darn...

Great white shark freed from captivity

im glad that its free, but i really wanted to go see it...

so we stopped tonight to talk to the guy who parked his bus at the end of the road to stay for a few days...

a hippie guy with long greyish hair and wire rimmed rounded glasses, his name is jess and he is traveling with his two sons in a large school bus with a VW van hoisted and resting on the roof. the van is his sons room and the middle of the bus is partitioned into 4 spaces... the living area, the kitchen, his room and a back study type place. there is a hole in the roof of the bus leading up the boys micro bus room. the van/bus is painted sky blue with a huge yellow sun on the sides and clouds up around the top. the back of the bus says "solstice" and he has a yellow "support our troops" ribbon magnet stamped to the back of the bus. he homeschools his sons so they can travel and he has been living in the bus on the road for about a year now. he told me it cost about 5,000.00 to get the bus running and to get it all together with the van on the roof.

with all the money i have spent on my van, i could have had a bus-van by now...

it was awesome to talk with him and his sons were cool kids too. he says he loves traveling in the old school bus and he feels like he has crossed some sort of a culteral gap becuase people of all kinds stop and talk with him about his bus and smile at him as he drives by.

im jealouse of him and his travels in the "solstice". i WILL live out of my vehicle some day and simply drive around with no where in particular to go. just park it on the side of the road and chill sometime... im jealouse of them and their travels in the "soltice"... but im also really happy that they have free enough spirits to do something like that...

peace...

im practiclly in love with giovani ribisi.

a little humour to begin the day with... although this may not be funny to some people. it probably wasnt funny to the guy who found the finger in his chili and vomited...

Californian finds finger in bowl of fast food chili

this was the outside of my bedroom window yesterday morning. really, it was that dark.

buddhists believe that earthworms could be their mothers reincarnated... although i dont belive in reincarnation myself, i like the respect that buddhists have towards living things. it makes my heart ache when i see people abusing living things, things that God created and made for us to take care of... i get sad when boys talk about shooting birds and squirrels just for the fun of shooting something.

buddhist beliefs are scary... there is no hope in what they believe...

"A Buddhist who is fully convinced of the doctrine of kamma does not pray to another to be saved but confidently relies on himself for his purification because it teaches individual responsibility."

there is no way that one can individualy make himself pure, man is sinful, therefore a true buddhist can never be saved... but they dont know that... what makes them believe so fervently in the things that they believe in? do they have holes in their hearts that they wont admitt to others during conversation?

the earth worms are coming out of the ground here due to the rain. they are all over the place by the second bridge on the AIM trail. i try to be careful to not step on them as i walk by, but i cant say the same for others... yesterday i took a good look at one of them as it crawled on the sidewalk in front of the barn. it was really, sort of beautiful...

as i was walking back to the ranch house a little while ago, a eastern indian quote came to mind, "let go of your attachment to the outcome..." and Jesus smiled at me through the rain and cold and told me "peace... today is beautiful..."

ive been watching the direction of the rain rapidly change from left to center, center to right and back to center again... its raining hard and the wind is blowing... im about to go out there...

and my head continues to spin...

i dont know what to write... i have several things to say, but written words escape me. if you asked me in person what was on my mind, i could tell you. but written words dont come easy to me... then again, neither do spoken words, but at least i could manage to struggle my words out in a way that maybe you could understand. maybe you would get the point i was trying to get across, maybe you would ne able to help me find the right words... i miss sitting on the corner of church and main...

i just want to be beautiful and i want everything around me to be beautiful... i want to see things as beautiful... i'm on my way...

no matter how i make the coffee when im up here, it always turns out just wrong... and im really sure the problem is with the coffee.

