The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--21. Only in Fear, Do We Want to Clip the Wings of Things Ready to Soar

Now, April 12, 2022, 2:10 PM:  One Standard Moment
in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Steve Brown 2022

Lasting happiness comes primarily from finding peace of mind and peace of mind does not fall from the sky.  We need to make concerted efforts to be kind to each other, to live in harmony with each other and cultivate a deep sense of brotherhood and sisterhood throughout the community.  We need to reflect on the oneness of humanity.

 -- Dalai Lama, social media post, November 20, 2023

Early on in the creative process, I was extremely driven to write this book.  I had been diagnosed with kidney disease, and because of my father, there was a small but genetically significant chance that that I might have amyloidosis, which is fairly fast and fatal.  At the time of our vacation, our 25th anniversary trip, I believed it could well be one of the last vacations Marci and I took together.    

Shortly after our return, I learned that although I have kidney disease, I have a very mild type, and as long as I eat reasonably well, I've got as much chance of living a long life as anyone does statistically-speaking.  Other than restricting my diet, the disease turned out not to be a big deal.

Yet, I was still very driven to write this book.  Although my kidney disease seems to make me very tired, the steroids I was taking gave me short bursts of energy daily.  One of the side effects listed for the medication is "excessive happiness".  Even knowing that, I didn't necessarily feel my new zest for life was drug-induced.  The joy simply felt too real to be artificially induced.  It was not the drugs speaking, I thought, but my evolved outlook on life.  Facing death had changed me forever.

I woke up early, often three or four in the morning, usually from a dream that would provide me the perfect kernel of what I needed next in my writing.  A few of those kernels were so aligned with what I would learn about Steinbeck's philosophy a day or two later during my research that I felt Steinbeck might be personally guiding my hand from beyond the veil.

And then it just stopped.  And here I am with a book that I'm unsure about.  I have thought about quitting, but until I finished my last and only book to date (which I haven't tried to publish), that's what I've always done:  go from project to project, writing some passages I feel are meaningful but never really saying anything because I simply quit before the project comes together as a whole.

I've decided a writer can't do that.  Like a good husband, a good father, a good friend, a good anything--one has to be committed to see it through to the end.  One needs the endurance to push forward when one most believes there is absolutely no reason to do so.  A writer learns to endure to the end, or he learns to not be a writer at all.  That type of learning destroys us from the inside out--the slow erosion of our hopes and dreams.  A man can survive not reaping the rewards of his efforts.  A man cannot survive letting go of his dreams.  He becomes half a man, a shell.  Prophets are stoned, burned and shot, not fully listened to in their day, and still they remain prophets.  But the minute a prophet believes What good will it do? and Why bother? a prophet is a prophet no more.  The same is true for a painter, a musician, a parent.   Or a writer.

A writer only remains a writer as long as he/she believes words matter and that he/she has a reason to put words down.  That can be Oh so difficult to believe especially when one is of the age that statistically speaking your chance of making an impact on the world is very slight.  Fame, which I care nothing about, and the power that comes with it to do good, which I care immensely about, begins while one is relatively young.  Changing the world is the realm of youth.  Having the wisdom appreciate life on its own terms is the realm of the elderly.  Sadly though, so is that reluctant, loosening grasp on one's dreams, and with it, one's desire to live.  A lot of elderly people slowly slope into death broken by the burden of carrying around dead dreams--totally alone under the weight of that huge question, what was it all for?

A belief in an afterlife helps for sure.  The end is not so final.  One is given a psychological extension, an eternity, to become who you want to be.  I fully believe in that, and I don't believe it is merely a concept to ward off the fear of death.  However, I don't think knowing that there is an afterlife saves one from the crushing weight of unfulfilled dreams.   We are built to want to accomplish certain things in this life.  A piano player will never die happily as a banker.  He or she is wired to play.  Play he or she must, or death will come long before the grave does.

However, I am just beginning to understand what keeps an old man young is how well he attends to the moment.  The now, fully taken in, always sings with light, even on the darkest night, because our eyes are wired to see light, and light is there always.  Sit in a dark room long enough and you will see shadows of light seeping in defining forms and giving the vagueness meaning.  In the now, a writer doesn't worry about impact or legacy--only the beauty of the words themselves, and a power and truth that almost seems tangible as the next word tingles the senses, and points towards something not yet named.

I haven't lived my life that way, but I believe it is possible to do so.  I can name people I believe have.  The Dalai Lama is one of them.  He isn't sloping towards death.  He is alive each and every moment.  He is constantly alive in the now that makes up the eternities.

