I found myself in confession the other day. My son was taking CCD classes and when I went to pick him up, realized there was a pennant mass with confessional following immediately after the service with twelve visiting priests from other parishes. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to slip in and get some of the guilt off my chest.
I rarely attend confession because it is usually at a strange time of day, maybe three to four p.m. on a Saturday, and it’s not like I’m overflowing with so many sins I need to unload them any chance I can get. Alright, these are bad excuses. I need to go to confession more. Bottom line.
I do believe confessions are useful. I believe in the power of talking about and facing the issues in your life that bring you down and make you sad. Sometimes something that might seem so insignificant and trivial to a stranger, is something that is literally eating us alive; something mean or bad that we said; some minor lie we told; taking some object that wasn’t ours; using another persons’ body for sexual gratification--these are all things that tear us up inside with guilt. But if we think of our neighbor doing these or a friend or someone on television, they often seem rather meaningless and petty, in the greater scheme of things.
I slipped into one of the long lines of parents and 14 and 15 year-old students that were forming in front of the confessional rooms.
Facing the priest brought naked fear to the surface. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I could feel the heat under my arms and the sweat drip down my lower back. My turn came. I entered the dark booth and saw the priest’s shadow hunched behind the mesh window, a little prayer bench in front of it with a simple prayer printed on card stock. I wasn’t too sure of the routine.
“Um, yeah, I don’t really do this too much. I’m sorry.”
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
We both crossed ourselves.
There was a pause and I could sense his uneasiness at my uneasiness. “Do you have anything to confess?”
“Nothing that big.”
Another pause. I thought of all the carnal desires that burned in my skull along with little lies I might have spoken or getting angry or only thinking of myself or innumerable other minor transgressions but they all seemed too small and petty to mention. I almost felt bad I didn’t have anything really big and heavy to lay on him. But there was the one thing. It was the biggest question of all, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was no way he could answer it.
“Sometimes I struggle with being led by certain desires. And this is really something that we’ve been dealing with for millions of years and even though I am aware of this constant struggle, still I find myself doing things I shouldn’t. Still I find myself being led into this darkness and ultimately reaching a point where I’m confounded by the utter pointlessness of it all. Like there is no meaning. Like once you have unraveled the deepest mystery at the bottom of all mysteries, it is just zero. Nothing. Emptiness. And I don’t want to think this way and thus yearn for annihilation, which is pretty much the death of the body but I can’t help reaching this point because I feel so overwhelmed and disheartened, and racked by such immense sorrow, the blackest, deepest sorrow, I don’t want to continue. I want to be free. So what is the meaning? Why the hell am I here?” I was about to scream: ‘what the fuck am I doing here?!’ “Is there some point to this endless struggling to satisfy my needs and seek happiness or will that only really lead to greater sorrow? In the end don’t you know we’re all just mowed under like so many blades of grass? I mean, I yearn for God’s love, but it feels so distant, so remote, so cold, so condescending, so maddeningly incomprehensible that my only recourse and natural goal as a human being on the planet earth is the roll myself up in a ball and tremble. Is that the destiny of man? Is that our great epic goal? Tremble for eternity? Is that my destiny? Please father, tell me something. Give me some encouragement. Drop me a bone. I am utterly confounded and clueless.”
There was a long pause and the priest sat up straight and I could make out his features a little better as the dim lamp in the corner hit him. He was pondering; maybe even troubled. His head was down. He was stumped. This was not a local priest. He was foreign, from India or the Middle East.
I thought I had really caught him off guard with this one. Today, after the endless train of masturbatory confessions, adulteress spouses, forged checks, throwing the old folks in the rest home, stealing the neighbor’s newspaper, where this priest had been spiritually lolled into a knee-jerk, quick-fix, magic bullet prayer response, now he finally had something to think about. You couldn’t just slide a prayer across a table and say, “here’s the answer”. There was no way he was going to wriggle out of this one. There was no “How to Answer The Question of The Meaning of Life”, in the Catechism Desk Reference For Priests. I almost felt smug and was about to stand up leave without another word spoken. That would have satisfied me; the only true answer to all questions: silence.
I looked down at the prayer on the little card in front of me. I took it in hand and scanned the text. I waited, almost mockingly, ready for him to tell me how many times to chant the obligatory prayer. Maybe throw in a few “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” for good measure. I had this guy up against the ropes. There was no way back from “Queer Street” now.
“Just love,” the priest finally muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Just love. That’s it.”
“Just love?”
“Yes, just love. That’s really the only think Jesus wants from us and that’s his primary teaching. First and formost, “just love”.
I was floored. My God, yes! It was so simple. Yet so perfect. Just love.
“There is really nothing that you must do or achieve. You just need to love more.”
The dark clouds of doubt burned instantly away, revealing only bright sunshine. It was as if I knew this all along, way in the back of my head somewhere, but couldn’t remember it. Like an old book in a library, in some back dusty store room. All it needed was a hand to point it out and a quick dust off. “Just love”. Wasn’t this what all the major religions were telling us from the beginning? Wasn’t this at the heart of all dogmas, creeds and divine law?
Sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find it, but love is always there somewhere, no matter how cleverly hidden among the brambles.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Zen Directing
When you direct a movie be prepared to die 45,000 times. Be prepared to see your children murdered in front of your eyes. Be prepared to lose faith in God and humanity as a whole. Be prepared to question your very existence and feel the unrelenting wrath of all the gods of all the pantheons pitted against you. To direct a feature film is a terrifying ordeal. Terrifying in that you are about to spend tremendous amounts of money to save your story. That’s right, save your story. Not tell a story. You set out to tell your story but soon realize that making a movie, is saving your story because it will be raped, slaughtered, ground-up, regurgitated, massacred, questioned, over-analyzed, disintegrated before your very eyes and it is up to you as the director, to preserve some semblance of the original idea, before the day is done.
I walked onto the set of my low-budget thriller with suddenly seventy people asking me seventy different questions about seventy different ways of doing seventy different things. I didn’t have the answer. I could barely talk I was so scared. My fear was paralyzing. I pretended to be confident and strong, but I could barely say my name.
If you let everyone think you are fearful, green and clueless, which you may be, everyone will walk all over you, all the time. No one will respect you. You will need to earn the respect of the crew. If you let one person put you down or slam the project, it will poison everybody and everything. The key is to be prepared, be an authority without being an ass and gain people’s respect by not getting walked on. When you are prepared, there is a lot less fear because your brain robot is dialed in to “move forward” mode and you are constantly focused on what you know you have to finish.
It is not that people are mean, malicious, self-centered and enjoy seeing other people suffer but all creatures strive against one another and if you let them, people will want to assert their own will over yours.
I am a mouse by nature. I am quiet, somewhat timid. I like to be humble and sometimes people try to take advantage of this.
The first day of shooting I didn’t know anything. Someone had to tell me to say “action” and “cut”. If someone walked up to me and asked me what planet I lived on, it would have taken ten minutes for me to come up with the answer. I was shaken to the core. Way in over my head.
The second day of shooting I realized that I was facing an all-out revolt. Now no one believed in me or the script or what they were doing. People were ready to quit. The producers wanted to replace me. The crew laughed at me behind my back or avoided me and deferred all the questions to the producers.
On day two I went around to all the departments to say hello and thank them and see how everything was coming. I could sense the general malaise. I was like the retarded cousin whom you are nice to but really don’t want around. I visited the art department, wardrobe, checked how the lighting was coming, visited the camera crew and made sure we had all the bases covered, conferred with the prop crew and the catering. Then as the actors began arriving, I personally said hello to each actor. This feeling of distrust and angst spread to everyone working on the film like a fever.
It came to a boiling point when I found one of the female leads sitting in the back yard of the house we rented as the main set, making notes in her script. But she was not just making notes, she was crossing paragraphs of description and rewriting line after line of new dialogue in the margins. Along with directing the script, I had also been the sole writer. When anyone takes it upon themselves to re-write my precious words, I generally like to know what motivated such a transgression.
It had been this female lead that had created a lot of the original dissent among the cast and crew by putting me down in front of everyone and voicing out loud I didn’t know what I was doing. She was also one of the most experienced persons on the set with the most credits under her belt and everyone just figured she knew what she was talking about, forgetting the old adage by William Goldman about the movie industry: “Nobody knows nothin’.” That double negative again.
“Hey Paula, how are you today? You look great.” I said to the actress, offering a hug and kiss. “What are you up to?”
“I’m re-writing your script,” she replied, the words that every writer/director cherishes to hear from his leading lady.
“Oh. Uh, okay.”
“Yeah, some of the dialogue is weak and you had a few false moments and I kind of spiced it up. Here take a look.”
Now think how this might come off on any other set on any other production. Even a star doesn’t re-write the script on the set. It just doesn’t happen but I had fallen victim to such a vast breach in my authority and loss of respect
from my peers, it became an “anything goes” mentality.
“Terrific. Very cool.”
“Yeah, it’s like pages thirty-six through fifty-four. That’s about all I’ve gotten to so far.”
There was more?
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll give it a look. Great,” I said strolling away, flipping through the pages of the script that had red ink scribbles on almost every page. I took about ten steps, arrived at a trash can, and promptly chucked the script in.
Some might translate this as a real “asshole” moment but from that point on, it signaled evolution. The cast and the crew suddenly respected me. They automatically assumed I had come around and was not going to take shit from anyone. No one questioned my decisions. Even the lead actress herself whom I heard was very “heartbroken” by my cruel gesture was suddenly quiet and agreeable. I never heard another word of dissent from the leading actress and most of the performances went off smashingly and the film went on the play in some festivals and did well on the overseas market.
In this life it is good to please a few people but it’s also good to stay strong, speak our peace, and stick to your guns, follow your dreams, make it happen.
In Paul Tillich’s book, “The Courage to Be”, very early on he talks about the existentialist anxiety and fear we all face which stems directly from the soul’s feeling separated from God and oneness while it resides in the material realm of the senses where we can’t help feeling divided or disconnected from our source. But right here you can feel at one because you are at one with the Creator whether you want to be or not. When you look deeply inside yourself and find the face of God there, you will come to the deeper understanding that all there is is joy, no matter who you are, what you are doing or where. If you continually meditate, going deeper and deeper, you will arrive at limitless bliss and the ultimate, fearless, all-knowing, all-satisfying, sorrowless, ever-renewed and renewing, imperishable cosmic consciousness.
I walked onto the set of my low-budget thriller with suddenly seventy people asking me seventy different questions about seventy different ways of doing seventy different things. I didn’t have the answer. I could barely talk I was so scared. My fear was paralyzing. I pretended to be confident and strong, but I could barely say my name.
If you let everyone think you are fearful, green and clueless, which you may be, everyone will walk all over you, all the time. No one will respect you. You will need to earn the respect of the crew. If you let one person put you down or slam the project, it will poison everybody and everything. The key is to be prepared, be an authority without being an ass and gain people’s respect by not getting walked on. When you are prepared, there is a lot less fear because your brain robot is dialed in to “move forward” mode and you are constantly focused on what you know you have to finish.
It is not that people are mean, malicious, self-centered and enjoy seeing other people suffer but all creatures strive against one another and if you let them, people will want to assert their own will over yours.
I am a mouse by nature. I am quiet, somewhat timid. I like to be humble and sometimes people try to take advantage of this.
The first day of shooting I didn’t know anything. Someone had to tell me to say “action” and “cut”. If someone walked up to me and asked me what planet I lived on, it would have taken ten minutes for me to come up with the answer. I was shaken to the core. Way in over my head.
The second day of shooting I realized that I was facing an all-out revolt. Now no one believed in me or the script or what they were doing. People were ready to quit. The producers wanted to replace me. The crew laughed at me behind my back or avoided me and deferred all the questions to the producers.
On day two I went around to all the departments to say hello and thank them and see how everything was coming. I could sense the general malaise. I was like the retarded cousin whom you are nice to but really don’t want around. I visited the art department, wardrobe, checked how the lighting was coming, visited the camera crew and made sure we had all the bases covered, conferred with the prop crew and the catering. Then as the actors began arriving, I personally said hello to each actor. This feeling of distrust and angst spread to everyone working on the film like a fever.
It came to a boiling point when I found one of the female leads sitting in the back yard of the house we rented as the main set, making notes in her script. But she was not just making notes, she was crossing paragraphs of description and rewriting line after line of new dialogue in the margins. Along with directing the script, I had also been the sole writer. When anyone takes it upon themselves to re-write my precious words, I generally like to know what motivated such a transgression.
It had been this female lead that had created a lot of the original dissent among the cast and crew by putting me down in front of everyone and voicing out loud I didn’t know what I was doing. She was also one of the most experienced persons on the set with the most credits under her belt and everyone just figured she knew what she was talking about, forgetting the old adage by William Goldman about the movie industry: “Nobody knows nothin’.” That double negative again.
“Hey Paula, how are you today? You look great.” I said to the actress, offering a hug and kiss. “What are you up to?”
“I’m re-writing your script,” she replied, the words that every writer/director cherishes to hear from his leading lady.
“Oh. Uh, okay.”
“Yeah, some of the dialogue is weak and you had a few false moments and I kind of spiced it up. Here take a look.”
Now think how this might come off on any other set on any other production. Even a star doesn’t re-write the script on the set. It just doesn’t happen but I had fallen victim to such a vast breach in my authority and loss of respect
from my peers, it became an “anything goes” mentality.
“Terrific. Very cool.”
“Yeah, it’s like pages thirty-six through fifty-four. That’s about all I’ve gotten to so far.”
There was more?
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll give it a look. Great,” I said strolling away, flipping through the pages of the script that had red ink scribbles on almost every page. I took about ten steps, arrived at a trash can, and promptly chucked the script in.
Some might translate this as a real “asshole” moment but from that point on, it signaled evolution. The cast and the crew suddenly respected me. They automatically assumed I had come around and was not going to take shit from anyone. No one questioned my decisions. Even the lead actress herself whom I heard was very “heartbroken” by my cruel gesture was suddenly quiet and agreeable. I never heard another word of dissent from the leading actress and most of the performances went off smashingly and the film went on the play in some festivals and did well on the overseas market.
In this life it is good to please a few people but it’s also good to stay strong, speak our peace, and stick to your guns, follow your dreams, make it happen.
In Paul Tillich’s book, “The Courage to Be”, very early on he talks about the existentialist anxiety and fear we all face which stems directly from the soul’s feeling separated from God and oneness while it resides in the material realm of the senses where we can’t help feeling divided or disconnected from our source. But right here you can feel at one because you are at one with the Creator whether you want to be or not. When you look deeply inside yourself and find the face of God there, you will come to the deeper understanding that all there is is joy, no matter who you are, what you are doing or where. If you continually meditate, going deeper and deeper, you will arrive at limitless bliss and the ultimate, fearless, all-knowing, all-satisfying, sorrowless, ever-renewed and renewing, imperishable cosmic consciousness.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
"Relax And Move On" Part 2
Back at the cars, Tom was subdued. Most of the people left early but we stayed with him as did Degan’s parents, Fred and Suzanne.
“This is an industrial area. Was he really expecting us to see any good birds here?” Fred confided with me as he placed his scope in the leather case.
“I don’t know. When I read the newsletter it said, ‘Saticoy Ponds’, which sounds like a natural kinda place.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Suzanne said.
“This sucks, big time,” was Degan’s astute summation of the excursion.
Tom stretched his knee out in the cab of his pickup.
“See this, J-2, appreciate it,” Tom said pouring bottled water over his knee. “Ever step you take in this life means something. Don’t take nothin’ for granted.” Again my son offered his “you’re full of crap but I’m being polite” forced grin and nod.
“Well, we’re out of here. Thanks for having us, Tom,” I said offering my hand.
“Damn! Damn!” Tom pounded the cab.
Fred and Suzanne thanked Tom and my son exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers with Degan.
“You guys want to drive down a little ways? Sometimes there’s water in the back ponds and a lot of the sea bids collect there,” Tom said with boyish enthusiasm and the first tenderness I had seen in his eyes.
“Nah. I think we’re good. I got a few errands to run today,” I replied as affably as possible.
“We’re gonna have to pass too, Tom. Again, thank you,” Suzanne said resolutely.
Tom was crestfallen.
“Please. It’s only…” he checked his cell phone, “not even 10:30.”
“Nah, we better, you know, head out,” I said, placing the lens caps on my binoculars.
“Please. Five minutes. That’s all I ask. Give me that,” Tom said imploringly, his eyes begging for mercy.
Fred and Suzanne looked at each other, slightly disturbed.
A sadistic side of me wanted to stick the knife in and beat it but I couldn’t do that to Tom. There was an earnestness to him that I found endearing. Maybe that’s what brought the others here today too. He was one of those great sufferers you run into a few times in your life who seem to have the world pitted against them but as you get to know them better, realize they make their world pitted against them. They won’t have it any other way.
“This guy’s a dumbass, let’s just go,” Jacob said, again loud enough for Tom to hear everything.
“Give him five minutes. It obviously means a lot to him.”
“But the guy’s an effin’ idiot.”
“He’s not an effin’ idiot and don’t curse.”
“Effin’ isn’t a curse word, dad.”
I looked at Fred and Suzanne and she was shaking her head at me. Fred’s eyes were more empathetic.
Finally, we gave in and agreed to let Tom lead us further back down the dirt road, not really sure what to expect but wishing we could get his over with and get on with our Saturdays.
As we rounded a bend, we came upon a lake dotted with sea birds. Sunlight sparkled resplendently on the surface. A flock of Canadian Geese soared overhead and glided into the brilliant water runway.
I looked over at Tom and the deep lines in his forehead were gone, the shadows under his eyes vanished, the grooves at his brow had smoothed away. His whole countenance softened and I thought I actually saw a tear glint in one eye.
“Damn, look at that, will you. This is where we shoulda gone in the first place.”
I glassed the pond and through the deep focus of my binoculars, and with the high contrast lighting and long focal length, saw, in heavenly detail, the rich varieties of birds, the whole image having an ethereal quality, almost as if I was gazing into another world. I thought of Buddha’s Pure Land which he describes as a wonderous place of clear waters, gentle breezes, and an amazing assortment of birds. I wanted to keep looking through my binoculars forever. It was a window directly into heaven. I saw Mallards, Egrets, Coots, Canadian Geese; the Bufflehead, Ring-neck, Canvas-back, and Green-winged teel ducks. I saw Widgeons, Pied-billed Grebes, Ring-billed Gulls, and the majestic Great Blue Heron. There were a series of tiny bird houses along the waterway which Tom explained were erected by a woman for migratory swallows to replace the tree homes that were cut down during construction of the water reclamation plant. As a result, myriads of swallows filled the air around these ponds, in the springtime.
Tom limped out along the channel using a hockey stick as a crutch. As we walked, I overheard Tom explain to Fred and Suzanne how his daughter was misdiagnosed with diabetes and suffered numerous health issues because of the medications she was given. There were tears in Tom’s eyes.
“American medicine is the worst in the world. You got a pharmaceutical lobby that pays off doctors and lawyers so every other commercial on TV is for a drug you don’t need,” Tom said, sweating under the effort of the crutch, the clouds burning off. “I bet at least half the people you know are on some kind of prescription medication.”
“Actually, no. Our friends and family are pretty health conscious. We’re into natural remedies,” said Suzanne.
“Good for you. You ain’t the norm,” said Tom. “You can cure diabetes with diet and exercise and taking the right herbal supplements.”
“You always been into natural remedies?” I asked.
“Heck no. I had my ‘chemical time’ but the Good Lord showed me the light at the end of the tunnel.”
We focused our birdwalk on the area around the central pond and found a plethora of specimens: Killdeer, Red-tailed Hawk, California Thrasher, Says Phoebe, Semipalmated Plover, Cattle Egret which Tom explained was introduced into North America by a small flock of the birds being trapped in a hurricane in Africa and carried across the Atlantic Ocean; Junco, Starling, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Mockingbird, Kestral, Savannah Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, American Pipit, Spotted Towee, Black Phoebe (Grassdipper), Peregrin Falcon.
“Peregrin was almost wiped out by DDT. It made the shells of their eggs too thin and the little ones couldn’t hatch. Once they started regulatin’ DDT, Peregrin’s makin’ a come back. Larry! Larry!” Tom started shouting and waving his arms, dropping the hockey stick in the dirt. I saw a large bird circling high overhead but couldn’t make out the markings. Finally I found him in my binoculars. I saw the distinctive white head and the broad, majestic wing span. I didn’t even know we had bald eagles in Southern California. Fred and Suzanne we delighted. Even Jacob and Degan were enthralled. Larry, the bald eagle, disappeared over the rolling hills toward Sulphur Mountain.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, just made this worth blowin’ my damn knee again,” Tom said, pumping his fist and throwing his hands up, celebrating. “YEAH! YEAY, BABY! GO LARRY!”
Tom high-fived each of us and slammed my son on the back again, almost taking a nose dive into the dirt as he did.
“How did you like that, youngblood?! Almost as good as the blond’s cell phone number.”
My son just nodded.
“Let’s wrap this thing. Chargers got a playoff game at one.”
Tom got on his cell phone and I deduced he was talking to his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend by all the yelling and cursing that commenced. We waited for a while for him to hang up so we could say our parting words but he didn’t. Fred and Suzanne looked at us with puzzled expressions and finally we hopped in the car and drove off.
“Hey dad, remind me never to go birdwatching with you again.”
“Hey, you met a friend. You learned something.”
“What did I learn today, dad?”
I had to think about that for a minute.
Relax and move on.
“This is an industrial area. Was he really expecting us to see any good birds here?” Fred confided with me as he placed his scope in the leather case.
“I don’t know. When I read the newsletter it said, ‘Saticoy Ponds’, which sounds like a natural kinda place.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Suzanne said.
“This sucks, big time,” was Degan’s astute summation of the excursion.
Tom stretched his knee out in the cab of his pickup.
“See this, J-2, appreciate it,” Tom said pouring bottled water over his knee. “Ever step you take in this life means something. Don’t take nothin’ for granted.” Again my son offered his “you’re full of crap but I’m being polite” forced grin and nod.
“Well, we’re out of here. Thanks for having us, Tom,” I said offering my hand.
“Damn! Damn!” Tom pounded the cab.
Fred and Suzanne thanked Tom and my son exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers with Degan.
“You guys want to drive down a little ways? Sometimes there’s water in the back ponds and a lot of the sea bids collect there,” Tom said with boyish enthusiasm and the first tenderness I had seen in his eyes.
“Nah. I think we’re good. I got a few errands to run today,” I replied as affably as possible.
“We’re gonna have to pass too, Tom. Again, thank you,” Suzanne said resolutely.
Tom was crestfallen.
“Please. It’s only…” he checked his cell phone, “not even 10:30.”
“Nah, we better, you know, head out,” I said, placing the lens caps on my binoculars.
“Please. Five minutes. That’s all I ask. Give me that,” Tom said imploringly, his eyes begging for mercy.
Fred and Suzanne looked at each other, slightly disturbed.
A sadistic side of me wanted to stick the knife in and beat it but I couldn’t do that to Tom. There was an earnestness to him that I found endearing. Maybe that’s what brought the others here today too. He was one of those great sufferers you run into a few times in your life who seem to have the world pitted against them but as you get to know them better, realize they make their world pitted against them. They won’t have it any other way.
“This guy’s a dumbass, let’s just go,” Jacob said, again loud enough for Tom to hear everything.
“Give him five minutes. It obviously means a lot to him.”
“But the guy’s an effin’ idiot.”
“He’s not an effin’ idiot and don’t curse.”
“Effin’ isn’t a curse word, dad.”
I looked at Fred and Suzanne and she was shaking her head at me. Fred’s eyes were more empathetic.
Finally, we gave in and agreed to let Tom lead us further back down the dirt road, not really sure what to expect but wishing we could get his over with and get on with our Saturdays.
As we rounded a bend, we came upon a lake dotted with sea birds. Sunlight sparkled resplendently on the surface. A flock of Canadian Geese soared overhead and glided into the brilliant water runway.
I looked over at Tom and the deep lines in his forehead were gone, the shadows under his eyes vanished, the grooves at his brow had smoothed away. His whole countenance softened and I thought I actually saw a tear glint in one eye.
“Damn, look at that, will you. This is where we shoulda gone in the first place.”
I glassed the pond and through the deep focus of my binoculars, and with the high contrast lighting and long focal length, saw, in heavenly detail, the rich varieties of birds, the whole image having an ethereal quality, almost as if I was gazing into another world. I thought of Buddha’s Pure Land which he describes as a wonderous place of clear waters, gentle breezes, and an amazing assortment of birds. I wanted to keep looking through my binoculars forever. It was a window directly into heaven. I saw Mallards, Egrets, Coots, Canadian Geese; the Bufflehead, Ring-neck, Canvas-back, and Green-winged teel ducks. I saw Widgeons, Pied-billed Grebes, Ring-billed Gulls, and the majestic Great Blue Heron. There were a series of tiny bird houses along the waterway which Tom explained were erected by a woman for migratory swallows to replace the tree homes that were cut down during construction of the water reclamation plant. As a result, myriads of swallows filled the air around these ponds, in the springtime.
Tom limped out along the channel using a hockey stick as a crutch. As we walked, I overheard Tom explain to Fred and Suzanne how his daughter was misdiagnosed with diabetes and suffered numerous health issues because of the medications she was given. There were tears in Tom’s eyes.
“American medicine is the worst in the world. You got a pharmaceutical lobby that pays off doctors and lawyers so every other commercial on TV is for a drug you don’t need,” Tom said, sweating under the effort of the crutch, the clouds burning off. “I bet at least half the people you know are on some kind of prescription medication.”
“Actually, no. Our friends and family are pretty health conscious. We’re into natural remedies,” said Suzanne.
“Good for you. You ain’t the norm,” said Tom. “You can cure diabetes with diet and exercise and taking the right herbal supplements.”
“You always been into natural remedies?” I asked.
“Heck no. I had my ‘chemical time’ but the Good Lord showed me the light at the end of the tunnel.”
We focused our birdwalk on the area around the central pond and found a plethora of specimens: Killdeer, Red-tailed Hawk, California Thrasher, Says Phoebe, Semipalmated Plover, Cattle Egret which Tom explained was introduced into North America by a small flock of the birds being trapped in a hurricane in Africa and carried across the Atlantic Ocean; Junco, Starling, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Mockingbird, Kestral, Savannah Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, American Pipit, Spotted Towee, Black Phoebe (Grassdipper), Peregrin Falcon.
“Peregrin was almost wiped out by DDT. It made the shells of their eggs too thin and the little ones couldn’t hatch. Once they started regulatin’ DDT, Peregrin’s makin’ a come back. Larry! Larry!” Tom started shouting and waving his arms, dropping the hockey stick in the dirt. I saw a large bird circling high overhead but couldn’t make out the markings. Finally I found him in my binoculars. I saw the distinctive white head and the broad, majestic wing span. I didn’t even know we had bald eagles in Southern California. Fred and Suzanne we delighted. Even Jacob and Degan were enthralled. Larry, the bald eagle, disappeared over the rolling hills toward Sulphur Mountain.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, just made this worth blowin’ my damn knee again,” Tom said, pumping his fist and throwing his hands up, celebrating. “YEAH! YEAY, BABY! GO LARRY!”
Tom high-fived each of us and slammed my son on the back again, almost taking a nose dive into the dirt as he did.
“How did you like that, youngblood?! Almost as good as the blond’s cell phone number.”
My son just nodded.
“Let’s wrap this thing. Chargers got a playoff game at one.”
Tom got on his cell phone and I deduced he was talking to his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend by all the yelling and cursing that commenced. We waited for a while for him to hang up so we could say our parting words but he didn’t. Fred and Suzanne looked at us with puzzled expressions and finally we hopped in the car and drove off.
“Hey dad, remind me never to go birdwatching with you again.”
“Hey, you met a friend. You learned something.”
“What did I learn today, dad?”
I had to think about that for a minute.
Relax and move on.
Monday, April 13, 2009
My Mom and Zen Shopping
“Have patience with all things, but first of all with thyself.”
St. Francis de Sales
I hate shopping. Being in a shopping mall or any department store turns me into a zombie. Some people can stay in a store for hours. My mom is one of these people.
I have literally been in a Pet Co. with my mom for six hours. Spending six hours shopping in Pet Co. is not an easy task. It requires much patience. Patience is vital for staying on the path and having faith.
In this busy, fast-paced modern life we lead, sometimes we find ourselves rushing hither and thither so much, it’s hard to slow down. I find myself caught up with the, “let’s go, let’s go” attitude, always having to be rushing off to the next thing or next appointment, new stimulation.
To overcome my impatience I go Zen shipping with my mom. Go into any store with her and she will look at EVERTYHING. She will talk to EVERYONE. She will spend hours searching for the perfect item. If you go into a shoe store with her, expect to help her try on every shoe in the store. I kid you not.
It used to be my mom would ask me to take her shopping and I’d cringe. I always slapped a time frame on it by telling her I had an appointment to keep us moving along in the store. Now I look forward to her shopping sessions because it is really a massive test for my patience. It’s like a person who has fear of cats being locked in a room with cats for eight hours.
The funny part about being in Pet. Co. with my mom for six hours was the fact that, when we finally went to the check out, all my mom was getting was pet food! But understand, she didn’t just look at pet food. She looked at all the dogs, the cats, the dog and cat toys, the birds, the fish, the insects and creepy crawlies, the mice the rats, the bedding, the cups, dishes, dispensers, shampoo, soap, cages, etc., etc. She looked at twenty five different types of food. She asked clerks, who kept switching because one shift would end, another would go on break, another would sneak off, exasperated by so many questions and stories.
My mom doesn’t care. When she enters a store her concept of time disappears. She can go into a Wal-Mart and if someone isn’t there to escort her out, she could be lost for months in there. Like that Japanese soldier on the island in the Pacific after the war is over, he has no reference point of time, so forty years after the cease fire, he’s still fighting on.
Time stands still for my mom in a store. It is never the mercenary way of get in get out. That’s the way I like to handle my shopping. My mom is all about infiltration. Like a spy who has to personally handle every detail and talk to every contact. That’s how she gets the job done.
The other day we went into Trader Joes to get my mom’s special butter. She has to have organic, raw butter that hasn’t been pasteurized, for health reasons.
Four hours later she is leaving with a full shopping cart of food and other items she found along the way.
I am going to recommend my mom hire out her services to people who are impatient to train them to overcome it. She could make a fortune.
My aunt sent me a gift in the mail the other day. I opened the package and found a bright yellow satin sock with tiny holes in it. Along with the sock was a box of tiny dark sunflower seeds. My aunt informed me this was a “Wild Finch Feed Sock”. My first thought was, my aunt had gone nuts. How were finches going to feed on a sock filled with seeds?
My aunt lives in Northern California and I had only seen and talked to her rarely. I pondered what could have pushed her over the deep end. Maybe some sudden traumatic event? I had no clue but I went along with it.
I assembled the feed sock and hung it from the veranda on my back porch. I watched I waited. Nothing. The sock just hung there, gently swaying in the breeze. I called my aunt up.
“Hey, what’s the deal with this feed sock thing-a-majiger?”
“You have to be patient,” she reassured me.
“It’s been like a week and I haven’t even seen a single bird sniff around the thing. It’s a sock. I don’t think birds are finding it very appetizing.”
“You just have to be patient.”
“How long do I wait? Maybe I should move it to another spot? Put it in a tree or something.”
“Patience, Jay. They will come.”
If I build it, they will come.
Now I was really thinking my aunt had lost it. There’s no way. Plus, how is the bird going to get the seed out of the sock? Forget it.
“Alright, sounds good. I’ll check it out. Thanks for thinking about me.” Take care. Good bye. Avoid sharp objects.
I forgot about the feed sock, going about the daily rush of activities.
As I was sitting on my floor one afternoon, perusing Time Magazine, I looked outside and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
The yellow feed sock was covered with Goldfinches! They clung to the sides and pecked at the seeds in a bundle of energy and excitement. A blanket of scattered seeds decorated the cement patio directly below the sock. I watched the sock, mesmerized for a good half hour or so. I called my aunt immediately and told her my success.
“Birds! It’s covered with birds! They must have picked up the scent finally.”
“It just takes them a little time to find it.”
“Wow. I’m really impressed. I was thinking you were absolutely nuts. That there was no way birds were gonna feed on this crazy sock.”
“Have patience. You expected instant results.”
I had to admit I did think that the second I strung it up, it would be a feeding frenzy.
Slow down and smell the flowers. That’s been a toughy for me over the years. I know I get caught up in the mad dash to the point where I feel I’m missing out on life.
Our lives are too complicated in this modern existence that we have to rush about at a breakneck pace in order to get everything done. Trouble with that is, suddenly you stop, look around, and realize ten years has gone by and what do you have to show for it?
If we can foster more patience, I think it can make the journey more fruitful. We get a little more out of the whole thing. We can weather the bad times if we know that around the corner there is a light of hope.
St. Francis de Sales
I hate shopping. Being in a shopping mall or any department store turns me into a zombie. Some people can stay in a store for hours. My mom is one of these people.
I have literally been in a Pet Co. with my mom for six hours. Spending six hours shopping in Pet Co. is not an easy task. It requires much patience. Patience is vital for staying on the path and having faith.
In this busy, fast-paced modern life we lead, sometimes we find ourselves rushing hither and thither so much, it’s hard to slow down. I find myself caught up with the, “let’s go, let’s go” attitude, always having to be rushing off to the next thing or next appointment, new stimulation.
To overcome my impatience I go Zen shipping with my mom. Go into any store with her and she will look at EVERTYHING. She will talk to EVERYONE. She will spend hours searching for the perfect item. If you go into a shoe store with her, expect to help her try on every shoe in the store. I kid you not.
It used to be my mom would ask me to take her shopping and I’d cringe. I always slapped a time frame on it by telling her I had an appointment to keep us moving along in the store. Now I look forward to her shopping sessions because it is really a massive test for my patience. It’s like a person who has fear of cats being locked in a room with cats for eight hours.
The funny part about being in Pet. Co. with my mom for six hours was the fact that, when we finally went to the check out, all my mom was getting was pet food! But understand, she didn’t just look at pet food. She looked at all the dogs, the cats, the dog and cat toys, the birds, the fish, the insects and creepy crawlies, the mice the rats, the bedding, the cups, dishes, dispensers, shampoo, soap, cages, etc., etc. She looked at twenty five different types of food. She asked clerks, who kept switching because one shift would end, another would go on break, another would sneak off, exasperated by so many questions and stories.
My mom doesn’t care. When she enters a store her concept of time disappears. She can go into a Wal-Mart and if someone isn’t there to escort her out, she could be lost for months in there. Like that Japanese soldier on the island in the Pacific after the war is over, he has no reference point of time, so forty years after the cease fire, he’s still fighting on.
Time stands still for my mom in a store. It is never the mercenary way of get in get out. That’s the way I like to handle my shopping. My mom is all about infiltration. Like a spy who has to personally handle every detail and talk to every contact. That’s how she gets the job done.
The other day we went into Trader Joes to get my mom’s special butter. She has to have organic, raw butter that hasn’t been pasteurized, for health reasons.
Four hours later she is leaving with a full shopping cart of food and other items she found along the way.
I am going to recommend my mom hire out her services to people who are impatient to train them to overcome it. She could make a fortune.
My aunt sent me a gift in the mail the other day. I opened the package and found a bright yellow satin sock with tiny holes in it. Along with the sock was a box of tiny dark sunflower seeds. My aunt informed me this was a “Wild Finch Feed Sock”. My first thought was, my aunt had gone nuts. How were finches going to feed on a sock filled with seeds?
My aunt lives in Northern California and I had only seen and talked to her rarely. I pondered what could have pushed her over the deep end. Maybe some sudden traumatic event? I had no clue but I went along with it.
I assembled the feed sock and hung it from the veranda on my back porch. I watched I waited. Nothing. The sock just hung there, gently swaying in the breeze. I called my aunt up.
“Hey, what’s the deal with this feed sock thing-a-majiger?”
“You have to be patient,” she reassured me.
“It’s been like a week and I haven’t even seen a single bird sniff around the thing. It’s a sock. I don’t think birds are finding it very appetizing.”
“You just have to be patient.”
“How long do I wait? Maybe I should move it to another spot? Put it in a tree or something.”
“Patience, Jay. They will come.”
If I build it, they will come.
Now I was really thinking my aunt had lost it. There’s no way. Plus, how is the bird going to get the seed out of the sock? Forget it.
“Alright, sounds good. I’ll check it out. Thanks for thinking about me.” Take care. Good bye. Avoid sharp objects.
I forgot about the feed sock, going about the daily rush of activities.
As I was sitting on my floor one afternoon, perusing Time Magazine, I looked outside and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
The yellow feed sock was covered with Goldfinches! They clung to the sides and pecked at the seeds in a bundle of energy and excitement. A blanket of scattered seeds decorated the cement patio directly below the sock. I watched the sock, mesmerized for a good half hour or so. I called my aunt immediately and told her my success.
“Birds! It’s covered with birds! They must have picked up the scent finally.”
“It just takes them a little time to find it.”
“Wow. I’m really impressed. I was thinking you were absolutely nuts. That there was no way birds were gonna feed on this crazy sock.”
“Have patience. You expected instant results.”
I had to admit I did think that the second I strung it up, it would be a feeding frenzy.
Slow down and smell the flowers. That’s been a toughy for me over the years. I know I get caught up in the mad dash to the point where I feel I’m missing out on life.
Our lives are too complicated in this modern existence that we have to rush about at a breakneck pace in order to get everything done. Trouble with that is, suddenly you stop, look around, and realize ten years has gone by and what do you have to show for it?
If we can foster more patience, I think it can make the journey more fruitful. We get a little more out of the whole thing. We can weather the bad times if we know that around the corner there is a light of hope.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Relax and Move On Pt. 1
“In Buddha’s Pure Land there are many birds. There are snow-white storks and swans, and gaily colored peacocks and tropical birds of paradise, and flocks of little birds, softly singing and voicing Buddha’s teachings and praising His virtues.”
Buddha
“Unhitch the wagon, people. We haven’t got all day,” Tom belted, holding the gate open for two elderly women in hooded parkas who shuffled along at a snail’s pace in the gravel. “We’re burning daylight here”.
The gate flanked the Ready-Mix Cement Factory and led to a dirt road along a series of irrigation ponds near Ventura and not far from the beach. I was already stressed and we hadn’t been two minutes into the walk. Tom had us there early. He told us 8a.m. but the true meeting time for the birdwalk was 8:30. I think he was operating on military time, hurry up and wait.
“Holy shit! Got the Geriatric crowd today,” cracked Tom with a grin, taking a sip of his Starbucks Moca Latte which he called “his only vice”.
Tom Coughlin was our group leader for the guided birdwalk to the Saticoy Ponds, December, 2008. He was around forty with a grey-flecked goatee, bomber jacket, safari hat, leather work gloves, camouflage shorts with a brace on his left knee. Pink Floyd concert T-shirt. A shark tooth hung at a chain on his neck which he swore was from a “megalodon” but I had seen a megalodon fossil and his was much smaller.
The sky was clear but an arctic chill brought snow to the distant peaks of Sulphur Mountain and the great Doppler Radar ball that loomed in the distance. We dressed warm for the early morning but knew the cloud cover would drift out to sea by noon time.
“I got two rules, real simple. When I talk, you do not. When I go like this,” he held up one hand, “Everyone stop and shut your traps.”
I looked around to the other faces of the small party of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society who were mostly senior citizens. Myself, my son Jacob, who is a teenager, and one other teenage girl with older parents, were the only ones under sixty, except for Tom. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and not troubled the slightest bit by Tom’s abrasive tone.
My son muttered, “what a douche”, just loud enough for everyone to hear but I don’t think he meant to. Tom clearly heard this and I noticed a slight tic, his eye twitching uncontrollably as he gave my son the slow burn.
I was looking forward to this day because it was going to be a chance to have some “quality” time to do the father-son bonding thing with Jacob. Already I could see there were going to be challenges.
“What we’re gonna do today is explore a series of ponds that are diverted waters from the Santa Clara River for agriculture irrigation and groundwater recharge. See, the water comes in here and it’s full of salt from the ocean, so they got to process it and remove the salt content,” Tom explained.
“And you’re telling us this, why?” my son blurted sarcastically. I gave him a slight nudge.
“Because you may just learn somethin’ today, youngblood.”
“What kind of birds are we going to see here, Tom?” A woman with her eyes looking like they were three times their normal size through thick glasses asked.
“We’re gonna see a lot of shore birds, Egrets, Blue Heron, ducks, lots of different ducks, and if we’re lucky, Larry might make an appearance,” he explained.
“Who’s Larry?” my son asked superciliously.
“The Bald Eagle,” Tom said.
He suddenly made a loud squawking sound two inches from my ear. “LARRY!” He yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. “He answers to Larry but he’s vain, man. He’s a vain bird.”
I couldn’t hear for like five minutes out of my left ear.
Birds were scarce as we made our way along the rectangular ponds that contained only a puddle of water in the muddy bottoms. I thought this was a strange site for a birdwalk, much more industrial than I expected. Tom blamed the lack of birds on local agriculture that sprayed pesticides and spread cellophane coverings over their fields that he claimed exuded a toxic gas when hit by direct sunlight. I thought the lack of birds was mainly due to Tom’s booming voice.
I noticed Tom shakily downing a few pills with bottled water.
“Valerian root. I got a friggin’ migraine…my daughter’s mother cut back my visitation this week,” Tom explained to a fellow birder. “She says I’m not responsible and she’s the one that can’t hold down a job.”
“Sorry to hear that, Tom”, an older man who perfectly resembled Ed Gein said.
“She never lets up. Never.”
“Towee! At three o’clock! In the tree to the left of the road sign,” a tiny woman named Barbara shouted, glassing a thicket of pepper trees across the 118 freeway.
“Fuck Towees,” Tom replied. “One flew into my truck and almost wasted my ass.”
“There are other people here, Tom, who might be interested in seeing it,” Barbara said.
“We’re not looking at Towees, Barbara. They’re ugly anyways.”
“They’re not ugly,” she said, peering through her binoculars.
“They’re brown. They got no distinctive marks. Their song is fer shit. Forget it.”
“Maybe some of these new people don’t know what a Towee is, Tom?”
“Do you want to lead this, Barbara? Can you get access to a place like this? I don’t think so. Relax and move on.”
That was his catch phrase, “relax and move on”. He generally applied it when someone was challenging his authority or doing something he didn’t care for which seemed quite often.
I began to surmise a few things about Tom. One was that he probably smoked cracked at some point in his life and another was that he had probably killed at least one human being.
I noticed the viewfinders of my binoculars were fogged and showed it to Tom to get his advice.
“Problem is you got moisture in your optics. Once that happens, may as well chuck ‘em in the trash,” he said.
“I think I left them in my car over night so I wouldn’t forget them.”
“Need to spend a few more dollars, J-1. It’s like anything, you skimp on the front end, you pay on the back.”
He began calling me J-1 and my son J-2.
A friendly rivalry developed between Tom and my son, who is usually very open about expressing his displeasure at authority figures who clearly shouldn’t be.
“Hey J-2, why don’t you smile more? It ain’t that early,” Tom said. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. “Smile more and the world smiles back.”
I cringed as my son said under his breath, “eat me”. It’s not that my son is always disrespectful to his elders but if he recognizes that someone is a little off, he will let them know this unrelentingly.
At one point Tom set up his scope and had my son check it out. “Have a look at that, youngblood. Ever seen anything like that?”
My son gave it a quick glance and offered his obviously forced grin with trademark self-effacing nod. Tom slapped him hard on the back, laughing. “See, he likes it! He’s catching on! Good man! Good man!”
I looked through the scope and he had a mangy crow in his sites which reminded me of the funny shot in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
The group began to separate but Tom kept us in a tightly bunched formation.
“I’m liable for your asses so stick together. Who’s that numbnuts way out there?”
“Carl Feinberg,” someone said.
A stocky, hunched figure, Carl Feinberg, was engrossed peering through his telescope at something across the highway and had fallen way behind the group.
“Feinberg! Feinberg!” Tom yelled and his voice echoed off the distant hills. “We stick together, man! This isn’t a freakin’ Rite-Aid!”
“I think he’s having trouble with his scope,” another birder said.
“He better not have a hypoglycemic fit like last time. I’m not waiting for that dipshit while he munches on a Twinkie.”
My son, Jacob, was starting to come awake, noticing the cute blond with braces, Degan, who was about his age. He struck up some small talk with her, leaving me alone with Tom. Jacob always had that strange good fortune some males possess that wherever they go, they always run into cute young women.
“This is a Zeiss Diascope 85 with Lotutec coating, eighty-five millimeter, baby,” he said showing me his telescope. “That’s a fifteen hundred dollar scope, bitch. Nitrogen filling. No fogging.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool”, he said sarcastically.
The group was excitedly watching a Peregrin Falcon perched on a distant telephone pole. Tom explained that the falcon’s favorite food was the ducks and coots that frequented the ponds, that so far, had been non-existent.
He was able to further illustrate this point when we found the mutilated remains of a dead coot. Most of the bird was missing, only a torn wing and tail feathers.
“Yep, that’s a coot.”
“Aren’t they the ones with really strange feet for an aquatic bird?” One birder asked.
“Yeah, actually got one right here.” Tom produced a mummified coot foot from his pocket. And sure enough the foot had talons as opposed to webbed footing. “Falcon schwacked this guy too. Seen him do it. Not here but up in Oxnard.”
I was about to take a bite out of a blueberry nut protein bar when he conveyed to me one of his unifying principles of life: “What you put into your body, is what you get out, J-1. Shit in, shit out.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Not just talkin’ food. Words, emotions, music, movies, whatever.”
“But then how do you know if it’s actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you?”
“You’ll know. Maybe not right away. But you’ll know.”
He then told me how he turned himself over to the will of Jesus Christ, his one true Lord and Savior after years of wandering in the “dark forest of the soul”. Personally I wasn’t sure how cool Jesus was with all the foul language.
“I ain’t saying that I totally got it licked but I’m on the road. That is, I ain’t sinless but I definitely ‘sin-less’.”
“Are you a member of the both the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Audubon Societies?” I asked uneasily. “I was thinking about joining one of those groups but don’t know which is better.”
He then explained how he was a member of the Conejo Valley group and referred to the Ventura County Audubon Society as “stupid pricks”.
“They put out a newsletter. Big deal. Then they cry when they don’t have the funding or can’t figure out how to attract new members.”
“That’s not good,” I said, trying to sound even vaguely interested.
“Ventura Fair, this year, I ran the whole show. Paid for the booth, did the artwork, recruited like 40 new members…this was on my own time, you understand.”
“Oh yeah. I saw the booth this year.”
“That was me. I spent the whole week at the thing and I have yet to be reimbursed for the booth and the artwork. My time is my time but you’d think at least they should have the balls to write me a check after they said they would.”
“That sucks.”
“And the president of VCAS, Melinda Abrego. She can go fuck herself. Stupid, ungrateful, bitch.”
I had met Melinda Abrego once, on the birdwalk to the Botanical Gardens. First off, she was about 80 years old and secondly, was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I had ever met. Tom seemed to have it out for senior citizens.
“Losers and bums. They assume society’s gonna carry ‘em on their backs.”
“Well, sometimes it’s difficult, you know, when you’re older, it’s harder to work, get around.”
“Oh, fuck you. Give me a break. Most of these jokers are on medication, as an excuse. They can work just as well as you or I can,” Tom said, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I caught a few nervous grins from elderly birders.
