Red Coral

by Duncan Charles Mason

Googling images of the phrase “blood red coral” had only revealed an endless stream of images of red coral “crafted” into jewelry, as if it only existed set in silver or gold or in combination with gemstones and other precious materials. Only here or there on the scrolling web page did the coral appear in its natural state in the endlessly shifting panoply of the aquatic depths. The irony of this, apropos but unexpected, only served to steel resolve.

Getting off the plane into the dazzling light and heat was a welcome relief after the stifling restrictions of the airplane cabin and the frigid, frozen wasteland of winter left far behind.

Long haul flights to tropical climes, once upon a time, ended with the slightly stressful process of keeping a tired (but glad to be standing) body hunched over a luggage cart while tensely waiting for bags to be launched on to the carousel, wrestled into position, and wheeled out of the baggage area into the dazzling pleasure potential of the holiday destination: sunshine, palm trees, beaches, coral.

This time, however, only a small backpack as carry on baggage and a trippingly simple stroll through to the airport’s exit and the waiting taxis. A half hour ride through palm treed streets punctuated by glimpses of jungle, humble homes, shops and institutions of learning and then the sign that beckons to the chosen spot, the elysian destination for some serious rest, relaxation, resolution.

Divorce, like death, greatly focuses the mind. Grown up children are easily left behind, at least in terms of one’s direct sense of responsibility to and for them. Dreams of a better life, dreams of living off the land, organic gardens, tenured positions in academia, a critically accepted novel, a successful string of gallery exhibitions, the intermittent attempts at poetry are all now also easily left behind.
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Dreams do die hard, but after a certain amount of time has passed or a certain level of realization achieved, they all become passing show settled into quiescence, like household dust settled into forgotten corners, or detritus sifted to the bottom of a pond to nestle in silence and gradually rot into oblivion.

The chosen accommodation is all that has been desired: a jungle cabin nestled into the hillside, one entire wall is the natural stone of an enormous boulder, the cabin incorporated into the hillside. A kitchen area leads out on to the verandah, a sleeping loft with its ubiquitous mosquito net beckons above.

The spa and cooling pool, which is a waterfall gracefully draping over an enormous boulder, is a short walk away along gravel and flag stone paths lined with pots containing lotus flowers. The enormous hexagonal cabana that serves as a platform for dance, yoga, martial arts, meditation, can also be seen from the verandah through the gently arcing trunks of the trees.

There was thought of a simpler and less luxurious location, perhaps just a simple beach house and tiny kitchen. But being a little more upmarket ensures a certain distance from the oft-times debauched and sordid (and noisy) revelers who congregate in tropical paradises in resorts at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum.

This was a final indulgence, and as such had to be perfect.

Once the diagnosis had been accepted the decision to end things this way was easy, the only question that remained was where and how. A few months spent wrapping up the loose ends of a somewhat peripatetic life had been relatively straightforward, and possessions were easily disposed of, or, so as not to raise suspicion, put into storage. Remarkable how little is left when one truly chooses to divorce oneself from the trappings of a modern 21st century lifestyle: cars, bedding, lamps, books (all those once precious books), clothes, ornaments, foods once cherished now merely a minor, though pleasurable, part of one’s daily routine.

The diagnosis, once accepted, changed everything. At first the grief was inconsolable, as all grief is. As T.S. Eliot says, “Time is no healer, the patient is no longer here”. What was difficult was the inability to discuss one’s fears and realizations with others. No one wanted to ‘go there’. Eyebrows were raised, frowns creased, one was labelled negative and the hurdy gurdy of ‘positive thinking’ was cranked up to drown out the gnawing teeth of truth. Friends turned away. Lovers chose to ignore. The topic was tentatively broached with a spouse or an adult child or teenage nephew; attempts were made to gauge the waters, to dip one’s toe into the slough of despond, to ascertain whether a pithy quote might be given to help the loved one when the time came for their own realization of the encroaching inevitabilities.

In the end the choked down despair is unstably settled, somewhere in the guts, and the mind begins to roam freely once more, painting pictures of an exit strategy created with all the passion, precision and creativity available to the aesthetically sensitive, richly educated, modern mind; an aesthetic quest for the anesthetic.

Solace — unavailable for the most part from those treasured ‘others’ of one’s acquaintance — is found in timeless classics: Mahler’s Fifth, Faure’s Requiem, Schubert’s Trout Quintet, the poet laureates of the counterculture — Joni, Neil, David, Bob, Bruce, Carlos, Jimi; the poets — Eliot, Blake, McCarthy, Kafka, Mann; the painters Venosa, O’Keefe, Bateman, Dali. A long list, much pain transmuted into art; much art transmuted into pain.

