I am in my room at the Jacaranda Guest House, on the South African Astronomical Observatory campus, at the base of Table Mountain, Cape Town. Outside my bedroom, the storm is intensifying again as it has come and gone all day. The window panes of this more than one hundred year old house rattle with the buffeting of the wind. The winter rains have come to Cape Town and it is time for me to depart.

I have found here an unexpected sense of community, a place where scientists from around the world come together to study the universe, to gain an understanding of where we came from and where we are going to. At the same time, these scientists make time to give back to their local community through an active outreach program, sharing their passion for astronomy with school-age children throughout the country.

Therein lies the magic of astronomy, the oldest of sciences which continues to engage the imagination. When we look to the night sky overhead, we see not just points of light but distant worlds which may be vastly different from our own or similar in their capacity to harbor life on both sea and land.

We see not just a handful, but hundreds of billions of galaxies each of which contains hundreds of millions of stars, the majority of which we believe have planets. Our dreams of what may be are overwhelmed for the numbers are greater than anything we use in our daily life.

If I were to attempt to count the impact of precipitation on the tin roof in the midst of this storm, and then the number of molecules in each drop of rain and the number of atoms, protons, and quarks of which they are composed, I may run the risk of losing enjoyment of the winter storm.

Yet this is what astronomy enables: a study of the inner workings of stars which takes us directly to the fundamental building blocks of matter and the formation of life itself while invoking a view of the immense scale of all that we see, both with the naked eye and through the increasingly capable instruments we employ.

Astronomy invokes astronomical numbers which challenge the best of mathematicians, and yet the theories have a means of reaching non-mathematicians with intrigue for the smallest of scales and majesty of distant, unreachable places.

I prepare myself to leave this place and know it will be missed. No where else do daily conversations range from the recovery of a country mired in a terribly complex socio-economic disparity to the theories which enable life to exist on the vast number of exo-planets, more of which are discovered each year.

No where else is my passion for telling the stories of the human condition interwoven with my craving for knowledge about the underpinnings of the rapidly expanding universe.

One year ago this month I posted “What I Learned From the Road” as a tribute to all that had come and gone for me in the prior nine months of transition and growth. This past year has also been a time for tremendous change and opportunity to learn.

I moved frequently between Phoenix, Colorado, Idaho, and Seattle. I completed more than two dozen short films and shot a sci-fi based on short stories I had written more than twenty years prior. I ventured to Hawaii to help a friend work on his house and witness the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. I walked across fields of flowing lava and filmed one of the most spectacular events I have ever witnessed–the unfolding beauty of new earth given form.

When the intoxicating sulfur and tremendous heat moved me to run but at the same time begged me to remain in order that I would be consumed, I was more alive then than at most any other time in my life.

I sold my house and lived for six weeks on a remote ranch in Colorado. I ran through the mountains without concern for trails, every day swam naked in the pond, and fell to sleep to the howl of the coyotes and bugle of the elk.

In September I moved to East Jerusalem where I rebuilt a website and produced short documentary and educational films. When the rockets came down on both Israel and Palestine, I wept for the pain of knowing people were dying not far from where I stood. In those hours, I found comfort in the hot tea and warm embrace of a Muslim shop keeper who didn’t judge those who hurt others, rather, he simply prayed they find peace.

I moved to Holland for full-time work but found myself again in motion when my job was abruptly terminated. I recovered in the warm embrace of family friends in Germany. Just two weeks later I was robbed while switching trains in Paris and arrived to Barcelona with but the clothes on my back, cell phone, some cash, and my camera bag. This year has repeatedly confronted me with the challenge of finding grounding in ungrounding times.

I was for the first time in my adult life fully accepted for all that I am without request that I change, only to be asked to let go of the expectation for that love, in the end. I am reminded that nothing truly beautiful remains the same for long.

Sometimes I desire nothing more than a normal life. Sometimes I cherish experiencing this world in a way that is impossible if I were to remain still. From this place of constant transition, I again offer what I have learned from the road.

Trust in who I know I am.
Always challenge myself to improve, but do not second guess my motivation.

I am a whole person even when I lose everything.
For as vulnerable as I may feel when I lose my material possessions, by happenstance or through direct confrontation—for as empty as I may be when I lose love, time has a way of rebuilding, of reminding what we yet retain.

Emotions are a filter to reality.
Despair and fear are but chemical responses designed to keep us from making the same mistakes over and over again. Joy is not a destination but also a temporary, passing filter to the same situation. In the sometimes nonsensical manner in which we have evolved, the signatures that flood our synaptic pathways also cause us to fall into patterns of behavior which are self-defeating.

The power of saying nothing is often greater than explanation.
Be comfortable in my own decisions and the path I create every day. I do not need to explain my actions in every situation.

Recognize the patterns of history then move ahead to an improved future.
Learn from what I have done in the past, from what those around me have done too. There are good patterns to copy and those which we should avoid. Only through looking back can we move ahead with opportunity to improve.

Don’t be attached to outcome.
Recognize what I did well and what I could have done better. Learn from my mistakes. Above all, believe I did the best I could, in the moment, given what I had to work with.

Last year a friend asked “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?” My answer came to me quickly, “I would do exactly what I am doing now. I would not change a thing no matter how much money I was given.” I am seeking a place on this planet (or the next) in which my skills and experience and passion find opportunity to serve others while at the same time encouraging me to be my best.

No amount of money can purchase a sense of direction. No bank account balance can provide true satisfaction. No amount of love from anyone can cause me to love myself. I have all that I need, right here, right now.

Maybe now is the time to do nothing. Maybe now is the time to do everything at once. Maybe now, finally, is the time to just move step by step in order that I am living in the moment and not afraid of what unfolds next. The world is open to me when I let go of fear.

I participated in the Nike University Run tonight.

It was an exciting, crazy, wild run of more than two hundred amateur and professional runners through the old and new city streets. We raced through traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and through narrow alleys lined with tables, chairs, street performers and salesmen.

Each runner had to reach five places shown (roughly) on a map before the final destination in order to be allowed into the bar where Nike gave each participant a shirt, water, and hot dogs, and played dance music.

Each location for the card punch also presented a challenge, physical or mental. The first was a line of U.S. style football players in full gear. Each runner had to line up and rush through. I got hit in the nose (unintentionally) and was instantly bleeding. As I ran past restaurants I grabbed napkins and then deposited them in the next trash can. Between restaurants the sleeves of my polar fleece became soaked. I kept bleeding. I kept running. It was just too much fun to stop.

As we moved from the open streets to the closed, narrow corridors off Las Ramblas, we picked up the pace and moved with greater agility. Arms over our heads to avoid knocking down children, ducking beneath restaurant patron umbrellas, leaping over handrails and intersection barriers. There is something compelling about running in the close proximity of many runners and even more moving objects (shoppers with too many bags, kids in strollers, small dogs) for the sense of motion is accelerated and the pleasure in movement amplified. My energy never waned, as though I were pressed along by those to my rear and pulled by those to my front.

My favorite part was the look on the faces of those we ran past, their heads spinning as packs of runners ran in one direction, then realizing they missed a turn, spun on their heels and shot back past the unwary spectator-participants sometimes more than a few times.

My debit card is expired. My credit card does not work in all but a few places in this country. I have only the cash remaining from what I borrowed from my former employer Bas. I am wearing borrowed jeans and jacket, riding a borrowed bicycle, and living in a borrowed camper. My water lines are frozen. I awake each morning to the sounds of animals at the local zoo next door. I ran out of toilet paper a week ago, borrowing from any rest room I can find, wrapping it around my hand and stuffing into my pockets to make it another day.

I question what skills I have that make me employable and as I walk through the old city corridors, my black hoodie pulled to the sides of my face and across my forehead, gloved fingers deep in borrowed pockets. Alone in an alley, I struggle to locate the train station which I believe is on the other side of an adjacent building.

This is how it happens. This is how people fall that one last step.

I walked along the tracks, the only place in this country even remotely dirty. The well dressed people stood on the other side of the steel lines, at the end of the station, staring. My head was bowed as I moved through industrial shadows, pulling on doors in attempt to find my way into the back of the station and out of the cold.

I remember a time when I was the CEO of a supercomputing company, VPs at IBM and lead engineers at Lockheed Martin called upon my team to solve their problems. If only they could see me now, my pockets stuffed with toilet paper, my hands numb from the cold, my stomach empty until I can again boil a packet of Chinese noodles in water I carry back to my camper each day.

Was that me? Did I run that company? Did I stand in front of engineers at NASA, confident we could help process images from Spirit and Opportunity?

I am not that person now. I have lost that edge, the confidence, that ego which says “I can” no matter the challenge. I walked further, my mind wandering to how I might borrow cash from a stranger for a train ticket to Germany or nab an apple from a grocer without being caught—anything to avoid borrowing more money from the man who fired me two days ago. He already sees me as so small, incapable, and weak.

I can do it. I can rise again. But where do I start?

I returned to my camper, feeling safe inside despite the bitter cold. In the comfort of tat tiny, temporary, mobile home I was reminded of the relative wealth I do have and the good fortune to have family and friends who would help me if I could not find my way home again.

Homelessness is a psychological state more than a physical one. I was, for that week, thinking much like the homeless people I have met in so many cities, across many countries. I wanted to shout at passing strangers and urinate on public property. As a nameless, faceless, jobless nobody it didn’t matter any more—I had nothing to prove and no one to prove it to. I was, even if but for a few days, no longer one of them.

I tried to picture myself standing in front of a VP for a job interview, and in that image I could not make eye contact. I could not see myself without this over-sized jacket, pockets stuffed with toilet paper, fingers numb from the cold. I was not able to see myself succeed. That is what it truly means to be homeless. It’s not about the physical ownership of a building, but the inability to see oneself as anything but alone, in the alley, angry at the world, while those who have everything stare from the other side of the tracks, wondering who or what I am.

In a spontaneous moment of desire to be with family, I decided to follow my father back to the U.S. after his two weeks stay with me here in East Jerusalem. I packed a single carry-on bag and left my camera gear behind. The flight back to the U.S. was without issue. But in return, I was told the plane was full and I had to check my bag at the bottom of the ramp, just before boarding the plane. There was not a lot of time to think, and my hands can carry only so many items. I boarded with a book and the pairs of climbing and running shoes I had slung over my shoulder.

I arrived to Tel Aviv … but my bag did not. After five days of calling Delta, morning and night, yesterday an account manager declared my bag officially lost. They have twenty one days to locate it before we begin what I can only assume will be an arduous process of negotiation. I can only hope that as my bag was not intended to be checked, the value of its contents more than $4300, I will be given some consideration.

In the process of working through this ordeal, I discovered a highly broken system in which no one is held accountable and what’s worse, there is little anyone can do when I am told over and over again that internal to Delta, both phone and email are prohibited—only their internal messaging system is used for lost & found. Each time I called the conversation started the same way, “Mr. Staats. We are doing everything we can to locate your suitcase.”

To which I would respond, “It’s not a suitcase. It is a professional photographer’s backpack.”

“Oh? Well, the system says only ‘black bag’.”

“What? In Tel Aviv I completed a full report. Did that not get entered into the system?”

“Is says only ‘black bag’ Mr. Staats.”

“Unbelievable. I called yesterday and gave the entire description.”

“I am sorry Mr. Staats, but there is no data in your file other than ‘black bag’.”

This happened three days in a row, for a total of a half dozen calls. Each time I gave the full description. Each time the data was not entered despite that person’s promise. Once, the conversation went something like this.

I was nearly shouting, “What?! I just spoke to an account manager this morning. She said she entered the bag description and contents. Again. What exactly is happening on that end? Do you just say you are entering data but not doing anything?”

“Mr. Staats. Sometimes, when people speak too quickly, or say too much, it is difficult for us to enter all they provide.”

“I answered the questions given to me. No more. No less. I described the contents.”

“We need only three or four unique items. What you have given to me is too much.”

“Uh, ok. So you are saying that if someone gives too much information, nothing is entered at all?”

“Mr. Staats, I am just saying it says only ‘black bag’.”

I attempted to clarify, but she interrupted me time and time again. I sensed this could go downhill quickly, and if I heard my name used in that horribly controlling tone again, I was going to scream.

“How many black bags do you believe are in your warehouse at JFK?”

“Thousands sir.”

“Right. So five days into this, the process of searching for my bag has not yet begun.”

But this is where it got really strange.

“Sir. We have had the tag number from the start. We have been searching for the tag.”

To which I responded, “And what if the tag fell off?”

“Oh. We have a very sophisticated destroyed tag location system.”

This was starting to feel like a bad dream or an episode from “The Twilight Zone.” My head was starting to spin, the quagmire taking hold and squeezing my brain. I took a deep breath, “A what?”

“A destroyed tag location system,” she repeated.

“That makes no sense. How can you locate a tag if it is destroyed? If there is no tag, there is nothing to locate!”

“It’s very sophisticated.” I had nothing to say. She continued, “Sir, we find thousands of bags every year. In fact, we just found one today.”

This implied they also lost thousands of bags every year. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

I said, “So. Let me get this straight. My bag is listed only as black. It may or may not have a tag. The tag may be destroyed. But your sophisticated destroyed tag location system will find both the tag and my bag?”

“Yes Mr. Staats, that is correct.”

I could think only that Delta should be employed to search for missing socks in laundromats, or for missing children around the world.

She concluded, as they always do, “Thank you for choosing Delta. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

How, exactly, does one respond?

For many years now, I have witnessed an increasing reliance on the dish washer, that seemingly indispensable kitchen aide which not only cleans forks, knives, cups and bowls, but our children’s (and pets’) toys too. While the discussion of water savings remains open to debate, so many variables related to the make, model, and efficiency of the dishwasher versus gas or electric water heater, whether you fill the sink or wash each item individually—I have discovered that only with a dishwasher can one have a kitchen full of wares and yet not be able to find a single clean fork, cup, or plate.

Because the dish washer reaches its maximum energy and water use efficiency only when full (which is also when it cleans the poorest), an incredible amount of effort is spent in moving items from the cupboard to the table to the dishwasher and back to the cupboard again. A perpetual, daily ritual which in my opinion, is a modern day unfolding of Sísyphos in Hades.

Instead, I maintain the One Dish Rule: one bowl, one dish (plate), one fork and one spoon.

Here at Victoria Guesthouse on Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, by the very nature of the “Clean your own dishes” policy, we wash our dishes immediately after eating, no matter if we prepared a full meal or indulged in a mid-day snack.

It is simple, fast, and efficient. The One Dish Rule establishes a strong sense of personal responsibility as no one desires to be “that person” who doesn’t clean his or her dishes. What’s more, it is an opportunity to do something kind for another guest whom you have just met, to offer to clean their dishes while you are at the sink. Best of all, we are never for need of a clean utensil, even when thirty or forty people come and go in a single day. If, on the other hand, we were to load a dishwasher, they would either run it half full or walk away, assuming someone else would take care of it later.

What’s more, I have fond memories as a child of washing and drying dishes with my parents. We would take turns, my brother and I matched with either our mother or father, standing on a small metal step stool to reach the counter. It was a time to talk, laugh, tell stories, and to be together, side by side. I felt important and part of the team. I do not recall ever declining the opportunity, and to this day when I visit, I prefer to wash dishes by hand for the chance to talk rather than load and unload the dishwasher.

For those concerned with the spread of germs, this topic invokes the need to address several issues: the misunderstanding of “Kills 99% of harmful bacteria,” surfactants, full drying through evaporation, and the nature of an immune system in a “sterile” environment compared to one comprised of a full-featured set of antibodies and response mechanisms. Topics for another time …

Where you were …
A friend wrote to me, Multiple times I caught myself giggling at the joy of being by myself. In my tent, on the beach, playing my guitar, building a fire, roasting marshmallows, writing—enjoying the distinct pleasure of doing whatever felt right in the moment. No outside input other than birds, squirrels, and waves crashing. I realize in this moment, as clear as anything, I have never done this before. I have never flowed from activity to activity without consulting a parent, a husband, a child, a friend, or a lover. The day is mine, and I am moved by it.

I do not want to leave here. But know eventually I must. I feel so safe, so secure, so okay. That may sound silly, but I think most of us stumble about hoping to encounter a feeling … that justifies who we are and what we do. A feeling that says we are okay. Until we find that feeling within, we are drawn to anyone or anything that offers a framework for our existence, our own well being tied to subjective opinions and belief systems. It is a precarious way to live but most of us do.

… and where you are now.
Now I am struggling. How did I go from feeling so good, completely independent, to this? It happens so quickly.

Do not see this is a failure, to have gone from feeling independent to needing again. You have not lost the one who was ok being alone. You are there, inside, ready to come alive again.

That sense of complete comfort, inside, comes and goes, by the hour, by the day, or by the week. When it is gone, you are not weak. When it is present, you are not strong. It is simply a measure of boundaries, clarity, and peace of mind. It is that wonderful place where everything comes together in a single, linear process which has no start and no end, but is always in motion.

You experienced your first waking meditation, the ability for the human mind and body to find peace in a waking, walking, climbing, working moment, not unlike that incredible place you go when you write or compose songs. But this time, it lasted for two whole days and gave you a sense of freedom like nothing you have ever experienced before.

I have been there countless times before and strive to be there every chance I get—in my Subaru, backpacking, sleeping in my tent, at Holden last year, the cave in the Superstitions this past spring, and the Ranch in Colorado this summer. This is why I make time to be alone. One, two, even three days without phone or email. That is the only way to find that place.

For me, and perhaps for you, that is the perfection of the human experience. Once you have tasted it, you will crave it for the rest of your life. The challenge then lies in finding someone with whom you can spend your days and nights and yet remain connected to the bliss of solitude.

“Essentially, there is no longer any natural selection in motion. Humans are in charge of our evolution, more from social pressure than availability of resources,” –Ron Spomer

This airport, perhaps more than any in the world, offers a snapshot of the diversity and complexity of human kind.

Olympians in wheelchairs glide across polished marble floors. A Spanish woman with painted-on-jeans and stylish high heels walks side-by-side, in stride with a woman wearing a black jilbab and full head dress. I am overheating with my pants, T-shirt, and sport coat and wonder how the latter fairs beneath so many more layers, carrying her luggage and that of her child who walks behind the two of them.

In the Giraffe Cafe, employees make eye contact with their patrons and do not hesitate to touch, tickle, and tease the children who wait in line, giving them cause to laugh while their parents review the eight pages menu.

Perhaps it is my transient point of view which enables me to feel there is less fear here, less concern for the strange and stranger, less inhibition or concern for lawsuit, and a tolerance or the unordinary. But then I am reminded of the global concern of terrorism, “For security reasons, unattended baggage will be removed and destroyed” broadcast again and again over the PA system in a few languages.

British Airways announcements cut through the background voices in German, French, Arabic, English and Spanish. Everything echoes in this large space. I pull on my coat and backpack, grab my camera bag in my right hand and tripod in left, walking in any direction which will take me from the shops to an exterior view.

The choice seats are taken by an elderly couple who face large four storey windows. I am to their back, looking out over the tarmac and runways, a Virgin Atlantic jet having just taken off. Low, heavy clouds roll by slowly, unable to cast shadows for the sunlight is masked by layer upon layer above them. England retains its weather no matter what else may change.

A Coca-Cola vending machine dispenses flavoured “vitamin water,” a reminder of the global tragedy that bottled water has become, the intention of cola manufacturers to sell water as their consumers grew concerned for the ill effects of sugar ladened soft drinks. And now, fragments of those bottles float in plastic islands the size of the State of Texas in the North Pacific.

I cannot help but wonder how many cubic meters, how many tons of garbage are generated each day by a facility such as this. While there are recycling containers at every gate, outside each restaurant and restroom, the fact remains that the vast majority of the consumer waste has no long term function, only the immediate transport of food items from a clerk’s hands to the consumers face. A waxy tissue would suffice, but that would require the food to be fresh, made in the cafe instead of transported their each morning, pre-assembled. Just one byproduct of mass production on the human food scale.

The main terminal is an impressive feat of engineering, the largest tensile structure I have ever been within. It’s massive lateral anchors held in place by bolts that likely weigh as much as my entire body. Sheathed cables run across the entire floor, some thirty feet overhead, their tension from one exterior wall to the other what keeps the roof from collapsing under its own weight.

And now, it is time to go …

While is not my style to use my blog as a personal diary, my summer has been scattered, no more than seven days in any one place before I pack my things and move on again. While I love to travel, my sense of adventure has been overridden by a growing need for home, one place to come back to for more than just a few days. The following are fragments of my thoughts, beginnings of what could have been full entries for From the Road, but instead, they were interrupted by my own cognition and as such, are presented here in their entirety.

July 5
Today, I drove back to Colorado from Boise, returning to my house and home of fourteen years for the first time in nearly ten months. I walked in and found everything exactly as I had left it. My plants yet alive thanks to the effort of my neighbor Pete and my mother (when she is in town) who have watched over things while I was traveling. It immediately felt like home, and yet, at the same time, unfamiliar, as vacant as it was when last September I ran away from home.

If I was not here to sell my house, I’d wash my clothes, clean my car, change the oil, and hit the road again.

July 10
I moved the first of my things into storage. It felt strange, constricting even, to take much of what represents me from a living, breathing space which I created into a small, poorly lit room. Inside, I fear my inventions, my art, my photographs and books will shrivel and die without the light of day.

But at the same time, my life is wonderfully consolidated, enabling me to expand again without the confine of material things which own me.

July 15
The sale of my house was to have happened tomorrow, but the bank has postponed the closing without a clear, next date. It is a little after 9 pm in Fort Collins, Colorado and warm enough for the children to play in a water fountain and not catch cold, but cool enough to wear long pants or a wind breaker. Perfect. The way Colorado is so much of the year.

I now sit near a piano, on the edge of the water park. Kids are running, jumping, playing with the water fountains as they bubble, spit, and shoot perfect liquid tubes and ribbons over the top of them. The children intentionally, even if with some trepidation place their bodies in the path of the water projectile and then squeal with delight when their clothes are soaked, their parents taking pictures instead of scolding.

July 20
I have returned to Buffalo Peak Ranch, a 270 acre ranch owned by a long-time family friend and one of the most beautiful pieces of land in the West. Last year we installed a large solar PV array which provides more than that consumed by the ranch. The system includes backup battery power and a grid-tied inverter such that the owner now covers his bills, and then some.

The ranch hand Trevor and I just completed a long day working on a three sided barn built of logs, fallen trees killed in the Hayman fire some ten years ago, dragged down the hill behind the ATV. I am at peace, my body aching in that wonderful way it is able only after physical labor, my mind at ease for the sounds of this place are only those of the wind, trees, coyotes, and occasional squeak and slam of the cabin door.

If you sit very still, and listen carefully, you can hear the bark beetles chewing their way through the fallen, dry trees.

August 1
I closed on the sale of my house of fourteen years. It didn’t feel as big a deal as I had anticipated, but after ten months of travel, perhaps it was just the next logical step for I had moved on some time ago.

Everything I own (save my 100 years old piano which now resides in Denver, on loan and well cared for) fits neatly into a 6×8 storage unit and the back of my car. Aside from my carpentry tools, it is nearly 100% emotional in context: books, music, my inventions, and a few antiques, dormant until I again find a place for them to breathe. Feels good to be officially homeless, no longer just denying that I have a place that no longer feels like home.

