Every August

“Tell us a story,” said kids.

"I’ll do my best,” said a Zen monk. "I heard this story from a friend in The Windy City and it’s stranger than creative nonfiction.

"Funny how it comes around just about this time every year, just like last August. Somebody said August is the cruelest month. Easily the hottest. A local 15-year old girl killed herself yesterday with a single shot to the head. Makes you wonder who, when, where, how and big WHY.

“Last August it was M in old Chi town. The perfusionist. She called a wrong number out of desperation and I inherited the inevitable task of talking her through the drama of her life.

"I answered the phone in Tacoma and kept her on the suicide hot line. It produced basic peace of mind for her. I created poems and a well-done intense piece entitled The Last Several Pages about a book she was reading. She said was going to join a procrastinators club but kept putting it off. She finally settled down with an older divorced real estate salesman.”

"Walking through fires," said Omar, the blind author of A Century is Nothing.

"It was a tough one. All about listening, a lot of listening, recognizing faces of fear, seeing truth. Letting go. Moving on. Finding balance.

"So, another August rolled around again. Out of curiosity I called one of those 900 relationship toll-free numbers and left a message: Independent orphan seeks open-minded spirituality adept woman for casual relationship and friendship.

"Did you get any response?" said Omar.

"Three. The Relationship Express hummed along the tracks stopping at stations named Loneliness, Emptiness, Friendship, mid-life Crisis, Ticking Time Bombs, Endless Conversations, Rhapsody of the Disenchanted, Still Looking After All These Years, and Where’s The One?

"It zoomed past scenic views of Depression, Melancholy, Trust, Hope, Anxiety, Doubt, and Fear as I transited into the listening role with a couple of new women.

"Both from Montana transiting through self-discovery, broken relationships and renewal. We’re riding the range, mending fences, and setting up new parameters. Now I love women, yes sirree, well all right then, but I know better now and it’s just this curious nature of heart and mind to be out there making new connections. I’m not saving anybody.

“All the stations have various levels of becoming. Passengers stuck on levels bang their heads and hearts against transparencies grasping their Gestalt, shattering mirrors and delusions. They work out in private emotional, physical, spiritual fitness centers. Levels replace levels. Each level has a center. The vortex is the equilibrium, the source."

"We are works in progress,” Omar said.

"I’m just doing my work,” I said.

“That’s a powerful statement,” Omar said.

"Yes it is. Now I wouldn’t be the first person to say it’s healing work but I’ve learned to listen.

“Not all the clowns are in the circus. I make it perfectly clear to these kind ladies that I am not in the rescuing business anymore. Nope. No way. Honesty is the best policy and I’m not in the mood to waste their time, my time and our collective energies establishing a Heavy Deep & Real relationship. HDR. The emotional bottom line is they’re looking for a kind, sensitive man who won’t screw around and fuck up their lives. They’ve been cheated on, dumped on and left taking care of the kids. They need someone who will just listen to them without saying, 'I can fix it.' They know what’s what. They know how the world works, how the heart beats. They have their own toolbox. You’ve gotta have a good tool box."

"Tools. Couldn’t agree with you more, " said Omar.

"We’re all passengers on life’s train," said the monk.

It’s the Circus Train!

A fall loon, schools of minnows circle and zoom. I stand in Puget Sound shallows as the Florida circus train rolls north. I yell and wave amid swirling dervishes on granite in rapid ocean tides breathing in and out.

“It’s the circus people.”

“Step right up, under the big Irish bog top!”

People wave from their moving life station. They are the old tired eyed circus veterans standing next to new clowns filming water lap land. They reload memories into instamatics. There are midgets barely able to see over the edge next to sturdy muscular mustached roustabouts. Everything they need in their magic portable city is on rolling stock; water trucks, tents, buses, cages.

There is a bright red ‘For Sale’ sign in a train window. Someone decorated a rolling window with a plant garden spilling into water vapor. Someone displays a stuffed hanging elephant. They are living their dream life on rails. They are caged people living with watered and fed animals.

They have city routines; set it up, do the show with all the temerity of tenacious trainers, take it down, roll mile after mile this gleaming circus waving as the ocean waves a silver fish and one silver sparkles skyward. When they reach the Canadian border they will reverse engines and roll east through Big Sky country toward winterized Florida. Rare dawn light passed sleepy stations, bathed in dew diamonds.

Riding the rails follows our spirit journey.

“The simple way is to listen, stay detached, share and establish levels of responsibility, limitations and boundaries while remaining open to the big picture,” said a monk.

A shadow carrying a candle passed them in the dark.

"Not too much wisdom and not too much compassion," whispered a wandering monk climbing Cold Mountain toward a bamboo cabin sanctuary.

"Who are you?" said a child.

"I am a wandering monk."

"Where are you going?"

"To gather medicinal herbs for tea."

"Would you care to join us later?"

"Yes. We all have (a) ways to go."

"That’s a powerful story. Your friend is onto something there. She touches into what people deal with in their daily lives, their form and their emptiness. It’s not fiction. Or is it? Is it a lie layered with your imagination to make it true?”

"Good question. Omar speaks and writes from the heart-mind. There are people who don’t want to hear this stuff, but say hey kid, they can take it or leave it. I’m willing to take her at her word. It’s about the human condition."

"Well said. Life is something to be lived and not talked about. What say, shall we rest here awhile, enjoy some food, companionship and a siesta?"

Everyone gathered in a sacred circle. It was all light in their interior shamanistic landscape.

Source: A Century is Nothing.