The End of Act I

          Right back where he started, the protagonist has encountered his first great obstacle: his body.  I drew this little picture of my home the night before I left, thinking this was the last time I'd be here for a while.  Little did I know I would be back the following morning.  So, here's what happened...

          On April 5th I was dropped off in Rockport and walked to Beverly.  By the end of the day, my knees were spent.  Upon waking up the next day, I was ready to walk again.  By the time I got to my front door in Stoneham, my knees were more than spent, they were in debt.  I had already planned to spend the next couple days at home so I rested my legs and said what I thought were my last goodbyes.  On sunday April 10th I felt 100% and walked to Concord.  Once I 

sat down on the shore of Walden Pond I didn't think I'd get back up again.  I spent the night anyway, stopped by Thoreau's cabin, or at least where it once was, drank some water from the pond and listened to the train that cuts through the woods every hour while I thought about what the Hell I'm going to do next.

          My mom picked me up in the morning.  I hobbled back to the other side of Walden through the light drizzle of rain.  I wasn't alone at the pond, there was already a cluster of people shoving out into rowboats and fishing at seven in the morning.  All those lucky people, nowhere more important to be, doing exactly what they want on a Monday morning.  If I had my way I would've been on my way to Harvard, MA, continuing my trip out West but, I took the advice from a good friend and listened to what my body was telling me: go back home.

          So, now what?  I've already said goodbye to everyone (just pretend I'm not here, friends!).  I've been planning this trip out for a long time now, I can't just give up on it.  I've been resting my legs, they feel better now.  I went to the doctor and he said everything looked fine but walking might not be the best thing for my knees.  I can dig it but, I'm definitely a little discouraged.  I've been walking around wearing my backpack for months to get ready and when the time came to leave I only made it 45 miles before my body told me to turn back.

          It's amazing how many banana peels I saw in those 45 miles.  I felt like the universe was speaking to me, confirming my thought that life is too short, telling me I was doing the right thing at the right time in the right place.  I certainly couldn't pass these peels off as mere coincidence after getting my tattoo right before I left.  Maybe this was all supposed to happen.  Maybe just doing this on foot was the wrong idea.

          The thought of taking my bike has entered my mind.  Originally I didn't want to have the burden of the bike in case something broke and I needed to fix it but, at this point fixing a bike would be a whole lot easier than fixing my legs if I wore them down to nothing.  This trip was never about walking, it was just about heading out West and seeing the country from a different perspective than a car or a train.  The important thing is to not give up on this idea I've had in my 

head.  I got this little bag from my friends at the Zen center with the all-important message, 'Never Give Up' written on it.  This little token seems extra important now and it reminds me of something Joan said the night I stayed in Beverly.  She said, 'There's no such thing as failures, just new discoveries.'  Nothing can be known until we try; I'm glad I found out I need to do something differently while I was still close to home.  I know something will work out but, until then I'll just enjoy being home for a little longer.

First Night in the Zendo

         I arrived earlier than I expected.  Luckily, Kevin was there to open the door when I rang the bell.  "You must be Dan," he said.  I was expecting Joan, the woman I met once before when I visited last summer, who I had contacted a week before I showed up with my backpack and walking stick.  She owns and lives in the Marblehead Zen Center (located in Beverly, MA); a lovely home located one street over from the Atlantic Ocean.  I told her I was attempting to walk across the country and was hoping I could spend my first night at the center.  Her response in the email was, "absolutely!"

          Kevin invited me in and said I could put my things in the library.  He had so many questions about my trip but said he couldn't think of any now that I was there.  I told him to ask me anything when he remembered.  It was just before 5:00 in the afternoon.  After I changed out of my sweaty travel clothes, Jacqueline and Kevin were talking and laughing in the kitchen.  Jacqueline comes to the zen center a few days a week to do a yoga session for anyone interested; I was just in time.  Joan arrived shortly after and met us in the zendo for yoga.

      The next few hours were a blur.  Yoga lead right into meditation when we were joined by three others; one had been there before, the other two were newcomers to the center.  Joan spoke about the Zen meditation method, what the point of staring at the wall is.  "It's about leaving everything outside of the zendo; in here we have no roles, we are just conscious bodies being present, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable while being as unmoving as the wall."

