In 1996, I began working as a psychologist with survivors of torture and communist re-education from various parts of Asia.  These were people who couldn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, or who had panic attacks at the sight of a police officer, because it reminded them of their torturers.  Four years later I sat down and began writing, and what emerged was the story of two American Quakers who trek into Tibet in the 1950s just as the Chinese communists are invading.  I hadn’t planned to write a story about the persecution suffered by Tibetans at the hands of the Chinese, but I let the story lead me, and I poured into it all I knew from sitting in the same room with people who had survived the unthinkable. 

What I began in the year 2000 is now a novel called FALLING TO HEAVEN, and it has been published in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and soon, in Spanish, worldwide.  

In FALLING TO HEAVEN, those two American trekkers are named Emma and Gerald, and they quickly form warm bonds with Dorje, a Tibetan neighbor. The communists suspect Gerald of teaching Tibetans capitalist ideas, and so the communists abduct both him and a member of Dorje’s family, throwing them into prison for “re-education.”  Dorje and his family, along with Emma, flee Tibet to go into exile. Told in three distinct voices rich in their respective spiritual traditions, FALLING TO HEAVEN is ultimately a novel about faith: losing it, and rediscovering it in places you’d never expect.  

It is my hope that FALLING TO HEAVEN will help readers experience the Tibetan struggle on a personal level.  I will be reading from the book at Summerthymes Café on September 30^th.  As I prepare for my trip to Grass Valley, I feel great excitement because of the enormous enthusiasm of my hosts, Sierra Friends of Tibet.  SFOT is a local group dedicated to raising awareness of issues facing Tibetans.  The group is spearheaded by Joseph Guida, who also hosts two radio programs on the subject: Tibet World Service on KVMR and the Tibetan Radio Hour streaming live on www.openmindradio.com.  Both programs are heard all over the world thanks to the Internet.  According to Joseph Guida, who tracks the origins of the website’s visitors, people from all over the globe tune in to listen to the programs, including listeners in China. 

So here is Grass Valley, California, a relatively small community tucked under the wing of the Sierra Nevadas, having an enormous reach across the planet.  I look forward to being a part of it.

I was feeling alone the other day.  Alone in the world.  Sad.

So I packed up my wetsuit and dragged myself over to the beach.  Pulled on my wetsuit.  The sun was already slanting in the sky, and it would head down below the horizon within the hour.

I stepped into the bracing water (60 degrees) and did those involuntary quick panting breaths as my feet and ankles felt the sting of it.  The waves were friendly, fun. 

But the best part was, a seal came to visit. 

That’s not unusual, really.  But this day it was different.  I was the only one out there, and he just kind of . . . hung around.  He poked his head up through the surface and just stayed.  Then he dove under, and a few minutes later, he poked his head up again in another spot close by.  That happened three times.  It was dusk and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I wasn’t entirely sure about this, but I thought he was looking at me. 

I’m not so self-absorbed as to think that God took time out from the miserable people of Haiti or the floods in Pakistan to send me a seal just because I was feeling a bit lonely.  But I sure did appreciate the little guy even so.  I didn’t feel alone anymore.

After I got out of the water and was sitting on a blanket, a woman approached me.  She said, “That was amazing.  That seal — he just kept looking at you.”  So it was confirmed; he was looking my way. 

I suspect there are many more instances of this — of our interconnectedness — than we generally notice.  It took me being lonely to take note of it this time.  I’ve got to work on that.

With this title, you might think I’d be writing about fun adventures with my gay male friends, but no, it’s actually about those pesky insects that buzz around your head and lay their eggs in the ripening bananas on your counter.

The fruit flies have been taking over my house.  Because of my compost worms. 

Which leads me to a confession: I haven’t been entirely honest about the annoyances attached to keeping compost worms in the house.  I’ve been wanting to encourage others to keep compost worms, too, so we can save the world together — one worm at a time.  So I’ve been hiding one of the pitfalls.  Fruit flies.  I’ve been presenting an utterly rosy picture of blissful communion with my worms.  In fact, I was doing something wrong with my worms to such an extent that for a while, I had a really bad case of fruit flies. 

I kept out a hand vacuum and kept vacuuming up live fruit flies.

And then there’s that book that I wrote called FALLING TO HEAVEN, which is about pacifism, Quakers and Tibetan Buddhism.  Pacifism, even towards insects.  

Oh, and truthfulness in all things – I mentioned that in FALLING TO HEAVEN, too. 

