Novelist and Storyteller
A true story. The Roman Emperor Hadrian took a young lover named Antinous. While such relationships were common in Rome and Greece, the seriousness of their love was unusual for the time. The Senate whispered loudly of the unseemliness of the affair while Hadrian traveled extensively with Antinous around the empire. When they were in …
Narrated by the ancient Roman Emperor and demigod Hadriano, The Troubleseeker weaves Cuban-Santería traditions with classical Greek mythology to depict the hero Antinio and his quest for freedom, identity, and love. Santería is the religion and the set of beliefs that the slaves from Yorubaland in present day Nigeria brought with them as they were …
Continue reading "The Troubleseeker-A Guide to the Characters"
The question of zen is what now? Not what's next as in I'm bored now what do I do, but what occurs next in our perceptions of life around us. What now is the recognition that in any moment, however one subdivides that into seconds or milliseconds, until we die there is something next. It …
Impermanence update. IPhone on the bottom of Halong Bay. Causes and conditions update. Kayak with a small leak causes wet conditions in my shorts; wet shorts cause me to take out my iPhone and camera from wet pockets and places it under my life jacket. Wet conditions also temporarily (as though everything could not be …
Continue reading "What Happens in Halong Bay, Stays in Halong Bay"
To cross a street in Hanoi, one must simultaneously heighten one's perception while lowering one's reactivity. One must be aware of the flow as well as the spaces within. If there is a human experience of the quantum physics conundrum of the duality of light existing as individual particles while a constant unified wave flow, …
Continue reading "Zen and the Art of Street Walking in Hanoi"
Impermanence, that was the word that kept coming to me yesterday and today roaming the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and a host of smaller temples (already impermanent to my memory.) Angkor Thom, meaning Great City, had a population of over one million in the 1200s, making it the largest city in the world …
Continue reading "Where Have All the Buddha Heads Gone (in Angkor Wat?)"
Buddha is big here, obviously, super big. So big that the world's largest Buddha statue is being constructed on a hillside over looking Thimphu. But that is not what I mean about being big. I mean big as imbued in people's lives at all levels. Officially Buddhist temples and the religious hierarchy are part of …
Continue reading "You Can’t Take the Buddha Out of the Bhutanese"
It is 4 am and we are already in our car headed back to Paro from Punakha where we famously met the King and Queen the day before. 4 am because the road is closed between 8 and 10 am or later for construction and an early departure will guarantee we will easily make it …
I just double checked our itinerary and indeed there was no planned meeting with the King or Queen today. The only items were a long drive from Trongsa where we stayed the other day for a festival and a visit to the Punakha Dzong. Like Europe and churches, at some point the dzongs all start …
It is always a wondrous day when you eat pancakes. Even more so when you thought you finished a small breakfast and unannounced one more plate with some pancakes, thinly sliced fried potatoes and a local apple is brought out. When the mountains outside your window are suddenly revealed to be dusted with snow from …
Alan Lessik 