brandon brown

update

2011-01-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

now treating patients

here

&

here!

the beginning of a practice

2010-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

So, I've not been posting here for awhile now, because things are moving in a whole new direction for me these days. I've started my practice at Watershed Community Wellness in SE Portland right on Ladd Circle in Ladd's Addition. It's a perfect spot and I'm working with great practitioners. We are providing high quality chinese medicine and acupuncture and massage treatments for people who want an integrative approach to health. I'm currently taking new patients, so please contact me (by email or here)if you're interested. I look forward to hearing from you.

Where's the Bees?

2009-12-12T09:05:00.001-08:00

In reading a distillation of an alchemical text, Sir Francis Bacon is paraphrased:

The Ant experiments by haphazardly collecting and using materials, which method indicates the all-too-human tendency to use materials without clearly understanding them.

The Spider neither experiments nor collects but produces webs from its own substance, which method indicates the tendency to formulate hypotheses based upon subjective bias, opinion, and conditioning leading to the confusion of subjective ideas and beliefs with direct perception of truth.

The Bee gathers both the nectar and pollen of many flowers and, little by little, transforms this nectar into honey through individual and collective effort and inherent nature. The product of this labor is then used to feed itself, the community, and the world at large. This method indicates an approach which uses both experimentation and observation (a posteriori); as well as using direct
interior penetration (a priori) in such a way as to eliminate the abuse of either, or the confusion of the one for the other. Assistance and guidance throughout the process is provided by a community of expert practitioners; the end of which is the transformation of the self and society in the service of all Life and the Source of life.

The disappearance (and hopeful reemergence) of the honey bee can thusly be seen as a metaphorical extension of man in the world today. I find myself thinking about the current climate talks in Copenhagen and what it truly means to practice Chinese Medicine as a bee.

Blue Fire

2009-08-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

The caelum, then, is a condition of mind. Envision it as a night sky filled with the airy bodies of the gods, those astrological constellations which are at once beasts and geometry and which participate in all things of the world as their imaginal ground. The caelum does not of course take place in your head, in your mind, but your mind moves in the caelum, touches the constellations, the thick and hairy skull opens to let in more light, their light, making possible a new idea of order, a cosmological imagination whose thought accounts for the cosmos in the forms of images.

-- James Hillman

The Holy Longing

2009-07-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

-- Goethe

The Fifth Month and Hexagram 44

2009-06-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

As things tend to do this time of year, my regular post for this month is a bit late. The fifth month started on June 5th with the seasonal qi of “grain in the ear" which is a reference to the corn harvest and also contains the qi of the "summer solstice" which occured on June 21st. The month will end on July 6th. In a way, my tardiness is good because this month is all about relationships and warmth of people (as opposed to the cold clickity-clack of computers). I don't know about you, but it has been really difficult to concentrate on school work in the midst of finals - all I want to do is hang out with friends and eat food and enjoy the sights and smells of a Portland that seems otherworldly from the dark winter of last.

Hexagram 44, 姤, is translated as Coupling, Meet, Rendezvous, Intercourse, or the Royal Bride. It is wind beneath heaven and aligning with the organ of the Heart, this hexagram is really about connection and contact: it's the spaces (distance and proximity) between all of us as individuals where the magic happens and where we can discover who we really are as an individual.

Here's the hexagram text:

《姤》女壯，勿用取女。 
A strong or royal woman, do not marry such a woman.  

《彖》曰：《姤》、遇也，柔遇剛也。「勿用取女」、不可與長也。天地相遇，品物咸章也。剛遇中正，天下大行也。《姤》之時義大矣哉！
  The image says: Encounter, a meeting, be soft yet firm in the meeting. Do not marry such a woman, for it will not last. Heaven and earth are both meeting, they produce the rules of all things. Firm and equitable meetings, produces great movement under heaven. Encounter is a time of great honor!!!  

《象》曰：天下有風，《姤》。后以施命誥四方。 The image says: Below Heaven there is Wind, Encounter. The queen uses this to carry out her imperial mandate int the four directions.

The idea of wind below heaven indicates to me an exchange on a purely energetic level that is not to be cemented into the material. The sage uses this energy to draw into himself while simultaneously connecting to the will of heaven. This is a good time to see that our desires are not to be placed into the material realm, but to appreciate the ever-changing nature of the flow of energy, which at this time is pivoting.

Wilhelm writes:

This hexagram indicates a situation in which the principle of darkness, after having been eliminated, furtively and unexpectedly obtrudes again from within and below. Of its own accord the female principle comes to meet the male. It is an unfavorable and dangerous situation, and we must understand and promptly prevent the possible consequences.

on healthcare costs

2009-06-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

The hot topic of the moment, and likely for the next few years unless something drastic happens, is healthcare. The Obama administration is attempting to revamp the insurance system, which is in dire straits. The question is, how to balance quality care with affordable care? The criticism for nationalized healthcare is that it becomes inefficient and slow, and lacks quality. People use Canada as an example. Though prioritization is certainly a problem when you have a lack of doctors and services, quality does not, necessarily need to suffer. This is the argument from the free-market champs who believe that the free-market is the only mechanism that can deliver the best quality. But as we've seen in the auto industry with respect to fuel efficiency, this is far from true. The so called "free-market" focuses on making profits, not delivering superior goods. The latter is only true if you have customers making informed honest decisions based on good information. But because corporations are required to make money, they often use obfuscation and dishonesty to bolster the image of their product. So we aren't operating in an environment where customers can really make informed decisions because they are being duped or expected to be experts in fields that they clearly can't be. (e.g. the recent financial crisis).

In terms of health insurance the problems are deeper because you: 1) don't know how sick you will be in the future, 2) can't understand exactly what you're buying and 3) the cost structures are inherently very complicated with rules about what is covered and what isn't. When you add in the necessity of healthcare, the customer not buying the product isn't really an option (though because of costs, it does happen). This sets up a market that is incredibly difficult to navigate for a customer. Therefore as customers we find ourselves in a position where the insurers want us to engage in "preventive medicine" but at the same time, they won't pick up the bill for such care.

As a future healthcare practitioner, I'm encouraged by examples of doctors who have tried alternative fee structures such as subscription services. For example, a doctor in New York, charges his patients $54-$130 a month depending on their age. They get unlimited access to him and he even makes house calls. He encourages his patients to get emergency coverage, and they have to pay for their own medications. But because he sees fewer patients, he gets to spend more than the disgustingly low average of 15 minutes with his clients. This extra time allows him to really streamline his patients treatments, often reducing the number of medications that they are on to half. This is real cost savings to the patient, and the system as well. Less referrals to specialists, and more patient-doctor interaction is a good thing for everyone.

on alternative medicine research

2009-05-31T07:43:00.000-07:00

A big question arises in the scientific realm whether alternative medicine is actually helpful or not. Whereas alternative medicines like Chinese Medicine (CM) are bottom-up treatments (individually custom) with top-down (holistic) theories, western medicine is typically bottom-up theory (molecular and chemically based) and top-down treatment (applying the law of averages to individuals). This is the main problem of designing randomized controlled double-blind trials to a holistic theory medicine like CM. In western medicine, it is usually fairly straightforward to come up with a diagnosis for a common disease; there is typically a physical marker such as a blood count, antibody, or hormone level that can be tested and isolated outside of the body. But in CM such an isolation does not exist, and as a result we can see 5 patients with prostate enlargement and have 5 different reasons why each patient developed the enlargement. Moreover, the treatments will be completely different depending on the CM diagnosis.

In a recent article on alternative medicine research, the problems that are addressed don't even distinguish this important point. Instead of looking at the diagnostic criteria of an alternative medicine, most studies use conventional diagnoses and alternative treatments to measure effectiveness. Because of this very basic error in study design, the studies are largely unreliable. Most of the studies designed by practitioners of CM even miss this point, in an effort to try to "legitimize" their medicine. It is a difficult situation with no easy answers, because in actuality the 5 patient with prostate enlargement could see different doctors and have different diagnoses. This further complicates the problem in terms of designing studies in the typical western fashion, but what it does for the medicine is make it extremely powerful and potent. In CM we have individuals with particular lineages and viewpoints treating individuals with customized diseases. In conventional medicine you have individuals treating individuals according to the law of averages and statistics. Both are useful, but measuring the effectiveness of something like CM with western methods is not fruitful unless these differences are understood and taken into account when the study is designed. Until such a study is designed, it seems that case-based studies are our best avenue of information in CM.

the rhythm of life and light

2009-05-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

Just read an interesting post about circadian rhythms and the classification of people into 3 categories: Hummingbirds (those that follow the normal sleep wake cycle of the sun), Larks (those that wake up very early and are at their best before noon), and Owls (those that don't peak until about 6pm or later). Apparently there are health benefits and risks associated with each group, the genetic factors of which largely contribute. But an important factor is exposure to light, especially sunlight:

" In brightly lit offices, the light levels are some 200-300 times less than they are outside on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day is some 20-30 times brighter."

So even though those fluorescent lights at work seem bright, they are still not cutting the mustard in terms of conditioning. When we add Vitamin D synthesis into the mix, the modern office worker is coming up short on two very big counts.

The article also discusses familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) which is a genetic disorder where people fall asleep around 7:30pm and wake up around 3-4am. Though genetic, Chinese Medicine has a lot to say about such a disorder. The time of 5-7pm is considered the time of the Kidney in CM. This is the time when the yang qi is held by the yin qi for sleep (hexagram 12). If a person is yang deficient, they are going to be somnolent during this time: the yin qi is too great. At 3-4am we have hexagram 11, which is associated with the Lung. Here the opposite is true. Because the yang qi was deficient, the yin qi is not engendered at night causing a yin deficiency leading to early waking with up-rushing yang qi. So this type of a pattern could be a mixed deficiency picture of yin and yang, also known as yin and yang not communicating. The formula Si Ni Tang instantly comes to mind.

Immortal Combat

2009-05-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Firewater

2009-05-12T09:46:00.001-07:00

The New York Times has been hitting the bottle pretty hard in the health section recently (here, here, and here). And for good reason. Everywhere we turn these days it is easy to see just how integrated drinking is with our lives. Whether it's the after-work drink to unwind or the weekend party the firewater presents a slippery slope of enjoyment and gradual destruction. I know for myself, and especially in my mid-twenties, I would frequently bust my ass all week working for high-pressure start-ups in silicon valley and sitting in traffic for two hours a day. The way I coped with the stress was to drink myself into the occasional blackout every saturday. I would spend sunday recovering and do it all again the next week. I think this is common, and although I have some pretty funny stories to go with the times that I can remember, the effects on my health were extreme. This could have continued, and might have, had I not been struck with my own version of a meltdown that caused me to re-examine my life. In my case, I was using the drinking as a crutch, as an avoidance of my lack of happiness. I didn't like my job, even though I was told I was good at it. My heart was missing something: a direction and purpose in life that was bigger than what I was living. I drank to ease the pain of this misdirection.

One of the above articles mentions to look for signs of alcohol abuse before it actually becomes alcoholism:

1. Repeatedly drinking more than self-set limits.
2. Having a persistent desire to quit or cut down.
3. Drinking and driving.
4. Spending too much time drinking.
5. Having hangovers or a sleep disorder.

Recognizing these trends can stop a problem before it manifests, which is truly what preventative medicine is all about. For myself, I was definitely guilty of some of these during those days. I still notice a trend in myself, that when the going gets tough, the tough makes martinis (maybe not tough enough: malt liquor?). What is interesting is the relationship of alcohol and the Liver in chinese medicine, and how alcohol in small amounts moves the Liver Qi which can counteract depression, but in larger amounts consumes the Liver Yin (the Blood). This can lead to a vicious cycle that ultimately ends in total dependency, tragedy, and often death. What one of the articles doesn't realize is the ironic co-morbidity of depression and alcoholism. In my opinion, and in my case, the former often times leads to the latter.

I grew up with a family where alcohol was just part of everyday life, but the perils of its abuse were unspoken.

I think its time to speak up.

The fourth month and Hexagram 1

2009-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was mistaken in some of my previous posts when I was talking about the months and the corresponding hexagrams. As it turns out, the hexagrams and months are more appropriately tied to the cycles of the 24 jie qi as opposed to that of the moon. This makes sense actually, because the hexagrams have many agricultural interpretations that are more relevant to the jie qi.

So this means that the fourth month started on 立夏, "the beginning of summer," which was on Tuesday May 5. This month will include this seasonal qi as well as the next one 小满, "lesser (grain) fullness" which begins on May 21 and continues until June 4. During this time, we also experience the energy of the auspicious hexagram 1, 乾 which is often translated as "The Creative" and is all 6 yang lines.

The Yi Jing text:
大哉「乾元」，萬物資始，乃統天。 
Great! The beginning of all material things, all are ordered under heaven.   

雲行雨施，品物流形。
 Clouds move and rain falls, giving rise to the movement and form of all things.

  大明終始，六位時成。
 Great brightness from beginning to end, 6 positions of successful times.   

時乘六龍以御天。
 It is time to ride the cart pulled by the 6 heavenly dragons.

  乾道變化，各正性命。
 Qian is the dao of change and transformation, supporting the correctness and truth of every life.   

保合大和，乃「利貞」。
 Safely coming together ensures great harmony, auspicious.   

首出庶物，萬國咸寧。 
Every creature's head emerges, and all nations are peaceful.

Of all the hexagrams this is the most auspicious, most grand, most promising. Under normal circumstances this is a time when all things can be achieved. However, at this particular moment in time there are some crazy western astrological trends afoot that indicate that we should be a little cautious. If you tend to be a bit lazy (like me recently) this month things will generally be a bit easier for you to get things done, meet new people, and proceed on some goals you have set. If you're a busy little bee that tends to not rest, relax, or find your center on a regular basis, this could be a month of burnout of both the mental and physical. But because of the way these things work, you probably won't notice the fallout or rewards until sometime in June. In a phrase: stay balanced, but enjoy the precious creative movement forward.

Stephen Karcher translates Hexagram 1 as "Dragon" or "Inspiring Force"

Force or Inspiring describes the situation in terms of primal power of spirit to create and destroy. Its symbols are the inspiring power of Heaven, the light of the sun that causes everything to grow, the fertilizing rain and the creative energy of the Dragon that breaks through boundaries. You are confronted with many obstacles. The way to deal with them is to persist, for you are in contact with fundamental creative energy. Take action. Be dynamic, strong, untiring, tenacious and enduring. Continue on your path and don't be dismayed. Ride the power of the Dragon and bring the fertilizing rain. Your situation contains great creative potential. It can open up a whole new cycle of time.

Concentration and your higher self

2009-05-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

In recent studies on concentration, researchers have determined that all the noise and chatter that our visual and auditory cortex is constantly subjected to is filtered by a coherent firing of neurons in the frontal cortex, called gamma waves. In information processing, most models posit some form of bottom-up construction of the external world in our brain, but in this case there is a significant ability to affect the visual field in a top-down fashion. That this over-riding mechanism of attention occurs in the new (evolutionarily speaking) area of the pre-frontal cortex should come as no surprise. This area of the brain is often equivocated to the 6th chakra, Ajna Chakra, which is responsible for balancing the energies from Shiva (object) and Shakti (subject) to create a sense of psychic knowing or 'seeing' through this 'third-eye.' In this light, the research is interesting because it reveals physical evidence of both form (visual stimulus) and function (our ability to attend to it or not). Practicing meditation trains this part of our brain for concentration and allows us to focus on that which we want to focus on instead of what assaults us on a daily basis. In Chinese Medicine, this visual stimulus is associated with the Stomach network where the outside world is internalized and integrated into our self. Just as we can choose our food, we choose what we attend to. Just as we can be driven mad to the point of indifference with our choices of food (Thai? Indian? Burgers? Pizza? Italian? Nepalese?) we can become comfortably numb to the chaotic cacophony that is city life.

Aporkalypse Now: Swine Flu and Chinese Medicine

2009-04-29T07:55:00.001-07:00

Ok, I stole the title from here. But by now you've heard about the terribleness that is the latest resurgence of swine flu. Face masks are in people. But as the authors discuss, making public health policy decisions (do you immunize a population, do you restrict travel, etc.) are difficult to make when you don't know very much about the nature of the virus and the deaths it has caused.

But chinese medicine is rich in a history of treating this type of epidemic outbreak. In fact, based on the symptom picture that the disease presents with, swine flu could fall under what is termed "Triple Yang Disease" where wind cold attacks Taiyang and simultaneously turns to heat in the Yangming and Shaoyang layers. Chai Ge Jie Ji Tang is the indicated formula for such symptoms as: severe but gradually decreasing aversion to cold and shivering that turns into increasing fever, mild sweat, head and body aches, orbital pain, dry nose, restlessness, and insomnia, tongue has a thin yellow coat and the pulse is wiry and slightly surging or rapid. Though this formula is not strictly classical (it was developed in the 15th century and is based on Chai Hu Gui Zhi jia Ge Gen Tang) it apparently has a wonderful clinical efficacy.

