Couchwarming Party!

Theme Song for the Day:

1. "Wonky Donkey", by Craig Smith

THE ARTS CENTER ARTS & CRAFTS MARKET

The mist in the streets of Christchurch today was a superfine drizzle that you could barely see swirling gently down from the grey skies above.  It sits on my hair and clothes like dew drops in the morning. 

We tour the Arts Center Market early in the afternoon and wander through stalls of hand-made merino wool clothing, carved greenstone jewellery, and beautiful photography of wild Kiwi landscapes.  Lunch is a spicy Lebanese Lamb Wrap from a street vendor, while my hosts and tourguides munch on a Czech Potato Pancake with Beef and Sauerkraut [I’ve never seen a Czech Food street vendor before!].

NOTICE THE DR SEUSS TUFTS GROWING ALONG THE RIVER BANKS

Hagley Park is 400+ acres of lush greenery that we walk through to go home.  A crowd is cheering on a rugby match as joggers bounce past us along the river, which is lined with willow trees and other Seussian water plants.  Ducks paddle and dive and waddle their way along the fast-flowing water, which is crystal clear and looks no more than thigh-deep.

It's a laid-back Saturday afternoon in misty Christchurch, and we spend it preparing for the party tonight; Marina is making chocolate truffles! Turns out last night that we missed the CouchSurfMeet by a day - it was on Thursday, not Friday - so Matt and I commiserated by sampling a couple rounds of the bubbly drink specials before Marina joined up with us an hour later after her work event.  When life gives you lemons, make ...sparkling wine!

After-drinking food is good here: the souvlaki joint was unexpectedly closed so we found a good Chinese take-out place right across the City Square.  This one even sold fish & chips ...apparently, not uncommon in these parts!

The festivities tonight are over at award-winning local musician Craig Smith's new diggs.  His new song, Wonky Donkey, won the 2009 APRA NZ Children's Song of the Year Award, and I am lucky enough to sneak a peek at the children's book version which is released in October.  

Craig is an easy conversationalist with a warm smile and a welcoming aura.  We swap stories about our respective journeys and find that we have walked similar paths: a few years ago, he closed up shop - after running his own business in sales and marketing for ten years or so - to feed his soul and pursue his music, and hasn't been happier ever since.

Craig also happens to be the Couchsurfing Ambassador for Christchurch which means that tonight I meet more locals, as well as fellow Couchsurfers from France, Germany, Canada, and LA... and, believe it or not, met someone whose Mum may have worked with my Mum in the Dole Pineapple Cannery in Hawaii... !  

I *HEART* Couchsurfing.

The world lies in the hands of those who have the courage to dream and to take the risk of living out their dreams - each according to his or her own talent."

-Paulo Coellho-

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Street Music

AUTUMN SUN ON MELBOURNE

Melbourne's streets thrum with music, art and life at all hours. It's one of the things I love about this city.

The other day, I walked with the crowd up the stairs from the train platform at Flinders St station, in the midst of a mystical musical landscape created by a busker sitting on his guitar amp caressing his strings. The guitar had a clean tone, and the sweetly haunting music cascaded down the steps and washed through the crowd.

As I neared the top of the steps, a voice like butter wove lyrics that were vaguely familiar....after a couple more steps the penny drops, and I marvel at his strangely sweet version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters". His music is like eating foie gras: it's oh-so-good, and it's oh-so fine... and you know there is a dark side to the pleasure you are indulging in the whole time.

I step onto the crosswalk and into the night, surreal now with his music fading into the background of moonlit city streetscapes.

It happened so quickly - the time it takes to walk up a flight of stairs, through the train station turnstyle, and to the sidewalk. I have the presence of mind to flip a $2 coin into his open guitar case, but not to stop and take a photo; though my guess is that would have diminished the surrealism of the experience. The moment, and the feelings he evoked in me, are etched into my memory banks of Melbourne.

Walking around the streets of Melbourne, this kind of experience can happen at any time, so rich is the tapestry of buskers... I have seen child prodigies on pianos, flautists, guitarists, quartets, preachers, acrobats, jugglers, beatboxers, comedians, and freaks... some talented, some you would pay to shut them up...