I found it difficult to fathom how Tom attracted anyone to his walks. He imparted very little bird knowledge along the trip and spewed such unrelenting venom and negativity, his disposition was almost diametrically opposed to the birdwatching mindset. The birders in this group seemed to regard Tom as a troubled grandchild, with more affectionate amusement than disdain. It even appeared there was the subtle element of these people really wanting to humor and help Tom by being cheerful witnesses to his guided rants. I considered the wise words of Lao Tzu, “A good man is a bad man’s teacher. A bad man, is a good man’s material.”
We reached a row of oak trees that shielded interminable fields of onion and broccoli. A lone mangy coyote picked his way along one of the empty ponds.
“That’s a magnificent animal.”
“I hate coyotes. One went after Sancho, my cat,” said a heavy, Hispanic lady who looked like a WWF wrestler with her giant arms squeezed through the sleeves of her puffy vest, two sets of binoculars and a long-lensed camera dangling at her massive bosom. “I had to throw bleach in his eyes.”
“That’s illegal, Carmen. You can get a fine for that,” Tom snapped angrily.
“What am I supposed to do when he’s roaming in my backyard, Tom? Tell me.”
“If you tell a coyote to take it under the arches, they’re gonna listen. Coyote’s a smart animal. Gotta be.”
“I wasn’t going to risk it with Sanchito. He’s sixteen n and can barely see.”
“Very simple, keep Sancho in the house. Don’t let him go out.”
“That’s where his potty is though.”
“Put the potty in the garage. C’mon, use some common sense, Carmen.”
“Coyote’s are stupid.”
“Not at all. How do you think they can survive with mankind laying waste to their habitat? Relax and move on.”
“Hey Tom, I thought you said there were ducks on this walk,” Carl Feinberg said and the air suddenly got as thick as spoiled margarine.
“There are,” Tom said, taken aback.
“I haven’t seen a single duck,” Carl Feinberg said.
“There were ducks four days ago after the rains.”
“Where’s the ducks? You should have checked it yesterday,” Carl said testily, waving a hand in the air as a sign of dismissal.
“I couldn’t yesterday, Carl, I drove my mom to the DMV to renew her license.”
“Do you see water? How can there be ducks?”
“There is no ducks, Carl.”
“Why don’t you check it beforehand?”
“I told you, there was water four days ago, Carl, but it seeps into the soil.”
“And you didn’t know this?”
“I did.”
“VCAS had a walk to the Ojai Meadow Preserve and I missed it for this worthless thing.”
“Then you should have gone to the Ojai Meadow Preserve, Carl.”
“Plus it’s ten minutes closer to my house.”
“You can leave anytime, Carl. You’re not obligated to be here.”
“I’m here. What am I going to do? Drive thirty minutes and show up late like a moron?”
“It’s a free country, Carl. So I made a mistake, big deal.”
“Every walk you do is a mistake. No ducks. No water. Last time, we stood in a parking lot for three hours.”
“I had to wait for Triple A. My battery died.”
“Yeah, your battery died. Your battery always dies.”
Tom looked distraught. His face turned beet red and he strode away, holding his breath, looking like he was about to implode. Jacob and Degan covered their mouths to shield their laughter.
Barbara caught my worried expression. “He blows up at least once every time he leads. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be okay.”
I watched Tom rubbing his forehead and pacing in circles. Carl calmly unwrapped a Hostess Cupcake and munched lazily as if nothing had happened.
The next instant I heard a shriek followed by a curse that sounded like “whorefucker!” Then Tom was dragging himself over the lip of the pond, one of his Air Jordan’s coated in mud. He limped around, clutching his knee.
“That’s it. I’m done. I heard a pop.” He held a hand over his knee. “That’s my bad knee. I’m totally fubar, people”.
We offered to help Tom back to the car but he refused any aid. Then it got to the point where he couldn’t walk any longer and just sat down in the gravel and removed his knee brace.
“Feels like my Meniscus. Bet you anything.”
“Was it messed up before?”
“It’s been messed up since forever.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Last time? Skateboard.”
“When was that?”
“June.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who ride skateboards but when you’re middle-aged and still riding skateboards, I tend to form opinions.
Jacob and I each took an arm and helped Tom up.
Buddha
“Unhitch the wagon, people. We haven’t got all day,” Tom belted, holding the gate open for two elderly women in hooded parkas who shuffled along at a snail’s pace in the gravel. “We’re burning daylight here”.
The gate flanked the Ready-Mix Cement Factory and led to a dirt road along a series of irrigation ponds near Ventura and not far from the beach. I was already stressed and we hadn’t been two minutes into the walk. Tom had us there early. He told us 8a.m. but the true meeting time for the birdwalk was 8:30. I think he was operating on military time, hurry up and wait.
“Holy shit! Got the Geriatric crowd today,” cracked Tom with a grin, taking a sip of his Starbucks Moca Latte which he called “his only vice”.
Tom Coughlin was our group leader for the guided birdwalk to the Saticoy Ponds, December, 2008. He was around forty with a grey-flecked goatee, bomber jacket, safari hat, leather work gloves, camouflage shorts with a brace on his left knee. Pink Floyd concert T-shirt. A shark tooth hung at a chain on his neck which he swore was from a “megalodon” but I had seen a megalodon fossil and his was much smaller.
The sky was clear but an arctic chill brought snow to the distant peaks of Sulphur Mountain and the great Doppler Radar ball that loomed in the distance. We dressed warm for the early morning but knew the cloud cover would drift out to sea by noon time.
“I got two rules, real simple. When I talk, you do not. When I go like this,” he held up one hand, “Everyone stop and shut your traps.”
I looked around to the other faces of the small party of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society who were mostly senior citizens. Myself, my son Jacob, who is a teenager, and one other teenage girl with older parents, were the only ones under sixty, except for Tom. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and not troubled the slightest bit by Tom’s abrasive tone.
My son muttered, “what a douche”, just loud enough for everyone to hear but I don’t think he meant to. Tom clearly heard this and I noticed a slight tic, his eye twitching uncontrollably as he gave my son the slow burn.
I was looking forward to this day because it was going to be a chance to have some “quality” time to do the father-son bonding thing with Jacob. Already I could see there were going to be challenges.
“What we’re gonna do today is explore a series of ponds that are diverted waters from the Santa Clara River for agriculture irrigation and groundwater recharge. See, the water comes in here and it’s full of salt from the ocean, so they got to process it and remove the salt content,” Tom explained.
“And you’re telling us this, why?” my son blurted sarcastically. I gave him a slight nudge.
“Because you may just learn somethin’ today, youngblood.”
“What kind of birds are we going to see here, Tom?” A woman with her eyes looking like they were three times their normal size through thick glasses asked.
“We’re gonna see a lot of shore birds, Egrets, Blue Heron, ducks, lots of different ducks, and if we’re lucky, Larry might make an appearance,” he explained.
“Who’s Larry?” my son asked superciliously.
“The Bald Eagle,” Tom said.
He suddenly made a loud squawking sound two inches from my ear. “LARRY!” He yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. “He answers to Larry but he’s vain, man. He’s a vain bird.”
I couldn’t hear for like five minutes out of my left ear.
Birds were scarce as we made our way along the rectangular ponds that contained only a puddle of water in the muddy bottoms. I thought this was a strange site for a birdwalk, much more industrial than I expected. Tom blamed the lack of birds on local agriculture that sprayed pesticides and spread cellophane coverings over their fields that he claimed exuded a toxic gas when hit by direct sunlight. I thought the lack of birds was mainly due to Tom’s booming voice.
I noticed Tom shakily downing a few pills with bottled water.
“Valerian root. I got a friggin’ migraine…my daughter’s mother cut back my visitation this week,” Tom explained to a fellow birder. “She says I’m not responsible and she’s the one that can’t hold down a job.”
“Sorry to hear that, Tom”, an older man who perfectly resembled Ed Gein said.
“She never lets up. Never.”
“Towee! At three o’clock! In the tree to the left of the road sign,” a tiny woman named Barbara shouted, glassing a thicket of pepper trees across the 118 freeway.
“Fuck Towees,” Tom replied. “One flew into my truck and almost wasted my ass.”
“There are other people here, Tom, who might be interested in seeing it,” Barbara said.
“We’re not looking at Towees, Barbara. They’re ugly anyways.”
“They’re not ugly,” she said, peering through her binoculars.
“They’re brown. They got no distinctive marks. Their song is fer shit. Forget it.”
“Maybe some of these new people don’t know what a Towee is, Tom?”
“Do you want to lead this, Barbara? Can you get access to a place like this? I don’t think so. Relax and move on.”
That was his catch phrase, “relax and move on”. He generally applied it when someone was challenging his authority or doing something he didn’t care for which seemed quite often.
I began to surmise a few things about Tom. One was that he probably smoked cracked at some point in his life and another was that he had probably killed at least one human being.
I noticed the viewfinders of my binoculars were fogged and showed it to Tom to get his advice.
“Problem is you got moisture in your optics. Once that happens, may as well chuck ‘em in the trash,” he said.
“I think I left them in my car over night so I wouldn’t forget them.”
“Need to spend a few more dollars, J-1. It’s like anything, you skimp on the front end, you pay on the back.”
He began calling me J-1 and my son J-2.
A friendly rivalry developed between Tom and my son, who is usually very open about expressing his displeasure at authority figures who clearly shouldn’t be.
“Hey J-2, why don’t you smile more? It ain’t that early,” Tom said. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. “Smile more and the world smiles back.”
I cringed as my son said under his breath, “eat me”. It’s not that my son is always disrespectful to his elders but if he recognizes that someone is a little off, he will let them know this unrelentingly.
At one point Tom set up his scope and had my son check it out. “Have a look at that, youngblood. Ever seen anything like that?”
My son gave it a quick glance and offered his obviously forced grin with trademark self-effacing nod. Tom slapped him hard on the back, laughing. “See, he likes it! He’s catching on! Good man! Good man!”
I looked through the scope and he had a mangy crow in his sites which reminded me of the funny shot in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
The group began to separate but Tom kept us in a tightly bunched formation.
“I’m liable for your asses so stick together. Who’s that numbnuts way out there?”
“Carl Feinberg,” someone said.
A stocky, hunched figure, Carl Feinberg, was engrossed peering through his telescope at something across the highway and had fallen way behind the group.
“Feinberg! Feinberg!” Tom yelled and his voice echoed off the distant hills. “We stick together, man! This isn’t a freakin’ Rite-Aid!”
“I think he’s having trouble with his scope,” another birder said.
“He better not have a hypoglycemic fit like last time. I’m not waiting for that dipshit while he munches on a Twinkie.”
My son, Jacob, was starting to come awake, noticing the cute blond with braces, Degan, who was about his age. He struck up some small talk with her, leaving me alone with Tom. Jacob always had that strange good fortune some males possess that wherever they go, they always run into cute young women.
“This is a Zeiss Diascope 85 with Lotutec coating, eighty-five millimeter, baby,” he said showing me his telescope. “That’s a fifteen hundred dollar scope, bitch. Nitrogen filling. No fogging.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool”, he said sarcastically.
The group was excitedly watching a Peregrin Falcon perched on a distant telephone pole. Tom explained that the falcon’s favorite food was the ducks and coots that frequented the ponds, that so far, had been non-existent.
He was able to further illustrate this point when we found the mutilated remains of a dead coot. Most of the bird was missing, only a torn wing and tail feathers.
“Yep, that’s a coot.”
“Aren’t they the ones with really strange feet for an aquatic bird?” One birder asked.
“Yeah, actually got one right here.” Tom produced a mummified coot foot from his pocket. And sure enough the foot had talons as opposed to webbed footing. “Falcon schwacked this guy too. Seen him do it. Not here but up in Oxnard.”
I was about to take a bite out of a blueberry nut protein bar when he conveyed to me one of his unifying principles of life: “What you put into your body, is what you get out, J-1. Shit in, shit out.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Not just talkin’ food. Words, emotions, music, movies, whatever.”
“But then how do you know if it’s actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you?”
“You’ll know. Maybe not right away. But you’ll know.”
He then told me how he turned himself over to the will of Jesus Christ, his one true Lord and Savior after years of wandering in the “dark forest of the soul”. Personally I wasn’t sure how cool Jesus was with all the foul language.
“I ain’t saying that I totally got it licked but I’m on the road. That is, I ain’t sinless but I definitely ‘sin-less’.”
“Are you a member of the both the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Audubon Societies?” I asked uneasily. “I was thinking about joining one of those groups but don’t know which is better.”
He then explained how he was a member of the Conejo Valley group and referred to the Ventura County Audubon Society as “stupid pricks”.
“They put out a newsletter. Big deal. Then they cry when they don’t have the funding or can’t figure out how to attract new members.”
“That’s not good,” I said, trying to sound even vaguely interested.
“Ventura Fair, this year, I ran the whole show. Paid for the booth, did the artwork, recruited like 40 new members…this was on my own time, you understand.”
“Oh yeah. I saw the booth this year.”
“That was me. I spent the whole week at the thing and I have yet to be reimbursed for the booth and the artwork. My time is my time but you’d think at least they should have the balls to write me a check after they said they would.”
“That sucks.”
“And the president of VCAS, Melinda Abrego. She can go fuck herself. Stupid, ungrateful, bitch.”
I had met Melinda Abrego once, on the birdwalk to the Botanical Gardens. First off, she was about 80 years old and secondly, was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I had ever met. Tom seemed to have it out for senior citizens.
“Losers and bums. They assume society’s gonna carry ‘em on their backs.”
“Well, sometimes it’s difficult, you know, when you’re older, it’s harder to work, get around.”
“Oh, fuck you. Give me a break. Most of these jokers are on medication, as an excuse. They can work just as well as you or I can,” Tom said, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I caught a few nervous grins from elderly birders.
I found it difficult to fathom how Tom attracted anyone to his walks. He imparted very little bird knowledge along the trip and spewed such unrelenting venom and negativity, his disposition was almost diametrically opposed to the birdwatching mindset. The birders in this group seemed to regard Tom as a troubled grandchild, with more affectionate amusement than disdain. It even appeared there was the subtle element of these people really wanting to humor and help Tom by being cheerful witnesses to his guided rants. I considered the wise words of Lao Tzu, “A good man is a bad man’s teacher. A bad man, is a good man’s material.”
We reached a row of oak trees that shielded interminable fields of onion and broccoli. A lone mangy coyote picked his way along one of the empty ponds.
“That’s a magnificent animal.”
“I hate coyotes. One went after Sancho, my cat,” said a heavy, Hispanic lady who looked like a WWF wrestler with her giant arms squeezed through the sleeves of her puffy vest, two sets of binoculars and a long-lensed camera dangling at her massive bosom. “I had to throw bleach in his eyes.”
“That’s illegal, Carmen. You can get a fine for that,” Tom snapped angrily.
“What am I supposed to do when he’s roaming in my backyard, Tom? Tell me.”
“If you tell a coyote to take it under the arches, they’re gonna listen. Coyote’s a smart animal. Gotta be.”
“I wasn’t going to risk it with Sanchito. He’s sixteen n and can barely see.”
“Very simple, keep Sancho in the house. Don’t let him go out.”
“That’s where his potty is though.”
“Put the potty in the garage. C’mon, use some common sense, Carmen.”
“Coyote’s are stupid.”
“Not at all. How do you think they can survive with mankind laying waste to their habitat? Relax and move on.”
“Hey Tom, I thought you said there were ducks on this walk,” Carl Feinberg said and the air suddenly got as thick as spoiled margarine.
“There are,” Tom said, taken aback.
“I haven’t seen a single duck,” Carl Feinberg said.
“There were ducks four days ago after the rains.”
“Where’s the ducks? You should have checked it yesterday,” Carl said testily, waving a hand in the air as a sign of dismissal.
“I couldn’t yesterday, Carl, I drove my mom to the DMV to renew her license.”
“Do you see water? How can there be ducks?”
“There is no ducks, Carl.”
