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 Wow... I had no idea... For years I was trying to understand why people take vacations. Hadn't really had one myself in my adult life so far. Just went on my first one, the first week without a computer in tow in probably a decade (and I did have 1000 emails waiting for me upon my return). How awesome, amazing and fun was that! Will definitely have to do this again. Spent an amazing week in Hawaii on the Big Island, away from the tourist stuff. Rented a lovely home there (view from the deck at sunset to the right) and spent most of the time driving around the island, dancing on volcanoes, and snorkeling (which I never understood before either). Really a fantastic voyage.
The main reason for my vacation was to celebrate the beginning of a new year of my life with all kinds of interesting things to look forward to. Decided that I should take next year off from consulting and told my pimp that I did not want any tricks for 2007. Instead, I will finally get back to my thesis (now close to a year overdue), will start marketing Six Sigma for Your Life and we have some lovely gigs planned with c3. Among other things we are planning a monthly lecture series to be filmed and turned into documentaries on the transformational power of art and media. Should be fun, and it's all about using the alchemical power of art to create new paradigms for this ailing world we live in. Just read a lovely quote by Gloria Steinem: "It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate."
Many people I know suffer from the strange dualism that while on the one hand they would love to have money, on the other they have very low opinions of people with money. Based on how psychology and this universe seem to operate, consequently they are not attaining any riches. Always thought that the more money can be made with art, the more can be turned into more art. So, next year, I guess, will be about just that for me. Look forward to playing in this new paradigm and will keep you posted on adventures ;-)
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"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." - Apple Commercial
 Always loved this commercial and have quoted it a lot. Could not agree more. For me, artists are the drivers of transformation, messengers of the gods. They tap into new paradigms, and, confronted with the dualism between that understanding and the world around them, suggest new visions, create new ideas, tell new stories. Found this quote the other day when I joined YAOC (Yet Another Online Community). This one is called zaadz (from Dutch seeds). After MySpace (which I joined 2 years ago and which by now appears to be crazy popular - guess I should check it out again some time - or maybe not), tribe.net (which I really enjoyed - seemed like there were a lot of really cool people on there - definitely will check back there again when I have time), a whole array of business related ones (LinkedIn, OpenBC, ...), invitations to new more world-changing ones (Pathworks or something?), this is now yet another online community I decided I could belong to. Not sure if I will spend much time there, but hey, we shall see...
In the meantime, I will continue to hang with some of my crazy artist friends, the ones I know and love in person. Went to a wonderful art opening for my friend Barry Goldberg the other day (it's his cupcake above). His show is called "Songs in the Everyday". Bought several of his pieces which are now delighting on my walls, but even more so I really love his ideas on art. He originally has a music engineering and production background (with a very ecclectic collection of artists ranging from Fleetwood Mac to Dr. Dre and Marylin Manson). Consequently, he walks around with his own soundtrack and transforms that into his visions for photography. The way he put it (much more eloquently): "it's an exhibition of my evolving interest in synesthesia. I use found objects, landscapes and abstract imagery as instruments, inviting viewers to tune into their personal internal soundscapes and soundtracks. Partly because I come from a music background, I find myself living in a song. As I'm walking down the street, for instance, all the sounds of life — construction sounds, traffic, conversations — become harmonious, rhythmic and integrated. I'm interested in changing people's perspectives about what they see and hear in their everyday lives." - Lovely, ey? Anyway, lots more coming soon. Finally moved into my new place! So excited. Quite a change after two years on the road. Books, Whiteboard, Art on the wall, and I even bought a bed (did splurge and got a king size futon - after all those nights in lovely big hotel beds and sleeping on the floor it seemed like a good way to go). Well, more about that when I had time to take some pictures. In general, I am planning to add a photo gallery to this site. People have asked me for pictures from my trip and also from LA (Iyanar, if you read this, they are coming!). So stay tuned and keep smiling ;-)
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I woke up in India to the scent of flowers and the sound of birds and bees (and frogs, geckos, lions and bears oh my)... I fell asleep - after being welcomed back by toxic cinamon sweetness in the air at LAX, record heat weather, and a beautiful sunset - to the sound of a helicopter humming above in the LA skies...
