Chapter 5
I was sitting in the alcove as lotus as I could with my raving inflexibility contemplating that trip to San Jacinto two year prior and all the other lessons of my life when the door bell rung and rang. Immediately after the door flew open and a medium height blonde thin beauty with modern eye glasses ushered her way in. It was my great friend Lindy, a friendship four years rock solid. Paige and her went back further, securing an intense and emotional and largely unpredictable friendship all the way back to the fifth grade. Together we were a bit of a pack - like dogs without a home, searching, wandering, picking up scraps when we found them like they were good universal omens. We were typically a happy bunch - an oligarchy of sorts, always seeking that magic balance of three. Thirty-three percent dot three to infinity.
Lindy was an interesting cat. She insisted just two days prior that her name was Serena Velasco and she was a big breasted ancient Spanish beauty with dark skin, long legs and a spicy attitude - all of which were completely opposite her except for the spicy attitude and the long legs.
I crawled out of the alcove and said, “Hey Serena.”
“Como estas senor? Tengo una pregunta. Cual es la fecha de hay?” she said with thick Spanish fake accent.
“‘Hoy,’ Serena. Not ‘hay’.”
She was just starting her first Spanish class while I was lousy but somewhat decent.
One thing to say about Lindy is that, while completely and totally cool and accepting of everyone, she never laid claim to knowledge. In pure humility, she felt belief is all we can ever have. And even in that she was quite skeptical. She thought our Buddhism was cool, but, like everything, it was quite suspicious for Lindy. But she was on this lonely trip of pure skepticism, existential dusk. She did her best to be an open book but was scared to death to let something absorb her because it might close her off to something else. And thus she couldn’t claim to have any knowledge. A few beliefs easily changed and nothing clung to. I tried to tell her that is Buddhism but she didn’t believe me and I took this as proof that she was in fact a holy Bodhisattva and didn’t know it - perhaps the only way to be a great Bodhisattva.
Paige came jutting down the stairs and Lindy said, “It’s sunny and warm and that’s rare up here in Northern California. I’m feeling good. What do you say we have a picnic out in the city square?”
I looked back at the alcove and it looked dark and hidden. “I would love to.” Paige was cool with the notion too.
The first step was to gather up some food. Now, no oligarchy would work quite right if there wasn’t some special individual with a touch more initiative or leadership to get the ball moving and to direct it. It’s one thing to gain a unanimous decision, quite another to raise the question. And so the perfect oligarchy exists in utopia, that is: no place. For our oligarchy Lindy was the undisputed leader, the one to get the ball rolling and to be quite honest, I’m quite certain Paige and I would have fallen apart long before if Lindy hadn’t taken on this roll. Just take, for instance, this little picnic. It’s easy enough - some yum yum food, a warm blanket, perhaps a little wine if we’re feeling good, and some napkins to clean up the mess. But here we were, as usual, Paige and I looking quiet and confused, lazy and distant, timid and scared. Thank God Lindy was there. Our beauty picnic would have easily turned into an alcove tea party, shut off from the world in our dark little corner.
“Jake, go in that fridge and get me some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Paige, squeeze me out some fresh orange juice. Jake, while you’re in there could you grab the peanut butter and jelly? Paige, where’s that cutting board? Let’s get us ready the lunch of a lifetime!” she was exclaiming in the kitchen.
And we performed our assigned duties, knowing that the only alternative was solidarity. I wanted to call her Mother Serena or Saint Spanish Long Legs or simply Savior. And head in the fridge, butt stretched out proud and tall, I prayed thanks for her being there for us time and time again, helping us along our path. Paige and I were lonely Bikkhus lost in dark zen forests and Lindy was our anchor, unwavering and strong.
Under her direction, we got a sweet and wholesome lunch together and we got walking to the plaza. The plaza is a magical place. It hosts a grand farmer’s market every Saturday through the spring, summer, and fall. It’s a rich environment filled with music, twirly jugglers, rootsy people, and crazy people too. I realized the town was quirky when I saw a young white girl wearing a shoelace, and only a shoelace. That shoelace had her contorted and crushed but by God she fit into it and it covered just enough to keep her from being arrested. All I could think when I saw her was, “Man that looks uncomfortable” but I guess that shoelace did get me thinking about her and I didn’t just pass her by, ho-hum, dead stare and see nothing, and maybe that’s all she wanted - to be noticed unlike everyone else. After all, when my eyes got focus on all her skin, there was a whole world of activity and action that took the background - fuzzy and out of focus. And thus we can’t really help but to have our blinders on. The only way to see anything with any type of clarity is to blind yourself of all that’s going on behind the thing in focus. Like a great gestalt switch. Boy, this world is big.
