Yes, It should have been impossible...but it wasn't

Upon the steps of the southeastern branch of the DC Public Library, I had said goodbye to some of my friends.  Gerard, a PhD graduate from Harvard said "I wish I could come with you." as he sat on the stoop waiting for the library to open.  It had been two months and nearly at the beginning of this journey, an anonymous man approached me, while I sat in the garden of the library writing approached me.  "I have lived in this neighborhood for nearly 40 years and have never come to this garden.  It's beautiful."  He paused.  "What are you writing about?"  I looked over the elder.  "I am writing about my travels abroad, and I am also writing about the homeless."  I could not have stopped the gush of words that proceeded out of his mouth at the time.  "The homeless?  Don't write about the homeless.  That's been done.  Where were you abroad?"  I resented this man, with his dictates, yet, I chose to respond.  "I taught in South Korea and in China.  I found China to be a magical place. The people are incredible, for I haven't seen innocence in a very long time..." He stopped me there..."You know, I am a left-hander, like President Obama.  We golf together.  I like left-handed people.  You should write about China.  Forget about the homeless.  This country is about God, Sex, and Drugs.  You have a mind of a 22-year-old...so idealistic.  However this country will kill each other.  It's just the way it is.  Don't write about the poor.  Write about China, that is what we need to hear about.  Don't be among the homeless, don't become them.  When this nation tears each other apart, we'll be on the golf course when it happens, and after its all over, we'll rebuild it.  You can't change the country, let alone with stories about these people."  I didn't get a rebuttal.  He walked off, not really listening, but dismissive and superior sounding.  I was left with those words to contemplate.  Was he right?

During my last survey of monuments, I ran across the work of Auguste Rodin, the famed Burghers of Calais.  I had seen the larger version in Paris, at the Rodin Museum with my friend Ruzica nearly three years ago.  This piece was a tribute to the brave and anguished men who had been sent by France at the end of the 100 years war, these 6 men were being sent as debt payment to the United Kingdom to King Edward III.  They were bound together with locks and ropes as a sacrifice (ordered to be beheaded) saved at the last moment by Queen Phillipa when they arrived, keeping their oath to save their people's pledge.  Who amongst us would stand as a pledge for our nation and not run?

I had found this tribute to the men who had sacrificed themselves during the fateful sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912.  Many would say that the Titanic was the vehicle that ushered in the American Central Banking System, known as the Federal Reserve (which is privately owned and created by a meeting on Jekyll Island).  The world become dependent on our fiat currency as a reserve currency to secure their own instead of gold or silver.  Though many times, through many presidents, we had tried to be free from the banking industry control, we saw a terrible path of greed, excess and the have and have nots growing wider apart.  Our 100 years war with the Federal Reserve comes to an end on 21 December 2012.  We were led to believe the bank was OURS, but it wasn't ever.  Our gold was gathered by Roosevelt, put in Fort Knox, and as the years went on, it was pilfered, nothing remains but the greed of the Military Industrial Complex that weakened our nation instead of strengthened it, making us destroyers instead of creators like we once were.

As I walked along the Anacostia River, under the bridge, I found the remains of the day.  A pocket of people who prefer to stay out in the open rather than stand in line to receive shelter for a night.  I was reminded by Walter, to not forget their stories, to tell them, because in their telling I find I have compassion.  I still remember that a citizen is not defined by possessions, for it is a simple state of being.  We are not citizens if we have a home, a bank account, or look a certain way.  We have done a poor job of taking care of our own, and a wonderful job of destroying at the beck and call of the special interests of others.

I had finally come to the last monument I needed to meditate at; the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.  Thomas Jefferson spoke of knowledge and wisdom a lot during his public service.  His focus was on the freedom of the human mind and education as being one of the cornerstones of absolute freedom.  We have heard that many of the elite say, "What do I want with a thinking public?"  However, it is with our imaginations, creativity we have created in this nation cures for diseases, transport, and our arts.  We have lost more skills than we have retained by being a culture of war.  

During Jefferson's time, and most certainly during Lincoln and Kennedy's times as well, we were ripe with the birth pains of change.  The peoples were not drugged by substances, controlled by propaganda, and had spirited conversations about our nation.  It seemed few were required to mobilize a nation, that unified them in the spirit of their day.  We argue over semantics, being lawyered about instead of releasing ourselves from the mystical spellings of words, lacking understanding of what emancipation means.  Most of us were not alive during the speeches of the great orators.  To be inspired is one thing, to live those words is quite another.

Asking ourselves, not why, but how can a nation bind up its wounds to reclaim its birthright and promise comes down to looking in the mirror.  If our God is economics and our freedom is material in nature, what does that say about our evolution as a people?

I close with this image from the Florida House.  I was surprised to find this house that was dedicated for use for the residents of Florida.  You will note the work of Romero Britto is prominently displayed.  Though Britto's work is declared by many as not being art within the established community, he is still celebrated, most likely because he created for the people many public works and not just for himself.  All art ever does is reflect our society along the way, keeping that in mind, it is why we need an educated public and not an ignorant and drugged one.  We have lost much by trying to control the masses instead of allowing them to be free.  Just words to think on and to share with you as I have finally found my way back home.  I had to remind myself of one universal truth, no single government, religion or institution is ever worth defending when it doesn't care about the people who are members of that society.

That is why family matters and why so many try to destroy it.  "There's no place like home."

