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This is me out for a walk just after 9am Monday, before the temperature skied to 90. Sayin’ it with pics:

There’s a Zen story with a monk wandering around in a snowstorm coming upon a monastery and entering for shelter. Within he approaches a Buddha statue carved of wood, and proceeds to chop it into pieces. And set those pieces on fire. The Master of the monastery, aware something wicked serious is up, runs into the meditation hall and yells, “What are you doing, burning our statue?” The monk replies, “Show me something that isn’t the buddha and I’ll burn that.”

I pretty much love that story – What isn’t sacred? What isn’t special? What isn’t eternal? And more and more and more I feel that way about all of it. Why I’m so completely “gone” on these lazy, dawdling walks I’m taking – I get to take – before employment or a lover or friends or spare money or anything much else to do.

Dawdle map — Chicken coop at NE Tillamook and 18th. Japanese maple at NE Knott and 17th. Statue, stones, and (I bet) magical pot at NE Stanton and 27th. After which I drove to get a coffee, and at an outside table received a text that the man I was about to be hired to support Wed – Fri afternoons from 1:30 – 4 was now saying Monday afternoons five hours to play golf. To which I replied, “I don’t play golf.” To which I received, “You don’t have to play. You just have to take him there.” To which I replied, “No.”

Before employment. Show me something that isn’t the buddha.

There are days like this Sunday, when the sky is a gray it should not be in early July, and the morning’s too cold to throw on cut-offs and walk the nine blocks to Starbucks, when I make two more cups of coffee in the ‘Toastmaster’ on the counter here, slip into the “on loan” brown, leather recliner in the basement corner, and read a little bit of one book after another – all things Chinese Zen and George Pelecanos fiction. The last few days, and there’s no real reason why, I’ve pulled the entirely too large and very thick “The Great Deluge” by Douglas Brinkley from one of the shelves and slowly made my way halfway through the nightmare that was Katrina, now nearly 21 years ago.

Twenty-one years ago I was just a 56-year-old, becoming-wrinkled kid still fairly interested in why the world worked the ways it did, and I couldn’t have picked Grand Master Ma or Tung Shan from a line-up of Portland pick-pockets. Now those cats are what you might call my posse, and I read things like, “Simply walking down the street feels large and alive,” which says it way better than I ever do – and without all the yackety yack.

On the Fourth of July, on a very long late afternoon walk (feeling large and alive) I took turns calling both my sons in Idaho and Montana – which may have been quite expensive long distance back when Katrina was murdering the deep south – and in both conversations suggested watching the movie “Independence Day” might be a fun thing to do on its very own holiday. Then when I arrived home I drank lots of sparkly water to fend off dehydration and sat at the Lenovo and watched my own suggestion there.

Amping up something like a trickle of noticeable patriotism. The real stuff abundant, beneath still waters.

I took a late afternoon walk yesterday, out over across Broadway and into the four east/west streets which transverse the neighborhood known as Sullivan’s Gulch. It was warm enough, for the first time in a while, to pull off my long-sleeve tee and parade around with my tank top and a pair of sweat pants. Casual kid.

Much earlier, after yogurt and peanut butter, I’d taken a long walk through the Northeast neighborhood this side, north, of Broadway before hopping in the Camry upon return and driving up to Starbucks, a mile away. There and back, two miles, all I drove today and the same yesterday. Both early and late walks likely felt a bit longer than an odometer would say, it’s my ambling, lazybones pace and stopping all over the place to look at communities of bees, play with a sidewalk kitty when I’m lucky, stop on the sidewalk or the middle of Halsey or Clackamas or Wasco or Multnomah Streets and stand in nothing short of awe staring up at one spectacular tree after another.

So I barely used any gas and spent just $3.45 on the coffee, and before the late walk switched a computer streaming service to one in combination – the change was $2 added difference. Pretty much I made a decision June 30 – you could read it in my Morning Pages – to not spend any money in July beyond food, coffee, and gas, in that order. I became a wild spendthrift with that $2 only because on the first I received $5 from Gavin – a monthly contribution to support the blog, arriving more than two years now. There remains $3 to do who knows what with.

All of this, and so very much extra, is why David Bowie sang “Heroes.” See what I mean?

I drank coffee later than usual yesterday. Much later. This was before, during, and after a long, hour-plus conversation with my sister Sandy, over there in New Hampshire. Catching up – lots to hear, some to say.

