IT'S JUST A RIDE!

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are... And it's fun, for a while...  Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: 'Is this real? Or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid -- ever -- because... this is just a ride...' 

And we kill those people."

- Bill Hicks (1961-1994)

I love this cartoon as it perfectly depicts a favorite analogy of mine... Imagine that you're thrown from an airplane and you are plummeting downward...without a parachute.  Now, you've already been thrown, there's nothing you can do about that.  You WILL hit the ground - there's nothing you can do about that either.  So what ARE your options here, eh???

Health Update on Aja

In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

- Edward Everett Hale

(Preface to this blog entry: To many of you this may be simply an unnecessary update on one weird guy's physical/mental/emotional stuff.  To those friends/family/students etc. who may have been wondering "What the hell is up with Aja?", this may give some clue.   More philosophical/spiritual blogs are coming in the VERY near future - I promise.)

Giant Addition for Simplicity Gardens

"That's the great thing about a tractor.

You can't really hear the phone ring." 

- Jeff Foxworthy

The Barnashram Boys are thrilled!  Finally, after three + years of farming, all with only a little riding lawn mower and their arms and backs to haul literally tons of compost, produce, and everything else here, they have acquired a tractor.

Occupy! The 60's Virus Revisited?

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." - Yoko Ono

Some years back, I wrote (I think) a piece called "Trigger the 60's Virus," with, however, little thought or hope that it would ever happen.  For those of us who were alive and active back then in the 60's and 70's, it was a time like no other. I know everyone says that about their time, but even historians admit that it was a very unique time, at least in the more recent times.  Thousands were coming out to the streets for many reasons, most notably, for peace and against the Viet Nam war. For God's sake, even my 50 something mother who spent the majority of her adult life drinking coffee, smoking Pall Mall cigarettes and reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, came out to protest! - though most probably in hopes that neither of her sons would have to go and come back in a box. (Thankfully, neither of us ended up having to go.)