Catch a Falling Star
My Pal Elliot met me in the Steam Trains parking lot at 4:40 on January 9th, half an hour before sunset. We often hike the East Bay Hills together, but this time was different. We had a mission: to catch a glimpse of Comet McNaught, (aka C/2006 P1), the celestial visitor darting briefly through our solar system.
McNaught was discovered on August 7th, and no one knew how bright it would be—comets are often mysterious and unpredictable—but the stories we’d been reading (“one of the brightest comets of the past century”) were irresistible.
We walked up the road to the microwave tower, and sat on a log as the day ended. It was one of the loveliest sunsets I’d
ever seen, as the solar disk flattened across the Pacific with the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tamalpais silhouetted in the foreground. The lights of Oakland and San Francisco glittered below. As the sky’s glow faded, and brilliant Venus came into view, we scanned the western horizon in vain: no comet.
We were baffled. How had we missed it? Had we totally blown the time, the dates, the direction? Finally, after a few slugs of Mekong whiskey, we began our retreat to the parking lot. Halfway down the hill I stopped at a break in the trees, raised my binoculars for one last look – and gasped in amazement. Two fingers above the horizon, just north of where the sun had set, I saw it: the brilliant white coma of McNaught, trailing a long, gossamer tail that curved in the solar breeze.
Once we knew where to look, McNaught was clearly visible with the naked eye: an absolutely gorgeous sight, like a comet out of a fairytale.
McNaught will soon disappear behind the sun, re-emerge for viewers on the Earth’s southern hemisphere, and swing off toward the reaches of deep space. For the next few days, though—through January 13th—those of us in the northern hemisphere, with a clear view of the eastern and/or western horizon, will have a chance to see this beautiful apparition at dawn and sunset. Catch it if you can.
God, that is. 
boarding gate in New York. Raed Jarrar, an architect of Iraqi descent on his way to California, was forced to remove a black T-shirt inscribed with an anti-war slogan — “We Will Not Be Silent” — in Arabic and English. The phrase, ironically, is borrowed from the White Rose group, formed in Munich in 1941. White Rose members believed that the young people of Germany had the potential to overthrow Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government. How’s that for irony?
refreshing to be in a place where I couldn’t check my email! Anyhow, the dispatches are going up — there will be two of them — and you can find them, as ever, on the 
their mystery and grandeur (which are hard to resist, even though we’ve seen a thousand pictures of them), I found that they, well, put me in MY head. The obsessive manufacture of the moai – enormous projects which exhausted a culture and its resources — were an uncomfortable metaphor for the pitfalls awaiting a solitary soul with artistic pretentions. 
rolling from the crests of ancient volcanoes toward cliffs that tower over a cobalt-blue sea. The people are beautiful, the dances are wild, and the mangoes are the most luscious gold you’ll ever see.
the most famous writer you’ve never heard of; his books include T
know how to read – except for one man, who builds his vocabulary by watching an ancient cache of silent movies.
Tevis
for me. My brother Jordan’s birthday was June 6th. He took his life in March, 1990, at 33, overwhelmed by the drama and despair within his own monumental head. This Summer I’m unusually focused on that event: a San Francisco filmmaker has asked me to work with him on a short film about suicide. It’s in the early stages, but I’ll provide details as they emerge.
autobiography. Second, it was exactly twelve years ago, during the epic journey described in my book 
from Egypt, the “Feast of Freedom” may well be the longest-running ritual in human history, having been observed every year for at least three millennia. The entire Passover Sedar, with its sweet apples and bitter herbs, is simply a vehicle for story-telling: something that has become more and more important in my own creative life. 
separation from church and state but also aware, every day, of how much the world has changed—and how much I have changed—since my first Asian odyssey, many long years ago. On my final day in Nepal in 1984, I remember walking around a sacred ficus tree holding the hand of a little blind boy, offering prayers to Saraswati and fighting back tears; during my last day in Thailand, just a few weeks ago, I went to see King Kong (the new one, of course) at the Siam Center multiplex, where I had to wrap myself in broadsheets from the Bangkok Post to fight off the cryogenic blast of the air conditioning. 
bathyspheric strains of System 777’s Fire+Water CD, as I prepare for a November 10th departure to Indonesia and beyond. It’s the longest semi-open-ended trip I’ve taken in a while, and though it won’t compare with the 16-month odysseys that defined my younger days, it promises to be an amazing series of adventures.
working with the Berkeley-based Seacology Foundation, writing about their ingenious environmental projects and sending dispatches back to Salon, Islands, and the Seacology site itself – not to mention my own party, Ethical Traveler. (Visit the Events section for web links.)
the Bunaken reefs are above a sheer wall 10,00 feet deep, cool upwellings have prevented coral bleaching. In my opinion, Bunaken ties with Palau as the world’s best dive spot. 
And so much of it is utterly dreamlike. The steel ladder with 108 rungs, rising from the alkaline anvil of the Playa into the radiant sky; the giant Unicorn with its jeweled eye, breaking from the flat expanse of earth; the woman with a purple hat and giant tricycle, offering ice-cold milk and homemade cookies to the dust-covered vagabonds on the seemingly infinite plain.
the thought of writing about it has never occurred to me. It’s like trying to draw a tesseract – a four-dimensional object – in two dimensions. My experience in Black Rock City is all about stories, conveyed not on the page but in urgent or sleepy tones, tinged with wonder or disbelief, told over gritty-eyed breakfasts or dinners by Coleman light, fingers tracing accidental semaphores through the fine layers of dust on coffee cups and tortilla chip bags…
My own stories from the Burn
Oakland, 8/18/05: