Jedi Master

I can recall three experiences where for a brief moment I was perfectly aligned with the forces of nature.  I came to understand at an early age that some events that are considered to be supernatural are in fact natural.  It's only due to the rarity of these events that they appear to be beyond the normal world.  When I was a little kid living with my parents there were a lot of books in our house.  My mother started out as a librarian and later managed retail book sales for Nash's department store in Pasadena.  She was always bringing home books for a "quick look see" but few were ever returned.  My mother favored no particular genre and our collection spanned the full range of the Dewey Decimal System.    

I was partial to some of the books that fell into the Dewey 200 classification that covers philosophy and religion.  I wasn't able to read yet but I discovered a few books with lots of pictures that I found totally fascinating.  My favorite was published around the early 1900s and included grainy black and white photos of some Sufi masters walking across the surface of a pond and others levitating a few feet above the ground while in a lotus position.  The others that captivated me were on Zen and Taoism where I got hooked on the architecture and the gardens shown in the photos.  Despite not yet being able to read I was certain these books from China, Japan and Turkey were all barking up the same tree.  I was in my early teens before I could comprehend enough of the text to confirm my initial take that they were in deed very similar.

The first time the force was with me, I was in the fourth grade playing kickball at Eagle Rock Elementary.  I had a disagreement over something with another boy.  The boy was holding the ball and when we finished arguing I turned and began to walk away.  There were no warning words or sounds but with my back to the boy, before I completed my first step, I sensed he was going to throw the ball at the back of my head.  I ducked just as the ball went whizzing through the space where my head had been a split second before.  

My next experience came when I was teaching art to high school kids enrolled in an Upward Bound program at Occidental in the summer of 1966.  Susan Kirk was one of my students.  She had graduated from Franklin High School and was to begin as a freshman at Occidental later that fall.  In addition to being a talented illustrator she also liked to talk about art.  One afternoon I was telling her what I knew about perspective and the visual clues that convey depth of field.  We walked up onto the hills behind the campus to view sight lines formed by the grid of streets in the neighborhood below.  The view out to the horizon also made it easy to see how color intensity and definition fade with distance.  

Out of the blue Susan asked me, "What's the thing with Zen Archery?"

I said, "Where's that coming from?"

Susan said, "Somebody was talking about it the other day and it sounded weird."

I said, "I'm no expert.  I can only tell you what I think it is."

Susan said, "Go ahead."

I said, "I think the main point is not to try."

Susan said, "Gee, that is so helpful."

I said, "Listen smart ass, it's not easy to explain something when you're not sure you even understand it.  I need a minute to find the right words."

Susan said, "Take your time."

I said, "Typically a person will TRY to hit the bulls eye by maintaining their stance and consciously controlling the aiming and coordination of their eyes and muscles to launch the arrow.  With Zen archery you do NOT TRY to consciously control any part of the task.  Once you've seen the target your mind is capable of instantly knowing the exact direction, trajectory and pulling force required to hit the bulls eye with a bow and arrow.  You must turn your head away from the target then pull and release the arrow but without applying any physical effort to control its flight.  There is no need to look at the target with your eyes because your mind knows exactly where it is.  Looking at the target with your eyes actually interferes with your ability to send off the arrow without controlling it.  The hard part is to NOT TRY in the typical manner and to trust your mind.  At least that's how I understand it is supposed to work."

During this conversation Susan and I were standing on the edge of a hill with a steep four-story drop down to a maintenance yard.  I looked down and saw an empty trash barrel that was standing upright.  From our vantage point it looked smaller than a Dixie cup.  I said to Susan, "See that trash can down there?"

Susan said, "Yeah."

I picked up a rock the size of a tennis ball, turned my back to the trash can and flung the rock high up back over my head.  I somehow managed to do this quickly, spontaneously and without giving any thought to it.  I turned back around and watched with Susan as the rock rose to the peak of its upward flight, then began a long descent down to the yard below, and landed dead center in the bottom of the trash can with a resounding clank.

My third and final experience came a year after the trash can demonstration.  Gerben was living in Venice in a house on Quarterdeck Street about fifty yards from the sand.  I spent some weekends at the house which always began with a trip to the supermarket on Friday afternoon.  On weekends the town was overwhelmed by a flood of people and cars during the summer.  The locals knew to hunker down and avoid leaving the house.  The traffic was complete madness on the weekend and you dared not move your car from its parking space on the street for the full two days.  This meant all of the residents mobbed the stores to stock up on provisions every Friday afternoon prior to the onslaught.   

I was at the market and had finished picking out what I needed.  I rolled my cart up to the back of one of the very long lines at the checkstands.  In the late 1960s there were no bar code scanners or debit cards.  Everyone waiting in line had a cart filled to the brim.  Nearly everyone wrote out a personal check when it came time to pay.  I could see it was going to take forever and I wanted to get to the beach. 

It is difficult to describe what happened next.  In an instant I began to act before I even realized what I was doing.  Once I understood where things were headed, I knew with absolute certainty that it would succeed.  Without taking any time to think or plan, I left my cart and found myself walking past the eight people waiting in line ahead of me and made my way up to the checkstand.  While the checker waited for a customer to finish writing out a check, I politely asked her for four paper bags.  The checker was completely focused on getting people through the line at fast as possible and without even a glance she handed me the bags.  I returned to my cart where I proceeded to place all of my items into the bags but found that only three bags were needed. 

Then, one by one, I nicely asked each of the people in line ahead of me to move their cart aside to let me by as I was leaving the store.  Once they understood I was not trying to cut in front of them but was instead headed out of the store, they were more than happy to help.  When I reached the checkstand I handed the checker the extra bag and told her, "Thank you.  It turns out I only needed three."

The checker replied, "No problem".

I pushed the cart out to the parking lot and loaded the bags into the back seat of my VW. 

The whole thing had come off like the scene in the first Star Wars movie where Obi Wan Kenobi slips through a checkpoint with a sly smile and a wave of his hand as he tells the imperial storm troopers, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."  Once past the checkpoint he says to Luke, R2-D2 and C-3PO, "The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded."

Gerben's car was parked next to mine in the supermarket lot.  He had arrived at the store far ahead of me to do his own shopping and was just now bringing his things out to his car.  He gave me a disapproving look and said, "You just walked out of there without paying, didn't you?"

I foolishly tried to defend myself saying, "Well it's what they deserve for not having enough checkers on Friday afternoons."

At the time I couldn't bring myself to tell him I lacked the strength to resist the dark side of the force.