I've been remiss in posting my travels over the past eighteen months.  Spending too much time enjoying the experiences, and not documenting what I encountered.  So the next series of posts will attempt to remedy. 

Spent six weeks in Cuba and Belize, one week in La Habana, and the rest traveling the countryside. Beautiful, yet improvised, particularly Cuba. Some parts of each city were refurbished, the rest were a testament to the paucity of services available under a Communist rule.Younger people have been indoctrinated since birth, and, although secretively, they have access to the Western world, they still reject its basic tenets. No sense in arguing, because their perspective is too narrow.  And, they have not been taught to challenge what they hear or read.

I realize I've reached the time
That I must be selective
As to what my preferences will be.

I’ll continue to toss a coin
To determine the direction I should go.
Speed and haste will not be a concern,

My pace will remain slow,

I do not waste my energy
On things that can't be changed.
If I spent time on past mistakes,
I’ll have wasted precious time.

.
Life has much to offer
To each of us.
I hope to conquer many things
Before my time is done.

I spent the past four months sailing a 42' catamaran from the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) to, and through the Panama Canal, then northward to a private marina south of Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico.  Along the way we, I and might two hired hands Christian and Charlotte, stopped in Panama, Costa Rica and various ports in Mexico.  Lovely journey, with narrow brushes with tropical storms, one hurricane, choppy seas and fantastic downwind sailing.

Now back in Palm Springs, where I'm making repairs on my tiny home, as well as planning my next sailing adventure.  Holidays are arriving soon, and it will be great to be back in the SF Bay area meeting friends and family. 

Here are some photos from the ten week sail.

I had forgotten about this poem, written in the early 1960s, as a protest against the Vietnam War. It resonates even more today. The original follows, from Khalil Gibran, written in 1933

Poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"PITY THE NATION"
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerers
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest. 

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. 

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening. 

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block. 

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking 

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again. 

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. 

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet

Beautiful rendition!

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” 

- Anaïs Nin

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.” 

- Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

Our body is just something you accumulated. It is a piece of earth you imbibed through food... Your body is on loan from the planet. All the countless numbers of people who have lived on this planet before you and me have all become topsoil, and so will you. This planet will collect back atom by atom what it has loaned to you...

If one is constantly, experientially aware that both the body and the mind are accumulations one has gathered, then that is samadhi. You are in the body, but you are not it. You are of the mind, but you are not it. That means that you are absolutely free of suffering because whatever suffering you have known enters you either through the body or through the mind. Once your awareness is keen enough to create a space between these two accumulations and who you really are--this is the end of all suffering.

-- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (with Cheryl Simone),
Midnights with the Mystic

One Regret

One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have 

when I am lying on my deathbed is that 

I did not kiss you enough. 

— Hafiz

I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

I long for You so much

I have even begun to travel

Where I have never been before.

-- Hafiz