Couch Surfing at 70

The me of me today: I have given notice to move from the room I am renting, to be out by October 22. As was the case some five and a half months ago – when my then-wife Susan asked me for a divorce and said I needed to move out – I face directly…

Oh, sort of moaner, on the edge of moaning, but more than enough in the moment consciousness of my blessings, even being here to note the things which are less than splendid in my life. What a gift, Pema would say. Wow – the big wide-open chance for wisdom mind. Man, I’m loopy this morning.…

 “I should have known you’d bid me farewellThere’s a lesson to be learned from this and I learned it very well. Now I know you’re not the only starfish in the sea.If I never hear your name again, it’s all the same to me… And I think it’s gonna be all rightYeah, the worst is over…

Overheard in Edgewater, Florida circa 1986: “This is the day the Lord hath made, and I will rejoice in it.” Took me a while to get past “hath”. Rejoicing in it has become a way of life. Monday.

Internet’s been off in my room most of the day – this will be quick. I came up from the beach and a sweet boogie boarding session to the Moonlight parking lot, which was closed to parking so as to provide space for a show of restored and absolutely knock-out beautiful woodies. You know, station…

I went into the water today. I’d missed out the last three days, working with the kids in San Marcos Monday and Tuesday, then understanding there were strong rip currents from big swells rolling into the San Diego beaches. Yesterday I brought my board to the ocean but left it on the sand and waded…

Regards today, I am mostly wordless. A great wind has blown me across the sky.

Bruce Springsteen has a line in one of his songs which goes, “Man the dope is that there’s still hope.” I’ve always dug that. Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun, suggests giving up hope is part of the pathway to end suffering. This is it – right here, right now. Hoping is wishing and wishing is grasping…

My wedding ring came back to me in the mail this morning. From Arizona. From Abby and Alex. There was a note.

Another Friday, me lucky enough to still be here – above ground, on the planet – and I’m back at Moonlight Beach with my boogie board. Set my towel down pretty much in the same place I did last Friday, where you may remember I came upon a young couple running their fingers through the…

Once: I was sitting in Pannikin thinking my Blog post today would be only three or four of five words. Already I’m wrong. But, not by much. Twice: White bougainvillea falling, drifting to the ground. Like snowflakes. Here in Encinitas in the summer. Amazed at their own beauty.

I woke this morning with a don’t know mind. I like that, I like being in that mind. It’s a pathway to staying in the moment. Like, what will you do if you find a dead mouse on the concrete path to your favorite ocean viewpoint? I don’t know. What will you do if current…

It’s Tuesday afternoon and a while ago I introduced myself to a guy I’ve spoken with a few times now. He’s waiting on a license to operate a concession at Moonlight Beach and he rents boogie boards and ocean devices and sells t-shirts and accessories and all that touristy stuff and we’ve spoken a few…

If you read the Blog Friday you saw the tale of the gifted wedding ring. Here now, this Labor Day, come three updates: One – I incorrectly identified the young couple from Arizona as Amy and Alex. It’s Abby and Alex. I don’t like making factual errors when I write anywhere – unless my pal…

I did not have a story for the Blog for the final weekday of this week until I went to the beach. I was involved in stay-at-my-room stuff until about 12:30 when I drove over beachside and went for a walk and for a coffee and reading at Pannikin. Then I drove to the Moonlight…

Someone hit my car in the Moonlight Beach parking lot while I was boogie boarding this afternoon. It was my best day of boogie boarding yet, my sixth time out with my board, I caught the most waves and missed the fewest, better ratio of success than previous days. Also a couple of very fast…

Yesterday I was able to leave my work shift with the San Marcos kids early because they are off to an eight-day vacation with one of the sets of parents this morning, picked up early to avoid traffic jams where possible. Means I rolled out just before three and cruised back to Encinitas, a stop…

Couch Surfing at 70 today is reconnoitering – pondering the reality testing of a worm-hole-like shuttle through time back to an alternative existence at age 15 – see me here, mellow beach bum. This is work in progress. To be shared as revealed. More tomorrow.

Friday I had my first medical appointment in something like forever, down in Carmel Valley with a doctor from South Africa who I selected as my primary because I thought she’d have a cool accent – which she did, more of an echo like she’d lived away from the Cape of Good Hope awhile now.…

This has been a day – already by 1:08 – with many challenges, some disappointments, and, of course, the never-ending-ness of wonders. I believe I will close out this week of posts with simply this: I see you Friday.