Then, too, the consolations of wisdom: Rumi, Prajnaparamita, the zen masters, Osho, Patanjali, the Sufi poets, the music of India.

The laptop contains a library and gallery of beauty and wisdom, the artifacts of a life spent in pursuit of value, of truth, of a loving kindness toward all that exists. Reflections all of an acknowledgement that this planet itself is alive to its uttermost recesses, and registers everything done upon it, just as our own bodies are crisscrossed with the tracks and traces of our own journey in consciousness, sensation and endeavour.

A quote comes to mind from a long ago book (and a beautiful film):

We die, we die,
We die rich with lovers & tribes
tastes we have swallowed
bodies we have entered
& swum up like rivers
fears we’ve hidden in.
I want all this marked on my body
where the real country is
— not this wretched cave —
not the boundaries drawn on maps,
the names of powerful men.
I know you’ll come & carry me out
into the palace of winds
That’s all I’ve wanted
to walk in such a place with you
with friends on earth without maps.
The lamp’s gone out
and I’m writing in the darkness. (Ondaatje)

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The lovers, the love, perhaps all that remains alongside this sense of gentle resignation and profound, poignant sorrow.

The first evening, a long walk on the beach is followed by a sojourn in the steam room, the cooling pool — head pummeled by the falling water, a gentle stroll back to the jungle cabin where a basket of fruit and lemon ginger tea (as requested) waits in the small fridge. The birds are quieting down as the sun quickly dips toward darkness.

A large lizard has left a ‘gift,’ a good sized turd, in the middle of the large slab of stone that is the coffee table of the living area. Looking up a beady eye and a fat, lizard body are glimpsed in a crevice where the warm tones of the wood of the ceiling meet the native stone of the wall. ‘This is my home,’ it seems to say, ‘You are merely a visitor here’.

The next morning, yoga, coffee on the terrace, letters and post cards are written — farewells to friends and acquaintances, gracious acknowledgements of the ‘thank-yous’ from charitable organizations to which donations have been given over the last few months.

Three days and three nights seems a very short time to say goodbye to life. In truth this has been building for years.

A Pentagon report, discovered online while a death-dealing president on the opposite side of the Potomac was denying that global warming even existed, was one of many milestones along the way. On the one hand denial, on the other the military flexing its steel claws to curb, to contain, to acquire.

Then the video by a presidential candidate who through his quiet humility and integrity made us realize at the same time the awful (and so inconvenient) truth of our dilemma and the heart-breaking loss of what might have been had the democratic process not been hijacked by greed, perversity and arrogance.

And then, despite the horrors already proclaimed, the ongoing realization of the feedback loops already in motion, discovered piecemeal over time in the news reports and on the websites of courageous individuals — some of whom had already walked away from the trappings of empire in order to attempt to reinvent what it means to be human. And all of this occurring against a background susurrus of beached whales, drowned polar bears, falling bats and birds, dead bees, plastic gyres, thawing permafrost, fracking and famine.

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The first day is spent snorkeling, the joyous buoyancy of the coral reef, the symphony of clicks and ticks and whispers of the water in the ears of the witness. The sharks, the sea turtles, the multi-coloured fish, the lobsters, cuttlefish, the coral, the coral, the coral: soft, hard, pink, purple, blue, red — blood red.

Later, exhausted, feeling that languorous exhaustion that only comes from hours spent in warm salty water, the pleasant dehydration as the moisture is pulled from the body by the higher salt content of our mother, the sea. That first slug of cold water after the swim — “Ah, so good!”

Simple pleasures: a shower after the snorkeling, yoga on the grass in the waning afternoon sun, the steam room, the waterfall cooling pool, the fruit, the ginger tea, the setting sun.

A fresh lizard turd is there again — smack dab in the center of the slab of stone — the beady eye still watches from the niche above. Joy in the audacity of its simple, primordial gesture of territoriality. A coffee cup raised in salute, in acknowledgment: “I get it. Thanks for letting me share your space for a while – and don’t worry, I’ll be leaving soon.”

Wondering how old the lizard is — it is almost as long as my arm from tip to tail. How many guests have shared this space — how does it get out at night to hunt, what secret egress known only to itself leads out into the teeming night jungle?

A peaceful night of deep dream-punctuated sleep. The first moments of slumber a riot of colour and light as memories of the reef play across the eyelid screen of consciousness.

