I’m in Kathmandu. Five years have passed since I’ve set foot in this Valley, which has been my spiritual home and point of inspiration since 1979. It’s a beautiful time to be here. The bloodthirsty Dasain festival is over, and the Moon is nearly full. In two weeks – just after I leave – Diwali, goddess Laxmi’s Festival of Lights, will begin.

Like so many other places in the developing world, the Kathmandu Valley changed profoundly, almost  unrecognizably, between the mid-1980’s and late 1990’s.  Most of the changes were for the worse. But the process of  degradation seems to have reached a plateau; aside from the political chaos, and the portrait of the unsmiling King Gyanendra on the newly minted rupee notes, the Himalayan capital is not very different from my last visit. Beyond the brick wall of Chrissie’s little garden, a street vendor totes a cloud of toy balloons; they pass like a giant white-and-pink rhododendron bloom. The air is filled with dust and butterflies, scooters bounce down pitted dirt lanes, the eyes of Buddha gleam from the gilt temple harnika of Swayambhu, and the ground-level shops in Asantole and Indrachowk overflow with bangles and incense, prayer flags and goat heads, spices and rope, silver cups, sarees, yak wool sweaters. I’m overflowing, too. It’s good to be home.

 Arrived in Nepal in mid-October, after taking my mother to India. She recently turned 75, and had never been to Asia before. I wanted to show her a few places while she’s still fit and sharp. We toured Delhi, and the forts and palaces of Rajasthan; we wandered among the startlingly modern astronomical sculptures in Jai Singh’s 18th century Observatory. And I brought her to the Taj Mahal — a place that, even after several visits, fills me with overwhelming admiration and awe. And so did my mother.

My premonitions for the trip had been dicey, to say the least: She’d get violently ill, she’d freak out, she would hate  the  food, she would tire quickly, the heat would be too much, the dust, the crowds, India. Wrong. We rode rickshaws into Delhi’s mobbed Old City, and an elephant up to Amber Fort. She developed a taste for papdam, masala dosa, and fresh lemon sodas. Her health was perfect, and she kept up with a punishing schedule that included hours – too many — in a bulbous Ambassador cab.

It was the most time I’d spent with my Mom since I was a teen, and her  open-mindedness was a revelation. The only aspects of India that panicked her were the aggressive vendors, who swarm around tourist sites like the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. And though she hated taking her shoes off in the crowded, frenetic temples, my mother – an observant, kosher-keeping Jewess who arranged her own Bat Mitzvah at 68 – was a spiritual sponge. She bent her head for a sadhu’s blessing in the mobbed Kalkaji Temple, tied a wishing string to the marble lattice of Chasti’s Tomb, and – pinch me — took home a small, modernist carving of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh.

Back in Oakland, I sometimes dream about being in Kathmandu. The dreams all share a sense of urgency – so much  to do, so many friends to see, so little time.  I suspected when I planned this trip that 18 days was going to be a little too long — or way too short. What was I thinking?  Returning to Nepal is like falling back into a familiar embrace. Life here may be tough, but it’s life on a human scale. From this perspective, there an amazing awareness of the many levels that surround us – from the sacred snake-gods in the  subterranean pools to the toxin-choked Bagmati River; from the ravens screeching from the tree-tops to the eyes of Buddha atop the Boudha dome. On every level, every level. That’s why I love Nepal. That’s why, even after five years, I call it home.

As I walk along the beach at the Point Reyes National Seashore, a head pops out of the ocean. Fifty feet away, a harbor seal – an adolescent male – watches me from just beyond the swell. By the time I pull out my binoculars, he’s gone.
 
This beach has been part of my life for 32 years. The adjoining campground, Coast, is the first place I ever camped overnight. The fallow deer and raccoons that awakened me that long ago weekend are here still, two or three generations removed from the fauna that inhabited this lush seashore when I was a teen. Even then, in 1975, one or two  seals always appeared when I found a spot on the beach. They’d emerge from the surf and study me, seeming to wonder what I’d do next—or why I was doing anything at all.
 
