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[bersonwriter]

from northeast coast of Scotland, back again south to Cambridge, England, Brighton as well, and then to Wales on way back north to Scotland for the last part of the trip to the UK - full month of September 2018

Deiniolen, Wales, UK.

Josh Berson, 9.27.2018

 Hey all. I’m in Wales. On a pirate ship. Sort of. It happens to be located in the high Welsh countryside close to Snowdonia and Mt.Snowden, in a little town called Deinielon, I and is actually the inside of an old chapel/stone church building for the 1800s surrounded by open expanses of sheep fields divided up by rock slate walls quarried out of the land not far away. The “astralship” as it is called, is what you step into when you walk out the rural Wales countryside and into the place I’ve been workAwaying and living for the last almost week. I found the place online on the website called workAway.com, which is the one I used to find the opportunity in Glasgow helping to fix up a flat to start my time in Scotland. When I was looking at possibilities for my time in Scotland, I came across this place. The premise of the place I was compelling, and I so I sent the guy a message back then to get in touch in case I happen to make it to Wales. It’s all about creating an optimal place for work teams in any kind of sustainable/visionary projects can come, base themselves for short one-week or so “voyages”, and have everything they need to facilitate flow and their best work in a limited span of time. If I could make it to Wales, I wanted to check it out and see if I could help out in some way.

 I made it to Wales.

 But first let me back track to last time I left off here. It’s been a while, again. Weeks… since Edinburgh I think. I’m going to check that now.

 Sep1st. That was nearly a month ago… the longest gap yet possible. Sorry about that. Finally really feeling like I’m in a place and setting I can do some reflection and process a lot of my time so far. I’m doing that ongoingly, often if possible to some degree, but I haven’t really sat and taken an hour to be with it all, think and write about it, and one way of doing that has been to write it here and post it to this blog/site for those of you following it to read.

 Some trip. A lot has happened since I wrote that last entry at the Containers Hostel in Edinburgh that night. It feels not that long ago, yet a lot has happened since I was there. A lot of people, and conversations. New places, and lives intersected with and passed by. Again and again. I still haven’t found someone in a parallel situation to connect with for a while. I’m still hoping for it, and so much time has passed in terms of the total length of this trip that if it is going to happen, it’ll have to happen soon. It’s almost the end of September, and though so much of what I’m doing and have done has been worth it, I’m missing a vital part of life and experience. The last part of my trip, (the remaining month or so of my time over here), I plan to and intend to align with that need.

 In the meantime, I’ll work on this workAway global/Welsh “astralship”, a project with a lot of promise as a future space and place for world-shifting efforts… and a long way to get there.

 Rewind.

 1 week now in North Wales (Deinielon, outside city of Bangor) –rewind— unexpected Ki Aikido seminar in the same area within 10 miles at local dojo.

-rewind—

  2nd trip back to Brighton, south coast of England

–rewind—

 Burwell, village outside Cambridge, UK, for Aiki-Extension 2018 Aikido seminar that happens every 2 years I was here and so returned to England for…

–rewind—

 15 hour overnight National Express coach bus trip from the Cairngorms National Park where I was a day and a night, camping out on a bothy up a few miles hike in the highland mountains near Glenmore, near Aviemore

–rewind—

 Inverness, the small city in the highlands on a river close to lochs and ferths and the north coast and things start having the Gaelic names listed as well as English (though most still don’t know the language) –rewind—

 Ended up on a one-on-one tour at the Dalmore Distillery in Alness, was really informative and helped me understand the full process and origins of whiskey a lot better, and feel closer to that aspect of Scotland and my connection to it through the people knowledge and craft,  wanted to go to one while in the country and stumbled on this one morning on a run while in the area of a…

–rewind—

  local Aikido seminar, this one once-a-year, happening in Alness a town just north of Inverness occurring the same time I was there, slept at the doja a few nights, reminder of UchiDeshi life in Tel Aviv (was there a full weekend and saw the distillery a mile up the road, went back to it at the conclusion of the seminar before leaving the region…

–rewind—

 Findhorn, a town/spiritual community on the northeast coast near Forres I’ve heard about from different sources in the past, really beautiful place but the community not too compelling…

–rewind—

 Taking the train up from Dundee, where I was the night with the son of a man I met in Brighton a month before, his name Jed and a recent graduate of the local university’s masters program in writing..

–rewind—

 Edinburgh. A night camping out on the little wilderness highland alcove on the top of Arthur’s Seat, high above the citylights below to one side, the east coast/ sea to the other. I went back up for my last night with a backpack and sleeping bag and a bottle of straightforward basic Scotch whiskey from the store for my last night hike to be there and sleep out solo before heading back into town, collecting the rest of the my things from the Container Hostel, dropping a bag off at the flat in Leith of the friendly punk musician Chris and his roommates, and then take the train up to the highlands.

 The night before that I was writing the last entry.

 I think I’ve rewinded as far as I need to the point where I left of in the last writing. More or less. The question now is how much to go into, and of what, and in what way. As the quick backward run I just took both you reading this and myself through is indicative of, a lot has happened. I have some time to write now before the evening starts off here.

  It’s Friday night at the astral-ship in Deinielon, North Wales, and soon people will start arriving for the evening, a sort of half/party half fundraising effort for the project and space here.

 Liam (the guy who bought the chapel with the vision and idea to restructure it into something different new and needed in these world-shifting times, a project which intrigued me enough to come here) has been in his office most of the day working on the ongoing and time-sensitive administrative sides of things, except for a hour he had to take some extra junk to the “tip” (the recycling dump of sorts) that I went with him and finally had a chance to have somewhat of a conversation, the first good one since I’ve been here in over a half a week.

  He was away when I arrived and attention is divided into a lot of places, so it was good to try and touch base and figure out what I can do in the time that I’m here. Money /funds are issues, and he’s trying to do lot all at once. I really want to carry on back to Scotland soon, but I want to make a difference and help out in a significant way while I’m here, and I communicated that to him. I said I might stay one more week.

 All day Aglae (his girlfriend) has been directed both myself and the young travelling Australian couple to cleaning up the place and getting it ready for tonight for a lot of the day. I think they’re maybe a couple years younger than me, and have been driving a van around Europe and landed here a few weeks ago through a mutual friend.

 Too much to write about… not all relevant to what I want to say… the question is what do I want to say… I have an idea.

 A metaphor of the spirit of things and this trip and who I am/trying be, and how it parallels the processing of barley into whiskey to take the raw materials, the origin of clean water and grain to soak and make a liquid and through enough time and intent derive the very “spirit” of it….

 It’s something I’ve thought of in this past. I think I might finish off with that and add some pictures… that’s what I’m going to do with this. It won’t be a lot of writing this time. I’ve communicated a window into things with the “rewinds”… I’ll someday write more about all of it. There’s so much to cover, but at the end of the day, to use the phrase, or more articulately, at the end of the post… whats the point? What am I going for? What are you looking for when you get on to read it? What is the point?

 There are a lot of points for doing this. And it might differ from person to person out there, on here, what they’re feeling, needing, or just wanting to read about or learn or experience. For me now, the main point has been two-fold— half of it is to document a lot of what is happening here, a written and photographed account of my time on this near half-year self trip of becoming and being and seeing and connecting and experiencing…… AND, to convey and communicate (both to those of you in my life back home and other places, and people with whom our lives have just temporarily crossed but choose to keep the overlap sustained through time)….. the spirit of this trip, and the spirit of who I am.

The whiskey of this trip. The whiskey of who I am.

 That’s the metaphor, if you hadn’t caught it yet. Not totally the same idea, but similar enough to get the spirit of what I’m thinking about with all this… the spirit, of the spirit… the spirit-squared….

 I could keep going with that but I’ll leave it for a different time. Either at the end of this, or in person. I had an hour or so to get back on here and write before the nights starts… I have choices to make, as this is also the one time a week the local Aikido dojo meets for its 2 hour class… at precisely the same time. Very often on this trip the timing has worked on synrhonistically perfectly for the intentions and “spirit” of this trip and what I’m trying to do. Tonight is not one of those times.

  So I need to conserve energy, which is not flowing a lot right now… I’m definitely needed some metaphorical kindling to add some fuel to my body and soul force…. Poetics… basically I’m beat and still see so much potential but a lot of important decision as to where and how I spend the next few weeks need to he made, and hopefully if they’re the right ones, (that is, fall within the circle of experiences that uplift and energize me towards my own needs and that of the world I’m both in now and entering into future)…….. then I’ll be alright.

 More than alright. I’ll be brilliant. I’ll be all-there. I’m not “all-there” now, despite all this. I’m alright, but not all-alright. I’ve done so much since leaving home near 5 months ago… really. I know that. And it means a lot to me. When I really sit with it… I start to feel something significant.

 I think of the possibility for learning Scottish Gaelic, if I’m still able to spent time up on the west coast and islands of the northern Scotland. To really go into and explore/follow-through that difficult-to-explain quality of this trip that brought me there specifically, out of anywhere I could’ve travelled to in this world. I need to follow it through. I want to. I really want to feel the depth of what that is, and after Wales, I intend to. That is the plan. Climbing while I’m there, and encountered the place-itself. The people-themselves. The spirit of there, and the nature of the connection and link that brought me here.  

 If it can happen, the spirit of another traveler, herself.

 All of these things can happen. That’s the spirit of the remainder of my time here, what I need to experience before coming home.

 Spirit: the essence or nature of what something is, its intrinsic and characteristic quality of what makes it, what it is, at its core. That’s at least how I would define this often really truthful and solid word that like many has lost itself through overuse, clichéd, either commodified on one end, or mystified and distanced on the other.

 The “spirit” of something is both intangible and experiential, but metaphysical and yet so physical too in that it exists in and through all elements of a something. The spirit, (distilled alcohol that takes the form of whiskey) was possible from the beginning all along, and only exists because of all that is in it, and that which forms it, the relationships of each part and their environment through time.

 All things have this process and quality happening.

 Their spirit.

 Their spirit.

   That’s the end of this one. I’ll include a few more pictures to show more than I’ve written of the last month here in the UK, from northern Scotland back through England and up now to Wales, where Welsh is still spoken and lived on a day-to-day basis, from the street signs to the grocery store aisles to the little kids paying in the alleyways and the women at the registrar at the corner store to the old men on the bus. I like it here. The spirit of this trip though is to the Gaelic language, not Welsh. This is now a part of it too… but I know where I need to be. After that… maybe the spirit of this trip, who I am, Gaelic and Scotland and the nature of everything will be more clear and known. I look forward to that point.

 For now, I’m looking forward to the story of how it happens and living this life of it.

 I hope all of you out there are in different ways circulating around the developing, experiencing, and learning the spirt of your own selves and lives and places and all that is happening for you, too.

  Diolche,

“Thank you” (in Welsh)

  Josh(ua) Berson, alonaryk

Deinielon, Wales, UK

[bersonwriter]

SCOTLAND. (GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, MONTH OF AUGUST-2018)

[bersonwriter]

Scotland. (Glasgow, Edinburgh, month of August-2018)

Hey all.

 I feel rested this morning, somewhat restored in body (something that has been through a lot on of exertion this trip), and in fairly sound mind, restful and calm and subtly energized too. I feel collected and focused. This is for different reasons, part being that the hostel room I’m in is basically empty except one other guy around my age in with a north face bag and wearing scrubs to bed who I lent some toothpaste too the other night he arrived when he approached me and asked if I had any extra, across the room from me.

 In the constant unfolding of my time here in both Glasgow and now Edinburgh since I’ve been in Scotland, I haven’t felt this too often at the start of the days, which is something I’m working on attaining and sustaining. It’s all been worthwhile, as everything has been since I left home nearly four months in the past. Though with the constant balancing of planning and spontaneity, focused disciplined body/mind self work, and more free and non-directed wandering and experiencing, I haven’t felt this way all the time.  

 This feels like it’s been a process, journey even of mind and being, connections and separateness, alone through the place of others… and is merging into how I really need to live and be alive in this life. It’s happening, and this morning is a touch-point and experience of that.

 This morning I’m seated upright, cross-legged up against the wall in a 12 person bunk dorm room at the Containers Hostel in Edinburgh. It is a temporary but standard-like hostel made of shipping containers in a vacant lot in a residential area called Gorgie, about a half hour or so from the center of the city, Grassmarket and Princes street, and iconic castle that this place is known for. (Its stone walls rise up overlooking the city in all directions, and can be seen in many places in a fully circumstance around its location.

 I planned to go up to it (the castle) yesterday afternoon, only succeeding in reaching a dead-end after 15 minutes of reaching the ramparts at the top of the thorn and grass covered rock formation covered slope/incline, and was stopped at the walls. They are over twenty feet tall at that point, apparently there is an official entrance on the opposite side where you can pay 20 quid to go inside, which a homeless man named Andrew who I gave half of a corner-store bought can of cold coffee (rare purchase, reminded me of all those cold brew and other ice coffee in a tall can I was buying and drinking as staff at Upper Limits all winter/part of spring before I stopped spending money on food/drinks, saving it all for this trip) told me yesterday who I talked to outside of a grocery store, where he was sitting with a cup for change, (as many do here), except for once a year when the open the place up for free.

 I saw at the base and looked out over the city, feeling incredibly free and with so much perspective, and also very alone and feeling like even with the vista before me, I was still not feeling it all there, as it is currently.

 That’s about to change this weekend, even in a few hours when I finish writing this and take off for the day, now, end of August 2018… or at least, I fully intend it to.

  I’ve been in Scotland for close to 3 weeks now. I arrived on the train through here and to Glasgow from Cambridge on the 9th. That was 21 days ago, so actually 3 weeks to the day just about. I’ve really been able to go all in to be here and follow my plan, or more accurately live the life-vision I had for this trip.

 I plan on returning to Glasgow from here in Edinburgh this weekend, and prepare possibly stay with someone I met named Luke through the workAway person I was lived with in a part of town Cess Nock which I like, as it was the beginning of my time here and feels like and is the origin of my trip to Scotland. There I plan to prepare my things for and head north, and possibly just head straight there from here.

 I have a few different ideas of where I’ll go. They include

 -          a workAway on the Ardanamurchan Peninsula,

-          Searching for and finding people to possibly go climbing with in different places around the region, both coastal and inland in the “hills.”

-          There is up by Inverness like 4 hours north a sort of spiritual/mindful/international community/nature-based eco-village center of sorts on the northeast coast, which seems promising and might be my first stop after this weekend.

-          Aikido along the way as often as possible.

-          Drink more of and experience quality scotch whiskey.

-          Try and learn some Gaelic.

-          The workAway host I stayed with, Misha, is also a really outdoorsy person and has a lot of experience and knowledge, as well as having grown up in the northern part of the country, and he recommended a place off the coast on this island not too far from Glasgow, and copied me a topo map of the area and lent me his stove and ground pad, so I’m hoping to head that way too at some point, maybe even with another traveler if I meet someone up there, which I’m hoping and feel is likely could happen. I definitely feel the need for that, though being solo is also really significant for me right now.

 Part of me is also drawn to the Stones of Callanish, way up on one of strings of northern Isles in the Outer Hebrides. It’s like the Stonehenge of far north of Scotland, and I learned of it and saw pictures of it in this coffee table book of powerful and beautiful places on earth in a book while on our Colorado family ski trip this past winter. At most there is something mystical and other-worldy about, with either of Celtic or druidic connection, though I’m not sure which. Possibly it was a different group who created the colossal circle standing stones. I’m on the fence about this sort of thing, I have felt/thought about the potential truth of both possibilities. Even if they’re nothing more than really interesting collection of tall rocks, it’s still a striking and rare sort of place that could be really worthwhile to see and experience as a final destination for my trip here to Scotland at this point in my life.

 I’m not expecting all of this will happen, but it’s the “loose structure”/”flexible plan”. In the days to come it’ll start unfolding, one way or another. I plan to return to Burwell, outside Cambridge, for a Aikido seminar the 14-16th of September with the really knowledgeable and perceptive teacher I met there, Quentin Cooke, about not only Aikido-itself and a lot of which for him is an emphasis on “ki,” but its application and connection to, in, and for life.

 After that… either back here or straight to Ireland, and then home. It all is connected to who I meet in the weeks to come, what I feel/think/experience, what is happening in me, and the how far the money I have left can keep me here. End of September, and maybe into October is the idea of far this trip will go, is what I’m striving for now.

 From there, I’ll return home to the US, St.Louis, Creve Coeur, the depth-friends I’ve found there, the couple close old ones too, my family, work at Upper Limits and Picklemans if possible… and the reality and life that is that country and the place that is my origin, that I intend live and work and begin a life there into the future. Something else could happen that changes that, but either way I plan to be home this fall. It’ll mark almost a full year since I came out of the near 7 year offness and non-life having “woke up” again, and though I did lose so much of that surge of the late fall and winter some of you out there will recall, and definitely started to and still struggle with my mind… there has been a new dimension of possibility and development, and my 26th year might have been the most important and transitional in a decade, even life. Maybe even the most healing too… I intend to really go into this with the rest of the trip.

 Okay. That’s all the reflections, if those of you out there reading this really wanted to know. If not, its there for me. Writing is known for its potential for reflection, working with words and language to cohere thoughts and feelings in a way that sharpen vision and process the past and present and look into the future.

 So there’s that.

 Okay then...

 Here are a few photograph-in-writing snapshots of my time here so far (Glasgow/Edinburgh, month of August 2018) –

 Arrival in Scotland; transfer at the Edinburgh train station. People everywhere, mostly white but different races, my encounter with how diverse this country (or at least these cities) really are, mostly middle-eastern looking, most of whom I found out later were Pakistani.

And… there’s all Scottish. Most of them. Even the ones who aren’t what one might think of as being Scots, (of celtic/scots origin)… Walking and hearing that amazing accent that is part of drew me here and have always felt a connection to for some reason. An hour ride to Glasgow and the station there really similar.

                 Exiting the train station, walking down the streets of downtown Glasgow. Grey, overcast, clear and having that quality of air that feels at least for me uplifting and energizing, very similar to the Pacific Northwest of the US. A lot of people around, though not overly crowded, and a even di

                 Riding the subway a system of two concentric circle train lines, the Outer and Inner Circle, about 9 stops maybe on each one, really excellent, not too large, maybe 3 or 4 cars per train, with a frequency of arriving every 15 minutes or so all day and most of the night. Loud, comfortable, fairly standard as far as undergrounds seem to work.

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NOTE: I left the writing of this and went to meet a Couchsurfing host named Michael who was unable to let me stay with him, but we connected through the messaging and planned to meet a this volunteer-run collective café of sorts, so I had to leave to go off and meet him.

 It’s the following night, and I want to write some more of these snapshot/perceptions/photographs-in-words, and finish off the entry. Yesterday after I went to the café, I got iPhone fixed (the charge port wasn’t working… cost 25 quid, which is a lot but for a phone I’ve had since 2016, the only iPhone I’ve ever owned… it was worth it. Soon after I was walking through the city with new warm wool clothes I acquired at some thrift stores in preparation for my trip north, and a little class with a group called “Still Point Aikido” at a local high school where two men in their 50s and 60s, (both very skilled dan-grades/black belts and very skilled, both teachers) proceeded to remind me how little I know of it, and learned a lot in the hour and a half I was able to train with them.

 Right. After that I charged up my phone (now that it was possible too) at a coffeeshop, I decided to head for the summit of the Crags and Arthurs Seat, the huge and beautiful cliffs and mountainside/wilderness/park right off to the side of the city. I had seen it when I first arrived in town, through some buildings near the University of Edinburgh, Holyrood campus, and I remember my face lighting up with a smile. So “Scotland”. I hadn’t known that was there.

 So I went up it, barefoot, on a path. There at the top I watched the sunrise, and spent the morning hanging out up there, resting, meditating, qigong and some yoga and just working on the ongoing process of working with my body, which a lot of what I spend time on day-to-day in life now on this trip. It is both alieving the back pain and tension that is fairly frequent with the amount of time I spend wearing a backpack, and other reasons too…. and, like with the Aikido, striving to unify body and mind and become as supple and full a person as possible.

 When I decided to finally come back down, I left the top of the Crags overlooking all of Edinburgh when the sun had already risen some ways. That point where I was before I hiked back down the side was a really nice location to be out/up there. If I stood in a certain way, I could hold my left hand out framing the ascending sun, and the other out to the west and frame the descending and waning half-full moon that was there all night travelling over me as I climbed up the Scottish nature, coast to one side, city on almost all sides but the peak and valleys below it and layered rocks formations ascending up to it.. it was like nowhere I’ve been before in life. Though there too I was not “all there”, I was more than the “half-way” as I often reflect. I was closer, closing in on it. The gap closing between me and full experience… I know it is not going to be that much time from now Soon. Very soon. The north, the coasts, the highlands. Even the outer islands… there it will happen.

 That said, it was really worthwhile and significant, the turning point of my time in Edinburgh and maybe all of this trip so far to Scotland, even all of it, in a way.

 Now, 24 hours later or so, I’m back at the laptop late at night at the hostle, “kids” partying in the kitchen being loud and drunk and exclaiming things off and on, and I’m in the entry/foyer container of sorts, a room of big leather beat-up sofas, a TV, old vintage game systems, a rack of DVDS, board games, a few instruments (acoustic guitar, ukulele)… it’s a good place. The lights are off because someone was asleep on one when I came in to write here.

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 Photographs in words of the last 3 weeks here in Scotland, Glasgow something like 10 days and Edinburgh just over a week…. there’s so much. It’s very late as well, and tomorrow is my last full day in Edinburgh before heading up the northern highlands and Inverness area. You know… I’ll write more on all of it in the future. For now I’ll leave this here, though I didn’t write a lot about it all so far, it’s been more of plans for what’s next. That’s important too. I’ll share a few limited thoughts on my time here so far, and call it a night for now.

 Scotland so far… I basically spent half a week in Cess Nock,a fairly diverse part of Glasgow 10-15 minute bus ride/subway ride from the city centre and central train station, workAwaying with this guy Misha, a 38 year-old friendly and hard-working Scot, who is also an outdoors enthusiast and explorer, both in the winters of the Scottish highlands, and also much of Africa.

 Through the workAway agreement I was able to stay in spare room and access to food/meals in return for a few hours of work each day (plastering, sanding, and miscellaneous projects and at one point taking one of his bikes to go buy supplies from a store) on renovating the flat he was living in, a very old tenement building that he’s fixing up there.

 Definitely formed a connection, when I left he lent me his backpacking stove, a camping mat, and a map of place to go on a camping trip to, which he said I can return when I pass through Glasgow after that part of the trip (which I fully intend to, I really like Glasgow. There’s also 2 climbing gyms within 10 minute walk in both directions of his flat, which was perfect, and I bought a month membership at one and went a number of times both weeks).

 The place he recommended after he heard of my idea of what I wanted to experience was island of the coast not too far up and out, beyond Glasgow, with allegedly beautiful places and a “bathe”, old structures designated and sometimes fixed up to be used a permanent shelters for travelers passing through those regions.

  Alright time to finish off. I ought to write about all the Aikido classes I went too, each of them that was happening, beginning with a few hours after I arrived there at his flat. I had contact the sensei and learned about a class that was occurring that night, and so hopped right back on a train not too far after I arrived to Barrhead, a further away part of Glasgow where there was a group of most high-grade/”dan”/black belt-levels (though a few beginners) and an amazing teacher named sensei Dunne. Thick Scottish/Glaswegian accent, need to really be listening to follow all of his words. Very subtle, and very powerful. He’s also slightly less than my height, and is in his late 50s. I think he said he’s trained 3 times a week for something like 27 years there and eventually became the head sensei when his teacher died. The classes are not easy but very accessible, and other experienced students (and him) work with you.

 Alright- maybe more on all this time in the future. When there is time to write it. This is all I have for now, end-of-August-2018, though looking down at the bottom right hand corner I see it is September 1st.

 September. Its transitioning from summer into fall… it came into my thoughts earlier today that I left home in the late spring and lived overseas and travelled on this trip for the entire summer, and now into autumn/fall. It’s significant. I posted on facebook today also, a short half-minute or so video of walking on the Royal Miles, one of the main streets of Edinburgh, seeing/listening to a man busking… with bagpipes, and the vista, and century old stone buildings and cobble-stone roads, the inclined sloping streets and very narrow walking alleyways and stairwells connecting streets and levels of the city, “closes” as they call them … the facebook was

 “After almost a month, it's finally starting to sink that I'm really here.”

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 I hope everyone back home is fairing okay. Here’s to you, and me, and doing all we can to embody our intentions for anything we can to accomplish and fulfill our ‘purpose and intent” and benefit in depth-ways another, and/others….

 …. Goodnight all. Hope you’re doing okay in all things that you’re experiencing/moving towards all need in your day-to-day as the time goes by and live is lived and felt and thought and is happening inside and between and around us all of the time.

  Josh(ua) Berson, alonaryk

[bersonwriter]

England (UK) - Cambridge, Brighton, London / (Jul29th-Aug9)

[bersonwriter]

[bersonwriter]

In the UK - CAMBRIDGE, BRIGHTON, LONDON - July/August2018 (and the end of UchiDeshi, climbing and experiencing Ramallah/WestBank, leaving Israel).

This time tomorrow, I’ll be in Scotland.

It’s been just over 3 months since I left home. Close to 13 weeks since I left US soil to go travelling, first to Israel and now for the last week, the UK. So much that I’ve done and experienced has been worthwhile. Throughout, there was value in what I found and the people I’ve met and the time I’ve spent in those places.

That said, the main destination of my trip was Scotland. All of it was heading for this.

People warn against expectation.  They say it sets you for disappointment, or limits an experience. There is definitely value in this caution, but I see that it is itself limited. Sometimes it is expectation, or at least vision of something, that is the very thing pulling you towards it. And oftentimes, what you’re looking for is there. And possibly far more.

And so, Scotland. I take the train up north in a few hours from Cambridge, here in England where I’ve been based the last week since I arrived on the 29th in the UK. I leave at 5:55am, just as the sun will be rising. 6 hours later I’ll be in Glasgow, Scotland.

