Author: buddycushman

I walked along the railroad tracks yesterday after work, a strong wind at my butt on the way out, a howling breeze in my face on the way back. My nose was running a lot. I don’t know why.

Getting out of the car back in the trailer park an older woman pulled up next to me at the stop sign. I held up the book I was carrying – “Essential Zen” by Taz Tanahashi and Tenso Schneider – but what I said in her direction was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Couldn’t tell you why.

I read that book in college and again down the road, and maybe again as time passed, and I came into the trailer with an urge to get a copy, and a wonder about just how long has Zen been so all this in my life? Like past what I consider the beginning, back when I bought used on Ebay John Tarrant’s “The Light Inside the Dark?” That’s just over there to my right right now, lingering with me some 17 or so years, but I’ll bet I’m a silly goose thinking buying and reading it was the beginning of me on (and as) this path.

Silly, silly goose. When I was very young I would snatch slices of bread from the kitchen and tear them to pieces and scatter those pieces on the snow and then sit in my second-floor Massachusetts window watching the birds arrive, me all mesmerized, I’m guessing not very separate from the birds, or the snow. And way, way before I ever spied Robert Pirsig’s book.

In our Koan group last night there was this – “On South Mountain clouds gather; on North Mountain rain falls.”

See.

It’s Sunday morning. John Tarrant Roshi presents from Santa Rosa in 30 minutes. Later, a plan to hike the Johnson Ranch, tightened laces, to explore a new ascending path my previous Tuesday eye spied climbing up and off toward the Milky Way, which I take on faith is beyond the daylight blue. Huff huff, puff puff, moo, moo.

The other day, Friday, I woke alert and began the day at two, and still, 19 hours later, I was bargaining for more time. In Massachusetts I use to see these bumper stickers – “So many pedestrians, so little time.”

Gina, my Santa Barbara Zen sidekick, recommended the David Hinton book “Hunger Mountain,” which I scored, and down the park’s clubhouse a while ago I came upon this sentence: “To see the world with this depth and clarity, sight mirroring things wholly, is always a solitary act.” Yay!! And yet…….I’m reminded of the Roger Waters album, “The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.”

After I worked an unexpected shift at the Channel Islands YMCA Saturday morning, I drove to my Starbucks and got a coffee. People were happy to see me, and my favorite table was empty and available, like it’s been almost every time I’ve been there the last couple of weeks, which also made me happy – along with being the cause of happiness.

It may have been at that table, it may have been seven hours earlier drinking coffee after meditating on the zafu, maybe while writing my Pages, or any point in between. At one of those times I got to think about all the walking I’ve been doing these past four and a half months, especially the hiking, and that the attention to the lay of the path and – I know, more scary creatures – the ever-possibility of rattlesnakes sunning themselves on the hardpack, that hyper-vigilant attention, has produced within me and through me, even as me, something akin to a meditative state. Single-pointed mind. While moving.

So when back to the trailer for a meal I gathered a number of books walking/hiking related, and one was my very own “Astoria Strange,” specifically for the story “Turnaround Place.” A tale of movement.

I sat in a chair alone later Saturday night and read “Turnaround Place,” and I wept when I finished. Because it’s good. Because I did something good. Something that counts. I did good.

Boy, I’ll tell you. My mind is so lighty these days. Flighty. It doesn’t want to settle anywhere. I don’t believe it’s a question of whether a thing feels important, or on a schedule, or, in fact, necessary. It’s more my “How about right now?” mind. And even “now” feels a smidge shimmery.

These past mornings I’ve been studying the ‘Chan’ life posture of simultaneous “do not dwell” and “do not set out.” That kind of gets to where I’m at these days.

I’ll tell this too: It’s when I’m hiking through the surrounding hills and across these mountainsides where and when I experience “I’m right where I’m supposed to be” most. Mostly all.

Peace out, Friday.

I had something of a revelation – vast, giddy side of ‘Aha!” – on the tail end of my Johnson Ranch Trail hike Tuesday afternoon after work. It followed, maybe 150 yards down the path toward the parking lot, an experience so profound and personal I don’t have any words for it. Call it a hushed, ethereal couple of moments.

I did spend some time very early Wednesday morning sharing the experience as best I could via Zoom with my teacher David, Roshi, who – nothing new here – asked me a few questions, none of which I could (can) answer. I open my mouth and nothing falls out, like that Harlan Ellison story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” I bet really like that. After a few moments I started laughing, completely dumbstruck, such an interesting experience.

That is much of my practice – Awash in dumbfoundedness, and not knowing much of anything. Honestly. Sometimes we use the word ‘Intimate.’ I’m quite fine with the childish glee of ‘Duh.’

“They flutter behind you, your possible pasts. Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost.” – Pink Floyd

I was talking with Gavin Monday afternoon about mountain lions, what is implied as a proximity to and with them on lots of the walks I walk. Hikes I hike. Somehow it came up again in the Zen Koan group out of Oakland I zoom every Tuesday. ‘The fire that burns everything — it doesn’t survive, it survives, we get to spend time with the “it.” The “it” amidst the burning. The end of things.’

