Tranquillity

 Energization exercises like Kriya Yoga have allowed me to calm my kindred spirit. The same energy that I once burned off through skiing and climbing and being outwardly physical I am now able to channel in to productive energy through scientific stretching and meditation. These days I am far more sedentary than I was in my youth. My mind returns often to the exciting exploits of younger days. Left unchecked the excess energy can build in my life and aid in disrupting my calm. By focusing my mind on meditation and exercise I am able to release the excess energy and enjoy a calm spirit.
Soothing the soul through massage aids in relaxation. It helps immensely to have a massage table set up in your living space. There are also massage chairs available. Listening to quite soothing music designed for healing during massage and meditation helps.

Tranquillity

With tranquillity, the small goes and the great comes, with auspicious success: this means heaven and earth interact, and their wills are the same. Yang inside and yin outside symbolize inward strength with outward docility, being a cultivated person within while appearing outwardly to be an ordinary person. The ways of cultivated people go on and on, the ways of ordinary people disappear.

I CHING
The Book Of Change

A Song for Tranquillity
R. Carlos Nakai, Peter Kater, "All Souls Waltz", From Honorable Sky

Listen to the Music

Sometimes the best medicine is to just listen to the music!

"Can't Find My Way Home," Blind Faith

Just let fly your golden lance!

A Walk In The Park

My flights of Fantasy are impossible to control once you let them flow. I started making a mental list of my prerequisites today while I was on Red Mountain in Aspen looking down on Aspen Mountain. I thought of my early years listening to my grandfather talking about Whiteface Mountain in New York State. I started skiing Gore and Whiteface in high school and quickly graduated to Vermont Mountains. Places like Killington, Stowe, Mad River, and Glen Ellen. In the early days it wasn't enough to just ski them. It was a challenge to get a free day pass or figure out a way to ski for free some how. Some of our early trickery was to Ski Glen Ellen early where they would let you take a free run up top to test the conditions. If you wore heavy ski clothes you could take off your coat and tell the lift op that you were too hot and your ticket was on your coat below. They would buy it for a about a half day. Then you could leave and drive to Mad River and buy two $2.50 ride tickets and ski the bumps there. The moguls used to get as big as Volkswagens parked sideways. Voila, a complete day of skiing for chump change. It didn't take much undergraduate work to realize that skiing in the East was a cruel hoax. Time to graduate.
The West, discovered on a ski trip in Fast Eddy's (The Bucklemeister's) Micro bus with the bursting Orange Suns in the window. The trip brought us through Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. It also brought us home with a Van load of Coors Beer. I was hopelessly hooked on deep powder and steep ski runs. So much so that I moved West to pursue my dreams. Life is funny though because I originally was on my way to Big Sky Montana. A ski bum's true ski dream. Except that as I was leaving a gas station wash room in Dillon Colorado I happened upon a friend named Angela. She informed me she lived with Mary and Melissa and they had jobs at Arapahoe Basin and a condominium. It was the late 70's and times were much more free then. A quick overnight visit and I had a season's ski pass and a home with the girls. I had hit the ski lottery. During that season I had the opportunity to get to Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. The home of Solitude and Brighton. I would revisit there many times for the grandeur that they were. A ski patrolman friend who had fallen in love with Utah was kind enough to take me under his wing and show me all the powder stashes he knew. Although that Little Cottonwood Canyon is much steeper and grander, Big Cottonwood Canyon had unknown places.
One of these was Honeycomb Canyon. The Powder Stash of all Stashes, I lost my mind (or what little I had left any way.) I was hooked I visited and revisited there as often as I could. Like all great places and most cities the rest of the world discovered it and (my suburbia) stash grew into a popular place.
There are many places that you ski and while you are skiing you realize that you are just a visitor. You can find your way back but it is always just for the moment and then the moment is gone. You change or deep inside it changes you. You touched it, caressed it, put down tracks on it and the wind and snow will fill then in and you were never there. Was it just a dream? A beautiful romantic love affair that only you experienced. How do you share it? Do you speak of it respectfully among friends they way you would of a great lover? Do you go through life never talking about it again? Now that I am older I still have no answers only the fond memory of the freedom and liberty to pursue my dreams.
Honeycomb Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