From there I plan to stay with somebody I found on workAway.com, a man who is renovating a building in the city there and has a spare room for someone who is willing to come and help him out, with that and other things he’s working on and needs done there. Apparently it gets very cold in Scotland in the winter, and there’s a lot of wood to split. So it sounds like through our communication I’ll be doing a lot of that too. This’ll be the first week I’ll be in the region. In my free time I plan to do Aikido at a place that the Scot I met in Tel Aviv told me about, as he too was/is an Aikidoka (someone who practices Aikido). Climbing too, both at the gyms there and looking into possibilities in the surrounding areas. Walking and wandering the streets of the city, one of my favorite things to do in a new place, (or a familiar one as well), it’s these times that I feel really feel like who I am, a sort of free human traveler connecting to a place with nothing but pure intent to know and experience what is there.

 Pause.

 I haven’t written in a while. I’d like to get some rest before taking this train in a couple of hours,  but I haven’t been writing on here much. The last time was somewhere back in the middle of my time as UchiDeshi in Tel Aviv, like halfway through my time in Israel. In the time since I finished my time there, passed a 5th kyu test (though Aikido is very much not about ranks, they are there as some mark of progress/development in it. This is the first of them), and went climbing outside Ramallah in the West Bank. That trip, the weekend before the last week as UchiDeshi and living in Israel, was significant for me. I was able to go to West Bank, and experience the “other side.” I knew I wanted to make it there while on this trip, but I wasn’t sure if I’d happen. This climbing trip facilitated me going there, as climbing is really important to me on many levels. The fact that it connected me to a place that I could then not only climb, but meet and connect with Palestinians, both climbers and others at the market and the streets there in Ramallah, was really something. I stayed at this quality hostel called Area D right in the middle of that Palestinian-arab city, which is so different than where I’ve been the whole time before then in the main part of Israel- all Arabic, no Hebrew or English. No Jews, only Muslims, etc. And life is hard there.

RAMALLAH , WEST BANK , PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES / Climbing trip, and being there as a traveler

 The fact is, they don’t like Israel there. And for good reason. Israel (at least, the “state”, or the  governmental agencies and the policies that control the Palestinian territories) are not good. It is a humanitarian crisis in some places, and even where life is happening it’s not easy. And the occupation by the Israelis is… yet it’s so complicated. Because so much of the control currently in place was out of need for safety, and the attacks and civilian deaths in Israel have gone down drastically in the last 10 years. Some actions were needed, and a lot of it has worked. Still, there are issues. And the Palestinians have little freedom, especially when it comes to leaving the region. They believe it is their homeland, their country. There are Israeli settlers, Jews, who believe the same thing and have been moving into all over the region creating “settlements”, with the intent of keeping the land for themselves and their kind and preventing Arab (Palestinian) growth throughout. There is a lot of tension, and often conflict, between these 2 groups and the Israeli army as well who patrols and had jurisdiction over much of the West Bank, and all of its borders and checkpoints.

The situation is really complex and very simple. People are suffering, and not enough is being done to fix it. And the reason why is what is complicated. It was really important for me to see it, and experience the place, but this is not my country nor the issues and struggles that are what I know I ought to be involved with in the future, back in the US. The language I know, and the people/world I’ve lived with throughout my life. For now though, I was there, and I wanted to make the most of it and learn/experience all I could.

In my time there I met the amazingly welcoming and kind Palestinians who greeted us on the streets from time to time, and saw some of the conditions and started to understand the systemic fucked-ness of so much of it. Israel has suffered so much because of Palestinian radicals and terrorists. And yet in their defending and preserving the safety and power of their world, the Palestinian people have also suffered.

Through it all and after, though I knew I was leaving, it was important, if anything for perspective. I know that as hard and shitty as a lot of it was there, I was needed back home in the United States to be involved with and connected in our conflicts there; issues of race, class, privilege, though also for me (more than any) the situation of mental health care, and the work there. This is the future I have to return to, and there is so much that has to happen there, too.

Being in Ramallah and the West Bank was impactful, and if peripheral to my future, the memories of my time there exists in me and the place is out there. Remembering it is a part of all this, as any experience of another place. Even if I won’t be involved with it directly, I know more about it and it will inform the way I live in the future.

Final note on my time in the West Bank: I did also get to visit Roots. I first heard about Roots this past November at the International Film Festival in St.Louis in November through the film “the Field” (https://www.cinemastlouis.org/sliff/2017/field). It’s an organization started by really incredible person name Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian man who has faced a lifetime of hardship and suffering from the Israelis, from a mother spending years in an Israeli prison, to his brother being shot for apparently no reason by an Israeli soldier…. a yet with all this grief, anger, and hatred for them, Awwad had a realization that actions based on this would never lead to resolution and ending the problem. He started Roots as a Palestinian-non-violence center, which is now based in Gush Etsion and is focused on Israel-Palestinian dialogue, not political so much as personal, having people talk for real about themselves and their lives and feelings about it all, so as to see the other as closer to what they really are, like oneself, a human too.

So I wanted to, if I could, go see it. And this climbing trip brought me to the region, and the day I left, after bus rides and walking and messages back and for with Shaul, one of the organizers, I found myself there. It only worked out for me to be there an hour, but it was worth it. They were running a summer camp for children, both of settlers (Israelis) from the surrounding settlements and Palestinians from the local towns. Roots does many things, but on this day that I got off the 45 minute bus ride from Jerusalem, walked past the intersection with a IDF sniper positioned on the corner (hadn’t experienced anything like this in the main part of Israel), passed a gas station and a parking lot and then walked up the gravel road parallel to the highway in that hot day in full sun…. I arrived at the place. There was a small group of volunteers finish up the first day of the camp on a property, like a farm of sort with a few buildings off the road. Little children walked here and there, and then a few minutes after Shaul met me and we were sitting and discussing the place, they circled up and sang a song together.

It was clear when the volunteers met after the kids went home and the small staff debriefed from the day that it wasn’t easy, and the value of the work, while believe in, wasn’t easy to experience. Still, they were there and were making and effort. Seeing the kids together singing at the end of their day at camp caused me to tear up a little. The groups these kids belong to hate each other, are killing each other, feel anger and so much fear for the other side. And here… well, it points to another possibility. It’s such a little thing, but the butterfly  effects of something like this, however small, the memories… might make a difference.

I left with a hat with the name of the organization, “Roots” written on it in all 3 languages (English, Hebrew, and Arabic). I was able to get a ride back to Jerusalem with one of the volunteers, and made my back to the train station and to Tel Aviv. I sat next to a very friendly and thoughtful Israeli man and talked to him almost the entire hour back to Tel Aviv, about both my travels and plans here, as well as his life both there and the time he spent in Memphis in the States. There was also this girl in the seat in front of me who though I only saw for a moment at the start of a the bus ride, I felt a powerful connection and attraction towards, though she had headphones in and though we were no more than 2 feet or so apart was impossibly far away. She was beautiful and had freckles and only really saw her briefly as we were boarding the bus and taking our seats, and then when we left after arriving at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, but the feeling reminded me of what I’m missing and moving closer to, the part of the trip that hasn’t happened yet and the soul and heart needs, though very much am planning on… in time, soon. Now I’m headed to Scotland today, and maybe something will happen there. 

The late afternoon wore on and our bus continued to traverse the land that is Israel, to the coast and Tel Aviv, and I went on conversing with my companion, who was probably in his mid-50s. He talked about his son and his own travels in India and Asia, which he has done much of through his work. Then the conflict came up and he expressed his sadness about Israelis and Palestinians, Gaza, and all of what has and continues to go on in that country/region. He pointed out as we were leaving the low mountainous hills leading into Jerusalem the highway our bus route took us on was actually the same way that they came in to liberate Jerusalem from the siege in 1967. History all around, if you know what to look for and what has happened there.

Then we arrived. He got off a stop before, and I disembarked, and with my pack left the station, biked back to the dojo, said hello to Victor (the new UchiDeshi from Madrid, Spain, who had arrived a day before I left for the Ramallah) and Orli the teacher that  night, and the made the call to go to sleep. I wanted to train but needed the rest. And it was needed, and allowed me time to move through the last week there in Israel. That Saturday night/Sunday morning I finished packing and went up on the rooftop of the dojo; Montefiore neighborhood, Tel Aviv, Israel, Middle-East… uchiDeshi, May-July 2018. I remember standing up at the very top side section above the rooftop, barefoot on the corrugated iron, looking up at the moonlit city and night lights, inhaling, exhaling, reflecting and trying to feel it all, what my time here was and meant for me and the future… and then went down to the street to meet my taxi, went to airport, and flew to the UK.

 Being in the UNITED KINGDOM, end-of-July….. into-August-2018

 Okay. The UK. I could write about this one for hours too. Instead… well, I’ll write a few photographs-in-words and leave it there. More next time I write, and then it’ll be from Scotland.

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In the airport outside baggage claim, food court and bus and train ticket stations, surrounded by families and individuals of all ages, employees of the airport and travelers, all speaking in British accents… the flip of how everything is back home. When I spoke or asked questions, my US accent, who I was, was the foreigner, the person not from there.

Boarding the bus to Cambridge, where I was staying for a few days at the beginning of this trip, the air cool and refreshing, almost cold, heavy cloudy, but no rain…  rural fields and green countryside, as well as town and buildings, and me thinking “I’m actually over here. This is England, the country you hear about your whole life occasionally, but never actually experience…” and now, I was there.

Meeting Joonghyun in Cherry Hinton, (part of Cambridge) the south Korean guy around my age who knows Sebastian, the teacher who I lived in Philadelphia I met an airport while I was still in college who I was able to meet up with again in April in Philadelphia and found out was working in Cambridge this summer… basically I had a free place to stay/couchSurf while starting my time in the UK because of this person and them helping me out while I was here.

CAMBRDIGE: Cherry Hinton, the suburb I’ve been staying at, after sleeping the first night there… walking barefoot around the neighborhoods, modest homes and quiet streets, blackberry brambles with some fruit on them, trees and paths between the streets and the apartments and homes around them. Finding a park and walking through, sound of birds, not many people, finding and collecting feathers, laying in the grass and in the woods too, close to the ground, looking up at the sun, focusing on being.

CAMBRIDGE: people walking up and down roads not too many cars, unique English architecture, some new looking and some very old, churches and universities Victorian-castle-old-Britain-aesthetic.

CAMBRIDGE: a lot of internationals walking on the street, the schools open their doors to students from other countries, a lot of people from Spain and Asia as well, along with the locals walking around talking like they’re from the UK, because, well, they are.

CAMBRIDGE: the man on the sidewalk, busking with a compelling instrument-set-up where he used his hands without touching it to disrupt a frequency, altering the volume or pitch… was really interesting, except for the sound – which hardly seemed like music, very shrill and piercing and undulating and awful. At least… not very nice sounding. The process of creating it was something, though not so much what came from it.

CAMBRDIGE: the homeless man sitting in against the wall of a bookstore with a cardboard sign, I sat and talked with him, mid 50s with a full but somewhat kept grey-white beard, bright blue eyes and a worn, exhausted face. Like a 21st century sea caption of Cambridge, I felt/thought. He had lived a very hard life and was losing hope. I wrote a poem for him, and left it with enough money he still needed for him get into the hostel for the night.

CAMBRDIGE: Other homeless, a look, some words, acknowledging them even without giving money-  can be just as impactful/beneficial, sometimes more.

CAMBRIDGE: “Christ College”, “Holy Trinity Church”, “Jesus Lane”, “Jesus Green” … not in Israel anymore. Definitely in a different place and historical context for it.

CAMBRDIGE: A man shouting “half-price! Half-price! Everything haaaalff price!” in front of a sushi restaurant, one of 3 within 100 meters… along with cafes, pharmacy/walgreens-like stores, bookstores and clothes stores, ice cream places and other restaurants too.

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BRIGHTON

 I also went to Brighton, on the southern coast, for a few days. The plan was/is to head north to Scotland, but as I’ve said to people, there’s value in England too. And so I figured I’d head south first, before going up the opposite direction to where I plan on spending most of my time here in the UK.

Brighton. Ahh, Brighton. I really like it there. The coast was of smooth rocks and the water was cold but not too much and there was a bright moon lighting up the town/city. People everywhere, almost all in their 20s and 30s. Endless streets of cafes and coffee-shops, as well as bars and bakeries, and clubs and food places along the water in the town itself. And beautiful girls everywhere. Like, no matter where you go, it seemed. Not only attractive but often having that sort of quality about them that is more, somehow. I’ve felt that in UK more than other places… though maybe it’s just because I’m really open and travelling and seeing so many people non-stop each hour of the day. As always it was amazing, and really hard. Especially this woman at the vegan restaurant (which she owned) I spent the last day at and lingered before directing myself away and forward towards… this isn’t the place to write about that but that too was significant. And meeting this other man in the park across the road from the vegan place who was in a really bad place and in mind-pain, apparently with violent tendencies (he said) but vowed not to harm me, and appreciated me listening to him… we shared verses, and time… he said I had a pure white aura and considering what that meant… and I left really hoping he’d be okay.

