Random Fiction

THE NAKED ABYSS: A Song of Sojourn

2011-06-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

By Jack Random

Vera! Vera! What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?

She was a simple girl with a simple point of view.
Wanted to find a marrying man and raise a child or two.
Then the bombs came and the world slipped away with the life that she once knew.

Flames spread out like napalm dreams and the terror took root and grew.
I still remember her quivering voice as into the night she flew.

Vera! Vera! What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?

Pity the poor man who dies without a name on some forgotten street corner. He was some mother’s son. He was the hope, the dream and the smile in his father’s eyes.

There was a time in life as in art and literature when civilization thrived on heroes. They were individuals ordinary and extraordinary that overcame hardship to do great good in the world. Through the tradition of story telling we lived their lives vicariously. We sought to be like them. We borrowed their strength and fortitude. We became better than ourselves by reaching beyond our self-defined limits.

Today we idolize so many people for so many reasons that we have reduced the concept of heroism to celebrity. The legacy of heroism gave way to Andy Warhol’s theory of fifteen-minute fame.

When he was only three he had bright eyes and great ambitions. He was going to make his parents proud. When he was five, he was going to show them all. They were wrong. He was going to be somebody. He was going to save lives. He was going to be a hero. He was going to be a star. When he was seven, he was going to start a band. When he was nine, he was going to join a gang. When he was thirteen he chased his dreams in the land of liquid horizons. When he was seventeen he was going to set the world on fire. When he was twenty-three he did. When he was twenty-seven he shot a man for twenty bucks. When he was thirty he looked fifty. When he was thirty-six he was lying in a pool of blood, his dreams fading, his hopes gone, his view of the world a gutter and his future over the rainbow.

We let him down.

He let himself down. He fell for it. He bought into a system that counted him out before he could discover a larger universe. We will not mourn for him. We will let him pass into the endless night, the naked abyss that awaits us all. We will not reach for him for he would pull us down with a smile of sarcasm. In his dying breath, he only wants revenge.

Vera! Vera! What has become of you?

She became a topless dancer in a jazz club on lower ninth until the inevitable day when her appeal no longer paid the bills. A spiral downward to a trailer park with overgrown weeds and a black market economy. She gasped her last breath faking orgasm with a bald man when a homegrown meth lab kissed the heavens goodbye.

He was driving down Highway 66 heading west from a pilgrimage to the sacred Chiricahua Mountains, where the face of Cochise gazes at the heavens, when he chanced upon an offshoot reading Route 666. He turned around and went back the way he came. There are odds no gambler should take.

He ended up at a dreary motel with a bar across the street. He asked for number nine but it was in repair. He asked for thirteen and she tossed him the key. He stayed for two weeks, drinking, eating salted snacks and waiting for something to happen.

She opened the door and asked him if he wanted a job. He already had one but how could he turn her down? She had dark eyes that sucked him in. They spent three days having hot, trailer park sex, doggie style, down and dirty, drug induced; he never saw it coming.

She drew a map and googled it just to make sure. She told him to meet her at the mark, seven o’clock sharp. Sure he said and drove to the next town.

These kinds of things never happened to him so he was sure it was happening to someone else, someone he could not trust. He picked up a hitchhiker outside of Tucson and began peppering her with questions.

She was on the run. A broken family, an old story, a brutal relationship and a bagful of pills: She asked if he wanted to try something and he said why not, he was going nowhere. They grabbed a six-pack at a local market and drove deep into the desert on a gallon of gas. He made his move but she showed no interest so they popped a few pills and let the barren earth swallow them.

Time cranked to a quivering halt, insects swirling, heat coming in waves, night riding in on a yellow moon and a blue-bellied lizard settled on his nose. The lizard gave him knowledge as they wandered the moonlit night, picking flowers and collecting the seeds of perception.

She placed them in a leather bag tied round her waist. She was building a new life, seed by seed, and he was her appointed guide. A dozen more and they could start their own cult. A dozen years and they could found their own religion.

How can you start a religion he wondered without sex? She folded him in her sprawling limbs and collected the seeds of creation.

He awakened on a broad flat rock, his clothes neatly folded, the sun bearing down on his reddened body. The woman was gone. The car was nowhere. He pulled on his jeans, his shirt, tied his undershirt around his head and began walking. An hour later he found her sleeping in his car: out of gas.

He told her to find another ride and walked ten miles with a gas can. She waited at the car. He came back in a pickup with a kid in his twenties, bucktooth and smiling. She was down to accessories: black panties and a maroon bra. She asked for a ride and the kid with a nod from our hero said hop in.

Later he would wonder: What ever became of his desert queen?

He was sitting in a bar in Sedona, Arizona, when a limo arrived with an entourage of security. Out stepped everybody’s hero John McCain. For a lingering moment he allowed his intellectual curiosity to roam. The old question: If you could stop the monster before he became the monster, would you do it? In the age of cell phone television you could alter history with an awkward moment. Cause him to lose balance. A moment of rage.

He quietly asked no one in particularly: What was so wrong with Ho Chi Minh anyway?

The muscles in the broad round neck of America’s hero tightened, his veins bulged as he visibly struggled not to look in our hero’s direction. He looked around to see if anyone had a cell phone. Maybe. You can never tell. He might have altered history. Then again America’s hero looked like he was down for the count. America’s hero had loser written all over him.

He finished his latte, crawled in his car and drove.

A million thoughts zigzagged through his head and he discovered the calming comfort in random chaos. Windows down and the desert heat permeating a cool breeze, he wondered why the random accelerator particle collider was considered random. If it was truly random the results would be meaningless and anything, including an all-consuming black hole, would be possible. Just a thought he thought while driving nowhere fast.

He noticed them in a flashing image bounced off the rearview mirror: Two men in dark shades and dark suits, sitting side by side in a nondescript gray Chrysler, not the kind to be driving a barren road into the Nevada desert. Something was up.

Was this the good Senator’s work? Was that stodgy old fart so uptight that he would summon the feds for a crack in the local Starbuck’s?

He noticed the cell phone embedded in the dash of his 64 Dodge van (they don’t make ‘em like that any more) and rang up the boys.

“Got some smoke in my mirror, boys, need some roadside assistance.”

Like magic he watched the scene unfold a few miles down the road. An accident, people laid out on the pavement, red lights flashing, people in uniforms. They let him pass but stopped the intruders at the gate.

“Somebody up there likes me,” he thought.

The highway was free and clear for a hundred miles. The scent of sage and melting landscape conjuring images of ancient lands uninhabited by man. He pulled into a roadside café, wondering how they made a living in such a forsaken place. Must be a front. Had to be a front. Something was going on under the hood.

The waitress was thin and oddly attractive with her painted eyes and ratted blonde hair. She asked him what was up with a wink that seemed incongruous. She was emitting some aroma that made him think of the late sixties, free love and plentiful picnics.

He ordered a cheeseburger without the beef. She laughed and gave him a grilled cheese sandwich and an order of fries on the house. There was no cook in the kitchen, no dishwasher, no one but the woman with ratted hair.

She sat down across the counter while he ate, pouring coffee, batting her eyes, waiting for some sign of interest. He asked her how she managed and she replied not well, pointing to a picture on the wall of a large man in front of a big rig named the Silver Bullet.

He went on a run six months ago and never came back. She was minding the store and biding her time, waiting for an opportunity to adventure.

“Where you headed, stranger?”

He told her he was on the road to nowhere, apologizing for the cliché, looking to discover the undercurrents of native life.

The grilled cheese was delicious. She undid the top button of her white cotton blouse. The fries were excellent for the frozen variety. She poured some catsup and joined him. Leaning over the counter his eyes traced the outline of her finely tuned breasts. She locked the door, turned over the closed sign and poured a couple of beers.

“No license,” she explained.

They drank and told stories about life, husbands, wives, families and twists of fate. He did not believe in fate but she did. It was fate that brought them together in this isolated place on the outskirts of nowhere. She opened her legs and he took her then and there on a revolving counter stool with the scent of fries and the rattle of dishes hovering about them.

She asked him if he wanted to stay and he asked her if she wanted to go. A six pack and an hour later they hit the road, headed for Las Vegas, the city of neon, games of chance, random adventures, strippers and hustlers, cheap thrills and costly addictions. The drove through the barren sage littered landscape smelling of half-baked reptilian remains looking like the dream of a cracker without a clue, talking in seamless cycles on parallel plains that never touch.

Periodically, he would take a moment, look at her and nod. She would do the same. It was not the reality of connection that mattered but the formality, the courtesy, the habit that gave mythology its teeth.

If he had been listening he would not have understood even a fraction of what she said but the rhythm of her voice was somehow pleasing. If he had been able to decode the message beneath a stream of sounds he would have understood that she was a gentle compassionate woman stuck in the particle collider of a troubled past. She rewound the dialogues that she perceived as keys to the mystery. She dissected decisions that led to the wrong choices and guided her on the wrong paths. She wondered what she could have done to deserve so little joy and so much sorrow.

He was stuck in the moment or rather a conglomeration of moments surrounding his present circumstance. His memory could only reach back so far and the incident at the Sedona Starbuck’s was as far as it reached. He kept coming back to the incredible arrogance and petty mindedness of the man who wanted to lead the world in war.

On their way to the desk at the Bellagio he plugged a silver dollar into a glittering machine, cashed out and handed it to his companion. They checked in to a room on the thirteenth floor and enjoyed an evening of varied entertainment, replete with gambling, music, fine food and sensual exploration. In the morning he got up early, kissed her gently and let her sleep. He left her cash, a credit card, keys to the van and a house in Malibu, and a message of affection. He had pressing business.

He picked up a copy of the Times, booked a flight to the nation’s capitol and caught a cab to the airport. On the ride over he felt a seizing of his heart and wondered if he would ever see her again. Hers was a giving spirit, a generous heart, and the feel of her limbs rubbing against his eased his yearning. He gazed out the window at a passing ambulance as it turned into the entryway of a local hospital. He hated hospitals. He had nothing against doctors and nurses. There were good and bad in every profession. But he felt in his gut that hospitals were cesspools of greed and disease.

He breathed in and out, a slow and measured pattern, until he sensed strength returning to his life and limbs, and contemplated the road ahead.

***

Joe the orderly reported to work every day with his bag lunch and green uniform checking in at the front desk flirting with the nurses and taking the elevator ride to the twenty-seventh floor. That was where they kept the hard cases, the hopeless, the unfortunate ones whose lives were sustained by machines, breathing machines, blood machines and monitoring devices around the clock until the insurance money ran out.

Despite the downturn in the economy (or perhaps because of it) there was no shortage of customers. It was not difficult for doctors and hospital administrators to convince loved ones, husbands and wives, parents and caretakers, that there was still a glimmer of hope when in fact it was a shot in the dark, one in a billion, the odds of finding a diamond in a trash bin.

Joe did the dirty work, moving from room to room, avoiding the rare and occasional visitor, changing sheets and bedpans, making sure the tubes were in place and the machines were operating. As he worked it was his habit to change the channels of the overhead televisions, which were invariably set to late night movies, heavy on the soft porn, by the overnight staff. He made an effort to judge what the patient might enjoy in the event that any of it seeped in to the subconscious mind, usually settling on cable news or generic music stations.

As he made his rounds he caught the nurse in room 2736 making some adjustments to the patient’s medications and cleaning his body with a wet towel. Her name was Bonnie and she was dangerously cute. The patient, an older man and a recent addition to the ward, had an obvious erection beneath his hospital gown. It was not uncommon for unconscious men and Joe wondered if it meant something really was going on in the minds of these patients.

“Why not ease his suffering?” he asked the nurse.

“Why don’t you?” she countered.

She told him about the patient. He was some kind of businessman. He choked on a giant shrimp while watching a sporting event in his apartment. He was alone and managed to call 911 but the ambulance arrived too late. He had a living will but left no instructions on what to do in the event of incapacity. His wife and family had no clue so after six months in a coma he was transferred to the twenty-seventh floor.

He changed the channel to MSNBC and sat waiting for her to finish up.

“What do you make of that?” he asked pointing to the patient’s still engorged member.

She said the common view was that it was nothing more than an autonomic response. Conscious men think of sex around the clock because their unconscious minds are wired to procreation and leaving a mark on the gene pool. Unconscious men still have the instinct even if their minds are not intact.

“Is that what you think?” he wondered.

She shrugged. She had noticed that some men responded to the sounds of sex on television and some responded to a woman’s touch differently than to a man’s – unless of course they were attracted to the same sex. The talk was making her a little uncomfortable but she let her gaze linger on the patient’s erection before she left with a wink at Joe who was concealing the beginning stages of his own arousal.

Later at break time, they worked the conversation around to the same subject. Nurse Bonnie finally admitted that if it was entirely up to her she would consider it therapeutic to relieve the patient of his pent up sexual frustration but it was not. She could lose her job and anyway no one really knew what if anything was going on inside the patient’s head.

Joe smiled at her with genuine good will and told her that if he ended up unconscious in a hospital bed, he would be pleased to be cared for by a nurse as compassionate as she was. That seemed to please her – enough so that later that evening they would make a date for the weekend. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship in which Joe the orderly’s pent up frustration was regularly relieved by the tender attentions of Nurse Bonnie.

They met every night in room 2736 and sometimes their relationship went beyond the bounds of their profession. One night with a full moon shining through an open window, Nurse Bonnie asked Joe to wait outside and let her know if anyone was approaching.

She leaned over and whispered in her patient’s ear: I don’t know if you can hear me or if you can whether you understand but if you can I want to help you. If you’re suffering, I want to ease your suffering. I want to comfort you. If I do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s up to you to stop me.

The patient did not respond in any recognizable way but it seemed to Nurse Bonnie that his erection was even more pronounced than usual. She wondered if her words, the touch of her breath or the sound of her voice aroused him.

Keeping her head by his, her ear tuned to his voice, she reached down and slowly, gently took hold of his erection. She thought she heard him moan. She could not be sure; it was so soft it was beyond normal perception. She slowly, gently moved her hand up and down, up and down, and she heard his breathing grow slightly stronger.

She ran her fingers through his hair, kissed him on his forehead and stroked his erection until he came. She could not sure but she thought he sighed. She thought he thanked her in the only way he could.

She cleaned his body with a wet towel and called Joe in to help change the sheets. Joe nodded his approval, gave her a hug and a kiss, and then pointed to the patient. He seemed to be smiling.

From that day forward, at least once a week, with Joe standing guard at the door, Nurse Bonnie would ease his suffering and celebrate the healing power of her touch.

***

He took a cab from the airport, picked up a copy of the Post, booked a suite at the Four Seasons and started running up a tab with room service. He bought six executive box tickets to the Redskins game and traded them straight up for two tickets to a production of modern dance at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. He ate at the finest restaurants, attended the most elite clubs and hired an escort everywhere he went.

On the third day he approached the maitre d with an unusual request: Could he arrange a meeting with someone from the McCain campaign? He folded a couple of crisp one hundred dollar bills in her hand as she indicated that she would see what she could do.

Twenty minutes later he received her call in his room. The McCain people were sending a couple of representatives within the hour. She would notify him when they arrived. He thanked her and promised a generous gratuity on his departure.

He had been doing his homework. McCain’s main argument against his younger opponent was experience. He knew that the candidate was notoriously prone to rash decisions based on a gut feeling. He wanted to plant a seed in McCain’s mind and give him a reason to be rash. A survey of the Republican political landscape yielded one name that would appeal to McCain’s vanity and gut instinct and at the same time torpedo his claim of experience: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.

She was perfect. She was on the far right, a Christian fundamentalist, and McCain was desperate to please the traditional Republican base. If she had ever expressed an opinion on any issue of national or international importance beyond the sound bites of a political campaign, it was not apparent. She was attractive, confident, ambitious and completely lacking in intellectual curiosity. She was in short George Bush in a pretty package – only Bush was better prepared.

The fact that she is a woman would fill McCain with irrational joy, believing that he could steal Hillary Clinton voters on that basis alone. But as the novelty wore off and voters saw her for what she is (a political opportunist) and what she is not (prepared to lead the nation) they would hold McCain responsible for incredibly poor judgment.

When three men in suits showed up at his door, he asked two of them to remain outside. They looked at each other and deferred to the oldest of the three, a man who looked a lot like G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame in the Nixon era. Maybe it was Liddy. Who knows? He was here to do the dirty work. No burglary this time, no stealing confidential records for political bribery and extortion, just a little “pay for play.”

Before he sat down, he pulled out a small device and swept the room for bugs. It was a clear signal he was prepared for nefarious business. He folded his hands, leaned forward and gazed into our hero’s eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“If you don’t know that already, you’re not doing your job and I’m wasting my time.”

“Fair enough,” replied Liddy. “What have you got?”

Not what do you want but what have you got. Interesting. He laid it on the table clear and unmistakable. This was a negotiation, a deal, an exchange of interests like pork bellies for shares in a coal mine. McCain’s interest was a pressing need for political contributions. What was he willing to give in return?

“I’m prepared to give six figures on one condition.”

He handed Liddy a business card with a name scribbled on the back: Palin.

“The governor of Alaska?”

“That’s right. I don’t know who’s on your list for VP but if it’s another old white guy the deal’s off. We used to be a party with balls. What have we got now? A washed up warrior, a cross dresser, a Mormon demagogue and a preacher from Arkansas, get serious! Win or lose, the party needs new blood.”

Liddy studied the card as if it held the key that would decode a secret message. There was none. It was a straight-up deal. He liked that.

“So you think Governor Palin would give the party balls.”

“That’s right.”

Liddy stood up and shook hands with a tired grin wrinkling his lips.

“I think the old man just might go for it. If he does I’ll be in contact.”

The man left and our hero contemplated what transpired. It was patently illegal to give a contribution of that size and McCain was supposed to be at the forefront of campaign finance reform. He must be desperate. Even the old money must be tired of Republican policies. They took their profits. Now it was time to restore some balance in the economy before the whole scam broke down. No one wins if the bank goes broke.

He wondered if it was even necessary to pull off this little charade. The McCain campaign was running scared. They would have to win with smoke and mirrors, the same old Republican smear tactics, down and dirty.

Well, he reflected, it worked before. No use taking any chances. He was sure McCain would take the bait. He had played his part. The rest would take care of itself.

He checked out of the hotel, fulfilling his obligation to the maitre d, booked a flight to Lisbon and flagged a cab to the airport. He felt a desire for Fado, that centuries old song of mourning and longing from Portugal and the torch singers who embodied it. He wanted to purge his soul. He wanted to be cleansed. He wanted to swim in the sorrows of ancient grief and generations lost and crumbling dreams. He wanted to be reborn in the hope that comes only from shedding his skin.

***

On the flight across the dark blue sea he felt the forces of gravity, the weight of responsibility, the betrayals of human dignity, the indifference of the powerful, the terrifying coldness of social institutions, the course of history on a troubled, choking planet pushing him to the edge of despair. He closed his eyes and felt the breath of someone gentle and sweet caressing his neck, whispering in his ear.

He awakened refreshed, renewed and invigorated as the plane descended on the European continent, the birthplace of capitalism and socialism, democracy and fascism, equality and aristocracy, feudalism and the rights of labor, the land of a trillion contradictions in perpetual shades of gray, the shadow hovering over America and much of the modern world.

He checked into a hotel, ordered room service and a hotel computer and wrote for three days. It was the kind of thing he always wanted to do but there was always someone to tell him not to, that the world was waiting, that you could not shut yourself away. It was an indulgence and now he was free to indulge.

He sent it out on the web and forgot about it. The web was the closest thing to a miracle he would ever know. You could send out your words, your thoughts and images, and as long as no one interfered (or even if someone did) they could wander about or sit still for a thousand years only to be discovered at a time and place you could never imagine.

His mind clear and free, he went down to the street and caught a cab to the nearest Fado club. It was a dark place, crowded with men and women of all ages and colors, all yearning and teaming with desire. The crowd hushed, a bright circle of light went up on a small wooden stage, and a singer poured her soul into a story of longing.

She was a beautiful woman, sensuous and strong. She talked in several languages so everyone in her audience understood the story of each song. Then she sang and grown men choked back tears. Women openly cried and returned the singer’s love with praise, a shower of roses and money.

It was an ancient art and it lifted him from time. It relieved him of a multitude of worries, pressures, resentment and regret. He remembered the love, the pain and the sorrow that always lived within his aching heart and then he let them go. He remained in his seat long after most of the patrons had left (all but the most desperate drinkers) when she emerged from backstage and cast a smile in his direction.

“Hello, stranger,” she said. “You look like you could use some company.”

He nodded and she told him of a place where they served fine food and wine at all hours of the night. It was a quiet place where they could talk, drink and feel free to explore the mysteries of existence in a transitory world. He nodded and she guided him there.

They talked to the morning hours and parted as secret lovers only to resume the play of strangers the next evening. On the third night they gave flesh to their affections, swimming in the moonlight of the only love they would ever know.

He felt the pull of tomorrow and she released him with a kiss. When two bodies have intermingled as theirs had done they will always be together. They will always be connected. They will always dance in the shadows of the mind. They will always be one.

He carried her scent with him on a train to Madrid to Paris to Berlin to Prague to Amsterdam, breathing in the sights, absorbing the land, the architecture, the ancient ruins, talking by day to familiar souls (an older woman who spoke longingly of deeds undone and dreams unfulfilled, a man whose one remaining wish was redemption, another who revered the love of friends and family), dancing and drinking by night with soulful women whose mystery was as enchanting as their beauty.

He walked along the Seine with a youthful Parisian who promised to remember. He shared an intimate moment in a dark, dank corner of a Bohemian castle with a woman in the Gothic mode. He sipped wine until dawn gazing out a window where the Third Reich once reined in horror with a companion whose empathy was without bound. He danced in the arms of velvet memories where a young Henry Miller and Anais Nin once christened their tortured love in vain. He loved them all and let them go as they did he. As he moved forward he folded his memories behind him in the dark spaces of his mind reserved for treasures. He was a pilgrim on a journey of discovery and such a man can only gaze into the prism of immediacy. There will be time for reflection at journey’s end.

Somewhere outside of Copenhagen he felt the bond of home. It was if in silence someone was calling his name. It was as if he was living under a spell. He had forgotten who he was and where his seed was sown. It was as if he had bolted from his own life, broke free for as long as he could survive beside himself. He was not lost or disoriented. He knew who he was and he knew where he belonged.

He boarded a plane and flew across the sea, over the top of the world, across the North American continent, and as he flew he dove into the deep waters of unconsciousness for the first time since his journey began. The walls of perception came crashing down. All that he knew was stripped away like flats in an elaborate theatrical production, leaving him naked and alone with his senses.

He was awakened as the plane descended in sweeping spirals to the golden city by the bay. Gazing out his window he grasped the majesty of life on planet earth, the rich textures of land and sea, the smallness of human achievement, the constant flowing motion, wind and rain, roads and traveling souls.

He walked through the bustling airport, people towing luggage and parents towing children, tearful greetings and goodbyes. He walked away from the swarm of activity into the open space outside where he tasted the sweet salt air beneath layers of gasoline, smoke and dust.

He took a cab into the city where he walked the streets crowded with hustling humanity. Men and women minding their business, never stopping to admire the scents of open air cafes, the bite of currents coursing through concrete canyons, never wondering at the generations who built these monuments to human ambition, who sacrificed their lives with the sweat and blood of labor. Couples drinking wine or savoring coffee, heads buried in books, magazines or newspapers, eyes locked to each other, thoughts folded inward while the world rushed by on the other side of a thin veil of glass. They did not hear the orchestra of city life, the purr of motion, the hum of energy, the waves of anxiety and joy carried by the sounds of voices in conversation or decree. They did not see the homeless man on a church’s steps, the bag lady and her cart, the street musician or the hustler with a plan. They did not know the miracles unfolding above, below, within and all around.

He found himself outside the Bay View Hospital, no longer tentative, no longer afraid, knowing he had reached the last stage of his journey. Peace had found him. Comfort held him in her arms. Love was waiting.

He lingered in the emergency room where the drama of life and death, of suffering and struggle was raw, clawing at his senses like vinegar on an open wound. He wondered what it would take to ease the pain, knowing from a place deep within that it was all a part of the parade, the journey, the book of knowledge, the growing, the living, the passing, the life. He walked through the afflicted like a shadow of kindness and for a moment the sorrow lifted and the suffering eased.

He entered the elevator where an orderly preceded him, pressing the number 27. Glancing at the buttons and looking twice at his fellow traveler, they rose to the twenty-seventh floor and continued in silence to room 2736.

The orderly opened the door and they both walked in: The nurse was listening intently to a visitor, an older woman and her patient’s widow. Her face was wet with tears, as she seemed to seek comfort, confirmation or absolution in the decision she had made. The nurse nodded with as much empathy as she could give and nodded again to the orderly who stood back in the corner of the small hospital room, trying to be invisible.

He understood what was happening and why he was here. He recognized the woman he loved and the woman who gave her love to him without jealousy or expectation beyond the norms of common decency.

He reached out to touch her cheek and felt her shiver. He told her he was fine and he knew she understood. He watched her reach out to touch the patient’s cheek and the tears welled in her eyes once more.

He held her shoulders and whispered in her ear: It’s time. Let me go.

She nodded to the nurse who nodded to the orderly and they went about their business of disconnecting life-sustaining devices.

She placed her hand on her husband’s as he placed his hand on hers and together they watched the dying light of a setting sun.

Somewhere in another part of the world someone was singing:

Vera! Vera! What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?

It was a song of sorrow and of joy. It was a song of sojourn, of yearning and release.

He kissed her three times: One for the past, one for the moment and one for the unknown still ahead.

Jazz.

THE GRAND CANYON ZEN GOLF TOUR: A SEMINAL JOURNEY

2011-03-09T19:21:00.000-08:00

*********

THE GRAND CANYON ZEN GOLF TOUR

A Seminal Journey

By Jack Random

Copyright Ray Miller 2011

Dedicated to James Wisniewski

And the memory of Beatlick Joe Speer

INTRODUCTION

In the year I turned forty, I took a cross-country journey from Nashville, Tennessee to central California where I was born and raised. I had only recently moved to Nashville to marry a former love, a singer-songwriter who longed for fame and fortune in the city of music.

The marriage was one of convenience, an unintended consequence of a healthcare system that failed to provide for struggling artists. It was in retrospect destined to fail but the journey was a critical juncture in a life that had become too predictable and uninspired.

In Nashville, I became a writer. Given my isolation from family and friends, I began to discover the discipline of writing. Back then I was writing plays. I soon switched to prose and eventually published a short story based on the news of the day: Burning Churches. I then became Jack Random and published several other works of fiction in literary magazines.

That first year in Nashville, I attended a Welcome Back party for a man who was legendary where I came from: the extraordinary singer-songwriter John Prine. At that gathering I also met a man named James Wisniewski, a gifted musician who operated under the name of Wiz. With wide eyes he introduced himself and wondered if I was a jazz musician. I replied that I was a writer and I was thinking about writing a jazz play. I would subsequently write Dark Underground: A Jazz Play in Sixteen Choruses. Under the guidance of the Wiz, we recruited a couple of actors and recorded a production of that work. We took to the Nashville poetry scene with Dark Underground and a series of erotic poems. There we collaborated with such luminaries as the Beatlicks (Joe Speer and Pamela Hirst) and Jake Berry, a brilliant experimental poet-songwriter from Florence, Alabama.

When I decided to journey back to California in my 1965 Mustang that summer, I invited the Wiz to go with me. He accepted.

We had two common interests, jazz poetry and Zen golf, and a desire to visit the Grand Canyon to gather what inspiration we could find. It was a seminal experience.

When I returned to Nashville I wrote it all down. It was my first book-length work. Life would never be the same.

May this life be but a passage in the journey of your soul.

********

GRAND CANYON: LEAVING NASHVILLE

2011-03-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

Nashville, city of music, city of dreams, city of heartbreak and ambition, city of sweltering summers, lurid thunder storms and enchanting fireflies, city of suddenly changing seasons, land of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Shawnee and Cherokee, where the Civil War is living history and the rebel cry is still heard on back country roads, city of southern culture and racial strife, city of deafening cicada serenades, red winged birds, ticks and chiggers, city of palatial mansions and southern charm, river city and forest land, city of limestone and rock mountains, city of segregation and homelessness, city that seems to stand still in the eye of the storm, we bid you adieu.

Though we strive to banish you from our thoughts, we will hold you in our hearts, knowing that we will return to you reborn. Like wayward children we will welcome your familiar arms and you, unmoved, will acknowledge our passing. We are but falling leaves in an immense forest, while you are the tree. We are pilgrims in a land of adversity while you are the sanctuary. Whether you remain home to us or become a chapter in the history of our lives, we will think of you often. But for now we must say So Long as we turn our backs and embark once more on the journey to discover ourselves.

GRAND CANYON: BLACK CROW

2011-03-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

A large black crow (is there any other kind?) touches down in the middle of busy highway and takes flight as we approach. It is a sign. Wait a thousand years and you will never see that sight again. The crow has appointed itself our guardian protector and guide. We welcome him and shall look for him wherever our journey shall take us. We are anxious, full of the life force, and wish only to heed the signs and yield to our inner calling. We are brothers by our own choosing and have chosen to share the path of this sacred journey. We do not know if our paths will part. We welcome the test of our friendship.

We have shared the Zen of the ancient and sacred game of golf. We are the jazz poets of the Nashville fringe. He is the wizard of the jazz poetry happening and holder of the sacred flute. I am the writer of dreams. We share the vision of the Grand Canyon and an enchanted shot under a full moon. We share the memories of journeys past. We are road warriors who have roamed the interstates and highways in search of life’s illusive meaning, in search of brotherhood and illumination. We have gathered what wisdom we could from the words embedded in Siddhartha, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Dharma Bums, On the Road, Don Juan and Journey to Ixtlan. We have had peyote dreams. We have seen the desert through the eyes of the coyote. We have ridden the wind of a Pacific sunset. We reserve places in our memories for people and places of distant travels. We hold them like treasures of the heart and wish to breathe into them new and eternal life.

We leave behind our loves and the mystery of how they will receive us on our return. For now we are creatures of the universe, open and free, hungry for adventure and eager to greet our common or separate destinies.

For myself, it is a journey home as well as away from home. It has been only a year since I married and left California. Only a year yet it seems so long ago. My life has changed in more ways than I can know and my heart is divided. I sense the unsettling of my soul has something to do with letting go but how can I let go of the friends and family members that have been so great a part of all that I am and all that I value? How do I let go without letting go? Somehow I must find an answer.

We shoot lie a blast of tequila out of Nashville and into the receding sun. The great forestland of Tennessee, Memphis and the bulging Mississippi, the rolling hills and dales of Arkansas and Oklahoma, blur like a mystery of distorted recollection. Rolling through the Texas panhandle in a sunny blaze, Wiz decides to take action.

The process of Mustang Sally’s preparation for the journey included replacing the gas tank, which had somehow rusted in Tennessee’s tropical air. I didn’t notice the missing spare tire until departure day. Too late. Aside from the time factor, the shop that did the deed had gone out of business. I’m willing to risk it but the Wiz is wary about crossing the desert without one and I know he’s right.

He spots a promising side road that leads us to an unaffiliated gas station. The Wiz connects with the good old boys whose checker game we interrupt. They try on three different tires without success and refer us to a junkyard down the road. Who would have guessed the old Mustang has an unusual number of tire bolts? We locate the junkyard and walk in. There seems to be some confusion about whose job it is to deal with us. It’s a family operation. In the small office space there are three generations of transplanted southerners. Wiz draws on his Alabama upbringing and makes inquiry about the spare. It sits a while until a new man shows up in the cramped office.

“Sixty five Mustang. Right.”

He takes off on the search for a usable replacement and we sit back and wait. One by one members of the family raise their heads from their miscellaneous occupations to give us a look over. The youngest of three children playing in the office, whose name is Bubba or Spunky or something akin, approaches the Wiz and demands: Get out of my chair! The Wiz is dumfounded, throws up his hands and rises to find another place to sit. Accustomed to dealing with troublesome children, I make eye contact with the kid, sitting in his chair, and we share a good laugh. It breaks a spell. We are temporarily accepted into the circle of junkyard society. Smiles all around. All is well.

The change in atmosphere gives us the freedom to look around. The walls are covered with old black and white photographs depicting black people in a curious mixture with white folks. Good old boys. The blacks all seem to have large smiles and are generally the center of focus while the whites linger at the sides or in the background, pleased and proud.

Some time later I come to the realization that the blacks are in servitude, whether enslaved or hired servants I can’t decide. A confirmation comes outside where the Wiz is helping the worker try on a new spare. We get a good deal and bid them goodbye. Wiz then points to a bumper sticker on the rear window of the family pickup: The White Empire. There was a reference to God’s Country.

I understand that this phenomenon has no geographical boundaries. There are white supremacy strongholds in central California and the Great Northwest. Still, my own upbringing does not allow me to feel comfortable in these settings. Maybe it’s the respect I have for the blacks I grew up with. Maybe it’s the memory of Ben May, a friend who stood up for me and a group of white boys back in the day. During the summer of Watts, we were walking through the west side when an angry black mob surrounded us. Ben stepped out of the crowd and vouched for us. They let us pass unharmed and I would always remember.

Maybe it’s the Apache blood that runs through my veins. Maybe it’s the regard I have for the Native American spirit. Whatever it is, I am uncomfortably grateful we did not put it together until after the fact. It is one of my eccentricities that I can’t hide my emotions, despite or perhaps because of years of acting experience.

To the folks at the Texas junkyard, we are good old boys with a keen sense of humor. To us they are rednecks, the racist family that gave us a fair deal on a spare tire somewhere on the Texas panhandle. It is something I will ponder when the time comes. For now there is no time to look back. We’re on the road.

We emerge, as if from a long dark tunnel, on the high desert plains, a land of red rock monuments and the endless highway. We drive on across a horizon of blood red and purple shadows to the oasis city of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Here we will rest to collect our thoughts, breathe deeply the spirit of the desert air, and encounter the first destination of our journey.

GRAND CANYON: ALBUQUERQUE

2011-03-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

Albuquerque was once a chosen stop in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the College of Your Choice. It was a sacred reference and one that pulled us here now, this odd mixture of a Zen master, gifted musician and an Alabama working man, paired up with a jazz poet, playwright of the underside, and devotee of golf and baseball. In all our differences and incongruities, we held to a core of beliefs that was essentially the same. We were seekers of secret knowledge and divine wisdom. This was where our search led us.

It was a place where Volkswagen busses broke down on their way to the people’s revolution in Los Angeles, Monterey, Berkeley and San Francisco. Fearful of the desert crossing, they staged their own cultural revolution here. It was a stop that somehow eluded both of us on our previous journeys.

Driving into town I was struck with an uneasy feeling. Was it a mistake? What kind of town was this? The outskirts have all the markings of temporary resolve: Tin can shelters on desert mountain sides, trailer camps, junkyards and tacky little shops hung up for business. Were these the dwellings of city Indians or aging hippies on the fringe still waiting for a few parts and a little more mechanical tinkering before braving the road westward?

From the eastside, the closer you get to the University of New Mexico a metamorphosis becomes more and more apparent. Tie-dye and head shops are chic. Congas and bongos are heard on the streets. Coolness is hanging in the local cafes, listening to folk music and poetry readings. Peace symbols and rainbows are everywhere.

They’re not sure what to make of Nashville jazz poets. They are comfortable in their coolness and have no desire for change. We stand our ground and play.

Jazzman on the corner of the Frontier Restaurant
Blowing cool breeze in the dry heat of a desert night
Faces blank, eyes wide, like an alien retreat
They’d never seen our like before

Jazz poetry in a hip-hop café
Dropped like a stone in black water
They long for a familiar refrain

“Oh very young what will you leave us this time?”

Poetry is dead long live poetry.

Wild man on the street brings terror to the peace monkeys

“Fuck peace!”

Afraid to look into the eyes
Peace to you! he cries

Beat cops on fat tire bikes
Khaki shorts and amber shades
Talk with undertones of brother be not proud

Send him on his way and bow
Applause at the sidewalk café

Walking alone into the shadows of the night
He is Bukowski, jazzman of dreams
Banned on the streets of Albuquerque

Poetry is dead long live poetry

Over the next few days we play rounds of nine on three golf courses. Our companions on the links are cool and easy to talk with. They speak of places and layouts and offer advise. The rounds are comfortable and strike a contrast. The University North layout is lined with trees featuring doglegs left and right. The greens are small and moderately slow to match the pace of play.

A nine-hole course next to the airport is windswept and hilly. A sign on the first tee warns against hitting over flying aircraft.

At the University South course we’re forced to play a three-hole beginner course. It is the most enlightening. We circle it three times and watch the progress of a Zen golf lesson on the driving range each time we make a pass. The teacher is a middle-aged woman with an air of grace. On the first pass she speaks of finding your center. On the second pass she speaks of balance. On the third pass the teacher is gone and the student is hitting balls from a one-legged stance. As she slowly takes back the club, she raises her left foot, methodically shifts her knee to center and replants her foot as she strikes the ball. It is a thing of infinite beauty. Golf from the solar plexus. Balance is the first lesson without which all other lessons are unnecessary.

As with golf so it is with life.

Evenings are for performance on the streets, the Wiz exploring new ground with free flowing riffs on his golden flute and me accompanying with the spoken word. We gather a small following of youthful tie-dyes, children of the late sixties who gaze at us with mystery and awe as if we were the beats of a lost generation, creators of a new mythology. The want to board the Magic Bus but that bus has left the yard. They are uncertain of our intentions. The sounds and words of our jazz have a bite. We carry more that a pleasant breeze and dharmic overtones. The message is infused with irony, spiked with a cynical brew, warm with the flames of rebellion.

They give us the respect of a generation removed and cautiously back away. We press on to the poetry café, place our names on the reading list, order cappuccinos and wait. Through the ears of an outsider the poetry reminds me of television soap and Oprah Winfrey confessionals. There are political commentaries tailored to community standards and thoughts while walking through the desert at night.

The emcee makes a joke about playing war as a child. Precision bombing and automatic weapons punctuate his formative years. His reading is an Indian chant accompanied by guitar. I hear drums in the canyons, drowning the messenger with discord. This is sacred land. The white man may settle here for a thousand years more but the Indian will rule like an unseen hand and the coyote will dance on his grave. The poet holds community grace but his satisfied smile undercuts his theme. He speaks of wild days, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson leathers, tattoos and blowing in the wind as if they were his resume. He has comfort and security as emcee of the local poetry café.

The other poets have made their way to the exit by the time we take the stage. I announce the death of poetry and wonder why the real poets are so hurried to depart before their own words have settled with the lattes and pastry. I summon Bukowski and gain their attention. The exodus is frozen. The Wiz rails on the resident piano…

Play the piano like a percussion instrument until the fingers bleed a bit.

He finds a groove and I begin.

We are the scum that crawls out the cracks in America’s nightmare…

Mid performance I realize that we have become my words in the eyes of our audience. They have met my derision with their own. Karmic dissonance. They make their antagonism clear as water but they listen intently and applaud with vigor at the conclusion of our set. The evening is called to a close.

Our young followers have abandoned us for more promising patronage. Now we are the wild men of the Albuquerque scene. We are the terrorists on the streets. The citizens will not look us in the eyes. I wonder if it is inevitable that we must sacrifice our place in the community of poets in order to sound the discordant notes that spring from our distorted psyches. Are we not men? At what price art? At what price change? Of all people on earth the poets should understand and cheer the death of poetry for only with death can poetry gain rebirth. Must we be content with poets reading to poets, waiting their turns while the family of man remains outside, untouched and unmoved?

After a spell a poet approaches us, tosses a compliment on our multi-media style and advises us to arrive earlier next time. We know there will not be a next time for us. He seems discomforted and withdraws, as if afraid to be identified with the outcasts. He will be here tomorrow. We will not.

Peace to you!

Are we too cynical? Am I? I have played the hitchhiker on previous journeys. The hitchhiker abides by the code of harmony but we have chosen to be messengers of discord on this incarnation. We are instigators and inciters of rebellious thought and we have little choice but to play it out. We reserve our softer side for the golf course where harmony and balance are paramount.

We are not ready to call it a night. The evening at the café has left us with a sense of unease. We need fulfillment. A waitress at the café points us to a downtown nightclub. We cross the railroad tracks and enter the old district. It is the wild side of Albuquerque where leathers, bums, winos, whores and drag queens reign.

There is a burrito stand advertising health food. The attractive blonde working the cart explains that her burritos are lard free. We’re impressed and order a couple. We find them to our liking but we are not allowed to take inside the club for a beer chaser. We hang and listen to the healthy burrito merchant, who strikes me like she belongs on Venice Beach instead of here on the wild side of Albuquerque. She has genuine warmth, a free spirit feeling to compliment an outward appearance that would draw eyes at Cannes. We learn that she’s a college graduate with a degree in accounting. She came to Albuquerque to help her father with his business but it turned out they couldn’t get along. She was now in transition.

