Couch Surfing at 70

Monday was a day speckled with wonders and generosities, nature, sparkly clean windows, graces and graces and graces. And a breathtaking after-the-meditation sunset over the Pacific, caught sideways searching for parking, and flat-out bedazzling seen through the rear-view climbing the hill of the 8 away from the beach. Even then, the sense of having missed…

‘It’s a beautiful morning. I think I’ll go outside for a while – and just smile.’

I’m feeling rather ancient this morning. Once I could climb Mount Monadnock with ease. Once I could run nine miles Friday afternoons. Once my body worked the way bodies work in fairy tales and the movies. Once I would wake at 3am, desparate for another life. Once I had a dog and we ran through…

It’s Ann’s birthday. I have presents. Shopping for presents is pretty great. The folk singer Melanie had a line in one of her songs, “Why can’t it be Christmas the whole year through?” For me, giving it all over to what will make someone else happy is just that invitation. I remember, and it was…

I have adopted the persona of struggling artist. I think I’ve rescued it. Like how kind souls rescue dogs and cats from a shelter. I’ve shown up to point – “That one.” – and brought it home. Like Van Gogh, giving all of himself to this calling and you sell two paintings in 30 years.…

I recently watched a three-part documentary of The Jefferson Airplane on YouTube. When I was much younger I took white masking tape and tore and stuck the words “Jefferson Airplane Loves You” on the wall of my bedroom, opposite the bed. “Jefferson Airplane Loves You” was a thing back then, the mid-sixties. A slogan. An…

I went to bed last night and woke this morning entirely discombobulated. Which feels like a rather gentle way to say it. I’m closer to a place with Laura Nyro, who sang, “Last call for the poverty train.” And further, this line from a Zen Koan – “I have a way to bless this poverty.”…

I woke this day troubled. This Friday, March 2024. I was born in January 1949. It’s a long way to troubled. The 10,000th dance to get going. Every time I danced, closer. James Brown – “Get up offa that thing and dance ’til you feel better.” The Church of the Good Shepherd basement dance lessons.…

I’m feeling a bit dismayed with the ‘struggling artist’ thing, and also wildly encouraged. Both those feelings – it feels right – resting comfortably together. ‘Struggling artist’ offers such a wide array of personal views. Trust me. Struggling to paint, struggling to doodle, struggling to market and sell, struggling to easy does it, to be…

I’m drinking two large cups of rich coffee in the (yesterday) afternoon. I know I need to call a friend in Massachusetts – Steve T. I’ve arranged as art on the counter three large cara cara oranges I bought for Ann at the People’s Co-op. My first post-work book invitation is “Nine-Headed Dragon River” by…

I found myself talking about my divorce last night in the meditation meeting. In response to the leader’s story of a recent break-up. Shortly after hearing the word ‘divorce’ a morning almost three years ago, I wandered out into that day’s sunshine on Portland streets, my walking aimlessly view streaked with tears, and after a…

I spent a bunch of time the past two days revitalizing and energizing an online artist website I had joined for free in 2013. Maybe you know, maybe you don’t, I’ve begun painting again after a substantial lay-off related for the most part to my April ’21 divorce in Portland and the subsequent lack of…

Sometimes in the earlyness, sitting in the lop-sided recliner drinking coffee and reading Zen materials, I hear someone on the kitchen floor, practicing yoga, singing along to tiny headphones in the joyous voice of a little kid. It sounds like praying.

Through and within what I’ll refer to as “my practice”, I have been spending a fair amount of time these last few weeks, six or seven, thinking about my life – self and soul, inclinations and fact-of-the-matter history, hows and whens and whys of the way I am. This process, this path taken, has been…

One Sunday I said to Sarah that as I was walking back from the Spruce Street suspension bridge a hummingbird was perched on the top power line wire, chittering away, and that I had the distinct feeling it was there for my benefit – to bring joy into my day. Sarah replied, asking, how do…

I had the most marvelous revelation earlier this morning. Which I won’t bore you with. Instead, I’ll quote from The Talking Heads — “Why stay in college.? Why go to night school? Gonna be different this time.”

