The Dao of Travel

I recently began work at a chocolate store. It's fun work, with cool people, good hours, and good pay. Seeing as most people like chocolate, we're somewhat popular, and through my work I do have opportunities to meet some rather interesting types.

Today, I had one of those opportunities. A younger man, probably in his late 20s, came in with a beautiful woman about the same age. Together they joked and looked and filled a couple boxes and bought a few bits of chocolate-covered fruit. He wore a large, stiff-looking cast that kept his right arm at about a 90ish degree angle. Being the personable type I am (and needing to fill time as the computer processed his transaction), I asked him about it. His reply was quite unexpected.

"Yeah, I was in Mongolia for the past 3 months and some jackass came out of nowhere and broke my arm in 5 places. You think in most parts of Asia they're just dicking around and just don't obey the laws for whatever reason, but in Mongolia they seriously have no idea what they're doing."

I took it in, realized he was joking about Mongolian drivers, and asked him why he spent so much time in Mongolia. He explained he was there teaching English and traveling for the most part, and had quite literally (just an hour and 45 minutes ago, he explained) touched back down in America. He asked me if I traveled, and I replied honestly,

"A little bit-- though not recently. The most interesting place I've been was Saigon."

Pic related.

The fact that I called the city Saigon (as opposed to Ho Chi Minh City) sparked his interest, and we began a lengthy talk. We shared stories and laughed at each others' "Stupid American" moments. It was a truly human conversation, and I was lucky to meet him. One of his final questions he asked me was,

"So, were you living in Saigon, or just traveling?"

And my response came to me so naturally and unexpectedly that I couldn't help but smile at myself.

"Well, if you aren't traveling, you aren't living."

He and his companion departed to explore the rest of the tangled jungle of capitalism that is the Mall of America, and I went off to my lunch break. As I sat, eating my food and sitting still, I meditated on what I had said.

In Zen teachings, that which is spontaneous is said to be the most honest and truthful. That's the true purpose of the Zen koan, or riddle, such as the famous "Tree Falls in a Forest" question. There is no true answer, it's simply meant to get you to respond spontaneously. My answer to this man's question felt like a response to a koan. Before I even realized it, the words had bubbled out of my mouth. I realized that this is how I truly felt. Even if it didn't apply to everyone, it certainly applied to me.

I came to the simple conclusion that I am getting the urge to travel again. I feel like I need it! I need to go out of my comfort zone, go somewhere that I need to learn a language for. I need to get away from the part time job, and the laptop, and the sleeping for 10 hours, and the capitalism and the Arnold Palmers and the freshly-mowed lawns and the $48.12 to fill my car. I need to leave that behind, even if it's only for a month, or 3 weeks, or hell, even 1 week.

To illustrate the concept of traveling, I have procured this Googled image of Kowloon in Hong Kong.

This conclusion was amplified later in the day when my new manager (new to the store, not new simply because it's a new job for me) asked me what kind of Muppet I am. She explained that there are two kinds of Muppets that Henson created: Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets. Order Muppets feel compelled to organize, divide, compartmentalize, and control, whereas Chaos Muppets enjoy unpredictability, passion, and self-government. After processing the fact that my boss was trying to manage her new store with Muppet logic, I told her that I am by far a Chaos Muppet. I enjoy unpredictability and hate being tied down. I love having a new adventure every day and despise being enslaved to routine.

On my drive home, I had words from the Dao De Jing echoing in my head (big surprise, eh?):

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."

That passage effectively sums up everything I feel right now. I think Daoism got it right about it's approach to traveling. In Daoist culture, wandering is considered the best form of traveling. Wandering for the purpose of discovery, for the purpose of understanding, for the purpose of experience. That's what I think more people need to do. To travel with an empty mind, a light pack, durable shoes, and a thirst to experience, with flexibility and a smile on their faces will do wonders for the soul.

If you like my writing, you can join the site to the right of the page, like Speaking with Storms on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+ . If you have questions or just want to chat, I'm on Formspring too!

Thanks for reading. Go forth and do good things, my friends.

The 99%

When the Occupy Wall Street protests started, I scoffed and said, "It'll never pick up."

It did.

When I saw the pictures and heard testimonials, I shook my head and said, "It won't spread."

It did.

When I saw the videos of the local protests in Government Plaza in Minneapolis, I turned the other way and I said, "I won't get involved."

I did.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Occupy Minneapolis protests in Government Plaza. Granted, I was there later in the evening when there weren't very many people there, but seeing some of the things these people were talking about actually showed me things I didn't expect to see.

Ashley Cope, the artist and writer of one of my all-time favorite comics, Unsounded, responded to a question about it on Formspring. She and I share initial reactions.

I'm not there so I can't speak definitively, but they are somewhat short-sighted. They are all brimming with youthful enthusiasm and hippy sentiment, but is anyone planning for the long-term? Wealth disparity, a collapsing middle class, a thoroughly dirty and defunct government; one-thousand and one issues that add up to the proverbial red, white, and blue dick up the ass. This protest cannot be like the Arab Spring. We don't have a single dictator or even army to rally against. We have a whole class, an entire financial system, entire branches of government that are against us. There's no one person to throw rocks at.

