DAYS 28 & 29: 4 Minutes & 40/50 Seconds of Gazing
I have been gazing solo since returning from Connecticut. My trip to the other ocean and back broke up the routine I was in with my neighbors so I find myself alone on the cactus covered mound watching the sun burst onto the scene in the early morning now. Brett branched off and established his own routine with the sun early on, and he’s also become the most addicted to her. He describes to me how he stands there and when his face begins to hurt and the muscles in his brow pulsate as his tear ducts gush. Instead of giving into the squint he holds his eyes open even wider with his fingers. This impresses me. I admire the faith he’s bringing to the experiment. There is no doubt in his mind he can completely heal his wounded eye. His certainty bolsters me. In the presence of his clarity I can see more clearly my trepidation. I know the sun-gazing has emotional effects, I’ve been experiencing them first hand. But will it manifest into my physical reality? Can the sun heal my gums and really make Brett fly? I don’t know. But Brett does seem to know, and that’s comforting. When I’m around him at least I can see what certainty looks like. And it looks amazing from here. As a consolation prize to Brett’s absolute faith, at least the conditioning I had earned in those first few weeks of gazing has quickly returned to my eyes. I can stare for the entire four minutes and change without the harsh struggle I had when I began again after my six day cloud sponsored break. Its as if the sun and I are making up after a fight and we finally achieve some peace. Only the fight was all in my mind, I realize, now that I’ve grown accustomed to the suns raw wattage again. The sunlight never changed, never wavered. The clouds interfered because they represent my inner clouds, keeping me from seeing things clearly. As above, so below. As within, so without. This ancient morsel of divine revelation unearthed in the tomb of Hermes seems to keep popping into my mind as I travel this road with the sun. It is revealing to me that every moment of life and every molecule of matter holds within it, inherently, guidance and love for us; it is a reflection of what is occurring within us, just waiting to be understood by us, for the benefit of, well, us. I have felt that invisible hand of guidance more clearly since beginning gazing. Maybe the sunlight just makes it easier to see the meaning or the lesson in something. Or maybe I’m so thick headed that I just need a little more nudging than most so the universe is being less and less demure. I mean, last week the universe sent me a message through an inebriated party goer I’m calling my drunk angle to stop drinking and eating junk food. I imagine that was a wild last resort. Then today as I’m leaving my house to head to my mechanic, the first of two random strangers interjects themselves into my life for no apparent reason but to deliver me another universal pick-me-up. The second angelic message of the day was delivered a few hours later as I was walking back through the park to pick up Summer from the doctor’s office. This morning I wasn’t feeling like my jolly self who likes to make eye contact with everyone and smile bright at strangers just for the hell of it; I was feeling tired and preoccupied. As I approached Summer I was going to have to pass right by this man standing on the front edge of his property and smoking a cigarette. My mind started one of those rapid fire debates with itself that can cover so much ground in the time it takes to light a cigarette that my preoccupied head was spinning even faster now. The subject: do I make eye contact with this guy and say good morning, or do I keep my head down and bustle to my car. My mood wanted the latter but the former was my habit, thus the great millisecond debate began. I finally chose to avert and bustle, so I pulled my laptop bag closer around me and shored myself up to ignore neighborly pleasantries and brush straight past to my car. “Good morning” comes a cheery unexpected development. Was he talking to me? Nobody just randomly greets each other in Los Angeles. That was my unique thing, and frankly I wasn’t in the mood for it today. But I knew he was addressing me. “Good morning” I forced, trying to pick up the pace without being rude. Then he fired another shot, “have a great day.” I found myself perplexed by this unsolicited friendliness but in spite of myself I was softening. The hint of a smile graced my face as I meagerly offered “you too, man.” Then his last interjection, “happy Monday.” It was as if this was the hail Mary pass from the Universe saying “this is the time of your life, Brian, snap out of it! So you are exhausted trying to manage your thriving medical marijuana collective. Look up every once in a while and see what that provides. You’ve got it made buddy.” I shrugged this off with a half-hearted agreement to myself to be more thankful, said “happy Monday to you too,” got in my car and took off. While Summer was in for her check up I took a walk through the park nearby with a final destination of the local Starbucks for a chai tea latte with non-fat milk and light ice. At the edge of the park a flock of birds was gathered on the ground a few feet away. For some reason they caught my attention and I commented to myself about their beauty. And somehow I knew I was
