Meditating Hung Over

By Jules Kragen
 Meditating Hung Over

A journey in manful meditations

1. Introduction; Mantras for the modern man.

2. Embracing the man-bhudda within

3. The man-bhudda speaks

4. Liar Liar brains on fire

5. A vision in the hospital bed

6. This is a rat race

7. But first an important message from your foot

8. This door shuts like velvet on foam

9. The eye of the storm is strangely quiet but still

really windy.

10. Back where we started, here we go round again.

11. Papa oooh mow mow. Uh Uh. Shboom shboom.

12. Let’s get this party started.

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13. Coached and contracted.

14. The purple and blue rays of dawn.

15. Heavy Construction

Chapter 24. I am not wasted. And I can find my way home.

Chapter 23: A Snake In The Grass
Chapter 22. Talking ’bout My Meditation.
Chapter 21. Yoga.
Chapter 20: What Is This Manfullness That You Speak Of?
Chapter 19: Finding a Holy Place In the Left Field Bleachers
Chapter 18. A Deep Dive in Cold Clear Water.
Chapter 17: Sunrise
Chapter 16: Finding An On-ramp in the Middle of the Countryside

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 Chapter 1.
Mantras for the modern man

Last year I lost my job, my hair, my wife and my

dog died although not necessarily in that order.

Well that is not exactly the truth. In fact, it isn’t

even close. But I always wanted to write a country
western song and I never got the chance to do so.
This is as close as I will get to that moment so please
bear with me. Simple pleasures are always at a
premium.

The truth is that my wife loves me, my dog is

alive and well and loves me too and my hair is
hanging in there, quite well thank you. I did leave
my job on the other hand. That is where this often
strange and completely unexpected journey begins.

Somewhere along the unnatural path of personal

unemployment and global recession combined with
the gentle but very firm urging of many others
around me, I reluctantly began a personal quest to
find myself, to bring peace, contentment and
spiritual fulfillment to my every waking moment.
Something that was the antithesis of what I had
always believed was the nature of my being.

My journey into this new world began one

afternoon when my wife came home from work early
and found me on the couch watching ESPN and
tossing buddy biscuits to our dog Kelly. I was

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commanding her to “go deep”, hoping that with the
right amount of training she could one day run a
proper post pattern. The dog was actually was
making progress but my wife was neither impressed
or amused by the scene in her living room. Her look
said it all and I knew that after an uncomfortable
silence there would be trouble. I didn’t even offer up
a feeble “hi honey.” I knew it looked bad.

Realistically I could see this coming for weeks

now. As she looked at me with a tightly drawn
expression that could only mean trouble I smiled.
She didn’t.

After an uncomfortable silence we exchanged a

perfunctory greeting. Then, after launching into
another pointed diatribe about my lack of progress in
finding work she bluntly asked me when I was going
to get my ass off of the couch and leave the house. I
didn’t have much of an answer to give her. She told
me that if I wasn’t going to make any progress in the
outside world maybe I should try working on the
inside one. Maybe I should try yoga or meditating.
To do something.

I reacted to her suggestion in the way that many

intelligent men might. I laughed. Not an A move.
Without another word she walked out of the living
room and slammed the door. Not good at all.

Later that afternoon, as I watched a rerun of the

49er’s Redskins 1989 NFC playoff and teared up once
again over that miserable phantom interference call
on Ronnie Lott, I began to think about what she said

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that afternoon. Whether it was the injustice of that
call or the way she said what she said to me, or both,
for the first time it all sort of hit home.

Sitting there I realized that I really didn’t have

much to do any more. Most days just sort of passed
from one into another, and not only was this a first
time experience for me, it was a big big problem.

I knew from years of personal experience that

inactivity and boredom had always been as toxic as
runoff from Chernobyl to me. I had always relied
upon the businesses of my career to keep the
boredom demons at bay. Now I had a 64 oz. big gulp
of both inactivity and boredom to cope with. A
supersize helping of trouble.

Whether I wanted to deal with my problems or

not, inside of me I knew that I needed a change. So I
thought, why not try something new. At a minimum
it would get her off of my case and give me an
excuse to help fill the time. Hey, I thought, this
meditation stuff had been around for thousands of
years. Maybe it might work for me. Best of all, it
was her idea and she couldn’t fault me for trying.

So the next day I began to look over the unread

books that she had lying around her side of the
bedroom about relaxation and breathing while
studiously avoiding the self help titles, (btw, what an
industry they had, the only persons they were
helping were themselves and most of them were
never read).

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 Eventually I found a book that seemed to make
sense. The tile was “Wherever you are you are
there.” Well that made sense and kind of reminded
me of the title of an old Firesign Theatre album.
Maybe that was a sign that this wouldn’t be so bad.

So I sat down and began to read. As I read the

book the first thing that I learned that I didn’t know
how to breathe. Funny, I thought I had been
breathing for over 50 years but now I was told that I
was wrong. I thought this must be bullshit. It was all
downhill from there. In under 20 pages I became
thoroughly bored with the book and promptly fell
asleep.

Where was the story line? Where was the

narrative? How much crap about looking inward
could I possibly deal with? I didn’t enjoy the laundry.
I didn’t enjoy going to the bank. After I woke up a few
minutes later I went quietly (but happily) back to the
living room couch where Kelly was waiting for me,
tail waging and ready to play. After all it was
Wednesday and that meant a day game even if the
Giants were playing the Pirates.

That evening when my wife came home she

found me as usual on the couch (for those who care
the Giants were losing 4-1). She asked me about my
day. I turned down the volume on the TV and told
her that I had been reading about breathing and
meditation. But before I could tell her how miserably
it had gone and how I couldn’t stand it, I saw
something in her I hadn’t seen much of since the
grim job reaper visited me last year, a smile. And

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then she walked over to me and hugged me. I
clammed up and didn’t say a word about the game
or more importantly how I had put down the book.

It got better. She told her that she was so proud

of me that she was going to cook dinner. As she
walked out of the room I was stunned. And although
I really didn’t get what was going on, I knew that this
inner work thing seemed to be yielding immediate
dividends. Maybe this meditation stuff was worth
looking at in more detail. I certainly had to give it an
effort, it was already helping our relationship.

So I tried hard to get into it. And failed.

Eventually I told her about my battles and to my very
pleasant surprise she didn’t react badly. Instead she
suggested that I find an instructor to help me.

So I did! I found a personal coach to help me on

the ways of the East. A real zen master who had
studied Buddhism for decades. He taught me about
personal freedom, something we are all after. I liked
that. He was a good guy and even cursed sometimes
during our sessions. That helped me a lot. He told
me that meditation was tough and he was right.

I went to my classes and read about bhuddas

and bodhisattvas and dharma and chakras. I learned
to focus my breath until I counted to a thousand
inhales and exhales and I sat on my ass till it hurt.
Then I sat again. I sat still for hours waiting for some
kind of enlightenment. Some kind of inner peace.
And then I waited some more.

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 And nothing happened. The coach told me that
was supposed to be the point. Nothing was
supposed to be OK, some kind of perfect state of
balance. I didn’t get it. I was supposed to let my
gaze go free, to look at the sky, the birds the wind
and not to judge. But try as I might I couldn’t stop
thinking about other things. Something was wrong.
Something was missing from this new found journey
into a spiritual life and without it I couldn’t make any
progress.

So at wife’s urging I tried yoga. Lots of different

kinds of yoga. I never knew there were so many
kinds of yoga all with names that could not be
pronounced. I stretched and grabbed my ankles.
They hurt. I thought I would pull all of the muscles in
my body at once. I twisted myself into pretzel
shapes and even tried to stand on my head. I fell
over. Instead of fining inner peace I found inner
soreness and a new found love of ibuprophen.

Then I went to a Bikram Yoga class that was the

equivalent of taking an intense cardio-workout inside
of a boiling pressure cooker. After class I nearly
passed out driving home and almost wrecked the
car.

But if anything I am not a quitter. So I kept

trying. I sat. I waited. I meditated. I breathed. I
controlled. I stretched. Still nothing. And I wanted to
quit, I was sick of the nothingness of it all. But as I
got more frustrated my wife was more encouraging
than ever. “You are doing great” she would say. “Yes
dear, I would answer, “you are right.” Even though I

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knew that I wasn’t. And she was so happy about
this! Happier than I was! So I kept going every day
to classes and instructors and readings.

But something was still missing. Something was

wrong. Where was that damn moment of inner
peace? Why was this so hard for me? As much as I
tried to enjoy those empty moments of meditation
and relaxation for me they were simply and
unalterably boring.

Within a few moments of sitting down and

breathing my mind would wander off quickly and
then permanently. Despite all the teachings that I
read and instructions that I received that you were
supposed to embrace these wandering thoughts and
that this was really OK my mind would never wander
back to emptiness and instead stuck somewhere
between the dismal state of the GS Warriors and last
nights episode of Family Guy. My thoughts remained
as random as my web research looking for a job.
This was getting me nowhere. And I couldn’t tell my
wife about my struggles.

But whether I liked it or not, inside of me things

were changing and I didn’t even know it. As I pushed
on I felt the beginning of a shift happening that I
could not put my finger on. I felt that a change was
going to come. I found myself playing that beautiful
haunting Sam Cooke song on the Ipod over and over
those days without knowing why. A change is gonna’
come. And then without warning it did.

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 Chapter 2
It’s a sufferer’s style

I was lying in bed one grey late autumn

Thursday morning, my mind drifting uncomfortably in
and out of a bracingly acidic hung over haze, wishing
I was still asleep and cursing the awesomely irritating
power of her alarm clock that woke me some 20
minutes before.

I wasn’t trying to control my breathing that

morning so I could meditate. No, not even close. I
was trying to control the rising pressure in my
stomach, the incredible tightness in my right
shoulder and neck and the powerful sour taste in my
mouth.

Nothing was working. As I lie there staring at the

ceiling my thoughts were as random and unfocused
as the Oakland Raiders management skills. My
emotions careened back and forth between guilt (yes
hung over again), fear (what was going to happen
when she came out of the bathroom) and anger (why
couldn’t I just drink heartily without retribution the
day after).

Oh yes my dear dear brothers, it all became

clear to me that morning as I lay there in that
familiar painful fog and listened to the daily habitual
sounds of my wife getting ready leave for work. I was
dreading what was about to happen. I had witnesses
this moment many times before. She would finish
blow-drying her hair and in a patronizing but
painfully neutral tone, she would ask me how the
evening had gone. What she really wanted to know

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was how much I had I had to drink and how I felt this
morning, to find out how sick I really felt. And I had
drunk plenty and boy did I feel really sick.

I could hear her in her daily morning routine in

the bathroom next to our bed, the shower was on
and soon she would emerge, coiffed, dressed and
ready to roll into another business day. And where
was I? Lying in bed hoping not to have to leave it’s
warm safe haven, pulling the blankets over my head.
Let’s face it, I felt like shit.

I had been out the night before with the usual

suspects in our wine and dinner group. Between the
generous plates of appetizers and salumi, followed
by squash ravioli in burnt butter with sage, braised
pork ragu over taglietelle, braised short ribs in a
Barolo sauce and Florentine steak over arugala, we
had blissfully consumed a 2 bottles of Gavi, 6 Chianti
classicos and finished the evening with a tasting
flight of Grappa and biscotti. I couldn’t turn down
those Grappas even though I knew how they would
hit me hard the next day. We were having a blast
and I was more than willing to pay the price. What
did I have to do tomorrow anyway?

As I continued to lay there my wandering mind

finally came to rest on an absolute truth; my wife’s
growing dissatisfaction with me and its direct relation
to the uncomfortable discussion that we were about
to have as result. Notwithstanding the appearance
of some successful “inner” progress, I knew that she
was growing more and more impatient with my lack
of outer progress and that meant finding work.

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 I told her that I was looking for a job every day.
That was true. I told her that I networking more then
ever. Well that wasn’t. I couldn’t stand the concept of
networking with people you didn’t care about when
employed. It felt even worse talking to them now.
What the hell did you say to those people anyway,
“Hi, I know that we haven’t spoken for months and
have little in common, but you know, I am out of
work and brother can you spare me a job? Oh, keep
in touch and send me an email when you can. Best to
the wife and kids.” What a load of crap.
While she had been supportive of me until now,
the point remained that all of her fears about my
future and thus our relationship were exacerbated by
my exceedingly rare nights out with the guys. She
was really down on those wine dinners. Yes, she was
right, I guess. They were kind of expensive and we
were getting a bit low on discretionary funds, a fact
made worse by, of all the ironies, the cost of my
journey towards inner peace. Worse yet, I was
usually out of commission for a day or even two
afterward a dinner. Even though it meant much in
reality it looked really bad.

But those wine dinners gave me something so

important, the few remaining happy moments that I
had left in my life. And just as importantly, time out
having a good time with the guys. Sure they were
expensive. Sure I got drunk. Sure, I had fun. Why was
that so bad? Didn’t I need some manly yin to the
dreadful soulless yang of being home with the cable
TV and the pleasures of scanning Internet want ads
all day? I needed relief!

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 As my thoughts continued to wander I concluded
that at this stage of the game the wife didn’t approve
of anything in my life except for my feeble attempts
at meditation and yoga. Even that was going poorly. I
had become so bored with the traditional mediation
process that when I tried to do so I would quickly fall
asleep waking up hours later with drool coming out
of the right side of my mouth, forming nice circular
stains of spit on the couch pillows that I would blame
on the dog. At least something good came from her
being up there with me.
What was I going to do? Time was running out, I
could hear her shut off the hair dryer. Five minutes to
go. OK, I thought, do something. Look like your
meditating. Close your eyes even if you are faking it.
Slow down and breathe, come on follow that path to
peace.

Was that a mistake. As I slowed my breathing

the stomach discomfort seemed to worsen and I felt
increasing pressure, culminating in an early morning
brutal after-belch that bordered on vomiting. Yum.

I was screwed. As I lie there trying to figure out

what to tell her I began to think about the incredible
Italian food that I had enjoyed last night. The risotto
with mushrooms, so rich and earthy. As it did, the
mental images of that meal distracted my from my
suffering and for the first time I began to feel a bit
better. I started to forget about my hangover, at
least temporarily. I thought about the pleasures of
well prepared Italian food, the slight bite of the
Sangiovese grapes, the drive home in my old Alfa
spyder, top down, heater on air cool as the Giants

14
lost again and my friendships. My mind focused on
these great pleasures and my breathing slowed. For
a brief moment I was curiously calm and even my
stomach shut up.
It was then that a kind of man-bhudda hidden
deep inside of me spoke for the first time. And when
he did, I had a revelation. A deep and clear voice as
calm and clear as the breeze and the blue sky came
into my head. I had a vision that touched my inner
being. Suddenly it all seemed so easy. I knew what to
say to her. At that moment the bathroom door
opened and she emerged, looking great I might add.
I was calm. I was ready. I wasn’t sure why.

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 Chapter 3
Embracing the Man-Bhudda Within

Before I could emerge from under covers she

spoke. “So how was dinner?” Her usual sharp voice
pierced through the morning silence of our bedroom.
I knew what was coming. She was ready to put up
with my recitation of the list of drinks and wines and
maybe some bar stories that flow from another night
with the boys. But moreso she was Ready to remind
me about where I should be spending my time and
our money. Ready to ask me how I would get
anything done today in an obviously hung-over state.
Hell, who knows what I might have said to her last
night when I came home.

I pulled the covers away from my face and

looked up at her staring down at me, much to close
for comfort. I started to speak and frankly, I was
surprised at what I said. It was then that this inner
voice that I never knew took over and once it did
there was no turning back.

“Well honey”, I began, “dinner was great”. I

paused a beat before I went on. “But you know
during the main course the funniest thing happened.
I started talking to the guys about what has been
going on with me over the past few months and my
inner journeys working with mediation and
breathing, and, well, you may not believe this but
they were all really interested. In fact, we spent
most of the evening talking about it.”

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 I was waiting for her to say something, to call
me out, but she didn’t. She just stood there looking
at me fussing with her hair. Was she stunned?
Angry? Happy? I couldn’t tell.

But this wasn’t the time to turn back and the

voice kept me moving. So I continued, “Maybe it was
the Chianti or just the times. I went on and on about
meditation and yoga and they all wanted to know
more. I told them about my Asthtanga classes and
Sam and John are going to come and break a sweat
with me next week and Ted is going to pick up a
book on breathing and mindfulness. And do you
know what was really amazing? With all of the talk,
we only finished ½ of our wine. Can you believe that?
I mean we would up giving the rest of the wine to the
staff.”

I looked up at her. Hey, was that a smile? It

was! To the amazement of my old self, but not to my
new inner-man self she believed it. She completely
bought into it.

She actually stopped putting on her earrings and

kept smiling at me. She began to speak. “Honey, I
am so impressed”, she said, “That is absolutely
wonderful. You are doing such a good job, I am
really proud of you. And you must feel so much
better this morning than you would have if the
evening would have gone as usual.” It would have
been great if she stopped there, but newly found
karma only goes so far. She carried on. “So what are
you doing today?”

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 I was amazed that she even was talking to me at
this hour. She hadn’t said this much before leaving
for work in weeks. I also knew that I felt absolutely
awful and that I needed to stay on course. Despite
my high residual blood alcohol content that morning,
the vision continued. It was clear, awe-inspiring. It
flooded me with purpose and enlightment. I went on.

“Well dear, I mean you are right. I don’t feel

perfect today. One thing is for sure, I certainly would
have felt a lot worse. I am trying really hard to keep
on course. In fact, I was meditating in bed just now
(yeah under the covers no less). I was relaxing and
listening to my breathing and thought that would be
a great day to take the dog for a long walk. Maybe I
will hit the gym later after going through the
unwanted ads”

She looked at me and I knew that she must have

seen the horrifying state of my eyes. She ignored
them and went on anyway, transfixed somehow by
the conversation. “I am really impressed. You are
doing so well with your inner work. Just try to be
patient about the job, something good is going to
come from all of this.” Then she told me that she
loved me, which she hadn’t done for weeks, and that
we should have something good for dinner that
evening, that she was running late for work. She
planted a detached kiss on my cheek and walked out
with what appeared to be that same smile on her
face. I never left the bed.

As I lie there contemplating the highlights of the

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Thursday morning cable TV schedule and dreading
the now mandatory 3 pm stretch fest with the
exercise witches at the Y, I went over the morning’s
events in my head. They were a pleasant but
confusing surprise that I didn’t understand at all. I
knew that something good had happened. I wasn’t
sure why, but I needed to know more if I could hope
to replicate them.

Throughout rest of the morning I had this

strange feeling. There was a kind of a warm
soothing peace that had settled over me. My wife
was happy with me for the first time in ages, so
pleased that I was sharing my mindfulness work with
the guys even though the truth was that I had not. I
couldn’t have been more frustrated with my journey
toward so called inner peace yet my primary
relationship was back on course. At the same time I
knew that I wasn’t telling her the truth. But that
reality was nothing compared to the results that I
had gotten. Damn this was perplexing.

The rest of the day passed easily and amicably,

centered around home made chicken soup with basil
and rice for lunch and the 5th season of the Sopranos.
I never made it to the gym or hit the ads. I was sick
of them anyway.

That evening when she came home late from

work I didn’t bring up her offer of dinner and she
didn’t seem to care or remember. That was
completely fine with me, my stomach was still
recovering and I didn’t know what else to say.

19
 I threw together a quick dish of pasta with pesto
and a salad, no wine tonight. We turned in early
afterwards without a word about the events of the
morning. Wife passed out reading the New York
Times and I was lulled to sleep by the dreary
monotony of the 10 o’clock news, the sounds of
gunshots, school closures and the crashing stock
market.

Notwithstanding all of that I slept soundly that

night, dreaming of home runs, mozzarella di bufala
and heirloom tomatoes.

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 Chapter 4
Liar Liar Brains On Fire

The next morning started out like most others.

Sweetie was long gone by quarter to 8 and I sat at
breakfast, nonchalantly pouring over the National
League standings in the Sporting Green and
mindlessly munching on a bowl of borderline stale
Cheerios, the dog snoring on the couch and the
morning fog still thick. Staring at those numbers told
me the harsh truth, that for a fourth year in a row
that would be no baseball playoffs in our town.

With no hope in sports to distract me, I lost

focus. My thoughts drifted away from the barren
desert of Bay Area baseball. As my mind wandered I
started thinking again about what had happened the
day before. I knew instinctively that something
significant had occurred, but I did not understand its
meaning. At least not as of yet.

I put the paper down tried to think hard about it.

As I did, I struggled to find meaning in the events of
that strange morning. Just what had happened?
Where the hell did that voice come from? Why did I
let it take over? Why did I say those things that I
knew weren’t true? And why was I so happy and
calm for the rest of the day?

As I replayed our unusual interaction over and

over again it gradually became clear. I saw that two
things that had happened. There had been some kind
of change in my attempts at finding inner calm and

21
peace. My meditation was different that morning and
not just because I was hung over and ready to ralph.
I wasn’t sure why, but it had felt much better, easier
some how.

Yet there was something much more important

to consider. Real life bonus points. A Super lotto hit.
What I had done had put some sorely needed big
time charm on my squeeze. This was completely
unexpected and entirely welcome.

Let me explain.

I still couldn’t believe what had happened with

her that morning. Until then I had never ever been
able to lie to her about anything. Period. She had a
smell test better than a DEA trained beagle checking
flights coming in from Cali. Even a slight fib got a
raised eyebrow or a poke in the ribs to let me know
she knew. But when I surrendered to this inner voice
and began talking about meditation and yoga, her
super feminine spydie sense just turned itself off and
she turned all smiles.

That was totally weird. I can’t say that I was

proud of it. I have professed honesty in my
relationship as long as I can remember and can’t
remember the last time I lied. But I couldn’t deny
the shot in the arm that it gave us that was sorely
needed. For that I was truly grateful.

I had learned an important lesson. I had learned

that as long as I was meditating or doing yoga or just
talking about it, my wife would be happy with me.

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And a happy wife means a happy life. Let that be
said again. A happy wife means a happy life. That is
the truth.

That fact alone was enough to keep me engaged

in a study that I was frankly sick and tired of. No
matter how bad this mediation thing had been I had
to keep going. I had to keep learning more about
mediation and yoga and mindfulness to find peace in
the home and if I was lucky within as well.

As I brought the bowl of cereal to my mouth and

drained the remaining milk, damned if I didn’t hear
the voice of the man-bhudda speaking to me again.
This time I listened to him closely, now expecting yet
another miracle.

I realized that I could deepen my study of

mindfulness and meditation by turning it into
something new. Something that was cosmically
connected and unashamedly masculine. Blissed yet
brave, heavenly and heroic. A study that was not
only mindful but manful. A practice that was built
not just mindfulness, but manfulness.

Then I straightened up. Was this heresy or my

mind finally going crazy from too much time at the
casa. Perhaps this whole concept was just plain
wrong. Were 5,000 years of sages and bhuddas
laughing or at a minimum scowling at me as I sat
there? Shit, what if they were right and I had just
screwed my shot at an afterlife so far down that I

23
would be reincarnated as an ass pimple on an
elephant. But maybe not. Maybe I had really hit on
something good that would help me and maybe
others. And more importantly, weren’t these Eastern
deities supposed to be a forgiving bunch?

No, I had to go on, if for nothing else for the sake

of the relationship. As I sat there the man-bhudda
gave me a calling. I had a voice with a mission. To
share this experience with others. A voice that spoke
to me again over the coming months as I began to
write. Calm and courageous, words would spill out of
me. Pages filled effortlessly like the passage of the
sun across the sky, a thought that that had been
putting me to sleep until now.

As the days of that autumn passed into winter, I

immersed myself in a study of manful meditation. I
was awake, aware and ready to kick some fully
centered manful ass. I read and I thought. I was
touched by the collective wisdom of men throughout
time. Overcome by a power that surrounded me and
moved me forward. The power inherent in being a
man and all that it meant.

My focus increased. My strength grew. I didn’t

use performance enhancing substances either.

My personal journey changed direction and was

gaining intensity like a young tropical storm off of the
coast of Baja, rising over warm clear Pacific waters
heading to class 5 status. Yes, my kick was up, it
was straight, long and sailing through the center of
the goalposts. In this dream my wife, who hates

24
football, was there in the crowd cheering me on.

Wouldn’t that make for a wonderful story? I

think that it would. But life had many other plans for
me first.

25
 Chapter 5

Green Light Green Light

May I Have Another Green Light Please?

In which your author is brutally attacked by a boneless leg of lamb.

But this journey does not begin here. No, it

starts on an evening like countless others that I had
spent at home with le sweetie during the previous
winter.

I had just finished the daily battle with the traffic

on the Bay Bridge driving home from work. I knew
the cupboards were bare, so stopped at Trader Joe’s
to pick up something easy for dinner. While there I
came upon the aforementioned boneless leg of lamb,
already marinated in red wine garlic spices and lots
of that good old tenderizer and the chef’s reliable
friend, plain old salt. Feeling a bit lazy and already
running behind, I grabbed it along with some
fingerling potatoes to roast and an inconsequential
vegetable choice. As long as I threw it on the grill, I
figured that I could tolerate a store made marinade
for once even though it was against my moral
cooking code.

We were both running late from work that

evening and I didn’t get the lamb on the grill until
after 8. The boss showed up a few minutes later,
thoroughly exhausted from her day at work. After
she changed out of the everyday work suit we both
went for the usual un-winder that we had been

26
enjoying as of late, it was Margarita Time again! I
made them fresh with Meyer lemons from our tree
(adding a bit more sweetness than limes), Cointreau
and a dark brown anejo reposado tequila (hey why
not it was Wednesday). They were tasty, refreshing,
strong and then gone.

Dinner featured nothing special to remember.

We talked amicably about my continuing frustrations
with work and how much we loved living in the house
without the kids. I downed most of a bottle of an
average plus Zin, the boss stuck to a Kiwi Sauvignon
Blanc, her choice of late. Just another night.

Our meal finished about 10. After cleaning up

and going upstairs, she fell asleep. I found her long
gone well before I crawled into bed after 11, the New
York Times spread out across the bed, her head
hidden under the winter quilts. After a few minutes
of watching the drivel that passes for the evening
news I gave her a peck on the cheek (unnoticed)
smashed up my pillow and without much hesitation
or delay, I was gone. Or so I thought.

For the past few weeks my stomach had been

acting really strangely, really unusual stuff. I wrote if
off to the pressures of work, too much travel and
another sign of age. Still, these symptoms were odd,
very different than just the regular upset stomach
that visited me from time to time. There was this
powerful pressure rising in my chest accompanied by
a very strong burning in my stomach.

Sometimes these feelings became

27
overwhelming. The week before when it hit me
driving down 101 through Marin I actually thought
about pulling over the car and resting for fear I would
pass out. But as I drove over the hill into Tiburon it
ended and it didn’t return so I didn’t say a word to
anyone. I figured I just had a really really bad upset
stomach. Took some Tums. Couldn’t be more than
that. Could it?

About half an hour later, just past midnight of

that evening I woke up. This was not an unusual
event as of late. I was waking up plenty in the
middle of the night during those days, worried about
work and what was going on there. Most nights my
fears were accompanied by a host of pains and
symptoms that came and went depending upon the
evening. A four-star menu of life’s hand picked
maladies that contained a dazzling variety of pains
and discomfort for my body to choose from.

Some nights I would be treated to an appetizer

of Tinnitus, real torture for those of us with sensitive
hearing. Tinnitus manifests in a loud droning bass
tone modulating up and down in frequency and
volume, combining the tones of a fog horn with the
bass lines of a bad gangster rap song played through
the vibrating trunk of a Buick Regal. I really had no
one to blame for this condition, having seen way too
many concerts in my youth including several bouts
with the Who and the Clash, no doubt there had been
some damage along with way.

After lots of reading and research I concluded

that there is no cure for Tinnitus except to take a

28
sleeping pill to make you forget it, something that I
would not do as a matter of principle. There was
nothing to do but wait for it to pass. Most nights it
didn’t and I lay awake worrying and wondering.

Other evenings there was a really lovely main

course, a complex stew of right shoulder pain and
neck aches. Starting in the shoulder, a bit of the way
down my back, these shooting pains would gradually
radiate upwards, crawling slowly and inexorably up
the side of the neck and up towards the right side of
my head where they would culminate in piercing pain
that traveled right through to my sinuses. Nice huh?
At least they reacted well to Ibuprophen, which I was
consuming regularly in larger and larger quantities.

Through in regular stomach upsets and periodic

racing heart beats for side dishes and you get the
picture.

So when I woke up that night I thought oh fuck,

here comes another one of those evenings. After
quickly surveying my symptoms, I decided to get up
and seek relief from my amigo the Ibuprophen bottle,
when I realized that this pain was quite different. It
struck me that this must be a house special, a dish
not on the usual evening menu. Yes, this pain was a
new one; radiating up and through my right arm into
my chest. It was intense too. And the pressure in
my chest was really severe, way beyond what I had
felt in the past weeks.
In addition, I felt weak, nauseous and most of all just
plain strange.

29
 I listed the symptoms off in my head and as I did
they spelled out those dreadful words that you don’t
ever want to see on your menu: heart attack. I heard
Richard Pryor’s voice deep in my head from his
journey down this road. “Now just don’t move
motherfucker,” he said to me. "Yes Sir", I thought.

See, my father died of congestive heart failure

and suffered through Angina for many years, popping
nitros like they were tic tacs. I watched his pain and
how he would bend over in half from it so so many
times. I knew where this could go and I didn’t want
to head down that path.

So I did the normal guy thing, I decided to gut it

out. Maybe if I just changed positions and rolled onto
my back to stare at the ceiling the pain would slow
down and the pressure would ease off. Maybe I was
just being a pussy.

It didn’t and I wasn’t.

Less than five minutes later I woke my wife.

Startled, she asked what was wrong and I told her.
She sensed the immediacy of my distress and asked
me what I wanted to do. I told her how was I feeling
and that I was very concerned. I added that if this
feeling didn’t pass in ten minutes she should drive
me to the hospital. She said OK, and then faded
back out somewhere between sleep and
consciousness.

Less than 2 minutes later I told her to get

dressed and get moving. This just felt way to weird to

30
mess with.

The trip to the hospital was uneventful, at least

the pain didn’t get worse and being late at night, we
were there in a matter of minutes. Little was said
during the ride, I was struggling with the pain and
the uncertainty of it all.

The emergency room was crowded even after

midnight with a variety of the afflicted, old young
and in between. We walked up to the receptionist
and she asked me what the problem was.

For those of you who have ever waited forever to

be seen in the emergency room of the hospital let
me suggest a fool proof way to beat those lines and
get instant service. Just say these words: “I think I
may be having a heart attack”. I have never seen a
hospital move so fast.

Minutes later I found myself clad in a backless

gown on a hospital bed hooked to a maze of
electronics and wires and hanging above me from a
metal rack, all leading to a heart monitor and an IV in
my arm. Try as you want within moments of entry;
the heart monitor becomes the dominant player in
the room. You watch its green tracks glide across
the screen and try to understand the information that
it feeds you. Most of all you watch the green lights
and listen for the hopefully steady beat of your heart.

The rest of the evening was a blur of different

doctors, nurses, waiting for test results and x-rays.
All were polite, educated and reassuring. My wife and

31
the medication kept me calm and we listened to the
steady beats of the heart monitor until she fell asleep
in her chair.

I found out about 5 that morning that I wasn’t

having a heart attack and was released about 2
hours later, both shaken and stirred. The doctor told
me that I had most likely suffered a different sort of
attack, a digestive crisis known as GERD.

With GERD** what happens is this: the pressure

of your stomach acid becomes so strong it starts to
back up through your chest and into your throat with
symptoms just like those of a heart attack. Left
untreated it leads to other pleasures like cancer of
the esophagus.

**I later learned that I had scored 100% on the GERD attack report
card, doing everything human to make sure I had an attack, from
eating spicy food late washed down with alcohol to lying down
afterwards.

To complete my evening meal, for dessert he

advised me that I had really high blood pressure that
needed to be dealt with immediately.

After receiving my doggy bag of pills and pages

on pages of instructions, I left the hospital about 7
am. I swear I heard some of the nurses laughing as I
did. But I could have been dreaming.

As we walked out of the hospital front door I

32
looked up at the morning sky. The air was cool and
the sky was clear and blue, something really rare
here in Berkeley. I felt that I had been lucky. For
starts I had health insurance although I could only
imagine what the bill would be anyway. But more
important, I had my wife next to me, the sun was out
and a new day was just beginning. In the trees next
to the parking lot birds were everywhere chirping.
The scene was ridiculously positive and for once
even my cynical being was overcome with a feeling
that was new to me: gratitude.

There is a well-known cliché that when you are

laid out flat on a hospital bed your life passes before
you. Well I am here to report that this is no cliché. It
really does and you have both the time and the
intense focus to see things for what the really are.
You are in for a long conversation with yourself
(assuming you are conscious) about life that starts
with two simple and basic questions.

1.Would you be satisfied if those green lights

stopped right now and that was it?

2. And if they keep going what would you

change?

As we drove home I thought about the

conversation that I had with myself throughout that
evening. It had been long and difficult and at the
end I was so thankful that those green lights kept
moving across the screen. As they did, I realized
that I had to make a radical change in my life. I
knew why I was lying in a hospital bed on a Tuesday

33
evening for a reason and I also knew that if I didn’t
make this change I would be back again. Maybe the
next time the lights wouldn’t respond so well.

There is one other thing that I now realize

looking back on that evening. Thinking about making
this particular change was easy no matter how
radical it seemed. It was easy to think about it
because deep down inside I didn’t believe that I
could ever pull it off. Not a chance. That was my
safety net. If I tried to make the change I would feel
better. But there was no way in hell I could make it
happen. So I really didn’t have to worry about the
consequences. There was no possibility that I could
ever ever make that change. The odds were stack.
The fix was in. It was truly impossible.

Then I did.

34
 Chapter 6
This is a rat race

Ten clues that you are not in a good working

relationship with your business partner:

1. He stops working. (You could stop here).

2. He borrows money from the company.
3. He can’t pay it back.
4. He borrows money from you.
5. He can’t pay it back.
6. He spends less and less time at work
7. He spends what little time that he is at work
arguing with his credit card companies about
personal bills.
8. He spends the rest of the time either dealing
with his car or sleeping in it.
9. He passes out at his desk, sometimes during
meetings with clients.
10. He would rather talk about anything else in
the world than the business that the two of you own.

Every time that I ran this checklist through my

head, which I did often, scoring a perfect 10 out of 10
was not a good omen for the future of our company,
our partnership or my health. And while it may
seem funny when you look at his behavior in the
form of a list, on a day-to-day basis, working under
these circumstances became a nightmare for
everyone. Something had to give.

For those of you that followed the narrative that

35
began in the previous chapter, the change that I
decided upon lying on that hospital bed should be
obvious by now. I made up my mind to leave the
business that I had loved for the past 10 years.

The minute details of the transaction that

ensued are not terribly important or interesting
unless you are type that enjoys stories about
business and negotiation strategy and I will try to
keep them to a minimum. This is not a business
book, it is a personal journey to peace and some sort
of redemption. Still, you don’t end a decade of life
without a lot of stories.

Let me say at the outset that despite our

differences and difficulties, there was a peaceful and
amicable separation that was negotiated in a
shockingly short amount of time. All of this would
never have happened but for the appearance of a
gentleman who saw strategic value in what we did
and was looking to invest in our company, easing my
way out the door and onto the street. To him I am
forever thankful.

So what happened? Why did I go? Leaving

career number 3 took tons of internal struggle and
soul searching that did not occur quickly or easily. I
had to be driven out by pain. By a visceral powerful
discomfort and suffocation from just being there.

So why was it so hard to go? Well, this was not

just a good job; it was a great one. It paid well, it
was fun and no one ever suggested, much less told,
me what to do. With a good amount of international

36
travel to South and Central America and a romantic
product line to boot, it never lacked for interest or
excitement. Who would want to leave?

What eventually pushed me out was one

overriding factor. It was clear (both to us and to
those who knew us) that we were more than a little
crazy. We shared a spectacular level of
dysfunctional behavior that alternately held us
together like some big extended Chinese-Jewish-
Brazilian-German-African American out of control
family while it tore us all apart. At the same time we
were as creative and resourceful as a business team
could be.

But no one took these behaviors to the extreme

like my business partner did. He seemed to be a
mixture of the Pied Piper, Houdini and Caligula and
he played all of these roles with great aplomb. He
got away with things in his life that no average
person should ever have and thought that normal.
Saw himself as a lucky man, somehow blessed by
god, as he charmed and then trampled through the
world, often leaving destruction in his wake as he
played a complex 7/4 rhythm on his conga drums
(something he did both often and well). Considering
what he managed to do for so long without being
caught; maybe he was blessed by one deity or
another along the way.

This is not to say that we didn’t enjoy each

other’s company. We did. We shared deep loves of
great food, clean graphic design, jazz and all objects
of beauty. We laughed a lot, even in the darkest of

37
times and about the darkest of subjects, often the
sicker the better.

I will never forget the first time I saw the office.

There was no paperwork to speak of. No files. No
records. No computer. Everything was somewhere
else or couldn’t be found. Yet they were doing
business and a fair amount of it.

In the early days we charged forward,

conquering accounts and territories, building sales
and sophistication. But the initial joys of building a
business soon turned into the day-to-day realities of
maintaining one, something I was much better suited
at, my business partner began to drift away. I can’t
blame him for this; many of us are better suited stay
on the creative side of an enterprise and never deal
with human resources, taxes, budgets and financial
planning. Yet that is where so many of the dollars are
made and lost and much of the heavy lifting gets
done.

Eventually he was overwhelmed by the personal

Rubik’s cube of his life. He created an acidic stew of
bad credit, too many women, and a lack of care for
his body and soul. Work bored him, it was full of
forms and insurance policies. Under worked and
overpaid, he managed to alienate those around him
including myself. The more we tried to help him the
worse it seemed to become.

In the end, my stubborn efforts to bring sanity to

our wonderful little company, whether in the form of
regular meetings, budgets or just plain speaking to

38
each other in a civil tone eventually withered on the
vine and failed. I was overwhelmed by a surging sea
of turmoil, cultural indifference and plain old stress.

That all became crystal clear in the hospital that

winter night. In the weeks that followed I was
overcome by an internal mandate that change must
happen in my life. A deep will rose from a psychic
fissure that had opened bubbling up to my
consciousness. An innate powerful and personal
knowledge that the current situation could not go on.
An understanding made all the more powerful by the
growing financial pressure on the business and the
amounts of money that I was regularly lending it to
keep it going combined with overwhelming
resentment at how little effort he made to keep the
business alive.

I spoke to friends and business associates who I

trusted and worked on a strategy to untangle this
web. I was confused and focused at the same time.
How? Well, the need to leave was very clear but the
emotions I carried were so damn complicated. I
knew that one of us had to go and it would likely be
me. I realized that I would be leaving 10 years of
work and countless people that had become my
friends and confidantes behind.

With all of this stress I was in desperate need of

a vacation and fortunately one had been planned
long in advance for that Christmas break. Our holiday
was spent in Mexico as you might imagine it, a
fishing village which had not yet been destroyed by
rampant development on a bay that stretched as far

39
as you could see. Fish were plentiful as were the
hundreds of pelicans that followed them around, the
water was clean and blue. The sky was as well.
People were friendly and the twin curses of credit
cards and ATM’s had yet to reach the sleepy town of
La Manzanilla, Jalisco somewhere between Manzanilo
and Puerto Vallarta. As long as your rental car had
good enough shocks to clear the numerous speed
bumps you could get around easily. Unfortunately
ours didn’t and we scraped our way up and down the
roads.

At the same time enough American and

European refugees had found it so that you could
order a thin crust pizza, a chopped salad (yes with
radicchio, sorry) and a bottle of chardonnay while
you watched the somewhat limp waves. That is if
you got tired of grilled fish, cold beer, raw clams in
fresh salsa and chili flavored pineapple and mangoes
that were everywhere. The week was refreshing,
renewing and just plain fun.

New Year’s eve found us dancing in a bar of an

Italian restaurant at a table overlooking the Pacific.
As midnight struck we took off our shoes, walked out
into the still warm water and opened a bottle of
champagne, listening in vain for the cork to hit the
water. As I stood there in a large moving semi-hug
with my wife, family and friends I knew that I had the
strength and support around me to make the move.
I resolved to wait no longer. It was time to act.

40
 Chapter 7

But first, an important message from your foot.

Just as we left the beach that evening and began

our return to the restaurant I felt a sharp small sting
in the bottom of my right foot. As we were out in the
middle of the country the beach was really dark and
the restaurant was not much better in terms of light.
Bottom line, I couldn’t see what if anything was going
on with my foot. Sure it hurt but when I touched it I
didn’t feel the warmth of blood or any obvious
foreign objects sticking out. So I had yet another
(4th? 5th? No Sabe!) shot of tequila to celebrate the
New Year and the end the evening and we began the
long walk home up the dirt streets of the town.

A quick word about the tourist rental homes in

La Manzanilla. Most are located on very steep hills
and ravines. You need a 4 by 4 vehicle to drive to
them. When we arrived several days earlier, we
abandoned our already broken down Dodge sedan a
good ½ mile from our home where the road took a
turn for the worse in terms of how steep it was and
the number and severity of the rocks and ruts. That
is where it sat collecting leaves and dirt in the hot
Mexican sun.

The regular walk home from the beach was

equally challenging, culminating in an insanely steep
concrete driveway and a quick scramble across a
neighbors property (you certainly couldn’t call it a
yard) through more dirt and rocks before arriving at
our wrought iron gate where more stairs awaited

41
you.

When we got back to the house that evening I

couldn’t feel my foot or any other part of my body
between the alcohol and the long walk. We all
jumped in the pool and swam until everyone
gradually began to fall apart from exhaustion. My
foot had been completely forgotten. After drying off I
climbed the concrete stairs to our absurdly white
bedroom and fell quickly and immediately asleep in
the comfortable and stiff bed. I felt no pain. Not yet.

No fellow travelers, at least this time I didn’t

wake up in the next hour as with my stomach attack
of November. I made it to until just about sunrise
when the increasing pain in my right foot acted as a
highly effective alarm clock. Sadly, I knew just what
was going on before I saw it. After I made my way to
the bathroom, in the early morning light I found the
switch and turned on the light over the sink. I angled
my right foot up to see. I could see a slightly puffy
red circle with a black stinger barely protruding out
in the middle of it, sort of a perfect little target.
Bulls-eye Mr. Bee.

This was all bad news. Over the past few years I
had developed an increasingly bad histamine crazed
reaction to all insect bites, be they spider, mosquito
or in this case bee. The bites would swell up and
hang around for weeks like an unwanted relative
visiting for the holidays while I would dose them with
any remedy I could get my hands on just hoping the
swelling and itching discomfort would go away.

42
 I pulled out the stinger with my fingernails, also
bad in terms of having been there overnight and the
probability of infection. I washed the wound as best I
could with soap and water. I found an old very funky
band-aid in the bottom of my medicine kit and
applied it. It sort of stuck there, not that it would do
much good with all of the dirt in town and went back
to bed.

That day wasn’t so bad. The wound stayed

about the same size and there was no swelling. I
made a quick trip to the local Pharmacia where an
elderly woman in white smock sold me hydrogen
peroxide and some sort of antihistamine cream, the
best she had. Walking wasn’t too bad and I hoped
that maybe this time things wouldn’t go so badly.
Maybe the antihistamine creams were better outside
of the US. They had relaxed laws about testing
didn’t they? Maybe this stuff would work.

I should have known better.

The next day we had plans to visit another

beach about ½ hour away where there was
snorkeling and a number of beach front restaurants
that all seemed to specialize in simple grilled sea
food and spectacular home made flans. Despite
hobbling around a bit the sting seemed to be stable
so I went along for the ride.

It was very hot and dry that day. Feeling fine, I

joined the group went for a long snorkel around a
large set of rocks just off the coast where large
schools of fish dodged diving pelicans. It was a really

43
good dive and we stayed out for a long time.

When I got out of the water I pulled the blue fin

off of my foot. It hurt. A lot. It seemed that the
combination of the pressure and the rubber of the
fin, the bee sting and the ‘anti’histamine reaction
(giving you some relief and then making things
worse when they wore off) all came together in a
glorious symphony of discomfort and swelling. I had
trouble walking back to the restaurant where we had
stashed out stuff and collapsed into a red plastic
chair, pissed off, itchy, thirsty, uncomfortable and
hungry.

By the time our waitress came around I could

swear that the red circle had grown another inch in
diameter. I knew from experience that I had an
infection from the excessive throbbing and itching.
To add to the party, the bright red discoloration was
starting to creep up over the top of my foot. To my
eye it actually seemed to be moving at a pretty good
pace.

In our broken Spanish we showed the waitress

my red spotted foot as we tried to explain what was
going on. She seemed to understand and made the
international gesture that that she would call
someone.

Sure enough, not more than 10 minutes a young

Mexican doctor showed up in torn designer jeans a
tight white shirt and cowboy boots. While he didn’t
necessarily look the part (he looked much more like a
model for Zara), he spoke pretty good English and

44
had a black leather doctor’s bag. He asked me what
had happened and I explained it to him. He took one
look at my foot and told me it was probably infected.

When not staring at my friend Ed’s daughter or

asking her where she goes to college, he assured me
that if I didn’t take the shot he was now offering me
the infection would race up my leg eventually
threatening my life. That was a convincing argument
so I took the shot even though I had neglected to
watch him remove the needle from some sort of
sterile environment or whether the bottle of
medication he used was sealed. I had to trust the
situation even if we were sitting at a beach side
restaurant getting ready to eat shrimp tacos instead
of a doctor’s office, there just was no choice. He
could be shooting me full of anything. OK, he said,
the first one is going to hurt, but it will numb you out
for the bigger one. Great. He was correct, that shot
into the ball of my swollen foot was searing, but it
quickly went away as the area became pleasantly
numb and stopped itching.

He told me to stay off of the foot for a few days.

He gave me a prescription for antibiotics and made
some off color joke about acetomiphine, why most
guys take it and tequila that I didn’t totally
understand but got anyway on another more basic
level. I laughed. He also told me to take it easy and
not to walk much for the next few days. It was easy
to follow his advice after we made it home, I even
got a ride up to the house from some people we met
later that day. T he whole thing cost 250 pesos, the
equivalent of 25 bucks for a house call and the

45
injections.

I spent rest of the week by the pool with the leg

elevated and iced chasing the antibiotics with cold
cans of Modelo. Only on the day before we left did
the swelling go down to the point where I could walk
again without pain. This behavior pattern left me
with a lot of empty time to kill. While polite, my
family made it clear that this was January, there was
a beach to be enjoyed and it was warm out. I had
very little to argue to the contrary, so they left me
alone with my Ipod and the last 1/3 of a Michael
Chabon novel that I quickly devoured out of
boredom. I guess just don’t get the whole
detective/gumshoe genre.

