VICTORY OVER WAR

An entire body of Chögyam Trungpa-Lord Mukpo's teachings was captured in a phrase he gave to his students, Victory Over War. Initially, this body of teachings had to do with protection; that a talk on Buddhism, say, needed to be given under a correct set of circumstances in order to be effective. A certain precision, decorum and beauty needed to be established for an audience to open to the teachings. The audience needed to feel safe and welcomed, yet also provoked toward clarity, becoming awake.

Lord Mukpo translated these principles into issues of aggression, the military and war. Any society needs members who are sworn to protect it (firemen, policemen, soldiers); pacifism is not always possible, but meeting aggression simply with more aggression is counterproductive, wrong and typically horrible: war begets war. An opportunity to further explore the possibilities of Victory Over War arose for me in these last two weeks.

Daughter of an Iraq era veteran.

IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR

Annual Convention, July 8-11 - Austin, Texas

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman interviewing three U.S. solders speaking out against the war in Afghanistan. It was mentioned that the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) were having their annual convention in Austin, Texas on July 8-11. Within a couple of minutes of hearing that I went to the IVAW website. At that moment I knew I was going to the convention myself.

Ten days later I unpacked my bags in room 200 of a dormitory on the Huston Tillitson University campus, an historically black school founded in the Nineteenth Century (it turns out Huston Tillitson was the only place, among those contacted in Austin, that was willing to host the Convention.) Over the next three days I took hours of video, met dozens of people, immersed myself in the convention, but also spent hours alone in my dorm room, downloading video footage, writing, collecting my thoughts - and sometimes simply escaping from social overwhelm and a certain anxiety (perhaps these arose, not just from arriving as a stranger, but from hidden collective and personal aspects of war I was encountering?).

Ones expectations are not always fulfilled, but in the case of the IVAW Convention mine were. I expected to find kind, mature and committed human beings who would be an inspiration to others. I found this and more. This was an age and gender diverse group of friendly, thoughtful, well-tattooed, well-spoken, courageous, shattered (occasionally I would see this) and perhaps above all creative people. A colony of artist-activist-leaders.

Personal stories of the horrors of war were not particularly on display or subjects of the workshops.  I learned only a few of the stories of what these men and women faced when they refused to deploy, became conscientious objectors in active duty, deserted or simply announced their opposition to United States military policy. Many were new, many who had attended previously had not returned. A growing but no doubt vulnerable colony as burnout, finances and other life priorities created a 2010 Annual Convention that was somewhat smaller than hoped for yet was also their "first" (previous conventions had been held in conjunction with and supported by Vietnam Veterans Against the War).

I will publish more videos and journals about the convention over the following weeks. For now, I have some photographs below and, especially, the following video-interview. Jacob George and Spencer Hindmarsh are riding their bicycles, along with other veterans, across the U.S. until our government ends the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Their website explains further:

Do you support war? Do you have a job? Do you pay taxes? Then yes, you support war. You’re supporting two wars actually. We are here today, to ask every single one of you to STOP SUPPORTING WAR. But how, how do we stop supporting war? How do we stop a war? Since our elected government has decided to continue funding this war with money coming from your paychecks, the first thing you can do is QUIT YOUR JOB. If you feel strongly enough about not supporting war to do that, you might be interested in taking the next step. Get a bicycle and join us for a ride. We are going town to town, spreading this message face to face and we are not stopping until BOTH WARS END!

Most would probably consider this statement absurdly impractical and wildly idealist, but I would say quiet the contrary. If only, say, a quarter of 1% or our population did this that would create a protest of almost a million people - which could easily galvanize popular opinion into a war-paradigm shift. But think of an even greater impact. A mass shift to bicycles could immediately begin to rescue our planet from runaway global warming. In short, Jacob and Spence's suggestion is sane, continuing to do what we are doing is insane. Plus these guys are cool.

Jacob George & Spence Hindmarsh of A RIDE TILL THE END from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

[If you watch and enjoy this video, please see the YouTube link at the bottom of this page. That video profiles Jacob and his brother Jordan, is a documentary of sections of their ride and give essential background to their views and courage.]

Faces of some of the veterans - not just from Iraq, 
but from Afghanistan and the Vietnam era - who attended 
the IVAW Convention.

AN OCEAN WITHOUT SHORE

INVOKING DRALA

One of Lord Mukpo's instructions for invoking drala is a three-step process that begins with a sudden flash of mindfulness, bringing one's aspiration onto the spot - coffee shop, intimate conversation or hospital bed. The second step is to remember our ancestral lineage, the lineages that culminate in this very moment we inhabit. Just as we are usually distracted from where we are, we typically feel alone and alienated, forgetting that we represent those who came before us, as well as our own teachers and all of the "transmissions" we have received.

For example, if I reflect for a moment, countless teachers and/or "transmission moments" come to mind. Once I visited the shrine of The Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. A moving walkway, like those found in airports, transported one past the supposed relic of Juan Diego. I rode the walkway again and again, and though the relic look fabricated, every time I passed in front of it my heart opened, I could literally feel my chest soften and expand. If I take that moment to heart, I feel not only connected to the Virgin of Guadalupe, but responsible to her, responsible to be a vehicle of her compassion. I can join my primary aspiration, Lord Mukpo's teachings and presence in my life, with this momentary recollection of The Virgin of Guadalupe. 

That joining is the third step of this evoking drala practice.The second step, a recognition of our ancestral heritage could be "transmissions" we have received from nature, the intangible or drala-presence of flowers, deer or jagged peaks. In any case, "joining" occurs as a sudden beauty and tenderness in our heart, a free-fall in which aggression is momentarily impossible.

"LORD MUKPO'S DREAM TIME"

Lord Mukpo's Dream Time is a personal metaphor for my spiritual practice, including the practice of invoking drala. The phrase came to me one day while I was in Cambodia and announced itself as the title of my film -  a film I had yet to make or even really conceive of! I felt intimidated, that it would be strange and presumptuous to use the title of my teacher in this way - yet I felt without doubt that he was telling me to use it!

I am offering a definition of this phrase below. Lord Mukpo refers, of course, to Chögyam Trungpa and for me the phrase is a kind of "guru yoga," a way of remembering my teacher. But it is also meant, I believe, as a kind of general principle, where Lord Mukpo simply refers to an individuals spiritual or human aspiration and Kingdom (as used below) refers to the fulfillment of one's highest aspiration in life, in this lifetime. It describes the often arduous path making our life one of real benefit to ourselves and others.

Lord Mukpo is "haunting us," available to those who will listen, who have a heart connection, who have in their heart (which everyone does!) the truth to establish a kingdom. To any available human being, Lord Mukpo wants to "capture" them into his dream time. His purpose is simply to encourage people to develop their kingdom. As each kingdom is established, it contributes to the fabric of the Kingdom of Shambhala. An individual kingdom cannot exist, by definition of egolessness, so as we develop our kingdom we capsize - but sink upward - into the ultimately non-dualistic or primordially awake Kingdom of Shambhala, which can also be called Lord Mukpo’s Dream Time. Once we exhaust our limited identity - that of our ego - through the courage and sacrifice of establishing our kingdom, we cease having our own dream - which is really a nightmare or prison. We cease being able to have our own dream. From that point on he - as our primordial nature - is dreaming us.

CAMBODIA: LORD MUKPO'S DREAM TIME - PART II

I have begun work on the successor to my first film, Cambodia: Lord Mukpo's Dream Time. Like that film, this one is being assembled incidentally, as I go along and almost by accident. This film will likely include the event that brought me back from Cambodia to the United States in 2007: the final months of my mother's life. The footage here, which documents that time, serves as a likely beginning.

Provisional footage for Lord Mukpo's Dream Time, Part II from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

PETER ORLOVSKY, 1933 - 2010.

Peter Orlovsky. Photo by Allen Ginsberg.

Peter Orlovsky, poet, central figure of the beat poets and writers, lifelong companion of Allen Ginsberg and student of  Chögyam Trungpa died on May 30th. I met Peter in 2002 while I was leading a meditation and arts program at Karma Chöling, Vermont. Peter was living there at the time, dealing with mental and physical challenges. Allen Ginsberg had died four years earlier. Peter seemed to be in a good deal of grief and anguish, an old man in suspenders and a large, drooping belly who seemed unrecognized and out of place in the midst of people mostly forty to fifty years younger. I invited him to attend our writing workshop and we all discovered almost immediately that we had a real poet in the room. A man of the working class, a kind of innocent butcher or plumber who was rough hewn, somewhat medicated and unbelievably, strangely gentle. And funny. A man with a tender smile and uncensored statements that rang about as true as they get. 

