Wintercount and CA

Wintercount was Awesome!

In the desert of Arizona four hundred something people gathered for a week to learn and play. Everyday it seems like there were 20 classes offered. everything from bow making to brain tanning to fire building. I was only there for 2 days of classes and only went to one class. I learned how to make a Dakota stove, basicly a cook fire that is under ground. The best parts were the community and the individuals. I was uncomforable when I arrived because it is a new scene for me. You can throw me into any city with nothing and I can live comfortably and enjoy myself, and I love the wilds, but if you put me in the woods with nothing... I will die. For all the time I have spent hiking and camping I have no skills to survive without modern tools. Nobody seemed to care if you live compleately off the land or if you are a weekend warrior. Two of my faviorate people where Doug and Matt. Both can walk off into the woods with nothing and live comfortably. I was blessed enough to offer both of them massages. Both, for their ages, had very healthy muscle structure and wonderful energy. Both of them offered to trade massage for the oppertunity to live with them and learn from them! We will see.

As for the next few months? I will be leaving LA next wendsay to bike up the CA coast and then to cut accross the conuntry to CT! I am so excited! I will be working at Great Hollow in CT! I have never been excited about a job before!

Things are going really well! Jaz and I are getting along splendidly. I have found the most valueable skill to avoid conflict is not to say things that instigate or feed into it. It's amazing how effective thinking before you speak is! I am staying with one of her friends because her family wont let me stay over. Acctualy they don't want to meet me at all :( I even shaved because I thought they would like me more without a beard :(

Sedona

I woke up last night with the feeling of soft rain on my face. I think my first thoughts were “Oh, Shit!” I hitch hiked from Gallup NM to Sedona AZ in about 5 hours. I have 2 bags, one for my sleeping bag, clothing, toiletries, computer, and sleeping pad. The other is for food and miscellaneous essentials. I didn't bring a tent. When the sun was falling I saw clouds in the sky and asked Rob “You sure it's not going to snow tonight.” “Yeah, I don't think so”. As I lay awake in my sleeping bag I thought about being present and “using all experience as fuel for practice”. Seconds later I was in my mind, hiding from the intense wind and rain. It wasn't to cold, or rainy for that matter. It was the wind. The wind that was whipping my sleeping bag into a frenzy and sucking the heat from my soggy down and blowing cold air into my breathing hole at what seemed like hurricane speeds.

My first ride was from an ex military Navajo man. He was born and raised in Gallup and worked on Apache helicopters all over the world. He was only driving a few miles and he dropped me off at an Indian tourist trap at the base of some beautiful red rocks. I waited for my next ride for over an hour. After finally deciding that I could walk to Phoenix faster then hitching and threw on my packs and took off. Within 5 minutes I was picked up by a young man running from his probation in CO headed towards San Fran to live out of his car and party. After cautioning him to the consequences we celebrated his new freedom. I have his phone number and I think I will call him in a year or so to see where he is. He was also ex-military. He dropped me off on the road to Sedona and within minutes a car stopped. Rob had lived in St. Pete FL for years and knew a hand full of my friends including Gene Cooke and Miguel who are good friends of mine. He brought me to the house of Hunter and Ayshea. I spent hours talking with Hunter as Ayshea gave Rob a massage.

Now I am sitting in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. Last night I slept next to Chimney rock and now I am going to explore Sedona!

Flashback; From FL to CO. Part 1

I was cleaning up my computer when I found this; a rough draft of trip from FL to CO. I am not going to clean it up much as I had originally planned. I was going to turn it into a coherent story... Nah :D

Gville arrive Mo
"Tubing" with Mike and Trevor. We were actually swimming the whole 3 hours until I turned blue and some nice people offered me a tube. Dumpstering. Bat Box! Thousands of bats! Buddha; Great graphic novel! Trout; cool guy who has an herb shop.

Bus Trip
Day 1 Fri 5th
Bob pick us up in Gville. Droped off motorcycle at Holt's. Arrive in Ginnie Springs.

Sat
Springs were awesome! Drove to Tallahassee.

Sun
Slept at Walmart. Anna Purna; Nepalese? restaurant for show. Snuck into the FSU theater building and explored for hours.

Mo
Karla; Jaz'es best friends sister. Truck stop; the bus was having problems.

Tu
Albany to Macon, to Cordelia. Somewhere in here we went to a really cool house to visit Don Wan. Bob's friend. It was really the land that was spectacular, nice lake with swing chairs hanging over it. I started my Loan process as Bob worked on the Bus. There were a lot of problems with the bus at this time.

We 10th
The Police woke us up. A guy who owned a BBQ joint across the street (Dooley's BBQ) from where we were parked gave us Breakfast and lunch and we talked for a while. Police stopped us because Jaz and I were on top of the bus. Bob and I dropped Jaz off in downtown Asheville. Went to Merrin's in Black Mountain. Met Abby and Ari at a coffee shop. Interesting, awkward. I liked them both.

Th
Coffee shop; spent a lot of time trying to get loans for school. Bus Painting; Abby came to paint my bunk.

Fri
Went hiking at Warren Wilson. The down town Asheville drum circle was great! Dancing! I met a religious studies professor from Warren Wilson and had a nice but short conversation.

Sat
Bob, Merrin and I went to Wild Roots, a small wilderness community. I was going to stay there with Jaz but decided that the best thing was to go with Bob back to the bus. Jaz almost stayed but ended up coming with us.

sun
Church decisions; I have no Idea what that means? Maybe talking about decision to leave the bus after a few more problems.

Mon 15th
Bob dropped Jaz and I off at a Starbucks in Knoxville. A man picked us up for a very short ride to a less desirable place to hitch from, it was slightly annoying but he meant well. Our next ride was awesome! Jack, an ex-infantry solider brought us most of the distance through TN. Along the way we stopped to walk around an abandoned mansion that had been burnt down. Right before he dropped us off we had lunch together and talked about his experiences in combat and seeing his friends die. He said his grandfather, who he was always close to, just died and he didn't feel anything. He is numb to death. Our next ride was an off duty policeman who was getting back from hunting. He and Jaz talked about tanning leather and things like that. It was getting late so we went to a homeless shelter for the night. Jaz and I were not allowed to stay together because we were not married so I slept in the mens dorm and Jaz got her own room. The only person in Jaz'es building was a grumpy old woman who's sole purpose in life was keeping me away. We were told that we had to meet across the street and she was trying to tell us we couldn't and watched us the whole time we were hanging out, even after her boss came and told her we were not breaking any rules. When curfew came I went back to the dorm. I was exhausted so I kept the conversation polite and went to bed. Breakfast had less then great food, but the conversation was lively and friendly. It was the most social shelter I have visited yet. I stuffed my pockets with food and we took off.

Se la vi.

Today was a awesome!
It's Jaz's birthday so as a present, God sent us two awesome friends to laugh and play with!
Mike and Jeremy drove from Oklahoma City to Boulder to deliver a car to Mike's sister. We met as we were hitching up to Boulder Falls. When we arrived they hopped out of the car and with exuberance declared that they would love to see the falls. After a short hike we found ourselves driving up to Eldora with them for some hot chocolate. "My treat" Mike said. I did not want to except to much but he insisted. While we were in Ned we had to stop by the gem and crystal shop! It is one of the most exquisite shops I have ever been to. A few of the pieces reminded me of an incredible wood shop I had been to in Laos. Carvings out of stone that were so perfect they must have been present in the stone before it was cut. We played and joked for hours up in Ned before coming back down for lunch. We picked up Mike's sister Michelle who is a freshman at CU and headed off to Aztec Sol. Oh my god. Great food, and we took home enough for 3 more meals. Next, we stopped by my favorite tea shop. Ku Cha. We drank tea with timelessness and humor. Have you ever had milk oolong? It is now my faviorate tea. Incredible! We tasted a large handful of other fantastic teas before calling it a night.
Unfortunately, Jaz is a little sick so although she could appreciate the day she could not be as active as she might have liked and as the day wore on she wore out.
Se la vi.

