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Running Away

All my Life, I have been a student of the gentle art and practice of Running Away. I hold a black belt, 7th degree.

So.

When I hear people attach that yuckiest of emotions, shame, to the gentle art and practice of Running Away, I fail to understand. In my view, Running Away is nothing more and nothing less than a course correction. And, given that every person in motion around the earth right now is, like every plane, or rocket, or boat, off course 95% of the time, it’s clear that if we want to get where we are going, we must be willing and able to make course corrections. To not make course corrections is at best incompetent, and at worst, incompetent.

I could be wrong, but if we were to examine every act of Running Away in the entire history of that gentle art and practice, we would find there is but one desire driving every Running Awayer: They have, to varying degree, lost control of their once-in-a-lifetime Life. And they want it back.

Yet, somehow, in the swinging of pendulums, the reversing of magnetic poles, and the attention deficits of public opinion, an expert and expeditious exiting that would once have been admired, even envied, is now derided as irresponsible, immoral, even craven. I fail to understand. What could be braver, or more responsible, than to take on the challenge and chore of being in charge of one’s Life?

Once upon a time, Running Away, and Running Awayers, were honored figments of the American imagination. Our history includes a bunch of smart rich white guys Running Away from being subjects of the British monarchy, to become the Founding Fathers; and Pilgrims Running Away from terrible persecutors in the Old World, to become terrible persecutors in the New World. Our myths include Huck and Jim rafting down the mighty Mississippi; Eliza crossing the ice pack on the same metaphorical river; Shane riding into town, and riding out; and Norma Jeane Mortenson catching a bus to Hollywood.

The gentle art and practice of Running Away is how we create Change—in our selves, and in our world—without the use of force.

Here is a fast, and loose, and by no means complete, list of the many splendored forms of Running Away in America:

Playing Hooky is Running Away from school. Perhaps because we do it when young, and new to the gentle art and practice of Running Away, Playing Hooky gives us an ineffable—something—we can never fully recapture later in Life. No matter how hard and often we try.

Calling in Sick is Playing Hooky from work. Calling in Sick is the ultimate reverse commute; while everyone else is driving to work, you’re driving away.

Quitting is how we Run Away from a job. There is no shame in quitting, provided it is done with élan. Storming out the door and leaving behind an angrily scrawled resignation letter in which you blame everyone else for everything that has gone wrong, is Quitting. Giving two weeks notice, having drinks with your boss and colleagues on your last day, then setting up shop with all your old firm’s best clients, is Quitting with élan.

Getting Fired is when your employer Runs Away from you.

Immigration is Running Away from where you were born. No one should ever be punished for choosing to immigrate, as it is hard-wired into our DNA. It’s why we got out of Africa, and why someday we will be selling low-interest, no-income-verification mortgages for houses on Mars.

Slipping Away is a subcategory of Running Away, in which we only briefly absent ourselves.

Divorce is Running Away from the stranger you woke up married to.

Bankruptcy is Running Away from your creditors. Curiously, it is also one of the few forms of Running Away written into our Constitution. Another being Impeachment, which is Running Away from the bums we elected.

The list goes on, but I believe the point is clear: Running Away is the ultimate Do Over. (This explains why California, the Do Over State, is our most populous.) And while Running Away always rewards us with adventures, on a deeper level, it can give us a heightened sense of Being Alive And In Charge of Our Once-in-a-lifetime Life.

I remember how, at the malleable age of 7, I discovered the gentle art and practice of Running Away.

At sunset of a hot summer day, I stomped across the kitchen and out the back door, yelling over my shoulder to my mother, “I’m leaving! And I’m never coming back!” (I was 7, and had no idea my dramatic exit line was one of humanity’s oldest clichés.)

My mother gasped, leaning over the kitchen counter, crying and sniffling, using the back of her wrist to wipe tears streaming from her eyes. She was chopping onions for dinner.

Once outside, our familiar backyard seemed new, vast, and, strange to me. The departing sun had, like a spiteful arsonist leaving town, torched the blue sky into Technicolor® fire. I experienced a sensation at once thrilling, and, threatening. I felt an Invisible Hand pressing on my chest and making my heart beat strong and hard and fast. It would take a few more years, and a few more Runnings Away, before I could put a name to that Invisible Hand: Freedom. Simultaneous with the strong and hard and fast beating of my heart, there was a strong and hard and fast beating of my mind, as I ran smack up against the nagging question every free person faces in every moment: What the hell do I do now?

My best answer was, “Keep moving!”

