My ticket is booked destination mocha, to a saffron-soaked India - excerpt Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between

Several months and as many countries successfully checked off my list, I think I’ve got the gist of what most Western European countries have to offer.  If you don’t mind me saying the Dutch are organized; the Italians and Spaniards have freshly-squeezed orange juice at gas stations and quite possibly the hottest men; the Swiss are O.C.D. and the Portuguese may or may not eat dogs if the carcasses in their butcher shops are any indication.  While mostly pleasant, (well except for the slaughter of man’s best friend), my experiences have been so… pedestrian.  Whatever treasures may have once been hidden have already been plundered.  Not that I imagined otherwise.  In a moment of brilliant abandon I hopped a boat in Portugal for Morocco.   Leaving the large cities in favor of the Sahara Desert and colorful Berber tribes, it only took ten days of hair-raising adventure to confirm what I already suspect.  The mystery I seek is not in Europe.  And while exciting, nor is it in North Africa.  I just finished Autobiography of a Yogi, devouring it from cover-to-cover, unable to put it down.  It confirmed where I must go.  Where I’ve always known I’m headed.  I just needed to earn my travel-stripes, and more money.  

 I saved for a year’s worth of shenanigans yet only a few months in, found myself nearly broke.  All those croissants aren’t cheap.   After Morocco I headed to Switzerland where I’d heard rich Genevois like to hire undocumented nannies.   The backpacker grapevine was right and I landed a back-to-back stint as a jeunne fille* for two aristocratic families in the French-speaking city of Geneva.  Both boasted the illustrious Baron and Baroness title, and both were challenging.  The first family was lovely, but their anti-Christ-like child was hell-bent on slaying the post of nanny.  He wasn’t a bad kid.  All he wanted was his mum, a not totally unreasonable request.  The children of the second family were a delight but the Baron was an old-school ‘noble’ who thought the hired help wouldn’t object to him importing his mistress into the family home the moment his wife and kids took off to Spain en vacance.  Sorry.  That’s not how we roll in Australia.  I most certainly did mind.  And I let him know it.

This only makes my forthcoming trip all the more exciting and timely.  I’ve seen how the other half lives, the half with titles and castles and towns named in their honor.  The half that takes the Nanny down to Monaco to meet up with the Baroness and les enfants, and threatens her life should she whisper a word about the mistress in the wife’s boudoir the night prior.  I don’t want a part of it.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like me some money and I’ve no aversion to prestige. But shouldn’t it stand for something?  If we’re all going to die, there has to be more to life than material success.  Right?  I do want to achieve great things, but before I break my neck climbing the proverbial ladder of success, I want to make sure it’s leaning against the right wall.  Perhaps more than anything I want to reclaim a sense of magic; something that disappeared with the rude awakening of adulthood.  As a kid I experienced great synchronicity with the world around me, a rich spiritual connection.  I felt I not only belonged in this world, but that I was loved and celebrated.  I realize how lame that sounds, truly I do, but I sensed reciprocation from the universe.  I actually sensed it.  I want it back. 
I don’t profess any one spiritual path superior to another.  I’ve always had a soft spot for Jesus since my schools were denomination-based in a saccharin-vanilla Christian sense. Regardless of cultural origins I’m convinced we remain unique and the innumerable available spiritual paths exist to accommodate our many flavored needs.  Though raised on a blond blue-eyed Savior, I’ve booked my ticket destination mocha.   I am seeking my flavor, my reason and my answer to life’s question in a saffron-soaked India.  I don’t plan to abscond for life, but I do want to learn the one thing my religious school never taught.  I want to learn about the elephant in the room.  The one we pretend isn’t here.  I want to know what it’s all about Alfie.  I want to know the meaning of life.

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* Jeune fille means “young girl,” colloquial for nanny

Love is the Drug - new Washington Times article

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/omkara/2011/mar/9/love-drug/

My husband is a Rock Star - Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between excerpt

These are the days of magic; days we travel the world performing for thousands of fans, running off to Greece for a post-tour romantic getaway.  Days we take spiritual sabbaticals in India, sharing both heavy austerities and the joy of fresh papaya dripping with lemon juice.  Days we invest in real estate, tend our organic garden, and sweat out summers convinced we’ve found the only masochist on earth who shares a disdain for recycled air. 