After finishing the book it was only 3 pm and I

was bored. I had already eaten lunch, they were
bringing back the provisions for dinner so there was
nothing to cook. I was plenty bored and pretty
desperate for something to read.

I went back inside the house, up to the bedroom

and scrambled through Sweetie’s pile by her bed.
She had brought along some of her extensive library
of ‘YOU TOO CAN BE A SUCCESSFUL WOMAN IF ONLY
MEN WOULD LEAVE YOU ALONE’ type books (toxic
stuff in my opinion), a bunch of Cosmos and Elles.
Bottom line, no cable TV nothing to read except the
economist and that was worse than nothing at all on
a vacation (seriously, at that moment did I really care
about the jockeying political parties in South Korea or
the rising national debt of South Africa?). Maybe
there was something to read in the living room…I

46
hopped downstairs.

Vacation homes attract a random array of

orphaned books, mostly detective stories and
romances, typically paperbacks and rarely
interesting. So much to my surprise I found
something to read in the living room that must had
been left behind by a previous guest. A book about
meditation no less.

I kind of liked the title, ‘Wherever You Go There

You Are’. Felt like a cross between the Firesign
Theatre (you can’t get there from here) and Monty
Python. Could this meditation stuff have a sense of
humor?

Before this trip I had dabbled in so called Eastern

thought for years. I had taken a few yoga classes
but never with any consistency or success. Never
had the discipline or the desire. Still, as is my usual
way, I had learned enough to hold a conversation on
the subject and do a few basic poses. I did enjoy the
stretching, early one of the first mornings on the trip
I had scored bonus points and a wolf whistle from the
boss and mocking derision from the young ones
when I was spotted doing feeble attempts at sun
salutes on the upstairs patio in my gym shorts.

But reading the book was like reading a foreign

language. Bhuddas and Buddhism? Mindfulness?
Awareness? What we he talking about? He kept
taking the most simple concepts and making them
seem so complex and then saying that they were
simple. Between the heat and the circular logic my

47
eyes began to close and that is where they found
me, asleep on the living room couch book in hand.
One thing about the book certainly was true.
Whatever he was talking about it sure relaxed me
that afternoon.

48
 Chapter 8
The door shuts like velvet on foam.

When I returned to San Francisco the next week

and thus to work the next Monday, the business felt
utterly and completely dead. Some people were still
on vacation and the rest who did show up were
trying to look busy because there wasn’t much to do.
The production line was down to two days a week.
The workers spent their time waiting for shoes to
drop and looking small. The business had come to
standstill, a void that completely lacked life energy
and I was no longer willing to play quarterback when
we had no line, no receivers and no running backs.

After perfunctory hellos, I sat down at my desk

to catch up on what hadn’t happened over the
holiday season. Hitting QuickBooks, I checked the
numbers just to confirm what I already knew, we had
a lackluster December, normally the strongest month
of the year, down from the year before. January was
traditionally a weak month and February would be
worse. There were no new accounts in the pipeline,
no new products under development and nothing to
look forward to except for additional pressure from
our creditors and calls for me to lend the company
more money. It was cold inside the building and out.

All of this reinforced the decision I had made. If

ever there was a time to pull the trigger this was it.
If I was going to make the change I had to do it now
before things just got worse. I could not wait any

49
longer for my sake and for that of the business.

I broke the news to my partner the next week in

the conference room on a Tuesday right before
lunch. I shut the doors and pulled him away from his
safety net of the Internet where he was no doubt
looking at luxury vacations or something else he
desired but could not afford. I told him that we
needed to talk.

I kept the conversation simple, there were

differences between us that we both knew could not
be resolved and were continuing to grow. They were
hurting the business and could no longer be
overcome especially in view of the way the company
was performing. And most importantly, the business
could no longer afford the two of us, our
management structure was ridiculously top heavy
(and being in sales mode I left out the part about
how only one of those two managers actually
worked). One of us had to leave the company before
things became even worse. I told him to look at it
like it a divorce but between business partners
instead of a couple.

He didn’t laugh or smile or show worry. In fact

he acted quite the contrary. He took the news like a
call from a bill collector with no show of visible
concern. Perhaps he quickly concluded that not
working with his “conscience” might be a good thing.
Did he feel some kind of relief at the chance of finally
being set free to do what he wanted whenever? Was
he still pissed about us cutting off his Amex? Or
maybe he saw this as some kind of opportunity?

50
Maybe he was just plain exhausted. Who knows? I
hadn’t been able to figure out his behavior for years
and this development wasn’t going to give rise to
some new illumination. He certainly didn’t resist and
when he finally did speak he asked me what I had in
mind in terms of a price.

I replied that I didn’t know yet. I did know that it

wasn’t worth it to hire an outside company to
evaluate what the business was worth like the big
boys do, there just wasn’t that much money at stake
and we couldn’t afford it anyway. I asked for two
weeks to come up with a range of numbers for us to
consider. I let him know that I was going to ask a
former board member serve as an intermediary
between us and to help keep the process moving
forward.

So over the next few days I did research on

comparable companies and dug into the numbers
and found that they didn’t matter. As is usually the
case with small business, it really came down to what
would be enough for one of us to step aside, keeping
in mind that one of the two owned the vast majority
of the business.

Back in the conference room less than two

weeks later I put a range (high to low) of values on
the table that either could use to buy out the other.
After looking them over briefly (numbers were never
of much use to him) he said rather unemotionally,
“Look, for me the problem is not in the numbers. We
both worked hard to build the business and should
get something for it. The problem is that I won’t ever

51
sell. My name is on the business. I can never leave.
I am too old to do anything else but you can start
another life.”

After a moment I told him that this conversation

wouldn’t solve anything. I knew that I could borrow
the money to fund a deal, but where would he ever
get the money to buy me out? He laughed and
replied “Of course I don’t have the money to do that.
But I have something in mind.” He then smiled.
“What if I found someone to buy you?”

I thought about it for less than a moment and

replied that where the money came from didn’t
matter, if we could work out a deal that would be fine
with me. I asked him who he had in mind. He told
me that there was someone who was interested in
buying into the company for a long time and that we
would set up a meeting.

He introduced me to a buyer the next week at

the office. He was quiet and asked basic questions
about the business and why I wanted to leave, all
very basic. He also asked for basic financial
information and then was gone. For two weeks I
heard nothing and waited in a quandary over what
was going on.

Finally he surfaced and asked for another

meeting to talk price. Much to my surprise, despite
the minimal interaction that we had, the negotiations
were done in less than an hour. We shook hand on
the final deal in the parking lot.

52
 All during the negotiations I was strangely calm
and focused on one thing, just getting the deal done.
I realized that if I did not leave the business soon it
was going to kill me and that was a powerful
motivator. I didn’t flinch when he counter offered or
at the eventual deal we made. Cutting the price was
fine, getting anything was a whole lot better than
being stuck with a chunk of the always mounting
corporate debt and my health on the line.

The final weeks were a blur of cleaning files,

educating staff and saying goodbye to the people I
had met along the way. I made sure that everything
was in place and could be found easily wondering if
anyone would take the time to look at a file in depth
in the future.

As the corporate secretary I even had to cancel

my own shares and issue the new ones to the buyer.

So that is it. One day you can’t delay it any

longer. The files are clean. The hands have been
shaken and the hugs exchanged. And then you are
there. Just as with so many huge moments in life,
you look back at something that has meant so much
to you at some point and you close the door.

One morning in July my commute changed from

the ritual of crossing the Bay Bridge to climbing the
stairs up to the home office. I found myself in a
classic good news bad news situation. The good
news was that I had left my company before the

53
recession started. The bad news was that I had left
my company before the recession started. I found
that out very quickly.

54
 Chapter 9

The eye of the storm is

strangely quiet but still really windy.

As I looked out from my excruciatingly clean

desk through the unevenly cherry stained wooden
windows and out onto the traffic on Monterey Avenue
that first morning back at home the sky was grey,
dark and menacing. A cold wind was blowing and
the sycamore trees outside of the house swayed.
Prematurely fallen green and brown leaves blew up
the street giving it a feeling of autumn and I actually
thought about turning on the heater, something
completely out of character. Yes, it was just another
typical Bay Area “summer” day in early July.

Staring ahead sitting at my desk chair with a

strong black cup of coffee and wondering just what
the fuck had happened, I found myself in a new and
stunningly unfamiliar spot, looking out my front
windows at the commuters heading towards San
Francisco instead of joining in with them. Today I
would not be taking the bus. There would be no
verbal interaction with the riders I used to pick up so
that I could take the car pool lane into the City and
no bridge toll to pay if I didn’t. No Bart ride, no lift
from a co-worker who happened to call earlier that
morning. Just a lot of no’s on the menu with a lot
more no nothing planned for this day.

I felt like a newborn child that had been hurled

55
off of a cliff.

As I punched up the old Dell it whirred and

clicked itself into life like something out of the Star
Wars movie and the bizarre start up screens of
Windows XP creaked into life I realized that it too
wouldn’t be making the cut much longer. At least
buying a new computer would give some thing to do
and a treat to look forward to. I had no idea how
important the computer was to the home office life.

Finally, after a long and excruciatingly slow

warm up period, I opened Explorer out of habit and
then Outlook. I read the little e-mail that came in
that morning, exclusively ads and spam before
trashing this pile of junk.

There were two phones upstairs, the cell and the

home phone. But the phone wasn’t ringing and I
knew that they would not be for some time. The dog
was sound asleep downstairs curled up into a warm
white ball, the wife had left for work an hour ago, the
‘kids’ were where they were supposed to be, with
summer jobs in their respective college towns of
Boston and San Diego. And there I was. For the first
time in I don’t even know how long I sat alone at a
desk at 8:53 in the am wondering just what the fuck
to do with myself with a day that loomed before me
with attitude of a troll watching children crossing a
fantasy bridge with a big appetite and a twitching left
eye.

See this is what happens. When you leave a

career, whether in a small entrepreneurial business

56
or a larger more corporate venue, you leave much
more behind than just the business life. You leave
structure. You leave habits, familiarity. You jump off
a diving board and diver into a pool of air that has no
walls no floor and no ceiling. Everything suddenly
becomes nothing.

At work you develop the creature habits that

define your day. Where you stop for breakfast or
don’t, what coffee do you drink to start the morning.
What is for lunch and often who is having lunch with
whom? Emails come in routinely that need to be
answered, phone calls bring a barrage of inquiries
what’s why’s and how’s. Even when times are shitty
there are challenges to overcome, especially for
those of us that relish a fight and don’t back away
easy. These are all taken for granted.

But mostly there is the constant inflow and

outflow of stimulation. Even as slow as our business
had been there was still plenty going on, maybe not
so pleasant but plenty intense. And when the
stimulation stops there is a void in front of you that is
impossible to fill. Each and every interaction that
occurs in a given work day allows you to define
yourself, you read yourself through the interaction
with others. When that feedback suddenly stops you
don’t know what to do first or where to turn. As the
days pass you feel like you are punching the Pillsbury
doughboy in his fat white rolly polly stomach. As you
hit him over and over again he just absorbs every
blow you can muster, laughs at you and asks “Thank
you sir, may I have another?” Then he winks.

57
 No, there is no manual for the newly
unemployed that you can turn to. There is no way
for you to head downtown to the financial district
looking to find a quick work fix. You won’t be
hanging out on the corner of Montgomery and
California staring out at guys and girls rushing by in
their work suits with your hands trembling mumbling
“Hey man, where can I score a 4 week consulting
contract. I got it bad this morning. I need some
work…brother can you spare a deal”

To make matters worse, I actually was foolish

enough to believe that I would get another job soon
after I left. Although I though I would have minded
taking some time off, something that I had not done
since I was 12, I wanted to get back into the work
force more than anything. Wasn’t this the great
chance to build on my career? To take the skills I
had acquired the knowledge that I had gained and
my real word experience and move into a healthy
company. You know, make my mark, and maybe
even do some good for the world along the way.
Maybe not.

These feelings were made all the worse by what

happened the week before I became one of the
hordes of the newly unemployed. Through a friend I
heard about Vice President of Sales position with
another gourmet food company in the East Bay. The
product was very high end and the target market
was the same that I had been working in but a bit
more corporate. I went through three grueling yet
funny interviews with the owner, who was the
youngest person (28) who had ever interviewed me

58
for a job who cursed freely during our talks. All of
this happened during the last few weeks that I was
still employed and I was on a cloud. I could see it
already happening. I would ask for a few weeks
vacation and would start working at the end of the
month tan relaxed and ready to work.

Maybe not. Maybe I should have known I was

screwed when he told me that I reminded him of this
father, who he insisted that he loved and respected
after I blanched fairly visibly at the comment. I knew
intuitively that not many of us would actually want to
work for our Dad, least of all me, but I chose to
ignore the obvious warning sign. I wound up scoring
a bridesmaid result, came in number 2 and got a
thank you and bottle of Organic Hazelnut Oil for my
efforts.

Notwithstanding this result I actually thought

this was good news. I wasn’t worried at all about
finding work at all. After all I had just missed getting
another job. There had to be more out there for me.
Right? Right?

Wrong.

If ever there was an ASSumption** (**Assume

stands for makes and ass out of u and me) that I
made about the near future of my life that had to be
it. Who knew that within weeks of leaving work the
United States economy would reveal that behind the
curtains it was cratering faster than our company’s
sinking credit score. I wouldn’t see a sniff of another
job interview, much less a whiff of the odor of a job,

59
for another 6
5 months.

But back to that morning. Eventually I gave up

on the computer and headed downstairs to put
breakfast together. The dog didn’t bother to wake
up or even move as I walked by. It was if I wasn’t
even there.

All through that morning that I noticed that there

was a tightness that gripped my body. This was not
a pain but a sort of tight rod that started at the
bottom of my intestine and held the inside of my
body hostage. This feeling, call it say anxiety with a
dash of impending despondency and touch of dare I
say a wee bit of feeling sorry for myself as a garnish
would be my good buddy for the next 6 months. We
would get to know each other real well.

And this was supposed to be a great day of joy,

liberation, the moment that I had been waiting for. I
should have felt alive, excited and optimistic. I
should have been celebrating, but no one wants to
on a cold Tuesday morning. No, instead I just felt
plain numb.

But if anything I am not a quitter. So after

breakfast it was back upstairs. I decided to make
myself a little plan. A business plan for myself. Yes, I
decided that this what I needed a plan to get myself
going, to get out there do stuff and most of all get
out of the house. After all, I had written countless
business plans for others. I knew how to organize a
business how to establish order create budgets

60
spreadsheets in Excel with almost functioning
macros, yes I would create a plan for myself.

I opened up Word and looked at that blank

screen. I started to type on the blank page. Personal
Business Plan. Yes that sounded very good. Really
good, hey, maybe this could be the beginning of a
new business! Yes, writing personal business plans!
Well what it really was the beginning of was just the
first of a host of business ideas that I had over the
rest of the year that would go absolutely nowhere.

So I sat there and I wondered where do I begin.

And I sat. And I waited. And the screen stayed
blank. After a few more moments I punched back
into Explorer and was on my way to ESPN.com to see
what was new in Sports. Hey, the Giants, on a
Midwest swing, were playing the reds at 4:15 pm.
Maybe I could take the dog for a walk. And what was
in the fridge for lunch?

That was as far as the plan got that day and the
next day and for many weeks thereafter.

61
 Chapter 10

Back where we started from;

here we go round again
(thanks Raymond Douglas D.)

Looking back on the first month or two of that

summer, I now realize that I accomplished an
unrequited and undeniable sum total of fuck all zero.
That is not to say I did nothing. Quite the contrary;
my days came and went one after another. They all
kind of blurred. But when look back at that time I
accomplished very very little.
Along with my fellow unemployed brothers and
sisters, we lined up single file to look for work only to
realize that we had become the collective road kill of
our crashing economy. This zombie life was bad
enough. But unemployment alone wasn’t the only
poison that this time period had in mind for us. That
wouldn’t do. Not only did we have no jobs and no
money coming in, we got a real bonus handed to us:
watching the stock market crash daily as our long
planned and hoped for retirements plummeted
downwards like pigeon full of buckshot and blew out
what was left of our remaining hope. Good times.
Good times.

Going against the advice I had given repeatedly

to my children I didn’t rely upon some of my old
sources of inner strength to get me through this lost
time. I didn’t have a spiritual revelation or start

62
listening to Coltrane and early Miles again. Didn’t go
back to my old heroes like Raymond Douglas D and
Peter T. and Thomas P. Didn’t finish that photo
project that I had been meaning to work on for so
many years, left the images piling up in digital
purgatory once again. Didn’t organize the photos of
the kids spilling out of box after box, didn’t use the
empty waiting albums. Didn’t get back on the
bicycle which sat faithfully waiting for me in the
garage. Didn’t start running again. Didn’t go back to
that yoga class that I tried once. Didn’t get my shit
together uh no no no no. Not at all. Couldn’t seem
to get motivated. I wonder why….

I did not know it at the time but I was in a state

of shock. Only in retrospect can one see what had
happened. For starters, my male pride had been
kicked in the groin and then stepped on. From the
time we are little boys, men are taught the
importance of making money. Women are given this
lesson too, but it is different for us. Making coin
becomes an integral part of our guy identity. So not
only had life blown apart my day to day temporal
structure, my masculine pride had hitchhiked out of
town.

At the same time; while I was thankful that one

of us was working, it hurt to see her leaving for the
office on mornings when my day was going to be like
so many others in that summer, spent just passing
the time and holding on tight to myself to maintain
sanity. Yes, I took that precious swath of time that
had been gift wrapped for me and left it sitting on
the credenza not knowing where to look for the

63
package must less to open it.

But I couldn’t afford to admit to myself what was

going or how I felt or more likely I just plain didn’t
know what to do with it. Yes, on the surface I
seemed fine. Yes, I made sure that I got out of bed
every morning before 9 and that I walked the dog
every afternoon sometimes for hours on end/
enjoying the tremendous variety of the Bay Area
landscape, hitting the trails I knew well in Marin and
Tilden park; listening to the i-shuffle and wondering
in amazement how it seemed to mock my moods,
enough New Order, Lucinda Williams and Portishead
songs already.

So what else did I do? I watched a whole lot of

sports, found myself looking forward to baseball
games and for the first time that I can recall, topped
that with a solid dose of meaningless television
(mostly Food Network and comedy central) to pass
the time and to forget about the rock solid tension in
my stomach and body that just would not go away.
Period.

Most days felt just plain dull. Nothing bad was

happening but nothing good either. Everything
appeared to be fine until you dug underneath it and
found the pools of stagnant waters.

Many days I relied on plain old physical labor to

get me through these strange times. I introduced
myself to the garage for the first time in a year. I
found it smelling of rat piss and really a mess. Spent
the hours cleaning, sorting, and then cleaning again.

64
Sorted through files from the past and tried not to
linger. Sat in the sun for hours and shredded
documents of times and lives past as quickly as I
could. Then when the shredder would overheat I
would stop and space out.

As the summer passed I had a lot of time to

think of lots of business ideas that went absolutely
nowhere. Here are some of the real winners that I
actually recall, god knows there are plenty more that
are buried deep in landfills and erased electrons
somewhere. Let’s see; open a gourmet taco truck
that fused Mexican and traditional Jewish deli
recipes. Moishe Gonazales. Can’t you see it, pastrami
carnitas on rye tortillas. Sweet tortilla blintzes stuffed
with ricotta cheese. I shared this idea with my
friends. Their opinion: Ummmm….maybe not. I said
if a Korean taco truck could make it why not this?
Their answer? Spice.

Some of the others? Three months would be

spent exploring what it would take to create a
gourmet ice cream truck and take advantage of the
burgeoning street food scene. But the research
came up with immediate problems. For one thing,
why start it in the Bay Area where it is never warm?
Where there is a new gourmet ice cream parlor or
strangely named and sour tasting yogurt stand
opening on every corner? At least I learned what 16
percent butterfat really meant and got to travel to
New York to check their street food scene and bury a
weekend that winter in thin crust pizzas and
Northern Italian reds.

65
 What if we opened a café that sold waffles? Had
a great name too. “Waffeltown”. But it felt old
fashioned and way too risky for me to pull the trigger
when every retail project on earth seemed to start at
a minimum investment of 300K. And that issue cut
across the board on every retail project that I looked
at. Still have the antique waffle irons that I bought
on Ebay that week.

Every retail project came down to the same

question: Where was that sort of money going to
come from? A loan against the house, the last
remaining great asset? Take more risk in an already
high risk world? Start a project whose numbers
didn’t pencil from the get go unless you hermit
crabbed your way into someone else’s failure.

But enough about food for a moment. There

were other mismatched and misplaced ideas to
explore.

In a thoroughly stupid gambit I was amateurish

enough to think I could outwit Google’s algorithm
police by searching for corporate websites like
Western Union and buying ads for competitive
products with low bids and similar names like
Western Union travel or Western Union Flowers.
Smart huh? It worked for one day. Found quickly
that Google doesn’t let anyone play games in their
sandbox when they marked up the ad cost from 3
cents to 3 dollars. Probably broke some trademark
laws too. Ideas so convoluted I can’t remember what
I did or why I did it.

66
 When not trying to start a business I spent the
time looking at those other ideas I had when I left my
job. Remember that ideal; trying to give back to the
community by getting a non-profit job even if it paid
very little? Me and every other unemployed business
person over 50 had the same idea. Get in line and
take a number, we need your money not you was the
answer loud and clear to us. We are overwhelmed
with your calls. Take a number. And volunteer. That
was the one idea that held on and was something I
would later do.

Then if the morning was really looking grim

there was always the clincher, for a really good time
let’s try looking for work! Is there anything more
degrading to a recently unemployed person over 50,
or of any age for that matter, with ‘senior’
management skills than looking for work in the midst
of a recession? And take that word senior out of your
resume if it is somehow still there. It no longer
means experienced….now it just plain means old.

Oh the exquisite pleasures of trying to find a job

in the modern world. The application process for
corporate jobs is designed so that no one will ever
speak with you. You fill out complex forms that are
more complicated than setting up a bank account,
each seeking scads of personal information and
history, all for jobs that you have little or no chance
of ever getting and never generating even the
courtesy of a form email reply. After how many tries
do you just stop caring about them? It doesn’t take
long.

67
 And how about those message boards? Tired of
the Craigslist shuffle? I know they do a service for
job seekers, but how many find themselves addicted
to checking those lists several times a day to find
nothing new and nothing relevant to your search
over and over again no matter how deep you did into
the site.

Monster? Worthless beyond entry level

positions. Ops ladder? Really only for ops guys.
Career Builder? A play for you to pay. A word of
advice. Keep the searches down to once a week on a
concentrated basis and don’t waste your time and
subject yourself to this battering.

Even though you know better, being persistent

you still check them out, exploring each and ever
lead going down the road to find it leads once again
to that same end. You apply for jobs that you will
never get or that barely interest you just to keep
sharp. And as the economy would worsen your
motivation would decrease at the competition
increased. As Neil Young put it so well, ‘Everybody
knows this is nowhere’.

A funny thing happens when you stop earning

money. Instead of earning new money you begin to
spend your time figuring out how you are saving
money by not working. One bored afternoon I
actually calculated that I was saving several hundred
dollars a month by not working. There was the
commute (an easy 10 bucks with gas and toll),
lunches (another 10) and dry cleaning (100 a month).
I was up to 700 already and hadn’t done a thing.

68
That was my “accomplishment”. I didn’t share it.

These shadow days were never even remotely

close to being satisfying for me. After trying not to
watch the clock and waiting until 12 for lunch I would
eat quickly without much pleasure reading the NY
times, having finished the comicle by the time
breakfast was half way done. Afternoons were adrift
with little to do and less to look forward to. I would
end the day at 6 pm in the highly unnatural and
uncomfortable role of waiting for le sweetie to come
home (and hard worker that she was that rarely
happened), deciding whether it was time to hit that
second Margarita with the stiff anxious physical bar
in my body unwilling to back down despite the Blue
Agave’s best shot. I would stand there on the back
deck feeling like some sort of demented
househusband with a three-day growth of beard
wearing unchanged sweats. Romantic image isn’t it?

And did I imagine it, but to me it seemed that ze

sweets was out more than usual during those days.
Maybe it was just that I noticed more, but I couldn’t
help wondering if she was enjoying the work driven
social life or somewhat eager to escape the brooding
presence of an unemployed bored and less than
happy husband at the casa.

This was a time of paradox. No matter how

many times you told yourself that you have health,
some money in the bank and a solid family, it was
not enough to overcome the sheer acid effect of too
much time by your lonesome in a newly unstructured
environment. I thought a lot about what had gone

69
wrong? Was it the pessimism of the economy? Gas
pricing? Why did it seem that so many bad stories
were permeating our lives? The stories I heard from
my friends:

“My grandson’s melanoma is back again in his brain.

My daughter is in rehab again.
Did you hear the story about so and so. Yeah they
are finished. He moved out last week.
No, they declared bankruptcy, the business is
finished.
And what about the kids? Well they aren’t taking it
well.
Yes, dropped dead playing tennis, right on the
court”.

This was brought to the forefront of my thoughts

when I went to check my bank balance one afternoon
and discovered that some asshole had gotten a hold
of my checking account and pulled some 5,000
(actually 4900 as 5000 is some kind of reporting
threshold) out of my bank account electronically
sending a payment to GMAC. And the bank,
although very professional and courteous, they did a
really decent job, said there is no way to stop this.
As things become more electronic fraud become so
much easier. There are rats everywhere, trying to
get to your money and your goodies in the garage.
They were right about not being to stop them. Three
weeks later they hit us again, this time $4700 paid to
a bookstore at a University in Nova Scotia (and just
what did the buy with that money? 8,000
Sweatshirts? Free books for everybody?).

70
 Our egotistical but naive generation thought it
would all be different for us but it wasn’t turning out
that way. All of our hopes and desires, the skills that
we thought would make our world and our kids lives
better were unable to evade the sheer idiocy of the
current world and the overpowering reality of our
exploding genetic pools.

Many afternoons I just wondered why bother.

Why put out the energy. Why not just stay home
with the 1080 resolution 181 channels picture in a
picture and nothing to watch. You stay there
passively waiting for something to happen watching
the ice in the margarita glass melt.

That is until some thing changes. And here is the

good news. That was it. That was the low point. I
was lucky, those weeks in early summer were the
bottom of it all for me.

While this time period seems remotely funny

looking back it is only funny when you are looking
back. Day to day it was a struggle to keep your
spirits positive. To not feel sorry for yourself was an
effort. To keep positive was a battle. That left little
time and energy left over for feelings like joy or
pleasure or growth. This was a time for keeping your
shit together for fear of looking down into the
personal abyss and where it inevitably led for too
long. This was a time of blind faith that it would get
better where you just hold on to the emotional
toboggan for dear life.

So what happens at a bottom? Is there an

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epiphany? A moment where the skies part and a
white haired Monty Python like blue eyed god-head
spoke to me? Did someone hand me a gold key or
open a door marked here?

No. Not really. It would be so wonderful if that

was the case, it would all be so much easier. I could
point to that moment and say “Eureka, there it is!” I
would have a neat little trick to share that would sell
a million books and make a million people happy.
You could stop reading in a few pages and change
your life too.

But there wasn’t one. There isn’t one. That is

the very essence of the journey that I began in those
bottom moments. As I emerged I realized over time
that is not about the clarity and hope of a crisp
morning sunrise or learning to take your time and
really lean into the downward dog. It is not about
controlling your breathing or your mind and setting
out on new adventures no matter what they are. It is
not about the smile on a child or the loping gallop of
a hunting dog in full stride on a beach.

It is about all of them. It is about how you greet

each moment and what you do with them. It is about
opening your eyes to what is all around you. That is
where the journeys really begin. One day I realized
that I had gotten off of the couch and started
moving on. And I didn’t notice that it had happened
much less the day on which it occurred.

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 Chapter 11

Papa Ooh Mow Mow?

Uh uh. Shboom Shbhoom!~

Just as there was no blinding epiphany at the

beginning of this journey (other than my wife
threatening to throw my ass off of the couch, which
is pretty damned epiphanous in and of itself) there
was no specific moment when suddenly things got
better that summer or when I could touch my chin
and elbows to the floor when stretching my body
across my legs (that still has not happened). Things
happened gradually over those first two months post
employment in a series of small steps so much so
that they were barely noticeable as they occurred.
And there were plenty of pratfalls and backward
motion to guarantee that any movements forward
were haphazard at very best and often painfully
nowhere. Illuminated and illustrative paths did not
open up to me regularly, chasms of knowledge did
not reveal themselves, the clouds or more aptly said,
the fog, did not part, it stayed low and close to the
ground letting the sun in from time to time only to
slowly crawl back as the evening came.

Instead of focusing on a search for mental

peace, in my typical impatient hunt and peck
research style, I kept trying different aspects of
meditation to see if they worked without taking the
time to fully understand just what it was that I was
doing. That is the same approach I used with

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computers, software and electronic devices. I mean
seriously, who takes the time to read the manuals? I
got better results from Microsoft Office.

As you may remember from the beginnings of

this adventure, my odyssey into this world of Eastern
studies began with a clandestine afternoon raid on La
Sweetie’s bookshelf for some research the day after
she lit me up on the couch in Chapter 1. The first
steps that I took into the world of meditation and
mindfulness over those next several weeks into were
worse for me than studying French as a kid. The
terms and concepts that I struggled to understand
were as foreign as the passé imparfait. I believe that
they remain just as difficult for most men.

But back to that afternoon and my little book

raid. I had always been curious about what she was
up to when she closed her eyes and began to
breathe deeply and why she loved meditation so
much. The subject seemed so foreign to her
character. Yet it actually seemed to relax her. And
relaxation was something that I really desperately
needed. So what was this peace and harmony stuff
all about? I needed to find out and this was the time.

When the thought came to me to raid her

bookshelf I got pretty excited. Let’s admit it, there is
something guilty and potentially titillating about
going through your wife’s stuff, even if it is just her
book collection. Celebrating the moment, I opened a
cold Trummer Pils for additional mental clarity,
grabbed a glass, went upstairs and started thumbing
through the bookshelves on her side of the bedroom

74
sitting cross legged on the carpet and ready to
receive some real knowledge.

Well, I wish there was something good to report

back about, some hidden nest of European sex books
in brown paper covers with lurid instructions or an
annotated copy of the Kama Sutra or maybe just
something plain funny. No such luck. Almost all of
the books were boring, or worse, and not surprisingly
directed towards women, their personal struggles
and their issues (mainly with men which by default
included me). Lacking both the estrogen levels and
the interest, I gratefully skipped over them quickly
without much thought. To me they were about as
exciting as a bowl of warm sour milk on a hot humid
day.

Finally on the bottom shelf I found a number of

books that dealt with what seemed to be Eastern
thought and I opened a few up, started skimming
and then dumped them in a pile by my side of the
bed. And that was it, the journey East was on.

Throughout the rest of late summer and into

early fall I gave this challenge my best. Most
importantly, I made sure that the books were left out
around the bedroom for her to see. I read about
mindfulness and meditation daily and tried really
really hard to make it work. I actually completed
several chapters in several books*, some good, some
not so. I didn’t finish any of the books; barely got
past the first few chapters in most.

**a recommend list of tolerable texts appears at the end of MHO

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 What got to me almost immediately was the
tone. These authors and their work were ethereal,
their advice seemed to float, to speak to people from
a different world and not to me. Now this is
understandable to a great extent because the people
who wrote these books are ethereal. They are
monks, Phd’s in philosophy, guys who had spent
years in vows of silence sitting on wooden benches
watching leaves fall and grass grow and loving it. Of
course they were spacey. The problem with these
texts and these messages is that I wasn’t. I was
stuck here on earth, unemployed and bored.

So I read on out of stubbornness but not joy. I

would follow their instructions to the letter. I found a
comfortable place to sit upstairs looking out at the
rooftops of our neighborhood and a cushion to sit on.
This was supposed to my “regular” spot and dutifully
I went there day after day, morning after morning.

I sat on my comfy cushion. I tucked it right up

under my butt and I sat there. And I followed those
instructions. I tried hard to breathe in and to breathe
out and to focus on my breath and to just be. I tried
to count to 25 breaths. I didn’t make it past 10 most
times. I tried to keep my eyes closed. They wouldn’t
stay that way popping open despite my strongest
efforts. I tried to keep my legs crossed. I couldn’t
because my back hurt and my ankles rebelled.

I mixed in a variety of Yoga classes looking for

one that clicked. I wondered if it was just my interest
or whether Berkeley had been taken over by Yoga

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studios, all with slightly different ways of torturing
your body and contorting your limbs. There names
were as confusing as the poses, Hatha, Ashtanga, I
couldn’t really see the difference between them.
They hurt just the same. I never went to two in a
row.

But my problem was way beyond the physical

issues of yoga. The biggest single hurdle that I could
not overcome was mental. Simply put, I could not
control my thoughts during my early attempts at
meditation. Some days I would feel like I was making
progress for a moment or two. Then I would blow up
again. My meditation practice had the consistency of
the 49’ers offensive line play. I recall no
Buddhist/Eastern feelings ‘of the moment’ during this
period of any sort. None. Everything felt forced,
artificial, discounted and disconnected.

As I look back on these first attempts to calm my

mind several things are now clear. One big one:
Those of us with ‘active’ minds (back then they
called you an excitable kind of guy or Mr. Smarty
Pants. These days they put labels on people like or
he has a short attention span or is a.d.d. What I call
it is ICD or intelligent concentration disorder.) are not
the best candidates for a meditation practice,
especially so when you start this work. Our minds cry
out to be entertained, and when they aren’t, they are
on to the next thing without hesitation.

It is only much later in the

mindfulness/meditation process that we learn that
while we may not seem to be the best candidates for

77
this stuff; for those of us who crave constant
stimulation, meditation provides us with the chance
to turn that switch off for the first time in our lives
without chemical intervention. And yes, for you
doubters out there who selfishly hang to those old
habits, it is worth learning to control that particular
switch in this way. It helps us to manage our toxic
quest for more more and then a little more with
benefits instead of side effects.

For so many reasons that I have alluded to

above and many more that became clear later on,
the traditional approach to meditation did not work
for me. I understand that only in hindsight. That
realization only came months later after the process
finally began to work. I want you to understand it
now so that you don’t loose faith as we navigate the
tepid ponds and falling oak leaves along the way.
There is a goal and it is and was worth the effort.

So here is what I believe was impeding my

progress. When I tried to meditate I worked hard to
block out my daily mundane thoughts just like they
wanted me to. But no matter how hard or long I
concentrated I could not empty my mind. My mental
cache was full and I guess that I liked it that way. I
was way too afraid or maybe just lacked the mental
command to empty it.

Now I will admit without hesitation that when I

began this study I wanted to be like all the other
yogis and little Buddha’s that I read about. They
looked so cool sitting cross-legged on mountain tops
by roaring streams and many of them were actually

78
ripped (this was something that really confused me).
The women yoga instructors were lithe, make up free
and beautiful, they spoke clearly and strongly. The
men could stand on their head in one quick motion
and stay there. They were odd but impressive
nonetheless.

Deep down I yearned for my mind to be a pure

wisp of nothing like theirs, conscious of the world
without judging it. I strived to become aware,
present, to be fully engaged in the moment; clean,
clear and pure. I tried to be aware, to be present, to
be mindful** of every moment. I wanted to sit and
say to myself, “Look a leaf. Wow what a blue blue
sky. Gee there is the sun”. I wanted everything to
be appreciated beautiful, meaningful. And I did not
see the world that way at all. Still don’t.

Mindfulness is defined as a calm awareness of one's body

functions, feelings, content of consciousness, or consciousness itself.

This is not to say that those sorts of moments

aren’t pretty, seriously, they are. But they were
never enough for me. I wanted to focus on
something more meaningful, more central to my life.
I know now that I was searching for am inner peace
that I could understand.

So there I was most mornings, trying

desperately to think of nothing with my head full of
everything. This is not to say that the old time
sages didn’t recognize our mental tendency to
wander. They called this the monkey mind, hopping
from subject to subject, from tree to tree. The
solution that they offered was more discipline, more

79
breathing, more meditation, more of the same things
that already were not working for me. I kept beating
my head against this soft wall of down pillows
without results during those two months.

Trying to think about nothing did have two

consistent effects on me. More often than not I
would give up. On some occasions I would actually
become very still. Then I would fall quickly to sleep.
Neither result was very satisfying or calming
although I am the first to admit the sleep felt good.

My frustrations boiled over about week 4 into

this process. I had been hitting the books hard all
week and had finally learned to hold a lotus position
for more than 2 minutes. This was especially
important for show and tell the night before. Fingers
touching in a nice round oval, I made sure that she
found me in the upstairs bedroom that evening cross
legged and eyes closed and breathing slowly right
after I turned off the Giants-Mets game as she pulled
into the driveway. Even she who is rarely conscious
when she comes home from work caught this
surprise act and I got rewarded later with more than
a smile.

The next afternoon found me back in the lotus

trying desperately to shut down my mind which was
lost in a death spiral of dwindling income
exacerbated by a new found well of major expense
that had reared its head a week before.

The challenge that I was now facing was a

leaking upstairs shower. Just like us, home

80
maintenance can only be deferred so long before
trouble sets in. I had known about this problem for
years, tackling it with a dazzling array of caulks,
sealants and other stalling efforts that brought me
many years of extra use. But these fixes were only
good for so long and I knew that the shower base,
something I later got to know was the “pan” had
finally cracked, sending a slow but steady stream of
water leaking down into the studs that support the
second floor each time we showered and then
soaking the ceiling of my son’s closet. The ceiling
which was now brown, grey and black, cracking and
turning really really ugly in colors that spelled out a
simple three letter word every homeowner dreads.
Rot. That horrifying combination of a dank sulfurous
smell and a spreading stain that looked like a tie dye
made by Nostradamus and gave way when I poked it
with my finger made it clear to me that home
remedies were now over. This was clearly beyond
the usual course of cortisone and antibiotics, surgery
would be required.

This was not a good subject for meditation but

one that kept seeping into my thoughts and wouldn’t
go away. How do you relax your mind when the
shower has cracked and you can’t fix it and the only
solution is to hire a contractor and your income
stream has stopped? That was a challenge. A
challenge that overwhelmed me that day.

So I gave up, stopped breathing in breathing out

and got off of the cushion and just stared out the
window for a while. I thought to myself that this shit
was going nowhere. I was becoming an actor, using

81
the appearance of meditating to make peace at
home and not believing in a word of it. I would tell
her the truth, that the meditation wasn’t going well,
that underneath that serene poses I was frustrated
angry and bordering on depressed with a steel rod
running from my gut to my brain that impaled me
24/7 and wouldn’t let me sleep through a single night
in the past two weeks. I was pissing away all the
benefits of being out of work and couldn’t do a thing
about it.

Yes, I would tell her tonight when she came

home from work. Enough was enough.

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 Chapter 12
Let’s get this party started

When she who lives here with me came

home later that day, the first thing she asked when
she walked through the door before the usual
request for a not too sweet Margarita or a glass of
Edna Valley Chardonnay was not how my day went
or how Kelly or the kidults were doing or what was
for dinner. No, it was “how was the meditation
today? Did it go well?” And there went my plan,
melting down like warm butter on a stack of
steaming hot pancakes. Boom. Gone. My
subsequent response was something eminently
forgettable along the lines of “uh, really great” and
“made some real breakthroughs on the job hunt” and
the rest of the evening went like the rest with her
passed out early upstairs and me cruising the far
end of the cable channels searching in vain for
entertainment before settling into yet another
cooking show to fill the time until sleep somewhat
naturally settled over me.

Throughout an uneventful next day (uneventful

= job searching + another lousy attempt at
meditation + long dog walk + shredding useless
paperwork) I swore to myself that the evening would
be different. I was determined that it would be. I
resolved not to let my guard down for the sake of a
future based on falsehoods and to tell her the truth.

83
End this hopeless charade and move on.

So that evening, between bites of a first rate

lamb sausage pesto lasagna that I had prepared to
keep my mind off of my rapidly deteriorating mental
state that afternoon and several glasses of our solid
but unspectacular house made Cabernet Sauvignon, I
explained my frustrations to her in rapid fire detail.
My clear intention was to tell her that I would be
ending it all. She stopped eating and looked up
across the table as I tried to put a positive spin on it
all. I put my best foot forward, explaining that I had
given this meditation thing a real shot. I focused on
the inability to concentrate during meditation,
knowing that I might hit a sympathetic chord with
her and I guessed correctly. When I mentioned this
aspect of my difficulties it must have really
resonated with her. She replied that everyone has
those issues with meditation and that she did to and
still does.

She continued on, “Meditation is not something

that we do naturally or easily. You have to learn how
to do it. I mean I couldn’t do it myself, that was why
I joined my meditation group.” Uh oh, when I heard
the word group the first alarm bells went off I in my
head immediately as not only was this was not the
answer I was hoping for, it had a lot of potential to
keep this process alive. Here I was all set to go in for
the kill, put this journey out of its misery. Instead
she effectively derailed me and I sat there looking
across the dinner table with a false smile on my face
while my balloon slowly lost pressure.

84
 She kept going, “I think that a big part of the
problems that you are having is that you are at home
too much.” Well that was true. “I know that you
want to do everything yourself and that you believe
that you can but this is different. This isn’t like using
a road map when you get lost. (Which I did by the
way). You need to get out of the house, find yourself
a group to meditate with just like I did, and let it
grow over time. Just think about it, I have been
meditating with the same group of women for over
10 years.”

Well that did it. These comments set off a series

of incredibly horrendous images in my head. I could
only imagine the ‘ meditation groups’ that I would
find if I pursued her suggestion. For this was not just
any American town that I lived in for god sake, this
was Berkeley or Bezerkeley as it is lovingly (or more
likely not) called. A city which I can safely say after
20 plus years of living more than lives up to its
reputation for attracting a population of highly
intelligent and very eclectic, often strange residents.

My imagination then took over, a glimpse of the

future came into focus, I smelled the patchouli
incense. I saw a room filled with pale old men with
long stringy dirty grey hair pony tales dancing in a
circle, chanting dancing twirling praying to a golden
bhudda that had Jerry Garcia’s head on its shoulders,
chanting Dark Star Dark Star, oh my god this was
perversion, when this personal nightmare vision was
broken by my wife’s voice. (I had seen this ghost
once before at Winterland on New Year's Eve in the
1980's but at that time it put me to sleep).

85
 “Honey, are you listening to me.”

I quickly came back to the room and her green

eyes. “Sorry dear, I was just was thinking about what
you said.” I stalled for time until I could think of what
to say.

She carried on. “So what do you think, how are

you going to approach this?” Ever the
businesswoman, she was right to the point. What
was my goal, my objective? What would be the
takeaways from our dinner chat? Did I have plan?

I went honest. “I have no idea”.

“Well,” she replied, “you rely on the Internet to

find everything else in your life, why not this?”

She was right (again! Damn it!) Over the past

years the net had become my major research tool
and I used it to find just about everything that I
purchased, from restaurants to cars to cameras. The
net made sense to me, a source of virtually unlimited
knowledge and resource all organized into key words
and bundles of facts. If I could find a monkey filled
tin roofed rain soaked bungalow with crocodiles
when you walked outside (yes true) in Costa Rica for
a family vacation, why not search for a coach or
meditation group in my own home town? I thanked
her and promised to get on it the next day.

The next morning I warmed up the new Imac

that I purchased the week before (what a pleasure

86
indeed quite fast, stylish and simple to operate) and
opened up the browser. The first question was
always the most basic, just what the hell was I
searching for? Um lets see. Inner peace. Too broad.
Buddhism? I wasn’t converting. Let’s guess.
Meditation? Yes. And keep it local. And maybe a
group to start. So I typed in: Eastern meditation
groups Berkeley Ca’.

I resolved to spend the next week trying

different groups to see if they might help me. I
wanted to find a men’s meditation group, where
normal guys that were trying to better themselves
and their homes could get together and not be afraid
to go out for a burger or pizza and beer after without
dirty looks form the Vegans. Oh there were plenty of
meditation groups for women, for gay men, gay
women, for Buddhists, the LGBT community, for
Tibetan Buddhists, for Christians, Hindus and Jews.
But none for guys. Something was wrong here.
Why couldn’t we meditate and continue to love
pepperoni?

So I manned up and headed out of the house

and drove up the hills to the local spiritual relief
center across from campus the next Monday morning
at 8:30 for their morning meditation introduction
program. It was held in a funky old school that had
been converted into a multi denominational church
painted with faded rainbows and surrounded by
tattered Tibetan prayer flags that had long since lost
their color.

There was no sign for the class and it was blind

87
luck that I opened the front door and walked into
right room. Aren’t their directions on the road to
Nirvana?

The room was unheated and cold and only 4

people were there. 3 women of unclear age (believe
me it is not like I was there to hit on anyone,
seriously these women were just plain, amorphous
and very ambiguous). One other guy, must have
been 60, dressed in multi color sweats. Everyone
standing around no one saying a word and no eye
contact was being made much less smiling. Not
promising at all.

A few minutes later a bald almond skinned man

of unknown age and just about 5 feet tall quietly
walked into the room. He was clad in a brown and
orange outfit somewhere between a high priest’s
robe and a jumpsuit carrying a brightly multi colored
cushion. He smiled subtly at us and then sat down at
the end of the room. He moved quickly into a half
lotus and spoke softly to us as we walked toward him
“Does everyone have their cushuns?” He said it just
that way, cushuns.

I looked around. Everyone else did, not me.

Worse yet they were already sitting down and
beginning to prepare for their coming relaxation
moments.

Cushions? I didn’t know we had to bring

cushions. I spoke up. “No”, I replied, “I didn’t bring
one. Do you have any that I can use?”

88
 At that point he went silent and looked at me.
This lasted for more than just a moment, to be the
point of being a bit strange. He seemed to be
considering his options. Was I imaging things or did
he actually furrow his brow and start to squint at me?

When he finally spoke it was even quieter, the

five of us were now hanging on his every word.
“Cushun. Do you understand me? You can not
meditate if you can not sit properly and you can not
sit properly without a cushun. Did you bring a
cushun?”

I answered again. “No, I replied for the second

time, “I didn’t.”

He stared for another moment. Then he sighed.

A deep and yes exasperated breath, the sort you
hear from a disappointed middle level Marubeni
executive, just not pulled backwards through his
teeth, not meditative or Zen in the least.

His gaze had not left me. “Pleassse understand

me. Pleassse understand that without a cushun you
can not properly meditate. Pleassse read the rules
they are posted on our website. Pleassse come back
with one tomorrow and we will meditate together. I
hope that you will join us then. You must remember
that the path to enlightenment is long and takes both
will and discipline. So pleassse go now and come
back tomorrow when you are completely ready to
join us.” And that was it. I was banished by a
passive aggressive monk.

89
 I was flabbergasted. Stunned. Outraged. What
had just happened! Where was that old mellow team
Zen spirit? I looked around at my fellow meditation
inmates for support but I should have known better.
They were fidgeting uncomfortably on their cushions,
waiting for their instruction to begin and looking for
me to leave because it was obvious that they were
not going to get started until I did. Collaborators.
Administrators. Vichy sympathizers. And thus ended
my one, and maybe fortuitously so, foray into the
world of group meditation. A crash both sudden and
swift.