The prophet of my church is pushing us to think celestially, which can be defined as eternity spent at the highest spiritual level possible.  Nothing could be a grander goal, and it begins with now.  How do I enter this moment fully enough that I know that glory of what it means to be alive?

A man who can do that willingly, whenever he wants, will only want good things for the world and will tire himself out in the joy of making the world a better place no matter the circumstances.  Death will come sudden with no regrets because no matter whatever his condition, or the condition of the world around him, he is attentive to the details of now.

Say, for instance, he is bed-ridden and in some pain constantly.  Instead of focusing on all he cannot do or all he wished he'd done but never seemed to get around to, what he could have done better in his life, those he abandoned, or those who abandoned him...  Instead of worrying about all that stuff, he notices the little bird with the yellow chest on the bony, wet limb outside his window, and the clouds breaking up after an early morning rain.  He hears the heater kick on and feels the warmth of the blanket tucked in tight around him.  He stares at the wall, and watches a spider move across it.  He notices the vase of flowers his daughter has brought him.  He lets his mind wander, and when it comes to his own death, and he feels his body tighten up, rather than running away from that fear, he looks at it the same way he looks outside his window, at the same way he looks around his room, and he comes to know it, knowing full well it is impossible to hate something you know well because hate is just a less-scary name for fear.  It is easier to hate something than admit it is something we fear.

To a man like that, death never comes until his heart stops beating and his brain goes cold, and his spirit is released into the next realm.

A man like that also only wants good for the world, because when totally immersed in the here and now, an active observer of everything around him, a sense of unity and connection is always present.  The feeling of separateness is gone, and with it, the sense of competition and the need to win.  Instead of viewing the world as resource-starved, one realizes that it is resource-rich, and instead of wanting to hoard everything to protect yourself, one wants to give abundantly, wanting the bugs to get their fill from your fruit tree.  

I am not yet that man, nowhere close, by any means.  But I know he exists in Christ.  I know he exists in others too, like the Dalai Lama, who know a moment so well they can look deep down into it and see eternities.

I know that if the world were populated by such people, together we would solve all of our problems, from climate change to war.

This book, I think, is how to become that person.  If not for you, for myself, because I believe if everyone could know all moments deeply, one would also know the eternities, and act appropriately.

It is a disconnected man who wants to burn the world, a disconnected man who wants to make me a foe.  It is a disconnected man who needs to win, and once he's won, sits on a pile of ashes, wondering What was it all for?

A connected man already knows.  He's experienced life moment by moment.  His only goal is for others to know that same joy.  Life is.  Live it.  Love it. Protect it.  Enjoy. 

      

I started to doubt the structure of this book.  I started to doubt a lot of things.  It felt like this book was morphing into something else, something beyond my initial conception, that it was growing wild, and beyond my control.  It was.  It is.   And isn't that exactly what I should want?  A book I have to run to catch up to.  Something I can see grow moment by moment beyond my intentions.  Something wild and free and striving to become.

Only in fear, do we want to clip the wings of things ready to soar.

   

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--20. One White Car in the Panamint Valley

 

There are two great valleys in Death Valley National Park--Death Valley and Panamint Valley.  Both are otherworldly.  With Death Valley, it is the heat, the texture, the lack of fauna (the desert of deserts), and a strange, heavy sodium light.  With Panamint Valley it is simply the immense sense of isolation.  Pretty much all tourism in the park ends at Stovepipe Wells.  Anything west of that seems far too quiet to be in a national park.  Other than the black asphalt, you clearly are in the wilds, Biblical-like wilds, not unlike where Jesus all alone met and overcame his temptation.  There are no pullouts with explanatory signs, no roadside garbage cans, and oh so few cars.  There is just you and the stone and the sand.  A man could meet his mind here.

We begin the drop into the Panamint Valley.  It is like a dream.  A large, yellow gash runs north to south below us.  It climbs quite a bit at the north end, where some large dunes pile up against a mountain where the valley abruptly ends.  The mountains around us are black, so black that at first, I'd thought there'd been a fire.  But no, it is just rock.  It is odd enough I was temporarily fooled even though I grew up less than ten miles from a lava flow.  Something is distinctly strange about them even for one familiar with the west.  I'm coming to the conclusion that there is nothing familiar about Death Valley National Park.  To enter it is to lose connection with your sense of the world even if you know deserts and the western United States well.  