Stayed at a hostel 2 nights and spend the 3rd night sitting with a Hungarian named Gehrgu and an Aussie/Londoner named Droo talking about the world and life and drinking from a bottle of rum until the sun came up, when I left to walk to the train station with my pack and head to London for the weekend before returning to Cambridge, where I am now.

LONDON

 I was there (in London) for the weekend, Aikido class on Saturday with Bjorn Saw, a friend of Miles Kessler (my teacher/sensei in Tel Aviv), weapons in the park with another teacher the next day, being hosted by a really kind woman named Deborah in Hackney, and walks in the park and time spent reading my books and resting, sleeping after Brighton, eating better and then back to Cambridge after first going climbing at a place called the Castle Centre – an old castle (actually a plant of some kind made to look that way with a Victorian-castle aesthetic)… full of climbing walls. Bouldering rooms, top rope and lead routes, and even a full café with drinks and food, and property to walk outside with gardens, paths, and more bouldering… including a dark black-grey textured feature wall,(no holds, they’re all a part of the wall itself) which was so nice. I climbed there the whole time after seeing all the rooms, met a guy who ended up walking me to the train station afterwards, and watched the sun set on the London horizon over the buildings and trees from the top of it after climbing up again and again.

The situation was all… on point. Like all of this trip. And yet, as I sat on the top of this boulder outside a climbing gym in London, UK, travelling freely and with my vision… I was conscious, as I often am, that I’m still not all-there. I’m half-there. Like there’s so much awareness and movement through places and connecting all over, but… I’m not feeling it deep, or full. The heart isn’t at play here, the soul isn’t really connected and felt in what I’m doing most of the time. I’m always aware of this, and I felt the lack up there at that really spectacular sunset on top of that really great black-grey feature boulder in London.

  I’m ending this here. Again, a very lengthy entry after weeks of nothing. Not my original plan (was going to write only some every week or two) but this seems to work better for the nature of this trip.

Scotland. I’ve tried to explain to people why Scotland, how I’ve wanted to go there since I was kid, and always felt drawn to it. Part of me always feels like I’m trying to explain something that is not really founded on anything really solid, more of an idea that isn’t all there… but then tonight I listened to this Gaelic song on youTube and almost teared up. Yeah. You can’t fake that.

There’s some sort of depth-connection to that land and the people who have live there. I have ideas of what this is in me, and why it’s there, but the fact is, it is. And tomorrow (actually, in an hour) I will head north and arrive in the region of this Earth at that I have chosen to really start experiencing life and develop into who I am and will become.

I’ll end with what I wrote for some of the workAway and couchSurfing requests:

 “It's not in my ancestry so far I know, but I've always felt this powerful if often subtle depth-connection to Scotland (and Ireland too, in part). The Gaelic language is to me the most beautiful I know of, and I have for some time for some inexplicable since I experienced it/came across it around the age of 17 have wanted to learn it someday. The haunting and echoing soulful sound of the bagpipes, the origin of the Celts, the clans and tartans... I don't know a lot about the actual Scotland of the present day, but on this trip I hope to connect with both, the ethos of the place-itself and its people, as well as the real life as it is lived today in 2018.”

Hope everyone out there is doing alright back home.

Joshua Berson, alonaryk

[bersonwriter]

UchiDeshi life at Integral Dojo, in Tel Aviv, June-July 2018

[bersonwriter]

Uchideshi at Integral Dojo, in the city of Tel Aviv, Israel, Middle East. Month 1 of 2 / May-June 2018

I think it’s time to write again.

If any of you have been visiting this blog/site from time-to-time to see if I’d posted, and seen that I had not, I’m sorry about that. A lot has been happening and up until the last few days, I’ve had fairly low-energy and have been sort of exhausted, or at least fairly worn out, most of the time, In fact, I haven’t really felt that good for the most part the last couple of weeks. There’s a shift happening though in my time here for the better, and I’m starting to feel it again. And so, I thought I’d use this new energy and spirit to return to the internet and write my time here.

Being an “uchi deshi”, which like I said last time is a Japanese term for “ inside student,” or “live-in student,” is hard.  The following is written about it on the website for the place I am living and studying in and through my time here.

“As an uchi deshi you are making a greater commitment to a developmental life through Aikido and related practices, in a full time, total emersion environment. This residential apprenticeship program is designed to develop your Aikido and deepen your understanding of the art.”

“If you think you are ready to immerse yourself in the art of Integral Aikido and walk the path of practice, embodiment, and meditation, then you are welcome to apply to our uchi deshi program, and come to train and live with us in the Integral Dojo, in Tel-Aviv.”

It is basically 2x a day classes 6 days a week, with one class only on Friday the exception, and no class on Saturdays. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s been amazing and focused and other times I’ve felt like resting or reading a book or taking a break. And to be straight, he has been open to me missing a class if something comes up or I need it, as long as I’m also communicating about it. There’s also the ongoing maintenance and cleaning of the dojo, somethings daily and others weekly. Like I said, it’s not easy. That being said, it is very, very much worth it. I still know I am exactly where I want to be right now in life. 

Part of that has to do with the last few days and meeting some people and a local community space, that has group dinners and workshops and yoga classes and music events. And its not far from where I live, maybe 10-15 minute walk from here. I want to know some of the people more, I really like some of them. I’ve really liked the people I practice/train with here at dojo too, but I haven’t really spent time with them outside of that environment. These people are also committed to well-being, connection, and embodying a sort of humanistic and even loving intention (to try and use a few terms that might describe the sort of ethos or spirit of the people I seem to connect to most in a depth-way). And they’re almost all Israeli. And, on of them is a Scot. 

That was fucking brilliant. I’ll write more about that later, but I met a guy from Glasgow, 35 and living here in Israel for a few years, a Jew but most definitely Scottish. I wasn’t expected that. I’m still trying to figure out how making it to the UK is going to work and what will happen there. It was sort of synchronicitious (word? of a synchronicistic quality) to meet a Scottish person here. And he’s a climber. And does yoga, too. And after a night learned about “Pele”, the community space and learning how to become a volunteer which I think I’ll do for the rest of my time here, I found out he used to do Aikido too. We’re exchanged contact information and he said when/if I make it to Scotland, I can stay with his “mum” (as they say in that part of the world) for dinner if want a place to go. I think we’ll be meeting up again soon... I’ve always wanted to know a Scot, and I’m looks like that is happening which is really something.

Okay, this isn’t going to be as uber-long as the last one. The frequency of these writings seem to not be happening as much as I thought, but I want to try and keep to the lengths. I know people are interested in following this, but I also want to make it work with people’s limited time, not against it. And so I’m going to take a minute to sit here in front of my laptop, close my eyes, breathe... and be with the where I’m at and how the last month has been here. Then I’m going to open them, and like I did last post/entry, start writing out some images and moments of the last 4 weeks in this city and what I’ve seen and experienced here. And then I’ll finish it off, and you can all go back to living your lives. Which, I hope, is going alright, wherever you are and whatever it is your experiencing. All of it.

Okay. I’ll start with what just happened, as it does about if not everyday in the mornings, and go from there:

A man yelling outside my window coming from the garage body shop down below, which seems to be happen at exactly 9am throughout the week, who’s words are still unintelligible to me. Something like “bira shratav hestratif! Behema destrev asafif!” Again, not that but maybe close to it. Its muffled and not that clear, but I can’t make out any Hebrew words I know. If anything it sounds more Arabic. Who knows.

Walking down through the neighborhoods of Montefiore, the area of Tel Aviv I live in here. Loud and noisy filled streets or honking and buses are not too far away to one side, the main Ayalon highway (route 20) a few streets to the other side, but here it’s relatively quiet and nice. Residential apartment buildings alongside with auto body shops, mechanic garages, an office building or two, an AM:PM (the 24 hr convenience store here, sort of like Israel’s 7-11 or C-Stop), a music store, synagogue, and some other corner stores, cafes, and food places.

Bus Stop at HaChashmonaim, Hamesger, and Derech Manachem Begin, always different people, a diversity I only somewhat expected to see here:

     - Middle-eastern-looking young men of different build more often than not very fit and athletic looking, in T-shirts and jeans around my age, maybe sunglasses, very short hair maybe some facial hair, usually not a lot of it. Also more “white” looking men, that is more “Ashkenazik,” or Jews of European, as opposed to those more middle-eastern “tsefardi” or “yemenite” in background.

      - Israeli women of all heights and ages, seemingly from my own, (20s) all the way through 30s and 40s, less commonly older, in anything from professional business clothes to light dresses to jeans and blouses and t shirts as well. And its hard not to walk the streets of Tel Aviv for more than a few minutes and not see an attractive woman somewhere around you.

    - Occasionally a religious Jew, either wearing ordinary clothes with a kippa, maybe tzit tzit, and sometimes too dressed fully in black and white as is often the way of the very orthodox here and elsewhere in the world.  

- To put it descriptively, “black people.” That’s the term an American would use, because that is who they most resemble from our own culture and country. That is, both men and women, usually young or middle-aged, who look very much of African descent because, well, they are. Though they are a wide range of black people here, from all different countries of origins and appearances too. Some are Ethiopian Jews who came here for refuge, though because I’m close to south Tel Aviv, which is very much an immigrant area, many came for jobs as migrant workers from places in Africa such as Eritrea, Somalia, and other places. Apparently their are some tensions with this minority and the the majority of the population of Israelis there. 

- Bicycles, with any of the previous demographics, riding by all the time.

- And motor-scooters, too. So many damn motor-scooters. It’s very characteristic of Tel Aviv, I’ve seen. They’re everywhere. Its a little ridiculous. More so are the little scooters people ride around on everywhere, where upright handles and all, on the sidewalks. They’re like as common here as long boards in California.

All of those types of people could be seen at the closest bus stop 5 minute walk from the dojo where I live, where the main streets of Hamesger and HaChashmonaim and Derech Menachem Begin all converge in one place, a hub of sorts.

There’s so much else I could write, but it’d take hours. Pages and pages of descriptions, let alone if I want to write reflections on it. I can tell you about the night I walked down Meir Diezengoff street, full of its well-known Tel Aviv night life of cafes and bars and stores open until really late, maybe 2, 3am. 

It was like 9, 10pm and I walked alone passed countless restaurants and food places packed with young Israeli’s crowded at outdoor tables watching the world cup and eating and drinking together, and then looking over and seeing a homeless man laying with his head away from people on the pavement behind a bus stop with a box in front of him for money. I remember looking at this and stopping myself to see it and feel it, because I realized that although I noticed and it did effect me, there was a thought of acknowledgement and empathy but not deeply felt compassion... which is what I think people like that need most... not the ignoring and not looking that most people do to have it not ruin their night out, but still not where I know I to be and exist from in this world.

 I recall looking at him asleep there, and this beautiful girl walked by with a friend, and buses flew past, and the air had cooled off because it was evening and was full of activity and sound of people having a time, and there I was walking alone, so much where I wanted to be doing in my life, but also with a “hole in my soul” to quote that song, which I hope and believe soon will be finally taken care of as well. As I walked on I saw two religious Jews next to each other on a bench, intensely conversing, while girls overly dressed up to go partying walk by in tall heels, and others, others, so much stimulus, so much humanity, so much dichotomy of both the lively and exciting and sad and painful and for me, freedom and as some know its occasional companion, loneliness.. is there too.

All part of this existence on earth, now in the 21st century, as people in this world. It’s not all good. So much of it is, and I’m experiencing that more and more. And here in Tel Aviv, this urban center in the middle of the opposite side of the planet from home in the United States, I’m developing myself to really be able to sustainable and with centeredness and well-being navigate it all, right now and when I return home, into and through the future.

To finish off I’ll say this, somewhat in reference to my comment in the last paragraph; if things happen the way I hope, not only will I be cultivating the abilities I am here with being an Uchideshi of centeredness, focused mind, open and relaxed but alert body, and embodied awareness and intent, but also find someone and people to open my heart again. That’s the one thing that’s missing from this picture, and there are possibilities there. I sense it happening soon. Maybe. Possibly. For sure maybe.

Hope you all are having an okay time back home. My parents reminded me recently its the 4th next week there. I hope you find a way to not just have a great time but develop in someway, even work on as some of the language is the Sensei’s words here, “evolve”. The idea of really working with life, and conflict, our experiences good and bad and neutral, and ourselves.. and developing into better and better humans, both for our own well being and longevity, but for that of all people in our lives and the the ones we continuously encounter throughout our days and weeks through time.

Final note: I am immeasurably grateful and appreciate to have the opportunity to do this trip and experience what I am here. I am from time-to-time aware, as I focus on the intensity of my training and self-development, that most of the people in this world will never have an opportunity to do something like this, even if they really wanted to and it could be really something for them and their life, too. It’s either because of time, or money, or both. I think of all the people I pass on the streets, everyone going to work, here and back home. I think of people from all classes back in the States, both the 40 year old working class parents who work two jobs just to pay the rent, or the more middle-class and affluent ones like my own parents and background, who might live more comfortably but only at the cost of non-stop working, frequent stress, and not a lot of time for themselves. I think of all the people pursuing advance degrees and further education, from people my peers, millennial in and finishing graduate school, in academics or in trade schools trying to secure financial security and a reliable future. 

