Encinitas

I just left Encinitas – electricly, on the computer winds of the internet. Zoom-traveler. It won’t always be that way, the ethernet coming and goings. Forth to and back from Encinitas. It won’t be that way next week.

I said to my fellow Encinitas Zoomers this morning that a very terrible thing had happened to me two and a half months ago. The unimaginable worst. But peeking out from behind that terrible thing was something shiny, something hopeful. Something remarkable and amazing. I’ve said this here to you. A week or so after the divorce conversation I was having real early coffee and something I’ve described – accurately – as a presence entered the wife’s living room and very clearly encouraged me to go to San Diego. I’ve said this here to you as well – the wife’s from San Diego and her parents remain there and we began from right away being together going down to visit and getting the second car and tooling all over greater-SD, swimming at Ocean Beach, lunching at Hodad’s, wandering through the wonders of Balboa Park, the Saturday downtown farmer’s market – all of it. I fell in love and I had no problem with begging and I begged to leave the Portland rain (sometimes it gets kind of hot here too) and move to SD and the wife would have none of it and then she was sending me away and a presence said, “Then you go. Go on now. Shoo.” And I turned all the energy and devotion and attention and soulfulness asking for and accepting help I could gather, and, yet, with all that righteous energy there was never one offer allowing me to land in San Diego.

But there was in Encinitas. In fact, after seven weeks or so, all paths were leading to Encinitas. The only room ever offered to me up here from down there – in Encinitas; a possible/likely/almost for certain job waiting – in Encinitas. People offering me a spare room from which to look and scout – in Encinitas. And this too – I see you Ocean.

The presence I felt that morning the third week of April, I’m thinking now, wanted me to aim for San Diego and right there around San Diego would make it real as well, and Encinitas is 25 miles up the coast – in what’s called San Diego’s North County – a 30-minute drive to all the downtown SD places I love and have visualized myself hanging out in. It’s 30 minutes to Golden Hill, to Ocean Beach. It’s 30 minutes to Balboa Park, the farmer’s market, the museum, the Padres and Petco. It’s five minutes to the Pacific Ocean. The crazily expensive rent for the room promises to be offset by a very part-time job in which I’ll get to work with and for and be supportive to a young man with Down syndrome, who, through phone conversations and a Zoom interview, sounds a whole lot like Spenser Cushman. And if that falls down and I cannot long afford the rent? There are people there – in Encinitas – who’ve promised shelter.

Remember how I’ve talked often about my first “mentor” of sorts – Dick M – and those encouraging words he so often had for me – “Your Higher Power didn’t bring you this far to suffer.” “You’re Higher Power has a plan for you.” “You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”

This Friday morning I’ll point my car south on the 5 and aim toward San Diego, and if the creek don’t rise and there ain’t no meltdown, slip off an exit 25 miles or so north of SD, late Saturday afternoon, and drive on in to this new life being presented to me in Encinitas.

This morning, here at Kate’s dining room table, I’m pretty sure it’s right where I’m supposed to be.