I'm Not Waiting Til I'm 85...

"Instantes" (Instants)

If I were able to live my life anew,
In the next I would try to commit more errors.
I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.
I would be more foolish than I've been,
In fact, I would take few things seriously.
I would be less hygienic.
I would run more risks,
take more vacations,
contemplate more sunsets,
climb more mountains, swim more rivers.
I would go to more places where I've never been,
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans,
I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly
and prolifically each minute of his life;
Of course I had moments of happiness.
If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments.

Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never
went anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot-water bottle,
an umbrella, and a parachute;
If I could live again, I would travel lighter.

If I could live again,
I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring
and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends.
I would take more cart rides,
contemplate more dawns,
and play with more children,
If I had another life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85,
and I know that I am dying.

(Translated from Spanish by myself)

-Jorge Luis Borges

Quest to Cycle...

...I have some periods of free time coming up and I'm planning to use that time to visit people across the state of MO and beyond. And, I've decided to head out on bike to do it.

Someone asked me why. Here's why:

to do something I love: traveling...
while doing something I love: exercising...
all while doing something I love: being out in nature
while doing yet another thing I love: new things that lead me to new places

Cruisin Indy Style

Check out this vid of me cruising around in a street legal two-seater IndyCar. Just one of the many perks of covering the Indy Racing League!

I do have to warn everybody now... I've got in my head to become an IndyCar driver now. So, I'm going to be making a habit hitting up the local go-kart joints. That along with my Muay Thai boxing training of course!

Anyways, here's the vid:



Also, check out this awesome shot of Scott Dixon I managed to get after he won the 92nd Indy 500:



If you're interested, check out my coverage of the race at domesticfuel.com. Just do a search for my name and all my posts should come up.

Another nickname...

I just had a friend call me the "Perpetual Traveler." Hahaha... I liked that one too.

Fav nicknames to date:

Lala - given to me by the fam many moons ago

Pluto - given to me by my good friends on Madrid Lane.

Renaissance Woman - Dustin's fine remarks

Perpetual Traveler - in the words of Bart

Learn to Fly...

...or swing around like a monkey. It all depends on how you look at it. Either way... I'm determined to learn how to do this! It's called Parkour:



Here's another one



I don't know why it says "Hated" at the end... whatev...

Courage in the Face of Disaster

We've all been hearing reports about the cyclone that barreled through Myanmar. The Death toll has reached 100,000 and is still climbing. Yet, the government still won't open its borders. And to think I was right there, literally next door, just a little over a month ago. Read the account of one CNN reporter. It's pretty unbelievable.

In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here CNN's Dan Rivers details his remarkable personal story to CNN Wire news editor Ashley Broughton after returning home Friday from five days in Myanmar, reporting on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.
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Rivers and his crew met this injured man while reporting on the tragedy.
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(CNN) -- Hiding under a blanket in the back of a car at a police checkpoint. Hopping on boats instead of staying on a road. Constantly looking over your shoulder, knowing that at any moment you -- and those with you -- face the possibility of imprisonment, torture, even death.

It sounds like a spy movie. But CNN's Dan Rivers, who sneaked into storm-ravaged Myanmar without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta, says the reality is even more frightening than it appears on the silver screen.

Now out of Myanmar, Rivers said Friday that his experience raises a question: If the government is chasing down a journalist reporting on a natural disaster, what kinds of problems are aid workers facing?

"The whole country is kind of a basket case," Rivers said. "Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won't let anyone in -- they're turning a bad situation into ... what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale." Photo Look at satellite pictures of the damage by the flooding »

He is concerned, he said, that many more may die as a result of the government's self-imposed isolation.

Earlier in the week, he said, his crew videotaped government workers dumping bodies of the dead into a river. A government not engaged in such activities, which amount to a kind of cover-up, should have nothing to hide, Rivers noted. "Why should they be trying to hide a natural disaster? It's not their fault. It just illustrates the mentality of the regime. It's so suspicious of the outside world." Video Watch how some aid is getting through »
Don't Miss

* U.N. furious after aid seized in Myanmar
* U.S. mulls food drops to devastated Myanmar
* In Depth: Crisis in Myanmar
* iReport.com: Are you there? Send your photos, videos
Impact Your World
o See how you can make a difference

Rivers arrived in Myanmar on Monday morning, a few days after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta region, putting more than 2,000 square miles of land under water and killing tens of thousands of people.

The Myanmar government has said 22,000 people were killed. The top U.S. envoy in the country has said the death toll may be as high as 100,000.

Rivers is no stranger to natural disasters and their aftermath. In 2004, he was in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, covering the devastation wrought by a tsunami. In October 2005, he was in Pakistan after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake killed 75,000 people in Pakistan and India.

"I've seen a lot of horrible things like that, unfortunately," he said of the situation in Myanmar. But "it was bad, and ... it's the kind of story you really feel emotionally. In that way, it's easy to write the story, because it just flows out. You feel passionate about it."

In Myanmar, however, "the logistics were horrendous," he said. Getting to the hardest-hit area involved an eight-hour drive on dirt roads.

In some ways, Banda Aceh before the tsunami resembled Myanmar, he said. The region, the closest land to the magnitude-9.0 underwater earthquake that spawned the tsunami, was also home to a nearly three-decade conflict between Indonesian troops and separatist rebels, and people tended to be suspicious of outsiders. Video Watch Dan Rivers' report from Myanmar »

However, after the disaster, "they just opened the whole place up, and it was just carte blanche," he said. "Anyone could go in. I guess I naively assumed it would be the same in this instance," thinking that police, with so many victims and so much damage to worry about, would not be concerned with, say, the kind of visa carried by a visitor.

Within days of his arrival, he realized he was wrong.

Rivers and his crew had been in Myanmar for only a day when a local contact warned them that the government was seeking him -- just after his name was broadcast. The contact said authorities were alerting all hotels to report which foreigners had stayed there.

Still, though, "I was pretty confident we were being careful enough," he said. He and his crew were continually changing locations, moving from hotel to hotel. But he knew that the potential for a problem was there.

That became more apparent during a visit in the country's southern portion Thursday, when members of his crew asked a local official whether a road was open. The official said yes and was going to give them a pass, but he said an immigration official wanted to talk to them, Rivers said. That official took the crew members' passports and were comparing them to a picture of Rivers -- apparently taken from a picture of a CNN screen. Learn more about Myanmar's recent history »

"They disappeared for, like, two hours," Rivers said. "I didn't know what had happened to them." He said he was worried his crew members might be interrogated or tortured, and considered turning himself in.

"I was wandering the street, not knowing what to do," he said. It was "baking hot" -- about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. He knew no one and was not fluent in the language. People were asking him who he was, where he came from. One person asked whether he was with the CIA.

The situation was "pretty uncomfortable," he said. "I must have looked pretty suspicious."

Luckily, he did not turn himself in -- and later found out that the officials did not know the crew members were from CNN or that they were accompanying him.

When the crew told him the officials had his photo, however, Rivers realized other authorities probably had his picture as well. The group decided to push farther south, he said. At one point, he hid under a blanket in the back of the car at a police checkpoint. It was at that checkpoint they were told that the people in the village they had just left wanted to see them again.

The crew turned around but decided to get off the road and followed a dirt road into the middle of the jungle, Rivers said. They parked the car, hopped on a boat and traveled down the river in two small boats. They reached a small village and were able to do some videotaping, he said. They also were checking on a rumor that there was a speedboat nearby.

While walking, however, they were stopped by a local official carrying a walkie-talkie, he said. The group was told to return to their van and that police would be waiting for them there.

The encounter, he said, was "gut-wrenching ... you think, 'Oh, my God, this is just going horribly wrong.' "

On the hour-long trek back through the jungle, Rivers said, he was genuinely fearful.

