Raman Frey

The End of Rose Colored Glasses (in work and romance)

By raman|Into the Frey|92 Comments

No more rose colored glasses.

I can’t.  It’s not that it’s what’s best and I refuse.  I literally can’t.  Fish can’t breath air.  Humans can’t breath water. (more…)

Superheroes: Myths, Religions and Comic Books

By raman|Into the Frey|47 Comments

“Man looks for a superman in the fantastic reality of heaven [but finds] nothing there but the reflection of himself.”

— Karl Marx —

Superheroes. They’ve been around for millennia. For thousands of years, people have elevated the stories of men (mostly) to the status of superheroes.

From one of our oldest recorded champions, the Sumerian Gilgamesh and his sidekick Enkidu (a little like our first Batman and Robin), to Jesus Christ Superstar (2,000 years ago and more recently on Broadway), The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (a grocery list of superhuman abilities you can develop born out of Indian Vedic philosophy) and the Buddha touching the earth to witness his enlightenment (caused an earthquake apparently), we obsess and repeat to ourselves stories of transcendent might overcoming impossible odds. What’s the implicit message? (more…)

Art and Tech in the Bay Area: Bigger Pie Thinking for Mutual Benefit

By raman|Into the Frey|73 Comments

In 2002, I co-founded Frey Norris Gallery, an international art gallery in San Francisco that I helped run for ten years. In one sense, my partner and I accomplished something great: we created an appetite for serious art collecting in a city with lots of money but a weak taste for it.  And we built a solid international business, developing a network of artists, art professionals and collectors on six continents.

But personally, I felt like a total failure. (more…)

Vertical Jungle: From Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, Laos

By raman|Into the Frey|49 Comments

Seven hours today up and down mountains, making our starting point in Luang Prabang, ringed with peaks, look flat. We rode in a giant bus up onto their shoulders, thousands of feet above sharp valleys carved by streams. The jungle on either side was dense. With machete, I could imagine making only two or three miles per day through that foliage, filthy, stung, with heavy arms.

In the tracts where the jungle was gone, it was shaved clean from the slopes, exactly rectilinear, like the work of an electric sheer on the green wool of Laos’ crumpled skin. On these patches of baldness there was either nothing, the thinnest scrub or grass, or near vertical orchards mostly of banana and papaya.
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Morning Alms in Luang Prabang

By raman|Into the Frey|49 Comments

It’s 6:00am.  I’ve been up since 5:00.  Unseasonably cold and damp, with out of monsoon rains just past, Luang Prabang has fully woken, on…what is this?…Monday? 

The night began with coughing fits, lying under thin sheets and wearing many layers of clothes and a black fleece hat.  Mostly I regretted the boldness that told me my lingering cough would vanish on this journey.  Of course, with half the planes filled with travelers in paroxysms of hacking illness, first from San Francisco to Taipei and on to Hanoi, Vientane and now Luang Prabang, my own illness grew worse.  And I didn’t bring any Benedryl.  At least I have this warm reconstituted soup, and a small cup of strong Lao tea.The intersection here at the Amatta Guest house is filled with women sweeping, some teenagers watching the final battle of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises on a TV under an awning. A large extended family converged yesterday on the neighboring home to celebrate and remember the life of a great local man, now one year gone.  (more…)

8 Things

By raman|Into the Frey|55 Comments

I grew up on what’s best described as a hippy commune called the Temple of Yoga in Coconut Grove, Florida (where I happen to be right now). This broke up when I was about 6 or 7, when my parents split.  The guru, a kind-hearted Indian man named Babaji has lived with a vow of silence for about 40 years now.  He writes on a chalk board to communicate.  Babaji moved with most of the founders to Santa Cruz, California and established Mount Madonna Center.  MMC now serves as an elite school, retreat center and pilgrimage site for NoCal Hindus, particularly followers of Hanuman, the monkey god from the Ramayana.

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Sock Bonds Broken

By raman|Into the Frey|52 Comments

In most cases, socks live in pairs, beautifully matched if unevenly worn.  In our home, they live alone.

My toddler’s socks may be strangely stained, found strewn behind the piano or next to the toilet or under the fridge.  Pomegranate juice is completely indelible, incidentally.  Why did I give her pomegranate juice?  Lapse of judgment.  I don’t know.

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