The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--52. One Night at H.V. Eastman Lake and One Moment Now

Grasslands Near H.V. Eastman Lake, California, Steve Brown 2022

After we picked up the Camry from the garage, we headed towards Yosemite.  It would be quite the push as we lost a day of travel waiting.  Yet, we lost nothing.  We only gained.  The visit to the National Steinbeck Center was probably the most important part of the trip for me.  Although the vacation was already somewhat about Steinbeck, as the choice of our honeymoon twenty-five years earlier had been about me wanting to visit Cannery Row, I doubt this book would have come into being if we had not broken down in Salinas.  I try now, each moment, to realize how deeply derailed plans are part of our journey, both individually and collectively.  I'm certainly not there, but I don't think anyone has fully arrived in this life until one is glad to see things fall apart.  Those moments when we don't get what we want are the same moments we are forced to pause, focus, and realign ourselves with our true being.  It is a wise man who notices the magic of disappointment in the moment and doesn't have to wait until hindsight forces him to admit that the day gone wrong did him well.  

Although, at the age of fifty-nine, I haven't fully arrived in my life, at least I am now fully aware of what arrival will look like when it occurs.  It will be the day I decide to see each moment as detailed as the head of a single bent blade of dry grass in a field of hot, seedy fecundity-- the day I am finally determined not to let the worries of my mind, no matter what, draw me out of that precise focus.  Knowing that's what my full arrival will look like lets me return to the practice of being without forcing it.

The California trip of 2022 gave me my first real glimpse in a very long time into is knowing--that simple knowledge of We are, and that is enough that isn't experienced in the brain but in your entire being. Having to face the uncertainty of my kidney disease and having this trip before me, which I thought could be my last, forced me to value a moment enough to fully sit in it as I once did as a child without expectations.  And now, I don't care about what anyone else wants out of life.  Whatever gives their life meaning, let them experience it.  But I know what matters to me:  now.  Each moment that I am here: this moment that my pug Buddha is curled up in her bed snoring, that the fish tank is gurgling, that there's a good chance a toad is hopping down the path outside my back door towards some greenery as the morning slowly lightens.  And if that wasn't my reality now, there would be some other reality just as important, and whatever that reality was, I now am absolutely certain, it would be the one the universe picked out just for me to sit in, to realize, Oh this is what this feels like now.  When I have that down, I am living.  When I don't, I'm just floating around existing, waiting for the moment when I'm ready to get down the actual purpose of life again--to exist and be fully aware of it.  The mind used improperly removes you from all that is.  The mind used properly is at home anywhere and in any circumstance.  I haven't experienced that.  It doesn't take much to derail my mind, and yet there is a part of me that knows that it is absolutely so.  Peace and presence are not some unattainable illusions.  They are our birthright.  We keep ourselves from finding them.  But they are there, always, waiting for us to arrive.

We never arrived at Yosemite, and we were okay with that.  We'd been there together on our honeymoon, and it was wonderful.  There are still fragments of that day of us strolling down through the valley with golden leaves all around, thin slivers of silver water spilling over polished granite canyon walls, auburn grasses in the meadows shaggy and tufted around the bends and wiggles in the river.  We still had these things, at least in shards, fragments of what once was our day together.  And a storm was coming, and we hadn't been to Sequoia or Kings Canyon, and the weather wasn't expected to hit as hard further south, so we decided to build new memories instead of seeking to relive old ones.  We talked this out as we drove as the sun slowly lowered, and the shadows from the scattered bulky oaks slowly lengthened, and the hills slowly rose from the flats of the Monopoly board valley.  I don't remember how it happened, but at some-point we decided to camp at H.V. Eastman Lake.  If I remember right, we were afraid campgrounds closer to Yosemite were likely to be full, and now that Yosemite wasn't a destination, it didn't matter where we camped.

I remember how remote the low, boulder-blobbed hills thick with dry grasses and scattered oaks looked, the sky of thin drawn-out clouds slowly turning marmalade as the sun sank towards the horizon.  The campground was almost empty.  We found a great site next to a large boulder with views down to the lake far below.  The site had a covered picnic table, which we moved, so that we could set up our tent under the canopy.  We weren't sure when the storm would arrive, and packing up a wet tent isn't fun, so we took advantage of the chance to have a solid roof overhead.

After we set up camp, we went exploring.  It was then, a little way down the trail, we noticed the massive inside of the earthen dam.  The lake was only far below us because, although still large, it was almost entirely empty.  What we were seeing was a puddle compared to what once was this mammoth reservoir.  It must have been drying up for a very long time because the grasses were so high and dry one did not immediately detect a shoreline.  It was not until we saw the inside of the dam that we noticed there was a line at which the oaks stopped, and looking at that one could determine the normal shoreline.  It was subtle though, very subtle.  I have a sharp eye when it comes to looking at landscapes and am not easily fooled.  The drought had been so long and extended the vegetation was able to establish itself as if the water had never been there.  My heart ached for California when I saw how much water wasn't there, that should be.  If that was the story at Eastman Lake, it was the story for most, if not all, lakes in the state.  It's so sad that the state that is doing the most to mitigate climate change is also the one that gets hit hardest by it.  I would love to visit Florida.  My heart goes out to the South too when disaster strikes.  We are one nation, and we need to act as one.  But there is a difference.  California is trying to respond responsibly to climate change; Florida is not.   It seems unfair that the state working the hardest to reduce emissions is among the hardest hit by its effects.

But life isn't fair; it is.  Nature isn't reactive; it's predictable.  It operates according to natural laws, laws scientists understand surprisingly well, yet societies foolishly ignore.  California doesn't get back its karma, nor does Florida.   Because we are one world, both places, like all places, receive global karma.  Predictable, measurable, clearly understood consequences that hit different places differently because of very understood local conditions.  That's what's so frustrating.  We know what will happen to California and Florida, or Kansas or Utah, if we don't change our ways, and yet we don't change our ways.  We are burning and flooding and tornado-tearing apart our homeland (not to mention what we're doing politically), and we're doing nothing to ease the pressure.  We see the cliff, understand the distance between us and it, and run like hell towards it anyway.  

No amount of denying the laws and dynamics of climate will save us; only changes in behavior will.  You can pretend the gun you're pointing at your own head is a flower all you want and say that trigger is nothing but a leaf, but if you keep putting pressure on it, it will react predictably according to the physics behind it, and the story you are telling yourself while you keep increasing the actual pressure won't do diddly to alter the outcome.  You must ease the pressure and put down the gun.  We all need to ease the pressure so that societies together can put down the gun.  

I know I didn't fully understand that reality the night we camped H.V. Eastman Lake.  Traveling is in my bones; perhaps, because of my dad, it is who I am.  When I am on a quiet highway, there is only the road ahead of me, and everything is so ultra-real--the variety of reds in the tumbleweed growing through the crumples of asphalt at the road's edge, the shades soft grays and greens of the sage, the shocking yellow of the late-blooming rabbit brush, all the various beiges, reds, lavenders and blues in distant ridges .  When I'm on a lonely highway, looking out that window, I finally vanish and I am.   So an automobile is a very difficult thing for me to give up.  The distance between my home and work and the rural nature of where I reside further complicate things.  Yet, if I understood the nature of the gun and the amount of pressure we're putting on that trigger deep down in our bones where I need to feel it, I would do anything, absolutely anything, to lighten the load.  I think I might get that now, right now as I write this--perhaps for the very first time.

Yet, at the same time I've known for some time.  I finally dreamed myself a Tesla because I've been wanting one deeply for a very long time, but not because I care about cars.  I care less what I drive.  A car for me is just a way to transport an eyeball.  It is the vision, not the car I need.  But I do need that space, that open road, that place to just be.  I felt guilty as hell though needing that knowing climate change indeed is.  So, I guess I manifested a Tesla for myself to ease the pressure I'm putting on that trigger.

I don't know how each of us needs change to reduce the load we're putting on our environment, but I do know the laws of physics and the chemical reactions in our atmosphere are real and predictable and that we have very educated people who have been telling us for decades what will happen, and all those consequences are indeed unfolding in real time and are very observable.  So, I know I need to understand that gun better, to picture me putting my weight on the trigger, because, through my choices, my actions, I am doing that, whether I think about it or not.  I do not like a man named Elon Musk; but I care about living in a world where I and my children and future grandchildren can exist a whole lot more than I dislike that man.  Buying a Tesla is not the only way to ease up on the trigger, but it is one way.  What is yours?  The gun is loaded.  That isn't propaganda.  It is as real as the grains on the head of dry grass blowing in the winds coming down the foothills of the Sierra in California.

