Ready to Go

Photo by Ryan Bennett.

Quote

The present was enough, though my work in the cemetery told me every day what happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on too long: it becomes your entire history.
Louise Erdrich, 'Demolition' in the New Yorker, Jan. 1, 2007.

Adam

From my diary, June 1987:

Hans came with his son Adam whom I had not seen since he was five – now he is nineteen. I could hardly believe it was the same person. As a small boy he was dense and chubby, very strong-willed and sometimes quite wild. Now he is tall and bony, polite and reasonable.
We had one memory in common: one day in the house in Älmeboda he was overly excited and I took him in my lap and held him very tight, and I told him: “When you relax completely I will let you go.” As soon as I loosened my grip on him he tried to get away and I held tight again.
It took a long time before I could let go of him without he tried to bolt, but in the end he relaxed and we sat for sometime peacefully together. His warm little body in my lap was pleasant – maybe even a bit exciting - and he must have liked it too, for even when I told him he was free to go, he didn’t go right away.
When I thought of him this was what came to mind and apparently it had also made a deep impression on his mind since this was the one thing he remembered, and he said it had been good for him.

SPRING

Yesterday hail
Today plum flowers
Falling like snow.

An Affair in Africa

The first time I went to sub-Saharan Africa, I attended a drum camp during the first month. It took place on the island of Roum, an hour’s ride from Conakry in a canoe-like boat with an outboard motor.
Roum is a small island with only one village and two beaches, one on each side of the island. It is like a little tropical paradise. When we arrived, there emerged, out of the waves next to the boat, an Apollonian apparition, an almost naked, shining bronze-god with a harpoon in his hand. This, I thought, must be what God had in mind when he created this world.

The first day in camp we had an orientation meeting with Abdoulaye Camara, the one dance teacher who spoke English. I was the only man in the group of nine American students, and Abdoulaye warned the girls that the young African drummers were very fast to become intimate and the girls should be ready to say no if they were not into it.
“Any questions?”
I asked: “What is the attitude to homosexuality in Africa?”
“That doesn’t exist,” said Abdoulaye with proud finality.
That, of course, gave some indication of the attitude.

The beach that turned towards the lagoon was very long and, at low tide, very wide and seemed to be always empty. I went there one of the first days with the two girls from the group that I had connected with, and their escorts, two young drummers. There was nobody else so I went skinny-dipping. A boy that I hadn’t noticed came swimming up to me and was obviously in a playful mood, and so was I. He was 15, I guess, and he was lean and muscular, as most people are in a country where you have to work hard to survive.
I love playing in the water and we lustily splashed each other; we were out where the water was chest-deep and he started coming up close, swimming around me and under me, sliding between my legs. I grew an instant, involuntary response and it was then demonstrated that African men are very fast! It lasted for a while, this surprising and enchanting encounter with a merman. When I had ‘enjoyed’, as the French say, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared.
My friends joked just enough to let me know that they had seen something go on, but not enough to embarrass me. Later I found out that the boy worked on one of the boats from Conakry; so his visits to Roum were irregular and infrequent. I met him one day on the path to the beach and I told him that I had a gift for him, a t-shirt, and we arranged how I could give it to him secretly.
I met him on and off and we managed also another tryst in the sea, hidden behind an anchored boat, and I left him some money by a mark on the empty beach and saw him pick it up without my friends noticing.
On two later visits to Guinea I met him again but it began to loose its charm. He was growing, and the romantic merman transformed into a young professional hustler.

We were living in tents, and I, being the only man, had a tent for myself. It stood under some trees next to the plaza in front of the school. This plaza was the place for parties and performances and New Years Eve there was blaring music and a dance in the schoolroom. There were couples and to one side mostly single men dancing. A young fisher, Ben, who was from Sierra Leone and spoke English, and who lived in the neighborhood of my tent, started dancing with me. The next dance another guy asked me to dance with him and I didn’t have the guts to say no, but when that was over I found my friend Ben again. He was a sexy dancer and he acted like a magnet on me.
Suddenly the music stopped, the lights went out and everybody went home – except me. I sat with Ben on a log in the dark. He asked me if I wanted a woman but I said: “I want you!” He took my hand and placed it in his crotch and I felt that he was hard. It went on for a while about a woman, one even turned up and was offered to me. We went into Ben’s house and his mate was there, but I repeated that it was him I wanted and finally he came with me to my tent. First he lay down on his stomach ready to be taken, but that was not what I wanted. I was amorous and I wanted to kiss him and revel in his beauty and he didn’t seem to mind. We had negotiated a price, a ridiculous low price, but handling money and talking about money is a normal thing in Africa.

