Sunday Sound

Stuck up in a lush life
The phone lines are down
Out on the salt flats
They take their money to town
Just like water on the ground
We will find our way

Hallucination nation
We got our vaccine
Dancing for quarters
'Ain't as underground as it seems
Just like water on the ground
We will find our way

Well I'd like to dance with you
As the band plays on
I'd like to talk with you
'Till dawn
We'll make a Sunday sound
Loud and clear
We'll make a Sunday sound
That love's here
Love's here

Decompression, coming up for air
A minor complication
To what it is you caught down there
And just like water on the ground
Say we will find our way

New Mexico love song
Warm your feathers in the sun
Your California traffic
Well it just it just ain't no fun

Just like water on the ground
We will find our way

Well I'd like to dance with you
As the band plays on
I'd like to talk with you
'Till dawn
We'll make a Sunday sound
Loud and clear
We'll make a Sunday sound
That love's here
Love's here

-New Earth Mud

Mr. Barker

"Just the other day I was reading a sentence by Jean-Paul Sartre. He says that life is like a child who is asleep in a train and is awakened by an inspector who wants to check the ticket, but the child has no ticket and no money to pay for one...The child is also not at all aware of where he is going, what his destination is and why he is on the train. And last but not least, the child cannot figure it out, because he never decided to be on the train in the first place. Why is he there? This situation is becoming more and more common to the modern mind, because we are somehow uprooted, and meaning is missing...I know that everybody one day feels like a child in a train. Yet life is not going to be a failure, because in this big train there are millions of people fast asleep, but there is always somebody who is awake. The child can search and find somebody who is not asleep and snoring, someone who has consciously entered the train, someone who knows where the train is going. Being in the vicinity of that person, the child also learns the ways of becoming conscious."
-Osho

How uncannily appropriate that this was the page I opened to in Osho.
It seems as though it has happened again that "when the teacher is ready, the student presents himself." It seems as though I've found a child on the train.
But I also get to be that child, at the same time, learning from another child, the ways to become conscious. When the teacher is ready, the student presents himself it seems. To reacquaint the teacher with the wonder and beauty of learning and curiosity.
Certainly this young man has resparked my interest the culmination of music, art, poetry, and literature, and the magic it brings to leading a richer life. Another young person with the desire to capture that beat generation feeling and weave it into your own unique quilt of what life's beauty will look like for you. He has reinforced in me the desire to always find something educational and mentally productive in nearly everything one does. But most of all, the simplicity of letting things flow and not forcing them upon yourself or anyone else for that matter. And these aren't things I'm interpreting as I want to, these are actual statements and conversations that were had! The overwhelming satisfaction I'm getting out of simply connecting with a young individual with such wisdom to realize the really important things in life at a younger age than even I did. He says to me "If I want to stay here and just take classes after I complete all of my requirements for my major, is that ok?" and when I explained the expectation of the school for a student to graduate, he saw and stated the irony of an institution of higher learning that squelches your enthusiasm and desire for "lifelong learning." Especially ironic when the tagline for the institution is "Learning for Life."
At a time when I'm questioning the necessity and achievement of my own job satisfaction, who is getting more out of this acquaintance?

p.s. And don't even get me started on the Jazz!

Dear Steve Jobs...

Dear Steve Jobs,

I am sending you this picture of me to show you just how much I love the MacBook Pro. If I wasn't in Panera right now (where they make the biggest if not best and foamiest cappuccino), this might be a picture of me in...er, planting wet kisses on the screen. Without it, I may not have be quite so happy for the past month. WOW, has it only been a month? Seems like I can hardly remember life before this beautiful little machine.

I hesitate as I compose this letter, worried about what it says about me that a computer has so positively impacted my life. But I toss that aside when I realize that I've been able to achieve some very real freedoms as a result of this computer, and, for me and my life, freedom is the thing to live by, the rule of thumb, the feeling I seek in nearly all aspects of life.

So as I sit here at a Panera - gosh I do love Panera for allowing me this wireless connectivity - and I listen to Coltrane, reading, emailing friends and family, sharing and keeping in touch, watching DVDs, catching up on work, I am reflecting on the life enhancement that this mac product has provided. Like my IPOD, it brings me ambiance wherever I may find myself. Thats another mac creation I need to thank you for. Really, in the hectic and always different lifestyle of a college recruiter, this machine has made it possible for me to balance my work and personal lives in a way that satisfies me entirely.

