A HAPPY NEW YEAR

TO ALL YOU WHO VISIT HERE AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST AND SUPPORT.

This is my last painting of 2007, finished yesterday.
As you can see by going through this blog I paint in many styles: mandalas, portraits, thankas, graphics, etc. but the most personal style is this that I think of as interdependent organic elementals. They have no 'meaning' other than leading the eye on a rhythmic journey through forms and colors.
I am always interested in feedback, so please comment!

SPIN

THREE BOYS FROM DUNUN VILLAGE

ALIEN IN STREETCAR

I used to feel like an alien on this planet and I still feel like that sometimes when I think about the crazy way affairs are handled here on earth.

PEASANT FROM ALGERIA

In 1967 when I lived in Ghardaia, an oasis in southern Algeria, I made my living by painting portraits. This peasant boy didn't come and pick his picture up.

SUNNY DECEMBER

A pleasant result of global warming? Or just another dry winter? The nights are icy, as they should be in December, but the days are like early summer in Denmark. I saw a fruit tree in bloom yesterday.

A corner of my room & a view into the music room.

A shadow of myself…

The weird window

The sun has set in the American suburb. African souvenirs.

Outside: Miguel's Saab and the Drum-Hater's house. I like to think that the drums she is forced to listen to every Tuesday and Thursday, without her knowledge are helping to heal her. She has had serious health problems, but show amazing resilience.

MOODS

When I am in a bad mood I think of this:
A long time ago I read an article about monthly mood swings and whether men had a cycle similar to what they had found for women. The rating system was a scale of five:

1) totally depressed and crappy :-((
2) not having a good day :-(
3) it’s OK :-]
4) pretty nice day :-)
5) cloud nine :-))
The rating was done three times a day: morning, afternoon and evening.

I was interested in the question and decided to try it out for myself. I rated for about six months and didn’t find any discernible lunar influence, but I found another thing. I worked out my average rate and it was exactly 3.0. I was pleasantly surprised; there had been some bleak times and I didn’t expect to come out OK average. It strengthened my belief in a natural balance in things.

I think that if I did such a survey today, I would again come out very close to average 3, but there would be way less ups and downs.

LOW TIDE IN SANTA CRUZ

"Give peace a chance"

HALLOWEEN GONE BAD

This is the pumpkin I grew!

SYNTHESIS

In Heglian philosophy Synthesis is the final stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis. Thesis being a statement put forth as truth and antithesis the negation of the thesis, based on experience.

So, what is needed as the world engages in religious warfare, is a synthetic religion that is in accord with science and embraces the Truth at the core the different religions and philosophies.

For example:
One thesis is that God created the world with the design of his intelligence, such as described in the Book of Books. The antithesis is that the universe evolved in the way proven by Science.
To resolve the conflict that exists between the believers of these two schools of belief we must admit that both are right.
Science, building on experience, is irrefutable and is obviously right about evolution.
In religion it’s less obvious what is truth and what is superstition, but, since the thesis is based on the Bible, that’s where we must seek its deeper truth. According to the Bible, God revealed himself to Moses as JHVH, meaning, “I am that which is”.
So the thesis holds that “That Which Is” created the world! Of course, “It” must have been there before the world was created, for something cannot come out of nothing.
But what exactly is it “That Is”?
That is a mystery, but in the belief of the American Americans it is called Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit. Science has found that the material world seemingly is built up of a mysterious energy in eleven dimensions.

The synthesis, the idea that makes a resolution of the conflict possible, is that “That Which Is” is an indestructible, free Spirit-Energy that eternally “Is” without any dimensions and that also exists manifested in continuous creation.
It is impossible to deny that there is intelligence in creation, but, as far as the evolution of life on earth goes, the intelligence expresses itself in evolution.
Evolution is continual creation.
This is true religion and goes far beyond words. The Truth at its core is this, that the actualization of being united in the Spirit is unconditional Love for all creation.
That is really all the religion we need.

The title of this picture is SYNTHESIS, and it uses the ancient symbol for spirit energy twice, spinning in opposite directions, as the thesis and antithesis.

QUOTE

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Bertrand Russell

A RUSSIAN PAINTER

Alexander Alexandrowich Deineka was born in Krakow in 1899 and died in Moskov in 1969.

Goalkeeper

Skiers

Sailors

Lunchbreak

POST # 400

Painted last night.

