Monday - My office is in the garage, or rather my office is the garage. Its too small to fit a car in and has a swing-up door that opens right onto the sidewalk and street. When the weather allows, I work with the door swung up and the effect from the inside is that of having only three walls. From the outside walking by, its as if youve inadvertently walked into a life size diorama depicting early 21st Century American Home-office. Its a bit unnerving for all concerned, pedestrians and office worker alike. Monday morning found me at my desk in the garage singing a chipper little tune to myself, door up, when the first pedestrian walked by. She was one of the upstream neighbors who had become an instant celebrity a few months previous, when she acquired Cassie, the worlds most endearing yellow lab puppy. Clump, clump, clump - I hear the footsteps echoing in the still morning air on our otherwise quiet cul-de-sac. I look up from email, over my shoulder, to greet whoever is about to step into Arts Office-World, and see Cassies Mom about the same time she sees me. She stops. Shes five feet away looking bewildered with a document in each hand. Oh!, she says, registering her surprise at suddenly finding herself in my office. She recovers and says I have an unusual request. I need signatures on these legal documents. She was right; it was an unusual request, all the more so because it wasnt even my signature she needed, but anyones. She had gone next door to her immediate neighbors to get them to sign as witnesses on some property transaction, but the neighbors werent home. Neither were the next, next-door neighbors, and with time running out, she had taken to the street, documents in hand, looking for anybody who would sign them. I signed. We laughed. She took off. But the image of a woman walking down the road in search of a witness with an official document in each hand stayed with me as if it were a Tarot card. There was something mythic about it. Like that Greek dude with the lantern searching for one honest man. I turned back to my email, but my mind wasnt on it. Time passed while I did something like day dream, turning off my rational mind, setting my intuition free to wander in search of the meaning of it all. The answer never came, but something else did, interrupting my search. Caw, Caw, Caw, silence, Caw, Caw, Caw, silence, Caw, Caw, Caw. The portentous call of a raven filled the innocent morning with waves of foreboding, sending instant shivers down my spine. We never had ravens here, plus, it was big and it was headed this way, following in the footsteps of Cassies Mom. I shouted back at it after each series of caws with anything that came to mind. “Caw, Caw, Caw”, Yeah, Yeah, Sure, sure, “Caw, Caw, Caw”, Easy for you to say., “Caw, Caw, Caw”, I heard that. It was a defensive reflex arising from my intuitive state. I was trying to hold back the darkness. From my desk I saw a large shadow skimming the surface of the street, and heard a great beating of wings. I ran out of my office just as the raven flew past, fifteen feet over my head, following the roadway down the hill, and watched as he disappeared into the canopy of Live Oak branches that covered our street. Now what the hell was that? Obviously a message, and not the kind that should be ignored, but what was its meaning? Earlier that morning while having coffee and perusing the morning paper at the kitchen counter, I had come across an article about this being the last day of business for Codys Bookstore, an iconic Berkeley cultural institution whose demise signaled an end to an era that extended all the way back to the sixties. I had promised myself to pay Cody’s a visit later that day and salute it and the era goodbye. Somehow, woman, bird and bookstore were connected. Endings, it seemed, were in the air - “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’ ” - and apparently I was being called to witness one. Monday had really started the day before with a strange incident at an estate sale out in Point Reyes that was still casting its shadow over my thoughts as the new week dawned. I had been looking at real estate and was on my way to an appointment at an old ranch just north of the Tomales Bay Oyster Company. I drove past a realtors for-sale sign and noticed a geodesic dome house with a yard sale in progress. On a whim, I stopped and went in. Someone had taken the revolutionary form of the dome and tried to make it main-stream suburban by adding a rectangular bedroom wing, painted sheet rock, wall-to-wall carpets, aluminum windows, and a mowed lawn. Weird. Bucky would not be happy. The female half of the resident old-hippy couple was staffing the sale and explained that their house had sold and they would be moving out in a few days. I glanced around the place looking at what was being unloaded. It was a typical collection of useless stuff and I was on my way out when a painting caught my eye. Hey, thats a John Anderson I blurted out, recognizing the inner and other worldly imagery that he and Gordon Onslow Ford, another Inverness painter, had evolved from their surrealist origins. Why I knew that is a long story. Too long for this tale of what happened one Monday in Berkeley. Suffice it to say that it involved several visits to a ridge top nature reserve and artists’ retreat in Inverness with some very strong vibes. Anderson and other artists lived and worked there, and my visits had produced a remarkable series of experiences that were both inner and other worldly in themselves. I spun around to ask about the painting and came face to face with an old man on a cane who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. He was standing right behind me in a house that a second before had held only myself and the hippy-dome-woman. Where had he come from? How had he gotten so close without my knowing it? Why was he looking at me like that – wary, suspicious, and a little afraid, as if I knew something I shouldn’t? For my part, the minute I saw him I knew I was onto something. Maybe it was being startled, first by the painting and then by him, maybe it was the associations with my unusual experiences up on the ridge, maybe it was the goofy and contradictory aesthetics of the space we were in, or maybe this was the fallout from having watched every episode of Twin Peaks while stoned. Whatever the cause, I was feeling that this chance encounter carried a significance far beyond its trappings. I had the sense that this gimpy old guy right there in front of me looking and acting strange was something other than what he seemed. It was as if he carried something that he didn’t understand given to him by some greater power, for a purpose they didn’t let him in on, and that over time it had made him a little nuts. The Manchurian Candidate, The Teachings of Don Juan, and the guy who gives the tours of The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot all came to mind. Most people would have gotten out of there, but I had spent the last two years enrolled in my own personal crash course in opening to the unknown, kind of a one-man, garage-band version of the Shamanic Journey, and this kind of strange encounter was right up my alley. I leaned closer to him while taking a long look into his eyes. The quality of experience in the room seemed to change. His fear increased and he leaned back away from me while keeping his eyes locked on mine. We began a haulting, simultaneous interrogation of each other. “How do you know about John Anderson?” “Do you know John Anderson?” , “Who are you?”, “Who are you?”, and so on, parrying back and forth with questions while trying to find our bearings and get some answers. He lost his nerve before either of us found out anything and backed away, sliding sideways through the room full of waffle irons, golf clubs, and macramé plant hangers, keeping a nervous eye on me. I turned back to the painting, and went into daydream mode, allowing my mind to sink through the layers of these events, looking for the reality beneath the appearances, allowing the mystery to swirl around me. When I turned to leave, there he was at the door, beckoning me to come outside, pssst-ing me under his breath as if we were being watched, and were in grave danger.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 15:33:29 +0000
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