From left: me, Ben's roommate and Ben
To keep an affair secret in Africa is a challenge. Your friends are your protectors and they like at all times to have check on where you are and with whom. I was not sure how they would react if they knew, and there was also a measure of excitement in keeping it secret. Of course a few village people knew but they were cool; I met Ben’s roommate on the path one day and as he passed me he winked and smiled knowingly. The tent was definitely not the place to make love, but Ben knew a hidden place in the jungle close by the village and here we met a couple of times before I left Roum.
Every time I was in Guinea I returned to Roum and the last year my visit fell on a full moon night. I met Ben and we managed to make a plan for the evening. I gave him a sign and left the village and he followed and met me on the path and took me down to the rocks by the sea. There we spread all our clothes on a warm flat rock and everything was so perfect, the lonely place by the moonlit ocean and my beautiful lover. Most often it had been pitch dark when we were together, so it was a treat to enjoy the sight of his flawless beauty.
That was our last meeting for I have not been back to Guinea, but it is still vivid in my mind.

The Lake

A sketch for the trigram Tui, the joyous or lake. 1968

It's All About Fucking

With thanks to Fletcherbeaver.

Tracks in the Sand

Yeshe

I got my Tibetan name, Yeshe Palden, from Lama Yeshe. It means ‘Having glorious transcendental Wisdom’. All Tibetan names are like that, road signs pointing at the highest aspirations. What I liked specially about my name was that it contained the wisdom part, Yeshe, from Lama Yeshe’s name.
There was one boy, the son of an Italian couple that I had met at Kopan in Nepal back in the early seventies, who also had the name Yeshe. He came to visit at Vajrapani when he was nine years old.

From my diary, July 15, 1985:

Today left my little wisdom-brother. Just before we separated yesterday he asked me: “Do you have a good life?”

I had a shower before writing this, on the balcony surrounded by pink and purple flowers, in the warm breeze, the cool water.

Playing robot with Yeshe yesterday he had a soft-button on his spine in the hollow of his back. I demonstrated him for the others and when I turned him soft he collapsed in a heap on the floor, his big porcelain eyes staring, empty of expression, a limp Pinocchio.

I said: “Yes, I have a good life; what about you?”
And he said: “Oh! I have a very good life.”
Already at the age of nine he is so full of human qualities of the kind that elevates man.

Rain

This is a dry year here in Santa Cruz but recently we were blessed with some rain.

Bareback

Thanks to Daniel the Guy in the Desert.

Thorkild

When I was 18 my aunt, with whom I lived, was at the hospital for a while and there she met a younger woman, Ellen, that she became fast friends with. After they had both left the hospital Ellen invited us to visit her family who lived on a large farm. Ellen’s husband was a swarthy, taciturn man with long lashed soft eyes and a friendly smile.
In the evenings I was fourth at Bridge, but during the day I passed most of my time with their oldest son, Thorkild, still just a boy of 11, but big and mature for his age. Together we explored the farm, the fields, and the forest; we played games and made theatrical productions with his younger brothers, entertaining the family.
I was very popular with the whole family for my ability to function in both worlds, the children’s as well as the grown-up’s.

One day we listened to a play on the radio. It was about a person who dug up corpses and ate them. As part of the play, in the intermissions between the acts, the microphone stayed open and the actors discussed the play and came thereby to grips with some of their prejudices against other ‘freaks’ like gays and blacks. The play touched me deeply, for I was not unaware of my feelings for Thorkild, and it was a comfort to hear everyone agree, both the actors and the listeners, that prejudice was stupid and evil.
Through seven years my aunt and I kept visiting from time to time, in the later years I came alone since my aunt was again not well. As Thorkild grew up, my attraction to him grew stronger and found some expression in sparring and physical nearness, and once, when he was 18 and I was 25 - and ebullient with wine - I tried to kiss him after having pinned him to the floor, but he turned his head and evaded me.
I had just come out of the closet to my aunt and my closest friends, but to tell Thorkild, with whom the sexual vibrations were alive, was more difficult. The kiss had been a way of saying without saying, but it didn’t bring any opening and I decided to write instead. In my letter I said rather bluntly how I wanted him and felt that maybe there was hope that he felt the same way. I had to be open about my feelings and, whatever he felt, the most important was our friendship.
His answer was defensive: how could I think there was hope? He could never do a thing like that and he had guessed and feared that I was gay.
I wrote back that I was sorry, but I had had to talk; all I wanted was to be open and be his friend. Could I come? Could we see each other?
This time Ellen wrote back. I should stick to my own kind, she said, and I had hurt her son, he had cried and she did not think it was time yet for me to come.

I never saw Thorkild again.
I went through a period of frustration and anger, arguing my case through the long sleepless nights. A son and a brother I had been in that family, who professed their liberal dissociation from prejudice, and yet they would never let me speak my case. Their total rejection nourished a debilitating fear in my mind that too often made my actions cramped and untimely.
I understood later how I set myself up. Thorkild could not have reacted differently precisely because he had known, and he had felt, and my bluntness scared him too much.

Quote

The orphan boat of my heart crosses the unsteady, undulant ocean of time.
Ping Hsin

Ups and Downs

From a diary, 1983:

The full moon rising at the end of the valley in a sky like abalone shell; the insects of night sounding their ecstatic monotony in concert with frogs and quail.
What am I to do with this perfection? It only seems to make my heart heavier.

Ebb of energy and enthusiasm. I spin my web in the corner of an empty frame.

I’m just back from two days cross-cultural camp. So many lovely boys! Most sexy: a blond Italian, Pietro. He is slim yet muscular, but it is his movements that makes him so sexy, whether he walks or swims or dances – oh, especially when he dances, of course – with slow odd twisting and sudden jerks; his classic torso burnt copper, glinting with sweat, his hair whitish gold. I cannot take my eyes off him.
At the pool, Eric, the lifeguard, asks him: “What’s macho in Italy?” and Pietro hugs an arm around his neck and gives him a kiss, and they all laugh happily.
And there was Jean François, athlete-puppy with the most magnificent chest, Christophe with yellow hair and almond-brown eyes, and Swiss Paul showing his elegant thighs. Most lovely was Christian, the German boy. They are all half and half, German boys, according to my experience. At least they are so conscious of the possibilities that, willing- or unwillingly, they play the flirting game. Christian was tall and skinny; his body like a column whose only function is to carry the head: exquisitely boyish beautiful with a smile that seems to force it’s way out against his will.
The last evening he became conscious of my attention and after I had twice caught him checking back out of the corner of his adorable dark blue eye, I ignored him for the rest of the evening.
Next morning I talked to him just casually and when we were settling in for the group photo before leaving I passed by him by calculated chance and sat down and he came and sat next to me. Said he: “Are you happy to sit next to this beautiful head?” and I: “Oh, yes! I appreciate it – here we sit: beauty and wisdom!” Again he looked at me, like realizing that this time he had started the flirting. From behind he was asked to move towards me, but I didn’t move, so we sat very close for the first photo. Then he pretended to want out but, instead, he just changed places with the girl on his right and sat down with a girl on each side, putting his arms around them, and for a moment he was focus of the whole group’s laughter. The second photo has him seated like that.
I ordered one; I wonder which one I get.

This is the emptiness within the frame.

It is Monday morning. Low clouds loom over the valley and my spirit is in the same tune. Only good for daydreaming – but nothing but sordid dreams will come: specters of lost opportunities, my own and others shortcomings.
I take a book as painkiller, but after hours and hours of reading I am in no better state than when I began.

Thursday Drum Night

Vijay, Josh, Jacob & Eric.

Eric & Arthur.

Arthur & Liz.

Liz & Eli.

Journey to the West (Santa Cruz)

(Continuation of Topanga Canyon)
My destination on the West coast was my friend Høne who was living in Berkeley with her husband, Chris, and their kids Thor and Amrit, whose birth in Sweden I had attended. They were part of the Vajrapani group who also included a retreat center in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
I was running out of my three months visa, but when I asked for an extension it was denied. I was too content being in America, being, in fact, where the whole hippie revolution had started and was still very alive, so I had no intension of leaving. This became the beginning of ten years as illegal alien.