But the real point is, and the CDC is finding this out all over again, that the flu will effect different people differently. In Mexico, it has reportedly killed over a hundred people, but in the United States it has yet to do so (knock on wood). This is another indicator that the material pathogen is never entirely responsible for disease but it is the combination of the pathogen and the constitution or landscape that indicates severity, death and recovery.

Oh, and for more hillarity, make sure you watch this.

The Pill

2009-04-21T22:58:00.001-07:00

A lot of my patients are likely to be women. One estimate is that higher than 75% of patients for Chinese Medicine are female. So women's health has always been on my radar as something to pay attention to. The pill, apparently, isn't just good for stopping those nasty periods, but is now also marketed as anti-cramping, anti-carcinogenic, tonifying for expecting mothers, regulating mood-swings, and preventing blemishes. Additionally, the placebo pills were introduced to make the woman have her period because the companies didn't think that women would be comfortable not bleeding for a whole year (or more). All of these claims of health and well-being may in fact be true, but what they do not do is treat the underlying imbalance that causes the symptoms. As is usually the case in western medicine, the goal is still "out there in the future" where discoveries can be applied to help fix the current "problem" of unintended pregnancy:

“The holy grail is a drug that would specifically target the ovaries and testes that would have no effect on any other organ system, so they would be side-effect free,” said Dr. James Strauss, who was co-chairman of a national committee on contraception research and is now dean of the medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University. “That would be based on the discovery of genes only present in those reproductive tissues. We know a significant number of those genes today, and that’s the fruit of 20 years of research. Unfortunately, that knowledge has yet to be translated into a product.”

I'm not sure this line of reductionistic thinking is actually healthy. Doesn't everything have a side effect? And just because we can't conceive of one today, does that mean that the side-effects that we may find in the future don't matter? I may not be a dean of a university but I know for a fact that my testes are pretty intimately connected to the rest of me. I'm just sayin.

Anecdote vs. Science

2009-04-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

It is common in the supposed fight of eastern vs. western medicine for the former to blame the latter for lacking faith and missing the underlying cause of the disease, and being impotent in an effective treatment until a material target can be identified and destroyed. Meanwhile, the latter blames the former for being “anecdotal” and medieval and lacking any comprehensive power. In a recent review of the book The Horse Boy the tired argument continues, to the delight of the institutions that protect their ideologies and to the detriment of patients, and families who suffer from recalcitrant disease. The Horse Boy is a book about a father who tries to treat, if not cure, his son of autistic characteristics including “demonic tantrums, speech delays, and incontinence.” The father takes his son to Mongolia to learn to ride horses and be healed by traditional practitioners of shamanism. The result is that much progress was made, including the disappearance of the maniacal tantrums and increased verbal directions to the horses the boy was riding.

However, in the press, the story was not about why this therapy may or may not work, but how this was an “anecdotal story” and should not be the purveyor of false hope. Because it was not part of a randomized controlled trial, no conclusions could be drawn. But can we honestly say this is the case for this father and son? That no conclusions can be drawn? Hardly. The positioning of this story as “anecdotal”, as some “scientific” commentators have dubbed it is actually misleading. The term anecdote is defined in Webster’s as: “a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident” the etymology of which includes the greek root anekdota which means unpublished. Herein lies the problem. So-called “anecdotal” stories are dubbed by the gold-standard scientific community as “unpublishable” so their relevance is instantly mitigated. Instead of spurning ideas for research, an idea such as giving horseback riding lessons to an autistic child is deemed “anecdotal” (which has the hint of implausible) by the scientific community to avoid any sort of general recommendation for the public at large. In a way, this is the stalwart western doctor’s job: to give advice that benefits the average. For example, if you have cancer, chemotherapy and radiation and surgery are likely to help you out, but there is nothing to say you, the patient, fall inside or outside of the standard deviation that they are using to make the recommendation. This is why all decisions for treatment are up to the patient themselves. The doctor makes their best guess and the rest is entirely left to something outside of their control. This is because medicine is hard work. The body constantly proves to be too complex to apply our reductionistic materialist models.

In Chinese Medicine we can understand instantly why horseback riding would be beneficial for those suffering from autism. The Horse is the animal that goes with the Heart, and as such rules the mental-emotional lives of our patients. Horses are used in crowd control because they have a pacifying nature to them. They instill peace in their riders. Horses understand the spirit of their rider: if the rider doesn’t have a good heart, they disobey. Born wild, they need to be trained to be useful just as we all must learn how to love. The Heart itself sounds like a galloping horse. Horses are used often in therapy to teach troubled youth how to care and love something beyond themselves. Their hoofs, legs, shoulders, skin, hair, blood, and fat (donkey hide gelatin) are useful in treatment, especially in regulating female hormones.

All this being said, it is important to realize that treating all autistic children with horse therapy will not cure all children who suffer from this ailment. However, what is clearly needed is more research and exposure to this potentially promising treatment modality. What is not needed is fear about what such a treatment may mean to the establishment.

The Third Lunar Month and Hexagram 43

2009-03-26T12:03:00.001-07:00

Spring continues to threaten to emerge here in Portland, Oregon; we are witnessing a deficient ShaoYang spring that is throwing many people into illness. One day it is warm and sunny, the next cold and rainy. But even on the cold days the spring energy is definitely palpable if not in your face. The daphne has an intoxicating sucker punch, the magnolia tree in front of my house is about to pop, and the birds won't shut up about the twists and turns of Obama's budget proposal (to be fair, i'm not fluent in bird, they're probably just talking about sex).

At any rate, the third lunar month (March 26 - April 24) is all about light eliminating the shadows of our lives so that we can make clear and decisive decisions without hesitation. This month is represented by Hexagram 43 夬 which translates as Stride, Eliminating, Decisiveness, or Receive. It is also related to the Stomach organ in Chinese Medicine. In this way, proper nourishment through outward decision is imperative to what we take in from the external and make part of ourselves.

The text from the Yi Jing:

揚于王庭，孚號有厲，告自邑。
 An inquiry at the King's court, confidence shouted carries terrible reports from the fiefdoms.  

不利即戎，利有攸往。
 It is not an auspicious time for going to war, it is beneficial to have someplace to go.

  夬、決也，剛決柔也。健而說，決而和。
  Stride, is decision. Firm but yielding. Strong and vocal, decisive and harmonious.

「揚于王庭」、柔乘五剛也，「孚號有厲」、其危乃光也。
"Inquiry at the King's court" means to yield to the 5 strengths (laws?), "confidence shouted carrying terribleness" means that the light shining (inquiry) is dangerous.

「告自邑不利即戎」、所尚乃窮也，「利有攸往」、剛長乃終也。
"Reports from the fiefdoms that it is not beneficial to war" means that the places of esteem are actually poor, "beneficial to have someplace to go" means firm and lasting only in the termination or ending of things.

I find this text really interesting for a number of reasons. For one, we're in the middle of spring and as we all know it is good to do some spring cleaning at this time of year. But from a cultivational standpoint, we can see this as symbolically cleaning out the ego, shining light on our skeletons in the closet and airing them out to dry. I understand this inquiry at the court to be a questioning of the ego in this way. Because of the instability that this causes, it is not correct to wage a battle because the structure of the ego itself is so changeable at this time. Instead it is best to move with the energy of spring and terminate those aspects of ourselves which are no longer useful to us and move outside of ourselves in travel or coming into contact with new things.

As Wilhelm writes:

This hexagram signifies on the one hand a break-through after a long accumulation of tension, as a swollen river breaks through its dikes, or in the manner of a cloudburst. On the other hand, applied to human conditions, it refers to the time when inferior people gradually begin to disappear. Their influence is on the wane; as a result of resolute action, a change in conditions occurs, a break-through.

Spring Equinox

2009-03-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

So, it is time. Today is the day that the yang qi, overcomes the yin qi and begins to lead. The days are longer than the nights, and will be for the next 6 months. Now is the time to execute and achieve those things that you want to do for the year; however big or small. You'll probably feel the need to clean some stuff, reorganize your living space, hang out with new people, and just generally bask in all the forms of intercourse that are taking place. If you properly cut away those things that didn't matter in the fall and stored your energy in the winter, your goals can now be easily achieved. Go speedracer! Go! And oh yeah, don't forget to stop and smell the metaphorical roses every once in a while - there is a lot to be learned in those moments of watching the activity of spring instead of constantly living it.

真武湯 True Warrior Decoction

2009-03-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

“True Warrior Decoction” is mentioned in the Shang Han Lun only twice. The first time it is mentioned, it is in reference to Tai Yang disease:

太陽病，發汗，汗出不解，其人仍發熱，心下悸，頭眩，身瞤動，振振欲擗地者，真武湯主之。

"In Tai Yang disease, when there is sweating, and the emergence of sweat does not resolve the disease, and the person still has fever, there are palpitations below the heart, the head is dizzy, and the body shivers violently, and they are quivering and about to fall on the ground, Zhen Wu Tang governs it."

In this scenario, the person is sweated with Gui Zhi Tang and the person does not recover or the person has sweated themselves and has not recovered. In both cases, the person has a yang deficiency because the person’s yang qi with the addition of a correct treatment of Gui Zhi Tang is still too weak to defeat the pathogen. Because of this yang deficiency, there is cold shivering, and because the body is attempting to mobilize its yang qi to the surface, there isn’t enough left to maintain the interior, so the Shao Yin heart and head begin to feel the effects.

The second time Zhen Wu Tang is mentioned is in reference to Shao Yin disease:

少陰病，二三日不已，至四五日，腹痛，小便不利，四肢沉重疼痛，自下利者，此為有水氣，其人或欬，或小便利，或下利，或嘔者，真武湯主之。

In ShaoYin disease, that has lasted two or three days without stopping, and at four or five days, there is abdominal cramping, inhibited urination, heaviness and pain of the four limbs, and spontaneous diarrhea, this is because the person has water qi, and the person may have cough, or uninhibited urination, or diarrhea, or retching, then Zhen Wu Tang governs it.

Zhen Wu Tang:
Fu Ling 3 Liang (45g)
Shao Yao 3 Liang (45g)
Bai Zhu 2 Liang (30g)
Sheng Jiang 3 Liang (45g)
Fu Zi 1 piece prepared

*if cough add:
Wu Wei Zi half sheng (100mL)
Xi Xin 1 Liang (15g)
Gan Jiang 1 Liang (15g)

*if urine flows freely, remove Fu Ling
*if there is diarrhea, remove Shao Yao and add 2 Liang of Gan Jiang
*if there is retching, remove Fu Zi and Sheng Jiang to equal 8 Liang (1/2 Jin).

In the first description of symptoms in Shao Yin disease, there are Earth symptoms being inversely invaded by Water: abdominal cramping (Wood trying to control the Water in the Earth), inhibited urination (Water being directed towards the Earth element), heaviness and pain of the four limbs (the Earth rules the four limbs), and spontaneous diarrhea (Water invading the Earth Spleen).

In the second description of the symptoms the Metal is overwhelmed by Water, and cough and uninhibited urination occur (or perhaps constant urination from the Lung being too open and a lack of pressure within the system). Also there is Earth disharmony as the Stomach is in counterflow, leading to collapse of the Spleen.

In both cases, the method is to restore the yang of the Kidney and drain the excess water to correct the reversal of Water Qi invading Metal and Earth. In the Tai Yang example, we can note that the Zhong Qi (中氣) of Tai Yang is Shao Yin and the Zhong Qi of Shao Yin is Tai Yang. This is an explanation for why, if someone is severely deficient and they are subjected to Tai Yang disease, and sweating does not work, that a Shao Yin pattern emerges. The ying and the wei have as their source the ultimate yang and yin of Shao Yin, when these are severely depleted the patient cannot mount an attack even with sweating so the underlying yang deficiency must be addressed with Fu Zi.

The Second Lunar Month and Hexagram 34

2009-02-26T07:28:00.000-08:00

Boom! The Yang qi is out of the gate and running now in the second lunar month. Whereas the last month was all about balance and being pressurized like an arrow on a drawn bowstring, this month is all about release and movement. Now is the time for production, strength, and action. All those plans that we've cultivated in the winter months can now be begun with full zeal. This is symbolized with the character 卯 for this month, which is the earthly branch depicting the opening of two great doors. The energy of this month, which began on February 25th and charges until March 25th is further represented by Hexagram 34, Da Zhuang 大壯, which is often translated as great strength, focus, movement, power, or killing.

《大壯》利貞。 
Great Strength is auspicious.

  剛以動，故壯。《大壯》「利貞」，大者、正也。正大而天地之情可見矣。 
Movement with firmness, therefore strength.
Great strength is auspicious, great because of correctness.
Correctness and greatness like heaven and earth, conditions are very clear.

  雷在天上，《大壯》。君子以非禮弗履。 
Thunder above Heaven, this is Great Strength.
The noble person is never impolite or treads upon.

Here, as opposed to other line translations that I've done before, you can see that the energy is very simple. There is correctness in action while checking any abuse of power at the door.

Steven Karcher corroborates:

The hexagram figure shows inner force expressing itself directly and decisively. Thunder located above heaven. This is a time for resolute action. Come out of retirement. It is important to be able to hold onto your strength, for you must judge things for yourself and proceed on your own. A great idea implies strength and power. Something solid and strong is stirring things up. This is the source of your strength. Put your ideas to the trial. Correct one-sidedness in yourself and others. Having a great idea and continually correcting your path lets you look into the heart of Heaven and Earth.

Ling Shu Chapter 1

2009-02-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

Ling Shu Chapter 1 is titled “The 9 needles and the 12 source points” wherein the source points are indicated as imperative to treat disorders of the Zang and the methods of tonification (“in slow, out fast”) and reducing (“in fast, out slow”) are explained. But I believe that the essence of the chapter lies in the following lines.

小鍼之要，易陳而難入，麤守形，上守神，神乎神，客在門，未睹其疾，惡知其原

The essentials of the small needles are easily explained but difficult to receive, the crude guard the form (the lesser physician only sees the body), the superior guard the Shen, Shen fantastic Shen, (without which the doctor is only a) guest at the gate and has not perceived the illness or known the origin of the evil.

刺之微在速遲，麤守關，上守機，機之動，不離其空，空中之機，清靜而微，其來不可逢，其往不可追。

The subtle and profound of needling are the rhythm (fastness and slowness), the crude physician guards the barrier (that which is closed), while the superior physician guards the movement of the mechanism, the mechanism is not separate from the void, the mechanism is the center of the void, it is quiet and subtle, you cannot meet it when it arrives, you cannot pursue it as it leaves.

知機之道者，不可掛以髮，不知機道，叩之不發，知其往來，要與之期，麤之闇乎，妙哉工獨有之。

To know the Dao of the mechanism, one cannot put up one's hair (be lazy), not knowing the way of the mechanism, you can knock (strike) the disease without emitting it, if you know its comings and goings, you can assist its phases, the dimness of the crude physician! the excellent physician alone has it.

往者為逆，來者為順，明知逆順，正行無問。

That which leaves is counterflow, that which arrives is flow, be fully aware of counterflow and flow, and you will have correct action without question.

逆而奪之，惡得無虛，追而濟之，惡得無實，迎之隨之，以意和之，鍼道畢矣。

Use it (the knowledge of the mechanism) to seize counterflow, get the evil without causing deficiency, pursue and assist it, get the evil without causing excess, welcome it and follow it, this means to harmonize it, this is the accomplished way of needling.

This is my favorite segment of this chapter of the Ling Shu because it explains the importance of engaging with the person’s Shen to observe disease but also of the disease process itself, the Bing Ji 病機, the pathological mechanism. This means that when we apply an acupuncture treatment, it isn’t enough to apply the rules of the body to find our treatment principles but we have to look at the process of the disease. For example, if someone has hemoptysis it isn’t enough to needle the points for hemoptysis. Rather we should seek an understanding of the root cause of the disorder and needle at the appropriate time, in the appropriate technique, to either “seize the counterflow to not create deficiency” or “follow it out to not cause excess.” “Not meeting it as it arrives and not pursuing it as it leaves” seems contradictory only if we operate from a fixed position. If we are firm in our beliefs and understandings of a disease, and thus remain metaphorically fixed in our ideas, we cannot be flexible and follow the ways of the disease which have a rhythm all of their own. It is this rhythm that is the key to unlocking the disease process.

HAPPY NEW YEAR OF THE EARTHEN OX!

2009-01-25T18:23:00.000-08:00

January 26th marks the first day of the first month of the chinese new year of the ox. Starting on the new moon, this month will extend until February 24th. In a way, the year of the ox is energetically represented as what I described in the last months energy as both have "ox" energy and are associated with Hexagram 19: the continuing endurance and approaching of something great. So the same can be said of the coming year of 2009. Having visited the dark cave that 2008 represented (子）, and fleshed out what direction we want to go in, 2009 is the year to begin executing those plans, and begin taking our internal ideas to the external world. Have something you were dreaming up last year but didn't quite getting around to making a move on? Well, this year is the one to start that big project. Also with the new year, and every year, comes a time to forgive those who owe us money that never showed up or apologies that never came and move on to a more compassionate, "we're all in this together" mentality.