Wiz asks her what’s happening around town and she offers a rundown on the bar scene. She says they used to have a hip-hop club but it attracted too many guns. The law in New Mexico apparently allows people to carry guns in bars as long as they’re visible. I wonder why hip-hop as opposed to hard rock or jazz would attract guns. She explains that it’s part of the culture. Our burritos finished we prepare to enter the club and thank her for the conversation. She smiles and wishes us well. She means it. We do not misinterpret her smile and pleasant demeanor as an invitation. They belong to the world and are delivered freely to everyone she encounters.

We pay a three-dollar cover and move inside. The club is divided into three sections in attempt to cover multiple bases. One section has a three-man punk band on an elevated platform with a large-screen video accompaniment. The young and hip crowd is standing room only. In the back an elevated disk jockey plays electronic punk and controls lighting effects on a small, crowded dance floor. Upstairs there is a small bar with sofas and padded chairs. It’s relatively sparse, comfortable and quiet enough for conversation.

We sit back and drink our beers while looking out over the dance floor below. We discuss the generational divide, the passage of time, the distance between us and our lives in Nashville. Wiz takes note of an attractive young woman in our midst. Unlike myself, he is theoretically free of obligation. He is coupled but not married. What kind of understanding or arrangement he and his partner have I don’t know but as of now his sense of loyalty remains. We are willing to enjoy a sense of attraction, to feel the pull of temptation, but we are not willing to cross the line. At least, not yet.

We wander down the street hoping for a jazz club, offer up a dollar to a couple of drunken Indians with a shopping cart full of junk, and encounter a large gathering outside a happening club. Wiz spots what appears to be a Latina fox in a tight black dress and whispers: She’s a man. The club is a drag bar with a scattering of very attractive ladies hanging with queens outside. One of them gives me a look that sends a charge through my libido. We go inside where it looks like a bad production of Pink Flamingos. We walk on. This is not our place.

The evening comes to a grateful end. It is time to leave this town without regrets. The lessons it has delivered will take time to gather and comprehend. Our performance at the poetry café was not we expected or hoped for though we could never be sure what to expect. We had fought to gain acceptance in the Nashville scene and were welcomed into the inner circle where Beatlick Joe Speer of Albuquerque was King. We hadn’t used his name but it was clear that winning acceptance here would take time we didn’t have. It weighs on our minds like a shadow crossing our path.

Like the wild man on the streets, likely the most misunderstood poet in Albuquerque, there must be a better way. Like golf, poetry is not important in itself. But like so many things in life that traditionally offer comfort or some sense of meaning in a chaotic world, poetry is in danger of dying from inbreeding and the deadly diseases of self centrism and boredom. Then let her die gently, in comfort or in rage, for with death comes the promise of transformation.

It is the great hope and we are its messengers. The role of the poet is to shape the living poetry of the future. Maybe it’s already happening. Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe, as Bob Dylan once projected, it is incorporated in the music.

We should not be too quick to judge rap or hip-hop or any other form of creative expression. All forms are valid. All messages are signs. All messengers are children of gods and creatures of creative light. We should listen most intently to those whom we find most offensive for they bring a message that expands our horizon.

We will choose to remember Albuquerque mostly for the golf. Balance is the first lesson. We will not stray from the path that chooses us. We will find our center and hold to it as an infant holds to his mother’s breast.

GRAND CANYON: GRAND CANYON

2011-03-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

Streaking across the desert skyline, Albuquerque to Grand Canyon in a heartbeat, coasting in on the fumes of yesterday’s drive, the dream hanging on by a thin white line. Riding the high plains highway under moonlight, a fleeting glimpse of a higher truth, spoken in tongues and deciphered in dreams.

The sun slowly dissolves with a golden orange and purple glow as we make our way to the continent’s great divide. We have crossed endless miles of Indian reservations. We have failed in our attempt to find mescal, forgetting that the selling of alcohol is prohibited on the reservation. We remember that the once proud tribes are still ruled by foreign invaders. We remember that these are a conquered people, protected by law from the weakness that helped to defeat them.

It is a strange phenomenon to see Quick Stops and Exxon stations, the golden arches and Super 8 Motels, and to be reminded that this is the last resting ground of the Navajo. We have traversed the land of the Zuni, the Petrified Forest, and the Apache land of the Painted Desert. The medicine woman’s spell still lingers in the warm dry air, her weathered face etched in the primordial terrain. The sacred dance is still performed on the mesa in a circle of red rock formations. The shadow of the ancient shaman still hovers above us in the evening sky.

A lone coyote yaps and sends us on our way. The crow is with us always. No mescal. No tequila. No alcohol of any kind.

We decide against a detour to Grey Mountain, just outside the reservation, and race the fading light to this day’s grand destination. Along the path in two-by-four shelters draped with canvas and plastic tarps are the new Indians, the commercial Indians who scrape by on the fringe of free enterprise. Signs proclaim them the Friendly Indians -- Manhattan Island’s revenge. They sell authentic Indian jewelry, hand crafted silver and turquoise necklaces, bracelets, medicine pouches and jade earrings.

The sun hovers in a brilliant amber glow. We have lost the race and pull over to a trace canyon, a small sliver of the Grand. The merchant Indians pack their wares, give us a glance over and sensing that we are neither buyers nor a threat to their welfare allow us to pass unobstructed to the edge of their little canyon. I am struck with awe and sit to ponder the hand of god. Wiz is less impressed. He has been to the Grand before. He has walked her ledge and camped on her floor while my eyes are virgin to this spectacle. I am aware of the great glaciers that cut and shaped Yosemite Valley but this is a different creature, bearing a distinctly different spiritual sensation. In a part of the world that desperately needed shelter it is as if the earth opened her womb and gave birth to the greatest shelter the world has ever known. It is a universe of its own, a monument of such depth and breadth that it challenges the eye and questions the very meaning of existence. It invokes flight of mind and humbles the most jaded and reticent of men.

We savor the remaining moments of twilight as we make our way to the edge of the Grand Canyon. The name begins to take on mythological proportions. Was it here beneath the infinite stars of heaven that Prometheus descended with the flame of human enlightenment? Was it here that the muses entertained the gods with music, dance and poetry? Was it here that Hades abducted Persephone and carried her into the bowels of the earth? We stop briefly at the first lookout. Here, under the light of a full moon, I catch my first glimpse on the unimaginable. Towering mountains, cliffs, valleys and bluffs, encapsulated by this slice of earth so far below the surface that the mind cannot grasp its fullness. Chasms within chasms, another world, separate and distinct, a monument to all forces greater than humankind. Its vastness is beyond the realm of fancy yet I am struck by the feeling that I have seen this sight before. Another life, another dream, a crystal meditation. Here on this holy spot of earth all things are possible.

It is late and we must find our place along the canyon’s ledge before the park ranger discovers us. We stop at the second lookout where Wiz spots a parking lot for overnight hikers. I stay with the Mustang while he scrambles to look for a temporary site to plant our gear out of sight of the rangers. He returns and we unload quickly: Sleeping bags, small packs, two beers, two golf balls, two tees and a five iron.

We scuffle down the hill to the chosen spot. It is a small rock ledge just below and to the left of the lookout. It is majestic. The canyon branches briefly to our left and opens in all its glory before us. The mountains on the canyon floor are divided by chasms in three directions: One toward the north rim, another branching to the east and a third toward the west below us.

A mist begins to gather in chasms of the canyon floor as we explore our location and scout for other viewpoints. Our explorations reveal that we have chosen wisely by intuition. Or rather it has chosen us. We return to our camp and settle in. It is the only place we have seen where a golf tee can be implanted in the ground.

I tee up my ball and carefully clean the path of the club’s backswing. As I address the ball I find two imprints in the granite ledge that perfectly fit the soles of my moccasins. I have no doubt that this is the spot. Like Carlos Castaneda rolling around on the porch of Don Juan, the Wiz in his mad scramble zeroed in on the only place our vision could abide. It was not only the right spot; it was the only spot. Had he not found it our destiny would have been altered in ways we can never know.

We are Zen Golfers. A Zen Golfer does not slap or punch a ball into the Grand Canyon. To do so would be sacrilege, an affront not only to the Canyon but also to the game that has come to symbolize and guide our lives.

I plant my feet in the indentations of the ledge and carefully rehearse the swing. I am aware that the force of a golf swing is more than enough to propel the golfer several yards in any direction, including straight forward. I do not mention this knowledge to Wiz who is relatively new to the game, just as one does not mention water on a water hole or out-of-bounds on a long par four. I will give instruction only by example, by preparing for the shot with due caution and sincerity. Balance is the first lesson.

There will be no second chance.

Satisfied, I lay the club along the line where the toes of my feet will be in my stance. Then I sit and wait for the moment. Again and again I visualize the shot. I see the swing, the rotation of the body, the release and the flight of the ball into the canyon. I free my mind of all other thoughts, focusing completely on my center, and wait.

Finally, as the mist rises in the canyon below, I see the white of the ball glowing as if from inner illumination. Moonlight has sprung through an opening in the overhanging shrubs, forming a sacred triangle around the ball. I rise, take up the club, address the ball and suddenly, as if some external force has taken hold of my body, I begin the swing. Like a pendulum, the club head starts its backward motion, the left shoulder swings downward below the chin, weight shifts inward toward the right knee and hip, wrists cock at the top of the swing, hands spring forward as the weight of the body follows closely behind to the point of impact. The coil is unleashed. The club head, still on a downward plain, strikes the ball squarely, snapping the white tee crisply into two equal halves. The body squares to the target of the canyon as the club completes the cycle on its own momentum. My feet remain planted. The ball has disappeared on contact. A sacred shot into the largest hole on the planet. It is my first hole-in-one. We do not mention that it is indeed possible to miss.

Wiz steps forward, tees up his Hogan and addresses the ball. His preparation is not as lengthy but no less sincere. His swing is powerful, full and fearless. He draws sparks from the granite fractions before the ball, a clear sign of solid contact on a downward plain. As before, the ball vanishes on contact. Another ace.

We have succeeded more gloriously than we could ever have imagined. Now we sit back to reflect and bask in the wonder of the moment. Instantly we are both exhausted. There is only time for a little more jostling and a brief visit from the park ranger above, who does not discover us, before sleep envelops us in her dark womb.

We awaken several times over the course of the night to witness the startling changes in the canyon below us. It fills with mist until the clouds below are joined with the clouds above. A more mystical sight cannot be seen in the physical realm. I wonder if Wiz is struck by the same curious urge to jump into the void. The curiosity is that it is by no means a death wish. It is the suspended belief that we are spiritual entities capable of walking to the stars or floating to the canyon floor. I have felt a similar sensation while driving down Highway One on the northern California coast at sunset. It is the sense of being outside oneself and beyond the hold of gravity.

In the morning, while Wiz is off exploring, I open my eyes to discover my sleeping bag has slid down the ledge. My feet are dangling over the precipice. It is time to rise. I stare at the site of the sacred golf shots for a time before I pack my things up and join Wiz in exploration. Tourists have begun to arrive. A German couple seems shy, perhaps humbled by the Canyon. A Japanese man and woman sport broad smiles. The man lets loose a yell that echoes down the canyon walls. Before we leave our sacred place, a place the tourists do not discover, two large crows rise up from the canyon to greet us and send us on our way. One settles on a bush directly before us, scans the canyon, and peers into the space behind my eyes.

It is said that if you look into the eyes of the crow you will see the future. I am filled with calm and wonder. We stop once more to see an Indian dwelling, a stone tower, round with nonlinear windows for lookout. It has been rebuilt and fashioned as a gift shop for tourists. It is still too early to be open but already a crowd is gathering. More Germans, Japanese and French nationals with their cameras ready and wide-eyed curiosity. It seems strange that there are far more foreigners at the Grand Canyon than Americans. Why is it that we never fully appreciate the beauty and majesty of our own back yard?

We leave the canyon the way we came, east and north through the reservation. The park station is unmanned. We are allowed to come and go without charge. This is the way it should be. A ten-dollar bill is deposited below the floor mat on the driver’s side where it will remain until it is needed.

GRAND CANYON: THREE ROUNDS ON THE ROAD

2011-03-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

Next stop Page, Arizona by Lake Powell, the creation of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. Wiz remembers this place as the best swimming hole west of the Mississippi. With passion he describes the translucent shades of blue and green and the sparkling clarity of the mile deep waters. It conjures my own memories of Crater Lake in Oregon.

A congenial grey haired lady at the gas station and convenience store tells us where to find the local golf course and our day is set. It is a flat nine-hole course with wide, tree-lined fairways, water and rabbits by the score. We play with the inner self as a theme. I sink a forty footer for birdie and finish two over par. Wiz beats fifty for the fourth time since taking up the game in earnest only a month ago. I’m not sure he realizes what an accomplishment that is. We both make shots with a five iron that allow us to imagine what our shots into the great moonlit void might have looked like had we been able to see the flight of the ball.

We have a good meal at the clubhouse where the bartender speaks about sexism at the dam. She has a degree in engineering and took a job here fresh out of college. Being both female and fresh out of college, the men under her authority resented her. She was smaller in stature than the men and so was often called upon to crawl into small spaces. On one such occasion she was locked in from behind. A lawsuit followed. The men responsible were fired and she quit. She decide to remain in Page as a local bartender, a good station to keep watch and have her revenge on any man who strays from common decency and the sanctity of marriage. We wish each other well and she notes that they have a band at night should we still be around.

The swimming spot is a water-filled rock canyon next to the dam. The water is still clear and striking but Wiz observes that there is a thin sheath of gasoline on the surface – no doubt from the powerboats. It has only been a year.

How frail the beauty of nature now seems when compared to the impregnable grandeur of the Canyon. In one year man has made a mark, like graffiti on the wall of El Capitan. I now understand why boating and recreation is so regulated at Crater Lake. I recall seeing where people had chipped away at a crystal waterfall in a cave called Crystal Palace and wondering how anyone could be so insensitive. Nature’s wonders must be protected. It is the worst of human instinct to want to own or leave a mark on nature one way or another. The signs of human shame are everywhere we look.

Wiz and I discussed our shots into the canyon, wondering if they could be considered littering. Maybe but I think that a golf ball, white and round, is more a holy object than a piece of trash. If we had fired a dozen range balls into the canyon that could be considered littering but a single shot under a full moon was a sacred offering. We ask forgiveness if we offend the pure of heart.

Wiz sends out some inspired sounds as an offering of peace to mother earth. We hope it will help diffuse the damage humans have done. The gentle soaring sounds emerging from his soul will be heard for a thousand miles and a thousand years. They will calm angry men and inspire children. It strikes me as strange the Wiz chose not to play at the canyon. Maybe he was overwhelmed by its perfection. Maybe the sheer magnitude of the canyon’s grace was too great for accompaniment. I never thought to ask. The answer is too simple: The impulse did not strike.

We are back on the road, our spirits soaring and our bodies renewed, though we have sleep only a few hours. The spirit of the crow goes with us and it is more powerful now than ever. What the Wiz calls the All Force is propelling us forward to a destiny that cannot be denied. We head north and cross quickly into Utah. We are at a crossroad on the journey and our senses are sharpened, our awareness heightened. We fight against anticipation but we cannot subdue a feeling of eagerness, of moving forward with eyes of wonder.

Golf has taken prominence in our minds. We have only two books: One is a collection of Bukowski poems and the other is Golf in the Kingdom. We consider the latter the bible of Zen Golf. We open it at random daily and follow its lessons – a tradition born on the short course in Albuquerque. On one occasion, when we were feeling the weight of the journey, Wiz suggested we take a cart. The daily lesson read: It is not the shots; it is the walk. We did not rent a cart and would not for the remainder of our journey.

We have begun taking notes for a pocketbook of Zen Golf. Its lessons are as varied as the game itself and the geography on which it’s played.

Balance is the first lesson.

Without balance, there is nothing.

The swing’s the thing. Julius Boros.

Find the center.

Be the trees.

See the flight of the ball before the shot.

Clear the mind.

Welcome adversity.

See the energy flow through the field of play.

Any shot that can be imagined can be made.

Approach the game with humility.

Swing easy, hit hard. Julius Boros.

Be the wind.

Let the club select you.

Golf is a game of opposites.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The path of the club, the flight of the ball is one.

Hear the wind through the trees.

Everything around you and within you is one.

By the time we get to Zion National Park we are primed and ready to receive the sign that now appears: A golf course on the roadside laid out in a chiseled valley below the red rock and clay formations, sculptures of mother earth and father time. It is mid afternoon, hot and the wind whips across the course in waves of dry heat. Be the wind.

In my mind there are two ways to play golf in the wind. One is to hit a straight ball and allow the wind to move it to the target. The other is to play a ball that moves into or with the wind, merging with complimentary forces or joining contrary forces. I favor the latter approach.

The Wiz chides me on the first tee. The people in the clubhouse, including a couple of young women, are watching us. He wonders if I am road weary. There is of course such a thing. Too long on the road can turn your legs into rubber and envelop your mind in fog. I have cautioned Wiz before to respect the ways and etiquette of other golfers. I have generally allowed him to chide me, preferring to accept the challenge of distraction. It is, however, a lesson I have often addressed. Back in Nashville I once reprimanded him for what I considered an affront to the game. He had playfully chanted “Hey batter-batter…swing!” while I missed a birdie putt. Before I could check my anger I informed him he had about seven holes of bad karma coming. His game went into an immediate tailspin. After three holes of suffering, I handed him a tee and asked him to repair a ball mark on the green. He repaired several and his game returned to him.

Approach the game with humility.

I hit what is known as a wormer. It never leaves the ground. Wiz steps up, hits a solid drive and continues his good-natured needling as we walk down the fairway. My second sails true to course, gliding with the wind. His shot hops along the ground. By the fourth hole we are both struggling. We are fighting the wind and fighting each other despite ourselves.

Welcome adversity.

Suddenly, I raise my head to breathe in the beauty that surrounds us. This is truly one of the most beautiful desert links courses we will ever be blessed to play yet we like spoiled children are waging war against ourselves. War in Paradise! Breathe in, breathe out, smell the desert air. Be the wind.

Like bad karma, good karma is contagious. We begin to play golf. The ball sails and bends gently with the wind. We steer the path of the ball with our minds. (The great Julius Boros once said: to hit a draw think draw, to hit a fade think fade.) We talk to our golf balls and praise their intuitive intelligence. At the seventh tee we are asked to play through by a family of beginning golfers. We greet them with smiles and explain that we are in no hurry but the father insists. We hit tee shots worthy of Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones. (Asked by a reporter how far Jones could hit the ball, his caddy replied: as long as he wants to.) Our balls have wings and soar like eagles with a force far greater than our swings. We are at peace. We are one with the game in all its ancient glory. We finish our round and resume our journey with the same high spirits we possessed at Grand Canyon.

Not more than thirty miles down the road we are greeted by another roadside golf course. It is evening now but we figure we have a good two hours of sunlight left in this sacred day. Once again we do not hesitate but accept this gift of the gods. A sign instructs us to pay for our round at a gas station convenience store down the road. The cost is a phenomenal three dollars per nine. There is a sign by the cash register noting that the last clerk had been fired for giving away golf rounds. At that price the man should have been hung and the golfers banned from the game. Golf at three dollars a round is a poor man’s blessing. It would open the game to the world and the world would be better for it.

It is a short course with an imaginative layout. There are children and ducks, swans and rabbits on the course. The grass is a brilliant shade of green. (The score boasts, “The greenest grass in Utah.”) There are scores of birch with their distinctive white bark. There is laughter and a pleasant breeze beneath a setting sun.

We tee off on a short par four and overshoot the green to the right. After a short hunt Wiz finds his ball and we proceed to play some of the best golf of our journey. By the time we climb to the elevated ninth tee I am aware that he is playing his best ever round. We are forced to wait while the foursome in front of us tees off and clears the fairway. The sun is nearly down. The groundskeeper has turned on the sprinklers, charging the atmosphere with a pulse and rhythm like a pendulum of the soul. There is a glow in the air. There is an uncommon sense of peace and well being.

At length we hit our shots. Mine sails right into a gully but it is well struck and pleasing to the eye. Wiz sends his dead center. Not bad if you like perfect. We descend from the tee like explorers from a high mountain and stride down the fairway in a state of nirvana: the Zen of Golf.

We are more than brothers now. We are comrades. There is an implicit bond and trust between us in this moment of spiritual high. It is beyond common understanding. It is true and unbreakable. It requires no words as words are inadequate but Wiz speaks of it with a satisfied glee: Don Juan would be proud of us!

At that very instant the sprinkler in front of us, as if guided by the hand and humor of the master himself, alters its direction and sends a steady stream directly at us. I bolt to the left and it follows me. I spring to the right and it stays with me. My momentum carries me full force into the braced shoulder of my playing partner and we erupt in gales of laughter.

The Wiz announces: Don Juan is laughing at us. And we have the good sense to laugh along with him.

We finish the hole in good style and humor. It is the best score relative to par the Wiz has ever recorded but it will be remembered as much more than that. We may often in the course of round tell ourselves that we have found it – the Zen, the All Force, the essence – but we have not. What we seek is essentially unattainable. It is illusive like perfection itself. The one sure thing is that those who have found it (or anything close to it) will have no need to speak of it. It is not a source of personal pride and it is not an end in itself. It is a state of mind, a state of being, that is constantly in motion and constantly changing.

We have but begun our journey.

We have played three rounds on the road in a single day and still found time to bathe in the sun and glorious waters of the Colorado River yet we are not tired. Like a golf ball sailing on the wings of an idea we are charged by a separate source of energy. It radiates within us and fills us with a hunger for adventure.

Wiz calls his parents from the pay phone outside the gas station. It is their anniversary. He relates telling his father about his round and his score. His father replied in disbelief: They’re making you count them now, are they? We have a good meal at the restaurant next door. I take note of a strange statement on the menu: They add a ten percent tip to the tab because 70% of their customers are European.

This is Utah. Where are the Americans? Have we made our roads too dangerous for the youth who once traveled these highways in search of self and country? Where are the working class retired in recreational vehicles and vans that once roamed this scenic landscape as a well-earned reward for a life of struggle? Have they discovered that the fruits of their labor, their life savings, are not adequate to the purpose? Have they just lost interest? It is the second reminder of this phenomenon and it leaves me perplexed. I have crossed the country by road, thumb and rail but never before have I witnessed the vanishing American tourist. The road used to be a place separate from society, almost immune to the changing times. It was a place where a young person could find something resembling freedom and it was always worth it to risk the dangers of the road just to experience that feeling.

What has changed? When did the adventurous spirit of Americans die? When did our love of freedom slip away? Now it seems the road is a desperate place where only the foreign born are found.

We decide against getting a room at the motel, opting instead to cross the barren wasteland of Nevada in the cool of the night. The moon is bright and we are charged with a wondrous strange energy as the high Sierras of California beckon us in the distance.

GRAND CANYON: THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA

2011-03-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

We are entering the barren desert that naïve visionaries once dreamed of transforming into farmland through the miracle of irrigation. That dream was long ago swept away like the sagebrush that haunts this landscape. It is hunting ground of the lone coyote, sky of the buzzard and crow, a wasteland where society digs for precious minerals and buries its toxic poisons. It is a land where dreams go to die.

The long stretch of flat desert highway between Ely and Fallen, Nevada, is known as the loneliest road in America. Ely is a major crossroad amidst this desolate land. Its tourist attractions include casinos and one of the world’s largest mining pits. We are not ready to stop in Ely. We fill up with gas and begin the crossing. Despite its flatness the elevation ranges from six to seven thousand feet above sea level. This is what is known as the high desert plains and we half expect Clint Eastwood in black to make an appearance. There are no trees. There are no wires and no electrical lights in the distance. There is nothing but sage and an eerie sensation, a sense of death and longing in the cool desert air.

Wiz has taken the wheel when we encounter kamikaze rabbits. They dash across the highway in droves and turn directly into the headlights of Mustang Sally. This is a breed of animal behavior I have never before observed. I have seen animals of all kinds frozen by the light of approaching vehicles and in their disorientation break the wrong way in an attempt to escape but I have never seen an animal plunge so intentionally into the center of a roaring mechanical beast. It shudders my soul and infuses my mind with doubt and foreboding.

Is it a sign? What lies beyond our naked view to justify such abhorrent behavior? There are thousands of them. Is it Darwin’s process of natural selection, survival of the fittest? With such a sparse supply of food, have these rabbits arrived at this solution to their over-abundant population growth? Should we see this as an act of heroism? Are they sacrificing themselves so that others of their kind can live? Or are there other forces at work: chemicals or radiation that poison and torture the unfortunate of the species? Is this a death of choice or one of madness?

We encounter a deer that startles us with a gesture that reminds us of the suicidal rabbits, feigning a dash into our headlights. We see an elk that watches us with absolute detachment. We see a lone coyote. The coyote alone seems to be home in this place. Here the coyote is king. He is neither startled nor afraid at the sight of our car streaking over asphalt in a vain attempt to outrun the barren loneliness of this land.

At Eureka nothing is open, not even a gas station. We take a look at the map and figure we have just enough to make it to Fallon. Wiz has been driving Sally hard so I take the wheel while he collapses in the passenger seat. I have slept erratically, on edge, but I am driven to put this place behind me. I feel threatened and I know the source of danger is uncertainty. I am not familiar with the rules of this road.

The wise one says: Go into the darkness and be not afraid.

But I am afraid. I can no more deny it than I can deny the moon. I experience the rabbit holocaust from the helm. It is beyond my control. I am driven. I finally begin to accept the unknown, relax and let the road with its flashing line calm me.

Wiz is still asleep when I encounter a stalled four-wheel drive on the opposite side of the road. The driver is on the road trying to wave me down. He is well dressed and the vehicle is new. There is someone else inside. I run all the factors through my mind but I do not stop. I slow and wake Wiz up. I explain the situation and he replies: I’d sure like it if someone stopped to help us. I know he’s right. I should stop and go back.

“How was he dressed?”

“He looks okay.”

I should stop and go back but I keep on driving.

“They should get some rest. There’s nothing we could do anyway. What could we do?”

I am relieved. I realize that my fear is not the risk they pose but the fear that if I stop I will be able to go again. We’re miles and miles from anywhere. Sally has driven harder and longer than she has in a decade. Rational or irrational, I’m afraid.

“We’ll call the highway patrol when we get to the next town.”

“They won’t be stranded long.”

Wiz goes back to sleep. I keep driving. I feel a little better when a truck passes. Truckers have CB radios. All will be well. Still, it is a strange feeling to find myself in a survival mode. How quickly we forget others when we sense ourselves in danger. To feel threatened by the simple act of stopping to aide a fellow traveler. The mirror is unkind. I know this will stay with me a long time. The karmic debt gains a notch.

The sun is slowly rising. The desolate landscape is becoming clearer with stark treeless mountains now in view, rising from the flatland plateau. During the course of a long night I realize that I cannot be sure about the gas status. The gauge is inoperable. The tank originally held twenty gallons but I’m sure about the replacement. The capacity of the new tank is uncertain.

Wiz wakes up some hours into the day and announces, looking at the road atlas, that we are in a danger zone. We have no idea what that means but there it is in black and white. We have entered a danger zone. There are postings in the sage alongside the road at approximately two hundred yard intervals and a hundred yards into the desert. They are too far away to read from the highway. My only thought is: This is not a good place to run out of gas. I wonder if this is my karma for failing to stop in the night.

The road before Fallon is far longer than its mileage. We enter the desert mountains and I coast on the downhills. I whisper solemn encouragement to Sally. Just a little longer. At each crest I look for signs of civilization like a ship lost at sea looking for land. There are cluster of crow, groups of five to seven, and that somehow gives me comfort. Where the crow lives, civilization cannot be far away.

At last Fallon appears like an oasis on the horizon. We have survived desolation row and the loneliest road in America. The gas meter reads 13.1 gallons. The attendant informs us that the danger zone refers to the naval air station’s use of the land for target practice.

It could have been worse. Much worse. The danger was more imaginary than real.

Still I have no desire to pass this way again.

GRAND CANYON: FLIGHT OF THE GRAY EAGLE

2011-03-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

We are no more than a stone’s throw from the grand Sierra Mountains, dividing Nevada from California. In the beginning this journey was billed as a trip to the golden state where I was born and raised.

“Going home. Wouldn’t mind some company but I’m going just the same.”

From the moment Wiz decided he would join me, the trip became much more. We spent the night before our departure in the Wiz’s makeshift studio, an old school house in the hills of the Tennessee countryside. We were recording the jazz poetry play inspired by our meeting. It was a wild futuristic vision of Joan of Arc in an underground setting and it took us more than five hours to complete. Wiz controlled all sound, playing keyboard, sax and trumpet as well as working the microphones. The only sounds he did not control were the voices of the actors and the relentless cicada outside.

It was an ordeal and an epic accomplishment. It enabled us to embark on our journey as jazz poets. One of our accomplices gave us references in Albuquerque and a friend from Florence, Alabama where Wiz grew up gave us a stop in Berkeley.

By the time we left Albuquerque none of that seemed important. Jazz poetry was no longer at the forefront of our psyches. We had become Zen Golfers in the sacred moon of Grand Canyon. We had taken the spirit of the Black Crows. We had leaped into the darkness. We had seen death and played our part in it. We had heard the laughter of a Zen master. We had known fear and loneliness as well as beauty beyond belief.

Now, as we ascend the Sierras, we gather our thoughts and collect our visions for soon we would be called upon to become social beings. My family is gathered at the home of my aunt and uncle in Graeagle, California, just over the hills. It had been a year since I had seen any of them. My Aunt Zella and Uncle Tim, cousins Tim and Cathy, and a scattering of friends I had not seen in two years. My older brother, the dark sheep of the family, had only recently returned from Arizona. I had not seen him in over five years.

Graeagle is a family place. As a child I spent many summers in what was then a sparsely populated mountain town. The people who could make a living here were a rare and sturdy breed. It was originally a logging town. The men took jobs in the lumber mills and logging camps during the summer and scraped by the best they could during the winter. It was well suited to a man for all seasons, a jack-of-all-trades, and the mechanically minded. Wiz is such a man. My Uncle Tim is such a man as well, strong and soft-spoken. His son of the same name was made from the same mold. He overcame a reputation for wildness and recklessness to carve his own nitch. His wife of equally sturdy timber and a heart of gold had a lot to do with his success.

Graeagle was an outdoorsman’s paradise. Over the years it had changed. Only an hour from Reno, Nevada, it is now the home of at least three championship golf courses and a burgeoning community of summer homes for the wealthy. My Aunt Zella, a gifted storyteller who came from hardworking folks herself, had the foresight to start a gourmet coffee, candy and card shop in a little space next to the town store. The shop prospered and relocated to its own building on the town’s main street. She passed it down to her son Tim and his wife.

My mother Artis, an artist and as sweet a woman as ever graced the planet, has taken to spending much of her time with her sister Zella. It was a development that left my father feeling alone but that was his own doing. Under the spell of second childhood, he went off on adventures, living away from his family in central California for years at a time. Zella and Artis had found paradise somewhere up on the Klamath River in northern California, where Zella and Uncle Tim owned a cabin. The gray eagle had flown north, leaving behind the old wooden Indian outside the town store and they had followed their own bliss.

The Fourth of July gathering in Graeagle had become a family tradition. My oldest brother John and his family started it many years ago. I had joined in the last few years before moving to Nashville. My sister Sue and her husband Robert were now a part of the tradition, as were most of my fellow siblings and their families.

On this summer only one of my family had opted for a separate vacation. He stands out by his absence. I recall how often he spoke of this place with longing. After a brief separation, his wife had given birth to their second child in the last year. I wonder what unresolved conflicts remain between them. Not coming to Graeagle was a statement.

The family welcomes us and takes Wiz into their embrace. There is always room for one more at the family gathering. My uncle is Polish and is thrilled to share his heritage with the new arrival. Wiz has an easy style and manner with people of all ages. It is one of his many gifts. I envy that quality while recognizing that it comes with an obligation and a responsibility to be generous with one’s time. It can be a curse as well as a blessing but if it is a burden he carries it well.

We exchange stories and make plans. Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we will watch the local parade, play golf on the local nine-hole course, and settle in for the fireworks display. Zella inquires about my wife and wonders when she will get to meet her. My wife has instructed me to reply that we need some time apart. I say only that she has business back in Nashville. She’s in the music business. When I left she was recording in two studios: one as an artist and the other as songwriter/musician. I am not aware that business has slowed to a crawl in the city of music two thousand miles away.

I have called only once and left a message on the phone machine. I have always had a mistrust of phone communications. I need to see a person to trust what he or she is saying. It has been a difficult year, a survival year in many ways, and I want my mind free of the debris it has left with me. I want to focus on the moment. I am a married man approaching his fortieth birthday. I am a speech pathologist in the public schools. I am a writer by avocation only. But tonight and for the length of the journey I am none of these things. I am a man in search of his calling.

The night is spent in the motel room of my sister Sue and her husband Robert. Among the family Sue is closest to me in both age and philosophy. Robert has often served as both counselor and antagonist in late night discussions on the meaning of life, marriage and most anything else that arises in late night discourse. Sue once came to me on a mission to give testimony to the power of the mind. She had taken a course teaching techniques of mind control and affirmation. She was surprised to find me receptive. I did not have to be convinced. I was already a believer. She thanked me for affirming her sanity against the chorus of criticism and belittlement she received from others, family and friends alike.

Over the years Sue and I would share our ideas concerning auras, meditation, altered states, alternative consciousness, charkas, crystals, karma, reincarnation, the afterlife, religion and the New Age. Nothing is beyond the realm of possible and noting is to be trivialized, scoffed at or mocked. The closeness of our bond was more than blood kinship. It was mutual respect, unconditional trust and a shared sense of wonder in the world of ideas.

In some ways our collaboration served to protect her from the cynicism of a family raised on atheism. I was respected as the smartest member of the clan, the only one to receive a higher degree in college. It was a title I never claimed. I enjoy study. I enjoy reading, writing and research. These qualities made me a better student than my siblings. From my point of view, it has little to do with intelligence however that concept may be defined.

Each member of our family needed something to distinguish him or her from the pack. John was a leader, a coach, an organizer and the enforcer of family values. Brother Randy was a smooth operator, a dandy, gifted with the ladies. He was wild but he had the best shot in basketball and a solid golf game. Sue was the communicator, the most spiritual and often the arbiter of dispute. Dave was the hardest worker, the most determined and without doubt the best golfer. Bob was always level headed, pragmatic and a genuine artist. Robin was both the most attractive and sensitive and the best with children. Tom excelled in imagination and had a gift for gadgetry and mechanics. He would go on to get a degree in engineering.

Our family album was like a high school yearbook. Our trophy case was full. We all had something to contribute. It was not for me to tip the balance.

My long lost brother Randy joins us at this gathering. He has been to the lower depths of drugs, poverty and self-imposed banishment to Arizona and parts unknown. He has returned to the family circle. Wiz admires his response to the constant preaching he is obliged to receive. It is well intentioned. Randy listens attentively and calmly as he is reminded of the times he betrayed the family trust. He nods and replies: I agree with you one hundred percent. He seems to mean it and has learned the futility of explaining his past. He is a recovering junkie. He speaks of friends know to us all who have died on the path he has walked.

Randy tells us the story of an old family friend. Sue offers testimony of his kindness. Like my brother, he was a good man who got lost in the shadows of an alternate lifestyle. He was living a separate reality. Randy protests that he was not a junkie. His poisons were alcohol and cocaine, afflictions that grab hold of so many. He says the drugs did not kill him as much as a broken heart. He was devoted to the love of a woman. When she left him he was done. They found him lying on the floor of his apartment, drowned in his own vomit.

He tells me that if his life is ever written it should be called: Sleeping with the Ants.

I don’t ask for an explanation.

Wiz is reminded of his own brother, something he rarely speaks about. He is remembered as a great man gone astray. It is a ghost we share: the knowledge that within ourselves there lurks an attraction to the darkness. There is a cynical side. There is a blues man. There is a rebel who would lead us to the edge of the abyss and push us over. If not for the grace of god…

His brother did not survive. He lives only in memories as a constant reminder of how wrong life can go. He lives in the hearts and minds of those he left behind. He is remembered for the good times and the love but his memory will always be accompanied by sorrow and longing.

My brother is still alive. His manner is light and easy, his spirit full of joy and laughter. He has looked into the eyes of the beast and lived to tell the story. At this moment, frozen like the still waters of a moonlit pond, he has no need to return to the life he led. I believe him because he believes himself. We do not know what the future holds. We can never know. But for now, in this refuge beneath the towering pines, he has rejoined the children of light. He is in the family circle.

We spend hours trying to play a song they’ve written called A Family Tradition. Robert spends as much time explaining that he can’t sing as he does singing. The late hour entrance of our eldest brother John finally interrupts us. He has taken my father’s place as the man who holds the family together. He has learned to temper his own wildness with the wisdom his wife Margie has nurtured in him.

He tells us the police stopped him on his way here. He had been drinking and left his headlights on high beam. The cop let him off with a warning, on the condition that Margie would drive the rest of the way.

It is a cautionary warning and a sign. We are all of us inclined to live a little recklessly in the spirit of celebration. Behold the signs. Go easy. We retire for the evening.

The next morning we gather in front of the Mill Works to watch the Fourth of July Parade. It is pure Rockwell. It summons a more innocent time in America. There is a Vietnam veteran, paralyzed from the waist down, who has traveled the length and breadth of the country in his wheelchair for the rights of the handicapped. He is a genuine American hero and the inspiration of this year’s Graeagle tradition. The volunteer fire department, the logging industry, the jazz jubilee, the Sierra Club and the developers are all represented.

It is a slice of American pie that seems as distant as the seventh star of the Pleiades.

My cousin is a judge on the parade platform, a highly respected position. This same man who once uprooted a kitchen counter and walked through a plate glass door in a nightmare of Armageddon is now a pillar of his community.

Change is possible.

The time has arrived for a round of family golf. We have two foursomes. My father has been uncharacteristically quiet but now he’s in his element. He challenges our concept of the Zen of golf but when I ask him if he has ever guided the ball with his mind it clicks. He loves the game and has often spoken of its mental aspects. I have witnessed him call on the powers of the masters during a round. In my mind he is held back from the realization he has long sought by his competitive nature and the desire for the power of a younger man.

There is some confusion over starting times so we are forced to wait a couple of hours. Mental and physical fatigue is setting in by the time our names are called. The group in front is apparently intimidated and asks us to play through. I decline but my father yells out: Don’t let them fool! They can hit the ball a mile!

We play through at their insistence. My father’s foursome is up first. Pop rips a drive down the middle of the fairway. My brother Randy steps up and sends one hooking out of bounds. My brother-in-law Robert follows with another OB left. My sister adds two more.

One of the foursome who graciously let us play through remarks: Well, I didn’t know they were going to hit two balls apiece.

My foursome adds to the OB total by two. My shot is a dribbler but at least it’s in play. I have often seen this phenomenon. Add a little pressure to the first tee and watch what happens. Observe the player in front of you go astray and you’re more likely to follow. It is the nature of the game.

We settle down to some golf. I finish three over par despite an opening double bogey. The shot of my round is a five iron to within six inches of the hole for a birdie. Visions of the Canyon are alive and well.

The foursome is up and down. My youngest brother Tom is a little too in love with power. He struggles through eight holes but unleashes a monster 280-yard drive to just short of the green on the ninth. It is the talk of the day. His girlfriend is an attractive nurse with a BMW and a friendly disposition. She’s a beginner in golf but plays with touch and finesse. Little brother is a good teacher. Her etiquette is spot on. Wiz surrounds a healthy number of pars and bogeys with a couple of disastrous holes.

All in all, we enjoy the round, the companionship and the walk.

The mood in the other foursome is different. Robert, who thrives on the challenge of competition, tells us what transpired. It seems Randy had been taunting him with an offer of one stroke per hole. Their scores are only a few strokes apart. Neither my father nor my sister wants to talk about their rounds.

When the time is right I speak to my father about the dangers of playing for power. He agrees and promises to make amends.

Swing easy, hit hard.

My brother crowns me the new family champion but reigning champion is not here. I sense family trouble, an old rivalry, and want no part of it. Competition has played a major role in my upbringing. I have grown to recognize the value of competition in instilling drive and inspiring progress but have also recognized its darker influence. The drive for mastery should come from within. The desire to improve and achieve should be independent of one’s competitive standing. A player should never be satisfied with a round because his score was one better than his rival. There is nothing on the golf course uglier than a golfer reveling in his partner’s misfortune. It will inevitably express itself in his own misfortune somewhere down the line.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a round well played. I do. And if that round is reflected in the score it pleases me. But if I ever find myself rooting against a fellow player or worse, planting misfortune in his mind (“Watch out for the water on the right.”), I know I have lost my way and my game will suffer.

Respect your fellow golfers.