The Panamint Valley is 65 miles long and 10 miles wide.  An alluvial fan sweeps across the valley and divides it into two basins, each with its own playa.  As recently as 10,000 years ago, like Death Valley and Owens Valley, the long gash was filled with a lake, its highest shoreline 1,820 feet above sea level.  The northern playa sits 1,540 feet above sea level, so during the lake's heyday, there was a good 280 feet of water where the highway now crosses that flat, yellowish-white plain.

I look for a designated pull-out.  It is strange that before such an extraordinary sight and in a national park there should be none.  Maybe we left the park, and I didn't see the sign.  I cannot pass this and not at least attempt to capture some minute part of its beauty.  The shoulder looks soft, but I'll risk it anyway.  No cars, of course, are coming.  We haven't seen one for over twenty minutes, coming in either direction, so I ease off the road onto a shoulder of gravel and sand a few feet elevated above the lakebed itself.  I get out.

It's warm, pleasant, but not as warm as the sand dunes at Mesquite Flat were.  This valley must be higher.  It sure didn't look like it though dropping down into it.

I look both ways and cross the road.  Such a Zen landscape.  I take a picture of one white car before an incredibly flat yellow lakebed in front of a distant wall of stone.

If I were to die tomorrow, I would be glad I was here with Marci, and this--this would be one of my last scenes.  

The silence is profound.  I am glad to be here even though I'm not certain how many of those I have left.  I guess none of us are.  I'm just more aware of it than I ever was before.  To be here is good.  How seldom we fully appreciate that.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--19. One Standard Moment Looking into Death Valley

One Standard Moment Looking into Death Valley on a Dusty Day, Steve Brown 2022

Sunday, April 10, 2022.  11:03 a.m.

I pull the car onto the shoulder to take a picture part way down the long descent back into Death Valley.  The heat of yesterday is gone after last night's cold front drove it some place farther south, perhaps deep into Mexico.  But, already, simply from the drop in elevation, it is so much warmer than it was in Rhyolite, even on this cold, cold day.

It is not as clear as I would like it to be.  That bitter wind has mucked up the sky.  Yet, it is incredibly beautiful here.  The distance, though distorted by dust, is still impressive.  Big spaces simply blow the mind, and there are few spaces bigger and deeper than Death Valley.  Time seems to stand still and march on forever simultaneously.  I feel that if I could just stand here and gaze forever, I would want for nothing more.

I know that is a lie, of course.   People are built to want.  Dissatisfaction and boredom are in our blood.  Stillness is a terrifying experience even for the quiet ones and those trained as meditators and Zen masters.  We can only handle so much peace, so much light, so much perfection before we go looking for some noise, some distraction, anything that removes us from being fully present.

I'm aware of that and don't fight it.  I just need a moment to take in the small chunks of rock, the medium chunks of rock, and the bigger chunks of rock--all casting shadows according to their size.  I just need to take in the dry narrow stems of the moisture-starved scatting of creosote bushes. I just need to feel that drop in elevation, and see that space, the salt flats north of Furnace Creek shockingly white even in this pastel stone landscape. 

At this point I know I have kidney disease, but I don't know what type, or how severe, so I'm aware this trip could be my only opportunity to take in this space.  We plan on returning this way, so I know I'll see it at least one more time, but after that, perhaps never again.

Moments right now are tremendously precious.  I have never seen the way I see now.  Every moment is a movie.  Nostalgia hangs deep and robust as Spanish moss hanging from big southern trees.  Sadness and joy sing together in unison.  Every hello is also possibly a goodbye.  I feel frail but deeply alive.  I think this must be what war feels like, although I don't really know for sure.

But I also know human nature, so I don't mind getting back in the car and driving on.  There will be music, and caramel rice cakes, Coke Zero, my wife sitting beside me, and at least for today, the road, always the road--the only place I've ever really wanted to be.

We drive on.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--18. The Ballad of I and my I-Me-My-Mine Mind

A Moment of Recognition:  Everest Brown at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Steve Brown

It is 5:24 a.m., November 6, 2023.  I have chosen to get up early to read scriptures and write.  There have been many other mornings that I have chosen to remain in bed instead.  Often, it feels like remaining in bed a few more minutes means absolutely everything and that I have no other choice.  That, of course, is usually a lie my brain tells me to get what it wants, a lie that I'm oh so willing to believe.

John Steinbeck talked a lot about nonetiological thinking, is thinking--the act of attempting to separate what we want to believe from what actually is real.  He acknowledged that this is difficult, perhaps impossible, because we are not only observers of reality; we are participants in reality.  Objectivity, therefore, does not come easily.

