I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the unrest and demonstrating and rioting and general misguided behavior that has accompanied the turmoil surrounding the death of the young man shot by a police officer. I don’t watch or listen to a lot of news but it’s been difficult to not be aware of the situation. A few thoughts come to mind.

The officer and the police and the media have a hard time dealing with one simple fact. That officer reacted out of pure fear and lost his composure and control and did indeed feel that he was in grave danger and had only one solution at hand. A gun. Often a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Ask the survivors of attempted suicide by gun if they would do it again? Obviously not, or they wouldn’t remain survivors. No one wants to talk about acting out of fear. We have a warped image of police. We have a warped image of courage. We have a warped image of how our police and soldiers should act. We forget, they are human and therefore inconsistent, and when they make a mistake it can be fatal. Acting out of fear is not a mistake. It is human.

Can we find room for mistakes in a culture that insists there are bad  people and there are good people? My experience is that we all have good doses of both bad and good in us and a huge portion of ambivalence and just plain old not-knowing.

How about those media-fed marches? The coverage of the mindless violence generated by groups of aimless people; black, white and brown just venting a huge array of justified, and in some cases manufactured, grievances.

Whenever people; singly, in groups, in mobs or in armies, set out to right wrongs, bad shit follows.

If not right away, pretty soon. Righteousness is the root of more mistakes than ignorance because it is ignorance compounded by insistence. A bad combination for sure. How many times have I indulged in that myself? A few too many, and I’ve probably got some more in me. We all do.

A tragedy is, when a righteous or sincere wish to do something good, either for oneself, or family, or country, turns on the instigator of the process and demolishes them. Who started all this discontent?

We did.

We are human and our intentions are good,

“Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood!”

as the old blues song goes…

It’s been almost a month since I posted, my intention at that time was to try and post every day.    The road to hell and all that…

Anyway, I’m settling in to my new little pad in downtown Vallejo, a quiet place in a sometimes noisy neighborhood; although sporadic, the random noise eruptions of poor urban life tell a continuing story by them selves. At least once a day I see some sort of police activity; at night there is an almost surreal sense when I have seen police lights flashing 8 or 10 blocks ahead and then turn into another street and there is another set of lights flashing there…The random eruptions of poor urban life.

Last Thursday was my first Thanksgiving in 30 years without Linda, so that was a little strange, not unexpected, as it is for so many, but still, a learning curve. Like today, I overheard a couple in a grocery store have this exchange: She, “I don’t know how I did it but somehow I got  rock in my shoe.”He, “You probably dropped your ring and one of the diamonds bounced of and into your shoe.” He had a toothpick in his mouth and was grinning. All of those small exchanges of complaint, or humor, or understanding, or ribbing, or give and take; that are the  woof and warp of the fabric of two lives in long term proximity. The noise-some eruptions of intertwined lives.

I plan to make the next two months or so a personal practice period of looking into this beginning of solitariness, if that is what it turns out to be, and how my relating to others changes; which in turn will point towards my changing relationship with my Self and The Eternal. Worth looking at.

On Thursday I spent a few hours in Napa at some meetings and then a few in Vallejo at some meetings. At the Napa locale they deep-fried twenty turkeys during the day as part of the sobriety meeting marathon. In Vallejo there was a bucket of KFC. Economic disparity and yet great similarity in people expressing their discomfort with the holidays. The have’s are just as dis-satisfied with their lives as the have-not’s; but their dis-satisfaction doesn’t have the same dire social consequences. However, it does have the same spiritual consequences.

When we make the feeling of “lack” a central point in our lives, it  is like certain invasive plant species. Starts out as a conversational piece in our “garden” but soon there is no garden because the “lack” Kudzu has taken over.

As I’ve said before. I never metaphor I didn’t like so much that I wasn’t willing to torture it.

I am off the internet grid at home so I will come to the library a block from my pad and try and keep this thing going.