"For the first time, I was thinking, you know, this is it," he said. "We're in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are, exactly. They could just shoot us and throw us into the river and say we had an accident. ... You start to think about family and what you'd put them through if you disappear."

He said he expected a large phalanx of police officers at the van but was heartened to see only two officers there. The group was asked for their passports. In holding his out -- the last one to offer it -- Rivers said he held it in such a way that his thumb covered his surname. Not noticing, police took his middle name and radioed it in.

"They thought we weren't who they were looking for and basically let us go," he said, calling it a "fluke."

The group was escorted back into town and met with a more senior government official, who appeared convinced they were there as part of an aid group. Finally released, "we kind of hightailed it," driving all night into Yangon, he said.

"It was a genuinely very scary 12 hours," he said. "It really did seem like a week."

Still, he wasn't yet home free. One last search

Sitting in a seat on a flight out of Yangon, having made it through security with no problems, Rivers thought he was finished with the Myanmar government.

But a flight attendant approached him and told him immigration authorities wanted to see him again, he said. He was escorted off the plane to officials who were waiting for him at the gate.

The authorities "basically searched everything I had," he said. They went through his bag and made him turn out his pockets, remove his shoes and socks.

He believes they were looking for pictures or videotapes, but he had none. They did find a computer flash drive, Rivers said, but it had nothing on it and it was returned to him. His passport was taken -- and his real name seen this time.

Eventually, the flight attendant returned. Although he did not understand the discourse, Rivers said he believed she was telling them the flight could not be held any longer and asking whether they were going to let him leave.

And so they did. "They hadn't found anything on me. They probably just wanted to get me out of the country anyway," he said. "The whole time, I just didn't really say anything."

Speaking from his home Friday and battling exhaustion after about 36 hours without sleep, Rivers said his experience as a wanted man was "really surreal."

"I guess the colorful bit, all this sneaking around in the swamps and getting on boats and stuff -- there were some quite comical moments, when I was literally under a blanket in the back of a car, sweating profusely at a checkpoint, trying to look like a piece of luggage in the boot, and you're thinking, 'How do I get into these situations?' "
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But he said the stubbornness of the Myanmar regime was "breathtaking" -- that, in the face of such a large-scale disaster, they would utilize time and resources looking for a reporter.

"The more resources are spent chasing me, the less they're going to be concentrating on actually helping people," he said. "There comes a point where I've done my job. I've told people what was going on ... staying in much longer would have meant I was getting in the way of the story."

Renaissance Woman

I finally caught up with my friend Dustin through the phone last night. You know, the filmmaker/screenwriter who put together the video just below. Long, thoughtful phone conversations with him were a favorite hobby of mine before I left. Dustin is an excellent listener and an even better thinker and challenger. In our discussion, we hit upon the quote in Shantaram that seemed to completely throw my head into chaos. "Interested in everything, committed to nothing." Ever since, I've been desperately trying to explore why those words affected me so much. Dustin solved that with two words: Renaissance Woman. He told me my unwavering interest in all things new is simply an attribute of people of renaissance.

Renaissance woman. It has a nice ring to it. I'm sticking with it... ; )

Find the Magic

My friend Loic, the couchsurfer who hosted me in France, just emailed me. And, even through an electronic email, I was so affected by his enthusiasm and pure spirit. I said before that Loic is a treasure, a simply stunning person. I can feel his zeal for life through his words... I mean I really feel it. Can you?

For me it's more than busy, and I have taken the time to analyse where
I am, and where I want to go. In a way, I'm impressed to look at what
I have done, but I've also the paradoxical impression that "the more
you learn, the more you realise you have to learn".
So to summarize last months, difficult, full of learnings, magic, and
amazing... In few words, amazing evolutions...

I will leave from my job in september, I'm learning portuguese :), I'm
working more and more with six incredible young senegalese on an
incredible project (www.ndaam.com), with Nigerians on another project
in Niamey, I'm making informal microcredit (to my level) in Senegal,
and enjoying how magic can be the life. I go to work Senegal in less
than two months now... Finally for 4 weeks. So good
! I'll come back to France by the road and the desert, through
Mauritania and Marocco for two weeks of holidays and to see some
friends. To sum up, that's it ! Are you coming for the road ?? :)

You guys haven't met Loic, but, I have... and I just wish I could describe the person he is... but that's near impossible.

A Place to Call Home

A friend of my mine has made a comical little spoof on living as a "starving artist." Dustin is a filmmaker/screenwriter living in Chicago who is working on getting his career off the ground. I met him through couchsurfing. He's become an invaluable friend.

Check out his video. His dry, easy-going performance should crack a few laughs!

Shantaram - The Movie

So this is pretty crazy. I just stumbled upon news that the book Shantaram will be adapted to motion picture. The movie will be released in 2009, starring Johnny Depp as the main character Lin. Kinda crazy since I just read the book not even two months ago. Interesting because the book was such a pivotal, inspiring and thought-provoking book for me.

Here's a recap of my previous postings about the memoir:

Shantaram (excellent you should read it, it's too complex to get into what it’s about right now though). It had this quote – “interested in everything, but committed to nothing.” That line kept echoing in my mind.

“We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.”

“The truth is often found more often in music, than it is in books of philosophy.”

“The truth is that here are no good men, or bad men. It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deed. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive, or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-fields of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”

“Of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists.”

“All possible things don’t exist.”

“Nothing exists as we see it. Nothing we see is really there, as we think we are seeing it. Our eyes are liars. Everything that seems real, is merely part of the illusion. Nothing exists, as we think it does. Not you. Not me. Not this room. Nothing.”

“The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man.”

Kismet = Fate (Urdu language)

“Reality, as most people see it, is nothing more than an illusion.”

“There is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyes. You have to feel your way into that reality with your heart. There is no other way.”

“Dream the future. Plan it. Then make it happen.”

“Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God.”

“Justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

“A politician is someone who promises you a bridge even when there’s no river.”

“I don’t know what scares me more, the madness that smashes people down or their ability to endure it.”

“The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the burden of suffering.”

“What characterizes the human race more? Cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it?”
- Niether. “It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are.”

“We live on because we love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“Every time we cage a man, we close him in with hate.”

“Fear dries a man’s mouth and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.”

The Ship That Sails

I'd rather be the ship that sails and rides the billows wild and free

Than to be the ship that always fails to leave its port and go to sea

I'd rather feel the sting of strife, where gales are born and tempests roar

Than settle down to useless life and rot in dry dock on the shore

I'd rather fight some mighty wave with honor in supreme command

And fill at last a well-earned grave, than die in ease upon the sand

I'd rather drive where sea storms blow, and be the ship that always failed

to make the ports where it would go, than be the ship that never sailed.

*verse from a quotes and passages book my mom gave me for graduation accompanied by a pic from my travels in Vietnam

Post-Americanism

My global wanderings have taken me to just four countries outside the "Western" world. In Thailand, I saw a country that was rapidly developing and "Westernizing", but still clinging to many of its Eastern traditions and characteristics. In Cambodia, I saw a poor nation still trying to rise up and start again from the murderous Pol Pot regime, a nations still struggling after 30 years of civil war. But, even in Cambodia, where (according to Wikipedia) 50 percent of its highways are still not paved, I saw pockets of developed wealth. I noticed, too, how the Chinese ($448 million in 2005) and Japanese ($22 million in 2007) governments were investing in Cambodia's millions of acres of undeveloped land and in the country's prized and ancient ruins of Angkor. Vietnam is on the crux of a boom in development (named a developing hot spot by a new CoreNet Global report). Laos seems to be the only country in that corner which, though influenced by Western travelers, still retains a seemingly pristine and untouched, native atmosphere. Raw, rich, beautiful. Yet, not for long I fear. Laos is getting its fair share of investment and I think it's only a matter of time before what's going on behind the scenes starts reshaping and developing this natural wonder. Luang Prabang is one city already ruined by tourists, save the street-side, all-you-can-eat veggie buffet that costs pocket change.