With the thousands of fruit flies I’ve vacuumed up, I’m headed straight for a next life as a fruit fly.  Karma. 

Luckily, my brother-in-law advised me to cover the top layer of my Can o Worms with dry shredded paper to keep the fruit flies out of the compost material.  And voila, the fruit flies have died down considerably.  Thank God.  But the lack of truthfulness, hmmm…my brother-in-law didn’t really help me with that problem, because I wasn’t truthful about it.

My next life as a fruit fly.  Hmmm.  I don’t think fruit flies live very long.  Anybody know how long they live?

My first radio interview is on KVMR on Labor Day (9/6/2010) at 12:25pm (Pacific Time). You can catch it live streaming on the Internet at http://www.kvmr.org/webcast.html. 

So for the first time in my life, I’m writing talking points.

I have mostly heard that phrase — talking points – from liberals (like myself) criticizing the far right for approaching every interview with a set of talking points provided by the Republican Party. 

Consequently, I have always viewed talking points with deep scorn — as a form of speech used by conservative automatons.  Of course, I never minded when liberal automatons used their own talking points, which they do, because, well, those talking points made sense to me. 

Now I’m training myself to be a talking point automaton too, so that I won’t sound like a blithering numskull or fill the air waves with a spectacular number of “Ummmmms.”   

So tune in.  Afterwards, you can tell me where I fell within the spectrum between Automaton and Blithering Numskull.

I’m always looking for the odd bit of good news — maybe because it’s so hard to find.  You have to look on your own for the good stuff, whereas the bad stuff is easily provided, fed to us by the media and all that. 

So here’s the good news, and it’s good indeed.  Shockingly good, in fact.  At least I think so. 

Here’s how I found this tidbit:

The other day I was parked outside a neighborhood market called Grant’s , and I saw this guy ride up on a bicycle.  He went inside, came out with a box, pulled some vegetables out of the box, stuffed them into satchels attached to his bike, and rode off.

Woah, I thought.  I think I just saw an eco-virtuous act.  I think I just witnessed someone picking up their CSA allotment.

CSA?  A sinister acronym for a government spying operation?  No.  Community Supported Agriculture.  I went inside Grant’s and asked some questions.  It turns out that Grant’s is a drop off site for Suzie’s Organic Farm.  Hmmm.  You sign up for a box of organic produce 2 or 4 times per month, and then Suzie’s drops it off at this site so you can go pick it up.  And you’re supporting organic farming.  Voila. 

A coworker of mine said the other day, “I’ve tasted organic produce and it doesn’t taste any different.”  I wanted to say, “That is so not the point.”  I mean, sometimes the produce tastes better, sometimes it tastes the same.  I’ve never run into organic produce that tastes worse, I have to say. 

My main reason for being drawn to organic foods is simply because instead of exhausting and contaminating the soil with a bunch of chemicals that could make us practically glow in the dark, organic farmers are keeping the soil rich and chemical-free.  I’m not a purist by any means — I still eat a lot of nonorganic things, and I shop at Albertson’s in their organic produce department, which leaves a bit to be desired.  Plus, I’m a cheapskate.  I have to remind myself that there’s an inherent value in organic stuff that makes it worth the extra cost (and I’m lucky enough to be able to afford it, which not everyone can, at this point). 

So you’re probably thinking, Ummm… what’s the good news?  The cause for hopefulness?   Here it is: I went to the Suzie’s Farm website, and found out that Suzie’s Farm is growing like that proverbial zucchini you left in the garden too long and it’s HUGE.  Here’s what the July Newsletter had to say:

One year ago we had 28 CSA customers. One year ago we were in no Farmers Markets.One year ago we had no chef or restaurant partners. We had no relationships with wholesalers or with grocery stores. One year ago, we had Ellie who worked ten hours a week, and our sister, Johanna,who was filling in during her summer break from college and spent almost her entire summer weeding.  We had a three-person crew hired to work with us at Kiki Town. One year ago I put the girls into full-time care, so I could give full-time care to the farm. One year ago today. Today we have almost 500 CSA customers. We have active grocery store relationships with Whole Foods, Boney’s Bayside Market and Jimbo’s Naturally. You can find Suzie’s Farm at 10 different Farmers Markets. We have at least 20 chef and restaurant partners, with more chefs reaching out to us every day.

In one year, this farm went from having 28 people ordering their produce to 500 people, grocery store relationships, 20 chef/restaurant partners, and 10 farmers markets.

