Banana Leaf "Take A Bite...I Dare You"

A moderately sized house located along the main strip of a college town with a bright neon sign shining "OPEN" in the front window conjures images of "happy ending" massage parlors, sketchy money loaning businesses, or psychic palm reading establishments. The Banana Leaf is none of these things. Walk up the handicap access ramp, open the door, and you are at home. Take a seat.
But don't lean up against the board where the reception desk is, you might tip it over, as I almost did. In the most gracious voice you've heard since eating at fast-paced, entitled-because-we're-here-restaurants in the last ten years comes a soft, "hii, table for two? The wait will be about 10-15 min." Like a storm-trooper jedi-mind-tricked into letting Luke and the crew go you sit down and wait. As you wait you glance around the living room where there are about seven tables. You see paintings, photos, statues, and images that will remind you of The King and Me. And the wife of the owner is dressed in eastern baggy pants like a bollywood dancer. The aroma reminded me of when I was in Scotland and had real, good Indian food for the first time; less scathing than the smell of cheap fried food, but definitely the same waft of coconuts, spices, breads, and avocados.
And then you glance at the table behind you and you see a couple drinking some kind of green juice. You ask what it is and you learn it is an avocado juice. You might get one to share with your date or you might get individual ones; in either case it is a hearty portion.
I know what I want immediately. We order and wait, talking pleasantly among ourselves while taking in the scents, the visual stimulus that beams you into another land, in another time, in another culture. When your food arrives it is surrounded by banana leafs; reinforcing the displacement of your senses and presence into another world. I take a piece of naan bread, dip into the coconut curry, take a bite, and I'm nearly there; elephants walking on jungle trails, people bathing in the river, cleaning their cloths...and then I take a sip of the avocado juice, and it happens. I am sitting on an elephant, riding through the Sri Lankan jungle. It is exotic. It is smooth and moves like mango juice over your palate and as it hits your throat it cools down any stress in your life, taking a yoga approach of relaxation right to the pit of your stomach. And you are immediately satisfied.
Do yourself a favor: travel. Get lost in Sri Lanka at the Banana Leaf. Take a bite...I dare you...

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Expert Advice

I once read in a blog about blogging that you should blog about a blog topic with which you are an expert. It told me that I should write as if I were explaining my expert opinion to someone who was familiar with my topic but not as knowledgeable as myself. I don't think I know anything about anything because I don't really have a solid topic to blog about!! Sad? Perhaps. Pathetic? Maybe more cosmetically on this page than in actuality. Changeable? I'm going with yes on this one. I can't blog about restaurants anymore because I don't go out! Some diet thing I'm on lately. I'll let you know how it works out in 50 years, whether I have cancer or diabetes or am as healthy as a clam; one that has not been caught and is still in the ocean of course.

One or the Other

I chose the fork that in the road that led me to life. I chose the fork in the road that led me to death. I chose the fork in the road that led me to my dreams.
I chose the fork in the road that felt safe and easy.
I chose the fork in the road that made me the happiest. I chose the fork in the road that didn't have fear written all over it; fear was where it pointed to and I'll never know what was at the end of that path.
I know that on the path that I took, there was no fear, there was no suffering, there was no denial, there was no control, there was no sacrifice. I knew that path led to safety and most importantly I knew that path's ending; a consummation of fear and loathing.
The path that frightens us the most is the path with the largest obstacles, the sharpest turns, the least amount of visibility, and the steepest of hills and climbs.
Too bad each step along that path is a step that forces us to grow, to live, and to overcome. It forces us to reach a higher, better, happier, more fulfilling end. Too bad we don't take that path because it scares us. What if fear did not exist? What if the word was never invented? Would we then have to take feelings of fear and describe them as feelings of life? What if every time we were scared the only word we could think of was life. What if we realized we could transform that weakest part of life to the strongest and healthiest by overcoming and swallowing up weakness in the pursuit of excellence. A great many possibilities await us; we have only to choose; one step at a time; one choice at a time. so choose.