Within this context of an oxen year, we begin in the first lunar month, represented by Hexagram 11 泰 often translated as peace, quiet, or balance.

Here is the text from the Yi Jing, as well as my translation.

小往大來，吉，亨
The small goes and the big arrives, auspicious, successful.

則是天地交而萬物通也，上下交而其志同也。
It is the joining of heaven and earth and the communion of the 10,000 things,
the joining of above and below and it is similar to will.

內陽而外陰，內健而外順，內君子而外小人，君子道長，小人道消也。
inside is yang and outside is yin, inside is strong and outside is following, inside is the character of a noble person and outside is the appearance of a lesser man, the noble person's path is long, the lesser person's path disappears.

This is a time of ultimate communion between heaven and earth. 3 yin lines are falling, and 3 yang lines are rising. Internal strength and external following is indicated here, to show that we follow the path of nature even though we may be pursuing our internal goals. Stephen Karcher writes:

This is a time of abundance. If you let yourself be lead you can realize your hidden potential. Later you can be quiet and settled. Reach out and penetrate things. Sense their interconnections. Radically change your sense of self and who you associate with. Put your possessions at the service of the spirit of the time. Support and encourage people. Use peace and abundance to set life in order.

The 12th Lunar Month and Hexagram 19

2009-01-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

New Year's is always an interesting time for me now that I'm studying Chinese Medicine. For one, there is a mismatch between the solar calendar that we follow here in the west and the lunar calendar favored by the ancient Chinese. Chinese New Year this year doesn't happen until February 4th, at which time we will begin the year of the Earthen Ox. Because I've been following the energetics of the seasons for over a year now (according to the 24 seasonal nodes) I have to admit January 1, 2009 seemed a bit premature for celebration as the Winter energy, especially here in Portland, is still quite strong. Secondly, the typical celebratory script of getting shitfaced and staying up all night is also contra-indicated for this time of year [note to reader: i managed to ignore this prescription this year and am still paying the price as i write this. i blame the bellinis!]

But what I actually want to write about is not my debaucherous ways but the energy of the lunar month that we are currently in, which began on December 27th and continues until January 25th. This is the 12th Lunar month, represented by the Earthly Branch 丑 and Hexagram 19, Lin 臨.

This hexagram represents the continued endurance of the Yang Qi as it has "returned" in the previous month, but still faces an uphill battle. It is often translated as Endurance and Approaching.

Here is my translation of the text from the YiJing for Hexagram 19.

《臨》元亨，利貞。至于八月有凶。
 Successful, Benefitial. As for the 8th month (august) it is ominous.   

《彖》曰：《臨》，剛浸而長，說而順，剛中而應。大「亨」以正、天之道也。「至于八月有凶」、消不久也。 Gradually firm and enduring, speaking with direction, responding with a firm center. Big success with correctness, this is the way of Heaven. Ominous challenges will soon disappear.  

《象》曰：澤上有地，《臨》。君子以教思�窮，容保民�疆。 
The marsh above indicates earthliness. The noble man uses this to teach the poor of thought, and contains and protects those on the outside.

[if anyone has insight to these two characters that are missing, i'd appreciate a hand digging them up!]

We can see from this translation that this is generally a beneficial gua for action though the action is quite specific in that it is centered in both directions (from the outer to the inner and the inner to the outer). There is an indication that there are obstacles present, but that if we hold to the correctness of the Dao, they will fade and be overcome naturally. The indication of teaching represents that of action, even with those who are not aligned with the way (the "poor" and those on the "outside").

Stephen Karcher writes:

Nearing describes your situation in terms of something approaching, particularly something great approaching something smaller. It is the first arrival and point of new contact. The way to deal with it is to move towards what is approaching without expecting to get what you want immediately. Look at things with care and sympathy. Welcome the approach of others. Keep your expectations modest. This contact opens a whole new cycle of time. It is particularly favorable for what is growing. So beware. Trying to rush to completion and an early harvest will cut you off from the spirits and leave you open to danger.

heartbreak haiku

2008-11-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

------------------------------

Once she pulled the thread
Life unravelled rather quick
And I'm no seamstress

------------------------------

Shadows lurking near
Easily dissolve with light
Where is that flashlight?

------------------------------

The prayer for today:
May my heart continue to
Break open, gently.

------------------------------

If ever you've tried
Loving in spite of violence
You know what I'm sayin'

------------------------------

Betrayal knows none
Better than me this autumn
Here's to raking leaves.

------------------------------

I've written you lots
But the end is all the same:
you can't even read

on love

2008-10-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

"When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips."

-- Khalil Gibran

Chinese Astrological Calendar

2008-09-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last few weeks creating a Chinese Astrological Calendar to aid in my studies of astrology and general energy watching of the seasons. It contains the heavenly stems and earthly branches in an easy to read color-coded fashion for every day from now until august 2009 in a big 11x17 format. It also has the seasonal nodes, moon phases, and tidal hexagrams for the months, as well as a reminder of what that month is about. And because I made it pretty (see below), I've decided to offer it for sale. The cost is $25, please email me if you are interested.

References for my paper on Salt-Sensitive Hypertension

2008-09-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Over at Deepest Health, I put up a guest posting on a Classical Chinese Medicine view of a modern disease process, Salt-Sensitive Hypertension. Below are the references I site in the work, in case you are interested in perusing them further. I welcome your comments here, or on eric's blog.

[i] Am J Kidney Dis. 2007 Oct;50(4):655-72. Pathophysiological mechanisms of salt-dependent hypertension. Rodriguez-Iturbe B, Romero F, Johnson RJ.

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertension

[iii] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf

[iv] Kempner W. Treatment of kidney disease and hypertensive vascular disease with rice diet. N C Med J1944; 5: 125–133

[v] Nephrol Ther. 2007 Sep;3 Suppl 2:S94-8. Abnormalities of renal sodium transport and blood pressure sensitivity to salt. Burnier M.

[vi] http://duedall.fit.edu/ocn1010eng/jan27sp.htm

[vii] http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

[viii] Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

[ix] Salt, Diet, and Health. MacGregor & deWardener. Cambridge University Press: 1998.

[x] Jones, E. The symbolic significance of salt in folklore and superstition. In: Essays in Folklore, Anthropology, and Religion. Vol. 2 Hogarth Press, 1951. London.

Omnivore's 100

2008-09-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone is doing it these days, so now its my turn. Pass it on.

Here are the instructions:
1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: Post a comment here linking to your results.

The Very Good Taste Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (thailand!)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (regrettably)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Not bad. Fortunately, I'm only 31. I'm hoping to knock the rest out, especially once I know what some of these actually are.

Barack the Vote!

2008-05-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

me and 75,000 of my closest friends.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

2008-04-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

by David Pinchbeck. On December 21, 2012 we know that many things will happen. For one, this happens to be the winter solstice, and the alignment of the earth, moon, and sun with Sagittarius A, what is thought to be the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Secondly, the Mayan calendar expires, reaching the end of its long count, and ushering in a new world. Based on this calendar each world stage, reflected by the 9 levels of the Mayan pyramid and our spiral galaxy, increases in speed and thus decreases in duration based on the solar calendar. Thus, the worlds proceed in a manner that marks major transitions:

* First World: 16.4 billion years ago. The Big Bang. Development of cellular life on earth.

* Second World: 820 million years ago. Animal life emerged.

* Third World: 41 million years ago. Evolution of primates and first use of rudimentary tools.

* Fourth World: 2 million years ago. Tribal organization.

* Fifth World: 102,000 years ago. Homo sapiens emerged. First use of language.

* Sixth World: 5,125 years ago (from 2012). Creation of patriarchal society, law, writing.

* Seventh World: 256 years ago. Creation of Industrialization, Electricity, Technology.

* Eighth World: 12.8 years ago (from 2012). 1999. The dissemination and consumption of global information via the Internet.

* Ninth World: 260 days after 2012. ???

Its anyone's guess as to what will happen at this point, but there is plenty of conjecture. Some hypothesize that the earth's poles will undergo a magnetic shift, causing problems in instrumentation but also in the migratory patterns of birds and insects. Some hypotheses put the culmination of peak oil at this date, at which point massive socio-economic shifts will take place, leading to increased pressure on food stores and fresh water supplies. Some think that 2012 will usher in the first use of widespread nuclear weapons. Global warming will decimate the planet.

Pinchbeck attempts to fill in the question marks and in so doing hits all of it in this book: global warming, massive culminations of wealth by the very few, exponentially increasing availability of information through the internet, terrorism and runaway nation-states, excessive materialism and its effect on our psyche, nuclear proliferation, disintegration of the family and our national health.

Quoting Marcuse: "There is a fundamental irrational rationality of our system. Industrialization and mechanization could - and logically should - have led to a reduction in labor time and the institution of a post-work and post-scarcity global society after World War II... The response to this deep threat to the controlling apparatus was the creation of "false needs" in the consumer, the perpetuating fear of nuclear war and terrorism, and the use of the mass media to enforce consensus consciousness:

The union of growing productivity and growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the surrender of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth constitute the most impartial indictment. Its sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth, is itself irrational.

The great mass of humanity forfeits their inner freedom of thought, conscience, and will to participate in this system, which presents itself as inevitable, inescapable, and airtight."

Pinchbeck looks at the theme behind all of these trends, and gives archetypical descriptions along with personal and global ramifications of all of it. He goes about answering these questions in a very personal way, one that i think we are all ultimately facing: do we find in ourselves the strength to change what is necessary in order to avoid total extinction? Pinchbeck's answer is ultimately a Gnostic one, where he integrates multiple shamanic religions and narratives to arrive at an answer that corroborates well with my own understanding of our role. Fear is the first and most natural response given any threat. But because we have a higher role as human beings, we must ultimately move past our fear and overcome ourselves first to usher in the change that we so desperately need.

Quoting Gebsner:

All work, the genuine work we must achieve, is that which is most difficult and painful: the work on ourselves. If we do not freely take upon ourselves this pre-acceptance of the pain and torment, they will be visited upon us in an otherwise necessary individual and universal collapse. Anyone dissociated from his origin and his spirituality sensed task acts against origin. Anyone who acts against it neither has a today nor a tomorrow.

The Qur'an

2008-01-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

So, for my first month of sagely living (see previous post) I'm going to be reading and studying the Qur'an (the Koran), the holy book of the Muslims as revealed by God to the prophet Muhammed. I chose this book for many reasons, some of which political, some of which spiritual, but I've simply never read it at all and there are a lot of people who have (20% of the world). Because school is starting in a week, and because I'm always trying to balance my life, I didn't want to overload on Chinese Medicine (though I was very tempted to read and translate The Art of War). I'm happy to be beginning this project and I chose Thomas Cleary's "Essential Koran" translation as a starting point.

There are some interesting things I've already learned. For one, the idea that reading the Qur'an in English is rather impossible task. As I've written here before about the limited nature of English, and the multi-layered meanings inherent in languages like Chinese and Arabic, a translation of this book into English lacks a great deal at the onset. Cleary understands this and creates some devices to help stretch English, like using poetic phrasing and pronouns. However, this is one of those things that would be hard to understand even if I did speak Arabic:

The text of the Qur'an reveals human language crushed by the power of the Divine Word. It is as if human language were scattered into a thousand fragments like a wave scattered into drops against the rocks at sea. The Qur'an displays human language with all the weakness inherent in it becoming suddenly the recipient of the Divine Word and displaying its frailty before a power which is infinitely greater than man can imagine. -- Seyyid Hussein Nasr

Thus, "the dramatic shifts in person, mood, tense, and mode become exhilirating exercises in perspective and translation of consciousness into a new manner of perception."
Whoah.

year of sagely living

2007-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

my classmate eric over at Deepest Health, has proposed a year of sagely livingas not only a challenge but a way to deepen our understanding of the all important aspect of self-cultivation. I've mentioned in posts here before that self-cultivation is a crucial aspect in being an effective practitioner in Chinese Medicine. In many respects, we can only ask our patients to be as healthy as we are and the best way to lead is by example. There are a number of teachers at my school who follow this principle, and they swear that it is not only beneficial, but necessary and crucial.

So the Year of sagely living will progress beginning Jan 1, 2008 according to the lunar 12 earthly branch clock. The first month, January, corresponds to the earthly branch of Zi 子。Zi is a picture of a child or an embryo and represents the contracted nature of the middle of winter. At this time, all that goes on is internal and external movements are diminished or severely reduced. Eric has appropriately chosen Scholarship/Study as the pairing for this month. So in the next day, I will choose an appropriate topic that i will study every day for a month and post my comments on the experience here.

You don't need to be a student to do this, if you'd like to join in at any time, just post some comments about your experiences.

Happy New Year!

the dynamic duo: the moon and the earth

2007-12-17T13:38:00.001-08:00

I was reading an interesting article about the moon's effect on the earth and came across this:

"Earth’s moon has helped stabilize our planet so that its axis of rotation stays in the same direction. For this reason, we had much less climatic change than if the Earth had been alone. And this has changed the way life evolved on Earth, allowing for the emergence of more complex multi-cellular organisms compared to a planet where drastic climatic change would allow only small, robust organisms to survive."

The moon has played a pivotal role in the evolution of man. Our systems of knowledge, observation, and activity once hinged upon the phase of the moon. Its interesting to think about what we've left behind by ignoring the phases of the moon, or more appropriately: if its even possible to divorce ourselves from its silent cadence.

The Foundation of the Chronic Miasms in the Practice of Homeopathy

2007-08-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

by Henny Heudens-Mast. This was my first introduction to Homeopathy and I devoured this book in a couple of weeks (and it was during finals!). "But Homeopathy isn't Chinese Medicine!" you say. I'm one of those people who thinks that all medicine can be Chinese Medicine if approached in the right way. Yes, even surgeons!

But what HH does in this book is describe the way she watches a patient, the way she categorizes them according to the miasms, and then tries to stimulate their vital force in order to expel disease. Although the categories of the miasms don't correspond to the 5 phase elements or the 6 Qi in a one-to-one manner I'm sure something could be gleaned from overlaying the two systems.

For example, the Tuburcular Miasm (dissatisfaction, lack of tolerance, changes everything, does harmful thing to one's self, solace in the mountains) smacked of Pericardium and maybe what is known as Yang Ming disease (Large Intestine and Stomach Networks).

What struck me most about this book was HH's methods. She often instructed her students to take no action if change was underway, and to only prescribe when it was clear what was happening was a roadblock to health as opposed to seeing a symptom as a beneficial "healing crisis."

The book has the best of both theory and application: true cases applied to the theory and decisions made on theory, study, and deep knowledge of the nature of life.

of snakes and spleens

2007-08-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

In Chinese Medicine the snake is the animal associated with the spleen in the system of the 12 organs. Though the animals were ascribed to the organs much later in the Medicine's history, there are remarkable parallels that can be drawn by meditating on the relationship between an organ and its animal. Sometimes, modern research will even point it out for us. Recently, it has been discovered that the snake can decrease its metabolic fasting rate by around 70%. Even at such a low rate, they still remain very alert and cognizant of possible approaching food. The mechanism isn't known, but some guesses are that the heart and liver cells down-regulate mitochondrial production or activity.

In Chinese Medicine the Spleen is a very important organ that raises the clear Qi from the food received by the stomach. The Spleen "steams" this clear Qi up to the lung to be combined with the Qi from the breath. When we discussed the Spleen in class we noted how snakes can eat nearly anything (including an entire kangaroo). Thus it shouldn't be surprising, considering typical Chinese duality, that something that can eat nearly anything can survive for an extended amount of time on nearly nothing. I say nearly nothing, because I think there may be ways to survive without eating anything at all but by absorbing this clear Qi through other methods.

car(s)

2007-08-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

so, i bought a car. i know, i know: they're evil, and i've been pretty preachy about the beauty of not owning one. but i have one now, and i want to share with you what I learned in 3.5 years of going without:

(1) Our cities are designed around cars. This is pretty obvious to anyone who has tried living without a car for any time whatsoever. Portland is nearly an exception to this rule, though not entirely. Our public transportation is excellent. Living in the NW of Portland, I didn't really need a car, I could walk most places and public transit was readily available and cheap. However, the majority of the people drive carsand when i was walking and riding my bike, you are painfully aware that cars will kill you if you aren't paying attention. I'm fairly serious about this. I walk down busy streets and ride my bike so defensively these days I might as well be pretending that the cars are actually out to get me.

(2) Our lives are designed around cars. Socially, we go out and see people. We meet them in places that aren't near our homes after work, between other social events, etc. What I realized in not owning a car is that because it takes sooooo long to get places on the bus, you end up doing less. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I realized that I'm such a social butterfly that this was a hard adjustment to make.

Going to the grocery store is different without a car as well. You have to go more often on foot because you can only carry two bags. This problem is compounded by my involvement in the healthcare field. The truly healthy food is in disparate places: farmers markets, whole foods, new seasons, and the co-ops; though all in the same quadrant of Portland, they aren't anywhere near each other on foot. And again the problem of carrying things emerges.

