Wandering in Circles in the Promised Land

“Sitting on a park bench
Eying little girls with bad intent
Snots running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes, hey, Aqualung

Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run, hey, Aqualung
Feeling like a dead duck
Spitting out pieces of his broken luck, oh, Aqualung

Sun streaking cold, an old man wandering lonely
Taking time, the only way he knows”…

Jethro Tull

You might point at my chest. With an accusing finger. “Aqualung, you poor old sod”… And, you would not be too far off the center of the target in that dreadful year, 2007.

In point (and shoot) of fact. I went over to Target… the big box store in the wetlands in north Eureka, CA. Jessica’s favorite store at the time. We went there often looking for cool household stuff… for Michael Graves and Isaac Mizrahi inspiration… together. Probably more out of longing for the familiar, and… well-established habit of going there… than anything else. I was on a track that I didn’t quite realize yet. But. Anyway

I went over to Target. And. I had a moment. Was it a true Henri Cartier-Bresson— Decisive Moment!? The real deal?

Yes. I think so. Or, at least. Very closely related. A second cousin once removed.

So. I was walking around the main aisles of the store… past the kitchenware, past the furniture, past the plastic storage bins, past the curtain rods, past the rugs and towels… And then. As I was walking past the technological gadgets section… where the digital cameras… suddenly, without prior notification, or, stated intention… something attracted my wandering attention

Jessica had been away in Turkey for some months. And, I’m afraid I was seeing her departed ghost around every corner. Everywhere I looked in the familiar landscape of Humboldt, especially in Arcata… I would see her… in a memory. Usually a fond memory of a past time we had spent together would superimpose itself upon my present time… grieving moment. It was automatic. Almost like a time-release capsule. Like a nostalgic moment caught in amber. Dissolving into the blood and. Mixing into the present moment with undeniable longing.

And, I would hear a voice in my head. Accompanying this nostalgic, inward movie. The voice said something like… maybe, there is a way. Don’t give up hope entirely. Maybe, in a year she will come back to you. Maybe, she will have a change of heart. Maybe, when she spends some time away… a year perhaps… she will realize just how much she loves and needs you… me. Maybe, there’s a chance for love to be reborn… maybe,

Echoes of a siren’s song in the blood? Who knows.

It had become such a steady background refrain. This melancholic song of longing. This lustful aria of hope. It just crept in everywhere like a slowly rising river. Until. Before I knew it. My bed was floating in three feet of water!

“Drifting
On a sea of forgotten teardrops
On a lifeboat
Sailing for
Your love
Sailing home”…

Jimi

Until. My fine redwood house in The Arcata Bottoms… was floating out into the main channel of the Mad River… upon an unstoppable, twisted, seething flood… journeying to the ocean…

But. Right at that particular moment in passing. Right in front of the banal glass case of digital cameras in Target. In the wetlands, in Eureka, Ca. In

2007. I heard a different voice. Soaring above the chronic, painful music of loss and longing—

And it spoke.

Buy a digital camera, dude!

You’re never going to get to go to that island out there in the Pacific. That faraway magic island where Adi Da lives. You’re never going to give up your beloved wine and weed. Not to mention. Become celibate?! Get real. You’re never going to get to work with His Majesty on His Divine Image Art. He has a dozen young, brilliant techno-wizard kids, the privileged offspring of his original devotees, working for him round the clock, for free. He doesn’t need an old, burnt out fart like you! Besides. They were all born with the Apple gene. And you weren’t. He’s doing complicated, highly technical digital art which you don’t know a damn thing about. Just forget about that crazy romantic “spiritual” idea you’ve been… mulling over in the back of your head. That idea about making art again… about making “sacred art” with Adi Da. To liberate planet Earth in its final hour. About serving guru and god with your artistic skills and talents…

Pick up that little Casio 10.1 megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera and

BE A FUCKING MAN!!
DO WHAT YOU WERE PUT ON THIS FUCKING PLANET TO DO!!
MAKE ART THAT IS WORTHY OF HIGHEST PRAISE!!
ART THAT SPEAKS DIRECTLY FROM YOUR OWN HEART!!
FROM THE HEART OF REALITY ITSELF!!
MAKE ART AND MAKE MONEY DOING IT!!

… or, I’ll kick your ass all over this galaxy… again and again.

Uh. Right. And, another voice. Voice #7, way in the back of the room—

Say. I remember how engaging it was. Viewing the world through a view finder. I remember how much I enjoyed taking photographs back in 1975-6 in Eugene Markowski’s Photography classes at UVA. I remember how. When I walked for hours and hours. Viewing the world through the eye of a camera lens. I became. So fully concentrated in the moment. That I forgot

all about everything else. I remember how I would. Just fall into a magical silence. A concentrated space. An empty, blissfulness. A steady flow of quiet beholding. A breath by breath trance. Into a world of beautiful. Even ecstatic. Calm wordless. Right brain wonder. Easily. Effortlessly

