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A guy who was in the rooms when I first set out doing the sober thing was always saying, “I don’t know nothing about nothing.” It took me two years to realize he wasn’t just saying it for laughs, he really meant it about himself. And it took me three more years to realize it wasn’t just him.

I wake each morning in my current state of unemployment with nothing more than a flimsy outline of possible acts, motions, even potions within that day. Yes, there are weekly staples – Tuesday night koan gathering, one of those meetings Saturday mornings. That’s about it. Of course coffee somewhere, like breathing, will happen daily. But, speaking in mathematics here for a sec, as I get up at 4a and mostly slip under the covers just before 9p, that’s 119 waking hours in which to entertain and be entertained.

I sit on the cushion a little over half an hour and write Morning Pages a little under half an hour seven days a week, get on the floor for my knees and hips, so that’s maybe 10 hours, and add Tuesday night zooming in Oakland and Saturday early showing up in Sellwood and coffee shop lingerings and there are about 20 of those 119 sort of spoken for, 100 hovering out in any seven days, peekaboo fairies and elves, whispers and giggles and calls from cuckoos and red-winged blackbirds – “Pick me. Pick me.”

And often, so often, there are mornings like this one where I just don’t have a clue – I hear myself ask out loud, “What am I going to do today?” and hear myself answer, “No clue.” And the to-thine-own-self-be-true self-awareness of that recovering cat back there in Somerville, MA keeps ringing through me. Over and over.

Me and Bob Zimmerman – ‘No direction home.’

What do I need money for beyond the obvious? — peanut butter, coffee, some food, gasoline. I have enough books, and my ragged clothes are exactly the rags the Buddha wore strolling back into the market place, “How can I help?” on his silent lips. There is, I think, a planetary generosity living lean. Me and Henry David. On birthdays I send money to my four grandkids and my son Spenser.

“You may be eloquent as a river tipping steadily over into a falls, but what would all your explanations reveal?” – David Hinton

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in NE (Northeast) writing, thinking this is the first time (within 12-plus PDX years) I’ve written in the NE. Dylan’s on the system singing, “Don’t think twice, it’s alright.” But I have thought twice, and realized that when I first moved to Portland in January ’09 I would walk down Burnside to a Starbucks and write every day, waiting to find a job. And, as Burnside divides SE from NE, and as that Starbucks was on the north side of the street, it turns out I began my Portland life wildly writing in NE.

The idea of symmetry has sat on my mind lots lately.

I was happy with the seven-part story that unfolded here these past seven weekdays, none of which I prepared or expected. It simply fell out. And especially with that most interesting married couple. I guess I’m left with this — It’s good to have spooky friends.

I honestly do not know what I’m going to write and share here at from a mountain bench moving forward. That’s certainly the case today, and wondering about tomorrow, as I’m experiencing an exceptional degree of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. It’s how it is. To borrow from ‘The Velvets’ — “I could sleep for a thousand years.”

But, I have decided to shave my head. For a couple of reasons: My head was basically shaved when I first arrived in Portland in 2009, and look at all the great stuff that happened then. And, it will be a lighter load to carry around.

Then Weymouth hopped off the stool, dragged it back over to the counter at the no-longer-boarded-up plate-glass. Connie stood, reached for Weymouth’s hand, and they turned and walked back out the coffee shop’s door. That was a week ago Saturday and I haven’t seen them since.

The end.

Back to me — Before this blog space and I came up with the surprising idea to tell a seven-part story there was no married couple named Connie and Weymouth in my life. Not a flicker of recognition. There was, though, one Rennie Lewis in DeLoreal Beach, California – a young private detective with a drinking problem. He of the 30,000-plus words of a very cool novel, nowhere near finished and collecting dust for more than seven years now. I was kind of happy to see the marrieds bringing him up as a get-your-butt-to-the-keyboard example. I don’t know any of those other folks.

I’ll end this week, and this ongoing story, with a couple of facts. Wednesday I celebrated 43 years without a drink or a drug. I did not do this alone, though much of that time has been spent alone. And, when I move the last day of this month I will be moving to my eighth address in these past five years. I say that neither as a plea for help nor as bragging. Just the way it is. Ducks float on the lake in the Rhododendron Garden. I move a lot.

