“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?… But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” – Jesus

February 28, 2004 – Last Day in LA

There’s an old Japanese saying that I read for the first time today that goes “My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.” I have a lighter in my pocket and the moon looks beautiful.

When I first came to Los Angeles more than a year ago, I had very few goals. I wanted to go to some auditions, get some extra parts to be on the Hollywood set, and, of course, do some writing. Before I arrived here, I only intended to stay for a couple of weeks. Over a year later, I’ve been to auditions, I’ve been on sets for TV and film, I’ve written three screenplays, several songs, performed on various stages, and made friends that will last a lifetime. I have surpassed my goals, and other dreams now call me on to other adventures.

It’s always been a dream of mine to become a successful artist in Hollywood. And though I will be leaving this city tomorrow, that dream remains intact. It is just not the right time for it to manifest. If it were to come true now, I would have to sacrifice other dreams, ones that are vital to the journey I must make.

Over these last few weeks, I’ve made it a daily habit to walk at least twice a day. More often than not, I had no destination other than the act of walking, and it was on these sojourns that I was reconnected with the glory of Being. It was through these exercises that I found the strength to take the next step.

As you may know, I spent the greater part of December working as a Production Assistant on a reality TV show called ‘Todd TV’. The premise was that of a thirty-year-old songwriter who gave his life over to a television crew and, in theory, the people of America to decide the steps he would take to help him achieve his dreams. I was let go from this job three days before the New Year.

Inspired by the idea of the show, I gave my life over to a Power higher than a television crew, trusting that America would be the source by which I would be provided for. I pledged to never again work for money, and at this point in time, I haven’t a penny to my name. It’s not that I’m against work, for I am far from lazy. But making money is not my intent. Friends have called on me twice this year to work, and I have gladly accepted the calls. Once for a bank commercial, and once for a television show about a shopping spree. The industry that runs this town has nothing to offer me, and they don’t want what I have to offer them.

The motorcycle that has served me so well these last several months here is on consignment at a shop in Silver Lake, and I have given away much of what many would call my belongings. A friend of mine has offered to take me a ways out of town tomorrow where I might be more apt to find generous souls that would be temporary companions in my journey.

I can’t begin to describe the peace that I feel as I start out on this new venture, though I am anxious to see where the path may lead.

Yet I have found a certain level of poetry in the timing of my departure. ‘Todd TV’ finished principal filming this week, as did my adventure in Los Angeles. The event known as the Oscars occurs tomorrow. It is the first Oscar ceremony I can remember missing since I began watching movies. Though the event is to take place just a few miles from my house, it’s the day I’ve chosen to say goodbye to Hollywood. Last year, I worked on a. The company that produced the TV show I worked on called ‘Paradise Hotel’ has a new venture which airs on Monday. It is called ‘Forever Eden’. Isn’t eternal paradise what most of us are really seeking?

I find it exhilarating that tomorrow, February 29, only exists once every four years. This, as it would turn out, is Leap Year. And I smile every time I consider the Leap of Faith I am taking.

As of this moment, I have nothing. I want for nothing. I am nothing. For it is not I that lives, but Christ that lives in me. I see no need to ask anyone for anything. I’m not leaving to become a beggar. I’m not leaving to become a tramp. I’m not leaving to become a bum. I’m just leaving to become.

All that I have within me is all that I need. For only three things remain. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

Take care, have faith, give hope and be love.

There’s a song by Keith Green that goes “You can run to the end of the highway and still not find what you’re looking for. You can’t make your troubles disappear. You can search to the end of the highway and come back no better than before. To find yourself, you’ve got to start right here.” That was one of my favorite songs when I was a young Christian. But I still had to run anyway just to make sure.

It occurred to me what an amazing season this is. Nearly every religion celebrates something this time of year. And for the last few, it hasn’t meant a whole lot to me. I’m a single, starving artist who lives in a studio apartment within spitting distance of Sunset Boulevard. The closest family I have is two thousand miles away. Not much to do on Christmas for a guy like me but watch TV and contemplate suicide.

So it seemed like a good idea for me to celebrate something.

It was on Sunset Boulevard, weaving through traffic on the strip that I thought about a sweat lodge. I’ve been reading “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell and gained a better understanding of the power of ritual. And I remember how I felt so deeply about Christianity because of the rituals involved.