POOH & PURRY

Purry is of the age of consent, he is just small. He showed up here one day and I have no idea where he came from.
Pooh was living with a bunch of other teddybears not far from here. I came by when his house-lady had a yardsale. Pooh and I took to each other and the lady said, take him with you.
Now we all three share the bed.

BECOMING A DRUMMER

What brought you to the drum?

It was definitely smoking pot that inspired me. When I grew up everybody seemed to think that I had no musical abilities whatsoever. In school, on the first day of song class, we were tested. I was told to sing a patriotic song and, without knowing it, I went a half tone up in the middle of the song. The teacher took this as a personal insult, like I had done it on purpose, and I was classified as ‘brummer’ (growler), which meant someone who could not be taught to sing.
There was not much music in my childhood. Morning song in school was about all and I never gave it much attention. When I was twelve we got a record player. My first record was one out of a set of four with the beginning and the end of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. It made me realize that at least I could appreciate music. Later I got into jazz: Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and from there to Charlie Parker, be-bob and so forth. But I was convinced that playing was beyond me. I have told before how I drummed the first time shortly after I started smoked pot.

What was the next step?

Oh, drumming was an obsession among the hippies and I loved to be immersed in the trance of drumming. It was all improv and the problem was that nobody really knew what he was doing, and it would often end in confusion. Thunder-drumming we now call it!

So, when did you begin to study drumming?

In 82 someone at Vajrapani Retreat Center arranged a drum class with Arthur Hull. It was an eye opener and inspiration for me. I mentioned it to Gabriel, my Haitian friend in Berkeley, who had once engaged a Haitian drummer at one of his parties. He is a great arranger of parties and the next time I visited him there was another party in his home Saturday night. I retired while the dancing was still going, and I had just left the shower when Gabriel asked me to come back in, so I went as I was: completely naked. The reason he had called me was that he was giving me a Haitian drum, and it was quite symbolic that I received it in my birth suit.
The drum was carved out of one piece but had split in three pieces. It took me three years before I got it fixed. The first two were very rainy and the situation at Vajrapani didn’t leave me time to work on the drum, but the third year I finally got to it, gluing it together, painting it and putting skin on it.
Now I thought of Arthur Hull and decided to show him the drum. He was enthusiastic and asked me to bring it to his Haitian class, so they could see a genuine Haitian drum. At the class they asked me to play with them and I discovered that I could do most of the parts. I realized that I could learn traditional drumming and Arthur knew how to make it fun. He had a mountain class and I started going once a week.

When did you start to perform?

I kept going to class with Arthur and when the class became his advanced class he wanted us to “graduate” and become a performing group. So we became The Rhythmonauts, the explorers of rhythm-space. Arthur had many contacts to local venues and groups, and he got us gigs as warm-up band and such.
Our most challenging engagement was opening for King Sonny Adé, a real African band. They were so nice and encouraging; as I have found that all Africans are when they see that you are interested in their culture. Always very positive!

Did you do “graduate” studies?

With drumming study never ends. My second teacher was an African-American drummer named Simbo. He said that he would teach if I could get a group together, and that ended up being the Rhythmonauts. Simbo was strong on Afro-Caribbean and Senegalese drumming and for over a year we studied every Saturday afternoon with him. He also had a dance company, Ghost Productions, and we performed with them too.

How did you become a teacher?

It began with Mabiba Beagne who settled down in Santa Cruz to teach dance and drumming. She is Congolese but has studied in Guinea and she started a dunun class. I liked that so much that I concentrated more and more on West Africa, especially Guinea. They play three dununs with djembes.

Dununs? Djembes?

Sorry! Dununs are barrel drums with cowskin at both ends and they are played horizontal with a stick in the one hand and the other hand plays a bell attached to the drum. They come in three sizes: the small one is called Kenkeni, the middle one is Sangban and the big one Dununba, meaning big dunun. With them plays several djembes. The djembe has a bowl with goatskin connected to a hollow foot and is played with the hands.
So, through Mabiba I met Lamine Dibo Camara who did workshops in Africa and I signed up for that winter. I came back from Africa with a lot of stuff and in order to practise it, I had to teach it to my friends. That was the beginning, but I really like teaching and I mostly do it for free just to spread the good vibe. The more people know the more fun to play.

You are still playing at the age of 82?

Yes, I play, but I don’t play for dance classes much anymore. I tire more easily and you can’t just stop in a dance class. Simbo once said to me: “I should have met you ten years earlier and I would have made you a master drummer.” That was a nice compliment, but it also points out the truth that you have to begin early if you want to reach the highest level. I was about 60 when I started. Many of the young ones who studied with me has now by far surpassed me, but I’m still good at teaching beginners and I have two classes a week that I enjoy very much.

