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 They 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.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--43. Being Here Now Noticing the Light

Red Skies - Pahvant Butte, Steve Brown 2025

It has occurred to me that we may be so confused about the present that we avoid it because it is not clear to us.  But why should that be a deterrent?  If this is a time of confusion, then it should be the subject of a good writer if he is to set down his time.

--John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, 1954

Two years, seven months, and eleven days ago, I started this book with above quotation.  I had been diagnosed with kidney disease, and although at the time of writing the first chapter, I had received the good news that my particular kidney disease is treatable and sometimes even curable, I was still making frequent trips to the lab to get blood drawn, and because our deductible was so high, wondering how we would pay for it all.  And of course, there was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Not only did the injustice of that impact me, but I thought I might well be writing this book into World War III.

But then I wrote, and as I wrote, my confusion seemed to dissipate.  The world didn’t get any less confusing.  For us, here, in the United States, the devastation in Ukraine grew more and more distant as the news covered it less and less as it became clear that at least for the time being the world would not explode into war.  But that’s not what created the shift.  As I wrote, I began to perceive I could be steady and stable, even happy, regardless of what was happening outside me.  I had started writing the book as a means to bear witness to our times, to sort through the confusion and try to make some semblance out of it.  I wanted to write something akin to The Grapes of Wrath.  It seemed history was repeating itself, that we hadn’t learned the lessons Steinbeck worked so hard to teach us, and that we were headed down the same old shitty path of inhumanity and war.  None of that changed in the course of almost three years of writing.  But my focus did.  

Writing the book became less and less a record of our times and more and more a record of my quest to find happiness.  If we are alive, we should feel good about it.  Not that I felt bad.  I didn’t.  I’ve basically been a happy man ever since I met Marci back 1997.  But, on a daily basis, happiness seemed so fleeting, at the whims of my ego and whatever trend of thoughts I had running through my head.

Then, while writing at my desk, facing out a sliding glass door onto the garden on September 14, 2023, I had a realization that has changed me.  Here it is again:    

I sit at my drafting table and look out my open sliding glass door into my garden.  It's late afternoon. Up front, the rose bush and peach tree are heavy with shadow.  There is an old wooden chair with chipped red paint.  Yellow black-eyed Susans and violet cosmos beyond sway gently.  All of this is muted softly by the shade.  Then, just as the garden beds meet the gravel pathway, a cluster of sunflowers catches the evening light, isolated again by heavy shadow thrown behind.  Distant dogs bark.  Outside, the fountain gurgles.  Inside, the fridge hums.  Two worlds mingle.

I have lived my entire life in moments like this.   I've existed during a lot of other times as well.  But I have only truly lived in these jeweled vignettes.  When I look back on my life, these are the images and sounds I remember.  From the time I was five, I have known light and shadow is all I really needed.  This is my purpose.  Of that, I had no doubt.  I couldn't have expressed it.  But I knew it.  Being is its own reason to exist.  Moments are everything.  

I had the sudden realization that for small slices of time I had always been happy, even during a time in my life when I was overall extremely dissatisfied with myself, my life, and my God—who I claimed to not believe in even as I cursed him, occasionally fervently.  Furthermore, these small slices of happiness all had something in common:  they were all moments when I was fully in the now.  In short, my unhappiness was all in my head.  Not that there weren’t real things to be unhappy about.  There are.  Always.  Life is brutal.  Unjust.  Bullies exist.  Invasions.  War.  Rape.  Starvation.  Petty arguments.  Pipes that break.  Sewers that back up.  Car batteries that die.  These are real.  But, at least for me, that is not my personal source of dissatisfaction that keeps joy away.  Thinking is.  A particular type of thinking.  Ego-driven thinking.  The type of thoughts that try to figure out my place in the world, how things at any given moment will turn out for me, and will I be safe or not.