Without looking back I walked out of the church

and almost, but didn’t after exercising considerable
personal restraint, slammed the large wooden door.

As I drove home I made an easy decision, I still

needed help, but until I found a group of like-minded
people, I wasn’t meditating with anyone else. I mean
who needed to be pushed around by a kid in a
saffron jumpsuit to learn what had been written
about for thousands of years. I needed a coach.
Someone who could help me to solve these
questions that kept bothering me about meditation,
Eastern thought and how it could mean something
for the modern American male.

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 Chapter 13
Coached and Contracted
(El Yingo Yango)

After traipsing up the stairs to the office cave

and opening up the Mac once again, I made a list of
potential coaching categories to check out. At first
my toss was broad, “Coaches San Francisco Bay
Area. This brought me hundreds of results. The next
hour was spent eliminating the obvious freaks.
Trainers who would get you in touch with your past
regressed life, hypno-therapists looking for the
moment when the someone out there broke your
spirit, the aura readers and soul searchers all of
whom made a living from the psychological
weaknesses that pervade our funny neighborhood.
Eventually I narrowed the search to these keywords:
Coach, breathing eastern thought, meditation, men
San Francisco Bay area. This net brought in a more
focused catch.

Two of the entries on the top page were of

interest; a man in the Oakland hills who felt a bit like
East meets career counselor and a woman located in
San Francisco whose web site emphasized personal
fulfillment and relaxation. After my experience with
the uber-under priest that morning, I decided to call

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the woman coach first. Her name was Margie and
her ad looked pretty straightforward, her photo (good
looking so what), her location (San Francisco), rates
(which seemed a bit high) and a discussion of
breathing and relaxation techniques for women, men
and couples. My rush to judgment was not the best
move, I should have read the details a bit closer as it
turned out.

Expecting to reach voice mail or maybe an

answering machine I was surprised and unprepared
to respond when she came on the line with a really
husky and I will be the first to admit it kind of sexy
voice and an English accent to boot. “Hi, this is
Margie, who is this.”

“Uh, I sort of stammered, uh this is Jules”. Was

this an appropriate question? I guess it was.

‘Hi Jules’, she replied, ‘nice to meet you. Do you

want to schedule an appointment?’

I don’t know why I didn’t think anything unusual

with the situation, I mean there really wasn’t a
reason to wonder at that point, so I said sure, and
she said how about today, and I said do you have
any appointments this afternoon and she said 3 pm,
so I said sure and she said you will see my address
on my website, when you get close to the flat, call
me, and I will give you the code to get in.

Maybe alarm bells should have gone off over the

same day appointment or the alarm code but then
again, who knew, I mean what if she was a coach in a

92
secure building. It wasn’t that unusual, was it?

So later that day I headed off across the bay on

an unusually bright sunny afternoon, enjoying the
view of the city (after 30 years still looking good to
me) as I crossed the Bay Bridge and made my way
south to a neighborhood full of newer condos and
apartments on the way to the ballpark. Now maybe
that should have tipped me off that she wasn’t a
regular breathing coach. But it didn’t.

After I parked at a one-hour meter ($2.00 in

quarters for one hour, ridiculous) I called the
intercom, and she gave me the code and the details.
I buzzed myself in, went up the elevator down the
nondescript hall to her apartment and knocked. She
opened the door but did not look out and asked me
to come in. When I walked and around the door, I
saw that despite the thick black leggings and capezio
style multi colored tie-dye top that she was stunning.
Not just pretty. She was stunning in a sort of
beautiful mid-thirties hippie way that the Bay Area
(and Santa Monica,, Pacific Beach and Park Slope)
seem to support. I must have been staring at her for
a moment because after she closed the door and
said hello she asked me if I was OK.

At that point confusion had seeped its way into

my consciousness. My reasons for this sense
confusion became all the more prevalent with her
first question. “Would you like to take a shower?”.

I had taken one this morning so I knew that my

smell wasn’t the issue and the scene became even

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stranger to me. Something wasn’t right. “No thanks,
I already did earlier.” This whole thing felt strange.

“Can I ask you a question?”, I asked.

“Of course.”

“Great. Look, I have never been to a coach

before so I am little nervous.”

She told me not to worry, everyone has a first

time and that she would take good care of me.

I went on. “OK, so let me explain why I am here.

I left my job 6 months ago and since then things
have, well, been a lot less than perfect, especially on
the home front if you know what I mean. My wife
suggested that I that maybe meditation would help,
and I really have tried to do it but it just hasn’t
worked for me. I just keep losing my focus and then I
start thinking about sports and it all goes away.

She smiled and said that she understood.

“Great. So then she suggested that I look for
someone to help me with the problems that I have
been having focusing and breathing, someone who
could help me to concentrate. So that is why I am
here. Let me be honest. I have never done anything
like this before. I don’t even know what it is that you
do. But does this make sense? Can you help me
with my problems?

She smiled and standing there in her hallway

she looked me right in the eyes. I was spellbound.

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And then she went off like a Zen roman candle. I do
believe that she had given this speech before. “ Yes,
I can help you with your problems. Before you can
learn to meditate on the true power within you need
to focus on your breathing. You must learn the power
of tantra.”

Tantra? I had no idea what she was talking

about. She didn’t wait and carried on, Do not worry,
I am a trained tantric breathing master, I have spent
hundreds of hours training and assisting men,
women and couples.”

She went on without pausing. “First you will

relax and we will work on your breathing. Breathing
is the center of all life and conciousness. Together
we will explore breathing and its power. Then we will
break through your barriers as you explode.”

Wow, I thought. What a character she is,

entertaining too. I stared straight ahead and kept my
mouth shut, not that there was a moment to say
anything. Her train was on the tracks gaining speed
when it took a real interesting turn without signaling
first. “Breathing is the center of all energy. It is the
core of our energy, our orgasmic energy. Imagine
the possibilities that exist when you link your
breathing to the internal temples of orgasmic energy.
As you embrace your most vulnerable inner soul-
being reaching levels of ecstasy as orgasm follows
orgasm in your own personal temple. Imagine the
possibilities. Imagine the inner love you will feel. I
will train you in tantric breathing, the first step to
joining our temple of communal orgasm. Breathing

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as you have only imagined it, a gateway to pure
alignment of spirit, body and ecstasy.”

I was speechless. We had barely said hello, I

thought I was going to meditation class and she was
redefining my sexual being. I didn’t know what to say
or was going to happen next and I realized that I
didn’t On a more basic level I had no idea what she
was talking about except that it concerned sex which
was at face value kind of intriguing.

After a lengthy pause I worked up the courage to

form what I thought was an intelligent response.
“Ummm. Shouldn’t I be working on this sort of stuff
with my wife?”

Not missing a beat she came back, “Absolutely. I

highly recommend working with your partner when
exploring the kama sutra. (I made a note to myself to
find out what she was talking about). In fact, I really
enjoy doing couples work. The three of us can
explore new worlds together.” Wow…was she
suggesting a threesome? Then an image of the
honey bunny’s stern forehead came into my mind
and those thoughts were quickly and efficiently
extinguished.

I didn’t know what else to say at that point so I

just stood there and smiled. She smiled back and we
both stood there for more than an uncomfortable
moment just sort of standing there in an
uncomfortable karmic stasis, neither really sure of
what more to do or say just smiling to keep doing
something until she spoke and finally broke the

96
quiet.

“You really are kind of lost aren’t you?” She was

right, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

She took the lead. “Well you seem like a pretty

decent guy and I have nothing else booked this
afternoon. Why don’t you just sit down on the couch
and let me get us a cup of tea. I can see this is going
to be a very different kind session. And don’t worry
about the money just pay me what you think is fair.”

Elouise, her real name as it turned out, was a

kind hearted model turned masseuse/yoga coach
who really believed in the world of chakra, kunalindi,
tantric breathing and extended communal orgasmic
release, a concept which she tried several times to
explain to me during the next hour but I still could
not understand. What I was able to grasp is that this
process involved small groups of people meditation
together somehow reaching orgasm collectively
numerous times yet never coming, something that
made zero sense to me. I also learned that she
made most of her living massaging men and I guess
women on a more conventional level.

The rest of the hour passed quickly as I settled

into her couch and walked her through my
frustrations with meditation and my dream of finding
inner peace from a guy’ perspective. About ½ way
through my diatribe she interrupted me and told me
that she knew of a coach in Berkeley that combined
Eastern and Western treatments that I might be
interested in looking. She went off and looked him

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up on the trusty Internet and gave me his address
(located very close to the house) and phone number.
At the end of the hour I paid her ½ of her regular fee,
her suggestion, which came to $100 and I got ready
to leave.

As we said good-bye she took my right hand and

held it. She looked me in the eyes again and told me
that if I ever wanted to experience the power that
was wrapped up inside of me to give her a call. I
smiled, realized that the crows feet around her eyes
were deeper than I first thought, removed my hand
from hers, thanked her for the green tea and left.

“Be quiet on your way out,” she added, I don’t

want to disturb the neighbors.” I was.

The deal that I thought I got on this centering

experience and my momentary inner peace were
quickly eviscerated by a 50$ parking ticket dead
center on my windshield that I discovered when I
returned to my car. It had been written just two
minutes earlier.

I called her suggested coach that afternoon, he

sounded like a regular guy on the phone and we
made an appointment for the next week.

Along with my nascent search for a coach, at the

same time I had begun to look for a contractor to fix
the shower, a process that turned out to be equally if
not more bizarre. If the roller coaster of personality
types that I confronted during my search for a guide
on the path East could be considered bizarre, then

98
the borderline types that I encountered trying to find
someone that I could work with to repair our home
without doubling the mortgage can only described as
ridiculous if not just plain hysterical. These guys
were as varied as the characteristics of the human
face itself, in terms of skill set, competency and plain
old ability to communicate. I can’t say which process
was stranger, finding a Zen coach or a building
contractor.

I had learned from previous construction

projects at the house (read: French doors, decks,
landscaping) that the worst mistake that a client
could make was to leave the scope of the job ill
defined. The narrower the job the more control you
had, ‘twas better to say no to the gold handled
faucet you didn’t really need as a suggested add on
then to have it part of an existing job (replace
bathroom sink and handles).

But first I did my homework. Called a plumber to

look at the leaking shower so I could learn the scope
of the job. He was competent and thorough and
came through with just what I wanted: a written
quote. Any hope that this could be fixed by opening
up the floor and fixing the leak was quickly and
immediately dashed. He proposed to rip out the
existing shower and replace it with all new tile
including the offending pan and have a subcontractor
come in to do the actual tile work. Total cost was
just under $15,000 give or take depending upon the
choice of tile. He was adamant, you couldn’t take
out the tile floor to do the work, the whole shower
had to go.

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 If only I would have hired him and followed my
own advice. But are we not our own worst
counselors? Why don’t we follow the advice that we
give to others and that we know to be true? Is it the
famous Groucho Marx line that we don’t want to be
part of any club that would let us in?

Instead I put together the mental laundry list of

what was bugging me in the house. This was easy to
do as I was home a lot for the first time I could
remember since childhood. The problems that had
seemed tolerable when I was working full time now
drove me crazy. I resolved to get them fixed finally,
when else would I have the time to actually supervise
the work and make sure it was done they way I
wanted it.

Number 1 on the house chart was water

pressure. Not only did the shower leak, it had the
water pressure of a dribbling 65 year-old man with
ongoing prostate issues. If I was going to fix the
shower then let’s get the pressure up to it. And that
is where this particular map to ruin began. From the
heater next to my bed that sounded like a 747
revving for take off at 2 in the morning to the slow
constantly leaking faucet in the front yard, every one
of these household hits get airplay in the next
months once a contractor got his foot in the door.

I started by calling people that I knew to see if

they had a contactor they knew that they would
recommend. There were numerous suggestions but
those guys all had one thing in common; they were

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working. It was getting toward the end of the
summer of 2007 and the full effect of the recession
hadn’t hit the contracting world, most of whom
seemed to be finishing large jobs already under
contract when the long slow descent began.

The few that were available to being work

anytime in the next few weeks would come in for
their appointment before or after work. All seemed to
have about the same routine. They would examine
the shower, the leak and then crawl under the house
to look at the pipes. It didn’t matter if they were
silent older white Greek men, their arms covered
with sagging tattoos who couldn’t speak English,
single operators who couldn’t work with anyone else
or the crew of Ukrainians that appeared to be fueled
by something a lot stronger than coffee (“we work
very quickly”), the result was always the same. They
could not give me an estimate and the work would
be based on time and materials. They muttered
phrases like: “ Looks like a month and a half.” Or
“We really don’t know what we are looking at until
we open her up.” They all wanted one thing, time
and materials where there were no caps and thus no
idea of what the job would really cost. When I would
say are we looking at 15, 20,000 they would shrug
their shoulders and say such illuminating phrases as
“Who knows?” And who can forget the union crew?
7 guys showed up to do the estimate. Plumber,
carpenter, tile guy, three apprentices and a foreman.
I could only imagine what the “job site” would look
like. The estimate? It’s gonna’ be north of 50.

I took the whole contractor search with a grain of

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salt; it was kind of funny and helped pass the time. It
did not deter me from the other search that I was
pursuing and one Tuesday I found myself in what
was without question a psychologist or psychiatrist
office sitting in a comfortable chair face to face with
a balding middle aged man dressed in faded jeans,
Birkenstocks, a grey T-shirt and an orange down
vest.

Before starting our session I asked him about his

work. He explained to me that he practiced
psychology for over 15 years and that he had moved
into an Eastern direction that he now integrated into
his work. That sounded reasonable. Then he asked
me about why I came to see him. Over the next 45
minutes (he practiced the classic 50 minute hour) he
sat and stared at me. When I finished talking he
wrote little notes on a pad and would ask such
probing questions as “tell me a little more about
that” and “what else made you feel that way”. He
offered no advice, no counseling, no direction. When
the session was done I realized that he had said
about 20 words including the fee, $150 for 50
minutes of listening to myself. I told him that I didn’t
bring my wallet or my checkbook and to send me a
bill. He asked me when I would like to schedule
another session. I told him that I would call after I
checked my schedule. I never did.

As I walked out of his office I was 150 dollars

lighter and felt worse than ever. Did anyone license
these guys? What gave him the right to sit in an
office and charge that kind of money to do nothing?

102
 Then I realized that the person I was most pissed
off at was myself. Once again I had left myself in a
position to be taken advantage of. I hadn’t really
checked him out. I didn’t ask him what he did or get
a reference before I let him go to work. I was doing a
better job checking out the guys working on the
shower then the one working on my head.

The comparison between the two experiences

made me think about one other thing. If we can
spend money on showers, cell phone and cable TV,
why are we sometimes reluctant to spend it trying to
better our own lives and who we are? I didn’t have
an answer to that question, but it was something that
I would be working on when I finally found a coach.

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 Chapter 14
The purple blue rays of dawn

In which the author learns that freedom is not just

another word for nothing left to lose.

QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

Not unlike those

bottom moments that I experienced in my grapples
with meditation and life in general during the
summer, the low spots I encountered in the search
for a contractor and a coach weren’t really all that
bad, although I was more than ready to make
progress on both fronts. Then without fanfare or
much additional effort my part, both searches fell
easily into place without any additional pain the next
week.

The contractor came first and from an unlikely

source at that; my gardener. My gardener, a battle
tested and bitter veteran of the urban outdoor
environment, stubborn enough to use a leaf blower
(against the city code) and pesticides (against the
city’s morals) in the People’s Republic of Berkeley at
least until I finally got him to lay off of the Roundup.

104
Yossi was also capable, if you let him, of talking your
ear off as he chain-smoked his hand rolled
cigarettes. He had spent way too much time in the
garden, when he saw a plant he saw its eventual
problems, from lack of sun, to how wind would effect
it to moisture (always too much or too little). The
former kibbutznik didn’t see the plants growing
anymore, instead he saw them dying of fungus, too
much fertilizer or the legions of ants. He regularly
accused me of treating our garden like a beautiful
woman (stop putting on the lipstick he would
chastise me). It took me years to learn that inside of
him just below his madness was an intelligent loyal
and trustworthy person, the kind that who you would
always want on your team. Someone who would be
there for you; that is if he understood the directions
and it was before 4 in the afternoon.

Standing in front of my house one early autumn

afternoon listening to Yossi go off on the state of my
garden for the who knows how manyeth time, he
pointed again to the leaking faucet, now covered in
duct tape. “For how many years are we going to let
that go on for?” he inquired, unlit cigarette dangling
from his mouth. I told him to cool it, I had been
searching unsuccessfully for someone to fix my
house and that I would get that person to do the
faucet once I found him. It was then that he
suggested that I contact Earl Andrews, a contractor
that he had worked with in the past and someone
who actually had dug a trench in my front yard years
before when we experience a leaking sewer pipe. I
remembered Earl as a 5-foot tall bowling ball of a
man, quiet but efficient and strong as a bull. He

105
promised to get me a phone number and he did a
few days later.

Meanwhile back in the coaching department I

received several references from an old contact that
had been out of the country for a few weeks in
response to an earlier email from me. One of her
recommendations was that I contact someone that
she knew in Marin, otherwise known as “the county”,
home of hot tubs, peacock feathers and million dollar
views along side of some truly famous centers of
Buddhist thought such as the Zen Center and Spirit
rock. So I did.

There is no funny story to tell about what

happens next, there is no low cut blouse I come face
to face with, no brooding psychopath or passive
aggressive priest. Instead there is a really good guy
who listened to my challenges in life as I tried to
build a successful meditation and mindfulness
practice. Someone who made a lot of good
suggestions, some of which I followed and others I
didn’t.

It is strange isn’t it? There are a lot more heroics

when you are dealing with monumental and stressful
issues that involve life-changing events. The day-to-
day grind of effecting change in your life is much
more workman like and frankly a lot less interesting

As I worked through this, I realized that

engaging a coach, especially one to help you work on
these sorts of issues, is an unusual process. Your
coach is part shrink, and part personal advocate.

106
They work on your behalf blending the often painful
neutrality of a psychologist with the enthusiasm of
your high school counselor (or coach if you played
organized sports. They feel free to actually call you
out on issues not just ask you to consider them, to
point out paths, not just suggest them.

The coach that I wound up working with was a

self- described “bhujew”. Equally steeped in Western
Jewish and Eastern traditions, he could talk about a
Passover Seder and hours spent in blissful pre-dawn
mindfulness with equal ease. His years of Eastern
training combined with real life experience as an
entrepreneur made him an ideal selection for me.

I realized this only after I finished working with

him did I realize this. In that sense anyone who looks
for a coach should not understate the importance of
this point. Your coach will be a lot more effective if
you can relate to him or her, something that
becomes very apparent early on.

After learning about him I checked him out on

the web, he seemed very normal (for a change) had
written several books about bringing Eastern thought
and training into the workplace and was a frequent
lecturer with a small counseling practice. I called, we
spoke quickly, and we set an appointment. I drove up
to Mill Valley to see him the next week. And that was
it. We didn’t waste any time, got right down to
business and went for it; engaging in a three-month
dialogue about life, unemployment, human nature
and how we can do a better of job of managing our
day to day moods by expanding our mental toolbox.

107
 I did make one adjustment in my approach this
time. After my experience with the silent listener
shrink, I decided that I would take charge of the
situation. I had learned from countless but effective
sales and marketing seminars that most efforts will
not succeed without those faithful old friends,
objectives, goals to meet those objectives and a plan
on how to achieve those goals. So I applied the
same logic to this engagement.

What were my objectives in seeking out this

counselor? First and foremost it was to help me
teach myself how to achieve inner peace, to accept
the confusing position that I had placed myself in by
leaving my job and entering the free fall of
unemployment and excess time. Second, it was to
get rid of the rod in my stomach that was stopping
me from moving forward and away from my past and
wouldn’t go away.

My goals, were to learn more about meditation

and mindfulness to see if they would help me to
achieve these objectives. My plan was simple, to
work with this coach for the next few months and to
set benchmarks on whether I was reaching those
goals.

Our first sessions focused on the most basic

technique that supports all effective meditation. And
that meant learning to control my breathing for once
and for all. When he brought this subject up I was
resistant, I thought what is all fuss about breathing? I
am already breathing already. If I wasn’t I’d be dead.

108
Right?

Who would ever have thought that breathing

would turn out to be such a challenge. We breathe in
and out about 40 times a minute. That comes to 240
ins and outs an hour, 5,760 a day. We breathe
without much effort. We breathe when we sleep. No
problem.

So what would happen when I tried to control my

breath by consciously breathing in and out there in
that Mill Valley basement? By the second breath
after I closed my eyes I would panic. Controlling my
breath didn’t relax me, quite the contrary, it scared
me. When I started thinking about my breath my
immediate fear was that it would be my last. This
was completely irrational and later as we worked on
this issue I gained my first insight about just how
damn anxious I felt about my current life situation.

What I realized is that I had been trying to gut

my way through the vicissitudes of the emotional
upheaval caused by leaving my work life behind.
This should come as no surprise, men are taught
early on to struggle through our problems on our
own. Men are not told to be ‘in touch’ with their
feelings. Quite the contrary, men that are born
‘emotional’ or ‘sensitive’ are regularly castigated,
called out on the testosterone carpet as fags or in
your early life as cry babies, mama’s boys, wimps.
For this is the curse of the aware and sensitive male.
We didn’t ask to see the behaviors that the other
guys missed. Hell, it would have been a lot easier
not to see all of this shit.

109
 We didn’t ask to have cold unengaged fathers
who did not know how to connect to us except in
socially sanctioned events such as sports. Or didn’t
understand us at all. We didn’t sign up to have close
and often suffocating emotional relationships with
our poor scarred moms. We had not choice. We had
to talk to someone.

But hold on, what does any this have to do with

breath? As one of the discussions with my coach
slowly turned form learning to breathe under control
(which I kind of did over time) to why I was so afraid
of losing control he taught me a key concept. After
listening to me launch into a particularly emotional
diatribe about the pain I felt in my continuing
disconnect from the outside world he responded in a
way that hit me foursquare and solid between the
eyes. He said this word: Freedom.

Freedom. Said it this way: “You have the choice

and you have the freedom to make the choice about
how you feel and what you do.”

I had never thought about my life in those terms.

My ears and my eyes opened. The concept of
inherent personal freedom changed my vision of how
I look at the world on an everyday basis. It came to
the realization that I had the freedom to try things
until they worked, to accept or reject advice and to
make up my own mind while allowing others to help
me. I also came to understand that if I did not take
advantage of that freedom to create change that
none would ever occur.

110
 I began to comprehend that too many of my
behaviors were reactive, no doubt a result of the
sensory overload that results from my often painful
sensitivity to all that is around me. I resolved not to
put up with shit. Not to be rude, why bother, but to
move quickly away from the people and the
behaviors that were not honest.

All of this because I couldn’t breath more than

three breaths in a row without going in to a mild
panic attack.

At each class my breathing got a little bit better,

at least when I was under instruction. Eventually I
put together a few breaths in a row, long enough for
my mind to begin wandering again. This remained a
challenge that I could not overcome. No matter how
much I read about the subject, no matter how much
we talked about it, it remained difficult for me to
imagine how I would ever gain any benefit from this
meditation stuff. I could barely breathe under control
and when I did my mind went crazy. While I enjoyed
our discussions and the freedom to spend my time
(and our money) working on why the simple act of
breathing caused such a complicated response in the
mind that I had always trusted as my savior I was still
coming up short. Making progress yet still lost on a
day to day basis as the phone stayed quiet and hope
of working again disappeared.

As to our contractor, he did a brilliant job of

marketing his craft. First he gave me the estimate to
do the work on the shower and it was reasonable,

111
detailed and fair. I accepted it and he started work
with his small crew a few days later. Over these
same weeks the house became a beehive of activity,
a series of distractions that evolved around canvas
tarps, nail guns, caulk and rotting floor boards. Did
you notice the word rot? That is another issue
entirely.

112
 Chapter 15

Heavy construction

It’s a beautiful autumn morning outside. The fog

is starting to burn off and the sun is poking through
the skies. Can you here the sweet songs of the
contractor king bird as he drives his turbo charged
diesel pick truck up the block? 80’s rock blaring loud
from the satellite radio, a little Foghat, a little
Humble Pie maybe even some Zep. And soon he
alights in the driveway next to your house. The
contractor bird sees you. He begins to sing about
the projects at your home one by one. He hums a
tune about the pipes that lead upstairs to the shower
he is working on, “Well we didn’t know that the dirt
in the basement was piled up quite so high from the
reconstruction of the house when the upstairs was
exposed and the foundation was capped thirty years
ago, I mean can you believe they just left it all there?
It’s going to take a lot of extra work to clear that but
I’ll only charge you by the bucket instead of the hour.
Don’t worry about it.” Chirp chirp.

He starts to sing loudly. “Did you know that dry

rot is like cancer? Lucky we caught it early, just sign
the change order so we can pull out those 2 by 4’s.
And while we are here, just take a look at this. These
are the rusty pipes that flow from your washing
machine, there is absolutely no way this thing could
even still be working, I mean look inside the pipe (it

113
was highly constricted, his chant was true) and those
laundry fittings, they are ready to burst and did you
know that these old plastic hoses that lead to your
toilet those could go at any minute, I had a client
where one burst and the flooding cost them $10,000
replace those hardwood floors alone wouldn’t want
that to happen here and tweet tweet are you really
comfortable living with that old knob and tube wiring
you know if the city hawks ever inspect this job they
are going to red tag it until you bring this place up to
code.”

His song goes on week after week, morning after

morning. “Look at that old pipe not only is it lined
asbestos it must weigh 600 pounds completely
sitting free without bracing when that quake comes it
is going to move around like a giant bowling pin and
oh shit, look at that, it isn’t even connected to the
water heater you have been leaking carbon
monoxide all this time.

To listen to his song, it is a wonder that we

aren’t all dead. But he is not done.

“You might as well fix it now you know”, he

hums, “you will pay for it later in the negotiations
when you sell after they inspect the house and hey I
have my crew here already, yeah, don’t worry I can
hire some extra guys because I have another job
scheduled this week don’t worry I will be able to
supervise both.”

Tweety tweet tweet.

114
 I don’t any one to have the impression that
hiring a bonded general contactor was a mistake. In
fact I learned a lot from him and his crew. Once I
gave up trying to figure out just how much I was
spending and how long it would take to pay it back it
sort of became fun. Without feeling the needle go in
we broke 6 figures with ease on the work he did that
fall. We wound up with a functioning new shower, a
new kitchen and countless projects that helped bring
this old house into the 21st century.

The greatest benefit to me, at best an amateur

putterer around the house, was learning how this 80
year-old house craftsman bungalow fit together and
what an amateur job the gentlemen (two gay men
named Bill but THAT is another story) who
“modernized” it did before it was sold to us. To put it
simply the words straight and plum did not seem to
be possible when describing the work they did. This
gave the contractor lots to talk about.

In addition, I had a good time working with them.

Yes, I am not the first guy to submit to the lure of the
tools. They even let me even play with the nail gun
once under supervision. But mostly I wound up
going to the hardware store to pick up something
that was missing, and why not, they charged out at
65 an hour and I had nothing to do.

I enjoyed the chatter of the crew as Ernie

brought earth, dirt and crawling under the house
back into my life, a bright contrast to the previous
state of things. The house had become deathly quiet
over the summer, what with La Sweetie during her

115
early morning clear out to work and faithful white
dog Kelly sleeping more and more as she got older;
just not a lot was going on. Now the day started with
coffee, canvas tarps being spread throughout the
house and the workers talking about their various
girlfriends or not, Raider games (I forgive them I
guess they grew up here when that team cold play)
and the regular conversations of guys in their late
20’s working construction in the Bay Area. They
were far from working idiots, one was a former cook
and the other had worked in grocery jobs all his life
before starting on the crew. At mid-day my lunch
moved from a sandwich at the desk to going out to
get burritos for the group (grilled chicken super
please thank you so much extra green hot sauce)
that we usually ate together. It brought rhythm to
the house, something that had been sorely lacking.

It also brought back my negotiation skills. As

each change order neared its end another job
seemed to pop up like a wild mushroom 14 days
after a heavy rain. Negotiations with Ernie were
tougher than dealing with insurance defense counsel.
When things weren’t going his way he always
claimed to ready to pack up the crew and take off for
a weekend of dirt biking near Tahoe. Yet somehow,
despite the threats, he never did leave the job and
we were able to work out most of our differences
without bloodshed over those 3 months.

The down to earth experience of construction

was book ended by regular weekly visits with my
coach. While I can’t say that our progress was
quantifiable, a theme that ran through my entire

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experience with meditation, I did begin to see
gradual changes in the way I approached it. For
starters I stopped hating it. I now see that this was
my first step toward reconciliation with the path
towards peace.

These changes were a direct result of our

continued work on breathing. At his urging I began to
do short exercises every day at the house. I would
find myself in a comfortable chair, ignoring his
instructions to sit up straight on a mediation cushion
and hoping that the sense of relaxation that I found
my favorite comfy chair might limit the recurring
stress I experienced while working on my breathing.

Every afternoon I would go upstairs and sit in the

lazy boy looking out at the rooftops toward the bay
(not that I could actually see the bay itself). This by
and of itself was unusual behavior for me. I actually
forced myself to sit still without an agenda on a
regular basis and at a set time. By doing so I made
relaxing a priority, something I had never done either
at work or at home. Relaxing was not a natural
behavior for me and by putting it on a calendar
basis, as sad as it seems, I wound up doing it more
often.

I developed a routine. I would recline that puppy

way back and get really comfortable. Then I would
close my eyes and try not to think of anything. It
would always start out so well, but after two minutes
of sitting what happened? All hell cut loose in the old
brain like a stampede of mental elephants, the bull
called fear leading the way snorting and looking very

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angry.

I worked hard with my coach to try to

understand the lack of control in my mind that
allowed my already anxious state to blossom into
full-blown breathing interruptus. We explored my
personal habits in great detail. During one session he
asked me to look at my behavior in a typical day.
Most mornings after breakfast I would open my
computer, start five programs and jump back and
forth from subject to subject without focus. While I
believed that I could get things done most of projects
that I intended to accomplish either stalled or just
plain got lost while I wandered off into my comfort
zones of sports, music and food.

Coach explained to me that I needed to learn

how to focus. He was right about that. He was
adamant that it all starts with breathing. That by
teaching myself to control my breathing I could learn
how to focus my thoughts. This seemed like a
stretch at best to me and I had real trouble buying
into it. I think that I would have blown the whole
thing off and gone back to Sport Central if I wasn’t
becoming a bit undone that summer. I was motivated
to do something as I could not stay in the emotional
condition that I was in much longer. So I kept
plugging away without a real sense of progress.

He went on: “Breathing is the first thing that we

do when we get to this planet and the last when we
leave. It is a foundation of life and a foundation of
your meditation practice. Once you learn its power
you will be able to turn your mind on and off like a

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switch.” It sounded so good when he said it that
way. I couldn’t wait for it to work for me.

So we worked on the breathing exercises. Once

I sat down with him I would start to count my inhales
and then my exhales. During the first week I made it
to 5 in and 5 out without feeling that death was
imminent. He pushed me to go to 10. He wanted me
to start to lengthen the time of each breath. No go
at his place. No go at home. He told me: “You are
breathing but you are not listening to your breath.” I
had no idea what he was talking about.

I felt pretty stupid at this point. I imagined how

good it would feel to breathe under control. To be
like that yoga guy at the gym balanced in a hand
stand, eyes closed focused and calm (without the
dreads and the body odor though). How maybe
controlled breathing would clear out some of those
mental cobwebs that were filling my head with
doubts and give me some real clarity to get my life
back on path. I yearned to go home from these
sessions, which were costing us plenty at a time
where I was making no money and paying a
contractor thousands to boot, with something
substantial to talk about over dinner with you know
who that night. To ease some of the guilt I felt in
spending that money with some tangible results. But
I knew that I was making incremental progress at
best and getting nowhere fast. At the end of the
day I was up against a wall of my own making and I
couldn’t or didn’t know how to overcome it.

So I did the only thing that a man can do when

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confronted with a real crisis of the heart and the
mind. I fled.

The words hit me right between the eyes.

Road trip.

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 Chapter 16

Finding an on-ramp in the middle of the countryside.

(Road trips, remodeling, recession and re-birth)

The road trip. Legendary and historic escape

route for men from 16 to 60, it called out to me like a
siren’s song on a foggy lost cove on the Oregon
coast in the dead of winter. This was a classic male
solution tried and true to the myriad of difficulties
that I faced that fall.

I succumbed to this urge without resistance (why

resist?) and the next morning I got on the usual
travel websites and began looking at some of my
favorite destinations. Fall would be great in New
York, what is on Broadway, at the Met? A little
autumn weather some falling leaves and a little black
and white photography, just when is that Robert
Frank exhibit coming in? And what is happening food
wise, got to hit Yelp and who is playing at the Blue
Note? That might just work…how are the airfares?
That high? Damn. Then maybe New Orleans, catch
some jazz at Snug Harbor, yes, some great meals at
Cochon, or Uptown or Brigstens and don’t forget the
real soul of the Acme Oyster House or a classic lunch
at Antoine’s. Some Po’boys, some Etouffe lots of
butter topped off with a dose of hearing Winton
Marsalis and some local blues, yes, that would be
very good. Walking the Quarter and seeing how the
recovery is going vote with our dollars to help the
city. Can we get uptown are the trolleys running?
What about Santa Fe for back up? Too dull. Mexico?
Not sure the crew will want to go that far.

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 So I settled on the Big Easy and after some
preliminary research on airfares, I got on the phone
to the guys. I suggested we go in October, weather
isn’t too bad, summer heat and humidity are gone.

I quickly found out fast that the only ‘easy’ in

these conversations was in the nickname of the
Emerald city by the Mississippi. The realities rained
down and down over me over the next few days, all
polite but firm.

“We are really busy at work and there is a

recession going on, can’t take any chances.
Are you kidding me, she would kill me. And did
you know there is a recession going on?
No I am not doing that again especially now
during this recession.
Not this year, we are barely getting by in this
recession as it is.
Hey, have you noticed that we are in the middle
of a recession? Are you awake?
Have you looked at your retirement account
lately? We got smoked by the recession.”

A few days later I exhausted my list of buds.

Alas, here was another good idea gone. No one

wanted to play. As I moved beyond any
personalization of this situation (the leprosy of the
unemployed?) I gauged that there was something
much larger afoot. An incredible and indelible sense
of malaise caused by, yes never a doubt about it, the
recession. Not a very tough call to make.

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 The combined effect of being unemployed
during this recession was like having a bad toothache
that had now become infected as well. Your spirit
ached constantly, some days more often than others
with frequent changes in severity that seemed to
vary from hour to hour. When you tried to forget
about the pain it would remind you in a hurry that it
was still there (helllloooo I am not going anywhere it
would whisper) Then as it finally diminished in
intensity, it lingered in the background of your
conciousness without ever going away, coloring your
every moment during the rest of the day. A veritable
roller coaster ride of mental discomfort.

And what about our Buddha buddies, what did

they say about tough times? In Eastern thought you
are often encouraged to embrace difficult situations.
The teachings stress that pain is be felt, examined
without judgment and explored. There is even a
meditation that urges you to imagine your own
death, visualizing your corpse in the ground as it
begins the cycle of rot and return to the earth. Well
the recession that vise-gripped America in the fall of
2008 did not need to be visualized or embraced. It
was everywhere, ubiquitous in its form and intensity,
all around you like a haze of rotting gauze that
filtered out joy and optimism from the spiritual sky.
There was no need to actualize what had become all
encompassing.

People around you had changed and not for the

better as their lives were gripped by a parade of
failures and fears both personal and societal. It

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seemed as if everything was placed on hold. Society
froze in its tracks watching billions of dollars in
wealth vaporize and there I stood, arguing with the
power about the color of the crushed quartz
countertops we were looking at for the kitchen.
Incongruous? Absolutely.

I don’t know why I wasn’t stopped cold in my

remodeling tracks by the grueling visions of society
falling apart all around me. Sure, I felt guilty every
day about what we were doing, remodeling in the
middle of a time of so much uncertainty around us.
So why didn’t we just stop? Maybe I was being
selfish or just doing my part for the failing economy
by borrowing more money to put into our single most
important investment; my home. It just didn’t feel as
wrong I thought it would or should. So we moved
forward from countertop to countertop, politically
and State of California building code correct LED light
fixture to LED light fixture, new ceiling fan to
additional gfc outlet as America gurgled and spit up
another brown yellow chunk of thick economic
phlegm.

Was this a happy time for me? Not really. As

the work around the house went on week after week
and check after check, I struggled with where and
how to end it. My contractor had the sales lamps
turned up halogen high, “just think of the light and
space we will create when we punch through that
ceiling? What about the additional storage space
that will be created when we go through that wall.
We can pick up another 50 square feet if we just
move that pocket door…” It would go on and on and

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each check that I wrote felt heavier and heavier as
the pen left my hand. I kept looking for the right exit
sign, this was worse than ending a relationship with a
shrink.

Eventually I just stopped without much reason,

just like I did with my shrink 30 years ago. I just felt
it was done. Told him the money was gone, the rest
of the projects could wait. Quiet returned to the
house the next Monday morning.

On the other bank of the river, the spiritual one,

despite the best efforts of my coach to create
balance to my life, many days remained lost in the
low thick valley fog of those days. Others soared a bit
too high on small victories such as a job lead, a great
meal or a good walk with the dog in the late
afternoon watching the fog dance through the golden
gate bridge as it crept towards the East Bay.

Life was feeling stale. Sure, the kitchen looked

great but it was done and the rest of home
improvement dollars were buried in the walls and
under the floors of the house. I had given up on the
search for work, hitting a classic why bother stage,
brought on by the same old suspects; frustration and
a strong feeling that I would never be hired again.

The one and only thing that resonated with me

on a consistent basis during that summer and fall
was food. Boy did I cook, it gave me something to do
with that good looking remodeled kitchen and it
seemed to please the honey bunch. A day might
start in front of a variety of websites researching

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recipes and looking for ideas on what to cook for the
evening. My dinners suddenly became architectural
works that grew higher and higher, complex sauces
appeared for the first time in years, meals looked
and tasted perfect.

I was so bored that I even gave up my long

standing and admittedly chintzy habits of recycling
food from one evening’s dish to start another just to
have something to do. Dog Kelly found herself the
real beneficiary of this sudden excess in the kitchen,
over those months I had to loosen the notches on her
collar several times. She began having difficulty
jumping onto the couch and suffered numerous
“accidents” for the first time as her diet became way
too rich. Even La Sweetie began to wonder why
dinner had to be so fancy every night and quietly
stopped finishing her plate without comment.

But as the fall progressed even food lost its

allure, becoming just an alternative to watching more
cable. Somehow the taste of dishes began to fade as
I came to rely on them too much for personal
satisfaction. We seemed to finish a bottle and a half
of wine (1 for me ½ for sweets) every night without
great pleasure. I would find myself waiting for the
clock to pass, starting at 5 pm sharp (it’s always 5
somewhere indeed) with a glass of white as dinner
simmered and moving into red as the evening wore
on. Evenings would end with a glass of aged rum or
maybe a port by the TV as Kelly snored and the news
droned one.

I was adrift, unemployed and growing very

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restless as result of the continuing lack of structure
in my life. Tired of the gym, struggling with life’s
imperfections and losing touch.

And then, after months of small imprecise,

minimal victories and resulting incremental growth,
both personally and spiritually, something significant
happened. Finally there was a big jump. On that one
hung over morning a door opened for the first time.
A personal revelation occurred that would whack
away the dead wood that held me back from
achieving real personal growth. Was it an accident?
A twist of fate or a little fib that I turned into
something so much greater? I will never know. In the
end run, it hardly matters.

My path, my life’s direction changed on that

afore-mentioned hung over morning. Without
knowing how or why when I, likely out of sheer
desperation, tried to meditate that grey dark fall
morning under the covers, I did an accidental 180
that changed my life. Now all I had to do was take
the time to figure out what it meant and how to deal
with it.

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 Chapter 17
Sunrise.

Allow me a few moments to explain what I

believe happened on the tumultuous hung over
morning that spawned this whole mishegas (mess).
After all there are only so many crucial turning points
in a story and in this case this is it.

As previously noted, the day after said morning

interlude with the power, I found myself sitting
quietly at the breakfast table, staring into an empty
bowl of cereal. I continued to poke about in the milk
for those last few Cheerios trying to understand just
what the fuck had happened the day before. As I sat
and sat (on a dining room chair, not in a lotus
position that issue surfaced later) I gradually came to
a realization, albeit in a nascent form, about what
happened when I hid under the covers fearing for my
future and in an act of desperation tried to meditate.
Why that attempt at meditation was so much easier
for me than all of the other attempts during the
previous several months notwithstanding a state of
mind that approached that of Bukowski’s.

What I came to understand are the lessons that

carried me forward for the rest of the year and then
onward, letting me create a delicate and personal
balance of eastern thought and western normal guy
logic that actually works. My first steps on personal
path that propelled me into the winter and on to the

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success of the next year.

What I now understand is this: When I closed my

eyes and began to breathe that morning; I focused
on a subject. I thought about something instead of
desperately trying to think of nothing. Not only was
this subject a something, it was a ‘something’ that I
dearly love and care for: great Italian food and red
wine.

When I did so I believe that my brain began to

engage in a calm and clear way that I could maintain
without freaking out. And then what happened is
that I relaxed. I even felt better, so much so that I
was able to forget about the fact that I was utterly
hung over with my marital relationship hanging by a
thread and no plan for my future. Only then did I
begin to calm down and to breathe, and even better
yet, I kept on breathing without panicking. This
seems close enough to meditation to me, whether it
fits the textbook definition or not.

I realized that a traditional meditation practice,

such as the one that I had been pursuing was pointed
in a completely wrong direction, at least for me. I had
experienced a true quantum shift, a turn in my
previously futile attempts at meditation and search
for balance in a world that was about as stable as an
amusement park ride that spins until you are stuck to
the sides as the floor recedes, freaked out and ready
to vomit.

Just as in every part of a journey into personal

redemption, all of this was not really clear at first.

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But early on I gained confidence that maybe some
good would actually come out of these efforts
towards so called personal growth. There were
several reasons for this new-found hope.

I got enough of the idea to realize that there had

been a change for the good. I wanted to try out my
ideas about meditating on interesting subjects
instead of nothings and that excited me.

But here is the important by-line to this story.

The bonus points that made damn sure that I kept
my eyes focused on the prize. The chocolate sauce
on my very own personal plate of profiteroles. As
you may recall during that very same hung over
morning when I told La Sweetie that I was meditating
when in fact I was thinking about Italian food and
Chianti Classicos, she went all smiles and positive
vibes. Not only that she never suspected that I was
faking it. That fact alone was genuinely and utterly
wonderful enough to wipe out any doubts about
doubling down on my efforts to move on down this
path.

During the next few weeks in October that

followed the Meditating Hung Over moment, things
got better and better as I grew to understand this
process and how it worked. My attitude towards
meditation changed. I understood for the first time
that this meditation journey had real big time
potential for me and for the two of us. I also came to
the conclusion that I had to figure this thing out and
how to make it work for the sake of our mutual
sanity.

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 I thought about the MHO morning incessantly as
I developed a theory that expounded on my initial
ideas about what happened. I distilled those
moments over and over and as I did so it became
clear that it wasn’t just about focusing on any old
subject. I began to believe that meditation would
work better if I focused on the things that appealed
to me instead of concentrating on the usual suspects
in the line up of ethereal elements of peace.

Here is an example. Think about sunsets.

People drive hours to see them and then when they
get there all time stops. In my opinion sunsets may
seem great in concept but in reality, most are duds
and the few that are good disappear in a matter of
seconds unless you are someplace really special like
Maui and most them suck over there too. I just
don’t get them.

So what is the point? I had long known that it

was a radically different set of subjects that excited
me. I instinctively knew loud and clear about what I
wanted to meditate about and why not! I wanted to
close my eyes and hear the sound of the swish of a
three point shot from 26 feet out (nothing but net
thank you) instead of a babbling brook. The
particular deep growl of a Porsche engine as you
down shifted into second with the mountain air in
your face and lungs, gave it gas and let out the
clutch on a tight sweeping curve on the Pacific Coast,
not jut the scent of those pine leaves and ocean. The
tannic bite of a still slightly young Howell Mountain
Napa Cab, the taste of perfectly a grilled wild salmon

131
steak cooked on a cedar plank, the crunch of crisp
home fries covered with coarse salt, smoked paprika
and home made vinegary ketchup. Simple pleasures
like a ripe Brunelo against a spit roasted veal chop
with some broccoli rabe and nettle raviolis in brown
sage butter. A beautiful woman in a tight sweater, a
tightly thrown pass reaching the outstretched arms
of a receiver. The piano of Bill Evans, the trumpet of
Miles, the horn of Coltrane, the laughter of Richard
and Lenny. Now those were subjects that I could
focus on! I was exhausted by all this study about
nothing; I wanted to think about things that made me
happy. I knew that I could concentrate on things that
I cared about.

Well, when combined with the upside of

repairing my love and personal lives, I was ready to
give this stuff a real try. I wasn’t going to back down
from a bunch of guys in brown robes. I was going to
whup on it. How very Eastern of me. And how very
clueless.

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 Chapter 18
A deep dive in cold water

Before I could hammer out a serious meditation

move to put on the sweets, I had to figure this whole
damn relaxation thing out for once and for all. I knew
deep down inside that I needed to understand and
respect the wisdom of the past before I could move
out into a new future even though I hadn’t realized it
yet.

Armed with this newly minted theory of how to

meditate, I actually believed that I could single
handedly move beyond thousands of years of study
and tradition. I was motivated, ready to roll, totally
and completely psyched and just as equally lost,
overconfident and completely naive.

I badly wanted to move forward with this fresh

attempt to study meditation and relaxation but as I
began I noticed that I had no idea where to turn or
what to do. Not knowing what else to do and too
embarrassed to talk to the coach about it, I went
back to the books again to see what I could learn this
time. Maybe f I could take the knowledge inherent in
these traditional teachings and combine them with
this newly focused approach things could work out
for me.

I was really motivated to make it happen this

time if for nothing else than to be sure I kept looking
good in the power’s eyes as she had thoroughly
bought into the process. I had to learn the basic
concepts of this world and learn them well for this to

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fly under her radar and evade closer scrutiny. I
needed cover and an understanding of the terms of
art so I could issue regular progress reports to
management in the lingua franca. I mean seriously, I
had no idea what I was doing and if I didn’t learn how
to act like I did, the truth of where I was at would
stick out like an old basset hound’s balls.

As I began to read, I quickly confirmed that the

way that I sought to practice meditation and study
mindfulness was, well, not exactly traditional
although not heretical by any stretch of the
imagination. It was just different, like most of the
things I had experienced in my life. In that sense this
was familiar territory.