We went to Boulder Creek to visit the retreat center. The last two miles were dirt road and it was slick with about six inches of soupy mud and the car was sliding along dangerously near the creek, but we got through. The retreat consisted of a few cabins and tepees hidden at the end of the road, deep in the redwoods. It was very new; the land had been given only a year before to create a center for Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa.
It was a lovely place and I was eager to move there, but first I had things to do in Berkeley. Together with Chris, I had been asked to make a brochure aimed at raising funds for Vajrapani. I was given a room in the house of a Vajrapani couple, Gabriel from Haïti and his wife Lois. The house was at the top of Shasta road with a view of the whole of San Francisco and the bay with a peep right through the Golden Gate at the wintry sunsets. It was glorious and I, who love to be gazing out the window, could not tire of watching the shifting colors of the evening and the lights coming on in San Francisco.
I thought it was a romantic environment, S.F. is a Mecca for the tribes who were united in the youth revolution of the sixties, and here I was at the very epicenter overlooking it all from up the hill in Berkeley. My need for nature walks was satisfied by Tilden Park a few minutes away.
Within the tribe of Tibetan Buddhists I felt a direct approach to the spirit of Peace and Love. We were fortunate to have an extended visit of our kind teacher, Lama Yeshe, who enjoyed California lifestyle. There was an atmosphere of light-heartedness around him that made us all feel happier with our lives.

The true purpose of religion, as far as I can see, is to be a help in the difficult task of living and connect us with the unity and love that makes for true happiness. In Buddhism, there is no dogma, nothing you have to believe. You look for experience and experiment to build up your own understanding. Whatever happens becomes a teaching.
When a person gives up personal agenda in the compassionate service of others, then that person becomes a living bodhisattva, an example of that which is taught. Such a person teaches with his own experience and is pointing the way, but it is up to you to go the way. The teacher is not accepted point blank. I observed Lama Yeshe through thirteen years and sometimes under conditions of closeness, like living together, and always there was a radiance of gladness and humor around him that was uplifting for all.

(Spell check comment from my computer: Yeshe = yes he?)

Buddhism is an ancient and wise course in self-help, to be employed in daily life.
I keep talking about this because I meet people that are totally opposed to all religion or completely uninterested in any religion, and I feel that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. Among them, I suspect, there are some who just do not recognize their true religious feelings as being “religious”. What it all comes down to is how we act and what the results are, for our self and for others. Ignorant people often create misery for themselves.
“If your actions brings greater clarity and more compassion,” said Lama Yeshe, “then you are following the Buddha’s way, whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, and if not, then you may call yourself a Buddhist, but you are not one.”

I’m digressing. Back to Berkeley hills. Lama Yeshe asked me what I planned to do and I said I would stay at Vajrapani Land over the winter.
“So short!” he said.
I think that was the moment when I began to realize that I was not on my way to India anymore.
Høne’s husband, Chris, had taken vows as monk and took off to Nepal to meditate and Høne and I moved with the kids Thor(5) and Amrit(4) into a tepee on the Ridge at Vajrapani Institute for Wisdom Culture, or, more simply, the Land. It was lovely to suddenly have a family and be part of a community devoted to the dream of building a place of calm for teachings and retreats, a dream that they were already living. For me it was a natural continuation of the time I had spent in Kagyu Ling and Kopan, where I had also been involved in building a center.
The Ridge had a compelling view down the valley of King’s Creek, ending in a blue mountain range on the far side of San Lorenzo Valley. At the end of the Ridge was a platform with the tepee where we stayed through this hot and dry summer that stretched into October. The sunny afternoons we rolled the cloth up on the western side and opened up for the view and the breeze that wafted up the valley with a hint of the cool ocean.

Next to the tepee was a light construction with corrugated sun roof, open on three sides to the oaks and madrones that covered the hill. This was the Ridge Kitchen, a communal center where half of the folks had dinner together every day. The Land had two such communal focal points of which the other was Jackson’s Kitchen further up the valley.

That year the creek was running strong all through the summer and I went down with the boys in the hot afternoons to cool down. My principal occupation was to paint a thanka for Chris that was the most complicated thanka I have ever painted.

Children's conference.

Space Garbage

On January 11th. China sent a missile out in space where it smashed an old weather satellite 520 miles above the surface of the earth.

Donald Kessler used to work for NASA, and it was him who gave name to the Kessler-syndrome – the conception that one day there will be so much scrap metal in space that it will be impossible to send up vessels and satellites.
He says to the newspaper that the Chinese missile test only has precipitated the inevitable.

Quote

To oppose something is to maintain it.

(Ursula K. LeGuin, ‘The Left Hand of Darkness” p. 146)

From Nepal

Among the friends who came to Lama Yeshe’s teachings in Kopan were Lena, Nick’s girlfriend, and Høne with her new American boyfriend, Chris. Lena was living with Nick in a house in the fields outside Bodhanath and it was in their home I first met Chris. He was part Native American, pale with long straight dark hair. That first night he didn’t say a word, and he intrigued me. He was living with Høne in one of the houses that circled Bodhanath stupa. From these houses, looking out one side there was the stupa, looking out the other side there was rice fields and the mountains in the distance.

