Showing posts with label Zen Birdwatching In America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zen Birdwatching In America. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Reflections of Big Sur
Now the fog is burning away and with it the worries. Bars of sunlight puncture the clouds. The ocean appears again, down steep cliffs, with diaphanous wisps of white vapor foam. I study the shore and the coastal stone monoliths of Big Sur and feel a pull deep inside me. Visions from distant memories come flooding back and I know I have visited here before, this place like in dreams, and with my family sleeping soundly, away in their own lands, and me just driving with a thrumming tickly feeling in my guts and heaven all around and the sea and the sea cliffs and the world wide sun god radiant jubilation everywhere; I recall, in fragments, little moments of my life: laughter, singing, dancing, crying, fighting, loving, giving and forgiving and no one can say if it’s right or wrong, not gods not men and the shadows creep back into the deep forest of the redwood giants going where shadows go when they can’t hold their breath any longer…it’s right here, man; it’s not any place else but right here, the big man on the radio says and I pull the car off the road in a little gravel turn-out, lock the doors with no one even stirring; running now, down the embankment, across the rubbery flower vines in the sand, and the orange flowers and the blue flowers crunching under my shoes, running as hard as I can, the ocean with its resplendent astral fabric and shore birds dipping and sand birds scattering and this is exactly a place I have visited before in a causal world of my own creation and as I run, for a moment I am not sure if I really am alive or if I have died and am now running in heaven, free, sublimely free, and filled with love, baby, big love and big freedom, and I am a voyager, a spark of energy in the cerulean landscape of subatomic dynamos, just merging, ever merging, with the space-time-wonder-love-bliss, the whoosh and roar of God out there past the breakers, me running madly skipping with childlike idiot laughter and my lungs alive with the salty refreshing sea-mist explosion of light...I had arrived.
Patience
I hate shopping. Being in a shopping mall or any department store reduces me to a zombie or borderline functioning vegetable. Some people can stay in a store for hours. My mom is one of those people. I have been in a Petco with my mom shopping for six hours. Spending six hours in Petco is not an easy task. It requires much patience. Patience is vital for staying on the path and having faith.
In this busy, fast-paced modern life we lead, sometimes we find ourselves rushing hither and thither so much it’s hard to slow down. I find myself caught up with the, “let’s go, let’s go” attitude, always having to rush off to the next thing or next appointment, new stimulation.
To overcome my impatience I go Zen shopping with my mom. Go into any store with her and she will look at EVERYTHING. She will talk to EVERYONE. She will spend hours searching for that elusive one perfect item that is never easy to find. If you go into a shoe store with her, expect to help her try on every shoe in the store. This is not an exaggeration.
It used to be my mom would ask me to take her shopping and I’d cringe. I always stamped a time frame on it by telling her I had an appointment afterwards to keep us moving along in the store. Now I look forward to her shopping sessions because it is really a massive test for my patience. It’s like a person who has fear of cats being locked in a room with cats for eight days with catnip in their underpants.
The funny part about being in Petco with my mom for six hours was the fact that, when we finally made it to the check out line, all my mom was really getting was dog food for her poodle, Molly! But understand, she didn’t just look at dog food. She looked at all the dogs, the cats, the dog and cat toys, the birds, the fish, the insects and creepy crawlies, the mice, the rats, the bedding, the cups, dishes, dispensers, shampoo, soap, cages, etc. She studied and pondered over twenty-five different types of dog food. She picked the clerk’s brains until there was nothing left to pick.
My mom doesn’t care. When she enters a store her concept of time disappears. She can go into a Wal-Mart, and if someone isn’t there to escort her out, she could be lost for months in there. Like that Japanese soldier on the island in the Pacific after World War Two is over, he has no reference point of time, so forty years after the cease fire, he’s still fighting on.
Time stands still for my mom in a store. It is never the mercenary way of get in, get out. That’s the way I like to handle my shopping. My mom is all about infiltration. Like a spy who has to personally handle every detail and talk to every contact. That’s how she gets the job done.
The other day we went into Trader Joes to get my mom’s special butter. She has to have organic, raw butter that hasn’t been pasteurized, for health reasons.
Four hours later she is leaving with a full shopping cart of food and other items she found along the way.
I am going to recommend my mom hire out her services to people who are impatient, to train them to overcome it. She could make a fortune.
My aunt sent me a gift in the mail the other day. I opened the package and found a bright yellow satin sock with tiny holes in it. Along with the sock was a box of tiny dark sunflower seeds. My aunt informed me this was a “Wild Finch Feed Sock”. My first thought was that my aunt had gone nuts. How were finches going to feed on a sock filled with seeds?
My aunt lives in Northern California and I had only seen and talked to her rarely. I pondered what could have pushed her over the deep end. Maybe some sudden traumatic event? I had no clue but I went along with it.
I assembled the feed sock and hung it from the veranda on my back porch. I watched. I waited. Nothing. The sock just hung there, gently swaying in the breeze. I called my aunt up.
“Hey, what’s the deal with this feed sock thing-a-majigger?”
“You have to be patient,” she reassured me.
“It’s been like a week and I haven’t even seen a single bird sniff around the thing. It’s a sock. I don’t think birds are finding it very appetizing.”
“You just have to be patient.”
“How long do I wait? Maybe I should move it to another spot? Put it in a tree or something.”
“Patience, Jay. They will come.”
If I build it, they will come.
Now I was really thinking my aunt had lost it. There’s no way. Plus, how is the bird going to get the seed out of the sock? Forget it.
“Alright, sounds good. I’ll check it out. Thanks for thinking about me.” Take care. Good bye. Avoid sharp objects.
I forgot about the feed sock, going about the daily rush of activities.
As I was sitting on my floor one afternoon, perusing National Geographic Magazine, I looked outside and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
The yellow feed sock was covered with Goldfinches! They clung to the sides and pecked at the seeds in a bundle of energy and excitement. A blanket of scattered seeds decorated the cement patio directly below the sock. I watched the sock, mesmerized for a good half hour or so. I called my aunt immediately and told her my success.
“Birds! It’s covered with birds! They must have picked up the scent finally.”
“It just takes them a little time to find it.”
“Wow. I’m really impressed. I was thinking you were absolutely nuts. That there was no way birds were gonna feed on this crazy sock.”
“Have patience. You expected instant results.”
I had to admit I did think that the second I strung it up, it would be a feeding frenzy.
In this busy, fast-paced modern life we lead, sometimes we find ourselves rushing hither and thither so much it’s hard to slow down. I find myself caught up with the, “let’s go, let’s go” attitude, always having to rush off to the next thing or next appointment, new stimulation.
To overcome my impatience I go Zen shopping with my mom. Go into any store with her and she will look at EVERYTHING. She will talk to EVERYONE. She will spend hours searching for that elusive one perfect item that is never easy to find. If you go into a shoe store with her, expect to help her try on every shoe in the store. This is not an exaggeration.
It used to be my mom would ask me to take her shopping and I’d cringe. I always stamped a time frame on it by telling her I had an appointment afterwards to keep us moving along in the store. Now I look forward to her shopping sessions because it is really a massive test for my patience. It’s like a person who has fear of cats being locked in a room with cats for eight days with catnip in their underpants.
The funny part about being in Petco with my mom for six hours was the fact that, when we finally made it to the check out line, all my mom was really getting was dog food for her poodle, Molly! But understand, she didn’t just look at dog food. She looked at all the dogs, the cats, the dog and cat toys, the birds, the fish, the insects and creepy crawlies, the mice, the rats, the bedding, the cups, dishes, dispensers, shampoo, soap, cages, etc. She studied and pondered over twenty-five different types of dog food. She picked the clerk’s brains until there was nothing left to pick.
My mom doesn’t care. When she enters a store her concept of time disappears. She can go into a Wal-Mart, and if someone isn’t there to escort her out, she could be lost for months in there. Like that Japanese soldier on the island in the Pacific after World War Two is over, he has no reference point of time, so forty years after the cease fire, he’s still fighting on.
Time stands still for my mom in a store. It is never the mercenary way of get in, get out. That’s the way I like to handle my shopping. My mom is all about infiltration. Like a spy who has to personally handle every detail and talk to every contact. That’s how she gets the job done.
The other day we went into Trader Joes to get my mom’s special butter. She has to have organic, raw butter that hasn’t been pasteurized, for health reasons.
Four hours later she is leaving with a full shopping cart of food and other items she found along the way.
I am going to recommend my mom hire out her services to people who are impatient, to train them to overcome it. She could make a fortune.
My aunt sent me a gift in the mail the other day. I opened the package and found a bright yellow satin sock with tiny holes in it. Along with the sock was a box of tiny dark sunflower seeds. My aunt informed me this was a “Wild Finch Feed Sock”. My first thought was that my aunt had gone nuts. How were finches going to feed on a sock filled with seeds?
My aunt lives in Northern California and I had only seen and talked to her rarely. I pondered what could have pushed her over the deep end. Maybe some sudden traumatic event? I had no clue but I went along with it.
I assembled the feed sock and hung it from the veranda on my back porch. I watched. I waited. Nothing. The sock just hung there, gently swaying in the breeze. I called my aunt up.
“Hey, what’s the deal with this feed sock thing-a-majigger?”
“You have to be patient,” she reassured me.
“It’s been like a week and I haven’t even seen a single bird sniff around the thing. It’s a sock. I don’t think birds are finding it very appetizing.”
“You just have to be patient.”
“How long do I wait? Maybe I should move it to another spot? Put it in a tree or something.”
“Patience, Jay. They will come.”
If I build it, they will come.
Now I was really thinking my aunt had lost it. There’s no way. Plus, how is the bird going to get the seed out of the sock? Forget it.
“Alright, sounds good. I’ll check it out. Thanks for thinking about me.” Take care. Good bye. Avoid sharp objects.
I forgot about the feed sock, going about the daily rush of activities.
As I was sitting on my floor one afternoon, perusing National Geographic Magazine, I looked outside and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
The yellow feed sock was covered with Goldfinches! They clung to the sides and pecked at the seeds in a bundle of energy and excitement. A blanket of scattered seeds decorated the cement patio directly below the sock. I watched the sock, mesmerized for a good half hour or so. I called my aunt immediately and told her my success.
“Birds! It’s covered with birds! They must have picked up the scent finally.”
“It just takes them a little time to find it.”
“Wow. I’m really impressed. I was thinking you were absolutely nuts. That there was no way birds were gonna feed on this crazy sock.”
“Have patience. You expected instant results.”
I had to admit I did think that the second I strung it up, it would be a feeding frenzy.
Waiting For Tom: Birdwalk To Malibu Canyon
Tom Coughlin from the Conejo Valley Audubon society called me the other day. “J-1, you want to see a Vermillion Flycatcher?”
This caught me off guard because I didn’t even remember giving him my phone number or last name. Tom was the guide on the walk to the Saticoy ponds that ended badly with him ruining his knee. Tom was not a friend of mine and I had no idea what would motivate him to call me. I was nervous because Tom scared me. He was a scary guy. It’s just who he was.
“Who is this?” I asked even though I instantly recognized that low, gruff, quasi-macho voice.
“Tom Coughlin. We went on a bird walk excursion to Saticoy Ponds coupla months ago. You gave me your business card.”
“Your knee? Wasn’t it thrashed?”
“Yeah. It’s better now, I put this Tiger Balm stuff on it and keeps it kinda numb so I get around.”
“Are you talking about a birdwalk? Is that why you called?”
“Private quest. This is a rare bird. Very illusive. Very illusive.”
“Is this local?”
“Malibu Canyon. We’ll meet at Burger King at seven thirty. Drive out to the spot. I got a few other people on my list but I thought of you because you and your son are good people.”
My first thought was, he was trying to scam me and sell me something. My second thought was, he was going to assassinate me for having a son who called him a “douche” and an “effin idiot” loud enough for him to hear at the Saticoy ponds bird walk.
“This is a rare deal, man. Vermillion Flycatcher’s a ghost. You see this bird maybe once in your life. It’s a lifebird, definitely.”
This was a Sunday morning and my soccer game would be sacrificed.
“I don’t know, Tom. Sunday’s a tricky day.”
“This will be mythical status, J-1. That’s what we’re talking. People megatick on this bird more than any other because you simply do not see him around. Ever. He’s gotta lay low because of his plumage. You know, kestrals and falcons.”
“Um, yeah, that’s cool but, I actually have plans Sunday morning.”
“No you don’t.” There was a tense pause then he chuckled. “That’s a joke. No sweat, man. You were just at the top of my list. I’ll call somebody else, J-1. Peace.”
He didn’t hang up right away and there was another tense pause for a few seconds. In those few seconds my mind scrambled back to opportunities in my past for growth, renewal, new discoveries that pop up every so often that we either choose to take, or choose to pass. Most of the time we choose to pass because we like to play it safe. I took a chance.
“How long do you think we’ll be there?”
“No longer than a hour, hour and a half, max.”
I parked at Burger King at Los Virgenes Canyon and waited twenty minutes for Tom, as expected. I was there at seven thirty sharp. He was there at ten to eight. I rode in the back seat of his truck. Seated with him was Art, a heavy-set Native American with thick glasses who breathed really loudly. I figured if I was going to get whacked, Art was the shovel man.
“Art’s one quarter Pawnee. His great grandpa fought with Geronimo.”
“I thought Geronimo was Apache?”
“That’s correct but his grandpa joined up with him. Isn’t that right, Art?” Art just grunted. He didn’t say much and when he did, it was in a monotone, gruff voice that seemed rarely used.
“You sure this bird’s gonna be there? The Flycatcher?”
“Vermillion Flycatcher. He’ll be there. Art’s got a good eye for ‘em. You tell him any bird and he’ll take you right to it. Spot ‘em a mile away.” I looked at Art’s reflection in the sun visor mirror. His glasses were thick as Coke bottles. I wasn’t sure if he could spot the end of his nose. Art shakily lit a cigarette and rolled the window down. The wooded canyons and open grasslands of Malibu Canyon flowed by. Curious, ornate white towers of the Hindu Temple loomed through the trees. We parked in the lot.
“Why are we at the Hindu Temple?”
“This is it.”
I was just here a few months back with my guru so it was familiar territory. I hadn’t remembered any Vermillion Flycatchers on my previous visit though.
Tom parked his truck beside an older Toyota with an angry-looking, frumpish woman leaning against her hood. A young girl balanced on the curb nearby.
“Thank you,” the plain woman said testily and jumped in her car, tires shrilling.
The little girl was left blinking with uncertainty toward us.
“Sosh, you bring another pair of shoes?” She shook her head. “All you got are sandals?”
The girl nodded, glancing at the rubber sandals on her feet. “I’m gonna kill your mother. I told her six god damn times. I had her repeat it back to me. HEY JENNIFER! JENNIFER!” Tom bellowed at the top of his lungs while the banged up Toyota cruised to the bottom of the lot, waiting to pull onto the side street. His voice echoed across the grounds of the temple. I noticed shocked devotees, turn abruptly, startled by his voice, as if it was the disembodied voice of a wrathful God.
The Toyota shrilled into the street and was gone.
“She heard me. You see that? She even looked back. Classic,” Tom laughed scornfully, shaking his head. The little girl sat on the curb examining a Happy Meal robot. Tom gathered his things from the back of the truck, binoculars, scope, backpack, bottled water. He gave a pair of binoculars to the little girl who just stared at them looking bored and puzzled.
“Sasha, you remember Art and this is J-1,” Tom said.
I wanted to say, “Sasha, run, as fast as you can. Into the woods and live with the wolves. You’ll be much better off.” I offered my hand for her to high-five. She didn’t understand.
“I hope the big priest isn’t here,” Art groaned.
“Doesn’t matter. This is zoned for the public which means he has to let us in there. This isn’t Pakistan.”
“He got real mad last time, Tom.” Art said in a high-pitched voice that seemed to get higher and higher, his cheeks patchy red with fear.
“I’ll handle it. Relax and move on.”
Famous last words. Art groaned again, taking a sip of water from a canteen. He didn’t bring any equipment, no scope, no binoculars, no field guide, nothing. He wore Kung Fu slippers, the kind Asians wear in martial arts movies.
“Maybe we should look someplace else?” I said wishing mightily I had gone to my Sunday morning soccer game.
“What kind of bird are you looking for, dad?” Sasha asked.
“Vermillion Flycatcher. It’s a life bird,” Tom answered.
“What’s a life bird?”
“A bird you only see once or twice in your life.”
We started up the flight of stairs to the upper level of the temple. Tom led the way. An old Indian woman in a red sari took Tom by the sleeve and pointed to his shoes.
“We’re not really here to pray, we’re looking for a bird.”
The old woman pointed a stern finger to rows of shoes lining the sidewalk.
“Alright, alright,” Tom growled and kicked off his tennis shoes. Sasha and I followed suit. Tom wore no socks with his tennis shoes and the odor wafted up spoiling the morning air. “Dang, that’s a stink bomb right there. That’ll chase off evil spirits.” Sasha giggled and held her nose.
At each corner of the square were alters to different deities within the Hindu pantheon along with a central sanctuary housing the statue of the creator God, Krishna. Tom explained that the Vermillion Flycatcher nested in a crack under the eves of the central sanctuary. One time the bird had flown inside the sanctuary and some of the priests deemed it sacred and brought it seeds and sugar water. I kept my head down feeling like we were violating the sanctity of this holy place. My other feeling was that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we would not be seeing the illusive Vermillion Flycatcher today and this would end being a colossal waste of time. You could just look at Tom and know this to be the case. I knew it wasn’t going to happen as we were driving here. I knew it wasn’t going to happen the second he called me. I glanced at my cell phone and realized, if I rushed home right now, I could probably catch the second half of my soccer game.
Art’s pudgy, unclipped toes poked out of the holes in his socks.
“Shoulda remembered to wear the socks with no holes,” he grumbled.
We tracked Tom as he ambled in clockwise circles around each deity stationed in the corners of the square.
“Make it look like we’re here to worship then they’ll leave us alone,” Tom said confidingly.
“This place is cool. Can we go here instead of your normal boring church?” said Sasha.
“These are heathen gods. You believe in your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Sash.”
“I do?”
“Of course you do.”
“Isn’t it all the same though?” asked Sasha.
“No. Hindus believe in lots of gods and we believe in just one.”
“Isn’t Jesus a god and then there’s the Virgin Mary, she’s a god. And what about God the Father? He’s a god too…” Sasha was getting confused and so was I.
“Yeah. You’re right but these people believe there’s a lot more gods. Like ten or something.”
“Ten gods?”
“Something like that.”
Sasha stopped and counted them out. “I only see seven.”
“That’s more than three.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. They have a whole bunch of gods. We have a few. End of story.”
Tom led us into the main altar that housed the great statue of Krishna. As we entered furtively, we noticed a shirtless, muscular priest talking loudly on a phone in Hindi at a desk only a few meters from the altar. No one else was in the sanctuary.
“Which god is this, dad?”
“That’s like their main god. You know, the head honcho god. Kinda like the Jesus for Indians.”
“The sanctuary is closed for renovations. I am sorry,” the heavily accented priest said, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece.
“Oh, actually we just came to see the flycatcher.”
“I don’t know about that but you can’t be in here. The lower Vishnu sanctuary is open. Thank you.”
“Listen,” Tom took the priest aside, “I brought these people to see the bird that was nesting here. These are ‘special needs people’,” Tom said trying to feign discreetness with the priest but he wasn’t buying. My stomach clenched at thought of me being implicated in this deception which was compounded by the fact that we stood on holy ground.
“That bird went away.”
“You didn’t kill it, did you?”
“No. It flew out. Please excuse me.”
“Prajeet said he was cool with us being in here.”
“I don’t know Prajeet. There is no Prajeet here.”
“Yeah, he was a little priest, a little Indian priest, black hair, dark skin. Prajeet. That’s his name.”
“Prajeet isn’t here. Can you please leave now or I will call security.”
Outside we waited on the steps as Tom disappeared in the lower temple looking for a supervisor. Tom was gone for a long time.
Art finally sat down on the steps and slipped on his shoes, lighting another cigarette. Sasha danced around the steps, singing to herself then growing bored and sitting down beside Art. I watched them for a moment and wondered what the hell I was doing with these two complete strangers at a Hindu temple on a Sunday morning away from my friends and family. I glanced at my cell phone. There was no way to make the game now. I grew very angry and impatient. I was also angry at Art and Sasha for letting themselves get suckered into this wild goose chase but more than anything I was angry at Tom for wasting all of our precious time. I paced. I kicked the stairs. I threw a rock into the woods. I sat down beside Art, Sasha on the other side.
No one knew what to say. There was an awkward silence. I looked at Sasha who picked at a hang nail on her big toe. I looked at Art who stared vacuously into the woods, the smoke from his cigarette stinging my throat.
“This is b.s., man,” I finally blurted.
“Yep.”
“I gotta get goin’. I got stuff to do today,” I said.