Getting out of the city is another, probably more important aspect that I was missing without a car. I like camping. I like going to the coast. I like road trips. But you can't do these things on the bike very well (unless it becomes the trip itself).

(3) Cars are expensive. Do you know how much I spent on transportation per month including bike parts and riding public transit? $60/month. Total. That is cheap. I just bought a car for $1800, that i hope isn't going to die or need repairs, that costs $30 to fill up every couple weeks, insurance is relatively cheap but still more than $60/month itself, and add the occasional oil change and we're talking at least 4 times the cost. And that doesn't even include the true cost of driving:

What would it cost to drive if the price tag of gas and cars included air pollution, road construction and maintenance; property taxes lost from land cleared for freeways; free parking paid for by taxes; noise and vibration damage to structures; protection of petroleum supply lines; sprawl and loss of transportation options; auto accidents; and congestion? A number of researchers have tried to answer this question, and John Holtzclaw of the Sierra Club profiled eight studies that, when averaged, estimated the true price of gas at $6.05 a gallon.

Which doesn't include the cost of wars (452 billion!) like Iraq, which I posted about here

(4) Gasoline is a dinosaur. I hate that I have to contribute to this. I really do. But the alternatives aren't there yet for a starving student who needs to get around. I looked into running a diesel on free vegetable oil but that seemed like more work and time than taking public transport. I think Biodiesel is trading one problem (foreign dependence on oil) for the same one (where do you think they get the fertilizer to grow the biodiesel?). I'm waiting for the Algae/Hydrogen powered car - I'll probably have a real job by then too, so I might even be able to afford it.

So, in conclusion, it might seem entirely contradictory that I now own a car. Or maybe it doesn't even seem like it. But there are tradeoffs, and if its one thing that Chinese Medicine has taught me is that things aren't inherently good or bad, they just are:

--------------------------------------------
Harmony is only in following the Way.

The Way is without form or quality,
But expresses all forms and qualities;
The Way is hidden and implicate,
But expresses all of nature;
The Way is unchanging,
But expresses all motion.

Beneath sensation and memory
The Way is the source of all the world.
How can I understand the source of the world?
By accepting.
--------------------------------------------Tao Te Ching Chapter 21

butterflies

2007-08-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

there's a new image at brandonblogtastic-land from the Helfgotters:

The butterfly in this context specifically shows support for a universal health care involving compassionate health practitioners, who seek the root cause for suffering, who are educated with effective tools for treating sickness and suffering, who possess exemplary bed-side mannerisms, and who rely on treatment methodology that does not harm the patient.

presidents

2007-08-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

i love voting. you know this. so whenever a big race is looming i get kinda giddy. mostly cause everyone seems to have an opinion and i like to hear how people have distilled the news and their personal life experiences to either support or not support and individual candidate. At this point, everything is very wide open: there are many democratic candidates to choose from as well as some possible late entries (keeping my fingers crossed for Gore to enter late).
I think Iraq is a non-issue. Its a very bad situation and anything you do at this point is crisis management. Clearly we need an apology in the hopes of building an international presence. Other issues are more important to me for this race, namely health-care and a sane environmental/energy policy. When I look at who offers the most compelling vision on these things I like Chris Dodd and John Edwards. Dodd's healthcare plan goes the furthest, ensuring every american is covered using a national marketplace of current providers. Dodd's energy policy is also the most comprehensive. Biodiesel isn't a total solution but a good band-aid for the moment (I want to see numbers on how much petroleum-based fertilizer it takes to fertilize all that corn). Obama and Hillary are obviously the ones to beat because they've raised the most money, but their policies are kinda dull - which isn't surprising as they're pandering to what they think the middle is. Yawn.

My friend rob is hoping for a Blumberg-Chuck Hagel ticket. Silly rob.

A neat way to see who has what money and from whom they got it is at this cool site.

What do you think? Who do you like at this point?

What is the What

2007-07-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

by Dave Eggers. It had been awhile since I read me some fiction. School does that to a man. Because my time is so limited it was hard to decide on what to read. I actually spent a week deciding, which seems ironic as I could have just read another book while i was evaluating my options. But I went with What is the What and I am happy I did.

I read Eggers' first book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and thought it quite a bit less than genius. But that was a long time ago and I was a pretty different person. What is the What is an autobiographical novel. It is fiction, but it is not fiction. What results is more realistic than any historical account could possibly be. It captures the story of one (of thousands) Valantino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee whose home and life was devastated by the long running civil war. The Darfur region gets all the press these days, but growing up in southern Sudan was (and maybe still is) a nightmare of its own kind. Deng was one of the "Lost Boys," children who watch their parents get murdered and then flee, walking across the entire width of Sudan to Ethiopia where they eventually settle. Its an amazingly horrific story and any summary I could give would be truly pathetic. All I'm going to say is, read it. A glimpse of this man's life is enough to know how beautifully difficult life can be. What people survived and what people endure.

All of the proceeds of the book go to a foundation dedicated to restore villages in southern Sudan and give refugees a chance to go to college. Buy it here.

CCMClock

2007-06-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

In Classical Chinese Medicine the body is governed by the operation of 12 organ networks that are active at different times of the day according to their differing physiological characteristics. For example, the Large Intestine represents the explosive energy of the sunrise. When you take a 24 hour day and divide it by 12 you get 2 hours per organ. But not really, because this method doesn't take into account the longer daylight hours during the summer and shorter daylight hours during the winter. What you really want is a clock that calibrates to this.

After talking with a couple of my teachers, and thinking it might be more clinically relevant to know which organ network was currently most active, I devised a widget for Mac OS X. It calculates sunrise and sunset based on a given location (longitude and latitude) and maps the current time to the energetics of the correct organ. Here's a sample:

Email me if you're interested in obtaining this. I'm offering lifetime support for $20. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or above.

wall street

2007-02-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

so i recently sold some stock from my old company and had to figure out how to re-invest it. its a relatively unpleasant task. as most of you know, i am a card-carrying tree hugger so investing in companies who are doing work that is socially and environmentally important (and also at the same time profitable) is a difficult thing to achieve. there are some socially-responsible (SRI) mutual funds out there but they are ultimately expensive and underperform the S&P. Being "good" doesn't have to entail unprofitability! i did end up settling on some interesting stocks that i figured i would share, since the research was a bit of work. please note that my method of investing is to buy and hold for the long term.

Startech (STHK): This company uses plasma guns to liquefy and vaporize trash! How cool is that? The output of the process is heat (of course), a glass that can be used in construction, and a gas that can be converted into hydrogen fuel. the whole thing is essentially self running once you get it started on trash. They were just covered in popular science magazine.

Whole Foods (WFMI): You all know Whole Foods. Basically, despite Michael Pollan's taking them to task on not being exactly as wholesome as advertised, I still think this is a great company, with a great product, and a great future. I think they're going to be the next Starbucks. Whenever I shop I vote with my money and I buy organic, as local as possible. Did you know organic produce may have 5 times the nutrients that non-organic do?

Linear Technologies (LLTC): Linear Technologies is a company that makes analog circuits, mostly in the arena of power management. I had a whole lot of experience with LTC at my previous engineering jobs and they have the most talented engineers working for them. They are a 5-star morningstar stock and are on the new clean energy index (CLEN) that was just introduced last week. They have an awesome profit sharing and employee ownership policy, which I'm all for.

Energy Conversion Devices (ENER): another CLEN stock. these guys sell solar in the european and north american markets as well as batteries for hybrids and lower-power memory chips for computing. the outlook for the next 5 years looks really good for this company. i love solar because it has minimal impact and eventually pays for itself. 4-stars on morningstar.

Advanced Analogic Technologies (AATI): these guys are similar to Linear Tech, and are also a 5-star stock on the CLEN. the big difference is that they are a much smaller company but focus on the consumer electronics market quite a bit more: cellphone backlighting. so the potential upside is huge.

脾胃者倉廩之官，五味出焉。

2007-01-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

That which is the stomach and spleen is the minister of granaries, the five flavors emanate from it.” This statement from the Neijing is very profound in that it sets in motion the basic physiology of the digestive system, but also that of all herbal treatment. The “five flavors” are more than just flavors, they are the energetic components that make up everything we ingest, from food to medicine. In seeing we call these components colors, in hearing we call these components tones, in smelling we call them odours, and in eating we call them flavors.

As pointed out, taste is the yin component of a flavor and yang the qi portion. Thus a food or herb that has a strong taste is more yin and “thick” than a taste that is more neutral and more yang and “thin.” The consumption of overly rich foods in modern times thus makes sense that we see so many excess yin conditions of obesity and depression. The five tastes correspond to the five elements (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty) and the qi of an herb is classified as cold, hot, warm, or cool.

Looking at the anatomy and physiology of the spleen through this five elemental lens yields some interesting findings. Primarily, the location of the spleen and its subsequent shape itself is dictated by physical contact with the stomach, the left kidney, and the diaphragm (lungs). The connections are obvious: physical contact entails that when one enlarges, the other must retreat and give-way. The laterally adjacent stomach and spleen (connected via the gastrosplenic ligament) balance each other energetically, the former descending and the latter ascending as if on a teeter-totter. The spleen also allows the lung to breathe (the generating cycle of Earth to Metal). An engorged spleen (Splenomegaly) would impinge on this area. So too would an enlarged spleen effect the left kidney (an interesting expression of Earth controlling Water).

The Spleen, containing the largest collection of lymphoid tissue in the body therefore makes good sense that it would be the clock pair of the Triple Warmer (sometimes thought to be the lymphatic system in general or the Extra-Cellular Matrix or connective tissue). As a holder of lymph and blood (30-40% of the bodies total platelet count), the Spleen blends the yin (blood) and yang (lymph) to clean and mount attacks. In this way, the Spleen can be seen as raising the clear freshly cleaned blood and lymph back into circulation. Splenectomies usually result in increased susceptibility to bacterial infection due to this lack of clearing ability.

In other pathologies such as congestive splenomegaly, the venous return system of the spleen becomes clogged. Interestingly, this usually only occurs in patients who already have liver cirrhosis. Because of the congested venous return, the heart begins to back-up and have experience its own problems. This is clearly a case of Wood invading Earth, a “wicked evil”, giving rise to the “Excess Evil” of Earth reversely controlling Fire. In a particular patient with congestive splenomegaly and liver cirrhosis, if the initiating factor is in fact determined to be liver excess the causative situation could be this “wicked evil.” These evils arise and are treated from the control cycle. When Wood over-controls Earth, the method is to tonify the controller of Wood, or Metal. This is done with pungent herbs such as Gui Zhi (cinnamon twig) and Fu Zi (aconite).

Another example of a Spleen pathology is a Splenic Infarct, which is essentially a lesion caused by an embolism originating from the circulatory system. In this case we can apply the 5 elemental understanding of physiology to see that Fire is influencing Earth in this case. With just the diagnosis of Splenic Infarct it is difficult to know if this is due to a deficiency or excessive condition. The former would be treated as a “Deficiency Evil” and the latter as a “Proper Evil.” Luckily, the treatments are identical in flavor. To treat deficiency, the Fire element, or Heart, would be treated by tonifying the Water element by using the bitter flavor. In the case of Proper Evils, we would support that organ with its corresponding flavor; in this case, the heart with bitter.

These are just two examples where a modern diagnosis can be explained and treated from the ancient methods of Chinese Medicine.

spell of the sensuous

2006-10-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

In Chinese medicine, disease is defined as that which goes against the Breath of Nature (Bian Hua變化). This statement begs the question: If human disease is that which goes against the breath, how are we going against the breath? Or more specifically, how did we get to this point of widespread cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, allergies, and depression? David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous offers some important insight.

Once upon a time, humans were inherently tied to the land as hunter-gatherers – to survive they were required to follow the laws of nature and the land that they inhabited. With the advent of agriculture and the ability to store surplus grain and consequently generate wealth, a separation arose. No longer did man have to toil day in and day out for food and his survival, but with smart farming techniques and the eventual domestication of grain, the more wealthy could pursue intellectual pursuits: the creation of the aleph-beth emerged as a technology that could transmit some of these intellectual constructs.

Abram discusses the consequences of this gradual transformation from oral to written culture as a divorce from the embodied sensorial experience of time-space to a domain that is referent only to the human domain. “Only with the emergence of the phonetic alphabet, and its appropriation by the ancient Greeks [from the Hebrews who consciously did not encase the majestic air as written vowels] did the written images lose all evident ties to the larger field of expressive beings. Each image now came to have a strictly human referent: each letter was now associated purely with a gesture or sound of the human mouth.” (p.138, italicized comments mine). Instead of seeing language in everything around us – the birds, the wind, the trees, the earth itself – encapsulating speech into written words divides humans from the very world in which we depend on for our well-being. The written word is no longer a transient mutating form, but a fixed non-breathing non-living reference to be analyzed, discussed, and returned to for all time. In short, the written word divides us from nature because it is in and of itself completely unnatural; simply a construction, a technological advancement, of the human mind.

When I go to write something down, I do so to preserve the present moment so that in some future time it can again be accessed. But my words, no matter how poetic or successful at describing some part of a scene or mood must fail to express the entirety of the scene. The pure infinite nature of the present is incapable of being recorded in this linear, discrete fashion, exported into the future to be re-experienced. So language itself, and written language even more-so, is limited*.

Besides the wealth generation of agriculture, the invention of the phonetic written word can be seen as the grandmother of the technologies we enjoy today. But these technologies come at a price. Because they are invented for humans instead of for the world in which humans live, using these inventions inherently reinforces this division. In this way man can then manipulate the environment for his gain. Thus, man is not required to observe, much less follow, the breath of nature. Sometimes we do follow the breath, and we are healthy and vibrant. But often we go against the breath, and we develop diseases that ultimately kill us.

Abrams describes the healer's role (in shamanic cutures) existing at the edge of society, constantly nourishing the border between human beings and the other beings – the animate and seemingly inanimate creatures of nature. For it is through this membrane that nature communicates with us, and where the answers lie to cure disease and live in the balance that is necessary to sustain life.

＊“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”
名可名非常名

the places in between

2006-07-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

rory stewart, a scotsman, decided to walk across Afghanistan in January of 2002, on foot, by himself. if you'll recall, January 2002 was about 3 weeks after we installed the new government in Afghanistan. it was and still is a terribly unsafe place for westerners. as it turns out its even unsafe if you're an Afghani. Afghanistan is a country that is primarily still medieval: tribes based on ethnicity, religion, and location are constantly battling each other. this book is rory's travel diary of the trip, and in short i have a man-crush on this guy. equipped only with his knowledge of the local language and an amazing craft to avoid trouble when it is staring him in the face, he nearly dies (twice) and survives on a piece of bread daily for days at a time while hiking 60km a day. this was the look at Afghanistan that I was looking for that the Kite Runner only could provide in part.

fourth of a lie?

2006-07-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

So in honor of it being fourth of July and all, I picked up Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and read about the revolutionary war. All I can remember from American History in high school was the famous phrase, "taxation without representation." And that's bad, right? Well as is usually the case, war is more complicated than a simple phrase and the Revolutionary War was no exception.

Before the colonists' dissent was directed at Britian, it was directed at the upper class here at home. In fact a study of the Boston tax lists of the early 1770s shows that 5% of the population was controlling 49% of the city's assets. This imbalance led to many riots and ransacking of private property. This made the people with the private property - the rich - understandably nervous. As a whole, the colonists had a huge amount of natural resources, were tired of fighting wars against the Spanish and French in the name of Great Britian, and the ruling class in the colonies was worried about losing their own wealth due to this growing dissent. It is no wonder then that their main objective was to direct this animosity towards Britain. In fact this redirection of anger was so tenuous, many of the poor in the army were forcibly enlisted and there was often mutiny, abandonment, and riots. The few who did join the army on their own will did so out of a necessity to advance their financial position - just as is done today. We likely would have lost the war if it were not for the support of France.

So this fourth of July, when you're barbecueing and drinking your beer, definately enjoy them. But remember what you are celebrating - a successful redirection of animosity at a time when real revolution may have actually been possible. For the common man, the Revolutionary War was no different than any other war. The poor have the "priveledge" and "duty" of protecting the wealth and assets of the rich. Sound familiar?

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

Awesome. See it.

As you'll find this is not a political movie, just like Global Warming is not a political issue. Global Warming is a scientific truth and a moral issue.

the tao of physics

2006-05-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

by fritjof capra. this book followed naturally from the holographic universe and far exceeded my expectations. in fact, it is amazing. capra is an accomplished physicist and sets out to describe the relationship between sub-atmoic particle physics and eastern mysticism. basically, the largely successful idea of classical physics and the macroscopic objects it describes completely breaks down in the sub-atomic realm. the blending of space and time, the uncertainty principle, and the interchangeability of matter and energy are likened to the ancient ideas of Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

of note:
*the scientific method of abstraction is very efficient and powerful, but we have to pay a price for it. As we define our systems of concepts more precisely, as we streamline it and make the connections more and more rigorous, it becomes increasingly detached from the real world.