When I was a child, salt water splashed through my veins. I strolled and skipped through small patches of forests – we called them woods. This time of year we skated on frozen-over cranberry bogs, safety cracks in the ice some of an after-school soundtrack. I took the time, back then, to feed robins and…

I’ve had a fun thought this morning. Rather than reading a book I just received from Ebay, I will only read the brief reviews on the back cover and inside page. That will give me everything. For example, I paid four or six dollars – the most I’ll spend – for a used copy of…

What’s a Thursday like?

Falling back asleep, the recliner, before, and now here, writing a Wednesday post. I want to be like Alice, falling, falling, without a care for how tall I am. And marveling at the Red Queen’s six impossible things. Painting messes was a thought I had earlier. While sleepwalking. Cue Santo and Johnny.

Lots of Sly and The Family Stone song lyrics showing up in my spacious mind this morning – “Different strokes for different folks.”; “Everybody is a star.”; “Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop when I want to.” I am enjoying them.

Yesterday I listened to someone say, “Perform all actions as worship.” I wrote it down. Knowing me, there’s nothing connected to any religion in any of those words. It’s more the idea….the aura of each thing sacred. A bit like the author Michael Connelly’s character Harry Bosch, who’s primary stance, for his job as police…

In another part of San Diego, in another decade, I would hear roosters calling out early in the morning. “Welcome, welcome Friday”, it was like they were saying. In the world, and of the world. Their songs and the rising sun not two separate things. Imagine that. And then there was me, somewhere in Spring…

Bob Dylan has a song, “Everything is Broken.” I wrote a Blog post about him and his song something like six years ago. A different Blog. Another life. I mention it here because some things in my life have been breaking lately. This Blog and its hosting site. My closet hanging pole and shelves. Meetings…

The website hosting my Blog has been in Halloween mode this last week, tricking rather than treating. However, drinking coffee this morning, the very clear image of a cone of pistachio ice cream – all green and yummy – came clearly into my mind. So, I’d say things are looking up.

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

Apparently, yesterday’s post here in the Blog did not travel out into the world, out to the subscribers, out into Thursday. The machinery of this site shows it did, in every show-able place. And yet – emptiness can be quite clear. So, I will copy and paste yesterday’s post below, an amended title, fully aware…

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

This Wednesday before dawn, filled with chilly downpours and in-between drifting clouds revealing stars, dark San Diego, there’s something like a hush. Finger-to-the-lips shhhss. Jingle jangle morning. Um,1979 littered with weekly Al-Anon meetings in Beverly, MA – “You’ve got to take the bitter with the better.” Sign in a Vero Beach, FL clubhouse – “We…

My sister Sandy texted me a while ago, 5:18, offering a “Stay safe”, and a link to ominous weather news here in the golden state. I dozed in the lop-sided recliner, afterwards, for a bit, response to wide awake much of the night, the falling rain out in the streets for company. The music group…

Mostly I just want to drink coffee. Mostly I just want to buy books, used and cheaper the better. For the most part I’m open to every person now, though, mostly I’d prefer a rendevous in a quiet room, drinking coffee, reading cheap, used books, Ann the only other person in sight. Mostly she prefers…

I have no understanding of not returning messages and phone calls. Jackie DeShannon was quite clear about this. And The Beatles – “Step on the gas and wipe that tear away.”

Much earlier, Ann asked, “What happens to butterflies in the rain?” Anticipating a storm soon to arrive. Following a conversation about skunks and Bobbie the feral cat fairing in the rain. The Beatles sang, “If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.” That’s probably true for Bobbie and the skunks, but how about…

As I come screaming, silently, into this Wednesday…. at 75 there is no time to fiddle. When diddle is called for. Home. The morning dove calling me home. And there aren’t deals there. Just doings. Maybe, if I’m lucky, with an hour of The Ronettes.

I crossed the Spruce Street Suspension bridge early this morning, like 6:25, and lingered twice along the way, the moon sharing lighting responsibility with the still-rising sun, the sounds of five hundred birds welcoming another Tuesday. The canyon below the bridge, say 90 feet down, is as wide as a football field in some places,…

Sunday morning I woke early with the inclination to set out on a brand new journey – one I’ve considered 10,000 times. Less food. Less talk. More art – art as a vast neighborhood. I packed some of Saturday in the pre-dawn, ready-to-journey napsack – mostly, forever lead with kindness, wherever, when hither and thither.…

And when I first woke today, the instruction to ‘practice silence’ arrived again – like a last Monday theme for this Friday. After a while, though, The Association and ‘Cherish’ strolled into my heart-mind, and it became vast with all the human applications possible in my life right here now – to be cherishing. So…

I was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts January 19, 1949. My parents were Irene Mercedes (Costa) Cushman and Winston H. Cushman. I was no years old at the time. Life has messed me up and enriched me since. Irene and Win don’t live here anymore. Then again – I heard there was a secret chord.