Peter Orlovsky, Karma Chöling Meditation 

Center, Barnet Vermont, 2002.

Karma Chöling.

I encouraged Peter to read his poetry to the entire community and one night he agreed to do so. Please enjoy the five-minute audio below in which Peter reads a poem and gives a very funny account of how Allen Ginsberg got the title for Howl.

Peter Orlovsky discussing the naming of Howl and reading Snail Poem.

Tal Varon was a student in the meditation and arts program. He wrote a detailed and wonderful tribute to Peter which you can find below.

Read a tribute to Peter Orlovsky by Tal Varon on

The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

BORN INTO THIS

Hear Charles Bukowski read Born Into This.

Safeway, Boulder Colorado

"Let me say before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By 'they' I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and meaninglessness."

- Thomas Merton, from his essay Rain and the Rhinoceros

For this week, I am sharing:

1. An essay sparked by the quote from Rain and the Rhinoceros.
2. A film about Alice Scheffel.
3. A film from New Orleans.
4. News on the Niger Delta.
5. A photo-essay from New Orleans.
6. Several links related to the oil catastrophe.

The quote above was sent to me by Jim Hartz (friend, longtime meditator and poet-activist; acute observer, synthesizer and devotee of the thought and teachings of Chogyam Trungpa, Thomas Merton, Noam Chomsky and many others). It comprises an axis I find myself situated upon; on one end the gratuitous nature of reality where most of our true pleasures and most of what is good for us is indeed free; on the other end the ever-gushing oil catastrophe, a worldwide sonar igniting rage, accusation and countless one-way streets of political opinion not acted upon, a recurring dream eating from the inside out our inventions of rising standards of living and other delusional happy endings. It is still free, and we are in it.

Bouquet in the home of Jay and Doug,
Portland, Oregon.

Alice Scheffel in 2006, age 89.

ALICE SCHEFFEL ON NATURE AND MEMORY

The catastrophe of our invented necessity for ever higher standards of living contrasts with the drala principle, which could simply be called the spirit of appreciation. Appreciation fills one with contentment, does not in itself require consuming and stays as part of the makeup of our psyche (or as a positive seed in the alaya vijnana, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say). My mother, Alice Scheffel was a warrior of this kind, someone who understood that life in its gratuitous beauty - as nature - was something to appreciate and serve. She did this in her best moments and often. Although driven to do, as we all are in contemporary culture, she took the time to step out of the frenzy of shopping or vacuuming - and with a sense of humor. She came to know Chögyam Trungp/Lord Mukpo through his photograph and a single conversation she and I had about him a few months before she died. From then on, she felt Lord Mukpo to be present in her life in the same kind of practical and not particularly religious way she felt Christ to be with her. My mom would entirely endorse this teaching:

Give yourself a break. That doesn’t mean to say that you should drive to the closest bar and have lots to drink or go to a movie. Just enjoy the day, your normal existence. Allow yourself to sit in your home or take a drive into the mountains. Park your car somewhere; just sit; just be. It sounds very simplistic, but it has a lot of magic. You begin to pick up on clouds, sunshine and weather, the mountains, your past, your chatter with your grand-mother and your grandfather, your own mother, your own father. You begin to pick up on a lot of things. Just let them pass like the chatter of a brook as it hits the rocks. We have to give ourselves some time to be.

We’ve been clouded by going to school, looking for a job—our lives are cluttered by all sorts of things. Your friends want you to come have a drink with them, which you don’t want to do. Life is crowded with all sorts of garbage. In themselves, those things aren’t garbage, but they’re cumbersome when they get in the way of how to relax, how to be, how to trust, how to be a warrior. We’ve missed so many possibilities for that, but there are so many more possibilities that we can catch. We have to learn to be kinder to ourselves, much more kind. Smile a lot, although nobody is watching you smile. Listen to your own brook, echoing yourself. You can do a good job.

In the sitting practice of meditation, when you begin to be still, hundreds of thousands, millions, and billions of thoughts will go through your mind. But they just pass through, and only the worthy ones leave their fish eggs behind. We have to leave our-selves some time to be. You’re not going to see the Shambhala vision, you’re not even going to survive, by not leaving yourself a minute to be, a minute to smile. If you don’t grant yourself a good time, you’re not going to get any Shambhala wisdom, even if you’re at the top of your class technically speaking. Please, I beg you, please, give yourself a good time.

