Thanksgiving 2012

It is never "Turkey Day" for me. Nor have I ever engaged in the mass spending spree known as "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday."

I don't know why more isn't made of the fact that the whole holiday was based on giving thanks to the Native Americans who could have just shrugged and gone about their harvest festivities, ignoring the poor Pilgrims unable to grow enough of their own food that first year in a New World. I'll bet there are more than a few Native Americans today who wished their ancestors hadn't been so generous.

And I've sat at my share of Thanksgiving dinners, but have yet to hear any thanks given to the original inhabitants of this continent and have kept mum when I wanted to squeal, "Okay, okay. So thank the Lord, too, but give credit where credit's due!" I try to be a polite guest.

In some ways, though, every day is Thanksgiving for me; I am thankful for so much. The health and well-being of loved ones, all the love in my life, and life itself, which has been (so far!) nothing but serendipitous. It has been so blessed and yet I have no idea why. Sure, a little of it was effort, but so much was just chance, circumstance and other factors I had no way of controlling.

Like growing up in different cultures and countries, in different languages. (Others have to spend years to become fluent in a second language.)

Like learning to be self-sufficient at a young age. (My non-English speaking mom was not much help in the U.S.)

Like losing a father and growing up real fast. (I mostly by-passed that horrible disco-n-coke era.)

Like NOT getting hired by any Japanese company post-graduation but somehow stumbling into what turned into an amazing career.

Through that, I met hundreds of fabulous people, both famous and unknown, found and learned to keep great friends. Heck, even my posture became better through all those on-camera jobs. And last but not least, finding Big Dog through that career and getting a lifetime of adventures and challenges.

The fatalist in me is worried it will all come to a crashing halt one of these days. The optimist in me says it never will because no matter how bad things get, I will always get something special out of it.

Friends Feed My Soul

Here in Tokyo the skies are dark. Too much concrete and steel weigh down my spirit. Everything seems outrageously expensive. So why am I so happy?

I am surrounded by love. Love from my family, love from my friends, even love from my former radio show listeners (the fans who I have gotten to know well.) It is a humbling experience.

After decades on air, I was sick of it all. I didn't need the stress, the endless hours of work, the exposure, the fan mail... Ugh. Get me out of here. 

What an ingrate I was.

Most of the year I live in silence and isolation. I tell Big Dog, that's why I talk so loudly in my sleep. I have not found a new "tribe" to replace the one I had in Tokyo, but it was okay. I had all the great energy from nature to commune with. But now in Tokyo, reconnecting with all these people, I realize how much they mean to me, how so fortunate I am.

My wacky family and our amazing dinner conversations that can go from heated political debates to potty humor. MM who has inspired me to lighten my life in preparation for The Big Change that she/we believe is coming. Q with all her spiritual wisdom. MS who never ceases to push my creativity buttons. My oldest friend G, always making me laugh. Remember how you made me laugh even on the day of my father's wake?

I can't wait to meet up with the others.

I used to think the best part of homecoming was the fantastic food here. Now I know it's really my friends and family who so completely feed my soul.

The Other Lesson Learned

I was getting too confident. During all the construction work this summer, I worked like I was a 16 year old speed freak. I felt stronger than ever, healthier than ever, absolutely invincible.

Hubris invites Nemesis. The Greeks knew it.
And now, so do I.

Shelter

Big Dog's a strange one. He can sound totally heartless when talking about "people." ("There're too many of us in this world, no one's going to end poverty or hunger until they do something about the population!" "I don't care if they're from Mexico or Minnesota, go home. California's got too many people already!") He can sound like he only cares about the animals and trees. And yet he's got a mysterious soft spot for his low-life friends.

These are the kinds of people everyone's already given up on. People who have seemingly let their lives turn into shambles through their own laziness, bad decisions (the obviously bad ones,) lack of discipline or fiscal responsibility. When they are friends of Big Dog, they will anger him to no end ("How can they be so stupid!" "Don't they care about themselves?!") but in the end, he will be there to help them out. When no one they know gives a crap anymore.

And thus, we welcomed Harley into our home.

Fact. Harley (not his real name) is five feet nothing and looked like a troll (until he no longer even had money for food.) He's been a bachelor all his life.
Fact. In what could be a scene from a movie, Harley's good-looking and popular older brother entrusts him with his '55 Chevy and goes off to Vietnam. The brother never comes back. The Chevy sits exactly where the brother left it -- for decades -- until earlier this year when Harley finally sells it for food money.
Fact. Harley's mother died in the late 70's or early 80's. Nothing in Harley's house has moved since then. Things come in, but nothing ever goes out. And when I say "hasn't moved" I mean it, literally. No vacuum has sucked up any dust, no broom has swept out any grub. Magazines and books grew like columns of trees in his living room. I've seen his couch slowly disintegrate.
Fact. When things break down, they stay broken. Harley's toilet started leaking one year. He stopped using the toilet. (Don't make me imagine what he used instead!!) Then he had to shut off water to the house entirely when something went wrong in the kitchen. (Now I really don't want to imagine what's going on -- or not!) He never took up Big Dog's offer to help him fix the problem.
Fact. Harley got fired a few years ago and never really bothered to find a new job (and back then he probably could have.) Earlier this year, his car got repo'd. Then they shut off his electricity. In the last few months, he has really struggled to scrounge up enough cash to feed himself, has lost so much weight he's as small as I am, but he still refuses to sell any of the books, CDs, records or unopened gifts stuffing his house.

"I'll start getting my pension at the end of September, so if I can just hang on til then..." Harley mentioned a while back, so Big Dog sent him an email telling him he was welcome to stay with us and maybe help with the ranch work. As soon as he was able to borrow money from another friend, Harley took the train and bus to San Luis Obispo.

"OK, Harley, I want you to shove all your clothes into the washer," Big Dog insisted when we got home. "The clothes you are wearing, too. You stink."
"Really? You know, I'm blessed with a really dull sense of smell," he laughed.
Big Dog and I looked at each other.
"I wouldn't call it a blessing," quipped BD.
"I wonder if that's why I couldn't find anyone to talk to on the way over."
I had to run from the laundry room. It seemed the odor coming out of Harley's duffle bag had an evil mind of its own.

Big Dog washed Harley's clothes three times. Then, the seat covers in our truck. Then he sprayed Fabreze into the truck and left the windows open.

"It still smells," we grimaced four days later.
"I don't know what else to do!" BD was exasperated.
"It's like that episode in Seinfeld!!"

After a week of twice daily showers, a working toilet and wholesome ranch food, Harley's smelling alright but friends and family still can't believe BD has brought him into our home. It's always easier to help out the poor and needy when they are far away.

A few of my friends are very involved with Tibetan refugees and make visits to refugee camps, have audiences with the Dalai Lama, etc. Others help build homes in El Salvador. One is with a group of middle aged tech guys, doing whatever they do, in Nigeria. I would much rather be there with them -- it's so glamorous, like jet-setting with Bono or something. But until I can learn about real compassion, joining them would be as hypocritical as spending a few dollars on a "stop poverty/hunger/infant mortality/etc." bracelet and walking by the old man with the "Homeless and Hungry" sign. Instead, we have taken him home. Here, he will be treated like the Dalai Lama. Even while we ask him to shovel a few piles of mulch around the ranch.

Behind the Redwood Curtain

After a long, frantic week of socializing, visitors and tidying up the ranch, we escaped gorgeous, sunny Central California to arrive in misty, magical Humboldt.

Not only are we behind the Redwood Curtain, but shrouded in fog. We're very hidden here in Arcata, a pretty little town of fanciful Victorian architecture, colorful denizens and majestic redwoods.

I remember the greeting we got a few years ago, as we just arrived and were driving through downtown Arcata. At a stop sign, an old hippie stood in front of our truck and "flew" his glass pipe over the hood of our car. It was like a benediction.

"We're back in Arcata!" Big Dog and I laughed.

No such welcome this time, but I'm impressed with the creative men's fashions. Men in long, flowing black skirts, men in kilts and leathers, a guy with dots tattooed over his eyebrows... it used to be just flannel and dreadlocks.

Aside from the fun of being in a town that's sort of trapped in the 60's, it was also good to get away from the ranch. As much as I love it there and as much as I think it IS paradise, I've recently found myself becoming more...what? bourgeois?...when I stay there too long, much to my disgust. I'm getting way too protective of everything there. ("Don't hang your exercise equipment on the fruit trees, JD! We already lost one apple tree!" "The kids are leaving too much crap all over the place!" "Daddy McC shouldn't have called the sheriff on our neighbor! No one in this valley wants the law to show up on their property!") The Road to Satori takes a backslide.

So it's good to be here, in a completely empty house, sleeping on foam mats, having only an odd assortment of stuff left over from Big Dog's student days. Old T-shirts work well as pillowcases. Empty pie tins make decent plates.

"You guys are way minimal!" commented Big Dog's high school buddy, J., when we met him and his wife for dinner in San Francisco on our way up here.
"You guys are zen!" laughed his wife.
True, we don't have much at the ranch, at least not stuff, but I get really possessive about the trees, the hills, the land. When in fact, in this life, ownership is only an illusion. Nobody really owns anything and so thinking that you do only makes for unhappiness.

Like slack key wonder Makana said in Hawaii, "Access trumps ownership." You understand that when you let go.

Right Here, Right Now

I have to remember to say it. Over and over, in my mind, like some kind of mantra. Not "some kind of." It IS a mantra. I need to remind myself that I cannot control everything and what I have no control over, I need to learn to accept.

Being away from the Ranch is hard for me, psychologically. I'll stress over everything and stay up at night wondering "what if...," working up countless idiotic scenarios.

"Maybe the motion sensor light that we haphazardly rigged to battle the bats (again! on a different side of the house!) got wet, shorted and burned down our house?"
"What if the gophers got the better of the ranch and stripped it of its vegetation?"
I worried a lot about the ranch. But, I worried a lot about our aging parents, too, and all the medical disasters waiting to strike. And when I wasn't thinking of the ranch or the old folks, I was phobing over all the little, loose "to dos" that have yet to become "dids."

I got back to The Ranch last Friday, literally steps before the next giant wave of visitors, but there is something strangely calming about this place. I don't need to keep chanting "right here, right now." Is it because the "right now" of "right here" is so perfect and my mind has no desire to wander? I don't know. It just feels right. Here.

And now that all the guests are gone and the ranch is back to its perfectly quiet self, it's only natural that nature itself also relaxes, yawns, lets its hair down, takes a big stretch. A bushy tailed fox appeared this morning in front of the old barn (walking away from the chicken coop -- the chickens were okay) and then, a baby bobcat by the creek this afternoon. Perfect parts of a perfect picture.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

In my case, happiness is a flowing caulk gun.

Last Tuesday, I left Tokyo at 6pm and by 4:30pm the very same day, I was back on the work crew on the other side of the Pacific. Lucky for me, I love detail work and find caulking to be one of the most satisfying things to do! The concentration, the delicate balance between caulk flow and gun movement, the feeling of complete satisfaction when the line is straight and even and oh-so-perfect!

But now, most of the work is done. It's our final week behind the Redwood Curtain. The weather has been gorgeous and neighbors are starting their own summer home repair projects. Do they need a girl with a (caulk) gun? She's really, really good...

Bye-bye Bamba

La Bamba left us.
She was Big Dog's old 1975 Volvo that he kept in the garage here in Arcata for the last 15 years. It was a bomb of a car, but ran well and when he had it in LA, was the perfect Urban Camouflage Vehicle. It was originally a maroon color, but I've only known it to be a tri-colored monstrosity, with exploded seats and an actual working eight track. Friends laughed at first. Then, when their nice Mercedes and Beemers kept getting stolen right from their driveways, they began to make offers on La Bamba.

When people panhandled Big Dog, he'd tell them, "Yeah, I've got a quarter. And it's going into a piggybank when I get home. See that car over there? When I've saved enough money, I'm going to get a paint job." Sometimes, the panhandlers would actually give him some change "for the cause." That's how crazy people are about their cars in LA!

We thought she'd eventually come to The Ranch. It would have been the perfect place for her to spend the twilight of her days. But this year, Big Dog finally got sick of her taking up so much space -- excruciatingly valuable space -- in the garage and even after he was able to start her up by dropping in a new battery, he put her up for adoption (i.e., he tried to give her away to a Charitable Cause.) After too many hours of negotiating with towing companies and red tape, he gave up and called a local tow operation.

A giant ramped truck arrived (their motto, "We don't want an arm and a leg; just your tows" painted on the cab in beautiful script) and in no time at all, La Bamba was pushed onto the truck. Big Dog only had the Volvo hood ornament and an old, sun-bleached Sensoji amulet that had been hanging inside. The amulet's already inside our Tacoma. Maybe I'll weld the Volvo ornament onto my bike.

People have relationships with their cars the way they don't with, say, their washing machine. I've never owned a car, so I can only imagine, but it was still sad to see her rolling away from us. Big Dog didn't appear to be too torn up about it, though. There is certainly something new and different in the air. Not only did BD off La Bamba, he's been in the process of trying to sell the first piece of property he bought, when he was still in university.

I might have written about it before, but Big Dog collects real estate the way others collect cars. He's not into real estate the way many people are -- he doesn't buy anything to "flip" and these are not really investments. It's like the guy who loves fine art and pays a bundle for a Picasso and justifies it by telling people about its investment value even though he has no intention of ever selling it. So this new move is a Big Deal. What is going on here?

"I'm finally moving on," he says, but he's usually way more tied to the past than I am. So why now?

When you start letting go, interesting things can happen. We might be coming upon some exciting times...