Baja California Sur hot springs
Posted on February 24, 2024 by Nik

The Californias

Hey you. Traveller. Voice from the past. Time is the biggest trickster of all, hey!

You asked about that time in the North, California, Big Sur, Esalen, through early 2000’s – til now, on the Mexican side of the political border – but then, was a mystical, nurturing and nourishing retreat from the driven madness of the world – for healing and learning, rooted in the power of nature, held between mountain wilderness and ocean, in the heart of the redwoods, the remote valleys, the oak lined ridges, overlooking the Pacific – but principally, initially, in the womb of Esalen, on the green cliffs, the hot springs welling up from the deep. It was a phenomenal meeting ground of wounded, if curious and playful souls, seekers and characters of great heart and spirit. There was a degree of disfunction, as anywhere, a reflection of society, it’s various ills, and our variously tortured lives being acted out, yet in a safe place of reflection, remote, held. Thus generally good, true, beautiful and transcendent. A unique and special time.

Since then, that hallowed ground has, of course, become increasingly financially motivated, corporate driven, and all of the soul and heart of the place driven out, along with the unintentional community that happened and thrived there for preceding decades. Such is the way of all things. Sometimes called the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, but I think of it as life blooming in splendour, then fading, its seeds dispersed, to begin a new iteration of evolution somewhere else, out on some other periphery, spiralling ever outward and upward.

So where are the current vortices and healing grounds? Actually, I do think those are separate things – at least, I feel that where I find myself now, is in the heart of a vortex, and that too has it’s healing, though hard core, more chaotic, requiring more discipline, it being more stochastic in nature, than nurturing. Of course there are many vortices, or active power places, scattered around the globe, and this may all be relative to who and when and where (and Esalen, it’s intrinsic primal nature still intact, is still what it ever was under foot one might suppose, albeit perhaps less active in a volcanic sense of upwelling…)

but here, now, Baja California Sur, feels like a final frontier – the last of the wild west perhaps. Booming, or blooming, or fading, becoming gentrified, yet still absolutely raw and elemental. Vortex – means swirling forces with a unified core of calm, that is perhaps inscrutable. Yet I trust the greater knowing that brought [me] here, now, and the quickening at large, as the world and we go through radical, heaving, recalcitrant shift. There is a power here, and place to be, human.

Three years now, working with the one hectare of farm land we have been sitting on for 20 years. Here in the midst of an elemental oasis. I am a willing slave to it again – and it has been a harsh mistress! It is all within the calling though. I have a fierce and lovely young lady partner, and her spirited kid, and other good travellers come and go and contribute to the project – creating Sanctuary

So, traveller, It is wild, harsh, otherworldly terrain to traverse, and I recommend moving slowly through the Baja peninsula, if that calling ever presents. There is infinite primordial wealth, ever waiting to be beheld, quite invisible to speeding travellers. It requires of one to stop. Feel the profound power and stillness of the desert landscape. Feel its heartbeat. Listen to its call. Its voices are ancient. I have to remind myself, again and again, to stop, drop back in, to the timeless moment…

Time.

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Nik

The Kingdom

Were I able to capture
within this flimflam frame
all the majesty of light

and space, scintillating
across the oasis
before me now
Read More

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Nik

Eclipsed

I am not really feeling it myself, and my friend Natalie doesn’t feel ready for what would be her first ceremony either, and we decide to let the idea go. So, we are sitting in Petite Leon café, meeting with a serendipitous group of enthusiastic plant experts from Mexico city, looking to collaborate in regenerative agriculture and medicinal plant cultivation here in El Pescadero. This is the beginning of something good. And in, out of the blue, pops English Iona. Infinitesimal probability of that happening by chance – time and space thing. She’s picking up Leah (name changed by request. One of the lauded Thirteen Grandmothers) on their way back from Los Cabos airport to La Paz. I see only the back of a little white haired lady, struggling a bit, to get into the back of Iona’s convertible white Mustang.

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Posted on November 27, 2021 by Nik

Thanksgiving

A man is grateful for his life, for the couple who brought him in
He is grateful for the land – plant creatures leaning in

The fragrance in the air – sweet earth, jasmine, cypress, sage
Life blooming in response, to his tender gaze
Read More

Posted on November 20, 2021 by Nik

Baja Baby

Dark, but let’s get real. On expatriate gentrification, in this instance, of Baja California, but could be Spain, Thailand, anywhere you like:

Natural borders – rivers and oceans;

political borders – economic and porous;

Privileged with dollars

we wonder across
the last frontier

aren’t we cool. Read More

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Nik

Space, Time and Consciousness

Creating balance with the inner and outer spaces we inhabit.

