Author: buddycushman

It has poured rain much of the night, with 10,000 flashes of lightning. We’re warned here in California the first time it rains after months and months of drought, all the oils which have dripped from car engines wash to the road’s surface, and things become slippery.

I have an every other Wednesday date with a younger woman named Sarah to meet for coffee and talk. I’m not sure what she gets out of it, or if she has a goal. For me it’s always a chance to riff on joy. This morning I may pay more attention to the drive over than our time in the coffee shop. And yet, when am I never not all there?

Rain-soaked oily kid.

I guess I would say if I am “working” on anything about myself these days that could fall under the entirely ethereal concept of “improvement” it is to be more spontaneous. To be spontaneous to the point where spontaneity nudges consciousness completely out of the room. Preparation as chatter.

Here is a definition of “spontaneity” from The Cambridge Dictionary – ‘Spontaneity is the quality of being natural rather than planned in advance, or a way of behaving in which you do what feels natural and good whenever you want to.‘ That sounds like Spontaneity 101. I’m thinking more in terms of Spontaneity on two hits of mescaline. A wild level of no think just do.

Sometimes what you see here as a mountain bench post just came flying in out of a nowhere and I scribbled it someplace or used the remaining memory cells and transcribed it here. This post for instance, in the Camry after a sweaty walk, at a stop sign.

The Hollies sang “Stop, Stop, Stop All the Dancing.” Chris Montez sang “Keep on Dancing.” Wilson Pickett invited us to a “Land of 1000 Dances.”

This is my dancing mind.

Last week it was all vultures. This week it’ll be all me – now as the blogger. I’ll share a secret. If you really show up here at fromamountainbench, look at each word, and especially look between each word, between each line and paragraph, it’ll be some thing of a time warp, a fracture in space, where you are looking directly at me right here right now. Science non-fiction.

The best ancient advice for my Zen/Ch’an life available here today: “Maintain your practice in secret” – is entirely impossible. Every single word, each of these travelogues/stories, is this very me nothing-held-back here now, my own vendor’s stall in this always-open planet’s farmer’s market.

REM sang, “That’s me in the corner.” I’m humming, “Here’s me on the market table, orange bell pepper.”

I cannot be a secret, visible on California’s Central Coast, aged 76 years, renting a room in a trailer, wearing YMCA apparel, yearning for the trails I see through the windshield, most of my money on books, hiking shoes, and peanut butter. Always with coffee. Always out there.

…I read Chinese poetry, I create vows of genuine friendship with these vultues on my path, with sidewalk kitties, with blue jays on the Bob Jones Trail, and most supremely, with every elegant cow I know. All these mountains.

Fortunately I have no explanation for any of this. An Oregon September 24, 2010 blind date through Match.com led me directly to this very strange California chair on which I sit and type here now, and I can see and roll back 60 years of connections from that Portland cafe. I guess I feel a little nostalgic today.

Early yesterday, Thursday, sipping coffee where I do, I came upon this line in a poem belonging to T’ao Ch’ien, who lived long, long ago – “My empty home harbors idleness to spare.” I have no one I call friend here in San Luis Obispo, despite much weekly people time. In this trailer I most often find myself alone. It’s not a bad thing. There’s idleness to spare.

So I say yes when Koans come calling, and find myself in these September 2025 todays friends with wing-ed and tail-ed creatures. Utterly belonging to the trails I hike. Entirely home on the morning cushion.

“A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.”

on Sunday morning when I set out on the Main Street of the Johnson Ranch trails I carried this as a goal – have an intimate conversation with one soaring, path-sharing vulture.

The ancient Zen master Hakuin said “The sound of one hand is not a sound you hear with your ear.” Two pair of vultures paid visits the first twisting mile of the walk, and the first pair spoke with their wings directly to my eyes one word: floating.

Close by the end of the trail a single bird flew immediately over my head, and when it banked away brought my eyes to the half moon still present in the mid-day blue, blue sky. A moment later this Zen koan arrived:

‘A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.’

Therefore,…

often I am high enough that I’m above the vulture’s glide on the wind. I don’t think I ever see that without feeling thrilled. Yes, that’s flying, and what little kid doesn’t spread their arms as wings, flying through summer vacation? There’s always that.

Yet for me, now, this path, there’s the clear feeling the vulture and the thermal wind doing the carrying are not two things. This – “You can take the kid out of Wareham, but you can’t take Wareham out of the kid.”

Joni – “Round and round and round in the circle game.”

All of which is why…

the vulture’s call was like a hawk’s, just more throaty, less ethereal. A possible Chinese poem: “circling Vulture, expresses throaty.”

And that was only one of the hundred sounds on this hike, different from the blue quiet there my first go round. New low-to-the-ground flowers must have blossomed, lavendars and yellows, since Wednesday, the buzzy hum of countless bees lifting up from near my shoes. One mysterious rustle through the golden grass and scrub after another. A young guy advising I climb over the padlocked fence to do the higher ridge-line trail, his small, black dog offering little whines for my attention. The chatter of other hikers.

The vultures’ cree, cree, cree, me far below, though…

I’d like to think I’ve become friends with the 10,000 vultures which soar and circle overhead when I walk out alone on sun-burnt hillside and mountain trails. “I may be gravitied down here, kids, but we’re not so different.” There’s a freaky childhoodness to see buzzards circling over me, like, do you know something I don’t know? But, there’s comfort as well. I’m not out here all by myself, even if that’s what the friendship number-counters tell me.

The vultures were there above Saturday morning as I walked through the Laguna Lake trails, a walk more aural than any other sense, at least until I picked up a pebble in my left hiking shoe.

So, Saturday…

This arrived in the mail Wednesday.

Notes:

(I’m 76 years old. I rent a room in a trailer. I work part-time on the front desk at the YMCA in San Luis Obispo, where I live. And about where, long, long ago, I dreamed of living, though I can’t tell which decade that was, or possibly why. Regarding Wednesday’s mail, I paid $6.90 on Ebay, plus tax. Who knew? Who knows? It’s resting on a pillow case covering an ancient pillow I’ve hauled back and forth 3000 miles over and over again. It could be my oldest personal possession, in a slow dance here with my newest.

My hope for today, Friday, is catch one of those meetings after dawn, and an early afternoon drive to Avila Beach to walk the Bob Jones Trail. My usual Friday now, though I’d never imagined it in September of 2001 when I lived in an apartment by myself in Lowell, Massachusetts, worked for a YMCA in Lawrence down the road, and moving then was running along the Merrimack River. So far from California’s central coast. Hiking cow-populated mountain trails. Mingling with Chinese poets.)

It’s Wednesday afternoon, 2:40, I just got back from hiking the Lemon Grove Loop Trail on San Luis Mountain. I discovered by chance a new way back down the mountain the last time I was up there, and pointed my moving again self toward the little jag right after sitting on the sacred bench a good long while.

As I was turning off to head down, I heard a noise like something moving through the brush at the place where the woods approach the path. Yes, my mind spun off to the likes of a big kitty. But much to my surprise – and amazement and joy – I saw two cows nibbling on the leaves of low branches, and then a wider view displayed a gathering of the girls standing up and laying down just into the trees. This sweetie one of the gathering.

We were way up on the mountain.

Every morning I give myself over to what I say out loud as “All offers.” A guest and host thing I think. Open invitation. And not always, life with its ups and downs, but sometimes what shows up is pretty fabulously cool.