Jack take us through several night time dreams and on walks through the San Jouquin Valley and Santa Cruz.

Moments of Awakening
Chapter Two




It's Christmas day, 2004. I am walking though a large stadium complex with my video camera. Filming as I walk, I focus on faces in the crowded hallways and try to film the side rooms. Through a window, I get a peek at a high mountain and think that I'd rather be outside. I walk down a hallway and film a couple of good-looking women who smile for the camera. Passing them, I shut off the camera and walk through a side door. I find that I am near the top level of the stadium. I think that I ought to climb to the top, but go back inside to continue filming.

I'm in a middle school cafeteria, a fourteen year old. I look around at all the beautiful girls and try to focus on the prettiest one. A boy my age come up and pours me a cup of coffee. I thank him and continue to look at the girls thinking how great it is to have my pick of the lot.

It's next to the last day of 2004. I'm walking down Tombs Road with my dog. The dog is part of my disguise as a middle class retiree. To the West of Tombs Road, the whole San Joaquin Valley rolls all the way to the inner costal mountain range. To the East, the clouds climb over the tiny housing developments, soar over millions, and millions of acres of almond and walnut orchards, and rise over the cattle dotted foothills to meet the mighty Seirra. I'm walking through the middle of the largest agriculture valley in the world. Blue sky and a burst of sunlight peeks through parting clouds that soar thousand of feet above the valley.

South of Tombs, I spot a dozen or so migrant workers spread out across a field. They are too far away for me to see what they are doing. They are wearing yellow rain pants and most still have their yellow rain slickers on. Looking like tiny toy chessmen in the distant field, they help me to see how tiny I stand in the depth of the Valley.

This morning walking between January storms toward Tombs Road, the Valley Sky opens up all the way to the inner coastal mountain range. The tiny peaks of Mt. Oslo shine black below a band of white cumulus clouds. I shrink to my true proportion, as I turn right on Tombs and step into the farmland. And, I ask myself; Can we prove that there is not other conscious life in the universe? Have we lived a billion years and explored every level of reality? Is there nothing above and beyond time-thought? Gurdjieff says, "You must remember that there is nothing dead, or inanimate in nature. Everything in its own way is alive; everything in its own way is intelligent and conscious. Only this consciousness and intelligence is expressed in a different way on different levels of being-that is, on different scales."

It's a couple days later. I am in some kind of large arcade with an illegal immigrant girl. I am thinking that I can help her find a job here. We walk past a stand where several women are selling used clothing and ask if they need any help. They tell us no.

At the far end of the building we see a large vinyl pool. There is a man and his teenage assistant that are setting up a movie camera and screen for a show. The man is yelling at the boy, telling him that he is doing everything wrong. "You're fired. Get out of here," he tells the boy.

"You would be able to hook up these wires wouldn't you?" The man asks me pointing to some electrical equipment.

"I can do it. I can do it," the boy says.

"I told you you're fired. Get out of here," the man tells him.

"Yea, I think so,"I answer.

"O.K. you start tomorrow. Your hours will be from ten A. M. to ten P.M."
"My friend here needs a job too," I say.

"Good. She can start tomorrow too."
Next morning, I report to work at ten, but instead of going to the arcade, I go to a middle school. They tell me I have to put the records in order. I begin looking through report cards and cum folders and settle down at a desk.

It's a day later; I am substituting in a high school classroom. There are only a few students in the room waiting for class to begin. Several of them are playing cards. I check them out and discover that the deck is marked, the student that owns the cards can cheat at will. I take the boy to the office and explain that the boy has marked cards. He is very up set that he is in trouble.

Back in the classroom with the boy, I discover that he has several more marked decks in his possession. I tell him he must give me all of the marked cards immediately or I'll send him back to the office. He hands over the cards with tears in his eyes.

