HAZARDOUS PIONEERS

Slacklife: My first piece of published writing!

2011-11-30T13:38:00.002+07:00

My first ever published piece of writing! Very happy with it...lots of photos and an awesome video to watch too, here - http://www.maverickslacklines.co.uk/2011/11/uk-slackline-collective/

SlackLondon: A peek into the SlackLife

2011-09-21T17:26:00.012+07:00

Friday

It was one of those mornings that started with sweaty sex.
The kind that burns calories. Fellas know that if you want to start your day jacked and natural, relieving the morning glory is a good way to go.
And if that wasn’t enough, what is it about walking round someone else’s apartment, naked, air-guitaring to Jimi Hendrix that is so invigorating?

With more energy than expected from my packet of chocolate buttons and a fromage-frais breakfast, I decided to set myself a mission.
Not two days ago had I bought a cool earring, and I’d taken even less time to lose it.
My mission - to find it.
Needle in a haystack.
Earring in London.
You get the idea.

But I felt lucky.
Sat on the tube, I ran a montage. There, before my feet was the silver ring, glinting, as if the sun had found the sacred spot. I felt like Indiana, mounting that medallion onto his staff.

The tube took a sharp turn, and then another ten. Jerked from my daydreams, I rationalise the ridiculous probability of finding my earring. I smile to myself, taking a deep breath in as 8 civilians cram themselves into a 3-man spot, along the train’s aisle and along my face.

I was off to Victoria Park. Not only the sacred burial ground for my earring, but the location for the 2011 SlackLondon festival, which I was rumoured to have been organising.

In true balls out fashion, I had set Victoria Park as the location disclosed to the public, yet not cleared our slacking permission with the park’s ranger service. And, the previous day on my first visit ever, I had managed to lose something. Things were looking bright.

Friday, during a British September, doesn’t conjure up images of perspiring brows or uncomfortably aligned underwear. Yet that’s what half of the city of London was experiencing. With an extra third of my body weight in rucksacks, I waddled into the park’s grounds, mentally grinning at the weekend ahead of me. What would it hold? Who would I meet? Who else’s shower would I operatically dismantle before clocking awkward eyes with the neighbour? Universe, give me a sign!

Bags down, roughly the same number of paces from the trees as you sat yesterday. Look for bottle cap dug into floor, and snapped twig the width of a chippolata sausage.

Looking. Found the cap. Still Looking. Found the twig. 15 minutes later, but still no earring. Sweating. Hopeless. I quit.

I bent down to pick up my bags, letting the frustration of losing something wash over me. Just then, as my hand reached for the backpack strap, the most glorious glint pierced my gaze like a heavenly gift.

That was it.
That was the omen.

From here on in, everything would fall into place, and I, into a deep sleep.
Blanket down under a shady canopy, Tom Sawyer position. I lit a pipe and drifted slowly in to my central city siesta.
The slacking wouldn’t begin for another hour or two. Perfect.

I awoke to a vibrating lump of plastic, hovering over my chest. Nothing to worry about. Friends were calling to say they had arrived. A dump of internal chemical excitement hit my veins. I was wired to go!

The first thing Aborigines do when they arrive at a new location is to set and burn a fire. With nomadic slackers, they rig lines.
The three of us put up what lines we had. Not just to slack with, but to show presence. SlackLondon was born. And it felt incredible.
Tunes, sunshine, slacklines and an open invitation the whole of the country. Things were looking peachy indeed.

Britain was in a good mood, and that was reflected in its sky. So good in fact, that Jake was able to set up his solar powered sound system. It wasn’t long before the public were captivated. City workers stopped their stomps momentarily, squinting their eyes to see if we really were levitating. A couple even joined in and tried the lines out. From 3 we grew to about 30 plus. Not bad for a facebook event’s page and a paper plate sign I ductaped to one of the park’s infinite gate entrances.

A few hours in and the rangers had pulled up.
‘Sorry mate, but we don’t allow slacklining in this park.’
Heart drops to my arse. It was an inevitable situation, but still, the imaginary version didn’t have the same, gut-wrenching quality to it. Think fast. Faster.

‘Well, in fact, I cleared it with Jivesh just the other day brother. He said it was all cool,’ I recited, in an on-the-spot manner of Event Organiser superiority.
The dialogue continued.
I name dropped as best I could.
I mentioned how Saturday was going to be the big one, how people from all over the country were coming to jam with us.
Still the head honcho wasn’t going to budge. His authoritative position meant too much to him in front of his colleague.
So I tried a different black-belt method of diversion.

‘All the kids coming tomorrow are so excited. If you take us out now, they’ll be so upset. Hey, in fact, why don’t you have a go, man. Here, I’ll help you walk the line.’

Laughs all round.
Suddenly the conversation turned from competition, to cooperation.
They declined the offer of trying the slackline.
‘Wouldn’t look too good doing it in uniform now, would it?’ they said, grinning.
Suddenly they didn’t seem so bothered about winning the battle of shutting us down.
I held my ground, for the good of us all and for the sake of SlackLondon. It paid off.
‘Well, I can’t stop you guys from doing it, I s’pose.’

And that’s all I needed to hear.
I beamed a smile of smugness to all the slackliners as I confirmed to them all, and to myself, that SlackLondon was going ahead. Result.

The sunset Friday night was just beyond majesty. I faced west, tilting my eyes to the sky, wishing I could somehow kiss it. Slacklines bordered my peripheral, gentle tunes accompaning my personal postcard. What could have been better? This is heaven, I thought. This is SlackLife.

With hardly any light but the effervescent, tangerine glow of the city, we de-rigged and de-littered our spot. A pint was in order, sadly not to be shared with other slackers, but that didn’t matter. They would return tomorrow.
Ben, Jake and I took ourselves to the nearest watering hole we could find. We re-rigged the sound system as we sat outside – the first time being our own DJs at someone else’s pub.

It was fantastic – the public’s mood shifted into a bubbly sense of euphoria the moment Jake’s funk collection hit their ears. Our excitement for Saturday couldn’t be contained. Even the barmaid was slung information on how to find us the following day.

Back in Jake’s palatial van and Ben wasn’t feeling too good. We’d scored a wicked park up spot, right along side the park’s western section. What better way for us to leave our mark than for Ben to projectile vomit over a whole section of fencing? Lads on tour indeed, even after only 2 pints.
Something for the squirrels I suppose.

Together we smoked ourselves out, listening to some fine Dub and lounging in the twilight of a small lamp. Kids passing by obviously heard, and thought it would be funny to shake, rattle and roll the palace from the outside. It definitely got our attention, and nearly caught my temper. A swift shout and flinging open of the door found no one in sight. All part and parcel of a travelling SlackLife.
The three of us drifted into our mellow slumber, smiles all round.

Saturday

The radiating heat of the morning sun was filling the van, prying us from our reclined status. The pangs hit us simultaneously. And so did the headaches. We needed to find a greasy spoon, soon. Neither of us had drunk enough water the day before. Topping that off with a couple of pints and some pre-sleep-rum-swigging meant that we were all missing the back section of our skulls. A fry-up and some caffeine required. Together, we trotted with light feet on a blurry-eyed grub-mission.

On the horizon read ‘BREAKFAST – 10 ITEMS FOR £5’. Done.
‘Had a rough night then lads?’ said our waitress.
Did we look that bad? We’d had 30 hours sleep between us!
Must have been a dirty fingernail giveaway.

Out came a plate the size of my torso, filled with meat and chips. We must have devoured a pig’s worth. Hangover cured and fuelled for a day of slacking, for less than a tenner. It’s deals like that that gets us pumped.
Excitedly, we blurted to our waitress where she could find us, and together we witnessed her realise that we were travelling slackers, not homeless drunks. Relief!

A leisurely lunchtime approach seemed the perfect time to rock up at the park. But not before visiting one of Jake’s contacts for the use of a shower.
Feeling new, we were ready to get on to day 2 of the weekend. We wheeled a whole trailer full of gear back to our spot. As soon as the first couple of lines went up and the sound system started pumping, it was show time. The public’s attention had been captivated with ease.

Gradually numbers of people began to accumulate on our lawn. Local indoor rock climbers came to check out the day, bringing with them everything they needed for a good sesh – from bags of fruit and nut, to lines of nylon tubular.

At the peak of the day, I recorded a whopping 13 lines that were rigged for everyone to try. Most were trick lines, but it wasn’t long before the 30+ meter lines came out. And then, the 56m ‘Widow Maker’.

The tension was the issue. Out of the ten plus people who tried, only three people sent it. And that was after we had to de-rig and re-tension. Before that, no man could tame the beast.

It was a personal battle for myself. The longest line I had tried to date. I didn’t feel pressure from surrounding slackers, as such. But I knew what it meant to me and what it would take to send it. That created a pressure of its own.
Somehow, I locked in and found the pocket. I had sent the beast and felt stoked as could be.
Unfortunately, I returned and found Jake had bailed and given himself mild-concussion. He couldn’t remember shit, so I figured dowsing him with beta on the Widow Maker wouldn’t sit well with his state of confusion.

The twilight of the day was drawing in, my favourite time. The skies opened up their chambers of super nature for us all to gawp upon in awe. Sunset lines and barbeques. I was in sending-celebration mode, and went to stock up on feast material. Sat round together, we chomped and chatted away, reminiscing on highlights of the weekend. Getting to know everyone there was a real pleasure. Some real diamonds had come out to play.

As darkness fell, we played out the SlackLife in full, packing and de-rigging with next to no visibility. Out came the head torches. We marched the trailer and all our gear across the park, only to find that we had been locked in! Again! Between four of us, we hauled the beast over the fence, tunes still pumping, much to the surprise of the locals drinking in the park’s border-lining pub. Trawling the streets with tunes would be our final chapter. We missioned to the nearest kebaby, all in the name of chips. Jake and Ben managed to confuse our cashier so well that he forgot to ask them for any money. As the four of us sat on the curb, barely able to keep our deep fried delights within our palettes, from laughing so hard, it dawned on me that I really was in the pocket. This really was heaven.

Sunday

A lazy Sunday morning came around in a haze. SlackLondon had played out its scene.
We awoke, all in level positions. Falling out of the palace, one by one, we realised we’d been done. The front right tire had been slashed. Along with about 50 other cars down the street and in the immediate local area. Mindless, infuriating vandalism, and yet, we couldn’t be happier. We juggled for the neighbours, admired the yuppie dressing gown talent, and even scored a free cuppa each. Locals lent us tools, and together we got on the case and changed the truck’s tire in street circus style. I’d like to think our grins were contagious. Thanks to the hot middle-eastern chicks for the tea!

Most of the slackers had retired to their abodes to rest. However, a few of us remained that were keen for some final day action. Dan brought his line to rig, and in between rain spells, we eventually rocked up to the park at 6pm.
A 64m was on cue, myself and Jake’s longest challenge yet. Internally and mentally, I was still in the pocket from sending the 56m the day before. Keeping that presence, I sent the line first try and back again, and so did Jake. It was a taste of bliss, I’m sure. I was so relaxed and so aware. I felt like a nylon Buddha.

Our final mission was one of style. All that was left was to say our goodbyes and figure out how to leave the sprawl that is central London.

Right by the station, the final three musketeers, Jake, Ben and myself, called in at the most badass Indian restaurant I have ever eaten at. This place had tree houses in it, man! We all double took as we walked past the window. Realising this would be the greatest novelty mastication had ever seen, we piled through the door and waved a ‘three’, pointing to the tree house cabin. We scored our own unit – 4 or 5 steps up a ladder, looking out over the whole restaurant. The waiters climb the ladder to serve you, and yes, clearing the table was both nerve wracking and hilarious. Yet they didn’t drop anything. God forbid. A stray item of cutlery from our cabin’s altitude would have resulted in a lawsuit. Or even another concussion.

We ran through the flavours of East laid before us. We laughed at all the discrepancies and raucousness of SlackLondon and how incredibly well it all came together. One conversation in a sub-urban park of Swindon a month previously, had manifested itself into a waking dream; 3 days of living in the pocket with friends and a whole selection of new people to add to that title. Incredible.

So excited and late for my train home, I legged it with 25 keys of gear strapped to my torso, up one massive, broken escalator. My legs gave out, I slipped on my sweaty flip-flop and sliced my foot clean open on the side of the metal step. And I missed my train.

Back to the palace for a smoke with the boys then?

Hazardous Davis

Photos: Hazardous Davis
Matt Locke
Lubos Horvat - www.luboshorvat.com

True Self-Expression; Juggling; My First Juggling Convention

2011-05-24T00:06:00.011+07:00

I had only looked at the poster in the local, sleepy, supermarket.

And yet with that small glance, I had just aligned the planets.
I wouldn’t realise the implications of looking upon that half-empty notice board for another 48 hours.
Then it would hit me; I’d stumble upon my seat for synchronicity’s rollercoaster.

Oh shit!

‘Hello, is this the Juggling Lab?’ went the call. ‘I’ve seen your poster and want to come along, what’s the deal?’
I wanted enough information to make sure this wasn’t going to be a horrific embarrassment. Suburbia was never known for its cultural exuberance. Turning up to a Juggling Club, in a foreign country’s arse-end, was tipping my risk assessment towards my paper bin.

‘We meet in a school gym. Just come along,’ she said.
‘Do you want a slackline?’ I threw it out there, not expecting a catch.
‘Yeah bring it along, why not.’ She sounded casual. Open, almost.
'Risk it for a biscuit,' I thought.

It was my first night driving on the wrong side of the road, in the wrong side of a car, using the wrong hands for all the right controls.
Miraculously, I arrived alive.

3 other people stood waiting to get inside.
My premonitions about suburbia had come true. Our juggling club was open to all of 3 members. And now a mono-linguistic challenge had turned up, with 25m of nylon to deal with.
A recipe for disaster.
Or magic.

‘Ciao, I’m Harry,’ I blurted, trying to bypass that awkwardness that always seems to lurk when meeting new members.
‘Hey, I’m Marco.’
I figured he was the teacher. He had the performer’s goatee. The glint in his eye that said ‘experienced’, the black hooded jumper that read ‘natural’ in bold, white letters.
And he had the keys to get in.
The door opened. Lights flickered on; the bulbs not warm enough to illuminate the gym beneath them.
As the filaments gained confidence, an Aladdin’s cave of circustry unfolded.
Clubs, climbing frames, mats and a multitude of juggling necessities, everywhere.
A ton of fun for 4 people.

‘So tonight, you teach slackline. Is OK?’
It was half-question, half-command.
A rebounding ‘Yeah, OK’ bopped out of my mouth.
A hint of confusion, as I thought I came to learn to juggle.

Whilst setting up, reams of bedroom-jugglers - all adepts of the unusual- just flowed through the double doors. A few minutes further and I could feel the excitement bubbling. Circus crews have some weird ability to charge their surrounding molecules with enthusiasm. When a whole gym does this, you can’t help but vibrate, too.
With the help of a translator, I taught a full, buzzing class of 25, open-minded participants. Questions, laughs and the odd squeal of amazement coalesced and seemed to juggle themselves, within shared space.

Not even half-way through and Marco told me about the Convention coming up at the weekend.
This time it was a full-bodied command. I was going whether I could get there or not.

Non-verbal communication unifies feelings and emotions between people that share compatible interests. It’s that silent magic that renders rapport. We barely spoke the same language. But all of us knew we were on the same page.
Before I could calculate it, I had a lift to Italy’s largest Juggling Convention; 3 days of electric, European eccentricity. In just 48 hours, suburbia had swallowed me backstage, into the chambers of the circus. And now I was about to be spat out, right into the spotlight.

Friday

‘I was thinking we should try this out?’ said Nico, margherita slice in one hand, Moroccan hash in the other. ‘What do you think?’
Before I could give an answer, a third limb came into play. He was steering with his knee, chewing his pizza and skinning up a spliff, all at 100km/h.
We were definitely on our way to the Convention.

Nico thinks in 3 languages. He’s not your average Italian.
He drives a German car with a broken clutch, lifting the pedal with his foot after each gear change. To show off, he once showed me he could lift it with his hand.
He drives a bus at the local airport, whilst trying to battle the three multi-lingual devils on his shoulder blades, whispering sonnets of escape.
He would be my partner in crime for the weekend. German organisation with Italian I don’t rushness. A blinding combination.

Nico was no stranger to the fundamental elements of the road trip. We didn’t have tickets, but that was of no concern.
His friends were already at the Convention; they would slip us a wristband so we could get in cheap.
Apparently.
His car was full of beers, cushions and a boombox. And he was rocking the most exotic pair of shit-catchers this side of Arabia - Princess Jasmin would have been jealous.

We pulled into the Convention parking-zone in darkness.
It was warm-up performance night.
Out of nowhere, the roar of the crowd just exploded through the marquee walls, over the fence and into our wagon’s cockpit.
‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’ we both screamed in unison, with uncontrollable excitement. The hair on my neck was even looking to exit the car.

The clouds opened, so to return the shots of the heavens, I unleashed my pop-up tent. No wet gear for us; Elements – 0 Jugglers – 1.
We met with Nico’s friends to arrange the necessary accreditation. The security guards weren’t employed at night; like ninjas we slid through the shadows in to the arena – the epicentre of those roars.

We picked out the last seats.
The marquee was rammed.
Friend’s had saved us spots and we supplied spliffs.
The hiss of popped beer bottles echoed into the uncanny silence, as the mass of bodies sat still, waiting for the next act to deliver.
What I proceeded to witness is beyond my literal capabilities of description. Some of the most original displays of human creativity, and I’d only been there ten minutes.
Juggling, Miming, Human-Hula-Hooping; just the most fantastic array of competence and this would be only the warm-up.

The site for the ‘Convention di Gioceleria della Brianza’ (Juggling Convention of Brianza) was miniscule.
Perfect.
1 minute from your tent to the arena.
One minute from the arena to the Palestra (indoor juggling gym), and one minute from the Palestra back to your tent.
A truly intimate triangle.
There were showers and squat-n-shot toilets (an experience!), a bar and food stall, a kids’ playground and even a unicycle assault course made from pallets. This was the 5th year of the convention; performers and fanatics from all over Europe would arrive to experience the delights and wonder in the world of Circus.

Nightfall had well and truly moved in, and the fire-spinners joined. I pulled up a seat and watched in hypnotic appreciation. A variety of flaming sticks, chains and fans created illuminated patterns of combusting kerosene. Between moments of being mesmerised, I conversed with the few in attendance that spoke English. They sounded surprised that this was my first ever Convention. I was in the presence of veterans. Fortunately, my recent moustache won me acceptance – I was addressed as ‘Malaysian Pirate’ and attracted the attention of fellow moustachers.
One in particular, Orzo, would prove to be so eloquent, yet so eccentric, that he even appeared in a dream I had later that night.
I was standing in the melting pot of vivid personality; Orzo was the result when Salvador Dali met Darcy Bussell; one of the many charismatic concoctions of the weekend.

I walked down a set of gritty steps and through a dimly lit porch, skimming a puddle with my heel.

Then it hit me.

‘I’ve never seen so many people just like me!’ flashed immediately through my head. Dreadlocks.
Colourful, expressive clothing.
Bare feet.
Everywhere!
Juggling balls, clubs, rings. All bouncing in the air as if swapped for atoms and particles. It was overwhelming.
I know it sounds like a bomb had just hit a commune, but it wasn’t that hippy. There were tracksuit bottoms. I spotted some water bottles. People were doing things, not just signing ‘Peace’ with their two fingers.
Never before, had I felt such rapport, such social proximity, with a mass of people that were complete strangers to me.
And yet with such elation, came confusion.
I didn’t quite know what to do.

Suddenly, I began to feel very self-conscious.
All these people looked so comfortable, so at ease with their surroundings.
And yet this was all so new to me. So foreign.
Somewhere inside, for some time, I’d been searching for a room like this.
Now I’d found it. And all I wanted to do was sit in the corner.
But not to sulk. More to watch, to glare in amazement at the thousand or so characters all practicing their tricks and expressing their under-layers of personality.

After a while, their energy rubbed off on me.
The self-consciousness disappeared.
All I wanted to do was get on my feet and juggle; to have a sesh!
Only 4 months juggling experience mattered no longer.

What resulted was something most profound.
Thanks to the hashish, I acquired an ability to manipulate time.
As I began, I felt myself zooming in on each ball, focusing on its every movement, every rotation. It was as if nothing else existed.
I was the Alchemist, creating the Philosopher’s Stone from three, charged elements.
I found myself learning with extraordinary focus – 3 new tricks, at 3am.
Welcome to Psychonautic Juggling.

The Palestra was open 24 hours. It was a massive sports hall, transformed into a juggler’s paradise. Come pre-sunrise, when the rains swept in, it was busier than ever. Jugglers rest from dawn to lunchtime, a body clock format that I had since trained myself out of.
I decided to take my new tricks to my tent as I left my fellow jugglers behind me. I caught glimpses of little ones tucked up on camping mats, fast asleep, as Mummy and Daddy, too, learnt new tricks at 3am.
‘What cool parents to have,’ I thought.

Saturday

Who would have thought two blobs of wax could save a life.

If there’s one item I don’t travel without, it’s my ear plugs.
Those things ensure a tight night’s sleep, whether you’re in a luxury hotel, or a field clouded by thunder storms.
Come dawn, it wasn’t noise that woke me up.
It was the sensation of an over-heated, sweaty top lip, that interrupted my slumber. The forecast of a brutal weekend of rain storms wasn’t holding true. The sun was practically melting my tent porch and with a moist patch on my lower back, I hurled myself out on to the grass.

Arriving at your destination in darkness, then seeing it in light the next day, brings a delicate magic with it. I spent a few minutes just soaking in my now visible surroundings.
No sign of life.
In that case, time to shower, before the other 2000 woke up!
Festival showers have a reputation for being appalling.
And there’s validity in that infamy.

However, we had struck gold this year, having access to showering facilities within the sport camp.
But still, I wasn’t quite ready for the shock.
These showers in particular were communal.
Turns out jugglers’ balls really do get themselves everywhere.
Bordering on emotional scar tissue, I scrambled out of the toilet block, trying not to mangle myself upon the lethal combination of flip-flops and wet tiled floors.
I felt fresh and clean, but had to laugh at this tragic case of bollock exposure.
The ‘British Reserve’ really has no place amongst shared nudity.

Although this was a juggling festival, there were plenty of slacklines about the place.
I happened to set up a Rodeo line (no tension), which produced amusing results, and seemed to keep the clouds at bay.
Across the weekend were a variety of free workshops; everything from clown performance to tight-rope walking.
By accident, I happened to set my line up at the scheduled time of the latter.

‘Are you the teacher for the workshop?’ people began asking me.
‘Officially, no. But we can start one,’ I replied, now somewhat acquainted with teaching people to slackline by accident.
As I result, I helped to teach 5 lads as best I could, how to mount and balance on the line.
Then the real teacher showed up.
He had brought with him a mini-tight-rope rig, that would prove to be bring lots of fun. And lots of blood.

Sandro was from Bologna and had studied at Circus School. He spoke no English, but his body language said it all. About 15 of us magnetised around him, anticipating the release of his secrets, as to how a human can send a piece of steel cable, and not fall off.
He demonstrated some fantastic warm-up drills (that I now use in my workshops); we all partnered off and drilled for the first section.
Then we all tried to walk the line.
Based on our performance, we would split into two groups; those who needed more practice, and those who needed even more practice.
As a little ego boost, I will add that I sent the line first go. All 3 meters of it.
That qualified me into the more practice group.

My first impressions of walking on steel; Pain.
Without shoes, it really chops at your feet. It was like walking in a straight line on sharp stones. Great for conditioning your soles – but a couple of people did have to pull out due to the hurt.
I put my shoes on. The session had begun.
Sandro taught us how to turn, and to walk with more grace and flare.
I thought I would be clever and try to lunge on the line.
It worked.

I then got even more cocky, pulling off a double-drop knee on the steel.
Everyone cheered and clapped.
I got down, despite my now inflated head wanting to float away, and realised my shin was leaking red everywhere.
I had taken a chunk out of my leg, ripping off an old scab. Now the blood was running down into my shoes.
Not so clever.

Macho-ism kicked in.
I still felt smug for pulling it off, even though I now looked a bit of a twat – I’d fashioned a bandage from an old football sock, tied around my leg.
However, ‘Warrior’ was sent my way, and I couldn’t disagree.
Sometimes you just have to take one for the team.

Sandro’s workshop was a great success.
I had to migrate to the areas of shade, as the UV had caught me unprepared.
It was only a couple of weeks since being fully-lobstered in Switzerland, and with a body of new skin, I wasn’t up for reliving the crustacean nightmare.