Chris

I became a frequent visitor in their house. Chris had many fantastic stories about out of body experiences and other supernatural phenomena. I took acid with him and had one such thing happen. We were looking at the starry sky and had located Gemini and Leo. “I don’t see Cancer,” I said, “it should be there in between.” Then, suddenly, we saw it: a radiant picture of the crab, and it was like the whole sky was a network of luminous correlations. I felt that this was how the ancients must have seen it and named it.

Bodhanath stupa

Nick and Lena took care of a puppy that was born in their house. He was named Skorpe (Danish for Rind) because they fed him cheese rinds. He became big and strong and was devoted to the different Danish households that he would often visit and where there was always some tidbit for him.
One time he came to my rescue. I came home late and when I passed the Bodhanath stupa a pack of feral dogs started barking aggressively at me and soon had me cornered, my back against the wall. Then one detached itself and jumped up to lick my face. It was Skorpe. As soon as the others saw that I was a friend they closed in on me with wagging tails and wanted to be petted. Later there was a raid on feral dogs, but Skorpe was too smart to take the bait of poisoned meat, maybe also less needy because of his Danish connections.

Quote

There is no sweeter revenge than requital of hatred with deeds of good will.

(Paul Carus, ‘Karma’)

One Year

Today, February 7th. 2007, is the first anniversary of this blog. I will profit by the occasion to thank you all, who visit here, for your interest and encouragement.
When I started out I had a lot of material ready: in writing, photos and paintings. Now, more and more, I have to create new material for each post and it naturally slows down the process. Please, bear with me and keep coming around.

Welome

A new citizen of the world came forth on February 1st. Arianna Shoshana Hunter, Daughter of Ellesa and Michael.

Life is Good

From Patagonia.

Krishna

Journey to the West (Topanga Canyon)

After three months in New York, I began to feel that big city life would drive me crazy and when the chance came for company with a young French guy we decided to take a drive-away car cross-country. We had limited time, but we made a stop at the Hopi reservation to pay our respects to the American-Americans. A second stop was at the Grand Canyon; truly a breath-taking encounter with American nature. The final destination of the car was another especially American phenomenon: Las Vegas. Here we split up and I took the bus to LA, or, more precisely, to Topanga Canyon where Sherab’s twin brother, Bruce, and his Danish wife had invited me to visit. They lived in a bus and had given me a fairly good description of how to find them.

Arrived in LA it was already early evening. I asked for Topanga and was shown to a bus. The bus let me off at a crossing. It was Topanga Avenue and it stretched infinitely to the right and to the left. There was nobody around. All I could do was take a guess, which way was right, and then start walking.
It was getting dark and there didn’t seem to be anybody living in the neighborhood. Finally a car came by and stopped for a red light near me. I approached the car to ask for help, but as soon as the driver noticed me he started up and ran the red light to get away. That was the last living being I saw that night. I found a deserted place behind an office building and rolled out my sleeping bag.

Next morning I found a gas station and the attendant told me that I had taken the wrong direction and anyway, Topanga Canyon was quite far. I had to take a bus. When I arrived I followed the directions, but where Bruce’s bus should have been there was no bus. I called Sherab in New York and after several phone calls it was revealed that Bruce had gone with the wife and the bus to visit his parents in Escondido and wouldn’t be back until a week later. I didn’t have money for a hotel, in part because Sherab hadn’t paid me what he owed me, so I told him he had to help me out. After more phone calls Sherab had me hooked up with a Buddhist center in LA and I reached them before nightfall. They took good care of me till Bruce returned.

I was still captivated by America, even more so after crossing the continent and seeing the West coast. I had expected everything to be new and efficient because all the new things in Europe that I disliked, like freeways and supermarkets, all came from America. Instead it was often more funky and old fashioned here than Europe. Topanga was some kind of hippie community; it even had a fair while I was there, attended by Timothy Leary. Ten years earlier meeting the acid guru would have fascinated me; now he seemed a bit passé.

Flowers

Vinci Diamond

A pic from the net. I don't know any more about it.

By Nick

My friend Nikolaj Fenger did this drawing of me back in the sixties.

What is Real?

The present moment is the only thing in existence; therefore everything comes down to the contents of this moment.
But it is steadily changing from one mood to another, from one state of consciousness to another, and though we can categorize and name a good part of it, it still fundamentally remains a mystery.

