Another two weeks without an entry. I promise at least one every few days for while - I can't believe how fast the days go by...

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We're considering a three-week road trip from here to Michoacan and back over the Christmas and New Year holidays. With the M-dog. It would be some combination of tent/campground and motel (seems maybe 50% of motels might allow a dog in the room). We figure about twelve days of driving are required, leaving twelve days of hanging around wherever. Still haven't decided if this is a really good idea or not, but I'm inclined to say yes, knowing that it will be a long and not always comfy experience.



We've always needed to have some sort of shared experience down there, and after putting so much time into the Yucatan/Merida investigation, we are badly in need of broadening our exposure to (some of) the rest of Mexico. This trip would give us a look at long stretches of the Pacific coast, Guadalajara/Ajijic/Chapala, Morelia, Patzcuaro, Uruapan, and possibly Aguascalientes and Zacatecas.

If we do it, the trip is certain to be memorable. The question is - what kind of memories will be created?

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Damn - another two weeks gone by and no blog update. Well, there is enough backlog for several days, so here goes...



I worked a few days ago getting a new neighborhood nursery together for a Sunday opening. Proceeds from plant sales are to benefit a homeless program here in former military housing. I was a volunteer, but my co-workers were from various homeless or work-entry programs. Couple of tough gals and a Latino guy from Guanajuato. All of us bossed by a radical eco-activist type who had to run off to Berkeley for a refill with bio-diesel (his truck exhaust smelled like doughnuts)

I spent the morning on heavy lifting and moving, and we built a bamboo and fabric shade structure lashed together with hemp twine. Very third-world looking. After that I hand-labeling hundreds of little plastic plant name stakes. Among them was a batch for Self Heal plants (Prunela Vulgaris) - an herb with a myriad of medicinal properties. I liked the name - it seemed instructive, and a reminder that things weren't going to get any better just waiting for beneficial external forces.

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Happy Birthday to Me (and independent Mexico!)


Henry V - Born Sept 16th, 1387.
Striking resemblence, eh?

Yesterday began Year 54 on the inexorable path from dust to dust. Mona honored the occasion with a blog entry, and also sent along a veritable treasure chest of goodies, including actual family-recipe birthday cake.

Friend Arlene came over to share dinner and a movie here at the house - and brought along a horoscope for those born on Sept 16th:

The intensity of your desire for success may mean a few bridges will be burned along the way. With [unfathomable astrological references] you may make significant changes in your lifestyle this year. Things that are no longer useful to you may be tossed aside in your quest to transform your life. By the end of the year, passions will begin to subside, and you can take some action to relax. Look for helpful hands to assist you in rebuilding new structure s around the time of your birthday next year.



OK - these things are always like a Rorschach test, but I can see a lot of reality and potential in all that.

Some of the folks I share a birthday with: King Henry V of England, Lauren Bacall, B.B King, Alan Funt, David Copperfield, and Peter Falk. Make what you will of that information.

I used to watch Funt on Candid Camera when I was a child. I think it influenced how I experienced just about everything that has happened since then. Do you ever get the urge, as the years pass, to see if maybe all the bizarre events have been staged for a hidden camera somewhere? Or feel like the camera yourself as you see others react and behave as they do with such humor and irony?

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My brief career in the motion picture industry...



At the beginning of last week I was browsing Craigslist - looking at job stuff, and I veered off into the 'gigs' section, where people post for one-off and short term engagements. There I spotted some film work, including a listing for intern PA's (production assistants) sought for a two-day shoot in downtown Oakland and my own Alameda Point neighborhood.

A few months ago, there was a film crew in the neighborhood for several weeks shooting an indie feature film. I observed the production activities every day as I walked the dog by the house where they had all the lighting and camera equipment strewn about, an a big crew of crafts people. I craved involvment in the engaging creative activity, with all the skills orchestrated among a crew enjoying obvious family closeness and fun (and constant catering).

Now there was an opportunity right in front of me, but it was something already underway - beginning in the early morning hours of the day I noticed the listing. The postings seeking interns had begun several days before.

So desperate for a sense of belonging in any meaningful activity, and an opportunity to exercise creativity and ability - I actually cried in frustration that I had not seen the request in time to respond and sign up. Pat, frustrated at my frequent lamenting about things already past, pointed out again the futility of being upset over settled history, and suggested that I might just show up and join the production already underway.

So I did.

I caught up with the crew as they were finishing a scene in the Oakland City Hall Supervisors' public meeting room. I introduced myself and was soon assigned several tasks under supervision by gaffer, grip, and various other PA's. Later, A producer grabbed me and several others for a trip to the airport to pick up a fleet of huge black SUV's to be used in scenes in an abandoned aircraft hanger later in the evening in Alameda.

The equipment trucks were being loaded at the City Hall loading dock as we pulled away in the producer's car. He was on the cell phone almost continually, going down wrong streets and missing turns tht would have taken us to the freeway for the drive to the airport. Discussions about money and budget, scheduling and logistics. It all seemded very chaotic and somewhat desperate.

