This page contains longer, titled posts that I have made to my blog, so as to more easily separate them from other posts that I make here. If you would like to subscribe to the feed for this page, point your RSS reader here.
Sunday, April 2, 2023
I sit in a hotel - on the move. I look out of the hotel window onto a busy freeway intersection - people on the move, going in all directions. I look out on the adjacent airport - people on the move, across the country and across the world. People on the move fascinate me. The human race, it seems, have always been on the move - exploring, hunting, grazing ground, searching for a better life, conquering, pilgrimage.
Saturday, April 1, 2023
I recently watched the documentary Tukdam: Between Worlds. This explored the phenomenon in Tibetan Buddhism where experienced practitioners can remain in a state of meditation after the body has shown all physical signs of having died - no breathing, the heart has stopped. In this state the body can support itself, the skin looks healthy, there is no sign of decomposition of the body (even in the heat of India where many of the exiled Tibetan community now live), and a feeling of warmth remains around the heart.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
March 2023 Hello and welcome to the March 2023 newsletter. I am hoping that I can get this months’ newsletter out on time. Time will be a crunch. Because of how Micro.blog, the host for my blog and newsletter, is structured, I will have a small window of opportunity to do the final editing and add this letter before jumping on a airplane to San Francisco. I shall probably be doing that editing sitting at the departure gate at Maui airport.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
A couple of days ago I replaced a metal bar that held up a small solar panel. The panel has been sitting on our gate post for around five years, quietly doing its job - charging a battery, and when that is fully charged, operating a gate. The metal bar had also quietly been doing its job. Holding up the panel, making sure that it captures as much sunlight as it can as the sun traverses the sky.
Sunday, March 26, 2023
I usually can’t start my day unless my bed is made. It is 7:45am on Sunday morning and the bed is made for today. I can now get on with my day. But yesterday was different… I didn’t make my bed. No one reason - I felt unwell and so got up later, and went back to bed mid-afternoon - but I was also up and about doing things through out the day.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
February 2023 Welcome to my February 2023 newsletter. This month has been dominated for me by travel to Europe. A solo journey made up of two parts. First I stopped for a week in England to visit my mother. From there I travelled down to Portugal for two weeks. Nothing specific was planned for the England leg of the trip. I simply spent some quality time with my mother, did some odd jobs for her around her apartment, and allowed myself to rest and get over jet lag which I find can hit me pretty hard when I travel east to Europe.
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Yesterday I landed at JFK airport in New York after a seven and a half hour flight from Lisbon. The previous night I had spent at an airport hotel in Lisbon due to my early departure the next day. Although someone was sitting next to me on the flight to JFK, we both kept to ourselves, eating, reading, and watching movies on the inflight entertainment. I arrived in New York at lunchtime, but my onward flight to home in Hawaii did not leave until the next morning, and so I had booked an overnight stay at the TWA Hotel connected to Terminal 5 at JFK.
Thursday, February 23, 2023
I stopped reading a book recently, and for some reason that process of putting the book down sits very uncomfortably with me. The book had been recommended to me by a friend a number of years back. I purchased it at the time, but ever since it has languished, other titles jumping the queue. I finally picked the book up a month or so ago. I wanted to enjoy the story because it had been recommended to me, but I found the plot rambling, as though it was trying to keep going by padding itself out.
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
The last 36 hours has been fun and games with jet lag. Waking up at odd hours, trying to function clearly while really wanting to put my head down, and then finally doing so midway through the day. I write this after a sleepless night. Yesterday afternoon around lunchtime I could not function any longer and decided to put my head down for, I thought, an hour. Four hours alter I woke up.
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
January 2023 I start this newsletter at an airport hotel on the edge of San Francisco airport, and continue it at 41,000 ft (12,496.8 m) as the aircraft approaches the west coast of Ireland. London in a little under an hour and a half. I’m guessing that I will finish this letter in the middle of the night in England while dealing with the disorientation of jet lag. Hello, and welcome to my January 2023 newsletter.
Monday, January 30, 2023
I started this post yesterday. I am now on solid ground, though will be back in the air in a few hours. Living in Hawaii makes getting back to Europe a long journey. Anyway, on with the post… I write this at 30,000+ feet over the Pacific Ocean, en route to San Francisco. Maui has been experiencing some heavy rain over the last couple of days, and the last hour has been a bumpy climb away for the islands.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Sean Heber has just published this post over at the Iconfactory website, following the pulling of Twitterrific from both the iOS and MacOS app stores. This was prompted by Twitter unceremoniously cutting access to the platform for third party apps. The ”End of an Era” indeed. When I think of the early days of Twitter, I think of Twitterrific. I signed up to the platform within its first year, though I don’t think that I really understood what I had signed up for?
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Last night I went back through some slides from my 1989/90 travels through Pakistan, China, Nepal & India. I have numerous slides, and they are in an ill arranged mess at the moment. As I loaded up the carousel to put into the projector, I had little idea as to what I would be looking at, even whether I would recognize the images. My fears of not recognizing images were unfounded.
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
When you hear the word, “Quiet,” what does it bring up for you. Home Fear Avoid A Refuge Your Nature Happiness Trauma Rejection Peace Noise Need Sensitivity Introvert Left Out Don’t Fit In other? This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Just some words that came to me through watching my own and others’ reaction to quiet. What does come to mind when you think of quiet, and why?
