As you may know, Facebook is blocked in China. However, if I post
something to my Posterous blog then it gets posted on my Facebook, so
I'm going to give this a try and see how it goes. Word to the wise: if
you want to comment on this and also want me to see it, please comment
directly onto the Posterous blog and not Facebook. Alternatively, just
email me people.

Well, I made to Xi'an in one piece, though perhaps a little worse for
wear. The train ride from Beijing turned into 17-hour struggle with
comfort among the tightly packed seats. There were even people
standing in the aisle for lack of seating. Apparently they have no
qualms about selling more tickets than there are seats. For a a few
hours there was even a large, hard suitcase belonging to one of the
Dutch girls sitting across from me that was packed into the
nonexistent space between my legroom and theirs. Fortunately, a space
in the luggage rack cleared up and I was able to muscle the case into
the rafters, for which I believe the girls were equally thankful. I
always enjoy cute company on a long journey, but it help when said
cute company is more willing to talk with you. Their English seemed
more than proficient. Maybe they were ignoring me because they mistook
the overwhelming B.O. emanating from the guy sitting next to me as my
own scent. C'est la vie.

Where are you? Where have you been? Where do you now go? You, who saw me as a noble creature through eyes of yore. Alas, time reveals all truths and unravels all to be known. Through expectations and misconceptions, what once you thought to be perfection suddenly manifests lesser qualities to be born.

From the primal cave I love you still from the deepest realms of the earth. You push me away, striving for what cannot be, nor was ever there. The acrid taste in your mouth as you look upon me I find hard to bear. Your distaste and silence bring tears to my eyes.

Love is as powerful as the great ocean currents, into which we are just as easily drawn. Ever harder to find ourselves as each moment passes, what once was separate becomes one, all consciousness combined. At times life’s currents send me into a torrent or otherwise adrift, into a place unknown and discomforting to both you and me alike. Before we are torn apart or set adrift upon the oceans, I would ask that you see me truly. I would ask that you look into my eyes and gaze in understanding upon your companion and know me, as I would strive to know you as mine.

Without your bright heart and loving gaze as a beacon, I seem lost for a time, alone in the vastness of the oceans with no safe harbor in sight. Some would say that there are many fish to be found in the sea, yet they provide nourishment only for the physical body. For nourishment of the spirit I must find one such as you, a rare blossom fallen from celestial heaven, for a time adrift upon the currents of this terrestrial plane, providing comfort for a weary traveler such as me.

In ignorance I pushed your petals too far from my embrace, scattered on the wind toward calmer seas. I look back to gaze upon you, yet I find no one there. All that remains is your lingering scent and the thought of your deep seeing eyes framed by your beautiful face with its warm, knowing smile.

I hope you might remember me fondly, and forgive where I’ve strayed. I picture you now, purest blossom adrift on the oceans, sparkling with the light of the sun, nothing to hold you back as you strive to cultivate beauty from your limitless imagination and your personal knowledge of the divine.

Life creates much confusion in its wake
We are born pure under the chrysanthemum sun
Ignorant of the treachery and desire of man
We look to Mother as source for love and wisdom
 
Age ever tears us apart from this infinite source
The void of desire is bred through loss and wanting
Oneness is sought through the futility of human activity
Though the void is limitless and contains all existence
 
With your smiling eyes and curved lips I see deeply
Into the void’s vastness I venture with understanding
To fill the void I must soak up love’s vastness
And so by your laughter all is made true and clear
 
Those eyes, lips, cheeks, those curves of the body
All as they would be were I God creating a woman
In His wisdom He has placed your soul at my side
Providing warmth and light in the cold void of my ego

This is about a dream I had last night. Maybe later I'll elaborate on the dream.

 I stand among his flock
In this house built in his name
Though I don't believe he claims any one home
I feel my fleece is blackest of them all
A strange stringed instrument placed in my hands
They say to play for the glory of God!
My fingers move, and so it begins
They explore its neck, feeling at home
The caress turns to a fury
All reason lost in the heat of desire
Fire creates water as I flow through the depths
Releasing the finite pleasures to the infinite fold
Look! it says, look at what's done
Cracked reality, curious faces let in the sun
Listen! it says, hear what you've done
All their minds are tuned in as one
For you play not for what they call glory
But for the love of all creatures
You play for the pure love of God!