In my life away from Point Reyes, I’ve watched plenty of kids grow up, and
plenty of people grow old. Some of the creatures I’ve known for years – my godson, my goddaughters, my co-workers and friends – didn’t even exist when I first walked down this beach. My brother Jordan, on the other hand—as well as well my father, and my grandparents —were alive back then. I remember writing my brother and telling him  about waking up in the middle of the night, and seeing a stark white deer standing right outside my tent, framed by the horns of Cassiopeia. Jordan’s gone now; so are many of my dear friends, claimed by accidents or disease.
 
The bluffs and rocks and cliffs of this beach have aged and crumbled during
those years as well, shaped by wind and erosion and tremors. Point Reyes is a lively place, where the ragged edges of the North American and Pacific plates scrape and shift in a perpetual renewal of the planet’s crust.

 But though I love this seashore—and have marked its changes—I don’t measure time on a geologic scale. I do that by the people who’ve come and gone in my life, during those 32 years of beach fires, day hikes, and bobcat- sightings.
 
The  seal surfaces again, keeping pace with my stroll along the shore. Quicker with my binoculars, I see his face. The pinniped seems genuinely curious. “Do I know you?” I call out, because alone on the beach we often speak without expecting an answer. “Did I know your father? Your uncle? Have we met before?”
 
He disappears, exquisitely adapted to water that has already numbed my feet.
I didn’t recognize him, of course. But it’s not unreasonable to think that,
when I first visited this coastline in 1975, one of his kin watched me
spread my blanket and open my book, just as I’ll do today. For all I know,
the seals themselves have kept track of me, as well: that tall guy with thin
legs, who used to have dark hair.
 
Each life on this planet is a continual coming-of-age, performed with a cast
of characters engaged in similar activity. We grow up with everyone, and everything, around us. For that reason I’m willing to consider these seals, and bobcats, and pelicans, and elk, part of my circle of friends (or at least my network of acquaintances). Even a fleeting moment of non-verbal contact with a  seal feels strangely comforting – like spying a former classmate, or their daughter, from atop a Ferris wheel at a crowded fair.

They may not see you wave, but it doesn’t matter. The sentiment is what counts. We’re still around, you and I. The world’s still spinning. I wish you well.

  In memory of Jordan M Greenwald, who would have turned 50 on June 6th. Written at the Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes, California, on the beach and in my writing cabin. My gratitude to the Common Counsel Foundation for the opportunity to spend two weeks at this extraordinary retreat.

My Pal Elliot met me in the Steam Trains parking lot at 4:40 on January 9th, half an hour before sunset. We often hike the East Bay Hills together, but this time was different. We had a mission: to catch a glimpse of Comet McNaught, (aka C/2006 P1), the celestial visitor darting briefly through our solar system.

McNaught was discovered on August 7th, and no one knew how bright it would be—comets are often mysterious and unpredictable—but the stories we’d been reading (“one of the brightest comets of the past century”) were irresistible.

We walked up the road to the microwave tower, and sat on a log as the day ended. It was one of the loveliest sunsets I’d ever seen, as the solar disk flattened across the Pacific with the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tamalpais silhouetted in the foreground. The lights of Oakland and San Francisco glittered below. As the sky’s glow faded, and brilliant Venus came into view, we scanned the western horizon in vain: no comet.

We were baffled. How had we missed it? Had we totally blown the time, the dates, the direction? Finally, after a few slugs of Mekong whiskey, we began our retreat to the parking lot. Halfway down the hill I stopped at a break in the trees, raised my binoculars for one last look – and gasped in amazement. Two fingers above the horizon, just north of where the sun had set, I saw it: the brilliant white coma of McNaught, trailing a long, gossamer tail that curved in the solar breeze.

Once we knew where to look, McNaught was clearly visible with the naked eye: an absolutely gorgeous sight, like a comet out of a fairytale.

McNaught will soon disappear behind the sun, re-emerge for viewers on the Earth’s southern hemisphere, and swing off toward the reaches of deep space. For the next few days, though—through January 13th—those of us in the northern hemisphere, with a clear view of the eastern and/or western horizon, will have a chance to see this beautiful apparition at dawn and sunset. Catch it if you can. 

God, that is. We had a very interesting conversation. Where? Where else but the Black Rock desert, where the Divine Essence and I enjoyed a rambling, 10-minute chat on Friday morning. Not metaphysically, but in a phone booth (while Superman waited patiently outside).