A half hour later, as our convoy of enormous SUVs lumbered through Alameda, I pondered my near hysteria over the fact that I appeared to have missed the opportunity to participate in a film production. I realized that it was not this engagement that was so important, but my general decline in self-esteem because I was not a valued contributor to any activity outside of home for so long. I also was anxious to find something to replace the old information technology trade, which has lost most of its apeal.

After we dropped off the vehicles at the hanger, the producer ferried us back to downtown Oakland to retrieve our own vehicles. From there we proceeded to a big science and space museum in the hills, where several shots were planned using manned spacecraft displays (this was segment for a science fiction film). There wasn't much for me to do there except observe - which was providing the perspective I needed on the fantasy of real participation in this activity. There are long tedious periods of inactivity or mundane activity between film rehearsals and camera takes.

All the other interns and most of the other crew members were about half my age. Many were embarking on a long period of dues-paying. One can gain a foothold in the industry by working with little or no compensation and then being hired with a real salary by people who they get acquainted with through various projects over time.



I believe I could create a career for myself in the film industry, but I don't have the commtiment to pay the dues, and stay in the Bay Area where the opportunities exist. I also realize that I favor individual creative efforts that aren't dependent on a big complex organization.

Guess I'll satisfy my curiosity about film making through commentary tracks on DVDs from now on.

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A couple of days ago, Pat got enough visibility into his travel and project schedule to announce that I could go ahead with my next foray into Mexico - to Michoacan - if I could be back by the weekend of the 17th. Given the time I need to cover all the territory for this trip, this meant I would probably have had to depart this Friday - the 9th.

Too soon.

I had some lame excuses, like the fact that I had just filled the refrigerator with perishable stuff from the farmers market that didn't fit the MRE model that works best for Pat when on his own, and the fact that I hadn't completed some research on the who what where and when of my journey.


Photo of angry Wyoming sky by Mona Dunn...

But in fact, I just need to settle down a bit and get more psyched up for my next outing SOB (South of the Border). Still trying to get to the root of depression, or seeing occasionally hints of the roots and trying to figure out how to turn things around. Sometimes this seems as futile as trying to change the weather.

Most of the problem has to do very simply with dissatisfaction with the way things are - mostly with regard to work and where we live (and don't live) - which results in a lot of mucking around in the past and fantasizing about various mutations of possible futures. I fret about whether we are making any progress at all toward whatever we are ultimately going to end up doing, and how little clarity we seem to have on what that is.

Yesterday I ran across a long manuscript that included the following comments...

"Does relaxing the requirement to see ourselves "getting somewhere" at all times, open the possibility for fresh air, fresh perception, to come in? There may be more time for a stronger sense of direction to reveal itself. But we also could just be in less of a hurry. We never really know what the ultimate implications are of anything. So what's the hurry?"..."We seldom experience contentment no matter what level we are on because we can't handle the lack of drama. We can't accept that we don't really know what the long-term implications are of anything."

And...

"We pursue external goals we presume will also bring along the contentment we long to experience or at least move us along the path toward it. We constantly think, "if I could only get this or that together, then I would be happy." or subconsciously "how could I or anyone be truly content without, blah, blah, blah."

This fellow (Layth Matthews), goes on at some length about how a successful search for fulfillment ALWAYS has to be inward-directed, and how pursuit of the perfect house/town/country/retirement potfolio is doomed to provide little satisfaction in the absence of the 'inherent wealth' that includes savoring in-the-moment living with all its unfathomable vagaries and surprises. This wealth does not have to be sought from outside - it is available and present for anyone to reveal as an inate endowment of their humanity. Watching the people of the obliterated Gulf region struggle with the aftermath of natural disaster and inept government made it easier to experience gratitude recently, which helps to uncover that appreciation of inherent wealth.


Photo of peaceful evening Wyoming sky by Mona Dunn...

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I'm sitting here just before 9pm with a live internet video feed from Burning Man, waiting for The Burn - which is scheduled for 9:30. I've been looking in at various times over the past few days, never having a connection problem, but tonight, as I anticipated, there were bandwidth problems as people like me from around the world decided to try to be there vicariously for the culimination of the week of playa activity. I connected after several dozen attemps, and now will keep my session alive until the flames die down.

Earlier this afternoon, I rode my bicycle to the gym. As I returned home along empty back streets, I thought of the thousands of bicycles scurrying around the Black Rock City thoroughfares. I rode home through a new development of enormous million-dollar McMansions on tiny lots. Only an initial swath has been completed, with many still under construction and a large area eerily devoid of anything developed but a wide paved road lined with trees and faux-Victorian lamp poles. Down this wide desolate boulevard I rode, trying to envision myself surrounded by the raucous activity at BRC - thousands of bizarrly and scantily clad denizans walking and pedalling, and fantastic mutant cars in all shapes and sizes.

