Posts
Ch 4.6 - Lockdown, Family Time, Bureacracy, and Black Market Currency Conversions
So its just a few clicks into the lockdown and suddenly we’re a family with all the tasks that came with that. We had to register Aquiles’ birth with the municipal government and take him to the pediatrician, while Lau was to start rehabilitation after her trauamatic birth. A foreigner, and the father, there was not much in those areas that I could help with beyond simply showing up.
Ch 4.2 - Startup Parenting and Lockdown Startups
Greetings after a couple months hiatus! It’s more and more difficult to “find” the time to write and reflect on what seems so far gone. Yet flashbacks do still hit me, and there is still a story to be told. I’ve decided to stress less about my prose and shove more media in front of your eyes.
Ch 4.1 - Business and “Career”… Work, Money, Purpose, Intention
We were to finish up April and May at the quiet Airbnb duplex we had found for Aquiles’ birth in March. The owner was happy to let us stay an extra month when we explained how difficult/illegal it was to move right now. Her mom owned a local cookie factory and she was ready to get out of there, but fortunately another friend of hers had an empty condo in town for her to stay at. There was a weird moment when she accused us of giving her ‘old’ one-hundred dollar bills that were ostensibly not worth as much here in Argentina as the newer generation of Benjamins, but then she realized she was tripping and shrugged it off like nothing happened. Anyway, that’s about all the notable detail I have regarding our Airbnb host for those three months.
Ch 3 - Giving Birth During a Pandemic and Lockdown in Argentina
Wow, that title sure is a mouthful, huh? With good reason, as I believe you will see. This installment isn’t anywhere near as long as the previous few. My apologies for the delay; I find that I write one of these and then it sits for 2-3 weeks before I find a chance to proofread and publish.
Ch 2.6 - A Farewell to Rambling Bachelorhood Amidst Chilean Revolution
Hello. Last we left off in my 2020 adventure, I was departing a sweaty Cordoban summer and heading to Chile for a final solo traveller adventure. This one is long but filled with pictures and even a little swashbuckling adventure.
Ch 2.6 - A Farewell to Rambling Bachelorhood Amidst Chilean Revolution
Hello. Last we left off in my 2020 adventure, I was departing a sweaty Cordoban summer and heading to Chile for a final solo traveller adventure. This one is long but filled with pictures and even a little swashbuckling adventure.
Chapter 2.3: Interlude! Partnerships, Plant Medicines, and Love
This one comes in three sections. I’ve never been a cookie-cutter lover and I figure to get to know me better, I should share with you some personal things.
Chapter 2 + Pregnancy Photoshoot (feb 2020) and Zoom Wedding (feb 2021)
Greetings from the other side! Lau and I finally tied the knot with the state and we are officially legally wed. (It took 13 months from the time of our actual “wedding” celebration.) And it happened on Zoom. Weird times to be sure, but it’s one more bureaucratic step forward that hints at the light at the other end of the tunnel that began a year ago. Here’s the comical video (music by me):
Chapter 1: Argentine Routine & Cuisine, in the calm before the storm.
It’s been a introspective time for me, questioning where to dedicate my creative energies this year, so I deeply appreciate your feedback and reaching out after the first mail. Social media to me was always a way to share my goings-on in my travels with those I cared with and had connected with. Since that golden era passed long ago I have been searching for a way to find purpose in sharing myself again outside of the toxic environment that I find those venues to be. You actually reading what I write means more than you know.
Home from Argentina! What a year…
We have finally arrived home in California. It was a long year, for reasons beyond the obvious. The political-economic-social crises triggered by the pandemic hit a lot more close-to-home for everyday living in South America but, while tough at times, sticking it out in Argentina was an ironic blessing of an experience for someone who has traveled the world craving unique experiences since he was 18 years old.
Final Video Exam 3: House of the Rising Dragon
I won’t embellish my feelings on this assignment. It would have been my favorite, had I not unleashed a new error in my back while rehearsing this sequence:
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
The simplest way to summarize “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” is just that: the title. A Zen mind stays in the beginner’s mindset. Always. It is the ends and it is the means. An open and limitless mind allows for everything and remains compassionate, free from the bias of the “expert” mind.
The Talent Code
The Talent Code explores the concept of talent while studying what “success” means and how different communities around the world have seemed to unlock it. Author Daniel Coyle found a few distinctive traits to areas where talent seemed to arise with more ease and frequency than other areas–talent hotbeds. Is talent unique to personality or culture, genes or environment, or is it simply a neurological equation?