The other day I read an article in the newpaper about Rupert Guenther, a Melbourne street-busker who honed his unique style of improvising classical music on his violin for five years, eeking out a living by playing music for passers-by.

He attended a masterclass in February at the renowned Julliard School in New York being given by Dr David Dolan, a professor at Guildhall and the Menuhin School. Dr Dolan was so impressed with Rupert that he suggested he audition in the UK at Guildhall's Centre for Classical Improvisation and Creative Performance. Rupert took his advice, and is now on his way to becoming an internationally acclaimed artist and teacher, like many of his alumni at the prestigous school.

Sounds like a screenplay in the making... I just love the creativity that just oozes from the pores of this city!

NOT RUPERT GUENTHER

NOT RUPERT GUENTHER EITHER!


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Chloe

YOUNG & JACKSON'S PUB,
HOME OF GRANDPA'S FAMOUS GIRLFRIEND:
CHLOE

The first time I ever saw a naked woman was at a bar with my Grandpa.

My Grandpa, Keith Lynch, owned the McKinnon pub [about 1/2 mile away from where Mum & Dad live today], and brought up Dad and his 3 brothers here; as a result the Lynch men are a very colorful bunch...our family get-togethers are always fascinating affairs!

The misadventures of the Lynch boys growing up in and around the pub would make for a great novel: pet snakes escaping into the neighborhood, unexpected overnight stays in the walk-in fridge, fast cars, and the girls next-door to name a few...but these are other stories that will be told another time...

This is a Grandpa Keith story [of which there are also a great many tales of misadventure], and I digress.

In 1985, the year before we moved to Oz, Dad took me on a scouting trip to Melbourne to prepare for the family's move the following year.

Grandpa was, of course, tickled to see his eldest son's eldest son come to Melbourne for the first time and took it upon himself to show me around. He booked us an all-day bus tour [highly recommended!] which included, among other things, a visit to Healsville Sanctuary to see a real live kangaroo, and a stop at Ferguson's Winery for lunch and a tour. breakfast that day was my first Aussie four'n'twenty meatpie [no the ketchup did not look like that on my pie]...

Long story short, after the tour was over and Grandpa had charmed all the ladies on the tour bus over lunch at the winery, he says, "I want to introduce you to my girlfriend", and takes me to the famous Young & Jackson's Hotel, across from Flinders Street station at the entrance to Melbourne central business district.

Grandpa sits me down at the bar, my 8-year old legs dangling off the barstool as I peer over the countertop, and orders himself a pint of beer, and me a shirley temple.

We sip our drinks and then raise our glasses to toast his girlfriend, "To Chloe!".... who is the 12 foot high nude oil painting hanging on the wall next to the bar!

"Sweet things do not go well
with a bitter Aussie lager -
Chloe is an exception"
-Rafal Zakrzewski, Beer Historian (2001)-

Today, the bar is different that I remember. My feet no longer dangle from the barstools, and I can lean over the countertop to order my own beer. Chloe now lives upstairs, overlooking the busy intersection that is home to Federation Square, St Paul's Cathedral, and Flinders Street Station.

I take a moment to myself today and climb the upstairs to visit her; she hasn't aged a day. As I hoist my glass to toast her, an old digger and his wife wink at me and comment about the gleam in my eye.

Here's to Chloe!

TO CHLOE!
AND TO YOU, GRANDPA...



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voyeur

THEME SONG FOR THE DAY:

1. "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder, from the soundrack "Into the Wild"
   

ACLAND STREET ROOFTOP

Today I people-watched.

This afternoon the sun broke through they grey of this morning, and so I ventured down to Acland Street in St Kilda, the wonderful little corner of the world that my Dad affectionately calls "The Armpit of the World".

It is such a surreal little stretch of asphalt, the gaping maw of Luna Park welcoming you to an avenue lined with cakeshops and coffeeshops and bookstores and boutiques. Garish characters on rooftops leer at you and wander the street muttering to themselves, while artists and musicians and other denizens of bohemia sit and sip on flat white coffees, passionately discussing existentialism, politics, music and art.

