The Shadow of Amanda - Chapter Three

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(For previous chapters of this story, please see Previous Posts on the right sidebar)
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Ojai was dry and warm, with golden, late afternoon sunlight making everything look like a scene from a Hollywood epic. Jana got noticeably more animated as we pulled up to her childhood home. There was a pottery wheel in the front yard. A beautiful brown horse lazily chewed wild grass behind a rail fence at the edge of the gravel driveway. Inside, Jana’s mother’s house was like a tropical forest. Lush, healthy indoor plants crowded every room. Jana showed me the bedroom she’d had as a child. I asked her about a photograph of her as young girl. In the shot, she was standing with her mother in front of a remote, ornate building in a dusty landscape.
“My mom goes to stay at an ashram in India for a few months every year,” she told me. “I’ve only been back once since this picture was taken. There’s a really amazing man in residence there.” A far away look came over Jana, and she was silent for a moment. “He’s like… he’s like nobody else on Earth. I can’t really describe it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Is he a priest or a monk or something?”
“He’s more like a saint. He’s totally enlightened. You don’t get to see him much, but when you do, it’s like seeing someone from another planet or another dimension or something. His aura is like, I don’t know. He’d blow your mind.” She was quiet again. Then she whispered, “He’s almost God-like.”
“Hmm,” I muttered.
“You sound skeptical, Phil.”
“Well, it’s just… I like the stuff I’ve read about trying to lose the ‘self’ in yourself and to have the perception that everything in the world is part of the same whole, you know, everything flowing into and through everything else.”
“Right.”
“And that our individual selves are just illusions based on personal memories. I can see how that could create a more compassionate life for people. But the whole supernatural thing is…I don’t know. I think it’s just a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the followers, or even inflated egos in the ‘enlightened’ – which is contrary to the original goal.”
Jana was looking at me closely. She seemed to be genuinely weighing the value of my ideas. Then she said, “Yeah, but everything you just said is based in words and logic. What I’m talking about is beyond anything that you can use your brain to judge. It’s just a feeling, a deep feeling you have when you’re in his presence. Like I said, I can’t really describe it. But you definitely walk away without a shred of doubt after you’ve been near him.”
I smiled and gave her a little squeeze on the shoulder. “O.K. I’ll keep an open mind,” I said. But inwardly I was wondering if there was a lot of money involved with the ashram and a wealth of donations flowing in to this man who obviously had a lot of charisma.

That evening, a large group of relaxed-looking people came to the house, bearing a variety of vegetarian casseroles and other dishes. The birthday party was unexciting. I was restless. The evening culminated with everyone standing in the living room, holding hands in a big circle and singing spiritual songs I was not familiar with. I did, however, manage to position myself between Jana and Faith for the hand holding part. That night, after the guests had left, those of us who had come up from Santa Barbara bedded down on the floor of the living room. The girls took of their jeans to sleep, but I kept mine on. Jana and Faith snuggled close together as they drifted off. I lay awake, squinting in an attempt to see their smooth bodies in the dim light. The next day we hiked up a trail that followed a stream in a dense oak forest. I impressed Jana by stripping off my clothes and jumping into a deep pool of icy creek water that was too cold for everyone else. My bravery was contagious. Jana, Faith, and another guy from the big yellow house bared their bodies and jumped in too. The girls surfaced squealing and laughing in the freezing water. Jana’s mom and a couple other people watched smiling from the banks of the stream. Nobody stayed in the cold water for long. After Jana and Faith got out, they laid back on a sunny rock in an attempt to warm up. Their skin was tight with goose bumps and their nipples were rock hard, pointing heavenwards.

