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.
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.
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