Came home from the airport and changed right back into my Indian wear to deal with the heat, and so I am sitting here now in Lungi and Mexican shirt, already had French, Italian food and Sushi, listening to my ipod with music collected over the last 6 months from British punk and AfroCuban funk to Indian and Voodoo sacred music, and feel comfort amidst the culture sludge ;-)
It was strange coming home to know that I am planning to stay for a while (of course one never knows). The diversity helps. Also lots going on here. I think I will like living in LA for a bit... Look forward to having my books up on a shelf again (it's been two years since I packed them in boxes and they have lived in darkness in a garage since, poor things), white boards and art hanging on the other walls... the many exciting projects that are already waiting in this pregnant universe ;-)
For now, it's rest a bit and digest the last two years of traveling...
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 Back in India for a few weeks... my first vacation of my adult life (outside of long weekends). Quite an interesting experience. Am visiting my cousin in Auroville. She is here working on some projects helping to reforest India, educating villages and schools on everything from composting to organic farming and medicinal herb planting. Really lovely project and some truly wonderful people.
Life in the forest is quite different from the traveling I have done in the last months: showering from a bucket of cold water, living without toilet paper, but instead with ants, roaches, geckos, frogs, butterflies (and all kinds of other creepy crawlers); sleeping underneath a mosquito net (and getting bit anyway - good thing it's a low risk Malaria area), eating rice and sambar for lunch every day, and still being able to hook up my computer (which I had originally not planned on even bringing) to a high-speed connection... Consequently, it's not as much of a vacation as it could have been, although at least I have been doing Yoga nearly every morning - when I was in Chennai, I met my Yoga teacher from LA who happened to be here for a certification process with the Krishnamacharja Yoga Mandiram. Quite inspiring. Saw Krishnamacharja's son TKV Desikachar speak the other day. Yoga is such an amazing science...
India is definitely a spiritually mind-bending place even though it seems most people here too are more religious than spiritual. Am also planning on visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the next days, the Krishnamurti center and the Theosophical Society Headquarter in Chennai. Still finishing a second reading of Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy", reading a book on the Practice of the Integral Yoga, and just reread Hesse's Siddartha, which always leaves me elated... We will see how all this will settle by the time I come back to LA. Really curious how this active reprogramming of my mind I have been doing here will manifest going forward. So far, I have been feeling calm, peaceful, and joyous ;-)
Am working slowly through the many emails in my inbox marked for follow up (in case you are waiting for an answer from me... mea culpa), and am helping the project by building a website for them. Regardless I have been able to ignore some of the other things I should be doing and letting things sit until I return to LA (which will already be next week - time is running much faster in India than in any other place I have been).
As of August it's back to lovely LALALand. Am in the process of looking for a new place and already have a new project waiting for me. Look forward to eating Sushi again and being around my lovely friends there. Am already planning some more traveling for later this year, but for now I look forward to being "home" for a while ;-)
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Quite a trip it has been. From the first impressions of India, to more insights into that lovely country, to thinking about being there for a while, I flew back to LA last week, had a magnificient time there, reconnecting with some wonderful friends and evaluating some more interesting projects.
Everything always stays in the flow. Heraclit already said that we do not step into the same river twice, and it seems that this river has picked up speed along the path...
The picture above is from my visit to Auroville. My cousin is there at the moment working on a variety of projects that help Indian villages to establish self-sustainability (using water filtration, organic farming, reforesting, medicine herb gardens, etc.). It was quite fascinating to get an insight into her life there, and I really enjoyed the idea of working on projects again that actually help humanity. We will see, met some interesting people in India (having been in a vortex of synchronicities lately), so there might just be more happening in that arena soon...
Initially, I thought, I might be in India until the end of the year. Now it looks more like I will be there for a few weeks and then return to LA for a couple more interesting and fun projects.
Am in Manchester right now (the beautiful view from my hotel room window below), will be here for a couple of weeks and then it's either on to India or to Germany. We shall see. Lots of options that will clarify over the next days I hope.