What the Bleep Do We Know

I saw a DVD today that was intriguing, informative, pontificating, and novel, so far as my experience goes. It was about quantum physics and how the world has recently been discovered on a much smaller level. In essence, it connected science with spirituality, God, and divinity.
Something that struck me and has nagged at me the whole day, in a manner that I do not quite yet understand how to digest, is the simple fact that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. If you allow that to sink into your mind and heart and whole being, you will realize that everything that you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is connected by energy. If energy is only distributed throughout the universe and throughout our world, then we are indeed incepted from the same mass of energy or being. We are all one; we all share life; life lived and life sustaining; we sustain each others energy; God sustains our energy; our being is part of Gods energy.
We are told that we are all sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father. I never understood real life, heart-beating, feet-moving, interacting implications of that doctrine. We are more than just brothers and sisters through covenants and commitments, we are brothers and sisters in a real blood, cell relationship. The universe, everything and everybody in it, is connected to each other through the dispersal of energy. If you are reading this blog, you might come to realize that no matter who you or where you come from, you and I are connected. The same energy that exists in my body exists in your body. We are literally one.
If you ever get the chance, rent this DVD from your local library. It will open up and expand your mind. It also will teach of the divinity of yourself and the greater possibilities that awaits each one of us, if we will but connect into the energy of life, which stems and courses through a Master Creator and Moulder.
May peace and Love engulf the energy you carry within you. May you spread and share that energy in love with those around you and remember that no man is an island.

Hate or Love It

I saw a guy driving on the highway today, zooming in and out of people, his own personal racetrack at his fingertips. At one point, at a critical point in his travel itinerary, he tried getting over to another lane to get off his exit. As he started going he noticed a car right next to him so he had to swerve back into his lane. As he forced his path away from a collision he looked at the woman in the car next to him, sat straight up in his seat, and with his lips moving vivaciously, let the bird out of its cage for her and I to see.
I took action immediately. I quickly accelerated so as to be right behind this crazy car, honking horn loudly and indefinitely, like a bullhorn from a large ship. The man looked in his mirror and threw his hands up in a "what the hell are you doing?!" manner. He stepped on his brakes to force me to step on mine as I proceeded get in the lane the to the left so I could get next to him.
The fun part of this story is when my machismo wears out as traffic slows...for a stoplight. Uh-oh. We stop, right next to each other. I was worried he might get out of his car and continue his road rage on me. Luckily he just resorted to rolling down his window, hurling a torrent of explicative toward me. I hesitated then rolled down my window, hurling an equal force of torrential explicative toward him. This cursing back and forth lasted for about a minute as we waited for the light to turn. I don't remember what he said, or what I said. All I remember is the intense feeling of adrenaline pumping through my heart as we he turned onto his street from the main road we were just on and I let my own bird fly away.
I got home that evening, got a cold glass of water and sat down to watch t.v. I thought about my previous engagement with the enemy, my blood still pumping in and out of my heart at an alarming rate. I tried to settle down but my whole energy and mind was focused on that guy.
So many questions. Why is he such a jerk? Why can't he just be cool? Why couldn't he realize how much of a jerk he was after I honked at him? That one probably bothered me the most. The one about him still not feeling bad for what he had done after I honked and cursed at him. Not being able to figure it out, I turned on the telee and sat back in my recliner.

Laugh to Live

If she would have given up five years ago she would be nowhere now. The laughter, the crying, the yelling and the clapping would be nothing more than a dream. If she would have listened to that particular voice in her head, she would have just walked away. We are all schizophrenic, listening to different voices in our heads, all telling us something different, all wanting something different from us. Luckily she listened to the voice that told her to not quit, to keep going, tell another joke, walk out on another stage and laugh another day. That voice was no less prophetic than the other ones, no less prophetic, but much more holy. That voice was the only one that urged her to follow her dreams, walk with her talents and her loves. She loved telling jokes and making people laugh, now more than ever.
Whatever happens she doesn’t care, at least she cares a lot less where the competition goes than where she finds happiness. She’ll always have clubs, bars, and special events to tell her jokes in. Five years ago though, she would never have imagined that she would care more about her jokes than she would about telling her jokes. That may sound a bit confusing, why would someone care so much about a joke if they can’t tell it. Well, the joke is in the creating and in the telling, you’re right. The joke isn’t in the size of the audience or the general social construction of a particular audience; the joke is in her heart, and if she can please first and foremost her soul then she will be able to please souls wherever she goes.