It's a couple days later. I am standing at a high mountain creek with Anne and a guide. He tells us that we have to catch our breakfast fish from the creek. I explain that we don't have any fishing gear. He tells me that I can just reach in and catch them by hand. He points at a couple of fish under the wooden footpath bridge. I reach into the water and pull out a silvery fish about a foot long. It wiggles out of my hands and jumps back into the water.

I reach in again and pull out another fish. It's a little larger than the first one. I put it up on the bank away from the water. The guide tells me that to kill the fish I have to put a fork in its nose and pull upward. "It will die instantly and feel less pain," he says. I reach in and pull out another fish, and give it to Anne. "Ahhh," she screams as it fights to get out of her hands.

"Hold tight, that's our breakfast," I tell her. I take the first fish, put the fork in its nostrils and pull upward. I can hear the spinal cord snap. Anne hands me the second fish. It wiggles so much that I can't get the fork into its nostrils. I hit it with a rock and it quiets down. I stick in the fork and give it an upward thrust. The fish dies.

I carry a whitened animal skull to the edge of the mountain and look down over a wide valley thousands of feet below. A bird swoops by and takes the skull from my hand. I return to the creek and find that the guide is gone and Anne is cooking our fish.

A couple days go by. I'm walking into crowded restaurant lobby with Stoke and a friend of his. I figure we are just going to have a beer and then go eat dinner at my house. Instead, Stoke and his friend take seats in the lobby. There is not room for me to sit. I walk into the next room and find an empty chair. "I'm gonna borrow this for a minute," I tell a waitress and carry the chair into the lobby. I set the chair next to Stoke and his friend and tell them that I'll buy the first round. Stoke hands me a five-dollar bill. I figure that five bucks won't be enough for three beers in this place, and slip the money into my Levi's pocket.

"When are you ever going to learn how to handle yourself in a place like this?" Stoke's friend asks. He hands a hundred dollar bill to a waiter and tells him to bring us three beers. He hands a fifty-dollar bill to the hostess and tells her that we'd like good seats as quickly as possible.

Some time goes by. Stoke's friend has a small calculator in his hand. "You lost one thousand eighty five dollars," he tells me. I read the numbers and figure we must have been playing cards or something.

Ahhh, well, the night is still young. I have time to win it back," I say feeling really bad that I've lost so much money. I look at Stoke and his friend and see that they are both sound asleep. I guess the night is not as young as I thought, I tell myself.

I'm dressed in an Air Force flight suit sitting in a flight simulator with an instructor and a fellow pilot. The instructor tells us that when we are flying with a partner it is as if we are one person. Everything you do you do together. You do nothing without first thinking of the effect that it will have on your partner," the instructor says. My partner looks pretty bored with the instruction, and like me, he wants to get on with the flying.

"Remember, when you go on a mission, your wing man and you are spiritually joined together. Nothing can separate you. You are joined together until death."

I'm walking outside with my dog on a foggy California night. The fog is at about three hundred feet, no stars are visible, but I can see the approach of headlights on the other side of the fields about a mile or more away. My moving center is really into the night, each footfall echoes through out my entire body. I sense the warm dampness of the evening air to my very bones. And my emotional center feels very deeply the silence of the surrounding fields and orchards. I catch my thinking center planning a reply to the last post at round table on the subject of our machine. As soon as I catch the thinking center at work, it shuts off and experiences the splendor of this winter night.

Another moment of Self Observation: My moving center is really into scrubbing the bathroom sink. I can sense the increase in pressure deep in my gut as I come to a dirty spot and rub harder. My thinking center and emotional center are listening to Simon and Gurfunkle. Is it the thinking center or the emotional center that sings along. I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told. I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles." The emotional center goes deeper into the guitar and background music. And through that center, I hear the beat of punches hitting a light bag. The thinking center picks up more lyrics. "All lies and jest. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Lie La Le. Lie la lie lie lie lie lie lie. Lie la lie. Lie lie lie lie." All three centers grove on words and music as the moving center drops the sponge and lets the body dance.