Final Video Exam 1
I messed up this assignment, because I didn’t check the instructions before spending an hour producing the video and recording it. In any case, my “student” was starting at square 0 so I am happy I could dedicate myself to instructing him to getting down the basics. I was quite proud of him (and myself!) by the end of our session.
Final Video Exam 2
Funny how once the end is near, I seem to stop feeling like things matter. Sounds familiar to many realms of my life.
Crawling Patterns Study
This is the film that got me following Budokon. I started watching Cameron’s instagram clips and tried mimicking them. What I was gathering by imitation online was helping my back issues—a lot. When they finally announced their online academy this February, I was all-in.
Household Sustainability
Chapter 5’s assignment has us explore our use of consumables, their cost, and our relationship with them. Like each of these Mind-Science pillars, this assignment arrived at a time when my partner and I had recently decided to support more both our local economy and local sustainability. A month or so back, we bought a compost bin from a local group we found on Instagram. It’s got two bins with worms and the liquid falls to the bottom… it’s definitely a step up from the raised wooden bed we had been tossing all our organic waste into.
“Waddling Toddler Tiger” - My First BDK Mobility Sequence
As part of a wider effort to demonstrate the effectiveness and community potential for open-source repositories of knowledge exercises and physical practices, I’ve begun to formulate my BDK Mobility Teacher Training assignments as a means of prototyping a use case. Suffice to say, it’s been a satisfying use of my creative energy applied to the first “academic” experience I’ve had in over ten years.
Moral Dilemma
You are having lunch with a friend and happen to see your best friend’s romantic partner/boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife being intimate with someone else in the restaurant.
What would you do?
Critical Thinking Tools
Deconstruct the concepts of ‘Necessary vs. Unnecessary’, ‘Fixed vs. Fluid’ and ‘Relative vs. Absolute’. Also outline what the similarities and what the key differences between the three concepts are?
Power Metal’s Reception in an Occidental Male Teenager
I stumbled upon this post on Reddit today while drinking my caffeine, and got caught up in a comment thread curious as to why the song references Iron Maiden in that early 2000s era. The argument in the thread was that ‘nerdy’ types would also be drawn to fantastical epic metal because it offered a different escape from reality.
I started a teacher training recently.
My life is good, lately. Blessings, love, gratitude, and everything I could ever want. It’s a mindset that I do believe has created this environment for my material being.
Belief and Sources of Truth
What is Belief?
Love Languages
I’ve been doing an online teacher training with Budokon. It’s an amazing physical practice and the reflection essays we’re required to write aren’t bad, either. In no particular order, I’m posting my assignments here. They definitely enter a space of transparency and vulnerability, so please be 1) forewarned and 2) respectful.
A Treatise on the Self and the Moment
What or who can we really be, beyond this moment? The only existence beyond this moment is a story we tell ourselves. Beyond this moment lies a future full of projections of the past, including the media we’ve consumed which contributes to fear, and things going “wrong.” Beyond this moment also lies a past full of lessons, including those that we’ve learned from which magically became a part of who we are in this moment.
A Time to Reflect
It’s the very last day of the lunar year, and a time for me to reflect. A lot has passed and I have grown tremendously in the past year.
Panic.
Everyone taking advantage of the hysteria/panic/confusion to wrest more power from anyone else… why don’t I do it too?
Try-ing Thymes
Last night I was laying in bed pondering the times when I realized that there was a reality outside trying to get in. That reality was the real-ity, which made me realize that I’d been choosing to exist in a different one for the last… week? Two weeks?
A deleted response in an Anarchy chat.
Governments suck. For the most part it’s run by power hungry, ego-driven sociopaths. I get it. But we’re living in a certain world right now and we have to start where we’re at, which is why my anti-establishment friends get upset when I say I like Bernie Sanders.
re: covid-19
A lot of my writing in recent years has come from innocent provocation in an e-mail, Reddit thread, or Telegram chat room. I write out a wall of text only to delete it, or un-send it, because of the context of the conversation. Here is one such segment.
And So We Blog
I’m writing again. A return to who I once was, before I decided to try to be a social entpreneur-ing filmmaker and dedicated my creative energy elsewhere.
For My Baby Boy
If there’s one thing I’ve learned,
New Moon-ish Aquarius
(1/26) I’m suddenly so easily grateful…
New Moon Dec 25 - Capricorn
forgiveness