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Let me begin by saying it has become akin to impossible for me to be influenced by anything said or written which appears as “life instruction.” There were those days, and now there aren’t.

Here’s an example. In 2008 I was in a winter rental, parenting my son Spenser, in North Truro out near the end of Cape Cod. We’d been practicing leaving Spenser alone, so on a rainy March Saturday morning I drove over to the library. Wandering through the stacks in the basement, the title of a book reached out – “Wherever You Go There You Are.” Skimming through I saw a bunch of quotes from Thoreau, and having both swam in and run around Walden Pond, I used my card and checked it out.

Over the next few days I read the book. It changed my life. The direct result of reading was I began meditating – 10 minutes in a chair each morning. Before helping Spenser out to the 6:30 bus. This occured nearly 18 years ago and there have been maybe three days through that time of no meditation. It, the meditation, is different here, now, and this life I have today is not separate from it; I would not be sharing this story without it.

Which brings me back to “Wherever You Go.” yesterday and I’m reading through it, and now there’s that book’s knock on my door and no one’s home. It’s like reading directions to a microwave.

Sorry.

After a number of pages I put “There You Are” down and picked up “Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism” by Chang Chung-Yuan and read this — “The (golden) lion symbolizes ‘shih,’ or appearance, which has no reality without the gold. On the other hand, gold lacks meaningful expression without the form of the lion as its appearance. The existence of each is dependent on the other. Yet the gold and the lion distinctly exist by themselves. When by mutual solution gold is lion and lion is gold, the dichotomy between reality and appearance disappears.”

I always promised nothing more than a report of “my daily weather” in my posts here. So, some of sitting on a firecracker.

From the unpublished book, “Poems Written in My Car Parked by the Mountain”:

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“Sitting on a firecracker”

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I giggle, I cry

I dare not squeal,

Keepin’ it real.

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Never not talkin’

too much.

Explodin’ life,

and no wife.

I write a blog post for every (week) day in the hopes it’s like throwing a window wide open so people (you) can lean out and look into the bright sunshine, or the 3am dark.

Through your eyes. Through my index fingers.

The song says, “You only get what you give,” and hopfully both the writing and the reading are the giving and the getting.

And

Last night about 10,000 raccoons gathered outside and below my window for a game of ring-around-the-rosy. I almost wrote 10,000 dragons, but that would be silly. I knew they were raccoons.

I’m not trying to win any popularity contest.

Later yesterday afternoon I found myself carelessly wandering through 1000 blades of tall, green grass at the outskirts of water-logged Laguna Lake. Much to my surprise, and joy, I saw the cows had returned, grazing by the path up to San Luis Mountain, way, way over there. Of course they saw me too – it’s like looking in a mirror.

The clouds and bright sky and brilliant, emeral hills were wild.

I had a post for today waiting here from last weekend, but I threw it out a few minutes ago. This is way more now. That previous post did include a song, so I’ll tack on a different one here – my all-time favorite singer.

Thanks for participating.

On the return half of a Friday morning hike on the Bob Jones Trail, snuck in between the rains, this thought settled entirely within my January 19, 1949 essence – I am utterly clueless about every bit of my life now. Right here, then and there, on the trail. The gathering of ancient Coast Live Oaks shimmering their total understanding in the southwesterly breeze. I don’t have a clue – not the tiniest morsel of a clue – regards (ing) any single possibility of a ‘What now? What’s next?’

I think I’ve been leaning into this, hinting to myself, in my writings, here in the blog with some of my posts the last month or so. Trailing my own personal crumbs Gretel has been tossing about along the way – I may be moving, my housemate’s wildly unpredictable, I don’t want a job, I’m so alone and yet feel disconnected from everyone, I feel like I’ve always lived here, that I’ve come home, and Encinitas and Oakland are on my mind.

I miss sitting on the sea wall at Ocean Beach in San Diego. I miss walking the Cape Cod Rail Trail in Orleans, Massachusetts. I miss sacred time on the bench in the Rhody Garden in Portland, Oregon.