This trip to Melbourne has so far been a wonderful whirlwind of reunions with family and friends, a blur of lattes and pints of beer and delicious meals shared with warm conversations and catchings-up. I feel like I could quite easily spend the whole of the next 12 months looking up old friends and acquaintances... It would be so easy, and so safe to just stay here...

As I wandered through the streets and gardens today, I observed myself observing others, a surreal feeling of watching a movie that is playing out in real time right before your eyes, except that you are participating, and watching, all at the same time; a lucid dream, except that I am wide-awake...

...a now-familiar feeling has been growing in my belly - it is the feeling that bubbles up to my conscious thought stream and whispers "I am no longer here". I am ready to move on.

Being a happy child surrounded by loving family in Hawaii is a blessing that I shall always treasure - all my childhood memories are full of joy and laughter. You don't truly appreciate the beauty of a place until you leave it.

As little people we all make decisions about ourselves, other people, and the world based upon our experiences, that shape our thinking, and therefore our words, actions, and habbits....and therefore our REALITY.

The despair, angst and sheer anger that I felt during my teen years served to drive much of the outward material successes I enjoyed in my 20s, though has long since faded. Anger, when focused to a point, can create positive results. The problem is that anger is a poor foundation upon which to build a legacy, and, when suppressed, will explode violently.

This stands in stark contrast to my current experience of Melbourne: peaceful, joyful, and connected. I have made my peace with this city, and with the experiences and emotions of the past.

Today I wandered and watched, enjoying the simplest details - snippets of conversations overheard in the street, the laughs of a young family tending to their plot in the community garden, the cacophony of screeching seagulls and cawing crows bathed in the soft, warm glow of the afternoon sun. The big, cold blue sky stretches far away above me, fading into deep indigos as the quiet drama of another Melbourne sunset slips away on the horizon.

"...A mind full of questions
And a teacher in my Soul..."
- "Guaranteed", from the soundtrack "Into The Wild"
by Eddie Vedder -

THE ARMPIT OF LUNA PARK

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melbourne by mobile - a photo/video tour

THEME SONGS FOR THE DAY:

Australia: by The Shins, from the album "Wincing The Night Away"
Nosebleed Section: by Hilltop Hoods, from the album "The Calling"


Note: for best effect, click on the image to enlarge... and enjoy!

OLDE IRISH SAYING:
"GUINNESS IS FOR STRENGTH"

ELIZABETH STREET TO FEDERATION SQUARE

INTRODUCING: AUSSIE HIP-HOP!



# # #

break on through...

"WHAT A FRIENDLY LOOKING HOLE.
LET'S GO SEE WHAT LIVES INSIDE!"

Today I went to the other side. Literally. Physically. Metaphysically. Let me explain:

A couple months ago while visiting Olomana Gardens in the foothills of Waimanalo, I followed along with an impromptu group hike and found out about a hidden trail that follows the water flumes which wind through the mountains and provide all the irrigation water for the agriculture in the area. We came across a tunnel about 4" high that disappeared into an almost sheer face of mountainside and was told that if we were to go through it, we would come out to the Lost World on the other side...

WAIMANALO WATER FLUMES

Today I went back. Today I went through the black, and came out on the other side.

We peer into the entrance and can only see blackness 30-40 feet in. The cool water rushing around our ankles gurgles impassively, and my stomach twitches as my mind starts to paint macabre pictures of creatures that lurk in deep, dark places, and of pale gaping faces floating in the night.

FELLOW ADVENTURER AND SOUL-SEARCHER:
LUCIE VOELCKER, THE TRAVELING POET OF GERMANY
AT THE TUNNEL ENTRANCE

Adrenaline kicks in and I can feel the glint in my eye brightening. The Traveling Poet's gaze meets mine, and our glinting eyes smile in agreement that we are actually going to go in.

The 9-LED flashlight, a gift I received only the day before, can only light the way 20 feet ahead before being swallowed by the blackness. It is a strange feeling, knowing that there are tons and tons of dirt, rock, trees, and who knows what else pressing in all around you. It is perhaps an even stranger thing to knowingly descend into these dark places of the earth; once the mind starts chewing on the your fears, the chatter is difficult to stop:

• "What if the light goes out?"
• "What lives in here?"
• "Remember that creature in Star Wars that dragged Luke under the muck in the garbage compacter? I wonder if that thing lives here..."
• "Now I know how Gollum must have felt; no wonder he went insane...."
• "Don't drop the flashlight."
• "What lies ahead?"
• "What was that?!?"
  