Many of the rituals I replaced them with were designed to break free from the ones I was raised on. Smoking, drinking and drugs were the most accessible and seemingly less dangerous forms of rebellion, so they seemed to be a very good start. And they’ve served their purpose well. They got me as far from Christianity as I could possibly go. And though they’ve proven themselves as worthwhile allies in almost every rebellion I was leading, they are often unfit companions in a life of peace.

I’ve often thought of taking part in a sweat lodge and knew the occasion would come to me when I was ready for it. So when I got back to the office of my new Prodution Assistant job, I googled ‘sweat lodge’ thinking that I may have to take a trip to the desert. Fortunately, there was one in Pasadena on Saturday night to celebrate Winter Solstice.

As we sat round the living room in our host’s Pasadena bungalow, we told the stories of how we had come to this place in our lives. When I left on this little adventure of mine, I stopped to see Kevin and Jen. Jen had been practicing the Tarot and I let her give me a reading. I don’t remember what all of the cards were, but the phrase that stuck with me was that I would rise like a Phoenix.

The Phoenix is a mythological bird that burns itself up and rises again from the ashes. The idea of resurrection that is also evident in the story of Jesus. I know this because in the last two weeks, the story of the phoenix has been presented to me twice in my reading and movie-watching. So the idea of burning myself up in the sweat lodge, the womb of the earth, and being born again had a definite appeal.

And as I shared this story with those who were sharing with me, a voice rose up, “I have a phoenix on my chest.”

I noticed Rosalyn when she walked in with her friends, but didn’t have a chance to introduce myself before the ceremony began. But as she followed me naked and shivering through the chill of a San Fernando night, the phoenix whose head screeched from between her bosoms and was painted around the rest of her body, beckoned me into my new adventure.

Similar to the summer solstice celebration I took part in while in Santa Cruz, and the rededication ceremony I’ve done many times in the Baptist church, part of the ritual was to write down what we were giving up and, before entering the lodge, throw them in the fire where the stones lay in wait. I gave up many things, primarily, fear and poverty.

After the first seven stones were ushered into the lodge, our guide – her medicine name is Starflyer – welcomed the spirits of our ancestors and began to pray. I thought of my family, my friends, those who have shared in my journey and helped me become the man that I have become.

The sweat consisted of four rounds of prayer and heat, enclosed in the grip of blackness and safe in the arms of God. Between each round, more stones were brought in, allowing a cool breeze to flow through the lodge as they were shoveled through the open hatch, glowing red in the night like a glimpse of the sun.

Afterward we lay in the cool of the night for awhile and went inside to talk about our experience and share in some food together. Talking more with Rosalyn, her friend Alayhah and her mother Amy, they told me that they went to a church called Builders of the Adytum.

The church was founded on the study of Tarot and Cabalah. I was immediately intrigued since the Tarot has continued to pop up in my life, and I have been curious about the Cabalah temple I’ve seen in Hollywood so many times. So I got directions and told them I would be there in the morning.

As it was, I was always a little anxious around the Tarot. I once had an irrational fear of these mysterious cards, a fear perpetuated by those in the Church around me, but that old rebellious streak in me often makes getting into trouble irresistable. So I’ve gotten a few readings since then, and even have a set of my own that I play with from time to time.

Actually, after my last letter, my Mom called and asked me to stay away from them. She had a strange experience when she was younger that scared her. She saw a dragon in the forest and must warn the wanderers she sees enter into it. Now understanding where my fear stemmed from, I am fully up to the challenge to slay my mother’s dragon.

The temple was bordered on either side with two rows of chairs and an altar at the end. The border of the wall around it was comprised of framed portraits of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. I was greeted with a “Shalom” from a nice woman in a robe, and ushered to my seat as the congregation sang “Silent Night.”

The Christmas carols went on for the first half hour of the service, and I thought of what a nice change it was to look into the eyes of the people I was singing with instead of the back of their heads. On into the service, though the merriment of Christmas died down, the name of Christ was still used throughout.

Fully embracing and honoring the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the rites of Cabalah made my heart jump. Just as I had honored and invited my ancestors the night before to accompany me on my journey, so they were still with me. And I was able to see how all of my wandering has led me full circle and back into the tradition which first called me to serve.

They served a huge meal after the service with four kinds of salad, two kinds of chicken and pastas and desserts and coffee and chai and I thought, “My God! These people even eat like Baptists!”

So I stuck around and got to know these people a little better. I met musicians and writers and filmmakers, and even a Hollywood career coach who invited me to a lecture he was giving at a writer’s group.