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The second day begins with a climb up the slopes behind the resort, sweat pouring after only a few minutes in the humid, tropical heat. Gradually a view over a chain of green islands, glistening ocean, cloudless empyrean, below a prospect of endless palm trees, some plantations of coconut, banana trees, here and there a glimpse of house or road. In the near distance a trio of elephants are moving along a jungle track, probably on their way to work, their masters strolling beside them.

Ivory, bear gall, rhino horn, feathers, leathers, gemstones, oil. How difficult it is to imagine a human civilization without an internal combustion engine, a drive shaft, a model T. What would be doing now if the car had never been invented? Horses and elephants and donkeys and asses and camels and llamas everywhere? The dog sled and the travois? Historical records of the amount of manure collected from the streets of London during the time of Dickens is enough to make one question the viability of that. There are only so many fields upon which such mountains of waste can be spread.

Climbing higher now, the distant prospect is a pure gradation of ocean into sky. Here and there ships pass — a commercial vessel, a sailboat, a Phinisi. Thoughts of the news bouncing off satellites emerge in my mind — CNN, BBC, Fox, CBC, Reuters – a cacophony of infamy and misery. Better left alone, better this peace, this false peace purchased by Western privilege and atmosphere-corrupting airliners; the guilty pleasure of comfort at 20,000 feet.

Approaching noon of the second day — this is the halfway point.

Descending the winding pathway to the cabin below, a light brunch of pineapple and apple slices, cold jasmine tea, then grab the snorkel, mask, and flippers and go back to the gently purling surf: the coral beckons.

The sharks are the ‘ferraris of the deep’, breathtaking in their streamlined purity, their singleness of purpose, their smooth simplicity. A large lobster bobs gently between two boulders, its antennae almost as long as its body – it seems about half a meter long in the magnified clarity of the coral surf. Closer inspection reveals a single bite has removed the entire back carapace. Moving in closer for a better view, the claws are tempting – a lot of meat there. But who knows how long it has been dead. Probably taken only this morning, a 6o year old life ended so one shark could have one unnoticed bite as it swam on in search of further nourishment. Then the realization that the ‘smell’ of the dead lobster, its ‘blood’ leaking into the surrounding waters might attract other sharks, time to move on.

Another evening of sunset silence, mp3 player playing Imee Oii’s beautiful version of the prajnaparamita sutra as the water falls over the stone into the cooling pool. Lizard turd and ginger tea, beady eye and sweet repose.

I sit on the verandah late into the night, drinking green tea, gazing at the stars.

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Morning awakens early from a vivid nightmare — a duel with a demon or perhaps Satan himself (itself?). Echoes of loud noises in the mind, of thunders and shouting, dark chanting. A vivid memory of confronting the demon, man-like, human, of being struck physically by its fist. Of calling down the forces of light with a raised right hand and delivering them to the accursed enemy with a pointing left index finger: invoking Higher Self, Vajrasattva, Sanat Kumara, Helios. On awakening a sense of quiet joy, a shy smile at the realization that one’s own dreams could be so vivid and so dramatic — the star of one’s own movie. Astonishing.

The third day, the last day, the self-agreed upon term of life’s rich pageant; the cusp of farewell, the horizon of eternity. The past is gone, completely gone, forever gone. The future is unwritten and unwanted. The here is now. The moment is all.

Osho, in one of his numerous books on zen tells the story of the zen master who died standing up. It seems impossible, but zen stories are like that — impossible inspiration.

At the end of his book on the Prajnaparamita Sutra, Osho explains that the first “Gate” (pronounced “Ga-tay”) — the sanskrit word meaning ‘gone’ or ‘beyond’ refers to the emerging consciousness transcending the mineral realm, matter, the geosphere, the timeless consciouslessness, the timeless deep sleep of the rocks, boulders, mountains. Wandering over I place a warm palm on the cool boulder wall of the jungle cabin, grateful for its enclosing shelter these last couple of days, of the lizard’s hospitable indulgence, the first “GATE!” is spoken. Goodbye.

The second “GATE” is bidding farewell to the realm of the biosphere, the preconscious realm of the plants and animals. The animals live out of the past, out of instinct, genetic inheritance. The beady eye is watching. A nod of thanks to the lizard and a ‘namaste’ gesture. Then a short walk across the verandah, down the stairs, fingers trailing through leaves and flowers, tracing the delicate web of plant life, eyes acknowledging bird and butterfly, palm leaves overhead clattering in the warm breeze. Gratitude, acknowledgment: “GATE!” Goodbye.

Moving across the beach, baking in the late morning light, moving toward the gentle surf, turquoise and aquamarine, donning fins, mask and snorkel, leaving sandals and shirt on the beach, taking the yellow-handled razor knife from the bag. Turning at the water’s edge, the spindrift border, to walk backwards into the waves, feeling the delicious warm coolness creep up my legs to my thighs, the electric thrill of the water enveloping crotch, the first chakra, the hara, then the second chakra, the belly button, and then the diaphragm, the third, lungs expanding spontaneously, freely as the water now covers the heart chakra — I am buoyant now, I am becoming a fish again.

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The next realm to transcend is the noosphere, the mind, self-consciousness, the razor’s edge of self, the dweller on the threshold. The first realm, the geosphere, is unconsciousness — Gate, goodbye; the second realm, the biosphere, is preconsciousness — Gate, goodbye. Now, time to say goodbye to “I”. The self is the central dilemma, yet also the gift of this precious human incarnation — the mind of the ever arising future; the still point, the moving point of light between stillness and arising, between the point and the wave, between the atom and the galaxy.

Me — such a small word for such a complexity. And ‘my’ gift to humanity at this time of NTE? The extraction of myself from this beautiful tormented planet. How strange to arrive at a place in one’s heart and soul where one can only conclude that to end one’s life of humble privilege is the best gift one can give to this planet, its creatures, the human race itself.

With progress, there must always be anxiety. With the ego, there must always be the dark night of the soul. The acquisition of healing hands necessitates the sojourn in the crying desert, the encounter with the shadow, the gracious gifts of fire and pain.

Saying goodbye to the human form.

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Now more fish than human being, floating weightless in our mother, the sea, gently rising and falling with the waves, focusing on breathing as deeply and gently as possible through the plastic snorkel, meditative, eyes scan the reef below.

And there, below me, Picasso trigger fish, a pair, such gorgeous coloration, such evocative, extravagant display. Two large blue green fish with tails like crescent moons appear above the endlessly shifting sun-dappled sand and coral a meter below — they swim in darting circles around the ends of my fins. They are playing with me and I with them, we are toying with each other. Around me, here near the surface, the small yellow and black banded fish form a dappled pattern of inquisitive life, their tiny, always-surprised eyes come in close and regard me with wonder.

Here a pair of cuttlefish, male and female, so close I could reach out and touch them. I marvel at the ever changing pattern as they move over the ever-shifting texture and colour of reef and rock, coral and sand. My ears are filled with the endlessly varying clicks and quirks of sound created by the waves among the corals and, no doubt, by the fish themselves. Raising my eyes I see the black-tipped reef sharks, harmless to humans, shoot by, just below the surface, graceful streamlined hunters, ever moving, gliding through the water as if it is air.

I feel a pang of regret, for although I have my scuba diving certificate and have done a number of dives, I have never had the privilege of swimming with dolphins, those laughing, smiling carnival barkers of the deep. I have never been blessed by the graceful presence of manta rays, surely my favourite marine creature, never seen them fly through the ocean depths and felt the gentle, timeless rhythm of that aquatic flight. But it is time to say goodbye and I now know, with a sense of gently settling finality, that I will never see them.

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I consider my throat chakra, my third eye, ajna chakra, my crown chakra gently massaged by my hair waving back and forth in the ripples of mother ocean. The third goodbye is “Paragate”, going beyond.

The three levels we are transcending here — sleep “Gate”, dream “Gate” and wakefulness “Paragate” — are not the wakefulness of a Buddha, but the wakefulness of you and me which contains within itself dreams, fantasies, sleep, ego, ambition, love, sorrow. For us to rest we must retreat from the world into light sleep — going backwards into dream and then into deeper dreamless sleep to return refreshed to our daily life. It is almost like we are regressing back through the animal state of slumber into the dreamless, timeless sleep of the mountains themselves.

Now, transcending all of this, we are saying goodbye to rock, plant and animal, human being. Paragate means ‘gone beyond’, ‘gone forever’, ‘always going’, the never ending pilgrimage of consciousness, of the wanderer awakening.

And suddenly I feel blessed. Two green sea turtles, gentle, venerable fellow travelers appear, and I laugh through my snorkel to see them — such delight. Their shells are dappled with barnacles from which stream green tendrils of plant life. Their beaks gnaw on the rocks, scraping off the green nourishment they thrive on. I watch them for several minutes and then, on an impulse — slightly naughty, truly delighted, I transfer the yellow handled razor knife to my left hand and dive down to touch the shell of the female with my right forefinger while she is preoccupied with the scrumptious buffet before her.

I feel slightly guilty as, shocked, she shoots away, her paddle-like forelimbs propelling her so swiftly away from me. The male follows her immediately, keeping close.

I say a little prayer of thanks.

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My mind has now become completely silent — silent chitta — I am only a deeply breathing witness in human form to the astonishing beauty around me: dappled sunlight, living colour moving in fishy form, soft corals waving, hard corals dappled with light and shadow and colour.

Such an impossibility to truly capture in paint or word this scene. I transcend the image and the word. I seek the gracious peace that ‘surpasseth’ understanding. I transfer the razor knife to my right hand, turn the black knob that locks the superbly sharp, wafer thin steel blade and extend the blade a finger’s length from the yellow plastic handle — superb technology purchased for very little.

I think of what an object like this would have meant to a neolithic hunter skinning the day’s catch. What a blade this sharp would have meant to a fishermen landing his catch on the banks of some river in Dark Age Europe. I think of why children today in Africa don’t even have pencils for their school work, while students in high schools in the West whine if they don’t have the latest smart phone on which to record and disseminate their ‘selfies’. I shake my head, and return to the present, and the now, and the silence, and the beauty.

The final goodbye is a complex one: Parasamgate — transcending even the concept of transcendence, going beyond the beyond. Releasing even the desire for enlightenment, the desire to become saint, arhat, boddhisattva, Buddha. Residing in the past is easy — and there is a kind of silence there. Looking for and moving into the future breeds anxiety — it is risky, there is always a chance of a mistake. But the final doorway is the ego itself and the dropping of it. Traumatic this encounter with the shadow on the doorstep, the watcher in the water, the dweller on the threshold. But this is what the Buddhas and the Christs have done, this is what we are enjoined to do – to disappear into the silence of the Buddhasphere, the Christophere, the Krishnasphere, what the Sufis call “fana”, the annihilation of the self, going beyond yourself, beyond your Self — the Tao of no-mind, consciousness without a center, with no mind in it, no name, no form, emptiness, shunyata, nirvana — the extinguished candle of the eternal now — timeless and eternal.

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I think back to the first time I heard of the Bodhisattvas and the Bodhisattvic Vow — I was 18 and attending a week long ‘Summer Festival in the Dharma’ at Manjushri Institute, Conishead Priory, Ulverston, in Cumbria, on the legendary borderland between England and Wales, the land of Taliesin and Merlin. Lama Zopa and Lama Yeshe — thank you.

I think of all the hours spent reading the sacred texts, the hours of struggling with meditation, the yoga classes, karate classes, the pilgrimages, of changing diapers, feeding colds, starving fevers, of cleaning pots and pans ‘just because’, of chastising myself for getting angry in traffic, for being disingenuous, for betrayals, recriminations, regrets. I chastise myself for not loving enough, for loving too much.

And I balance this with gratitude for all the moments of beauty, of truth, of communion, of sex, of love, of affection given and received. I remember a character in a movie I once saw — Ricky Fitts, who said: “That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember … I need to remember … Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”

And here, now, the chosen spot, they loom in front of me — the blood red corals, the coral garden, the crimson corals I remember so clearly from my first experience snorkelling with one whom I loved so very deeply. One who is now gone from my life — and to whom, yesterday, I posted a letter of forgiveness and gratitude. For all love is pain — for me, in this life at least, it has always seemed a fifty/fifty bargain. And I was always willing, well, almost always willing, to pay the price of lovers, spouses, children, friends.

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Love is all we have. Love is. Love abides.

“Parasamgate!”

I draw the superbly sharp blade across my left wrist, the cut is so thin, the blade so sharp, the water so warm – almost matching my body temperature — that there is no pain. I watch the crimson cloud flow out of me and dissipate into carmine, into ruby, rose, amaranth, carnation, pale pink cloud disappearing … And I transfer the blade to my left hand and cut my right wrist. I drop the knife and watch the yellow handle spiral swiftly to the fine white sand below, catching the light winking off the spiraling silver steel of the blade. “Goodbye.”

I think of my minerals, my salt flowing outwards, diluting and disappearing into the rich soup of life that is the ocean. I laugh through my snorkel as I think of me nourishing all this beauty around me. I smile. And words come into my mind unbidden: “So the drop disappears into the ocean as the ocean flows into the drop.”

I breathe ever more deeply, extend my arms out in front of me and raise my eyes to see the gentle rhythm of the two sea turtles as they swim back towards me.

I speak through my snorkel: “Thank you, thank you, thank you …”

For just a moment I think of sharks and their sensitivity to blood in the water. I can almost feel them, like telepathy, like radar, like sonar, I sense them swimming in the water surrounding me, out of sight. They will come soon, but I will be gone:

“Bodhi!”

“Svaha!”

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Duncan C. Mason (B.Ed., M.Ed.) is an educator in art, literature and the English language with more than twenty years experience teaching in Canada, Japan and the Middle East. He has a novel entitled Muse (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), which is a modern riff on the Orpheus myth, and his website contains some of his other writings and artwork. He loves life, coral, trees, and dark chocolate.

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McPherson is interviewed for Peak Moment TV. Catch the action here (transcript is here).

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The following ad hit the top of the CLASSIFIEDS page a couple days ago:

We sold our home, featured in the 2007 Solar Tour. We literally built it ourselves, with a bit of help. It was the home of our dreams, and we designed it thinking, I’m planning on leaving, only with a tag around my toe.

So, now what? Well we have identified a lovely parcel that is very amenable to setting up a durable set of living arrangements at. It has 2 sources of water, irrigation rights to 8 flat acres, and a good woodlot as well. Total acreage is 15 to 20 acres.

The problem that is elucidated so well, here and at the Doomstead Diner, is we realize we can’t do this alone, too old, too much to do, and community seems to be the toughest ingredient but that is the solution to seeing this maybe work.

Hence this ad.

We are a couple, ages 60 and 56, respectively. The skill set we bring to this arrangement is our biggest contribution. We keep bees, and KNOW how to grow food and put it up, we are in the greenhouse business and plan on setting 2 at 30′ X 96′ for growing food, most of all 4 seasons. There is room for chickens, goats, rabbits, and maybe a cow/calf operation. With rotational grazing, we think we can raise enough to feed a sizable group, say up to 8-10 small groups. Maybe room for 30.

The first hurdle will be the zoning folks, but we may have a work-around about them, too.

Then how to go about attracting folks, what the buy in cost is, to retire any mortgages or other encumbrances, and what sort of mix or skill set gives this any so much as a whisper of a chance.

Initial cost per couple looks to be $10K, for a whisper of a chance. Then when governance is decided, what to purchase, barter, trade for to harden up the farm, plan for resilience, what tools, skills give the best shot at random chance.

Check with Guy is to who he saw and felt when he spent some time in our care.

The work to pull this off, the resources needed in the way of human inputs in lieu of unlimited and then gone all fossil fuels, will stagger and perhaps defeat most, who can say.

We will keep an open mind, if someone has a stronger idea, but this is our means of making a stand, attempting to leave someone or something for those that may follow.

The complete set of skills we have obtained is something we can talk over the web or on the phone.

Interested parties contact us at through Guy. He will forward serious inquires.

Rick and Anna

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Sunday, 30 March 2014, 3:00 p.m., Multi Kulti, 1000 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, sponsored by the Chicago Chapter of System Change Not Climate Change, “Climate Chaos” (follow on Facebook here)

Tuesday, 1 April 2014, 7:00 p.m., Paul Henry’s Art Gallery, 416 Sibley Street, Hammond, Indiana, “Climate Chaos” (follow on Facebook here)

East-coast tour (detailed information to come, including exact locations and times; follow on Facebook here):

5 April 2014, Ithaca, New York

6 April 2014, Niagara Falls, New York

Monday, 7 April 2014, 7:00 p.m., McMartin House National Historic Site, 125 Gore Street Perth, Ontario, Canada. RSVP and follow on Facebook here.

Tuesday, 8 April 2014, 7:00 p.m. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Conversation With Paul Beckwith (to be live-streamed)

Wednesday, 9 April 2014, 6:00 p.m., Steelworker’s Hall, 66 Brady Street, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, “Climate Chaos” (Facebook announcement and invitation)

Thursday, 10 April 2014, 12:00 noon, Meeting Room 1, Greater Sudbury Public Library, 74 Mackenzie Street, Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, “Responding to Climate Chaos” (Facebook announcement and invitation)

14 April 2014, Westchester County, New York

20 April 2014, Potluck dinner with attendees of last May’s presentation at the Mt. Kisco Library

The Next Step: Living Courageously in a World of Transition, a 14-day seminar, 12-25 June 2014, Izabal, Guatemala, Central America.

Late October through early November 2014, European tour. Details forthcoming. Follow on Facebook here.