Simple Gifts

I was walking in the labyrinth today and a beautiful butterfly accompanied me almost the entire way. There is a plane of space created above the rocks in the Labyrinth when you walk it that is like a field you enter and become a part of. From the outside it just looks like space, but from within the path there is a discernable vibration in the space that opens up like a pasture inside yourself if you let it. To be joined in there by a beautiful butterfly fresh from its cocoon is a gift I cannot measure.

dreams

August 19th-
Dad was in my dream last night. I didn’t realize it until I woke up; it was hard to get to peaceful sleep. It seems to take me until my first alarm goes off in the morning that I’m really actually tired enough to enjoy slipping back into my dream. We were on a huge cruise ship at some point, and a huge wave almost tipped it over. It crashed into the side of the boat and the windows shattered and everything. People sort of panicked, but not so much after the initial wave hit. It was after that at some point when dad and I were walking through a lounge of some sort, maybe looking for a table to sit down and eat. I was younger, and wasn’t ecstatic to see dad, so I clearly wasn’t aware I was dreaming. I was my child self, my naïve self who just took dad to be dad, the dad that would always be there to take care of me and I didn’t need to worry about it really. It was quiet at the table, I didn’t really have anything to say and dad was calm and just sat there. It reminded me of the father and son I saw sitting at the table together at that bar in Memphis I went to with Lauren the other day. When I woke up I realized, “That was dad!” but I felt I needed to get up and be here for when Francis came so that grandma would feel better. I looked outside and saw that Dave was here fixing the EZGo already too. Dad was in my dream though. That’s nice.

Grandma's Goldfish

Adventures of the Shelby County Fair

So it was senior night at the County fair last night so Brooks, Mollie and me took Grandma to check on Brooks’ pie. It was so funny because Grandma just kept asking about the pie. “Where’s the pie?”
Once we walked into the Shelby County Exhibition Hall where it was there was so much going on us first timers where a little overwhelmed by all the showings and booths and gospel, let alone the rides and games and kids all hepped up on cotton candy running around outside. Needless to say we got a little distracted until Grandma said, “I’m gonna ask somebody where the pies are,” and swatted her hand like she meant it.
I asked somebody and she led us to the Baked Goods booth and sure enough Brooks won 2nd place with Grandma’s Ice Box Pie. It was a heroic moment for the Suttle family. Grandma was simply overjoyed, it was fantastic.
So from there we went and got hot dogs and hamburgers and sweet tea and then sat down to listen to an all mean’s singing group. There were four men singing, a piano player and a bassist. They sang old timey gospel numbers and talked slow and made simple humor in their banter and it was great. They were having a grand old time. Grandma leans over and says, “They look like they’re having a good time, don’t they?”
“Sure do Grandma.”
From there we went outside and hit up the games. I won the water gun race game and got a ducky and Brooks used the hammer to hit the mallet and try to hit the bell and won a tiger for Mollie, but none of these compared to the victory that was yet to come.
The one game I always remember from my Carver Elementary fair Days was the booth with ping-pong balls and jars and you have to throw the ping-pong ball in the jar and if you do you get a goldfish. Clear as day I can see myself playing on the Carver blacktop. Of course that’s the one I went to. It was 17 shots for 2 dollars so I loaded up, tossed them all, didn’t get a single one.
“17 more please,” without thinking twice.
I had about five balls left when Grandma and Brooks and Mollie came up and found me so I said, “Here Grandma, toss it like this.”
“What now?” she said, hesitant but willing, so I showed her and she got it and she tossed it. She missed too so I gave her another one and I shot one and then we where out. We were just about to call it a night when I pulled out four more dollars and said, “Could you load us both us please?”
So Grandma and I went to town, Brooks and Mollie cheering on the sideline, and wouldn’t you know, I didn’t make a single one. Three rounds of 17 balls and I didn’t make a single one. But you know who did make one? Grandma! We were going crazy and she wasn’t quite sure what she’d done or if she’d won or anything, she just kept tossing her ping-pong balls. and that my friends, was the only thing that could have been comparable to Brooks’ red ribbon in the Shelby County Fair Pie contest.
(We also learned later on that the only one who beat Brooks was the wife of the guy the building we were standing in was named after.”

Wild Life Day at the Farm

Sense of Self

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing." -Meister Eckhart

*

Break in the nothingness
when well placed
makes you think inwards
from here
on out.


All I have…
is a desire
for something better

Sunday

Rudy's heady BarBQ

the government

capitol in the background

Austin

String Cheese Incident at Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, Texas

it was billy's birthday, an extra special show

waffle fame

We stopped at Waffle House on our way down to see String Cheese Incident in Austin, and look who I saw tacked to the wall. I think i know a Forkner too...

the travis jam

The recording studio is really coming together. Travis stopped by just before I left for Dallas and had a short little session. We’re on our way to getting a few tracks out and we met a men’s singing group tonight at the fair that I think we should sign to the label… You and I Records

The Current. This is the Current.

I went to Dallas for the weekend, that’s why I haven’t been posting, but lots has come into view the past two weeks, or come into mind, or come into peace of mind is even better I suppose. It’s late and I want to go to sleep so I’ll tell you all about it later, I think I’m ready to settle back into the farm groove for a while, but for now here’s what I managed to type down.

Reflections on the Weekend:

God bless good time old buddies. God bless what is truly yours, for within it lay your path to personal self realization, because that’s all there is to hope for, everything else is illusion. Your methods of perception are themselves the knot you must untie in order to see life as truly as it is.

God bless good time old buddies, where would we be with out them? How would we know who we even were if it weren’t for them? How would I have come to know my inherent blips any other way? Who else would call me out?

I think its ok for me to be doing this time on the farm. Moratorium, Barnard called it, is sort of like a period of time in the lives of a lot of people who go on to be widely influential writers where they kind of go into a granted period of gestation. He said to imagine it like a cocoon, where you go and you are sort of given permission to just kind of hang out and live lightly and figure yourself out for a bit. A time to really think about everything you learned in the first part of your life and pull all the good out of it like iron fillings to a magnetic so that you can net all your previous experiences into a single transcendental cap that is the present. An experience of the Presence is a beneficial experience for the soul that is consciously aware that it is inevitability seeking enlightenment, ultimately.

I’m either going to dig in right where I am and get ‘er done like I know I’ll have to before I get anywhere that’s really any other place than here, on this stage, where I am. True, I can move some place where there are lots of distractions and it will be easier to constantly skim over it more and more, or I can meet it where I am and continue to become more aware of just how conscious of my vibe I really am. The foundation isn’t going to change just because I keep throwing parties over the holes in the wall and in the floor so there’s never any time to notice really.

I think the most crucial thing I can do is become more patient with individual experiences in the present sense of the word and soak into the deepness of all it through the beautiful naïve bliss of utter awe and the etheric sensation of being in the presence of the divine that comes along with it.

The tricky thing is that it takes getting back into the state of mind I was in when I was a few years younger when I was having all the rawest and juiciest secret naughty thoughts about what I really desired to do way deep down inside, masked with a willingness to do what I thought and knew was the best action instead. Training myself to attach positive thoughts to the positive actions didn’t really come until later after my will had trained me well enough to make positivism habitual. You were taught one thing and naturally rebelled against it, which most likely left you sitting in the lake water of the other thing that’s the opposite of what you were initially taught, but now you see how you weren’t seeing a part of the whole earlier because the lens you were using at that particular time wasn’t as good as the lens you have now. The lens you’ve shaped and polished and sharpened and focused for your entire life, up to now. What does your lens for observing truth look like? What kind of filter system are you running in your aquarium, and by aquarium I mean your head, and by head I mean your single point of perception, and by your single point of perception I mean your equilibrium.

The art is to develop a sort of personal method/ritual to get back into conceptual communion with the overtone of a number of very high calibrating resonances.



from brooks’ blog-

“I was talking about how there is a seemingly endless list of projects and chores that you have in your mind, and how it's a constant process of completing one task while beginning another. The key is to balance the small jobs with the larger, more long-term goals. You have to learn to prioritize what you want to do in terms of the money and time and labor and knowledge it requires, to figure out what it is that you can do right now, and what is going to be the best use of your time.”

