Author: buddycushman

Early Monday morning I decided to change my life almost entirely, sometime between the end of my first 34 minutes of sitting (3:50a) and the last word on the third page of my Morning Pages (5:45a) – those very rich two hours I’m gifted each morning I wake up. Seeds of decisions loitering in this wacky mind, spontaneous decisions appearing right then and there.

I believe the first urge for significant change came walking out of one of ‘those meetings’ just after 8:30 Friday morning. Then a larger push came Saturday afternoon, on my return of the out-and-back Bob Jones Trail hike, when synchronicity had me passing the home of the White Heron Sangha as members filed out from the first day of a weekend ‘session.’ I got to talking to a middle-aged Asian woman, splashing questions everywhere out into the day, and she kept saying, “Look at the website. Look at the website.” So Zen-like.

Anyway, I did, and tumblers began tumbling and all of a sudden it’s six in the morning yesterday and I could feel the changes – actually kind of experiencing  organically the quality of cool decisions as a whole – embodied and scatterbrained.

The specifics are not a big deal, it’d feel like yackety yack all over the place hoping to explain. But, I will tell you this: I’m off to work at the YMCA in a little while; it’s been crazy windy in San Luis Obispo while all this has been going on; and I’m four days older than I was on my way to a dermatology follow-up Friday morning. Still here.

So, late Saturday afternoon, ushering in evening…….hey, I’d hiked Laguna Lake way early and raced to get a coffee, then after ditzing around in my room and something like a lunch, I motorvated down the 101 to Avila Beach and the Bob Jones Trail, which was gorgeous, and out to the end of the pier, round waves rolling and crashing, folks still in the late-October ocean.

Back, snacking on peanuts and fuzzy water, I fell into watching a couple of videos on song-writing – Nirvana and Bob Dylan – and all of a sudden the video copied above just showed up. Me host, video guest. This one of the “All offers” I say out loud, a promise for complete acceptance, every single morning on my knees. Like, “Here’s something for you, kid,” Saturday chuckled.

Maybe you’ve heard this, or of this foursome. Maybe you haven’t. I never had. If you have four and a half minutes and grateful ears, later this morning you’ll be able to say, “Now I have.”

Betcha you’ll want to thank me too.

This photo was snapped by me on Reed College Way in Portland, OR sometime in the late spring of 2021, perhaps a couple of months after learning of my wife Susan’s clear desire for a divorce. By then I’d moved down into the basement, and was out walking the streets a lot.

It’s sort of funny. Back then I was out walking so much to not be there – there in Susan’s house with all the wonderful memories and all that right-then pain. Now I’m walking and hiking as much as I am to exactly be there. To be there in the landscape, there out in the day – slipping in and out of the moments of the day depending on my lack of thinking (a good thing.) and just being. Me and Fats Domino – “I’m Walking.” And Fats’ lovely existential question – “Whatcha gonna do when the well run dry?”

There’s no special reason for this picture and these words. I suppose it’s the fault of Windows 11, which since I made my best effort to download has played various bits of havoc with my computer, including running through all my photos drifting through the x and o technology and splashing them up on the screen as new-age screen-savers. There have been a bunch of pictorial reminders of those old days. The wife. The wife and me.

The walking thing is interesting to me – not enough room to riff about it here – and there’s a spooky sort of premonition wearing San Diego articles of clothing way before the fact.

It’s also interesting that the entirety of the time I was with Susan – autumn 2010 to spring 2021 – my hair was nearly as short on purpose as it is now accidentily. See:

(My art on the basement wall.)

(The idea for this post arrived while I was hiking Wednesday afternoon. I was just the host.)

I’m a cat person. Have been, will be. Though, likely my greatest pet/companion was my dog Taffy, who I received as a puppy present for my sixth birthday back in Wareham, Mass, and who remained my loyal friend until I came home for Thanksgiving my freshman year at Cape Cod Community, when Taffy walked into the living room and nuzzled me and loved me and then went into the front room and passed away an hour later. Talk about devotion. “She waited for you,” my dad said.

And yet, I’m a cat person. Always was, always am. Even when hiking through the Laguna Lake open space after work yesterday and was greeted and wet/nosed/nuzzled by two dogs hiking with their owners, loved to the point where a squeegee would have been nice. And not a kitty in sight, not even a really big one.

Still, I’m a cat person. Sometimes when I walk around the trailer park early in the morning after yogurt and peanut butter three or four or six kitties are in the streets, or on metal porches, or rolling on cement walks. Some are wicked friendly and tumble over when I speak and sing “Kitty speak” and rub against me – hold the drool – and then some look at me with a “What’s it feel like to want?” Which kind of makes me love kitties even more.

That’s it.

Below, a couple pictures ofTaffy and me a few years back, and a few of the felines I’ve tried to honor with my fifth-grade drawing and painting. And a drivebye. Cause, the fact is, I’m a cat person.

I worked a longer shift yesterday so my YMCA compadre Jorge could have the afternoon to attend a career day/fair for computer science majors at Cal Poly. When I left work I drove to Starbucks for a coffee and bacon /egg bites and then back to the trailer, where I had a salad before donning hiking clothes/shoes and heading to Laguna Lake for a late afternoon walk. Chilly, windy, lots of clouds, about 10 younger folks from what I’m guessing was a day treatment progam on the first part of the trail in front of me.