DAY 27: 4 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing – The Overdose
My friend Ben flew into Los Angeles for a few days so I picked him up in Summer at nine am and handed him a thick and powerful joint, as is our custom. This is the best California weed I’ve ever had, and I work at a pot collective. He tells me I roll the best joints, and with that endorsement we proceed to park near our chosen coffee shop and get stoned. I notice the parking meter still has some time left on it, I can tell from my car by the flashing green light. This is gonna be a good day, I think. We put out the roach, opt for juice instead of coffee and take a leisurely stroll in the park. We speak philosophically about the states of our lives and our dreams, as often happens when you are mildly stoned. We wax poetic as we settle down under a shady table to relax and enjoy ourselves. He talks about a concept he’s working on for a show about a group of folks who meditate and I talk about sun-gazing. I was going to do four minutes and thirty seconds today but I forgot my phone was on silent when I set the timer. After what seemed like an eternity I finally checked and, surely, the time had long since run out. I’m gonna say I gazed for over five minutes, but I can’t be sure. Now, here in the park just a few hours later, Ben and I decide to meditate for twenty minutes. Okay, I guess. So I set my cell phone timer, hunker down under a large tree a few feet from Ben and mediate. I feel excited to do this. This is my first serious meditation since the sun-gazing began. I start by concentrating on my breathing. But there is a stick in my back. I adjust the branch and now as I lean tight against the tree it’s almost as if this branch is hugging me, and comforting me. As I try to become calm I notice for the first time this nest of butterflies in my stomach. Nothing particular, just a dull baseline of anxiety that I can feel now that I’m relaxed. I wonder how long that’s been there? Do I live with this all time? How do I fix it? Fix. Fix. Fix. I stop myself, I don’t want to get lost in thought, I think to myself, I want to meditate. So I decide to chant a mantra to myself focusing on something I want. The human mind learns from repetition, they say. So I begin to silently repeat “I’m peaceful, I’m prosperous, I’m powerful.” I do this with fervor and zeal but there is no noticeable change in the butterflies. So I take a different approach. I slow it all down. I try with each repetition to actually inhabit peacefulness, to imagine what I would feel like if I was prosperous in the ways I dream of, and to experience the sensations of power, the confidence, the certainty. This passes the time nicely and the butterflies seem to have moved on as well. It’s working, I begin to think excitedly, thus breaking the meditative spell I had conjured. So I do this process again, from the beginning. I am peaceful, I am prosperous, I am powerful. This time an eternity goes by. I’ve got the hang of this now, I tell myself, so I can “experience the mantra” and still feel the butterflies do their tango too if I want to, I’ve become a master at multi-tasking. God, it has to have been twenty minutes by now, right? At just the point I’m starting to get antsy I remember that I forgot to fill the meter when we parked the car. The green light had lulled me in, and I forgot to feed the beast. She could run out at any moment. The meter could be expired already! I was tempted to get up and go see if there was a ticket, I even visualized myself getting up to go check. But I stayed. I’m chanting about peacefulness and I’m going to leave that in a hurried and panicked state to go see if I have a parking ticket. Nonsense, wait it out. This is a test. But then I remember that I have two outstanding parking tickets already, both within the last two weeks because I pay them right away generally. Well, now I have a really good reason to get up and go check, don’t I? This could be my third strike! But still some deeper part of me is holding me to that tree. The branch that had been snuggling me before was now restraining me, it seemed. I wanted to go rescue Summer (my convertible) from an over-worked and under-paid parking “enforcer” who’s only option left is take their shitty life out on me! I am speaking in generalities here, if you are a parking enforcer of any kind, you are the one exception to this infallible rule of thumb: meter maids suck. You don’t, this is not about you because you have three children and take your job seriously yadda yadda. So where was I? Oh yeah, I wanted to get the hell up from this meditation that had deteriorated into a jumbled stream of panic-stricken thoughts and sarcasm. Wait, but what was that whispering from the ground to my skin, from the birds to my ears and from the soul of the tree to my soul: “I am peaceful, I am prosperous, I am powerful.” Suddenly I let go, parking ticket be damned, I was going to sit here and experience peace if it killed me. And I did. Another century went by, which I’m guessing was about six more minutes when the timer rang and Ben and I finally compared notes. “It was a constructive experience” were Ben’s first words. I couldn’t have agreed more. Then I noticed there