I  from the soldiers my own age on the streets everywhere here, in uniform and looked very much like ordinary kids- kids, listen to me. They’re younger than me, that’s clear. They’re very much not kids though. 18, 19, maybe 20. They’re my sister’s age, and very much young adults. They are committed to this duty, and some of them might never live to be my age and live the rest of their lives. Most will. There are no wars happening here, only ongoing tension and conflict on and off. Still.. I thought of this as I passed a cafe with a few eating together yesterday not far from here. 

All of this again makes me so fucking appreciate to be here. To be focusing on my being. So much of it is really honing my consciousness, making my my body supple, flexible, and even powerful, and the idea is in this process, create a form that is me that can handle anything, throughout the rest of my life. It’ll be an ongoing process endlessly, of knowing myself and who I am, and the world and other people, but this existential effort... to know oneself, and hone oneself too... it’s all about being more “on point”, as I and others sometimes call it. 

This and hopefully soon more fully opening my heart to the vast array of emotions and human feelings that are possible that even now are still not really a part of my experience of life... it’s like that overused mission statement used these days, from the Y to other business and non-profits and education and medicine, somewhat cliche but based in truth so its actually valuable “for the body, mind, and spirit”. 

If body is our physical form and its external strength and flexibility as well as internal processes and wellness, and mind is cognition and emotion, identity and personal history/memory/life story, as well as thought... I think “spirit”, or maybe “soul”, is that “somethingness” that holds it all together. It’s the ethos and life-force, the sort of half consciousness, half heart, that love and truth and connection come from, both our awareness of ourselves, and that which we base our ethics, and therefore our choices, on each moment of our lives.  The reflection I’ll leave you with is this; I’m not in graduate school, and I’m not working. I have 2 jobs back home, but no career. And yet, I have a vision. I really believe now that if you strive to optimize and enhance your being, your spirit/body/mind connection of who you are, things can and likely will fall into place. To be both fully in life, and in yourself, integrated and focused and open and with intent, is to be really alive and in touch with things. From there, each conversation is valuable, each time you’re with someone it has meaning, and each breath is “life-spirit” entering your lungs and blood and running through you with all the molecules of energy and sustenance from the environment and earth itself. 

Alright, I’m really finishing now. Breath. It’s so important. Breath. Breathe. Inhale, exhale. “Life-spirit” might be a poetic term I just came up with in writing, but there is more truth to it that most realize. It is the difference between going through your days, and really living. Being. It nourishes your internal organs, and opens your body, if done right and full as often as possible. It can clear the mind and help navigate emotional states and feelings of all kind. It can return us to center. 

It is the only link between the mind and body that is both voluntarily, and involuntarily controlled. It is the foundation of meditation practices, though you never to meditate to know its truth. If you can’t having a sitting practice or do yoga, or even if you do, make life your meditation. 

Breathe. It’s the link. When you, I, we, are with it... we’re really there. Here.

Josh Berson, alonaryk.

[bersonwriter]

[bersonwriter]

May2018, Birthright Israel and the future.

I know this is where I need to be.

Maybe not need to be. There are other places that could also be right at the moment, in a different situation and form.

That being said, being here is… apt.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table in the place I’ll be living for a month. That’s the plan. Possibly longer, since I want to move on to the UK at some point. Though I’m open to what happens here. There is late day sunlight shining in from the windows high up on the left above the cabinets, casting light across the room onto the 15 foot off-white fabric curtains to my right. They are what separate my “room” from the kitchen, and the rest of the dojo.

Dojo. As in, Aikido dojo. Place of meeting, gathering, training and practice of the art of Aikido. It’s called Integral dojo, founded by an American, here in downtown, Tel Aviv, Middle-east. Yes, the Middle-east. Somewhere I wasn’t sure I’d ever end up again, but I am here now. For those who don’t know or feel like they don’t really know what Aikido is or why I’ve focused my life on it right now, here’s a good description of Kisshomaru Ueshiba, in his book The Spirt of Aikido:

“[Aikido]’s goal is the formation of the ideal human self unifying body and mind, realized through vigorous mental and physical training and the attainment of dynamic life in both activity and stillness.”

It resonates deeply for me. It’s both a practice of redirecting of energy with body/mind and movement, as well as metaphor. The principles and philosophical spirit of Aikido are a reflection of my own way of seeing the world, and what I hope to embody and learn how to live from all of the time. A life on the path of Aikido, and someday in the future one of mastery, is something I know will keep me aligned with the vision I have for my life, the intention I have for it, and the people I want to connect to and be with through time. And so, I’m here.

The situation is I pay about $570 dollars for a month of rent and clean the place from time-to-time, and receive a place to live in one of the most booming urban cities in this part of (and possibly all of) world and full-time classes throughout the week, of which I am planning to go to all that are happening.

I can write more about that later. For now, I need to backtrack to last time I wrote on this blog/site. It was like May 7th that I left Newark airport in the US, for Birthright, that free 10-day trip to Israel that exists for anyone of Jewish descent. I’ve talked to some of you reading this about this and my choice to do it, after not being interesting for a long time. It seemed like it was time. I’m 26, it was the cut off, and it was time to allow this part of who I am and my past back into my mind and life, how it exists and is in this world for real, and… synthesize it all. Integrate. Form a relationship with what was for a lot of my life painful and confusing non-identifying component of myself and this world into a new and uplifting understanding and experience. And so I went, and now I’m here.

(NOTE: I just looked over all of this and noticed it became fairly long. Future entries won’t be, as I’ll probably be writing more often, or at least more succinctly. This first one though, there is more writing.)

BIRTHRIGHT, May 6-17 ---the North, the Golan Heights---

I arrived at the airport at like 2pm that Sunday as a group slowly started arriving. After checking my bag our group formed and found there were 4 Josh(s) out of our group of 39. Just like back home at work at Upper Limits, go figure. Through the security and at a terminal/gate restaurant we sat in a few different groups hanging out and waiting to board. Meeting a lot of people at once in always difficult in terms of actually knowing who to relate and what to say, but it went fine and soon we were boarding the plane.

I’m not going to into anymore step-by-step detail. My intention for this site is a window in my travelling and life here, not an exact documentation of it. No one has time for all of that, myself included. I think the plan I have for it is better; a reflection, with some thoughts and details here and there. Hope that works for you all.

Here it goes. Focusing on the spirit of it all, you know? Like what it was like for me. And what happened through all of it.

Birthright, 2018. Returning to Israel. This was significant, because I wasn’t sure when if ever I’d go back. As we left American soil and headed out into the clouds high over the Atlantic Ocean, I realized it was done. I had made the choice, I was returning to it. I was going back, after over 10 years.

The flights were fine, a stop-over in Austria. I didn’t sleep. Neither did Alex. She’s this girl I ended up sitting next to from our group, which was great because she’s fairly attractive and very intelligent and I felt like I wanted to get to know better… there’s always a girl, as is sometimes said. This trip was no different. More on that later. Okay spoiler alert: we’re nothing alike in most things, she doesn’t like facial hair, and I eventually found out as well she has a boyfriend. And we’re basically nothing alike— did I mention that? All things I found out over the next 2 weeks. Important, you know. These writings are all about honesty and a truthful depiction of what’s happening. It doesn’t mean I’ll include everything, but I do intend to keep it… interesting, and relevant. Point is, nothing happened there, but the trip itself was so worthwhile anyway. Not all good, as I’ve described it to some, but totally worthwhile. After arriving in Tel Aviv, it started happening; the dissolving of my ethnocentrism and the validation of Jewish existence. It’s hard to articulate what I mean by that in a concise way, it’d take pages. In short, growing up in the states where you are a minority, where the language of your people and religion and history are marginal and peripheral, where the entire society is structured in a way counter to the way of life you are brought up in… it seems fairly… not normal, not the “way” of things, different, and there’s always that subtle suggestion, though not necessarily there, that you’re somewhat… inferior. It’s very rare that this was ever said growing up identifying as Jewish by anyone, and a lot of people don’t necessarily believe it. Still… I felt it. Somehow because you are trying to live in a way that is not what is lived by the mainstream of the world you live in, there is a sense that you are wrong in some way. This is not true, but it can be felt by a kid.

Okay, summarize: I might not really even identify as Jewish anymore, but it is my past and ancestry and ethnically I am definitely a Jew. A human first, but being a Jew as well is a part of who I am in this world, on Earth. And so, being back in Ha’Aretz, “the land”, the state of Israel, where everything is in Hebrew on the walls and the air as the sound of peoples voices go back and forth in that language… it validates it all. It is just as legitimate a form of existing and living as anything Eurocentric, English, Christian or American. The world I have become a part of (United States) is significant, but only one form of human life. This is valid too. And I was here, and I felt it.

Birthright was valuable, both in terms of places to experience and people to connect to. The first few days were spent in North, Israel’s “Golan Heights”, staying in a village resort of sorts in little cabins having group meals in a dining hall and taking day trips to places like the 400 year old+ mountain city of Tsvat known for Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, Tiveria/Tiberias on the freshwater Kineret (Sea of Galilee), a winery on the Syria border, and then moved to the west to the Galilee, because of the foreseen conflict with Iranian forces and missiles in Syria, which occurred they knew would of the day before and happened after we had left. It was safe there, but Birthright was responsible for our safety and doesn’t take any chances on it— so we left the Golan.

It is something, the situation here. They live lives very similar to our own in the US, with highway interstates and towns and cities, gas stations and beaches and internet and movie theaters, parks and food stores and restaurants and parking lots, farms and fields and rocks and mountains and powerlines and day-to-day life of a western society. And yet they are always ready to respond when there is violent threats and potential conflict. It is a sort of always living life and relaxing and being okay, but always ready to face threats when they come up… which they do, from time-to-time. This sort of normal-life but always-ready is a sort of dichotomy that I don’t think most people in other parts of the world, especially the states, can fully understand right off. I hope to, through knowing people in my time here, understand more of it.

View from our housing on the kibbutz in the Golan near Sde Nehemia, in the North of Israel.

BIRTHRIGHT, May 6-17 ---the North, the Galilee---

We were in the Galilee for a night, doing team-building like activities with some two eccentric guys who were originally from South America and Mexico but are Israeli now’s company, and spent the night at the pub that was in the Kibbutz we were staying at, called Aiyilon, or something that sounds like that. The little bar was full, 90% our “Taglit” (Birthright) group.

The kids (they’re young professionals in their mid-20s… when are we no longer think of ourselves as kids?) from Baltimore and DC that came together were taking plates of shots together at a table outside, the couches were full of everyone talking to each other, drinking. The bar was full of others, drinking. As I found out throughout our trip (though honestly, I very much expected it), our group was for the most part an example of mainstream, affluent Millennial America, who happened to also be Jewish. There’s nothing wrong with drinking. I took a shot of whiskey with Max from the east coast somewhere, a big friendly guy who looks middle-eastern, speaks Hebrew (the only one in our entire group) and is actually joining the IDF soon.

What I’m saying is, as many of you are aware who know me, I like to drink too. Some. Not a lot, and not all the time. For many out there though, it’s a way of life. And…. this isn’t that place for that commentary. The point is that though I drank throughout the trip too, it wasn’t needed, unlike for the others… it was like social dependency, a circulating needed vice of much of the group. And though not all bad, it was a source of disconnect. More later. Maybe.

BIRTHRIGHT, May 6-17 ---Jerusalem, (the Kotel)---

After the north we went down the 3 hours or so to Jerusalem, staying for 3 or so days at kibbutz outside the city called Tzuba. Here was our base for experiencing the old city of Jerusalem, the 3,000 tiny historical city that is the holiest place for 3 religions. It is the source of so much conflict and devotion, as well as pilgrimage and theistic meaning for some— especially the Kotel, the Western Wall. And then a night of partying and drinking on Ben Yehuda street, which on a Thursday was full of people in the 20s and 30s, some older, some younger, though it was definitely the scene of night life in that city, likely only second to Tel Aviv an hour or so away on the coast. That was nice too, an experience for sure. Even if my ethos and that of most of the people on my trip are far different. But back to the old city.

               It was an emotional experience for me. That’s relevant, because at this point, that’s still not a frequent thing. It wasn’t like I was inspired, or full of joy and connection, like before in 2004 and 2006, when I was 12 and then 14. Like I had come home, and come to what I had been taught to believe was the most important place on this earth. No. It wasn’t that. It was different. And it was powerful.

               I felt an overwhelming sense of… something. As I walked up ahead moving away from the group when Oshri, our amazing tour guide throughout Birthright (more later) let us go for a short 15 minutes or so, I experienced a feeling of… no words. As I reached the turn off to the men’s side (it is divided in half, men/women), and walked up over the characteristic smooth paved yellow Jerusalem stone slabs, and saw it again... I started to cry. Not all out. I stopped myself. I felt it though. It was emotional. I didn’t try to name it or explain what I was feeling. I saw the men everywhere, super religious looking and totally not, men of all ages in tzit tzit and tefillin and wearing tallit with beards of all lengths praying, fervently and sincerely, and secular looking Jews, both in the open space and right up on the wall too. It was so sad, and so real. This happens. This is a part of the world… and I used to be one of them. And still, it’s beautiful too. This is a very important place to a believing Jew, no matter how they practice or live.

