unreasonable.org

At long last, the decision is in: after being (rudely, IMHO) booted out of its long-term home at the Brushwood Folklore Center, this year's Starwood Festival will be held at Wisteria in Pomeroy, Ohio, July 6-12.

That's pretty much due west of Baltimore, so hopefully should be warmer than Sherman, NY, where nighttime temperatures can drop into the 40s in July! It's about the same drive time, if Google Maps can be believed.

(I had a conflict in the that my karate school has a retreat scheduled that weekend, but I've learned that that event has already filled up. So it's looking good for me to be at Starwood.)

According to the "Golden Snow Globe" website, with 79.9 inches of snow so far, Baltimore is currently the snowiest city in the U.S. this winter.

And we could be looking at a few more inches Monday or Tuesday -- we might just get rained on, or we might get 6 inches of snow.

As I tweeted about a week ago, the first draft of the book is done. (Except for checking one footnote, for which I await an amazon.com order...and given the snow I don't expect a mail delivery until next week!)

A few weeks ago, Elissa asked me if I had done any writing about Piccolo's passing, and I told her I planned to work something into the book. So here's that. Not including the copious appendix, these are the closing words, following on a discussion of life and death and reincarnation and anatman:

It’s now January 2010, a few years after the trip to Japan that started this book. As I have been concluding work on it in the past few months, death has come and paid me a visit, taking the two dogs who were my close companions for over twelve years.

People are much more forthcoming with questions and advice when you lose a dog than when you lose a parent or a spouse or a child. And so friends have been asking me, “Will you get another dog?” (Compare the questions “Will you marry again?” or “Will you have another child?”, which we often wonder about but seldom ask the bereaved spouse or parent.) Many have suggested that I do so – some even to the point of implying that grief is something to avoid, that I should fill the void as soon as possible.

Another advisor, though, pointed out that taking another dog into my life will just have me back in this same place of grief some years down the road. And this is true – but it is also true for any relationship. Every connection we make eventually ends with us saying good-bye, from one side of the grave or the other.

The only way to avoid that grief would be to never love – an even greater tragedy. I am reminded of an aphorism attributed to author John A. Shedd: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Just so, a heart that never loves is safe from the pangs of grief; but that’s not what hearts are for.

And so the death of a loved one (two-footed or four-footed) is a reminder of the grief that is common to us all, a call to tenderness, a call to open the heart and let the whole Cosmos in.
As I knew that my second dog, Piccolo, was in failing health and likely to pass on soon, I wrote this prose poem:

The snow is gone. Where did it go to? There were billions of snowflakes, in my backyard, each perfectly detailed, dazzling faceted. Now they have gone, and my yard is mud.

Did they go to snowflake heaven? Did they reincarnate as packed powder on some ski slope?

Each snowflake was a nexus of conditions, of water and temperatures and altitudes of clouds. Each snowflake was a mass of Arctic air, plus an ocean breeze, plus a low pressure system. Each snowflake contained the cycle of seasons, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the deep ocean currents that make the climate, the Milankovitch cycles that make the Ice Ages. And more: the formation of the Earth itself, the Sun, the element of oxygen born in a dying star, the hydrogen that condensed out of the Big Bang, the whole universe in each snowflake.

And then those elements move apart, no longer overlap and the snowflake cannot be seen. But it is not gone, because the seasons, the Earth, the Sun, the Universe, remain.

And what is true for a snowflake, is no less true for a dog or a human. We are the snow that appears when conditions are just so, and then melts and goes into the soil, and is taken up by trees and grasses, and rises to become the cloud skittering across the sky, and then falls to become the stream and the ocean and the puddle, part of other sets of conditions, each glorious and beautiful. We melt into the world, and our oneness with it – which never went away – is again revealed.

And this oneness is also revealed when we open our hearts, remove the boundaries, and let death remind us of our own tender Buddha nature.

we are playing games

across the miles, Scrabble on the computer
building on each others words
a sort of improv two-author poem

in person, chess
we sit over her board, hand-carved wooded pieces
we both play slowly, carefully
considering each move

but as I steal glances at her
I am considering another game

where I win if I keep the spark of a possibility alive
in a space and time where circumstances aren't right for the fire

and no guarantee they ever will be

but with every single beat
every strand of muscle on the left side of my heart
the stronger side
says "love her...love her...love her"

but the right side
connecting to the lungs, to the breath, to the moment
whispers, regretfully, "not now...not now...not now"

so I try to wind between the tight boundaries
of too much said, and too little
how much can I say without saying?
a look, a smile

we finish the game
this chess game at least
and time to go

an embrace
that
I want
to last forever...