Feelings

Have I mentioned that I am feeling allot?

Have I mentioned that my relationship with Jaz is troubled?

The problem with problems is that nobody wants to look at them. I have been chided many times for writing things that were to honest, I don't want to hurt anybody. One of the main purposes of this blog was to express myself unabashedly. Maybe if I write what I want to write, about how Jaz has hurt me and I have hurt her, it is still a form of running from fully expressing myself?

The positive side of the story is that I am communicating with my family, particularly Mom more then ever before.

How do I break the cycle? It started before I was born.

Life is magical, wonderful, horible, and scary.

3 hours of sitting later my mind was still racing.

I found myself all of a sudden with a tremendous amount of free time. As is per usual when I have free time I turn towards either rampant escapism or yoga. Since my life was already feeling fucked enough I choose the later.
Sunday I went to the Shambhala Center to sit. After 3 hours I had no more peace of mind then I did from from before. In fact, I was feeling more tumultuous then ever. I could not bare to look at my mind any longer so I got up and went dancing.
Monday was markedly better. After 3 hours I was finally starting to calm down, the 2 hours after that were of a normal level of distraction and in the final 2 hours, which were sitting listening to a teacher I was very calm and present.
For the rest of the week I sat for about 4 hours a day. My schedule went something like this:
7.30 the center opens and I would sit for an hour with a "group". There was usually only me and the time keeper though because people are afraid of the cold. Then I would move to a different room and continue until either my stomach or my bladder told me to get up. After eating I would take a break and walk around town and make any phone calls I wanted to make. Then I would sit until I needed to do something or whatever. That is the "typical" schedule, and as we all know, life is never typical. Every day something came up, something spectacular happened, something awful happened. Before going on I would like to point out the fact that awful, according to Webster, means both 1 Inspiring awe, and 3 extremely disagreeable... The connection according to a yogi (Peter Marchand?) that I have read lies in definition 2 which points to the connection between fear and reverence... fear and wonder.
I am not going to go into each day in any detail. Sometimes the magic of life can only be seen in from a distance, like the broad strokes of Monet, or the splashes of light and clouds in God's famous work, the sky. Other times the wonder can only be seen if you dive in, if you stay still, it's not just the devil in the details... The major factors of each situation are:
1 my confusion about life and my place in the world.
2 Fear, that ever present miser, the over prudent dog in The writings of Gibran.
3 NVC; It is not only the general structure of society but also the very structure of our thoughts that cause the immense suffering that the weak enjoy. Observing my mind under the microscope of Marshal Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication and meditation is horrific. On Monday night, after 7 hours of sitting and an hour of Dharma talks I was feeling good, within seconds of talking on the phone with Jaz I was pissed off. A day of stabilizing my mind was destroyed when she told me she was changing her plans. Luckily I could see it happening and see more clearly. A quick note here that I am not yet trying to write in NVC, I think that I may end up doing that but I don't know the system enough to even try now. Speaking with it is hard enough.
4 Love and Compassion, When I am not overwhelmed by fear and confusion, when I am happy, I am filled with so much love. I see beauty everywhere, humor everywhere. When my hands have become incapable of opening a door or operating my jacket zipper I have to admit that it's funny. And I can't even begin to explain how watching the weary worn souls at the Carriage House, making jokes about being untouchable, is beautiful. "Did you see Jacks sign? 'You can spit on me for a quarter.'" Karuna in the Indian theory of emotions means both sadness and compassion. I think that even if I become a millionaire I would like to eat at homeless shelters regularly. Like the song "All the madmen" "I'm quite content there all as sane as me".
Friday night, after about 6 hours of sitting I was getting hungry. There was a food not bombs dinner so I proceeded in that direction. When I arrived there was no food, only a pack of mean drunks. When I walked up one of the drunks tried to haze me, the mind and social skills of the drunken homeless are easily dealt with if one posses even an iota of self confidence and grace. The drunk backed down and tried to become my friend. Simultaneously I was being flanked by a drunk from the right. Ready for pretty much anything I turned to see a very emotional man coming towards me. As soon as I looked at him he began crying. "I see angels everywhere, you were sent by god to take me!" I was confused and afraid but after a moment of evaluating the situation I realized that he was more confused and afraid then I was. I tried out my NVC skills and attempted to connect with his feelings and needs. He was feeling afraid and needed to find a safe place to be. Well I could certainly empathize with that. I asked him if he had a place to go and he said that he needed my help to get there. There is, in this scene, so much could be gleaned into the workings of the social mind of men. Scraped bare by drugs and desperation you can see that we are completely interdependent. How could I say no? I spent the next hour talking with him and trying to find a place for him to be safe or at least break down in peace. The house that he led me to had only one girl there, who was very busy and had very little interest in a drunk off the street. She gave me the phone number of her roommate who had told Jay that she would help. The roommate was going to be away for a while but told me about another house to try. Jay told me his feelings about the other house, he was feeling ashamed and love for the people there. I could not get more out of him. Nobody was home anyway... I had asked him earlier when discussing the topic of friends if he had friends in AA. He did. So when Jay began talking about needing to find some "blood and body". I decided to knock on a random door to ask if they could use the Internet to find a meeting. The kids were a little if'ed out but seemed like really nice people. There was a meeting within walking distance. When we arrived I thanked them for being there and told them that I was the son of Alcoholics and that I am very thankful for AA. The 'topic' of the meeting was a quote from the big book about stopping drinking being only the first step. I felt an odd sense of homeliness in the meeting. I could relate to their experiences both second hand from seeing it my whole life and first hand from not drinking but still being afflicted with "the disease". I am convinced that we all suffer from "the disease" and that dis ease is duhka or a dysfunctional center. Anyway when I left Jay was in a ball on the floor surrounded by concerned people. One thing that I have noted a few times in my life is that the only place I know that I can go when I am in trouble, the only place where I am sure that I will find open hearted people who will put their lives aside for the lives of others any time of the day or night, is AA. I could not have brought Jay to just any church, ashram, or meditation hall. Maybe if every time we spoke we said "Hi, I'm Daniel, and I am not perfect" We might find more love in the world?
Anyway afterwards I called my dad and cried as I talked and looked through trash cans for dinner. I continued to cry and feel completely fucked up until I found a ton of Mexican food in one of the last cans on Pearl St. If your trying not to drink HALT! Don't let yourself feel Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I have been feeling allot of these things lately, luckily my escapes are not as bad as drinking.
Lets talk about my problems shall we? Going back to the previous Tuesday night when I told Jaz that we couldn't continue our relationship. In my relationship with Jaz there are basically three things that I have large difficulties with. The first is open communication. When Jaz experiences anything unpleasant she stops all forms of communication. Often she will busy herself with a task so that she doesn't even look at at me. I have told her that if she starts hitting me and yelling at me that will be preferable to completely shutting down. The second issue is cleanliness. I have asked her to clean her clothing and she has promised me that she would but has not. It's disgusting. I am not intending to just complain about Jaz here, I am setting the scene for talking about myself. Some of you who have known me for a few years know that I have gone through my stages of both nil communication and uncleanliness. You might think that being able to relate so completely with both issues I would have more understanding and patience for Jaz. Basically what happens is I try to coax her into talking and cleaning for some time and then I get fed up and tell her to leave. The problems here are my noncommittal nature, and coercive thinking. Threatening to break up with her as a means to cause change. I can see myself doing these things but the harmful actions begin on unconscious and subconscious levels. By the time I become aware of them I have already done some hurtful things and my self image is committed to follow in the same way for various reasons. I can also see that the same sort of process happened at times in school which was my end of the problems that happened there.
On Wednesday, I was at the Library reading about kenisiology and reflecting on my life when I asked myself what would I want from a partner that I am not offered from Jaz when she is clean and happy? I could not think of any reasonable answers. I decided to go have lunch at the Carriage House and then hitch to Eldora and catch Jaz before getting off work to go hiking in the mountains. I thought about the idea that every organism and every mindstate has conditions in which it thrives and conditions in which it has to struggle. I realized that I have been forcing myself into conditions which my talents do not thrive and so I have not been able live with ease. Based on the persistence of many people who love me and only want the best for me I tried to live in a way which is not fitting to me. Jaz has followed me into the same. I decided to follow her as she pursued her truth, and maybe I could learn from that as well. The day that followed was magical, wonderful, horrible and scary.