And I have no plan at all – which was the subtle zap walking the Bob Jones the end of last week. None of this is ‘poor me,’ and if it reads that way, I apologize. I tend to tell it like it (me) is – previously on surfed couches, now from a mountain bench. And this is like it is. I’m just so utterly clueless about my life.

It’s not scary. I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just how I am.

A Japanese woman came into the coffee shop the afternoon before next year. She was wearing a shiny gray rain hat. With napkins she polished the family table and her own chair almost endlessly. She bought and brought her son coffee shop eggs, and shared a homemade, out of her bag, thick, steamy drink with the man, perhaps her husband, though she wore no wedding ring.

The coffee shop on the afternoon before next year was filled with happy and grumpy people. Many of the men had beards.

As I was preparing to leave, one of my favorite baristas, who I almost never see, appeared behind the counter. Holly. Also, while preparing to leave, the Japanese woman with the shiny gray rain hat and no wedding ring, stood and walked directly to my table.

“Don’t prepare the room,” she said to me.

I went with my book and pencil and glasses and said “Happy New Year” to China and Isiah and Holly, and I left.

It’s interesting. Coming back on the Bob Jones Trail I see a slightly-larger-than-half moon just above the tree line of the hill that holds my all-by-itself tree. (The one I bow to.) The path takes me away from the view of the moon, but as I move around the corner and uphill, the moon is there, high in the sky, the tree high on the hill, and this is my Koan, which begins, “A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.”

Which is no other than me, in this very life now – a solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight. Home. Yet, four hours later when I don’t get tagged to speak at one of those meetings – and not tagged for the second week in a row – I realize how disconnected I am from these people, like barely an after thought, and the question flashes – “Why is that?” The question maybe hoping I’ll beat myself up, the “without oars” more than some romantic poetry.

And I don’t know if I beat myself up or not, because on the way out a woman chases me down and says she wants one of my books, she’ll pay, and I go to my car and bring one back, it’s free I say, and she says, “We have to get coffee sometime,” her and her partner Rick and me, and I say I’d like that because for six months I’ve suggested we all get coffee and I’ve never heard from them.

Maybe the question “Who’s fault is that?” floats by, but I get in the car and turn on the radio and forget it. I don’t notice, driving up Higuera, no doubt the moonlight slips into the passenger seat and rides along with me. Digging the beat. It’s easy to dance to.

Morning Pages, Monday 12/29, influenced directly reading snippets of John Tarrant’s “Bring Me the Rhinocerous:”

“Apparently there are so many things to read I can find nothing to read. Like the sand-raked patterns of the Japanese Garden in Portland. Unexplainable and perfect.

Like the blue jay flying across the Bob Jones Trail and lighting on a branch in a close-by tree. Nothing but blue. The whole universe, blue. No sorrow, no mischevious thinking, no music from the picnic place. No renewing the driver’s license, and feeling so alone. No Starbucks, no crazy people, no picture of my boys in my wallet. No polar cold fronts and no boogie boarding. No oil change. No late or on time for the meditation group. Just blue.

Even the screech of the jay sounds blue. My ears may have turned blue. And that’s just 10 steps on the path. I can’t possibly imagine what the next half hour has planned.

Now, in this place, I hear the 6:11 Surfliner whistle in the distance. While my mind hums “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” And a permission comes to wonder this – Do blue jays get cold?”

Here’s my New Year’s fantasy. Wait! That’s what they call them, right? New Year’s fantasies?

Anyway, my New Year’s fantasy is to discover and attract into my life a stream of income which does not involve a job, a schedule, bosses, travel, and all that employment jazz.

To be clear, I have a job now and I like my bosses and the job has real cool opportunities to be kind and goofy and welcoming, groovy even.

But it’s a job, with bosses and schedules and time cards and a uniform, and if the creek don’t rise, in a few weeks I’ll turn 77 and venture out into my 78th year on this green and blue spinning planet. The one bubbling with joy and wonder if you look around.

And if it’s all the same to dragonflies and my kids and ancient masters and favorite baristas and past and future girlfriends, I’d very much like the ‘Path of 78′ to be employment free.

Dig it?

It’s my New Year’s fantasy. And, see! See! I could sit around all day long and listen to this. Wicked, wicked Yay!!!