But I was alone, with no sound but the wind setting of a small roar in my ears as I rolled along. Then, a mile or so ahead I saw then heard a large piece of earthmoving equipment tearing up some dirt. As far as I know it wasn't equipped with a bunch of trashed living room furniture and coolers full of Red Bull, or occupied by burned-out revelers, and I didn't observe any animalistic veneer or flame and smoke generating activity, so my musing had apparently not manifested a mutant vehicle there on the dreary housing tract.

I turned down a street away from the undeveloped area into a section of completed houses. They are all done up in fake representations of Colonial or Mediterranean, or Craftsman and other unrecognizable tricks of facade bits and pieces. There were no people visible anywhere, although there were a lot of high-priced Japanese and German sedans and SUVs parked on the street. Either everyone was holed up in the bloated houses or they were behind the identical privacy fences enjoying their postage-stamp patios on the tiny lots. As I rounded a corner, a small Asian child on a new bicycle approached and, seeing me, screwed up his face and stuck out his toungue. He was the only tangible human presence in the whole development.

Rounding a corner, I approached a long section of incomplete houses lining both sides of the street. Without the finishing-touch fakery and still devoid of their carefully selected alternating innocuous pastel colors, they had a dreary gray sameness, like Eastern German mass housing of the coldwar era. With scaffolding erected in front of each, I had a sense of riding through a set under construction for some future knock-off of a Stepford Wives movie.

From the end of the street, penetrating Trance music pulsed and throbbed. In place of the Mexican radio music I normally heard riding through this area while the immigrant workers were toiling, this was a direct hook into my Burning Man musing. As I reached the end of the street and edge of the development, I discovered tht the music came from beyond, somewhere in the old Naval Air Station where we are temporarily camped out, in such spendid isolation.

After I arrived at home I tried to nap, or meditate, but thoughts of the Louisiana horrors and Burning Man raced through my head unstoppable, so I sat down to hammer out the previous blog entry. And now, the Man has burned. I know from experience that with time, this obsession with what I have missed will subside, and I can move on the next opportunity - to embrace or reject.

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It's been a quiet and strange week here in my corner of the planet. Around here, in my house and neighborhood and town, there is an eery absence of any activity this holiday weekend. I have been closely following the events in the Gulf states and Black Rock City in Nevada, where two very different scenes of chaos and bedlam have been unfolding, while trying to plot my next exploration of Mexico as my desire to someday emigrate is mightily reinforced.

On Nevada's bone-dry lakebed, the Burning Man encampment offers a joyous simulation of danger and regression to a primitive state. People are running around unclothed and unwashed amidst an assortment of often apocolyptic art and machinery. While the remote and harsh environment suggests deprivation and danger to health and isolation of spirit, in fact all are well fed and sated with all manner of rich drink and companionship. Their senses are overstimulated to near the breaking point by relentless cacophany and extremes of human behavior and appearance.

Can you see where I am going with this? Shall we look at New Orleans?

In this soggy and fetid mess there is real danger and regression to a most primitive state. People are running around unwashed amidst an apocolyptic landscape of biblical malevolence. The now remote and harsh environment impose life-threatening deprivation and danger to health, and isolation of spirit that is heartbreaking to behold. Few are without hunger and thirst, and many are alone, or reduced by death or separation in their families. Their senses are overstimulated near to the breaking point by the harsh environment and extremes of human behavior and appearance.

Trust me when I tell you that nothing is more extreme in appearance of a fellow human than to behold them dead in your presence.

I don't begrudge the Burners on the playa, reveling in their elaborately created fantasy realm and idealistic smugness. More than a few times this week I have wished to be among them, and questioned my decision a few days ago not to place myself in their midst. But the contrast is mesmerizing and irresistable. That these activities are occuring at the same time seems almost contrived by some divine force begging us to recognize and acknowledge....something.

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One thing has emerged as a unifying force between the two realms. From Burning Man today, I was listening to a live Internet audio feed from the FM radio station that is on the air for the week there. A collection of Bush speeches were artfully edited and strung together with savage effectiveness to portray a man and his henchmen as hapless buffoons at best and depraved evildoers at worst.


Government officials speak from the Rose Garden at the White House this morning. "Listen, we're going to have a problem this weekend when it comes to gasoline but we're addressing it," Bush told reporters upon viewing the scene earlier in the week.

And from Louisiana, a Guardsman was quoted in the press as saying "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here. We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq."

Earlier in the day, I read about how the dire warnings of a catastrophic result of severe weather on New Orleans and its levees were disregarded by the present administration, and how funding for badly needed flood control measures there was shut off in recent years to finance the adventures in the middle east.

Is there not a similar message to be discerned here?

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Edvard Munch described "The Scream", in one of his notes: "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun was setting. I felt a breath of melancholy. Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired; looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and town. My friends walked on–I stood there, trembling with fear. And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature."