Alternate Vision

Looking for housing is always a bore. Some people find it exciting. I don't. I've been enjoying the temporary month to month rental at my current residence, but it's not as private a space as I would like and I am not allowed to host, which is a drawback. Santa Cruz is a tourist hub in the summer. Come August right before the semester starts at UCSC housing is almost impossible to find. Today's events were a bit out of the ordinary.

I was shown a studio apartment by this British gentleman this evening. He owns a sprawling 8 acre property in the hills right next to the redwood forests right off 17. At first the locked gates, enormous mansion and the lawn ball field had me thinking he was just another rich, Californian property owner in the bay area. Boy was I mistaken. This old chap has seen more of the world than I can ever hope of seeing and is a living exemplar of 'Carpe Diem.' Instead of showing me around, we spent the first half an hour after we met chatting about his journey from California to Nigeria by van. In the early 90s he was offered a job in Nigeria. Him and his wife decided to drive their Volkswagen there. They made it by road to Canada first. Jumped on a boat which took them to Morocco and from there drove down via Central Africa to Nigeria. He had to rebuild his engine in the desert where they got stranded several times in the sand. They never stayed in a hotel, always camped out and cooked most of their meals to save money. After a few years of working with the Nigerian government, he was soon frustrated with the corrupt system he found himself in and decided it was time to leave. They left the continent much the same way they came in - across the equator to Kenya in the east and then back up north. They attempted to head south first but at the Gabon border they were warned not to head to Angola because of the civil war. So instead they went eastward. Road tripping has been his favorite way to travel and continues to be so today. He has covered Central and South America in exactly the same way as he saw Africa - armed with his vehicle, brilliant language and survival skills and his wife. Travelling is the best education anyone can have.

The only thing lacking in the studio he offered me for rent was a proper kitchen, which is a huge negative. I told him that wouldn't stop me from engaging in more enlightening conversation with him. How about tea or drinks sometime? I said. I've got a better idea, how about you come over and cook us an Indian meal. I miss the food from my Bangalore days. Deal. I drove off down the hill and watched him trek into the mountains through the black bamboo forest. I'll be seeing Mr G and his crew in the woods this weekends for some more nomadic tales. I'll have to think up a good menu for the occasion.

here's to many many more

saw a bobcat and wild deer running around outside earlier this week. This morning on my way to the office, I almost stepped on a garden snake. Two hours later, I notice this thin, long black lizard strolling around the office...it never gets boring here in Los Gatos

Today Leary's motto would be "turn off, tune out, drop dead". At the decline of American Empire, young people have all the bombs, all the post-September 11, 2001, cops in the world - and it is not theirs. They have Hummers, holidays in Cambodia, neo-Byzantine condos. But then, spiritually unfulfilled even though they have been to all the five-star healing spas in the world, they still think there is nothing else - apart from a shot at TV celebrity.

Nobody gives a damn: the best lack all conviction (and take refugee in their iPods) while the worst simply lord over all, unchallenged. In overwhelmingly dumbed-down global medialand, airhead heiress Paris Hilton is the Queen of News, governments are no more than "political commissars of economic power", in the formulation of Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, and the Bush administration/industrial-military complex merrily fight proxy wars in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Somalia.

History does repeat itself - as farce. By early 1967, the US had half a million troops in Vietnam. Massacres of civilians and torture - the precursors of Abu Ghraib - were routine. Half a million Vietnamese - the precursors of Iraqis - had already been killed. President Lyndon Johnson, another regular guy from Texas, was not going to "negotiate with terrorists". - Roving Eye


Our generation, the "i-pod generation", is saturated with the entertainment media, with overstimulation from images and impertinent information coming at us from every which direction, from bombardment by capitalist and government propaganda, which eventually encourages conformity and stifles the imagination. Sub-cultures continue to thrive, but in the U.S. at least there is not yet an authoritative and imaginative counterculture, one that could mobilize the masses to sway public opinion in an era of global mass communication technologies and unparalleled access to information and ideas.

We found empty seats in the outdoor area of a quaint street side cafe, in a gentrified part of the Mission district. The fittingly named Revolution Cafe is the type of place to sit on a sunny Saturday afternoon and stroke your goatee over a glass of wine as you contrive a sophisticated plan that would rouse any anti-neoliberal into action. A jazz trio, most likely affiliated with the Jazz Mafia collective, offered up some live, unadulterated classic jazz.
She sat across the table from me facing outward onto the street as she described her travel tales from Guam where she had recently spent several months working with her family in support of the indigenous art community there. We spoke of the implications of the decolonization of Guam. Were it to happen, the lack of a support system would mean things would be economically worse-off than they are today, a cost many locals are willing to bear but are ill equipped to do so. She was certain about that. I wondered what it would be like to wake up to the taste of fresh coconut water for breakfast, pick conch shells and make art with the locals all day only to be interrupted for lunch, which would inevitably be some type of fresh fish cooked in a spicy coconut curry or maybe a meaty stew served over rice.
My attention drifted for a moment to the escola de capoeira across the street from us. There was a cute mural of two fat children doing capoeira up on the wall that elicited a silent giggle. My thoughts swayed again, this time to her long nails. They were elegant and a bit intimidating at the same time. I glanced back up at her face realizing that she had moved on to a different topic. She was now talking about her fascination with the Zapatistas and the time she crossed over the border into Mexico to attend one of the largest rallies in Mexico City. I wanted to see Marcos in person. Marcos, he is a fascinating individual. It's all about the mystique, don't you think? The Marcos Mystique..si. Coincidentally, I had just finished watching a documentary on the Zapatista movement a few days ago and was still in awe at the faceless face of the first "post-modern" revolution. The sun was relentless at this point, but the accompanying sea breeze that is so characteristic of the bay area made it feel comfortable to sit outside and indulge each other's intellectual curiousity. I knew the rest of the weekend was going to be unpredictably exciting and I was ready for it.