          Chögyam Trungpa, from The Great Eastern Sun.

Alice Scheffel died at age niney-one of liver cancer. I was her primary care giver during her last five months of life, December 2007 to April 2008. During this time I video-documented my mother's daily life, the things she had to say and her interactions with others. Her letting go was lucid and inspiring - she showed me the way. The footage in this scene was taken as I asked my mother the question, "Do you miss going out into nature?"

Watch video on larger player (recommended).


Alice Scheffel on Nature and Memory from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

A short film, Water, Science, Responsibility and Home.

 After I made my first two documentary films - one thirty minutes long, the other sixty - I gained tremendous respect for the colossal amount of time and concentration it takes to edit shot footage into something that can be called a film. I also began to look for an easier way to make a living (very so to speak) and imagined making a series of very short films (phew!) on a single subject that could be seen in the order the viewer chooses (as poems are read).

This nine-minute film below comprises four interviews I shot in New Orleans, approximately four weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and just as the oil was beginning to contact the Louisiana coast. These were random encounters, people I approached on the long walks I too there, mostly in the Ninth Ward. I asked questions about water issues, our relationship to our environment and about the oil catastrophe.  As I edited this group of interviews I realized they could be seen individually or as a continuous ensemble, a semi-realization of my imagined notion of future film-making. Here I am presenting the four together, an ensemble title, Water, Science, Responsibility and Home.

Watch video on larger player (suggested).

Water, Science, Responsibility, Home from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

Essential to know about the Niger Delta 
(and Ecuador, and many other places):

 The New York Times: Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old

BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab... read more.

New Orleans Photo Essay

I ran into a friend, Mike Smith, yesterday. Decades-long manager of the Trident Cafe and Bookstore here in Boulder, Mike reminded me he is a native son of Lafayette, Louisiana and asked me if I had more photographs of New Orleans - a question that launched the following photo-essay.

Times Picayune, May 10, 2010.

One day, during my stay in New Orleans I spread the Times Picayune on my hotel room floor and photographed the front page, May 10th. Louisiana Govenor Bobby Jindal and others are being shown the first sightings of oil on the Louisiana shore.

Garden District, New Orleans.

It was already in the low 90s in May when I was there, but more than one New Orleans resident warned me that August is the month you would do almost anything to be anywhere but here. The living analog of that statement are the old trees of New Orleans (mostly unknown species to me, who grew up among ponderosa pines and Douglas fir) who offer a shade and cooler micro-climate so palpable and necessary that just standing under one is a lesson in global warming and climate change.

Near Paris Ave and Hwy 610.

Ninth Ward.

A city with street names and thus intersections like North Rampart and Piety must have always been the home of poets or at least decent historians (Robert E. Lee Blvd and Paris Ave). Where I live you can't find much cracked and peeling paint or a red door inside a yellow frame. I really don't know why the sight of old walls and decaying architecture makes me so deliriously happy.

Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

These two photographs, with their elements of similarly cracked streets and parallel perspectives, for me represent Lord Mukpo's Dream Time (so to speak), a hunch I had before I took my trip and something bordering conviction when I look back upon it: that going to New Orleans was like going to Cambodia. Katrina and the Khmer Rouge each being initiatory cataclysms, still lingering as defining histories with people wandering around in their aftermath hard at work and somehow warmer, crazier, more real than the rest of us. Each place's future seems disturbingly parallel, too. New Orleans (the Gulf Coast) helpless as the oil increases and increases; Cambodia helpless among powerful neighbors, with its supply of the Mekong River downstream of dams the Chinese are building and the Himalayan glaciers that are melting.

The man below (now I can't even remember his name) worked for a rental company and drove me to and from my hotel during a 48-hour interval. Our time together was warm and humorous. I asked if he had remained in New Orleans during Katrina and he said he had. He had, in fact, spent two days on the roof of his house. "Oh, you were one of them," I said.

He laughed in admitting, "Yep."

Church on St. Bernard Ave.

