The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland 63: Near Silence

Moonrise, Angel Lake Campground, Nevada,
Marci Brown 2025

I'm changing.  I'm becoming aware of these perfect moments of near silence, and I love to sit in them and do nothing.  They can occur almost anytime and anywhere, and they are intensely calm.  I used to approach such moments only out in nature, often my garden.  But now, I'll be sitting in my chair in the living room and Marci will be in the office or in the car, running her sister somewhere, and I'll just become aware of the space and silence around me, no noise other than the fishtank pump running.  It happens at school too, before and after class.  Also, I often don't turn on music in the car anymore, not because I'm seeking silence, but because I'll get in and think, This feels nice, before I have time to reach for my phone to select a play list.  At home, I like closing my eyes and doing absolutely nothing.  I don't do it for long, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and it isn't planned or intentional.  I'm just more aware being has a profound meaning that has nothing to do with doing.  Getting things done is important.  A clean house is a nicer environment than a messy one.  It is fun to create, whether writing or painting, or building something in the yard.  Those are good things.  But they aren't near as rewarding as just sitting in silence with your eyes closed.

Fretting is the opposite of that.  And I still do a lot of that.  So, it's not like I'm this totally new person.  But I'm also not who I used to be either.  I'll just stumble upon this silence and think Oh, yeah, this is where I'm meant to be.  The worrying and the doing are just a necessary distraction to keep us playing the game, which must be important or we wouldn't play it, but this, this is what life is about.  And then I just slide into a moment and be.  After five or ten minutes, I intentionally step back out of the silence again.  Then I usually find a different task more or aligned with who I want to become.  Or I go back to the previous one, but without inner-dialog and judgment that so often goes with chores, such as, Why am I the only one doing dishes again?  

A couple weeks ago we all went out to help a struggling family member clean out her house and get it ready to sell.  Most of the time she was not in a place emotionally where she could help.  And I noticed something.  Even though the work was difficult and disgusting, dealing with great amounts of mouse urine and droppings, while engaged in the actual task of cleaning, I got great joy out of seeing the improvement.  It was only during breaks, when we had time to reflect that the person we were working for wasn't there helping that we became resentful.  The task wasn't making us unhappy.  Thinking, judging, and voicing our frustrations was.  Moments aren't toxic--at least not emotionally.  Resentment is.  Work, even dirty work, is rewarding because engagement forces you into a moment, and a moment is everything.

I have no clue on how to help those around me realize that.  Attempting to help someone usually never helps anyone anyway, especially if it's through advice.  All of us are eager to reform others, and almost none of us are seeking reform ourselves.  It's always someone else that has the problem.  It's especially useful if we can find a scapegoat, because then our egos can join forces and support each other in negativity.

Happiness has nothing to do with what you're doing and everything to do with what you're thinking.  The most blissful moments are when you have no thought at all, and space opens up all around you.  There's no way to put into words what that is because it's no-thought being.  It has no words.  Yet, it is precisely in those moments, and only in those moments, you understand what life is.  And yet that knowledge, whatever it is, has no words.  It just is.  I think stillness points towards the essence of God rather than being God's essence.  I can't conceive of a God that isn't about doing, creating, engaging lovingly with his creations.  Yet, somehow silence, stillness, an actual void, is at the center of his command.  Moments without evaluating life are the only moments when life is actually understood.  

Living is more than doing.  Living is being.  The greatest gift of God is life itself.  For whatever reason, in this realm at least, that can only be comprehended in moments of complete personal silence.  Not silence out there, all around you, although that helps, but silence deep, deep within where everything is cool and calm always, that perfection in absolutely everyone and everything. You can't earn that.  It is God's grace.  All you can do is witness it, and that comes in moments like this.  Moments of total peace in the near silence.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland 62: Pioneer Park, Tehachapi

Pioneer Park, Tehachapi, California, Steve Brown 2022

           Mrs. Malloy… came into the boiler on her hands and knees one day and she stood up and said a little breathlessly: "Holman's are having a sale of curtains. Real lace curtains and edges of blue and pink — $1.98 a set with curtain rods thrown in.”

        Mr. Malloy set up on the mattress. “Curtains?” he demanded. “What in God’s name do you want curtains for?”

        “I like things nice,” said Mrs. Malloy. “I always did like to have things nice for you,” and her lower lip began to tremble.

        “But, darling,” Sam Malloy cried, “I got nothing against curtains. I like curtains.”

        “Only $1.98,” Mrs. Malloy quavered, “and you begrutch me $1.98,” and she sniffled and her chest heaved.

        “I don’t begrutch you,” said Mr. Malloy. “But, darling—for Christ’s sake what are we going to do with curtains? We got no windows."

--John Steinbeck, Cannery Row 1945

After McFarland, we were soon on California 58, a route we knew well.  We often came this way in the winter to avoid snowstorms in the Sierras and Cascades on our way to visit my father in Oregon.  And until we got to the coast, the most memorable part of the journey was Tehachapi Pass, which I partly knew from pictures of the wind farms I'd seen in National Geographic back in the 1980s.  Those great white turbines looked so graceful amongst the rolling hills and promised a better world where energy is cheap and clean.  A couple decades later, when we happened upon them in real life, I felt like I'd stumbled upon a sacred shrine I'd formally known only from the picture books.  Even now that I've made that drive many times, I still feel I'm entering sacred space passing those great white landmarks slowly spinning each at their own time, planted up and down the hillsides.

Though only 3,771 feet tall, the pass feels significant because both the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert are relatively low.  Crossing the ridges that connect the south end of the Sierra Nevada and the Tehachapi Mountains, the pass is steep, curvy, the road rising alongside a busy railway, through high, rolling-top mountains covered in grasses that are bright green in the winter and golden in the summer and are dolloped with oak and pine.  It's incredibly verdant with a great variety of plants and grasses.  And then the most unusual thing happens.  A city sits right at the top:  Tehachapi.

As it was nearing lunch, we got off the freeway to find a park for a picnic.  We found a jewel, Pioneer Park, established in 2006.   Located in a quiet residential neighborhood of modest lower-middle-class homes, sitting on a rectangular lot, the park is shockingly spectacular due to good planning and the high-quality materials chosen. 

I remember it was brisk, but the sun was warm--a bit too chilly for short-sleeves, but pleasant with a hoodie.  I carried the cooler and the food boxes over to the table and then walked around while Marci made Chicken Salad sandwiches.  

What makes this small, rectangular park spectacular is its combinations of curving walkways, circular concrete pads, two pond-shaped areas of grass, and a third pond-shaped area for the playground.  Without an actual pond, it has the layout and feel of a Japanese botanical garden, other than it's on flat ground.  The park is proof that good design and quality materials can make the simplest of spaces grand.

Small details and the human need to create beauty were highly valued by John Steinbeck.  The working of flowerbeds and the hanging curtains are especially significant in his work as symbols of establishing home and fulfilling that human need to connect our dwellings to the natural world.  Well-kept orchards and fields, including fences are also important to his narratives.

I think if Steinbeck had come across this park in his travels with Charlie, it would have been included in what is best about America.  

As individuals, and as a society, we always have two opposing choices, and only two:  Lean towards love, creativity, and beauty, or lean towards hate, depravity, and ugliness.  At any moment, that choice is ours.  Steinbeck longed for individuals, a country, and a world that chose the first, but understanding himself and others well, so he was extremely empathetic towards individuals, a country, and a world that so often sadly chose the latter.  But it wasn't a stagnant, still, empathy, thick with resignation.  It was an active, angry, pleading empathy, desperately urging us to choose our better selves.

I love a good public park.  It is a symbol of community, of putting the collective good above individual wants and desires.  It claims to welcome everyone, even out-of-towners, and costs nothing to visit.  It's presented as a generous giving back to the community and any wanderer that needs a place to stop and break bread.  I'm aware reality doesn't always match that.  Historically, parks were segregated throughout the country.  Today, the homeless are frequently pushed out.  Still, parks are collective spaces, often on donated land, for communities to gather, where visitors are generally welcomed.   They are spaces that reconnect us to nature and point towards our better selves.