To all my pop culture kids who grew up on video games and church on Sunday:

To all those who also have a hard time fully relating to "My body is a temple"
If you've ever used collecting experience points as a form of meditation...
Then this is for you.
Have you ever wished you could skip forward in game time so you could finally have that stellar new body armor imbued with +3 all skills and +25% elemental resist?
A way to finally rush wave after wave of monsters with uber ease wearing a complete and total suit of godliness?
Well please know that this particular moment in RLT (real life time) happens to be particularly benefiting to your overall inventory.
You have right now in your stash at this very instant a highly sophisticated machine...
Capable of literally anything.
It is a vehicle of "I can do Infinity" mixed with completely dummy-proof operating systems.
Fully modifiable with enormous capacity for various statistics.
This suit will from this day forward do anything just for you.
You have full control from the inside out to morph this body into a streamlined existence of Beauty.
A paintbrush of life. The most artistic expression of "Holy shit! This is the dopest game ever!"
Welcome to you.
The ultimate functioning symbiosis of water and dirt being propelled by fire and air...
the basic elements for all of our technology are making up that body you wear.
It can be taught to do magic. It can fly. It can heal.
Its so strong that you don't have to mule anything on someone else if you don't want to.
It will take anything that you throw at it and can come back fully just by your will.
It takes no learning to use but its hard to amass great skill.
A fully integrated system allows you to experience reality totally and completely should you feel.
It provides access to a puzzle that will confound the shit out of you...
Make you throw the controller over and over and always you'll come back again.
Basic considerations: Use it or lose it.
It grows with fresh experience. Remember that.
You will feel pain to know your fire of refinement is working well.
Joy will be your life support.
Throw maximum skill points into Gratitude and Giving. This when once high level will afford you to unlimited use of Life.
It will use EVERYTHING... time spent locked in spells and cells still provide you with the raw power of experience. Thus boosting your level unceasingly.
Ask and you shall have it.
Beware of your auto control!
Your memory system is meshed with your auto targeting so that your past is literally projected onto all five senses providing you with the ability to make highly predictive... almost instantaneous control of the future.
You don't know your available power without breathing.
It can carry you if you need it but don't let it auto control always. Its powerful ability to handle means it can consume itself.
Instead balance on the edge of Flow with balanced strokes of Art.
The rest is up to you.

First week in Sudan went something like this:

Mama!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Come get me!!!! heh heh. Do you ever have those moments where all the sudden you look around and the gravity of where you are sits on you like an elephant? ok ok... but have you had a day where that happens to you about 400 times? ok ok..but have you had a month where everyday was like that though?? Jeez this trip is wild! Well Im in Khartoum (I know..I have no idea where that is either!) which is the capital city of Sudan and is the spot where the Blue Nile from Ethiopia and the White Nile from Uganda meet to form The Nile that runs up to Egypt and into the sea below Greece.

So far my trip in Sudan has gone like this: I left Aswan, Egypt about 7 days or so ago on a ferry that sails south to Sudan. When Egypt made the High Dam on the Nile in the 70's they ended up flooding a huge part of the desert thus creating the largest man made lake on the planet. The ferry took about 20 hrs of sailing to arrive in Sudan. I slept on the deck of the boat under the stars. Wind wasnt too bad and the boat was much more chill than I thought it would be. Once in Sudan we pulled to port right outside a town called Wadi Halfa which basically looks like a temporary town thats permanetly there. The ferry was about 1 1/2 miles from the town so after the whole immigration process that took 8 hrs (literally) I started walking to the town to find a hotel. I put my hand in my pocket and of course... my money was gone. At this point I didnt know what to do but start laughing. This is gonna make a great movie was all I could think. I kept walking and ran into a bunch of travelers from random countries that I had met on the ferry standing in the middle of the desert talking to a couple of Germans headed in the opposite direction.

"Guess what?"
"What?"
"I just lost all my cash.
" HUH?!"
"Yea, I think I dropped it somehow while walking from the ferry."
"Oh jeez... um..why are you so calm?"

