We are in the midst of a move. My older son Evan moved first. He has been in southern California for a few weeks now and is about to begin studies at a new (for him) college. I drove my wife Monika and younger son Andrew to the airport just days ago. It was still dark when we awakened and the three of us had coffee to keep us awake for the trip to JFK.
There was a heart-wrenching moment when we had the back of the station wagon loaded with their huge suitcases. My wife and I sat in the car while Andrew remained in the house saying goodbye to the Dixie the dog, we thought. But when he did not appear for ten minutes or so, Monika went in to see what was up. She came out looking sad saying she found Andrew walking through the rooms of the house with tears running down his cheeks.
Moving is hard. Andrew who is 17 has lived in this house all his life. I didn’t realize just how important this wooden building on this humble half-acre of land is to him. But we have made up our minds for many reasons, to go. It is time.
The move is all for good, positive reasons. But there is the barrier of leaving a place to get through. Although the barrier is invisible, it is very, very powerful. Now that autumn is arriving in New England, I hope that the warm California sun will make our move seen more right.
All the energy involved in selling the house, keeping it clean and neat to show prospective buyers, has taken its toll. Monika and I are exhausted and I’ve been so consumed and felt so disconnected, I’ve been unable to write.
But now it’s so quiet around here. It’s just me and the dog and I feel the urge to write again. I’ve just polished up my screenplay and am sending it off again—so there’s hope.
But I’m hoping it won’t be long before Dixie and I will be on the road following my family and the sun.
I don’t know if you remember him—not Wallace Green, but Green Wallace. He appeared here just once. Let’s call him a sort of Guest Speaker. He is the forgetful one and has a great many imperfections greater than that, in fact, among them is his anger.
And today, Green is sad, feeling like he should be curled up in a little ball. He’d be happy in a dark and damp place somewhere lost deep in a forest in a land without so much as a name. He’d like to be lost. It’s almost as if he’d like just not to be at all! Which is a very scary thought for Green Wallace or for anybody for that matter.
When Green got this way, buried so deep inside himself that he—well, he wanted to see if he could be somewhere else outside himself as if he was an actor in a play who could see himself acting the part of someone else. He thought life would be so easy that way.
He liked the idea of not having to be himself for awhile. But then sometimes he would forget himself—just who he was exactly—until nothing at all would matter, nothing at all.
But that was a sort of depression, or a depression of sorts. That’s when he would find himself deep within the forest we mentioned, where the air certainly smelled more of musk and mold and where there were more animals, insects and trees than anything else at all.
And there it is where we find Green Wallace, still alone, almost as still as a rock or as a dead fly even.
Wallace has a kind of hunger within him—an empty space that nothing, it seems, could ever fill.
I went to a party at the home of Linda Howard and Tucker Clark on Saturday where there were lawn games, volleyball, croquet and horse shoes.
But most importantly, a friend of Linda’s was to be there, Gail Ramey, with whom I have a long ago connection—Bob Roth. Bob is a truly wonderful guy who happens to be the person who introduced me to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. That was in 1973. In 2003, Bob still works closely with Maharishi as his press secretary. His loyalty and dedication to Maharishi is amazing, and admirable, to me. Thirty years of focusing on a higher goal. Ho-ray, Bob!
Gail told me a wonderful tale of growing up in and around Berkeley in the 60’s and 70’s, where she and Bob had met in high school and were girlfriend and boyfriend. There they were as teenagers in the very epicenter of change for the whole country during the time when America was going through an intense change of consciousness.
I told Gail I thought it was the experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs combined with what was happening with our country’s involvement in Vietnam that opened the door that allowed people to witness different states of consciousness. It was drugs and the war shaking us to the core of our existence, which made us question the meaning of our lives and start to look for the Truth—whatever that might be.
Gail’s description of growing up in those turbulent times was so clear and so visual that I suggested that she write about it. She said she’d already begun to; I hope she continues.
When I began to blog, I began with my story of life in 1970, when I’d just come home from my year in Vietnam and traveled to California in search of my guru. Talking with Gail about those times brought me back there again. 1970 was truly a new beginning for me.
Living on the anchovy boat in Santa Barbara harbor, I was a lost soul. I’d lost my faith in the inevitability of life—something we usually take for granted—the fact that life will continue into the next day and the next and so on. What was going on with me then was not just a questioning of our country’s moral values—I had a cavernous doubt, a huge hole in my soul, caused by the war which needed to be filled with some positive affirmation that life was worth living.