We are on a road headed towards a cliff with our foot on the accelerator.  We do have the choice to let up on the gas even if we're not sure we've left enough breaking distance.  Why in the hell do we seem to want to gun it?

I think I finally feel this deep enough to change.  I sure hope so.    Now is all we've ever got; this moment is the only thing that actually is.   In an instant, it will become part of the past that can never be fully recovered and definitely never altered.  The past is the past.  Done.  Dead.  Forever out of reach.  How we collectively act now changes everything collectively forever.  And yet I am the only thing I can control.  My choices now, in this instant, in any instant, is all that I have at my disposal to influence the outcome of eternity.  It isn't much, but it is reality.  And I am here now.  So are you.  It's all we've got alone; it's all we've got together.   One now after another, that add up to be everything.  We are all collectively determining the nature of our future now, not only for us but for all upcoming generations, whether we like that responsibility or not.  That joy or burden is ours to carry because we are here now carrying it regardless of our wishes.   God, chance, the cosmos--together, they say it must be so, and so it is.  Now.  And so it is that I think good thoughts because I want good outcomes--for me, for everybody, forever.

 

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--51. All Together Now

Sunflowers, Steve Brown 2025

Sustained belief in anything isn't easy, especially over the last decade.   We seem to all be passengers on a runaway train headed towards catastrophic chaos, and instead of working together to somehow slow that train down, we yell and scream and throw apples and shoes and bananas and brief cases and circus fliers and political pamphlets and diapers and dynamite at each other, and yell, "Fowl, fowl fowl!"

Well sort of.  We all have been through an awful lot together.  COVID-19, three very-heated elections, a seemingly never-ending list of increasingly disastrous natural disasters, as well as political assignations and mass shootings.  And that's completely skipping over the endless footage of bombs and carnage in Ukraine and Palestine we view together separately daily.  And yet we still smile at each other at work, at church, and in the supermarket.  We still say Thank-You in the drive-thru or in the bank.  We unfriend our sister or brother in-law on Facebook because of their idiotic ideology and their politically warped brains, but we usually re-friend them again because they're family.  Given the unending stress of our times, maybe we're actually handling the collective trauma of our times reasonably well.

Maybe.  It really is very hard to believe in anything these days.  Especially love and peace.  

But stillness is still there if you're looking for it.  On Saturday I went to get a hamburger.  There was only one car ahead of me at the drive thru.  It shouldn't have taken long.  But the man in the truck ahead of me had this incredible ability to stick fourteen "Uh, let's see, I'll take, no, maybe, do you have?"'s into his one order for himself before he ever got to his car full of kids and a wife too.  And the cashier had this incredible ability to say, "I'm so sorry, we're out of that, we're so busy, would you like, now take your time darling," between each of his "Uh, let's see, I'll take, no, maybe, do you have?"'s.  And the sun was out, and it was hot, and I was hot, and I glared at him the best I could through his side mirror, me all righteous and mighty and angry and hot and pristine and vindicated in my holy cause to just get a hamburger and shake.

But, once the ordeal was over, I thought to myself, I can either take this frustration home with me and ruin my day, or I can go find a grand view and some shade.  

So, I did just that.  I hooked a right just past Steve's Tire, went past the golf course, through the narrow graffiti-plastered tunnel under the interstate and found some magnificently tall sun-bleached rye before thick straggly elms and a leaning barbed-wire fence.  I opened my window to the sounds of cicada and the muffled interstate.  And it was good, really good.

I think if we consciously take in such moments, if we actually sit back down in our seats, and look out the window at the blur of the country-side instead of yelling and screaming and tossing bananas and briefcases and dynamite and GOD!-pamphlets and political propaganda, and sit in our own emotional crud for a while, we just might get some ideas on how to actually slow the train down, and when we do, if we're all looking out those windows, all coming up with ideas, and if we share those out, open to listening, to adjusting our own thinking, refining, improving, adding upon--well, just maybe we can slow that train down enough to see if the disaster we think is coming is even necessary.

Maybe.  I don't know.  It's hard to believe in anything.  But rye is real.  Elms are real.  The water running in the irrigation ditch is real--at least for now.  And it is grounding, sustaining.

And if you don't have that, you have a parking lot looking out on a fantastic city skyline nearby, or there's a soccer game at a neighborhood park tucked back in an endless coil of shady suburban streets and cul-de-sacs.

There is peace in presence.  If we choose it.

It may not be perfect, but it's got to be better than bullets and blood and dead people leaving behind their spouse and children to weep and wail.

Perhaps now is a time say less, move more slowly, listen to birds and cicada and think What am I doing to add to the chaos?

  

  

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--50. At Home in the National Steinbeck Center

There is something about experiencing a good museum that is difficult to put into words.  When writing about nature or a bustling city, all you have to do is focus on a few details precisely and you can place your reader there because we have all seen early morning dew glisten on a blade of grass with diamonds dancing off a brook or ditch in the background.  We have all stood on a corner and taken in the heavy, thick whiff of exhaust as the light turns green as either a city bus or delivery truck rumbles forward and you look at the red Do Not Walk sign that appears and vanishes behind trucks and busses.  

Because we all know these things, the writer can take short cuts.  Each place is both its own place and universal simultaneously.  There is only one Las Vegas (even though technically, there are at least two), but there are enough ingredients in a Las Vegas street corner common to an intersection in Salt Lake City or San Antonio that the writer can still have the reader fill in most the details while he or she focuses on those unique qualities that separate Las Vegas from other places.

I'm not sure you can do the same with museums.  Even art museums all have such a different feel.  The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas, even though it is a pure piece of modern architecture without one single classical column, makes you feel like you're stepping back in time to ancient Greece with its calm, cool fountains, thick travertine walls, and long vaulted concrete ceilings.  Everything feels hushed and sacred, and you expect to find philosophers sitting at the water's edge expanding on the meaning of life.  The DMA, on the other hand, just next door in Big D, feels like a favorite neighborhood diner--someplace you hang out and relax at after a hard day's work.   It's casual, known.  Even if it's your first time there.  That's because the architect and art collection determine the feel of a museum.  Time and evolution determine the feel of a city.  Time and evolution have a similar play on all of us as the universe marches forward.  Cities are cosmopolitan in nature.  Museums are individuals within that cosmopolitan setting.

So, how do I capture one particular museum well enough to put you there--especially a museum dedicated to something pretty hard to display adequately, words and ideas?  Most museums are designed to display objects, not the rhythms of phrases and the slow gathering of thoughts until a philosophy is formed, not the deep ties of a life-long friendship between two visionary thinkers.

Yet, that moment I stepped into the National Steinbeck Center was profound.  I don't know what effect that space has on other visitors, but for me, it was coming home to a place I've always known.  There is something about Steinbeck's writing that takes me back to who I already am.  It has always been like that since I first read The Grapes of Wrath back in the late 1980s.  I don't read him frequently, and these days, when I do, it's extremely leisurely, with big spaces and other books, other images, other voices and ideas between readings, but with each and every paragraph that is specifically his, I always feel I know this.  Often that is literally true.  I've read The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row multiple times.  But it's more than that.  Every book with the exception of East of Eden has felt that way from the very first paragraph read for the very first time.  And the same with stepping into The National Steinbeck Center.  I knew instantly that I was home.

Perhaps it is because they let the books do the talking.  The covers, the font of the text, the feel of the words in those perfect sentences--they're all enlarged, many on large sheets of glass suspended, made three-dimensional, casting shadows.  That's just what his books do too.  Steinbeck writes in vignettes, in little scenes, in these visually perfect little slices of life, that tell a specific story and all stories simultaneously.  I'm not exactly sure how he does that--how he seamlessly moves from the narrative into these astonishingly real stage-sets of life so that you as the reader aren't really aware of when you're in the narrative, hearing that very narrative voice, full of humor and tenderness, full of oral history and the art of good story telling, and when he's moved you onto his stage and surrounded you in a magnificently complete world based on just a few perfectly placed stage props.  I don't know exactly how he does that--tells one very specific story while simultaneously telling all stories.  But I do know it was intentional and that he was aware that he was doing it, that he knew it was part of his art for he tells us so in East of Eden:

If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.  And here I make a rule--a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

Steinbeck creates stories that are astonishingly singular and universal simultaneously by shifting almost seamlessly from specific vignettes to classic story telling, as seen in Chapter 6 of The Grapes of Wrath:

The Reverend Casy and young Tom stood on the hill and looked down on the Joad place.  The small unpainted house was mashed at one corner, and it had been pushed off its foundation so that it slumped at an angle, it's blind front windows pointing at a spot of sky well above the horizon.  The fences were gone and the cotton grew in the dooryard and up against the house, and the cotton was about the shed barn.  The outhouse lay on its side, and the cotton grew close against it.  Where the dooryard had been pounded hard by bare feet of children and by stamping horses' hooves and by broad wagon wheels, it was cultivated now, and the dark green, dusty cotton grew.