DUNUNBA ACROBATS

From Guinea.

AREA SCATTER

Area Scatter was a shaman. After a seven months and seven days retreat he came back as a female entertainer. Here he/she is singing for a local king in Nigeria.
Thanks to Likembe.

BLOGGING

With blogging I ventured into virtual reality, the land of fantasy and the miracle of world wide communication, and it opened up a new world, whose existence I had had no idea about.
It also takes a lot of time! I am impressed with the amount of work my blogger-friends are putting in and I love the openness and kindness, the sharing and giving, that I have met on the net.
Being retired (from what?) and living in good health on an adequate pension, I have lots of time - but still not enough time for everything: visiting the whole line of links, commenting, hunting for, or creating, new material. I am so slow.

I have two blogs; this one, with less than 100 hits per day, and BOYS I LIKE, which is of special interest to gay men and has 3800-4200 daily hits. I am sometimes tempted to try to manipulate the visitors from BOYS I LIKE and send them here where the theme is more eclectic in order to connect on a deeper level. On the other hand, I believe that connections come about naturally by the force of who we are and where we are. Because the internet is a net, each point will naturally connect to a point nearby, and in the virtual realm ‘nearby’ means of similar mind, of similar purpose, united in spirit.
I don’t believe in coincidence.

My view of the world is not original, but it is confirmed by experience, and as far as expressing it, it is done with logic so universal that it embraces the seemingly illogical.
Anything is possible!
My belief is the opposite of fanatic, and it reconciles all conflicts in the unity of Spirit. It is simply the belief that everything IS Spirit, the belief that the primal stuff, that science is pursuing with a unified theory, IS Spirit.
Science calls it energy, but the ultimate question is: what is the character of this energy? Is it blind or is it ‘Being, Awareness, Bliss’ as the Hindus say? I cannot see how awareness and consciousness could arise out of simple multiplication of blind energies. Awareness must be inherent in the primal energy and that’s the reason I name it Spirit.

This is really Animism, the earliest man’s knowledge and belief. Millions of years they lived and handled the world from this knowledge and only for a fraction of humanity’s stay on earth has the growth of greed transformed the earth and now threatens to destroy it. The only thing that can save us now is love, pure love that is equal for all creation, because love is the actualization of our unity in Spirit.

This is my hobbyhorse! In Denmark we say ‘ride sin kæphest’, ride one’s stick-horse; I don’t know if ‘hobbyhorse’ calls up that same image. Anyway, I digress; I don’t believe that happenings are fortuitous. I think that what we get in life is what we need and what we deserve. The only sin is to forget the pure love due to unity.

“When you are happy I am happy; that’s the formula. First you, then me! That’s all happiness is; it’s just the heart being free.” Said Sakyong Mipham Rimpoche.

Did I get off the subject of blogging?
Not really.
For me blogging means putting the cards on the table, show who you are and connect with those of the same mind.

IN FRONT OF THE POTALA

This classic picture was taken in Kathmandu in 1971. It's me sitting on the right in my Tibetan chuba. It is made of homespun yak wool and all hand made. The moths finally got it this year, but I haven't had the heart to throw it out yet.

OIL PASTEL

1980

FIRST LOVE

Among my mother’s friends was an older couple that lived in the small town of Nykøbing on Falster. Their grandchildren, Birgitte and Poul Reimer, were close to my age. Our first meeting I don’t remember, but a now lost photo showed Birgitte and me as toddlers talking, while Poul is looking on from behind the bars of his playpen. Later, when I was twelve and big enough to be on my own, I lodged with the Reimers when we visited in Nykøbing. The three of us teemed up well, with Birgitte as the moving spirit. She was a spunky redhead and a graceful dancer. Poul was a sweet kid, but overlooked by the grown ups since he had no obvious talents and did not excel in school like his sister. We did performances for the parents and their friends with Birgitte as both director and star.

