Couch Surfing at 70

It was 11:15 Wednesday morning and I was sitting at a hospital cafeteria table with the three folks for whom I’ve served as ‘job coach’ about the last four months. Two were eating lunch, one wasn’t, nobody was talking. I’d had two vaccinations the previous afternoon – Covid booster and RSV – and I was…

I’m typing this in one of Ann’s living room leather chairs, the really big one, with the laptop on my legs. It’s weird. I’m a desktop kind of kid. But a couple of weeks ago I shushed the dust off this one and began the slow process of finding ways to log into and bring…

So, this feeling/knowing/sensation that time is running out for everything. For every precious moment left with Ann. For every hour still able to make money. For packing up and entirely ready to leave. For selling what’s here to sell. For a world of goodbyes. A window into 10,000 fears. And perhaps slow dancing.

Every morning before meditation I get on my knees. Twenty-five years ago it was one thing, now it’s another. Always these two words appear – “All offers.” It’s been said that when you (me) take the position of host you know the guests are arriving, and you (me) get to be courteous. With a possibility…

Lately I’ve been rather light-heartedly saying, “I’ve rented a room I’ve never seen from a man I’ve never met in a town I know no one.” A Koan-like choice of words. Yet Saturday morning on the meditation cushion I became filled with an experience of vast loneliness. Here’s my old mentor Frenchie stepping to the…

In my book “Joy in the Journey” there’s a story of a woman from Everett, Massachusetts who says, “When I first came to the coffee shop my life was the size of a peanut shell,” and the author’s resonance upon hearing that. Now, moving away from here, taking only what will fit in my car,…

I think I’d like to easy does it this morning and borrow a quote from the Ross Bolleter book “Dongshan’s Five Ranks.” It feels wildly relevant in my life these days. “The moon rises and is reflected in the water in its own good time. Meanwhile, you come up to the gate a thousand times.…

My Zen teacher is in Japan. Here’s a telephone conversation with my new landlord Tuesday afternoon – Me – “Hello Frank, it’s Buddy Cushman.” Frank – One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, “Oh, right, Buddy Cushman, hello.” There were a lot of tears at the Co-op Tuesday morning within the “I’ll be…

Today I begin telling the four people I’ve been supporting as “job coach” that I will be leaving the job, leaving United Cerebral Palsy, leaving San Diego. Today’s tell will be the most difficult, as I have been working with Jolene at the Ocean Beach People’s Co-op more than a year and have become a…

I am on a farewell tour here in San Diego. Friday, Shelter Island. Saturday, the India Street farmer’s market. Sunday, the San Diego zoo. Looking out the living room window. Driving through Balboa Park. Stopping at the dragon in the front yard on Albatross Street. Honoring the experience of ending things. A long-time, long-ago friend…

Dearest Reader – Please consider a donation to support this Couch Surfing at 70 blog’s domain, hosting, and current rent expenses. And, as you may have deduced from a number of posts here these last couple of months – considerable expense involving a move from San Diego north toward Oakland. A new chapter in my…

The emptiness gazing at the blank blog page is kind of inviting. I’m not very talkative today. I’m hoping to take (to fit) three of my plants in this room when I head north toward Oakland.

I have never before felt so ‘all at once’ as I do these days. I never remember feeling so connected with the world, and so separate from it — these realities not two. My life feels entirely blasted wide open right now. So much tenderness. Many tears. 76 years of soul.

I had a conversation with my friend Bob from Massachusetts the other day. The focus was on something I was wondering/worrying about, but by the time we clicked off our phones on both sides of the country, I realized we had been talking about something entirely else. Something I needed to hear and feel. Falling…

With all my behavior and plotting and energies, there’s too honoring the sorrow of separation in my life. The impending aloneness. I also honor something of joy with the leaving of the city of San Diego. And the wonder of the coming of such spacious uncertainty. Like the determined small birds in the spring bushes…

I have a number of times in this blog referred to the Zen teacher Joan Sutherland and her comment of, “The willingness to not flee.” I’ve moved very close to that not-fleeing place and space these last number of years, an image of sitting before a mirror and staying – no matter what. Then one…

There are days when it’s simply putting one foot in front of the other. For me these are those days.

“This is the core of the practice: breathing in others’ pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open — breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever we feel would bring them relief and happiness.” Pema Chodron – “When Things Fall Apart” This is exactly why I will be driving…

Monday morning I took the Camry for an oil change, scooted to the clinic and received a long-delayed pneumonia vaccination, and caught my 10am appointment down the street for a set of four new tires. At Valvoline I thanked the dude under my hood for being so thorough. At Kaiser in the nurse’s clinic I…

My life feels like a dance. With dancing partners of sorrow and wonder. Mostly it’s a lady’s choice. And I keep saying yes. Saying yes to each request. All this dancing is happening right now.

In the Sunday morning Koan room, John Tarrant Roshi wondered about what the Universe is providing through us. Not only for us. Through us. In a little over a month I will be gone from here. Pointing north, I have rented from a man I’ve never met a room I’ve never seen in a town…

I do not need approval these days. I just need to sell my furniture and pack my bags.

There’s a great scene in the movie “Grand Canyon” where Mary McDonnell is walking down an alley and this quite funky-looking homeless guy’s coming the other way, and as he passes her he mumbles, “Keep the baby.” It is a shockingly, unexpected, powerful moment in the movie. One minute you’re walking down an alley in…

A Zen parable: Question – “What is the sound of one hand?” Answer – “Wiping these tears away.”

I am saying goodbye to people, places, and things.

I’m feeling even more of a kinship with Bobbie the feral cat these days.

I have a vision of myself as an old man sitting on a bench watching the day parade by. I’m grateful to see me as ongoing. There’s sadness with the aloneness. In my practice it’s like: This formless form. No knowing.

Vast uncertainty.

Our relationship is coming to an end. My partner and I are separating. I will be leaving San Diego. Sorrow and tenderness, I am entirely talked out.

I wrote a short story once about a young girl waking up beside a small, flowing river, reeds and cattails leaning with the current, and she sees a muskrat walking from the shore up towards an embankment behind her, and it’s total deja vu, because she’s seen this very scene before, that certainty of hazy…

I heard today’s post title as a suggestion long ago, before my mother passed away in 2005. There’s been a metaphorical quality for me since that Saturday morning I first heard it. “Get in the car,” come all the way in and sit all the way down. Commit entirely to this most important thing. And…

As the sun was going down last night I was sitting in my lop-sided recliner looking around the room I have called (some of my) home these last 20 months. A fabric kittie, a rubber kitty, painted-wood kitties. Pictures on the wall of my four grandchildren. Lots of art, mostly my own, some of others.…

People are always selling their old furniture. This is comforting for me. I’m sitting in what I’ve called the lop-sided recliner these past three and a half years. About a yard away, both to my left and my right, are a small, black desk and a lovely browned-wood bookcase. I purchased these pieces of furniture…

After work yesterday I drove over the hill and went to Starbucks. I bought my usual ‘grande’ drip, and a pound of ‘Italian Roast,’ which I asked to be ground on the number 9 setting. At my two-person round table by the entry/exit door I looked at notes I’ve been scribbling about changes in my…

Long ago, on a Tuesday night in Somerville, Massachusetts, I was in a room filled with guys talking about stuff. This other guy came in late, I hadn’t seen him in a few years, and after a minute he began ranting that the world sucked, and his family sucked, and people sucked, and life sucked…

When I landed in Encinitas, CA in July of ’21, rolling down from my life and divorce in Portland, OR, one of the first things I did was to find the Encinitas Public Library and apply for a library card. It feels to me like a priority when arriving in a new place. When my…

So there’s this, in terms of what’s real right now. Today. Unions at the hospital where I support three folks as a job coach are going out on strike next week. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. My work schedule there is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. There will be picket lines. I spoke to a woman union organizer…