A spot of lunch in the sanctuary of the Palestra and then it was off to watch some live Capoiera. An international spectacle of music, singing and combat dancing.
Only to be cut short by the eruption of the skies.
The heat had proved to be too much.
An aerial dump of water ensued, turning the sports ground to a semi-floating, refugee camp. I took shelter in my tent at this point; with no pegs. The best I had to offer was my own body weight.
I won’t lie. I was shitting it. Rain was coming in the back. When the lightning flashed, it reflected off the zippers. Too close for comfort. Memories of swimming in Thai pools during storms, and how stupid that was, came to me. All I wanted was my siesta. And now I felt like I was reliving a scene from Jumanji.

However, the wax worked wonders, yet again.
I arose heavy-eyed and off balance, like a lion with a hangover.
Afternoon-recharge was complete.
Countdown to the Gala; 5 hours.
Saturday night’s show was the big one. I couldn’t understand, but I knew everyone was talking about it. Previous years were said to have been funny, but not so high in skill. This year would be different. The card was international, and rumour had it that some super original treats of walking sticks and LED clubs would make an appearance. I was excited.

Earlier in the day, I had met a wizard.
He had a shaved, bald head, with a tiny tail of hair at the base of his skull.
On the top, he had a tattoo of a circle.
He had big, black, ear tunnels that looked like miniature wine barrels.
And of course, no wizard is complete with out his own designated pair of Shit-catchers.
Alessandro showed me into his van; his royal palace on wheels.
‘I think I’ll be paying for this for the rest of my life’ he laughed. ‘Since coming back from India, this has been my home.’
He told me stories of how he had been studying with a guru out there; a 65 year-old Sadhu, with the full dreads-and-robe rig, and how his guru found him, not the other way round.
He lent me a book on brain-breathing; a Tantric science, similar to the breath skills of Pranayama, but a lot more knarly. A perfect esoteric text to compliment my surroundings.

Post-prana digestion, and off to the Palestra to shelter from the storms.
Out of the corner of my eye, I’d noticed some hand balancers.
The fact that they were the only characters upside down must have caught my eye. Amongst them, I noticed a chick really kicking ass. She was pressing effortlessly, holding her poise as if second nature.
‘That’s who I want to teach me,’ I thought.
I plucked up the balls to interrupt her practice; something I dislike to do. Especially in a foreign, broken language.
To my surprise, she was Swiss, and had a cool name.
Mya had driven down from Zurich with her crew, specialising in balancing and club juggling. I asked her if she could help me with my technique, to which she responded with utmost Swiss-precision.
‘It’s not about strength,’ she stated. ‘If you’re getting tired, it’s because you’re using your muscles. This is about balancing.’
Since sustaining a back injury, I thought my ability to clown upside-down would have diminished. To my surprise; ‘You’re not far off. You just need to close here and open here.’ And she didn’t mean the former to be my mouth.

Mya was also a bit of a genius at the partner acrobatics, or Acro-Yoga as it’s sometimes known. In the UK, apparently it’s difficult to get started in the formal stages of Acro-Yoga without sufficient training and experience. Well, I had zero experience, and an injury, but I was invited to try. My friends who told me about the Convention were already quite adept at the partner-acro stuff. To describe it when man and woman take part, would be like watching male and female energies unifying. It’s like they’re making love, but without the sexually intimate nudity. It’s intense, yet graceful. And you definitely have to trust your partner. You don’t have to be of opposite sex to try, however. My first attempt was spotted by my friend Marco. I tried the Acro bit, he supported me.

Tricky.
I then played spotter.
But with Marco’s Mrs.
Her hands were supporting her weight, in vicinity of my crotch.
And yet Marco seemed fine with it.
What a Man.
I was over the intimacy pretty fast.
I had to support a full, inverted human being, lying on a mat that would not save the both of us if gravity should win.
To my delight, I didn’t kill Marco’s Mrs.
In fact, I only pulled my groin (strain, not mischief).
If you want to try this sort of thing, don’t bother with Acro-Yoga classes if they require lots of experience. Instead, go to a circus workshop. They’ll show you the way.

Post-groin failure and my appetite was peaking.
By accident, I bumped into Marco once more, who then invited me to his magic house-bus, for a meal of Fajitas and red wine. Four of us lounged within his 1970s Mercedes wagon; a most hospitable of machines. Dinner in Italy is never a rushed affair, so for the next 3 hours we chopped, smoked, sipped and split our sides with laughter, whilst Marco did the honours.
With side windows open, we decided to spread the wings of hospitality even further, offering mini shots of grappa to anyone walking by.
‘Voi un GRAPPINO?’ would become our chant of choice, shocking unsuspecting passers-by into accepting traditional Italian apparatífs.
In a field, you make your own humour.

Stumbling out of the food-cart, half-pissed and half-jedi, we made our way to take our seats for the grand Gala.
The result was truly amazing.
The crowd enthusiasm was at new levels; shouts and cheers were flung at every interval.
Real empathy filled out that tent.

My favourite parts of the show were: a simple, 3-ball juggling act, in which the balls were swapped for ball-size balloons without the audience guessing.
And the opening act; a high-tech, LED juggling-club performance involving a doctor and his human robot-experiment.

Words can’t do the acts justice, however.
Every single spectator left that tent on a high, feeling inspired at what they had just witnessed. You could just feel it. People were too happy to be in a rush to leave, despite thousands of them trying through one exit point.
At any other event, tempers would have erupted.
Not at the Convention.

The Gala would prove to be the introduction for an epic night ahead.
Whilst at the show, nightfall had set itself around the grounds, sparking ideas for a fire-pit in the minds of the flame-spinners.
Everyone would gather outdoors on an old basketball court, to witness a truly tribal performance of humans and fire, accompanied by African djembe drumming.

One of Nico’s friends was taking part in the unofficial flame show.
He had caught my attention the first night I arrived.
His specialty was fire-poi; twin chains attached to cylinders of flames.
When he was practicing, and even performing, he would just go into his trance; 110% focus, tuning out everything around him.
He was one of the few people that I really noticed this with.
He just had this glint in his eye; a reflection of his poi.Wheeling and spiralling lines of hypnotic light, encompassed around his retinas.
You could tell he loved what he did.
This was his path. His form of expression.
I’m not really into fire-spinning. But this unknown friend left a smokey trail of kerosene-induced inspiration behind him, something I would later transform into my world.

The djembe drum circle had decided to move indoors.
I was already pretty high, and I had asked the crew when outside, if I could have a go. Nobody was willing to give up their drum.
We drummers are funny like that.
We don’t share our craft easily.

Instead, I was hauled off my arse by some friends, literally dragged into a dance circle that was forming.
2 or 3 wizards had set the pace.
In their fearless approach, they decided somewhere inside of them, that tonight, they were dancing. Surrounded by jugglers, they got to it. Within ten minutes, their energy had replicated itself into the bodies of another 40 people. This was contagious. This was music in its most primal form; everyone in that Palestra was tuning into frequencies so hard-wired by evolution, you couldn’t help but move.
The dancing waves of energy seemed to feed the drummers.
They absorbed, translated them into their instruments, then boomed them back at us via pulses of sound. This was an unbreakable cycle, and went on for hours. I even managed to join in on the beating – a 10-minute unbroken attack of hand-swelling rhythms. That took a good deal out of me, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. Just after I had stopped, we were shut down by the local mayor for ‘noise pollution’.
It was 5.30am.
Unfortunate maybe, but it proved just how powerful a collection of acoustic drums and the correct company could really be.

I was polarised from it all.
I couldn’t finish there.
I still had more to give.
What better time to learn a new skill, than just before the sun rises?
I had been watching people juggle clubs all weekend. I didn’t really want to learn how to do it. I was comfortable pushing the boundaries of fusing psychotropic drugs with rice-filled balls.
But if there’s one thing juggling has taught me, it’s how my brain works when it learns something new; somehow I can navigate that process.
With a body and mind full of fresh tribal energy, I wanted to test myself.
I wanted to juggle 3 clubs before receiving a solar audience.
Not for transcending club-limits.
For personal ones.

I started hopeful.
Clubs crashed all around me, so I found a spot in the corner to reduce casualties.
A couple of tips on how to get started and I was off.
For the first quarter, I don’t think I took a full breath.
Relentlessly, I kept picking up my juggling shrapnel, trying to burn the new neural pathways in place.
After fifteen minutes, I had a couple of cycles.
After 30 minutes, I was up to ten.
Those in my company couldn’t all believe what they were witnessing.
Apparently, learning the basics of clubs in under half an hour is not possible.
I was truly the anomaly, doing so and at an unholy hour.
Within 60 minutes, I had a cascade down.
It wasn’t perfect. But it flowed – think pre-pubescent waterfall.
I was thrilled with my achievement. And juggling clubs actually felt good.
We friends finished the night with a spliff, before returning to our tents for some well
earned rest.
After all, Sunday had already begun.

Sunday

There she was.
I knew she liked me before she opened her mouth.
And she was in my way.

‘Sitting there’s not such a good idea,’ I stated. ‘Maybe wait til I’ve finished this.’
In any other foreign situation, I would have either been slapped, or looked at as if I’d escaped Mars.
Fortunately, she spoke English.
She also gave me the eyes.

Sometimes, it’s that split second look from a woman that dictates your future.
I was cavemanning it, in a field. Unshaven, sweating and trying not to burn under the ultra-violet air strike.
She had a dry, dancer’s physique. Her hair was blonde, straight and clean. And she wasn’t hairy – unlike the many gravel-bagged bodies I’d witnessed back in my village.

Many people had asked if I would teach them to slackline on the last day of the Convention. With my new drills, roasting weather and some bi-lingual talent on offer, I wasn’t saying No.
For the newly pilfered workshop drills, I strategically chose Maria as my partner.
Making eye contact was a bad idea - I found myself looking down into the greens of a rainforest.
I was lost in an optical illusion.

Concentrate!

Teaching her to slackline had won her over.
It was that simple.
Except, I hadn’t noticed.
I was too busy trying to be a Man.
To be cool.
After all, my subconscious was ticking, formulating a strategy for getting her back to my semi-molten tent!
I racked my brains for impressive tactics.
Mating dances of tropical birdlife flashed through my mind.
In all my cringe-worthy genius, I had decided it was time for the human equivalent: Handstands.
With my newly acquired Swiss-skills for hand balancing, I attempted to show Maria how it was done. I was going to get laid tonight. And I would do so by walking on my hands.
In hindsight, only one word comes to mind.
Twat.

Cue the Crash and Burn.

I was at a Juggling Convention. Yet still it came as a surprise when I found out that Maria was a circus instructor, teaching kids how to handstand. For a living.
Not only could she juggle more balls than me. But when it was my turn to help her with hand balancing, she didn’t even need my assistance.

Trying to repair the chasm unfolding before me, I suggested we grab some lunch together.
She accepted.
Result.
But so did her friend.
In a panic, I reeled my closest Italian companions to join us.
There was no way I was entertaining by myself.
We shared what tent-warmed produce we had, dividing chunks of sweaty mozzarella on to the last slabs of stale bread.
This was a crumbsnatchers’ picnic, accompanied by an array of awkward silences.
My companions knew they were only there to assist my image. The played a strategy of their own – saying nothing.
I found myself picking at the remaining broken shards of crisps, as tumbleweed threatened to cut through our circle.
I would have laughed at it all until Maria pulled out a penknife before I did. Being outclassed by a female with utensils is enough to jerk the tears from any man.

The comedic tragedy didn’t stop there. In fact, the embarrassment and irony would spread even further.
A super stud hand balancer, performing on the outdoor stage earlier in the day, had also spotted Maria. He was a popular show-man, performing for the crowds stunts of calibrated equilibrium. Upside down.
I didn’t have a chance. This dude could invert himself upon another man’s shoulders!
I watched, as if back in the classroom, as he coaxed her back to his luxurious campervan. She had been swept off her feet by a man on his hands.
And it wasn’t me.
The mating ritual was over.
I’d been officially outclassed.

Laughing at my own humiliation, the day transformed itself. Strangely, I felt much lighter. I no longer had the need to impress. I could just relax, enjoy the atmosphere.

Crowds gathered outside to watch Europe’s best jugglers compete in friendly battles for number one. An American, Wes Peden, destroyed all his opponents. He won both the clubs and ball competitions, throwing his prizes in to the crowd like a superstar. I looked on in amazement, in between winces of pain, as my friend master crafted new dreads for me. Sunshine, tunes, expression and creativity. The four elements of a memorable Sunday.

A lot of people left on the last day. We were staying for the full whack. Sunday night was the Renegade Show – a kind of Italy’s Got Talent for Circus Freaks, that involves making an arse of yourself for free booze.
Fortunately, just turning up was enough to receive beverages at no cost. Crates of beer were handed out to the spectators, much to their surprise. I got my hands on to a can or two, and proceeded to sit and glare, as the Italian sense of humour erupted through the audience.
I witnessed brick-juggling and nose-balancing. A fellow Brit even got up, made a complete dick of himself, pissed-off all those in attendance, and still got a free drink. This was truly bizarre. I hadn’t attended the previous years of Renegade Shows, meaning that I left after I noted no more free beers were available.

I waltzed to my tent on a high note, ready for rest and recharging.
I lay on my mat, smiling to myself at how crazy the whole weekend had been.
I felt like this field was home. I’d hardly spoken to anyone in Italian, and yet I felt like I knew all these people.
With most festivals that go exceptionally well, you don’t want to leave. The weekend had left a magical impression on me that was most remarkable and would not be forgotten.
The following day, driving home on the highway, Nico and I shared the last spliff.
We were exhausted; 3 non-stop days of invigorating pupil-dilation were finally coming to a close.
I returned to the clouds one last time, leant my head back and gave an outward breath of completed adventure.

Thank you, Brianza.

True Self-Expression; Psytrance; Liquid Soul

2011-05-18T18:35:00.003+07:00

Liquid Soul, my favourite Progressive Psytrance producers for a few months now.
Here's a live set for you to listen to,
Enjoy!

Liquid Soul "remember live set" by Liquid Soul

True Self-Expression; THE SWISS MISSION - PART 3; A LION'S GUIDE TO WATERLINING

2011-05-10T15:32:00.011+07:00

A Lion’s guide to Waterlining

I.

Monday mornings are supposed to be predictable. Unless you’re in Switzerland with a secret weapon.

As I attempted to rig my weapon – the slackline - in the University of Lausanne’s campus grounds, Alain appeared in my peripheral, crash-pad-packed and ready to go.

‘I thought we’d rig a waterline today,’ he casually let out, with a hint of a smile that suggested fun and nothing short of it. Whilst a sea of Swiss students cleared the nuggets of sleepy dust from their eyes, preparing for their early morning lectures, Alain, a 22yr old prodigy from Lausanne, had other ideas on how one should perform the dull, Monday-morning, wake-up ritual.

‘There’s an amazing spot just down by the lake that I have got to show you before you go,’ he added.
And amazing wouldn’t win the award for understatement of the day.

A waterline is essentially a slackline, rigged at high-tension between two points, over water. The bit Sherlock didn’t tell you was that this water could have a visible depth, or continue into the murky realms of Poseidon’s lair. It could be soft sand under foot, or you might be calibrating your balance skills over outcrops of rocky talons with the potential to sink a fleet. The water might be warm, but until you take a good, unexpected dunk, you’re balls aren’t gonna know whether it’s necessary brace’n’gloat or just grace’n’float. There is really no end to what conditions exist when one rigs a waterline.

I was expecting to send a 30-35m longline over dry land, and had only gone as far as to mentally affirm to myself the previous night, that whatever went down, I would send the line before returning on the cross-country train ride back to Italy.

I had no idea what to expect when Alain suggested the waterline - that’s the beauty of spontaneity. All I was sure about was that I was keen as a mere cat to give the waterline a shot. That might not have come across as genuine as I had intended.
My line of vision was constantly being fractured by my jumping attention; towards pieces of hot, Swiss-ass, left, right and centre.
And the female levels of distraction weren’t going to stop there.
If there’s one place you want to practice improving your concentration, set up a slackline pretty much anywhere in Switzerland and try not to notice how many gorgeous women protrude your peripherals, innocently crossing your sights and yet putting you off in such a way that you’re convinced their scheming on you.

As my neck jarred itself back to centre like a spring-loaded stocking toy, Alain signalled that this was our metro to catch.
I decided to bunk the journey to get to the lake – I had managed to reach day 3 with only 24 Francs in my possession, and my last 5 weren’t going on tickets – not when there was Swiss-cheese and beers to grab.

A moment or two later, and we had arrived at La Tour De Peilz, a sleepy little shepherd’s port that quite casually sat itself on one of the largest lakes in Europe, soaking up one of the most majestic views I’d ever seen to date.

A brief detour through the supermarket to stock up on slack-snacks was in order. Alain, I could tell over the weekend, was already a seasoned-pro when it came to picking out European snackage that came at an impressive price but at an even more prestigious taste. The basket seemed to fill itself with an array of breads, cheeses, fresh strawberries and cold beverages – along with a fat Hazardous smile as I pictured the future outcomes of mixing waterlines with alcohol.
I trustily handed over my last 5 Euros with gratitude.
I was privileged to be in on some insider-knowledge, at how to eat Swiss-style when setting up a line for the day; which really is an art in itself once you experience it.
Believe me.

Shuffling out of the supermarket, back into the sunlight, like the end of a winter’s hibernation, and there it was in front of me. I unfolded upon the most breathtaking of images. All I could do was utter a sheepish ‘Wow’ towards one of Nature’s greatest visual accomplishments, humbled like a peasant amongst costumes of emperors.
I won’t proceed to try and describe what I saw.
I’ll let the pictures do that.
Besides, stringing words together would probably only offend those very mountains. They seemed to encompass me, like those intimate hello-hugs at a train stations.

Alain took it all in his stride.
He told me how his friends’ grandparents had been backpackers passing through many years ago, only to now be the owners of a humble building which would easily fetch a million or two on today’s property market. He mentioned how he would spend most of his summers down there, just chilling by the lake with his friends, his guitar or his slackline. And apparently the sunsets, each and every one, were heart-stoppers – the depth of which they penetrated one’s being, I could only just begin to fantasize.

I had burnt calories just absorbing the landscape in all is superiority. Before our rigging, it was time to tuck in to our dejeuner – an education. The Swiss-army knife seemed to pull itself out of Alain’s pack – what could be more Swiss, than to reaffirm your utility within an image conquered from a postcard?
This, after all, was what the knife was made for – cutting cheese to put in your French-stick.
Lakeside.

We weren’t the only one’s to encompass the flavours and visuals for lunch time. Countless youths appeared to be spending their lunch break down by the lake, the elite few staying on beyond the bell, bunking the days’ classes, as Alain did, in order to experience life with a little more substance.

‘My lectures today were with a ‘Pessimist-Environmentalist’ anyway, so I think I can afford to miss his words,’ Alain confessed in a grin, only to be validated by our surroundings, at how minute the sin he had committed really was.

With only a couple of hours until I had to catch my ride back through the valleys, we patched ourselves up in our jackets, in order to work up as much a sweat as was possible before getting dunked. Within a few minutes, the churning Swiss-cow mouths of the local public paused, as they tried to configure what on earth these two loons were doing with some string and key rings.

‘Do you want to try first?’ Alain asked me, once he had flicked the line, like an oversized cello-string, to check the tension.
‘Sure, why not?’ I replied with a semi-break in my voice, masked only by the thick throat I’d achieved from eating so much cheese.

At this point it’s important to note that this is a Lion’s guide to waterlining.
I’m a Leo by nature, and last time I checked, I didn’t see Aslan battling Phelps for a podium finish.
Neither has the Lion of Judah shed any wisdom on how to cross a waterline, so I figured it was my vocation to do so. The astrological fact in itself, for those of you in the know, should clarify why I went through what I am about to describe to you.

Until I actually began to mount the line, the build up of nerves had been solely on a sub-conscious level. In hindsight, as beautiful as the setting was, I think the water had the biggest part to play in rocking my boat. Along with being in the company of someone much better than you, naturally wanting to make a good, macho-impression at how capable and non-pussy you are.

I wouldn’t realise the water bit until much later.

For those of you that have never sent a splashline before, and for those of you with Lion-legged tendencies, allow me to fill you in on this water aspect:

Depth
What scared me most about the depth was that I had no idea just how deep the water was. Despite the clarity of the water – apparently some of the clearest in Europe – ¾ of the way down the line you couldn’t see beyond 2 feet deep.

Rocks
In conjunction with not being able to see into the unknown, we were surrounded by rocks. Not just rocks, but boulders that acted as erosion defenders to the country’s lakeside populace. They positioned themselves both in and out of the water, exuding an attitude of mercilessness. Somehow, your subconscious decided to conger up these flash-card images in your head; you fall in, smash yourself on something you didn’t even know was sleeping subsurface. Broken and bruised train ride home.
Great.

Temperature
This wasn’t so much of a big deal. However, later on I would experience the sheer speed at which your core temperature would plummet after a good dunk. ‘Don’t fall in or you’ll have to spend ages warming up again,’ started to play on loop, in my internal-dialogue collection.

Mirror-Effect
This aspect wasn’t just me being a pussy. I assure you it was actually real. This I figured by Alain asking me ‘Does the sun’s reflection bother you?’ If he sees it, then it’s there!
The only way I can describe this effect was like there was an invisible man sat subsurface with his own signalling mirror. He’d flash your retinas with laser rays, right when you least expected it.
In time, the only solution I found to work; to accept it. And frown. Frowning seemed to narrow your eyes just enough to cut away the major part of the flashes.
Alain suggested that if I sent the line from the other side, there would be no mirror issues. However, there was a stunning bronzing-blonde with her arse out, so if the water’s reflections weren’t going to put me off, reflections off the Swiss-buns would.

Disorientating Flow
This element was just weird, something I didn’t even experience until I started hitting the half-way mark.
You’d focus your gaze so intensely, on one fixed point on the other side of the line. But then it seemed like your brain’s spatial-awareness centre would begin to meltdown, like post-pocket chocolate at lunchtime. Trying to combine a fixed point, over a matrix of moving, shimmering water, proved to smother my mind’s ability to cope.
It was like trying to compete in an arithmetic competition, during a coastguard emergency.
Not happening.
You’d have split seconds where you’d become cloaked in dizziness. It was like having a bag over your head then being punched square on the chin. At this point, you’re relying completely on your muscle-memory to keep you from taking a dizzy dunk in to that icy bath below.
You’d either bail; potentially lethal over a geological obstacle course.
Or you’d successfully fade back into reality, like opening your eyes underwater and surfacing again.

The above outlines some of the water’s crippling components.
The very substance that can seem so innocent when poised in a glass, yet so menacing when you add some rocks and reflections.
Most of all, I think my nerves trembled most from the rocks and depth elements. The other elements started to present themselves as I began to relax.
But this wouldn’t happen until much later on, and they’d still be wearing masks.

Everyone has 20:20 vision in hindsight.
Somehow, we’re able to pinpoint everything we did wrong, yet at the time of committing the crimes, we’re oblivious.
Whilst documenting this waterline session later in the week, I realised how I could have debunked my water worries with one simple question to Alain;
‘How deep is it?’
Funny how that never even occurred to me during the day.
Perhaps I did ask, and his answer of ‘Less than your height,’ just wasn’t convincing me. Or maybe I registered his answer but my macho-ism took over. A man would rather not look a pussy, than prove his fears to be ridiculous, right?
A strange species plagued by paradox, is man.

With what felt like a medieval battalion kicking off in my stomach, I tried to compose myself and mounted the line. Alain was spotting me, just in case I lost control and split my melon on one of the granite widow-makers. That provided some relief. But to be honest, in the state of macho-ism, the last thing you want to do is end up in your spotter’s arms, like a scene from Cabaret.

In a nutshell, it didn’t happen. So much for first-go glory.

Alain attempted, then concluded that the tension was a little off.
Relief.
My failure wasn’t all due to my incompetence. I could at least cast some of the blame on physics.
Line re-tightened and Alain full-manned it (walked all the way, and back) straight off the cuff.
Shit.
No more blame could be shed on the conditions.
Like a whining workman with a new box of tools, it was time to man up and take control of myself.

Easier said than done.

I proceeded maybe 10 or so times in a row trying to mount the line.
But then I would just shake uncontrollably, like a cheap pudding on the back seat of a 4X4.
The biggest shock of all was my inability to breathe.
Taking a full deep breath just proved to be impossible.
Somewhere, the connection between brain and breath must have been severed.

It was a notable moment for me. Never have I felt so restricted in my cardiovascular department. It was like you’ve just completed a bleep test, wearing a straight-jacket.
Except I hadn’t even been running.
All I was physically doing was standing up, on a line, over water.
And I couldn’t even breathe.

The unintended result was that my body froze like a cryogenic tragedy, creating so much unnecessary force, the line just ricocheted it all straight back at me. It was like a human catapult proceeding a drum roll.

