Author: buddycushman

I called my younger sister Nancy Wednesday afternoon to wish her a happy birthday. She told me it was raining then, there in our hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts where she now lives again.

Rain.

It has rained here once in San Luis Obispo, CA in the four plus months this place has become my home. Early on, late April, for maybe a bit over half an hour. I miss the rain.

I’m a California kid, now, til death do us part, and know from experience the rains will be coming in the fall, often with a fury and wildness that has kids like me longing for sunny summer days. It’s okay. My teacher endlessly reminds me — It’s dry, it’s like that; it’s a rain storm, it’s like that.

Here today, I’d like to think that when the time of the rain does return I won’t be shy stepping out into it. Dancing this mess around.

“You may be eloquent as a river tipping steadily over into a falls, but what would all your explanations reveal?” – David Hinton, “No-Gate Gateway”

It’s interesting to try and carve out a post – using words – about the value of not saying anything. Which continues to gather as a suggestion – zip it, throw key – in my life these days. Me and Uncle Buck. The following two paragraphs were typed before this one, being typed right now within a morning of worthy activities – some of which involved talking. Hmmm, don’t-know mind. Anyway, this below from the artist Drew Davis here in SLO. Who needs words?:

As my Teacher pointed out to me Wednesday morning – Having a plan to not have a plan is still having a plan.

And like I heard another someone share a while later yesterday – “Like I always say, it’s the limitations that make the artist.” …….talkin’ about mine, surely not Drew’s.

This was posted on Craigslist yesterday:

Hello. I am looking for an empty or somewhat empty garage space where I can store 19 medium size boxes, almost entirely filled with books I’ve gathered through my life. They are currently in a garage in Idaho, but those friends are moving away and I need to find a resting place for the boxes here in San Luis Obispo. They would fit against an empty wall if you have one, the conditions of the garage are not important – lots of your stuff, dirt floor, spider webs, windowless, etc. I cannot pay much but it would be something where there’s now nothing. I would/will never come at strange hours, likely late mornings or earlier afternoons, and rarely at that.

These are books that have been away from me since a divorce in the spring of 2021. It would/will be a thrill to hold them again, and that can only happen if I find a space where they can rest their too-far-away selves here. I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of CD’s tucked in a box or two as well, and that means dancing (out from the garage) will be involved.

I’m responsible, I already have a grateful heart, and I am long-time sober. I’m only interested in this city. They’ve (we’ve) logged enough miles already. Thanks for your consideration.

I became a cow Sunday afternoon. I walked the walk, I talked the talk. I stepped over the patties of others, and danced my slow animal waltz amidst all those strands of golden grass. We was all wary of mountain lions, just like the sign in the eucalyptus grove said to be. We cows can run, but those lions can motorvate.

I followed a brand new path on a now old trail,found my way into being lost on the way back. Then I saw an opening and became a cow. On the ‘Tube I played Van Morrison. I played Freddie Scott. I did not play The Dave Clark Five – “Catch Us If You Can.”

I’ve been walking a lot, more than usual, these past days, and my four-leg sisters travel on and about nearly all those bedouin paths. Right there along with me. And always there’s this fine practice for me – Holding those close no longer close by.

“Well, I’ve been out walking
I don’t do that much talking these days…..” – Jackson Browne

There’s a mellow up-and-downness on the hiking through the Johnson Ranch. The topography of the land takes and gives. The strong breeze cools, from around one bench, through the stand of oaks. I feel as if every one of the buzzards gliding on the currents above are my sisters. Saturday there must have been eight of them. The hardpack beneath my feet, step by step by step, appears to hold as sticky my badly worn orange shoes. I see and nearly taste the way the ground maintains me – keep on little traveler.

For me the day offers trades, though Saturday was mostly receiving. It’s longer periods than that, I think – four months; four years; the first fly ball I ever snagged while falling in a Little League’s right field.Taffy, my childhood companion, traded in for cats on the small streets in this trailer park. Some rub my leg, others a friendly distance. I wonder what they think about all the surrounding hills? Those mountains? Look Felix, Cloe, fun Cheshire – I climbed that one. To the very top.

I’m glad I’m not as social as those eight hawks circling in some funky rhythm above me, Saturday walk, walk, walk. Maybe if I was a bird it’d be different. ‘It’ as me. I might be different. I think I hope not.

I do love the land here on California’s central coast, and I swear it’s forever welcoming me with all its arms wide open.

I’d join the buzzards’ chorus if I knew the tune. If they gave me the sheet music.

I told on myself yesterday. It was at work, a few minutes after a conversation with the young woman who’s my boss – a conversation in which she checked my input on the computer and said it was right and correct and good job, because you (me) didn’t offer a free pass when this was a case when there was no chance of a new membership. Why we give out free passes, to people seeming sincere about becoming a member.