Here, Steinbeck writes through the lens of a camera, and captures one specific place in a specific moment in time so vividly the reader feels as if he is actually standing there taking the picture.  This is how he places his reader in the now of his narrative.  It gives the text immediacy, particularity.  Like Hemingway or William Carlos Williams, he's very Modern in his approach--no ideas but in things.  But then, unlike Hemingway, he smoothly transitions to the good ol' fashioned story telling:  

"If Ma was anywheres about, that gate'd be shut an' hooked.  That's one thing she always done--seen that gate was shut...  Ever since the pig got in over to Jacobs' an' et the baby.  Milly Jacobs was jus' out in the barn.  She come in while the pig was still eatin' it.  Well, Milly Jacobs was in a family way, an' she went raven'.  Never did get over it.  Touched ever since."

The curators of the National Steinbeck Center have digested his words deeply enough that they have done the same thing.  By selecting just the right words, phrases and images, they've created these wonderful little vignettes that capture Steinbeck's world marvelously.  They even have Ronchamp; the truck and camper Steinbeck took across country in Travel's with Charlie. I especially love the model of Cannery Row in Monterey that lets you see the setting of the book from above.  I think if you were visiting the National Steinbeck Center and had never opened one of his books that you would make sure to pick one up on your way out to make sure that no longer remained true.  I can't know that for sure, of course, as I was already at home in Steinbeck's books many times, but that museum has done such a fine job, I can't imagine it would be any other way.

For me though, specifically on that trip in 2022, no travel destination could have meant more.  I had been diagnosed with kidney disease but hadn't yet found out what type.  My dad had died pretty quickly from amyloidosis, and my doctor hadn't ruled that out for me.  I was keenly aware there was a greater than normal chance I might not have too many years left.  At times like that you think thoughts like What's it all been about?  I knew for me, even though I didn't and still don't have a book published, part of it has been about words.  Not just words in general though.  I've never been an avid reader.  I'm incredibly slow, and it takes me a long time to get through a book.  Because of that, I'm pretty selective about what I read.  Not out of some type of snobbery, but because I know the time involved.  Yet words matter deeply to me.  A thing said Well moves me.  In particular, I like words that capture three things:  time, place, and vulnerability.  Whatever I got right or wrong in my life, I knew I had tried my best to do that:  be here now in this place and be vulnerable enough to experience whatever this particular experience means.  I spent most of my life terrified of people, which is sad.  I'm sure I let that fear rob me of a lot of living.  But I also knew that I'd been true to moments and not afraid see deeply and be present in my emotions rather than running from them.  And I had wrote those experiences down.  I knew that was good.  That in itself is a noble cause: to capture one street corner in one city at one moment, open and vulnerable enough to explore exactly what that is instead of chopping the hell out of that experience and plugging it into socially predetermined paradigms, needing to find some meaning, some moral, some metaphor beyond this moment now.

Steinbeck, along with William Carlos Williams and John Lennon, first gave me that: what I already knew is what really mattered to me in life: now.  That has always been enough of a life for me.  When I've been in the moment, I've been happy--even when I've been incredibly sad.  After my dad died, I drove the Oregon coast, his coast, and took in again all the places he'd taken me.  I cried deeply, but I was also totally there, totally alive.  Not numb.  Present.  Now always does that for me.  Yet, when I haven't been in the moment, I've been lost in my head: envious, anxious, distracted, dull, distanced, removed.

Steinbeck gave me back that sense of connection, what I already knew as a child.  Life is about floating an empty pop can down an irrigation ditch and watching light dance dart off the ripples.  If you understand that deeply, and live it well, you understand all moments, all places, all times, and can just naturally be that you, you were meant to be.  In such a place you comfortably arise to whatever the occasion calls for without ego, without enterprise, just as you are.  Out of that place though, everything is always a constant struggle.  It has to be.  Because you are no longer home.

Steinbeck takes me back to being vulnerable, to being human, to being home.  The world needs that like never before.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--49. One Young Ecosystem

Growing an Ecosystem, Steve Brown 2025

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in a path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.  

-- John Steinbeck, East of Eden,1952

Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things--plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and the expanding universe, all bound by the elastic string of time.  It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

--John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, 1941

Heavy, blue-gray clouds drag along the juniper-blobbed ridge outside my front window.  Dark oaks stand sturdy in the blond field of dry grasses up front.  Bright green young elms dot the space in between.  This is all part of my daily world.  The clouds, the ridge, the juniper would be here if I never existed, and yet they are mine at this moment, because I'm here, now, focused on them.  

The oaks--I planted them with my brother back in 1995.  There are twenty-five of them.  He wanted to create a ribbon of forest that would connect the trailer, where we lived, with the natural forest in the canyon.  It was his idea, his vision.  We planted bare-root saplings.    Then we both picked up and moved on to different lives.  It's very doubtful the trees would still be here if there was not something in my stepdad that would not let them die.  He had a faucet installed in the middle of the field even though it is about a block away from his house.  And in our absence, year after year, on hot summer days, he came down and dragged the hose around to water them while Lloyd was off in Dallas living a different life and Marci and I were in Arizona.  He hated doing that.  It was hot and time-consuming.  He cursed us for planting the trees and then leaving them.  Yet, there was something in him that would not let them die.  They were trees.  It was his land.  We were his family.  He had a commitment to our efforts and this place, Dry Creek.

My house sits where it does because of those oak trees, and the vision of my brother, and the determination of my father.  It could be situated along the edge of the canyon with a full mature forest out the back door.  I sometimes wish it was.  The yard would be all there, already established, a full functioning forest that needs no care.  But I'd grown attached to the single-wide trailer that was the summer home of Marci, me, and our children for eleven years.   I was attached to a little shed we turned into The Blue Door Bar where we hung out each night, made milkshakes, and watched movies.  I was attached to the old lean-to barn that was, and still is, slowly tipping over.  I was attached to watching those stupid little oaks slowly grow.  And although I knew the better site for the house would be along the canyon edge with the forest down below, I could not let go of all those years we'd spent in the trailer for reasons I did not and still do not know.  

So, the oak trees are still here, and the oak trees still grow.

Between them now are elms.  In the spring, until recently, we have been able to run irrigation down through the trees April through early July.  The wet soil has given a place for elm seeds to settle and grow.

The ridge and the juniper were here, and would be here, whether or not we ever existed.  The oaks are here because we planted them.  The elm trees are here because of the oaks we planted, as are a few Russian olive and a volunteer apricot tree.  Now that there is a bit of ecosystem established, as long as there are at least a few years with adequate water, more will follow.  There will be a forest where there were once only dry grasses.  There will be soil where there once, and still is, very little.  There is already so much more shade than there once was, and as the shade grows, so will more variety of plants, and with more variety of plants, there will be more insects, birds, mice and squirrels.  More sounds.  More smells.  More life.

All because my brother and I planted twenty-five seedling oaks trees and my dad took care of them for twelve years in our absence.

Now that the house sits here, I have extended the yard outback.  I planted a peach tree and a few others.  Because I water flowerbeds, and because I let most anything that wants to grow stay and live, I have far more volunteer trees than planted ones--elm, ash, oak, apricot, peach, boxelder, Russian olive, and sumac--and so the forest grows. 

It is time now to put down this writing, go out and water a forest that is growing me as much as I am growing it.

We are one.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--48. A Fantastic Day to Break Down and Walk to The National Steinbeck Center

Destiny, Salinas, CA April 13, 2022, Steve Brown

1.

I grabbed the new, significantly alternator-drained car battery out of our motel room and stepped back out into the parking lot.   The morning was glorious.  The sun was warm on the skin.  Shadows were thrown long and thin, and the sodium air was intensely lemon in the light.  One could not have had a better day for troubles.  Normally, I wouldn't have noticed that.  I hate anything going wrong, and I let small things totally wipe out good days.  I become so consumed by my hardship that I fail to notice the world around me.  

I don't think I'm alone in that.  They write most novels wrong.  Traditionally, the mood of the setting reflects the mood of the character.  Not all problems occur on dark and stormy nights.  I don't even think we turn a blue-sky day stormy in our minds when we're in a bleak place.  Instead, our connection with things around us ceases to exist when we get caught in our mind.  So, when the character is stuck in him or herself, the setting should be blotted out--absolutely nonexistent.  I think that's what happens to most of us.  And if it didn't, we'd never get stuck in the first place.  We'd realize there's more to life than our current problem.  

But I didn't let myself slip into that self-absorbed void that day, or even the entire trip, because I didn't feel I had the time to waste.  As I still didn't know the details about my kidney disease, my mortality was front and center in my mind.  Our 25th anniversary trip could be our last major vacation together.  That fact temporarily softened me, opened me up, made me cherish each moment.  I was grateful to have such a wonderful morning to reinstall the battery, and such a great day to deal with what to do next if the car didn't start.   

And what glorious day it was.  Especially since the car not only started, but we made it to our destination, a small, Hispanic owned garage not too far from The National Steinbeck Center.  We had planned it that way.  Two days prior, we'd blown a tire by hitting a sharp rock on the Pacific Coast Highway after a brief, intense downpour.  We were pleased with the service at a small, Hispanic owned tire shop we found in Monterey.  I had no idea if my logic held true or not, but I reasoned that a small, minority-owned garage wouldn't have the luxury of ripping off its customers.  I've found that to be true of small-town auto-shops that are not located near the interstate.  An auto-shop with a limited, loyal customer-base is honest in its dealings.  It has to be, or it soon won't have any customers left.  So, when our alternator went out, I looked for a garage I thought would need happy customers.  I found a few of them, and then I selected the one closest to the National Steinbeck Center.  

If we were going to spend a day stuck in Salinas, I was going to spend it with John.  I never met the guy; he died when I was only two; but for writers, that isn't a requirement for a mentor/mentee relationship.  One simply seeks out a way of constructing a sentence that feels right.  A brush stroke across the sky.  A pale, soft light on the Oklahoma horizon.  A fragment that contains both everything and nothing at all, all at once.  A rotating fan softly humming on the chipped vinyl counter in an old gas station that smells of oil and grease on a hot smack-a-fly-dead day.  To a writer, those things matter--and a mentor is whoever makes the young writer first realize what they've already always known:  those things matter.  An author calls to you, Follow me, my Son, whether you personally know them or not, whether they're alive or in the grave.  Words rather than a particular person are the mentor.  I have another mentor, the poet Bobby Byrd, who I personally knew well, but that isn't a requirement for mentor/mentee relationship at all.  It is the work of the master writer, not the writer himself, that is the teacher.  It is the sentences, the images, the phrases.

When I first read The Grapes of Wrath, I knew that if I spent my life trying write something so connected with earth, people, and place, I would never wonder if my life had meaning.  I thought my medium would be through poetry rather than prose, but I was passionate about getting there.  And then, I don't know, I let something happen to me.  I let other voices, including voices of those who I love, dictate where I'd put my focus in life.  I don't blame anyone.  I don't even regret it.  Those other paths all led to good places that taught me things.  But it's time to refocus on what I was born to do and who I was born to be.  As Wayne Dyre said, far too many of us "die with our music still in us."

2.  

The garage was located in a long, corrugated metal building just off the 101.  We had to circle the block because a U-HAUL lot was up-front, and a chain-link fence divided the gravel parking lots edged with dry, short grasses and littered with straws, plastic lids, and bits of foam cups.  Three rolled-up garage doors were open to black interiors as I slowly eased our Camry over three massive potholes. We got out into the still, slightly chilly morning, and I headed towards one of those black openings looking to see if anyone was inside.   I found Joe, and also found Joe was very busy, and that it would be a six hour wait.  As that would give us time to go The National Steinbeck Center, we didn't think that was a big deal.   The only question was how to get there--bus or foot?

Across the street from the garage, right next to the on ramp to the 101, was a Carl's Jr.  So, we headed over there to get breakfast and think.  I remember looking out at the stark morning light through their dark, tinted windows, which somehow, even though it cuts out the light, increases your attention on the difference between light and shadow--much like being under the strange, orange light of an eclipse.  I can't remember what we ate, but I do know I had a lemonade and enjoyed the cool sensation of it sliding down my throat.  We asked about busses and found out one stopped nearby.  But, when we looked at the map, we simply decided to walk.  It was only a mile.

3.  

East Market Street is a four-lane road lined with dusty sidewalks, palm trees, chain-link fences and corrugated metal buildings.  The sun was hot and intense, but the air cool--the type of day one side of you is sweating and the other chilled.  Fortunately, we were headed west, so our faces were in shadow, and all was well.

A couple blocks past Salinas Smog, you have to make a left turn at a traffic light to stay on Market Street.  So, we did.  That takes you downslope to cross under the railroad tracks.  It's prettier here with flowering groundcovers typical to California freeways growing up the banks of the road.  

After the tracks, the road slowly rises back up to ground level, and the wide green banks of groundcover disappear as the road curves back into the original town grid.  It is here we encountered an enormous homeless camp right alongside the railroad tracks.  I remember how the stark morning light caught every fabric, cardboard and plywood detail perfectly.  I was shocked by how much 2022 California looked like Great Depression California.  This was not the California I knew from the 1970s.  But it also could have been Salt Lake or Boise in 2022.  I wasn't sure what was happening to our country, but I knew it wasn't good.  Somehow, as a Nation, we were slipping back in time to a period I only knew from books and scratchy film footage.   The writer in me wanted to go investigate, to squeeze through the space at the end of the chain-link fence and talk to some people.  If I would have been alone, I would have done exactly that.  But it was clear Marci was getting nervous.  Although I'd never seen a camp that size before, having lived a few blocks from the border in El Paso, walking among the homeless was not new to me.  I knew generally there is nothing to fear around people down on their luck.  But it had been some time since I spent an afternoon in a littered vacant lot overlooking I-10, the railroad tracks, the Rio Grande, and the concrete block houses across the series of chain-link fences that is the border.  So, I too was nervous.  I would have pushed myself past that fear and went to say "Hi," but I didn't want to push Marci to do that.  This was both our vacations.  And of course, one always feels awkward interacting with the destitute:  "Hey, let me drop in on your misery and chat for a bit."  As bad as that is though, I still think it's far better than walking by and pretending you don't see what you clearly see.  To ignore someone's existence just so you can avoid reality cannot be a good for either them or you.

Unfortunately, we did do that.  But before we crossed the street to avoid the camp, we saw a sight that I think needs to be shared here.  A man stepped out of the black rectangular door hole cut in his particle board hut and started sweeping the dust off a piece of plywood he had set down on the ground as a porch.  He had two, fold-up camping chairs sitting on it and an awning of cloth over his porch.  Had he had some rose bushes and had his house been made of brick, it would have been a scene out of any neighborhood from the 1940s when front porches were king.  If you are looking out on homelessness and seeing only needles and trash and despair, you are seeing real details, but you still aren't seeing reality.  Just like in any neighborhood anywhere, there are those who have given up and don't care, and there are those sweeping off porches and doing everything they can to make this day better than yesterday.  In whatever neighborhood, the hopeless and hopeful are most likely the same people on different days.  We have our days when we gallantly defy the odds, and we have our days when we sink hopelessly into despair.  What bothers me about when people look out on homelessness is that they somehow filter out everything but the garbage.

It's a safety mechanism, I guess.  If you aren't like me, I don't have to worry about you.  But it's not real.  And if you don't believe me, visit your nearest homeless camp.  You won't have to travel too far.  There's no need to book a flight.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--47. Chrysanthemums Manifested

Intentions, Steve Brown 2025

The other day I had the impulse to read "Chrysanthemums".  I was walking by my bookcase dedicated to Steinbeck.  Showcased in a dark brown curio cabinet with a glass front and sides, glass shelves and a mirrored back, are displayed his books, research about his writing and life, and curios I've picked up that remind me of his work, all of which are lit up by hidden lights within the cabinet.  My favorites are three cartonaria, folk-art Mexican paper statues of laborers that look like illustrations from Steinbeck's books except that they are three-dimensional.  The characters are tall, skinny, bent with heavy loads, time, and hunger.  They express great empathy for the human condition.

Although I didn't know it at the time I set it up, that cabinet is an intention to see this book through, a visualization of the end of the project established concretely just as I was beginning to get started.  Someday it will include the book I'm now writing, and it will be passed down through the family.