I looked for a place at the wall and found a small gap in its 40 or so foot length. And as I walked up, and saw the notes… it hit me again. Harder. It’s like I remembered: hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny pieces of paper folded and pressed up into every available nook and cranny and crack and hole in the ancient rock stones of the wall. The Kotel (Western Wall) is at its limit with them, and still people add more of them. More prayers. More messages and requests and pleas to their god, the kadosh barachu, blessed art thou our god, king of the universe… hashem, yud-hay-vav-hay, Adonai, Elohim. So many names for the theological being that the minds and hearts of millions of people are bound to, and here was the proof of that belief. And I was in my past one of them.

               I’m not an atheist. I needed and always need to keep reminding myself of that. I am agnostic. I aware of the inability to know the nature of a theistic truth, that one can never really know there is a god. That there could be. There really could. And yet, there could not be. At least, not in the way Judaism or the other monotheistic faiths claim. I very much don’t want to close-mindedly limit my own perception and experience of the world and where it came from, what’s behind/within it all, through intellectual defiance or emotional bitterness. I stood there, and have lived my life for some time now, agnostically, both at times sensing a potential force behind things, and balancing it with a critical yet open-minded skepticism for an ongoing process of being in touch with truth of all this, whatever that is at its base.

               So I was emotional. Because it was all real, and I was back, and I wasn’t the same, and never would be. I touched the wall. I inhaled deeply, exhaled, and opened myself to anything that could be there. I allowed for the possibility that there could be something metaphysical in this place, that I don’t know everything, that there could be something there.

               I didn’t pray. That isn’t really an option anymore, if I am honest with who I am and what I believe about this world. Still, I allowed myself to be. I didn’t feel anything from it, but I also didn’t leave. It was good to be there. Like the being in the Ben Gurion – Tel Aviv airport a week earlier, it was… validating. This faith is really a part of this world. This religion has its center, its existence. And in some way, though far different then the last time I was there… I was connected to it. Now though, it was in a different and maybe even more advanced form. I wasn’t rejecting it all. I was accepting it as a part of the world. Not the center of it all, like I once thought/felt… a part of it.

I looked at my phone and saw I had very little time, maybe 5 minutes. I left and walked left into and through the underground tunnel that the wall continues into, and all the people davhaning (praying), chanting and rocking back-and-forth and sitting and walking around, learning at tables and reading from Hebrew texts, so many books, and Torah scrolls, and Jews. They are Jews. I am a Jew. We’re so different. And we’re all, in part, from the same origin.

               And then I was walking back up to my group. I felt sad, and had more clarity and focus than I had the entire trip up until then. I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be. It was part of my story, and evolution as a person. This place is a part of the 14 kid that I was when everything shifted in my life. And I felt like I reconnected to that part of me. And now, I thought/felt, I could move on. I might never return to the Kotel, but I needed to come back. And it happened.

BIRTHRIGHT, May 6-17 ---the South (Ein Gedi, Masada, Dead Sea, Negev and Bedouin Tents)

               Those few days staying at Tzuba kibbutz a half hour outside Jerusalem before headed to the South were significant. I learned more about my group as the nights went late partying at the empty basketball court of the edge of the community and drinking into the night, both us Americans and the 8 Israelis who joined our group, soldiers and students who had finished the army. That was eye-opening too, but I’m not going to write about it here. I know they have depth, clearly, but our Israeli peers who they have join Birthright groups were very much like the Israeli equivalent to so many of the 20-something peers we have in the United States in terms of… this isn’t the place. I did have some really impactful conversations with one of them though, Nick. He was a commander of 14 other soldiers, and was staying with the IDF longer because of a contract he signed having them cover his post-army education. He struggled with the situation, the pain and suffering on both sides. His thoughts were insightful, and what I really was wanting to hear, the point-of-view of someone who lived and fought and worked there.

I also befriended Yunis, the arab guy who worked in the kitchen at the dining hall and ended up showing him and a few of his co-workers, along with a dad and his two little kids from the kibbutz, how to slackline. I had tried to practice the very little Arabic I know with him our first day, became friendly, and they joined me when I set mine up on a central yard on Saturday (Shabbat), when we didn’t leave the kibbutz. And I even met a girl from Missouri. More specifically, St.Louis. More specifically, Creve Coeur. She was 24 and went to my high school at the same time I was there, two years behind me. And she group less than a mile from both the houses I’ve lived in there. And we meet for the first time 6,000 miles away across the planet. Sometimes this world is far too impossibly big… and other times it is, as is some like to say, a “small world,” too.

I met Jack at Tzuba too, an amazing thoughtful and philosophical 18 year-old kid from Florida. He was from another Birthright group staying there, a younger age trip out of a college Hillel in that state. I met him one night when I had left our group and was wandering around the kibbutz. We had a few amazing conversations from relationships to philosophical thinking, the nature of things to thinking about them, from marijuana and altered states to the quality of self and core-beliefs, from Aikido to love, and a lot more; they were probably the best I’ve had since I’ve been here all month. And we kept each other’s information. I know we’ll be in touch in to the future.

The South.

One more thing first. Neil Lazarus. http://www.awesomeseminars.com/ A one-hour seminar/presentation for our group while we were staying there. He’s from the UK, but has been living here for like 30 years. He’s brilliant. It was an hour crash-course in the situation in the middle-east, and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was perceptive, intense, focused and thorough. And the amazing part too was he was hilarious. He used humor to keep everyone in the room engaged, interested, and alert. He would directly confront people in the audience (our Birthright group), and in a making fun but not mean way, bring everyone “back” to the talk. He was constantly synthesizing information, to its most important facts and messages. It was fucking amazing, and exactly what I was hoping we’d be able to experience while here. I haven’t been following anything happening over here in a decade or more, (not that I ever was that much), and having something like this, especially as honest and critical as it was (I was concerned Birthright wouldn’t have that) was really something. He has videos, is on all social media, and speaks around the country and internationally as well. I definitely want to meet up with him again, as this is very much a part of why I’m here. I recommend anyone reading this that wants a perspective/source that is reliable and unbiased as possible to check him out.

The South. I’m going to write some on this, our time in Tel Aviv, and then finish it off. And I just remembered what I planned to do for all of this, and only remembered just now. And so I’ll end in that form.

Closing my eyes as I looked out of the bus window as we were leaving the green mountainous hills of Jerusalem, and opening them to remote and grey vast rocky landscape of the Judean desert less than an hour later.

Pulling up to a gas station in a little oasis, using the bathroom. An Arab probably my age with a huge camel offering rides around the parking lot for 1 shekel. His name was” Shakshuka,” a cooked egg and tomato dish. (The camel, not the man).

Ein-Gedi center, palm trees and buildings and open space, our lodging for our first night there in the south, high above the floor of the Judean desert looking out at the dead sea, and the surrounding rocky landscapes.

Our hike before sunrise up Masada, the fortress of the Jews in one of their last stands against the Romans around 30 BCE. At around 400m (1,300 ft), the rocky pleateau looks out at the desert for miles in all directions, and out at the Dead Sea far below. (See below.)

Climbing up into a cave high above the path at Ein Gedi while our group packed up after hanging out in the pools and little waterfalls found here, a place of rocks and Ibex’s and a freshwater stream that comes down from the desert mountains. I looked out though it’s opening at the southern Israeli landscape, and thought how maybe this is something my ancestors had done, 1,000 years of years ago. It’s possible.

At sunset, riding camels outside the Bedouin tents, everything bright and silhouetted in the falling sun. Both feeling the sadness of these animals lives in having to do this work, and after dismounting before walking back to our camp, looking at the face of ours and seeing… dignity. And acknowledging it in him.

Late night conversation by the fire with Nick, the Israeli soldier, about what had happened that day May 15th, (Nakba, “the catastrophe”, the Palestinian name for Israel’s independence and day where the situation in Gaza flared and 59 of them were killed. And him telling me about how he when his service ends in the next year or so he wants to hike “shveel yisrael,” the Israel Trail, and find out what he wants to do with his life. His thoughts of saying “fuck it” and leaving the country, because he doesn’t know the solutions. Or staying, and trying to find a way. The “Shveel Yistrael”/Israel Trail is their equivalent to our AT (Appalachian Trail) on the east coast of the United States that my brother and I have talked about wanted to do together someday in the future. Him explaining how 2 months of walking might help him find his way.

The loud and crowded narrow streets of Tel Aviv, cars and scooters and bicycles flying by and stopping abrubtly, a urban landscape of contrasts with its high reaching building and skyscrapers, old apartment buildings, little storefronts and restaurants, main street thruways and tiny side streets crossing them here and there.

The nights in Netanya, north of there, where all the signs and writing everywhere is in Hebrew, and Russian. Walking out on the night beach the night before our 10 days ended, and everyone left the hotel and our Birthright trip finished.

Backpacking for 3 days up north in the Galilee sea-to-sea, the Mediterranean to the Kineret, the freshwater Sea of Galilee, a guided Birthright “plus” trip with a different group, most college-age, many from Canada. Made a few friends from Montreal, and hiked over 50km.

There’s so much more I could write about, and maybe will on my own, but this is it for now. There are my conversations with my part of the time roommate Josh Ausfresser on Birthright, our connection and lack of it, from coming up with the term “L3” on the bus to Haifa one day to explain a way I exist in the world (a video game button that does what I often do in life), to Joel, a really good person who was both very funny and had depth, and was struggling with an intense loss in his life. Practicing Russian with Ben, the guy from Atlanta, who I didn’t realize was Russian until he ordered Vodka one night and I noticed his subtle accent as he said it. Meagan and the other Ben, a couple from the east coast who were always really nice and a little more mature than many of the others, though still very much part of it all. Mike, the fuck-it-all/have a good time at any cost/heavy drinking/stoner/very successful accountant from Baltimore who I somehow felt a connection with, despite us being nearly opposites as people.

And there was Alex, of course (speaking of opposites), the girl who kept my interest throughout but definitely wasn’t going anywhere – probably for the best, so I can stay focused on what is finally happening right now. Tel Aviv, the future, the living the life I have been planning since November of 2017, and been longing to live for much longer than that. It’s finally happening.

 Tel Aviv, Israel - Summer 2018 (Aikido, climbing, and Life-Itself here)

I’ve been in the mountain town of 500 year old Tsvat in the Galilee to the north, and spoken about Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) with an artist from Michigan who moved there and has been living there non-stop making art from it for 20 years named Avrham, as well a guy to my own own age (27) named Yonatan, also from the United States, who was with absolute certainty, and calmly, telling me of the truth and goodness of “God” and how he is in that place and our lives and other beliefs… and then, in the same day, a conversation with one of the leaders on my backpacking birthright-plus trip Barr, a 28 year old secular Israeli who is intensely critical and even angrily and intellectual combative against religion as both a phenomenon and its coercive power on the politics and social systems in his country.

Both are here. Both are real. This is all a part of what this world is that we existing within. And I’m here, with it, in a place with a different language that my own, one that is both familiar and foreign, given the fact of my situation and life right now, and yet it’s influence on me in my childhood. This is not my country, but I am connected to it and its people. And right now, the summer of 2018, I’ll be here. Meeting and getting to know it as a place, and its people. Immersing myself and focusing on Aikido training, and in that process being here, and experiencing life.

Maybe that’s how I’ll end this. Experience. Because that’s so much of what this means to me. So much of the last 10 years of my life I have not been feeling the world and life… I haven’t been there, in life. Experiencing it. Even when I’m doing aright, I’m almost always seeking to influence what is happening to direct me closer to the place I really want to be in, and in the existential situation that I feel/sense I will be aligned with the trajectory I feel/think my life needs to go to be true to who I am as a human. And it’s potential.

And now, I’m there. I really feel like I can for the most part, let go and sink into what is happening, at this moment, in the day-to-day. Yes, I want to make it to the UK later in the summer. And no, I don’t want to get lost and lose my existential vision of the future and who I’m trying to be and become in this life. Still… I’m where I want to be. I can be here, and experience it. It’s fucking amazing, when I reflect and realize what it is I’m stepping into now. Open to lite-itself, the people I meet, what I feel and what I choose  and experience as the future unfolds. Its like, all this work, all this mind-effort and planning and struggle to make it through…. And I’m here.

Experience. Life.

And what happens now, the people I connect to, what I feel and what unfolds from here…  we’ll see. 

 A final thought; I know and am very aware that my way of thinking and reflecting is lost on some people. That my way of writing sometimes isn’t clear to the way a lot of people usually think, and so it’s meaning is missed or is unable to be related to. I write it still, because it is who I am and it is the story of my life and experience.