A few months later, Jana’s boyfriend left Santa Barbara to stay with his mother in New Mexico. His mother was ill and his possible return to Santa Barbara and Jana was undetermined.
“Hey Phil, what are you doing this summer?” Jana asked me one day. I was tending my plot in the community vegetable garden, putting in countless man-hours to yield about a dollar’s worth of zucchini. I squinted up at Jana. She wore a thin white t-shirt and some baggy shorts that she’d sewn from ornately patterned silk.
“No plans really. Why?”
“Well, don’t answer right away. I know this doesn’t fit with your ideal of the comfortable life, but me and Faith are traveling to India. We’re going up to the ashram I told you about. My mom’s there now. We’re planning to stay there about three months. So, anyway, I think you should come with us.”
“I don’t know,” I started.
“I told you, don’t answer right away. Just think about it. I think it would be really good for you. You’re always reading those books, like Be Here Now and The Tao Te Ching. But this would take you so far beyond what any book could give you.”
I could never quite figure out Jana. She must have sensed that I often lusted after her. We’d lived at the house for a few years together. For most of that time she was with Garth. But she was very friendly towards me. I never made any kind of move on her for fear of fouling the placid waters of the big yellow house. Social dynamics can be tricky between housemates.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Cool.” She looked at me levelly with her dark brown eyes and smiled a graceful smile. Then she coughed and turned her head to the side and spit on the ground.

The Shadow of Amanda - Chapter Two

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(For Chapter One of this story, please see Previous Posts on the right sidebar)
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We once quarantined our living room after a guest with scabies slept on the couch. We learned of the infestation a couple days later when the younger sister of one of the housemates slept on the same couch and awoke to a broadened view of the possible range of human discomfort. We taped plastic over the doors of the living room and stayed out of it for a couple weeks. Some of us added eucalyptus oil to our bathwater for a few days. Other members of the household were not as worried.

“You know, Phil, if you go through life always trying to be careful to avoid lice and always sleeping in comfortable beds, you’re going to miss out on a lot of things,” Jana said to me one morning in the kitchen. Jana lived in the converted gardener’s shed with her boyfriend. I always thought she was a beautiful girl, although her personal hygiene was sometimes a bit below my standards.
“Miss out on lice?” I said. “That’s O.K. with me.”
“Well, I mean, you’re always all Zenned out and everything. That’s cool. And you live a mellow lifestyle, you know, off the grid. But still, you grind your gourmet French Roast coffee every morning and you have your king sized feather bed and your antique lamps and all.”
Jana was one of the few members of the commune who really could be considered an authentic hippie, if such a category even existed anymore. Her mother was an ex-flower child who lived in Ojai. Jana had been barefoot pretty much every day since birth and was skinny-dipping in the streams of the Upper Ojai Valley when I was sitting in grammar school in a button down shirt from Sears.
“I do enjoy the comforts of life,” I admitted.
“Yeah,” she said. “And I’d love to own a stereo like yours. But don’t you ever feel like being a little bit … a little less careful all the time?” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her loose flannel shirt. I sliced a cantaloupe.
“A bunch of us are going up to Ojai for my mom’s 50th birthday in a couple hours,” she continued. “We’re going to come back on Sunday. Why don’t you come along?”
“I’ve got my piano gig,” I said. “I can’t.”
“Blow it off. Just call them and tell them you’re sick. They’ll survive without you for one weekend. Hey can I have some of that?” She reached over and took a piece of the melon and chewed it with her mouth open.
“Help yourself,” I smiled.
“Thanks,” she said still chewing, a shiny drop of saliva escaping from the corner of her mouth. Her flannel shirt was only fastened with a couple of buttons. Her smooth breasts were tan and high. She’d probably never had tan lines in her life. “Garth won’t be going. He’s flaking on me again. I need a date,” she smiled. “Anyway, my mom likes you. She’d love it if you were there.”
“I guess I’d need to pack some clothes and things,”
“Whatever. We’re just going to crash on the floor. You don’t need much. Faith is cooking a big pot of three bean soup that we’re going to bring along.” She pointed to a very large aluminum pot simmering on the back burner of the stove.
Faith was another one of the people who I considered an actual hippie. She didn’t technically live at the house, but just dropped in once in a while on her many travels. When she visited, she didn’t sleep on the couch or anywhere inside the house. She slept out on the open meadow of the abandoned nursery under the moon and stars. If Garth wasn’t around though, she sometimes snuggled up with Jana out in the shed on cold nights. I always thought that was pretty sexy.

A couple hours later I climbed into the back of an ancient VW van, trying to remember if I’d locked the door to my room and wondering if I should have gone to the bank to get some more pocket cash. I toted along an overnight bag with a change of clothes and my toiletries. But I noticed that none of the others who got into the van brought anything except for the clothes they were wearing. The big pot of beans sat covered on the floor between the front seats. A golden retriever climbed in. We all settled down in the back of the van, which had no rear seats, only a couple of big futons and a lot of pillows and blankets.

