Baron Michael Mojohito John Richerson von Tchudi

I know my sudden departure may come as a shock to you, but in truth, it has been a long time coming.

Since I arrived, in fact.

I ought to have told you earlier in our relationship, but I’m not the type to settle down, and no sooner do I arrive than I am already looking at the exit door. It’s a pattern I need to work on, I know. Because we started some things together. Things that when we started, I thought I was ready to commit to. A real career, a real community. I took on a lot of responsibility for our growth together, and I saw early on that I got in too deep too quickly. That happens sometimes when we meet again after a long time apart, and the new traits make even the old familiar ones exciting again.

An adage I use often: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I suppose figures of speech become so because they speak to us on many levels, sometimes eluding us with simple complexity…

Anyway…

I got in too deep too quickly, and I tried to correct for that. I noticed you notice me withdrawing, and even as I did so, I was really intending to come back with fervor, stoke the coals and grow back stronger, but, well, that just didn’t happen. And I left you hanging.

I’d like to say, Reno, that “It’s not you. It’s me.” But it is you. You left me hanging, too. I thought you’d pick up the slack in our relationship, see that the distance I was creating was for my own protection, realize that you could keep us both safe by stepping up to the challenge of taking care of your old friend. But that didn’t happen. You stayed needy, quietly, and I just couldn’t keep feeding you all I had.

Reno, you’re a Gateway place, some intersection of laylines gives you purpose. The last place between lush free Pacific and desolate, barren dystopic desert – just look at all the “Burners”, those transhuman souls desperate to re-create the excitement of cosmic life who pass through you in droves on their annual pilgrimage to the psychotic other-land of their imagination, forced by the tight white collar of this doomed culture to flip out in the opposite direction, Reno is their gateway to that land. Also between the hot south Vegas Angeles and the cool north Portland Seattle, while not a pit-stop for most, Reno, you are the fulcrum.

Even more, Reno, you are a portal between above and below, the reality of the living and the realm of the discorporeal. I meet as many disembodied beings as embodied ones, searching for the warmth of connection with another soul, able to envelop and protect them from their own limitless hunger.

Take a look at yourself, Reno: you exist as transition fixed, progress frozen at each step. You amaze me with your progressive stationaryness. A lot of people, well, they need to spend time on the threshold – from here one can look forward and backward through time, peer at the notion of the soul, obsess over sureality – until they become ready to tip the balance of their own destiny in the controlled repetitive falling of walking forward.

Reno, I’m sorry to leave you. It makes me sad.  It does. I’ll watch you from afar, and check in, but I’ll miss all the games we started that we didn’t quite finish. Or really, even quite begin.

But it isn’t you, it is me.

I am thrilled for the future! One can only stand on the precipice of destiny for so long before being drawn in. Not that I believe in destiny, necessarily, or karma, but with observation the patterns of life are undeniable. Not sitting still says something about me: I am not complacent. I am not waiting for something better to come along, I am beckoning it. And consequently, my life continually improves, quality of life gets richer, growth and learning accelerate.

When I reunited with you, Reno, it was meant to be only a short time. That short time extended, and extended some more until I didn’t know for sure when we would separate. (I hope you didn’t get too comfortable during that time – I didn’t.) So the last half a year has been borrowed time… I hope you can understand.

I’m leaving you to be with Heartwood Institute again. Heartwood is a village, a school, devoted to healing arts. My students are here and there, but my teachers are waiting for me there. Accelerated growth, deepening of practice is the hallmark of that kind of life. For all of our amazing projects, I feel stagnant where I am.

It’s time for me to move on.

It’s both of us.

Let’s try not to have a drawn out farewell. I ain’t one for no emotional goodbye…

I love to write, and I love to write for this journal/blog. I craft entries in my head for days, weeks even, imagining a perceived audience anticipating my update quietly. But the posts don’t get written, and my drawling mental drafts get weary and frayed. I plan to write. “Today I’ll make a blog post”, I think. I put it on my “To Do” list, which is any variety of scraps of paper, chunky felt-tipped letters on a dry erase board, note books, post-its, text on a mobile phone. But the posts don’t get written, the list is too long.
I begin to get miffed at myself, and even resent the perceived audience. I don’t get emails or personal tribe messages inquiring to my well-being, so I imagine that nobody is out there, or that nobody cares. And that’s not really important, and not really why I write. So, before I give you a bulleted story as to my excuses and perpetual priorities, I’m just going to say:
Maybe I’m taking a vacation from the ‘net for a while. Maybe I’ll not be planning to write another post, to be a blogger extraordinaire. Maybe you shouldn’t wait for another entry in my journal. Instead, you send me a personal message on tribe. Send me an email. Get on Skype and add mojo_hito as your friend. Figure out what Twitter is and add mojohito as your friend. Dial 415 992 5525 and see what happens. Leave a voice mail message. I’m really easy to learn about, find, talk to. But I don’t have the time to make the time to sit down and write to you a beautifully worded entry about all the events listed below. I’m re-prioritizing, and instead of blogging, I meditate. Instead of abosrbing information, I integrate. Instead of thinking, I do. Here’s a sample:

> Tahoe Yoga and Wellness Center. I work the front desk as a receptionist, I update the website, I make fliers and you know what? I’m making print adverts that get published.
> Tahoe Yoga some more. I facilitate taiji sessions, five days a week, in addition to the desk job.
> Hito’s Homemade. The kombucha is thriving, and so is the market for my humble project. Heatherlee and I are working together on this, 50/50 and splitting profits, but it’s difficult to keep up with the work necessary. It’s probably a black market operation, but the Health Department doesn’t return my phone calls, so I don’t know.
> Great Basin Community Food Cooperative. I’m the webmaster, which means I maintain and update the website, and think a lot about how to make it better for the people who use it. I also maintain the bulletin board and the events calendar, which get a lot of spam, which takes more time to delete.
> GBCFC cont’d: I’m doing ordering, which is about five hours every week or every other week.
> GBCFC part III: I’m still on the Board of Directors. But I’ve quit the other committees, and stopped going to meetings.
> Healthy Beginnings; It’s a Lifestyle Magazine. My first professional article will be published in the May issue of this local magazine. I expect to have future articles published locally, and move up from there. I love to write.
> Canemasters: at my first ranking test, Grandmaster Mark Shuey Sr. was impressed with how quickly I’m improving, and skipped a rank. I’m in the Cane Masters International Association, and I ought to be teaching the exercise routine classes for folks with limited range of motion and recovering from injuries within a month or two. Still have a lot of work to do before I’m ready to teach self defense.
> Bodywork. I finally put in my application to take the National Certification Exam for Massage and Bodywork today. Really looking forward to practicing shiatsu legally, but I’ve got a lot of anatomy studying to do.
> Dharma. I think I’m finally beginning to learn what this means, thanks to Lama Marut of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I STRONGLY encourage you to check out his website and subscribe to his podcast: www.lamamarut.org I’m finally putting some things aside and taking up a daily meditation practice. Finally, I’m beginning to understand.

No doubt that I am forgetting at least one major project in my life. Like the garden, or the house, or living healthy relationships, or experimenting with computer networking, or writing for wirelessisfun.com, or…

Oh, and my parents have bought the piece of land near Chico, and them and Brother Cheetah expect to move out of Reno in June to begin the farm.

Look, go back up there, and find the part about how to reach me, and consider trying. The future is now. It’s wide open. Be alert, bring your awareness into your body, into your breath, each moment.

You might have money now, but soon enough you will find that Love is the only currency. And that’s not bullshit, so you better get your karma in order.

Like music? Listen to Roots Manuva’s “Awfully Deep” and be moved by some urban spiritual warrior hip hop dub like you’ve never heard.

Keep it real.

In Solidarity,
Mojohito

Over and Out

I am pleased to report that Tahoe Yoga and Wellness Center in Reno is up and running. The Center is absolutely beautiful, and a dream to work at every day – see images at mojohito.ro/images/tywc/ . The first week was slow, but attendence has been steadily increasing and we’re starting to see some normal numbers. I’ve been facilitating tai chi every day for the past week, and, not surprisingly, I’m very much getting into the flow. For the most part, my only students have been my parents and Heather, and I am thrilled that my folks are taking to tai chi so enthusiastically. Constant tai chi and yoga practice is radically shifting my world. Between classes (when I’m not at the desk) I sit on the couch and drink tea or kombucha and talk about healing arts with other people hanging out in the space.
I’m taking direct steps towards the National Certification Exam for massage, because – although shiatsu is distinctly different from massage therapy – I need National Certification to get a state massage license to practice shiatsu. Maybe I’ll do massage for TYWC, but my real vision is the nutrition/shiatsu/tai chi combo based on Taoist Five Element model. It’s very effective and from what I’ve seen. no one else around here (Reno/Great Basin) is doing anything similar.
Heather and I are moving out; we’re getting out of the big house shared with my parents and brother Cheetah and moving into our own big house! If all goes according to plan. It’s a beautiful four bedroom on 3/4 acre in the valley. It’s one of the older houses in the neighborhood, totally bikeable around town. The place is bigger than we need (and heating will be an issue in the winter), but we’ll have lots of room for our various experiments and have plenty of space for meetings, potlucks, guests, and wrestling.
The place was a punk-rock flop house for years, run primarily by various combinations of the Salliberry sisters (3 brilliant and crazy young women who are long time friends); everybody who’s anybody in the Reno hipster scene has lived there at some time or another. Now, for whatever reason, all the roommates are moving out at once, and the place is up for grabs, including a fair bit of antique furniture and a lot of salvaged doors. Maybe a drum-kit, too. Heather and I are taking it, in two weeks.