I met by chance a musician friend of mine on Lakeshore Blvd. in Oakland the other evening, and we had one of those intense and rather deep conversations, that ensue when people are exploring each other after they have had a so far satisfying short acquaintance. He’s about 44, so he see’s me as an elder, sort of. He knows I’ve been around the block a few times and we have a lot of cognate about urban life; he’s black, I’m not. Differences in the minutiae and details and the potentials in each set of the similar situations. He’s  a professional blues musician. I’m not. I have certainly felt very blue and I can moan about it but can’t sing about it. Although I did give him two good titles.  Anyway, he liked some of the things I said to him in our conversation and suggested that I start a Twitter account and “start posting some of that stuff, you’ll end up with a million followers and make a load of money.” We had recognized each other as hustlers from our first conversation and that we were both in the continuing process of trying to move past that view of life; so when I told him that everything that I said was given to me freely; I think he saw that the blues, too, were given to him freely, and that gave them a value beyond recompense. In a sense.

Oh, the joy of living and learning. Of never being too old. I love life. Thank you.

I’ve had a full week of organizing (as it were), my new digs and getting used to the subtle (yet useful), paranoia that is part of urban life. When I was young and closer to life on The Street or The Block I was always confident and felt I could prevail in most situations, which, by the way, was an erroneous view that persisted despite evidence to the contrary. I had my ass handed to me on more than several occasions. Nevertheless, I was mostly too deluded to see that confidence may not be all that it is cracked up to be. So, I blundered, and with huge amounts of luck and residual good merit I managed to reach what I now consider, fairly, to be old age.

Still, still; I strut a little when I walk past young men who are as I was when I was a street guy. Which I might as well differentiate from a street person. A street guy, is a young boy/man who knows the ways of the underclass and aspires to learn the ways of the middle and upper classes so that he can bring that street knowledge to bear, in a mistaken and often fruitless attempt to “get over” on the denizens of the country club. What the street guy has to find out at some point is that the denizens of the CC’s all come from families that were started by some ancestor who was a street guy and basically wrote the rule book for “becoming” . Not getting over.

A street “person” is one who has lost all the battles to become, or get over. This is one who has given in to the blandishments that fun and high times offered and now has the sinking (literal) feeling that things will only get worse. And, they do.

I’ve had the good fortune to be in all three places, and survived them all.

I went over to Napa Last night and went to a meeting at the place that the big change in my life began. The place where I first got sober and clean. When I went there over 31 years ago I was a real wreck. I could not think a straight thought. I could not look beyond my own cynicism wrapped in fear. But, one day at a time, incrementally and ever so slowly, I began to change. Until I became the paragon of virtue that I am today. Until I had enough time and distance from that earlier version to see that I was not really changing so much as learning to not act so much on my impulses. Many are still very much in place and accessible, but pretty withered from disuse (hmmmmm).

Anyhooo; my experience is that basically I act different and I  didn’t sense that until I was back in a more “urban” environment and I could see some old thought habits crop up. A sixty-seven year old coot “Bustin’ on down the street like a stone diddley-bop”, as we used to say… It is amusing, and I suspect provides a chuckle or two for any modern diddley-bops who happen to see this old ghost reliving an old delusion.

Life is wonderful, but we don’t have to keep repeating everything and sometimes we can just grin and shake our heads and realize that old fools are usually the result of being young fools.

Being a fool, young or old is not necessarily a bad thing. If you learn from it, and, live through it.

I am in a new place. A small apartment in downtown Vallejo. This was the first big(er) city to go bankrupt several years ago and is trying for a comeback. There are definitely signs of life and resurgence, but it has many of the basic urban problems. I’m in a small building with four other tenants and it’s pretty quiet, although there are enough urban noises to keep one alert when going about. A high speed police chase went right by me the other day; and as it was when I used to live here, was the sound of ambient gunshots.

In Tekoa when I heard gunfire I could safely assume it was another hunting season, here I can safely assume that when I hear gunfire it may bode ill. Although the hunting guns also bode ill for the animal(s) in question.

In any case, this week I’ve been getting together the basic things I need. The annoying thing is that I have all of that stuff but it’s in storage back in Tekoa; so a short trip back there should easily pay for itself in terms of not having to buy a bunch of useful gee-gaws. I’ll do that next week.