Behold!
These broad doors
Always shut, it seems
The storm of God-man rises
Ever raging beyond
Sparked from ego's greed
Eternal pressure pounds
Tendrils of the soul all tingling
 
Enter my thralldom! proclaims the blacksmith
 
Blacksmith!
 
In what chamber was forged this tempest?
Set to ruin these walls constructed in prostration
 
Wanderer!
 
My molten iron rages through your veins
Your kind are wont to feel its scalding
 
This oaken heart
Behold!
As it splinters and screams
Yearning to join without
Pulsing from within
The sinuous serpent's fold
Forcing all that lies therein
Our own creation set adrift
 
Enter my thralldom! proclaims the earth shaker
 
Poseidon!
 
Guide not my vessel to the belly of the whale
Mind's eye reveals a voyage into the abyss of desire
 
Wanderer!
 
In mindless hunger fire overflows the heart
Release your hold, balance wills its nature to transform
 
Rays of golden light, pure
Bursting forth throughout reality
Wrath of ignorance, incoherent
Smoldering in the warmth of creation
 
Realize its brilliance as grey reveals as light
Unfolding eternally outward, all-encompassing
The greatness of truth knows each one as all
And in knowing will be found that all is but illusion

If you would be so kind as to indulge me, let it be my pleasure to relate to you the brief tale of a young man. About whom some would say was possessed of an old gigolo’s soft soul in the mold of a hardheaded youth.

He didn’t have a particularly harsh upbringing—his mother’s love flowed as surely as the Amazon’s great snaking waters, his pool of opportunities seeming to him as bottomless as one of the world’s great oceans. Yet, for some reason, this youth came to find a bitter taste in his mouth as he bit into the fruit of adolescence. He found the customs and protocols of we the people to be irrational, inconsistent, and most particularly, severely ineffective in dealing with the conflicts of men and in discovering the true needs of the mind, body, and soul. In his subconscious, he knew developing these qualities would shed light on the meaning of life and the secret therein to attaining a true understanding of love. For surely, he thought, if one can understand truly the pure nature of love then one cannot but live in peace with the world.

There came a time when the boy found it harder and yet harder to comply with the demands of society. He began to create his own rules based on his own perception of what was just and fair, deciding those morals that to him seemed based upon ignorance and shortsightedness should not apply to him. Fortunately, a mother’s wisdom usually seems to gaze deeper than our own. His mother recognized the disdain and frustration with which her son faced the world. She knew that his environment should be made into one of an unorthodox nature, one that would encourage his innate abilities and challenge him in ways he would not otherwise take it upon himself to do.

At first the boy tried to function in this new environment in much the same way as he would the old. He found, however, that replacing the rigid, stone walls of old were flowing nets of yarn, all ready to tauten so that he might climb when needed, ready to unravel and open up when he needed to explore beyond the boundaries, and ready to be woven into a warm, patchwork quilt when he needed a reassuring embrace of guidance.

The boy flourished in this new, exciting world. He was initiated into life’s great possibilities, came to know and love many beautiful souls. Yet, as is common in such tales, discord was eventually struck between the boy and this world, causing great distress to all. It matters not who said what or who committed such and such offense, for in the end the blame lies in the nature of the ego, and in the inability to recognize love.

After this rupture, the boy left this world behind, believing it placed in his past for good. Little did he know, however, such influence is not so easily shaken. As he had walked away from it all, a strand of yarn from the net caught in his hair, leaving a flowing trail behind him as it unraveled from its unlimited source. Only much later did he notice the strand of yarn’s existence, and even then, did not recognize it immediately for its true nature.

In time, memories began to surface as the boy slowly grew into a young man. He came to understand and accept the significant meaning of the yarn. As his awareness expanded, the yarn transformed before him into a great quilt, patched together from all the bright wisdom and joy of the world from which it came. Now aware of its presence, the young man would bring out the quilt whenever the world seemed cold and void of light. In doing this, he would be reminded yet again of the great possibilities in life and of the love that is at the heart of all creation.

As he became aware of that love in his own core, suddenly it would burst forth from his body in all directions, illuminating all around him, flooding the cold uncertainty out from his true self. With this realization would come always a certainty of life’s good will, and so too the motivation once again to take up the materials set before him and with his own hands create from that a life of greatness and joy. For is not the highest form of wisdom the attainment of a state of pure happiness?