“The difference between the Dylan and Rage Against the Machine renditions of Maggie’s Farm is that Dylan is loose and happy. Rage is up tight and mad about the whole thing,” I tell Alex next evening as we sit at my dinner table. “Dylan ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s Pa no mo, ‘cause he’s tired of working for nickels and dimes. He’s happy to be free and poor and enjoying life. He doesn’t need their money, advice, or morals. He doesn’t believe their lies. But, he’s happy about it. He’s glad to be free.
Rage is mad about the whole situation. He hasn’t changed Dylan’s lyrics and he spits them out in a hard mechanical way. He’s stiff and unhappy like he still wants the nickels and dimes, but he doesn’t want to work for them. He’s mad at the machine, but hasn’t freed himself from the conditioned violence.

A major difference between the sixties and right now, some sixties people, Dylan included, saw the conditioning and were able to jump clear of the clockwork, at least for the moment. Today, we can’t see that we too are conditioned and anger will not help us to awaken and free ourselves from our imprisonment.

I’m in a large classroom with two fellow teachers. It suddenly strikes me that we need to add to our curriculum. I call the other teachers to the front of the room and tell them,

“ We need to weave a new thread into our curriculum. We have to teach our students that man is asleep. That he is controlled by conditioning, and cannot do a single thing on his own.”

The other teachers nod in agreement and tell me that this is something that we have to work on.

Walking down the hall I see, Nancy, one of our vice principals. “We have to begin teaching students that man as he is is asleep. That we can awaken, but that it takes super effort,” I tell her.
“Cool! We can do that,” she tells me.

The principal, Mrs. Goreman, walks up to show us a small statue of Mary that she just bought. We tell her that it’s a lovely statue. Then, I add, “We have to make an addition to the school curriculum. We need to begin showing how man is functioning at a lower level of consciousness and needs to work on becoming more conscious,” I tell her.

“We can’t do that. It’s not in the mandated Standards,” she answers.
Well, they’re not going to stop me from doing it, I tell myself. The statue slips from Mrs. Goreman’s hands and drops to the floor breaking the head off. Good, that’s God punishing you for not trying to raise the level of consciousness of our children, I tell myself, and figure I better not tell Mrs. G. as a joke like I intended.

She picks up the statue and hands it to me. “I just bought it and hate to throw it away. Why don’t you take it?” she asks.

“Sure, thanks,” I say accepting what is now a pair of leather gloves with the tip off one finger. I can use them for work gloves, I tell myself.

This late February afternoon I get a different look at Santa Cruz. Blake and I come back from our walk on the beach, and meet Grandma in front of a ride that takes you in the air and turns you up side down. Riders are screaming their pleasure while some in line begin to change their minds. I spot Vickie, Bella, Jake, and Shelly waiting near the front of the line. They give off nervous smiles. I can’t believe the number of people passing in both directions. I focus on several faces that are staring straight ahead with grim determination.

Spanning my view outward I see at least a hundred fellow boardwalk seekers. More than half are young and walking in groups of three to a half dozen. They are totally in to their social relationship, talking about the last ride and trying to be cool. Next are some older couples enfolded into each other with fresh pledges of love. Those a little older still are dragging or being dragged to the next food stand, or I was going to say penny-pitching thing, but they pitch dollars now. Then come a number of grand parents hurrying to the next ride with their little charges.

Beyond the boardwalk is a football field length of beach that is piled in the middle with debris that washed up in the early winter storms. Beyond the beach is a curved stretch of surf that is cut short by the Santa Cruz Warf. A sea gull makes a lazy sweep down the coast. I follow his path as he steers toward a lighthouse that juts out from a prominent budge. I lose sight of the gull and scan across the waves to a mountain of white clouds. Beyond the clouds is the black outline of the mountains. Wow, The water is in an enormous basin here, I tell myself.

Screams from the Dumpster strike my ears and turn my attention back to the ride. I try to make out Vickie and the kids. “There they are,” Anne tells me taking my arm and pointing to one of the cars.

