I Am What I Eat
Two disclaimers before I begin: One – This is my story. I tell you these things to tell a story. There is no intention of suggestion, encouragement, preaching – none of that. It’s just another story on Couch Surfing at 70. Two – For all I know, I could drop dead tomorrow. Picture this:…
Your Stories
As promised, these are comments in the form of dislodged memories and other thoughts and thinking from subscribers in reaction to the “Flying down Durant with Doug” post. And as always, I bow to your commitment. And heart. “Jim Morrison was always my muse, light my fire playing on my families’s car radio at…
Addendum of Sorts
9/16/18 Verbatim ‘Morning Pages’ I have a distinct sense, which feels to be clearing with time, that the “Couch” Blog is in fact something special – special for me as an opportunity to move closer to focus and devotion and intention, loyalty even, than what I have usually wrung from myself in the past.…
Flying down Durant with Doug
The scene is this – It’s midnight, give or take, a Friday or Saturday, I don’t remember. We leave our room on the sixth floor of the Durant Hotel. Before dark there is an in-your-face, up-close perfect view of UC Berkeley’s campanile from our room’s window. But now it’s dark. We’ve been to a disability…
Kind of How it Goes
A couple of weeks ago a friend named Eric stopped by the house. He lives up near Seattle and was down in Portland for the weekend. Talking on the phone a week or so earlier he was describing a room he’d rented in a house under construction – the floors were torn up, he was…
Coming Attractions
Hello there my Blog subscriber. Just a quick non-post post, a few odds and ends I’d like to note. First, I have just come to understand that my replies to comments you have graciously taken the time to leave are not automatically being seen by you. You don’t know I’ve replied, or someone else…
From the Tool Kit
I’m not big on telling anyone “You ought to try this.” But….. Along the highways and the byways of my life, from ultra cool apartments I’ve rented, gifted mattresses on floors where I’ve laid my can-I-crash-here head, the house belonging to Susan I’ve called home these last eight years. Within and from these places, out…
Surfing Around the Rail Trail
There’s another story that proceeds this one, but I’ll begin here. The third or fourth week of May 2007 my son Cameron and I completed a cross-country father-son journey and adventure from Oakland, California to Cape Cod, that peninsula-like-thing that sticks out from the Massachusetts coastline. Technically homeless (me), Cameron and I had spent a…
Nine Words and a Question Mark
I have had a habit, pretty much all my life, of talking myself into not doing things. Not trying things, not joining, participating, leading, confidently chasing each and every dream I ached for. Pema Chodron, the Catholic Buddhist nun and author of many wonderful, helpful, and supportive books, talks about “our ancient stories”. Stories we…
Dumb Luck
Early in August in 1982 I left my apartment in Salem, Massachusetts and a three-year part-time Sports Editor and high school stringer job with the Newburyport Daily News some 30 miles away and dragged one suitcase and all my dreams onto a Greyhound bus in downtown Boston. I had stored two large trash bags of…
Couch Surfing at 70
To google ‘couch surfing’ results in this on-line dictionary definition — “Stay temporarily in a series of other people’s homes, typically making use of improvised sleeping arrangements.” Every morning finds me up at 5:30, ‘sitting’ in meditation from between eight and 20 minutes in a straight-back chair in the living room. Often I’m thinking about…
Dating My Wife
A SHORT STORY — Once upon a time my wife took yesterday off from work. It was her birthday. I like it when my wife is home from work. We hang out. I’ve tried to convince her to quit working the last couple of years, so we could hang out more. But she is too…