Happy New Day

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7, January, 2008

Dear Friends

Well, Happy New Year. And I say that with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The rebel in me scoffs at the phrase, yet I still greet people with it this time of year. Really, what could be more hackneyed than wishing you a Happy New Year? Of all holidays, this one seems the most contrived. It doesn’t mark anything other than the calendar itself. I imagine those Gregorians must be smirking still, having sat up there in their dank stone castles plotting to get people all fired up about the passage of one more day. I can see them with their parchment charts and medieval talking points saying smugly “Let’s see if they’ll agree to this!”

Of course, the people did. We’ve always been a gullible lot, trusting leaders to do the right thing. Just look at how many of us bought into the War in Iraq and the even larger War on Terror. Or the sub-prime mortgage fraud. I hope you escaped that one at least though I know of one friend who had a close call.

So Happy New Day! Calendars and fireworks displays notwithstanding, it has been a while since I’ve written.

Ah well, 2007. I knew all along that it was beginning of the end. But then again, it always has been. After all, taking birth is just a set up for dying. All part of the package. And now come to find out that quantum physicists and yogic sages all say the same thing, that time doesn’t even exist. It’s just a construct of the mind. A helpful one in many ways, good for selling watches, navigating around the world or just getting to the dentist, but a mental construct just the same. The same applies for matter too. Ain’t none of it solid. Particles pass right through the earth’s core as if it were a cloud. It’s crazy when I think about it, especially when the low back is playing up, or even more because I spent a big part of the year combining time and materials into bankable digital impressions that have somehow kept me fed and housed.

I credit the energetic force of love for keeping me afloat. And I had a lot of help along the way. Looking back over the last 400 days, I left the loving friends and smoggy skies of Shanghai in December and arrived back to the beautiful sun and snow in Denver where I crowded in with Amy in her little Denver house (bought with a conventional mortgage, thank goodness) and spent time sledding down a museum roof and painting a mural in her back alley.

In January I popped down to Diamond Mountain University in southern Arizona where I spent five weeks sleeping in a tent in the desert and learning about Tibetan Buddhism from followers of Geshe Michael Roach. I got quite caught up in the three jewels (the Buddha, the dharma and the community) and gave it some serious study. The mental challenge of understanding emptiness was leavened by the lovely group of people all working toward reaching enlightenment in this lifetime. While they are waiting, they focus on taking care of each other and putting others first. This is the closest I’ve come to living in an ashram and DMU has a positive loving energy. I liked it enough to come back for a second semester in April and May, but I found I’m not quite ready to hitch my wagon to this particular train. Enlightenment requires full on commitment and DMU taught me that I’m not quite ready to renounce the material world of samsara though I know I have a home among friends there.

June found me back with my Alaska family, doing handyman and carpentry work to replenish the virtual value of my bank account when along came news from Amy that we’d been awarded two-year working visas in Australia. She’d seen the writing on the wall at her previous job teaching physical therapists how to fit people into her company’s wheelchairs so ever adventurous, took a similar position in Sydney. Having had a relationship with her over the previous two years, her company sponsored me, too. She arrived in July, mid winter, dark, rainy and cold and got us set up a gift I am grateful for.

Alaska still feels like home to me and I was supported by all my friends there who collectively provided me with a car, housing, work and food. I housesat seven different homes, cared for fish, cats, dogs, lawns and in one case, eliminated a massive explosion of diverse life forms that had colonized a neglected refrigerator. In another case, I eliminated a modest shelf of diverse chocolate treats. (As in life, the downside of living from a backpack has its upside.) In ten weeks, I nailed, screwed, sawed, shoveled, taught yoga, scraped and painted my way through the most glorious summer in Fairbanks’s memory and enjoyed it so much that I never left town on a single river trip. Working with the talented craftsmen I did, work just never seemed like work, even blowing insulation was kind of fun and besides, I’d already spent ten weeks sleeping on the ground in Arizona…

September found me back in Delaware for a bit of reunion. Mom needed to replace her back deck and my carpenter brother Scott supplied tools, guidance and materials enough for me to pull it off. Along the way I got help from my soul brother Sean, another Delawarean, who I’d lived with while in Hangzhou. He and I spent days laying planks and nights playing Frisbee. Then Dave, my long lost brother I’d grown up with but hadn’t seen in more than 20 years, returned to Delaware and he and I piled into Steve’s ’69 GTO convertible for some gas-guzzling cruising. Along the way we visited friends and reminisced over a single beer about summers of low expectations, loutish behavior and over-consumption. As Dave secured the front end quarterpanels of a Pontiac LeMans or some such muscle car to the bed of his new pickup (he was taking it home to Georgia where he is also a carpenter) we marveled a bit over how we’ve all made it to middle age despite all that dangerous behavior in years gone by.

As another arbitrary date (September 11th ) rolled around, I got on a plane which transported my particular set of particles to Sydney where Amy picked me up and took me to what we discovered was the gay nude beach where, fully clothed, we dipped our toes in the waters of the southern hemisphere. Then home to the house we share with two fair dinkum Aussies who give us insight into the lives of typical Australians.

My job search began in earnest and after Amy’s company hired me for a month as a temp driving round Sydney servicing oxygen concentrators, I landed feet first with Hire-A-Hubby, a handyman franchise outfit. I’m very fortunate to be working with Neil in a position variously known as a trades assistant, off-sider, hammerhand or American-but-don’t-hold-it-against-him. I’ve set myself up in the local parlance as a ‘sole trader’ or as I like to call it a ‘soul trader,’ that is, I am trading my soul’s energy as an independent contractor much like I was in Alaska. Have tools, will travel.

I also restarted my “Wordsmith” project. I found a manual typewriter named Gabrielle in a St. Vinnies and have been offering to write letters and poems for people who see me at one of the local weekend markets. And in a couple weeks I’ll be teaching yoga again at a nearby lawn bowling club.

Lastly, December rolled around and I spent two weeks in a silent yoga retreat attempting to cultivate my soul, followed by two more weeks traveling with Amy and seeing old friends I’d met on my last foray to this magical land. Now it’s back to ‘work’ as some people call it, though, as you may have gathered by now, I really like fixing stuff and getting paid for it is all the more helpful. The obstacles that come along are just opportunities to learn.

Now I know some of you will be admiring this varied and vagabond lifestyle I lead, so allow me to reciprocate by admiring you for staying home or venturing out, raising kids or raising veggies and creating communities for me to come visit. Each of you is getting this letter because in some way, you’ve either taught me or supported me in some way and I am grateful for that. We both know the year hasn’t been all light and roses for any of us. I know I still have a lot to learn about love and giving, the perils of ego clinging, letting go and living a heart-centered life. There are huge social forces that would like to keep me away from wellness and goodness and love. They want me to sit down, shut up, be fearful, go shopping and for Christ’s sake, don’t rock the damn boat. To that I say rock the damn boat, get a little wet, see security for the illusion that it is. Even if time is an illusion, my life is short and sure as shootin’ one day my energy will transform and I’ll not write another sentence, crack a smile or utter another kind word. So my wish, for me and you, is that we take one more step toward love and living a life of which we can be proud.

Namaste - John


PS. there’s a video of me talking about skijoring with a moose at a conference called “interesting south” at: http://nextbutton.pureprofile.com/TVC/?id=4342

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