The Imhotep Construction Company

Finish

2011-11-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

This is the last post for my Imhotep Construction Company blog.

Thanks to all of you who have visited--it was definitely my pleasure to communicate with you!

I will continue posting on my other blog sites--see you there--and visit my new site:

tommymorganstern.blogspot.com.

...

Amethyst Earth

2011-11-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Remember the overnight bus ride.

Your palm had a double life line--
I never saw anything like that.

The jewelry shop had lots of pretty things
But the best was the amethyst earth.

...

Movin On

2011-10-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

Temecula Freeway View

Temecula Gas Prices, 8/22/11

We were looking for a different place to live.

Temecula, where we live now, is a new town designed for working-class people with kids. Lots of schools, little league teams and like that--not bad, but not us.

Front Street, Old Temecula

Maybe back to San Diego?

Driving down I-15 is not a pleasant experience and there is no other way to go. Sometimes fourteen lanes of traffic all jammed with daily commuters--no, this is not a good way for human beings to live.

We visited some addresses of the apartments we could afford in the city. Disaster zones!

Other places?

Rents so high two adults working full time at good jobs could barely cover the expense and the insane commuting is expected--it's part (or most!) of your southern California experience.

We have looked at all the coastal towns from San Diego to San Francisco. Nothing.

So we are going to leave the sunny southland for a while.

Temecula Morning

Lets go live where it's cool, foggy and rains.

It is time.

Beach Path, Trinidad, CA

...

46. Pilgrimage End

2011-10-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

"You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."

I never went back to Italy or Il Poggio and have never communicated with Thielo or his sister except to acknowledge their letter and express my feelings about our loss-- their mother, my friend.

Elisabetta was my strong connecting link with that phase of my life and I believe to try to continue or pursue that life would amount to the grasping some wise Buddhists caution us against.

I have never been able to work with clay again somewhat to my regret. The essential space, materials, kiln, time--these things have never come together in my life again. (Though I am not finished with life in this body yet by any means.) Papier mache is my current substitute for clay. It's temporary (just like everything else) and cheap--flour, water and recycled cardboard and newspaper with magazine illustrations for color.

Well then, what does a pilgrim do when the pilgrimage is done?

This particular American pilgrim went to Russia, found a teaching job at a university, met his mate, returned to America and waited until it was possible to marry her, and as a married man needing an income has worked as a substitute teacher in California until the unpleasant children disgusted him away from teaching, worked as a sales clerk until the huge retail store closed down, worked the twelve-hour night shift in a bunny suit in a factory clean room until the heat and noise became unbearable, learned the copy and shipping business until he asked for a month off for a spiritual retreat and the company decided to give him a permanent spiritual retreat and has tried without much success to be an artist and writer.

But the hidden pilgrim inside continues to live and even thrive!

Good for him and Good for you!

TW

.....

45. A Name

2011-10-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

The name my parents gave me, Thomas, suits me to a "T" (for Thomas, of course!).

Thomas Jefferson comes to mind--Thomas the Doubter, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Tom, Tom the Piper's son and Tommy the Drummer!

I was named after Tommy Morgan--an old German piano player friend of my father--and I like that.

I like that Morgan means "morning" in German.

There is something about names and the sound of them that sometimes seems awfully meaningful important.

The very sound of them.

"Aum"-- THE sound to so many people. Vajra guru Padmasambhava--such a power name. Jesus Christ--name of a name--as they say. YHVH. Jehovah. El. There is something about a name.

In my life "Elisabeth" is a name that seems important to me personally.

Elisabeth-- my mother's middle name-- I was with her when I was born and I was with her when she died.

Elisabeth English, the young woman I was so crazy about that died in that tragic plane wreck in Hawaii so many years ago.

And Elisabetta Studer at Il Poggio, Italy.

Sitting on her stool by the table-high cooking fireplace at the dark end of the big kitchen behind the big wooden work table which was like a magnet to all of us--guests and workers. Usually smiling. Seldom talking except when it was necessary. Just being herself. Moving slowly, methodically--getting everything done beautifully without the slightest fuss.

I waved goodbye to her and the rest of the staff when I rode my bike away to continue my pilgrimage to Holy Mountain--now many years ago--and when I left Europe I took a northern route through Germany and never returned to Il Poggio.

Back then I intended to go back and work on more ceramics some day but first I wanted to see my parents and stay a while in California.

But one day, just a few weeks after my return to California, a letter came from Elisabetta's son Thielo--Elisabetta was dead.

Such a shock.

She was such a presence I could hardly believe that she was gone.

When I was working on the clay at Il Poggio I sometimes imagined that I was preserving some words for the future--like on the burned clay tablets discovered at the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro--so I incised a classic Zen remark on some clay tablets and fired them for future generations: "Before illumination--cutting wood, carrying water. After illumination--cutting wood, carrying water."

In his letter, Thielo had used these words to describe his mother.

Yes.

Years after the events I have been telling about in Italy, I was driving in Plumas County, California--driving the windy highway through the beautiful mountains and enjoying the scenery--when I had the feeling that I was missing something--that I should stop and look around--so I pulled over to the side of the highway, got out and walked down the road a way.

Almost covered by bushes and leaves to the side of the highway there was a small, faded sign: "Former Location of Elisabethville".

Wasn't it?

...

44. Woman in Black

2011-10-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Medici family had built another huge mansion on a hilltop about 200 yards from Il Poggio.

This mansion was not as large as Il Poggio but was a good sized stone chalet.

A dark-haired woman of about my age lived alone in this mansion whom I met several times walking in the fields, Sometimes she visited Elisabetta as a neighbor.

Married to a very wealthy Italian who was never around, she spoke English with a British accent was obviously well educated. She was always dressed entirely in black and on cold days wore a theatrical long black cape which made her look kind of spooky when she was out "on the moors".
She invited me to visit her to view the house and it was quite an interesting old place. As a nice historic touch, the old Medici family crest--an arrangement of balls in bas relief like the Olympic Games circles, decorated the main dining-room mantelpiece.

She was obsessed with death--her own --and had purchased a nice grave site in a cemetery she could see from an upper floor window of her grand house.

"My life is over." She told me several times--and obviously believed it though she was in good health and, as I said, was about my age--and I personally never believed MY life was over--and in fact I have lived several lives since then!

But she had definitely decided that she, mournful soul, WAS the woman in black.

...

43. Another Winter

2011-10-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

I got to remembering another winter I had spent at Il Poggio-- and this was the winter there was a frost in these Tuscan hills that sadly killed groves of old olive trees.

It was new year's eve but I had gone to bed early as was my habit in those days.

The bed and breakfast hotel rooms were full of paying guests so Elisabetta had moved me into the drying room of the ceramica. That evening she was firing some pieces in her big walk-in gas kiln.

Of course there was a new year celebration party in the main dining room, but I planned to sleep through.

A little after midnight some tipsy part-goers erupted into the room where I was sleeping to wish me a happy new year. I had made my bed up very comfortably near the ceiling on top of some wide drying shelves.

The guests had expected to find me me freezing in some dank cellar and instead found me in the snuggest, warmest situation in the whole medieval stone place.

...

42. Winter Quarters

2011-10-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

During this visit, I spent the winter months at Il Poggio enjoying the friendly people, the healthy outdoor work, the excellent food and a warm little private room across a tiny lane paved in broken pottery from the main buildings.

Pete had restored this little room for his own use before he moved to Switzerland with Dora and he had built in some unusual and creative touches of his own.

He had set some colored wine bottles into one of the the stone walls which provided some beautiful colored lighting when the sun shone through them and he had cantilevered some flat stones into an opposite wall to provide a few steps up to the nest-like sleeping loft he had built.

He had also made a large central fireplace which was very welcome because the winter nights were cold--though it was very seldom cold enough for a frost in this part of sunny Tuscany.

This little stone living-room was adjacent to other simple rooms used for storage and other maintenance work and the whole were covered with the heavy antique thick pink clay tiles I have described before.

Was this not a perfectly snug place for an artistic, romantic sort of pilgrim with poetry in his soul like me to winter in?

...

41. Talking Pilgrimage

2011-10-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

When the week-end yoga session arrived, I was there and ready to learn and talk.

I had learned a little about hatha yoga in Honolulu some years before and was practicing a few of Yogananda Paramahamsa's yoga ideas during my pilgrimage--in fact, what little I knew of pilgrimage was influenced by the sanyasin ideas of the yogis I had read about--so I guess I was OK for the evening talk.

The Italians were very interested in the presentation of the two German yoga teachers and we all practiced asanas and breathing techniques all afternoon and most of the evening. We ate a nicely prepared vegetarian dinner and then,after a question-and-answer period by the Germans, I was asked to talk

Which I did.

My voice is naturally sort of soft and soothing so most of the listeners--who were tired out from the day's activities--seemed to me to kind of drift away into revery--or maybe dreamland--but I spun my yarns anyway for about half an hour and then we all went off to the beds provided and I, at least, slept very soundly.

The next morning Wolfgang met me in the hallway and congratulated me on a very interesting talk. I said that it seemed to me that most of the participants simply went to sleep, but he assured me that that was not the case--that they enjoyed my stories very much.

Then he handed me a can full of money. "We are taking up a collection." he said.

"Oh?" I said, "How much should I put in?"

"As much as you want!" he laughed, "It's for you!"

That little can-full of money--Deutschmarks, Lire, French and Swiss franks-- carried me through Turkey, to Holy Mountain in Greece and back to Germany months later!

...

40. Yogis

2011-09-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

I was living at Il Poggio when my birthday arrived and Elisabetta took me to one of her friend's houses to hear a talk about yoga by a couple of young German men who were fluent in Italian and English as a birthday present.

Wolfgang and his younger brother Gunter were good men and very knowledgeable about yoga. They were followers of Swami Rama, the founder of the international Himalayan Yoga Institute, and headed a branch of that yoga school in Ahrensburg, Germany.

Their talk was mainly about the benefits of yoga--mentally and physically--and they demonstrated a few of the asanas and breathing techniques. The Italians at the meeting were quite interested it seemed to me--and several of them wanted to have a more in-depth experience and suggested a week-end seminar.

The German yogis arranged a sleep-over meeting weekend and invited me to attend--they suggested I could give a short evening talk in English about my pilgrimage experiences. It was clear that all persons of a certain class in Italy spoke several languages anyway --English being one of them--so my talk, even in a foreign language, might be of some interest.

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39. Party Me

2011-09-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

Personally, I enjoyed Pete's party to the max.

I didn't have to do anything--I was just another guest--except that I was neither so young, so beautiful nor so rich as the other guests.

I fit in as well as I could and enjoyed the idea that I was a part of a scene that I had only watched before in movies.

The women were charming. They seemed to like speaking English to a real American (like me!) and with my pilgrim's whiskers, long hair and hard-time traveler's outfit I must have been at least a conversation piece.

The men were mostly either young and beautiful and rich or slightly older, beautiful enough and very, very rich.

Leather jackets and silk scarves were in for the men and bare arms and shoulders were the costumes of the women--and the whole thing was really too much fun!

For directing traffic at the improvised parking-lot, Pete even had one of his skier buddies dressed as a professional parking-lot attendant down to the smart black cap and little leather change pouch they must carry in Rome or Napoli--though I personally have never had a Lamborghini to turn over to any parking lot attendant anywhere!

There was plenty of the appropriate delicious foods and mandatory superb wines free for all!

Truly a world-class molto wunderbar magnifique fiesta!

...

38. Pete's Party

2011-09-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Pete had been working on digging out the catacomb-like cellars beneath the main building of Il Poggio for months.

His goal was to make the space useful again--but it was soggy, hard work.

I offered to help dig and carry out the mud and soil of ages, but he wanted to do it all himself and, like I said, he was a very creative and imaginative person.

When he had finished his digging work, he built a bar and turned some stone and brick alcoves into candle-lit roomlets with comfortable lounge seating. But he wouldn't let anyone enter the cavelike rooms to see what he was doing!

He was saving it all up as a surprise for one grand party!

Pete had more jet-set friends than you can imagine since he had worked for some years as a very popular young bartender in Interlaken, Switzerland and he invited all his international friends down for his grand party.

When the expensive sport cars started arriving on the evening of his party it was clear that this was going to be the event of the year! Everyone young. Everyone beautiful. Everyone rich. La Dulce Vita come alive!

Pete had created--all by himself-- what to him was the perfect nightclub setting for his one-night bash and it was grand!.
.

...

37. Fame

2011-09-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

This one-man show at Il Poggio was my third in this lifetime one-man show.

The first was at Gima's Gallery in the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu many, many years ago--an exhibition of oil paintings in a sort of abstract mode I developed during my years as an undergraduate. I grandly thought of the style as "abstract expressionism" and considered myself to be a contender. I didn't sell anything.

The second show was outdoors--no gallery--on the beach near Marmaris, Turkey where I found temporary work one summer at a beach camp for German tourists in "caravans". I made paintings in house paint on scrap boards--abstract subjects again and Mexican colorful. I sold everything I painted cheap so I could have some traveling money.

This one-man show at Il Poggio was a huge success though I didn't sell anything. Everyone who came to the opening--all Elisabetta's friends--liked my ceramics and the things my friends had created--but nothing sold.

But by this time I had decided that I didn't need any money at all to travel as a pilgrim. In fact, I had discovered that it was more interesting to give any money I had away from day to day so I would start each day fresh without any money at all.

And I never begged for money either. It just seemed that anything I needed would come to me anyway--I still don't know how it happened, and looking back at those pilgrim days many years ago it does seem rather impossible--but there it is.

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36.One-man Show

2011-09-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

I made several visits to Il Poggio over a period of four or five years--an always welcome part-time unpaid worker-- and I eventually accumulated enough finished pottery objects to have a one-man show in Elisabetta's gallery.

I thought it would be more interesting to have some artwork made by the other artists at Il Poggio, so my show was not a strictly one-man affair.

One of the young German woman potters also did clever needlework--decorating old blue jeans and shirts which I thought was very interesting--so I asked her to show some of her creations along with mine.

Elisabetta's sister Dora did some very unusual animal decorations on-ceramic plates and large salad bowls--so I asked her to show some of her work too.

Occasionally Elisabetta would make suggestions to me about the exhibition and about what to include and the show shaped up into a nice eclectic selection of work, but she left me pretty much alone to do what I wanted.

There was no stress or pressure at all in the preparation and I was quite oblivious to the passage of time at Il Poggio--doing my usual chores and adding to the show pieces as I wanted.

One afternoon Elisabetta asked me to carry some trays of sandwiches and fresh fruit out to the gallery and I was happy to comply.

"Who are these things for?" I asked her.

"For the opening of your show this evening. I have invited some of my friends which I think would like to see your exhibition."

Of course she had told me the date of my show, but I had so completely lost track of calendar time that I didn't even know that my big evening had arrived!

...

Vacation

2011-09-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Fans!

I'm gonna take a short vacation.

See ya back at your favorite computer monitor in a week or so...!

Fun to you!

Tomasito

35. Granite Porch

2011-09-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Pete was doing some work on his cottage and--just like him--there was an impossible but fun task which he had decided to accomplish.

He had come by a BIG slab of dressed granite somewhere--it was about three by five feet square and about four inches thick. It was a BIG, solid, heavy slab of granite!

He had decided that it would be fine as his back porch floor--you would step out of his back door-- which was about six feet over the ground level--onto this slab and then down some regular wooden stairs to the back yard.

When I arrived he had already built four sturdy pillars to support the slab so the porch floor, resting on these pillars, would be just a little over shoulder height to a person standing on the ground. When the slab was in place he himself would carpenter in some wooden stairs and add a handrail. Perfect!

But--how to lift this mighty slab up over the pillars and into place at the door--remember this is a small Swiss village--not a California ranch-style suburb with lifting machines and contract laborers easily available.

Solution: wait until you get six friends visiting at the same time and they can lift the slab into place by brute force.

Pete was especially happy to have me visit because I was his sixth man. The rest of his crew were strong looking skier friends who had just skied over the mountains from Interlaken where he had been a very popular bartender.

I didn't think it would be possible, but we did it! No smashed fingers no hernias--by golly we just did it!

Pete got his solid granite back porch!

...

34.Old Switzerland

2011-09-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

After walking about the village for a while, talking to a few of the residents and visiting the chapel, Pete said he would like me to meet some REAL Swiss folks--an old couple who lived about a half hour's walk further down the valley.

This elderly pair lived year-round in this most isolated part of the country. They owned a few cows and grew their own food as much as possible. They had lived in this valley their entire lives
and lived almost as the Swiss people did before the modern world encroached so thoroughly with railroads, highways, tourist resorts and ski lifts.

We left our bicycles in the village and walked the little-used path on down the valley for a half hour until we came to a green meadow pasture, unfenced, of course, with deep lush grass sprinkled with pretty wild flowers-- and at the foot of the pasture a postcard view alpine cottage where Pete's friends lived.

We walked up to the low doorway and Pete knocked lightly.

An old man dressed in what looked to be coarse but soft hand-made clothing and hand knitted sweater answered the door and welcomed us in with a delighted smile. His wife rose from a cozy-looking hand-made chair to offer her hand and to turn off their television set.

To my great surprise--they were watching Dallas when we came in!

...

33. Swiss Shangri-La

2011-09-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

After an hours ride on the paved highway, Pete and I turned off at a dirt path leading into a side canyon. We walked our bicycles along the fairly level path.

The surrounding jagged mountains and forest were as beautiful and pristine as you could want in this picturesque country and before long we arrived at an antique village of perhaps ten cottages and a chapel of the typically Swiss alpine construction.

Perhaps forty men, women and children presently lived in this village but they were not the original residents. Since it was not on the highway and only reachable by footpath, the village had been abandoned for years but had been bought entire lately by a small religious community.

These current residents were some folks who had decided to band together and live apart from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

And they had found what seemed to me to be a perfect refuge.

There was no sign on the highway that the community was here. No visitors or tourists were encouraged or expected.

They made no attempt to recruit new residents and they had no propaganda publications extolling their unusual village or way of life.

They were just here.

They were friendly and welcoming to me, I think, because I came with Pete, who spoke Swiss-Deutsch, knew everybody and was, it seemed, everybody's friend.

I felt very fortunate to visit this modern Swiss Shangri-La

...

32. Cherry Thief

2011-08-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

In the meantime, Pete the Welshman had married Dora the Artist sister of Elisabetta and they invited me to visit them in Switzerland.

At the time I was pretty furry--with a full beard and longish hair--sort of a hippy-looking chap--so I expected some sort of border problems crossing from Italy into Switzerland, but I told the customs officer I was visiting friends and mentioned their names and the village they had given me directions to--the officer waved me and my bike through and wished me a pleasant stay in Switzerland.

Pete was such a fun person to be around. Everything he did was done with maximum energy and enthusiasm--he was one of three young men I was lucky to meet in this lifetime: Nordic Norm in Lassen County California, Brian Callahan in Sonoma County, California and Pete at Il Poggio and now in Switzerland.

When I found the cottage of Dora and Pete, Pete immediately took off from whatever he was doing and took me for a spin by bicycle further into the mountains to see a religious community he thought I should visit.

Pete had a classic antique bicycle he had found and restored and was immensely proud of--especially its real leather covered narrow seat. I stripped my own funky German old-man-going-to-buy-bread bicycle of its bags and bottles and we took off.

It was a beautiful Swiss day and everything was fine.

Pete slalomed back and forth across the empty paved road with his usual joie de vivre which was so contagious--I started swooping with him.

There was a house at a sharp curve in the road and there was a cherry tree in its garden loaded with fruit hanging out over the road. I grabbed one cherry as I swooped under and around the tree.

"I thought pilgrims were not supposed to steal!" Pete cheerfully reprimanded me when we paused--and remember this is Switzerland. one of the very few places in this world where the inhabitants do not steal anything.

...

31.A Death

2011-08-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

While I was at Il Poggio there was a death in my family.

Bro Joe, that good guy, found out where I was (which took some detective work) and telephoned that Dad (Andy Wold) had died at home of a brain aneurism in Ventura, California. This was the only phone call I got during the long pilgrimage.

Dad had been feeling weak and had some painful back trouble before I left but both he and my mother, Lorene, seemed healthy enough to last some time--at least until I had finished this pilgrimage and had returned to the USA.

Dad had always been very good to me.

After Joe called I walked to the little church in San Vicenzo a Torre and sat for a while thinking about everything.

There is really nothing like the death of a parent to set one thinking as you either know or will find out some day.

In a way I was sorry I was not there to help out and in another way I was glad I had missed all the emotion and sadness of my grieving family the my parent's friends.

I was a long way away from Ventura, there was nothing I could do and I would continue my slow pilgrimage to Holy Mountain in Greece in the spring.

...

30. Old Mill Stream

2011-08-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things I liked best about Il Poggio was that it was a place with a lot of history.

What is old to an American just can't be as old as the old things here in Italy and I really liked that fact.

For example I was scouting out the neighborhood and followed a path behind the Il Poggio buildings and into the countryside. A couple of hundred yards along this woodsy path I came to a babbling brook issuing from a cavern in a hill.

I went into the darkish cavern and discovered that it was made with mostly collapsed old brick arches with a floor of dressed stones--and buried in the sandy clay bed of the stream was a big millstone--which weighed, I guess, several hundred pounds.

What the heck--this hillside must be part of an old dam. And this millstone must at one time have been part of a regular mill--a flour mill maybe before this country was all turned into vineyards.

When I asked Elisabetta about it she said that Il Poggio had at one time been a monastery and the monks had dammed the stream in the valley to produce water power for a mill!

This was all long ago. The mill had been ruined for years--maybe hundreds of years--and all that was left was the partially collapsed cavern and the half buried old millstones.

Lovers sometimes made the cavern a romantic trysting place these days. She said if you looked you could see places where candles had burned on long summer nights down by the old mill stream.

....

29. Wall Falls

2011-08-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

In the time I am writing about, Germany was divided into two sectors--east (the DDR soviet side) and west. As an American citizen I was welcome to come and go in the western sector, but not the east. The east was closed to Americans.

Before I came to Il Poggio I had been visiting friends in west Germany--in the province of Hesse--and I was riding with Siggy (Siegfried) one evening and asked him when he thought the wall separating the east and the west would come down. He said: "Not in my lifetime"--and that seemed to be the general opinion in west Germany.

I was on the road a few months pilgrimming before I got to Il Poggio and I had been at Il Poggio a short while when three East German young people in an old car arrived on their way to Rome.

Their car was jammed with stuff and they were a happy and carefree lot it seemed to me.

They told us this story: they were sitting in their apartment one evening when some friends stopped by and said that the guards at the wall separating east and west Germany were letting everyone pass through--no questions asked--no passports needed.

So these intrepid three--two girls and one young man--tossed everything they thought they might need into their old car and crossed to the forbidden west--and here they were.

I don't know how they found about Il Poggio but they stayed a couple of days and left for Rome.

I was so impressed I made a Wall sculpture with little figures climbing ladders and so forth and standing on a wall with the dates of the opening of east Germany and incised some kind of remark about freedom in English, German and Italian. I would have done it in French too but my French is too bad.

After Elisabetta fired the sculpture, I placed it on a pedestal in the Il Poggio garden.

...

28.Portrait Ceramics

2011-08-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

In the ceramics studio at LIl Poggio there were some small circular metal platforms which you could turn when you were working on a pot or vase and I discovered that they were perfect for building a ceramic portrait head on.

I know now that these devices are called banding wheels on sculpture stands. They spin and make it easy to look at the totality of anything in clay you are working on--like a full-sized portrait head, for example.

That's what I started using them for and it was good fun.

I got people to sit for me while I made portrait heads of them in clay.

The biggest problem, of course, was that the heads had to be hollow so they wouldn't explode in the kiln but I licked this problem by making a kind of honeycomb structure beneath the final head.

Another problem was controlling the drying of the portrait--if it was not done carefully, the clay would crack.

I learned to do this by judiciously keeping the head covered with a plastic bag except for short periods of time when I was in the studio to monitor the drying process.

These things took a longish time to make so I only finished about six in the several months I stayed at Il Poggio--some only bisque fired and some of them color glazed fired.

Tilo, Elisabetta's grown son, posed for me so I had the opportunity of making a life-sized portrait of him--a sensitive, handsome young man with lots of long wavy hair which I enjoyed making by layering thinner slabs of clay. This portrait was bisque-fired but not colored since it was effective as a work of art as plain reddish stoneware.

I found later, after I had left Il Poggio, that stoneware masks and portrait heads were made here in Tuscany long, long ago--so I was following, without knowing it, a very old tradition.

...

27. Jesus

2011-08-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

I got right back into the ceramica and clay work too.

Since I was on a pilgrimage to some Christian Holy Places and had been using the old Greek Jesus Prayer mantra as I rode my bike, (Kyrie Jesu Christe eleson mas) I thought I would make some little crucifixes out of clay.

This turned into a very interesting project for me and I made a lot of them--all about eight inches tall and four inches across at the widest spot. I rolled out the cross pieces and notched them and put them together like pieces of wood and then I made little Jesus figures--they were fun to do with Hebrew noses and kind of skinny but athletic builds.

I made tiny clay nails and used them to stick the figure on the soft clay cross and at first this seemed a good solution to an artistic problem--but then it seemed not so nice.

True this was just clay and I was just an artist--but it still didn't seem exactly right to me to be "crucifying " this little clay Jesus.

Something else.

At the time Pope John Paul the Second was the man in the Catholic Church and he carried a symbolic cross that was sort of droopy and sad looking. Well, that's OK for HIM, but I didn't feel so weepy about the whole thing, so I started by straightening the cross bar of the cross--no droop--and then I even started turning it UP like a smile. Well, why not?

But after making twenty or thirty of these things, I started to leave the cross out of the "crucifix" entirely and started to make the Jesus figure raise his arms into a dancing man. I turned the famous crown of thorns into a crown of flowers and his famous loin-cloth into a flowery dancing costume--more like a Krishna than a Jesus, maybe..

Oh, it was good fun and absolutely unique and suited my happy feelings exactly.

When these figures were glazed with color (some totally black or deep blue) and fired they were as good as I can do.

I was pleased and Elisabetta said I could have a one-man show in her gallery whenever I wanted to. Hooray!

...

26.Roof Tiles

2011-08-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

There was always plenty of interesting work for me to do at Il Poggio.

