The realization that god, or spirit, or energy or whatever you want to call it is not an all powerful external being or entity that I talk to/pray to or negotiate with but something within me that I must turn inward to ask for, commit, and figure out ways to make life happen is empowering.  Knowing this power within me is the same energy that is within every living being and all our actions based on it influence us as we all move together is humbling, relieving, and brings a sense of love, belonging, and empowerment at a much higher level.

Sometimes I feel like I can get used to almost anything except sacrificing my principals.

Boxes

I feel like SD´s too straight and square. All the buildings have sharp curves and the streets run parallel and perpendicular, and every locale, building, house, trailer, business, and government office has an exact number assigned to it on a street with a sign that matches every other street sign in color, shape, and height and it's all conveniently located by satellite on google maps.  I'm always lost here.  How can something be clearly marked if it all looks the same?  The tables are all in rows, the cubicles are all lined up, can I get a curve please? I always know where things are going, there´s a line to direct me, I´m free to go wherever I want as long as I follow the straight lines, as long as I stay on that paved road. I can only go off it if I have an off-road vehicle and I can´t get back on it until I have my highway legal vehicle. And in order to get off road, I must pay a fee and stay within the off road area. Everything is predictable. BORing.   I feel like it´s crushing my soul, like the fire inside me is nearly extinguished from being stuck inside a box. The big box stores, the big box fast food chains. There's hardly a neighborhood without a McDonalds and a Walmart and a Home Depot where everything you need is fabricated to keep up your perfectly boxed up life inside your box shaped home while you peer out eagerly at the perfectly lined streets on your boxed shaped block with rectangle signs all white with black block lettering on every corner through your square window waiting for the box shaped truck to drive up and deliver... a box. How can I find my way and grow and evolve if everywhere I go, it's all the same?  I need to break away.


I wanna go to a place where theater shows are often free and rarely cost more than $10, I want to find a hill that I can't make it up on my bicycle and I’m on the brink of losing control as a fly down the other side.  I wanna go somewhere where the dividing lines are blurred so I don't have to «PICK A LANE».  I want to go to a place where the only way you can get there is to ask directions.  Where instead of standard green freeway signs with white lettering, you know where to turn because there's a 4 story white house with plant leaves dripping off every balcony. 
I want to end up on roads that sometimes abruptly end and force me to take a detour without any signs, where there are street performers that don't have a permit, I wanna take a bus that has frequent and unpredictable stops, and if I get off, I can get on another a couple minutes later. I don´t want to go straight, I want to go up and down and around and around. I wanna walk across an intersection diagonally and bump into others in the middle.  I wanna go somewhere, just cause I feel like it and run into something else on the way that I like better. I wanna go to a place that's in transition, be focused on something from within instead of being streamlined by practical forces without... without love, without spontaneity, without a creative curve ball that throws me into the middle of an area where my curiosity is challenged and I can fulfill my love and passion and gain the strength and speed to blaze into the wide-open strike zone of life. A place where there is so much youth that they are bursting out of their sewn britches and jumping into a universe of possibilities for a better world. In short, I wanna go to Tijuana.

I got a question for you...?