but
"not now...not now...not now"
and so I say farewell
and, with both sides of my heart, drive off into the night

There's something about this area where I live, the Patapsco Valley around Catonsville and Ellicott City, that's special. Call it the genius loci, call it the kami of the river and the forest, call it cultural geography, ley lines, whatever, but somehow there's a cluster of interesting people that have ended up around here. Some of them are just a little off (perhaps I should include myself there and say some of us!); some are kooky but functional, like the always interesting musician and activist Bob Pyle, subject of Sara Michener's short film Bobumentary (can't find a link right now but hope someone will give one in a comment); and some are vagrants, living in the woods around the river valley.

Even the vagrants aren't just random homeless people; you get the impression that in a slightly different world, a saner and more humane one, they would be artists or shamans -- or perhaps even Emperors.

One of these was a man known as "Backpack Ed".

If you spent time in Ellicott City, you probably saw him walking the streets or hanging out in Tiber Park. I didn't really know him, but he was a familiar face, and I'd nod and say "hi" whenever I passed. A lot of locals, though, knew him pretty well.

Last night, Ed was struck and killed by a train. I've walked along that stretch of track. We'll probably never know, but it is hard to believe that someone could be struck accidentally.

Sara wrote a moving note about him:

He was the town's Gollum; Everyone who knew him well enough, knew things couldn't possibly end well for him. He didn't have the support network that other vagrants in town had. And everyone who knew him more closely, shared with that feeling the hope that he would one day surprise us. But the eerie feeling last night among the townspeople that I spoke with was the death also of that hope. Both for himself, as he may have chosen to lay on those tracks rather than deal with an impending snowstorm with no place to stay, and for us, who were always pulling for him.

That's a hell of a thing to think about, that we live in a society where some people make a million dollars a year, and others are so desperate and hurting that rather than face a harsh winter they will lie down on the tracks. This is not due to some inviolate law of nature, it is not a consequence of physics or chemistry. It is because we have chosen to organize our society in this way.

I don't have any easy answer as to how to change that. All I can do right now is say, rest in peace, Ed.

Yesterday the lovely and talented Sara Michener texted me: "See my [Facebook] wall about a puppy." A friend of hers had a rescued pup, found on the street in Pigtown, that she was trying to find a home for.

There were cute photos, too, and so I talked to the folks who had rescued and were fostering him, Jillian and Issac, and arranged to go meet him tonight.

And so now there's a dog napping -- snoring, even -- in my room.

They had named him Bingo, but that didn't quite click with me. As soon as I got him in the car, it hit me: not Bingo, but Ringo! My mom's favorite Beatle; when I was a wee bitty lad, she had a car she named Ringo, so that makes it a venerable family name.

You never know the full history with a street dog, of course, but he's estimated to be about four months old, a good ol' American mutt, maybe some boxer, maybe some pit bull. He's a sweetheart; when Jillian, Issac, and I were talking, he lied down next to me, put his head in my lap, and went to sleep. That pretty much sealed the deal.

So, here we are at the start of a new adventure: the Ringo years.

Dear friends, I'm very sad to inform you all that Piccolo, one of the truly great dogs, left us on January 20.

She had been in declining health since the end of last year. In early January, she began to lose her appetite, and I took her in (again) to see a vet. This time she was diagnosed with kidney failure, and the prognosis was very poor -- I was advised that there was nothing to be done except euthanasia.

Rather than make a hasty decision, I went to Falls Road Animal Hospital for a second opinion. Piccolo spent a week in intensive care there, and while her urea, creatinine, and phosphorus levels came down (though still not to normal levels), she did not regain her appetite. She was apparently feeling nauseous, possibly due to ulcers. She was put on stomach protectants, but still didn't start eating.

I brought her home on Saturday, and while I continued to care for her, administering subcutaneous fluids and the stomach meds and trying to tempt her with old favorite foods and many new options, she didn't improve. While she was not in pain, because she was weakening and lethargic, and apparently dizzy and confused, and still not eating or showing signs of recovery, I made the very difficult decision that rather than let nature take its course, I would choose euthanasia on her behalf. She passed peacefully here at home while I was with her.

I'm very glad that Saturday, the day I brought her home, was also the day of my 40th birthday party. I'm grateful that this meant that many friends were able to come and say farewells to this wonderful dog in the final days of her life.

