dave

i can tell you a story about dave. when i transferred from the sacramento burbs to dominican college of san rafael for my junior year, dave drove up in his red chevy vega, introduced himself and offered me a tour of marin county, where he'd grown up. he told me the price range of the homes in every neighborhood that we drove through.

dave was a business major with a big heart. he had that undefinable intuitive knack for business that michael phillips calls "tradeskill." he was also a big man, well over six feet and 220 lbs. he found a powerful practical and soulful mentor in john caple, who directed the new business degree program. the two went to study for a summer at oxford, and dave slipped away for a few sauce classes at le cordon bleu.

dave was a connoisseur. he was a student at san rafael high school when four twenty was invented there. there was always a big plastic container of leaf in his dorm room (mild enough to roll and pass all evening.) then he'd bring out the thai sticks or the flat pressed mailing envelope of buds that someone from jamaica had sent to him. i began to joke that he was on a tantric path to liberation, continuously indulging and always sharing.

the nearby women's dorm at dominican was a creaky old ivy-covered building with beautiful wood in the large community rooms and steam heaters in the small sleeping rooms. dave said "let's make it a haunted house for halloween. a really good haunted house!" we invited kids from all around san rafael to walk through. the music and theater students dived in: john recorded bach's tocatta and fugue on the organ at the pizza place where he worked, which we piped in on a continuous loop. lisa the classical harpist (and part time witch) looked ravishingly ghoulish. the theater folks had all the blood makeup we all needed for a series of scary scenes and the kids had a thrilling time.

at the graduation ceremony he wore a yellow tuxedo. my parents never forgot that one. "dave who? the guy who wore the tux?"

after college our friendship deepened in a mix of lively projects. dave started "buds & leaves creative catering" and invited friends to help. when he couldn't pay cash he kept the help feeling fine. one summer we drove a u-haul to the top of mount tam, loaded with 55 gallon oil drums halved to make huge grills, and served hot turkey drumsticks and corn on the cob to folks at the mountain play.

i got a job with an alcohol fuel training program and we hired dave to bring his chef's outfit and hat to the steps of the san jose city hall when local alcohol fuel production was made legal again. our press release invited folks for an "alcohol-powered dessert" and there was big dave making cherries jubilee for the gathered reporters.

dave got trained to run alcohol workshops but the company got over-extended and furloughed us. fortunately this was just as the diablo canyon nuclear power plant was nearing completion. dave arranged to be a call-in live reporter for the marin rock radio station, and we drove down to join the nonviolent blockade organized by the abalone alliance. i'd been studying the issues for a while and it was time for action. for two weeks dave co-coordinated food for a few thousand people, who camped out on donated land, self organized into affinity groups using consensus process, and got arrested for trespassing at the front gates of the plant. (dave's walkie-talkie handle was chuck e. cheese, as he was briefly a management trainee at the kids' pizza parlor.)

not long after, someone noticed that a big part of the plant's blueprints had been upside down, and construction halted. (and our point, as george lakey said later, was not to stop the plant but to stop the industry. it worked.) over a three year period we went to a series of nonviolent actions at the livermore weapons lab and vandenberg air force base as the social movement against nuclear weapons began to grow during reagan's first term.

dave recruited me to take the lifespring basic and advanced trainings and we brought other friends in too. we loved this heart opening work and volunteered for the organization for a year. the blend of nonviolent action and experiential growth work was potent for us. we learned that bush was speaking at a breakfast for a local republican candidate; spent the night beforehand painting and then hanging a huge anti-nuclear sign on the only billboard in marin county; and picketed outside the restaurant with huge smiles on our faces. we got fearless.

then dave reported back from a few mindblowing experiences at grateful dead concerts. after a year and twenty shows i too was firmly on the bus. he got a pilot's license and a not unusual plan was to fly to davis to pick up some friends, then fly to eugene to see the dead three nights, front row at the hult center, and stay in a hotel room next to the band's hospitality suite. generous dave made lots of friends and it was fun to run in that bubble of energy, for a while.