“You don't have to stop believing common-sense principles of life; that's not what I'm getting at here. What is being asked of you is to forego one's attachment to them as certainties. In order for something like kinesiology to enter into one's working model of the world around them, the possibility of it being a reality must be genuinely accepted. One must be open to it before it can enter.
This sounds simple, but because the implications of kinesiology require one to surrender just about every idea, concept, or pre-conception about life, the universe, and everything that is considered "normal", "rational", or "common-sensical" by our current society, there are many resistances within a person to having it actually become a reality within their worldview. Often these are subconscious, and though a person may purport to "want" it to work, and believe this wholeheartedly to be true, there may nonetheless be blocks, doubts, and apprehensions within their subconscious that must first be rooted out, brought to light and resolved before the person may reliably use kinesiology in their own lives. So look within your awareness for the things which, if someone stated them to you out loud, you would most likely respond with "well no duh, everyone knows that...”’

Gemini for the Week of Now

Of all the objects in the world that are made of 22-karat gold, a bathtub in Japan is the biggest. Weighing in at over 300 pounds, it's in the Funabara Hotel a hundred miles south of Tokyo. I suggest you regard it as your personal symbol of power in the coming week, Gemini. It will remind you to stay true to your task, which is to cleanse yourself extravagantly as you purge your heart of all motivations that aren't pure gold.


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Love, love, love: That is the soul of genius."
Krishnamurti: "The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset."
Henry David Thoreau: "There is no remedy for love but to love more."
Erica Jong: "Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more."

P.J.'s Wisdom

It’s a time where little people rule the pool hall.
Listen to the sound of the drum beat.
It’s the reverb of happy little magic snaps.
We hear about random accounts, but draw colors that don’t exist.
It’s time to dance the serpent dance.
We need to paint the house black,
Then draw red on them.
The end of sadness is the end of reality.
We see it, we love it, but its not what, but how we live it.
Eat berries, beat up cherries.
Say high to the evening bliss,
Kiss the evil monkey in the closet.
Sleep with the driver who delivers the newspaper to the homeless.
Wake up, feel the air in the morning, let the evening dew cover the eyes of the world.
The wolf howls to the moon like the turtle to the sand.

Mahantesh

For Christmas Brooks sponsored a child in India in my name and ever since then we’ve been conversing. It is an amazing thing to try and write a letter to a nine-year-old child who lives in a poor village on the other side of the world and try to figure out what sorts of things about your self you should mention. A wonderful exercise in coming to notice yourself. Who are you? Who are you to a non American? Who are you to a human? How do you describe yourself normally? Why do it any different now? Its not that I seek to be disingenuous in any way by putting all this thought into it, quite the opposite. I want to know what I can share that can be translated.
How it works is he hand writes me a letter in his native tongue and then it is sent along with an English translation to me. I read, respond, and the letter is explained to Mahantesh. Brooks said that he picked Mahantesh because he calibrated his photo and found him to be over 500, but I just like trying to communicate on a human level with some one from a totally different background and mental position of consciousness than me.
I want to share our exchange with you because it has been more than rich and fruitful and I am having the best time with it. I sent him some pictures of the farm and the Labyrinth and, well, you can just read for yourself. We’ll consider this a new segment of the blog. I’m just getting ready to send off a response letter, which I include in the end here, and then I’ll let you all know when I hear from him next.

My Dear Mr. Suttle,

With sweet kiss and with greetings a letter from your loving child Mahantesh.

All of us are keeping well by your blessings. I wish you the same.

I am sending my family photo along with this letter. You can see my mother and myself in the photo. My father had gone for work. Hence you cannot see him in the photo.

Two days back I had gone to my aunty’s place to attend the cradle function of her son. Program was very nice. We have named him as ‘Satish’. How many members are there in your family?

Here with greetings I end this letter.

