Parable of the Shed

Extreme acceleration
Carnival clown cartoon ride
Red and blue interlocking diamond pattern
Yellow smiley and frowny faces
Loop de loop animated movie tunnel
Cannon shot out the big top
Blasting off planet
Hurdling through space at unimaginable speed
Faster than thought
Colliding into a glass dome cathedral ceiling
Shattering the starry night sky like a jigsaw puzzle
Endless soundless blackness
A far distant speck of curious white light
Disembodied eyeball floating in infinite space
Exquisite holographic gemlike
Getting closer closer
Now you see it now you don’t
Shooting through the dark pupil in the iris
Super concentrated point of light
White dwarf star
Bingo
Golden milky white
Liquid gaseous electric plasma
Slow lightning egg drop soup

Rushing wind
Locusts whirring in a golden rain tree
Waring blender on high speed
Terrifyingly loud roar
Ear splitting noise thunder
Elephants stampeding
Trumpets blaring
Steam locomotive full throttle hits symphony orchestra
The tinkle of shattering glass rain
A gentle waterfall
Krishna’s alluring magic flute piping
Faintly in the inner distance
In the old growth ring silence of a dreamy redwood forest
Expansive consciousness delight
(((Ringing)))???

………. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sorry. I needed to recap. To reorient. I’ve been away from my austere, penitent life at the digital writing desk for over a cyber-month. On retreat. In glorious. “Pure Michigan”! Beautiful, benevolent… isolated… Bear Lake. Very pure. Mostly. And. Cosmopolitan, gourmet… questionably pure— but very Scandinavian nerdy-cool, almost albino white, corn maze cracker country, nevertheless—Traverse City, MI.

Visiting “real live” Saint Lisa, snow white Jasper, (our group emotional support animal)… and, Lisa’s “never say die”… pale, ghostly white… staring into emptiness mostly… 94-year old invincible mother…

June.

My authentic midwestern mother in law June.
The June we haven’t told we’re married…
Yet?
June with Six Forms of Incurable Cancer!
And counting….
Super Star June!!
Mother June of “Dancing with the Stars” Saint Lisa!!
Still standing June at the sink doing dishes
Like a real life “Rosie, the Riveter”!
June on the Lake (Fruit flies)begon assembly line.
Still barking orders to Lisa and Jasper
Commander June! And her tupperware army.
Watching reruns over and over
On the Hallmark (Don’t change the…!) Channel June.
And Fox News… the angry oligarchs—

Don’t forget Fox News June!!

Then back here. With John and Ann, the Costco couple extraordinaire, visiting for a couple of weeks! Those were some delicious scallops with bacon on the gas grill and scrumptious shrimp tacos!! Too bad I was already blown out on animal protein… Chesapeake blue crab cakes, melted down Cuban couchon, and, fine rose wine…

The highly contested… Le Chateau Miraval… from Fred Meyer in Manistee, MI, no less!!

Long live Angelina, the kungfu cancer warrior champion!! and Brad… King of the Ninth Ward… if not the gypsies!!

Now. Where were we?

A cup of dragonwell tea, first?

Yes. Thank you. So good!

Indeed. I just bought a recently harvested batch of fine, glistening green leaves from Silk Road Teas on line. First grade. Quite delicious. Grassy, hazel nutty… potent and serene.

So. To our health! Dauntless cyber-reader.

Today is Friday, October the fifth, 2018. Yesterday, October the fourth, was the anniversary of my “knowledge birthday”. That is. My forty-third year—1975-2018—since “receiving knowledge” at the Divine Shelter of Guru Maharaj ji in Denver, Colorado on October 4, 1975.

(See: Close Encounters with The White Dwarf and The True Voice of God in Confessions above.)

I always consider it an auspicious day—the fourth of October. My unforgettable… Nat King Coleslaw?… “egoic self-transcendence”, or… mystical “independence day”… spiritual fireworks and all. A “5th stage enlightenment” experience day… if we’re going with Adi Da’s somewhat cryptic, highly disputed… poorly understood… model of The Seven Stages of Life.