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.... maybe then I would have the words to describe the sensory input I have experienced in the course of the last week and a half... I have heard it said that every place has its own sensory set, its own colors, sounds, smells, tastes, feel... India seems to have all of them: Brown dust on the ground is offset by loud colors be it of plastic products hanging in openings resembling stores or of women's magnificient sari's; beeping horns, Indian elevator music, the sound of a diesel motor grinding sugar cane dripping its sweet juices into plastic cups washed in a bucket of water that is as brown as the ground; the scent of delightful incense mingling with the scent of jasmine woven into women's hair immediately followed by the smell of an open sewer running by the side of the street and the pile of possibly human shit at my feet. It seems impossible to walk in a straight line. The sidewalks are crooked, interrupted by hanging powerlines, plastic wrappings, an unfortunate sign of Westernization, lying there discarded with the same laissez-faire as banana peels that would not be there in another thousand years. Bananas... Never had one before I came here, I think. The green things they sell in super markets in the west seem if at all a remote cousin of the fruit I have had the pleasure of tasting here. The food in general has been most amazing. Every bite put into my mouth so far has been an explosion of flavors, tasting totally different by the time it is swallowed, in between jumping through a range of suprises, delights, tickles...
For the whole first week I was here I could not have taken a picture if I had wanted to. It was as if the sights had blinded my eyes and brain like film exposed to sunlight. Even now, I cannot honestly say that I have taken any real pictures. Below are a couple of touristy shots I took last weekend of a Dravidian temple from the 7th century and the building across the street from where I work. Although all new, every day as I am standing outside smoking, I see laundry hung up on a clothes line, people dressed only in Lungis washing themselves out of buckets of water, and similar sights that don't seem to quite fit the steel and glass image the building is trying to pompously portray.
I apologize for not being anywhere near describing the experiences I have had here, I will do my best to capture more over the next weeks...
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 It's been a while since my last entry. If I get this right, I have been in Berlin, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, London, Zurich, Milan, Hastings, and who knows where else since then. The picture on the right is from Zurich airport, which apparently has the longest business lounge airport bar in the world (it was indeed pretty long). My friend Brett once recorded a song with an Artist named John Fournier called "Drinking in Airports", which kind of stuck with me ;-)
Have been collecting my boarding passes and it's turned into a cute little book. Have to figure out how I can use it somehow... In the least, I might scan them and then we shall see. Maybe I will use them for my Once-Around-The-World Party invite. That's right, Once-Around-The-World. I guess that other people have done this before, and some in 80 days, but for me it's a first. I thought I would return to LA after finishing my project in London this week, be there for a few weeks and then think about going to India for a vacation and to visit my cousin who is over there at the moment, but things turned out a bit different...
Looks like I will be going to Chennai (Madras) end of this week as soon as I am done here in London, and no, not (just) on vacation, but to work on a project over there... Of course, not having been home in the last three months (wherever that place was again), I will travel there with all my winter clothes that brought me through the cold months in Europe. There, I am told, it will be about 40 degrees Celcius and 85-90% Humidity. Think I won't need my jackets... Then it's on to LA to exchange clothes, catch my breath and all that good stuff. At that point, I will have actually gone around the world once this year having started in LA in February - thus the party.
After that it's back to India until the end of July and then... we shall see... Don't have a plan yet, but am sure I will have one eventually, even if no plan ever survives initial contact ;-)
How appropriate, though, that my mystic tour 2006 would actually lead me to India. What better place. Had hoped to be there this January to study with my Yoga teacher's teacher. Then I had hoped to go there to visit Auroville, where my cousin is currently working on a project, but that, too, did not go as planned. Now I am going there for a whole set of different reasons, but I still hope that I will have the chance to study some Yoga, see Auroville, check out the Theosophical Society, and maybe a couple of Ashrams and magnificient sages... Ahhhh.... mystical it is indeed ;-)
On that note, here a collage with more pictures taken for a picture contest a friend of mine is holding. Of course, the topic is "toilets".... The ones below are from Frankfurt and London (Camden Town):
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"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
-- Herm Albright |
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