GRAND CANYON: DOWN HOME IN THE VALLEY

2011-03-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

There’s an old movie from the fifties called the Snake Pit in which a song is a running theme: Going home, going home, I’m a going home…

That song keeps running through my head as we descend from the mountains, leaving behind the thin clean air and the scent of pine, down to the valley where I was raised. For all the beauty I have experienced, from the glistening sanctity of the northwest coast to the barren solemnity of the sculpted desert, from the tropical density of the southeast forest to the magical colors of a New England fall, this unremarkable flatland before us is and always will be my home.

It is not the first time I have been away. I lived for two years in the Big Apple pursuing the dream of an artist. I never regretted leaving home but I always knew I would return. I know that now even if I will not reveal it. Nashville is another adventure but it is not my home and it never will be.

Three cars leave Graeagle at the same time on a Sunday afternoon: Wiz and me in Sally, my father and brother Randy in a rough-running 1985 Mustang, and Robert and Sue in their new four-wheel drive Cherokee. The drive is about two hundred miles and normally takes about three and a half hours. After a half hour delay, Robert and Sue make it home to Modesto in four hours. Wary of a prolonged traffic jam and the possibility of overheating, both Mustangs veer south. My father and Randy will arrive in nine hours. We will arrive in ten.

We follow the path that the journey takes us. Rather than fight the traffic, we play golf in Truckee when the opportunity presents itself. We are joined on the first tee by a twosome bearing our first names. Remarkably, it is the first time I have heard the Wiz introduce himself by the name of Jim. They are a doctor and a lawyer nearing retirement age. The doctor is an easy going ethereal man whose first choice in hobbies is tennis. He is taking up golf in earnest now that his knees have betrayed him. The lawyer is more serious and stoic. He has taken lesson recently and is determined to get his money’s worth. The doctor is adept at chiding him for his seriousness in a way that does not offend.

We enjoy the company of our playing partners. They speak of the harshest winter in recorded California history. Coming in the wake of an eight-year drought, they were snowed in well into spring. It reminds me of the storm that greeted the Donner Party, which they tell us is not more than a mile away as the crow flies.

The golf is unremarkable except for an incident that seems to send the entire foursome into a tailspin. On the fifth tee my drive sails to the left out of sight. My vision is obstructed but I am told it skipped hotly by an older woman on an adjacent fairway. Wiz witnesses the event but he is not sufficiently in tune with the etiquette of yelling Fore! It is of course my responsibility. I walk over to their green to apologize and the lady is livid. I try to explain but she’s not having it. I wonder if I should have been more in tune with my surroundings and my fellow golfers. Was it a failure of awareness? My partners advise me to shrug it off but within two holes we’re all struggling. At the end of nine, we decide to play three more to recover our games. We do and exchange well wishing with our namesakes before hitting the road.

We find the traffic is still jammed as we head toward the western shore of Lake Tahoe. Twilight glistens on enchanted waters and we stop for a bite and a bottle of beer. The Wiz buys and I am increasingly aware of his generous nature. We have noticed that a section of Highway 50 is closed and the waitress informs us that cars were sinking in a bad mixture of recently applied asphalt.

We will later learn that my father was caught in that mixture. Their journey takes them on a series of detours and almost comes to blows. The interstate jam, caused by a fruit check, turned out to be the least troublesome. Our road is a series of jams to the valley floor but we don’t mind. Wiz serenades a car full of young ladies with my trumpet. They are thrilled and we chase them down the mountain in the spirit of the moment. It develops into a game of tease and tantalize. We pull off for coffee in Placerville and they nearly follow, veering to the exit before driving on. Had they stopped we would have had an interesting conversation.

We arrive in Modesto after midnight. It takes some time to rouse my sister from her bed. We exchange stories briefly and retire for the night.

It’s almost as if I never left.

GRAND CANYON: MOTOWN

2011-03-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

To the rest of the world Motown refers to the Motor City, home of the American automobile, conjuring images of the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Shondells, Aretha Franklin and Cadillac Records but to those who hail from the central valley of California Motown is Modesto, home of Gallo Wine and American Graffiti.

Modesto is at the dead center of the richest agricultural land the world has ever known outside the Nile. Modesto is from the Spanish for modest and it is appropriately named. I wonder how it looks through Wiz’s eyes with its flatland profile, its Quik Stops and 7-11’s, its Burger Kings and lighted ballparks, its almond orchards and shopping malls, its construction projects and commercialism, its main drag and downtown improvement, its tree lined streets and industrial parks.

In parts of the Midwest I’m told Modesto is known as Sin City. It is a crossroad in the drug trade. In my own travels I have rarely encountered anyone who has even heard of the town except those who have been here. For years there was a controversy played out in the editorial page of the local paper regarding the absence of freeway signs referring to Modesto. We call it a town but the population is over 200,000. To me it is a lot like every town.

Over the years Modesto has undergone massive growth and development yet somehow it remains essentially the same. The children here still have a hard time finding anything to do outside of sports. The adults never tire of complaining about the rebelliousness of youth only now it relates to gangs. Modesto’s prime agricultural land is shrinking. Crime and unemployment are high. Local politicians have given lip service to limited growth policy but the developers march on without restraint.

It is a town of strange bedfellows and curious contradictions. The city council has outlawed the tradition of the cruise made famous by Modesto raised filmmaker George Lucas but they reserve one night a year each summer for reenactment.

There is a new and positive development: the downtown Café. Young people gather with books and notepads, listening to music and talking about art. They look at their elders as we looked at ours with trepidation and mistrust. In my eyes they appear to be taking notes for a cultural revolution. I like the look of them and wish them success whatever the consequences.

A good friend of mine has contributed to the trend by opening a bistro called Deva after his oldest daughter. It is first on my list of places to go. Charlie is one of the nicest guys in America. In more than ten years the harshest criticism I’ve ever heard him utter is: You must be high! I met Charlie at the crossroad of women and sports. I was then a college student involved with an interesting woman from my old neighborhood. Her sister was married to one of the few remaining longhairs from the late sixties. Ron is also one of the nicest guys in America. He was destined to lose his then wife for lack of ambition. My own relationship would stumble to a close after little more than a year. I was never quite certain why it ended but I suspect my interest in sports, my philosophic opposition to marriage and my distrust of counseling contributed to the fading of our relationship. I had begun to look in other directions and so had she.

Before our relationships ended, Ron invited me to try out for a city league softball team. I did and played for the Westside Hammers for the next few seasons. Charlie played third base and Ron was the centerfielder. Before long we were gathering at Charlie’s place on Paradise Road, talking baseball, passing the pipe and listening to rock and roll. Neil Young was Charlie’s hero. My oldest brother John offered me a place in a fantasy baseball team. I recruited Ron and Charlie as my partners and took him up. That was the beginning of a long commitment. My participation in softball would end when I took a part in a summer Shakespeare production but the fantasy baseball team would endure.

Looking back I am amazed at how a chain of seemingly random events so profoundly shape our lives. Our ends never know our means. On the perpetually winding road of life there is so much to be grateful for and so little to regret. I love this life. I love living it. I love bending with the wind in search of my own destiny. Above all I love the people who have become a part of my life.

Charlie’s wife Cathy is a gifted teacher who as chance would have it worked with my mother as instructional aide. She has a strong spiritual side. She believes she has encountered extraterrestrial life on earth and greets that knowledge with both wonder and apprehension. Ron’s second wife Deborah is a nurse and a wise soul from the flower child tradition. She compliments and accepts Ron as himself. She has no need to inspire him with greater ambition. Their children are as gifted and talented as their parents are, free spirits who find their own paths to make a mark in this ever-changing world.

As the Wiz and I make our way to Charlie’s café, the one word that describes both him and the circle of friends surrounding him occurs to me: Acceptance. There is a simple creed governing the conduct of this sacred circle that strangely seems to require a great deal of intellect to comprehend. There is no wrong where there is no harm. At Charlie’s place you are not judged for your opinions, tastes, manner of speech or choice of appearance. Each individual is valued for his contribution to the harmony of the whole. Like Wiz it is a quality that calls on Charlie to give much of his time and energy. It is not his habit to cut a conversation short or turn down a friend in need. As a consequence he will often let his phone ring for hours without answering it. Even nice guys need their own time.

I don’t have an address for the café. I only know it is somewhere on Jay Street, a road that runs from the west side to the center of town and feeds eventually to the new main drag at five corners. We begin on the west side and work our way eastward. I have pictured an informal atmosphere, low keyed and low overhead, like a converted storefront with wooden spools for tables and director chairs dispersed without any discernable pattern. I picture a bar rather than a service counter, a sound system next to the cash register with a rich collection of tapes and disks. On the walls I see avant-garde artwork, photographs and rock posters in style of the psychedelic sixties. Neil Young’s Ragged Glory is playing through quadraphonic speakers. Wednesday night poetry, Thursday jazz and Friday rock is on the program. Books of interest adorn shelves in one corner of the room where a water pipe hides behind a potted plant.

In the back of my mind I hear Charlie saying: You must be high!

We finally locate Deva in the center of town, only a handful of blocks from the main drag. Times have changed. I realize that my vision was drawn from my own ambitions in another time and place. Charlie is no sentimental fool, at least not where business is concerned. Deva is not highbrow but it is impressively upscale by local standards. On the walls are large prints by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and others against a tasteful wallpapered background. Classical music floats softly through the air. A single Neil Young ballad is the only concession to the owner’s personal taste. The décor compliments a menu with items like Pesto a la Panache.

Times have changed. It is I suspect the finest café-bistro in old Motown with a clientele of downtown lawyers, judges and business people.

A beautiful and talented actress, a young woman who was the source of many wet dreams in my former days, greets us at a table by the windows. She is our waitress. I offer an opinion that she has the best boss in town. She agrees with a hint of doubt: You mean Charlie? She has more than one boss. I later learn that Charlie and Cathy have hired a friend from Seattle as a consultant.

Deva is the only establishment in northern California with Guinness stout on tap. Served as intended at room temperature, I am certain that is Charlie’s touch. I suspect the place will take on more of his imprint as time goes by.

Charlie makes a late entrance and his eyes light up. Introductions around. The Wiz is welcomed into the circle. Cathy joins us with a warm embrace. She tells us about a friend who recently died in a car wreck while traveling at an estimated 120 miles per hour. By divine coincidence, at the approximate time of his death I happened to send an email entitled: Is anybody out there? It reads in part:

He was a man who befriended many, who left his mark on trees and park benches…and in the hearts of those he loved. He wandered long and far from home. He returned to find no one who remembered his name. His mark erased, painted over by graffiti artists… Is anybody out there? Does anybody know my name?

The words were not intended in effigy or as an epitaph. They were elicited by the journey before me, not the journey behind. Yet how strangely poignant they are in the death of a friend. Death too is a journey. It is a journey that escapes none of us. As Charlie says: No one gets out alive. He is not in mourning. He says his friend went the way he would like to go, in a blaze of glory, fast, reckless and wild like James Dean. I knew him only as a friend of Charlie’s, a man with a quick smile and encouraging words.

Ron soon joins us with his youngest child Manon, after the film Manon of the Spring. She is a beautiful child, full of life and laughter. We all sit for a few on the house. The more things change the more they stay the same: Baseball, David Lynch, Neil Young and the passage of time. We are invited to dinner and a gathering of minds. We accept and make our way to the Mustang where Manon coaxes the Wiz into a little music on the streets of Motown. The journey brings out the child in us all.

The gods of golf are calling once again.

GRAND CANYON: GOLF AT THE MUNI

2011-03-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

There are three public golf courses in Modesto. The oldest is a nine-hole layout next to the ballpark affectionately referred to as the Muni. It is the equivalent of no name at all since all public courses are municipal. Despite the flat terrain the Muni is an excellent test of skill. Its fairways lined with tall sycamore, oak and pine require the golfer to bend the ball both left and right. It is a course designed for shot making.

The finishing holes offer a fair sampling of all the shots in golf. Number seven is a 475-yard par five. For a long hitter it is reachable in two shots but there are a line of trees about two hundred and fifty yards down. The hole calls for a draw off the tee, bending to the left to clear the barrier of trees. The second shot presents a choice: You may be able to reach the green with a fairway wood but you have to avoid a trap guarding the left side and out of bounds on the right. The safer option is to lay up with a mid iron to the right leaving a short wedge to the green. It takes the trap and out of bounds out of play. A third option is to drill a two iron to the front, leaving a chip for eagle. It carries the same risk as a fairway wood to a lesser degree. Unless you’re in the zone the safe play is the best play.

The eighth hole is a standard 150-yard par three to a large sloping green with a large bunker on the left. Pin placement is critical. If the hole is located short right you can fire an eight iron at the stick. If it’s up left the trap comes into play. Aim at the pin and you risk the trap or worse, skipping over the backside for a tough chip back. The best play is an easy seven iron to the middle of the green. Take your chances with the putter.

Number nine is a classic and one of the toughest holes in the valley: A long par four dogleg right with a road bordering the entire right side and a tough bunker to the left of the green. A power fade off the tee leaves you a long iron or a five wood home. There is nothing easier in golf than losing a long iron to the right. The shot calls for a low draw or a gentle fade aimed directly at the trap. If you hit the trap, however, you would prefer to hit from the green side, leaving an uphill lie and a relatively easy sand shot.

My only eagle came on the fifth hole, a short par four. I chipped in after an excellent drive. The Muni has the added feature of a free driving range with room enough for a solid five iron.

I love the Muni. Back in the day we used to play those three holes over and over into the night, stopping only when we could no longer see the flight of the ball. I went to high school a block down the road. We paid five dollars for a monthly pass of unlimited play. Those days are long gone.

Ironically, I was not in love with the game back then. It was the late sixties to early seventies and I had plenty to occupy my mind. It was a time of upheaval. I started hitchhiking and had plans to join the flower children of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. I almost dropped out of school. I had my first taste of mind-bending drugs. I went public with my agnostic views on religion and experienced the effects of ostracism. It was a time of great change and great promise and I wanted nothing more than to be a part of it.

There was so much I did not understand and could not condone. As graduation speaker I accused our president of lying and causing the death of over fifty thousand American soldiers as well as more than a million Vietnamese. More than anything else I represented the frustration and sense of betrayal that my generation felt. In the wake of Kent State and Jackson State, Berkeley, Watts and Chicago, we felt we were disenfranchised.

The worst was yet to come. For me as for countless others the ultimate betrayal was the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I had seen him only days before he was gunned down on the back of a campaign train running through the central California valley. All the joy and promise I once felt was suddenly transformed into a pervasive cynicism. I felt betrayed not only by the nation’s leaders but by the elders of my own generation. To have offered so much hope only to have it smothered and swept away into the back pages of history before I was old enough to play my part.

It seemed a cruel fate to be born at precisely the wrong time: Old enough to be aware but too young to engage. It would be years before I understood well enough to forgive them and to forgive myself. There was nowhere to go and nothing to be done. I had no plan and those we had empowered with our faith were all gone. Dead and gone. We thought we could change the world on faith alone but we were wrong. Jim Morrison became the spokesman of a lost generation and James Dean its hero.

Survival is the cardinal rule of the revolution and the one most overlooked. Too late. It was much too late. Those of us who survived must carry on in our own individual ways. It would be many years before I could recover enough faith to enjoy the simple pleasures and pastimes of life, including baseball where the drama of life is metaphorically played out every year over the course of spring, summer and fall, and including golf which more than any other sport is a game of individual faith.

It is Saturday morning and we arrive at the Muni for a round with my father and an old friend. Mike and I share a common interest in golf, baseball and theater. We met during our college days when we were both engaged in competitive speech. He made his mark with a rhetorical analysis of Charles Lindberg’s opposition to America’s entry into World War II. The tainting of an American hero. My greatest accomplishment was a gold prize in Reader’s Theater at the state championship for my portrayal of the legendary Woody Guthrie in a show called Hard Travelin’. For years after I would answer to the call of Woody. The show turned professional and played the college circuit for a year. It sent my ambition soaring. I wrote, directed and acted in my first original play, Fosdick and Muldoon. I moved to New York shortly thereafter to stake my claim. Two years later I came back home with more modest expectations.

Mike was a member of the cast for both Hard Travelin’ and Fosdick and Muldoon. I typed him as an accountant whose central motive was to win at any cost. There’s a lot of history between us and a lot of memories. Our compadre back in the day was a man who married and later divorced Mike’s sister after a long struggle with alcoholism. He was one of the most intelligent and levelheaded persons I ever knew. There but for the grace of god go all of us. At one point he called upon his circle of friends to provide support in his battle. It was the first time I had heard the term Intervention. I felt acutely uncomfortable sitting in his living room, listening to testimonials of the harm, pain and despair he had caused. My days with him were full of joy and laughter, glory and adventure. He had never been a source of misery to me but I was told these accusations were critical to his recovery. I sensed that I was much too far removed from his life to be of help. Maybe I also feared that I was in danger of drowning myself so I didn’t have the heart to hang on to a drowning man.

The last I heard from him he was doing well, a dedicated member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had begun a new relationship. From the depths of my heart I wished him well. I offered him what I did not know then was a major truism of AA: One day at a time.

Don’t look back, brother. You can never look back.

I wonder now if what drove us in those college days of glory was not some fundamental insecurity. I wonder if we sought external recognition to compensate for some deficiency in our upbringing. Our ends never know our means.

Mike is now an accountant for the county, married to a woman we half jokingly refer to as a saint. It is a title she does not claim. She has without doubt helped him along to overcome his reputation as a hot head. Wiz recognizes a few glimpses of that personality trait in his golf game. As it is in golf, so it is in life. It has been Mike’s habit to curse a wayward shot and talk incessantly about his own game to the last person on earth who wants to hear it: another golfer.

Fortunately, Mike is in control today, though his game is suffering from his characteristic stubbornness and a lack of attention. He is not interested in improving his game. He is only interested in improving his score. He does not seem to understand the relationship between the two.

I have learned not to offer advise on the course. I have come to believe that a player’s game need only be good enough to enable him or her to enjoy the walk. One does not have to play well to keep pace.

My father is on his home turf. He smacks one down the middle, long lean and mean. Wiz finds the trees left, Mike skies one to the right and chump one about a hundred yards in the fairway. Pop remarks that it is one of the worst shots he has seen me hit. His memory is apparently not as good as it once was. I make an excuse of the road though I know there are no excuses in this game. Back to basics: Balance is the first lesson. I recover with a solid shot and hit the green in three but take three putts for a double bogey. I make a note that I need to warm up before a round.

Pop, whose nickname from his boxing days is Killer, has a number of tactics to distract and otherwise thwart his opponents. In addition to good-natured ribbing, they include whispering while a fellow player is addressing the ball and standing directly behind the ball while another player hits or putts on tees and greens. They are practices that drive many golfers through the roof. Because of them I had great difficulty playing with my father until I decided to welcome distractions as a challenge to my ability to focus on the shot. Although I still may gesture for silence when others are addressing the ball, I have greatly enjoyed the rounds we have shared since that time. On the golf course, we have achieved a level of camaraderie and mutual respect that we rarely experience while living in the same house.

Pop is a great golfer and a great man. He has fought his entire life for the things he believes are right. When he stays within the limits of his age, he is the kind of golfer who compliments you on a drive fifty yards past his and then takes the wind from you sails with a 30-yard chip to the center of the cup. The difficulty is accepting one’s limitations.

I double the second hole in the same manner as the first. Bad drive, good recovery and three putts. I save par on three with an excellent wedge over a trap. I take a tough bogey on number four and after a booming drive on five, par out the nine. The last three holes I play to perfection. On seven, I take the fairway trees out of play with a draw to the left, play a mid iron to the right side and hit a wedge to within eight feet. I just miss the putt. On eight, with the pin up left, I play to the center of the green and two putt. On nine, I follow a power fade with a low two iron to the front of the green. Up and in for par.

My run of pars draws me even with the old man, who has played well despite a few careless shots. It is a good round enjoyed by all. We have each played well enough to enjoy the game, the walk and the companionship. Mike has managed to keep his cool despite his trials and Wiz takes great joy in my father’s company. According to plan, pop calls it a day after nine and we join him in the clubhouse for a beer. We talk golf, politics, Nashville and Motown. Others join in the conversation. Everyone knows Killer.

When I was growing up pop was a policeman and a wrestling promoter, a celebrity on the local sports scene. Pop has spent most of his life in the limelight. He was a star athlete as a kid. He was a top ranked boxer as a young man, at a time when pugilists were regarded as baseball or basketball players are regarded today. We kids were awed by his collection of trophies, photographs, clippings and stories. One of his most prized possessions were a championship belt and a sterling silver statuette of a boxer, commemorating his military conquest of allied China, Burma and India during the great war. He was named the most scientific boxer of the tournament and he was proud of that acknowledgement. He also had a black satin jacket with a Golden Gloves emblem on it. He once said that I was the only son who had the skills to follow him in the ring. He gave that jacket and I treasured it.

Acting as his own lawyer he sued his former fight manager for skimming the purse and won. He used that money to stake himself to his own gym in Modesto. For a while he trained boxers and promoted fights but eventually went exclusively into wrestling and rock promotion. There was just too much risk in the boxing game and not enough profit. Top ranked fighters required a large purse up front but wrestlers worked on a percentage basis. Rock and roll had a large following in a town that offered so little to its youth.

I have vivid memories of the day two young Mexican American brothers who were trained by my father decided to challenge the old man. One of them had risen to the ranks of local stardom but my father knocked them both out, one after the other in a matter of minutes. It may have ended a budding career but it secured pop’s larger than life stature in the eyes of his children.

Pop was the man who brought The Doors to Modesto only weeks before Light my Fire hit the airwaves catapulting them to international prominence. They were by far the most professional I have ever seen. They were the second bill that night and I remember a local band wanting billing above them. Their manager informed them that they did not want to follow The Doors.

Eventually pop’s promotion of rock concerts ended his career as a policeman. After twenty years service as a Westside cop, the only cop trusted in the black community during the days of racial unrest, the new chief didn’t approve of rock and roll. My father didn’t approve of the new chief or many of his policies, like ticket quotas, duck ponds, preferential law enforcement or phasing out veteran cops. He fought his dismissal and won a personnel hearing against long odds but the city dismissed him anyway. His appeal was allowed to expire by a corrupt lawyer turned politician who had volunteered to represent him at minimal cost. A red cent would have been too much. His last advice to my father was to sue him, knowing that he could not afford to do so.

I wondered then how he was paid off. The city had spared no expense defending itself in a nonbinding personnel hearing. A sitting circuit court judge who soon after was appointed to an appellate court bench represented them. He did all he could to avoid the civil rights issue at the heart of the case. The corrupt politician lawyer advised my father to save the issue for an appeal he knew would never happen. He instructed pop to cease his practice of stating his case before the public where he was winning widespread sympathy. It was then that I became suspicious but my father still believed in him. He was from our neighborhood and had been a state representative. Pop wanted to believe in him. It would be years before he realized he had been betrayed.

The local paper pulled an enthusiastic reporter from the case when he got too close to the truth. The story had been front-page news but was afterward buried in the back pages. A particularly damning piece of evidence, a newspaper clipping in which the chief and several of his lieutenants advocated an ordinance requiring local businesses to purchase alarm systems. The article did not mention that those same individuals had started a security alarm business, a clear conflict of interest. The profit they stood to gain was staggering. My father spent hours in the local library looking through back issues to find that article to no avail. Somehow the city had been tipped off. The article disappeared. The mayor, who had advocated the establishment of a citizen’s review board for police affairs, was called to testify and turned to mush. The case was much larger than the mayor’s office.

This was the way city hall fights back against those who dare to stand up against the machine. They all but crushed my father’s spirit. He was only months shy of retirement but they could not allow him to retain his job after such a challenge. He ended up selling the wrestling business and found jobs as a security here and there. He moved from Modesto to the bay area to Reno to Portland, Oregon.

In Portland he suffered a heart attack on the golf course and returned home for bypass surgery. I happened to be at his side when he awoke from the operation. He held my hand as if for life itself. It was a strange feeling to be holding the hand of this proud man who had long ago rejected his religious upbringing to stand alone as an atheist of conviction. I felt his fear of death.

I wanted to be sure he knew I loved him. We were all changed by that experience. We were all a little wiser and a little stronger. Life is frail in the strongest man but life goes on in the community of man.

Of all the words the great Walt Whitman ever wrote the only ones I ever disagreed with were those of his most his most famous poem:

Do not go gently into that goodnight
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

I believe that this life is but a prelude to the great mystery ahead. We should not race to an end but neither should we fail to accept it when death arrives. When the time comes we should go gently into that goodnight. But Whitman spoke for my father now and it was not his time to go.

Within three years my father’s father, a wise and devoutly spiritual man, my father’s sister, who had fallen into her own snake pit of madness and returned, his mother, who was always kind to her grandchildren but who preached hatred and distrust of men, and his brother, who in the end betrayed him by handing what remained of the family inheritance to an opportunist black widow, would all be gone. Like my father, maybe they expected too much in life and, with the exception of my grandfather, too little in death.

Pop was the last of his family and in a very real sense he was more alone than he had ever been. He is in many ways the tragedy of the American family.

My mother understandably grew apart from him during his years of wandering. She grew stronger over the years, influenced partly by the women’s movement and partly by her own resolve. After more than two decades of raising a family of eight children, running a home and keeping the books of the family business, she was forced to reenter the workforce. At fifty-five she learned to drive a car alone for the first time. She soon learned that she had valuable skills to offer and that children instinctively treasured her. Eventually, she secured her own modest retirement and began spending more and more time with her sister and less with the family in Modesto. We were all very proud of her fortitude and accomplishment but saddened that she was no longer around as much as we would have wanted. We were saddened too that my father’s pride was damaged; however much he brought it on himself. Her dependency was broken and they would never again be as close as they once were.

Now it seems pop lives mainly for golf, for the camaraderie and competition it affords him, and for the hope that my mother will one day forgive him and come home. He is unable to live in the secluded surroundings of the Klamath River cabin nor in the mountain environment of Graeagle. He needs the company of his family and friends as much as he needs her affection.

Let go. Let go of the things you love and they will find you. Let go of your feelings of guilt and betrayal to rediscover your own sense of worth. Sit still in the winter of your discontent and behold the glory and the beauty of life all around you. The best is yet to come.

We leave pop at the clubhouse and embark on second nine. We are joined by a local legend known to all Golfer Joe. He has known more hard times than an Appalachian sharecropper. In his early forties he is dedicated to making a go at the senior tour on his fiftieth birthday. Outside our foursome he is pretty much the only familiar face left at the old Muni. Rising fees and the changing attitude of the new staff have alienated everyone else. They have moved on to other courses. Once a golfer is alienated it is difficult to win him back.

Joe has been able to pick up some cash giving golf lessons but is acutely worried about his job situation. The off-season unemployment rate in Modesto is up to forty percent, an astonishing figure. He talks about coming to Nashville to seek his fortune on the mini tours in the south. I can only tell him: Times are tough all over. I am unaware of Nashville’s unemployment rate but I am very much aware of the rising problem of homelessness. I am also aware of the amazement that greets me in the city of music when I say I was able to find work without difficulty.

It is hard to concentrate on the game when you’re listening to someone’s story. It is equally difficult to concentrate while telling your story. Golfer Joe has an up and down round while showing off his new titanium shaft oversized driver. He hits them long but a little out of control. I pick up a birdie on five and finish the nine three over par. On number eight I’m feeling good and go for the pin. It’s on line but comes up about ten feet short. Wiz sends a seven iron stiff to the target. It hits hard and skips to the back fringe about fifteen feet away from home. We leave the stick in as he lines it up, addresses the ball and strokes it dead center. It is his first birdie. The satisfaction of that dead solid perfect stroke will last a lifetime. It is a blessing to bear witness. He buys the beers at the clubhouse.

It’s a great round of golf.

I love this game. You can skull it, scrape it, chunk it, slice it, duck hook, shank it and yank it for seventeen holes and then: perfection. The game teaches you to hang in there no matter what happens. Never give up a shot. Never give up on a hole. Never give up on a round because, if you still believe, anything can happen. Anything you can imagine in a round of golf is possible. I am still waiting for that magic moment when the perfect shot drops into the cup for a hole-in-one. Twice on this very hole I have been everywhere but in. One hit the stick on the first bounce and settled inches from the cup. The other marked in front of the hole and finished directly behind it. Wiz’s birdie goes a long way toward keeping the faith. Hang in there. It will happen.

Keep the faith.

GRAND CANYON: THE SHADOW OF DEATH

2011-03-09T19:07:00.000-08:00

It strikes like a bolt of lightning in a summer storm
Invades the solar plexus like an omen
Spreading like a cancer like a hellish nightmare
On a sleepless night

Wolves howl at a clouded blue moon
Owls take flight and the air stills
To a hollow silence

I don’t know what we did that day. I tried to piece it together after the fact. It evaded me like an intricate puzzle. I believe it began with something mundane like taking care of some car business, an oil change for Sally.

We then played the front nine at Dryden Park, an eighteen-hole course on the Tuolumne River. I played well, birdied the par-three fifth, scored par on the sixth, the toughest hole on the course. It is a long dogleg left and would be hard enough without a tall branching oak in the center of the fairway about two hundred yards down. I hit a solid drive to the left of the oak and stiff a five iron to the back of the green. I finished the nine two over par. I can’t recall how Wiz played except that our hotshot playing partner, who was dying to give us a few tips on the game, complimented him as the most relaxed player he had ever seen.

We have a couple of the famous Dryden cheeseburgers and kill some time driving around town. We read jazz poetry accompanied by flute at Mancini Bowl in Graceada Park. It is ironic that this prominent park in this conservative town is actually named after a couple reputed to be lesbian. The amphitheater is name after Henry Mancini of the famous marching bands, another local legend.

As I near the conclusion of the first chorus of Dark Underground a drunk Latino in ragged clothes rises from his park bench and grumbles his displeasure. He throws the word Satin at us like a dagger to the throat. It gains my attention and raises my ire. The piece is in fact the story of Joan of Arc. The charge of Satanism should not surprise me by now but it does. It startles me and settles in my gut. I will not to be censored in my own hometown. I finish the chorus and flip to the Demands of the Underground:

We demand food for hunger free of charge!
We demand jobs for all who call and ones that suit our make and model not our soles!
We demand the laser stun be drop and done or access free to all!
We demand the opening of the boundaries, free travel, an end to border stops and crossing!
We demand the closing of the righteous guard! Let them work to feed the poor!
We demand access to the stars! Let all behold the heavens and scope the upper maze!
We demand a home for all and not a hole to shovel dirt in!

We finish our performance to the silence of our former critic. It hits home. He doesn’t say a word but he knows he has judged us harshly. Maybe he will think twice before he accuses someone of Satanism again. We are in fact his advocates yet he would have cut our throats had he had the chance.

We drive over to Charlie’s place on Paradise Road for an early dinner. This is where the drag races were in the bee-bop early sixties when the Wolf Man was growling on the AM radio and crew cuts glistened with the glow of Dixie Peach. It was also where my second crush lived. We were at Mark Twain Junior High. She was a cheerleader and I was vice president of the student body. We were both thin but she was a good six inches taller and I thought she was a queen. We danced all night in the age of innocence to Johnny Mathis, the Four Seasons and the Supremes. The end of that sweet and tender romance at the beginning of our freshman year was the effect of miscommunication and my initiation to the mixed blessing of relationships. It was an experience I would always treasure.

My first crush was a pretty blonde in elementary school. It ended much the same way: an awkward miscommunication gone out of control, brought on by the betrayal of a jealous friend. Funny how it stays with you, shaping how you approach relationships for much of your life.

In contrast to Deva, Charlie is a basic meat and potatoes man. His dinners are down home affairs. There is always a parade of visitors and they are always good people. Wiz entertains the kids with improvisational flute and piano. They are inspired. There will be music in their lives. We move outside to the patio and Charlie puts on our recording of Dark Underground: A Jazz Poetry Play in Fifteen Choruses. I suggest turning it off after the first chorus but Charlie insists on playing it in its entirety. It runs two hours and draws both encouraging and insightful comments.

It is the first time anyone has listened to the work beside us and the response means a lot. It has been a long and winding road in the jazz poetry business and I for one am in need of some encouraging words. We are reluctant to leave this place of warmth but the obligations of time press on.

We return to Robert and Sue’s house where we find an old friend of Robert is entertaining them. He’s a good musician with the mind of a businessman and the ambition of Julius Caesar. He has found tough times. His band in the bay area, featuring an old Chicago blues man, recently broke up. He has been diagnosed with kidney failure and his health is faltering. Wiz joins him on flute but his guitar falls oddly silent when Wiz plays and he engages in distracting conversation.

I am suddenly aware that Wiz is despondent, struggling and weak. It is a state I have not seen in him. I am only vaguely aware of the cause but a sense of discomfort settles in my soul. We are due to visit some close friends twenty miles down the road in Turlock. They are rehearsing for a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which has prevented me from seeing them until now. I suggest it is time to go and the Wiz is more than ready. In the car he informs me he is having trouble breathing. Some strange spell has taken hold of him and he feels threatened. I wait to allow him to catch his breath before telling him what he cannot know: That old friend and jealous musician is a dying man.

It is the shadow of death that follows us even now.

Adding to my own discomfort is a growing sense of anxiety. I feel vulnerable. There is a hole in my aura and I feel it. My vision is discolored, shrouded and awry. Something is happening and something must happen to relieve us of this cloud that hovers above us like the pall of a funeral procession. Wiz begins to chant in the tongue of another world. It has a calming effect like the ocean at twilight. I join in the chant but the ghost is still with us.

As we approach Turlock, Sally checks and sputters. We glide to a stop out of gas. After 2,500 miles of journey, traversing land of every description from Nevada’s desolation row to the tower peaks of Donner Summit, here by the familiar Turlock off ramp, we run out of gas. Something has happened. It could have been so much worse. I take it as a strange blessing and a warning of renewed caution.

Wiz stays with Sally as I walk the short distance to a nearby gas station. It is a time for reflection. There has been too much recklessness, too much late night partying, too much blowing with the wind, too much trust where it does not belong, too little grounding and self-control. A man must learn to play the safe shot when the safe shot is appropriate. Grip it and rip it may work for John Daly but its bound to lead you astray.

We struggle into town and the company of friends, the darkness subsiding but still hovering over us, the weight still bearing down on our shoulders. At last we arrive and the spell is broken. We have found sanctuary. The shadow has vanished. We could not outrun it but we could banish by entering a sacred circle of unconditional trust. Wiz will refer to the Jere and Patty O’Donnell as saints. They serve on this night as our guardian angels like the crow of Grand Canyon.

Heart and soul, angels above
Circle in unconditional love
Diffuse the darkness
Dry the fear from wetted brow
Smooth the furrowed woe

Blessed friendship, sacred light
Like the first beacon on a jagged shore
Like the first breath of spring

If an individual is born as I was into a warm and loving family, it is a blessing of chance or fate beyond our control or comprehension. The friends we find thereafter, those with whom we choose to share our lives with mutual respect and understanding is a blessing of choice. It is something we all search for and when we find it we instinctively embrace it. We value it highly. We must take care not to abuse it by holding too tightly or leaning on it too heavily. When I moved to Nashville it was more than difficult to leave behind this family of friends, just as it was to leave my bloodline.

Liberated from the shadow of death, we are welcomed by a warm embrace. Wiz plays more freely than he has since our journey began. Patty is entranced. She has become a politician of sorts, having been appointed to the chair of the local arts council. After years of raising a child (now eight) she is asserting herself as a major force of the local theater. It is her calling and her eyes, already brilliant, shine with enthusiasm and purpose.

Jere has become the first tenured acting instructor in the history of the local university. He speaks of playing a part in Uncle Vanya that is the kind of part he always avoided. He is playing a romantic idealist. I consider it a positive development. He has long fought that side of himself that is as natural as honey to a bee. What he perceived as a weakness has opened a door. He will become the stronger for it.

Our old friend Gary is also here. He has a calm about him that is rare. Having quit a job as a cook due to a back condition that will not allow him to stand for long periods of time, he is jobless. His situation is little changed but he is being paid for the part he is acting in Vanya and he treasures working with the O’Donnell’s.

Gary should be an acting instructor in a high school or college. He has the talent, the experience and the acquired wisdom of a natural teacher but he is haunted by a mistake he made in the distant past. While working as an elementary school teacher he was busted for importing hashish. It was decades ago at a time when it was far less shocking than it would be today and it should be expunged from his record. But in the small town mentality of the central valley, records are never expunged. Still he is well. He offers Wiz and I a reading from the I Ching and a quote that came to him from some external voice:

At last the wanderer understood
It was the cup, not the water
It was the journey, not the spring
It was the search, not the drinking

There is a feeling of peace, contentment, a mood of calm reflection and joy. It is unusual in the days preceding opening night. It is late and time to move on. We will see them again and thank them for an inspired performance on the opening of Uncle Vanya. We make a golf date with Jere and Patty though it will keep us here longer than we originally intended.

It is difficult to let go.

GRAND CANYON: BAY AREA POETRY SCENE

2011-03-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

Since we arrived in Modesto we have had little time to sit back, relax and reflect. The commitment of family and friends is gratifying but we have a yen to continue the adventure of the road. We have a day open and decide to make a sojourn to San Francisco and an appointment with the king of the Bay Area poetry scene. Wiz has made a connection through Jake Berry, a Florence Alabama poet of underground notoriety, a poet of poets. He is convinced that San Francisco will embrace our cutting edge style and content.

We get an early start and ascend from the valley of agriculture, past the windmills of Altamont Pass, where the Rolling Stones hosted the concert that became the film Gimme Shelter, and veer north to the city that gave birth to most of the dreams of my youth: Berkeley, California. I tell Wiz about the changes I have witnessed here since the days I used to thumb a ride, hang out in the square listening to the conga line, roam Telegraph Avenue in search of a new nation, study the hipsters in the cafes, and crash by a creek that runs through the campus of the university.

I remember the beautiful beaded woman in layered dress and painted face who gave me a smile and a kiss of promise. It was the dawning of a new age. I remember the charge that ran through this chosen place like an electric current of hope. I remember radical speech, political pamphlets, a sitar harmonizing with Jimi Hendrix electric lady land, the spirit of love and the sensation of being infallible.

I also remember the cops and People’s Park and the time they formed a line with their blue helmets and black riot sticks. I remember when they cleared the courtyard in front of the library with tear gas and a march of terror. It was all here: the entire history of what is now referred to as the sixties movement.

Everything has changed.

We walk down Telegraph toward the university. The street people who once roamed freely and unobstructed are now a homeless problem. The sidewalk venders are far more stylish, commercial and hip. There is no music, no buzz of political discourse and no charge of electric energy. My memories have become mythology.

We make our way to the square and the library steps where I once watched Mario Salvo address a throng of student activists. The students now are studious and more politically correct. Their issues now are more practical: the cost of tuition, public housing and parking, smoking in public places. There is a scattering of musicians but Wiz senses they would not welcome his accompaniment. They have staked claim to their turfs so we stake our claim to ours. We find our spot and the Wiz pulls out his magic flute, letting loose a kaleidoscope of sound that lingers in the air before drifting into wistful memory. I allow the enchantment to capture me before weighing in.

The karmic debt is mounting like an ancient den of thieves
With each tick of the cosmic clock like a chill in a gentle breeze

The karmic debt is mounting like a river overrun
With each lie in a soulful sorrow like a story almost done

The karmic debt is mounting with each I where we belongs
Like a river dammed and clogged like an old familiar song

The karmic debt is mounting with avarice and deceit
Each thump of the collective heartbeat and every all begins with me

The karmic debt is mounting like a storm that threatens all
And I am chained to the floodgates to suffer the karmic fall

Set me free so I may rise or die a free and noble man

On the train of the Wiz’s melody my mood carries me from politics and philosophy to ethereal dreams to the jazz underground and back again. The people around us take note and offer unspoken approval. A man with writer’s eyes sits to our side as listens as if to read our intentions. We have made a mark. It is enough.

We walk back down Telegraph, stopping at a familiar café for a bite to eat, pick up a copy of Zen and the Art of Golf at Powell’s Bookstore and put Berkeley in the mirror. The transition from a hotbed of political thought and activism to a progressive university metropolis is difficult to accept for those of us who remember what was before but these are good people and worthy of their legacy in their way.

The times are a changing and we better make way.

We drive from Berkeley to Oakland and the home of Jack Foley, king of the bay area poetry scene. He greets us as if we are long lost brothers. He speaks with an enthusiasm that belies his age, dropping names like a politician on the move: Shepard, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, McClure and Ray Manzarek of The Doors. He hosts a weekly radio show and offers up samples of his recordings. He hands us scores of poetry magazines. His theory is that poetry has its roots in the oral tradition of Homer, the original poet of the western world.

