- Maya the Good's search for understanding and her place
in the universe has me thinking about my own quest, which took over my
life almost 20 years ago, yanking me out of Los Angeles and the Hollywood
Way and bringing me - after many a detour - here to Paradise.
-
- What happened - and I'll be brief here, I promise - was
that the time came when I no longer could deny that I hated my life. Because
it didn't feel like my life at all, but like a part I was playing.
-
- Hollywood writer!
-
- With a big house in the hills! Fancy cars! Expensive
women!
-
- I was caught up in a culture where having a good parking
space at the studio meant more than anything.
-
- My idiocy hit me right between the eyes. And one evening
in 1991 there I was, making my getaway along I-40.
-
- In the passenger seat beside me lay the Navajo Dog, the
homeless red and white creature who'd jumped into my car the year before,
on the Navajo reservation.
-
- In the back seat was a pile of suitcases full of Levi's,
T-shirts, jackets and way too many pairs of cowboy boots. And in the cargo
area behind them were boxes of comic books I'd been collecting since the
'60s and my old Ludwig drum set, the one that'd made me a hero when I played
in various high school rock bands.
-
- Nothing else seemed worth taking.
-
- And I wasn't too sure about most of this stuff, either.
-
- I still was unable to be entirely honest with myself,
so my left brain told my right brain this was a research trip. That I was
"tracking the magic," as in trying to discover whether the fantasy
I'd written about for a big part of my life existed in the real world.
-
- "This is the right thing to do," the Navajo
Dog said. "You won't regret it."
-
- And I didn't.
-
- For three years, I traveled with outlaw bikers and motorcycle
patrolmen. I slept outside with wild horses and inside with wild cowboys.
In the company of beloved elders and medicine men and ministers and priests,
I flew with soaring eagles and swam with bottom-scraping catfish.
-
- I learned to love doublewide trailers and the bemused
open-mindedness of those living in them. To see beauty everywhere I looked
even if it meant having to squint or completely close my eyes. At night,
I watched stars dance around each other in the sky. During the day, I talked
to buffalo. My evening meals were rabbits the Navajo Dog chased down.
-
- Most folks would've said I had nothing, but when I grasped
that nothing, with my hands, my heart, my mind, I discovered it was everything.
I discovered that all I surveyed also was surveying me - and that we were
a part of each other.
-
- I touched the trees and became them. Felt the millions
of living things, large and microscopic, that made their home in those
other versions of me. One of my branches touched my body and I became human
again. Felt the millions of living things, the bacteria, the mitochondria,
that made their home in that original version of me.
-
- And as I did all this, as I searched for the truth of
the basic nature of being, I discovered and felt something else.
-
- Love.
-
- Not that treacly, "I need you," man-and-woman
stuff. Not that that lusty, "I want you," man-and-woman stuff,
either. A whole other kind of love. A universal force that holds everything
and everyone together spiritually the way gravity holds us together physically.
A connection that made me feel valued and cherished and cared about no
matter where I went or who I was, or wasn't, with.
-
- Now, years after the thrill of belonging first made me
smile, I feel it even more strongly. There I was just a few minutes ago,
starting my morning coffee, when I heard myself say, "I love you,"
to the Mr. Coffee maker.
-
- And heard it reply.
-
- I was completely caught up in the moment, feeling it
with every fiber of my being. Aware of the fact that I was getting ready
for the day and that it was a wonderful thing to be doing. Just as I'm
aware of it every morning. And of everything else I do as well.
-
- Ah, how wonderful to be able to write this, as I sip
from my steaming mug.
-
- How wonderful to be alive in a world where the fantasy
is real.
-
-
- Copyright C 2007 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
-
- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
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