Couch Surfing at 70

My meditations this morning were wild with projections, and fortunately after a long while I was able to shine a light on them and grin a little at my persistent follies. Breath an ‘easy does it’ into this morning’s path. Man, is it hot in San Diego, and our first destination on the coast-line, bookstore…

I have long loved The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak.” Especially it’s opening line – “Take out the papers and the trash.” Like sayings you hear in the practice of Zen: “Chop wood, carry water.” “After the enlightenment, the laundry.” The sobriety crowd has a saying which says, “Keep it simple.” Back when I was first hanging…

It’s rare that I come to this Blog space so empty-minded as I am today. I sat in the dark – after my morning stuff – my mind open for an idea, and mostly I was just sleepy. I have a thing with my left eye, about which I spoke on the phone with an…

A few months ago, after she had come into some unexpected money, Ann proposed a journey up the California coast, with funky, independent bookstores as anchors along the way. We leave Saturday. Also a while back, Ann went on line and ordered a book to serve as something like “The Goonies” treasure map, writings and…

When I lived in Portland, Oregon I often visited the Rhododendron Gardens. At the far end to the south in the gardens was a bench I liked to sit on. For long periods of time, and most often alone. The bench. Sitting on that bench was a meditative experience for me. Before words like zazen…

I hope it’s a lovely day for anyone seeing this. Friday soundtrack – Laura Nyro’s “Stoney End,” Arthur Brown’s cover of “I Put a Spell On You,” and Carole King’s “It Might As Well Rain Until September.” “Mama, let me start all over.”

Everything is swirling around and through me this morning as I sit with the wonder about my relationship with people. And as accurately asked, my lack of relationship with people. I’m bringing my don’t-know, I don’t know nothing about nothing mind to it. Where the “it” is wondering. Where the “it” is me. A few…

The other night I was listening to someone talk to someone else about watching Shakespeare at the ‘Old Globe’ playhouse in Balboa Park. “Henry VI.” When I was a sophomore at Cape Cod Community College, the spring of 1969, I was going out with this lovely young woman named Linda, and as a graduation gift…

I’m feeling especially invisible this days. I sit in this room and wonder why and how that is. On the wondering spectrum somewhere between Walden House’s “Own my own” and Annie Hall’s “La-dee-da.” There’s a line in a Pink Floyd song – “They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.” Say, turning here when I could…

This is insane. I’ve already sat zazen (meditation) on the zafu (cushion) two times for 17 minutes each, a small bow in between. I’ve gone outside to look at the stars, found the moon’s brightness glowing lots of them un-see-able. I’ve had my first cup of coffee, and read more from Ann Lamott’s book on…

Gavin suddenly coming from Oakland to Carlsbad to dog sit for his sister. A call to me, I get to spend five hours with him yesterday. Best friend time. Fetchable. John and Us. Jen and Us. Us.

This is Josh. I know him as a cashier at the People’s Market Co-op in Ocean Beach, where I remain employed one morning a week. Josh is usually found manning Register One. He also boards dogs at his home (for folks off on vacation) as another business venture. He takes his six-year-old daughter surfing. Josh…

Ann and I were sitting at our small kitchen table in our small kitchen yesterday afternoon talking. The topic of ‘resentments’ came up. I was reminded of something I heard early one afternoon in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 2008 — “Having a resentment is like setting yourself on fire and hoping the smoke bothers someone else.”…

Setting out on this journey of ‘almost retirement’, there within my ancient “Wayside Youth and Family Services” backpack are found four “writing projects.” Two that have been dangling in a stretched-out stasis for far too long, another pair of rather exciting “possibles” in this new reality. One day of work a week – that’s today…

There’s a Yoda-like quality to the title of this post, a hopefully explicit statement of wild gratitude for waking up again. Getting up again. Showing up again. But before moving ahead into this new week, let me quote from Zen Master Sylvester Stewart – “Thank you for lettin’ me be myself, again.” This Blog is…

In the middle of April in 2021 my then wife asked me for a divorce. It was eleven o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday. It was sunny in Portland that day. Sometime not much later I was out wandering neighborhood streets, including the grass-and-trees median in the middle of Reed College Way. There was…

Strolling into the village with my begging bowl: (Dear Reader – Please consider a donation to support this Blog’s domain, hosting, and rent expenses. Go to the Home page (couchsurfingat70.com), open the Donate page, and click  here    A monthly donation, a one-time donation, any support will be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.)

