Time is relative

One of my least favorite quotes of all time is "Time is money.".
Time is life.

It has been a mere 12 days since my last post but it seems like it has been forever ago. Every day flies by so fast. One of my teachers said we were already on week 4 of the program! We are in testing times... as in we just had our A&P test last week and this week we have both Shiatsu and Anatomiken. I got 100% on my A&P test and plan to get the same on all of my tests. I am learning what I need to do to be happy and productive in school. Still loving all but one of my classes. My respect for my teachers here has done nothing but grown, and I have even found a niche in the student social order.
My role in social life is one of giving. It feels really good. My best friend here right now is a beautiful 6' tall free spirit. I go to her place every morning and cook for her (Kelsey) and her roommates. The 5 of us eat together and joke and listen to music and then we go to school. If I made extra I bring it and give it out at school. Our food is 90% dumpstered and they offer me the 10% since I cook and clean for B-fast and lunch. It works out well for everyone. Last week there was a young Dutch woman staying there and she gave me the greatest complement. "You could be European". Speaking of being, I still don't feel at home. Last night I went to a comedy show and since we got home late and Kelsey was away I decided to crash in her bed for the night. I didn't think of the eventuality of being woken up buy 4 half dressed fully drunken people. I thought it was pretty great at the time but it stirred some conflict in myself. I decided to go down and watch the party for a bit. When 2 friends ran off to have sex it was like watering my little seeds of discontent. I hung out with Jessy (a big attractive really drunk guy) and Sarah (a cute girl) while Jessy told me everything from the fact that he hated me asked me why I hated him, to the fact that I am a freak, to the fact that he respected me for how I handled my space and that he couldn't control me. The first statement I think has little significance and was accompanied by a fib about a gift I gave to him being a poor gift. The second statement highlights the fact that I don't really fit in. The third is part and parcel with the second. Anyway, after he passed out I asked Sarah if she wanted to cuddle with me, which she didn't, and I went off to bed. Leading to the discontent I was talking about. I feel alone on many levels. The persona I chose here is going to be great for getting work done but not one which will likely lead to sexual affairs. I choose this very intentionally so that I don't get distracted from school but it's difficult none the less. Other levels of intimacy are being quelled by calling family and friends more often.
Speaking of family. I just had a great conversation with Merrin. In the last part we talked about change. I have realized that although I have changed the superficial aspects of myself many times in many ways there are parts of myself that have hardly changed or not changed at all in my life. This is an important thought for me because change has always been a major focus of my life. We also spoke of priorities and the difference between "setting" priorities and observing priorities. I have previously mentioned that I am not really believing in a free will a such so much. In the A&P world apparently there is a big debate about what "controls" cells. It has been traditionally held that the nucleus controls the cell but now people are saying that the cell membrane controls the cell... Where is the self of the cell? Can I say that "I" am the self of the cell? Excepting mitochondria it is my DNA after all is it not? (did you know that the "power plant" of your cells is not even made of your DNA?) What's my point? I don't know.

Peace and blessings manifest

Peace and blessings manifest with every lesson learned,
If your knowledge were your wealth then it will be well earned.
-Erykah Badu

What a day. I woke up in the middle of the night and thought "what were the 8 functions of an organism?" Went through them in my head, and thought about some more A&P as I drifted back to sleep...

Woke again around 5.30 to cook and stretch and what not before leaving on my bike at 7.00 to make it to the social services dept. by 8.00. I took off like a bat out of hell with a feeling of being on top of the world. That was until I realized that I could not shift gears. Then in a panic I realized that my breaks were also frozen solid... That's where I put my foot down! I won't go into all the details but my breaks were terribly problematic the whole morning. I was starting to feel as if the whole world was against me when Erykah popped into my head my entire attitude shifted and immediately afterwards I met a nice epileptic man on the side of the road and had a nice chat about his son in WA and daughter in After many delays I made it to be the first in line for food stamps. I was very pleased to find that they had bad coffee waiting for me.
The woman that helped me was not a very happy woman, and she explained to me why I could not get food stamps but I insisted on going through with the process. Since then I have found out how I can get food stamps and I am happy I choose to do the whole process. "The process" as I am affectionately calling it ended up taking about 45 minutes which meant that if I didn't get a car ride to school I would be over 30 minutes late and be counted absent. Luckily Eileen gave me a ride making us both only 15 minutes late costing only 2% of my grade... With my bad timing I am wondering if that will be the sole reason I don't get A's? I apologized to my shiatsu teacher for being late and told her I would learn to be on time. Class was great. We started off playing with Chi, I haven't done much of that in years but my sensitivity came back immediately. Very fun. The rest of the school day was kinda whatever.
My after school chore was scouting a good place to squat. I think I found an awesome spot! More on that to come.
Lastly, I asked a guy for directions and ended up riding with him for a mile or so which led to a long conversation about practice and philosophy. I won't go into details but it was cool how it all happened.