There is a tendency to take some states as being more 'real' than others. For instance an event in the full light of day is taken for more 'real' than a dream.
I don't believe in this distinction.
If there are different levels of reality, I believe that they depend on the intensity of the experience. The reason that the waking state seems more 'real' than a dream is that we can think of it in conventional language. A recurring nightmare, that I had when I was a child, could not be conveyed because there were no precise words for the sensations and feelings it involved. It had the quality of a ride in an amusement park; there was simultaneous terror and elation at its relentlessness. I wanted it to stop but even as I woke up it had me in its grip.

Looking back, I think this nightmare was maybe one of the most 'real' things that happened to me at the time. I now believe that it contained a vision of the true reality, and it became a nightmare because it threatened to dissolve my emerging illusion of separate identity. I think that if I had been able to accept it and merge with it, it would have turned blissful.

What is most real is hardest to convey because it is furthest from language. I had an experience on the top of mount Shivapuri on the rim of the Katmandu valley that was to me a unique view into wordless reality.
We were a few friends who had climbed the mountain to pass the night on its top in view of the high Himalayas. We were only two at our campsite; the others were exploring the surroundings. Bob was playing the flute and I was making a fire. When I stood up after blowing on the fire I felt I was going to faint but I wholeheartedly accepted it and concentrated on the point between the eyes.
What followed were moments of reality that cannot be described, but their intensity has not diminished in memory.

I was aware and full of wonder like a new born. I knew nothing, I thought nothing, but things were happening that filled me with intense wonder.

Then, suddenly, I felt a pain in my shoulder, and with the pain came knowledge: I was lying down looking at the snow mountains but the perspective, of course, was unusual because I was lying down. The strange thing that moved my whole being was the sound of the flute, for Bob had continued playing though he saw me fall like a log, as he said.
I was lucky too. I could have easily hit a boulder when I fell, for the grassy terrain was full of them. But when I accepted my dizziness I consciously gave myself over to the Spirit with full trust.

Goddess Funk

is an all women band including friends of mine.

Journey to the West (New York)

In the summer of 1977 I took care of Tågarp school where I had been living with Don Cherry and his family. I had decided to go back to Nepal, and when Don insisted that I see New York I thought I could just as well go that way since Nepal was pretty much on the opposite side of the globe.
I had never liked America and all the Americans that I met had left their country in disgust and confirmed and reinforced my dislike. I was turned off by the foreign policy, the lack of social conscience and, above all, the racism. But Don’s insistence and a natural curiosity overcame my reluctance and early in November I flew to New York with Don.

The sheer size of everything was overwhelming and I loved it right away. Don had a friend, Sherab, a white guy who was a monk in the Tibetan tradition. He had a five-story house downtown Manhattan. Each story was one big room stretching from the front to the back with eight supporting metal rods from ceiling to floor.
Here I was installed, on the second floor in a closet-like room under the stairs; it was like camping out, and when, after Christmas, Sherab got a bunch of unsold Christmas trees and tied them to the rods, I was camping in a forest.

Many things were going on in the house. The first floor was rented to flea market sellers on a weekly basis and I became the rent collector. There was often problems with the heating system and when I went on my round to collect, I was met with: “No heat, no rent!” and had to let Sherab continue the negotiations. I was not held personally responsible for the lack of heat and became immediately friendly with some of the sellers who were real characters.
The second floor, where Sherab and I resided, was dedicated to the Samaya Foundation and used for avant-garde concerts and poetry readings and here I met a variety of New York artists and also two young black guys who worked for Sherab. I was shocked by the distance between blacks and whites in America and how easily the ugly specter of racism stuck out its head. One of the boys was suspected of theft and took it for granted that I also suspected him and I had to tell him how I came from a different place and grew up without racism.
On the upper floors construction was going on and here I met and befriended some of the workers and learned a few things that came in handy at a later time when I build my own cabin in California.

Mountain

From the Himalayas 1970.

NIA

I am a cat-person but in 1993 a car had killed my cat Scarface and I was reluctant to get another cat because it had hurt so much.
Then one morning just after Christmas, when I was lying in bed half asleep, I had a clear vision: I saw a calico cat sitting in tall grass. It was such a forceful image that I could not ignore it and I thought, if I meet a cat like this I know we belong together.
A couple of days later there she was. My friend Ron had acquired a key to the cages at SPCA and when he went there to inquire about a lost dog he noticed a tiny kitten that stretched her paws out of the cage as if saying, please save me! There was no one around and he quickly opened the cage and transferred the kitten to his backpack. That night we played drums together and Ron said, I have a kitten in the car; maybe you’ll want it. She had obviously had hard times; somebody had cut off half her whiskers and one eye was infected and running with pus, but I fell in love right away; she was so tiny and trusting.


