FINDINGS is a newsletter of strange or profound discoveries from the rabbit hole of my research with a bit about my work. It’s included in Magical Western subscriptions.
My new story, mOther, is inspired by several men I’ve met in real life—truth seekers. Their struggle, especially in early adulthood, is acceptance from the outer world while resolving their path with societal expectations. Main character (MC) Brian of mOther is partially shaped after an actual “Brian” (name is changed) whom I knew in the 1990s. A Pan or Puck by the time we met, after he more or less broke ties with his parents, he’d hide in my apartment’s living room closet, once for 2 hours, while other guests sat around the living room floor, eating curried rice with ranch dressing, or smoking. When a guest asked an unanswerable question, Brian would pop out the door, his tossed brown head like a Muppet, and answer it. Accurately. Then he retreated back to the closet.
Eventually he’d black fog us; we’d peek into an empty closet. But I could still feel his presence. Those hours he spent in the dark. Thinking.
He asked me once about finding a Guru—if I’d ever tried. He knew I meditated with my cat, Violet, whom everyone agreed amplified my energetic connection. I never knew what to believe, but it looked pretty cool when Violet sat behind me, my back to the sofa, and she put a paw on my shoulder while I stopped my thinking and tried just being.
“I tried, Brian. You’re supposed to call your Guru. Then they appear? But I never had that happen. No one’s appeared. I think I’m supposed to become my own guru. And that’s kinda hard since I don’t have experience. But maybe I can, sort of, borrow others’ gurus along the way?”
“I’ve called my Guru,” he said. “He will appear. Any day now.”
I nodded. I hoped he’d share if that did happen. What would that be like? If someone like Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Dan Millman’s ‘Socrates’ appeared. Would their auras sparkle? Would they gaze into my eyes seeing my future, or past, lives? Or would they be normal? No, I didn’t believe the normal part. You just can’t get that well-known hanging out.
Despite his confidence, Brian still looked locked down. He was his own closet.
“Wanna race?” I grinned, grabbing the antique handle of the front door. We banged out the screen door.
A full moon hummed with neighborhood crickets chirping. We’d circle the infamous Warm Springs Ave cemetery and make a loop.
Laughing wildly, I flew ahead. He closed the gap. Reached for my shoulder. I veered away, closer to the wrought iron fence.
“Oh no!” My shirt sleeve tore on metal that scratched my skin.
Brian’s face fell at my sad look.
I assured him, “Change is to be expected, right?” I inspected the damage. I’d be OK, but the shirt was garbage. “Dang it, I really liked this shirt.”
“A lesson in impermanence.”
“Yeah. I guess.” I swallowed my feelings.
He eyed me. “How do you know this isn’t a dream?”
“Why would I want to rip my own shirt?” I shook my head as if to add, ‘silly.’ But instead I insisted, “Let’s run! Tonight we are free from expectations. Freeee!!!”
Our loop passed marble and sandstone headstones, and ran into the houses behind. 1900’s houses were linked by a crumbling cement canal.
We were sweating, finally, by the front door, grinning. Something had softened in him, reality sinking in, perhaps. Life had real stakes. But he seemed to accept that.
“I’m gonna wander.” He searched my face.
I knew he’d walk the neighborhood, maybe head downtown, another few hours. It was already midnight. I didn’t worry. At the least, he could confuse any potential attacker with a philosophical question that would leave them stunned. But Brian was also tall and lean, not a usual target.
I liked him a lot, but I didn’t feel that special spark. I knew it wasn’t right, but I liked dark men—confident, type A, deeply troubled men, usually blond.
“I know. Be safe.” I smiled and added when his brow furled. “Or just be your own reality.”
He might have kissed me. I don’t remember. But I do know, in the following years, he worked on a farm that boosted kids needing a second chance, he had a baby who died of SIDs, and he still struggled. But I will always remember his absolutely sincere search for truth and light. I hope he found it, and think he probably did. It just took time.
***
Speed forward to yesterday. A middle aged “lady” with economic depression looming, building my new raised garden beds for tomatoes and heat-loving plants. Right in the front yard.
It’s been a hot minute since I dug soil and pushed a wheel barrow. It’s onerous.
I broke through the first layer of internal resistance by dropping worries about old injuries (after feeling them out to be sure I’d be OK), calling fie on feelings of ‘I can’t do this!’ and ‘It’s so hard to work like this!’, and I threw myself into chopping ground, shoveling it, and flinging it into the three-pointed vehicle.
The effort took me right back to the summer I worked in the Forest Service.
I was the one struggling this time. A couple years after living in that semi-communal apartment complex, I moved to be truly on my own. Now I had my feet firmly on the ground: I’d committed to two university degrees (because I couldn’t decide between practicality and what I loved doing), and I was making solid progress in both. I had a part-time job that paid OK and was tolerable. I had a love affair with a deeply troubled blond man, and I graduated from vegetarianism to veganism. I was in “fighting” shape, as my lover and future husband, would say.
But, the ever-present black hole of despair was—always—underneath me. I could fall in at any time I lost focus circling the drain by swimming fast enough to float in the current.
My high school buddy encouraged me to work in the Forest Service with her. Get outside! You work hard (she giggled) and play hard! It’s like 20 males to 1. You’ll love it!
I did want to be outside, and the pay was promising. Maybe I wouldn’t have to work the final two semesters at the university if I saved.
I let go of my bungalow lease, boarded my cat with a friend, and joined the Forest Service. To be clear, it took many applications, references, phone calling, and follow-up, but I eventually found a trail crew willing to take me on.
“It’s really hard work,” my soon-to-be boss plied. “Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
That first week was so hard, I would have crawled down the mountain if the “boys,” my new coworkers who hated girls, wouldn’t have harangued me forever.
Our work was to move an almost historic trail, allowing old growth to rehabilitate, which sometimes involved closing portions of trail, but mostly digging new portions of the path. Like 10 hours of digging. Standing on a diagonal of the downside of the mountain, tamping or stomping dirt into a trail, or tossing shovelfuls into a wheel barrow parked between four of us workers. I got pretty good at aiming my dirt.
There was another motivation to be here, I realized. I wanted to catch a little of what my Dad might have come to understand working in the forests. On some level, I knew I needed a different coming-of-age than I had experienced upon his death at my ripe old age of 16. By the time I was 20-something, I’d learned a lot about surviving, but still had this black hole in my chest. Swirling in my dreams like a funnel to hell, not carnival cakes. When I imagined my future, the black hole was always there. No matter what museum, magazine, or high-tech career I might land. No matter my future husband and family. No matter what spiritual enlightenment I might obtain.
The digging saved me in some way. First it was drudgery, and my clothes were getting ruined. I lived in dirt, streaked on my face, in my hair, under my nails. My fingers bled in the ungiving gloves they provided. Every part of my body hurt, especially my butt.
At home, I cried to my high school buddy, “I don’t think I’m going to make it!”
“You can, and you will. Quit crying. Let’s go get what you need.”
She showed me tricks like a special way to double-layer socks and how to apply mole-skin to blistered feet. She took me to a Boise supply store’s clearance rack, where I traded out for thermals. Soft, good-fitting leather gloves were worth the price. My boyfriend massaged my painful arms and back.
Week 2, hanging onto the mountain with snow shards falling directly in my eyes, a bubble of anger and rage welled up deep in my gut. It burst out with a huge whacking swing of a Pulaski.
“Hah!” I sunk into Earth and moved something.
Every day that summer, I broke through the barrier to my inner hurt, and I hacked it out.
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