Hey. I wonder if it would help with? With the repetitive cycle of this… heart longing. This broken-hearted… broken record. This vicious rotation of deathlike disappointment, and… greatest hits of grieving for loss in life. The family, the farm, the bakery, the girlfriend…

I wonder if… taking pictures. Would. Help me get over Jessica. Help me forget Jessica in the moment. Stop the voices saying… maybe… we might get back together… maybe… we can make it work… maybe

Maybe. I can put the camera between me and… the memories I have… of Jessica… littered all over the landscape. Maybe. I can recapture the silence of mind that these… damn zen ghost walks through the dunes… don’t seem to be… doing for me

Yes. I had been walking. Walking and walking when I wasn’t working in my grow room. Or commuting to work on the pot plantations in Sohum all week. Working working walking walking… trying to keep busy. Trying to outrun the ghosts. Trying to “stare down”… the memories waltzing on the wall… like a good zen monk. But.

I wasn’t a goddamn zen monk! Bodhidharma, give me a break!!

Maybe. Maybe a camera. And the concentrated, solemn act of photography. Combined with the long zen walks in nature. Through the dunes, along the ocean, on the banks of the river…

So that was a pretty darn decisive moment. That fateful day in the Target big box store in Eureka, Ca. That day I picked out the Casio point-and-shoot 10.1MP digital camera. And. Hit the trail of tears…

Breathe, walk, photograph… breathe, walk, photograph… breathe, walk, photograph…

And then there was the surfing, too!

2007! The same year I picked up a camera again. After maybe twenty-seven years without a camera! Fifty-two years of age. That’s the first time I heard yet another voice tell me to… buy a Strive surfboard and walk out into the raging Pacific Ocean!!

That’s when it all started. Breathe, walk, photograph, surf… breathe, walk, photograph, surf… keep breathing

Yeah. Grow weed, harvest weed, trim weed, smoke weed… legal medical cannabis… drink wine, masturbate, eat sushi… salutations to the sun, chi gong on the river… get busted, get cancer, whatever.

And, all that time. Unbeknownst to sad, hopeful, struggling… silly old billy goat… moron, me. Jessica, my brave tart, had already met the man… if not the red-haired man of her nightly dreams… a boy whom she would later call… her Che… as in, Che Guevara, the

“Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist".

Actually. The Noble Lady Tara… helping angel spirit… met Jessica at the airport in Istanbul with… Jessica’s little future revolutionary… her Turkish Che.

And. Well. They had already laid down a foolproof plan for Che. A wily, female… venus fly trap whopper of a fix… one might say. For that unsuspecting, lucky… “military theorist” lad… (There was something about two years of yet to complete, mandatory Turkish military service?)… our fine lad of maybe… twenty-seven years of age? The deal was. The Nobel Lady T. was going to set Jessica up with Che… and

Jessica was going to lure him into a “divine feminine” relationship. Make him fall blindly in love… at first kiss, of course. Whereupon. After she ran through her BOA business credit card account… Well. That is. I mean.

After she worked hard, made her fortune giving brilliant massages to Turkish billionaires. And. After she got pregnant with… a little miracle unicorn. With the help of our… dedicated Turkish revolutionary… with honorable sperm from the happy donor, Che—

After they… fell hopelessly, breathlessly, madly in love… she got pregnant by him… and, they were immediately married. Bang bang bang… one two three—

After the nuptial noose knot was tied forever and the swell deal was sealed with golden magical mystical Chinese sealing wax…. stored away in the essential wealth vase in a safe, secure vault beside a hand-built wooden sailing ship pointing in the direction of…

Then, she would fly him home to her new dragon nest. Which she would buy with her spoils from massaging the more than grateful rulers of the newly resurging Ottoman Empire… seeing as Che was flat broke… being a revolutionary isn’t all that profitable at first after all… but… think… Chairman Mao!! Comrades Stalin and Putin!! Der future fuhrer Recep Tayyip Erdoğan!!

Hell. She was an American Woman!! Everyone knows that American Women roaming around all over Istanbul, Turkey with credit cards are rich!!

Damn, every poorly educated, pot and tobacco-addicted, raki belching young revolutionary son of a poet knows that!!

All dese American Woman is good catch!! my friend!!

The plan was. Marry him, get pregnant… whichever came first… return to Humboldt on the next flight beside him, start a grow house of her own, hand the Rothchild off to him to raise… if he proves to want it… or, farm it out for adoption… viva la maternal revolution!!… whatever

And, they live… happily ever after.

Bonny and Clyde had nothing on Jessica and… whatshisname

Maybe they could rob a diaper delivery truck next?!

Wow!!

And there I was. With my little point-and-shoot Casio 10.1MP
Reeling from two-and-a-half… whirlwind years… with the goddess.

Jeepers. “Well, goooooollly, sarge”!
Clueless.

“Feeling alone, the army's up the road
Salvation a la mode and a cup of tea”…

Walking in dedicated circles… wandering, drifting… dreaming in the Promiscuous Land?

Walking… six, eight hours a day… on my few day’s off. With a Casio 10.1MP point-and-shoot digital camera from Target.

Walking to Myanmar.

You may also like