“Try these on for size,” said Weymouth, “maybe crank over those napping brain cells.” —– They took turns:

“It took me a long time to find out about money. You either have it or you don’t. Life goes on. Walk around wearing a smile or become an f’ing whiner. Either way, no one’s just going to give you a winning lottery ticket.”

“Pete Martin was schooling his friend Daryl. ‘Here at the fish house we have a cool way of life. We do what we want. And you can come or you can go, any time you want.’ Daryl let his eyes travel over the rag-tag collection of second-hand couches and old soft chairs. ‘What do you do here?’ he asked. ‘We tell stories, bro,’ Pete answered. ‘That’s all?’ ‘That’s all.’ Pete twisted to look directly, for the first time, at his friend. ‘We tell stories, bro, and then the stories come true.’”

“It’s pretty much tradition in DeLoreal Beach to spend as much time out in the sun as possible, and to build a daily diet around alcohol, coffee, and ice cream. Rennie Lewis had never been much for ice cream. And he looked on coffee primarily as remedy.”

“Sharon Filkins found the duck blind Saturday, on one of her weekly trips out into the marsh. Fortunately, she found no evidence of killing, which was good. She was a pacifist and a lover of animals. She never once saw a duck she didn’t think about cuddling. But the duck blind was here, where she found it, and it for sure wasn’t built to house wayward girls on nature hikes. So, Saturday, that day, she cut some reeds and made a make-shift cushion, sat down with legs crossed and her hands in what’s called the cosmic mudra, and became very still. Thirty minutes later she was clear on what she had to do.”

Silence..

“Yo, sleepy head,” Connie said right at me, looking like the Cheshire Cat. “Where do you think Sharon got the knife to cut the reeds with?” Weymouth spun around on a stool that didn’t spin.

The marrieds sat there, across and above, for the next five minutes, just looking at me.

Weymouth clears his throat, but it’s Connie saying, “Did you hear the one about the guy who strolls into the Monday morning credit union and has his credit card shredded? Because his life is so screwed up?” “Or,” Weymouth says, while sipping some of my half n’ half, “because it’s so wildly together?”

“Well anyway,” Connie says, “it’s just a story going around town. Now, about last night and that cutie pie Weymouth and my lucky, lucky cutie-pied self up all hours ruminating and Contemplating and

• Reflecting
• Pondering
• Meditating
• Deliberating
• Mulling over
• Speculating
• Considering
• Chewing over

      and brooding about how to help and maybe even save your inertia-rized, stuck in the middle, lost in space, ain’t no author here self. Are you interested to hear what all our devotion to the one and only you came up with?”

“Sure,” I say again.

“Sweet,” says Weymouth. “Buckle up.”

Weymouth looked down at me. “We hear you’re looking to rent a place over in the Northeast,” he said, “in the wealthiest part of town.” I nodded. “Yeah, it’s true. And that would be something, right? Me in the wealthy quadrant of the city.”

A Weymouth smile. “Every once in a while the Universe likes to horse around.”

“Speaking of horsing around,” Connie said, “what’s with no new book as long as I can remember? You were on a roll there for a while.” I don’t know why, but I didn’t wonder why I wasn’t wondering how she would know any of that. I’d never met or even seen these folks before, and even here, across and slightly above me, there was something not quite focused with their faces. “I guess it’s an inspiration thing,” I say, “or not having much.”

“We may be able to help with that,” said Weymouth, and all of a sudden I’m sitting on a bench in the shade watching a dragonfly hover over five inches of wetland water. Things are teeming. Bright green reeds. A salad of reeds. A childhood flash – Howard Johnson’s 28 flavors. A peanut gallery of 10,000 geese and one lone woodpecker, up a high branch, sitting meditation. Not a peck, peck, peck in sight. After a while the bird floats down and lights on the tip of the bench. If I could tell you all about the wonder of our conversation I would. Surely (dear subscriber) there must be a mirror in your house.

