Author: BuddyCushman

I bought my Sunday groceries Friday afternoon when Ann said she was going to Sprout’s, just so I could hang out with her. “The only true currency in this world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” – Lester Bangs, “Almost Famous” Me to a job interviewer HR person Friday morning –…

I’d like to talk about a few of the rare acts of consistency in my life. Let’s see: my meditation practice; my Morning Pages; this Blog. I began meditating in 2008, while living with my son Spenser in a winter rental down the end of Cape Cod. A book from the North Truro library titled…

My Zen practice leans into – Just this here now. Wednesday afternoon at the zoo.

Last night I came upon this stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometimes” – ‘Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.’ It makes me happy that that’s the life I see when I look in the mirror. By the way, if you would like to donate to support the cost of…

I have come to believe that a most important benefit of my meditation practice is quieting enough to see my mind at work. How it’s working right then, how one thought directly opens and another falls out. Sometimes – I get to see – consecutive thoughts which would be considered in any analytical, logical, everyday…

Last Wednesday I was walking on University Ave here in San Diego and there was a man walking on the other side of the street. Bedraggled, whiskered, somewhat bent over, carrying bags, Maybe homeless, I thought. I dawdled walking along and when I looked over again, there were three bags on the sidewalk and no…

I found myself this morning keeping company with the opening line of the Ray Charles title track song of the soundtrack for the movie “In the Heat of the Night” – “In the heat of the night, I’ve got troubles wall to wall.” This morning the word “troubles” rather spacious in its implications and invitations,…

“In Chinese legend, the cuckoo will call until her throat bleeds and turns the azaleas red.” – Joan Sutherland. I had a conversation with my main man Gavin in Oakland yesterday, and noted that the sense, the actuality, of being “all-in” with anything – this within a conversation about my meditation – was more vivid…

Yesterday, concluding my one partial day of weekly work, I drove over the hill to the Starbucks on Rosecrans. I was served by the manager, Christie, who previously ignored an email from me requesting space for a book signing of “It’s Like This.” Which reminded me of a sign on the wall beside the desk…

(9/9/24, Morning Pages from a Cayucos room.) “All this taking the bench, ongoing practice, sitting on the cushion in the dark of a porcelin room, mindful of shared space, fetched by the goddess of ‘Just try to be courteous, kid.’ Yeah, that goddess. Here as a writer on the beach. Always with re-write an option,…

It came to me early yesterday morning that what’s now called for is a vast-reaching expansion of the boundaries of my mind. A larger playground, the next street over. It was either Albert Einstein or Robert Oppenheimer or Little Bo Peep who said something like, “We can not solve these problems with this very mind…

Summer came to an official end exactly a week after we rolled back into San Diego from the eight-day adventure. We left in summer, and returned in summer. Now it’s fall. Things change. They stay the same. They change. I have begun looking for work again. I had a Zoom interview early yesterday afternoon. It’s…

Ann drove all the way home. Pismo Beach to San Diego – 299.4 miles. Ann drove every mile of our everyday bookstore/coastline journey – more than 1200 miles. I didn’t get behind the wheel once. I was a good passenger. Ann researched and planned the whole trip, highlighted bookstores from a book she bought for…

Early Saturday, quiet and still amidst the meditative call of breaking waves. We take a long Half Moon walk on a coastal path, both sides covered with low brush and a few wildflowers, ten million small bunnies scooting one way or another across the path. Here one moment, invisible the next. Then it is off…

Friday, Sept 13 – Out of Carmel early, heading up the 1 for a rendevous at a Half Moon Bay seaside room. But first, some time in Santa Cruz. Ann parked near the Boardwalk (see her there) and we made our way over to the Santa Cruz wharf/pier, a sign announcing it as, “The longest…

(Oh, there have been cows everyday. Yay. And I finished Saturday’s Michael Connelley mystery I bought at Bart’s in Ojai. It now goes to Ann.) Thursday, the 12th – Tired. Long days. Monterey all day. Much walking, miles and miles of it. We walked the Monterey pier – yes, the gift of another pier, before…

September 11 – Big Sur. Those are the operative words for today. A nice breakfast in Carmel. and out and down the 1, eventually close to where the road has been closed and detoured a long time due to a landslide. We make stops on the way to our ultimate destination – the next bookstore.…

Tuesday — Writing here from downtown Carmel, CA. Out of Cayucos early, after another wondrous, freezing-bare-feet walk on the beach. We spotted three dolphin – Ann’s spirit animal – just off the Cayucos pier, and ducks swimming in the sea. A little later heading north, in Cambria, two deer on a residential lawn. Ann said…

9/9 — Off to Morrow Bay early, under lifting fog and marine layer. Found our way out to the Morrow Bay rock, passing a host of seals on rocks and water-level piers, and floating-on-their-back sea otters along the path. Ann bought me a very cool ‘Surf Morrow Bay’ t-shirt, it’s quite lovely. I bought her…

Reporting from Cayucos, lovely hotel second-floor room with a direct view of the ocean and this town’s pier, which we walked before check-in. Earlier, coffee at 6:15a at our favorite Ojai roasting company, a reverse trip on the 150, back up the 101 to the 154, a twisting and bragging byway through green and hay-brown…

107 degrees rolling into Ojai at 2pm. Left San Diego at 5:40a, Starbucks stops in San Clemente and Oxnard. At Ventura farmer’s market, walked out on Ventura’s pier. First book stop, Timbre Books, nothing for me, talked with a young woman selling clothes out of a short bus she’d parked by the sidewalk. Off to…

Tomorrow begins the journaling on the great journey north — and back — in search of funky book gatherings, and dreamy coastlines.

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.

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…

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…