I see this as the beginning of a strange and incredible new beginning in my life. And I see more opportunity to become the man that I want to be.

“And the end of all our exploriing will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

- T.S. Eliot

October 31, 2003

Six thirty in the morning at LAX. I ran myself and my carry-on through the x-ray and walked by the little, old Hispanic woman having her shoes inspected for possible weapons. Gotta watch those little, old Hispanic women. You never know what those godless heathens will hide in their shoes. After a three dollar croissan’wich and a large cup of Starbuck’s miracle sludge, I found a seat by my gate, propped my feet up on my bag, and cracked the book which would take me back to Florida.

I’d seen it in the library a few weeks earlier and later saw it recommended in another book, and since I was on my way home after more than two years of my feet carrying me through twenty-six states and my pen guiding me through many more pages, I figured “The Writer’s Journey” was an appropriate read. Based on the teachings of Joseph Campbell, who astounded me with “The Power of Myth” on PBS, the book describes the Hero’s Journey – the events every hero goes through to get from the world he is in to the world the story calls him to.

I tried to pinpoint when that first call to adventure was for me, that call that every hero refuses at first. What was the call asking me to do? What was this journey about anyway? Was there any purpose to my rambling or was rambling the purpose? When I conceived the idea to travel, I decided to go while the idea was still fresh in my mind, ink still wet on the paper. There was no refusal. I wanted rid the life I was leading like dog shit on my shoe. Life leading me sounded like a much better option. The journey I’ve actually been on is much bigger than a mere year and a half traverse across the country. The first call I remember receiving, the one I wrote about when I began this diatribe over two years ago, was the call of Christ to die to myself and become a disciple.

And though I walked forward and knelt at the altar of the Baptist Church when I was fifteen years old, though I let them submerge me fully clothed in that green water to symbolize my death and rebirth, though I learned the Bible better than any other book the Universe had to offer, and though I only listened to Christian music and kept only Christian company, I rejected the call to be a disciple. I didn’t die to myself; I just became comatose and let myself become what the Church told me to. Though I was called to be a disciple of Christ, I settled for being a fan. Instead of the internship, I went to the conference. Instead of breathing Spirit, I gagged on religion.

A year ago today, I skipped my last day of work at Korbel, sat down on my bed at the Xen Resort and Spa in Guerneville, California, and wrote fourteen pages of what I had come to disbelieve about the Church and their recommended prescription for following Jesus. I realize it must be frustrating for some in the Church when I get argumentative and write about what I see in its machinery as an ex-insider now looking back. Sort of how the CIA must feel when an ex-agent writes a tell-all book. But it’s a passion that burns in my heart. Not because I have been so hurt in the past, but because of the healing Christ does in the present.

I know that my family has prayed for me often over these last few years, that God would bring me back into the fold and help me to realize my place in the Church. And I know it hasn’t always been easy on them to hear me hem and haw against it. I wonder if they even realize that, as frustrating as it may be, God is answering their prayers.

I know it’s been hard for them to understand why I had to go seeking out answers in Buddhism, paganism, and whatever else crossed my path, but it was a path I had to take in order to get where I am. That was part of dying to myself. I had to explore the rest of mankind who believed differently than I did. What gave them hope? What gave them peace? Because the fire insurance policy I picked up at Colonial Oaks Baptist Church hadn’t given me much of either. My own beliefs and tradition told me that these people I visited with, who had no conception of the Hell my people believed in, were bound to go there. So I died to my tradition because I had greater faith in God than my stories would allow.

It is a widely held belief that during those years when Jesus’ life was not accounted for in the gospels, he was in India and China, studying Buddhism and Hinduism. There is a thread of consciousness, a bolt of truth that runs through it all – the writings of the Buddha, the message of Christ, the Tao, the Way, I Am that I Am. And as I’ve gotten through the parables of Jesus and the metaphors and mythology of the Bible, gotten down to the philosophies and principles that matter, cracked the shell and gotten to the yolk, I was able to see how integral that tradition was to the man I have become.

