forgiving mother, Priscilla Rose Leslie. In that, I am eternally thankful to the g-ds for letting us share so many wonderful years together in this fleeting world.
You’ve been the still centerpiece of our family's lives, Mom. The quiet and enduring strength when we needed someone to trust or rely upon; the caring and loving mother who would lift us up when we were down or at risk of capsizing in the turbulent world; the protectoress in the background always watching our backs and making sure that we knew what dangers may be ahead; the judge of our actions and decisions who would try to guide us in the right direction and advise us on the consequences of our choices; the sacred spirit recalling our religious duties and obligations in an increasingly secular and atomized world.
In all of these roles, Mom, you were 'the One'. You were the elegant mother we were all proud of among the suburbanites of Syracuse, cool, refined, urbane, among the earthy chatter of the neighborhood. The Belle of Fieldston, who sought sanctuary Upstate away from the artifice and high society of the City. The well-read deb who chose a career in nursing to care for others while raising her family. The well-coiffed cook who could make the best brisket, as well as roast pork, of any Reform mother in the synagogue.
The station wagon Mom stuffing us in the back for Sunday School or Boy Scouts or summer camp or the Passovers with the Tumans in New Jersey or the unexpected, free-spirited, escape from school, ‘on the road’ journeys down the New York State Thruway from Syracuse to the caverns and excitement of Rose's apartment at Sixth Avenue and 57th St. on a dime and a lark…
Childhood memories mixed with the turmoils of adolescence and unexpected sexuality. The simple joys of high school before the well-planned displacement to college and then beyond. The slow, necessary, complex struggle to become One-in-oneself, separate from the protective shadow of one’s parents, beloved and misunderstood in equal measures.
We all survive, fall and stand up again on that journey. Yet, it is made the more soothing and comforting when one knows that there is a mother who loves and loves without question or limitation.
Thank-you, Mom, for all these years of joy, care and love. I couldn’t have asked for more...
xoxo, Keith
[Note: The Bhakti movement was a Hindu religious movement in which the spiritual practice was loving devotion to G-d, or bhakti. The devotion was directed towards a particular form of G-d, such as Shiva, Vishnu or Shakti. The bhakti movement started in southern India and spread north during the Indian medieval period (800-1700 CE). A bhakta is a devotee of a particular form of G-d. In common use it means 'one who follows the path of bhakti', often referred to as bhakti yoga.]
Tony Hillerman, novelist
“Everything is connected,” Jim Chee reflects in “The Ghostway” (1984).
“The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality.
All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.”
Tony Hillerman, novelist
1925-2008
“The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality.
All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.”
Tony Hillerman, novelist
1925-2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Journey: Travels with Steinbeck 1962
"When I was very young and the urge to be some place else was on me, I ws assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach highup under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teenagers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
Once a journey is desgined, equipped,, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uinqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brassbound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, altough only those who have experienced it will understand it."
John Steinbeck
Travels with Charlie in Search of America
1962
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teenagers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
Once a journey is desgined, equipped,, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uinqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brassbound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, altough only those who have experienced it will understand it."
John Steinbeck
Travels with Charlie in Search of America
1962
Sunday, October 19, 2008
My Three Sons (and Mohammad, too...)
the boys are upstairs asleep in bruce and buff's quiet newton home, while i'm down a flight of stairs on monica's computer, as usual when i'm here.
it's about 8 am here on sunday morning. i've been up for two hours already. a bit of jet lag, but also i went to bed before 11
pm, so a reasonable night's sleep, as well. the boys, however, may sleep for a few more hours as they are cumulatively exhausted by school, soccer and the intensity of their lives. if they are homsick, at times, they don't have much time to think
about it...
as i noted the other day, my trip here was also exhausting. i gave the eithad folks my mind a few times, mixing humor, anger and irony, to the delight of the international crowd around me, when the airlines were simply so incompetent in rearranging our travel once they cancelled the direct flight to nyc from abu dhabi after the flight was postponed for hours.. the eithad staff, of course, were trying the best, but they were either poorly trained or badly managed for dealing with such a situation (where 70++ folks are all trying to make new plans without any good guidance from the airlines).
thus, i had one night in abu dhabi (in the hotel lounge that turned out to be a steal at $23 for 16 hours...), then in london on thursday night when we missed our american airlines connection due to more delays in abu dhabi on the runway.
even now, on sunday, i still haven't seen my bag yet. hopefully it'll show up today at bruce's, but i can't be certain, of course. in the end, i finally flew to nyc on british airways (which was quite nice, thank-you), so they are responsible now for finding the bag and sending it to me here. en challah!
then, no surprise, nyc traffic was a bear leaving jfk and getting across the whitestone bridge in the early afternoon. it took 3 hours to drive to new haven with too many cars for the road space -- not to mention all the folks escaping the city for the w/end on a friday afternoon. after getting on 91 north, it only took 2 hours through increasingly open, tranquil and autumnal landscape.
i finally arrived at nmh at 7:30 pm on friday, sixty hours after leaving k'du, long after the classes i'd hoped to attend had ended, but in time to take the boys (joshua, ezra and suraj) w/ mohammad, their close egytian friend, out to dinner for what they affectionately call 'fake thai food' in greenfield.
as any parent will immediately understand, it's so great to be near our sons and their friends again. strange, in some ways, that it feels so natural when we were breathless for weeks in kathmandu w/o them nearby. one good steady hug and reality bites back. in truth, they all look and sound quite good.
no matter our fretting, their kvetching and our fears, all three of them (josh, ezi & suraj) seem in excellent spirits and minds. of course, it doesn't take too long to hear the complaining, which is the human condition for all of us, but i heard almost universal praise about them from their teachers, administrators and the like. not to mention, they seem in good health, physically, emotionally & mentally -- even though they are overworked, over-exercised and all the natural stuff that young students and boys feel when they have to be in the constraints and demands of formal school.
there's much at nmh to admire. not the least the massive construction boom of the past year. the new $10 m arts center is stunning and has begun to define the new mount hermon campus quad. although it is truly a cow pasture on a hill overlooing the connecticut river, what a cow pasture! the views are stunning, esp. in the autumn colors and refreshing liight. there's a joyfulness and studiousness that endows a new england campus setting, as well.
i also really liked all the teachers i met. they seem a wise, stimulating and caring community. a healthy mix of old and new, americans and internationals. i met with josh & sura's ap env science teacher, ezi's french teacher, josh's classics teacher and suraj's math teacher (a vietnamese immigrant who sees himself in suraj's odyssey to the states). although the boys may have started the term a bit slowly w/ not their desired grades, they all seem to have picked up their games in october and are moving toward high Bs in all subjects w/ the possibility of even an A- if they work super hard and concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.
in the afternoon, with a bit of a pre-winter wind coming off the hills, i watched the first half of the jv and second half of the varsity soccer games. unfortunately, neither team won against andover and the varsity season, after such great hopes, is falling apart at 2-6. sad for joshua, especially, but he so loves playing at the varsity level, that no matter what he says about the frustration with this season, there's a deep pride of accomplishment personally in what he has achieved, even if the team is tanking this year.
ez and suraj are playing w/ mo on the JV this year (as josh did last year). the jv team has a very good record this year and a real team spirit, so that's fun for them. because mo's the captain of the jv this year, he and ezi have become very tight which is a delight to see. the egyptian-nepal axis of joy and respect seems well watered by this young tribe for a long-term growth. it's a pleasure to see national and religious barriers so easily overcome far from home in the openness and generosity of youth...
i was also told that there's also a good chance josh wil go to the model un in hong kong in january, after he returns to campus from nepal. i met the woman in charge and she spoke very highly and affectionately about josh's leadership on the mun, as he's the student teacher for the mun students. it's been a great source of pride and interest for joshu, since global affairs and international studies comes so naturally to a son born in thaiand, raised in nepal, who's traveled the world with an american passport.
i also met ezi's new buddy, bill batty, the 70 year nmh english teacher who is ezra's partner in french 3 honors. bill's taing the french course for the pleasure of learning. he's an adorable humanist who absolutely loves movies, literature. life & ezi. he's a wonderfully inspiring man who is an excellent role model for ezi who says 'ezra's like the mayor of nmh; he knows and greets everyone!' not only that. he told me ezi sings songs in french class that he writes himself about nmh! now, can you imagine that?? ;-)
over lunch yesterday in the dining hall, when ezi ran off to watch the man utd game, suraj and i sat and talked. he's in good spirits, although says that the nmh academics are so much more demanding & rigorous than they experienced at lincoln. he described the nmh environment as 'taking some of the most talented people from all over the world and putting them here on one campus'. of course, there are all types of kids here, but it's an insightful perspective that explains the level of demand and achievement among many of the students.
clearly, suraj is very well-liked by the two of his teachers i met and is much more settled here than a month ago. suraj also told me (ezi hasn't...) that ezra has decided that he's definitely staying on next year. he said that ezi feels that it woul be hard to return to lincoln after the challenge and growth he's experienced nmh. he's afraid he'd be unhappy personally at lincoln after the stimulus and demands of nmh. he's doesn't think it would be wise to return after having begun, with so much struggle, his new path here. even if nmh is academically and athletically much tougher than the gentler and more supportive lincoln, it's a challenge that he now finds appealing and rewarding. in this i trust suraj's perspective & thoughts on ezi.
whereas suraj is less certain. he says that he and ezi discuss this all the time and he's more cautious than ezi. partially it's also b/c it's not certain that nmh will fund suraj for a second year, as well as his feeling, that he expressed to me, that once he starts college he won't be going back to nepal for a long time (forever?), so he thinks doing his senior year there, with his family and among old friends, even if the academics is less challenging, would be an important year for him. of course, that's also motivated by the fact that he doubts that he will be able to afford to go back this summer if he stays on, which makes
him more homesick since ezi & josh are even coming at the new year's break. although i told suraj that, if nmh offers him a second year, there may be a way for his family to bring him back in the summer or he could find work in nepal to help
subidize that cost...
while joshua is busy filling out college applications this weekend. for him, he can see the end of his two years at nmh almost in sight. he's ready to move on, he says. ready to be free of the strict rules and requirements that a boarding school impose. he's 18 years old now and wants to begin the next stage of his almot adult life. nmh has given him so much, but it's time to get himself closer to a city with all the opportunities and simuli that the modern urban universe offers. closer, as well, to himself and the image he is still creating of the young man he is busy becoming...
three sons. three young men. three lives. for the moment, all sharing their world in western massachusetts, stimulated, challenged, possibly even inspired. all a bit homesick and eager to escape for this long weekend with dad as their charioteer.
for me, the joys of fatherhood are endless, enriching and profound. i am so happy to be among them, again.
so, after a full day's journey, with mohammed with us to meet his sister in boston, we drove the increasingly familiar route 2 express to bruce's last night about 9 pm. once again, bruce and buff are great hosts for us from the 'far abroad'. it feels so good to be able to have an extended family home to come back to when the boys leave the campus and i come to america.
with the way the stock market has been dancing these past weeks, it's doubtful that we'll be purchasing our own here anytime soon....
it's about 8 am here on sunday morning. i've been up for two hours already. a bit of jet lag, but also i went to bed before 11
pm, so a reasonable night's sleep, as well. the boys, however, may sleep for a few more hours as they are cumulatively exhausted by school, soccer and the intensity of their lives. if they are homsick, at times, they don't have much time to think
about it...
as i noted the other day, my trip here was also exhausting. i gave the eithad folks my mind a few times, mixing humor, anger and irony, to the delight of the international crowd around me, when the airlines were simply so incompetent in rearranging our travel once they cancelled the direct flight to nyc from abu dhabi after the flight was postponed for hours.. the eithad staff, of course, were trying the best, but they were either poorly trained or badly managed for dealing with such a situation (where 70++ folks are all trying to make new plans without any good guidance from the airlines).
thus, i had one night in abu dhabi (in the hotel lounge that turned out to be a steal at $23 for 16 hours...), then in london on thursday night when we missed our american airlines connection due to more delays in abu dhabi on the runway.
even now, on sunday, i still haven't seen my bag yet. hopefully it'll show up today at bruce's, but i can't be certain, of course. in the end, i finally flew to nyc on british airways (which was quite nice, thank-you), so they are responsible now for finding the bag and sending it to me here. en challah!
then, no surprise, nyc traffic was a bear leaving jfk and getting across the whitestone bridge in the early afternoon. it took 3 hours to drive to new haven with too many cars for the road space -- not to mention all the folks escaping the city for the w/end on a friday afternoon. after getting on 91 north, it only took 2 hours through increasingly open, tranquil and autumnal landscape.
i finally arrived at nmh at 7:30 pm on friday, sixty hours after leaving k'du, long after the classes i'd hoped to attend had ended, but in time to take the boys (joshua, ezra and suraj) w/ mohammad, their close egytian friend, out to dinner for what they affectionately call 'fake thai food' in greenfield.
as any parent will immediately understand, it's so great to be near our sons and their friends again. strange, in some ways, that it feels so natural when we were breathless for weeks in kathmandu w/o them nearby. one good steady hug and reality bites back. in truth, they all look and sound quite good.
no matter our fretting, their kvetching and our fears, all three of them (josh, ezi & suraj) seem in excellent spirits and minds. of course, it doesn't take too long to hear the complaining, which is the human condition for all of us, but i heard almost universal praise about them from their teachers, administrators and the like. not to mention, they seem in good health, physically, emotionally & mentally -- even though they are overworked, over-exercised and all the natural stuff that young students and boys feel when they have to be in the constraints and demands of formal school.
there's much at nmh to admire. not the least the massive construction boom of the past year. the new $10 m arts center is stunning and has begun to define the new mount hermon campus quad. although it is truly a cow pasture on a hill overlooing the connecticut river, what a cow pasture! the views are stunning, esp. in the autumn colors and refreshing liight. there's a joyfulness and studiousness that endows a new england campus setting, as well.
i also really liked all the teachers i met. they seem a wise, stimulating and caring community. a healthy mix of old and new, americans and internationals. i met with josh & sura's ap env science teacher, ezi's french teacher, josh's classics teacher and suraj's math teacher (a vietnamese immigrant who sees himself in suraj's odyssey to the states). although the boys may have started the term a bit slowly w/ not their desired grades, they all seem to have picked up their games in october and are moving toward high Bs in all subjects w/ the possibility of even an A- if they work super hard and concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.
in the afternoon, with a bit of a pre-winter wind coming off the hills, i watched the first half of the jv and second half of the varsity soccer games. unfortunately, neither team won against andover and the varsity season, after such great hopes, is falling apart at 2-6. sad for joshua, especially, but he so loves playing at the varsity level, that no matter what he says about the frustration with this season, there's a deep pride of accomplishment personally in what he has achieved, even if the team is tanking this year.
ez and suraj are playing w/ mo on the JV this year (as josh did last year). the jv team has a very good record this year and a real team spirit, so that's fun for them. because mo's the captain of the jv this year, he and ezi have become very tight which is a delight to see. the egyptian-nepal axis of joy and respect seems well watered by this young tribe for a long-term growth. it's a pleasure to see national and religious barriers so easily overcome far from home in the openness and generosity of youth...
i was also told that there's also a good chance josh wil go to the model un in hong kong in january, after he returns to campus from nepal. i met the woman in charge and she spoke very highly and affectionately about josh's leadership on the mun, as he's the student teacher for the mun students. it's been a great source of pride and interest for joshu, since global affairs and international studies comes so naturally to a son born in thaiand, raised in nepal, who's traveled the world with an american passport.
i also met ezi's new buddy, bill batty, the 70 year nmh english teacher who is ezra's partner in french 3 honors. bill's taing the french course for the pleasure of learning. he's an adorable humanist who absolutely loves movies, literature. life & ezi. he's a wonderfully inspiring man who is an excellent role model for ezi who says 'ezra's like the mayor of nmh; he knows and greets everyone!' not only that. he told me ezi sings songs in french class that he writes himself about nmh! now, can you imagine that?? ;-)
over lunch yesterday in the dining hall, when ezi ran off to watch the man utd game, suraj and i sat and talked. he's in good spirits, although says that the nmh academics are so much more demanding & rigorous than they experienced at lincoln. he described the nmh environment as 'taking some of the most talented people from all over the world and putting them here on one campus'. of course, there are all types of kids here, but it's an insightful perspective that explains the level of demand and achievement among many of the students.
clearly, suraj is very well-liked by the two of his teachers i met and is much more settled here than a month ago. suraj also told me (ezi hasn't...) that ezra has decided that he's definitely staying on next year. he said that ezi feels that it woul be hard to return to lincoln after the challenge and growth he's experienced nmh. he's afraid he'd be unhappy personally at lincoln after the stimulus and demands of nmh. he's doesn't think it would be wise to return after having begun, with so much struggle, his new path here. even if nmh is academically and athletically much tougher than the gentler and more supportive lincoln, it's a challenge that he now finds appealing and rewarding. in this i trust suraj's perspective & thoughts on ezi.
whereas suraj is less certain. he says that he and ezi discuss this all the time and he's more cautious than ezi. partially it's also b/c it's not certain that nmh will fund suraj for a second year, as well as his feeling, that he expressed to me, that once he starts college he won't be going back to nepal for a long time (forever?), so he thinks doing his senior year there, with his family and among old friends, even if the academics is less challenging, would be an important year for him. of course, that's also motivated by the fact that he doubts that he will be able to afford to go back this summer if he stays on, which makes
him more homesick since ezi & josh are even coming at the new year's break. although i told suraj that, if nmh offers him a second year, there may be a way for his family to bring him back in the summer or he could find work in nepal to help
subidize that cost...
while joshua is busy filling out college applications this weekend. for him, he can see the end of his two years at nmh almost in sight. he's ready to move on, he says. ready to be free of the strict rules and requirements that a boarding school impose. he's 18 years old now and wants to begin the next stage of his almot adult life. nmh has given him so much, but it's time to get himself closer to a city with all the opportunities and simuli that the modern urban universe offers. closer, as well, to himself and the image he is still creating of the young man he is busy becoming...
three sons. three young men. three lives. for the moment, all sharing their world in western massachusetts, stimulated, challenged, possibly even inspired. all a bit homesick and eager to escape for this long weekend with dad as their charioteer.
for me, the joys of fatherhood are endless, enriching and profound. i am so happy to be among them, again.
so, after a full day's journey, with mohammed with us to meet his sister in boston, we drove the increasingly familiar route 2 express to bruce's last night about 9 pm. once again, bruce and buff are great hosts for us from the 'far abroad'. it feels so good to be able to have an extended family home to come back to when the boys leave the campus and i come to america.
with the way the stock market has been dancing these past weeks, it's doubtful that we'll be purchasing our own here anytime soon....
