Good Morning Aztlan

Do you have a balanced diet of FRIENDS?

2008-10-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to hear a presentation by Junot Diaz regarding his life as a writer/artist and the success of his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Of all the wisdom Diaz shared, and there was quite a bit, one comment stuck out in my mind more than any other. When asked who his direct audience was, and in reference to his friends specifically, he had something like this to say...

my friends don't give a f*ck about any of this... they don't read any of it!

Imagine that, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, a professor at MIT, and in the words of a good friend "the most real kind of intellectual" whose friends, or at least some of them, are not at all interested in Literature... Reflection on the apparent contradiction between Diaz and this portion of his immediate social network has led me to the question above... "Do you have a balanced diet of friends?", Do I?

When I say "balanced diet of friends"? Well, simply stated, that your friends have different interests, beliefs, backgrounds, and aspirations than you do; they spend their time pursuing different passions, investigating different curiosities, paving different paths.

The response to this question, I believe, revels something quite important about how each of us approaches the world and understands our place in it. If we do not, in fact, have friends that provide balance to our own lives, how can we honestly gauge the importance of our own endeavors, or better said, how can we defend against the selfish impulse to believe that whatever we are doing is super ultra-important? How can we find the perspective we lack in the face of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual turmoil? How can we fuel our own growth and maturation? How can we ever see that our problems, no matter how unique we think they are, can be understood by others? - diverse experiences, at the end of the day, usually lead to universal lessons. How deep an understanding of self can we achieve if it is not thought the hearts and minds of a diverse collective?

As a very close friend recently asked me, "Why do so many people want only friends that are the same as them?" - The answer, now more than ever, I simply fail to grasp.

Come to think of it, maybe it is in part because Diaz has friends who could not care less about his success and notoriety that he is the type of artist and the quality of intellectual that so many of us greatly admire. Maybe it is because he understands that no analysis of literature, history, or society is going to end the world - an understanding that apparently is reinforced through his diverse friendships, that he can so honestly speak about the privilege to make the analysis in the first place.

If in reading this post you feel that your social network could use a little influx of diversity, then do not hesitate to act. New relationships that provide fundamentally different lenses through which too see life could be the same relationships that guide you into the next great chapter of life. Buena Suerte.

Bay to Bahia Book Club... and the world at our fingertips...

2008-09-30T17:08:00.001-07:00

I broke fast this morning in the company of three queens Chappellet... the inagural meeting to the Bay to Bahia Book Club - the BBC.

Our selection - "Omnivore's Dilemma" - Michael Pollan; our location - La Boulange de Hayes, San Francisco, CA; our time - 10:15 pst, our dress - casual, our Temp - 65 F, our nourishment- oj, egg sandwhiches, black coffee ...

Why do I choose to include these seemingly random details?... only to remind us, to remind myself, that all across the world, at all hours of the day, in all sort of place and under all sort of circumstance, friends come together and share ideas, emotions, and desires... and more importantly, by doing so they generate knowledge, cultivate peace, and discover pathways to achievement and healthy living.

There are no limits restricting the coming together of people for good.... and no one setting can be qualified as better than another... And so although the BBC is now and will forever be dear to my heart, I celebrate the possibilities that I have recently found in Twitter and Google Reader... I laugh when remembering my historic condemnation of Facebook, myspace, and orkut... As is the case of the BBC, with readership in Boston, Salvador, Big Sur, and San Francisco, I now see the power of my internet based social networks that include friends in Iringa, Cairo, Moscow, Paris, and Rio...

In the company of friends we can experience the world... and now more than ever, the world is truly at our fingertips...

"The thinker, slowly going on his way, suddenly stood still..."

2008-09-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

Siddhartha looked up and around him, a smile crept over his face, and a strong feeling of awakening from a long dream spread right through his being. Immediately he walked on again, quickly, like a man who knows what he has to do.

The only book that I've read repeatedly... Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

In the cases of my greatest need, Siddhartha has always emergered, just before its last lessons fade, in order to re-instruct me in how to best find and know myself. In this way, the book itself is its own metaphorical river: the lesson that revels itself through patient listening, the favor that comes back when not given with expectation...

(And yet I wonder, what would Siddhartha have to say about me learning from his life as an example? Was it not he who left The Illustrious Buddha in order to follow his own path? Was it not he who affirmed that we must each find our own path to self and strategy in its conquest? I wonder...)

I find myself at the beginning of a new journey and, not surprisingly, I therefore find myself with another copy of Hesse's classic. Despite the abundance of events that need be accounted for due to the time that has passed since my last entry to this blog, my current plans give me the urge to read, reflect, and write. As of this afternoon, I have confirmed plans with Democratic Party offices in New Mexico to leave Monterey within the next two weeks so as to serve as a full-time volunteer for the Obama campaign. After a summer of restlessness for not having where to dedicate my mind and energy, this opportunity is Godsent. And I cannot think of a better description of my state of mind and conviction than the very words of Hesse to describe the journey of Siddhartha himself.

I leave soon to New Mexico... knowing what what I have to do.

