I now know why the lights still glow

When we have

Shaken off our sins

When we have

Shuffled off our mortal coil


Fire burning bright

Don’t know what kept me in the flames

Charcoal hearts take the blame

When we are the sparks

Try to remember again

[Sailing to a new world. Lake Pontchartrain, LA]


Hey everybody,

I hope you are doing well. For the past several months I haven't posted much original content except for poems or songs. While that's okay, my favorite part about blogging has been sharing original thoughts or analyzing an article or book or anything and offering my views. For the first (6 out of) 7 months, I posted at least 12 times a month. For the last 16 months, I haven't blogged more than 6 times a month. Why oh why is that? I suppose that my level of introversion in those first months was higher...?

As I type this post, I am sitting in bed in my new home. I moved back to Austin (I spent the previous two and a half months in Palm Coast, Portland, and Lafayette, LA) two weeks ago in order to find a job and settle back in.

Today, 8/8/08, I got my first job offer that I'm legitimately excited about with Meltwater News. While they are not a social business or NGO, they are a company spreading web 2.0 technology - software that analyzes media trends relating to a business or specific issue with a business. I am well aware that this product can be used with good and bad intent, like most things. While this is not my ideal job, it will be a means to an end. If I can learn enough business skills thoroughly and rapidly, I plan to join part of a social business venture in the coming 5 years or so. I recently finished a book which captivated and inspired me, and many of you are familiar with: A World Without Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. I do hope that social businesses will begin to thrive and challenge the amorality of capitalism. While I have not started to talk to organizations or people to join such a venture, I will do so after gaining some business insight. Like most of you, I must struggle to integrate my personal values with my professional values and goals. I do not want to become another money-hungry monkey in a suit!


So as I begin my first 'career job' in a few weeks, I will focus on maintaining interest in activism (online and Austin-area). Here are some resources which will enable me to do so - check them out if you're in Austin!:

Austin Eco Network - Receive (usually) multiple emails a day about opportunities for volunteering, activism, education, etc on a wide spectrum of environmental issues

Mini-Austin Activist Guide - Great resource, includes info for bicyclers and vegetarians too.

Worldchanging.com: Austin - no updates in 6 months though :(

OxfamUT - Local chapter of Oxfam I was involved with for over 2 years before graduating.


Austin is a great place to live! I'm lucky to have gotten a decent job here out of college.


While activism of differing kinds is certainly important, personal development is equally or moreso important. In all honesty, my dedication to self-improvent has fluctuated. However, in this phase of new beginnings comes growth. Now that I am on my own, I am more conscious of how I spend my time and money. Being at home allowed me to excuse myself to a 10th oreo and/or a lethargic evening.

Since I have been continuously inspired by my girlfriend's frugality and selflessness, and by my guru's (James Norris, fellow zaadzster-err Gaia member, and founder of an Austin personal development group) drive and mind-boggling organizational skills, I know that I can manifest the ideals I desire. For example, I started putting everything into excel sheets...all expenditures, short medium and long term goals, tasks, lists,  etc. The first step in change is to be aware of the problem or goal. I also began the hundred pushup challenge, which is a fun idea but not necessarily the best workout. However, I've stuck to it and I'm on week 5 of 6. From that checklist evolved a broader personal dev. excel-sheet list. It includes running/biking, protein shakes, meditation, yoga, and inebriation. While I do not do all of these things every day (inebriation is a negative! I rarely indulge in inebriation these days), I am at about 3 - 6 x a week for most. This is a prototype ILP - integral life practice which I will start after I get into the groove with my future work schedule. I am also eating very healthily - the only meat I've eaten in the past 2 weeks has been lean turkey meat - it's as cheap as beef and tastes basically as good- and I don't buy dessert! I will start a separate ILP blog when I begin a body-mind-spirit-shadow routine. For now I am doing less, but still improving.

A new life will soon emerge for me. I'm gonna be a workin man! With that will come the struggles of pursuing a life of adventure and contemplation around the demands of each workday. I began my Day One post saying that this blog will be about just that. [After checking to see how long I've been blogging, today, 080808, is exactly my 2 year anniversary! This post seems so fitting ;) ] I look forward to hopefully entertaining, enlightening, and engaging you all a little bit more than I have before. To use Rumi's masterful metaphors from Coleman Bark's The Essential Rumi...I dedicate myself to nourishing my "thirst equipment," prodding myself to learn and grow. Do not forget, no never forget -

"your boundaries are your quest."

And so one chapter closes, and another begins. Good luck to all of us in this mad world.

This evening I attended my first personal development group meetup in Austin. As I mentioned last post, James Norris hosts the meetup and facilitates activities and discussion. He did a great job. I'd like to share with you the basic format of the event and my thoughts.

18th Meetup: Passion and Achievement

First things first - last meeting they assigned a 'homework' task, which was to "create something physical that highlights your life's passions/loves and/or achievements." Well that was perfect timing because I just produced and received in the mail my first DIY book of poetry, entitled Mirror of Fire. You're welcome to purchase it from wordclay's website if you feel so inclined ;) It needs editing and further work but it's online! The next part of the homework I identified my major passions/loves. I made it quite simple, and the categories overlap significantly:

Nature - camping/hiking/etc, being outdoors

Sport - soccer, tennis, etc > competition and self/team motivation

Science (upper left and upper right quadrants)
     Inner > contemplation/introspection, the nature of being
    Outer > different contours of reality, integration of knowledge in "broad orienting generalizations",

Exploration - life consists of unending new-ness, inherent mysteriousness, and adventure, which is very cool

Art - self-expression, creativity

After introductions, we did an optional group sharing event where we share a recent accomplishment. I said that I graduated college! I got a few laughs and claps for that (I believe I was 2nd youngest of the 10 of us).

