Summer Solstice at Vajra Vidya*

Dragonfly hovers in boughs of

     Rocky Mountain juniper

On sandy slopes

     of the Sangre de Cristo

Syncopated long tones

     breathe in — breathe out

Meditation’s windy sonata ends

     with fading bell coda

Khenpo blows the holy ashes toward that

     long-setting sun while

Saturn follows Mars through dusk of spring

     and Mercury — even now at summer’s dawn

*  “Unchanging Awareness”

The Birth of a Journey

I have been asked to tell the story of how this journey came about:

As far as I know, it all began in the spring of ’57, atop one of those San Diego mesas overlooking the blue Pacific.  Dad was a jet jock, a Naval Aviator flying F9F-8 Cougars with the VA-56 Squadron out of NAS Miramar; Mom would soon be conferred a master’s in geography.  Nine months later I find myself in Kingsville, Texas of all places....

Fast forward a quarter century and I’m finally finishing a degree in English Literature at Indiana University.  The previous spring I had taken an elective course in the East Asian Languages and Culture department and was fascinated by everything Dr. West presented about both China and Japan.  I read The Spirit of Zen while sitting on the banks of the Jordan River, and felt my course in life subtly shifting.  I took first-year Chinese during my senior year; then took a summer intensive course in second-year Chinese at UCLA immediately after graduating.  I’m sure I could have become fluent had I been immersed in the language right then, but I was also intrigued by software development, and my career simply took a different path.  Besides, Tiananman Square was still years away, and it just wasn’t the right time to go to mainland China.

Fast forward another quarter century or so and I’m taking a course in Authentic Leadership at Naropa University, having recently left the college where I’d been employed as a teacher and administrator for the past nine years.  I received an offer to teach English in the Foreign Languages Department at Xi’an Jiaotong University City College just prior to our second onsite session in Boulder, and I assumed I would travel in China before starting work in the fall.  Wrong!  I was soon informed by the International Affairs Office that no travel would be permitted in the P.R.C. until I’d received a work visa, a month after arriving in Xi’an.  Bummer.

Disappointment turned to anticipation, however, when I realized I could make my way toward China via Japan.  Naturally, my first step was to look into flights out of Denver, but that only led to renewed dismay.  I love to fly, but I prefer to sit in the left front seat.  The prospect of 17 hours sardined into the back of a 747 just made me want to scream—along with all of the other kids in coach.  I thought, okay, I’ll make my way up the Inland Passage by ferry to Anchorage, where I had once spent a summer watching flights landing enroute to Japan.  Unfortunately, those flights now go via Sea-Tac or LAX, and reservations on the auto ferries have to be made months in advance.

Having contemplated ocean travel, the leap to considering a freighter voyage was not that great.  It costs more than flying, but if you look at it as meals and lodging for two weeks, in addition to transportation, it’s not expensive at all.  Plus it’s not a cruise—there’s no casino, no entertainment—just nice accommodations in a single cabin, with access to a fitness room, indoor swimming pool, and a lounge.  Unfortunately, there is no disembarking in Japan, so that means getting off the ship in South Korea, where I’ll just have to explore the mountain temples around Busan before crossing the Korea Strait.  So it goes.

My dad suggested looking into Japan Rail Pass, which opens up whole vistas of opportunity for exploring the length of Japan for three weeks.  A friend had recently recommended Memoirs of a Geisha, and I really enjoyed Arthur Golden’s description of the teahouses in Gion, so that became a must-see destination.  It’s close to Nara, the seat of Zen Buddhism, which is where my interest in Japan really lies, and there are a number of ryokan, or traditional Japanese inns, in Kyoto.  Before you know it, An Itinerary had emerged.

Now we’ll just have to see how it plays out….  Any suggestions?

An Itinerary

I figure every itinerant needs an itinerary—however sketchy—so here’s mine. Some dates are firm; some are still TBD.

June 19	Back to the Briar Rose B&B in Boulder, Colorado
	Urantia Study Group
June 20-21	Two-Day Retreat at Vajra Vidya in Crestone, Colorado
	Observe Summer Solstice
	Sit with the lamas
June 22-30(?)	Hang with the ‘rents in Bernalillo, New Mexico
July 1-7(?)	Cross the Great American Desert
	Chaco Canyon
	Flagstaff, Arizona
July 8-11(?)	Hang with buddy Kris in Anaheim Hills, California
July 12-20(?)	Make way up California Coast
	Asilomar State Beach
	Tassajara Zen Center
	Sell White Fang
July 21	Embark the Hanjin Boston in Oakland, California
July 22-August 3	Cross the Pacific Ocean
	Read books
	Watch the stars
August 4	Disembark in Busan, South Korea
	Mountain temples of Busan
August 7(?)	Cross the Korea Strait by speed ferry
August 8-29	Japan Rail Pass on shinkansen (bullet trains)
	Seven Great Temples of Nara
	Tea ceremony in Gion
	Ryokan in Kyoto
August 30	Enter the People’s Republic of China at Shanghai
	Fly to Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, P.R.C.

Transit of Venus

I went to a viewing party to see the 2012 Transit of Venus last week at Yanney Park in Kearney, Nebraska.  The party told us many stories about ourselves.

First, there’s the story of our enduring fascination with the stars and planets.  After having watched the delightful conjunction of Jupiter and Venus throughout the month of March, dozens of us were now here to watch Venus cross the face of the sun as seen from Earth.  Something is moving, I thought, but actually a number of objects are in continuous motion: Venus in its orbit around the sun, currently seen as retrograde due to our own greater orbit around that same star; Earth revolving on its tilted axis, from which we were viewing the spectacle as a tiny dot moving across the face of the “setting sun.”

Then there’s the story of our commonplace facility with material technologies.  Several telescopes were brought to the party by various groups, including Platte Valley Astronomical Observers and Seven Hills Observatory.  Each telescope was fitted with a different filter, so we could watch the event through various spectral bands.  My personal favorite was the hydrogen filter, with its fiery red signature and visible prominences, like mountains of flame protruding from the surface of the sun.  A subplot to this story was played out by a group of schoolchildren, who proudly showed off the NASA-supplied telescopes they had purchased for their school after months of dedicated fundraising.

Most important to me, however, is the story of our ability to communicate events such as this through our increasingly ubiquitous network of telecommunications media.  I was made aware of the event through National Public Radio’s mobile app on my smartphone, which provided a link to NASA’s webpage of viewing parties across the nation, from which I found the Seven Hills Observatory announcement of this event at Yanney Park.  Others had heard of the event on local radio; still others had read an announcement in the Kearney Hub.  Even just a century ago, only a very few people on Earth—a handful of astronomers and a few students of astronomy—would have known of this celestial event, and I daresay not one of them would have watched it from Kearney, Nebraska.

As Einstein once put it, “Something is moving.”  A number of things, actually.

Cast Your Fate to the Wind

A month of nights, a year of days,

Octobers drifting into Mays;

I set my sail when the tide comes in

And I just cast my fate to the wind.

Late afternoon sunlight danced across the rippled waters of Johnson Lake as Nancy and Bill and I enjoyed our fish and chips one Friday evening last month.  We were upstairs at Medo’s Resort (home of Judy’s Famous Tanq & Tonic—best GT on the High Plains) celebrating the recent rental of my house across the lake on Mallard Bay.  Unfortunately, I had not yet received an Invitation Letter from the Chinese government (see An Invitation, below), so renting out the house without some guarantee of a job teaching abroad felt like setting sail without a destination.

“So what are you going to do?” Nancy asked.

“Well, I guess I’ll just cast my….”  But suddenly I couldn’t remember how the expression went.   

“What’s the line?” I asked.  “What is it you cast to the wind?”

“I don’t know,” she replied offhandedly.  The conversation took a different tack, but I couldn’t shake the question—and googled it as soon as I got home that night.  A bunch of references to Vince Guaraldi came up in the SERP, and I was swept away in a wave of Sixties nostalgia:  The Sandpipers; Schroeder at the piano; the Summer of Love….  With Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto moving into rare triple conjunction, the possibilities had seemed endless back then; unlike today, in which possibilities feel so constrained.

I sat down at the piano and picked out Guaraldi’s 1962 hit, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.”  How can such a simple tune evoke such strong emotions?  It seems to me it’s all about the spaces in between.  It’s in Guaraldi’s unique harmonic voicings—the spacious intervals between notes in each chord on the piano.  It’s in his infectious use of expansive jazz rhythms and swing feel—the spacing between notes in time.  Both qualities underlie a simple, almost childlike melody in such a way as to render it sophisticated and evocative yet accessible to all—the very essence of cool.

I shift my course along the breeze;

Won’t sail upwind on memories.

The empty sky is my best friend,

And I just cast my fate to the wind.*

Yeah, man—it’s all about the spaces in between.



*  Lyrics by Carel Werber

An Invitation

Late last week, after nearly a year and well over 100 emails sent flying between Nebraska, China, and Chile, I finally received my Working Permit and Invitation Letter of Duly Authorized Unit from the People’s Republic of China.  The documents arrived by special delivery just two days before I became homeless earlier this week—who knows what would have happened had I not been there to accept the delivery…

With these documents I can now apply for a China Z Visa, which allows entry into the country.  I am to enter via Shanghai, and proceed directly to Xi’an on August 30th, where Crystal will escort me to the local police station for registration within 24 hours of my arrival.  Then we apply for a work visa.

Who is Crystal?  Funny you should ask…  “Crystal” is the email respondent that has held my fate for much of the past year.  She works in the International Affairs Office of Xi’an Jiaotong University City College, where I have been offered a position teaching English in the Foreign Languages Department this fall.  Crystal is filling in for “Carrie,” who is on maternity leave, and I am pretty sure I am the first Foreign Expert that Crystal has ever processed.  I feel confident that Crystal has learned at least as much from the experience as I have.

Perhaps I should let Crystal speak for herself.  Here, for example, is her response to my status inquiry last month, after not having heard from her for several weeks:

hi  Douglas
Everything are going very weil! You may rest assured.It will take another three or four weeks to close it.The relevant departments of the Chinese government will give you invitation letter.I will mail it to you by postal service  as soon as possible.

Crystal

Crystal always calls me Douglas, even though I’ve never referred to myself that way except on official documents.  It’s just as well, really; Chinese speakers usually call me Duck.

Don’t get me wrong—I could not even begin such a complex transaction with the two years of college Chinese that I took back in 1983, so I truly admire Crystal’s ability to conduct our conversation in a foreign language.  Still, when it’s not completely painful, it can be pretty funny.  Here’s how it began:

Dear Douglas

I'm crystal from international affairs of XJTUCC.Congratulations that XJTUCC decides to employ you for 1 year's contract.

I'm writing to help you completingthe prcedures to come to china successfully,please send the following documents to me:

1、the copy of passport

2、a e-copy of 2 inch color photo

3、the copy of highest diploma

4、health records

Thank you!

I hope to see you in xi'an!

Needless to say, it would require numerous additional emails to satisfy her request.  The good news is I now know that one of my first lessons will be on the proper use of indefinite and definite articles, a/an and the.

In the meantime, Crystal and I will just keep working away at it, or as she puts it:

We have a long procedure to run to obtain your one-year work visa within one month. If we miss the validity period of visa, you will be refused by Shaanxi  Exit and Entry Administration Center and that is a big trouble for both of us.

 No doubt.