Cathy, Alexis, and I were walking out of the Bi-national friendship garden after weeding it out.  The agent on the North side of the secondary barrier was sitting in his vehicle.  "Can you open the door for us?"
He snarked a little.  "Go down to the beach and walk around."
The other agent had told us to ask the agent on duty to open the door when we finished.  "You don't have a key?"  I asked politely.
"No."
It was only a short walk down the hill.  Not worth arguing about.  "Like it would've hurt'em to get out of his vehicle." remarked Cathy.  "Why didn't he opent he gate?"
"I don't know.  I think he was just being a dick."  That was my guess from the look on his face when he answered.
When we got to the bottom of the hill he was there waiting in his vehicle.  "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I told him and walked over to his truck."
Alexis and Cathy kept walking up the hill.
"I could give you guys a ride up the hill in the back of the unit."  He said chuckling. 
"Sure."  I said only half realizing it was another sarcastic remark.
"What's the purpose behind the garden?  What are you trying to do?"  He asked in a non-threatening way.
"The garden has a dual purpose: to make friends across the border and promote native habitat."
"What's your name?"
"Dan Watman, yours?"
"Agent Pacheco...Yeah, but what are you really trying to do?"
"I guess you haven't been briefed.  I have this project where we do events at the border fence under common interest themes with the idea of making friends through the fence."
"What's the purpose of it?"
"To make friends through the fence."
"Where are you from?"
"I grew up in Modesto, California."
"You grew up in Modesto?  Me too."
"O, wow yeah we're about the same age, maybe..."
"What high school did you go to?"
"Beyer."
"I went to Modesto High, graduated in 1984."
"I graduated in '89."
"I joined the marine corps and then joined Border Patrol,16 years"
"Oh, well, different paths to end up in the same place.  Have you been in this area the whole time?"
"Yeah."
"I'm surprised we haven't run into each other."
"Me too.  Yeah, there's good stuf that goes on around here we just had to put up the wall cause people passing illegal documents through the fence, switching out kids, and passing drugs through the fence. It was getting out of hand.  Too much illegal activity."
"Yeah. I've commited myself to this friendship concept and kind of look at it as necessary independant of any illegal activity."
"I understand that."
"My friend's waiting for me.  I gotta go.  Nice to meet you."
"Yeah, nice to meet you too" this time with a genuine as opposed to sarcastic smile and a stretched arm to shake hands through his window.

Brownman

Brownman around the edges of my earth

brownman around the edges of  the heart

every beat a fight to stay alive

brown earth nurtures the California Sunflower

why don't we let you rest so you can pulsate life 

Tribute to my friend Jim Moreno

A kind man
a poet with a purpose
he can't help but give like a dream 
his poems will not disappear
A humble indian singing in the clouds

The diminishing of authentic passion through corporate marketing

"Empowering People" were the words that flashed across the screen as I turned on my Acer Netbook.  If empowering people really was their priority, they wouldn't sell the computers at a price where only a small part of the world's population can afford them (mostly people who are already "empowered") and they wouldn't be a client of infamous sweatshop computer assembly factory Foxconn in the republic of China who is in the business of disempowering people.  I guess they wouldn't sell much if they told the truth in their marketing slogans, "Empowering Profit", "Disempowering the 99% in order to empower the 1%" or, even more accurate, "we don't care who we empower or exploit as long as we make a profit and the more the better".

Although I definitely feel passionate about how corporations have no consciencsous and are ruling the world and need to be stopped as well as how there needs to be a major shift in priorities of the world's political and economic system, my main point in this entry is to focus on one small evil (among the many) that corporations commmit by using these tag lines that don't reflect what they are really after.  When they claim that they are "empowering people" not because they are, but because they think that will sell more computers, it can eventually make that phrase cliche.  People see the phrase "empowering People" over and over again, don't see anyone empowered, and just keep using their computer. Meanwhile, there are efforts around the world where organizations and everyday people decide they want to empower others like this one appers to be or this one (whom I actually have experience with and can vouch for).  These orgs and efforts that honestly put people as a priority over profit, could just speak openly about what they do and maybe even use that phrase of "empowering people" and others would fall in love with their cause.  But the phrase has already been cheapened and people who would be impressed and even support their efforts are hesitant because "empowering people" is now associated with a company logo with a multi-million dollar annual advertising budget.

I used the phrase empowering people as an example.  I don't think it's reached the clicheness that other company logos have and I think there's still hope that it could actually be truly associated with people who are truly empowering people as opposed to backward priority corporations like Acer.  One thing Acer could do to earn the right to use that phrase would be to put people as a higher priority than profit.  They could give away free computers to people who need them, pay a living wage to the people who make them, provide safe and sustainable work places, not expect that any of their employees have a better life than any other, and make this phrase "empowering people" visible to all people as opposed to just the ones that might be able to buy more of their product.  I like to think I'm not affected by their fiendish almost subliminal attempt to make me think that I'm somehow contributing to a worthy cause, since I bought mine used.  I hope I'm right and I hope that this flash on the screen, doesn't subconsciencously satisfy that natural human desire in all of us to want to help others.