          8:30 came around so quickly and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, I don't know how I was still standing.  Everyone was gone by this point except Kevin and me.  He has been living at the Zen center for a few months now and in a few months he'll be flying to California to stay in a monastery for an "indefinite amount of time".  He ate his vegetables and rice and I had a couple peanut butter sandwiches (he offered me his delicious food but I was content with the meal I will probably eating once or twice a day for the rest of the year) and we talked about the surreal situation we were both sitting in: staying in a house owned by an incredibly kind and caring woman, both of us just trying to figure out a way to live life that's different from the usual full-time job and starting a family and all the other distractions that don't appeal to either of us, both of us about to give in to some hefty commitments with no real plans for afterward.  Neither of us had roles, we were both just being present, almost like speaking to the wall and hearing the same words being echoed back.  

          Sleep never came so easily.  I wish I could've looked at some of the books in the library but, I couldn't keep my eyes open longer than I had to.  In the morning after meditation, Joan and Kevin and Mark (another member of the center) sent me off by chanting the Jizo Dharani, a sort of mantra recited to grant extra protection to travelers.  What more could you possibly want from your hosts?  Breakfast?  Well, they took care of that too after the chanting; oatmeal, apple sauce, toast and tea filled me up before heading out into the sunshine.

          Upon stepping out through the back door and onto the porch I was confronted by this sign: 'great is the matter / of birth and death / life is fleeting, gone GONE / awake, awake each one! / do not waste this life'.  Just like life, my stay at the zendo was brief and fleeting and I am gone, off to make something out of life!

The Unthinkable

          Not long ago I walked by a cemetery and saw an old woman standing in front of a grave.  She wasn't crying or saying anything outloud, just standing quietly, looking down at whoever was buried there.  It could've been anyone, her lover, her son, her own mother.  Death doesn't discriminate; you don't have to be old to die.  I wonder what she was silently saying to this person in the ground.  It might've been nothing, maybe she was just staring into the unknown, wondering.

          Death is a mystery.  Life is a mystery, too, although at times we think we've got it figured out and then death happens and life gets flipped upside-down.  I like to think it's all an illusion, smoke and mirrors, some combination of misinformation and misperception that makes us forget death is part of life, and out of death comes new life.  The metaphors are all around us: the birth and death of the day, the changing seasons, the brief and beautiful cycle of plants blooming each Spring.  For some reason, a lot of people have trouble seeing this cycle in terms of human life.  To many, death seems like an abrupt apathetic end to a beautiful performance that only happens once.

          Yesterday I was walking in the woods with a friend.  It was one of the windiest days I had seen in a while.  We were walking towards the edge of a lake when we came across this man and his dog standing next to a fallen tree in the middle of the path.  His dog was was picking up smaller branches and running around all excited.  The man was pretty excited, too.  He said the tree had fallen less than two minutes before we showed up.  He heard a tremendous crack in the midst of a strong gust of wind.  He looked up to see where the noise came from and was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the falling tree just in time for him and his dog to move out of the way.  When my friend and I arrived the smell of fresh pine hung in the air.  The tree looked like it had exploded, there were pine needles and splinters all over the path.  My friend and I could've stumbled upon this man crushed underneath the massive tree amongst all the debris but, today was not his day to die (or his dog's).  Tragedy was avoided and the man's near-death experience became a funny story for all of us and his dog was quite happy to play with all the broken branches from the fallen tree.

 

      

          Plenty of people are worried about me going on this trip – very excited but, also worried.  For my mom, it's almost like I'm going off to war.  She had me get a set of dog tags with my identity and emergency contact information on them. She even suggested I write up something so my money and possessions can be divvied up if the unthinkable happens; for lack of a better term, my last will and testament.  I joked with her and said I'd leave it all to our dog just like that Jimmy Buffet song but, she didn't laugh as hard as me.  I'm not poking fun at you, mom (I know you're reading this), it's just funny to think of walking across America as going into war.  Really, anything can happen at anytime, though.  You can get crushed by a tree on a windy day or you could slip on a banana peel and break your neck.  These shouldn't be reasons to be afraid, they should be reasons to embrace each day in this lifetime.

          I suppose I'm putting myself in a vulnerable situation, attempting to walk 3,300 miles with 35 pounds on my back like some slow-moving turtle.  But, there's a fine line between being excessively foolish and overly cautious and I think going for a walk is literally walking this line.  The adventure is worth the risk to me.  If America turns out to be a warzone and I end up getting killed in action then so it goes.  I sure hope I don't die out there but, that's something that's just out of my control.  If I die, I will die trying to live.

Where Have I Been?

          Tonight (about a week ago) reminded me of many nights I had last May when I would get out of work with just enough time to get to the Wakefield lake.  The sun would set as I circled the water, and the sky would change from swirls of blue and pink to a deep violet that stained every surface; those nights when an extra hour of exercise and meditation felt like a step in the right direction to something more worth while, before I even had the idea to walk across the country.  Tonight reminded me of when I first felt like breaking the routine I was in.

          Walking then and walking now is not the same.  I may be in the same place, getting the same extra hour of exercise in my routine but, now I do it with my backpack on, my soon-to-be-home, getting my body ready to carry the weight for the rest of the year.  'Ready' is a tricky term, though.  To be ready is not a way of saying you expect to succeed but, that you're mentally and physically prepared to confront the unexpected.

          So where have I been?  I ask myself this question because this is such a strange and wonderful time in my life that seems to be happening faster than the ordinary flow of time.  Physically, for the most part, I've been home or in the woods nearby or at the lake in Wakefield.  If you could see my daily route on a GPS you would see a lot of small circles happening very close to my house.  Mentally, I've been in some little fish bowl of a routine I've worked myself into: walk, eat, stretch, sleep and then the other important things like planning my walking route to California and spending time with friends and family.  A structured daily to-do list is something most of us live with and often try to escape; or at least balance the things we have to do with things we want to do.

          And sometimes the things we want to do become the things we have to do, and therefore we're back in another fish bowl.  This is where I am right now.  I couldn't feel more ready to leave but I need to stick around a little longer to have more time with the ones I love.  While I wait, I feel compelled to keep the momentum going and find at least a few hours a day to walk with my pack on.  But, it's tough to get excited about walking in the same places day after day when you start to recognize every rock and root you step on (sounds a little like floating between work and home).  Everyday isn't like tonight at the lake where it feels like the world is opening up and something new is just on the other side.

          I can't help but wonder if there's ever an end to it; if there's a routine that doesn't feel like a routine.  I wonder if there's such a right combination of things that makes life feel like an endless ocean of possibilities.  We may be stuck in our own little fish bowls, going around and around but I know there are ways to make it seem a little bigger if we just balance the good and the bad and have a little bit of patience.  But if you find it impossible to look past the glass surrounding you then maybe the only thing to do is break it.  Who knows?

Little Clay Pots

          I've been working on writing something about being comfortable for over two weeks now.  I say 'working on' but that means I've just been filling my time with other things that have kept my head in the clouds and away from my notebook.  So maybe 'working on' is the wrong term but I'm certainly working on it now.

          Maybe I couldn't bring myself to finish what I started because I didn't know how; because I used the word 'comfortable' so much and I wanted to go back and figure out how to change that (I didn't).  The reason that best fits is I've been too comfortable– too comfortable settling into a daily routine (a routine that hasn't involved writing); too comfortable house-sitting for a few days, enjoying the silence that replaced the constant noise of living with five other people; too comfortable enjoying the company of a friend who came home to visit for a few weeks who also enjoys donuts and the great outdoors as much as I do; perhaps too comfortable being freshly unemployed with no sign of having a job for the rest of 2016.  Yes, life has been damn good lately which might be the cause of this lack of motivation to write about things I want to say.  There isn't much too say when life is just... so damn good.

          But this can't last, nothing does.  My friend is leaving, there's some crappy weather heading my way that is about to throw off my daily routine, and I'm back home living with five other people instead of sitting in solitide by myself (I still love you, Mom, Dad, Meg, Ava, and Gunnar!).  So here I am, like a plant pulled from a flower pot, readjusting, getting ready to leave home in about a month, with newfound motivation to write something about this whole experience we all acknowledge as 'living' however we choose to define it.

          A plant can flourish just fine in a pot on a windowsill.  There's enough dirt and sunshine without the unpredictable outdoor elements.  But all potted plants reach an end to their growth.  There's only so much soil before the plant becomes root-bound and slowly cuts itself off from the dirt where all the good stuff is.  The death of the potted plant is inevitable without the promise of rebirth in the same soil.  Transplanting into a garden outdoors can be risky business.  Those roots are susceptible to damage and need extra care over the first week or so of their new home.  But the life of that plant merges with a whole new environment.  The roots will grow strong with infinite space to meander through ensuring, at least, a perennial return.  Perhaps the biggest difference between the potted plant and the garden plant is the potted requires the daily care of the watering can, maybe even the right mix of nutrients while the transplanted specimen, once established, can thrive off the outdoor elements with little to no help from the gardener and become one with the environment.