Heart of Darkness

Going into the interminable jungle of life, a savage society awaits and watches your every step, breath, and utterance. Death wafts in from every direction, always weary of sickness and pain on each path trod and nervous with every call to deck that you might not return. A haze of darkness goes before us, follows behind us, and eventually becomes us. The heart is the gate to our soul and when it is plagued and harangued with continual darkness, it is only a matter of time before one final struggle and push by the darkness engulfs the soul, hopes, dreams, passions, the good along with the bad. It is all swallowed up in a black hole.
Going into Conrad's Congo is not so hard for me to imagine. Not only imagine, but actually walking in the jungle, drinking in the emptiness that surrounded life there. Conrad's Congo is not unlike daily life for some.
A suffusing comment I read takes in stride the universality of the life experience, despite surroundings, situations, etc. I can't find the reference exactly, but he says something along the lines of how work tests us, reveals to us what and who we really are, or at least what we may gain from hard work.
It's true. It is when we are tested in our finest and most delicate faculties to produce something that is desirable by another party, we come to realize what we are currently capable of, what we are potentially capable of, and what we are not capable of. And if we find we are not capable of something, we find that we are capable of turning what we are not capable of into something that we are.
There is potential among the heart of darkness. Largely, there is great knowledge and potential wisdom to churn in the heart of darkness into something desirable and necessary. Never be ungrateful for a moment to walk in Conrad's jungle, which is our jungle. Never for a moment shun the opportunity to walk into the darkest jungle of your heart, for it will see you wiser, albeit weaker in some faculties, to gain better worlds like it in different spheres.

Smile and Wave Boys, Smile and Wave

This post is for all the people out there that don't get what they want. How many times a day do you wish you had something in your life, but it just isn't there? For me, it happens at least once a day, and about twice a week it is something really big that makes me depressed I don't have it. I know how old people with arthritis feel. I wake up every morning with a shooting pain down the left side of my lower body, every day hoping and praying that the pain will subside, stop, and eventually leave me forever. I feel moments, maybe minutes long worth, of freedom from the pain, but it inevitably comes back to literally bite me in the butt.
I guess pain is there to be my constant companion. She has already taught me a few things about life and now that I feel that the lessons are over, she can go. But she doesn't. She clings to me lint to cotton. We all have so much to learn from pain in our life, we just want to learn it and be done with it. Not so. That isn't the plan. I guess when I get older I will look back on my life and say, "sheesh, I am sooo glad that I went through that, I learned so much about life." Ha. But I am not older yet and I just say be gone.
Trust. Apparently trust comes with a price, and that price is some form of pain; whether it is physical or emotional, you have to pay the price. There is no skirting the contract, there is no hedging your bet. You have to pay what you have to pay and that is that.
I guess we can still feel pain in our life, but it does not have to bring us down. We can smile through it and endure. Yep. Smile and wave boys, smile and wave. That will be my motto: Smile and wave boys, smile and wave....

For love's Sake!

Returning home from working out, I had an extra skip in my step, yet at the same time a small chip on my shoulder. My leg hurt so I was ready to just get home and take some medicine--mmmmmm...on my way home I spotted a girl walking towards me on the same path. In the mood I was in I usually wouldn't care to notice anyone walking my way, but I noticed and she noticeably noticed me, then noticed me noticing her, so we mutually noticed each other. It was like I was in middle school again, seeing the cute girl walking towards me, instantaneously not knowing what to do and not wanting to look away because she is so dang cute! I glanced up, she glanced down, she glanced up, I glanced down. When we were about ten feet away from each other I managed a half-attractive smile and said "hey..." She grinned ear to ear and said, "Hi, how are you doing?" As I was about to respond, "great!" the tennis class beginners decided they did not want love to have a chance, one of their balls ricocheting off of a racquet right into the side of my head. As I yelped softly, the girl I was guffawing at put her hands up in a catching posture as if a tennis ball would bowl me over. She asked, "Are you o.k.," to which I responded, "Huh?! Oh yeah, I'm great, thanks, have a good one." I walked away as quickly as I could to hide the redness that invaded the rest of my face. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Are You Happy?