A memorial web page has been set up at http://infamous.net/piccolo.php

This is probably going to piss off some of my friends. But best to get it out of the way now, rather then whatever future time my book is published.

I'm including a chapter in my book-in-progress about the dark underbelly of the spiritual quest. The idea, basically, is

There is an old aphorism, often attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that those who love sausages or the law should never watch either being made. I've always disagreed with this -- if people saw the truth behind the production of these things, we'd have many more vegetarian anarchists, which would seem to me a positive development.

And so it is too with religion and spirituality. The hazards of cults, superstitions, delusions, hypocrisy, and manipulation are very real. A peek behind the scenes of both ancient traditions and the modern cults of personality around self-help gurus and peddlers of enlightenment-lite, is an unpleasant but necessary requirement for spiritual health.

In this chapter I talk about scandals in Zen (Japanese and American), about Chögyam Trungpa's misbehavior, about sex scandals in the Pagan community, and about some new age-y sort of "Plastic Shamans and Goofy Gurus". And one of the folks I deal with under that heading is Daniel Pinchbeck.

I first mentioned Pinchbeck over three years ago, when Rolling Stone profiled him. I was not impressed, but I didn't give it much more thought than that.

A year or so after that, my good friend Robin Gunkel, whose opinion I regard highly, met him at Burning Man and she was impressed. So I suspended judgment -- maybe the Rolling Stone profile was an unfair hatchet job. That happens.

Robin has since become involved with Evolver, a social network arising out of Pinchbeck's blog, "Reality Sandwich". I've gone to several events put on by the Baltimore "spore" of Evolver, and heard some good discussions.

But with that said, when I sat down to look more deeply into Daniel Pinchbeck, what I found was not favorable. Here's a first draft of the section about him that will go into my book.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the guy probably most responsible for kicking off the idea that some great transformation is going to occur in 2012. In his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, he claims to have received "transmissions" from the Mayan deity Quetzalcoatl telling him about this momentous event. An excerpt from these transmissions:

I have fond memories of Omni magazine -- I think there might be some old issues up in my attic. Slate looks back at Omni's look forward into the future world of 2010:

For anyone who was raised in the '70s and never had a date in the '80s or who thought the 2000s would look like a cross between a Yes album cover and Journey concert T-shirt, Omni magazine was essential reading—one with a ready answer to all your robot and rocket questions. And to a 10-year old getting a subscription for Christmas in 1979, Omni was The Future.

The magazine was a lushly airbrushed, sans-serif, and silver-paged vision dreamed up by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and his wife, Kathy Keeton. It split the difference between the consumerist Popular Science—which always seemed to cover hypersonic travel and AMC carburetors in the same page—and the lofty Scientific American, whose rigor was alluring but still impenetrable to me. But with equal parts sci-fi, feature reporting, and meaty interviews with Freeman Dyson and Edward O. Wilson, Omni's arrival every month was a sort of peak nerd experience.

It's beautiful, can stop everything, cause disasters, come unexpectedly. Some can live without it, others never get enough. Snow or love?

Snow is the big story this weekend. It started about 10pm Friday, came down all day and all night Saturday, was still falling lightly around 1 am this morning. I measured 19 inches of it last night, and it was still falling. Dug out this afternoon, which was a decent workout. So just about everything that was scheduled for this weekend -- including the big Solstice show with Telesma and Alex Grey -- got canceled.

After all that digging out, felt like I had to go somewhere tonight! Came down to Fells Point, figured maybe the Grind would be open (it is) and some Zelda's folks might make it (none yet) -- and if not, surely some bar would be open.

I was just down here Friday -- sort of the other half of the question, as I met up with Jen for the first time since October. We had planned to play some chess, but her set got left in her car when she had to borrow another. Still, we spent almost four hours talking, lingering over coffee at the Grind and a drink at Birds of a Feather. Bittersweet, but so it goes.

Got some work done on the book while snowed in yesterday. The chapter on Shinto is shaping up, and when I've finished that, I just have one more to go! I've set the goal of having a rough draft complete by my birthday, and am well on target for that.

So. How about a little writing exercise? What can we make of "nineteen inches of snow"?

nineteen inches of snow
covers the graves
nineteen inches of snow
keeps writers holed up, working
nineteen inches of snow
weighs down the roof
nineteen inches of snow
buries many sins
nineteen inches of snow
makes the city go slowly
nineteen inches of snow
take all day to fall
nineteen inches of snow
will take a long time to melt
but
eventually
will