Manai'a Explorations
HC SVNT DRACONES

Geshe Michael gives a moving description of his first experience of emptiness and his subsequent realization that he creates his experience, his reality. Particularly moving is his vision of himself as a Bodhisattva, loving the world. Joseph Campbell says, “The world is filled and illuminated by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva; rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them – and with profound repose.” The Buddhist notion that everything is “empty” and that the meaning/purpose/function that we perceive coming from external forms actually originates from our own mind is beautifully illustrated by a most famous Christian: Journalist: You know you can’t save them. They will all die. Mother Teresa: Your strength falters because you only see poor sick people. My love endures because I see Jesus Forsaken in his distressing disguise. The external forms – Calcutta’s lepers – are “empty,” yet the journalist and the Bodhisatt...

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Saturday morning at 6:30AM, I glanced at my watch and went back to sleep. I had the following dream: I was with Dr. B. I started to tell him that I loved him, I was grateful to him, and I had deep respect for him, but he stopped me short. He told me he was preoccupied with his own difficulties and I then noticed that he had been cut off at the knees (as in his lower legs were missing) and was struggling to move himself with only his arms. I went inside a small, messy office trailer. On one table off to the side there was a statue, about 18” tall, brown with yellow spikes on top, like a stylized tanned troll doll with blond crystals for hair. Dr. B. came in. The office was on a huge mound of dark, fertile earth. There was an industrialist/capitalist outfit that was mining the fertile earth, looking for valuable treasure. A man came in. He wanted Dr. B. to direct him to the buried valuable treasure. Dr. B. gave him some instructions and sent him back out to his mining. The capita...

The Lagoon Nebula, shot from a parking lot in Tucson through terrible light polution. I can't wait to get my telescope to the dark skies around Elko.

Background: I am 45 years old this morning. I have a beat-to-hell 1985 Toyota 4Runner that LAG calls “Junkasaurus” and Angel calls “El Confiable” – Old Reliable. I also have a ridiculous, over-the-top Toyota rock crawler project that I called “Truckasaurus” for many years, but now that it is almost finished, I call “El Borrego Cimarrón” – Mountain Goat. Someday I would like to outfit a sailboat for expedition, sail to the south Pacific, and make documentaries like the BBC’s Planet Earth, or perhaps visual meditations like the movie Baraka. Last night’s dream: I drive the 4Runner to a car wash, but the 4Runner has been so extremely modified, the car wash, made for conventional autos, cannot wash it. I cannot even reach the carwash controls to start the carwash. I look at the 4Runner. I have converted it to a boat with a white hull and blue trim. The car wash attendant opens the doors at the far end of the carwash so I can drive through and exit. I drive in, stop to visit with the car...

Dad haggling over produce, Selçuk, Turkey Dad learned a bit of Turkish in the early 60's when he was stationed in Izmir. Twenty some odd years later, he was building a geothermal power plant in the southern California desert. Most all of the laborers on the project were Hispanic, so Dad bought some "Learn to Speak Spanish" cassettes that he listened to commuting to and from work. My sister and I studied Spanish in junior high and high school and we would roll our eyes at Dad's terrible accent. One day they were pouring concrete foundations at the job site and the workmen were doing something too fast so Dad accessed his foreign language memories and told the workment to "slow down" in Spanish. Everyone looked at Dad in confusion, so he thought about what he was saying and realized he was speaking in Turkish. (I had a similar experience in Thailand. I spoke to our waiter in Thai and then accidentally switched to Spanish.) A few years ago we visited Tur...

Georgia O'Keeffe in my front yard

"Doest thou love life? Then do not squander time. Time is the stuff life is made of." – Benjamin Franklin "For the essence of time is flux, dissolution of the momentarily existent; and the essence of life is time." - Joseph Campbell

Word came today that Dr. B has entered hospice. Years ago, I tried to express my gratitude to Dr. B for all that he had done for me. He conjured up the image of a long line of people, with me standing in the front, and he in the number two spot. He said that what he had done for me, number three had done for him, and number four had done for number three, and so on, stretching back to time immemorial. He told me that the way to express my gratitude to him was to turn around and give my gift to the next person in front of me. I will be dwelling on this challenge in the coming days. Dr. B initiated me into life. He was my Virgil that accompanied me on my descent into grief. When I was afraid, he was my Buddha signaling the Abhaya Mudrā. When I discovered that joy hurt as much as grief, he was my patient Bodhisattva, smiling knowingly. I've been preparing myself for years for this inevitability. There will be grief, of course. I love Dr. B. I am terribly attached. But the coming exper...

