Mother Meera is an avatar and incarnation of Divine Mother. By her simple touch and by looking deeply into your being, she offers a darshan blessing where she can clear negative blocks that have built up along your spine and open your heart and mind to the cosmic experience of God.
I drove Ryan to the U.C.L.A. campus to meet the Divine Mother. The smell of sour milk still pervaded my car from Ryan spilling his granola and made it hard to eat the banana I brought as a snack. Like the milk, I felt the relationship with my guru had soured since my refusal to smoke pot. I had to drag him along with me reluctantly after the ride he was promised by someone else fell through. I was like the consolation ride. He talked to me very little on the trip and mainly sent text messages and chatted on his cell phone.
“Are you pissed because I didn’t smoke pot?” I finally said, sensing the unspoken tension.
“No, bro. You can smoke pot or not smoke pot. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Don’t you think it clouds your mind if you want to experience God though?”
“To each his own, bro. What works for me, may not work for you.”
We arrived at the campus early and sat at the front of the line in the vestibule of the conference center. I was nervous as hell. I imagined Divine Mother gazing into my heart and seeing a huge, piled up dung heap of sins and evil curses, then, reacting to the mess, collapsing in a thrashing seizure. Or her penetrating gaze stabbing my already-delicate heart and causing me to have an attack right there in front of five hundred spiritually-minded devotees.
At our seats we removed our shoes and waited for Mother to arrive. We waited a long time. The banana I ate produced a lot of gas that I had been holding in, which built up and began to cause severe cramping. My nervousness made it worse. Soon waves of stabbing cramps forced me to squirm in my seat.
“What’s wrong, bro?”
“My stomach is cramping.”
“Ride it out, bro. She’s on her way.”
I sucked air and wondered how Mother Meera might look, if she had a divine aura or if she appeared differently, as they say, casting no shadow or leaving no footprint, characteristics of someone who has achieved God realization or avatar status.
We were instructed to stand as Mother Meera entered the hall. I was terrified I might rip one as I lifted off my seat but the gas settled back into my guts. Mother Meera was surrounded by a group of assistants and nuns. She was barely visible, a tiny woman, with steepled hands, bowing her head as she walked. She wore an ochre-colored robe with a purple scarf. She was well under five feet, barely weighing ninety pounds.
A line formed and we worked our way to the dais where she performed the darshan which consisted of the individual kneeling before Divine Mother, bowing to her as she placed her hand on your head to shoot the white light of creation down your spine and then look deeply into your eyes, to see your soul and the tangled web of individual experience lurking within. I wasn’t wearing any socks and was extremely nervous about people seeing my feet. Both of my toe nails had been crushed off in soccer games. It looked grotesque. I tried to hide my feet under the seat in front of me, and as we made our way up, I sat cross-legged with my hands gripping my big toes. I caught a glimpse of an older woman checking out my feet with a disturbed look. She kept her eyes on my feet and I felt the burn of her gaze the whole way to the front. Now the cramping in my guts had reached its zenith and if I didn’t keep my butt cheeks flush to the floor, the gas was surely to escape. I writhed. I wriggled. I held my breath. Stabbing waves came that nearly forced the gases from my bowels in the cramped, crowded quarters of the line moving to the front of the room. I fought valiantly to hold it in. The woman behind me was right on my back and I knew if I let one rip, it would spoil the whole affair.
I crawled up to the dais where Mother Meera was seated in an ornate chair. My heart was racing. Five hundred people were watching in rapt attention, many were praying, many in deep meditation. My stomach coiled and uncoiled like a snake with razor blade scales. I thought I might faint. I noticed she was spending more time with some people and others she sped through in a few seconds. I was thinking if she spent more time on the blessing, it probably signified the individual needed more work. I was hoping my darshan would be quick and painless. Another sharp cramp tore through my insides and I stretched my legs out in front of me.
My turn came and I shuffled in front of Divine Mother. She looked about ten feet tall. A colossal figure. I squeezed my butt cheeks together. I bowed and she placed a gentle hand on my head and I felt an electric current race through my body. I didn’t breathe. I think my heart stopped beating. When she withdrew her hand I looked up into her piercing eyes spearing into my soul. My whole body was trembling. It seemed almost impossible to hold her gaze. She remained focused into my eyes for a long time. A really long time. So long a time I almost turned around and looked at the long line behind me to apologize for it taking such a long time. My stomach started doing back flips and another wave of cramps rolled in from the sea.
I held my breath and squeezed my butt cheeks together tighter. It felt like an eternity that she stared into my eyes.
I said a prayer to myself, inside my head, and I hope she didn’t hear it: “Please God, don’t let me pass gas in front of Divine Mother.” I repeated this over and over.
Then the wave of cramps passed as if magically and her eyes dropped and I noted a disappointed twinge in her expression, pursing her lips faintly, as if she knew what was really going on in my twisted soul. Jeez, I wonder what train wreck she saw in there? I hope it didn’t freak her out too much. I bowed to her a last time and stumbled off the stage almost tripping down the stairs and flinging myself headlong into the row of plants near the exit. In my sudden loss of control, I farted but the banging down the short flight of stairs masked the sound...I hoped. The movement of my body carried the smell to the exit. The middle-aged woman behind me only took a few seconds for her blessing and walked right through the invisible gaseous cloud. I watched her out of the corner of my eye to see if she reacted. Her head was down as she stepped off the dais but suddenly shot up, scowling a little as she looked right at me. Oh no. She caught the whiff and definitely knew it was me. I hurried to my seat and put my face in my hands to meditate and hide. Then I hurriedly threw on my shoes and sat squirming impatiently.
Ryan appeared smiling brightly with the corners of his eyes glinting with tears.
“How’d it go, bro?”
“I think good. Yeah. I got a weird vibe though.”
“She took away your pain, bro.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“She took it. You’re good. I’ll tell you what you need to do when we leave. She told me.”
“She did?”
“What Jay needs to do to let the light shine through,” he said smiling radiantly and affectionately punched my shoulder.
It was recommended everyone stay inside the blessing hall until the very end, after the last person in line had received their darshan. Ryan asked me if I wanted to go and I said it was up to him, but I really wanted to go. We left early. I stopped in the bathroom and let out a long oozing sigh of gas. It was that god damn banana. Never eat a banana before visiting a saint.
Later, we went to Subway to eat dinner. Over a six inch chicken teriyaki with Italian herb and cheese bread, my guru told me what I had to do to find the eternal answers I was seeking.
“Smoke pot.”
“I thought we already went over this?”
“Bro, I’m just going by what she said.”
“She really said, ‘Jay needs to smoke pot’?”
“Correct.”
“I don’t like that advice too much.”
“Like it or not, bro. It’s what you need.”
“I don’t think I can accept that.”
“You have to, if you want to grow.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“What were Divine Mother’s exact words? He needs to toke out to be free?”
“No, bro. I sensed what she was thinking. She sent me a vision.”
“Maybe it got lost in translation?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wash birds,” a man at the table next to us said. He was a small, muscular, African American man in a “Tap Out” T-shirt with the peculiar flattening and thickening of the nose and ears marking he was a fighter.
“Wash birds?”
“Watch birds, man. Forget the drugs. Watch birds.”
The fighter was sitting with another skinny man in glasses who looked like an artist. “That’s where you’ll find it.”
“So I just go outside and watch a bird in a tree or something? Watch them fly around?”
He shook his head looking for a napkin to wipe the vinegar running down his chin.
“Guided birdwalk.”
“That doesn’t sound so great.”
“It’s nature, man. Birds are the soul.”
“Birds are the soul?”
“Birds are the soul. And freedom.”
“How often do you guys go on guided birdwalks?”
“Every weekend. I’m an MMA fighter. That’s my quiet time. My meditation time. He doesn’t go. He’s my manager and he plays poker every weekend.”
“How do I find a guided birdwalk?”
“How do you find anything? Get online.”
I looked at Ryan. “Have you ever gone on a guided birdwalk?”
“No.”
“Would you?”
“Not right now. I’m pretty busy with my son and a lot of projects.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by “a lot of projects” because he didn’t work and usually woke up around noon and his only real activity was smoking and selling pot.
“Get online and find a group, man. That’s how you connect,” said the fighter taking another big bite. “If I didn’t I’d just walk around knocking people in the head.”
The guy was about five foot five but ripped. I’m sure he could do some damage even though he was small.
My only experience watching birds was when I was around ten-years-old and found a dusty copy of the Peterson’s Field Guide on our book shelf. I loved the colorful illustrations and would venture into the outlying forests around Mud Bay in northwestern Washington State identifying fantastical and magical species of birds such as the giant Pileated Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Flicker, the tiny House Wren, the Mourning Dove, Goldfinch, Killdeer, the Great Blue Heron, Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, Cedar Waxwing (one of my favorites), all of which I knew well by my tenth year. I would sketch little drawings of the birds and make notes of their identifying marks and calls. One of the most awe-inspiring experiences I had birding as a youth was coming upon a series of Great Blue Heron nests atop a grove of cottonwood trees and seeing the magnificent creatures in large numbers shadowed in silhouette, trumpeting and squawking, like giant, mythic sentinels from some lost prehistoric epoch.
“What about the Kryia yoga initiation?” I asked Ryan as we drove home up the congested 405.
“I asked Babaji and he said it wasn’t a good idea yet.”
“What do I need to do to get it, man?” Kriya yoga was at the forefront of my spiritual goals. I really felt driven to receive the technique, not only to heighten my meditation practices, evolve spiritually, and get closer to God, but also to suppress some of the greasy, neurotic, fear-desire, slipstream, teeth-gnashing, high-low, hate burgers bringing me down.
“I don’t know, bro. I don’t really know anything.”
Showing posts with label birdwalk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birdwalk. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
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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