Overcoming the Hardness of Life

The softest thing in the universe

Overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.
That without substance can enter where there is no room.
Hence I know the value of non-action.

Teaching without words
and work without doing
Are understood by very few.
The Tao Te Ching - 43rd Verse
Jane English Translation

I had written in an earlier entry of a find of a tree growing through a boulder, located at a museum in Nanjing. While on my sojourn in Zhongshan we came to a little oasis in a park. It isn't often I get drawn to do strange things, but I felt compelled to climb in to and area where I just felt like I would find something similar. There it was, the seemingly impossible, another tree that come up through a boulder. The one above in Zhongshan, the one below in Nanjing.
I reflected on my journey, how the softness in my own life seemed to open more doors than with a hard stance. Often with the hardness, it went against my nature, making the pressures of life seem unbearable at times. When I looked at these trees I thought about the journey from a small seed to go through where no light existed, by a force of faith, that some amount of space came and it reached up towards the light and water. As its roots expanded, the softness made way up and out of the rock.
Should it be an impossible journey? Should it be so hard? Often I wondered about the times I needed to have just a little more patience, just a little more strength to push through. At the same time I looked and actually could observe the action and nonaction at the same time. They may not be perfect trees out there on their own, growing without opposition.
But in this oasis of calm, I saw the harmony of how life can actually be soft even when it appears to be hard.

Oddly touching...

What is and isn't noticed when you wander around in unfamiliar surroundings...well, I am not sure what that says about a person. However, there was something common and uncommon about this woman who is under 4 feet tall, pushing her cart with her rough hands and slightly stooped body down the streets of Seoul. I don't know why exactly she caught my eye, but she did. She wasn't begging for anything, just making her way through this world, but she had a toughness about her in the way she walked despite her advanced age.

It wasn't like she was selling anything, or even gathering anything. No, she was just pushing her cart along like so many do.

The City of Hope - Daegu

It has been an adventure just getting here to South Korea from Florida. I have to admit, when I first saw my itinerary I was overwhelmed with the prospect of having so much time in-flight. The respite I did get was the lay-over in Japan in the outskirts of Toyko. Bleary-eyed and aching just to be stretched out for a moment I tried to be excited, but it was difficult fighting the clear fatigue that had been raging within me. Such as my human form was, I dragged myself through security checkpoints and continued on for the final leg of my journey to Seoul. It is amazing how normal alerts stop when your body wants to shut off the reality around you. When we boarded our flight on time, I was just aching for my seat, to close my eyes on one more flight that would normally take about two hours. Instead, an hour passed, and we finally taxied out, only to be called back to the gate. Apparently there wasn't enough fuel...thank God for checklists....but I wasn't even worried. I fluttered my eyelids and begged for a nap. I have to say, under any other state I might have been agitated, but that is the control freak part of me that my fatigue had placed under submission.

I kind of just realized I just felt I was required to make this journey, a predestined destination to bring me closer to whatever the fates had in store for me. My journey was far from over after landing in Seoul, being met by my agent, whisked to a conveyance, then to a bus, since the last train out of Seoul had already departed....four more hours...another day had passed and I longed for the examination of my eyelids.

I think often it is strange what can seem like a lifetime ago, and what can seem as freshly imprinted as if it was a day ago. I like to think that we choose to forget those ordinary moments where we are captive audiences told how to put on our oxygen masks first...how our seat cushions can be used as floatation devices...and yet we ignore these obligatory pacifications of our attendents. The reality is we would be screaming for our bloody lives if something tragic were to happen...the panic of realizing that our chips might be called at that moment...and in those moments we think about our unfinished business in our lives.

I asked the question of myself a few years ago about my own life. Not so much about being given a death sentence or the like, but the serious question about what I had not done with my life that I wished to do. I began to make an internal list. I didn't have to write it down, because I had been writing this list my entire life. I realized, gladly, that most of what I had wanted to do, or had said I would do I had indeed done. However, there were things still on my list I had not done and I knew that I had to act now or live with the regrets of never acting on my internal desires. That is a luxury few people have. I didn't realize how many people are unable to go after their dreams, most are riddled with assorted prisons and cages, keys, locks, and chains. Some are gladly held because their dreams had changed, mine, the constant search for my various quests.

This quest is quite different for me. This isn't so much about enlightenment, but how to be at peace with myself. The facing of internal demons, and yet the love I simply have for people is overwhelming. Most people hate people. They hate putting themselves out there. They think it is a waste of time, and they tire easily of the company of others. I equate this to being lazy. Though I am a loner for the most part, I am because I am an observer of life. It is strange because I am not a wallflower, engaging easily in conversation, but I see myself like a stream never really forming attachments. I am the comfortable stranger, often taking confessions, and realizing that these things I am told are just to release someone of a burden of the heart.

Often, after the unbearing of a soul, they move on to a deeper truth, and have left me with something to learn. They tell their truths to a strange woman and then keep their public display of lies for others. Perhaps because they act as if it was a kindness to not reveal their real self to others, or to even share to those that are close to them about their wounds.

But, here, in Daegu, I am not taking confession as I have throughout the world. I am in a city of hope where I have to search for the Lotus Sutra...my own enlightenment in a world right now distorted with fear and wars...I have come to a place of peace. I find it ironic and yet I plan to share much with you. These are my adventures of more to come. This isn't about changing the world....this is about living.