At this point we all walked to the town and the Germans said they would look on the ground on the way back. In town I dug around in my bag and found the cash you had given me in the card you wrote and a couple dollars I had stashed. All together was about $17 I think. This got me a little money for starters. I then decided to sell my cell phone (a cheap one I bought in Cairo) so now I had about $37 or almost 80 SUD. I figured I would just slowly sell my belongings as I traveled till I ended up back in Egypt with just my clothes and my passport. I checked into a cheap hotel (calling it a hotel is giving it too much credit) and got some dinner with the other travelers. Later that night the two Germans came back (a couple) and said they didnt find my money but they were gonna give me $250 and I could just pay them back when I get back to the states. They said based on their travels in Sudan that much should get me by if I was good with my spending. I hugged them both and then gave them the best info for Egypt (their first time there) and where to go for a great time. Who knew I have two German angels. I now had more cash then what I came with and lost. So far so good.

The next morning I went to immigration and payed the dues for being in the country and learned that the money I came with in the first place wasnt even enough to begin with. Feeling blessed is a common experience for me right now. I handled my paperwork and jumped a bus (again a liberal term for that vehicle) headed for the next town which was way into the desert along the Nile. Theres no paved roads in North Sudan so it was like bumping along on the surface of the moon for 8 hrs and my body was twisted up when we finally arrived in Abri. The town looked like a National Geographic special on mud houses. I stayed one nite in the hotel (even worse than the last one.. metal beds in stinky mud rooms and the common toilet was a hole in the ground backed up with you know what...). The next morning I woke to find I had missed the bus for the next town and there was no bus for another 4 days. Now at this point in my traveling career I know that whenever I arrive in a new and completely unknown place that the best thing for me to do is hole up somewhere alone, chill and catch my proverbial breath. So I went exploring and found an old mud house that was abandoned on the banks of the Nile. The house was falling apart but one room had a roof still and once I cleared the floor of human feces then it would be a great place to camp. There was fire wood nearby and the house was about 20 feet above the actual Nile waters. This meant no crocs could come in on me in the night. During the day the whole town was infested by swarms of gnats that bite so I spent the next 3 days in my tent during the day and chilling by the fire in the beautiful nights. So very peaceful. I had to be careful to avoid showing any of the locals where I was staying so they wouldnt get curious and bother me or mess with my stuff. This worked well for the first couple days but eventually one young guy found me and by the next day they were leading me to the police station to try and convince me to stay in the hotel (which was much worse than my camp site). The police ended up saying I was fine where I was but the next morning was the bus so I decided to pack up and stay in the hotel. They let me stay that last night for free.

The next morning had me on a "real bus" to Khartoum and 16 hrs later I arrived. Only the first half of the trip was on dirt roads this time. That was all yesterday. A big sand storm has hit Sudan for the past couple days so everything is super dusty. I arrived in Khartoum at 2 am where the bus dropped me in the middle of dusty nowhere. I started looking for a hotel and was turned away, ignored, misdirected, held at gunpoint by a police officer until he realized I was American and apologized, and randomly lost for about an hour. I finally stumbled upon a room that was in a rail yard. There was no people around and the room had a fan and a plug for my iPod. I was able to bar the door shut and lay out my sleeping pad. It was hot so the fan was nice. I woke up with a fat upper lip where the mosquito had a feast while I slept. I packed up and walked out into the stares. Im the least black person around. People here are BLACK. Like almost purple. Anywho, I had the name of a place where I could camp... so I found a bank, exchanged the rest of my cash and headed to the campsite. Now my tent is set up on the bank of the Blue Nile and after wandering around a bit I found this internet spot. Whew. What a week!

Imma try and link up with some expats who will let me stay on the couch for free (couchsurfing.com) for a few days then prolly head north again and see the little towns I skipped on the way to Khartoum before heading back to Egypt.I might be able to get a small boat and sail back towards Egypt on the Nile hopping from village to village. We'll see.
-J

PS.. The website was too expensive to maintain from here so purejustin.com is supposed to go straight to the blog. Im working on gettting it set up. The direct link to the blog is: purejustin.blogspot.com.

Some artwork Im playing with...

*Updates to my travel*

Cairo, Egypt-

Well Im so close to leaving for Sudan I can taste it. It took about a month for the whole process to result in success but it was worth it. About a month ago I visited the Sudanese embassy in Cairo to inquire/start the whole application. The embassy has an atmosphere that expects chickens to run past at any moment and is usually packed full of Nubians. I took a collegue of mine to help with the language barrier and to generally grease the wheels with her charm. I just recently read an article on lonelyplanet.com from an American who didn't get his visa... I wonder if its because he didn't take a pretty girl with him? Anywho, the first visit cost me $50 and two passport photos which after submitted with the application I was told to come back in two weeks. That was Jan 20th. I had a couple weeks to waste so I made for El Arish. 

Recently, as most of humanity hopefully knows, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza lasting for 20 something days which resulted in the offical number of 1300 dead Palestinians (I believe its closer to 2000). Over half of them were women and children. I was just returning from Siwa Oasis which is in the Western Desert of Egypt where Egyptian and Libian culture has mixed into a unique culture, language, etc. I was in my hotel in Alexandria when the news began to show bombs and carnage in Gaza. Photos of dead babies were everywhere. This was about a week or two deep by the time I made it to Sinai. Egypt borders Palestinian territories with only one place to come and go: the Rafah crossing. Rafah is about 20 miles from the next town, El Arish. The purpose of my visit to El Arish was to visit a Bedouin friend of mine whos family land was there. I stayed with him in the house his great grandfather built on a huge piece of land that was still unencroched by villas and beach resorts. The mud house has 3 foot thick walls and is right across the road from the Meditteranian Sea. The land is vast sand dunes peppered by hundreds of 50 ft. palm trees. These trees were planted 3 generations ago and made the perfect setting for finding hidden lamps containing djinn. Only 25 min away people were being bombed. 

The road in front of the house is one of the most ancient routes in human history. Sinai is a small arrowhead shaped land that literally creates a bridge between the massive African and Asian continents. This was supposed to be the road Jesus and his parents took when escaping to Egypt while male children where being slaughtered in his hometown. Quite the tradition they have in this part of the world. While in El Arish, the ceasefire was finally called and trucks bearing food and supplies as well as medical services began to make for the border. The air was palpable with the feeling of suffering so close. After about a week staying out all nite and sleeping in the day I decided to leave my vampiric lifestyle and head for the Red Sea. I had never been to Dahab but had heard it compared to the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. I had a great time in Thailand at the Full Moon Party so I decided to check it out. Dahab was lame. Maybe it was just the off season and as such no people but the beach has been consumed by resturants that all look the same and in Thailand there's no one to hustle you as you walk by. I missed Taba with its serenity and nature. Four days later I arrived at my favorite spot in Sinai. Moonlight Camp. 

From Sinai '08

After a week of swimming in the sea and eating the best food it was time to make for Cairo and to get my visa for Sudan. On Feb 5th I arrived at the embassy only to be told there was no reply from Khartoum. I still didn't know if I was denied or approved. Keep hope. Since last year when I was in Egypt there was one place I anticipated seeing, the White Desert. 

I jumped on a bus in crowded chaos, aka Cairo, and headed for Bawati Oasis. 5 hours later and I arrived late in the night to the center of town. I paid 5 times too much for a quick taxi ride to my hotel where I forwent the actual rooms and just set up my tent in the garden. The next couple nights proved to be extremely windy but the location of my tent was protected for the most part. On the third day the hotel staff decided to clean the sewage tank which was underground so they began to pump the water to a nearby ditch. I realized they had flooded the garden in the process and went to check my tent. Yup, they had flooded me out. My backpack was soaked with water but my sleeping pad and blankets were still dry. The owner put me in a half built utility room that was covered in dust and gave me a huge straw mat so I could lay my stuff out to dry. Fortunately my artwork was spared the water damage and it was only a matter of drying out my pack and some clothes. That night was colder than usual so it was nice to have four walls around my tent for shelter. 

The following day a couple of Japanese and one French traveler were headed to the White Desert on a cheap tour which lasted one night in the desert with dinner provided so I jumped in with them. We got a late start of about 4pm so most of the daylight was gone when we arrived. The setting was none the less breathtaking. 

Located between two oasis, the White Desert was once under water. The area is full literally of white calcium "sculptures" that the wind and elements have has millenia to work on. (pics to come soon) Some of the statues look like massive white mushrooms that are 40 feet high. Others look like animal faces... hawks and foxes, etc. BurningMan anyone? The ground is solid white calcium as well but covered with patches of off-white sand and sprinkled everywhere with black pieces of iron which when closer inspected are actually fossilized plant pieces. Berries, cones, and stems of plants which have over the last several million years turned to pure iron. Closer looks are rewarded with shells and what looked like teeth. This whole place used to be under the sea. As the evening gave way to the night the sky exploded into the most 3 dimensional experience of the stars I have ever seen. I climbed one of the huge calcium towers which was about 30 feet high and looked up at the sky. It felt like I was floating in outer space. One could actually see which stars were closer and which were further away. At times I had a feeling of vertigo like I could fall off the face of the Earth. Ever been stuck upside down to the ceiling? 

My compainions on the safari were all very quiet and so the night in the desert was extremely peaceful. I slept late under the stars after watching the moon rise and woke early to see the sun rise. The landscape was morphing from white blue to pink orange and then back to pure white in the Sun's rays. We made a quick breakfast, packed camp, and then made for the Black Desert. A quick climb up a mountain to see the entire landscape (again pics to come...) and then back to Bawati. I stayed one more night in the hotel and jumped on a bus out of the oasis. There were no seats available so I just sat on the floor in the middle isle for 5 hours headed back to mayhem. Cairo. 

It was now two weeks later or one month in total that the Sudanese embassy was giving me the runaround. This time they claimed that the paperwork was lost and that they couldnt help me. We asked to speak to someone in charge and they sent us around back to the director. We were led upstairs to a nice office where a man sat behind a big desk. He was kind but firm and asked me why I wanted to see Sudan and what have I heard of his country... "Everyone tells me not to go but none of them have ever been. The few that have been said that the people are the kindest in the world and that the land is still pure. I wish to see this." He said he would help me if they couldnt find my papers. Infact they had lost them so I filled out a new application and he signed the approval then and there. I was instructed to come at 9am sharp the next morning to pay the last $100 and deliver my second batch of photos. I arrived at 9:15 which IS 9 'o clock Egyptian time. The actual workers didnt arrive until 10:30. After giving me some more hassle, I paid and they took my passport telling me to come back at 4pm to collect my visa. I arrived at 4:01 to find the doors locked and one of the workers standing outside smoking. I asked to obtain my visa and he said they were closed. I told him they said 4pm and he said the passport was ready at 3. I repeated that HE said 4pm and so he asked what time it was. 4:03. His face betrayed him. He was caught. He then decided to question me. "What is your job?" "I teach peace to children." I guess that was enough so he took me through another door where a worker led me to a huge safe. 30 seconds later I was doing my victory dance in the street. 

3 days later a bomb went off in Cairo. The bomb was in Old Cairo where a huge bazaar sells all kinds of random stuff to whom ever is sucker enough to buy it. I had heard about the bomb on the news and some friends called to give the latest report on the situation. My friend whom I was staying with asked if I wanted to go to the place where the bomb went off to see what the situation was. I was down for an adventure so I said why not and we went down to catch a cab. The taxi driver overheard where we were going and refused to take us all the way. The streets were unusually empty and eerily calm. We got let off a few blocks away and began to make our way up to the bomb site. Its in the middle of a huge square with a large hotel on one side, a huge mosque on another side while a major street bordered the rest of it. This part of the square was off limits to any but foot traffic. Apparently someone had dropped two bombs from the top floor of the hotel down on the people drinking tea below. One French teenager was killed. She was 17 and a friend of mine was hanging out with her the night before. The same friend, Mido of Old Cairo, was dragging people to safety and sending wounded in taxis to the hospital. That night the police had the whole area closed off and after walking around the square we started to wander in the old old old streets of Cairo. This was one of the original areas of Cairo. Tiny dirt alleys and ancient stone and mud buildings propped up by wooden beams to prevent collapse all decorated by random coffee shops and small food stands for locals. This was another world and at one point we had gone so deep into the neighborhood that they told us to leave. After a couple min we were scooped up by a group of boys who took us to some friends playing cards. We sat and had tea and I won the card game on my first try much to the hurt pride of my teacher. They were all very kind and it turned out we were only right arround the corner from my old hotel. A hotel that I couldnt find when I stayed there one night and I kept getting led to another hotel with the same name: El Hussien, the very same hotel the bomb was dropped out of. 