“Yep.”
“What am I doing here on a Sunday morning? What are any of us doing here? Where the heck is he?”
“Don’t know.”
“He’s been gone for like fifteen minutes. What’s he doing?”
“Don’t know.”
“Jeez, man.”
I stood up and pulled out my cell phone and dialed my wife’s number to come and pick me up. She would be angry because I forfeited church and family for a Sunday birdwalk with strangers in Malibu.
“I went and I returned. It was nothing special,” Art said languidly and I wasn’t sure he was talking to me or Sasha. I looked at him and realized he was directing the question toward me.
“What?”
“You wanted excitement but it was nothing special.”
“Uh, okay. I’m actually gonna call my wife and have her pick me up.”
“I went to Yosemite to see El Capitan and the Merced River.”
“Cool,” I said hitting “send” on my cell phone and waiting for my wife’s phone to ring.
“But it was just a mountain and a river.”
Art ground out his cigarette on the steps and dug some sunflower seeds out of his pocket.
“Sunflower seed?”
I shook my head. They didn’t look very appetizing, mixed with dust and pocket lint. He began peeling one with his teeth.
“You wanted excitement and something special but it wasn’t.”
Now he was stating the obvious. I listened as my wife’s cell phone went straight to voice mail and remembered they were probably in mass by now.
“And your point is?” I wasn’t trying to be mean but really didn’t care about affability any longer.
Sasha took a handful of sunflower seeds. They were both peeling them with their teeth now.
“Don’t really need to do anything or be anything or say anything,” he explained in monotone, spitting a sunflower shell on the steps.
“I don’t get it. Sorry, I’m slow.”
“You don’t have to be president of America or win an academy award to feel like you’re accomplishing something.”
“But in terms of enriching my life or learning something or feeling like I spent my time well…”
“When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re sleepy, sleep. And when you need to go to the bathroom…”
“Just go?” said Sasha with a squinty smile.
“Bingo,” he said and tried to spit a shell but it got caught on the end of his tongue.
“Well, I’d kinda like to be home with my family Sunday morning as opposed to sitting on the steps of a Hindu Temple in Malibu waiting for someone I barely know to lead me to something that doesn’t exist,” I said testily.
“Why?”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Because you don’t see that this is really you. There is no place you really should be but on the steps of this Hindu Temple, waiting for Tom,” he said picking another shell off his tongue and flicking it on the stairs.
“But I’d definitely rather be home or doing something for myself.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just would.”
“Well, that makes sense then.”
Sasha spit a shell that landed on Art’s Kung Fu slipper. She giggled and kicked it off. He didn’t seem to notice.
There was another long pause.
“Why birds?” I said. “Why do we look at birds? Are we retarded or something?”
“Why not?” he said dully, chewing the seed.
“I thought I was looking for something profound, or maybe I was trying to make some kind of connection, you know with nature, the soul, new people…” I said, softening.
“Sure.”
“But I didn’t.”
“It’s all right in here.” He tapped his forehead with his pudgy index finger.
“I was getting caught up in what I was striving for that might bring relief, inner peace…shit, I don’t know.”
“No suffering required,” he said pointing to the back of a Mazda with a bumper sticker that read, No Suffering Required.
“Why do you watch birds?”
“I don’t. I just came with Tom.”
I did a triple take.
“But he said you were like the bird master. You could locate any bird. Anywhere.”
“He just said that to make you more interested. I don’t care too much for birds, personally.”
I felt my face flush with anger. At that moment Sasha leaped up and ran to Tom who was marching angrily across the plaza. She hugged him and he kept coming toward us, clearly unhappy.
“Change of plans. We’re going to Malibu lagoon.”
“What about the Vermillion Flycatcher?” I said taken aback.
Tom quickly slapped on his Air Jordans.
“Not here. I found Prajeet who’s like the janitor not a priest. He said the Flycatcher flew off like eight months ago which is a total lie but what the heck.”
“So no Vermillion Flycatcher?”
“Cerulean Warbler.”
“What?” I asked, feeling the sudden urge to hurl myself down a long flight of stairs.
“Cerulean Warbler. Very rare. It’ll be extinct in ten years. Numbers are down because their habitat is shrinking...old growth forests.”
“That’s great but I need…”
“Saw one up in Big Sur. It was a vagrant but definitely a life bird.”
“What’s a life bird?” Sasha asked again.
“I told you already.”
Sasha repeated her father’s words mockingly. He didn’t notice or pretended not to.
“Um, yeah, how long do you think it’s going to take because I have to get back home?” I asked.
“Another fifteen, twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”
“Uh, where’s the old growth forest?”
“Not far.”
“How do we know we’re even going to see a Cerulean Warbler?”
“It’s guaranteed.”
Art glanced at me with a cocked eyebrow that translated, “Don’t hold your breath.”
I sat on the steps for a moment and watched Art lumber behind Tom who draped an arm over Sasha’s shoulder, still clinging to him. They got to the truck and Tom began packing his gear. Sasha danced and Art lit a cigarette.
I went and I returned. It was nothing special.
This caught me off guard because I didn’t even remember giving him my phone number or last name. Tom was the guide on the walk to the Saticoy ponds that ended badly with him ruining his knee. Tom was not a friend of mine and I had no idea what would motivate him to call me. I was nervous because Tom scared me. He was a scary guy. It’s just who he was.
“Who is this?” I asked even though I instantly recognized that low, gruff, quasi-macho voice.
“Tom Coughlin. We went on a bird walk excursion to Saticoy Ponds coupla months ago. You gave me your business card.”
“Your knee? Wasn’t it thrashed?”
“Yeah. It’s better now, I put this Tiger Balm stuff on it and keeps it kinda numb so I get around.”
“Are you talking about a birdwalk? Is that why you called?”
“Private quest. This is a rare bird. Very illusive. Very illusive.”
“Is this local?”
“Malibu Canyon. We’ll meet at Burger King at seven thirty. Drive out to the spot. I got a few other people on my list but I thought of you because you and your son are good people.”
My first thought was, he was trying to scam me and sell me something. My second thought was, he was going to assassinate me for having a son who called him a “douche” and an “effin idiot” loud enough for him to hear at the Saticoy ponds bird walk.
“This is a rare deal, man. Vermillion Flycatcher’s a ghost. You see this bird maybe once in your life. It’s a lifebird, definitely.”
This was a Sunday morning and my soccer game would be sacrificed.
“I don’t know, Tom. Sunday’s a tricky day.”
“This will be mythical status, J-1. That’s what we’re talking. People megatick on this bird more than any other because you simply do not see him around. Ever. He’s gotta lay low because of his plumage. You know, kestrals and falcons.”
“Um, yeah, that’s cool but, I actually have plans Sunday morning.”
“No you don’t.” There was a tense pause then he chuckled. “That’s a joke. No sweat, man. You were just at the top of my list. I’ll call somebody else, J-1. Peace.”
He didn’t hang up right away and there was another tense pause for a few seconds. In those few seconds my mind scrambled back to opportunities in my past for growth, renewal, new discoveries that pop up every so often that we either choose to take, or choose to pass. Most of the time we choose to pass because we like to play it safe. I took a chance.
“How long do you think we’ll be there?”
“No longer than a hour, hour and a half, max.”
I parked at Burger King at Los Virgenes Canyon and waited twenty minutes for Tom, as expected. I was there at seven thirty sharp. He was there at ten to eight. I rode in the back seat of his truck. Seated with him was Art, a heavy-set Native American with thick glasses who breathed really loudly. I figured if I was going to get whacked, Art was the shovel man.
“Art’s one quarter Pawnee. His great grandpa fought with Geronimo.”
“I thought Geronimo was Apache?”
“That’s correct but his grandpa joined up with him. Isn’t that right, Art?” Art just grunted. He didn’t say much and when he did, it was in a monotone, gruff voice that seemed rarely used.
“You sure this bird’s gonna be there? The Flycatcher?”
“Vermillion Flycatcher. He’ll be there. Art’s got a good eye for ‘em. You tell him any bird and he’ll take you right to it. Spot ‘em a mile away.” I looked at Art’s reflection in the sun visor mirror. His glasses were thick as Coke bottles. I wasn’t sure if he could spot the end of his nose. Art shakily lit a cigarette and rolled the window down. The wooded canyons and open grasslands of Malibu Canyon flowed by. Curious, ornate white towers of the Hindu Temple loomed through the trees. We parked in the lot.
“Why are we at the Hindu Temple?”
“This is it.”
I was just here a few months back with my guru so it was familiar territory. I hadn’t remembered any Vermillion Flycatchers on my previous visit though.
Tom parked his truck beside an older Toyota with an angry-looking, frumpish woman leaning against her hood. A young girl balanced on the curb nearby.
“Thank you,” the plain woman said testily and jumped in her car, tires shrilling.
The little girl was left blinking with uncertainty toward us.
“Sosh, you bring another pair of shoes?” She shook her head. “All you got are sandals?”
The girl nodded, glancing at the rubber sandals on her feet. “I’m gonna kill your mother. I told her six god damn times. I had her repeat it back to me. HEY JENNIFER! JENNIFER!” Tom bellowed at the top of his lungs while the banged up Toyota cruised to the bottom of the lot, waiting to pull onto the side street. His voice echoed across the grounds of the temple. I noticed shocked devotees, turn abruptly, startled by his voice, as if it was the disembodied voice of a wrathful God.
The Toyota shrilled into the street and was gone.
“She heard me. You see that? She even looked back. Classic,” Tom laughed scornfully, shaking his head. The little girl sat on the curb examining a Happy Meal robot. Tom gathered his things from the back of the truck, binoculars, scope, backpack, bottled water. He gave a pair of binoculars to the little girl who just stared at them looking bored and puzzled.
“Sasha, you remember Art and this is J-1,” Tom said.
I wanted to say, “Sasha, run, as fast as you can. Into the woods and live with the wolves. You’ll be much better off.” I offered my hand for her to high-five. She didn’t understand.
“I hope the big priest isn’t here,” Art groaned.
“Doesn’t matter. This is zoned for the public which means he has to let us in there. This isn’t Pakistan.”
“He got real mad last time, Tom.” Art said in a high-pitched voice that seemed to get higher and higher, his cheeks patchy red with fear.
“I’ll handle it. Relax and move on.”
Famous last words. Art groaned again, taking a sip of water from a canteen. He didn’t bring any equipment, no scope, no binoculars, no field guide, nothing. He wore Kung Fu slippers, the kind Asians wear in martial arts movies.
“Maybe we should look someplace else?” I said wishing mightily I had gone to my Sunday morning soccer game.
“What kind of bird are you looking for, dad?” Sasha asked.
“Vermillion Flycatcher. It’s a life bird,” Tom answered.
“What’s a life bird?”
“A bird you only see once or twice in your life.”
We started up the flight of stairs to the upper level of the temple. Tom led the way. An old Indian woman in a red sari took Tom by the sleeve and pointed to his shoes.
“We’re not really here to pray, we’re looking for a bird.”
The old woman pointed a stern finger to rows of shoes lining the sidewalk.
“Alright, alright,” Tom growled and kicked off his tennis shoes. Sasha and I followed suit. Tom wore no socks with his tennis shoes and the odor wafted up spoiling the morning air. “Dang, that’s a stink bomb right there. That’ll chase off evil spirits.” Sasha giggled and held her nose.
At each corner of the square were alters to different deities within the Hindu pantheon along with a central sanctuary housing the statue of the creator God, Krishna. Tom explained that the Vermillion Flycatcher nested in a crack under the eves of the central sanctuary. One time the bird had flown inside the sanctuary and some of the priests deemed it sacred and brought it seeds and sugar water. I kept my head down feeling like we were violating the sanctity of this holy place. My other feeling was that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we would not be seeing the illusive Vermillion Flycatcher today and this would end being a colossal waste of time. You could just look at Tom and know this to be the case. I knew it wasn’t going to happen as we were driving here. I knew it wasn’t going to happen the second he called me. I glanced at my cell phone and realized, if I rushed home right now, I could probably catch the second half of my soccer game.
Art’s pudgy, unclipped toes poked out of the holes in his socks.
“Shoulda remembered to wear the socks with no holes,” he grumbled.
We tracked Tom as he ambled in clockwise circles around each deity stationed in the corners of the square.
“Make it look like we’re here to worship then they’ll leave us alone,” Tom said confidingly.
“This place is cool. Can we go here instead of your normal boring church?” said Sasha.
“These are heathen gods. You believe in your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Sash.”
“I do?”
“Of course you do.”
“Isn’t it all the same though?” asked Sasha.
“No. Hindus believe in lots of gods and we believe in just one.”
“Isn’t Jesus a god and then there’s the Virgin Mary, she’s a god. And what about God the Father? He’s a god too…” Sasha was getting confused and so was I.
“Yeah. You’re right but these people believe there’s a lot more gods. Like ten or something.”
“Ten gods?”
“Something like that.”
Sasha stopped and counted them out. “I only see seven.”
“That’s more than three.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. They have a whole bunch of gods. We have a few. End of story.”
Tom led us into the main altar that housed the great statue of Krishna. As we entered furtively, we noticed a shirtless, muscular priest talking loudly on a phone in Hindi at a desk only a few meters from the altar. No one else was in the sanctuary.
“Which god is this, dad?”
“That’s like their main god. You know, the head honcho god. Kinda like the Jesus for Indians.”
“The sanctuary is closed for renovations. I am sorry,” the heavily accented priest said, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece.
“Oh, actually we just came to see the flycatcher.”
“I don’t know about that but you can’t be in here. The lower Vishnu sanctuary is open. Thank you.”
“Listen,” Tom took the priest aside, “I brought these people to see the bird that was nesting here. These are ‘special needs people’,” Tom said trying to feign discreetness with the priest but he wasn’t buying. My stomach clenched at thought of me being implicated in this deception which was compounded by the fact that we stood on holy ground.
“That bird went away.”
“You didn’t kill it, did you?”
“No. It flew out. Please excuse me.”
“Prajeet said he was cool with us being in here.”
“I don’t know Prajeet. There is no Prajeet here.”
“Yeah, he was a little priest, a little Indian priest, black hair, dark skin. Prajeet. That’s his name.”
“Prajeet isn’t here. Can you please leave now or I will call security.”
Outside we waited on the steps as Tom disappeared in the lower temple looking for a supervisor. Tom was gone for a long time.
Art finally sat down on the steps and slipped on his shoes, lighting another cigarette. Sasha danced around the steps, singing to herself then growing bored and sitting down beside Art. I watched them for a moment and wondered what the hell I was doing with these two complete strangers at a Hindu temple on a Sunday morning away from my friends and family. I glanced at my cell phone. There was no way to make the game now. I grew very angry and impatient. I was also angry at Art and Sasha for letting themselves get suckered into this wild goose chase but more than anything I was angry at Tom for wasting all of our precious time. I paced. I kicked the stairs. I threw a rock into the woods. I sat down beside Art, Sasha on the other side.
No one knew what to say. There was an awkward silence. I looked at Sasha who picked at a hang nail on her big toe. I looked at Art who stared vacuously into the woods, the smoke from his cigarette stinging my throat.
“This is b.s., man,” I finally blurted.
“Yep.”
“I gotta get goin’. I got stuff to do today,” I said.
“Yep.”
“What am I doing here on a Sunday morning? What are any of us doing here? Where the heck is he?”
“Don’t know.”
“He’s been gone for like fifteen minutes. What’s he doing?”
“Don’t know.”
“Jeez, man.”
I stood up and pulled out my cell phone and dialed my wife’s number to come and pick me up. She would be angry because I forfeited church and family for a Sunday birdwalk with strangers in Malibu.
“I went and I returned. It was nothing special,” Art said languidly and I wasn’t sure he was talking to me or Sasha. I looked at him and realized he was directing the question toward me.
“What?”
“You wanted excitement but it was nothing special.”
“Uh, okay. I’m actually gonna call my wife and have her pick me up.”
“I went to Yosemite to see El Capitan and the Merced River.”
“Cool,” I said hitting “send” on my cell phone and waiting for my wife’s phone to ring.
“But it was just a mountain and a river.”
Art ground out his cigarette on the steps and dug some sunflower seeds out of his pocket.
“Sunflower seed?”
I shook my head. They didn’t look very appetizing, mixed with dust and pocket lint. He began peeling one with his teeth.
“You wanted excitement and something special but it wasn’t.”
Now he was stating the obvious. I listened as my wife’s cell phone went straight to voice mail and remembered they were probably in mass by now.
“And your point is?” I wasn’t trying to be mean but really didn’t care about affability any longer.
Sasha took a handful of sunflower seeds. They were both peeling them with their teeth now.
“Don’t really need to do anything or be anything or say anything,” he explained in monotone, spitting a sunflower shell on the steps.
“I don’t get it. Sorry, I’m slow.”
“You don’t have to be president of America or win an academy award to feel like you’re accomplishing something.”
“But in terms of enriching my life or learning something or feeling like I spent my time well…”
“When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re sleepy, sleep. And when you need to go to the bathroom…”
“Just go?” said Sasha with a squinty smile.
“Bingo,” he said and tried to spit a shell but it got caught on the end of his tongue.
“Well, I’d kinda like to be home with my family Sunday morning as opposed to sitting on the steps of a Hindu Temple in Malibu waiting for someone I barely know to lead me to something that doesn’t exist,” I said testily.
“Why?”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Because you don’t see that this is really you. There is no place you really should be but on the steps of this Hindu Temple, waiting for Tom,” he said picking another shell off his tongue and flicking it on the stairs.
“But I’d definitely rather be home or doing something for myself.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just would.”
“Well, that makes sense then.”
Sasha spit a shell that landed on Art’s Kung Fu slipper. She giggled and kicked it off. He didn’t seem to notice.
There was another long pause.
“Why birds?” I said. “Why do we look at birds? Are we retarded or something?”
“Why not?” he said dully, chewing the seed.
“I thought I was looking for something profound, or maybe I was trying to make some kind of connection, you know with nature, the soul, new people…” I said, softening.
“Sure.”
“But I didn’t.”
“It’s all right in here.” He tapped his forehead with his pudgy index finger.
“I was getting caught up in what I was striving for that might bring relief, inner peace…shit, I don’t know.”
“No suffering required,” he said pointing to the back of a Mazda with a bumper sticker that read, No Suffering Required.
“Why do you watch birds?”
“I don’t. I just came with Tom.”
I did a triple take.
“But he said you were like the bird master. You could locate any bird. Anywhere.”
“He just said that to make you more interested. I don’t care too much for birds, personally.”
I felt my face flush with anger. At that moment Sasha leaped up and ran to Tom who was marching angrily across the plaza. She hugged him and he kept coming toward us, clearly unhappy.
“Change of plans. We’re going to Malibu lagoon.”
“What about the Vermillion Flycatcher?” I said taken aback.
Tom quickly slapped on his Air Jordans.
“Not here. I found Prajeet who’s like the janitor not a priest. He said the Flycatcher flew off like eight months ago which is a total lie but what the heck.”
“So no Vermillion Flycatcher?”
“Cerulean Warbler.”
“What?” I asked, feeling the sudden urge to hurl myself down a long flight of stairs.
“Cerulean Warbler. Very rare. It’ll be extinct in ten years. Numbers are down because their habitat is shrinking...old growth forests.”
“That’s great but I need…”
“Saw one up in Big Sur. It was a vagrant but definitely a life bird.”
“What’s a life bird?” Sasha asked again.
“I told you already.”
Sasha repeated her father’s words mockingly. He didn’t notice or pretended not to.
“Um, yeah, how long do you think it’s going to take because I have to get back home?” I asked.
“Another fifteen, twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”
“Uh, where’s the old growth forest?”
“Not far.”
“How do we know we’re even going to see a Cerulean Warbler?”
“It’s guaranteed.”
Art glanced at me with a cocked eyebrow that translated, “Don’t hold your breath.”
I sat on the steps for a moment and watched Art lumber behind Tom who draped an arm over Sasha’s shoulder, still clinging to him. They got to the truck and Tom began packing his gear. Sasha danced and Art lit a cigarette.
I went and I returned. It was nothing special.
Some of the Things That Make Me Cry
Before I had a near-death experience, then, I could never cry. My wife would ask me, “why don’t you cry?”
I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral, or my grandmother’s or grandfather’s funeral. Or when I knew my wife was sick or from the joy at seeing the birth of my kids. I just couldn’t cry. I didn’t know how.
I grew up holding in my emotions. My brain was not hard-wired for crying. The only time I remembered crying was as a child in moments of extreme pain or anger.
Now I cry and am moved to tears often. And they are not tears of sadness; when I am flooded with immense bliss, I cannot help but cry.
Sometimes I will cry at the site of a bird, or hearing my children’s laughter, or hearing a great piece of music, or sitting in church, or watching an inspirational show, or simply reading about some of my heroes: Whitman, Jesus, Buddha, Poe, Beethoven, Yogananda, Dr. Seuss, Fellini. Or when I simply think of Mahavatar Babaji, I am moved to tears. I cannot help it. The mere thought of Babaji crushes me.