I asked if She’d read “The End of Faith,”an enormously provocative and important book by Sam Harris. Indeed She had. (Interestingly, the woman who spoke to God before me described Him as a man.) “The problem isn’t faith,” She said, “but organized religion.” When I wondered why there wasn’t more divine intervention, given the current state of affairs, She replied by answering that age-old question: Yes, we do have free will, and no, there isn’t much She can do about the little foibles, the microcosmic inanities, of creation.

So what of the Bible? The Old Testament is the source of much of the modern world’s conflict and turmoil, and I wanted to know once and for all whether or not it was, in fact, God’s word. When I asked that final question, She laughed with dry amusement: “Come on," She insisted. "I’m a much better writer than that.”

And speaking of free will,
one of the most outrageous examples of national hysteria in memory unfolded on August 12th, at a JetBlue boarding gate in New York. Raed Jarrar, an architect of Iraqi descent on his way to California, was forced to remove a black T-shirt inscribed with an anti-war slogan — “We Will Not Be Silent” — in Arabic and English. The phrase, ironically, is borrowed from the White Rose group, formed in Munich in 1941. White Rose members believed that the young people of Germany had the potential to overthrow Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government. How’s that for irony?

As fate would have it, I’m scheduled to fly to JFK on JetBlue next month. In a perfect world, every freedom-loving passenger traveling on that airline would pull a Spartacus move, and show up wearing the very same T-shirt. Can you imagine? Two hundred JetBlue passengers, all wearing shirts saying "We Will Not Be Silent" in Arabic and English. Imagine the open mouths of the baggage checkers; the consternation of the ticket-takers; the giddy pride of belonging to a nation of people with the courage to stand up for the First Amendment.

Oh, for a perfect world.

Just back from Fiji, where there was scant chance to upload my latest stories … but it was so  refreshing to be in a place where I couldn’t check my email! Anyhow, the dispatches are going up — there will be two of them — and you can find them, as ever, on the Seacology website.

Why is it so difficult to keep up with these entries? When does it become a chore, like flossing? And how do some of my friends, like monologist Mike Daisey, manage to write two, three, eight entries a DAY?? Go figure.

For six weeks, my inability to simply sit down and compose a blog, any blog, has weighed on me like … like … like a giant head. For a number of reasons, my mid-April trip to Rapa Nui – aka Easter Island – landed me in an existential funk. The moai, the famous stone heads, are everywhere; there are nearly 900 of them. And while some visitors are spellbound by their mystery and grandeur (which are hard to resist, even though we’ve seen a thousand pictures of them), I found that they, well, put me in MY head. The obsessive manufacture of the moai – enormous projects which exhausted a culture and its resources — were an uncomfortable metaphor for the pitfalls awaiting a solitary soul with artistic pretentions.  

But enough about me. It’s a lovely place, Rapa Nui, reminiscent at times of Point Reyes National Seashore (my favorite place in the world). Much of the island’s landscape (which was completely deforested, perhaps to build the moai) consists of broad, grassy hills, rolling from the crests of ancient volcanoes toward cliffs that tower over a cobalt-blue sea. The people are beautiful, the dances are wild, and the mangoes are the most luscious gold you’ll ever see.

My next port of call will be Fiji, on a final assignment for Seacology. I’ll be visiting two village projects – one on Vanua Levu, the other on Taveuni – and filing dispatches from June 22nd ‘til early July. You’ll be able to read them, as ever, on the Seacology website.

Another reading recommendation: Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis. Tevis may be the most famous writer you’ve never heard of; his books include The Hustler, The Color of Money, and his science fiction classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Mockingbird is also sci-fi, more along the lines of 1984 than 2001. (Hey, it’s an open secret that my real literary passion is not travel writing, but science fiction.) It’s a beautiful novel about a distant future when the world is run by caretaker robots, and people no longer know how to read – except for one man, who builds his vocabulary by watching an ancient cache of silent movies.

Tevis, who wrote and taught in Ohio and New York, died in 1984. I wish he were alive, so I could buy him a drink. The least I can do is launch a Tevis revival.