a few years years later i was scanning the want ads in the chronicle newspaper and for some reason noticed that the old bakery in bolinas was for sale. dave was between restaurant gigs and i called him right away. he had noticed it and passed it by, but then he made the decision to call the owner. dave planted himself in bolinas, ran a busy local and regional bakery (later expanding into a cafe across the street); became a leader in the local community center and marin county disaster planning; married and began to raise two children.

the bakery! i'd visit at night to find dave and a couple of younger folks in tie-dyes carrying trays of dough, moving around each other in the small kitchen, passing a joint and listening to pristine soundboard tapes of recent or classic dead shows. one weekend he painted the large propane tank in the yard a bright yellow and added beatles animation characters to make the yellow submarine. on fourth of july during the famous bolinas parade people would line up out the door for bakery goodies. he'd call on friends to help and we'd be there.

one spring day i got a call at work. dave being jewish did not know a good recipe for hot cross buns for easter. i was raised christian and called my aunt who referred me to her aunt alice, who was probably in her seventies at the time. alice asked how many dave wanted to make; dave replied oh, a couple hundred.

when i lived in point reyes in the late nineties i occasionally saw dave, separated/divorced, hurtling his bakery van around the rural roads. big as a refrigerator, wearing his usual tie-dye shirt, gym shorts and birkenstocks. we had both taken our first journeys in israel in 1999 without knowing the other was there; dave had taken his son with him.

the following year, while hiking with his son and daughter on the oregon coast, dave suddenly passed at 42. congregation rodef sholom was filled for the memorial service. the largest words in memory of dave were sincerity and generosity. i was sad to miss the wake in bolinas. i guess i've been waiting since to tell this story.

i can tell you a story about...

a creativity exercise recently shared by Nika Quirk sticks with me. we take turns saying "i can tell you a story about ---" filling in the blank. we don't tell the stories yet, just gather a number of possible stories. then we can choose which ones to tell first.

tonight i want to rekindle this blog using this process. (you're welcome to share too, and i'll be filling in that sentence and choosing stories whether others join in or not.)

rick tarnas recently described the jupiter/neptune archetypal dynamic - personified differently in louis armstrong, paul mccartney, bob marley. this is the buoyant confidence that an ideal can become realized; an affirmation of the divine benevolence at the core of life. at its best, this is about profound vision; when not skillful, it can be pollyannaish or sentimental. i share this dynamic, and want to be mindful of its highs and lows as i write.

i can tell you a story about driving a thousand miles to see the grateful dead, twice.

i can tell you a story about a demonstration in front of vandenberg air force base to protest the test flights of the mx missile.

i can tell you a story about a woman i might have married, and a woman named lolita.

i can tell you a story about buying a buddha statue in prague.

i can tell you a story about making a stingray bike sound cool with a playing card and a clothespin.

i can tell you a story about playing table tennis with a saudi prince.

i can tell you a story about the ten jeffs in my law school entering class.

i can tell you a story about hitchhiking over the golden gate bridge all summer.

i can tell you a story about a dog, a mouse, a bird, a turtle, a rabbit, and a fish.

toward open space transition poems

in this small group my mind rises above the words.
with a quick bow i stand and turn. and before me
the dog star shines, and the thick belt of orion in the black above.

my grandfather taught me to sail at night alone. i feel
the rolling waves with my hips and feet. i smell jasmine
and coffee in the salt air. there - there i will go.

i lean to the left, make land, take a chair. jenny from marketing
shows us how she gets more pulp from the purple fruits
on the west side of the county. roberto peels them in a tight spiral.

around the fire, late, the weariness weights our limbs. but we did well
today. we feel good about where to go for the coming quarter, and
how to get there. jenny got a promotion; she leads with a firm grace.

bill moyer, the social movement empowerment project

Happy to find online the video of the final lecture by Bill Moyer, the brilliant and modest author of Doing Democracy, distilling his forty years of activism and research in nonviolent social transformation.