I walked by many churches in New Orleans, wondering what their congregations and services were like. Most of all I walked by houses. New Orleans is a city of single family houses, many of them small but with surprisingly large yards. Many of the houses are of course empty, abandoned, waiting to be restored or destroyed; the casualties of urban decay, violence, foreclosure or hurricane  Katrina. There is no hesitation in New Orleans to paint houses in bright and saturated color which creates a visual tonic and a seeming, emergent prosperity as these newly painted houses dominate those beside them. These house are like exotic birds, flamingos foraging in a wasteland. The abandoned and destroyed houses are equally compelling, as if their stories are not the singular ones of inhabited homes, but are the stories of every previous occupant - ghost stories - and of a cataclysmic history that emptied them.

Lower Ninth Ward.

Ninth Ward.

Ninth Ward.

St. Bernard Ave.

Lower Ninth Ward.

Annunciation Street.

Habitat for Humanity Crew,
Lower 9th Ward.

Door, Magazine St.

Links to websites with news and information on water issues and the oil catastrophe (With thanks to Jeff Krouk for many of these):

1. This link, through excellent, first-hand writing brings one into the feeling of the birds and those who are observing and treating them. 

Gulf Coast Oil Spill Slow Death of the Herons

2. These links are to crucial and comprehensive sources of news and information on water issues around the globe. 

Circle of Blue Water News: Reporting the Global Water Crisis

Science Daily: Coastal Habitats Are The Biosphere's Most Imperiled Ecosystems

Tree Hugger: Coastal Habitats Deemed Planet's Most Imperiled Ecosystem

The Huffington Post: Aral Sea Almost Dried Up

3. These links all related to the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe.

Ocean currents likely to carry oil along Atlantic coast

BP well disaster stuns hardened oil men

How the ultimate BP Gulf disaster could kill millions

 

 

 

 

A GRADUAL JOURNEY TO THE OIL CATASTROPHE (PART III)

"THE OTHER"

Today's title The Other in this case refers to a book of lectures by Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, published posthumously in 2008, which explores Kapuscinski's conviction that the most desirable human conduct is to move toward "the other," to directly encounter those who differ from ourselves. An infinite continuum that might begin on the extreme end with the object of our prejudice or hatred but eventually reaches our own doorstep, our wife, husband, daughter or best friend. Ultimately, no one completely agrees with us. 

This "engagement with the other," is an expression of the bodhisattva vow, the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of compassion or "exchanging oneself with other." It struck me that my trip to New Orleans was an opportunity to further explore the fact that although we don't agree, we nevertheless feel the same. As the Tibetans say, "All the beings just want to be happy." Might we all be allies in the face of what matters the most, such as the oil catastrophe?

. . . . . . . 

Drala can be translated as "above conflict"; that the world is not struggling with itself, but in our confused perception we struggle with the world. The drala principle proposes that when we release our "acquired conditioning" we discover the natural intelligence of non-struggle within us, a blossoming state of joy. Acquired conditioning often reveals itself as our internalized "shoulds," all kinds of second thoughts that deflect seeing things as they are.

Eduardo Galiano wrote a poem that gets at this:

The Body

The church says the body is a sin.
Science says the body is a machine.
Advertising says the body is a market.
The body says, I am a fiesta.

. . . . . . . 

Three of my walks in New Orleans took me into the Ninth Ward and the Lower Ninth Ward, the primary neighborhoods that delivered pictures to the world of people left behind, stranded on their roofs in the floods when water driven by hurricane Katrina breached the levees. In the handful of off-the-cuff video interviews I conducted on my walks, my inquiries began with questions such as "How is the oil spill effecting you?" or about water in general, but increasingly I found myself simply wanting to ask people, "What do you want?"

I asked all of these questions of Faith and Perry, two young people I encountered, along with their dog Grimace, on the porch of their house in the  Ninth Ward - as seen in this 5-minute video documentary.

NOTE: If the player below does not work for you,
go directly to Vimeo.
On Vimeo you will also see a LARGER SCREEN.

 

Faith and Perry from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

A GRADUAL JOURNEY TO THE OIL CATASTROPHE (PART II)

Oil rig worker near Venice,

Louisiana.

Hwy 23, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

Three weeks ago I decided to spend a week in New Orleans, traveling there after a wedding I was invited to attend in Chicago, and before visiting my son in Portland, Oregon, where I am now. Now I am standing in my son's bathroom (he is still asleep, this is where I can work without disturbing him) before my computer and a large, toothpaste splattered mirror. Now I am left facing myself in the mirror, as one always, so to speak, is. 

Thanks to a comment a reader made, I have changed my usage from oil "spill" to oil catastrophe; a word defined as "an extremely large-scale disaster, a horrible event." I went to New Orleans to, as I wrote a few weeks ago, "investigate" the catastrophe and now I am looking over the photographs, video footage and notes I took in to order assimilate, along with my memories, what I have learned. My body feels distinctly different after the trip. Of course I have aged and of course impermanence is the rule, but a more telling reflection says I have encountered something both symbolically and viscerally potent (like meeting a teacher?) and it is my duty to unfold the symbols and treasure the viscera, to let none of this drop from my hands. 

In sacrifice, the viscera or organs of the slain animal were part of the augury priests were compelled to divine. It strikes me that New Orleans has suffered a double catastrophe, a "natural" one in the form of Katrina and a "man made" one in the form of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Besides 9/11, there are not too many examples of a post WWII American City being devastated by an event. Perhaps ideally a disaster is supposed to decrease hubris and increase sympathy or love. Collectively it may be hard to claim that America is a less proud and more loving country since 9/11, but when I  visited New York City earlier this year I was struck again and again by a kind of exuberant courtesy, an enthusiastically choreographed helpfulness that I encountered from subway attendants to just about anyone I asked anything of in the street. 

Perhaps what I can say that after a week in New Orleans I feel better equipped to understand things I've sought or been committed to for most of my life. I arrived in Louis Armstrong International Airport without a telephone number, without a map, without having investigated websites about the oil catastrophe, without having read a history of New Orleans and without even booking a hotel. I arrived without an education but determined decrease my ignorance. The expertise I gained was only in the experience that unfolded before me, hour by hour and day by day. Everything significant and that seemed to pertain to the oil catastrophe (my expressed purpose) seemed to happen by accident, through double-take or an unexpected glance into the rear-view mirror.

I also tried to take the view (as a practice) that everyone I met, every opinion I encountered, was a part of me. And that I was complicit in everything. I've long been influenced by similar statements of two Buddhist teachers. Thich Nhat Hanh argued that he could easily have been a Thai sea pirate (who stole from, raped and often killed the "boat people" fleeing Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975) if he had been born into circumstances that gave rise to piratetry. Pema  Chödrön once asked her audience if there was a parent among them, including herself, who could not understand a child abuser because what parent had never lost their temper, had never shook their child, had never inflicted some degree of emotional or physical violence upon their son or daughter?

Signs in restaurant near

Venice, Louisiana.

slowness, more tears (laughter).

ACCIDENT #1: On a journey to actually see the oil that had just made contact with shore, I bought a map, rented a car and drove to a town that more than one local referred to as  "the end of the world," Venice, a dot on the map at the south end of Hwy 23, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. All the ABC and CNN and other news crews had already been there, but I didn't see a trace of them in the brief time I spent. What I saw was a restaurant with a Harley parked in front, a couple of motels and a tangle of piers, harbors and construction cranes with lots of sheriff patrol cars parked about. The gravel road I followed eventually led to a fence, a keep out sign and a large hanger with the name Hallliburtan on the side. 

Like the returning bodies of solders killed in Iraq that photographers were denied access to until recently, I seemed to be in the symbolic tableau most of our citizens find themselves in. If we think of our country and the global economy as a "family system" there are, naturally, many things the more privileged children  should not be allowed to see. Combat, factory conditions in Juarez and oil coating the white sands of the Louisiana shore must be as off limits as Dad's drawer of racing forms and photographs of his mistress. This impression was amplified later in the day when I stopped to film an oil refinery along the side of Hwy 23. A Sheriff pulled up, questioned me and announced he "had to report me to the FBI." I had ostensibly broken no law, but in the post 9/11 Patriot Act era an oil refinery is a "potential terrorist target" that obliged the Sheriff to conflate my legal act into an interrogation and a final stern warning that he "never wanted to see me on this road again."

Mississippi Delta, Plaquemines Parish,
Louisiana.