I lick my arm and it tastes like salt. I’m typing this in a damp bathing suit. These are good things. I’ve never used sunscreen, ever, and I’m brown as a Torey pine trunk and I have my first Doctor’s appointment in forever, and the first one down here in SoCal, tomorrow morning, and I…

While out with the large push broom sweeping clean the long driveway here early this morning the idea of sleepwalking through life drifted into my mind. I guess because I realized I had to give full attention, in this case visual, to what I was doing. Otherwise the broom would whimsically skip over some of…

….and on the walk I got to thinking of the two ditch-digger cats who’d roll into the 5:30 gathering of folks hoping to get their lives a bit more together and the one guy every single time would say, “This is the day the Lord hath made, and I will rejoice in it.” And big…

Back in January of 2006 when I began a job at Walden House in San Francisco I discovered that the old-time drug rehab-type program there – where I was going to work with kids – continued to make use of slogans as part of the daily routine. Part of the lingo, heard over and over…

I’ve been talking about the Pema Chodron book “When Things Fall Apart” lately, since I used my library card to borrow it accidently on purpose. Accidently because it was not a dust-mote-sized thought in my mind. On purpose because it was all I went to get. Reading it slowly has brought memories of information I…

Not much to say here late on this Thursday afternoon. I did jump into the Pacific and get pushed and pulled around and about some by serious wave action. The salt water experience was a highlight of the day. This post is being created on my new Dell computer, me finally unplugging the Lenovo which…

At two in the afternoon yesterday, Tuesday, I found myself in a highly-chlorinated swimming pool in an apartment complex in San Marcos, California. About 10 feet away in the water were a young married couple, both with Down syndrome. It was 80 degrees, the sky was bright blue, the water felt real good in a…

Squished for time, off in a few minutes for a workday with the kids. Hoping to be a channel of joy. I went to a movie last night, first time in two, maybe three years. The La Paloma on 101, sort of in the heart of kind of ‘downtown’ Encinitas. Old-time big theater, one screen.…

Saturday morning I drove a mile to the closest credit union here in Encinitas and opened an account. In order to make the minimum $25 deposit for a new account, I had to use the credit union’s atm to withdraw money from my credit union in Portland, Oregon – which is where I have done…

I had a post mostly written, about half an hour ago, and the internet stopped its web thing and when it came back on a minute later the computer crashed – not even a cursor. Then I turned the computer off and on by hand and the internet came back and now is mostly gone…

I was driving home from one of those early-morning meetings over by the ocean and I was stopped at a boulevard traffic light thinking about Susan – my ex-wife – and how I’d taken a picture of two turtles someone had amazingly and so colorfully painted on a fence near the Pannikin coffee shop and…

If I were a Catholic I’d be giving my computer the last rites. As a practicing half-assed Buddhist I have concluded my computer’s ‘thusness’ is somewhere between life support and scrap heap. Folks have been telling me – my son Cameron most clearly – that things get made these days with a corporate eye to…

My life, today, is filled with so many wonderful, remarkable things – gifts, really, from living life, from being part of. An imperial sadness nudges its way in as well, though when I’m mindful I realize it’s often like a vampire, needing an invitation. But, not always. Being sad for loss is as real as…

There’s a saying – give time time. I know it and I do remember it. Then I forget it. Then – oh yeah – I remember it again. And then I forget it. Again. Maybe that makes me an outlier. Maybe that makes me normal. Falling out of consciousness that things take time. Changes take…

I met for a couple of hours this morning with my new boss at the Pannikan coffee shop, rapidly becoming a favored space for me – here in Encinitas. This was a get-the-paperwork-done get together, along with some final pieces of orientation – how to’s for record-keeping and record-sharing, apps to be downloaded on the…

There’s a line from a Mose Alison song – “My mind is on vacation, but my mouth is working overtime.” It might be relevant, in shape-shifting evidence – to this post. It reminds me, a little, of another line which was once upon a time heard here and there amidst gatherings of the don’t-drink-one-day-at-a-time folks…

This is one of those few days – both the computer and the beams of internet clinging to life – when I come to the Blog at Couch Surfing with nothing to say. Not one thing. Nothing serious, nothing heavy, nothing remorseful, witty, far out, earth-shaking, resentful, fabulously grateful, amazingly stupid, charming, bashful, low-self-esteemed, cool,…