This will be a very interesting experiment if only for one reason: for the almost 10 collected years that I’ve lived in Reno, I have always lived in this same suburban house with my folks. It’s worked out well, I’d say, but I’ve always felt isolated and dependent on my (lovely) car to get around. I’ve thought I’d like Reno much more if I lived in town, able to bike and walk to get around. Now I get to impliment that notion, utilizing a house reminiscent of Fight Club as home base.

We’re getting serious. Plum flower poles. Jungle gym. Slackline. Octogon?

UPDATE:
I can’t believe I forgot to mention: I’ve been appointed a position on the Great Basin Community Food Cooperative Board of Directors! I hope that I can now more effectively help provide leadership for our budding food store intoooooo the FUTURE!

And some good news and some bad news:

The good news is that my Magyar-Romanian friend Bori has been accepted into Oxford. I don’t know if she ever reads this, but she deserves congratulations!

The bad news is that sustainability hero Old Mill Farm manager Cas severely wounded his hand almost two months ago. He’s expected to make a full recovery, no thanks to our government:
After applying for workman’s compensation he was instead fined $15,000 for not having a guard on the table-saw, adding insult to injury. Does the person who made that decision sleep soundly at night? S/he’s certainly not helping anyone – this fine not only affects Cas and his family, but everyone in Mendocino who relies on OMF to provide beyond-organic meat and vegetables! I don’t often curse people, but this development makes me furious. Sorry Cas. I’m losing sleep over it, seriously.

The bad news is that the Great Basin Community Food Co-op board meeting was canceled, so I am not able to participate in the fun decision making process of grass-roots food distribution tonight.
The good news is that I can instead take a little time to write something for all y’all out there spread across the Earth who occasionally foster enough curiosity to read about what’s up in El Reno.

I am becoming more absorbed in the lifestyle of kombucha brewing, fostered in large part by a continually growing demand of my product, Hito’s Homemade, at the Co-op. It’s a fine balance, maintaining shelf space alongside GT’s excellent product, but as I’ve been having success bottling a sweeter blend (with fruit juice and ginger), the demand for GT’s has apparently decreased and I am having to tilt harder to produce enough to keep the Co-op well stocked.
So it’s become apparent that increasing capacity, and more than a little bit, is a priority. Suitable containers are not that easy to come by: wide-necked glass vessels are rarely larger than 2.5 gallons, and I’m reluctant to start hacking the top off of carboys just to get another four or five gallons. Ceramic is another great material. but even more expensive. There’s some talk on the Kombucha Tea tribe of using wood, but that isn’t an imminently available material (though picking up an old wine cask for the purpose is going on my “To Do” list).
I’d been thinking about using an aquarium ever since I first saw a culture dominate a cask, producing a wrist-thick, 13″ diameter scoby. And in fact, fish tanks are surprisingly cheap, with the possibility of going to 40 gallons for $50. Lo and behold, as I discuss this with my family over dinner, my Dad offers me to re-appropriate his 29 year old 30 gallon tank which has been over it’s life a salt tank, a fresh tank, and most recently, a terrarium.
I have some concern with the silicone used to seal the tank affecting the ferment or leaching into the beverage, but I haven’t seen any reports of folks who have had experience with this, and I figure that silicone is relatively inert (it’s questionable use in breast implants and common use in areas where organisms are sharing the environment [i.e. fish] somewhat reinforce this assumption), so the only thing left to do is experiment.
So I started a 12 gallon batch in the tank today to see what happens! (see photo)

Tahoe Yoga and Wellness Center hasn’t opened the doors in Reno yet, so my new job hasn’t really ramped up yet. My enthusiasm is still strong, and our grand opening weekend is going to be a blast, I’m sure. I’m having a meeting with the owner this week to discuss the specifics of my multi-faceted job (front desk, tai chi, lifestyle consultations, and maybe some computer technical work as well), after which I’ll nail down some liability insurance and other details. I have to admit, that having a steady income for the first time in nearly two years will be very nice indeed.