My friend Cory gave me a Starbucks gift card on my birthday. My friend Kate mailed me a gift card from Blick, the art store, for my birthday. Ann took me out to a pizza dinner the night of my birthday, and bought a huge, heavy, delicious carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for a…

Being wide open to the offers from this day, it came to me I need to organize the closet.

Advice to me from this Monday morning – Practice, Practice, Practice. Practice. Practice art. Practice zazen. Practice honoring this body. Practice “It’s not them.” Practice silence. Practice “This is the way to the end of suffering.” Practice “The joy is in the journey.” Practice “Each being’s eternal radiance appears before us.” Practice practicing. Practice not…

It feels wildly appropriate (a “How could it be otherwise?”) that while writing my Morning Pages on this birthday day The Beach Boys would come running into my head — “After six hours of school I’ve had enough of a day. I hit the radio dial, I turn it up all the way.” This is…

I believe my two favorite high schools in Massachusetts are my hometown’s Wareham High School, from which I graduated in the Summer of Love, and North Reading High School, up there north of Boston, where I was priviledged and fortunate through a cool job to meet and hang out with a number of quite interesting…

Sunday afternoon Sarah brought a three-line verse into the Koan group, on-line from cold, cold Colorado Springs. One of the lines said this – “I have a way to bless this poverty.” That line has stuck and stayed and journeyed with me since. Bringing me to feel the same way I feel when I get…

I stopped and lingered on the suspension bridge two blocks away, the Saturday mid-afternoon sun cutting through a San Diego cold spell – hot knives and butter – you know. Two little libraries along the walk had offered up a book each, and I carried them back to a room awash, piled with books, thinking,…

I began working at and for Walden House in San Francisco on Monday, January 16, 2006. It was Martin Luther King, Jr Day. I settled into my office, with one window on the left wall, overlooking Haight Street. The Haight Street of ‘Haight Ashbury’, a place I’d longed for back there in Massachusetts in the…

Yesterday, Thursday, I found myself in someone’s office listening to her story of dealing with a serious situation in her role as a foster parent. I listened and listened, and because I know a few things about “the system” – how it works and when it doesn’t work so well – I encouraged her, strongly,…

Yesterday afternoon in Walmart, on my way to the stationary aisle in search of Morning Pages notebooks, a very short, older woman stopped me and asked me if the card she was holding was a right one for an anniversary. I stopped, and read the card through, out loud, coming to “Congratulations on your wedding.”…

Quoting philosophers Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog: “It’s like this and like that and like this….” That feels like enough, Wednesday.

Talking less is a vow arriving with one year becoming another. This here is talk, kind of, “blogging”, as is any drawing I’m lucky enough to find among my (often) weird inclinations. And keeping “my practice” to myself. That’s a wicked good plan. My pal Dongshan offers, “Conceal your practice, function in secret, seem for…

I have lived in two valleys. The Merrimack Valley up there in Lowell, Massachusetts by the New Hampshire border, and the Willamette Valley, when I lived in Portland, Oregon. While I have no evidence of this, my mind tells me I lived in Lowell for 10 years. It’s hard to imagine that’s true, but I…

I wrote yesterday about walking along Sixth Avenue, quite early, and seeing the striking silhouette of the California Tower over there in Balboa Park. I’d always thought/known it was the Balboa Park Tower, honoring and bowing to it for years from afar as such. While writing the Blog I googled it, and lo, the true…

Consider this: A thin line of clouds glowed pink in the dawn, this morning’s walk, those clouds lolling, lazy, perhaps there over Mexico, not far away to the south. I walked a different route from the usual, saw things I had not seen, or at least registered, before. The silhouette of the California Tower in…

From the ‘Morning Pages’ on an Ojai Saturday morning: ‘The empty valley receives the clouds. The cold stream cleanses the moon. Not departing and not remaining. Wash my bowl, drink my coffee, do not require making arrangements. As with not preparing the room (before speaking). Taking the backward step, passing through the gateless gate behind…