Your loving sponsor child.
Mahantesh

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Dear Mahantesh,

It is so wonderful to begin to get to know you. It is an honor to be able to share what fortune has given my family with you and your family, and it is more amazing that we can come to know each other even when we live halfway around the world from each other.
Currently I live in Columbiana, Alabama, a small town where my parents grew up. I didn’t grow up here though, I grew up in Pasadena, California with my mother and father and brother named Brooks. I lived there until I was 18 years old and then went to school in Dallas, Texas for four years. I graduated from school this time last year and have been traveling around the United States ever since. Most recently I spent the winter in the mountains in Park City, Utah, and then moved down here to my grandparents farm with my brother for the summer. Even though I wasn’t born in this town, I feel like I am from here in a deeper way because it is small and where both my parents grew up. How big is your village/town/city?
My father passed away from cancer in 2001, which is sad and beautiful at the same time. He taught me many things before, during, and after his death, and he is still a strong ally to me in this lifetime. Maybe that is why I love coming back to his hometown to see my grandparents and run wild on the farm so much. When I am down here it feels like he hasn’t gone anywhere. My mother lives in California in the house I grew up in but we see each other often. I have found life is sweeter when you count your blessings instead of your obstacles. It seems strange but death is the greatest way to learn about life. It teaches us how beautiful our waking moments are and helps us learn to grow and appreciate all the little magical things that happen everyday.
I enjoy music and dancing wildly with my eyes closed very much. I have found that with a good imagination and good music it is possible to close your eyes and travel to far off, mysterious places. Do you do that? Do you enjoy playing music? Do you have a favorite song you like to sing to yourself to make you happy when you are sad?
When is your birthday? Your mother is a very beautiful woman, what is her name? My mother’s name is Dawn and my father’s name is Allan.
What is your favorite color? Will you put some of it on your next letter so I can see?
I am sorry if I am writing too much or asking too many questions, don’t worry about answering all of them if you don’t want to. I enjoy sharing what I can with you and don’t know where to begin. I have reason to believe you are a very wise old soul, Mahantesh, and am blessed to try and get to know you all the way on the other side of the world. I hope you are smiling on your side of the world, and if you can think of anything I can do or tell you to make you smile more, please just let me know.
Last summer I built a stone Labyrinth in the woods on my grandparent’s farm here in Alabama (see picture). It is a very sacred place to me. When I am feeling sad or lost I walk it while I meditate and it helps me to feel whole. If you will send me a stone from where you live I will walk it into the middle of the Labyrinth and leave it there in your honor. It will be a way to connect our worlds, and maybe one day, God willing, you can come and walk it yourself.
I pray this letter finds you and your family in good health and good spirits and look forward to our ongoing conversation.

Sincerely,



Cole Suttle
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My dear Mr. Suttle,

With lots of love and best wishes a letter from your loving child Mahantesh.

All of us are keeping well by the blessings of God and by your prayer’s. How are you? How is your health?

I have received your letter / 9 photos sent by you. Your letter was read and explained to me by our social worker. All my family members and myself felt very happy. Thank you very much for your letter.

Photos have come out very nice. All your family members and yourself look very smart. I would like to answer all your questions. Our plae is a backward villiage. Here we have about 200-300 houses. The main occupation is agriculture. Here we have four temples, one primary school, 5-6 tiny shops, 3 borewells, and a well. Roads are not so good. During the rainiy season we feel very difficult. I also enjoy music with my eyes closed as you do. One of my neighbors has a transistor. Sometiem I enjoy by hearing music from it. But I do not know how to play music. When I become very sad, I sing this song, i.e.

Premachandrama kaige segu udiye
Hele tangle hele tangle’

It is from ‘Yajamana’ Kannada movie. I enjoy singing this song. My mother’s name is Sabavva. I have drawn a picture behind this letter and filled it with my favorite green color.

In my further letter I am sending you a stone. My body colour is light black. So, my hands also a little black.

I am waiting for your next letter. Here I end this letter.

Your loving sponsor child.