“Why don’t you check it beforehand?”
“I told you, there was water four days ago, Carl, but it seeps into the soil.”
“And you didn’t know this?”
“I did.”
“VCAS had a walk to the Ojai Meadow Preserve and I missed it for this worthless thing.”
“Then you should have gone to the Ojai Meadow Preserve, Carl.”
“Plus it’s ten minutes closer to my house.”
“You can leave anytime, Carl. You’re not obligated to be here.”
“I’m here. What am I going to do? Drive thirty minutes and show up late like a moron?”
“It’s a free country, Carl. So I made a mistake, big deal.”
“Every walk you do is a mistake. No ducks. No water. Last time, we stood in a parking lot for three hours.”
“I had to wait for Triple A. My battery died.”
“Yeah, your battery died. Your battery always dies.”
Tom looked distraught. His face turned beet red and he strode away, holding his breath, looking like he was about to implode. Jacob and Degan covered their mouths to shield their laughter.
Barbara caught my worried expression. “He blows up at least once every time he leads. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be okay.”
I watched Tom rubbing his forehead and pacing in circles. Carl calmly unwrapped a Hostess Cupcake and munched lazily as if nothing had happened.
The next instant I heard a shriek followed by a curse that sounded like “whorefucker!” Then Tom was dragging himself over the lip of the pond, one of his Air Jordan’s coated in mud. He limped around, clutching his knee.
“That’s it. I’m done. I heard a pop.” He held a hand over his knee. “That’s my bad knee. I’m totally fubar, people”.
We offered to help Tom back to the car but he refused any aid. Then it got to the point where he couldn’t walk any longer and just sat down in the gravel and removed his knee brace.
“Feels like my Meniscus. Bet you anything.”
“Was it messed up before?”
“It’s been messed up since forever.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Last time? Skateboard.”
“When was that?”
“June.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who ride skateboards but when you’re middle-aged and still riding skateboards, I tend to form opinions.
Jacob and I each took an arm and helped Tom up.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Feeling Connected Pt. 2
I float up, a hundred feet off the ground.
I extend my arms and drift up to the zenith of the teepee with the smoke that is ebbing out into the night air, curling toward a coyote moon blazing orange and diaphanous like the devil’s iris in a parlor of twinkling diamonds.
I peer down at the little circle of celebrants beneath me who look like squatting ants around a cigarette spark. The flaming eagle flaps his wings in dreamy slo-mo. Whoosh. Whoosh. I feel my face wafted by the wind of his great wings, cool, breezy, even though they are made of millions of tiny, cherry-red coal fragments. The eagle hovers close to my face and I look into his eye that transforms from flaming ember, into a real eagle eye, full of wisdom and deep knowledge, unblinking, eternal, the Great God of Light and Air, the Protector, Vanquisher of Darkness, Giver of Eternal Peace. He conveys to me, through subtle intuition, that I am at one with the natural world, this earth, this realm, created by God for our majestic quest for truth and to find ourselves which is really only finding God again.
My God it is so simple, so radiant.
For one brief shining moment I achieve absolute knowledge, the realization that I myself and the universe are one and God is everything.
Then the Great Spirit Eagle shows me atoms. And I see atoms in my bed while I sleep. I see the atoms of my bedspread, my pillow, my sheets, spinning, constantly turning and bouncing every which way. Then I am in a trawler off of Anacapa, my hook skimming the reefs for rockfish, bat ray, guitar fish, barracuda, sea scorpions, thresher sharks and I see atoms too. Then I am running in a forest on Mt. Rainier, chasing mighty elk through dense thickets and there are atoms. Then I am riding the Bonzai Rapids on the Kings River in a flimsy pool raft and there are atoms. Then I am at work, amid the boredom and monotony of my little desk, chair and computer, and I see atoms. Then I am chasing a ball on a playing field and people chase me with atoms. And I am floating in the blue waters of a cinote in Chichen Itza, swimming amid the hundreds of tiny brown catfish and I see atoms everywhere. And then I am in a vast sea of cars on the 405 moving along endlessly in a gigantic river, millions upon millions of cars, and I see atoms too. And I am walking amid the throngs of people at the fair in Ventura or at a football game or soccer match with a crowd of ninety thousand at the Coliseum who are atoms. Then I am sitting alone, at night, on my living room floor, in my silence and everything is atoms. Then I am a child lying in the snow of Olympia, Washington, waving my arms to make a snow angel and it is all atoms. Everything atoms always.
The flaming eagle drifts back, smaller and smaller, floating down to a distant mountain a thousand feet below, disappearing behind a snow-capped peak, at the bottom of the teepee.
Holy Shit! They slipped me something in the tea. I dodged the peyote and still mind has conjured up multifarious visions. Sneaky Indians.
Eight hours into the ceremony, I am no longer at one with the burning eagle, the atoms or anything else. I’ve had it with the damn absolute knowledge. Screw the freakin’ eagle.
My knees ache. My ankles ache. My stomach aches. My back aches. I only want to get the hell out of the friggin’ teepee.
When Randy originally told me about the ritual, I thought, alright, maybe an hour or two, your standard ceremony length, get in, listen to the sermon, say some chants, dance around, we’re good. We went into the teepee around dusk on Saturday night. We didn’t get out until around eight a.m., the next morning. Let me repeat that: eight a.m. the next morning! No wonder you need the peyote -- you’re in a teepee, sitting on your laurels for twelve hours! TWELVE HOURS! Sitting! I haven’t sat anywhere for twelve hours. It’s hard enough for me to sit for an hour let alone twelve, on the floor. I couldn’t sit for twelve hours in a Lay-Z-Boy with a remote watching the World Cup. I’d have to get up, move around sometime, step out for a drink, grab some chips or something.
With the heat of the sun warming the teepee, the Fire Man covers the smoldering embers with dirt. People make their way into the open air. I stand up, my knees creaking, ankles sore and aching, and the chunks of peyote scatter over the dirt floor. I freeze, looking around to see if my iniquity has been detected. Everyone is collecting their things, oblivious. I drop my sweater on the scattered pieces and coolly stuff them into my pocket.
Randy and June are disappointed with me when I complain to them in the refreshing sunlight.
“That was absolute torture. I had no idea it was going to be so long.”
“You didn’t take the peyote,” are the first words out of June’s mouth.
How did they know? Everyone was spaced out and it was semi-dark in there.
“I drank the tea.”
“It doesn’t matter. The peyote was very vital to the ritual, Jay. That’s why we call it ‘Father Peyote’”, says Randy, accusingly.
“I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Then why did you come in the first place?”
“I really thought I could connect without the drug.”
“It’s not a drug. It grows in nature. It’s natural.”
“I still just didn’t feel comfortable.”
“You disappoint me, Jay.”
“I’m sorry, Randy.”
“Until you learn to have courage and take chances and face your inner struggles, you’re never going to get where you need to be.”
Bottom line, I was a bad Indian.
I tell them I am tired and need to leave. Everyone has brought food and this is the potluck/socializing time but I want to duck out, go home and sleep. That’s all I can think about.
I catch Rick, the Road Chief and his sister Glenda’s disappointed looks as I shuffle to my car. I try to strike up small talk with them but they give me the cold shoulder. I try to tell him about seeing the Great Spirit Eagle and being carried a hundred feet off the ground and seeing everything as atoms but I am still a dick because I chucked the peyote in the weeds.
One other guy also suffers the humiliation of the outcast. This is the only guy who left the teepee early that night. He is a young white guy with glasses who looks like a carbon copy of myself. He also says he had the vision of being carried off the ground. Everyone seems to avoid this guy like a leper. He is worse off than me because he left the teepee prematurely and broke the sacred hoop.
I drive home, trying mightily to keep myself awake and almost dying about seven times from dozing off and drifting over the center line and getting in near head-on collisions with eighteen wheelers.
I never see Randy and his wife after that. I try to call but he avoids me. I want to apologize and tell him that maybe it was too much for me but he should have for-warned me about the twelve-hour-on-your-ass-in-a-teepee-Indian-ritual-thing. Would have been nice. I was thinking it was going to be camping in Ojai with maybe a one hour ceremony, dancing chicks, head dresses, the whole nine yards. Right now, I don’t have the faith or stamina for twelve hours in a teepee. Get back to me in about twenty years.
`
I extend my arms and drift up to the zenith of the teepee with the smoke that is ebbing out into the night air, curling toward a coyote moon blazing orange and diaphanous like the devil’s iris in a parlor of twinkling diamonds.
I peer down at the little circle of celebrants beneath me who look like squatting ants around a cigarette spark. The flaming eagle flaps his wings in dreamy slo-mo. Whoosh. Whoosh. I feel my face wafted by the wind of his great wings, cool, breezy, even though they are made of millions of tiny, cherry-red coal fragments. The eagle hovers close to my face and I look into his eye that transforms from flaming ember, into a real eagle eye, full of wisdom and deep knowledge, unblinking, eternal, the Great God of Light and Air, the Protector, Vanquisher of Darkness, Giver of Eternal Peace. He conveys to me, through subtle intuition, that I am at one with the natural world, this earth, this realm, created by God for our majestic quest for truth and to find ourselves which is really only finding God again.
My God it is so simple, so radiant.
For one brief shining moment I achieve absolute knowledge, the realization that I myself and the universe are one and God is everything.
Then the Great Spirit Eagle shows me atoms. And I see atoms in my bed while I sleep. I see the atoms of my bedspread, my pillow, my sheets, spinning, constantly turning and bouncing every which way. Then I am in a trawler off of Anacapa, my hook skimming the reefs for rockfish, bat ray, guitar fish, barracuda, sea scorpions, thresher sharks and I see atoms too. Then I am running in a forest on Mt. Rainier, chasing mighty elk through dense thickets and there are atoms. Then I am riding the Bonzai Rapids on the Kings River in a flimsy pool raft and there are atoms. Then I am at work, amid the boredom and monotony of my little desk, chair and computer, and I see atoms. Then I am chasing a ball on a playing field and people chase me with atoms. And I am floating in the blue waters of a cinote in Chichen Itza, swimming amid the hundreds of tiny brown catfish and I see atoms everywhere. And then I am in a vast sea of cars on the 405 moving along endlessly in a gigantic river, millions upon millions of cars, and I see atoms too. And I am walking amid the throngs of people at the fair in Ventura or at a football game or soccer match with a crowd of ninety thousand at the Coliseum who are atoms. Then I am sitting alone, at night, on my living room floor, in my silence and everything is atoms. Then I am a child lying in the snow of Olympia, Washington, waving my arms to make a snow angel and it is all atoms. Everything atoms always.
The flaming eagle drifts back, smaller and smaller, floating down to a distant mountain a thousand feet below, disappearing behind a snow-capped peak, at the bottom of the teepee.
Holy Shit! They slipped me something in the tea. I dodged the peyote and still mind has conjured up multifarious visions. Sneaky Indians.
Eight hours into the ceremony, I am no longer at one with the burning eagle, the atoms or anything else. I’ve had it with the damn absolute knowledge. Screw the freakin’ eagle.
My knees ache. My ankles ache. My stomach aches. My back aches. I only want to get the hell out of the friggin’ teepee.
When Randy originally told me about the ritual, I thought, alright, maybe an hour or two, your standard ceremony length, get in, listen to the sermon, say some chants, dance around, we’re good. We went into the teepee around dusk on Saturday night. We didn’t get out until around eight a.m., the next morning. Let me repeat that: eight a.m. the next morning! No wonder you need the peyote -- you’re in a teepee, sitting on your laurels for twelve hours! TWELVE HOURS! Sitting! I haven’t sat anywhere for twelve hours. It’s hard enough for me to sit for an hour let alone twelve, on the floor. I couldn’t sit for twelve hours in a Lay-Z-Boy with a remote watching the World Cup. I’d have to get up, move around sometime, step out for a drink, grab some chips or something.
With the heat of the sun warming the teepee, the Fire Man covers the smoldering embers with dirt. People make their way into the open air. I stand up, my knees creaking, ankles sore and aching, and the chunks of peyote scatter over the dirt floor. I freeze, looking around to see if my iniquity has been detected. Everyone is collecting their things, oblivious. I drop my sweater on the scattered pieces and coolly stuff them into my pocket.
Randy and June are disappointed with me when I complain to them in the refreshing sunlight.
“That was absolute torture. I had no idea it was going to be so long.”
“You didn’t take the peyote,” are the first words out of June’s mouth.
How did they know? Everyone was spaced out and it was semi-dark in there.
“I drank the tea.”
“It doesn’t matter. The peyote was very vital to the ritual, Jay. That’s why we call it ‘Father Peyote’”, says Randy, accusingly.
“I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Then why did you come in the first place?”
“I really thought I could connect without the drug.”
“It’s not a drug. It grows in nature. It’s natural.”
“I still just didn’t feel comfortable.”
“You disappoint me, Jay.”
“I’m sorry, Randy.”
“Until you learn to have courage and take chances and face your inner struggles, you’re never going to get where you need to be.”
Bottom line, I was a bad Indian.
I tell them I am tired and need to leave. Everyone has brought food and this is the potluck/socializing time but I want to duck out, go home and sleep. That’s all I can think about.
I catch Rick, the Road Chief and his sister Glenda’s disappointed looks as I shuffle to my car. I try to strike up small talk with them but they give me the cold shoulder. I try to tell him about seeing the Great Spirit Eagle and being carried a hundred feet off the ground and seeing everything as atoms but I am still a dick because I chucked the peyote in the weeds.
One other guy also suffers the humiliation of the outcast. This is the only guy who left the teepee early that night. He is a young white guy with glasses who looks like a carbon copy of myself. He also says he had the vision of being carried off the ground. Everyone seems to avoid this guy like a leper. He is worse off than me because he left the teepee prematurely and broke the sacred hoop.
I drive home, trying mightily to keep myself awake and almost dying about seven times from dozing off and drifting over the center line and getting in near head-on collisions with eighteen wheelers.
I never see Randy and his wife after that. I try to call but he avoids me. I want to apologize and tell him that maybe it was too much for me but he should have for-warned me about the twelve-hour-on-your-ass-in-a-teepee-Indian-ritual-thing. Would have been nice. I was thinking it was going to be camping in Ojai with maybe a one hour ceremony, dancing chicks, head dresses, the whole nine yards. Right now, I don’t have the faith or stamina for twelve hours in a teepee. Get back to me in about twenty years.
`
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Birding 101
“If one keeps his eyes open, he will see the teachings everywhere.”
Buddha
“Well don’t you know about the bird? Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word.”
The Trashmen
For a successful birdwalk, you will need to gather a few items to help you along your journey. Firstly, you will need a strong pair of walking shoes, rubber-soled with grooves for negotiating steep hills and muddy places. Long socks as opposed to shin-highs or footies are preferred as occasionally you may venture from the path and get burrs or foxtails stuck in your shoes. One pair of binoculars or a telescope (this is a must for identification and viewing the rich color patterns of feathers). A copy of Peterson’s “Field Guide to Western Birds” or “National Geographic’s Field Guide to Birds of North America” to quickly reference any species you meet along the way. One notepad and pen for documenting species and for noting other points of interest. One wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off your face, (unless the sun is no where to be found). Long- sleeve shirt or sweater or jacket as you will be getting an early start because birds are most active at first light and generally this is a chilly time of day. Other items you will find useful: bottled water, sunscreen, energy bar, sunglasses, camera (long lens preferably), bug spray, map of area, patience, generosity, courage, wisdom, open eyes, an open mind, some stamina and definitely, most of all, an open heart.
My first birding excursion was on a mild spring day, April 2008, at the Thousand Oaks Botanical Garden. Some fog in the early morning that I knew would burn off around lunch. We were running late, my ten-year-old daughter, Sofia, already complaining, “I hate birds”, she exclaimed, throwing herself back in the seat.
“How can you hate birds?” I asked.
“I just do.”
I didn’t know how to respond. When you hate birds, you hate birds. There is no argument for this.
My wife was also not very thrilled at the idea of spending early Saturday morning, when she could have been sleeping in, with a bunch of strangers on a walk to look at birds.
