Author: buddycushman

Last week in my ‘Ode to the odometer’ I mentioned both my friend Gavin and the April morning my then-wife Susan asked me for a divorce. At some point when the talking and listening were done I wandered out of the art studio and through the house and out onto the streets of Portland. I could not see through my tears.

Aimless and unable to breathe, after a while I called Gavin. He talked to me for an hour. He held me up, and mostly together, from 600 miles away. In fact he called me every single day for the next month – every single day: “How are you? Are you okay today? You’re gonna be okay.” At some point in the conversation the first morning he asked if I knew the Fleetwood Mac song “Gypsy.” I said I did, but he explained it to me that day in a way I’d never understood. He said there was a lot of me in it. A lot.

Last Sunday driving home from a walk along the railroad tracks a Fleetwood Mac song came on the radio and my mind went back to “Gypsy,” and to that day. And the vast friendship and care I was offered. I went home and looked up and copied the lyrics. These:

So I’m back, to the velvet underground
Back to the floor, that I love
To a room with some lace and paper flowers.
Back to the gypsy that I was
To the gypsy that I was

And it all comes down to you
Well you know that it does
And lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
Oh, and it lights up the night
And you see your gypsy
You see your gypsy

To the gypsy that remains
Faces freedom with a little fear
I have no fear, I have only love
And if I was a child
And the child was enough
Enough for me to love
Enough to love

She is dancing away from me now
She was just a wish
She was just a wish
And a memory is all that is left for you now
You see your gypsy, oh
You see your gypsy

Huh. Yeah. Still dancing away.

“Thanks.”

Flashback — I’m one of a four-member crew for the Wareham (Massachusetts) Park Department a summer after my high school graduation. It’s pouring down rain and we are in the little shack on the other side of town from the main building, a daily respite place.The superintendent (Billy), who walks around like he has a large stick up his butt, comes in through the door and asks Frank, my boss, “What are you doing in here?” Frank says, “It’s pouring down rain.” Billy says, “What about the rain gear?” To which Frank asnwers, to his boss, “Fuck the rain gear.”

This conversation taking place sometime between 1967 and 1973 has always stayed with me, now more than 50 years later. “What’s right?” It’s always felt like that. “What’s right?” In this very situation, at this very time. “What’s right?”

It’s a good question.

The other morning writing my Morning Pages the phrase ‘Kit and Kaboodle’ showed up. Google shared this definition – “All of something, the entire lot of people or things….Origin – ‘Kit and boodle.’ ‘Kit’ – collection. ‘Boodle’ – bundle.”

So cool.

Each post from here, onamountainbench, each day are my whole kit and kaboodle.

Promise.

There were times when I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts the winter temperature would drop to six degrees. And it wasn’t unusual, there in my first 50 years, to have two or three or four days in a row of the low twenties. It was just winter.

Now, when I go outside at 4am after meditation to look at the stars and it’s 45 and I can see my breath, I can barely imagine ever having been so cold.

It seems getting old had made me wussier. And yet, has it?

I can never remember being this brave.

While on the ride back from the Bob Jones Trail and the Avila Beach pier Wednesday afternoon, sunlight poured in through the rear window and lit up the dashboard. My eyes fell on the odometer, which read 153,637. Wednesday was November 19, 2025. I bought my 2002 Camry at an independent dealership in North Portland, Oregon May 10, 2019, and that late morning the odometer announced itself as 126,769. A random calculator came up with this math – I’ve driven 26,869 miles in a little more than six and a half years. Those miles request I share their stories. So…….

Further calculation, they want me to tell you, determines I have averaged driving 4,134 miles per year. When I was a kid I remember hearing that an average person drives an average of 25,000 miles annually. So – Yikes! – there must be stories there. Here’s one: On a Wednesday morning in the middle of an April day 2021 my lovely wife Susan asked me for a divorce. Something like 10 weeks later I pointed the Camry south on the 5, detoured briefly to Gavin’s in Oakland for a night, and landed in San Diego, some 1,082 miles later. And subtract those two days pointed south, the other 363 days that year I accumulated 3052 miles of me behind the wheel, and, totally being geeky, in the 363-day-year of 2021 I averaged driving a smidge less than eight and one half miles a day.

(July 2021, Encinitas living:)

Hmmm – Not much in the way of storytelling. So, (another So), I’ve just now decided these mileage tales will be a story ongoing, a to be continued. I’ll see you back here – odometer kid – next time.

Fun fact #11 – I am now 325 miles north from San Diego, back toward Oregon, here in San Luis Obispo. Another “I don’t want to do this anymore” tearful hearing hand turning the ignition.

Cows have entered the picture.

There’s a feral cat named Bobbie up on a thin fence, what looks like a magnificent act of balance, though for Bobbie it’s just hanging out.

Bobbie became my friend, this was back in San Diego where loneliness was farther away, me morning bright eager and enthusiastic with my hellos, Bobbie sphinx-like and cool. That kind of friendship.

The last time I saw Bobbie, after a year as friends, he padded over to the sidewalk gate and stuck his nose through to moisten my hand – a first and only time.

I guess a case can be made for patience. I won’t argue. But, if you ask me, it was just the both of us decorating our hearts.

Sometime before 5 a.m. Monday morning, more rain washing out of the sky than nearly imaginable, likely 10,000 tiny flash floods all through the city, college students warm and dry under winter blankets – no northern light show, no stars to count, no moon reflecting soft glow in the eyes of dreamers – I finished another book. There was no sense of accomplishment. Just – cool.

I’m guessing the rain, too, with no self-centered sense of accomplishment. I see my mind like a merry-go-round, spinning back and back again to right here now, after the book – these ancient sneakers like slippers, this rented chair, my so early Pages. Later there’s a dentist appointment, and later still an evening shift at work.

Maybe someone can tell me what Wednesday will look like.

I’ve been having these coffees with Jorge – think “My Dinner With Andre” – every other Sunday, 10 a.m., at Starbucks. They are so interesting. He’s my co-worker and technical role model wannabe at the front desk at the Y, and we could barely be more different. He’s 21 and I’m 76. He’s a soon-to-be-graduating student at Cal Poly with a degree in computer science and I’m in the zip code of helpless when it comes to the technology, seven years to earn a BS in screwing around. He’s a Mexican-American kid from Fresno, CA, a real family son and grandson, and I’m a Waspy goofball older guy from the outskirts of Cape Cod, MA. mostly a loner. He’s Dodger Blue, I’m Red Sox green.

There’s just something amazingly special about our conversations. I often end up talking about stuff I didn’t remember I’d remembered, never mind a gush of details. Things just fall out, and it’s a ditto for him too – though I’m the usual chatterbox – and we laugh out loud – I laugh way more than normal out in the world. And there are many, many touching moments. Genuine moments of this big, crazy, don’t-know-what’s-coming-next la vida loca.

Sunday, Jorge talked about just that – It’s always been school, summer vacay, school, vacay, school, vacay. Now school’s coming to its BSCS end, and Jorge – who’s gone to a school career fair and been sending out resumes and interviewing – doesn’t know what comes next. As for me, the not knowing is kind of where I thrive, and sitting there a couple days ago I thought about it and said there have been really big not knowing changes much of the last 20 years of my life. It feels like that now too. It’s interesting.

I’m incredibly grateful for these rendevous’s, and I let Jorge know that. Something like a tangible “space” opens up within those 60 to 120 minutes, and something like magic falls out. It warms my heart.

Which is sweet.

Everything is so wet, so green.

Yesterday I began poking around for a new place to live.

There is no more information than that to share today:

Wet, green, and what now?