The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Bishop Nippo Syaku

by // 1 Comment

San Francisco, 1975: I saw the flimsy poster, but it was quaint rather than crude. Bishop Nippo Syaku would give some short talks about Zen. In the rawboned Victorian near Filmore street, poor lighting made the room seem drab, but Bishop Nippo lit up the place. The Bishop was a round-faced, cheerful fellow, very chipper he was. He spoke often of the nature of things.”We say, ‘Oh the flower is pretty!’” He beamed, “But flower does not care!”

On this evening, he spoke of how the True Buddhist is without fear. This amazed me, and made me ponder. I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. I pointed to an empty chair. “Let’s say the True Buddhist was sitting right there.”

Bishop Nippo nodded.

“And let’s say that a Sabre-Tooth Tiger came through that door.” Everybody looked at the door. I continued, “Now the True Buddhist would feel no fear, but he would jump up and run like hell, correct?”

“Ah!” said Bishop Nippo Syaku. “That is True Buddhist!”

The Abandoned Road

by // Leave a Comment

Dallas, Texas, 1966: On this particular day, my girlfriend and I decided to take the psilocybin before heading out. Driving the Morgan from Dallas to Shady Shores was an odd adventure. It was about thirty miles, and seemingly many days driving.

I knew of this place from years earlier. College roommates and I had lived nearby, and some scouting trip discovered an abandoned roadway that had once run atop a dam built across Lake Dallas. In a concrete building halfway out, remnants of the dam’s machinery remained, huge wheels and vast pipes, going nowhere.

Whoever these mysterious builders were, they were fickle, for after building the dam across the lake, they’d cut a hole through it, so it was no dam any longer. Just a finger of elevated land reaching toward, but not touching, a finger of land from the other side. On the elevated crest, earth and stone and even trees, and the once roadway ran, and stopped at the cut.

Just the spot for our picnic.

I recalled a time from college when the gang of us, plus the girl gang too, hiked beyond the road’s blockade, and spent an afternoon with beer and burnt hotdogs and more beer, on the crescent moon beach that formed at the end, beside the cut.

Now, above the Morgan, the day was turning overcast, the air keen and wild. I parked beneath the trees, and we hiked. It was a strange journey. Past the old spillway’s jumbled boulders, and there among the mesquite trees, we stumbled across a horrible and alarming black and orange snake, which proved to be a fragment of nylon rope.

The ground was heaving, and the trees whispered. The sky darkened, and a breeze began to blow. As we sat beside the abandoned roadway, to the west the sun peeked out, low across the lake.

The water between sparkled with flashes of God and the unseen heavens beyond this Earth. Bright flashes, as bright as the sun, and the water’s chop swirled them round and round in a pattern we could sense, and could almost see clearly.

And then clouds came in from the northwest, and the sun was covered, and the clouds drifted, a million miles above the earth, and slowly across the lake. The breeze returned, lifting the grasses around us, whispering. Then, from the clouds, rain.

Falling in parallel streaks like a Hiroshige print, going on eternally, and the lake turned its face up to receive the gentle rain.

I’m sure we returned to our homes later; unless, of course, we are still there.

April’s Mystery Avocado

by // Leave a Comment

>San Francisco, 1983: April R. was a pretty girl with red hair and pale skin. She and Madonna M. started work at Network Answering Service at the same time. Madonna was a beautiful black woman, and the two of them were physical opposites in every way. April was thin, quick, shrill. Madonna was voluptuous, languid, calm. They went through training together and became best of friends.At Network, operators worked in pairs, according to an eccentric scheme I’d developed with Bob back when we were the only two operators. With your team partner you develop a coordination, passing calls back and forth. The training was extensive, including training in how to communicate effectively with another human, as well as how to operate the telephone machinery. April and Madonna worked together with style, wit, and humor.But today April was in the kitchen, very unhappy. She was hungry, and somebody had stolen her avocado.

The system in the kitchen was that people didn’t need to label their food. Although you might not know who owned something, you knew darn well that it wasn’t yours, so you weren’t to eat another’s food. This generally worked.

What's in the Bag?

In this case, April had brought her lunch, an avocado, in a small paper bag, and put it on the cabinet shelf. There were about eight paper bags there. I asked the obvious.

“Did you look in all the bags?”

Miserably, she said she’d checked them all, twice, thinking that surely it was there. But it wasn’t.

I told her that the best possible solution was that it was just there in one of these bags, because if it could magically disappear, then it could magically reappear. It’s as if magic doesn’t like to disturb the physical universe. Big puff of smoke and a flash? Not the way magic likes to manifest. It likes to perform its miracles unseen, unexplainable.

Sour at my chatter, she went through the bags again, bitter because she was hungry and had no more money for food today. She asked me what I was talking about.

I told her about a small miracle I’d seen, and how it felt so natural, so unforced. “For example,” I said, “with no sense of effort at all, you’d just pick up a sack …” I crossed to the cabinet and picked up a sack. I handed it to her. “You’d just say ‘There is your avocado,’ and it would be there.”

April peeked down into the sack she was holding. She looked up at me, looking much like a siamese cat.

“How did you do that?” she said.

Was it the avocado? It was.

How was it done? I don’t know. Bishop Nippo Syaku used to ask, “Where do we go when we die? Nobody knows that.”

But of course, the avocado was there all the time, and she had just been unable to find it, while searching the eight bags carefully three times.

Sure it was.

A Tiny Miracle on Napa Street

by // Leave a Comment

Lacunae — blind spots —
like black cats prowling midnight,
but just out of sight.

Napa Street, Berkeley, Summer 1977: In Christine’s room, Richard W. and I were yakking about nothing in the late morning. The windows were open; the day would be warm. A fat fly buzzed lazily around Richard where he lounged on the floor beneath the window.

Our talk turned to magic and miracles. He’d seen some; I’d seen some. I was relating a strange experience in England. How magic can happen in an instant, with no sense of effort, and as though something else is acting through you. I’d felt it before. It feels natural, more natural than most days’ living; it’s hard to describe.

“It was as if, suddenly, there’s a kind of a wave, and you’re being carried along. You’re caught up,” I said, trying to capture it.

He looked dubious.

Suppose I said, to the fly …

A Fat Fly Buzzed Around.

“It’s like this,” I said. I pointed to the fly. “Suppose I said to that fly, ‘Come here.’”

The fly flew across the room, and landed on my finger.

“And then suppose I said, ‘Fly out the window.’”

The fly took off, flew past Richard and out the window.

And it was so …

Richard gaped. I nodded. It had come; it had gone. I felt no sense of triumph, or strength; it wasn’t exactly me that did it. It felt … right. At the time, it seemed inevitable.

Is this something that’s always in us, waiting to emerge? Or does it pass through humanity like a wind through the boughs? Why does it appear seemingly only at great need, or, like today, in no need at all? Is it a matter of attention, or, like conscious dreaming, a matter of exactly the right amount of inattention? What is it?

These things — miracles, epiphanies, synchronicities — surround us, like nebulae of faeries, visable and hiding in plain sight. Magic breathes into and out of our world, transient lacunae, trailing thin and smoky tracks like cosmic rays in this cloud chamber we call Earth.

A blink of the mind; they are gone.

 

The Altar Boys

by // 2 Comments

Eddie Frank Scheer, later, when he was the School Principal in Henrietta, Texas

Henrietta, Texas, 1957: Since we were Methodists, I don’t see why it was so important.

In our town, being a Methodist was considered kind of easy. The story goes that a fellow had died, and was being shown around Heaven. In one room folks were dancing because, being Catholics, they couldn’t dance on Earth. In another room folks were drinking, because they’d been Baptists. And in one room, folks just sat around; being Methodists, they’d already done everything. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I suspect it was some jealousy of the Catholic rituals that caused the trouble.

Well, of course, it was only trouble for me and Eddie Frank.

Our church had decided to have altar boys. They already had choir robes, so they just had to get a couple of short metal poles so two of us could walk down the aisle and light some candles. This particular Sunday, it was me and Eddy Frank.

We Got All Holy

We did our holy duty, walking real slow and looking solemn, lit the candles, then retreated back out the same way. In the cloakroom we shucked our gowns, and he suggested we go sit in his parents new car — a blue 1958 Chevrolet, very classy — to hear the radio for a few minutes before joining the service.

Gosh, I don’t know what happened. I guess we were just yakking, and suddenly we realized a long time had passed. Eddy Frank looked plenty worried.

“If we go in there now, everybody’ll stare,” he said.

I agreed. But what to do?

Oh Holy Holy Holy

We cudgeled our brains, but were unable to think of anything workable. So we gave up and walked home. When church had let out, my mother came home, screeching the tires, real mad.

“I was so proud of you!” she said. “And then we were waiting, and waiting, and waiting!”

There was no explaining. I got spanked. So did Eddy Frank.

The Best Kind of Friend, where Parents Wouldn’t Let You Sit Together at Church

Back then, Eddy Frank was probably my best friend. We started stamp companies at the same time. Or, rather, he started one and I copied him. I never sold any stamps, though, and finally sold my stock to him. I don’t think he sold any stamps either.

Later, we took Latin together. We drank some terrible wine together. We were in egg fights. We hung a dummy from my Uncle Doc’s radio tower, unseen with the town cop cruising on the street below. We painted Class of 61 on the water tower. But in the dark I got the spray can backwards and sprayed my chin day-glow orange. Then, figuring this might be a clue revealing me as one of the perpetrators, I had to remove this evidence. This required a lot of scrubbing with Ajax cleanser, and not a little pain.

Oddly enough, not long after, I asked Eddy Frank to come over to my house to make rockets, and he declined. “My mamma says I can’t play with you any more,” he explained. “She says you’re a bad iffluous on me.”

A bad iffluous indeed.

John and Joan

by // Leave a Comment

North Texas State University, Denton, Texas, 1965: There were two girls named Patty. I loved each of them, at different times. The one called Pretty Patty eventually ran off with a guy named Gary; I lost track of them in Santa Fe.

The other was called Patty Cake, and on the eve of my 21st birthday, completely misinformed while I was away getting the beer, threw a fit and all my records onto the floor of my apartment, and so I stopped phoning her. When next I saw her, she was abashed, embarassed. I leaned over the table, looking into her eyes, and said softly, “You scamp,” and she knew it was over between us.

But this was before all that, when life was still fresh and light-hearted. Now the deal was, there was John, and there was Joan. John was younger, because, being brilliant, he’d graduated high-school at sixteen, and now found himself editor of our college Literary Magazine.

Joan I no longer recall clearly, except that John showed us the marks she had made on his back, so I guess she had her points.

But the thing was, the two of them squabbled. Squabbilus, squabbelaste, squabbalorum. All the time. About anything. About nothing. Without regard to anyone present. Always, always, always. So annoying it was, to wade through this movable skirmish.

So Patty Cake and I, commiserating over wine, hatched a plan to cure them.

First, we invited them to an evening, dinner and wine, at my tiny apartment at 1308 1/2 West Hickory, across from the English Building. We had the usual student meal in which spaghetti was featured, and red wine. And a little more red wine.

About the time everybody was feeling good, we arranged it that John and Joan sat on the sofa, out of the way. They’d bickered earlier, off and on, but were basking in a fine mood now.

However, Patty Cake and I began to quarrel. We really began to quarrel. We grew more and more heated, until we were standing mid-room, screaming into each other’s faces. Patty Cake drew back and slapped me, hard. It staggered me.

Bellowing in rage, I ran to grab a huge butcher knife, and, raising it high, I sprang at her. She shrank, screaming.

At the last moment … we stopped, and turned together to where John and Joan sat paralysed, eyes wide in horror. And Patty Cake and I said, calmly, “See? Do you see how unpleasant it is to be around people fighting all the time?”

Numbly, open-mouthed, they nodded.

Later, more wine. Sometime late, late, late, we four found ourselves in a children’s playground, in the dark, upon a grassy knoll, falling off some kind of merry-go-round contraption, and laughing and laughing and laughing.

It was very late towards morning when Patty Cake and I got cozy in my apartment, to spend some time together. Perhaps it was a long time together. My bed was next to the window, and just as we were drifting off to sleep, there was a hint of daybreak outside, and the sounds of birds singing.

I fell asleep, smiling, content.

Buddha Next Door

by // Leave a Comment

495 Third Avenue #8, San Francisco, 1975: Reading a lot of metaphysical books, I studied astral projection and conscious dreaming. Success was limited, but on this particular night the dream-like experience was clear.

I was lying down and deeply relaxing, in the evening, and mentally I left my body. I rose and floated outside, finding myself now walking the sidewalk. In this vision, it was daytime, and in crossing the street, I found myself wading through a heaving mass of alligators.

When I made it across the street, there was something odd about the door of the house on the corner.

This door was now painted red, and upon it a paper notice fluttered. I climbed their stair to read it, but once there, the door was open, and I stepped into the dim hallway. A dark stair led to the floor above, and to the left an open door revealed a lighted room, with rows of folding chairs, like a classroom.

I took a seat, and perhaps others were there. A monk in a brown robe entered, and at the blackboard he drew a large circle, with a hub and spokes, using many-colored chalk.

As I watched, this diagram began to spin, growing larger in my vision until it became a vast wheel, spinning in space, blurring at incredible speed, and yet ponderous, revolving as slowly as the aeons.

In this vision, I thought, “The Wheel of Dharma.”

At the time, I didn’t know what Dharma was. I still don’t know what Dharma is. But what happened the next week was real enough.

This corner house in my vision was a real house. It was just across the street. From my windows, it looked like any San Francisco flat, meaning no yard around, of two stories and touching the neighbor house to either side. Except, this was a corner house, and the long side faced my windows. Painted white like others on the street. Nothing notable.

That is, until the moving van began unloading the strange crates.

Some of these were huge, and all were labelled with symbols in a foreign alphabet. Please note, I’m speaking not of any vision, but of what occurred outside my second-floor apartment the following week. Huge wooden crates with strange symbols in some foreign language.

Somehow I was not surprised when, the next day, thin monks in brown robes began to come and go around that house, and a few days later, towards the evening, when lights went on inside, I discovered that my window looked down and directly into a long room in that house.

There, at the end of the room, a huge statue of the seated Buddha, pale white, in the bliss of contemplation.

Mick Jagger’s Secret

by // 1 Comment

San Francisco, 1977. Disco was in full sway, as the Men’s Club — myself, Richard W., Derek S., and Phil Groves — drove to dinner. Somebody was complaining about something.

“You don’t have to do it! Oh, noooo!” I sang, mimicking BeeGees. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Derek had wrangled tickets to the upcoming Stones concert. We were jovial. We were on top of the world.

Earlier that day, I’d visited City Hall. A business license, as I recall. Oddly, there was a San Francisco streetcar sitting on the sidewalk in the square across from City Hall, one of those fake streetcars that run on tires. And a TV crew loitered about.

“What’s going on?” I asked the crowd of gawkers standing on the grand steps leading up to the doorway.

“Mick Jagger and the Mayor,” somebody said. The Mayor. That would be Diane Feinstein. But I didn’t see any Stones, and I didn’t see Ms. Feinstein. My business license beckoned.

When I came out, across the street, hanging from the streetcar while TV crews shot from below, Mick and Diane were chatting it up. Big smiles flashed. Wonderful, so happy, really looking forward. Publicity for the Mayor. Publicity for San Francisco. Publicity for the Stones. Everybody happy.

Huge bodyguards in black suits frowned the casual passersby away. I noticed the long, black limousine parked down below, and made a calculation in my head. Up the block, I crossed the street, and then walked slowly back, on a diagonal crossing the street.

Sure enough, the shoot was done and Jagger, trailed by black suits, was crossing the street. Our paths intersected so we were walking side by side, two feet apart. He looked over at me. I looked over at him. There was something important that I wanted to know.

“How do you stay so thin?” I asked. He nodded.

“Don’t eat much,” he said.

 
 

reviews

[wprevpro_usetemplate tid=”1″]