Hindsight later showed me that I was refusing to admit my fears welling up inside me, and there was only so much resistance I could provide. The fears persisted with even more force. They weren’t going anywhere.

Alain noticed that it wasn’t going to plan.
The irony of trying to hide my fear from my company only meant that he picked up on it even more.
‘Just sit, chill and meditate for five minutes,’ he suggested.
At some stage or other, every slackliner has been at the point where composure is the only factor that will bring success, but the only skill not in your arsenal.
Alain’s advice would prove to do something quite powerful.
Cue meditation.

Before I describe how I conquered what arose within me, I’ll break the fear down for you, again into its components.

Dialogue
Imagine a room, big enough to fit 1000 people in it. They’re all voicing their opinions in a low voice. Not too loud, not too quiet.
Now for every one of those opinions, include a sentence, explaining exactly why you shouldn’t be doing what you’re attempting to do.
Transfer this room to your own head and you’ll be experiencing the kind of dialogue-soundscape I felt I was trying to navigate.
Trying to quiet this noise takes up a good chunk of your concentration reserve.

Adrenaline
Out of nowhere, adrenaline just starts to dump itself throughout your body. As it courses through your veins, your heart starts to pound with such force your throat feels like a subwoofer.

Breath
The most important element, and definitely the most profound of the day; not being able to breathe complete and deep breaths.
Your heart’s pounding so hard, when you breathe in, you just stutter. It’s like a silent speech impediment.
You become gassed, which compounds so much you eventually can’t ignore it any more. Lack of air is the first thing the human body notices. I felt like the majority of my supply had been confiscated, yet there was still a task to complete.
This shocked me a little, as my Pranayama practice had shown good results of breath control.
Not quite the case when your bedroom floor is swapped for a lakeside mountainscape, with a line through the middle of it.

Tension
As a result of incomplete breathing, your body tenses up. It’s like you connected eyes with Medusa, the stone is setting in.
That tension drastically reduces your ability to calibrate yourself to a dynamic environment such as a waterline. Instead of absorbing any shockwaves that come through you from the line, you repel them. They magnify until you’re no longer in the way. I felt like a statue, dropped on to a trampoline, and then commanded to not bounce off.
This whole process creates even more dialogue – ‘You can’t do this, you haven’t got a chance,’ etc and the cycle repeats itself again and again.

Fortunately, having someone with more experience in my company, meant that they understood what was happening and could advise on how to go about calming down and regaining a sense of composure.
I sat up straight on the rocks, half-closed my eyes - through which I focused on a point in front of me - beginning to pay attention to my breath.
Sit and observe.
That’s all.

The process is so simple but so profound, like raising a flag in surrender. I finally became aware that I couldn’t even take a complete breath inwards without there being jitters in my cadence.

Something had to be done!

I only began focusing on my breath out of habit. When I have meditated in the past, that’s the first port of call. But to my horror, I couldn’t even breathe as I intended to, so my mission for the next few minutes was simple; to take one, single, in and out breath. It sounds easy, but so does climbing Everest, when you boil it down to putting one foot in front of the other.

Gradually, I began to take a hold of my diaphragmatic spasms. My body began to obey. First, one complete breath, then 2, 7, all the way until 10 complete, deep, in and out breaths were no longer an issue.
Although this only took 5 or so minutes, I felt a new sense of capability begin to brew within, like an alchemist on the brink of transmutation. Somewhere inside I knew that if I could control my breath, I could accomplish what I’d come to the lakeside to achieve.

Now I could actually breathe. The stuttering slithered away like a serpent in hunting company. My heart was assured its casing was no longer giving up on life, and it too began to taper it’s beat. Then the tension started to drain from my limbs, as if I had been a plasticine model exposed to the heat.

With my new found, breath-led composure, I set off on my new journey of conquering my fears.
I wanted to feel like a warrior victorious. I wanted to return to Italy as if my train was chauffeuring me home. I wanted to experience what it would feel like to have my face crochet in on itself, from grinning so hard at reminiscent thoughts of success.
If I really wanted to prove myself, and prove that I could send this line, then I would have to up my focus.
That meant blocking out the beautiful, gallery-standard mountains.
It meant reigning in subtle neck turns to check out hot girls’ bums.
Most of all it meant asking myself one question; ‘How bad do you want it?’

II.

Conquering the Fear

Meditation
Sitting on the rock with Buddah-eyes, paying internal attention to my breath, was the starting point. For someone interested in meditation and its applications to various aspects of life, this approach would seem obvious. However, in the heat of the moment, wanting to cross the line so bad, meditation was the last technique I thought that would get me there.

Breathing Completely
After sitting, when I mounted the line, breathing how I wanted was no longer an issue. My lungs felt liberated. The straight-jacket had been removed. Breathing as you wish would prove to be worlds apart from what it’s like being subjected to shortness of breath.
Results presented themselves immediately. I began to get further across the line; 8,9, 10 steps. Not too far from half-way.
Cue confidence-surge.

Removal of Tension
Once you’re in control of your breath, the tension has no foundation. It is then up to you to calibrate yourself to your environment. Instead of repelling those shockwaves, I started to resonate with them, until they dissolved. I felt like a Tai-Chi master, floating on a polyester dojo.

Trusting the Line
This is difficult to explain.
With the body's tension removed, you begin to fully trust the line to be able to take your weight. Factually, you know that the rigging is strong enough. Yet if you’re tense, you can’t commit your weight to your steps. Now I felt I could place each foot with almost gymnastic definition.
‘This is what relaxing feels like,’ I would tell myself, as my kinaesthetic centre began smiling.

There’s a massive life lesson in trusting what’s around to take you’re spiritual weight. I felt I’d just graduated my first class from Life-on-the-Line school.
A state of effortlessness cannot be reached with effort.
Previously, I was trying to relax into the line by being tense. That only reveals itself as truly absurd when you spell it out, but that’s exactly what I was trying to do.

Alain shredded the line some more. He busted out some fat tricks midway, taking the line as his prisoner. And what way to entice a lion’s appetite than to dangle the kill in front of its face?

In the time Alain was busting his moves, I felt my core temperature cruise into the glacial realms. It was a strange feeling. I knew I should be hot. Everyone around me had skin to bare. I just couldn’t seem to start my internal fire.

After what felt like half the afternoon, I reached a point of warmth that would suffice to become semi-naked once more. There were 25 minutes on the clock until I had a train to catch; a journey that would either be a cruise through landscapes of elation, or dragging through passages of regret.

Personally, I thrive under pressure.
I used the absence of time to my advantage. I recognised the effort I had put in to make it to Switzerland. I calculated just how much I had been practicing.
Most importantly, I asked myself ‘How bad do you want it?’.

Fucking bad.

When the boys ask me back in the UK ‘So, did you do it?’ I want to be able to pause, escalate the suspense, and then crush it all with a fat-grinned ‘Of course I Diddddd!’
My body wasn’t exactly at the desirable temperature, but waiting for the perfect moment only helps to ensure that it never comes.
I proceeded on my epic journey, mounting the line, breathing out like a cross-wired vacuum.
Still I fell off.

The dialogue started to rear its ugly head once more.
‘What if you don’t make it across before you have to go?’
‘How’s it going to feel to have come all this way, only to fail?’

All I could do was answer the little devil on my shoulder blade with a fat ‘Fuck you. Not crossing is not an option.’

And with that I just hit Terminator mode. I would plummet into the icy lake, resurface, wading out like I had just seen T1000.
Again and again this went on, each time a fragment of my fears was smashed and left to sink beneath me.
For those next 25 minutes, that’s all I did. I got further along each time. But my feet were aching. My lips felt like I’d been making out with charred embers. And my skin was making the lake’s crustacean population jealous.
My inner biceps looked like the better end of a train wreck where I had caught the line’s recoil, repeatedly.

In a montage moment of recollection, I remembered how a teacher of mine long ago had once said to me ‘Sometimes you just have to conquer your daemons. You know what I mean by that?’ Back then, I didn’t. Now I was about to find out.
I mounted the line with all I had left. Breathing like a god of tornadoes, frowning like my eyebrows were mid-bench press, and drifting in-and-out of states of dizzy-induced delirium, I channelled every last molecule of oxygen towards my point of focus.

Line sent.

I sprung onto solid ground at the other end, for the first time. I couldn’t quite grasp if this was reality or not. Gradually, the reassurance of elation started to flood in. I began to realise that my internal battle had been won.
I had conquered the waterline.
I had conquered myself.
Man, I was so stoked!
I yelled some cries of manly success, pumping my fists, like donkey kong upon a drum kit. The smile that charged its way to my face would stay with me for the rest of the day.

The whole saga of crossing that waterline could be summed up with two points.
In order to know if you’re capable of doing something, you only have to ask yourself one question; ‘How bad do you want it?’
And once you’ve asked yourself that, and achieved what you set out to do, you’ll understand that it really is all in your head.

All your hopes, your fears, your expectations. All a selection of brainwaves that take place behind the mask.

In the end, sending the waterline was not a question of skill.
When you want something bad enough, the skill will create itself.

Right after I made it across, I walked back around and got on the line again.
About ¾ of the way across, Alain moved himself in the background, crossing from one segment of concrete to another. I fell off.
‘Was it me that made you fall?’ he called out, preparing himself to be the cause for my failure.
‘No,’ I bounced back. ‘I was just thinking about how good it felt!’

And that’s the beauty of it; once you know it’s all in your head, you can actually begin to enjoy it.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; The Swiss Mission Part 2; Sunday Funday

2011-05-03T14:57:00.010+07:00

The Swiss Mission, Part 2; Sunday Funday

In a couple of hours’ time, I would be staring down one of the biggest monsters Lausanne had ever seen.

A combination of early morning summer-sweats and excitement became my alarm clock. Navigating the young, heat-less hours was our incentive, as James had been plotting the rigging of the 125m monster to be our first mission, and the cooler the temperature, the better.
The previous day’s excitement had meant we were a little geriatric in our movements down to the bus stop. We soon began to limber up however, as the enthusiasm grew in unison with the sun’s rising line above us, somewhat defrosting our stiffness.

I hadn’t really any expectations for the day, I’d travelled too far to risk being disappointed by events not living up to my train-time daydreams. I had more a gut feeling; elements of the radical were about to present themselves in full effect. Much to everyone’s delight.

When a season gives itself in its entirety, like it has one last chance to prove itself, it strikes a note that leaves an indelible impression.
Nature was giving her last performance - not one member of the audience was to leave with a hint of negativity, and I had managed to get a ticket.

Riding the Dragon

James is an up and coming PhD wizard, so something as technical as rigging 125m of nylon-knarliness was all figured out. In his head.
In these situations, it’s just easier to act the servant. If Pharoah were to explain to his masses how the pyramids functioned, instead of where to stack stones, he would probably have had a revolution on his hands.

Rigging the Dragons

It all became clear what the James-brain had conceived after about an hour of jogging, adjusting, tugging and tightening. The tug of war tensioning efforts felt like a re-enactment of a Viking Longboat scene; every man giving his brawn to the rhythm of the drum- his own pulse. All we were missing were the silly hats.

The 125 line cut the park in half, sitting at about 8ft off the ground. A royal-blue, nylon dragon had landed in Lausanne, deciding to uncoil itself between the two tallest trees it could find. And little did it know, it would be battled by many a knight throughout the day.

It was an intimidating sight. I was witnessing one of the longest lines I’d ever dared to look at. I personally only made a few steps before the dragon seemed to realise something was on its back; casting me off like dust upon its scales.
Only the most skilled and courageous in attendance managed to send the beast – a crossing time of anything from 5 to 20 minutes, end to end.

Mounting the Beast

Beast Awakens

The 75m line would prove to be my personal task for the day, and although I didn’t cross it, the lessons became more about how to cross a line so long. I made the most of the skilled slackers in attendance, asking where possible for tips and advice on various aspects of the art of balance.
And slacking wouldn’t be the only form of entertainment for the day.

Taming of the Beast

‘What happened over there?’ I asked, spotting some activity by a big tree.
‘He tried to take a piss in my bag!’ Fabian replied, through a grin that was comprised of half shock and half hilarity.
Lausanne’s drunk and homeless population hardly existed from what I saw, but we were graced by one fellow’s presence, and to his credit, he did very well: free beers, cigarettes, food and a place to have an afternoon nap. Apart from the moment when we decided to take a piss in his bag, as a reminder.

Only joking.

That was only one of the many social delights that would unfold on this summer-like Sunday. A very successful BBQ, supplied by no other than James’ science department, provided a re-enactment of what felt to be the feeding of the 5000. For those not yet accomplished in slacking, they brought with them an array of culinary delights and chef skills, grilling up mean meat-feast material.

First Grill Results

During the digestive period, where many of the crew were out of action combating numerous cases of food-coma, the longer lines even served as temporary volleyball nets. Who would have thought park life to be so innovative?
One of James’ friends had done especially well to not only bring racks of chicken wings and sausages with him, but at least 10 women also.
(Fellers, take note; if you’re invited to a meat-feast, balance out that energy with some of the feminine. It’s the least you can do.)

James had done very well at organising everything. More than thirty people showed themselves throughout the day, some experienced slackers (with enough Swiss precision to make Victorinox envious), some keen to try, and some experts in chilling.

Higher than it looks!

There were a selection of different lines to try, of varying lengths and difficulties. Beginners had the freedom to attempt sending the shorter lines by themselves, or ask one of the many competent slackers present if they would show them how it’s done. Members of the public stopped in their paths, some even joining in amongst what looked to be a mix of circus escapees with barbeque connoisseurs, all laughing and lounging together.

I was particularly taken a back by the positive vibes from the whole day.
Usually you get one or two upsets at events like these, but even a drunk urinating in someone’s bag was laughed at and didn’t affect anyone for the worse. Slackliners have proved themselves, yet again, to be some of the most genuine, sound people across the globe.

We had moments of challenges; a game in particular I took part in, involved using a plastic plate as a marker to show the distance that each slacker fell off. The aim was to outdo all who fell before you and move the plate as far down the line as possible.
Thanks to that little charade, I managed to add another ten meters on to my attempts.
Personal records were broken.
If I’m not mistaken, James even had time to set a personal record by nailing the 75+ meter line.

And despite the dangerous first-impressions that Slacklining can give to members of the public and authorities, there were no injuries sustained and we weren’t once interrupted to be told that we had no rights to set up in the park.
The day had an underlying current of helping each other running through it, and the result meant that instead of coming to the park and losing, breaking or missing something, everyone seemed to leave better off than when they arrived.

We finished the day as the light began to remove itself from the sky, being replaced with the orange tint of Lausanne’s street lamps.

A cooler breeze swept through the air, and in true European style, we decided there was only one last thing left to accomplish -

Sinking a cold, white beer.

Next Up; Swiss Mission part 3 - A Lion's Guide to Waterlining

True Self-Expression; THE SWISS MISSION - PART 1

2011-04-28T22:02:00.005+07:00

THE SWISS MISSION - PART 1

“I’ll meet you in the station at the little boulangerie, and you can play where’s waldo.”

That was all the confirmation I needed.

I had told James I could be on a train in 24 hours if the planets aligned themselves. They did.
The scorching heat of the day wasn’t in full display at 7am. But somehow you know that the furnace with be stoked for you later on. Walking to my local train station, a concoction of emotions stirred themselves with each step; excitement, language anxiety, curiosity, composure.

I would be taking a 4 hour train journey from Northern Italy to Lausanne, Switzerland, to meet James Clulow. An established Kiwi Slackliner, now residing in Lausanne, meddling with their science laboratories and even more so with the local talent, he’d organised a slackline festival in a local park for the Sunday, and I was on a trans-global mission to join in.

With somewhat confident, yet broken Italian, I managed to purchase a return ticket to Switzerland, albeit costing double what I had prepared myself for.
With a lighter itinerary and even lighter wallet, I picked my seats strategically, so I could gaze into some of Europe’s most humbling, yet epic scenery, losing myself before I’d even found it.

Adrenaline was obviously on this weekend’s menu.
For no reason other than enthusiasm, I attempted to converse with a local Italian paraglider on his way to Monterone for the day. Between us, like pigeons sharing prose, we managed to express the essential essence of our conversations.
The journey flew by as I felt myself sink into a semi-hypnotic trance. My train was my frequency, the scenery my pendulum, falling ever deeper into the eyes of the mountains.

Next stop, Lausanne.

This was my first official time in Switzerland. My last visit was an airport stop-over hook-up attempt, where I had less than an hour to kiss a Swiss-blonde bombshell I’d reeled in in Hong Kong.

It didn’t happen.

In that time she’d become taken, so the only souvenir I could take with me was that wrapped in foil, and contained hazelnuts.
This time I would have 3 days, and my mission would be to walk on as many slacklines as I could. Caressing a strip of nylon with calloused feet doesn’t sound quite as romantic but it congers up just as much passion.

James was rocking the Waldo outfit in true, striped style. As I spotted him from across the station, I felt smug, like I had just completed a real Waldo comic book challenge.
We wasted no time. James gave me a quick preview of the following day’s venue, then we headed straight to a part of the city where a 50m beast was awaiting our enthusiasm.

Captain Clulow demonstrates to the Swiss youth just how it's done

Switzerland’s public transport is pretty damn good. Even better if you have no money and are looking for free rides across town. The fine is 120 Francs if you get caught, but I guess that’s the beauty of having an international address.

The elation of achieving stage one of my mission; arrival, started to set in.
I began to comprehend just how rad it felt, to be able to suggest a mission to someone in an online forum, who you’ve never met, then to meet them in person, in another part of the world, all in the name of your mutual passion.
Already I could tell this was going to be a weekend of hilarity, community and ‘Balls Out!’ efforts.

We metro’d across the city to meet James’ friends who had rigged a longline over a grass football pitch, surrounded by numerous towers of concrete apartment blocks.
If it wasn’t in Switzerland, you would have felt like you were landcruising through a portion of The Bronx.
Graffiti productions smothered the scratchy wall surfaces.
Kids kicked footballs through the dusty remnants of industry, spliff-smoke sailed in whispy currents disclosing the presence of a breeze in the air.
The setting had that strange aesthetic that seems to accompany the inherent ugliness of urbanism. Steel re-bar stuck out of breeze blocks, like rusty chocolate-flake ice creams.
Yet the strangest part was that it didn’t feel unsafe at all. In fact, I felt quite at home there.

SwissBronx

At first glances, the line was…long.
50m is well over double anything I had ever attempted to date.
It was rigged well over head height, waving in the wind like a ribbon of temptation.
I was blatantly getting on it.
There was no mistake I was in Europe.
Shirts off in April.
Pop-topped beers, open pages of foreign rock climbing magazines and half ripped packets of cheeses littered with crumbs of crusty bread.
A home away from home.

James sent the line as if he was just warming up. His friend, Alain, busted some moves mid-line which caught the attention of the locals so as to stop their game of footbag. I, however, mounted the monster and got flung off as if I’d just been shot from a human cannon! It’s alright, there was grass underfoot. And my bruises would be mostly internal.

My first impressions were just how strong the forces through the line, up into my body, really were. The distance of the line also meant that the weight of the webbing was far heavier than anything I had experienced previously. My initial reaction was to try and tame the beast, comparable to taming a bull, but barehanded.
The forces were just too strong to try and resist.
Instead, you had to absorb what shockwaves came your way, using your core strength to ensure those absorptions didn’t smother you to a point of imbalance.
Eventually, you get used to the sensations that began overwhelming you, gradually progressing further and further down the line.

The sun was pretty full force, so James decided we should set up a trick line down in the shade. There would be nothing glamorous about sun-dried tomatoes waltzing upon polyester string anyway.

Within ten minutes, James had won podium position for knarliest battle-wound of the weekend – a mach-10 line-whip across his whole right latimus dorsi muscle, looking like he came out from a 10 round, white collar, Thai Boxing match.
He definitely took it like a champ and I couldn’t resist snapping some shots for the ‘Bloodbank’ gallery.

BLOODBANK!

The boys taught me some new tricks, including ‘Charlies’, that look like the walks that Charlie Chaplin used to do when entertaining the masses; something I thought I was really clever for noticing, until I realised the trick was actually named after Chaplin himself.
Alain practiced his backflip attempts, a trick that seems to slow down the essence of time when you witness it in the flesh. And James used his long-legged advantage, gaining super hang-time with some atomic leaps which seemed to make the local air- traffic jealous.

I was blessed with some sweet Swiss-Sativa, and between us, the trick session seemed to lean in a whole new realm. The local kids were fascinated (as kids the world over seem to be) and amongst us we just had so much fun, right into the blackened hours of the night’s hot air.

Swiss Kids in Awe

The camaraderie of a ‘Session’ for men really does give us a kick – it exhausts you but it’s that exhaustion that leaves a smile in its wake, a smile of satisfaction at what a sick day you’ve had.
With my newly developed taste for white beers, James and Alain were keen to grab a pint as close to our location as possible. We hauled the gear like urban sherpas through the surprisingly quiet streets, until coming across an empty hotel beer garden; the perfect location to reflect on the days events and make the last minute plans for the big SlackFest the following day.

Back at James’ studio apartment – a modern, 3 metres squared, European tech-tardis – he treated me to Spaghetti Carbonara, Clulow style; a badass mouthful.
Carb loading never felt so good, especially after not eating wheat for the last 4 months. Food Coma hit hard, and after serving for a game or two of snoring-tennis, it was time to awaken from our slumbers, for the big day.

Next Up: Part 2 - Sunday Funday

Update; ITALIA! 2

2011-04-28T21:54:00.000+07:00

Hello fellow Hazards,

Here on the continent, there has been many a treat going down. I will be sharing with you some raw and uncut account of adventures, some unadulterated knowledge of the unseen and imagery that would leave a lemon sweet.

Buckle Up!

Update; ITALIA!

2011-03-31T22:46:00.003+07:00

So we've hit 8000 clicks - never in my days did I think that when I started this blog it would reach this many views.
Thanks to all of you that keep checking in!

So Monday I'm off to the motherland; Italia!

I will be packing my slacklines ready for some shredding, so if any of you are around the Swiss/North Italy/South-East-France Area for April, and are up for stretching your mind to new dimensions then hit me an email (address at the top of the page) and we'll sort it out!

In the meantime, search through the archives and pick out something to make you smile or a post that you think might contribute to getting a reaction out of someone, just for kicks.

Until motherland touchdown, Peace out famalam!

