Author: buddycushman

This is some of Laurelhurst Park. Maybe a month or so ago Laurelhurst Park began whispering to me…….”Hey. Hey, remember me?” And with here-and-there flashes of its up and down paths, its forest of one amazing and giant tree after another, its very own lake, and the all-in sensation of being one with, yes, I did.

When the rain let up Thursday, after setting up the desktop, after coffee at the Starbucks where I’ve been all three Portland days now, after something like brunch early afternoon, I threw on my heaviest sweatshirt and my R.E.I. raincoat and flowed with Cesar Chavez traffic right over to the park – parked the Camry and elatedly walked in.

Every single footstep felt like affirmation. Every sway of my eyes, from the grove of Redwoods to the crazy green at both ends of the lake, said “yes, yes, yes.” And as I stepped out of the park where you walk beside the road for about 30 yards before heading back in, I was literally stunned that here I was – in Laurelhurst Park, in Portland, with a current mailing address. Come on! I was just in San Luis Obispo. And wasn’t I just in San Diego? And here I am, in the attic, reading messages from people saying, “Yay. Welcome back.” Too much.

On my second time around a tank-top guy (which would have brought me to hypothermia) walked across my path and over to the lake with a big bag in his hand. I stopped to watch, and before he made a move, every duck and goose in the zip code came a-runnin’. It looked like this:

Far out.

So, I’ll end this week – one in which I wasn’t even sure I’d be posting – with another song. Exactly the right one:

I had forgotten how beautiful Portland is. The neighborhoods, the tree-lined streets, lawns covered with daffodils and newly emerging crocus -splashing a Wednesday in white, lavender, and so-deep purple. The majesty of Douglas firs, I can see some out of every attic window, the almost perfect Christmas-tree-like symmetry of other firs or cedars or whoever they are.

It was raining when I got up later than usual to sit on the cushion Wednesday, the Zen question, “Who is hearing the rain?” wildly relevant. “You and me and rain on the roof.” And it rained through the day. But there were sun breaks, the sky clearing in spots, splotches of blue, light streaming through, the Portland day glimmering with glorious gold until the clouds and rain filled in again. People everywhere, strolling, my soul sister Janis – “Get it while you can.” I’d forgotten how special these sun breaks are.

Mostly, at least so far, I had forgotten the everywhere, all-over-ness of moss: splotched on sidewalks, running up front walks, climbing almost every tree, covering roofs. Green, green. So green. So substantially green. Kermit would be impressed.

I sure am.

Monday — Up into the attic space I’ve rented, have a place to sleep, sit zazen, and type fun things the next 30 days. Being an attic, I have wacked my head five times the last few hours. Landed in Portland at 1p and couldn’t move things in until 5 when the new landlady got home. Used the in between time wisely, moved most of my California credit unions money (not much, not nothing) into my original credit union here, which I have always kept, where my social security lands, and took advice and opened a nine-month CD – again, not much, not nothing. The woman who helped me was the same woman who helped me and then-wife Susan open our credit union accounts in 2011.

I also went to the Rhododendron Garden and bought a pass for the rest of the year, walked as if I could do it blind-folded to the far reaches and my sacred bench. I took the Rhody bench. $35. I traveled to my favorite Starbucks over at Burnside and 28th, only to find it closed. Wah. So I cruised across town, as if I knew the way, and into the only other S’bucks around, bacon egg bites and a promise they’d be getting to know me.

My back hurts, my legs were shaking, my heart pumping overtime, still managed to attend my long-standing Tuesday night Koan gathering, though the truth is I wasn’t really there. Life, life, life, life, life.

It’ll be weird (so Portland). It may be marvelous.

Sometimes the attic shakes when cars drive past down on Cesar Chavez.

I was listening to The Beach Boys on CD when I drove into Oregon at 12 minutes past 10 Monday morning.

Pink Floyd sang, “They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.” That’s kind of cool, not sure how it fits, Dylan’s, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” feels closer to it. The “it” being this old life of mine. Waking up Saturday in San Luis Obispo, Sunday in Oakland, Monday in Arcata, and here in Florence, Oregon today. Many rivers have been crossed.

I’m perched high above another now, The Siuslaw. And if the creek don’t rise, I’ll travel just a smidge further north on the 101 (all the way from San Luis) and hang a right onto the 126, itself traveling along the Siuslaw, and shortly passing through the town of Cushman. Which strikes me as more Jimmy Cliff than either Roger Waters or Mr. Dylan.

I want to tell you something most encouraging. Much of the drives both Sunday and Monday I wound and dipped up and down through forests. Endless forests. On and on and on. Many of them Redwood, each massive tree a huge sentinel of the dark and the shade and sun-splash and undergrowth, forever oxygen, their very being profound evidence that good goes on, beauty goes on, what matters most in this often messed-up world stands taller than tall. Resolutely. So green.

There is a final line from a verse in a Zen Koan – “On South Mountain clouds gather; on North Mountain rain falls.” And now I’m in Oregon.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1241098067552374

Oops, incapable of bringing this video to this place., and it’s the only post worthy here today. Perhaps it’s easy enough to grab from the above, or please stroll over to my FB page at https://www.facebook.com/buddy.cushman/

yup, 500 miles away, still hanging with the girls.