“It don’t seem that bad,” Blake tells us.

“It’s just getting started,” Anne answers as I try to focus on the car that holds the four of them. “It turns them all the way over while they’re hanging in the air,” Anne continues. Blake moves forward to get a better look. I shade my eyes and try to get into the feel of the ride, the music, hundreds, of people streaming so close that you can look right into their very eyes. My eyes are drawn again to the water. I try to measure the distance, foot by foot, through the passing throng, over the sands, and sun worshipers, past the black suited surfers, foot by foot person by person. My whole world expands a million fold in every direction as the silence touches me.

Vickie and the kids are exiting the ride. We ask if they want to go around again. No, they are ready for the Water Log. Vickie asks Blake if he wants to ride with her or Jake. It’s decided that the three girls will go on one seat and the guys on the other. Grandma will hold the stuffed animals and watch. “I’m gonna take off for my walk. I’ll be back in a couple hours,” I tell Anne.

“Stay as long as you want,” she tells me.

“You guys have a good time,” I say and turn to take my leave.

I can’t believe it. Here I am in Santa Cruz on my own with money in my pocket and time to do whatever I want. I step lightly getting into the feel of my footsteps. Most of the crowd is walking the opposite direction from me, working their way toward the rides. The sounds of pop music from loud speakers, shouts and screams from the riders, excited conversations strike my ears. A boardwalk cop in neatly pressed uniform struts along with watchful eye. I cut right to avoid a pair of teenage girls who are engaged in eating an enormous plate of pastry. “Grandpa, Grandpa,” someone calls from the overhead gondola. Grandpa looks up with his camera and begins snapping away.

I cut to my right and head down an aisle that leads to the street. The crowd thins out a little. I feel almost like I’m leaving a loony bin, as I get further up the street and meet the same anxious boardwalk seekers that are hurrying in. I peer over the volleyball players and get another view of the ocean. The waters beat upon the sand. It’s almost noon, hours later than the usual morning walk that I make up the coast. There are a lot more people even out at the wharf. I stop for the line of cars coming out, let one through and hurry across the street.

Across the street the crowd is younger and dressed more in outdoor garb. I climb up hill past two hotels that block the shoreline. Across the street a couple of Victorians catch my eye. Bumper to bumper cars are coming down the road. It’s like you’re a resident, here, I tell myself and figure that I’ve been on this walk enough times to call myself a resident. The whole of my history in Santa Cruz from the very first visit on our wedding day in 1961 and on through the years, the winter boat ride when Stoke first learned to spit, the last time we took Vickie as a child still in high school, the concert in 1980, the trips with Alex though the nineties, my year two thousand plus walks. My whole history of Santa Cruz is flashed through my mind as I slow down a little so as not to get too close to the two women in front of me.

Flowers at the edge of the hotel catch my eye, bright colors and geometric pattern, and the green lawns in between. I catch sight of nearly two hundred black suited surfers spreading out the waters to my west, behind the boardwalk rides grow smaller, the wharf stretches into the bay, white storm clouds ride slowly at the southwestern horizon. The immense expanse of the shoreline puts time-space into perspective. I measure the distance from this cliffside drive, across the waters, and into the vast expanse of water and sky. My tiny place in the immensity is duly noted. I turn off to the left at a site above the surfers to give the ladies a chance to walk ahead.

I’m alone on a small sandy strip closer to the shore above the surfers. Two park benches about a hundred feet apart are empty. Water breaks on the narrow sandy beach about three hundred feet beneath the cliff. Like seals the surfers range out one by one ten to fifty feet apart from the shoreline to maybe a half-mile. Beyond the surfers, the coast winds northwest, surf pounds the sand and rocks for several miles or more. A flight of nine pelicans spread the sky still more. Across the ocean, the outline of a blue-black mountain range curves from the north, in the south a smaller mountain range curves out from Monterey. Again I see the great bay of water that the mountains hold between them.