Dear Buddi, July 24, 2005
“Inch by inch life a cinch, yard by yard its hard.” Said the Snail.
Ah I repeat myself, but if is good, do it again. I journey back three years and find….
The gradient approach to life. How do you eat a whole watermelon, the magic instructors once asked?
The epiphanies, kismets, revelations, original thoughts, and direct experiences occasionally revealed in my discipline of Avatar Fry Day appear hidden. The discipline required in telling a story of value to you my precious reader is especially challenging this week. I ponder have I evolved past doubt, staying out of the ruts of sameness and honor the wisdom of my teachers? Am I asking myself good questions? Am I ‘Slip sliding away’ as Paul Simon sings.
It is not the one lucky strike; it is the ability to string many lucky strikes that make a great bowler. How does the continuity of my day-to-day opportunities keep my creative spirit alive to share in this AFD? This AFD becomes a daily log, blog?
“Monday , Monday so good to me…can’t trust that day…sometimes it just works out that way.” Mamas and Papas did the singing, but I hear what I want, and make up my own words & meaning. Getting ready for Monday’s excites me, I love the preparation. I loved getting ready for school. School was the friends, the wisdom in books, teachers or in the work and words of a schoolmate. I take my schoolboy enthusiasm into life. ‘It is my attitude of appropriate fun, rapport, information, and compassion that keeps me on purpose and in demand to realtors, brokers and affiliates. I am an asset to whomever I contact!’ That’s my credo for work.
Tuesday was & still is Realtor Marketing meeting. My last week brochures went nowhere, so this week I went back to adding pictures. My original brochures had Jimmy Stewart photo, from the film Mr. Smith goes to Washington, the story of a down home senator who took on the bureaucrats. Filibustering to stop injustice and get his message across.
“Why is he on the flyers? Who is he anyway?” realtors asked. I thought the message was clear, I, another Mr. Smith, have an idea whose time has come. Do your diligence; disclose the truth, become accountable, a new idea to make-work easier and risk free liability.
Next brochure I went with Arnold, the Gubernator. Get fit, and stay toned with our Home Owners Document review. It was a early pose in speedos.
I loved it when someone asked, “Is that you?”
I’d never be caught in shorts like that. The flyer did create interest.
On Thursday, while making a presentation to a ‘condo specialist’, she asked if I had any marketing literature. She was looking at the review binder, excited about our service, as I dug thru my flyers and showed her Arnold's photo. She was aghast, insulted, and distraught, in shock at the lack of professionalism. Got her attention! Oops, wrong attention. But marketing a new product first they have to know you and the product exist. She now knows we exist. I didn’t tell her the flyer was for realtors and not the public, or that the hidden intent was that the Gubernator wanted HOA’s get into the fitness’s mode. Oh well.
Tuesday afternoon I got a call from a broker saying he has an HOA Review interest. I have an appointment for Wednesday morning. I create a threefold intention,, 1-I want to get to know them. 2-For them to know our service. 3-For them to get to know and remember me, so I tell my story of my Great Granddad Thomas, the Royal Plumber to Queen Victoria and King Edward. It was he who invented the toilet, the Crapper. It’s an exercise to see all the places that you can use the word crap in a sentence with reference to your buddi, great grandson Gary. I always get a laugh. Toliet humor is still very popular so I started putting a picture of great granddad Thomas Crapper on the flyer.
I can see me in his portrait, the facial hair, and the whimsical look of making money while on the crapper. I get a call from the broker saying do the HOA review..
Wednesday is coaching night with Practical Resources, David & George my new mentors into the Real Estate world, want me to fly to LA Monday to help with their seminars. I’m in motion again. I begin to feel like Jello, an ambivalent glop of goop contained in an unknown mold. I shudder and shake while looking at homes for sale, contemplate two other brokers interests, prep for the classes next week to the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals and to an HOA with parking problems.
I stayed grounded this week with fitness classes each day, BBQ’s each evening and ‘nothing’ time to absorb the events. Maybe I’m more Popsicle than Jello, the 111-degree heat adding to the melting.
Friday, It's been a great week to extend an AFD, feel my way looking for ‘right view.’ I read Harry Palmer, “It means that you don’t impose your own beliefs upon things….Right view means you see things as they are, and when you see things as they are, the nature of things begin to make sense.”
What makes sense to me is road trip, or boat trip. The Carquienz straits out our window have the sea foam cutting across the water, the fog has lifted and I’m going to take the ferry to SF to solidify my intent about WHAT’S NEXT.