Bill was the kind of person who watched on TV (from his home in Philadelphia) that the FBI was surrounding the Indians at Wounded Knee, and two days later he had organized a large number of quakers and clergy to place themselves between the FBI and the Indians.

He knew that it would be very difficult to organize people against nuclear weapons in the late 1960's and early 1970's, so he set about organizing a movement against nuclear power, a movement which took off in the late 1970's, and it was then easy to shift the focus to nuclear weapons in the early 1980's, a movement which quickly grew worldwide and led to the end of the Cold War.

This video is nearly an hour in length and well worth the time. Bill died in 2002.

the wounds are restimulated

Rabbi Michael Lerner in Tikkun:

We mourn the 8 lives lost and the wounded in Yeshivat Mercaz Harav just as we mourn the 120 lives lost in Gaza last week, the hundreds wounded, and the many wounded and killed in Sderot and Ashkelon....

The wounds of two thousand years of exile and the holocaust are inevitably restimulated by this kind of attack, and tragically the price will likely be paid by Palestinian civilians, who in turn will fight back and then the price will be paid by other Israelis. Thus the seemingly endless cycle of violence will continue....

We understand that these killings can only be understood in the context of the 60 year old struggle between these two communities, and that nothing short of a full peace accord that will require a new open-heartedness on both sides can possibly break this horrible cycle of violence.

Thanks to Juan Cole for the link.

Catherine Austin Fitts

I've now linked to Catherine's blog, because her expertise as an investment banker and high government official is now in spirited service to developing strategies to safely ride the rapids.

Today she reposted a fundamental analysis that she first shared in 2003.

The current state of the U.S. economy is simply dreadful. This is thoroughly covered up by a willingness of foreign investors to continue to finance a negative return on investment system. Theoretically, one can maintain a negative return on investment system so long as one can finance it. The notion that it cannot be financed forever is probably a driving force behind the efforts by the two Bush and the Clinton Administrations to build the legal, political and physical infrastructure for the occupation of the US by its own military armed with a dazzling high tech toolkit of non-lethal weapons and the authority to impose martial law.

When and if US homeowners discover that their private property and public land, water and minerals all belong to America’s creditors, tensions may rise. This is particularly true when a penciling in of the numbers will show that the US leadership has intentionally been moving public and private resources offshore since the mid 1990’s — much of it in fraudulent and illegal ways. The folks whom the US middle class will depend on for financial capital are the same folks who stole all their retirement savings and tax money.

...From my experience serving as a member of, and then from the outside as a close observer of, US leadership, I am led to believe that those in positions of power have concluded that a steady reduction in living standards combined with a depopulation/ immigration strategy is the most practicable solution to the issue of nonsustainability of our current living standard within existing power structures... In short, the leadership’s way of dealing with non-sustainability is to consider a significant portion of the US and global population as sub-human, exploitable and expendable.

Here's where the addiction to the thrill of US presidential politics (especially when there are apparently quite worthy candidates) distracts from frankly more fundamental questions. If the new president is not motivating a citizenry around reversing such a strategy, we are still left to our own households and communities, another year later.

So Catherine has also updated her Solari model as a guide for re-investing in that which we trust in a way that gives us energy.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the organizational and investment building block that is needed to build a new and profitable alignment among people, natural resources and money. This model is the building block that will allow global investors to generate high capital gains from building healthy people in beautiful, safe and environmentally rich and cared-for places -- not just from extraction and consumption. It’s called a solari – an investment databank and investment advisor for your neighborhood that is created and controlled locally and can access capital both locally and globally. A network of solaris and the equity pools they will create and manage are the most significant capital gains opportunity in America today.

A solari offers the opportunity for higher returns to all Americans -- a soccer mom, a trucker, the general counsel of an insurance company, the young man or woman who works the late shift at the food mart on Route 66 or a Wall Street master of the universe. It does not matter where you went to school or who you know. It does not matter if you are young or old, male or female, black or white, rich or poor. If you are a person who loves making things work, a solari can help you find and mine the “diamonds” in your own backyard.

on poetry on the oslist

When my father died I grieved all year.
But Michael Stipe was right that sweetness follows.