DAY 26: 4 Minutes & 20 Seconds of Gazing – The Poop Story
My sister describes to me over the phone how she felt like she had to poop, stuck in the car on the way home from work; in her state, at eight and a half months pregnant, that almost qualifies as a national emergency. At the very least it was a local emergency, local to the driver’s seat of her car and her ass. So, God knows why, she decides to call me. She describes how she couldn’t stand it anymore and crossed her fingers and gently, hesitantly, let out some pressure. “Thank god it was just a fart,” she reflects. She was so relieved. “I’m living on the edge,” she muses, still regaining composure from what must have been a great scare. For those of you who don’t know, as I didn’t until Cheryl clued me in, when you are eight and a half months pregnant you go to the toilet every time you have to fart just in case it’s actually a real life honest to goodness poop trying to get through. I thought about this for a moment then tried to understand “So what you are telling me is that you had to take a shit so badly that it felt better to fart and risk taking a dump in your pants, in your car and driving the rest of the way home than it did to hold in your poop?” She chuckled, still driving. As I was beginning to wonder to what did I, in fact, own the pleasure of this strange phone call, Cheryl becomes urgent. “Shit, I have to pee.” “If you were willing to poop in you car certainly you can pee in it” I tease, dismissing her pregnant urgency. “Okay, I gotta go, I gotta concentrate.” “Okay, bye” “Okay, love you, bye” “Love you, bye” And she was gone. Welcome to the third trimester, folks, where finding the location of a bathroom is more important than, well, anything else. I am doing the sun-gazing for a total of nine months, and this poop story that my sister just told me makes me wonder what my eight and a half month growing pains may look like. Hopefully I won’t be dealing with incontinence, but with changes in my countenance. I am awed by the knowledge that a tiny little entire human being is growing and living and breathing inside my sister. I am even more in awe as I feel the outline of little Charlotte’s head and neck when I touch my sister’s belly. Nine short months ago my sister was just my sister, now she is somebody’s mother, and also huge. The appearance of Charlotte onto the scene, seemingly from nowhere (at least from my point of view) reminds me that so much can happen and change in this short period of time. An entire human can be created from scratch! I am aware that sun-gazing is not the same as pregnancy, however the nine-month NASA recommended program brings to mind the idea that the sunlight will be gestating inside me and transforming itself and me into something entirely new by the end; something that I give birth to, I guess. I am on one of those journey’s where you can sense there is something larger at work, like the guiding force that is always hiding behind the chaotic harmony of life tips his hand for a second and you can catch a glimpse of the strategies and patterns at work more clearly than usual. I am becoming whole as I, forgive the cliche, let the light shine in. That’s the pattern I’m in right now, and seeing that and knowing that fills me with a type of peace that is also a type of fear because it inevitably means some facet of my life or the foundation of my life is going to be drastically different by the time my experiment is through; that does sound an awful lot like pregnancy. I’m not even sure I understand fully in what ways exactly I was broken. And I don’t think I need to understand. I broke my wrist once years ago and if the doctor told me I was going to heal I believed I was going to heal. I didn’t need to know the names of the bones that were broken, or how ligaments worked, and I didn’t need to explore the route cause of my fall either, the only thing I needed to do was relax and let the healing take place on its own. The strangest part is that I wouldn’t have even known I was broken and I certainly wouldn’t have declared it in a blog if not for the fact that I am healing now. I can tell the difference, I can see the scars from the breaks, only from here, only by comparison, only now. I attribute this clarity of self-reflection, and my filterless willingness to vomit it out to the public a direct result of the sun light. I feel it charging me with peace, which in turn marinates into confidence, which eventually is cooked into wholeness and health. I feel fundamental shifts in my being, an overall precipitous drop in my anxiousness and an abundance of tranquility, and I’m barely three weeks pregnant. I can hear my sister now sighing, “just wait until you’re eight and a half months!” SIDE EFFECTS: The sun was a strain again today, as I still work to regain the conditioning that has diminished during my six days of relentless clouds BENEFITS: I can still control all my bowel movements and my bladder, sorry Cheryl, but it’s true.