* Einstein: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

*The knowledge of matter at this [subatomic] level is no longer derived from direct sensory experience, and therefor our ordinary language, which takes its images from the world of the senses, is no longer adequate to describe the observed phenomena. The Tao that can be named, is not the eternal Tao.

*At the subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather shows 'tendencies to exist.' The solid material objects of classical physics dissolve into wave-like patterns of probabilities, and these patterns, ultimately do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated 'building blocks', but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The Cartesian partition between the 'I' and the world, between the observer and the observed, cannot be made when dealing with atomic physics.

* in the extremely dense nucleus of an atom, because the protons and neutrons are restricted to such a small area, they scream around at about 40,000 miles per second!

* the idea of an elementary particle, or building block should be entirely done away with, and is a holdover from an antiquated classical view.

* at the subatomic level, the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve into wave-like patterns of probabilities, and these patterns, ultimately, do not represent probabilities of things, but probabilities of interconnections. These interconnections always include the observer in an essential way.

* Quantum theory thus reveals the basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units.

* E = mc^2 matter has appeared through experiments as completely mutable; particles can be created from energy and return to energy.

* Hinduism: as long as our view of the world is fragmented, as long as we are under the spell of maya and believe that we are seperated from our environment and can act independently, we are bound by karma.

* space-time diagrams: mathematically identical interpretations yield anti-particles (positrons) moving forward in time or particles (electrons) moving backwards in time!

* Like the quantum field, Qi is conceived as a tenuous and non-perceptable form of matter which is present throughout space and can condense into solid material objects.

* the relationship of the I Ching and particle/anti-particle relationships (p. 283). modern physics and chinese thought both consider change and transformation as the primary aspect of nature, and that the structures and symmetries resultant of change are secondary.

the brooklyn bombers

2006-05-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

comedy shows, riding the subway, actually winning $ at the horse races, eating Allison's cooking, seeing dead people, seeing collisions, playing video games, eating NY pizza, staying out late, playing the drinking man's thinking game (middlemost), and laughing till it hurts. These were just things that I did. But what made it memorable were my friends.

keep the internet free

2006-05-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

this is so obvious i shouldn't even need to comment on it. but please, do take a quick moment to sign the petition.

fugitives and refugees

2006-04-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

by chuck palahniuk. this guy is the author of fight club, choke, and lullaby (none of which i've actually read - yet). but he lives in portland, and this book is basically a list of things to do here, interspersed with zany stories about all the weird people in portland (there's lots). so, rather than a book review, this serves as a list of "things to do in portland"

* visit USS Blueback
* visit the self-cleaning house
* tour the underground shanghai tunnels
* watch or participate in adult soap-box derby - August 10
* drive on timberline highway: driving down from the lodge turn right under the first ski lift post.
* fire department ride-along
* monk for a month at the Trappist Abbey in Lafayette
* visit OMSI - museum of science and industry
* watch the drama at eviction court: Multonomah County Courthouse Room 120 M-F 9am
*restaurants that chuck likes: alibi, delta cafe, fuller's, le happy, western culinary institute (6 course meal for $20), wild abandon
* visit mount gleall castle: 2591 sw buckingham ave
* ride to sauvie island
* see the real knife from psycho at movie madness
* galleries: BICC at OHSC, Art Gym at Marylhurst, Cooley Gallery at Reed, Archer Gallery at Clark College.
* see the mills used for grinding my steel cut oatmeal at bob's red mill
* the smallest park in the world: mill end park at sw front and taylor
* other parks: Columbia Gorge Hotel, Maryhill Museum, bishop's close (11800 sw military lane), elk rock island, the grotto at rocky butte, the recycled gardens, rooftop sculpture garden (9th floor mark o. hatfield courthouse).

the holographic universe

2006-04-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

by michael talbot. this is a fun forray into the grand theory of everything. basically, everything is a hologram acording to physicist David Bohm ("Wholeness and the Implicate Order"): waves interfere with each other to form images, objects, everything. that which we can perceive is the explicate order and that which we cannot is the implicate. the implicate contains the explicate, and the boundaries are also constantly wavering. the interesting thing about a hologram is that every part of the hologram contains all parts of itself. therefore if you take a piece of holographic film and split it in half, the image does not split, but remains as two whole images. the results are quite profound: the normal distinctions we draw don't actually exist. you and i don't exist as separate entities but are just an interference pattern from the same cosmic unity. moreover, time doesn't exist in the linear sense that we think it does, the "past" and "future" are equally accessible as the present.

talbot starts from the interesting results of quantum mechanics (nonlocality, uncertainty, conscious observer effect) and moves on to note findings in not only physics, but neurobiology, dreaming, psychokinesis, near death experiences, out of body experiences, religious miracles, reincarnation, psychic powers, and even ghosts. see? fun! what's more interesting is that people are starting to study things like psychokinesis and the results are startling - it seems that we all have the ability (at least to some degree) to control and effect the world around us with our beliefs and minds.

moreover, there is a bias or trend in science to discount these experiences as not testable or verifiable, which means they are often not studied or simply ignored. it has also been shown that the belief of the scientist running the "new agey" experiments influences the actual results of the experiment. children often experience these "other dimensions" more often than adults perhaps because adults have had so much conditioning as to what "is possible."

some interesting notes:
*an ink drop spun in a glycerine tube undergoes reverse entropy
* stigmata is manifest through deep belief: stigmatists portray wounds on the palms instead of the more accurate location of the wrists. this is likely due to artistic interpretation of crucifiction occuring on the palm.
*when we dream, we typically have access to information that is beyond our waking knowledge (i.e., we can learn new things when dreaming).
*in chinese medicine, the method of mapping the entire body to the foot, or the ear is an example of a hologram
* people being able to see with with the tips of their fingers, ear lobes, tip of the nose, and even, yes, armpits.
* Immanuel Kant's *Dreams of a Spirit-Seer* an account of Swedenborg: "we are constituted by the intersection of two flows: one direct from the divine, and one indirect from the divine through our environment."
* The Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon use of ayahuasca ("soul vine") - a hallucinogenic plant that when taken transports even lay people to exceedingly similar dimensions that the Conibo shamans visit regularly.

Personality Test

2006-04-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

these are fun. and probably meaningless.

Extraversion |||||||||||| 46%
Stability |||||||||||| 50%
Orderliness |||||||||||||| 60%
Accommodation |||||||||||||||| 63%
Interdependence |||||||||||||||| 70%
Intellectual |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Mystical |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Artistic |||||||||| 36%
Religious |||||||||||| 43%
Hedonism |||| 16%
Materialism |||||| 30%
Narcissism |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Adventurousness |||||||||||||||| 70%
Work ethic |||||||||||| 50%
Self absorbed |||||||||||| 43%
Conflict seeking |||||| 30%
Need to dominate |||||| 30%

Romantic |||||||||||||||| 70%
Avoidant |||||||||||||||| 63%
Anti-authority |||||| 30%
Wealth |||||||||||| 50%
Dependency |||||||||| 36%
Change averse |||||||||| 36%
Cautiousness |||||| 30%
Individuality |||||| 23%
Sexuality |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Peter pan complex |||||||||||| 50%
Physical security |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Physical fitness |||||||||||||||||||| 84%
Histrionic |||||||||||| 43%
Paranoia |||||||||||| 43%
Vanity |||||||||||||| 56%
Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Female cliche |||| 16%

Siddhartha

2006-03-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

"I am telling you what I have discovered. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. In every truth the opposite is equally true. A truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. But the world around us, is never one sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real."

3rd anniversary

2006-03-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

The Iraq War began four years ago March 18th. Here are the numbers:

Minimum Iraqi Dead: 33638
American Dead: 2311

Total Minimum Dead: 35,949

Portland is holding protests on March 19 and I intend on joining them. If you don't support this war, I encourage you to get out in your town and vote with your feet. Stand up and be counted and call for change.

it's getting hot in here...

2006-03-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Probably the single most atrocious act the Bush administration has committed is ignoring the worldwide scientific evidence that the world is warming up, it is our fault , and we're not doing anything about it.. It's not sad that we will cease to exist as a species. Everything that lives must die. What is sad is that if we and the rest of the planet cease to exist because we didn't change our behavior to be more in tune with the laws of nature and we could have done so. Don't wait for the government to sign on to these treaties. Don't wait for Ford to come out with a green car. Take action, yourself, now.

why we fight

2006-02-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

a film by Eugene Jarecki. This documentary explores the idea that America is controlled by what President Eisenhower saw as a growing "industrial-military complex." That is, since WWII America has used the industrial revolution primarily to build the biggest army in the history of the world. This is not news. What is interesting about this film is how it explores the motivation for war from a business perspective (the defense industry operates on an average profit margin of 25% and is rife with sweetheart deals) and the ideologies that purport that America should be the lone super-power in the world. Most Americans don't know why we are at war in Iraq, yet it is tolerated. Just as it was tolerated in any previous war - the original reasons for going to war eventually evaporate in a cloud of lies and secrecy.

Who is to blame? We are, essentially. We elect congress and they sit idly, ignoring these problems. So called "liberal democrats" constantly support funding of defense contractors because their constituents are employed by these same contracts. The contractors intentionally distribute the manufacture of their goods across the states to build political clout.

The federal budget for 2007 is 2.2 trillion dollars. Depending on what you're counting as military expenditure (and I'm inclined to agree with the latter number) somewhere between 20-50% of federal taxes are spent on the military. I pay $246 a month in federal taxes. This means that I'm donating somewhere between $50 - $123 a month to kill and influence people. That makes me physically ill.

The real reason we're in Iraq? To extend American imperialism. How does one do that? Insure that the military remains strong. Iraq is a strategic target in that it contains the world's second largest oil reserves. This oil is for your cars, sure, but its also to secure our place as the number one super-power. If the oil goes away, so does the ability for us to operate our armed forces.

What are we afraid of? What do we think will be taken away from us if we are suddenly not the superpower we are now?

If you disagree with me, you should be able to answer this question.

Cal Rugby!

2006-01-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened when I was in New Zealand hitch-hiking around the south island. I was standing literally in the middle of nowhere. There was a car about every 30 minutes and I wasn't getting picked up. After an hour (although you wouldn't bat an eye at an 0-2 record in the states, its worth mentioning that the kiwis always pick you up), this small RV pulls up and two americans ask where i'm headed. We're going to the same place so I jump in. These two guys turn out to go to Cal and are on the Rugby team! Even when you're down under its a small world. I'll hopefully be in seattle at the end of march to watch them cream washington.

Here's their schedule.

administration spying

2006-01-20T12:23:00.000-08:00

so, i'm concerned about all this hubub about the administration spying without warrants. i'm not a lawyer. i have no idea whether it was illegal or not, and at some point that will be decided. but i do know that if it isn't illegal, it sure as hell should be. we have these checks and balances in place for a purpose, and the spirit of the law as i understand it is that this type of warantless spying should be illegal. if there was a loophole that was exploited i sure hope we close it. and quick.

still life with woodpecker

2006-01-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

by tom robbins. this has truly been a year of tom robbins. and he is genius. still. this is my friend sam's favorite book of all time and i read it on his recommendation. it did not disappoint. there are a lot of really great nuggets in here, and i bookmarked many pages to remind me, but instead of quoting them all i'll just say go read it your damn self and be your own explorer. its better when we're told that there's gold in them thar hills and we risk finding it ourselves. even if it turns out to be fool's gold.

2005

2005-12-30T16:11:00.000-08:00

happy new year everyone! i feel so blessed to have had the year i did. i was going to write something summarizing 2005, but every time i try words aren't cutting it.

best to you all in 2006.

christmas ships

2005-12-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

my boss invited me out on his big boat for the annual running of the portland christmas ships. basically a bunch of boats cruise up and down the willamette river at night with a bunch of lights on their boats. there's food and drink and good times. it was freezing cold but we had a really beautiful clear night. there were about 14 boats in total. portland is such a beautiful city and seeing it from the water and cruising underneath all the bridges was a real treat.

i've posted some pictures of the ships and my new face. people were worried after those last pictures, but as you can see, its healing nicely.

happy holidays everyone!

the kite runner

2005-12-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

by Khaled Hosseini. This book is on the NYT bestseller list and has been for awhile, and for good reason. Though the overall devices and structure that Hosseini uses are a bit simplistic for my tastes, the subject matter was riveting and haunting. His descriptive powers are intense - actually his non-descripritve powers are intense. Instead of detailing horror he alludes to it just enough to send your imagination flying off into the possibilities and as the novel climaxed I found myself more and more wanting to put it down because it seemed a bit too terrible. But I was engrossed, and would highly recommend the read. While the middle east is in the news spotlight daily, this novel serves as an important cultural and humane insight that is so often lacking in the daily orgy of journo-politicking of the region.

my new favorite site

2005-12-05T21:22:00.000-08:00

just when you thought the internet wasn't impressive anymore, another example of collective amazingness emerges.

the most important posting

2005-12-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

i met a beautiful canadian couple while travelling in new zealand (and we randomly ran into each other in thailand too) named laura and chris. as it turns out, chris personally knows one of the peace workers who were recently kidnapped in Iraq.

please take 30 seconds and sign this petition by clicking here.

i've included chris' email here:

You know that I do not like to send email blasts with frivolous messages, but this is very personal and important, so please take a look at this forward and the link below.

Many of you will know that four peace workers were recently kidnapped in Iraq. It just so happens that I (Chris) know one of them well from my days at Columbus Boys' Camp and Sault Ste. Marie. His name is James Loney and he has been an advocate for peace and social change locally in Toronto and globally as well. Knowing that's being held captive has really brought the horror of the Iraq war home. The charges laid against him for spying are absurd and we must do something to help.

We've all felt helpless with this war, and now Lara and I are hoping that by signing the petition and sending an email to the Muslim media outlets, we can make differenc ein the war. By freeing Jim we are allowing him, and others that are as brave as he, to continue their work with the real victims of the war, the poor and forgotten in Iraq.

Jim was the kind of guy who helped the poorest of the poor. One summer at Columbus Boys' Camp, where we helped underpriviledged boys in the GTA, Jim felt so passionate about helping even needier boys, that he went to the inner city in New York. He brought back a group of kids who needed our kind of love and care. That's just the kind of person he is, selfless and kind. Please take a few minutes to help him out.

turkey day smackdown

2005-11-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

so i woke up on monday afternoon in the ER with people stitching my face together. painfully. i didn't know how i got there, but when i asked they said i fell off my bike. i hit a pothole they said. the only thing i remember is going to bed sunday night. the next thing i know i'm in the ER. weird. i'm ok, minus the scars and swelling and concussion. if you have a strong stomach you can see what i looked like the day after here.

happy thanksgiving everyone.

i'm thankful i'm alive.

why density?

2005-11-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

being raised in suburbia i sometimes long for the backyard to throw the frisbee around (or in the fall, a football). then i remember that i've read things and walk my ass down to the park.

from Better Dead than Red:

The population of New York City is larger than that of 39 states. But because dense apartment housing is more energy efficient, New York City uses less energy than any state. Conversely, suburban living--with its cars, highways, and single-family houses flanked by pesticide-soaked lawns--saps energy and devastates the ecosystem.

strangers on a train

2005-11-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

if there was ever a time to support cheap, efficient forms of transportation, you'd think now is the time. Apparently, the administration doesn't think so. From the New York Times editorial today:

The sudden firing by the Amtrak board of David Gunn, the best president in years of the nation's only passenger railroad, was a body blow to anybody who cares about long-range passenger trains.

Mr. Gunn has done a masterly job in the last three years of holding down costs without dismantling the railroad. That, apparently, was his problem. Mr. Gunn was trying to save Amtrak, but the Bush administration wants to privatize it, bit by bit.

The battle between Mr. Gunn and Amtrak board members - all of them appointed by President Bush - intensified in recent weeks when the board took steps to break off the more profitable Northeast Corridor, putting it into its own division and sharing its control and costs with the states. Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, called it a "fire sale" intended to break up the nation's railroad system.

So last week Senator Lautenberg and Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, managed to get a 93-to-6 vote to authorize $11.6 billion for passenger rail service in the next six years - as close to an all-out endorsement of Amtrak as you can get.

But while senators were trying to help Amtrak move forward, its board took a step backward. It complained yesterday that Mr. Gunn - who has greatly increased ridership, improved management and upgraded equipment - was moving too slowly. After his firing, Mr. Gunn said, "Obviously what their goal is, and it's been their goal from the beginning, is to liquidate the company."