We are fascinated by his exuberance. He’s like a child showing off his toys the day after Christmas. He looks the part of a poet with long frazzled hair, loose fitting clothes and sandals. His wife is clearly devoted to her husband’s artistic lifestyle but she strikes a contrast, straight and proper. Their home in the Oakland hills is beautiful but they are worried about money. Their teenage son is not interested in poetry or poets. He likes baseball and rock and roll.

We continue our conversation at a charming little Chinese restaurant where he engages an unknown couple in a discussion of the origins of pot stickers. Jack has something to say about virtually everything. He is a man of knowledge, literature and culture.

I put the meal on my credit card as he recommends a club in San Francisco where we might try out our jazz poetry. Wiz slips him a copy of Dark Underground as the three of us share a hug of brotherhood.

Crossing the Bay Bridge I realize that we have spent over four hours in the company of whirlwind mind. It is the approximate time of a round of golf. It is a rare pleasure to listen to a man so eager to share his remarkable life and experience. I wonder at the breadth of his knowledge and the passion that sustains his sense of adventure. He has found his bliss. His bliss has found him. It is not chosen but chooses.

Nothing is happening at the poetry joint. The scheduled readings are over. A bearded man plays a younger man in chess. No one else is here. I sneak a peak at the stage in the back where the readings take place. There is a naked podium on the floor and a single bleacher in front of it. I am struck by how very small the poetry universe is. Poetry is dead. There is no future. Not here in San Francisco, not across the bay, not in Nashville or Albuquerque, New York or Chicago. Poetry is for poets with large dreams but small ambitions. The devotees have large hearts. They are driven not by success, which is measured in humility, but by the thing itself, the Zen of poetry. If poetry is an oral tradition it is enough to stand before a handful of fellow poets. Let the words be heard. Let them roar like a stampede of buffalo on the open plains, or let them rattle and quiver like a lover’s lips in the embrace of ecstasy. Poetry is dead, long live poetry.

Maybe we are too ambitious. We have not yet come to understand the Zen of poetry as we intuitively understand the Zen of golf. We are too dependent on the response of our audience. We want too much to please, to be accepted and embraced. Wiz is a phenomenal musician. He has often played for hours in the isolation of a forest or in a secluded corner of a busy park. I am a writer. Though I fear I may never be published, my plays never destined for the professional stage, I continue to write. I will always write. It is not chosen but chooses. Just as the music itself is enough to spur the Wiz on a quest for musical or creative growth, the act of committing words to paper is my calling. Even if no more than a handful of friends or acquaintances will ever read them, even if they are not read at all, the act of writing itself speaks to me in a language that pulls at my heart.

Every writer wants his words to live on, just as every composer and musician wants his music to be heard beyond his time on earth, but the desired outcome is the reason we write, compose or play. Wiz plays because it fulfills a need and because it speaks to the center of his being. As it is with music so it is with writing. As it is with writing so it is with golf. As it is with golf so it is with life and the living of it.

We walk out of the poetry joint and perform our piece on the street. We gather a few curious glances but nothing more. No one is listening but it no longer matters. We read and play for our own fulfillment. It is enough.

We drive down Van Ness to the heart of San Francisco but nothing captures our interest. We decide to head south to Santa Cruz. It is late when we arrive and I suggest staying over to ride the roller coaster in the morning. The Santa Cruz roller coaster is famous as the largest wooden structure of its kind. Wiz declines. He wants no part of it. We are both in a strange reflective mood. We drive on without aim, finally laying out our sleeping bags at a small beach along Highway 1. The smell of the Pacific and the sound of ocean wildlife have a calming effect. The ocean has always spoken to me in times of sorrow or upheaval. It has never failed to soothe my soul.

We awake just after sunrise to the hustle of farm workers on their way to work in the fields. We shake off sleep and the restlessness of the last twenty-four hours, pack our bags and drive into Monterey.

Dollar for dollar, Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay is among the most beautiful courses in the world. Nine holes of tree-lined fairways in typical municipal course style give way to a back nine of ocean side links. Wide open to the elements of the coast, the links nine features no more than a scattering of windswept cypress, evergreen bushes and tall grass no taller than a man, and ice plant over sand where golf balls go to die. If you’ve never hit out of ice plant you would be well advised to use nothing more than a wedge. The course with its narrow fairways, punishing rough and small greens places a premium on accuracy and the ability to hit the ball on a low trajectory.

The back nine has earned Pacific Grove the name: a poor man’s Pebble Beach. Its more famous namesake is just down the coast. The story goes that the land was donated to the city on the condition that the course should always be affordable to the common man. It is a tale that is repeated most every time I come here. Today is no exception.

We arrive early and are paired with a twosome of retired gentlemen. It is reminiscent of our round in Truckee by Donner Pass. We play well enough on the front side to settle in for some inspired golf on the back nine. There are dozens of deer wandering the course along with scores of sea gulls, crows, squirrels and jackrabbits. It is a spectacle of nature rivaling the Grand Canyon. It is a place to forget your troubles and your game and allow yourself to soar with the wind. The sight of the eleventh hole, gazing out over the Pacific, a family of deer grazing below an elevated tee, brings out the best in me. A solid three wood, a stiff wedge and ten-foot putt for birdie. It is the peak of my round but it hardly matters.

On the twelfth, a sweeping par five alongside the coastline, Wiz unloads a drive and a fairway wood that charges the imagination and extends the limits of his game. The ball kicks left into the rough but it doesn’t matter. Here, amidst the grandeur of the California coast, the game takes on a new dimension. We play well, score decently and depart with newfound sense of wonder and admiration for the world around us.

We head on to Carmel on a natural high, a mixture of joy and a sense of infallibility riding with us. Nothing can stop us. Nothing can bring us down. Not even a suicide pigeon that dives into the grill beneath Sally’s hood at the exit ramp can dampen our spirits. Its timing is unfathomable. It leaves me a little dazed, perplexed and without explanation. Maybe we are in need of grounding. Maybe we are too high, too centered on ourselves. Pigeons have long been attracted to Sally’s Mustang orange exterior and have pelted her with droppings at every opportunity. Maybe it’s Sally’s revenge.

I believe in life in all its forms and would not take it lightly. I know only that I don’t know. The why is beyond my comprehension. I only understand that I do not understand. Like the mesmerizing magnitude of the sea, it is a mystery and a mystery it will remain.

In all my life I have seen nothing more beautiful than the cypress of Monterey and Carmel beach. The home of the immortal John Steinbeck it is a living tribute to man’s fascination and devotion to the sea. When I was a younger man it was my habit to come here whenever my mind was clouded with trouble and despair. I would sit for hours, my feet buried in the fine sand or above on a cliff or overhang, where the gulls would trace the shoreline. The gentle but all-powerful waves of the Pacific would empty my mind, cleanse my soul and send me back to the world reborn.

It has the same effect now. Wiz has supplied me with a trumpet and a mute. We stand in the sand, him with his magic flute, me with my muted horn, sending sweet sounds into the endless sea. The crow is here. Of all the times I have spent on this beach I can only remember gulls. It is as mystifying as the sea itself.

Wiz gives me a lesson on looking cool while playing the trumpet. My tendency is to point the horn downward. He wants me to raise it up. We eventually walk back to Sally and deposit our instruments, suddenly aware of the human beauty that surrounds us. She is young enough to be his daughter but old enough to hunger for experience. A bronzed beauty, breasts like golden delicious apples, she moves in a manner that defies the laws of physics. I look down and see a golden anklet. It is the gift I have sought for my wife two thousand miles away. The signs are all around us.

We have to this place in service to my memories. We have play glorious golf in the company of wildlife at Pacific Grove. Wiz has played shots he never thought he was capable of hitting. I have played with a free and open mind. We have been absorbed in the majesty of nature. We have had communion with the sea.

All this leads me back to Nashville where my love awaits.

We have one more service to perform. We are heading to the Hog’s Breath Inn, Clint Eastwood’s place, where once I caught him dashing in and out, a beautiful blonde by his side, to check on his affairs. Wiz asks me the time and I immediately realize we are due back in Motown for a family picnic. A couple of fine looking ladies give us a glance but we are immune to temptation. We cut our visit short and head back to the valley. Clint is not in.

The ride back is thoughtful, peaceful, full of dreams and pleasant memories. I realize that it will be a year or more before I am likely to feel the Pacific breeze again. It is difficult to let go. We stop in the valley town of Los Banos for gas and call ahead to let the family know we’re on our way.

Wiz takes care of the gas and encounters a young lady with the frazzled look of methamphetamine. As we’re pulling out he tells the story. A man says it’s his birthday and she offers him a gift he will remember. She looks at Wiz and says: Hell, I’d give it to almost anyone. She looks our way as she climbs the stairs of a hotel across the way. She charges the imagination. I tell Wiz he’d better wear two condoms for that encounter. Temptation aside, we drive off with the weight of the road a little heavier and the stuff of wet dreams swirling in our minds.

GRAND CANYON: FAMILY GATHERING

2011-03-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

It is an evening picnic in the large back yard of my brother John’s house. When we called from Los Banos no one was inside to receive it. Everyone is here. Dave and his wife, who passed on Graeagle, are here with their two children. Cameron is a precocious seven-year-old overcoming an only-child syndrome. Matthew is an infant whom I have only seen once. Dave is the best golfer in the family and at this stage of life may be the most cynical. He is a technical golfer in the Jack Nicklaus tradition. In the recent past he has overspent on such frivolous items as a large-screen television to go with his new house on the west side. He is grateful to me for having loaned him five hundred dollars in a time of need without making him suffer a lecture on economics. He won my admiration for the diligent manner in which he repaid me. He is the only person I have ever loaned money who did not require a reminder of the debt. I am aware that loaning money is often the surest way to end a friendship but in this case it helped form one.

Dave is an honest and honorable man who is in danger of losing faith. He is skeptical of spiritual values. He is skeptical of affirmation, the power of the mind, the concept of karma and alternative paths to enlightenment. He believes in hard work and he is frustrated when it is not enough. He has recovered from hard times and now seems content. His wife Lisa is in many ways a reflection of himself. Very intelligent, highly competitive, talented and hard working, she has an edge of cynicism. It is amusing to see them both on the golf course. They both demand so much more of themselves than they expect in others. It is little wonder Dave has all but given up the game. He can no longer rise to the level of play that once allowed him to break the course record at Dryden Park. He does not seem to enjoy the walk. The demands they place on each other almost cost them their marriage but all is well now and I wonder if they have discovered something. Maybe they are beginning to enjoy the walk.

The next generation of the family now numbers six with one more on the way. My brother Bob’s wife Robin has given birth to their second child and John’s wife Margie is pregnant with their third. It is a huge surprise since she had her tubes tied. It is ironic that my sister Sue, the most spiritual of the family, wants desperately to have a child but it hasn’t happened. In another world maybe she could have raised the unwanted child of a brother.

Coming from a large family, there was a time when my parents began to wonder if the future of the family was secure. The fear of a lost progeny is gone. The children have become the dominant force in the family. They are the markers of time, the center of all gatherings, and the primary topic of discussion.

This gathering however is for the childless, a wondering son back home from Tennessee. We talk about Nashville, my marriage, John Prine, the music business, the rich forestland of the Tennessee countryside, ticks and chiggers, and the sweltering heat. I realize that I am the only member of the family who has strayed from the nest. Drawn by an old but not forgotten love, I followed her wandering nature to another world. I alone have broken the chain.

I realize as well that the time for wandering and adventure has pretty much passed my family by. Only the youngest, Tom and Robin, are without their own families to bind them to this place. I sense they are not likely to leave. They are attached to the central valley and the surrounding area. They each have a spirit of rebellion that expresses itself in different ways: driving too fast, drunken parties, reckless relationships. They have both had schooling in Texas and Oklahoma before returning home. They have shown no inclination to wander again.

There is comfort here and a sense of security that is at once reassuring and disturbing. It was that disturbing feeling of getting stuck, of not advancing, of being left behind that I answered with my move to Tennessee. I fear the age of the journey is coming to an end not only for myself but also for the nation. There are so few hitchhikers on the road these days and most of them are hitchers of necessity rather than choice. This generation of youth does not seem interested in the journey as a path to spiritual growth. Maybe the futility of my generation has made its mark. Maybe they have learned what Henry Miller learned late in life at Big Sur: Sit still and watch the world go by while all the things you need come to you.

Brother Tom has inquired about my philosophy, my way of looking at life as a journey of the soul and the road to wisdom. I told him about the books that inspired me: Castaneda, Hesse, Kerouac, Miller. He gave them a look but they didn’t take hold. They did not hold the magic for him that they did for me. To each his own. In the end we must all find our own paths. It is one of the tenets of my own journey: There is no one way.

Our days in Motown are numbered now. There is a vague and growing sense of urgency that I do not define. Time is growing short. We spend what remains of the night and most of the next day with Robert and Sue. We tell stories, kick the old dogs, exchange opinions and enjoy music. Robert is in rare form on the trumpet and on the microphone. Brother Randy who has formed a bond with Robert joins us. They are like children, singing and recording songs a little off key. I am convinced that Randy has a chance to rebuild his life. I wonder if his transformation has something to do with Robert’s way of diving into the center of one’s being.

I’m a little surprised he does not probe deeply into my life on the present journey. Maybe there is no need. Maybe he understands what I am beginning to realize. I am no longer a part of his world. I may never return home. My visits may grow further and further apart until I am only a stranger he once knew.

I wonder if Randy is in fact the true adventurer of the family. He has been to the belly of the beast and wrestled with the dragon of his inmost self. It is something I have not yet experienced. I force myself to see everything with new eyes. There is no one way.

Wiz and I have a date with the theater. We excuse ourselves and drive down to Turlock for Uncle Vanya. It is the finest production of Chekhov I have ever seen. Patty plays the object of desire and the personification of life in a decaying world. It is a familiar role and one that she graces with the ease of a professional. Jere is the enlightened doctor who perceives the decay in the deforestation of the land. He senses life in the wife of another man and is too wise to be denied by the moral code of a dying society. Gary is the personification of death and the social machine that enforces it. His is the most tragic of tales: Growing old without comfort. Another old friend whose life journey seems parallel to my own plays the title role. He has married, moved to Seattle and is now preparing for a move to Dublin, Ireland. His talent has blossomed under the tutelage these gifted forces of the creative mind. His part is that of a humble man, a man who lives by the rules, who works diligently and suffers without complaint only to find that his interests are discarded in the decaying rubble. He too is in love with live and his tragedy is that he has known so little of it.

It is a surprisingly moving play and one that speaks to our world in more ways than the obvious. It raises the question: As we destroy our environment, are we not also destroying our souls? Have we lost our zeal for life? Are we destined to meet our ends with the realization that our lives have been without meaning? Life is the rallying cry. Live and have no regrets. That is the central purpose of our journey. Enlightenment must follow life. It cannot escape or transcend life itself. Without life made rich and full by experience there can be no wisdom.

We gather at Jere and Patty’s after the play as I have so many times before. Wiz finds harmony with Jere’s brother John, a superb guitarist. As the conversation gradually shifts from the play to more personal matters, my attention is increasingly drawn to Gary. He is now fifty, an age that I have come to believe is the age of the shaman of my generation. He was twenty-five in the summer of love. He has seen the world change through the eyes of a man. His childhood was not happy. He shares with us a story of abuse at the hands of a nun in parochial school. Wiz had a similar experience.

I wonder if these women, empowered with the cloth of faith and the role of a teacher, realize the mark of cynicism they left in the world. It is no less than a miracle that those abused children grew up to be the men that stand before me now. Maybe it served as their initiations. Maybe it helped them to break free of the ties that bound them. Their wounds healed as they made their way through life’s journey.

Gary preceded me on the path of wisdom that is represented in the words of Joseph Campbell. He is the sage that enabled both of us to reclaim our faith. When once I believe in none, I now believe in all religions. I believe they are essentially the same. I believe they are one. I believe in a universal mythology that, far from reducing their value, empowers them to speak to all. Gary understands this far better than I. He has achieved a level of wisdom if not enlightenment that I am still pursuing. I give him a copy of my latest works in the hope that he will understand my intentions and shed some needed light. We wish him well as we depart in the late hours of the night.

We have two more rounds of golf before we leave this valley. We are scheduled to play a course in Manteca with Jere and Patty and Creekside in Modesto with Robert and Sue.

Manteca is a beautiful valley municipal course. Tight well-kept fairways, varied terrain, water hazards and a major wind factor on the back nine. Jere and Patty opt for a cart. Wiz and I are walking. We share some of our ideas concerning Zen golf, a topic that is not new to them. Patty is open and Jere is less skeptical than he was. He proclaims: It’s not the shots; it’s the ride. Wiz turns in some amazing shots and cards his second birdie, adding to the mystical appeal of Zen.

We take the turn to the backside in good shape but the long haul and the adversity of the wind begins to take its toll. On the sixteenth hole the foursome behind us fires a pair of drives beyond us as we look for my ball in the woods. While we’re on the green a third shot skips hotly past us to the right. I linger on the next tee to issue a stern but vague warning. The force of my voice surprises my playing partners. Wiz wonders if I have a little of the redneck buried within. To me it is no more than the game demands: Respect your fellow players. In the future they will be a little more cognizant of those around them and in front of them.

Unfortunately, I experience a little karmic kickback, doubling the next hole. We all struggle to the finish. I reflect that maybe my partners were right. I have an acute sense of right versus wrong that can trigger an angry response. It strikes a contrast to my normal mellow demeanor and often shocks those I know. It is something I must work on: controlling my emotions. It is a reminder as well that we are never alone in the game of golf. Our fellow players are as much a part of our game as the trees and the wind. The struggle is not so great as our scores are respectable. We have spent the afternoon in the company of friends and we are grateful.

Next stop: Creekside. It was falsely billed as Modesto’s first championship course. It is in fact far too short for that status and the trees are a good ten years from becoming the barriers they should be. It is nevertheless a good layout. Like Jere and Patty, Robert and Sue opt for a cart while we prefer the walk. We are acclimated to the humidity of Nashville so the dry heat of California goes relatively easy on us.

It is a good day for golf and I am on my game. I have come to believe that good golf, like bad, is contagious. We all play the front nine well once we hit our strides. An errant shot into the water on the difficult ninth hole costs me a sub-forty round. We grab a bite to eat at the clubhouse and start the back nine in good spirits. Like Manteca, the wind picks up as the day goes on and the backside is wide open.

We allow a series of twosomes in carts to play through. They are excellent golfers but the speed of their play is excessive. I speculate that they are gamblers who have chosen golf as the field on which their stakes are laid. I am aware that Robert is a gambling man. I once witnessed his magic in high stakes action on the blackjack tables in Lake Tahoe. There is an unmistakable aura about him when he’s on a roll. He speaks of it in spiritual terms. It feeds on the positive energy of those around him. It feeds on itself. It is its own entity and it is something to behold. It is the Zen of gambling. There is no other way to describe it. Though I am not a gambler, I understand it through the venue of golf. I know the feeling. The energy of the life force is focused and channeled into one cause. The effect is inevitable.

I cannot pass judgment on the chosen venue. Whether it is golf or bowling, darts or basketball, pool, gambling or a path of artistic endeavor, it is all one. It gathers at the center of one’s being and unites the one with all. It is the essence of faith and the mystical wonder of the human experience.

I have been driving the ball extremely well. On the thirteenth hole, a long par five with a tail wind, I let loose a monster drive. The rockets down the left side of the fairway like a rifle shot. It will measure about three hundred and ten yards. As the others take their turns at the tee an elderly man playing solo approaches. He is the image of the immortal Sam Snead with his easy manner and a small straw hat. We invite him to play through and he graciously accepts. He steps to the tee and hammers a drive with a smooth, even-tempered swing. Swing easy, hit hard. He tips his hat and delays his departure long enough to tell Wiz that the three-wood he has picked up at a yard sale is a classic persimmons wood. It is highly valued.

As we trail behind him, I notice that he walks as if by instinct to the longest ball. It is not his. He pauses and scans our foursome from a distance until his eyes meet mine. This master of the game is impressed. I give him a satisfied nod which he returns as he walks back to his own ball. He places it on the front of the green, misses the putt and settles for a tap-in birdie. By the time we reach the next tee he is long gone.

It is a perfect moment in golf and one that leaves me with a feeling of exhilaration. I play inspired golf, birdie the fifteenth and finish the back nine at level par. On the sixteenth sister Sue finds her iron game and rips a series of fine shots. She is elated and her joy is gratifying. Robert reaches the greenside bunker in two but takes three to get out. His red haired temper flares and he gives his wedge a heave. It is a modified thrust which allows him to claim later that he was merely tossing it aside to retrieve his putter. The contrast in moods between Robert and Sue strikes me as hilarious and I have to fight my instinct to laugh.

To Robert’s credit he recovers his demeanor on the next hole and finishes a fine round. We have all played well. It is a fitting goodbye to golf in the valley of my upbringing. Tomorrow we are back on the road. Our first destiny is Wawona Golf Course in Yosemite National Park. It has been a wondrous visit and all that I could have asked for. Like a good round of golf, it will leave me with a yen to return.

GRAND CANYON: YOSEMITE

2011-03-09T19:03:00.001-08:00

We have stayed three days longer than intended. Once again I am reminded how difficult it is to escape the hold of this valley. Motowners are like the variety of tree ironically named Trees of Heaven. Once they take root they do not let go. They spread and swallow the land.

Our plan begins with golf at Wawona, a course at the southwestern tip of Yosemite National Park. It is a place of bountiful beauty that Jere and Patty have told us about. Our route takes us through Merced, a town smaller but strikingly similar to Modesto. In fact, it strikes me that all these valley towns are pretty much the same: Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced, Stockton, Modesto, Lodi and Sacramento. They are variations on a theme of commercial development with agricultural roots. The valley has been invaded by an army of Bay Area commuters. It is a boon to real estate but a nightmare to renters and working people who are rapidly abandoning their dreams of home ownership. Thousands of people prefer to drive up to two hundred miles a day rather than pay the high price of housing on their own turf.

As we turn east into the Sierra foothills, I am reminded of an ill-fated bicycle trip a good friend and I once took along this path. We set out for Yosemite from Turlock with packs on our backs and nothing but grit. We took no precautions such as tools, flashlights, spare tires or pumps. My compadre had neglected to sport underwear and developed a rash. I vividly remember watching him climb slowly up these rolling hills, pack swaying from side to side, as he tried to avoid contact with his seat. We slept in a cow pasture in pitch-black darkness not more than a mile from the nearest town. We made it as far as Mariposa, gateway to the national park, when a downpour of rain gave us an excuse to turn back. A flat tire in Merced allowed us to call for a ride home. It was a memorable journey despite the misfortunes and the fact that we never reached our destiny.

Our friendship was then as tight and secure as Wiz and I are now. It would end several years later. I was directing a play and recruited him as my set designer. He interrupted a rehearsal by moving set pieces on stage. When I expressed my displeasure he walked out. Within a week came the news that he had overturned his car on the freeway. He’d lost consciousness while driving, a victim of his own adventurous spirit. He was fortunate to survive but he lost control of the muscles and nerves that move the left eyelid. It was fixed in a closed position and there it would remain. He was a superb actor and a prince of a man though he would prefer the title of court jester. He took risks and that path constantly took him to the edge. When he pushed it too far he paid the price. He fell into an abyss. Some would say he jumped. The wonder is that he returned to carry on.

Would it have happened had I not chastised him for something so ultimately unimportant? Would it have happened if he had not walked out? No one can say. We would become friends again but we would never be brothers. We lost that sense of trust. I can only believe it is as it is supposed to be. I will remember this and hold on when it is my turn to take the fall. We all get a turn. Things do not happen at random. If I have learned anything on the journey it is this: There is a reason and a purpose to the events and experiences that cross our paths. We should not fear and avoid them, but rather embrace and learn from them.

We turn south at Mariposa and wind our way to Wawona. Throughout our journey we have been advised to take precautions and make reservations in advance but we prefer to take our chances. If it is meant to happen it will.

Am I a fatalist? Yes, I believe in fate. I believe in magic. I believe in karma. I believe in spirits and the soul. I believe there is infinitely more beyond our grasp than within it. Do we have a choice? Yes, we have a choice to deny it or embrace it. Deny it and you deny yourself. Embrace it and grow. Become the thing you are intended to be.

The first time I faced the charge of fatalism it was at the hand of a high school world geography teacher whom I respected. I had written what I considered an excellent essay on a subject that now escapes me. The paper came back with a grade of B and the comment: Isn’t this a bit fatalistic? It was the first time my work was criticized for the content of my theme rather than the quality of the work. It had a profound effect and sent me into a period of doubt. It would be years before I would allow myself to further explore the concept of fate. By deferring to authority I had delayed the journey of my soul.

At the entrance to Yosemite the ranger waves the fee with the statement: We’re not charging today. We have now visited two of America’s most popular national parks free of charge. This is how it should be and we accept it as a blessing.

Wawona is far from the glacier valley of Half Dome, Indian Caves, Yosemite Falls and El Capitan. It possesses a more placid beauty with tall redwood pines and open fields of tall grass and wildflowers nestled in a terrain where the gentle foothills begin their transformation to the high Sierra peaks. Wawona Lodge is a large white wooden structure of southern forties grace with its long row of elegant columns running the length of the structure and bordering its front porch. There are countless squirrels, ducks, swan and deer on its huge expanse of bright green lawn mixing with the boarders in soft white, blue and pink attire.

There is plenty of sunlight left in the day as we check in at a clubhouse that doubles as the village grocery store. We are invited to tee up whenever we like. Wiz and I are at the top of our games through the first four holes. There are curious warning signs at the first and third tees: The first tells the tale of a seven-year-old boy who lost his life to an antlered deer. The second warns of a rattlesnake without rattles. I surmise it is an effective means of keeping golfers out of the natural brush representing the rough.

The fifth hole takes my breath away. It is a long par four from an elevated tee, dropping steeply to a typically small and well-bunkered green. It is exceptionally narrow with tall redwoods on both sides. I try to control my tee shot, constricting the muscles of my arms and body and upsetting the natural rhythm of my swing. It sails off right into the woods. I am forced to take a drop, miss my next two shots on a downhill lie and end up with a triple bogey. Wiz is in a smooth and relaxed groove. He plays it like a champ, saving par with a short chip and putt.

As we walk to the next hole Wiz brings up our scores and makes a joke about the master’s fall. Suddenly, we have entered the world of competitive golf. He later says it was only meaningless patter, an expression of his sense of humor. He doesn’t seem to realize that expressions of humor often have a dark and serious side. The words we choose to let loose on the world are never without meaning. I have witnessed the cold harshness of his joking interactions with his girlfriend and watched nearly come to blows. It is a lesson he has yet to learn.

Wiz has the honor of shooting first at the next tee. He fires the ball into the tall grass. He refuses to take a mulligan. I step to the tee and send a three-iron sailing two hundred yards and slightly left of the target. It fades and settles gently on the center of the green. The gods of golf have spoken. I save par on the next hole with a nice sand wedge while Wiz continues to struggle. He drops seven strokes in two holes. The golf gods have delivered a stern lesson. Golf is a game of ultimate humility. Wiz will have his day. As I have often told him, though I have been his mentor, he will better me as a matter of course. It will happen but it will not happen on a day when he is brash and cocky. It will not happen when he raises the red flag of competition. It will not happen today.

We finish the round in good spirits and head off to Yosemite Valley as the sun sets in the west. Night has fallen by the time we arrive. We are surprised to find the village store still open and a nightlife happening. As I wander off to find an open restroom Wiz purchases a small flashlight, two pints of Sam Adams lager, a fifth of cognac and a couple of microwave Mexican food platters. He starts up a conversation with a wild-eyed teenager. The thought that runs through our minds is little short of absurd. We have been on the road too long.

We find a picnic table outside in front of the village snack bar and position ourselves to view the young ladies who seem everywhere on this scene. Except for the tamales, which are passable, the Mexican platters are by far the worst excuse for a meal we have taken on the journey. It doesn’t matter. The beer is great. We wander back toward the parking lot, scouting for a place to sleep, when I spot a couple of rangers approaching in the sparse light. I wonder aloud if it’s cool to have an open beer on the park grounds. Wiz replies: If he stops us we’ll have to kill him. It is a joke that will not seem funny as time rolls on.

I stay with Sally as Wiz take the flashlight and explores the surroundings. He spots a place to lay out our bags on the backside of park headquarters and off we go. Again he jokes: If they catch us we’ll just have to kill them. We settle down for the night and reflect on the journey behind us as well as the journey ahead. We are pleased. We had discussed crossing Tioga Pass during the night but fatigue and hunger have held us back. It is the path that has chosen us. Wiz observes that we could easily have come to hate each other by now. That is one of the dangers of the journey. We agree that our friendship is secure and count our blessings. It is the first time we have allowed ourselves to look back and reflect with satisfaction the distance we have traveled. Now we speak at length, retelling the stories and recounting our own versions on the events of the last two weeks. We finish off the liquor and settle in for sweet dreams and visions of tomorrow.

Tomorrow greets us at the crack of dawn with a world of beauty and grace. It seems frozen in time. We leave our empty bottles at the front of the building where they are sure to be spotted and discarded properly. Wiz does not want to risk being discovered carrying them to the nearest garbage can. I make a vow to balance our karma by picking up someone else’s trash down the line.

We can find no coffee and must be content with cans of coke from a vending machine. We set out for Tioga Pass but are soon overtaken by Yosemite’s mystical pull. We opt for a hike to Yosemite Falls and I recount the story of my first drunk. It was a sixth grade field trip and one of my friends turned me on to a strange wine concoction known as Bali Hai. Beneath the majesty of Yosemite Falls I fell as sick as I had ever been in my young life. I have always it seems been attracted to friends who were driven by risk and adventure.

It is early and we are alone in the splendor of John Muir’s valley. We linger longer than we should, long enough to collect our thoughts, becoming one with the animal and Indian spirits that still rule this sacred kingdom, and then we resume the journey.

GRAND CANYON: TIOGA PASS

2011-03-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

The highway that runs through Tioga Pass is a long two-lane road that cuts through the heart of Yosemite and climbs to an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet. The glare of the morning sun on a winding road makes the going tough, slow and treacherous. I remark off-hand that if for any reason the pass were closed it would cost us literally hundreds of miles and a full day’s travel. We are grateful we did not attempt the pass last night.

Soon enough the road opens up and the going is easy. We are about thirty miles from the village when we are flagged to a stop by a park ranger. He informs us that a fellow ranger has been shot during the night. Tioga Pass is closed until they find the shooter. He tells it might be an hour or two or it might be a few days. No one knows. We ask if there’s a place to wait it out and he directs us to the lodge at Wolf Creek. We thank him but before we can turn around he asks for the second time: Are you sure you don’t have a gun in the car? Not even a little one? Wiz has joked about carrying a gun and I give him a glance before answering: No, not even a little one.

We will hear several versions of the shooting but the one that sticks is: The ranger came upon a man walking down the road and stopped to ask him if he needed help. The man said no but inexplicably took off running into the woods. When the ranger followed, he fired two bullets from a 22-caliber pistol. That’s a little gun. The ranger is still alive and presumably will be able to identify the gunman.

It occurs to me that we are suspects and I begin to think about prophetic remarks, given and taken so lightly at the time. First there was Wiz with his: Well, we’ll just have to kill him. Then there was my comment about the closing of Tioga Pass. Wiz’s mind has begun to spin the same yarn. He tells me that the empty bottles we left at the park headquarters would collaborate our story. I tell him that if they decide to search Sally the first thing they would see upon opening the trunk would be the word Killer on the strap of my golf bag. It was a gift from my father and the inscription was his nickname from his fighting days. Never mind, it would a long time before they would allow us to leave this place.

At the Wolf Creek lodge we are greeted by a small gathering of stranded travelers waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast. A line is forming when a lady emerges from inside to explain that the lodgers have first priority. We step aside and allow the lodgers to move to the front. As the hours drag on, the gathering of fellow travelers grows. They relate their varied stories of the shooting and speculate on the identity of the suspect. He could be miles away in the desolate country or he could have doubled back to find a car. He could be right here at Wolf Creek. He might be one of us. Suddenly all single men begin to look suspicious. Some make the difficult decision to turn back and replan their vacations. We are content for now to wait. We have a wonderful breakfast and enjoy the interchange with the waiters. They are surprisingly joyful and upbeat despite the chaos descending on them.

We pull our instruments from Sally and Wiz decides to give me a lesson on the trumpet. He teaches me a simple jazz scale. Before long the practice gives way to improvisational jazz and space music. The sounds are sweet to these ears and seem to blend with our rustic surroundings. We are joined on the rocks by two fellow travelers and invite them to play but they are content to listen.

A dark complexioned man with a large pack and a very noticeable limp draws all eyes as he walks into camp. He is an American Indian who is walking a trail that will take him from the Mexican border to Canada. A fire walking experience that left a large blister on his right foot has slowed his progress. He was detained for carrying a weapon in the park. It was a bow and arrow he carried for hunting. The local Indian group came to his defense and gave him shelter. Their defense was successful but he was unable to retrieve his bow. He wears a medicine pouch around his neck, army surplus pants, coat and boots. In the eyes of the predominantly white encampment he is suspect number one. Naturally he finds his way to our gathering on the rocks.

He is pleased to join us on guitar and shows an affinity for Jimi Hendrix. Between songs and interludes we exchange stories. Though he is on foot the rangers will not allow him to continue his journey until the shooter is caught. He has been through the desert. I ask him if has seen Don Juan. Without a smile he replies: I am Don Juan.

An elderly couple emerges from the cabin adjacent to our circle and the man is clearly incensed. He makes it to his car before he erupts. He explains that he and his wife were trying to meditate in their cabin when the noise of our trumpet session broke their concentration, disturbing their peace. Wiz wonders why they didn’t say something at the time. The woman explains that they anticipated how they would be greeted: A couple of old fogies. Don Juan offers to play them a song and that only infuriates the man: Now you’re being smart. He storms off to the lodge as we continue our discussion with the woman. We apologize but suggest that they should not presume us to be devoid of manners and common decency. Had they said something we would surely have stopped. They are not aware of what has transpired in the night. We make our peace but we have lost the feel for music. The mood has shifted.

I surmise that the old man is in grave danger. To feel such rage and to be unable even to conceive another way of diffusing it. What is the purpose of his meditation? The Zen masters would welcome the distraction of a practicing trumpet as a challenge to their practice of the meditative art. Embrace it and focus ever deeper on the center of your being. Or if you cannot, seek remedy. Do not allow your rage to envelop you. Do not give yourself to rage. Or if you must then embrace the rage and understand it as your own so that you may learn from it and find another way.

We pack away our instruments and begin to discuss our options. We study the atlas for an alternative route that might have escaped us. There is none. Wiz opens the Zen of Golf at random and reads a passage: Be still and take in the breadth and depth of your surroundings. The message is clear. I had been leaning the other way. The thought that keeps circling through my mind is one that I have not allowed myself to speak for fear of the power of the self fulfilling prophecy: If we don’t get out of California today, we will never get out.

Wiz suggests that we take our sand wedges, a couple of balls and shoot our way along the hiking trail to Luben’s Lake. The hike is about three miles. Wiz has only recently purchased his wedge at a second hand store in Motown. He is anxious to give it workout. It’s too bizarre to take a pass. Before we embark Don Juan offers us some sage. He explains that he offers it to all musicians that cross his path. I am pleased with the designation as a musician though it is not a title I claim. Who am I to deny the offering of Don Juan? As is his habit, Wiz gives him a CD of his girlfriend Rhonda’s album. It is a labor of love that he has produced. I offer some road kill jerky. It is the best I can do. It later occurs to me that I should have given him the manuscript of a recent play: The Ringed Women of the Sacred and Forbidden Forest. It is a Joseph Campbell inspired tale of a hero’s journey. Maybe it would have been presumptuous. Don Juan needs no lessons that I can deliver. Knowing we will never see him again, we bid him farewell. I believe we have formed a brotherhood and that he will remember and speak of us just as we will of him.

We begin the hike, laying down our balls at the foot of the trail. We each have two balls and are determined to play all the way to the lake. I am not aware that Wiz has stored away a third ball. The lower part of the trail is relatively wide and flat, allowing us to swing freely, blasting away at fifty to seventy yards a shot. As we cross a creek with shots over the water, the trail narrows, becoming rocky and climbing steeply. Soon we take on the characters of Dufus McGhee and Sivas MacDuff, Irish masters of the ancient and royal art. We begin to count strokes. I build a sizable lead but begin taking drops at the cost of a stroke, concerned that the rocky terrain will damage my wedge.

At some point we both hit into the woods. After a long search we decide to exchange roles. He looks for my ball and I look for his. Our reasoning is that since we have not focused on the other’s ball, we will be forced to employ a sixth sense. Within minutes we find both balls. Wiz loses one in the thick grass and I abandon the search when I discover water on the ground below. It is then he reveals his third ball. I am convinced that that is the reason he has lost a ball. I have advised many a beginning golfer not to carry an extra ball in his pocket, particularly when water is in play. It invites doubt and even the smallest measure of doubt can break down the golf swing. The gods of golf can smell a weakness and the water will draw the ball in like a magnet.

We are near the lake as a couple of amazed hikers as they descended the trail. Wiz is reluctant to give up his search. He is determined to play the same ball the length of the trail. It is hard to give up your goals. Finally we resume the climb and Wiz overtakes me by two strokes when the lake appears before us. We are observing etiquette and I am away. If my shot makes the lake through the trees, he will have two shots to win. I hit a beautiful shot that finds an opening and sails into the middle of the lake. Wiz plays a setup shot to position himself for the win. We agree that the next shot must enter the water on the fly rather than rolling in for his victory to be pure. He sets up, takes his backswing and lets loose a glorious, soaring shot deep into the lake. I shake his hand and congratulate him. We have played the game in its best tradition and I have discovered there is as much joy in playing well and falling short as there is in winning.

Wiz figures we have played some three thousand shots during the four hours it has taken us to hike the trail. It has been an adventure. We begin the descent, wedges tucked under our arms, with the same self-satisfied feeling one has after a round of golf well played. At some point Wiz breaks into a trot that gives way to a run and becomes a mad dash down the mountain. I stay with him about ten yards behind and find the going surprisingly easy, effortless and free of restraint. We are approaching the creek and I wonder what Wiz has in mind. I place myself in his hands. I follow his lead. He decides to fly through the maze with a blindfold. He accelerates, taking great leaping strides. It is an amazing sight, man becoming bird, but the log he has chosen to plant his foot gives way. Crack! The Wiz is down, sprawled out on a small boulder with one foot in the creek. I manage to pull up before I come down on top of him.

He looks up with an expression that tells me his ego is bruised more than his body. He was protected by blind faith and his natural relaxation at the moment of impact. That the log gave way is like the distraction of the trumpet scales. His fall is triumphant, a beautiful and inspired event, but my smile does nothing to comfort him. He proposes a deal and I agree: I will not mention his fall if he does not mention his victory in golf. I agree though I see only glory in both events. I admit I have not completely conquered my competitive spirit but I feel no shame in losing a round of golf and hope I never will.

We are back on the trail and like Castaneda and Don Juan in the desert of New Mexico we are soon trotting at a comfortable pace. We reach the lodge to discover that little has changed. The shooter is still at large. The authorities have evacuated a village down the road. We decide it is time to move on.

We wish Don Juan well, crank up Sally and head for the pass, hoping against hope that it will open before us. To my surprise the road is open for miles and miles, climbing to an elevation of 9,000 feet before we are pulled over at a lookout station by Fairview Dome and Tuolumne Meadows. The view is spectacular. It is a clear day and the sky calls to the imagination the blues of Maxfield Parrish. El Capitan towers in the distance. Surrounded by the enormous granite mountains that dominate this land, I cannot imagine a manhunt on this terrain. The hopelessness of the pursued is rivaled only by the hopelessness of the pursuers. We linger in the glory and the beauty and the majesty and the grace of mother earth, trying to communicate our gratitude with sweet sounds of music.

A park ranger about our age breaks from our station to join us. He is a musician. We talk, he plays a song and he repeats the news of the hour. It might be a matter of minutes or it might be days. We are no more than twenty or thirty miles from conquering the pass and resuming our eastward journey but it is it not to be. We are not defeated but we turn back, resolved that our path has been chosen for us. I am grateful that we are in agreement. He later confesses that he has been visited by the same haunting thought that has trailed me since our detainment at Wolf Creek: Though it runs counter to the philosophy of the journey, we must get out of California tonight.

GRAND CANYON: SKY OF A MILLION STARS

2011-03-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

We retrace our path down Tioga Pass into the foothills, a sense of urgency crawling over us. It is a strange feeling moving once again toward the setting sun. The grade grows steeper, the road narrows and winds around the mountains of purple hued bushes as we reach Groveland where the mountains yield gradually to rolling hills. Groveland is the home to one of my favorite golf course: Pine Mountain Golf and Country Club. It is laid out around a lake, using the natural lay of the land, where elevated tees and greens are the rule and the greens are as slick and smooth as pool tables, with slope and undulations to challenge the finest putter.

It is a course I have walked once and never will again. The grade is too steep and the beauty far too great for labor. The golf at Pine Mountain has long since given way to the country club. The privatization of such places of beauty is a process that began at the peak of golf’s popularity. It will run its course but probably not here in my lifetime. I’ve never felt comfortable in the company of the privileged class and they’ve never seemed comfortable in mine. People are people so I suppose it is a failing I must some day learn to conquer.

The sun has lowered in the western sky by the time we reach the turn around near Chinese Camp. It was here in the land of Joaquin Murrieta that the indentured Chinese nationals were stationed when they were called upon to cut their way through the granite mountains of the high Sierras to pave the way for the westward migration. Anyone who has traveled these mountain roads cannot but be awed by their accomplishment. It is comparable to any of the Seven Wonders of the World. To us it brings a startling reality that we are now no more than forty miles from where we began thirty-six hours ago. We might have walked as far. Wiz suggests that we return to Motown just for the look on the faces of friends and family members. I am too driven to take the bait, not completely sure he is joking.

We’ve got to get out of this place.

We begin again the ascent to the high Sierras, Sonora Pass to the Devil’s Gate. The darkness brings a fresh chill as we roll into Sonora, dead tired but not beaten. We pull up at a restaurant on the far side of town. It is surprisingly nice with its white tablecloths, folded linen napkins and spacious dining room. The waitress is about the age of Wiz’s mom. She’s a country music fan and assumes we are the same when we tell her we live in Nashville. We order steak and enjoy the most gratifying meal of our journey. We are no longer in a hurry. We gulp down as much coffee as we can hold and engage the waitress in a discussion of her favorite country music stars. We leave her a healthy tip, including one of Wiz’s CDs, hitting the highway fresh and renewed.

It is late and there is no moon. The sky is without clouds. We crawl to the top of Sonora Pass and there we are compelled to stop. I have been in these mountains a thousand nights but never have I seen a sky so closes and so teeming with stars and shining planets bursting with cosmic energy. It is the sky of a million stars. The power is so immense that it tempts my soul to walk the stairway to heaven. The sky sings to us in a chorus of infinite voices. I know now the wonder of the muses and the graces in perfect harmony. Breathless, mesmerized, enthralled, there are no words. This glorious view is the reason there is music in the universe of humankind. There are no words.

We can’t stay long. We must embrace the moment with all our beings. This image must last a lifetime. Linger too long in this heavenly perfection and we will never return to our earthly stations. We will wonder like blind men in the valley of desolation. We will find no peace or consolation. Linger too long and we will go over the edge. We are ready for such a final destiny. It is not our time. It is a moment of inspiration, not of attainment. Our journey remains before us.

We descend with all the caution and respect the mountain commands. It is the pinnacle of danger yet our spirits are light and free. We have been to the mountaintop and seen the playground of the gods. Now my human drive returns to press on. We come to a fork known as the Devil’s Gate and veer south still on the California side of the Sierras. We enter a strange land where the human spirit is not welcome. It is a land of military installations, one after another without end. It is a land without hope and a land where death reigns. We press onward with the high of Sonora Pass sill fresh in our minds, still holding us in its arms and pushing back despair.

Wiz soon falls asleep. He senses that I will soon need relief at the wheel. At any other time on our journey I would pull over and rest. Driving these mountain roads, twisting and turning and the relentless climb, has sapped my strength and clouded my vision. The road now appears as if in a tunnel, its periphery blurred beyond recognition. There is a fog where there is no fog. There is a cloud on a cloudless horizon.

Finally we turn east and head toward Highway 6 across Nevada. If it were daylight we would be able to see the granite peaks of Tioga Pass. As it is I am too tired to think or to appreciate the irony. Wiz is awakened by the change in direction and senses the disparity between my spirits and the state of my physical being. He takes the wheel and we drive on through the night.

I am unable to sleep or rest. I am beyond fatigue. I am in a state of suspended consciousness where no thoughts or visions outside the moment are allowed. The road now seems heartless, cold and unforgiving. Wiz is driving Sally hard. She seems to be flying as we hit a long series of pronounced undulations in the road. They are too small to be described as hills but too large to be called bumps. Wiz wonders at a strange sound like scraping metal that follows the passing of each rise. He is far-gone. I explain that Sally is hitting bottom on each landing and he slows down. It is an eternity before we reach the state line. We are at last free to exchange our fears of never escaping the grip of California. The high plains are barren and strange but we have finally made it to Nevada. Within a few miles we pull over and fall into a deep, deep sleep.

I dream of dark places where only rattlesnakes, lizards and scorpions thrive, where faces appear and submerge in shades of gray. I am lost and unsettled.

We awake at dawn, the chill of the night still with us in the morning light. It is a bold new world. It is astonishing how radically the land changes on the Nevada side of the Sierras. Each state is so distinctive, their boundaries laid more by nature than by political divide. Nevada is a desolate state, a land of sage and coyotes, a land of crow and vultures on the barren highland plains. Having escaped California we must now traverse the desperate stretch of highway before us.

Our first destiny is Boulder Colorado. Our path will take us through Nevada and Utah. It is something of a mirror image of our westward journey, beginning on Highway 6 and crossing over to the north in St. Louis Missouri. The paths intersect at only one point: Eli Nevada. The town that first appeared to us as an oasis in a land of desperation now appears as a crossroad where the highways converge in all directions. It is a fitting place for a round of golf.

We pay a visit to the local Burger King for coffee and breakfast. The pickup in front of us bizarrely has the number 666 on its license plate. I can’t imagine being so immune to humanity’s obsession with numbers and symbolism that you would be willing to drive a vehicle with the mark of the beast. It is a company truck and a curiosity. Is it an omen, a warning or a sign? We don’t know what to make of it.

An attractive young Hispanic woman at the Burger King is unusually friendly. She notices the instruments in the back of the car and delivers extra sugar and cream with a smile. I admit I enjoy sharing the image of traveling musicians with the Wiz, who suggests facetiously that this might not be such a bad place to settle down. It leads me to wonder what life would be like in a place like this. It leads me to wonder why anyone would choose this place over all the places of beauty we have witnessed on our journey. Heaven is where the heart is and I suppose that even Eli could be heaven with the right person and the right state of mind. Still, I can think of no attraction but the promise of employment.

There is a convention of golfers at a large local motel. The sign out front reads: Welcome Golfers! That is a sign we know what to do with. We stop for gas and Wiz opens the hood to give the engine a quick check. He finds a problem. The bolt that holds the alternator in place is broken. Left unattended it will drain the battery and leave us stranded by the roadside. It is only a matter of when. The man at the station is unable to deal with it and gives us directions to a shop on the outside of town. We decide to let it ride for now. It is early in the day so there is plenty of time.

We look up the local golf course and sign on for nine holes. It is a flat course with few trees and the ground is nearly as hard as stone off its grass fairways. We hit a bucket of balls on the practice range and I begin to realize how weary I am. This will be a round about balance, the first principle of Zen golf.

We play well on a course that is as simple and uninspired as a landfill. The holes are so similar that we get lost in the middle of the round and tee off on the wrong hole. It is not until we are walking to our balls that we realize we have played this hole before. Ironically, it is my best drive of the day, a scorching 300 yards down the right side of the fairway. No matter that it is lost on the scorecard, we right our selves and allow a twosome to play through. They appear to be businessmen, one of whom is a very large man with an extra long, graphite shaft driver with an oversized head. It is designed for maximum distance. I admit I find these new drivers bothersome. I understand the role of technology in golf. I have no real desire to go back to the days of wooden shafts, the knobby and the baffle but there is something unsavory about a club that allows a man to simulate the power of a professional golfer. They do not encourage the beauty of the swing. The extended shaft forces a flat trajectory that generally carries a hitch in the backswing. It is an ugly swing and the golfer who gets caught up in the power game will soon be lost.

The large man hits a solid drive down the middle and struts off with a satisfied grin, without a word in response to our compliments. He has demonstrated his superior manhood. I answer in their wake with a rocket down the middle. They look back with a silent acknowledgement: It is not the club so much as the golfer. The skinny guy with a persimmons wood has out-driven the beast. My momentary flirtation with the power game as well as a competitive challenge has a predictable impact. I have forgotten the day’s lesson and the principle of balance, focus, and finding the center. We finish the round, grinding against the wind and head out once again for the highway.

It is close to five o’clock and we decide to check out the shop outside of town for repair work. As before, Wiz takes the lead. He is teaching me a lot about making connections with people of all kinds. When dealing with mechanics it is advantageous to have a background of knowledge and a working vocabulary. He never begins with business. He makes small talk as if he only stopped here for a little human interaction. The manager explains that this is the first day in some time that the wind had settled down. He talks on about the Midwest where a relentless storm has overloaded the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to record depths. Here in Eli the winds whip the dry land into a dust bowl.

It is closing time and the manager passes on an offer to go golfing. Wiz inquires about a good course and the manager is familiar with one. It is clear he has taken a liking to Wiz. He asks a mechanic if he’d be willing to put in some overtime to help us out and the mechanic agrees. Turns out it’s a tricky job but the man is up to it. It takes about a half an hour and the charge is very reasonable. Wiz leaves a couple of CD’s and all is well.

We head out across Utah with its towering rock monuments. They resemble Stonehenge or some ancient carvings. Utah has no particular attraction to us. We drive straight through and watch the land undergo changes in texture, in color and feel. We observe the appearance of crows in groups of five and seven. It seems they have mastered this territory and seem to rule over it. It is a place for silent contemplation, communion with the spirit world and oneness with the earth.

We reach Colorado by nightfall and drive on to Glenwood Springs. There we give up the push to reach Boulder and settle in for the night. We check in to a motel, shower and shake the road from our bones. For the first time in weeks it seems we have a little time to kill. I watch a little baseball on TV. The Giants are in first in their division. The other division leaders are Philadelphia, Toronto and the White Sox. The Yanks and the Rangers are hanging tough. Baseball is a game I love as much as I do golf. I sometimes wonder how far I might have gone if my path led in that direction. I suppose I could never have hit the curveball.

I have a surge of energy and suggest we hit the streets. Wiz is reluctant but agrees at my urging. We stop at the liquor store down the road and pick up a fifth of brandy, a couple of ales and two samplers of Mescal con Dos Gusanos. Somewhere we will consume the worms. We check out a place that advertises live music but there is none to be found. Nothing is happening in this town. We take it as a sign. We don’t need action enough to go looking for it. We have dinner at a 24-hour restaurant, head back to the motel, click on the tube and try to make a dent in our fresh stash of booze. One hit of brandy, half an ale and we’re both out for the night. The spirit is willing but the body is in need of rest. So be it.

We are awakened in the morning by a knock at the door. It startles us. Our plans for an early start are gone. It’s closing in on half past ten and the maid wants to finish her rounds. We plead for time and she gives us a little. We are not in a mood to hurry. We click the tube back on and go through our morning routines, which include my running over to the office for coffee, doughnuts and a newspaper. When I return a movie called Buffy the Vampire Slayer is playing. It’s a kick in the ass. Wiz rearranges the packing in Sally while we extend our stay beyond checkout time. The maid will have to wait. Buffy has captured our attention and we stay to the finish, Paul Ruben’s death scene milked to the hilt. We burst into fits of laughter. It’s a great feeling.

Whatever divinity rules over us, it is smiling upon us today. It’s a great day for driving, for sitting in the sun, for laughing and playing music, for singing or just being alive. We are last car to leave the lot. The maid gives a smile. She thinks we must be high. We have a good breakfast and hit the road, bound for glory and a place called Boulder in the shadow of the Great Rocky Mountains.

Beyond Grand Junction there is a stretch of highway that extols the meeting of the Rockies and the Colorado River. To the first roaming tribes of North American hunters or the first European explorers this land must have seemed a Mecca, the promised land, the land of the gods and goddesses, a landed of blessed enchantment. Now it is a tourist Mecca. The smell of avarice is rich and bittersweet like pure natural chocolate. Vail is down the road and Aspen is due south. Somewhere around Grand Junction the highway is under construction and the remains of deer and wildlife are common along the side of the road. There is a sign warning that the eagle lands on this strip of highway. I wonder what in god’s creation would lead the great bird of the North American continent to land on a busy interstate? Is this their sacred land? Is it a protest of human encroachment? It occurs to me that tourism is to the natural inhabitants of the land what the invasion of the Jesuits was to the Native Americans. Though it promises the blessings of prosperity what it brings is ruin. In the end nothing will be spared the onslaught.

We resist the temptation to mingle with the wealthy, driving past the first roadside golf course, beautifully manicured and fitted at the base of the Rockies in this narrow interstate valley. I confide to Wiz that I know their kind and I know they don’t want our kind around. He is not convinced. We approach a second course and my resistance weakens. Wiz wants to check it out. What have we got to lose? I have to admit he’s right so we pull off the highway and enter tourist land. It is a maze of social activity. Summer vacation condos are the center of it all with a bar at its base overlooking the golf course. Outside the yuppie adolescents are playing mud volleyball to the tune of rock and roll. There is something very odd and almost humorous about this crowd’s willingness to get down and dirty. Some are less adapted than others. They take the pose and look the part but are willing to go no further than a step in any direction. Their less restrained comrades are in it from head to toe, the mud people of Gypsum.

They are of the same make as we are. The only thing that separates us from them is their parents’ bank accounts. We are of the working class and there is no mistaking their fear of us. They believe we want what they have. We do not. We desire something of far greater worth. We want what they desire and what money cannot attain. We want freedom, peace and wisdom. We have more in common than they realize.

Or first stop is the driving range where a lesson is in progress. They may be among the worst golfers I have seen. The lesson is the antithesis of Zen. It is all nuts and bolts. Keep the left arm straight, right elbow in, shoulder under the chin, head down. It is the golf of restraint. Avoid errors and all will be well. A left hander stands apart from the crowd and strikes a contrast, sending shots that rise and soar like a glider and land like a ball of cotton. He is a Zen golfer. They take no notice of him. He is not one of them but he is adapted to their presence. It is a private lesson. We are given directions to the clubhouse.

We arrive and I know at a glance the cost will exceed our comfort level. It smells of it. We engage a uniformed employee outside the clubhouse in conversation. It is her job to take care of the carts and customers. Se gives us the information we need. The tee times are booked and the price is high but it includes mandatory carts. Walking is not allowed. We politely explain our conviction that walking is a part of the game. She’s sure we’re right but she is not a golfer.

It seems clear that this is not our kind of place. We hang a while, have a beer and observe the yuppie gathering. It is not our kind of place. We return to Sally and give her a crank but she stutters and stalls. At length Wiz pulls the air filter and she struggles but turns over. It turns out the combination of thin air and low octane gas has deprived her of required oxygen. She is choking. I promise her a jump in octane at the first opportunity and we go our way with a vague longing to return to where we belong. We need to be welcome. We seek a place with familiar signs and warm memories and a place that feels something like home. We want to be surrounded by our kind of people.

GRAND CANYON: BOULDER, COLORADO

2011-03-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

The last time I came through Boulder I was eighteen, a draft fugitive and traveling by thumb. Had I known my draft status at the time I might not have enjoyed it so much. I’d just completed my first season of summer theater and linked up with a fellow actor who was returning to his home in York, Pennsylvania, on Chesapeake Bay.

We’d lost a loved one that memorable summer. She was stage-managing our production of Man of La Mancha when she walked out of the theater and was struck by a speeding car. She never regained consciousness. I still remember the smile she wore that fateful day. The charm and love of live she personified filled my soul with a warm and tender feeling that I did not completely understand. She possessed the beauty of innocence. My friend had dated her while I had only dreamed. We both mourned her passing. It was my first encounter with the shadow of death.

My buddy Jay had hitchhiked across country a few times. For some reason he despised the southern route with a passion. Having seen Easy Rider I never asked why. Though the summer was coming to an end and the fall was coming on, we took the northern route across interstate 80 through Reno, Winnemucca, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Omaha, Chicago and Cleveland. Our first night out we were stranded for seventeen hours on the exit ramp for Mustang Ranch just east of Reno. Some fool or sadistic bastard picked us up in Reno and dumped us there. He invited us in but we didn’t have that kind of cash so we waited alongside the narrow two-lane highway until we finally realized that no one was going to pick up a couple of guys outside a whorehouse. We decided to walk. The problem was he wanted to walk back toward Reno and I wanted to go forward. It was something I felt by instinct and retain today: Never turn back. The adventure lies ahead.

We started out walking our separate ways, a sizeable chip on both our shoulders, when he finally relented and caught up to me. Within half an hour a trucker picked us up. In those days that alone was something of a miracle. There was a hierarchy of expectations when it came to getting a ride: Volkswagen busses were top of the mark; big-rig trucks were rock bottom. It was against company policy. In all my days of hitching that was only time a trucker ever offered a ride.

He let us off in Winnemucca where we spent a long while reading the notes of desperation scribbled and scratched on the road sign. We were more fortunate than the scribes. A guy with a camper shell on the back of his pickup asked us if either of us could drive a standard transmission. He was headed for Ohio and wanted us to take the wheel. We told him we could, no problem. He rode a while and then we pulled over so he could climb in the camper and sleep. We got off the interstate and sailed down the highway at an average speed between sixty-five and seventy, sleeping in shifts. I was driving when we were forced to pass up a couple of fellow hitchers in the Cowboy State of Wyoming. We could see their spirits rise as the checked us out. We were brethren spirits but all we could do was shrug and gesture as they waved frantically and threw their signs and bags in the road as we drove on by. It seems they’d been there a while.

Like the stalled travelers on the loneliest road in America, the experience left me weak and pondering. We should have stopped but it wasn’t our place. More than likely we’d have joined them in despair when our sleeping proprietor awoke. Who can tell what might have been? It was a crossroad and we made our choice.

We crossed the Mississippi River at night and made it to Chesapeake Bay the next day. The entire crossing took only two and a half days, including the long wait at Mustang Ranch. I spent a week at Jay’s parents home. He was their only child and they were grateful for his return. I was treated as a valued member of the family. I remember clearly the most prized possession of their home: A framed photograph of Jay’s father with John Wayne, both in navy uniforms, on the mantel of their fireplace. They were working class people with basic values and a wandering son they did not understand. I connected with them and respected their ways though I was only a passing stranger.

It was not my place and they were not my people.

I headed north to New Hampshire where I fell in love with autumn. Colors more beautiful than any I have seen outside the realm of imagining. Hills covered with trees and trees covered with leaves of every color. Colors blending harmoniously in a way that reminded me of the French Impressionists. I spent two weeks communing with nature, staying at the college living quarters of a woman I had known since grade school though we had never shared time outside the classroom. I felt like Thoreau must have felt at Walden. As the northern chill set in, I left with a promise to myself that I would someday return. Twenty-two years later, though I have not kept that promise, I have returned often in my mind and in my heart.

On the return journey I was invited to join a theater company in Lincoln, Nebraska, but the strings that tied me to home were too powerful. I held an invitation to audition at the famed Guthrie Theater in Minnesota but the road was too long and cold. I moved on and fell in love with a place called Boulder where the people were open and kind to wandering strangers and seemed enlightened to young adventurous eyes. I spent only a day and a night there, sleeping in the dormitory lounge at the University of Colorado but I left its mark.

I returned home to Motown, kicking up my heels alongside the road to the amusement of passersby and discovered that I was already a month late in reporting for my physical to be drafted into the military. I had written a radical application for conscientious objector status, believing that it would not be approved in any case because my family was not the church going kind. My oldest brother had already distinguished himself in the family’s eyes by refusing to step forward at the induction ceremony. He was a convicted draft resister. I had read a book called 4F and decided my best shot was to starve myself so that I would be under the standard weight requirement. I had done so.

When I reported to the center they instructed us all to hold our clothing in our hands as we were weighed. I could not be sure if that was the usual procedure but it put me just over the limit. It was as if they knew who I was and what I intended. In the infamous bend-over room I heard a doctor comment that I was awfully skinny. Someone replied that I was above the guideline. When it was all over we were assembled in a holding room where we waited until our names were called for a final conference. I was the last to be called though all the others were in alphabetical order. I entered a smaller room and the man in charge called all of his associates into the room. I was clearly being given special attention. I was naïve enough that I did not know why I was being singled out.

“Look at this guy,” the man in charge began. “Does he look like he could make it through basic training?”

“Depends how much he wants it,” another said.

“He doesn’t want it,” said a third.

I nodded in agreement and looked around the room. They seemed to be enjoying this interplay. Finally, the man in charge confides:

“Alright, you may get a 1-A in the mail but don’t worry. You won’t be inducted.”

I don’t know why but I believed him. Maybe they figured I’d be more trouble than I was worth. Maybe they figured I really was a conscientious objector. Maybe they knew that Nixon was about to call off the draft. Or maybe they were just playing with me. I do know that I would not have gone under any circumstances and as it turned out I was never called. In some strange way I almost resented it. I wanted to take a stand. I wanted to join the army of resistance but it was not my destiny. That distinction would belong to my brother John and I will forever honor him for it.

That was my first journey. It was filled with wonders and its many crossroads had the power to change the course of my life. That I made the choices I did has led me to the place I now stand. I have returned to a place of beauty and one that has lived only in my memories for over two decades.

We drive into town, our separate memories preoccupying our minds in silence. Wiz has more recent memories and we follow his lead. We stop at a gas station near the university and I press the clerk about what’s happening in town while Wiz attends to Sally. The clerk knows nothing about golf. She doesn’t know about the Colorado Shakespeare Festival where I once applied for a position. She doesn’t know about jazz clubs. But when I ask about the poetry scene her eyes light up. She tells me where it’s happening and when. She says the Allen Ginsberg is in town, teaching a class at the Institute. Wiz locates the nearest public course through the phone book and our plan takes form. First we will golf in the shadow of the Rockies, then we will explore jazz poetry on the streets of Boulder and finally we will check out the scene at the poetry café the clerk has recommended.

The golf course is striking, more for its surroundings than for its layout. It is the new breed of course, a centerpiece for a housing development. It is long, well contoured and beautifully manicured. The greens are smooth, slick and sloping. We’re paired with an older couple, good and solid people. The man uses an iron off the tee and rarely sends it airborne. We later learn he is recovering from back surgery. His wife is a beginning golfer but she has a better swing than her husband. With a little guidance (hit down to go up) they could both be good golfers. As it is they enjoy the round despite their games.

The Wiz and I are playing our normal games. We are having a little difficulty with the read and the speed of the greens. On the sixth hole, out of the blue, I nail a three wood off the tee and stiff an eight iron to within ten feet of the pin. My putt is true to the center of the cup. I look up with a smile and immediately recall from the expression on Wiz’s face the bargain we struck back in Glenwood Springs. After the next birdie we swallow the worm! Only in this case, we swallow two worms each: Dos Gusanos.

We have placed our mescal samplers in our golf bags in preparation for this occasion. We tee off on the next hole, a three par to an elevated green and linger at the tee to allow our playing partners to move ahead. We are all but certain they would not approve. We whip them out quickly and put them down, mine in one swallow, the Wiz in two. I am amazed at how well I play under the influence of the worm. The world opens before my eyes. Don Juan, howling in the breeze, hovers over my shoulder. Suddenly our partners, unaware of our adventure, are like family to us. On the ninth hole we share stories and confidences and part with a heartfelt well wishing.

Boulder is a magical place. Our spirits are soaring as we head downtown, primed for jazz, laughter, music and poetry. Wiz points us to the square at the beginning of the pedestrian walk where neither cars nor bad tidings are allowed. We find a place to park and walk to the street where the scene is unfolding. There on the corner we come upon a couple of bongo players and a gypsy dancer. Within a sliver of a moment I know her. I have always known her. She is the dream I have always dreamed. She is the love I have always held within my heart. She is the queen of the gypsies. She is the woman I fell in love with a thousand years ago in a house of mystery. She is the woman I followed to Nashville.

I pull out my pen and begin writing, looking up only to take in the inspiration that comes with each breath. Wiz joins the musical feast, charging the dance of the gypsy with fresh muse like the first star of a clear moonless night, like the first scent of evergreen, like the first taste of ocean air, like the first glimpse of Grand Canyon. The enchanted circle grows. The words flow faster than I am able to write them down. I capture and hold them. They are as illusive as a gypsy’s love.

The music fades to silence. The mood is satisfaction. The dance gives way to the dream of glory and yields to waking motion. The players converse as actors do between scenes at rehearsal. They shake hands with Wiz. He has passed the audition. My words finally run dry as if the motion itself carried them and when the motion ceased the words emptied in its wake. I join the player circle on the corner of the square and Wiz introduces me. He tells them I am a poet of the streets and suggests that I join them in revelry. It seems to cause a split.

One of the percussionists is reluctant and skeptical which he communicates with a scowl and a sarcastic wit. He doesn’t want to share the stage. The gypsy dancer has already encroached on their territory and stolen his thunder as gypsies are inclined to do. He has not conceded to welcome Wiz with his magic flute yet already he is being asked to make room for a street poet. It is an art form he does not recognize.

I can only be amused. I have had some difficulty accepting the art of poetry myself. I have no need to recite my words on the streets. I am satisfied to have committed them to paper.

The other man is wiser. He strikes a contrasting chord with a smile that spreads good tidings to match the mood of celebration. He welcomes all artists of the street. He has recognized the enchantment of the moment and answers with a recitation of a poem he has committed to memory. It is a piece by Blake as I recall. The words rise and hang in the air like a lingering melody of strings. It is inviting and yet foreboding. It is the standard by which my words will be judged. I smile and understand. I like his style and manner. I have as yet made no decision: to read or not to read.

The next round of music and dance begins. I imagine myself a surfer waiting to catch a wave. It must be the right wave. Just as each wave requires a different style of surfing, each rhythm calls for its own style of word jazz. I don’t do country or folk, rock and roll or Irish jigs. Give me jazz or space jam.

I wait and listen but mostly I watch the dancer and the dance. Her eyes are mystical and divine forces guide her movement. Finally the spirit moves within and I spot a wave I can ride.

The karmic debt is mounting with each tick of the karmic clock
With each breath of unholy air each thump of collective shock…

The rhythm and the movement accelerates and transitions like the wind before a storm, carrying me like a dream of mystic flight among the clouds of a starlit night.

Speak no more of troubled times and days of mourning
And dawns of no tomorrow

Hear no more the winds of darkness unloading tears of sorrow

Heaven lives upon this earth what more could heaven be?
Hell is a room without doors in heaven we are free

Free to choose the darkness or the light
Free to love or hate and choose the battle we will fight

My love is my heaven here and now

Speak no more of bring me down and suffer me your truth

I love therefore I am the truth and love is my master

The dancer moves to a higher plain and touches me at the core and center of my being, like the hand of a goddess. I am moved beyond words but offer up the only gratitude I have to give: my words, my poetry.

Esmeralda on the Streets of Boulder
Spinning with the core and center of life
Her eyes dancing with fire rage desire
Her soul tempting ecstasy

Forces of an ancient peyote wind howl
Move this precious jewel beyond words
Beyond passion beyond the edge of reason
The body as an instrument of faith finely tuned
To raise the lightning rod that dwells
Within the secret soul of self

Blast me with the fuel or your undaunted devotion pure
And unpolluted by the hand of social righteousness

Fear not the wagging tongues and bulging eyes of those
Who cannot walk the streets with open shirts and hearts

You are the wind the blessed child of mother earth
The chosen of the nameless flock who follow their noses
To the maze of mindless wonder and dumbstruck awe
To settle in the circle of their own waste
Content and comfortably numb

You are the object of their desires
They dream of you and pray to meet you in another life

Dance and let the masses dream
Sweet nectar of life be yours and mine
And ours to embrace

What are words to their inspiration when the inspiration is itself inspired? They linger and hesitate as if awaiting her sacred blessing. They rise like smoke and scatter with the first breeze. They have hit their mark. They have spoken to the moment with honesty and truth. They recall the essence of the oral tradition. This is the method of the troubadour and the street poet, immediate and engaging, inspired by the unfolding of events. What greater tribute to the gift of a gypsy dancer than this?

Alas she speaks. More gratifying than eloquence, more pleasing than poetry, as if awakening from a dream, in an airy distant voice, she solves the moment’s mystery: Wow, that’s beautiful! Sweet satisfaction is mine. Sweet love of innocence is born again. Her simple words have filled my heart with joy. I have paid tribute to her grace and she has embraced my song of praise.

Her name is Rain Forest. From this time forward she will also answer to the name Esmeralda. She asks if she may have my words and stops me as I start to tear the page from my notebook. She borrows my pen and copies them in her own hand. She asks me how I pronounce Esmeralda. I do so and explain it is from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It is one of her favorite stories along with Cyrano de Bergerac. She is a romantic and so am I. We are pleased there are still some of us left in this world. We do not speak of ordinary things, our lives and our living. We know enough already. When we shake hands there is an electrical charge that seals our bond forever.

If it is true that our lives are built on prior lives then I have surely known her in another existence. Maybe I was Cyrano to her Roxanne. Maybe I was the poet suitor never to win the love of Esmeralda. There are far stranger things in this world than our dreams allow. Tonight was her debut on the streets of Boulder. Her legend is born.

She thanks me for the poem and I thank her for the inspiration. She thanks me again in the poetry of dance. This time she dances for me. My eyes are riveted to her untrained body in flowing, writhing, floating and sensual motion. She has tapped an ancient muse. She has transformed her perfect body into universal spirit. When her eyes meet mine there is a pull of energy so strong it renders me helpless. I am grateful to be sitting. Were I standing, her power would surely knock me to the ground, leaving me breathless at her command.

The time comes for her to move on, like a mermaid in an ocean mist, vanishing into the streets of Boulder. She has a return date with the wiser of the bongo players. The other has departed. I wish her well and watch her turn and walk away. She does not look back. It is unlikely we will ever see each other again but her image is burned into my consciousness. The moment is perfect and eternal.

Wiz and I linger, enjoying the company of strangers and basking in the afterglow. They play a little longer. My words are spent for now but my spirit is renewed. We make a clean break and wander down the pedestrian walkway, Wiz playing as we go, polishing his chops on a silver flute.

Everywhere we go he is greeted with smiles and compliments. They offer money, ask him to stay and play, and thank him for a moment of surreal enchantment. The Wiz is in his element. This city loves his chosen instrument and he is a master in the garb of an apprentice. Here the people recognize his gift and applaud his talent.

He speaks of the flute in relation to the cities where he has plied his trade. For all its jazz and mystique, New Orleans does not embrace the sound. Though he can render it mournfully and draw tears from an angel, New Orleans is too dark for such a heavenly voice. It is a muse one would not expect in the company of voodoo queens and vampires. The jazzman flautist would starve in the Big Easy but here he would thrive.

Nashville is a strange town for the wizard of the flute. It is a city of music and musicians of all stripes find their way to its confines. In the taverns and bars some of the best jazz, rock and folk you will ever hear plays through the night but country is where the money is and country rarely embraces the flute.

We stroll down the enchanted boulevard, pausing here and there to breathe in the shops and enclaves of street entertainers. There is a strong presence of jazz, rhythm and blues. Rockers with acoustic guitars stand alone, gathering contributions in open cases. Fiddlers draw a crowd. I make a note: There are no poets on the streets of Boulder, not even here in this sanctuary of free expression. A juggler draws the largest gathering and performs to thunderous applause.

In the land of enchantment the fool is always treasured.

A woman in conservative dress and style approaches Wiz with exuberance before she draws back. Wiz beckons her and she returns. She confides that she is in love with the flute. She is a devoted follower of Ian Anderson who performs under the name of Jethro Tull. Wiz has long sworn off the style he believes is addictive to the point that it excludes all others but now he plays the patented chops that Anderson made famous. The woman is overjoyed and offers money. Wiz refuses and offers a CD with the explanation: Write to the address on the back and I’ll send you one of my own. She thanks him and we move on. His following grows and another soul is made lighter for his passing. The karma of jazz.

We grab a couple of falafels and sit before a Blues Brother trio on break between sets. The bench where we are seated has an overhang that prevents us from seeing the upper halves of their bodies. We speak of music, art, the street scene and finally, the shoes of the three musicians. They are well suited to their style but poorly matched to their feet. We realize at length that they are not prepared to play another set. Their gig is up. With a tip of the hat, we head over to the poetry café.

It is on a corner a couple of blocks from the pedestrian mall on the main drag. It’s a happening joint divided into two sections. The smaller features a plywood stage, sparsely lit, and a crowded audience area jammed with a few dozen cool blue punksters. We scope the punk rock scene and gather that poetry is not on the menu. We walk over to the larger section, at least double in size, where postcards, greeting cards and a cappuccino bar are featured. There are a few empty tables in the front. It strikes as too cool in a very stylish way. I’ve been known to collect a few postcards in tribute to the heroes and heroines of my upbringing. You can tell a lot about a community by the postcards they stock. This one has a fine collection of American Indians: Geronimo, Sarah Winnemucca, an unknown Lakota warrior and a variety of tribal shamans. It also has more traditional figures of American culture: Bessie Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Andy Warhol. One features William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg at the Democratic National Convention circa 1968.

As we browse the shop a petit woman appears to be stuck at the counter trying to carry a large square metal object out to her car. The opening is barely wide enough to squeeze it through at great peril to her seemingly delicate hands. Always a gentleman and quick on the draw, Wiz instinctively moves to help her. It triggers an immediate and forceful reprimand. Wiz steps back and with mouths agape we watch her struggle onward with her task. At the door she turns back to announce: There’s nothing I hate more than that.

It’s all I can do not to reply: How about serial killers? Instead I look to Wiz with a shrug. He shrugs back, apparently unaffected.

I select a handful of postcards and take them to the counter where a tall woman informs me they do not accept plastic. I pay cash for the cards and a latte on the side. I ask for change for the postage stamp machine and she directs me to the Quick Stop market. I realize that this is not a friendly place. What’s wrong here? Suddenly and without warning we’re being treated like lepers at a costume ball, like California tourists in Oregon, like some sub-species of a lesser god. Are they tourist weary in a tourist shop? They’ll take our money but they won’t say thanks? Come again?

We sit at the corner table in the front of the shop. I choose a magnificent wooden chair carved into the image of a grizzly bear. I generally prefer a less conspicuous perch but the rudeness of the shopkeepers emboldens me. It doesn’t matter. Here I could sit yoga style on the tabletop and no one would acknowledge my presence. I’m scoping the scene, taking it all in when the reality of the place hits me like a jolt of whiskey on a December morn. The taller woman is braless, mother earth style with a strong sexual appeal but she seems purposely detached and aloof. My vantage point allows me to take it all in and I begin to write while Wiz heads outside to create a new scene.

Slick circle of feminist dreams
She practiced too long at being hip before the mirror cracked
Her sixties dress clean lean and hanging from sharpened nipples by a thread

Don’t look she said with a scowl that would freeze a mother’s smile
Cool baby blue back off I can take you before the shock settles
And leave you breathless like a slow dance that grinds and grooves
So long it steals the light from romance

Bend baby bend shake it down and clutch the inner beast
Your soul is mine to rise or bury like an old machine
Rust and fade to dust

Smile baby blue whose eyes were meant to shine
The morning light not ground the midnight high

There is no life but this we swim together and dance the mating cry
There is no view but this we share as we walk a lonely path

Rise to the call of human kindness spare your tortured brand
I see you dancing naked under blue moon sight
In thundering rain beneath heaven star light

I see your perfect being unleashed in dreams of passion
And raw untempered desire

I see your hunger filled in rhapsodic tides
Your soul lost in the great divide

I see your body open like a broken dam
Whitewater crash again and again

I see your love and tender mercy hidden in the root and core
Emerging with Eros' raging fire radiating in sultry light
Awakening in the long lost night

You and I are lovers from a million lives before this hallowed crossing
I greet you with a kiss and praise eternal beauty

Awaken and steal the breath of moonlight
This wine will last forever

In the end I do not understand the divisive attitudes of the oppressed. The feminist left can at times appear as bigoted as the white supremacists of the old south or the rednecks on the south side of Boston or the country clubbers of Pine Mountain. Geography has no hold on bigotry. We are meant to be allies. If I open the door in courtesy open my mind, do not slam it in my face. The crimes of our culture on the individual level are as pebbles to the mountain. This discrimination and division will set back the cause. It is a strange phenomenon. It feeds the religious right who would neither open the door of courtesy nor the door of opportunity. When it all comes down, know who your friends are. It is too easy to alienate. Build the alliance and thrive! In the hour of need pray that we all find a way to forgive without judgment so that we can stand as one against the tide of oppression. Our differences are of little consequence yet the breach of trust, betrayals large and small, will so widen the gap between us that they will appear as vast and unapproachable as Grand Canyon under moonlight. When will we find the way?

I finish my scribe as a wild and writhing dancer appears before me life a vision from the dark side of a liquid dream. The gig is on. I write.

Shake it baby grind and lust the pining light
Jazz be yours in major key and chase us through the night
Snake and groove the heavens to divine the pulsing
Heat of all and ever force of life life life

Jazz be yours and couple with the fire of desire
Tap the cave dwellers and stir them to rejoice
The lava flows in mounting waves of madness
Joy and love of nature’s boundless womb

Jazz be yours and glide on streams of wanton dreams
Down and down again sinking without care
A whirlwind to the depths of ancient core desire
Sweet blue fame of gone and over edge of sane
And pain and Mary Jane in mourning
Make heat and lusty love in waterfalls of time

Jazz be yours embrace it squeeze it
And hold on for dear life

We head out across the pedestrian mall our spirits rising. The Wiz is playing as we move and I am reading verse and prose as the spirit moves me. Wiz discovers a sign that we are on the right path. There beneath the bench where we sat to the blues trio that never played are a pair of shiny patent leather shoes. They must have been left behind by one of the three musicians. They must have heard our musings and left them as an offering in lieu of their set. It seems mystical as the Wiz tries them on: a perfect fit.

We resume our stroll toward Sally with an open mind. A university student waves a five spot and asks Wiz to play before their table outside a beer joint. Wiz refuses the money but plays for his and their entertainment. We end up inside where we are engaged in conversation by another student who informs us that Boulder is a doomed city. He explains that it lies on a flood plain. It is only a matter of time before it is swept away.

I imagine being a Californian escaping the great earthquake, a Floridian or Carolinian escaping a hurricane or an inhabitant of tornado alley escaping the ruins only to be swept away on the flood plain of Colorado. Go where your bliss informs you and take your chances. There is no escape. There is no sanctuary.

He is a student of literature but he doesn’t write. He doesn’t believe he has the talent. His favorite writer is Charles Dickens and his favorite novel A Tale of Two Cities. His outward appearance is that of a typical football and Friday night college student like the elitists of Vanderbilt in Nashville. Inwardly he has world of though to offer a planet in desperate need but he lacks the confidence to deliver his message. I want to tell that of course he can write. If he can speak he can write. If he can think he can write. But no one on earth can deliver the lesson that he must learn for himself.

It is near midnight and we are content with our Boulder experience. It has renewed a bond and a sense of security. It is a place that welcomes us. We are grateful but we decide to move on. We get to within a block of Sally when a corner of activity inspires Wiz to a last improvisational performance. The enchanting sound attracts a raggedy man with wild eyes and a guitar who praises him to the heavens. He asks if he may play a few riffs on Wiz’s magnificent instrument. Wiz consents and the raggedy man plays. He asks Wiz to join him for a few songs down the road at the square. We are back to where we began. They set up a plastic bubble, the waiting station for public transportation, and commence to play. It turns out the man is a gifted Irish Indian Mexican flamenco guitarist looking to make a comeback on the local scene. He had started an Irish folk group that ran its course and broke apart despite its success. He’ looking to start again and wants Wiz to join him.

My muse is still burning and I let the music take me where it will. Writing without thought or car is a rare and special blessing. Ride it when it come and let it flow. The moment will not last forever.

City of a thousand wet dreams and visions of tomorrow
Police siren at the crack of midnight Don Juan on guitar
Soul of the magic flute scorching the Boulder skyline
City of holy sounds wise prophets and gypsy dancers
City that moves in harmony to the beat of higher minds
That cracks the upper maze and grounds angels in mid flight

Scream the stream of consciousness coyote on the run
Black crow perched on sacred ground
Thunderbird on native winds transcending the heights
Touching my secret soul with the wind of timeless sage

The music like the flight of butterflies emerges from the air
Showers me with blessings letting go without care

The rare and precious jewels for which the mind of man is meant
Muses of the gods the goddess of content

Lore of the ancient tribe of troubadours
Treatise of the philosophic mind
Rhyme of the first poet
Breath of the first wind

Beauty is in the being rising from the void
Feeding the depths of spirit nourishing harmonics
Inspiring the core wisdom of the universal soul:
We are one with all and all is one within

It seems hours have passed in minutes. The wild man has made his case for the Wiz to stay and join him in his venture. It is a crossroad and he is tempted but in the end like me he cannot shake the journey’s chosen end. We will return to Nashville. He offers a CD and asks the man to write him at the Alabama address. His message is clear: Get it together and Wiz may join him. We shake hands and I have the sense that their reunion will never happen. He needs more than a musician. He needs the man that Wiz is. It is a strangely solemn parting.

Our minds are full with thoughts and memories of all we have experienced on the journey as we drive down the highway heading east to Kansas City. No more than a few miles out of town Wiz wants to turn back. The ghost of Mustang, Nevada clouds my mind. I was prepared to stay the night. I even suggested it. Now it is too late. Don’t turn back. You can never go back. What more did we have to learn? How could we better the experience we have already enjoyed? It is time to let go. We have departed for a reason. To turn back now would fly in the face of all the journey means. Believe in the path and go forth.

Wiz finally concedes. With the ghost of regret riding with us now, we drive on. Boulder has been all we could anticipate and more. It is a place that calls us back and I have no doubt that each of us in time will return.

If ever I am stranded by the roadside abandoned
Here will I return to greet the setting of the sun

If ever I am fallen like October leaves of brown
Here will I be planted upon this sacred ground

And when the chill wind suffers me to groan
Here will I return to find paradise alone

For I will wander distant lands and glory at the sights
But never will I leave behind the wonder of this night

GRAND CANYON: KANSAS HIGHWAY BLUES

2011-03-09T18:01:00.002-08:00

We drive as long and far as our eyes will allow us, finally pulling up at a trucker’s all-night diner somewhere on the outskirts of Limon, Colorado, where Wiz goes in to fill up with coffee and a bite to eat. I catch some needed sleep in the car. My mind is swimming in a sweet and swirling torrent of dream. Esmeralda is with me. Though I have left temptation behind, she remains implanted in my heart and mind.

Is it wrong I wonder? Can a man betray his loved one in dreams? I have no heart to stop the passion that runs through my veins and fills me with sweet pleasure. This is not my dream alone. It is too powerful. It is the dance of the temptress and gypsy magic. It is positive proof that we live our lives both as physical and spiritual beings. In our imaginations we are not confined. We are free to wander and roam wherever the spirit takes us. It is more than a sensual feast. Our bodies blend and mold together, joining in a rhythm only our hearts can keep. Love among the stars, at heaven’s gate, before the eyes of the gods, a muse of celestial poets, gardens of delight at the sweet and tender mercy of Eros. It is the twenty-four hour wet dream in the sanctuary of liquid desire.

She dances by firelight in a gypsy caravan, bidding me come with her eyes. She lays her body down by a river of moonlit waters and opens to my embrace. She leads me to a forest of starlight and reveals to me her soul. She pulls me to her breasts, soft and charged with radiant energy. She locks me in her fold. Our legs and arms entwined, our bodies as one, we are capable of flight, no longer physical but embodied light.

Wiz emerges from the all-night diner ready to take the wheel. He senses my distance and allows me to roam in dreamland while he drives deep into the night. The highway is flat and straight and I am caught between sleep and awake. I am unable or unwilling to let go of the dream that has captured me. Eyes closed and I am submerged, sinking ever deeper, aware but unafraid of drowning. Eyes open and I return to the here and now but fail to find balance. Each time I go down it is harder to return, harder to pry the lids apart, harder to gain focus, harder to hang on to the world above.

Finally I let go. It is not mine to control. Let it run its course. Let it take me where it will. I will not fight back. I will not struggle against the dream that chooses me. Lit be. Let it have its way with me. It is not fro a man to turn away his destiny though it may cost him his life. There are forces at work that will not be denied. To do so would be perilous. It would plant a seed of unrest that would haunt me down the road.

We reach Kansas in the morning. Wiz has lost his caffeine high and hands the keys to me. The long night’s journey has rested me enough to drive although I am not completely myself. I am entranced in a state of awareness. The world has once again transformed. There is a sky of endless clouds, huge white billowy formations that roll over the land. It is world of dreams. Never have I seen such a sky. It seems to cover all of Kansas, moving westward from the floods of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

The dream takes on a new dimension. No longer confined to darkness it summons me in daylight and dances in the corners of my mind. I need only call her name and she appears before me. As the miles roll on and the clouds begin to reveal scattered glimpses of blue sky above, I am aware of another presence in the dream. It is another gypsy dancer, the one I fell in love with so many years ago, the one that uprooted me from my home in California, and the one whom I followed to Nashville. I glance in the rearview mirror and I’m startled to see a whirling red light.

A Kansas highway patrolman pulls us over and informs me that I’ve been traveling at 73 miles per hour. The road is desolate and the land is wide with sparse traffic. The speed limit is sixty-five. I’ve been lost in another world, unaware of his presence behind me, and I suspect that my lack of awareness more than my speed has led to his action. A 1965 Mustang with California plates and a driver that has been too long on the road is suspect enough. He asks for license and registration and I scramble to find them. In my haste I hand him the original registration, which is over ten years old. He walks back to his patrol car to check out my vehicle as I locate the updated registration. I hand to him with an apology on his return. He smiles and tells me he’s going to let me off with a warning but he advises me to keep my attention on the road. It is a warning in more ways than one.

Wiz has awakened to this scene and surmises the true nature of the event: Your wife just reached out from Nashville to give you a slap. I don’t doubt it. We had lived apart for twenty years yet in some strange way we were always connected, joined in spirit and in dreams. I call for her forgiveness and feel it is received. But forgiveness must be without judgment and it will be another thousand miles before the truth of what has happened on this open highway in Kansas will be revealed. I have no sense of guilt and I will not be found guilty. To dream is not a crime, no matter what form it takes. I have not betrayed my love but I have forgotten for a time its source. I have discovered what I have always known within: that it is possible to love again. It is always possible.

The closer we get to Nashville on the eastward swing of our journey, the more my thoughts will turn to her. My love for her survived a canyon of time and a thousand rude awakenings. I knew the first time I saw her in her layered gypsy dress, a bandana wrapped around her almost childlike face, that she was the woman of my dreams. She was innocence and wisdom and her eyes sparkled with anticipation of the life that would unfold before her. She was mystery and mysticism, reading palms and communing with the stars. She was spirituality and sensuality and her voice carried angels on its wings. She was a dancer and a musician whose talent shined like the sky of a million stars at Sonora Pass.

In the days of our youth she was beyond my reach. She was bonded to another man, the mother of a small child, and I was not ready for the life she would lead. My love remained within my heart. Later, when I went to New York to make my mark as an actor and playwright, I would dream of her. It was as if she called me from the distance of a continent and I answered in devotion. I returned to the central valley of California dead broke and struggling for a new way of life but all I could think about was her. My friend and roommate at the time was adept at reading the hearts of men. He revealed to her my affection though I had never revealed it to him.

It happened one night in the back yard of a mutual acquaintance. Beneath the eyes of heaven we touched. I wondered then as I wonder now how many of us are blessed to know such a sensation. To reveal the contents of the heart and to know in an instant the meaning of love. All this and so much more that a thousand words could not begin to describe it. All this in an embrace. She was my first true love and she became an obsession. We began a relationship of agony and ecstasy, of passion and jealousy, of joy and suffering.

Maybe it was too soon for love. We were young and neither of us was prepared for what love entails. We were still hungry for adventure. The world was wide open and teeming with excitement to commit to another’s dreams and ambitions.

It ended as suddenly as it began. Jealousy reared its bloody fangs. She had promised her love but she had never forsworn her freedom. The final scene was dark and foreboding. For years I would refer to it as the incubus. My accusation of betrayal struck so deeply that she threw herself at me in rage. I recoiled in remorse but the damage was done. Not long after she called to say goodbye. She was leaving the valley, bound for glory and adventure somewhere in Oregon. We parted as friends and for years thereafter I sent her a trail of love letters, hoping without cause or reason to win back her love. Eighteen years later my hope was realized.

Her travels had taken her from Oregon to Idaho to Nashville in pursuit of a dream. Her daughter had grown from a beautiful child to a mature young artist. She had gone through several frustrating relationships. She had come to the realization that she was attracted to men who abused her. They were broken spirits in need of nurturing and incapable of returning the love and support she gave them.

I had undergone many changes as well. Two fruitless relationships and a handful of brief affairs left me wondering if it all wasn’t a waste of time. Having received my degree in psychology and speech pathology I got a job in the public schools and there I remained for the past ten years. My life was secure. I had found a sacred circle of friends and was close to my family. I was alone but I was not lonely. I had decided not to settle for less than love. I discovered that a man could find contentment and meaning in life without ever finding his soul mate. I was respected by my peers and felt no animosity toward anyone in the world.

It was then that she came calling. It was not entirely unexpected. I had seen her a number of times over the years. I was her way to travel periodically and she would generally look me up when her path brought her back to the valley. On those occasions we had rekindled the old flame. Each time she left feeling a little empty when she left. The last time we had a fight over what I perceived as her selfishness. On a three-day weekend I had driven her to Idaho to rescue her belongings from an unknown fate. When we arrived I was no longer a lover but only a friend. She made visits to former lovers and former haunts, leaving me to my own thoughts. She began to speak fondly of the man she left behind in Nashville. I had not realized how deeply she could still wound me. When we parted company I promised myself that I would never welcome her again.

When she called I was polite but guarded. I was not certain I wanted to see her. I was certain that I did not want to repeat the romantic sojourns of the past. I found her waiting on the steps of my porch at two in the morning. Something about her was different. She had changed. I had changed. We talked through the night and sealed our newfound bond several evenings later. We made love like angels caught between heaven and earth. It was a night to remember. It was a union of spirits. We jumped the broom in Nashville at Christmas and married officially the following April in Lake Tahoe. The truth for all the romance is: she needed a marriage certificate to get health insurance.

From that moment everything changed. By all accounts the first year was a struggle, a battle of opposing wills. I was perplexed. I had moved two thousand miles from home and was very nearly abandoned there. The best that could be said was that we survived. Though we parted on good terms, I could not be certain what would greet me when I came home from this journey: a loving wife or a nightmare of opposition. She was invited on this homeward journey but opted to remain behind. She said I needed the space and she was more than right. I’d spoken to her only twice since I left. I wanted to live the moment and for the most part that is what I have done.

We pull over at a Kansas visitor’s welcome center, grabbing a cup of coffee and a pamphlet on golf in the Jayhawk state. We pick out a course in Lawrence near Topeka. It is billed as one of the best public courses in the state. It is a long and lonely drive, Wiz sleeping and dreams drifting in and our of consciousness as if driven by a will of their own. The greenery born of fresh and bountiful rain overshadows the traditional amber sea of grain. The crows are with us everywhere.

We reach Lawrence and find our way to the course with plenty of time for a late round. Laid out on rolling Kansas hills, the course is pleasing to the eye with plush evenly cut grass, elevated tees, thick rough and pine lining the fairways. I step out of Sally and feel as though I’ve set a record for tumbling in a high speed dryer. Wiz comments that I look like five hundred miles of hard road. Thanks a lot. I feel much worse. We check in at the clubhouse and sign up for nine. By the time we pull out our clubs we’re due on the first tee. I duff my drive and comment to the starter that I’m a bit road weary. He knows the feeling. He’s a navy man and recalls his first round after a long stint at sea. The ground wouldn’t stop moving.

It is several holes before I realize it’s not bound to get better soon. My spirit is down and trending downward. I haven’t the heart for laughter and camaraderie despite the beauty of the course and the friendly nature of the guys we’re playing with. I am far-gone and goner still. Wiz who is play a good round begins to wear on me with his teasing commentary and attempted humor. On the seventh tee he tosses me a pink tee. It is a running joke with us. I refuse to use yellow or pink tees but with my amber vision shades I can’t tell the difference. This time it draws no smile or laughter, just a worn out shrug as I toss it aside. His response startles me. With a look of downtrodden sincerity he announces: You hate me. I begin to rethink my state of being.

I had forgotten. I am not alone on the course. I am not alone in my struggle. Wiz has tried in vain to pick me up and I have returned nothing but grief. Wiz nails a three wood that sails right into the trees. I step up and hit the best drive of my round down the center. When he has trouble finding his ball I welcome the opportunity to make my peace by helping him to locate it. A load is lifted from my shoulders, leaving only the fatigue buried deep in my bones. I finish well, hitting the last two greens in regulation.

As we walk off the ninth green it occurs to me that our scores are close. I make inquiry and learn that he has bettered me by two strokes. The gods of golf have spoken. Wiz is gracious in victory, making excuses for my game. But there are no excuses in golf. I have been delivered a harsh lesson and one that will require pondering. For the second time on the journey, Wiz has defeated his mentor fair and square. He refused to acknowledge the first at Tioga Pass and now he refuses to gloat. He could easily have stumbled and fallen short. The road has been as rough on him as it has been on me. I’m proud of his accomplishment, proud of how he carries it and proud that he has not allowed the attitude of his playing partner to ruin his game.

I am also a little ashamed of my own conduct through the middle holes of the round: hanging my head, cursing myself, refusing attempts at encouragement, wallowing in self pity. There is no excuse. Regardless the circumstances, a bad round happens as a matter of course in the game of golf. There is a right way and a wrong way to handle it. I chose the wrong way, seeking excuses and finding blame in inanimate objects. The right way is to ask yourself what the round is teaching you. Had I asked I might have realized that I was in need of grounding. I had been swimming in a sea of dreams for the better part of twenty-four hours and could not feel the earth beneath my moccasins.

We head on to Kansas City with our thoughts surrounding the game behind us. We are in desperate need of nourishment and take the first inviting off ramp in search of a quiet homespun meal. There is nothing to be found. Our choices are between a pizza parlor with a karaoke stage and a Chinese restaurant. A rowdy man in front of the pizza parlor makes our choice for us. It is a wise choice. We are the only customers. The atmosphere is peaceful except for an explosive telephone conversation in Chinese by the woman at the cash register. The waitress explains: In laws. Over tea and wanton soup I believe the lesson of the round was: Accept adversity.

On our way back to Sally, we encounter another disturbance of the peace: a shouting match in the parking lot that has all the signs of a fight. We decide Kansas City is not our kind of town but we are too tired to move on. We stop at the first motel where a Persian man with a couple of missing teeth informs us: No vacancy. We find the next Motel 6 with a TV bolted to the wall and settle in for a long night’s sleep.

The first words from my mouth upon awakening in the morning are: Welcome adversity. Wiz nods in agreement. He had no comment the night before but the night has settled the issue. We are ready to resume the journey and anxious to leave this town behind.

Next stop: St. Louis.

GRAND CANYON: THE HEARTLAND

2011-03-09T18:01:00.001-08:00

In the middle of Missouri, equidistant between Kansas City and St. Louis lies the heartland city of Columbia. From the interstate it draws us in for a magical round of golf. For me it is a chance at redemption, not to avenge my loss but to make amends for my transgressions. For us, it is a landmark round, a line in the sand we have chosen to honor: By our calculations, the sixth hole will be the 200th of our journey.

Wiz made it a goal soon after our visit to Grand Canyon, the same day we played three rounds on the road and drew the laughter of Don Juan. Incredibly, we have averaged nine holes a day. We are not aware that it will be the last round of the journey but it is gratifying to have reached this marker. It would have mattered little had we not but as it is it is a cause for celebration.

It is a weekday and the course is far enough from the center of town that we are virtually alone on the course. There is no one but us and a few devoted locals on the putting green. I take care of the green fees while Wiz scopes a row of clubs against the clubhouse wall. He lays his hands on a Ping two-iron on sale for fifteen dollars. He asks my advice and I say: Buy it. I believe it is worth far more. It’s in perfect condition and matches the five-iron Wiz found on a driving range. It is as if it was left there, like the jazz shoes on the streets of Boulder, for the Wiz to find. Some folks choose a club; Wiz allows a club to choose him.

We later learn from a local that the club was brand new. It’s former owner put it up for sale after one round. He will someday learn: It is not the club but the hand that grips it.

The acting club pro takes us out to the first tee to give us a rundown on the course. He is as friendly and easy going as an Autumnal breeze. In all my days of golf I cannot remember such personal and friendly treatment at any course at any price. It is a breath of fresh Missouri air and the course itself is a gem. It is an imaginative nine-hole layout surrounded by deep forest, with running water, gullies, hills and dales, and tall trees of hickory and oak with sprawling branches that jut out into the fairway.

We tee off and I am immediately gratified. My game has returned to me. The gods of golf forgive the repentant when the repentance is sincere. I par the first hole and hit a beautiful draw down the middle of the dogleg left second. Wiz bogies the first and fades a well-struck tee shot off the second, his ball bounding down a twenty-foot embankment. I give his lie a look and offer: Looks like a two-iron to me. It is a steep uphill shot that will have to carry a creek and a grandfather tree some thirty feet high and thirty feet wide. Wiz whips out his new two-iron and rips a masterpiece. It sails overhead, clears the creek and the grandfather tree to settle just short of an elevated green. By my reckoning it has covered a solid two hundred and twenty yards of earth. It is his best shot in one hundred and ninety six holes. At an average of six shots a hole that comes out to around 1,200 shots. Inspired by his majesty, I spike my wedge to the stick and drill it home for birdie while the Wiz saves par.

At this point a high school kid, stocky in build and quiet in demeanor, approaches us with an air of intensity. We offer him a choice: Play through or join us. Somewhat to my surprise, he opts to join us. We play on, matching shot for shot, stroke for stroke, Wiz and I on a Zen golf high, the kid on a ride of quiet desperation. We try in our separate ways to loosen the kid up and lead him to the other side of golf. He has too much tension and is far too worried about technique but he has a feel for the game and a strong desire to master it. He has yet to learn to let the game master him. The game is the real teacher and it yields its secrets only to those who give themselves to the game.

We finally reach the sixth tee, our landmark hole, and the kid has the honor. It is a long par four with the forest to the right. He pulls out his high-tech driver with the oversized metal head and the super-graphite shaft and nails one long and lean to the left side of the fairway. Nice shot. He smiles. It is as much expression of emotion as his temperament will allow. I pull out the old reliable Big Mama, my faithful persimmons driver, give it a waggle and summon the gods for a blessing on the journey. I give myself to the game, call on my inner strength, the heightened awareness of the fourth and sixth chakras, and let it go.

She sails like a shooting star into the distant horizon. Like an eagle catching an updraft, she finds a second wind, rises and sails again. I tell myself: Savor the moment. Wiz lets one loose that fades into the woods. So be it. The moment is beautiful. We finish the round walking on thin air and good vibes, breathing in the smell of green, enjoying the hillside surroundings, the plush rich vegetation and the blessings of the round.

On the ninth tee, the kid finally opens up. Through the first eight holes he has said no more than a dozen words. I tell him I hope to see him on the tour someday. He cracks another smile. It seems I’ve tapped his dream. He replies: I hope so. Having broken the ice, I ask him if he’s a baseball fan. Sure he is. I get the feeling he’s never met anyone who wasn’t. I ask: St. Louis or Kansas City? His brow furrows. It’s seems to be a serious matter. He explains: Well, I’ve always liked George Brett. He’s a KC man. I reply: Sure hall of famer, five years after he retires.

By god, I think I’ve made the kid’s day. He struggles a bit on the ninth. He’s not used to all this talk during a round of golf. But he keeps his cool, that Kansas-Missouri temperament. Maybe he will make it to the tour one day. I hope so.

We finish up and the kid waits to replace the pin.

“Good luck,” say I.

“Happy golfing,” says Wiz.

“Same to you,” he replies as he heads off to the putting green. His day is not finished without a little more practice and maybe another round.

They grow them strong here in the heartland, sturdy and constant as the sun in July, quiet and solid souls. We hang out a while, basking in the glory. We drink a beer and watch the locals move slowly through the day. The lady at the desk is watching the president on TV. We ask about the flood. She shrugs: It’s still there. So it is.

Onward to St. Louie and the Great Flood of 1993.

GRAND CANYON: THE GREAT FLOOD

2011-03-09T18:00:00.001-08:00

Much has been said about the great flood of the northern Mississippi River on this journey. The story has been front-page news for weeks now. The latest reports question whether the floodwall protecting St. Louis will hold. The great rivers of the North American continent are higher now than they have ever been since records have been kept. Most of Illinois, Indiana and much of Missouri have been declared disaster areas. The bulging Mississippi and Missouri Rivers are cutting new channels and rerouting. The land will never be the same. New streams, creeks and rivers, new ponds, lakes and natural gardens are now forming to change the maps and rearrange the inhabitants.

It is a tumultuous event in the continuing evolution of mother earth but around here they don’t talk about it much. What is there to say? It’s a big river and a hell of a flood. Not much you can do about it except pick up and move when your time comes. These are not the kind of people to panic. Other than a catastrophic collapse of the floodwall, the biggest concern now seems to be the supply of drinking water. It’s ironic. With all this water fresh from the heavens, they’ve had to cut off the public water supply in many communities. I guess you can’t drink that river water. It’s contaminated. I’m sure somebody can set me straight on this. It just seems a mighty strange world when you can’t drink untreated water.

I noticed it several years back in the high Sierras of California: Don’t drink the water. It will kill you. It had something to do with deadly microbes. I don’t know what the story is here.

Driving through St. Louis on a bright summer day you would never imagine it was an official disaster area. We have seen little evidence of the great flood from the vantage point of the interstate, only the immense rolling rivers themselves. Just north of St. Louis is where the Missouri joins the Mississippi from the west and the Illinois from the northeast, making it a critical flood area. To the south the great Ohio and Tennessee Rivers join forces at Paducah, Kentucky, and feed into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. The flooding is confined to the north. By the time you get to Tennessee the worry is about a drought. Nature is full of irony.

The Missouri crosses under the interstate at St. Charles on the outskirts of St. Louis. These are dirt-water rivers the color of creamed coffee and thick in appearance. Of the two, the Missouri is the more impressive. Its breadth is mammoth and the force it carries can be felt like brain fever even from the highway above.

There are a few scattering raindrops but little more to hint at the looming terror at the floodgate. There is a clarity of vision rarely seen in the heart of an industrial land, a brightness of color, sharp crisp angles of the St. Louis skyline and the great arch, which conjures images of MacDonald’s despite its striking beauty.

St. Louis strikes me as the first eastern city on the interstate, like Memphis to the south. The line is drawn at the Mississippi. It presents a stunning contrast to Kansas City, which seems to have neither eastern nor western roots, and an even greater contrast to Columbia. Its glory and its pain are wide open to the view of all who pass through its gates. Its stylish towers and skyscrapers, its Victorian houses and classically drawn neighborhoods seem to be at war with its brick housing projects, crumbling buildings and concentrated poverty.

Here too are the billboard advertisements of assorted Gentleman’s Clubs and Dancing Girls by the score. You can’t mistake a sign like that. I make the inevitable suggestion that we give it a look. It’s our last day on the road, the last major city we will encounter and the last chance at false romance.

Before this journey began I had written a series of jazz poems under the title Random Erotica. It might have titled the Wet Dream Series. Those who are associated with erotic literature yield to an unspoken law that they should never cross the line that divides the sensual from the sexual. I have no such restriction. With the Wiz playing background, we recorded several of them in the schoolhouse before we left. It is a part of our repertoire.

We had intended to catch a ballgame in St. Louis but the killer of Tioga Pass threw us well off schedule. Now there’s only one thing left to do.

We pick out a billboard advertising a place called Cheeks that seems to be on our path. The name is a little obvious but what can you expect? This is not art. We pull off the highway at the advertised exit and find ourselves in the middle of slum city. Welcome to East St. Louis. There are no white folks here except in the joint where we’re headed. We drive about ten blocks when the red neon sign of danger lights up the front of my consciousness. I turn to Wiz to gaze his thoughts. He is not alarmed as I am: What could be more inviting to the criminal element than a couple of white boys in a bright orange Mustang with California plates? How bad do we want it?

I make the suggestion: Let’s get out of here. Wiz is not ready to turn back: Let’s give it a few more blocks. I figure he wants it a little more than I do. A few blocks up we pull into the parking lot of Cheeks. It is a flat top painted brick building that looks like it could have been a garage in a former life.

Wiz ran out of cash somewhere between Boulder and Kansas City. Before we embark I hand him a twenty and suggest that we not sit in the front. I am not a veteran of these joints but I know there’s a world of difference between a titty bar where well-rounded women with too much makeup shake their breasts, slap their asses and take your contributions with their cheeks, and a true strip joint where the women move with the grace and sensuality of cats or swans and stimulate erotic dreams with a blueprint of the universal male psyche. I am an admirer of a good erotic dancer and an artful tease. This place is somewhere between.

It is surprisingly tasteful with red carpeting, velvet drapes, a circular bar, padded barstools and several small stages with lighting in red, blue and amber. We sit at the bar, order the beer on tap and turn our attentions to stage one. The dancer is tall, thin, blonde and beautiful, a worthy specimen of the profession. If she’s smart and looking to get ahead, a few years on these stages and she’ll have enough money to buy a house or go to college or pursue the kind of life she chooses.

She dances with a natural rhythmic talent but little imagination and less choreography. Choreography is not in her job description. The first song closes and Wiz springs from the bar to approach the dancer. I have no idea what he’s up to and less sure that I like it. He returns with a shrug and explains that he was trying to buy me a table dance. Unfortunately, it costs twenty bucks and after the beer he only has ten. I tell him it wasn’t meant to be.

The next song starts up and the blonde dances for me. She’s sure she can get the extra five and she wants me to know she’ll give me my money’s worth. I resist the temptation but acknowledge her raw talent. There is a thin line between enjoying the erotic nature of human kind and infidelity. It is a line I’ve chosen not to cross.

A man with a dark complexion steps up to the blonde, whispers in her ear, hands her a bill and the dancer springs to action. Wiz got it wrong. It turns out the specialty of the house is the lap dance. She straddles him as he sits on an armless chair and grinds with a piston action that would turn back the floods. She presses her well-contoured breasts to his face and squeezes. She spins on a dime and continues her riveting motion from the backside view. All the while she maintains eye contact with the Wiz and I. We’re marked at the next recipients of her charm.

Suddenly she rises and stands like a stature before her customer. Without pause he produces another bill and the show goes on. It reminds me of a mechanical horse outside a supermarket. It is as close to sex as it gets without penetration. It is also one solution to the AIDS epidemic and it is no coincidence that these places have thrived in the wake of that deadly disease.

I say to myself: Yes, this will do. The words begin to mold themselves into poetic form. It will be my first wet dream poem in a thousand miles. I signal the Wiz, leave a five on the stage, and we walk out to the startling daylight of East St. Louis. The plan was: One beer and we’re out of here. I am a little surprised we lived up to it.

We head out to the highway, Wiz at the wheel, the image of the blonde still fresh in our minds, words circling in my brain, finding their niche like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. As we near the southern turnoff I whip out my notebook and write:

She was a streamline model nobody’s whore
Breasts the size of golden delicious apples

She pressed her cheeks against the mirror image
Twisted and squeezed in a manner that suggests one thing

Twenty bucks she said mouthing the words
Twenty bucks to feel the force of her machine

Shake it baby grind it to the rod and core
Writhe and squirm and squeeze
Drive it like a locomotive full steam
Like an atomic powered submarine

Quake it shake it take it down in liquid lust
Guide the stream of wanton dreams

Buck and quiver like a wild stallion
Ride it high and low

Take me to the poorhouse
Drop me off the edge of sanity
Lay me down in tupelo honey
Floating in the waves of fantasy

You’ve got to feed the monkey she says
Beyond the sweet blue flame of far far away
The monkey has been fed

Ten bucks for a beer and a poem. Not bad. She delivered on her unspoken promise. She gave us our money’s worth.

GRAND CANYON: THE ROAD TO NASHVILLE

2011-03-09T17:58:00.000-08:00

It has been a long road and an eventful journey. Only now do our thoughts return to Nashville. As we venture south on highway 127 everything around us begins to look like Tennessee. For the first time since Utah or Nevada we abandon the mass transit multi-lane interstate and settle into the rural American countryside. The further south we travel, the denser the forest becomes. The night is serenaded by multitudes of clicking, screeching, croaking insects and tree frogs that are never seen but always heard. Through the rolling hills of southern Illinois, the bluegrass pastures of western Kentucky, the farm, dairy and grassland communities with their small clusters of modern life, all-night convenience stores, fast food restaurants and brightly lit gas stations. They seem as out of place in this wide-open country as a California Mustang in East St. Louis.

This is the land of the Shawnee, Choctaw and Cherokee. It is the land of the great rivers where thousands of Indian nations, faced with the onslaught of a European invasion, condensed social evolution into a microcosm. The distinctive Indian burial grounds still mark the landscape. It is the land of the pioneers as well, the Daniel Boones and Davy Crockets who braved the dangers of the forest and moved on at the first sight of smoke on a distant hill. It is the land where the line was drawn in civil war, a land rich in the ironies of a nation.

As we drive by the large simple houses with their huge and manicured yards and open spaces between them, our minds drift to quiet places and simple times, settling at last on the place we now call home. This land holds added meaning to Wiz. He grew up in these parts. His grandparents still live here in a little town called Royalton. His old haunts are in Pinckneyville down the road. The place is full of ancient memories for Wiz and he is surprisingly sentimental. This is his heritage: Small town America.

Our first stop is Nashville, Illinois with a population of 3,202. We’ve started talking about golf in Nashville and decide to take advantage of this early opportunity. There are not many hours of daylight left as we drive down Main Street and turn at a small sign directing us to a golf course. For a small town there is a large park with lighted baseball fields, picnic tables, driving range and golf course – all in one cozy package.

As we drive down the one-lane road to the clubhouse, kids are playing baseball off the road. Nothing brings out the kid in me more than a ball game. I wouldn’t mind a few innings but Wiz is a bit anxious. We locate the clubhouse and he lingers while I check out the scene. Strangely, the clubhouse door is locked. Inside a circle of gray haired folks, neatly dressed, are engaged in an intense discussion as they sit around a large wooden table behind a Plexiglas wall. I think about knocking for an explanation but their intensity pushes me back.

I walk back to the car and tell Wiz what I’ve seen. He goes for his own look and comes back with the same impression: Looks like there’s no golfing today.

We head back the way we came and drive to Pinckneyville, arriving as the sun sets slowly on a distant horizon. It’s a charming little town with forties architecture and a circular drive at its core. Wiz takes it all in with a quiet breath of nostalgia.

You can never go back, my friend.

I don’t know whether it’s the rural scenery, the mood of sentimentality or the remembrance of home but we pass on an opportunity to fill up with gas though we are getting low. After a spell I begin to calculate mileage in my mind and take a look at the road map. Sure enough it looks like an adventure. The oversight costs us a detour to Royalton when the little town of Vergennes is closed for the night.

In the not too distant past, I remember discovering what was for me the key to driving mountain roads. They had terrorized me and left me feeling far more exhausted than I should have been. The key was relaxation in the gut, the solar plexus, freeing the third chakra of all tension. Suddenly the car seemed to bond with he curve of the road and found its proper pace. When the inevitable maniac came sniffing at my tailpipe, I calmly pulled over at the next opportunity and allowed him to pass. No panic, no tension.

I summon the technique now and the effect is immediate. There is an undeniable joy in risk taking, an attraction to the excitement and mystery of danger whether it is real or imagined. I recall running curfew as a teenager, being chased by cops through back yards and alleys not know if a growling dog would greet you over the next fence or afterwards if your friends managed to escape. It was a childish pleasure and one of the great adventures of youth.

We struggle into Carbondale, a veritable metropolis in these parts, and fill up with gas at an Exxon station. Sally takes in 16.3 gallons, close enough to justify the worry. We grab coffee and a burger at a local fast food, marvel at how closely this town is like every other town across the country, and toy with the idea of hitting a local bar before we head out into the night.

We cross over the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers and enter western Kentucky just north of the Land Between the Lakes. We drive in virtual silence, thoughts to ourselves, until a roadside attraction pulls us off the road one more time. Somewhere around Saratoga or Lamasco or Wattonia there is a late night driving range just off Highway 24 to Nashville.

There on the Kentucky roadside, more than two hundred holes behind us, in the land of a billion flying, crawling, buzzing and biting insects, I find the missing link that molds my golf swing into one flowing, magical motion. A widened stance strengthens my balance and playing the ball back toward center sends my long irons screaming into the darkness straight as an arrow. Here on the bug infested Kentucky roadside I am playing the best golf of my life.

I know that the lessons of today might not be the lessons of tomorrow. The swing, like the golfer, is a dynamic ever-changing phenomenon. But for the moment and the moment is all we really have, the game and I are in perfect flowing harmony. If all the lessons of golf could be reduced to just one, maybe it is this: Savor the moment. Nothing in golf or life lasts forever. When it’s right, it’s right: embrace it, cherish it, bask in it, and create a picture in your mind to remember it by.

It is unfortunate that two people so rarely experience the moment we call Zen at the same time. Wiz struggles at the all-night range and races through his bucket of balls as if he were finishing up a kitchen cabinet. By the time I’m down to twenty, he’s twiddling his thumbs. The bugs are bugging him. At my urging he helps me finish off my shots and we head down the last stretch of road before Nashville, Tennessee.

The silence descends on us as we drive and the Welcome to Tennessee sign appears in the distance. I glance at my watch and inform Wiz that I just turned forty years old. We had almost forgotten. He wishes me a heartfelt happy birthday and our thoughts return to our destination. Across the border, exit one takes on a whole new meaning.

So they say: Life begins at forty.

Somewhere overhead, hidden in darkness, a crow heralds our arrival with a woeful caw. Welcome to Nashville.

GRAND CANYON: JOURNEY’S END

2011-03-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

We hit town between two and three o’clock in the morning. For the first time in a month I am aware that it is the hour of the drunken driver. The bar scene in Nashville is lively. It doesn’t seem to matter what day it is. The movers and shakers are always out there making plans, talking shop, and dreaming up schemes until closing time.

We gas up one last time, giving Sally a good pat on the dash for a job well done. Wiz takes the wheel and drives the back roads out to his secluded little house in Williamson County, some twenty miles from the heart of Nashville. His live-in girlfriend Rhonda, a wonderful person and talented singer who has been in various states of war with Wiz since I’ve known them, is naturally asleep. As he circles the house to rouse her or find a way inside I can’t help wondering what kind of greeting he’ll receive.

They were not on the best of terms when we departed. Then again, even when they were on good terms they were often at odds. I’ve often wondered why two people who find it easy to get along with the world find it so difficult to get along with each other. Both have strong wills. Both have strong egos and independent senses of identity, destiny and everything else that goes along with being human. I hope the soothsayers are right when they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Rhonda makes a brief appearance on the porch, clothed in a robe and a fluffy pair of slippers. With a smile and a hug, she wishes me a happy birthday and welcomes us back home. She offers no hit of the whirlwind that awaits me. Wiz unpacks in a matter of minutes and we exchange our so-longs. We’ll talk tomorrow.

I don’t know what I expected. Whatever it was it wasn’t what I got. I had promised my wife that I would be back on this day. Given the volatility of our relationship over the last year, maybe I had hoped that my birthday would set the tone of our reunion. But in the early hours of a still dark morning it made little difference. The celebration ended the moment I walked in the door.

Stumbling on the porch with a handful of belongings and fumbling for my keys, I make enough sound to awaken her. I am surprised when she doesn’t come to greet me. I lower my things on the living room floor and look in on the bedroom. She raises her head and offers the sort of greeting one would expect after a night on the town: What time is it? Late. How are you? She is not fine. She’s hung over and sick. She tells me she’s built up her defenses by playing the If game. If he doesn’t call, he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t call, I’ll stop caring. If he doesn’t call, he doesn’t love me. If he doesn’t call, I’ll stop loving him.

I explain the best I can. I wanted to live the moment. I wanted my mind focused on the journey. I wanted to leave Nashville and all that goes with it, the struggles of daily life and an uncertain marriage, behind. I needed to breathe the air of open country. I needed to live free. I wanted to find the center of my being independent of all bonds and responsibilities. I wanted to be sure that the life I choose is the life that chooses me.

I tell her I’m sorry and I mean it. I had called her once on the westward journey but she wasn’t home or she wasn’t answering. I’d left a message of love. When I’d intended to call again, she beat me to the punch. I should have called. I know it. Blame me or forgive me. It is the past and nothing I can do or say will change what has been done.

I wonder if this is karmic payback for the dreams of Boulder and the Kansas highway. I wonder if the struggles of a Kansas golf course were meant to prepare me for this. I try to summon the lessons of the journey to show me the way forward but I feel anger and disappointment growing within. When I last talked to her she was in good spirits. All was well. I have not been here. Am I the cause of her despair or is there something else? My anger blinds me to the lesson that would otherwise calm and guide me: Welcome adversity.

I gently remind her it is my birthday and an uneasy truce is declared in silence. The gloom is so thick it would make the muddy waters of the Mississippi seem sparkling clear. The journey is over. The nightmare has begun.

It is a recurring nightmare and one that has shadowed us for twenty years. Born of jealousy and heartbreak, it erupts without warning. It follows us like the shadow of death, discoloring all it touches, leaving us devoid of hope and wandering aimlessly in the valley of doom. Love is not enough to fight it. Respect and admiration are not enough. It feeds on itself until it devours our bonded souls. Even the angels appear to have abandoned us.

It is an uneasy sleep yet one that I hold onto until I can no longer. It is well into the day when I arise. I warily move into my wife’s presence to learn what the restless night has wrought. To my relief she has tempered her anger, softened her hard edges and found enough warmth and affection to withhold accusations and treat me with civility. All seems well yet beneath the surface, in a place I dare not look, lingers a foreboding wind. The conflict is unresolved and the battle still looms.

What remains of the day passes uneventfully. There is small talk and reserved conversation. I sketch the journey and relate the happenings in California. I did not visit her mother or family. Time was short and I chose to honor those I am close to rather than any sense of obligation. She relates what news there is in Nashville. While Wiz and I have squeezed a lifetime of experience into the last four weeks, Nashville has been frozen in time. Nothing is new.

We make plans for a birthday dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. It is grounds for hope. A little romance may be all that is needed to rekindle the flames. We are seated in the patio area and my wife informs the waitress that it’s my birthday. Sensing my discomfort, the waitress promises not to sing and I am relieved. The lighting is too bright and there are other parties within our view, dampening the spirit of romance. We order and continue a pattern of small talk, this time revolving around her conversations with the girls. Somehow she has decided that this is the time to bring it up: my collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia has to go. They all agree.

It’s strange. I’m really not sure how it started. Long before I wrote a play called Heroes as a tribute to the forgotten heroes within us all and a lament of the hero’s fall, I had begun a collection of memorabilia. It started with Humphrey Bogart and then spread to include The Beatles, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Einstein, the Kennedy’s, James Dean, Billie Holliday, Samuel Beckett, DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. The Marilyn thing got out of hand. Whenever a gift was called for, Marilyn was an easy solution. I had to put a stop to it when I realized not only that the cost was substantial but that the real pleasure of collecting was in discovery, not possession. It was not as if I wanted everything with Marilyn’s image imprinted on it. There was an art to it. Some works captured her essence, her mystique, while others did not.

I confess that I along with a generation of romantics was a little in love with the mystery of Marilyn and Norma Jean. I found in her the same qualities I found in my wife. She embodies a strange mix of innocence and worldliness, vulnerability and strength. The absence of a father figure in Norma Jean’s life and the delicate balance she maintained with her mother were both features that ran parallel with my wife. Her transformation from an orphaned child to the most appealing woman of her generation and beyond was and is one of the most intriguing stories of our times. I honored her remembrance in the same way I honored Bogie and Bacall and all the others in my pantheon of heroes.

In her jealously inspired gloom, my wife had decided that Marilyn was at the heart of our problem. None of her friends approved. None of them would put up with it. In my play I had argued that when a man abandons his heroes, he gives up a part of himself. The absence of heroes was symptomatic of a social pathology that made life less meaningful.

I am not willing to part with Marilyn on my fortieth birthday but she is insistent. She is determined to have it out. I ask her to stop but she persists. I tell her in anger that my life has been reduced to the confines of one room and now she wants to take that away.

She walks out of the restaurant. Happy birthday.

I pay the bill and walk out into the Nashville night. My wife is nowhere to be found. I figure she’s in one of the bars within walking distance, drowning her sorrow or feeding her rage. I decide she can find her own way home. As Sally guides me back to the house where I reside my mind is already sifting through my options: I could return to California. I could move somewhere new. I could back to Boulder. I could spend another year in Nashville under a separate roof.

Within minutes of reaching home and settling into misery, glancing with new eyes at the prints and photographs of Marilyn on my walls, the phone rings. My wife has no money and needs a ride home. I am not so heartless as to leave her stranded in the Nashville night. I hop in Sally and find my way back to the scene of the crime. I find her in the parking lot and she picks up where she left off. Now she knows it’s true. She’d only wondered before. I am in love with Marilyn.

The irony hits me like a sledgehammer. In the relationships I’d been through since my wife and I first parted, I had often confronted a similar accusation but it was not Marilyn’s name they spoke of; it was hers.