DAY 25: 4 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing
I felt strange this morning. I missed the last six days of gazing due to a combination of cloudy weather, travel, a touch of oversleeping and finally what I interpreted to be a sun declared ultimatum that I must swear off of junk food or it was over between the Sun and me! Well I’ve become rather co-dependent on the sun over the last twenty five days so I’m going to make a go of this “no junk food” thing, starting with meat and processed foods and hopefully ending with six pack abs and a little extra bounce in my step (chai tea lattes excepted). I also traveled for 10 hours from New York City to Los Angeles yesterday so even my exhaustion was fatigued. My plane touched down in Los Angeles two hours late at 10:10 pm. My friend Rachel picked me up and we went straight to Taco Bell for some grub. Officially the no junk food policy hadn’t started yet, obviously. All they serve you on the plan is Doritos and eye rolls when you ask for a second bag; each bag has about six Doritos and some crumbs in it, so needless to say it’s not a very filling snack. After eight and a half hours I was a tad peckish. I enjoy healthy food, I do. So why do I feel like a prisoner on death row, and the gas chamber is actually Wholefoods and my last real meal was that Taco Bell I had eagerly inhaled. The sun was bright today. My eyes have lost all their conditioning, or at least a good chunk of it. I was fighting an impulse to squint for the entire duration this morning. It felt good to have my feet pressed into the cold earth and I began to feel myself expand again (and I don’t mean from all the junk food) as I stood out in the wide open, surrounded by hills and bunnies and birds and being drenched by the sun. I am not sure if the sun was coming on so strong because he missed me or because he was pissed that I hadn’t been around for a few days. While I lean toward the idea that he missed me dearly, I also must entertain the unlikely possibility that my eyes just need to get used to my daily doses of sun rays again. During my cloud-forced absence from sun-gazing I missed twenty minutes of cumulative light entering into my system. So in an effort to fill my cells back to the brim with solar power I am going to be doing 2 minutes of extra gazing at sunset each day for the next ten days in addition to the morning gazing. I like to think of it as a make up class. I am going to night school, well, sunset school anyway. SIDE EFFECTS: If you do not remain diligent and consistent the conditioning that you achieve does seem to diminish. My other theory is that the more toxic things I ingest the harsher the light becomes. BENEFITS: I will be visiting with the sun twice a day for the next ten days, and the giddiness still fills me every time so I’m thinking this is going to rock.
DAYS 19-23: Attempts to Gaze in Connecticut
I haven’t seen so much as a glimmer of the morning or evening sun in five days, and if the weather forecast in Fairfield CT holds true I won’t be seeing her tomorrow either. The last time I gazed I was standing in a converted above-ground subway station in New York City; later that same night a drunk angle came up to me and told me I needed to be in this gazing thing all the way and not eat junk food or drink heavily during this quest, in not so many words. And that encounter, hunched over the bar waiting for shots of gin with my drunk heavenly host had quite an impact on me. I took him seriously, took my shot, took a subway back to Brooklyn with Ben, and through circumstances beyond my control, took a five day break from sun-gazing. I tried to gaze, because I was inspired anew. I wanted to take the angels advice and be in this thing all the way. I woke up the next morning in Brooklyn with a hangover that was anything but heavenly, but I knew I’d see the sun that night when I arrived at my sister’s place in the small town of Black Rock, in southern Connecticut. My sister, Cheryl, tried to take me down to the water in her new Hyundai SUV but the clouds, that I’m starting to think have come to really dislike me, had gathered in such large numbers to mock me that it looked as if the sky was a piece of toast that had been slathered with far too much cream cheese to even be sure there was toast underneath. Undeterred, I thought I would make up the time tomorrow and keep moving forward. After all I was in this all the way now. Saturday morning I woke up before my sister and her husband, snuck out pre-dawn to do my morning chanting and find a practical perch from which to greet the morning sun. Before I left West Hollywood I loaded my favorite version of the chants onto my iPhone, so now parked in Seaside Park in Bridgeport CT, I popped my headphones into my ears, adjusted the car heat to the perfect level of cozy and chanted away. I found out later that morning from my sister that Seaside Park is a dangerous place in a bad part of town where white people in SUV’s are either buying drugs or getting mugged. I thought about what I must have looked like sitting in her car, a hapless dupe in headphones chanting my heart out; I suddenly became very grateful to still be alive. The sky brightened and the clouds smirked at me as they obscured the sun completely. I imagine now they were saying “you don’t get to see the sun today but at least you’re not getting shot at so don’t say the universe never did anything for you.” I reply in my head, “somebody woke up on the wrong side of the sun today,” which I think may have inflamed the clouds even more because Sunday morning I overslept. Sunday evening I was going to have dinner with my mom and her new boyfriend and despite the fact that my mom wanted to introduce me to a new Italian restaurant she thought I’d love, I requested we find a restaurant on the eastern shore of New Haven, facing west, so I could excuse myself from the meal and steal a few minutes of gazing as the sun went down. Everyone seemed okay with this odd request, even though it might seem crazy that I want to see the sunset so desperately. But I was desperate; I had missed two days in a row already. So everyone gave their blessing, everyone except the clouds of course; They were right on schedule standing guard at the gate. Monday was grey at both morning and evening, and this morning was unforgivingly and predictably more grey. As I was discussing this phenomena of the clouds ganging up on me, my sister pointed out that my drunk angel had said to stop eating junk food. I gave her a look like “so?” She laughed as she listed off the box of Oreo’s, the two boxes of danish, the swiss cheese flavored Cheez-it crackers and the piles of sausage I’ve eaten since arriving at her place. What was she trying to say? The sun was hiding from me on purpose because I’ve been eating like a toxic teenager? Well that’s just stupid I reacted and told her to go to work already. But now, as much as I hate to admit this, I think she might have a point. I don’t think she really believes that the sun is reacting to my diet, but she knows I would believe it, and it turns out, I think she was right. So now I have a choice, what kind of diet will I have today? And will the sun show itself to me again in reply. The forecast already predicts rain. We already have sausages in the fridge for dinner, and I’ve already missed five days of gazing. So I’ve decided to just enjoy my last day here, swerve with abandon into the junk food skid, and go at this gazing thing all the way tomorrow night, when I get all the way back home. SIDE EFFECTS: I think the sun has issued an ultimatum. Junk food or me! BENEFITS: I’m going to give up junk food…but just not yet, please, not quite yet.
DAY 18: 3 Minutes of Gazing – Manhattan
I woke up to a bright day in full swing and to the sounds of traffic roaring on this bustling Brooklyn morning. So seeing the sunrise was definitely out. Plan B was to watch the sun go down from The High Line, a decommissioned above ground subway track that has been converted into a beautiful, and I’ll say very well-designed Manhattan park. I’d been wanting to see this park for a while now and I needed to catch up on sleep from my marathon travel day yesterday, so I smiled at the thought of the warm sunset I’d see later, pulled the covers over my head and didn’t emerge for another two hours. Ben and I filled the rest of our morning with conversation and pot smoke as we laughed and caught up on old times and new developments. Ben is the type of friend I feel at home in, like an old sweater that I don’t wear much but when I do put it on I always marvel at how comfortable it is and it brings back so many great memories. The only reason I don’t wear it more is because it lives in Brooklyn and I live in LA. It even smells like old times. Okay so the analogy of the sweater begins to unravel at this point but the gist of it is that I was in high spirits frittering the morning away with an old friend. His hilarious web series that I like to say is loosely based on my life as a marijuana delivery guy is in the TriBeCa Film Festival this week so he took me along to the Filmmakers Lounge with him for the afternoon. While he conducted interviews I ate coconut macaroons. I plopped myself down in a womb chair in the converted Chelsea store front and caught up on my blog and on Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, the sequel to Jordan Belfort’s best seller The Wolf of Wall Street which I gobbled up like candy last year. At some point in the afternoon Ben wandered over to me to conduct one of his “man on the street” style interviews about filmmaking and who was my inspiration etc. etc. I spoke about my blog and my sun gazing adventure and then we discussed Joss Whedon, who’s lesbian witch storyline on Buffy the Vampire Slayer single handedly gave me the strength to come out of the closet and embrace who I truly am, as strange as that may sound. Later in the day the sound guy, Dimitiri, told me that he had been listening to Ben do these interviews all day and that mine had been intriguing and the only one worth listening to. And at the after party we all attended everybody wanted to know about this sun-gazing thing. This took me off guard because I am so used to it that gazing has become normal to me. All my neighbors in LA are either used to it or doing it with me so it becomes easy to forget that my sun-gazing experiment makes me look like a fringe lunatic who just happens to not be homeless. Right before the after party, and after the day of interviews, Ben and I made our way to The High Line where we scouted out the perfect expansive spot from which to gaze. Today marks three full minutes of gazing; another milestone I thought as the idea of “three minutes” registered in my mind and impressed even me. Ben kept the time for me and I gazed. Sunlight poured into my eyes and tears poured out. After it was over Ben did his first ten seconds of gazing and said he had the same experience of the brightness disappearing and the light inviting you in. The sun “revealed itself to him” is how he put it. We walked, wrapped in peace and excitement to the after party, where it turns out, I would answer many questions on my sun-gazing experiment. One of the men on the film crew is a fellow gazer from Ecuador, Sebastian, who said he gazed off an on for years and felt improvements in his confidence and his mind. After we were a few drinks deep, Sebastian and I went to the bar to get everyone another round. When we were alone his jovial drunken demeanor turned suddenly grave and ernest as he said “you can’t be drinking man, you gotta ask yourself why are you doing this? Why are you gazing and it’s not to do this, it’s not to eat that junk and drink,” then he looked at me directly in the eyes as he poked me in the heart with a gentle tap and said “only you know why you are doing this man, and you gotta do it all the way.” Then just as suddenly as the earnestness had come on, it evaporated and the jolly drunk party goer was back again. I felt deeply affected by his words, as if he had channeled an angel from heaven to give me an urgent message. Something sacred and important just happened it seemed to me. We grabbed the round of shots we ordered and headed back to our group, my mind reeling from a gem of wisdom given to me in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times, and the messenger seemed to have no idea that anything profound or sacred had happened at all. SIDE EFFECTS: Drunken party goers may unknowingly channel angels from heaven that have personal messages for you. And then do a round of shots. BENEFITS: I am more and more at peace even with more and more strangeness manifesting itself around me.
