Being a Carreon

Sometimes I feel so vulnerable here. If you have been here a long time, you know it is impossible to avoid those familiar faces in this small town. Eventually you will find yourself standing in front of someone you didn't really want to see. Or maybe you did want to see them. But either way, if "what goes around comes all the way back around," then in Ashland you could say it comes back around sooner than you might like at times.

Of course, holidays have a tendency to accentuate this situation further. I had succeeded in avoiding a certain someone for at least a couple of years now, and was caught off guard while wandering through the Fourth of July celebrations. I'm usually very aware on Halloween, but at least then I have cover of darkness. But the thing is, I know that it's my karma to be in this place at this time and I become hyper-aware of the now. So it is sort of a spiritual experience. What is it about a face that can shake things up so much? I think, I was there for this person. I made sacrifices. And now, I will not give any more. Just being me, the gentle and kind me -- that is enough.

But some people and places are formative, they tend to make something of us. Looking back sometimes we realize that we were made to be something that we don't like. It's not fun to look at those things. And yet they have a visceral affect on us. Like a person who has quit smoking or drinking or taking hard drugs...seeing someone else do those things may produce a combination of feelings that are not in harmony with each other. So the result is that you feel kinda queasy, like you consumed some foods that simply do not combine well.

I was born in a little house in Ashland, and the woman who midwifed me is now a well-known businesswoman in town. I saw her today, too, trying to escape from someone who wanted to talk about work while she was enjoying her holiday, I assume. My parents were snowed out of their little yurt at the time of my birth, during the big storms of 1982. Dad says Asha was holding my mother's hand when I came barreling out of mom's womb. Dad was paralyzed, unable to respond to my impending crash. Luckily Asha caught me just in time.

I grew up in Santa Monica, a safe place for me to be as a child, and I remember sunsets over the ocean and crunchy leaves on the ground in the fall. Dad would take me to the little bakery called Odeon, before Starbucks came in and sucked up all the coffee cash with their hyper-efficient business model. Odeon used to have lines out the door, and it was so worth the wait. Dad always flirted with the baristas and got free lattes. He introduced me to all the lovely ladies there, and I would get my almond croissant. We would grab a chocolate croissant for Maria too.

Many of my childhood memories involve hanging with my dad, going to the coffee shops and bookstores. I really don't know how he did it in between working long weekends and late nights at a busy, prestigious law firm. Mom and I would go shopping together too. She wanted clothes made out of real silk, and we would go on the hunt for this luxurious fabric. We went to Rodeo Drive one time, and I got the feeling we were headed out for a big adventure. That's where you went to find the best of the best. Mom bought me a denim jacket with quilted sleeves, which I came to love until one day I forgot it on the playground and found that it had been stolen when I returned for it later.

I didn't love Santa Monica. The ocean and the sunsets, yes, but not the place as a whole. The place I loved most was in Oregon -- we called it "The Land." That's where we would go for our summer vacations...where Rinpoche and the Statue and the Temple were. That's where the Mouse House and the Kitchen and Philip's Pond were. Seems like everything on The Land had a capital letter and a "the" before it. So it's no wonder that in the early 90's, after the Rodney King beatings and the L.A. riots and the disastrous earthquake and the O.J. Simpson trials, I was thrilled to learn that we were moving to "The Land," where mom and dad had purchased some property. I was 11 years old, about to finish up elementary school, and had nothing to lose except for a free ticket to Knotts Berry Farm. I was a little bit bummed I wouldn't get to use it, but I was just proud to have earned it in a school reading challenge. More importantly a big adventure, it seemed, was ahead of me. The Land is where we went to play, and I was going to live there!

Little did I know that adventures involve struggle, that those things that shape you also hurt you, and that my body and mind were about to have a very rude awakening.