“I can look at birds in my back yard. Why do we need to get up so early?”
“Um…”
“I worked hard all week and now we have to spend my Saturday morning with a bunch of strangers walking in the park?”
“Yeah, well…”
“We can walk in the park anytime,” she whined.
“This is special. This is like meditation,” was my answer but I didn’t really know what to expect either. I had never been on a guided birdwalk before and was a little nervous at the prospect. I was concerned I didn’t know the proper etiquette and might say something stupid or inappropriate which usually find myself doing anyhow, no matter what the circumstances.
The only experience I had as a birder was when I was around nine or ten and found a dusty copy of the Peterson’s Field Guide on our book shelf. I loved the illustrations and found myself venturing into the forests around Mud Bay in northwestern Washington State, identifying fantastic and magical species of birds such as the Flicker, the Kingfisher, the giant Pileated Woodpecker, the tiny House Wren, the Mourning Dove, the Goldfinch, the Killdeer, the Great Blue Heron, the Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, the Cedar Waxwing (one of my favorites), all of which I knew well by my tenth year. I would sketch little drawings of the birds and make notes of their identifying marks and calls.
One of the most awe-inspiring experiences I had birding as a youth was coming upon a network of Great Blue Heron nests atop a grove of cottonwood trees and seeing the magnificent creatures in large numbers shadowed in silhouette, trumpeting and squawking, like giant, mythic sentinels from some lost prehistoric epoch.
We drove around the parking lot of the Botanical Gardens, realizing the park had three different entrances and was quite vast, encircling a series of wooded hills in the Conejo Valley of Southern California.
My stomach grew queasy at the fear of this new adventure and for being twenty minutes late already. Soon we spotted a cluster of cars at the furthest interior lot. A group of people huddled together in a semi-circle. My first thought was they were doing some kind of pre-birding ritual to perhaps appease the bird gods to make for a favorable walk. They looked like players on a football team receiving plays from a quarterback.
My contact was Roger of the Ventura County Audubon Society. I knew nothing about Roger only that he sounded white and older and somewhat kindly on the phone.
“This sucks. I can’t believe we’re doing this,” my daughter imparted with encouragement.
“Just check it out. Could be fun,” I tried to pump her up.
“Yeah, right.” She made a face at me that basically said, “Dad, you’re a loser.” Ten-year-old girls these days have a lot of attitude. If you don’t have one yet, you will soon find this out.
As we made our way across the long parking lot toward the group, I realized they were not doing some pre-birding ritual but looking at nature photos Roger has taken. Roger was a wiry little man with a sturdy build, outwardly unaffected by his seventy-one years on this planet. Still very vigorous and in great shape, he looked like he could walk forever, up any mountain, through any dense thicket, crossing a desert if need be. He was dressed in khakis of an agricultural bent, floppy-brimmed hat. His eyes were intense and I instantly anticipated getting a frontal assault of big male ego energy at our first exchange, but this couldn’t have been be further from the truth. When he spoke his face softened and kindness mixed with deep compassion shone through. He exuded an inner peace and natural openness with the world around him.
“Hey, you must be Roger. I’m Jay. I called and talked to Ann and she told me to meet here,” I stuttered nervously.
“Great.”
“I found you guys online through the newsletter and thanks for having me,” I said.
He looked at me calmly, subdued, with the eyes of a saint.
“Welcome. Thanks for joining us.” He returned to showing a few more photos to other persons in the group.
It was primarily an older crowd, well-educated, well-groomed, clean, tidy. And happy. Everybody was very welcoming. I didn’t expect this because it is still only 8:20am in the morning and sometimes it’s tough for people, including myself, to look like they’re having a peachy-keen time right after they wake up.
Instantly, an older woman with a Safari hat and vest approached me.
“Where are your binoculars? Can’t see anything without binoculars.”
“Yeah, dad. Where are your binoculars?” my daughter prodded sarcastically.
“Uh, well that’s the thing…I forgot them because we were running late.”
“Oh well, we better go,” my daughter snapped.
My heart sunk. I had actually set out a pair of old binoculars but forgotten to throw them in the car when we left.
“I think Dennis has an extra pair.”
This was not thirty seconds into arrival, already someone was willing to help me secure a pair of binoculars. A few words were exchanged with a tall, geeky looking man, Dennis, and I have secured my very own pair of Eagle Optics 6x30 binoculars for the excursion. Before I knew it, my daughter snatched the pair from my hands and threw the strap around her neck, proudly claiming herself “Keeper of the Binoculars”, doling out their use at her whim.
“Hey, I thought you hated birds?” I asked my daughter.
“I do but I’m still carrying the binoculars.”
Raw deal.
Before we advanced to the hiking trail, we were already encountering many species of birds right there in the parking lot. A small group pointed excitedly toward a distant grassy hill with a single valley oak tree that twisted toward the sky. I asked someone what the excitement was. “Red-tailed hawk”. I glassed the hillside and couldn’t find anything in the jittery, limited field of view. A heavy-set man with 60s style square glasses named Matt, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned toward his telescope mounted on a tripod. I looked through the viewfinder and was blown away. I couldn’t believe the rich color pattern I beheld. It looked like a painting. The red-tailed hawk’s coloring was nothing like I had ever seen before. Bright, beautiful, vibrant. I wanted to stare longer but a small line was forming behind me to get a peek through the scope.
I asked my daughter if she was able to view the hawk with the borrowed binoculars. She shot back with a facetious look that is best described as “someone who is mentally challenged looking excited”. From the parking lot we made our way across the grass and up a slope to the hiking trail. I walked close to Roger because I had a burning question I really wanted to ask him but found myself really just wanting to talk to the guy because he had such a soothing, peaceful aura about him that seemed to affect everyone and everything within his range.
“There is a little dark-colored bird, with a light body and a dark crest. It’s a friendly bird and one of its behaviors is to “dip” from its perch and swoop into the grass and return to its spot. I call it a “Grassdipper” but I know that’s not its real name,” I explained.
“Could be a Black Phoebe. Where have you seen this bird?”
“Usually at my house. In my back yard. At the park,” I told him.
“What kind of call does it have?”
“It’s a single tweet. And it moves its tail when it does this.”
“A Black Phoebe. It’s a type of flycatcher. When it “dips” into your yard it is catching a fly which is its primary diet. There’s also a Say’s Phoebe and a Vermillion Flycatcher that are similar. The Vermillion Flycatcher is exceptionally rare though.”
“Is it really vermillion?”
“Bright red.”
We strolled together for a moment and my mind raced for things to say because this was one of the rare moments when I had Roger alone. He was constantly swarmed by members of the society during the walk.
“What kind of work do you do? Are you retired? How long have you been doing this?” I anxiously threw out random questions to Roger just because I wanted to talk to the guy and dwell in his aura of peace.
“About twenty-eight years. I retired a few years ago.”
“So you do this. What else do you do?”
“I roam.”
Two women closed in on Roger to ask him about a strange bird one of them had seen in her backyard that looked like a mini-hawk which he explained was probably an American Kestral or Sparrowhawk.
The trail meandered past endless fields of wild mustard, California sunflower, white alder trees, desert willows, wild lilac and a myriad of valley oaks.
As we walked, I took note of all the birds we identified in my journal. People in the group were more than happy to make sure I got the names and spellings correct.
My daughter was getting into it, excited and dancing now, finding the birds with the binoculars and being stunned by the rich colors.
We saw Alan’s Hummingbird, Western Kingbird, the bright orange-yellow Hooded Oriole, California Quayle, American Goldfinch, California Towee, Western Bluebird, Red-Tailed Hawk, House Wren (although I am confused because the House Wren in California are larger than the tiny House Wren I knew from Washington State), Song Sparrow, Nutcatcher, House Finch, Acorn Woodpecker (who is named thus because he hides his acorns in little holes in oak trees. Roger points this out to us on the walk), American Robin, Black Phoebe (I call this a Grassdipper), Mallard (Male), Bush Titt, Mourning Dove, White-Crested Nuthatch.
We stopped for a water break near a sapphire dragon tree and I noticed there was one man off by himself, smoking. He was the only person who didn’t look like he was enjoying himself. He looked irritable, like someone had dragged him along and he much rather wanted to be golfing or watching a baseball game. He was tall, thin, with a shock of gray hair, sunglasses and pastel clothing that appeared more functional for library wear than a nature hike. He was also the only person without a pair of binoculars or spotting scope. I heard a few people ask him questions like, “Alan, did you sell your boat yet?” or “Alan, are you going to the walk in Ojai next week?” Along the way I threw him a few questions about incidentals just to see what he was about which he only answered with a grunt or groan. When he was alone with his cigarette, I mustered the courage to ask a more direct question, “Why do you do this?”
After a long pause, remaining stone-faced, he answered with an uncertain smile:
“It comforts me.” I was surprised by his candor. He ground his cigarette into the dirt with his jogging shoe.
“But you’re the only one here who seems like they don’t really want to be here.” He looked at me again with mild irritation. (Note to the reader, I am generally only this direct with people I am certain I can subdue in hand-to-hand combat).
“My wife was really into it,” said Alan.
“She didn’t come today?”
“She passed on.”
“I’m sorry.”
That hurt me a little bit. I was being a pushy jerk because I thought he had an attitude and he was really only still mourning the death of his wife. Talking further with Alan, I found out that he was retired from an executive job at a pharmaceutical company, married nearly forty years and had never gone birdwatching with his wife before. He only began when his wife got sick.
“I like to come with Roger because some of the other people who lead these things are idiots, frankly,” Alan confided.
“This is my first.”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“You ask too many questions.”
I always have the strange tendency to ask weird questions of complete strangers.
As we walked further down the trail which snaked into an oak forest along a trickling creek, I dropped the bomb:
“Do you believe in God?”
Alan glared at me with absolute incredulity as if I had asked him if he had ever raped his grandmother.
“I’m an atheist,” he replied.
“That’s cool.”
“I believe in the Church of High Overhead,” he said with levity.
I thought of something else to say and we kind of just walked alongside each other feeling that clumsy silence of two personalities who repel each other like the wrong sides of colliding magnets.
Before I moved off to join my wife and daughter who have ventured ahead on the trail, he caught me with a question of his own.
“Do you believe?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“But what do you base that on?”
Dennis, the man who had loaned me the binoculars, chuckled and stepped between us like a ref between two boxers, sensing the heaviness in the air.
“How did we get on this God debate?”
“He started it,” Alan said with a hint of good humor in his expression.
“No. He did. I swear,” I said.
“Let me ask you this. Where is God? Where can I see him?”
Dennis slouched off, shaking his head and flashing an uneasy grin.
I looked at Alan’s eyes that shone slightly through his hundred dollar Ray Bans. I saw some macho haughtiness but there was pain and anguish there too.
I wanted to say something really profound here but couldn’t find the words. You know when you’re confronted with the chance to convey some earth-shattering philosophical concept that could change lives, shift realities, move mountains…but you don’t? All you can focus on is your anxiety as your mind races a million miles an hour. I even entertained the idea of changing a non-believer into a believer with a single, well-delivered gem of inspiration.
I tried to formulate something and it came out all wrong: “It’s really all about what you choose to believe…I mean, who we are as…you know…where we are spiritually…”
He made an exasperated sound by blowing air out of his mouth and skipped ahead of me down the narrow trail. Then it came to me, “Everywhere”. That’s what I should have said. “He’s everywhere!” I wanted to run after him and take his arm and yell right in his face: “Everywhere!” Or scream at him from a distance so it echoed over the distant hills, “Hey Alan! Everywhere-where-where-where!” Hah!
Then I read his mind: Yeah, screw you! You blew it! I don’t believe, jerkface! Because of you, I will never believe! I will die a non-believer and end up in hell because you don’t know how to communicate your ideas! I opened the door for you to say something profound and you stuttered like a school girl! You amateur! You fake! Loser!
I tried to catch up with him and tell him but a man had cornered him in discussion about a sail boat he owned that was collecting barnacles in Ventura Harbor. I had blown it, big time.
We never spoke again the rest of the walk and later I learned that Alan had a stroke a few months after the birdwalk and half of his body was paralyzed. I never heard if he recovered or not.
As we neared the end of the walk, a few people had already left. I looked at my wife and daughter and they appeared energized. They were laughing and singing. My wife’s stress level from the previous week of trying to earn a living and never having enough, had melted away. She was happy and excited.
“Hey Sofi, how did you like the walk?” I asked my daughter. “Did you have fun?”
“No,” was her flat answer but I knew she did by the way she was filled with such joy and excitement.
“I actually had a really good time. I’m surprised,” my wife added. “And best of all, it’s not even eleven yet. We still had the whole day to do things.”
Roger thanked me for coming and said we should join him on a walk to the grasslands of Oxnard by the beach in two weeks. He began to list off some of the species we might encounter. I told him I would love to. When my wife and daughter were out of earshot, I cut Roger off as he continued naming various shore birds.
“Roger, tell me, why do you really do this?”
“This?”
“Birdwatching.”
“I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“It’s just fun for you, or…”
“I have no clue. Why do you do it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Since I was a kid, I felt a connection. I also read it’s a good walking meditation.”
“You want to know why I do it?” I looked at him, anticipating some heady gem. “I have no clue,” he said and patted me on the shoulder with a sheepish grin.
Back at the car I asked my daughter the big question, “Do you still hate birds?”
“Yes.”
Buddha
“Well don’t you know about the bird? Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word.”
The Trashmen
For a successful birdwalk, you will need to gather a few items to help you along your journey. Firstly, you will need a strong pair of walking shoes, rubber-soled with grooves for negotiating steep hills and muddy places. Long socks as opposed to shin-highs or footies are preferred as occasionally you may venture from the path and get burrs or foxtails stuck in your shoes. One pair of binoculars or a telescope (this is a must for identification and viewing the rich color patterns of feathers). A copy of Peterson’s “Field Guide to Western Birds” or “National Geographic’s Field Guide to Birds of North America” to quickly reference any species you meet along the way. One notepad and pen for documenting species and for noting other points of interest. One wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off your face, (unless the sun is no where to be found). Long- sleeve shirt or sweater or jacket as you will be getting an early start because birds are most active at first light and generally this is a chilly time of day. Other items you will find useful: bottled water, sunscreen, energy bar, sunglasses, camera (long lens preferably), bug spray, map of area, patience, generosity, courage, wisdom, open eyes, an open mind, some stamina and definitely, most of all, an open heart.
My first birding excursion was on a mild spring day, April 2008, at the Thousand Oaks Botanical Garden. Some fog in the early morning that I knew would burn off around lunch. We were running late, my ten-year-old daughter, Sofia, already complaining, “I hate birds”, she exclaimed, throwing herself back in the seat.
“How can you hate birds?” I asked.
“I just do.”
I didn’t know how to respond. When you hate birds, you hate birds. There is no argument for this.
My wife was also not very thrilled at the idea of spending early Saturday morning, when she could have been sleeping in, with a bunch of strangers on a walk to look at birds.
“I can look at birds in my back yard. Why do we need to get up so early?”
“Um…”
“I worked hard all week and now we have to spend my Saturday morning with a bunch of strangers walking in the park?”
“Yeah, well…”
“We can walk in the park anytime,” she whined.
“This is special. This is like meditation,” was my answer but I didn’t really know what to expect either. I had never been on a guided birdwalk before and was a little nervous at the prospect. I was concerned I didn’t know the proper etiquette and might say something stupid or inappropriate which usually find myself doing anyhow, no matter what the circumstances.
The only experience I had as a birder was when I was around nine or ten and found a dusty copy of the Peterson’s Field Guide on our book shelf. I loved the illustrations and found myself venturing into the forests around Mud Bay in northwestern Washington State, identifying fantastic and magical species of birds such as the Flicker, the Kingfisher, the giant Pileated Woodpecker, the tiny House Wren, the Mourning Dove, the Goldfinch, the Killdeer, the Great Blue Heron, the Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, the Cedar Waxwing (one of my favorites), all of which I knew well by my tenth year. I would sketch little drawings of the birds and make notes of their identifying marks and calls.