I stomped through our backyard, cut across the neighbor’s freshly mown lawn, and came out on Long Hill Road. I kept walking, and as I walked, I squeezed in my small fists the red-hot coals of my anger. I faltered only when I heard small rustlings of unseen animals in the brush beside the road, or when the taunting, teasing songs from unseen birds inside the plush green trees seemed to be calling my name. Distracted by the world around me, my anger cooled, and soon my clenched fists were filled with coal dust. I wiped my hands on my jeans, and kept walking, proving the law of inertia.

A sound-filled, sight-filled, eternity later, I had crossed the half-mile suburban savannah between my parents home and where Long Hill Road ran across a short bridge high above the four lanes of Interstate 95. As I approached the bridge, the familiar noise of large trucks, family-burdened station wagons, and hippie-filled Volkswagen vans, buzzed the air like a swarm of mechanical bees in a cheap science-fiction movie. On the high hill to the side of the bridge, I saw a boy I knew. Dougie French, two years older than me, had the same ultra-short haircut I sported, although my hair was brown, and Dougie’s, even at the age of 9, was pure white. I felt then, but only fully understand now, that Dougie French was an “old soul.” The amused disdain he had for everyone and everything, and that both attracted and repelled me at age 7, I have since observed in many others, who carry the ennui of the experienced traveler having to find something new while, yet, again, passing through an overly familiar land.

From Long Hill Road, I watched as Dougie French picked up a sharp-edged gray rock from the thousands that covered the hillside beside the bridge, having been spread there to keep the hillside from washing down onto the highway. I watched as Dougie French tossed that sharp-edged gray rock up in a low, lazy arc, just to the right of himself, and swung a yellow whiffle-ball bat. The plastic bat connected with the rock, making a thwunk sound, and sent the rock arcing through the air. I lost sight of it  somewhere above the cars speeding along the highway.

While gravity took charge of the sailing rock, I walked over to Dougie and asked, “Why are you doing that?”

“Don’t know. Bored. It’s fun.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Why?”

Not experienced with being on the receiving end of the Multiple-Why debate technique, I was stymied.

Dougie held the yellow whiffleball bat out to me. “Here. You try it.”

I was 7, almost everything that happened every day was new. I tried it.

The first five stones I lifted, tossed up, and swung at, fell harmlessly at my feet. Then I connected, and the sixth stone shot high into the air—straight up. Dougie and I covered our heads and bumped into each other as we hopped and dodged the stone that was falling back down on us like a flaming space capsule re-entering earth’s atmosphere at 17,000 miles per hour. The rock smacked down in the gravel, inches from my black Keds® sneaker, instantly anonymous among the field of gravel from whence it came.

“Scheisskopf!” Dougie yelled, grabbing the whiffleball bat from me.

“Huh? What’s size-cough?”

“Shit head.”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

“Why not?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Why?”

Stymied again.

Dougie French said, “Shit for brains.”

While Dougie French and I were laughing and yelling at each other, “Shit for brains!” my mother drove up in the family station wagon and pulled to the side of Long Hill Road. She got out of the car, walked to the front of it, stopped, and yelled, “Get in the car!”

So that there could be no mistake, she pointed at our family station wagon, in the same rigid, imperial way I would point at the ground when I wanted Patches, our family dog, to stay, or to lie down.

“I gotta go, Dougie.”

“See you around, kid,” Dougie French smirked, leaning on the yellow whiffleball bat as if he were a tap dancer dressed in a tuxedo and the bat was his walking stick.

I got in the car. All the windows were rolled down and my mother said nothing to me, yet the force of her silent anger made the air inside the car too thick to breathe, a magic trick I had been a captive audience to many times before. As she made a sharp u-turn back toward home, I risked a glance back, and I caught a snapshot of Dougie French, as graceful a juvenile delinquent as Mickey Mantle was an athlete, lazily tossing a sharp-edged chunk of gravel in a low-arc to his side, and making what seemed a slow-motion swing of the yellow whiffleball bat.

The hard-knuckled back of my mother’s hand hit me in the side of my turned aside head.

But it came too late. I had discovered the possibilities of Running Away.

The trick, it seemed, was to master the gentle art and practice of Staying Away.

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The Secret
© David Boyne

A lot of attention has been paid to the DVD-internet movie phenomenon, The Secret. The folks who made this movie, following in the footsteps of folks like Wallace Delois Wattles, and Dr. Robert Anthony, and lots of other folks who write books, who record audio books, and who speak lectures, all insist that if we accept everything about the present moment, no matter what, and choose to feel good right now, we’ll get everything we want.

Of course, many, many other folks who write books, who record audio books, and who talk on television, say, “What bullshit!”

These other folks say the practice of accepting what is and choosing to feel good now is simple-minded pie-in-the-sky wishful-thinking self-indulgent cock-eyed optimism, and socially irresponsible, and did I mention, bullshit.