At my first visit Poul and I were put in the same bed at night and Birgitte on a cot next to us. While she was asleep Poul and I fooled around with each other, and for the first time, being not alone, I came, while Poul at ten was still too young to have an orgasm.
Ancher, their father, was a bitter man. He had expected to follow his father as head of one of Denmark’s great banks, but because of a scandal involving the Minister of Justice, who was Jewish, he ended up as manager of the local branch in Nykøbing. This was his reason for being anti-Semite, but his mother-in-law was Jewish. Naturally there was no love lost between them. Ingse, his wife, was about 15 years younger than he and suffered from this constant war in her family. In everyday life it was glossed over, but at parties the alcohol brought it to the surface. Ancher would loosen up, I think that was the only times I saw him smile, but Ingse would be in the bedroom crying and complaining about her unhappy marriage. This happened a couple of years later when we were old enough to participate in the parties.

We also had our own illegal parties where we competed with the grown-ups in consuming vast amounts of alcohol. Ingse and Ancher were gone for the weekend and the word was put out. At this time Birgitte had a boyfriend. At the party they got into an argument and Poul threw himself down the stairs to divert their attention from the fight; he deeply loved his sister and was never jealous of her status as the preferred sibling.
In the early morning everybody helped clean up, but since they didn’t know where everything went, it all got jumbled, the glasses were where the plates should have been, the forks were mixed with the spoons, the person who rolled up the window shades tied some special Gordian knots, and at the last moment, when the keg was rolled out of the living room a remnant of beer ran out on the carpet and made the room smell strongly. We were found out right away, Ancher tried to catch Poul who had a narrow escape. In the end the tempers were calmed and we were punished only with a lecture.
This time I slept with Poul in his room in the attic. He had a huge old bed that had belonged to his grandfather. Here we took our innocent pleasures together every night, taking turns caressing and masturbating each other. Next time I returned we went at it with even more zeal. When I arrived, I asked for Poul and was told he was in his room. I ran up and found the door locked. I guessed what was going on in there, and kept knocking, saying: “Let me in, let me in, it’s me!” The door was opened, and there was Poul with a friend whom I had met before, when he was a very fat little kid. He had changed into a young Adonis, and I was pleased to find him included in our lusty play.
Poul came to visit me for Easter when I was 17 and living by myself in a pension. As soon as we were in my room we fell on each other with passion, and those four days we were as close as we would ever get, both best friends and hot lovers.
A year later, Poul came again and I was of course all fired up with expectations, but when I suggested that we take up where we had left, he turned me down with no other reason than he didn’t want to. I did not insist, for I knew that I was in the ‘wrong’.

Easter 43

So, I swallowed my sorrow and we remained best friends, and when Poul later moved to Copenhagen we saw a lot of each other, long nights of talk and drinking. Poul had quit his job as an apprentice in a grocery store and started at the Royal Academy of Arts and when I came out and changed my life, I chose to study art and be a painter in part because that was what Poul did. When I told him of being gay, he said: “If I ever said anything that hurt you, please forgive me.”
Poul married a strange American woman who drove him to drinking and on to his first mental breakdown. He divorced, but the alcoholism stayed with him, the first many years not too heavily, but later alternating between being on the wagon and taking a yearly binge of excessive drinking.

Early morning after a night of drinking

When I had begun to smoke pot I traveled to Paris and from there further south with a boy I had met. We paid a visit to Poul who was passing the winter painting in Nerja on the south coast of Spain. The visit was not a success. There was a definite split between the potheads and the alcoholic, between the gays and the straight that made communication impossible. It seemed to be the end of my closeness with Poul.
I traveled a lot until I moved to California in 77, and then in 84, after 22 years of silence, I wrote him a letter that became the first in a correspondence lasting till we met one last time. In long letters we recaptured memories from our childhood and youth together and exchanged the stories of our lives, and it felt as if our friendship was intact, but it was nourished by the past; in the present we were far apart.

In 89 I came to Denmark after twelve years absence. Poul was living in Roskilde, a small town about an hour from Copenhagen. I went there to visit with some friends and naturally also to see Poul. My friends took me to lunch in a restaurant owned by Poul’s second wife and she immediately grasped the phone and called him. He invited me over and I had a shock when I saw him. He had changed into the spitting image of his father, Ancher, whom I had feared and loathed when I was young. I was presented to his third wife and their daughter but I could not stay long because I was engaged for the evening. I think the haphazard character and shortness of our meeting hurt him, for after that he didn’t answer my letter and our correspondence died out.
Four years later he was found dead in his studio, sitting in his chair with the morning paper and a cup of coffee.

HIPPIES IN MARRAKESH

A drawing from our hotel room in Marrakesh 1966. In the foreground Lone lying, behind Anja and a German boy, Wolfgang.