As I re-read those texts for a second time, the

basic principles became clearer. I am not sure if it
was the repetition or my new found inspiration, but
this time I began to get it. So what did I learn? I
learned that there are 4 basic concepts to master (or
at least learn enough to talk about). The keys to
leading a relaxed and focused life and thus creating
peace in the casa.

The 4 concepts that I learned over those next

few months are:

Mindfulness.

Breathing.

Meditation.

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 and:

Practice.

While they seemed difficult at first they weren’t all

that bad. And more importantly, they eventually
created real tangible benefits in my day-to-day life as
I learned how to adapt them to my needs.

But hold the phone. I know many readers might

be starting to wonder about this particular fork in the
road. Maybe you are thinking that my journey is
getting a little too serious. What about the funny
title? Is he going to get drunk again? Where are the
jokes? Is there going to be any sex? Will she ever
learn to love an unemployed man again?

Just hang in there. Don’t skim over the next few

pages to look for the funny stuff you might have
thought this story was about. After all, these are the
concepts that led me out of the mental ditch that
year.

I recognized that moving forward without

understanding them would be as much of a failure as
the last 10 seasons of Clipper basketball. I had to
master these basic concepts before I could pull out of
the driveway, let out that clutch and hit the fast lane
towards inner peace. So I put in the effort this time
and hung with it. It is the same for all of us who want
to make their lives better.

As I read those books again I often heard the

135
voice of the holy mother (i.e. mine, may she rest in
peace) as she said to me many times, “Not so fast
mister big shot”. She was right, there is hard work to
do before finding personal nirvana. No foundation,
no internal house standing straight and tall.

So here was the first thing that I did, something

new during this hugely unstructured phase. I got
organized. This meant, in my case, that I put aside
an hour each and every day to turn off the TV, stop
reading the paper and staring at the computer
praying for change and bear down on those texts
instead. That part of the learning process wasn’t
funny or easy. But it isn’t like I had that much to do
as autumn waned and winter approached that year
anyway, so I hit the books with discipline that made
up for a lack of enthusiasm.

The first concept that I grasped was

mindfulness. This was the easiest of these four
concepts to understand at a gut level. So just what is
it? For those of us who like or need definitions, let me
toss one out. Mindfulness means being aware of the
moment, whatever it is, and the once you are,
accepting it. By no means is this some kind of weeny
concept where you don’t have a backbone, be
assured that it doesn’t mean being passive. It also
means being free to say no. I’ll come back to that
concept in detail later.

How did I finally get it? I am the sort of person

who either learns best through doing or seeing
others do it. So what was the first example of
mindfulness that was easy for me to grasp? How did I

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begin to get it? One afternoon as I reflected on the
meaning of this initially obtuse concept, I suddenly
realized that mindfulness existed in a realm that I
completely understood and loved: Sports. In sports
there is a moment known as being in the zone, a
place where conscious and unconscious merge and
the player is perfectly in place as he acts. For most
of us at the mention of the zone, an image jumped
into our heads right? It could be Jordan floating
above the rim or the focus in Jerry Rice’s eyes as he
caught a sideline pass without going out of bounds.
When I thought of it in those terms mindfulness
suddenly made sense to me for the first time.

Sounds simple right? In a sense it is. Because

the core of mindfulness is being there, consciously
present and in the moment just as you are when you
swing that club perfectly or the instant that you hook
that trout or cut that garlic razor thin. It is clean and
clear. All has stopped, all is at peace, the mind and
the moment is transparent. Easy right? Not at all.

Well that all sounds great, but how do actually

you become mindful? To become mindfull it helps a
lot to meditate. Meditating helps you to focus on
mindfull moments when you are fully engaged in the
present. By focusing on the moment you become
more aware of the every day joys of living. Then as
the focus becomes greater you will become more
mindful. Yes, that is a tautology and it only became
clear over time.

Eventually I learned that mindfulness is being in

and of the moment without judgment or fear, truly

137
being here now. That knowledge came later after a
lot of hard work and many failures. To reach that
state I needed to meditate and I couldn’t meditate
until I learned to control my breathing and that
aspect of my life like most of it was far from perfect.
I was still falling asleep regularly on the comfy chair
and fighting to make that 10 count on the breath
scale.

At its peak mindfulness is a sense of complete

awareness of what is going on around you. Once
aware, you realize that there are things that can be
controlled and those that can’t. You learn to let go of
those that can’t. You focus on those that can. That
is the freedom that follows this study. This is an
aspect of mindfulness that especially liberating for
men, who have been taught all of their lives never to
“back down”, it is a powerful thing to learn to walk
away and not to engage. You can. It gives you the
power to choose when, where and how to draw the
line. It takes away the blindness of rage that blurs
your intelligence and puts you into situations that
either can’t be overcome or lead inevitably to failure.

Still, at this stage something big was missing

and until I put my finger on it the breathing thing and
thus meditation was standing in the batter’s box, bat
on his shoulder, studying the spin on the curve of the
opposing pitcher. Waiting to step up to the plate and
hit that sucker out of the park. Sadly, when this
particular pitch crossed the plate I was out in front of
the slider it turned out to be as it broke beautifully
downward, leaving me flailing trying hard just not to
hurt my mental wrists.

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 Chapter 19
Finding A Holy Place In the Left Field Bleachers

October became a memory and the holidays

rapidly appeared on the horizon in its place. I had
worked hard on relaxation and meditation techniques
for months now. And the jury was far from in on the
results. My well-documented failures were still in
charge of day-to-day operations and they showed no
signs of early retirement from their posts.

Some real internal frustrations were building up

inside. And along with those deviations came
increasingly regular return visits from my very own
personal pusher of anxiety and fear, my dear old
friend doubt.

Doubt. Doubt in myself. Doubt in what was

doing and more accurately doubt because of what I
was not doing. Accompanying doubt, I experienced a
re-occurrence of stomach discomfort for the first
time since I was hospitalized the year before. To be
sure, these pains weren’t brutally severe and they
came and went without a real incident. They served
as a sort of reminder of my prior life, a tattered
business card from a past associate that you would
much rather forget that you find in an unused
drawer.

As doubt took hold every obstruction that I met

in my odyssey towards a peaceful centered life was
now met with an equal reaction of plain old fashioned

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I don’t give a shit behavior. I regressed quickly into
old comfy and unproductive ways, all too easily
embracing the ease of falling into familiar darker
paths. Days would pass when I just gave up, pushing
the breathing exercises aside as soon as they didn’t
feel right, which was pretty easy as they didn’t work
very well any more. I let go of any and all attempts
at meditation and quit my work with the coach. In
other market news, soon a day was a success when I
just passed the time without having a drink before 4
pm when I started cooking and pleasantly burned
through the rest of that afternoon. Or was that 3? I
began to lose track.

The Internet returned to reprise its previous

Oscar winning role, starring as the senseless time
waster that only it can be. Where else could you
pass the hours in such semi-intelligent fashion and
feel that you were accomplishing something when
the opposite was so true? Hours wasted on sites you
can only imagine (and those that you probably
shouldn’t). And thank god Macs don’t attract viruses
and I know how to erase a history, it could have been
much worse.

The tension on the home front returned with a

vengeance and began to rise to new heights as we
hit new lows punctuated by uncomfortable silences
and suspicion of what I was “doing all day long” and
how often she found me at the end of the day with
another gourmet meal ready to eat and a serious
buzz on.

When she asked what I was up to I relied on the

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old warhorses, “ Oh you know, looking for work.
Great networking lunch. Spent some time
meditating. Beautiful day to walk the dog up in the
hills.” She was growing impatient with me. Believe
me, I knew that she expected more and I wish I had
something to say. But there was nothing new to
report on any front. Some mornings it just felt like I
was walking in thick thick mud covered with a central
valley ground fog at the speed of a zombie.

I had made a vow to myself to read a book about

Eastern thought every day for an hour. At least.
That time was shrinking fast, some days I would skip
the readings entirely, preferring to bury myself in
Gourmet, Bon Appetit, old issues of the NY Times and
Sports Illustrated. And then I guess I just got lucky.
When reading one of the texts I hit upon a concept
that would help to bring me back on course or at
least buy me some cover. It showed me a faint but
clear sign that helped me get back on the road to
balance that I so wanted and get the Power back on
happy street with us.

So just what juicy transcendental trinket did I

find that was M.I.A. in my flailing attempts to find
inner peace between quarters during the commercial
breaks?

Here is how the recovery played out. To help

with my breathing challenges I knew that I needed to
practice more. One of the texts suggested that to
practice effectively, I needed a regular place of my
own where I could get away, a personal space where
I can be left alone to leave one world and enter

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another. That is what hit me. I immediately and
intuitively understood what needed to be done! I
would create a modern mancave.

OK, my approach was a bit out of order. From

what I read that I was supposed to master the
breathing and the meditation stuff first. My problem
was that I was so easily distracted. I thought that
maybe a finding a regular place to unwind would
help me to focus. Yes, if I had a place to practice
regularly then the breathing might come easier.

And there was another simple goal that revealed

itself during construction. To find a place in the
house where I could, well, hang out and ignore
everything without judgment or rebuke. With some
luck, if I played this right my wife would learn to
actually adore me for doing nothing. Now that was
not a bad concept at all.

But back to the work at hand, the Mancave.

When this idea hit me I got stoked. Mancaves have
existed throughout history. Yet they have recently
fallen into disparagement as a result of continued
(and in this case misguided) feminine and feminist
attacks on this critical aspect of our male well beings
(sorry girls, it is just true you have driven us out of
these safe spaces as the demands for gourmet food
pantries, children’s playrooms and family viewing
rooms took their place).

There are so many wonderful historical

examples that come to mind when I think of the
great mancaves of the past. Workshop. Garage.

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Wood paneled den. Pool hall. Fraternal orders.
Orthodox synagogues (just kidding but less so than it
first seemed). The rectors of the priesthood. I close
my eyes and I see images our collective fathers,
Jackie Gleason with his raccoon hat, my dad fixing a
broken appliance in the garage, a neighbor
overhauling the engine of his car underneath a
fluorescent light.

Yet there was always something missing in those

holy spaces of mandom: Her unconditional seal of
approval. And how to get that precious stamp? I
found the answer through the simple study of way
that the opposing team built their she-nests. Just
what had she done that I could co-opt in the
construction plans for this new impenetrable male
environment?

I had the breakthrough one evening as I

contemplated this dilemma lying next to la sweets
just watching her, she already deeply sound asleep
on the other side of the bed, eyes closed, breath
heavy and obviously happy to be (a concept that has
always honestly always evaded my comprehension.
What male enjoys sleeping the way that they do?).
As I lie there looking over her and at her side of the
bedroom, I saw that she had created a she-nest right
there in our bedroom space. That ruled the bedroom
out for me, there just was not enough room left over
to create a holy space where my work on manful
meditations to continue.

I studied her tools of the trade, a ganesh (the

holy elephant), some candles, incense burners a

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variety of wooden buddahs, and some polished
stones. Books, a prayer rug and a shawl. These were
the symbols of meditation to her. I needed to borrow
them to lend credibility to my version of this trip
east.

Living in a small but sweet bungalow didn’t allow

for many alternatives as I ran the floor plan of the
house through my head and thought about where I
could hole up for this holy work. With no office, a
garage regularly attacked by rats and full of slowly
molding paperwork, unusable clothing, my tools and
my wine cellar; there was no easy spatial solution
that came to mind.

Then it hit me. What about my daughter’s

room? Someone had to take one for the team and
what were we hanging on to anyway? She was the
one who grew up and left for Boston to go college.
Now the room sat uncomfortably between her past
and the present, full of stuff she wouldn’t be needing
anytime soon and a collection of odds and ends that
the Power couldn’t store anywhere else in the maison
including numerous laundry baskets, suitcases and
travel bags all of which were tossed about without an
apparent plan.

The next afternoon as I looked over her room

and laid out the dimensions of my new manspace. I
took a quick mental inventory of holy images and
symbols I wanted to surround myself with to
encourage my inner search. Heroes I could relate to.
A black and white photo of Bill Walsh and Joe
Montana taken in 1981, god did Montana look young

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and happy. A baseball signed by Barry Bonds. A
black and white photo of three bottles of Chateau
D’yquem that I took in Paris so many many years
back, portraits of Bill Graham, David Byrne and Bruce
Springsteen.

Now, I needed a black stone bhudda and an

incense burner for cover, I could always get those
from the other side of the bedroom. Let’s see put a
few of my real holy texts on the desk and maybe get
a prayer rug to hang on the wall.

More importantly I need to move in the holiest

embodiments of the peaceful spirit of all men, my
comfy chair and a TV. I knew that the chair would
be an easy explanation (it is about relaxing isn’t it?),
but the TV was the wild card. I had already spotted a
21 inch flat screen on Craigslist for $150 that
morning and was going to pick it up later that day. It
was going to need some creativity to make that
move fly, but I had a some time and her wonderful
indifference to details to work that out.

The next day after La Sweets left the house I

purchased the TV without incident (or question on
my part) at a run down but clean home just off of San
Pablo Avenue after seeing it work no questions
asked. Paid cash. Then under the faithful but
somewhat confused supervision of white dog Kelly, I
began the process of converting the daughter’s room
into my new modern man cave. After moving her
bed I had enough space to put the TV on the desk
and surround it with my holy symbols. The comfy
chair went right between the desk and the wall so I

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could settle in. I thanked my spirits that we had
wired her room for cable when she demanded it
while she was in high school. As I worked I rehearsed
the introduction of the new man space to her that
evening, angling for maximum effect.

This didn’t solve the bigger issue of why I

needed a TV as part of this path to Eastern holy
thought. But I was working on it.

The installation took less than two hours, easily

done before lunch, a prosciutto and mozzarella
panini with some aged balsamic which was
particularly tasty that day. I passed the afternoon in
the comfy chair watching the Food Network and
reruns of South Park just to be sure that everything
worked right. It did.

When SHE arrived home late as usual and tired

from work that evening I had a margarita in hand
waiting for in the kitchen. Normally she would
welcome this but her fem-sense went into high red
alert instead. This was not a good sign. There were
dark clouds covering the emotional horizon. Before
saying hello she looked at me standing there with
her drink and stared at me silently. She finally
started in. “Ok, so what is with the margarita tonight.
It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?”

I ignored the obvious bait and stayed positive. “I

thought you would enjoy it.” She didn’t budge.

“Did something go wrong today?

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 “No.” Not enough.

“Did you get another job rejection?” Another

bad sign, she didn’t remember that I hadn’t applied
for a job in over a month and nothing was pending.

“No.” Keep it short.

“Have you been drinking?” Well I had, but that

wasn’t going to help anything now.

“None of the above,” I answered. “Nothing went

wrong today and believe me nothing is happening on
the job front, good or bad.” I couldn’t resist that one.
“I just thought you would enjoy a cocktail after
work.”

She looked at me skeptically. She still hadn’t

taken the drink from my hand.

“Come on now have a drink with me, I have

some good news”

She took it and just stared at me with the drink

in one hand and her clutch in the other, sort of
pursing her lips and furrowing her forehead without
saying another word. I was beginning to worry about
how she might react. Was this a mistake or was she
just making me feel uncomfortable? Why I was
feeling so anxious about what she would do when
she saw what I had done to daughter dearest’s room
when I knew this was a good thing.

No, I wouldn’t let that happen. I knew that this

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was it, time to go deep with this idea, either my
mancave theory was going to work out or it wouldn’t.
This was sort of a coming out for the concept of
manful meditation. I needed to declare my new
space to my wife, just like some roaming Fido leaving
his mark on that tree outside the house. I wanted to
lift my spiritual leg up high and say:

“Honey this is the space where I am most

comfortable with my meditation practice.”

Five minutes later I opened the door to the

bedroom and said just that. When I opened the door
and turned on the lights she just smiled.

“What the hell is this?” I knew from her tone

that the worst was over.

“This is my new meditation space.”

She smiled. “Did I give you permission to

borrow Ganesh?” There was enough a tease in her
voice to let me know that she didn’t really mind.

Would you like me to get you a new one?

“No, you can use it until you are ready to give it

back. I can’t believe you did this. You know, it makes
me feel good that a part of me is down here with you
when you meditate.”

This was going really well. So I went for the

jugular.

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 “Fantastic. So when I am here meditating, I
would really appreciate it if you let me do this alone.
It helps me focus on my personal growth.”

Hey, I will admit it. I had always imagined a

moment when I could tell her to leave me alone and
she would want to do so!

“Of course honey,” and yes, she smiled again as

she replied, “just don’t spend all of your weekends
in here. I can get lonely.”

Wow! This was a 4 star experience. She walked

out of the room and went upstairs without another
word. Or a mention of the new TV that sat on the
desk.

So here is what I learned on this occasion. Every

home has a space that a man can carve out for
himself and every woman will let him create one as
long as she believes that it is part of a journey to
inner peace. Yes, before getting ready to engage in
the practice, the student must retire to his holy
space. All you need are the symbols and the space to
do it. Once you close that door you are in control.
No one knows what the hell you are doing except
you. And what possibilities existed for further
exploration.

A few days later, as I enjoyed the mid-afternoon

repeat of the English first league match between
Leeds and Manchester United, I felt just wonderful. I
sat, well more slouched than sat, deeply rooted in
the comfy chair with a cold Sierra Nevada in hand

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enjoying the rhythmic passing and stout defenses.
Things were dandy, wife was back in the fold, I had a
new TV and no commitments on the horizon.

Somewhere during the second period I

absolutely spaced out for a good 20 minutes. I mean
I must have missed 1/2 of the period and when
gradually I came out of it I felt refreshed, focused
and relaxed. I knew that I hadn’t fallen asleep yet
my beer had spilled on my pants and I hadn’t even
noticed. Just what the hell had happened?

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 Chapter 20

What Is This Manfullness That You Speak Of?

As I continued to sit there in the comfy chair, I

ruminated upon the interesting shapes that formed
by the beer stains that spread up my groin and down
the right leg of my khakis during the 20 minutes or
so that had disappeared that afternoon when my
Sierra Nevada did a half gainer on my pants. Were
those unusual spots a subconscious sort of
Rorschach test for my current state of mind? Did that
shape on my upper right thigh look like a holy
elephants head? Or an eight armed female spirit?
Or more accurately, maybe I shouldn’t have drank
that third (fourth?) pale ale that afternoon
christening the new manspace?

I didn’t spend much longer dwelling on the

stains, it was easier just to change into my standard
dark blue sweats and get on with butchering the
lamb shoulder I would need to make a tangine for
the evening meal. I was already behind on my
timing and had to get moving or the lamb would be
as tough as the last few weeks in the house had
been.

Later that afternoon, standing in the now

functional kitchen, carving the lamb, separating out
the fat and cartilage in a steady rhythmic motion,
knife sharp and hand steady, I kept thinking about
how good I felt. Something had happened that

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afternoon and I liked it. That positive feeling was a
premonition of what was about to occur, a step
forward on a conscious trek that was already open to
me.

This was the start of another breakthrough

period that followed during the next few weeks. Over
these weeks I made a number of small but significant
adjustments in my practice. For one thing, I began
to actually try again. That alone produced immediate
results.

It seems clear why that happened. All of the

pieces were in place; now everything was destined to
get better. I had practiced relaxation for months
now. I worked with a good coach. I went to yoga
regularly. And now, a holy manspace was
established and blessed while the little gem of a TV
remained incognito, under the radar and
undiscovered. Having a regular space to enjoy
relaxed me and it showed, both in my continuing
attempts at meditation and relations on the home
front. As I continued to relax so did La Sweets.

Then without thinking about why, one morning I

opened my eyes while I meditated. This too had a
positive effect. First of all my breathing wasn’t nearly
as bad. By keeping my eyes open I avoided the
panic that ensued each time I got to 5 breaths with
them closed. I even found a meditation website full
of people in white flowing outfits that said it was OK
to do to meditate this way. After that I felt less like a
heretic every day.

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 It was just as the books said, as the breathing
got better I was able to meditate for longer periods.
For the first time thoughts came and went lightly and
sometimes I embrace them. Other times I let them
just drift off without stress.

Just as with every other stop along this bus line

when I would pause and reflect on where things were
going I could see the changes. However, when they
were happening I could not.

So this was it, right? Isn’t this time when I

should have faced another epic personal disaster?
When some horrible event comes along that brought
the familiar dramatic tension that seemed to rule my
everyday life back from the dead, zombie hand rising
through the floorboards of my house grasping my
spiritual throat, painful headaches creeping up my
shoulder to my neck.

Nope. It all just kept getting gradually better

and better from there. This was the sweet set of
moments when it started to fall together. When a
meditation practice emerged from the unformed
firmament and began to take shape that I could live
with.

As my comfort levels increased I spent more

time practicing. When I did, I thought a lot about
why this was happening. Just what was working for
me, an unemployed middle-aged male stuck in the
middle of late 2008, trying to make sense of the
world as it collapsed in financial ruins all about us
while I, weirdly enough, found more happiness than I

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had in many many years.

There were several changes that revealed

themselves during this fertile period. I continued to
be amazed by the abundance found in creating a
state of mindfulness. I spent a lot of time reading
and learning more about it. It provided me with a
new found sense of relief and calm, something so so
foreign to me. It was an oasis and I drank at the well
with gusto.

At the same time I finally ascertained there was

another factor that walked hand in hand with
mindfulness that made it work for me this time.

There was something in common between the

seminal meditating hung over moment of August and
my beer induced space out that October, an incident
that I came to understand was a deep meditative
dive into the green of the soccer pitch. It wasn’t the
alcohol either.

Once again I had meditated on a subject that I

loved so much, except in this case it was sports
instead of food and I got much further out there.
Thinking about the great sports moments that I had
enjoyed over the years and the great meals, I
understood that there was something greater afoot.
This was a power greater than I had found while
meditating while focusing on things that I loved.

For me to make this inner journey a success, I

wanted to meditate on the joy we find in our lives as
men. Put differently, to focus on things that were

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both mindful and manful**. It wasn’t enough to
become just mindful. It had to be manful as well.

****Manful: adj. Having or showing the bravery and resoluteness

considered characteristic of a man. Manfullness is a really a subjective
concept that is more easily explained by looking at the lives of other
manful men. Do you want a manful role model to illustrate this? Think
about one such man: Quincy Jones. What, close to 200 Grammies, 5
wives who all love him, 2 of which just happen to be Natasha Kinsky
and Peggy Lipton. Now that is living life as a manful man in the
moment. What man wouldn’t be awake, alive and aware in that life!

This core teaching formed the base of my

meditation practice that I follow to this day. Not
meditation, but manful meditation. A path that I built
step by step as I explored my work in this new kind
of meditation over the months that followed. A study
built upon a regular practice of meditation that
focuses upon those things that are manful.

There was another shock to my system right

about then. To my surprise I wanted to share this
study with others other men in transition like myself.

There were good reasons for this.

Manful meditation calmed my mind and let me

take control of my life through a regular practice of
relaxation training that I enjoy and look forward to. It
provided me with mental freedom that I have never
imagined. It is fun too. This alone was worth
sharing.

If only someone would have taught me to relax

years ago. How differently those years might have
gone. How much time wasted and pain suffered

155
unnecessarily.

I dreamed of being to turn on that power

whenever I wanted and then enjoy it for the rest of
my life. To have the mental discipline to choose
what I am feeling and when I feel it. To weed out the
negative poisons of anxiety and fear. Then these
dreams became part of my life.

This is the end game of a manful meditation

practice. What right thinking man couldn’t use a bit
of that in the daily wars of life.

Chapter 21
Yogurt

This little piece of the manful meditation saga

isn’t about yogurt. Although I will readily volunteer
that I have a very powerful affection for the simplest
sour plain variety. Although yogurt would be fun to
write about, I don’t see how it remotely fits into this
story in any possible way. No, these thoughts are
about Yoga. Truth is there is no real connection
between Yoga and Yogurt except that they kind of
sound alike and I have always referred to Yoga as
Yogurt for reasons known only to the idiosyncrasies
of my mind.

Ahem.

Here is a plain and simple fact. I could never

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have crawled back out of the personal abyss of
underemployment and understructure without
making yoga a regular part of my daily life. Period.
It has surprised me in its power to shape both my
being and my mind.

Yoga blew through every stereotype that I held

when I started to practice. It became my reliable
source of strength and energy. I discovered that I
struggle when I let life overwhelm my discipline and I
forget to practice or fail to make it a priority. I come
back to it every time. It is a rock and a teacher.

Through a study of yoga I learned to deal with a

strange duality of consistent and incremental
success accompanies by mild but consistent failures.
It taught about our human relationship with physical
pain. It showed me how to overcome my fear of it.

Yoga forced me to listen to and then

begrudgingly respect a teacher once again even if I
did not like him one bit just like many relationships
that I had with the teachers that I met over the
years.

My love of yoga surprised me. You see, I am

anything but the prototypical candidate to start a
yoga practice. I have hamstrings that scream every
time I stretch them. They still do. I suffered some
serious damage to my hips and groin in a severe bike
wreck years ago in which I cracked my helmet in
half. Let that be a lesson to those of you that don’t
wear one. The fallout from that accident combined
with work tension made me so stiff that several years

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ago I desperately sought relief from a chiropractor.
That is another experience I hope not to repeat in
this life, both in terms of the pain, it got to the point
where I could not walk and the treatments. I for one
am not comfortable with the having my spine
cracked like a walnut shell.

Now, unlike the journey into manful meditation

that I have been chronicling, my yoga practice went
pretty fairly smoothly with the usual strange detours
along the way until I found a regular practice that I
adopted. In the end run I believe that it is the
physical aspect of doing yoga that makes it easier for
me to grasp.

My first interactions with the various yoga

schools of thought didn’t help this process in any
way. Does it seem that these days anyone can rent
space in a studio pump in some airy music, buy a few
mats, blankets and blocks and call him or herself a
yogi? Shouldn’t there be a test or at least some sort
of disclosure (where did you go to school, how long
have you been doing this, etc.)before you get to toy
with people’s bodies? Are they even insured?
Probably not.

Ah, those first few yoga classes, what totally

bizarre experiences they were. I don’t know how I
had the stomach to try it again and again. Must be
that persistence thing.

Yoga training starts from a position that many

men including myself find intuitively untenable.
Yoga requires you to be passive. You are instructed

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to place your body and your mind under the control
of an instructor who knows nothing about you, your
physical limitations and your strengths and in 9.9 of
out 10 classes won’t bother to ask. In a group that
can be as small as just you or as big as 50, you sit
there as the class begins, completely unprotected
from a panoply of embarrassing possibilities and
routine failures.

There are some really good ways to screw up in

Yoga class. My favorite is the yoga fart. Yoga’s
particular emphasis on stretching your body puts
pressure on your core, i.e. your center, and that
means your abdomen. If you are not careful and
observant, that same pressure will force that
lingering fart out of you at a very inopportune
moment. This usually results in a loud quick
announcement that someone has let go of the gas.

The question I always wondered about is why no

one will acknowledge it. Or laugh. Or say
something. Everyone acts as if nothing has
happened.

Is that part of the yoga spirit? Or perhaps it is a

reflection of the collective behavior of yoga students,
a group of individuals doing the same activities,
sharing the same instructor, but rarely, if ever,
acknowledging that the other people around them
exist. In fact, it seems that people in yoga classes go
out of the way to be sure not to acknowledge each
other.

Recently a newly single friend asked me about

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Yoga. He had seen a number of good-looking women
his age going into a studio near his workplace. He
wondered if this was a place he could meet someone.
I told him flat out not to bother. No one interacts at
the Yoga studio, not on the way in, the way out or
during. Eye contract is frowned upon as are smiles
or any acknowledgment that the individual exists.
When eye contact is made it is quickly averted, an
embarrassment for both parties. The individual
becomes fully subjugated to the group experience
but there is no team. Another confusing moment for
most of us guys who are waiting for someone to
block for us as we hit the hole.

But back to those first yoga moments. The first

class I attended was held in an old warehouse in the
industrial part of the city taught by a short and
comfortably butch lesbian who ran the hour like a
junior high school gym class. Commands were
grunted at us in a secret language I did not
understand. We were told to salute the sun, stand
like a tree, sit like a lotus flower, spin like a wheel
and kneel like a child. Other poses were named
plank, dolphin, cobra or scorpion. All of them also
had long foreign names that she yelled in clipped
angry barks. People contorted and twisted while I
looked on perplexed and confused doing my feeble
best not to look like a fool.

Finally the hour passed. At the end of the class,

as I stood there looking straight ahead in state of
shock and pain she told us to lie down like corpses
while the heater, suspended twenty feet above us,
wheezed to life desperately trying to get the room

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above 62 degrees.

Not a word was said at the end except for what I

now know to be the traditional end of class
salutation: “Namaste”. As I left the room I imagined
her snapping towels at our butts, just like the gym
teachers did back when.

The other students picked up their mats,

blankets, blocks and towels and just left without a
word. This class had the warmth of a February
Boston day. I did not consider a second visit.

On return from class I sought out the advice of

La femme. She had been going to Yoga classes for
the past few years although I observed that she
seemed to switch schools and instructors on a
regular basis. While supportive, she had no
recommendation other than to keep trying until I
found something that worked. This was not very
reassuring because I knew she hadn’t done so yet.

But there is that persistence thing in me.

So I turned back to my trusted old amigo, the

Internet and started to search. Let’s see. “Yoga.
Berkeley. Beginner.” What would come up?

The first listing that I saw that was close to our

home was for a ‘gentle’ yoga class. As a novice I
thought that hey, this might be an easier way to get
started; you know maybe do some stretching and get
some instruction on how to properly do this posing
stuff.

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 The class was held the next day at 4pm in the
afternoon in a bright studio full of plants and sunlight
on residential street. I should have know from the
painfully insipid sounds of Enya that were playing
when I walked in the room (remember her? sadly I
do) and the strange mixed scent of patchouli and
sweat that this was going to be a stretch (and not in
the sense that I wanted to be). The whole room
reeked of ancient long expired hippiedom and
enforced relaxation vibes. No good signs to report.

The class truly was ‘gentle’. So much so that we

did nothing but search for our breath for the first 20
minutes while synthesizers swooshed and Enya’s
voice came and went along with my patience as my
mind drifted between what to make for dinner and
Cal football. Our teacher kept telling us find
ourselves, I didn’t know where to look. Then after
some ‘gentle’ movement that barely qualified as
stretching we lay down again. More breathing, I
swear I couldn’t take much more of this. Two more
gentle poses we barely held with our arms above our
heads. More breathing and done time to lied down.
Happy Namaste everybody. Who wants to play
corpse with these corpses?

And then there was the population of the class. I

try to have an open mind. But am I the only man who
is uncomfortable in a crowd of mostly graying post
menopausal women in tie dye leotards and
ridiculously tight stretch pants that reveal way too
much detail for visual comfort? I mean is there no
shame in your outfits ladies?

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 There is just something wrong with the visuals
that I witnessed during the class. It completely
creeped me out.

After that I bounced around from studio to studio

and school to school without success including the
famous Bikram loss of consciousness alluded to
many pages earlier.

Eventually I was saved when my trusty cheap

inner self took over. I already belonged to a fancy
pants gym that had regular yoga classes. Not being
able to stomach keep paying for more disastrous
experiences I thought I should give it a try.

The next Tuesday I schlepped to downtown

Oakland with my mat, some loose trunks and no
expectations of what this class could bring, this was
a gym after all.

Well, the first class did something new for me. It

kicked my ass. I didn’t fall once during class. I must
have fallen 10 times. Some falls were comic, some
short and intense where an arm you were relying on
caved. Others rolled softly like a 3.5 trembler ending
in a slow rolling collapse.

I discovered very quickly how hard it was too

stand like a tree and to balance on one leg. Or to
hold your own hand while the other is placed inside
of your thigh while you twisted your spine and back.
And much much more. I felt the pain of stretching
muscles and joints that had not been exercised in my

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50 plus years of life.

After class I hurt. I took a long schvitz and a very

hot shower. When I came home that evening I took 2
Ibuprophen and passed out cold before her for a
change.

I was intrigued to say the least.

So I returned. And as with everything in this

journey my progress in Yoga proved incremental. A
little better here, a little better there. As the weeks
went by and then the months that followed, I went to
class once and then twice a week. Then I purchased
a CD of the class so I could add a work out once on
the weekend. As my time spent doing yoga my
competency increased. What a surprise!

Just as strange as the relationship, or lack

thereof, was with the students, was the behavior of
our instructor, who seemed to be another closet
fascist hiding out in the world of relaxation.

He said little outside of the instructions, and

when he did he told the worst jokes imaginable.
Sometimes he would insult a student for being late.
Other times he feigned as if he had missed the count
of a string of poses, which of course he never did.
Forced ‘ha ha ha’ laughter would follow from the
collaborator students in the studio while the rest of
us just waited uncomfortably for the moment to pass.
Stranger still was the fact that he seemed to have
difficulty walking, something incongruous with the
core reason for doing yoga in the first place.

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 But there was no doubting his ability or his
dedication to the Ashtanga School. He knew the
exercises and every subtle detail, letting you know
when to add an upward twist or a stretch of you toes
or to lift your back. These minimal variations in his
instructions were always there if you looked for them
but never easy to find if you were desperately trying
to catch your breath.

Yoga still delivered some way to much detail

moments when I come out of a pose and found
myself staring at a very large and sweaty butt. But
now I just pushed ahead and kept my laughter
choked down inside.

In the much larger sense, going to the same

yoga class twice a week with the same teacher,
same poses and at the same time provided me a
missing key to my inner path to peace and my own
character. The fourth pillar of the world that I had
been trying to build that summer and fall without
success. Practice. As my Yoga practice got better
the mediation couldn’t help but benefit from the
discipline I developed.

I don’t know why I ever imagined that

meditation and mindfulness would ever become a
part of my life without devoting myself to them. How
did I ever learn to play sports? Play an instrument?
Learn to do anything new? Why did I believe that
meditation was any different? That somehow it
would just come to me when it was so very foreign
and if anything required even more discipline in

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order to push forward.

So it was on. I began to get it. What I put into

the practice is equal to what I got out. Energy in to
get energy out.

In this world there is no sweaty asshole coach

ready to kick my ass, no stuck up teacher riding me
to perfect that pose and no parents to answer to if I
fail. The only person who decides whether to practice
(whether we are talking about Yoga or meditation) on
a given day is me. That is a responsibility to myself
that I have to fulfill.

I found the energy that Yoga gave me addicting,

the clarity refreshing and the physical calm
refreshing. And it was always good to see the smile
on the power’s face when I told her how much I
enjoyed the last work out.

This part of the inward journey was a lot like

riding a bike or going ice skating for the first time.
There were plenty of wobbles and sometimes I
thought that I would fall. But in a little while and with
some practice and patience I began to move forward
with style and grace.

But do not for a nano-moment think that that

this was easy. It was not. I can’t tell you the number
of times that I wanted to just stop. I got bored and
spaced out in class. The doubters inside my head
would come roaring in for their regular visits, it won’t
work, you can’t get there, and it doesn’t mean shit,
why fucking bother.

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 That didn’t stop me from getting what I wanted
before. I would remind myself of the simple rule of
forward motion:

Keep your eye on the prize. Oh and that other

one. Get off of the couch.

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 Chapter 22
Talking ‘bout my Meditation

When I think about meditation the first image

that comes to mind is that of a vaguely Indian, dark
skinned, very thin boned and old holy man with
wispy white hair sitting cross-legged staring out over
the snow capped Himalayas in deep silent
contemplation. Or maybe it is an old hippie, with
equally wispy hair, gazing out at a field of ferns by a
Pacific redwood grove by the coast, lost in her
memories of numerous acid trips gone by with an
internal soundtrack by the Dead and imaginary little
bears dancing in her head.

Neither image is really fair to the practice, but

both illustrate the stereotyping that I, like many
others, had fallen victim too over the years. These
were the caricatures that I had to overcome if I was
going to break through my natural internal resistance
(caused by a deep and addictive love of stimulation)
to a world of what appeared to be enforced
tranquility.

Relaxation was never natural to me. It was

boring. A word that I always equated with moss. Or
fungus. Or being dumb. And never with pleasure or
stability or personal progress.

As November progressed and the Thanksgiving

holidays now loomed around the corner, I was

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making decent day-to-day strides in both yoga and
meditation, but nothing earth shattering. This
limited progress was very fortunate, because any
hope of landing a job, something that I believed I had
every right to do and really wanted, was now fading
into the distance, barely a faint light fading slowly
into the bleak horizon.

The resulting lack of work gave me way too

much empty and alone time to fill every day. The
combination of yoga and my funky attempts at
mediation helped to deal with that time. These
disciplines also gave me strength to help navigate
the complete and total lack of structure in my every
day life.

The combination seemed to be working. I

meditated with my eyes open. When I did I became
more comfortable with my breathing. I sat in my
comfy chair and I relaxed. As I did, I kept coming
back to one concept that was inescapable. When I
thought about the things I loved while I meditated I
focused. And the things I loved were manful.
Together they made my meditation work.

My manful meditations became more regular.

Most times I found myself thinking long and hard
about food in my sessions. With a subject to work on
I started looking forward to meditation. Many times I
would spend the rest of the day preparing the
recipes that I was thinking about during my
meditations. Other times I skipped meditating
entirely and just cooked. Who knew the difference?

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 Yes, all seemed well. I was finally having some
fun or at least remembering what it felt like. Along
with this joy there was a sense of relief between us
after the continued low-level angst of the past
months. I have to say that everything was looking
up.

And it was. That is until SHE found me one

Thursday night (at 8pm no less), sound asleep,
snuggled deeply into the reassuring folds of the
comfy chair with a down blanket over me, the TV on,
the dog asleep and not fed with dinner uncooked in
the oven. Oh, and to make matters worse, the back
door and the garage were wide open, adding to her
unending opinion that my sense of security in my
own home was foolish and naive. (I had argued
unsuccessfully that both times we were robbed the
doors were locked but this didn’t seem to matter to
her.)

One of the characteristics of an old home is that

many of the doors stick. On that day it was the
creaking sound of her opening the bedroom door to
the mancave that pulled me out of my peaceful
slumber and back into the cold November evening.

The truth was that had been a lot of fun to do

this little hustle over the past few months. To set up
a mancave and bring down the comfy chair as my
new mental throne. To buy the still incognito TV (how
could that be?) to watch cable. To set up these little
holy symbols. At the same time, as I rubbed my eyes
and she came into focus I wondered, could I have
gone too far with the lackadaisical and perhaps

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dishonest use of meditation as a charade and cover
up for my slack work habits and retreat from the
outside world?

Could it be that the jig was up? Was the cover

blown? Or maybe, since things really were going a bit
better, what with the increasing daily awareness and
signs of inner calm, was an act even necessary? I
could tell her the truth, right? That lots of days I just
blew off the whole meditation shtick and just fucked
off playing around with the dog and relaxed. Or
more importantly, that when I did meditate I was
thinking about how bad the Warriors were this year?
I should tell her the truth.

Shouldn’t I?

One thing for sure, returning to the current

moment, the blazing intensity of her look said that
this was not a typical ‘hi honey’ evening. Not in any
way shape or form, uh-uh. She just stood there in the
doorway and stared at me without a sign of emotion.
That was a very bad sign.

Maybe truth wasn’t such a hot idea right now.

I understood her position. She had a job, worked

hard all day under great pressure and what did she
come home to? An unemployed amateur
cook/photographer/writer/ex-lawyer/businessman
with a three day growth wearing jeans with holes and
furry slippers asleep on a chair.

To make matters worse she was playing dirty,

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using the weapon that she knew always really threw
me completely off center; silence. That destabilizing
force, the behavior that knocked me off balance, off
of the perch off of everything. Silence was my worst
nightmare, with no input to react to or markers to
read. It drove me crazy.

She knew this. She just stood there and looked

at me, dressed in a typical workday grey pantsuit
and red scarf, still holding her briefcase as dog Kelly
circled the comfy chair over and over, unsure about
the strange vibe in the room and the lack of an
outstretched hand to pet her or throw her a treat
across the room. Oy, what a situation.

What to do? Now that push had come to shove

did I dare go the well of the meditation story again?
My thoughts raced around my head. I hoped that
there would be some good ones soon. I was clearly
running out of time to respond. My mind kept racing.
What to do?

So was this it. The moment that I would come

clean about those afternoons like this one when I
wasn’t making ‘inner’ progress and spent instead
perfecting the crust on a grilled aged cheddar cheese
sandwich? (BTW, get some butter in that cast iron
pan next time.) Another afternoon lost listening to
Live at Leeds (god Peter could you play), playing
Tetris and then falling asleep in the holy chair after a
few cold ones? Was I ready to give it all that up?

Well here is the manful moment that followed.

Yes sir, I sat up straight in my chair and looked her

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right in those deep green eyes, no smile on my lips,
there would be no cocky attitude about meditation
this time, no little happy stories. I was going to come
clean damn it. Tell her about my struggles to. To.
To. To what?

Er, maybe not. I admit it, looking at her at that

very second I panicked. Honesty went fluttering out
of the window. I couldn’t do it. The show had to go
on.

Once that decision was made the words just

streamed out of me slow, easy, calm and committed.
“Hey honey”, I began, smiling and taking my time for
maximum effect and stall and hoping that she might
smile back. No smile? None. Damn. I pushed on
anyway, no choice now, “I am so sorry that I didn’t
feed our girl Kelly here, she must be starving.”
Response to the soft toss sympathy play for the dog
play? None. Damn. OK, move on, hope for the best.

“This morning I cleaned the garden.”

Bad move. She doesn’t care about the garden.

Still no change in her look or a word. Push forward!

“Then I took Kelly on a really long walk in the

hills, what with the break in the rain and all, pretty
muddy. Afterward I did a yoga class, I have it on the
CD now so I can do it a home.”

Cover cover cover. Keep the story straight.

“I made a great lunch did some reading and later
that afternoon well I went into this really deep

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meditation in the chair and I guess, I am sorry, I
guess I just fell asleep. I was so tired.”

Reaction? Nada. I can’t say if she bought it. It

even sounded bit hollow coming out. And I could see
by her expression that her reaction was lot less
favorable than it had been on previous occasions
where I had invoked the holy explanations. Maybe
the old Eastern act was beginning to wear thin.

Without saying a word she turned and started to

leave the room when she turned back and said in a
completely tepid and 100% unemotional voice, “Well,
then what’s for dinner, I have been in meetings since
10 and I am starving.” Ouch. Business as usual. No
acknowledgment. Double Oy.

“Um….I forgot to make it…” No point telling her

about the prosciutto sage stuffed chicken breasts
sitting in the oven that had risen to room
temperature about 5 hours ago. They were headed
for le garbage can.

She looked at me again without reaction. “Well,

if dinner isn’t made, order some cheeseboard pizza
then.” She paused and then added: “And next time
you might try to stay awake when you meditate, will
get more out of it.” She walked out and headed up
the stairs without another word or a glance in my
direction or the time of day……….

And that was it. It was pretty clear what had just
happened. If I didn’t do a better job of getting myself
together the delicate armistice between us would

174
end. I knew that today’s use of meditation was an
emergency life-line that I couldn’t use again.

This much was obvious, if I keep falling asleep

my cover will be blown. She will figure out just what I
am doing and there goes all that trust we have been
building. Going. Going. Gone. Just like Barry Bond’s
hopes of getting into the hall of fame.

Later, as I drove the Honda to the gourmet

ghetto in North Berkeley to pick up the Asiago,
Provolone, corn and arugula pizza (yes I know about
the rap on arugula but it is damn good on pizza), I
couldn’t help but think about the next steps. What
the hell was I supposed to do? I couldn’t fix the job
market or the economy or do any more meditation
and yoga then than I already was.

Then I realized something. Maybe there was a

solution. Yes, I wanted to improve my practice but if I
couldn’t pull it off in substance I damn well better do
so in image. I had to look better, like I was
completely serious about the inner work. My image
was too flippant, not respectful enough and it was
damaging my meditation cred.

Now did that mean sacrificing a dear friend.

Was the comfy chair at risk?

No. I am not suggesting that I considered

dismantling the man cave and moving out the chair.
Quite the contrary, my dear chair would continue to
be a holy space of regular and deep solace for me.
No, I had to improve the look of my internal work.

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 As I neared the Cheeseboard, looking at the line
and dreading it, I came up with the first step. It was
time to face the facts, I had to step up my game.
The answer was obvious, I needed a meditation
cushion and a place to sit. If I was going to move
forward in meditation I had to learn to sit or at a
minimum find a place where it looked like I had been
sitting.

There are lots of reasons why. Think back to

every image that exists of people meditating? What
are those people doing? They are sitting. Every
photo of everyone who meditates is sitting.
Everyone that your wife knows that meditates sits.
When she meditates, she sits. As such, I had to sit or
at least try to do so. If I could sit and maybe even
get on that meditation look, I would be golden. They
sit, you sit, no questions are asked. Sit in a chair and
you fall asleep. Then questions arise.

I had avoided the subject of sitting from the

beginning. Why sit I wondered? Sitting still and
doing nothing while staying awake and aware is as
common to most men as putting on mascara before
you go out on a date with your wife. It is not present
in our mental tool boxes. It plain feels strange.

There was another reason that I avoided this

development for some time. Pain. Sitting still for a
long time hurt, another leftover of the fateful bike
wreck all those years ago. I thought about telling her
that I have health reasons that prevent me from
sitting but that wouldn’t solve the image problem I

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faced.

I wondered about the pillows in the house.

Could I use on of them? Clearly I had to stay away
from those fancy pillows in the living room that she
brought back from vacation in Tuscany. Just what
were those things for anyway? No one ever dared sit
on them, even the dog somehow knew to stay away.

The rest of the evening and dinner passed

without further comment or dissonance, our spirits
soothed by the crisp crust and the healing powers of
Sauvignon Blanc and Dolcetto.

The next day I went out to the all Nepal shop on

Solano and brought back a real beauty of a cushion
from the most unusual looking salesperson. A
brightly colored pillow with powerful geometric
shapes numerous of tassels and took it home. And
there it sat on the floor of the mancave for several
days, looking at me as forlorn as dog Kelly begging
for a whole wheat corn free biscuit. The last steps of
avoidance of the inevitable.

Finally I decided that I was being ridiculous.

How bad could it be? Yes, it was that moment. I had
to sit down on it. I had been doing Yoga for months
so I was relatively confident that I could do this
without severe discomfort. So I put it down on the
floor of the mancave and got ready.

Then I had a thought. If I was going to go

through with this what I needed was evidence. If I
could just cross my legs over my ankles long enough

177
for a few moments, I could take a photo of myself
using the timer on and email it to her! That would do
it, I could get some credit out of this.

There was no more waiting. I went upstairs got

the camera, came back to the cave and got started.
Yes, let’s see, just lower myself down that’s it, not so
bad. Ok I am sitting on the cushion with cheek bones
engaged and legs pointed forward. Now raise one
leg up and move it bend it over the other, yes pain
but not too bad, then the other and cross them, hey
this isn’t so bad at all. OK, now get the camera,
bring it over to me and set the timer.