I have lots of ideas for enhancements to your products should you be interested. Thats another thing this computer has done: kept my brain juices flowing. When I'm feeling fried, I can relax and watch a DVD. When I'm feeling productive, the internet and other creative tools are at my fingertips and on my lap. There is no "waiting until I get home (when I'm too tired or lacking momentum)."

So thank you, and keep up the good work.

Signed,
Loyal Mac User

p.s. And thanks for making the pro so goddamn sexy. Everyone around me with their silly IBMs and Dells is drooling. No joke.

Travels through Pleasantville...

Dragonfly Caffe...lovely...

i tend to agree...

...from the Riverside NY City Public Library

I love this job and i love this computer.
I DON'T love Commerce Bank when the card swiper isn't working.
I love $1 cups of coffee that leave $4 for the Tappan Zee.
I DON'T love people driving behind you who honk because you are leaving a safe following distance in traffic.
I love sunshine and sun rises over the Tappan Zee Bridge that make it worth having woken up at 5:15 am.
I DON'T love people who complain about test dates and having enough time to study.
I love The Office.
I DON'T love COSI when the wireless isn't working.
I love public libraries.
I love love love Steve Jobs.

stay tuned for my love letter to Steve Jobs...

Not sure I can handle...

...any more perfection in my life...
but here it is anyway...
after an amazing day that was really just an extension of yesterday's beautiful weather, jazz (talked to my favorite WPU frosh and the music admissions guy), and general wonderment...i get this sky...
...and these leaves....

The Rotation

a wise woman once said "screw commitment to one man...i can't even commit to one book!"

Super Jazzy Sunday

Absurd and absurdly amazing day...

My favorite admit of my (short) admissions career, a fellow jazz enthusiast, and I were able to catch up and experience the celestine adventure of a garage sale treasure discovery: jazz and trumpet music books. So wonderful to see a motivated and turned on student who has endless potential and excitement to learn. And then to hear him giggle over some awesome big band jazz!

During a magical musical moment, the yin hands me this fortune: "Your problems become your stepping stone. capture the moment." and its so true if only amended to say "capture AND RELEASE the moment." Difficult to do with such incredulous musical moments, and the wisdom of an Octogenarian coinciding with blissful discoveries of my own.

Jimmy Heath performed at the William Paterson Jazz Room this lovely cloudless 73 degree Oct 21st. He spouted off such wisdom as:

"I relate to the students....I find myself learning from THEM. You never stop learning and as soon as you think you know everything, your journey has ended...as long as you have that thirst, you are going to develop..."

Musical profoundity: "Charlie Parker reinterpreted the language of jazz, changed the vocabulary." Something we all should do but, instead of jazz, sub in "life."

The man is tiny, all of 4 ft 11 inches most likely, and quite the comedian:
"When you hear someone playing your music, it touches your heart- and it may touch your pocketbook!"

"I got outta high school and said 'I'm gunna play jazz'... I wasn't big enough to play football, basketball, baseball...I'm the size of a jocket, and I'm AFRAID of horses!"
Imagine this said with absolutely perfect comic delivery and timing.

And all of this musical wonderfulness sandwiched between
the most speechless of days
Again, bliss is all I could possibly say to even begin to explain the very something
that has no explanation.

Ah now I get it, Marilyn....

Rose's Soliloquy

"Life exists in vulnerability, it exists in danger, insecurity. There is no security, and there cannot be...The higher the quality of life, the more fragile. Look at a rose, look at a poem, look at a song, look at music -- it vibrates for a second and then is gone! Look at love: One moment it is there, next moment it is not...So there is nothing wrong with vulnerability; it is understanding how life is...So just learn to accept your vulnerability, and then there will be a very deep understanding and a deep flow of energy..."

"Be positive and enjoy more...be more cheerful, enthusiastic about small things...Life consists of small things, but if you can bring the quality of cheerfulness to small things, the total will be tremendous. So don't wait for anything great to happen. Great things do happen...but don't wait for the something great to happen. It happens only when you start living small, ordinary, day to day things with a new mind, with a new freshness, with a new vitality...One has just to go on collecting pebbles on the shore...There are a many people in the world who miss because they are always waiting for something great. It can't happen. It happens only through small things: eating your breakfast, walking, taking a bath, talking to a friend, just sitting alone looking at the sky or lying on your bed doing nothing. These small things are what life is made of. They are the very stuff of life."

-Osho

freedom fighter

Honestly, its not HARD to make the best of this job
From the flexibility to grab a workout midday (when I actually have energy)
to the honest, rewarding assignment of simply talking to high schoolers about plans for college...
From getting to drive around experiencing different parts of the tri state area,
finding all the new spots for day trips on my work hours,
getting paid to listen to my IPOD for hours
to finding inner peace sitting outside a panera
catching the wireless on my pro
From the potential for a fully reimbursed graduate degree
to the best pension plan you can get...
It was a good day...

jamie cullum...

so hail a taxi cab and come around here
and i will meet you right outside.
i got some DVDs and a couple of beers,
if you want to,
we can stay up all night.
it's nothing fancy, just a little couch and me
and conversation for your mind.
so let's explore all the possibilities
of the things that we both talked about last time.


take a trip to my yard
don't you know the grass is greener on the other side?
take a trip to my yard
don't you know the love that you've been dreaming of is mine?

i'll be your neighbour at the other end of town
and the benefits you soon will find.
so let's enjoy the fact that we're on our own
and we will answer to nobody else this time.
tonight might be nothing but the moon and me
any time that we take the script and flip it baby
take a trip to my yard


take a trip to my yard
don't you know the grass is greener on the otherside?
take a trip to my yard
don't you know the love that you've been dreaming of is mine?

Global Drum Project

more experiences without words...
perfect vermont day
perfect peter travel companion
perfect pint of long trail
perfect percussion

i guess the word could be perfect?
but it was so much more
"i can tell you much more, so much more"


aka: http://sayitaintpete.blogspot.com/2007/10/letter-from-utopia.html

lonely vs alone

"You have to come to terms with your loneliness, so much that the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep, enriching relationship...Loneliness is a state of mind where you are constantly missing the other. Aloneness is a state of mind where you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable. Aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring something. Aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness, you are off center. In aloneness, you are centered and rooted...Loneliness is a dependence, aloneness is sheer independence...
Nobody is here to fulfill anyone else's expectations, everybody is just here to be himself, to be herself...When you move according to your loneliness you will fall into a relationship with somebody who is in the same plight, because nobody who is really living his aloneness will be attracted to you...One who is on the peak of aloneness can only be attracted toward someone who is also alone...
First become authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter. You are full, overflowing...The person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully...When two masters meet -- masters of their beings, of their aloneness -- happiness is not just added, it is multiplied...tremendous phenomenon of celebrating...they don't exploit, they share...
Whenever two lonely persons meet, they look at each other, because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other -- how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two persons who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travelers...The goal is high...far away. Their common interest joins them together."
Osho, "Joy"

why being alone, apart is essential

"When you have moved into a deep relationship with somebody, a great need arises to be alone. You start feeling spent, exhausted, tired -- joyously tired, happily tired, but each excitement is exhausting. It was tremendously beautiful to relate, but now you would like to move into aloneness, so that you can again gather yourself together, so that you can again become overflowing, so that again you become rooted in your own being.
...Love arises out of aloneness. Aloneness makes you overfull. Love receives your gifts. Love empties you so that you can become full again. Whenever you are emptied by love, aloneness is there to nourish you, to integrate you. And this is a rhythm...
Love is a spontaneous phenomenon. Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn't happen it doesn't happen...
When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone...so that he can again gather together his being, so that again he has energy to share. And this rhythm is like day and night, summer and winter; it goes on changing..."
Osho, "Intelligence"

wondermazement

I'm not sure what is more amazing about all this: the fact that I am de-defining and rethinking the constructs society tries to force upon you, or the idea that I'm actually able to live according to my new definitions, many of which I had already created and had abandoned as idealistic dreaming.
We live in a society, with already defined norms; this society that almost seems to tell us how to conduct our lives should we choose to participate in one of its institutions - education (read a lot, memorize, take the test, succeed, finish your education -ha! you never finish!), family, marriage.
My problem and hesitation in "relationships," for example, is to be blamed on society's definition and experience; all that "should"...what it is "supposed" to mean, be, and what role it needs to take in your life. But I get to make "relationship" whatever I want in my own life. Just like marriage, and education, if I assign my own meaning, role, significance, priority, understanding to the concept, then in my reality, that is what it is. I have that freedom.

In all seriousness and in general, don't make your choice to want or not want, like or dislike something based on what that thing's popular perception and definition has always been. Deconstruct, undefine, and redefine when ready. You decide what the experiences in your life are able to become, to signify, and to impact.

The extra wonderful part is having someone in my life who understands this idea of dedefinition as well as they understand (and often agree with!) what it is I'd like to avoid and also to live out. A person who, like me, questions and critically thinks the institutions as well as more abstract concepts in general. Their ability to think on all these different levels will continue to stimulate my thinking joyfully.

Still a little bit of your song in my ear
Still a little bit of your words I long to hear...
It's not hard to grow
When you know that you just don't know
-Damien Rice, Cannonball

mirror...

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-4w6h9eA8erTSjhX.bWOKOe_BRiw-?cq=1

One can be in deep love and yet be alone. In fact, one can be alone only when one is in deep love. The depth of love creates an ocean around you, a deep ocean, and you become an island, utterly alone. Yes, the ocean goes on throwing its waves on your shore, but the more the ocean crashes with its waves on your shore, the more integrated you are, the more rooted, the more centered you are.

Love has value only because it gives you aloneness. It gives you space enough to be on your own.

But you have an idea of love; that idea is creating trouble - not love itself, but the idea. The idea is that, in love, lovers disappear into each other, dissolve into each other. Yes, there are moments of dissolution - but this is the beauty of life and all that is existential: that when lovers dissolve into each other, the same are the moments when they become very conscious, very alert. That dissolution is not a kind of drunkenness, that dissolution is not unconscious. It brings great consciousness, it releases great awareness. On the one hand they are dissolved - on the other hand for the first time they see their utter beauty in being alone... And they are grateful to each other. It is because of the other that they have been able to see their own selves; the other has become a mirror in which they are reflected. Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.

Hence, it looks very contradictory, paradoxical, when stated in such a way: "Love brings aloneness." You were thinking all along that love brings togetherness. I am not saying that it does not bring togetherness, but unless you are alone you cannot be together. Who is going to be together? Two persons are needed to be together, two independent persons are needed to be together. A togetherness will be rich, infinitely rich, if both the persons are utterly independent. If they are dependent on each other, it is not a togetherness - it is a slavery, it is a bondage.

If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness.

Kahlil Gibran says: Two lovers are like two pillars of a temple - they support the same roof, but they stand separate; together as far as supporting the same roof is concerned, but utterly separate as far as their own being is concerned. Be pillars of a temple, supporting the same temple of love, the same roof of love, yet rooted in your own being, not distracted from there. And then you will know both the beauty, the purity, the cleanliness, the health, the wholeness of aloneness, and you will also know the joy, the dance, the music of being together.

There is a beauty when somebody is playing a solo instrument - a solo flute player - there is tremendous beauty in that. And there is also beauty in an orchestra. And love knows both together: it knows how to be a solo flute player and it also knows how to be in rhythm, harmony with the other...

cliches vs authenticity in action

from: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-4w6h9eA8erTSjhX.bWOKOe_BRiw-?cq=1&p=2290

"Gurdjieff used to say that man is a machine. It is true. Unless you become a Buddha, you are a machine. What does the word 'Buddha' mean? 'Buddha' means one who is awakened, aware.
Become aware. The man of awareness has no character. You will be surprised: I say the man of awareness is characterless - not in the sense that you give to the word 'characterless', but in a totally different sense he is characterless. Because he has no past to dominate him, no structure, no pattern. He is pure freedom. He is innocent. He responds to the moment, with no ready-made responses, because if a response is ready-made it is not a response at all: it is a reaction. He mirrors the moment as it is, and in that mirroring, he acts.

The unconscious person reacts; the conscious person acts.

And if you can act consciously, TOTALLY in the moment, you don't create any karma, you don't create any structures. You always remain free; you always go on moving beyond the past. You go on slipping out of the past like a snake slips out of the old skin.