That night I didn’t get much sleep because she alternately wanted to come in under the bedcover or get out to breathe.
Next day I named her for the day in Kwanza that was her first day in my house: Nia, meaning purpose - we are here for a purpose, and we should think about it.
Most of my cats had been strays or had been left to me by friends that moved, so I hadn’t been with a kitten for a long time. It was a lot of fun for she was addicted to play; she didn’t ask for food but she begged to play. Already on her second day she learned to use the cat door and she had impeccable manners from the beginning though I spoiled her. I let her lie on the table while I was eating and if I had something that she liked I would give her a bite or two or let her lick the plate. But she was always patiently waiting to be offered.
One day I was drumming and I looked around and couldn’t see her anywhere until I looked down. There she was curled up, asleep right under the drum.
She was very independent but she loved to be with people. Often she would come when I was reading in bed and settle on my chest, purring loudly, with her face a couple of millimeters from my nose, and we would be together like that, face to face, for fifteen to twenty minutes and then she would leave.

The reason I write about Nia now is that today it is three years since she passed away. She had been sick for a while and when one day she lost her balance and fell over, I knew that she was dying. She was diagnosed with a tumor on the side of her nose and nothing could be done, but she didn’t seem to be in pain and she slept most of the time. As the end came close she wanted to be near me day and night. She slept next to me in bed and I had to arrange my cover as a tent over her so that she could breathe.
The last evening we were drumming and I closed my door to let her sleep in peace, but when I checked up on her she had crawled toward the door and since she wanted to be with us I put her on a pillow where we were drumming.
The next morning I awoke at seven. Her breathing was sometimes so faint that I thought she might die any moment. After ten I got up, had a bite of breakfast, and lay down again next to her. She got into a phase of rapid breathing that lasted over an hour, and then she had a spasm. It was terrible to watch; she flailed her legs in the air and gasped for breath. The breathing seemed to stop, and it looked like the moment of death had come, but the spasm started up again. It went back and forth like that four or five times before the breathing finally did stop and no spasm followed. She was gone.
Nia, farewell! May my love be like an angel at your side through the shadow lands.

A basket case.

Her favorite spot.

At ease with other felines.

Walt Whitman

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

From Leaves of Grass.

Quote

The best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good.

(Richard Wilhelm in I Ching, The Book of Changes)

Peyote, the Sacred Cactus

When I had this peyote cactus it was perfectly legal in Denmark. One of the big flower shops downtown Copenhagen had the whole window full of them. That's where I bought this.
Then I painted it and then I ate it.

Poland

When I met Don Cherry in 1974 and he invited me to come and live with him in Tågarp in Sweden, he was about to go to a jazz conference in Poland with his family and he wanted me to join them.
To visit Poland was like time travel, going back 40 years to when I was ten years old. The countryside, which consisted of rolling hills very similar to the Danish landscape, was hardly touched by technology. The main road, two lanes with no painted lines and only a car or two passing every hour, was winding through small villages where women with kerchiefs chased the geese off the road. The grocery stores did not have an abundance of stuff, but what they had was old fashioned quality, like homemade.

At the jazz conference Don suggested to the other teachers that they all take time off to get together and rehearse a piece to perform at the end. That set Don in his element as composer, arranger and soloist; he knew how to unify and inspire and the show was a great success.

Because my participation had been decided at the last moment, I had only the three days visa that you could get when entering Poland. People seemed nervous about my situation, but there was no place to apply for an extension before the conference was over and we came to Warsaw.
When I presented the passport with the expired visa, the immigration officer was obviously perplexed; it had apparently never happened before that someone flouted the rules. Should he put me in jail or should he ignore the misstep? I was silently repeating the mantra of the powerful Guru Rimpoche for protection while he nervously leafed through the passport waiting for a solution to the problem. It worked! With sudden determination the officer stamped my passport and gave it back with a smile.
We went to celebrate at a restaurant and in our elation we didn’t notice the time pass until an hour had gone by and we still hadn’t been served. It could only be a case of racism, something we were unaccustomed to in Sweden and Denmark. In Sweden, driving once with Don, we were stopped and all Don had was an expired California driver’s license, but the cop was so thrilled by the meeting that Don could have shown him any old paper.

New Painting

The winter nights are good for painting, especially Friday night when everybody has things to do. I finished this one last night. The design was made on the computer and then done over with watercolor and colored pencils.
I call it 'Radioactive mushroom and new life-forms'

Selfportrait

1964.

