100-Journey of an Awakening

 I stand on the rocks of the Rio Grande Trail in the John Denver Sanctuary and read the words of Rocky Mountain High and Annie's Song etched in to the surrounding stones. I  stare down at my hiking boots and think of how many trails and mountain peaks I have walked, climbed and skied to arrive here at this moment. The words ring clear in my mind and are part of the reason that I looked to the open road in search of sunrises, snowflakes and sunsets. It is a lot like reading Walt Whitman and Poems like Song of the Open Road. Each word, note or phrase touching a part of me and reaffirming everything that I believed in. All the reasons to continue on to another winter and another town or mountain to ski. "Aspen Colorado," I say to myself in my mind. Twenty Years in a town I thought I would never set ski boot in. It wasn't the Lure, the mountain is not king here, although beautiful and challenging in places, I can't put my finger on what has kept me here. Why didn't I go Chamonix, France. The draw was there. The lure of extreme skiing. The ever deeper snow and steeper mountains. It is the thing. Is it age? I am in my late 60's. I only went to Colorado to take Film and Screenwriting courses in the early 90's. A ski bum looking for a way to salvage a career from a mis-pent youth. In 1973 I took a year off from an Engineering Degree to go skiing, I never went back. Too late to be an extreme skier in Valdez, Alaska, too old. Part of the heart wants to carry on, even now, but the body refuses to. So you entertain other options. Ah! Aspen, the other option. The words to Rocky Mountain High pass before my eyes as I begin my walk down the Rio Grande Trail. I reflect on my time in Aspen now as I have left it. I am all right with that. It was time. It is unique and there was no other ski town in the world like it. I know I have tried them all. While I never cared much for the mountains there myself. This place has been a home and friend. It has allowed me the success for the freedom I wish in the future. Perhaps It is time to pick up my screenplay that I began here about Arapahoe Basin and complete it. I do not underestimate the work and I understand the challenge of getting it to market. The difficulty of Publishing Mountain writing will be a challenge. A challenge that others have faced and overcome. A young Nepalese Mountaineer Nimsdai Purja just conquered all of the world's 14- 8,000 meter peaks in seven months. (To put this into perspective Mount Everest, which was one, is 8,848.86 meters. Reinhold Messner an Italian Mountaineer, considered the World's Greatest Mountaineer, took 16 years to accomplish this. In all fairness Messner accomplished it without supplemental oxygen. Nimsdai used it above 8000 meters. Youth knows no limits. The will to accomplish what you were put on Earth to do cannot be denied at any age once it is realized and acted on. You do not often realize your goal or mission in life when you do you should not deny it. Accept the challenge and conquer it.) Reinhold has expressed a desire to make a film about a mountain which is encouraging and he is also the author of 80 books, however many are not published in the U.S. The difficulty is great but I believe not insurmountable.

14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible This is an absolute Incredible Inspiration for anyone who ever dreamed of accomplishing any Great Feat.

 On my way from the park I look up into Oklahoma Flats at the big log mansion that Kathy and I managed and lived in. It is dusk and I marvel at the beauty and the expense. I find joy in the freedom of not being a slave to it. I own my soul, my backpack, my hiking boots, and my Mac Air stuffed with my latest project. I have two tickets to Awake: The life of Yogananda, for Monday night in Carbondale. I still climb peaks to sit and meditate on. Even though they may be smaller hills these days. I am looking forward to an evening with my Guru and with my family. Things for me now are simpler. Maybe I look at things differently these days.

 I smile when I sit on the cliffs of Encinitas, California and meditate on the benches at Swamii's overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and Thank God that I was shown this Ashram by my wife. Although it is now somewhat commercialized it is still the most Beautiful Ocean Cliff in Southern California.

 I devoured Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket as a young man in the Eastern United States and I hope to return home soon to pay respect for my Father's Passing during the Corona Virus Time and look forward to seeing the Atlantic once again. However my die has been cast and I have no choice but to accept what God's Will is for my future. I am after all tested and ready.

Years ago I saw a concert in the Palace Theatre in Albany, New York. The group was called Renaissance. I was poised to set my feet on the road and try my hand at being a true to life ski bum. 
" Carpet of the Sun" became my song of the open road.
"Carpet of the Sun", Renaissance

99- What Are The Dreams Of An Odd Beat Poet?