So, yeah, I’m cool and hip and minimally computer savvy. And, um, I did give the guy a free pass. It was after I couldn’t get the $15 fee for a day pass to show up, and it was dragging on and on. Turns out this guy handed me a $20 and said to bring him a five if I ever could fix the problem – and like they say, even a blind squirrel will find a nut once in a while – I did figure what was missing and fixed it. There was the charge and I brought him a five. And I had given him a free pass, and told him he could use it tomorrow – which is today as you read this.

Back in the day I would keep secret these little secrets. Some sense of self-protection, ongoing rationalization. And it took a long while in sobriety to start to get it – that those things always eat me. Every time.

So – Happy ending!! – I called Julia back to the front desk and said, “I did give that guy a free pass.” And she smiled and said that was okay; that was cool.

It felt better, telling on myself. The gray-haired canine in me, forever learning new tricks. Owning my own.

Some of you seeing this know that I write “Morning Pages” every morning. A practice I began June 2011 and have continued every day since – three pages in a (wide-ruled) notebook. Again today, hanging with my brother Chuck Berry, “No particular place to go.” Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist Way” with this one one law – Just fill up three pages.

The material, the filler, had ebbed and flowed, changing through the decades the way my physical and emotional, perhaps, even, my spiritual self has changed. These last few years I believe it’s something of a ratatuoille of broken heartedness and a forever more spacious Zen practice. Moving here and there, and money, and out from retirement, and books I’ve read and now read – perhaps its the seeing with my feet, hearing with my eyes. The air that I breath. The air I breath through my one hand.

For whatever reason and plethora of factors, I come to my Pages these days, usually around five in the morning, all ears. A kind of sitting down giddyness, alert to what arrives out from the tip of the pen. Am I hosting? Am I the guest? Anyway, it’s often like this, from 25 minutes ago:

“The experience of being entirely alone on the walk through the luscious Johnson Ranch, and never alone – the golden grass, the green oaks, gatherings of tall, yellow flowers, the warmth of the sun, shirtless body. Aretha singing, ‘Who’s zoomin’ who?’”

“

Last Wednesday I found my way into the Pacific Shores Dermatology and Skin Cancer Institute down the highway in Arroyo Grande. Following a full-body, amazingly detailed inspection, my PA informed me I had all sorts of of “scaly, angry” bubbles and growths, years of no sunscreen thank you very much sun damage, mostly around the edges of my face, on my nose, and left ear, and she proceeded to use her light saber (the liquid nitrogen model) to freeze them away.

When I walked out the door 20 minutes later it felt like I’d stuck my head in a nest of hornets, and forgot to take it out. Now, after seven days, the spots of battle she said might appear “shiny” have become significant spots of brown. Like, sprayed by a paint gun loaded with burnt sienna.

A new and in-your(my)-face reason I’m guessing my days of dating have fallen out from the rearview mirror, and likely why any girls I figure to get close with have udders, tails, and black luminous eyes.

Older, with damaged skin. I’m still here. Older than yesterday. And yet – thank goodness – still one of Peter’s ‘Lost Boys’ at heart.

“All trees wither and die in time, But the cypress in Zhaozhou’s yard flourishes forever. Not only does it defy the frost, keeping its integrity; It virtually sings with a clear voice to the light of the moon.” — Zen Master Huanglong Nan

Older age. It’s a thing for me. Like the Red Sox, cows, aloneness, and newly-found mountain energy are things. I’m filled with gratitude that I continue to operate – climb those mountains, head out on long walks and pilgrimage looking for something – with original knees and hips. Some of my parts don’t work so well. Most have kept on keeping on. Yeah, my brain mysteriously clicks off every six months or so, but not so much that I can’t figure the basic stuff on the Y’s “Welcome in” computers. Usually.

When I was married to Susan in Portland, 2018, I wrote a poem titled “Older.” Here’s some of it – “We’re older, my wife and me, and don’t remember things. Not like before. Not like last week. We take turns in our forgetting, though I see, I hear it, more in her. Did she forget these very things only last spring? Spring with all its promises and anticipations and evidences of renewal. Or not? I fear our forgetting makes us less. We shrink and inch away in our now long life to some other place. Some place smaller – I am frightened…Will I forget to check the rearview?…I’ve forgotten twice in just the last week…..”

And yet, here I am, dragging my weary butt up mountains, motorvating down and back up the 101, catching five-mile walks on the Bob Jones Trail, clocking in at my job. Even with the aloneness, my life feels somehow larger. My 76-year-old brain can explain none of it. Like the cypress tree there in Zhaozhou’s yard – it just is.

(Happily, Susan seems to be fine up there in the Rose City.)