Yes, the timer. Looking over the body of the all

digital Nikon I couldn’t see anything like the simple
mechanical bar on the face of the body that
controlled the timer on cameras long gone by,
another analog reminder of simpler times gone by.

I turned the camera around and opened the

menu, started to scroll around, maybe it was here.
Went through the image quality, checked the ISO,
was 400 right? Did some adjustments, amazing how
much we forget about our digital assistants while we
use them. Then I looked at the program dial on the
upper left. What is this multiple image view, hey,
there were some photos I haven’t downloaded yet,
so I checked out someshots of a trip to Healdsburg.
Now, just what is this button here, no that is the
manual focus. Then it hit me, shit, I was lost, where
had the timer gone?

Several minutes later I found a strange icon on

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top of the body that sort of looked like a clock. Yes
was a clock. The timer clock! I pushed it. Nothing
happened. Oh to go back to the simple manual days.
I started to play with the toggle wheel and then the
symbol changed. Then I pushed the exposure button
down and a chirping high-pitched noise emerged
from within the Nikon’s computerized mini-mind.
Eureka!

There was no time to do more than hold it an

arm’s length away so I did and it took my picture.

The picture was comical at best. While I was

looking at it I realized something more important. I
had sat in lotus for almost five minutes while I
worked on this problem and not felt a thing. That
was a win. I set the timer and took another shot.
Much better.

Still, looking at the second photo there was still

something missing and I knew what it was. I didn’t
look the part. And to do so, I had to take my hands
and put them above my knees, fingers touching,
close the loop, feel the power. Feh.

As I did couldn’t help thinking that this looks

really weird. Who sits around their house on a
Thursday afternoon in a full lotus? What happened
to my inner captain of industry? Where had he
gone?

The truth remained evident. I knew that if I put

my hands above my knees and let them rest there
and then put a half smile on me everyone would

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think I was really into this. And that is what is
important. I had to let go of how dumb it looked to
and focus on the results. If I was going to do this the
half assed effort had to come to an end.

The next question was just as obvious. Where

should I put the pillow for regular sessions? I had to
find some place where she could see it and that
defeated the man cave concept entirely. No answer
revealed itself.

That afternoon I thought long and hard about

where to sit. As I did realized that the question
should never be where or whether to sit. The
question is this: Where is a comfortable place for me
to sit? A place where I can hang out.

Have you ever seen your dog check out a place

where he is going to lie down? How he circles and
circles until he finds that one spot and then
collapses? I was looking for that spot. I had no idea
where it was.

I never did send that photo to La Sweets but I

wanted to be sure that she noticed anyway. Later
that week I went back to the all Nepal store and
bought three more pillows. Put two in the bedroom,
one for me one for her, and one in the living room.

She who sees nothing that does not interest her

saw them immediately when she came home that
night and gave me that look that we are all looking
for.

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 She picked one up. “Cute,” she commented.
“And just what are these?”

“His and her cushions,” I replied. “Thought we

might meditate together sometime.”

She smiled came over to my desk and gave me

a sincere hug. Looked me right in the eyes.

“That”, she replied, “would be very nice”.

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 Chapter 23

A snake in the grass

(Hey motherfucker, can’t you see me hiss?)

It was just a few weeks before that the worst

thing that could possibly have happened to me
actually did. Something completely out of the blue,
completely unfair and entirely destabilizing. Without
warning I was contacted about a real job opening, a
good one where I had a real chance of getting the
position.

The effect upon me was as immediate and

visceral as the first shot must be on an alcoholic who
hasn’t had a drink in years. The information burned
as I drank it down. It felt so good as the thoughts
pulsed warmly through my system, but my joy was
tempered by the instinctive knowledge that I was
opening a door that I had sealed tightly shut for a
reason.

Oh my friends, this wasn’t just an opening that I

read about somewhere or a Craigslist ad or a rumor
on the street. It was a direct referral through a
mutual friend who knew the owners of this company.
I knew the owners as well from my previous work.
Their business was in a related field. I respected
them and their product, loved their team and the
brand’s personality.

He told me to give them (a husband and wife

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team owned the company) a call this week. Sure
enough when I did their reaction could not been
more positive. “Happy to hear from you. Yes heard
you left your former position. How is it going? What
have you been up to? Great. Yes, we are thinking
about hiring someone. Yes we should talk. Can we
have lunch next week?”

Sure, I could make the time.

The next steps were just too much fun. Several

lunches at good restaurants in the City talking
business, family and philosophy over Pad Thai, garlic
eggplant and beers. Relaxed discussions about
where their business was and how I could help it.
Brainstorming sessions with their key managers.
Perfect South of Market location, lots of light,
exposed ceilings, open floor plan, plenty of bright
people, so different from the places where I had
worked in the past. Several weeks of discussions
followed that stretched right through into November.

I committed the absolute sin of visualizing

myself working there. How much a reasonable salary
would be. Could I get it together to be ready for the
next Fancy Food Show in January? How good it
would feel to make that announcement.

Over time the moment of truth came in a natural

progression. We defined the position as President of
one of a consumer product division and had reached
a go/no-go point in the negotiations. We hadn’t
talked salary yet, but they had assured me that it
wasn’t an issue. They just wanted to think about it

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some more. And as they were busy finishing the
remodel of their home they couldn’t give me a final
answer until next week. That seemed fine.
Reasonable. Sure. No big deal. Nothing to worry
about. Right?

Weekend? No one calls on the weekend.

Monday. Silence. Tuesday. Silence. Wednesday. Too
much silence for this boy to stand. I emailed them
that we had long planned to spend some time with
our daughter in Boston and would be gone for the
next week. The husband got right back to me in
minutes, apologized and reiterated they were busy
with the house and promised to call me on Monday
to let me know the decision.

We headed back East that Sunday to enjoy

ourselves. I focused on keeping my thoughts
positive and not worrying about the situation, what
would be, I told myself, would be.

Then Monday came. Monday Monday, the

Mommas and Papas sang, can’t trust that day. True
here to. Just as dreaded, Monday came and went
without word one from them and that triggered a
new dilemma. Do I call?
No. It is the wrong move, this is only pride that is
speaking now. You don’t want to look as anxious as
you are.

So we helped ease the pain that evening by

going out to dinner at Neptune Oyster, an
exceptional seafood restaurant on the North End with
a take it as it is attitude matched by the freshness

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and quality of the oysters (never thought there were
so many kinds), local beers and new to me East coast
fish (haddock? Black cod?) all washed down with a
classic crisp tall necked bottle of the Loire’s finest
Muscadet. We had a great time walking back to our
hotel in the cold but clear winter evening. Forgot all
about the job until I woke up the next day and it
roared front and center into my cerebellum just as
my eyes opened.

But Tuesday came and went too. The anxiety

began to mount. Why hadn’t they called? We all
know what this meant. It was a bad, very bad, sign
and the famous boo birds inside of me began to sing
out in their plaintive dark and shrill voices, ‘fucked
again, yes, you are fucked again.’

As such Tuesday was a thorough disaster. My

mind was completely preoccupied with the job. I was
restless cranky and generally a complete pain to be
with and to make matters worse the girls wanted to
shop.

That evening I drank a lot (yes again) at another

wonderful dinner (yes again) at the counter at B&G
Oyster House trying to distract myself, surrounded
by the love of my family who did their best to tell me
to be patient and that things would work out. I didn’t
buy into a word they said, barely listened to them,
the boo bird song was all that I heard. Fucked again.
Fucked again. Found myself staring at the intricate
tile work the deep fryer and a bottle of Pinot Noir.

To end the evening I ordered a cognac, always a

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favorite personal down drafter. It felt so good going
down, nutty viscous and dry. Sure enough it came
back to bite me right in the ass later.

I didn’t sleep well at all that night, tossing,

turning and battling the hotel’s lack of fresh air,
miserable pillows and noisy fan. It felt like I was up
every 15 minutes. Lying there in a damp sweat,
shifting from uncomfortable position to
uncomfortable position, unable to fall asleep I
couldn’t shut my mind off as wife slept soundly along
side me blissfully unaware.

I was, once again, the mouse on the mental

wheel, running fast and getting nowhere. All I could
think about was how much I wanted to go back to
work. That feeling was overpowering, a faucet of
pure bitterness that I could not turn off. As I
routinely checked the digital alarm clock I could see
the hours pass, 1, 2, 3 and then 4.

I got very angry. I was pissed off about so many

things. The economy. Joblessness. Bush.
Restlessness. A lack of purpose in life. And mostly
about the fact that I knew that I wasn’t going to get
this job. I could feel it coming even though I had no
idea why it was or how I could stop it.

I awoke at 9 dry mouthed, bleary and unfocused.

Took a shower without caring, got dressed. And sure
enough, a little later Wednesday morning while we
sat at the counter enjoying the very blueberry
pancake breakfast at Charlie’s Sandwich Shop, a
very local hole in the wall that defines the words

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local and hole in the wall, the call came in. Seeing
the Caller ID, I stepped outside into the cold
Massachusetts air between the smokers on the
sidewalk and listened for my fate in the cold morning
air.

The call was quick, honest and cordial. Really

nothing to argue about. ‘Sorry mate, change of
plans and all that. Recession and all you know old
chap.’ Decided to keep the division manager that
they described to me as a complete and utter idiot.
‘Chin up though. Let’s have lunch sometime. Don’t
be a stranger.’ I held up my end fine, sure I
understand, keep me in mind for the future, blah
blah blah, blah and blah. No problem. Right? No
problem! Yeah, I am cool.

Todd Rundgren once sang a song about

relationship break ups. In the chorus he asked “Can
we still be friends?” Maybe in love. Not possible in
business.

No problem? Bullshit. It was a problem.

As I pushed my way back into the restaurant,

through the long line of customers waiting on
Columbus Avenue for their chance at breakfast, I felt
the flood of emotions and the sour taste of last
night’s dinner and drinks push its way up my
stomach and into my throat. Anger quickly gave way
to sadness as self-pity stood waiting in the wings for
its chance to take center stage. By the time I made
it back to the counter I was ready for a full on wallow
in the pit of self-loathing.

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 Wife knew I didn’t get the job before I even sat
down, it was inscribed on my face and etched into
my expression. “Bad news, huh” she asked quietly.

I didn’t answer. She knew. She put her arm

around me and I asked for the NY Times. This just
wasn’t a time to talk, even for me. I didn’t know what
to say anyway that wouldn’t sound just as shitty as I
felt. There was nothing I wanted to share and no one
I wanted to talk to.

To her credit she left me alone. Well to be

honest she left me alone after I barked at her after
she asked me if was OK.

“Do I fucking look OK? Are you blind?”

That killed the chat very effectively.

It was one of those very very rare moments

where I seriously thought about a cocktail before
noon.

Later, after we walked in silence to the hotel,

daughter called wanting to know what we were going
to do for the day. She had planned to do some food
shopping with us and was ready to make plans. Food
was my lingua franca with the kids, always a source
of pleasure and comfort. And I knew that the
semester had been a bit of struggle for her. She had
taken the time to clean the filthy kitchen of their
ramshackle Allston rental and was and that she was
looking forward to cooking us dinner that night.

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 Wife told her right off that I was in a horrible
mood (so true) as the word had come down that
morning about the job and it sure wasn’t good. I
begged off food shopping with them, something
completely out of character and no doubt not fair to
my daughter, but I was worthless at that point.

I stayed behind as wife caught a cab and took off

and for a while I just stood there, looking out over the
grey winter downtown Boston skyline and trying hard
to understand the meaning of what had happened
over the past two weeks without opening up the mini
bar and grabbing a stiff one to help the translation.

As I thought about the situation I fell into the

terrible realm of remorse. I reviewed each step of the
negotiations in painful and unnecessary detail, where
I had made comments, what I might have done
wrong all without any particular insight other than
perhaps not to be so excited next time.

Then I became bitter. I looked at my life through

the black lens of entitlement and the taste of the
heart of an almond seed. Everything felt horrible,
disjointed and ugly. As grey as the day. All of these
skills, all of this knowledge, degrees, experience.
What good did it do for me?

The final emotion that I crossed that morning

was despair. Just how long would this go on for?
When would this shit end? How long did I have to
stay at home and wonder what to do the next day?

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 I don’t know how long I stood there staring out
without purpose, it must have been for a good while,
until I stopped feeling so damn sorry for myself.
Either I had reached a crossroads or gotten bored.
Maybe both.

Eventually the pain began to recede and some

shockingly clear thoughts came into my mind. First:

‘Do not focus on what you cannot control.’

Ooooooh, what was that? Then another.

‘Accept those things that have happened.’

Finally this:

‘Learn from what has happened. Then move

on.’

As I concluded this sequence of thoughts I

laughed out loud in the empty hotel room. These
were new concepts, ideas that I had recently learned
in the past 6 months of study. Yet they had become
completely internalized, a reservoir of strength that I
never had before. These concepts were strangely
calming and very reassuring.

What I needed was to understand my situation

not to block it out and hope it would go away. Then
a truth hit me. What was I angry about? They hadn’t
misled me or even led me on. They had treated me
with respect, listened to me and made a hard
decision based on the economy and what they

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believed was best for their company.

So what was I pissed about?

I also realized that what I really needed was a

good workout and a sweat to burn off some of these
toxins. I called the concierge and asked if there was
a yoga studio in the neighborhood. I don’t think he
knew what I was even talking about but he did
suggest that there was a gym on the 4th floor.

That is where I stood 20 minutes later, after

some basic stretching, up on one leg trying to stay in
the tree posture and not lose my balance, hoping no
one would come into the gym, not that this was likely
at 11:00 am in the morning. It took me about an
hour to finish my sequence and then I went back to
the room.

I thought about calling the girls for company, but

I knew darn well that they were busy and why not,
they should enjoy their time together. I was ready to
turn the TV on when I stopped. No, this was time for
something different. I had to honor the process that
had saved me.

Slowly, I pulled a pillow off of the bed and put it

on the floor. I sat down and crossed my legs into a
lotus, began to breathe in and out. Yes and as I did
my mind calmed and settled. And then, there in the
middle of this oasis of peace and tranquility a vision
emerged. A holy manful meditation image of pure
elegant humble ecstasy. Simple, balanced, perfect,
hovering it seemed above the bed set against the

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white curtains of the room.

A hamburger.

A perfectly cooked hamburger, still pink in the

center, juices flowing as I cut into it sharp mustard
sharper cheddar caramelized onions thinly sliced half
sour dills, slightly toasted egg bun….

Oh hell yes, I was hungry.

Then my grass fed day-dream was interrupted

by phone call from a friend in California. As we
chatted I bitched out the job opportunity, laughing
now, and thought about how many things I had to be
thankful for. There were a lot.

As it turned out dinner that evening never

happened. The girls got busy shopping for clothes
and never made it to the food store. Daughter got a
clean kitchen and we went out for Shabu Shabu hot
pot in the neighborhood instead. The company was
sweet, the place was packed, the food was great and
the Kirin beers were dry and cold. Daughter
admitted that maybe she was beginning to like
Boston. La Sweets showed some pubic affection.

What more could a guy ask for?

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 Chapter 24

I Am Not Wasted and I Can Find My Way Home.

What is about airplane flights that provide us

with such pure concentrated time to think? Is it the
thin metal skin that surrounds you? The artificial
space that feels like an illusion of structure? The total
disconnect from the world below? Or the undeniable
fact that you are hurtling through the sky at insane
speeds sealed in an oxygen cone, activities that defy
logic. Who knows? The results are what matters.

For me, a plane flight has always been one of

the best places to read and think. Positively 100%
away from it all. And you don’t have to drive.

On long airplane flights time disconnects. Watch

checks become way too frequent and usually wrong.
Time seems to move even more slowly on flights
coming home to the West Coast. And it truly is
thanks to the trade winds that move against us. That
is not always a bad thing.

Our flight home the next day from Boston was

wonderfully uneventful, from decent weather to a
mindless car return to short lines at check in right
through to empty security and an on-time departure.
Less time at Logan is always the better. What a pit
of an airport.

Once onboard, the experience that we currently

call flight is incredibly insulated. I submit that this is

193
for the best. There is nothing, including the last
vestiges of customer service (that disappeared with
the 401(k) programs of the attendants) to interfere
with a good novel or magazine, your Ipod music
shuffle (from Monk to Dvorak to Muddy Waters) and
lots of time to just think without interruption.

People no longer talk to each other on planes.

Just as in our cafes, we would rather look at a screen
than each other. In addition, we no longer face that
hopeless feeling of wondering whether to eat that
questionable airplane food. It is gone from the
unfriendly skies along with our blankets, pillows and
the remnants of airborne dignity. Now you have the
choice of not paying 8 dollars for trail mix, crackers,
inert cheese and salami. That is a quick decision to
make. It is just so much easier not to have to deal
with what was at best a marginal experience in the
past.

As we flew to the west with El Dulce sleeping

contentedly along side, I set down my latest in a
continuing series of food themed books and tucked it
into the pocket of the seat in front of me. I gently
closed my suddenly burning eyes and reflected upon
what had happened in the past few weeks. That
supercharged cranked up feeling sparked by the
hope of employment followed by a very rude body
slam into the ocean floor of not getting the job.

I thought about why it hit me so very hard this

time. That turned out to be a quick bit of analysis. It
hurt because I came really close to getting a really
good job that disappeared just as quickly and easily.

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That combined with painful truth that I knew the next
one would be a long way off.

That issue closed, as the flight continued I

wondered about the meaning of the floating
hamburger that appeared hovering over the bed in
my Boston hotel room the day before. While this
vision appeared at first impression to be random it
was no accident. My bovine yet spiritual moment
was a predictable result of the last few months of my
life and my nascent journey into manful meditation.
A potent symbol of where I had come from and a
preview of where the next steps would take me.

All of this in a hovering juice dripping imaginary

burger? Yes and then some mustard please. My
reflections began to drift a bit as I my train of
thought turned inwards.

By beginning this journey I intuitively recognized

where I was a person. Perhaps more importantly I
recognized where I wasn’t.

By taking action I made a decision. I decided

that I didn’t want to stay in the mindset of the past.
Something sparked within me and once lit it
continued to burn.

Phrased differently, it has been said that we all

come from somewhere. However, as one of the many
wise sages I studied as a young man said in
response:

“But you can’t get there from here.”

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 I had come to that point in my life. I could not
get there from the here that I was now living.

My inner manful spirit was searching for

something more, something greater, but I did now
know yet where that road began or where it leads. I
knew that I could not continue down the path
towards enlightenment without finding an onramp.
But my personal onramp had no signs. I was driving
down the 405 into the smog filled LA basin and then
back up to Mullholland again and again searching
vainly for the exit.

As the plane flew on I continued to wonder.

Where does my road to enlightenment begin? Does it
have a beginning? Yes, it did on that hung-over
morning And does this road end? I believe that it
does not. For this road is endless yet finite, limited
yet infinite. My search for manful enlightenment is
like trying to find the open highway itself.

The only speed limit is the personal energy and

discipline invested.

I knew that the road to happiness that I sought is

not free. There is a toll and it is not monetary. The
tokens that open the gates to happiness are found in
the basic teachings and the discipline to practice
them regularly.

You see, the search for regular and successful

manful meditation had become more and more
dominant in my life. But without discipline there

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would be no chance of success. Without a regular
study of manful meditation, my attempt at creating
this practice would be as naked and exposed as the
sweaty, hairy and bare ass-crack of a fat man ready
to pass out during a hard work out.

Yuck.

Stepping away from this philosophical

exploration, I recognized what was coming and I
welcomed it. As the flight crossed the Midwest I
decided to make my first attempt to bring discipline
to my manful meditation practice. It was time to
create a manful meditation plan.

Over the years I have learned not to fear the

blank page or in our modern world, the blank screen.
I have actually come to enjoy it. The blank page of
any plan, whether business or personal, contains
elements of pure clarity and infinite possibility. It is
the sketchbook of the author, a canvass open to the
creative spirit and soul of the writer.

So I reached down and fished the old reliable

clunker dell laptop out from the backpack and booted
it up. And, after the usual slow start up, there sat a
perfect blank screen empty save for a small flashing
cursor in the upper left corner. Now what? Having no
particular inspiration, I typed the words ‘manful
meditation plan’.

And there those words sat for several moments

while I fretted about the flip side of the discipline that
I was so excited about just a moment before.

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Consistent approach isn’t it? Wasting time, I
wondered…can you plan for spiritual success? Does
planning destroy the joy of exploration? Can you
plan creativity? Excitement? Stimulation? Or were
these just excuses I invoked whenever I stood at the
precipice of focused effort, little ADD flavored chirps
from the creative punk wannabe within.

After that little inner bitch was dismissed, I

started to write.

1. What are my objectives?

To create a practice of manful meditation.

To achieve greater clarity.
To be more relaxed.
To accept my limitations.
To banish my temper and my anger.

2. The Goals?

To do a 10 minute manful meditation every day.

To do at least 4 hours of yoga a week.
Not to drink 3 nights a week.
To walk the dog for 30 minutes every day.

3. How to keep the process creative yet

disciplined.

Item 3 remained blank. No inspiration came just

yet.

As I re-read the page I felt really good. I had a

plan! Now I could turn the computer off and relax. I

198
swore to stay away from the 40 channels of tempting
flickering TV images and to start the process now
with a 10-minute meditation. It was 3:40 pm West
Coast. Time to start.

Closing my eyes for a moment and wandering

off into the faint hiss of the little air that was
grudgingly provided to us it, the vision came back to
me, as if it was somehow burnt into my memory.
The burger was back and it felt great.

Why did I believe that this revelation would help

me? I theorized long and hard about how mediating
on objects that I loved made it easier on me to
meditate. Yet I had no proof. I was in a mental
diaspora, wandering from subject to subject without
plan. Now, for the first time the same object had
reappeared in my mind several times. The lesson
was as plain to see as ketchup on a white tablecloth.

I was ready for a series of focused repetitive

meditations on the subject that I loved most in life. In
this case that meant one thing and thing only. Food.
(sorry hon, it is just so). It was the burger that
stepped up from my subconscious and volunteered
to be my meditation guinea pig. Once again food had
come roaring out of my subconscious to save me at a
critical moment.

So there was the path, the hamburger as the

study of my first organized meditation. There was no
turning back. I was going to do this, even though my
legs weren’t crossed. Eyes closed, breathing steady
my mind drifted lightly and easily through all things

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that meant hamburger. The effect was remarkable.

My mind instantly visualized a sequence of

hamburgers. They came to me in waves, a study in
meaty contrasts at 40,000 feet. The burgers whirled
as they changed sizes, from sliders to quarter
pounders to 16 oz. behemoths.

Eventually, my mind’s eye settled on my image

of the perfect burger, about 8 ounces of medium
cooked heaven placed gently so as not to pierce the
slightly charred crust, open face on a warm diner
style plate just off of the charcoal grill, cooling as it
relaxed, juices just starting to flow.

Then the meditation glided to the assembly of

the burger (as I wondered, what is a burger, is it the
meat or the whole shebang? Or both?) Which
mustard to choose, brown, whole grain, Dijon or dull
French’s? What lettuce? Romaine for firmness yes.
Thick slice of tomato, a dab of mayo and sour pickle
relish. Bun? No question for me, egg yellow and
lightly toasted with sesame seeds. Now I slowly
began to assemble the finished product. As I looked
in my mind’s eye at this imaginary plate I knew it
looked naked. I tried to discipline the process and
stay off of the sides but they came roaring through
anyway.

Eyes still closed, breathing so relaxed and deep I

let them tease me. Insanely crisp double cooked
thick French Fries were next, dipped in a vinegary
tart ketchup with just enough salt. I danced back

200
and forth in an out of spicy peppery cole slaw, the
guilty pleasure of bbq potato chips and some savory
baked beans. Yes and and well, then I felt a pain, a
rumble, a powerful movement that pulled me right
out of the world of manful meditation and back to
seat 19B (yes sweetness had taken the window).
Ouch! This pain was real, it was no meditation.

My stomach was rumbling bad. The meditation

had brought on a serious case of unexpected
munchies. I was starving and my stomach let me
know it. I looked at my watch. Good news bad news
followed. Good news. It was 4:05. I had been gone
for 25 minutes! Bad news. There were three hours
left before landing.

Sweets had packed some slightly over the hill

bananas and oatmeal raisin cookies that I fished out
and proceeded to devour. While far from perfect,
they held serve until we touched down.

Slightly fed, I relaxed again as the plane flew

onward to the west coast. I smiled. I realized that I
was ecstatic about this development. I had a plan. I
would bring order to my life and discipline to my
meditation work, spending the rest of the year
working through glorious subjects of my choice. This
would keep my mediations strong and my mind
focused.

I would start with a week dedicated to burgers.

Then maybe continue the beef theme to steaks.
Either way, the next month would be focused on
food. Then I would review my progress before

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starting a new manful subject. And she would love
me all the more for it.

Landing was on time and even the baggage

showed up in less than 10 minutes. I forgave the
airlines for their aesthetic transgressions, their job
was to get me home safely and on time and they did.

As we pulled out off site parking I made another

decision. Instead of the usual trip north on 101 we
detoured south immediately after landing. Only the
primal joy of double-double with cheese and onions,
fries and a vanilla shake could ease the remainder of
my inner hunger. The sleeping white dog could
always wait a few more minutes before we came
home.

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 Chapter 25
Home Again.
(And again.)

Do you want it well done?

The next day I returned home to the every, every

and give it to me one more time, every day routine.
It didn’t take more than another long dull morning
with no set plans to reduce my newly found
confidence to that of a third grader who has lost his
milk money.

It is amazing how corrosive having nothing to do is to

my well-being and to my confidence. And that is the
point isn’t it? Doing nothing or even doing less is
seen as a defeat both by society and by myself.

Men, and certainly those of us that have a burning

drive to succeed, are taught over and over to go for
the gusto, the gold, the big prize. To win what’s
behind the third door. Anything less is a considered
to be failure. There are no awards for those who
came in 10th out of 10,000 runners even though they
are in the top .01% of whatever they are doing. No
consolation prize is offered.

Yes, us guys aren’t trained, or perhaps just not aware

enough to enjoy the simple day-to-day victories in
our lives. The place where real satisfaction is found.
Worse yet, we are not rewarded for accomplishing
them. So we keep trying to hit the ball out of the
park.

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Men tend to run in packs. As such, it is not surprising
that our behavior patterns have turned out this way.
Look at the messages we receive in the ads we see.
Have you ever seen a beer ad (remember that beer
is one of the big rewards guys are presumed to look
forward to in order to enjoy themselves) that
features a solitary man dealing with the broken drive
belt on a washing machine, a leaking faucet or a
faulty gas valve on the backyard bbq? You don’t see
him finding that missing password on the email
account or fixing the router that is down before he
gets a cold one. Yet these are the everyday tasks of
the modern man. While this is the realm where we
do most of our work we receive no rewards for these
tasks except our own personal satisfaction.
Unfortunately, we come to believe that this alone is
never enough.

How many of us spend our days driving through the

wide-open countryside, working on large construction
projects with concrete and mud in the beds of our
sweetly tuned pick up trucks? Not as many as the ad
companies would have us believe I suspect.

We are more likely to be painting a wall then building

a new one (or hiring someone to do both).

Why is it that the daily work that men do is simply

expected of us? Is it because we are taught not to
ask for praise or a thank you? Have our spouses and
partners become immune or oblivious?

Maybe there is another reason.

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Men are expected to hit the shot, the target, the
bulls- eye. When we succeed, it is assumed instead
of appreciated. Women, on the other hand, do a
much better job of letting us know when they want to
be recognized for success. And when they don’t
succeed, they are more accepting of their failures.
We just get ‘er done and if we don’t, say fuck it, if we
say anything at all.

And that isn’t all. To make matters more

complicated the she’s have left for work permanently
and once that door swung upon it stayed that way.
Our wives (and/or partners) aren’t coming home to
polish the floors and many of them are out-earning
their husbands and boyfriends. (As a quick aside, if
you can’t handle that fact, check your pride at the
door and grow up. You are a couple. Period.) The
rules of engagement have changed.

The downside of their mass departure from the casa

is that now you can add a crying child that refuses to
be calmed, a sink full of dishes and, in my case, a
sweetie pie that doesn’t want or care to cook to the
male taskbar.

Now in all fairness that last aspect of the current

state of affairs is just fine with me. I am not sure
how I would have handled a competitive voice in the
kitchen. Frankly, I don’t think it would have been
easy for me to have a collaborator jousting for
position on the cutting board.

I bring this up to illustrate that the list of required

205
guy tasks has broadened beyond firing the back yard
grill on Sundays. It now includes cooking a mean
beef stew (if not a boeuf bourginon), knowing which
red to serve with it and how to make a passable
dessert. Ah but once again thoughts of food
overwhelm me and I immediately digress from the
moment at hand.

It is a complicated set of tasks that we all face.

These feelings are brought home when we don’t
have careers to rely upon and the days are no longer
structured.

But hold the phone there was good news on the line
that particular morning. Instead of wandering back
into the double-edged sword of wandering the
Internet as I did so often, I chose another route. I
took action. The day witnessed a change in
behavior. The morning would turn out different. I
had a battle plan and now it was time to launch it, an
alternative to the continuous mild discomfort and
excess down time of the unemployed male. No more
talk about starting my meditation plan or outlining
what to do. It was time to start the mental engines.

So I fired up the 6-pound Dell and threw my little

meditation plan on a flash-drive. I quickly transferred
it to the Mac. Then I opened Ical and created a new
calendar group titled ‘Manful Meditation’. Ignoring
for the moment how blank the week was, I blocked
out 30 minutes every morning to walk and thus
exercise big foot white dog and myself, 30 minutes
for yoga and 15 minutes for manful meditation.
Every day, 3 blocks of time to focus on and hopefully

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provide a structure for the day.

Yet, looking at those isolated bright blue squares

spread out across the days of week, I felt kind of sad.
Did I really need to do this? Putting order to my life
had as much appeal to me as the taste of castor oil
to a 7-year old, or at least how I imagine that taste to
be. We never had it in the house. On the other hand,
we had other flavor tortures way back then like
tongue and bone marrow, now both hip but that is
another story completely.

The screen was doubly depressing as there were no

other entries for the entire week. But I had to try to
get some discipline into this process or nothing
would ever change. And this was that moment.

It was early enough in the day put my plan into

action. To hear the white dog cry out with happiness
when the magic world ‘walk’ was uttered and head
up the hill together for a strenuous hike before the
rains started later that early winter afternoon.

I threw on some old sweats and left the house with

the ipod blaring. The music kept my pace strong as
my furry companion pulled me up the path to Indian
Rock and onwards. It was a cold but clear day and
the bay shimmered out in the distance as I climbed
the North Berkeley hills. As I did, the ipod shuffle
program uncannily scored a 10 of 10, tossing out a
variety of music and styles that made me smile.
Here is what it played:

Today’s real life shuffle 10 (courtesy of the ipod)

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-Bumpin on Sunset. Wes Montgomery. Just as funky
50(could it be?) years later. A guitar sound of his
own.
-Gone Baby Gone. Violent Femmes. Filthy.
Depraved. Love your dress.
-Angel Eyes Ella Fitzgerald w/ Frank Sinatra (live).
Two masters.
-Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The Clash (live). No
comment needed.
-Secrets. Eliane Elias. Smooth as a 25 year old Flor
De Cana Nicaraguan rum.
-What I See (Family guy) Randy Newman. Very
funny. Where did this come from?
-Breakdown (bootleg live) Tom Petty. Yes, everyone
sings along with Tom in California.
-Blame It on Yourself. Ivy. This breathy French girl is
just such a bitch? Yet he still can’t help himself from
wanting her.
-Superlungs. Donavan. The ultimate hippy singing a
b--track. about a 14 year old pot smoking girl.
-Rahde Krishna. DJ Chebb I Sabbah. Om meets hip in
trancelike grooves.

A set no radio station will ever approach. What a

game changing device it is.

The walk flew by and I picked up some fresh Kaiser

rolls. After returning home and putting my stuff
away, I threw down the yoga mat and began a light
work out with the traditional ashtanga sun salute
poses, stretching and calming. A little tree, a little
spine stretching. It felt good. Then I walked
downstairs and found the cushion, white dog wisely

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staying upstairs to absorb the last of the morning sun
on the beige wool carpet. After shutting the door to
the mancave (why I thought, no one is here…)I sat
down, moved into a lotus (without thinking about
pain or worrying!), closed my eyes and began to
breathe. Time to implement the burger meditations.
So I started looking for them. Nothing happened.
Where were they? When would they come? What
was going to happen? My brain flooded with doubt.

Would this work I began to wonder? Was my theory

of self-directed male oriented meditation just plain
vanilla bullshit? Was I kidding myself trying to find an
excuse not to follow the rules where none was truly
needed?

Why couldn’t I just settle for thousands of years of

proven relaxation techniques? Not good enough for
the big man? Why did I have to rebel against these
well-known and successful schools of thought?

Perhaps it was the effect of growing up in the 60’s

and 70’s where we rebelled against everything and
tore so much down, always believing that there
would be something better around the corner, that
we could improve on whatever was out there no
matter what we started with. Or maybe it was my
early exposures to mediation. In high school I met
people who were chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for
a new car, a television or a million dollars. What
material nonsense. Other practitioners appeared to
be lobotomized, the Hare Krishna dancing blissfully
and mindlessly down the street. Still other forms of
meditation focused on a phrase, a mantra repeated

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as nauseum. All of that sounded horrible and
contributed to my instinctive distrust of those
practices and thus Eastern thought.

Now I hoped that I had a much better route to finding

some kind of peace. I had to know if I could make it
by thinking and meditating about those things that
make me happy. So I closed my eyes again and this
time I let go of all thought. Without further effort the
second hamburger meditation commenced after a
few minutes of emptiness. And what a beauty it
turned out to be.

At first the meditation resembled that of the previous

day in the airplane. That part was great. I thought
about the burger itself, a humble yet exalted food
capable of infinite variety. I continued my personal
search for a perfect burger, exploring the relative
virtues of cooking temperatures and the results, rare
vs. medium, well done to steak tartare. I visualized
charcoal and gas, frying pan and oven broiler.
Everything was going great but as the meditation
continued on without warning the burgers began to
change and not in a good way.

It stared innocently enough. I started to think about

ground meat. Why was meat that you purchased at
the store red on the outside and grey on the inside?
Rookie mistake. The mental banana peel to a host of
horrors.

I saw visions of frozen meat packed into cardboard

boxes marked not fit for human consumption. The
boxes contained countless pre-formed 3-ounce

210
patties made from beef blended with ammonia
processed fat remnants that could barely be called
meat. Burgers full of saturated fat and sodium.
Others laced with e-coli that I couldn’t see but felt.
Frisbees made of fat and slat that destroyed societal
health in the name of providing cheap food at
unrealistically inexpensive prices subsidized by
government.

Things got darker and darker. I pulled myself out the

meditation when the maggots started to appear a bit
shaken by the power of the visual imagery. All this in
the image of burger. Yes yes yes and more.

I looked at the clock in the mancave. 30 minutes had

gone by. Despite the negative ending, I felt
strangely calm and rested and some of the anxiety of
the early morning was gone.

The rest of the day passed easily with a quick lunch

of teriyaki chicken with udon and mixed vegetables
and some overdue work in the garden. I was
peaceful throughout.

I continued this pattern for the rest the week. A

walk in the morning followed by yoga and then a
focused burger mediation. I wanted to see if I could
spend a week on one subject.

The third meditation of the burger sequence on

Wednesday was really sweet. It began with a
reflection on the many different kinds. Ground turkey
started it off followed by chicken and then lamb. The
lamb took me briefly into a sort of Greek theme and

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my mind watched a shimmering ground meat
shwarma spit turning and turning in front of a fire for
what seemed like a very very long time.

Thursday’s fourth burger meditation started

innocently enough before I went all Sinclair on it. I
spend a lot of time looking at the structure of the
burger itself. Some were so simple and elegant
focused on the quality of the meat, the way it should
crumble in your mouth. Others were huge
productions with a host of additional ingredients from
onion rings to blue cheese to half sour pickles.

But most of the meditation looked at the role of the

bun. It is the foundation of this house. It must be
thick enough to support the meat but thin enough
not to get in the way of the main feature. As the
burger is eaten it becomes something new, part of
the evolution of the meal itself. The juices drip into
the structure of the bread creating something akin to
a miniature Yorkshire pudding or a French toast with
gravy as the lubricant.

If only the dark side of my brain would have left well

enough alone. At some point I got lost on the meat
itself again and this time that led right back to
Bessie. Oh you can guess where it went from there.
Do not pass go, head directly to holocaust like
images of slaughterhouses and feeding pens full of
terrorized bovines. Suddenly I smelled the awful
stench of the feeding pens on I-5 driving from SF to
LA. It was all spinning out of mental control when I
heard the voice (of all damn people) of Anthony
Bourdain and his speech about animals and why

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even though we don’t enjoy it, we love to eat them
too much to stop.

To quote:

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the

vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.
To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ
meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth
living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and
decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for,
the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads
imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal
protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian
waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a
cold.”

Truth that.

Eventually I calmed down. I finished the meditation

in a field of fat well-fed beer drinking Kobe cows
grazing the hills of Japan with an imaginary
snowcapped Mt. Fuji looming in the background.

As the end of the week was upon me it was time for

the fifth burger and final burger meditation. This
time I had a goal, I decided to think about my
favorite burgers over the years. Eyes closed,
breathing normally and deeply and comfortable on
the cushion indeed, I went right into this historical
jaunt. The first dish to come to mind was from my
childhood. We never had burgers at home so I spent
time in an image of my mom’s meat loaf, always
served in the same oval blue baking pan and covered
with a sauce that I later learned was ketchup that
she liberally applied during the last minutes of

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cooking. For our house, a real gastronomic event.

I moved from there to days spent with a junior high

friend at a long gone burger stand that his parents
owned on Crenshaw Blvd. south of Santa Barbara
(now King) in LA. There, at a burger stand owned by
Jews no less, we broke all of the Kosher rules with
their boring but passable cheeseburgers and greasy
fries that we gladly devoured after school.

From there my burger mediations moved to a chili

size (a burger in chili covered with cheese and
reheated in the oven) at the Hamburger Hamlet on
Sepulveda Blvd. on the west side that we loved in
high school and where I saw my first leather booth.

I still can’t forget the first taste of an In and Out

burger on Arrow Highway, our escape from the dorm
food at Claremont Men’s College. Then on to Clown
Alley and Grubstake at 3 in the morning when I first
moved to the City and what about Barney’s with the
kids bridging the decades.

Then the era of fancy pants burgers arrived and they

suddenly appeared at fine restaurants throughout
the city, somewhat out-of-place at dinner, the
country bumpkin invited to a fancy dinner with fine
china and real silverware. But they held their own
and now I can enjoy a good burger just about
everywhere.

As my mediation ended and eyes opened I realized

how burgers had followed me throughout life. They
were always there. whether I was rich or poor. What

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amazing dishes whether eaten simple or
complicated, true food chameleons in our lives.

All this in a burger indeed.

Only the noodle has more variations. Noodles…

hmmm,, maybe that would be the theme for next
week.

I had to leave the mancave at that point. We had

company coming over for dinner that night, sweets
was working late (surprise that), the house was a
mess and the shopping wasn’t done.

I handled the tasks easily that day and enjoyed

them. The resentment I so often felt about my life
situation was missing for a change. I hope it enjoyed
the vacation from my life. I was curiously calm.

The weather was actually pretty nice that evening, so

much so that I uncovered the bbq. I grilled
swordfish.

Chili Size

Grilled hamburger patties

Chili. Any recipe is fine. Just have it cooked
beforehand.
Cheddar Cheese shredded.
Chopped fine raw onions.
Portions to taste and to size of crowd

Grill your burgers to medium rare. Have your chili

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ready and hot. In a baking dish arrange the patties.
Cover with chili and top with grated cheddar cheese.
Cook in hot oven until cheese has melted and is
bubbling. Top with chopped raw onions.

Buns are completely optional, as the Chili Size is

historically served open-faced.

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 Chapter 26
Pass the turkey.

Thanksgiving 2008 passed amicably and easily in

spite of the turmoil that reeked havoc on the stock
markets. Having survived the October assault to our
financial well being when the Dow dropped to 8500,
things felt a little better as it began to slowly climb
upwards in November. Maybe, we thought, just
maybe the worst was over. Hitting 10,000 was just
over the horizon and this would all end soon. A new
year and a new government were coming!

Fools.

None of us could imagine the economic horror that

the winter of 2008/09 had in store. We didn’t dare
even contemplate the possibility that the crash of
February and March would happen. No, that
crushing blow to our spirit was still out there spinning
in the monetary cosmos growing into a category 5
monetary hurricane, waiting to kick our wallets and
our financial integrity smack in the balls.

Instead, and likely because of this stress, we focused

clearly on what we loved during the holiday.
Watching the descent of market had become a habit
by then, too gruesome to look away from. At
Thanksgiving we finally turned off the TV and took
time to escape from these incessant fears about the
state of our money. For a precious moment
Americans paused to reflect on the things that mean
the most to us: Family, friends and of course food.

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Both daughter and son made it home that year and
the house quickly regained the energy it had for so
many years as they grew up. While young adults
now, they still carried many of their brother and
sister habits intact in their expressions and mock
arguments which offered La Sweets and I a reminder
of days gone past.

The long weekend progressed wonderfully. Dinner

flowed into dinner, turkeys were brined, stuffed,
baked brown and devoured. Sweet potatoes were
peeled and pureed, cranberries were served chopped
into relish and sauced as tablecloths cringed in
anticipation of the beating they would take. Gales of
laughter filled our lives and for just a little while we
forgot about the powerful spiritual malaise that had
surreptitiously crept into our American homes while
we were justifiably distracted that year. This host of
temporal dust balls that now inhabited the corners of
our collective psyche. A sort of low level mental flu
that had infected us and was about to get even
nastier as it mutated during the next spring.

But weekends pass quickly. The kidults went their

way as they should and by Sunday night the house
returned to its quiet self as we poked at leftover
turkey and mashed potatoes rescued with butter and
cheddar cheese hoping to ease the tension with a
buttery chard. We tried hard to balance the pleasure
of having the house full with the emptiness we felt
when they left and came up short.

As adults we learn to adjust to so many fundamental

218
changes as we get older. For me, having our
children leave the home remains one of the most
difficult. This is made all the more clear when they
return for short times and then go. While we may
have the maturity and depth to understand that this
is normal and best for everyone and blah fucking
blah, I miss throwing them around the pool. I loved
being a parent and always will. Plain and simple.

Then my last glass of dessert sauterne was gone,

dinner was over and we went silently up the stairs to
bed and feel asleep without saying another word.

I blinked and it was 7:30 am, El Amour Travajo was

long gone and another Monday morning was leering
at me long in the tooth, pasty and colored pale grey.
My weekly calendar was as empty as the house, the
pages were blank except for my self-prescribed
treatment of yoga, meditation and dog walk.

The choice of whether and how to cross this spiritual

river was once again entirely up in the air. And this
is one of the most destabilizing aspects of under- and
un- employment. Every day lacks a pre-determined
structure. As a result, it forces a choice of emotional
paths on you every morning.

This is all a bit too much. Underemployment already

throws so much into question about say, for
example, your abilities and your financial future. So
who needs this extra burden? Who wants to wonder
“what kind of Monday am I going to have?’ But if you
are still alive and kicking, you have no choice but to
wonder just that: “what kind of Monday is this going

219
to be?

Was I going to pass the time feeling sorry for myself?

I know that it doesn’t do any good, but I can’t help
the signing the “I was” blues from time to time. It
starts with a plaintive “I was a successful (now you
fill in the blank) once”. Throw in a chorus of “what
did I do get to this place” and sweet harmonies of
regrets and the song is just rolling. Once that tune
starts it inevitably unleashes a torrent of personal
shit that we selectively design for ourselves over the
years of experience that we call our lives. One ‘I
was’ leads to a thousand ‘I cant’s’ and where are you
then? Lying in bed watching the golf channel at 10
in the morning in your pajamas wondering whether
to shave today? Thank god I was too motivated to
ever go there. I have way too much pride to climb
back into bed, at least in the morning. Afternoon
naps are another story.

Not that I didn’t have plenty of doubts and ‘I cant’s’.

I did. Plenty. Along with lots of ‘I won’t’ and ‘Why
bothers’, the personal favorites of pride, my dear and
oft-dangerous buddy, that I had to beat into
submission on a regular basis.

So there I sat on cold November morning sitting

looking at a computer screen again. With little else to
do I reflected on the 6 months that passed since I left
the working life, hoping to find some meaning in
what I had done.

After I realized that finding a job was just about

impossible, I looked for opportunities that would

220
build on my experience and keep me in touch with
the business world. Volunteer work, advice to
businesses, anything to keep me busy and out of the
house.

Through LinkedIn, the Facebook for wandering

professionals, I took a position working for free, with
a hint of stock in the future as bait, on a failed
consumer product. That project ended rather
abruptly in October without remuneration or
satisfaction when the investors/board suddenly voted
to shut what was left of company down. Didn’t even
get my hard costs back, not that they were many.
When I asked they just blew me off. Told me to file a
claim.

I put plenty of effort into the job and while it passed

the time on a satisfactory level intellectually I
wondered whether it was worth it. I couldn’t answer
that question.

So why did I do it? It is important to keep the

calendar alive. To create a mosaic of people and
possibilities, priming the pump so that if a shot is out
there you will here about it. Not that there was back
then. But no matter how much I disliked this aspect
of creating opportunities there is little choice. For
some strange reason I was comfortable branding and
marketing products but never myself. I had to get
over that.

After that uplifting review of the past, it was easy

enough to do some Yoga that day, anything else felt
good. The morning walk was uneventful and

221
uninspired. The white dog with brown ears raced
ahead oblivious to command and barked without
reason or control. The Ipod, eerily prescient of my
mood responded with a shuffle package that
matched the mood of the day, unfocused with tinges
of grey mixed in with moments of blue sky clarity
spiced with sparks of thunderous anger.

Here is the Ipod shuffle of that day:

-‘Down by the River’, Neil Young. Yes, I shot her

dead. Dead. I could think of some people I would
like to shoot too.
-What’s so funny ‘bout Peace Love and
Understanding, Nick Lowe. I could never answer this
plea either.
-Fools Must Die, the Pretenders, Loose Screw.
Between Chrissie Hynde’s voice, attitude, and the
title, you can guess the rest.
-Moment’s Notice, John Coltrane. Frantic, fast
exhilarating, a man in control of the power within.
-Company In My Back. Wilco, Live, Kicking
Television. Never sure what this song meant, but it
sounds pissed at the business world like I was.
-Black Waves. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away.
Haunting and haunted.
-A Noite Sem Fim’. Suba, Sao Paulo Confessions.
How can someone make Brazil seem so dark and
menacing? So far from the joy of Samba or Carnival.
Brooding and deeply rhythmic.
-‘Those Three Days’. Lucinda Williams, World Without
Tears. Does any woman sound more betrayed then
she does? Strange for me to like something so
country.