The meat of the meetup focused on discussing passion and achievement. We shared our creations (book of poetry, etc) and spent time discussing our homework. At this time the diversity of age and experience really came through. One person wanted to design a geriatric living solution that doesn't compromise a person's autonomy. Another wanted to overcome shyness and guilt.

The highlight for me was exchanging info on upcoming interesting events.

On August 30th, the "Badass Adventures" meetup is receiving a tour/consulting session of Whole Foods (downtown Austin) from in-house nutritionist Carly Pollack. Sounds interesting huh?

A member of the Austin Neuro Lingustic Programming (NLP) meetup also attends this development group, and they are hosting Tom Best in a talk entitled 'Shamanism, NLP and the Alchemy of Energy' on the 26th of August. That's an enticing headline!

I can't say that I'll go to both (or either) of these events, but anyone in the Austin area is welcome to go - check out meetup.com to learn more. If I do go, I will blog about it and let y'all know how it went!

That's all for now. Much love and peace.

[from the New Yorker]


Check out this amazing story I found on Digg.com:

The Chameleon

The many lives of Frédéric Bourdin.

From the article

...At police headquarters, he admitted that he was Frédéric Bourdin, and that in the past decade and a half he had invented scores of identities, in more than fifteen countries and five languages. His aliases included Benjamin Kent, Jimmy Morins, Alex Dole, Sladjan Raskovic, Arnaud Orions, Giovanni Petrullo, and Michelangelo Martini. News reports claimed that he had even impersonated a tiger tamer and a priest, but, in truth, he had nearly always played a similar character: an abused or abandoned child. He was unusually adept at transforming his appearance—his facial hair, his weight, his walk, his mannerisms. “I can become whatever I want,” he liked to say. In 2004, when he pretended to be a fourteen-year-old French boy in the town of Grenoble, a doctor who examined him at the request of authorities concluded that he was, indeed, a teen-ager. A police captain in Pau noted, “When he talked in Spanish, he became a Spaniard. When he talked in English, he was an Englishman.” Chadourne said of him, “Of course, he lied, but what an actor!”

Over the years, Bourdin had insinuated himself into youth shelters, orphanages, foster homes, junior high schools, and children’s hospitals. His trail of cons extended to, among other places, Spain, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Bosnia, Portugal, Austria, Slovakia, France, Sweden, Denmark, and America. The U.S. State Department warned that he was an “exceedingly clever” man who posed as a desperate child in order to “win sympathy,” and a French prosecutor called him “an incredible illusionist whose perversity is matched only by his intelligence.” Bourdin himself has said, “I am a manipulator. . . . My job is to manipulate.”

In Pau, the authorities launched an investigation to determine why a thirty-year-old man would pose as a teen-age orphan. They found no evidence of sexual deviance or pedophilia; they did not uncover any financial motive, either. “In my twenty-two years on the job, I’ve never seen a case like it,” Eric Maurel, the prosecutor, told me. “Usually people con for money. His profit seems to have been purely emotional.”

On his right forearm, police discovered a tattoo. It said “caméléon nantais”—“Chameleon from Nantes.”

Incredible...the well written article offers an exciting and stunning read so check out the rest.

Saturday was the full moon midnight bike ride in Austin. I arrived a few minutes late, but we didn't take off until a little after 12:30. What a blast! The hills in Austin are challenging, especially when your back tire keeps deflating (luckily one of my friends had a portable pump), but the overall experience was great! We started off with probably 100 - 125 riders, and ended up around 3 45 am (after 3 or 4 10ish minute stops) at someone's house. After a little deliberation, we headed over to Kerby Lane, an Austin 24-hr classic diner. I didn't get home until a little after 5 am, but since my job doesn't start until September 2, I'm okay.

I also just bought a domain and web hosting service, so I'll be rolling out a photography website, hopefully in the next month or so. Stay tuned!

Much peace and love.

I find myself surrounded by a lot of excitement these transitory days. I picked up my girlfriend Jackie from Houston on Saturday and I helped her move back in to 21st St. Co-op, where we met and lived last school year. With moving came swimming in the next door co-op's (and co-owned) pool, a trip to the annual Austin Hot Sauce Festival, and a sort of family reunion of the 50ish people I know who still live there.

For the past few days, I have been hanging out with Jackie and staying around the co-op while I am also looking to trade cars (Mom's expedition-bleh for a civic). Fun activities have included a raucous costume party to welcome the new members, free bouldering (for the first week of school) at the UT Gregory gym, playing classical guitar (Jackie's roommate has one), and general revelry and reunion.

Job starts this Tuesday.

Before then I plan to have a shiny newish civic and go camping with Jackie. I bought a REI Halfdome 2 HC tent (it was backordered so I hope it arrives by tomorrow), and Jackie just received her Z2 Chacos and a pocket rocket! 

Much love and peace to all in this mad world.