      I remember a line to a song that said, "such are the dreams of the every day housewife you see anywhere any time of the day." What are exactly the Dreams of an Odd Beat Poet. I always thought my dreams were of the white. Snow, skiing, mountain sides covered in white snow, being above timberline. A climber friend of mine in Vail once told me, "I get very quite above 20,000 feet in elevation." Do you think? The silence of mountaineering and the white and the solitude and the quite is deafening to me. It touches me deep in my soul. My back pages are filled with mountain scenes. I have consciously chosen places to live where mountaineering and skiing were a by product. Dreaming of my golden years and acclimating to being around people and society in Oregon, preferably Eugene, I still have mountains on my mind. How about the Three Sisters in the Cascades, Mount Hood and Mount Bachelor? What is it about not letting it go. Do you ever really give up your first love? In Vail I had Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, and the Beaver Creek Children's Theatre. I'm sensing a theme here. Is old age spent in trying to recapture your youth? Ah to be twenty five again. I was in the best shape of my life for skiing in Aspen at forty after taking my wife's skiing conditioning class at the Aspen Athletic Club. I would like to think that I move on. However my obsessions are still my obsessions. I am a schemer, a dreamer. Dreaming about the ocean and walking on the beach and writing short stories and conquering the writing challenges that I envisioned for myself in my youth. I still find myself googling Mount Ranier and wondering how hard it would be to climb. I find myself taking long walks with Kathy these days under the pretense of staying in shape. I secretly think the Odd Beat Poet is plotting advanced workouts to get in shape for a major climb, somewhat similar to a Walter Mitty adventure. He googles late at night, "The oldest man to climb Mount Everest."

What are you doing? Those days are gone, not forgotten but gone.

Why is it that men attach feminine characteristics to inanimate objects. I know that almost every mountain that I have climbed or skied, I have at some point looked back at it and said, "isn't she beautiful." My most favorite ski run has to be the Pallavicini at Arapahoe Basin. Even tho it is next to impossible to rule out Utah and British Columbia, run for run my heart belongs to the Pali. I think that because in the early days you would have to start at the top of Montezuma Bowl traverse the cornice run to access the Pali. It was a long traverse with a giant tuck and a herring bone climb, if you didn't hit it hard enough to reach the top of the Pali.
All good things eventually come to and end. In bounds skiing gave way to out of bounds, open snow fields and steeper runs with deeper snows. Long climbs and incredibly steep unforgiving chutes, couloirs. Places where you came to the bottom rested on your ski poles your knees knocking together and your heart racing in your chest and couldn't wait to climb back up and do it again. Even those came to and end with age, fear, and disability. The body and mind betrays you. A ski patrolman friend of mine always said, "there are old ski patrolman and bold ski patrolman, but there aren't any old bold ski patrolman."
There is a new youth and they are more daring than my friends and I ever thought of being. I secretly envy them and wish I had thought of skiing off cliffs with parachutes or gliding suits. There are amazing young men and women accomplishing feats of daring that are astounding.
The Walter Mitty Odd Beat Poet flashes back to reality and he is walking along the Colorado River, with his champagne toy poodle and wife of twenty-six years, in Laughlin Nevada in the desert and avoiding other people so we don't get. Covid. We still talk about Oregon and will go there this summer. The Russians have invaded Ukraine and I am letting life flow with the Beautiful River. Since the beginning of the Pandemic Kathy and I have watched the news and said is it time to stand up hug each other and wail? We came very close watching the invasion lately. A full scale assault on Innocence, Freedom, Sovereignty and Democracy. If I was younger I would go and fight. I had a high draft lottery for the Vietnam war and did not have to go. I went to ski! It is out of my control,  at least I will write today. My writing is getting good. Hopefully, I'll write about my Love of Mountains.

Take the time to watch this young skier.
Skier Takes An Insane Run Down A Tiny Gap Between 2 Mountains

A Song of and Odd Beat Poets Love.
Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen "Suzanne"

98-Life is Love (A Humble Tribute To The Suffering Of The People Of Ukraine)

Beau Preparing Breakfast

Life is love, love is trust, trust is earned. These are truths that I learned from our equine massage school and equine rescue ranch. John Thompson would often have his good friend Beau in for breakfast. Beau is a buckskin stallion from the Buckskin Stallion Station. (Photos by John's Photographer, Cookie) We mutually learned about trust from one another. We both had wive's we loved and shared love for each others wife. More than once I have leaned over to kiss my wife in front of a horse and found myself standing several feet away from her with pursed lips and a big bucket head horse between us. I was literally knocked away by a jealous suitor.

The very first time that we worked on the brood mares in their stalls we were stalked by Beau. He would walk up to the stalls and create a ruckus. I quickly went out and attempted to shoo him away. I did not realize at the time that I was giving him the signal to rear up on his hind legs. I found myself looking straight up at the belly of this big Buckskin and his front legs pawing at the sky.
I fell quickly in love with Brooks. She was Beau's wife and partner. They always shared the same field and often a double stall. I came to admire the relationship of Beau and Brooks and their offspring. My favorite was Little Man. He was a Cremello, also known as an Albino. He was mesmerizing to watch in the field. I miss all the animals and the time we spent with them.

When I was a single young man and living in New York at this time of year I would enroll in ski conditioning classes. There was a particular pneumatic crunch machine. It was at the Steuben Athletic Club in Albany. It strengthened your core for skiing. There was a saying on the  machine. "The more you use what God has given you, the more God will give you." It wasn't until I surrendered my heart to love that I found happiness.

Corey Hart - Never Surrender

Life is Love and Memories and All We Work Our Lives to Achieve!

My heart is broken as I watch the news reports about the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army. What happened to the world. The World for these people is being destroyed. Families torn apart, children dying, old people losing everything they have worked for. Democracy and the Ideals of it Destroyed. My words fail me. My mind is numb. All I can do is watch in horror. To all people of Ukraine, I can only send you what I know of Love as an American Citizen. May Your Suffering Be Eased. May the World come to it's senses and aid you in your time of need. People of the World Rise Up And Be Heard!

97-The Children's Crusade (Unfortunately Revisited) Living in the Time of the Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

 First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-
 Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me. 
Martin Niemoller

   There is a destiny that makes me fear not the rag man. The rag man was not a fictitious character but a real one. As a young child, I would cower and hide in my grand parents house behind the front door. I would kneel down and peak out the mail slot and listen for the rag man's call.
   "Rags! Rags for sale!
   "Clop, clop, clop, clop," the old work horse's hoofs would ring clear on the roadway.
   "Rags! Rags for sale!
   He was coming to get me. Just as my sisters had foretold because I had been bad. I lived in fear of the ragman in some form or another the majority of my life. I choose to no longer fear the reality that was the rag man or is now Vladimir Putin. They cannot have the children, Wake up America and the World! They are killing the youth of today, in Ukraine, they are bombing a Nuclear Power Plant. Threatening to make all of Europe Radioactive! Give us back the Children! We must find a way to re-engage the young into our society and make them a part of our world. We must create our own Children's Crusade and make it real or face another blight of Hitler's Youth where they will be coming for law abiding citizens under the guise of some social injustice.

   I don't have and answer as to how to reach out and engage disaffected discouraged youths and citizens. Doing nothing is not working, as the number of mass shootings and domestic terrorism grows. Innocent citizens named by the generic term "soft targets" are dying by the hundreds while politicians can't seem to pass any gun legislation to keep AK-47's from the hands of these murders. Does gun legislation work anyway? Could we make all of these radicals, writers and poets instead? Writing has allowed me to channel my former life anger and desire for revolution into a productive channel of change. If not for society, but my own betterment I no longer want to tear down the fabric of society today as I did as a youth. The answer is not a simple one and people have to come together to address the problem or we will continue to become targets.

Eve of Destruction, Barry McGuire

96: When Do You, Release The Kraken?

A little over Thirty years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a Film and Screenwriting Course at the Aspen Writers Conference. The course was taught by Ira Wood, a Fiction Novelist who went to Hollywood to write a Screenplay for his best selling novel The Kitchen Man. He used two books by Syd Field, Screenplay, and The Screenwriter’s Workbook, as a course syllabus. I was immediately enamored to the course by the beginning quote. “Writing is a personal responsibility -- either you do it, or you don’t.” I didn’t know at the time just how prophetic that quote would become in my writing life. You see I chose the latter, not to write for many years. All the essentials were there for my writing success. I chose not to write. I wanted to write. I had the ability to attend the best writing classes the motivation to do so and to participate in the process. However, like many people have told me in my life, Al you are your own worst enemy. I let life get in my writing way. Oh yeah I dabbled with poems here, a fiction story there, I said things like, “Writing is just a hobby, it’s not what I do for my living!” No wonder writing has just been my hobby and has never become what I do for a living. I don’t need to have an Avalanche roll over me, to get the point. I guess unless you structure you life around your writing and not the opposite it will always be a hobby and not a living. Now that I have retired it is time to move forward with years of writing projects. Working on several long range projects. My short stories about my mentor will be woven into a novel about my early writing years and later years in Colorado and finish in Cortina, Italy. The location of the 2026 Winter Olympics, Milano Cortina.