My son Spenser attended a day program – On the Move – when we lived in Portland, and that crew yesterday brought back memories. I’ve been missing Spenser lately, he sent me some very cool pictures of himself the other day. I’ve been wondering if maybe there isn’t a way for him to move to San Luis Obispo some time in the future and hang around with his dad. I used to trim his hair with a trimmer when I trimmed mine – though not so recklessly – another fond memory.

When I returned home for the second time I found in the mailbox used Ebay versions of David Hinton’s “The Wilds of Poetry” (book) and The Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night” (cd). It’s fun to get fun mail.

This was just some Tuesday stuff in SLO. Plus me in my hat zooming into a night of Oakland Zen.

So, this is an abbreviated post for this morning. Feel free to send flowers, money, cards of various condolence, cool photos of cows.

Monday early afternoon, working with the fact that my hair had grown longer than usual – think Scruffy the cat – I charged the trimmer and took out the numbers 7,4, and3 attachments and energized the trimmer and began trimming away when, perhaps five seconds later, I realized I’d neglected to attach the number seven attachment. Yes, there in the mirror, a far out, punk rocking, zombie from another world, the beginning of a Zen hermit wandering through mountains and hills shaved head hipster stared back, not so cool for school after all.

Perhaps 30 seconds of wild physical thrashing and dancing and countless curse words later – big, big, big, big sigh – I shaved all the rest of it off. Then I called work and asked if I could wear a hat here on out. Yes. Then I visualized a hat on at my Tuesday evening koan group tonight, Zen monk wannabe, hopefully with nothing to say. Seriously, vow of silence.

I’ve been including photos lots here from a mountain bench lately, devoted to practicing show don’t tell. This time it’s just words.

Flowers would be nice.

I never jumped all the way into the ocean this year, nevermind not a single rushing ride on a boogie board. The fact is I gave my boogie board away when I left San Diego. Comings and goings.

This photo taken at Avila Beach Saturday, October 18. After walking the five miles of the Bob Jones Trail, I walked out on the pier and then down onto the beach, took off my socks and shoes, and strolled through the water, south and back north. It was cold.

Avila Beach has a magic I’m lucky to be some off most weeks, too detailed to share here. I do splash water up my arms and over my face, and hours later when I lick an arm I’m right back at the ocean.

I wish there was enough magic to do what Joni Mitchell wishes for in her song ‘Urge for Going’ – “I’d like to call back summer time and have her stay for just another month or so.”

But she’s got the urge for going, summer does, and I have to let her go. There are things where even magic isn’t enough.

I was standing behind the front desk at the Channel Islands YMCA Thursday morning. Earlier, when I woke up and sat in meditation and drank coffee and read books and wrote Morning Pages, I was 76 years old. I live in San Luis Obispo, California, I’m nearly entirely alone, my best friend’s a cow, and hiking is not only a way of life – it’s the way of life. Me and the sun-shiny day, down by the schoolyard. Tumbleweed tramp.

When I was just getting sober in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1983 I would hear people suggest you stay sober a day at a time and try to picture where you’ll be in five years, and, they suggested, you will inevitably sell yourself short. I don’t know about that sitting here today, but for suresy I never would have guessed/predicted/hoped for any of the things I told you up there in the first paragraph. Not a single smidge of my life here today.

I love my life here today. I’d much prefer not being so all by myself, I don’t remember what I would have pictured about a partner at five years sober. But I live in a beautiful world, and have taken the path of immersing myself entirely in it. Like really all the way into it – like totally. The Y thing is just kind of weird, though it’s a door through which I bring my hip, funky self a couple times a week and get to serve and be kind and be generous to others.

And dig this – my best friend’s a cow. Like totally.

I went hiking in the Laguna Lake open space yesterday, a little after noon. The air was clean and sparkly from the previous night’s storm, mountains bursting into the blue, streams of white clouds drifting from the northwest toward the southeast. The trail paths were more giving, spongier from the rain.

I’d walked there the seven consecutive days, the seventh last Friday, and hiked the Bob Jones trail Saturday and the Lemon Grove loop – replete with a path-sharing deer – Sunday. I went out to Laguna Lake Monday, before the rains, and again yesterday.

Two distinct thoughts have come to me. The feeling that if I do not amble along through that vast mountain and lake space I might miss something. And I don’t want to miss ‘it.’ Secondly, the reason I’m walking slower and slower each time out is because I don’t want ‘it’ to end. I don’t want ‘it’ to be over. The thrill. That experience. The awe.

I never feel like a guest in the vastness, never feel like some small insignificant thing. I feel welcomed, every time, one with, part of. Kind of too cool for school.

I snapped this picture at 6:30 last night. A storm dropping down from Alaska swept through much of California the last couple of days – the central coast here drenched from early Monday evening and all through the night. We 3am meditators know such things.

After work yesterday I came back to the trailer to eat, and planned to accept an amazingly strong pull from the Laguna Lake open space to keep coming back. But a final downpour mid-afternoon changed my plans. More often than not I remain just fine when my plans and schemes don’t work out. I guess like you hear all the time nowadays – no worries.

Anyway, all that informational chatter beyond lucking into this crimson cloud California view and capturing its image is yackety yack. This visual is enough.

Right?