I could be wrong, but when I take this idea of accepting what is and choosing to feel good now and follow it to its logical conclusion, i.e., my death, and I imagine myself in the last moments of this once-in-a-lifetime Life, looking back and realizing that I did not in fact get everything I wanted, including that two-week, day-and-night stay in the Plaza Hotel suite with Marisa Tomei, I wonder.

Will I be overwhelmed with remorse and cry out, “I wish I had spent more time feeling bad!”

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Black Teeth and Bubonic Plaque
© David Boyne

People way smarter than me say that when Life presents us with a gift, whatever it is, we must accept it.

They say whether the gift Life presents us with is finding a spray of coins on the sidewalk, just waiting for us to pick them up, or a doctor calmly giving us a diagnosis of testicular cancer, or a cop handing us a traffic ticket and not bothering to hide his smirk as he salts our wound with the command to “have a nice day,” or someone telling us that they love us and will always be there for us, we must accept the gift.

Sometimes, Life presents us with a two-part gift that we are meant to accept, and then to do something with. Like that 20-inch cast iron skillet your wife thought you’d be thrilled to receive on Christmas morning and that the Goodwill people truly were thrilled to receive a week later. I think of these two-part gifts as Door Prizes—because the second part of the gift presents us with a choice of many doorways, any one of which will open to us when we choose it.

Life recently presented me with the multiple Door Prize of a root canal, my first ever, a crown for a broken tooth, and a bill from my dentist for $2,000. When driving back to my office, the left side of my face numb and drool dropping on my shirt collar, Life was so moved with affection for me that it then presented me with the bonus Door Prize of the transmission in my car suddenly failing. When a traffic light turned green and I stepped on the accelerator, the car’s engine roared but the car barely moved forward. I would have lost a race to a glacier. Yet, when the car managed to build to a speed of 5 miles per hour, it began running properly and I even caught up to some of the many drivers who had blasted past me while blaring their horns. Until the next red light stopped me.

I had a choice. I could feel bad and put my energy into imagining a future that would include another $2,000 bill, this one from my Volvo mechanic. And I could have gone on to imagine a future beyond that in which I would be invited to the wedding of my Volvo mechanic’s daughter who was marrying my dentist’s son now that both had graduated, debt-free, from Harvard.

Or I could laugh. I could choose to laugh at the absurd timing and succession of these experiences. So I chuckled, and drooled, and turned up the stereo, and felt pretty good. And a funny thing happened when I left my office a few hours later and got in my car to drive home. The numbness in my jaw was gone, I had sold thousands of dollars of stuff, and the transmission of my car worked perfectly. It hasn’t pulled a prank since.

But I shall now digress and tell you about my most recent near-death experience.

This past Thursday, when washing my hands in the restroom in my office, smiling for no apparent reason, (which I seem to be doing a lot more of the older I get; perhaps this is the happy approach of senility?) I noticed that all of my lower front teeth appeared gray, almost black. I dismissed it as a trick of the dim, flourescent light of the restroom. But later, when I got into my car to drive home, I checked my teeth in the rear view mirror: definitely black. Then the mirror on my sun visor: black. At home, I stared long and hard into the mirror in my bright, sun-drenched bathroom: black. No getting around it. My lower front teeth had suddenly, mysteriously, turned black. And I thought, Aren’t black teeth a symptom of bubonic plaque?

Which made me imagine the headline, Vigorously Healthy Man in Encinitas Suddenly Dead from Bubonic Plague! Everyone Should Now Go Crazy with Irrational Fear!

Which made me laugh. Which made me decide to go for a long walk on the beach. Which allowed me to see a brilliant green flash at sunset, while listening on my iPod to Jack Johnson singing how my shadow walks faster than me, and staring skyward in awe as three great V-formation flocks of pelicans flew low overhead, gliding on the thermals alongside the high bluffs.

I had no thoughts, no intentions, of leaving this wonder-filled world any time soon.

When I got home, I brushed my teeth.

And the black disappeared.

Which made me remember that for lunch I had eaten a half-pint of delicious fresh tart blackberries.

Which made me laugh and feel a small yet immense gratitude that for the past hour of life I had chosen Door Number One: an amazing walk on the beach, instead of Door Number Two: an anguished hour of poring over the internet reading about bubonic plaque and having to decide who would inherit my Louis Prima Greatest Hits CD.

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It's All Good
© David Boyne

About every 1.7 hours, I have an out-of-body experience.

Where do I go during these experiences?

I’m glad I asked. But first, some Back Story.

I was born the son of a poor black sharecropper…

Wait. Wrong Back Story.

