Virginia - Locals in Training

Winter turned out to be a good time to move cross-country as in the natural cycle of life, this is a quiet season great as a springboard into Spring. We’d been preparing for the move for at least 8 months, selling things we don’t need, researching apartments, researching moving companies, establishing new subscriptions to various necessary service, et al …

Come to think of it, we got so lucky for it wasn’t any sooner than the next day that a huge thunderstorm came in and it rained cats & dogs! Our day to pack the truck was perfect!!

The Last Piece to send on its journey ...

We stayed with a friend for a week before flying east as our belongings would take at least that long to arrive.

The Silver Diner was our kitchen for at least a week

In the meantime, our camel arrived

The arrival of my vehicle was not exactly without incident. Our driver calls one day letting us know where to meet him. As we hoof it almost around the entire mall via parking lot, we finally see Oleg arguing with a security guard. Come to find out, he’s not allowed to park his rig there to unload my car! { SIGH } After talking a moment longer, Oleg just gets sick and tired of “all this blah blah blah”, walks over to his rig and starts lowering the platform to unload. At this point the guard calls his supervisor who arrives shortly after. The supervisor explains to Oleg and me that this is private property, even if emtpy, and for various 'reasons', the vehicle cannot be unloaded there. It took a couple more exchanges before Oleg 😤 steamed off to move the entire rig, this time to park on the adjacent road. And you guessed it, the guard not only follows us, but explains that the road belongs to the mall and is therefor also private property. At this point the supervisor calls the police, people from a nearby business start gathering to see what’s going on with 2 security guards, two police cars, an auto mover and the three of us (Rhônya was there, too). So goofy dude that I am, I introduce myself to the officer as a recent transplant from the land of fruitloops California and thought I´d just make some smalltalk just long enough to distract him so that we can unload, but the guy was just too focused – 😒. I did make a point that if all properties in the county are privately owned then do they expect us to do business in West Virginia? 🤦

So rather than incur charges being pressed against Oleg, he relents to move the rig to a nearby parking lot that security supervisor alluded to use for our purposes. Mind you, Oleg did manage to get a porsche off the rig in the meantime, which in the interests of saving time, he asked me to drive to the nearby lot! But the story happily ends there as we finally had our space and peace and quiet to conduct our business and make our exchange. Honestly, I felt really bad for Oleg as I saw him working so hard to do such a simple thing whilst the anal regulations and authorities adhered stubbornly to the letter of the law with complete disregard whether such blind enforcement actually serves the public. We were not impressed 🤪

But now to something a bit more cheerful … some images from our adventures around the area ...

This is an excursion into Spook Central DC

Note: any metropolitan population hub is a spook central to me, generally overpopulated, noisy, ...

I’d never dreamed to find Washington DC interesting at all since I have little interest in politics and the legalistic, bureaucratic convolution that trails behind it, and the resultant headache it gives me. But once we got there and I looked at some of what America would call “old” inscriptions on some of the statues for example, I thought back on the country’s forefathers and the kind of life experience that drove these men & women and inspired them to risk their lives and write documents such as the Constitution of the United States to assure a future after their struggles were over.

The only reason I’d even be thinking about this is because when I look at current events, I am not impressed by global leadership, not just the US and its current embarrassments. At the time of this writing we’ve got Russia haphazardly invading Ukraine with no intelligent, rational support for such action. Then we have China who just cannot accept that Taiwanese people have a mind of their own and have no interest in the mainland’s ideological foundation. Let’s not even talk about Tibet. In the 21^st century, there is no longer any reason for war, period. It is time for humanity to show some dignity and show some fucking respect for each other’s cultures, see these as an asset for diverse thinking & problem solving, roll up our sleeves, prioritize global challenges, and start noodling on solutions!

When I look at history and it’s clear tendency towards conquest and violence, I’d theorize that the effects of these actions among countries have never really healed, let alone been transcended, hence a remaining environment of trust but verify. Else why would we have intelligence agencies spying on each others’ countries? Our energies should be spent on understanding the inner cores of a multitude of problems (pollution, disease, population growth, energy, pursuit of happiness* and quality of life for everyone, …) and synthesize solutions. Instead time is wasted with analysis paralysis, bureaucracy, and political pontification. Wake up!

What is so Gad-damn difficult about realizing that we are one global people on this planet who have merely developed regional, cultural differences along with minor physiological adaptations (involuntary genetic expression) relative to local climate over time?

• Perhaps prejudice can be cured when people have the means to travel and have global exposure to the world, expand their experiential horizons and grow as human beings and be able to think on a larger scale.
• While this global clusterfuck of posturing, war mongering and hemming and hawing around by world leaders can be cured when everyone decides to bury their hatchet and starts laying their cards on the table and decides to work together, no ego, no pretense, no alterior motives, only “we’re in this together so let’s solve this …”

Politics are irrelevant if the planet becomes unihabitable because we’ve either overpolluted & destroyed it with from greed & waste or nuked the hell out of it because your dignity lacks heart since violence is so much easier than having to engage hearts & minds in solving problems, isn’t it!?

Lastly, the best way that I can see to bring humanity to a healthier level of being and improve the pool from which to pick true visionary leadership by allowing children to learn and grow up with intrinsic life values e.g.:

• appreciation for all life
• curiosity about the world we live in
• intuitive learning
• structured learning
• meditation
• nutrition
• exercise
• exploration of the inner being
  • discover one’s individual potential
  • naturally contribute to humanity

Unfortunately, qualified teachers are hard to find … of course I’m speaking from the vantage point of America and its curriculums, I cannot speak for other countries. 🙄

In conclusion, start here: incoherent culture & human irrationality, Bohm Dialogue, then progress to Inner Engineering …

And now I’m going on with my life, kiss my wife and continue with our visionary endeavors toward reaching our human potential from a pure heart ~ joie de vivre.