gardenia lust: Coronavirus Communique May 30, 2020

Buddhist Thai monks chanting: my go to


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCS19EOsrA&t=63s

Post early morning exercise sess, freshly bathed, meditation time on my yoga mat, 2nd cup of coffee, lanai, truth.

Truth streaming down my face; a sweet fervent deluge cascading down, cleansing my outcropped facade of 'strength'. Salty water purging through petrifying boulders that threaten to stagnate. Fiercely gentle they are. But I am malleable.  Welcome relief to saturate and satiate my essence. Putrefaction to purification. To be cognizant of the process of transformation... ah yes. Becoming whole again I am.

Yesterday was a tough lesson. I pushed through though- but not without shedding a lot of angst. ANGST- this shit is dis-ease. Peeling back the layers, going deeper internally to my core- where the good shit happens when tended to properly. 

The secret gardenia bushes taught me my lesson this morning. Yes, early morning jamming down PC Parkway listening to my fav jazz podcast, these lovelies woke me the fuck up. So intoxication their essence I dare not to pluck even one.  Staying power. So with every completed lap comes another nugget to tickle my thirst for my quest for The Divine. A few unsuspecting people have walked or drove by when I am amidst this rite for my passage. Mermaid hair, don't care...

But I digress. Yesterday... In reflection, my routine was disrupted yesterday. Not that I like to adhere to 'routine' in daily life, but these times of covid-19 necessitate something. Sort sort of structure to look forward to.  Being so isolated over here to start off and living alone during covid19, well you gotta get creative.  That being said, I miss The Kitts so much- yet my heart swells to think of them in their Oregon chapter of life. So free they are to dwell among the beasts and listen to the rhythms of eARTh.

Take 2... Yesterday...
I woke today with some trepidation; would I snap outta my funk?  Sure as the sun rises/sets I did just that!  So what was it, this temporary dis-ease yesterday? First off, I did absolutely nothing physical.  I perhaps didn't even step out of my apartment. I do recall heading out to my lanai on a mission to procure my cocoa butter that I had sitting out in the sun warming up in anticipation of slathering it on myself. Yea, that's about it.

By 10:30 am I was crawling the walls it seemed. Of course I had moved on to delving into the U.S. news dramedy show. Thirty or so tweets into updates on $45, Minneapolis, posts with haoles directing other haoles on how to act responsibly in our fucked up society, I had had enough.  It drove me back to my knitting and trying to remember how to add on stitches for a sleeve project I am working on. 

On an upswing, I have been studying my Portuguese lessons feverishly lately.  I'm starting to feel fairly confident in my reading and speaking.  Listening, of course, is tricky.

I've been working on a tarot card project as of late. For the past 2 weeks I've been working with the court cards. As it happened, yesterday I was focused on the Hanged Man and Death cards.  Serendipitous, really. I finished off my research with 'Art'.

Yet still, it was a tough fucking day... Some other helpful moments consisted of watching the new Netflix series, "Space Force" with Steve Carrell & just a solid group of characters- most notable for me is the return of John Malkovich to the tele.

In other news, today [tonight here @ 10:22 pm] will be the second attempt at launch of the SpaceX crew launch to the International Space Station. You know what, amidst all this shit streaming at homo sapiens right now (a majority of which we have devised, fostered, and destroyed with), this seems so joyful for some reason.  It's really quite bittersweet; why the fuck do we get to bring our planet to (perhaps) a brink of no return (thinking 'overpopulation' being #1 here),  and explore other realms to continue to fuck up? So yea, I have problems with this, but the science of it fascinates.  Our species, as far as I'm concerned, is fucked. We've hit our 'zenith' and are on a slow descent, back-sliding into  another chapter in HERstory.

things I'm grateful for:

• all the varieties of frankincense that I have purchased on my trips to Oman.  Pounds of frankincense have filled my suitcases!  Oh, and the sandalwood, and the amber, and and and da kine...

• music- all of it.  At this moment it's monks chanting.  Earlier this morning was jazz funk. Last night it was Led Zeppelin... See where I'm going with this? 

