When the Universe Speaks

You must listen.

The fog has lifted from my indifferent eyes. The fort of paperwork and office chairs I hid myself behind to avoid the questions I didn't want to see still existed, has crumbled. The questions do not scare me, and I should've trusted myself to know that all along.

I was tired; I'd stayed too late; and hungry. I just popped my head in to the other office to say good night when the older, wise man who sits there began to regale his tales, the way people do when they have amassed mounds of experience. And they are always interesting, so I listen and smile, but I really was aching to go.

I guess sometimes the Universe just has to slap me upside the head to get my attention.

He told me of learning about Zen Buddhism in Los Angeles in the late 40's. Of taking that knowledge with him to school in Oregon and sharing it with another student, who had never heard of it before but was thus introduced. Turns out, the student went on to become a Zen Buddhist monk himself, and this the man told me humbly and as just another bit of the story. And as I stand there, in the doorway, poised and ready to go, completely unprepared, he asks me if I know of Jack Kerouac. Because this young kid sitting next to him in the college classrom, this budding mad man, was none other than Gary Snyder, in my world more commonly known by Kerouac's moniker for him: Japhy Ryder, zen poet, the original Dharma Bum.

Shivers ran up and down my entire body, my feet went numb, tears welled up in my eyes. It sounds silly now, but that was my reaction. It was just so Big. I had reread the Dharma Bums just weeks ago and been reminded of its beauty, of Japhy's sweet love for the world, of the Bigness and Simpleness of it all.

Jack is the reason I am in this City in the first place. And here I was, talking to a man who was to this day a good friend of a person Jack admired so. It was too big, it was too untouchable. I rambled home through the village and giggled madly inside. On this day when I seemed to lean into the downward spiral, when I was ready to ask what hell I was doing, the Universe reminded me. We get so few chances to live our dreams. I have been allowed to come this far; there is no reason for me not to dive head first into the flames. My heart smiles, I go gladly.

...as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said "Thank you, shack." Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.