MY AUNT INGER

My mother, Agnes, was the fifth of seven children, and early on I knew by rote their names: Inger, Eva, Anne Marie, Ellen, Agnes, Vilhelm, and Gudrun. Six girls and a boy.
My aunt Inger was the oldest and not as bright as the rest of the siblings. The story went that she had fallen off a swing and hurt her head when she was little. There was a degree of snobbery in the family; lack of intelligence, or just lack of higher education, was looked down upon, and there had to be an explanation for her not being up to the family standard.

The five oldest girls with Inger at the right, my mother at the left
In my home a lot of the social life was centered on Contract Bridge, the cardgame that rivals chess in complexity, and which was played with gusto. Inger liked very much to play, but it was annoying for the others when she stumbled through the game and brought her team down, so it was always a sacrifice to include her. My cousins and I didn’t much like her; maybe we were cruel in our self-centeredness, but we picked up on the grown-up’s attitude.
Inger also had a particular little cover-up laugh she laughed when everybody else was laughing and she had not understood. She was thrifty, not to say stingy, with small amounts. I remember her coming into the dining room with a plate in her hand, saying: “The liverpaste is still good, I have scraped the mold off.” That, of course, became part of the family lore. It happened in a summer cottage she had built in Arild, our favorite summer spot at Kullen in Sweden. Now we stayed with her instead of renting, for the family feeling was a strong undercurrent beneath the sometimes-choppy waves.
When I came out, I didn’t come out to Inger, but told her only about giving up my job as engineer and wanting to study with an art teacher and paint. She asked to have a talk with me and begged me to promise that if I hadn’t “succeeded” in a year’s time I would return to engineering. I was very insecure, but, without trying to hide my uncertainties, I made her see that such a promise was impossible and absurd.

For many years I didn’t see aunt Inger that often, for I lived far from her and traveled a lot. Several times she helped me out and she never withdrew her love or judged my life. When it came to true generosity, she had a big heart. As I was the only one in the family who didn’t have a secure and well-paid job, she wanted to let me inherit her whole estate, but my uncle, who invested her capital for her, talked her into establishing instead a trust fund, the interest of which I could receive as long as I lived. The others agreed to wait with their inheritance until my death. That was a good solution for me; I still have this welcome addition to my income. If I had inherited the capital it would have evaporated long ago.She was the only one of the six sisters who didn’t suffer from depressions or other mental illness, until, in her last years, before she died at the age of 92, senility clouded her mind. When I came back from two years in France and said I would go and see her, I was told: “It isn’t worthwhile, she will not recognize you”.
“Well I’ll go and see her anyway,” I said.
She was in bed and I could see that she was close to death.
I took her hand and she asked: “Who is it?”
“Åge,” I said.
“A nephew of mine?” she said, and I kept her hand in mine and sat with her for a while. I allerted the family and she died two days later.

Funny, I shaved once in my sixties after having had a beard for many years. Whose face should look out at me from the mirror but my aunt Inger’s! It was disconcerting - though I had come to appreciate her after I grew up and when her age fused her shortcomings with the natural frailties of old age. How many hours of Scrabble have I passed with her, leading to uncountable victories for me!

BAMBOO

Photo by Tony Orlando

THOUGHTS ON REINCARNATION

Reincarnation is very simple; it’s mental energy. Your physical energy is exhausted at the time of death and the energy of your consciousness separates from your body and goes into another form, that’s all. That’s the simple explanation. Mental energy and physical energy are different. Modern science has some difficulty with this. They do explain some difference between mental and physical energy but Buddhism explains it more clearly.
(Lama Yeshe)

Question asked Khandro Rimpoche, a recognized reincarnation: Can you recall things of your past life?
Answer: It depends on what you would call remembering. When one talks about the previous incarnations one does not necessarily say that it is something like flashbacks. But it is definitely something that one can feel.


Think about these three possibilities:
After death there is nothing.
After death there is an eternity, either in heaven or in hell.
After death there is a revision of the life lived and a return to a new life.

Think about why people are born into such different circumstances.
Is it just that everything is meaningless coincidence?
Is it that God is cruel and without caring?
Is it that we are all bound to go through life’s possibilities according to our own actions?

For me there is no doubt about the answers.
Reincarnation is the only way to explain the difference in our lots, without giving up a belief in some kind of ‘divine’ justice. This justice manifests itself in the law ‘What-You-Sow-You-Shall-Reap’ and that makes us directly responsible for our own life, from its original circumstances to the way it develops.