• all my medicinals that travel with me to each new environment.  Where would I be without my: Omega 3s, Turmeric, Tang-kuei & Blupieurum Formula, Glucosamine, D3, grapefruit seed extract, plant enzymes, Ashwagandha, Maça, spirulina, lung tonic, ginko, gotu kola, lysine, etc...

Okay it's likely that my neighbors don't know what to think of me. The stairwell was quite active today while I was burning my incense concoction with my door open, monks chanting... No matter. Just letting my freak flag fry fly.

-peace on eARTh

Cultivate: Coronavirus Communique May 26, 2020

Reflecting on:

'Parkie' life- it's a good life
If you are traveling around America and get the chance, check out Yosemite National Park- preferably during off-season...

Pak City Parkway Strut
How does one power-walk while listening to Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" without strutting? It ain't easy y'all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BM5wPOe0xQ

As my story goes... early mornings are my most coveted moments these daze. I have cultivated a routine that I look forward to, thrive from and desire to keep me blossoming during these times.  So imagine this morning my bubble shattering- enough that it pissed me off.  There was so much fucking trash all about the PCP this morning.  I just lost my shit silently screaming in my mind. Between the cacophony of litter carelessly strewn about on and off the path and discordant sounds coming from deep within my Solar Plexus, I felt like I was swimming in a pile of ignorance.

This reminds me of living on the Big Island (of Hawaii) when I was studying at University of Hawaii, Hilo. I lived in this fucking amazing area along the eastern coast; Richardson Beach.  I lived in this household of funky people, none of which were also going to university.  They were actors/actresses at the community playhouse as well as holding down their day jobs responsibly.  I used to bike and run along this long, fairly remote stretch (especially if heading further east from Richardson, towards Leleiwi Point. After that it turned to a path (circumnavigating a majority of the island actually- the King's Highway (Pi`ilani Trail). 

This area was so strikingly beautiful it could make you weep. Quiet solitude, local living, nature so wild and unkempt that it was thrilling to be in its presence. But... it was full of trash on deeper inspection.  I mean the little sugar-cane saturated clusters hiding various pullouts so intricate it's like a tunnels leading to treasure chests- of rubbish.  Trash everywhere; furniture, toilet paper, just fucking garbage thrown out of car windows or deposited late in the night by people perhaps not wanting to drive to the dump and dump their shit because they were too fucking lazy.

Beautiful Hilo, Hawaii- but you best remember to walk lightly upon this eARTh... This place is full of mana. No disrespect, eh...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hilo,+HI+96720,+USA/@19.6865437,-155.2300207,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x79524b5a6c97dec9:0xc15ba900330c15c6!8m2!3d19.7241106!4d-155.0868193

That's what it is... laziness. So seeing trash in my current hood just really made me sad this morning.  It's laziness from all corners of the globe. Why would you not want to responsibly throw your trash away?  I fucking hate this... Pick up your fucking trash.

As I look deeper into the situation I think about what's behind it. Right now we are back in a 4-day lockdown over the course of the Eid Al Fitr national holidays. Covid cases have increased a bit recently and mitigation measures were needed on the fly so this is what the government came up with.  It seems a responsible measure, honestly.

So how this perhaps trickles down to this travesty is that the Bengalese and/or local workers that take care of the grounds (beautiful rose gardens!) aren't working? So normally they are picking up everybody's fucking trash... What the fuck? That shit ain't right.

Rant over.

Each lap, though, I can purge that shit feeling and surround myself with cultivating beauty. Looking forward to seeing my favorite rose bushes each day brings great pleasure, as well as bittersweet sorrow to observe them wilting as they complete their life cycle.  Yes, bittersweet.

While listening to jazz (jazz funk being my 'go-to', I spend a lot of time working on memory exercises in my mind while working out. Each lap I pick one of these mulberry things and eat it and rate them. I think about what I want to blog about as I wander in and out of my own moving picture show that sets the stage for pondering deeper. So many topics come up that it is a challenge to remember each. Just remembering how many laps can be a challenge some days... I concentrate on words/grammar I'm learning in my Portuguese language studies and what I got wrong, etc.

Figueira da Foz
Getting more and more psyched about cultivating my near future... As a back-up, I continue exploring other parts of Portugal to perhaps settle, but I'm not having any of it. Figueira da Foz is it.  There is this sweet village just outside of the (small) city, Maiorca.

So yea I work hard to cultivate my present. I indulge myself into my 'fantasy-of-owning-property-that-is-evolving-into-reality moods. It feels good. Real good. The present is dealing some shitty cards on large scale to Mother Earth these days, down to the scale of global pandemic, and can be reduced further down to each individual's response to all this over-stimuli coming at us. Whatever. I'm trying to turn that shit into lemonade.

Reach the Beach.

Cultivate the Beach... Be the Beach

-peace

What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud: Coronavirus Communique May 25, 2020

inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEoxGJ79PMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHSH9sJUEo

early mornings funking down Pak City Parkway
I'm my own private dancer in these moments. Quiet stillness, or so it seems in my mind, adds to these moments in the time of coronavirus. Iraq is on total lockdown for Eid al Fitr for obvious reasons.  The city eased up 'lockdown' a while ago, yet I still tread with trepidation. Not yet ready for the transformation to society from a period of hibernation really. All in my own time.  


good shit's brewing in my head. 
Days fly. I can't catch up. Dawn slips to twilight to sunrise to morning to afternoon to sunset to dusk to dark. Lately. Full of projects, my mind is nourished with fuel. Creative energy purges through my network drowning any stagnation lurking, not yet 'wanting' a fix.  Gotta 'fix' that shit.

Pull a few court cards from my tarot: the Sun, the Moon, the Hierophant. Look at me. Energies mirrored, conflicting, swirling creating energy. Moody energy. Fine-tuning raw energy into something malleable, USEful. UseFUEL. Anthem.

Time to create. Time to funk. What the fuck is 'time'?

word salad

 Google Classroom

Bewitching hour

French Roast

South Pacific

wanderlust

Portugal

da kine 

rhythm

sweat

beach

garb

space

home

write

road-fishing

Magic happens. Left my building this morning full of musical energy to strut down **da kine**  Pak City Parkway, this nugget fell right into my lap. Instinct. Grab it.  I love how the universe provides. Next on deck is "The Mountains of Portugal" by ??? author escapes me... Yann Martel maybe? Me thinks. But, possibilities have just widened.  After all, I'm a newbie in the genre of Russian literature only having read Master and Margarita previously. That book was such a struggle to 'get' (nuances galore with Russian society) that I thirst for more. Who knows. 

sprouts

So I've been growing sprouts for a few years over here with varied results.  Fall and spring seem to work best. Recently I transitioned them from mason jars to (newly discovered) seed bags. Alas they are still struggling... Perhaps too much dryness? My last batch in the mason jar last week was too moist, turning to mush kinda. I think some of that problem was the aluminum lid (with plastic mesh atop) mixed with an abundance of moisture thus creating a greenhouse effect.  

I had such hope in the seed bags. After 24 hours of soaking in they went.  It's day 3 maybe and they don't seem to be sprouting easily.  I keep them fastened so I can easily rinse them more than a few times a day (to account for the heat now?), but they resist.  I'm thinking they dry out too fast? More research. More data needs to be collected before I can make more hypotheses to determine a viable solution. 

So that's where I'm at with sprouts currently.

Yea, I'm just trying to keep my freak flag flying in the time of coronavirus. Proud. I'm feeling it.

 

Groove Tribe: coronavirus communique May 23, 2020

Music saves sanity. Truth.

Daze and daze go by. I look at the numbers, unfocused in a haze of waiting- for what? I'm not that interested in keeping up with the general details. I'm nesting safely inside my psyche these daze hand-feeding it all my desires and fantasies to tide me over and seeing what develops.

I sense that it's not just me. Globally we are learning how to become 'unstuck' perhaps.  The phoenix rising from the ashes- that kinda stuff. Slow and steady wins the 'race'... Emergence. Transformation. This I work at with grace and positivity, until I slip backwards into stagnation. The wheel of life. It's spinning, which is dynamic.

That's all, really. Love and light we seek.