News reports speak about the "crystal blue waters" of the gulf, as if the spill is is a toxin entirely new to an otherwise unspoiled area, yet scientific studies have long-cited the Mississippi River coast as " the single dirtiest, most imperiled coastal ecosystem on earth." It's not that the river itself is so highly polluted, but it provides continuous flows of nitrogen and phosphorus into the ocean, the vast runoff of chemical fertilizers from American farms which promote algae growth and so greatly decrease the oxygen content of the water that large "dead zone" had been created, no longer able to support marine life. To acknowledge this is in no way to discount the sweeping destruction of the oil spill but to acknowledge the insidious degradation that continuously goes on below the waters surface, often belied by a surface that may still look "crystal blue."

Scott Nixon (University of Rhode Island, USA) explained that this process, known as eutrophication, is not a recent phenomenon, but one that first appeared with the spread of urban sewage networks in the second half of the nineteenth century and has been accelerating sharply since 1970. According to Nixon, “we are seeing a clear global increase in the incidence of hypoxia in coastal ecosystems,” a phenomenon whereby the oxygen concentration in water drops so far that it causes catastrophic mortality among marine organisms. Prof. Nixon went on to add that “there is a relationship between the health damage done by the excessive consumption of meat in developed societies and the health damage done to coastal ecosystems by the massive nitrogen emissions associated with meat production.”- Science Daily

Figure on wall in Kristy's
restaurant, Plaquemines Parish,
Louisiana.

Shortly into the eighty-mile drive from Venice back to New Orleans I stopped, somewhat uncertainly, at a restaurant named Kristy's, which consisted of a double-wide mobile home with a single automobile parked in front. Here I spent one of the most remarkable hours of my trip (if not my life) in the company of three oil rig workers and the sole cook and waitress of Kristy's, its proprietress, a black grandmother who called herself "T." T took my order and later talked to me at length with a head-on wit, so gracious, guileless and shrewd that I felt I'd encountered a new and more exhilarating form of love, fast food style (though her fried-food took twenty minutes to prepare). We talked about catfish, her nine grandchildren, the poverty of the region, and her hat, a headpiece to keep her hair out of the food that I found attractive and even elegant but that T claimed made her look like Aunt Jemima - which became the cause of much laughter and the reason she steadfastly refused to let me take her photograph. T agreed with me wholeheartedly when I told her she was lucky to have given love to so many people and had so many people who loved her.

Interior, Kristy's Restaurant.

In truth, everything about my trip down Hwy 23 felt like an accident, including waking up that morning with no idea I would be taking the trip in the first place. But the "accident" I cited earlier was one of a different kind, and a very painful one. Three young men were in the restaurant when I arrived, workers who neither acknowledged my entrance nor gave me the slightest feeling I was intruding. They just sat there, waiting for their food, making an occasional cell phone call and existing in their own familiarity (which included this restaurant). As I acclimatized to a place that was decidedly not familiar to me, I began to realize I should ask to video interview them. I went out to my rental car to fetch my camera with the vague apprehension which  accompanies these sudden decisions to intrude upon strangers.

I returned from my car, introduced myself and learned the men's names were Lester, Cory and Wallace. I told them I was making a film about the oil spill and water issues. I asked if I could interview them and their collective response was a willing shrug. "Why not?" Lester replied. And so I asked each a few questions and took about five minutes of footage. I wouldn't be writing about any of this, expect for the "accident." It turned out, something I learned only days later, that the audio didn't record. I ended up with video footage that had no sound. I could have lost my camera and hardly given it a second thought, but I grimaced all day that I had lost this footage, because it was exactly what I had hoped the trip would bring. I realized that all I could do was post some stills to this journal and let the photographs speak for themselves.

Lester.

Cory.

Wallace.

"7,000 Miles Nonstop, and No Pretzels"

The three photographs below and the headline above are from a New York Times article published last Tuesday, May 25th. Scientists are now able to plant transmitting devices in birds that migrate over vast distances, from the Arctic Circle, say, to as far south as Australia. It was assumed the birds flew over land and made many pit stops along the way. But the transmitters have shown otherwise. The bar-tailed godwit leaves Alaska and flies nonstop over 7,100 miles of ocean to New Zealand. Researchers in Alaska also observed, "the godwits were feasting on clams and worms as if they were not going to be able to eat for a very long time."

Bar-Tailed Godwit.

Arctic Tern.

Bristled-Thighed Curlew.

Restaurant in Venice, Louisiana.