Mahantesh

+

September 12, 2006

Dear Mahantesh,
It was so nice to hear from you and hear that you and your family are doing well. Your drawing of a tree with your favorite color looks like a tree I know of here on the farm in Alabama. I think I will call that “Mahantesh’s Tree,” from now on.
My mother brought your letter over from California to where I have been living on the farm in Alabama and we all read it together. My grandmother saw your picture and thinks you are very handsome. She says, “Hello!”
A lot has happened in our family since I wrote last. My grandfather on my late father’s side passed away here in June. He was blessed enough to spend his last weeks in the home he built on the farm he cultivated for 50 years, surrounded by the family who loves him. He was blessed to move across the void peacefully.
What has made the loss of my grandfather so powerful for me is that he passed away on my twenty-third birthday, June 13th, and we buried him on what would have been his own eighty-ninth birthday, June 17th. We buried him next to my father, his son, auspiciously enough, the day before a holiday we celebrate here called, “Father’s Day.” What better present for father’s day than to be reunited?
Even though we are sad to lose Pop, the experience has brought our family closer together as we remember him together and share our fondest memories. When I walk through the fields, I can feel him and my father all around me and I am at peace.
The other big news in my family is that my older brother, Brooks, is getting married to a wonderful girl named Mollie. Auspiciously enough, Mollie has the same birthday as Pop! Pop got to meet Mollie before he passed on and liked her very much. Everyone is very excited and we are all planning to get together in November back in California for a holiday called “Thanksgiving.” My Grandmother has never been to our home in California and so we are going to take her now that Pop is free.
I have been living on the farm with Grandma helping her adjust to life without Pop for the first time in 64 years. Can you imagine what a shock it must be to be married to someone for 64 years and then not have them around anymore? I do my best to bring youth and life and laughter around the farm to share all I can with Grandma. It has been a wonderful experience for both of us. We are blessed to be able to share the secrets of the elder’s for the secrets of the youth. I see now that the farm and all our memories of it are the physical space that holds our spiritual family together.
I am looking forward to walking your stone into the middle of the Labyrinth. In a way you too are part of our spiritual family and it will be an honor to have a physical, stone-solid connection with you, from earth to earth.
The season is just starting to change here. Summer is over and fall is on the way, the leaves on the trees are beginning to change colors from green to yellow to red and then blowing off in the wind. After they fall down they turn brown and there is a nice crunchy sound under your feet when you walk that makes me happy.
I very much enjoyed the song you sing to yourself to make you happy. I have been working on my pronunciation but have no way to make sure if I’m saying it right or not. I kind of like it that way because I never say it the same way twice. It makes me happy to hear myself try.
I’ve included a few more pictures of what has been going on around here, I hope you enjoy. We went fishing in Montana this summer and that is one of the pictures, as well as a picture of the sunrise and the sunset here on the farm. Which do you like better? Sunrise or sunset?

How is your family doing? What season is it over there? What was the funniest thing that happened to you today?
I have been talking about you to many of my friends and they all send their greetings and wish you well. They are excited we are getting to meet.

May blessings and happiness always find you.
Your loving sponsor
Cole

stooges

whether the weather will bring out the sun, or whether the weather bring... snow?

"What? You don't eat dirt?"

brother time

currents and winds

I can feel my equilibrium shift as we take off. To be in the sky for a sunset really lets you see how big the earth is. Everything is a shade of blue but the horizon which is a line of liquid fire orange light slicing the divide, curving ever so slightly if you look just right… extend it in your mind… as the brighter ball of fire dips under into the invisible other side of day, and I am here, perceiving this massive, simple, ancient affair of existence. How blessed.
The beauty of this whole thing, the way the clouds layer themselves and stay on two different planes like that. The way it all stays in balance, the equilibrium of the depth of the sky and the atmosphere, it’s boggling- but it makes sense. It’s the skies of Florida that draw me here. Currents and winds of a single source.

back into the woods

I returned from Florida last night. I reread Power vs. Force in the two days while I traveled there and now back and the crash course review made me feel extra awake. I was in Charlotte waiting for my connecting flight in the terminal and it kept getting delayed along with a few other planes for maintenance reasons they said. There was a guy next to me watching a personal DVD player in his lap when they announced that his flight was refueling in Philadelphia and then it was on its way.
“What the hell!” I hear him say as he slammed his player to the ground. Not looking up from the pages of Power vs. Force I couldn’t help but find humor in how well he was demonstrating the opposite of surrendering to the flow. All he wanted was someone to blame, someone to go yell at, someone to care and be as upset as he was so his ego would feel better.
“God Damnit! I could have rented a car and driven there by now!” he keeps yelling to himself and then storms off to the counter to raise hell. Then he comes back, still disgruntled and hot, and finds that he broke his DVD player when he slammed it to the ground in a childish fit of temper.
I couldn’t help but smile, but I never looked up from my book.