Bladder/Large Intestine

Once I had been convinced that I had an extreme wood excess I did what I always do, I set myself wholly to bringing myself into greater balance. Through allot of meditation practices that were aimed at developing awareness of the conditions within myself that uphold my elemental state of being, and a few practices to guide myself into new uncharted territory I shifted my awareness in a fairly drastic way. The first thing that happened was my fire flew through the roof, my body was burning up and I became very emotional, I like the word passionate. I asked Sarah, my teacher and she affirmed my shift. Next I set towards balancing the fire and a few days later I was not sure what was going on exactly. I knew that metal and water issues were becoming predominate but I was not familiar enough with anything to know more. Awareness of the mantra that I had been initiated into had sprung full force into my mind and I found myself doing fairly extreme hatha yoga for the first time in a long while. The stars, I think, were aligned to cause some mischief. Monday night I had an appointment with a wonderful shiatsu practitioner named Beck Stephens. We talked about my emotional and physical focuses and then she focused on my Bladder and Large Intestine lines. Large Intestine is all about Letting Go. As for Bladder, Going with the flow. That night I had a break down. It was awful. I had not been spending much time with Jaz and the time we had been spending together was stressed and subsequently our relationship was doing poorly. She spent the night at a friends house and did not call me to let me know or anything but I knew. I was tremendously jealous. It was not so much that I thought that she was going to have sex with this guy and if she was that was not the big problem... The problem was that she was enjoying herself with someone else while we were hardly able to smile at each other half the time. I was furious. I couldn't sleep. I layed in 'bed' on the windiest night yet here in Boulder listening to the gusts threaten to tear my shelter apart and spread it across the park. Finally, reflecting on the fact that my thoughts were like a poison that I was drinking in hopes of improving my conditions I set my mind to a cure. Another hour later after many distractions well after 3pm I finally fell asleep. What I had come to, which is no difficult conclusion, is that it was out of love and my need for love that I was suffering. It is common rhetoric and almost trite, but when I could lead my heart from fear and anger to love of both myself and Jaz I fell asleep almost immediately upon arrival. The next day I tried to break up with Jaz, again, focusing on needing to let go. My peaceful realizations of the night before had vanished almost immediately once I saw Jaz. I ended up late for class because I wanted to talk to her, not only was I late but I left early because I could not concentrate on anything. As I tried to leave my teacher Ann, who is a wonderful lady, tried to persuade me to stay. Not without a little drama did I get to leave the class (I explained later to Ann and she expressed that she was just concerned because I was acting out of character). I skipped my next class, EK, which was although I respect the teacher, one of largest wastes of time I have participated in since high school (That's another story though) and went to talk with Jaz. I felt resolved enough to go to A&P and afterwards the next big thing hit. Erik, one of the roommates had found out that I had had sex in his room. I didn't think it was that big a deal or first of all I would not have done it and secondly if I had he would have never found out about it... but the facts were that I did and he did. He was furious, and he told me that he didn't want me coming back to the house anymore. I was furious, not at him, that was his right, but at myself and Jaz, who in addition to all of this had made a mess in the kitchen while she was making candles. After cleaning up the mess and refusing console from Kelsey we took off to the shelter. At this point I was was incredibly emotionally confused and in regards to all things I decided to take Dad's advice; "When you don't know what to do, don't do anything". I laid around for a little trying to be noncommittal when Liam called and asked if I was coming over to tutor him in A&P and Anatomiken... I went mostly just to have something else to think about and it was great. After I vented to him for a while we studied and I forgot about all of my problems.
Since I had no place to cook breakfast any longer Kelsy and Brooke, two of the other roommates from the house I was cooking at brought food to me for school. I thanked them for their kindness's and assured them that I would be fine. For the next few days it seemed like life would be returning to normal and everything would be OK. Then I received an email from Sarah that I had not turned in a portion of an assignment and although I had A's or B's in everything else in the class I might fail if I didn't turn it in. I turned it in immediately. After the insanely stupid written exam which took almost 2 hours to complete I went to talk to her about my possibility of failing. While waiting I watched a friend of mine, who had come to school claiming disabilities and who had been promised she would receive help, crying. No, she was balling, begging for "another way to show" that she knows the material. I became so angry that I was worried that I might become violent. I could hardly speak. When my Friend left Sarah assured me that she didn't think that I would fail, that I knew the material and that she did not think that I needed to retake the class. I sat and listened until she stopped speaking and told her "It is what it is. If I fail I will just leave and go to India." Later, I realised that that came from a very habitual part of myself that runs from all of my problems. Shortly there after I was informed by telephone that I had failed the class and not to come back for the final practical exam. I talked to student council about what I should do who suggested that I talk to Susan Carol. Susan informed me that not only did I fail the written portion of the class I also failed the professionalism portion of the class. I was then more confused then ever. Susan told me that I needed to clear it up with Sarah and that it was the teachers discretion to not allow me back into class. I called Sarah to ask to speak with her and later received a phone message telling me that I "obviously didn't care" about the class and that I had cheated on the final assignment. I felt both concerned and relieved. Concerned because I was confused about how communication and perception became so warped that she thought that I had "fabricated the tracking sheets" of the assignment and relieved because I thought that if I showed that it was not my handwriting and that I did not fabricate the tracking sheets then clearing up the misunderstanding would raise both my professionalism and written grades. When I spoke with Sarah on the phone however all of my hopes we dashed. In the conversation she told me that although she thought that I had cheated she did not grade my assignment in that light and that I failed anyway. One thing was cleared up, I have difficulty turning out work that I think is useless and despite my efforts, which were great, I produced lousy work. I have always been pretty transparent, that is why when I asked about my professionalism grade and was told that I am passive aggressive I was shocked. Next I tried to plead, I begged that she had no idea to what lengths I have tried to succeed in class and how much I have grown in order to have done all that I have. She replied "And that's another thing, you always underestimate me. You don't know how much I can see." That is pretty much the end of the story because I felt a complete lack of motivation at that point. I felt utterly dead inside, no hope, no rage, no sadness, nothing. The only thing left was to ask for a list of actions which she thought were unprofessional and to point out that she never once approached me about my professional attitude or appearance. The only thing she noted was that I sat still in class and meditated instead of listening to her lectures. I tried to explain that the only way that I could sit in class without getting distracted was to be still and keep my eyes closed and that I was listening to her "how else would I have done so well on the tests", and "I thought that it demonstrated that I was listening when I opened my eyes and contributed to class conversations when I had something relevant to say". I guess not.
After the call several friends tried to persuade me not to drop out. "You have to suffer though the first two quarters before you get to the good classes", and "We need people like you here to have some diversity and lighten the mood, they will work with you like they work with Oliver." I am not into suffering for a massage education, and I am not interested in fighting through school so that I can get a fancy piece of paper that says that I can do what I am already good at doing. I was slightly persuaded however until I asked about my teacher for Sweetish. When my friend said "let's just say I have never heard anything good about her." I gave up.

That is the beginning of the most tumultuous time in my life since high school.
To be Continued...