On his way back to earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced a radical transformation in consciousness. As he approached our planet from beyond its sphere of influence, taking in the exquisite poise of earth, moon and sun gyrating about each other within a 360º panorama of stars,

‘he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning, is part of a living system, harmonious and whole, and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, ‘in a universe of consciousness.’ *

Mitchell became aware that, despite science’s dazzling achievements, we had barely begun to probe the deepest mystery of the universe – the fact of consciousness itself.

“I realized that the story of ourselves as told by science, our cosmology, our religion, was incomplete and likely flawed. I recognized that the Newtonian idea of separate, independent, discrete things in the universe wasn’t a fully accurate description. What was needed was a new story of who we are and what we are capable of becoming.” *

Consciousness as the primary force in the universe

Consider this idea. Space only exists when and where occupied by consciousness. Read More

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Nik

Death In The Wings

Life, Love and the Human Spirit

Ever the irreverent rogue, defiant of establishment and death, there was my father, on the slow road. Nine lives cashed in, prostate cancer in remission, driving himself from his off-grid, country shack to dialysis in Palma, three times a week, until my younger brother Hieronymus (after Bosch, no less) had to confiscate his keys for driving faster than a man of his condition ought. The final year then, hospital bound, partial to the pain killers, he kept his own stash of fentanyl for self medication whenever he felt the calling. I tried it with him, for empathic, research purposes, the max strength inhaler – knock out gear. The same stuff that killed Prince, but not my old man. He was a rock n roller of the Kieth Richards calibre. The type that might do shots of embalming fluid before bed, courting death, yet living ablaze through opaque stretches of time, where the rest of their generation slip away, one by one. Keith and Lez, vampire crusaders. Yet time and death catch up with every man. It is the great equaliser.
Read More

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Nik

Lunar

Having to pee three times a night is great for star gazing, especially when you live in a field in an oasis in the desert. And then there’s a full lunar eclipse. Gotta be cool, right! So I watch her rise, magnificent, low in the evening sky, sailing through the palms. Silhouetted, their skirts swish in the breeze. She leaves them and the mountains, and enters the open sky. There’s a cool glass of Chardonnay in my hand (from the Guadalupe valley. I like to imbibe local nectar of the gods whilst beholding celestial bodies.) It is delicious. I celebrate all the rich sensory beauty of this world.
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Posted on March 18, 2021 by Nik

I got pillaged

It was perhaps an inevitability, given that I am currently living in an old trailer in a dark field with an obfuscating hedgerow adjacent, perfect for a little bandit to make away with my new TV and silver flute and the lovely pineapple I had been ripening. It’s a poor country. The little shit took my Kindle amongst the other items loaded into the royal blue wheelbarrow and carted off. I followed his footprints and my wheelbarrow tire tracks in the morning, through the fields and up the road. He started ordering books through my linked amazon account. At least the fucker can read, but Read More

Posted on January 17, 2021 by Nik

The Bees Reprise (nomadic meanderings pt III)

They left
I felt their absence every day
The curious thrill of knowing, there is this thriving
silent throng of dangerous
vital existence
right outside my door
I missed that life force.Read More

 

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Nik

The Bees – nomadic meanderings (part II)

I’m sitting here with a cuppa in the early morning sun in my field in BCS. I’m taking in the expanse of tall shimmering palms, stretching out towards the jagged mountain ridges that divide this primal peninsula.

There’s a swarm of bees hanging low, 5 meters away from my little trailer home here. I have been watching them morph slowly over a week as they come and go, presumable scouting for a new home.Read More

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Nik

On the current – nomadic meanderings (part I)

Right, so this little sojourn, to which you are invited, is predicated on the ongoing exploration of the idea that there are two fundamental forces in the universe, namely fear, (withdrawal) and love, (expansion) and that we get to chose in which direction we lean each and every moment, mid pandemia or otherwise. Like every day, all the time. (There is a third principle concerning power/greed, but that’s perhaps more anthropocentric and less universal and I’m not going there.)
You cool with that?
Then we shall begin.
Read More

Posted on August 28, 2020 by Nik

Freedom and Pandemia

What scares me is not death. What scares me is having our freedom to live responsibly taken away. This, it appears, is more ominous and imminent a threat than death by any virus old or new.

Read More

Posted on May 16, 2019 by Nik

Extinction, Rebellion, or Obsolescence: A peer to peer platform to redefine humanity’s greatest challenge – itself!

The idea of arresting increasing climate related disaster was recently taken up by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement in the UK. XR represent a confrontational if disruptive demand to hold government accountable for the denial or dallying of their roles in practices shown to disrupt climate stability. Greenpeace, NRDC, and countless other environmental and humanitarian organisations across the globe have continued their efforts to hold industry and government to account since the 1840’s. Read More

Posted on September 4, 2018 by Nik

Desire

What’s not to love about a little love poem ; )

Waiting

impatiently to savour
the smokey taste
tobacco wine chocolate dark
traveller’s lips upon mine softly
once more to hear that husky voice
chattering like water coursing across
mossy mountain rocks singing

the delirious song of being
into my soul under my skin waiting Read More

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Nik

Equinox Phoenix Rising

After an especially dark and internal winter, the light of new creativity and power have been welling up from within those murky depths, the looming horizon becomes present, the Phoenix rises – it must be spring! Here’s a graphic to honour the phenomenon.