Other than The Erroneous Zones, I hadn't read Wayne Dyre at the time, but I have since.   Your Sacred Self called me from a bookshelf in a thrift store.  It's a paperback copy, fairly beat-up, not what I'm usually looking for.  It was $1.00.  I'm a very slow reader.  It's 360 pages of very small print.  I finished it in two weeks, which is definitely a record for me.  I was driven to read it.  Ever since then, I've been listening to Dyre's videos every day on the way to work.  He often talks about how once that we identify a wish, we need to proceed as if the outcome of that desire is already present.  We need to manifest our intentions fully from the beginning.  I now realize that's what I was symbolically doing with my Steinbeck cabinet without knowing it--visualizing the end of my hard work.

Dyre also talks about how once we align with our spiritual intentions--those things we are driven to do without knowing why--life will open up and guide us.  What we normally write off as coincidences will provide us everything we need to move forward.  When Marci and I broke down in Salinas, California that day, I immediately felt that it was so we would visit The National Steinbeck Center.  I felt that intuition was confirmed when all of their research books were 50% off.  At the time I didn't necessarily believe that way.  I had a strong belief in a God of miracles and believed prayers are answered in a way that is best for each of us in the long run.  But I didn't go around thinking, "Oh, this is happening so that I'll be here at this exact location now."  That is until our car broke down.  Somehow, I immediately thought, "This is so we won't skip the Steinbeck Center."  

Currently, I do tend to believe that if we listen, the universe will freely provide us with what we need next on our journey.  So, when I was walking past my Steinbeck alter the other day and The Long Valley caught my eye, I thought, "Okay, I better get that out and read it.  It's calling me."  

I remembered that "Chrysanthemums" was the first story and intended to skip it.  I had a professor, Carol DeMarinis, who hated that story.  She said, "He's brutal to that old woman," referring to the way Steinbeck manipulated the protagonist of the story.  I agreed that the story is a pretty sexist, and it and East of Eden are the only works by the author that didn't do much for me.  So, the other day I was going to skip the story and read on.

That is until I opened the book.  As soon I saw "The Chrysanthemums" as a title, I knew that was the story I was meant to read although I will probably read the rest of the book as well.  

I still don't like how the author manipulates the protagonist.  It happens quickly:

Elisa's voice grew husky.  She broke in on him, "I've never lived as you do, but I know what you mean.  When the night is dark--why, the stars are sharpened, and there's quiet.  Why, you rise up and up!  Every pointed star gets driven into your body.  It's like that.  Hot and sharp and--lovely.

Kneeling there, her hand went towards his legs in his greasy black trousers.  Her hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth.  Then her hand almost dropped to the ground.  She crouched low like a dog fawning.

Those paragraphs do read like cheap pornography.  And it does feel like Steinbeck abuses his protagonist.  That's because he used her in this story as a tool to get across a message.  Fiction writers, which I am not, often talk about how their characters find them.  The writer doesn't so much create characters as listen to characters who want to speak through the writer.  The characters manifest themselves.  That clearly is not the case here.  Elisa is being forced to crouch low like a dog fawning.  She's been violated by Steinbeck wanting to convey a specific message.

However, that message is important.  And it isn't her sexual desire, although that is how it manifest itself initially to Elisa.

It's worth slowing down, going through how the story builds, because what Steinbeck is teaching is key, and it aligns with what Wayne Dyre teaches, and what I am teaching also.  It is a message that is universal because it is universally felt.  Yet, it is seldomly directly named.  I think there is a reason for that, which I'll get into later, but first, let's get into the story.

"Chrysanthemums" opens thus:

The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world.  On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made the great valley a closed pot.  On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut.  On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed bathed in cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December.  The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.

The valley in the winter psychologically closes off the inhabitants from the rest of the world.  I'm going to suggest that the setting is really a metaphor for the human ego, for that human experience of being isolated amidst fecundity.  We can't get to the sunshine because we can't get out of ourselves.  We're closed in by a thick fog that disconnects us from reality even though "thick willow scrub along the river" even in the dead of winter are "flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves".  Reality is still intense and golden out there, but we can't perceive our connection to it through the fog.

What Elisa is really seeking is not sex, but some meaningful connection to the world outside her own ego, which she begins to touch through her gardening, but doesn't quite succeed at because her love and talent go unrecognized.  Her husband acknowledges her talent, but he doesn't understand that talent.  He has no deep connection to who she is at her core.  He doesn't know "the black earth shining like metal" or the "thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves".  For him, gardening is just her hobby.  For her, gardening is connection to life itself.  But nobody in the valley gets that.  Even as she is connected to the natural world around her through her garden, she is isolated from society because they are oblivious that she has a secret to share.  She is isolated by her own natural insight.

Then comes along the traveling tradesman who fixes pots for a living.  He reads people like her hands read the soil.  But unlike her, for him knowing is all utilitarian rather than spiritual.  While she uses her knowledge of the plants as a means to connect with something greater than herself, he uses his knowledge of people to make a living.  She seeks connection.  He seeks his next meal.  He connects to her just enough accomplish this purpose.  He intuitively knows what she's seeking, so he can slip a little to her, here and there, to lead her where he wants, but he doesn't connect enough to recognize she really has some insight to offer the world, and so he moves on, obtaining only what he came for but nothing more.

In one way, her love and knowledge of plants and soil, makes her so tied to the source, she almost is the source--life itself, but the traveling tradesman can't recognize it because like most of us, he's only looking for what he thinks he want wants.  He taps into her need to mentor, but he isn't serious about being a mentee.  She is born to teach her secret connection to the source, but the world offers her no willing student.  Nonetheless, she is driven share her message:

"Well, I can only tell you what it feels like.  It's when you're picking off the buds you don't want.  Everything goes right down into your fingertips.  You watch your fingers work.  They do it themselves.  You feel how it is.   They're with the plant.  Do you see?  Your fingers and the plant.  You can feel that, right up your arm.  They know.  They never make a mistake.  You can feel it.  When you're like that you can't do anything wrong.  Do you see that?  Can you understand that?"

Steinbeck, through Elisa is trying to convey the same thing Dyer is:  there is a part of us that is so connected to the whole that when we enter that space being becomes automatic, knowing just is, and there can be no wrong.  Dichotomy ceases to exist because creation as a whole is perfect as is.

As right as my old teacher Carol DeMarinis was about Steinbeck using Elisa as a tool, she was wrong when she claimed he was simply reducing her to something akin to an animal in heat.  Actually, Elisa is a symbol of the misunderstood artist, the prophet that goes unheard and unheeded, the spiritual core within all of us that is so easily silenced by the fears of the ego.  

Elisa not only knows the soil at her fingertips, but she also knows the tradesman and her predicament as well.  She desperately wants to share her connection with earth and feels isolated and alone because she has nobody to share that knowledge with, but she also understands the nature of man, and she is not the unknowing victim we might at first assume.  If we pay attention, towards the end of the story, we find she is more like a prophet planting a seed of wisdom in a world that is not ready to harvest the abundance that already exists than a victim of the traveling con-artist.

On the way to town on their date, Eliza and her husband pass where the traveling tradesman has thrown the Chrysanthemums she gave him on the road.  At first, she is offended, her ego taking hold of her:  "He might have thrown them off the road.  That wouldn't have been much trouble, not very much."  But she doesn't stay in that ego-driven state for long.  She says, "He had to keep the pot."  She knew enough of the future that she made sure she put the real gift she gave him, which would likely be discarded as meaningless, in something less meaningful that she knew would not be instantly thrown away.  She gave him a token by which to be remembered.  In so doing, she's planting seeds.

Maybe when he sees the pot, he'll remember the Chrysanthemums, her, and ultimately, her lesson, which is we are one. As is Steinbeck's.  Even isolated, each on our own journey, driven by our own desires, we are rooted to the same earth, to the same source, both biologically and spiritually, and because of that, we all share that need for connection--to be part of something greater than ourselves.

So, why, if this need is so universal that two on-the surface, very different men--John Steinbeck, who believed we were ultimately driven by our biology and biological connections to life around us, and Wayne Dyre, who believed we are spiritual beings, bits of God, having a temporary human experience-- came to the exact same conclusion, that we are one and that a meaningful life can only be accessed through that realization--why then is this universal theme so often only spoke of symbolically rather than directly named?

Fear I think is the answer.  Our ego--that grip of comparison of each of us to others as isolated beings--is so strong, so universal, many are afraid to name what they already know for fear of being written off as crazy.  So, the message is leaked out.  In writing about The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck said, "There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can, and he won't find more than he has in himself."  As much as Steinbeck sought the universal, as much as he empathized with the down and displaced, he too was isolated by his ego.  He coded his writing so that only those who are ready to receive the higher message would do so.  Why?  Ego.  He felt he'd grasped something most of the world wasn't ready hear, and I would suggest, he feared he'd be ridiculed if he directly stated it: we are one.  Biologically speaking there are no individuals--just the tidepool as a one ecosystem, each individual creature acting as one cell for the whole.  Yet, by assuming most won't get that message, that somehow, he had some knowledge in him that the world wasn't ready for, Steinbeck was separated from the whole also.  As are most of us.  I, most certainly am, most of the time.

What I really admire about Wayne Dyer is his ability to break through that.  He is confident in his abilities.  He knows what he speaks is true.  But he is equally confident in everyone's ability to get it.  He sometimes jokingly refers to himself as a prophet, but in context it is clear he believes we all carry our own answers within us.  The message is universal, but so is our capacity to understand it.  It's just a matter of letting go of the ego, that sense of separation, until we just feel it in our core:  we are one.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--46. Headed Towards a Day at the National Steinbeck Center without Knowing It

Destiny, Salinas, CA April 13, 2022, Steve Brown

1.  Open to the Pulse of the Moment

I want to write, write well, and maybe say something in the process.  Certainly, a lot needs to be said.  But a poem is as much an energy as it is a thing that says something.  A poet doesn't write poems, a poet is receptive to energy--the movement of clouds, wheat being whipped at forty miles an hour, gunfire at the 7-11 down the street, or simply Grandpa flushing in the toilet--it's motion that counts.  When you say something, it's because the energy is right, not because you feel like saving the world.  The rest of the time you're open to any pulse you can get, and you put it down.

I was quite young when I wrote the above in 1992 for a magazine a friend and I published.

That is how a poet operates.  I am here now.  I sit down, confident that as I write, my presence now will take me someplace.  I surrender and follow the flow wherever it goes. 

Maybe a life isn't much different than a poem.  Maybe way back then I wasn't just writing about poetry. Maybe opening up to a poem was just my initial way to begin to open up to life.  Maybe I wasn't quite ready to view life as energy, so instead, I was given an initial glimpse of poetry as that.

I've been reading and listening to Wayne Dyre recently.  He asks a lot of us.  He asks us to believe we are already living the divine life we have already chosen, and that by opening up to a version of our self--our energy or spirit--that is greater than our fear-based ego, we can each discover our own individual sacred quest.  He's asking us to shift from constant doing to constant being, which he calls inspiration.

I'm pretty open to this idea.  Afterall, I do know it is difficult to write a meaningful poem by setting out to do so.  Meaningful poems are a result of trusting that the poem will know where it needs to go.  It's not a process of creating, but rather of following.  A poet doesn't make poems.  A poet is receptive to poems.  When I wrote poems, I understood that very well.  I never sat down to write.  I sat down to open.  In fact, I named a blog where I will still occasionally post poems The Only Poem Open that Day.  The title suggests that the poet wanders around the city and finds whatever poem is open the same way one would find whatever bakery or coffee shop that is open late at night.  The poet is not the creator.  The poet is the customer.  Not all poems are open at all times.  You take in and enjoy the one open to you that day.

Maybe it is no different with this book.  Maybe I need to stop trying to write this book, and instead, let the book write itself.  

Maybe it is the same with life.  What if to fully blossom, all we need to do is let go of our ego and just let life happen?  What if fear keeps us trying to write a life for ourselves that doesn't want to be written?

Maybe much of the turmoil we feel is nothing more than our ego trying force us to do things against the will of our silent sacred self.

What if we are wild words of wonder stuck in greeting-card prison waiting to roam and wander this great big, glorious universe oh so grandly, but instead we've allowed ourselves to be packaged and marketed by the greeting card company called Ego so that we offend nobody and say little of importance, opting for a life that can be mass-marketed in a world of mediocrity.  What if we do that to ourselves?  What if we are born into life tart and tangy, hot and spicy, wild and wonderfully grand, and out of fear, we take on silly rhyme-schemes and sentimentality and become nothing at all really, but words forced upon us by the expectations of others?

It's a hard thing to believe we're already living the life we've chosen so far, and that it was something we decided long ago.  But it shouldn't be.  After all, the life we have is the one that is.  What else adequately explains it?  Something had to get us to now.  Why not simply us?   Not that there haven't been outside influences.  For some, without a doubt, there have been brutal ones.  Not every life is planted in the same soil.  It is extremely egotistical and unempathetic to think otherwise.  Some of us, like me, are very lucky that way.  Some of us got good soil.  However, some of us got planted in toxic waste dumps.  It's not fair, but it is.  Some come from families of love and stability.  Others do not.  But what if we actually chose that?

I have no clue if that is true or not.  However, it is very useful as a thought because it frees us from any resentment that we have against life so far, and that in return, allows us to open up to a life more abundant.  If I believe I chose my current now, I can own that and let go, and then I'll be more willing to open up to whatever comes next.  Afterall, no matter what life I've chosen up to now, I'm here, I've survived, and I know somehow that I've been up to that task, or I wouldn't be here.  If I believe that life just happens to me randomly, I may believe that I am not up to the task, and my ego will shut me down into a dry, thorny, bony twig of existence to protect me from the dangerous life I assume is. I may still exist, but I certainly won't blossom.

I choose to believe I sit here now writing this because every choice I have made up to now has given me everything I need to write it, and if I just open up, the words will come.  I express profound gratitude for every choice I've made so far because without making those choices, I would not be here now writing this particular thing, and I would not have all that I need to do it well.   Some part of me in the past accepted a life where I would be bullied because I know my ego, and I know how much I crave attention, and I know without the experience of being bullied, I'd be a complete ass.    I'm open to the idea that some higher self within me knew that and said, "It won't be fun, but I volunteer for that whole high school geek role because I know it'll do me good, and more importantly, I know I've got what it takes to survive that and move on without a grudge."

Maybe other people said something like, "Yeah, I think I'm up to that whole near-starvation thing" or "Yeah, I think I can still love a real asshole for a dad.  Why don't you give me Fred?  He can be my pop.  We'll duke it out until we both finally give up our egos and grow a bit." What if it is really like that?  I don't know, but it could be.  And whether or not it is, there is great power in thinking it so.  And it's an honest thought-train.  Because it incorporates reality as is instead of denying it.  It is a sort of is-thinking.  I don't have to deny that I needed to be bullied in order to be empathetic.  I can accept the real me.  The guy with the asshole dad can accept both the fact that his dad is an asshole and love him anyway.  I can live in poverty and not hate God for being born into it.  I can accept it as is if I believe I had some choice in the matter.  And then, because I believe I chose it, and know that I survived it, I can also choose to let it go.

I chose my shyness.  I write around it.  I'm not sure why I'm not quite ready to move on.  Something sometimes screams out from deep down inside me, Shutdown!  It doesn't happen at a conscious level, but rather at a cellular level. I don't seem to have any control over it.  It comes as an instant panic attack.  All I want to do is get somewhere by myself and be alone where I feel safe.  I don't know where that comes from.  But I believe I chose it, and just like everything else in my life, at the right moment--which possibly could be right now--that shyness will give me everything I need to write or do or say the perfect thing to help someone, and so I am good with it because it is.  I have chosen a life where I am now grateful for whatever is because I find reality extremely beautiful on its own terms.  I don't need to alter it to love it.  

If I didn't panic in the company of others, would I have learned to love silence sufficiently enough to recognize God speaks through the absolute stillness found in places like Death Valley?

I don't know.  

Maybe that same peace exists wandering through a room full of people, casually opening up and exchanging energy with each individual, feeling that connection to the one through everyone around you.   Maybe there is profound stillness in casual conversation too.  I haven't felt it.  But that doesn't mean it isn't there.  

An experience doesn't exist for anyone until it does.

2.  Destined to Break Down

April 12, 2022

It is late afternoon.  The sun is a hands-width above the horizon on the ocean, low enough the caps of the waves are starting to get golden-glazed.  Marci and I don't get to see that though because we are headed east into the golden hills between Monterey and Salinas.  Yet, I know where the sun is above the horizon by the color of the light.  Therefore, I know the view back at the place we left behind as well as I know the view in front of me.  As Emily Dickenson noted, there is a certain slant of light, and you know it when you see it.  Even the darkest oak leaves take on gold tint, and even the wide trunks come to life as the light picks up each crag in the coarse bark.  This is the time of day when each blade of dry, golden grass along the tar-crumbles and gravelly shit along the highway sings out in singularity, its individual distinctness dazzlingly divine.  

And here we are, winding through a sort of canyon, our heads angled slightly up to see hills blobbed with bulky islands of vegetation surround by golden grass, the occasional grove of trees down in the canyon with us, over-arching the road, sending shadows ticking across each of our faces with time, a metronome of light and shadow.

And then things open up.  We are on the flat.  There is a long straight road with a lot of traffic on the outskirts of town.  We're bypassing Salinas to get to our campground near Yosemite.  I notice we're low on gas--just as we pass a gas station.  I do a U-turn and flip around.

I stand here, pumping gas.  The sun is low--that time of day when the ugliest of buildings becomes gloriously beautiful in intense light.  It is an ugly, dirty gas station with not a bush for landscaping, but in this light, it needs nothing.  As beautiful as it is, I'm rushing the pump in my mind because it's windy and cold.   Also, we have quite a few miles to cover.   I hate setting up camp in the dark.

I go in, pay for the gas.   I get back in, turn the key to start the car.  Nothing.  The engine groans a bit. But it simply will not turn over.  The battery is dead.  What now?

The cars rush by, their lights on--a humming swoosh so steady that in its constant noise it almost creates a sort of silence, like the hum of a fridge or air conditioner.  I stand and lean on the car, wondering what to do.  An old truck from the 50s turns in, its headlight shining at us.  Maybe he can give us a jump.  I worry though.   I'm an idiot when it comes to automobiles, but even I know that car batteries don't normally go dead in the middle of long drives.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--45. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Human Rights Rally and March, Utah State Capitol, February 8, 2025, Steve Brown

And this I believe:  that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.  And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.  And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.  This is what I am and what I am about.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden 1952

Although now is the focus of this book, I am completely ill-equipped to understand today.  The United States has changed so drastically in the short time since Trump took office again through acts that are blatantly antidemocratic, blatantly anti-Christian, and blatantly inhumane, and also appear to be incredibly stupid, causing harm to not only his country but perhaps also to Trump himself, as resistance builds, including the following:

• Trying to remove birthright citizenship.
• Deporting illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, which is not an official U.S. territory, where occupants can be denied the basic rights the U.S. constitution provides to everyone within its borders, citizens or not.
• Threatening to incorporate Canada, Gaza, Greenland, Mexico and Panama into the U.S.
• Bizarrely claiming Ukraine, not Russia, was the aggressor, and that President Zelenskyy rather than Putin is a dictator.
• Cutting off USAID money to those who most need it.
• Trying to shut down all media who factcheck Trump.
• Gutting the Department of Justice of any independence from the president.  

As much as I attempt to understand the many good Christian people who support Trump, I cannot possibly wrap my brain around how any of the above proposed or literal actions fit into the basic principles of Christianity based on who Christ is as depicted in the New Testament.

More broadly, I can't wrap my mind around how America First itself is a Christian principle.  Since when did Christ teach that the way to freedom is through putting yourself first?  We are going through an era of extreme collective egoism that pits us as a country against the world, and I don't see how that can bring collective happiness any more than personal pride and avarice does.  Christ teaches that the personal path to freedom and happiness is by forgetting yourself in the service of humanity.  The more you seek personal gratification, the less you find happiness.  The more you forget about yourself and serve those around you, the more peace and joy you find, which is exactly what Mother Theresa understood.  Happiness comes from demolishing the ego and entering now in the service of others--not what you obtain materially or through honors.  It's totally illogical that the means to collective good would be any different than the means to individual worth.  The only America I can believe in is the America that is in the service of mankind, an America that gives aid to Ukraine not to get something in return but out of love and empathy and dedication to the principles of democracy and respect for the borders of sovereign nations.

However, I know absolutely no argument I make here will convince all those good, Christian Trump supporters of the errors of their thinking.  If anything, it will just cause them to dig into their position.  Who likes to be wrong?  I know I don't. 

Rather, feeble as it may be, this is an attempt to understand our times, which I've got to admit, I find completely baffling.

Which is okay.  It has to be okay.  Because it is.  Reality exists whether I like it or not.  If you live in an era of legalized slavery, you have to on some level accept slavery as the reality, whether as the slave or the slave owner, whether you like it or not, or believe in it or support it in any way.  Because for the time, at least, it is.  The slave has no real tangible means of not-being the slave in such times, and though in hindsight, it seems like it would be easy for the moral slave-owner to simply free his slaves, at the time that would have seemed almost impossible because of the extreme social pressure not to do so.  Afterall, if you let your slaves go, what ideas are you planting in the minds of your neighbor's slaves?  It is easy to make moral judgement on people outside your time period while it can be incredibly difficult to be moral now in your current reality.  Slavery is perceived as moral in a slave society.  Lynching is perceived as moral in a society where it's accepted.  Segregation is perceived as moral in a segregated society.  This is as it is meant to be:  societies are designed to make it easy to continue as things are.  You are meant to feel comfortable and at ease when you join in with the status-quo.  You are meant to feel uneasy and radical when you decide you believe in something superior to what is.

Because we live in an ego-driven world, Christianity, which calls on us to abandon our egos, is never a comfortable religion to live unless you develop two minds that don't talk to each other, which is exactly what happens.  The slave owner is a moral person.  He goes to church, he raises a family, he gives generously to local clubs and organizations.  But because slavery is inherently evil, he must beat and vilify the enslaved to justify his continued practice.  And if, by chance, his two brains do accidently talk to each other, society is there to put on the social pressure to keep him living the status-quo.  The great minds of the times develop theories about how blacks are cursed by God and genetically inferior to whites.  They reinforce the idea that the slave owner is in fact a good man, reminding him of his generous offerings to the community and how much economic good his plantation does.  But, if he doesn't listen, he himself is vilified and rooted out, so that slavery can continue.

But none of that changes the fact that slavery cannot possibly be a Christian institution.  Good people can and did participate in it, but slavery itself could never be Christian because Christ was incredibly concise and articulate about what He knew was the path to personal and collective freedom.  You can create whatever ideology you want to justify slavery as an institution, but the minute you open the New Testament and read the words attributed to Christ, slavery is abolished immediately in principle if not in practice because the Word is perfect.  It is above argumentation.  We instinctively know the principles of Christianity are true.  We are designed to love.  We are designed to care.  We are meant to lose ourselves in the service of mankind.  Nothing can make those beliefs untrue because they are who we are at our core.  

Hate has to be fueled constantly by drumming up fear, separateness, distain for others--driven by the ego in a society of competition.  Love is automatic.  It is our survival instinct.  Two people alone on an island will not kill each other.  In fact, I'm almost positive they will fall in love.  We need that human connection.  Take a free man and a slave place them together alone on an island and you will have ended slavery--at least until a third person is added.  Slavery needs society.  Wickedness needs society.  Wickedness is just another name for fear.  Jealousy is just another name for fear.  We do bad when we fear.  Intelligent, insecure men use our fear to motivate us to do things we would not otherwise do.  The slave owner enslaves another because he fears resources are limited, that if he doesn't participate in the economic system he is given, he will lose his position and the respect of his peers, and so he retains his slaves and continues to go to church and worship Christ, and because part of his brain registers the disconnect, he grows to hate his slaves.  They seem vile to him, almost inhuman.  He wants to beat them to death even though that makes no economic sense.  A healthy, happy slave is bound to produce more than one that's been whipped almost to the point of death.  But at this point the slave owner is no longer rational.  He just has to find a way to justify his enslavement of another.  Hate blots out his natural love and connection to his slave.  But if you removed all other pathways for his love--took away his family and his society--he would soon love his slave.  It is impossible not to.  We are built to love.  

There are exceptions, of course.  There are sociopaths.  There are tyrants who are sociopaths.  But there are not societies of sociopaths.  There have been societies of good people who support slavery though.  Many societies and many good people who called themselves Christian have supported incredible evil throughout history.  The same in Nazi Germany.  All those millions of Jews were killed by the support of good people.  It could not have happened without them.  However, it also could have been stopped by them.

I believe Trump is a sociopath, that everything he does is the opposite of what Christ would do, and I am making a choice to do everything peaceful in my power (which admittedly is next to nil) to change the trajectory of this nation, which I still love, despite what is now going on.  I will be at every rally I can attend against him.  I will be boycotting any company that doesn't support diversity, equity and inclusion policies, because I believe in those things, and I will give as much support as possible to fund opposition to Trump, mainly through the Democratic party, because that's where the most resources exist to fight him.  

However, those are my beliefs, and although I personally cannot fathom how Trump supports Christian values in any shape, way, or form, I do not need others to believe the same as I believe to be okay with them.  I personally know many loving people who support Trump.  They are good.  They are intelligent.  Many of them are even well-informed.  I wish I could somehow convince them that we are at the same point in history that Germany was when Hitler came to power because that is what I know to be true.  I can't even begin to understand how they can support a man who claimed Ukraine was the aggressor against Russia when we saw Russia attack Ukraine in real time.  But I don't need to understand all things, and I don't need to agree with someone to love them, to see them as equally human, as equally intelligent, or as equally divine sons and daughters of God.

I hope my Trump-supporting friends, family and acquaintances feel the same way and can accept my choice to stand up to what I see as tyranny.  But I'm good if they don't.  At some point the man who wants to be free from a society that believes in slavery has to be willing to let go of all that binds him--whether he be the slave or the slave holder.

At some point I have to be willing to let go of an America that believes all its problems are caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion--because I love diversity, equity and inclusion.  I hear DEI and I don't feel fear--I feel love, protection, and the possibility of a better world.

Therefore, I will be marching in love for the right of everyone to celebrate their diverse heritages, cultures, religions, and beliefs.  I'll be marching in love for the right of everyone to have equal treatment under the law.  I will be marching in love in hopes of an America that is includes everyone--gays, lesbians, minorities, immigrants (legal or not).  I will be marching because I've already done it once, and it felt great.  And I will be marching because my soul knows that's what Christ would also do.  And no matter how flawed I may be as a person, I know that doing right feels damn good, and that when I hate, it is my fear and ego talking.  So, I'm telling my ego to take a hike and gladly holding up the banner Snowflake no matter what the consequences are.  At some point someone has to step out of a society gone-wrong and say, "I still love you, but I cannot in good conscience go along with this".  Otherwise, Nazi Germany is bound to repeat itself under other names and in different places.  I will not be a part of hate. 

Illegal immigrants are not animals.  They are simply people, like you and I, doing the best they can to get by in a difficult world.  Their status as citizens means nothing to me.  Their status as humans means everything.  The Christ I believe is Christ of creation, and I believe His love knows no boundaries.  I don't believe any other Christ is worth worshiping.  I only believe in Him because I know the words attributed to Him in the New Testament are perfect.  I believe in that perfection, no matter how far I may currently fall from it.

Trumps America does not represent those words, that love, any more than Slavery-America or Segregation-America did.  But the America promised in the Declaration of Independence and established in the Constitution at least in word do.

That is the America I pledge allegiance to.  And I will support no other version of America ever--no matter what America those around me choose to give their allegiance to instead.  

My goal in life is to be happy and happiness cannot be built on lies.  Trump is one great big lie.  The lie is that happiness is found by placing yourself first in the world and making those around you kneel in subjugation.   America First is a one-way collective ego-trip towards misery.  I'm not going to ride that train.  Instead, I'm hitchhiking across DEI America as long as I possibly can, the hippy I was born to be, a vagabond snowflake, a rallying rolling stone, out for good music, good vibrations, God-intentions and love.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--44. Cannery Row

The Empty Lot in Steinbeck's Cannery Row as Depicted in a Model
at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Steve Brown 2022

1.  Steinbeck's Cannery Row

Steinbeck's Cannery Row is a revolutionary book.  Most works of fiction are built on a formula, one every college creative writing and literature major is taught deeply, and one every high school student is at least exposed to:  the plot of a narrative is driven by the writer creating a protagonist with a goal and something that keeps them from immediately reaching it.  Then, the hero either overcomes the obstacles or is transformed in some way through the struggle, or both.  It is quite possible to see Cannery Row this way. Doc can be viewed as the main character.  If that is the case, his goal is to be left alone to work.  That suffices.  If one looks into the tide pool using the exact same paradigm as everyone always has, one is likely to see what has always been seen.

However, from the very beginning of the book, Steinbeck provides us the lens through which he wants us to view Cannery Row:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.  Cannery row is the gathered and the scattered, tin and iron, rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and Labatories and flophouses.  Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches, by which he meant Everybody.  Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

In that paragraph Steinbeck defines the paradigm he would like us to use when reading Cannery Row.  This is not a book about a single character.  Rather, it is a book where the place is the protagonist.  The characters are not to be studied individually but rather how they function together in the tidepool that was Ocean View Avenue at the time.  

The book is not a study of Ed Rickets, the inspiration for Doc, but rather a study of Ed Ricket's role in the greater stink, grating noise, quality of light, tone, habit, nostalgia, and dream that is Cannery Row.  Doc is an essential cell in that organism, the type of person Malcolm Gladwell would much later label a "connector" in The Tipping Point.  Doc is the cell that if removed would cause the character Cannery Row to wither and die, but the protagonist is not Doc, but rather community as a whole.  That was and is still revolutionary for a novel.  

Just as Monterey Bay Aquarium would later be among the first aquariums in the world to try to share communities of sea life working together as they do in the real world rather than simply spotlighting individual species floating around in isolation from their community, Cannery Row makes the whole cast of Cannery Row the exhibit rather than one dominating character.    

In Steinbeck's hand and mind everyone is equally human ("whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches") and equally godly ("saints and angels and martyrs and holy men") because Cannery Row is not only about the individuals, but it also about the sublime whole.  The book is a study of human ecology, and Cannery Row is the tidepool into which we are looking at humanity.  It is a case-study in human condition--the general known through the particular.

Of course, John also wrote the book as a tribute to Ed Rickets, so there is nothing wrong with reading it as a traditional protagonist-centered story with a traditional goal-driven plot.  It definitely can be read on that level.  However, in writing about The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck said, "There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can and he won't find more than he has in himself." 

Steinbeck wrote in layers, and one layer he always wanted us to see is that we are all connected.  Everything we do impacts those around us, and in Cannery Row everyone equally fills their role as a human--from vagrant, to prostitute, to unfocused artist, to Chinese shopkeeper, to marine biologist and social connector.  All are equally important to the tidepool that is Cannery Row.  Steinbeck is a classless writer.  He writes about how destructive classes can be, especially in The Grapes of Wrath, but he doesn't see people in levels.  He doesn't ignore the social class.  He sees things as they are.  However, the quality of the person has nothing to do with their rank or occupation.  In fact, in Cannery Row, he doesn't even rank people according to goodness or badness of character.  They just are.  The saint and the sinner are one; it just depends how and when you are looking.  Steinbeck views the world with love even as he is angry about the social injustice all around him.

2.

Cannery Row today no longer resembles the one captured in the book.  When I first visited in 1997, I was deeply disappointed by that even though I knew that would be the case.  Although I loved the aquarium, Cannery Row itself did little for me.  It could be the West End of Dallas or any other restored warehouse district in any city in America.  They are all the same.  Somehow, even with that foreknowledge, I was still sorely disappointed to find a neighborhood that doesn't resemble what's in the novel at all.

However, this time, although we didn't spend much time there, I felt completely different about the place.  For one thing, I love old, refurbished warehouses and factories.  Sure, they are no longer what they used to be, but would we really want them to be that?  Those areas never were generally kind to either the environment or the people that lived and worked there.  They were exploitation zones--lively, nasty places teaming with humanity.  That's partially what drew Steinbeck there in the first place: it was a microcosm of humanity.  In the case of Cannery Row, if it was still the same, it would still be pillaging sea life from the Monterey Bay at an unsustainable rate, which of course is impossible, which is why all of the canneries shut down in the first place.

The Cannery Row that Steinbeck knew was unsustainable, which he knew.  The novel captures a place right before ecological collapse and local extinction of a place he loved dearly.  The tidepool would be forever changed by outside forces greater than the lives within it.  Similar characters of Steinbeck's Cannery Row can still be found, but in different places.  That Ocean View Avenue would evolve into something else was inevitable.

However, if it was not for Steinbeck and his wonderful little book, most of the canneries probably would have been torn down.  Walmart's and strip malls would most likely now occupy their place.  

So, although one can't get a living picture into Steinbeck's world by visiting Cannery Row, one can visit a monument to a man, a book, and most importantly an idea: we are all interconnected, and the story of one protagonist, no matter how unique and special that man or woman may be, can't be accurately told without also telling the story of everyone else in the community.  Everything we do impacts each other for better or worse.

Likewise, no matter how unique mankind is as a species, we are part of the tidepool that is earth.  In order to survive we need to understand those connections.

Ultimately, empathy is understanding your connection to the whole.  Our world needs that more now than ever.

Cannery Row in Monterey California is a monument to two great men who aimed to see the whole, the beauty and elegance of everything woven together.  And for that, even with all its commercialization, it is worth visiting a place dedicated to the idea we are all one.