According to the materialistic view all activity, bodily and mental, ceases at death. But since the material elements basically consist of energy and we don’t really know anything about the true nature of this energy; how can we know for sure - or deny for sure – anything that may be going on in the mysterious realm of pure energy?
We have enough reports of phenomena that cannot be explained, such as out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences and instances of clairvoyance and telepathy, to make simple coincidence very unlikely.
The spiritual view postulates the supremacy and unity of Spirit. The difference between this belief and the prevalent Western belief in God is that the Great Spirit inhabits everything and is not in any way separate from creation. This belief is more kin to animism, the most ancient belief of humankind.

Let us take a look at the cycle of life and death.
In the womb, between conception and birth, there is awareness but as yet no concept of life. Awareness is a quality of Spirit, and awareness contains memory.
Memory can be seen as being of three kinds that I will call: instinctive memory, immediate memory, and historical memory.
The instinctive memory is unconscious and it is necessary for survival in the world. It contains memory of skills and/or special phobias.
The immediate memory is the conscious memory of past events. This is what we normally call memory.
And finally the historical memory, which is special for humans, consists of the ‘stories’ that fixes the images of immediate memory into a fictitious past. It is also included in what we normally call memory. Because the historical memory is an individual transformation of the immediate memory, the same event is often remembered completely different by different people.

In early childhood, besides the instinctive memory, there may be shreds of immediate memory from last life. As the person grows older these memories fade away together with the memories of early childhood.
In the Tibetan tradition there is established a continuity between lives so that one can find the reincarnation of a specific person who has honed his awareness and thereby strengthened his memory. To be recognized he must choose, from among objects, those that were his in his former life.
The reincarnated is of course a different person with different genes derived from different parents and living in different circumstances; so what is it that he has brought with him from a former life, besides the fading memories?
He brings the honed awareness – like a light that dispells the darkness of ignorance, the source of all misery. He brings awareness with instinctive memory of skills that is perceived as giftedness or talent and makes it easy for him to relearn things.
Here we are talking about special individuals, but it’s the same for everybody; mental energy is indestructible in the same way as physical energy is. It can change form but there is a constant connection of causality and nothing is ever lost; so everybody is bringing with them baggage from former lives as fate decides. Cause and effect is like the glue that unifies the universe in the Spirit. In its subtlety it is what seems to be fate.
There is both determination and free will. When free will is in accord with the determined course, good luck ensues.

Death is the reverse of life; similar to the way sleep is the reverse of being awake. There are different stages and different states in death, just like there is in life, but they have a content that we can hardly imagine, except that it may be dreamlike sensations that we have no precise words to describe.
The first stage in death is the transition from life’s complex richness to the bare essence, the pure Spirit of one’s own being. According to tales of near death experiences this seems to begin in bliss, but soon one must confront truth. The mythical ‘judgment’ is the suffering or the joy that this confrontation will provoke, according to the life one has lived.
To go through this process there must be a structure connected to the awareness. This individual structure of awareness I call the Soul, and it is the mental energy that sustains, but is independent of, the physical energy.
The next stage then, is where the karmic repercussions of life have to be gone through. This could be ‘heaven’ or it could be ‘hell’, but in the end it will be exhausted and the wish for a new life will guide the Soul to seek reincarnation.
At conception we are thus transmitted from the unlimited mental realm of death into the bare essence of a one-celled organism. Conception, like death, is a paring down to the essence and there is bliss in both transitions, but it doesn’t last !

In all sentient beings the illusionary is coupled with the indestructible. If one can see through the illusion, only the indestructible is left.

TONIGHT

Do you like the new colors ? I'm happy about the title banner - don't ask me how I got that metallic effect ! It came by itself; I used iphoto and changed the colors on and on, five or six times, and suddenly the colors began to mix and glint like metal.
I had to change the other colors to fit but that you probably will not notice.

I got an e-mail from Ellesa and Michael saying they had been reading the blog. "You are all over the place," they said, and I guess that's true. I like that !

Besides blogging I also make jam. Today I made apple-guave jam out of the last Red Delicious and the first small guavas. The guavas have an intense taste that give pizzas to the apple sauce. For dinner I made Danish pancakes = crèpes, and ate them with vintage rhubarb jam. And I mean vintage ! I've had this jar and a jar of green tomato jam since 1987. My friends urged me to throw them out, but before throwing them out I ventured a taste and they were both totally preserved and tasty.

It's getting late and I wish you a good night and a bright morning.