Cheetah is back in Reno and living in the house with the Folks, Heather and I. Of course he has his two herding dogs, Quinoa and Zero, who are nicely crate-trained and so only “terrorize” the house a couple hours a day. It’s lovely to have Cheetah around, but it’s clear that he’s antsy for the next thing; Reno doesn’t offer him much, when he really wants to be out working his dogs and working the land.
Mom and Chee are leaving town for a full week tomorrow to visit some more pieces of land and also to explore a couple of WWOOFing options for Cheetah’s interim, considering that land may not materialize for a number of months yet. Nonetheless, the Family intends to be out of this house and onto new land by June.

It has become clear to everyone that Heather and I are serious about pursuing our healing arts career(s), and surprisingly, Reno is a superb venue for that. So it’s pretty likely that we’ll start renting at that point, and… well, who ever knows what the future holds, eh?
I continue to feel confident that all the pieces or elements will come together to create a cohesive texture of lifestyle in which we all are achieving what we want to, while working together to co-create a life in which we all prosper more greatly than if we were working separately to achieve our goals. I’m dreaming of a Tai Chi Kung Fu Temple on the family land, growing food and practicing Taoist healing and combat arts, teaching our children, and manifesting the global future.

I personally find blogging distasteful, dull, and purely self-referential (I really don’t care what album someone is listening to on any given day), so I have to drag myself to post, which anyway means I assume that of my free-floating amalgam of colleagues out there take the time or care to read what I write. So it’s been a month.
But, hey! Never did find the cash for kung fu lessons, but something better has come up, as I’ve been hired by a new wellness center opening in Reno next month. In addition to working the front desk, I’ll be taking nutrition clients and facilitating open Tai Chi sessions. It’s the kind of opportunity I’ve been holding out for, and a really excellent environment to hang out in. Heather’s been hired there, too, and once Nevada pulls it’s massage licensing procedures together, we’ll be able to take bodywork clients, too.
The land search has slowed considerably, partially due to winter time, partially due to the declining housing market here in Reno. Also, we’re doing more of the research and groundwork necessary to truly be prepared for the next steps.
Over all, feeling healthy and positive.

I’ve been doing a lot more physical work this week and enjoying it. Built a box for the thriving compost, repackaged old photos and books to get them into storage, some wild sex, and so on. I’ve found a kung-fu hall here in Reno that I’m quite attracted to, and look forward to getting finances enough in order to attend classes. Yoga is really only worth it under a qualified teacher, and around here the facilities are more like new-age health-spas. Aikido is pretty good too. But the kung fu hall has qigong and meditation in addition to the combat forms.
Doing research too, developing business plans, both for myself and for the Aurora project.
Looking forward to a road-trip of sorts, getting brother Cheetah back up to Olympia via a piece of property we’re interested in and a mycology confrence in Portland; then Heather and I will go to Wenatchee to pick up some of her stuff and drop it off in Reno before I go to San Francisco next weekend. That’s the plan, anyway.
But Reno is still a happy place to be. The weather is superb, the co-op is expanding, my kombucha is out-selling the brand-name stuff (which is itself a good product), and there’s a new punkabilly band that plans to perform a lot. I got a new gameboy, don’t ask me why.
I’m living the dream, to be sure, though still not making a lot of money. Continually aligning myself with my path and purpose, being patient and preparing. Looking forward to having some clients.
And so on…

Seven days ago, Heather and I left Emerald Earth. It was eerie, as every other person at the Sanctuary left for events, and our last day was also our first time completely alone there. So we pranced naked in the middle of a courtyard, just for the thrill of it, even though the weather was unseasonably cold and foggy.
We hauled ass across the state to our new (temporary) home in Reno at my parent’s house, which is on the market to sell; our jobs are to facilitate that process and do research.
It rained the following night, a fortuitous omen of our arrival, and indeed, Reno has matured significantly. I am pleased to see my friends here, and impressed with the work some of them have been doing.
The Great Basin Food Co-op had its grand opening on Tuesday, which I attended and signed up to shop. THe organizers have done an amazing amount of leg-work to get the thing up to speed, first with a CSA and now the Co-op. The space is small but ample, and the selection of products is impressive. They emphisize local and inexpensive, so the products are excellent quality and cheaper than I’ve seen anywhere.
I am especially excited to report that I have been invited to produce and bottle and sell kombucha to the co-op. Hito’s Homemade will hopefully be on the market in ten days or so! This is possible becuase the co-op is technically a private club: only members shop there, and all memebers sign a waiver that indicates that they understand the risks involved with raw food. Very exciting.
Much is happening. This is just a taste. Suffice to say that I am pleased to be back in Reno, something I hadn’t expected.