Yes!! No...wait, do you want me to answer that seriously or do you want me to give you you the socially perfunctory answer that everyone wants to hear because they don't really want to hear about your life because 99% of people 98% of the time only care and think about themselves? This was the beginning of a conversation I had with a dear friend last night, of which was returned the answer, 'of course I want the truth or I would not have asked.'

The truth is that, no, of course I am not happy. How many of us are happy in the truest sense of the word? I think very few of us are. I think very few of us let ourselves be happy and I think very many of us are stupid enough to keep our thoughts to ourselves and not find good advice and support from the people around us. My posts always end with some optimistic outlook on a bleak situation, exerting universal paradigms that we know happy people have themselves, hoping our paradigm will turn with time. The issue lies deeper than a change of mind, deeper than a universal truth, deeper than immediately accepting someone else's outlook on life to give life a pretense of fulfillment.

So many answers, I will not attempt to explicate our problems of unhappiness and find the cure-all for our problems in life. I might be a billionaire if I was able to do that. I think instead I will start from the bottom, from what I know: I know I am unhappy and I know I am unhappy because there are so many things that I desire to have in my life that are not in my life and I attribute the reason for those things not being there to my own laziness and fear. Good, now we are getting somewhere. We are seeing ourselves for what and who we are right now. Our problems lie in the times when all we see is what we could be, where we could be, and who we could be. I am going to see myself for who I am, accept myself as I am, and blog from there. I am just going to experiment in this step and try to be comfortable in the skin I live in now, not imaging myself being comfortable in a skin that I might eventually be in.

Natta Me

Natta thing I can find
With which to fill my
Time; I scamper, scurry,
Surf, and stream, but not
A thing I do is getting
Me closer to my dream;
So much time is wasted, in
technological glory, but
I really just need to sit down,
and start writing my story.

Hubble Telescope

Enthrall and enchant me,
Don't drop me as you walk away;
You got me from the first time
I saw you sitting there.
Angels, flowers, purest
Sunsets, there are no words that
begin to describe your beauty;
New inventions, new language,
New words in a million years
Never will touch your beauty,
It exists not in this world,
Not even in Heaven, but a
World yet undiscovered, yet
Uninterpreted, yet to be
Understood.

Summit Life in Twists and Turns

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” So says Edmund Hillary, the first man to have reached the summit of Mt. Everest, 29,029 ft. into the heavens.
Last night I decided that I needed to get some more exercise in, after having a torn muscle that has plagued me for the past 2 months. So, yay, yes, I made it to the top. That is not what I want to talk about.
Turns marked the way up the trail. Each turn was a switchback, effectively changing the direction you are walking, yet ascending higher up the mountain with each turn. This makes the hike bearable, and doable, by just about anyone. Each new turn presented a new opportunity, a new possibility. Each new turn led to new and changing terrain, in fact, when you look closely at any mountain trail, it is easy to see that each new step provides a new opportunity and changing terrain.
At that moment, I decided that the word FAILURE does not exist in my vocabulary. For every failure rather is a turn in the road; presenting me with a new direction, a challenge to get back up, to go again, to finish what I started but perhaps from a different approach. To summit the mountains of my life, and ultimately THE mountain of my life, I have but to look to the summit, realize that my way may not be my destined way, the best way for me, and certainly not the only way. At the end, I will look down from the summit, I will look back on my life, and be able to say, "I conquered no such thing as life, but I conquered myself."