So, I drove into the African-American section of town yesterday and met with the wife of the husband and wife owners of a coffee shop there, to discuss hanging a few pieces of my art. January. On the drive back I decided to stop at the Logan Heights library, pick up the last book I’ll…

Ah – now I approach the place here in the Blog I imagined one morning on my way to – and as part of – this almost retired, wicked poor, nowhere to go to in a hurry space at age 75. Writing about the writing — “process” too sterile of a word; “interwoven-ness” better; “inevitability”…

I set out on a walk yesterday afternoon to a favorite spot on the Cabrillo Bridge. It was quite warm and I was sweating when I arrived, happily discovering a wind tunnel of sorts blowing straight up the 163 from downtown and the view into the Big Bay and Coronado Bridge and the Pacific beyond.…

I woke this morning badly broke and wildly grateful to still be here. Where nearly all my best friends are long gone. I read earlier this line from Zen master Dogen – “When you know the place where you are, practice begins.” This feels profound to me, and familiar. This place right here now –…

8/7 — I’m in the Mission Hills library, it’s just after 11 in the morning, and this chair isn’t comfortable. Cushion butt, wooden back. There’s lots of old people in the library this Wednesday morning. I’m one of them. I’ve brought three books and one DVD from the ‘C’ section on the ‘Holds’ shelves back…

From Susan Murphy, “A Fire Runs Through All Things” – “But of course it’s a joy tinged with grief that learns to face this grievously mixed world as it is. Zen praises the value of the ‘hazy moon of enlightenment’ that not merely tolerates but embraces the crazed, sad, dreamy, fogged, painful faces of humanity.…

I just returned from a long walk up to the credit union. On the way back I got to thinking back about opinions – Opinions – and that you rarely see any of those here at Couch Surfing. There’s two reasons: One, I like writing posts and pieces here that lean into storytelling. Like a…

(Note from Buddy – This post is copied and pasted from a Blog I owned and posted in many years ago, before Couch Surfing. I recently stumbled upon it, and decided I wanted to share it, again. Doug’s always been one of the dearest people in my life, and here you can read about a…

Pssst. It’s me. I’m still here. Here’s Kevin Costner in ‘Draft Day’ – “We live in a different world than we did just 30 seconds ago.” Everything I wrote in yesterday’s post – most especially it being the final post in the lengthy history of Couch Surfing at 70 – was true. Except, it turns…

There’s some decisions that just happen, no help from me.

Wow. This is the last post here in this blogging space known as Couch Surfing at 70. I have a sadness with that. Even as this address on the web has become a bit broken here and there as these last nearly six years have come, and gone. Even as the expense of maintaining this…

This is a painting I did sometime around 2015/16. In a garage-turned-studio in Portland, OR. I have no idea where it is, or what happened to it. So many changes since then, most thrilling, some heartbreaking. This is what I get for being a human. Right? I guess I have lived something of a gypsy…

I was actually stunned to find myself still here when I woke and got up at three this morning. Right away wondering what my business with this day would look like. ‘Business’ the right word, not ‘duty’ or ‘obligation,’ no, my business with the day. The way Jacob Marley realized it, sadly, much too long…

“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden in the shade.” I like things that aren’t quite clear. That stand kitty corner to accepted, expected. There’s an octopus’s garden under the sea – all well and good. And there’s in the shade – hmmm. Kinda cool. My friend Karen on the North…

This is me, yesterday morning, sitting on a zafu on a blanket on the floor of the “office” room where I write and sometimes paint – the second bedroom of this two-bedroom apartment on a street marking the exact line between the Banker’s Hill and Hillcrest neighborhoods of this Southern California city. It’s 16 miles…

