An Old Poem

November 29, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

One of my read­ers (Thanks Shah) pointed me to some of my old posts that I hadn’t read in a long time. One of the them, “Wak­ing to”, which I wrote on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2004, sur­prised me with the way I used the lan­guage. I had al­ways thought of my­self as a ter­ri­ble po­etry writer, but this was some­thing I felt I could ac­tu­ally be happy with. Some of you may have read it be­fore, but for some of you it might be new. Tell me what you think.

Wak­ing to

Here, let me mur­mur a bit about the light to­day, the falling of heat
like a rain of down from some pass­ing flock. The pas­sage from sleep to
that soft trans­fer of thought didn’t stop at the win­dow. I stepped out
and show­ered in peace, wings of still­ness ris­ing and falling about me,
where only yes­ter­day the air shook with trep­i­da­tion. I waited in the
bated morn­ing, ex­pect­ing a voice to shat­ter the emer­gence of it all,
but the in­ter­val lasted, preg­nant with si­lence. For a time it was just
as I imag­ined, me and clouds scratch­ing by over­head, head­ing
north-​​northwest. Speed or a trendy dis­place­ment had no place in that
brief per­fec­tion, as if I was given a re­prieve. But I dared not blink,
lest, in that eter­nity of blind­ness, time for­sook me, and the slow
ghosts of change failed the quick­ness of my eyes, too slow for
re­mem­brance. Even to mouth the news turns the en­counter to dust, so,
as I speak, the light is lost, sift­ing through wire, long, pow­dery,
and loved into absence.

Mad World

November 23, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 6 Comments 

A friend (thanks Art­turi) sent me this video. I was re­ally moved by it though I had al­ready known the story and the statistics.

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I am in the midst of re­search­ing how to cre­ate a magazine-​​style blog and will be mov­ing Laugh­ing Knees over to a new server, pos­si­bly on new blog soft­ware (I’m us­ing Word­Press and like it, so may stay with that, but I am also look­ing at TextPat­tern, Nu­cleus CMS, BlogCMS, B2Evolution, and Ex­pres­sion En­gine… If I can get the mul­ti­ple blogs show­cased on the front page fea­ture of Word­Press work­ing, then Word­Press will prob­a­bly be where I’ll stay, mainly be­cause I’m fa­mil­iar with it and it is very well sup­ported, but set­ting up my idea for the site de­sign with one of the other plat­forms is in many ways much more straight­for­ward and eas­ier, so we’ll see. I like Ex­pres­sion En­gine the best of all these plat­forms, but if I am go­ing to move on to in­clud­ing a few com­mer­cial things on the site… I want to sell some pub­lished things like books, il­lus­tra­tions, and higher qual­ity pho­tographs… then Ex­pres­sion En­gine can be quite ex­pen­sive ini­tially. But it may be worth it. I tried out TextPat­tern for Laugh­ing Knees for a while, but the de­vel­op­ment is so slow that it doesn’t seem to be keep­ing up with what is go­ing on. I don’t want to spend all my time cod­ing things. I used to do that, but I just don’t have the time or will any more. Though, TextPat­tern is truly elegant….

It will be good to get the blog set­tled in one place with a server that I like and to fi­nally start mov­ing on with the other ideas ideas I’ve al­ways had for the site, like fic­tional sto­ries, es­says, pho­tos, il­lus­tra­tions and car­toons, tu­to­ri­als, a few con­cen­tra­tions on some of my hob­bies, like ul­tra­light back­pack­ing, bi­cy­cle travel, pho­tog­ra­phy, books, eco­log­i­cal hous­ing and com­mu­ni­ties, and wildlife, all of which I’d like to write up more sta­tic, per­ma­nent pages for. I’d even like to record many of the songs I’ve writ­ten and sung so that peo­ple can lis­ten to them. All of it takes time, of course. But I’m slowly get­ting there.

I will con­tinue the photo se­ries of my Eu­rope trip soon. I just fin­ished a long stint with tests and class prepa­ra­tions re­cently so I’ve not had much time out­side of school be­yond stum­bling back home, heat­ing up some soup, and falling into bed. To­mor­row I, fi­nally, get to leave the area and go on a two-​​day hike, to cel­e­brate my birth­day (Nov. 26, 1960… erm, no I am NOT cry­ing out for at­ten­tion!!!), and try out my new and long-​​awaited Mari­posa Plus back­pack. Af­ter years of spend­ing and wast­ing money on lots of other more ex­pen­sive, heav­ier, and ul­ti­mately un­sat­is­fac­tory packs, the one that orig­i­nally caught my eye, but which I shunned for the fancier stuff, fi­nally came home. Try­ing it out three weeks ago and pack­ing it on and off with dif­fer­ent loads for dif­fer­ent sea­sons and dif­fer­ent cli­mates and ter­rain, I think I’ve fi­nally found the pack that does ex­actly what I want a pack to do, ba­si­cally mean­ing that it holds my light se­lec­tion of gear and dis­ap­pears on my back with­out call­ing at­ten­tion to it­self. I think I’ve got­ten most of my other gear pretty much worked out, in­clud­ing switch­ing, for most walks, over to a tiny, wood­burn­ing stove that will elim­i­nate the need for car­ry­ing gas can­nis­ters and al­low me to learn more about mak­ing fires while at the same time be­ing en­vi­ron­men­tally safe, a pair of sturdy, but light hik­ing shoes with more thick­ness in the in­sole than the shoes I used in the Alps this sum­mer, which caused quite a lot of swelling and pain on the rocky de­scents, and re­vert­ing, from the mis­er­ably cold and wet film of plas­tic of my ex­pen­sive Mon­tane Su­per­fly to the heav­ier, but more pro­tec­tive and re­li­able Paramo Cas­cada jacket. Some­times lighter isn’t al­ways bet­ter. And some­times it’s nice to just wrap up in­side some­thing warm and dry, no mat­ter how heavy it is. And I guess I’m just tired of spend­ing so much time think­ing about gear all the time rather than be­ing out there ac­tu­ally walk­ing and los­ing my­self in the woods. Af­ter all, I didn’t start go­ing for those long walks all those years ago so that I could get wrapped up in what I was walk­ing in; I went out there be­cause I for­got all that. There were times when I’d emerge from the woods and stand there blink­ing in sur­prise, won­der­ing where I had stepped out into.