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
In central north Maui are two small hills. They are man made. They started life as massive holes in the ground, a third has been dug, those holes were slowly filled up and then stuff was continually piled on top of them. Dirt and grass create the facade of a hill. They are garbage dumps, filled with the unwanted products of life styles on Maui. Someone once said to me words to the effect of,
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
My acupuncturist shared this poem, by Jeff Foster, with me yesterday. On hearing it, I felt as though I was being wrapped in a warm blanket. LET YOURSELF REST If you’re exhausted, rest. If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t. If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known. If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.
Saturday, December 31, 2022
December 2022 I write this as 2022 draws to a close. While I don’t usually stay up to see the New Year in tonight, weather permitting, I plan to light a fire outside and sit around it with some family and friends to welcome in 2023 . . . or at least stay up for a while into the night. This last month has been filled with the Holiday season for me.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Every year around this time I look out for my first sighting of a Humpback Whale, on their return to Hawaiian waters from Alaska to calf. That sighting is usually either a spout of water or a breaching whale. This year it was a water spout as I was driving home. I find that there is something magical in having these gentle giants swimming in the waters around the islands, and I would guess that I am not the only one?
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
November 2022 Hello and welcome to the November 2022 edition of my newsletter. I write this sitting outside at dusk. I look out on the shadows of the night, as lights from distant houses break the darkness. It’s still. Very still. The wind of last week, and that which helps to keep these islands cool, has blown itself out. I sit listening to the crickets, to a distant dog bark, occasional traffic on the nearby highway (a two lane road running the length of Maui’s north east shore).
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
I’ve written about this before in relation to meditation, and it has been prominent in my mind again. As such I felt like reflecting on what the message is that accompanies this instruction at this time. Goals With any given meditation instruction I find it is very easy to imagine where I should be on the completion of such practice - that is if completion is a thing with regard to meditation.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
I am ready to share this story now. I have cooled down. Actually I cooled down once we were back at our B&B, but it has just taken me a while to get this story written down. My wife and I were in the small town of Alcácer do Sal in Portugal a couple of months ago (more on the reason behind that later, in another post). The town is situated on the river Sado about fifty minutes drive south of Lisbon.
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Since February this year I have been sending out a monthly newsletter, via Micro.blog’s newsletter feature - that is except for March where growing pains with the new system caused a hiccup in output. With each newsletter, along with the selected blog posts from the past month that I share, I also write an accompanying letter to the subscribers. I have no plan when I sit down to write the letter.
Monday, November 14, 2022
Maui is known for having a lot of micro climates. Lush tropical vegetation, barren volcano slopes dropping down to the ocean, cool high elevations, hot humid coastal lowlands. We live on the north east side of Maui, and yesterday went to a birthday party at a park on the south east shore, 34 miles away, an hour’s drive. The difference in climate was stark. We left torrential rain at home, our property is green and lush.
Sunday, November 6, 2022
While we were in Europe I appreciated that Sunday morning on October 29th when the clocks went back, and Daylight Savings Time in Europe (or British Summer Time as we referred to it in the UK) dropped away with the arrival of autumn. We had just completed a long drive into the foothills of the Italian Alps at the start of an Italian holiday weekend. This was something that I was not aware of at the time, and I had assumed that the roads were always this busy, and that the Italians enjoyed racing each other to see who could be the first to Lake Como.
Monday, October 31, 2022
October 2022 Hello and welcome to my October 2022 newsletter. I am writing this at the end of a long visit to Europe. I’ll be starting my journey home as this newsletter goes out. Most of the posts that I have shared here come from the journey of the last six weeks. My wife and I left Maui in the closing days of September and now November is just beginning. As I was putting together the newsletter, even finding time on this trip to do that has been a challenge, looking back through my blog I was amazed at the ground that we have covered, both literally and figuratively.
Friday, September 30, 2022
September 2022 Hello and welcome to my September 2022 newsletter. I am back in the UK visiting family, staying with my mother. Last night my sister and her husband flew in from New Zealand. Distractions are at a maximum. I’m grabbing some early morning hours to pen these words. I was going to say that two things have marked this month for me - post COVID symptoms and then this trip to England and onto to Europe for a family wedding.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Grief is a beast, I was going to call it that but will return to what it is, an emotion. Grief is an emotion that appears to always have a surprise up its sleeve. Right now I feel as though I have been hit by that wave that catches you at the beach when you are looking in the wrong direction, hitting you from behind, toppling you over, tumbling you around, sending salt water up your nose and down your mouth, before depositing you in the shallows.
Friday, September 9, 2022
This last Wednesday was the first anniversary of my Dad passing away. I was blessed to be at home for the last two weeks of his life, helping to look after Dad and just sitting with him. I might not have used the word blessed as I dropped everything and made quick plans to return to Britain following a sudden turn for the worse with Dad’s health. I was really unsure what I was returning to, especially on an emotional level.
Thursday, September 1, 2022
August 2022 Hello Friend, Well if one thing could define August to me, it would be COVID. After, how long is it, two and half years since the initial breakout? After watching COVID travel around the world. Following Maui become so quiet with no visitors allowed in. Watching the vaccines being rolled out, and tensions rise as debates raged about when to ease a particular restriction or let life return to normal (will that ever be possible?
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Kundun, or The Presence, is one of the names that the Tibetans use for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In 1997 Martin Scorsese directed the movie Kundun, a biographical story of the current Dalai Lama written by Melissa Mathison. I remember going to see the film a number of times when it came out. I picked up a copy of the soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass, and listened to it regularly.