I cried recently when a friend mentioned his enjoyment of Lao Tzu’s work or when another friend discussed the Dalai Llama.
I recall going to see Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed by the L.A. Philharmonic and when I was sitting in the audience, without a single note being played, I couldn’t help but weep uncontrollably because of the incandescent meaning of the great master’s work -- one man’s connection and inspiration directly from God, expressed with such profound and infinite clarity and brilliance.
My family still doesn’t fully accept the fact that whenever I hear “Moonlight Sonata”, tears will unfailingly run down my cheeks. It is even a running joke when we go for long drives, they will sneak in the CD and wait for the tears to flow.
I can only describe the feeling as being “overwhelmed by the immensity of the divine” or a deeper love that fills me up with an all-pervading sense of joy and beauty in creation.
These are not tears of sadness. I cry because I feel touched deeply by something I can’t describe that moves me beyond description.
I cry because, for a brief instant, I feel in touch with the ETERNAL. I feel in touch with whatever it is, way out there, across the universe, that is also right underneath my nose.
You will know you are close to acquiring a heart of compassion when you see a bird and can’t help but weep or when you think of Jesus and his immense sacrifice and feel it deep in the pit of your soul. When a child laughing and running at the park takes you back to a time when you were closer to who you really are, and closer to God.
Some of the other things that make me cry now, not in any particular order are: the sparkle in my wife’s eyes; my daughter’s laughter or singing; watching my son play sports; attending mass or visiting a church, temple or synagogue; listening to certain music, usually classical (esp. Beethoven’s Ninth and Moonlight Sonata); seeing a parent’s love for their child; watching a bird or small animal; seeing emotional movies; hearing “The Star Spangled Banner” sung at sporting events; passages in books, mainly Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (esp. Song of Myself, number 20); some of Jack Kerouac’s poetry; seeing the look of wonder in my son’s or daughter’s eyes when they watch a butterfly or a hummingbird or a horse run through a meadow or fish swimming in a stream; a sunset; watching the crowds of people go by at the mall or at the fair and feeling their struggle and sorrows and just wanting to take it all away...
I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral, or my grandmother’s or grandfather’s funeral. Or when I knew my wife was sick or from the joy at seeing the birth of my kids. I just couldn’t cry. I didn’t know how.
I grew up holding in my emotions. My brain was not hard-wired for crying. The only time I remembered crying was as a child in moments of extreme pain or anger.
Now I cry and am moved to tears often. And they are not tears of sadness; when I am flooded with immense bliss, I cannot help but cry.
Sometimes I will cry at the site of a bird, or hearing my children’s laughter, or hearing a great piece of music, or sitting in church, or watching an inspirational show, or simply reading about some of my heroes: Whitman, Jesus, Buddha, Poe, Beethoven, Yogananda, Dr. Seuss, Fellini. Or when I simply think of Mahavatar Babaji, I am moved to tears. I cannot help it. The mere thought of Babaji crushes me.
I cried recently when a friend mentioned his enjoyment of Lao Tzu’s work or when another friend discussed the Dalai Llama.
I recall going to see Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed by the L.A. Philharmonic and when I was sitting in the audience, without a single note being played, I couldn’t help but weep uncontrollably because of the incandescent meaning of the great master’s work -- one man’s connection and inspiration directly from God, expressed with such profound and infinite clarity and brilliance.
My family still doesn’t fully accept the fact that whenever I hear “Moonlight Sonata”, tears will unfailingly run down my cheeks. It is even a running joke when we go for long drives, they will sneak in the CD and wait for the tears to flow.
I can only describe the feeling as being “overwhelmed by the immensity of the divine” or a deeper love that fills me up with an all-pervading sense of joy and beauty in creation.
These are not tears of sadness. I cry because I feel touched deeply by something I can’t describe that moves me beyond description.
I cry because, for a brief instant, I feel in touch with the ETERNAL. I feel in touch with whatever it is, way out there, across the universe, that is also right underneath my nose.
You will know you are close to acquiring a heart of compassion when you see a bird and can’t help but weep or when you think of Jesus and his immense sacrifice and feel it deep in the pit of your soul. When a child laughing and running at the park takes you back to a time when you were closer to who you really are, and closer to God.
Some of the other things that make me cry now, not in any particular order are: the sparkle in my wife’s eyes; my daughter’s laughter or singing; watching my son play sports; attending mass or visiting a church, temple or synagogue; listening to certain music, usually classical (esp. Beethoven’s Ninth and Moonlight Sonata); seeing a parent’s love for their child; watching a bird or small animal; seeing emotional movies; hearing “The Star Spangled Banner” sung at sporting events; passages in books, mainly Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (esp. Song of Myself, number 20); some of Jack Kerouac’s poetry; seeing the look of wonder in my son’s or daughter’s eyes when they watch a butterfly or a hummingbird or a horse run through a meadow or fish swimming in a stream; a sunset; watching the crowds of people go by at the mall or at the fair and feeling their struggle and sorrows and just wanting to take it all away...
My First Birdwalk
For a successful birdwalk, you will need to gather a few items to help you along your journey. First, you will need a strong pair of walking shoes, rubber-soled with grooves for negotiating steep hills and muddy places. Long socks as opposed to shin-highs or footies are preferred as occasionally you may venture from the path and get burrs or foxtails stuck in your shoes. One pair of binoculars or a telescope (this is a must for identification and viewing rich color patterns of feathers). A copy of Peterson’s “Field Guide to Western Birds” or “National Geographic’s Field Guide to Birds of North America” to quickly reference any species you may meet along the way. One notepad and pen for documenting species and for noting other points of interest. One wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off your face, (unless the sun is no where to be found). Long- sleeve shirt or sweater or jacket because you will be getting an early start to view birds at their most active time of day, when it can be chilly. Other items you will find useful: bottled water, sunscreen, energy bar, sunglasses, camera (long lens preferably), bug spray, map of the area, patience, generosity, courage, wisdom, open eyes, an open mind, some stamina and definitely, most of all, an open heart.
My first birding excursion was on a mild spring day, at the Thousand Oaks Botanical Garden, a misty early morning with warm dew collecting on the wind shield as we drove along Gainsborough in a middle class residential district looking for the entrance to the park. We were running late, my ten-year-old daughter, Sofia, already complaining, “I hate birds”, she exclaimed, throwing herself back in the seat.
“How can you hate birds?” I asked.
“I just do.”
I didn’t know how to respond. When you hate birds, you hate birds. There is no argument for this.
My wife was also not very thrilled at the idea of spending a cold, early Saturday morning, with a bunch of strangers on a nature walk to look at birds when she could be tucked cozily under the blankets in a warm bed.
“I can look at birds in my back yard. Why do we need to get up so early?”
“Um…”
“I worked hard all week and now we have to spend my Saturday morning with a bunch of strangers walking in the park?”
“Yeah, well…”
“We can walk in the park anytime,” she whined.
“This is special. This is like meditation,” was my answer but I didn’t really know what to expect either. I had never been on a guided birdwalk before and was a little nervous at the prospect. I was concerned that I didn’t know the proper etiquette and might say something stupid or inappropriate which I usually find myself doing anyhow, no matter what the circumstances.
At the Botanical Gardens in Thousand Oaks we circled the parking lot looking for the birding group. The park itself was situated in the rolling hills between housing developments in the Conejo Valley of Southern California. My stomach grew queasy at the fear of this new adventure and the stigma of already being twenty minutes late. Finally we spotted a cluster of cars collecting at the innermost parking lot and a group of decidedly-innocuous looking suburbanites huddled together in a semi-circle. This was not a tough crowd. I could tell by first sight. These were not gangsters, bikers or hardened criminals. These were birders, my friends, humans who don Safari outfits and inhabit parks and soft hiking trails with binoculars and cameras with long lenses. Birders are probably the last group called upon to thwart a terrorist attack or save the world from the forces of absolute evil.
There was no danger. My fear dissipated.
My contact was Roger of the Ventura County Audubon Society. I knew nothing about Roger only that he sounded white and older and somewhat kindly on the phone.
“This sucks. I can’t believe we’re doing this,” my daughter said as we exited the car.
“Just check it out. Could be fun,” I replied, trying to prime her enthusiasm to no avail.
“Yeah, right.” She made a face at me that basically said, “Dad, you’re a loser. Big time.” Ten-year-old girls these days have a lot of attitude.
Roger stood at the head of the group displaying nature photos he had snapped on a previous walk. Roger was a smallish, wiry man with a sturdy build, outwardly only partially affected by his seventy-one years on the planet -- graying hair, drooping eyelids, white stubble, but his gait and posture were that of a young man. Roger looked like he could hump the trails of the Himalayas, brave the darkest confines of the Amazon, march across an unforgiving Sahara; there was no walking trip too daunting for Roger. He was dressed in khakis of an agricultural bent, floppy-brimmed hat, hiking boots. His eyes were intense, and I instantly anticipated getting a full frontal ego assault of Alpha Male Energy at our first exchange, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. When he spoke his face softened and kindness mixed with deep compassion shone through. He exuded an inner peace and natural openness with the world around him that I have only seen in a few rare souls. It was a look you saw in the eyes of saints.
“Hey, you must be Roger. I’m Jay. I talked to Ann and um...she told me to meet you here,” I stuttered nervously.
“Great.”
“I found you guys online through the newsletter,” I said as the words stuck in my throat. “We’re kind of new to the whole, you know, bird watching experience.”
He looked at me with infinite peace, supremely subdued, understanding instantly that I was a socially-challenged neurotic who didn’t get out much.
“Welcome. Thanks for joining us,” he replied warmly. After brief introductions, he returned to showing more photos to other birders in the group.
Everyone was very welcoming. I didn’t expect this because it was still only 8:20 in the morning and sometimes it’s tough for people, including myself, to look like they’re having a peachy-keen time.
An older woman with a Safari hat and vest approached me.
“Where are your binoculars?” You can’t see anything without binoculars.”
“Yeah, dad. Where are your binoculars?” my daughter prodded sarcastically.
“Uh, that’s the thing…”
“Oh well, we better leave,” snapped my daughter.
My heart sunk. I had actually set out a pair of old binoculars on the kitchen counter but in my rush to get out the door, I had forgotten to throw them in the car.
“I forgot them. We were running late.”
“I think Dennis has an extra pair.”
This was not thirty seconds into arrival, already someone was willing to help me secure a pair of binoculars. A few words were exchanged with a tall, geeky-looking man, Dennis, and I had secured my very own pair of Eagle Optics 6x30 binoculars for the excursion. Before I knew it, my daughter snatched the pair from my hands and threw the strap around her neck, proudly claiming herself “Keeper of the Binoculars”, doling out their use at her whim.
“Hey, I thought you hated birds?” I ask my daughter.
“I do but I’m still carrying the binoculars,” she said with a wry grin and a haughty hand on her hip.
Raw deal.
Before we advanced to the hiking trail, we were already encountering many species of birds right there in the parking lot. A small group pointed excitedly toward a distant grassy hill with a single valley oak tree twisting toward the sky. I asked someone what the excitement was. “Red-tailed hawk”. I glassed the hillside and couldn’t find anything in the jittery, limited circular field of view. A heavy-set man with 60s-style square glasses, named Matt, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned toward his telescope mounted on a tripod. I looked through the viewfinder and was utterly blown away. A red-tailed hawk was locked in the field of view unlike anything I had ever seen before. It looked like a painting, with rich, vivid coloration and vibrant detail. The speckled red feathers seemed close enough to reach out and stroke. I wanted to stare longer but a small line had formed behind me to get a peek through the scope.
I suggested to my daughter to use the binoculars to find the hawk. She shot back a facetious look that is best described as “someone who is mentally challenged looking excited”.
From the parking lot we made our way across the grass and up a slope to the hiking trail. I walked close to Roger. I had a burning question I really wanted to ask him. I also found myself drawn into his soothing, amiable aura.
“There is a little dark-colored bird, with a light body and a dark crest,” I said, trying to get ahead of the women who had crowded around him. “It’s a friendly bird and one of its behaviors is to ‘dip’ from its perch and swoop into the grass and return to its spot. I call it a ‘Grassdipper’ but I know that’s not its real name,” I explained.
“Could be a Black Phoebe. Where have you seen it?”
“Usually at my house. In my back yard. At the park,” I said.
“What kind of call does it have?”
“It’s a single tweet. And it moves its tail when it does it.”
“A Black Phoebe. It’s a type of flycatcher. When it ‘dips’ into your yard, it is catching a fly, its main diet. There’s also a Say’s Phoebe and a Vermillion Flycatcher that are similar. The Vermillion Flycatcher is pretty rare though. You’re not going to find one of those around here.”
“Is it really vermillion?”
“Bright red.”
We walked together for a moment and my mind raced for more things to say.
“What kind of work do you do? Are you retired? How long have you been doing this?” I anxiously threw out random questions to Roger so as to dwell a moment longer in his warming aura of peace.
“About twenty-eight years. I retired a few years ago.”
“So you do this. What else do you do?”
“I roam.”
We separated as two women closed in on him to ask him about a strange bird one of them had seen in her backyard that looked like a mini-hawk which he explained was probably an American Kestral or Sparrowhawk.
The trail meandered past endless fields of wild mustard, California sunflower, white alder trees, desert willows, wild lilac and a myriad of valley oaks.
As we strode along, I took note of all the birds we identified in my journal. People in the group were more than happy to make sure I got the names and spellings correct.
To my astonishment, my daughter was actually getting into the groove of bird watching, excited and enthusiastic now, spotting birds with her binoculars and being surprised by their stunning appearance when viewed at close range.
“I didn’t know they looked like that. From a distance they just look grey,” Sofia said.
“Everything looks grey from a distance,” a woman said and I wasn’t really sure what she meant by it.
We saw Alan’s Hummingbird, Western Kingbird, the bright orange-yellow Hooded Oriole, California Quail, American Goldfinch, California Towee, Western Bluebird, Red-Tailed Hawk, House Wren (although I was confused because the House Wren in California are larger than the tiny House Wren I knew from Washington State), Song Sparrow, Nutcatcher, House Finch, Acorn Woodpecker (who was named thus because he hides his acorns in little holes in oak trees. Roger pointed this out to us on the walk), American Robin, Black Phoebe (I call this a Grassdipper), Mallard (Male), Bush Titt, Mourning Dove, White-Crested Nuthatch.
We stopped for a water break near a sapphire dragon tree and I noticed there was one man off by himself, smoking. He was the only person who didn’t look like he was enjoying himself very much. He looked gruff and irritable, like someone had dragged him along and he would much rather be golfing or watching a baseball game. He was tall and slight with a shock of gray hair, wearing sunglasses and pastel clothing that appeared more functional for library wear than a nature hike. He was also the only person without a pair of binoculars or spotting scope. I heard a few people ask him questions like, “Alan, did you sell your boat yet?” or “Alan, are you going to the walk in Ojai next week?” Along the way I threw him a few questions about incidentals just to feel him out which he only answered with a grunt or groan. When he was alone with his cigarette, I mustered the courage to ask a more direct question, “Why do you do this?”
After a long pause, remaining stone-faced, he answered, “It comforts me.” I was surprised by his candor. He ground his cigarette into the dirt with his jogging shoe.
“But you’re the only one here who seems like they don’t really want to be here.” He looked at me again with mounting irritation. (Note to the reader: I am generally only this direct with people I am certain I can subdue in hand-to-hand combat)
“My wife was really into it,” Alan said finally.
“She didn’t come today?”
“She passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
That hurt a little bit. I was being a pushy jerk because he looked like he had an attitude but he was really only still mourning the death of his wife. Talking further with Alan, I found out that he was recently retired from an executive job at a pharmaceutical company, married nearly forty years and had never gone bird watching with his wife before. He only began when his wife got sick. This was her main hobby.
“I like to come with Roger because some of the other people who lead these groups are idiots, frankly,” Alan confided.
“This is my first.”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“You ask way too many questions.”
I have always had the strange tendency to ask random questions of complete strangers.
As we walked further down the trail, which snaked into an oak forest along a trickling creek, I dropped the bomb:
“Do you believe in God?”
Alan glared at me with absolute incredulity as if I had asked him if he ever had butt-sex with his grandmother.
“I’m an atheist,” he replied testily.
“That’s cool.”
“I believe in the Church of High Overhead,” he said with levity.
I tried to think of something else to say and we kind of just walked alongside each other feeling that clumsy silence of two personalities who repel each other like the wrong sides of colliding magnets.
Before I moved off to join my wife and daughter who had ventured ahead on the trail, he caught me with a question of his own.
“Do you believe?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“But what do you base that on?”
Dennis, the man who had loaned me the binoculars, chuckled uncomfortably and stepped between us like a ref between two boxers, sensing the heaviness in the air.
“How did we get on this God debate?”
“He started it,” Alan said with a hint of good humor in his expression.
“No. He did. I swear,” I said.
“Let me ask you this. Where is God? Where can I see him? No, really. Show me where God is,” Alan said with feisty eyebrows cocked in challenge.
Dennis slouched off, shaking his head and flashing an uneasy grin.
I looked at Alan’s eyes glaring through his hundred dollar Ray Bans. I saw some macho haughtiness but there was pain and anguish too.
I wanted to say something really profound here but couldn’t find the words. You know when you’re confronted with the chance to convey some earth-shattering philosophical concept that could change lives, shift realities, move mountains? But you don’t. All you can focus on is your anxiety as your mind races a million miles an hour to formulate an unequivocal statement. I was even under the delusional belief I could transform a non-believer into a believer with a single, well-delivered gem of inspiration.
I tried to formulate something and it came out all wrong: “It’s really all about, you know like, what you choose to believe...I mean, who we are as... you know...where we are going spiritually...”
He made an exasperated sound by blowing air out of his pursed lips and slouched ahead of me down the narrow trail. A few seconds later it came to me, “Everywhere!” That’s what I wanted to say. “He’s everywhere!” I wanted to run after him, take his arm and yell right in his face: “Everywhere!” Or better yet, scream at him from a distance so it echoed over the distant hills, “Hey Alan! Everywhere-where-where-where!”
Then I read his mind: Yeah, screw you! You blew it! I don’t believe, jerkface! Because of you, I will never believe! I will die a non-believer and end up in the fiery abyss of Hades because you don’t know how to communicate your ideas! I opened the door for you to say something profound and you stuttered like a school girl! You amateur! You fake! Loser!
I made an attempt to catch up with Alan and elucidate my point but a man had engaged him in another discussion about his sail boat that was collecting barnacles in Ventura Harbor. I had blown it, big time.
We never spoke again the rest of the walk and later I learned that Alan had a stroke a few months after the birdwalk and half of his face was paralyzed. I never heard if he recovered or not.
As we approached the end of the walk, the party thinned; some people had gone on ahead and left and others had dropped behind, exploring other areas of the park. My wife and daughter appeared energized. They were laughing and singing. My wife’s stress level from the previous week had melted away. She was happy and content.
“Hey Sofi, how did you like the walk?” I asked my daughter. “Did you have fun?”
“No,” was her flat answer but I knew she did by the way she was dancing and singing her favorite song.
“I actually had a really good time. I’m surprised,” my wife said. “And best of all, it’s not even eleven yet. We still have the rest of Saturday to do things.”
Roger thanked me for coming and said we should join him on a walk to the grasslands of Oxnard by the beach in two weeks. He began to list off some of the species we might encounter. I told him I would love to. When my wife and daughter were out of earshot, I cut Roger off as he continued naming various shore birds.
“Roger, tell me, why do you really do this?”
“This?”
“Birdwatching.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
He continued walking for some ways and I felt insecure at the silence.
“Why do you do it?” he asked cheerfully.
“Uh, a friend suggested I check it out and I read it was a pretty good walking meditation.”
“It’s transcendent,” he said and patted me on the shoulder with a sheepish grin that half-looked like he was joking or embarrassed by making it into something bigger than it was.
Transcendent? I hadn’t heard that word applied to nature since I studied those funny, soul brothers from the nineteenth century who practiced civil disobedience and went out to live alone by ponds.
Transcendent? How could walking through a park in southern California looking at birds be transcendent? You can see birds anytime. After all, aren’t they everywhere? I had no clue what he was referring to. None whatsoever.
“Do you still hate birds?” I asked my daughter as we reached the car and dumped out equipment in the back.
“Yes.”
My first birding excursion was on a mild spring day, at the Thousand Oaks Botanical Garden, a misty early morning with warm dew collecting on the wind shield as we drove along Gainsborough in a middle class residential district looking for the entrance to the park. We were running late, my ten-year-old daughter, Sofia, already complaining, “I hate birds”, she exclaimed, throwing herself back in the seat.
“How can you hate birds?” I asked.