Half way home and I’ve had enough. I can take no more of this lunacy. I pull over and ask her to get out of my car. She relents just enough to get a ride home. She makes a vow of silence and keeps it. We arrive and I close the door of my room behind me. It is over. There is no more forgiveness. There is only rage and jealousy and remorse.

GRAND CANYON: THE HOMELESS ANGEL

2011-03-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

Who can say what form an angel may take? On a late July morning, in the shadow of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, an angel came in the form of a tough merchant marine down on his luck.

I got out early that morning, determined not to encounter my wife. I wanted no part of her and wished with all my heart that I’d never laid eyes on this city. It felt like death. It was strange how I came to be there in the park that morning, my newspaper spread out before me and a large cup of coffee doubling as a paperweight to keep the paper from blowing away. It was my habit in times like this to take long walks but it was not my habit to hang out anywhere unless to catch the bongo players and the whirling rainbow dancers on summer Sundays. I avoided contact with other people. If a homeless man approached me I would endure it for no more than a few minutes before moving on. I’d give him a dollar or a pocket of change and be on my way.

It was equally strange how this exceptional man happened to be there at this particular time. It was highly unusual that the cops hadn’t hustled him out of the park and shuffled him off to the other side of town. It felt like it was meant to be.

He looks me over and sizes me up, pausing here and there, trying to gauge my receptivity before traversing the last few yard to approach me.

“Mind if I sit here a spell?”

His voice has the twang of the Deep South.

“It’s a public park.”

I’m hoping he’ll make his plea, take a buck and shove off.

“So it is.”

He plants himself on the bench across from me.

“Nice day.”

Oh no, I tell myself, he wants to talk.

He asks me if I’ve seen a guy with a black cowboy hat, a golden Palomino or some such thing embroidered on it. He informs me: Not another like it in the world.

“Haven’t seen it or him but then I haven’t been here that long. You might want to ask the folks over there.”

He doesn’t take the hint. Maybe he’s already asked them. He seems to know everyone in the park and they know him. It reminds me of the subway station in New York. He explains that someone stole his hat during the night. He doesn’t know who but he refers to the thief as them.

He was drunk and he makes a point of admitting it. They stole a bowl of chili he’d planned for breakfast as well. He didn’t mind the chili. If they had asked, he’d have shared it with them. He understands what it’s like to be hungry. But that hat is another story. It’s a lowdown dirty deed to steal a man’s hat.

I agree with him and wish I could do something about it but I can’t.

He tells me how he’s come to be living among the Nashville homeless, sleeping in the park. He’s a merchant marine on extended leave. Call it wild oats but he hasn’t gone back. He wanted to plant his feet on the earth, get a feel of the country and mix with the common folk. Like Wiz he’s an Alabama man. His check from the merchant marines is overdue. He had it sent to a friend in Nashville but he’s had a world of trouble trying to make the connection.

I can’t help wondering what kind of friend would not offer a play to stay under the circumstances but I let it pass. He says he once had a check sent general delivery to New Orleans but it took two weeks. That was two weeks too long. He doesn’t trust the postal service and figures they stamp general delivery with Last Priority.

Here in Nashville he’s found himself in the middle of a raging controversy that has made the front page of the Tennessean and the local news broadcasts. It seems they want to ban the homeless from the parks altogether and clear the streets of them. It’s bad for business. He says he’s got a high-powered attorney from Alabama on the case and expects to meet him later in the day. He figures the lawyer will want him to get arrested and he’s willing to along with that. I embrace his cause as noble and just, wish him luck, and figure they’ll have their hands full if they tangle with this man.

His name is Reed and I believe everything he tells me. Everything about him tells me it’s true. Except for the wrinkled look that comes from sleeping off a drunk in the park, his appearance is neat, his clean white shirt worn open, his new blue jeans, an odd looking pair of high-top tennis shoes, his greased back hair combed and his hands and face washed. He has the look of a sailor, tough as nails, slim and tightly packed. His nose is flat like that of a boxer who’s taken a few blows. Put him in the ring and he could have been a contender.

After each story or commentary, told with rigor and the expression of a carnival barker or a big tent evangelist, he checks in with the same remark: I don’t mean to be preaching to you. I know you don’t need to hear this or maybe you do.

His dark eyes are piercing, gazing into mine and I surmise he’s decided he believes my sincerity just as I believe his.

Yes, my friend, I do need to hear this. We all need to hear it as often as it takes to shake us from this debilitating lethargy: It can’t happen to me. If we close our eyes, ship the homeless out of town under the cover of night, pass an ordinance that declares the homeless are no more, then somehow the problem will cease to exist. There ought to be jobs for all at any cost. As long as there aren’t jobs and shelters for everyone then the parks should be opened as a refuge and sanctuary. Tents and shelters should be put up with food, health care and clothing. Arts and crafts should be taught until the parks become a home and the pride of the civilized world.

He notices my impression of his high-top shoes and tells me his philosophy of helping a man in need: There’s always someone more needy than you are. He tells me about an old man who could hardly walk, his shoes two sizes too small. Reed had a new pair of Nikes, good walking shoes, and gave them to the old man who thanked him two or three times and shared his wine. Later a man who had witnessed the transaction gave Reed the shoes he’s now wearing.

He says: That’s how it should be, people helping people.

He pauses as if to catch his breath and gather his thoughts. Then he speaks the thought I believe I was meant to hear: Yeah, I’m down on my luck. I’m a drinking man. I’m a workingman but a drinking man and I like to fight and cuss. But I know one thing: God don’t give us no temptations we can’t handle. Says so right in the scriptures. God don’t give us no trials we can’t bear. As long as I keep my head up, I know I’ll be all right.

I take a few moments to let it sink in. Then I speak: Brother, you are a preaching man and the best I’ve ever been blessed to hear.

Like the old man with the Nikes I thank him two or three times and tell him I’ve got to go. There’s something I’ve got to do. I pull out my wallet and give him a twenty.

“I know it doesn’t make much difference but there it is. It belongs to the world. Spend it any way you like.”

He takes it with a smile and makes it a point that he never asked for it. He tells me one more story about going to church on Sunday, where they blocked him at the door and told him he wasn’t properly attired. He blew fire and brimstone and threw the scriptures back in their stunned and self-righteous faces. They invited him in but he changed his mind.

“I can see this ain’t a house of god after all.”

With that we parted. I walked back home holding on to the one thought that had changed my water into wine. I hoped it would have the same effect on my wife as it had on me.

I walk in to find her in the same cold and bitter mood that greeted me that morning. I want desperately to speak the words that had been delivered as if by some divine or mystical voice but I can’t speak them to a face so cold. Suddenly, as I stand motionless, I see a change come over her. Her face softens and she says: Is there something you want to say to me?

I pause and speak the words: God doesn’t give us any trials we can’t bear.

She waits, looking into my eyes, and flies into my arms.

Thank you, preacher man. Thank you.

GRAND CANYON: THE JOURNEY CONTINUED

2011-03-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

After a few days of rest we are on the road once more. We will return to a place of beauty my wife has discovered in my absence. Like Ponce de Leon she was seeking magic waters of enchantment and eternal youth. Hot Springs in North Carolina is as close as she’s likely to get. Nestled in the Smokey Mountains, amongst the white bark birch and deciduous brush, it is accessible only to those who know its secret. We are reminded by a mining operation, halting traffic in both directions, that nothing lasts forever.

We set up camp at the side of a gurgling creek by day and walk leisurely down the trail to the hot springs at sunset. There in a world of torchlight and canopies we are as removed from civilization as we would be in Outer Mongolia. A storm brewing as we are escorted to our private spa. It is a magical night. I cannot imagine a more enchanted setting for renewing the bonds of love.

From the deep bowels of the earth spring the waters of heaven. The sight of my love’s silken skin, the joy of her touch, the gleam of her eyes under blue moonlight, combine with the earth’s splendor to form a feeling of well being so profound that death itself could not disturb the peace. Even the crack of thunder from the ever closing storm and the collapse of a nearby tree limb under the force of a strong wind only heightens my sense of wonder and delight.

My wife holds on to earthly reason and rouses me to dress before the storm hits. An escort is on her way as she speaks. Electrified customers would not serve their plans as a great escape for the rich and famous. We are promised time tomorrow to complete our allotment of time. To me it is perfect. A full hour of this indescribable beauty and we would be in danger of no return. At it is we prepare ourselves for a drive to the coast with a relaxing soak in the cool air of morning.

We are scheduled to meet a friend in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he is hoping to start a new life. From there we will follow the stars north or south to an Oceanside paradise.

Myrtle Beach is a golf town. There are stores on the main drag devoted solely to golf balls. There are at least twenty golf courses ranging from inaccessible championship quality country clubs to a high priced public course. The streets are filled with tourists and the beach itself has been cut down to thin sliver by encroaching summer homes and oceanside resorts. We find our paradise down the coast at the Barnacle Inn in Garden City. I serenade my love on a borrowed trumpet and we make sweet music before and after a moonlit walk on the sands of the Carolina coast.

There is no place I’d rather be than
On the sands of Garden City
Beneath the moonlight rays of dreams
Counting the endless waves of time
Arm in arm hand in hand heart to heart
Soul to soul, her love embracing mine

We gather seashells and ocean carved rocks and allow the waves to carry us to far away places where we recline on sheets of satin in a deep cave at the top on a crystal mountain. She speaks of making an offering to the sea as a token of our love and gratitude. At the moment she stoops to gather in a stone with sacred markings, the jewel she has long treasured slips from her necklace and is swept away. We look for it before deciding it is as it is supposed to be. She will wear the newfound beach stone in its place.

We arise at dawn, walk down to the beach and hit five irons into the Atlantic. Mine sails, rises and bends into the seventh wave. Hers skips and plops into the first. She’s new to the game. Good people of all makes and sizes walk by with smiles, seagulls soar closely overhead scavenging the shoreline and my mind drifts in fond memory to a thousand places at once: Grand Canyon and the eyes of the crow, Albuquerque and a poetry café, Graeagle and a family reunion, Motown and a sacred circle of friends, Berkeley and modern poetry sage, Monterey and golf in the kingdom, Yosemite and the Tioga Pass killer, Sonora Pass and a sky of a million stars, Boulder and the gypsy dancer, Kansas and a round of adversity, St. Louis and the bulging rivers, Nashville and a homeless angel.

This journey has no end, not for those who live each day, each hour, each moment as if it were the only moment of their lives. Not for those who embrace life in all its wonders, seeming good and seeming bad, its glories and its trials. The most fundamental lesson is simple as true thing are: all our trials are for a reason. They instruct us by leaps and bounds to what otherwise would take us centuries to absorb. Life is too short not to embrace all of its experiences. We are no stronger than our adversaries, real or imagined. Like the Native Americans and the warriors of old honored their enemies in battle, we too must embrace the trials that befall our paths. They make us worthy and strengthen our spirits. As long as we keep trying, keep listening, keep learning and remain open to the lessons of the never-ending journey, we will make it.

On the road back to Nashville we stop and make camp at Altoona Reservoir in the Red Top Mountain National Park just past Woodstock and north of Atlanta. We plan to get a good night’s rest but end up staying two nights and the better part of two days. My wife busies herself with a thousand projects, playing guitar, making a doll from found materials, improving the campsite, communing with nature. I spend most of mine studying the rocks in their rich variety of petrified wood, crystal, stones of red, white, amber and ash. On the second day, as I wash and examine the rocks by the Creekside, there is a great commotion in the sky. At least a dozen crows are gathered in the trees overhead. I make eye contact with the leader. He tells me I have found it. Nothing more or less. With a great caw he takes flight and the gathering of crows is gone.

All is well. All is as it should be. There is no journey greater than this we are living. There is neither end nor beginning greater than love.

AFTERMATH

Eighteen years later:

The author is happily married and living in central California. The marriage chronicled in this journey lasted four more years. He is still writing, still dreaming and still playing golf.

Wiz (aka wZ) is living in northern Florida. He often journeys cross-country and is a legend at the Burning Man Festival on the desert of Nevada.

MUSTANG SALLY’S MILEAGE GAUGE

2011-03-09T17:49:00.000-08:00

MILEAGE LOCATION GALLONS
42,047 Nashville, Tennessee 3.6
42,279 Memphis 11.6
42,446 Little Rock, Arkansas 9.2
42,675 Okemah, Oklahoma 10.8
42,881 Clinton 11.3
43,098 Amarillo, Texas 11.8
43,271 Cuervo, New Mexico 8.7
43,500 Albuquerque 12.5
43,659 Gallup 8.3
43,862 Tuba City, Arizona 11.0
44,091 Page 11.5
44,202 Zion, Utah 5.6
44,312 Beaver 6.8
44,500 Ely, Nevada 11.5
44,808 Fallon 13.1
45,061 Graeagle, California 13.1
45,394 Turlock 15.0
45,423 Modesto 3.5
45,640 Santa Cruz 12.2
45,820 Los Banos 8.9
46,008 Modesto 11.5
46,149 Wawona 7.9
46,267 Yosemite Village 7.1
46,444 Bridgeport 10.2
46,624 Tonopah, Nevada 4.4
46,821 Ely 10.4
46,999 Hinckley, Utah 10.5
47,086 Salina 4.4
47,238 Crescent Junction 9.4
47,449 Glenwood Springs, Colorado 12.9
47,639 Boulder 10.0
47,795 Limon 7.0
48,062 Hayes, Kansas 13.7
48,317 Topeka 12.2
48,547 Columbia, Missouri 13.0
48,820 Carbondale, Illinois 16.3
49,070 Nashville, Tennessee 13.6

ZEN GOLF TOUR LOG

2011-03-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

DATE LOCATION COURSE NOTES

June 30: Albuquerque, New Mexico / University of New Mexico North Course / 1st Class

June 30: Albuquerque / Puerto Del Sol / Low Flying Aircraft

July 1: Albuquerque / University of New Mexico South / Zen Golf Lesson

July 2: Page, Arizona / Glen Canyon Country Club / Woman Bartender

July 2: Kanab, Utah / Coral Cliffs Golf Course / Wind Blown Red Rock

July 2: Mount Carmel Junction / Thunderbird Golf Course / Don Juan Laughs

July 4: Graeagle, California / Feather River Inn / Family Reunion

July 5: Truckee / Ponderosa Golf Course / Traffic Jam

July 9: Pacific Grove / Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course / Poor Man’s Pebble Beach

July 10: Modesto / Modesto Municipal Golf Course / Wiz’s Birdie

July 11: Modesto / Dryden Park Golf Course / Hot Shot Companion

July 12: Manteca / Manteca Park Golf Course / Jere and Patty

July 13: Modesto / Creekside Golf Course / Robert and Sue

July 14: Yosemite National Park / Wawona Golf Course / Rattlesnake without Rattles

July 16: East Ely, Nevada / White Pine Golf & Tennis / Welcome Golfers!

July 18: Lawrence, Kansas / Alvamar-Jayhawk Nine / Round of Adversity

July 19: Boonville, Missouri / Kemper Golf Club / Magic 2-iron 200 Holes

THE HANDBOOK OF ZEN GOLF

2011-03-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

By Ray Miller and Jim Wisniewski

AKA Jack Random and wZ

AKA Shivas MacDuff and Rufus McGhee

Copyright 1995 Crow Dog Press

LESSON ONE

BALANCE

It is difficult to imagine anything in life or in golf more important than balance. The force that is necessary to propel a standing object 200, 250, 300 yards from a fixed position toward a given target is astonishing. We have seen that force raise a large man off his feet and seat him firmly upon the earth. We have seen it hurl the striker in a full sprint at a ninety-degree angle from the flight of the ball.

With such tremendous forces at work in the swing of a golf club, each possessing the inert power to send the shot awry in any direction, it is imperative to remain planted and centered in the position of addressing the ball. Locate your center and the field of balance surrounding it. Sense the circular boundary, acknowledging that you can lose your balance on the forward-backward plane as easily as the left-right plane. The coil of your swing must remain within that field of balance, focused at the core, even while shifting weight throughout the course of the swing. Find you optimum stance and stay within yourself.

Without balance there are no other lessons. With balance all things are possible. As a wise being once said: When life is in balance, the soul is lightened.

LESSON TWO

RELAXATION IS KEY

What is the worst thing that could happen? Relax, breathe deeply, and place yourself in a cool breeze state of mind. Smile. Nothing destroys the tempo, balance and rhythm of the swing more assuredly than tension.

Where does tension center in your physical being? For many it is in the shoulders. For others it may be the lower back or the gut. Locate the tension centers of your body. Close your eyes and imagine the waves of a calm ocean or a scenic lake. Use that image to create waves of relaxation and send them, wave upon wave, throughout your body, focusing most intently on your own centers of tension. Think of nothing else. When you have achieved a state of relaxation, begin your swing. Swing slowly, smoothly, careful not to disturb you relaxed state of being. Practice your relaxation techniques on each and every shot, including putts. Become aware of the presence of tension. Locate it and calm it.

Allow nothing to come between you and your calm: Not the score, not the taunting of playing partners, not an event of perceived misfortune. You and only you are the master of your state of being. Don’t panic. Remain calm. Breathe. Relax.

LESSON THREE

SMOOTH AND EASY TAKES YOU HOME

In the words of the immortal Julius Boros: Swing easy, hit hard. Anyone who has seen the master play knows the meaning of poetry in motion. Grip the club firmly but gently, give it a playful toggle, step to the ball and let it fly. It requires no strength, no great effort, and no mental torture. Just a smooth, natural easy flowing motion, a sense of rhythm and grace, and a feel for the sweet spot.

Let everything else go. Think of Boros or Casper. Think of a flowing river. Picture the waves of a calm Pacific Ocean or sailing off a tropical island. See the flight of the condor. Consider ballet or the running motion of Joe DiMaggio circling under a fly ball. Think blue velvet and the voice of Lady Day. Picture yourself on a starlight flight, no cares and no worries.

Swing easy and the pendulum sway of the club head locate the sweet spot on the round white sphere below. Be patient. It will happen. Golf is a game of opposites: Swing easy, hit hard.

LESSON FOUR

VISUALIZE THE SHOT

Everything is energy. Everything is alive. Everything is surrounded by fields of light and shadow, color and sound, waves of pulsating, breathing life force. The aura surrounding all living beings, observed by mystics and psychics since the beginning of time has been recorded by cerulean photography. Audio recordings have documented the storage capacity of trees and stone. Believe it. It is so.

See the ball in a new light. Use your peripheral vision. Use your third eye. Focus from you inner vision until you see the aura surrounding the ball. Sense its pulse, its vibrant energy, its self-generating all force. See the aura of the club head, the shaft, your hands and arms. See the trace aura remaining in the path of the swing’s arc. See the fields of light become one with the ball, the swing, the club and you. See the trace of the ball in flight. Visualize the aura of the ball uniting with the aura of the club and enveloping the golfer, bringing together the motion of the swing with the flight of the ball.

Look around. See the fairway before you as fields of energy in shades of light and color. See the aura of the wind, the trees, the sand, the water, the rough, the grass, the earth and the heavens. Become one with all.

LESSON FIVE

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SCORE

Golf is a sacred game. It is a game that can bring you closer to the heavens and closer to the earth. It can bring you in touch with forces infinitely greater than yourself. It can give you a sense of profound well-being, exhilaration, joy and love of life. To those of us who truly love the game, though we may possess no more than a minutia of true understanding, it has nothing to do with the score.

We have seen a golfer hit the drive of his life only to end up in misery over a missed putt. We have seen grown men transformed into nursery school children because of a number placed on a scorecard. We have seen seemingly honorable persons pretend they cannot count to seven. To these people we have one suggestion: Ping-pong. You may well be content with your game but the game and the individuals forced to play with you will be better off without you.

What would you rather do? Play good golf or score well? The Zen golfer has no conflict. Play the game and let the score take care of itself.

LESSON SIX

TAKE TIME TO ENJOY THE VIEW

It is not a pleasant coincident that the game of golf is played in some of the world’s most beautiful settings. The oceanside links can inspire absolute awe. The mountain course in a forest of pine can elevate the spirit. Even the flatland course has its own charm for those attuned to it.

No matter where you’re teeing up today, take time to enjoy the view. There is nothing more disconcerting that the golfer who is so absorbed in his game that he would fail to notice the Grand Canyon or a small tornado on the horizon. Yet the clearing of a throat or the landing of a butterfly will distract the same golfer during his backswing.

Find the beauty. Begin by acknowledging the blessing: Another day in Paradise. Observe the trees be they pine or oak, maple or dogwood. Become aware of the coloring in shades of green, blue, brown and gray. Notice the presence of wildflowers, sage, ice plant or shrubbery, the birds and wildlife that inhabit these hallowed grounds. Enjoy the view from all perspectives. Become a part of it. See yourself not at the center of this wonder but only as one of the all. It will then be impossible to assume a negative mindset.

LESSON SEVEN

FIND YOUR CENTER

The golf swing is like a spinning top. When perfectly balanced and centered it is a marvel. The marriage of force and counter force, motion and stability. When it loses hold of its center, even by a fraction, it wobbles, stumbles and falls.

Centering is more than balance. It is grounding and mental focus. It is feeling the earth and the power of gravity below your feet and blending with that force in perfect harmony. It begins with balance and finishes with grace.

Begin by assuming a well-balanced stance. The imagine a line, like a string or a rod, from the heavens to the core of the earth, traversing the top of your head, the middle of you body, between your legs to the center of your stance and beyond. Forget about striking the ball. Forget about your grip. Forget about keeping your left arm straight and your head down. Concentrate all your energy on centering your swing on its axis, from it backswing coil to the follow through. Consider the spine as the center of your being. Maintain spinal alignment. The centered golfer is the consistent golfer. The centered being is on the path to spiritual awareness.

LESSON EIGHT

TRUST YOUR CREATIVE IMPULSE

No two shots are alike. Like the lilies of the field, they may look alike but they are not. Each is varied, however subtly, in texture, shades of coloring, shape and posture. Each has its own distinctive being, though its essence is shared. It is one of the blessings of golf that its variables are infinite. Play the shot as if it is the only chance you will ever have to make it for in fact it is.

When you understand this you will begin to allow your imagination to roam freely. You will see possibilities that did not before exist. You will appreciate the constant challenge of the moment. You will not think back to a previous shot. You will not look ahead to the next. You will notice the peculiarities of the lie, the subtle shifts of the wind, the bend of the trees, and the shape of the fairway. The shot awaits and beckons your creative powers. Answer the call.

It is a mistake for the makers of golf technology to aim at eliminating the variables of the golf shot. They limit us. The fade, the banana slice, the draw and the hook, the high ball and the low, are as much a part of the game as the straight ahead shot. Paul Azinger won the PGA by using his imagination. Corey Pavin won the US Open in like manner. Trust your creative impulse. Free your mind and play the shot.

LESSON NINE

FEEL THE ALL FORCE

You can’t see it but you know it’s there. You can’t hear, touch or smell it but its existence is beyond doubt. You can feel it. It is the all force. It is the wellspring of all power and energy. It is accessible to those who can locate it and call it to their service.

The all force exists deep within the soul of the self. It is the universal self, the self that denies the self. It can be found through meditation, zazen, music or any other means of achieving higher or altered states of consciousness. Once found it can always be summoned. The force is within you always.

Begin by clearing your mind. Focus your awareness on the center of your being. Some say it is the solar plexus: the area at the back of the gut or third chakra. Some say it is the fourth chakra, the area of the heart. Still others say it is an area of the diaphragm between the third and fourth chakras. It is the spring of the force within. Find it, feel it, summon it. Let it guide your swing. The all force be with you.

LESSON TEN

PURE THOUGHTS YIELD GOOD SHOTS

So you like to play mind games? You’ve come to the right place. Golf is a game of the mind. In fact it is possible to play a round of golf without clubs, with ball, without anything, within the fertile confines of the ever-expanding mind.

Can you bend the path of the ball with your brain waves? Can you send it soaring like a rising gull with a thought? Everyone who plays the game, from the unskilled hacker to the master, knows the negative power of the mind. The negative thought is the surest way to destroy the golf swing. Watch out for that trap on the right sends the ball like a magnet straight to sand. Pulling out the marked ball for a shot over water geometrically multiplies the odds of a one-stroke penalty. The mind betrays us. Or rather we betray the mind.

Relatively few know the positive power of the mind. Believe it and it is done. Know that you can make the shot and let the body deliver it. Brain the ball. Talk to it. See it in the mind’s eye. The mind is the power. Free it of distractions and watch with amazement the miracles it will deliver.

LESSON ELEVEN

PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIGNS

By the third tee at Wawona Golf Course at the southwest corner of Yosemite National Park there is a sign: Beware of rattlesnake without rattles. Some signs are easier to read than others. One does not look for lost golf balls in the thick rough of Wawona’s third hole.

Most signs are more difficult to read. The Zen golfer must be open and aware. When you receive a sign, interpret it as best you can and heed it. The signs may come from many sources. A black bird sounding a woeful caw, a ray of sunlight through the shadows of tall trees, a burst of chill wind or a sudden calm. The signs may generally be interpreted in two ways: A warning or a blessing. In golf as in life there is a time for caution and a time for running with the wind. One’s approach to the game at any given moment should be determined not only by awareness of the inner self but also by an equal awareness of the surrounding environment. You are never alone on the golf course, even when playing solo. With practice and careful attention, you can benefit greatly by reading the signs your environment provides you.

The signs may mean different things to different people. Be aware, interpret and learn from your mistakes.

LESSON TWELVE

THE INFINITE ROUND

Henry Miller said: Sit still and watch the world go round. The Buddha presented the Lotus. How do we describe the essence, the Zen, the life within the life, the essential core? We must first recognize that it is not the Lotus. We must then realize that it is.

Contemplate the white of the ball. It is not a color. It is the presence of all light. It is the white path of the Cherokee. It is the white buffalo of the Lakota and the sacred white owl. It is the moon, illumination and purity of spirit. Consider the infinite round. It is the great wheel of life, the wheel of dharma, the life-death-rebirth cycle, the four seasons and the endless motion of transformation. Consider the meaning of the hole: The unknown, the void, the dark forest and the Great Mystery.

The white of the ball, the infinite round, the number nine and the path of the fairway: Such sacred mythological symbolism is not coincidental. Yet we can only scratch the surface. Golf is everything. Golf is nothing. Golf is life but golf is not important. Sit for a hundred years and then you may begin to understand.

LESSON THIRTEEN

THE GARDEN OF EARTH IS HEAVEN

Is there golf in heaven? Without doubt. Heaven is the garden of earth where the game of golf is played. How do you choose to conduct yourself in paradise? Shall you lose your patience with your fellow players? Shall you set yourself above all others? Shall you vent your frustrations on the venerate staff? Shall you glory in the misfortunes of others? Shall you rant and rave and curse the sacred sphere? Shall you cheat on your score as if it really mattered?

You are in the garden. Behave yourself. Be aware of golfer’s karma. Replace divots, repair ball marks, rake the sand trap. Allow the foursome behind you to play through. There is no hurry in the garden. Be patient. Give praise where praise is due. Be understanding of other’s shortcomings, even when they begin to wonder what’s wrong with you. Be humble. Take that two-stroke penalty with a contented smile. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. The great wheel of life will continue to turn. For now, be there. Smell the flowers. Enjoy your time in the garden.

LESSON FOURTEEN

EVERY ROUND HAS ITS LESSON

The game of golf is as complex as life itself. It is the chess of sport. No one source could even attempt to cover all the possibilities. The lessons of the round are infinitely varied as the game.

As you play your round ask yourself: What is this round teaching me? The first answer may be balance, as it so often is. As the game progresses, however, you may begin to realize the uniqueness and complexity of the round. It is rarely as simple as balance. It may take hours or day to realize the lesson of the round. Always it is directly related to life outside the realm of golf. The lesson may be humility. Are you focused on yourself to the neglect of your surroundings and those who share the view? The lesson may be pleasure. Are you taking your work too seriously? It may be values. Can you see the forest for the trees? The possibilities are endless but you can be sure that whatever is going on in life will reveal itself in a round of golf.

A Zen golfer was playing a miserable round, convinced that fatigue was the reason. He awoke the next morning with the thought: Welcome adversity. The round was preparing him for an event still to come.

LESSON FIFTEEN

WELCOME ADVERSITY

Take a moment to recall a few of you most memorable shots: The low fading riser out of the rough, through the trees, below the overhanging branches, bending with the fairway, soaring like a hawk, landing like a butterfly safely on the green. The bank shot through the sand. The blind draw over the valley of death to an elevated green. These are the moments inspired by adversity. It is the challenge that often triggers the creative instinct.

The most memorable moments of a round are almost always against the odds. They are almost always the outcome of a wayward shot. The Zen golfer does not seek danger but he or she welcomes the opportunity it presents. Adversity builds character. It is only on the edge that one appreciates the infinite. Only from the precipice can one envision the depths. It is only when we wander from the path that we discover the illusive keys to greater understanding of the divine forces that guide and instruct us. It is only when we test the limits that we illuminate the divinity within. There are no limits save those we impose on ourselves. There are no boundaries save those we have constructed from the collective consciousness. Break the boundaries. Accept the challenge. Welcome adversity.

LESSON SIXTEEN

GOLF EMBRACES THE SIMPLE

In the beginning there was the knobby and the feathery. A good hickory stick and a skin wrapped ball of goose down. In the beginning it was as simple as grasping the club and striking the ball. It is important to return often to this fundamental. Don’t think, don’t procrastinate, don’t analyze, just hit the ball.

We have all observed the beginning golfer just after a half-hour lesson on the techniques of golf. We can verbalize the mental process as he stands sweating over the ball: Left arm straight, right shoulder under the chin, weight shift, elbow in and don’t forget to keep your head down. By the time his litany ends he has forgotten its beginning. We want desperately to advise: Just hit the ball! But he would not understand.

It is never as simple as it seems and never as complicated. Nature embraces the simple. Golf is nature. Therefore, golf embraces the simple. When in doubt return to the fundamental: Grasp your knobby and strike the feathery.

LESSON SEVENTEEN

CLEAR YOUR MIND

It has been said that the average human mind cannot hold more than three simultaneous thoughts without impairment of physical activity. When the activity is as complex as the golf swing it is best to begin with a blank slate. When the mind is clear, the Zen golfer can achieve a level of focus far beyond that of the average golfer.

It is important to begin a round of golf clear of the worries, pressures and problems of life outside the round. Breathe deeply and focus on the trees, the wind and the natural beauty of the golf course. With each exhalation let go of the worries, let go of the appointments, and let go of the tension and mental processes. Visualize the letting go. Watch the worries rise above the tree line, like rings of smoke, and fade into the distance. Focus on an abstraction: the aura of the fairway, the roundness of the ball, and the sway of a pendulum. When the mind is empty of conscious thought, you are ready to begin the round.

If you choose this message in the middle of a round it is a reminder that you should return to the blank mind. It is a reminder not to carry the thought of the last shot into the next. Clear the mind and begin each shot anew.

LESSON EIGHTEEN

PRAISE THE GODS

The gods of golf are watching. Always. They hear your thoughts. They know the content of your heart. The gods are cold and harsh to the unworthy. They are forgiving and kind to the humble. They appreciate gratitude and grace. They appreciate the golfer who is aware of those around him. They appreciate the well-mannered player. They frown upon those who complain and curse and fail to offer thanks. They punish those who offer insincere praise or knowingly cheat or wish their playing partners ill fortune. The gods are the keepers of the scales upon which karma is weighed. The gods control the flow of yin and yang. The gods giveth and the gods taketh away.

Take heart when fortune appears to have turned its back. It is a test of your character. Know that in the absence of anger, blessed fortune will soon shine upon you. Remember that it is easy to be calm, cool, collected when all is well. The challenge is to maintain the balance when all is not well. When good fortune returns, give praise. Be humble. The game is big and you are small. Give thanks and collect you blessings.

CRY FATHER: Chapter Five: Commitment

2010-07-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

Maggie came home from the office early. She needed time alone to clear her mind. She knew John would be out most of day, having gone fishing on the peninsula with a friend. Detective Jones (who preferred the title to his given name despite the fact that he had retired years ago) had become one of his few confidants. John enjoyed calling him “Myron” just to goad him. The detective had three great loves: Shakespeare, his wife and fishing.

So once every two weeks John and the good detective crossed the sound to find their way to some obscure location that the detective uncovered from old fishing magazines. They hardly ever seemed to catch any fish judging from the fact that John would pick up the catch of the day at Fisherman’s Market on his way home. Their expeditions were not really about fishing. They were an opportunity to discuss the affairs of the world and Maggie knew exactly what the topic was today.

His plans were on hold. He would not take action until Maggie gave her final word. She was aware of this and sometimes wished it was not so. It made them seem like a married couple. They had made a choice not to marry though it did not reflect their commitment to one another. Marriage was an institution that preserved the order of a patriarchal society. It did not matter how the vows were altered, the act itself was a cultural and legal claim of possession that they did not wish to sanctify.

They were both financially secure so they needed no legal guarantees and had no desire for societal approval. Their love did not require a formal bond. They were more than married; they were soul mates. Yes, it is a phrase that strikes the ear with an awkward clang yet there were no other words that better defined what they were to each other. It was a distinct distance from the values of their parents and that was as it should be. Having gone to great lengths not to define their relationship, they had defined it in a way few of their friends or family members could understand yet they embraced it with their love. They responded to each other’s needs and desires in a way that required little thought or planning. It evolved as they did – as unique beings in a world gone mad.

Paramount in their relationship was the need for individual expression. They maintained two residences, one geared to John’s need for solitude on the rocky coast of Vancouver Island, the other geared to Maggie’s need for social interaction atop a high rise overlooking Puget Sound.

Depending on his mood and the status of his projects, John would spend days or even weeks alone on the island where the waves ran high, where the winds whipped across the sound and where the kingfishers and gulls were a constant reminder of nature’s power. It was a simple three-room cabin made of old weathered logs. The cabin satisfied his need for solitude far from the voices of media, technology and modern life. The wind and the sea spoke to him in a language he could understand. If not for his social consciousness, his obsessive need for a cause to benefit all of humankind, he might have been content to live a quiet life in the mystic wilderness.

Maggie also loved the sound and the wind and the sea but she was by nature a social creature. She thrived on the challenges that only humans could provide. She possessed a gift for understanding other points of view. She drew people in, gained their trust, formed friendships and alliances and gathered influence. She was loved by those knew her well and liked by those who knew her only casually.

Maggie’s place was in the heart of the city. She was most at home in the comfort of their spacious suite overlooking the sound. It was clean and stylish with straight lines and prominent works of art featuring an eclectic view from Edward Hopper’s modern American realism to Van Gogh’s abstractions. Maggie’s support of the art community was central to her identity. To her there was nothing more natural and fulfilling that living in an artistic environment. To John it was a little like living in a museum. He loved art as much as Maggie did but he had a problem with order. If not for Maggie and the intoxicating view of the sound and, on a clear day, the mountains of Olympus, this was not a place he would choose to live for any length of time. It was however a good balance to the natural chaos that sometimes overwhelmed him at the cabin.

Maggie was drawn to order. She was as constant as the sun and forgiving as the earth. Where John’s was scattered, her mind was geared to organizing, seeking out patterns and using them to optimize function and efficiency. Her aesthetic sense reflected order from works of art to the natural beauty of sunset on the northern Pacific. John preferred the anarchy of the unexpected, the jazz of Coltrane to Louie Armstrong, Picasso to Monet, Burroughs to Shakespeare, and Bukowski to Byron. The terrible beauty of a violent storm was worth a thousand calm sunsets.

They shared a love of jazz. It was a part of Maggie that enabled her to understand her man beneath the skin. His moods were as wild and unpredictable as the music that captured him. When he soared he was the mercurial eagle riding the winds of unbounded imagination and when he dove he dove deep like Dante on his descent to the lowest level of hell.

Maggie grew to understand his mood swings, his eccentricities and his retreats into isolation. She gave him the time he needed before she reached out to pull him back from the depths. To anyone else it might have been the burden that would break them apart but Maggie understood that it was a part of him. When he was giving he gave far more than he took. He respected her needs as she respected his. It was not a sacrifice. It was the natural flow of their lives together. It was a unique relationship that operated on a level most cannot begin to comprehend. They were blessed.

Maggie was reading in the living room when John arrived. He discarded his fishing gear in the laundry room. It was early evening. He tossed her a greeting on his way to cleaning up. She smiled and wrinkled her nose at the smell of fresh cod wrapped in brown paper, which he discarded on the kitchen counter. He took a little extra time in the bathroom, sensing that something was amiss and wondering what it might be.

She handed him a glass of wine and asked how his trip had gone.

“Great, Maggie. What’s on your mind?”

She could count on him to be direct. It was an acquired trait for her sake. Maggie was direct and honest to a fault.

She held a printed copy of his latest chronicle on the web. It was an impassioned attack on the two-party system in the name of the founding fathers and a summons to an independent movement.

“I don’t know what you plan to do. I don’t know if anything can be done but I do know that you don’t address a problem unless you’re prepared to act on it. So what’s your plan?”

“There is no plan.”

“Are you waiting on me?”

“We’re partners, Maggie. I’d like you to be a part of this but we’re moving ahead with you or without you.”

“Then there is a plan.”

“More like an idea.”

Maggie watched him sit in a chair opposite her as she tossed it around in her mind. A storm was approaching and they could see the workings of a strong wind outside their windows. Normally John would comment on the nature of climate change brought on by global warming. For a time she thought it would become his new cause but that was before the last election. Now everything was politics and everything from business to baseball was cast in political terms.

“I’m sorry but I think you’re being a little disingenuous. I sense that you’re waiting for something and I thought it might be me. Have you consulted anyone?”

“Yes.”

“And they convinced you that I should run for office?”

“That was my idea.”

“Do you have other options?”

John walked over to the windows where he stared at a dark sky over the dark waters of the sound. The sound seemed to awaken at night, waves crashing on rocky shores, reminding us that the earth was still a force to be reckoned in this technologically crazed world, a world that too often forgot its dependency on the forces of nature.

“Another storm.”

She joined him at the windows as the first bolt of lightning struck with a shiver of rolling thunder in its wake. She cradled him from behind and took comfort.

“Are you ready to hear this?”

“I know you, John. I could no more stop you from doing what you intend to do than you could stop yourself. But there’s one thing I think you should know from the beginning. It’s not the founding fathers that concern you so much as it is your own father.”

His father had been something of a hopeless idealist. Hopeless because he had never acted beyond voting or choosing not to vote. Hopeless because he never believed that anything could be done.

John remembered an occasion when his father had concluded a familiar rant on the plight of the working class and the failures of democracy with the question: How can any one person make a difference in this world? His mother replied: One step at a time.

“Well, Maggie, we can’t do much about our parents but maybe we can do something about the world.”

“What does Myron say?”

“The same thing everyone else says: It’s impossible. Then we talked.”

“You’ve consulted experts?”

“Pundits, consultants, operatives, advisers and gurus. They all say the same thing: I’m certifiable.”

“I’ve known that for a long time.”

“I’m about to confirm it.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“The goal is the utter and absolute destruction of the two-party system.”

A clap of thunder rumbled through the walls as if to punctuate his pronouncement. It was undeniable that these violent storms were becoming more frequent and all of Seattle (if not the world) was becoming a harder and colder place. People on the streets were harsher. Clients were more cynical. Clerks and waiters were less friendly. Even those in her circle of friends were less patient and less thoughtful. Was it the weather? Was there an epidemic of ill will and foreboding? Or was it the cold, relentless winds of conservative politics? The politics of privilege and exploitation had widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Had it spilled over in the form of resentment on both sides of the gap?

“You are certifiable.”

“I know.”

“Everyone says it’s impossible but you don’t believe them.”

“Yes. No.”

“What do you believe?”

He walked over to the fireplace where he turned a knob that switched on artificial flames. No one responsible burned wood anymore unless they were poor or hadn’t heard the news. Burning wood added deadly toxins to an atmosphere already filled with industrial waste. He missed the flames of a real fire but these would do.

“I believe in wine and music.”

She joined him on the sofa where she saw the forces of destiny at work on his face. It was a constant struggle for John, a battle he felt compelled to fight though its conclusion was always the same. She came to understand that both the struggle and its effect were equally important to his sense of purpose.

“I’ve been talking to the wrong people, Maggie. They know the numbers but they lack a sense of imagination. I should have been talking to jazz musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, poets and dreamers. If you can imagine it, it can be done.”

She held back the urge to comment. It was a process that would unfold on its own time. She knew already there was no turning back. It was his cause and it would become hers. It would surround and dominate their lives. She settled in his arms, flames dancing and a storm raging outside their windows.

“What will it take?”

“A miracle. An alignment of the stars, a million acts of faith, a convergence of events, and a desperate plan carefully orchestrated against all odds … a miracle. What could be simpler?”

They kissed and kissed again. Lightning and thunder like a thousand angry drums, rain descending like waterfalls, their bodies pulled closer and he realized that Maggie would travel with him once more. He was not alone.

