"Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhuast whomever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry. To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible." - Don Juan, from Carlos Castaneda's "Journey to Ixtlan."

According to New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersch, who broke both the Mylai and Abu Ghraib stories, the United States is countering Iran's growing influence by tacitly supporting fundamentalist Sunni movements throughout the region. In essence, the US went into Iraq to defeat Al Qaeda and unexpectedly met an Iran who was seeking regional hegemony. The US has responded by supporting the Sunnis against the Shiite Iranians. It would seem that past failures would keep our leaders from making these same mistakes.This backfired when the US supported the Afghani muhajadeen against the Soviets. Notable muhajadeen veterans make up the backbone of anti-US terror groups, most notably Osama bin Laden. We also substantially strengthened Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.

It seems like we are running in circles, fighting perpetual wars for a ever distant peace.

This imperialistic model worked well two thousand years ago. We are moving out of a space where force is the medium used to acquire power. Watching these blunders unfold in the middle east is like watching a tyrannosaurus rex feed right before the comet hit the earth.

Brokaw's Greatest Generation

After seeing Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" last weekend, I started thinking about America's recollection of WWII. Peter Brokaw popularized the idea of the WWII generation as the "greatest generation." While I certainly do not want to diminish their sacrifice, I think there is some merit in exploring how perceptions of this time.

The positions in the war were easier to define. There was no mistaking the enemies: militaristic fascist governments with imperial aspirations. The Germans were willing to use genocidal means to achieve empire status.

The roles have become more fluid, and it is difficult to assign the "good" and "bad" labels. Piscean categorizations are loosing potency. We have entered new territory, and people long for a time when they could wrap their brains around what was happening. Is our affection for the "greatest generation" a nostalgia for a time when all our information was delivered from a handful of sources, when we could trust that our leaders would boldly lead us into conflicts against clearly defined enemies?

The future is bringing different challenges. May we respect the past generation while not longing for the simplicity of the past.

A French backpacker took the above picture. I was on the Isla del Sol, an island in the 12,500 foot Lake Titicaca. The Incans believed that creation began on the island. In the distance is Nevado Illampu, a 21,000 foot citadel standing on the northern edge of Cordillera Real.

Photos and the Moment

Why do we bring cameras on trips? We love to share your experience; we want to hold tangible evidence of the voyage; we need visual reminders of adventure when a lifestyle of commuting and cubicles becomes route. A bad day at the office? Open up the photo book and remember that we will always have Casablanca.

But the process of capturing the moment can result in a total loss of being there. Last September I took a three tour in the remote southwest corner of Bolivia. We navigated through the world's largest salt plains, the world's dryest desert, 15,500 geysers, and pink flamingos feeding in red and green lakes. Vicunas (wild llamas) dotted the treeless scape. The landscape was surreal, as the lack of oxygen enabled the views to stretch for miles.

I traveled in a jeep with a guide and five fellow travelers. An older French Canadian couple, a thirtysomething French couple, and a young Catalonian. Everyone came with cameras in hand. As we came upon each extraordinary vista, the jeep would stop for a photo oppurtunity. The men of each couple would shoot before looking, eagerly filling up their expansive memory cards with momentos. By the morning of the final day, each couple had more than 500 pictures. For the exception of the herds of vicunas, the vistas were not going anywhere.

With the onset of digital photography. we can afford to shoot mistakes. If one shoots a hundred shots, at least one will turn up right.

In this way photography can be a refusal of the moment. The moment is not something separate from ourselves, something that must be caught as it flees. Time is endless, it is the only thing we can be sure that will never run out. We can structure our lives to convince ourselves that we are short on it, but this is only an illusion.

Jordy, the Catalonian, waited for his oppurtunity. He walked around, breathing into the scene before setting up his shots. Funny enough, he is a professional photographer. His shots came only after careful observation, as opposed to indiscriminate firing. And perhaps that is why he is successful with what he does.

The moment is there for the taking. The best photography is a merger with the moment, as opposed to an outsider's observation of it. Let the camera be a tool for merging with the inner.

SDS

Moving Class Divides: Either Way You Divide It, You Wait

My car has been in the shop for the past few days. I have substituted my car for the bus while negotiating the gridlock. A massive fault line exists between those who take public transportation and those who drive.

Public transport can be an equalizer in New York City. The upper middle class sit alongside the city's dispossessed. New York's compact bundle has spilled out over several thousands of square miles in Los Angeles. Cars become status beacons. Bentleys and Ferraris are a daily sight, and seemingly every third car is a Mercedes or a BMW. The moving masses shut themselves in the roving castles, bluetooth headsets ensuring no awareness of other people or other even fellow traffic.

Below the lowliest of vehicles is the bus. A majority of riders belong to ethnic minorities (though I am not sure if you can call Latinos a minority in a city where they make up 52%). Blank, anxious ridden stares cover the faces of most riders. If you don't have a car in LA, you are not necessarily making ends meet.

Los Angeles's massive transient population use the bus. Last night our bus was stopped after a blacked out homeless man began screaming to the bus driver that she did not know where she was going and that we were all fucked. We filed out of the bus, and waited next to the 405's roar for a police officer to cart him away. A look of crushed humiliation filled him as he used his little remaining effort to remove himself from the bus. A fellow homeless man made a ruckus about how he was homeless, but did not treat others that way. His play for sympathy and stories of how he had been cheated out of a fortune playing with Ray Charles brought some attention: an recovered homeless women gave him 8 dollars which he promised not to use for booze.

Some buses are clean, but others are cramped graffiti ridden roving dungeons.

However, riding the bus gives you an outsiders look at the rush hour traffic sludge. At least I can read a book and not worry about slamming into that person either chatting to etheric voices or into their blue tooth.

Sometimes my time in Los Angeles feels like a dream. My childhood was in the shadows of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's plantations. The past hangs thick in the humid air. The Appalachian mountains, the world's oldest range, is cloaked in vegetation reminiscent of the Amazon's depths. The old boys of the hollows seem to have grown with the mountains from their inception

I had a core feeling of roots, of beloning on this ancient land

And then came Los Angeles, a virtually history-less post-urban apocolypse of eleven million people all seemingly in their cars at rush hour. The dry desert inhalation shows no relation to its sticky green counterpart in the south. Small towns are so non-existent that they are recreated as shopping centers of glitz. Old Appalachian folk contrast with fashioned up aspiring stars and the armies of mentally ill homeless.

I now find myself wearing turbans and medieval white dresses in contrast to camouflage hats and khakis of yore. It is said that the electro-magnetic field is particularly heavy in the south, and it is virtually non-existent in LA.

I sometimes feel like I may wake up, arriving back in Charlottesville Virginia in late April as the flowers are blooming and the school is gearing up for party season. This time in California, of yogic discipline in the nightmare of Moloch, is not bad, but it is not home. Perhaps the work I have done has unhinged me from my attachment to that area, but it remains imbedded in my soul.

SDS