“I just do.”
I didn’t know how to respond. When you hate birds, you hate birds. There is no argument for this.
My wife was also not very thrilled at the idea of spending a cold, early Saturday morning, with a bunch of strangers on a nature walk to look at birds when she could be tucked cozily under the blankets in a warm bed.
“I can look at birds in my back yard. Why do we need to get up so early?”
“Um…”
“I worked hard all week and now we have to spend my Saturday morning with a bunch of strangers walking in the park?”
“Yeah, well…”
“We can walk in the park anytime,” she whined.
“This is special. This is like meditation,” was my answer but I didn’t really know what to expect either. I had never been on a guided birdwalk before and was a little nervous at the prospect. I was concerned that I didn’t know the proper etiquette and might say something stupid or inappropriate which I usually find myself doing anyhow, no matter what the circumstances.
At the Botanical Gardens in Thousand Oaks we circled the parking lot looking for the birding group. The park itself was situated in the rolling hills between housing developments in the Conejo Valley of Southern California. My stomach grew queasy at the fear of this new adventure and the stigma of already being twenty minutes late. Finally we spotted a cluster of cars collecting at the innermost parking lot and a group of decidedly-innocuous looking suburbanites huddled together in a semi-circle. This was not a tough crowd. I could tell by first sight. These were not gangsters, bikers or hardened criminals. These were birders, my friends, humans who don Safari outfits and inhabit parks and soft hiking trails with binoculars and cameras with long lenses. Birders are probably the last group called upon to thwart a terrorist attack or save the world from the forces of absolute evil.
There was no danger. My fear dissipated.
My contact was Roger of the Ventura County Audubon Society. I knew nothing about Roger only that he sounded white and older and somewhat kindly on the phone.
“This sucks. I can’t believe we’re doing this,” my daughter said as we exited the car.
“Just check it out. Could be fun,” I replied, trying to prime her enthusiasm to no avail.
“Yeah, right.” She made a face at me that basically said, “Dad, you’re a loser. Big time.” Ten-year-old girls these days have a lot of attitude.
Roger stood at the head of the group displaying nature photos he had snapped on a previous walk. Roger was a smallish, wiry man with a sturdy build, outwardly only partially affected by his seventy-one years on the planet -- graying hair, drooping eyelids, white stubble, but his gait and posture were that of a young man. Roger looked like he could hump the trails of the Himalayas, brave the darkest confines of the Amazon, march across an unforgiving Sahara; there was no walking trip too daunting for Roger. He was dressed in khakis of an agricultural bent, floppy-brimmed hat, hiking boots. His eyes were intense, and I instantly anticipated getting a full frontal ego assault of Alpha Male Energy at our first exchange, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. When he spoke his face softened and kindness mixed with deep compassion shone through. He exuded an inner peace and natural openness with the world around him that I have only seen in a few rare souls. It was a look you saw in the eyes of saints.
“Hey, you must be Roger. I’m Jay. I talked to Ann and um...she told me to meet you here,” I stuttered nervously.
“Great.”
“I found you guys online through the newsletter,” I said as the words stuck in my throat. “We’re kind of new to the whole, you know, bird watching experience.”
He looked at me with infinite peace, supremely subdued, understanding instantly that I was a socially-challenged neurotic who didn’t get out much.
“Welcome. Thanks for joining us,” he replied warmly. After brief introductions, he returned to showing more photos to other birders in the group.
Everyone was very welcoming. I didn’t expect this because it was still only 8:20 in the morning and sometimes it’s tough for people, including myself, to look like they’re having a peachy-keen time.
An older woman with a Safari hat and vest approached me.
“Where are your binoculars?” You can’t see anything without binoculars.”
“Yeah, dad. Where are your binoculars?” my daughter prodded sarcastically.
“Uh, that’s the thing…”
“Oh well, we better leave,” snapped my daughter.
My heart sunk. I had actually set out a pair of old binoculars on the kitchen counter but in my rush to get out the door, I had forgotten to throw them in the car.
“I forgot them. We were running late.”
“I think Dennis has an extra pair.”
This was not thirty seconds into arrival, already someone was willing to help me secure a pair of binoculars. A few words were exchanged with a tall, geeky-looking man, Dennis, and I had secured my very own pair of Eagle Optics 6x30 binoculars for the excursion. Before I knew it, my daughter snatched the pair from my hands and threw the strap around her neck, proudly claiming herself “Keeper of the Binoculars”, doling out their use at her whim.
“Hey, I thought you hated birds?” I ask my daughter.
“I do but I’m still carrying the binoculars,” she said with a wry grin and a haughty hand on her hip.
Raw deal.
Before we advanced to the hiking trail, we were already encountering many species of birds right there in the parking lot. A small group pointed excitedly toward a distant grassy hill with a single valley oak tree twisting toward the sky. I asked someone what the excitement was. “Red-tailed hawk”. I glassed the hillside and couldn’t find anything in the jittery, limited circular field of view. A heavy-set man with 60s-style square glasses, named Matt, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned toward his telescope mounted on a tripod. I looked through the viewfinder and was utterly blown away. A red-tailed hawk was locked in the field of view unlike anything I had ever seen before. It looked like a painting, with rich, vivid coloration and vibrant detail. The speckled red feathers seemed close enough to reach out and stroke. I wanted to stare longer but a small line had formed behind me to get a peek through the scope.
I suggested to my daughter to use the binoculars to find the hawk. She shot back a facetious look that is best described as “someone who is mentally challenged looking excited”.
From the parking lot we made our way across the grass and up a slope to the hiking trail. I walked close to Roger. I had a burning question I really wanted to ask him. I also found myself drawn into his soothing, amiable aura.
“There is a little dark-colored bird, with a light body and a dark crest,” I said, trying to get ahead of the women who had crowded around him. “It’s a friendly bird and one of its behaviors is to ‘dip’ from its perch and swoop into the grass and return to its spot. I call it a ‘Grassdipper’ but I know that’s not its real name,” I explained.
“Could be a Black Phoebe. Where have you seen it?”
“Usually at my house. In my back yard. At the park,” I said.
“What kind of call does it have?”
“It’s a single tweet. And it moves its tail when it does it.”
“A Black Phoebe. It’s a type of flycatcher. When it ‘dips’ into your yard, it is catching a fly, its main diet. There’s also a Say’s Phoebe and a Vermillion Flycatcher that are similar. The Vermillion Flycatcher is pretty rare though. You’re not going to find one of those around here.”
“Is it really vermillion?”
“Bright red.”
We walked together for a moment and my mind raced for more things to say.
“What kind of work do you do? Are you retired? How long have you been doing this?” I anxiously threw out random questions to Roger so as to dwell a moment longer in his warming aura of peace.
“About twenty-eight years. I retired a few years ago.”
“So you do this. What else do you do?”
“I roam.”
We separated as two women closed in on him to ask him about a strange bird one of them had seen in her backyard that looked like a mini-hawk which he explained was probably an American Kestral or Sparrowhawk.
The trail meandered past endless fields of wild mustard, California sunflower, white alder trees, desert willows, wild lilac and a myriad of valley oaks.
As we strode along, I took note of all the birds we identified in my journal. People in the group were more than happy to make sure I got the names and spellings correct.
To my astonishment, my daughter was actually getting into the groove of bird watching, excited and enthusiastic now, spotting birds with her binoculars and being surprised by their stunning appearance when viewed at close range.
“I didn’t know they looked like that. From a distance they just look grey,” Sofia said.
“Everything looks grey from a distance,” a woman said and I wasn’t really sure what she meant by it.
We saw Alan’s Hummingbird, Western Kingbird, the bright orange-yellow Hooded Oriole, California Quail, American Goldfinch, California Towee, Western Bluebird, Red-Tailed Hawk, House Wren (although I was confused because the House Wren in California are larger than the tiny House Wren I knew from Washington State), Song Sparrow, Nutcatcher, House Finch, Acorn Woodpecker (who was named thus because he hides his acorns in little holes in oak trees. Roger pointed this out to us on the walk), American Robin, Black Phoebe (I call this a Grassdipper), Mallard (Male), Bush Titt, Mourning Dove, White-Crested Nuthatch.
We stopped for a water break near a sapphire dragon tree and I noticed there was one man off by himself, smoking. He was the only person who didn’t look like he was enjoying himself very much. He looked gruff and irritable, like someone had dragged him along and he would much rather be golfing or watching a baseball game. He was tall and slight with a shock of gray hair, wearing sunglasses and pastel clothing that appeared more functional for library wear than a nature hike. He was also the only person without a pair of binoculars or spotting scope. I heard a few people ask him questions like, “Alan, did you sell your boat yet?” or “Alan, are you going to the walk in Ojai next week?” Along the way I threw him a few questions about incidentals just to feel him out which he only answered with a grunt or groan. When he was alone with his cigarette, I mustered the courage to ask a more direct question, “Why do you do this?”
After a long pause, remaining stone-faced, he answered, “It comforts me.” I was surprised by his candor. He ground his cigarette into the dirt with his jogging shoe.
“But you’re the only one here who seems like they don’t really want to be here.” He looked at me again with mounting irritation. (Note to the reader: I am generally only this direct with people I am certain I can subdue in hand-to-hand combat)
“My wife was really into it,” Alan said finally.
“She didn’t come today?”
“She passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
That hurt a little bit. I was being a pushy jerk because he looked like he had an attitude but he was really only still mourning the death of his wife. Talking further with Alan, I found out that he was recently retired from an executive job at a pharmaceutical company, married nearly forty years and had never gone bird watching with his wife before. He only began when his wife got sick. This was her main hobby.
“I like to come with Roger because some of the other people who lead these groups are idiots, frankly,” Alan confided.
“This is my first.”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“You ask way too many questions.”
I have always had the strange tendency to ask random questions of complete strangers.
As we walked further down the trail, which snaked into an oak forest along a trickling creek, I dropped the bomb:
“Do you believe in God?”
Alan glared at me with absolute incredulity as if I had asked him if he ever had butt-sex with his grandmother.
“I’m an atheist,” he replied testily.
“That’s cool.”
“I believe in the Church of High Overhead,” he said with levity.
I tried to think of something else to say and we kind of just walked alongside each other feeling that clumsy silence of two personalities who repel each other like the wrong sides of colliding magnets.
Before I moved off to join my wife and daughter who had ventured ahead on the trail, he caught me with a question of his own.
“Do you believe?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“But what do you base that on?”
Dennis, the man who had loaned me the binoculars, chuckled uncomfortably and stepped between us like a ref between two boxers, sensing the heaviness in the air.
“How did we get on this God debate?”
“He started it,” Alan said with a hint of good humor in his expression.
“No. He did. I swear,” I said.
“Let me ask you this. Where is God? Where can I see him? No, really. Show me where God is,” Alan said with feisty eyebrows cocked in challenge.
Dennis slouched off, shaking his head and flashing an uneasy grin.
I looked at Alan’s eyes glaring through his hundred dollar Ray Bans. I saw some macho haughtiness but there was pain and anguish too.
I wanted to say something really profound here but couldn’t find the words. You know when you’re confronted with the chance to convey some earth-shattering philosophical concept that could change lives, shift realities, move mountains? But you don’t. All you can focus on is your anxiety as your mind races a million miles an hour to formulate an unequivocal statement. I was even under the delusional belief I could transform a non-believer into a believer with a single, well-delivered gem of inspiration.
I tried to formulate something and it came out all wrong: “It’s really all about, you know like, what you choose to believe...I mean, who we are as... you know...where we are going spiritually...”
He made an exasperated sound by blowing air out of his pursed lips and slouched ahead of me down the narrow trail. A few seconds later it came to me, “Everywhere!” That’s what I wanted to say. “He’s everywhere!” I wanted to run after him, take his arm and yell right in his face: “Everywhere!” Or better yet, scream at him from a distance so it echoed over the distant hills, “Hey Alan! Everywhere-where-where-where!”
Then I read his mind: Yeah, screw you! You blew it! I don’t believe, jerkface! Because of you, I will never believe! I will die a non-believer and end up in the fiery abyss of Hades because you don’t know how to communicate your ideas! I opened the door for you to say something profound and you stuttered like a school girl! You amateur! You fake! Loser!
I made an attempt to catch up with Alan and elucidate my point but a man had engaged him in another discussion about his sail boat that was collecting barnacles in Ventura Harbor. I had blown it, big time.
We never spoke again the rest of the walk and later I learned that Alan had a stroke a few months after the birdwalk and half of his face was paralyzed. I never heard if he recovered or not.
As we approached the end of the walk, the party thinned; some people had gone on ahead and left and others had dropped behind, exploring other areas of the park. My wife and daughter appeared energized. They were laughing and singing. My wife’s stress level from the previous week had melted away. She was happy and content.
“Hey Sofi, how did you like the walk?” I asked my daughter. “Did you have fun?”
“No,” was her flat answer but I knew she did by the way she was dancing and singing her favorite song.
“I actually had a really good time. I’m surprised,” my wife said. “And best of all, it’s not even eleven yet. We still have the rest of Saturday to do things.”
Roger thanked me for coming and said we should join him on a walk to the grasslands of Oxnard by the beach in two weeks. He began to list off some of the species we might encounter. I told him I would love to. When my wife and daughter were out of earshot, I cut Roger off as he continued naming various shore birds.
“Roger, tell me, why do you really do this?”
“This?”
“Birdwatching.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
He continued walking for some ways and I felt insecure at the silence.
“Why do you do it?” he asked cheerfully.
“Uh, a friend suggested I check it out and I read it was a pretty good walking meditation.”
“It’s transcendent,” he said and patted me on the shoulder with a sheepish grin that half-looked like he was joking or embarrassed by making it into something bigger than it was.
Transcendent? I hadn’t heard that word applied to nature since I studied those funny, soul brothers from the nineteenth century who practiced civil disobedience and went out to live alone by ponds.
Transcendent? How could walking through a park in southern California looking at birds be transcendent? You can see birds anytime. After all, aren’t they everywhere? I had no clue what he was referring to. None whatsoever.
“Do you still hate birds?” I asked my daughter as we reached the car and dumped out equipment in the back.
“Yes.”
Just Love
I found myself in confession the other day. My son was taking CCD classes and when I went to pick him up, I realized there was a pennant mass with confessional following immediately after the service with twelve visiting priests from other parishes. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to slip in and get some of the guilt off my chest.
I rarely attend confession because it is usually at a strange time of day, maybe three to four p.m. on a Saturday, and it’s not like I’m overflowing with so many sins I need to unload them any chance I can get. Alright, these are bad excuses. I need to go to confession more. Bottom line.
I do believe confessions are useful. I believe in the power of talking about and facing the issues in your life that bring you down and make you sad. Sometimes something that may seem so insignificant to a stranger, is something that is literally eating us alive inside. Something mean or bad that we said; some minor lie we told; taking some object that wasn’t ours; using another persons’ body for sexual gratification; these are all things that tear us up inside with guilt. But if we think of our neighbor doing these acts or a friend or someone on television, they often seem rather meaningless and petty in the greater scheme of things.
I slipped into one of the long lines that were forming of parents and fifteen-year-old students in front of the confessional rooms.
Facing the priest brought naked fear to the surface. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I could feel the heat under my arms and the sweat dripping down my lower back. My turn came and I entered the dark booth and saw the priest’s shadow hunched behind the mesh window, a little prayer bench in front of it with a simple prayer printed on card stock. I wasn’t too sure of the routine.
“Um, yeah, I don’t really do this too much. I’m sorry.”
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
We both crossed ourselves.
There was a pause and I could sense his uneasiness at my uneasiness. “Do you have anything to confess?”
“Nothing that big.”
Another pause. I thought of all the carnal desires that burned in my skull along with little lies I might have spoken or getting angry or only thinking of myself but they all seemed too small and petty to mention. I almost felt bad I didn’t have anything really big and heavy to lay on him. But there was the one thing. It was the biggest question of all, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was no way he could answer it.
“Sometimes I struggle with certain desires. And this is really something that we’ve been dealing with for millions of years and even though I am aware of this constant struggle, still I find myself doing things I shouldn’t. Still I find myself being led into this darkness and ultimately reaching a point where I’m confounded by the utter pointlessness of it all. Like there is no meaning. Like once you have unraveled the deepest mystery at the bottom of all mysteries, it is just zero. Nothing. Emptiness. And I don’t want to think this way and thus yearn for annihilation, which is pretty much the death of the body but I can’t help reaching this point because I feel so overwhelmed and disheartened, and racked by such immense sorrow, the blackest, deepest sorrow, I don’t want to continue. I want to be free. So what is the meaning? Why the hell am I here?” I was about to scream: “what the fuck am I doing here?!” “Is there some point to this endless struggling to satisfy my needs and seek happiness or will that only really lead to greater sorrow? In the end don’t you know we’re all just mowed under like so many blades of grass? I mean, I long for God’s love, but it feels so distant, so remote, so cold, so condescending, so maddeningly incomprehensible that my only recourse and natural goal as a human being on the planet earth is to roll myself up in a ball and tremble. Is that the destiny of man? Is that our great epic goal? Tremble, for eternity? Is that my destiny? Please father, tell me something. Give me some encouragement. Drop me a bone. I am utterly confounded and clueless.”
There was a long pause and the priest sat up straight and I could make out his features a little better as the dim lamp in the corner hit him. He was pondering; maybe even troubled. His head was down. He was stumped. This was not a local priest. He was foreign, from India or the Middle East.
I thought I had really caught him off guard with this one. Today, after the endless train of masturbatory confessions, adulteress spouses, forged checks, throwing the old folks in the rest home, stealing the neighbor’s newspaper, where this priest had been spiritually lolled into a knee-jerk, quick-fix, magic bullet prayer response, now he finally had something to think about. You couldn’t just slide a prayer across a table and say, “here’s the answer”. There was no way he was going to wriggle out of this one. There was no “How to Answer the Question of the Meaning of Life”, in the Catechism Desk Reference For Priests. I almost felt smug and was about to stand up leave without another word spoken. That would have satisfied me; the only true answer to all questions: silence.
I looked down at the prayer on the little card in front of me. I took it in hand and scanned the text. I waited, almost mockingly, ready for him to tell me how many times to chant the obligatory prayer. Maybe throw in a few “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” for good measure. I had this guy up against the ropes. There was no way back from “Queer Street” now.
“Just love,” the priest finally muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Just love. That’s it.”
“Just love?”
“Yes, just love. That’s really the only thing Jesus wants from us and that’s his primary teaching. First and foremost, just love.”
I was floored. My God, yes! It was so simple. Yet so perfect. Just love.
“There is really nothing that you must do or achieve. You just need to love more.”
The dark clouds of doubt burned instantly away, revealing only bright sunshine. It was as if I knew this all along, way in the back of my head somewhere, but couldn’t remember it. Like an old book in a library, in some back dusty store room. All it needed was a hand to point it out and a quick dust off. “Just love”. Wasn’t this what all the major religions were telling us from the beginning? Wasn’t this at the heart of all dogmas, creeds and divine law?
Sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find it, but love is always there somewhere, no matter how cleverly hidden among the brambles.
I rarely attend confession because it is usually at a strange time of day, maybe three to four p.m. on a Saturday, and it’s not like I’m overflowing with so many sins I need to unload them any chance I can get. Alright, these are bad excuses. I need to go to confession more. Bottom line.
I do believe confessions are useful. I believe in the power of talking about and facing the issues in your life that bring you down and make you sad. Sometimes something that may seem so insignificant to a stranger, is something that is literally eating us alive inside. Something mean or bad that we said; some minor lie we told; taking some object that wasn’t ours; using another persons’ body for sexual gratification; these are all things that tear us up inside with guilt. But if we think of our neighbor doing these acts or a friend or someone on television, they often seem rather meaningless and petty in the greater scheme of things.
I slipped into one of the long lines that were forming of parents and fifteen-year-old students in front of the confessional rooms.
Facing the priest brought naked fear to the surface. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I could feel the heat under my arms and the sweat dripping down my lower back. My turn came and I entered the dark booth and saw the priest’s shadow hunched behind the mesh window, a little prayer bench in front of it with a simple prayer printed on card stock. I wasn’t too sure of the routine.
“Um, yeah, I don’t really do this too much. I’m sorry.”
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
We both crossed ourselves.
There was a pause and I could sense his uneasiness at my uneasiness. “Do you have anything to confess?”
“Nothing that big.”
Another pause. I thought of all the carnal desires that burned in my skull along with little lies I might have spoken or getting angry or only thinking of myself but they all seemed too small and petty to mention. I almost felt bad I didn’t have anything really big and heavy to lay on him. But there was the one thing. It was the biggest question of all, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was no way he could answer it.