One of the most awe-inspiring experiences I had birding as a youth was coming upon a network of Great Blue Heron nests atop a grove of cottonwood trees and seeing the magnificent creatures in large numbers shadowed in silhouette, trumpeting and squawking, like giant, mythic sentinels from some lost prehistoric epoch.
We drove around the parking lot of the Botanical Gardens, realizing the park had three different entrances and was quite vast, encircling a series of wooded hills in the Conejo Valley of Southern California.
My stomach grew queasy at the fear of this new adventure and for being twenty minutes late already. Soon we spotted a cluster of cars at the furthest interior lot. A group of people huddled together in a semi-circle. My first thought was they were doing some kind of pre-birding ritual to perhaps appease the bird gods to make for a favorable walk. They looked like players on a football team receiving plays from a quarterback.
My contact was Roger of the Ventura County Audubon Society. I knew nothing about Roger only that he sounded white and older and somewhat kindly on the phone.
“This sucks. I can’t believe we’re doing this,” my daughter imparted with encouragement.
“Just check it out. Could be fun,” I tried to pump her up.
“Yeah, right.” She made a face at me that basically said, “Dad, you’re a loser.” Ten-year-old girls these days have a lot of attitude. If you don’t have one yet, you will soon find this out.
As we made our way across the long parking lot toward the group, I realized they were not doing some pre-birding ritual but looking at nature photos Roger has taken. Roger was a wiry little man with a sturdy build, outwardly unaffected by his seventy-one years on this planet. Still very vigorous and in great shape, he looked like he could walk forever, up any mountain, through any dense thicket, crossing a desert if need be. He was dressed in khakis of an agricultural bent, floppy-brimmed hat. His eyes were intense and I instantly anticipated getting a frontal assault of big male ego energy at our first exchange, but this couldn’t have been be further from the truth. When he spoke his face softened and kindness mixed with deep compassion shone through. He exuded an inner peace and natural openness with the world around him.
“Hey, you must be Roger. I’m Jay. I called and talked to Ann and she told me to meet here,” I stuttered nervously.
“Great.”
“I found you guys online through the newsletter and thanks for having me,” I said.
He looked at me calmly, subdued, with the eyes of a saint.
“Welcome. Thanks for joining us.” He returned to showing a few more photos to other persons in the group.
It was primarily an older crowd, well-educated, well-groomed, clean, tidy. And happy. Everybody was very welcoming. I didn’t expect this because it is still only 8:20am in the morning and sometimes it’s tough for people, including myself, to look like they’re having a peachy-keen time right after they wake up.
Instantly, an older woman with a Safari hat and vest approached me.
“Where are your binoculars? Can’t see anything without binoculars.”
“Yeah, dad. Where are your binoculars?” my daughter prodded sarcastically.
“Uh, well that’s the thing…I forgot them because we were running late.”
“Oh well, we better go,” my daughter snapped.
My heart sunk. I had actually set out a pair of old binoculars but forgotten to throw them in the car when we left.
“I think Dennis has an extra pair.”
This was not thirty seconds into arrival, already someone was willing to help me secure a pair of binoculars. A few words were exchanged with a tall, geeky looking man, Dennis, and I have secured my very own pair of Eagle Optics 6x30 binoculars for the excursion. Before I knew it, my daughter snatched the pair from my hands and threw the strap around her neck, proudly claiming herself “Keeper of the Binoculars”, doling out their use at her whim.
“Hey, I thought you hated birds?” I asked my daughter.
“I do but I’m still carrying the binoculars.”
Raw deal.
Before we advanced to the hiking trail, we were already encountering many species of birds right there in the parking lot. A small group pointed excitedly toward a distant grassy hill with a single valley oak tree that twisted toward the sky. I asked someone what the excitement was. “Red-tailed hawk”. I glassed the hillside and couldn’t find anything in the jittery, limited field of view. A heavy-set man with 60s style square glasses named Matt, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned toward his telescope mounted on a tripod. I looked through the viewfinder and was blown away. I couldn’t believe the rich color pattern I beheld. It looked like a painting. The red-tailed hawk’s coloring was nothing like I had ever seen before. Bright, beautiful, vibrant. I wanted to stare longer but a small line was forming behind me to get a peek through the scope.
I asked my daughter if she was able to view the hawk with the borrowed binoculars. She shot back with a facetious look that is best described as “someone who is mentally challenged looking excited”. From the parking lot we made our way across the grass and up a slope to the hiking trail. I walked close to Roger because I had a burning question I really wanted to ask him but found myself really just wanting to talk to the guy because he had such a soothing, peaceful aura about him that seemed to affect everyone and everything within his range.
“There is a little dark-colored bird, with a light body and a dark crest. It’s a friendly bird and one of its behaviors is to “dip” from its perch and swoop into the grass and return to its spot. I call it a “Grassdipper” but I know that’s not its real name,” I explained.
“Could be a Black Phoebe. Where have you seen this bird?”
“Usually at my house. In my back yard. At the park,” I told him.
“What kind of call does it have?”
“It’s a single tweet. And it moves its tail when it does this.”
“A Black Phoebe. It’s a type of flycatcher. When it “dips” into your yard it is catching a fly which is its primary diet. There’s also a Say’s Phoebe and a Vermillion Flycatcher that are similar. The Vermillion Flycatcher is exceptionally rare though.”
“Is it really vermillion?”
“Bright red.”
We strolled together for a moment and my mind raced for things to say because this was one of the rare moments when I had Roger alone. He was constantly swarmed by members of the society during the walk.
“What kind of work do you do? Are you retired? How long have you been doing this?” I anxiously threw out random questions to Roger just because I wanted to talk to the guy and dwell in his aura of peace.
“About twenty-eight years. I retired a few years ago.”
“So you do this. What else do you do?”
“I roam.”
Two women closed in on Roger to ask him about a strange bird one of them had seen in her backyard that looked like a mini-hawk which he explained was probably an American Kestral or Sparrowhawk.
The trail meandered past endless fields of wild mustard, California sunflower, white alder trees, desert willows, wild lilac and a myriad of valley oaks.
As we walked, I took note of all the birds we identified in my journal. People in the group were more than happy to make sure I got the names and spellings correct.
My daughter was getting into it, excited and dancing now, finding the birds with the binoculars and being stunned by the rich colors.
We saw Alan’s Hummingbird, Western Kingbird, the bright orange-yellow Hooded Oriole, California Quayle, American Goldfinch, California Towee, Western Bluebird, Red-Tailed Hawk, House Wren (although I am confused because the House Wren in California are larger than the tiny House Wren I knew from Washington State), Song Sparrow, Nutcatcher, House Finch, Acorn Woodpecker (who is named thus because he hides his acorns in little holes in oak trees. Roger points this out to us on the walk), American Robin, Black Phoebe (I call this a Grassdipper), Mallard (Male), Bush Titt, Mourning Dove, White-Crested Nuthatch.
We stopped for a water break near a sapphire dragon tree and I noticed there was one man off by himself, smoking. He was the only person who didn’t look like he was enjoying himself. He looked irritable, like someone had dragged him along and he much rather wanted to be golfing or watching a baseball game. He was tall, thin, with a shock of gray hair, sunglasses and pastel clothing that appeared more functional for library wear than a nature hike. He was also the only person without a pair of binoculars or spotting scope. I heard a few people ask him questions like, “Alan, did you sell your boat yet?” or “Alan, are you going to the walk in Ojai next week?” Along the way I threw him a few questions about incidentals just to see what he was about which he only answered with a grunt or groan. When he was alone with his cigarette, I mustered the courage to ask a more direct question, “Why do you do this?”
After a long pause, remaining stone-faced, he answered with an uncertain smile:
“It comforts me.” I was surprised by his candor. He ground his cigarette into the dirt with his jogging shoe.
“But you’re the only one here who seems like they don’t really want to be here.” He looked at me again with mild irritation. (Note to the reader, I am generally only this direct with people I am certain I can subdue in hand-to-hand combat).
“My wife was really into it,” said Alan.
“She didn’t come today?”
“She passed on.”
“I’m sorry.”
That hurt me a little bit. I was being a pushy jerk because I thought he had an attitude and he was really only still mourning the death of his wife. Talking further with Alan, I found out that he was retired from an executive job at a pharmaceutical company, married nearly forty years and had never gone birdwatching with his wife before. He only began when his wife got sick.
“I like to come with Roger because some of the other people who lead these things are idiots, frankly,” Alan confided.
“This is my first.”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“You ask too many questions.”
I always have the strange tendency to ask weird questions of complete strangers.
As we walked further down the trail which snaked into an oak forest along a trickling creek, I dropped the bomb:
“Do you believe in God?”
Alan glared at me with absolute incredulity as if I had asked him if he had ever raped his grandmother.
“I’m an atheist,” he replied.
“That’s cool.”
“I believe in the Church of High Overhead,” he said with levity.
I thought of something else to say and we kind of just walked alongside each other feeling that clumsy silence of two personalities who repel each other like the wrong sides of colliding magnets.
Before I moved off to join my wife and daughter who have ventured ahead on the trail, he caught me with a question of his own.
“Do you believe?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“But what do you base that on?”
Dennis, the man who had loaned me the binoculars, chuckled and stepped between us like a ref between two boxers, sensing the heaviness in the air.
“How did we get on this God debate?”
“He started it,” Alan said with a hint of good humor in his expression.
“No. He did. I swear,” I said.
“Let me ask you this. Where is God? Where can I see him?”
Dennis slouched off, shaking his head and flashing an uneasy grin.
I looked at Alan’s eyes that shone slightly through his hundred dollar Ray Bans. I saw some macho haughtiness but there was pain and anguish there too.
I wanted to say something really profound here but couldn’t find the words. You know when you’re confronted with the chance to convey some earth-shattering philosophical concept that could change lives, shift realities, move mountains…but you don’t? All you can focus on is your anxiety as your mind races a million miles an hour. I even entertained the idea of changing a non-believer into a believer with a single, well-delivered gem of inspiration.
I tried to formulate something and it came out all wrong: “It’s really all about what you choose to believe…I mean, who we are as…you know…where we are spiritually…”
He made an exasperated sound by blowing air out of his mouth and skipped ahead of me down the narrow trail. Then it came to me, “Everywhere”. That’s what I should have said. “He’s everywhere!” I wanted to run after him and take his arm and yell right in his face: “Everywhere!” Or scream at him from a distance so it echoed over the distant hills, “Hey Alan! Everywhere-where-where-where!” Hah!
Then I read his mind: Yeah, screw you! You blew it! I don’t believe, jerkface! Because of you, I will never believe! I will die a non-believer and end up in hell because you don’t know how to communicate your ideas! I opened the door for you to say something profound and you stuttered like a school girl! You amateur! You fake! Loser!
I tried to catch up with him and tell him but a man had cornered him in discussion about a sail boat he owned that was collecting barnacles in Ventura Harbor. I had blown it, big time.
We never spoke again the rest of the walk and later I learned that Alan had a stroke a few months after the birdwalk and half of his body was paralyzed. I never heard if he recovered or not.
As we neared the end of the walk, a few people had already left. I looked at my wife and daughter and they appeared energized. They were laughing and singing. My wife’s stress level from the previous week of trying to earn a living and never having enough, had melted away. She was happy and excited.
“Hey Sofi, how did you like the walk?” I asked my daughter. “Did you have fun?”
“No,” was her flat answer but I knew she did by the way she was filled with such joy and excitement.
“I actually had a really good time. I’m surprised,” my wife added. “And best of all, it’s not even eleven yet. We still had the whole day to do things.”
Roger thanked me for coming and said we should join him on a walk to the grasslands of Oxnard by the beach in two weeks. He began to list off some of the species we might encounter. I told him I would love to. When my wife and daughter were out of earshot, I cut Roger off as he continued naming various shore birds.
“Roger, tell me, why do you really do this?”
“This?”
“Birdwatching.”
“I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“It’s just fun for you, or…”
“I have no clue. Why do you do it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Since I was a kid, I felt a connection. I also read it’s a good walking meditation.”
“You want to know why I do it?” I looked at him, anticipating some heady gem. “I have no clue,” he said and patted me on the shoulder with a sheepish grin.
Back at the car I asked my daughter the big question, “Do you still hate birds?”
“Yes.”
Feeling Connected Pt. 1
I follow Randy and his wife June, up the winding highway 150 to Ojai. His wife drives like a lunatic and I have to be Mario Andretti to keep up.
Randy is an actor friend and aspiring writer who attends a bi-monthly peyote ceremony in the Ojai valley for his Native American religion. He tells me this is the most profound spiritual experience of his life and urges me to check it out. How can I resist the invitation?
I have always loved and respected Native American pathways and appreciated their tradition and deep connection to the earth and nature. I do harbor a bit of trepidation at the thought of ingesting peyote. I am generally a person who avoids drugs and alcohol, not because I am a prude or a square, I just never liked the idea of that kind of unnatural escape and always thought it would hamper my creativity.
As Randy’s wife, June, Nascars the highway, I begin to feel nauseating fear building in my guts. I am concerned I might be socially pressured to take the drug or fall victim to some Indian faux paux if I am not careful. I don’t want to embarrass Randy and make everyone feel uncomfortable being the only one who doesn’t fully partake in the ritual.
On the drive up, Randy and June pull along the side of the road and Randy tells me he saw “Coyote” cross the road which is a good omen for tonight’s ritual. “Coyote” symbolizes good fortune and a safe trip. A red-tailed hawk is also spotted on the drive which means favorable blessings and self-awareness. They fail to mention though what the omen means for all the flattened bunnies, squirrels, raccoons and other small varmints June leaves in her relentless wake.
Randy is small and wiry with an enormous head. His acting skills are unparalleled but his writing is average. His wife is a very plain, blond woman with a low, subdued energy level and she seems to hold in a lot of emotion, perfectly contrasting Randy, who is very flamboyant and outspoken. I had originally assumed he was gay at our first meeting and was rather astounded when I learned he was actually married to a woman, with real parts and everything.
At a rural site off the highway, we collect long timber poles to construct the teepee. Randy ducks out of the work by talking incessantly with anyone who will listen or by making himself look busy by kicking around in the dust and removing things from the soles of his shoes. His wife vanishes for a while, also opting out of the hard labor which is reserved for the men of the tribe.
We share a peace pipe as we construct the teepee, to appease the spirits. It is not actually a pipe but a small, flat cigarette tied together with string. I am the fifth in line to take a puff. I have never smoked anything so I am clueless how to do this. I just play along trying my best to look reverential so as not to piss of the Road Chief, Rick, a massive, kindly man with a barrel chest and giant brown hands and calves. He appears quiet and humble when you meet him on the street, but at this ceremony he is larger than life, a gargantuan personality who seems to spiritually come alive in his element and drift back into obscurity when trying to re-assimilate into the white man’s world.
The teepee is constructed and other attendants begin to trickle in. It is an earthy crowd, many of the people not looking like they hold down regular jobs. Besides the Chief, his daughter, the Fire Man, and the Drum Man, I think everyone else is white.
I roam off by myself to walk along a river and get in touch with nature and God. I sit quietly by myself and do some simple meditations and prayers. I want to be open and humble for this experience to get the most out of it. I know my cynicism is my own worst enemy and don’t want it to spoil the experience. This is obviously a very sacred ritual to these people and to harbor negative thoughts has always been my undoing.
Alone, out here in the forest, away from everyone, I feel peaceful and connected.
I notice a spotted hawk perched on the roots of a tree that has been swept over in the recent rains. I remove my shoes and cross the river, climbing up on the opposite bank to get a closer look at the hawk. He doesn’t fly away. He doesn’t seem to mind my approach at all. I think to myself, maybe this is another sign; this great bird telling me everything is okay and I am actually close to nature and connected with Mother Earth.
I walk right up to the hawk, and strangely, he doesn’t move, just looks at me. I peer around wondering if this is someone’s domesticated pet. The hawk is massive and beautiful, with a white tail, spotted wings, and bright yellow eyes.