I was born in and raised in Connecticut. At the time of my birth, I was the pinnacle of collective creation achieved by a long line of stubborn, stolid, Irish-Catholic New England ancestors. (The kind of folk who made excellent fodder for the canons of the Industrial Revolution.) If that breeding were not enough to make me sufficiently hardheaded, when I was 22 I moved to Manhattan and began a 10-year graduate course in the Humanities. Although I’ve yet to complete my dissertation, when I do it will be universally hailed for its brilliant observations of humans in the urban wild behaving badly when entranced by big money, or bright lights, or hot lust, or all three combined.

When living in hustle and flow Manhattan, if California ever crossed my mind or was mentioned in conversation, it was derisively referred to as The Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Front Story: Guess where I live now?

I must report that after nearly 11 years among the Lotus Eaters, both my flinty cold New England edge, and my flashing hot New York edge, have been blunted. I have, alas, mellowed.

Most of the time, I am a well-adjusted if somewhat bemused tourist here. Although each time my application for Permanent Resident Status comes before the Immigration Inquisitors overseeing this paradise, they cite fresh complaints of my New York soul having slipped its leash to run about barking and snarling and ripping holes in the grass huts of the natives.

Which brings me back to these out-of-body experiences I have about every 1.7 hours.

They can be triggered by seemingly empty, meaningless events. Take my recent close encounter with Surfer Dude. Only here in the Land of the Lotus Easters can I be thwarted from taking possession of my morning cup of coffee by some ray-of-sunshine-barefoot-child-of-god strategically placed in line ahead of me and drawling his order for 3-ounces of wheat grass.

This is why, my patience exhausted after an eternity passed (at least a full minute), I muttered, “For chrissakes what’s taking so long? They fertilizing the ground to plant the seeds to grow the damn grass?”

This surge of dark energy triggered the infinitely complex machinery of the Universe by leveraging the small cog of which we have named the Law of Cause and Effect, making Surfer Dude turn and beam a solar-powered smile at me. He called me “Bro,’” and told me “It’s All Good!” and commanded me to “Relax!” and to “Let It Go!” He then said, “No Worries!” while wagging the pinky and thumb of one hand in my face.

Which caused me, having been knocked back into New York Time-Space, to smirk. (No one smiles in NYC.) And to say, “I am sincerely sorry that your penis is so small but that is no reason to show the measure of it to me while I’m Jonesing for my morning coffee.”

Which caused Surfer Dude to belly laugh with startling gusto.

Which caused me to take a step back, fearing this irrepressible fraternal good will was about to cause him to hug me.

Which caused the nose-ringed barrista, who had chosen that precise moment to approach with my intensely sought-after uber-sized cup of coffee, to hold said coffee out to me, but just beyond my reach—with laughing-gas-inflated Surfer Dude blocking the space between me and my true heart’s desire.

Which caused me to snap back into my body, back into this time, back into this place, and to ask myself, “Why is getting a cup of coffee sometimes such a struggle?”

I’ll come back to this. But first, I’ll move laterally.

There’s this guy who goes by the name Dr. Robert Anthony, whose writing I’ve been reading and whose talking I’ve been hearing. He, among others, asserts that when we hold tight to what is past, we are actually living in that past. Dr. A insists that when we focus on the Past, Life comes calling in the Now, but we ain’t home. We have knocked ourselves right out of the Now, and are living in our past, right down to our cellular level, so that the new cells our body is making are actually being made in the past, replicating the damage and pain of the past we refuse to let go of.

In New York, this is called bullshit.

But I don’t live in New York anymore; that’s in my past. I live in California now, where this stuff is called awesome.

Where the hell am I going with all this?

Relax!

I’ll get there.

Or not.

I suspect that Dr A and Surfer Dude may both be saying the same thing, in very different ways.

Because I have noticed that when I have my out-of-body flashbacks to being a hard-of-sight, hard-of-hearing, hard-thinking, hard-judging Manhattanite, everything I do—even something that should be as easy as getting my morning coffee—becomes a struggle. Sure, I compete, and I usually win. I get the coffee. But at what cost?

I have also noticed that when I’m living in my body and in the moment and in this place, what Lotus Eaters call living on the creative, not competitive, plane—the cup of coffee just comes to me right when I’m putting out my hand to receive it.

Which is why, when Surfer Dude, wheat grass in hand, launched into long minutes of gushing about the quality of the waves, regaling the barista who had just pulverized his wheat grass into 3 ounces of the most iridescent pulpy green liquid I had ever seen, I chose to stand near him, sipping my coffee, and listening. At that moment I realized that Surfer Dude was a wise and experienced sherpa, offering guidance to me on my Grand Tour though this world.