The day my tiny fledgling “third eye” exploded. Really. The fateful day I really did… “die and go to heaven”… and thereby meet… G O D … Lord Shiva… “the One Divine Person”… Ye Olde Unborn Self… “the little man behind the green curtain”… the eschaton, or is it the pleroma?…
“the transcendental object at the end of time”… Poimandres… I AM

faceless face to faceless face

A truly breathless, speechless, silent… ascended nirvikalpa samadhi… memorial for the deathless… kind of day. Not that I realized as much at the time. Nevertheless. A day that changed the course of my little river forever. A most perplexing, amazing… truly pivotal day… of self discovery. A day upon which all of my youthful, heartsung prayers were answered—

The Day the Big Bang erupted. Alpha and Omega Day.

And then what?

I always try to remember, to take time to reflect upon, the meaning of the ineffable word, God, and… consider how my conceptual ideas, and my actual, tangible experiences, of… “God Realization”… or, “Realizing the Knowledge of SatGuru Maharaj ji”… have grown or shifted over the intervening years… most especially upon this auspicious day, October the fourth.

Yesterday morning then… God’s Birthday… the precious fourth of October. In a quiet, open, beneficent… self-reflective… mood. Standing at my usual surf worshipping spot above Moonstone Beach and Camel Rock. Surveying the light. With my beloved Sony Alpha 7riii camera and a Zeiss Batis 2.8/18mm lens on a Manfrotto 290xtra tripod. With a gorgeous sunny, blue sky morning spreading across the Pacific Ocean. To the House of the Setting Sun. I was given a rare and subtle opportunity to make peace with a person who has maintained an almost ten year hostility toward me.

Ah. What a gift!

This fellow I mention is a surfer. A wave worshipper. As am I. So. In a sense we belong to the same church. (See: Da Church o No Church! above.) But. He grew up surfing Humboldt County. While I. I only began teaching myself to surf in 2007. Almost exclusively in Humboldt County. Moonstone Beach. Camel Rock, mostly.

He, the aforementioned fellow surfer. He is perhaps in his early fifties. I am in my early sixties. He has been surfing for perhaps forty years. I have been a devoted wave worshipper for eleven years. Since 2007, more or less.

In 2010, my father bought the wonderful house I am currently blessed to be able to live in. Here in Mckinleyville, CA. At the time of my father’s purchase of this house, this fellow, the local surfer. He was living with an older woman. From whom my father bought—

“Our house is a very, very, very fine house with two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you…”

Thank you, father. Thank you for allowing us to live here.

Now. He, the fellow surfer. He was not married to the woman who owned and sold the house to my father. He was simply living there, or here, at our house. In what capacity? I do not know.

I cannot speculate upon what kind of relationship the fellow surfer had with the owner of the house. But. I do know that his name was not on the deed. I also know for a fact. That he did own an outdoor storage shed. A shed which sat behind the garage which stood next to our house. A shed which I was told housed his surfboard repairing, shaping equipment.

An 8x12-foot free standing wooden… typical plain white garden shed.

At the time. My chemo year, 2010. He apparently. Desperately. Wanted to keep his shed. But. He was having difficulty finding a way to move it. The seller’s realtor therefore asked my father’s realtor. Who asked my father. Who was buying the house with cash. If it would be possible for the fellow surfer—

(An almost complete stranger to us at the time. I. Having met him once myself briefly.)

“To leave his shed on the property for an indefinite period of time”—

(Without charge to him, of course.)

“Until he could arrange for the shed to be moved to a new location”.

Well. My father was like… “WTF”!?

“Tell the goddamn son of a bitch to take his fucking lousy shed off my property now”!!

Yes. That is how my father speaks on occasion.

Alas. Not being the buyer of the house. I. Sympathized with my father’s position. Who wants a stranger’s belongings on a property one has just spent half a million dollars purchasing?

But. Also. I sympathized with the fellow surfer. And so. I asked my father if we could make an offer on the shed?

He said. OK. If you think so, son.

My father is also thoughtful and kind.

And so. I instructed our realtor. The incomparable Audrey. To ask the seller’s realtor. If it would be possible to buy the shed from the fellow surfer. Thereby potentially solving his moving problem.

Well. There was also the personal issue at the time of my intending to build a grow in the garage. And. The shaping shed was directly behind the garage where I would be working.

Ah. So you see. A complicated, delicate affair.

