Sri Lanka on my mind and in my heart . . .

Hello from Sri Lanka . . .

It is a land of wonder and a land of sadness. We are all met except for one, Charles from Kenya, who is experiencing visa problems. Our welcoming ceremony and first day of training was today. Though hot, the land is beautiful. I was able to go on a run this morning by the sea, near where a ship has run aground and been abandoned. The people are incredibly friendly, and I feel very safe.

Internet services are very primitive. We've spent about an hour finding this one Internet Cafe. I am on a very slow dial-up connection that I cannot hook meMojomac up to, so my missives here shall be very brief with no pics for awhile until we are able to get settled into our own hook-up . . .

I am close to your hearts in spirit . . .

Just a quickie connection for folks to know that I am most of the way to Sri Lanka . . .

Have spent a somewhat wonderful but also somewhat frustrating day in Hong Kong. It was wonderful because I was able to visit again a most exotic and fantastic place for the first time in 36 years since I was here in -mid January of 1968 while on R&R from Vietnam. Like so much else everything is the same and everything is totally different. I had a wonderful visit to the Hong Kong Museum of Art to see an Exhibition Desire and Devotion, art from India, Nepal and Tibet . . .

I have bunches of pictures but I don't have enough time to upload them.

It was very, very frustrating because just as I was about to purchase a muchly needed charger for my Mac in the Apple store which I was able to find, my Credit Union, whom I failed to notify I would be traveling apparently put a stop to my account even though there are funds available in it -- my credit card does nothing but deny or give me a message to contact my bank. Ah, it could have been worse, I could have gone up to the rooftop restaurant of the Kowloon Hotel where I stayed 36 years ago and ordered a $50.00 meal which would have bounced.

As it all does in the end, it worked out -- I was able to get back to the Airport and borrow some cash from one of my fellow Peace Worker (thanks Rita) and get back in to the Apple Store and get the charger, which is dutifully charging my battery; it is now up to 86% and I have about 15 minutes before I have to go to the gate for my flight to Columbo . . .

I also was unable with the "Genius" in the Apple Store to get my address book to iSync into the mac.com mail account -- maybe I'll just stay with Earthlink afterall . . .

Later from Columbo in the mysterious land of ecstasy and suffering, Sri Lanka . . .

The previous post was two entries I typed this morning in my New Mojo Journal, which I've been keeping for the past couple of years on my G-4 -- funny thing that all of a sudden the blogger software isn't recognizing ' " ? -- as far as I can tell, putting funny little question mark diamonds in the midst of the text. Weird. Hope they can fix that whenever I get a chance to go to support about it . . .

Also it didn't pick up the link to the War Person poem, even though on the preview it indicated it had done. Ah, the never-ending viscitudes with technology; here, I shall endeavor to do it again:

War Person . . .

Ah yup, there it is . . .

Will prolly connect here later tonight when I'm back at SFO; my plan is to go get a good Chinese meal in China town, then get to a 6:00 p.m. Step Meeting, and go back to the airport . . .

Last day in the good, ole U S of A -- just freakin' amazin' . . .

Evening in the splendid City by the Bay has come, and after a lovely meal of Chicken with Plum Sauce and a walk through some of the spicier parts of San Francisco, for the second time not being able to find a meeting, I came on back out to SFO to wait to meet David Hartsough.

Walking on the wild side of the City Streets and riding out on the BART in the waning rush hour with the multitudes of rainbow colored folks and the myriad accumulations of stuff from the most simple to the most cosmopolitan, with the energy and the verve and the "out-there-ness" of the consumptive consumeristic culture that America just is, watching the children, and old peeps and the young and the poor and the rich and the vast middle in between, I was so deeply moved with how truely I do in trith love this country and it's people of my birth from the ocean beaches through the high mountains and the vast plains, the cities, the towns, the villages and the wide countryside -- like the bumper sticker I saw yesterday, it's the government and it's collusion with the corporations I've never been able to stand. Is what it is, and I've made my choice to find in Sri Lanka as an ex-pat a different for sure, perhaps "a better place to be . . . "