With self righteous ego
Worldly illusions forever seen
Enveloped by dark voided sight
Sword of light side-sheathed
Strong hands brandish its might
Cut, without thought, cut—its will

Some of you may know that I've begun to write a story based on my trip
to Mongolia in 2007. Well, I'd been rather stagnant in my writing, but
just the other day I had an inspiration to start my story in a whole
different manner, and wanted to share it with you. I've only typed out
a short bit of this new beginning so far, but I think it has potential
to be more interesting then where I had originally started. The basic
idea is that instead of starting from the beginning and going on in a
linear fashion, I place the first scene on the train going from
Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, and we're already in Mongol territory. I feel
this injects a more immediate sense of wanderlust into the reader,
reflecting more accurately how I felt on the journey. Also, in
starting the action here, the reader is left to wonder, "Why is this
man on this train to Mongolia? How did it begin?" I feel this is much
more effective.
 
This isn't a reboot, I'm not erasing what I have already written and
starting over. The idea is to take the story of how it started and why
we're on that train and place portions of it throughout the the story.
I don't know, we'll see what happens. Regardless of where I place and
expand upon my previous writing, this new start has given a needed
breath of fresh air to my motivation.
 
I'll paste something below. Let me know of any thoughts if you so
desire. I may post smatterings of the story as it progresses, though
never in its entirety. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to make
any of this public until it was complete, but I decided to give it a
go and see if even a few people read it at all and share their
thoughts with me.
 
__________________________________________________ 
 
Long strands of hair fell across my vision, altering the perception
already made strange by eyeglasses gone askew. I had been up for maybe
only ten minutes from what I'd like to say had been a long, blissful
slumber between soft sheets in a big, comfortable bed. Unfortunately,
such was not the case. I placed my palm on the glass of the window,
feeling the vibrations again surge through my arm, and continued to
watch the landscape pass by unchanging as we rolled across the earth,
the blazing sun rising to blind my hazel eyes as the distance to our
destination became yet closer with each turning of the train's steel
wheels.
 
Eyes closed, I formed an image of the tracks laid across the land. I
could picture them coming from all the way to the southeast in Beijing
where we had begun, running by all the small farms and kneeling
workers with cigarettes hanging from their lips, eventually coming to
the dry, cracked province of Inner Mongolia—what I like to call the
Pseudo-Mongolia—one of the many lands taken under the mighty
protection and authority of the Dragon to help create and expand the
One China, and whose inhabitants were now one of the 55 official
ethnic minorities of China. I continued to follow those tracks in my
mind as they came to the border, where their width broadened from the
standard size used in China to that of the typical Soviet era
tracks—another headache from those glorious days of the Iron Curtain.
The tracks went on, my vision passing beneath our own train carrying
my own weary body, flowing across the broad desert plain toward
rolling green hills and, beyond, the broad valley where flowed the
river Tuul, in which laid nestled Ulaanbaatar, capital of the Mongols.
Though I couldn't yet see those sites, my vision provided what to me
seemed a clear glimpse of the road set out upon the earth before me.
 
The cigarette between my fingers wasn't exactly helping to quiet the
hungry demands issuing from my belly. My mind drifted from thoughts of
rolling hills and flowing rivers to the more immediate needs of man
and his continuing existence in the form of the dining car. The roar
of the train grinding along the tracks became louder as the door
opened, presenting before me the unkempt profile of a broad sturdy
fellow.
 
"Oh, hey Ross."
 
"Mornin', sweetie. Got my lighter? I'm starving for a cigarette!"
 
"Right here, ya cocksucker!" I tossed the lighter, aiming for his
head. Fortunately, for him, my aim was off that morning and he easily
caught it.

I know I am! Just take a look at this ghastly BBQ creation and you'll either want to vomit or start drooling in delight.

Personally, I started drooling—but hey, I'm no Rabbi! To get a full rundown on how to create this masterpiece of pork cuisine, go to BBQ Addicts and start reading. 

Well, just got started on this posterous thing. I don't have the motivation to elaborate at the moment, but it could end up being a cool way to post quick thoughts and ideas while mobile. Basically, probably more things that no one will read, but it might be a good exercise in ego and maybe even a way to post things purely for my own benefit. Who can know what will come out of such a thing as this? ... I guess we'll find out!