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; I take illegal drugs for inspiration

2011-03-28T00:13:00.002+07:00

Every year, like a social drinker who wants to prove to herself that she's not an alcoholic, I give up cannabis for a month. It can be a tough and dreary time - and much as I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, alcohol cannot take its place.
Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written.
Some evenings, after a long day at my desk, I'll slip into the bath, light a candle and a spliff, and let the ideas flow - that lecture I have to give to 500 people next week, that article I'm writing for New Scientist, those tricky last words of a book I've been working on for months. This is the time when the sentences seem to write themselves. Or I might sit out in my greenhouse on a summer evening among my tomatoes and peach trees, struggling with questions about free will or the nature of the universe, and find that a smoke gives me new ways of thinking about them.
Yes, I know there are serious risks to my health, and I know I might be caught and fined or put in prison. But I weigh all this up, and go on smoking grass.
For both individuals and society, all drugs present a dilemma: are they worth the risks to health, wealth and sanity? For me, the pay-off is the scientific inspiration, the wealth of new ideas and the spur to inner exploration. But if I end up a mental and physical wreck, I hereby give you my permission to gloat and say: "I told you so".
My first encounter with drugs was a joint shared with a college friend in my first term at Oxford. This was at the tail end of the days of psychedelia and flower power - and cannabis was easy to obtain. After long days of lectures and writing essays, we enjoyed the laughter and giggling, the heightened sensations and crazy ideas that the drug seemed to let loose.
Then, one night, something out of the ordinary happened - though whether it was caused by the drug, lack of sleep or something else altogether, I don't know. I was listening to a record with two friends, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I had smoked just enough to induce a mild synaesthesia. The sound of the music had somehow induced the sensation of rushing through a long, dark tunnel of rustling leaves towards a bright light.
I love tunnels. They come on the verges of sleep and death and are well known in all the cultures that use drugs for ritual, magic or healing. The reason for them lies in the visual cortex at the back of the brain, where certain drugs interfere with the inhibitory systems, releasing patterns of circles and spirals that form into tunnels and lights.
I didn't know about the science then. I was just enjoying the ride, when one of my friends asked a peculiar question: "Where are you, Sue?".
Where was I? I was in the tunnel. No, I was in my friend's room. I struggled to answer; then the confusion cleared and I was looking down on the familiar scene from above.
"I'm on the ceiling, " I said, as I watched the mouth down below open and close and say the words in unison. It was a most peculiar sensation.
My friend persisted. Can you move? Yes. Can you go through the walls? Yes. And I was off exploring what I thought, at the time, was the real world. It was a wonderful feeling - like a flying dream, only more realistic and intense.
The experience lasted more than two hours, and I remember it clearly even now. Eventually, it came to seem more like a mystical experience in which time and space had lost their meaning and I appeared to merge with the universe. Years later, when I began research on out-of-body and near-death experiences, I realised that I'd had all those now-familiar sensations that people report after close brushes with death. And I wanted to find out more.
However, nothing in the physiology and psychology that I was studying could remotely begin to cope with something like this. We were learning about rats' brains, and memory mechanisms, not mind and consciousness - let alone a mind that could apparently leave its body and travel around without it. Then and there, I decided to become a parapsychologist and devote my life to proving all those closed-minded scientists wrong.
But I was the one who was wrong. I did become a parapsychologist, but decades of difficult research taught me that ESP almost certainly doesn't exist and that nothing leaves the body during an out-of-body experience - however realistic it may feel.
Although parapsychology gave me no answers, I was still obsessed with a scientific mystery: how can we explain the mind and consciousness from what we know about the brain? Like any conventional scientist, I carried out experiments and surveys and studied the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience. But since the object of my inquiry was consciousness itself, this wasn't enough. I wanted to investigate my own consciousness as well.
So I tried everything from weird machines and gadgets to long-term training in meditation - but I have to admit that drugs have played a major role.
Back in those student days, it was the hallucinogens, or "mind-revealing" psychedelics, that excited us - and the ultimate hallucinogen must be LSD. Effective in minuscule doses, and not physically addictive, LSD takes you on a "trip" that lasts about eight to 10 hours but can seem like forever. Every sense is enhanced or distorted, objects change shape and form, terrors flood up from your own mind, and you can find joy in the simplest thing.
Once the trip has begun, there is no escape - no antidote, no way to stop the journey into the depths of your own mind. In my twenties, I used to take acid two or three times a year - and this was quite enough, for an acid trip is not an adventure to be undertaken lightly.
I've met the horrors with several hallucinogens, including magic mushrooms that I grew myself. I remember once gazing at a cheerfully coloured cushion, only to see each streak of colour turn into a scene of rape, mutilation or torture, the victims writhing and screaming - and when I shut my eyes, it didn't go away. It is easy to understand how such visions can turn into a classic "bad trip" , though that has never happened to me.
Instead, the onslaught of images eventually taught me to see and accept the frightening depths of my own mind - to face up to the fact that, under other circumstances, I might be either torturer or tortured. In a curious way, this makes it easier to cope with the guilt, fear or anxiety of ordinary life. Certainly, acceptance is a skill worth having - though I guess there are easier ways of acquiring it.
Then there's the fun and just the plain strangeness of LSD. On one sunny trip in Oxford, my friend and I stopped under a vast oak tree where the path had been trampled into deep furrows by cattle and then dried solid by the hot weather. We must have spent an hour there, gazing in wonder at the texture of this dried mud; at the hills and valleys in miniature; at the hoof-shaped pits and sharp cliffs; at the shifting patterns in the dappled shade. I felt that I knew every inch of this special place; that I had an intimate connection with the mud.
Suddenly, I noticed a very old man with a stick, walking slowly towards us on the path. Keep calm, I told myself. Act normal. He'll just say hello, walk by, and be gone.
"Excuse me, young lady," he said in a cracked voice. "My eyes are weak and, in this light, I can't see my way. Would you help me across?" And so it was that I found myself, dream-like, guiding the old man slowly across my special place - a patch of mud that I knew as well as my own features.
Two days later, my friend came back from lectures, very excited. "I've seen him. The man with the stick. He's real!"
We both feared that we'd hallucinated him.
Aldous Huxley once said that mescaline opened "the doors of perception"; it certainly did that for me. I took it one day with friends in the country, where we walked in spring meadows, identified wild flowers, marvelled over sparkling spider's webs and gasped at the colours in the sky that rippled overhead.
Back at the farmhouse, I sat playing with a kitten until kitten and flowers seemed inextricable. I took a pen and began to draw. I still have that little flower-kitten drawing on my study wall today.
On another wall is a field of daffodils in oils. One day, many years later, I went to my regular art class the day after an LSD trip. The teacher had brought in a bunch of daffodils and given us one each, in a milk bottle. Mine was beautiful; but I couldn't draw just one.
My vision was filled with daffodils, and I began to paint, in bold colours, huge blooms to fill the entire canvas. I will never be a great painter but, like many artists through the ages, I had found new ways of seeing that were induced by a chemical in the brain.
So can drugs be creative? I would say so, although the dangers are great - not just the dangers inherent in any drug use, but the danger of coming to rely on them too much and of neglecting the hard work that both art and science demand. There are plenty of good reasons to shun drug-induced creativity.
Yet, in my own case, drugs have an interesting role: in trying to understand consciousness, I am taking substances that affect the brain that I'm trying to understand. In other words, they alter the mind that is both the investigator and the investigated.
Interestingly, hallucinogens such as LSD and psilocybin are the least popular of today's street drugs - perhaps because they demand so much of the person who takes them and promise neither pleasure or cheap happiness. Instead, the money is all in heroin, cocaine and other drugs of addiction.
I have not enjoyed my few experiences with cocaine. I don't like the rush of false confidence and energy it provides - partly because that's not what I'm looking for and partly because I've seen cocaine take people over and ruin their lives. But many people love it - and the dealers get rich on getting people hooked.
This is tragic. In just about every human society there has ever been, people have used dangerous drugs - but most have developed rituals that bring an element of control or safety to the experience. In more primitive societies, it is shamans and healers who control the use of dangerous drugs, choose appropriate settings in which to take them and teach people how to appreciate the visions and insights that they can bring.
In our own society, criminals control all drug sales. This means that users have no way of knowing exactly what they are buying and no-one to teach them how to use these dangerous tools.
I have been lucky with my own teachers. The first time I took ecstasy, for example, I was with three people I had met at a Norwegian conference on death and dying. It was mid-summer, and they had invited me to join them on a trip around the fjords. One afternoon, we sat together and took pure crystals of MDMA - nothing like the frightening mixtures for sale on the streets today.
MDMA has the curious effect of making you feel warm and loving towards everyone and everything around you: within a few short hours, we were all convinced that we knew each other in a deep and intimate way. Then we deliberately each set off alone to walk in the mountains, where the same feeling of love now seemed to encompass the entire landscape.
I was told then that I should make the most of my first few experiences with MDMA because, after five or six doses, I would never get the same effects again. In my experience, this has been true, although prohibition makes it all but impossible to find such things out. In fact, we know horrifyingly little about the psychological effects of drugs that people take every day in Britain because scientists are not allowed to carry out the necessary research.
That is why I've had to do my own. I once had an expert friend inject me with a high dose of ketamine because I had heard it could induce out-of-body experiences. Known as K, or Special K, on the street, this is an anaesthetic used more often by vets than anaesthetists because of its unpleasant tendency to produce nightmares.
Get the dose right, as I did, and you are completely paralysed apart from the ability to move your eyes. This is not very pleasant. However, by imagining I was lifting out of my body, I felt I could fly, and I set off home to see what my children were up to. I was sure that I saw them playing in the kitchen; but when I checked the next day, I was told they had been asleep.
Back in the room, my guide began holding up his fingers out of my line of vision and, as soon as my mouth started working again, made me guess how many. I seemed to see the fingers all right, but my guesses were totally wrong.
I didn't repeat the experiment. It was not nearly as interesting as those drugs, such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT or mescaline, that undermine everything you take for granted. These are psychedelics that threaten our ordinary sense of self, and that is where they touch most deeply on my scientific interests.
What is a self? How does the brain create this sense of being "me", inside this head, looking out at the world, when I know that behind my eyes there are only millions of brain cells - and nowhere for an inner self to hide? How can those millions of brain cells give rise to free will when they are merely physical and chemical machines? In threatening our sense of self, could it be that these drugs reveal the scary truth that there is no such thing?
Mystics would say so. And, here, we hit an old and familiar question: do drugs and mystical experiences lead to the same "insights"? And are those insights true?
Since those first trips, I have taken many other drugs - such as nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. For just a few moments, I have understood everything - "Yes, yes, this is so right, this is how it has to be" - and then the certainty vanishes and you cannot say what you understood.
When the discoverer of nitrous oxide, Sir Humphrey Davy, took it himself in 1799, he exclaimed: "Nothing exists but thoughts". Others, too, have found their views profoundly shifted. It seems quite extraordinary to me that so simple a molecule can change one's philosophy, even for a few moments, yet it seems it can.
Why does the gas make you laugh? Perhaps it is a reaction to a brief appreciation of that terrifying cosmic joke - that we are just shifting patterns in a meaningless universe.
Are drugs the quick and dirty route to insight? I wanted to try the slow route, too. So I have spent more than 20 years training in meditation - not joining any cult or religion but learning the discipline of steadily looking into my own mind.
Gradually, the mind calms, space opens up, self and other become indistinguishable, and desires drop away. It's an old metaphor, but people often liken the task to climbing a mountain. The drugs can take you up in a helicopter to see what's there, but you can't stay.
In the end, you have to climb the mountain yourself - the hard way. Even so, by giving you that first glimpse, the drugs may provide the inspiration to keep climbing.

From here.

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; There is no hiding with LSD

2011-03-27T23:59:00.002+07:00

Is LSD a great spiritual teacher? Or indeed a teacher at all? My answer is an emphatic "Yes", even though there will always be students who learn nothing from their teachers or misuse what they do learn.

For me LSD is the ultimate psychedelic. It's a tough one – one not to be taken lightly or often. A typical trip lasts eight to 10 hours and there's no respite or way out once you've popped that tiny scrap of blotter in your mouth. I will even admit that on those rare occasions when I take it I feel some deep physiological reaction that makes me involuntarily shaky and afraid just before that fateful moment.

So why do it? Because the fear is worth – a million times over it's worth – the experience.

That experience, as many writers have explained, depends dramatically on the set and setting – on what you expect of the trip, where you are, whom you are with, and how safe you feel. One of the tragedies of drug prohibition is that we have never developed a culture in which young people can learn how to use powerful drugs properly from older, wiser and more experienced psychonauts. I count myself lucky to have encountered such good teachers to guide me with such drugs as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA and mescaline.

Of course the psychedelics can be just plain fun – the amazing colours, the shifting and moving scenes, the flowers that turn into cats that turn into rabbits that disappear down holes; the sounds that turn into streams that flow away into the sky. But very few people have eight hours of simple fun. This drug, above all, confronts you with yourself. The flickering flowers can turn into scenes of horror and desperation, the coloured-streaked sky into a theatre of unwelcome memories and shame.

For myself I used to face terrible scenes of torture, rape and other kinds of human cruelty. I do not know why, but I found myself imagining them again and again both in meditation and with drugs. Perhaps like most people, I began by fighting them and trying to push them away, but LSD will not let you push anything away. You have to face it. And this is, I think, what makes it the ultimate psychedelic. There is no hiding with LSD. You have to face whatever comes up or be overwhelmed by it.

I faced the fact that I could not blame the drug nor anyone else for my visions, and certainly not for the worst fact of all – that such cruelty has always happened and is happening somewhere even now. Ultimately I confronted the fact that I was not fundamentally different from either the torturers or the tortured, that I had in myself strains of cruelty and hatred that might, under other circumstances, lead me to be the perpetrator as well as the sufferer.

This is just one small example, and everyone's stories are different, but again and again people report that through LSD they learned to know, and accept, themselves. This may be why LSD has such powerful therapeutic effects and can be so helpful for people facing terminal illness.

Our question mentions "spirituality" and whether anyone becomes "kinder and wiser". Surely knowing oneself underlies all these – knowing and accepting your own mind, taking responsibility for what you have done and what you might do. Even simple kindness grows with self-knowledge. When we see ourselves clearly we can see others more clearly, and then it is so very much easier to be kind.

Finally, our question asked "did anyone learn anything about reality from LSD?", "… was it a glimpse – however inadequate – of something real and standing beyond our everyday lives?". I would say that in one sense selves are not "reality", but are invented stories about non-existent inner beings; that what we learn through LSD is precisely about our everyday lives, not something beyond them. But then I would say the same of spirituality. It is not something to be found beyond our everyday lives at all. It is right here and now, and that is precisely what LSD reveals.

By Sue Blackmore

Original article here.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Hazardous Pioneers' Video Retrospect-Collection

2011-03-26T20:10:00.002+07:00

^No idea what this dude is saying, but he's got some mad skills! Let me know if you can translate it, I'm sure if he's talking that long about slacklining, then there has to be something of interest in what he's saying...

^ Again, no idea what these dudes are saying, but this is one BEAST of a line!

^ Mr Andy Lewis, killing it as ever.

^Following on in the trend of not knowing what anyone's saying, this clip is a bonus just because of the EuroMetal soundtrack.

Enjoy!

Knowledge; Slacklining; 'No Knots, You WAnchor!'

2011-03-24T16:32:00.003+07:00

Imagine yourself in the following situation;

You've set up your slackline - a trickline setup.
Your line is between two trees, about 7 metres apart, just over a metre high. You've tightened the ratchet because you're practicing new tricks that involve vertical spice; the butt-bounce, the vertical jump etc.

You've just learnt the butt-bounce about ten minutes ago - salivating at the mouth to stick as many as possible before the sun sets.

But there is a problem.

That knot that you tied into your anchor sling last weekend, the one that has infinitely tightened itself into a nugget of indestructibility, the knot that you thought was doing you a favour by adjusting the length of your sling when you needed to shorten it.....

That knot has created a weakness.

You're facing away from the ratchet. You take off for the butt-bounce, everything is in slow-motion now. You beast your legs to the right of the line, trusting that you won't miss and that the line will take the strain. Your butt makes contact, everything is still slow and feels epic.

Then, time catches up with you, fast-forwarding and compounding in to one big BOOOOM!
Time speeds through you - your sling snaps, the ratchet flies into your right hip and butt cheek, hitting you in three different places simultaneously, your coccyx hits the floor - and then the pain hits.
Oh, the pain.

You're rolling around on the floor, man-screaming, shouting, venting all that anger that is now raging out of your body - anger towards the line, the company, that damn ratchet, the world itself for letting you get beat so bad.

After a good minute or two of pain-vent, an elderly dog walker appears, towered over you at the level you once were, butt-bouncing in pure, naive oblivionauto at what was about to happen.

He asks 'You alright son?' thinking to himself 'What on earth is going on here?'

'I think I'll manage,' you respond, slowly coming back to reality and feeling the immediate bruising begin to escalate.

'I'll leave you to suffer then,' he says jollily, as he walks on to his dog.

You get up, already limping, and to your surprise, you see that is wasn't the ratchet that fucked you up.
Oh no, it was an anchor-sling breakage - at the very edge of that knot you so cunningly tied last week. That point in the knot had one butt-bounce too many, and that was it, finished.

All the thoughts start racing through your head; how luckily you escaped, what if that ratchet made contact with your face, how many points of impact can one arse cheek take? etc

You pack up, half pissed off, half laughing, as the sun sets and everyone else around you has no clue as to what you just went through.

Then your conscience kicks in, telling you 'You must share this with the others! So that it doesn't happen to them!'

So there you have it. For your arse's sake, 'No Knots, You WAnchor!'

Any recommendations towards what gear to upgrade to so this never happens again, would be much appreciated. Likewise, if you want to donate some gear so that my hips, arse and coccyx don't have to go through that ordeal again, that would also be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Anarcho-Spirituality; Bruce Lipton 'The Power of Consciousness'

2011-03-21T16:58:00.003+07:00

A good friend sent this to me yesterday - gave it a watch and thought there were some really interesting points that Lipton brings up, talking about awareness, and how if you're aware of what you're doing in a habitual manner, then you can begin to break the patterns that are programmed in to you, and start being. Real cool,

Enjoy,

True Self-Expression; Bad A$$ B!tch Steph Davis

2011-03-18T00:37:00.005+07:00

Women out there, take note. Here's another Hazardous Davis, Steph Davis, and she's officially a bad ass beeeatch!

You can watch more of her videos here,

Enjoy!

Children of the Sky from steph davis on Vimeo.

Pas de Deux from steph davis on Vimeo.

Kinda Busy from steph davis on Vimeo.

Free Solo and BASE, Castleton North Face from steph davis on Vimeo.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Hayden Nickell Videos

2011-03-16T21:05:00.003+07:00

And some more cool highlining vids from Hayden Nickell,

Enjoy!

Moab Slackline - Highline from hayden nickell on Vimeo.

Dog Bowl Highline from hayden nickell on Vimeo.

Deans 120' Line Fruit Bowl from hayden nickell on Vimeo.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Charlie Long Videos

2011-03-16T21:02:00.003+07:00

Cruising the web, and some nice videos by a Mr Charlie Long

Enjoy!

Slacklife in the Baja from Charlie Long on Vimeo.

EPeC Highline a Movie from Charlie Long on Vimeo.

Mexican Exchange Rate Highline from Charlie Long on Vimeo.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Pierre Carrillo

2011-03-15T04:57:00.002+07:00

I was just over at Balance Community dot com seeing what was going down, and came across this inspiring chap, Pierre Carrillo. As I was reading through his biography, I realised that he has a pretty rad story to share, and as I'm relating a lot to what he has written - currently in my own SlackLife - I wanted to share some of it with you;

After looking at tons of pictures of people walking high in the air, my desire to let go of my fear and go for it grew. I read many posts on technical rigging information and found the member writing the most informative posts containing precise numbers and knowledge on rigging. Damian Cooksey, then holding the world record for longest line and longest highline walked, was my man. I wrote him an email and asked if I could join him on his next highline expedition, hoping he would say yes, fearing he would say no. Two days later he replied, telling me to meet him that Saturday at the trail head of a mountain four hours away from where I lived at 6am.

I spent that Friday night at a friends house in San Francisco and woke up at 3:45 in the morning to hit the road. I spent the morning with Damian C. and Andy Lewis learning how to safely rig a highline and that afternoon after everyone had walked it was my turn. With all confidence I tied the leash to my harness then to the line. I sat on the line and tried to stand up before the fear set in. The line quickly moved out from under my feet and I fell and caught the line. Hanging there my fear came back strong and I began to shake. The memories from my childhood came back, every roller coaster I chickened out of, every flight of stairs I walked down instead of taking the elevator and the rope course at summer camp that I was terrified of. I quickly pushed my thoughts aside and pulled myself back up onto the line. Again and again I fell and caught the line. On what was supposed to be my last try I fell and was unable to catch the line. Hanging from my leash exhausted, Damian told me they had to take the line down so I should give it one more go. I remounted and told myself, “If I am able to walk a line double this length close to the ground I can walk this line. I stood up and walked the entire line and then walked it back. This was a major victory for me, finally I had not been held back by my fear and performed something not many people do. I chuckled at the thought that all my brothers would probably be scared of what I just did.

Since that day I have not been able to work a normal job behind a computer or in a restaurant without thinking about being in the mountains. I realized that fear held me back from enjoying life fully and the things I was afraid of were all things I would most likely love. This realization led me to a new passion, getting over fear to discover new sensations.

You can read Pierre's full Bio here

Pierre's Website, MySlackline.com also has some pretty rad vids on it, so I thought I'd be extra nice and give you some of those too!

True Self-Expression; Dean Potter

2011-03-14T04:51:00.002+07:00

Doesn't get much more inspiring than this man,

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Hazardous Pioneers' Video Retrospect-Collection

2011-03-12T03:19:00.004+07:00

3 videos for you that I've come across this week,

Enjoy

^This crew from Germany definitely hit the scales with originality points!

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; James Fadiman - Psychedelics as Entheogens Video

2011-03-10T23:34:00.001+07:00

James Fadiman Psychedelics as Entheogens: How to Create and Guide Successful Sessions from MAPS: Psychedelic Science on Vimeo.

More than ninety-eight percent of people using psychedelics worldwide use them illegally. In the United States alone, there are 600, 000 new users of LSD each year. Restrictive laws have not led to any less use. Many users can only guess at how to prevent harm and maximize the beneﬁts of their experiences. Manuals have been developed to teach how these experiences can be made safe and supportive by the proper understanding of set, setting, sitter, substance, session and support. We will consider the advantages and limitations of the use of guides and discuss how to establish the best possible conditions for spiritual or entheogenic (as distinct from psychotherapeutic and other uses) experiences. Other manuals have been developed for psychotherapeutic use, as well as for scientiﬁc or technical problem solving. These will be presented and discussed as time allows.

Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century, a conference in San Jose, California, April 15-18 2010, organized by MAPS - the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in collaboration with: the Heffter Research Institute, The Council on Spiritual Practices, & the Beckley Foundation

To become a MAPS member visit maps.org

This video was produced by Green Fuse Media, contact Nathan at greenfusefilms@gmail.com

Medical doctors, other medical professionals, psychologists, and social workers can earn continuing medical education/ continuing education credits by viewing these videos. Visit maps.org

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Video from Holland

2011-03-09T01:21:00.001+07:00

I like the simplicity of this video. The tune is good, and it showcases that spring must be coming all the way across Europa, including Holland!

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Gainer to Base Jump

2011-03-09T00:53:00.002+07:00

Andy Lewis, pushing the realms of what can be done!

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; Erik Davis 'Sampling Paradise'

2011-03-08T15:20:00.004+07:00

So it turns out that Erik Davis writes even better than he speaks. He's an accomplished freelance writer within the worlds of the weird and wondrous, and I have managed to find a few of his pieces to share with you all.

This article below, was originally written for a magazine in '95. Davis was paid to go to Goa and rave, tripping his balls of on the Indian Bays; and what you're about to read is his account of it all.

Awesome! Definitely a story for the grandkids.

It's one hour past midnight, and the jungle throbs with techno. The tropical breeze off the Arabian Sea is warm and wet. I stuff a wad of rupees into the outstretched palm of the auto-rickshaw taxi-driver, and head toward the noise. I'm 350 kilometers south of Bombay, in India's coastal state of Goa, and I'm about to hit a rave.

Read the whole thing, here.

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; Erik Davis Psychedelics; Between Natural and Supernatural

2011-03-08T01:57:00.003+07:00

Here's a lecture I came across this evening by a guy named Erik Davis, who really looks to be head-first into the world of Psychonautic and Psychedelic research.

The lecture below brings up some very interesting stuff, particularly two guys, James Kent and Brion Gysin, both of whom I am now digging to find more about.

Hope you enjoy it,

Info about the vid:

Erik Davis - “Psychedelics: Between Natural and Supernatural”

Setting aside the growth of MDMA into one of the most popular controlled substances on the planet, the most dynamic and meaningful development in underground psychedelic use over the last fifteen years has been the explosion of an explicitly spiritual ayahuasca culture in the West. In contrast to earlier waves of Euro-American interest in “ethno-botanically active” substances like peyote and psilocybe mushrooms, today’s “tea” drinkers largely operate within a ritual and imaginative context grounded directly in shamanism, mestizo or otherwise, as well as syncretic South American religious sects. At the same time, with the important but problematic exception of Roland Griffiths’ 2008 Johns Hopkins study, the current wave of above-ground medical studies of psychedelics derives their legitimacy from the adoption of strictly secular and naturalist frames of reference drawn from Western medicine and psycho-pharmacology. What does this tension tell us about the challenges and promise of integrating psychedelics into contemporary culture?

Biography

Erik Davis is one of the most articulate writers and speakers on spirituality and contemporary alternative religion. He is the author, most recently, of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica, and also penned The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, the cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Information Age, and a critical volume on Led Zeppelin. A frequent speaker at universities and festivals alike, Davis has contributed to dozens of books and journal and has taught at UC Berkeley, Pacifica, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He also hosts the weekly net radio show Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network, and posts at techgnosis.com. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Rice University.

Horizons 2010: Erik Davis - “Psychedelics: Between Natural and Supernatural” from Horizons on Vimeo.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Hot Chicks 'N' Highlines

2011-03-06T18:00:00.005+07:00

That's right.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; SKYLINER, A documentary about our passion for highlining, made by highliners

2011-03-06T17:41:00.002+07:00

Here's a nifty little Highlining documentary from the Frenc Massif, headed by Seb Montaz.

Enjoy,

SKYLINERS - A Documentary by Seb Montaz from sébastien montaz-rosset on Vimeo.

Knowledge; Insulating your body

2011-03-05T04:21:00.005+07:00

Mumson wasn't chatting shit when she said 'Have you got a vest on?'

This article by Low-tech magazine does a fantastic job at explaining why, and how you might go about layering up for your next expedition.

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Hazardous Pioneers' Video Retrospect-Collection

2011-03-05T03:19:00.004+07:00

Why not bring you a selection of the finest and most recent Slacking vids that the world has to offer, ey?

Enjoy,

Slackline from Damian Czermak on Vimeo.

Joshua Tree Highliners - Directors Cut from Shea Design on Vimeo.

