“That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spot light,” blogging my religion. All this chatter:
On the wings of Ebay appear three new books (like totally, new), just seeing and touching and loving, cherished, prizes, imagining a trip to Paris, or Corvallis, Oregon. Or Trader Joe’s.
Prized things, already encouraging the kid on with sheer beauty, the flowery whispers of a breathtaking witch, cackling on her wind-driven broom: “Follow me home.” Magical thinking.
P.S. — Tomorrow, as promised, the return of stories falling out from the sun-splashed Camry odometer. Fortunately.
It all started on Thanksgiving, five days ago. The winter’s chill of giving thanks, alone. How can you (one) talk cogently about mental illness when you don’t have it? Probably. I cannot speak cogently about my life growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, cause I didn’t. I did, though, fly on my bike down Lincoln Hill in my hometown close by old Cape Cod.
I’ve always liked this image of men in white suits (it’s always men) coming with their butterfly nets to catch the mentally ill. Think the 1966 song, “They’re coming to take me away, ha-haa.” To the funny farm – something of a warm and fuzzy glow juxtaposed to all the bricked state hospitals throughout the land. Cows and chickens laughing it up.
And what’s all this about? I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps, as John Tarrant Roshi said once – “When you take the position of host you know the guests are arriving, and you get to treat them with courtesy.” Something like that. Butterfly nets, bicycles, laughing chickens.
And last Friday I was scheduled to work and I was paid time and a half and I’m lucky I have a job that’s mostly fun in which I get to say “Welcome” over and over – saving the planet little by slow. And I’d still rather not work, I’d rather lol around and dawdle through the day. Go outside for a while and just smile.
Somehow this life has scraped away much of what has been in my head. The wicked aloneness. All the music. Sleeping in a thin bed which floats on the dreams of compassion.The way bees find themselves walking on the ground – something other than expected.
How many brain cells come and go? Who is hearing the rain? “It is I,” someone in old China said, “alone and destitute.” Thoreau in the woods – “Simplify, simplify.” There’s an osprey on a pole eating a fish. A fish with cousins and sisters, at home in the ocean’s movements. “Obladi, Oblida.” It goes on, it stops going on. Splish splash only 45 seconds ago, freedom not being just another word.
What is better than the stars in the sky? Coffee? Rock and roll? Slow dancing? As Abbie Hoffman once said at the end of a talk at Salem State College – “Answers, anyone? We all know the questions.” Like I read in a new book this morning – “The Landscape beyond landscapes.” Or The Rascals – “I think I’ll go outside for a while, and just smile.” The faintest of grins.
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:
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?”
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.
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?
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.
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.
from a mountain bench 