DAY 17: 2 Minutes & 50 Seconds of Gazing – Sunset Park, Brooklyn NY
For a massive ball of fire that’s bigger than the planet it’s surprisingly hard to find a way to get a few minutes of a glimpse at it every day. Especially when I’m traveling. I am currently in NYC for a few days visiting some friends. I didn’t really think this all through because even though I am on the east coast (which I thought meant I was set for easy sunrise gazing) I am actually surrounded by very tall buildings that make it hard to see the sun when its low on the horizon, exactly the time when I need to gaze. I arrived to New York City’s JFK airport at 4:45 am. Sunrise was to be at 6:03 so I figured I had an hour and 15 minutes to get myself set up on the beach, relaxed and barefoot, and ready to gaze. I needed to be sure to gaze today because I only got 40 bullshit seconds of gazing yesterday on my way to the airport, through a mobile gas station, in my socks and shoes and in Summer (my convertible). All against the rules, but I thought, better than nothing. I didn’t want to take any chances of missing the morning show so I dropped $50 on a taxi and arrived at Brighton Beach/Cony Island at 5:30am, with plenty of time to spare before the sun was to appear. I squandered 20 minutes of that time away walking to a pavilion that I thought could shield me from the bitter whipping wind as I waited for the sun to shine. The pavilion didn’t help one bit, but it did have benches, so gratefully I sat down, plopped my luggage on the bench beside me, caught my breath and relaxed. I had been awake for 25 straight hours at this point (except for the hour of pot induced slumber I got on the plane) so I was a little pooped. I had plenty of time now and the sand was just right here in front of me for when the moment came. I wasn’t going to take my shoes and socks off any earlier than I had to because it’s ice cold out in these quiet pre-dawn hours. As the time ticked closer and close to 6:03 I noticed something strange about the sky. It was still dark, I mean the whole sky was lighter but the source of that light didn’t appear to be over yonder on the horizon. It appeared to be coming from my left, over the line of very tall buildings hemming me in. So for the first time in 5 years of having an iPhone I hurriedly opened my compass app to find that i was on a south facing beach and indeed I would not be seeing the sun rise over the water on the beach where I was standing anytime soon. Why don’t they tell you in school that even on the east coast you might not be on a beach that is actually facing east? I bet that’s a very common mistake and should be covered in third grade instead of teaching us cursive. I mean who uses that? I could have actually used the little tidbit about the beaches. Just my two cents. So I contemplated running in my pajamas, with my luggage and without my dignity, to see if I could catch the sun from the streets, or make it all the way beyond the buildings, or if only I could already fly, then I could just float up and see it all easy like. Instead I gave up. As I moped all the way to the subway I cursed how it still proved difficult to see the sunrise even when you were on the eastern goddamn coast of the country. I made my way to Ben’s neighborhood, got myself a sugar rush in the form of a vanilla chai tea latte and a donut and since I’d been awake for 26 hours at this point I promptly fell deeply asleep with my face pressed firmly into the hot pink and orange table top. I won’t confirm this for certain, but there may have been some drooling. The Dunkin’ Donuts pink and orange color scheme was the closest thing to a sunrise I was going to get today. So sunset became my only hope if I didn’t want to fall seriously behind. I spent the day relaxing in my friend Ben’s Prospect Park Brooklyn apartment, feeling at peace because I had formed a fool proof plan for catching the sunset today. I was going to Sunset Park, so named for it’s hills that put you high above most of the buildings and give you a good view of the western shore of Brooklyn as the sun sets over the water. Or so I thought. Sunset was to be at 7:54, so I left Ben’s place at 5:30, dropped $20 more on a taxi so I could relax with a slice of NY pizza in the neighborhood of the park while waiting for the right moment to gaze. The taxi driver acted like he was doing me a favor by not turning on the meter because I had agreed to pay cash, so he was only going to charge me $20. I was thrilled. I am being blessed in my endeavor by the universe because of my single-minded passion to follow through and getting a cheaper cab ride than the masses of “sheeple” who don’t pursue their passions the same way because of that fact, I thought. I congratulated myself for currying the favor of the universe yet again, and pitied the world around me for being so lost in their own drama that they couldn’t see what was plain to me, that life is trying to support us at every turn. On the return trip however, which was exactly the same distance, the cabbie clicked on his meter and my total ended up at only $12.00
DAY 16: Only 40 Seconds of Gazing