Well. The fellow surfer was not happy with being told he could not leave his shed on my father’s property for “an indefinite period of time… free of charge…. until he could figure out a way to move the shed”…

How do I know this?

The very next time I saw this fellow surfer in the water. He glared at me. He snarled at me. He seethed with rage as he tried to run over me with his enormous longboard. Over and over again.

This was probably some time in 2011. The year after colon surgery and my grueling six months of chemotherapy? When I finally got back in the water. And continued to try to teach myself how to dance with the ocean.

Then. For the next seven years. This fellow surfer glared at me anytime he saw me anywhere. And. He told all of his many local friends. That I was “a piece of shit who cost him money”. So. Basically. He and all of his gang of local surfers. A band of tattooed, snarly younger wave pirates. And one apparent woman. Or, sea hag. “Humboldt’s finest”. Water rats. Far more highly skilled and experienced at wave carving. Than I could demonstrate at the time.

Oh. They all tried to run me over. Curse me out. Snake every wave. Every time they saw me in the lineup.

Welcome to Humboldt Surf School. Now go to hell.

Ah so. Teaching oneself to surf is not so easy, Grasshopper. There will be many pop up trials. Only the truly committed waterman will survive. Devotion to the waves always comes at a steep… drop in… price.

One must fall deeply in love with the Mother Ocean. One must devote one’s life to the briny steep and…

Yeah yeah. Pacifico Clara and the wet wild slippery sea lioness.

Uh. But. Where were we, goodly water cowboys?

Oh, right.

So. Yesterday morning. On the 43rd anniversary of my “knowledge birthday”. Standing there before the Great Mother Ocean. Before the vast, immeasurable expanse of sky. At the altar of Beloved Camel Rock.

Who showed up?

Ah, yes. Just the one who hates me so. The aforementioned local fellow surfer. He walked up from behind me on the right. And I turned to him gently. And said.

Maybe we can talk about this little difficulty we have. Now. That we are out of the water?

He glared. Then said. What difficulty?

And I said. The problem of the shed. The moving of your shed at the house my father bought in Mckinleyville back in 2010. You’ve been angry with me a long time over it…

And so, he was able to vent his anger. While I was able to apologize for the misunderstanding. And explain to him. Why I had not been able at the time. To find a shed saving solution that was agreeable to him.

We shook hands. I hope that it helped him to overcome his anger.

In the afternoon, I went searching for gold deep inside the pockets of Wash Rock. Directly below the lookout where that same morning I had shaken hands with the fellow surfer who had been angry with me for so many years.

On my last wave of the day. The vicious shore break swept me into its whirling tumult. My solid, heavy ten-foot… Travis Reynolds longboard… swung around inside the tight, resounding curl of a… solid, heavy ten-foot… sand-sucking wave. And slammed me. Like a war hammer in the strong arms of a vengeful foe. In the back of my head—

(((Splitting the curved edge, or rail, of the board.)))

Just to the right of the A-O! joint… near the neighborhood of yonder—

Obliquus capitis superior muscle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The obliquus capitis superior muscle (/əˈblaɪkwəs ˈkæpɪtɪs/) is a small muscle in the upper back part of the neck and is one of the suboccipital muscles and part of the suboccipital triangle. It arises from the lateral mass of the atlas bone. It passes superiorly and posteriorly to insert into the lateral half of the inferior nuchal line on the external surface of the occipital bone. The muscle is innervated by the suboccipital nerve, the dorsal ramus of the first spinal nerve.

It acts at the atlanto-occipital joint to extend the head and flex the head to the ipsilateral side.

And, there ya go….
Same precise spot
Just below my leather hauberk
Where that nameless Mongolian archer in the 11th c.
Nailed me with a lethal arrow shot from his nasty little compound bow
In the same general vicinity
More or less
Where my decapitated head rolled to a halt
In tall engulfing waves
Of wind riven blond grass

As I chased Genghis Kahn’s fleeing army of magnificent fast
Trick pony riders
Like so many snarling wave jockeys
With full bloodlust
In primordial battle rage
Into the house of yonder setting sun.

I surely hope that realignment helps, bro.

See how the universe is always looking out for us, Grasshopper?

Yeah. I saw the light, alright.

And I sure hope you do, too.

Cheers.

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