Of course, a lot of what all this con­cen­tra­tion on go­ing lighter has to do with is be­ing able to go en­cum­bered, and that is thanks to the evo­lu­tion of my gear se­lec­tion and hik­ing and camp­ing tech­niques, along with a quan­tum shift in how I ap­proach be­ing out­doors, ever since I read Ray Jardin’s “The Pa­cific Crest Trail Hiker’s Hand­book” and later, his “Be­yond Back­pack­ing” and af­ter that dis­cov­ered the Back­pack­ing Light site and com­mu­nity in its early days of its re­fresh­ingly new ideas and a num­ber of other sites, like the now dor­mant Joe’s Ul­tra­light Back­pack­ing”. Walk­ing with camp­ing gear is ac­tu­ally fun now, no longer a bur­den and source of agony. The only thing that keeps me from truly en­joy­ing the climbs and de­scents is be­ing out of shape. If I work on that, well, there are a lot of moun­tain trails I want to explore!

From this point bushcraft seems like the likely step for my evo­lu­tion, learn­ing to go even sim­pler and dis­cov­er­ing fur­ther what it means to live close to the el­e­ments. Of course, I want to bal­ance this with a healthy un­der­stand­ing that with all our bil­lions on the planet it is no longer re­spon­si­ble to go around chop­ping down trees and killing an­i­mals for sport. But there is some­thing about know­ing ex­actly where your food comes from and why an­i­mals be­have the way they do in dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments and that you will be all right if your light­weight pack ac­tu­ally does fall off the side of the cliff (some­thing that ac­tu­ally hap­pened while I sat eat­ing lunch with a friend… one mo­ment we were shar­ing a tan­ger­ine, the next, his pack had dis­ap­peared in the clouds be­low) that calls to me and seems to re­mind me of what it means to be alive and why we have these brains in our heads and noses on our faces and hands on our arms. When­ever I see videos of the Inuit go­ing hunt­ing or the Saan dis­cov­er­ing a buried gourd for drink­ing wa­ter, I just have to think how ig­no­rant the rest of us are about ba­sic needs.

I of­ten won­der if the sim­ple test of hav­ing to find food for the day, of hav­ing to con­cen­trate on sur­vival rather than how to screw your neigh­bor, brings peo­ple to­gether more than other way of life pos­si­bly can, sim­ply be­cause we can­not sur­vive alone. Maybe that is why I love the moun­tains so much; up there you are def­i­nitely not in charge. You have to give way and watch your­self, you have to make sure your part­ners are all right, you have to rein in your ego and do your best to get com­pan­ions to share and co­op­er­ate. Com­ing back from a dif­fi­cult moun­tain trip al­ways hum­bles me, and all the crap of jock­ey­ing for recog­ni­tion in a com­pany, of peo­ple scrab­bling to tell other peo­ple what to do, of ac­cu­mu­lat­ing too many be­long­ings, of con­stantly be­ing sullen or ap­a­thetic or lazy or in­con­sid­er­ate all come across as alarm­ingly anti-​​life. I don’t know how close I can get to liv­ing with less and learn­ing to get along bet­ter with peo­ple, but I want to at least try. It’s part of what will help us sur­vive in the mess we’ve created.

Water Angels

November 11, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 3 Comments 

I’ve been re­ally busy for the last few weeks and so haven’t had time to up­date my blog, but I thought I’d post this link be­cause it leads to one small prac­ti­cal way that we can do some­thing about the en­vi­ron­ment. I was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary on the TV Asahi pro­gram “Space­ship Earth” about clean­ing up the Ara River in north­ern Tokyo, when they high­lighted a do­mes­tic wa­ter pu­rifi­ca­tion so­lu­tion that is very easy and cheap to make. It is a mix­ture of natto (fer­mented soy beans), yo­ghurt, dry yeast, sugar (white or brown), and tap wa­ter, called Ehime AI-​​2. It works much like the mi­croor­gan­isms in our stom­achs and can be used in toi­lets, bath­rooms, kitchen sinks, and com­post con­tain­ers to break down the harm­ful bac­te­ria that pol­lute water.

I’ve al­ways won­dered why let­ting the wa­ter run in our homes is such a ter­ri­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal no-​​no if all it does is al­low un­pol­luted wa­ter to flow back into the world out­side. Of course the use of pumps and dams uses lots of elec­tric­ity and oil, lots of chem­i­cals are dis­solved into the reser­voirs, and our bills go up, but other than that un­touched wa­ter is prob­a­bly bet­ter for the en­vi­ron­ment, not worse. I think the rivers and lakes could do very well with­out all our fe­cal mat­ter mak­ing a de­but in their volumes.

Any­way, on top of look­ing for a way to keep a small com­post bucket on my bal­cony I want to do what I can to clean the wa­ter that leaves my home, too. Take a look and see if maybe it’s some­thing you might want to do, too.

I’ll try to get my next in­stall­ment of pho­tos up soon!