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-‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. U2, Joshua
Tree. Total alienation punctuated by the Edge’s
slashing guitar.
-‘Blues Man’, BB King, Blues on the Bayou. So the
session ends with a true blues Buddha, at home with
himself and his music. At peace in the world, all
honey and molasses in his voice picking his notes
with love. When we saw him in concert he played
less and talked a lot and poked fun at himself for
doing so.

As he said, “I’m 86. I can do what I want.”

So the walk didn’t help much. By the time I reached

home my anxiety levels were climbing steadily as the
bile in my stomach churned and the day had just
begun. A nice way to kick things off for the week.

After a second cup of coffee, always a good way to

calm myself and my stomach, I pulled into the
mancave and sat down. My mind was racing back
and forth, worried about money and where it was
going to come one moment and how to find personal
happiness the next. You know, keeping it simple and
balanced.

But this week I was sticking to the plan so I sat down

and tried to begin another focused meditation. As my
eyes closed my thoughts wandered like the marker
on a Ouija board, pushed along by unknown forces in
my subconscious until it came to rest in the usual
safe and happy place. Food.

It’s not like I was hungry either. Inside my brain food

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just won’t shut up.

Many of the Eastern texts refer of the existence of a

third eye, a point in the middle of your forehead
equidistant between your two eyebrows. Holy
figures are routinely depicted with this third eye. It
represents the teacher inside of you, perception and
imagination. It is your center.

It seems that my focus is on a lesser-known but

equally sacred space. I swear that I have a fourth
eye, located between my chest and my waist at the
center of my belly button. My fourth eye of
enlightenment symbolizes the contrasting yins and
yangs of hunger and satisfaction. It guides my days
and is a constant source of wonder and never ending
pleasure. Food is my center.

As I relaxed and allowed my mind to clear, my

attention eventually alighted upon one of the most
unusual foods in the world. A symbol of complete
transformation. Capable of changing from a bitter
acrid vegetable that can bring a man to tears to a
source of sweet caramel viscous pleasure with just a
little attention and care. That and judiciously applied
heat. Not only that, a completely indispensible
ingredient in any kitchen.

Think about this for a moment. How many recipes

start out with these simple words:

“Chop an onion”.

I can’t count them.

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So I let my meditation joyously fly off into the world
of these beautiful and oft misunderstood humble
orbs. At first I visualized various onions. My thoughts
moved through images of onions of all sizes, from
brown to red and then to white. Then the round
onions became deep red long torpedoes that
morphed into green leeks, brown shallots and finally
green scallions. I saw bins full of white cippolinis,
brown Maui sweets and Walla Wallas. The
meditation ended with a series of visions of raised
beds of perfectly arranged chives, bright green
threads poking out from the soil as beautiful to me as
any rose or tulip as their bright purple flowers
emerged. I felt better already.

Throughout the week I reveled in the changes that

onion goes through on its little journey from tear
jerker to honeyed heaven. Before you can chop that
onion you have to peel it. I did, slowly, peeling layer
after layer back witnessing the perfect symmetry and
geometry. Then I chopped and I chopped and when
done I did it again. I would cut my imaginary onion
in half on a large wooden cutting board. Then I
quartered it. Peeled away the outer layer. Held the
quarter firmly keeping fingers out of the way of a
very sharp knife. Sliced across the quarters until all
are done. Cut across again and again until ready.
Boom.

While many men may never have cried in their lives

they are no match for its power and neither was I. As
I came back to the room I thought I felt a tear in my
eye. But it could have been my imagination.

225
On the third day of meditation I gently moved the
onions from the cutting board and into the frying
pan. Heard the gentle popping noise as the hot oil
beings it’s work. Witnessed the miraculous
transformation occurs as the smelly fiery onion is
slowly transformed into a golden brown sweet mass.
Saw the heat breaking down the sugars in the onion
and bringing them to surface, caramelizing the
formerly evil bulb. Then I lost discipline and moved
the cooked onions onto a bun draped over a perfectly
grilled Italian sausage in a long bun. So what. I let
the mind wander freely. I let the onion wherever it
wants to go.

For those of us love the stinky bulbs as I do the next

choice was pretty obvious. I repeated this dance
again with onion’s second cousin. Garlic. Peeled
them and smelled my fingers. Smashed them into
pulp. Baked them whole in the oven in a clay pot
until they became a brown butter like no other that I
squeezed from their pods. Spread them on crispy
rustic toasts.

The week witnessed another transformation. I finally

followed my own advice and created a marketing
plan to build my food consulting business. Step 1
was to find a name and step 2 was to build a website
so people could see what it was that I did. I named
the company and began building a simple site. It felt
better than I thought it would. I felt like I was coming
out of a long and powerful funk.

Friday’s meditation was completely unexpected. It

226
featured a guest appearance by someone who hadn’t
invaded my thoughts in years.

In the middle of the meditation, in which I was

preparing an onion soup, I was struck by a powerful
image. It was that of a middle-aged man in a white
wife beater T-shirt. He was standing in the middle of
an all too familiar kitchen eating a large onion raw
just as you would an apple. He held a water glass
filled with vodka to chase it down. He was smiling a
devious grin.

It was my father. And that, believe me, is another

subject entirely.

Onion soup (with thoughts of La Sweet’s Papa who

first introduced me to the power of this dish in their
basement kitchen in Northern France.)

Ingredients;
4 good sized onions of your choice.
4 cups stock, chicken is fine but beef is better.
1 slice of stale bread per serving.
Grated gruyere cheese. Any good melting cheese
can be substituted such
Lots of Olive Oil.

Peel the onions and slice them into quarters. Cutting

across each quarter and slice them into thin strips.
In a large sauce pan add the olive oil and just before
smoking stir in the onions. Cook until brown stirring
only as needed until they are caramelized.

As the onions brown heat the stock. Add the

227
browned onions and cook for a minimum of 5
minutes on medium heat. The longer you cook the
better.

If you have a bowl that will stand up under a broiler,

then ladle the soup into it, place a piece of bread on
top and cover with grated cheese. Broil to brown.

If not, before serving toast the bread. Fill the bowl,

place bread in it and cover with cheese. Melt in
microwave or grate fine so the heat of the soup will
melt the cheese. Not a preferable method as you
lose the crispness of the broiled cheese but
acceptable.

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 Chapter 27.
The Colors Purple
Authors note:

As noted previously, MHO is a work of fiction. While some of the

incidents that occur in the story and many the characters in it are
based in part upon my life, the vast majority of MHO resides in my
ever-active imagination. I (and those around me) are thankful for that.

(It’s all in the pour.)

With the onion and burger meditations successfully

behind me it was undeniable that the past few weeks
had been good for my spirit. The daily structure
(walk/yoga/manful meds) was something to look
forward to, especially rewarding during those
typically dead moments between Thanksgiving and
Christmas when things slowed down even in the best
of times. Creating a calendar, even though it seemed
a bit artificial, turned out to be a great source of
stability to build upon. Who would have thought that
structure, an aspect of life that I habitually
distrusted, could help me move to forward? What a
surprise.

Then Monday arrived. Fresh out of ideas, I decided to

use the day’s meditation to choose a subject that
would be fun to meditate about. As that thought
crossed my mind I laughed out loud, I never thought I
would use the words meditation and fun in the same
sentence.

Sticking to the daily prescription, I did a cursory set

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of yoga stretches, noticing a strange burning
sensation in my palms during downward dogs, and
headed home after cutting my walk in half. I was
eager to get back to the mancave, close the door
and sit down to ponder manful subjects to meditate
about. Closing my eyes I opened my heart and soul
to find further inspiration in the manful meditation
journey. I left a paper and pad out just in case I did.

Starting the search for subjects at the highest levels,

I thought about those things that mean the most. I
could hang with food forever but that would be too
easy. Even I knew that there was more to life than
food although I often lost track of that.

I began to meditate about things that meant the

most to me. Family came first but I didn’t really feel
like dwelling on them, at least not yet. Just too
complicated. Friends were a close second and then I
could not forget big foot white dog faithful walking
companion and the world’s most unaffectionate
canine. No, too weird. Bike? Music? Literature?
Sports? All had loads of promise but none were
attractive that morning. I searched for something a
little easier to handle or more artistic, or well, maybe
I should admit that I didn’t know what the hell I was
doing and just wandering around an imaginary
mental field aimlessly without a fucking clue.

As the thoughts ebbed and flowed without reason, an

image finally began to materialize in my mind’s eye.
Seconds later it popped up bright and clear, the third
vision of wondrous manful meditation as beautiful as
the burger and onion that preceded it.

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There, in my mind’s eye, was a shining clear wine
glass. Examining at the wine glass in my mind I
grasped several messages. First, it was empty. I
knew it would not be the case for long. Second it
was large, with a grand broad bowl, long stem and
wide base. Yes, this manful meditation carried a
prohibition revealed in the shape of the wine glass.
You cannot have a manful meditation that is focused
on a glass of white wine. Now some of you may not
agree but this guy can’t see it as hard as he tries to
peer within. Can’t do it. Just can’t.

I knew from the beginning that wine would be a very

long meditation. From start to finish it could take
days just to catalog red wines in California north of
the bay choosing one grape. So rather than get
specific on this first attempt I took time to reflect on
the pleasure that red wine has given me through the
years and the social bounty I have shared with so
many others. Not to mention the health benefits (we
can’t get that benefit from manful meditation
although studies have shown that meditation does
lower your blood pressure). It was a warm easy
comfortable feeling as I drifted from dinner to dinner
and tasting to tasting.

I thought about history. Wine has been around for

thousands of years discovered well before the birth
of Christ. I wondered, who was the brave first man
who raised a ceramic cup to his lips and figured out
that this spoiled grape juice tasted good. And better
yet that it gave you a buzz as well. What compelled
him to go for it? Was it some ancient game of

231
chicken, (“come on Essau, drink it, I dare you’) or
was he trying to impress a babe? That was a manful
moment to ponder.

Who was the first guy who created the amphoras

crafted thousands of years ago to store their liters
and liters of precious juices? Who took the time to
domesticate the grapes and learn to ferment in a
time when stones were still tools? The facts are
there, man loves wine.

Then my contemplation moved to wine on the stage

of our religions, whether in communion (taking on
the role of blood no less) or the fourth cup at
Passovers past, images of my family gathered
around a table in the house where I grew up.

Later, I awoke gently awakened from this mental

relaxation exercise. I felt refreshed. I was also hungry
and thirsty. It was a cold and clear early winter
afternoon, plenty of time to throw on a sweatshirt,
fire up the Weber and grill something for lunch. The
decision of what to cook was easy. As the burgers
sizzled (and of course the onions sautéed) it didn’t
take long for me to decide they needed support, a
hearty red to help them and the afternoon along.
Poking at the bottles in the mock cellar at the back of
the garage I came upon a 2005 Rafanelli Zin. That
would do just fine. And it did. Lunch was a pleasure.

During the first months at home, lunch was a

challenge. As dysfunctional as my business life was,
we enjoyed years of great lunches together, it was
the place we could relax and get a surprising amount

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of business done. We loved the small ethnic
restaurants throughout the Mission and Portrero Hill
enjoying countless delicious bowls of Pho or Udon as
well as plates of Pupusas rice and beans or enormous
burritos on 24th street. As a result, eating home
alone had been very difficult at first. Not only was I
bored, I got hungry early ate quickly to get it over in
under 5 minutes and moved on as fast as I could.
Bad for my digestion and spirit.

On that winter day I saw the difference that manful

mediation made. I took my time during lunch,(why
not, there was little else to do), enjoyed several
glasses of red wine and read the New York Times
from the Sunday before I became exhausted by the
continuing decline of the planet.

While I would suffer plenty of angst and setbacks in

the next months, I would not wear them as a badge
of courage as I had in the past. Instead of worrying
about what had happened to me and why, I thought
about how lucky I was, what I had to be thankful for
and how I could do better. Imagine that, me on the
border of becoming an optimist. Manful Mediation
would teach me how to absorb the speed bumps,
learn as much as I could from them and then move
on. This just wouldn’t have happened in the same
way in days gone by.

The next few weeks were, dare I say, really good

ones. I enjoyed series of self-guided daily journeys
into the world of wine that put me in a great mood.
These journeys gave me great pleasure and no, while
I didn’t start drinking every day at lunch I certainly

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did think about it and more often than not, I did.

I wanted to begin the next meditation with a

vineyard but first I settled on a geographic tour. I
narrowed it down to the US and then California
(where else for this native son?) and then thought
about wine growing regions known and loved one by
one. Started up north in the morning fog shrouded
rolling hills of Mendocino and the Sonoma coast, let
those thoughts trail inland up the Russian River to
the Dry Creek Valley west of Healdsburg, an easy
point to stop for a while and enjoy the sun. My
visions flowed down the curved roads of the
Alexander Valley into Calistoga and then up to
Napa’s Pope valley doubling back to the long stretch
of Highway 29 winding north across and through the
hills to Lake County. Without a hesitation I jumped to
101 heading south through Paso Robles, turned off to
enjoy the lush hills of Edna Valley. I finished outside
of Lodi, wine grapes stretching as far as the eyes
good see surrounded by huge gleaming stainless
steel storage tanks.

As those weeks passed I thought about wine in so

many different ways. There was an inspiring
meditation on the grape vines. I saw them bare in
winter and then just blooming in spring first tiny
green leaves breaking through the brown leathery
vine skin of last winter’s growth. Watched the fruit
set and then grow full of flavor and sugar content.
Just as suddenly, wham, the leaves turned orange
and brown in autumn and fell. I picked up the dirt,
crumbled it in my hands bringing it to my nose to
smell its richness. I stepped up to a grapevine,

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picked a ripe cabernet grape and ate it. Felt the
acidity of a young grape in my mouth, the crunch of
the seeds between my teeth.

Other days found me wandering vineyards I recalled.

I was lost in the pinot noir fields in Willamette Valley
on a spring morning south of Portland. Then I was
cruising Chianti country in Tuscany in a rented Alfa, a
manicured vineyard around every curve, the black
rooster crowing and a perfect bowl of al dente
tagliatelle with sugo waiting in the next town. My
mind flew across borders to the Hospices De Beaune
looking at barrel after barrel of perfectly aging Pinot
Noirs. I remember the smell room and the strange
pewter “tastevin” that they gave us to drink with. I
strolled between racks of oak barrels inhaling the
dank, moist and musty atmosphere of the caves.

One of the final meditations was on the wines

themselves. I mean who in their right mind would
keep a Grange Hermitage or a first growth Bordeaux
out of a perfect manful mediation moment? I could
feel my mouth explode with their powerful rich
flavors. I imagined them aging, how their profiles
would change and the nuanced dry flavors would
emerge. I thought of all of the wines that had
expired in my faux cellar, waiting to long to enjoy
them as they approached a vinegary brown off end.

One what I knew would be the last day thinking

about wine I picked an imaginary bottle from my
cellar and thought about the perfect pour. What
followed was a mental ballet that went like this.

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‘I get a corkscrew and open the bottle slowly, watch
the cork slide out of the bottle. No dry cork here no
rot; just the purple crystals at the bottom of the cork
and the smell of earth and grapes. I wipe the top of
the bottle clean.

Now find a simple but elegant clear glass decanter

then slowly and carefully pour the bottle in. Now I
pause. Just like that ½ an hour has already passed
and it is ready to drink!

Pick a wine glass. Take time to admire its shape, the

narrow shape of the stem, the clean crystal
reflection. Pour the wine into the glass slowly and
evenly until just over 1/3 full.

I give the wine a small swirl to bring out the

character and put my manly schnog deep into the
glass and do what I have been practicing since I
started this adventure. I breathe! At no other point
in this practice until now has this point been simpler.
I go back to your breathing training and refresh
myself. Eyes closed? Mind calm? Yes! Now breathe
in and take in the smell of this perfect glass of wine.
What do I smell? Bell Peppers? Tobacco?
Cinnamon? Leather? What smells attract me most in
that red wine ambrosia? The list goes on and on.
Each smell lingers as I breathe in and breathe out,
nice and slow easy and calm.

I look at the wine, from the top of the glass and then
from the side. Look at its color. Is it dense or light,
do the reds run to purple or even hints of dark blue?

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I raise the glass and take a deep but not
overwhelming pull and fill my mouth. My mind tastes
the wine from the perspective of pleasure not a
contest of snobbery or predetermined results. There
are no hidden labels or agendas, no score sheets, no
one to impress. This is all about the grape.

Now I pull a bit of the juice through the mouth by

sipping a bit of air to help the imaginary flavors to
explode. Let the tastes fill my mouth. I think about
the full body and take the time to focus on the
flavors that matter. I let the flavors linger.’

That was it. The moment was perfect I could go no

further.

Then the next day I realized there was a one more

left. A final meditation that defied the rules I had set
at the beginning of the process. There was a white
wine worth meditation upon. Sauternes.

This one was all about flavor and body. They roared.
Apricots honey pineapples botrytis fruit smoke all in
one golden sticky gooey taste thick yet not syrupy it
gives the word nectar meaning. That was a mantra.

As the wine meditations ended I was sad but realized

it was time to move on. I thought back to wine glass
and where it had come from. I thanked my spirits for
that elusive character called inspiration. Where does
this reserve come from? I had no easy answer, but
Thank goodness that it is there, otherwise where
would life be.

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That afternoon I hit the kitchen inspired by the red
wine visions of the past weeks, there was only one
dish to make.

A Simple Boeuf Bourginon with music heard in the

kitchen courtesy of the Ipod.

Ingredients:

3 pounds red stew meat, I like chuck.

1 pound bacon.
2 pounds mushrooms. Your choice.
1 bottle red wine.
2 cups beef stock.
Flour, salt, pepper.
Olive Oil.
1 head garlic
1 bunch carrots
1 large onion.
Spices: Bay leaf, thyme.

Technique.

Brown the bacon. Pour off the fat.

Add oil and brown peeled onion and garlic until
translucent.
Dredge the stew meat salt, pepper and flour. In a
large cast iron pan add olive oil and brown. Remove
from pan.
Add the beef back and stir.
Slice carrots to ¼ to ½ inch depending upon desired.
Same for the mushrooms. Add to pot along with
spices.
Stir. Add the red wine, beef stock and finely

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chopped spices. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours on
low/medium heat.

Today’s Ipod shuffle top 10 to cook by

Mozart Rondo in D, Vladimir Horowitz, Horowitz at

Home. No comment needed smooth a cognac.
Tramp, Otis Redding & Carla Thomas, The Complete
Stax Sessions. Uh. Uh uh.
Water, Fela Kuti. It has no enemies.
Sneaking Sally through The Alley, Robert Palmer.
The guy was just too handsome. Trying to get her
out of sight indeed.
Going Out Walking, Muddy Waters. He is the man.
He knows it.
Ooh La La, Ronnie Lane. The chorus says it all. I
wish that I knew what I know now when I was
younger.
On Broadway, George Benson. All that hope.
Celos. Gotan Project, Lunatico. Eerie Argentine
tangos meet French accordions. Yet so very
listenable.
Midnight Confession, the Grass Roots. South Africa’s
only pop hit band of the 60’s in a state of guilt.
I’ll Probably Feel A Whole Lot Better When You’re
Gone, The Byrds. No message that means anything
to me of relevance, just a great song.

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 Chapter 28
The continuing oil shortage

(8 days a week is not enough to show I care)

As our family embraces continents, countries and

religions we have always worked hard to respect
each other’s faith and traditions. Perhaps because
we were each raised in homes that were traditionally
conservative and very dogmatic in their approach to
religion, neither of us wanted to let go of the many
symbols of the homes and lives that we grew up
with.

But with the children gone this push began to

decline, both in terms of the desire and the need to
celebrate these holidays (except for Christmas which
exists in its very own sphere) as we used to. This
change cut across the board, whether we were
talking about Halloween, Passover, Easter or in this
particular case Chanukah. Yes, in our house poor old
Chanukah was dying and this year it felt sad and
moribund. After all, when the kids aren’t home who
were we doing it for?

Still we dutifully dug out the glass menorah that we

purchased together many years go at a synagogue in
Florence and found enough candles left over from
last year to approach a ceremony. I didn’t feel much
like praying as we lit the candles in the empty dining
room, creating one lonely light to mark the first night

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of holiday soldiering on into the evening. No songs
tonight, no celebration no wondering just why we
would be frying potato pancakes in a home where we
fried virtually no food at all. No dreidl, no chocolate
gelt coins, just us.

I spent the day lost in thoughts about my Mom

caused no doubt by my choice of what to make for
dinner that evening. Brisket. No dish symbolized her
life like the brisket that she made every Passover
and periodically throughout the year. The recipe was
deceptively simple and easy to make and it uniformly
yielded great results, something that I could not say
about the rest of her cooking (sorry Mom, it just is
true). That is except for except for that year she
insisted using a bottle of coca-cola as the marinade.
That was not good at all, way too sweet and so
tender it bordered on creepy.

Cooking her brisket did not bring me happy

memories that day. Instead, I felt powerful
reminders of my mother’s frustration with her life.
Her constant resentment of our financial status and
my father’s lack of education and manners. How
things could have turned out differently if that
bastard Hitler just wouldn’t have shown up in Austria
in 1938.

As I cut the onions into smaller and smaller slices, I

saw her making the same motion, standing next to
the sink in the house that I grew up in, her hair in a
tight bun, a cooking apron on and bright chicken fat
melting in the pan behind her. I saw in her
expression a life filled with sadness and

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disappointment. Of what could have been, not what
was.

After finishing the prep and as dinner heated in the

over, I thought about Chanukah and the 2008
election of October. These were two stories that
centered around miracles. But while oil burning for 8
nights instead of 1 was pretty amazing, electing a
black man named Barack president of the US, now
that was miraculous.

Even as we celebrated Obama’s win earlier that year,

letting the Democrats out of their self imposed exile
of disenfranchised bitterness, we knew what a
miserable country he inherited. A nation full of
bitterness, misplaced and falsely manipulated rage,
division and mistrust, none of which would really
‘change’ after he took office. We were so intoxicated
by the event that we forgot the facts for a few
months before reality set in and when it did, it did so
with a vengeance that should have been expected.
There was lots of money on the line, the fight would
be bitter.

None of that mattered in December 2008. We were

just so happy not to deal with Bush 43 and his
policies any more. We had no idea what was coming,
both for us and the country. Poor Obama, he needed
a lamp lit with the oil of hope to burn for 8 nights just
as much as the Maccabees did. His light would only
last for a short time while before the hatred would
begin.

I thought about the story of Hanukah as we ate our

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latkes and brisket without much thought or energy.
I couldn’t help but love the story even with the
religious terrorist overtones, you know Semitic guys
in the desert rebelling against the state and all that.
The miracle felt so right and couldn’t we all use a
miracle these days with the state of the economy?

We did the dishes quickly after dinner and fled

upstairs to our reading materials, making the best
out of a sad situation. We went to bed without further
comment or contact.

The next morning I attended an unusual graduation

ceremony. The 14 students, all of them from low
income and/or at risk families, had enrolled in a
program that taught them how to work in kitchens
and restaurants, giving them a second chance in life.
As I watched them receive their diplomas dressed in
their chef’s whites I listened to their stories of how
much they overcame to simply step up and make it
to class every day. How hard it was for them to work
with others, many for the first time, and how thankful
they were. These were real heroes.

During one of the sessions with my coach many

months ago I learned a principle that has always
been on mind and now came to the forefront. It was
one of the main factors that would bring me out of
my funk and back into the world as a fully
participating member. Dharma. Your reason to do
good on during the time spent on this planet. An
Eastern view of the big picture, a sort of celestial
universal version of the Jewish version called
Mitzvah, all wrapped in your own private destiny with

243
a good dose of personal bravery for leavening and in
their thinking, your eternal birth and rebirth as icing
on the cake. I wasn’t at all sure about that last part
but it reassured me to think that this core guiding
principle ran deep in other cultures. And more than
that, it resonated with what I wanted to do in my life.

Throughout my corporate career in coffee I had done

my best to incorporate the concept of doing “the
right thing” into my work. I was proud of the work
that I did advancing just causes such as organics and
fair treatment of workers at farm. I had a lot to make
up for. There had been plenty of damage that I had
contributed to in my personal quest to make a buck
during the days of working in the construction
equipment industry supplying the massive machines
that carved up the earth for mines and forestry.

Was I just looking for a quick hit to improve my

karma? I don’t think so. It is not as simple as that
although there is plenty of work to do to right that
ship. It was deep in me and needed to be satisfied.
As I worked with charities (although they were
overloaded with volunteers such as myself) I closed a
hole in my soul. It felt good.

The Chanukah meal: Mom’s Brisket.

Ingredients. A 4-to-5 pound brisket. The bigger the

better, you are going to have leftovers so get used to
it.
One onion per pound.
One head of garlic.
One bottle of white wine, can be sweet.

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Salt
Paprika
Brown Sugar
A covered baking dish, preferably that oblong old
blue metal one that your mom used to use.

Preheat the oven to 400. Chop your onions and peel

the garlic. If freaked out about fat trim.
While the oven is heated line the baking dish with
the onions. Puncture the brisket in numerous places
and insert a clove of garlic in each slit. The more the
better. Rub the brisket with salt, brown sugar and
paprika to taste.
Place the brisket in the pan, fat side up.
Cook for 10 minutes at 400 or until there is some
browning in the fat. Flip the brisket onto the bottom
of the pan fat side now down.
Cover and lower temperature to 325. Cook for two
hours and check. When it shrinks to 2/3 of its
original size it is done. It should slice easily and there
should be lots of liquid.

Thanks Mom for the meditation.

The ipod shuffle top 4

(Sometimes just 4 songs are all you need.)

Frank Sinatra. My Way. Barely made it through, now

seems so sad when you get older.
Ray Charles. I can’t stop loving you. Just living in
the memories.
Van Morrison, And It Stoned Me. Moondance. His
voice following Ray’s is uncanny.
John Hiatt. The Tip of My Tongue. Bring the family.

245
One of the most underappreciated American
songwriters delivers a brutal vision of a failed love.

Sometimes fame never reached those who deserve

it. See also, Richard Thompson, guitar and so many
many others.

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 Chapter 29
Christmas Grilled

Authors note:

As noted previously, MHO is a work of fiction. While some of the

incidents that occur in the story and many the characters in it are
based in part upon my life, the vast majority of MHO resides in my
ever-active imagination. I (and those around me especially the dog)
are thankful for that.

Chanukah wasn’t the only thing that lasted eight

days that year. During the holiday celebration, if you
could call it that, in a moment of weakness I fed big
foot white dog Kelly quite a bit of our brisket and
onions and fatty bits at that. I won’t deny it, I
wanted to see someone happy in the house that
night and for the split second of pleasure that dogs
do get as they inhale food from their bowls (no I
didn’t break down and feed her from the table) she
was very very excited. Then she went back the living
room and immediately fell soundly sleep, spread out
completely across her cushion in a state of complete
and utter relaxation.

Faithful neurotic companion white dog Kelly (an

English Pointer, medium sized 45 pound white
hunting dog with brown ears) was found starving and
then rescued from near death by a local animal
rights group and we adopted her nervous self many
years ago. While we know she is a bit, well, off, it is
always disconcerting to know that all of your friends
agree with you. You keep hoping that maybe the
dog is saner than she seems but uniform reactions

247
reinforce the reality, she ain’t quite right. Now that
is not to say that she has ever bit anyone and that
she isn’t a saint around us. Like most rescues she
knows where the meal is coming from and pays close
attention to protecting those that feed her. And that
is the problem, she is very territorial, making sure
that anyone that comes in the door, friend or foe, is
greeted with a growl that implies trouble until you
notice that she is wagging her tail hoping for
affection at the same time. Consistently confusing
behavior.

The rescue foundation spent two years bringing Kelly

back to society and to life. Along the way she
developed a number of strange bit endearing habits.
She chases shadows, leaves and butterflies and
hunts like a cat, skulking low and arching her back
when she strikes. Genetically a hunting dog, she
points at nothing. Most importantly, she makes us
laugh.

The next morning when oui cherie was heading to

work and I was at the breakfast table scanning the
continuing descent of the GS Warriors into injury
ridden hell, I heard her utter an expletive that she
normally is not known to do. “Merdre”, I heard the
shout, and as it turned out she meant just that.
Kelly, used to eating dry kibble and oak leaves (her
constant ‘chew’ of choice in the back yard), had been
overwhelmed by the fat content in the brisket and
had left a trail of dumps in ever increasing liquidity
across the living room carpet and Sweets had
stepped square in one of them. After helping her
clean her shoes and getting her out the door, I

248
worked on the mess, cleaning the carpet while white
dog seemed to burrow deeper and deeper into her
sleeping pillow knowing that something was wrong.
Her digestive issues would continue for some time. In
fact, these morning surprises would last a week
before her system reestablished itself and they
became quite an issue until she simply got better.
As the 8th day of Chanukah ended so did her upset
stomach.

Chanukah came very late that year and didn’t start

until December 22. By the time the little holiday that
can showed up the Christmas tree was up and
decorated and presents were showing up en masse.
All of this made me even sadder than usual as
Christmas came roaring into our lives once again.

It has always been hard for my family to understand

my feelings about Christmas. It starts with a simple
fact. I am a non-believer. As a result, for me the
tree is always too big, the presents too many. They
think that I hate Christmas but they are wrong. It
wasn’t hatred that I was feeling; it was jealousy.

These feelings began years ago when I was a child.

Christmas was the most depressing day of the year.
All around me kids were reaping the benefits of
weeks of begging and whining as the opened their
gifts with their incomprehensibly large families. And
where were we? Driving through a strangely empty
West Los Angeles searching for an open Chinese
restaurant that my father could tolerate while the
rest of the nation basked in their living rooms fires
roaring children laughing and people, yes, singing.

249
Not at our house.

This year the coincidence in calendars brought this

reality home even more. Christmas consumed
Chanukah. If these two holidays were basketball
teams, Chanukah would feature an assortment of D-
Leaguers and Israelis while Christmas started the
NBA All Star Team with Kobe, LeBron, Chris Paul,
Dwight Howard and Melo leading the way to a 200 to
2 victory. It just wasn’t right.

If this confusing set of emotions and facts weren’t

enough, Christmas was also my daughter’s birthday.
An additional complication that made sure that if
there was any lack of pressure in a given Christmas
day we had the double responsibility of making sure
she had a decent celebration that evening, always
tough when everyone was busy.

The holidays were a traditional time of major excess

and I was destined to pay the price. For most of
December I was too busy, or so it seemed, to
remember to meditate and to do yoga on a regular
basis. I lost track of my calendar. Instead, it seemed
that spent most days running around gathering
presents like a squirrel on crank and shopping for
dinners, stuck in traffic a lot and spending more
money than I felt comfortable about.

My famously grumpy Christmas mornings also

typically featured a hang over courtesy of the annual
traditional Christmas Eve dinner the night before.
The dinner, generously and graciously hosted by

250
family friends in San Francisco always featured a
variety of excellent champagne, vintage red wines
(California Cabs or 1st growth Bordeaux) and aged
ports that I would happily bury myself in. We had a
wonderful time each and every year that lasted right
until I woke up the next day to the sounds of
Christmas songs.

In earlier times when the children were small their

overwhelmingly positive energy would eclipse my
ambivalent feelings about the holiday. Who in their
right mind could resist your kids at Christmas? But
now that they were young kidults I had little to
distract me from the bitterness I felt on Christmas
morning.

I woke up early that day, letting sweets have the

present that she loved best, sleeping in, and went
out to get the paper. Groggy but focused, I planned
to resurrect another old tradition that morning,
pancakes for breakfast. As I sleepwalked across the
living room the odor hit me, white dog has dumped
again damnit I thought. I was right. I knew because
my right slipper was planted in the middle of it. This
one was a liquid beauty spread out across the carpet
from one end to the other. It created an ugly brown
stain and it stank. Almost simultaneously my foot
skidded across the slick wet carpet as the slipper
came off and my toes touched down into the brown
nasty goo.

Merry Merry Merry.

So what did I do? I yelled at Kelly. A long brutal

251
exclamation that was loud, angry and full of
expletives. And then, obviously without thinking, I
picked up the slipper that was covered with loose
brown shit and threw it at the poor dog who sat there
stunned for a bare moment and then took off at full
speed for safety. I missed.

Standing there in the empty living room, Christmas

tree twinkling in the background, looking at the now
shit stained wall, I couldn’t move. I just stood there.
At first I was just pissed that I now had spread the
shit to the wall and the dog’s bed. I also surmised
that every step I took spread it further. But as the
flush of adrenaline and anger passed I just felt plain
sad. That and stupid. And cold. And alone. So I
picked up the shitty shoe and hopped to the
downstairs bathtub where I rinsed off my foot. Then I
went to the kitchen where I placed the slipper into a
plastic bad and filled it with water to let is soak. I
called the dog. No reply.

After a 10-minute bout of ½ a roll of paper towels,

carpet cleaner and simple green things were more or
less normal except for me. I was shaken.

When I had stood in the bathroom a few minutes

earlier washing my hands and then rinsing my face I
looked up into the mirror. Now I know that morning
light is always harsh but nothing would have
prepared me for the face that I saw there. Was it the
hair, a bit long this time of year and wildly
uncombed, the dark circles below my eyes, the
weight I had gained? Or maybe my age or the effect
of the torrent of rage that had pulsed through me

252
earlier or was I just imagining the man that I saw in
that mirror. Because that man was my father. The
vision shook me.

And so another merry happy merry happy Christmas

began with me cleaning dog shit off of the wall after
losing my temper in the time honored fashion of my
Polish father who last greeted my memory about a
month ago eating a whole onion and drinking vodka
straight from the bottle. He was back except this
time as a part of my behavior not just an image from
my youth. This was not a great start to an already
difficult day and an ominous sign of what was to
come later that morning.

Eventually, I settled down at the dining room table

with a cup of coffee and the NY Times and tried to
calm down. My mind had other plans. I couldn’t help
it, my outburst had taken me aback. I wandered
deep and long back to my youth in Los Angeles and
the pain that I knew growing up. Which malignant
behavior pattern that he had left me with would
bubble up today? The powerful and unpredictable
temper that I had worked on eradicating for years
but still showed up like sour grass growing in the
spring lawn? Distrust of everyone around me
springing from a lack of confidence in myself,
something he did his best to beat out of me?
Resentment of success in others that he carried all of
his life? What a fucking panoply of mental crap he
left me with that I had to work so hard to overcome.
And yes, I had done so, but what years had been
wasted along the way unable to enjoy life without
excessive stimulation on the one hand or wild mood

253
swings on the other.

There was nothing normal about him. It made me

wonder, how often do you hear someone described
as larger than life as a compliment?

This inner jousting was interrupted about half an

hour later the family showed up. Of course the
kidults first question were “damn, what smells” and
then “where is Kelly?”. The answers were simple,
dog shit and I don’t know, both of which I spat off.

Kelly was upstairs on her blanket sleeping,

beneficiary of a dog’s short memory span, and came
downstairs on daughter’s first whistle already
forgiving and looking to have her belly scratched as
soon as possible. A cure for all what ails, a good
belly rub.

I wish it would work as well for me, if it did I would

scratch so hard I would bleed.

The rest of the morning seemed to straighten out

nicely around a menu of pancakes, hot coffee and
thoughtful gifts, books, sweaters and shirts, music
and cookware. Then I opened a gift from la cherie,
noticing that I was going to Yoga in sweats and an
old t-shirt she had purchased a slick black pair of
pants and a shiny yoga shirt from the local hip Yoga
store. Instead of thanking her I got stupid and
pissed. Yes, the first words out of my mouth were
“How much did these things cost?”.

Not a good move. My behavior slid from there

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moving rapidly downhill from price to need to
slickness to how I was just fine working out in my
sweats. That shut the joy down and somewhere Dad
was up in the heavens giving me an attaboy.

It was only the next day as we were putting away our

gifts that I realized what I had done. I could see in
the ice cold glare that I got from elle when I asked for
the receipt that I had blown it and when I asked her
what was wrong she told me.

She was right. Not only was my response not

gracious or thankful, it put a damper on the rest of
the day that only receded as we celebrated
daughter’s birthday that evening and forgot. Simply
put, I acted selfish, immature and angry, none of
which were called for. I told her that she was right
and talked a bit about my earlier incident with the
dogshit. She looked at me with a look that only your
life partner can give you, the look said this: You still
have a lot of work to do. Words not necessary.

I kept the yoga pants but took the shirt back. Poor
behavior aside, it was ugly.

A Christmas song selection from a non-believer.

Merry Christmas Baby, Charles Brown. You sure look

GOOD this year.
Jingle Bell Rock. Frankie Ford.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Definitely the
Ronettes version.
Anything on the BB King Christmas Collection.
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. The Jackson 5.

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Run Run Rudolph. Chuck Berry. And don’t look
back, the man is crazy.

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 Chapter 30
New Year’s and New Resolve

There is nothing like a good old-fashioned setback to

get me motivated and the Christmas incidents were
just the wake up call that I needed. They reminded
me that there were loads of adjustments to be made
to my mental calibrations before a life in balance
could be considered much less achieved.

With the classic resolve that the day after New Year’s
brings, I was ready to start manful meditations once
again. One change I noticed immediately, I looked
forward to doing it. For the first time that I could
remember I was happy when the femme who works
so hard left the house running late the day as always
leaving a trail of toothpaste remnants, makeup and a
½ full coffee cup behind her. I was ready to hit the
computer and reload my mental health calendar. To
get back into exploring the manful meditations that
had helped me to progress towards, towards,,,,,well
towards something that felt a lot better than where I
had been. Now if only I could define just what that
something was….but no dwelling on that today.

Fighting down the usual curse of the wandering

mind, oh so ready to get back into the Russo novel
that I was enjoying or just hang with that article on
DeNiro in Vanity Fair, or maybe catch an early movie
that I could just stream in on the computer…or... I
found the inner discipline and opened up my mental

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health calendar to review my progress to date in the
manful meditation journey. The answer I came to
was quick and fairly obvious, I hadn’t made much
progress at all. Some good weeks and then adrift
again. So I sat there and waited for inspiration to
help me populate the calendar with some new
manful subject. None came. I waited some more.
Same result.

The next realization came quick, inspiration doesn’t

always live in front of a computer screen. It was time
to head downstairs to the mancave where I could
turn my mind loose in the primordial subconscious
male ooze and see what might bubble up.

I hit the mancave with serious enthusiasm, white dog

running down the stairs in front of me hoping for
something maybe a walk. I shut the door and set the
cushion down and then to my pleasant surprise, fell
right into a meditative mood without the usual
mental detours. It felt good to focus on my breathing
and I dived in.

This turned out to be a breakthrough day. Not only

did my mind pick a subject easily and quickly, once
there I went happily down its path without resistance
or distraction. It wasn’t a burger or an onion this
time, or another glass of wine that appeared
hovering in the room. This time my mind’s eye
zoomed right through the patio doors to my dear old
buddy, the ultimate male tool (and not in the
negative sense) and trusty brother in arms and
keeper of the eternal male flame, my Bar-B-Que.

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The manful mediation that followed was swift, steady
and frankly a blast. My thoughts ran easy and free
as I reflected on BBQ’s, their role in mandom, my life,
and how much I loved them.

Yes, BBQ is a meditation that is built for the

carnivore that lives on within me despite years of
Berkeley life. It is also the subject of one of the
greatest historical divisions in the world of manful
thought. For many years men, including myself,
worshipped at the ancient temple of charcoal and
then, the more advanced study devoted to the
powerful and focused heat of mesquite. But as times
changed a new force emerged, devoted to the clean
reliable power of propane. The gas grill. A modern
challenger that called many historical truths into
question.

My Manful Meditation is always about personal

choice and grill enlightenment is no different. The
first path, walked by holy men for hundreds if not
thousands of remains is my boyhood favorite, fire.
My vision turned to a large bag of charcoal, no
mesquite and I got ready to stoke up the grill. I dug
deep and found that old pyro feeling and just for the
sake of history, I inhaled the guilty smell of
petroleum distillates but I didn’t worry, there are no
chemical residues in the manful meditation kingdom.
I gave it an extra spray and watched the flair. Nice.

Then, I thought about the pleasures of the gas path.

Less traditional maybe but so simple and so reliable.
Turn a knob hit a switch and heat her up. Clean,
efficient and controllable. And that stuff about

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carcinogens….you had to wonder.

Then I thought about grills in all shapes and forms. A

massive brick installation with a pizza oven that I
never built. The Texas smoker that I could never get
to work right. A favorite grill that is long gone. I can
cook on all of them now.

In my minds eye I focused on the fire for a moment,

glowing perfectly, hot enough to sear but not to hot
that it can’t be controlled. And in my manful
meditation practice, the grill is always clean. After
20 minutes I gradually came out the clouds, it was
cold and miserable out but I didn’t care if I couldn’t
use the grill in reality that day. I was satisfied.

On the second day of the BBQ meditations I moved

beyond the grill itself and into its true meaning. I
stated by traveling to an exceptional summer day.
The temperature outside is warm and not too humid.
Blue skies abound. I invite my friends. It is a
Buddha’s BBQ in my mind. A feast for the manful
heart.

I go the fridge and pull out the steaks I bought just

for this occasion. What was the cut? New York? Rib
Eye? Filet? Maybe skirt or sliced thin for Carne
Asada. I have a back to the land moment and for a
second I take it back to the cow and the butcher.
Then I leave it behind.

I settle on rib eye, bone in. The meat is red, no off

colorations. It is firm to the touch with just enough
fat to give it flavor. There is no need to marinate

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these bad boys, they stand on their own. I will salt
and pepper them later as they rest.

The grill is hot. It is glowing. I want it that way. It is

waiting. The fire is practically anticipatory. Moving
carefully I place the steaks close to each other but
not touching. Hear the sizzle as they hit the hot
metal. No need to close the hood today, I am cooking
at my pace in the open air. The fire is perfect, the
outside will brown but not burn. The meat will
caramelize.

And then it is the zen moment. Each steak gets a

perfect ¼ turn. I wait and enjoy the scene, in the
middle of winter I am lost again in a summer day.
Then I quickly and easily flip each steak over and
when the meat is just firm to the touch of a finger I
remove them. We wait while the flavors settle and
the juices return to the center of the meat. I bring
the steaks to the table. The grill marks are perfectly
crossed, of course.

I feel the holy state that has settled over my body.

Over the rest of the week I continue on this path to

manful grill enlightenment. Sky is the limit on this
one. My mind sambas from Italian Sausages to
pounded paper thin chicken breasts marinated in
Olive Oil, lemons and rosemary, tiny lamb chops,
pencil size asparagus, move quickly now with
portobello mushrooms and finish with whole squid
marinated in lemon juice and hot pepper flakes.

On Friday I end the BBQ meditations with thoughts of

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dry rubs and sauces. La Sweets wonders why I am
so happy this week even though it is the dead of
winter and the dead of job search. I smile inwards,
all is well, the inner fire glows brightly but does not
burn.

A quick dry rub.

1/8 oz ground coffee

1/4 oz paprika

1/2 oz brown sugar

1/2 oz salt

pinch of spices you think feel right at the moment.

Now get in there and rub.

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 Chapter 31
Worshiping At The Supreme Temple.

It’s bye bye baby.

I would never have expected the cold beginning

of January to be a time of work activity, but somehow
that is what it turned out to be. Just as rigor mortis
had set in to what remained of the traditional job
market, my consulting practice started showing
sudden and strange gurgling signs of life.

The Dow hadn’t yet begun the kamikaze descent

that it would take a few months later in March 2009
and in the post holiday haze several, yes that is right,
several potential clients called wanting to either start
projects up again or create new ones. One company
was thinking of selling their business and wanted
help valuing and positioning it. Another was starting
a new line of dine at home ethnic foods and a third
had a group of pickled organic vegetables that he
wanted to develop into retail. The website I built in
the fall that had been dormant so long generated
several inquiries for the first time. I even considered
doing some marketing for once. Bottom line; there
was more action that week than in the past six
months. Go figure.

And that is the strange life of the consultant.

Consultants are the second cousins at a family
reunion. They are invited, you know who they are,
they a part of the party but never the focus of the

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evening. A consultant can drink from the cup but
rarely finishes it, he can date forever but never
marries.

I was never comfortable with this sort of work

and my instincts turned out to be right. The manner
in which my consultancy practice played out over the
next few months would not be good. Even it’s short-
term effects did little to replace my longing for the
structure that was missing in my life where work
used to be. Consulting actually wound up
contributing to my state of anxiety because I didn’t
know how to handle the ups and downs. But none of
that mattered that week; I was flush with the
excitement of new leads. If I had been a hunting dog
I would have been in point.

The flip side of leads is that they are just that.

Leads are like the glimpse of a beautiful woman
walking up the street ahead of you, a passing glance
is just what you get. You have to wait to get a good
look at her and more than often than not, you are
surprised by what you see. Any man who won’t
admit that someone that he were looking at from a
distance turned out to be, well, a man, is lying to you
and himself. The same theory applies to business,
sometimes what look like a gorgeous lead in a short
skirt happens to have a two-day growth when you
look closer.

These new work opportunities left me with

optimism for my future but an empty calendar as I
waited for meetings that were scheduled but
scattered throughout the coming month. That was

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the other aspect of consultancy that drove me nuts.
I never realized just how much energy I had until I
started working on other people’s projects. They
lacked the urgency that I did and toning down my
natural desire to push forward now to respect their
slow pace was challenging to say the least. Didn’t
they get it? Where was their desire? Where was the
fire in their bellies, shit, it was their business and I
was more excited about it then they were!

As a result life left me with too much time on my

hands again. Here I was again in this now familiar yet
never comfortable dilemma. Just how do I fill this
time? It was too cold to get on my bike, something I
was regretting and missing and I was sick of the gym
and my yoga classes, I mean how many downward
dogs can a man do before he hurts himself? Sadly I
found out that there is a limit to that too.

This was the time when I came to appreciate

how happy I was that there was had left the
emptiness that had vice gripped my life for the past
9 months. Instead of emptiness I had the happy
confines of the mancave and the manful meditation
studies that now intrigued and excited me there
whenever I needed them. They had quickly become
my reliable back up, then my go to move and now a
real game changer in life.

That bleak winter afternoon after I finished an

hour long walk up through the Berkeley Hills with the
tow-dog, I heated up a massive bowl of Chicken Soup
with basil and orzo, slipped some parmesan and
croutons on top and got the heat up to 68, a move

265
totally out of character on that count. I tore the NY
times and threw the dishes in the sink. I was eager to
be into a meditation. And when I did, without much
effort or direction thank you very much, I opened my
mind and heart to the things that I loved.

I was overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude as I

thought about what I had to be thankful for. Yes,
there was always family first including a sense of
peace that seemed to be increasing daily with she
who must be considered and god I knew how much I
loved food, I could meditate about that forever.

But there was something else that I wanted to

meditate about that day. It came to me fast. It was
something I missed deeply that day, buried in the
winter emptiness before the NFL playoffs and the
Super Bowl. The only one subject I could meditate
about that mattered as much to me as family,
women, wine and food.