Change is either going to come bloodily - and I mean that literally - or it's going to come via a long term hijacking and renewal of the system. That means establishing a new political party and finding new, truly Progressive candidates to represent it. It's a lot of hard work, planning, and sacrifice. It's not just setting up tents on Wall Street.

That being said, these protests are a good start. They need to go national, grow in scale, and try to establish a few solid demands. It'll be exciting to see if it bears fruit. Roll out Mademoiselle Guillotine!

 I still think that way for the most part, but I'm slowly growing more optimistic.  They're starting to go national, even international. There are 5 separate protest efforts in Minnesota alone, and Canada (where the protests originated), Australia, Japan, and all over Europe people are rising up. Most of these protests are adopting the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, which follows as such:


As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!

These are really strong words, inspiring words, well-written words. But these words alone, though powerful, will not make the change happen. We need to make change happen, through our words, yes, but also through our actions. I think the 99% need to band together, to unify even more tightly, and to set completely clear goals and demands. If we do this, the protesters can do this! We can do this!

For those who are unaware, "the 99%" refers to the statistic that at any given time, anywhere from 85 to 90 percent of the wealth is in the hands of the top 1% wealthiest of the population.  Chances are, you are part of the 99%. I am too. I want the protesters to know, that I am with them.

I came from a pretty lucky household: Middle-class,with both parents having a college degree, good income, my parents raising me with love and respect into a pretty good education system, and they never once told me that I couldn't do something. I'm transferring to an expensive university soon to get a degree that may not right away give me a job (unless the gods themselves smile upon me) and thus will rack up tons of debt while working at a supermarket's bakery. I am definitely one of the luckier of the 99%, but I am still the 99%.

My name is David. I am a writer, a poet, a student, a thinker, a lover, a fighter, and I am the 99%.

If you like my writing, you can join the site to the right of the page, like Speaking with Storms on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+ . If you have questions or just want to chat, I'm on Formspring too!

Thanks for reading. Stay human, my friends.

Let it Fall!

I've been stealing little bits here and there... Just enough to keep me going
It isn't mine, I know it's bad for me, but I still need a taste, a fleeting taste
To know that it's still there for me.
I need this addiction to fade, to stop stinging me with white-hot needles.
Let it fall.

Greed, my master passion, has been cycloning within me
A wicked maelstrom that has no bottom to its abyssal belly.
I keep wanting more, I keep needing more, but I know
I need this hurricane to turn to a rain, a tired, sighing mist.
Let it fall.

The clock on the wall, with each thundering motion of fate's hand, is slowly
rusting, decaying.
The glass I used to see your face through is now covered in dust, obscuring any thought, any spoken word.
I need this eon to end, end with the flap of its wing.
Let it fall.

The Dao of Health

I try to stay healthy most of the time. I practice tai chi and kung fu, and I make sure to stay away from obviously unhealthy food and try to eat as healthily as possible. I drink at least two cups of green tea every day. I don't smoke. Things like that.

I know people who have experience in drugs personally. Not just cannabis, but also harder drugs such as hallucinogenic mushrooms and cocaine, and two people having experience with heroin.

I don't use anything like that, not because it's illegal but also because I just don't like the feeling of having unnatural effects being placed on my mind. The thoughts scares me. I also have seen what happens to people who use them.

A lot of people rely on substances to offer a release, or an escape. They feel that the sensation offered by the drugs is simply "better" than the real world, or it offers a form of "enhanced perception". Such thinking could not be more dangerous. What hallucinogens, for example, are really doing is firing neurons in your brain in a very destructive, dangerous, volatile fashion.

Even with drugs that are not directly addictive, the risk is there... The desire is there. I've never understood the desire for a certain drug past that of a cigarette. It throws the entire body-mind balance out of whack! It throws it outside the Dao, the Way.

The Dao, or the Way, is described as being within the natural flow of things. Using drugs throws your body so far out of the natural order that it's incredibly difficult to become realigned with the Dao.

People who are slave to drugs rarely realize the manacles around their wrists, because their eyes are always on the next time they can alter their perception of the world. The worst part is, the people who are in the most danger of becoming addicts are often the ones who never realize it.

In one of my favorite books of all time, Lamb by Christopher Moore, one of the disciples of Joshua (otherwise known as Jesus), named Bartholomew, is portrayed as a Cynic and teaches Joshua of Cynic values. He describes it as living like a dog. "I own nothing, therefore I am slave to nothing." This resounds deeply within Buddhist values of removing suffering by removing desire. Similarly, removing the dependence on any substance breaks the shackles of a soul and emancipates it-- Grants it true, unabashed freedom.

Some people believe that drugs help them get "closer to God"... What they tragically fail to see-- Or, rather, what fails to be shown to them-- is that God is always close. What they destroy their body and their soul in order to see has always been right in front of them. It's in their friends, in the water they drink, in the food they eat, in the air they breathe. Everything they need is all right there.

If you know someone who is struggling with substance abuse, help them as you would want them to help you. Call 1 800 390 4056 or go to www.addict-help.com .