(tomorrow something about swimming, Buddhism, Guerrilla Warefare, and Bruce Lee - I think.)

Friends and Lovers... Dance!

2008-01-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

If you’ve read my previous blog entries you know that I’ve tended to focus on issues that might be called philosophical, spiritual, emotionally charged, “deep” (ha, if I’m lucky), etc. etc. etc…

Tonight we’ll have none of that! And so to whoever is reading, no matter what you are doing or where you are, I call on you, all the way from Tanzania, to put it down, to turn on your favorite album, and DANCE!

Dance until your heart is racing and your legs are tired and you can’t even imagine how much time has passed since you began.

And so long as you are dancing, why not dance to a great song about love?!?! The ones you can’t take seriously when your in your “philosophical, spiritual, emotionally charged, or deep” states of mind, but that could not make you happier when you’re just allowing your self to LIVE, not think. Live, not worry. LIVE.

Bring out the songs you haven’t listened to in months, years maybe! And then turn it up and dance! If you can sing, do that too!! Sing even if you can't!!! Celebrate the great love you’ve had, the love you share, or the love you excitedly wait for… and most of all celebrate the life that makes it all possible!!

I’ve danced here in Tanzania. Danced just the way I hope you will, wherever you find yourself.

I send each you all my rhythm, all my rock, and most of all… all my “BIDI BIDI BOM BOM”. (Selena Quintanilla RIP April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995)

systole and diastole... "lub dub" goes my heart

2008-01-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

A challenger or a bargainer? Which are you?

I’ve considered myself a challenger… a challenger of institutions. Unfortunately, through my challenge of the Church, I’d become a challenger of even the Divine.

I was proud to be a challenger. It was as though my understanding of the injustices of the Church (especially on the colonized continent that I currently call home) and my resolve to remain apart somehow made me stronger, better!, than any of the Church folk.

And so when I realized the spiritual emptiness of me I was afraid that any attempt to express submission would seem in-genuine, in-sincere, and most especially undeserved. – “you who criticized my church, who choose to see all the bad and none of the good, who criticized those who selflessly carry my word, who are you to call out to me in need?”

So I decided to challenge the challenge. If it were a true challenge, if I were fighting for something, if I were protecting something… what was that thing?!? What good was the challenge if it caused me to loose my self, if it came at the expense of my spirit?

I gave up the challenge… and now when I listen, listen close, I can hear a familiar sound… my heart beats once more.

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“My heart knows no fear. My soul knows no shame.

My heart beats in love. My soul thrives in peace.

Surely, thou art with me.”

first, you have to believe that it is there to be found...

2008-01-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

For positive change we will start by believing, once more, in beauty.

Although it may not be found equally in each person we meet and each place we go, there is great beauty in all.

Peace is found in the appreciation and development of beauty, not in the condemnation of its unequal distribution.

something like "a heart of darkness"...

2007-12-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

Where is my heart?

The cavity of my chest… the part of me that used to feel the entrance of the divine into my body… it now feels empty.

How does one build it up again? Alone, how does one re-initiate the cultivation of their soul? I don’t know where to start.

I am afraid. Afraid that I don’t know what to say.

I wait. I wait as though with time I might be moved to prayer, moved to repentance, and that the words will come naturally.

In the depth of me, I am even more afraid that this time will never come.

"blindness"... and "seeing"... barceló meets saramago

2007-10-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

Today…

Today is a day of questioning… dissatisfaction fosters uncertainty.

Does the sublimity of one afternoon set the stage for ennui in the next?

No. I cannot believe that it would. The range of emotion that accompanies an afternoon’s passage is a reflection only of our choice to act and how.

Action has become the vehicle through which I discover life, through which I see life and feel its energy around me. Blindness, therefore, in my case, is not an impairment of vision, but the result of a failure to provide stimulus.

To see, to hear, to feel, to taste, to smell; in order to live, one must live sensually. A sensual life is our celebration of a world encountered and re-encountered via our daily choice to act and “be live”.
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shout out to dot for the artistic inspiration.

kwanza

2007-09-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

"i see babies cry and i watch them grow, they'll learn so much more than we'll ever know, and i think to myself, what a wonderful world."

its been difficult for me to begin... i think i'd been intimidated by the precedent set by a few close friends.... this morning, however, a number of recent events have coalesced. this union reminds me how unreasonable it is to feel hesitant about the creation of something new.

the lyrics above catalyzed the unexpected precipitation of disjointed thought into solid mass. (sorry, the sentence above, i couldn't let it go.) when i heard these words i understood that, just as we watch babies grow and wonder what they will learn, in daring to create, we simultaneously see our own maturity (or maybe even infancy) and wonder what events will bring us to new levels of understanding. i am grateful to see that this opportunity for creation and growth is finally realizing itself. whether beautiful or horrid, it will be. it must be...

i've just turned 24. the best birthday i've known. on this last birthday i was blessed with a tremendous appreciation for life and the priceless gift of feeling that it had just begun.

my body works and rests in tanzania, but my mind and heart soar reaching each of the people and places that have blessed my life. thank you to each of you and thank you to life for blessing each of us with the opportunity to greet another day.