A KISS

I couldn't decide on which blog to post this my latest drawing - so I put it on both !

NGAWANG CHOTAK

A word about Ngawang Chotak, whom I met in Nepal under the name of Chris in 1970.

Chotak recently went to a center in San Francisco that helps alcoholics and while he was there he lost consciousness. He was taken from the center to San Francisco General Hospital. The doctors found bleeding had occurred in his brain, like when a trauma to the head occurs. Further, he was put on a respirator, which means the doctors believed he was not able to breathe by himself.
Now he seems miraculously to be coming back from another brush with death. He can breathe by himself and communicate. His sister and his oldest son are with him and his younger son is on his way from Nepal.
Pray with Ngawang Chotak’s many students for his recovery!

THE TRAVELERS

It has taken time to sort out the photos, but here we are at the entrance to Yokohama's China Town, at the bus station in Yokohama and with June in his house.

OCTOBER SUN

INSPIRATION

This grafiti is inspired by the Music of Africa.
I'm listening to Baba Maal from Senegal.

A FIRST GAY PARTY

I had a best friend in high school but after we graduated we had less and less contact. The last time I saw him was a Saturday night about four years after graduation, and that’s when I realized that we had nothing in common anymore. The atmosphere had been strained and the night boring and I left early around eleven o’clock.
On my way home, walking to the train station, a group of laughing partygoers called out to me and when I responded they invited me to a party that was going on in the house right behind them. That was just what I needed to dispel the gloom of a friendship extinct.
I started out with some stiff drinks and then I noticed that the girls danced together and the boys likewise. Even though this was three years before I came out, I suddenly had no doubt that I belonged. I was rather drunk and I spilled my heart, how I was in love with a straight boy. I got some sympathy and soon forgot my laments and joined the party, totally letting go of my inhibitions.
One guy eagerly pursued me, but he didn’t interest me; there was a boy that I had my eyes on. With him I danced and there was a strong current between us. After a while we sneaked off to find a hiding place where we could consume our passion, but we had hardly gotten started when my pursuer found us and joined in.
This was my first genuine homosexual experience and however exciting it had been in the moment, the next day found me in a very different mood. I felt soiled and debased, I had been drunk, I had had sex with two persons I didn’t know and I had lost my undies in the mess.
The straight boy I was in love with was staying with me for the summer while we were both doing a workshop in survey. We were together every day, but I couldn’t talk to him about it. In comparison to that messy night and my drunken lust, my love for him seemed pure - but was it? Not really! It is true that I was happy just being with him, being his best friend, but the undercurrent of physical attraction was never the less at the bottom of our connection. My relationship with him repeated my pattern of furtive approaches to pleasure. If we happened to be in the same bed, I rolled close in pretended sleep. He, of course, had his suspicions, but since I was not explicit, it went on for several years and never came to any kind of clarity.
When he found a girlfriend and began to prefer her company to mine, it spelled the end of our closeness.

MY MOTHER - BORN OCT. 10, 1887

My mother always gave total support and she had a strong mind. As a young girl about nine or ten years old she had the sudden realization that religion was just old wives tales and since then she believed only in science. What science could not explain was better left alone. She became a chemical engineer and was working in chemical physics. In nineteen seventeen she was engaged to be married, but her fiancé died in the Spanish flu in 18. He left a teen-age son Jørgen and my mother was close to him and took care of him. When he became an officer in the army they drifted apart and in I my time they didn’t see each other often. He had married a woman who suffered from depressions. In the end she committed suicide by going away and taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a hidden place. My mother talked about this and I remember her having some admiration for a job well done, so to speak.
Jørgen shot himself when the Germans invaded Denmark. The government didn’t put upany resistance and his soldier’s honor was shamed.


After the death of mother’s fiancé she moved in with her elder sister, Eva, and they had great sisterly love for each other. Two independent women, young, free, educated, and spirited, living with a circle of friends in the liberal middle class.
They both had a couple of serious amorous affairs. I never could make my aunt Eva tell me about hers, but I knew about my mother’s.
She had an affair with her married boss, professor B. How many years it lasted I don’t know, but if it hadn’t already ended it was broken in the summer of 24 when she met my father and they fell in love and conceived a child.
My father was a painter with some succes in academic circles, married to a Polish artist who painted lyrical and genuine still-lifes with flowers. They had a daughter who was thirteen years older than I.
To be a single woman with child was not common in 1925. But my mother stood up for herself and she told family and friends how happy she was, and was generally accepted.