That's just my small understanding of what's going on in one small corner of the non-Western world. And it just goes to show, Fareed Zakaria is on to something when he speaks of post-Americanism in Newsweek. We're seeing movings and shakings in the rest of the world, many of which are occurring far outside America's sphere of influence:

Americans are glum at the moment, but the facts on the ground-unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks -- are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise, writes Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria in his forthcoming book, "The Post-American World," which is excerpted on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek. "American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world," Zakaria writes. "In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled ... And-for the first time in living memory -- the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people."

He writes, "In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious -- and vaguely French -- so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, 'they' have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism."

Over the last two decades, lands outside of the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable, Zakaria writes in the excerpt in the May 12 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, May 5). "While there have been booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward ... This is something much broader than the much-ballyhooed rise of China or even Asia. It is the rise of the rest -- the rest of the world," he writes.

"We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now -- science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations.

"For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged -- something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age -- the rise of the rest.

"At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension -- industrial, financial, social, cultural -- the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now -- one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples."

I Have to Give It to the Girls on This One...

This is dead on...

Comments on Pol Pot and Other 'Truths'

I really liked what a friend of mine from the Netherlands had to say about dictators. Here's what Lourens wrote:

Stories about 'the killing fields' are always fascinating to me. It shows what can happen when people or regimes (governments) claim that only they posses the 'real truth'. Therefore we should ALWAYS question those who make that kind of claims. The difficulty is, however, that those claims are often in disguise, or seem so very logical at that moment. And then suddenly a mass movement has started. Those who question such a hype are ignored, discarded, put aside etc.

Hitler is the absolute example (now, afterwards). Pol Pot probably had believers at that time. People often trust their leaders and even willing to fight for them. The First World War was an incredible example. Soldiers driven into death by the thousands.

Dith Pran said it correctly (note: in case you forgot, Dith Pran is the Cambodia journalist who survived the genocide of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He just passed away):

"If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

It makes me wander in thoughts to Iraq, the modern killing fields. We were clearly misguided by our great leaders, who claimed their truth. I understand that Americans still might think different.

We are Such Hypocrites...

Everyone is making a big deal about this priest who is arrested in Russia. While it is unfortunate that he is being detained and while I would like to believe he intended no ill-will, he tried to enter Russia with a box of ammo. The priest, Philip Miles, says it was ammo for "his friend's new Winchester rifle." Miles has also been going to Russia for the past ten years for mission work. But, c'mon. If it was some Russian or some Middle Eastern who had the same story while trying to come into the U.S., you bet our authorities would have put that guy in jail. People need to quit acting shocked over the arrest and saying it's not fair. It makes sense. Hopefully, it will get cleared up. But again, c'mon people. Quit having a double-standard when it comes to national security!

A Moscow court on Monday convicted an American pastor of smuggling hunting ammunition into Russia and sentenced him to three years and two months in prison.

Phillip Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, S.C., part of an evangelical fellowship, has been in custody since his arrest Feb. 3, several days after arriving in Moscow.

Miles has said he brought the .300-caliber cartridges for a friend who had recently bought a Winchester rifle -- a gun rarely found in Russia. He said he did not know bringing such ammunition into Russia was illegal.

"I'm very disappointed. It's a strange sentence for one box of hunting bullets," he said as bailiffs led him from the court in handcuffs. His lawyer, calling the sentence surprisingly severe, said he would appeal.

Pol Pot Still Haunts Villagers

Most of you probably don't know who Pol Pot is, but he is THE man responsible for the mass genocide in Cambodia in the late 70s. Remember this picture of the pile of the cracked skulls? It was that remains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge at the killing fields... well, that some more bones, some bits of clothing and dozens of mass graves. That was all Pol Pot's doing. Remember the jail I walked through where I could still see the dark blood of victims staining the floors and walls? Again, Pol Pot. The monster died in 1998. But, it seems some people are still worshiping him. Either out of reverence or fear... of his spirit. The Cambodian genocide trial is just getting underway right now too.

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia (AP) -- Ten years after the death of brutal Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, his grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort to some in the village where he is buried.


Pol Pot's grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort for some in the village where he is buried.

Villagers pray at the site, asking for blessings of luck, happiness and even protection from malaria -- despite the mayhem he wrought upon their country. He died on April 15, 1998, apparently of heart failure.

"I know it is odd, but I just do as many people here do, asking for happiness from his spirit," said Orn Pheap, a 37-year-old woman who lost a grandfather and two uncles during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.

"I don't know how long I can stay angry with him, since he is already dead," she said. Her house sits 100 yards from the grave.

Officials in Anlong Veng, 250 kilometers north of the capital, Phnom Penh, say only few of the area's 35,000 residents pray at Pol Pot's grave.

For most, Pol Pot is remembered as a murderous tyrant with fanatical communist beliefs. Under his leadership, the Khmer Rouge turned the country into a vast slave labor camp, causing the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, forced labor and execution.

But Cambodians believe in the influence of spirits and superstitious forces on their daily lives and fortunes, which may be why some worship at Pol Pot's grave.

Last week, the grave -- a pile of dirt covered by a knee-high corrugated zinc roof -- was cluttered with clay jars filled with half-burned incense sticks, a sign of prayer and worship.

Many may still view their former tormentor as a powerful figure, said Philip Short, author of "Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare," a biography of the former despot.

"Evil or good is not the issue," Short said. "He has imposed himself on Cambodians' imaginations, and in that sense he lives on" in the spirit world.

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Once a jungle war zone, Anlong Veng is now a sprawling border market town bustling with the kind of capitalist activities Pol Pot and his comrades sought to stamp out. Ramshackle shops are filled with clothing, housewares, pirated DVDs and other goods from nearby Thailand.

Cambodian pop songs blare from a coffee shop near Pol Pot's grave, which has been designated a tourist attraction. It is among the few remnants of Khmer Rouge history, which the government is trying to preserve.

Some Cambodians have traveled to Anlong Veng to spit on the grave and curse him in anger, said 37-year-old Sat Narin, who owns a nearby clothing shop.

"Given his bad reputation, he should not be venerated," he said. "But somehow he is popular with some people."

Among the worshippers who seek blessings from Pol Pot's ghost are ethnic Vietnamese who live in the community -- a sharp irony given Pol Pot's massacres of ethnic Vietnamese during his rule.

A 33-year-old Vietnamese resident, who goes by her adopted Cambodian name of Van Sothy, recalled a nightmare in which she saw a black-clad man sitting on a tree near her hut.

When she described the vision to her Cambodian neighbors, they advised her to bring offerings of fruit and boiled chicken to Pol Pot's grave to ask his spirit for protection.

"I have prayed at his grave ever since. I just want to show some respect to the spiritual master of the land," she said.

If Pol Pot were alive, he would likely be facing war crimes charges along with five of his former comrades currently detained by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal. The long-delayed trials are expected to start later this year.


Nhem En, who was forced to work as the photographer at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh, says he is setting up his own museum in Anlong Veng about the communist group -- not to glorify them but for educational purposes.

He too used to light incense and pray at Pol Pot's grave, he said, but "only for him not to butcher people again in his next life."

I Would Just Like to Say...

...that the world is exciting!!!

More on that later...

Set the Powers Free...

"Enthusiasm comes with the revelation of true and satisfying objectives of devotion; and it is enthusiasm that sets the powers free." ~ Woodrow Wilson

Going Light...

One of my main goals since I've returned to the US is to get rid of most of my possessions. Why? Because I want to be back to wandering the world in October and not have to worry about "junk" I've left behind.

I stumbled upon this verse today and found it inspiring:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:19-21)

Killing Fields Survivor Dies

I just learned about the killing fields, seeing the remnants of them myself, last December. Now, I learn that Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist who survived the killing spree, has died from cancer. The movie, The Killing Fields, was the popular film that told the story of the murderous Khmer Rouge. It was based off of Dith's character.


NEW YORK (AP) -- Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said.


Dith Pran founded an awareness project dedicated to educating people about the Khmer Rouge regime.

Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.

Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its chaotic end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by Communist forces.

Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind after the capital fell; they were not reunited until Dith escaped four and a half years later. Eventually, Dith resettled in the United States and went to work as a photographer for the Times.

It was Dith himself who coined the term "killing fields" for the horrifying clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered on his desperate journey to freedom.

The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people.

"That was the phrase he used from the very first day, during our wondrous reunion in the refugee camp," Schanberg said later.

With thousands being executed simply for manifesting signs of intellect or Western influence -- even wearing glasses or wristwatches -- Dith survived by masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day, and whatever small animals he could catch.

After Dith moved to the U.S., he became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, dedicated to educating people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime.

He was "the most patriotic American photographer I've ever met, always talking about how he loves America," said AP photographer Paul Sakuma, who knew Dith through their work with the Asian American Journalists Association.

Schanberg described Dith's ordeal and salvation in a 1980 magazine article titled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran." Schanberg's reporting from Phnom Penh had earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Later a book, the magazine article became the basis for "The Killing Fields," the highly successful 1984 British film starring Sam Waterston as the Times correspondent and Haing S. Ngor, another Cambodian escapee from the Khmer Rouge, as Dith Pran.

The film won three Oscars, including the best supporting actor award to Ngor. Ngor, a physician, was shot to death in 1996 during a robbery outside his Los Angeles home. Three Asian gang members were convicted of the crime.

"Pran was a true reporter, a fighter for the truth and for his people," Schanberg said. "When cancer struck, he fought for his life again. And he did it with the same Buddhist calm and courage and positive spirit that made my brother so special."

Dith spoke of his illness in a March interview with The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, saying he was determined to fight against the odds and urging others to get tested for cancer.

"I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body," he said. "It is just a house for the spirit, and if the house is full of termites, it is time to leave."

Dith Pran was born September 27, 1942 at Siem Reap, site of the famed 12th century ruins of Angkor Wat. Educated in French and English, he worked as an interpreter for U.S. officials in Phnom Penh. As with many Asians, the family name, Dith, came first, but he was known by his given name, Pran.

After Cambodia's leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, broke off relations with the United States in 1965, Dith worked at other jobs. When Sihanouk was deposed in a 1970 coup and Cambodian troops went to war with the Khmer Rouge, Dith returned to Phnom Penh and worked as an interpreter for Times reporters.

In 1972, he and Schanberg, then newly arrived, were the first journalists to discover the devastation of a U.S. bombing attack on Neak Leung, a vital river crossing on the highway linking Phnom Penh with eastern Cambodia.

Dith recalled in a 2003 article for the Times what it was like to watch U.S. planes attacking enemy targets.

"If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

After Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1979 and seized control of territory, Dith escaped from a commune near Siem Reap and trekked 40 miles, dodging both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces, to reach a border refugee camp in Thailand.

From the Thai camp he sent a message to Schanberg, who rushed from the United States for an emotional reunion with the trusted friend he felt he had abandoned four years earlier.

"I had searched for four years for any scrap of information about Pran," Schanberg said. "I was losing hope. His emergence in October 1979 felt like an actual miracle for me. It restored my life."

After Dith moved to the U.S., the Times hired him and put him in the photo department as a trainee. The veteran staffers "took him under their wing and taught him how to survive on the streets of New York as a photographer, how to see things," said Times photographer Marilynn Yee.

Yee recalled an incident early in Dith's new career as a photojournalist when, after working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, he was robbed at gunpoint of all his camera equipment at the back door of his apartment.

"He survived everything in Cambodia and he survived that too," she said, adding, "He never had to work the night shift again."

Dith spoke and wrote often about his wartime experience and remained an outspoken critic of the Khmer Rouge regime.

When Pol Pot died in 1998, Dith said he was saddened that the dictator was never held accountable for the genocide.

"The Jewish people's search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people's search for justice doesn't end with Pol Pot," he said.

Dith's survivors include his companion, Bette Parslow; his former wife, Meoun Ser Dith; a sister, Samproeuth Dith Nop; sons Titony, Titonath and Titonel; daughter Hemkarey Dith Tan; six grandchildren including a boy named Sydney; and two step-grandchildren.

Dith's three brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Learn the Head Fake and Live Your Dreams...

One of my roommates during college just posted this video on my profile in Facebook... It's a video that EVERYONE should watch. It's long, but worth every minute. It's priceless... and it made me tear up.

Randy Pausch Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

"Journeys" are special University Lectures in which Carnegie Mellon faculty members share their reflections on their journeys -- the everyday actions, decisions, challenges and joys that make a life.


Some quotes I pulled from it with the hopes to get you to sit down and actually watch it - BECAUSE YOU SHOULD:

"I'm dying... and I'm having fun."

"Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you."

"Never lose the child-like wonder."

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

"If your kids want to paint their bedroom, as a favor to me, let them do it."

"Brick walls are there to let us show our dedication."

"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."

Muslims Embrace Pope Benedict

This sounds like a step in the right direction...

The following op-ed is by Nihad Awad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties group. He may be contacted at: nawad@cair.com.

As one of 138 Islamic leaders and scholars from around the world who last October signed the first-of-its-kind "A Common Word Between Us and You" open letter intended to promote understanding between Muslims and Christians, I welcome Pope Benedict XVI on his first papal visit to the United States.

While that letter, which was well received by the pope and other world Christian leaders, recognizes the differences between our two faiths, it also states: "[L]et our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to (one) another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill."

It is this desire for harmony and goodwill between faiths that leads American Muslim leaders to welcome the pope and to meet with him during his visit to our nation.
Religious leaders have a great responsibility and opportunity to show the best of both our faith and of our nation's religious diversity during the pope's visit. We must demonstrate that our faith in God should be a source of peace and reconciliation, not violence or mutual mistrust.
American Muslims can also reiterate that they respect and love the revered figures of Christianity, including Jesus and his mother Mary.
As God states in the Quran, Islam's revealed text: "Behold! The angels said: 'O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.'" (The Holy Quran, 3:45)
The Quran also reaffirms God's eternal message of spiritual unity when it states: "Say ye: 'We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves.'" (2:136)
The Prophet Muhammad said: "Both in this world and in the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one."
As Americans, we cherish diversity, not only in race and ethnicity, but also in faith. In that spirit, I see the pope's visit as an opportunity for him to learn more about America and its respect for religious diversity.
Unfortunately, some of the pope's past statements and actions have led to tensions between Muslims and Catholics. It is perhaps best not to dwell on these past events, but instead to use them as a springboard to help deepen interfaith dialogue based on mutual understanding and acceptance of differences.
The true test of productive interfaith dialogue comes when we build partnerships to take on the great challenges facing humanity today - injustice, inequality, war, poverty, illiteracy, disease, and hunger. To that end, we must quickly expand and strengthen the constructive conversation between faiths.
Two great faith communities, Islam and Christianity, together make up more than half of the world's population. It is therefore imperative that Muslims and Christians use their faith to make a positive difference in their communities and the world.
By preaching - and practicing - the values of tolerance, love of one's neighbor, justice, peace, and reconciliation, people of all faiths can help reverse the world's disturbing descent into violence and division.
Today the world needs forward-looking political and religious leaders who focus more on the future than on the past. We need leaders who build on what we have in common, not on our differences.
It is our hope and expectation that Pope Benedict XVI is one of those who will help lead our world to a better future.
ISLAM-OPED is a syndication service of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) designed to offer an American Muslim perspective on current political, social and religious issues. ISLAM-OPED commentaries are offered free-of-charge to one media outlet in each market area. Permission for publication will be granted on a first-come-first-served basis.
Please consider the following commentary for publication.

Just Play The Game...

"You could not live your life in the fear of the unknown. You made your plans, took the necessary precautions and then you played the game." ~Mohammad, The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy

This Doesn't Help...

Once again, I've got a ton of catching up to do. And, for those of you who don't know, I am back in the U S of A.

I was just parusing Ben's blog since he's still living the dream and... well, I'm not at the moment. I'm thinking I shouldn't read his blog for a bit... it just convinces me that I made the wrong decision. After trekking to base camp on Mt. Everest, he is back in Bangkok just in time for the water festival!!!

Right now it is Songkran, the Thai new year. Also known as the Water Festival, it consists of drenching every person with buckets of water, nailing them with super soakers, or lobbing water baloons around. It is literally impossible to stay dry if you go outside. The tempurature here is brutally hot, so the water feels great, but it makes it dangerous for me to bring my camera out. I saw some people with good bags around thiers, screwed into the lens filter, and may try that today with the camera on an auto mode. The festival goes on until the 15th, and I dont leave until the 18th, so I may zip out to one of the surrounding towns for a few days at the end.

Life was so much easier over there... I've had hassle after hassle since I've been back. But, I'm focused. And I AM going back out to embrace that HUGE, CRAZY WORLD. Flights are set. Now is the time to save some moola, get the right gear and get rid of EVERYTHING else... and I mean EVERYTHING!!

Coincidences...

I had wanted to make this certain point in my discussions with Silviu: Too many coincidences have become entangled into the story of my life for me to actually consider them coincidences. Silviu is, as I mentioned before, is a self-professed atheist or agnostic (depending upon how you look at it). And, as I also mentioned, we consistently found ourselves delving into debates about spirituality, religion, humanity and God. And I must say, Silviu has given his arguments a lot of thought. I didn’t always have an answer for him. Although, sometimes I knew there was an answer… I just didn’t yet have the ideas in which to properly articulate them to someone who doesn’t possess the faith that I do. Nonetheless, the foundation of my spirituality was left, admittedly, a little shaken after my conversations with Silviu. Shaken, but still standing. Personally, I cannot deny the Heaven that I know lies beyond the veil of cynicism that lies over modern society. As a Tengri Mongolian put it in one of Paolo Coelho’s novels, The Zahir: “Welcome to the place where we say the sky is blue even when it’s gray, because we know that the color is still there above the clouds.”

And then, as if in a special, reassuring gesture, another coincidence materialized before my eyes. The moment I grasped it, I was also able to grasp how recent events had to occur and recent decisions had to made just as they happened or else the “coincidence” would have been lost to me:

When I flew to Munich, I had the option of trying to find a couch to surf for one night or to move on to Graz. I did have time to just continue on my way. But, for reasons I wasn’t quite sure of, I decided to stay in Munich. ‘Get some rest after my flight,’ I thought. It’s because I stayed at Martin’s in Munich that I discovered The Zahir. Oddly enough, the Zahir was one of the few books in English on Martin’s bookshelf. Paolo Coelho was the author, so I was immediately interested, because the two books of his I had already read greatly affected me. Even though I knew I wouldn’t finish before I left, I began reading the book. Unsurprisingly, this book, like the others, began impacting me greatly. Then I had to go, and leave the book unfinished. I really don’t like leaving things unfinished.

Upon my arrival in Graz, I learned that Claudia is struggling with some personal issues. Immediately, I thought of the book. From what I had read so far, I thought The Zahir would have some excellent insight into what Claudia was facing at the moment. So, I made it a point to purchase her a copy in German. I also picked up a copy for myself in English. Now, I would get to finish it! Claudia, also a big fan of Paolo, insisted that I should buy a copy of one of his novels that she had read, the Witch of Portobello. She said I would identify with it just as much as she did. (Claudia and I have already realized we are cut from the same cloth, though, there is a bit of a difference with the pattern we are weaving with it.) Claudia had also already purchased Into the Wild for me. So, after finishing the Zahir, I tackled Into the Wild, saving The Witch of Portobello for last. I had just finished Into the Wild when I arrived in Salzburg and met Silviu, my Translyvanian host. Although, the Dracula/vampire myth was created by an Irish man who had never been to Transylvania, I still thought it was interesting that the Transylvanian I met was passionate about death metal and, often enough, spent time in dark, underground dives. (Now, I’ve already described how this is just one element of Silviu’s complex character. There’s a good deal more to his personality that veers away from death metal and dark, underground dives. He’s a great guy!)

And finally to the point of all this, after extensive, challenging debates with Silviu, I finally crack open The Witch of Portobello on the train from Salzburg, Austria to Bern, Switzerland. Page three reveals the opening setting: Transylvania. Page three also reveals the main plot: there is a world of energy and magic beyond that of our everyday existence… a world of spirituality and God. Thus, by page three, the Witch of Portobello was already making an argument against what I had been hearing from Silviu: “that anything science cannot explain has no right to exist.” Another suggested point of Silviu’s was the apparent need for all those who are spiritual to “force” their spirituality upon others. On page five of the Witch of Portobello I read: “No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind a door. The purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.” Hence, the inherent quality of spirituality (so often likened to light) is to share its energy. That same idea is echoed in Luke 11:33, the verse that opens Paolo’s book: “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.” It’s the nature of belief to shine upon those who don’t believe.

So as you see, it could have been just a mere coincidence that the plot of the Witch of Portobello is rooted in Transylvania and that a Transylvanian had just hosted me. It could also have been just a mere coincidence that the book in question also tackled the very issues my Transylvanian host and I debated. But, then, when you consider the intricate complexity it took for that “coincidence” to even take place, you realize… there is simply too much design behind the event, to call it a mere “coincidence.”

And another thing to ponder… I was struck with the desire of wanting to meet Paolo Coelho. Interestingly enough, despite my lifelong love of reading and writing, I can remember only one other time I had actually wanted to meet a writer in the flesh. When I was young, I wanted to meet Jack London. But, unfortunately, he had already passed. Paolo, on the other hand, is still alive and well and still writing. Just a couple days ago I had a tentative invite from a friend to plan a trip to South America this summer. Paolo is from Brazil. Hmmm… just a though. Could be nothing. The SA trip might not even happen. But still… the parallels are to strong to ignore.

Quotes to Ponder...

Shantaram

“We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.”

“The truth is often found more often in music, than it is in books of philosophy.”

“The truth is that here are no good men, or bad men. It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deed. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive, or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-fields of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”

“Of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists.”

“All possible things don’t exist.”

“Nothing exists as we see it. Nothing we see is really there, as we think we are seeing it. Our eyes are liars. Everything that seems real, is merely part of the illusion. Nothing exists, as we think it does. Not you. Not me. Not this room. Nothing.”

“The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man.”

Kismet = Fate (Urdu language)

“Reality, as most people see it, is nothing more than an illusion.”

“There is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyes. You have to feel your way into that reality with your heart. There is no other way.”

“Dream the future. Plan it. Then make it happen.”

“Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God.”

“Justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

“A politician is someone who promises you a bridge even when there’s no river.”

“I don’t know what scares me more, the madness that smashes people down or their ability to endure it.”

“The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the burden of suffering.”

“What characterizes the human race more? Cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it?”
- Niether. “It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are.”

“We live on because we love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“Every time we cage a man, we close him in with hate.”

“Fear dries a man’s mouth and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.”

Me

“When you get closer to the truth, you stop comparing your good deeds to other’s ill-doings. Instead, you find yourself on a quest to find more examples of good – whether from wicked man, or saint.”

Did you know there are 31 places in the world where the sand dunes sing?



Into the Wild

“I prefer the saddle to the street-car, the star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult train, leading into the unknown… and the deep peace of the wild, to the discontent bred by cities.”

“I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.”

“The peculiar thing about Everett Ruess was that he went out and did the things he dreamed about, not simply for a two-weeks’ vacation in the civilized and trimmed wonderlands but for months and years in the very midst of wonder...”

“…damning the stereotypes of civilization, chanting his barbaric adolescent yawp into the teeth of the world.”

“In a dream he saw himself plodding through jungles, chinning up the ledges of cliffs, wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams.”

“But then, I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.”

“God, how the trail lures me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me. I’ll never stop wandering.”

“Always, I want to live more intensely and richly.”

The Zahir

“Learn by doing and not by thinking about doing.”

“We can harness the energy of the winds, the seas, the sun. But the day that man learns to harness the energy of love, that will be as important as the discovery of fire.” (Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin)

“As soon as people decide to confront a problem, they realize that they are far more capable than they thought they were.”

“I also learned a respect for mystery: As Einstein said: God does not play dice with the Universe; everything is inter connected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm… If not, we had better change.”

“All energy and all knowledge come from the same unknown source, which we usually call God.”

“When we can love unconditionally, without restrictions, we become more like God.”

“In order for the true energy of love to penetrate your soul, your soul must be as if you had just been born.”

“In order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement; only then can each day be different from the last.”

“…distancing yourself from your personal history, from what you were forced to become.”

“With different stories, with experiences we never dared to have or didn’t want to have. That is how we change. That is how we love grows. And when love grows, we grow with it.”

“Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

“Forget who we are in order to become who we really are.”

Why are people sad?
“They are prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why the forget their dreams.”

“The invisible world always manifests itself in the visible world.”

“May your horizon always be wider than you can see.”

“Welcome to the place where we say the sky is blue even when its gray, because we know that the color is still there above the clouds.”

“The taste of things recovered is the sweetest honey we will ever know.”

“Age only slows down those who never had the courage to walk their own pace.”

“The extraordinary occurs in the lives of ordinary people.”

The Witch of Portobello

“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind a door. The purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.”

“No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: love.”

“Collective reality” versus reality.

“She wanted to live, dance, make love, travel, to gather people around her in order to demonstrate how wise she was, to show off her gifts, to provoke the neighbors, to make the most of all that is profane in us – although she always tried to give a spiritual gloss to that search.”

“…the mistress of the truth.”

“It’s the nature of the female to open herself to love easily.”

“Everyone’s looking for the perfect teacher. But although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that’s something people find hard to accept.”

“An encounter with the superior energy is open to anyone, but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others.”

“The best way to know who we are is to find out how others see us.”

“The grandeur of God reveals itself through simple things.”

“Everything moves, and everything moves to a rhythm. And everything that moves to a rhythm creates a sound.”

“When mouths close, it’s because there’s something important to be said.”

“Dance to the point of exhaustion, as if you were a mountaineer climbing a hill, a sacred mountain. Dance until you are so out of breath that your organism is forced to obtain oxygen some other way. And it is that, in the end, which will cause you to lose your identity and your relationship with space and time. Dance only to the sound of percussion…”

“When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily.”

“The hand that draws each line reflects the soul of the person making that line.”

“Writing wasn’t just the expression of a thought, but a way of reflecting on the meaning of each word.”

“What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.”

“All great painters understand: in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.”

“See life through your own eyes and not through other people’s.”

“Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.”

“The truth is that each step we take, we arrive”

“The trees give so that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.”

“Instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, the interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, perceptions of reality grow less rigid.”

“Unconditional love does not fear suffering, rejection, loss.”

"...die to the world and be reborn unto yourself."

Once Upon a Time…

…far far away, in the land of rolling hills and rocky cliffs, lived the Von Trapp family. Okay, okay. I know, my posts are enough of a novel as it is… But, Salzburg, the city that served as the storybook setting for the movie The Sound of Music is, well, something out of a storybook. Churches, shops, jewelry stores, banks and apartments of old Austrian design are huddled between an alcove of towering cliffs and the banks of the Salzach river. Europe’s best-preserved castle, Festung Hohensalzburg, rises from the peaks of the most prominent rocky crag, guarding and protecting the winding cobbled streets that twist and turn along ornamented buildings below. Signs of gold, red, yellow, green and blue sway overhead the cobbled lanes, hanging from intricate iron brackets. Then, suddenly the tight, winding streets open up into cozy piazzas marked with elegant fountains and enclosed by grand cathedrals, theatres, opera houses and government buildings. For me, it was love at first sight. Salzburg, the home of Mozart, has captured my heart.

When I arrived in Salzburg Monday afternoon, my cs host Silviu accompanied me on a stroll through the charming city. He introduced me to the main landmarks so that I might be able to easily navigate my way around the next day, when I more thoroughly explored the city on my own. One of my favorite landmarks was the old “car wash.” An ornamented wall with paintings of gallant horses served as the background to a decorated fountain that was surrounded by a bigger trough of water with steps leading into the bowl from opposite ends. This is where carriages and horses would be washed during the first half of the twentieth century. That night, we relaxed to the smooth sounds of the sax at Jazz It, a local dive near Silviu’s apartment.

Silviu is an intriguing character. His strikingly handsome face and piercing blue eyes are largely shrouded by a long mane of hair and a full scruffy beard that gets bushier at the chin. His look matches that of one of his biggest interests: death metal. Silviu, a Romanian, thoroughly enjoys nights of heavy metal head-banging in dark dives. Yet, outside of the metal bar scene, Silviu is perfectly comfortable in the subdued setting of a jazz lounge or in the academic and artistic setting of the university café that’s popular with music students (where we ate at earlier that afternoon). His manner is gentle, even a bit tender. His eyes speak of compassion. His thoughts, though, speak of distrust., a distrust in anything that can’t be explained by the physical world around him. Silviu is a self-described cynic and agnostic.

Silviu is also an open man, however, and willingly discussed and debated ideas on hope, humanity and God with me. Silviu has traveled to India - where there exists a world, which many say, is a far cry from the conveniences and comforts of Western civilization. Thus, Silviu certainly has experiences from which he can draw sound arguments that support his ideas. I too have seen the different worlds of the Cambodian people and the villagers of Vietnam and Laos. So, I can understand many of his arguments.

And that was Silviu’s only qualm with engaging me in debate. He didn’t want to come across as a person who wanted to pull me away from the hopeful optimism and spirituality that marks my own personal views of the world and of humanity. I continually reassured him, though, that challenge is good. Challenging debates help us fully measure just how much faith we do possess in our supposed beliefs. They help us identify the areas where the foundation of our faith might be weak and faltering.

It turned out, Silviu and I couldn’t really stray from these debates whenever we spent more than ten minutes together, even when others joined us in our activities. Our exchanges were always respectful and completely amicable though, and we usually wound up sucking those around us, no matter how hesitant they might be, into the debate.

My exchanges with Silviu were leaving me with a lot to ponder and consider and were quickly flagging places where my faith needed further exploration and instruction. And that was okay, because I had a lot of time for self-reflection the next day. Silviu had to work on his doctorate’s program on the university, so I set off to discover more of Salzburg. First, I met with a cheerful young cs student for lunch. Cordi’s sweet disposition and easy smiles were like a refreshing breeze after the deep, dark discussions with Silviu. Cordi took me to a little café popular with students in the old city, called Picnic. Then, we went to a new 60s café she had just discovered, called Afro Café, for desert. Both places had a fun, easy-going atmosphere. After sharing tales of our travels and adventures and our plans for more to come, we parted ways. She was off to statistics class. I was off to wander the city.

I ambled along snapping pics of the winding cobbled lanes, ornamented churches and the towering castle. Along the way, I munched an original Austrian Brez’l and bread from the oldest bakery in Salzburg. Before too long, I found myself in an old cemetery with unique graves. Some of the graves and headstones were monuments gated in arched alcoves, similar to the gated alcoves that the Von Trapp family uses to hide from the Nazi soldiers. This cemetery backed right up to one of the sheer cliffs surrounding the city and from there I could spy old houses formed straight out of the sides of the rock. How cool would it have been to live on the side of a cliff?!

I spent a long time in the cemetery… thinking and taking pictures. It turned out to be the same cemetery that Silviu has pictures of hanging on his wall in his bedroom. Eventually, I wandered away from the ancient bed of the dead and headed up the side of the cliff toward the Festung Hohensalzburg. I had planned to hike up to the castle and see first-hand the best preserved castle in Europe, but my curiosity veered me off course and the next thing I knew was I was wandering down a path along the rocky crags… away from the castle. I still got some great views of the city… and, I was able to take in the landscape, the smell of the surrounding evergreens and limber, the calls and chirps of the birds, alone and in peace, instead of with a throng of tourists on the terraces of the castle. I was more than content with where my wandering feet had led me. I had found myself amidst the pages of a fairytale storybook…

Later that evening I met up with Silviu. He and the couchsurfer he would be hosting the night we are a local brewery. Silviu says the brewery scene is the epitome of the truly local Austrian experience. You grab a litre or half litre mug from the shelf, pay for the beer, bring the receipt to the barman at the tap and fill up your mug. You can also stop along any one of the stands along a strop of shops selling Austrian sausages, brats, breads and more. Before too long, Silviu and I were back at the questions and debates, and our fellow cser pitching in from time to time. A metal head like Silviu (though you wouldn’t think it from his preppy style of dress), he tended to side with my host.

By midnight, I was on the way to the train station to catch my train to Bern, Switzerland. My train left at 45 past the hour and arrived the next morning around eight. I would do my best to get some shuteye, before another full day of wandering in more lands of the fairytales…

Uninhibited African Beats

My head was still in a deep contemplative fog when I arrived in Graz, and that wasn’t a good mix for trying to find the connecting train from Graz to the small village outside of Graz where Claudia lives. Long story short, a major bout of absent-mindedness meant I added two hours to my journey back to Claudia’s house. It wasn’t so bad though. I was able to indulge in more of my books, thus plunging even further into my absent-minded fog. ; ) It also meant I had less time to get ready for the Multi Kulti Ball though. By the time I got to Claudia’s, I was in a rush!

The Multi Kulti Ball is a yearly event that’s meant to showcase the international culture thriving in Graz. Persian, Latin, Asian, European… it was all there. But, it was the African beats that lured Claudia and I in first and we bounced to those beats throughout the night. Oddly enough, all the books I’ve been reading and that have been impacting me so much lately have strong passages about deserts. As the African drum beats mingled with the tales from exotic sand dunes already swirling through my mind… the call for me to journey into the desert swelled within me like a sand storm, sweeping through all the little nooks and crevices of my mind. I couldn’t help but think that I should have simply stayed in Cairo when I stopped over.

My blood is pulsing, calling for more adventure. I’m coming home. But I can tell you right now, I won’t be home for too long…

Check out the videos. Look at life sparking out of the musicians’ hands and smiles, out of the girls’ dancing, out of their eyes.

The Grandeur of Vienna

It was late, half past eleven, when I finally met Vincenc in Vienna. So my first hours in that thriving city of European crossroads were spent getting acquainted with Vincenc while he and I scurried about in the windy chill of the night, catching the various trams and busses we needed in order to find our way to the warmth of Vincenc’s small dorm room. Vincenc is a student from Kosovo who has been living, working and studying in Vienna for the past six years.

It was a tight squeeze in Vincenc’s room. The extra mattress took up what little floor space there was. But, it was comfortable and cozy and a warm refuge from the windy, Viennese chill.

I accompanied Vincenc to a local coffee house near his work the next morning. From there, he explained how I could use local transportation to get to Schonbrunn, Vienna’s summer palace. Unfortunately, I was visiting just as winter had only begun to fade away, thus I was missing out on the palace’s true glory: intricate mazes from trimmed hedges and large, stately expanses of flowers in delicate design that backed up to a rolling hill of kelly greens. Yet, despite the bare-branched trees and bushes, the freshly turned beds of earth that were still void of any buds or flowers, the magnificence of the palace was unmistakable - its poise and elegance evident no matter the season. I spent a good two and a half hours wandering around the palace grounds, before rushing off to meet Vincenc back at the coffee house.

When I hurried into Coffee Day, a bit late, I found Vincenc surrounded by friends. We spent an hour there in the coffee shop chatting and trading stories before Vincenc, another couchsurfer - Roger, Vincenc’s friend - Arber and I headed out to explore some of the city center. Vincenc possesses a wealth of knowledge about Vienna. It’s incredible how much he knows about Vienna’s history, culture, and politics. Unfortunately, Vincenc’s excitement in sharing the richness of the city means he jumps from one landmark to the next, barely leaving time to digest its significance, let alone time snap some halfway-decent pictures, before rushing off to the next attraction. I must say, we got a lot in, in just one evening. I also have to add how impressed I was with Vienna’s university. I haven’t seen too many of the Ivy-league colleges in the U.S. first-hand, but I would venture to say that the grandeur of the University of Vienna (the oldest University in the German-speaking world) easily surpasses that of any American university.

Where we ate dinner that first night is a perfect example of why couchsurfing is really the best way to indulge in the hidden treasures of a given city. Vincenc took us to a small family-owned restaurant that served a small buffet of Pakistani cuisine. The restaurant’s motto: “Eat as you wish. Pay as you wish.” For two and a half plates overflowing with food I paid just 6 euros… and I had even dished out a little more than everyone else since it was my first time. You couldn’t beat that! I would have never found the cozy little restaurant on my own or in some tourist package. After dinner, we met back up with Vincenc’s other friends for some drinks at a local bar. The bar was rather smoky though and I was still fighting jet lag, so I was pretty low-key. I enjoyed the great company, but I was grateful when I finally got to plop down on the mattress in Vincenc’s room and fall into a deep sleep.

On day two, I met up with Roger while Vincenc went to work. Roger and I had planned to go sightseeing, but lunch took a bit longer than expected and we enjoyed a relaxed afternoon of cooking, talking and reading before meeting up with Vincenc at Coffee Day again. This time it was just Vincenc and I for round two of the blitz like tour of the city center. That evening, I enjoyed a home-cooked Italian dinner with tortellini and sangria. Giorgio, another couchsurfer, hosted me, Vincenc, Roger, Arber and two of his friends in honor of my visit to Vienna. I must say, I’m getting spoiled by all these dinner parties! I expect nothing less for my return to the U.S.! Kidding… I’m kidding.

Friday, my third day was full of beautiful landscapes and introspective contemplation. I set out for a prominent hill just outside the city as Vincenc set out for work. The hill offers an incredible view of Vienna’s sprawling European metropolis. Distinctly European. There were just a handful of skyscrapers, none of which were too grand. That’s because, until relatively recently, a law in Vienna regulated buildings to a height no greater than the city’s Dom (main church). That’s why European city landscapes are such a cozy picturesque with a sea of red, brown and black tiled roofs dotted with islands of church steeples and ornamental government buildings. After taking in the Viennese landscape, I planted myself on a nearby bench and cracked open one of the books I was currently reading, The Zahir. As I mentioned before, the last few books I’ve been reading have left me considering what I don’t know and reconsidering what I thought I knew… among other things. Their words have been urging me to look more closely at myself, who I am, what stories and personal histories define me, which stories and personal histories I should perhaps let go of… I still have to share the passages that have stuck with me. I’ll get to them in a post or two.

In the meantime, my contemplative mood stuck with me as I headed back down the hill and worked my way through the public transportation system to the Danube River. In most city squares, you feed the pigeons. At most lakes, ponds and rivers, you feed the ducks. Along the Danube in Vienna, you feed the swans. I’ve never seen so many swans at once before… at least twenty, perhaps even thirty. Even when huddling while being fed, these stately birds are poised and elegant, just like Vienna it seems. And that’s what they’re doing… huddling. Not clustering. Not in a frenzy. Just gliding into a cozy huddle near the breadcrumbs floating on the water’s surface. Every so often, one swan would expand its broad wings, as if stretching to keep things from getting too cramped. But never was there a feeding frenzy. Further along the Danube, the swans dispersed. Now, there were open runways and I glimpsed a couple swans racing across the miniature river waves, that were dancing in twirling pirouettes.

That evening I got to take pleasure in one the city’s defining characteristics: the music of Austria's classical prodigies Mozart and Strauss. Vincenc works for an online ticketing agency, so it was just a matter of making a phone call to secure us tickets for the live classical concert that’s popular with tourists. Like I said, I was delighted! It was my last night and I really felt as if I was leaving the city on the right “note”. (Yes, the corny pun intended.) The evening of classical dramas and melodies lightened my contemplative mood from earlier and I hummed in amused delight as I remembered Wednesdays spent in old Catholic school hallways listening to my parents practice with the church choir, Sundays spent with those same voices belting out hymns from the church’s choir loft, and later, Thursdays practicing with my own singing group that preformed classically-themed Disney productions. I recalled the poignant experience of singing with a trained, professional choir. I participated in but a small piece of the production of Carmina Burana. But, as my voice sang in harmony with all those other powerful, resonating voices, I felt as if I was inside the music. Yes, the hills of Austria are alive with music and their notes ring true and clear throughout the Danube river valley in Vienna.

On Saturday, I left the classical poise of Vienna. But, thanks to Arber I was able to bring some of Mozart and Strauss with me on my laptop! That night though, I would be bouncing and writhing to very different beats. I had plans to attend the Multi Kulti Ball in Graz with Claudia!

Appendix:

I LOVE traveling by train! It really is such a shame the US has not properly developed its passenger railway system. I was listening to Mozart Symphony No. 40 In G Minor when I was chugging past little Austrian villages tucked between the corners and bends of the foothills of the Austrian Alps. It was ride of bliss… looking out the window of the train and comfortably encountering the Austrian countryside while listening to the world-renowned Austrian composer on my way from Vienna back to Graz. Truly, one of life’s little treasures…

On yet, another train ride through more Alps, foothills and valleys (this time Graz to Salzburg), I looked up from writing and see a lone mountain coated in a creamy frosting of early spring snow. It’s actually a warm spring day, but just several hundred feet up from the green valleys and purple evergreens are jagged, slate-gray, rocky peaks sprinkled in the snowy frost. They’re alluding to a chill that hasn’t quite lifted despite the day’s sunny warmth.

Making the Most of the Time I Have Left...

I feel like everything inside of me is going topsy-turvy. False illusions are crumbling – some quickly, others decaying rather steadily, but slowly. And that’s a good thing, because my desires and dreams are coming to fill the voids that these crumbling illusions leave behind… and my desires and dreams are becoming more of my reality everyday. I’m learning that so many “truths” that have been impressed upon me might not even resemble the real truth. Each day, I learn more and more about what I DON’T know… and that comforts me. I’m also discovering/learning new things… and that’s exciting. Passages from several books I’ve been reading have been aimlessly drifting around inside of my head, ever-present, but unsure of themselves. They have certainly been affecting how I interpret what I’ve been experiencing during this last part of my journey. I’d like to share them. But first, a little about my adventures since my return to Austria!

My first few days in Graz were spent relaxing, catching up on various to-dos, sleeping off jet lag… and, gasp, securing a flight back to the U.S. The date is set. I fly into KCMO from Frankfurt, Germany on April 7th. I’m not going to lie. When I booked the flight, I started to panic a little bit. That was it. I had booked the flight back to reality. The flight that would tear me away from my dream life as a nomad and plunge me back into well, what we refer to as “the real world.” Three things saved me from succumbing to full-blown anxiety: 1) I booked a roundtrip ticket. I am scheduled to fly back to Europe, via Frankfurt on October 16th. Yay!!! 2) Of course, I am excited about seeing all my sorely-missed family and friends, enjoying the good ol- times with them once again! 3) I had two weeks to fully adjust to the idea of returning home, meaning I had time to fit in some last minute travels and adventure. Again, yay!!!

The last-minute hoorahs began the next evening when I went out salsa dancing with Claudia and her friend Mua. Then, the next thing I knew, it was Easter. I enjoyed a laid-back Easter celebration, helping Claudia hide eggs and other treats for her daughter Lisa, sharing in Lisa’s joy of the holiday and tasting traditional Austrian dishes in an Easter feast at Claudia’s friend’s house. The main Austrian Easter dish is a platter of various meats topped with slices of hard-boiled egg. You usually pair these with a slice of bread (and European bread is never the poor excuse for bread in the States mind you… sorry but it’s the truth), cheese and perhaps some mustard. I also enjoyed my first bowl of zucchini soup and devoured some delicious asparagus dish.

The next day, I met Reini, an active couchsurfer living in Graz and studying engineering at the university. I quickly found out that Reini is the king of hospitality for couchsurfers and foreign exchange students alike in Graz. I met Reini at his apartment and then we set off to explore the city in local student fashion on a couple of old, rickety European bicycles. There was a biting chill to the air, but I loved it! If I were studying here, this would be a part of the student experience. We cycled to the city center and decided to visit the Schlossberg clock tower, which Claudia had introduced me to before back in December. The scenic look-out point was a lot less crowded than it was during the Christmas holiday season and offered a nice relaxing atmosphere where Reini and I could chat and easily get to know each other a bit better. Reini and I had spent… maybe… a half an hour together before we started making plans for more adventure when I returned in October. We plan to go trekking, camping and rock climbing in the Austrian Alps near the town where he grew up. We will go visit the islands of Italy, Sicily and Sardegna (since Italy is so close!). We will organize Sunday dinners every week for interested couchsurfers and foreign exchange students. We have a lot to do when I get back!

In the meantime, Reini and I strolled along the River Mur and spotted a kayaker battling the frigid rapids just under one of the main bridges in the city. We also enjoyed a bit of urban bouldering. This is ingenious! A portion of wall formed by the roadway running alongside the river is covered in bouldering pegs. Reini explained the pegs were attached to the wall during the same time Graz built the eclectic Art House and Moor Isel (Island) during it’s celebration as the cultural center for Europe in 2003. I think the bouldering pegs are a great way to add culture and function to a typical highway wall. I think every city should do this… especially the city where I went to college. There’s a decent rock climbing community in COMO that would appreciate a few extra places to boulder for free!

That evening, a handful of couchsurfers, students and foreign exchange students met us at Reini’s apartment for an impromptu dinner. Reini and a couple others were planning on exploring a bit of Eastern Europe for the remainder of their Easter holiday and were leaving the next day. Reini used that as an excuse to invite everyone over and use the remainder of his food to prepare a creative feast. We dined on Czech-made Weiner schnitzel and mashed potatoes and one of the most inventive and delicious salad’s I’ve ever tasted. The salad consisted of a mixture of whatever salad ingredients Reini had on hand: sliced tomatoes, sliced grapes, chopped spring onion, cubed pineapple, corn, and chopped walnuts all coated in olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, a pinch of salt and pepper and spoonfuls of cinnamon. The salad was a success and none of us could get enough of the imaginative concoction. After dinner, we all stayed there huddled around Reini’s kitchen table laughing, sharing stories and enjoying each other’s company.

The next day I met Reini and the two others leaving for Eastern Europe in the evening. I had already planned a trip to Vienna and that happened to be the first leg of their trip, so we decided to travel that leg by train together. In Vienna, I left Reini and the others to go meet yet another delightfully interesting and entertaining batch of csers.... !