Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Thanks Friend

What is a friendship if it isn't a union of mutual teachers and learners? What is any relationship if not a mirror that reflects us as a lesson and shows us to be a student. It is the miracle and tragedy of societies; we all have something to teach and we all desperately need to learn.

Our evolution is a struggle  Within the community the lessons we can offer one another are too similar. We know the same things as our neighbors with only subtle differences in the knowledge. It is true when the subtleties surface, between our different understandings, the effect of the shared knowledge is profound. The moment that it becomes clear that our buddy sees from a different perspective, our own perspective changes. Perhaps it is just a hair-line alteration, but when it happens, when our vision shifts, it reveals that the ingrained idea we held just a moment ago is not the absolute. We detach one thread from the stitching of our beliefs and we experience the phenomena of learning.

The situations within daily society are repetitive and most of the experiences are shared. No matter how different we think we are from one another the truth is, at the blood-deep level, we agree. Success is important, lovers make us happy, what we think is who we are. In this homogenized-mix of interactions it can take a lifetime to learn even just a few new beauties. It takes a real brewing of people to put enough time into communication to uncover and accept the differences we do hold. It is slow and we know there is often suffering, but it is not the only way. The key to expedite the education is to meet your friends between the societies.

Fall into the cracks where our intellectual-quests rarely go and be a gora on the wall in the world's cities of adversity.  An uncomfortable condition can be the magnified glass placed over our subtle differences. In the confusion and chaos of uncharted cultures we can quickly see and agree on how we have been conditioned differently from our companions. On the dusty-crumbling-road the malicious bugs and murderous drivers are so unknown to us that we have no shared knowledge for an agreed upon response  Our differences are revealed in the one beat our heart skips when the blind-beggar grabs our shin, and the unmatchalbe universes of our dreams unfold in the time it takes to watch a human-body burn.

Our response to the unthinkable leaves our thoughts naked and to see a friends's bare-mind can undress all our own beliefs. Standing there vulnerable in the streets of a foreign land is the most efficient route for seeing that our way is not the only way. The education of companion-travel lets us know that what you belief is not the same as what I believe and we are both wrong. In-between all the societies no assumption holds true; if we can understand and accept that we've graduated the world...



The quality of experience is amazing while traveling with a friend and it is amazing how much I've traveled with some friends without ever leaving home.




Saturday, March 2, 2013

A Moment in Hampi


Wonder and ponder down to the ancient river-swamp. A poster-cow grazes, hooves deep in the muck. The black and white blotches, perfectly distributed over her bulk, are exploiting in the tremendous green. 

Rose-stone boulders pile everywhere along the banks and two birds stand on her back. Marvelous white cranes watch the scene. With clear eyes above a pal-yellow beak, a color most beautiful when found in nature, they look at me as I look at them. 

Head down, she munches grass as the three of us continue to look out and admire. One crane enters flight, but not from fear, soaring out of sight behind the line of coconut and banana trees. Then the looping flight reappears overhead completing a cycle. 

The sunlight penetrates through the wingspan and reveals the intimacies of each air-birthing feather. A shimmering-black butterfly dips about the breeze, open and gliding on its red and white speckled wings. 

As my observation is with this thin-winged animal of flight, the second crane finds a new point of interest too, and takes off. Between the rustling flows of palms and grasses these ears get a glimpse of the appetite of the cow. Her chewing is one song of happiness in these ancient interactions. 











Must the sun set to unveil the magnificence of a place...