First Elisabetta had me paint numbers on the doors of her guest rooms with colorful animal cartoons as a part of the number. That was fun and luckily I had brought some tubes of acrylic paint and brushes with me in my little yellow wagon.

She said some of her guests had told her that there were scurrying noises coming from the ceiling in one of her upstairs rooms and she thought some squirrels had decided to move in so she asked me to help a couple of her regular workmen to solve the problem by removing the false ceiling from the room and opening it to its original height--which was about fourteen feet high.

She said that one of the previous owners had thought to modernize the room by putting in a regular eight foot ceiling, but she actually preferred the old original--open to the very pretty old pink fired clay tiles of the roof overhead.

There was some other work which also needed to be done to the tile roof, so we climbed up and removed and cleaned some of the original tiles.

The Italian workmen demonstrated for me the ancient method of making the tiles. They were formed from a thick sheet of clay being laid on the artisan's muscular thigh, then dried and fired.

These were the original tiles used by the workers hired by the Medici family in the original construction and some of the tiles had five or six inches of moss growing on them. We had to scrape off some of the moss to see if they were sound and so forth, but the workmen tried not to move too much of the moss because it takes so long to grow--it has their respect.

(We never found any trace of squirrels.)

...

25.Return

2011-08-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

I was a little bit lost--which was not so unusual for me--when I approached San Vicenzo a Torre and Il Poggio by bicycle.

I had followed the road signs from Florence and that I was close to my destination was pretty clear to me--but it was getting dark--it had been raining and was about to rain again--it was getting colder--and darker--by the minute, and I was exhausted tired.

My bike was loaded to the max and I was even pulling a little yellow plastic two-wheeled trailer with tools and bedding and stuff and I was more than ready to pause and stay for a while with my old friends.

I pushed my gear less bike--walking beside it--up a long, dark hill--thinking that maybe Il Poggio was at the top--but it wasn't.

I was so disappointed and frustrated I almost cried, but I rode back down the way I had come and found a little grocery and wine store still open at a crossroads. I asked the shop man if he knew of Elisabetta or Il Poggio and he said yes, she had just been in for something and Il Poggio was only a few kilometers down one of the crossroads--not the one I had was on!

I thanked him and rode the last bit feeling very much better.

I soon recognized the tree-lined dirt lane leading from the highway to Il Poggio and pushed my bike the last hundred uphill yards.

Oh my! Elisabetta was so happy to see me.

She put a lot of warm food on the big wooden kitchen table for me with a handy bottle of wine and called some of the guests to join in a home-coming celebration for the pilgrim--me!

I talked for quite a while-- telling pilgrim yarns to the cozy gathering--until we were all sleepy--then Elisabetta showed me to one of the nice upstairs tourist bedrooms where she said I could stay--and continue our old work-for-food and-lodging program.

Wonderful.

...

24. Pilgrimage Time

2011-08-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

I returned to Il Poggio a couple of years later.

This time I did have a goal and a purpose--though rather ill-defined by normal goal and purpose standards, I guess.

I was on my way by bicycle and slowly on a pilgrimage to Holy Mountain, Greece, where I wanted to visit the old monasteries and perhaps learn a bit about the use and manufacture of their sacred icons.

Winter was coming on and I hoped to spend the cold months at Il Poggio and leave for Greece in the spring. I was coming from Santiago, Spain, where I had completed a pilgrimage for an old German woman from Bavaria, who had asked me to do it for her, and I wanted to complete a pilgrimage to Holy Mountain in Greece for a Greek Orthodox woman in California who had asked me to do it for her, so I was no longer a wandering traveler, but A PURPOSEFUL PILGRIM, though I must admit I I knew very little about being a pilgrim of any sort--purposeful or not--since pilgrimage was not a part of the religious life of my family or friends. So I was inventing my own pilgrimage style as I went.

Elisabetta expected me to show up sometime, though because of my oddball traveling style, she did not know exactly when, but she DID more or less expect me. I didn't know myself when I would be at Il Poggio, but since it had been cold and rainy, I hoped it would be soon.

...

23. Free and Easy

2011-08-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

At the time of my life I am writing about I was in a sort of free-fall state of being.

I was in Europe for the first time in my life with no particular ambition or reason to be anywhere or do anything.

I had been a US Navy sailor, rock 'n roll musician and a university professor--divorced twice with my best latest good lady friend killed in an airplane accident. I had been around the world with a backpack and that is how and where I found myself.

And I was really enjoying my work and stay at Il Poggio.

I liked Elisabetta. She was different--a "boss" I could both like and respect. She was low-key but got things done. I think she was a few years older than me with a lifetime of European hotel management in a classy Italian/Swiss Lago Majori hotel, and she had bought and restored Il Poggio to be, like I said, her work of art.

Still, I was on the loose--free and easy--and after three or four months I was ready to move on.

So I left--backpacking toward the east with no particular goal--but I also kept in touch by mail.

...

22. Coke Bottle

2011-08-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Elisabetta was first and foremost an artist and Il Poggio was her creation.

She lived in her work of art--like an installation artist might live in a gallery demonstration--and she was always improving and experimenting with her magnum opus.

All of the staff were her helpers and assistants--she directed the work like a sculptor or fresco artist might have a gang of assistants to do the grunt work--and for a while I was one of her staff.

There was a very good unused stone building near the main buildings and while I was there Elisabetta decided to turn it into an art gallery. I think it was some kind of farm storage building when it was first built god knows how many centuries ago--one big room was two stories high and the rest had been divided at some later time into separate floors--floored (or ceilinged), as I mentioned, with wood from WWII ammunition crates from the USA. But the whole thing needed work. It was almost empty so not much junk had to be removed but it needed a lot of cleaning--and that was to be my job.

Our garden tools were stored in part of the building and there was a nice dry area for firewood storage. It was cool and darkish and a very nice place for me to work--I could easily visualize a great art gallery there and that is what I was going to help create.

Some of the floor was tiled and some bricked and I found one place where there was a big dressed stone block set into the tiles--I thought it looked like the first step of a stone staircase down, so I got Elisabetta's permission to spend some time digging out some of the dirt in the direction I thought a staircase to a cellar might be located--and, sure enough, there was a filled-in staircase there with stone steps going into a subterranean passage--all filled in with dirt. Aha! Maybe a treasure trove awaited me!

Removing said dirt turned out to be quite a chore and the filled-in cellar room turned out to be almost empty--but in the far corner of what had been the cellar floor I found a Coca-cola bottle of the old green glass kind. I think it had probably been left there by the workmen who filled in the cellar just after the armies had been through during the Battle of Il Poggio.

Elisabetta placed it proudly in her trophy case beside the other antique bottle I had dug up outside the main building.

...

21.Archaeological Dig

2011-08-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

When I was a high school lad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we Bulldogs (Go Bulldogs!) owned a ruined Indian pueblo on the west bank of the Rio Grande a few miles outside of town. There was enough interest in the science of archaeology for the school to hire a teacher and conduct one class and I was one of the lucky students in that class.

It was fun to learn about the way to dig old stuff up and think about the culture which had produced the artifact. We took a field trip or two to our Indian pueblo and I even helped find some bone needles buried with the remains of a body beneath the floor of one of the little rooms we excavated--just like Indiana Jones though he came years later!

So when I was at Il Poggio I was wondering if the Old people had left anything under the grass for me to find.

I was walking up to the main building one day with a spade in my hand after doing some gardening and just for fun I took a couple of shovelfuls of dirt out below the bank of the access road.

Holy Cow! There was a cool tiny glass bottle--very old--at the bottom of the hole!

That is the ONLY hole I dug and it was only a foot or two deep.

I know you don't believe this story but its true.

I gave the bottle to Elisabetta and she displayed it with some other prized objects in a glass-fronted case in the dining room.

...

20. Florence Alone

2011-08-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be interesting to see the famous city of Florence by myself so early one morning I took the local bus from San Vicenzo a Torre into the old City of Flowers.

The day was a Sunday--my "day off" at Il Poggio and it was high summertime--what I didn't know was that Florence would be jam-pack-sardine crowded with tourists and Italians.

To me, awfully, miserably crowded after my free and easy, quiet and spacious life at Il Poggio.

The city was interesting. The cathedral--huge--awesome construction and the other famous chapels and buildings--more than interesting--but horribly crowded.

I happened to walk by the famous Uffizi gallery--the place that contains Michelangelo's David and some other totally famous pieces of sculpture--but the crowds packing the entrance and the price of admission was really too much for a country boy like me so I took a pass and I think you might as well too since you can see copies here and there or look at the nice, quiet picture books in your local library without getting elbowed by the sweating crowds.

Maybe it would be better on a cold, rainy winter day.

I got tired and discouraged early in the afternoon but couldn't find my way back to the San Vicenzo a Torre bus stop so I asked a black-robed priest for directions. To my absolute astonishment he gave me a tongue-lashing like I have seldom ever had.

My Italian was not good but I caught his drift very clearly. He despised tourists--especially English-speaking tourists who could barely speak a word of correct Italian--and ME in particular!

We should all GO back to wherever we came from, or to Hades, and STAY there!

I guess what shocked me most was that he was a priest. In fact that is why I asked him--because I thought he might give me a more polite answer perhaps than one of his harassed countrymen--and maybe he did.

But instead of searching for the bus stop any more or asking anybody else for directions, I just hiked back to Il Poggio. I was used to walking.

Walking always did me good.

...

19. Florence Shopping

2011-08-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Il Poggio B+B was about eighteen kilometers south of Florence, Italy.

There was nothing urban about Il Poggio and it could have been anywhere out in the Tuscan countryside--there was no traffic and no noise--no rush and no hurry.

Several times during my stay Elisabetta took me shopping with her into the city.

The drive to Florence with Elisabetta at the wheel of the old company van was a totally enjoyable experience. She was a competent and careful driver and as the traffic increased close to the city she was only more competent and careful--no rush and no hurry.

I was her only passenger and we were going on a shopping trip to visit a couple of old friends' warehouse-style antique shops.

This trip to Florence seemed to be the only kind of shopping trip Elisabetta ever took. She seemed totally uninterested in buying anything modern and everything else she needed she had delivered.

She had furnished Il Poggio herself--every last corner of it--with practical, unique antique items.

Her method of shopping was also unique to my experience. Her contacts would call her when they had something very old new and she would drive in to take a look.

While she was in the shops she would also prowl around eyeballing the other merchandise. She knew what she needed and what was not a part of her plan and no amount of salesmanship would sell her anything she didn't need or want--but if she saw something she liked she would get it with fierce determination.

This day she wanted to look at a table the dealer had called her about. We left without the table but with some very used "fire dogs"--the iron things which go in an open fireplace to hold cooking ware up out of the flames. By very old I mean used until they were burned thin, but still useful. Just the thing for her kitchen.

All the way in and out she talked quietly about the countryside and the city--how it had changed--what was what and what was where. She was a marvelous tour guide and seemed to know everything--answering my few questions before I asked them. I really liked that.

We left before noon and were back before dinner since she wanted to help cook something for her guests.

...

18. Battle Scars

2011-08-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

Fiori was a family man who worked as a handyman almost full time at Il Poggio and lived with his wife and kids in San Vicenzo a Torre.

He was a nice little guy--literally. He was only about five-foot two.

He liked to make conversation and didn't care if I didn't always understand every word.

There was a small forest of fairly old trees surrounding the main buildings of Il Poggio as I have said and there were very few older trees anywhere else in the vicinity and one day he told me why.

"There was a terrific battle here in World War Two." he said.

"The Germans were in the stone buildings stoutly defending them to the death. The Italians were in the cellars drinking the wine stored there and you Americans were advancing up the hill slope. It was a terrific fight--such a terrific fight that the trees were all shot to hell with lead bullets and that's why they are still standing--because after the war when all the other trees around here were cut down for firewood, those trees near the buildings were so filled with lead bullets that when the woodsmen tried to cut them down their saw blades were damaged so bad that they let the trees stand."

Another time Fiori (the name means "little flower") pointed to the ceiling of one of the stone outbuildings. When you looked up, the wooden slats the ceiling was made with had mortar shell manufacturing marks printed on them in English.

"That wood is from crates made in the your country to hold your soldiers' artillery ammunition. Of course it was pretty high quality milled wood so the farmers here used it to re-build with after the armies passed through. One bad thing about it though, some of the wood had bugs in it that infected the cypress trees around here and that's why so many of them are dead."

This conversation took place more than half a century after said battle.

...

17. Duck Pond Lesson

2011-08-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Well. It's true even at Il Poggio.

Not all is beer and skittles.

I was caught off my guard and told a bit of humiliating truth after I helped drain and clean the Il Poggio duck pond.

The truth teller was a young man, maybe eighteen years old, by the name of Giovanni.

Giovanni helped out at Il Poggio on a once in a while basis. He was not a regular, but when he was around we sometimes worked together--usually on sort of dirty physical projects--gardening, cleaning and whatnot.

My Italian was improving a little so we could communicate in a very basic way.

Cleaning the duck pond was my idea.

Ducks don't seem to care what kind of unpleasant muck they slurp and paddle about in and this little pond was only about fifteen feet around and a foot deep. Water for the pond came from a nearby outdoor spigot with twenty feet of plastic hose attached. The pond did have an unpleasant odor to it if you got very close but since it was in an out-of-the-way place-- kind of behind one of the stone outbuildings--I probably the only person who noticed the stench.

Anyway, I had the help of Giovanni and explained the project to him.

He didn't see how I was going to drain the pond though to me it seemed a simple matter.

The pond was on a hill. Just take the water hose--stick one end in the pond and carry the other end downhill. Suck on the downhill end being VERY careful not to suck too long and you had a siphon situation. The water would flow to it's lowest level through the hose and out into the nearby garden.

To Giovanni this seemed like a magical trick.

Well, I demonstrated the siphon technique and the pond was drained and we shoveled some smelly stuff out and the ducks had some clean, fresh water for a few days-- but Giovanni got something off his chest by confronting me thus:

"You Americans." he said bitterly, "You think you are so smart. You are so well educated. Italians like me stand no chance! You know things like how to drain a pond with a hose and I don't know anything! No wonder I can find no work and have to to stupid things. You can do anything you want and go wherever you want. It is so unfair!"

That's something I learned about human relations from cleaning the Il Poggio duck pond.

...

16. Memorial Bees

2011-08-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

Elisabetta arranged for one or two highly trained young women potters from Germany to be working at the Il Poggio ceramica studio all the time.

I don't know what bait she used--free rent in her splendid old Tuscan villa maybe--maybe some cash too--I never asked--but there they were happily at work every weekday in the ceramica studios of the place.

I learned a lot about clay work looking over the shoulders of these nice young women--and they enjoyed my untrained free and easy clay work style too, I think.

One of these--shall I call them girls?--had a cute idea. She showed the rest of us how to make little clay bees and every day we cranked out a few just for fun.

She threw a clay hive which held a couple of dozen bees at a time and all these bees and their hive were duly dried, bisque fired, glazed and final fired again and we used the bees as gifts for the guests of the B+B and the very rare shoppers who visited the ceramica.

They reminded me of the little green fired clay scarab beetles which are so popular in Egypt. All the tourists pick up a few very cheap on the street and the museum guards at the big Cairo museum are forever whispering and showing you their "Psst! Rare, precious and expensive..." antique fakes.

I expect--I hope--a few of these cool little Il Poggio Memorial Bees are still flitting around the world.

...

15. Pizza

2011-08-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

Pizza.

The national gastronomic delight of Italy which has conquered the world.

How was it served by Master Cook Elisabetta?

In two words: it wasn't.

Every Friday evening all the guests of Il Poggio and all the staff who wanted to join the party scrambled into the company van or into willing guest's cars (Everyone arrived at Il Poggio by car--there was no reliable local public transport except for occasional buses in the nearby village of San Vicenzo a Torre.) and we all drove to a respectable old pizzeria in the slightly larger village of Montespertoli about six miles distant.

Elisabetta had made an arrangement with the owner of this pizzeria to be prepared for an invasion of hungry guests every Friday evening and he was a jolly and reliable host--no matter the size of the group--but always from ten to thirty people--there was always plenty of hot, fresh, scrumptious pizza.

And, of course, the ever-welcome classic Chianti wine produced by the surrounding vineyards was also plentifully present.

So the Il Poggio kitchen staff had the evening off and the guests had the fun of dining in a real, honest-to-God Italian village pizzeria!

This was all paid for by Elisabetta--for the B+B guests it was a part of their regular fee and for the staff, it was a weekly free party.

Well remembered!

...

14. The Food

2011-07-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

The Food

The Food!

Oh, my dears, The Food! THE FOOD!

Elisabetta was a Master Cook. (Chef is too effete!)

Lucky for all of us at Il Poggio--guests and staff--and even temporary employees like me--were welcome at the big dining room Lazy Susan table, the outdoor Marble topped table in the patio at lunch, the Swiss style plenty of everything and eat all you want breakfasts.

When she appeared at the entrance of the dining room with a huge bowl of steaming pasta--strong men wept for joy!

As I said, Elisabetta practically lived in the kitchen--always on her favorite stool by the fireplace or preparing or supervising other staff in the preparation of meals.

Her family had been in the hotel business for generations--with the current grand family hotel being on Lago Majori on the Italian side--and she maintained the noble tradition wonderfully well.

Since one of my chores was to carry out the kitchen garbage, I can certify that everything used in food preparation except tomato-paste was natural and fresh (I did find tomato paste cans in the trash!)

...

13. Tables

2011-07-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

There was a wide assortment of tables at Il Poggio.

Elisabetta had scrounged and bought old--even antique--serviceable, solid, durable tables and other furniture in Florence (fifteen miles distant) and in nearby villages so there were unique tables in every guest room, in the broad hallways holding lamps, in the ceramic display room, in the ceramica work rooms--and even a granite topped outdoor table seating about twelve people in the patio formed by the U-shaped main building.

The two most remarkable indoor tables, however, were the main work table in the kitchen and the big round table in the dining room.

The kitchen table had a thick wooden surface and trestle legs. Elisabetta had found it in a defunct monastery and somehow had talked the secular owners out of it. With the table were several heavy benches and chairs so about twelve to fourteen people could comfortably sit around it.

Pick-up snacks and meals were often served on it in the cheerful, homey-feeling kitchen. Guests and Il Poggio workers gathered there at all times for friendly talk and maybe a glass of the ever-present Tuscan Chianti wine.

And Elisabetta was almost always nearby on her stool in the hearth-side corner or at work with the tasks of cooking ON the table--since it was the primary work table of the kitchen--though not the only working surface to say the least. (There were working cabinet-tops and cupboards on every wall.)

The main dining room table was most unusual-- circular with matching chairs for about fourteen people. The center was a Lazy-Susan revolving platform for passing plates and bowls of food around--which was kept in almost constant motion during the convivial luncheons and evening meals. I have never seen another like it.

...

12. The Kitchen

2011-07-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

The kitchen was the heart and center of Il Poggio, and this is where Elisabetta could be found at almost any time of any day.

Remember, Il Poggio was built in medieval times by one the Medici family as a country estate, so the kitchen was planned to prepare the food (and banquets) for thirty or more people at every meal.

The kitchen was big. and rather dark because there were windows on only one side.

The far side--away from the window light--was well-lit by modern standards by electric light but was still rather darkish and country kitcheny.

In the farthest corner--away from the windows-- was a wood-burning fireplace which was always alight.

This was not a floor fireplace necessary for heating but an old-fashioned table-high fireplace with a wide brick hearth and a wide smoke hood which was used every day for cooking of the most marvelous foods.

Elisabetta had a strong high stool near this fireplace and from this stool she directed all the activities of her Bed and Breakfast.

I saw, as one of my tasks, that there was always a plentiful supply of all sizes of firewood from kindling to logs for her to burn.

There had been a hard frost two years before my arrival which had killed the trees in a nearby olive grove so, stacked in one of the out-buildings, was a good supply of seasoned, dry olive wood--choice cooking fuel.

...

11. The Garden

2011-07-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

There was a good-sized vegetable garden at Il Poggio and a larger forested plot of land surrounding the buildings.

I enjoyed working amongst the vegetables and walking and sitting in the small forest.

There was a young Welshman who came around often who planted and worked in the garden and who also helped with building maintenance and the general yard-work and so forth required. I forget his name but lets call him Peter (Pete for short). He was an important high-energy member of the Il Poggio family.

Pete and I worked side by side in the hot sun weeding, watering and taking care of the tomatoes, squash, onions and--most especially--the broad beans, of which he was most particularly partial. In fact he had brought these broad bean seeds with him from his old family garden in Wales and so the beans were familiar to him and he claimed them to be Welsh broad-beans generations old. Pete absolutely loved his broad beans!

...

10. Early Birds

2011-07-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

Elisabetta assigned me another job which I liked a lot.

She asked me to get up early every day and feed the chickens and ducks which were a part of the Il Poggio family.

I spent some years as a kid on a half-acre family farm "The Three Willow Ranch" in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and learned to take care of chickens, pigeons, ducks, turkeys, pigs, calves, donkeys, cats and dogs, a desert turtle and other critters large and small--so I knew what to do.

When I was a boy I didn't much like doing "the chores", but at Il Poggio I thoroughly enjoyed them.

It was fun for me in the very early Tuscan morning to throw grain to some eager birds and watch them merrily dine!

I especially admired the two huge multi-colored roosters--the way they would scratch the earth for the hens and then stand tall and bright-eyed alert while the females would peck, peck, peck at whatever was there to eat. Such gentlemen!

Oddly enough, at Il Poggio there was no cat and no dog!

...

9. Clay Curls

2011-07-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

Another thing I discovered about the nature of clay.

Something so obvious that I had never thought about it.

Clay naturally likes to dry in thinnish curves.

You have noticed that when clay dries in the hot summer sun on the river bottom--the clay cracks in fairly small, fairly thin pieces--not quite geometrical patterns--but also not very large "plates", and you have also noticed that the clay shards curl up, toward the heat source--the sun--slightly at the edges.

Dishes, cups. pots, vases--BIG vases--all the most useful ceramic objects --except tiles--are round or roundish. And all the most common flat objects made of clay--like tiles--are usually small or smallish, because clay likes to curl up as it dries! And almost all ceramic objects have fairly uniformly thin "walls".

I think most potters grasp these facts early on and intuitively--but if they come at the craft like I did--not knowing a thing about it--they will discover by trial and error these interesting facts because everything they try to make too big or too flat or too thick WILL crack as it dries---even if it dries VERY slowly.

...

8. Patience

2011-07-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

I soon learned that time is a very important factor in ceramic work.

The artist must be constantly aware that the clay he is working with is drying as he works. This changes the consistency of the clay which can be a positive or negative thing.

Clay is just dirt after all--but a special kind of rather sticky dirt that will hold a shape as long as it has just the right amount of moisture in it. Too much water and it becomes mud and too little and it becomes dry and cracks.

There are deposits of good ceramic clay in the Tuscan hills of Italy and this is why good pottery has been produced here for centuries and wasn't I lucky to find this out and to actually be living at Il Poggio with my own hands in it up to the elbows !

But, back to time.

When you draw a picture--you draw it and it is done. But when you work on a clay shape you have to be aware that the clay is changing as you work. If you can't finish the project, you must keep the clay in it's proper state of moisture--not too wet--not too dry--until you can work on it again. At Il Poggio we used plastic sheeting or bags around the work in progress to keep the moisture just right.

And when the shape you want is finished it must dry slowly. If it drys too fast the whole thing will crack like you have seen in clay deposits in river beds on hot summer days. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey--until the whole piece is consistently dry.

Before it goes into the kiln to be fired, the work must be absolutely, completely dry or it will explode.

So to prepare one piece for firing might take not just minuts or hours, but days or even weeks.

And, of course, the first firing is not the end of the process!

Patience is a key to ceramic production.

...

7. Me Ceramist

2011-07-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

I tried to throw a pot on the electric wheels but my efforts always ended with a disastrous mess--a muddy lump. I tried on the foot-powered old fashioned wheel--same result.

I impatiently wanted to make something good--something I could show and be proud of.

One of the real potters showed me how to make a "pinch pot" with handful of clay and I made a couple of dozen of these beginner's projects--good fun, but no Kewpie Doll artistically.

Next somebody showed me how to roll "snakes"of clay and then coil them up into a pot shape and smooth the sides--well, this was getting somewhere but not where I wanted to go.

Then somebody showed me how to roll a sheet clay of uniform thickness between two wooden lathes with a cook's rolling pin. Ahh--then you could use the slabs of clay to form shapes--almost any shape you could imagine. Vases, cups, big flat tiles with incised pictures and words!

This was much more like it!

I started making bas-relief tile scenery with little houses and mountains and trees. I made castles and modeled little people--then I started curving strips of clay and started making life-size heads--first monsters (easy) and then portraits of my fellow workers! Fun!

Look, Ma! I'm a ceramist!

...

6. Clay

2011-07-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

As I said, I had no experience with ceramics but soon became very involved with the craft, working at it in all my spare time and, since the tasks I did for Elisabetta were usually finished in a couple of morning hours, I worked with clay--you could say--full time and more--day and night--lost myself in the work and completely enjoyed myself!

Elisabetta gave me full run of the ceramic studio as well as the Il Poggio workshops--in fact the run of all the buildings and spaces in her huge sprawling antique stone dwelling.

I had free use of any clay, glazes, throwing wheels, drying shelves or tools. She did all the firing--loading and unloading the kiln and so forth--herself.

She allowed me to watch her work and the other professional ceramists also answered my questions, gave me advice and let me watch them work.

Since I had NO experience in the field, I didn't know what you can't do with clay--so I did the most, to them, outrageous things, which they thought was great fun--like unheard of experiments!

They did warn me to make every item I produced hollow with an air passage out and of an almost uniform thickness so my creations would not explode in the kiln and destroy their own hard work.

...

5. Ceramica

2011-07-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

Il Poggio was not only a B+B, it was a "ceramica"--a small producer of hand made ceramic ware.

I discovered that these small family-owned ceramicas were fairly common and an old tradition in Tuscany--the pots, dishes and bowls crafted here are famous and collected by people who appreciate good folk art.

Elisabetta had converted one wing of her old mansion into art studios and a large sales room.

She had made other suites into firing and work rooms with storage shelves for work in progress and a big walk-in gas fired kiln.