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Nik

Your pocket guide to the digital cash revolution. Bitcoin and beyond.

Everything you and your mum need to know about the new distributed currency and the decentralised information revolution – how and why to get onboard, in a nutshell.

Bitcoin was born out of an extraordinary innovation to resolve the loss of faith in, and the failings of central banks, sovereign states and governments, after the economic collapse of 2008 in particular.
 
It does this in a way that has sparked a surge of innovation in the way information is stored and exchanged across the world wide web. 
 
Here’s the deal

Read More

Revisiting India – Goa going gone

I had forgotten how completely and utterly fucking nuts India is. It’s so scuzzy and chaotic you still can’t believe it. But vibrant, colourful and exotic like nowhere else. Hop on your moped and into the foray and it’s adrenalin carnival all the way…  Read More

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Nik

Syzygy

poetry – I mean,
who fucking has time for poetry?
 
but,

 

there is a moment
when the light hits you
and you don’t feel
separate

 

a radiance obliterating
every atom and
 purpose
as you stand
basking, blissful, desolate
at the edge
of the world

Read More

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Nik
Comments Off on Autobiography of Eve

Autobiography of Eve

an ode to sex, desire, rebellion and fallen women

The Triumph of Eve by Scott Siedman

The Triumph of Eve by Scott Siedman
Artist FB page Neverwuz Productions

Found this artwork in centre camp at burning man a few years ago (tracked down the artist through the playa vine for attribution) then stumbled across this poem and thought… they belong together!

Autobiography of Eve
by Ansel Elkins

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth… Read More

sacred tree of life
Posted on August 2, 2016 by Nik

saved by beauty

Our one world, will be saved by beauty
when we remember, how to see
with the eyes of a child
into the golden heart, of every living thing.

We will feel deeply
the earthly memories
etched into the mountains of home
the forgetfulness in the oceans heave, the forgiving Read More

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Nik

Burning Man, Carnival and A Pattern Language

Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.

A Pattern Language

is the seminal (1977) work of architect Christopher Alexander et al. describing a functional system to meet humanistic needs in the design of buildings, the urban environment and vital community.

Pattern number 58 “Carnival” is a prescient and perfect description of what has organically arisen as the ephemeral Black Rock City – otherwise known as Burning Man!

Read More

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Nik

Perspectives

On his way back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced a radical transformation in perspective and thus consciousness. As he approached our planet from beyond it’s sphere of influence, “he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning is part of a living system, harmonious and whole—and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, “in a universe of consciousness.”

Getting a handle on culture, perspective and future.

Consider this: there can be no omniscient, impartial chronicler of history, culture or identity – it is all subjective. Accepting this on the cultural scale has been a tremendous liberation as I understood that my people, my city, my country, the English speaking world, are not necessarily better. There are of course no “chosen” people anywhere and indeed, my spiritual beliefs are equal to any other aspirant of the divine whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pantheist, Shamanic cosmologist, or astronomer on the road to awe. Read More

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Nik

ecstasy / rapture

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis morning, through the twilight, the sound of lovemaking enters me through the open window – such an arousing, hauntingly beautiful sound – a sound that could heal the world. Strange though… whenever this ardent song strays on the breeze, it’s only ever that of the woman I hear, never the man lost in his own rapture. What’s up with that fellas?

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Nik

Invitation of the Ancients

Lithe bodied,  we dance tall
swaying arcs of verdure leaning
into curved mists of space and aeons
as heaving earth-body
pulsing in tune,  exultant
sun,  sultry moon
we sink our roots,  feeling
deep around you,  and swirl
with wind,  and stars reaching,  we rise

upon the long song,  of creation. Read More

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Nik

The Return

Ekphrasis in response to Rilke’s Turning Point (below)

letting all the deep
rivers of the world – rush in /
cracking open the quartz prism
of your being – you surrendered
– you no longer had a choice Read More

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Nik

The One

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou can’st not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never never can’st thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats – Ode on a Grecian Urn

WINTER: In the darkness, gestation.
Until the Phoenix rises, once more, exultant, free
to love and love again, soaring across
the ancient white peaks, the dazzling, clear blue
skies… Read More

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Nik

Letting go

This evening

the burgeoning crescent moon hovers low 
over the western pacific
a veil of ocean mist rising up 
to kiss beyond 
the mountains – where I lay
in these steaming waters –
earthly aromas
rose geranium, thyme
rustling bamboo leaves
quiet cricket’s trill… Read More
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