• "I don't want to see any faces. Or dead bodies. I don't do dead bodies. Or floating apparitions. No floating apparitions please."
• "What if this doesn't come out on the other side?"
  
• "What was that that just brushed my ankle?!"
• "Don't drop the flashlight!!"
• "DO NOT. DROP. THE FLASHLIGHT."
  

And on and on and on and on.....

On and on we press, losing all sense of time and space, save for what the flashlight can show us for the next twenty feet, the next 30 seconds. The tunnel walls are cold and roughly hewn, and beads of water glisten on the walls like pearls in the gray sky.

The water seems to simply appear out of thin air. The ceiling bears down upon us, seeming to get lower and lower with each step...then it toys with me, opening up every now and then enough to let me stand up straight.

Thankfully, The Traveling Poet starts singing. It is haunting and surreal and macabre and beautiful and strangely comforting all at the same time...

THE SOUND OF PITCH BLACK -
FOR BEST EFFECT, VIEW FULLSCREEN

We pause for a moment and turn off the light. The cool water rushes around my ankles, like busy commuters rushing and gurgling to make their trains. The walls press in around me, and my unseeing eyes blink naievely, desperately groping for light.

There is no difference between keeping my eyes open or closed. Panic rises in my stomach, and I smile broadly to laugh silently and keep the fear at bay.

The screen of my mind and the screen of my retina are one and the same, both inky blank canvases awaiting inspiration and direction...

We press on, the rythym of our sloshing footsteps keeping pace with my quickening heartbeat. I force my mind to stay on the light at the end of the tunnel, though it does not come. On and on into the next 20 feet of darkness we slosh, the water no longer gurgling but relentlessly going the other way, passing silent judgment on the decision to walk against the flow.

My life has become a cliche, and I am loving every minute of it: fear mixed with wonder mixed with anticipation shaken in mountain spring water and pressed by a hundred million tons of sheer-faced mountain...

It is no longer my imagination, the ceiling is getting gradually lower and lower now. Up ahead at the edge of the flashlight, I can make out a different shape, and I cringe....it looks like the roof has caved in, and I don't want to think about the implications of that.

As we get closer, the tunnel turns almost 90 degrees to the left, and what I thought was a cave-in is actually an older tunnel that has since been sealed. The water seems to have quickened its pace and is much louder here, and the cave ceiling keep getting lower.

Now, we are duck-walking, arse-deep in the water, and I am wondering if we will keep going like this until we shrink down and down and down into the size of m&m candies, like Alice in Wonderland, on our way to smoke hookahs with giant existentially philosophic caterpillars...

Up ahead in the distance, I see a simmering light...

It's not the Hotel California, it's the Exit to the Tunnel...and I can breathe deeply again. My thighs are aching from duck-walking the last 100 feet, but it doesn't matter now, I can see the end.

The Travel Poet emerges first, fourty feet ahead of me, and when I finally emerge blinking in the sunlight, a whole new world ... the Lost World ... comes into focus...

We are Sam Neil and Laura Dern, we are the only two humans left on the planet, we are the first two human beings on the planet...we are Adam & Eve. The other side is lush, vibrant green, a living, breathing soundscape of nature...

THE SOUNDS OF NATURE

With newly refreshed eyes and ears, each sight, sound, smell, touch is heightened, and we explore this wilderness we have discovered with childlike wonder, taking our shoes off and squishing through the mud, running up the valley walls and whooping with joy.

As the nature-induced ecstasy fades, we bask in the afterglow and settle back down next to the Exit, out portal back into the world we just escaped. Not ready to return yet, we hunker into our packs and much on organic energy bars and vegan apple cakes given to us that morning by our genius rockclimbing/smoothie-making friend [Badass Harvard Laureate]...and the Traveling Poet strums Martin [her guitar], and bursts into song again...

