Thursday, October 30th

02008-10-30 | Ottmar

Rode my Brompton (yesterday I rode the other one, which now sports this saddle) to breakfast with Jon. Haven’t used my car in several days. I wonder how long I can go without a car if I get one of these or these.

Looked up VHEMT because it came up in our conversation and came across this quote:

Man in his misguidance has powerfully interfered with nature. He has devastated the forests, and thereby even changed the atmospheric conditions and the climate. Some species of plants and animals have become entirely extinct through man, although they were essential in the economy of Nature. Everywhere the purity of the air is affected by smoke and the like, and the rivers are defiled. These and other things are serious encroachments upon Nature, which men nowadays entirely overlook but which are of the greatest importance, and at once show their evil effect not only upon plants but upon animals as well, the latter not having the endurance and power of resistance of man.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

I believe that’s a quote from Goethe’s Faust. (Ich lese zur Zeit Gespräche mit Goethe)

I mean, we have known this to be true… but we have not known it in our bones. I hope we can come together and preserve nature for our children and beyond.

After breakfast, which lasted a good hour and fortyfive minutes, I stopped by Mellow Velo and ordered a pair of pant cuff clips like these. My grandfather always rode a bike to work and I remember him having some exactly like that.

Played guitar for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Amazing how practicing creates a physical sensation of well-being for me. Then zazen and dinner and now I am heading into the studio to work on new mixes for The Santa Fe Sessions. I started stripping away everything that isn’t essential and the songs begin to sparkle and shine in a new way.

Thirty Years Ago

02008-09-06 | Ottmar, Travel

File under “Wanderjahre”:

Thirty years ago I was on Phuket island in Thailand. On the Trans-Siberian train in April of 1978 I had met a few young fellow travelers, an Englishman on the way to India, a Swede on his way to Thailand. We called ourselves the Semolina Club, because for vegetarians the only food options on the train were semolina gruel, peas and the occassional potatoe, baked, wrapped in newspaper and offered for sale in buckets in railway stations by old ladies. The train would stop for a few minutes and we would jump out and buy potatoes. Yes, I did sell a pair of jeans to a waiter in the train’s restaurant car. And we drank vodka with soldiers on the train.

I arrived in Japan at end of cherry blossom season. In Japan I got around by hitch-hiking, and while hitch-hiking is something the Japanese did not do themselves, they tolerated foreigners doing it and in fact it was very easy to get rides as people wanted to practice their English. Three weeks later I flew to Taipei, where I stayed for a month studying Tai-Chi. In July I traveled to Hongkong, which I loved, and in August to Bangkok, where I ran into the Swede from the Trans-Siberian train, heard about the beautiful Phuket island, and took a bus South. At the time Phuket had one resort hotel (((must be hundreds now!))), but I rented a hut about 100 feet from the beach, for $1.50 per night. I stayed for a month.

Related entries: Rockgarden in Japan, Papaya in India, Traveling in Thailand, Bombay and Goa, Eating on the Train

Photography

02008-09-03 | Ottmar, Photos

A couple of months ago I started making new slideshows because I wanted something that is less visually distracting than Flickr. There is one for every month:

June
July
August

They are also linked from the sidebar.