I’m sitting here on a day without work – and those days will be piling up soon – pondering the variety of forward-motion avenues appearing before me. With not a smidge of worry about the risk of boredom. No wondering, “Whatever will I do with all that time?” Nah. There’s none of that. Even with…

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle created a lot of songs which mattered as I was growing up – ‘The Sound of Silence’, ‘Homeward Bound’, ‘America’, ‘At the Zoo’. Ann brought me to the San Diego Zoo yesterday. We spent time with some of the wonders of this life. We zinged high up over the zoo…

Hello. I stood on the sidewalk yesterday and watched San Diego’s ‘Pride’ parade. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. So joyful. So exuberantly each and every one of us counts the same. So can you see the real me? It was the longest parade I’ve ever watched, by any length of measurement, and I…

That summer, between my junior and senior years, I worked for AT&T, thanks to a connection my dad had. My job was to collect LIDS – Left In Disconnected telephones – from summer homes in Falmouth and Bourne on Cape Cod. I would get a company van early in the morning at the Wellingham garage…

I am happily rejoicing in the moment right now. Yeah, this very moment here. And that I am still here to rejoice in it. My friend Cory says we do the right things and we’re in for the chance. How cool is that. Last night I was locked out from this Blog. Last night I…

It strikes me that my life is not over. I haven’t lived in the forest. Not yet. I’d like to live in the forest with Ann now. In a small cottage, painted yellow or dark green. Shutters and trim the other color. There at the edge of the forest, or, in the best of all…

I’ve been having some meetings lately. There’s been three of us – Me, Myself, and I. Preparation for these meetings, and their desired positive outcomes, has included gathering a college-ruled two-dollar notebook, a blue medium-point pen and a blue medium-point gel pen, a yellow highlighter for marking occasional unusual ideas, my smart phone with its…

A rare weekend post from me here at Couch Surfing at 70. Moving forward, Couch Surfing at 70 will exist, and improve, with the support of donations from its readers. Please consider a monthly donation of $5 to keep what has been free nearly six years going. Payments through your PayPal account can be made…

I’ve been wondering out loud here about what I have to offer of value – why invest precious time and energy and possibly money to read what’s posted here. Each of these weekday posts. And beyond this Blog, as I race toward a time of near-retirement and what feels like a vow of poverty: what…

When I think of summer, I think of Little Harbor. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts filled with beaches. Wareham. My favorite adolescent hijinks beach was Parkwood. Some of that too at Onset. Younger, it was riding our bikes to Pinehurst, sometimes Briarwood or Tempest Knob. Can’t forget arcade times at Swifts.…

I was having this conversation with Gavin last night. I was saying that I write books and poems and I create paintings and from them greeting cards and note cards, even a long-ago zine. Then I offer those creations up for sale and, I said to my Oakland pal, for the most part any sales…

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ” — Samuel Beckett “You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.” — Ryan Marrinan A couple of quotes which strolled into reading time Wednesday. The idea of “failing better” is kind of…

I’m excited to tell you my book “It’s Like This” is about to be available as an ebook on Amazon. Like any moment now. If reading on one device or another is your thing, you’ll be able to bring along Hector the rat(s), Phil with all his books, the fun-loving-robbing trio in ‘Beats Me’, and…

Yesterday afternoon I told Ann I had spent two, two-hour periods of time working to set this Blog up for its new persona the middle of this month, and had not made one inch of progress. She asked me if I’d learned anything, and I said no. Maybe half an hour later I said, yeah,…

My son Cameron ran and completed his first marathon yesterday. In Missoula, Montana. Cameron came upon, and passed, the sign pictured above at mile 19, and he told me later it was quite emotional, and powerfully encouraging. Affirming. This is you, you have suited up and shown up, and you are doing this. You will…

I want to begin today by letting you know I’ve made a decision to begin charging for couchsurfingat70. The plan is to set a “membership” system in place, starting Monday, July 15. Beginning that day, posts here will be visible only to people who have signed on as ‘members’. It will cost you $5 a…