I was sitting in the Camry in the Moonlight Beach parking lot high above the Pacific Ocean last night, around 7:30, in conversation with my main man and ongoing mentor Gavin in Oakland. We were in agreement, the both of us, that I was doing a better job of living my life more fully these…

I like the movie “School of Rock”. I like it a lot. It’s been a joy for me many years sitting with my son Spenser and watching “School of Rock”. He likes it even more than me. We’ve had a lot of fun together – knowing the next line, singing the next song. One-upping each…

I’ve been thinking about something these last few days and it’s been reinforced (or maybe ignited) by the two orientation trainings I’ve now sat through with the new agency. I thought I’d write about it today, last day of the week, and I went on an extended beyond the usual walk in hopes the post…

Last Sunday night, in a 1000-mile phone call, I told my friend Kate I’d been too busy to weep. In the three months since my wife had told me she wanted a divorce I’d wept twice – once after sitting behind my son Spenser, watching him take his t-shirts, one by one, and hand them…

I put a $15 check in an entirely funky mailbox this morning, there on US coastal Highway 101 in Encinitas. The check was made out to Paumalu Press and snugged in an envelope addressed to a PO Box in Haleiwa, Hawaii. Back in 2015 when I was married and my wife and I had enough…

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those three words put together, in that particular order. But I did this morning. Oh, regarding Monday’s post, I guess I passed the collective eyes and ears of yesterday’s interviewees because the CEO lady called me late last night and said words to the effect of “Welcome aboard, Kid.”…

I’m about to leave on a job interview. This interview was set up by the CEO of a non-profit agency down near the San Diego airport. The interview will be in a town called San Marcos, exactly 10 miles inland north and east of Encinitas. I’m to be interviewed by a young married couple –…

When we were kids, us from one, maybe two streets, we’d play in our yards, backyards, front yards, sometimes we’d ride three-speed bikes on tar sidewalks, maybe down the middle of the street, daringly, possibly all around the big block of High Street and Low Street. Adults would see us, looking out from behind windows,…

(The following lifted from a today practice writing 25:25 session.) “I wish I had it in me to write the Blog right now and maybe I do, maybe the sitting here and tap tap tapping the keys with an index-ian dexterity will wake something up in the ole brain cells, could happen, and it’ll be…

The brief post in my mind the last hour or so was this – “I ain’t got the internet, kids, but I’ve got the California tags.” I even took a picture, sitting on the driveway, when I arrived ‘home’ from the DMV, about 18 miles and 43 traffic jams up and down the road from…

Let me speak quickly to you today, internet chicanery is afoot, you’ll find me now out on the patio, in search of the at times diminished at times entirely gone signal from whatever service the homeowner/landlady buys, I’m in the sun and it’s quite lovely, the ambiance of this Southern California late afternoon, me with…

Me being lazy, scoffing up one of my favorite Beach Boys songs for today’s title. The Blog titles have seemed way less important lately, compared with the stuff. Today, Monday, scooting past mid-July, I’m lazy and in fact have come here without my usual pizzazz to begin banging the keys with both index fingers and…

This Friday was a slightly more “structured” day than I’ve had in a while. Like formal, distinct, specific things to do. Starting early was leading a Zoomy thing, kind of doing what I’ve done a few decades now, it falls nicely under the cute euphemism, “You’ve got to give it away to keep it.” Next…

I’m feeling like a local, here in Encinitas, CA, more with each day drifting by on the westerlies. Today I went and got my library card (I think there’s a pic popping up here in a second). There’s nothing like a library card, a free ticket to the fun house, to a world of visions…

…….and I did go outside earlier before brekkie and trim a lavender shrub which was clearly wild and out of maybe expected control – who wants to control nature, really, though nature is nebulous what with that being planted and water-drip maintained there, and anyway I hope the take is positive and will be bummed…

I come to the Blog today with empty mind. Swirls and whirlpools, gurgling noises from deep in the woods, the sound of a cloud passing overhead. I went out to the curving driveway here in the home in which I rent a room now – this is nine days – and with a push broom…

There was an old guy who used to walk by my growing-up house every day when I was a kid, when I was out in the yard. His name was Mr. Baker. He was wicked old. Seemed kind of ancient. If my flickering brain cells remember correctly, he was always wearing dressy clothes, I picture…

interesting..