Sunday, I was off to Orlando to see Kevin. We’ve spoken frequently since his divorce from Jen, and I have watched him use his time of misery as a spiritual awakening as he has transcended despair and kept a faith in God he had no other reason to believe in than the air that filled his lungs. When I speak about Kevin to anyone who has ever met him, they have nothing but good to say about him. And I have to agree that he is of noble character and one of the most loyal people I have ever met. He and I have had very similar experiences in our faith, though our lifestyles have been very different. He is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I went to my first Jesus Festival with Kevin, my first Night of Joy, my first Afterglow. And we both started becoming disillusioned with the Church around the same time. And so, we each started our own searches through other religions and philosophies, looking for the face of God which called us. Though we have built our lives differently, the foundation of Christianity remained the same. And it is encouraging to me to know him and know that we share the same roots.

I see the man that Kevin has become because of that foundation, and how much more of a man he has become because he has continued to search. I see the desires in my own life, and know that my first thoughts are usually of other people not because I’m just a swell guy, but because my formative years were spent in the Church where those principles were given root. Do I call myself a Christian? Sure. But I also call myself a pagan, a Taoist, a mystic, and a Zen Buddhist. I’ve seen too much to limit myself to one philosophy. And I’ve leaned enough to know that they are all One.

Synchronicity being what it is, an often used tool of God to get my attention where it needs to be, I was not at all surprised to find a book by Joseph Campbell on Kevin’s dresser. The first sentence in the book is, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

The day before, Jay and Mandy were married on Clearwater Beach. The sky was a little overcast all day, and the weatherman gave us an eighty percent chance of rain, but the sun broke through the clouds just before it melted into the Gulf, and smiled on one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever seen. Foster performed the ceremony, having recently been ordained as an internet minister. Matt played guitar. Tiffany sang. And little Jackson shared with me part of what I love about his parents.

Maybe I’m just a little lonely after forsaking my family and friends to wander the country these last few years, but once the ceremonial shaman blessed the wedding with sage and Jay’s grandfather’s eagle feather, the promised rain flowed through my thankful eyes. I couldn’t stop it. Every eye I looked into caused me to smile. Every embrace brought me to tears. The word I can best use to describe the evening is worship – of being thankful for the life that God has given me and the friends He has graced me with. It truly was a privilege to be me.

I’ve been a lot of things. Many of them I didn’t consider a privilege. I’ve been a waiter, an actor, a puppeteer, a youth minister, a truck driver, a cook, a bartender, a cowboy, a painter, a cabbie, a counselor, a teacher, a carpenter, a stuntman, a hobo, and a fool. What did this journey make of me? What am I left to work with?

In every hero’s journey, after he refuses the call, he finds a mentor, someone to guide him in the direction he should go, to get him on the road. When I began writing these letters, they were addressed “Dear Jack.” This began as an homage to Mr. Kerouac, drawn from the inspiration he gave to me through the spirit that we shared. When I was in the Haight-Ashbury Library last year I found this passage by Kerouac and thought enough of it to write it down. I recalled a year earlier when Nora called me a poet, and I thought Kerouac’s definition exemplified what I was doing.

“A poet is a fellow who spends his time thinking about what it is that’s wrong, and although he knows he can never quite find out what this wrong is, he goes right on thinking it out and writing it down. A poet is a blind optimist. The world is against him for many reasons. But the poet persists. He believes that he is on the right track, no matter what any of his fellow men say. In his eternal search for truth, the poet is alone. He tries to be timeless in a society built on time.”

Do I consider myself a poet? Of course. Do I consider myself a hero? Well, I saved myself. Have I found my place in the world? I’m on the path, and it would seem this is exactly where I need to be.

So as my path now runs in circles here in the City of Angels, as I sift through the ashes of the bridges that I’ve burned, I’m answering the call to an all new adventure. And this is my offering to you as I make my journey, that you may make it with me. To show you in my life how God has blessed me, lessons I learn, and joys that fill my moments. It is my hope that you will do the same.

Amazon.com Widgets

It’s another Independence Day and I’m at work. Decide what you will about what that says about the state of my patriotism. I’ve managed to attain employment as a Production Assistant on a new reality show crap-fest currently running on Fox called “Paradise Hotel.” Though I am apt to take a negative stance on the question of whether or not the surge of reality television is disintegrating our society’s moral and mental fiber, it has become a case of me feeding the beast so the beast can feed me. The symbiosis of Hollywood.

The basis of the show involves eleven nubile twenty- and thirty-somethings alternating between superior gender numbers as week-by-week, the inhabitants of the Acapulco resort, kick off whichever member is not shacking up and vote on another stranger in hopes that they are more willing to have casual sex. The show is a little different from the others in its vein. There is no money to be won or prize to be claimed other than the chance to be on television and have lots and lots of sex. All that matters is what is going on. I think is has a very Zen quality to it. Alan Watts would be proud.