For Amtrak's 25 million passengers, this should be a call to arms. Amtrak should be a public transportation trust. It will never be self-sufficient, nor show a conventional profit, any more than the airline industry can fly without federal help. The Bush administration long ago threatened to disassemble Amtrak. Yesterday it began at the executive suite.

autumn

2005-11-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

the weather is definitely changing here in portland, and so i thought i'd share something from the Neijing, the classical text of chinese medicine:

In the three months of autumn all things in nature reach their full maturity. The grains ripen and harvesting occurs. The heavenly energy cools, as does the weather. The wind begins to stir. This is the changing or pivoting point when the yang, or active, phase turns into its opposite, the yin, or passive, phase. One should retire with the sunset and arise with the dawn. Just as the weather of autumn turns harsh, so does the emotional climate. It is therefore important to remain calm and peaceful, refraining from depression so that one can make the transition to winter smoothly. this is the time to gather one's spirit and energy, be more focused, and not allow desires to run wild. One must keep the lung energy full, clean, and quiet. This means practicing breathing exercises to enhance lung qi*. Also, one should refrain from both smoking and grief, the emotion of the lung. This will prevent kidney or digestive problems in the winter. If this natural order is violated, damage will occur in the lungs, resulting in diarrhea with undigested food in the winter. This compromises the body to store in the winter.

*a simple and effective breathing exercise is to sit upright and breathing through the nose, imagining energy beginning at the perinium crawling up the back of the spine to the top of the head on an in-breath and on the out-breath tracing down the front midline of the body to the genitals. touch the tongue to the top of the palette to complete the loop. you will find that you generate saliva while doing this. this is the good stuff and should be swallowed in three tiny sips as it occurs.

happy halloween!

2005-10-30T08:33:00.000-08:00

halloween is one of my most favorite holidays.
i went to some hipster house party where a couple cool bands (narwhal and show me the pink) rocked the house.
i dressed up as a cast and had people sign me with various colored pens.
best signage, "have a great summer!"
my pumpkin is also pretty decent this year.

nam prik gaeng kheo wan (thai green curry)

2005-10-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

thai green curry is the hottest, most fresh tasting curry i've ever had. the thai green chili (a.k.a., bird's eye or bird shit chilis) is really really hot. pick firm and small chilis. the smaller and greener the hotter. for this paste, you can freeze it so it will last about 6 months, or you can fry it in oil and jar it in the fridge for about 3 months.

Thai Green Curry (Yields 4-5 T)
dry ingredients:
1 t coriander seeds (roasted until brown)
1/2 t cumin seed (roasted until brown)
1/2 t black peppercorn (warm em up just for fun)
1/2 t salt

fresh ingredients:
1 t ginza/siamese ginger/galangal (skin removed & chopped)
3 T lemongrass (lower 1/3 only, chopped)
1 t kaffir lime peel (chopped - can substitute local lime peel)
2 T coriander root (chopped - can substitute coriander stalk)
2 T shallots (chopped)
1 T garlic (crushed)
1 t shrimp paste (ignore the awful smell and use it!)
1 t tumeric (skin removed & chopped)
20 small, green chilis (stems removed and chopped)
1 C sweet basil leaves

Make a powder of the dry ingredients in a mortar and pestle. Then add all the fresh ingredients and pound to a paste. This takes a while, 15-20 minutes of heavy mashing. But its totally worth it. The smells of all the ingredients will create this beautiful complex relaxing aroma. Its a very meditative process. The paste should be very very smooth and should stick to the pestle. If you'd rather use a food processor you can add a little water, but for some reason it just doesn't taste the same. Use immediately for best results.

Gaeng Kheo Wan Gai
Green Curry with Chicken (serves 4)
this dish is also good with tofu

1 1/2 C chicken breast (thinly sliced)
1 C thick coconut milk
1 C thin coconut milk
4 T green curry paste
3 long eggplants cut into 1 cm pieces
1/2 C small eggplants
2 T palm sugar
2 T fish sauce
2 kaffir lime leaves torn into pieces (discard the stem)
1 C sweet basil leaves
1 big green chili
1 big red chili

Heat a wok over high heat. Fry the thick coconut cream until the oil begins to crack out of the cream. When you see the oil, add the curry paste and fry until fragrant (about a minute). Then add the chicken or tofu and fry quickly until it turns white. Since tofu is already white i guess you can just keep going. Add the thin coconut milk and when it boils add the egg plants. Simmer until the eggplants are slightly soft. Add palm sugar, lime leaves, and fish sauce. Stir until the palm sugar dissolves. Add half the basil leaves. Garnish with the red and green chilis and the rest of the basil. Drizzle some coconut cream over the top if you have any left for a nice effect. Eat. Marvel at your genius.

yay, democracy!

2005-10-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

American troops dead: 1979
Coalition dead: 198
Civilian dead: 272
Iraqi dead: 26,661 - 30,018

tao no. 49

2005-10-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

Sages have no fixed mind;
they make the mind of the people their mind:
they improve the good,
and also improve those who are not good;
that virtue is good.
They make sure of the true,
and they make sure of the untrue too;
that virtue is sure.
The relation of sages to the world
is one of concern:
they cloud their minds for the world;
all people pour into their ears and eyes,
and sages render them innocent.

buy local

2005-10-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

from LocalHarvest:

Why Buy Local?

Most produce in the US is picked 4 to 7 days before being placed on supermarket shelves, and is shipped for an average of 1500 miles before being sold. And this is when taking into account only US grown products! Those distances are substantially longer when we take into consideration produce imported from Mexico, Asia, Canada, South America, and other places.

We can only afford to do this now because of the artificially low energy prices that we currently enjoy, and by externalizing the environmental costs of such a wasteful food system. We do this also to the detriment of small farmers by subsidizing large scale, agribusiness-oriented agriculture with government handouts and artificially cheap energy.

Cheap oil will not last forever though. World oil production has already peaked, according to some estimates, and while demand for energy continues to grow, supply will soon start dwindling, sending the price of energy through the roof. We'll be forced then to reevaluate our food systems and place more emphasis on energy efficient agricultural methods, like smaller-scale organic agriculture, and on local production wherever possible.

Cheap energy and agricultural subsidies facilitate a type of agriculture that is destroying and polluting our soils and water, weakening our communities, and concentrating wealth and power into a few hands. It is also threatening the security of our food systems, as demonstrated by the continued e-Coli, GMO-contamination, and other health scares that are often seen nowadays on the news.

These large-scale, agribusiness-oriented food systems are bound to fail on the long term, sunk by their own unsustainability. But why wait until we're forced by circumstance to abandon our destructive patterns of consumption? We can start now by buying locally grown food whenever possible. By doing so you'll be helping preserve the environment, and you'll be strengthening your community by investing your food dollar close to home. Only 18 cents of every dollar, when buying at a large supermarket, go to the grower. 82 cents go to various unnecessary middlemen. Cut them out of the picture and buy your food directly from your local farmer.

diaper rash

2005-10-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

the NYT ran an op-ed today highlighting the differences in how american and asian babies are potty-trained. there is even a support group for people determined to do it. the jist is that you can train your child to not need diapers after they are only three weeks old. i have no idea why i'm so interested in this - maybe because i thought those little asian kids with their butts hanging out of their pants were cute - but from an environmental and efficiency standpoint i'm glad to see people (adults) weening themselves off the diapers. the author makes the point that western culture attempts to make the baby independent earlier by use of cribs, strollers, and jump seats, whereas the diaper phenomenon seems contradictory to that aim. in asia, the kids are attached to their parents: they sleep with them, they are carried until they are too heavy to be, and basically just touched more. and you know what? all the kids i saw were sooooo well behaved. i think that we can and should investigate how we raise our children. and i think we should take lessons from those cultures that have methods that work. there's too many screaming brats around.

bike nation

2005-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

well, its eco-day in brandon's brain. despite all the bitching you're about to read, i'm really settling into portland well. i just went for a run in the park directly behind my house and there was sun and the smell of damp earth. i'm about to make some green curry paste to go with all the vegetables i'm about to buy at the big saturday farmer's market. good stuff.

when i hear people complain about the price of gas i get annoyed. the price of gas isn't remotely high enough because of all of the hidden costs (see below). the cost would go even higher when you include fiascoes like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, both of which are motivated by oil. If you still don't believe that, you need help and I can't help you.

from adbusters:

What would it cost to drive if the price tag of gas and cars included air pollution, road construction and maintenance; property taxes lost from land cleared for freeways; free parking paid for by taxes; noise and vibration damage to structures; protection of petroleum supply lines; sprawl and loss of transportation options; auto accidents; and congestion? A number of researchers have tried to answer this question, and John Holtzclaw of the Sierra Club profiled eight studies that, when averaged, estimated the true price of gas at $6.05 a gallon.

Source: John Holtzclaw “America's Autos On Welfare” Sierra Club

As for vehicles, transportation analyst Todd Litman has calculated that the external costs of driving would add $42,363 to the sticker price of a shiny new car, based on a 12.5 year lifespan.

Source: Todd Litman, “Transportation Costs & Benefits,” June 2004

Here's a comprehensive yet highly readable discussion of driving externalities produced by Redefining Progress:

Source: Beyond Gas Taxes: Linking Driving Fees to Externalities by Mark M. Glickman, March 2001

ride a bike.

the land of ports

2005-10-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

i wanted to let you all know (because you care!) i've returned from
asia and am now living in portland.

the subsequent culture shock of returning to the
states was a bit rough. suddenly i could understand
everyone's conversations on the bus. if you've spent
a good deal of time on public transit, you know this
isn't a good thing. i had sticker shock too. $5 for
a beer! $5 buys 5 beers in asia! i forced myself to
stop converting everything becuase i was getting
depressed. i would, as it turns out, have to get a
job sooner rather than later. a hard pill to swallow
after more than a year off.

arriving in portland i quickly realized its
surprisingly difficult and arduous to find a place to
live. portland, like every city i guess, has distinct
neighborhoods and every time i went to look at a
place, the people would explain to me the culture of
the particular neighborhood. alberta is where the
artists live, the pearl is shi-shi, hawthorne is for
hippies, and northwest is for yuppies. "but what
about if you're me?" i wanted to ask them. "the real
people live in the east, the fake people in the west."
"the east is suburbia, the real city is in the west."
the fact that its a "renter's market" and having so
many places to choose from only confused me more. i
could stay in a dungeon that stank of mold and had
slanted floors for $300, i could get a 1 bedroom for
myself on a nasty street for $450, i could live in a
nice little house but be terribly far away from
everything and as long as i didn't bring meat in the
house (this includes fish sauce - a key thai
ingredient i won't give up) i wouldn't be burned at
the stake in their next seance.

my dad was gracious enough to stick it out in the
search with me for a few days, but when that turned up
empty, it was me, my bike, and my backpack along with,
luckily, the sunshine. i had to start my classes
(anatomy and physiology at the local community
college) soon and i needed a place to sleep, so i
stayed in a hostel that happened to be filled with
mostly americans looking for places to live in
portland as well. a far cry from the hostels in asia,
i assure you. but it was pleasant and they had a
great cat and cheap pancakes.

i eventually found an awesome place in northwest,
making me a yuppie. its a 1920s apartment building
with beautiful hardwood floors and a view of the city
and mt. saint helens - on a clear day. its got a gas
range and room for me to do yoga in my room. its
raining today, but i'm headed outside to the columbia
river gorge anyway - you just gotta learn to love the
rain. the artists, yuppies, and hippies all agree on
that.

koh tao (take 2)

2005-08-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

so after massage class i wanted to spend my last days on the beach and doing some more diving. ideally i would have gone to Phuket and Koh Pi Pi, but the monsoon had brought poor visibility to the adaman sea. so i trucked it to koh tao and did some serious diving. i took an overnight bus, and my iPod was stolen out of the cargo hold. apparently they must have had someone down there going through bags while everyone slept. thieving bastards. it was a tourist bus, as opposed to my tibetian busride, so i guess it was a target. it was one of the only times i didn't carry things like that directly on my person. bummer.

anyway, koh tao did not disappoint. despite being dumb and getting a bad sunburn the first day, everything was spectacular. the visibility was really good and i saw a 6ft reef shark at one point, massive barracuda, squid, crabs, and even the cutest little yellow box fish at shark rock, one of the best dives ever. pictures here.

and now, its time to go home.

thai massage class

2005-08-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

i just returned from 12 days in a hilltribe village learning thai massage (pictures here). it was beautiful - the monsoon season brought towering bamboo and lush greenery everywhere. it was tough - we practised 6 hours a day. i had to fend off yet another bug with fever and diaharea. but the class was great. the village was a lahu village ( aminority formerly from, of all places, tibet) and the german who founded the school had recently died. daily i was able to practice yoga and meditation as well as learn massage. we ate very simple (and sometimes awfully plain) vegetarian meals 3 times a day. i woke at 6 everyday to practice yoga. unfortunately, being in a hilltribe is very loud. pigs, dogs, chickens, cats, rats - they're all constantly fighting and making noise at all hours. but it was really great, and not surprisingly thai massage is an art that requires a huge amount of practice and understanding. it was interesting to see that the same issues i deal with in my yoga and meditation practice came up in my massage practice as well. i'm excited to continue studying and practicing, but for now, i'm going to get a massage myself and eat some meat. Pictures here!

villa incognito

2005-08-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

by tom robbins. this book is hilarious. i resonated with the book because its about 3 vietnam MIAs who go missing in Laos and decided they wanted to stay missing. now that i know i'm headed home, i'm already missing the culture, the food, the weather. the book is about Bangkok, Laos, Japan, and American culture. It was excellent, but it ended a bit abruptly i thought. a glimpse of America through Japanese eyes:

Your country [America] seems to have everything and yet has almost nothing. Its unbelievable. In that vast, beautiful, powerful land of unprecedented abundance live some of the most unhappy people on earth. Oh, generally speaking, they complement all that affluence by being generous and energetic and, except for the ruling class - which is wormy with evil like ruling classes everywhere - rather decent. But they're chronically depressed and dissatisfied. Chronically.

Autobiography of a Yogi

2005-07-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

by Paramahansa Yogananda. This is the man's life story of his spiritual journey in India and America. This is Yoga with a big Y. He begins his life always knowing and searching for a higher power. His run-ins with many saints and the miracles they perform seem magical. The skeptic in me always held a splash of incredulity of some of the tales: saints with two bodies, resurrections, saint who could live without food or water, levitation, curing disease, etc. At the same time, these stories are inspiring, and i don't reject any of it outright. Authenticated by impartial coroners, the power of yoga is such that upon death, Yogananda's body did not decay for one month before he was burried.

Additionally, his overall message of uniting East and West is inspiring. Throughout the book he compares Hindu and Christian teaching showing that they have much more similarities than differences. In America, i've seen all too well the divisive nature of the Christianity. This book is a refreshing look at religion and its place in the world.

Some gems:

It is the Infinite, the Ocean of Power, that lies behind all phenomenal manifestations. Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe. Because modern science tells us how to utilize the power of Nature, we fail to comprehend the Great Life in back of all names and forms. Familiarity with Nature has bred contempt for her ultimate secrets; our relation with her is one of practical business. On the other hand, when the seld is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man.

quoting the great guru Babaji:

'Child, for the faults of the many, judge not the whole. Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar. Be like the wise who seizes the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.'

War and crime never pay. The billions of dollars that went up in the smoke of explosive nothingness would have been sufficient to have made a new world, one almost free of disease and completely free of poverty. Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence, the danse macabre, but one broad land of peace, prosperity, and widening knowledge.

xie jien jungwo

2005-07-27T03:03:00.000-07:00

so, i'm off to thailand (again). this time to study some thai massage in a northern hilltribe village. i'm enjoying my last few days in kunming (southern china). today i went out and bought all the goodies i want to take home with me, including some amazing teas, and a calligraphy set. i met a chinese guy - we hung out all day drinking tea, drinking beer, and throwing the frisbee. we could hardly speak to each other but it didn't seem to matter.