^^This one looks like it's a bunch of still photographs but linked together to give that slo-mo feel....

From the director - Sometimes I wonder into the dessert for inspiration and to be with nature, other times I find it in my front yard. This short piece is a composite of those experiences meant to momentarily captivate the viewer with distortions of time and space set to Zen moments borrowed from brave sky walkers.

slackline in the dolomites - my mental rehab training from Armin Holzer on Vimeo.

^^...had a pretty bad ski crash in april '10. immediately the day after the my right knee got refixed. broke just everything in there, boom exploded!!!!
after this I spent 5 months in the rehabilitation center, training every day... crying, yelling, oh man. hard times!
in september my mental rehab training began... finally my right knee was quite strong enough to go highlining...
And here we have the result.
mental training by armin holzer...
Enjoy the edit, and feel the vibe!!

Equilibrium - teaser from Bruno Villela on Vimeo.

^^And this one just for dope camera work..

True Self-Expression; Parkour; Antek; The Beast from Down-Under

2011-03-05T02:03:00.005+07:00

I had the great pleasure to train with this man in Sydney's Summer of 2009, and it's really awesome to see that he's still training and still going strong, and most importantly, still keeping his head on his neck.

Check it,

And of course, the legendary Sydney Parkour Chaps,

And there you have it, pushing the limit on what is.

Anarcho-Spirituality; Non-Duality; Jeff Foster - A Short Note On Suffering

2011-03-04T01:19:00.002+07:00

Came across this on Jeff Foster's website a few days ago.
It was sat in one of my millions of browser's tabs for a few days, and finally this evening, I was able to give it a read.

So simple, yet so compelling.

Take a look,

A SHORT NOTE ON SUFFERING

We try to escape from suffering, without asking ourselves what the word 'suffering' really means.

For example: Extreme fear - is it suffering? Well, when you're about to jump out of a plane for a skydive, extreme fear may arise - but it's part of the excitement, it's part of the experience, it's just there. The fear is there - and then you jump. Where is the suffering? There can be fear, even extreme fear, and no suffering, can't there?

The following week, you're sitting at home, sitting on your sofa - and extreme fear arises. It's the same fear, but in a different context. It feels like it shouldn't be there. It lingers. You try and get rid of it but it won't go away. You try and distract yourself from it, but it remains. You really don't want it to be there - it's uncomfortable! So you call up a friend and say 'I'm suffering with fear'. You ask for help. You want a way out. It feels like the fear is happening 'to' you. It feels like some strange, alien force that has 'overtaken' you.

What has happened? It's clear that something has identified with fear. Something has taken ownership of fear. Something says "this is my fear - I am afraid." And then something has begun to seek the absence of fear. The fear has become a problem. The fear has turned into a problem - and a problem needs a solution. This is the very definition of seeking. To seek a solution to something that we only assume is a problem.

But the fear is the same fear as the fear during the skydive. The fear hasn't changed - the story has changed, that's all. Ownership has happened - which is identification. A story has wrapped itself around fear. A story of somebody who is afraid, and somebody who one day will no longer be afraid. Time has come into the picture.

*

"How do I find freedom from suffering?" is the wrong question.

A better question: "what is suffering?" - and "who suffers?" - and perhaps these questions are really the same question.

In other words, what don't you want to feel?

What don't you want to experience?

If fear appears, is there an attempt to escape it? That attempt, perhaps we could call 'suffering'.

But there can be fear, and no suffering. There can be pain, and no suffering. There can be sadness, and no suffering.

It's not really about "getting rid of suffering" and moving into some transcendent place - that's the spiritual search which ultimately leads to denial, detachment and despair - although you might have some pleasant experiences along the way. But all experiences pass...

It's about seeing suffering for what it is.

Then there is no need - or even any desire - to get rid of suffering. Why would you get rid of something that doesn't exist?

What is wrong with pain? What is wrong with sadness? What is wrong with fear?

What is wrong with feeling exactly what you feel?

What is wrong with life as it is?

Forget the attempt to escape suffering. Suffer fully - and suffering evaporates. Why? Because there is nobody there separate from what you call 'suffering'. There never was. It's a paradox when you talk about it - and yet when you discover this secret it's the most obvious thing of all, and there is no paradox, there is just life appearing, in its fullness.

The Advaita concept "THERE IS NOBODY HERE WHO SUFFERS! THERE IS NO SUFFERING!" doesn't even begin to capture the richness of human experience and the possible beauty in suffering. Although in an ultimate sense it might be true, nobody lives in 'an ultimate sense' - and if they think they do, I wonder what sort of denial is going on. When suffering is understood and therefore loved, there is no need to deny it in this way - all human experience is embraced in this seeing... and that's really the end of seeking, now, now and now. The end of seeking, right at the heart of this human experience. No need for any talk of the 'impersonal' - the appearance of the personal contains all the grace that's needed. All Advaita/Nondual concepts dissolve into the clarity of life itself. That's true freedom, I feel.

You don't need to suffer one ounce more or less than you already do. Within present suffering there is the spaciousness you crave - always. But only if you are willing to look life in the face.

Life holds nothing back. Why do we hold back from life?

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Highlining. Naked!?

2011-03-03T17:33:00.003+07:00

Friends. Desert. Highlines. Nudity.

Rad!

GGBY3 from jordan tybon on Vimeo.

SomewhereElseLand.com Blog

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; Highlining; 2 Words: Daniel. Ahnen.

2011-03-02T03:32:00.003+07:00

Had a slacking session today, and my body took a beating. Wooden-back syndrome combined with wrist-wreckage. So what better way to nurse the ailments than to feast my opticals upon this little collection of mastery;

Welcome to Daniel-Ahnen-Land!

YouClimb.de

Landcruising Slacklines Germany

Enjoy!

True Self-Expression; Slacklining; So you wanna walk a Highline, do you?

2011-02-26T19:22:00.000+07:00

A dope little selection of Highline vids for you, just before I go out and have a sesh myself...

Anarcho-Spirituality; Non-Duality; Jeff Foster - Early shows

2011-02-26T18:50:00.000+07:00

I've been digesting one of these videos a night, for the last couple of nights, and thought I would share them with you all.

I don't know what it is about this Jeff Foster chap, but he definitely radiates some kind of genuine warmth. My intuition seems to say that he's lacking agenda, that he doesn't even care for it perhaps.

Either way, what he talks about (or more accurately, tries to articulate) is very captivating.

I'm not going to bother to try and summarise, just watch for yourself.

The host can be a bit off-key sometimes, but stick with it and you might get something from it.

This is brainfood. So I would recommend approaching it as such!

Enjoy,

Jeff Foster Early shows

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; 6 Great Drug-Induced Creations

2011-02-26T18:01:00.002+07:00

An interesting article on the more positive side of drug-use, here.

Enjoy!

Anarcho-Spirituality; Psychonautics; Hoffman's Potion

2011-01-05T12:20:00.002+07:00

True Self-Expression; Nas - What Goes Around

2010-12-10T17:19:00.002+07:00

Nas Escobar, the dark skinned wizard of ages.
Listened to this on the train the other day; the accuracy of it has an Orwellian uncanny-quality to it...
Video at the bottom.

[Chorus]
Ayo its poison, ecstasy, coke
You say its love, it is poison
Schools where I learned they should be burned, it is poison
Physicians prescripting us medicine which is poison
Doctors injecting our infants with the poison
Religion misoverstood is poison

[Verse 1]
Niggas up in my hood be getting shot giving poison
In hospitals, shots rittle the block
Little children and elderly women run for their lives
Drizzling rain come out the sky every time somebody dies,
Must be out my fucking mind, what is this, the hundredth time?
Sending flowers to funerals, reading rest in peace
You know the usual, death comes in threes
Life is short is what some nigga said
Not if you measure life by how one lives and what he did
Its funny how these black killer companies is making money off us
Fast food, colas, sodas skull and bone crossers

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
Sisters up in my hood trying to do good given choices
When pregnant drop out of school or have abortions
Stop working hoping that they find a man that will support them
Up late night on they mothers cordless, thinking a perm or
Bleaching cream will make better when they gorgeous
White girls tanning, lypo suction
Fake titties are implanted, fake lips thats life destruction
Lightskin women, bi-racial hateful toward themselves
Denying even they blood
I don't judge Tiger Woods but I overstand the mental poison
Thats even worser than drugs

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
Radio and TV poison, white Jesus poison
And any thoughts of taking me down is poison
Who want beef now, my heat shell anoint them, plaow

[Talking]
Never to worry, all the wrong doers got it coming back to em
A thousand times over
Every dog has its day and everything flips around
Even the most greatest nation in the world has it coming back to em
Everyone reaps what they sew that's how it goes
Innocent lives will be taken, it may get worse but we'll get through it
You all be strong

[Verse 4]
The China-men built the railroad
The Indians saved the Pilgrim
And in return the Pilgrim killed em
They call it it Thanksgiving, I call your holiday hellday
Cause I'm from poverty, neglected by the wealthy
Me and my niggas share gifts every day like Christmas
Slay bitches and party everyday like this is the last
I'm with my heckles connecting and we hitting the lad
This is my level, fuck if it get you mad
It's all poison, all of my words to enemies it is poison
Rappers only talk about ki's, its all poison
How could you call yourself emcees you ain't poison
Think about the kids you mislead with the poison
And any thoughts of taking me down is all poison
Who want beef now, my heat shell anoint them, plaow

[Hook]
What goes around comes around my nigga
And what goes up it must come down my nigga
The soldiers found below the ground my nigga
Just hold it down we older now my nigga
What goes around comes around my nigga
And what goes up it must come down my nigga
The soldiers found below the ground my nigga
Just hold it down we older now my nigga

[Verse 5]
This nigga Ike with the Iverson jersey
Light skin with herpees
Fuckin' sisters in Harlem, Brooklyn and D.C.
This is the problem cause he never tell em he got it
From letting fags suck him off Rikers Island in nine-three
Drives in Benz, hangs in all the parties
All the concerts, backstage where the stars be
Rocking their shirts in bitches faces like clockwork
Whats your name, where you from, chain blinging
Thinking girls everywheres dumb, taking powder ruining their lives
So they could never have babies, and they could never be wives
He never used a condom, give him head he got ya
Met the wrong bitch and now he dead from the monster AIDs
I contemplate, believing in karma
Those on top could just break and wont be eating tomorrow
I know some bitches who be sleeping on niggas dreams
They leave when they nigga blow she the first bitch on her knees
Knowing dudes thats neglecting their seeds
Instead of taking care of em they spending money on trees
I pray for you deadbeat daddies
Cause when them kids get grown its too late for you
Now you old and you getting shitted on
Its all scientific, mystic, you know the Earth and the stars
Don't hesitate to say you heard it from Nas
What is destined shall be
George Bush killer till George Bush kills me
Much blessings be healthy, remember

[Hook]

Anarcho-Spirituality; Will Smith talks about being an Alchemist

2010-12-10T17:14:00.002+07:00

Will Smith is on it.

Do I trust him? I don't know.

But he and his family are one massive resumé of credentials and achievements the world over.

It's worth hunting out the full interview, just to see how driven this man really is...

True Self-Expression; Free Psytrance Music

2010-12-07T02:00:00.003+07:00

Came across this dude's Youtube channel, Graveyard Guardian - tons of free psytrance music that you can stream. Well worth a look,

Enjoy,

Anarcho-Spirituality; Guerilla Psychonautics with Neil Kramer

2010-12-07T01:55:00.002+07:00

Came across this the other day, and AT LAST! Someone who is finally sumarising what it is to be awakened and then the life that you live therein.

Enjoy,

This is the video in its entirety, as a playlist...

Update; December

2010-12-07T01:52:00.002+07:00

Mwahahahhh!!!

Where to begin??

Well, first for the update, both of the Pioneers are well and on a deep path towards self-discovery.

From here on in, the blog seems like it will be taking a little more of a turn towards things of an Esoteric nature.

Both of us are on that tip, and want to share it with you, and those who are interested.

Future plans include travels to Canada in 2011...another combined Hazardous Mission!

Hope you enjoy what's coming...

Salam

Urban and Wild Survival; 'Low-Income Houses from Recycled Goods' Video

2010-09-16T18:25:00.003+07:00

Check this dude out....

On it!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Lessons:

1. DEMONSTRATION - Live by Example

2. ADVOCACY - Find 'The Others'

3. CREATIVITY - Design and Create!

Update; September

2010-09-16T17:48:00.004+07:00

So, the Hazardous Pioneers are both back from their travels, and in the UK.

Ultimately, the current plan is to work towards a self-built, Hazardous Pioneers Complex.
That begins with buying land, a mission we are currently on.

So, posts from now on, might take a bit of a shift towards sustainability / house-building / self-build kinda stuff, along with the other bits and pieces that we come across and find interesting.

We have both decided that we have spent enough time developing our left-brains. The last 20 or so years have been dedicated to that.
Now we want to progress our right-brains, and have concluded that in order to do so, we first need our own land and property to be able to start exploring these realms.

Most people on this planet, leave life with their house and property, spending a life time to earn it, and even so, it's not always 100% theirs.
Well, we have figured that our starting point is going to be where everyone else seems to finish.
Just think of the possible realms of exploration - we know all the stages of life that lead up to having something/somewhere that you can call 'yours'. But what about what happens after that? Most people will never know, but we have decided that this is where our real journey of living begins.

So sit tight, as we'll try to feature as much as we can on here, all be it more esoteric and 'right brain' in nature,

Enjoy,

HPs

Urban and Wild Survival; Double Chamber Cob Oven Video

2010-09-16T17:45:00.002+07:00

Check this badboy out - a 'double chamber cob oven' - Yeah, get your pizza on.

Knowledge; 'Revenge of the Introvert'

2010-09-16T17:27:00.003+07:00

Looking through Ran Prieur's site earlier, and came across this article.

This part really caught my attention:

To Hell With Happiness

In the united states, people rank happiness as their most important goal. That view has a special impact on introverts. Happiness is not always their top priority; they don't need external rewards to keep their brains in high gear. In fact, the pursuit of happiness may represent another personality-culture clash for them.

In a series of studies in which subjects were presented with an effortful task such as taking a test, thinking rationally, or giving a speech, introverts did not choose to invoke happy feelings, reports Boston College psychologist Maya Tamir. They preferred to maintain a neutral emotional state. Happiness, an arousing emotion, may be distracting for introverts during tasks. By contrast, extraverts reported a preference to feel "happy," "up," or "enthusiastic" and to recall happy memories while approaching or completing the tasks.

At this year's meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Tamir, along with Iris Mauss of the University of Denver, presented a paper entitled, "Come On, Get Happy: The Ironic Effects of the Pursuit of Happiness." The two did not specifically study introverts or extraverts. What they discovered is that, for all people, the pressure to be happy actually reduces happiness.

"We found that when we prime people to value happiness more, they become more unhappy and depressed," reports Mauss. "Our findings offer an intriguing explanation for the vexing paradox that even in the face of objectively positive life circumstances, nations generally do not become happier."

Urban and Wild Survival; 'How to Live the Simple Life; Part 1'

2010-08-27T00:53:00.004+07:00

A good friend of mine sent me this link to the BBC's latest project 'How to Live the Simple Life'.

In Episode 1, there are a number of good points raised.

'This could be a way forward for everyone' states the presenter. I think that's true, eventually. However, he is experimenting from a villager's lifestyle where the element of community is already quite prevalent. Do you think his statement could apply as easily to someone living in the city?

I recommend watching this. It will pop a lot of questions in to your head, so see what you get from it.

This is the path that Hazardous John and myself are now committing ourselves to, and in the near future, there will be a lot more on the subject of Simple Living within the realms of Urban and Wild Survival.

Enjoy,

Urban and Wild Survival; In Support of 'Co-Evolution'

2010-08-16T17:12:00.002+07:00

Via Ran Prieur's site, I came across this.

It's an article that supports the practice of Co-Evolution; something which has been shunting the old theories of evolution and competition from out of the limelight.

Old MacDonald Had A Farmers’ Market –
total self-sufficiency is a noble, misguided ideal

By Bill McKibben

Generations of college freshmen, asked to read Walden, have sputtered with indignation when they learned that Henry David went back to Concord for dinner with his family every week or two. He’s cheating; his grand experiment is a fraud. This outrage is a useful tactic; it prevents them from having to grapple with the most important (and perhaps the most difficult) book in the American canon, one that asks impossibly searching questions about the emptiness of a consumer economy, the vacuity of an information-soaked era. But it also points to something else: Thoreau, our apostle of solitary, individual self-reliance, out in his cabin with his hoe and his beans, the most determinedly asocial man of his time — nonetheless was immersed in his community to a degree few people today can comprehend.

Consider the sheer number of people who happened to drop by the cabin of an obscure eccentric. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society,” he writes. Often more visitors came than could sit — sometimes twenty or thirty at a time. “Half-witted men from the almshouse,” busybodies who “pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out,” a French-Canadian woodchopper, a runaway slave “whom I helped to forward toward the north star,” doctors, lawyers, the old and infirm and the timid, the self-styled reformers. It’s not that Thoreau was necessarily a cheerful host — there were visitors “who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness.” Instead, it was simply a visiting age — as most of human history has been a visiting age, and every human culture a visiting culture.

Until ours. I doubt if many people reading these words have had a spontaneous visit from a neighbor in the past week — less than a fifth of Americans report visiting regularly with friends and neighbors, and the percentage is declining steadily. The number of close friends that an American claims has dropped steadily for the last fifty years too; three-quarters of us don’t know our next-door neighbors. Even the people who share our houses are becoming strangers: The Wall Street Journal reported recently that “major builders and top architects are walling off space. They’re touting one-person ‘internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and-her offices on opposite ends of the house.” The new floor plans, says the director of research for the National Association of Home Builders, are “good for the dysfunctional family.” Or, as another executive put it, these are the perfect homes for “families that don’t want anything to do with one another.” Compared to these guys, Thoreau with his three-chair cabin was practically Martha Stewart.

Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else; with a credit card, you can harvest the world’s bounty from the privacy of your room. And we’ve built a culture much the same — the dream houses those architects build, needless to say, come with a plasma screen in every room. As long as we can go on earning good money in our own tiny niche, we don’t need a helping hand from a soul — save, of course, from the invisible hand that cups us all in its benign grip.

There are a couple of problems with this fine scenario, of course. One is: we’re miserable. Reported levels of happiness and life-satisfaction are locked in long-term one-way declines, almost certainly because of this lack of connection. Does this sound subjective and airy? Find one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t belong to anything and convince them to join a church, a softball league, a bird-watching group. In the next year their mortality — the risk that they will die in the next year — falls by half.

The other trouble is that our self-reliance is actually a reliance on cheap fossil fuel and the economy it’s built. Take that away — either because we start to run out of oil, or because global warming forces us to stop using it in current quantities — and our vaunted independence will start to lurch like a Hummer with four flat tires. Just think for a moment about that world and then decide if you want to live on an acre all your own in the outermost ring of suburbs.

The idea of self-reliance is so deep in our psyches, however, that even when we attempt to escape from the unhappy and unsustainable cul-de-sac of our society, we’re likely to turn toward yet more “independence.” The “back-to-the-land” movement, for instance, often added the words “by myself.” Think about how proudly a certain kind of person talks about his “off-the-grid” life — he makes his own energy and grows his own food, he can deal with whatever the world throws at him. One such person may be left-wing in politics (à la Scott and Helen Nearing); another may be conservative. But they are united in their lack of need for the larger world. Not even to school their kids — they’ll take care of that as well.

Such folks are admirable, of course — they have a wide variety of skills now missing in most Americans; they’re able to amuse themselves; they work hard. But as an ideal, especially an economic ideal, that radical self-reliance strikes me as being almost as empty as the consumer society from which it dissents. Consider, for instance, the idea of growing all your own food. It’s clearly better than relying on food from thousands of miles away — from our current industrialized food economy, which figures “it’s always summer somewhere” and so orders take-out from that distant field every night of the year. Compared with that, an enormous garden and a root cellar full of all you’ll need for the winter is virtue incarnate. But if you believe in many of the (entirely plausible) horror stories about what’s to come — peak oil, climate change — then the world ends with you standing shotgun in hand above your vegetable patch, protecting your carrots from the poaching urban horde.

Contrast that with another vision, one taking shape in at least a few places around the country: a matrix of small farmers growing food for their local areas. Farmers’ markets are the fastest-growing part of our food economy, with sales showing double-digit growth annually. Partly that’s because people want good food (all kinds of people: immigrants and ethnic Americans tend to be the most avid farmers’ market shoppers). And partly it’s because they want more company. One team of sociologists reported recently that shoppers at farmers’ markets engaged in ten times more conversations per visit than customers in supermarkets. I spent the past winter eating only from my valley; a little of the food I grew myself, but the idea of my experiment was to see what remained of the agricultural infrastructure that had once supported this place. And the payoff was not only a delicious six months, but also a deep network of new friends, a much stronger sense of the cultural geography of my place.

Or consider energy. Since the 1970s, a particular breed of noble ex-hippie has been building “off-the-grid” homes, often relying on solar panels. This has been important work — they’ve figured out many of the techniques and technologies that we desperately need to get free of our climate change predicament. But the most exciting new gadget is a home-scale inverter, one that allows you to send the power your rooftop generates down the line instead of down into the basement. Where the isolated system has a stack of batteries, the grid-tied solar panel uses the whole region’s electric system as its battery: my electric meter spins merrily backward all afternoon because while the sun shines I’m a utility; then at night I draw from somewhere else. It’s a two-way flow, in the same way that the internet allows ideas to bounce in many directions.

You can do the same kind of calculation with almost any commodity. Music doesn’t need to come from Nashville or Hollywood on a small disc, for instance. But you don’t have to produce it all yourself either. More fun to join with the neighbors, to make music together or to listen to the local stars. A hundred years ago, Iowa had 1,300 opera houses. Radio doesn’t need to come from the ClearChannel headquarters in some Texas office park; new low-power FM lets valleys make their own. Even currency can become a joint local project — all it takes is the trust that underwrites any system of money. In hundreds of communities, people are trying to build that trust locally, with money that only works within the region.

Thinking this way won’t be easy. We’re used to independence as the prime virtue — so used to it that three quarters of American Christians believe the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible, instead of Ben Franklin. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is harder advice, but sweeter and more sage. We don’t need to live on communes (though more and more old people are finding themselves enrolling in “retirement communities” that are gray-haired, upscale versions). But we will, I think, need to figure out how to stop relying on both oil and ourselves, and instead learn the lesson that the other primates and the other human cultures never forgot: we’re built to rely on each other.

.....

Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and the author of many books, including Enough, Wandering Home, The End of Nature, Hundred Dollar Holiday, and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Urban and Wild Survival; 'Realities of Going Primitive' - Brent Ladd

2010-08-12T15:46:00.002+07:00

Realities of Going Primitive - Brent Ladd

I recommend reading this dude's brief account of what the last couple of years have been like for hime since taking the plunge in to the 'wilderness way of life'.

Here's an excerpt;

"Another aspect I have noticed is my change in sense of time. I am relaxed and not hurrying around to beat the clock.

As I have slowed down, it appears that there is more time! A wonderful paradox, isn't it? I think less of the future and live more in the present moment. Time seems to have opened up and blossomed-expanded if you will. I feel more into the natural flow of life. This too is a part of freedom, I believe.

Living in the present moment isn't something I have consciously tried to accomplish, but is gradually and naturally occurring the longer I am in the woods."

Knowledge; The Difference: Living Well VS Doing Well

2010-08-10T16:55:00.002+07:00

Words of Wisdom from the Pottmeister, Rolf Potts.

If you want the article with the bold-texts added in, plus a list of resources, click here.

Total post read time: 5 minutes.

“From all your herds, a cup or two of milk,
From all your granaries, a loaf of bread,
In all your palace, only half a bed:
Can man use more? And do you own the rest?”
– Ancient Sanskrit poem

Living well is quite different from “doing well.”

In the quest to get ahead — destination often unknown — it’s easy to have life pass you by while you’re focused on other things. This post is intended as a reminder and a manifesto: keep it simple.

This is written by Rolf Potts, author of my perennial favorite and heavily highlighted Vagabonding. In the below piece, I’ve bolded some particular parts that have had an impact on my life.

Enter Rolf.

###

In March of 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck a reef off the coast of Alaska, resulting in the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Initially viewed as an ecological disaster, this catastrophe did wonders to raise environmental awareness among average Americans. As television images of oil-choked sea otters and dying shore birds were beamed across the country, pop-environmentalism grew into a national craze.

Instead of conserving more and consuming less, however, many Americans sought to save the earth by purchasing “environmental” products. Energy-efficient home appliances flew off the shelves, health food sales boomed, and reusable canvas shopping bags became vogue in strip malls from Jacksonville to Jackson Hole. Credit card companies began to earmark a small percentage of profits for conservation groups, thus encouraging consumers to “help the environment” by striking off on idealistic shopping binges.