Mistress of Plan B series: Coronavirus Communique May 21, 2020

Mistress of Plan B series

Things I’m digging right now in the time of corona-virus:

Thinking about Ernest Hemingway sitting on his lanai in Paris with his typewriter.

it'll do, for now...

Ginger. Lots of it.

Smoothies every day. Serious mana from the gods/goddesses, this is my kool-aid.

Jazz.

Not checking the news incessantly.

“Mermaid Hair Don’t Care” [thanks Hayley]

Early rising w/da kine and working out outside before the sun gods/goddesses reigns supreme.  With every lap comes a sense of calm vigor.  Blood pumping, it nourishes my cells, my spirit, me. 

Then there are the mulberry trees (yes?) with its mana hanging low, yet not so low anymore to easily reach.  I gotta work to get to those luscious black berries now.  Perhaps another few weeks at most to engage in this endeavor and I’ll move on to another sideshow activity.

The floral bouquet rising from my beloved Yosemite trucker hat continues on.  The abundance of roses in bloom in the region now does not escape me. The audacity to pluck one! The desire to pluck many adornments can’t be abated. After giving me essence to accompany my workout, they continue to delight me decaying on my bathroom sink counter. I honor their metamorphosis into sweet decay. 

Sprouting sprouts. This joy has recently been heightened. As the temperatures have been increasing here, my mason jar sprouts have become compromised. I’d noticed that the glass jars were more a greenhouse recently, collecting more moisture. Of course I knew what the solution was (seed bags I learned), but didn’t have any, or so I thought.  Then I remembered Julie from the Istanbul tribe. She had given us these reusable vegetable bags (seed bags!) that a friend of hers had made.  I constantly use them still on my green grocer visits in the hood. I already possessed the remedy!  I put that shit to work immediately and on day 2 I already see a major difference.  Sprouts happy. Holly happy. 

Tribe. The Human tribe. The Blood tribe. All the tribes. I am tribe.

“Valeria” on Netflix.  Only one season right now so get on it.

“The Eddy” on Netflix.  Jazzy beats. I need speak no more about it.  Sure the story is a sideline. It works.

Tarot cards.  Yes, introspective times necessitate self-reflection- however you go about it.

Something that felt really good recently: Carrying a big stack of books downstairs in the foyer for anyone to read.  What a sense of accomplishment!  First, just to part with books is so difficult so the act in itself is a small victory.  It’s like spreading your seed far and wide to all corners of the eARTh.  What faraway lands will all these books end up at the end of their lifespan? What stories divulge.  They have their own trajectories independent of us spending some time admiring them on our book shelves, finally reading them, seeing them lying around on the coffee table for months afterward, etc. So to release them into the wilds, anything is possible!  You know that feeling when you score a free book and you also get another hidden nugget in a bus ticket, museum stub, a note scratched on a post-it on some random page- yes THAT. It delights.

Plan B; one hit wonders sometimes, which is fine.  Plan B always deserves cultivation and storage somewhere in the hard drive.  I don’t always pay attention to Plan B, but when I do I’m sincere. Then I set it aside until its time. Plan B rarely works ‘on the fly’- not for me anyway.  But the possibilities… That is the beauty of Plan B.

And then there’s the distant Plan C. I put this to use when I headed to Yosemite to work for the season a few summers back.  Hastily arranged, it all fucking worked out fairly effortlessly (with a lot of paperwork!) and it was a fucking amazing experience (the gig, not the paperwork- but there’s something to say about keeping organized and on top of that paperwork trail shit). I put Plan A on hold for Plan C and absolutely it was the right path.  There’s a lot of magic in the universe, but you gotta feel it and catch it when it tempts you. The attractions, the dance, the emotions, the rationale (‘should I stay or should I go”) all are valuable tools when considering magic.

So I’m refining Plan B. Science! Big plans, yet not grandiose. Plan B, something to work actively towards achieving by creating while in Plan A.

Coronavirus Communique #3: " I was dreamin' when I wrote this. Forgive me if it goes astray" May 1, 2020

 "I was dreamin' when I wrote this. Forgive me if it [I] go astray"
                                                           -Prince

me.today.vibe:EternalSunshineoftheSpotlessMind.for real. And da kine.  Always da kine.