Well I screwed this all up. I tried to gaze at sunrise but there was a thick dark grey helmet of fog like I’ve never seen before at the top of the mountain on my usual grassy mound. I think the clouds had gathered forces after a weather pattern from Hoboken read my blog and told them I’ve been talking smack about clouds. The sky was literally smirking and telling me to fuck off! Well, you’re not so smart you wise ass little gigantic fog storm. I can just check the weather report on my handy dandy phone right here and see that, oh yup, it’s going to be sunny tonight over West Hollywood for the sunset. So in your face you puffy little gang of collected moisture, why don’t you go rain on somebody else’s parade. I turned around, drove back down the mountain in a huff, and vowed to see the sunset tonight, so all was well. This was not to be so. I was planning to sip some sun real quick at 6:55 and then head to the airport at 7:00 to catch a red eye to New York city to see a few friends and then head to my final destination in Connecticut to see my 8-month pregnant sister and her husband. As I was heading out I got absorbed in conversation with my ride to the airport and forgot all about the sun until we were cruising down La Cienega, top down, and the sun starts casting the deep orange glow that hits me like an alarm clock every day at sunrise and sunset now. I threw an “oh fuck” out there into the universe and thought okay I’ll do it at a red light. But it’s 2 minutes and thirty seconds, what red light is that freaking long (well there is actually this one light at six am that skips you sometimes and you have to wait forever, but that’s not the point.) The point is I was cruising to the airport to catch a flight and the sun was sinking lower every second. I managed to get 40 seconds of on the fly gazing in at the longest red light we encountered until a mini van pulled up beside us, between me and the sun. By the next light, poof, the sun was gone. Night fell upon me quickly. I popped a marijuana candy into my mouth at security that I’d been saving for the flight, and forty five minutes later I was in dream land. I started this blog entry when I woke up and was interrupted by the busy-body flight attendant telling me to stow my gear for landing. Stow my gear. Fuck her. I was on fire here. But alas TSA flight regulations and my eagerness to get off the plane forced my hand. So I am finishing up this entry now as I sit in my pajamas (which I wore on the plane) on a bench in Brighton Beach Brooklyn waiting for the sun to rise because I am not going to miss it again! For the first time since my quest began I will be gazing on the East coast over the Atlantic Ocean. In my pajamas on a beach in Brooklyn. Freezing my ass off. SIDE EFFECTS: Travel schedules must be planned around the sun’s schedule, because despite how much calm and tranquility she instills in me, she is completely inflexible when it comes to her sunrise and sunset appointments. BENEFITS: I discovered one useful thing about red lights. Finally red lights have shown their usefulness for something.
DAY 15: 2 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing
I woke up at 3:30 am, went to the yoga studio, laid out my yoga mat, straightened out my sheepskin mat cover just so, arranged my water bottle in reaching distance, took off my socks, cleared my throat to get ready for the chanting, and promptly fell asleep for the full two hours of it. I awoke automatically at 5:58 am, as if the sun had volunteered to tap me on the shoulder so I wouldn’t miss our morning appointment. I packed everything up, put my socks back on, put my water bottle away and raced up the hill like I do every other day to catch the fiery frisbee as it hurls itself up toward the zenith of the sky. I arrived at our grassy mound with minutes to spare before the glow of the actual disc began to show itself. Brett and I have been learning a mantra to say in our heads as we stare, and to repeat to ourselves in the moments before we stare to ready our minds for the healing and vitality. The mantra: “The perfection of God is now being expressed through me. The idea of perfect health is now filling my subconscious mind. The image God has of me is a perfect image; my subconscious mind recreates my body in perfect accordance with the perfect image held in the mind of God.” I should explain here that by God I do not mean anything resembling an actual man, bearded or otherwise, and certainly not holding a staff and looking down on us with contempt. I also don’t mean a woman, shrouded in vines with the ability to command the earth at her will. And I don’t mean Jesus, or Buddha, or Gaia, or Mohammed. I simply mean the energy of life, the thing that makes anything you can think of grow. The force science can’t name but that is clearly underneath everything we call alive. By God I mean the force of life, the preference toward harmony, the surrounding energy that makes the sun rise and my fingernails grow. Atop the grassy mound, I pulled my socks off for the second time since 3:30 am, but this time I stood up, firmly planted on the earth instead of curled up in a ball on my sheep skin yoga mat sleeping through chants. I stilled my heart and began repeating our mantra out loud until the sun was fully in view. Then I switched to saying the mantra internally, switched on my timer, and gazed. There is no challenge in this aspect for me