Making clay figures was her specialty. She was an expert potter with the wheel but to save time would often have another local potter come in and throw half a dozen stoneware pots which she would keep soft--covered with plastic bags. When she had time from her cooking and the management of her B+B hotel, she would decorate these pots--transforming them into Great Earth Mother style female figures.

Elisabetta's artist sister Doris, who lived in another hotel owned by Elisabetta's family on Lago Majori at the Swiss border, would come down once or twice a month to decorate plates, bowls and cups.

A young German woman who had been trained in a polytechnic university in Germany also lived and worked at Il Poggio. She threw precision coffee cups, saucers, boiled egg cups and things like that on a potter's wheel at a wonderfully fast pace.

Elisabetta let me work in the ceramica all afternoon and all night if I wished--any time I was free from the other little tasks she assigned me.

This was great for me because I have always been interested in art but never had the chance to use all the equipment and materials necessary for ceramic work.

...

4. My Work

2011-07-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

My work.

I have been an indoor classroom teacher for years and an indoor salesman of shoes and things like that for years and a rock n roll musician for long enough--but what I really LIKE to do is to work at my own speed with my own hands outdoors: gardening, farming, carpentry, animal care, building maintenance and repair, painting--THAT kind of thing--what I consider to be really creative, fully engaged work.

And THAT is EXACTLY what Elisabetta wanted me to do!

(I could repeat that sentence for emphasis.)

That is exactly what Elisabetta wanted me to do!!

...

3. The ticket

2011-07-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

I had nowhere specific to go or to be--in fact I had become a traveler without a destination. I wanted to explore Europe and here I was.

Elisabetta's proposal was just the ticket. I could work part-time here near Florence, see the sights, maybe learn a little Italian, eat steady, sleep dry and live.

My second-floor room was fine--bed, desk, chair, bath down the hall, heavy wooden door, window in the thick stone wall with a view of the patio and the rising farmland behind the old mansion--vineyards and the signature cypress trees of Tuscany. The view was so stunning in fact that I made the social error of leaving the solid wood shutters open the first day I moved in. This is not done. Open shutters anywhere in the house raised the indoor temperature noticeably and I was told to please keep the shutters closed during the day.

Another resident worker, Maria, had an apartment in the eastern wing of the house. Fiori, the maintenance man, lived with his wife and children in a nearby village and Elisabetta, the owner, manager, head cook and everything else lived in a larger downstairs apartment.

The B&B rental rooms were mostly near mine on the second floor but there were several others in nearby stone annex buildings.

...

2. Proposition

2011-06-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

The hotel--or Bed and Breakfast called Il Poggio (The Hill) is, or was-- since I don't know about it's present condition-- a fine ancient cut-stone building originally constructed by the Medici family on a sunny hilltop surrounded by a small forest of pine and cypress. trees.

The main building had been a country estate. When I discovered it the owner had converted into an eight bedroom hotel.

The building, more solid than elegant, had heavy wooden shutters and massive front doors--a two story structure with mossy pink tile roof.

The owner, Elizabeth Studer, welcomed me warmly--as she did all her guests--and asked how long I planned to stay. When I said a night or two she said, "Perhaps you wold like to stay a bit longer, if you are not in a hurry to be somewhere. I would like to invite you to stay here to help out--you can work for me a half day and have the rest of your time for yourself. Your rent and meals would be free and I will pay you something to keep you in spending money. The work would never be very hard. Why not try it for a while to see if it would be enjoyable for you?"

.....

1. Il Poggio

2011-06-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

I don't remember quite how I heard of Il Poggio, but I think it was from a couple of ladies who were starting a Bed and Breakfast in southwestern France where I stayed for a couple of nights on my way, slowly as usual since I was backpacking, toward Italy.

They told me that they were modeling their inn on one they had visited near Florence in Italy. They must have given me directions to find the place and suggested that if I was ever in the area I should stop and stay there.

Some weeks later I walked up to the very low-key hilltop compound of the B&B "Il Poggio ". There was no sign announcing it. You had to know where it was and what it was to find it.

...

26. Pool Party

2011-06-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

Temecula Base Camp:

There is a big public swimming pool in a park near our apartment and we walk by there almost every day we are in our Base Camp.

There was a lot of unusual activity there a few weeks ago--three fifth grades from a single public school across town were having an end-of-the-year-and-going-to-a-new-school-next-year party. Not exactly a graduation party, but a moving-on celebration for sure.

A disk jockey was there and the kids were strutting their stuff in bikinis and with wild abandon. Looked like good fun to me.

But I was also kind of wondering: THREE fifth grade classes in just ONE of this rapidly growing town's SEVENTEEN elementary schools. I think they have a few over 30 kids in a classroom now, but lets just say 30 times three is ninety for short.

Ninety kids about 13 years old in just ONE of the seventeen elementary schools in Temecula.

They will all be getting their driver's licenses in about three or four years--that means about a hundred more cars on the freeway from this ONE elementary school and there are how many elementary schools in California?

And more JOBS needed and HOUSING and, in about six or seven years, MORE KIDS from these kids.

Man, this is trouble BIG TIME.

It is time for us to "grab the bull by the tail and face the situation".

So many more people so fast...

Something has GOT to change!

...

25. Pechanga Casino

2011-06-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Temecula Base Camp:

New in town, we are always looking for interesting work in entertaining places so we stopped in to take a look at the biggest employer in Temecula, California-- a casino on nearby Indian land--Pechanga Casino--about noon on a week-day

Well, Pechanga Casino is HUGE--billed as the second biggest casino in the United States--it is really awfully big--with several restaurants and showrooms and miles of slot machines and other gaming tables and such--and they must hire an army of people to keep it going--but it is not a place for us.

All big casinos always have a peculiar odor--have you noticed? Not exactly a stink, but not pleasant either---sort of a mixture of perfume, restroom deodorant, people, stale booze, fast food, carpet cleaner and I don't know what-all. Anyway, not something you would like to inhale all day every working day--not a scent that appeals to us.

Something else that I personally find unappealing are the casino's customers---at this time of day mainly old people sitting or sprawling in the ultra-comfortable seats at the gaming machines--the marks-- losing, ever so slowly, ever so certainly, their money in the oh-so-ever-so-loose slots.

It bothers me that OLD people can be so ignorant. Haven't they learned ANYTHING in all the years they have been alive?

So we satisfied our curiosity about the town's biggest employer and, tailed by a young plainclothes security man, walked back out to the parking lot to drive on to nearby Wal-Mart for some of the Chinese-made stuff we needed.

...

23. Ponderosas

2011-06-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ponderosa Pine Pond

Between the world-famous Arizona town of Sedona where spiritual seekers go to spend their hopeful money on enlightenment and the Northern Arizona University town, Flagstaff, where students go to spend their hopeful parent's money on higher education, lies one of the prettiest drives in this state of beautiful highways: the Oak Creek Canyon.

This scenic highway, following Oak Creek through it's canyon, is very narrow and twisting--emerging at the head of the canyon on the Mogollon volcanic plateau. The canyon itself is filled with a mixed forest of green--so different from the deserty tans south of Sedona, it is wonderfully refreshing.

The highland--the Mogollon Plateau --is forested almost entirely with one of my most favorite trees--the Ponderosa Pine.

I love the scent of the Ponderosa Pine forest and I love the waves-on-the-beach sound of the wind passing through the top pine-needle-leaved branches. (I REALLY love this piney sound. It is, to me, more satisfyingly musical than Bach--and THAT is my very highest compliment!)

Tanya Snapping Me

My Favorite Person in My Favorite Ponderosa Pine Forest.

...

22. Outlaw Village

2011-06-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

Outlaw Desert Village. (Tomasito photo)

People do live in the strangest places.

Lucky for us tourists and travelers--because if some people didn't live a sort of camp-out life beside the highway in the remote deserts--there would be no-one to pump the gas or sell the beer!

The above photo shows a clutch of the mobile-type temporary dwellings of today's free desert people--nothing wasted--nothing around but the most basic shelter and transport--it looks pretty jumbled and jivey but see? There's no trash on the ground or visible garbage (or people)--just the essentials for living.

The residents are in the market/station peacefully looting the few stray travelers--like us.

I call them outlaws because they live outside the usual normal prosaic common lifeways of the crass majority. They make their own rules and are free to live as they choose as long as they don't break society's big rules too blatantly. They are kind of like the hopeful weeds that come through the cracks in the pavement.

...

21. Flagstaff Face-off

2011-06-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

Flagstaff Face-off. (Tomasito photo)

The little green sub-compact Chevy Aveo is ours--the jacked-up yellow pick-up belongs to the owner of the hardware store next door to the motel where we spent the night in Flagstaff.

When I parked the night before, the pick-up truck was not there--but when I got up it was and placed nose to nose and as close as possible above our little car.

Boy did HE show US tourists who rules in Flagstaff!

...

20. Flagstaff Revisited

2011-06-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Peak from Flagstaff Grocery Parking Lot. (Tomasito photo)

Yes, we had to visit Flagstaff, Arizona on our recent "Journey to the East".

For some unknown reason Flagstaff figures fairly prominently in my life journey and I don't know why, but I can't seem to get far enough away.

I somehow always manage to return for a look-see every few years.

Many, many years ago I even studented myself in this northern Arizona town for a two dose period--long enough to get a "master's" degree in English. At the time I didn't see the joke of getting an advanced degree in English in this out-of-the-way place so very far from England.

Flagstaff was a lot smaller then and Northern Arizona University--which is now a pretty big deal--was then very small potatoes.

To make ends meet, I had a job as a night clerk at a motel out of town to the east. The motel was called The Crown and it was fairly new. Oddly enough it still exists but is very much changed as is the entire scene. The motel has a different name and they have added a restaurant (called the Crown Restaurant) and they have paved the parking lot--but the old cowboy-style Museum Club is still in business next door--still serving the town's drunks as it did in those long-ago days--though I suppose they are a new crop of drunks.

We found "Old Main"--the old main building of the university -- still standing.

I used to pick up my mail there and the NAU administrative offices were there as I suppose some still are--but the important new buildings of the university are now being built further and further away from what used to be the Flagstaff town center on old Route 66. In fact to reach the newest buildings is quite a hike for the few pedestrians who might still walk from town as we did.

If you are the grasping type--hoping to re-experience something good from the past--all it takes is a short trip to some well-remembered site which you have not visited for years-- to realize very clearly that nothing--but nothing--stays the same and that "this exists only because of that" as the Buddhists say.

...

19. Human Child

2011-06-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

Brother Joe's granddaughter, Dulcinea. (2011)

Happy Journey.

...

18. Beautiful Mud

2011-06-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

Mud Detail, San Xavier. (Tomasito photo)

We went to see the very famous Dove of the Desert, San Xavier del Bac Mission on the Papago Indian Reservation south of Tucson, Arizona.

This unusual and beautiful edifice was planned by the "Padre on Horseback", Jesuit Father Kino, and built in 1783.

We love to prowl around these old missions. We appreciate the struggle of these long-ago Catholic missionaries to "save the souls" (what ever that may mean) of the "heathen" (whatever that may mean) inhabitants of this remote desert and especially we appreciate the lasting but not quite permanent monuments to their faith symbolized by these mud marvels.

Looking at this dove you tend to forget that it--all of it--including the delicate swirls and ornaments--is made of mud painted white.

Adobe is mud--dried mud--and that's what these missions are made of.

Mud wants to return to it's natural state and place--flat--part of the earth, growing weeds and cactus out here on the desert--but keep a well-baked mud roof (teclas or tiles) over your walls and the mud will stand erect for a good long time--if not eternity.

So: here's to Mud and Beauty!

San Xavier. (Tomasito photo)

...

17. International Wildlife Museum

2011-06-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

In a hillside neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona--up where the streets become windy and the houses become architect's dreams and the dry cactusy desert is starting to be a more significant part of the landscape--we found a very unusual institution: The International Wildlife Museum--open to the public for a small fee.

You leave a nice parking lot--cross a pedestrian bridge over a trickling desert stream (with duck pond) and arrive at the museum--A crenelated Pasha's palace from a Hollywood movie.

Inside, the ground-plan consists of three large regular hexagons filled with stuffed animals and birds--mainly one trophy hunter's brag from a life-long and gaudily successful serial safari.

Patronizing it is.

We discover that: "We humans have disrupted the balance of natural systems. Now we have to step in and carefully manage our wildlife and other natural resources such as forests, soil and water."

We?

This shooter, a man who got rich selling floor coverings in post-war Los Angeles and so had the leisure to slaughter wild life all over the world, tells us WE must: "step in and Carefully Manage OUR wildlife. Oh, bother!

Megalomania it is.

We live on this living planet with a lot of other living things and we are ALL
wildlife.

But now that the shooting is over and the damage done--these life-like stuffed birds and animals DO hold perfectly still for us human wildlife to study--meanwhile the rich white hunter has gone on to his final "happy hunting ground".

...

16. birdsong songbird

2011-06-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

It's not the bird that comes along and leans how to sing.

It's the song that comes along and learns how to bird.

...

15. Motel 6 Kingman AZ

2011-06-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

If you are not an older person, you may not know that there is a reason for the popular motel chain "Motel Six's" name.

The dollar, young person, is NOT what it used to be and the reason Motel Six is called Motel Six is because many years ago every room in the motel chain rented for six dollars a night. It is considerably more now (2011), but still cheaper than most other standard motels.