People are jumping on that bandwagon, and we all know that’s what will help make organic farming more affordable for everyone. 

So maybe the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket after all.  At least not this week.

At many of the book signing events for FALLING TO HEAVEN, people have asked me about whether I’d like to go back to Tibet.   There is this expectation, I think, that I’ll get misty-eyed and say something like, “Oh yes, I would live there if I could.”

But my answer is, unequivocally, “No.”   During the several years since 2003, when I was in Tibet, I’ve felt rather sheepish, even guilty, about my lack of desire to return.  Didn’t I love it enough to write a book about it, after all?

There are some natural inconveniences built into going to Tibet.  There’s the adjustment to the altitude, which takes a few days in which your heart pounds when you even stand up from your chair and going up a flight of stairs makes you feel like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn.  There’s the poor hygiene, which led me to eat mostly fried rice with egg during most of my time there, and of course, the bathrooms, whose stenchy horrors defy description.

But that doesn’t explain my rejection of a return visit.  I’ve dealt with other unhygienic places in which adjustment to local conditions required some effort.

It wasn’t until I read a recent article in the New York Times that I could put my finger on the exact reason for my discomfort.  The article is entitled, “China’s Money and Migrants Pour into Tibet,” by Edward Wong.  This piece covers a wide range of issues affecting Tibetans today, enumerating the factors that exacerbate the discontent among Tibetans.

The part that struck me involved a description of the Barkhor area.  The Barkhor is a sort of plaza where there are many vendors and a lot of pilgrims.  The Barkhor sprang up around the Jokhang Temple, one of the most famous temples in Tibet.  Standing right outside the temple on any given day, one can see the faithful doing their prostrations.  Many of them wear leather aprons and mitts for this purpose, which can signify that their current prostrations are simply part of a larger pilgrimage — pilgrimages can last for months, in which literally every inch of ground covered was done by means of prostrations in Tibet’s dry rocky soil.  Some people in the Barkhor area are doing a simple set of koras, or circumambulations on a set clockwise path around the temple and plaza.  All of these practices are believed by Tibetan Buddhists to accumulate merit towards a more favorable rebirth in the next lifetime (as a human, for example, instead of as a yak). 

The Barkhor of today is patrolled by paramilitary troops in riot gear.  They march counterclockwise, disrupting the clockwise route of pilgrims. 

Worshippers go into the temple to pay their respects.  Ah, but, actually they can’t quite do that normally either, as pictures of the Dalai Lama are banned everywhere in Tibet, even inside the temple and within private homes. 

Imagine going to your place of worship, ready to connect with your God/gods, and being greeted by police in riot gear.  Wouldn’t that be a bit distracting?  Perhaps even intimidating, or terrifying?  Picture a Christian church without any crosses — or a synagogue without a star of David anywhere in it?

In reality, the comparison I’m making here is a failure.  We westerners live in very secular societies, so it is difficult for us to comprehend the level of intrusion Tibetans experience, as religion is so much more central to their lives than it is to ours.   

The fact is, I have absolutely no desire to visit Tibet again.  And reading about the police in riot gear and the rest helped me to pinpoint why that is.  Even though there were no police in riot gear in 2003, I could not forget that I was visiting an occupied country.  When I paid my Chinese coins to get into the Tibetan monasteries, it was impossible not to think of whose pockets I was lining.  The Chinese have cleared the monasteries of thousands of monks and thus disrupted the transmission of teachings/trainings that are centuries old.  And then they charge admission for you to go in and have the tourist-y Shangri-la experience of walking through those gorgeous but somewhat empty edifices.

There was a pall hanging over the Barkhor that arose from something else as well: desperate beggars.  In all my travels through Mexico, Chile, and even more geographically similarly, Kathmandu, I’ve never seen beggars like I saw in Lhasa, while in the Barkhor area.  There was a desperation that bordered on aggression.  If you gave money to one, you would be immediately surrounded by 15 more.  When I ran out of bills to give them, they fought over the bills I had given.  At one point, a child beggar made such a beeline towards me that he ran into a passing rickshaw and fell down.  (He was okay).

These days, a lot of people are going on trips to see the glaciers in Alaska before they all melt and disappear forever from global warming. 

Perhaps these folks have the same thought I had in Tibet about witnessing what’s before them: Precious, but doomed.

I wrote recently about how restorative it is to play in the ocean waves.  This past year has been deeply healing for me on a personal level, and aside from the kindness of family members and some caring friends, it is the playful waves which have been a major part of the cure. 