But whenever I was just there, in a moment, noticing light, all seemed to be well.  I seemed not to be me.  I seemed to be one thing and everything at once.  So, I started testing my thesis, to see if, at least for me, happiness is always contained in the moment, whatever that is, and that the ego is always trying to keep us from that natural bliss by constantly throwing us into hypotheticals that either aggrandize us or place us in doomsday scenarios where we will either be scorned and ridiculed, obliterated, or at least doomed in some significant way.  One moment we've got the idea that's going to change the word, and the next we're going to lose our job because we spoke our mind a bit too forcibly at the last meeting--and all of that occurs nowhere outside the sinews of the brain.

I have found my premise to basically be true.  If my head is running wild on the way home from work, and I can focus on the electrical poles running towards the horizon, and how majestic the shoe-shaped island cinder cone of Pahvant Butte looks against the marmalade sky, the riots in my head quickly subside and I realize that along with everything else, I am, and what's outside my window seems sufficient enough reason to be glad to be alive.  Nothing more is required.  Whatever happened at work doesn't disappear; it simply becomes insignificant before creation.   

However, I have to admit we as humans are certainly making the restoring-power of nature murkier all of the time.  There are quite a few ugly days now, even in this remote valley, because of smog and smoky skies.  We are literally setting our collective home on fire through our addictions to fossil fuel.  

However, light, even when bent and blurred and brutalized by industrial pollutants, is still light, and as long as we don't blot out the sun completely, I do believe one can still get to that bliss anywhere.  Light is God's visual language the way love is his spiritual communication.  So, one can tap into that anywhere, but of course it's going to be easier doing that holding hands with your loved one looking out at sunlit Half Dome than looking at your dead uncle on the cratered streets of Gaza with your home a heap of concrete and rebar in the background.  

Somehow, even though I haven't experienced anything remotely like that and assume that I most likely will never achieve such a state of pure knowledge and assurance that mortality works, I absolutely know it is possible to arrive at that place of peace in places like Gaza even if I struggle to keep my cool while in the midst of losing a game of Uno.

Part of me thinks there are times that justify righteous anger, that there are times when happiness is actually not the moral course.  Afterall, even Jesus Christ lost his cool when he saw the money changers violating the temple.  Surely such times as ours, when democracy seems to be being shredded right before our eyes and our president is making all the same moves as Adolf Hitler, a little doom and gloom might just be the moral emotion.  

However, part of me knows it's not.  Darkness is never light.  Evil is never good.  The air may be dense with razor-sharp shards of hate floating everywhere, but whatever light we can omit through the dense dusty chemical-filled fog is better than no light at all.  The man who can see beauty in the obliterated humanity littering the streets of Gaza is the same man who can hold his eye steady and fearless before the perpetrator and begin to melt the enemy's resolve to hate.

And so, as lousy as I am at it, my only goal in life is to enter now so totally present my joy isn't dependent on what is happening around me.  To me, it seems to be the key to real love--the type that comes with no expectations because one is so sure of the human experience as a whole one can absorb the present ugliness into the grandness of the entirety with loving compassion.  

We all have access to that surrender and sureness when we silent the mind and just be.

Confusion is a product of ego-driven thinking.  Knowing is a product of witnessing what is silently, objectively.  Now is that portal to the infinite, where light and love merge into the divine answer always.  Everything else, no matter how solid and real it may appear in the mind, is nothing more than dust in the wind.

… Ah, people asking questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there's no problem
Only solutions
Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here doing time

--John Lennon, "Watching the Wheels" 1980

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--42. To Be in the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Observing, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Steve Brown 2022

When Marci and I made our honeymoon trip to Cannery Row twenty-five years earlier, seven hundred dollars was all we had to our names combined.  Looking back, I wonder why, given our financial situation, we would have opted to include going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in our itinerary as it was quite expensive even then.  Twenty-five years later, I still found it difficult to hand over that entrance fee even though it was a much smaller percentage of our wealth than before.  

It is mind-boggling how much trust we have in life and love when we are young.  You find the person you want to be with, and you just do it, having almost nothing financially.  And in our case, Marci already had two children to her name, and yet we still took that leap of faith.  We not only chose to get married, but we also chose to spend everything we had on our honeymoon and trust that the pay checks we'd receive after working a couple weeks when we returned home, along with the welfare and W.I.C. Marci was thankfully receiving, would sustain us until the next pay period came.  There were no extra funds if the car broke down.  We just hit the road and didn't worry about it.  Well, at least not until the drive home.  And even then, only I worried about it.  Marci hadn't a care in the world which led to our first fight.  

