I Was There Then, I Am There Now

I was there then, I am there now.

Ten years ago, I performed at my first event with the legendary Wayne Dyer. He would be gone within only a few years, and I was there because my first published book had inspired what would be his last. 

I was so full of optimism on that blustery mountain afternoon… so full of hope, that with Wayne’s blessing and his publisher’s help, this For The Sender project would reach a wider audience and make a deeper impact. 

I never thought about sales. Really. Never. I worked hard to produce the best book I could (and accompanying album) every year for the next 3 years. I’d speak anywhere, perform anywhere, bring whatever light I could to wherever I could, but I was reluctant to exploit social media to sell myself. Didn’t sit right then, still doesn’t.

And this was the publisher’s main marketing tool, even 10 years ago… their authors’ own social media accounts. Mine were anemic, so they hired someone to build my following, almost entirely with follow-back tricks that ended up being even emptier than the medium itself. 

Anyway, my first book almost touched the New York Times bestseller list, and then fell off a cliff. I started wondering if I’d been looking at this creative life all wrong. Maybe I did need to focus on selling, because that was the most concrete way to get my message across. That’s how I’d know people were engaged… not through likes and comments, but hard numbers. 

I’d never been good at the Buy My Sh** pitch when I was touring as a musician, because I thought that if folks wanted to buy a CD or something, they would, and I wasn’t peddling used cars, anyway. I was putting pieces of myself out there, and aggressively asking people to buy part of my heart ran counter to my being.

I considered being more of a salesman for about a minute.

My publisher’s interest in me died with Wayne in 2015, and the final book in the series was lucky to even get printed. I found myself a long ways from that June afternoon in 2012, when I’d watched Wayne speak for the first time as someone he actually knew, who’s work he respected… and when I thought my most fulfilling chapter was only beginning.

I hadn’t thought about that day for ten years. Not until about an hour and a half ago, when a friend sent me a video of the entire talk. He didn’t know what that afternoon had meant to me, only that I knew Wayne.

I watched the full 90 minutes, just now, sometimes seeing myself as a tiny figure on the periphery of the crowd. Back then, the space kind of felt like a church. A different kind of church, not one where something outside ourselves was worshipped, but one where God, or spirit, or the soul, or whatever you want to call love, waited inside each of us, ready to be unleashed on a world desperately in need.

I was there then, I am there now.

Needles and Blades

The street is empty, save for the junkies shooting up in the graffiti-enshrined doorway.

And the human feces on the corner.

Which I barely miss stepping in as I headed into the intersection. A few people sporting headphones and masks don’t budge, apparently because the pedestrian sign is still showing the red hand. The only thing that had a chance of hitting any of us at the moment is a stray urine stream carried on the frigid wind tunneling down Pike Street past the boarded-up storefronts, so I walk. 

Shocked?

I am, too.

This city is falling apart, a real-life underworld scene from a steampunk imagination.

I lived a handful of blocks from here and worked in this downtown core for almost a decade, first as a temp worker, then as an actual hired employee, and finally as a singer-songwriter trying to find my own voice in the skeptical post-grunge Seattle scene. I’d called my guitar player from back then to suggest we meet at a bar where we used to play, and had been surprised at the unfamiliar hesitancy creeping through his usually overenthusiastic voice.

I don’t know, man. Really unsafe there now. No cops, kind of the Wild West with blades and needles. I don’t even go down there anymore. 

Someone else’s problem, right?

Not in my backyard. 

Otherwise known as NIMBY… a clever acronym for folks who think helping others is a nice idea, as long as the solution has nothing to actually do with them.

Acronyms won’t solve this. Neither will slogans. Or movements. Or hashtags. 

Only people can solve this. People willing to do what is necessary and unpopular, people willing to step away from their screens, people willing to consider protest as an action to materially improve a stranger’s life, not an opportunity to deflect responsibility.

People can solve this.

But probably not in headphones and masks, waiting for a sign to tell them to cross an empty street, as their city falls apart around them.

Hina Kai

Dawn has barely broken on this Sunday morning, and she walks around the perimeter of the property, finding flowers for the vase. Her young daughter says hello to the stray cat nestled in the side yard lava rocks and hands me a plumeria she picked from one of the few mature tree branches she can reach.

She named the cat Hina Kai sometime last year, because she’s gray and, like the Hawaiian coastline that serves as my backdrop right now, extraordinarily beautiful… for a cat, anyway. I’m more of a dog person. But you probably knew this.

We restored this house a few years ago, and are here as often as life allows. When we’re not, we occasionally rent the place out to cover expenses. But this isn’t a house… it’s a home, and after they’ve stayed here, folks tend to recognize we’re offering a piece of ourselves. 

So I was a little, well, taken aback at the text message demanding we get rid of the cat. 

She stays on the perimeter of the property, usually just off the lanai in the lava rocks, and you have to really look for her to even know she’s there. 

But word came down from the guests last month that the cat must go, that we must trap her and either kill her or dump her far, far away, because their son was apparently deathly allergic to cats, and his mother didn’t want dander anywhere outside.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Suffice to say, Hawaii is teeming with feral cats, and outside is, well, outside. Hopefully, the kid’s mother packed one of those spacesuits that a few people, who clearly shouldn’t be traveling, have been wearing in the airport the last couple of years to protect themselves from… well… life.

Turns out, the son was also allergic to cockroaches. He found one dead in a drawer, and his mother wanted a refund, in addition to getting rid of the cat.

I wrote what amounted to literary violence via text, then erased the more offensive bits to say something to the effect of You can take the money, honey, but you’re not taking the cat.

A whale spouts in the ocean window between the palms, and the young daughter tells me to close my eyes and smell. Which I do. Plumeria.

She hands me the single flower and asks if Hina Kai knows her name.

Yes, I think she does.

As the small gray cat lays curled between the lava rock and garden house, her eyes drooping into sleep.