On the Road Again - #27

1996 begins with another cross-country trip

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One of the presents I received for my 60th birthday a few years ago was a kind of a desk calendar book called Offerings: Buddhist wisdom for every day. The cover is now tattered, the spine completely shot, but every day I still turn a page and reflect on the photograph and accompanying text from a Tibetan Buddhist teacher.

As I sat at my desk outlining events of 1996, my gaze fell on the dayʻs entry, a quotation from the writings of Arnaud Desjardins, the late French author of books about Eastern wisdom traditions.

You cannot live sheltered forever without being exposed, and at the same time be a spiritual adventurer. Be audacious. Be crazy in your own way, with that madness in the eyes of man that is wisdom in the eyes of God. Take risks, search and search again, search everywhere, in every way, do not let a single opportunity of chance that life offers pass you by…

Arnaud Desjardins

From 1992 to 1994, I was a spiritual adventurer in small, controlled doses. Twenty days in Tibet. Sharing my apartment with Paulo Coelho and then with Velvalee. Studying with various native American teachers in workshops and more organic situations. But in all of this I was still “living sheltered.”

Physically I was sheltered in that charming brownstone apartment on one of the most celebrated streets in Manhattanʻs West Village. Emotionally I was sheltering from the tempest within, content to skim the surface. I have already chastised myself in these pages for using a transitional relationship and a bunch of workshops in lieu of psychotherapy after the divorce that set me free to start the events of this memoir. That emotional work remained to be done - in truth, remained undone for a couple of decades. But in 1996, the spiritual growth that was evidently even more pressing finally required me to just be audacious.

1996 was the year some people concluded I was crazy, lost, emotionally unbalanced. I wasnʻt any of those things. Well, maybe “crazy in my own way”. I just finally took the risks required to follow the path to spiritual growth I was being offered. It would start with an innocuous road trip.

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On Christmas Day of 1995, I had dinner with Craig and Rosetta. In 1994, Craig was still well enough for the three of us to enjoy the meal at his favorite table at one of his favorite restaurants. In 1995, we were at home in his apartment. Craig insisted on baking a ham with all the trimmings. He wanted to be the sole cook for our Christmas lunch, giving us a sweet holiday gift with his effort of love. Once we finished eating, Craig had spent all the energy he had for the day and retreated to the bedroom to rest. Rosetta and I cleaned the kitchen, trimmed the catʻs nails, and then opened another bottle of Sancerre.

The following week, for the first time in four years, I spent New Yearʻs Eve at home in wintry New York rather than sunbathing in Brazil or Hawaiʻi. Carman and I had a few things in the works for the Mass for the 21st Century that year, but first I needed to leave on another road trip. I was invited to produce an event in planning stages for that coming June at Red Rocks Amphitheater. The first meeting of the organizers was in late January, and I decided to drive the still appropriately named Pathfinder back out to Colorado where it would stay at my parentʻs house until after the event.

Velvalee was home in Oklahoma for the holidays. When she heard I would be passing that way, she proposed I take a slight detour so she could ride along for the rest of my road trip, flying back to Hawaiʻi from Colorado when I flew back to New York.

It had been a year since I met Joié in Hawai’i, and Velvalee thought maybe she should join us too. For mysterious reasons, it was decided that Joié would fly to Memphis from California, and I would collect her there. The following day we would continue on to pick up Velvalee in her home town of Heavener, Oklahoma - a drive of about five hours. I planned to depart late on the morning of January 15th so I could wish Craig a happy birthday in person before I left and we made all the arrangements accordingly. Joié booked a flight, and I booked a hotel in Memphis.

Digging out Saint Lukes Place after the Blizzard of 1996

Then on January 7th, the historic Blizzard of 1996 began. The worst storm in nearly half a century covered Central Park with over two feet of snow. Even Washington DC, where friends of mine from Hawaiʻi were on sabbatical and I had arranged to spend the first night of my trip visiting them, was buried under snowdrifts. Perhaps not the most auspicious conditions for the start of a cross-country road trip. But on the morning of my scheduled day of departure I drove across town on slushy streets to give Craig a hug and kiss, soaking up the love in his luminous eyes before heading to the Holland tunnel and south through New Jersey.

I thought I had 1996 all mapped out. Clearly I just wasn’t reading the omens. It did not occur to me until later that this was the landslide that would bring me down, the avalanche finally stripping away the layers of my sheltered life. I have described this time in my life as a “walkabout” but now I would hesitate to misuse a specifically Aboriginal term. At one point I described it to my worried parents as “my first practice attempt at retirement.” On January 15, 1996 I unwittingly began a spiritual journey of almost two years, some of it pretty sane, some of it pure madness. We have come to the point in this memoir when it is time to see how much of that journey is ready to be shared.