I “pish” at him to show I am not here to harm him. Pishing is a high-pitched, squeaky sound birdwatchers use to connect with birds. The hawk tilts his head sideways inquisitively, when I make the call. He doesn’t show even the slightest ounce of fear.
I look at his wings and talons to see if he is injured but find no signs of external damage.
I gaze around again wondering if this is some joke or someone is taping a hidden camera show. I actually expect the owner to come around a corner yelling, “get away from my bird, jerk!”
I move a few inches closer, making another pishing sound. He stays in that exact spot, only shuffling his talons a little on the branch.
I hold out my index finger as you do with a parrot when you want him to perch on you. I think of the majestic thrill of being connected to this great raptor and having him sit on my finger. He just watches my finger, deeply interested. I move it toward his spotted white belly, pishing quietly again. He looks into my eye as if he has known me for ages. He sees through all my insecurities, my limitations, my human frailties. For him, I am only another creature of the forest. I represent no predatory threat or challenge. I think of the great St. Francis of Assisi and his amazing spiritual advancement where he could commune with wildlife and they would follow him around like Dr. Doolittle. I understand that when you are in tune with the Divine, nature automatically obeys. I was beginning to sense that I, myself, despite my failings and cynicism, was perhaps truly a spiritually advanced soul who had finally attained mastery over beasts of the field and birds of the sky.
I move my index finger right up to the spotted hawk’s belly, pressing it against the downy feathers. My eyes are like poached eggs; like a kid at his first big Christmas.
Then he pecks the shit out of me.
He freakin’ annihilates my finger.
He grips it in his razor-sharp beak and doesn’t let go for what seems like forever.
The hawk issues a piercing shriek and flies off, brushing my cheek with his wing as he goes.
For a moment I am stunned. I can’t believe he did such a thing. We were getting along so well. My finger is throbbing. The bird instantly shatters my delusion of being at one with nature. I look up and catch a glimpse of him disappearing over the tree line. What an asshole. You build up a man’s hopes like that, then yank the rug out from under his feet.
I hold my bleeding finger under the freezing water of the creek. There is a gash right at the joint that oozes blood. The pain continues to throb dully.
I am not really sure what my intention was at having a wild hawk perch on my finger, and after about twenty seconds, after I get over the shock of it, the whole idea seems really rather idiotic. Completely idiotic, as a matter of fact. What the hell was I thinking?
Ever notice how lots of things don’t seem that idiotic until you actually do the idiotic thing and look back and go, “hey, that was really freakin’ idiotic”?
Sometimes it’s too late to know you were an idiot at the time until after you are an idiot and realize it. Words of wisdom. You can write that down if you like.
Later that night, inside the teepee, the Fire Man burns wood in the center of the dirt floor with cedar incense which is supposed to curb the feelings of nausea which can accompany ingesting the peyote, the key ingredient being mescaline.
We sit in a wide circle around the fire. I was told to bring a few pillows and a blanket but I have forgotten. I use my sweatshirt to pad my seat. For now this suffices.
Rick, the Road Chief, starts off with a short prayer: “I am going into my place of worship. Be with us tonight, oh Creator.”
I end up being seated right next to Rick and his sister, Glenda, a heavy-set, simple woman who smiles a lot but doesn’t say much. She passes me this tea that tastes like clay and I take a sip and pass it. They begin chanting as the Drum Man beats the drum. The tea is passed again and I take another sip. This tea seems to have a relaxing effect as I can feel my pulse rate slow, the thrumming of the blood in my veins at my neck keeping beat with the steady thud of the drum. A warm, mellow feeling washes over my body blanketing every fiber of my frame.
Glenda passes me peyote which looks like slices of a dark-colored mushroom. I notice everyone wolfing this stuff down like it’s going out of style. I look at Randy as he sways and chants, his eyes closed, in some kind of deep trance.
The humming vibrations of the chanting bore deep in my chest. I can feel my ribs quivering. I try to play along as the Fire Man is now using the flaming coals to fashion amazing designs on the floor of the teepee. He creates a flaming mountain. Then he creates what looks like a coyote. Then an inverted deer. Glenda keeps passing me peyote and notices my constant squirming as the pain in my knees and ankles from sitting for so long in one spot grows unbearable.
“Take more peyote. I will help relax you,” she says quietly.
I am relaxed. Don’t I look like I’m relaxed? She didn’t know I am stuffing the peyote underneath my sweater. After a while I have a big pile of the stuff under me and I am worried how I am going to dispose of it before the Road Chief sees me and gives me a sound boxing to the ears.
It is about at this point that alarming numbers of the congregation begin to vomit into the dirt in front of them. Randy had explained this is people upchucking their sins and impurities, a direct result of the peyote ingestion which forces everyone to face their own hidden demons. For right now, I am okay with my sins, demons and whatnot just so long as I didn’t have to hurl my guts out in front of strangers on the dirt floor of the teepee. This only proves to heighten my fear of eating the drug.
The drum finally reaches me. Each person has a turn to pound on it and do their own personal chant. Everyone gets into the groove and knows the lingo, letting the Great Spirit guide their words and song.
When the drum comes to me, I kind of look around for some guidance but no one seems to offer any. The Chief’s sister motions to the drum as I sit in dumb silence holding it between my knees like my pecker. Finally I belt out the only Indian chant I know from childhood, “Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!” while banging on the drum like a cretin. A few white people shoot me scornful looks like they think I’m not being serious. No one else seems to notice or care or are too embarrassed or stoned to look at me and make a scene. Some are busy vomiting, and for a moment I think this is a direct result of my pathetic chant. I look at Randy to make sure he isn’t giving me the stink-eye, and fortunately, he is whacked out of his mind, swaying too and fro and humming something unintelligible.
I am not sure if it is the strange tea or the chanting or the drumming or the smoky ambiance of the cedar incense but there are rare moments when I am taken away and feel I am in touch with that deeper place I saw on the mountain when I looked inside myself in deep meditation. I suddenly feel at one with this motley group of white people who want to be Indians.
Then I begin hallucinating.
The Fire Man spins an incredible flaming eagle on the floor that rises up like the Phoenix, out of the ashes and hovers in the center of the teepee. I look around to see if anyone else notices this apparition and everyone is off in dreamland, chanting and swaying. Then I am suddenly lifted off the dirt floor!
Randy is an actor friend and aspiring writer who attends a bi-monthly peyote ceremony in the Ojai valley for his Native American religion. He tells me this is the most profound spiritual experience of his life and urges me to check it out. How can I resist the invitation?
I have always loved and respected Native American pathways and appreciated their tradition and deep connection to the earth and nature. I do harbor a bit of trepidation at the thought of ingesting peyote. I am generally a person who avoids drugs and alcohol, not because I am a prude or a square, I just never liked the idea of that kind of unnatural escape and always thought it would hamper my creativity.
As Randy’s wife, June, Nascars the highway, I begin to feel nauseating fear building in my guts. I am concerned I might be socially pressured to take the drug or fall victim to some Indian faux paux if I am not careful. I don’t want to embarrass Randy and make everyone feel uncomfortable being the only one who doesn’t fully partake in the ritual.
On the drive up, Randy and June pull along the side of the road and Randy tells me he saw “Coyote” cross the road which is a good omen for tonight’s ritual. “Coyote” symbolizes good fortune and a safe trip. A red-tailed hawk is also spotted on the drive which means favorable blessings and self-awareness. They fail to mention though what the omen means for all the flattened bunnies, squirrels, raccoons and other small varmints June leaves in her relentless wake.
Randy is small and wiry with an enormous head. His acting skills are unparalleled but his writing is average. His wife is a very plain, blond woman with a low, subdued energy level and she seems to hold in a lot of emotion, perfectly contrasting Randy, who is very flamboyant and outspoken. I had originally assumed he was gay at our first meeting and was rather astounded when I learned he was actually married to a woman, with real parts and everything.
At a rural site off the highway, we collect long timber poles to construct the teepee. Randy ducks out of the work by talking incessantly with anyone who will listen or by making himself look busy by kicking around in the dust and removing things from the soles of his shoes. His wife vanishes for a while, also opting out of the hard labor which is reserved for the men of the tribe.
We share a peace pipe as we construct the teepee, to appease the spirits. It is not actually a pipe but a small, flat cigarette tied together with string. I am the fifth in line to take a puff. I have never smoked anything so I am clueless how to do this. I just play along trying my best to look reverential so as not to piss of the Road Chief, Rick, a massive, kindly man with a barrel chest and giant brown hands and calves. He appears quiet and humble when you meet him on the street, but at this ceremony he is larger than life, a gargantuan personality who seems to spiritually come alive in his element and drift back into obscurity when trying to re-assimilate into the white man’s world.
The teepee is constructed and other attendants begin to trickle in. It is an earthy crowd, many of the people not looking like they hold down regular jobs. Besides the Chief, his daughter, the Fire Man, and the Drum Man, I think everyone else is white.
I roam off by myself to walk along a river and get in touch with nature and God. I sit quietly by myself and do some simple meditations and prayers. I want to be open and humble for this experience to get the most out of it. I know my cynicism is my own worst enemy and don’t want it to spoil the experience. This is obviously a very sacred ritual to these people and to harbor negative thoughts has always been my undoing.
Alone, out here in the forest, away from everyone, I feel peaceful and connected.
I notice a spotted hawk perched on the roots of a tree that has been swept over in the recent rains. I remove my shoes and cross the river, climbing up on the opposite bank to get a closer look at the hawk. He doesn’t fly away. He doesn’t seem to mind my approach at all. I think to myself, maybe this is another sign; this great bird telling me everything is okay and I am actually close to nature and connected with Mother Earth.
I walk right up to the hawk, and strangely, he doesn’t move, just looks at me. I peer around wondering if this is someone’s domesticated pet. The hawk is massive and beautiful, with a white tail, spotted wings, and bright yellow eyes.
I “pish” at him to show I am not here to harm him. Pishing is a high-pitched, squeaky sound birdwatchers use to connect with birds. The hawk tilts his head sideways inquisitively, when I make the call. He doesn’t show even the slightest ounce of fear.
I look at his wings and talons to see if he is injured but find no signs of external damage.
I gaze around again wondering if this is some joke or someone is taping a hidden camera show. I actually expect the owner to come around a corner yelling, “get away from my bird, jerk!”
I move a few inches closer, making another pishing sound. He stays in that exact spot, only shuffling his talons a little on the branch.
I hold out my index finger as you do with a parrot when you want him to perch on you. I think of the majestic thrill of being connected to this great raptor and having him sit on my finger. He just watches my finger, deeply interested. I move it toward his spotted white belly, pishing quietly again. He looks into my eye as if he has known me for ages. He sees through all my insecurities, my limitations, my human frailties. For him, I am only another creature of the forest. I represent no predatory threat or challenge. I think of the great St. Francis of Assisi and his amazing spiritual advancement where he could commune with wildlife and they would follow him around like Dr. Doolittle. I understand that when you are in tune with the Divine, nature automatically obeys. I was beginning to sense that I, myself, despite my failings and cynicism, was perhaps truly a spiritually advanced soul who had finally attained mastery over beasts of the field and birds of the sky.
I move my index finger right up to the spotted hawk’s belly, pressing it against the downy feathers. My eyes are like poached eggs; like a kid at his first big Christmas.
Then he pecks the shit out of me.
He freakin’ annihilates my finger.
He grips it in his razor-sharp beak and doesn’t let go for what seems like forever.
The hawk issues a piercing shriek and flies off, brushing my cheek with his wing as he goes.
For a moment I am stunned. I can’t believe he did such a thing. We were getting along so well. My finger is throbbing. The bird instantly shatters my delusion of being at one with nature. I look up and catch a glimpse of him disappearing over the tree line. What an asshole. You build up a man’s hopes like that, then yank the rug out from under his feet.
I hold my bleeding finger under the freezing water of the creek. There is a gash right at the joint that oozes blood. The pain continues to throb dully.
I am not really sure what my intention was at having a wild hawk perch on my finger, and after about twenty seconds, after I get over the shock of it, the whole idea seems really rather idiotic. Completely idiotic, as a matter of fact. What the hell was I thinking?
Ever notice how lots of things don’t seem that idiotic until you actually do the idiotic thing and look back and go, “hey, that was really freakin’ idiotic”?
Sometimes it’s too late to know you were an idiot at the time until after you are an idiot and realize it. Words of wisdom. You can write that down if you like.
Later that night, inside the teepee, the Fire Man burns wood in the center of the dirt floor with cedar incense which is supposed to curb the feelings of nausea which can accompany ingesting the peyote, the key ingredient being mescaline.
We sit in a wide circle around the fire. I was told to bring a few pillows and a blanket but I have forgotten. I use my sweatshirt to pad my seat. For now this suffices.
Rick, the Road Chief, starts off with a short prayer: “I am going into my place of worship. Be with us tonight, oh Creator.”
I end up being seated right next to Rick and his sister, Glenda, a heavy-set, simple woman who smiles a lot but doesn’t say much. She passes me this tea that tastes like clay and I take a sip and pass it. They begin chanting as the Drum Man beats the drum. The tea is passed again and I take another sip. This tea seems to have a relaxing effect as I can feel my pulse rate slow, the thrumming of the blood in my veins at my neck keeping beat with the steady thud of the drum. A warm, mellow feeling washes over my body blanketing every fiber of my frame.
Glenda passes me peyote which looks like slices of a dark-colored mushroom. I notice everyone wolfing this stuff down like it’s going out of style. I look at Randy as he sways and chants, his eyes closed, in some kind of deep trance.
The humming vibrations of the chanting bore deep in my chest. I can feel my ribs quivering. I try to play along as the Fire Man is now using the flaming coals to fashion amazing designs on the floor of the teepee. He creates a flaming mountain. Then he creates what looks like a coyote. Then an inverted deer. Glenda keeps passing me peyote and notices my constant squirming as the pain in my knees and ankles from sitting for so long in one spot grows unbearable.
“Take more peyote. I will help relax you,” she says quietly.
I am relaxed. Don’t I look like I’m relaxed? She didn’t know I am stuffing the peyote underneath my sweater. After a while I have a big pile of the stuff under me and I am worried how I am going to dispose of it before the Road Chief sees me and gives me a sound boxing to the ears.
It is about at this point that alarming numbers of the congregation begin to vomit into the dirt in front of them. Randy had explained this is people upchucking their sins and impurities, a direct result of the peyote ingestion which forces everyone to face their own hidden demons. For right now, I am okay with my sins, demons and whatnot just so long as I didn’t have to hurl my guts out in front of strangers on the dirt floor of the teepee. This only proves to heighten my fear of eating the drug.
The drum finally reaches me. Each person has a turn to pound on it and do their own personal chant. Everyone gets into the groove and knows the lingo, letting the Great Spirit guide their words and song.
When the drum comes to me, I kind of look around for some guidance but no one seems to offer any. The Chief’s sister motions to the drum as I sit in dumb silence holding it between my knees like my pecker. Finally I belt out the only Indian chant I know from childhood, “Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!” while banging on the drum like a cretin. A few white people shoot me scornful looks like they think I’m not being serious. No one else seems to notice or care or are too embarrassed or stoned to look at me and make a scene. Some are busy vomiting, and for a moment I think this is a direct result of my pathetic chant. I look at Randy to make sure he isn’t giving me the stink-eye, and fortunately, he is whacked out of his mind, swaying too and fro and humming something unintelligible.
I am not sure if it is the strange tea or the chanting or the drumming or the smoky ambiance of the cedar incense but there are rare moments when I am taken away and feel I am in touch with that deeper place I saw on the mountain when I looked inside myself in deep meditation. I suddenly feel at one with this motley group of white people who want to be Indians.
Then I begin hallucinating.
The Fire Man spins an incredible flaming eagle on the floor that rises up like the Phoenix, out of the ashes and hovers in the center of the teepee. I look around to see if anyone else notices this apparition and everyone is off in dreamland, chanting and swaying. Then I am suddenly lifted off the dirt floor!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
