Sunday, January 9, 2011

After much arguing and another elaborate feast we set off the next morning in the afternoon.  Well into day two we were two hours from Monterey.  


Before stopping at the Muir Woods overlook for what was to be the first bocce game of the trip, we stopped at a yard sale outside of Tamalpais to find, hopefully, a pot functional for camping.  Instead Tristan found oil for future bike repairs, and I found Emmanuel’s Book, a text that became of great interest to us in the next leg of the trip, and certainly influential in its overall meaning.  Due to the nearly inaudible portable speakers we had brought and Tristan’s long-ago maimed and stolen stereo, we filled the space with reading from many books, and Emmanuel’s granted much insight as we made our first assent into the redwoods of northern California. 

Ram Daas introduces the book as legitimate, saying that the authors who, on their radio show, fielded questions and presented them to their friend in the spirit world, they are sincerely communicating the message of an entity on the other side, and when Pat Rodgecast “conveyed Emmanuel’s words…the differences were very noticeable” (xiii).  

We now found ourselves, to fill the audio void, giving voice to Emmanuel’s truth, announcing our divinity and foreshadowing many lessons yet to come, the first poem/koan/psalm appropriately named “An Overview of the Human Adventure” (3).

The purpose of life is exploration.

Adventure.  Learning.  Pleasure.

And another step towards home.

Physical bodies

Are rather like space suits.

Your physical bodies

can be symbols to you of restriction,

of ultimate pain and death,

of surprising and alarming needs

and of unexpected triviality

that knows no bounds of denigration.

Or they can be seen as chosen vehicles

that souls are inhabiting

because, rather like space suits,

they are necessary where you are.

It is within your humanity

that you will learn

to recognize your divinity.

The spiritual and the human have to walk hand in hand

otherwise the spiritual has no foundation

on which to take hold.

We are all one.

Ours is one reality, one energy, one perception.

The mind cannot grasp this fact 

or accept it without battle

but the heart is yearning to know it.

Is this not life’s purpose—

to know that you belong,

that you are safe and eternal,

to know that in your spiritual reality

you are already one with God?

The human condition is not the antithesis of heaven.

It is the reproduction, within a limited vision,

manifest in physical form.

There is nothing in human experience 

that does not exist in spirit.

This is why the human condition is a blessed one.

It is a mirror, a faithful replica

of the spirit’s situation.

There is Divinity in all things

and in order to find that Divinity

one must work with the material at hand.

To disregard the clay

is to question the Divine Energy 

that formed it.

Your text has been completed. 

It is all here.  There is nothing more

that humanity needs to hear in order to grow.

There will be no new teachings,

for they are unnecessary.

What we in spirit are here to do

is to point you

to what has already been given.

You live in a loving universe.

All the forces are here to give you assistance,

to give you support.

We admire you tremendously.

Those of us who have been human

know full well the courage it takes.

John Muir Overlook

Tristan: Guitar music

Andrew: “We’re here at the Muir Overlook, Marin County.  We can see the San Francisco Peninsula.  And we’re on day two of our tour of the west coast and discovery of its best bocce locations and experiences to be offered.”

Andrew: “I guess we could just play freestyle bocce ball.”

Andrew: “There’s a beautiful lawn patch resting on this overlook, of what would you say this drop here is? 100 yards?

Tristan: “Oh, at least 1,000 feet.”

Andrew: “And I couldn’t think of a more ideal spot to play bocce.  Now on our opening night in Monterey we played the full fifteen points, though nowhere near thirty points were scored—it was not a close game. Tristan and Andrew beat Alexandra and myself, 15 to what? What did we end up getting? 6?”

Tristan: “7.”

Andrew: “As I was very distracted partway through the game, by a lot of visits from people getting off work.”

Andrew: “Also Alex had never played bocce before.”

Andrew: “She had some incredible shots, but there were parts when I realized she had never played before.”

Andrew: “Yesterday we stopped in San Jose at the Almaden Lake City Park, which I had picked out on the internet as a prime bocce location and indeed when we stopped there.”

Tristan: “Low and behold.”

Andrew: “Astroturf on the courts.  Four of them. Beautiful.  Right next to the lake.  Unbelievable moment.  Tristan had not set eyes on the courts before the state ranger—city-whatever-you-wanna-call-him—“

Tristan: “The man with the gun.”

Andrew: “the man with the gun.  He didn’t get out of the car and shout at us.  He stayed in the cab and announced it.”

Andrew: “How about an inaccurate reenactment right now?”

Andrew: “Alright.”

Andrew: “’Scuse me! ‘Scuse me!  Park is closing!  Park is closing!”
Tristan: “Half an hour ago!  Half an hour ago! Half an hour!”

Andrew: “Half an hour ago!  I’ve been making these announcements!”

Tristan: “And he had these three voices and was just yelling at everyone.”

Andrew: “Well, we were just, we wanted to look at the bocce—well get out!  Get out!  Go home. I have a gun.”

Tristan: “leave.  Leave now.  I’m gonna kill you.  I’ve killed already half your soul.”

Andrew: “Thank you, sir.”

Andrew: “So no bocce was played then.  But Andrew did manage to crack, barely, the beer that we had planned to drink. And made for”

Tristan: “And when we went to put it back in the very chilled environment of our mini cooler.”

Andrew: “Not realizing that it had been cracked slightly.”

Tristan: “It then spilled all over our food.”

Andrew: “It prematurely ejected itself from the bottle all over our cheese emotion.”

Andrew: “So what do you say? A round?”

Andrew: “Sure.”

*       *       *

2:45 PM Muir Beach Overlook, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, CA

Andrew Anderson

7

Tristan Kadish

3

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

4

From the late east bay start the sun was down by the time we were about where we wanted to camp for the evening.  We continued to wind up highway 1 with no radio, no light to read by, and no space between Tristan driving on my left and Andrew wedged with his arm out the window on my right.  The moon glimmered on the ocean ripples below us.  Every five minutes a pair of white headlights appeared before us and became a pair of red taillights behind us.  Sometimes it would be a faint pair miles ahead atop the next ridge. Sometimes it would be a blinding light suddenly appearing around the next corner.  Nothing was visible to the east until the road curved that way and the truck illuminated it. We stopped at a state park.  Spots available.  It was a beautiful campground, sheltered in a dropped down meadow below the highway and above the precipitous descent into the Pacific.  Forty dollars.  "Does it come with a TV?" we asked and continued on, the gear shift wedged into my left thigh for reverse.  We stopped for gas.   I filled my mug with convenience store powder hot chocolate and coffee to warm me up.  We climbed back in and got back on the road.  Fourth gear hit me in the knee.  We approach another state park, similarly ideal.  "Forty dollars?" and we continued on.  By now we had had our groceries that we had picked up in Bodega Bay and been all set for a couple of hours.  The headlights don't come at all now.  It's too late to be winding on this road.  The game of bocce has been played.  The car is in the garage. The television show has begun.  The kids have brushed their teeth.  But for us the destination is uncertain.

Then it was the cruelness of the sea, its restlessness and awfulness, rushed upon me.  Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime.  I held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fogbanks that hid San Francisco and the California coast.  Rain-squalls were driving in between, and I could scarcely see the fog.  And this strange vessel, with its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and out, was heading away into the southwest, into the great and lonely Pacific expanse.

—Jack London, the Sea Wolf, page 25