The Shadow of Amanda - Chapter One

I used to think I was on a solid path toward enlightenment. But then I realized that what I thought had been the path was actually just the word “path” scrawled hastily in crayon on a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper. I no longer search for answers, because I’m not sure what the questions should be. I no longer watch for signs to loom up in the night along the roadway, because I wouldn’t be able to read them. I’m driving with my headlights off.

The big yellow house had been a vegetarian commune since the late 1960s. Thirty years later, it still oozed the unique sights, sounds, and smells of the Age of Aquarius. The property was a small village unto itself. The huge, run-down Victorian had seven bedrooms. A ramshackle gardener’s shed had been converted into a cozy home for a young couple. Someone built a greenhouse out of old glass doors, and soon a guy had moved into that. People also lived in a big storage building that had later been carpeted and soundproofed for a music studio. A girl lived in our tree house high in the old oak tree. Besides a large assortment of other vehicles, there were usually three or four VW vans permanently parked in the big circular dirt driveway. As the coastal California morning fog burned off, the sliding doors of the vans would open wide, and tan young couples would doze a little while longer, curled up happily on dirty futons with their dogs and fleas.

Most residents were in the midst of what would be the most experimental phase of their lives. Lots of people visited for short and long terms, creating numerous opportunities for liaisons. The atmosphere was sensual, with big parties that lasted from Friday evening through Sunday. Dancing bodies were silhouetted by firelight under the stars. Drums pounded on past midnight. Someone’s lips tasted like peach schnapps behind the converted gardener’s shed, her breath stale and sleepy, her name slipping from my immediate cognitive grasp.

The property was isolated from the city and even from its remote mesa neighborhood, tucked deep into the trees and spilling out onto an old abandoned plant nursery on a cliff above the Pacific. I played the piano on Friday and Saturday nights at a restaurant in town. The pay from that gig easily covered the rent on my room in the house. There were technically only six or eight hours a week that I needed to be anywhere else but the lazy paradise of the big yellow house and its sprawling, overgrown gardens. There was no TV in the house, and no newspaper or magazines were delivered. Most everyone who lived there was content to escape mainstream culture. I remember hearing vaguely about the Berlin Wall coming down. O.J. Simpson’s trial came and went without even a passing mention.

The zeitgeist of the commune was spiritual. Many residents of the house made it their last stop before departing for long trips to places like India and the Far East, or made it their first stop upon returning. People shared books on many philosophies, mostly Eastern. For about a year, I was steady with a girl in the house who sat in Zen meditation for 20 minutes every morning. She always set an alarm clock in her sight line as she plumbed the depths of inner peace, and kept a watchful eye on its dial so as not to be subjected to a minute more of nirvana than her guru had prescribed.

She turned me on to a lot of reading that I might not otherwise have discovered. Most mornings I would sit out in the sun and read Hindu, Buddhist, or Taoist texts over breakfast. Then I would get up and walk down the cliff trail for a swim in the ocean as the dregs of my coffee etched a permanent ring on the inside of my mug. Dolphins jumped offshore. Lithe girls from the big yellow house did naked cartwheels on the sand in the morning light.

For about 18 straight months of my five-year stay at the commune, I stopped smoking pot. It was difficult to keep up the abstention, since bongs, pipes and joints were as common as food and drink. The reason I decided to forego the drug was something I read in one of the spiritual books. When Richard Alpert, also known as Ram Das, asked a Hindu guru about the sensation of illumination that came from drug use, the teacher answered, “It is like being at the wedding without an invitation.” The gist of the teacher’s message was that one could get higher without drugs.

I poured over accounts of devout people who had attained mystical states of consciousness. Witnesses claim to have seen the enlightened achieve levitation – a wise old sage floating cross-legged a few feet above the floor in a cold, stone room high in the Himalayas. I sat on the floor of my bedroom and tried to empty my mind of all thoughts, expecting any moment to begin to float into the air. I was distracted when a beautiful blonde girl began doing Yoga poses topless outside my window in the side yard, her spectacular breasts heaving as her body stretched into improbable positions thousands of years old.