A Soft Pad

The summer of 35 when I was ten years old I passed the holidays in Sweden with my mother and my aunt. We lived in a cabin and took our meals with other vacationers in a dining hall.
One day, just before lunch, I got something in the eye and my mother couldn’t find it and get it out. I felt miserable and didn’t want to eat, so my mother and my aunt went off to lunch without me.
Soon I began to feel lonely and hungry and the eye felt better. I decided to tie something over it and go to lunch before it was too late. I searched my mother’s drawer for a handkerchief but instead I found a marvelous soft, sausage-shaped pad with a string at each end – just the thing!
I tied it over my sore eye and went up to the dining hall. When I entered, a hush fell over the company and all eyes turned towards me. A wave of suppressed mirth went through the room and my mother got up and took my hand and led me back to the cabin to find a more suitable pad for my eye. When I realized the use of the pad I had found, I was embarrassed, but my mother just laughed it off and took me back to get my lunch.

Portrait with Frame

Watercolor from 1965.

My Corner

I love the beginning of the year. All the hulabaloo is over, things are getting on track; the light is coming back. It was a brilliant day today, warm and sunny. I went out bicycling twice but there wasn't much happening. When 4:20 came around I had already smoked a pipe and started painting, taking up the thread from, maybe, two years ago. Working on half done things.
When I go to the kitchen to get a plate, I think:

I am in a movie where I am spectator, actor, and director - and I hope: screenwriter too, but the script, I don’t know wherefrom it came.
How is this movie? Apart from the beauty, is it good? Is it the best I can do?

Maybe there is something in this allegory? I write it down on the computer.
Oh! My computer! What a toy for an old man.
Not so much running around, but the world at my fingertips. At least, the amazing blogger world. So, hey, I took some stills, like this of my corner:

Mandala

This is a mandala of the world outside and the world within connected by the senses, represented by the eye. A flower and the open sky symbolize the outer world, and the roots and a diamond hidden in the earth symbolize the inner world. This is a fairly recent painting in oil pastel.

Quote

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable, and therefore, not popular.
(Carl Jung)

Truth Catching up with Me

After ten months I finished with the military and I had a job waiting for me with a consulting engineer firm, Birch & Krogboe. This was different from the dream that I had tried to sustain of building bridges or railways in exotic countries. My work here was adding and multiplying endless columns to decide the dimensions of pipes and radiators in a complex of high-rise buildings. I had less free time than I had as a student and the first summer I could not get a paid vacation. I was given the option of an unpaid vacation and decided for two weeks in France.
There I had a couple of experiences that were hard to reconcile with my belief that I would grow out of my attraction to men. I was now 25 years old and had hardly had any satisfactory sexual contacts in seven years. A few not very successful encounters with women; that was all.
While I was a soldier, I met a young actress, who fell in love with me. I dated her for a while but one night when we were kissing goodbye, she was in the throes of passion and my cold feeling of inadequacy so embarrassed and scared me that it spelt the end of our relationship.
One earlier time in Paris, I had an affair with a woman, Yvette, who worked in a bar. Here again I couldn’t measure up to her desires. I was not impotent but I was just not interested enough to satisfy her again and again.
This was as far as I had gotten with women.

Now I had two weeks alone in France. Going south, hitchhiking, I was picked up by a man in his forties in a shining black Citroën. I didn’t understand much French, but the way he put his hand on my thigh did not need translation. To protect myself I covered my lap with my hands, but he placed his hand on top of mine; then I pressed my fingers together making my crotch unapproachable, but he still had his hand on my thigh. By now I was aroused, and I finally gave up my defenses and leaned back pretending to sleep. He at once opened my fly and his hand found its way in. I had hardly come when he stopped the car and told me that this was as far as he was going. I had to get out, and as I saw him continue down the road I felt cheated and dirty. I had not liked him, and yet I had been excited.
Back in Paris I went to a café to have a drink. There were several young Senegalese men at the bar, and I could not help staring. Shortly after, one of them came over and asked if I wanted to go with him. I did, and we went to my hotel. He was very warm and open, but as soon as we were finished he asked for money. I said he should have told me before, but he became threatening and I had to pay up. Again I felt cheated, and I was shaken by the intensity of my desires and the letdown they resulted in.

These two events shook me up. They turned out to be a prelude to my coming out. You can read here about how this happened.

Summer Day

Happiness is laying in the grass looking through the branches into the blue sky.