I've been meaning to comment of the floral bouquets wafting through the air in the early mornings here when I'm power-walking or running around the building complex here.  Lockdown restrictions have been lifted somewhat recently (since Ramadan started) yet I've been lingering around my health den, my cocoon of cleanliness so to speak. If I'm being honest, as a host of you know, I'm not the most organized of housekeepers... And it's perfectly fucking fine...

So you know... yes, the flowers... Each day I've gotten into the routine of starting out on my 1st lap just getting into my breath, trying to establish consistency: deep inhalation.hold.controlled, constant exhalation. Over and over.  Let's get all that shit outta our lungs, right? Am I right??? [I call this covid-19 protection. That's right, I drank THAT koolaid and I wanna believe.  An, unrelated, unconfirmed coronavirus claim I recently said that smoking MAY protect you from the virus... Weird. Wouldn't that be a strange conundrum...]

Flowers. Yes. So I sense this aromatic sensory sweetness. Yes, it's sweet. Because it's fleeting. And you have to work for it. That is the challenge here: finding the beauty where you can- either externally or internally.  Da kine. Right?

By the 2nd lap there is a flower in my pony tail (I'm thinking to bring back the term 'pig tails' this season...) or my right ear. Because, Hawai`i & shit.  I do miss the shit outta Hawai`i.  I try to live Hawai`i as much as possible here.  Everywhere.

How can someone greet a flower with a grimace? Someone can't.

[side note here, I just finished reading Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito & there is a knock-knock joke that frequents some chapters:

     knock-knock
           who's there?
      It's me. Himself

...I'm not entirely sure why I brought that to attention. I believe it was the 'someone' & the 'himself' association.  I could be wrong though].

So, books.  I've got a lot of 'em.  I've plowed through many of 'em.  I'm quite impressed with myself. Kinda like braggadocio rights I give to myself. This reflexive instinct, however misguided, puts me into another category as a compulsive book collector.

You see, I can't turn away a free book.  I carry them all around the world with me. Different bookshelves in different countries they sit. Awaiting that one day, what might never arrive, for me to pick it up, look at the flyer or postcard or museum ticket, or receipt of something incurred while traveling... Next in the process is to read the back cover. Last, delve into it.

I picked up a VERY eclectic selection when I lived in Yosemite.  Nothing but sweet fucking memories of pure goodness working that gig.  What a trip it was.  The fucking Sierra Nevada!!! Anyway, Parkies read it all. I mean, Tom Robbins? I poured through his quiver 30 years ago while living in the jungle on Maui doing that thing that one does living in the jungle... Yes, it's true. All of it. 

While I'm pondering books, I recently read some unpublished work by a colleague. Short stories is a 'newish' genre I've delved into. The result? I enjoy them.  There is something to the structure, or how you need to structure your mind, energy, psyche for short-story enjoyment.  I enjoy the challenge, the science of it.  My brain digs the chemicals it produces. So does my body. I mean, I work hard to produce the right chemicals. Tirelessly.

So the stories got me to thinking about connections. While I couldn't find a connection between all the stories, I sensed that there was. I just didn't know what it was yet.  I was rewarded in the end to find that indeed a ribbon was weaved through the stories, traveling to-fro contemporaneously or sequentially.  Yea, my brain digs these treasure hunts; sifting through the sands to get the satisfaction of discovering the jeweled nuggets.

OH OH OH you guys.  You NEED to listen to this podcast: Prince: The Story of 1999.  

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/prince-the-story-of-1999/id1488187430

Sheer fucking genius.  The Prince Foundation does an excellent job of presenting these intimate grains of sand of Prince's vast desert he surrounded himself with: Deserts of art, music, friendship, experiences. Each grain goes through this hourglass of information learned about his sheer fucking genius.

The part about working with his favorite studio sound engineer, Peggy, to working with Lisa (and her interviews are so raw and descriptive) to Desmond describing when their band opened up for the Rolling Stones, which ended up a total disaster. It's said that the Stones' fans were not ready for Prince's 'show', and things got ugly. 

Even if you're not into Prince, the podcast is well produced. 

Peace. A purple protective perspective piece of peace to you all

Some projects as of late...