I’m so grateful both of my sisters remain here on the planet, one older, one younger. And both my sons. If you saw yesterday’s post, most of my best friends (including Billy in Costa Rica) are long gone. I don’t take any of this for granted. The most simple things.

I finished a novel by George Pelecanos last night, one of the almost zillion books which found their way home to me recently – the fifth or sixth novel I’ve finished the last few weeks. Jack Kerouac’s “Maggie Cassidy” is waiting, its backdrop my old haunts in Lowell (MA) where I lived a bunch of years. Back then was the prime time of my running roads and trails and paths, and I would push a walkman into the back pocket of cutoffs and run over one bridge and back another, crisscrossing the Merrimack River, often nine miles round trip following the long commute back from work in Boston. Playing cassettes, ones I’d recorded on stereo equipment which felt more important back then, though I guess the Camry’s CD player and sweet head phones on the Lenovo’s YouTube and it’s just always the rock and roll.

I came up with a bunch of agreements the last day of June, mostly vows, with myself, for do’s and dont’s in the month of July. So far so good.

It was June of 1977. College friends drove me to Logan Airport and I took my first plane ride – Boston via Kansas City to Los Angeles. I was bound for a new life, and it would begin crashing on my friend Bob Zimmerman’s bedroom floor in a cottage he shared with others just off the Boardwalk in Venice Beach, CA.

Bob was the person I considered my best friend. He had been my boss in a runaway house on the grounds of a crazy hospital north of Boston, and then the program closed and then he moved to Los Angeles and then a year later I followed. A month or so after my first gonna-live-here-forever move to CA we rented an apartment together in Santa Monica. And one night from there we went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the Nuart Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was my first time.

A short while later Bob introduced me to his boss, Dr. Douglas Martin, the Exec Director of The Westside Center for Independent Living, which he had founded. In very short order Doug became my second best friend in the world, and one night Doug and I (and maybe Bob) went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the Fox Venice Theater in Venice. That night there was a character costume contest, and Doug – with polio since the age of six and everywhere in his battery-powered chair -rolled up on the stage and captured the look-alive prize for Dr. Everett Scott. You can see him, Dr. Scott, in his blue shirt and wheelchair bellow, and Doug kind of had it made in the shade.

Back in Massachusetts I went to see “The RHPS” at the Exeter Street Theater in Boston, where it ruled the midnight roost for just about ever. I can’t remember how many times I saw it there.

Doug died in 2003, Bob in 2010. My heart broke each time. I believe Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon are still alive and well and causing good trouble. Just like me. The show and all those wonderful times with great pals came to me out from the cobwebs Tuesday morning. I’m never far away from all of its wonderful songs – I could sing ’em to you now. Perhaps my favorite is here below.

And I’m for sure never away from my friends.

The WordPress statistics that tag along in the blog space showed me that almost no one viewed yesterday’s post. I was sad to see that, I had a nice feeling about the post, kind of an all-over-the-place overview of my life these days – music I love, things blossoming within ‘my practice,’ even a grocery list. And a last-minute addition of a painting of mine I’ve always cherished.

Which is all cool. I am deeply grateful to you for subscribing and reading as often as you do. This blog is pretty much my light out into the world these days. So just waking up and clicking “Publish” is a big deal, and a thrill.

I had a second interview for a human service job yesterday, this one in person, with both the CEO of the company and the young man to whom and for whom I’d be offering my unique support. It all went well, and the job’s mine if I want it, but I’ve already decided to say “No thank you.” It’s just too far away, and it’s in a city just beyond Portland where I know pretty much nothing about where things are. And how I’d get there.

The boss is calling me at noon today, and when she does I’ll say ‘No’ and please keep me in mind if there’s a client/customer lots closer to NE PDX. There’s another company out there with some interest in me too, though there’s ‘No’ stuff there as well.

None of this is complaint, and I am not playing hard to get. It’s just like this.

I do not tell you these things with exaggeration. Or comedy. I’m not in search of a cheap laugh.

My Morning Pages Saturday laid it out there. I knew something was going on but I didn’t know what. And then my Morning Pages, like John Lennon said of ‘Sexy Sadie,’ “Laid it out for all to see.” There was something like a little pinch. An emotional pinch. A blowsy whisper of “Aha.” Maybe it was a shout.