That said, I’ll end this with something a little more concrete that highlights the message in a different way. Okay. Something I didn’t write about was the day we went to Har Hertzl (the national military cemetary) and Yad Vashem (the world-known Holocaust memorial/museum) in Jerusalem. It was a powerful day. And emotional. Har Hertzl was intense, because half the graves were of soldiers my age, and younger, who died fighting in the IDF. I remember the numbers on the stones; 22, 25, 20, 19, 20… all kids at the same point in life as me, in a different reality, a world nothing like my own in the United States.

The second half was even more significant, in a personal way. Yad Vashem. I’ve always have had a really hard time learning about and spending time focusing on the “Shoa”, the Holocaust. Who hasn’t? For me though, it seemed worse. I was a sensitive kid, and felt a lot of the pain in life I experienced in others as well as my own life. Learning about our history as Jews was that times a million. Well, six million.

This time was similar but different. It was brutal but I was prepared, I already knew so much of what happened. Our tour guide was perceptive and contemplative, having us look at what happened not only as Jews but as humans, to understand not only the true extent of the atrocities of the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe, how it could happen and what it means in terms of knowing this world.

It wasn’t until the end of our hour moving through the exhibits and pictures of Yad Vashem that I experienced something I never had before in a Holocaust museum. We were just about out of the long, narrow, high-ceiling building that was designed so that you had to keep crossing the center back and forth through side-rooms before reaching the light opening at the end, where the museum opened out to the outside and bright sunlight that is found there. A metaphor is there, and the architecture was planned for it to be that way.

The last room was a huge cylindrical room, maybe 50 feet wide. It was a platform, maybe 30 ft wide, with a hole in its center, a concrete well maybe 15 ft across that fell maybe twice as deep to a pool of water far below. The ceiling went high above, and was cone-shaped, and was full of photographs. They are all Jews who were killed in the Shoa, the Holocaust. The room is called the “Hall of Names.”

At the outer edge of the platform, the floor drops again, maybe 20 ft, and the ceiling rises high above a similar amount. And there, maybe 10ft from the perimeter, are shelves. Floor to ceiling, countless shelves line the walls. And on them are binders, hundreds, thousands of them. And in each one of them, are pages, with names written on them. There were 6,000,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust. One of the main priorities of Yad Vashem in the decades since it was founded was collecting a list of all those who died in it. They now have over 5.5 million names.

Here’s where I’m ending this entry, and you’ll see why I went into all this detail. They also have a computer database. Our tour guide ended by telling us it was off through a doorway on the other side of the room, and we would now go outside and finish the tour.

I heard his words and felt something. As our group started to leave, I walked straight for the door. I went through, leaving my group behind. I passed through into the next room and found maybe 10 computers on desks there, with chairs in front of each of them.

I’m not going to go into the full experience. I plan to write about it a different time, in a more cathartic, detailed, and poignant way. Cause it was poignant, and overwhelmingly intense. And so emotional.

I looked up my name, the one word that defines me in this world and is all I have to connect who I am to the past. I, like many 21st century American Jews, know very little of where I come from, my kin, my ancestors and how/where they lived. And died.

“Bersohn.” I typed it into the browser, using spelling my dad once told me was used before our family came through Ellis Island to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, and took a deep breath.

And there it was. A name. Two names, five names. More.

I expected it. Still, seeing each person listed, first names the year they were born as well, made it real. It also the country of origin, and a note about what is known about who they were.

It was hard, and it was powerful. It was a record of the people who never were able to make it and live through that time. The line of Bersons that never were because of the Nazis. But that was only beginning. After the last “Bersohn”… was a “Berson.” Same spelling as the way we spell our name today. I wasn’t expecting that. And there weren’t only a few. There were… many. Too many.

I’ll end this here. I remember my mind focusing absolutely, thinking of nothing, as I scrolled down the page all the way to the bottom, as the list of people went on and on… all Bersons. I was starting to tear up. I clicked the NEXT on the bottom of the page, figured that was all of them. I was wrong. The next page had more. A lot more. I kept scrolling, and started breathing heavier. And the names kept coming, and coming… and tears started to fall from my eyes without a sound as I looked into the computer screen, clicking the mouse again and again. Again and again.

Men, women, children. Young and old. I don’t know if I’m related to all of them. It doesn’t really make a difference. What matters is the overpowering sense of loss and sadness and emotion that moved through me as I kept clicking the notes and scrolling down the page, 10 names, 20 names, 30 names… and then a new page, and it started over again. Berson, Berson, Berson.

If anyone saw my face they would have seen fiercely focused eyes and pain, wet with silent tears, a blend of anger and both stoic intensity and emotion too, deep sadness and connection to knowing the truth of the past. I kept on, page after page, determined to look at each human being on the list that shared my last name. A name is a link. I was feeling that link, and the loss of all those who were not able to continue with into their future. The future that is now.

Eventually, I finished. I can’t remember how many full pages I clicked through, maybe 10 of them, each one feeling like an endless list of names. All Berson. I inhaled deeply, exited the browser of the computer, stood up, and walked out of the room. I did not wipe away the tears that had fallen over my face.

I looked up at the Hall of Names photographs feeling them there, realizing for the first time that one or some of the faces might actually be related to me in a very real way. I walked out, alone, and found myself leaving the building and into the light.

It was bright outside, and I was looking out off an overlook at the vast Jerusalem hills far below and in front of me. It was beautiful. There were vast greens hillsides and buildings here and there, and I breathed in the clean fresh air, and felt… there.

I felt okay. I was exhausted emotionally, but it had been… cathartic, and powerfully clarifying. I felt like I knew who I was in relation to history, and that I was here now, while others were not. That through the truthful nature of my name, that link, I connected to the past and people who lived and died there. And I was here, and I was alive, and it was beautiful thing. I didn’t feel the anger and depression I had felt as a kid both here and other places learning about the Holocaust and the Nazis. It was different. Looking out in that bright sun at the vista in front of me, I felt like… I understood. I had the knowledge and perspective on human lives and minds to see how something like it could happen, and how I am in a very real way connected to it all. If things were different… my name would have been on that list as well. Actually, my name would never have existed, because I would not have ever lived. The names would be that of my great-grandparents, if they had stayed and not came to America before it happened. If they had made a different choice, 90 years in the past in eastern Europe, in the past. But I do exist, I am alive, and as I realized that I half started crying again, this time with a sort of appreciation and uplifting sense of possibility that felt… that felt. No words. I felt it.

My existence is proof that the Hitler, and Nazis, failed. My DNA and genetics, consciousness and life are made of and from the people who came before, a line of people, of individual human beings, their relationships and life and love. I am the end result of hundreds of years of history, just like every other person on earth. The difference is I had never felt it as viscerally and emotionally, as powerfully, as that day walking out of Yad Vashem. I come from somewhere. My family is vast and goes back generations, even if I don’t know of any of them. I saw their names. They existed. I exist. I am alive. And so, as I thought and felt that late afternoon as the bright sun lit up the high green hills of the landscape in front of me, I will do all I can to embody that truth and do all I can to not only live, but be alive. Feel alive. Not everyone has that. For the Jews of the 20th century of my past, it was stolen from them. And yet, I’m here. I’m here. And it’s a beautiful and uplifting thing. It’s so real. It was/is… clarity. Perspective.

And so, as I finished this writing earlier, and I’ll repeat it here, before this reflection:

 “It’s fucking amazing, when I reflect and realize what it is I’m stepping into now. Open to lite-itself, the people I meet, what I feel and what I choose and experience as the future unfolds. Its like, all this work, all this mind-effort and planning and struggle to make it through…. And I’m here.

Experience. Life.

And what happens now, the people I connect to, what I feel and what unfolds from here…  we’ll see.”

 Joshua Gordon Berson – Tel Aviv, Israel, May 2018

[bersonwriter]

(...7 YEARS LATER...)

Alright... this is it.

I’m sitting in my Aunt’s house in New Jersey. It’s Sunday, the 6th of May, 2018. Looking back, it’s been about 7 years since my last entry on here.

As many of you who are reading this know, I wanted to write something online to document my travels, a form of reflection for me and source of information for those who want to follow my trip overseas this summer to the Middle-East and the UK, and maybe farther. I was going to just find a new blog site, and start anew there. And then I thought... I could use this one. It was still online. And in someways, the idea of bridging who I was then in 2011 at age 19, with the person I am now at 26 in the year 2018.... well, I sort of liked the idea. It’s message. We’re always in process of being different, changing, hopefully growing and becoming, and yet I feel on some level there is something within that is always there... who we are through it all. And if any of you are interested into looking into the mind of who I was freshman year in college... well, that’s there too. It’s... perspective.

I’m so different and I’ve been through so much struggle in this life, mostly inside of me. Somehow I made it through, and continue to do so as I struggle off and on. And now I’m flying across the world to go travelling and meet people and form new relationships and increase my awareness of the world as it really is in other places. I hope to have a great time, really learn a lot, and have a spectrum of human experiences my life has been lacking up until this point.

So here’s to the future, that is, the present (right now) and how it unfolds. Both for me, and for anyone out there who is reading this. I don’t really plan on writing a lot: maybe a few paragraphs, like this introduction entry, once a week or two. Maybe a couple of photographs too to go along with it. I think that’d be best. Bypass conventional social media, so if anyone wants to check-in without getting lost in the endless cyber-stimulus site distractions, they can go here. It won’t be a lot. I really intend for it to be, more than anything, a window into my life through time and the places and people I am encountering and connecting with. I hope you all who read this are also, even if you’re not travelling and having the same sort of day-to-day experiences, are finding the meaning and value in your life as well, wherever you are these next few months. It really can be there. I know it. It’s all about intention, and sincerity. Sometimes just really being with someone, and intending to really be there, can be as profound and life-altering as what I hope to experience travelling this summer. If anything that’s what I’m looking for, only in different and new places. 

I have a new, different look that I feel is a reflection of who I am at this point in life, and am ready for the future. It’s time.

Josh Berson

[bersonwriter]

 I set my expectations too high

they soar higher than the sky

and as a result, I die each day

I need to remember that

satisfaction lies in the embrace of finitude

it is where it can be found.

Grasping for affirming thoughts does not help

nor will it sustain itself.

Objectifying everything in the mind is not real to the persons whom you objectify

it only is to yourself

and so, skillfully live this life

because through presence, it can be okay

if you meditate everyday

not a formulaic approach to what is

but taking it as it is, and living this with truth

within the finitude of our lives

nothing is wrong, all is mind

though certain things can help us too

nothing is right, but certain ways

benefit the intangible something

next time you feel yourself bursting with thoughts and inexpressible ideas…

write them down, or talk to someone

that could possibly understand.

Like Steff.

Keep on, and do

with this life-itself, of finitude.

[bersonwriter]

Someone who could mean a lot. Sharing our lives, our thoughts, feelings, being, through conversation; listening, talking, intention. Human potential. Atmosphericals. Through the empty lighted streets of Prescott at night, during the day too, seeing what is together. This could mean a lot. Life-itself is here, for real.

    I spent the day at the Hopi reservation too, a village called Moenkopi. Sort of little road trip through Flagstaff to get there; I'll have to write this, today, in the future.

    There's a faint presence of hope for "all I need," for "all I want." For truth, and connection. Overall well-being, grounding, anchorage, and integrated everything. This can be okay. It is happening.

Someone who could mean a lot. Keep on, look within, and with people too. Rising above, and feet on the ground of life-itself. It's this; happening at this point in existence. End-of-January-2011. Inhale, exhale, breathe and know; it is. As it is. This is happening... and I need to believe, because it is true. Heart-truth. Keep on.

[bersonwriter]

I feel hope. Moving on again from someone, looking towards the possibility of it for real, in another. Someone like me. Possibilty.

    Ambiguity aside, I'd like to write a little bit about where I'm at, though nothing seems to apt to put here. I'll write that I bought a snowboard from this person named Derek who lives in north part of town, out towards Watson Lake and Method Coffee, where a friend of mine works. The board came with bindings too, and this killer bag that it all fits in (with a place for my boots too,) so it's excellent. Hopefully I'll be able to head up to Flagstaff, or even to Sunrise Park Resort, this intriguing place owned by the Apache people in sort of central-eastern Arizona, like 4 hours away or so from here in Prescott. I was looking at their trail maps earlier, and it definitely looks like a place I'd like to go, for sure. I own a climbing harness too now, one I bought from Granite Mountain Outfitters about a week ago or so. And new climbing shoes online, because up to this point it's all been barefoot. Mostly solo climbing, though maybe with this now and the relationships I'm starting to build, I'll be able to spend time with people that matter, and climb too. Definitely. Hopefully. Potentially. Likely.

     In the middle of last week, I was on a run. I went to the old railroad bridge, this intriguing place where they left the bridge and railroad ties (even though the tracks are no longer there)... a place that I've gone to frequently both on runs to stretch, but also when walking and wandering around Prescott.. it has a gravity to it, and I once spent a few hours talking there with someone who could've meant a lot back at the end of September.. sad, but that’s what happened. Point is, it's quite a place and I like it a lot. Next to the Sam Hill Warehouse, the art gallery and building that houses the photography darkroom, and courses for Art at Prescott College. Though it's off-campus on-campus, which is a feature of it (like the Granite Performing Arts Center, not too far away, also off-campus on-campus). What I mean by this is both of the buildings are not on-campus, but because they are owned by Prescott College, they technically are, of themselves. Though rather than explaining the history of this place, I wanted to write a snapshot of what happened there earlier in the week.