Many years ago, I had a dream where I was questioning Christ about creation.  More accurately, I was using rhetorical questions to argue that the facts established by science rule out any possibility of a God who could be intimately involved in each of our lives, let alone be our Savior.  In a kind and loving but stern rebuke, Christ asked, "Who are you to think you can understand a system you are part of better than I, the creator of that system?"

I woke up realizing I'd never thought of that before.  Ultimately, we can never fully understand creation while being mortal any more than a fish can understand all the stuff outside his fish tank that keeps him alive--such as the electrical socket his water pump and bubbler are plugged into, the distant power plant that feeds electricity, the trainloads of coal that feed the powerplant, or the plants and animals that died millions of years ago and were later compressed under great pressure to create the coal that ultimately keeps our little fish alive.  He can never detect all this, no matter how intelligent he is, because most of what sustains him exists outside his realm of observation.  In short, it is impossible to fully understand the tidepool in which you exist because you cannot get outside it to observe all that affects it.   

Whether I simply had a dream or whether Christ actually came to me in a dream (which is what I believe), what that dream identified was essentially the same problem that Ed Rickets and John Steinbeck identified in trying to understand reality:  how can we fully understand a system we are part of?  I can analyze a story because I'm outside it.  I'm not a player in it.  How well would I do that though as a character?  How does Coyote realize it doesn't matter what he does, he will never catch Roadrunner because of forces beyond his control when he can't get out of his own mind, his own desires, his own thinking?  How does he identify his ultimate reality when he can't let go of his world view because of how closely he ties his identity to being a coyote, a pursuer and devourer of roadrunners?  If he could but glimpse the negative loop that he's in, he could perhaps walk away and be free.

I have a strong suspicion we are all coyotes caught in loops of fixated beliefs and desires, fueled by untrue assumptions.  One of those false beliefs is that we can trust our mind--that it is some stable, reliable processor of reality.  That what we think actually is.  We don't think that about others--just ourselves.  It's the I-me mind, and it keeps each of us running around in our own reality.

I know I can't trust my mind.  Or at least part of it.  My stupid ego gets offended by the stupidest, unimportant crap ever, and if I'm not careful, I find myself getting defensive and justifying my behavior over the simplest things, making up wars in my head that don't exist simply because I feel I'm under attack.  I swing into self-righteous mode, and the driver in front of me becomes an idiot, and the person at the drive-thru window is the most ignorant, rude ignoramus ever born, and I, the great purveyor of wisdom, must somehow set them right and make them realize their stupidity.  I feel at that moment that honking that horn or making that comment is the most important thing in the world.  A day later, those moments seldom enter my mind, and if they do, I certainly don't deem them worthy of wasting any time over them.

How then, can that mind be trusted?--when something so important one moment doesn't even pop up on the radar a day later.  If you believe your brain is a trustworthy instrument to observe reality with, you are probably upset and angry at the world most of your life.  Most of our brain is there to protect us; it is driven by fear; it is reactive.  Only a small portion is receptive to actual thought.  There have been those who've had near-death experiences who claim that they learned that the brain is a filter rather than a generator of thought.  I'm not only open to that idea, I tend to believe it.  It seems to me, so much of our thought is about protecting us from reality rather than immersing ourselves in reality.  Our brain, untrained, removes us from the world rather than connecting us to it.  It filters out the light.  Love, which seems to be outside the brain, though the brain clearly is stimulated by it, seems to be what connects us to the world.  Our empathy, not our intelligence, is what anchors us to reality through a recognition of oh yeah, that could just as easily be me.    

If we believe that our brains cannot be fully trusted, that our initial thought, our gut-reaction, isn't necessarily accurate, then it opens up a world of possibilities not available through instinct.  I personally believe I have a soul that has its own intelligence and that I can access that higher self through a small portion of my brain.  My soul is that part of me which recognizes my connection to all things, that sees me as part of existence, rather than separate and superior.  Whether this concept is accurate or not isn't so important.  What is important is that it removes me from my instinctual self, which always reacts the in the same, predictable, often destructive ways, because it views everything as a possible threat, which limits my ability to think outside the box.  It is this way with everybody.

Take Israel right now, for example.  Collectively, their natural instinct is to punish Hamas, to rein justice down so hard as to wipe Hamas out of existence, no matter what the cost to Palestine, or ultimately themselves, because their need for revenge prevents them from any long-term, strategic questioning.  For example, how many future terrorists are we creating each time an innocent civilian loses a loved one?    They can't think anything through, because like me cut off on the freeway, their brains can only think retaliation.  It is how we are naturally wired.  It is our gut reaction.  You hit me, and I'll hit back.  But is it smart?  And is thinking that you must retaliate for your own safety even real, as in is it a must?  That is where our instinctual brain lies to us--it presents one option as the only option.  It tricks us into believing we have no other choice.  Up until the moment we die, we always have a choice.  It is our one luxury in this world no matter what our circumstances.  We can be put in a place where no matter what we do, the outcome isn't going to be favorable, such as being held hostage or living in a war zone, but we still have thousands of options as to how to react to that reality.  We just instinctually don't believe it at the time.

When you begin to question your own mind, it does not lead to insanity.  It does quite the opposite.  It keeps you sane.  Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Our instinctual brain feeds us the same limited options over and over again.  We become Coyote in his quest to catch Roadrunner.   Each time we go about doing the same thing over may appear to be ingeniously unique as we build the latest gadget to provide the greatest clobber yet imagined, but because we can't get out of our mind-loop, the outcome is ultimately the same over and over again, often with ever-increasing intensity.  What will our future terrorists be like because of Israel's actions today?  How can Israel possibly think Hamas did not calculate Israel's current reaction in their list of possible outcomes?  It may not be the outcome they ultimately wanted, but it had to at least been considered as a possibility because it is the most natural reaction, the most obvious one.  Whatever Israel is doing, it is not surprising Hamas, although Hamas may be somewhat shocked by the intensity of Israel's retaliation.

Now, what if Israel didn't trust their instinctual brain?  What if, instead, they viewed the world with empathy?  What if they saw Hamas's attack as a cry for help from Palestinians?  What if terrorism was viewed as a symptom of some larger problem rather than as a foe?  What if Israel thought outside the box, and did something truly unpredictable?

What if they had loaded up bomber after bomber with bouquets of flowers with "Sorry, we love you!" notes and dropped them on all of the Palestinian civilians?  How much energy would that have sucked out of Hamas's hate campaign?  Could it have undermined Hamas from within?   Would the Palestinians have demanded their leaders release the hostages?  Would it have created a space where both sides could have come to the table and began again that hard process of sharing the Holyland? 

Who knows?  It's possible.  But Israel will never be able to gather that data because they never tried it.  They got locked in an instinctual moment and responded in the most predictable way possible, and it is likely that Hamas, or whatever terrorist organization the Palestinians replace it with (as they likely will), will do the same.  Like Coyote, we can be oh so clever in developing new ways to deliver blows, but if we can't remove at least part of ourselves from our instinctual selves, we are locked forever in loops of predictable outcomes without realizing we are fueling a plot that has no resolution if we continue playing the same old roles.  We have to realize we are in the script before we can make a conscious decision rewrite our part with a better outcome.

You have to realize you are the fuel feeding the fire before you can cool things down and soften the burn.

That is what this book is ultimately about.  The world is out of control--environmentally, politically, and socially.  How do we cool things down and soften the burn?

And even if I don't have enough influence to do anything about it--how can I at least see things accurately enough to live well and make the most of the here and now in ways pleasing to my higher, spiritual self?--the only part of me that can or ever will be satisfied because that is the only part of me that sees myself connected to all things rather than separate and under attack.  Happiness and separateness are incompatible emotions.  One cannot be in competition, feel envy or jealousy, or feel superiority and feel true joy at the same time.  Our instinctual selves see everything as a competition and therefore everyone is a possible foe.  We are driven by fear, which locks us forever in a prison of our own making.   

How do I remove myself from that, and live free, no matter what is happening around me?  How do I enter a moment, through my own will, so profoundly that I see the beauty that radiates all around me no matter what the circumstances are?  From my brief aware moments in the sun, simply absorbing its warmth, or in the shade, feeling a cool, gentle breeze, moments when I'm totally absorbed in simply existing, in taking in all that's around me, undistracted by thought--from moments like that, I do believe it is possible for a person to get to that place most of the time.   I also believe that that place is the only place we can see clearly and that when in that place, all solutions come from a place of love and recognition that everything is connected.

The trick is, how do I become aware enough of the workings of my own brain that I make the choice to remain still?  How do I see reality clearly enough that I open myself to multiple possibilities at all times rather than getting locked down in the same old repetitive actions that bring about the same old repetitive outcomes? 

I'm not sure, but it is worth exploring.