November, 2010
Oh jeese the Big Cheese. Oh Creamy California! Hoo Boy, it marinates the eyes, simmers the spirits, and churns the child in us all... and like honey dripping down a road map, I'm somewhere between this pixel and that, a gluon a Go Go. Hooee I shout, as gluons are sure to shout, spinning tumbling yearning down the coast! And as I am here, you are there, each of us always in the right place at the right time doing exactly the right thing - or else, where would we be?! Like our lungs that breath without being asked, and our hearts that keep beating regardless of our say - I mean, what is that? What force wakes us up in the morning? Who lifts our eyelids to the discovery of a new day? Who's sleeping, and who's awake? Everything anyone knows is what's happened before! Dig this: raveling and unraveling mean exactly the same thing.
Hey Man! Wherever I am - here I am! I shout it Loud to the Road. And sparks fly and the sun shines, oh yes does it ever. An everyday fling, this California sunshine thing. Fields upon fields of the stuff, the same energies that sparked the Great Exodus westward, from the dust bowls of the east to the fruit basket feast, towards that fat and fabled Tangerine Dream... for the Grapes of Happiness they came searching, where the citrus trees were said to sit heavy with their glObular sOlar-soaked meats, their navels from nuclear to nucleic. And that age old promise of a new land, that always greener pasture yonder still whispers in our ears rhymes of sunshine and spring time... and so we journey on, love on, crave on under the sun! From Pharaohs to Phoenicians to Polynesians to Pop Tarts, from foraging to farming to fabricating to %@#$%-if-I-know, the same desires and wildfires born in us all! Yet our salamander souls, our reptilian brain stems, our Monkey Mind: our fingers pointed at each other! Our feral and fetal forms forgotten, as our webbed hands turn to digits dexterous and individual in our placental peacetime. And lo! In time, our Monkey Mind appears, and it says this and it says that, it wants bananas and more bananas, it's demanding and doesn't know patience. We must teach it patience. Teach it resolve and kindness. Oh yes indeed. Be mindful of Monkey Mind! Cause although these be different times, we're repeating the same story lines...
And so it is. Jorges and Juans now to replace the Jeds and Joads of the fields, Tecate for Pabst Blue. Suburbs for saloons. But it's the same far away look, a man tired at the end of his day. The same blisters and soars. The same bread but tortillas: two days ago, a Guatemalan family shared their lunch with me, all of them working the fields of February when the avocados and artichokes put on their blush and high heels. From dawn till happy hour and back again, working the day for pay. Their hands like boot leather. Their voices like the dripping waters of an arroyo. And these folks one and the same, left their own land, put their hopes on the road, and landed here in California, the Hollywood of Hopes, the Golden Goose, the Altar of Promise. And for that almond-afternoon we nodded together in the shade of the palms, paying our respects to the land, with more cold ones resting in the cooler. Their story far from mine, yet we still found ourselves 2000 miles from home and on the roam.
Oh yes the Road! Back on it after a whole month load of bliss on the Big Sur coast with some of the loveliest folks this side of Timbuktu. And a beep bop bounce back onto the saddle, that leather ass-paddle, with the Sound and Fury of the wind, the swooshing and hummin', the sweating and hootin', and with it the deep hunger that abides... and ever onward the road, the surprise beyond each rise, the surmise of that soul-cry of routine.
Oh Hum De dO Da daY! Another day in the life of a fool. Oh but the Fool is potentially everybody, as he resides in us all, with a bag over his shoulder whistling while he walks down what road he knows nor cares not. What's in the bag he's carrying? Everything he needs to make his journey through life. But lots of folks don't ever find out that they're carrying it - carrying him and his teachings. For it's up to each of us to open the bag for ourselves, cause the Fool, he'll waltz and twirl right on through without ever caring to see what it is he's carrying. And so it is that you have to befriend the Fool and he you, to have a chance of seeing what's inside...
As he insists, what you resist, persists!!
