Author: buddycushman

Back when I was a kid, back in Massachusetts, I’d often see this bumper sticker – “I feel a lot better now that I’ve given up hope.” Now, while I’ve always found myself attracted to darker, edgier things and ideas, I enjoyed that bumper sticker more than I ever agreed with it. Call me head in the clouds, Pollyanna wannabe, endless dreamer, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – I’ve always believed in hope. Always. Like Bruce Springsteen sang about it — “Man the dope’s that there’s still hope.”

I bring this up on a dreary Tuesday morning as if to crawl inside that bumper sticker – this particular one on, say, a ’67 GTO – to look at it entirely differently, inside out, me now in full agreement.

If you are a regular here you know that upon and since my return to Portland I’ve been devoted to finding a part-time job. Being broke has its advantages, but not every day. And, you also know, despite something like 30 applications and 10 or more interviews, ain’t nothing echoing in these eardrums but “No” “No” No.” And then it hit me, I think it was last Thursday, it was raining, how absolutely fortunate I am to not have to suit up and show up at a job. All this don’t-have-a-job time to sit on the cushion, to drink one coffee after another, to wander the hood – one hood after another, to read all sorts of Zenish books. To just sit around and not do a thing, other than stream Apple TV a lot.

So, see, further on down the road, I do feel a lot better figuring there’s no hope at all to click a time card ever again. Ha! Poverty? What poverty?

By the way – my basement studio is sort of loaded with chestnuts, sidewalk refugees and companions from lazybones, meandering walks – me and my chestnuts, Northeast neighborhoods ambling kid. And not a job description in sight.

Saturday morning, after the farmer’s market and off to the coffee shop, I took a crazy long way home, mostly to stay warm in the car and listen to The Clash. Win-Win. And a feeling came – and I’ve felt it a few times lately – that something of significance, maybe even something wicked big, is showing up in my life any day now. Which could be that I’m gonna croak, and not “Gotta crow” like Peter Pan, more in the Tibetan bardo adios, some after life here on the day-to-day planet, though my vision is lazing at a minor league baseball field, season ticket, sunny, balmy, maybe in Virginia.

Other than that, some new thing, maybe it’s an adventure, or it could be a special project winging in out of the blue. But something. Something that matters. Not to worry, it’s not a new zip code – an obvious template – and in fact it is sort of like Peter flying around up above Neverland. “I’ve gotta crow.”

We’ll see.

And you know what they say – “After the enlightenment, the laundry.”

Last Friday, deep in the milieu of illness, I made a decision. I was going to put aside all my Zen books, most importantly all my Koan books (and there are many) and focus exclusively on just two books the next five days – Saturday through Wednesday: “Two Arrows Meeting in Mid Air – The Zen Koan” – by John Daido Loori (Roshi) and “Something A Little Bird Told Me” by Biz Stone. Yeah, still one Koan book but far different from the usual early morning and through-the-day perusal of shelf-loads. The decision came out of the blue – my way of saturated living more and more and more – and it felt exactly right.

On Sunday I decided to extend through Thursday, and on Monday it felt like the “work week” was the way to go and I said to no one other than me that I’d stick to these two books through Friday – today. I’ve been just short of entirely devoted to the plan, a quick peek at two pages in “The Carefree Ease Record” the teeniest goofy blip.

It’s made a difference, and my best, poetic, engaging words can’t say how. Like I’m always saying to my son Spenser – “Trust me.” And there are dozens of wonderful quotes throughout both books I could post here – when I humbly ask others to speak for me. And maybe I’ll post them. But not today.

I finished “A Little Bird’ yesterday. Very wonderful.  And I’m not quite halfway through “Two Arrows”, which if you know anything about Koans is like saying it’s barely started on me. Ladeeda, me and Annie Hall on a schoolyard merry-go-round. I’ll continue to stroll into the zendo of Loori’s book.

I’m feeling better, and have no clue how my life’s gonna go past this morning. But, it’s grand still being here. One down, one going.

This thought strolled into my head this morning — “Have dinner with friends.”

It’d be a good trick. Here in Portland in the autumn of me (2026), no active friends, the skinniest of working menus. Nevermind when’s dinner? When I was a kid, on the TV shows a mom would open the front door and call out, “Dinner.” It would be 5pm or 5:30, 6pm, even 7:00. My mom was probably doing that too. Then, look now, I’m nearly always done with the meal by 3:30p, as late as 4:00. Who’s keeping track?

This is just reporting. Noting. I had two job interviews earlier this week. Face-timed calls with both my sons this week. I have been very active in my practice this week. I came upon this leaf on a sunny walk yesterday, and this poem this morning:

“If you still don’t get it, then look —- Just look at September! Look at October! —- Hundreds of thousands of gold and yellow leaves fill the mountain streams.”

