No brainer, er... Did animals' 'sixth sense' save them from tsunami?

Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a "sixth sense" for disasters, experts said on Thursday. Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found. "No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department, said on Wednesday

Hardly a case, I think, of a 'sixth sense,' but rather the application of the existing ones in tune with the natural environment, something we humans have long since abandoned at-large. If animals can navigate by detecting differing magnetic fields, subtleties of light and the stars, and simply by sensing changes in the earth, than biologically speaking 'higher order' creatures must have the same talents. It's thinking too damn much, and intellectual over-analysis (versus sensual intuitiveness) of our surroundings that's made that a latent talent.

Stop. Breathe. Feel exactly what it is your hand is resting on. Notice the light that somehow illuminates your view. This is, suddenly, your world. Somehow, someway, you have arrived at this point to do just this... taking a second to be aware of your place in the Universe, to be enveloped by it, and it within you.

And yet, you may as well be afloat on the wind, a seed wandering and tumbling above the massive Earth. You can see only this right now; from your chair, do you really hear the temple bells of Kathmandu? From your eye, do you see that squalid slums of Rio? Is your hand sifting through the rubble of Iraq? The map of human life is incomprehensibly dense, and yet that itself is so much dust among the silent galactic roar and froth of timeless abyss.

This minute gone by is alive, a singular feat of sorcery in the unknown repertoire of a chancy magician. What will you do next? Where are you planning to go today? Such slight questions, such mangificently tricky answers. These words here are nothing, really; you are turning them, transforming them into your next thought, you make the moment alive. Feel the repercussions of your being. Breathe. Go.

Santa Claus and Mushroom Shamanism

Santa Claus and Christmas have a hidden secret: namely the powerful entheogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria. Though perhaps challenging and difficult to accept, a close examination of this strange relationship offers deep insight into the nature of the human soul. This long forgotten key to the hidden meaning of Christmas helps to explain the very nature of the classic religious experience. And as we probe deeper into this mystery, it may even shed light on the widespread religious and political oppression that still dominates much of the world.

The most obvious connection between Santa and the fly agaric mushroom is their appearance; both are rather portly, bright and jolly looking. Moreover, both are red, white and black, three colors that resound throughout time with symbolic meaning. Santa, as we all know, wears a bright red suit with white trim and sports a long white beard. He is all covered in "ashes and soot" from sliding down the chimney to deliver his gifts on Christmas Eve, hence the black or dark color in the trio. Likewise, the fly agaric is bright red and white. The famous polka dots are actually the remainder of what is called the universal veil, a white shell-like membrane that protects the mushroom as it breaks through the ground. This fierce and sudden eruption through the earth also accounts for the additional black color, in this case bits of soil that cling to the mushroom as it emerges.

Finding the holy in an unlikely place: Baba, Baba, Everywhere!

“Is there a Wiccan community around here?”

“My name’s Barry and I live on up near Bolivia, North Carolina. We got some Buddhist fellers up there now and they’re just the nicest bunch a guys you’ll ever meet. They got a crew that go out weekends, clean up litter and road kill on the roadsides.”

Being Naked

Being naked is recognizing that the personality that you have arrived in this moment with, to a greater or lesser degree (depending on your inner work thus far) is not what you are, but who you are. The who that we are is based on reactions and expectations to our surroundings. The what we are is what is at the heart of the onion. The spiritual journey is the peeling away of the layers of fiction, lies, misunderstandings, lack of communication, inability to touch, or be touched by someone, deeply, limitations and separations (unconsciously created mind you). If we know that this rough stone contains a gem at it's center, or that our life has been a lie, then why fear exposing the lie to an audience of equally false existing dreamers?

Hobbits? We've got a cave full

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago.... The villagers of Boawae believe the strange woman came down from a cave on the steaming mountain where short, hairy people they call Ebu Gogo lived long ago. "Maybe some Ebu Gogo are still there," the 70-year-old chief told the Herald through an interpreter in Boawae last week. The locals' descriptions of Ebu Gogo as about a metre tall, with pot bellies and long arms match the features of a new species of human "hobbits" whose bones were recently unearthed by Australian and Indonesian researchers in a different part of Flores in a cave known as Liang Bua.

Gorillas hold 'wake' for group's leader

After Babs the gorilla died at age 30, keepers at Brookfield Zoo decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the most influential female in their social family... Babs' 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs' mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm.

Today is that weird day, that 1/365th of the year where I imagine X-many years ago emerging into the world by crawling though loving guts, ready to be imprinted by all kinds of American-made mania and wonder. Pretty colors, pretty lights, pretty sounds, than school happens and drop kicks imagination right in the tukhas.

That's happened to all of us on some level, so I'm not complaining, just extraordinarily happy to be alive and utterly pleased to have two days off to "reel in the years, stow away the time." Today's posts will inevitably deal with the past 32 years, shameless introspection, and celebratory revels. If this kind of thing sickens you, don't fret, it will all get packed away tomorrow for the sake of humility and decency.

I had a dream last night that we humans will never understand pure silence because the mind does a freak when there's no input, and will find something to put there anyway. I think that's a metaphor that makes sense all-around: if there ain't nothin' goin' on, make it. That is my intention for this lightly scheduled day: a trip out to buy some shoes, an hour and a half at the natural mineral baths, and the time required to fill in the gaps with self-appraisal and folly. And I'll do my best to lay down some silence as well.

And yes, that's me in the picture, about 10 years old and quite obvious. I mean, come on, that's looking pretty gay. It's perfectly alright to say it. Flaming even. Actually at about that point, I'd identified certain feelings that my young brain was unable to account for, but soon became apparent as the dragon of puberty breathed fire into previously innocent places. Oh innocence, how deeply you are missed.

I suppose that everyday may as well be a birthday, or a re-birthday (no evangelical implications, please), as each morning our consciousness settles into a new order, slight as it may be, the difference as fine as gossamer. Each stellar alignment, each gust of wind, each ink blot of daily events from the inkwell of randomness does something to us deeper than understanding. As with the holidays, no one day should be the only time to reflect...

But I'm gonna live this one up anyway.

(Birthday greetin's are also in order for Noam Chomsky, and for two great musicians, Tom Waits and Harry Chapin. Give a tip of your hat in their direction)