“You went somewhere,” Connie said, snapping me out of my reverie. “Nevermind. Weymouth and I were up late, late last night throwing around some thoughts on this “Inspiration” (Connie with finger quotes in the air) problem. Some kickstarts for your authorly inertia.” She leaned in a bit. “Want to hear some?”

Sometimes yes and no are the same answer. But not every time. “Sure,” I say.

Out from the coffee shop, Friday morning lilacs, white, spring following the kid up the coast. Crossing state lines, sweet April’s faint fragrance. So quiet, even these words conjure hush. And yet, tick tick tick…….

At my usual table in a space of sunshine, Saturday morning coffee shop. Strewn Chinese poems, empty notebook, lonely Bic pen. Two walk in the door, holding hands. I can’t quite make out their faces, must be the reading glasses. They come over. “Connie,” she says, as introduction. “Weymouth,” he says. Connie takes the other chair at my two-chair table. Weymouth slides a stool over from the plate-glass (now boardless) window counter, sits between and above us. They’re married, it turns out.

“You’re here a lot,” Weymouth said from his position up on the stool. “We see you,” Connie added. “I’m not sure I have anywhere else to go,” I say, not in my defense, just playing along. “It’s impossible for me to explain how it feels to come in here with a book or notebook or both, and order the same thing every time. I sink into this space entirely. There’s a word I see a lot in the books and it truly gets at it – utterly. When I’m here the way I just said, sipping coffee, there’s an utterness to that “here.” (My hands up in the air with quote marks). I looked from one to the other. “You know what I mean?”

Connie stared straight at me. “We haven’t got a clue.” Weymouth’s eyes went out the window, following a bird above the roofs across the street. “Of course we do,” he said.

Connie stood up and sat back down again, said, “From this standpoint it looks like your life’s falling apart.” Weymouth added, “From this standpoint it seems your life’s never been more together.” The marrieds grinned at each other, and I felt the air move, like they’d high-fived and I couldn’t see it.

Strolling down Milwaukie Ave from where I park to the Starbucks I see the huge plate-glass window is entirely boarded up. Yet I continue, and yeah, they’re open and the barista Bekah’s already getting what I want – an order without lips and tongue – and after a while a worker comes in to go up to the roof of the building for something and after a while more someone says, “The air conditioning is back on,” and then there’s this smell like burning, which happens as I’m about to leave, so I go to the counter and say to Bekah and the managers Heather and Brooke, “This place is a mess. The windows are covered in wood and the roof’s on fire. And still, it’s my favorite place.”

And that brings three laughs, and there I go again saving the planet. One giggle at a time. And a few hours later I’m walking in Laurelhurst Park and a young guy just off the tar path is walking back and forth looking down at the ground, so I ask, “Did you lose something?” and he says, “No, I’m picking up litter.” And there he goes, saving the planet again, a piece of trash at a time.

I don’t ever have far to travel to find heroic acts, which sometimes are my own. Plus, speaking of heroes, never mind the Laurelhurst Park bench phone call which followed all this.

Please check this out.

This blog space sometimes becomes something like sentient, and comes to me with whispered invitations. Honest. Like just the other day – “Let’s change it up a bit,” the blog softly says. “Share the words here differently.” So I said okay, and what we (the blog and I) agreed was to offer something of a rambling, spacious, hopefully engaging, ongoing story over the next seven posting days. It begins like this:

Peeps – I began deconstructing my life last Monday morning. (Milky said.) Actually, a case can be made that it began Sunday night with a sudden decision to make a momentous change – an absolutely positive “right on” sensation. It fell out of a blast of fury. So not me.

It’s interesting, like sitting in a theater and watching on the white screen the path(s) of this life blowing all around the street within a strong, swirling wind, which often masquerades as a gentle breeze so convincingly that when I look around my zip code has changed. Where my resume gets fatter. Sometimes just floating along, sometimes rushed from over there to over here. Plans falling in line after the changes. And something akin to momentum, but not really momentum, begins to gather. As if I’ve cornered the market on self-discipline. — 10,000 jars of empty peanut butter would chuckle at that one.

So very much of life these days points to dualities and asks, “Are you sure? Can’t it be ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at the same time?”