Such shopping sprees and health food purchases did absolutely nothing to improve the state of the planet, of course — but most people managed to feel a little better about the situation without having to make any serious lifestyle changes.

This notion — that material investment is somehow more important to life than personal investment — is exactly what leads so many of us to believe we could never afford to go vagabonding. The more our life options get paraded around as consumer options, the more we forget that there’s a difference between the two. Thus, having convinced ourselves that buying things is the only way to play an active role in the world, we fatalistically conclude that we’ll never be rich enough to purchase a long-term travel experience.

Fortunately, the world need not be a consumer product. As with environmental integrity, long-term travel isn’t something you buy into: it’s something you give to yourself.

Indeed, the freedom to go vagabonding has never been determined by income level, but through simplicity — the conscious decision of how to use what income you have.

And, contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn’t require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself.

“Our crude civilization engenders a multitude of wants… Our forefathers forged chains of duty and habit, which bind us notwithstanding our boasted freedom, and we ourselves in desperation, add link to link, groaning and making medicinal laws for relief.”
– John Muir, Kindred and Related Spirits

At times, the biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn’t garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture.

Jack Kerouac’s legacy as a cultural icon is a good example of this. Arguably the most famous American vagabonder of the 20th century, Kerouac vividly captured the epiphanies of hand-to-mouth travel in books like On the Road and Lonesome Traveler. In Dharma Bums, he wrote about the joy of living with people who blissfully ignore “the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want…general junk you always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of [it] impersonal in a system of work, produce, consume.”

Despite his observance of material simplicity, however, Kerouac found that his personal life – the life that had afforded him the freedom to travel – was soon overshadowed by a more fashionable (and marketable) public vision of his travel lifestyle. Convertible cars, jazz records, marijuana (and, later, Gap khakis), ultimately came to represent the mystical “It” that he and Neal Cassidy sought in On the Road. As his Beat cohort William S. Burroughs was to point out years after his death, part of Kerouac’s mystique became inseparable from the idea that he “opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levi’s to both sexes.”

In some ways, of course, coffee bars, convertibles and marijuana are all part of what made travel appealing to Kerouac’s readers. That’s how marketing (intentional and otherwise) works. But these aren’t the things that made travel possible for Kerouac. What made travel possible was that he knew how neither self nor wealth can be measured in terms of what you consume or own. Even the downtrodden souls on the fringes of society, he observed, had something the rich didn’t: Time.

This notion – the notion that “riches” don’t necessarily make you wealthy – is as old as society itself. The ancient Hindu Upanishads refer disdainfully to “that chain of possessions wherewith men bind themselves, and beneath which they sink”; ancient Hebrew scriptures declare that “whoever loves money never has money enough.” Jesus noted that it’s pointless for a man to “gain the whole world, yet lose his very self”, and the Buddha whimsically pointed out that seeking happiness in one’s material desires is as absurd as “suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.”

Despite several millennia of such warnings, however, there is still an overwhelming social compulsion – an insanity of consensus, if you will – to get rich from life rather than live richly, to “do well” in the world instead of living well. And, in spite of the fact that America is famous for its unhappy rich people, most of us remain convinced that just a little more money will set life right. In this way, the messianic metaphor of modern life becomes the lottery – that outside chance that the right odds will come together to liberate us from financial worries once and for all.

“Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing…”
– Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”

Fortunately, we were all born with winning tickets – and cashing them in is a simple matter of altering our cadence as we walk through the world. Vagabonding sage Ed Buryn knew as much: “By switching to a new game, which in this case involves vagabonding, time becomes the only possession and everyone is equally rich in it by biological inheritance. Money, of course, is still needed to survive, but time is what you need to live. So, save what little money you possess to meet basic survival requirements, but spend your time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?”

Dug. And the bonus to all of this is that – as you of sow your future with rich fields of time – you are also planting the seeds of personal growth that will gradually bloom as you travel into the world.

* * *

In a way, simplifying your life for vagabonding is easier than it sounds. This is because travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don’t believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you own into a backpack. This will never work, because no matter how meagerly you live at home, you can’t match the scaled-down minimalism that travel requires. You can, however, set the process of reduction and simplification into motion while you’re still at home. This is useful on several levels: Not only does it help you to save up travel money, but it helps you realize how independent you are of your possessions and your routines. In this way, it prepares you mentally for the realities of the road, and makes travel a dynamic extension of the life-alterations you began at home.

“Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance. This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear” — disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide.
– Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel”

As with, say, giving up coffee, simplifying your life will require a somewhat difficult consumer withdrawal period. Fortunately, your impending travel experience will give you a very tangible and rewarding long-term goal that helps ease the discomfort. Over time, as you reap the sublime rewards of simplicity, you’ll begin to wonder how you ever put up with such a cluttered life in the first place.

On a basic level, there are three general methods to simplifying your life: stopping expansion, reining in your routine, and reducing clutter. The easiest part of this process is stopping expansion. This means that – in anticipation of vagabonding – you don’t add any new possessions to your life, regardless of how tempting they might seem. Naturally, this applies to things like cars and home entertainment systems, but this also applies to travel accessories. Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes people make in anticipation of vagabonding is to indulge in a vicarious travel buzz by investing in water filters, sleeping bags, and travel-boutique wardrobes. In reality, vagabonding runs smoothest on a bare minimum of gear – and even multi-year trips require little initial investment beyond sturdy footwear and a dependable travel bag or backpack.

While you’re curbing the material expansion of your life, you should also take pains to rein in the unnecessary expenses of your weekly routine. Simply put, this means living more humbly (even if you aren’t humble) and investing the difference into your travel fund. Instead of eating at restaurants, for instance, cook at home and pack a lunch to work or school. Instead of partying at nightclubs and going out to movies or pubs, entertain at home with friends or family. Wherever you see the chance to eliminate an expensive habit, take it. The money you save as a result will pay handsomely in travel time. In this way, I ate lot of baloney sandwiches (and missed out on a lot of grunge-era Seattle nightlife) while saving up for a vagabonding stint after college — but the ensuing eight months of freedom on the roads of North America more than made up for it.

“Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.”
– Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Perhaps the most challenging step in keeping things simple is to reduce clutter – to downsize what you already own. As Thoreau observed, downsizing can be the most vital step in winning the freedom to change your life: “I have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all,” he wrote in Walden, “who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or sliver fetters.”

How you reduce your “dross” in anticipation of travel will depend on your situation. If you’re young, odds are you haven’t accumulated enough to hold you down (which, incidentally, is a big reason why so many vagabonders tend to be young). If you’re not-so-young, you can re-create the carefree conditions of youth by jettisoning the things that aren’t necessary to your basic well-being. For much of what you own, garage sales and on-line auctions can do wonders to unclutter your life (and score you an extra bit of cash to boot). Homeowners can win their travel freedom by renting out their houses; those who rent accommodation can sell, store, or lend out the things that might bind them to one place.

An additional consideration in life-simplification is debt. As Laurel Lee wryly observed in Godspeed, “cities are full of those who have been caught in monthly payments for avocado green furniture sets.” Thus, if at all possible, don’t let avocado green furniture sets (or any other seemingly innocuous indulgence) dictate the course of your life by forcing you into ongoing cycles of production and consumption. If you’re already in debt, work your way out of it – and stay out. If you have a mortgage or other long-term debt, devise a situation (such as property rental) that allows you to be independent of its obligations for long periods of time. Being free from debt’s burdens simply gives you more vagabonding options.

And, for that matter, more life options.

* * *

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self Reliance”

As you simplify your life and look forward to spending your new wealth of time, you’re likely to get a curious reaction from your friends and family. On one level, they will express enthusiasm for your impending adventures. But on another level, they might take your growing freedom as a subtle criticism of their own way of life. Because your fresh worldview might appear to call their own values into question (or, at least, force them to consider those values in a new light), they will tend to write you off as irresponsible and self-indulgent. Let them. As I’ve said before, vagabonding is not an ideology, a balm for societal ills, nor a token of social status. Vagabonding is, was, and always will be a private undertaking – and its goal is not to improve your life in relation to your neighbors, but in relation to yourself. Thus, if your neighbors consider your travels foolish, don’t waste your time trying to convince them otherwise. Instead, the only sensible reply is to quietly enrich your life with the myriad opportunities that vagabonding provides.

Interestingly, some of the harshest responses I’ve received in reaction to my vagabonding life have come while traveling. Once, at Armageddon (the site in Israel; not the battle at the end of the world), I met an American aeronautical engineer who was so tickled he had negotiated 5 days of free time into a Tel Aviv consulting trip that he spoke of little else as we walked through the ruined city. When I eventually mentioned that I’d been traveling around Asia for the past 18 months, he looked at me like I’d slapped him. “You must be filthy rich,” he said acidly. “Or maybe,” he added, giving me the once-over, “your mommy and daddy are.”

I tried to explain how two years of teaching English in Korea had funded my freedom, but the engineer would have none of it. Somehow, he couldn’t accept that two years of any kind of honest work could have funded 18 months (and counting) of travel. He didn’t even bother sticking around for the real kicker: In those 18 months of travel, my day-to-day costs were significantly cheaper than day-to-day life would have cost me back in the United States.

The secret to my extraordinary thrift was neither secret nor extraordinary: I had tapped into that vast well of free time simply by forgoing a few comforts as I traveled. Instead of luxury hotels, I slept in clean, basic hostels and guesthouses. Instead of flying from place to place, I took local buses, trains, and share-taxis. Instead of dining at fancy restaurants, I ate food from street-vendors and local cafeterias. Occasionally, I traveled on foot, slept out under the stars, and dined for free at the stubborn insistence of local hosts.

In what ultimately amounted to over two years of travel in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, my lodging averaged out to just under $5 a night, my meals cost well under $1 a plate, and my total expenses rarely exceeded $1000 a month.

“When I was very young a big financier once asked me what I would like to do, and I said, ‘To travel.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it is very expensive; one must have a lot of money to do that.’ He was wrong. For there are two kinds of travelers; the Comfortable Voyager, round whom a cloud of voracious expenses hums all the time, and the man who shifts for himself and enjoys the little discomforts as a change from life’s routine.”
– Ralph Bagnold, Libyan Sands

Granted, I have simple tastes – and I didn’t linger long in expensive places – but there was nothing exceptional in the way I traveled. In fact, entire multi-national backpacker circuits (not to mention budget guidebook publishing empires) have been created by the simple abundance of such travel bargains in the developing world. For what it costs to fill your gas-tank back home, for example you can take a train from one end of China to the other. For the cost of a home-delivered pepperoni pizza, you can eat great meals for a week in Brazil. And, for a month’s rent in any major American city, you can spend a year in a beach hut in Indonesia. Moreover, even the industrialized parts of the world host enough hostel networks, bulk transportation discounts, and camping opportunities make long-term travel affordable.

Ultimately, you may well discover that vagabonding on the cheap becomes your favorite way to travel, even if given more expensive options. Indeed, not only does simplicity save you money and buy you time, it makes you more adventuresome, forces you into sincere contact with locals, and allows you the independence to follow your passions and curiosities down exciting new roads.

In this way, simplicity – both at home and on the road – affords you the time to seek renewed meaning in an oft-neglected commodity that can’t be bought at any price: life itself

Urban and Wild Survival; Tiny House Jam Sesh

2010-08-03T21:45:00.000+07:00

A rad cabin jam man!

Urban and Wild Survival; Tiny House Tour Round 2

2010-08-03T21:28:00.001+07:00

A Tiny House Tour; Round 2

Urban and Wild Survival; Tiny House Interview Video

2010-08-03T20:14:00.002+07:00

Derek Diedricksen contacted me yesterday and said that he just posted a new video of an interview he shot in Florida with Alex Pino, the person behind Tiny House Talk.

Derek publishes a blog called Relaxshax’s Blog and has been producing a show on YouTube called Tiny Yellow House. Alex tells a little background information on how he got started blogging about the tiny house movement and says he has a tiny house ebook on the way that will contain resource and reference information on tiny houses.

Knowledge; Techno-Addicts

2010-08-03T18:26:00.002+07:00

An article about Dopamine release and its relation to Technology -

Originally from here.

When we think of addiction, most of us think of alcoholism or drug abuse. But the easy access, anonymity, and constant availability of the Internet, email, texting, chatting and twittering has led to a new form of compulsive and dependent behavior - techno-addicts. The same neural pathways in the brain that reinforce dependence on substances can reinforce compulsive technology behaviors that are just as addictive and potentially destructive. Almost anything that we like to do - eat, shop, gamble, have sex - contain the potential for psychological and physiological dependence.

Whether we're watching TV, playing an interactive video game, or simply searching online for an old movie title, our brains and other organs automatically react to the monitor's rapidly changing, staccato stimuli: heart rate slows, brain blood vessels dilate, and blood flows away from major muscles. As we continue staring at the screen, this physical reaction helps our brains focus on the incoming mental stimuli, and the constant flow of visual stimuli can shift our orienting responses into overdrive. Eventually, however, rather than continued mental stimulation, we begin to experience fatigue. After a computer or video marathon, our concentration abilities often decline, and many people report a sense of depletion - as if the energy has been "sucked out of them." Despite these side effects, computers and the Internet are hard to resist, and our brains can get hooked rapidly - especially young ones. Sales of video games world-wide are stronger than ever.

Self-proclaimed Internet addicts report feeling a pleasurable mood burst or "rush" from simply booting up their computer, let alone visiting their favorite websites - just as shopping addicts get a thrill from scanning sale ads, putting their credit cards in their wallets, and setting out on a spending spree. These feelings of euphoria, even before the actual acting out of the addiction occurs, are linked to brain chemical changes that control behaviors ranging from a seductive psychological draw to a full-blown addiction. The brain-wiring system that controls these responses involves the neurotransmitter dopamine, a brain messenger that modulates all sorts of activities involving reward, feeling good, exploration and punishment.

Dopamine is responsible for the euphoria that addicts chase, whether they get it from methamphetamine, alcohol, or Internet gambling. The addict becomes conditioned to compulsively seek, crave and recreate the sense of elation while off-line or off-drug. Whether it's knocking back a few whiskeys or betting on the horses, dopamine transmits messages to the brain's pleasure centers causing addicts to want to repeat those actions - over and over again, even if the addict is no longer experiencing the original pleasure and is aware of negative consequences.

The mental reward stimulation of the dopamine system is a powerful pull that non-addicts feel as well. Studies of volunteers enrapt in addictive video games show that gamers continue to play on despite multiple attempts to distract them. The dopamine system allows them to tolerate noise and discomfort extremely well. Previous research has shown that both eating and sexual activity drive up dopamine levels. Even checking email can become a compulsive behavior that's hard to stop.

It is not the technology itself that is addictive, but rather the specific application-of-choice. People can get hooked on Internet searching, online dating, Web shopping, porn sites, on-line gambling, or even checking their email. Even if you are not addicted to the Internet or any other technology, you may be struggling with its enticement.

True Self-Expression; Lucylovescrafts.blogspot.com

2010-07-07T03:37:00.014+07:00

Lu's handmade driftwood stall

This tale of success and creativity begins here, in Queenstown, New Zealand. This is my second week here, and last Saturday saw the manifestation of something very inspiring.

Let yourself become immersed in what you’re about to learn…

Craig and Lucy are a couple I can now proudly call “my friends”. Hailing from Devon, back home in the UK, they have been travelling around NZ in a ‘HiAce’ Campervan for the last 5 months – an impressive effort, considering neither has attacked one another regardless of such a confined space! Remarkable!

To top that however, is not only their chilled vibes and willingness for new adventures and experiences, but Lucy’s ability to create. Creating crafts – of all shapes and sizes – now seems to come second nature to Lucy; so much so, she and Craig taught me how to create something of my own – a privilege, I must say.

Each shell has a hand-written label attached telling you its origin

The reason I’m writing about this is for two very relevant reasons –

1. For support – there’s not enough support going around from friends to friends, to help each establish their foundations. For example, I’m so thrilled that I have met someone who has found their passion and talent in the same package; the least I can do is write a little passage about it here.

2. The skills that Lucy possesses, not only go perfectly with life on the road, but also contain a sense of primal ‘togetherness’ with them; or at least, the art of craft-making can bring people together, (as this post will show) a factor that has seem to become trampled upon and somewhat buried in modern-day activities. For once, the competition of existence is put on hold, and instead, a time where sharing knowledge and skills now takes the podium.

Queenstown's Craft Market bustling

Every Saturday in central Queenstown sees the local craft market take the spotlight down at the lake-fronted Earnslaw Park.

A day or two before the market, all three of us went out ‘driftwood hunting’ – searching for materials to create Lucy’s display stand. The idea was to create something that the jewellery and other handmade items could hang from.

Hangin' out the goods!

Craig, a chippy by trade back in the UK, knocked up the stand in a couple of minutes with my trusty five-finger-discounted multi-tool, and hey presto, next thing we know, we’re all down at the marche, and loving it!

Up early for the setup, the day would bring forth lots of useful lessons that would be taken on board by all of us. For example, little things such as the height of your stall, can make a tremendous difference to sales and levels of interest.

However, the idea of the day wasn’t primarily to make paper. It was more about giving Lucy the hands on experience of what it’s like to trade via markets, meeting knew people, exchanging ideas and craft techniques, eating chips in the sun and learning how to savour every bit of body heat (looking at every stallholder, they all looked cold in some way or another!).

After the sun crept its way over the surrounding Queenstown mountain ranges, momentum started to gather as crowds began to defrost from their hibernation chambers and slowly, crawled their way through the miniature streets of marketdom.

Crowds gather to marvel at the craftiness

I was on tea runs – quite amusingly bombing down hills on my skateboard, back to the hostel to fill up a cuppa or two, then straight back down the slopes, teas in both hands. Quite a rush, I tell you.

After a trip or two back and forth, I noticed people chatting with Lucy, showing their interest, and before long, the first couple of purchases started to roll through.

For $35 and 7 hours of your time, you can set up a stall through the local council, and as long as all your stuff is handmade, you can sell it.

For the past few nights since I had met Lucy and Craig, we would be chatting whilst Lu would be knotting and crafting away.
The skill of making something with your hands couldn’t really be more in tune with how life works on the road – for those of you that have or are travelling extensively, you will know what I mean.

You can make someone a gift. You can teach them to make something to give as a gift to someone else. You can sell it. You can trade and barter with it. You can exhibit it. You can make it for fun. You can post it all over the world. You can customise it to each person. The list goes on.

Lu's selection of hand-made keyrings

Lucy, to date, is my favourite example of how one can survive financially, whilst keeping her sanity and pieces of her soul intact, without selling out to the machine – all the while having fun and gaining new experiences and shared moments with fellow travellers, anywhere in the world! ‘Can’t afford it.’!? Bollocks! Learn to craft!

So to all of you out there still craving for the ‘proper job’ and the oh-so-illusive ‘career path’, simply because you don’t believe in any other way or even know where to begin placing your faith (with regards to ‘alternative’ options), focus your attention towards Lucy. You might learn something useful.

The market was a great success. I think it’s fair to say that Lucy did actually sell more than she thought she would. Remember, this was her first market ever.

Lu's first happy customer!

But not only breaking even on the cost of setting up a stall and taking home enough for a nice portion of fish and chips – experiences and moments were shared and interchanged on that day too; something which can’t be priced.

Making Paper!

Our mates from the hostels came down, marvelling at what Craig and Lucy had manifested from just their supplies they had retrieved from their campervan.

Some more satisfied customers

Music padded in the background, the sun kept limbs above freezing point, and the constant stream of people complimented the friendly chatter that was exchanged amongst us.

'Keep it Frosty!'

Tea, trades, friends and tunes.

Welcome to the world of craft markets.

Urban and Wild Survival; 'La Casa Movil'

2010-06-18T03:51:00.002+07:00

Multi-national Monsters Vodafone, released this hi-tech model of a tiny house back in 2009.
It's quite an inspiration for what is possible with regards to 'trailer-homes'.

Knowledge; 'Risk'

2010-06-16T07:22:00.002+07:00

A very interesting article on the psychology of 'risk taking'.

Hopefully this gives a better insight into the way of living that a Hazardous Pioneer undertakes on a daily basis.

From here.

In the land of seatbelts and safety helmets, the leisure pursuit of dangeris a growth industry. Some experts say that courting uncertainty is the only way to protect the inner force America was founded on. Or to define the self.

RISKY BUSINESS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE POPULAR. MOUNTAIN CLIMBING IS AMONG AMERICA'S FASTEST GROWING SPORTS.

Extreme skiing--in which skiers descend cliff-like runs by dropping from ledge to snow-covered ledge--is drawing wider interest. Sports like paragliding and cliff-parachuting are marching into the recreational mainstream while the adventurer-travel business, which often mixes activities like climbing or river rafting with wildlife safaris, has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry. "Forget the beach," declared Newsweek last year. "We're hot for mountain biking, river running, ice climbing, and bungee jumping.

Thirty-six-year-old Derek Hersey knew a thing or two about life on the edge. Where most rock climbers used ropes and other safety gear, the wiry, wise-cracking Brit usually climbed "free solo"--alone, using nothing but climbing shoes, finger chalk, and his wits. As one climbing buddy put it, Hersey went "for the adrenaline and risk," and on May 28, 1993, he got a dose of both. High on the face of Yosemite's Sentinel Rock, Hersey met with rain and, apparently, slick rock. Friends who found the battered body reckon he fell several hundred feet. In the not-too-distant past, students of human behavior might have explained Hersey's fall as death-wish fulfillment. Under conventional personality theories, normal individuals do everything possible to avoid tension and risk.

In fact, as researchers are discovering, the psychology of risk involves far more than a simple "death wish." Studies now indicate that the inclination to take high risks may be hard-wired into the brain, intimately linked to arousal and pleasure mechanisms, and may offer such a thrill that it functions like an addiction. The tendency probably affects one in five people, mostly young males, and declines with age. It may ensure our survival, even spur our evolution as individuals and as a species. Risk taking probably bestowed a crucial evolutionary advantage, inciting the fighting and foraging of the hunter-gatherer.

In mapping out the mechanisms of risk, psychologists hope to do more than explain why people climb mountains. Risk-taking, which one researcher defines as "engaging in any activity with an uncertain outcome," arises in nearly all walks of life. Asking someone on a date, accepting a challenging work assignment, raising a sensitive issue with a spouse or a friend, confronting an abusive boss--all involve uncertain outcomes, and present some level of risk. Understanding the psychology of risk, understanding why some individuals will take chances and others won't, could have important consequences in everything from career counseling to programs for juvenile delinquents.

Researchers don't yet know precisely how a risk taking impulse arises from within or what role is played by environmental factors, from upbringing to the culture at large. And, while some level of risk taking is dearly necessary for survival (try crossing a busy street without it), scientists are divided as to whether, in a modern society, a "high-risk gene" is still advantageous. Some scientists, like Frank Farley, Ph.D., a University of Wisconsin psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association, see a willingness to take big risks as essential for success. The same inner force that pushed Derek Hersey, Farley argues, may also explain why some dare to run for office, launch a corporate raid, or lead a civil-rights demonstration.

Yet research has also revealed the darker side of risk taking. High-risk takers are easily bored and may suffer low job satisfaction. Their craving for stimulation can make them more likely to abuse drugs, gamble, commit crimes, and be promiscuous. As psychologist Salvadore Maddi, Ph.D., of the University of California-Davis warns, high-risk takers may "have a hard time deriving meaning and purpose from everyday life."

Indeed, this peculiar form of dissatisfaction could help explain the explosion of high-risk sports in America and other postindustrial Western nations. In unstable cultures, such as those at war or suffering poverty, people rarely seek out additional thrills. But in a rich and safety-obsessed country like America, land of guardrails, seat belts, and personal-injury lawsuits, everyday life may have become too safe, predictable, and boring for those programmed for risk-taking.

In an unsettling paradox, our culture's emphasis on security and certainty--two defining elements of a "civilized" society--may not only be fostering the current risk taking wave, but could spawn riskier activities in the future. "The safer we try to make life," cautions psychologist Michael Aptor, Ph.D, a visiting professor at Yale and author of The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement, "the more people may take on risks."

UNIQUE WAVELENGTHS

In Icicle Canyon, a towering rocky corridor in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state, this strange interplay between safety and risk is a common sight. When weather permits, the canyon's formidable walls swarm with fit-looking men and women, using improbably small ledges and cracks to hoist themselves upward. For novices, risk can be kept to a minimum. Beginners' climbs are "top-roped" by a line running from the climber to a fixed cliff-top anchor and back down to a partner on the ground.