She is taken by the moment, channeling words and chords and melodies that speak to the moment we are sharing... I sit at her feet and am 6 years old again, close my eyes and am lifted with her voice, swirling with the notes up through the trees... she tells me later that when this happens, it is as if her soul is speaking to her through her own music. I am witnessing a faerie singing her heartsong in the wilderness with my own eyes...

INSPIRATION - CLICK FOR YOUTUBE VIDEO

# # #

...Today, I sat under a mountain, and in the complete absence of light, became a thought.

A bodiless, floating thought. As if the tunnel had collapsed, and my consciousness was ascending through the layers of rock and dirt through the mountain to gain a better view...and in that moment, I experienced peace.

Peace, knowing that if I had indeed died, that I had died while adventuring, doing exactly what I want to be doing - something I love... and absolutely living in the moment.

Peace, knowing that few humans had ever trod into the heart of this mountain...and fewer still had taken the time to stop, turn off their flashlights, and savor the experience.

Peace, melting into the walls of the tunnel, becoming one with the 'aina.

Peace, knowing that the world is what you think it is.

Peace, in communion with nature.

Peace, reconnecting with the source.

Peace.

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departure draws nigh, doubts run high

WHERE AM I ?

My departure date draws nearer each day, and I find myself constantly amazed at the doors that are opening to me - sometimes it feels as though the universe is conspiring to fulfill my dreams...

I am meeting writers, filmmakers, activists, volunteers, philanthropists, visionaries ...the world gets smaller each day...and, on other days, the world seems vast and inaccessible...

...these are the days when my electricity gets shut off and I have to come up with $400 that I don't have to pay the entire bill and turn it back on; the days where I speak with the buyer of my house and can hear the doubt in his voice as we drag this transaction further and further along in this limbo we "in the biz" call "escrow"....3 months now, and the guy is having difficulty getting financing from the bank, even though he has perfect credit and is putting 50% down, yes five-zero....HALF OF THE PURCHASE PRICE...towards the purchase of this home....

These are the days when the chatter starts in my mind:

• "WTF am I doing??"
• "How the hell am I going to pay for this??"
• "Who do I think I am anyways, who am I kidding?!?"
  

On these days, this blog seems like a bad mistake, an out-house of misplaced dreams and hopes, a mish-mash of unconnected ideas and threads that make sense to no-one but me....and maybe the 4 people or so who read this [thanks Mom]. The whole idea seems absurd, how the hell can you travel around the world without any money??

Is TheGreenBackpack a travel log? a journal? a spiritual diary? a "green" resource? Are these personal rants relevant? Does anyone even care? Am I writing for an audience [that doesn't even exist yet], or am I writing for me?

One of my best friends left this for me the other day, with the handwritten note "for your blog" scrawled across it:

"Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations."
- Earl Nightengale-

Why did he leave this for me? What about it grabbed him that made him think of me? I'm thinking it's something along the lines of "To Think Is To Create", but there is something else about it that is toying with me, tugging at my mind like that shadow that disappears when you turn your head...

Especially after having spent much of the week with a guy who has decided to devote his life to the fight against climate change, funding trips out of his own pocket to China and India and all over the world to educate people. Passionate, angry, and driven, a reformed Financial Planner with a top 10 firm and later a Professor of Statistics [in former lives] ....and now, he is a self-proclaimed Eco-Soldier.

Tears well in his eyes when he comes to certain parts of his Al-Gore-Inconvenient-Truth-inspired presentation that he shares with me, and the conversation breaks off in moments of despair as he pauses to gather himself when the data gets too heavy.

I can't remember the last time I was that passionate about something.

Comments like "If we're still here" and "If it's not too late" pepper our dialogue, and he speaks with such fervor that I find my own temperature and concern rising.

Why am I concerned with things like art, and photography, and literature... when the glaciers are slipping off of Greenland into the sea? Why am I frolicking in the mountains and valleys of Oahu while humanity is poised to destroy itself, and Honolulu may very well be under 10 feet of water within a few years?

Is global warming a product of our mass consciousness' attitudes and expectations? And if so, then what does that say about the race of humanity....and our chances?