When there isn’t Farmer’s Market the plaza is filled with down and out’s. The poor folk looking for a buck sit out there and beat their drums and try to find that peace that’s inherent in all things including the grass carpet, big open-windowed home that is the plaza. And I got to know a few of them and they weren’t so bad (though one man raved about an acid trip through which he realized vegetables have feelings and due to that became a meat-aterian, only eating meat because he figured vegetables never hurt nobody and didn’t deserve to be eaten alive and suffering while animals often attack people and are therefore guilty in some sense - a very strange man he was though I suppose logically consistent).
So we were walking out there with our lucky lunch and this is the time that all the news was coming out that Iraq, whom we’d just invaded and took over, never had weapons of mass destruction and so the premise for the war was a lie. And the sad thing was noone even looked surprised because the weapons inspectors searching for these deadly weapons had been telling us over and over before the war that they weren’t there and everyone knew President Bush was hell-bent on war and noone had any trust in the government or anything for that matter. It was becoming common knowledge that the ideology of “freedom for the people” really meant “freedom for capital.” But hope remained in the soul of the activist, and war-protestors never tired from their mission and sure enough there were always five or six of them out on that plaza every day. Today was no exception.
We walked by this real beat figure, ragged and red-eyed, holding up a sign that said, “Drop acid, not bombs!” And I was just walking by this cat thinking, “Dude, I dig what you’re doing but I don’t know, I don’t know.” And I still to this day don’t know.
Paige whispered to Lindy and I, “Shoot up heroin, not Iraqis.” We laughed good. Paige always has a sense of humor, a noble trait indeed. And then I just kept thinking, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
I started thinking about a world in which every single person was free, like some great Hegelian dream, when every soul was self-determining, pure recognition all around, and how beautiful that would look. But that’s a real democracy and noone’s ever seen that - us with our Republic, the masses ruled by the powerful elite. Keep us in check and check on us often and play to your audience like an actor on a stick. And we’ll cast the vote if you’ve got the funds. This world’s too complicated for a simpleton like me.
We found a nice healthy patch of green grass and laid down our stuff. We plopped right on the ground and stretched out in the poignant sun. It was nice to feel those yellow rays as most of the time the sun’s kicking it behind some bummer clouds.
I took a look around and saw beat hippies all over the place. I was a couple of them screaming at each other, a few just sitting looking down and out and sad, a couple playing guitars and drums, and a few sleeping in the grass. It was a nice scene. Then a guy caught my eye. He didn’t have the dredlocks most of these other guys had and he didn’t look so dirty. He had a shaved head - all the way to the skin, an old holey holy shirt with the ohm symbol on it, some greenish baggy khakis and some sandals.
He caught my eye for two reasons. First of all, he was full lotus and meditating in utter repose even when right next to him a faded hippie was jamming out Bob Dylan covers on his trashed guitar. Second, he looked just like Lao Tzu. Well, what I envisioned Lao Tzu to look like. This idea was not preconceived, mind you. If I’d ever sat down and thought about what Lao Tzu looked like I’m sure I would have figured him to be Asian. But when I saw this white zen saint meditating in the square I knew it was Lao Tzu embodied. All these thoughts flying through my mind and he was just sitting there - Lao Tzu as a white man - Mr. Tzu, how are you?
Like a great moment of synchronicity young Mr. Tzu opened his eyes, awoken from his dogmatic slumber, and looked right at me, linking eyes. Normally I’d look away, pretending not to have been staring but I was looking at a 2600 year old sage who was conceived to a shooting star and carried in his mother’s womb for sixty-two years. How could I help but gawk?
And Lao Tzu, intrigued, got right up and came over to me and my picnic pals.
In a soft, gentle voice he said, “Hello, I’m Jonathon. May I join you?”
Lindy was surprised and very open and inviting. She sensed that special something that defined this man. She wanted to hear his stories and dig him.
Paige was equally inviting and a little turned on, I suspected. She looked up at him with squinted eyes and happy smile and said, “Have a seat.”
And so young Jonathon Tzu sat down and the four of us had the most interesting talk of our lifetime.
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