Upsetting news from the paragliding community in Tucson . There is a lot of history that makes the news of Lew's accident at Box even more upsetting. I wrote the following accident report 13 years ago: On Sunday, March 1, 1998, several Tucson area paraglider pilots gathered at Box Canyon for an evening flight. The gathering included pilots Fred Leonard, Lew Smith, Red Walsh, Ian Stine, Ed Hileman, Buddy Crill, Scott Horton, Leigh Anne Gallagher, Arjan Ala, Kep Taiz, and Larry Mayer. Larry's wife Rose offered her services as chauffer. Box Canyon is a horseshoe of ridges with the open end facing west. The inside, north-facing ridge of the south leg of the horseshoe is very steep and rocky and is consistently soarable in a north or northwest wind. There is a landing zone (LZ) at the mouth of the horseshoe where most pilots park their cars. Several pilots hoofed the one and a half hour hike from the LZ up to launch with their paragliders. Several others four wheeled the washed out ...

I have been wanting to do time lapse, motion controlled photography ever since I saw Baraka. Seems like lots of other people are getting into it. All it takes is time and money. And talent I suppose.

I’ve been working at home on the computer the last few days, so I’ve been able to sleep until my body is ready to wake up, as opposed to the alarm jolting me up at some uncivilized hour so I can drive several hours to a job site. One of the benefits of sleeping in is I get to dream. I’ve had two remarkable dreams in the last two days. A bit of background for the first dream: I used to work with an engineer that I’ll call Bob for this story. I rarely communicate with Bob anymore. Also, I have a ridiculous 4x4 truck project, El Borrego Cimarrón (the Mountain Goat), that is nearing completion. The first dream: Borrego Cimmarón is finished and in my mechanic’s garage. Bob has put dozens of antenna, like Ham radio or CB antenna, all over the roof of the vehicle. It looks like a porcupine. I wonder why on earth did Bob put all these communication antenna on my truck. I inspect the mounting of one of the antenna and it is half-assed. I hear the phone ring. I wake up, the phone rings again. I ...

I wrote this in 1999 for publication in the Southern Arizona Hang Gliding Association newsletter. LAG and I were visiting the other day. She recently visited San Diego and Torrey Pines and said she had a good chuckle remembering me pounding in, so I dug it up from the archives. A Lesson in Humility The summer of 1996, I happened to be in pretty good shape and I decided I wanted to do the La Jolla Rough Water Swim, a three mile open water race that starts, surprisingly, in La Jolla cove. Leigh Anne and I got some cheap tickets to San Diego on Southwest, packed our paragliders, swimsuits, and sun block and headed off to SoCal. Our buddy Evan, flight handle "Hollywood," and his honey of a girlfriend, Susan, picked us up at the San Diego airport with two HGs strapped on top. The four of us spent Friday night having fun in La Jolla. Saturday was dedicated to flying Torrey Pines. We showed up at Torrey late in the AM and found very light conditions, but at least it was blowing in. ...

 

My new kitchen: Maple cabinets: Maple flooring, maple fan blades in the living room: Dining room with bachelor furniture: Maple stairwell: Going to make a little meditation altar where the TV is supposed to go: Bay windows and the entrance foyer: Bachelor bedroom: Guest bedroom, also the dog's nap room: The upstairs bath that was ugly pink: My office:

Gary and I left town in the dark this morning and drove through sunrise on our way to a remote mine site. The moon was a sliver of a crescent and Venus was very bright, leading the moon into the sky. In the dark, a pronghorn pranced across the road in front of us. Just before sunrise, we came upon four elk. Unfortunately the only camera we had was my crummy phone camera. The elk were not flighty at all. They slowly walked up the hillside away from us. On our way home in the afternoon, we passed two pronghorns resting in a mowed field. I didn’t even try to take their photograph with my camera, but they were close enough we could see their pretty markings. The Great Basin is a lovely place. It’s too bad there are so many rednecks stinking the place up. On the way home, we stopped to pee and I noticed some redneck’s proud display of his recent destruction. The rednecks seem to be quite proud of their culture of destruction. They emblazon their pickups with stickers advertising as much.

Let me tell you about my tortured friend Chaz: • 1979 National Merit Scholar • American Field Service exchange student to New Zealand • BA in Asian Studies, UC Berkeley • Taught English in Taiwan for years • Spoke fluent Chinese • MS Anthropology, University of Arizona • Traveled to the most remote parts of the People's Republic of China • Studied tree rings in the Tien Shan mountains of China • Ph.D. course work in archaeology, University of Arizona • Participated in many archaeology digs in Israel, France and around the US • Explored the Peruvian Andes • Worked on fishing vessels in the Bering Sea • Worked for the Pima Association of Governments (PAG) planning transportation improvements in southern Arizona • Flew hang gliders and paragliders in New Zealand, Arizona and California • Former president of the Southern Arizona Hang Gliding Association Chaz froze to death two weeks ago, age 49, drunk and homeless in Seattle. I am trying to be happy for Chaz, now that he is liberated f...

In my backyard in Elko.