“I contain multitudes,” Walt Whitman said in his ‘Song of Myself,’ and this is the “all’ Sexy Sadie laid it out to. In my case, these very multitudes – Winston, Buddy, Milky. Eight-year-old me. Sixty-five-year-old me. Mom’s funeral service me. Friday morning wedding me. Hawaii vacation me. Suicidal me and wild-with-life me. Father me. Class President me, mountain hermit me. Doo wop and punk rock and church choir me. Multitudes.

Saturday morning, Whole Foods/Starbucks plaza, the world was filled with mutants. They mostly looked like people, but I knew way down deep they were mutants. Just pay attention, I reminded myself. Check the behaviors. I drove up listening to Springsteen – “Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain.” Do they write ’em like that anymore?

Sometimes. Even amidst “this god almighty gloom.”

I can’t seem but help to write this stuff.

Broccoli, peanut butter, yellow squash, Cannellini Beans. Still I shopped, among the mutants.

The painting – ‘My Hawaiian Vacation With Dragons’

Walking further into Northeast, yesterday, after coffee at Starbucks, the Camry still in their lot, having decided to walk from NE 15th to MLK on Beech, up a block, and back on Falling. It feels important you know this, as does the fact I rarely use my car anymore. It began maybe five weeks ago out from a place of not wanting to arrive at the road sign which points “Food” one way, “Gas” the other. Pick one. Seems reasonable. As is so often the case, though, the primary focus of cold cash has fallen behind the experience of living a life without a car most of the time. There’s been a real squeeze down to a very succinct, pinpoint view of the day, and a blossoming spaciousness which chuckles at the thought of words as adjectives to “describe” “it.”

So, back to yesterday, I’ve walked the length of Beech and am strolling the return on Falling when peripheral vision swoops me from the middle of the road to the sidewalk close by a tree-filled house, and to this in an enclosed-glass signpost:

How lovely to stroll into a thing like this on a lazybones Thursday morning. For free.

Sometimes, and I guess most times these days, my sense of shrinking separateness from it all is mostly connected with “things,” possibly insentient beings, more than folks. (Though I do have conversations with about-to-be-brides and their bridal bouquets with the ease of walking down a hill.) So, there was no surprise when I hung a right back onto 15th and came upon these:

How am I not them? They not me?

Gina told me yesterday she fell in love with her cereal while on a retreat. I knew exactly entirely completely what she meant. And I don’t eat cereal.

What is the purpose of a human life?

I had a long post prepared for this morning and then decided no. Another California thing. Maybe another time.

I’d like to say I’m talked out, but in fact I’m hardly ever talking. Here’s one conversation : I drove to Trader Joe’s about 5:30 yesterday afternoon for things. My refrigerator was fairly empty. Mostly dairy stuff – sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, jack cheese, which is me dissolving into the cow-ness of life.

Before checking out I walked over to enjoy the flowers, cause I do, and saw two women – a mother and daughter – looking at and picking up the various bunches of colors of Alstromeria. So, see, here’s me as a regular Chatty Cathy — “Those are my favorite flowers,” I said. “I have some at home now lasting nearly three weeks.” The younger woman asked, “They last that long?” and I said, “Yes.” The older woman, Mom, looked at me and said, “We’re picking flowers for her wedding.”

I got to say, “Congratulations,” and then went to check out. It was just like myself and the cows of Arcata – a very little grateful slice of cool conversation. And there’s the reverence, too, of silence I have with my flowers.

Last night in my Koan group someone, someone I like a lot, shared that she was away from her home on the 5 corridor in the middle of California and was presently at another home in Arcata, close by the coast. It gonged in my head like a meditation bell.

When I made the long drive from San Luis Obispo to Portland I stopped and spent my second night in Arcata. I’d reserved a room in a hotel close by the 101, and after settling in, checking in early, I walked out into “the country” a bit, away from the highway, and took a road which looked private (though someone I asked in a passing truck said it was public) and walked up a ways. On my left was a vast expanse of green field, and grazing and dancing and hanging out in all that green was a really large herd of cows – it seemed like about five different herds congregating. Mixing.

And as I leaned up close to the fence they took me in and group by group made their way over. Hang out with the new kid. And it was perhaps more magical than magic, so many cows looking right at me. Directly right at me.

Tuesday morning with coffee I was reading from ‘The Book of Mu’ and I found myself lingering at this sentence — “Working on this elusive Mu is like working on making the shy forest animals come to you.” I flashed back to my afternoon in Arcata, when Lora was sharing her geography, and it was sort of something like that. Gypsy me and all my spacious availability.