My flight did turn out to be a little late getting back to Birmingham and I was going to feel bad about Brooks having to wait, but somehow I didn’t think he would be there on time anyways. It worked out he was 45 minutes late anyways, hmmm. When I was waiting for my bag to come out I was looking for a coke machine but I couldn’t find one. I asked the security guard if there was one and he said, “sure is, let me show you.”
He proceeded to walk me to the “Authorized Personal Do Not Enter” door and tell me to go through and there would be one on the right I could use, then just come straight back out.
“Thanks so much,” I told him. When I went in there was indeed a coke machine and cans were only 50 cents. A 50 cent coke machine is a rare find these days, am I wrong? Anyways, while I'm in there I realize I don’t actually have a dollar bill or even any change because I didn’t take any carry on what with the new regulations and all. I passed the security guard on the way out, empty handed, and laughed to him about how I didn’t even have a dollar after all.
“Well here, let me give you a dollar,” the security guard insisted.
“No no, are you sure? It’s ok I can wait, no big deal-“
“No no, its just a dollar, here ya go.”
“Gosh sir, I sure do appreciate it.”
Sure enough I got my Dr. Pepper, which was only 50 cents, but he wouldn’t take the change back. “I said I’d give you a dollar I’m going to give you a dollar.”
Power vs. Force, I couldn’t help but smile.

It was so easy not to think about the fact it was 9/11, I don’t know why that is. Fear I presume.

It’s a rainy day on the farm today. As I came up the porch stairs I heard Meadow and then saw him curled up in the chair underneath the bird feeders. Behind him in the fields three turkeys peck along and don’t seem to mind the rain one bit. A few more trees have turned yellow and they stand out with a golden glint that reminds me the seasons are in the midst of change.
Walking in I am greeted by the house and I greet it back, thankful to have returned. Thankful to have such a place to return to. Thankful. Grandma is reading in the chair by the picture window and gets excited to see me. Over her shoulder through the picture glass window I notice ten more turkeys are wandering the other field. There must be near sixteen turkeys in two different flocks living around the farm these days I figure. It’s rather peaceful now that we’ve used up most of our fireworks from the summer, its no wonder the turkeys love to get back in these fields.
Coming back to the farm feels like more of a blessing every time. When I leave this place and venture out to explore and observe and participate it gives me great perspective on just how special of a spot this place is when I come back home. How nice it is to worry about making sure grandma is happy and taken care of, to know I have time to reflect on things that happened out in the world, to have a place to walk that’ll always be there, to have family first and be assured my vibe is positive when I’m here.

hope we live long and lucky

Old soul


Well, Old Soul, he moves slow
He likes to look at things and paint pictures on his radio
He says they make the songs look better.

One day, Joe met a girl
Sweet breathing thing
Dancin' naked, nudey, in the winter snow
Underneath her dozen sweaters

And someday, somewhere
Some things get hit by lighting
And some things just don't
Hope we live long and lucky

At least one things for sure
Or maybe it isn't.
No matter where we are
It's this life that we're livin' in

And someday, somewhere
Some things get hit by lighting
And some things just don't
Hope we live long and lucky

life

At a certain point you are who you are.

I'm down in florida for the weekend so updates are hard to do. Went and tried to swim against full moon currents in the atlantic ocean yesterday, it was a full body experience. Now here are some things to think about.


What if a person’s tastes could change the essential qualities of things?
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There is this boy who has a religious experience. He loses control of his soul, touches a level of truth so deep it changes his color scheme. He became aware of the moments as they passed, not as they happened. In an instant Johnny became aware of the pulse. Everything was shiny and shimmering because he was in perpetual existence; he no longer saw time as a series of frames from a slideshow, he saw life in fluidity. When he talked to people he would sort of plug into them and could perceive their thoughts underneath their words.
At first he was scared, overwhelmed. He didn’t feel like he deserved to have all these gifts of perception. Perhaps “gifts” is not the right word. Responsibilities.
Why me?
He came to covet it and understood.
+
Is personality memory?
+
The Faucet Theory- Everything comes into the universe from one point and ripples out from there, expanding outward.
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The tree is free because it knows where it stands.
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Words are just jarble
Threatening to make sense
Language is a punch line
The carrot to the hare
Habit makes a fool of us all