first half, last half of the year, another year. what th'... Joe, Loki, Michael, and I head up to Indian Peaks. this time less snow, but still it remains. from the same snowstorm that almost impeded our escape to Arizona in March. more than a meter in Boulder, over 2 meters up here. in 24 hours.

solstice. Mormon ads on teevee. meeting Nick and Deb and friends in Golden at the Golden Brewery, that funky little place behind the laundromat. kids running rampant, and that fine local brew, I think the only US microbrew that I actually can enjoy. Golden has shifted realities since the first time I drove into the town back in August 1976. aeons ago. the Ace Hi tavern is no longer the biker/cowboy place, but is full of scrub-faced Mines students playing pool. there are planters full of flowers lining the downtown streets, and everything is landscaped. not the Golden I used to know. yuppified. wrinkles smoothed, corners buffed, stains washed out, Californicators moved in with their 4000-square-foot (400m2) tile-roofed monstrosities, and undesireables run outta town by the sheriff.

I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too ill-instructed to instruct others. -- Montaigne

up into Indian Peaks with Kathy, Vika, Loki and a friend of Kathy's. wet upslope, green, still some feet of snow in the trees. but is the drought over?

three juvenile owls, each a foot tall, are sitting on a clothes-line along the Boulder Creek bike trail as Loki and I bike home from Kathy's talk at the Boulder Bookstore. in a blustery sturm und drang, we watch. rapt. as they flutter in the coming storm-wind, pouncing on falling leaves thinking they are prey, in the dark, just a few feet from us. no fear. predators-in-training. raptors. other cyclists swoosh by, oblivious.

In planning a session, the first question to be decided is "what is the goal?" Classic Hinduism suggest four possibilities:

1. For increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth.
2. For duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow men.
3. For fun, sensuous enjoyment, aesthetic pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure experience.
4. For transcendence, liberation from ego and space-time limits; attainment of mystical union.

...snip...

Instructions for Vision 4: The Wave-Vibration Structure of External Forms (Eyes open, rapt involvement with the external visual stimuli, intellectual aspects)

O nobly born, listen carefully:
At this point you can become aware of the wave structure of the world around you.
Everything you see dissolves into energy vibrations.
Look closely and you will tune in on the electric dance of energy.
There are no longer things and persons but only the direct flow of particles.
Consciousness will now leave your body and flow into the stream of wave rhythm.
There is no need for talk or action.
Let your brain become a receiving set for the radiance.
All interpretations are the products of your own mind.
Dispel them. Have no fear.
Exult in the natural power of your own brain,
The wisdom of your own electricity.
Abide in the state of quietude.
As the three-dimensional world fragments, you may feel panic;
You may beget a fondness for the heavy dull world of objects you are leaving.
At this time, fear not the transparent, radiant, dazzling wave energy.
Allow your intellect to rest.
Fear not the hook-rays of the light of life,
The basic structure of matter,
The basic form of wave communication.
Watch quietly and receive the message.
You will now experience directly the revelation of primal forms.

-- Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., & Richard Alpert, Ph.D. The Psychedelic Experience

oh well, stumbled on that, following a thread from Aldous Huxley. as for the effort to shift awarenesses from a dominantly materialist point-of-view to one that has a central locus on an energized movement. I just had the realization that I probably will not ever produce a text-based representation circumscribing the territory of my own world-view. and unless in a situation where there can be an unfolding of the thoughts, in concert with an Other, there will be no revelation, no representation. only action, doing, facilitating, and teaching. the 2126 class moves fast and with gusto. a deep difference with the spring class. where people seemed tight, fearful, and distracted. just war? or, hmmmm, does it confirm or refute my theory that much education is about saturating individual, forming humans in a certain fear of non-conforming, while in-validating divergent behaviors and thoughts. how come I resist letting my child be wild?

below Carbon Peak, at night, sleeping in the pick-up, tearful in the cold to pee, knowing that the stellar core of the Milky Way is being obscured by Dark Matter, otherwise it would blind us and keep us in wakeful madness. and make the sun only a dim reminder of local being. all life would radiate in Dante's Paradise.

afternoon stop in Crested Butte for pizza and beer, thin air. brilliance.

long weekend up at the cabin with Chris, Scharmin, Claudia, Stefan and 5 kids. still cool at 9000 feet. a windy hike to the waterfall, playing in the water, calculating the rules on eating trailmix (no fair picking out the m&m's).

Loki graduates tonight from fifth grade at Whittier. what an incredible constellation of kids he has been with. incredible teachers, including his main man, the legendary Whittier Elementary 4th-5th grade teacher, Craig Yager. not sure what exactly has rubbed off for him, but it is clear that his teachers give themselves into the process. it is very emotional, watching the whole event, realizing that the year is over, this dip into a community, something, at least on this geographical scale, foreign to me. and having a sustained presence here, also an anomaly. how good it felt. how hard it was on both of us. how sad seeing it end. fears for future floating, rise up. fears.

bah!