Ah! Here I go again, settled but for a few days, weeks at a time …

August 5
The thrill of the landing of Curiosity!

Earlier today Ann Druyan said it best, that scientists disagree but never kill each other over their differences. This is what science is about, people working together to improve our present understanding of our world in order to improve our shared future independent of all the little things that otherwise push us apart. Curiosity is not just a machine testing the soil for life, it is an extension of our species arriving just slightly ahead of us, to pave the way.

August 8
I walked from my Ron & Betsy’s to downtown Boise. The temperature is in the mid to high nineties. I don’t mind, for it feels good to walk, to just be outside and away from the computer.

I worked from a cafe ’till night. Rounding the corner, I noticed a number of people spray painting the alley side walls of the downtown buildings. Obviously not hiding their art, these truly exceptional paintings were commissioned by the city, and from what I can tell, painted over previous generations, a tradition in downtown Boise.

Half the distance to my favorite cafe, I passed an elderly man walking slowly, his feet barely lifting from the ground, shuffling as older men and women do sometimes. His grey pants were neatly pressed, cotton, button-down shirt tucked into his pants. His hands were interlaced behind his back and I wondered, Will I be so dignified when I am no longer able to run, climb, or bike?

August 9
Ron, Betsy, Sarah, Chris and I went to the Boise River today, to play and swim in the cool, fast flowing water. What a simple, deeply satisfying joy. I ask myself, How do I forget the pleasure in this? Why do I not do this every summer day? Eager to return.

August 13
Today is the first day of this entire summer that I feel present, accounted for, and truly in my own mind and body. It feels good, finally, to return to this place. I am alone, without music or entertainment of any sort. I hear only the buzz of humming birds, the breeze working to rattle the aspen trees, and when inside the cabin at this isolated ranch, the tick of the clock.

I have found that my brain and body are wired for stress, for constant stimuli and interruption. Email and social media have become my undoing, mechanisms that create a sense of connectivity, but at the price of my lost creativity. It is only with a few days in a row in which I am uninterrupted, two weeks without having to pack my bags and travel again that I find my passion for writing and music and film coming to me freely.

And so I have initiated a plan, a rigid schedule which will enable me to find my passion again.

I start the day with reading from a novel, something light and fun while still in bed, the morning light and heat warming the blanket on my bed. I rise, drink a large glass of water, grab a yoga mat or large bath towel and make my way outside. In the sun or shade, depending upon the time and intensity of the sun, I meditate for twenty or thirty minutes and then either practice yoga or go for a cross-country run and swim in the cold pond. I return to spend the day barefoot, in the cabin or outside, working on my Kickstarter campaign, completing client projects, and preparing for living in Palestine.

It’s working. I am finding flow again. Finally, after six months, since the day I left Holden, I am beginning to feel like me again …

August 19
Last night I was taken on a journey into the darkness of a sheltered sea. By paddle we moved silently between the San Juan islands, not knowing what creatures swam beneath us. The moon nearly new, the sun set, and a light layer of clouds gave way to the ideal conditions by which we could not only witness, but interact with the bioluminescence, naturally occurring organisms that in this form, when stimulated through kinetic energy generate their own light.

A single fingertip set lightly in the water left a trace six, ten, even twelve inches long that glowed with a blue-white light. Five fingers created a mesmerizing flurry of glowing sea and an entire paddle, when swished back ‘n forth generated so much light that it would swirl blue and white for as far as I could see, behind me, when I turned within the confines of the kayak and spray skirt.

It is difficult to describe, and the camera I brought was unable to capture that level of light. But in my mind, I yet recall clearly the illuminated wake as it cut back from the bow, the glowing dots on my paddle and palm, and the sense of awe at something so beautiful and yet completely unknown to me until I experienced it first hand.

August 22
I have taken a significant chance at further self-destruction in order to give opportunity to grow. Indeed, the risk was worth taking for we are healing. Thank you.

August 27
A dear friend sent this to me, today, a well timed and well received reminder to give both reason and passion their rightful place and rightful place each day.

“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements? Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.” –Kahlil Gibran