Mido of Old Cairo called us to meet up at a local coffee shop that is popular with artists and writers and we all sat and heard his story over some beers. He was freshly showered and said that his clothes had blood on them before he changed. A wierd night in Cairo. The following day all was back to normal for the most part. Cairo was on the chaotic move. 

Its been about 4 or 5 days since I got my visa and Ive been waiting to see if some work is gonna start before I leave for Sudan. It would get me a little bit of needed cash but in typical Egyptian fashion, there has been no word. Im thinking of leaving for the south in a day or two if no work comes. It's time to bounce outta Egypt for awhile. Sudan has some crazy things going on right now. The president is being pursued for war crimes in a possible indictment. Darfur is clashing as always... and there is magic in the air. I cant wait.  

The economic depression...

The money crisis in America is at the fault of the people. We are distracted. This isnt spiritual bullshit. Our survival as a creature... the whole of the human animal is squarely sitting on our own shoulders. Each clever scheme that further manipulates Nature's orginial balance will eventually create an over-correct which will be disasterous for those caught in the wake. Can we all zoom out? We have forgotten how to grow plants and make our own clothes. Can we be the long anticipated movement waiting to be fullfilled? We starve some so they will function off of the refuse so that a few can forget what this is all based on. We have created a self propelled spirit. A song called consumerism. Babylon. When was the last time you spent $5 and had a custom shirt made just for your beautiful body from your own handpicked fabric? Or did you hand over $80 for that sweatshop work? Who now is the slave master? Bloody bling bling. All we have to do is stop and listen to the silent song of Eden sing... even blare the beauty of god in your face thru every breath upon the senses. Yea, your pretty. So what else can you do? Do you know how to live? The dumb are so smart and the smart so dumb. I drempt you were coming today. Will we get to see you?

We have a long way to go....in an instant.

I have this feeling of sadness or disillusionment due to my perception of this worlds current state. To use fear for unification is juvenile. The act of immaturity... it reaps a people in shock. Self preserving cases our past into the form of a golden idol. Can we all move in singular fashion? Where each of us follows the individual Heart Path inherent to each and every Human Being cell of this Human Body? Can the Human Creature collectivly sit still? Maybe the sabbath is to give the rest of nature a rest from the effects of our human race. Where are we going? And why are we fighting ourself? what is this appetite that we each nurture at the risk of being consumed? There is trash everywhere! The wrappers of our feast. We are bizzare. Its all bullshit! We cant see god that is already all of this. A pre existing fact of eternal reality regardless of what we choose to take seriously in this epic Choose Your Own Adventure. Except this one doesnt work if you fingermark the last chapter you read incase you change your mind. Fully living and fully dying. All of it. Day. Night. Before numbers and our foolish game of time... Day. Night. Life. Death. Blinking truths forming the IS. It. Just. Is. All of It. Fear is bullshit. Money is bullshit. Its all distractions from the Beautiful. Can we use the byproduct of life, carbon, and sculpt sculptures that will bare evidence of our souls endless immortality? Or are we still gonna keep charging each other to take a shit? Collect the scraps from the table of the past. History is all good but you and I are real NOW. What is ourstory? How beautifuly can we sculpt our byproducts? We are messy. We will collapse on ourselves and be purged by our own hands should we continue in current style and pattern. Let go of all of it. And care for all of it. And let go of all of it. And take care for all of it. Yes. That big. Impossibly possible.