10 things i'll miss about china:
10) ya rong chwar (buttery bbq lamb skewers w/ dry marinade - cost: $.12/ea)
9) cheap warm pijou (beer - cost: $.50/L)
8) cheap good food
7) sean & my friends in beijing
6) cheap accesible chinese medicine
5) the people (they're ａｍａｚｉｎｇｌｙ　friendly)
4) the mountains and rivers of the south
3) the inane engrish T-shirts (my favorite: "the company who always looks safety is like child's lost kitten")
2) the little kids butts poking out of their pants (all the toddlers have holes designed into their pants so when they need to go, they just go. as a result, their little butts are in plain view).
1) the squatters (nuff said)

10 things i won't miss:
10) traffic
9) spitting
8) cheap bad food
7) MSG
6) the music
5) the shitty sunglasses (i'm on pair #4)
4) pollution
3) traveller's diaharea (2 rounds is enough for me)
2) the shitty internet connections and blocked sites (the great firewall as its called)
1）cigarette smoke (its everywhere!)

on da bus - lhasa to chengdu

2005-07-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

so i decided to try and save some money. the airfare from lhasa to chengdu is a steep $200, a bus trip is $60. being that i had time (or i thought i did) i went with the bus. i knew it was a long trip, but it turned out to be a lot longer than it was supposed to be.

first, the bus. its a double decker sleeper bus. sean, al, and i took one similar for 9 hours from kunming to lijang. that was the bus ride where we had to buy Al an extra bed in the back of the bus because he wouldn't fit in one. so, the beds are small. they're actually metal boxes about 4'5" in length where you have a metal box for a pillow. they're rough. i knew this. i also knew that the trip was supposed to take "3 days" - whatever that means.

i was mainly excited to travel by bus to see the scenery. it did not disappoint. the first night we drove through high altitude and a snow storm. i could tell we were high because of my pounding headache. i saw glaciers and prairies, and beautiful gorges and a powerful river (that after the rafting trip made me want to kayak it). plenty of lush, beautiful scenery in sichuan, and i saw part of the three gorges dam project where they were relocating entire villages above the flood line. impressive.

i also wanted a taste of chinese travel. the bus did not disappoint on that front either. i was the only non-chinese on the bus, and the other passengers loved the fact that i was there. i went by laowai, which literally means "outside person." the man sleeping in the bin next to me was particularly fond of calling me laowai and once he learned i spoke literally no chinese, he kept trying to tease me. it was fun, for the first 12 hours, but eventually got annoying because even though i didn't understand what he was saying, i knew he kept saying the same thing. some younger chinese on the bus befriended me, but because they spoke about as much english as i spoke chinese, we could hardly communicate anything more than pointing and saying if something was good or not.

the chinese smoke like chimneys at all hours. that was the worst. waking up in the middle of the night because the guy below my bunk was smoking is very unpleasant. a boy sleeping next to me had the most raunchiest of smells emanating from his feet, so i couldn't turn my head to the right. there was also a significant amount of hacking up lung butter and spitting. the women even do this - often. they are also incredibly loud, talking on their cellphones - loudly - at all hours. but they're great to travel with because they're always having fun. they didn't care that the bus was stopped, or broken, or that we weren't eating. they were constantly deriding either me (which i didn't care cause i didn't understand them) or the sifu (the bus driver, literally "master" a holdover from communist days) or each other (i think). we ate sporadically. my friends ordered food for me and we ate nearly every part of the pig (pig ears, intestines, and tails).

the bus meandered on its way. i'm pretty sure the route the driver took was a little more than irregular - we often drove off-road (hard to sleep with your head banging against the window). the bus broke down no less than 3 times. we stopped often for no apparent reason, and no one on the bus seemed to care when or if we would actually ever get to chengdu. at one point, when we were about 100 km from chengdu, we were stopped by police and told that the road was closed. at first i thought what they were saying was that we couldn't go through at all, and we would have to drive another day to get around the construction. in the end though, we just waited adding another 8 hours, and another night of trying to sleep, on the bus. a heartbreaker at that point.

it was definitely an experience. but after 90 hours of being in that metal bin, i had had enough. lucky me, a train is providing much of my descent toward laos. onward.

lhasa nights

2005-07-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

they were a bitch to get posted, but here are some pics.

the last night that sean, missy, and nadine were here we went to a "nagma." this is essentially a nightclub where karaoke singers belt out the hits interspersed with some traditional dancing and variety acts. there was a moving stage, smoke machine, and flashy lights. its distinctly chinese in that its extremely shrill and loud. nadine had to put tissue in her ears, and some of the tibetans even did this. we were the only westerners in the place, upon arrival they seated us directly in the front. to forget the fact that our ears were bleeding we proceeded to get hammered on lhasa beer. they serve you beer in these little shot glasses, so its impossible to keep track of how much beer you've had. before we knew it, tibetans near and far were toasting us (note: they drink budweiser almost exclusively here). mostly people didn't dance. until they did. for certain songs everybody got up and danced in a clockwise circle around the center of the dance floor. it was just like being at one of the temples. then the song would end and everyone would go back to their table to sit and look completely bored and sleepy. we were the rowdiest bunch there and once our rafting guides showed up (unexpectedly, and late) all hell broke loose and we proceeded to dance to every song regardless of whether it was appropriate or not. i got a round of applause for a solo dance and later some of the karaoke singers came and sat with us which i think made us a bigger hit. sean, in typical sean form, nearly started a fight in the toilet with a chinese man. but i think overall, we were liked.

the rooftop of the world

2005-07-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

after spending two days in chengdu (the capital of sichuan province) eating delicious mau pao dofu and hotpot, checking out panda bears, and taking in a sichuan variety show, it was off to tibet. on the trip were myself, sean, missy (an american i knew from yoga who lives in beijing), and nadine (a german who lives in sean's apartment complex).

we had heard that the first couple days after arriving in lhasa are rough because of the altitude, and they were. lhasa sits at 3650m (12,000 ft) where there is only 60% of the available oxygen as there is at sea level. despite taking some altitude medication, we essentially slept for two days straight. we had headaches, were dehydrated, and short of breath whenever we moved. but we got better and were able to explore the temples of the city.

lhasa is really an amazing place. maybe the holiest place in the world, tibetan buddhists (read: all tibetans) make pilgrimages to the temples the town is built around. we arrived smack dab in the middle of the jokhang, the holist of the holiest of places. all day people circumambulate the temple in a clockwise direction praying, chanting, and smiling. we looked a bit out of place with our backpacks and no idea where we were supposed to be going. lots of pointing and laughing.

the religious devotion is hard to describe and after reading Krishnamurti i found it impressive, but a bit silly. people here are so devoted, and so systematic in their practice. the chanting is really cool to hear. we went inside the jokhang for the evening prayers and got to watch the famous tibetan monks perform their chants. we watched for maybe an hour. so peaceful and mesmerizing.

everywhere we went we were included in the praying. people we happy to show us how to do the rituals. one temple we entered during a ceremony. the place was packed with monks listening to a lamma chanting something. we were motioned to walk right in, and even though the place was packed wall-to-wall with sitting monks, a small aisle was kept clear to we could walk clockwise around the interior of the temple, trying not to step on people. one of the monks even gave me a red cloth to wear around my head. it was intimidating to be there, but ultimately so friendly.

the day before we set out for our big 7 day rafting trip, i got really ill. i must have eaten something but it was coming out both ends and i had a fever. i was in bed sleeping and apparently sean told the guesthouse we were staying at

i won't even try to describe the scenery and hope the pictures can do a little justice to the amazingness that surrounded us daily. we rafted, went horseback riding, hiked, ate lunch in a nomadic yak fur tent with some tibetans, and were intesely checked out by the locals wherever we went. one of the rivers, had only been rafted once before so everytime we passed people they were flabbergasted. whenever we set up camp, we had a crowd of people around us watching us doing whatever we were doing. at one point 30 people just stood around and watched us eat. they were so so curious. it was fun. they especially liked my chest hair. they would pet the hair on my arm and say "yak." which is actually how you say yak in tibetan.

the guides were great and so was the food. the altitude was a bit rough. we started at 4700 m (15000 ft or 50% of available oxygen) and i had a pretty bad headache and shortness of breath. i took some diamox and we decended a bit which cleared everythign up and i was able to enjoy the rest of the trip. until i got some river bug that gave me awful diahrea. but it was tolerable, and i was still in very good spirits and enjoyed the trip immensely. (how do those sherpas do it? everest is 30000 ft!).

i have tons of pictures to go through, but i'll post some soon.

total freedom

2005-06-30T03:54:00.000-07:00

by j. krishnamurti. jk was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of modern times. this book was recommended to me by the folks at the yoga retreat and it is really quite an amazing book. its an anthology of jk's most important writings, talks, and discussions.

in summary, his philosophy is that the individual has the power to change the world by becoming totally free from societies constructs and limitations. he shuns organized religions, politics, and any system designed by any group of people. he revokes the notion of an ideal, saying that we have in us, the power to see the world as it really is, not as we would like it to be, or remember it, but as it is now. digging deep down and meeting the conflicts we face through our jobs, relationships, families, and society head on is the only way to understand them and thusly be completely free of them. attempting to solve our conflicts in any other way will eventually only lead to more conflict, pain, and sorrow. with a free mind, one can act freely without an attachment to an outcome. one's life becomes pure action.

it was such an amazing book for me that i could only read one chapter a day, typically in the morning, and write on that which i had just read. it was the only way i could digest it.

here are some ideas that i found particularly compelling:

Conflict
Conflict only exists between two things that are false. Truth and Truth cannot be in conflict. Truth and falsehood cannot be in conflict. Only False and False. The sense of "I" is only a product of the environment. the fears, hopes, longings, prejudices, likes, and personal views which we glorify our temperament are, after all, the result, the product of the environment. So when there is conflict, it is between this "I" and the environment. Struggles of all sorts: job, wife, kids, money - are all a product of the environment. So, because conflict can only arise from a conflict of two falsehoods, the sense of self, the "I" must also be false. This is not surprising when "I" is seen as a product of the environment.

So, you are seeking a means to overcome this environment. For the "I" to conquer the "outside". You do this by attempting to change the environment, or by self-expressing (art, economic adjustment, service to humanity), or creating religions.

There cannot be a perfect environment. Each person has his own idea of what this should be, so it cannot and will not happen. The only thing that can happen is the awakening of intelligence that would allow one to be free of an imperfect environment. Only by questioning the environment can you see that it is false and therefore be free of any environment.

to free the mind, there must be great intensity; there must be this continual alertness, observation, which creates conflict. this alertness itself creates a disturbance, and when there is that crisis, that intensity of conflict, then mind, if it is not escaping, begins to think anew, and that very thinking is eternity itself, ecstasy.

Memory
if my experiences and remembrances of the past are becoming hindrances in the present through their reaction, then i cannot comprehend or live fully, intensely, in the present. if you are aware of that hindrance, aware of it at its depth, not superficially, then the dormant subconscious memory, which is but the lack of understanding and incompleteness of living, disappears, and therefore, you meet each movement of environment, each swiftness of thought, anew.

Loss & Love
so long as there is loneliness, emptiness, insufficiency, which in its outer expression is dependence, there must be pain. and you cannot fill that insufficiency by overcoming obstacles, by substitutions, by escaping or accumulating, which is merely the cunning of the mind lost in the pursuit of gain. you will see how memory creates greater and greater dependence, the continual looking back to an event emotionally, to get a reaction from it, which prevents the full expression of intelligence in the present.

Love
Love is not identification; it is not thought about the loved. You do not think about love when it is there; you think about it only when it is absent, when there is distance between you and the object of your love. When there is direct communion, there is no thought, no image, no revival of memory; it is when the communion breaks, at any level, that the process of thought, of imagination, begins. Love is not of the mind. The mind makes the smoke of envy, of holding, of missing, of recalling the past, of longing for tomorrow, of sorrow and worry; and this effectively smothers the flame. When the smoke is not, the flame is. The two cannot exist together; the thought that they exist together is merely a wish. A wish is a projection of thought, and thought is not love.

Experiment
thinking and feeling without a search for a reward, a result, is true experiment. in real experiencing, real experimenting, there cannot be a search for result, because this experimenting is the movement of creative thought. to experiment, mind must be continually freeing itself from the environment with which it conflicts in its movement, the environment which we call the past.

Resolving Problems
So, the mere search for the solution of your problems is not going to free the mind from creating further problems. As long as this center of self-protectiveness, born of insufficiency, exists, there must be disturbances, tremendous sorrow, and pain; and you cannot free the mind of sorrow by disciplining it not to be insufficient. That is, you cannot discipline yourself, or be influenced by conditions and environment, in order not to be shallow. You say to yourself, "I am shallow; I recognize the fact, and how am I going to get rid of it?" I say, do not seek to get rid of it, which is merely a process of substitution, but become conscious, become aware of what is causing this insufficiency. You cannot compel it; you cannot force it; it cannot be influenced by an ideal, by a fear, by the pursuit of enjoyment and powers. You can find out the cause of insufficiency only through awareness. That is, by looking into environment and piercing into its significance there will be revealed the cunning subtleties of self-protection.

its hot in beijing

2005-06-28T03:52:00.000-07:00

from mohawk to nothing

gated communities

2005-06-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

awesome

p.s. i can't read my blog from china, i can only post to it. funny that china considers me more dangerous than the new york times.

cultural difference no. 162

2005-06-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

so, as you saw in the last post regarding china, some of the culture here can be annoying, but some of the differences are really cool. for one, its common for chinese men to walk around the street after dinner with their shirts pulled up and their bellies sticking out. invariably, their finger is in their belly button. its awesome.

the other thing that many chinese do that is different is that they eat with their mouths open. i was disgusted with this at first, because in the west its obviously considered rude - the sound is a bit gross to me still. but have you ever tried it? i'm not sure if it has anything to do with the olfactory glands, but food tastes WAY better when you eat with your mouth open. i think we've been missing out on 50% of the taste in an effort to be polite. if you are alone, and the sound doesn't ruin your appetite, try it - you'll be amazed.

star wars sucks

2005-06-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

so, i was really disappointed with star wars episode 3. i guess in retrospect, there was no way i could have been satisfied after the tradgedies that were episode 1 & 2. sure, 3 was better than 1 & 2. but that's like saying constipation is better than diarrhea. my generation was built upon the ideals of star wars (see the earlier review of sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs), so its disturbing for me to see such a puff piece as a supposed prequel.

Lucas had a tremendous opportunity to show the struggle that eventually turns anakin skywalker to the dark side. i mean this, in essence is what the star wars epic is about. how one moves past the selfish desires and insecurities of the future based on the understanding and good of the greater whole and the understanding of the immediate present. anakin can choose to use hate and fear to try to secure the future of his loved ones, or he can accept that he has no control of the future and love them and all people immediately. This greater story is given short time with a quick discussion between anakin and yoda, and the anti-climactic scene where anakin "turns" to the darkside - an unbelievably emotionally unrealistic 3 minute scene. opportunity squandered. i guess Lucas thought inventing new vehicles for every scene and tying together loose ends that didn't need tying was more important than the actual story.

upon hearing that padame is dead, vader, correct to the cliche, raises his fists in the air and wails, "Nooooooooooooooooo!"

Nooooooooooooooooo, indeed.

a present of presence

2005-06-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
and it is on these spaces where there is nothing
that the utility of the house depends.
Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is,
we should recognize the utility of what is not.

Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching

This is an exceedingly hard thing to do:
recognize the utility of what is not.

The western way is to constantly strive for what one does not have. By so doing, are we ever happy? Are we ever satisfied with what we have now at this point? Can we live in the present without concern for the future? Can we forget the past?
My travels have shown me we are incredibly lucky to be born into the situation that we have, yet Americans are leading the way to our own self-destruction: mental illness, obesity, mass-consumption. And from what I have seen, the world is following our example.

I have no answers, only heartbreak. But this too, is what is not. The world is imperfect, and there is utility in that. Don't you think?

Try this: close your eyes. count each of your breaths (an inhale and an exhale is one). see how far you can get without losing track of what number you are on. see how quickly the past infultrates the present, or how our desires for a future other than the present pull you away from your breath. can you get to 10? 100? its very difficult. but the excercise is very instructive to show you just how well you can be in the present. the happiest times in my life are achieved when i am completely present. that's where happiness lives: in the now.

river town: two years on the yangtze

2005-05-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

by peter hessler. peter is a resident of beijing whom sean met at a local book cafe. peter spent two years living in Fuling (in Schichuan Province) teaching English for the Peace Corps. The book is written as two intertwined themes. One, a story of his experiences living and teaching in Fuling, and the other are short stories of the Chinese people he meets. I liked the book because it gives an inside perspective on chinese issues like the three gorges dam, the Communist Party, democracy, america, capitalism, racism, etc. It was also good to get confirmation of my own experiences. Since I had spent the first week in china alone, i had started to wonder if the things i was seeing were as crazy as i thought they were, or if it was i who was different. Hessler's description of honking cars are a great example, and it comes as a complete shock and was one of the first things I noticed (its worth noting that the problem is compunded in Beijing where the population is insanely huge):

[the cars] were always passing each other in a mad rush to get wherever they were going. Most of them were cabs, and virtually every cabby in Fuling had rewired his horn so it was triggered by a contact point at the tip of the gearshift. They did this for convenience; because of the hills, drivers shifted gears frequently, and with their hand on the stick it was possible to touch the contact point ever so slightly and the horn would sound. They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians,. They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was nobody to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the driver's mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. ... the other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose.

Something that i learned early on in Bangkok is that "the simple truth was that you could do nothing about either the noise or the pollution, which meant that they could either become very important and very annoying, or they could become not important at all." To enjoy your time in asia, you must decide on the latter. I've decided to make honking fun. I try to predict when someone will honk. I try to make cars honk on my bicycle. The chinese ride their bikes a lot. They also ride them very very slowly (most don't have gears). So, in comparison, i'm lance armstrong and when i use the car lanes to pass the slow cyclists, any car behind me will honk if i enter their lane. It doesn't matter that i'm actually going twice as fast as the cars (which also go slow because there are too many of them). The predictability and meaninglessness of the honk is hilarious.

Something i've noticed in the states is that the chinese exhibit greater collectiveness and generosity within a family than do americans. Growing up in San Jose, we lived next to a Chinese family where the grandparents lived with their children.