When it's over,
A cloud of feeling lingers, calls up memories,
shows me the world with eyes more raw, more open
to this stark, leafless maple growing in the sidewalk.
And shows me to the work that's next to do.

When it's over,
We might start that lovely, awkward dance of hugs,
and wait our turn to hug Ralph, and Chris, Karen,
Joelle, and Lisa, everyone who won and wrote and read,
and lay a wreath for Laurel on the earth.

When it's over,
we might stand in Harrison's circle with hands joined
and faces outward, hearts burst open to the horizon
and the mystery of walking toward it, alone and
together, finding spaces snapping open like poppies.


I wrote this poem to honor three threads: The poetry contest series on the open space listserv, that began some years ago, might be coming to a natural end from depleted interest; I would not want it to end without an appreciation of it; and the contest invitation this time says, please write of your inner experience in open space.

(Thursday evening - Now I hear there is plenty of interest - people writing poems to be collected and shared with the oslist - so I got the inkling to withdraw this poem from the contest. Because it's not over, after all! But then I changed my mind. I'm glad I don't have a lot of readers to confuse and write annoyed comments.)

london

Claude Monet: London: Houses of Parliament at Sunset (1903).

I was in/near London only three days and my senses were constantly engaged, so I have a final set of memories to share.

I spent an hour in the museum and walked back to the south bank of the Thames to be immersed in the most intense sunset I have ever witnessed. Add some fire to Monet's palette and lose none of his subtlety. The buildings (and bridges) are now tastefully shaped by lights that enhance the pervasive glow without interfering. And the river is as Monet shows, a gorgeous flowing mirror. What a treat to catch one night like this.

I was daily in the Underground at commute time for the high-speed ballet of thousands of people in black overcoats and black shoes moving in rapid lines up and down the network of escalators and staircases from level to level, train to train. I know every city is like this - I'm spoiled on the cable cars at off-peak hours - but there I imagined being in the midst of a Pink Floyd animation with "Money" or "Time" playing in the background.

I transferred at Waterloo station for the train to Salisbury on Monday morning, and thought "what should I buy to eat on the train ride?" when there appeared the latest juxtaposition of ancestral and postpostmodern. I grew up eating Cornish pasties (pass-tees) made the traditional way, with cubed meat, onions, potatoes and spices, wrapped in a buttery, flaky crust. In Cornwall I had trouble finding them well made. But now Pasty.com has fast outlets everywhere, and the traditional meat pie that they handed me was really excellent, just like mom and my aunts make. Another special dimension to the journey to Stonehenge!

what a real one looks like

In 2003 San Francisco supervisor Matt Gonzalez ran a mayoral campaign that shook up the city. Despite a late start getting into the race, he won enough votes to force a runoff election against Gavin Newsom, who had big advantages in wealthy support and name recogition.

Matt organized a campaign that drew upon the passions of artists and musicians, students and poor people, marginalized and outcast. And he won 47% of the runoff votes in an election that electrified San Francisco.

Now Matt is Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate. I saw them together a couple of years ago in a reception at Matt's law office, where Ralph spoke and signed books. Ralph's choice does not surprise me.

The best line in today's SF Chronicle coverage (by Zachary Coile and Cecilia M. Vega) is from Rich DeLeon, a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University.

"I hear some right-wing commentators describe Obama as a left-wing radical. We just laugh," DeLeon said. "There's a certain function the Nader-Gonzalez ticket can play in reminding people what a real left-wing radical in the American system looks like. In that context, Obama looks more like an acceptable political centrist."

practical voices

I first heard Richard Heinberg talk about oil in 2001, when he mentioned to a workshop audience that among his quirky interests was to follow - for years - some obscure online conversations by retired petroleum engineers.

Apparently these engineers felt free to let their hair down with one another and talk about what they really saw happening in the oilfields around the world. An obscure engineer named M. King Hubbert had in 1956 correctly predicted the timing of the rise, 1970 peak, and decline of oil production in the US; which went from being the world's largest exporter to the world's largest importer of oil in one generation.

Hubbert also predicted the timing of the rise, peak, and decline of the Earth's oil production; and what the retired petroleum engineers saw happening was that "Hubbert's curve" is, with some adjustments, looking accurate again. The peak might be right now.

Heinberg writes and speaks extensively about what this means to us. Because oil has such unique qualities as an energy source - widely transportable, multi-functional, and containing a huge amount of energy per unit - there is simply no way to replace it with any equal sources. His detailed analysis shows that human and animal muscle power will need to be an increasing source of energy to do work in our societies - beyond the comfort levels to which many are accustomed.

And the wider implications of the world oil "peak" for all aspects of our lives - food, water, health, work, transport, and so forth - will be something in the range from severe to devastating, depending on how we prepare and respond.

Now you can follow the deliberations of the petroleum engineers from the comfort of your own home! A great blog called The Oil Drum - Discussions About Energy and Our Future has been in operation for some time.

If you have the reserve brain power to follow some technical jargon and read some graphs and charts in a basic way, it's a fascinating series of exchanges by sharp-as-a-tack, opinionated, often funny people who are trying to track whether the world has indeed arrived at the peak of oil production, and what might be the shape of the ride to an inevitable decline. (And what our options may be.)

You'll see posts like this snip from memmel, a chemist and computer programmer, trying to make sense of recent production numbers from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:

Its not unreasonable to suspect that KSA and friends attempted to see if they could influence oil prices to the point that Bush in co could have some political breathing space. Given past experience one would have expected this surge to send oil prices into the 80's or lower and it did not happen....

In my opinion current prices seem to show at least at a global level exports decreased despite the claims in production increases. This may be ELM related, bad numbers etc no telling. But a shorter time frame test is to see if production increase and prices move in the same direction.

Or this from Roger K about biofuels:

...If the net fuel output of conventional petroleum that we wish to replace is NP, then the required amount of ethanol is E = NP/0.2 which is equal to 365 million barrels if NP=73 million barrels. However 73 million barrels of oil is not the net energy of the transportation fuel supplied by those barrels. Only 92% of the energy content of the crude oil ends up in the form of refined fuels, and about 13% of that 92% is consumed from other energy sources during the refining process. Therefore the net fuel from 73 million barrels is 58.4 million barrels, and the ethanol equivalent is 58.4 million / 0.2 = 254 million barrels.

My inner dork just loves this stuff, and after a workweek of conversations about process, it's great to read the most practical people you will ever encounter, taking on the important questions of our time.

rending and sewing

The other striking artwork that touched me at the Tate Modern was impossible to overlook - it's ripped into the wide concrete inclined walkway that leads to the doors of the museum. It's Shibboleth, by Doris Salcedo.

As a (nearly) lifelong Californian this raw chasm had an immediate impact. (I think about the active faults in my landscape more often than is maybe healthy.) And I'm right with this artist as she digs down with this sculpted image to the faults that rend our psyches, our human community, and our relationships with the whole of life.

From the Tate website:

Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built....

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others.

The level of reconciliation that is called for is very deep. It's not impossible; we are developing and remembering the tools and capacities that are necessary; and I feel hopeful that with inspired leadership from each of us, the chasms can be sewn together with reeds and threads of love...

a startup presidency?

A bit more investigation of the secrets of the Obama campaign/movement yields this blog post by Julius Genachowski at launchboxdigital.

Imagine a start-up that on Day 1 has no full-time employees and no revenue ... just a small team with a big idea in a crowded market dominated by one player. Now roll the clock forward a year. The startup has generated over $100 million in revenue, hired several hundred employees working around the clock, and has taken very significant market share, including from the main competitor previously thought to be invulnerable.

This start-up, it turns out, is the Barack Obama presidential campaign.

The author finds three lessons here for startups.

1...In the first quarter after the campaign launched, the Obama campaign raised about $20 million ... just about as much as its strongest competitor. This accomplished two things: first, it gave the campaign the ability to hire great people (see #2 below) and therefore execute on the rest of its strategy; second, the fundraising achievement itself was significant public validation of the campaign....

2. Hire great people, organize them well, and empower them. When the story of the 08 campaign is written, one of the chapters will be about how the Best and Brightest of this generation went to work on the Obama campaign....

3...Throughout the campaign, there has been a focus on clear objectives and metrics-based goals, rolling all the way through the organization.

Not a lot of detail here on self-organizing/self-managing, but key notions about inspiration, empowerment, and clarity of vision and principles.

For me this is a response to concerns about a campaign of "just words" versus "getting real". It will take an inspired and organized populace to manifest the changes that are needed in the USA, and this campaign is showing itself capable of the quality of organizing that can yield these changes.

It's fun to see that Michael is writing about the campaign too, as it's capturing both of our imaginations.

meanwhile

Meanwhile, the occupation of Iraq continues. The best source of daily new information and analysis that I have found is Informed Comment, a blog by Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, with friends and interlocutors. He shares stories and analysis published in English and Arabic.

Michael asks how we in the US could wrap our minds around the occupation costs: 9 billion dollars a month. It's half again as much as the YEARLY budget of Chicago. Cole offers this comment:

I review the news below and don't somehow conclude that the US occupation of Iraq is a success story. I know we are paying a lot for our presence in Iraq. I can't figure out what the average American is receiving for the money. It isn't increased security, since Iraq is a training ground for terrorists who will likely hit the US or US interests in future. It isn't extra petroleum, at least not for us ordinary folks. Maybe the US oil majors will do well out of it. But even they say they can't do business in Iraq without oil legislations. And petroleum prices held above $98 a barrel on Friday. The Turkish invasion of Iraq was cited as one reason for the price increase. Instead of asking "are things hopeful in Iraq?" or "is there progress in Iraq?", the American media and public should be asking, "What are we getting out of all this?" That is the question the US Right fears most of all, which is why they ask the 'progress' question all the time. They only have two settings, "slow progress" and "progress." A burned out hulk of a city like Falluja? A sign of "slow progress."

Thanks to Tikkun for reminding me to share Cole's blog - required reading for an informed electorate.

flying

It's been three years since I've been in an airplane; since that year of monthly flights from my home in Albuquerque back to San Francisco for family and friends and facilitation work.

Today there's a funny (as usual) Rhymes With Orange cartoon about the window seat and the aisle seat. I love both locations, and for the reasons Hilary Price writes here. The little kid in me wants to see Shasta and Rainier and Whitney and Vegas, and my creaky bod wants to stand up and walk around as often as possible.

My mom asked "are you ever afraid up there?" I'm not, but I noticed that, with some beginner's mind because of the hiatus from flying, that a couple of times I looked up from watching "3:10 to Yuma" to notice that we were inside a small aluminum machine, six miles in the air over Greenland, going five hundred miles an hour, and it was 60 below zero right outside the window.

So yes, I'm equally amazed by Stonehenge and by Boeing's handiwork.

transforming spaces

I can't say anything about the planning workshop itself - sworn to confidentiality! - but I thoroughly enjoyed the day Tuesday with fifty service professionals from around Europe. It resurfaced memories of a couple of amazing open space conferences in Europe in the 1990's. The top managers were gracious and the staff were sharp and passionate.

The lead facilitator said "we're not actually going to facilitate much - we're going to put you to work" and as an open space facilitator I smiled inwardly (maybe outwardly too.)