Geoff, Will, and John—Dreams and Opportunities

Not too impressed? I hardly am. Names you’ve seen a hundred times and heard a thousand more; television, newspapers, your best friends, roll call during class, the list goes on. Guaranteed you know, or have personally met a guy who has one of these three names as their first name. Interesting that a man’s, or a woman’s, first name is not the name which brings them their glory, honor, and legacy. A first name wastes away as much as the word seed wastes away in name to grow into an oak, a fir, a maple. The name that lasts is the last name, it is the name that gives us honor, puts us on a pedestal of glory, and memorializes our legacy through all time and eternity.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton might be the names you are more familiar with that bring a flood of impressions, mostly those of respect and awe. Family names. Like Malcolm Gladwell spoke of in his book Outliers, successful people are largely successful due to the opportunities they were offered due to their family circumstances. If you are reading this, take stock into what your last name has offered you by way of opportunities. Hardly has the world seen a person dig themselves up from the dregs of society and find themselves on the pinnacle of greatness. There is almost always an opportunity involved.
So don’t worry if your last name isn’t Carnegie, Gates, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Van Gogh. Worry only that you take the opportunity when it comes to you. It may only come once, quickly, forcefully, or fearfully. You will imprint your name on the books of history as you take that one opportunity that is given to all great people. We make our opportunities, we fight for them, we live for them, and they raise our spirits and our hopes. Never let opportunity pass you by. Instead grasp it and snatch it from the world that dreams are made of, our dreams, hopes, and ambitions.

Tao of Pooh

Taoism is a thought culture that explicates the physical relation our mind, body, and spirit hold to the physical world. In the book, the Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff shows how Taoist Winnie the Pooh is. One of the metaphors he explicates is that of a boulder in a river to the peace of mind and conscious that comes as we become one with the problems challenges around us.
He writes of a large boulder that falls in the river. The water when it encounters the boulder is too weak to break the outside shell, let alone the core of the rock. Instead of the water trying to go through the rock, it flows around the rock.
When Winnie the Pooh encounters problems he doesn't go head on with them, he always himself to solve them by going with the flow so to speak. None of us are powerful or strong enough to break through boulders in our lives, but we can become aware enough to flow through and around our problems, turning our problems into opportunities of new and exciting growth and change. Remember Winnie the Pooh next time you have a major challenge in your life and see it as a way to discover a new path and a new opportunity.

Better Dayz

Ain't it the life though? Shoot, standing here in my kitchen, cooking spaghetti, listening to Tupac's Better Dayz, watching the sun go down out my window, preparing for a night of karaoke on the town with good people I love. Ain't it the life? I don't remember any better dayz than the one I'm livin' in right now. Give me a torn muscle that hasn't healed in a month and a half, take away the sport that is one of very few things in life that gives me happiness, but give me a plate of spaghetti with shredded parmesan cheese on it, and I'm livin' the life; the good life. My crushed heel, my torn peroneus longus, my three cracked ribs, my pulled hamstrings and groin, sciatica down the left side of my body for months and years, potential carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrist from a hit I took at practice, it's all taught me what I love most about my life and what is most important in any person's life; people. But people are only masses of emotion, flesh, and blood without the relationship we can have with them. And just as I'm finishing up my thoughts, my spaghetti is done and I'm ready to eat.

Live the good life baby.

The Sun

What in life is sown in death,
Can have but nothing but regret
The tears and pain of a billion
Worlds, wishing, wondering, what if.
Do not join the pool that wanders,
That floats amid dreary dread.
Live now, live full, live right
For when you die, you’re dead.

Suddenly

Walking down the sidewalk, I looked down,
my eyes glazed, heel-toe, heel-toe,
then I heard you
call my name, I didn't look up
immediately, my glazed eyes
subverting my mind.
As the wind rushed past my
eardrums, my mind heard a
swoosh, then a faint whistle.
I looked up, away from my feet,
straight ahead at the horizon,
suddenly I turned, piercing the
source of your voice; now I
waited, waited for you to call
again; it didn't take but a
moment, it couldn't have lasted
longer, I wished it would never
stop. You were not there,
nothing was there, nothing but
a new, no a different horizon; the
same horizon I first looked ahead to,
the same, nothing there but sky.

Unconquered

A debilitating case of tuberculosis of the bone saw Henley in pain for many years. His contemporaries saw him as an inspiration. Even those who did not get along with his views as editor of the National Observer, such as William Butler Yeats, praised him, "I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words." Read Invictus with this in mind and see if you can not now feel more powerfully the truth behind the ink.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley