Imagine... Moab, Utah... 110 degrees Fahrenheit... it's impossible to walk barefoot on anything, when you stand in the sun it's as if the finger of god were upon you. You awake in a van every morning drenched in sweat and covered in mosquito bites, the dog lays under the bed panting, tortured by the heat. When you do finally rise there exists an immediate emergency situation where you must find shade.. and now. Not just enough shade for you, but enough shade for the van, so the ice in your cooler doesn't melt, your food doesn't go bad, and your film stock doesn't cook under the hot desert sun. Shade is a prime commodity in a place like Moab, without it, you're as good as dead.Once you find shade under a tree in the park, you sit and wait it out, there's not much else you can really do.. you read... you reorganize... you sit.
This was the average day for Liz and I in Moab, except while I sat in the shade, Liz spent her time knitting at Desert Thread a local yarn shop where she is now considered family... it's difficult to be productive when you're held hostage by sunlight and the threat of dehydration. And while I'm struggling through the heat, I'm also trying to coexist with my loved one within 24 square feet. I can see that she is growing increasingly unhappy with bathing out of rubbermaid containers, sleeping in her own sweat, and the dirty grimy smelly existence that goes with van life. It's not fun, especially at 110 degrees. We're both becoming increasingly irritable, and all the love we share is giving way to intolerance, resentment, and impatience both within the van and within ourselves.
There comes a time and place when you have to take stock and reevaluate your situation. I think for us that came somewhere in the last week of June when the magic and wonder of the desert gave way to a deep desire for the cool high elevations of our home back in Colorado, and the compassionate humor of our friends that live there. For me the desert taught me a lot... it taught me that as much as I am in love with Liz and in love with spending time together, I'm not in love with living in a dirty smelly van with her, and it's difficult if not impossible to make a feature film while coexisting in such a small space. I often compare it to being a photojournalist in a war zone trying to capture images, while your lover is calling to you asking where you'd like to eat dinner and if you like her latest knit creation.
Although I must say that some of my best interview leads resulted from Liz' involvement in the Moab knitting circle. Anyways you would have thought I had learned this lesson up in the Arctic with Forbes, where after 4 months of working together I sent him home in deep need of solitude. But you see, I tend to be optimistic and love has a way of making nothing matter, making hard times worth while, and making all of us blind to the road of common sense. Since for every moment of frustration Liz and I shared in Veronica's oven-like interior, there are so many more bliss-filled moments of laughter, love, sharing, intellectual exchanges and I'd be a fool not to mention the literally HOT sex ;-)So where was I, oh yeah, it's the last week of June and things are breaking down... I'm realizing I have to make this film alone, and Liz is realizing life in a van isn't all it cracked up to be and is planning to return to Colorado to finish up her degree. It's a difficult realization filled with sadness at the prospect of a future apart, but at the same time it brings with it a sense of relief for us both. Emerging now is acceptance and understanding which is bringing with it a deep sense of peace between us. I am so grateful for the time in the van with Liz since it brought an increased depth of understanding for myself and I'm sure she feels the same way.
We left Moab and headed back to Colorado for the 4th of July, into the arms of loving friends and cool high mountain air that allowed all the pressure built up between us to escape, which in turn allows us to get back to what matters in the here and now, which is laughing, hiking, being blissed out and loving each other.
So now it's July 22nd and we've been house sitting our friend Jeff's a-frame up in the Rockies for the past two weeks. Liz has found a beautiful Victorian house down in Denver and in some weird way it feels like things are beginning to come full circle.
I've chosen to put the project on hold until September 1st and Liz and I are just enjoying our time together until we have to walk our own roads again for awhile. We're going to Burning Man in Nevada at the end of August and this crazy mind blowing event will mark both a celebration of what we have shared, while also a process of letting go while holding onto the faith that if things are meant to be, our roads will bring us together once more.
I can say for certain that Liz as much as she may, at times, drive me crazy, is one of the best teachers and mirrors I have ever had. I know she'll be in my life for as long as I'm alive. We have made a commitment to revisit our relationship since what we have shared doesn't come along every day. I know our paths will cross again regardless. And, I know that love is crazy and unpredictable and sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone to establish what's worth establishing, to leave behind parts of yourself that are afraid or angry, to believe anything is possible, and to hold on only to let go, so that maybe in some strange way you can actually hold on.A close friend of mine in Denver gave me a copy of the book The Only Dance There Is which is made up of talks given by Ram Dass. I especially liked this part about love.
Love As A State of Being If a Western man were to become a fully enlightened being what would happen to his human relationships, particularly love? Let me start with the word "love" for the moment. I think there is a transformation that goes on in one's conception of the term "love". And I think one changes from seeing it as a verb, to seeing it as a state of being. And you move much more toward what would be called Christ-love, that is, the state of being where one "is" love. One is like a light that emits, and one is a loving being. Consciousness and energy are an identity, as I said last night, and similarly with those identities is the term love. That is, that love and consciousness are one and the same thing. So that as you get into a higher state of consciousness you come closer to being in love. That doesn't mean in interpersonal love. It means being-love. Now if you and I love or fall into love and I say, "She really turns me on. I love her," from this model what I see is happening is that I'm saying, "You are a....," in the imprinting literature, "You are a superordinate key stimulus that is eliciting an innate response mechanism. You're releasing an innate response mechanism." Or I could say it in a more general sense, saying that, "You're turning me on." And you're turning me on to a place inside myself that is love. So I am experiencing what it means to "be in love." And I'm saying I am in love with you. I am in love with my connection to the place in me that is love, is the way I would now say it in this Western framework. Now to keep working with this I would say that as you are making love and totally into the interpenetration as much as your bodies would allow and your thoughts and feelings would often allow and still feel that there was a separateness. And it is interesting that as long as you are under the illusion that what you are loving is "out there" you will always experience that separateness. It is only when you begin to understand that if you and I are truly in love, if I go to the place in me that is love and you to the place in you that is love, we are "together" in Love. We start to understand that what love means is that we are sharing a common state together. That state exists in you and it exists in me. Now the enlightened being - what happens to him is that he changes the nature of his love object from a specific love object to it all, finally. You would say that an enlightened being is totally in love with the universe, in the sense that everything in the universe turns him on to that place in himself where he is love and consciousness. So I would say that an interpersonal relationship that has any qualities of possessiveness in it, or ego drama of any kind, certainly undergoes changes as the nature of consciousness changes. And at the same moment I would say that as a person becomes more conscious, he understands that he has certain karmic commitments, that is, existing contracts which may be with parents, it may be with husband or wife, it may be with children - and that he cannot rid himself from these without creating a karmic cost - without leaving behind some uncooked seeds that he's running away from. - Ram Dass, The Only Dance There Is
Another except that has been helpful for me comes from my friend Ken Williams in Alberta. The original email wasn't sent to me, but I still find the insight into attachement thought provoking and in some way comforting. It becomes I guess about being a Knight of Faith rather than a Knight of Resignation.
Buddhists of course work very hard in their practice to detach themselves, and rid themselves of the pain of attachments too -- they see all human suffering coming out of attachments of one kind or another. If you are a Buddhist at all, then you will have to see your pain as being created out of the illusion of attachment, and learn to accept that situation. But our Western tradition is all about attachments and passion. For me personally, I think life full of contradictions and mystery, and that means, for me, that it's both true that we ought not to get caught up in our attachments (in other words, learn to detach from things, from life itself) while at the same time, choosing to embrace things tightly and passionately. The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard writes beautifully about this, in "Fear and Trembling"... he compares what he calls the Knight of Resignation (one who learns to detach) with the Knight of Faith (who learns this detachment, and steps one step beyond it to re-attach to life 'by virtue of the absurd'). The knight of faith embraces life wholeheartedly, even while knowing detachment, knowing that nothing can be truly possessed. - Ken Williams
All of this to say that life is beautiful, difficult, and magical and although it's not always easy to find our way, we must move forward without fear, holding onto faith and understanding, and do our best to love each other to the full extent of our human capabilities.
peace,
d
Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near
Published Friday, June 27, 2008 by Dan Gainsford.
Click Here for PDF of Testimony
peace,
d
This past week I watched the film A Crude Awakening hosted by Red Rock Forests here in Moab. I've seen the film before but it was great to have it reinvigorate old ideas and feelings that have been dormant for some time now. It's a great film and if you haven't seen it go rent it ASAP! I agree with most of what it has to say about where our world is headed and my anxiety after seeing it is running high.A few days after the screening a friend in New Zealand sent me this article, and while I personally feel it's horse shit, I also acknowledge that in this day and age it's hard to know what's fact and what's fiction. So give it a read and make up your own mind... Is oil running out - or running in?
peace,
d
Is oil running out – or in?
Are we being screwed by the oil companies, big time? Do they create false shortages so they can raise prices however they wish?
American or British geologists say the world's supply of oil was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that took millions of years. It is a ‘fossil fuel,’ a biological residue derived from crushed animal and vegetative matter and hence in finite supply. In some cases, according to the theory, huge amounts have been concealed between rock formations in the shallower ocean offshore as in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea or Gulf of Guinea.
Oil and renewable resource are not words that often appear in the same sentence. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence would arguably turn the world view upside down. Is ‘peak oil’ a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists and hippies? If oil is not finite then the price should come down, the panic to find alternatives would be over and in the realisation that oil is harmless to the environment the first casualty would be the international banking system, backed up by the cost of the US dollar which in turn is governed by the cost of oil. No one knows if we are using up something much faster than it was created.
Even to say known reserves of ABC will be exhausted by period XYZ at current consumption rates is to deny that new reserves will be discovered during XYZ. But more importantly, we can confidently observe that in nature everything recycles. It is possible but highly improbable that oil is the sole exception. It is more likely that oil is renewable and can be compared to air or underground water. If we can positively establish that the amount of oil being returned to or remaining in the earth equals or exceeds the amount extracted from it by the number of humans using it then any oil “problem” disappears. The sun's hydrogen is also a finite resource, and at some point in the future our local star is certain to die, and when it does our planet will die with it. But no one lays awake at night worrying over that. To assess the oil reserves we must estimate the starting number of barrels of oil in the ground and how much we have so far used. We will never know either answer. So why do so many environmentalists paint a doom-filled picture?
The evidence is more of oil running in, rather than running out. The Eugene Island case is an example. Production at this oil field deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. Following its 1973 discovery, production slowed from 15,000 barrels a day to about 4,000 in 1989. The field is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago. This means Eugene Island is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below the Earth's surface.
It now looks as though the world contains far more recoverable oil than was believed even 20 years ago. The world's greatest oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20 years, despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region.
Just when we thought we were running out of oil, technology came along to extract oil from shale rocks in the mid west and Canada. Brazil recently went from 17th to the rank of 10th biggest oil producer. China has made 10 major new discoveries this year alone. India is finding energy offshore.Russia is a major producer. Last year Mexico made a huge offshore discovery it has yet to tap and NZ found oil off the southeast coast near Southland. New technologies now recover resources from old wells previously thought tapped out, they can create oil from formerly useless resources, like tar sands, and recover oil and natural gas from previously impossible geography, like the deep blue sea miles beneath the surface.
The somewhat buried reality is that oil may not have come from dinosaurs or forests smashed under rocks. More and more scientists are now coming to a belief that oil is "a-biotic", continuing to be replaced by chemical processes in the crust of the earth. Russia is now the world’s largest oil producer and natural gas producer. The Russians have been saying the fossil-caused oil theory is an unscientific absurdity that is unprovable since the early 1950’s, but the idea is still almost unknown in the West. To the Russians, oil supply on earth is limited only by the amount of organic hydrocarbon constituents present deep in the earth at the time of the earth’s formation. They claim oil is formed deep in the earth, formed in conditions of very high temperature and very high pressure like that required for diamonds to form. That oil is a biological residue of plant and animal fossil is seen as a hoax designed to perpetuate the myth of limited supply.
In the 1980s the Russians went to Vietnam and offered to finance a-biotic drilling costs. The company Petrosov drilled Vietnam’s White Tiger oilfield offshore into basalt rock some 17,000 feet down and extracted 6,000 barrels a day of oil to feed the energy-starved Vietnam economy. By the mid-1980’s the USSR emerged as the world’s largest oil producer. To have produced the amount of oil to date that Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field has produced would have required a cube of fossilized dinosaur detritus, assuming 100% conversion efficiency, measuring 19 miles deep, wide and high. In short, an absurdity. Meanwhile, Western geologists do not bother to offer hard scientific proof of fossil origins. They merely assert it as a holy truth.
The 2003 arrest of Russian Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, took place just before he could sell a dominant stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil after Khodorkovsky had a private meeting with Dick Cheney. Had Exxon got the stake they would have gotten control of the world’s largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the a-biotic techniques of deep drilling. Why then the high-risk war to control Iraq? For a century US and allied Western oil giants have controlled world oil via control of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Nigeria. Today, as many giant fields are declining, the companies see the state-controlled oilfields of Iraq and Iran as the largest remaining base of cheap, easy oil. With the huge demand for oil from China and now India, some say it becomes a geopolitical imperative for the United States to take direct, military control of those Middle East reserves as fast as possible. Vice President Dick Cheney came to his job from Halliburton Corp., the world’s largest oil geophysical services company.
There is no hard evidence of a lack of crude oil in the world. Global oil use = 31.5 billion barrels per year. One barrel oil = 42 U.S. gallons. One cubic foot = 7.48 U.S. gallons. One cubic mile = 147.2 billion cubic feet. So the volume of oil consumed by mankind annually = (31.5 x 42) / (7.48 x147.2) = 1.2 cubic miles of oil per year. The volume of the earth is 260,000 million cubic miles. If by volume a millionth of the interior of the earth contains oil, there is enough to last 260,000 years. But if 1/250,000 of the earth is oil, which is only about the volume of the Mediterranean Sea, and which does not seem at all unreasonable, at the present rate of consumption we can drive our SUVs around for another million years. You read it right, one million years.
Sources
editorial, "Brazil's Not Peaking," Investor's Business Daily, December 14, 2007. Courtesy: NCPA) http://resources.alibaba.com
http://www.oralchelation.com
http://www.ibdeditorials.com
Since we left Roaring Hell Canyon I've been wanting to go back.. wanting to go back to capture the place that now held so much meaning for me. I wanted to go back to arrive at a new perspective regarding where I was and where I am headed. Liz wasn't as keen as I to return, but I know she herself has arrived at a new kind of peace with the place as well.I spend a lot of time thinking about sacred spaces while traveling and what it is that makes a space sacred. I think aside from the raw energy of a place it's the idea of what we ourselves bring to it. When we experience a place we infuse it with our own thoughts, feelings, and personal energies. In returning to Roaring Hell I brought a newfound balance, perspective and understanding. I am comforted by this place now, it has become a sort of home for me and I feel in some way I'll be coming back here for a long time to come.
In going back we camped in a new location right on the edge of the canyon wall about a thirty minute hike to the point which overlooks the length of the canyon itself. I found it funny when I first arrived at the point that I could see across to the place I had been before, the deep wash (bottom pic orange square inset) that felt as though it was pulling all the negative energies of the world down and out of this world. I think it's a powerful place, but at the same time I'm glad I'm on the overlook now feeling on top of the world. It's where any of us would rather be.
Liz and I are back in Moab now after spending four days at Roaring Hell, there is a certain peace pervading things and it feels nice to be have captured footage found a certain closure in my dialog with the landscape. It's hot here in the van as the clouds have cleared and the sun is beginning to beam down on Moses and I (Liz is off knitting with Kathy and Rosie), so I'm going to end this post and head for a walk with Mogley and then talk to some interview contacts from somewhere cool :-).
peace,
d
... Roaring Hell Canyon has been a week of processing and growing. Liz and I have been organizing the van, throwing out excess garbage, and lightening the load both physically and spiritually. The calm after the storm is definitely upon us and I'm thankful for the space to rest and breath and get back to work (on something other than myself). We spent this past week up on highway 128 just north of Moab, Utah. We hiked Fisher Towers, camped with some extraordinary new friends from Denver over memorial weekend, caught our breath, caught some great views, and found that life is beautiful and all is well with the universe once again.
There comes times in our lives where we must trust our intuition and walk in our personal medicine. Sometimes everything in the universe seems to be working against this walk, forcing you to tear yourself apart, howl in agony, and bay at life’s seemingly torturous beauty, but these are the times when walking in your personal medicine is most important.I recently had a friend/brother/guide take me somewhere I really needed to go. But before our arrival traveling down the road to get there I had to take a moment to walk in my medicine. I don’t quite understand what it all meant, and I’m not sure I ever will. But I know it has to do with the fact that sometimes you have to walk your own walk separate from that of those you love. This means having the strength to even leave loved ones in an effort to be true to thy self. Sometimes this process of leaving people and places behind can tear you apart spiritually unlike anything else. But sometimes that process no matter how difficult it may be affects things in ways that may in the end, allow us all to hold on.
I know it doesn’t all make sense, and perhaps it will take years for even me to figure it all out, but all I’m saying is this, it’s important to follow your dharma (life’s truth). We may not always understand the ripple effect of our truth on others but it not ours to understand, it is only ours to walk our walk as best we can.
With tears streaming down my face, I left that friend behind on the side of a deserted Utah highway, only to have the universe bring him back around two days later. In a state like Utah it’s no simple magic to be lost then found amidst all the desert vastness, but that’s the way it was to be. I walked with him some more, something changed in me, perhaps my medicine now more firmly in place. I had trusted my intuition, and in a way I had asked a question and been given a beautiful answer.Our road together has wound through some of the most pivotal moments of my life, I don’t know why I got stuck with this lunatic as a mirror, but in the end I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. He doesn't always teach me in the way I would like, he doesn't always guide me with gentleness, and sometimes he leaves me wanting to rip him to shreds... but in the end, if I asked him to express himself any differently, I wouldn't be honoring his road or the way he walks his medicine.
Upon our reconnection he brought me to Roaring Hell Canyon where I stood on the side of a 2000ft canyon wall confronting personal fears as deep as the universe is expansive. Fears I have created, fears I have been given, and fears it seems have been with me since birth. It takes a good friend and brother to let you go and then to watch you die. It takes a brother to support you as you walk in your medicine in the only way you know how. A part of me died up on that canyon wall, and for a brief moment I thought some of the best parts of me went with it, but I’m still here, stronger than ever. I have only my friends to thank for this, and Liz for her never-ending depth and patience. The demons I feel I've exercised took a team to help me remove... everyone played their part... and though they may not have understood their roles in my process, they all did just fine, and I'm forever grateful.And if the devil ever challenges you in the way he challenged me, tell him to go fuck himself! Tell him you’re stronger than anything he can imagine! Tell him if he doesn’t smarten up you’re going to kick his ass! Tell him Nothing he can throw at you will make you choose fear over love! And tell him in the end he's the one who will end up at the bottom of Roaring Hell Canyon, not you, you have other plans!
peace,
d
But there’s been a lot going on.
Since the a-frame up in the mountains I’ve found a new traveling partner. Liz and I stumbled into each other’s life somewhere in late February and since then have been working out how to move forward down this winding road of life side by side. Sometimes things come out of nowhere and blindside you unexpectedly and sometimes letting go takes on a whole new meaning. For me I’ve had to let go of my lone wolf complex to some degree and for Liz it’s meant letting go of worldly possessions and moving into a tight fitting home on wheels.In the weeks since living in her place in Denver, selling or storing all her personal belongings, and her finishing up some class work; we’ve been doing just fine. Liz has become the SFD Film Project’s front woman as she introduces her and I to everyone we meet, explains the project, exchanges contact info, leaving me with more interviews than I can handle. She is delving back into a passion for writing and exceeding my expectations of van adaptation. Living in a van isn't easy as I'm sure you'll read about in her NEW BLOG!
I haven’t had to share my van with another human being since Forbes up in Canada’s North West Territories, so for me this change involves letting go of some of my rigidity. It’s easy to go through life as a lonely hermit not having to worry about anyone else except the dog, but that’s the life of a lonely hermit which, while at times beautiful, also leave much to be desired. As with Forbes living in a 5’x10’ space with another person involves letting go of control, and since it’s always been my project and my van, it’s my control reflexes that need to be addressed. I’m thankful to Forbes and Liz for this opportunity, and I’m remembering how beautiful it can be to share something as precious as this pilgrimage.
I know Liz will bring a great perspective to the journey and I know everyone following will love her deep sense of awareness and endless reserve of Jersey wit. There’s a deep magic in this raven-haired wonder, and like all of us, if we let this magic shine our true capabilities are endless.
Liz Kazmierczak, welcome to the Searching for Dragons Film Project! May the journey fill your life with love, beauty and truth!
peace,
d
Check this space for filmmaker updates from the road!
Links
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