"I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world"

I'm now on the rooftop of the Mekong Region in Luang Prabang Province about to head off into the wilderness to work for Hmong and Khmu ethnic minority groups. I am lucky enough to be traveling with three incredibly hard-working and dedicated environmentalists and permaculturalists who are acting as translators and sounding boards for ideas about how to test the hypothesis - that utilization leads to conservation: all within the new model of Bio-Human Ecology (unpublished) by my boss and the Founder of the Social Policy and Ecology Research Institute (SPERI): Ms. Tranh Thi Lanh.

Life is exceedingly good and full of adventure mixed with hard work and laughter.

Here is a poem by Walt Whitman I am revisiting this morning:

Photo of Walt Whitman
Smithsonian Magazine

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

What is this?

Max Erdstein, Global Manager of Google, gave a great talk at the Insight Meditation Center about 'peeling back the onion' through a combination of vipassana and zen meditation. He said that after years and years of zen practice he went on a vipassana retreat and suddenly realized that he did not know how to meditate - and had a consequent breakthrough in deepening his mediation practice.

"The ritual is an elaborate ruse; a kind of kabuki."

The moral of the story seems to be letting go of learning how to do meditation is the way to learn how to do meditation. - To breathe in you have to first breathe out. - In a way, not knowing is a way to 'breathe out;' breathe out the ego-based practices by letting go of 'knowing' how to do something or about something; a kind of learning through 'don't know mind' as Suzuki Rochi says.

In the vein of celebrating not knowing, here is the poem 'A child said, What is the grass?' by Walt Whitman. It is a part of 'Song of Myself' and is one long and hopeful question.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is
any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Ca' Penelope: Agritourismo

The Organic Agritourismo farm Ca' Penelope, in Maranello, Italy, has become my second home. It is also the home of many animals, several wwoofers and a host of hard working, inspiring, and friendly Italians http://www.capenelope.it/.

The Farmers of  Cà Penelope and I on the new label for their own organic lambrusco wine 

Walking around in these hills I have been noticing, once again, the stark difference between the plowed fields and the fresh edible greens of the forests and fields of springtime... It makes me think of wild collecting and the words of Walt Whitman:

These, I, Singing in Spring. by Walt Whitman

THESE, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, pick’d from the
fields,
have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover
them—Beyond
these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought—yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive—thicker they come, a great crowd,
and I
in the
middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens—tossing toward whoever is near me;
Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida, as it
hung
trailing
down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and returns again, never to separate
from
me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades—this Calamus-root shall,
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:
These, I, compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have—giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it—but only to them that love, as I myself am capable of loving.