She pressed her lips against his and felt the passion of the cause, the power of renewal, the anticipation of battle against unbeatable forces and the irrational sense that somehow they would prevail or at least they would survive to fight again. She drew him in and he followed to a place where no worries or rational thoughts exist. He went inside where there was no storm, no lightning or thunder, no sheets of rain and no howling winds of change.

There was only Maggie. Maggie and John.

CRY FATHER: Chapter Four: The Candidate

2010-07-17T13:58:00.001-07:00

The candidate was impatient. This was supposed to be a publicity tour but the media had failed to show. As a first year congressman he had exerted some measure of independence and now he was paying the price. The Democratic Party abandoned him. In so doing they sent a message to all who wished to enter electoral politics: There is no place in the party for anyone who is not a team player. The party leaders gave him one last chance to play ball but when he failed to make amends they cut him loose.

Bob Johnson of Colorado’s seventh district chose to carry on. He was seeking a second term despite the party’s notice that they would actively support his opponent in the primary. He could not afford to squander time or money on a tour that would only be covered by his own home movies on public access television. After two weeks on the stump he was tired and ready to pack it in.

Yet here he was outside an old Anasazi pueblo where his senior advisor and the only man in politics he had ever fully trusted was trying to convince him that he should invest another hour in visiting the Navaho elders gathered in a cave of ancient rock paintings to honor their distinguished visitor. These were Indians for god’s sake. They didn’t even vote. For a moment he suspected his old friend was having him on but the expression on the old timer’s face conveyed an importance beyond what reason would allow.

Gardner McMahon, a short balding redheaded Irish American with an infectious smile and a story for every occasion, was a seasoned veteran in the game of politics and he rarely joked when it came to business. His integrity was unchallenged and he was hardly ever wrong. Of all the congressman’s former advisors and consultants, he alone chose to stay after the party’s declaration.

He explained: “In all my live I have known princes and kings, saints and scientists, poets and priests. In all that time I have met but two or three extraordinary people. I believe you are one of them, my friend, and another sits at a fire circle inside that cave. Believe me when I tell you it is a rare honor to be invited to her circle. Don’t disappoint me.”

So the honorable Robert Johnson, first term congressman from Colorado, walked down a red rock path bordered by tall stone walls toward the light of a distant fire and the chant of Navaho elders to receive their sacred blessing. He was beckoned to his place in the circle as a pipe was passed and his gaze came to rest on the elder woman directly across from him. Her dark probing eyes seem to question his very soul. Her expression seemed contorted, pushing forward, etching deep lines upon her face.

Congressman Johnson had not known such scrutiny since his great grandmother, a Cherokee spirit guide, had spoken to him of many things he did not understand. He was only a child and it was the day of her passing. This elderly woman, the tribe’s spiritual leader, possessed his great grandmother’s eyes and they struck him dumb.

The smell of sweet grass infused the air with mystery and the dancing light of the flames revealed in staggered motion the drawings of hands no longer present on the rich red rock walls. In signs, symbols and renderings the history of the Navaho and the tribes from which they descended were revealed on these walls.

“It is a good day for pilgrimage,” the elder said. “It is a holy day.”

It was in fact the anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre – an event as horrific as Wounded Knee. A priest turned military commander led his Colorado volunteers to a peaceful camp of Cheyenne where they slaughtered without warning men, women and children as if they were rabid dogs.

A quarter Cherokee and a quarter Navaho, Johnson was aware of native history. His native blood dominated his physical features but his skin color was light. He often reflected that it was the latter feature that enabled him to succeed in a society still dominated by whites. A dark skinned Indian would find too many doors closed to him. Johnson could walk in both worlds. He was not raised in Indian culture but he knew the suffering of the native tribes and carried their sorrow within him.

“It is the day of ending and the day of beginning,” the old woman said. “It is the day we honor the past and dedicate ourselves to the future. It is the day we plow the old crops under and plant new seeds.”

The elders began chanting in their native tongue, swaying as willows in a gentle breeze. The visitor soon joined them though he knew nothing of the language or the ritual in which he was engaged. His interest in his native ancestry had waned in recent years. He had lived the life of a white man, raised by liberal well-intentioned white people who thought it best that their adopted child know only one culture under one flag of loyalty and one version of the truth.

As he chanted the dancing flames took on human form transporting him in time and space to the place where dreams and reality merged. He saw his blood parents giving him up for adoption. His father, half Cherokee, was afflicted with the wind disease. He could not remain in one place. He wandered without direction like a man without roots, without tribe, family or history. He was a thief and a drunk, spending as much time in jail as out. His heart was heavy and clouded but he meant well. He always meant well but his wandering nature was a disease he could not overcome.

His mother, half Navaho, was also addicted to the white man’s firewater. Her heart was true but her sorrows ran too deep, too buried in her soul for her to conquer them. She had lost three children, two in childbirth, one in childhood, and she feared the Great Spirit would take her only surviving child if she did not give him away.

He saw the circumstances of their poverty, felt their hopelessness, and heard their prayers that their only son would find happiness and the means to return to the people to help. They prayed he would neither forsake nor forget the blood that fed his soul.

The elders in the sacred fire circle rejoiced that their lost son had come home. They did not seem to know or believe that he was only a politician on a publicity tour. To them he was a pilgrim and a man who held the promise of redemption. He was a man who could walk in two worlds.

CRY FATHER: Chapter Three: Maggie's Dilemma

2010-07-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

Margaret Thomas was at a crossroads. After a four-year absence she had resumed a selective law practice that elevated her profile in the Seattle community above and beyond her substantial resources. Her sabbatical had been a disruption of the life to which she was accustomed and at some level she resented it. She had served a worthy cause with a devotion and competence that inspired those around her and she was proud of what they were able to accomplish for the Native American community but she resented that it was necessary.

Maggie believed that life should be simple. She believed in family and friends. She believed that if you were honest and good you were fulfilling your responsibility to society. She never wanted to be a leader but circumstances thrust that role upon her. She accepted that there were forces beyond control that shaped one’s destiny and those forces had shaped hers. She embraced and devoted all her efforts to the cause.

Now however that she had played her part, now that she had found her soul mate, she wanted nothing more than to return to a normal life. She wanted a family. She wanted children. She wanted to share the joys of life with those she loved most.

Her soul mate had another idea.

She chopped yellow squash and broccoli with a little more force than the task required. John noticed. Tending the pasta in a pot of boiling water, he knew what was bothering her. His writings had turned from the familiar rants on the rights of Native Americans to a scathing indictment of American politics. She knew what he intended.

He poured her a glass of wine and studied her silence from across the dinner table. He felt sympathy and love. She was the constant in his life. She kept him grounded and saved him from his inevitable descents into the lower depths of despair. She alone could reach through the darkness to take his hand. She alone could soothe his unsettled soul. He needed her and in some strange incomprehensible way she needed him.

As he admired her honey brown eyes he felt a familiar twinge of guilt. He was being selfish again. He had no right to ask anything more of Maggie. She had given enough. She had served the cause at his urging. He would not ask her to do so again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She lifted her glass and flashed a wry grin in her trademark sign of resignation.

“Don’t be.”

It was Maggie being Maggie and it gave him comfort. She had the power. If she chose to use it she could mold him like soft clay but she chose restraint.

“No one knows you better than I do, John. Without a cause you have no life. If I resist now and then it’s only to remind you that I am my own person. I won’t be taken for granted but I know better than to stand in the way.”

John shifted in his chair and sipped his wine, suddenly aware of Maggie’s watchful eyes, studying his silence as he had studied hers only moments ago. She felt that she had disarmed the tension between them but now she realized there was something else. She had given her blessings but it was not enough. Was there a misunderstanding?

“You missed the punch line,” said John.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m not the one to lead this cause, Maggie. You are.”

She looked straight through him as she had so often done before. It was the kind of surprise she was accustomed to in her lover but it did not dampen the impact. She sighed and braced for whatever followed.

“I’ve been having dreams,” he said.

She might have known. John was an active dreamer. He walked and talked and acted in his dreams. It was not something he could control. It came and went as it pleased but he believed in his dreams as a Catholic believes in the Holy Trinity or as a Lakota medicine woman believes in the Great Spirit. He believed his dreams were celestial messages meant to shape his destiny and Maggie shared that belief.

“Vivid, recurring and unambiguous dreams,” he continued. “It’s you I see behind the podium. It’s your face on the television screen and your name on the ballot. You’re the candidate.”

She sifted through the memories of all their conversations and discussions regarding politics. The common thread was mutual disgust. Politicians were corrupt, unscrupulous and conniving creatures who fed on the misfortunes of others, who allowed focus groups and pollsters to set their moral compasses, who profited by betraying the people who elected them to office. Even those who began their careers with virtuous intent were swept into the web of corruption. Those who thrived did so by embracing a system that disdained virtue.

Maggie’s distaste for politicians and all things political went beyond abstraction. She blamed politicians for corrupting her father. It was nothing short of miraculous that he had been able to extricate himself from their tangled web to go on with his life.

“Why would I become the very thing I most despise?”

“To prove it’s possible.”

John twirled his pasta in his fork, drank his cabernet and continued consuming his meal as if the topic of conversation was no more complicated than the weather or the next movie they planned to see. Maggie saw through the façade and he knew it. Without passion he was not himself. When he assumed this demeanor there was a purpose. It meant the opposite of what it appeared. If he pretended not to care it was because he cared too much.

“There’s Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and Bernie Sanders,” she replied. “That’s proof enough.”

“They’re Democrats,” he sneered. If anything he despised Democrats even more than Republicans. Republicans were pretty much straightforward about representing the elite with their tax cuts and deregulation and trickle down theories. Democrats pretended to represent the working people but they fed from the same trough of corporate contributions.

“Sanders is an independent,” she corrected him.

“In name only,” he replied.

She smiled and his demeanor shattered. She had him and he knew it. They both admired the congressman from Vermont. A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, he was an enigma in American politics. There were rumors he would run for the Senate and they would support him if he did. He had taken some criticism from the left but neither John nor Maggie questioned his integrity. The same was true for Kucinich, the diminutive congressman from Ohio, though he was a loyal Democrat, and Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from California who was the only member of congress to vote against the Gulf War, the Afghan War and the War in Iraq. She was an heroic exception to the rule.

“You’re right,” said John after a moment’s reflection. “We don’t need another symbol. We need a movement and we need you to lead it.”

“Why me? This is your cause, your dream, your bliss. Why not follow it yourself?”

“You know me, Maggie. I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. I don’t have the name, the standing or the reputation. We don’t need a martyr any more than we need a symbol. We need a winner.”

It was fundamentally true. John was too direct, too outspoken, too driven by the waves of passion to be an effective candidate. He had created a financial empire that rivaled all but Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest but he had gone to great lengths to protect his privacy. Outside his small circle of friends and associates he was unknown. Those who did know him considered him an uncompromised radical.

“Just think about it, Maggie. You know I’m right.”

She felt a surge of anger rising to expression and fought to suppress it. There was truth in what he said but it was not the whole truth. It was the kind of truth that rationalized resignation. It was a quitter’s truth.

“No, I don’t know that you’re right. I know that if you set your mind to it there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. You have to pay the price. You have to take the risk. You have to be willing to compromise and god knows you’re not accustomed to that.”

He threw up his hands in protest and resignation, shaking his head in wonder at the twists and turns in this discussion. It hadn’t gone as he had hoped.

“Alright, Maggie, you win!”

“It’s not about winning!”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

Wine in hand, he walked over to the plate glass windows and gazed out at the Sound. Maggie joined him. It was a calming influence, the waves rolling in from the sea. It was why they had chosen this apartment and they relied on it often.

“But in a way,” he said softly, “it illustrates my point. I sat down to dinner this evening fully prepared to make my case and you tore it to shreds. You’re better at this than I am.”

Maggie smiled and the tension floated away with the Sound. John placed his arm around her shoulders and reflected on his life. It was something like a disease: his causes, his social conscience, his obsessions. Life would be easier if he could only embrace Maggie’s simple values – family, friends and a normal life – but he could not. Still, he would never lose the feeling that he was not worthy of the woman he loved.

“Just think about it,” he mumbled.

“I will.”

They allowed their thoughts and cares to drift away as the jazz station on the radio struck a gentle chord. They sat back down and finished dinner, talking about friends, books, vacations, music, and art – anything but politics. Finally, they settled on a bundle of pillows and blankets before the glow of an open fire and leaned upon their love.

John counted his blessings in the warmth of Maggie’s embrace. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, the kind men fawned over, the kind that gathered all eyes as she walked into a room. He brushed her hair aside, kissed her gently on the forehead and vowed not to push any further. She was the woman of his dreams and he had no doubt the only companion who could endure his eccentricities.

Maggie guided his lips to hers and returned his affection. She never doubted that they were made for each other no matter the trials they would face. They would face them together. Life was not meant to be easy and with John it never would be. Yet they understood each other as well as any two humans could. Their arms entwined, their lips caressing, their bodies came together in the harmony of slow jazz and they knew that their love would conquer all worries.

CRY FATHER: Chapter Two: Reflections

2010-07-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

It was another gray Seattle day. John leaned on the sink and looked hard at the man in the mirror. He peeled away years of perception to see himself as he really was. For the first time in months perhaps years he saw the man he had become. He saw the man standing before him without the filter of who he had been: a confident, fit and fine looking man with a drive in his eyes and motive in his step.

Who was this imposter? He glared into the mirror until he saw the naked truth. He saw himself as Maggie must have. He saw himself through Maggie’s eyes.

Maggie was his life partner, mate of his soul, and the only being on a lonely planet with whom he could share his inner self. What did Maggie see in him now? Pools of darkness shrouded his swollen eyes. His dark shoulder-length hair stood up and scattered like a poor impression of Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde.

When was the last time he shaved and showered? He knew exactly how long: Election Day. How long was it? Two weeks? Three? He had planted himself in the living room of their high-rise apartment overlooking the Sound, yelling and cursing at the endless parade of political hacks and self-serving analysts none of whom could claim objectivity. No one in the nation’s media was capable of cutting through the smokescreen of partisan politics when the entire world could see what had happened: Deception, fraud, betrayal!

He was enraged to the point that it haunted him. When he retired each night the rage followed him. He was unable to sleep. The rage would give way to depression and return again undiminished. He stayed in bed later and later each morning until mornings became afternoons and still the rage stayed with him.

“Forgive me,” he said. But he was not speaking to the man in the mirror. He was speaking to Maggie though she was not there. She left for the office hours ago. She was getting on with her life. That’s what we do. We go on. It was not the first time the world had disappointed and it would not be the last. Maggie was a fighter and a survivor. She did what she needed to do. She moved on and it was time he did the same.

He splashed cold water over his eyes, turned on the shower and soaped the stubble on his chin. It wasn’t much but it was a beginning. There had to be a beginning.

John Christianson was a man in need of a cause. Some would say it was an obsession, a failing, a character flaw, a curse of perpetual discontent, but he could find no meaning or fulfillment in strictly personal expression. It was only by serving some greater purpose that he could justify his place on earth. His adult life was a series of causes in which he had always been a warrior. He had fought many battles, great and small, lost and won, but he had always seen the cause to its conclusion.

For years his cause had been that of the American Indians. He was convinced that America could never fulfill her destiny until its citizens had come to terms with the nation’s original sin. For nations have souls and wounded souls are capable of great evil. This nation was born with the greatest ideals in the history of humankind yet its reality was one of horrifying hypocrisy.

The founders spoke of freedom and equality but they failed to consider women, the landless or racial minorities. They neglected the institution of slavery and failed to even acknowledge the right of indigenous peoples to exist. The ultimate truth that remained hidden behind the flag of destiny and patriotism was that America was born on soil made fertile with the sweat of slaves and the blood of its natives. More than liberty, justice and equality, the legacy of our forefathers is genocide.

True healing cannot begin until true history is accepted. Once accepted, reciprocity will follow as summer follows spring. We as a nation must make amends.

For years he had devoted his efforts and considerable resources to this cause and this cause alone. He helped to bring about changes in school curricula so that children would learn the terrifying truth underlying Manifest Destiny. He helped to raise awareness of the quality of life on the reservations. He pushed to return artifacts and sacred lands to their rightful owners. He raised funds for legal battles to release Leonard Peltier and to protect native sovereignty.

It was not enough. It could never be enough but at last he was compelled to realize that the cause, however dear and heartfelt, was not his own. The last thing the Indian nations wanted or needed was a white man’s crusade. He could go so far and no further. The rest was up to the tribes. He would always be aware and he would always contribute but his active role came to an end. It had reached a logical conclusion.

He became a man in search of a new cause. He began by consuming knowledge as if it were manna, as if it was the only thing that could sustain him in his time of need. He read newspapers from cover to cover. He studied history, philosophy, science and religion. He formed connections and followed his intellectual curiosity wherever it led. He read fiction, biography, memoirs and poetry for whatever truths they could reveal.

He was fortunate in the sense that his business interests no longer required his direct engagement. He was free to feed his hunger for knowledge, to search for inspiration, to seek out some sign that would lead to a new path, a new journey, a new cause.

He read and he meditated, read and listened to jazz, read and watched the waves of the northern Pacific. He read and let his mind drift with the wind as it coursed through the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. He read and sought inspiration in the stars. He read and he found the answer. It was there all along. It was hiding in plain view. It was there when he picked up the morning paper or turned on the television news. It was the election. It stirred his outrage and aroused his indignation. It cried out for change.

The words of Joseph Campbell rang like the bells of a thousand cathedrals: Follow your bliss. For whatever reason this was his passion, his bliss and his destiny.

He began to write.

To the world at large John Christianson was just another man of independent wealth. He remained unknown though his actions had touched the lives of many in large and small ways. The world knew nothing of his personal battles. It was as he wanted it to be. There was the public face and the mythical hero behind it. He was a man with a mask and the mask was all they were allowed to see.

To the world within the web he was known as the Jazzman. The Jazzman was a commentator on the human condition. After a period of silence, a period of sporadic communications from the edge, the Jazzman was back and he was back with a vengeance. To his followers in an alternative universe of bits and algorithms, where imagination reigned and dreams took on all the qualities of life, the Jazzman announced his cause for a new era: an end to the two-party system of American politics.

What lies beyond survival? What lies beyond personal fulfillment? A system of government that ensures the former and enhances the latter. It is the government we were promised over two centuries ago, a government where the people are sovereign, a government that embraces diversity and extends the arms of justice and opportunity to all.

It was long past time to answer the cry of our founding fathers. It was time for true democracy to take root on American soil. The age of promise was over. The age of deliverance was at hand.

Jazz.

CRY OF THE FATHERS: Chapter One: The Conscience of Simon Juneau

2010-07-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

CRY OF THE FATHERS

A Jazzman Novel by Jack Random

Copyright Ray Miller 2010

CHAPTER ONE

THE CONSCIENCE OF SIMON JUNEAU

Hands trembling, tears welling in tired eyes, a veteran of four decades in political warfare, a little man with thinning snow white hair and glasses so thick they resembled the base of water a bottle, crouched over the keyboard of an unfamiliar technology, pecking one key at a time.

Peck, peck…peck.

Outside the desert shimmered in a moonlit silver essence. Coyotes scrambled through the brush and fat bellied lizards slumbered in their hideouts. It was late summer or was it autumn? Time was an abstraction measured by the mechanical clicking of an antique clock, a gift from the ambassador to Spain at a time when such things still held intrinsic value. As if propelled by its own inertia, it clicked on as if time would never end.

It was the third of November 2004. Democrat John Kerry had just conceded Ohio and therefore the presidency despite compelling evidence of fraud and mass disenfranchisement. It was a replay of Florida 2000 and to those who understood the political process the exit polls told the story. It was unthinkable yet it had happened again.

Simon Juneau was old and as far removed as it was possible to be from the political world he once knew like a young man knows a lover. Wanting and expecting nothing more than to be able to spend his remaining days on earth seeking solace with the silent desert, he was called out of retirement to serve the cause of partisan politics one last time. It was the irresistible call of history in November of the millennial year 2000 when everyone who was anyone in contemporary American politics converged on the state of Florida where living history was in process.

What happened in Florida?

Was it as the Republicans claimed: A confirmation of the constitutional process and ultimate proof that the system, for all its flaws and conflagrations, works? Or was it as the Democrats claimed: An indictment of Republican ethics, a call to arms and a reason for turning to the Democratic alternative in the next election?

The truth would come out in time but far too late to make a difference. No one but political hacks would be paying attention. The truth was it was a bipartisan conspiracy to defraud the American electorate. It was a disgrace to the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy and an insult to those who served it. It was an insult to Simon Juneau. It was an affront to every man, woman and school child who still believed in the democratic ideal and the sanctity of the ballot box.

The Republicans played hardball, pulling in the old warhorse in former Secretary of State James Baker, who immediately served notice that their side would pursue a scorched earth policy unless their case was allowed to be played out in the courts on their own terms. They brought in low-level operatives by the busloads to simulate a popular uprising and disrupt an orderly process of counting votes as required by the state constitution. The Democrats countered with their own elder statesman, the soft-spoken and perpetually underestimated Warren Christopher, along with a small army of lawyers and political advisers.

That Christopher would take much of the blame for what happened was yet another crime against justice. It wasn’t Christopher who decided not to call for a full recount as the law prescribed. It wasn’t Christopher who decided to stake the election and the next four years of governance on the issue of hanging chads in selected precincts. The responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of Albert Gore. When he failed to demand a statewide recount he lost the moral high ground. Moreover, it was politically naïve to think that most of the fraud would occur in Democrat controlled precincts. As it turned out, it was fatally wrong.

When the case was thrown up to the most partisan rightwing Supreme Court in history it was already too late. The fix was in. So the case against Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a case of election fraud and disenfranchisement that harkened back to the Jim Crow era, was never heard before a court of law. The Democrats had their own skeletons in Illinois and Michigan so no one was willing to risk it all for one election or the quaint notion of democracy.

The real story was never written and hardly noticed by mainstream corporate media. As long as the river flows, the sun still shines and the politics of party continue to reign, the real story would never come to light. It would be consigned to the back pages of conspiracy theories that the talking heads of media would denigrate with laughter and contempt.

True history would not be recorded.

Only a handful of operatives knew the full extent of what happened in Florida and Simon Juneau was among them. When it happened again in Ohio he took it personally. He felt the sting of a betrayal so profound it bordered on treason. He felt the weight of guilt for the part he had played. He had arrived at the end of a long and successful career only to find doubt awaiting him and casting a shadow on everything he had accomplished. He let his long slumbering conscience guide him now.

The time had come to strike back as only an insider could. He was armed not only with knowledge but also with the codes to certain shadow accounts. They had come into being while the elder Bush was Director of Central Intelligence under Gerald Ford. Initially comprised of illicit funds to finance CIA operations, they were expanded in the Reagan years as deals were made with drug cartels from the Mexican border to the tip of the South American continent. Each succeeding president and DCI signed off on the arrangement. The drug wars were unofficially over. Only those drug lords who refused to pay or tried to shortchange the fund were targeted for elimination. Such cases were high profile and frequent enough to convince the public and the corporate media that the drug war was still engaged.

As the fund grew from millions to billions to trillions of American dollars, there was a need for political cover. A sizable portion of the fund was channeled to both the Republican and Democratic National Committees. There was no subterfuge or deception. The parties knew where the money came from. They made it available to any and all office holders or bona fide candidates on the condition that they sign a statement of acknowledgement. They were not privileged to any specific knowledge, only that the funds came from an anonymous source and it carried strings of party allegiance. It was a perfect insurance policy. Those who took the money were certifiably guilty of a crime and one that went to the highest levels of power. If anyone broke their promise of silence they could prove nothing but their own corruption and they would face ridicule as they kissed their political careers goodbye.

Juneau knew of the accounts from numerous sources over the years. It was one of those things everyone seemed to know about but no one touched. While in Florida he was approached by a retired CIA analyst with some background information on the CEO of the company that plotted the great disenfranchisement. It was the usual stuff: shady deals and possible criminal connections. It was enough to raise questions, not enough for an indictment, but tucked away in the back of the file there was a paper entitled “Agency Political Fund” with a series of 12-digit codes – maybe three dozen of them.

Juneau knew immediately what it was and the power it possessed. He asked no questions and sought no answers. He tucked it away and let it rest. Later he would learn that the former analyst had died of a rare disease. Juneau surmised that he knew he was dying when he passed the information on to him. He didn’t want to be a hero but neither did he want the evidence to vanish with his death. Why had he chosen Juneau? For some reason he trusted him and Juneau had no surviving family. He was old and alone. He had no one but himself to protect.

Ironically, had Ohio never happened the secret and the codes to unravel it would have died with him in the Arizona desert.

Beads of sweat swelled on his brow as he tapped the last keystrokes, saved and copied the file to disk. He sat back in his cluttered study, took a deep breath and gazed at the photographs of presidents, diplomats, senators and power brokers with whom he had shared a moment of history. He then removed the disk and sealed it in a padded envelope. He made another copy and placed it in a second envelope.

Suddenly the weight of his actions began to bear down on him. His hands were trembling, his throat was dry and the walls surrounding him were swaying as if their tethering had somehow loosened. He feared the end would come before he could commit this final act of redemption. It was foreign beyond words. Juneau had stood in battle for and against some of the most powerful figures in modern history. He had made and broken presidents. Yet now, at the twilight of this strange and distorted journey, he could not stop his hands from shaking.

He was tired. On any other day he would have retired for the evening but he was afraid that if he allowed himself to close his eyes he would lose his will to act. The conscience that had always been his friend and comfort, even in trying times, would become his nightmare, his shadow, a legacy of remorse and regret.

He gathered the envelopes in his still quivering hands, climbed in his car and made the short drive to the nearest postal drop in Bisbee. He was relatively new to computer technology but he knew better than to send a confidential file over the web. If anyone in the political establishment caught a glimpse of what he intended or what he possessed, his remaining days would be numbered.

What Juneau could not know was that his file, sans sweat and tears, was already in the hands of his adversaries. By the time he reached Bisbee, some thirty miles down a desert highway, his fate was already sealed.

The Scenario

2010-01-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

RANDOM TALES: A journalist is offered the story of a lifetime by a rogue CIA agent: An alternative scenario for the September 11 terrorist attack.

THE SCENARIO

By Jack Random

PART ONE: THE INFORMANT

On the drive to the rendezvous, I tried to visualize what the informant looked like. I pictured an older man with checkered gray hair, full beard, close cut, slightly unkempt, a little fuzzy around the edges. I smiled, realizing I had painted a portrait of my now retired professor of International Studies at Columbia University.

If the informant was what he presented himself to be, it was an inept analogy. The professor had been a dissident voice, a defender of civil liberties, and an outspoken advocate of civil disobedience. Rumors persisted that he was forced into retirement in the second wave of antiterrorism legislation. I had wanted to contact him, to write his story, but I was advised against it. It was easy to rationalize that decision, then as now, but it left a deep impression of regret.

By contrast, this informant was anything but a dissident. He was an insider, a political operative at best and, quite possibly, a rogue agent, a turncoat to his colleagues and secret ally in the struggle for freedom.

In the space of a few minutes the informant had accomplished what he intended; he had established credibility. His cautionary tone, almost indifferent, an air of confidence, the sense that he was offering directives to be followed without question, a game of phone tag leading to a location on the wrong side of town, all combined to convince a skeptical reporter that he was what he claimed to be: the real deal.

I cursed myself for not having insisted on a name or at least some useful contact. What kind of reporter was I? I was operating on pure speculation and blind faith. It was the kind of situation that invited trouble – as it had before in my tenuous career as a journalist. I swore it would not happen again. It was always the same thing: my weakness, my need and hunger for the story.

I gazed out the window of a yellow cab as we drove past the brownstone towers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, monuments to generations of poverty and a reminder of our government’s failure to address it.

When was the last time a politician referred to the war on poverty? The problem of the poor had become the assault on middle class. Like Vietnam and the war on drugs, it was better to forget.

The idea had been to combat crime on the streets, create community pride, and thereby save the urban landscape, but concentrations of poverty in high-rise buildings did not have the desired effect. Crime was more rampant than ever and the towers became markers for urban blight. Like a domestic domino theory, the government pressed on with its grand experiment long after its obvious failure. What else could they do?

We drove past the pimps, hookers, junkies, and a cacophony of boom box rap before arriving at the appointed address. It was the basement of an abandoned storefront. I took note of an all night café on the corner across the street before paying the cabbie. At least there was a place I could use to get off the street while waiting for a cab to return me to the relative safety of my middle class apartment.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The informant was nothing like my former professor. He was an older man, clean shaven, white haired and crew cut, his dress informal but meticulous. The general impression was distinctly military. He claimed to be an analyst and spoke of “the agency” in tones bordering reverence. He said that for twenty year his job had been to run scenarios: What if scenarios.

“We took situations, real and hypothetical, and ran them through probability quotients. We analyzed the results and projected outcomes.”

Despite my protests, he insisted on beginning his story in Lebanon, Beirut, circa 1983. It was the year a group of Shiite Muslims attacked the American Embassy, killing dozens of CIA operatives and capturing the Agency’s station chief for Middle East operations. According to the informant, they ran a scenario that indicated any response had to be covert. They were unwilling to risk congressional inquiry.

“Our hands were everywhere,” he said. “We were supporting both sides in every conflict. We were sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists as a buffer against Soviet influence.”

The Reagan Republicans had conspired with America’s most hated enemy, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, for the release of American hostages immediately after Reagan’s inauguration as president. The deal culminated in the delivery of weapons and spare parts in exchange for funds that, in turn, were used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua – expressly forbidden by an act of Congress.

“If ever there was a cause for impeachment,” the informant said, “this was it. Reagan consorted with the enemy to defraud an election, openly defied Congress, and lied to cover his tracks. What is the definition of treason if this was not?”

I began to suspect it was either a hoax or a trap. In my years as a reporter, I had seen it all. I once took a shot at the paper’s corporate owner, refusing to run stories that were obvious plants, and I had paid for my indiscretions. I was kicked out of the newsroom and given a desk in Metro. I was hoping that this story would give me the jump I needed to get my career back on line but I was losing faith.

“I just don’t believe you,” I confessed. “I don’t believe you were ever with the Agency. I think you’re just some radical looking for attention.”

“Did I say I was with the Agency?” he replied with a cynical smile.

Then he shrugged with an incredulity that was as biting as it was sincere.

“You’re right. You found me out.”

I was dumfounded. I wanted to be disappointed but what I felt was relief. The journalist within was dying. I had to consider the consequences. I had a wife and child. At least I still had a job. Many did not. At least I still had my freedom.

I clicked off my recorder, gathered my notes and stuffed them in my briefcase. Out of habit, I reached out to shake hands with the man who had just played me for a fool. The informant, with a sardonic pose, placed a business card in my hand: “William Sinclair, Consultant.”

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked.

I laughed but felt a rising anger that I knew was fear at its core.

“We’ll see,” I replied.

I left thinking I would toss his card in the first trashcan I saw.

PART TWO: GRAVITY

I knew someone who knew someone at the Agency. I had contacts at the Pentagon and the State Department. I could make a few calls and tap my sources – or not. I could play the part of a journalist or go back to Metro and be a good boy. Nothing was certain.

I struggled with it through the night, like a shadow at the dinner table, like a ghost in the bed I shared with my faithful wife. I did not confide in her. She would only support me as she had always done. I was a good husband and father. She was a good mother and wife. I did not want her support. I wanted a way out that would allow me to retain a sense of self-esteem. The only way was to see it through.

I made the calls and what I found was conclusive: William Sinclair was the real deal. His involvement with the Agency went back three decades. He had risen from a low level data processor to a prime analyst when suddenly, in 1996, he went AWOL. If the Agency knew why, they were not talking. They wanted Sinclair and the man who turned him in could expect a sizable reward. I could be the hero of my own story. I could get my desk back in the newsroom. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted a Pulitzer.

“I knew you’d come,” smiled Sinclair.

“The hell you did,” I replied.

A man like him leaves nothing to chance. In the vernacular of the intelligence community, he knew more about me than I knew about myself. I wondered: What did he know that made him think I was his boy? Was it a sting? Was it all a part of the domestic offensive in the perpetual war on terrorism? If so, I was vulnerable the moment I walked through the door.

I asked why he had chosen me. He replied that I was not his first choice. He had considered a number of reporters who had shown some backbone, some integrity, some degree of professional pride but none had passed the test.

I soon learned that the test involved enduring Sinclair’s lectures on the history of American foreign policy. One of his favorite themes was that Americans have no sense of history. In the world according to Sinclair, that was what distinguished America from everyone else.

“To America, Vietnam is ancient history. To the rest of the world, it was only yesterday.”

He rambled on about Operation Phoenix in the early stages of the war, when 20,000 South Vietnamese were allegedly rounded up and executed. They were supposed to be our allies. He talked about free fire zones and the commonality of My Lai. He claimed that three million Southeast Asians had lost their lives as the result of our actions.

“We don’t count enemy dead,” he said with a profound sadness. “There was a time when we did.”

He sat behind his naked desk in the sparsely furnished room and stared into space, as if he could still see their faces, their wide dark eyes, their contorted and charred bodies.

“The Vietnamese are the bravest people in world history. After fighting every empire from the Ottoman to the British and French, they turned back the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.”

I was moved by his account and wondered what role he had played in the war. It was not my purpose, however, to revisit Nam or to rewrite history according to one rogue agent. When I said as much, Sinclair poured a large glass of water and dropped it on the concrete floor, shards of glass scattering like shrapnel from an antipersonnel bomb.

“What is this?” he challenged.

“An irrational display of self righteous indignation,” I replied. He had already been through any number of reporters. I was confident he needed me as much as I needed him.

“Gravity,” he answered. “Come back when you have some sense of it.”

I went home and did some homework.

PART THREE: HISTORY

Sinclair’s history lesson resumed with Nicaragua in the early eighties. The Agency backed the Contras, a ruthless paramilitary force, against the Sandinistas, a coalition of working class and indigenous peoples. It was there that an infamous Agency Operations Manual was uncovered.

As Sinclair put it: “How to Subvert Popular Government by Terrorist Tactics.”

It openly advocated a nightmare scenario: Creating an atmosphere of constant fear with random looting, rape and murder, techniques of torture, hiring criminals to do the dirty work, assassination, and creating martyrs by killing your own leaders. He added that the Agency would not hesitate to use the same tactics within our own country if it believed it could get away with it. He connected the dots: Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, the Kennedy assassinations and Martin Luther King.

I was reluctant to consider such a wide brush for any story in the current political climate. The mere whisper of conspiracy, past, present or future, would never get past the editorial board of any major news organization, including mine.

Still, he left an impression, almost unthinkable thoughts, unspeakable possibilities that would transform my dreams to nightmares and darken my view of the world for years to come.

It was not the world I believed in. It was not the world I wanted to believe in. I was not prepared to accept such a radical transformation of reality.

Sinclair went on about our involvements throughout Latin America: El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Columbia, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. (In Argentina, 9-11 recalls the Agency sponsored coup that replaced Salvador Allende with the butcher Augusto Pinochet.) Everywhere it was the same story: Subversion of lawful democracies in favor of military despots. We allied ourselves with thugs, criminals and drug lords.

He lingered on the story of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the clergyman who stood up against oppression of the poor. It was hardly noted in the American press when nearly 200,000 peasants were slaughtered in Guatemala, but when six Jesuit priests, four American missionaries and the Archbishop Romero were tortured and executed, it was front-page news.

“Why do they hate us?” he asked with a twisted grin.

“They hate us for Suharto, America’s bloody gift to Indonesia. They hate us for the massacre of East Timor, where the price of opposition was one quarter of their population.

“Why do they hate us?”

He was pacing the room, gaining momentum, as he moved on to the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The first Gulf War was fought over the issues of cross-drilling and Kuwaiti belligerence. Saddam Hussein cleared the invasion with the American consulate but he could not have been surprised by America’s betrayal. It was an opportunity to establish dominance in a critical region. Our objective was accomplished when we refused to leave as promised after the war.

“Why do they hate us?”

“We financed Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world but especially in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded. After the Russians pulled out, we asked the ‘freedom fighters’ to return our more sophisticated weaponry. They politely declined.”

If it was an argument, Sinclair was winning. My mind was opening to the possibility that our government was guilty of massive crimes against humanity. I was beginning to believe that we – our government, our intelligence forces, and our military – were the real terrorists but my mind stopped short, unable to make that leap.

I wondered why he left the Agency. He had known these things for years. Why would he continue to work for an agency that was at least partly responsible for so much suffering and death?

It was not something he wanted to address. His eyes grew cold; his entire body seemed to shrivel like an old man in a storm. Finally, he produced an obituary and quietly sat down while I read:

“William Randolph Sinclair, Jr., 27, of Arlington, VA, died at St. Jude’s Medical Center. He was a veteran of Desert Storm. He is survived by…”

The pieces started falling into place. His son, following the example of his father, lost his life in consequence.

“You wrote a story,” said Sinclair, “about the Gulf War Syndrome.”

I had indeed. As many as half of the soldiers who served in the first war later contracted the sickness. It began with a mild rash, headaches, nausea, but developed into a neurological disorder resembling Parkinson Disease. Whatever the cause – depleted uranium munitions, experimental vaccines – the military chose to deny its existence rather than investigate. When they were forced to investigate, their findings were always inconclusive.

“Billy walked over to the high school football field,” continued Sinclair. “He was a star athlete, you know. He walked out into the center of the field, knelt as if in prayer, and put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth…”

His face grew ever darker and a shadow seemed to come over him. His gaze went inward as he summoned the image of his child.

“Before Billy died it was just a game. Not any more.”

The history lessons were over. It was not that I had won his trust. It was just that he no longer seemed to care. If his story had merit and I had the courage to run with it, it was mine.

PART FOUR: THE SCENARIO

Sinclair came up with the terrorist attack scenario in January 1996, ten months before his son ended his own life. It proposed a simultaneous attack by an Islamic fundamentalist group on several cities within the United States. It was an attack on both civilian and government targets – the Washington Monument, Disney World, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon – using commercial airlines as missiles. His superiors were intrigued and asked him to give the enemy a name. He did so. The name had been around for years and his face was that of the perfect enemy: Usama bin Laden.

He emphasized that none of this was the product of his imagination.

“I have no imagination,” he said. “I wasn’t a fiction writer. I was not paid to write stories. I was paid to create realistic scenarios based on existing facts. Everything is in the public record.”

He instructed me to check the official transcripts from the investigations of the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and the trial records of the first attack on the World Trade Center. I did so. It all checked out. Usama bin Laden, altered after September 11, 2001, to Osama bin Laden was an Agency recruit from the days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Sinclair explained that he ran a cost-benefit analysis, projecting the cost in lives and economic loss against the “benefits” to the Agency and the powers it served: Increased military spending, congressional approval of covert operations, broad powers of domestic surveillance, control of Congress and the White House, and, most critically, a forty year “war on terrorism” – a long awaited replacement for the Cold War. It was a virtual carte blanche for the neoconservative ideologues already entrenched in the White House.

“It would have been so easy to prevent this catastrophe,” he said.

He reminded me that the director of the Federal Aviation Administration pleaded with Congress and the administration to secure the cockpits of commercial airlines long before September 2001.

“Where was the Agency then?” he asked. “Where was the FBI? Where were all those men in high office who knew what was being planned and did nothing to prevent it? It would have been so easy.”

I had always considered myself a good, patriotic citizen. Even if I did not always agree with my government, I believed my country was the best and most virtuous on the planet.

This was not a story I wanted to hear, no less report: That our leaders – those in charge of defending our nation – knew what was about to happen and failed to act.

Sinclair offered me an envelope. He explained that it contained all the evidence I would require. I hesitated. I imagined he was reading my mind: Was this really what I wanted? Did I wish to go down in history as the man who exposed the great lie? Did the facts even matter? Would I be vilified by my colleagues in the press? Would I be called a traitor? Would I lose my job and everything I valued and worked so hard to protect?

I took the envelope in my hands, held it for the length of a second thought, and tossed it onto Sinclair’s desk. I had a confession to make. I had already contacted the authorities.

“I suspect,” I said, “there are a couple of agents outside right now.”

Sinclair flashed his sardonic smile.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You passed the test.”

I looked at him with disbelief. All of his passion and conviction were nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies and deceptions, like the lies of war.

“You try to convince me that my government has betrayed the nation, its people, its founding principles, and if you succeed, I go to jail.”

“You want to work in the fourth estate,” he replied, “that’s the test. It’s the price you pay to enjoy the blessings of your profession and the esteem, the privilege and the power of serving the greatest nation on earth.”

He was wrong. The price was much greater. Beneath his twisted sense of humor, a profound sadness would stay with us both as long as we lived. For each of us, shame was the price of survival.

He winked and I went my way. I was back in the newsroom. A few months later, I was given a column and a seat on the editorial board.

I never asked my publisher if he was in on the sting. I never had to.