Spoke with Momma and Meg and Tommy and Deyanne and Dawn and left messages for Jennifer and Rebecca -- and -- I spoke to a stoppered down Sara -- we are just so not there, and I was able to genuinely from the bottom of my heart in honor for all the deep love that once we did so certainly share wish her the best of all new love to experience with Chuck. On the flight here from Tucson, I was reflecting with gratitude on the healing on many levels I have experienced with dear Bonnie's assistance of late, and I was deeply moved by the realization that I can and have made a commitment to myself to be with Bonnie. We can have a healing, good life together. I remembered, it hit me like a ton of soft pillows or teddy bears, that the Course says words to the effect: "We do not get to heaven alone, by ourselves; we get there two by two." In other words, I wish for Sara with Chuck, especially this weekend with them going to an Imago Weekend with Harville, to do what I could not do for her: get healed. Just as I wish for myself to be able to continue to do with Bonnie, either in Sri Lanka if she is accepted as part of the second wave of Field Team Members, or as a partner when I return to the US -- at the least I really look forward to her coming with me on a "Welcome back" tour of the good, ole US of A in April or May of 2005, when I come back after extending for the third year of duty on the Sri Lanka project. That'll be a wonderful time to come back home, in the Spring with perhaps a new President and a different culture of peace and healing in the making

Yes !~!~! It is all good . . .

9:26 a.m., Thursday, September 25, 2003

Tucson Airport

Welp, the actual Sri Lankan Journey begins . . .

Bonnie just dropped me off after we shared a last breakfast, and I was hassled first by not being able to check my baggage all the way through to Sri Lanka because the ticket is ticketed over two days with all the layovers and then by the $289.00 f--- job with no vasoline from Verizon for back charges, which must include bunches of roaming charges from the long Road Trip I have to resolve online from Sri Lanka � oh well the corporate machine always seems to win in the end on this earthly plane.

I also got royally hassled at the Security Point setting off the alarm with my watch, jewelry and Birkenstock sandal buckles and leaving the tray with ticket, money/credit cards and change unattended, being paged back to the guffawing sneers of other retired old fucks such as I, who were fully in uniformed control of giving me my stuff or not. Clenched-teethingly, thin-lipped-grimacingly, I again skirted upon the sharp edge of self-imposed rage-against-the-corporate-police-state-machine, being enabled through grace to avoid a real disaster, such as getting my ass arrested and detained as a security risk, which would have been an awful way to begin my new role of ex-patriot peace-maker.

I obviously still have miles to go to be able to practice and be the nonviolent, non-reactive, centered, wise person I wish to be . . .

I guess I am really being affected by the similarity of this departure to Sri Lanka as a Peace Warrior to that of the departure I made 36 years ago to Vietnam as a War Warrior. It�s so much the same; it�s so totally different. I was 23, the same age as son, Tommy, is today, a full-fledged drunk in spiritual despair, having volunteered to go to Vietnam as a suicide gesture, Now at age 60 I�m blessed to be in my 31st year of recovery. Then I went as a warrior to participate in the war of my generation; now I go as a Peace Warrior to try and be of service in the brutal 20-year old civil war between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. This morning -- the last in the loving arms and home I�ve shared with Bonnie the last several weeks -- I lay on her dining room carpet, listening to the soothing music we made love to last night so splendidly, and let the tears just simply flow down my cheeks onto her carpet, wondering why I still am so possessed to have to pursue war yet once again. This is just one more chapter of my long life, much of which is catalogued in my long, prose poem, War Person, perhaps the last, in which I choose to experience the results of war, to which I perhaps add to my already full storehouse of memories and images of how man, mostly but increasingly with women as perpetrators also, wrack death and destruction, pain and suffering on his/her fellow beings, not to mention the environment and other species caught unhappily in the cross-fire as well . . .

I sit here stuck in the Tucson Terminal waiting for our flight to re-board. It has been delayed an hour-and-a-half due to the remnants of Hurricane/Tropical storm Marty, which has traffic backed up at SFO. Marty also made my last two days very un-Tucson-like with steady falling rain from low-hanging clouds, which virtually hid the usually sun-drenched views of the Santa Catalina mountains. Here are three shots showing the clouds making contrast instead of sun and shadows against the stark mountain scenery, which had their own kind of beauty. These are the last shots I took of Tucson, my home for the past year-and-a-half. In many ways it has been a most wonderful place for me to be, especially the healing connection with Bonnie of late and being able to provide for Tommy a base of support for him to make his new life � yesterday, I it warmed my heart to hear Claudia and Lori Ann speak so highly of him:







The storm also prevented me from having a final drive with the top down in the Miata, where we would have watched another brilliant Southern Arizona sunset driving up to Phoenix and the marvelous starlit night sky driving back. Instead, when Bonnie and I visited Dawn and Marty, having a lovely barbeque in their wonderful upscale desert tract home, we took Bonnie�s truck. How strange to experience Dawn, a lithe and most comely 32 year-old, the same age as her beautiful mother was when we met, all grown up and living such a different life out in Phoenix from the one we shared during her turbulent adolescence in our Islip home, now only a place of mostly fond memories for us both.

11:34 a.m., Thursday, September 25, 2003

Aboard Horizon Airlines Flight 2436

Out of Tucson. Flying now N-NW, I suppose, over the desert mountains toward San Francisco. We were delayed a bit more than an hour. Not too bad. Better to sit in the terminal than to be flying circles in the air waiting in line for landing clearance at SFO.

Gliding down the runway just a few moments ago, I recalled that it was exactly a year ago when I flew out of Tucson to New York for my first visit back for Jenn/Ian�s wedding, after leaving in the RV in 2001. What a difference a year makes! As she and I spoke about yesterday afternoon, she has suffered through two miscarriages and I have come to finally accept the ending of the relationship with Sara, her mother -- now I am off to another foreign land to reinvent myself, to find a new destiny.

During the delay in the terminal, I was able to do some writing of the above entry and to watch the boarding process of a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta at Gate 4, especially the �Security� routines of randomly searching citizens for contraband. Such a violation, I feel, of our constitutional rights against improper and illegal search and seizure, only to keep up the pretense, the appearance, of actually providing security after the blatant lapses of 9.11. Smoke and mirrors. Typical bureaucratic government stuff. As if any would-be terrorist would today be so stupid to actually try to board a craft with a metal weapon. Can it Brinso � it does you no good to rant and rave against the corporate/police state machine. Instead, you have manifested to live the life away from Amerika as you prophesied in this poem in 1967 while in Vietnam:

patriotic pondering

fact:
i was born
in a certain place
within a particular country

but that happenstance alone
is not enough - - no it doesn�t suffice
to induce in me peacocked pride
stirring loyalty or blind patriotism

indeed
somewhat thankful
am i for it
now i serve it
in a war-torn land
distant and strange and unnecessary
where i just might die for it
or so the newspapers shall say
gallantly waxing trite rhetoric and hollow pomp
i�ll just be dead - - small comfort for my next-of-kin

soon i may return to it
and maybe be happy in it
for awhile
but that won�t make me stay
i very well may leave it

not quite ready yet
to fully accept
to be definitively sure
that some other place
other than it
far-off or near
isn�t greater better
or more relevant

Somewhere in Vietnam
Sometime in 1967-68


Indeed, it is most amazingly weird and wonderfully fantastic how we make it up on this earthly plane, spinning it�s illusory way through the Kosmos . . .

So, I�m on my way to Sri Lanka, land of mystery, land of terror, land of enchantment, land of suffering . . .

Cloudy, overcast day. In the distance the Catalina Mountains are muted shades of greys, browns, high-lit with splotches of white and dark skeins of vegetation not burnt from the raging fires earlier this summer, or are the ashed remnants of what once were evergreens.

Next to last day in Tucson, yea verily, next to last day in the U.S. of A., the country of my birth and from which I have been issued a passport. On Thursday, I fly to San Francisco, and then early, very early at 1:30 a.m., I depart on a Cathay Pacific big jet airplane for Sri Lanka. What has been mostly abstract becomes increasingly more real. Jokingly, I with a sparkling grin of bravado describe my state as rapidly vascillating between estactic excitement and stark terror. This moment I feel numb, rather removed, just the squiggle of a tear squeezed in left eye of sadness, grief, that my life has led me in my 61st of age and 31st of recovery to be departing on so drastic a journey to follow the path of my destiny which is unfolding in ways I would never have been able to plan, much less to imagine . . .

But here it is, about to be experienced for real in the flesh, and ready or not, I am about to be on my way. The level of my anxiety is perhaps best expressed by the low-grade chest cold I have come down with the last couple of days -- nothing serious like I was afraid of in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, when my throat felt like a fusilade of razors marching across each swallow, and it is passing, not the strep that I worried briefly about, but it is indicative, perhaps symptomatic, of how much the waves of conflict I have been suppressing are manifesting themselves, which is a good thing, my intuitive self taking care of itself, when my conscious-self is still so oblivious and clueless after all these years. No prob -- as the Richard Thieme column, "A Miracle by Any Other Name," described so poignantly yesterday, the older I get, the more wisely accepting I become that most of the time I am clueless and can best be by relaxing and experiencing the here/now-ness of each gift of a moment to be in wonder and awe at the miracle of IT ALL . . .

The last several days very pleasant days with Bonnie on another of our camping jaunts to the shining Pacific Ocean in San Diego with another lovely night of camping in the lush evergreened mountains in Cuyamaca State Park. Here are some pictures from the trip:

But first a picture from Long Island, which I don't think I have previously uploaded, of how sad over-population and over-development has become that unless you own private land by the seaside, there is no place one can legally take their best friend without threat of harassment by the local keepers of law:




Okay, on to the West Coast, where I noticed the same "No dog" signs, but apparently the local gendarmes are not as anal about enforcing as their Eastcoast brothers/sisters on the beat:



I was finally after several misses able to get a shot of a seabird flying across the setting sun . . .



I loved watching this surfer hat dude . . .



The setting sun highlights the bobbing surfers waiting to catch one last wave before going into the evening . . .



This is the Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant in downtown San Clemente, very Orange County, where we had a lovely sunset meal, our second in a row, having spent a lovely evening the night before with Peter and Sandra at my probably most favorite restaurant in the world, so far, Jake's on the beach of Delmar, CA. The couple with the three kids walking down the stairs sat beside us and apologized for their kids who were stellar, very well-behaved, compared to Tommy, my darlin' now grown, now such a wonderful young man, whom his mother and I couldn't take out in public until he was 16 . . . ;)



I love this shot of the Firelamps, which kept us nice and toasty in the early evenings chill and breeze coming off the Pacific Ocean.



Here's what the San Clemente (not San Diego as I mislabeled it) wharf looked like from where we were sitting as the waning sun bathed us with simmering rays that we basked in to the darkened end . . .

The next day was spent driving to Cuyamaca State Park where we listened on the periphery to the Julian Blues festival and ate another lovely meal at the Julian Inn before building a roaring fire to make sweet love by at our campsite tucked under large evergreens and big boulders. The next morning we had a lovely breakfast in Piney Ridge (2) in a diner which was an authentic, not a pre-fab, pre-franchised wannabe, testament to the 50s and 60s with old 45 records on the wall and posters of Marilyn and James Dean and Elvis and the front-end of a '57 Impala and a '53 Studebaker. It was very, very sweet . . .

We got back to Tucson in plenty of time for us to be at Reader's Oasis for the "Poetry Thugs" reading organized by Albert. Here is Albert reading from his lovely rant-poem about being old -- NOT:



Finally, here is a picture taken by lovely Bonnie of me doing my last public reading in the very vibrant and lively performance poetry community of Tucson. I shall indeed miss their collaborative inspiration:



And so my life as I have known it the past couple of years in Tucson, and the past 60 years in the US of A, with the noticeable hiatus of the seminal year in Vietnam, winds down to move on to the next adventure . . .

Yup, my gad-about trip through memory lanes of all persuasions in all regions of this great land/lousy government of my birth is rounding to a close . . .

My last two days in New York, could not have been any finer -- perfectly clear with white-washed cloud-swirls throughout the wide horizon of a deep azure blue sky, a bright sun slowly warming up the evenings' touch of Fall in the air coolness . . .

And what a way to round out my return back to the City of my dreams:

Yesterday, a perfect last day in the City. Took the LIRR train from Babylon (oh sing it in my head, Dave Gray) to Penn Station, then walked uptown to get a half-priced ticket for Movin' Out. WHOAAAA!~!~! It blew my heart and mind away, it's depiction through Billy Joel's songs my generations tragic interface with the Vietnam War and the slow healing that maybe happens for some of us, though I had to just sit and accept again deeper in my heart&soul the reality that my rage from that long (now) ago war successfully destroyed beyond reconciliation the relationship with Sara, unlike how Tony and Brenda were able to to healingly resolve the anger/rages of their relationship. So, I am freer, now, to move on to the new experience of love with Bonnie.

For a totally committed to the deepest core past, present, and future LOVIN' NEW-YORK-CITY-PHILE, the show's ending couldn't have been more meaningful. The full cast and band with the audience up on their feet cheering, clapping and singing our hearts out of Billy's "New York State of Mind." Y E S !~!~!~!~!~!

Then I walked up through Mid-town and the theatre district into Central Park and sat for a long while at Strawberry Fields, where I sat for a lovely long while listening to an acoustic guitar singer sing several of Lennon's favorites, including his "Imagine," which brough tears to my mind. I wish I had my camera to take a real picture, not just the one in my mind's eye, of the IMAGINE mosaic with a lovely arrangement of yellow daisies and one red rose.

Then, I went to a wonderful NYC AA meeting on the 11th Promise, "God will do for you what you are unable to do for yourself." How true, how indeed true !~!~!

Yesterday morning, I drove out to Giants Stadium to watch the season opener of my NY GIANTS wearing my new Number 80 Shockey jersy, given me as a going away present from the Case Manager gang at La Frontera, and the new NY logo tattoo on my right calf. Just too wonderful !~!~! The game day couldn't have been more perfect as was the game, a 23-13 trouncing of the St. Louis Rams. I savored every sight, sound, smell of a perfect ending to a perfect trip back "home."


After a wonderful meal prepared by dear friend, Johnny T. who treated me to the game, our friend Jim even paying my $15.00 parking fee, I turned my trusty Miata-steed westward to begin my journey back to Tucson and thence to Sri Lanka . . .

All of last week was most eventful with wonderful trips down to D.C. to visit the Wall and my kids and grandkids in Fredrick. Here're several pictures:



Zack, Camden and granddaddy with Chutney . . .

A very sad note is that I had to make the hard decision not to immediately bring him with me to Sri Lanka. I'll wait until I get settled there in my house in the area where I shall serve, and if it is feasible I will have him shipped over later. He is staying with dear friend, Mark, and his family who have a lovely house with a big back yard, another dog-mate, and a five year old girl who will spoil him even more than I will. He was most relieved, I believe, not to have to get back into the Miata . . .



First daughter, Rebecca, with son Joshua, aka Bub, who is a bountiful handful of pure boy into everything . . .



Second daughter, Jennifer, with little sweetheart, Leslie, with the gorgeous curls, deep angelic blue eyes, and a smile that would stop an A-10 and cleanse all depleted uranium from it . . .

Last Sunday I went to a combination going away party for my oldest step-daughter, Dawn, who is moving to Phoenix with her husband, Marty, and birthday party for my second step-daughter, Jennifer, who is 5-months pregnant. Here the two of them are:



I am, indeed, so blessed, and this trip the past month has been better than I could ever have imagined it. I am most anxious now to return home to Tucson to spend some good time with son, Tommy, and new love, Bonnie, whom I am feeling more and more grateful to have in my life . . .