The sleep that had evaded me was now becoming easier and easier to find and I was back to getting at least six hours of sleep or more most nights. I would get up by 9, which during the week was usually just before Ally would be leaving for work so I could bid her a good day and then I’d have a coffee on the back porch as I listened to the birds and read. And as it were I spent my second week in Austin in much the same way I would begin it that Saturday. And so anyways, as I mentioned I felt that old life calling to me as I lay on the floor in Ally’s spare room in Austin one Saturday morning the nearly two decades later, and like an answered prayer originating from an aspect of God, Itself, begging me to understand with renewed clarity my own life’s journey and to return within. Unto each their own so long as it does not bring harm to another is one of my mantras which is really just another way of articulating the Golden Rule anyhow. I do not say this to disparage any religion nor ideology for it is my belief that All is One regardless and that whatever beliefs anyone may or may not have are of a personal nature within a community and I try to leave it at that and allow the Universe to unfold as It wills. Needless to say, man, the identifying concepts that were instilled in me by way of a Middle Western Bible Belt upbringing were becoming challenged by new ideas about Free Will and the Universe and Love and God that were at the time obliterating much of what I had assumed to accept as Truth. And I did so while also delving deeper into the conceptual mindsets of the great mystics of the tradition, Kabbalah, that had become centralized to my consciousness expanding understandings concerning the hidden knowledge of Creation. Even Kerouac too in my favorite of his books, The Dharma Bums, amongst many other writers and thinkers that spanned the millennia. Back then I was immersed in studies on Buddhism as was understood by writers like Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts and Jack Kornfield. with the calmed water within the breakers providing a soft sway as the the hull undulated beneath me. The Statue of Liberty just over my shoulder to the starboard… the boat rising and falling with the tides. I could still see before me in my minds eye the panorama of Lower Manhattan splayed out across the immediate eastern horizon seemingly just beyond the bow as the skyline rose to such magnificent heights from off the choppy waterline to where I’d be sitting cross legged on the teak wooden railing of that old Albin Trawler while contemplating early kabbalistic and buddhist tomes and sipped cheap wine from the bottle as I was introduced to Eastern Philosophy for the first time. While beginning to read from the work anew I was reminded of many of my own struggles and early epiphanies that I had while in New York City during my time spent there living on my older brothers boat in Liberty State Park Marina just off the breakwaters of the Hudson River, and all that too had now become woven into the tapestry of my own discontent. upon its pages was the story of Jack’s own disillusionment after the years of hard living and road going had taken its toll on him much as I felt had recently taken place in my own life… and as I opened it the remembrance of his words that I once romanticized now felt eerily prophetic and almost pathetic to me as I was. Ally had a small library in the spare room where I was sleeping, and scanning the bookshelf one morning I found a copy of Big Sur by Kerouac on one of the shelves. I’d settled into my workout routine also and had even finished reading Jen Sincero’s book again. Just left it idly sitting under the small sheetmetal canopy next to the house that acted as a garage of sorts. 8 The first week wore on in Austin and each day it became hotter and hotter outside.
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