The process we used was not open space - I was not consultant nor facilitator - and, I liked the way that the large hotel meeting room got set up for collaborative work, with rolling whiteboards as harvest walls and lots of comfortable spaces for small groups and the large group to think and work together. There was a roving cameraperson (video and still) and a very skillful graphic recorder making colorful maps of the proceedings. And the food was fantastic (awesome desserts) and the OJ, water, tea and coffee were flowing.

And at the end we acknowledged the impact of our work together, which was substantial.

There's a useful publication on designing collaborative spaces here, published by Innovation Labs.

a raw embrace

Mark Rothko
Red on Maroon
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 2002
2667 x 2388
Oil on Canvas

I would have loved more time in London - the trip was like a dream itself (was I really there?) But that morning in caffe Nero I was happy to plan to go to the Tate Modern on the south bank of the Thames and look for one painting, whatever it was, that would capture me. As it turned out, there was one room, showing one series of paintings, that turned my head and heart around.


I'm intuitive with art; I can't say much about what I love except that I love it. Here in a single small room, with gray walls and bathed in low light, hang a set of massive, stunning canvases by Mark Rothko. They float and shimmer, as Rothkos do. I sit absorbed in them; they confront me, draw me deep into the ambiguity of this life. I tear myself away to read something of their story, but it's not satisfying; a series of paintings for a restaurant in New York, a commission from which he suddenly withdrew, and later sent the paintings instead to the Tate.

Now home I find an extraordinary analysis (2002) by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. He says "the Seagram or Four Seasons murals, which are among the very best American art, are not religious paintings. They are furious meditations on the American empire."

Rothko was deeply familiar with the Roman wall paintings from Boscoreale in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he studied closely Nietzsche's The Birth Of Tragedy, which contrasted the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. He wanted his art to be Dionysian, beyond reason. Rothko's project for the Four Seasons was to create an anti-architecture that scorned the rational order of Mies van der Rohe's building, that tormented the "rich bastards" sitting down to a civilised lunch. He wanted the deathly space of Michelangelo's Laurentian Library to push in on them, deny them exit. He spoke of himself as an architect - "I have created a place," he said when he looked at the murals in his Bowery studio.

That sinking feeling in my gut, that invitation to embrace the raw dilemma of life, is what Rothko wanted the wealthy patrons to feel. But, Jones says, he finally decided that the paintings would not have the desired effect in that setting; they would form a background and not be attentively seen. The paintings arrived at the Tate, Jones writes, on the day that Rothko was found dead by suicide.

In this season of hope and possibility, the raising of new and passionate voices in the American discourse, we honor the visceral daily struggles of all of us; and let us transform this world into a new world.

the way

After Whidbey where a major old dream came true at last, Chris and others wondered with me whether a new dream or vision might arise soon.

My first morning in London, sitting with a jetlag-fighter latte at the big side window of a cafe, I looked up and saw a dark green cab stopped at the intersection, with the license place LAO2 SZU.

For the moment I'll take that as a reminder to read the Tao Te Ching more often.

the stones 2

Some years ago when approaching the Merry Maidens stone circle in Cornwall I was astonished at the palpable field of energy surrounding the stones. The following year I felt a strong field surrounding the stone inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. So on Monday I approached Stonehenge with some curiosity and a trace of anticipation.

The stones are huge, and silent, but for the crows who lift and wheel in the air playfully. And the click of digital cameras all around the oblong walk, which first takes us close to the largest triad (two standing stones topped with a lintel stone) and then out in a wide arc near a fence and flock of sheep who live in the surrounding pasture.

I don't feel a field of energy, and I don't mind not being able to walk directly among the stones. The present day communication of this place is the circle aligned with the movements of the cosmos, created by the ancestors of white people, who might again stand around the fire in humility and respect with indigenous people everywhere.

On this day Neptune was exactly transiting my natal Sun, a once-in-a-lifetime cosmos alignment. I may not understand the deep meaning of this transit in my life except in retrospect; my last two major Neptune transits coincided with my first job at CIIS (a school which has become a spiritual and vocational center of my life) and with the first time I lived with a woman in relationship, moving together from the big city to a remote rural hamlet in the largest wilderness of the Bay area.