It is funny in life that certain songs and lyrics become Anthems to you and when you are young and making life decisions the words almost speak to you. I remember a room mate of mine telling me that if a Played Bob Dylan late at night when I came home after a night out drinking that he would break all of my Dylan Albums. Listening to this song, I was a young college student again struggling with trying to stay in College and get my degree or be free and ski. I stayed and got my education buy flew to the hills as soon as I was able.
"What About Me," Quicksilver Messenger Service

Remembering Aspen

Today with the bleakness and inundation of snow in Aspen, I would like to go to Portland Oregon and learn the proper way of tea. It might be nicer to be wet and warm and comfortably inside sipping Pu Ehr tea (fermented tea) than cold wet and snowy.

I noticed in Aspen that the Explore Book Store is for sale for 6.4 million dollars. www.explorerbooksellers.com/What a joy my early days in Aspen were. The book store was a short walk up the street from my 200 E. Main St. apartment. I was working on several projects. My short story collection White Dreams, Out of Amereka (I have since mellowed and call it America) and outlining my Historical Novel. A hot cup of coffee and all the time in the world to linger in front of the poetry section and fiction novels. It is a unique Victorian in downtown Aspen. They sponsored the Aspen Writers Foundation and Winter Words, bringing in talented authors from all over the world. I will always have a special place in my heart for those creative times in Aspen.

I know that there are more creative times to come and I find myself gathering resolve and determination to complete the projects that are presently before me. I can't leave my projects  unfinished they need to be wrapped up and put to bed.

A Song of Conviction to a Goal
Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns

The Sage

Today with in excess of two feet of snow expected in Aspen, my thoughts have turned to Encinitas, California. I am picturing a quaint little bungalow on an estate overlooking the ocean and a wonderful garden that I am writing in. I am working on a screenplay for Appaloosa Lake, my wife Kathy's novel. She is working on the music score on her Roland Juno DI synthesizer and I am enjoying her music. Our hearts are filled with happiness and joy. There has always been a draw of enlightenment for me in Southern California. Often in life I have gotten in the way of my own success, when I should have, "let go and let God."



A Song of letting go and letting God.
Mr. Mister "Kyrie Eleison"

Let the Sunshine In

Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone is enjoying family and friends today. May you find peace and joy and that you are seeking the light. Let the sunshine in your life. Our beautiful sunflower was in the window of our ranch and my Appaloosa came up and bit the top. He was quite a character and brought great joy to our lives. Snowy was a pure white bundle of happiness.  You just never knew where he would show up. My wife, Kathy Duncan discovered that if you put a bottle of beer in his mouth he would raise his head and chug it. They had a contest one afternoon, Guess who lost?
A Song to the Sun.                              

"Pablo Cruise, A Place In The Sun"

Lazy Days

The last lazy days of Buddy and Sage. Buddy a quarter horse who's lineage was traceable back to being a great grandson of Poco Bueno. A true foundation quarter horse. Koda Rookie Page. He came from Winter Hawk Outfitters and was the Mountain King. It was his job to pack out the mountain lions and elk from the  remote hunting camps.
Our girl Sage was a rag a muffin and she came to the rescue ranch from a barn that had Miniatures. Unfortunately she was left in a dark stall for most of the time and never saw the light of day.
They both had very bad arthritis issues and found life very difficult in the winter month's of Colorado. They however enjoyed the warm lazy never ending dog day's of summer next to the creek. "Raja or Boobala Raja as Kathy called him was a true gentleman and a very gentle soul. He and Sage fell deeply in love and became inseparable in their later years. Ever wary he knew how to maneuver around the Big Mountain Cat that often visited our ranch to feast on our kittens that made their home under our cabin. The ranch cabin was a 110 year old log cabin that had been retrofitted by a Sears kit home in the early 1930's. A true Western Mecca that served as the water source for all the other ranchers on Dry Hollow. Ha hence the term "Dry Hollow." I miss the Lazy hazy days of dry hollow as much as I miss the open snowfields of the Mountains I skied in my youth. Their love affair was truly a moving tale. A passing of time and harmony with nature.

A Song By Robbie Robertson

Somewhere Down The Crazy River