     While I was laying down the on ancient wooden boards between iron railroad pieces, someone walked up after reading the sign. He seemed like he was new to the area, and said that this was so. I stood up after stretching and talking for a few minutes, and we kept talking. He mentioned after I had said I was running that he had to wake up earlier and run 10 miles every damn day, and hated it. "All you'd get was bad knees, bad knees, bad knees." I turns out he was a veteran that left the army after a fair amount of time, and 2 tours in Iraq. He was getting some money to go to school, and when I asked said he was considering Prescott College. I told him I went there, and a little about the place itself, and the Block course I was currently in, "Spiritual Landscapes of the Indigenous Southwest." How I had two professors, one of them Hopi. And then he told me that was half-Navaho, and had spent time on the "rez" (reservation) learning about his heritage from them. He's also half-Irish, by the way. And I realize that I could write about this for hours, and the intent of this was a snapshot. I was interesting to him because I was only 19 years-old and yet had a uncommon perspective that intrigued him. We talked for a long time, he drank vodka and mountain dew, the sun went down and it grew dark, the stars came out and possibly the moon too. I ended up offering to walk him back to his place, after hearing a lot about this life and perspectives about what's happening now in this world, where we're at (especially here in the US, though all of it). His indignities at the way veterans aren't cared for properly, at the awfulness of war, about where the Native American are at now, about a lot. We ate Thai food a few minutes away when he mentioned food, and offered to buy me dinner. Profound, I thanked him for it. He ended up getting a ride with his Apache friend in his truck back to where he lived, because he wasn't quite in shape to walk back. I went with him to the Albertons (grocery store) parking lot where he was picked up, and said goodbye to this person who seemed to be in the midst a lot of struggle, both with family and his past, as well his place now. And then there was me, needing perspective and true comprehension of what "is..." and he definitively could provide me with a little of that. 

     With the same compassion that I felt when I chose to listen to him and ask him to tell me about his life-experience back at the railroad bridge, I turned back into the parking lot after leaving... because of a drunk homeless person I saw leaning up against the wall of the place. I went back over, and somehow felt the need to talk to him, because everyone else were probably shunning him or ignoring him out of disgust, pity, or even fear. He was talking to himself, had a large white beard, and wore some kind of baseball cap. I chose to sit with my back against the wall, and wait. That sort of mindfulness, and Zen-like willingness and ability to just sit, anywhere... is definitely helpful in relation to this kind of life-experience. I sat there for a few minutes, meditating. And, intriguingly enough, he stumbled over to me, leaning on the wall for support... and asked me if I was okay. He asked me? Yes. I told him I was alright, and looked back and reflected the question to him. In slurred speech the man looked at me and said "Owh, I'm awwwl ryeeight, awwwl ryeeight toooo." His substantial and unruly white beard was stained a yellowish brown above his lip, evidence of a lot of alcohol. I could smell it on his breath too, even though he was a few feet away from me still. He then walked on past me, asked a few people coming and and out of Albertons for money, and then went inside and sat on one of those benches that sometimes are right inside the automatic doors next tot he grocery carts. I chose to stand up at that point, walked in, and saw next to him. He repeated the question, with the waves of alcohol pouring out of him with every breath. Somehow, we started talking. I think it started with him asking me if I was okay again, and me asking him. He might've asked me what I wanted, and I said simply to listen to him. That I was a writer. And later on, I realize he thought I said "rider." Because he spent the next 10 minutes telling me that he was too. "Yeah maaahhn (that's how it sounded when he said man), I'm a rider too! I ride freight trains! Yeayh maaaaahhhan, freight trains! Mwaiy name is Mwaiichal Aallen," (Michael Allen). 

     I spend the next few hours with him and his buddy, name Pat, on some steps next to the parking lot of the same shopping complex, but a different place next to the Wells Fargo Bank. His friend wore all camouflage clothing, and had a bike packed with gear including food, a sleeping bag, and hiking boots. They sat there for hours, and I sat there and listened to them talk about whatever they felt like. A few times they asked if a wanted a cigarette or some of the alcohol (might have been whiskey, not sure.. it was in a plastic bag)... and I said no, and they conversated into the night. Eventually I stood up and said goodbye, to Pat (who was looking for work with his new bicycle that he actually made at HUB, the Helping Understand Bicycles program at Prescott College where you can come by and make a bicycle for free using the parts there, if you're willing to put the time and effort into doing it AND was trying to apply for a Pell Grant to finish his education which had done a little here and there in the previous 30 years) and to Michael Allen, and ran home, really cold (it was definitely cold and I was in a running hoodie and shorts)... with this new knowledge, insight, and awareness as to the life-experience of some people, living in the same place I now live. 

      That was a lot, and for some reason I felt like it'd be worthwhile to write about it here. Next week I think I'll look more into my own experience with people here and within, though I will add before I finish this that I have hope for Palo Verde this semester. The five of us here (Nate our RA is leading winter Orientation, and Preston is off doing Backcountry Skiing in Idaho for Block) had a little meeting/gathering of sorts, and made a plan for weekly cleaning and responsibility about it. I made breakfast (eggs and onion, haphazard fairly tasty omelete) and dinner too (leftover half-onion and half-eggplant stir-fried together)... its okay, and I feel like it's becoming even more, potentially. School-works alright, and Friday night I finished "No Begining, No End; The Intimate Heart of Zen" by Jakusho Kwong... a book that I feel, within. 

      Meditation, contemplation, and being with people. Heartfelt spontaneous truth-in-sincerity, all phrases pointing back to the life-path from within and with persons too... it's the start of 2011, and I continue to do all I can to amplify the human potential of my existence. As a bodhisattva, as a 19 year-old college kid, as this person that is me. It's here, this place-and-time, and no matter what; I will keep on, always now. From within, hopefully togetherness too, and conscious following, and living, with heart-truth. I mean it, I really do. For real.

[bersonwriter]

He looks at the sunset, the glowing yellow behind the granite rock boulders, structures, overlapping and layered with little trees in between. He thinks... I need to keep on. And do. 

And then, 24 hours later, he's at this laptop typing. And he thinks, "what to write?" And he writes this. And that's it. Maybe next week, it'll be more than a snapshot of being up on the granite next to Watson Lake, what he feels is more beautiful and stellar a place than any other in Arizona. He could mention the new convenience store outside of town with the friendly owner, his wife Rebecca, and their two kids Jose and Aureliano. Maybe he could mention his longings for someone who doesn't give a shit about him. Maybe he could acknowledge, as he chooses to do, that is is also not what is happening. That he has been so far within himself that it isn't possible that way. Though it's so close now, she's not going away until later, and as a result he can't move on. At least it's feeling, he reflects. That's a lot better than the numbness he's felt before. Not necessarily. Necessarily. He then contemplates whether or not to include the poem that he wrote in his Block course about it. And decides, okay. And he'll end with a question, and post. Here it is. And the typing it out like this might change everything. It could be exactly what's needed to pull him back into life-itself. That with his heart-truth within, is all he really wants. Needs. Okayness. And he types it up, to see what will be because of it.

Stop.

Your face is beautiful, it kills me

your sincerity is lovable

I yearn for you... and do not want to.

Stop.

Please, you're killing me.

You... hurt me with your inaccessibility

it causes heartache that won't go away

when you're here. It's like

a pressure that seizes my heart when I look at you.

Please go... and take these feelings

with you. 

They're unwanted, they kill me

and will not leave.

Please... take them...

with you.

And let me feel okay, without you.

And now, the question; is this fiction, or is this me? And that's not even directed at you, the someone who knows me. It's directed at me, to see if there is a spontaneous heartfelt truth, from within. "Follow your heart and the truth of the mind, of consciousness." It's likely that the next one will make a little more sense. For now, take this narrative (be it fiction or happening, or both) as something to read. The Kerouac's soul within lies far within, unable to surface and rejoin with me. I know it's possible, it's happened before. Soon. I'll open to it, focus to it, illuminate with effortless effort of willingness to pour myself into my existential responsibility to... as a poet, be true. And you. 

        Meditate and quietly listen, use voice and compassionately act through the opening. Believe in the spontaneous heartfelt conviction, for truth. As soon as you do, it will be. Keep on, and do. 19 years-old... I need to return to life-itself; people need me, including this person that is me. It's here. Illuminate. Here and now, as it is. Always now, definitively at this point... here. For real.

[bersonwriter]

It's late. Though I chose to keep on with this tumblr blog, and so I will continue to do so. I think all I'll write for now is that the previous few days back home in St. Louis for Thanksgiving break, especially the last 48 hours... meant a lot. Spending time with my parents, brother, and little sister. Then, I found; there are people, persons in my life, and... I might actually be in theirs. Like an atmospherical possibility of "it's real," and it's heartfelt and actually there.

     I'm not going to explain all of this, but maybe a short poem in reflection will do for now. I'll try that.

And her, a photographer, bread co, the future

and them, friends, myself too- a little fire amidst the icy night

not dying, but maybe "fulfilling itself", the metaphor we used

iceskating too, with each of them and him too

a confluence of experience, eating donuts on the back trunk in a parking lot, friends

leaving with a goodbye to him, into the next

actual conversation driving through the realm of our minds, together

contemplating, using voice, late into the night of roads, then a driveway still

keeping ourselves close enough to the shore with human contact, as he phrased it

though conscious of all we can actually do

bodhisattva, friend, and on I keep on

I think again about her, so alive and illuminative keeping on, a 

photographer, to Flagstaff, into the future and through

thoughts, emotional truths, as friends which is okay

that's it, this poem

back at Palo Verde

in the day-to-day

which can be a lot more, if only

you live it life-itself

from within and around you

life-path of truth-in-sincerity

it's you. And like Zen as well, it's

always now.

And on, end-of-November-2010. It's life-itself, and I keep on within it; the weaving together is all-truth of people, and that is happening. It is always now, and I write as a reflection for-itself to me and anyone else can read, can listen too; follow your heart, and the truth of your mind, of consciousness. It's you; always now.

[bersonwriter]

And it's a few days before I leave to return home for thanksgiving break. It's intriguing that it's been the full 12 weeks already, I moved into the Palo Verde House, into Prescott on August 26th. It's the 21st of November now. So much has happened, and in a way so little. A lot, and nothing. Actual relationships, and faded shadows of possibilities of maybes. I'm not thinking of a great way to phrase this entry, so I'll just write a bit of what's been happening within, and around me. 

I read a lot of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac yesterday, and it finally allowed me to rise above and actually feel like it all matters and I want to live it (life-itself), not just intellectually but emotionally too, as an actual person. I realize that I really can be a bodhisattva and a 19 year-old college student, though I've been thinking I might need to leave and come back, and actually live somewhere that is stunningly real and can ground me on earth. Then, I could come back to the college realm of study and reading and discussion. Maybe I won't need to leave, maybe it'd be what could really illuminate and amplify the virtue in my potential, and create life-experience to make a difference in my life, in others, and in... what "is". 

What I really need is... someone. The feelings that are inherently real and part of the human experience is that of love, of togetherness, of an all-truth found in being with people and- that's kind of what I need more than anything. I think of deleting this entire passage because it's tremendously personal, but what is "personal"? If I want to live my life and write like Kerouac and the beatniks, because their atmosphere-of-being and writing resonates with me in the realm of my consciousness, and heart... then I need to write and write and write and write and write and write and everyone and anyone can read it, and maybe language can actually convey my life-experience.

I look forward to seeing my family in a few days, and the few people I think I can actually consider friends at this point that I kind of actually got to know through out the summer occasionally... because the end of high school I was existentially separate from it all, though there... I could write about all that in another entry. I went to a Latino-Anglo Alliance dance to volunteer with Jeremy (one of my roommates at Palo Verde) at the Smoki Place, a kind of anthropology museum across from the skatepark at Ken Lindley park about a twenty minute walk from where I live on campus. It was a worthwhile experience, I met this vibrant bilingual guy name Ray who helped plan the event, middle-aged and born of Mexican parents who both live now in Prescott. Hablé con personas latinos, y fue muy bien to be able to talk, to actually use Spanish and see it as what it actually is; a real fluidity of communication, an idioma, a language for people. I also met someone, a girl who was helping out at the "bar", and said I'd read her scholarship essay that she told me about when we were talking about colleges; I think she's sending it to me online, and I definitely plan on reading it.

A lot has happened, and nothing. That's not a great way of articulating it, but I'm allowing the thoughts to flow out onto the page through my typing fingertips for a truth-in-sincerity of voice. You know?

I think that's all I'll write. I'll finish it by saying that I continue to meditate each day, recently started to get to know this incredible guy Patrick (actually last night, on the way back from the dance) who's from Illinois and walks barefoot everywhere and after talking to him about it I'm trying it now, and overall... I continue to try and weave together this kind of bodhisattva/consciousness/poet/philosopher atmosphere-of-being, with that of just living in the always now, with people, having life-experiences... and living within life-itself. And on... as I live.