I shared I’ve been walking on trails which display signs with this relevant information – “Mountain Lion Habitat.” And this advice – “Don’t hike alone.” I wouldn’t walk on them at first and now I do. Hiking through the Johnson Ranch Trail yesterday after work there was the small feeling of being looked at once in a while. Watched. Fortunately there were cows scattered everywhere back at the beginning (and end) and I got to spend close proximity with a few and nobody was eating anybody, though that may be their fate down the path, and that kind of swings me around to what I was talking to Gavin about Monday about Native Americans and the deep honor offered and not separate from eating and wearing the buffalo — we thank you for this gift –

and I was having some goofy and maybe a smidge romantic feelings about being eaten by a mountain lion and I wanted Gavin – and you – to know I’d be scared out of my mind — again, it encourages me in the direction to really be the fire that burns everything and begin to identify with what it must be like to be eaten – and anyway, here in ’25 on the Central Coast I’m pretty sure there’d be worse ways to go. Other than as a gift.

The mountain lions were my favorite animals at/in the San Diego Zoo – along with the giraffes. Just saying.

I don’t know how to talk about what I want to say this morning. I feel it, I’ll just scribble. It has to do with my place in all the rooms of my world here today, and a clarity – ? – for each and every one of those places — a physical, experiential rather than intellectual clarity. Sensory. Maybe like coming home, at long last, to my very own dna. “Hi Sweetie. Where ya been?”

There’s a Zen verse which makes use of the word ‘Elegant,” and there is something there…….The elegance of allowing myself to be entirely this very me. The mysterious side of the universe, far from the land of any form of people pleasing.

Even cows, girlfriends, now more like pals to hang out with on the corner. If we’re energetic and enthused, and really lucky, maybe moo some doo wop amidst the seemingly endless vagrancy. Under this street light, or that one.

I am so grateful you are a subscriber, and the fact is there’s less personal mental stability up on the mountain bench than there was when I continued to find myself couch surfing – even at 70. Especially in the heat.

And so yesterday morning I was all lost in the summer heat – dizzy dancing morning – and I left early to catch a walk before 90 degrees. On the back of the one-mile each way out-and back I had this droozy fantasy that some morning – I was thinking this coming Wednesday – every single person on our planet would wake and find themselves capable of speaking only two words for something like a week. The two words? “Good morning.”

It’s funny because the next couple and a solo act and another couple all passed the other way, and they made eye contact, and someone or the other said, “Good morning.”

What a wonderful world it would be/is. A while later I picked my phone from my pocket, dialed up YouTube the way I do on the mountain bench, and played “Good Morning, Good Morning” by The Beatles. That song having come up as a suggestion from me to Jorge on the Y’s front desk Saturday morning when he was wondering about songs to load into his player for the long ride out to Fresno to visit family directly after work.

Then there it was again. Turns out, “I’ve got nothing to say but it’s okay.”

Intimacy as a tangible thing – as a vibrant experience – is wild in my life right now. These days. I suppose it may be greater awareness, slowly encroaching through years of devoted meditation – zazen. Or maybe there’s just more intimacy at 76.

This example:

I have become intimate with the 101. When I lived in Portland, OR, then on to Encinitas and San Diego, CA, I spent time on the 5. It was a route from one place to another. Long while driving, and with sometime serious traffic jams. It was pretty much just the Mexico to Canada highway to take when heading north or south.

It’s different with the 101. Driving it feels more experience than task. I learned it from Ann, hoping off the 405 north of LA on the way to central and north places. She pointed out the ‘El Camino Real’ markers every mile. It has offered an amazing array of scenery, then and today. There’s a friendliness.

But mostly what has brought the 101 into its own revered place in my heart is the way it joins me on every hill and mountain hike I take. I see it from this blog’s mountain bench. I see it on the ups and arounds at the Johnson Ranch. It’s there when I’m sweating up Bishop Peak, and I can see amazingly far both north and south on my newest Lemon Grove Trail, a confidant. The 101 as boundary below, visual and aural, the land and landscape on which I trudge and stroll keeping all my secrets.

Even on the beloved Bob Jones Trail, a growing volume of 101 music urging me on to the turnaround place. I like how it feels.

This morning I could offer dozens of examples of a wild intimacy wrapping its arms around the whole of my late summer ’25 life on the Central Coast. This highway is one of them.

I was going to ask if you might find a few extra minutes this morning to read a longer, story-telling post . But, nah, I’ve decided to simply leave out all the unimportant words. — Which reads:

Save legs, hold mountains, city stroll, ancient bookstore, Shunryu Roshi — San Francisco Zen, Page Street coffee, Bay Bridge videos, so bruised already.

Missed Point Reyes hikes, Old Pine Trail, Douglas Firs, glancing dangling mirror, original face, long-ago stories — “Welcome in.” Staples – “I’ll take you there.” Before, “Sitting cross-legged on the floor.”

Will I ever get better and have I always been so good?