I went to Ash Wednesday mass yesterday. Lent is a dark season of descent into grief and ashes. Remember: From dust you came, to dust you shall return. Heavy stuff. A clear thinking, insightful friend observed that being reminded of our impermanence is depressing, but Lent has the opposite effect on me. I am filled with wonder and awe when I contemplate that I am made of star dust that was made from nuclear fusion of hydrogen that came from the big bang that came from ??? A deeply spiritual agnostic's explanation. Comet Lulin from my backyard in Tucson, February 2009. It all comes down to one's ego attachment. If you ask people, “Who are you?” the answer inevitably comes from their ego: “I’m a successful electrical engineer with a beautiful house and truck and girlfriend …” The ego self is the source of much suffering. Lent is a call to transcend the ego and recognize the self’s role in the big process: From an indefinable void, empty but full of potential, comes the big bang, ...

The road to work:

The Ancient Tree by Thich Nhat Hanh Deep in the forest highlands stood a great, ancient tree. No one knew how many thousands of years it had lived. Its trunk was as large as the armspans of eighteen people. Its great roots pushed up through the ground and spread to a radius of fifty meters. Its bark was as hard as rock; if you pressed a fingernail against it, it would hurt your finger. Its branches held tens of thousands of birds' nests, sheltering hundreds of thousands of birds, large and small. The earth beneath the shadow of the tree was unusually cool. In the morning when the sun rose, the first rays of light were like a conductor's baton, beginning a grand symphony, the voices of the birds as majestic as any great philharmonic orchestra. All the creatures of the forest arose, on two feet or four, slowly and in awe. In the great tree there was an opening as large as a grapefruit from Bien Hoa. It was twelve meters up from the ground. In that opening lay a small brown egg. N...

The Catalinas are big mountains north of Tucson. Hang glider and paraglider pilots have been flying them for decades, but it is an all day commitment. Ross pioneered a hike-up site off the Sutherland Trail. We played hookey today to go check it out. It has a lot of potential, but it is for advanced pilots only.

We did a bit of work on a big hoist that moves people, equipment and dirt between the surface and the underground mine yesterday. It's an impressive machine.

2010 Cash Flow Mortgage 36.89% Automobile 24.58% Home Improvement 22.43% Grocery 3.94% Utilities 3.75% Insurance 2.29% Dogs 1.99% Restaurants 1.39% Accountant 1.08% Exercise 1.01% Camera 0.78% Entertainment 0.74% Deductible 0.49% Fuel 0.33% clothes 0.27% Hair cut 0.08%

Occasionally I get to mix work and pleasure. Photography is a hobby. Engineering is work. We needed to record the nameplate data on a CT that was in service. The bare conductors that connect to the CT have 13,800 volts between them, so approaching the CT was problematic. Gary and I rigged up a means to photograph the CT nameplate from the ground with an insulated telescoping fiberglass pole. It worked beautifully and got me thinking of pole mounted photography and videography possibilities.

July 2005. I had just quit my corporate job and was about to embark on my first foray into entrepreneurship. I was going to be a small owner in a partnership. My colleagues at the corporation thought it was a risky move. I put on a façade of total confidence. A few weeks later, I woke up alone in a Waikiki hotel and thought, “What have I done?” Thinking back, I have to laugh at myself. My perception of the risk I was taking was so inflated and my denial of my fear was so unconscious. But before I arrived in Hawaii, I took a wonderful bunch of teenagers to San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico and for a week, we helped build a very modest house for a very poor woman. The kids and I were slogging away at our manual labor in the oppressive heat and humidity and this big gringo showed up in a beat up van. He called himself an electrician and said he was a friend of the home owner. He brought tools out of his van and started helping us. I was suspicious at first – I had a bunch of teenagers I was resp...

Last night at the gym, a young woman was reading How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times by James Wesley Rawles. I asked her how she came to be reading such a book and she explained that she had heard about the book on Fox News and she had lots of anxiety about the economy and the national debt. She wants to be ready for the end of civilization. A few days earlier, I read an editorial by a very fearful Ted Nugent - Be Prepared for Evil . I've been reading Warren Buffet's biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. Buffet's father was a US Senator from Nebraska. You could take his rhetoric, his fears and anxieties, his paranoia, from his era - Great Depression, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower - and drop it into a contemporary Fox News broadcast and have no idea that you were listening to rational logic that was 70 years old. It is identical to the rhetoric, fears, anxieties...

“We think with words, and when we don’t think with words, I think we come close to what mystics might describe as a mystical experience, because I don’t think that words would come into that.”1 *** There is a beautiful 80 foot waterfall in the jungle of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. After a good rain, when the stream is running hard, Jane Goodall’s famous chimpanzees make pilgrimages to the waterfall and perform magnificent, ritual displays. As they approach the waterfall and hear the water crashing down on the rocks, their hair bristles, indicating excitement. They stand upright and rhythmically sway left and right. “They pick up and throw great rocks and branches. They leap to seize the hanging vines, and swing out over the stream in the spray-drenched wind …”2 After the display, they sit meditatively on streamside rocks and watch the water flow by. *** Years ago, my friend Glenn blew a launch at Miller Canyon near Sierra Vista, Arizona. For a hang glider to fly, for it to ...

The cab should be on next week. I'm guessing my truck will be on the road around Easter. .