I’m early at the Vallejo ferry building humming ”Sitting on the dock of the wasting time…” “If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let's all get wasted together and have the time of our lives,” written on Armand's Plaza, Washington , DC. I pull out my rugged writing pad, and write. The air feels lighter, the breeze ruffles the flags, the smell is clean like a mountain stream, not fishy diesel. Two hundred yards across the inlet is an aircraft carrier being disembodied by Star Wars like cranes. There is an old paddle wheeler waiting its turn. On the road behind me are parked two 1947 Packard convertible limos. Shiny chrome and cream, a champagne bucket waiting to cruise up to Napa. It feels like Fred Astaire singing “Heaven, I’m in heaven, and I can hardly stand a moment…”. I meet the limo drivers, sit on the pleated Naugahyde and file this under things to do. I’ve added a chauffeured road trip to Napa as a compelling future.
It’s time to queue up for the 55-minute trip to the renovated San Francisco Ferry Building. My spongy Jello character has been transformed by the adventure into the explorer. My view of time has shifted, the shape and sizes of ships and objects become clearer almost psychedelic in the sharpness. I have a gestalt of forms countering the separation of all things into this is that, and that is this. Its my call, my day to just let it be. I am not lost, nor skipping over the surface of the water like the orange balloon that landed on the water being blown upstream. Everywhere I look is something I haven’t noticed before.
I practice my smile. Smiling at guys while ferrying to SF might bring up a judgment of being ‘gay.’ I create a version of the Compassion Exercise where I put my attention on a person and imagine what I was like at that age, or with that attitude-the Asian woman smoker doing a crossword, the three year old racing around the cabin, the embarrassed teenager huddled with peers, the one who looks like my mom traveling with her mom my nana, the old guy with hat and shirt endorsing Mercury boats. “Just like me, this person is learning about life.”
I am getting high, maybe one of those promised flashbacks as I head to the City to visit the ghost of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. Professor Mark at U of Oregon has resurrected the Prankster bus Furrther to take the acid test., which I passed with A’s, and tutored many an initiate.
"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer-- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." Ken Kesey.
I return to pen and pad and use some Creativism to script my SF trip. I want to meet some people, stand out in the open air while we are cruising. Raleen and I once saw a whale on this cruise so seeing one is scripted in. I want to see children being kind to each other, feel the rush of sailboats passing, a view of Emperor Norton’s new bay bridge, lots of shade, and a large dose of the unexpected, coupled with laughter, and a nice lunch. I’ll walk to SBC ballpark.
The Ferry building has been transformed into an agora of farmers markets and restaurants. Hundreds buying peaches, tomatoes, & breads. I taste the sweetest wheat grass juice. Walking down the Embarcadero I spy a strange movement a block ahead. It looks like camels asses.(Ah another version of PigLips, a pattern interrupt and transderivational search) I speed up to catch the parade or a march of some kind. The camels are rattan coolie caps, worn by men and women in black robes. They are led by a blind Asian man with a seeing eye dog, and a Buddhist monk beating a drum. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap tap. The hats have written in felt pen upon the top “The Full Circle to Trinity.”
“What’s happening I ask a video cameramen with his sound guy. “I’m doing a documentary on the blind guy. He’s from Hiroshima. They are walking to Trinity, New Mexico, site of the first atomic bomb, 1,600 miles. We just started at the Ferry building."
Well I never thought of scripting this, but I join. I even check to see if I have my AMEX card so I can go all the way. I’m flooded with images of growing up “Put your hands on your head, your head between your legs, and kiss your ass good bye." From the early 1950’s till the Berlin Wall fell I expected the world to be nuked. No sense planning heavily on the future, might as well retire now. Be Here Now became an epiphany of the NEW CLEAR AGE, because there wasn’t going to be a then.
At SBC park we all stop, only 1599 miles to go, and everyone gets bottled water, and some check their ‘cells’ for messages. Pictures are taken. A prayer and chant begin under the bronze statue of Willie Mays. Without my AMEX card I choose to Mecca around the ballpark. The green grass of the IN-field was my first hope of salvation in this life. There was no meaning to life till I made meaning as a six year old with the other players, the bats, the ball, gloves, uniforms, a team, the game. Winning, being a good sport, playing fair, hustling, were my lessons before the magicians, sages and avatars ever appeared. Lessons in paying attention, eye on the ball, joining with others for a common (often uncommon) goal.
So the ballpark is a full circle, a loop that can be entered at any time. Being inside a creation, experiencing self and others from compassion and new and different ways of looking at life. This week I again proved to myself that I do keep the magic alive.
Namaste, Gary