Both Ira Wood and Syd Field have said, “A screenplay is s story told with pictures.” I have just decided to go back to the Film and Screenwriting notebooks pull out my screenplay about The sale of Arapahoe Basin to the Ralston Purina Corporation in 1978 and polish the opening act that I have already written and to finish the project. (I am not foolish enough to think it a simple task! You must Conquer it or it will forever Conquer you.)

 So Picture this, I feel like Poseidon in the new re-make movie Clash of the Titans and I’m the God of my own destiny and I’m getting ready to say, “Release the Kraken.” 

Albert Bianchine

95: Mastering The Art Of Inaction, In The Time Of the Invasion of Ukraine by Russia

Sri Yoganandaji described as follows the state of "inaction" mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita.

 "When a true yogi performs an action, karmically it is like writing on water. No mark remains."*

*ie., no karmic record is kept. Only a master is a free man- one unbound by karma (the inexorable cosmic law that holds unenlightened persons accountable for their thoughts and actions). In urging Arjuna to fight on the battlefield, Lord Krishna assured him that he would incur no karma if he acted as God's agent, without egoistic consciousness. Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda

     You can move forward with lightening fast speed in your life by ascribing to God's will for you. Do not assert your will but rather perform what God's will for you is. How do you know? Listen in the quietest moments of your life to your inner voice. The voice that tells you in your silence which way to proceed. Ours has enlightened us to continue our teaching and rescuing. Instead of the Equine souls we once saved our mission is to raise and support humankind. We wish to use our limited platforms to the fullest extent of their possibilities in the hopes that they will grow exponentially in magnitude. Having been listeners since the beginning of Covid-19 and captives as well, we are finally at the point like Howard Beale in the movie Network, where this is the start of my rant and we are not going to take it. Silence is no longer a snowflake falling in one of my poems. We are writing on the water our displeasure and disillusionment and sitting back to watch the Karma of the world snap back with its own response in the Americas. Beginning with these new blogs our mission is now set in motion. We are willing to watch the course it now takes.

The outrage of the invasion of Ukraine by Putin is beyond belief in these times. It is past time to stand up and to be heard and to speak your truth. Truth is our only weapon against such atrocities. Through all our collective wills coupled with Divine Will it is time to no longer be part of a silent majority. Be heard and speak your Discourse with great firmness and authority. Be one of those who will not have your will be bent or swayed by Tyrannical Rhetoric. See and Say what your Heart and Soul speaks to you.

Perhaps it is our time to lead our people out of bondage! Beware you who lead through Autocracy and Aristocratical Arrogance.!

94; Embracing the Everlasting

 Our dear ones promise to love us forever, yet when they sink into the Great Sleep, their earth memories forsaken, what value their vows? Who, without telling us in words, loves us everlastingly? Who remembers us when all others forget us? Who will still be with us when we must leave the friends of this world? God alone---- Paramahansa Yogananda, "Whispers from Eternity" 

The Ghosts they do come in all sizes, shapes, species and forms. They are woven deeply into the fabric of our daily lives. Yet the one true love is often over looked or ignored. Shame on delusion and her sister maya that keep us in our darkness and fearful isolation. Isn't it everyone's wish to become a part of something greater than one's self? Look for the one who hides in the ocean, air, mountain's and earth. They are ever omniscient and present. It is not that they aren't looking for you. It is you are not showing the desire for spirit's presence. Change all that today! Use your sense's and intuition to put your life on track. No matter what the World is doing, the global conflicts are increasing intensely and disillusionment seams to be on the rise. Why do we care about your Spirit or your advancement in this world? We were once of you, the trials and tribulations are not just yours alone. Through Divine Will not our own Will we have opened our hearts and minds. There is a Scientific Method through Kriya Yoga that will lead you to Peace (Samadhi). It is not the only method. If you are skeptical take the time and research your own path. There is a Strength and Truth that you can gain through Discipline. You owe it to yourself to explore it. 

We will move on to our own writing goals. Hopefully you have read the posts of the Beijing Olympics. They represent youth and the promise of hope. It is time to shift the focus to our new writings. Perhaps they will entertain you and help you to enjoy the New Dawn we all face.