Yes, I could still hear, far, far off in the distance of my personal New York Time-Space, the blaring horns of mid-town taxis and a booming Brooklyn-Italian voice yelling, “Ya crazy motherfucker!”

But I relaxed.

I let it go.

That world, and this one, are all good.

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Who's In Charge?
© David Boyne

Where I live in Encinitas, California, the beaches were closed last weekend because a man from Solana Beach, two towns over, while swimming in the ocean on Friday, was attacked and killed by a great white shark.

That same night I received an email from a dear friend who wrote with heartfelt despair, citing this once-in-50-year fatal shark attack where we live as being hard proof and startling reminder that death is all around us. And we can do nothing about it.

My friend is right. Death is all around us. And we can do nothing about it.

I could be wrong, but while we can do nothing about dying, we can do a hell of a lot about living. In fact, the mind-expanding Life-altering wisdom I am about to impart to you, dear reader, has been around for millennia, in one expression or another, and was even a hippie slogan from the 1970s that I was, back then, probably too stoned to have paid attention to. Here it is:

There are only two things you have no choice about. First thing is, you have to die. Second thing is, you have to live until you die.

We all have to die, and we all have to live until we die. The rest—all of it—is up to us.

Don’t get me wrong. I pay attention to death. In fact, I think about death every day, several times a day. But the way I think of death is kind of like an old commercial that used to be on television when I was a kid. A guy stands in a somnambulant trance before his bathroom mirror, having just shaved himself despite being half-asleep. (This is truly Reality Television.) Yawning, he liberally splashes the after-shave lotion being advertised into his hands and then slaps each cheek of his face—hard. Shaking his head to clear the stars from his eyes, he smiles—wide-awake now —and says, “Thanks! I needed that!”

That’s the way I often think of death.

Thich Nhat Hahn, an influential Zen Buddhist monk who has a retreat, Deer Park, right up the road a piece from where I live, has a subtler way of saying, “Thanks! I needed that!” He thinks we’d all live deeper and with more wide open hearts, minds, and eyes, if we not only acknowledged death, but embraced it, going so far as to now and then invite the grim reaper in for a cup of tea and a neighborly chat, just to keep in touch. Thich Nhat Hahn even encourages us to quietly meditate on being dead, to imagine the slow decomposing of our own body, right down to the worms eating the carcass we once inhabited. In a way, Thich Nhat Hahn is saying, when we occasionally pause to meditate on death, the next time we're driving our red convertible BMWs down I-5 with the top down and the wind blowing our hair and the sun tanning our skin and the stereo playing loud and we're shouting at the sky, “When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day!” that joie de' vivre we're feeling will be even deeper.

The day after the shark killed the man from Solana Beach, I spent the morning in a café, as I often do, pretending to be absorbed by the words and images flickering on my laptop screen, while secretly eavesdropping on everyone around me. 

Like my friend who had written the email to me the night before, the people I listened to in the café the morning after expressed shock, worry, and fear. Interspersed with jokes about selling shark repellent to surfers and inviting their in-laws to come to town for a swim.

Over the next several days, the people who fill the empty space of newspapers and televisions all over the world—for once, I am NOT exaggerating things —were obsessed with reporting the shark attack. Everyone, from Larry King, to the localist local journalist, struggled to find meaning, to cipher a message, in the event. There were precious little facts to report, so they reported, just like the folks I eavesdropped on in the café, their emotions. Those emotions were shock, worry, and fear. Their goal seemed to be to make a farmer having a beer in his armchair in landlocked Nebraska shiver with fear of imminent shark attack. And then they left town to cover the next shocking story that would spread worry and fear.

I see in the event of this man’s unusual death a meaning and message at odds with the above reactions.

I gleaned from the conversations I eavesdropped on that before the man from Solana Beach died from the shark attack, he had lived 66 years in this world. He was a retired veterinarian; a profession I believe shows the deeply magnanimous nature of humans—that they would heal species other than their own—because they want to, and because they can. He lived in one of the wealthiest and most beautiful towns anyone could live in anywhere on the planet. He had health and wealth, family and friends, was admired and respected. In the moment of his death, he was swimming vigorously in the ocean, training for a future triathlon.

I carry a notepad with me at all times, in case Life sends me a bumper sticker slogan that I mistake for an original thought. On April 11, 2008 when driving home from a vigorous workout at the gym, I pulled over 3 different times to write down three separate thoughts before they would escape back to whence they came. One of the thoughts I wrote in my notepad was this:

I am in charge of my Life. God is in charge of my death.

When I learned about the Life of the man killed by the shark, I immediately understood that he was a man in full charge of his Life.

While, unlike my friends and neighbors and globe-trotting reporters, learning of his death caused no worry or fear in me, I did feel a heartache in knowing that, unlike a death from cancer or HIV, but just like a death in a car crash or from a heart attack, the man from Solana Beach killed by the shark did not get to say goodbye to those he loved. Nor they to him. Yet, they must know far better than I, that he lived well until he died.

The death and Life of the man from Solana Beach killed by the shark have once again awakened me to the Life and death all around me. Especially my own.

Thanks. I needed that.

Time, in partnership with CNN:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1735577,00.html

Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352603,00.html

USA Today:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/04/fatal-shark-att.html?loc=interstitialskip

Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shark26apr26,0,3429715.story

10 News San Diego:
http://www.10news.com/news/15993296/detail.html

San Diego Union Tribune:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080425-100

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Where I Lived
June 10, 2008
© by David Boyne

To Erin, the oracle of the Pannikin Chalkboard, and to Pauline, who knows a Happy Accident is announced, “HA!”

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven't before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't before

From the song Stand, by REM (©Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe)

Some people, including Zen Buddhist monks at monasteries, use the sound waves from bells, struck once, at random, throughout the day, as a way to call them back to being more present in this one forever and only moment.

I use the air-horns of trains roaring past at 70 miles per hour.

If equating a resonating bell struck at a quiet monastery with the air-horn of a train blasting through town doesn’t add up for you, then, as salespeople all around the world command, “Allow me to demonstrate!”

On June 10, 2008, on or about 6:15 in the morning, driving my car in my half-awake pre-coffee trance, I approached the intersection of D Street and Pacific Coast Highway in downtown Encinitas and the traffic lights began flashing red, the railroad crossing alarm began clang-clang-clanging, and the black-and-white barriers began lowering to block the road. The air-horn of a fast approaching train blored. (Technical note: ‘bloared” is blared and roared, train-wrecked.) From the other end of town the shock waves from the train horn going BLOARRRRR reached me—and then the train was THERE—the horn going BLOAR-BLOAR-BLOAR—the shock waves of sound hitting against and entering into my body—and then the train was PAST—and the Doppler diminuendo of its horn BLOARRRrrrreeddd off on down the line.

I was suddenly being more present in this one forever and only moment. I perceived myself, and the world I swam inside, as if watching from outside of my body—which, I knew, I was.

For one lingering moment, I was aware of the alarm bells still clang-clang-clanging, the red lights still flashing, and the barrier blocking the road lifting. Then all was silent. As suddenly as it began, it was over. Like this one forever and only moment.

Alone inside my empty car I whispered, “I love this.”

Just like the bells being rung for the monks and others, my trains come randomly. (I’ve never bothered to get, let alone to memorize, a schedule.) Just like the bells being rung at the monastery, my train horns send out sound waves—very big ones—that cross space and pass into my body, vibrating me wherever I happen to be, whether I’m standing on the street just five feet from the train blasting past, or lying awake in bed a half-mile away in the middle of the night wondering how long I have to live before I go back into the silent nothingness.

Wherever I chance to be when the invisible shockwave of the bloring train horn reaches me, I’m reminded to drop the weight of the past that I am hauling around and to let go of the future I am loading with expectations, and to be more present in this one forever and only moment.

On the morning of June 10, 2008, after the train passed, I turned left, drove North on Pacific Coast Highway, waved to the guy wearing the yellow reflective vest and standing at the big STOP sign with a stack of newspapers he sold to drivers who stop at the STOP sign. Two years ago, I STOPPED reading newspapers, as many years before I had STOPPED watching televisions, having come to an understanding that the stuff which others call ‘content,’ and that fills the space inside newspapers and televisions, is all about insisting that I feel afraid of this world I live in. Still, I always wave to the man who stands by the STOP sign selling newspapers, and he always waves back. We are in this together.

As it turned out, I lived long enough to drive the mile from my home, to the Pannikin Café.

I parked behind the yellow wood building with its white trimmed peaked roof and second-floor balcony that once upon a time in a former life before working as a café had worked as a train station. I walked to the front, to the entrance. Outside the entrance to the Pannikin Café in Encinitas, California, there is an easel with a chalkboard on both sides. And on this easel outside the entrance to the Pannikin Café in Encinitas, California, almost every day, cryptic, meaning-filled messages appear. Once upon a time, Life arranged for me to meet the woman who writes cryptic, meaning-filled messages on the easel with a chalkboard on both sides outside the entrance of the Pannikin Café in Encinitas, California. Her name is Erin. I had asked Erin, “Why do you write these messages on the chalkboard?”

Erin had said, “I want to help.”

As it turned out, I lived long enough to read Erin’s message on the morning of June 10, 2008:

Where Are You Dwelling?
The Neighborhood of Possibility?
Or the Valley of Discontent?
Location. Location. Location.

I was about to laugh aloud, but was stopped by the sound of laughter behind me. I turned to see a woman who had just read Erin’s message. Smiling, her brightened eyes found mine, and she said, “Always worth the reading!”

I could be wrong, but I suspect this is why Erin writes messages on the chalkboard outside the entrance to the Pannikin Café in Encinitas, California.

As it turned out, I lived long enough to leave the Pannikin and to drive myself and an extra-large black coffee and a still warm-from-the-oven raspberry bran muffin a few miles north to the cliffs in Carlsbad. Parking tight to the curb, and looking straight out the windshield, it felt as if my car were floating on the grey-green ocean. I watched as curving backs of black dolphins swelled above the white-frothy waves, then disappeared, then swelled up again farther along on their journey, again and again until beyond my sight. I watched pelicans surf the micro-thermals made by the rising, cresting, and forever rolling forward waves. The pelicans skimmed inches above the water, swooshing along the troughs of the waves, making micro-adjustments to their body, their angle, their wing conformation, until the wave began collapsing and they swooshed to the wave forming behind it, perfectly surfing the micro-thermals created by the waves for half-mile-and longer distances without a single flap of their wings. We are in this together. 

To my left, there was a promontory of the cliff jutting out twenty feet, where, if I wanted, I could go stand at the very edge, as some mornings I do, and look straight out to the horizon, and feel as if the ocean were under my feet.

But on June 10, 2008 I sat in my car, sipping very, very good hot coffee; nibbling, when I remembered to, a very, very good and still warm from the oven raspberry bran muffin. I had opened the windows of my car so the air, perfumed and salted and carrying roiling sound waves from the surf pounding on the beach straight down below my car, flowed into my car and flowed into my lungs and flowed into my blood with each slow, deep breath I took.

As I watched as much of everything of the world I live in as I could see, I felt excitement and sadness and eternal aloneness, as if I were drowning, without dying, in a forever fluid, molten world of forms. Which, I know, I am.

To my left, on the promontory, I saw a blue plastic trash barrel. There was more trash on the tan dirt than inside the blue barrel. Which, I knew, was as likely due to hungry seagulls and crows plucking out the trash to search for food, as it was due to hungry humans plucking out the trash to find aluminum cans that could be redeemed for money, and the money redeemed for food or alcohol or some other drug of their choice. We are in this together.

Near the blue plastic trash barrel, I saw a ground squirrel. (Technical Note: squirrel is a word for cute rat.) From a crumpled white paper bag on the ground, Squirrel expertly extracted a small white rectangular plastic pouch. With astonishingly dexterous hands and nimble fingers that would be the envy of any micro-surgeon, Squirrel sliced the plastic pouch and began licking at the neat incision he had made. It was a bag of hot sauce. Squirrel spasmodically licked the hot sauce, and then spasmodically shook his head. The same thing I do, when experiencing wasabi or habanera. Squirrel then went back for more, the way I, when experiencing the fire of wasabi or habanera, go back for more. As I watched Squirrel spasmodically lick the hot sauce and spasmodically shake his head, I thought how addiction, like pornography, is difficult to define. But I know it when I see it.

Squirrel finally dropped the emptied packet of hot sauce from both paws, the way a Bowery bum would release his wreck of the Past, or his drained quart of cheap sugary wine, to shatter on the sidewalk. Squirrel, swaying on his hind legs, staggered to the left, stopped, dropped to all fours, shook his head spasmodically, became perfectly still for a full three seconds —  — — then methodically set about exploring the contents of the other crumpled white and brown paper bags scattered around the blue plastic trash barrel.

I dropped a bit of my still warm from the oven raspberry bran muffin out the car window. Squirrel paid no attention, and continued rooting around the scattered trash. I shrugged off the snub, looked out at the ocean, sipped coffee, nibbled muffin, went empty of words each time the curving black backs of dolphins traveling north came up from under the water and into my world, or the pelicans, alone, or in pairs, or sometimes in long lines of 7 or 9 or more than I could count, swooped down to skim just inches above the waves and glide half-mile distances with not a single flap of their wings. And, as always happens, I fell out of being more present in this one forever and only moment, not coming back until I realized that I was in the middle of a lively back-and-forth conversation with a beautiful and unhappy woman I loved with all my heart and who I had not seen or spoken with, outside of my mind, in a long time. We are in this together.

In this distracted state, which, I know, is my home state, I chanced to look to my left and I saw Squirrel beside my car now, eating the bit of still warm from the oven raspberry bran muffin I had dropped there.

I then offered advice to go with the muffin. “My friend, you damn well could use some whole-grain fiber after all that junk you’ve been eating.”

Squirrel ignored me, standing on his back legs, nibbling bran muffin, and looking straight out at the ocean, perhaps thinking how it felt as if the ocean were right under his feet.

I watched Squirrel in his trance, from within my trance, and I sipped my coffee, a drug to which I am addicted, and wondered how many animals have become addicted to man’s trashy food. As I thought this, I watched the front tires of a large SUV pulling in to the curb appear in my vision and pass two inches behind friend Squirrel’s back.

I whispered, “Whoa!”

Squirrel sprinted to the safety of the car-free promontory.

From my car, I watched a woman get out of the SUV. She wore black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt that had the letters MICKEY embroidered across the back. She carried a large plastic bag filled with cracker crumbs. She began spreading the cracker crumbs on the ground, aiming clucking noises, and come-hither nods toward Squirrel.

Squirrel was having none of it.

Minutes passed. I traveled somewhere I cannot recall. When I came back, I watched MICKEY, looking disappointed, climb into her big vehicle, and start the loud engine. But then she got out again, leaving the engine running, walked onto the promontory, glanced at the ocean, glanced at a watch on her wrist, then quickly began gathering handfuls of the trash scattered on the ground and carrying it back to the trash can.

Then she drove away.

Squirrel immediately ran onto the flat ground near the suddenly re-filled blue trash barrel. He stood on his hind legs, I am sure, but if he were truly shaking a raised fist at MICKEY’S disappearing SUV, I am not sure. It could have been a trick of my trance.

Nonetheless, breakfast was over.

I lived long enough to drive three miles from the cliffs, to my office. Walking inside, I did what I always do first, raise the blinds covering the wall-to-ceiling windows to reveal the trees and bushes and flowers and hummingbirds and spiders and bees roaming just inches from where I work at my desk. I then sat at my desk, staring into the vivid colors of the box called computer, and fell into work, the way a child, exhausted by a long good day and not wanting it to ever end, falls into sleep.

The train horn, the message on the Pannikin Chalkboard, the cliffs, the ocean, the surging black backs of the dolphins, the wave-surfing lines of pelicans, the blue plastic trash barrel, Squirrel buzzed on hot sauce, all I have tediously described above, were gone gone gone from my awareness.

Then.

There was a soft thump against one of the big windows and it brought me back to being more present in this one forever and only moment.

I knew the sound. Hearing it now, caused a hurt in the center of my chest as if there was a permanent purpled bruise there and a hand had just pressed on it. Which, I knew, was true.

The soft thump had been the sound of a small brown-flecked bird having flown into the virtually invisible glass door that I had left open at a right angle to the virtually invisible windows of my office.

I stood in the doorway, watching down on the injured and dying fluff of stunned life at my feet. As every small meaningless event of each forever and only moment of the morning came flooding back into my thoughts, the center of my chest ached as the pressure of that invisible hand pushed hard against the bruise, my birthright, that I carried there.

I watched as the small life form made three slow attempts to lift it’s head, as if it were trying to sight up the long straight line of life form that was me, into eternity. I felt like a skyscraper, with a child at my base, craning his neck to sight along my length into the eternal bright sky of the future.

In the slowed down time of the bird straining to raise its head three times, its neck broken, on the screen of my mind a silent movie from my past played. From within this movie, I watched out the huge windshield of a large rented U-Haul truck that I was driving across the Great Salt Lake of Utah. Asleep in the passenger seat beside me was the woman who was my wife, but would, a few months later, be the woman I had once been married to. The truck carried all the worldly possessions contained in our rapidly disintegrating union and with each mile west that I drove, I became aware of my breath becoming heavier and heavier with the inarticulate sadness I had accumulated in my just over thirty years of life. In that moment, an iridescently blue and vividly bright yellow bird smashed into the big high windshield of the rented truck carrying everything that I had gained and was in the process of losing. My wife slept. I drove on, knowing I would never be the same again.

As it turned out, I would live long enough so that on June 10, 2008 I would watch down on a dying bird at my feet and simultaneously watch everything around me, letting it all come flooding into me as if I was drowning without dying. Which, I knew, I was. I felt as if I had slipped behind a diaphanous veil, slipped past a secret border, slipped past an invisible boundary separating me from everything, absolutely everything, in this world of forms of which I was but one more form. Which, I knew, I had.

Then the phone rang.

The shockwaves of the ringing called me back to being more present in this one forever and only moment.

I would never be the same again.

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