In both cases the Janus-faced nature of Neptune shone forth: it feels inspiring, a dream-come-true, and it can be delusional, a dream that ends in a sudden pop. In both cases the initial wild idealism has mellowed into long-term loving warmth, and for that I am grateful and delighted. And so I await and pursue the unfolding of this moment in its turn.

the stones

Eight years ago on the way to Israel I had a ten hour layover at Heathrow Airport outside London. Before crossing the Atlantic I hatched a plan to rent a car and drive to Stonehenge and back to catch my flight to Tel Aviv, so as to stand at two spiritual centers of my ancestral traditions during the same journey.

Ah, but I did not sleep well on the flight and, woozy with jet lag, I did not relish the prospect of driving a rental Mini Cooper on the left side of the British roads. I caught up on my sleep and had a few good meals instead. On the way back from Israel we changed planes again at Heathrow, and from the window seat I scanned the land after takeoff. And the low clouds parted briefly, and there far below was the huge stone circle on the plain.

This afternoon I fly to London to take part in a daylong planning retreat on Tuesday (and return the next day!) A quick jaunt 'cross the pond in the mid of winter -- put a log on the fire and pass me another pint willya? There might be freezing sideways rain, but I dedicate Monday to the stones. The linked photo was taken in the month of my last near-encounter.

The brewing feeling within me is a readiness to go quite deeper into the mysteries of my different Celtic ancestors. I began my doctoral research with the Jewish mysteries because being Jewish was so new to me, and it felt right to start with the tradition of my birth mother, and the sister I had just met.

I did travel to Kernew and Cymru (Cornwall and Wales) "in a good way" as best I knew how. But a few encounters at Whidbey Island have helped to turn my head again toward those who stand behind my mom, dad, and "bio" father. So this short journey to Britain, which appeared so suddenly, is a new planting of seeds.

a strange addiction

Presidential campaigns are a strange addiction. Despite my best analysis I'm again sucked right into this theater which is bigger than super bowls, stanley cups, world series and Open championships. And never more so than now, for the young man below is more eloquently inclusive (which totally turns my crank) than the former champ Bill Clinton and rises toward the legendaries Robert Kennedy and Martin King.

The design of the US system with elections on a two- and four-year cycle has given the system a capacity for absorbing (or suppressing) radical changes, leaving it relatively stable for capitalists. It's not as time-responsive as a parliamentary system in which elections can be rapidly called and conducted (tho these have their own systemic issues.) The two US owning-class political parties take turns in power and transmute the revolutionary energies of working people and religious people. Even many independents find themselves between these parties and not above or beyond them. (I await Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson's "cultural creatives" asserting ourselves in the governance of the US.) The feeling of being included and represented in this process is mostly illusory.

Catherine Austin Fitts warns us that we have a stark choice: we support the centralizers or the decentralizers. We support a centralizing economic system (the "tapeworm" economy, which has sucked 10 trillion dollars out of communities into globalized concentrations of wealth); or forge a decentralizing, community economics when we pull our investments (and those of our community's institutions, like pension funds) out of the tapeworm and put them to work in our communities. The government is not coming to our rescue when "peak everything" leaves us to our own relationships with farmers and shoemakers. Bill Clinton, for all his persuasive power to evoke charity, is a centralizer.

But! Here's a man (and the woman who is his partner) who could really bring change, do you feel it? From within an owning class party, can a movement of optimism and collaboration and inclusivity and vision emerge around the will and eloquence of this couple? And it's so easy to just support them and watch it happen. At least for now.

If there will be a transformative presidency it will be because we respond to, and push to expand and deepen, the call for a collaborative redesign and reconstruction and reconciliation required in the 70,000 neighborhoods in the US. And make plain our alliance with the work of this kind taking place in every neighborhood and village around the planet.

I don't expect to emerge fully from the election trance this year - I find myself more thoroughly immersed in it each week - but I will try to raise my head outside of it on occasion.