They were remarkably generous with each other, and often this selflessness extended to good friends ... collective thought was particularly good for the elderly, who were much better cared for than in America ... they almost always lived with their children ... doing what they could to help out around the family farm, business, or home. There was no question that their lives had more of a sense of purpose and routine than I had seen among elderly [in America].
But such collectivism is limited to small groups, to families and close friends ... these tight social circles also acted as boundaries: they were exclusive as well as inclusive. The most common [example] was the hassle at ticket lines, which weren't lines so much as piles, great pushing mobs in which every person fought forward with no concern for anybody else. Collectively the mobs had one single idea - that tickets must be purchased - but nothing else held them together, and so each individual made every effort to fulfill his personal goal as quickly as possible.

This behavior permeates every experience in China. There is no sense of personal space, because if you're not in the person's circle, you essentially don't exist. There is constant contact (i.e. collisions) with other people who aren't looking where they're going. When there is an accident or an argument on the street, bystanders will crowd around and watch without helping or interfering. Someone could be bleeding to death on the street from a car accident, surrounded by people watching them wail in pain. I've seen it happen.

China is indeed a crazy place for an american.

beijing

2005-05-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

so i've been in beijing for about a month now. it has been really good to be around family (i.e., sean). i've started working at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes. so i've been doing yoga everyday, and i must be improving but can't really tell. i do know i sweat a lot. the classes are mostly flow classes which means there is a lot of controlled movement between poses. this is challenging for me as i was used to my meditative iyengar classes (in san francisco) where we'd get into a pose and sit there for a couple of minutes. there is a saying in yoga that means "fierce dedication without attachment to results." this is a great saying to apply not only to yoga, but to life in general and adopting and living it is really natural, and really freeing.

my anxiety now is almost totally gone. i think the accupuncture had a great deal to do with it. for the first time in a year, i feel like myself, but also feel totally new. different. at peace. its hard to describe, but its great.

i'm working on learning chinese while i'm here. its very difficult. the tones are a bitch to get right. and even when people say them back to back, i have a hard time distinguishing them. still, its useful and the chinese people are wonderfully helpful, generous, and inquisitive. sean's landlord is an elderly chinese woman who cooks for him constantly. being a white person (or waigouren - literally "an outside person") in china is like being the focus of attention wherever you go - even in a big city like beijing that has a huge expat population: people are constantly staring and wanting to talk to you, moreso than the other places i've been.

the chinese can't drive. i'm willing to say that with absolute certainty. i bought a bike for $20 and can cruise around beijing. and people on foot, car, and bicycle really try to hit you. there can be no other explanation. there is no such thing as private space. i was riding my bike the other day, and i was cruising along in a straight line. a woman standing on the curb on the left was going to cross the street. she looked me right in the eye, about 12 feet in front of me, and proceeded to step right in front of my bike. i swerved and just barely missed her. she just kept walking. this happens daily and i really have no explanation for it. you'd really think that people who have been living in such close proximity, in such density, would figure out a way to coexist without running into each other. but they seem completely incapable of it.

its also very polluted here. when the IOC came to check out Beijing for their Olympic bid, the government shut down all the factories and seeded the clouds so it would rain. that's how bad it is. and after a month of being here, after doing anything requiring heavy breathing (running, playing ultimate, cycling, getting out of bed) i end up in coughing fits. these really gross dry coughs. but sean and i are fighting back, creating a little oasis in his apartment of plants that are supposed to remove toxins from the air.

my books arrive soon so i can begin my distance learning classes in ecological design at San Francisco Institute of Architecture. i'm stoked.

the tipping point

2005-05-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

by malcolm gladwell. "how little things can make a big difference" is the subtitle. this is a bestseller and i was interested to see his take on phenomena and epidemics. having recently read so many critical accounts of society, agriculture, and economics i was excited to see how things might change for the better via epidemics. recycling was one epidemic i had great experience with growing up. i remember the day that san jose instituted its rather expansive recycling program. one day we were throwing everything into one bin, and the next we had bins for every type of waste; aluminum, glass, newspaper, food waste, motor oil, metals, and yard waste were all separated and laid out on the curb in a precarious rainbow stack. san jose went from not recycling at all, to being the number one city in the world (probably for about a week). i always wondered how this happened.

gladwell breaks epidemics down into classes of people that fuel the epidemic. basically, his hypothesis is that these few people (connectors, mavens, and salesmen) spread the word about an idea or product. once this idea (and the idea has to be a "sticky" idea) reaches a certain critical mass (of typically 150 people) the product tips or explodes into the mainstream. he looks at the stickiness factor of sesame street and blues clues, the massive fall of new york city crime by tweaking very small cues in the environment, the allure of suicide and smoking, and the spread of fashion from a few to the world.

in regards to the new york city crime drop:

the criminal - far from being someone who acts for fundamental intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world - is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him ... behavior is a function of social context. [Crime] has everything to do with the message sent by the graffiti on the walls and the disorder at the turnstiles [of the NYC subway].

quoting the evolutionary biologist S.L. Washburn in an attempt to pinpoint the magic number of 150, the "social channel capacity" (note the interesting parallel with Manning's Against The Grain):

Most of human evolution took place before the advent of agriculture when men lived in small groups, on a face-to-face basis. As a result human biology has evolved as an adaptive mechanism to conditions that have largely ceased to exist. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time; and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him.

Thus, the figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of people we can "know;" those who we have a genuinely social relationship with. Or, "those people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in the bar."

Gladwell references Gore Associates (makers of Gore-Tex fabric) that take this number of 150 seriously:

At Gore there are no title. If you ask people who work there for their card, it will just say their name and underneath it the word "Associate," regardless of how much money they make or how much responsibility they have or how long they have been at the company. People don't have bosses, they have sponsors - mentors - who watch out for their interests. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no elaborate strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively.

The short of the long of it is, Gore Associates is one of the most desirable companies to work for: they have a turnover rate that is 33% the industry average, they've been profitable for 35 consecutive years, and they are innovative and they are constantly growing new product lines. Whenever they grow to over 150 people, they divide the company into autonomous divisions. This way, you can work with people you feel a connection to. You know and understand everyone's job and their function. You build a relationship because you depend on them and what they do and they, likewise, rely on you.

yunnan

2005-05-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

after playing beijing tourguide for sean's dad for two days (note: all i know how to do is say thank you and use the subway) it was time to hop on another plane to go south to yunnan. i had ants in my pants to hike the spectacular Leaping Tiger Gorge. Its a gorge where a river runs at the base of two 4000 meter mountains that are breathtakingly vertical (that's 2.5 miles high people!). Legend has it that it is so narrow in one spot a tiger escaped some hunters by leaping across. Sean and Al seemed a bit apathetic so i cracked the whip.

After the 3 hour flight, we arrived in Kunming and spent the next day in the pleasant weather. It was nice to be in cool, relatively clean air. (Beijing is as dirty as they say - if you're not choking back sand from the recent sandstorm, you're inhaling some sort of burt coal product or car exhaust.) Being in the south, there are more minorities so people seem a bit friendlier and are more exotic looking (read: more attractive). Getting to LTG was not easy, it required an overnight bus (9 hours to Lijang). Since Al is not a standard issue asian size, we had to buy him two beds in the bus and still the beds were too short, he hung over the edge at his calfs. But we made it there and it was another 2 hour car ride to the trailhead.

The walking was spectacular. We were so high, and the drop was so steep its really hard to describe. I literally almost fainted at one point it was so breathatking. I felt connected to the world. A very small part of it. At this one point the mountain was so large and sheer, you could put your chin on your chest and look down at the river, you could crane your neck back and see the mountaintop (barely), and you could look left and right and just barely make out the ends of the peaks.

All along the way the natives have donkeys to help the tourists up the mountain (because its so steep you have to use your hands in certain parts). I think even if we were to mount the little mules, they wouldn't have supported Al's weight. No asses for us.

We hiked for two nights and stayed in nice Naxi guesthouses. The Naxi are the so called "minority" people of the region. The food was excellent. They had this bread called Naxi Baba which was like a fluffy wheat pita bread that they put all sorts of toppings on: garlic, butter, bananas, chocolate, weed. you name it. it was great. The first night we arrived in the twilight (actually it was dark) and all the beds were full because of the big holiday week in china. It was 1.5 hours to the next guesthouse in the dark, and we were all very tired. The cute Naxi girls, giggiling, made us a bed on the floor and it worked superbly.

The town of Lijang was charming. Courtyard houses and a river running through the old town corresponded to what i thought china should look like.

pictures of yunnan, here

sencha photos

2005-05-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

from the retreat

retreat

2005-05-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

my blitzkrieg to beijing was motivated by a yoga retreat in the mountains to the north of the sprawling city. sean had signed me up for this retreat, and i was thinking it was going to be a bunch of yoga, but as it turned out it was so much more.

first, sencha is a small village perched in the steep mountains 2 hours north of beijing. when we arrived it was insanely windy and dry, but over the next few days it became warm, green, and calm. it went from winter to spring in those few days, the apricot trees coming into full pungent blossom throughout the hillsides. the retreat was led by cameron tukapua, a kind, warm new zealander versed in the art of accupuncture, chinese medicine, and qi gong. we'd awake every morning at 6:30am with 2 hours of yoga, followed by a wonderful breakfast, a lecture, lunch, a hike and lecture, 2 more hours of yoga, dinner, a talking circle, and then meditation and bedtime. it was ideal. the people were perfect and so was the food. the teachings revolved around a model of being, life, and health that are inspired by the seasons and the ecology of the planet.

for example, the cycle of summer -> indian summer -> autumn -> winter -> spring are analagous to the 5 elements of fire -> earth -> metal -> water -> wood. each of these elements has a connection to various parts of the body as well as personality archetypes, emotions, traits, etc. when we're out of balance in one element, the model shows how it can affect the others. it was a beautifully simple system, and it was exciting to learn about in such a dreamy setting. our lecture on metal/rock was delivered on the great wall itself perched high above everything - we were on top of the world.

when i returned from the retreat i got my first accupuncture treatment by the teacher, and it was really wonderful. i've had a total of 3 treatments and they've all helped in some way or another. while in china i hope to spend more time studying more about this life energy chi which i've felt in small quantities before, but never as strongly as now. the human body is truly amazing.

now sean, his dad, and myself are off to yunnan in the south of china to hike and visit the "minorities" as they're called here.

yangshou pictures

2005-04-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

are finally here.

yangshou, china

2005-04-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

i arrived in guilin to rain and cold. bangkok was stifling hot when i left and the south of china is just plain cold at the moment. i haven't seemed to acclimate to any sort of weather probably because i rarely stay put.

i took a ferry down the Li River to Yangshou. The river snakes its way through enormous limestone mountains. These are the same mountains that inspire all of those ink scroll paintings you see everywhere. Many of the mountains are named after objects they evoke: elephant trunk, apple, 9 horses, camel, dragon. It was like picking objects out of clouds. Dreamy.

Towards the end of the cruise, some older chinese gentlemen took a liking to me and proceeded to get me drunk on the local beer. Being that i didn't speak a word of chinese nor they a word of english, i drank what they gave me, not wanting to offend them. it was a lot of beer.

i found a guesthouse, Hotel California, and took a big nap.

waking, i went to find food. and find it i did. the street food here is pretty fresh and varied. snails, rabbits, snakes, chickens, fish, bamboo, dog, pork, EVERYTHING. i hope to try a little bit of everything while i was here, so i started in on some snails and vegetables. i need to learn how to say, "no MSG" though as it seems to be in everything. i had some cuhrazy dreams.

the next day i took a calligraphy class and climbed one of the limestone mountains. i got nearly to the top before deciding that i probably wasn't supposed to be up there. i didn't want to piss off any officials. i was using trees and small foot/hand holds to get that high. i got some good pictures though.

i decided to go live the remaining sunny days in yangshou with my calligraphy teacher. he had some extra rooms he rents out and is trying to get an actual hostel off the ground. he and his family are wonderfully kind people. i was able to eat 3 meals a day with them and their son. i hiked to the top of moon hill - this amazing limestone bridge at the top of one of the many pinnacles. i also got to practice a bit more calligraphy, some cheng-style tai chi, and do my first actual rock climbing (note: i suck).

soon i will board a train and in 27 hours arrive in beijing. i'll hopefully post some pictures when i get there.

against the grain

2005-04-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

by richard manning. the subtitle to this book is "how argirculture has hijacked civilization" and the book is just that. although i was put off by manning's manic style, i do like the message and the argument that he delivers. in short, it is a must read.

this book is a logical extension of Ishmael in that it discusses precisely what the last 10,000 years of agriculture has grown: poverty, hunger, famine, slavery, corruption, imperialism, war, diabetes, obesity, disease, poisoned drinking water, extinction of species, etc. its a pretty damning account, but the argument is pretty sound. in the modern day, by subsidizing and supporting industrial agriculture and encouraging surpluses, the USDA has encouraged and enabled the growth of what is known as the farming of commodity goods made from wheat, rice, and corn. these grains are then processed into things like flour, high fructose corn syrup, and the like consituting nearly 66% of our caloric intake (add sugar and you nearly have the complete picture of what we eat). because they are commodities they can and are traded in markets just as currecy is. what farms grow is no food, but money. and we are fooled into eating it, pretending that it nourishes us (because we feel full).

in regards to production:

virtually all of the increases in total food production ... [in the US] ... were achieved by expansion of the arable land base ... eventually, though, expansion ran up against the limits of the planet's supply of plowable land.

we have nearly exhausted this strategy [of making a plant the most productive as possible] in a bout forty years, a period in which the world's population has doubled. There is an odd proportionality to that. It took ten thousand years to exhaust the old expansionist strategy of claiming more arable land [to increase total food production].

the farm subsidy itself encourages surplus. whatever the farmer doesn't sell, he cashes a check from the government. the surplus food is typically exported to undeveloped, famine stricken areas, which encourages further population growth, bankrupts local farmers, and adds a resource to parasitic governemnts.

in surplus, we end up with worthless products like Jell-O, "a tasteless blob of reconstituted cow's hooves artificially colored, sweetened [by corn syrup], and flavored."

on industrial ag:

the richest 2% of all farmers - 2% of 1.6% of the nation's population - account for 35% of total farm sales. At the same time, they receive 27% of federal subsidies. As many as 76% of the farms in some Colorado counties would lose money were it not for subsidies.

on fast food:

Americans spent $6 billion on fast food in 1970 and more than $110 billion in 2000. This latter figure exceeds what Americans spend annually on higher education, personal computers, or cars. It's also more than they spend on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined.

he even quotes my heroine, Alice Waters, "Every choice you make has consequences for the quality of your own life and good health, but also for agriculture and culture. If you buy food from people who take care of the land, you are supporting a while way of life."

its not all doom and gloom, as manning points to the recent surge in organic farm and farmer's markets as ways to turn the system around. from organic farming leads to sustainable agriculture, to the development of a permaculture. encapsulating the essence of nature in a farm would be ideal. closing the loop and letting the land produce. when people start caring what they eat, and learning about what they eat, they will begin to connect with people of their community and therefore lead happier, healthier lives.

the economy of cities

2005-04-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

by jane jacobs. i didn't like this nearly as well as The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (which is fantastic) but maybe its because i know shit about economics. her basic thesis is that it is cities that allow rural land and agriculture to develop rather than the other way around. cities invent and towns and farms implement. i guess this wasn't terribly surprising to me, but, again, i've engaged in little reading on economic theory. she mentions only in passing that

The effects of economic stagnation upon nature are veiled when populations are so scanty and so primitive in their technologies that anything they do has relatively little effect upon the rest of the natural world. But once a society has developed its economy appreciably, and thus has increased its population appreciably too, any serious stagnation becomes appallingly destructive to the environment. Common sequels in the past have been deforestation, complete destruction of wild life, loss of soil fertility and the lowering of water tables.

but this is all she says about it. its not clear to me what she means by stagnation, which made me frustrated for a more telling account. this statement to me seems counter to the theory in Ishmael where she believes technological progress will right a wrong world. but i had to guess because, again, that's all she said about it.

some other nuggets.

one of the social preconditions for economic development is not so much the opportunity for a person to change his work (and his class) from that of his father, as if often supposed, but rather the possibility of changing radically his own work and his own place in society during his own working life.

so, just when i thought i wasn't contributing to the economy by leaving engineering, according to JJ, i am. neat.

and:

When organizations that are already large decide to embark on a program of adding new goods and services, they seldom start by adding onto the divisions of labor they already have. They buy up others, to provide parent work for the new purposes they have in mind.

in other words, actual R&D typically does not (and will not) come from large companies. they can't afford the risk of development costs not paying off (something like 9 of 10 ideas fail). so big companies buy small ones. this is exactly what i saw while working. new exciting work done by the start-ups whereas the larger companies work on their quarterly profits ensuring the bread will be on the table. this is what drove me mad. the tendency of the masses to participate in maintenence, not innovation.