My husband is a Rock Star, a type personified by that affable and charismatic scoundrel, Bill Clinton.  He’s not as powerful as Slick Willy, and arguably better behaved, but he does enjoy Clintonesque fame in his own B-grade way.  Don’t get me wrong – that’s no slight.  B-grade fame is fabulous!  Jokes about B or C-grade celebrity suggest the status is easily achieved.  On the contrary, it takes hard work and B-grade fame enjoys advantages that most people underestimate.  As long as we’re talking about real artists and not the latest nasty-ass stripper with her own reality TV show on the Oxygen Network, the lower rungs of fame earn my utmost respect.  A-grade fame attracts the crazies and the stalkers, something I learned impressively on tour with A-list celebs, No Doubt.  Their fans are for the most part the loveliest a band could hope for.  Even so, I was regaled with horror stories of the sordid little things in innocuous little packages that make their way to Gwen Stefani on a daily basis.  She’s a down to earth Orange County girl who quickly learned to have security quarantine all incoming ‘gifts.’  Life’s precious privacies are exchanged for A-grade fame in ways one can’t imagine.  My gratuitous name-dropping serves as the perfect segue into another story where No Doubt invited us as guests to watch them perform on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  I look nothing like Gwen Stefani even on a good day, but with blond hair and apparently what must scream a skater-girl uniform, fans rushed our group as we emerged from the TV studio thinking I’m the diva herself.  We pushed through the passionate crowd and into our car, laughing at the madness of it all.  They love this woman so dearly they willingly overlooked my clear blue eyes in place of her chocolate browns, and my five-feet/one-inches over her five-seven.  Out of the studio grounds and into the labyrinth known as Burbank we five, clueless-in-L.A. New York City punks realized we were lost and made an illegal u-turn.  So did five other cars.  “Gwen” was being chased!  We set off on a high-speed pursuit that would make any Los Angelina proud, weaving in and out of traffic turning left then right, and slicing through gas stations on corners to avoid red lights intent on thwarting our escape.  Certain we were no longer being trailed (and quite enamored with our evidently amazing evasion skills) we abandoned the streets in favor of the 101 freeway back to our hotel.  Almost immediately we slowed to a crawl.  L.A. traffic! But we didn’t care. The sun was shining, and we took the opportunity to drop the top on our convertible Mustang rental.  No doubt (pardon the pun) friends back East weren’t enjoying such a warm April afternoon.  Within thirty seconds two fans jogged up to the car, huffing and puffing, risking life and limb begging me for an autograph right on the freeway.

“I’m not Gwen Stefani!”

“Yes you are.”  A pretty brunette countered defiantly.

“No I'm not!  Look at my eyes.  My God, listen to my accent!"

“But you signed a CD back at the studio!”

Oops, I did… but only because the crowd was so persistent, and the boys goading me on.  There’s no excuse.  I shouldn’t have done it.  It took several more impassioned declarations that I am not Gwen, noting absolutely all our physical distinctions to convince them.  I’m almost sad I did.  They were markedly happier five minutes ago.

Is Happiness the Key to Weight Loss - new Washington Times article

Is Happiness the Key to Weight Loss?  New article by Sri Keshava at The Washington Times

Professor Tim Sharp

from 

The Happiness Institute

From the White House to Straightedge punks: Contrarianism is uniquely American.

Washinton Times article by Sri Keshava

New York snark Vs L.A. nice

N.Y.C. Vs L.A.

snark Vs nice 

New Yorkers can be snarky when it comes to Los Angeles.  Sometimes it’s not even snark but rather a bona fide reaction to a successful smoke and mirrors campaign.  When it comes to the City of Angels, New Yorkers tend to lick the outside of the honey jar.  And frequently refuse even do that.  On occasion even the sweetest New Yorker can be heard uttering something along the lines of, “Yeah… it’s just that people from L.A. are sort of... shallow.”  It’s not true.  Or rather it can be, but it’s an illusion half the good people of L.A. are happy to perpetuate in a diabolical attempt to avoid a mass east coast exodus west.  It’s a similar scenario between Sydney and Melbourne (a microcosmic homage to bed pal America for anyone that cares).  Melbourne, our New York proxy has analogous opinions about Sydney-siders.  The good peeps of Sydney, like good Los Angelinas, hear the slander and just don’t give a crap. Maybe it’s that response alone that sends New Yorkers into a rage?  Remember, pot is legal in California.  No wonder, “it’s all good,” is part of Californian vernacular.

So the shallow part…  Absolutely.  There is an absolute repulsive, retch-inducing side to L.A.  It’s called Entourage and it’s got a few flavor variations.  Fake boobies.  Yeah.  Sunset Boulevard.  Yeah.  But doesn’t New York also have the Frying Pan and Wall Street?  (And all the clichés that hitch along for those joy rides?)  Don’t get me started or I might have to mention a few other charmed spots in the Big Apple.

Los Angeles has something that New Yorkers enjoy, but perhaps too little: The humble house party.  No wonder New Yorkers think Los Angeles is full of douchebags.  Statistically, there are a large percentage of said douchebags out on the town on any given Saturday night.  (New Yorkers, does the term: Bridge and Tunnel ring a bell for anyone?)  Very few have been invited to the humble house party.  And if they are at a party, they’re at a douchebag’s house party like Heff’s.   If he were canine he’d be an Australian sheep dog, keeping the herd localized.  Thanks Heff.  In homes scattered all over Los Angeles, from historic Pasadena to nature’s Topanga Canyon; from Victorian mansions overlooking downtown in inner-city Angelina’s Heights Echo Park to Venice beach… and every where in between, good people are inviting their friends over to eat, drink, talk, dance, celebrate and get to know each other better.  It’s a rather nice human tradition.  The only problem is that you’ve got to be invited.  Los Angeles is a jewel opened through relationships.  If you’ve got fake titties, (and without malice,) you’re likely not invited to my party. I’m pretty sure you don’t even want to come. 

 L.A. has some of the best hiking a major city in the world can offer.  I’d be curious and open to suggestions where there is better – all things compared.   L.A. has great beaches.  They pale to Australia, but that’s a personal issue I have to deal with.  New York is a vortex that can forbid escape for months at a time.  Think of that feeling when you’re returning from a rare breakout to upstate New York.  You see Manhattan in the distance over the river, and it starts sucking you back in.  You can physically feel yourself being pulled (willingly mind you) into the vortex.  L.A.’s vortex is interrupted by gorgeous mountains and a Pacific ocean that consoles the frazzled with the promise that no matter how crazy the city can be, you can stand on her shore and let the negative-ion charged wind blow the crazy right out of you.  A true snarky New Yorker will hate me for even mentioning the term negative ions.

I recently went to a house party in New York; a fantastic ground floor garden apartment.  Of course it was in Brooklyn, because when one talks of anything fun in New York it’s probably happening in Brooklyn.  It was such a nice party with truly good people.  They were very New York, in every likable way.  But good people are good people.  Just like Americans as a whole need to travel more and enjoy meaningful experiences with other people in other countries, New Yorkers need to leave New York and just maybe pry the lid off the honey jar and get their fingers sticky.

Straightedge punk Vs Vaishnav monk - Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between excerpt

They were the new soldiers of Straightedge, a movement of fresh-faced kids who reject drugs and impropriety. Their appearance and manner began as a mix of tough healthy jock and Leave it to Beaver goody-two-shoes nerd, but any chance of being called ‘pussies’ was made redundant by the mix of frantic, epilepsy-inducing music and angry, screaming vocals that could send even the Godfather of Punk, Johnny Rotten, sniveling into a corner begging for mercy.  Why so incensed to right the wrongs of the world, even he’s at a loss to explain.  For the most part they were just a bunch of rich white kids from the tri-state area.  But young raging hormones need only a hint of reason when seeking an alternative cause to champion, and Straightedge was born out of contrarianism to the current status quo.  In the 1960s and 70s, kids rejected parental dogma by embracing drugs and free love.  Decades later, Straightedge punks practice defiance by rejecting the very freedoms for which their Flower Power parents so valiantly fought.   

Straightedge is a floating ethos.  It doesn’t stop at drugs, but extends the ban to cigarettes, alcohol and in its extremes to meat-eating and casual sex.  Practiced with humility, I can see how the Straightedge movement is easily more constructive than most contemporary alternative youth cultures.  With their strict and puritanical rules, one can even draw similarities between an austere monk and a Straightedge punk.   If you group all these aspirants, monks and punks together into one, you can better divide them not by way of ideology, but rather by underlying intention.  One group is thoughtful, gaze introverted, with personal growth and service to humanity at its core.  The second hides behind dogma and uses the alliance to foster feelings of exclusivity, superiority and ego-based power.  No mortal is wholly innocent or diabolical.  Neither the faithful nor the revolutionary is exempt from the dualities of human nature.  All subcultures are microcosms of the macrocosm called humanity.  At the end of the day and on no matter whose team you play, many people are good, a few are bad, and a couple are just downright f-ugly.