Nevertheless, if any of you are so inclined and care enough about the outcome of the weekly decisions to ask me to betray my solemn of vow of confidentiality to my employers and reveal what the rest of America must wait two weeks to see, I shall decry you in public as a nitwit and mock your name eternally for your involvement in this most nefarious ruses of artistic expression which is the Fox Summer Lineup.

My job is basically making coffee, taking out trash, and running errands. The errands are my specialty. Using my second and third greatest assets – Attention Deficit Disorder and a motorcycle – I find it a great way to make a few bucks.

I’ve been trying to do that much more lately – use whatever I’m given as a strength. I still have weaknesses. They are often rampant and harsh. But I don’t really have catastrophe anymore. And believe me, to the wary onlooker, my life has often looked that way. But personally, I have yet to really fall on hard times. I haven’t even fallen on very difficult times. But that’s not to say they haven’t fallen on me. They just didn’t take me down with them.

After my motorcycle accident – a minor spill on a new bike – I used my broken collarbone and library card to learn more about this trade of screenwriting. The language of the screenplay is a dialect I have never been quite fluent in. It involves using words succinctly and steadily with as few letters as possible. Whereas, when I usually write, the words can drip on for days and spread a single idea of a grassy meadow to the length of a paragraph – one of gigantic proportions that makes a gregarious reader dance through the sound of the wind bending grass and images of dandelions in bloom, of jackrabbits playing in noble deer paths and a girl dressed in white with a bow in her long, blonde hair – but can be summed up in a screenplay with EXT. So learning this art form has been long and tenuous. But I learned how to do what I wanted to do, and then I did it. I used my second month of unemployment, when no jobs were available anywhere, to finish the first three drafts. The week my motorcycle was in the shop was used for draft four. And my day off last Tuesday was used for draft five. Drafts two and four were written on a manual typewriter, exactly as I dreamed it would be.

So now my gears are shifting. I have a marketable script to sell. I must change my role from artist to businessman. This is going to be interesting.

This book began a few years before it was actually lived and written. After college, I wandered from job to job for awhile before my friend Matt Corbin invited me on a surefire Alaskan fishing expedition that would wipe out all of the financial debts that had accrued during our reckless youth and early adulthood. The five month journey found the worst    fishing season in eighteen years, a substantial break with my religious tradition, and an all-consuming infatuation with wanderlust.

A few years later, shortly after I scoffed at Matt’s newfound diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder, I met with him to discuss its implications. My job jumping had only intensified, and I found myself at the end of my proverbial rope. Of the twenty diagnostic criteria, seventeen of them succinctly defined my standard operating procedure.
Researching it more and finding a therapist to make the official diagnosis, I decided to make a documentary on the subject of ADD. After filming ten hours’ worth of material, my appetite for creative stimulation was still nowhere near  satiated. And so, I decided to use the malady to my advantage and took to the road to write the book that you hold in your hands.
While it was largely my goal to simply travel for the sake of travel, I was also imbued with a yen to explore the deeper meanings of spirituality, society, community, and the American Dream. Before I left on my sojourn, I contacted a number of intentional communities from monasteries to hippie communes to at least give me a rough outline of what the    journey would entail. And though the road often curved more than I imagined it would, every corner brought me new insights and a greater understanding of life on this rolling clump of dirt I call home.
When I began delivering these letters via email to the number of addresses I’d collected over the years, the fact that I addressed them with the epithet “Dear Jack” was a bit     confusing to many. But I was deeply indebted to Jack Kerouac for the limelight that he brought to wanderlust, and the free flowing verse that enraptured a generation and has echoed throughout those that followed.
The title of this book was inspired by Jack’s book The Dharma Bums, from a passage where Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder discuss The Rucksack Revolution.

“…see the whole thing is a world of rucksack  wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks,   going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures…”

It wasn’t until I reached the end of my road that I realized Jack’s folly, the self destructive lifestyle that eventually led to his death at the age of 49. And though I adopted many of his more reckless traits as my own, I also managed to adopt some of his strengths.
Though you may find a large measure of folly in the words that follow, it is my hope that your eyes will also be opened to a greater understanding of your fellow man. Though we each must make our own individual journeys, at the end of the road we are all one.

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