Fortunate Friday.

Everyday in shiatsu we have a "student of the day". Since people were reluctant to volunteer I put myself out there. Yesterday was my big day. In the morning I still didn't know what I was going to do, something to do with yoga... My first thought was to stand on my head for 5 minutes but in the days since I volunteered I have heard allot of ignorant talk about yoga that standing on my head might encourage. My next idea was to give a talk on what yoga is, but that seemed to boring. I asked Eileen and she suggested that I teach the sun salutations. Thinking that everyone must know the sun salutations I decided to do a round and talk about yoga in pose. I started out saying that yoga is not about the body and then into hatha or "forceful" yoga. I was nervous and thought I did a really poor job when Sarah F the teacher asked me if I would lead the class in a round. I did and still felt like I did a terrible job. Afterwards 3 people gave me high fives and several people thanked me. Maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought.

I am starting to feel comfortable working on the table and excited to learn a little Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

Fridays are great, I only have one class!
After class I met one of the Kenyan Olympic team massage therapists. He was a very nice. I asked him if I could do an internship with the Kenyan team and he gave me his contact info both here and in Kenya. It sounds like I can do some volunteer work with them and figure it out from there. What a cool idea!
Our conversation was cut short because I had a massage. As a student I get $15 student massages! It's not quite as good as a professional massage but it's definitely good. There were also a few unexpected benefits. He talked to me about different muscles and helped me understand where they were, and his teacher came in and I got to listen to her sort of 1 on 1 lesson with him. Besides that she also worked on me a little, and helped me understand what's up with my back.
Due to yoga I have allot of mobility, which is good and much to the dismay of Jacob I can also take a tremendous amount of pressure. She said I need orthopedic massage to help my alignment. I felt awesome afterward!
My bike ride home was great! My posture was so different that I fell like I need to readjust my bike to fit the new posture!
Speaking of bikes... I am doing the Community Cycles "earn a bike program". I put in 10 hours and they will give me a frame and parts to work on! I should get my new frame today! I am bringing in some treats today as well so that I get extra help working on my bike! Thanks for the tip Dad, and you thought I never learned anything from you!

Next I went to Shambala to sit. I only had about 30 min but it I felt some nice emotional releases.

Bad Dream

I was just over sleeping a little and having a very strange dream with Mom and Merrin in it when Merrin called and said "I don't have any time to talk but I wanted to call and say I love you."

The dream was first that I was camping with two other people, the kind of dream morphous people that are sortof Bob but sortof Dad... I accidently left something at the camp site with a reporter from a forign land who didn't speak much english. We left without my knowing we were going too. I felt guilty both for leaving the thing and for leaving the guy without saying good bye, but I didn't stop us from leaving. Later we were stoped and they were looking for the thing, I went out side and they pulled off. I walked around the corner to the bookstore coffee shop they moved to when I saw a man harrasing people with swords in the parking lot on the other side of a fence. I got his attention and he tried to threaten me. I wasn't afraid so he asked me if I was afraid of him. I told him I knew who he was and he tried to threaten me one more time before breaking into dance. I danced with him and everyone started to dance. I danced into the bookstore, into the cafe where I stopped. The casheir asked if I wanted something and I said someing to excuse myself from buying anything. Dad/Bob and merrin were there.

Next thing I know I am on a road with a little girl/Merrin and another Crazy guy. The crazy walks into the road and stops that lane stops at first and then they go around him. He is mad at the road. He starts yelling at a walker about it and they tell him that it was his Idea to "do the 2 lane road" and he said "Oh, yeah" and calmed down. I didn't know what they were talking about, we were on a three lane road so it must have been something else influensing that road. We climbed up a hill and found Mom. Details get fuzzy but we are at an airport disscusing how Merrin and I can get there easily in the futrure. Mom starts dangeling herself on the pipe that hangs over a ~30 foot drop. If I was doing it, which I would as a child but not any more I would feel safe but I thought about how odd it was for Mom and felt unsafe. Then a little girl touched her shirt and she started to wobble and got sacred. I freaked out. I grabed a hold of her legs with a hug. I wondered if I should be doing that for 2 reasons. 1 I would be more safe without help and 2 it makes getting off more complicated. That's when Merrin called.

Today's classes were good. Zen Shiatsu in the morning and Anatomiken in the afternoon. I am afraid of Anatomiken. We will be learning anatomy by building it out of clay. I'm not much of the artsy craftsy type... The teacher also scares me a little. She is not particularly friendly but she seems to know the material well and explaines things clearly. Today they had an an "intersting side note" about the zygomatic arch... Aparently the it is etimologicly related the the sanskrit root yuga from which we get yoga... I tried to tell her that yuga is not the sanskrit root for but a mesurement of time. She was not pleased with my input and obviously had no intention of changing her material. I think I will be sticking with anatomy in that class from now on. We started the class by handing out bones and figuring out what they were! The class will be chalanging no doubt, many people fail, but it will be really fun as well!

