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Was $11,315.95— Now just $1.95! (While supplies last)

It's All Good

©2008 David Boyne

About every 1.7 hours, I have an out-of-body experience.

Where do I go during these experiences?

I’m glad I asked. But first, some Back Story.

I was born the son of a poor black sharecropper…

Wait. Wrong Back Story.

I was born in and raised in Connecticut. At the time of my birth, I was the pinnacle of collective creation achieved by a long line of stubborn, stolid, Irish-Catholic New England ancestors. (The kind of folk who made excellent fodder for the canons of the Industrial Revolution.) If that breeding were not enough to make me sufficiently hardheaded, when I was 22 I moved to Manhattan and began a 10-year graduate course in the Humanities. Although I’ve yet to complete my dissertation, when I do it will be universally hailed for its brilliant observations of humans in the urban wild behaving badly when entranced by big money, or bright lights, or hot lust, or all three combined.

When living in hustle and flow Manhattan, if California ever crossed my mind or was mentioned in conversation, it was derisively referred to as The Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Front Story: Guess where I live now?

I must report that after nearly 11 years among the Lotus Eaters, both my flinty cold New England edge, and my flashing hot New York edge, have been blunted. I have, alas, mellowed.

Most of the time, I am a well-adjusted if somewhat bemused tourist here. Although each time my application for Permanent Resident Status comes before the Immigration Inquisitors overseeing this paradise, they cite fresh complaints of my New York soul having slipped its leash to run about barking and snarling and ripping holes in the grass huts of the natives.

Which brings me back to these out-of-body experiences I have about every 1.7 hours.

They can be triggered by seemingly empty, meaningless events. Take my recent close encounter with Surfer Dude. Only here in the Land of the Lotus Easters can I be thwarted from taking possession of my morning cup of coffee by some ray-of-sunshine-barefoot-child-of-god strategically placed in line ahead of me and drawling his order for 3-ounces of wheat grass.

This is why, my patience exhausted after an eternity passed (at least a full minute), I muttered, “For chrissakes what’s taking so long? They fertilizing the ground to plant the seeds to grow the damn grass?”

This surge of dark energy triggered the infinitely complex machinery of the Universe by leveraging the small cog of which we have named the Law of Cause and Effect, making Surfer Dude turn and beam a solar-powered smile at me. He called me “Bro,’” and told me “It’s All Good!” and commanded me to “Relax!” and to “Let It Go!” He then said, “No Worries!” while wagging the pinky and thumb of one hand in my face.

Which caused me, having been knocked back into New York Time-Space, to smirk. (No one smiles in NYC.) And to say, “I am sincerely sorry that your penis is so small but that is no reason to show the measure of it to me while I’m Jonesing for my morning coffee.”

Which caused Surfer Dude to belly laugh with startling gusto.

Which caused me to take a step back, fearing this irrepressible fraternal good will was about to cause him to hug me.

Which caused the nose-ringed barrista, who had chosen that precise moment to approach with my intensely sought-after uber-sized cup of coffee, to hold said coffee out to me, but just beyond my reach—with laughing-gas-inflated Surfer Dude blocking the space between me and my true heart’s desire.

Which caused me to snap back into my body, back into this time, back into this place, and to ask myself, “Why is getting a cup of coffee sometimes such a struggle?”

I’ll come back to this. But first, I’ll move laterally.

There’s this guy who goes by the name Dr. Robert Anthony, whose writing I’ve been reading and whose talking I’ve been hearing. He, among others, asserts that when we hold tight to what is past, we are actually living in that past. Dr. A insists that when we focus on the Past, Life comes calling in the Now, but we ain’t home. We have knocked ourselves right out of the Now, and are living in our past, right down to our cellular level, so that the new cells our body is making are actually being made in the past, replicating the damage and pain of the past we refuse to let go of.

In New York, this is called bullshit.

But I don’t live in New York anymore; that’s in my past. I live in California now, where this stuff is called awesome.

Where the hell am I going with all this?

Relax!

I’ll get there.

Or not.

I suspect that Dr A and Surfer Dude may both be saying the same thing, in very different ways.

Because I have noticed that when I have my out-of-body flashbacks to being a hard-of-sight, hard-of-hearing, hard-thinking, hard-judging Manhattanite, everything I do—even something that should be as easy as getting my morning coffee—becomes a struggle. Sure, I compete, and I usually win. I get the coffee. But at what cost?

I have also noticed that when I’m living in my body and in the moment and in this place, what Lotus Eaters call living on the creative, not competitive, plane—the cup of coffee just comes to me right when I’m putting out my hand to receive it.

Which is why, when Surfer Dude, wheat grass in hand, launched into long minutes of gushing about the quality of the waves, regaling the barista who had just pulverized his wheat grass into 3 ounces of the most iridescent pulpy green liquid I had ever seen, I chose to stand near him, sipping my coffee, and listening. At that moment I realized that Surfer Dude was a wise and experienced sherpa, offering guidance to me on my Grand Tour though this world.

Yes, I could still hear, far, far off in the distance of my personal New York Time-Space, the blaring horns of mid-town taxis and a booming Brooklyn-Italian voice yelling, “Ya crazy motherfucker!”

But I relaxed.

I let it go.

That world, and this one, are all good.