There were only a few Motel Sixes back then but now, if you want a basic "clean room and a comfortable bed" for a night when you are traveling, you can stay at a Motel Six all over the United States and Canada. Their Directory Listings booklet gives directions to more than 900 locations and we use them fairly often. Like McDonald's, they are all pretty much alike--but the hot water is hot, the TV works, the floors are more or less clean, there are two plastic cups wrapped in cellophane and the usual number of nice, white rather thin towels per guest. No surprises and not the place for an adventure.

Which is why my adventure at the Kingman, Arizona, Motel 6 was rather a surprise.

We checked in, carried our luggage to our room as the sun set and prepared for an ordinary motel night.

Then a noisy thumpity- thump-thump-thump vibration started in the bathroom. What the heck? Bad plumbing??

The noise kept going for a few minutes and we were ready to go over to the office to complain when it stopped.

A few minutes later--there it goes again and carries on for five minutes, then stops again--but THIS time , for me, the vibration goes on! Not the loud sound, just the steady, pulsing vibration!

Tanya doesn't feel a thing.

I am perplexed to say the least--for me, the floor is vibrating with a regular pulse and when I touch the door it is vibrating rhythmically too--with the same frequency as the noisy bathroom plumbing.

On the way to the office to inquire what might be going on, I feel the vibration through my shoes in the parking lot and when I lay my hand on the concrete curb it is pulsing too.

The girl in the office says SHE doesn't feel anything but would we like to change rooms?

Well, I am no stranger to oddball pulsing. I hear the Taos hum when no one else can. I hear a distant rumbling at remote, silent Pate Lake in Alaska when no one else hears a thing. I hear and feel the yoga "nada" current in empty churches and solitary beaches, but this is something different. For one thing it is so VERY strong it is bizarre even for ME.

SO bizarre in fact I decide to shut up about it--like I have since I first started to feel the vibrations and hear the nada hum after my experiences with a Sufi teacher in Lebanon many years ago.

I notice a freight train with over a hundred heavy cars passing on the mainline across the highway and a block or two away. Maybe constant heavy train traffic has set up this constant pulsing vibration?

I have no problem sleeping and the next morning I keep quiet about the vibration. I'm not nuts or "hearing things that don't exist"--I don't think--and away from Kingman I don't feel anything unusual.

...

14. Mrs. Shimmer's Garden

2011-06-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

When we were in the desert garden section of the Tucson Botanical garden I remembered another desert garden I visited a long time ago.

My mother was a very sociable woman--when she was young she had several older women as close friends and when she herself was an old woman she had several young women as close friends.

One of her oldest friends when I was a boy in Albuquerque was Mrs. Shimmer. Mom had made friends with Mrs. Shimmer when she (Mom that is) was a girl so Mrs. Shimmer was quite elderly.

At the time of my memory, I was about eight years old and Mrs. Shimmer must have been about 90 years old--quite the oldest person I had ever met.

Of course Mrs. Shimmer was a native of Germany and spoke with a heavy accent which made her even more exotic to me--though I was too young to recognize a German accent--to me she just sounded strange and very old.

"Shimmer" in German means the same thing as it does in English--a sort of sparkle--and Mrs. Shimmer was a sort of a tiny ancient sparkling person.

When we visited Mrs Shimmer, I would play outside in the front "garden" of her very little old house in a run-down old neighborhood of Albuquerque, while she and mother visited.

Now THIS garden was a REAL desert garden and that is probably why walking through the Tucson Botanical Garden triggered the memory. There was NO grass or plants of ANY kind except for some large bushes and a skinny tree or two growing from circular earthen depressions which could hold some irrigation water. I seem to remember lilacs since this is one of the memorable scented plants I recall from childhood and we didn't have any at our house. There were several kinds of cactus too and I remember checking out their different kinds of needles very thoroughly.

Best of all and beside the garden adventure--whenever we visited Mrs. Shimmer, she would always hand me a huge, thick home-baked sugar cookie from her big cookie jar. And I wish I had one now!

...

13. Tucson Botanical Garden

2011-06-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Zen Garden Exhibit. (Tomasito photo)

There is a good smallish botanical garden in Tucson where we spent a morning.

A special exhibit called "Wicked Ways of Wicked Plants" was featured with some clever postings describing such plants as "Flesh Eaters" and "Horrific Houseplants" and a whimsical mock laboratory of "Horticulturalist-in-residence, Dr. Ergot Ratbane".

One of the workers said she enjoyed having so many children visit the garden to see the collection of "wicked plants" and to meet "Dr. Ratbane" because, as she said, "Kids listen and adults don't and kids tell the truth and adults don't."

Desert Blue. (Tomasito photo)

...

12. Tucson

2011-05-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

Our "Journey to the East" took us through Tucson, Arizona.

I had lived in Tucson for a few weeks when I was a very young man but had forgotten just about everything except the dry heat and the typical deserty smells which are unforgettable for me. Most of the details of my long ago stay were erased.

We found a motel near the city center as the sun was setting and had our usual traveler's picnic dinner in our room.

Then, since it was a warm pleasant evening, we went out for a stroll.

From a quick check of the city map in a "What to do in Tucson" magazine in our room, we decided to walk to "El Presidio Plaza"--just a few blocks away.

By one of those wonderful accidents which sometimes happen to travelers, our walk took us through a preserved old neighborhood with great houses from an earlier day. Everyone of them different. Every one of them unique.

Even the street lights were of the old-fashioned kind--the antique concrete sidewalks--the scent of lilac--everything so well remembered from my boyhood.

But these houses were lived in. There were new cars in the old driveways and new residents beyond the old bay windows watching today's American Idol not Your Hit Parade--but the neighborhood itself was like a piece of the past. My past.

I was delighted with the museumish neighborhood and very happy that Tanya, from so very far away and from such a different cultural background, could share this experience with me.

...

11. Memorial Day

2011-05-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day Story

I was a kid in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

My family: Dad and Mom, Big Brother Joe and Little Brother Jack, lived on a half-acre we called "The Three Willow Ranch".

In those long-ago days Memorial Day was called Decoration Day and it was a custom for many people to decorate the graves of their departed family members and friends. It was not a fun celebration day like Dia de los Muertos for Mexicans, but a solemn day for us gringos.

Starting when I was about ten years old I helped Mom decorate Baby Steve's grave every year for a few years .

Baby Steve was our fourth brother who died about five years before I was born of infant bed syndrome--one minute a healthy baby, the next a dead baby--a big shock to my young parents and never forgotten.

Mom loved roses and we had lots of them--a circular flowerbed-full of whites and reds set in the middle of the front lawn--an eight-foot high hedge of pink climbers running for a hundred feet along the east side of the house and big yellow pink and red mixed with larkspur in a big garden by the driveway--this was before Grandpa Clayton built the carport. And there were even several huge rambling rose bushes covered with sprays of blooms back beyond the chicken pens on a trellis by the storm cellar.

So Mom and I would bag lots of mainly pink rose petals and cut piles of blossoms of all colors , put the cut roses in cans of water in the back seat floor of the old Chrysler and she would drive us out to the big walled municipal graveyard which had two sections--an expensive "eternal care" one with mowed, irrigated lawn and a bigger one for us common people with hard dirt and drifted sand.

There was always a search for the right grave among the tatty metal name plates and dried-up wooden crosses for the unmarked one Mom remembered and then, using spare tin cans for tools, we would pile up some dirt into a baby grave-sized mound and cover it with rose petals. We would set big tin cans into the dirt at "head' and "foot" and create a lavish display of all colors of roses--cut blossoms and sprays of leaves and blooms.

Before we drove away Mom would send me to look for water to put in the cans to preserve the bloom's freshness for a little longer in the heat. The water came from a spigot I would find sticking out of the dirt near some tamarack trees.

I don't remember Joe or Jack ever being there and Dad never came--I think now maybe it was because of some unhealed wound of unforgotten grief for him.

I didn't much like to do this chore and I was glad when it was over, though it was never weeping and wailing sad--just sort of a businesslike something you did every year as a duty.

When I was grown up and asked Mom about Steve she said that he would have been just the right age to be in the New Mexico National Guard for the disastrous Bataan Death March in the Philippines in which so many of Albuquerque's young men died--so maybe his painless death as a baby spared him from all that suffering.

Taos Cemetery. (Tomasito photo)

...

10. Motel

2011-05-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

Me in a Motel (Tanya photo)

Motel. A place to sleep, shower, picnic or maybe cook some rice in the electric pot, write some notes and don't watch the color TV.

Always overpriced, sometimes clean. Park at the foot of the stairs, carry the luggage and the plastic bags of groceries up--two sometimes three trips. Maybe a laundry, free breakfast coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Motel.

Plastic card for a key that will expire at noon tomorrow--never works the first time. Motel. Queen size bed or two full size beds, cigarette burns in the carpet and the TV table, Only one chair. Shower controls always different--water flow too weak, too strong--too hot--too cold. Thin white towels. Toilet paper folded into a classy neat point at the used edge.

Noisy family next door. Motel. Hoodlums next door. Retired military next door. Motel. Driving on to Florida next door. Don't speak English next door.

Trucks roaring by all night, freight trains all night long, police sirens, toilet flushing next door, strange vibrations, Gideon Bible. Motel.

Tanya. (Tomasito photo)

...

9. Desert Water

2011-05-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

We have recently visited three human solutions to the problem of water in the desert and they all are concerned with containment pools.

Montezuma Well in the middle of the Arizona Desert--a small pond formed by nature and exploited by the "Sinagua" early human desert dwellers--Lake Elsinore, created in the early 20th Century by damming seasonal rainwater runoff streams near the Pacific coast in the southern California desert and Lake Havasu--also created in the early 20th Century by damming the Colorado River on the desert California/Arizona border.

Here are some photos of each of these human solutions to a need. (Click photo to enlarge)

Lake Elsinore, (Tomasito photo)

Lake Havasu. (Tomasito photo)

Montezuma Well. (Tanya photo)

More humans mean more massive solutions.

How many people are enough?

"Enough is plenty."

...

8. Montezuma Irrigation Canal

2011-05-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Montezuma Well. Irrigation Canal and Beaver Creek

Water is a rare and precious resource in the desert.

The plants and animals --all the living things of the desert--have evolved with this basic fact.

The Sinagua people--late comers into this environment--obviously based their occupation of the arid land on the availability of water--and that is why a small group of them discovered and used the Montezuma Well as a resource.

The circular sink of the well is adjacent to an abrupt valley and the springs that feed the well pour from a small passageway from the well into a stream in the valley.

Long ago the Sinagua people created a system of irrigation canals capturing the water coming from the cliff under Montezuma Well and carrying it down the valley to water their fields of maize, beans and squash. The later native people and eventually the European settlers used and improved these canals which are still useful today.

Just a few paces from the look-out point above the well into the valley below the well brings the visitor to this rushing "leak" in Montezuma Well and follows the ancient irrigation system a short way, passing from dry desert to lush riparian habitat.

...

7. Montezuma Well

2011-05-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

Montezuma Well Lookout. (Tomasito photo)

There are two other ancient sites near Montezuma Castle National Monument: Montezuma Well and Tuzigoot.

We drove the few miles to Montezuma well and saved the ruined village of old Tuzigoot for future exploration. .

I was very curious to see Montezuma Well since I had heard about it since I was a boy but never had the opportunity to visit. It is well worth the drive to this out-of-the-way part of the huge state of Arizona.

The well is a "limestone sink formed long ago by the collapse of an immense underground cavern."

There is a paved access road from highway eleven, parking lot and restroom facilities for the many tourists to wish to see this small pond smack in the middle of this vast desert.

When we arrived, a couple of busloads of elementary school kids from Phoenix and their adult chaperones were climbing all over the place--gawking at the still water below from the viewing area at the rim and clogging the trail which descends to the water's edge with their lively young bodies. Maybe fifty other tourists were mingling with the exuberant children--and we were there too, of course.

I was thinking how lucky these kids were to be here--to enjoy this one-of-a-kind rare place as children when it has taken me a long lifetime to get here.

...

6. Parking Lot

2011-05-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned the crowded parking lot at the Montezuma Castle National Monument.

There is a nice paved access road down into the narrow canyon where the ruins are and the parking lot is also paved and well laid out but there were so many visitors that all the spaces were filled and there was a resulting traffic jam--not exactly expected out here in the empty desert!

And the cars were from everywhere! We saw license plates from Arizona and California, of course--and also from Texas, New Mexico, New York and Florida--even Canada.

We found a parking place though with not such a very long wait and also found a welcome empty picnic table in the shade of some big cottonwood trees for our lunch--yogurt, bananas, oranges and some good bread. Drinking water was available free at the park.

...

5. Montezuma Castle

2011-05-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

This famous Arizona ruin is in an elevated cave in a canyon on Beaver Creek about fifty miles from The town of Flagstaff.

It was built in the eleventh century of the Common Era by the Sinagua people but was abandoned before being discovered by European settlers who imagined that it had been built by the Aztecs and so called it the Montezuma Castle.

The location of this beautiful "cliff dwelling" is in what I would call the perfect place for a farm.

There is a large natural cave in a sandstone cliff, elevated above the valley floor by several hundred feet--perfect for sheltering an adobe high-rise structure-- with a rushing stream of clear water a short walk from the cliff base.

The "Castle" is a twenty-room dwelling set picturesquely into the cave.

There are also the eroded remains of a forty-five room village at the base of the cliff--so the population of the farm was never very large. There are probably more tourists in the valley at any time of the day now than there ever were inhabitants of the early village.

I think the National Park Service has done a good job of protecting the ruins--there is a small museum, gift shop and restroom facilities and a crowded parking lot.

...

4. Joshua Tree

2011-05-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Tanya on the Rocks. (Tomasito photo)

Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California is another protected desert park we visited in our Journey to the East.

There are two desert environments in this huge park--the eastern half, below 3,000 feet above sea level is called the Colorado Desert and the western half, above 3,000 feet, is called the Mojave Desert.

The Joshua Trees (not trees, but a type of yucca) live in the Mojave part of the park--Creosote bush and cholla cactus covers much of the Colorado part.

Both environments are chock-full of life--plants, animals, birds--even the strange outcroppings of stones seem to be quite alive in their own way!

We love to drive through this big beautiful, inspiring, quiet land--and we love to park and mingle with the desert life-forms. They are so interesting!

Cholla Cactus Garden. (Tomasito photo)

...

3. Casa Grande

2011-05-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Tanya at Casa Grande Ruins. (Tomasito photo)

Our Journey to the East took us by the ruins called "Casa Grande Ruins National Monument" in south-central Arizona.

These badly eroded but still impressive adobe structures mark a town center of the "Hohokam" (All Gone--Used Up People).

This desert culture on the Gila River developed slowly for many centuries and failed and disappeared by 1450 Common Era leaving traces of irrigated fields, scattered trade goods, pot shards and these four-story walls of some grand building.

The old village was vacant and partly in ruins when first visited by European missionaries (Father Kino) in 1694.

This remote site became the first federally protected archeological site in the United States in 1892 and a steel protective roof was built to slow the adobe erosion in the 1930s.

A placard informs the pedestrian viewer that the village was built by unknown people of long ago. "What were their secrets? Adaptability, hard work and human ingenuity: the essentials of life."

...

2. Saguaro Facts

2011-05-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Dying Saguaro. (Tomasito photo)

Saguaros can live to a very old age--200 and more years.

At fifteen years of age the cactus may be only twelve inches in height and it does not grow "arms" until after it's 75th birthday.

The mature saguaro blossoms and produces fruit containing thousands of tiny seeds at about thirty years of age.

"Saguaros that live 150 years or more attain the grandest sizes, towering 50 feet or more and weighing 16,000 pounds or more, dwarf every other living thing in the desert" (Saguaro National Park brochure).

Dying Human Being. (Tomasito photo)

Humans can live to an age of one hundred and a few more years.

A human female can have babies from about thirteen to about fifty years years of age after fertilization by a human male. Babies are usually single but can come as twins, triplets or, rarely, more--up to a record of eight.

Humans can attain the height of about six and a half feet or, rarely, more. Some can weigh as much as three hundred or more pounds though the average is less than 200 pounds. (Tomasito's Facts)

...

1. Saguaro Desert

2011-05-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

There is a kind of place I like to be in the outdoors--quiet--empty--but filled with life-- not the usual noisy, ordinary kind of life--a more mysterious, subtle kind of life: a humming, expanding, vibrating kind of life--sometimes with form and sometimes formless---the kind of life that fills and overflows the saguaro desert country of Arizona.

We went there again recently--but in a way I never leave the desert. I've got desert in my bones!

I was born in the New Mexico desert in what was the little town of Albuquerque and can always and easily recall the wild desert mood--the silence, the strange plants--the snake trails in the dirt and the lizards--the gray coyote slipping away into the distance--the glimpse of roadrunner or brilliant song of some Mexican bird hidden in the sparse trees.

But it is always wonderful to BE in the desert again: the high vibrating color, the tasty air--the humming distance--the weird plants, the the signs of animals, birds, insects--the dry heat--the magnificent sun.

Dangerous, deadly, happy, peaceful desert.

...

319. That's All Folks

2011-05-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Who to travel (or live) with: I think "righteous" or “holy” people are the best companions but I guess these words will mean something different to everyone, of course.

Some of the very best people don’t like to think of themselves as either righteous or holy!

But when you have had enough earthprobing experience to develop some discrimination, I think you will agree that you can depend more on “righteous” or “holy” people through thick and thin than "unrighteous" or “unholy” people.

I define "holy" as someone who builds you up, makes you better—just like they are. “Unholy” people are selfish---tear you down and make you a worse person—just like they are.

For me, "righteous" or “holy” is never boring, it’s classy!

Help: It is probably not possible for a traveler not to need help fairly often
so when you need help, I suggest you go to the “religious” people in any country—that is, to the simple religious people, not necessarily the professionally religious people-- and you will usually get the simple, practical help you need—and it will usually be free. This works for me.

Don’t bother going to rich people for help. They don’t understand “need” and they will never help anyone but themselves.

~:~

And speaking of help: Tanya Wold did all the initial computer work necessary to get this old book of mine back into print and she constantly helps me when I have computer or internet problems. Tanya is my wife, inspiration and charming earthprobing companion. Thanks, Tanya!

Tom (Starship) Wold

Snug Harbor, California

...

318. Still More Stuff

2011-05-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

Identification: is a main priority—a traveler must be able to prove who he is quickly—so keep essential documents next to your skin. Even when you bathe, have them in full view but dry, of course. I have heard that the next step is to have a microchip implanted under your skin so you can always be identified, but that is pretty extreme. We already have fingerprints for positive physical identification—maybe that’s enough.

NOTE: when traveling, “The WHO Immunization Card” is as necessary to carry as your passport. At the present time (1976) you MUST CARRY evidence of a “typhoid booster” shot (annually), a “smallpox booster” shot (updated annually), a TB test (updated annually) a, “cholera booster” every six months and hepatitis protection—a gamma globulin shot every four months. Some countries are very serious about this evidence and others are lax. Be prepared!

Wardrobe: I like a baseball cap with a bill to keep my nose from getting sunburned. I like sturdy, lace-up ankle high leather boots with “tractor tread” soles so I don’t have to worry about my feet. A change of underwear and socks are nice. A couple of bandana handkerchiefs are handy. Tee shirts and shorts in the tropics are good and I like to have one presentable collared shirt with buttons for “dress-up” occasions. Jeans seem acceptable almost everywhere and a lined jean jacket is good protection for all but very cold weather. A real wool sweater is practical if you can afford it.

In South America
I tried wearing a poncho as a combination “coat and blanket” but it never worked for me. I like a separate coat and a blanket better.

For a backpacking earthprober, “comfortable” is better than “stylish”.

I never found one trouble-free backpacker’s wardrobe that would accommodate all climates and all cultures and all conditions, but I also discovered that whatever I need seems to appear whenever I need it—this always works for me so I don’t worry much about how I’m dressed.

...

317. More Stuff

2011-05-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

In the study: Writing kit with paper, envelopes, ballpoint pen, local stamps; drawing kit with colored pencils, sketch pad, brush and India ink; a world map and some local maps are fun; not more than one book (Keep exchanging it!), musical instrument (like a harmonica or tin whistle), foreign language phrase book for the country you’re in and a magnifying glass, if you need it, for the small print.

In The Bedroom: Sleeping bag or blanket. (I don’t like the tapering “mummy bags” because they cramp my feet!), candle or flashlight, plastic rain sheet or ultra lightweight one-man tent.

Carry on the body: Passport, “World Health Organization (WHO) Immunization Card” ( both in a waterproof wallet hanging around the neck), address book, airline tickets, and American Express card; camera and film in a protective case with a shoulder strap—(or in the backpack for security); money wallet, ID, etc., in front clothing pockets--nothing but a handkerchief in the thief-tempting rear pockets. I like to carry some loose paper money in my front shirt pocket--it is easier to take out to pay for necessary things and easy to protect. (I learned this trick from Brother Joe in Liberia.)

...

316. My Stuff

2011-05-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the things I carried:

In the kitchen: “Optimus” gasoline stove and 1 quart metal container for gasoline (You can buy standard motor gasoline, “petrol”, almost everywhere on earth, but not specialized cooker fuels.), two-quart water container, lightweight “unbreakable” cup, bowl, spoon and fork. (My Swiss Army pocket-knife with its practical tools stayed in my pants pocket.), sharpening stone for the knife, one-quart bail handled cooking pot with lid, small tea-pot and several plastic containers for food, matches, etc.

In the bathroom/closet: soap, toilet paper, hairbrush, comb, scissors, shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste (I prefer baking soda now), dental floss (makes good, tough emergency thread), tweezers, nail clippers, sewing kit with needles, thread, buttons, safety pins.

Also in the bathroom:

Doctor Tree’s Medicine Chest:

For diarrhoea: Streptomagma, Lomotil or Paregoric (blood or mucous show means it’s amoebic: see someone for shots!).

Malaria prevention: Chloroquinine (250 mg pill weekly) or Primaquinine (daily pill).

Water purification: Iodine (tablets or fluid) but best is to boil the daylights out of the water (at least fifteen minutes of rapid boiling!).

Other medical needs: Vaseline (good for so many things!), mosquito repellent, adhesive tape or “Band-Aids”.

(Health tips for the traveler):

Always wear shoes (Especially in West Africa where soil parasites can bore right through the skin of your feet and get into your bloodstream!).

In many countries helpful or necessary drugs can be purchased at a pharmacy without a prescription if you know the chemical name of what you need.

If the food you eat is steaming hot, the harmful bacteria on it may be weakened enough not make you very sick!

To cure most illnesses, you don’t need a medical doctor. Just think of what you have done or are doing and change your life-style until you are better. Sometimes it takes just as long to heal yourself as it has taken to make yourself sick!

If you are hurting, don’t concentrate on the pain, concentrate on something else and you may forget the pain!

If you are in a place where sickness is rampant, leave, because health, like sickness, is contagious—stay around healthy, happy people! Avoid complainers and sickness addicts!

Practice some Hatha Yoga. You’ll never regret it! (You can learn all you need out of a book. Don’t waste your money on “power yoga” lessons or that kind of commercial nonsense!)

Whenever possible, avoid breathing polluted air, drinking polluted liquids, eating polluted food or thinking whatever you think are polluted thoughts!

Health insurance: whatever policy you are paying for probably won’t work anywhere except in the most westernised of western countries. Socialistic countries will probably give you free minimal health care even if you are not a citizen just to get rid of you. Don’t be a fool. Take care of yourself!

I never had any health insurance during my earthprobe and when people would ask me, since I had no health insurance, what happened when I got sick I would always say: “I feel terrible until I get well!”

...

315. Backpack Stuffing

2011-05-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

My backpack, the one I called my Big Red Friend, was made of lightweight, red, heavy-duty nylon. It had four horizontally zippered compartments, which was very handy because you didn’t have to dig down to the bottom of the bag for small loose stuff, and two small zippered pockets on each side for smaller things I needed handy..These compartments were very good for keeping things separated that need to be separated, for example my eating equipment and food isolated from my old sweat socks.

I called the four larger separate backpack compartments my “kitchen”, my “bedroom”, my “bathroom/closet” and my “study”.

The backpack was attached to a lightweight aluminium/webbing frame with some handy steel pins, or it could be detached if you didn’t want to be bothered with the frame.

The frame had an adjustable belt that rested on my hips (instead of circling the waist) with a quick-release buckle and padded shoulder straps so that it was fairly comfortable to carry. When I bought it, it was the largest backpack available, but this was not good because I discovered I would carry I whatever would fit into my luggage. Now I prefer to carry small luggage so I will carry less stuff, which means less weight to lug!

But my Big Red Friend’s frame was pretty much destroyed by the US custom officer’s drug search at Honolulu International Airport. I accepted that as one of the prices of earthprobing and let it go, but...

Unfortunately, the frame was essential to the integrity of the backpack--it was not so efficient after the frame was messed up so I never used the backpack again in quite the same hard way—though I did use it for some easy stateside traveling.

...

314. Tommy's Travel Tips

2011-05-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Tommy’s Travel Tips

(For Serious Travelers)

Never buy a long-distance ticket unless you are sure you can go the whole distance. Once they have your money they can do anything they want.

Prices are often flexible. Haggling is OK and may save you a lot of money.

People carry their own weather around with them, so never believe stories of border hassles and so forth. People’s stories illustrate their own problems! But always be careful. It’s the only ass you’ve got this time around!

If you wear pants, never carry anything you value in your rear pocket! Sooner or later it will be stolen. Keep your wallet, if you carry one, in a front pocket and keep a hand on it. Fact: good professional thieves will get your money no matter where you carry it--this is experience speaking.

When you travel always carry some food and drink (not alcoholic) with you—even if it is just a little, because sooner or later you will be stranded and need it. (Stranded is bad, stranded and drunk is worse.)

Everything is temporary! Maintain your equilibrium.

Keep all signs of wealth out of sight. Flaunting watches, jewelry, cameras, expensive anything (cloths, luggage, shoes, etc.) will make you an even more tempting target for thieves then you already are.

Familiarize yourself with local currency as quickly as you can. Count out change in front of other customers since their reaction will show you how badly you are being cheated.

In every transaction, hold onto your money as long as possible and don’t be ashamed to yell when you are cheated.