Tuesday afternoon I walked uphill to Balboa Park. I sat on one bench in the direct sunshine, then on another where I had once snapped a picture of my former Portland wife. Then I walked around through the park’s elegance before sitting on a third bench, this one with a back, allowing me to lean…

I have decided to create a four-person advisory council. Most of the members don’t know it yet. Notification is imminent. It’s become clear to me I’m in need of boundless advice on the forward movement of my life. To the point, if I’m being real, of what clothes I should wear each day I’m lucky…

I guess I can make a case that there are benefits of being this old. First, and foremost, I grew up in the sixties – class of ’67 – and the sixties traveling into the seventies. Those times, that sense of possibility. A special mystic. And, right up there with all the wonder, the music.…

From Saturday’s Morning Pages, unedited: “Sometimes, after the coffee has cooled, I see the steam rising. This, momentus day, cleaning the room would be good. How about a Saturday to be free from who I think I am? Like dismissed, invisible. All the hummingbirds and kitties see me. This day has come to fetch me,…

Tuesday afternoon at a Starbucks I recorded and posted a video of me explaining that I’d become weary of my time on Facebook – the lack of any interaction there, me interacting with others or me being interacted with. A general boredom. However, before deciding to sayonara it all away, the thought came that I…

I slept last night with my socks on, and when I woke they were full of dreams.

The last couple of days I’ve talked here about whimsically finding my way into what I’ll call a keto lifestyle – my diet radiating out into the vast areas of my life – and living there mostly full-on these past six-plus years. Yesterday’s post concluded with a reference to a “darker side” of this life.…

Keto cliff note, sort of: To get into and remain in ‘ketosis,’ in which the body burns fat rather than carbohydrate as preferred fuel, means eating less than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. Better yet, less than 20 grams. This can be very difficult, it was for me, as there’s a drastic change in…

Last week I talked about the whimsical nature of landing on the career path of human services, a life-changing, life-directing passing conversation in a deserted college hall. Today, and perhaps other days this week, finds another story holding my heart close with absolute whimsy, another “Oh by the way” comment about to change my life…

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A number of months back I believe I shared the story of Peter, and his famous call of “Cheepios!” With the pair of young women protectors who promised to take names and kick ass should anyone mess with him and his differences. Nobody did, and at the end of summer camp his mother proclaimed it…

I may have mentioned here one of the past three posts that I began my chase after a Bachelor’s Degree at Cape Cod Community College in the fall of 1967. The intention to hold a Bachelor of Arts in Education and/or English four years later. Yet, there I was, wicked long hair and flowing graduation…

After the divorce, couch surfing at my friend Kate’s, through the wonder of Zoom, I interviewed for and was mostly offered a job in Encinitas, California – where I was headed – working with a young man with Down syndrome in his apartment and in the community. Just the formality of a face-to-face, which happened…

In 1984 I was spending two to three hours every week in an office in the guidance department at North Reading High School in Massachusetts. Back then I was a youth outreach worker for the Drug and Alcohol Resource Program in Stoneham, some 12 miles south. Kids would drop in to visit me in the…

I’m strolling onto the second floor at New England Memorial Hospital around 2:50 to begin my three to eleven. There are four teams – two psychiatric, one substance abuse, and the adolescent. That last one holds my counselor position, and this Monday a young woman named Sharon runs up to me and says the staff…

Heard somewhere along the way: “Decorate your own heart, for the buddha is nowhere else.” Feels like forgiveness, and gratitude, joy in the journey, and dancing. “Be a lamp unto this world.”

After work, after Starbucks, I headed home on North Harbor Drive. Quite suddenly, out from the left end of the windshield, I saw three planes taking off all at once from Lindbergh Field, San Diego’s International Airport. But, in a moment, they were only crows, lifting over the drive toward Spanish Landing. Stories out of…

“I put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning.” There are so many things I cannot explain. No words. The way my life is right here today, this morning, this afternoon, when I crawl into bed, the 2:59 alarm as bird song, and on my knees making an intention to be open to…