Even so, the novice can quickly experience a very realistic fear--what veterans call "getting gripped." Halfway up one short cliff, a first-timer in a tee shirt and shorts stalls out beneath a rock overhang. Unable to find a foothold, the climber peels off the cliff like wet wallpaper and dangles limply from the rope. His partner lowers him back to safety, where he stands white-faced, like someone emerging from an auto accident. Five minutes later, he is back on the cliff.

It's easy to see why high-risk sports receive so much academic attention. Climbers, for example, score higher on risk-preference tests than nearly all other groups. They show a strong need for intense stimulation and seek it in environments--sheer cliffs or frozen waterfalls--that most humans seem genetically programmed to avoid.

Climbers' own explanations for why they climb illustrate the difficulty of separating genetic, environmental, and cognitive components of this or any other behavioral trait. Many say they climb for decidedly conscious reasons: to test limits, to build or maintain self-esteem, to gain self-knowledge. Some regard it as a form of meditation. "Climbing demands absolute concentration," says Barbara, a lithe, 30-ish climber from Washington State. "It's the only time I ever feel in the moment."

Yet even the most contemplative climbers concede that their minds and bodies do operate on a unique wavelength. As Forrest Kennedy, a 32-year-old climber from Georgia, bluntly puts it, "What we do for kicks, most people wouldn't do if you held a gun to their heads."

Many climbers recognize that their commitment to the sport borders on addiction, one that persists after brushes with injury and death. Seattle attorney Jim Wickwire, for example, is probably best known for being on the first American team to summit Pakistan's 28,250-foot K-2, second highest peak in the world and arguably the most challenging. (The movie K-2 was based on his story.) Yet this handsome, soft-spoken father of five is almost as wellknown for his obstinacy. On K-2, Wickwire lost several toes to frostbite and half a lung to altitude sickness. A year before, in 1977, he'd seen two climbing partners fall 4,000 feet. In 1981, on Alaska's Mount McKinley, he watched helplessly as another partner froze to death after becoming wedged in an ice crevasse.

Wickwire vowed then never to climb again. But in 1982, he attempted 29,028-foot Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak--and there saw yet another partner plunge 6,000 feet to her death. In 1993, as Wickwire, then 53, prepared for a second Everest attempt, he told a climbing magazine that he'd "stopped questioning why" he still climbed. Today, he seems just as uncertain. "The people who engage in this," Wickwire says, "are probably driven to it in a psychological fashion that they may not even understand themselves."

Until recently, researchers were equally baffled. Psychoanalytic theory and learning theory relied heavily on the notion of stimulus reduction, which saw all human motivation geared toward eliminating tension. Behaviors that created tension, such as risk taking, were deemed dys-functional, masking anxieties or feelings of inadequacy.

A CRAVING FOR AROUSAL

Yet as far back as the 1950s, research was hinting at alternative explanations. British psychologist Hans J. Eysenck developed a scale to measure the personality trait of extroversion, now one of the most consistent predictors of risk taking. Other studies revealed that, contrary to Freud, the brain not only craved arousal, but somehow regulated that arousal at an optimal level. Over the next three decades, researchers extended these early findings into a host of theories about risk taking.

Some scientists, like UC-Davis's Maddi and Wisconsin's Farley, concentrate on risk taking primarily as a cognitive or behavioral phenomenon. Maddi sees risk taking as an element of a larger personality dimension he calls "hardiness," which measures individuals' sense of control over their environment and their willingness to seek out challenges. Farley regards risk-taking more as a whole personality type. Where other researchers speak of Type A and B personalities, Farley adds Type T, for thrill seeking. He breaks Type-T behavior into four categories: T-mental and T-physical, to distinguish between intellectual and physical risk taking; and T-negative and T-positive, to distinguish between productive and destructive risk taking.

A second line of research focuses on risks biological roots. A pioneer in these studies is psychologist Marvin Zuckerman at the University of Delaware. He produced a detailed profile of the high-sensation seeking (HSS) personality. HSS individuals, or "highs," as Zuckerman calls them, are typically impulsive, uninhibited, social, and tend toward liberal political views. They like high-stimulus activities, such as loud rock music or pornographic or horror movies, yet are rarely satisfied by vicarious thrills. Some level of actual risk--whether physical, social, or legal-seems necessary. Highs tend to be heavy bettors. They may try many kinds of drugs and favor sports like skiing or mountain climbing to running or gymnastics. Highs also show a clear aversion to low-sensation situations, otherwise known as boredom.

High-sensation seeking plays a huge role in relationships. Highs favor friends with interesting or offbeat life-styles, and avoid boring people. They're also far more sexually permissive, particularly in the number of sex partners, than lows. Highs favor mates with similar proclivities for stimulation, while lows generally pair off with other lows. And woe, apparently, to those who break this rule. "The combination of a high- and a low-sensation seeker," says Zuckerman, "seems to put the marriage relationship at risk."

Indeed, one benefit of such research is that it can be applied to many areas of everyday life. Those seeking mates, the University of Wisconsin's Farley says, should focus on those who share their level of risk taking, particularly in terms of sexual habits. Likewise, thrill seekers should also look for the right level of on-the-job excitement. "If you're a Big T type working on a microchip assembly line, you're going to be miserable," Farley predicts. "But if you're Big T on a big daily newspaper or a police force, where you never know what you'll be doing next, you're probably going to thrive."

Many climbers fit the HSS profile. Many report difficulty keeping full-time jobs, either because the work bores them, or because it interferes with their climbing schedule. Long-term relationships can be problematic, especially where climbers marry nonclimbers, or where one partner begins losing interest in the sport. Non-climbing partners often complain that their spouses spend too much time away from home, or refuse to commit to projects (children, for example) that might interfere with climbing. Relationships are also strained by the ever-present threat of injury or death. As one Midwestern climber puts it, "the possibility that I might miss dinner, forever, doesn't make things any smoother."

Further, while many climbers are models of clean living, the sport has its share of hard partiers. Some even boast of making first ascents while high on marijuana or hallucinogens like LSD. Climbers say such drugs enhance or intensify the climbing experience. But studies suggest that the drugs may also mimic the process that pushes climbers in the first place.

WIRED FOR THRILLS

Researchers have long known of physiological differences between high- and low-sensation seekers. According to Zuckerman, the cortical system of a high can handle higher levels of stimulation without overloading and switching to the fight-or-flight response. Psychologist Randy Larsen, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, has even shown that high-sensation seekers not only tolerate high stimulus but crave it as well.

Larsen calls high-sensation seekers "reducers": Their brains automatically dampen the level of incoming stimuli, leaving them with a kind of excitement deficit. (Low-sensation seekers, by contrast, tend to "augment" stimuli, and thus desire less excitement.) Why are some brains wired for excitement? Since 1974, researchers have known that the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) plays a central role in regulating arousal, inhibition, and pleasure. They also found that low levels of MAO correlate with high levels of certain behaviors, including criminality, social activity, and drug abuse. When Zuckerman began testing HSS individuals, they, too, showed unusually low MAO levels.

The enzyme's precise role isn't deal It regulates levels of at least three important neurotransmitters: norepinephrine, which arouses the brain in response to stimuli; dopamine, which is involved with the sensation of pleasure in response to arousal; and serotonin, which acts as a brake on norepinephrine and inhibits arousal. It's possible that high-sensation seekers have lower base levels of norepinephrine and thus, can tolerate more stimulation before triggering serotonin's dampening effect. High-sensation seekers may also have lower levels of dopamine and are thus in a chronic state of underarousal in the brain's pleasure centers.

Such individuals may turn to drugs, like cocaine, which mimic dopamine's pleasure reaction. But they may also use intense and novel stimulation, triggering norepinephrine's arousal reaction and getting rewarded by the dopamine pleasure reaction. "What you get is a combination of tremendous arousal with tremendous pleasure," Zuckerman speculates. "And the faster that arousal reaches its peak, the more intense your pleasure." Just as important, individuals may develop a tolerance for the pleasure reaction, and thus may need ever higher levels of stimulation--of risk--to achieve the same rush.

Today such an addictive dynamic may seem largely problematic. In prehistoric times it was very likely essential. Dopamine, for example, has known links to various "approach" behaviors: feeding, fighting, foraging, and exploration. Probably, the same mechanism that gave people like Derek Hersey a rush from climbing also rewarded their predecessors for the more necessary acts of survival.

Psychologist Aptor suggests that the willingness to take risks, even if expressed by only certain individuals, would have produced benefits for an entire group. Upon entering a new territory, a tribe would quickly need to assess the environment's safety in terms of "which water holes are safe to drink from, which caves are empty of dangerous animals." Some risk takers would surely die. But, Aptor points out, "it's better for one person to eat a poisonous fruit than for everybody."

Climbers are understandably leery of such explanations. They admit that they may be more inclined to take risks than the average human. But that inclination's ultimate expression, they argue, is largely a matter of personal volition. "At some level, there is a reason, chemical, mechanical, or whatever, for why we climb. But doesn't that take the 'human' element out of it, and make us all robots?" grouses Todd Wells, a 40-year-old climber from Chattanooga. "I climb so I don't feel like a robot, so I feel like I'm doing something that is motivated by the 'self.'"

Even physiologically oriented scientists like Zuckerman admit the dopamine reaction is only part of the risk-taking picture. Upbringing, personal experience, socio-economic status, and learning are all crucial in determining how that risk-taking impulse is ultimately expressed.

CULTURE OF ASCENT

Although many climbers report a childhood preference for thrills, their interest in climbing was often shaped externally, either through contact with older climbers or by reading about great expeditions. Upon entering the sport, novices are often immersed in a tight-knit climbing subculture, with its own lingo, rules of conduct, and standards of excellence.

This learned aspect may be the most important element in the formation of the high-sensation seeking personality. While risk taking may have arisen from neurochemicals and environmental influences, there is an intellectual or conscious side to it that is now not only distinct from them but is itself a powerful motivator. Working through a challenging climbing route, for example, generates a powerful sense of competence that can also provide climbers with a new-found confidence in their everyday life. "There is nothing more empowering than taking a risk and succeeding," says Farley.

No wonder scaling the face of a cliff is a potent act that can penetrate to the very essence of self and help reshape it. Many climbers report using that empowering dynamic to overcome some of their own inner obstacles. Among these, fear--of heights, of loss of control, of death--is the most commonly cited.

Richard Gottlieb, 42-year-old climber from New York, is known for climbing frozen waterfalls, one of the riskiest facets of the sport. But as a kid, he was too scared even to go to summer camp. "Yet there was something in me that wanted to get into some swashbuckling adventure," he says. Climbing satisfied that impulse while helping him overcome his fearful nature. Gottlieb believes climbing has helped him cope with his fear of death: "We open the door, see the Grim Reaper right there, but instead of just slamming the door, you push him back a few steps."

NEW OUTLETS

Traditional outlets for the risk-taking impulse have been disappearing from everyday life. As civilization steadily minimized natural risks, Aptor says, and as cultures have sought to maintain their hard-won stability through repressive laws and stifling social mores, risk takers have been forced to devise new outlets. In the 20th century, that has brought about a rise in thrill sports. But Aptor believes the tension between civilization and risk taking dates back eons. Aptor wonders how much of the British Empire "was built up by people trying to escape the desperately conformist society of Victorian England."

When channeled into sports like climbing, where skill and training can minimize danger, or into starting a new business, risk taking may continue to be a healthy psychological outlet. It may provide a means to cope with boredom and modern anxieties, to bolster self-esteem. Risk taking may provide a crucial sense of control in a period where so much of what happens--from crime and auto accidents to environmental disasters and economic downturns--seems almost random.

Unfortunately, the risk taking impulse doesn't always find such healthy outlets. Many high-sensation seekers don't have the money or the role models for sky diving or rock climbing, Zuckerman notes. "In such groups, the main forms of sensation seeking include sex, drugs, heavy drinking, gambling, and reckless driving." Indeed, sensation seeking may emerge as a critical factor in crime. No surprise, then, that some researchers place the risk taking personality in the "abnormal" category and regard high-risk takers almost as an evolutionarily obsolete subspecies. Maddi suggests that well-adjusted people are "good at turning everyday experience into something interesting. My guess is that the safecracker or the mountain climber can't do that as well. They have to do something exciting to get a sense of vitality. It's the only way they have of getting away from the sense that life sucks." Larsen is even blunter: "I think risk takers are a little sociopathic."

Farley is more optimistic. Even civilized society, he says, holds ample opportunity for constructive risk taking: investing in a high-stakes business venture, running for political office, taking an unpopular social stand. Farley argues that history's most crucial events are shaped by Big T behavior and Big T individuals, from Boris Yeltsin to Martin Luther King, Jr. The act of emigration, he says, is an intrinsically risky endeavor that selects individuals who are high in sensation seeking. Consequently, countries built upon immigrant population--America, Canada, Australia--probably have an above-aver-age level of risk takers. He warns that much of the current effort to minimize risk and. risk taking itself runs the risk of eliminating "a large part of what made this country great in the first place."

For all the societal aspects of this peculiar trait, the ultimate benefits may continue to be purely personal. "There's a freshness to the [climbing; experience that clears away the weariness of routine and the complexity of social norms," says Seattle climber Bill Pilling. "Climbing brings you back to a primal place, where values are being created and transformed."

To push away from society's rules and protections, Farley suggests, is the only way to get a sense of where "society" ends and "you" begin. "Taking a risk, stepping away from the guardrails, from the rules and the status quo, that's when you get a sense of who 'you' are," he says. "If you don't stretch, try to push past the frontiers, it's very difficult to know that."

True Self-Expression; Underwater Base Jump Video

2010-06-16T06:46:00.001+07:00

..Consider the fact that the person who filmed this video, Julie Gautier, also held her breath when filming Nery, and the video seems even more incredible.

True Self-Expression; 'Are Risk Takers A Dying Breed?'

2010-06-16T06:37:00.003+07:00

Reannon Muth wonders if the modern daredevil has become obsolete - The following article was taken from here.

Long before my first attempt at scaling the side of a mountain, I scaled the side of my parents’ two-story house.

Using my bedspread as a make-shift rope, I kicked out my bedroom window and prepared to swing Tarzan-style down to the ground 50 feet below. I was seven.

Luckily, my father caught me dangling from the window-ledge just in time to spare a trip to the ER. But not in time to spare me from a life-long addiction to thrills and daring adventures. That, apparently, had been hard-wired into my brain since birth.

According to research conducted by University of Delaware professor Marvin Zuckerman, not only is my passion for living on the edge a trait of a risk-taking personality type, it’s also hereditary. I’m a risk-taker – or high sensation-seeker – a label Zuckerman attributes to anyone who craves “novel, intense and complex sensations and experiences” and is willing to engage in risky behavior in order to achieve them.

In modern society, daredevils are usually considered oddballs or worse, adrenaline junkies with a death wish.
And while that often involves physical risks, not everyone needs to be a sky-diving instructor in order to consider herself a risk-taker. According to Zuckerman, the risk-taking trait can manifest itself in other behaviors. Someone who enjoys exploring a foreign city without a map, for example, would be considered an “Experience-seeking” risk-taker. And those easily bored by routine and who frequently move or switch jobs are called “Boredom Susceptibility” risk-takers.

Although there might be a little Evel Knievel lurking in your entrepreneurial next-door neighbor, it’s usually the climber on Everest or the crocodile hunter that receive the attention. And it’s often negative. In modern society, daredevils are usually considered oddballs or worse, adrenaline junkies with a death wish. But it wasn’t always like that.

As the theory goes, the risk-takers of yore were not only valued members of a tribe, but absolutely vital to humankind’s survival.

While the play-it-safers stuck close to their berry patches, their more adventurous counterparts risked life and limb hunting the saber-tooth tiger or investigating a newly-discovered cave.

Not surprisingly, many a risk-taking caveman didn’t survive that elephant tusk to the back or drink from that contaminated watering-hole. But as psychologist Michael Aptor, author of the book “Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement”, pointed out in the Psychology Today article, Risk, “it’s better for one person to eat a poisonous fruit than for everybody.” It was because of these early risk-takers that our species was able to survive.

But you wouldn’t know it from people’s reactions today. Up until recently, the theory was that human beings main motivation in life was tension-avoidance, so those adventurists who actively sought it were deemed impaired and even crazy. Some researchers not only consider the risk-taking personality “abnormal”, but theorize that it’s becoming obsolete.

They have a point. In the modern world, where no waters are left uncharted or lands undiscovered, there just isn’t a need in society for the girl gutsy enough to dive for oysters in shark-infested water.

Michael Alvear, in the Salon article Risky Business, wrote: “You can’t swing a helmeted cat without hitting a mandated safety precaution.” And although those helmet laws and health inspections have made the modern world safer, they’ve also sapped it of the very thing that makes life interesting: it’s wild unpredictability.

And this is bad news for those programmed to crave adventure. Because as science has shown, a thirst for novelty is in the risk-taker’s blood. While neuroscientists have yet to agree which gene is responsible for why some prefer paint-balling to painting, a study from Vanderbilt University in Nashville found that those who crave an element of danger do so because their brains have trouble regulating dopamine.

Science has shown, a thirst for novelty is in the risk-taker’s blood.
Dopamine is the brain’s “happy juice”. It’s the chemical you can thank for that blissful feeling you experience while eating that chocolate sundae or sharing a romantic evening with a lover. And in the brain of a high-sensation seeker (who is believed to have fewer of a dopamine-blocking enzyme), it’s overflowing. Which is why the risk-taker may feel bizarrely elated at the prospect of jumping off a cliff, whereas the average person feels merely frightened and stressed.

Not that the average person doesn’t enjoy the occasional weekend ski-trip. On a scale of sensation-seeking tendencies, with the couch potato on one end and the base jumper on the other, most people fall somewhere in between. And that’s unlikely to change, no matter how many safety nets or seat-belts society cocoons itself in.

But adrenaline junkies (those who struggle to cope with the mundane existence of every-day life) are a different breed. And as evolution has demonstrated, over time, when a trait ceases to be advantageous, it ceases to exist.

So with an intense desire for adventure literally pumping through their veins and with no spear-throwing tribesman in sight, what’s a modern daredevil to do?

Well, as the article “Risk” and the spike in popularity of adventure tourism would suggest, when you can’t find danger, you create it. And that’s why we find grannies giddily signing up for white-water rafting in Costa Rica or college students heading to orphanages in New Delhi for voluntourism gigs.

Last weekend, 20 years since that day on my window-ledge, I stood on a different sort of ledge, the kind 200 feet above ground and attached to a cliff on the border of a Guatemalan jungle. As I readied myself to zip-line across the tree tops, I prayed that metal and cable would prove studier than the bedspread. I was nervous. But perhaps not unsurprisingly, exhilarated, too.

Maybe we risk-takers are a dying breed. But you can be sure that if we do all die out, we’ll be going out in style: para-gliding, free-falling and bungeeing our way into extinction.

Anarcho-Spirituality; Dean Potter

2010-06-14T14:56:00.002+07:00

Dean Potter.

All I can say is that you have to watch this 5 part documentary.

I think I've found my niche in life...

Anarcho-Spirituality; Anti-Work

2010-06-08T13:15:00.003+07:00

The time has come to write another post.

These last few weeks have seen my head rear itself from the sandy depths of the silicate, systematic ant's nest, and now that the light is burning my eyes, I thought I would share my revelations with you all.

Specifically, this last month or so has been built upon the premise that we all know as 'work'; paid employment. In truth, beneath that disguise is the very nature of it all; wage slavery.

I have found myself once again questioning my reasons as to why I put myself through such monotonous, meaningless, mundane bullshit, all in the name of valueless paper - that we seem to sacrifice pieces of ourselves as we come to worship before the mythical entity that we know as 'money'.

Each shift feels more and more like an eternal-chasm that just will not come to end. I notice myself rocket-clocking - rampantly darting my eyes back and forth at the minutes presenting themself on my screen, torturing myself as I ask questions I already know the answers to; 'How much longer?' 'How long left to go?'

And why is it we seem to be able to ask that very question in a million different ways when we vest ourselves in situations that we'd really rather not have to partake in.

I personally have two weeks left in my current call-centre job. I have already had one verbal warning, and as I count the remaining days that I will have to work, I seem to have to psyche myself up for each shift - 'Can you handle this one?' 'Do you think you'll make it?'

Due to such a short time left, I find myself pushing the boundaries further from what I already know and understand as 'the art of milking'.
Today, I found that there is a loophole in the system with regards to lengths of breaktimes - I managed to blag 20 minutes instead of the usual, standard 10 minute paid break.

But like a morphine addict, that sweet sensation just wasn't enough. Immediately my brain ticked as to how the boundaries could be pushed further, and further.

'Could I not just sit in the toilet for half an hour? Would anyone notice?' I find the devil on my shoulderblade ponering.

And so, this goes on, and on and on.
Eventually, I have to conclude - as I would expect any person wishing to keep their sanity intact - that this is NOT HEALTHY!

Realistically, if the above are your mental and physical reactions to work and wage slavery in general, then one has to ask 'WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING THIS FOR!?'

And that's precisely the point I am at right now.

The following are essays and excerpts from others out there that share my opinions on commerce, the system and wage slavery, and I do hope that you find some sense, truth and even heart-scalding resonance in what they too say about the tragedy that we all know as 'employment'.

This spawns deeper - mostly for me 'Why on Earth would you bother to commit your precious little time on this planet, to doing a 'job' which cuts your divine and unlimited potential short?'

If everyone's goal throughout life is essentially to find some sort of lasting, meaningful happiness whilst they're here, WHY would you waste that energy on status, wage slavery and above all, actions of such synthesis?

I should add that due to my less than 20 hour work week, I was confronted by one of my housemates with the oh, so eloquently-phrased condemnation 'Why don't you work you lazy shit!?'There was conviction in her voice, and to her, not working just seemed incomprehendible.

The following, Hannah, is for you:

Buckle up, it's about to get raw -

ONE.

'THE CULT OF THE JOB' By D. JoAnn Swanson
(Bold has been added by Hazardous Davis)

The Cult of the Job

I am job-free. Out of the rat race. Unemployed, as they say, but definitely by choice. My self-esteem is intact, thank you, I'm not "in transition", and I have no intention of getting a job again.

That's right--I'm on the leisure track permanently. I don't have a cushy nine-to-five job with profit-sharing, "security", stock options, health insurance, advancement opportunities, or free parking. I also don't have to deal with office politics, attending motivation seminars, climbing the corporate ladder, employee evaluations, increasing productivity, the absurd "team player" mentality, brown-nosing, mandatory overtime, stressful commutes in rush-hour traffic, being trapped in a cubicle, or the threat of being pink-slipped. Oh, and let's not forget--I don't have the expense of a "professional" wardrobe, strong coffee to wake me up every morning, or "power lunches".

I wouldn't have it any other way.

If you ask me what seems to have become the first question new acquaintances ask each other nowadays-namely, "What do you do for a living?" I'm likely to say that I'm job-free by choice or quip that I'm an "occupational tourist", as a friend likes to say. Sometimes I'll tell 'em I'm a freelancer or self-employed, specializing in leisure. Most people, when they hear this, say something like "You mean you don't have a regular job? Wow, that's great--I'll bet more people would do that if they thought they could swing it."

I'm willing to bet that more of them could swing it if they'd just find within themselves the wherewithal to question a few of the assumptions that are often taken for granted in America, particularly by the middle class and those who aspire to wealth. So what assumptions am I talking about? Well, let's start with the cult of jobs and work.

We need to re-evaluate the role of jobs in our lives. For far too many of us, getting a job amounts to securing a means of paying for our living expenses, and not much more. At best, this attitude leads to years of "paying one's dues" in exchange for the dubious "security" of a (hopefully) steady paycheck and the promise of finally enjoying leisure when one retires. At worst, it leads to a way of life where we devote 40 or more hours of our precious time a week to doing something we don't care about mainly for the sake of having a roof over our heads and food on the table. I know I'm not the only one who thinks this is ludicrous. It took me years of trying to fit myself into some kind of job title, of devoting myself to figuring out "what I wanted to be when I grew up", before I realized that I don't want a job, nor do I feel guilty about not wanting one.

It's time for us to make a crucial distinction between "jobs" and "work". Work--particularly the kind that is motivated by interest, social welfare, connection, curiosity, learning, beauty--can be satisfying, fulfilling, fun, and honorable. However, it's exceedingly hard to see this when we are blinded by the compulsion to "get a job" or face the poorhouse, or when we're terrified by the social and financial consequences of being job-free. In addition, we've internalized a puritan work ethic which holds that laziness is a sign of moral weakness. We sense deep in our guts that even if we were to arrange our financial affairs such that we could quit our jobs for good, it would mean we are lazy. We know we'd still face guilt, social disapproval, maybe even an identity crisis once we were unemployed--especially if we were to tell everyone we meet that we're not "in transition", not hunting for a new job, that in fact we are happy this way. I maintain that a complex web of unquestioned assumptions are what keep such fears in place, and that we need to delve into those places we fear to tread if we're ever going to make lasting changes for the better.