The answer was obvious. Easy. Plain as the nose

on my face.

Sports.

A question: Has a research group every

conducted a study of male brain waves when we
watch a sporting event? Just what does it do to us?
Why will I watch losing teams play meaningless
games (who in their right mind believes that they are
gaining something from watching the Warrior play
the Clippers?). I rail against bad books, bad movies
and bad music and then I watch bad sports without

266
complaint. Do we just shut down? Why is this bad
entertainment acceptable?

I can’t explain it either. I don’t know why I love

sports so passionately. I do know that I have loved it
from the earliest memories of boyhood.

As my meditation deepens, I move inside the

mind and enter the church of sports. As I do I am
immediately transported to a holy moment that lives
within me at all times. A bright shining example of
my continuing study of manful ways. A moment for
me to share and one that I will always remember.

It is late September 1997. The Giants are

playing the Dodgers at Candlestick Park, one of the
holiest rivalries in this church of sports. It’s a warm
day and these two historical enemies are fighting for
the title of the Western Division as the summer sun
shines down. The Dodgers are in first but the Giants
are breathing down their blue necks.

I have snuck my 11-year old son out of school to

enjoy a game with his dad without the blessings of
she who does not go to sporting events after two
tickets blissfully appeared in my life the day before, a
gift from a habitual sinner, a down payment on debts
that will never be repaid (but that too is another
story).

The day is very very hot. The game is very

competitive. The crowed is highly excited. The game
goes into extra innings. In the top of the 10th inning,
relief pitcher Rod “Shooter” Beck takes the mound, a

267
massive bear like man with a fu-Manchu moustache
and a larger than life presence. Beck, the first relief
pitcher to perfect the intimidating combination of
death glare and dead arm swing (may his soul rest in
peace).

Beck’s year has gone to shit. He has lost his

closer’s job. He isn’t pitching well. The game is tied
5 to 5. He quickly gives up three consecutive singles
but somehow the Dodgers don’t score. They have
loaded the bases with no one out. The crowed is
silent.

Beck’s coach, the revered teacher Dusty Baker

comes to the altar of the pitching mound. The crowd
is murmurs. Then they are stunned because he
doesn’t pull Beck from the game. Instead, it has
been told that he looks in his eyes and says these
holy words:

“Dig as deep as you can with whatever you have

learned. You are the guy.”

I believe that these are words that define

manfullness without the need for further explanation.
Words that a man can mediate on and I often do.

The game continues. Beck somehow does dig

within and finds his center. He strikes out the next
batter. The fans go nuts. One out. Beck throws a
brutally nasty splitter to the next batter, but the
Dodger hitter rips it. He hits a blistering shot right up
the middle heading straight for center field. Then, in
a flash Beck reaches out stabs it with his glove and

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throws to first. He starts the perfect double play.
People around me are crying holy tears of joy.

Two innings catcher Brian Johnson leads off the

12th with a home run and the Giants win. The entire
stadium is out of its collective mind. We are beside
ourselves almost out of our bodies. I hug my son. I
hug strangers. They hug us. All is perfect wonder.

In perfect harmony the Giants go on to win the

division.*

(*it is important that if you are a Giants fan that your meditation stop
here before the pain of the ghostly spirit of Solomon Torres appears
poisons your now pure thoughts as your recall just how this year
ends…)

When I have trouble meditating, I repeat this

story in my head over and over. I focus on the holy
words of bodhisattva Baker; “You are the man.”

And his teachings: “Dig as deep as you can into

what you have learned over the years.”

That is wisdom.

There is nothing more to say when words are

clear as light itself. At the end of this meditation my
mind is silent and at peace, my heart is as pure as
the rotation in the spin of a tight spiral on a Koufax
curve dipping before it reaches home plate in a
motion that defies physics.

A game day celebration:

269
12 buns
12 sausages
24 beers
6 friends
Onions
Bell peppers
Garlic
Sauerkraut.
Dill pickle relish.

Get a frying pan and heat to medium. Peel the onion

and chop, clean the bell pepper removing seeds and
inner vein, clean the garlic. Sauté until all golden,
keep warm.

Grill sausages and buns to heart’s content and don’t

forget them. Set table. Watch Giants win.

270
 Chapter 32.
I hear you Vin Scully.

I quickly realize that this is the beginning of a

more advanced manful mediations, starting to
looking inside of the self and not out.

I have a dark secret. It is dark blue.

Seven. Perfect number of touchdown. Throwing

the tight spiral. The journey through sports starts
with an easy meditation. Then we will work our way
up to complex groups of manful moments. Think of
this as mental stretching before you are ready to air
it out. And remember to sit and to breathe when you
are ready to start. Mind clear? If not let the flotsam
and jetsam of everyday worries settle down until it is.
When you are breathing and your head is empty
before you get bored you are ready go.

Since so few of you have actually quarterbacked

a team have fun with an imaginary meditation this
time and let it guide you.

Start with a mental image yourself on a football

field. Where it is doesn’t matter. You many have
never thrown a perfect spiral, I know that I sure the
hell can’t no matter how I try. And I love this
meditation because now we all can.

You are standing on the field, which is what matters.

It could be a stadium full of cheering spectators. It
may be you alone on a crisp autumn day. You smell
the air, you feel the sun in front of you. You might

271
imagine yourself behind the stacked bodies of your
0-line as the ball is hiked. Set your own stage. You
can be a 12-year old realizing his talent for the first
time or Brett Favre at any point in his career (except
last season with the Jets, don’t go there it will only
lead to pain). Have you set the stage?

See your football in front of you. Hold it up and

bring it to your chest as you bend your elbows. Look
at the laces, place your fingers across the laces. Grip
the ball comfortably, go one, grip it.

Look downfield, imagine the scene. Look at your

target. Your eyes are clear and focused. Your hips
and shoulders face the sideline. You are ready to
begin your throw.

Imagine your elbow as it begins to rise as you

step forward; transferring the weight from your back
foot to your front, feeling the energy rising through
the motion of your arm now moving rapidly yet
gracefully forward. At the peak of the arc of your
arm motion you let go and release the ball, the nose
of the dimpled brown pigskin pointing up and forward
as it sails away in a perfect spinning spiral. You step
back and admire the sight, brown football against
blue sky. There is no pain in your arm, the motion is
fluid the release perfect as your wrist falls gently to
your side.

You can add to your meditation in many ways at

this point or just end here and repeat. A suggested
addition to this meditation includes watching your
target receive the throw and sprinting away. If you

272
fear being tackled, block this out of your mind at all
costs.

Finish your meditation in any way you wish. A

receiver catches the ball to score to the cheers of the
crowd or is it the smile of your son or daughter
instead or the cheerleader that you lusted for but
never had. You finish it off it off anyway you like.
That is the freedom of manful meditation.

Done? Now repeat it over and over until you are

ready to move on to something else. You will be
surprised how quickly the time passes and how much
better you feel when it this manful meditation is
done. But remember, meditative exercise is never a
substitute for the real thing. And no one really wants
to meditate on the size of their growing gut for more
than a passing moment.

Exercise 2:
Enjoying the game

Just because you didn’t play sports doesn’t mean

that you don’t enjoy sports just as passionately. Is
there a greater manful joy than opening up the
sports section, watching a game on TV or listening to
it on the radio?

This group of exercises is divided into 3 sub

groups; so you can pick you favorite medium of
information or do all 3, the recommended path to
sports broadcasting salvation.

Exercise 2a

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 Being there
(Walking in the presence of the gods).
Watching the game on TV

These are a particularly difficult set of

meditations because if you take yourself back to a
crucial moment of manliness that involved watching
a major sporting event such as say the 1983 super
bowl between the 49ers and the Bengals especially
that final drive in the 4th quarter when Montana hits
Taylor the room exploded as did our collective heads,
you very likely in a highly altered state of
consciousness which you may not remember. This
exercise will allow you to re-create that moment as
you wish it had been or if you were sober as your
remember it to be or most likely, a little bit of both.

Think of a moment that you loved in sports when

you were watching television. Pick a sport.
Remember the setting. The television itself, the size
of the screen and the quality of the signal. It could
even be in black and white. Hold it there for a
moment and remember the players on the field, the
time of year and imagine a particular moment in the
game. Are you there? Now play back the video in
your mind. As you do don’t’ forget to breathe and let
the moment unfold. Take time to notice the room
that you were in the people who were around you
and the mood. It might be a celebratory moment, it
could be the moment when you knew your team
wasn’t going to be going to the holy land that year.
Let the playback repeat itself as you breathe and
drift.

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 Exercise 2b
Inside your mind:
Listening to the game on the radio

This is a variation on television for those who

enjoy the pleasure of an audio signal and have the
power to imagine a scene. But mostly this is a
chance for you to recreate a moment, likely in your
childhood, where you were listening to sports on the
radio. And even more than that the voice of the
announcer. Who was it that took you out of your
room and onto the court without leaving? Was it Vin
Scully or Chick Hearn for those from Southern
California? Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell, Jack Buck or
Harry Carry? Or someone that no one in their right
mind but you would remember, but you take yourself
back to that moment, in a car or in your bed with an
earphone on so no one would hear and you are back
at the game again. Hear that voice and take yourself
back into that time.

Exercise 2c
Sitting still
Reading the sports section

This exercise is for those who enjoy their sports

section every day. The rest many not get it. You
know who you are. Pulling the sports section out
first, you read every word about your local teams
and then every word about any team that might be
competitive with them. You can’t miss the gossip
about the major players and find yourself scanning
the statistics. You even wander into the standings

275
every day. You love your sports section and when
you are traveling you read every word of any sports
section you can get your hands on.

So visualize a newspaper that you love to read.

It doesn’t matter which just take yourself to a happy
place put your feet up get a cup of coffee and
whatever stimulants you use to get the day started.
Maybe you like sitting on the can when reading, find
that righteous spot and go there imaginary paper in
hand.

If you want to imagine a story do so. Make one

up or recall something that you read recently. Think
about the story and what it means. Read cover to
cover or hit the spots you like best, even those of us
who actually look at the standings.

Don’t move on to exercise 3 until you have

repeated this meditation at least five times. The
point of the exercise is to focus upon it and
understand it, not to read it like you would a novel or
short story.

Exercise 3
The luck of the draw.

This is a short meditation and easy to do. It can

be imaginary or based on personal experience.
Begin the exercise and see which direction your mind
pulls you, fantasy or reality?

See yourself in a casino, it can be anywhere

276
from Las Vegas to Monte Carlo to Biloxi. You pick
the spot. If you don’t like the casino atmosphere,
you can imagine a game of blackjack with your fellow
manfulness students.

See the face of the dealer. He holds the cards

out for all to see. Watch the intensity of his eyes as
he shuffles the deck. Now he places the cards down
and begins to deal. He gives everyone at the table a
card and takes one himself. Now the second round
of cards is dealt. You already peaked at the first
card. It is an ace. You feel great, something good is
about to happen. You have placed a large bet on this
round and it looks good.

This is not a moment to think about doubling

down, splitting or insurance. You are going to win.
Your card is now in front of you. You turn it over.
Your heart leaps but you show nothing to the table.
Quietly and firmly you turn them over. Blackjack.

Repeat as needed. For those who prefer other

card games run this meditation with them, from
Poker to Hearts, the key is to pick a moment in the
game and focus on it while you breathe and enjoy.
Hearts fans, throw the black bitch over and over and
tell me you didn’t smile every time.

If none of these work for you then take the path

back to a gambling moment that sticks out in the
mind. It could be the weekly poker game or that
number you called right on the roulette wheel. As
with every meditation exercise that we do,
appreciate the setting, look at the moment and the

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people around you, see yourself and go there.

Exercise 4
Riding the perfect wave

You may have enjoyed the pleasure of surfing a

perfect wave at a great moment in your life, but
more the likely you haven’t. This meditation will
guide you through what if feels like to ride a wave. If
you are an experienced surfer, feel free to substitute
your own experience. It is likely to be more exciting.
And to the reader that could give a shit about
surfing, even from an imaginary perspective try
substituting mountains, snow and skis as you read
through.

First pick a beach. Look out at the day. A

beginner? Make the sky blue and the waves
consistent and perfectly shaped. Advanced? Take
yourself to Mavericks on the San Mateo cost on a
grey turbulent day with massive swells that seem to
swallow those who dare.

Look at that beautiful surfboard for a moment

and place it in the water, flat with its nose, the front
poking out slightly. Lie down right in the center of
board from both right to left and in the middle. Now
begin to paddle, taking the surfboard right through
the wave close to shore as you move out into the
ocean. Are you there? Great.

Now gently turn the board around so that the

nose faces the beach. It may seem elementary but it

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is part of the exercise. Look behind and watch the
waves as they approach. Wait for a nicely formed
wave to come near you and hold the board flat. Start
to paddle and as the wave approaches you begin to
move.

Relaxed and confident you stand. The power of

the wave lifts you and carries you forward, gliding.
You lean right and begin to move across it. As the
wave looses steam and you approach the beach you
dismount. Get ready to ride again.

End the exercise on the shore, salt water on your

lips, hair, even if the subject of hair is in the past,
matted, mind calm after riding the waves. Look out
at the ocean and watch the waves. Let that image
linger like the aftertaste of a great cognac. Then let
is linger some more.

Exercise 5
Build You Own

Sports are a smorgasbord of possibilities for

manful meditation. The first four exercises were just
strong images designed to get this process started
and familiarize you with the basis of manful
meditation, guided tours through moments of a
manful life. But they are not by any means more
than a small fraction of this world.

So let’s take a small risk here in the early study

of the ways of manful meditation. Trust yourself and
try to make this work. It will give you a gauge on
how you are progressing.

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 Pick a sport that you excelled at or that you love.
Take yourself back to a sports moment that was not
provoked in the previous 4 exercises. It could be
little league or Pop Warner football, it could be
shooting hoops in 7th grade behind the garage. Take
yourself on a long run that you loved or a bike ride
that you know so well. Find a moment of power and
breakthrough, then one of speed and grace.

Let the spirit of athletic release flow into your

memories and breathe.

Got a moment like that? Time to remember it.

Now see where this goes. Repeat until done.

Now there are those amongst you who just need

to hear the word restaurant and your mind takes off
like a dog waiting for a walk. Before you finished
reading the title of this exercise, your newly trained
meditative mind started assembling a list of greatest
eating hits more numerous that hit songs by the
Beatles. For you, restaurants are temples of the
soul, theaters upon which the great plays of food and
wine are acted out by a cast of characters that
stretches back to early childhood memories right
through to adulthood. Your problem is filtering that
flood of information. For you just go. Run. Nothing
can hold you back. The restaurant is already racing
ahead of your meditation, the maitre d’ has seated
you and the meal awaits. Don’t feel obligated to
study the rest of the chapter now. Just pick the book
back up after your meditation finishes dessert (and

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by the way you should read on later because these
exercises will help you choosing meals in the future).
Anyway, now git.

As to the rest of us or those that want to read on

anyway, there is a bit of guided work to do. This
meditation begins with a question that will bring the
subject into focus, what makes a great restaurant
experience for you? Is it the 4 star atmosphere? The
reputation or the discovery? The innovation of the
cooking, the freshness of the ingredient? Maybe it is
a particular setting or is the knowledge that you have
been going there for years and that a particular dish
will always taste the same. It could be a memory
that triggers back a person or time in your life. So
take some time zone out and let your mind drift
across the restaurants that you have loved (and have
loved you) the times that you spent there and the
meals that you had.

Once you have zeroed in on a meal take some

time and let it linger a while. Try to reply the entire
experience, from the moment that you stepped into
the room until the instant that you walked the same
steps but this time the other way. Focus on small
things, the table or the way the menu looked. And
stay there for the course of this mediation.

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 Exercise 3
Ultimate Sandwich

Why is the sandwich such as pleasurable

experience? Is it the variety of infinite possibilities
that are presented when you think of one? The fact
that so many different combinations exist with only
one thing in common, a set of ingredients that are
surrounded by bread. It is surprising that the
sandwich, as opposed to the steak, is a more
advance manful meditation. While it allows you
more freedom to choose it is also more difficult to
manage during your practice.

Rather than provide you with specific

instructions for this meditation, we will set the
sandwich guidelines and you will fill them in before
beginning your visualization.

Start with your choice of bread. This is a wide

ranging question, from Pita to wonder bread, whole
wheat to Kaiser roll to ciabatta. And the bread
choice will guide the ingredients that follow. Got
your bread out of the package? Now get a good
sharp knife, something with some serration please
and carefully cut the bread in half.

Put the bread down on a cutting board and get

the condiments of choice. Toaster is optional, your
call.

Don’t be shy here, let your manful meditation

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flow into a variety of condiments, even ones that you
might not normally use, the mental grocery store is
open for business after all. Or if you are just not that
imaginative get the mayo and French’s yellow. If you
are, think salsas, pestos, And everyone have the salt
pepper vinegar (red or white) and olive oil ready.

Now let your mind slowly engage in the meats

and cheeses that await your imagination. Heading
steady? Fresh roast turkey or ham. Feeling
aggressive? Procsuitto, salami, Or Roast beef.
Think back over the sandwiches that you have loved
over the years and let them come back to you. BLT.
Corned Beef or Pastrami with cole slaw and Russian
dressing. Even the self-effacing choice of PB&J on
white.

Not a meat eater? Roast portabella mushrooms,

eggplants, red bell peppers…but be manful about
your approach. Get the balsamic into your mind,
make the vegetables rich garlicky and forward.

OK, has something come to you? Now

assemble. You might go thin, You might go thick.
You have the piles of ingredients ready to add. Thin
slices of cheese. Lettuce, tomatoes, avocados. Cut
them up and slap them on.

There must be a balance between ingredients

and bread, the bread must envelop the inner
ingredients but not overwhelm them, they must
dominate.

If needed cut the sandwich in half again and put

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the beauty on a plate. Get some chips if you want or
some cole slaw and sit down someplace comfortable.

Take the first bite. Savor the juxtaposition of the

core flavors, the bread and the seasonings. See how
they blend and compliment. Take your time and
enjoy each bite and then work the second half. As
always, repeat five times.

For those who needs some variety, try some

additional meditation exercises, just substitute the
ingredients and go to sandwich heaven. Close your
eyes and taste.

Panini. The sum of the whole so much greater

than its parts, the flat crisp bread, the cheese that
melts and

Lox and Bagel. Cold smoked salmon, wild

caught please. Slice thin red onion. Rich Cream
cheese no non fat needed in a manful meditation
unless of course you actually prefer the texture!
Fresh chewy bagels (sorry to the bagel wimps, it
must have density and it must not be steamed to be
manful). Chives, capers, lemon, dress to your hearts
content.

BBQ Pork Bao. Now hold on, there are the

traditionalists among you that say that a donut like
ball of steamed white flour stuffed with bbq pork is
not a sandwich because it isn’t assembled. To you I
say, skip the exercise. To those that love a good
bao, go on and meditate on it.

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 Hummus in Pita. Anyone who has traveled in
the mid east knows the love of fresh pita stuffed with
creamy olive oil tinged hummus, pickled vegetables,
salad maybe some chopped tomatoes.

Peanut butter and jelly.

Grilled cheese and its cousin, tuna melt.

And if this isn’t enough your mind has already

found one to settle on. Stay there and enjoy.

Exercise 3
Ice Cream Sundae

For every spicy, sour or salty flavor there is a

sweet filling out the yin and yang of the fourth eye of
oral pleasure. The first sweet meditation is the Ice
Cream Sundae, an all American treat has been with
us since the 1800’s. Let us move right into this sweet
oral erogenous zone and how it has played a role in
your life.

This meditation, like so many, plays in different

directions. As always, if you have a regular ice cream
ritual; that you enjoy go off and focus on it. If you
want to be guided then continue on.

It begins with the ice cream of course. You have

gone to the freezer and it is full of choice. Can’t
make up your mind? There really is only one, a rich
true vanilla slightly yellow from the rich egg yolks
and lightly flecked with vanilla beans throughout.

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The choice is yours, coffee, chocolate, let your mind
wander.

Get the ice cream sundae dish, tall ribbed and

elegant from the closet and the scoop from the
kitchen. The ice cream is as always as you want it,
firm yet easy to scoop. You start with two healthy
scoops that fill the bottom of the dish. Now you add
the chocolate syrup, whichever you want, hot or not.
Another scoop of ice cream follows. More chocolate
syrup. Not a chocolate fan? Caramel is just as good.
Or strawberry. Or blend them.

Take the whipped cream out of the fridge. Want

the scoop? Prefer the can? Load it up. No calories
in your mind. Secret passion for that bright red
chemically enhanced maraschino cherry? Won’t
cause cancer in manful meditation and it still looks
just as bright red a stop sign and somehow even
more beautiful. Get your favorite nuts and even if
you are allergic, sprinkle them on (unless you are
weird enough to meditate on the reaction, in which
case you really should consider stopping now and
thinking about why).

Now get a tall spoon and take the first bite. Go

on have another. A really big one. Work it all the
way down the glass. And go for another one. You
won’t gain a pound. Not even an ounce.

Not much more to imagine is there?

Some alternative ice cream meditations for

additional self guided work:

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 The banana split.
The dame blanche (if you have had one you
know).
Black and Tan.
Ice cream sandwich and the variety of
meditations within this mandala of pleasure as the
mind floats from flavor of cookie to type of ice cream
and infinite possibilities that are created.
Root Beer Float.
Apple pie a la mode.

Time to add some of your own.

Exercise 5
Perfectly Formed Mandala
Pizza!

Why is pizza one of the holiest symbols of the

spirit of Manful Meditation? Is it because it is a staple
of the traditional manful diet? The yin and yang of
the simple hand tossed bread dough, rolled flat and a
combination of toppings that will keep a man
enraptured for a long long time. Pizza is the mandala
of the fourth eye circle inside of circles forming a
cosmic mix of cheeses, spices, sauces and meats,
coming together in a cosmic oneness to delicious
strength. But I digress in a Pizzaholic’s blissful
worship.

To begin this exercise start by focusing on a

type of pizza and work backwards. Some followers

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may wish the deep dish Chicago style others yearn
for the crisp thin dough of Italy or maybe the flavor
of a pizza they knew in New York. Got a pizza in
mind? Good.

Cooking seem boring? Then skip the next

paragraphs. Think of the dough that made the pizza.
The humble ingredients, flour, warm water, yeast,
olive oil and salt. Imagine the warm water in a clear
bowl, the mixing of the ingredients by hand until they
form a ball. No need for wait an hour for the dough
to rise, just let if double in size right in the imaginary
kitchen of choice. Done? Now here is a different
meditative moment. Take a deeper then usual
breath, wind up your fist and hit it. Hit it again until
it deflates.

No need to wait that extra hour, time to roll it

out. Pick a surface, wood marble or stainless steel
and roll it flat. How thin depends on the pizza that is
dominating this meditation.

Time to build. Let the imagination roll and build

out a pizza to love. For the few that may need some
inspiration or just love the process take the mind to
tomatoes, olive oil, cheese from Mozzarella to
Provolone to Goat, peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni,
sausage, basil, oregano and on and on and on. The
Mandala of pizza forms the perfect circle and is ready
to bake.

No need for further instruction. The rest of the

meditation should be obvious. Get the paddle and
take it out of the oven. Not a cook, take the

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thoughts to the best pizza parlor in the neighborhood
and get ready to slice it up. Now eat.

Exercise 6
First ripe peach of the summer.

A parable to meditate on summer fruit first. I

live in a region known for fog and cold summers not
fruit and certainly not the sort of fruit that is found at
the stands that dominate side roads throughout our
country. Yet doggedly and as the philosopher
gardener pointed out, stupidly, I planted them
anyway. A pink lady apple, straight from a farm in
Philo to the north, a peach and a nectarine, the latter
two from a hardware store. No pedigree.

Five years later the apple tree has never

produced more than 4 or 5 apples, and this year 2 of
the 4 are covered in brown dots dying. The rest fell
to the ground earlier this sort of summer. The peach
which did OK last year didn’t produce a thing, got hit
with a blight that turned its leaves to crinkled black
whispers.

The nectarine is producing, this three year old

that suffered through a few transplants is suddenly
happy. We think so often of the peach, but there is
the nectarine in the background, never mushy and
never with that horrible skin/flesh contrast. The
steady eddy underdog fruit.

So step away from the whipped cream and in

this meditation, why not think about a perfect piece

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of fruit of your choice. Where does the fruit of your
dreams lie? Something simple like a crisp apple or
maybe a slice of cantaloupe, right out of the fridge,
cold and crisp never mushy an perfectly sweet. Pick
the fruit, how you would like to eat it and where and
go.

Exercise 7
Optional Guides

It is just not fair to end group 2 with an optional

guide for the billions of foods that weren’t covered in
this short chapter. As you begin this exercise
breathing and sitting quietly let your mind wander
freely in and among the foods you love.

Let your mind wander through a series of virtual

recipes and kitchen shelves, from farmer’s markets
to grocery stores. Touch the foods that you love
lightly and quickly and when one grabs your
attention, let it. Then linger on it, enjoy it in the
detail that it deserves.

To now we have explored external pleasures,

food and drink. Now we move inside the body and
into that temple we ALL worship at: Sports. As the
third exercise of this group it is also the most
challenging for it begins the exploration of more
advanced manful mediations, beginning to looking
inside of the self and not out.

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What you are thankful for
Some kind of role for the son
Home too long. Much too long.
Meditation for the weeks leading up?

Trying to navigate the calm confusing waters of

Eastern thought while what I really wanted to do was
clean the garage. Never understanding that you can
do both.

By learning these basic concepts and bringing

them into daily life, they will become an invaluable
and integral part of your very being. They will
provide focus and the freedom to move quickly and
easily through problems that have sent you scurrying
for mental cover crying incoming in the past.

The problem with meditation for so many of us is

that it is passive. Manful meditation replaces the
emphasis of traditional meditation on nothing with a
focused and controlled active set of thoughts.
Instead of emptying the mind manful meditation
trains it.

Now that you have begun to study the core

values of manfulness that define our practice
together, let us meditate together on what
manfulness really is. Let us share the golden cup of
male virility and drink heartily from it.

Manfulness is grounded in the belief that the

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world that we know as a man is a holy place. Every
waking moment that is spent in a manful state is a
blessed one. Manfulness is a perfectly balanced
state of mind and body, something to be revered and
celebrated.*

* As women have established there roles as equals in his world the

concept of manfulness has taken quite a beating in the past 20 years.
Do not fall into the trap of blaming women for this. Your job is honor
being a man and that honor extends to those around you. And to
those self righteous women who condemn the mass of men for the sins
of those who come before us remember the ancient words: do not
throw stones in the bedroom when you live, you are likely to injure that
guy sleeping next to you.

Now that you have begun to study the core

values of manfulness that define our practice
together, let us meditate together on what
manfulness really is. Let us share the golden cup of
male virility and drink heartily from it.

Manfulness is grounded in the belief that the

world that we know as a man is a holy place. Every
waking moment that is spent in a manful state is a
blessed one. Manfulness is a perfectly balanced
state of mind and body, something to be revered and
celebrated.*

* As women have established there roles as equals in his world the

concept of manfulness has taken quite a beating in the past 20 years.
Do not fall into the trap of blaming women for this. Your job is honor
being a man and that honor extends to those around you. And to
those self righteous women who condemn the mass of men for the sins
of those who come before us remember the ancient words: do not
throw stones in the bedroom when you live, you are likely to injure that

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guy sleeping next to you.

Manful Meditation created an additional benefit

that I quickly grasped as central to the pleasures of
the practice. A sweet treat, a mental biscuit waiting
for me at the end this road.

So what is that benefit? This is one of the most

important and blessed lessons of the practice of
manful meditation: No woman will ever challenge the
time spent in a manful meditation practice if you
repeat the blessed chant of the manful man to her:

“Honey, I need a few more minutes alone, I am in

here meditating.”

The first time that this thought came into my

mind I laughed out loud. The first time that I used it
on the fem-power while watching a brutal 49er loss
and not wanting to see a soul in the mancave, I
stopped laughing because it worked. She walked
away from that door and later that afternoon could
not have been more sympathetic when I explained
that I had a bad session. Do you really think she
would have cared about how pitiful the secondary
handled itself that afternoon?

I imagined how this could help my brothers in

arms out there. Think about it. Repeat that line
about needing time to meditate to yourself a few
times and imagine how that would play with your
partner. Go on, imagine the scene. She has walked
into your room. You are sitting up on the couch. You
might be thinking about how your favorite ball club

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gave it up last night in the 9th inning and worse yet,
how much money you lost.

What do you tell her? You tell her that you are
meditating. You are bettering yourself. The result?
You are golden. She loves you. She walks away
feeling whole. The entire scene has changed. Done a
180. But the truth? You could have been asleep. You
probably were asleep. You might have been thinking
about a cold one or a slice of pizza. Your mind could
be anywhere. Period. You could be thinking about
anything, anything at all. You can.

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 Learn them well and they will guide you during
moments of personal difficulty. They will bring you
joy where there was pain, slack where there was
tension. They are the coder pins of the manfull
experience, the silicon lube that frees the rusty
mental hinges. Without them, your journey into
manfullness will resemble that of Richard Simmons
instead of Sean Connery

Don’t skip over these essential concepts and try

to fake it. Don’t skimp on the understanding. Take
them deep until they are as clear as the power of a
strike at the bowling alley. For they are the reasons
that manfulness works. And for those of you are still
thinking that the title of the chapter refers to an old
Chicago song and have been waiting to understand
the relevance of the reference, friends, you will need
to study extra extra hard. And double that if you
remembered the band was once named C.T.A. Tripe
that if you know what it stands for.

But this path can be your journey as well. I can

serve as a vessel, a guide as you seek your own path
to manful enlightenment. Indeed, what you hold in
your hands today is a roadmap, a manual, a
guidebook to living life fully and completely in the
moment as a man. Free from boundaries yet loved
by those around you.** All of this will flow to you
from the practice of manfullness that I learned to
love over the past year.

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 Now there are those amongst you who really
don’t care about your own journey. Go ahead and
skip the next four chapters. I don’t recommend it.
Those of you who study the road to manfullness will
understand the journey that I took and get much
more meaning out of it.

Yes, it is time to move on to the glue that binds

us all, that male html code that is called manfulness.

As my studies intensified and fall blended into early

winter my wife loved me more than ever. I thought
about hundreds of manful subjects that I could
understand and love and meditate upon with an
open heart and lots of joy. Now I would spend hours
lost in manly bliss and equally powerful marital
harmony.

Right? Well yes eventually I did and so did she. But

not just yet.

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 Manful Meditations are designed to make
meditation fun. Betcha’ didn’t expect to see those
two words in a row.

How? By following these lessons you will learn

to meditate the best experiences of a man’s life, i.e.
your life, (and yes you can embellish to your heart’s
content if you want to). We focus on them instead of
the abstract traditional forms of meditation. We
honor our memories and the things we love most.
Like sports, alcohol, food, sex, and cars just to start.
Later there will be a host of more complex subjects
to work on but let’s not get the cart ahead of the
horse.

Manful meditation is a practice of choice. Once

you get through these exercises you are ready to go
off on your own path to manful freedom where your
mind is lost somewhere in an AC/DC chord
progression and looking like a star all the way.

How is this even possible? Just relax, release

and practice grasshopper (don’t think too much
about how Carradine died wow that was weird), all
will become clear in due time. Patience will be
rewarded.

BUILDING THE PRACTICE UP

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 So what will happen? In the next chapters you
will find a group of beginning meditation exercises
divided by subject. Read and practice these groups
of meditation exercises in order, don’t deviate from
the groups. They become progressively more
difficult to focus on and don’t skip ahead.

In each group there will be five or more manful

meditation exercises. Choose the exercises that you
want to do in a particular group, but remember to
work through the groups in order to build up a
manfulness core.

There are no points for finishing them all.

The best way to work though an exercise is to

start by reading it once thoroughly. Then close your
eyes, enter a holy space and start slow and rhythmic
breathing. As you mind starts to focus clearly and
breathing slows down, work through the exercise at
your own pace letting thoughts expand on the
subject matter but not wander too far. When your
mind starts to wander, and this is to be expected,
just steer yourself back to the subject and if needed,
feel free to come back to the written text for a
reminder. Again, the point of each exercise is to
free your mind as you relax with it.

Do not expect to follow a meditation exercise

verbatim and don’t treat is like an exam question.
One part of an exercise may stick in your mind and if
so, follow it. But if the road gets dark or confusing
don’t get upset, it is normal for the mind to wander
and don’t force it back. Just guide it back like a soft

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Tiger Woods put, right in the hole easy as pie.

Time your thoughts to match the rhythm of your

breathing. Don’t get steamrolled by the freight train
of the flood that may open as you begin a
meditation. Slow it down and take it at a pace that
allows for concentration and deeper thought. Again,
try to match the pace of your thoughts with that of
your breathing and keep them slow regular and
relaxed, even during the advanced meditations on
sex that will follow later. This is a mental training
ground.

At the point of redundancy, recall that the path

to progress is deceptively simple; you don’t have to
do every exercise. And you don’t have to follow
every step in the exercise. In fact, most or all of you
won’t be able to follow each step. Your mind will
wander and you will lose focus. It may go empty.
That would be called progress. Don’t try to force the
mental path in any one direction or another. Pick the
meditation that you were working back up as it feels
good again. And don’t get angry at yourself if you
have to start over.

Look at each exercise as a road map. You are

doing the driving. You don’t even have to read to the
end of an exercise if the feeling overtakes you or
your thoughts differ from the path described. You
can start and stop, although in the beginning it will
be a better bet to complete reading a guided
meditation exercise and then begin the process. As
you get more comfortable it will be easier to pick any
point to get started.

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 After an exercise is completed it is crucial to
remember to do it again until it has been digested
you are ready to head to another. The more times
the better. Remember friends, this is a practice, not
a novel. Put this guide down and pick it up as you
need. If this book doesn’t look beaten when you
finish it we haven’t done our job.

Along the way the manner in which you

approach life will change in two significant ways.
First, you will achieve better control over your mind.
That’s right, better control over your thoughts and
more energy to finish the tasks that you begin.
Second, you will focus better on the tasks at hand.
You will hold the screwdriver with more confidence
as you tighten that window hinge because your mind
is clear and in the moment. Even when hungover.
Finally, you will focus on your goals and what you
want out of your life. Once that happens a funny
thing will follow, you will get there. But let’s not get
ahead of ourselves. No gain without the work.

So, are you in a personal holy space? Sitting or

in one of the manful mediation poses? Breathing
calm? Is she gone? If not, ask her to leave and get
the personal satisfaction that she will be happy to.

Everything is in place. Let’s turn that engine

over, get her started and see how she rolls.**

** The author did not intend that this book be a substitute for the brilliance of
thousands of years of Eastern thought. Quite the contrary. This text celebrates
meditation in a new and non-traditional way that is focused upon the lives of
contemporary men. Those seeking more traditional texts to supplement their studies

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should refer to those books in the recommended reading section at any time.

Chapter 13.
My journey within
Finding the path

Beer week had been such a pleasure for me and the

length and power of my meditations had increased
dramaticfally day by day.

Chapter 14

Some Early Manful Meditations

Drinking the holy fluids
(ah, demon alcohol)

I had made the decision to really focus on

manful subjects to assist me as I probed deeper into
this new world that I loved. I did a long and
throrough scanned my experiences and came back a
more comfortable subject to begin my inner journey
into manful meditation then drinking?

The drinking of the holy fluids is a perfect set of

easy and joyful manful meditations to begin your
practice. A combination of perfect moments in life
that you vaguely recall heightened by well above
average attention to detail in preparation provides a
perfect subject for a series of manful meditations,
thoughts to repeat over and over again ever so
blissfully and then to expand upon. Even better, this
inner practice leads one to the heightened realm of

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consciousness of the inner bartender, as the quality
of the meditation improves so will the quality of the
drinks at the house.

Spending the next week meditating on that

which you cannot and likely should not have may be
too much for any holy soul. Then again, should one
who pursues a life of sobriety feel strong and desire
to meditate on these concepts, this is a path that
should be carefully monitored with the help of a
mentor or friend or maybe her.

Exercise 1
Oh blessed cold one

Oh my brothers, I don’t start a game without

stretching. So here I gave myself a mental soft toss.
A warm up, working on something that is deeply
known and loved: Enjoying a cold one. Ah yes for
starts I decided to meditate on having a beer.

Beer is deeply hardwired to the male

consciousness to the tune of billions of dollars a year
of sales and countless television ads that seek to
shamefully capitalize upon manful moments to sell a
particular brand or lifestyle. Manful meditation gives
you the freedom to choose a manful moment you
want and the beer you want any time any place.
Close your eyes and begin. Breathing regularly?
Time to get starte..

First select your glass. Want it chilled? Yes Pull

it out of the freezer. Belgian fan? Get the matching
glass with that cool Stella logo. Take it out and put it

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on the table, alone naked empty.

Now choose your beer. Take an extra manful

moment and relax with the variety of choice, the
abundance of beer pleasure that we enjoy. Survey
the variety of options that are available to you. And
as always, feel free to skip anyone type that doesn’t
float the boat.

Start with the lightest pale lager, blonde clear

and so pure. Move slowly into the wheat beers
cloudy and sharp with lemon. Turn to the medium
body and more boldly flavored pilsners. Let the hops
and barley come into play as tastes become more
forward. Want something comfortable? Think of the
old beloved warriors, from Budweiser to Hamm’s to
Lucky Lager. Remember their labels, the shape of
their bottles, their tastes.

Now the passage moves to the darker colors.

You enter the world of ales. How about an India pale
ale? Nothing pale about this one, or maybe
something fuller, and keep it local.

You have chosen your beer, it is at the right

temperature and you are ready for a moment of
heightened intensity. The pour. Hold the beer glass
at a slight angle. Pour the beer from the bottle into
the glass slowly. Feel like a bartender, then go
ahead an imagine a pull on the handle to the same
effect. Let the beer fill the glass slowly watching the
head begin to form. End the pour so that the head
covers the top of the glass. Now wait and let the
beer settle.

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 If the pour makes you happy then end here and
start again for your 10 and 20 breath cycles.

On the other hand if you are conscious you

should be ready for the taste by now. Want to chug
it? Go for it. The meditation is yours.

Do you need an instruction to repeat this

exercise or did you already?

Exercise 2
The perfect glass of red wine
.

Exercise 3
The Margarita.

You can’t start the margarita meditation without

setting the stage, and what goes better with a beach
on the Pacific Coast Mexico. If you have been there,
you know what is coming. If you haven’t, here is a
setting for you to focus on.

Begin here with these thoughts. Warm sand

warm sun. Repeat five times. Continue. Now feel
them. Warm sand, warm sun, blue sky warm clear
water. Repeat ten times or more until you are ready
for the margarita.

Now pause and start to visualize the setting of

your choice. You can stay a beach or you can be at
home, hey you can have a freezer at the beach. You

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are in control.

Go to your freezer. Watch the condensation

slowly pour out of the freezer as you pull out the ice
tray. Crack the tray and put 4 ice cubes per drink in
a big ceramic bowl.

Now go to the bar and pull out your favorite

tequila. Don’t have one? That’s OK, just think
tequila. Got one? You know what the bottle looks
like. Need a suggestion? How about Porfidio out of
Vera Cruz. The greatest looking tequila bottle, tall
and slender with a glass cactus coming out of the
bottom. It can be silver it can be gold, you make the
call, reposado, anejo, all up to you.

Bring out a silver cocktail shaker from the bar.

Get several limes. Cut them in ½. Take a moment
and look at each ½, put your nose up to them and
draw in the tart but sweet smell of the tropics.
Squeeze them by hand or with a squeezer. Watch
the juice run into the cocktail shaker. Smell the fresh
citrus.

Now take the tequila bottle and pour in twice as

much of the lime juice that you have set aside.

Get out the Cointreau or the Grand Marinier.

And if you have something against the French, go
with triple sec or the new Patron orange liqueur. Pour
in one part.

Feeling aggressive? Make your drink a double.

Why not? Who is counting? Add the ice cubes.

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Cover with the strainer. Shake and swirl.

Find your favorite glass and imagine it. Now

hold the strainer over the shaker and begin to pour.
Watch the margarita as it pours into your glass,
cloudy and cold.

Sit down some place comfortable. Take your

glass. Look at the view. Now bring the glass to your
nose and smell this sacred blend of the fruits of this
earth. It should not be too hard to top everything
else in your too active mind at this point. Now take
the first sip, not too long, but enough to fill your
mouth. Sip and sip again.

Repeat five times. You will be happy just

thinking about it. Repeat again as needed. You won’t
get drunk either.

Exercise 4
Cool calm collected, the Martini.

Why does the martini that appeal to that sub

group of manful mediators known as the button
downs? Is it the exquisite detail in preparation the
austere yet complex flavors or is the damn shape of
the holy vessel, the martini glass? And no other
meditation offers quite the same manful extra
exercise, a focus on the ultimate martini drinker,
James Bond. As this exercise begins and the mind
starts to clear repeat the mantra, shaken, not stirred.
Shaken, not stirred.

As the words repeat move your focus to the

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beloved receptacle, the vessel of this meditation, the
martini glass. Now meditate upon the freezer where
it waits, cold yet clear. Waiting.

Choose your alcohol and the accompaniment of

your choice. Onion, lemon peel, vodka or gin, this
hallowed menu is of your own volition. Imagine the
cold metal cocktail shaker in your hand as you shake
it back and forth. Now strain the drink into the glass.
Look at it. Hold the glass by the stem, raise it to
your lips and sip.

This is where the self-guided portion of the

meditation should engage easily. Let the botanical
cloud of flavors descend over your lips and tongue
and down your throat. The spices and herbs of the
gin, forward yet understated, the beautiful luminous
quality of the cold liquid. An elegant and manful
meditation as cool as the drink itself.

Exercise 5
Exploring the wide world of drinks

This series of self-guided meditations is designed

to encourage you to explore the world of drinks as
part of your manful meditation practice. By now a
pattern has emerged from these exercises that
should be clear to the reader. After controlling your
thoughts focus on your breath. Once under control,
take your mind to a place that you want to be, a
setting that you love where the featured drink would
be served. Make sure to take the time to focus upon
the small steps along the way that make the drink

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special. Some suggestions include:

A Cuba libre on a very hot day.

Scotch. Some of you want to meditate in this

peat bog. I never understood it but each to their
own!

A warm brandy snifter, a spectacular French

cognac, hold the bowl in your hands, swish gently
smell and breathe.

The Modern Cocktail. For all of those younger

mixologists go wild here. Let your free cocktail flag
flow in the breeze in visions of pomegranate extract,
absinthe and vanilla beans.

Exercise 6
The state of being drunk
(and then alas hungover)
THIS NEEDS WORK OR TO BE MOVED.

This two exercise group is a preview of what will

come in your practice; advanced meditation
exercises that become more difficult as your internal
skills and discipline emerge.

While it is fun and always easy to meditate

about a cocktail and the pleasure it might bring at
any given moment, focusing on being drunk and then
hungover is quite a different paradigm altogether.

The first part of this meditation will take you

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back to a moment when you were drunk. The setting
and what it was that you drank that day or evening.
But when finishing the meditation take a moment to
look at the choice you made and just how it came to
pass that you wound up having that extra one too
many.

Begin as always with your breathing. As your

mind calms take it back to that moment where you
crossed that internal frontier just ahead of the word
coherent.

Where were you? Bar? Home? Or? Now ask

yourself this question: Why did you get drunk?WEAK

On to the next morning. When considering a

hangover an obvious choice emerges to the reader
and practitioner. Why? Why would anyone want to
focus on such an unpleasant subject as a hangover?

Bringing mental focus and acuity to more

personal and unpleasant subjects is a preview of the
more advanced techniques that we are building
towards as your practice becomes more focused.
Overcoming what seem to be negative thoughts and
finding joy in them teaches us to minimize their
damages and look forward when things are bleak.
This is always a skill.

NOW PAUSE.

Time to take a break and review the first 6 exercises.

How did they go? Which ones went easily and which
did not? Which ones did you repeat with pleasure?

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And the others that you skipped, can you figure out
why?

When you are done good news is coming. It is

time to eat.

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ne over 20 different exercises and if you have
meditated an average of times on each that is 100
guided meditation exercises. And it wasn’t bad at all
was it.

So take a moment and pause again. Look back

at the these three subjects and meditate on each of
them on an abstract basis. Before moving on group
number 4. What did each of these powerful concepts
mean to you in your life then and what about now.
Spend a few moments letting the mind wander over
them, core values that a central to the identity a
manful man. Righteous parts of manful living that
you have enjoyed over the years, linger for a minute
longer in this holy trinity of sports, food and drink.

And when you are full of their spirit enjoy the

calm that it brings you. Then and only then are you
ready for a new and much more complex subject that
awaits you in this journey together.

Women.

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 Chapter 11

The shape of the body of

the Buddha’s girlfriend

The holy spirit James Brown sang a hallowed

chant of manfulness in a voice that was not of this
life and time. He sang: “This is man’s world. But it
wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a
girl.” Then he grunted and screamed as only a
celestial visitor could and did a soul clap. And he
continued his blessed chant. “Man needs a woman.
He got to have a woman. Man, man can make
everything he can. But a woman makes a better
man.”

Take a moment and meditate on that chant but

at the same time try not to think too much about his
hair. That mental image can distract even the most
thoughtful and dedicated meditation.

When ready, begin this complex set of

meditations with an open and clear mind. You are
going to need it for this is hallowed but often very
dangerous ground to walk upon. At the same time it
offers one the opportunity to gaze upon the most
revered visions that we have as men without the fear
that so often walks hand in hand with this
experience. Because thank god they can’t read our
minds, as much as they want to or think that the can.

And a last reminder from the Holy soul brother

number#1. A man that doesn’t have a woman is

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lost. Amen to that.

Exercise 1
The holy of holies
A woman’s butt**

Asking a righteous man to meditate upon a

woman’s butt is like asking an art student to dwell
upon a sculpture such as say Michelangelo’s David.
A perfect woman’s ass is art, plain and simple.
Match. Set. Point. Game over.

Throughout life many manful moments have bee

spent gazing longingly at this particularly glorious
part of the female anatomy and the subject of this
meditation exercise without the need for instruction.
How many of those moments were spent as your
eyes followed a beautiful woman’s body as she
walked by you on the street? Thank the spirits that
they do not turn around to see that look in our eyes.
Indeed, if they really had eyes in the back of their
heads the world would be a different place.

But let us focus together now. What sort of butt

is the one you wish to meditate upon? It might be
that of someone you love, it might be one that you
have admired from afar and will never touch. Well,
at least not with your hands, but you have in the
heart.

Over and over one word comes back to your

mind as this butt hovers in the mind’s eye. That word
is perfect. Start your meditation by thinking of that

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perfect butt. And as with all of the meditations in
this group 5, beauty is truly in the mind of the
beholder.

Is it large? Can you get your hands around it?

Small? Round? Oblong? How does it move? Does it
appear soft? Hard? Muscular? Flabby? Does it shift
from side to side or just stay there moving up and
down up and down and side to side. Now come back
to your breathing, slow it down.