To find the true value of the local currency, buy a loaf of bread and then think: “Tonight’s lodging will cost me so many loaves of bread.” I like the bread standard better than the gold standard.

Here are my favorite short-change artists: waiters, post office employees, ticket agents for transport of all kinds.

When you cash traveler’s checks get your cash in small denominations. Most merchants or even banks will not accept large bills.

Refuse damaged or torn paper money--it is usually worthless and if you accept it you will probably be stuck with it!

Expect the worst rate of exchange for safe traveler’s checks. Most agents will charge a huge “service fee” to cash them.

American dollars in twenty dollar denominations are accepted almost everywhere.

The world is round. Always assume you will return. Honesty is the best policy. Kindness is contagious and so on…

Don't be curious about unusual or mob human activity--walk the other way. Curiosity still kills cats.

An experienced traveler gets sensitive to his surroundings. This is not just paranoia--act on your intuitions and be happy.

The golden rule still rules.

...

313. Earthprobe Tapestry

2011-05-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

When I began my “earthprobe” adventure I imagined that I what I was doing was gathering true information about the world for my friends and readers in Hawaii and the United States of America, but they have all been busy with their own “earthprobes”, doing and learning what they could in their own ways.

Besides, my truth, filtered by my consciousness, my experiences, my education and so forth, will never be True (with a capital T)—for you or anyone else but me.

And so my earthprobe, my life, my adventure is my lesson and my miracle. Your earthprobe is yours, but perhaps our separate ways sometimes cross and entwine like reeds in a basket or fibers in cloth.

Maybe the deepest longing and desire of the human heart is to communicate, to help and be helped in understanding life.

So, happy earthprobing to you too dear friend and may the subtle fibers of our being merge and mingle for good.

“With a handclasp in thought”,

Tom (Thomas Frederick, Tomasito, Starship, Tommy the Drummer) Wold

...

312. Good

2011-05-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

My old friend and colleague Wiggers invites me to spend a few days and nights on his “guest porch” until I can get myself back together.

The heavy-duty old friend who is now the English Department chairperson at the Leeward Community College branch of the University of Hawaii where I used to work takes me for a spin in her brand new bright red sports car but there is nothing for me there.

I learned to smoke with the Moslem brothers in Lebanon--now I am going through more than a pack a day. No wonder they offer a cigarette to a person about to be shot--tobacco is a wonderful depressant.

Easter Sunday. I hike up into the Nuuanu Valley to the old Royal Mausoleum Park, the most sacred place I know nearby, and spend the day under the old trees in thought. When I am ready to go, I bend down and kiss the good, warm soil of Hawaii. There are many good places to be on this horrible, beautiful earth. It is good for me to be here too.

...

311. Normal

2011-05-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

Morning: I am lying on my stomach. I open my eyes and watch the mud and water running past my face. If I don’t move too much, my torso, at least, stays warm.

When there’s enough daylight, I struggle down the mountainside and phone another friend who invites me over to her apartment. When she goes off to work she lets me sleep on her rug where I am most comfortable—I don’t sleep in beds any more..

When she returns in the evening she fixes me a large pan of fried chicken for dinner. When she serves the food I am almost overcome with emotion. It’s all for me. I have seen too much poverty and weirdness. These normal things in these normal surroundings are almost more than I can bear. I guess I am experiencing a little of what a soldier returning from a combat zone feels.

Maybe “earthprobe” was my Viet Nam.

...

310 Welcome Home

2011-05-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

In the morning I phone a friend, walk to her apartment and borrow her car.

In a very confused state of mind I drive through the American traffic to a magazine publisher’s office—the same office where Elizabeth and I met and got to know and like each other…but the office is locked. “The Hawaii Beacon Magazine” is extinguished--gone out of business.

I drive to the office of the "Hawaii Herald", the Japanese language newspaper I edited for a while. It’s dead too.

I drive by the University of Hawaii in Manoa Valley-- Toshi’s “Cosmic Computer” has been removed from the lawn leaving no trace.

I visit an old musician friend. He is into a new thing, which is making him lots of money—he is touring mainland America with a “Hawaiian Show”—he says it’s too bad my skin is not brown or he could hire me.

That’s my first day “home”.

I return the car and hike up into the mountains above Honolulu, pushing my way through the underbrush to a cliff where you can see the city below. I used to come up here alone when I was troubled to think, though I thought different thoughts then.

I cut loose and went my own way—did I expect any welcome home?

Wrapped in my Afghani coat, I sleep.

About midnight it starts to rain--a real Hawaiian downpour with floods of water in pitch-black darkness. It’s impossible to climb back down the cliff to find shelter. Totally drenched and heavy with water, my sheepskin coat starts to fall apart.

I wrap all the plastic sheeting I have around my diary to keep it dry then crouch and finally lay exhausted in the rain.

In a confusion of emotion, I start to cry. I cry as I haven’t cried for years (grown men don’t cry) sobbing until my body aches. Then I sleep.

...

309. Absurd Fantasy

2011-05-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Old friends are only a telephone call away, but I know I cannot cope with a “normal” conversation now.

I hike the long way from Waikiki back to the airport—a long midnight walk—marveling at the incredible wealth, the impossible normalcy of everything I see.

The airline has “found” my backpack. The US customs police have gone through it and broken open its aluminum framework to search for the drugs I must have smuggled in from Nepal. But I didn’t.

I carry the ruined backpack to a beach I know and sleep with my head on it—guarding my few worn possessions and my diary as I have all these lonely, weary months. My backpack is the only familiar thing to me now. Hawaii, the place I used to think of as “home”, is an absurd fantasy.

...

308. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

2011-05-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA:

Late afternoon arrival.

My backpack--my "Big Red Friend"--is gone. It has been misplaced, they say, by the airline. I am jet lagged and exhausted. I don’t know…maybe some kind of a circle is complete—at least I am back where I started…but all these cars! The wide, paved streets! The neat, clean people speaking English…the shiny, spacious, almost empty public bus to Waikiki…the dimes and quarters and dollar bills bus fare…the glittering hotels, so expensive, so familiar and so very, very strange!

Nothing has changed, but all is changed and strange to me!

I am no drinker, but I have a drink at a hotel bar I know. Here’s Ala Wai harbor where I lived for a couple of years on my very own sailboat. Here’s Waikiki--the Rainbow Tower and Hawaiian Village Hotel.

Oh, My God.

Where AM I? Where have I gone?

Where are the hustlers? The beggars? Are there no ragged untouchables here? Or am I the only poor, ragged untouchable now?

Nothing has changed but me alone!

I have changed!

I have made my long journey to the Monkey Temple and I will never be the same.

...

307. Over Asia

2011-05-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

There is a difficult decision to make: should I buy two Thai silk “aloha shirts” that feel like you are wearing nothing when you wear them, or should I spend my last night in town in my hotel room? I can’t afford both.

I check out of the hotel and make it down to the airport to sleep wearing one of my new shirts.

In the airport waiting room a well-dressed older man comes up to me and asks if I can fly a fighter jet. If I can he says he has work for me. I never learned to fly one. Looks like I am back in “the real world”.

Most of the rest of the night I spend talking to a pretty Spanish woman—when she leaves for Pakistan at 2 a.m. I go to sleep under my Afghani sheepskin coat.

My flight to Honolulu leaves at 8 a.m. On the plane I sit next to a friendly American woman on her way to New York. She makes it a good trip.

Hong Kong: In and out. I never leave the plane.

Formosa: Green and lovely below.

Seoul: Cold.

Tokyo: The lady going to New York reads my I Ching: “Small gains”.

...

306. Bankok

2011-05-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

Bangkok is a whirlwind of automobiles, buses and people.

Provocative billboards five or six stories high advertise the latest in sex and violence movies. It is so hot and humid here that sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater may be the most sensible pastime available.

The people are small and seem vivacious. Many of the young women are very attractive to me and they seem to like foreign men like me—probably because so many American military men have been through here with plenty of money to spend.

In the few days I am in the city shopping for the cheapest plane fare to Hawaii, I see several movies, visit several exquisite temples and watch one of the Asian Cup soccer finals. (South Viet Nam lost…and the USA war just ended. America lost too in South Viet Nam!)

...

305. Flying Home

2011-05-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

The plane out of Nepal passes near Mount Everest. Snow is blowing off the world’s loftiest peak in a soft cloud.

Bangkok, Thailand: The usual airport hustlers are waiting. I am almost taken for an expensive taxi ride to an expensive airport hotel by one of the usual airport parasites-- when my earthprobeing experience takes control of my mind and actions.

Slow down. Take it easy. There is no hurry.

I wait for the other arriving airport tourists to make their frantic bid for security in an alien environment. I walk around a bit and then casually catch a regular city bus downtown. On a back street near Siam Square I find a hotel I can afford and, much too curious about this unusual city to rest, I walk out to “probe” the place.

...

304. Image

2011-05-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

In the evening I gaze into the eyes of my reflected image in the hotel room mirror.

It is obvious that the things I am now thinking I could think only here and now.

The choices I have made have made every present breath and every present thought inevitable. I am-- I must be-- at “the right place at the right time” for my particular spiritual growth since this is where I am and this is all there is for me.

That’s faith I suppose— a faith that is essential at least to my present understanding.

And you reading these lines— could you possibly be anywhere else or is this meeting of our minds inevitable? I wish you very well, Dear Reader and MAY YOU ATTAIN.

Next morning I begin to arrange my return journey back to Honolulu by air.

...

303. Enough is Enough

2011-05-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

This “earthprobe”…

My earthprobe.

Is this a small part of what “finding yourself” means?

And couldn’t I have “found myself” more conveniently on the beach at Waikiki? Or did I have to say goodbye and go—“cell in the stream, fish in the flow” as I put it back then to really "find myself" good?

Is there “something” deep in me, maybe something “spiritual” that somehow “knows” what experiences I need to “become myself”—something that somehow drives the events of my life and perhaps even provides the necessary “right experiences”?

I don't know, but this is a mystery most mysterious for me!

But honestly, this “Temple of the Monkeys” in Nepal is emblematic of the kind of place where an ignorant monkey like me would be destined to “find himself”!

I believe I have reached the end of this portion of the wandering path of my earthprobing. I do not have the strength or the will to return to India and continue traveling east by land until I come to land’s end.

China and Russia are closed to US citizens now. We Americans are at war in Viet Nam.

I am broke and bone-weary.

This is enough and enough is plenty. Enough is enough. Snuff, snuff!

...

302. Monkey Temple

2011-05-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

Somewhat fatigued by the high altitude, I retire early but sleep like a baby dreaming of trying on new clothes for some new kind of work. Friends are helping me choose. I even get a dream haircut but regret it in my dream.

In the morning, ringing my bike bell constantly like everyone else, I thread my way through the Katmandu traffic—lots of pedestrians but few cars or bicycles. After a few minutes of peddling I am alone on a paved country lane leading up a hill to the gilded tower of the famous “Temple of the Monkeys”.

I lean my rented bike against a tree where a footpath to the temple begins and start to climb. A picturesque outcropping of stones and trees catches my eye and I leave the main path and walk over to them. The larger stones have mysterious symbols carved on them, the smaller stones and pebbles between the twisted tree roots are smeared with vermilion paste. The air is pine-scented and fresh. Shadowy monkeys appear on rock ledges high above me. I think this little natural shrine suits me better than the big golden one further up the slope so I sit and spend some quiet time here drawing and thinking and save the celebrated sanctuary on the summit for another day.

...

301. Stupa and Pie

2011-05-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

I rent a bicycle and ride out into the countryside. There are very few motorized vehicles—maybe that’s why the air is so clean and the pace seems so “human”. Farmers are busy in the fertile- looking fields and at every turn in the country lane there is a crumbling stone temple with penetrating but sleepy-looking eyes painted on them.

I find “The Largest Stupa in the World”-- an immense white dome of solid masonry, with the same large sleepy blue eyes painted on the square tower built on top of the dome. Colorful prayer flags are fluttering in every direction from cords tied to the top of the tower. Prayer wheels-- sort of vertical bronze cylinders fixed so brushing them with the hand will spin them-- are installed in niches around the base of the dome. A saffron-robed monk gently scolds a small child who has been turning one of the prayer wheels the wrong way—unwinding someone’s prayer, no doubt!

I enjoy Nepalese food for lunch: a crispy potato pancake wrapped around some delicious curry.

In the evening I peddle my bike down to the row of pie shops near the town’s almost dry riverbed. I have heard of these pie shops from other travelers and I have been curious to see if they are as good as their reputation. I open the door of the first shop in the row, “The Upper Crust Pie Shop”, and am confronted by a by a table laden with beautiful cakes and pies. Oh, my goodness! Take your pick. One thick slice with hot milk tea for two rupees! There is peach, apple, berry, lemon meringue and banana cream pie, angle’s food, devil’s food and vanilla cake—all right from the oven!

A stoned hippy is smiling in a corner over a wedge of pineapple pie and a straight tourist in shorts is getting into some chocolate cake. I take a slice of the supreme pie, pecan!

There is no rush. When I have eaten my fill I pay the thin, businesslike boy in change and wander out into the peaceful evening. Children are playing in a fountain with carved stone faces. I am reminded of the fuente pre-Hispanico in Colombia. Though very different, this place has the same good vibes.

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