“Sometimes I struggle with certain desires. And this is really something that we’ve been dealing with for millions of years and even though I am aware of this constant struggle, still I find myself doing things I shouldn’t. Still I find myself being led into this darkness and ultimately reaching a point where I’m confounded by the utter pointlessness of it all. Like there is no meaning. Like once you have unraveled the deepest mystery at the bottom of all mysteries, it is just zero. Nothing. Emptiness. And I don’t want to think this way and thus yearn for annihilation, which is pretty much the death of the body but I can’t help reaching this point because I feel so overwhelmed and disheartened, and racked by such immense sorrow, the blackest, deepest sorrow, I don’t want to continue. I want to be free. So what is the meaning? Why the hell am I here?” I was about to scream: “what the fuck am I doing here?!” “Is there some point to this endless struggling to satisfy my needs and seek happiness or will that only really lead to greater sorrow? In the end don’t you know we’re all just mowed under like so many blades of grass? I mean, I long for God’s love, but it feels so distant, so remote, so cold, so condescending, so maddeningly incomprehensible that my only recourse and natural goal as a human being on the planet earth is to roll myself up in a ball and tremble. Is that the destiny of man? Is that our great epic goal? Tremble, for eternity? Is that my destiny? Please father, tell me something. Give me some encouragement. Drop me a bone. I am utterly confounded and clueless.”
There was a long pause and the priest sat up straight and I could make out his features a little better as the dim lamp in the corner hit him. He was pondering; maybe even troubled. His head was down. He was stumped. This was not a local priest. He was foreign, from India or the Middle East.
I thought I had really caught him off guard with this one. Today, after the endless train of masturbatory confessions, adulteress spouses, forged checks, throwing the old folks in the rest home, stealing the neighbor’s newspaper, where this priest had been spiritually lolled into a knee-jerk, quick-fix, magic bullet prayer response, now he finally had something to think about. You couldn’t just slide a prayer across a table and say, “here’s the answer”. There was no way he was going to wriggle out of this one. There was no “How to Answer the Question of the Meaning of Life”, in the Catechism Desk Reference For Priests. I almost felt smug and was about to stand up leave without another word spoken. That would have satisfied me; the only true answer to all questions: silence.
I looked down at the prayer on the little card in front of me. I took it in hand and scanned the text. I waited, almost mockingly, ready for him to tell me how many times to chant the obligatory prayer. Maybe throw in a few “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” for good measure. I had this guy up against the ropes. There was no way back from “Queer Street” now.
“Just love,” the priest finally muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Just love. That’s it.”
“Just love?”
“Yes, just love. That’s really the only thing Jesus wants from us and that’s his primary teaching. First and foremost, just love.”
I was floored. My God, yes! It was so simple. Yet so perfect. Just love.
“There is really nothing that you must do or achieve. You just need to love more.”
The dark clouds of doubt burned instantly away, revealing only bright sunshine. It was as if I knew this all along, way in the back of my head somewhere, but couldn’t remember it. Like an old book in a library, in some back dusty store room. All it needed was a hand to point it out and a quick dust off. “Just love”. Wasn’t this what all the major religions were telling us from the beginning? Wasn’t this at the heart of all dogmas, creeds and divine law?
Sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find it, but love is always there somewhere, no matter how cleverly hidden among the brambles.
The Healer
“The Healer”
I want to do the right thing. I want to help people. I want to volunteer my time to maybe pass on some of the wisdom I have learned, along with instilling compassion and loving kindness in those who may really need it. I want to be a healer. I want to heal troubled souls.
I show up at Hospice House in Calabasas, California for my volunteer training with Gladys, the supervisor, and two other volunteer trainees. Gladys is a kindly, happy-go-lucky Christian who herself had started as a Hospice volunteer and rose to a paid staff position. She always has a big smile on her face and never really takes anything too seriously. Gladys is a trooper because she works day in and day out with human beings at the end of their lives, which isn’t always a sun-shiny, knee-slapping good time.
When you are admitted to Hospice House, you have basically six months to live. That is the physical stipulation that is confirmed by a doctor in order to receive the Medicare coverage.
Gladys has us introduce ourselves and explain what cosmic forces compelled us to want to lend a helping hand.
“My name is Jay. I really feel like I am on some kind of spiritual mission where I want to impart some of the great wisdom that I have learned over the years to other people who might really need it.” I am feeling a little smug here, maybe even over confident. Gladys is beaming, her eyes actually glinting with tears. “Sometimes just a simple quote from The Bible can save a life or really bring peace to a person who is really feeling down.”
As I finish I gaze humbly around the room at each volunteer. They are moved. They believe. They want to be my Christian foot soldiers on the march to our great cause of saving souls.
Our first order of business is feeding of the Hospice patients. We are to observe how this is implemented and gain a general introduction to the care center. I find this odd because why would we need to be there when they are being fed? I picture some sort of waiter role, trucking trays of food back and forth from the kitchen or maybe fetching drinks, taking orders, being on hand to help scoop ice cream at desert time. This was definitely not the case.
I am stunned when I enter the cafeteria. Most of the patients can neither move nor speak and a few appear already in the death spasms. They need to be fed, because, as I am told, if they weren’t, they would never eat and the food would simply be thrown away promptly at the six o’ clock bell. I never anticipated the final days being this vegetative, almost as if each patient has returned to the postnatal phase where they are virtually helpless as a babe. I hang back uneasily to observe Gladys go around to each individual, many in wheel chairs, many unresponsive, many babbling incoherently, many just staring at me like I am the incarnation of the devil. Gladys quickly tries to scoop a few spoonfuls into unresponsive mouths then moves on to the next person. I do my best to paste on a grin but the room is so miserable, so depressing, so dim and utterly without hope and there is such a ubiquitous cloud of unwieldy death shrouding all, my smile hurts. It physically hurts.
In absolute wonder, I watch Gladys as she dances from one patient the next, ever-smiling and ever-offering words of love and encouragement, never wavering for a second. My God she is a trooper. My God.
“This is Mr. Klein. We thought we lost him two weeks ago but he’s still here,” Gladys says, patting the back of an elderly man in a reclining wheel chair with a brace that supports his neck. Everything about him is gray, almost as if he is only half on the material plane. First, he looks like he is about 120 years old. His hands are bony, claw-like, crippled with palsy. She makes a few faint attempts to offer him the pureed paste from his tray, but he doesn’t respond, his lips slightly trembling at the cold of the spoon.
“Some of the patients have to get their food in soft form otherwise they can’t swallow or digest it,” she explains.
Mr. Klein’s plate consists of three little piles of mashed food product: one gray, one darker gray, and one an orangish brown. I don’t have the faintest clue what kind of foods these represent but assume it is of the generic baby food variety.
“Are you working?” A stern-faced woman in glasses asks me with a German accent.
“Uh, I’m learning. I’m a volunteer.”
“Come with me.” She takes my hand and leads me to the corner where a large-eared, old man sits upright staring straight ahead into oblivion. “This is Klaus. He needs to eat dinner. Please.” She bids me to sit across from Klaus.
“I’m not sure if I…”
“It’s very easy,” she says. “You take a little like this and offer it to him.”
She takes a small amount of rice and pushes it into Klaus’s mouth. He chews, his eyes still peering off into space. She hands me the fork. “Go ahead.”
“Hey, what’s up, bro?” I ask Klaus, trying to scoop rice onto the fork, not wanting to get too much in and choke the poor bastard. Klaus just stares beyond me vacuously.
“He doesn’t speak much English. Please.”
I raise the fork to his paper-thin lips with a little rice on board. As the fork touches his lips, they part and I dump the rice in. He chews slowly and impassively, like a cow. “Good. See, it’s easy,” She says then she leaves. I have no clue where she goes and don’t see her after that. She just disappears.
“So, how are we doing there, Klaus?” He just stares past me. “Do you like rice?” As a response, he gives a long oozing fart with liquid sounds which I know must be a bad thing. I turn around and there is a heavy-set Hispanic lady in a wheel chair, two inches from my nose, staring at me with piercing black eyes.
“How’s it going?” I say uneasily.
“Feed me,” she says in loud monotone.
“Um, I’m kinda with this dude.”
“Feed me.”
Gladys comes by and takes the fork.
“This is Kiki. Why don’t you help her and I’ll assist Mr. Voller.”
I wheel Kiki back to her table and begin shoveling chicken chow mein into her mouth. At the first spoonful, she makes a disgusted face.
“You don’t like it?”
“Cold.”
“Oh.” I offer her more and she eats, still each bite eliciting the same reaction as if I am feeding her Comet.
“Juice,” she snaps.
I offer her a drink from her glass. Despite being confined to a wheel chair, Kiki seems more vigorous and lively than the others. Gladys tells me that Kiki is not on Hospice but has other “special needs”. The center doubles as a nursing home but the active elderly who don’t have one foot in the grave are kept in another part of the ward. It is sad they have Kiki bunched in with the soon-to-be-departed.
“Biscuit.”
I take the dinner roll on her plate and hold it to her lips. The dinner role appears more agreeable than the chow mein.
“Juice.” I offer her more juice.
“Biscuit.” I offer another bite of the bread.
I offer her more chow mein and she only makes the disgusted face.
“Take me to my room,” Kiki says abruptly.
“Uh, not sure if I’m supposed to do that.”
“Take me to my room.”
I look for Gladys.
“She wants me to take her to her room.”
“No. She needs to eat. She just wants attention,” Gladys explains.
I feed her a while longer until she no longer seems interested, only staring at me like I just sprouted horns. I keep smiling through the pain.
“This is Mr. O’Leary,” Gladys says, leading me to a hearty-looking fellow who resembles a retired general with a buzz cut and a tall, solid frame. Strong Irish boxer’s features. A wave of relief passes over me as I feel that at last, here is someone I can talk to who is coherent and we might have a nice warm discussion over dinner. “Hi, Mr. O’Leary. How are you today, handsome?” Gladys says, hugging him then kissing the top of his head. Gladys takes his fork and offers him food and things go down hill from there. He bites down on the fork and won’t let go, finally dropping it into his lap, then on the floor. He clenches great fistfuls of chow mein and rice and smears it across his face and over his pink polo shirt.
“Oh dear…” says Gladys, her smile going crooked, backing off as Mr. O’Leary crushes the food in his enormous hands and plasters it over his entire body, wolfing it down like a wildman. Gladys looks at me and I see a trace of the real Gladys, hidden in there somewhere. She is doing her best to maintain and be a good Christian, but damn it is hard.
“Mr. Moser…” she introduces me to an affable man with gray hair who doesn’t look that old and appears normal enough until he opens his mouth...
“Be-bop the de-dop, the car said, the man said, he go, she go, which go,” he stammers, in a stream of consciousness rant.
“Yes, yes, I know Mr. Moser,” Gladys says, hugging him.
“Which way, this way, the car way, the car, the bus, brick bus, bit bus…”
“Yes! Yes! The bus! Mr. Moser, the bus,” replies Gladys.
“Frontiers, frontier, the frontier, the guesswork, the car work, the car, the cars, haddle-haddle-haddle…”
“I love you, Mr. Moser! “
“Bing-bong the ding-dong, the ring, the thing, the car, the car thing…” As he speaks he always stares straight ahead, never directing his words at anyone in particular, unblinking.
“Yes, I know!”
I turn around and Kiki is inches away from me again with that unnerving, penetrating look. “Take me to my room.”
“Why don’t you take her and we’ll meet you there? We’re going to the conference room from here. It’s on the way,” Gladys says.
“Oh, uh...”
“Don’t put her in bed though. She just wants attention.”
I find myself pushing Kiki down the interminable corridors that seem to stretch on forever. Patients watch in wide-eyed horror as we pass. Some stand in corners like zombies, others truck by aimlessly on walkers or wheelchairs. I picture this as some anesthetized plane of lower hell where the sane mix with the insane, in a slow, simmering decline of the senses, not quite dead but dead enough; a kind of atrophy of the soul where one is trapped in a spoon-fed nightmare, the delicious freedom of death only spoken in the fractured chittering of the demented.
“Uh, which way do we go?” I ask realizing that if I didn’t, we could have circled the facility until one of us actually expired in the process.
“Straight.”
“Left here?”
“No.”
“Right here?”
“No.”
“Are we getting close?”
“No.”
“Which way now?”
“Right.”
“What’s your room number?”
“Left.”
“Are we close to your room?”
“No.”
“Which way now?”
“Left.”
“Are we close?”
“No.”
If by some miracle, we finally find her room after what seems like an endless trip around the ward. Her room is a tiny space with two single beds, a nightstand with a few books and stuffed animals and a single closet. A white specter of a woman lies in the second bed nearby asleep.
“This is it, huh? Here we are. Okay.”
There is a silence as she just stares at me and I nod uncomfortably and try to smile. I go out into the hallway to see if Gladys is on her way. Nothing. I go back in and stand near Kiki, glancing at the woman in the second bed.
“What’s her name?”
“She’s sleeping!” Kiki yells.
I scan her books, a weird assortment of horror novels and thrillers by Peter Straub and Stephen King.
“Did you read these? They look like good books,” I say.
“Those are my husband’s books.”
“Oh, where is he?”
“He died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“He died in a plane crash.”
“Wow, that’s sad.”
“He was a writer and a movie director.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
“He never sold anything. No luck.”
A long silence. I sneak out to the hallway even though she is spearing me through the whole time with her piercing black eyes. No Gladys.
“I want to go to bed.”
“Well, uh...”
“Put me in bed. I want to sleep.”
“Not sure if I’m supposed to.”
“I want to sleep.”
“Yeah, I know but...”
“Put me in bed.”
“Can you do it yourself?”
“No.”
“Alright.”
I position the wheelchair close to the bed and move around behind Kiki to place my hands under her arms. I lift with all my strength. She offers no assistance whatsoever just sitting there like a stubborn elephant. She feels like she weighs a thousand pounds. I strain and manage to get her up and wedge her into her sheets. Her legs dangle awkwardly over the bed. I put my shoulder to her shins and heave. Finally, I’m able to pull the sheets over her body.
“Alright, there we go. You’re all set.” She just stares at me with those wide black eyes. “So, uh, I better, uh, you know, head out.”
“Do you like books?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Those are my husband’s books.”
I flip through her books and find “A Farewell To Arms” by Ernest Hemingway.
“Wow, you have Hemingway? He’s great.”
“I don’t know.”
I sit there for about twenty seconds trying to look happy and content while she just glares at me. Twenty seconds feel like twenty minutes.
“Are you from Los Angeles originally?”
“No.”
Another twenty seconds. I pretend to read, to smile, to nod. I glance back at the hallway like a drug freak.
“Do you have a big family?”
“No.”
Another twenty seconds.
“Is that your daughter in that picture?”
“No.”
“What’s your relationship with God?”
“You ask too many questions!”
I sit in silence, looking at her, then down at Hemingway, then back to her smiling self-consciously, nodding, then down at the Hemingway again. I am about to throw out another question but I hold it in. I feel the back of my neck creak and the hair stand up on end. For a second I feel like my skull will rip apart and my brain will spill onto the carpet, sizzling like a raw egg. I look at Kiki and for a brief instant, I notice a twinge of warmth in her eyes mixed with pity.
“What are you doing?!” A scolding voice comes from the hall. I turn and see Gladys framed in the doorway with an angry look. I want to say, “I’m diddling my nutsack, what does it look like?” But what I actually say is, “Uh, she wanted to go to bed.”
“We don’t move patients. Only nurses move patients.”
“Oh, I was just talking to her.”
Gladys is really pissed like she caught me urinating on the floor or something. “Come on. We’re going now.”
I move to the door, glance back at Kiki and give her a wave. “See you later, Kiki.” She makes no response and for a moment my heart leaps as I think she might have died, right there, her face is frozen in that wide-eyed look of wonder. She finally blinks and I sigh, hugely relieved.
“Don’t move patients. She just wants attention anyways and will be back in her wheel chair and down the hall in five minutes or so,” Gladys explains.
I am a little huffy that she left me alone for such a long period of time.
“Where did you go? It felt like you were gone forever.”
“I went to check my email.”
Great, she’s checking her email while I engage in elderly abuse.
“That’s sad her husband died in a plane crash,” I say.
“Oh, he didn’t die in a plane crash. He comes every other day to visit her.”
I join Gladys and the other two volunteers in the conference room for the remainder of the orientation. Our meals are brought to us and we eat while Gladys goes over the rules and protocol of Hospice House. We are fed the exact Chinese chicken chow mein and rice meal the patients received. After feeding so many Hospice patients the same thing, I am feeling a little queasy. While Gladys shows us the volunteer handbook, Mr. O’Leary barges in like a rampaging zombie and throws our handbooks around the table.
“Grab your plates!” Gladys screams.
We all try to be cool and gather up our plates and silverware. We try to appear happy and casual while Mr. O’Leary thrashes about in the room but everyone looks wildly disturbed, even Gladys.
“Grab your pens!”
Mr. O’Leary has armed himself with a pen and is wielding it like a dagger, flailing his arms about and bumping into the table. He bumps into me and I try to look calm expecting any second to feel the pen driven into my carotid artery.
“Hi, Mr. O’Leary. Do you want to join our meeting?” Gladys says in a loud, measured tone, the color drained from her face.
Mr. O’Leary continues to thrash about like a gut-shot zombie. He tries to rip the employee handbook out of my hands and suddenly I am in a minor tug-of-war match with a man who has less than six months to live.
“C’mon! If we pretend to leave, maybe he’ll go away,” Gladys says to us, not even trying to be discreet at this point. “Mr. O’Leary, we’re leaving. You can come if you want.”
We all file out the door and Mr. O’Leary shambles after us, the room in complete disarray, papers scattered everywhere, food and dishes spilled on the floor, glasses of water overturned and dripping on the carpet. We roam down the hall and Mr. O’Leary follows us. No one speaks. Everyone looks like we just witnessed Bambi executed by Dick Cheney.
“In here!” Gladys yells and motions us into a patient residence room where two frail old men sleep peacefully in their beds. Mr. O’Leary staggers in, bouncing off the wall. I fear for the tenuous lives of the old men. Mr. O’Leary still grasps the pen upside down in one hand.
“Quick! Run!” Gladys commands and we all bolt down the hallway. I want to stay and stand guard over the two sleeping men but this is not an option. We sprint down the hallway.
Gladys takes us on a hasty tour of the facilities, clearly still shaken by Mr. O’Leary’s rampage. We meet a few warm old people along the way that, thankfully, are fully lucid and energetic. Gladys greets them with hugs and words of love and support. My mind is still on the zombie island massacre that could be happening down the hall but I try to blot it out of my mind as I will try to do with much of the memories of the evening.
Our tour brings us to the “rec center” which is really only a large room with a long conference table, many rough, very uncomfortable looking sofas and a blurry big screen TV. A large group of patients sit around watching Samuel Jackson and Collin Ferrel machine gun terrorists. There are explosions, bloodletting, bodies flying everywhere. Somebody takes a head shot and their face blows apart. I see Samuel Jackson throw a knife that sticks in a guy’s eye. I look around the room and see who is handling the remote--an angry-looking, middle-aged Hispanic orderly, leaning against the wall, so enraptured by the carnage he doesn’t even know we are there. I realize there is nothing that exists on earth that will pry the remote from the orderly’s fingers. Half the people in the room, I am certain, have already passed away. They look like they have been lying there for days, some in contorted positions on sofas, some spread at the conference table, some half on the floor. A few stare glassy-eyed and stunned at the screen. Some lie with their heads thrown back, mouths wide open.
“This is Mr. Garza. He’s an orderly here.”
Mr. Garza doesn’t even turn to say “hi”. His arms are crossed at his chest and he grips the remote like a lifeline.
By this point in my visit to Hospice House, I am feeling that my soul has gained about twenty-six pounds. I feel heavy, tired, burnt out, like I could sleep for days. I feel sick and drained like a vampire might after supplementing his diet of blood with sugar water and Twinkies. I want to go home. There were no spiritual lessons here. There were no healings. There were no great life-affirming talks of wisdom and transcendence. There was no robust inspiration of light that myself and the other volunteers might have shone on the darkness here. No one was saved.
At the main entrance, Gladys punches a code in the security lock. For the moment, she has forgotten the code and we are trapped. I am scared. I am horrified. I want to jump out a window. I want to break the door down to get out. The little Asian volunteer feverishly pushes on the bar, trying to swing the door open, taking panicked breaths.
“No! Don’t do that! It won’t open without the code!” Gladys shouts. The Asian man continues pushing on the bar. He doesn’t care. He’s had enough too. I feel short of breath. I look around like a trapped animal. What if I am to be stuck in here all night? There must be another way out. There has to be another way out.
I notice a sad-faced lesbian nurse pushing Kiki around in her wheelchair. Kiki sees me and flashes a faint grin of recognition. That faint grin offers me worlds of hope. I feel tremendous relief. I wave to her and she waves back. I can suddenly breathe again as Gladys punches in the code and the cold night air hits me as I wander out into the parking lot, the half moon and glittering stars never looking so good.
I want to do the right thing. I want to help people. I want to volunteer my time to maybe pass on some of the wisdom I have learned, along with instilling compassion and loving kindness in those who may really need it. I want to be a healer. I want to heal troubled souls.
I show up at Hospice House in Calabasas, California for my volunteer training with Gladys, the supervisor, and two other volunteer trainees. Gladys is a kindly, happy-go-lucky Christian who herself had started as a Hospice volunteer and rose to a paid staff position. She always has a big smile on her face and never really takes anything too seriously. Gladys is a trooper because she works day in and day out with human beings at the end of their lives, which isn’t always a sun-shiny, knee-slapping good time.
When you are admitted to Hospice House, you have basically six months to live. That is the physical stipulation that is confirmed by a doctor in order to receive the Medicare coverage.
Gladys has us introduce ourselves and explain what cosmic forces compelled us to want to lend a helping hand.
“My name is Jay. I really feel like I am on some kind of spiritual mission where I want to impart some of the great wisdom that I have learned over the years to other people who might really need it.” I am feeling a little smug here, maybe even over confident. Gladys is beaming, her eyes actually glinting with tears. “Sometimes just a simple quote from The Bible can save a life or really bring peace to a person who is really feeling down.”
As I finish I gaze humbly around the room at each volunteer. They are moved. They believe. They want to be my Christian foot soldiers on the march to our great cause of saving souls.
Our first order of business is feeding of the Hospice patients. We are to observe how this is implemented and gain a general introduction to the care center. I find this odd because why would we need to be there when they are being fed? I picture some sort of waiter role, trucking trays of food back and forth from the kitchen or maybe fetching drinks, taking orders, being on hand to help scoop ice cream at desert time. This was definitely not the case.
I am stunned when I enter the cafeteria. Most of the patients can neither move nor speak and a few appear already in the death spasms. They need to be fed, because, as I am told, if they weren’t, they would never eat and the food would simply be thrown away promptly at the six o’ clock bell. I never anticipated the final days being this vegetative, almost as if each patient has returned to the postnatal phase where they are virtually helpless as a babe. I hang back uneasily to observe Gladys go around to each individual, many in wheel chairs, many unresponsive, many babbling incoherently, many just staring at me like I am the incarnation of the devil. Gladys quickly tries to scoop a few spoonfuls into unresponsive mouths then moves on to the next person. I do my best to paste on a grin but the room is so miserable, so depressing, so dim and utterly without hope and there is such a ubiquitous cloud of unwieldy death shrouding all, my smile hurts. It physically hurts.
In absolute wonder, I watch Gladys as she dances from one patient the next, ever-smiling and ever-offering words of love and encouragement, never wavering for a second. My God she is a trooper. My God.
“This is Mr. Klein. We thought we lost him two weeks ago but he’s still here,” Gladys says, patting the back of an elderly man in a reclining wheel chair with a brace that supports his neck. Everything about him is gray, almost as if he is only half on the material plane. First, he looks like he is about 120 years old. His hands are bony, claw-like, crippled with palsy. She makes a few faint attempts to offer him the pureed paste from his tray, but he doesn’t respond, his lips slightly trembling at the cold of the spoon.
“Some of the patients have to get their food in soft form otherwise they can’t swallow or digest it,” she explains.
Mr. Klein’s plate consists of three little piles of mashed food product: one gray, one darker gray, and one an orangish brown. I don’t have the faintest clue what kind of foods these represent but assume it is of the generic baby food variety.
“Are you working?” A stern-faced woman in glasses asks me with a German accent.
“Uh, I’m learning. I’m a volunteer.”
“Come with me.” She takes my hand and leads me to the corner where a large-eared, old man sits upright staring straight ahead into oblivion. “This is Klaus. He needs to eat dinner. Please.” She bids me to sit across from Klaus.
“I’m not sure if I…”
“It’s very easy,” she says. “You take a little like this and offer it to him.”
She takes a small amount of rice and pushes it into Klaus’s mouth. He chews, his eyes still peering off into space. She hands me the fork. “Go ahead.”
“Hey, what’s up, bro?” I ask Klaus, trying to scoop rice onto the fork, not wanting to get too much in and choke the poor bastard. Klaus just stares beyond me vacuously.
“He doesn’t speak much English. Please.”
I raise the fork to his paper-thin lips with a little rice on board. As the fork touches his lips, they part and I dump the rice in. He chews slowly and impassively, like a cow. “Good. See, it’s easy,” She says then she leaves. I have no clue where she goes and don’t see her after that. She just disappears.
“So, how are we doing there, Klaus?” He just stares past me. “Do you like rice?” As a response, he gives a long oozing fart with liquid sounds which I know must be a bad thing. I turn around and there is a heavy-set Hispanic lady in a wheel chair, two inches from my nose, staring at me with piercing black eyes.
“How’s it going?” I say uneasily.
“Feed me,” she says in loud monotone.
“Um, I’m kinda with this dude.”
“Feed me.”
Gladys comes by and takes the fork.
“This is Kiki. Why don’t you help her and I’ll assist Mr. Voller.”
I wheel Kiki back to her table and begin shoveling chicken chow mein into her mouth. At the first spoonful, she makes a disgusted face.
“You don’t like it?”
“Cold.”
“Oh.” I offer her more and she eats, still each bite eliciting the same reaction as if I am feeding her Comet.
“Juice,” she snaps.
I offer her a drink from her glass. Despite being confined to a wheel chair, Kiki seems more vigorous and lively than the others. Gladys tells me that Kiki is not on Hospice but has other “special needs”. The center doubles as a nursing home but the active elderly who don’t have one foot in the grave are kept in another part of the ward. It is sad they have Kiki bunched in with the soon-to-be-departed.
“Biscuit.”
I take the dinner roll on her plate and hold it to her lips. The dinner role appears more agreeable than the chow mein.
“Juice.” I offer her more juice.
“Biscuit.” I offer another bite of the bread.
I offer her more chow mein and she only makes the disgusted face.
“Take me to my room,” Kiki says abruptly.
“Uh, not sure if I’m supposed to do that.”
“Take me to my room.”
I look for Gladys.
“She wants me to take her to her room.”
“No. She needs to eat. She just wants attention,” Gladys explains.
I feed her a while longer until she no longer seems interested, only staring at me like I just sprouted horns. I keep smiling through the pain.
“This is Mr. O’Leary,” Gladys says, leading me to a hearty-looking fellow who resembles a retired general with a buzz cut and a tall, solid frame. Strong Irish boxer’s features. A wave of relief passes over me as I feel that at last, here is someone I can talk to who is coherent and we might have a nice warm discussion over dinner. “Hi, Mr. O’Leary. How are you today, handsome?” Gladys says, hugging him then kissing the top of his head. Gladys takes his fork and offers him food and things go down hill from there. He bites down on the fork and won’t let go, finally dropping it into his lap, then on the floor. He clenches great fistfuls of chow mein and rice and smears it across his face and over his pink polo shirt.
“Oh dear…” says Gladys, her smile going crooked, backing off as Mr. O’Leary crushes the food in his enormous hands and plasters it over his entire body, wolfing it down like a wildman. Gladys looks at me and I see a trace of the real Gladys, hidden in there somewhere. She is doing her best to maintain and be a good Christian, but damn it is hard.
“Mr. Moser…” she introduces me to an affable man with gray hair who doesn’t look that old and appears normal enough until he opens his mouth...
“Be-bop the de-dop, the car said, the man said, he go, she go, which go,” he stammers, in a stream of consciousness rant.
“Yes, yes, I know Mr. Moser,” Gladys says, hugging him.
“Which way, this way, the car way, the car, the bus, brick bus, bit bus…”
“Yes! Yes! The bus! Mr. Moser, the bus,” replies Gladys.
“Frontiers, frontier, the frontier, the guesswork, the car work, the car, the cars, haddle-haddle-haddle…”
“I love you, Mr. Moser! “
“Bing-bong the ding-dong, the ring, the thing, the car, the car thing…” As he speaks he always stares straight ahead, never directing his words at anyone in particular, unblinking.
“Yes, I know!”
I turn around and Kiki is inches away from me again with that unnerving, penetrating look. “Take me to my room.”
“Why don’t you take her and we’ll meet you there? We’re going to the conference room from here. It’s on the way,” Gladys says.
“Oh, uh...”
“Don’t put her in bed though. She just wants attention.”
I find myself pushing Kiki down the interminable corridors that seem to stretch on forever. Patients watch in wide-eyed horror as we pass. Some stand in corners like zombies, others truck by aimlessly on walkers or wheelchairs. I picture this as some anesthetized plane of lower hell where the sane mix with the insane, in a slow, simmering decline of the senses, not quite dead but dead enough; a kind of atrophy of the soul where one is trapped in a spoon-fed nightmare, the delicious freedom of death only spoken in the fractured chittering of the demented.
“Uh, which way do we go?” I ask realizing that if I didn’t, we could have circled the facility until one of us actually expired in the process.
“Straight.”
“Left here?”
“No.”
“Right here?”
“No.”
“Are we getting close?”
“No.”
“Which way now?”
“Right.”
“What’s your room number?”
“Left.”
“Are we close to your room?”
“No.”
“Which way now?”
“Left.”
“Are we close?”
“No.”
If by some miracle, we finally find her room after what seems like an endless trip around the ward. Her room is a tiny space with two single beds, a nightstand with a few books and stuffed animals and a single closet. A white specter of a woman lies in the second bed nearby asleep.
“This is it, huh? Here we are. Okay.”
There is a silence as she just stares at me and I nod uncomfortably and try to smile. I go out into the hallway to see if Gladys is on her way. Nothing. I go back in and stand near Kiki, glancing at the woman in the second bed.
“What’s her name?”
“She’s sleeping!” Kiki yells.
I scan her books, a weird assortment of horror novels and thrillers by Peter Straub and Stephen King.
“Did you read these? They look like good books,” I say.
“Those are my husband’s books.”
“Oh, where is he?”
“He died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“He died in a plane crash.”
“Wow, that’s sad.”
“He was a writer and a movie director.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
“He never sold anything. No luck.”
A long silence. I sneak out to the hallway even though she is spearing me through the whole time with her piercing black eyes. No Gladys.
“I want to go to bed.”
“Well, uh...”
“Put me in bed. I want to sleep.”
“Not sure if I’m supposed to.”
“I want to sleep.”
“Yeah, I know but...”
“Put me in bed.”
“Can you do it yourself?”
“No.”
“Alright.”
I position the wheelchair close to the bed and move around behind Kiki to place my hands under her arms. I lift with all my strength. She offers no assistance whatsoever just sitting there like a stubborn elephant. She feels like she weighs a thousand pounds. I strain and manage to get her up and wedge her into her sheets. Her legs dangle awkwardly over the bed. I put my shoulder to her shins and heave. Finally, I’m able to pull the sheets over her body.
“Alright, there we go. You’re all set.” She just stares at me with those wide black eyes. “So, uh, I better, uh, you know, head out.”
“Do you like books?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Those are my husband’s books.”
I flip through her books and find “A Farewell To Arms” by Ernest Hemingway.
“Wow, you have Hemingway? He’s great.”
“I don’t know.”
I sit there for about twenty seconds trying to look happy and content while she just glares at me. Twenty seconds feel like twenty minutes.
“Are you from Los Angeles originally?”
“No.”
Another twenty seconds. I pretend to read, to smile, to nod. I glance back at the hallway like a drug freak.
“Do you have a big family?”
“No.”
Another twenty seconds.
“Is that your daughter in that picture?”
“No.”
“What’s your relationship with God?”
“You ask too many questions!”
I sit in silence, looking at her, then down at Hemingway, then back to her smiling self-consciously, nodding, then down at the Hemingway again. I am about to throw out another question but I hold it in. I feel the back of my neck creak and the hair stand up on end. For a second I feel like my skull will rip apart and my brain will spill onto the carpet, sizzling like a raw egg. I look at Kiki and for a brief instant, I notice a twinge of warmth in her eyes mixed with pity.
“What are you doing?!” A scolding voice comes from the hall. I turn and see Gladys framed in the doorway with an angry look. I want to say, “I’m diddling my nutsack, what does it look like?” But what I actually say is, “Uh, she wanted to go to bed.”
“We don’t move patients. Only nurses move patients.”
“Oh, I was just talking to her.”
Gladys is really pissed like she caught me urinating on the floor or something. “Come on. We’re going now.”
I move to the door, glance back at Kiki and give her a wave. “See you later, Kiki.” She makes no response and for a moment my heart leaps as I think she might have died, right there, her face is frozen in that wide-eyed look of wonder. She finally blinks and I sigh, hugely relieved.
“Don’t move patients. She just wants attention anyways and will be back in her wheel chair and down the hall in five minutes or so,” Gladys explains.
I am a little huffy that she left me alone for such a long period of time.
“Where did you go? It felt like you were gone forever.”
“I went to check my email.”
Great, she’s checking her email while I engage in elderly abuse.
“That’s sad her husband died in a plane crash,” I say.
“Oh, he didn’t die in a plane crash. He comes every other day to visit her.”
I join Gladys and the other two volunteers in the conference room for the remainder of the orientation. Our meals are brought to us and we eat while Gladys goes over the rules and protocol of Hospice House. We are fed the exact Chinese chicken chow mein and rice meal the patients received. After feeding so many Hospice patients the same thing, I am feeling a little queasy. While Gladys shows us the volunteer handbook, Mr. O’Leary barges in like a rampaging zombie and throws our handbooks around the table.
“Grab your plates!” Gladys screams.
We all try to be cool and gather up our plates and silverware. We try to appear happy and casual while Mr. O’Leary thrashes about in the room but everyone looks wildly disturbed, even Gladys.
“Grab your pens!”
Mr. O’Leary has armed himself with a pen and is wielding it like a dagger, flailing his arms about and bumping into the table. He bumps into me and I try to look calm expecting any second to feel the pen driven into my carotid artery.
“Hi, Mr. O’Leary. Do you want to join our meeting?” Gladys says in a loud, measured tone, the color drained from her face.
Mr. O’Leary continues to thrash about like a gut-shot zombie. He tries to rip the employee handbook out of my hands and suddenly I am in a minor tug-of-war match with a man who has less than six months to live.
“C’mon! If we pretend to leave, maybe he’ll go away,” Gladys says to us, not even trying to be discreet at this point. “Mr. O’Leary, we’re leaving. You can come if you want.”
We all file out the door and Mr. O’Leary shambles after us, the room in complete disarray, papers scattered everywhere, food and dishes spilled on the floor, glasses of water overturned and dripping on the carpet. We roam down the hall and Mr. O’Leary follows us. No one speaks. Everyone looks like we just witnessed Bambi executed by Dick Cheney.
“In here!” Gladys yells and motions us into a patient residence room where two frail old men sleep peacefully in their beds. Mr. O’Leary staggers in, bouncing off the wall. I fear for the tenuous lives of the old men. Mr. O’Leary still grasps the pen upside down in one hand.
“Quick! Run!” Gladys commands and we all bolt down the hallway. I want to stay and stand guard over the two sleeping men but this is not an option. We sprint down the hallway.
Gladys takes us on a hasty tour of the facilities, clearly still shaken by Mr. O’Leary’s rampage. We meet a few warm old people along the way that, thankfully, are fully lucid and energetic. Gladys greets them with hugs and words of love and support. My mind is still on the zombie island massacre that could be happening down the hall but I try to blot it out of my mind as I will try to do with much of the memories of the evening.
Our tour brings us to the “rec center” which is really only a large room with a long conference table, many rough, very uncomfortable looking sofas and a blurry big screen TV. A large group of patients sit around watching Samuel Jackson and Collin Ferrel machine gun terrorists. There are explosions, bloodletting, bodies flying everywhere. Somebody takes a head shot and their face blows apart. I see Samuel Jackson throw a knife that sticks in a guy’s eye. I look around the room and see who is handling the remote--an angry-looking, middle-aged Hispanic orderly, leaning against the wall, so enraptured by the carnage he doesn’t even know we are there. I realize there is nothing that exists on earth that will pry the remote from the orderly’s fingers. Half the people in the room, I am certain, have already passed away. They look like they have been lying there for days, some in contorted positions on sofas, some spread at the conference table, some half on the floor. A few stare glassy-eyed and stunned at the screen. Some lie with their heads thrown back, mouths wide open.
“This is Mr. Garza. He’s an orderly here.”
Mr. Garza doesn’t even turn to say “hi”. His arms are crossed at his chest and he grips the remote like a lifeline.
By this point in my visit to Hospice House, I am feeling that my soul has gained about twenty-six pounds. I feel heavy, tired, burnt out, like I could sleep for days. I feel sick and drained like a vampire might after supplementing his diet of blood with sugar water and Twinkies. I want to go home. There were no spiritual lessons here. There were no healings. There were no great life-affirming talks of wisdom and transcendence. There was no robust inspiration of light that myself and the other volunteers might have shone on the darkness here. No one was saved.
At the main entrance, Gladys punches a code in the security lock. For the moment, she has forgotten the code and we are trapped. I am scared. I am horrified. I want to jump out a window. I want to break the door down to get out. The little Asian volunteer feverishly pushes on the bar, trying to swing the door open, taking panicked breaths.
“No! Don’t do that! It won’t open without the code!” Gladys shouts. The Asian man continues pushing on the bar. He doesn’t care. He’s had enough too. I feel short of breath. I look around like a trapped animal. What if I am to be stuck in here all night? There must be another way out. There has to be another way out.
I notice a sad-faced lesbian nurse pushing Kiki around in her wheelchair. Kiki sees me and flashes a faint grin of recognition. That faint grin offers me worlds of hope. I feel tremendous relief. I wave to her and she waves back. I can suddenly breathe again as Gladys punches in the code and the cold night air hits me as I wander out into the parking lot, the half moon and glittering stars never looking so good.
You Must Haveth Thy Sense of Humor
“You Must Haveth Thy Sense of Humor”
I cherish my Sunday mornings because that is my soccer time. I can run like a maniac, breathe fresh air, compete, laugh, meditate, get-away and sweat, with very basic, simple intentions before me. I find soccer gives me a better workout than any other activity or exercise because I am forced to work my entire body and am constantly forced to run.
When I got back into playing soccer after college, I fell in with a group of Persians who had been playing together for years. At first it was a little hard to acclimate into their group because I was the lone American so I didn’t receive the same treatment as the other players did. I was fouled more often and yelled at constantly. I really had to prove myself as a player, much more so than the other new Persian players.
One of the interesting cultural factors of Persian athletes I have observed over the years, which is in sharp contrast to athletes from other countries, is the intensity and argumentative nature of the competition. When Persians compete, even if it is a kick-around at a local park among so-called friends, they treat it like the finals of the World Cup. There are constant arguments, battles, fisticuffs, intentional injuries, revenge, temper tantrums, screaming, crying, and so forth. When I have played with Americans, British, Germans, Asians, South Americans, Italians, Spanish, Mexicans, basically any other nationality, you have guys who want to win and play hard and sometimes fight and get angry, but not to the extent the Persians do. Persians love to win. Persians have to win. Even if there is nothing really at stake except pride. Americans want to win too, but there will be a point when an American will finally throw up his hands and proclaim, “You know what? It’s just a game and we ain’t getting paid so what the heck?”
A friendly kick-around at a park for Persians is all out war. Even the dude who is the nicest, friendliest chap before kick off, the person who seems like the most compassionate lover of humanity the modern world has ever known, with patience like a saint and monk-like restraint, will morph into the Demon King of Destruction on the field. And someone is always bound to get hurt. I have seen broken jaws, broken legs, broken ribs (I’ve done some of the breaking and had it done to me), broken arms, broken ankles and feet (I’ve had my foot broken too), broken noses (sorry, did this to someone too), heads cracked open, black eyes, fat lips, bloody noses, torn muscles, many, many destroyed knees, and numerous other injuries.
When a fight breaks out, as it always does, (I have been playing with this group for eleven years now and maybe have had three Sundays without at least one fight) I have to step back and laugh because the way I look at it is: I’m here for the fun of it. I’m here to get a little exercise. Laugh a little, sweat a little, connect with the land, my neighbors and fellow athletes and test my skills. Winning for me is great, but in the spirit of play, not in the spirit of harming someone else or making someone else feel bad. Granted, I have injured quite a number of persons in the course of different games but I am never compelled by malicious or vengeful motives. Not that I am more highly evolved or more intelligent or have greater sensibilities than anyone else, I am just happy to be outside, running around and appreciate every second of it. To get angry and fight really defeats the purpose.
I try to apply this to all areas of my life. It is very hard for me to become angry. Ever since my near-death experience, anger doesn’t seem to make much sense anymore. Anger and frustration are born out of thwarted desires. Not that I have beat desire completely, but it has cooled a bit, and I no longer need to have everything, be with everyone, smash things and be loud.
Often we take ourselves too seriously. To me, when someone is too serious about everything in their life, this is a sign of immaturity or ignorance. This is especially true when someone is older. I always feel sad for the older person, who has lived so many years only to reach a point where they are letting anger eat up their bodies and minds. It is anger that issues from stress and leads to more stress and more anger. We are angry because we are not getting what we want. We are angry that we lost a loved one or that someone cheated us or that God is challenging us. Smile and realize that it is all part of God’s perfect plan.
I cherish my Sunday mornings because that is my soccer time. I can run like a maniac, breathe fresh air, compete, laugh, meditate, get-away and sweat, with very basic, simple intentions before me. I find soccer gives me a better workout than any other activity or exercise because I am forced to work my entire body and am constantly forced to run.
When I got back into playing soccer after college, I fell in with a group of Persians who had been playing together for years. At first it was a little hard to acclimate into their group because I was the lone American so I didn’t receive the same treatment as the other players did. I was fouled more often and yelled at constantly. I really had to prove myself as a player, much more so than the other new Persian players.
One of the interesting cultural factors of Persian athletes I have observed over the years, which is in sharp contrast to athletes from other countries, is the intensity and argumentative nature of the competition. When Persians compete, even if it is a kick-around at a local park among so-called friends, they treat it like the finals of the World Cup. There are constant arguments, battles, fisticuffs, intentional injuries, revenge, temper tantrums, screaming, crying, and so forth. When I have played with Americans, British, Germans, Asians, South Americans, Italians, Spanish, Mexicans, basically any other nationality, you have guys who want to win and play hard and sometimes fight and get angry, but not to the extent the Persians do. Persians love to win. Persians have to win. Even if there is nothing really at stake except pride. Americans want to win too, but there will be a point when an American will finally throw up his hands and proclaim, “You know what? It’s just a game and we ain’t getting paid so what the heck?”
A friendly kick-around at a park for Persians is all out war. Even the dude who is the nicest, friendliest chap before kick off, the person who seems like the most compassionate lover of humanity the modern world has ever known, with patience like a saint and monk-like restraint, will morph into the Demon King of Destruction on the field. And someone is always bound to get hurt. I have seen broken jaws, broken legs, broken ribs (I’ve done some of the breaking and had it done to me), broken arms, broken ankles and feet (I’ve had my foot broken too), broken noses (sorry, did this to someone too), heads cracked open, black eyes, fat lips, bloody noses, torn muscles, many, many destroyed knees, and numerous other injuries.
When a fight breaks out, as it always does, (I have been playing with this group for eleven years now and maybe have had three Sundays without at least one fight) I have to step back and laugh because the way I look at it is: I’m here for the fun of it. I’m here to get a little exercise. Laugh a little, sweat a little, connect with the land, my neighbors and fellow athletes and test my skills. Winning for me is great, but in the spirit of play, not in the spirit of harming someone else or making someone else feel bad. Granted, I have injured quite a number of persons in the course of different games but I am never compelled by malicious or vengeful motives. Not that I am more highly evolved or more intelligent or have greater sensibilities than anyone else, I am just happy to be outside, running around and appreciate every second of it. To get angry and fight really defeats the purpose.
I try to apply this to all areas of my life. It is very hard for me to become angry. Ever since my near-death experience, anger doesn’t seem to make much sense anymore. Anger and frustration are born out of thwarted desires. Not that I have beat desire completely, but it has cooled a bit, and I no longer need to have everything, be with everyone, smash things and be loud.
Often we take ourselves too seriously. To me, when someone is too serious about everything in their life, this is a sign of immaturity or ignorance. This is especially true when someone is older. I always feel sad for the older person, who has lived so many years only to reach a point where they are letting anger eat up their bodies and minds. It is anger that issues from stress and leads to more stress and more anger. We are angry because we are not getting what we want. We are angry that we lost a loved one or that someone cheated us or that God is challenging us. Smile and realize that it is all part of God’s perfect plan.
Relax and Move On Pt. 2
We reached a row of oak trees that shielded interminable fields of onion and broccoli. A lone mangy coyote picked his way along one of the empty ponds.
“That’s a magnificent animal.”
“I hate coyotes. One went after Sancho, my cat,” said a heavy, Hispanic lady who looked like a WWF wrestler with her giant arms squeezed through the sleeves of her puffy vest, two sets of binoculars and a long-lensed camera dangling at her massive bosom. “I had to throw bleach in his eyes.”
“That’s illegal, Carmen. You can get a fine for that,” Tom snapped angrily.
“What am I supposed to do when he’s roaming in my backyard, Tom? Tell me.”
“If you tell a coyote to take a hike, he’s gonna listen. Coyote’s a smart animal. Gotta be.”
“I wasn’t going to risk it with Sanchito. He’s sixteen and can barely see.”
“Very simple, keep Sancho in the house. Don’t let him go out.”
“That’s where his potty is though.”
“Put the potty in the garage. C’mon, use some common sense, Carmen.”
“Coyote’s are stupid.”
“Not at all. How do you think they can survive with mankind laying waste to their habitat? Relax and move on.”
“Hey Tom, I thought you said there were ducks on this walk,” Carl Feinberg said and the air suddenly got as thick as frozen margarine with the tension.
“There are,” Tom said taken aback.
“I haven’t seen a single duck,” Carl Feinberg said.
“There were ducks four days ago after the rains.”
“Where’s the ducks? You should have checked it yesterday,” Carl said testily, waving a hand in the air as a sign of dismissal.
“I couldn’t yesterday, Carl, I drove my mom to the DMV to renew her license.”
“Do you see water? How can there be ducks?”
“There’s no ducks, Carl.”
“Why don’t you check it beforehand?”
“I told you, there was water four days ago, Carl, but it seeps into the soil.”
“And you didn’t know this?”
“I did.”
“VCAS had a walk to the Ojai Meadow Preserve and I missed it for this worthless thing.”
“Then you should have gone to the Ojai Meadow Preserve, Carl.”
“Plus it’s ten minutes closer to my house.”
“You can leave anytime, Carl. You’re not obligated to be here.”
“I’m here. What am I going to do? Drive thirty minutes and show up late like a moron?”
“It’s a free country, Carl. So I made a mistake, big deal.”
“Every walk you do is a mistake. No ducks. No water. Last time, we stood in a parking lot for three hours.”
“I had to wait for Triple A. My battery died.”
“Yeah, your battery died. Your battery always dies.”
Tom looked distraught. His face turned beet red and he strode away, holding his breath, looking like he was about to implode. Jacob and Degan covered their mouths to shield their laughter.
Barbara caught my worried expression. “He blows up at least once every time he leads. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be okay.”
I watched Tom rubbing his forehead and pacing in circles. Carl calmly unwrapped a Hostess Cupcake and munched lazily as if nothing had happened.
The next instant I heard a shriek followed by a curse that sounded like “whorefucker!” Then Tom was dragging himself over the lip of the pond, one of his Air Jordan’s coated in mud. He limped around, clutching his knee.
“That’s it. I’m done. I heard a pop.” He held a hand over his knee. “That’s my bad knee. I’m totally fubar, people”.
“Big surprise,” Carl mumbled, shaking his head.
We offered to help Tom back to the car but he refused any aid. Then it got to the point where he couldn’t walk any longer and just sat down in the gravel and removed his knee brace.
“Feels like my Meniscus. Bet you anything.”
“Was it messed up before?”
“It’s been messed up since forever.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Last time? Skateboard.”
“When was that?”
“June.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who ride skateboards but when you’re middle-aged and still riding skateboards, I tend to form opinions.
Jacob and I each took an arm and helped Tom up.
Back at the cars, Tom was subdued. Most of the people left early but we stayed with him as did Degan’s parents, Fred and Suzanne.
“This is an industrial area. Was he really expecting us to see any good birds here?” Fred whispered to me as he placed his scope in the leather case.
“I don’t know. When I read the newsletter it said, ‘Saticoy Ponds’, which sounds like a natural kinda place.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Suzanne said.
“This sucks, big time,” was Degan’s astute summation of the excursion.
Tom stretched his knee out in the cab of his pickup.
“See this, J-2, appreciate it,” Tom said pouring bottled water over his knee. “Ever step you take in this life means something. Don’t take nothin’ for granted.” Again my son offered his “you’re full of crap but I’m being polite” forced grin and nod.
“Well, we’re out of here. Thanks for having us, Tom,” I said offering my hand.
“Damn! Damn!” Tom pounded the cab.
Fred and Suzanne thanked Tom and my son exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers with Degan.
“You guys want to drive down a little ways? Sometimes there’s water in the back ponds and a lot of the sea bids collect there,” Tom said with boyish enthusiasm and the first tenderness I had seen in his eyes.
“Nah. I think we’re good. I got a few errands to run today,” I replied as affably as possible.
“We’re gonna have to pass too, Tom. Again, thank you,” Suzanne said resolutely.
Tom was crestfallen.
“Please. It’s only…” he checked his cell phone, “not even 10:30.”
“Nah, we better, you know, head out,” I said, placing the lens caps on my binoculars.
“Please. Five minutes. That’s all I ask. Give me that,” Tom said imploringly, his eyes begging for mercy.
Fred and Suzanne looked at each other, slightly disturbed.
A sadistic side of me wanted to stick the knife in and beat it but I couldn’t do that to Tom. There was an earnestness to him that I found endearing. Maybe that’s what brought the others here today too. He was one of those great sufferers you run into a few times in your life who seem to have the world pitted against them, but as you get to know them better, realize they make their world pitted against them. They won’t have it any other way.
“This guy’s a dumbass, let’s just go,” Jacob said, again loud enough for Tom to hear everything.
“Give him five minutes. It obviously means a lot to him.”
“But the guy’s an effin’ idiot.”
“He’s not an effin’ idiot and don’t curse.”
“Effin’ isn’t a curse word, dad.”
I looked at Fred and Suzanne and she was shaking her head at me. Fred’s eyes were more empathetic.
Finally, we gave in and agreed to let Tom lead us further back down the dirt road, not really sure what to expect but wishing we could get this over with and get on with our Saturday.
As we rounded a bend, we came upon a lake dotted with sea birds. Sunlight sparkled resplendently on the surface. A flock of Canadian Geese soared overhead and glided into the brilliant water runway.
I looked over at Tom and the deep lines in his forehead were gone, the shadows under his eyes vanished, the grooves at his brow had smoothed away. His whole countenance softened and I thought I actually saw a tear glint in one eye.
“Damn, look at that, will you. This is where we shoulda gone in the first place.”
I glassed the pond and through the deep focus of my binoculars, and with the high contrast lighting and long focal length, saw, in heavenly detail, the rich varieties of birds, the whole image having an ethereal quality, almost as if I were gazing into another world. I thought of Buddha’s Pure Land which describes a wondrous place of clear waters, gentle breezes, and an amazing assortment of birds. I wanted to keep looking through my binoculars forever. It was like a window directly into heaven. I saw Mallards, Egrets, Coots, Canadian Geese; the Bufflehead, Ring-neck, Canvas-back, and Green-winged teal ducks. I saw Widgeons, Pied-billed Grebes, Ring-billed Gulls, and the majestic Great Blue Heron. There were a series of tiny bird houses along the waterway which Tom explained were erected by a woman for migratory swallows to replace the tree homes that were cut down during construction of the water reclamation plant. As a result, myriads of swallows filled the air around these ponds in the springtime.
Tom limped out along the waterway using a hockey stick as a crutch. We focused our birdwalk on the area around the central pond and found a plethora of specimens: Killdeer, Red-tailed Hawk, California Thrasher, Says Phoebe, Semipalmated Plover, Cattle Egret (which Tom explained was introduced into North America by a small flock of the birds being trapped in a hurricane in Africa and carried across the Atlantic Ocean); Junco, Starling, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Mockingbird, Kestral, Savannah Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, American Pipit, Spotted Towee, Black Phoebe (Grassdipper), Peregrin Falcon.
“Larry! Larry!” Tom started shouting and waving his arms, dropping the hockey stick in the dirt. I saw a large bird circling high overhead but couldn’t make out the markings. Finally I found him in my binoculars. I saw the distinctive white head and the broad, majestic wing span. I didn’t even know we had bald eagles in Southern California. Fred and Suzanne were delighted. Even Jacob and Degan were enthralled. Larry, the bald eagle, disappeared over the rolling hills toward Sulphur Mountain.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, just made this worth blowin’ my damn knee again,” Tom said, pumping his fist and throwing his hands up, celebrating. “YEAH! YEAY, BABY! GO LARRY!”
Tom high-fived each of us and slammed my son on the back again, almost taking a nose dive into the dirt as he did.
“How did you like that, youngblood?! Almost as good as the blond’s cell number.”
My son just nodded.
“Let’s wrap this thing. Chargers got a playoff game at one.”
Tom got on his cell phone and I deduced he was talking to his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend by all the yelling and cursing that commenced. We waited for a while for him to hang up so we could say our parting words, but he didn’t. Fred and Suzanne looked at us with puzzled expressions and finally we hopped in the car and drove off.
“Hey dad, remind me never to go birdwatching with you again.”
“Hey, you met a friend. You learned something.”
“What did I learn today, dad?”
I had to think about that for a minute.
Relax and move on.
“That’s a magnificent animal.”
“I hate coyotes. One went after Sancho, my cat,” said a heavy, Hispanic lady who looked like a WWF wrestler with her giant arms squeezed through the sleeves of her puffy vest, two sets of binoculars and a long-lensed camera dangling at her massive bosom. “I had to throw bleach in his eyes.”
“That’s illegal, Carmen. You can get a fine for that,” Tom snapped angrily.
“What am I supposed to do when he’s roaming in my backyard, Tom? Tell me.”
“If you tell a coyote to take a hike, he’s gonna listen. Coyote’s a smart animal. Gotta be.”
“I wasn’t going to risk it with Sanchito. He’s sixteen and can barely see.”
“Very simple, keep Sancho in the house. Don’t let him go out.”
“That’s where his potty is though.”
“Put the potty in the garage. C’mon, use some common sense, Carmen.”
“Coyote’s are stupid.”
“Not at all. How do you think they can survive with mankind laying waste to their habitat? Relax and move on.”
“Hey Tom, I thought you said there were ducks on this walk,” Carl Feinberg said and the air suddenly got as thick as frozen margarine with the tension.
“There are,” Tom said taken aback.
“I haven’t seen a single duck,” Carl Feinberg said.
“There were ducks four days ago after the rains.”
“Where’s the ducks? You should have checked it yesterday,” Carl said testily, waving a hand in the air as a sign of dismissal.
“I couldn’t yesterday, Carl, I drove my mom to the DMV to renew her license.”
“Do you see water? How can there be ducks?”
“There’s no ducks, Carl.”
“Why don’t you check it beforehand?”
“I told you, there was water four days ago, Carl, but it seeps into the soil.”
“And you didn’t know this?”
“I did.”
“VCAS had a walk to the Ojai Meadow Preserve and I missed it for this worthless thing.”
“Then you should have gone to the Ojai Meadow Preserve, Carl.”
“Plus it’s ten minutes closer to my house.”
“You can leave anytime, Carl. You’re not obligated to be here.”
“I’m here. What am I going to do? Drive thirty minutes and show up late like a moron?”
“It’s a free country, Carl. So I made a mistake, big deal.”
“Every walk you do is a mistake. No ducks. No water. Last time, we stood in a parking lot for three hours.”
“I had to wait for Triple A. My battery died.”
“Yeah, your battery died. Your battery always dies.”
Tom looked distraught. His face turned beet red and he strode away, holding his breath, looking like he was about to implode. Jacob and Degan covered their mouths to shield their laughter.
Barbara caught my worried expression. “He blows up at least once every time he leads. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be okay.”
I watched Tom rubbing his forehead and pacing in circles. Carl calmly unwrapped a Hostess Cupcake and munched lazily as if nothing had happened.
The next instant I heard a shriek followed by a curse that sounded like “whorefucker!” Then Tom was dragging himself over the lip of the pond, one of his Air Jordan’s coated in mud. He limped around, clutching his knee.
“That’s it. I’m done. I heard a pop.” He held a hand over his knee. “That’s my bad knee. I’m totally fubar, people”.
“Big surprise,” Carl mumbled, shaking his head.
We offered to help Tom back to the car but he refused any aid. Then it got to the point where he couldn’t walk any longer and just sat down in the gravel and removed his knee brace.
“Feels like my Meniscus. Bet you anything.”
“Was it messed up before?”
“It’s been messed up since forever.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Last time? Skateboard.”
“When was that?”
“June.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who ride skateboards but when you’re middle-aged and still riding skateboards, I tend to form opinions.
Jacob and I each took an arm and helped Tom up.
Back at the cars, Tom was subdued. Most of the people left early but we stayed with him as did Degan’s parents, Fred and Suzanne.
“This is an industrial area. Was he really expecting us to see any good birds here?” Fred whispered to me as he placed his scope in the leather case.
“I don’t know. When I read the newsletter it said, ‘Saticoy Ponds’, which sounds like a natural kinda place.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Suzanne said.
“This sucks, big time,” was Degan’s astute summation of the excursion.
Tom stretched his knee out in the cab of his pickup.
“See this, J-2, appreciate it,” Tom said pouring bottled water over his knee. “Ever step you take in this life means something. Don’t take nothin’ for granted.” Again my son offered his “you’re full of crap but I’m being polite” forced grin and nod.
“Well, we’re out of here. Thanks for having us, Tom,” I said offering my hand.
“Damn! Damn!” Tom pounded the cab.
Fred and Suzanne thanked Tom and my son exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers with Degan.
“You guys want to drive down a little ways? Sometimes there’s water in the back ponds and a lot of the sea bids collect there,” Tom said with boyish enthusiasm and the first tenderness I had seen in his eyes.
“Nah. I think we’re good. I got a few errands to run today,” I replied as affably as possible.
“We’re gonna have to pass too, Tom. Again, thank you,” Suzanne said resolutely.
Tom was crestfallen.
“Please. It’s only…” he checked his cell phone, “not even 10:30.”
“Nah, we better, you know, head out,” I said, placing the lens caps on my binoculars.
“Please. Five minutes. That’s all I ask. Give me that,” Tom said imploringly, his eyes begging for mercy.
Fred and Suzanne looked at each other, slightly disturbed.
A sadistic side of me wanted to stick the knife in and beat it but I couldn’t do that to Tom. There was an earnestness to him that I found endearing. Maybe that’s what brought the others here today too. He was one of those great sufferers you run into a few times in your life who seem to have the world pitted against them, but as you get to know them better, realize they make their world pitted against them. They won’t have it any other way.
“This guy’s a dumbass, let’s just go,” Jacob said, again loud enough for Tom to hear everything.
“Give him five minutes. It obviously means a lot to him.”
“But the guy’s an effin’ idiot.”
“He’s not an effin’ idiot and don’t curse.”
“Effin’ isn’t a curse word, dad.”
I looked at Fred and Suzanne and she was shaking her head at me. Fred’s eyes were more empathetic.
Finally, we gave in and agreed to let Tom lead us further back down the dirt road, not really sure what to expect but wishing we could get this over with and get on with our Saturday.
As we rounded a bend, we came upon a lake dotted with sea birds. Sunlight sparkled resplendently on the surface. A flock of Canadian Geese soared overhead and glided into the brilliant water runway.
I looked over at Tom and the deep lines in his forehead were gone, the shadows under his eyes vanished, the grooves at his brow had smoothed away. His whole countenance softened and I thought I actually saw a tear glint in one eye.
“Damn, look at that, will you. This is where we shoulda gone in the first place.”
I glassed the pond and through the deep focus of my binoculars, and with the high contrast lighting and long focal length, saw, in heavenly detail, the rich varieties of birds, the whole image having an ethereal quality, almost as if I were gazing into another world. I thought of Buddha’s Pure Land which describes a wondrous place of clear waters, gentle breezes, and an amazing assortment of birds. I wanted to keep looking through my binoculars forever. It was like a window directly into heaven. I saw Mallards, Egrets, Coots, Canadian Geese; the Bufflehead, Ring-neck, Canvas-back, and Green-winged teal ducks. I saw Widgeons, Pied-billed Grebes, Ring-billed Gulls, and the majestic Great Blue Heron. There were a series of tiny bird houses along the waterway which Tom explained were erected by a woman for migratory swallows to replace the tree homes that were cut down during construction of the water reclamation plant. As a result, myriads of swallows filled the air around these ponds in the springtime.
Tom limped out along the waterway using a hockey stick as a crutch. We focused our birdwalk on the area around the central pond and found a plethora of specimens: Killdeer, Red-tailed Hawk, California Thrasher, Says Phoebe, Semipalmated Plover, Cattle Egret (which Tom explained was introduced into North America by a small flock of the birds being trapped in a hurricane in Africa and carried across the Atlantic Ocean); Junco, Starling, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Mockingbird, Kestral, Savannah Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, American Pipit, Spotted Towee, Black Phoebe (Grassdipper), Peregrin Falcon.
“Larry! Larry!” Tom started shouting and waving his arms, dropping the hockey stick in the dirt. I saw a large bird circling high overhead but couldn’t make out the markings. Finally I found him in my binoculars. I saw the distinctive white head and the broad, majestic wing span. I didn’t even know we had bald eagles in Southern California. Fred and Suzanne were delighted. Even Jacob and Degan were enthralled. Larry, the bald eagle, disappeared over the rolling hills toward Sulphur Mountain.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, just made this worth blowin’ my damn knee again,” Tom said, pumping his fist and throwing his hands up, celebrating. “YEAH! YEAY, BABY! GO LARRY!”
Tom high-fived each of us and slammed my son on the back again, almost taking a nose dive into the dirt as he did.
“How did you like that, youngblood?! Almost as good as the blond’s cell number.”
My son just nodded.
“Let’s wrap this thing. Chargers got a playoff game at one.”
Tom got on his cell phone and I deduced he was talking to his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend by all the yelling and cursing that commenced. We waited for a while for him to hang up so we could say our parting words, but he didn’t. Fred and Suzanne looked at us with puzzled expressions and finally we hopped in the car and drove off.
“Hey dad, remind me never to go birdwatching with you again.”
“Hey, you met a friend. You learned something.”
“What did I learn today, dad?”
I had to think about that for a minute.
Relax and move on.
Relax And Move On Pt. 1
“Unhitch the wagon, people. We haven’t got all day,” Tom belted, holding the gate open for two elderly women in hooded parkas who shuffled along at a snail’s pace in the gravel. “We’re burning daylight here”.
The gate flanked the Ready-Mix Cement Factory and led to a dirt road along a series of irrigation ponds near Ventura and not far from the beach. I was already stressed and we hadn’t been two minutes into the walk. Tom had us there early. He told us 7a.m. but the true meeting time for the birdwalk was 7:30. I think he was operating on military time, hurry up and wait.
“Holy shit! Got the Geriatric crowd today,” cracked Tom with a wry grin, taking a sip of his Starbucks Moca Latte which he called “his only vice”.
Tom Coughlin was our group leader for the guided birdwalk to the Saticoy Ponds. He was around forty with a grey-flecked goatee, bomber jacket, safari hat, leather work gloves, camouflage shorts with a brace on his left knee. Pink Floyd concert T-shirt. A shark tooth hung at a chain on his neck, which he swore was from a megalodon but I had seen a megalodon fossil and this was much smaller.
The sky was clear but an arctic chill brought snow to the distant peaks of Sulphur Mountain and the great Doppler Radar ball that loomed in the distance. We dressed warm for the early morning but knew the cloud cover would drift out to sea by noon time.
“I got two rules, real simple. When I talk, you do not. When I go like this,” he held up one hand, “Everyone stop and shut your traps.”
I looked around to the other faces of the small party of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society who were mostly senior citizens. My son Jacob, who is a teenager, and one other teenage girl with older parents, and I were the only ones under sixty, except for Tom. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and not troubled the slightest bit by Tom’s abrasive tone.
My son muttered, “what a douche”, just loud enough for everyone to hear but I don’t think he meant that to happen. Tom clearly heard this and I noticed a slight tic, his eye twitching uncontrollably as he gave my son the slow burn.
I was looking forward to this day because it was going to be a chance to have some “quality” time to do the father-son bonding thing. Already I could see there were going to be challenges.
“What we’re gonna do today is explore a series of ponds that are diverted waters from the Santa Clara River for agriculture irrigation and groundwater recharge. See, the water comes in here and it’s full of salt from the ocean, so they got to process it and remove the salt content,” Tom explained.
“And you’re telling us this, why?” my son blurted sarcastically. I gave him a slight nudge.
“Because you might just learn somethin’ today, youngblood.”
“What kind of birds are we going to see here, Tom?” A woman asked with eyes appearing like they were three times their normal size through thick glasses.
“We’re gonna see a lot of shore birds, Egrets, Blue Heron, ducks, lots of different ducks, and if we’re lucky, Larry might make an appearance,” he explained.
“Who’s Larry?” my son asked annoyed.
“The Bald Eagle,” Tom said.
He suddenly made a loud squawking sound two inches from my head. “LARRY!” He yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. “He answers to Larry but he’s vain, man. He’s a vain bird.”
I couldn’t hear out of my left ear for like five minutes.
Birds were scarce as we made our way along the rectangular ponds that contained only a puddle of water in the muddy bottoms. I thought this was a strange site for a birdwalk, much more industrial than I expected. Tom blamed the lack of birds on local agriculture that sprayed pesticides and spread cellophane plastic over the fields which he claimed exuded a toxic gas when hit by direct sunlight. I thought the lack of birds was mainly due to Tom’s booming voice.
“Towee! At three o’clock! In the tree to the left of the road sign,” a tiny woman named Barbara shouted, glassing a thicket of pepper trees across the 118 freeway.
“Fuck Towees,” Tom replied. “One flew into my truck and almost wasted my ass.”
“There are other people here, Tom, who might be interested in seeing it,” Barbara said.
“Fuck it, Barbara, we’re not looking at Towees. They’re ugly anyways.”
“They’re not ugly,” she said, peering through her binoculars.
“They’re brown. They got no distinctive marks. Their song is fer shit. Forget it.”
“Maybe some of these new people don’t know what a Towee is, Tom?”
“Do you want to lead this, Barbara? Can you get access to a site like this? I don’t think so. Relax and move on.”
That was his catch phrase, “relax and move on”. He generally applied it when someone was challenging his authority or doing something he didn’t care for, which seemed quite often.
I began to surmise a few things about Tom. One was that he probably smoked crack at some point in his life and another was that he had probably killed at least one human being, either by accident or on purpose.
I noticed the viewfinders of my binoculars were fogged and showed it to Tom to get his advice.
“Problem is you got moisture in your optics. Once that happens, may as well chuck ‘em in the trash,” he said.
“I think I left them in my car overnight so I wouldn’t forget them.”
“Need to spend a few more dollars, J-1. It’s like anything, you skimp on the front end, you pay on the back.”
He began calling me J-1 and my son J-2.
A friendly rivalry developed between Tom and my son, who is usually very open about expressing his displeasure at authority figures who clearly shouldn’t be.
“Hey J-2, why don’t you smile more? It ain’t that early,” Tom said. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. “Smile more and the world smiles back.”
I cringed as my son said under his breath, “eat me”. It’s not that my son is always disrespectful to his elders but if he recognizes that someone is a little off, he will let them know it unrelentingly.
At one point Tom set up his scope and had my son check it out. “Have a look at that, youngblood. Ever seen anything like that?”
My son gave it a quick glance and offered his obviously forced grin with trademark self-effacing nod. Tom slapped him hard on the back, laughing. “See, he likes it! He’s catching on! Good man! Good man!”
I looked through the scope where he had a mangy crow in his sites which reminded me of the funny shot in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
The group began to separate but Tom kept us in a tightly bunched formation.
“I’m liable for your asses so stick together. Who’s that numbnuts way out there?”
“Carl Feinberg,” someone replied.
A stocky, hunched figure dressed for an Arctic expedition, Carl Feinberg, was engrossed peering through his telescope at something across the highway and had fallen behind the group.
“Feinberg! Feinberg!” Tom yelled and his voice echoed off the distant hills. “We stick together, man! This isn’t a freakin’ Wal-Mart!”
“I think he’s having trouble with his scope,” another birder said.
“He better not have a hypoglycemic fit like last time. I’m not waiting for that dipshit while he munches on a Twinkie.”
My son, Jacob, was starting to come awake, noticing the cute blond with braces, Degan, who was about his age. He struck up some small talk with her, leaving me alone with Tom. Jacob always had that strange good fortune some males possess that wherever they go, they always run into cute young women, even a Saturday morning birdwalk pervaded with senior citizens.
“This is a Zeiss Diascope 85 with Lotutec coating, eighty-five millimeter, baby,” Tom said showing me his telescope. “That’s a fifteen hundred dollar scope, bitch. Nitrogen filling. No fogging.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool”, he said sarcastically.
The group was excitedly watching a Peregrine Falcon perched on a distant telephone pole. Tom explained that the falcon’s favorite food was the ducks and coots that frequented the ponds, that, so far this morning had been non-existent. He was able to further illustrate this point when we found the mutilated remains of a dead coot. Most of the bird was missing, only a torn wing and tail feathers.
“Yep, that’s a coot.”
“Aren’t they the ones with really strange feet for an aquatic bird?” One birder asked.
“Yeah, actually got one right here.” Tom produced a mummified coot foot from his pocket. And sure enough the foot had talons as opposed to webbed footing. “Falcon schwacked this guy too. Seen him do it. Not here but up in Oxnard.”
I was about to take a bite out of a blueberry nut protein bar when he conveyed to me one of his unifying principles of life: “What you put into your body, is what you get out, J-1. Shit in, shit out.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Not just talkin’ food. Words, emotions, music, movies, whatever.”
“But then how do you know if it’s actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you?”
“You’ll know. Maybe not right away. But you’ll know.”
He then told me how he turned himself over to the will of Jesus Christ, his one true Lord and Savior after years of wandering in the “dark forest of the soul”. Personally I wasn’t sure how cool Jesus was with all the foul language.
“I ain’t saying that I totally got it licked but I’m on the road. That is, I ain’t sinless but I definitely ‘sin-less’.”
“Are you a member of both the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Audubon Societies?” I asked. “I was thinking about joining one of those groups but don’t know which is better.”
He then explained how he was a member of the Conejo Valley group and referred to the Ventura County Audubon Society as ‘stupid pricks’.
“They put out a newsletter. Big deal. Then they cry when they don’t have the funding or can’t figure out how to attract new members.”
“That’s not good,” I said, trying to sound even vaguely interested.
“Ventura Fair, this year, I ran the whole show. Paid for the booth, did the artwork, recruited like 40 new members…this was on my own time, you understand.”
“Oh yeah. I saw the booth this year.”
“That was me. I spent the whole week at the thing and I have yet to be reimbursed for the booth and the artwork. My time is my time but you’d think at least they should have the balls to write me a check after they said they would.”
“That sucks.”
“And the president of VCAS, Melinda Abrego. She can go fuck herself. Stupid, ungrateful, bitch.”
I had met Melinda Abrego once, on the birdwalk to the Botanical Gardens. First off, she was about 80 years old and secondly, was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I had ever met. Tom seemed to have it out for the elderly.
“Losers and bums. They assume society’s gonna carry ‘em on their backs.”
“Well, sometimes it’s difficult, you know, when you’re older, it’s harder to work, get around.”
“Oh, fuck you. Give me a break. Most of these jokers are on medication as an excuse. They can work just as well as you or I can,” Tom said, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I caught a few nervous grins from elderly birders.
I found it difficult to fathom how Tom attracted anyone to his walks. He imparted very little bird knowledge along the trip and spewed unrelenting venom and negativity. His disposition was almost diametrically opposed to the birdwatching mindset. The birders in this group seemed to regard Tom as a troubled grandchild, with more affectionate amusement than disdain. It even appeared there was the subtle element of these people really wanting to humor and help Tom by being cheerful witnesses to his guided rants. I considered the wise words of Lao Tzu, “A good man is a bad man’s teacher. A bad man, is a good man’s material.”
The gate flanked the Ready-Mix Cement Factory and led to a dirt road along a series of irrigation ponds near Ventura and not far from the beach. I was already stressed and we hadn’t been two minutes into the walk. Tom had us there early. He told us 7a.m. but the true meeting time for the birdwalk was 7:30. I think he was operating on military time, hurry up and wait.
“Holy shit! Got the Geriatric crowd today,” cracked Tom with a wry grin, taking a sip of his Starbucks Moca Latte which he called “his only vice”.
Tom Coughlin was our group leader for the guided birdwalk to the Saticoy Ponds. He was around forty with a grey-flecked goatee, bomber jacket, safari hat, leather work gloves, camouflage shorts with a brace on his left knee. Pink Floyd concert T-shirt. A shark tooth hung at a chain on his neck, which he swore was from a megalodon but I had seen a megalodon fossil and this was much smaller.
The sky was clear but an arctic chill brought snow to the distant peaks of Sulphur Mountain and the great Doppler Radar ball that loomed in the distance. We dressed warm for the early morning but knew the cloud cover would drift out to sea by noon time.
“I got two rules, real simple. When I talk, you do not. When I go like this,” he held up one hand, “Everyone stop and shut your traps.”
I looked around to the other faces of the small party of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society who were mostly senior citizens. My son Jacob, who is a teenager, and one other teenage girl with older parents, and I were the only ones under sixty, except for Tom. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and not troubled the slightest bit by Tom’s abrasive tone.
My son muttered, “what a douche”, just loud enough for everyone to hear but I don’t think he meant that to happen. Tom clearly heard this and I noticed a slight tic, his eye twitching uncontrollably as he gave my son the slow burn.
I was looking forward to this day because it was going to be a chance to have some “quality” time to do the father-son bonding thing. Already I could see there were going to be challenges.
“What we’re gonna do today is explore a series of ponds that are diverted waters from the Santa Clara River for agriculture irrigation and groundwater recharge. See, the water comes in here and it’s full of salt from the ocean, so they got to process it and remove the salt content,” Tom explained.
“And you’re telling us this, why?” my son blurted sarcastically. I gave him a slight nudge.
“Because you might just learn somethin’ today, youngblood.”
“What kind of birds are we going to see here, Tom?” A woman asked with eyes appearing like they were three times their normal size through thick glasses.
“We’re gonna see a lot of shore birds, Egrets, Blue Heron, ducks, lots of different ducks, and if we’re lucky, Larry might make an appearance,” he explained.
“Who’s Larry?” my son asked annoyed.
“The Bald Eagle,” Tom said.
He suddenly made a loud squawking sound two inches from my head. “LARRY!” He yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. “He answers to Larry but he’s vain, man. He’s a vain bird.”
I couldn’t hear out of my left ear for like five minutes.
Birds were scarce as we made our way along the rectangular ponds that contained only a puddle of water in the muddy bottoms. I thought this was a strange site for a birdwalk, much more industrial than I expected. Tom blamed the lack of birds on local agriculture that sprayed pesticides and spread cellophane plastic over the fields which he claimed exuded a toxic gas when hit by direct sunlight. I thought the lack of birds was mainly due to Tom’s booming voice.
“Towee! At three o’clock! In the tree to the left of the road sign,” a tiny woman named Barbara shouted, glassing a thicket of pepper trees across the 118 freeway.
“Fuck Towees,” Tom replied. “One flew into my truck and almost wasted my ass.”
“There are other people here, Tom, who might be interested in seeing it,” Barbara said.
“Fuck it, Barbara, we’re not looking at Towees. They’re ugly anyways.”
“They’re not ugly,” she said, peering through her binoculars.
“They’re brown. They got no distinctive marks. Their song is fer shit. Forget it.”
“Maybe some of these new people don’t know what a Towee is, Tom?”
“Do you want to lead this, Barbara? Can you get access to a site like this? I don’t think so. Relax and move on.”
That was his catch phrase, “relax and move on”. He generally applied it when someone was challenging his authority or doing something he didn’t care for, which seemed quite often.
I began to surmise a few things about Tom. One was that he probably smoked crack at some point in his life and another was that he had probably killed at least one human being, either by accident or on purpose.
I noticed the viewfinders of my binoculars were fogged and showed it to Tom to get his advice.
“Problem is you got moisture in your optics. Once that happens, may as well chuck ‘em in the trash,” he said.
“I think I left them in my car overnight so I wouldn’t forget them.”
“Need to spend a few more dollars, J-1. It’s like anything, you skimp on the front end, you pay on the back.”
He began calling me J-1 and my son J-2.
A friendly rivalry developed between Tom and my son, who is usually very open about expressing his displeasure at authority figures who clearly shouldn’t be.
“Hey J-2, why don’t you smile more? It ain’t that early,” Tom said. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. “Smile more and the world smiles back.”
I cringed as my son said under his breath, “eat me”. It’s not that my son is always disrespectful to his elders but if he recognizes that someone is a little off, he will let them know it unrelentingly.
At one point Tom set up his scope and had my son check it out. “Have a look at that, youngblood. Ever seen anything like that?”
My son gave it a quick glance and offered his obviously forced grin with trademark self-effacing nod. Tom slapped him hard on the back, laughing. “See, he likes it! He’s catching on! Good man! Good man!”
I looked through the scope where he had a mangy crow in his sites which reminded me of the funny shot in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
The group began to separate but Tom kept us in a tightly bunched formation.
“I’m liable for your asses so stick together. Who’s that numbnuts way out there?”
“Carl Feinberg,” someone replied.
A stocky, hunched figure dressed for an Arctic expedition, Carl Feinberg, was engrossed peering through his telescope at something across the highway and had fallen behind the group.
“Feinberg! Feinberg!” Tom yelled and his voice echoed off the distant hills. “We stick together, man! This isn’t a freakin’ Wal-Mart!”
“I think he’s having trouble with his scope,” another birder said.
“He better not have a hypoglycemic fit like last time. I’m not waiting for that dipshit while he munches on a Twinkie.”
My son, Jacob, was starting to come awake, noticing the cute blond with braces, Degan, who was about his age. He struck up some small talk with her, leaving me alone with Tom. Jacob always had that strange good fortune some males possess that wherever they go, they always run into cute young women, even a Saturday morning birdwalk pervaded with senior citizens.
“This is a Zeiss Diascope 85 with Lotutec coating, eighty-five millimeter, baby,” Tom said showing me his telescope. “That’s a fifteen hundred dollar scope, bitch. Nitrogen filling. No fogging.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool”, he said sarcastically.
The group was excitedly watching a Peregrine Falcon perched on a distant telephone pole. Tom explained that the falcon’s favorite food was the ducks and coots that frequented the ponds, that, so far this morning had been non-existent. He was able to further illustrate this point when we found the mutilated remains of a dead coot. Most of the bird was missing, only a torn wing and tail feathers.
“Yep, that’s a coot.”
“Aren’t they the ones with really strange feet for an aquatic bird?” One birder asked.
“Yeah, actually got one right here.” Tom produced a mummified coot foot from his pocket. And sure enough the foot had talons as opposed to webbed footing. “Falcon schwacked this guy too. Seen him do it. Not here but up in Oxnard.”
I was about to take a bite out of a blueberry nut protein bar when he conveyed to me one of his unifying principles of life: “What you put into your body, is what you get out, J-1. Shit in, shit out.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Not just talkin’ food. Words, emotions, music, movies, whatever.”
“But then how do you know if it’s actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you?”
“You’ll know. Maybe not right away. But you’ll know.”
He then told me how he turned himself over to the will of Jesus Christ, his one true Lord and Savior after years of wandering in the “dark forest of the soul”. Personally I wasn’t sure how cool Jesus was with all the foul language.
“I ain’t saying that I totally got it licked but I’m on the road. That is, I ain’t sinless but I definitely ‘sin-less’.”
“Are you a member of both the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Audubon Societies?” I asked. “I was thinking about joining one of those groups but don’t know which is better.”
He then explained how he was a member of the Conejo Valley group and referred to the Ventura County Audubon Society as ‘stupid pricks’.
“They put out a newsletter. Big deal. Then they cry when they don’t have the funding or can’t figure out how to attract new members.”
“That’s not good,” I said, trying to sound even vaguely interested.
“Ventura Fair, this year, I ran the whole show. Paid for the booth, did the artwork, recruited like 40 new members…this was on my own time, you understand.”
“Oh yeah. I saw the booth this year.”
“That was me. I spent the whole week at the thing and I have yet to be reimbursed for the booth and the artwork. My time is my time but you’d think at least they should have the balls to write me a check after they said they would.”
“That sucks.”
“And the president of VCAS, Melinda Abrego. She can go fuck herself. Stupid, ungrateful, bitch.”
I had met Melinda Abrego once, on the birdwalk to the Botanical Gardens. First off, she was about 80 years old and secondly, was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I had ever met. Tom seemed to have it out for the elderly.
“Losers and bums. They assume society’s gonna carry ‘em on their backs.”
“Well, sometimes it’s difficult, you know, when you’re older, it’s harder to work, get around.”
“Oh, fuck you. Give me a break. Most of these jokers are on medication as an excuse. They can work just as well as you or I can,” Tom said, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I caught a few nervous grins from elderly birders.
I found it difficult to fathom how Tom attracted anyone to his walks. He imparted very little bird knowledge along the trip and spewed unrelenting venom and negativity. His disposition was almost diametrically opposed to the birdwatching mindset. The birders in this group seemed to regard Tom as a troubled grandchild, with more affectionate amusement than disdain. It even appeared there was the subtle element of these people really wanting to humor and help Tom by being cheerful witnesses to his guided rants. I considered the wise words of Lao Tzu, “A good man is a bad man’s teacher. A bad man, is a good man’s material.”
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