There is something glorious in that trust in life.  And I'm glad we were foolish enough to include a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in our first real journey together.  It is an amazing place, and our honeymoon would not have been the same without it.  And the money did come, as did the degrees, and some semblance of security.  But a little bit of wisdom could have kept that trip to the aquarium forever out of our memories.  I'm glad we didn't let prudence cheat us out of that experience.  It is indeed a glorious one.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is different from most aquariums in that it is not just a collection of fish.  Although it includes aquatic life from all over, its main purpose is to share the biological diversity of Monterey Bay itself.  It is a lens on the life under the sea right out its windows.  Julie Packard, daughter of David Packard, who with his children founded and funded the project, puts it this way in Monterey Bay Aquarium:  The First 35 Years:

From the start, the idea to create an aquarium all about Monterey Bay met with a good deal of skepticism from those outside of our planning group. To outsiders it sounded limiting. To us it sounded boundless. We wanted to go deep, and for the first time show people what the ocean is really like. Monterey Bay was our inspiration. We were singularly focused on telling its story. And what a story it was—a diverse and abundant ecosystem thriving with life, enriched by the seasonal upwelling of nutrient-rich water along the Pacific Coast. Best of all, unlike nearly every other aquarium, we had the real thing right outside our doors. 

There are two ends of the spectrum on how to live life--with arms wide-open to now or by putting off immediate impulses for a more secure tomorrow.   And of course, there is a balance, a middle way.  However, given the short time we are here on earth, I cannot help but wonder how much time is lost to being sensible.  For example, with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, although the founders proceeded sensibly, that initial impulse to center the aquarium's story about life under the sea so locally was a radical departure of what it meant to be an aquarium.  It certainly was not the safest route to success.  Again, Julie Packard puts it this way:

Our vision differed from most existing aquariums at the time. The typical aquarium displayed fish in mostly individual tanks and focused on exotic and colorful species from around the world. Our approach aimed to showcase the communities of fishes, plants, invertebrates and birds as you would find them in nature. The influence of our backgrounds cannot be underestimated—not one of us was a fish specialist. What got us excited were the small, squishy and slimy plants and animals, the bizarre and beautiful, the comical and complicated. 

In the beginning, we knew very little about how to pull off this focus on communities. No one had ever tackled the complex challenges of displaying a living kelp forest community before. We needed unfiltered seawater to bring in plankton to nourish the filter-feeding invertebrate animals, as well as larvae and spores of organisms to create a natural community of plants and animals on the rockwork. Unfortunately, this rich unfiltered water makes for poor visibility— like a typical day diving in Monterey Bay—and we needed to filter the water during opening hours so people could see into the exhibit. The kelp needed 6 hours of ample sunlight, requiring proper positioning in the building, and water motion.

 

Because the family was tackling things that had never been done before in an aquarium, it was very-much a let's try it and see if it works approach.  The architect remembers his first meeting with David Packard this way:

“Well, Chuck, the kids and everybody have this idea about doing an aquarium... I don’t know whether it’s worth a damn or not. So, my deal with you is I’m going to be there every Friday, I’m going to come and look at what you’ve done and if I like what you’ve done, we’ll go on for another week. If I don’t like it, I’ll pay you off and send you home. Is that a deal?” 

When we're in our twenties, most of us have this approach to most things in life.  We take a job, and our attitude is If I like this, I'll go another week and see how I feel.  If I don't, I'll put in my two weeks and make sure I leave on good terms and try something else.  As we get older, and the stakes get higher, we lose our trust in our ability to follow the music of life, and instead of dancing freely to its rhythms, we slavishly fall into mechanical steps, terrified we'll lose pace and won't be able to catch up if we step out of line.  All improvisation ends.  What started as an adventure slowly turns into enslavement to our material desires that we mistake as needs.

It would probably do most of us good, especially as we cling more closely to being secure with each advancing year, to occasionally do something joyous and good and erratic--something that requires us to trust in each other and in life.  Fear of the unknown can snuff out a lot of possibilities in life--from vacations that never seemed feasible to hobbies never acquired, or even things thought but never said.  And though isolated, those small subtractions from this experience we call mortality, add up over a lifetime.   I believe that they can greatly reduce our mortal experience.  I know I spend way too much time not creating.  I begin to believe it's pointless, that my book has grown beyond what I can control, that I'll never get it published, that others will never read it.

All that may be true, but...

When I write I know who I am and what my purpose is.  When I put writing on the back burner, I begin to listen to other voices, and those voices tell me to believe in things that I can never believe in, namely committing my life to work and a paycheck.  I don't mind those things.  I'm not anti-security.  I worry way too much to live life precariously.  I love stability.  But my reason to be here is to see and create.  If I'm focused on those two things I know who I am.  If I'm not, I feel disconnected and lost, and I soon begin to believe life is pointless--because to me, the job and the paycheck are pointless.  Rather, life happens around the edges of responsibility, in the stolen glances at magic light, and time getting that down somehow--through a quick snapshot on the phone or a hastily written paragraph.

Life for me is about seeing lime green.  Or orange, or purple.  Is there anything anymore magical?  Does there need to be another reason to live?  If I'm focused on color, or texture, or light, I never question why I exist.  If I focus on work and finances and accomplishing something, it soon all begins to feel pointless.  I have the sneaky suspicion that's because it is.  Not all of it.  Just the stuff we do to establish ourselves in the world.  Real life takes place in stolen glances at life abundant outside what we've established as our life.  And that's okay.  In fact, it probably makes it more meaningful to participate in a game one knows has no meaning other than to get you to experience everything outside the gameboard itself.  I have no idea how much impact I have as a teacher, but I do know my commute is glorious and that my students are marvelously entertaining--and that both those are made more meaningful by the fact that I'm supposed to teach something in the process.  It limits that drive.  I just can't drive on forever, which I would definitely try to do given total freedom.  I've got just forty-five minutes to take in everything I can on that drive each way.  And the fact that I have teaching objectives forces just enough conflict in the relationship I have with my students to make things interesting.  Each day their job is to learn as little as possible.  Each day my role is to get them to learn as much as possible.  We each have our roles, and because I know the rules, and most of all that it is a game, I usually enjoy teaching immensely.  And when I don't, it's because I'm no longer centered in the now as an observer.  I forget our roles and focus so much on the teaching that it feels pointless.  That's because it is.  

The meaning of life isn't in what we're doing.  It's not about adding up numbers, writing out sentences, packing cans and boxes of macaroni and cheese in plastic bags, or even getting on stage and singing your heart out to thousands and thousands of fans who love you even though they don't know you, and you can't even see their faces beyond the first couple of rows.  It's none of that.  The meaning is simply in being thrown out there in life somehow to take it all in and learn whatever you need to learn from all of it, which for most of us is just this: we are not the center, and true joy only comes in those moments when we finally take in being part of something we cannot even begin to comprehend that includes galaxies and grains of sand, grocery stores and mudslides, fungi and parakeets, clocks and sunlit waves, beaches and dumb people who believe Biden, not the global pandemic, is the reason that a can of Cambell's Tomato Soup costs 25% more than it used to.   

What was so magical to me on our first visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium was just that: Damn, it's beautiful under the sea, and here I am with the one I love, looking right in at it.  And on our return trip, all that remained exactly the same.

Here I am, it's beautiful looking under the sea at all that is clearly not me, and yet, here we are staring at each other through eyes and walls of glass.  And at this moment, that is all there is: us taking in each other the best we can--baffled by our differences, one in our extreme separateness, connected in ways I will never understand.

In such moments, meaning never comes into question.  Experience is all there is.   Joy is all-encompassing.

I survive everything else, knowing the ridiculous routines and absurd situations are just divine games to get us to moments of surrendering our egos and glimpsing the fecundity of life we cannot begin to understand.  For me, that oddly feels the same as understanding everything.

To surrender is to be.