Am I really about to set off to travel the world while the impending doom of our species and planet lurks around the next decade?

Will I embark on a journey of trivial discovery, or can I really use my Ninja skills to help save humanity?

My life has turned into a surreal dream of late, each conversation I have is from two perspectives: talking me, who is engaging in said conversation with subject, and observer me, who watches the whole thing with a bemused smirk and the detached air of someone who is watching a really bad soap opera.

Of course I met this person now, just before I am about to depart. Of course, they have a contact in [insert exotic future destination here] that they would love to introduce me to. Of course, of course, of course, it's all synchronicity, isn't it?

Especially when you risk it all in search of your dreams....who am I kidding, I've got nothing left TO risk ...one of the perks of "losing it all". And, look what I've gained access to:

THE WORLD AT-LARGE

...if we can keep it.

Angry Woebots

WOEBOTS UNITE

I bought a painting in 2003 at a live art show in Chinatown called First Thursdays, when it was held at Studio One on King st in Chinatown back in the day serving beer out of giant fisherman's coolers and makeshit plywood bars....it has since grown into the largest registered Poetry Slam in the world and moved from Studio One to the Hawaiian Hut at Ala Moana Hotel.

The poets were passionate, some angry, some funny, and they all had something to say...the blank canvas was crafted  by the emotions  of each poet's words, and by the end of the  night an artistic phenomenon was born.

"BREAK YOUR REMOTE" calls to me across the room, me who has not owned a TV set for six years now, who hasbecome his father despite his furious efforts not to [television is EVIL and will rot your brain]...and I find myself purchasing my first piece of art.  

Two days later, the artist [Aaron Martin] rolls up to my house with the painting sticking out the back of  his mini-truck bed, all smiles and stoked that someone had actually purchased his work - his first sale.  

From a recent cover story article in the Honolulu MidWeek:

"...his trademark black-and-white panda paintings began as an accident.  “Originally I was going to paint a grizzly bear, but a friend of mine forgot to bring the paint I was waiting for,” says Martin, noting the only colors he had with him in large quantities were black and white. With the room packed and the pressure mounting, Martin had to make do with what he had.  “I was standing on the side, people were just staring at me, so I decided to change (the design) and make it into a panda.”

I am in awe of this man.  Here he is, pursuing his passion, making a good living doing what he loves....painting.    His passion has become his business.  In doing what he loves, he is able to make a good living.  I have looked him up today to help me sell my painting.

He says I look familiar, and when I tell him that I am the guys who bought his first painting, he is all smiles and stoked again, shakes by hand, gives me a hug and tells me that it is good to see me again.  Yes, his assistant did get the email I send him about 3 months ago explaining that I had hit upon hard times and don't want to sell the painting but need the cash....they have just been too busy tearing up the arts scene around the world to get back to me.  He tells me yes, of course he will help me out to sell my painting on his blog, it is THE original painting, and he tells me that I should go travel the world.

I am taken back to my drunken-stoned days in art school where the most important things we were concerned with were things like light & shadow, composition, and expressing form, where my self-induced bluriness lent me a clarity devoid of logic & reason.  Of couse, it makes sense to stop my studies, leave everything behind, and fly off to Hawaii to travel the world.

And then....I remember the conscious decision I made to take the path of entrepreneur rather than starving artist, and I feel again the frustration of having ignored my artistic impulses for the last 12 years.  I am standing before myself in a parallel dimension, a me who took the path of starving artist and "made it", because he is following his passion rather than finding things in his work to be passionate about.

And here I am 12 years later, leaving everything behind, flying off to see the world.....haunted by a quote I just read on a friend's blog:

I want to live like I travel, not wait until I travel to live.

And the doubt and the questions creep back in to my head....am I doing the right thing?  Won't I be losing momentum in my career?  Will I ever come back?  Am I running away or am I indeed taking a much-needed breather? blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 

They say that fear [my mind] is the voice in your head that screams loudest, a great guide but a poor master.  They say that inution [my soul] is a soft, gentle, knowing whisper that is there when you quiet the incessant chatter.  

The quiet thoughts of travel have been whispered to me for the last twelve years of my life...

I will listen to my soul.