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Stuck inside of Abu Dhabi with the NYC Blues Again
Well, the news got worse (as it often does...) rather than better during the night. Instead of the 2-3 hour delay due to the fog here in the United Arab Emirates, at some point early this morning the fight was cancelled. I guess the crew had waited long enough and couldn't fly to the States w/o breaking the regulations, alas.
So, instead of a five hour wait b/n flights in Abu Dhabi, I've been here for about 12hours with another 4 more to go. I could have gotten a residency permit in that time...
Fortunately, as I said earlier, I went to the airport hotel lounge and paid to stay here when I arrived, so I've had the sanctuary of their relative comfort, food and drinks, not to mention the internet. A little pricey at $23 for a few hours, an absolute steal for most of the night and day...
Now, instead of flying directly to NYC on Eithad, they've rebooked us via London (Heathrow) on Eithad and then to NYC on American Airlines. Unfortunately, I won't get to NYC until 11 pm tonight (Thursday). Since I need to be in the boys' NMH classroom for Parents Weekend at 8 am tomorrow (Friday), the revised schedule leaves a bit to be desired.
What I'm thinking now is that unless there is a midnight flight to Boston that I can catch (dubious...), I'll just rent a car at JFK and drive up to western Massachusetts tonight. It's definitely not my preferred option (at this point, there is no preferred option...), but it's the only way I can get to the boys' school in time for classes first thing Friday morning.
Ahhh, the mixed blessings of modern travel... (It's now 9:30 am, a full 12 hours after arriving here, with very little sleep, so I feel like I could slip off this seat and simply sleep.) It's, no doubt, better than the steerage journeys that many of our ancestors took from the shipyards or cities along the Baltic coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quicker, too -- even with these delays...
I wonder at how attractive or pleasant the accomodations or food were on those week-long sea voyages. The massive immigration at the turn of the century, 108 years ago, when the shetel was fleeing the czar's wrath, cossack greed and religious intolerance. So many families who constitue our modern American world came at that time. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Germans and rag muffin European peasantry and urban overlow.
In the spring, when I came to visit Mom & Dad, I started on their memoirs, and the stories of their families. I wondered while trying to get stories out of them, about the passage from the olde world to the new one. My father's parents actually came when they were young from Russian to America, while my mother's family came a generation earlier.
Yet, alas, there's no one alive to tell me the stories or relate the 'sights & sounds' of those maiden voyages. How did they feel crossing between worlds? What were their fears? Their hopes? What did they carry? Who did they come with? Who was there to receive them? What did they leave behind? Where did they think they were going? What did it feel like when they go there? (more, more...)
These thoughts came to me earlier today when I was still at the Kathmandu airport early yesterday evening. There were huddles of Bhutanese (Nepali) refugee families being transited by IOM (Int'l Organization for Migration) to the United States. Like our relatives of olde, these families appeared to have little idea of where they were going, seemed not to speak much English and were in the proces of having their lives changed forver.
As I sat near them, they seemed like they had just come out of a Bhutanese or Nepali village. I could easily imagine them in Zhemgang or Gorkha district. Rugged, simple, hard-working, innocent villagers who mostly took one day at a time and thought of wealth in terms of enough food to eat and children to help them.
They were dressed like the villagers I have known for a quarter of a century (wow!) while living & working in Nepal. Married daughters carrying for their aged parents. Handicapped (physically and mentally) children being taken care of by siblings. Basnets, Gurungs, Subedis and Magars all leaving the forced regime of refugee camps to the unknown and vast world of America.
I wondered if our past generations left with the same trepidation and anticipation? Yet there was no int'l agency there to help prepare and guide our grand and great-grand parents across that cultural, economic and social divide.
After so long in Nepal, I'm biased -- but I have a hard time seeing these older folks finding a better life in the isolated suburbs or dense urban environments of America. Maybe it's my limitation after so many years in Nepal, but I worried that the older parents and grandparents would find more unhappiness than fulfillment in the States; all for the sake of their younger generations who would much more quickly fit in, become American and leave the old world behind.
Didn't our grandparents do the same for us?
So many of the centuries-old historical traditions collapsed and withered in the open, free, safe & vivaciously new space of America. The great secular manifest destiny of our modern republic absorbing language, history and religion in a cultural maelstrom of new pop icons like Mae West (perfect name for a new continent...), Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Nat King Cole, Elizabeth Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Allen, Tupac Shakur and Morgan Freeman...
Will these dear Himalayan souls, in their Chinese sneakers, Thai t-shirts, towels still wrapped around their heads, find solace and opportunity in America? Is the dream still on the horizon for the latest immigrants? Will they find the reserves w/in themselves to adjust to the radically different world that awaits them? Will the grandparents retreat to the privacy of their new homes while the younger children begin their individual paths to the American life through school, friends and the relative receptivity of a proudly multi-cultural society?
Ahh, dear great grandmother, unknown, unknowable. I see you in the grainy, B&W sepia-toned photos, stern, tidy and proud. You are surrounded by a score of children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews and nieces dressed in their Sunday finery. I imagine you making the sea voyage as a young woman, carrying tightly your most valuable possessions, firmly holding the hand of your father, as you bid adieu to the grey shores of Prussia, villages and towns receding from view. A favorite cat or puppy left behind. Childhood friends who you know you will never see again...
Now, I have crossed part of that boundary myself. After 25 years in Nepal, I find my Janus face looking both ways. Tonight, I am caught in the river Styx, Charon's lost his oar and we wait, almost patiently, for the airlines staff to bring us new boarding passes to permit us to leave, finally, this middle world, neither East nor West, a connecting point, a passage in the night.
Yet, my concerns and complaints last only a few hours, half a day, I know not the long and final passage that you made from the old world to the new. These days, we flit between these categories almost with ease (airport lounges offering us snacks, drinks & the ubiquitous internet...).
Only these 'gaonly' Bhutanese (Nepali) refugees accompanying me to remind me that once, too, my family left a traditional world, huddling, like refugees, between greater and more expansionist empires, seeking a home, a refuge, a sanctuary. Like these passing villagers traveling with hope and fear through the night with me, they found it in America, over a hundred years ago.
While I, a generation removed, went searching for some qualities of the world they'd left behind and found Nepal, dear Nepal, and a pilgrim's progress...
Now, distant, long passed, Great Grandmothers, I cross these distances by air, not sea, and find my own children on both sides of this aching planet, struggling themselves to find their feet in a world of categories, identities and biases.
May some of your courage carry them, as well, over the personal and physical seas that they must perforce traverse.
When they, too, look at your enduring photographs, may your strength be theirs, as well.
I think they're calling my flight tonight...
So, instead of a five hour wait b/n flights in Abu Dhabi, I've been here for about 12hours with another 4 more to go. I could have gotten a residency permit in that time...
Fortunately, as I said earlier, I went to the airport hotel lounge and paid to stay here when I arrived, so I've had the sanctuary of their relative comfort, food and drinks, not to mention the internet. A little pricey at $23 for a few hours, an absolute steal for most of the night and day...
Now, instead of flying directly to NYC on Eithad, they've rebooked us via London (Heathrow) on Eithad and then to NYC on American Airlines. Unfortunately, I won't get to NYC until 11 pm tonight (Thursday). Since I need to be in the boys' NMH classroom for Parents Weekend at 8 am tomorrow (Friday), the revised schedule leaves a bit to be desired.
What I'm thinking now is that unless there is a midnight flight to Boston that I can catch (dubious...), I'll just rent a car at JFK and drive up to western Massachusetts tonight. It's definitely not my preferred option (at this point, there is no preferred option...), but it's the only way I can get to the boys' school in time for classes first thing Friday morning.
Ahhh, the mixed blessings of modern travel... (It's now 9:30 am, a full 12 hours after arriving here, with very little sleep, so I feel like I could slip off this seat and simply sleep.) It's, no doubt, better than the steerage journeys that many of our ancestors took from the shipyards or cities along the Baltic coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quicker, too -- even with these delays...
I wonder at how attractive or pleasant the accomodations or food were on those week-long sea voyages. The massive immigration at the turn of the century, 108 years ago, when the shetel was fleeing the czar's wrath, cossack greed and religious intolerance. So many families who constitue our modern American world came at that time. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Germans and rag muffin European peasantry and urban overlow.
In the spring, when I came to visit Mom & Dad, I started on their memoirs, and the stories of their families. I wondered while trying to get stories out of them, about the passage from the olde world to the new one. My father's parents actually came when they were young from Russian to America, while my mother's family came a generation earlier.
Yet, alas, there's no one alive to tell me the stories or relate the 'sights & sounds' of those maiden voyages. How did they feel crossing between worlds? What were their fears? Their hopes? What did they carry? Who did they come with? Who was there to receive them? What did they leave behind? Where did they think they were going? What did it feel like when they go there? (more, more...)
These thoughts came to me earlier today when I was still at the Kathmandu airport early yesterday evening. There were huddles of Bhutanese (Nepali) refugee families being transited by IOM (Int'l Organization for Migration) to the United States. Like our relatives of olde, these families appeared to have little idea of where they were going, seemed not to speak much English and were in the proces of having their lives changed forver.
As I sat near them, they seemed like they had just come out of a Bhutanese or Nepali village. I could easily imagine them in Zhemgang or Gorkha district. Rugged, simple, hard-working, innocent villagers who mostly took one day at a time and thought of wealth in terms of enough food to eat and children to help them.
They were dressed like the villagers I have known for a quarter of a century (wow!) while living & working in Nepal. Married daughters carrying for their aged parents. Handicapped (physically and mentally) children being taken care of by siblings. Basnets, Gurungs, Subedis and Magars all leaving the forced regime of refugee camps to the unknown and vast world of America.
I wondered if our past generations left with the same trepidation and anticipation? Yet there was no int'l agency there to help prepare and guide our grand and great-grand parents across that cultural, economic and social divide.
After so long in Nepal, I'm biased -- but I have a hard time seeing these older folks finding a better life in the isolated suburbs or dense urban environments of America. Maybe it's my limitation after so many years in Nepal, but I worried that the older parents and grandparents would find more unhappiness than fulfillment in the States; all for the sake of their younger generations who would much more quickly fit in, become American and leave the old world behind.
Didn't our grandparents do the same for us?
So many of the centuries-old historical traditions collapsed and withered in the open, free, safe & vivaciously new space of America. The great secular manifest destiny of our modern republic absorbing language, history and religion in a cultural maelstrom of new pop icons like Mae West (perfect name for a new continent...), Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Nat King Cole, Elizabeth Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Allen, Tupac Shakur and Morgan Freeman...
Will these dear Himalayan souls, in their Chinese sneakers, Thai t-shirts, towels still wrapped around their heads, find solace and opportunity in America? Is the dream still on the horizon for the latest immigrants? Will they find the reserves w/in themselves to adjust to the radically different world that awaits them? Will the grandparents retreat to the privacy of their new homes while the younger children begin their individual paths to the American life through school, friends and the relative receptivity of a proudly multi-cultural society?
Ahh, dear great grandmother, unknown, unknowable. I see you in the grainy, B&W sepia-toned photos, stern, tidy and proud. You are surrounded by a score of children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews and nieces dressed in their Sunday finery. I imagine you making the sea voyage as a young woman, carrying tightly your most valuable possessions, firmly holding the hand of your father, as you bid adieu to the grey shores of Prussia, villages and towns receding from view. A favorite cat or puppy left behind. Childhood friends who you know you will never see again...
Now, I have crossed part of that boundary myself. After 25 years in Nepal, I find my Janus face looking both ways. Tonight, I am caught in the river Styx, Charon's lost his oar and we wait, almost patiently, for the airlines staff to bring us new boarding passes to permit us to leave, finally, this middle world, neither East nor West, a connecting point, a passage in the night.
Yet, my concerns and complaints last only a few hours, half a day, I know not the long and final passage that you made from the old world to the new. These days, we flit between these categories almost with ease (airport lounges offering us snacks, drinks & the ubiquitous internet...).
Only these 'gaonly' Bhutanese (Nepali) refugees accompanying me to remind me that once, too, my family left a traditional world, huddling, like refugees, between greater and more expansionist empires, seeking a home, a refuge, a sanctuary. Like these passing villagers traveling with hope and fear through the night with me, they found it in America, over a hundred years ago.
While I, a generation removed, went searching for some qualities of the world they'd left behind and found Nepal, dear Nepal, and a pilgrim's progress...
Now, distant, long passed, Great Grandmothers, I cross these distances by air, not sea, and find my own children on both sides of this aching planet, struggling themselves to find their feet in a world of categories, identities and biases.
May some of your courage carry them, as well, over the personal and physical seas that they must perforce traverse.
When they, too, look at your enduring photographs, may your strength be theirs, as well.
I think they're calling my flight tonight...
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Ananda Asked the Buddha
Ananda, feeling a bit sheepish about the wonderful times he shared with his
fellow monks and friends, asked the Buddha,
"Is being with good friends a part of the Dharma [Teaching]?"
To which Buddha replied,
"Being with good friends is the whole of the Dharma."
fellow monks and friends, asked the Buddha,
"Is being with good friends a part of the Dharma [Teaching]?"
To which Buddha replied,
"Being with good friends is the whole of the Dharma."
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The Actual Playlist
I Will Follow You Into the Dark Death Cab for Cutie
Soul Meets Body Death Cab for Cutie
American Boy (feat. Kanye West) Estelle
Better Together Jack Johnson
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing Jack Johnson
Upside Down Jack Johnson
Foolish Games Jewel
Say John Mayer
Waiting On the World to Change John Mayer
Strange Fruit Josh White
Love Lockdown Kanye West
Across the Universe (remix) Rufus Wainwright
California Rufus Wainwright
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk Rufus Wainwright
How to Save a Life The Fray
Over My Head (Cable Car) The Fray
Soul Meets Body Death Cab for Cutie
American Boy (feat. Kanye West) Estelle
Better Together Jack Johnson
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing Jack Johnson
Upside Down Jack Johnson
Foolish Games Jewel
Say John Mayer
Waiting On the World to Change John Mayer
Strange Fruit Josh White
Love Lockdown Kanye West
Across the Universe (remix) Rufus Wainwright
California Rufus Wainwright
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk Rufus Wainwright
How to Save a Life The Fray
Over My Head (Cable Car) The Fray
iTunes Playlist for the Traffic on the New Year (5769)
i've just downloaded tonight's playlist bought off itunes @ 99 cents/song. making a daily wage as a consultant makes it fun to come home and feel like i deserve some reward for the x#!%@!! congested, commute across k'du.
no doubt the end of september traffic was compounded by nepal's frantic pre-desain shopping with the incremental, ineluctable increase in the numbers of motorcycles (that fill the gaps b/n the cars like mortar b/n bricks...) and shiny new family cars and mammoth suvs that have finally created unbelievable, unrestrainable havoc on the once charming streets of kathmandu. alas, no more...
one only wonders what will happen when the congestion simply comes to a halt. will it be a bit like the old joke, 'does a tree that falls in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear?' will anyone in the world (besides those of us on the mean streets of kathmandu) even notice when this ancient city comes to a grinding halt by the excesses of modernity? will it be covered by cnn, bbc or al jezera? will there be an ironic column in 'the guardian' or by maureen dowd in the 'nyt'?
or will we be stuck permanently in the present continuous tense without moving. achieving a lifetime view of tundikhel with breakfast, lunch & dinner peanuts and popcorn available from the sidewalk merchants. the ritual excess of screeching horns & incessent honking... what a life??!!?
monday night it took me 1.5 hours to get from the un on pulchowk to mike's b'fast in gairidhara. i got into a micro (minivan) at the un, but had to stand bent over inside as there was no seat available. someone kindly held my day pack, still it was difficult to not fall over inside. when we only went about 200 m. in 15 minutes, i got out and walked given the incredible, unmovable traffic jam. i walked downhill from the un across the thapathali bridge to the giant mandala (only in kathmandu would a sacred mandala serve as a traffic circle!).
i waited again for a micro since the traffic cleared a bit and it seemed too far to walk all the way to durbar marg. i finally got a bus w/, amazing, space inside to sit down. since it was going all the way to tangal/bhatbatini, i stayed on through the urban nightmare of ratna park hordes and the lainchaur jam until it turned behind the ex-palace. then i walked in the dark from the gairidhara chowk to mike's breakfast restaurant, where i sat down in the dark (surprise: no electricity), ordered a gin & tonic (much deserved), opened a copy of 'newsfront' while i waited for shaku and leah to meet me. since we didn't have anything at home, and francis was with shaku, we all stayed & ate there before coming home.
in contrast, yesterday, since it was ghatastapana (the first day of desain), i had the good fortune to stay home in the bucolic quiet of our garden to work. so, at the evening hour, when it came time to head out to the hyatt hotel by boudha for rosh hasonah dinner, i dressed up and decided to enjoy the luxury of a taxi. for the princely sum of 250 =/ ($3.50), i could pass on the sardine micro ride and enjoy the start of the new year in the style to which i am accustomed (or used to be...).
rosh hashonah observes the annual migration of the local kathmandu jews, partial jews, struggling jews, buddhist jews, hindu jews and still wandering jews. it's actually quite a lovely and fascinating crowd. 'our crowd'. the long-term kathmandu-ites with others who are here for only a few years. there are dear teachers representing the best of lincoln school (suzi and shira), the kind-hearted israeli ambo and his wife (dan & gilli), the 'thulo-manches', the head of the world bank (sue) and world food program (richard) with their accomplished accompanied spouses (kai, david & marcela), worldly dharma students (andrea & judy), young israelis (who are here w/ micha), the israeli gm of the hyatt (gadi), underground jews who i hardly know and a slew of our own gorgeous, energetic and joyous kids. it's a very, very soothing and family-like evening to share the joys and hopes at the start of a new year (5769).
actually, besides the commute across town, my new two month undp consultancy is quite interesting. i've been asked to help design a civil society outreach strategy for the constitution-making project. it's quite a good team this time at undp, including a very thoughtful kenyan, sila, with whom i share a room who has been here for four years. sila worked w/ vso assigned to the national dalit scholarship endowment i'd set up through save the children (sc) & usaid. the fact that this endowment for dalit children is still running after fifteen years is one of my true joys of my sc years.
the undp project is actually a bit like an old friends home. the sc finance manager's wife, kalpana, works with the project, as well as budhi, a lawyer we worked w/ on an sc conflict mitigation project. the new project head, larry, is a canadian lawyer who's worked in the balkans and afghanistan. he seems a good, serious, gentle, reasonable soul.
the un has contracted me for 40 days work over the next four months. since i'm off to see the boys and m&d in the states on the 15th for three weeks, it's a good balance -- as long as i can keep the assignments coming in... after all, school fees for three lovely children hang over my head like the proverbial sword of damocles...
well, it's already 12:30 am so time to turn in. i'm upstairs in ms. leah's room where she & shaku have been asleep for a few hours already while i sit here and enjoy the downloads. many of these songs dear ezi turned us on to this summer from his ipod.
so tonight i tried to remember the names of the artists and the songs that he played for us. i'd already downloaded the snow patrol songs ('you could be so happy'), which are also brilliant, as well as the plain white t's ('hey there delilah'). great stuff!!
good night, moon!
no doubt the end of september traffic was compounded by nepal's frantic pre-desain shopping with the incremental, ineluctable increase in the numbers of motorcycles (that fill the gaps b/n the cars like mortar b/n bricks...) and shiny new family cars and mammoth suvs that have finally created unbelievable, unrestrainable havoc on the once charming streets of kathmandu. alas, no more...
one only wonders what will happen when the congestion simply comes to a halt. will it be a bit like the old joke, 'does a tree that falls in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear?' will anyone in the world (besides those of us on the mean streets of kathmandu) even notice when this ancient city comes to a grinding halt by the excesses of modernity? will it be covered by cnn, bbc or al jezera? will there be an ironic column in 'the guardian' or by maureen dowd in the 'nyt'?
or will we be stuck permanently in the present continuous tense without moving. achieving a lifetime view of tundikhel with breakfast, lunch & dinner peanuts and popcorn available from the sidewalk merchants. the ritual excess of screeching horns & incessent honking... what a life??!!?
monday night it took me 1.5 hours to get from the un on pulchowk to mike's b'fast in gairidhara. i got into a micro (minivan) at the un, but had to stand bent over inside as there was no seat available. someone kindly held my day pack, still it was difficult to not fall over inside. when we only went about 200 m. in 15 minutes, i got out and walked given the incredible, unmovable traffic jam. i walked downhill from the un across the thapathali bridge to the giant mandala (only in kathmandu would a sacred mandala serve as a traffic circle!).
i waited again for a micro since the traffic cleared a bit and it seemed too far to walk all the way to durbar marg. i finally got a bus w/, amazing, space inside to sit down. since it was going all the way to tangal/bhatbatini, i stayed on through the urban nightmare of ratna park hordes and the lainchaur jam until it turned behind the ex-palace. then i walked in the dark from the gairidhara chowk to mike's breakfast restaurant, where i sat down in the dark (surprise: no electricity), ordered a gin & tonic (much deserved), opened a copy of 'newsfront' while i waited for shaku and leah to meet me. since we didn't have anything at home, and francis was with shaku, we all stayed & ate there before coming home.
in contrast, yesterday, since it was ghatastapana (the first day of desain), i had the good fortune to stay home in the bucolic quiet of our garden to work. so, at the evening hour, when it came time to head out to the hyatt hotel by boudha for rosh hasonah dinner, i dressed up and decided to enjoy the luxury of a taxi. for the princely sum of 250 =/ ($3.50), i could pass on the sardine micro ride and enjoy the start of the new year in the style to which i am accustomed (or used to be...).
rosh hashonah observes the annual migration of the local kathmandu jews, partial jews, struggling jews, buddhist jews, hindu jews and still wandering jews. it's actually quite a lovely and fascinating crowd. 'our crowd'. the long-term kathmandu-ites with others who are here for only a few years. there are dear teachers representing the best of lincoln school (suzi and shira), the kind-hearted israeli ambo and his wife (dan & gilli), the 'thulo-manches', the head of the world bank (sue) and world food program (richard) with their accomplished accompanied spouses (kai, david & marcela), worldly dharma students (andrea & judy), young israelis (who are here w/ micha), the israeli gm of the hyatt (gadi), underground jews who i hardly know and a slew of our own gorgeous, energetic and joyous kids. it's a very, very soothing and family-like evening to share the joys and hopes at the start of a new year (5769).
actually, besides the commute across town, my new two month undp consultancy is quite interesting. i've been asked to help design a civil society outreach strategy for the constitution-making project. it's quite a good team this time at undp, including a very thoughtful kenyan, sila, with whom i share a room who has been here for four years. sila worked w/ vso assigned to the national dalit scholarship endowment i'd set up through save the children (sc) & usaid. the fact that this endowment for dalit children is still running after fifteen years is one of my true joys of my sc years.
the undp project is actually a bit like an old friends home. the sc finance manager's wife, kalpana, works with the project, as well as budhi, a lawyer we worked w/ on an sc conflict mitigation project. the new project head, larry, is a canadian lawyer who's worked in the balkans and afghanistan. he seems a good, serious, gentle, reasonable soul.
the un has contracted me for 40 days work over the next four months. since i'm off to see the boys and m&d in the states on the 15th for three weeks, it's a good balance -- as long as i can keep the assignments coming in... after all, school fees for three lovely children hang over my head like the proverbial sword of damocles...
well, it's already 12:30 am so time to turn in. i'm upstairs in ms. leah's room where she & shaku have been asleep for a few hours already while i sit here and enjoy the downloads. many of these songs dear ezi turned us on to this summer from his ipod.
so tonight i tried to remember the names of the artists and the songs that he played for us. i'd already downloaded the snow patrol songs ('you could be so happy'), which are also brilliant, as well as the plain white t's ('hey there delilah'). great stuff!!
good night, moon!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
A Prayer for the Living on the New Year: 5769
joshua and ezra, dear sons,
if you have the time, please try and remember that this coming monday/tuesday is the jewish new year celebration.
it's a good moment to pause to remember your family's story and the cyclical start of a new year, once again, in the jewish world. i don't recall the exact year, but, i believe, it's said that the hebrew world began about 5769 years ago-- or something like that. either way, it's an impressive number of years in a dog's life, even a poor human being's.
as you know, the jews are known to have long memories. it's our blessing and curse. this veil of joys and tears.
as elie wiesel put it at the end of his novel 'the gates of the forest', 'may you be honest, humble and strong'.
or, what the irish mr. yeats called, 'this rag and bone shop of the heart'...
(the irish and jews lovers of language, poetry, misshapen g-ds and the sound of the word.)
of course, an annual, iterative, joyful celebration of the jewish new year doesn't answer any of the elemental questions that you both ask. and, ask so poignantly as young men setting out odysseus-like in our modern world full of turmoil and doubts...
(we, my generation, had dreams of offering you, our children, a rare millennium, shambala or tushita heaven, but, alas, in our vainglory have found only what others before us have learned: the dream of peace, compassion & humility is rarely achieved while the hubris and egoism of our race remains as profound as its aspirations...)
but, dear sons, you have been raised like good jewish-thakali yeshiva students to always ask the good question and seek the spirit of g-d in all of our works here on earth. it's not that you'll always find that moving spirit here (especially late at night when doing your homework...), but the search for life's meaning is intimately tied up with that very human quest for purpose and identity. it's one of our more noble attributes, actually.
thus, as the rabbis, rimpoches and gurus have said through the ages: remember to praise g-d (the spirit or dharma-dhatu which animates us), love your family and, while alive in the neighborhood, do a bit of good by which to be remembered.
if you make your friends laugh, your sister happy, your grandparents proud and your parents remember the joys of your childhood, you will have brought the true spirit of 'the lord, our g-d, praise be he' (as it says in the ancient jewish scripture) among your closest, truest and most beloved community.
let's remember what our dearly loved friend robin used to say, like the biblical prophet he was: "go out and make the world a bit less miserable" for ourselves, for others and, especially, for the ones we love.
may g-d have mercy on us all.
we love you, sons, deeply and forever,
mom and dad
if you have the time, please try and remember that this coming monday/tuesday is the jewish new year celebration.
it's a good moment to pause to remember your family's story and the cyclical start of a new year, once again, in the jewish world. i don't recall the exact year, but, i believe, it's said that the hebrew world began about 5769 years ago-- or something like that. either way, it's an impressive number of years in a dog's life, even a poor human being's.
as you know, the jews are known to have long memories. it's our blessing and curse. this veil of joys and tears.
as elie wiesel put it at the end of his novel 'the gates of the forest', 'may you be honest, humble and strong'.
or, what the irish mr. yeats called, 'this rag and bone shop of the heart'...
(the irish and jews lovers of language, poetry, misshapen g-ds and the sound of the word.)
of course, an annual, iterative, joyful celebration of the jewish new year doesn't answer any of the elemental questions that you both ask. and, ask so poignantly as young men setting out odysseus-like in our modern world full of turmoil and doubts...
(we, my generation, had dreams of offering you, our children, a rare millennium, shambala or tushita heaven, but, alas, in our vainglory have found only what others before us have learned: the dream of peace, compassion & humility is rarely achieved while the hubris and egoism of our race remains as profound as its aspirations...)
but, dear sons, you have been raised like good jewish-thakali yeshiva students to always ask the good question and seek the spirit of g-d in all of our works here on earth. it's not that you'll always find that moving spirit here (especially late at night when doing your homework...), but the search for life's meaning is intimately tied up with that very human quest for purpose and identity. it's one of our more noble attributes, actually.
thus, as the rabbis, rimpoches and gurus have said through the ages: remember to praise g-d (the spirit or dharma-dhatu which animates us), love your family and, while alive in the neighborhood, do a bit of good by which to be remembered.
if you make your friends laugh, your sister happy, your grandparents proud and your parents remember the joys of your childhood, you will have brought the true spirit of 'the lord, our g-d, praise be he' (as it says in the ancient jewish scripture) among your closest, truest and most beloved community.
let's remember what our dearly loved friend robin used to say, like the biblical prophet he was: "go out and make the world a bit less miserable" for ourselves, for others and, especially, for the ones we love.
may g-d have mercy on us all.
we love you, sons, deeply and forever,
mom and dad
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Jerry's Medicine Puja in Kathmandu
This afternoon Ms. Leah, my friend, Christopher, and I trundled down the backstreets of Kathmandu along Indrachowk via Durbar Square to Tahaity to visit the Rimpoche we affectionately call, 'Tip-Top'.
It was a few days after the main Indra Jatra festival, so we stopped by the Indra Temple to offer our respects to the good g-d Indra, still out in public view in all of his silver masked glory. Then continued by the main Taleju temples, looking even more 'rato' (red) and resplendent after the recent election of a Maoist government in Nepal. I wanted to show Leah the massive black statue of the g-d of Time in front of Hanuman Dhoka and the golden mask of Indra (where a bamboo reed from the mouth of the mask spouts local beer at the start of the festival) unveiled only at this time of year.
This being the Kali Yuga, and Kathmandu being the modern mess it's become, we endured motorcycle-people-bicycle traffic jams walking from Durbar Square toward Thamel through the narrow lanes of the old city. Yet, Ms. Leah, even after a full and rewarding day of Second Grade was not wearied by our long march through Nepal's living past. With her eyes wide open and her hand tightly clutching mine, she kept pace with us as we narrowly avoided two and four wheel traffic.
At last, a peaceful haven appears in the form of the stupa that is known as "Little Swayambunath" on the backstreets of Tahaity. It's a large courtyard with the lovely, white stupa rising in the middle and the Drubgon Jangchup Choeling Monastery set off back from the crowded, commercial mean streets of Kathmandu.
Christopher's guided us here to meet his beloved Rimpoche so that we can ask for a puja to be done for Jerry. While we wait upstairs in the ante-chamber, Chris buys some 'kata' (white silk blessing scarves) to present to Rimpoche and a younger attendant brings us some much appreciated orange squash to drink. After a few minutes, we're invited in to see "Tip-Top".
The aged and gentle Rimpoche is in a small room overlooking the courtyard sitting quietly on his bed below a large, almost life-sized thangka of Avalokitshevara (the thousand-armed) image of the Buddha of Compassion. There are Tibetan carpets covering the floor, images of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist iconography on the walls.
Chris makes his ritual thrice prostrations on the floor in front of Rimpoche as a manifestation of his devotion and respect for the Buddha (Spirit incarnate), Dharma (Teachings) and Sangha (Buddhist community) represented by Rimpoche's spirit and teachings. He then comes up to give the kata and receive a blessing from the Rimpoche.
Leah and I, still of our Jewish persuasion (although Ms. Leah may not yet fully understand that...), bow deeply in front of this profoundly human teacher and spiritual guide. I place Leah in front of me as we come close to Rimpoche. She, quite naturally, bows before him while he holds both sides of her head and offers a prayer. I follow and feel the soothing loving-kindness of Rimpoche's blessing on our lives and the journey which brings us all together in this modest sacred space today.
Then, through the young Tibetan monk attendant I explain in Nepali about Jerry and his recent illness. I say that I was with Jerry just a few weeks ago when he became ill and entered an American hospital. I say that Jerry loves Nepal almost as much as our home country America. Then, I correct myself and say, 'as much as America', with which I believe Jerry would agree. I mention that Jerry worked here in Nepal some decades ago with the US Peace Corps. Then, I mention that I'd like to offer a puja for Jerry's health and happiness. The young Tibetan monk translates this into Tibetan for Rimpoche while we listen.
Tip-Top recommends a Medicine Buddha puja (ceremony) for Jerry. He also gives me a prescription of Tibetan medicine that I can bring back to the US when I come in mid-October.
The puja will be next Monday at 9 am at the gompa (roughly 11 am Sunday night EST).
As we depart, Leah takes a ride on Christopher's old, red bike through the streets of Kathmandu. A few corners away, we depart. Chris heads home to Maharajganj while Leah and I walk through Bohaity back to Shakun's boutique on Durbar Marg from where we will head home, too. We smile at each other through the din and dank of a decaying Kathmandu, a city where we have lived half of our lives, as we part, once again, and head back our separate ways.
Recalling:
Life's constant passage;
Buoyed by friendship.
An uncertain journey
We share,
Gladly,
Before we wave and say,
'Again!'
It was a few days after the main Indra Jatra festival, so we stopped by the Indra Temple to offer our respects to the good g-d Indra, still out in public view in all of his silver masked glory. Then continued by the main Taleju temples, looking even more 'rato' (red) and resplendent after the recent election of a Maoist government in Nepal. I wanted to show Leah the massive black statue of the g-d of Time in front of Hanuman Dhoka and the golden mask of Indra (where a bamboo reed from the mouth of the mask spouts local beer at the start of the festival) unveiled only at this time of year.
This being the Kali Yuga, and Kathmandu being the modern mess it's become, we endured motorcycle-people-bicycle traffic jams walking from Durbar Square toward Thamel through the narrow lanes of the old city. Yet, Ms. Leah, even after a full and rewarding day of Second Grade was not wearied by our long march through Nepal's living past. With her eyes wide open and her hand tightly clutching mine, she kept pace with us as we narrowly avoided two and four wheel traffic.
At last, a peaceful haven appears in the form of the stupa that is known as "Little Swayambunath" on the backstreets of Tahaity. It's a large courtyard with the lovely, white stupa rising in the middle and the Drubgon Jangchup Choeling Monastery set off back from the crowded, commercial mean streets of Kathmandu.
Christopher's guided us here to meet his beloved Rimpoche so that we can ask for a puja to be done for Jerry. While we wait upstairs in the ante-chamber, Chris buys some 'kata' (white silk blessing scarves) to present to Rimpoche and a younger attendant brings us some much appreciated orange squash to drink. After a few minutes, we're invited in to see "Tip-Top".
The aged and gentle Rimpoche is in a small room overlooking the courtyard sitting quietly on his bed below a large, almost life-sized thangka of Avalokitshevara (the thousand-armed) image of the Buddha of Compassion. There are Tibetan carpets covering the floor, images of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist iconography on the walls.
Chris makes his ritual thrice prostrations on the floor in front of Rimpoche as a manifestation of his devotion and respect for the Buddha (Spirit incarnate), Dharma (Teachings) and Sangha (Buddhist community) represented by Rimpoche's spirit and teachings. He then comes up to give the kata and receive a blessing from the Rimpoche.
Leah and I, still of our Jewish persuasion (although Ms. Leah may not yet fully understand that...), bow deeply in front of this profoundly human teacher and spiritual guide. I place Leah in front of me as we come close to Rimpoche. She, quite naturally, bows before him while he holds both sides of her head and offers a prayer. I follow and feel the soothing loving-kindness of Rimpoche's blessing on our lives and the journey which brings us all together in this modest sacred space today.
Then, through the young Tibetan monk attendant I explain in Nepali about Jerry and his recent illness. I say that I was with Jerry just a few weeks ago when he became ill and entered an American hospital. I say that Jerry loves Nepal almost as much as our home country America. Then, I correct myself and say, 'as much as America', with which I believe Jerry would agree. I mention that Jerry worked here in Nepal some decades ago with the US Peace Corps. Then, I mention that I'd like to offer a puja for Jerry's health and happiness. The young Tibetan monk translates this into Tibetan for Rimpoche while we listen.
Tip-Top recommends a Medicine Buddha puja (ceremony) for Jerry. He also gives me a prescription of Tibetan medicine that I can bring back to the US when I come in mid-October.
The puja will be next Monday at 9 am at the gompa (roughly 11 am Sunday night EST).
As we depart, Leah takes a ride on Christopher's old, red bike through the streets of Kathmandu. A few corners away, we depart. Chris heads home to Maharajganj while Leah and I walk through Bohaity back to Shakun's boutique on Durbar Marg from where we will head home, too. We smile at each other through the din and dank of a decaying Kathmandu, a city where we have lived half of our lives, as we part, once again, and head back our separate ways.
Recalling:
Life's constant passage;
Buoyed by friendship.
An uncertain journey
We share,
Gladly,
Before we wave and say,
'Again!'
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The Floods! The Floods!
welcome to the monsoon on the hills outside of kathmandu!
there was massive flooding on the w/end in upper budhanilkantha. i didn't realize what had happened until i took leah to the bus stop on monday morning. although coming out of our gate i did wonder why there was so much debris on the road in front of our home. but, it was only when i began walking up the hill that i realized that something wicked had happened during the night.
the first sign was about 2-3' of the main road that had been washed away just a few hundred feet above our turn-off. the whole side for about 30'++ disappeared when the wall below broke and left a gutter of about 3-4' deep which had been the road before. if it keeps raining in september and october, then more of the main road may slip down that hill toward the temple by the river, as well... even now the lincoln bus doesn't go past our lane due to the damage to the main road.
as i walked uphill alot of villagers were gathered by the temple in the river, where the 'khola' (river) had surrounded the huge bamboo clumps and washed down both sides -- not to mention taking out the dirt road heading north above the bridge along that 'stream'.
but it was only when i got to the top of the road, by the vipassana center, at the far end of keno's land that i saw the devastation that had happened that night.
actually that river is really usually just a stream, as you know. however, there must have been a serious landslide above or a new underground river broke through up on shivapuri ridge. there was debris 20' on both sides of the stream bed. in fact, the stream had risen higher than 8' up on the beautiful large bamboo by the stream, leaving debris well above my head!
then, i walked down what had previously been a trail, but now was just a river gorge w/ no sign of the trail that we had always walked in the past. to may amazement, there were huge 6' boulders in the stream that hadn't been there before.
as i walked down, mouth slightly agape at the power of this once gentle stream, i saw that 40' of keno's lovely 10' high brick wall was gone. the stream that had become a river had moved inside his land somehow in the night. then, needing a route back downhill, broke through his well-constructed wall -- leaving no sign of the thousands of bricks anywhere in sight! just destruction. the new local water tap that had been built by the stream was smashed and broken. part of the cement base was overturned and in the expanded river bed. that new cement house that the water entrepeneurs had erected by the 'khola' lost its room closest to the river with debris piled as high as the structure itself. the water simply poured down with an amazing, relentless power.
then, as i walked down to binod choudhary's a-frame home in the upper budhanilkantha village, i realized why steve and penny told me (when i called them a few minutes earlier to ask if they'd seen the destruction...) that they hadn't been able to make it up through the debris in the village. what had been the paved road through the village and behind tashi's to the ridge above where swami is planning to build some homes, was completely gone. nada. nothing. goneski.
where there were modest stretches of the road left, the water course was three feet below with the muddy river swirling in delight as if to say that it was never going to give up this newfound urgent path down the hill. ever. never. no.
as i approached, i saw that 20' of binod's large wall along the road was gone. stretches of his sharp-edged metal gilding on the top of his wall was a couple hundred feet further down the stream smashed and crumpled from the power of the water, boulders and debris. quite impressive, as long as it wasn't your wall and iron protective railing. nearby there were individual family water pipes twisted and turned into free-form pretzels with slews of electrical cable tossed amid the piles of wood and tree trunks that had come down in the landslide and torrent through the night.
groups of people were standing around in a daze just looking at the damage done. sadly, one 15 year old tamang girl up the hillside had died that night when her house collapsed and they couldn't get her to the hospital in time. fortunately few other homes had collapsed. although a few vehicles that were parked on the road had sunk in the muck and been smashed by debris and looked unlikely to start without a major overhaul -- if ever.
clearly, this local road isn't going to be repaired easily or only by the community themselves. today, the kind-hearted local guruji who lives on the main road with the peepul tree in his yard told me that they estimated that it would take 3 crore (30 million rupees/$500,000) to fix all of the damage. not exactly spare change for the folks up here.
fortunately, the torrent of water (think of the arno river behind the enigmatic smile of ms. mona lisa) turned back into the earlier main river bed just by the monastery and followed the curve of the land below an around lisa choegyal's home, thus avoiding any serious damage down our way. part of the river did go past the gompa (monastery) and then took a left and then a right straight up to gunnar's front gate, where a few feet of debris was piled -- but that was the only modest evidence of the serious damage done above in the village.
as we have said before: never under-estimate the power of the himalaya, particularly the monsoon waters that pour off these massive hills...
there was massive flooding on the w/end in upper budhanilkantha. i didn't realize what had happened until i took leah to the bus stop on monday morning. although coming out of our gate i did wonder why there was so much debris on the road in front of our home. but, it was only when i began walking up the hill that i realized that something wicked had happened during the night.
the first sign was about 2-3' of the main road that had been washed away just a few hundred feet above our turn-off. the whole side for about 30'++ disappeared when the wall below broke and left a gutter of about 3-4' deep which had been the road before. if it keeps raining in september and october, then more of the main road may slip down that hill toward the temple by the river, as well... even now the lincoln bus doesn't go past our lane due to the damage to the main road.
as i walked uphill alot of villagers were gathered by the temple in the river, where the 'khola' (river) had surrounded the huge bamboo clumps and washed down both sides -- not to mention taking out the dirt road heading north above the bridge along that 'stream'.
but it was only when i got to the top of the road, by the vipassana center, at the far end of keno's land that i saw the devastation that had happened that night.
actually that river is really usually just a stream, as you know. however, there must have been a serious landslide above or a new underground river broke through up on shivapuri ridge. there was debris 20' on both sides of the stream bed. in fact, the stream had risen higher than 8' up on the beautiful large bamboo by the stream, leaving debris well above my head!
then, i walked down what had previously been a trail, but now was just a river gorge w/ no sign of the trail that we had always walked in the past. to may amazement, there were huge 6' boulders in the stream that hadn't been there before.
as i walked down, mouth slightly agape at the power of this once gentle stream, i saw that 40' of keno's lovely 10' high brick wall was gone. the stream that had become a river had moved inside his land somehow in the night. then, needing a route back downhill, broke through his well-constructed wall -- leaving no sign of the thousands of bricks anywhere in sight! just destruction. the new local water tap that had been built by the stream was smashed and broken. part of the cement base was overturned and in the expanded river bed. that new cement house that the water entrepeneurs had erected by the 'khola' lost its room closest to the river with debris piled as high as the structure itself. the water simply poured down with an amazing, relentless power.
then, as i walked down to binod choudhary's a-frame home in the upper budhanilkantha village, i realized why steve and penny told me (when i called them a few minutes earlier to ask if they'd seen the destruction...) that they hadn't been able to make it up through the debris in the village. what had been the paved road through the village and behind tashi's to the ridge above where swami is planning to build some homes, was completely gone. nada. nothing. goneski.
where there were modest stretches of the road left, the water course was three feet below with the muddy river swirling in delight as if to say that it was never going to give up this newfound urgent path down the hill. ever. never. no.
as i approached, i saw that 20' of binod's large wall along the road was gone. stretches of his sharp-edged metal gilding on the top of his wall was a couple hundred feet further down the stream smashed and crumpled from the power of the water, boulders and debris. quite impressive, as long as it wasn't your wall and iron protective railing. nearby there were individual family water pipes twisted and turned into free-form pretzels with slews of electrical cable tossed amid the piles of wood and tree trunks that had come down in the landslide and torrent through the night.
groups of people were standing around in a daze just looking at the damage done. sadly, one 15 year old tamang girl up the hillside had died that night when her house collapsed and they couldn't get her to the hospital in time. fortunately few other homes had collapsed. although a few vehicles that were parked on the road had sunk in the muck and been smashed by debris and looked unlikely to start without a major overhaul -- if ever.
clearly, this local road isn't going to be repaired easily or only by the community themselves. today, the kind-hearted local guruji who lives on the main road with the peepul tree in his yard told me that they estimated that it would take 3 crore (30 million rupees/$500,000) to fix all of the damage. not exactly spare change for the folks up here.
fortunately, the torrent of water (think of the arno river behind the enigmatic smile of ms. mona lisa) turned back into the earlier main river bed just by the monastery and followed the curve of the land below an around lisa choegyal's home, thus avoiding any serious damage down our way. part of the river did go past the gompa (monastery) and then took a left and then a right straight up to gunnar's front gate, where a few feet of debris was piled -- but that was the only modest evidence of the serious damage done above in the village.
as we have said before: never under-estimate the power of the himalaya, particularly the monsoon waters that pour off these massive hills...
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Hans Castorp Returns to Kathmandu
Two days' travel separated the youth... from his own world, from all that he thought of his duties, interests, cares and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space rolling and revolving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time.
From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking.
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us free from our bodily surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine.
Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.
'The Magic Mountain'
Thomas Mann
From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking.
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us free from our bodily surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine.
Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.
'The Magic Mountain'
Thomas Mann
Thursday, September 11, 2008
New Beginnings...
"But there remains also the truth
that every end in history necessarily contains
a new beginning:
this beginning is the promise,
the only "message"
which the end can ever produce."
'Love and Saint Augustine'
By Hannah Arendt, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott, Judith Chelius Stark
that every end in history necessarily contains
a new beginning:
this beginning is the promise,
the only "message"
which the end can ever produce."
'Love and Saint Augustine'
By Hannah Arendt, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott, Judith Chelius Stark
A Peek at National Politics in America with 2 Months To Go...
Well, it seems that the Democrats, particularly Obama have a new challenge in responding to the kinetic appeal that Sarah Palin has unleashed in suburbs and small towns of America. There's no denying that Palin has electrified her base just as powerfully as Obama did for his in winning the Democratic primaries.
Unfortunately, the Democrats have a way of always winning the Democratic primaries (remarkable, no?), while losing the general elections to Republicans over the past four decades. Two Nixons, two Reagans and three Bushes should cause us to pause for a moment -- especially in a year when a race which should, for all the oft-stated reasons, belong to the Democrats.
Thus, we would be well-advised that it's self-defeating and poor politics to attack Palin personally, particularly about her family, when it can look like class warfare of the moralistic, secular, urban Democrats pitying the low culture, overly religious, lower middle class Americans.
Democrats don't win on class or country in US elections. Even if it's really not meant that way, especially not to our ears, a lot of Americans hear it that way and respond by voting against their economic interests at the national level.
Clinton won twice by undermining those antagonisms and positioning the Democrats, once again, as the party of the 'boy from Hope' heartland against the Republican privileged elite (e.g., George Sr. in Kennebunkport). Now, McCain has cleverly (if disingenuously) repositioned himself through Palin as the agent of outsider change. 'Mr & Mrs. Smith Go to Washington.' Smart move! Stealing lightening from the Democratic g-ds with two months to go on the racetrack.
Clearly, Palin's captured the imagination of conservative America, hearkening back (as Reagan used to in his speeches...) to a frontier society of rugged individuals.
However, I don't quite buy the commonly identified (and self-serving...) Light vs Darkness/Goodness vs Evil/Idealism vs Cynicism metaphor, where we (whoever we are) are always the 'good guys'. Often we Democrats are equally prone to self-righteousness in our political beliefs. Whereas the Buddhists have taught us the limits of duality -- even in the political realms. Not all of these issues (any issues...) are simple either-ors.
They don't call it the "Middle Way" for no reason...
Although I do believe that putting a woman on the ticket was a major undercurrent of the campaign this year. The resurgence of the feminine principle and mother goddess within America's shadow was exceptionally powerful for many this year.
'Anima rising' as Joni Mitchell has sang on her 1970s 'hissing of summer lawns' album...
No matter who wins, give McCain credit for plucking that wise and long overdue balanced Jungian insight from the slick alternative of Mitt Romney's preternaturally coiffured hair.
So, time again for Obama/Biden to remind the country that much of the Republican administration has been a 'bridge to nowhere' for the past eight years. Forget Sarah for now and get back to real worries of the American people.
Get off the less-than-subtle cultural divide and back to the pocketbook, the economy (bye-bye Lehman Brothers...), the mortgage crisis, the fuel crisis, quality education and a wiser response to the endless war against external terror.
When it's time to vote in November, those concerns will be uppermost in the minds of the skeptical, independent, working class voters who will decide the election
(and our near-term future...).
Unfortunately, the Democrats have a way of always winning the Democratic primaries (remarkable, no?), while losing the general elections to Republicans over the past four decades. Two Nixons, two Reagans and three Bushes should cause us to pause for a moment -- especially in a year when a race which should, for all the oft-stated reasons, belong to the Democrats.
Thus, we would be well-advised that it's self-defeating and poor politics to attack Palin personally, particularly about her family, when it can look like class warfare of the moralistic, secular, urban Democrats pitying the low culture, overly religious, lower middle class Americans.
Democrats don't win on class or country in US elections. Even if it's really not meant that way, especially not to our ears, a lot of Americans hear it that way and respond by voting against their economic interests at the national level.
Clinton won twice by undermining those antagonisms and positioning the Democrats, once again, as the party of the 'boy from Hope' heartland against the Republican privileged elite (e.g., George Sr. in Kennebunkport). Now, McCain has cleverly (if disingenuously) repositioned himself through Palin as the agent of outsider change. 'Mr & Mrs. Smith Go to Washington.' Smart move! Stealing lightening from the Democratic g-ds with two months to go on the racetrack.
Clearly, Palin's captured the imagination of conservative America, hearkening back (as Reagan used to in his speeches...) to a frontier society of rugged individuals.
However, I don't quite buy the commonly identified (and self-serving...) Light vs Darkness/Goodness vs Evil/Idealism vs Cynicism metaphor, where we (whoever we are) are always the 'good guys'. Often we Democrats are equally prone to self-righteousness in our political beliefs. Whereas the Buddhists have taught us the limits of duality -- even in the political realms. Not all of these issues (any issues...) are simple either-ors.
They don't call it the "Middle Way" for no reason...
Although I do believe that putting a woman on the ticket was a major undercurrent of the campaign this year. The resurgence of the feminine principle and mother goddess within America's shadow was exceptionally powerful for many this year.
'Anima rising' as Joni Mitchell has sang on her 1970s 'hissing of summer lawns' album...
No matter who wins, give McCain credit for plucking that wise and long overdue balanced Jungian insight from the slick alternative of Mitt Romney's preternaturally coiffured hair.
So, time again for Obama/Biden to remind the country that much of the Republican administration has been a 'bridge to nowhere' for the past eight years. Forget Sarah for now and get back to real worries of the American people.
Get off the less-than-subtle cultural divide and back to the pocketbook, the economy (bye-bye Lehman Brothers...), the mortgage crisis, the fuel crisis, quality education and a wiser response to the endless war against external terror.
When it's time to vote in November, those concerns will be uppermost in the minds of the skeptical, independent, working class voters who will decide the election
(and our near-term future...).
American the Beautiful (Friends)...
Oregon: Dave, Lisa, Lily & Iris Ellenberg; Alissa, Neal & Jordan Keny-Guyer;
California: Christopher, Mary & Nic Szecsey; Donna Sillan; Davis & Catherine Baltz; Greg, Chimi, Khenzom & Rinzi Allthon; Seth, Vicki, Ethan & Shari Kimball; Eduardo, Helena & Elliot Gutekunst; Charles & Pam Gay/Ross; Lance & Jared Dublin & Christine; Elliot Marseille; Steve Golub & Betty Lucas; Margie DeMonchy Leiper; Avery and Hank O'Neill
Maine: Mom & Dad; Alma, Jennings, Jay & Sabrina Boylan-Garnett; Jeff and Maggie Janer;
Massachusetts: Bruce, Buff, Brian, Liz & Monica Leslie; Jerry & Monique Sternin; Dave, Linda & Adam Danzig; Andrew, Dawn & two English Roses Wilder; Margaret Groesbeck & Arthur; Sheila Heffernon
California: Christopher, Mary & Nic Szecsey; Donna Sillan; Davis & Catherine Baltz; Greg, Chimi, Khenzom & Rinzi Allthon; Seth, Vicki, Ethan & Shari Kimball; Eduardo, Helena & Elliot Gutekunst; Charles & Pam Gay/Ross; Lance & Jared Dublin & Christine; Elliot Marseille; Steve Golub & Betty Lucas; Margie DeMonchy Leiper; Avery and Hank O'Neill
Maine: Mom & Dad; Alma, Jennings, Jay & Sabrina Boylan-Garnett; Jeff and Maggie Janer;
Massachusetts: Bruce, Buff, Brian, Liz & Monica Leslie; Jerry & Monique Sternin; Dave, Linda & Adam Danzig; Andrew, Dawn & two English Roses Wilder; Margaret Groesbeck & Arthur; Sheila Heffernon
Friday, August 29, 2008
'ITHAKA' by Constantine P. Cavafy
ITHAKA
Constantine P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Constantine P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
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