Then life has tremendous beauty - because then there is power. And it is not YOUR power, so there is no question of any ego trip. Ego comes from the past; it is part of the law of necessity. Ego is your character, good or bad, but ego is the prison that keeps you in bondage. Ego arises out of your whole past.

Just think for a moment: if you have no past, who are you? Suddenly the whole edifice of the ego collapses. The man of power is not really powerful in his own right: he is just a vehicle for the power of God. He has no claims. He simply functions as a representative of the whole. He is utter freedom, utter joy. He knows no boundaries, he is infinite. Space and time are no more relevant to him. He is beyond space, beyond time.

That is the meaning of being enlightened. Disappearing as a character, disappearing as a person, disappearing as an ego... and becoming one with the whole"

words, or the lack thereof

"When there is so much to say, it is always difficult to say it. Only small things can be said, only trivia can be said, only the mundane can be said. Whenever you feel something overwhelming, it is impossible to say it, because words are too narrow to contain anything essential.
Words are utilitarian. They are good for day to day, mundane activities. They start falling short as you move beyond ordinary life. In love, they are not useful...All that is great goes beyond language, and when you find that nothing can be expressed, then you have arrived.
Then life is full of great beauty, great love, great joy, great celebration."
-Osho

more than ever imagined..

"If two persons are really respectful - and love is always respectful, it reveres the other...then slowly, slowly you will understand each other more and more and you will become aware of the other's rhythm and your rhythm. And soon you will find that out of love, out of respect, your rhythms are coming closer and closer. When you feel loving, she feels loving; this settles. This settles on its own, it is a synchronicity.
...Stupid people do just the opposite. They never leave each other alone - they are constantly with each other, tiring and boring each other, never leaving any space for the other to be (and to grow!!).
Love gives freedom and love helps the other to be himself or herself.

You love, but your love gives freedom - and, when you give freedom to the other, you are free. Only in freedom does your soul grow. You will feel very, very happy

Love is a very paradoxical phenomenon. ...In another way it gives you individuality; uniqueness. It helps you to drop your small selves but it also helps you to attain to the supreme self. Then there is no problem: Love and meditation are two wings, and they balance each other. And between the two (love and meditation) you grow; between the two you become whole.

Osho: Love, Freedom, Aloneness

Updated entry

Osho read Celestine...haha I'm sure Redfield read Osho? Amazing, either way...

http://ceefar83.blogspot.com/2007/09/testing-how-this-will-work-pretty.html

Freedom

"If tomorrow is fixed, then there can be security, but you have no freedom. Then you are just like a robot. You have to fulfill certain things that are already predestined. But tomorrow is beautiful because tomorrow is total freedom. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Whether you will be breathing, whether you will be alive at all, nobody knows. Hence there is beauty, because everything is in a chaos, everything is a challenge, and everything exists as a possibility.

Don't ask for consolations. If you go on asking, you will remain insecure. Accept insecurity, and insecurity will disappear. This is not a paradox, it is a simple truth -- paradoxical, but absolutely true. Up to now you have existed, so why be worried about tomorrow? If you could exist today, if you could exist yesterday, tomorrow will take care of itself too.

Don't think of the morrow, and move freely. A chaos at ease -- that's how a person should be. When you carry a revolution within you, every moment brings a new world, a new life...every moment becomes a new birth."

-Osho

seems apt

Him: oh yea
so the name of this album
'on letting go'
seems apt.

Me: for?

Him: i dunno, me?
personal philosophy!

Me: me? him? life right now?

Him: oh yea

Me: synchronicity

Him: wait wait
it doesn't SEEM apt
it IS!!!

Me: wavelength jiving
i just picture us all grooving out there on the same wavelength

Him: 3rd overtone.
best wavelength ever

Purpose of Education...

"Transfer of knowledge, according to Makiguchi is not and can never be the purpose of education. The purpose of education is, rather, to guide the learning process and to put the responsibility of learning into the student's own hands...Teachers, he insisted, must leave fact-finding to books and assume a supporting role to the students own learning experience. Teachers must choose between force-feeding students and guiding them in their own efforts at self-enlightenment. Teachers must decide if they are to be organizers of information or arousers of students' natural interest and curiosity. What teachers decide about this, Makiguchi believed, would be the single most important factor in reforming the educational system and, beyond that, in changing the entire conception of the how of education."

...from "Education for Creative Living" by Makiguchi...