A job, nowadays, is used as a shorthand term for whatever it is you do that occupies a large portion of your time and provides a paycheck. In a work-obsessed culture that elevates jobs and money-making capacity to crucial components of our identities, having a job and money often provides a sense of social acceptability that cannot be found any other way, or so we believe. But there are lots of (legal) ways of getting money besides jobs, and what's more, we are increasingly becoming aware that we've paid a very high price for our myopic job-centered focus.

On a personal level, many of us find ourselves disillusioned, depressed and frustrated when, day after day, we force ourselves to get out of bed and put in another eight hours at our jobs, then come home exhausted--only to get up the next day and do it all over again. The future doesn't hold out much hope for us when we consider that we're expected to continue this way indefinitely. When do we get to enjoy life, we think as we watch the clock and count the days until the weekend?

On a societal level, we hear about corporate "downsizing" as well as environmental and human rights violations, rising rents in choice areas, the growing wage gap between executives and "worker bees", the rising cost of a college education and the lack of "marketability" of liberal arts degrees, and many other factors which contribute to a widespread sense of disillusionment. This certainly isn't the way we thought it would be, is it? It's not what were promised when we were told that getting an education and a "good" job would be our ticket into the promised land.

This concept we have of jobs as the way we make a name for ourselves, "get ahead", create an identity, and earn money is ripe for re-evaluation. It's high time for us to take a hard look at the personal and environmental devastation such thinking has wrought, and to conceptualize and create alternatives to the cult of jobs and work in our lives.
Such alternatives could take many forms: self-employment, cooperative living arrangements, simplifying our lives, changes in economic policy, and so forth. Envisioning a new way of working is certainly not a new idea, but those of us who question the conventional wisdom about jobs are still considered heretics, radicals and pariahs in many circles.

Heretic or not, I'd like to see us re-define success as having more to do with people and their values, and less to do with profits or climbing the corporate ladder. I'd like to see a world where we are less relentlessly driven by the pursuit of job growth, impressive stock portfolios, the "bottom line" and material acquisition--and more motivated by active mindful learning, joyful work, and creating a web of relationships that will sustain us in our more meager times. I'm holding out for a new way of thinking, one in which we recognize that leisure is essential to our mental health rather than cause for guilt, and that we don't have to spend our lives struggling, striving to make ends meet through working at a job.

I think we all know, at some level, that we weren't meant to live this way, and that there are better, more fulfilling, and more socially responsible ways to work than by sacrificing ourselves on the altar of jobs and money. There are the stirrings of a new social movement underway as we speak--a diverse collection of people from all walks of life who are re-examining the way we've been indoctrinated into thinking our jobs are our ticket to respectability and freedom. They are re-defining success, learning how to appreciate what they have instead of endlessly questing for more growth, and discovering their passions without worrying about trying to fit them into the form of a job.

I'm happy to count myself among the proponents of that movement away from the cult of jobs and toward a new way of envisioning work--a way that gives us hope for the future.

I invite you to join us.

TWO. What I Learned When I Quit My Job: Part One

Six years ago, I quit my dreadful, low-paying temp job. After years of wage slavery, I was sick of jobs altogether. I dreamed of a different kind of life, one where I could choose my own activities and meet my survival needs with ease. It's possible, and in the long run it takes something more than winning the lottery, having a rich spouse, or inheriting a fortune. But before I delve into "survival without a job", I'd like to offer some new definitions of terms we often use when discussing these matters.

JOB:
Drudgery. Alienated effort expended for someone else on their terms, often a corporation or boss, doing something you don't care about, in exchange for external compensation - money, health insurance, benefits, pleasing others. Something done against one's will for the sake of a paycheck. See "wage slavery".

WORK:
Satisfying, self-directed activity, sometimes (but not always) with tangible results, done for its own sake, driven by interest or fascination, sustained by intrinsic motivation. Distinguished from "job" by the fact that work can be done with joy, deep care, and pride, whether or not money is received. See "leisure".

LEISURE:
Satisfying, self-directed activity, sometimes (but not always) with intangible results, done for its own sake, driven by interest or fascination, sustained by intrinsic motivation. Not the same thing as "free time", since that phrase suggests that everything else is "non-free (wage slave) time". Distinguished from "work" by…well, hmmm…see "work".

WAGE SLAVERY:
Being driven by an unhealthy work ethic, lacking a fulfilling sense of leisure (thinking of it as just "free time"), and/or feeling trapped in a soulless, alienated job you hate just for the sake of a paycheck. Failing to see possibility for joyful work OR joyful leisure. Feeling trapped in a cycle of spending most of one's time at a job, and much of the rest recuperating. Never being fully present in this moment; holding out for an elusive future promise. Unfortunately, a very common condition.

FREEDOM FROM WAGE SLAVERY:
Defining work and leisure a whole new way. Knowing deep inside, not just intellectually, that you don't have to hold a job or be a wage slave to meet your needs in life. Being able to enter that space in the present moment where the distinction between work and leisure is blurred. Being committed to a job-free life, often while simultaneously working to free others from wage slavery.
"I'd quit this lame job in a heartbeat if only I had the money." That's what I told myself for years. But I've come to believe that lack of money is not the only thing that keeps most people stuck in wage slavery. It's a factor, yes, and my intention here is not to dismiss legitimate concerns about money - but for me it was by no means the whole story. I know society makes it hard to live without a job, but what about that slave-driving, destructive work ethic operating in our minds and hearts? Many of us never even question it. We think it's just the need for money keeping us stuck in our lousy jobs, but I've learned that the problem runs much deeper.

When I tell people I've been out of the 9-to-5 grind and happily job-free for three years (not unemployed - I write, after all, but my time is all my own), the first question I get asked is how I manage to support myself. The short, incomplete answer: a combination of good fortune and deliberate, methodical planning. The good fortune part: I've never had any trouble getting jobs when necessary, I've had supportive friends and family, and I received a small family inheritance (enough to pay my expenses job-free for about six months). The planning part: I invested my money, made a few unpopular life choices, saved earnings from the years I spent being a wage slave, and embarked upon some serious self-exploration until I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life outside the bounds of a traditional job. That planning part is not as easy as it sounds, but I think it's much better than wage slavery. So I started, at a young age, to make choices that would allow me freedom to live a self-directed life. To wit:

1) I've consciously chosen to live simply and avoid debt. I know I can be quite happy with few material goods. I've also chosen not to marry, have children or keep pets.

2) I've shifted my perspective on wealth. Wealth has little to do with greenbacks. No matter how little money I may have, I can always find something to make me feel rich - like the fact that I can hear a bird sing a beautiful melody outside my window, for example.

3) I've invested time in friendship and creating community. As a result, I have a lot of very good friends who are happy to share their resources (homes, food, etc.) and barter services with me.

And that's just a start. I think most people who want to free themselves from the wage slave grind have other options. It's not very widely acknowledged, though, that if we hate our jobs, the questions we need to ask are much broader than "how do I get money once I quit?" Dispensing suggestions to would-be job quitters is all well and good. However, I feel I'm leaving out a crucial factor if I offer suggestions on how to get money outside the confines of a job WITHOUT addressing our deeper attitudes on work and leisure. Our attitudes are a whole lot more important than most of us would like to admit.

For a long time I thought that the only thing keeping me stuck in a job I hated was fear of not having money to eat and pay rent. That's a socially acceptable way to complain about your job nowadays - after all, gotta pay the bills - so I had lots of company. Like many of my "slacker" intellectual friends from comfortable white middle-class backgrounds, I spent untold energy griping about my job, The System, being a cog in the machine, and selling out to The Man. But then I had an experience that baffled me, and made me question everything I used to believe about what kept me stuck in shitty jobs.

With the financial support of my partner, I gratefully quit my job to write a book. Although I made a bit of progress, I still felt very stuck (for reasons I could not identify at the time), and was unable to get far on the book, even after a year's time. I felt terribly guilty about my "laziness", which added to the problem. Rather than accepting my partner's gift gracefully, I felt weighted down - I owed, I was in debt to my partner, and this made me feel pressured, which I hated. I felt obligated to repay my partner's generous support by being "productive" (read: earning money). Even worse, I felt that I was unworthy if I did not. There was a healthy part of me rebelling against the idea that I should measure my worth by my accomplishments, but deep inside I was convinced that I'd have no friends or supporters if I didn't earn money. These two parts clashed, sapping most of my energy in fighting a psychological battle, and of course that left very little energy for creative activities like writing a book.

After years of therapy and wrestling with why I remained "stuck" even after lack of money was no longer keeping me stuck in a job I hated, I've come to believe that my biggest obstacles to living a job-free life were in my own mind and heart. I had to unearth some very deep-seated beliefs and re-think my slave-driving work ethic before I was able to successfully live, guilt-free, without a traditional nine-to-five job. Once I began this process of re-thinking, I noticed that it became a whole lot easier to attract money and/or find ways to provide for my needs. It's an ongoing challenge, of course - some days I still feel guilty if I don't live up to others' ideas of "productivity" (or worse, my own hidden fears that I won't measure up if I'm not "productive") - but then again, all of life is a process of unfolding, isn't it? It isn't as though I suddenly woke up one day and had all the answers. I've learned to love the process instead of seeking instant solutions.

So…back to the "how do I survive without a job" question. I struggled with this for years, until I realized that there was a hidden layer of confusion, often unconscious, motivating that question at the root. I think that's why I sensed that the source of my problems was not addressed simply through having my food and rent taken care of. A list of practical suggestions (for example: live cheaply in a trailer, join a squatting group, shop at food co-ops, don't own a car, etc.), doesn't really address the core question, helpful as such a list might be. So I'd like to delve a little deeper.

When I directed my focus to wondering how I'd survive without a job, I asked questions like these:

"How will I pay my bills if I don't have a job?"
"Where will I live when I get evicted or the bank forecloses on my house?"
"How will I feed and clothe myself and my family without the security of a paycheck?"
"Doesn't everyone need to work to get money?"

Although there is a certain amount of legitimate concern involved here, I phrased these questions as though I believed some secret magical ticket to job-free life would be suddenly and completely revealed, without me having to search for it in earnest, in my own mind and heart. I wanted someone to tell me the secret. Suggestions can help, but I now think the ultimate solutions will come from inside. My experience suggests that there's no instant solution - it's more like a process that we kick off when we make a commitment to be free of wage slavery.

I conducted my life as though it were a foregone conclusion that losing my job would mean homelessness, hunger, or complete insecurity. But the lesson here for me was that no matter how much we may want it to, security does not come from outside ourselves. Security does not come from having a job or money, despite what we may have unconsciously absorbed from living in a money-worshipping and job-focused culture. We can live in a shack and feel secure; conversely, we can live in a mansion and be filled with fear and insecurity. Real security, the kind that will last a lifetime regardless of job status or bank balance, comes from facing up to our fears and mastering them. We may have heard this before…but do we believe it? Failing that, are we willing to at least give it a try, and act as if we believe it? It couldn't hurt, and it might actually work. This is not meant to suggest that we don't need any money or support to live comfortably. It is meant to suggest that if we're afraid that we can't survive without a job, we have a perfect opportunity right now to face that fear and master it. We can use that fear to learn how to find real security!

My surface questions about how to pay the rent without a job were a red herring. They covered up my unexamined and deeply ingrained fears of scarcity and lack. Once I learned to ask myself some deeper questions, I was able to address what was keeping me feeling stuck in the daily grind regardless of whether my survival needs were met. Here are some examples of how the voice of my fears cropped up. Each is followed by the response my deeper awareness gave when the question was posed.

1) "There isn't enough wealth to go around, and if I don't work hard and strive and compete and achieve, I'll be homeless or hungry or destitute."

(Are you aware that the World Game Institute, the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, and many others have confirmed scientifically that we live in an abundant world with sufficient resources to care for every person on the planet? Are you aware that the only obstacles to all of us manifesting this abundance in our lives are personal and political - e.g. our deepest beliefs about wealth, and how the resources are distributed? Are you willing to let go of your fear of scarcity, work toward more equitable distribution of the world's abundance, and ALSO replace your fear with trust in an abundant world?)

2) "I hate to admit it, but I'm afraid of what would happen if I quit my job and had that much freedom every day. For one thing, what would get me out of bed in the morning?"

(An understandable fear indeed; it's very common to fear change and cling to the familiar, even if it is stifling or harmful. Are you willing to gently push yourself past the fear, trust that you will find a joyful reason to get up, and seek your freedom anyway?)

3) "I don't know what I want to do with my life, I just know I don't want to work at this shitty job for the rest of my days."

(Can you find and nurture within yourself the desire to discover what it is you really want to do? Can you be happy day-to-day even if you never find an occupation that gives you that "A-ha, THIS is it!" feeling? How about just trying different things out for awhile, and cultivating patience? How about entertaining the possibility that the "a-ha" feeling you are seeking might come more from what kind of person you are BEING in each moment than what you are DOING?)

4) "If I quit my job, people will think I'm lazy…and what's worse, I'm afraid they might be right. What would that say about my character? Would my partner leave me? Would my friends shun me?"

(Where did you get the idea that there was some kind of character flaw involved in being lazy? Are you willing to re-think that assumption, and adopt a new, more humane attitude toward leisure and idleness (and maybe make some new, less judgemental friends)? Leisure has brought us great works of art, created memorable moments in life, lessened our burdens, and contributed immeasurably to our culture. Is it really so bad?)

5) "I'm too busy (because of my job) to take the time to figure out what I really want out of life, and even if I had the time, I don't think I could get it anyway. I have to be realistic. Living without a job is nothing more than a pipe dream."

(We find time for the things that are truly important to us. Even five minutes a day of focused thinking, if you use it well, can be enough to get you going on a plan toward a job-free life. And history is full of examples of people who brought things into being because they believed in themselves and their abilities to go after their dreams. Why not try believing in your own ability to create the life you want? It couldn't hurt to at least TRY, before you dismiss the idea.)

6) "If I were to quit my job, I'd have to be totally responsible for finding something else to do, and maybe even dealing with my family's objections and criticism. And I don't think I'm prepared to face that."

(Are you prepared to deal with the alternative: abdicating that responsibility to others, and living under their rules and restraints?)

7) "I don't want to give up the material comforts I've become accustomed to, even for a short time."

(Are you willing to spend the rest of your days living in fear that you will lose those comforts, in exchange for the "instant gratification" of not giving them up now? Are you willing to entertain the idea that you might not HAVE to give them up, but that it will loosen your psychological shackles to at least be WILLING to do so?)

8) "I've always been taught that the way to financial security is to have a job and work hard."

(Are you willing to open your mind to learning different ways to financial security, besides having money through working at a job, particularly a job you dislike?)

I hate to admit it here, but even after I started asking the kind of questions above (and listening to the answers), I wasted a lot of energy on self-blame. It took me a long time to realize that I was not at fault for my struggles simply because I felt stuck. The System is set up so that very few other options are feasible besides earning income through a job. Not to mention that our hyper-individualistic American attitudes make us labor under an additional psychological burden: our mainstream political and social discourse convinces us that any failures to find jobs are due to individual faults, ignoring the role of larger forces. We hear that we are "lazy bums" if we can't find or don't want a job. (I hope you don't fall for this garbage the same way I did). But it won't help to use all of our precious energy lamenting the state of The System, either. We still have choices. We could be using that energy figuring out how to live a job-free life instead.

Although I don't think we should fault ONLY ourselves or ONLY The System, I can't emphasize enough that even though there are coercive forces at work in The System, we still have the most important of freedoms: to change our attitudes, and claim the power we DO have. That power turned out to be very crucial for me. It helped me immensely on my quest for a life free of wage slavery.

I've come to believe that wage slavery is, at its core, a mindset. This does not mean it's solely an individual problem and that all we have to do is adjust our attitudes and our job-related problems will disappear; there are definitely systemic factors involved. But it's just as important to remember that it's not entirely the fault of The System that we feel stuck in jobs we hate, because blaming it all on The System discourages us from recognizing our other options (and no matter how limited they may be, we DO have other options). It's even possible to have a "normal" job and not be a wage slave. But that's another topic for another time.

The way we interpret events has a lot to do with the filters we have in our minds. Let's say that, like me, you already realize that you've spent a lot of energy battling fears - energy that could be used to pursue your dreams. And let's say you realize that focusing on scarcity thoughts creates barriers to getting what you want before you've even begun. Why not continue on by digging deeper until you find your most stubborn block? For example, I once believed, unconsciously, that the only viable means to ensuring an income (and thus survival) is to have a job. That meant that jobs which provide a paycheck, or make-money-fast scams, were the only income opportunities I ever noticed. That "belief filter" made it as if I had blinders on - I didn't even perceive the other possible ways to survive or receive money, or even more commonly, I quickly wrote them off as "impractical" before giving them any serious consideration.

Once again, because I think this bears repeating: I don't mean to over-emphasize the role of the individual in achieving a life free from wage slavery. I want to make it clear that I recognize and affirm the necessity for social change work. I certainly don't intend to trivialize the concerns of those who suffer from severe poverty, homelessness and hunger; people in those situations often don't have the luxury of considering the kind of questions I pose here. In fact, I believe that the more thought we give to what it might take to have a job-free life ourselves, the more we will understand that as long as wage slavery exists, for us or anyone else, we can never be truly free as a society. When I realized that, I felt drawn toward working for social change and abolition of wage slavery, as well as my own freedom from the daily grind. The two go hand in hand.

Here are some other questions I asked myself: How committed am I to freeing myself (and others) from wage slavery? Not how committed would I like to be "if only" - how committed AM I, today? What would I be willing to do in order to be free to spend my time pursuing things I value? Am I willing to face the fear that I might end up as a bag lady? Am I willing to devote time to putting together a plan for how I'll meet my needs without a job? Am I willing to eat at soup kitchens, or cook and clean in exchange for room and board with family and friends, if that becomes necessary? Would I take the time to write up a classified ad specifying what non-traditional living situation I want and try to connect with others who could help me get it?

These questions were scary for me. For many years, I made a lot of excuses and used a lot of rationalizations. The job-free life, in a job-obsessed culture, isn't for the faint of heart. It asks of us an "I'll do whatever it takes for my freedom" kind of attitude, combined with the willingness to get very clear about what we want in life and face our fear of the unknown in order to have it. But if we are devoted to doing so, and willing to find that quiet force within us, it will enrich our entire lives - not just our outlook on work and leisure.

The next step for me was to apply what I'd learned about where real security comes from. I began a shift in my life that continues to this day. Here is how I maintain it.

1) Every day, I consciously cultivate a feeling of gratitude for the things I already have, rather than endlessly pining for more. If I just ate a good meal, and have a full stomach, I recognize that as a blessing. If I have a comfortable place to sleep tonight, that's certainly worth feeling thankful for. If I can name friends and family who love and care about me, and who teach me to stretch my own ability to love, I am deeply blessed. These are the important things in life - not "what I do for a living" or how fat my pocketbook happens to be. Keeping the focus on the blessings we already enjoy (and away from those insidious survival fears) opens the way for more blessings to flow in life.

2) I ask myself often, honestly and unflinchingly, what my life and the world would look like if I could wave a magic wand right now and miraculously cure all my money or job problems. What would I do if I never had to work solely for the sake of a paycheck again? What would I be doing? Where would I be living? These questions inspired me. Once I got crystal clear on the answers (and it didn't happen overnight), I didn't want to waste another minute. Life is precious and short, and this realization gave me the courage to take action now to move toward the kind of life I longed for. It might not look exactly the way I've planned, but I don't want to die without giving it a shot. Of course, the kind of life I wish for may change over time, and that's fine too.

3) I make a point of re-thinking the nature of work, jobs, and leisure. As mentioned above in our "new definitions", work does not have to equal suffering; it can be done with ease and joy. "Jobs", on the other hand, usually involve doing things we'd rather not. Even if I end up as one of the lucky few who happen to get paid for doing exactly what I'd be doing anyway regardless of remuneration, I know of FAR too many others who'd quit their jobs tomorrow if they felt money was not an issue. This suggests a social problem that cannot be cured by "creating more jobs", as politicians often claim. I continuously educate myself about it, and am doing my part toward creating a world where wage slavery is a thing of the past. Want to help? You can start today, right now, with yourself. Besides, the more self-respect you develop, the less you will be willing to settle for a job that deadens your soul.

4) I remind myself daily that not wanting a job does not necessarily mean I am "lazy", and even if it did, there is nothing morally wrong with laziness. Wage slaves are sometimes driven to suffer in jobs they hate by the fear that others would think them indolent or somehow remiss if they admitted their love of leisure and their disdain for jobs. Remember when people were saying that technology was such a huge blessing because it would take over much of the "grunt work" and provide us with more leisure time? Do you think the people who spearheaded this movement stopped pushing for progress because they feared being considered lazy? On the contrary…leisure was seen as a good thing, not just what you do when you're not at your job. Leisure is much more than just the time you have when you're not getting paid. Refer to our new definitions above.

For me the process I've described above was necessary before I could really, seriously consider the alternatives to taking a wage slave job. I've gone into detail here about my struggles in the hopes that I'll be able to shed some light on the portion of living a job-free life that can't be addressed by having more money. That part, I've found, isn't very glamorous, but it's a crucial step. I know it's only part of the story, though - so Part Two of "What I Learned When I Quit My Job" will offer some down-to-earth, practical suggestions that I have found useful in my quest for a job-free life. Until then…good luck. Believe in yourself. You can realize your own unique beauty and go after your dreams.

A lot of this has to do with self-respect and delving within oneself and asking questions that most of us don't want to ask.

However, if you know you're selling yourself short living as you are now, then there's really no thought needed as to which path to take; stifled, or free?

There will be some more posts on this subject coming soon - my latest escapade is my move of location to southern New Zealand to Queenstown. Yet again I can experiment with some of the afformentioned ideas and theories, in realtime and see where the balance lies in the toss up between 'to work, or not to work?'

Hopefully you've taken something from all of this. And if you haven't, well, then you're one of those then aren't you...

Blessings,

Links; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-work
http://www.whywork.org/about/features/books/leisuretrack.html

Update May 2010

2010-05-12T12:02:00.003+07:00

Hello to fellow Pioneers out there!
Just a quick update to you all;

Hazardous John is still over in the centrals of the Americas; keeping well and in correspondence with myself.

I, well, working my arse off is the only way to put it really.

Full on, in the system, but still a part-timer. Couldn't sell all of my soul off now, could I?

Somewhat ironic that I keep a blog that is dedicated to living life, and getting out of the cage, yet here I am with one limb stuck in the bugger. Hypocritical perhaps? I'll take that. It is. But it is also proving useful in the sense that I am learning a lot from it....Silver lining and all that.

Other than that, I have a call to action for you all out there.
Basically, I want to know, what you the readers, want to read more about and see more of?

Please email me at HAZARDOUSPIONEERS@HOTMAIL.COM - and just drop me a quick line as to what you'd like to see more of on the blog. And don't rub it in and ask to see 'more of me living it' because 'living' is somewhat on hold until July!

But any suggestions would be fantastic, as I do have access to the net here at home, and can do my best to cover some more of the kind of topics that you guys are keen for.

Let me know!

Blessings,

Parkour; In Nature; Green Fitness

2010-05-09T11:24:00.002+07:00

When I think of Green Fitness, a few things come to mind.

In this case, we're talking about exercising outside; this is an interesting article to do with science studies showing the improvements to people's psyches from training outdoors.

Check it out,

Anarcho-Spirituality; Against Happiness

2010-05-07T06:20:00.002+07:00

Gave this podcast a listen to last night, was a very interesting take on Melancholy and how it is a dual part of life.

I recommend giving it a listen, just click this link and then click play.

Interesting part of it was the topic of 'Adam and Eve and The Fall of Man'.

See what you make of it,

True Self-Expression; Film; Erasing David

2010-05-06T07:52:00.001+07:00

Give this a watch; the trailer for 'Erasing David', looks like it could be a sick doco,

Enjoy!

Knowledge; Freedom and Truth; John Harris Red Ice Interview

2010-05-06T05:20:00.001+07:00

Gave this a listen to last night, finally!

I'll let the Harris do the talking; it speaks for itself!

Enjoy,

Now go to Youtube and listen to the rest!

Parkour; Damien 'The Demon' Walters 2010 Showreel

2010-05-02T07:40:00.002+07:00

A good friend of mine sent this to me this morning; I was so excited, I had a bit of trouble keeping my oats and banana to remain in my stomach..
Check out Walter's early 2010 showreel; fully sick, the man is pushing the limits!

Faavourites; .27, .39, .50, 1.16 (!), 1.22 (!!), 1.42, 1.52, 2.02 (gainerrrrr!), the man is a savage!

Urban and Wild Survival; The Protohaus Project

2010-05-01T13:47:00.001+07:00

Dopeness! I can fully see 'The Hazard Wagon' taking full-form!