*laughing* the commonfire web site cracks me up... i wonder how long my name has been sitting there like that... sort of aimlessly floating around the commonfire web page... story of my life.

the air quality and blueness of the sky at 5000 feet is surreal to me...

traffic was lame yesterday down the 41 and the 99...

coffee and cigerettes was an entertaining movie, despite the bad reviews...

so today i'll watch in america, maria full of grace and dead poets society...

only 2 and a 1/2 more months to go...

im in the valley today, with my family... i already pulled some weeds from my beloved flower beds, my hands are covered with dirt and i wore my insanley old and messed up birkenstocks. i like it here.

im taking my camera on a photo shoot now...

i woke up much earlier today than i had would have liked to. i almost thought that my clock just had to be wrong, there was no way that it was only 7:30 when i woke up... so i stared at it fot a while, actually praying that it was later than 7:30... i actually considered the option that maybe it reached 7:30 and then somehow froze there, and the real time was like, 10:00... so i kept staring at it untill it turned 7:31. by that point i had come to reality and accepted the fact that i just woke up earlier than i had wanted too and i allowed my brain to begin functioning.

last week i didnt go to monday night church becuase i didnt want to have to break off into groups with someone else and share how i was doing with that person. i didnt want to tell some stranger, (becuase usually we have to break off with someone we dont really know, i understand this becuase its good to get to know other people in the body) what was going on in my life and how i was struggeling. i wanted to go, and i considered going and then slipping out the door right before we had to break off, but ended up not going. i came home and had a long conversation with God.

i stood outside one night this past week, it was really dark and the clouds were floating fast, exposing stary sky and then quickly covering the stars up only to uncover them again secons later. it was amazing and i had a long conversation with God.

i know that i dont have full on social anxiety disorder, but i think i at least have a slight case. ive tried to get over this several times, forcing myself to be around new people in groups and trying to include myself in their conversations and i smile and act polite, i smile a fake smile and in my head i wish i was somewhere else, away from this group of people that are strangers to me... but i tried to push those thoughts aside and try to stay focused at what was going on with the group... but it never seems to work out. i get away as fast as i can and then i can breath. most of the time i like meeting new people one by one, or maybe two at a time... but when a group comes in, i just dont know what to do.

my last thought it one that has been on my mind for a few weeks now... Romans 8:6 says... For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace...
i read this verse one morning and it struck me that this is how i want to live my life... this is the exact way of life i have been striving for since almost a year ago when God grabbed me by the heart and threw me for a loop out of my comfortable, apathy stricken life... i want to live peacfully, simply, simply loving and being cruelty free. ive taken several steps towards this kind of life, i am hardly the person i was a year ago... but i feel like no matter how many changes i make, there are always more changes and more things i could be doing diferently... no matter how much i try, i need to change more... i realize it is this way for everyone and it is a constant... and i realize im in a good place, realizing tyhis about myself... but i struggle with wanting to do more... more peace... more simplicity... more love for others... less judgment, apathy, hatefullness, slander and thinking of things that are not of the spirit...

i have a hard time sitting in church next to the same person who outrightly told me that violence is funny and now listening to him singing worship songs to Jesus... is violence funny? should we be entertained by violence? i know that violence in unavoidable, but should we allow ourselves to be entertained by it, rather than being compassionate towards the people who are effected by violence? am i part of some sort of minority? i am confused... and angry... so many guys i know think violence is funny and honestly the majority of those guys are christians. the guys who i know who agree with me on the fact that violence is not funny are my non-christian friends. they are the ones who strive for peace and compassion, rather than entertainment in violence... i know that not all guys fall into this generalizing, this stereo-type i am struggeling against setting in my mind... but those are just my observations so far...

im a walking contradiction... a jumbled mess of questions left unanswered and a stirred heart and spirit.

so, do these questions, these thoughts and ideas, this stirring of my spirit, does that all mean that i am living by the spirit? living... i believe i am living by the spirit. my questions prove to me that i am living... i am alive in spirit, not dead... not stagnit (sp?)... not still... never content with my current state of mind and heart... always moving and changing... listening... watching... learning... seeking...

i will continue today, to strive towards peace and life. i am alive in the spirit...

i put up some photos... http://upadanasaddha.deviantart.com

peace...

my carpal tunnel had been in remesion, but im really sure its back now...