After cavorting in the water, I find myself buzzing with gratitude, my whole body thrumming happily.  And then my eyes settle onto the fast food containers left behind by some other beach-goer.  The self-righteous bit starts up in my head, predictably.  I go pick it up and put it in the trash can, all the while imagining how attracted some fish is going to be to the bright colors of that Taco Bell cup and the straw sticking out of it and then, sayonara, no more fish-y.  

But the self-righteous bit doesn’t go all that far.  No matter how much I do, there are always going to be people who are doing a hell of a lot more to help this planet than I am (like those people living completely off the grid, or, say, the inhabitants of the other 95% of the countries of the world), and there will always be those who keep on collecting those annoying plastic shopping bags because, well, they haven’t made the shift to reusable bags. 

But I’m getting it together, bit by bit — I’m packing up to go play in the waves later today, and one of the things I’m stowing in the car is a trash grabber and a bunch of plastic bags so that every time, after I go in the waves, I’ll pick up a little trash on the beach — as a way of saying to the sea, “Thanks for the good time.”

There’s an old man in my neighborhood who I see trundling along pushing a walker every day.  He’s bent double.  Actually, double with a twist — his right shoulder is lower than his left.  Although there’s some pain in seeing him shuffle his way down the street, what I feel most when I see him is pure awe.  The bursting kind of awe that makes you pull in a deep breath, hold it and grin. 

Sometimes he’s got a grocery bag attached to the front of the walker, which gives me a sense that he’s moving with a purpose, but other times, it seems his goal is simply to keep moving.  I have the impulse to pull over and say, “Do you know that every time I see you it makes my day, just because you’re not giving in?” 

There’s no telling how he’d react — maybe he’d feel patronized or insulted.  Or maybe he doesn’t even speak English and would see my big goofy smile and my lips moving and wonder what planet I’d dropped off of into his personal space.  But some day I might risk it anyway.

I took my two sons to Disneyland this week and you know what the best part of it was for me? 

Holding their hands all day long.   They’re 6 and 9 years old, so that’s a rare blessing, to hold their hands.  The younger one still holds my hand when I drop him off at school, but the older one has moved on, passing out of the time when he would permit that.  Often we don’t know when the very last time will be that we’re allowed to hold someone’s hand, either because we lose that person, or as with children, because they grow up.   

I honor the fact that my older son doesn’t want to hold my hand anymore.  The growing up of both him and his younger brother is a thing to be celebrated, not just mourned.  Nevertheless, I took a guilty, grinning pleasure in holding their little hands as we traipsed from one crazy ride to another.

I’ve been spending time in the Pacific Ocean this week and ahhh…it never fails to amaze me how restorative it is to be in the sea.  When I emerge from the salty waves, I have a profound feeling of peace and presence.  It’s a physical sensation, a tingling, as the blood courses warmly into my hands and feet.  I’m tired and spent like someone who has just made love and can now drift into sleep.  There is no thought.  My normally buzzing, flitting brain simply hums along, perfectly content and able to roll with whatever may arise.  Of course, given that I and my boogie boarding buddy usually go to a decadent restaurant and have luscious food and perhaps, a mojito, it isn’t as though I’m asked to “roll with” much! 

But I ask myself, “What is it that the ocean does?”  The best explanation I can find is that it holds you.  Buoyancy is an incredible experience, of being lifted up like you were when you were a child.  And then the waves also rock your body in a gentle rhythm that brings you back to those primal sensations of being held in the arms of a swaying parent.  Think of the way an infant settles into that and lets go completely.  Trusting.  Sometimes, after riding a wave up close to the shoreline where it’s shallow enough that I’m on hands and knees with my head above water, I just roll around in the waves and let them move my body.  Catching my breath and just sensing.  Simply being.

The waves often make me laugh, too.  They slap me upside the head, jump into my mouth when I’m screaming with glee because a wave has picked me up and is shooting me like a bullet towards the shore.  Occasionally, the waves will put me through a spin cycle, and that also makes me laugh.  And there is something so funny about standing before a wave that’s a lot bigger than you expected and saying to yourself, “Oh man, I am going to get hosed!” 

Of course it was frightening to let go that much at first.  But after a year of consistent time in the ocean, I feel confident enough before each wave that although the sea water may reach new heights in my sinus cavity, I’ll be just fine.  And then it’s fun. 

Now if only one could approach life in the same way…