For months and months and months I have had coffee every other Sunday morning with Jorge. Last Sunday, after an hour and a half of that lovely and most wonderful magic, I had tears in my eyes hugging and saying goodbye in the parking lot. Jorge’s been my only true friend here in San Luis Obispo.

I first met him in a mandatory first aid/cpr training on a Saturday morning maybe two weeks into my Channel Island YMCA career. We were sitting next to each other and so, whimsically you could say, became partners. I think Jorge would agree we’ve come a long way since 15 compressions and two lifey breaths.

We worked a bunch of Saturday mornings together, and at some point I said something like, “We should get a coffee sometime,” and maybe a couple of weeks later, Jorge showing up to relieve me on a Tuesday shift, he said, “You want to get a coffee this Sunday?” And I said , “Yes.”

It’s been something like five-and-a-half months of every other Sunday, and I honestly cannot imagine my life here without those times. Cows on hillsides, trails through the woods, and all these coffees with Jorge.

The world came to fetch us even before we knew it.

2819 SE Cesar Chavez Blvd – Portland, OR 97202

This is my new address. Please feel free to mail cards, letters, checks of varying amounts, notes advising get it together. And scribbles, doodles, smiley faces, poetry you just wrote. Did I mention love letters?

Winston or Buddy – both seem to find me where I’ve gone off to.

I’m listening to The Doors “Strange Days” while I type this, but “Toys In the Attic” would do just as well.

Subscriber note — Tomorrow’s post may/could be the last one in a while. And I’m so grateful to share it.

I would like to offer this song up as a few moments of great encouragement. Of certainty. It has encouraged me a very long time, perhaps all the way back to 1971, if I discovered it in all its freshness then. Maybe further down the road. Don’t remember.

The posts here in ‘from a mountain bench’ – like those in first cousin ‘couch surfing at 70’ – mostly offer no opinion or comment on the world of big systems and big leaders and life in the big city. I’d like to think each and every post here points to one road sign only. This one — “straight on to little kid goofiness.”

“They can’t take it away” may lean towards the other big stuff. I suppose it’s how you hear it. For me, I adore the thought of music as my dancing partner always, voices and dancing and big, big joy. A ladies choice with my dream girl.

It feels right to post another of my poems found in the book “my startled heart.” This one’s titled, “ode to a neighborhood creek.” It’s a Portland thing. Again, paragraphs taking the place of verse:

“The green heron swoops down under the bridge on which I stand and watch. Is it winter or summer? I’m there often. Ducks in the creek on either side, Disneyland rush of a ride by the falls here. Meditative meander slow, slower than a slow drift in small circles there.

How our view changes with the seasons – the clarity of winter exposition in the diminished landscape, our view carries on. So far. We see less in the blossoming spring through green tea leaves of hope. The fresh green of possibility, it tunnels, shrinks our long view. Either way can satisfy.

The creek flows. Flows on. In all seasons. The green heron sings its Jurassic song. And one afternoon I watched a beaver doing laps.

The creek survives to meander – a lesson for us all – and miles away cutthroat trout and a painted salmon hold their place at the great Oregon river. Like bouncers at your favorite club.

I’ve dreamed – often – of finding the lightest rowboat and giving myself over to the endless current. All the tree-lined bends and turns, the high golden grass of summer, at one with the dizzy pastel leaves of late September. Dropped down on the water like me. Just like me.

I’d like to think I remain in the season of my childhood. Where prehistoric birds and rainbowed fish tag along. Where they just might think, ‘We’ve got a live one here.’

Here at the creek.”

In last Monday’s post – the one about leaving California and all the times I’ve lived here and likely won’t again – I made reference to “Making memories,” a line I borrowed from one of the twins in the Lindsey Lohan ‘Parent Trap’ remake. Walking and hiking the trails I’ve been walking and hiking nearly a year. Gazing down at the San Luis Obispo Creek. Strolling out onto the Avila Beach pier. This Trader Joe’s. This very Starbucks. Today, if I’m lucky, Cayucos.

And now a most wonderful thing has happened. For one, I remember distinctly of talking out loud about “making memories” before leaving Portland, nearly five years ago. I’d lived there more than 12 times as long as I’ve lived here, and believe I was at least 12 times as devoted making those memories. Additionally, and way cooler, those memories I did make back there and then have begun flowing back to me. Vividly, in living color. Sensually.

This is mostly the result of a relentless search to find a place 900 plus miles north to call home. Response after response after response to Craigslist postings and Facebook postings and the rare reply to my CL posting. And with each of those I have looked at the map of Portland, checked the address specifics of the home/room posted. And almost inevitably there has been some sense of familiarity and maybe a smidge of memory. And quite often the address, the streets, that neighborhood has been more like a “blast from the past.” And I know that. I can feel that trail, that wetland. I know those ups and downs in Laurelhurst. I know the all-ness of how it feels to sit on that bench. I was once one of the regulars at that very Starbucks on Burnside and 28th.

I have made Portland memories and they have come back to greet me. To take my hand. “Yay,” I hear them whisper. “He’s coming back. Yay.

“Kid,” they say, “How about this one?”