I don’t have clarity about when this life of walking began. I know it began “As the thing, as the all of it” in October of 2021 when I landed in San Diego after three months in Encinitas — where I learned to boogie board — after the Portland divorce. The fact is my walking now, back in Portland, is the “all of it.” Along with coffee. Along with Zen books. Along with blogging. With Morning Pages. That potpourri a small speck held within the self-love arms of a practice.

Someone wondered the other day if I’m depressed. I’m not. When the first snow comes to Portland I’ll run out into it, wild, aflame, in a fire dance. Energy enough to rattle all the trees in Forest Park, swish the mighty Willamette River from shore to shore.

In the meantime — walking, coffee, books, sidewalk kitties, the cushion, dragonflies — all the colorful palette of art I’m offered each day, another day, presenting itself, huffs out.

There is no blog waiting. Going back to PSU won’t help, though there may be pretty girls. Are old eyes filled with longing or acceptance or surrender? Or the joy of every butterfly and a line at Starbucks? The yearning of here I am with every faraway train whistle. This much is certain — this sickness is relentless, like The Milwaukie Brewers. And the AC/DC anthem – “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.” Or The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Some candy talking.” Zen 101: ‘Who’s hearing?’ No one here but just old bag of bones me. Dancing at the fever party. At peace among used furniture, streamlined provisions, and nowhere to go. Just as long as there’s enough coffee.

This very ramble has been brought to you by General Electric, where ‘Progress is our most important product.’ And thank goodness for Ed Sullivan, who invited The Beatles to come over and sing awhile.

See! See! There ain’t no editor in the house.

Sunday morning, still in the throes of wild illness, I came to a conclusion that this blog – fromamountainbench.com – was in need of more subscribers – a hundred in total to be exact. At the moment of this astounding revelation there were/are 55. And I have – as the blog – been around a long time. What’s a kid with his head in the clouds to do?

Also on Sunday morning I wrote in my Morning Pages that I’d been out on a walk in one of these local NE Portland neighborhoods when I saw three kangaroos hop by. I believe they were joeys. Whatever, they paid no attention to me, I think they didn’t even notice me. Some kind of statement (to myself) about not being the center of things. Not exactly Zen, not exactly not Zen.

I’m telling you this, feverish, bronchial, beyond my default mind of delusion, that I would love to have asked that bouncing threesome if they had any thoughts on where I can find another 45 subscribers, I don’t know, say by Thursday.

Do you?

Quite interesting to feel so sick and try to make sense of anything. Cancelled a job interview yesterday, rescheduled for Monday, by then my nose ought to look like Rudolph’s. On the other hand, there is a clarity about needing to do better with my eating.

Still, it doesn’t feel like there’s any playbook this Friday. Perhaps I’ll sit in the recliner all day and do nothing at all, other than sitting there. The be here now of feeling like this.

I’ve mentioned a few times in this space a guy I knew back in Somerville, MA named Frenchie, and his go-to pronouncement – “I don’t know nothing about nothing.” Every once in a while that line comes ringing into a day I’m having. It’s not entirely the case so far today – clear about better eating and the color of my nose. I think I’m mentioning it because it’s always been a sentiment I’ve felt okay around.

Tuesday at this time (9:15 a) I was heading up to the parking lot at Fremont to get a cup of coffee and then head out on the walk that brought me past the glorious, reach-for-the-sky Douglas Fir on Shaver. This morning (Wednesday 9:15 a) I’m sick as a dog.

Yesterday (Tuesday) late afternoon my son told me he had spoken to his wife about having me Baker Act’d, what’s known as 5150’d in California. We used to call it being committed. For my seemingly growing inability to make good decisions to take care of myself. I asked him to please hold off on that. I said I liked my freedom.

Children, right? Got it all figured out. Who knows, maybe they do. And I suppose there’d be what’s somewhat flippantly referred to as “three hots and a cot.” I wonder how many books you’re allowed to bring? And are there daily outings to stroll through the falling leaves and feel the cooling breeze on increasingly wrinkled skin? Never mind a stereo and headphones and The Clash and a thousand other hit records.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, though a few of my recent decisions are right up there. One of those noted hit records sang, “the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time.” Between you and me I’d like to think it’s the funny farm right down here in the basement. The buddhas and plants and sweet potatoes are for sure laughing at me most of the time.

Or is it with me?

this Douglas Fir, here in a yard at the corner of NE Shaver and NE 10th.

there’s something about going off into some wild place – right across the street; down a deserted grocery store aisle. The day brightens. This life brightens. Hope swirls through a late, cool morning – greens, blues, browns, and yellows – and as has always been the case, leaves flutter down. By the cans of chili, the rolls of paper towels; under the pine needles.

maybe a scrub jay paints its life way up on the top of the magnificent tree. Maybe it thinks, “What isn’t a palette?”

I know I think that.