anymore. My eyes love the sunlight and they don’t squint or try to turn away from the easy morning spectrum that used to make my whole face contort in an ache just 15 days ago. The camaraderie between the sun and myself continues to deepen. I actually turned back to it on my way up the path after the gazing today, waved and said with a smile “Thank you, see you tomorrow.” The old man who I pass daily on his morning hike looked at me like “who the hell are you talking to?”, but I thought it was obvious. I am talking to the sun. I’m sure it seemed strange to him, just as the teary eyed weirdo who gazes from the heart of West Hollywood during sunset seems strange to my neighbors. But, I swear the sun waved back to me and said “you betcha.” The sun is continuing to communicate with me. I know it has much to say and much to relate and I push for answers as I gaze. I feel a hand being raised to me in the midst of the ball of fire saying “patience Brian, the secrets I hold will be revealed, but first you must learn to love yourself the way I love you. I shine on all things equally, all people equally. You too must learn to bring that sameness of love to all with whom you interact. And I will help you, but there is no rush.” But I want to transcend into bliss now, Goddammit! As I push for a new revelation the sun is unmoved, unbothered, and still unbridled. She warms or she burns. She enhances vision or makes blind. But one thing she won’t do: whatever I want, whenever I want. I am starting to understand that I don’t need to be in a rush, because the energy passed to me by the unpredictable sun is a rush of it’s own. I’ve been gazing, seeking answers and healing. But it’s simpler than that I’m learning. The only good reason to gaze, is so you can see the light. SIDE EFFECTS: Again, none! BENEFITS: Deeper feelings of calm and tranquility than I have experienced in years of city living.
DAY 14: 2 Minutes & 20 Seconds of Gazing
I tried this morning to catch the sunrise again, but the clouds were there first, determined to distract from the show. The clouds are like that asshole in movie theaters who answers their cell phone and has an entire conversation during the best action scenes. Just like the clouds at sunrise, they ruin the entire experience. So I stood in front of my West Hollywood bungalow at dusk a block away from Santa Monica Boulevard and gazed at the setting sun. From my vantage point in West Hollywood I don’t have the luxury of waiting until just 3 minutes before sunset because there are buildings in the way so I have to gaze when the sun is thirty minutes from setting and still has the sting of bright white heat beaming it’s way toward me. I know I can do this though because I stood here on day twelve and, although the light was bright and I cried, it wasn’t painful and my eyes adjusted just as easily. I was surprised and delighted. So, with my friend Johanna at my side I grabbed the earth with my bare feet, clinched my toes around the cool ground and stared away. Tears streamed down my face but despite the sharp white edges of the sunlight there was no pain today. My eyes are officially conditioned to accept the sun. I get squinty when the water pools up in my sockets but as soon as I blink it free my face relaxes and the gaze continues undisturbed. As my eyes adjust more and more to the light I notice new facets of the sun. For example, I can see now this ring that zips around the edge of the disc, it circles the sun in white, then circles the opposite direction in black, then changes direction and circles in white again. It’s as if the sun has the Chinese Yin/Yang symbol hidden behind it and we can see the outer edges of the black and white design as it teeters around and then around the other way, then back around the first way again. I am feeling more and more balanced within myself as I keep to my ritual and watch the sun so it’s no surprise that the very symbol of balance and duality would be housed up there in the ball of fire. The days are starting to blend together and I accidentally gazed for an extra 10 seconds today. There was no pain, no bursting of the retina, no dizzying blindness. Just ten extra seconds of beautiful yellow light. People passed by and did their usual double takes at the barefooted weirdo crying and wide-eyed like a zombie staring off into space. The distractions of the city and the strange looks I get don’t even phase me anymore. After we were done today Johanna commented that I was so focused on the sun. But the truth is that it is easy to focus because staring at the sun is even more delicious than staring at a piece of fine art. It’s alive. It is staring back. I am not simply appreciating beauty like one does when they gaze at a sculpture in a gallery, I am interacting with beauty. I am being unmade and remade by this beauty into something even more beautiful. They say looking at good art changes a person. I’m starting to realize that looking at the sun changes everything. SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: The sun has details within it, behind it and around it. And the more my eyes adjust to the light the more I can make out these details, and they are mysterious, breathtaking, like a treasure only a few lucky souls will ever get to experience.