This morning instead of going right into my to-do list I went and hopped on the Vallejo/S.F. Ferry and went to the early parts (staging) of the S.F. Giants Parade. The boat was full, a mix of regular commuters and Baseball fans. When I got to the City I just walked up Market Street for  ways and got the feel of the the Baseball fans that were starting to come into town for the big event (2 million expected, yes 2 million! I have to remember that the SF bay area is the fourth most populous urban area in the country), and it was starting to rain. After an hour of that I went back to the ferry and caught a ride back to Vallejo. I was the only passenger.

I am extremely grateful and glad that I was able to spend the last three months living at our temple in Berkeley. I didn’t know how crazy I had become. The daily schedule and constant proximity to a Zen Master(s) and other practitioners was a great benefit to me.

My plan is to develop a routine of practice for myself in this apartment and go to the temple twice a week in Berkeley and see if I can integrate a creative practice into my daily routine. More on that as it evolves (or doesn’t [or de-volves] ). :)) he indicated parenthetically…

How to live a grateful live gracefully. That’s what I want to learn. Or, perhaps a graceful life gratefully. I’ll take either.

Life passes as swiftly as an arrow,

The morning dew is gone,

The sun continues its climb.

I have started serious house/apartment hunting in Bay area. I plan to move at end of month and am looking in Craigslist and alerting friends to keep an eye out for a small place for a short term (perhaps longer depending on price and situation), lease so that I can experience this area again and see if I fit in, come Spring. I am so grateful for the opportunity that the Abbot of this temple gave me by inviting me to stay and live and train with him for these now almost ten weeks. I am starting to get some clarity and also some relaxing of views and tensions and heretofore unseen anxieties. So, a great opportunity offered, and taken, and deeply appreciated.

Last week I was sitting by Lake Merit waiting to go to a meeting nearby. I was about 15 yards from the lake and watching all the jogger and after-work exercisers thronging the circumference pathways. the sun had set and the sky was red-orange and deep blue and the lake quiet and reflective, as was I. When I heard a huge splash beyond my left peripheral vision field and turned in time to see a pelican coming up from its dive and working to swallow a fish it had. It then lumbered up into the sky with a rather awkward take-off and very slow altitude gain, but off it went.

A jogger went by and we were both grinning at our fortune of having seen this primal feat right in the midst of this huge urban sprawl, our eyes met briefly in acknowledgement of our good fortune. It was a nice moment. Over the next five or so minutes I watched three more pelicans dive into the water and get some dinner. Oddly, they got better. The last one I saw barely left a ripple on the surface, because the entry was so clean and smooth. #10 in Waterbird Olympic Diving Contest for sure. The first one which I didn’t see enter the water, but definitely heard, was probably a #5-6; in that range. No sooner had the last bird left the stage with its fish (I’m fairly sure the four fish concerned were not so happy about the evenings events), when I was startled by loud shouting and screaming coming from somewhere to the right of me.

Walking/staggering/weaving, gesticulating screaming swearing angry words, wild haired and eyed, came a drunk; mad at the Universe and  sharing his confusion and anger with everyone he encountered or withing earshot. He came staggering towards the bench I was on and while sitting/falling on to the bench I was sitting on, he turned to me and very seriously and loudly said, “Now you look like an intelligent man!” In the fashion that some people use in trying to start a sales pitch or some proposition proffer. I just turned my head somewhat towards him and said, “I am not one.”

He did sort of double take and as he lurched to get up and started to stagger on in the direction he was going, he said “Then you must be an idiot!”

I was very still at that moment, because some points had been made in front of my very eyes in the last 5 or 6 minutes. I’m not sure what they were, exactly. But they had to do with life and moments and transactions. Not all things we learn have deep meaning or are necessarily connected, but everything that appears is a teaching. A fair amount of the time we just wait to see if some other dots appear and we can connect them and learn maybe just some small thing  that may turn out to be big.

Here’s what I learned that day. If we sit still and just watch, there’s no end to the surprising things that arise in front of our very eyes.

Go figure!