The birth was difficult and she had some complications, but they were soon healed, and that summer she often saw my father and I imagine they had a happy, romantic time. He promised her to get a divorce and to marry her, but I think they must have known that their happiness was fragile, for marriage was still a strong institution at that time.
When I was about a year old my father’s wife found a picture of me in his pocket and with her wife-power she made him promise never to se my mother or me again. He wrote to mother that he felt obligations towards his wife, whom he had brought to Denmark, and he thought my mother more able to be single.
I wonder what she felt, but it is my guess that she realized that life with my father might have been difficult and that living with Eva and having a child was in many ways ideal. I never felt that her life was not fulfilled, not until circumstances changed and her strength gave in.


She loved me totally and in spite of working 9 to 5 she gave me ample time. Every night we would sit by the lamp at one end of the sofa and she would read to me. She didn’t want to read things that she didn’t like herself. Of the early things she read I remember Hans Christian Andersen, Winnie the Pooh, Oliver Twist, Gulliver’s Travels and The Three Musketeers.
She was like a lioness if anybody threatened the apple of her eye, mama’s boy!
The time we were closest was when I was thirteen. That summer I traveled with mother and Eva to France where we visited with my former schoolmate. It was a fairytale trip for me, a new world opening up while I was still protected and taken care of. After that I began more and more to pass time with my peers, the war came, and decline set in.

Professor B had turned bitter and began to torment not only my mother but also his other assistant, who was easier to get to. My mother had reached menopause and the bitter unfriendliness at her workplace began to take its toll. She brought home a notebook where she had written down his harassments and she would often cry when telling about it. The assistant comitted suicide, and according to my mother it was he who drove her to it with his unpredictable rages when his unclear orders were misunderstood. Added to this was the gathering tension in Germany, the persecution of Jews, and also an estrangement from her old friend Holger. The cause of this was Holger’s wife, who could not accept her daughter’s marriage to a young teacher of proletarian roots. My mother gave shelter and help to the young couple, and as a result she was not invited to Holger’s 50th birthday. That was like a slap in the face. Years passed without communication and it was a thorn in my mother’s heart.


In 1940, three weeks before my 15th birthday the Germans invaded and occupied Denmark. My mother’s depression had completely taken over and incapacitated her. She was bedridden and every day when I came home from school I visited her and tried to cheer her up – a Sisyphus task!
She was scheduled to be hospitalized in a few days, when one day I found her bed empty.
“Your mother has gone to get her hair done”, said the new housekeeper, and so, when I later heard the front door I went to the top of the stairs to see mother. But it was Eva.
“I thought it was mother”, I said, and in that moment I read the truth in Eva’s face, and we both knew that there was no doubt; she had taken action and nothing could be done about it.


The impressions from the final years have always seemed to overshadow the feelings from happier times. There are images in my mind, of course, from these times, but I was still a child and her love was the very element in which I lived. With her sickness the communication turned into something more like a chore. You had to be careful what to say since everything could be the cause of new worries in her troubled mind.
It felt like a betrayal that I, who had always participated in every aspect of our family life, had been kept ignorant of the suicidal thoughts that mother had in fact expressed to Eva. She had preferred to leave, and even though I knew that she had done it in part because she knew she was a burden to us, I felt both bereaved and guilty.

Now our two lives span 120 years, and I still often think what she would have made of my life and times.

QUOTE

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

IS THIS REAL?

YES! It is called a 'Fire Rainbow' - One of the rarest of all naturally occuring atmospheric phenomena. The picture was captured on the Idaho - Washington border, and the event was reported to have lasted about 1 hour.
Clouds have to be Cirrus, at least 20K feet in the air, with just the right amount of ice crystals and the Sun has to hit the clouds at precisely an angle of 58 degrees.
(From Deejohnized)

THE 20TH DUNUN VILLAGE

The showers and toilets were finally ready and Chris performed the opening ceremony all-alone!!
Again, it was a small gathering, but the music and the dance were raging already Friday night. Rain was expected on Saturday, and during the afternoon it fell, mild and refreshing, without stopping the drums.
Sunday the sun was out again and there was still dance classes going on and a small group of drummers even stayed the night over.
I learned a lot of new stuff and enjoyed this gathering very much. I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures, but here are some for your enjoyment:

Ruben, Chris, Adley and Mario

Tenara

Friday night

The view from my camp

Raindrops

Greg, Diensu, Adley and David

This is not photoshop…

but a trampoline