And so I wrap up this long-delayed blog, and slouch into June — always rough seas for me. My brother Jordan’s birthday was June 6th. He took his life in March, 1990, at 33, overwhelmed by the drama and despair within his own monumental head. This Summer I’m unusually focused on that event: a San Francisco filmmaker has asked me to work with him on a short film about suicide. It’s in the early stages, but I’ll provide details as they emerge.

And for those wondering about Strange Travel Suggestions – look for one-off performances late in the Summer and early Fall, at SF’s Mechanic’s Institute, and Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage.

It’s funny; I wrote the title line for this blog without thinking, then realized two things. First, it’s also the title of the late Paul Bowles’ autobiography. Second, it was exactly twelve years ago, during the epic journey described in my book  The Size of the World, that I spent Passover with Bowles at his home in Tangier, Morocco. I brought the bedridden Bowles raw honey from the local souk, which we ate with round matzohs (unleavened bread) I’d received from the Tangier Synagogue. Bowles and I raised our wineglasses, and I toasted “to liberation.” “Oh?” Bowles raised his eyebrows. “Do you believe it’s possible?”

In fact, I do. Maybe that’s why Passover has always been one of my favorite holidays – in any country, religion or culture. Recounting the tale of the Exodusfrom Egypt, the “Feast of Freedom” may well be the longest-running ritual in human history, having been observed every year for at least three millennia. The entire Passover Sedar, with its sweet apples and bitter herbs, is simply a vehicle for story-telling: something that has become more and more important in my own creative life. (more…)

Always so much to say when I’m traveling. From my journeys to Sulawesi and Bali emerged an ecstasy of expository epigrams, emitted from the environmental epicenters of some small but significant islands. (You can now find those dispatches in hoary archives of the Seacology Foundation; how quickly news fades into memory.)

It was a long, productive, but exhausting trip: six weeks in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and India, enjoying the separation from church and state but also aware, every day, of how much the world has changed—and how much I have changed—since my first Asian odyssey, many long years ago. On my final day in Nepal in 1984, I remember walking around a sacred ficus tree holding the hand of a little blind boy, offering prayers to Saraswati and fighting back tears; during my last day in Thailand, just a few weeks ago, I went to see King Kong (the new one, of course) at the Siam Center multiplex, where I had to wrap myself in broadsheets from the Bangkok Post to fight off the cryogenic blast of the air conditioning.

The ape is loose, all right. Learn to love it.  (more…)

…Smells a lot like Balinese incense these days. That’s what I’m immersed in, along with the bathyspheric strains of System 777’s Fire+Water CD, as I prepare for a November 10th departure to Indonesia and beyond. It’s the longest semi-open-ended trip I’ve taken in a while, and though it won’t compare with the 16-month odysseys that defined my younger days, it promises to be an amazing series of adventures.

The expedition will begin in Sulawesi, an Ichabod Crane-shaped island north of Bali and east of Singapore. I’ll be working with the Berkeley-based Seacology Foundation, writing about their ingenious environmental projects and sending dispatches back to Salon, Islands, and the Seacology site itself – not to mention my own party, Ethical Traveler. (Visit the Events section for web links.)

Among Seacology’s efforts in northern Sulawesi is a project to protect and rehabilitate the coral reefs around Bunaken Island, at Sulawesi’s northern tip. My story about diving that spectacular area (where Charles Wallace did his research) appears in the current issue of Outside Adventures. But words can’t do justice to the experience of diving in those warm, pristine waters, whose residents include the elusive and amazing ghost pipefish. Because the Bunaken reefs are above a sheer wall 10,00 feet deep, cool upwellings have prevented coral bleaching. In my opinion, Bunaken ties with Palau as the world’s best dive spot. (more…)

Honestly, cyberpals, I don’t know what kind of weird-ass art you’re into, but I saw a show today that amazed me – as I knew it would, after seeing the invitation. The work is by East Bay artist Susan Danis, and the show is called PLEASURE. There are 33 sculptures in the show (at the Berkeley Art Center), all assemblages. Danis’ materials include everything and anything she can find, wherever she can find it, from the floor of SuperCuts to the oral surgeon’s trash bin: human hair, socks, rubber snakes, locks, teeth, nets and chains, bull testicles, tails and manes, freeze-dried moles and anal plugs, cigar tips and natural pearls, giant gems and glass eyes…. (more…)