          I was planning on including the original text I had been 'working on' somewhere around here but I don't want to steer anyone away from this page with an unnecessarily long rambling of things I want to say.  I can certainly summarize my other words for you in case my little flower pot metaphor didn't do the trick for you:

          Comfort means something different to every person.  Hot or cold, hard or soft.  It's good to be comfortable with who we are, what we do, where we live.  But when we develope the idea that comfort means always being entertained and the senses stimulated, comfort tends to become a carrot on a string mere feet in front of us while we're stuck on a treadmill.  The more we have, the more we need and we always need the newest and biggest versions: cars, phones, TVs, homes.  We can never fully see how comfortable be can be with less until we understand the satisfaction of things never lasts.  We all suffocate ourselves in our own little flower pots because we're safe and change is tough.  We think a good clay pot is everything but, less is more, let those roots grow into the dirt.

Perfection

          Sometimes it seems like things happen at the exact moment they should, like the events in our lives are actually carefully orchestrated instead of randomly occurring.  A close friend recently introduced me to the idea of EWOP, "Everything is Working Out Perfectly".  This friend of mine was travelling around on the other side of the world, going wherever the wind took him when he met a guy who was trying to spread the good word of EWOP.

          The idea behind this perspective is quite simple: the way everything has happened is perfect and the way everything is happening is perfect.  However, if something strikes you as imperfect you should feel compelled to change it.  Otherwise, if there is nothing you can do for the situation, accept it as perfection.  But, especially do not sit and complain about it because negative words only create negative energy which does nothing but spread negativity.

          "Everything is Working Out Perfectly" is just another way of saying "everything happens for a reason".  While the reason may not be immediately apparent there is always time to see things from another perspective to understand what life has thrown at you.  The way life unfolds doesn't always happen the way we hoped it would but, nothing in life is guaranteed, a fact that we should try to be more mindful of.  When we take a step back from the situation we might even see how a detour on the path we're on actually leads to the same destination even if the detour seems to be long and winding in the opposite direction.

          In this life there are no isolated incidences.  Each moment is shaped by the previous moment and will define the shape of the next one.  We should do our best to be in each moment to the fullest to find insight for how to proceed to the next.  If we are caught up in the past or are focused on the moment too far ahead we will miss whatever is happening in front of us right now.

          I've been doing my best to acknowledge at all times that everything is working out perfectly.  Trusting in this allows me to rest in the now and not worry about how things could be different or what will happen if this doesn't take place at the "right" time.  Anything that defies our expectations is just a detour on the road of life, the road which brings us to no destination, just a new beginning.  In this realization we see it's all about the journey, there is no end to hurry towards.  With this vision, we can see everything happens at the right time.

Stuff

                  "That's the whole

          meaning of life: trying to find

               a place for your stuff."

                               -George Carlin

          Someone very smart once said, "Life's a garden, dig it!"  I've always considered myself a happy gardener and always enjoyed the fruits of my labor.  It's funny though, once I started to think seriously about my trek from Massachusetts to California I got the feeling I was laying down a new bed of soil, out of which has already sprouted the first signs of a simpler and happier life.

          In order for this trip to be possible I knew a lot would have to change.  Just over a month ago I had a condo full of stuff.  The usual stuff, nothing too crazy.  It didn't seem like that much until I had to decide what I would keep and what I would give away before moving back home with my family.

          To live out of a backpack for six to eight months requires a bit of mindfulness of what is actually essential to survival.  When you know you're the one who has to carry your entire home on your back you start to see how every ounce counts and how easy it is to tell necessities from luxuries.  I never had to look at stuff this way with my condo.  All I ever had was space for more.  I had a closet overflowing with clothes, a bed, about 100 books, a kitchen filled with cups, plates, coffee mugs, pots, pans, and a crockpot I never even used; not to mention nearly 500 records and a heavy duty shelf to store them all.  I never saw how cumbersome this all was until it had to be dealt with.

          As a quick fix to this excessive stuff situation I gave most of it away to friends and family and nearby donation centers.  It's nice to know the books and records that gave me so much joy have been given new lives in someone else's home, and all the groovy clothes I collected from second-hand stores are probably back on the racks now from where I first bought them.

          It felt great to cut out the extra clutter, to "weed out" the garden, so to speak.  However, when the day came to move back home with my rents I was surprised to see how many boxes of stuff I still had (not as surprised as my parents).  I mean, I couldn't get rid of all my records and books, and I still need at least one funny coffee mug and some of my clothes, and of course I need some of the junk that gets collected over the years that we don't know why we saved it but can't seem to get rid of it, either.

          I guess I still have some weeds in my garden but, even the occassional dandelion is pleasing to the eye.  What can you do?  Until I come back from my trip, all this extra stuff will sit in boxes in my parents basement.  Maybe by then I'll be able to find the proper place for it all and give my life meaning as Mr. Carlin suggests!