I am riding a bike to school, about 9 miles. Well, probably longer since I got lost this morning and was almost late for class. My cardio system is not in the best shape but I love the ride.

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Life is precious. Handle with care.

I had an older German friend at the Himalayan Institute who was among other things a photographer. Just before I left she gave her friends there a CD of her pictures and on it it said "Life is precious. Handle with care."

I realized that everything in this world is impermanent when I was pretty young. It helped shield me from some of the harsh realities of life that I also saw at a fairly young age. I thought to myself that only I could shelter myself. I think that both of these things are fundamental truths in some sense but I didn't understand all of their implications at the time. I didn't understand how interconnected everything is.

Jaz never really settled into life here in Boulder. She was growing more and more unhappy almost daily. She was always happier in the woods then in the city. I told her 2 days ago that I thought that she should go to visit her parents so that when Halloween rolls around and she is flown in and out of NYC for a documentary she will be able to go anywhere already having fulfilled family obligations. Then I walked to the Shambala Center to listen to a Lama give a talk on love. It was very difficult to tell her to leave. By the time I got home she had bought a plane ticket. I was sad, she was sad. She was ignoring me. I couldn't concentrate on my studies, wasn't yet sleepy, to cold to stand out side and talk for long (I called Merrin) and had nothing else to do... So I sat in the room and watched her, and my mind. At what seemed to be the most appropriate time I finally spoke. I didn't want her to leave upset with me, and I needed to say a few things myself. After a few minutes we had agreed that her leaving was the best thing and she might come back if we are both able to resolve a few issues.

I am at school now. I am loving the classes today. We had movement and kinesiology and anatomy and physiology comes next. The kids are starting to loosen up a bit. I am forming a few friendships.

After class before bed: I feel a kind of stress I have never felt before... I am feeling behind with everything, just slightly behind. I am not worried about it. After a week or two I am sure I will settle into a new rhythm. One blessing is Theo. She has a science brain, we will be studying together allot I hope.

No time to write. Sleepy time.

If I can remember how precious this passing stressful moment is then I will be very pleased with myself.

I'm a mess

When it comes to things and keeping track of things, I suck. When I was young I was always loosing my shoes or what ever.

On a side note. There are 30 or so of these cute rodent looking critters in the field across from where I am sitting. One just sat up on it's hind legs and cried out.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I suck. Some time ago, for the second time this year I lost my credit card. I may have lost it up to a month ago since that was the last time I actually used it. The out come of all this is that I didn't have the money I so desperately begged for at the time I needed it. I Called Wachovia and they air mailed another card to me, a waste of $16. Today I had to ride to BCMT to pay my bill. I got on the bus and found out that it was a special bus. Not the kind I rode in elementary school, the $3.00 kind. I only had 1.25 which I was told was the cost of the bus. The driver was very nice and she took me for free, but while talking with her my phone fell out of my pocket. I'm wearing these darned (did I tell you Jaz made me stop using profanity?) Thai pants. They only hold things in the pockets in Thailand. Magic I guess. I think a Button is in order.

So I was waiting across from the vermin field to see if the driver would come back around on the same route. She didn't. The man who came instead gave me a bus slip with transfers because it had the Boulder Bus number on it. I was able to use this pass to run all of my chores for the day. In total I used 5 buses for zero dollars and zero cents. This doesn't in itself make up for, in either the emotional or monetary senses, for what I deal with because of my ineptness with things, but it makes me think. I was thinking about it as I walked towards the salvation army to buy the sheets I need for school. As I sat in front of a Panera Bread eating from their garbage I looked toward the mountains and contemplated my existence. I thought about my strengths and weaknesses. I thought about types of things and specific things. Take food for example. Food breaks down simply into a few types. Starch foods, protein foods, green foods, fruit foods, dairy foods, and junk foods. All of these fit also into the categories of my food, not my food, and waste food. The waste food is like no mans land. By throwing it away one is saying it's not theirs, but the stigma of digging it out of the garbage clearly says that it is not mine. Speaking of social mores, I don't care much about them. Years of not fitting in has desensitized me. Jaz is very uncomfortable pulling garbage in front of people. It doesn't bother me one bit. I guess it comes from perspective. I could also classify people broadly as people that matter and people that don't. The people that "don't matter" do matter in that they matter to themselves and I wouldn't want to hurt them, and of course they effect me indirectly but most people don't matter. If they see me eating out of a garbage can it wont change anything. Sometimes they will turn into someone who will matter but odds are they won't be able to see past my clothing. I wear my hippy cloths when I don't want anyone to see me. Most of the people who matter won't care anyway. Back to the stuff stuff. It floats in and out of my life without care. I get stuff for free or super cheap and then it disappears or I give it away. Most things in the world are pretty interchangeable. If I eat one kind of green food or another it's pretty much the same, one shirt or another, etc. In our world you need to have particular things. I don't do well with particulars. I will need to get better at that.