What emotion does this particular butt carry? Is

it a happy butt? Or is it sad? Is it angry? Loving? Is
it a butt that hates or loves?

What is that butt clothed in? And if women

didn’t want men looking at their behinds why would
they wear what the wear. G-string bikini underwear
peaking out from a tight pair of jeans? Who can
blame even a chaste and pious soul for gazing?

Found the butt of your dreams? Is it in a

righteous space and outfit? Good. Now focus on it for
a really really long time. That’s right, let your third
eye drink mightily from these waters and your id
shall be refreshed. You can take it all in without fear
that someone will be ‘offended’ by this love. Take
your time, it’s your manful meditation and a butt that
you love. So stare at it.

And where you want to go with this mediation is

your business. Just remember to keep breathing and
stay out of the physical realm.

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**This exercise is dedicated with deepest respect to the high priest of
holy butt mediation, the “general” of Panama City and David who first
shared this ancient manful mantra with me.

Exercise 2
When is a pear not a pear?
A melon not a melon?
The perfect breast

Following up the first exercise of this group by

asking you holy warriors to focus on the second
temple of the woman’s body is a test of even an
advanced practioner’s concentration skill and focus.
It is time to test yourself and see what has been
learned.

So clear the mind and begin anew. Let the

images of breasts come into your mind like a flock of
a thousand different kinds of birds. For there as
many kind of breasts as there are eyes or noses. You
see them everywhere. You see them every day.
What images come into this part of our journey?

As the revered Firesign sages once said, does

she have a balcony that you would do Shakespeare
from”? Are they large pendulous heavy and ripe as
cantaloupes? Or tight and tiny nipples poking
through a tank top? What color are they? Red as
bing cherries or brown as fine leather? Let the mind
wander freely here don’t hold it back.

What images have come into this mediation? Is

she clothed or not. Not that it is likely, but if you
need some inspiration for this meditation try this:

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Think of the moment that a perfect pair emerges
from underneath a tight white shirt, or that moment
when you reach behind her back and unhook her bra
and it falls free. They are there in all of their beauty
for you to look at.

Now in your mind’s eye reach out and touch

them. Remember how a particular pair that stand
out in memory felt. And remember the first pair that
you were lucky enough to get your hands on.

The rest should be easy. The discipline in this

exercise is keeping your manful monkey mind of the
focus of this exercise, her breasts. Hold your
thoughts on that subject only. If your mental hands
start to move down her waist towards her stomach
stop immediately. You are losing focus and
wandering badly.

Are you focused clearly on this incredible

pleasure zone? Good, now repeat repeat repeat, this
shouldn’t be a tough one, and we will see you later
when you have calmed back down and are thinking
clearly. And remember to breathe.

Exercise 3
First kiss.

Feel better now? Good. Let’s go explore a

different path where woman worship is at its most
innocent and sweet. Your first kiss.

For many the first kiss is long forgotten, buried

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under layer upon layer of memories and time. So for
this meditation you can focus on your first kiss or
should you wish, the first kiss that meant something.
Your choice, the instructions for this manful
mediation are the same.

Before beginning remember who she was? How

old were you? How old was she? What was the
setting? Were you home, in a car, at a friends
house? The back of a van or a truck. Focus on the
setting, the air, the temperature, how she looked.

Was it sudden and surprising? Had you been

planning this or what it spontaneous? Were you
holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes or did
you just grab her? Was anything said or what do you
wish you had said?

Can you remember the taste of her lips? Did she

keep her mouth closed? Was she chaste and
shocked, or did she grab you and hold you tight? Did
she part her lips or did you force your way in?

You should be well started on this exercise and

not need much more help from here. Focus on the
moment, how it passed, and how it ended.

If this is a good one you will be back many

times, don’t dwell on it to much and try to limit
yourself to 10. repetitions You can’t stay here much
longer and if you keep repeating the same exercises
there won’t be any progress. Darn.

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 Exercise 4
Mountains rising in the distance:
The first girl who really got you hot.

This meditation builds upon the sentiment that

started in exercise 4. Because sometime after the
first kiss a very different moment occurred. A
different feeling. One that got you excited.
Something else entirely, a bit rough stormy and
turbulent. Maybe even violent and perhaps wild.

You might have been the leader in the moment

that is confronting you now. But perhaps not. That
time it got out of hand and the boundaries began to
crumble. And the walls came tumbling down and the
trumpets blared. Some woman got you really hot.

There is no need to guide further on this

meditation. This is a memory that most manful men
have etched into their minds, there might be some
internal excavating to do, but once the scene is set,
it should be like watching a Jamaican 100 yard dash
champion let loose from the blocks. Enjoy.

Exercise 5
Climbing the peaks of joy
The Best lover of your life.

Exercise 5 is a warm up for what is coming later,

more advanced exercises that force you to think
while you meditate. While they guide you, they bring
up as many questions as they answer. You should
only begin the advanced instruction once you have

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learned to easily guide yourself through the basic
group. Climbing this peak will show you why.

The reason why this meditation is advanced is a

simple but complex one. There is a good to great
chance that the woman who is about to grace your
mental bed is not that currently shares the real one.
This can often cause a sense of unease and bring
back memories that have long been banished. Jus
because she was the best lover doesn’t make here a
keeper for the long term. For most of you this will be
fun, but keep those woulda coulda shoulda thoughts
at bay. Those are issues well beyond control and not
positive for meditation at any time. Especially when
you are thinking about how fine she was and how she
moved. Uh huh.

Already gone. Good, take off. Need some

guidance? Take the journey back now and let the
rogues gallery of women that have allowed you into
their inner world and let the mind drift across them
one by one until the image of one in a particular
moment of ecstatic movement stops on this roulette
wheel of love. When you get there follow the well
known route of manful meditation, recall the scene in
detail, then shift to her and finally ready, set, action.
Feel free to repeat as needed. Like you need the
encouragement.

Exercise 6
Making a woman come

For many readers this issue is highly personal

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and maybe something they don’t like to focus on.
The question for that reader is this: Why not? This
meditation begins with a frank chat with yourself
about your partner and how you feel when you make
her come.

It should be one of the most fulfilling moments in

a man’s life. Sadly it has been presented to manful
men as the rubic’s cube of sexuality, affording it the
accessibility of the gates of Mordor.

If this is a tough subject then move the subject

of the meditation in that direction but gently. If the
meditation begins moving quickly into thoughts
about why she isn’t and why you can’t then slow
down and move gently away. This meditation will
come up later as you explore the love of your
partner. For now, you can move on to those spinning
wheels of pleasure and a familiar lawn to lie on.

For those of you who enjoy getting your partner off

stay and meditate on those fireworks. And count
your blessings.

Exercise 7
Masturbation

What is this exercise doing here in a chapter

about women? Well that is the challenge that your
guide faced when writing it. It really didn’t fit
anywhere else. This is the only chapter about sex in
the guide so even though there are no women
involved in masturbation cut your author some slack

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and read on.

Masturbation is a complex subject, so much so

that it lends itself perfectly to a series of mediation
exercises grouped around this subject.

First time.
First time you got caught.
What you masturbated about.

Exercise 8.
Isn’t something missing?

Yes something is. Can you guess what it is? How

can we take time meditating about women without
spending lots of time focused on the glory of sex.
That’s right. Fucking.

Well there is a reason. Some subjects are so vast so

complex and so tempting that they will detour even
the most holy of holy men from the path to
enlightenment. So tempting would it be to meditate
about fucking that a manful man might never reach
the advanced stages of manful meditation and all
that it brings. In other words most of you would stop
here for a long long time.

Now there will be those amongst you that think you

have the strength to dabble. You made it through
the chapter on the first girl who got you hot, right?
Well that was focused for a reason.

Some of you won’t be able to stop. Well like the sign

said in front of Davey Jones Locker: Enter at your

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own risk.

For those who haven’t left us for glories of the old in

out another manful treat awaits. Another kind of
motion entirely. Speed.

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 Chapter 11
Manful Meditations
Beginning Exercises Group 6

To drive on this earth is divine

Motion. So attractive so seductive, the

combination of motion and speed. This spinning
wheel is hypnotic, round and always in our minds. So
many ways to move so many ways to fall. Another
set of yins and yangs to ponder.

We will begin this chapter with a teaching. The

lion’s roar of the downshift beats deep in the heart of
even the youngest manful man.

A few weeks ago I was waiting for a red light in

my neighborhood. That summer afternoon was a
perfect day to drive our bright red 1980’s Alfa Romeo
Spyder convertible. For those that don’t know it, the
car may be underpowered, but it has the classic
pinafarina studio sports car nose, chrome grill and
recessed headlights that say simply sports car. It is
also red (what else?).

A very young manful man (probably no more

than 8 years old) was crossing with his mother and
his younger brother. I waited for them to go by. As he
passed in front of the long red nose of the Alfa he
looked at it a manner that is usually reserved for the
subject of a previous group of meditations, women.

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When he was about to pass by the front of the car,
he looked right at me and said “Wow Mister, that is a
really cool car”.

I smiled back at him and replied, “Thanks, when

you get older, I hope you get the one that you want.”

And he walked away still smiling with his towel

draped over his shoulder. Where did this deep car
worship come from already profoundly present
already in the mind of an 8 year old boy?

We don’t know and there is no need to care.

After women and sports, and sometimes before and
always during lean times, men love their cars. Now
there very few of my brothers do not worship at the
feet of the Zeus of motion, the automobile. For
them, move on to Exercise 4, cycling or 5, or just skip
this group altogether. But before you do, why not
rev it up and give it a chance?

Exercise 1
Lion’s roar of the downshift.

This is a mediation that combines two o the

greatest joys that a man can experience in his life, a
tight car and a challenging road. As usual, if you are
a NASCAR driver go ahead, turn the key and go. For
the rest of us, let the day begin driving on a road
that you know. You may have driven it once or a
thousand times, but your muscle memory still feels
it.

What are you driving? Remember how the car

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felt, the seats, the key and the sound that it made
when you started it. Take a moment to let your gaze
move around the car, remember its colors, its beauty
and perhaps its damage or faults. Remember the
sound that it made when idling.

On to the scene. Where are you? On the coast?

In the mountains? On an empty stretch of 4 lane
freeway late at night? A deserted stretch of 2 lane
road in the early morning desert with the horizon
stretching endlessly. Where are you? Find that
place. Now get back into the driver’s seat.

Feel the engine as the RPM’s start to climb. Let

you comfort zone get left in the rear view mirror.
There are no speed traps here, no cops and you take
the turn as tight as you want. Now as the turn
intensifies you downshift, the tach enters that zone
between yellow and red and the engine sings as the
grip gets even tighter and you come out of the curve
like a slingshot. The road lies ahead. You are not in a
hurry. You drive.

Exercise 2
Your first ride

So what was the first car that you bought

anyway? Not the one that your dad handed down to
you (although if that is a car that you loved by all
means go for it and hang out with that old memory
for a while.)

No, this meditation is designed to take you back

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to the first car the you purchased. That’s right,
probably the biggest amount of money that you had
ever spent to that moment and maybe the first time
you went seriously into debt.

Now think about the purchase of that car? Who

did you buy it from? What did it cost and how did
you scrape together those funds? Why did you buy
it? Vanity? Looks? Necessity?

What kind of car was it? How much did you pay?
Did you have trouble getting it home? Let your mind
get behind that wheel again and remember what it
meant to you to have your first set of wheels.

Exercise 3
Waxing your car

Does not your chariot deserve the greatest of

love and care? Is there a greater pleasure than
seeing color and shine emerge from the dirt and
grime of the street? This is a simple and short
exercise focused on a very simple guy pleasure,
cleaning your car.

Exercise 4
Bikes (powered and not)

Exercise 5
DYI

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Many men experience some of their first manful
meditations without knowing while engaged in this
manful moment, fixing their car. At the same time,
these moments are knows for the quixotic ability to
move from deep concentration to outbursts of
extreme anger in the blink of any eye.

Repairing a car is a universal manful meditation.

Most of us wouldn’t know how to begin to rebuild a
transmission or change out a clutch. At the same
time we have known the pleasure of simply replacing
a burnt out headlight of fixing a squeak.

Begin this meditation by choosing a repair that you

enjoy and a car that you would like to work on. Put
together a list of the tools that you will need, don’t
worry about whether they are metric or not. In this
meditation, the tools are correct, the bolts turn easy
and best of all, the repair is going to work.

Chapter 12
Beginning Meditations Group 7
Working for the almighty dollar
(Career & Business)

The biggest prick that you ever worked for or with

The deaSinging the contract, closing the sale
Real Estate

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 Chapter 13
Beginning Group 8

Re-energizing the creative chakras

Music, Film, Books and more.

Before we happily descend into the pleasure pit

of media, a parable on the yin and yang of man’s life
and technology. We live in a time of the greatest
access to media in history, an explosion which has
democratized our access to these creative chakras
while at the same time flooding us with so much
information that we simply turn off.

These meditations are designed to take you

back to the media that you have loved. When you
finish them there will be a concluding exercise that
will guide you toward media choice in the future.

The parable? Once upon a time there was

media domination. CONCLUDE

Exercise 1
The first song you ever loved.

Each man-bhudda has a memory of a song deep in

his mind. This exercise requires a particularly clear
starting point as the moment we are seeking is often
clouded by the power of external forces that were
occurring at the same time. So empty all thoughts
from your head and when you are breathing slowly
and evenly begin.

What is the first song that you really really loved. Go

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back to the moment when it overwhelmed you.
Where were you? In a child hood bedroom, at a
concert, in a car?

This was the moment when a song went from music

to the inside your head and stayed there. Dug in and
touched the core of your mind and soul.

Focus on the moment that it happened. What sound

made the connection? A vocal? A guitar chord? A
piano? Let that one sound hang in this meditation, a
personal Tibetan bell for you to ring. Then take the
song through your mind, try to remember the entire
thing. If you can’t just focus on the parts that you
do. This is not a contest. Repeat.

First concert.

If you haven’t been to one well it is time to go see

some live music!

First song you made out to

A footnote.

Sam Cooke singing a change is gonna come

books, music, film…

Finishing exercise. What do your choices have in

common? How can they guide you in your media
choices as the flood of options descends upon you.
Was it emotion? Action? And what elements do you

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miss

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 Chapter 14
Guy Stuff

The little things that make manfullness what it is.

A perfect shave.

Building a fire outdorrs

Mowing the lawn. If you don’t have a lawn, well

imagine one or substitue planting a tree.

Cleaning the dog shit (you think I am serious, you are

going to far, but the master is laughing at you). And
the kitty litter box, no matter how hard you try, just
won’t do.

Working the remote control, finding the right button.

Finishing an IKEA dresser.

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 Chapter 15
Oil stains in your driveway
Is this working?

This is a good time to check in on this process

before you move on to the advanced excercises that
follow.

Remember the cars that you owned when you

were younger and we meditate on earlier? Ever
owned an Italian car such as say a Fiat? A $500
sports car? How about an old Ford with over 100,000
miles on it, or maybe worse yet a Chevy Vega. No,
you won’t be meditating on that and if you are the
sort of man that wants to meditate about the glory of
an aluminum engine block, this bhudda is out of
magic bullets for you.

And after that old car finally started when you

would pull it out of the driveway you couldn’t help
seeing them there, the oil stains in your driveway.
There they were; dark brown stains on the concrete
with an oily sheen that said…that said what? That
you didn’t maintain your car? That you couldn’t
afford something better? That your car was a
disaster? That you were a disaster? How did you
react? Did you get angry? And what did you do
about it?

We all get oil stains in our driveways. The

question is what do you do with them? Worry? You
can’t change them once they are there. Try to scrub
them out? Your mother might be proud of your

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efforts, but the odds are long that no matter how
long you scrub the driveway with whatever chemical
crap the salesman at the car parts store sold you
they aren’t going away.

You can’t control those spots once they have

dripped out of the leak and onto the concrete. They
are there. You have to accept them and over time,
you know, they fade away. And no one is going to
talk about them at your funeral or write about them
on your gravestone.

Life is full of I cant’s and I won’t. Most of these

moments relate to with things that are out of your
control anyway. But you beat yourself senseless
worrying about them. To the extent that your fears
and phobias take away from your every day
enjoyment of every moment that we have on this
short strange journey they destroy your senses.

As you read this book a bunch of I can’t and it

won’t came into your head. For example:

1. It won’t matter. It does matter. It has

already changed your home life for the better. If you
have read this book and you are spending more than
10 minutes a day in manful meditation your attention
span has already improved. This is a medical fact.
(FN here)

2. I can’t believe that my partner will care about

the stuff I am interested in, she never did before.
Well, in this case it is true, she still doesn’t. But that
is OK, she thinks you are meditating. Remember? At

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least you can spend all the time you want focused on
what interests you the most. That is a step in the
right direction and you are more relaxed. That is
progress!

3. I can’t do this. Have you tried? Really tried?

Still can’t? Are you telling me that you don’t enough
concentration to sit down and spend five minutes
thinking about an amazing baseball game or the
most beautiful tits you have ever seen or touched?
You many not want to, you may not think you can do
this, but believe me you can and you already have.
Let’s put those daydreaming skills to use!

4. How often do I do this? A question often

arises, how often should I practice? There are
numerous answers to this question, each of which
should be considered by the practionner before a
decision is made.

There is only one person who can make the

decision about how much to practice. That is you.

However, that decision is often a difficult one. It

is very to become overwhelmed by the day to day
responsibilities of life and give up on your manful
meditation practice. This is a mistake.

One way to ensure a meaningful practice is to

dedicate a specific time to it every day. It could be
anytime, upon waking, before dinner or after.
Setting that time to meditate will make sure that you
do so at least some of the time.

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 There is no way that you can do this too much or
too often. You will find that as the benefits of your
practice grow the amount of time that you spend
meditating will as well.

So pick your ass up off of your couch, wherever

it is and commit to ten minutes a day of quiet manful
thought. Watch what happens after a week and then
after a month. It will matter.

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 Chapter 15
Advanced Practice
The basics

In the advanced practice we celebrate lives

spent as men, reflecting upon them during manful
meditation in respect and often horror. These groups
of exercises are the final chapter and represent the
most difficult level of the manful mediation practice.
The meditations that you have been guided through
have looked at many aspect of your life. Now you
will examine your present. What is going on now and
meditate upon those moments that make up your life
as it lives now. These exercises guides will seem to
be the shortest because they are the most
dependent upon you. But they may be the longest in
practice as you think them through and meditate
upon them. If you want to take notes get out your
computer or a pen and paper and do so. And when
you finish meditating on one exercise five times
move on to the next.

Here are some advanced concepts that you may

wish to consider as you move along in your manful
mediation practice.

Time to turn up the inner heat.

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 Chapter 16.
Life and death moments.
We are entering,
We are leaving the building.

As we journey together through life it is good to

reflect upon those people and events that meant
most to us. But some into clearer focus and intensity
by the shear weight of their impact upon our lives.
This chapter looks at those moments and people.

Exercise 1
The birth of your first son.

This is a meditation that many of you may wish to

skip (maybe you weren’t there, maybe you closed
your eyes) but for those of you who have witnessed
the birth of your first son we will move forward
together into a moment of pure and clear manfulness
as bright as desert sunrise.

Remember the date first. Then try to think of the

time. If you can’t remember the time try to recall
whether it was morning afternoon or evening.

Now go back a few hours and put yourself in the

moment when you and your wife first realized that
this really was the moment (and yes for those who
had a c-section that won’t matter so much) that you
had been reading about or thinking about or
worrying about. Think of the drive to the hospital,
admission and the room or rooms you were in that

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day. This isn’t a test; imagination can take a role
here.

At some point if you were in a hospital they moved

you to a birthing room. How are you feeling at this
point? What are you doing, are you in the room with
her and the nurses and doctors? Watching through a
window? Put yourself back at that moment when
birth occurs. If you weren’t there imagine it. The
head poking through, the wet tousled here, the
sudden shocking moment when the shoulders clear
her body, the rush of the body into the world, the
first time you see your first child. And if you are at
peace and fully zoomed in our manful moment, the
first time you saw that little penis. There is that
small body and the first action he takes, a cry, a
breath or a pee. A gentle arcing stream of water,
free for the first time and all over a nurse. Welcome
to the world.

Repeat over and over again, you should never get

tired of this meditation and when you are done do
the same exercise for the birth of your daughter and
if prolific, kid by kid by kid.

Exercise 2.

Putting the ring on your wife’s finger for the first time
(getting married).

Before beginning this meditation many students may

experience anxiety, the subject of its own mediation
and the basis for so many others. This is normal.
There is such anxiety when this moment happens

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and equal amounts of anxiety if it hasn’t. And it
doesn’t get better the second time, just different.

Now, back to the moment. This should be easy.

Where were you standing? Inside or out, get there
now. Take a moment in the meditation to remember
how she looked, her hair, what she was wearing.
And if that memory is locked away, go and get a
photo, this is worth some extra effort.

What were you doing at that moment? One

thing and one thing only. Who handed you the ring?
How did he look? Who was on stage? Remember the
look in her eyes and the commitment in your heart
(or maybe the burning sensation in the pit of your
stomach).

Take some time and breath. Bring her hand

back into yours and feel its warmth. Get the ring out
where everyone can see it and slide it calmly and
gently back over her finger once again. Repeat the
image, breathe and dwell.

Been married twice or more? Choose the

marriage that made you the happiest or for that rare
manful meditator, do them all.

For those amongst us who need a bit of a boost

in their relationship (and who doesn’t?) don’t hesitate
to mention your meditation tonight at that
appropriate moment, embellish a bit about how it felt
and maybe offer to reenact it. This is a can’t lose
moment unless things are really horrible. In that
case at least the reality will become clear and

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regretfully another meditation that follows; break up.

Exercise 3
Your father’s eulogy.

This manful meditation is focused on the man

who influenced you most in your life, whether by his
presence or his absence, your father. If he is alive
still you can think about his eulogy now. If he is gone
you will try to remember what you said. If you can’t
remember what you said or you didn’t speak you can
make give the eulogy in this mediation that you
should have.

And if dad just wasn’t there and this exercise

just brings up a lot of sour bile; transfer the
instructions to the person who meant the most to
you growing up. It could be mom, an uncle, aunt
teacher or grandparent. It is mom, consider skipping
to the next exercise. Just substitute the person who
took up the slack for the dad who wasn’t there. Clear
your mind and open your heart, this is an advanced
meditation that requires discipline and strength. It
may not be pretty.

But a tale of manful sharing presents itself here.

My father Harry’s eulogy was given by a Rabbi that
had known our family for over 40 years. Paul Dubin
was a great thinker, a bit of a radical who came out
against the Vietnam War way before it was cool and
almost was fired for his beliefs.

All those years later we somehow located Paul

and he agreed to speak at my father’s burial. After

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mom finally sat down and stopped working the crowd
he looked over the assembly milking the moment.
He paused for a what seemed like a long time and
began in a calm deep voice. “Harry Kragen was a
difficult man.” This was the nicest thing that he
could say. That is where he started my father’s
eulogy for me. Where will your father’s begin?

Let’s get started. First picture his face. Focus

on it for a moment, especially if he is gone. Try to
imagine his face at different times in your life as you
aged together. Think of him when you were small,
doing the things that fathers do and if he was not
there, think of the things he should have done. And
how you feel about him. Let it stay there.

Now think about his life. Look at his strengths.

His weaknesses. Accomplishments. Failures. The
things he wanted to do but couldn’t.

His emotions, did they come easily to him or

painful slow like a drip from a leaking faucet. Could
he express his love to you or was it hidden. Stop
here and take a moment to meditate on this. Get
through the surface, be a man, dig into it.

To finish the meditation open your mind to the

behaviors of your father that you see inside of
yourself. Let the old man’s ghost walk the room for a
few minutes and see how it familiar it looks. Don’t
kid yourself, those behaviors are there. Think about
them.

Now read the instructions to this mediation and

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do it again. Repeat it several times. Did the eulogy
change? Did you discover something that you might
have left out the first time through?

And then repeat it again as needed. For this

exercise five times may be too much or hopefully too
little. Only you know.

Exercise 4.
Mom

A man’s relationship with his mother is the

subject of a book, not an exercise. Make that a lot of
books. For as many books as there are, there are
just as many mother son emotions. And right now
my mother, looking spiritually over my shoulder is
wondering one thing, what am I doing at Chapter 15
exercise 4? Is that how important I am to you? Is
that the best you can do? I can see her finger
pointing at me right now.

Don’t write mom’s eulogy, like we just did for

dad. Instead, this meditation will focus on a perfect
mother/son moment.** Start with her looks that day.
Focus on her mood, her demeanor and her spirit.
What is it about this moment that made your mom
special, or if she wasn’t, what made her not. This
may not be a joyous meditation, it does not have to
be. It looks at the essence of your mother.

Are you there now? Take yourself deep into that

moment and let it linger. Hold it for a minimum of
10 breaths and repeat that feeling of that moment at

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least 10 times. She is or was worth it, wasn’t she?
Keep this meditation handy, it is a reminder of how
important mom is to manful meditation practice.

** There may be many men that are out there struggling to deal with a
lot of anger over the lack of those moments in their lives. Dig deep.
You will find one where she was there for you in a way that no one else
could ever be. Don’t let the bitterness of what she was not take that
moment of meditation away. A manful mediation forgives his mother
no matter what she did.

Scratching your pubic hair or somewhere else that

itch

Build you own, later, start a website, send bob your

manful meditations.

Self guided meditations?

Your career

Children

Really advanced emotions:

Anger
Fear
Sadness
Apology

Random

Pet
Relative

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Friend

Future. The ladder of time and what rung will you be

on? Seeing yourself at 5 years, then 10 then 20.

The first article of clothing that meant something to

you.

Material goods
Chapter 17
Advance Practice
NOW.

Exercise 1

What means most to you in your life?

Reflect upon the people around you, family friends,

workers and social contacts. Let there faces run
through your mind and meditate upon what they
mean to you. Spend the most time on those that
mean the most.

Exercise 2

What would you change if given the absolute right to

change one thing?
Your call.

Exercise 3.
Where do you want to be in 1 year, 3 years and 5.

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There are several aspects to this mediation, put the 1
3 and 5 year goals on each.

First, where do you want to be physically? This could

refer to where you live. It could refer to your body.
You decide.

Mentally?

And finally, spiritually?

And if you are happy where you are meditate on

that.

Exercise 4.

Chapter 17
Places

Urban
Nature
Foreign
Where you were born

Advanced manful meditation focuses upon your

relationship with self as opposed to your relationship
with the world. The first set of manful meditations
introduced you to the practice of sitting breathing
and being aware. Now that you are you can move
into these advanced subject and keep your focus. By
exploring these advanced meditations you will
become more comfortable with you past, your

345
present and your future. While not as much ‘fun’ as
the first group they allow you to harness the power
of manful meditation to effect change in your life.

Add:

Embarrassing moment in your life. Understanding

why you were embarrassed will allow you to forgive
yourself. Now this is going to take some work.
Allowing yourself to bury the pride and go back to an
incredibly embarrassing moment is a sign of manful
maturity, an outgrowth of your manfulness.

Where were you? How old were you? Can you

remember the people who were around you?

Now take yourself right back to that moment. Set

the scene. Take yourself up to the cliff of your
confidence and jump. Let yourself go. Feel the pain
that you felt, the flush that rose up in your cheeks,
the desire to hide.

Remember the moment. Remember who and were

you were. And focus on just why it was that it was so
damn difficult for you to handle. Maybe you would
just laugh at it now. Maybe not.

Now let that feeling overwhelm you and remember, it

is in the past and it is not going to happen again.
Ever. The usual five repetitions or more are optional
here. Not many of us want to stay here for too long.

Add:

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The first time you met your wife (or current “other”).
The worst break up.
Something that you did that you are proud of.
Something you did that you want to forget.
Something that you are ashamed of

This is a particularly tough meditation, one left for

those that have become comfortable not only with
the manful mediation process, but with themselves.
Shame is a deep emotion for a man, one that he
does not often feels yet one that comes profoundly
deeply and painfully, a deep nasty emotional zit that
rises slowly and stays for days.

By meditating on this shameful event of your life first

focus upon what happened. As you live these
moments again remember who was involved, what
happened, how old were you and where you were.

Now as the moments become clearer in your head

allow the emotions that led to a feeling of shame to
distill and to become clear. Stay with those feelings
for a while and linger on them. Swirl them in your
mind as you would a good cognac until they are
completely and thoroughly understood, chewed four
times like cow and her cud.

Ask this question as you breathe. Why did this

moment cause me to feel ashamed? And when you
answer it, stay there for at least 10 breaths.

Now here comes the best part. Spend the rest of the
mediation forgiving yourself. That’s right, forgive

347
yourself. Stay there until you are ready to end the
exercise.

After you end the exercise stop for a moment before

reentering the day. Are the people who thought of
alive? Would it be right to contact them and ask for
their forgiveness to? Or would it just make an
already bad situation worse. Only you can decide.

Add: bodily functions:

Scratching your balls.

Taking a major dump

A good belch after a good meal
Really blowing your nose
Add: Pets
A good walk with you dog

Also possible:
Fixing shit
Mechanical functions
Solving a puzzle
A great book

Some additional thoughts and meditations:

Expectations
Acceptance of limits
Relationships with others
Friendship
Death
Anger
Violence
Failure.

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Your dead tomato plants why does a garden fail?

The environment
Great public Places inside
Great public Places outside

San Marcos Square

Time Square
The Statue of Liberty
Machu Piccu

Your get the picture

Fear
Obsession
How do you make choices?
Career
Friendship

Eight headed twisting snakes that dance.

Your Siblings.

Before beginning this work your humble servant is

compelled to make a comment. I believe that I am
particularly well suited to comment upon this subject
having had the exact kind of experience that brings
me real clarity when I meditate on sibling
relationships. I am only child.

Though the years I have watched siblings put each

other through torture that only the great dictators of
the world and the truncheon wielding rat henchmen
could even dream of, so bitter and caustic is the
attack, and usually over one subject. Money.

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This won’t be a meditation about sibling and money.
That is too much work for a single mediation
exercise and carries the potential to destroy all
progress made by the reader to date. Always toxic
and rarely a happy ending.

With that restriction begin by picking a moment in

your with a brother or a sister. Take yourself back to
the family home or car or vacation. Where are you?
What is happening? What is being said? Are you
fighting? Laughing or in a secret place that only you
knew as children. Or are the thoughts contemporary,
recent and complex?

Multiple brothers and or sisters? Same instructions

except now broaden the focus to the expanded
grand family moments, wheter happy or sad. Now
let it unfold.

Family

Inside the almond seed.

Bitterness

Happiness

Love

Forgiveness

Masturbation

A dream

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 Scraping the belly of the serpent.
Shame.

Uh oh, love comes to town.

What if she wants to join the party, what do you do if

your wife wants to meditate with you?

Invite her in. Enjoy the moment to its fullest.

Because for once, she is going to be quiet, and you
won’t have to tell her to.

2. Yes, were going to a party.

Going fishing with the guys next weekend? Tell the

girls you will be meditating together on the river at
sunrise.

MM is not a novel. MM is manual, an almanac for the

mind that you should pick and put down as needed.

Seeking out the better yet accepting of the worse.

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 Chapter 15
Into Infinity (and beyond).

As even the most advanced practioners will tell

you, it is not easy to clear your mind and keep it
there. That difficulty is what led the author to write
this book in the first place. But if you have
meditated actively and worked your way through the
exercises a funny thing might have started, after an
exercise you might have kept your eyes closed, your
breathing regular and just relaxed. And partner at
that point the focus of the mediation changed. You
thought about nothing. It may have lasted a
moment, or maybe several, but the first steps on
another path have been taken.

Nothing the most difficult subject to mediate on.

The one that has been scrupulously avoided in the
exercises that have guided your practice. The
subject we all fear. Nothing is the unknown. The
joker in the deck. The emptiness and infinity of our
lives and thus our deaths.

Every star has a trajectory and certainly most of

us are not stars. For example, where is Johnny
Rotten today? A long way from the stage of
Winterland at their last show in 1976 where I
watched him picking his nose and spitting on his
audience while his band played some of the worst
and scariest music I have ever heard. Probably in a
senior center plucking away on an out of tune piano
singing Anarchy in the UK at the social hour before
Sunday dinner of pre chewed bangers and mash.
Every star rises. Every star falls. Ours must too and

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we must be comfortable with this all penguins
marching on.

Begin this meditation as you have every other.

Find your holy space once again. Control your
breathing and begin. Except this time there are no
instructions. No story to tell. No memory to search.
There is no smell no taste no motion no emotion.
There is your breath and yourself.

Do you hear something around you? Good. Let

it go. Is your mind going to wander? When it does,
gently push it back into nothing. Embrace the
emptiness, feel how relaxing it is. There is no stress
here, no anger, no pain, and no hangover.

So maybe this paragraph would have made

sense to you if you had read it before starting this
book but most likely it would not have. And after you
finish your 20th or 30th meditation about nothing and
the relaxation flows through your body calm and
refreshing you can take pleasure in a job well done.
Enjoying the pleasure of being, just hanging out in
this righteous zone; free from twitter and e-mail; no
blackberry no iphone. A world you can call on
anytime with built in boundaries that are enforced
and respected because they feel so good.

Remember that but for the journeys that you

took through your life in the beginning exercises;
gradually and more easily getting used to sitting still
and thinking you would not have been able to sit still
and not think. But as one journey ends another
begins. As time passes do not hesitate to mix in

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thinking and non-thinking meditations in the future.
It’s one big mental tool box for you to use, choose
the one that fits your life needs today and it doesn’t
work go back to the box and get another.

It’s funny, isn’t it, as we conclude this final part

of the practice the work we are doing sounds a lot
like good old fashioned meditation the way it has
been throughout time. And it is. Just a bit better.

Thank yous.

Family
Flo Olivia and Mark.
Brothers in arms
Mark, Fred, Mitchell, Michael and Ron.
And thanks to Marc Lesser, for teaching me how to
bring mindfulness and acceptance in to my world.

Real reading list

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Future books for the bubba bhudda:

Coming soon, the real man’s guide to Tantra and

Yoga

Key phrases:

Bodhisattva
Liberation
Wisdom

354
Beauty
Fear
Compassion
Concentration
Constant
Team
Feelings
Perceptions
Mental state

For those of you that need scientific validation of

what you are dong, here are some notes from an
article on the New York Times about meditation and
what it brings to people’s lives:

“Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your
smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-
mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a
taxicab with a copy of “Rapt,” a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the
science of paying attention.

The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she
had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the
psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to
attend to.” You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every
e-mail message instantly.

Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing

information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of
what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life. It can sound wonderfully
appealing, except that as you sit in the cab reading about the science
of paying attention, you realize that ... you’re not paying attention
to a word on the page.

The taxi’s television, which can’t be turned off, is showing a

commercial of a guy in a taxi working on a laptop — and as long as
he’s jabbering about how his new wireless card has made him so

355
productive during his cab ride, you can’t do anything productive
during yours.

Why can’t you concentrate on anything except your desire to shut

him up? And even if you flee the cab, is there any realistic refuge
anymore from the Age of Distraction?

I put these questions to Ms. Gallagher and to one of the experts in

her book, Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at M.I.T. who has been
doing experiments somewhat similar to my taxicab TV experience.
He has been tracking the brain waves of macaque monkeys and
humans as they stare at video screens looking for certain flashing
patterns.

When something bright or novel flashes, it tends to automatically

win the competition for the brain’s attention, but that involuntary
bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-
down process that Dr. Desimone calls “biased competition.” He and
colleagues have found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the
brain’s planning center — start oscillating in unison and send
signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.

These oscillations, called gamma waves, are created by neurons’

firing on and off at the same time — a feat of neural coordination a
bit like getting strangers in one section of a stadium to start
clapping in unison, thereby sending a signal that induces people on
the other side of the stadium to clap along. But these signals can
have trouble getting through in a noisy environment.

“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to
process a strong input like a television commercial,” said Dr.
Desimone, the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research
at M.I.T. “If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may
not have the resources left to focus on the words.”

Now that neuroscientists have identified the brain’s synchronizing

mechanism, they’ve started work on therapies to strengthen
attention. In the current issue of Nature, researchers from M.I.T.,
Penn and Stanford report that they directly induced gamma waves
in mice by shining pulses of laser light through tiny optical fibers
onto genetically engineered neurons. In the current issue of Neuron,

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Dr. Desimone and colleagues report progress in using this
“optogenetic” technique in monkeys.

Ultimately, Dr. Desimone said, it may be possible to improve your

attention by using pulses of light to directly synchronize your
neurons, a form of direct therapy that could help people with
schizophrenia and attention-deficit problems (and might have fewer
side effects than drugs). If it could be done with low-wavelength
light that penetrates the skull, you could simply put on (or take off) a
tiny wirelessly controlled device that would be a bit like a hearing
aid.

In the nearer future, neuroscientists might also help you focus by

observing your brain activity and providing biofeedback as you
practice strengthening your concentration. Researchers have
already observed higher levels of synchrony in the brains of people
who regularly meditate.

Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she

says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention
researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain
to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s
voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped
in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she
says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your

most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal
cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return
phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before
focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by
anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the
equivalent of rebooting after an interruption. (For more advice, go
to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two

things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either
this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s
brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a
lifetime.

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“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like
money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on
endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re
constantly making choices, and your choices determine your
experience, just as William James said.”

During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said,
she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind
James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: “The mind is its own
place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask

myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good
chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want
to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and
your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”

An ordinary person may consider meditation as a

worship or prayer. But it is not so. Meditation means
awareness. Whatever you do with awareness is
meditation. "Watching your breath" is meditation;
listening to the birds is meditation. As long as these
activities are free from any other distraction to the
mind, it is effective meditation.
Meditation is not a technique but a way of life.
Meditation means 'a cessation of the thought
process' . It describes a state of consciousness, when
the mind is free of scattered thoughts and various
patterns . The observer (one who is doing
meditation) realizes that all the activity of the mind is
reduced to one.
A Tibetan Lama was being monitored on a brain scan

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machine by a scientist wishing to test physiological
functions during deep meditation. The scientist said -
"Very good Sir. The machine shows that you are able
to go very deep in brain relaxation, and that
validates your meditation". "No", said the Lama,
"This (pointing to his brain) validates the machine!".
These days it is commonly understood to mean some
form of spiritual practice where one sits down with
eyes closed and empties the mind to attain inner
peace, relaxation or even an experience of God.
Some people use the term as "my gardening is my
meditation" or for jogging or art or music, hence
creating confusion or misunderstanding.
The word meditation, is derived from two Latin words
: meditari(to think, to dwell upon, to exercise the
mind) and mederi (to heal). Its Sanskrit derivation
'medha' means wisdom.
Many years ago meditation was considered
something just not meant for modern people, but
now it has become very popular with all types of
people. Published scientific and medical evidence
has proved its benefits, but it still needs to be much
understood.
Traditionally, the classical yoga texts, describe that
to attain true states of meditation one must go
through several stages. After the necessary
preparation of personal and social code, physical
position, breath control, and relaxation come the
more advanced stages of concentration,
contemplation, and then ultimately absorption. But
that does not mean that one must perfect any one
stage before moving onto the next. The Integral yoga

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approach is simultaneous application of a little of all
stages together.
Commonly today, people can mean any one of these
stages when they refer to the term meditation. Some
schools only teach concentration techniques, some
relaxation, and others teach free form contemplative
activities like just sitting and awaiting absorption.
Some call it meditation without giving credence to
yoga for fear of being branded 'eastern'. But yoga is
not something eastern or western as it is universal in
its approach and application.
With regular practice of a balanced series of
techniques, the energy of the body and mind can be
liberated and the quality of consciousness can be
expanded. This is not a subjective claim but is now
being investigated by the scientists and being shown
by an empirical fact

How can you focus on what's important? Join the discussion,

and send in your questions about concentration and liv

Further Reading
"Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life." Winifred Gallagher.
Penguin Press, 2009.
"Driving fast-spiking cells induces gamma rhythm and
controls sensory responses." J. A. Cardin, M. Carlén, K.
Meletis, U. Knoblich, F. Zhang, K. Deisseroth, L.H. Tsai,
C.Moore. Nature, 2009.
"Millisecond-Timescale Optical Control of Neural Dynamics
in the Nonhuman Primate Brain." X. Han,X. Qian,J.G.
Bernstein,H. Zhou, G.T. Franzesi,P. Stern,R.T. Bronson,A.M.
Graybiel,R. Desimone, E.S. Boyden. Neuron, 2009.

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Thesaurus Holy

angelic believing, blessed, chaste, clean, consecrated, dedicated,

devoted, devot devoted, devotional, devout, divine, faithful,
faultless, glorified, god-fearing, godlike, godly, good, hallowed,
humble, immaculate, innocent, just, messianic, moral, perfect,
pietistic, pious, prayerful, pure, revered, reverent, righteous,
sacrosanct, sainted, saintlike, saintly, sanctified, seraphic,
spiritual, spotless, sublime, uncorrupt, undefiled, untainted,
unworldly, upright, venerable, venerated, virtuous

adorable, archangelic, beatific, beneficent, celestial, cherubic,

devout, divine, entrancing, ethereal, godly, good, heavenly, holy,
humble, innocent, lovely, otherworldly, pure, radiant, rapturous,
righteous, saintly, self-sacrificing, seraphic, virtuous

Olympian, angelic, astral, beatific, blessed, divine, elysian,

empyral, empyrean, eternal, ethereal, godlike, hallowed, holy,
immortal, otherworldly, seraphic, spiritual, sublime, supernal,
supernatural, transcendental, transmundane

depraved, evil, immoral, irreligious, irreverent, sacrilegious,

sinful, unholy, unsacred, vile, wicked

Journey

adventure, airing, beat, campaign, caravan, circuit,

constitutional, course, crossing, drive, expedition, exploration,
hike, itinerary, jaunt, junket, march, migration, odyssey, outing,
passage, patrol, peregrination, pilgrimage, progress, promenade,
quest, ramble, range, roaming, round, route, run, safari, sally,
saunter, sojourn, stroll, survey, tour, tramp, transit,
transmigration, travel, traveling, traverse, trek, trip,
vagabondage, vagrancy, venture, visit, voyage, wandering,
wayfaring

travel, journey, course; take a journey, go a journey; take a

walk, go out for walk; have a run; take the air; racewalk., flit,

361
take wing; migrate, emigrate; trek; rove, prowl, roam, range,
patrol, pace up and down, traverse; scour the country, traverse
the country; peragrate; circumambulate, perambulate;
nomadize, wander, ramble, stroll, saunter, hover, go one's
rounds, straggle; gad, gad about; expatiate., walk, march, step,
tread, pace, plod, wend, go by shank's mare; promenade;
trudge, tramp; stalk, stride, straddle, strut, foot it, stump,
bundle, bowl along, toddle; paddle; tread a path., take horse,
ride, drive, trot, amble, canter, prance, fisk, frisk, caracoler,
caracole; gallop (move quickly) [more]., peg on, jog on, wag on,
shuffle on; stir one's stumps; bend one's steps, bend one's
course; make one's way, find one's way, wend one's way, pick
one's way, pick one's way, thread one's way, plow one's way;
slide, glide, coast, skim, skate; march in procession, file on,
defile., go to, repair to, resort to, hie to, betake oneself to

Thesaurus:

Holy

Religious sacred blessed dedicated devoted divine

faithful saint sanctified spiritual sublime venerable
upright pious fearful

Calm

Peace cool composed pleased satisfied

How to approach your meditation moments.

Or at least as much as possible without

overwhelming yourself trying to change things that

362
are out of your control.

But before getting down to the hard work, first let us

study a story of manful devotion together and seek
its meaning. By doing so we examine how bring the
concepts of manful mediation into our daily lives.

. Finally the fictional Mike Endres. Short intense

and funny. The real zen and dirt bike combination,
actualized and in the moment already with all of his
agendas in mind. to the cramped unworkable kitchen
that I had cooked thousands of meals

A loser
In our studies together, I am reminded of the
tale of our brother Timothy and his recent visit to my
sacred space. As Timothy spoke to me from the floor
of my garage in the advanced holy lying down
position, his spine completely straight against the
cold concrete floor, his eyes focused on the spider
webs on the ceiling, he began to tell me the story
that I will share with you.

“Oh brother”, he began. “brother, I am

reminded daily that the ways of manfulness are
powerful.”

“You are blessed brother Tim”, I replied, keeping

my gaze focused on the widening crack in the floor’s
foundation and wondering just weather I could use
caulk or mortar to fill it, “tell me what new lessons
have you learned in the quest for inner manful
peace?”

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 “A powerful one. Last night I came home from a
restful spiritual retreat. A glorious night shooting
pool over smooth green felt, drinking holy liquid
perfection itself, perfectly poured glasses of 12-
ounce lager beers with white foam heads as beautiful
as the ocean itself.

“A blessed moment of manfulness,” I replied.

“Indeed. Our group meditation was long and

deep. So much so that I came home at 1 in the
morning. My wife was asleep and she awoke as I
crawled into bed. She asked how my meditation
group had been. I told her that we had spent the
evening studying and meditating intensely. We had
lost track of time and I apologized to her for coming
home so late.”

“And what did she say Tim?”

“She told me not to get too carried away with

my inner work and to try to be home earlier next
time. Then went back to sleep with a smile.”

“And what did you learn from the practice of

manful meditation Tim?”

“I learned that the power of manfullness is

healing and forgiving.”

“And it is so Tim.” And we laughed together

loudly finding the deep inner breath of our bellies
and exhaling it through our grinning mouths.

364
 Tim had found the joy of the peaceful inner
space of manfullness. Yes he and his brothers had
been meditating that evening. They were immersed
in the inner beauty of the pool hall, the deep green of
the felt, the strange spine tingling sense of chalking
the pool cue, the curl of the back spin as they struck
the smooth circular pool ball precisely below its
center. Together they breathed in the sweet smell of
sawdust and beer and they were pious men as they
drank the long sweet spirit of the holy bar.

But there are unbelievers amongst who may well

object to his behavior. You say to yourself this is
wrong, our friend Tim was not telling the truth to his
wife.

What do the teachings of the practice of

manfulness say? They say that he was truthful.

We examine first this question: What was the

purpose of Tim’s evening? Did he not meditate? Did
he and his brothers not meditate upon the quiet
moments inherent in the game of pool? Did they not
reflect upon the beauty of the perfect foam head on
the glass of beer, one of the holiest moments of
manfulness which we shall study together? Did he
not get carried away in his practice so much that he
lost track of time? Did he not utter the chant of the
pious brothers, “hey, how about another round for
me and my friends?”

Then, when he came home Tim had shared the

truth about his evening of deep and profound

365
meditations with his wife and she was happy. And
the slept together at peace!

This is the second essence of manfullness. He

was happy and she was too and no one got hurt.

We looked at each other in silence, enjoying the

shared knowledge. My friend Tim smiled the
peaceful smile of the knowing man. It is so he said.
And it was so. So let us begin our journey together on
this path.

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