I think That is what Gail and I were talking about at Linda and Tucker’s party. It was powerful, as it always is, to be reminded of those years. I admire Bob Roth for sticking so closely to his quest for the Answer. And thanks to Gail for bringing it back to being so close at hand.
Still in my pajamas, I wandered outside yesterday as soon as I saw the pick up filled with sign poles parked in the driveway. By the time I reached the street, the men, one black and one white, had got the post in and were tamping down the ground around it.
Seeing the sign up made the selling of our house seem more real. But I felt a little sad because the men had found the perfect spot to plant the sign—the place I’d intended to tell them about—the one where cars coming from both directions would see it.
Now that I have had time to ponder, I realize that of course I didn’t need to tell these men where to put the sign. After all, it’s their business. But what made me sad was the realization, I guess, that I was no longer needed here. The sign is the sign that it’s time for us to go. The place can live without us now. It’s time to give up control and the fatherly and motherly feelings of thinking we need to take care of things.
This is letting go.
But, as I think about it, it must happen before the next stage can begin, which is what, I’ll bet, I’ll be writing about from now on—at least for awhile.
Yesterday, I woke up early and realized something.
That I live fearlessly. I stand in front of God I am proud to say, shamelessly and feel I am able to spreak to Him directly and without hesitation. Here is a short prayer I wrote:
My Lord, I trust you enough not to fear, knowing You will provide for my family and me. You give and give and as always, I am the receiver. So for every single thing I have, I thank you, Lord--especially for allowing me to live fearlessly.
I think, every so often, we all need to make sure our connection with our Higher Power is clear and operating flawlessly. This seems to be the sentiment of my short prayer. Thanks for listening.
There is much you do not understand about me. I sometimes need to be left alone. I need to feel a large space around me, as if it is just me standing alone somewhere in the middle of the Sahara Desert, or the Gobi Desert.
I need to not hear your voice. I need to listen, at these times, only to the beating of my own heart. For it is there that I feel the connection with my God and my Universe and my Self.
It is all just this simple. Sometimes people don’t understand. They think I am avoiding them, or unhappy with them, or even angry. I am none of these things. I know that whatever anyone thinks of me, if they have some problem, it is only a problem they have with themselves. Often, people don’t understand this.
So when I say, "do not disturb me" it is nothing mean or untoward or anything at all except what it is—my need for space and to feel connected.
Every action needs an inspiration and underlying this action the inspiration appears to be tiredness. I really don’t like to admit that I’m tired but the truth is that I am. Although I’ve always been blessed with a manic amount of energy—ask anyone, I don’t stop working until I drop—there are a lot of things I no longer want to do.
Here's that list:
1. I no longer want a full-time job.
2. I no longer want to own a house in Westport, Connecticut.
3. I no longer want to own a luxury car. As a matter of fact when I began working in the travel business I owned a pick up truck, which was an oddity in a parking lot full of sedans. My older son thinks my downfall coincided with the sale of that truck. I have to agree with him. Once again I want to own pick up truck—a Ford F150-dark green I think, maybe even with a diesel engine. Have you ever heard the big Ford 250 diesel? It has a deep-throated sound almost better than a Harley!
4. I want no responsibility…or as little as possible.
5. I want no schedule at all. Just want to begin each day breakfast and a walk and see what comes after that. This means no appointment book. A calendar, which shows Christmas, New Years and the family birthdays—that’s about it.
And then there are the things I do want to do.
1. I want to grow my own food. I want to have a farm—not a huge commercial deal, just one big enough to feed the family.
2. I want to walk a lot.
3. I want to swim a lot. There’s a swimming hole cut into the Eel River part of my in-law’s ranch that is the perfect size for swimming laps. It even has a rope swing that makes you feel like a kid again when you’re on it. And there’s a raft to sun yourself on.
4. I want to go slow. Slow enough to enjoy fishing.
5. I want to be a Buddhist without being called one, just so there is no pressure to be that or anything else. I don’t want the pressure of a label, otherwise I might as well go back to being a Creative Director.
6. I want very, very few clothes. Just the ones I need for the day and one other change would be enough. I don’t need to own a suit. A sport jacket is enough. No ties—not a single one. And no dress shoes. Just a pair for hiking, some boots for fishing and climbing.
7. The only other possessions I want are expendable things, like cookware and plates to eat off of and maybe a tent, camping stove and a sleeping bag for when I don’t want to sleep in a bed.
8. I want to build my own house. The process of building is what interests me as much as living in the result. But the result should be simple, Buddhist if that is a word you can apply to a house. I’ve been sketching my house for years, more than twenty. But I think its location on the planet is about as important as the house itself. It's going to be somewhere out west.