The Beanstalk

It’s March 17, 2013.  I was born at 17 Jackson Street.  Two days ago my friend Jack visited for the first time in two and a half years.  Today I wished him well at the airport and onto his next journey, back to Australia to resume life with his love, found while serving his fellow humans in the strangest of places.  Specifically, he worked in Tonga for two years, with the Peace Corps.  He’s one of the best people I know.  He’s the best teacher by example I’ve ever been blessed to mix paths with.  So many journeys together… but life goes on.  The more you explore, the more familiar the globe, and the continued drive to embrace the greater possibilities that are always present and always pulling you away from the ones who understand the parts of you that need some extra explaining for other audiences.  It was great to see him, and very hard to say good bye again after so much time, but making the world a playground is our project, and we're both aware that we're lucky to even be playing here.  I gave him a crudely printed copy of my first public book, which I'd just written unexpectedly while thinking about writing this other book I'm writing.  It's about all of the friends you meet out in the big wide world, and how they help you get through this thing called life and have the most fun as possible, and help you fight the fear and loneliness.

                It was September 2010 the last time I saw this great friend, traveler and teacher.  I’d just told him and the rest of my great friends, travelers and teachers that I was going to try to go on a journey to the pyramids of Mexico by way of an airplane from San Francisco, California, which would be reached by a cross country journey on land from where we were, upstate New York.  I had just finished a very long journey around the world, and it only made sense at the time to keep exploring as much as possible, and learning and growing and having fun in new ways.  I had just seen some of the most different intriguing places in the world, and met all of these people in the world who knew my supposed home land better than I did.  I had the time and the means, so I looked at an atlas of the US and mapped a rough outline of a route through the south across Texas to the southwest and southern California up to San Francisco, with the main focus being the Grand Canyon, because I had heard it was the most beautiful place in America.  For example, a few years earlier, I was in a really bad state of mind in Queens, New York, and my friend played me this Bob Dylan poem where he said that you would find God in the Grand Canyon at sundown.  I had just started hiking and camping, and I wanted to do it when I was in my prime ability to experience it at its best.  I’d also heard that San Francisco was the best place to live on the other side of America if you liked New York but wanted to experience something new, diverse and full of stories.  And of course, the pyramids.  You can stand on top of them down there.  They’re gigantic art objects that stand the test of time, although they might require a little extra imagination for those who aren’t used to seeing magical mystery in the world’s living history.  And Mexico.  I mean… Mexico!  It’s like in that song “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon & Garfunkel, where they say to catch your plane right on time and your part will go fine and to let (434) your honesty shine.  My dad quoted it in his high school senior year book as his favorite quote: “I gather all the news I need on the weather report.”  He likes doing stuff outside.  Me too.  That’s why I planned that crazy journey.  Plus I figured I’d meet so many people from my country, people I’d heard about and read about and seen on television, and had formed all of these opinions about but didn’t actually know anything about at all because I didn’t know them from direct experience.  Same with the landscapes.  Beautiful landscapes are super mushrooms for the soul like in that Japanese video game.  In one of them you get a gold star atop the pyramid.  But it’s not easy to get there, and it might take a few tries sometimes.  It’s usually easiest if you learn how to fly to the top and not bother with the climb.

                You can always set out on a journey at any moment you get the idea and feel it, but it’s usually best to ask some sort of guide or map before setting out if you’re thinking of planning anything at all.  It’s always best to start with your friends, the ones who are experiencing life at the levels nearest yours.  When it comes to individual journeys in foreign territory, Jack is a supremely respected trailblazer and contemporary, and always good company.  Life has put us in the same place at the same time so many times, for very important intense experiences, yet always knowing that the paths are many, and it’s the nature of curious minds to wander on their own to as many carnival booths as possible in the big Bonnaroo of life.  We were born on the same island, although we did not know each other until whoever decides housing at Cornell decided that we should live in the same wing of the same dormitory hall.  And due to Jack’s eagerness to experience and meet as much as possible on his path, I inevitably found my way across his, as did many other lucky ones.  He was way ahead of me in loving his fellow humans, and experiencing life with them and trying as much newness as possible and always keeping in mind the best benefit for everyone in life: to remember to have fun and not worry about their image or judgment, but to take care of each other.  I didn’t know him very well for the first year, although there were many great moments where I was feeling down and he appeared out of nowhere to spread his positive energy and show me I could keep going with my own journey.  We all got to know each other more throughout the year, although he moved to a different dormitory in the second year while a bunch of the rest of us got an apartment further away.  We all saw each other a lot that year anyway, and the next year he went to Australia when I went to New Zealand, and then visited me during his break, which was in New Zealand anyway.  He had just started learning how to hitchhike.  I was amazed at his bravery and care free spirit and trust of his fellow humans.  He’s the kind of person who sleeps in the desert and wakes up to find a poisonous spider on his face and calmly pulls it off and places it away from him and tells the story later on as “it happened”, without any kind of self-importance or even flair for effect in his experience.  It’s another great story that just happened from the same journey I’m living within.   He also looked after me the first two times I explored the mystery of magic beans...

It only made sense for him to be my journey sensei when I had finally come around to hitchhiking and camping out in the desert on my own out west, on a personal quest to live my myth as I best intuited and reasoned for the short term experience and long term wisdom to handle whatever came next.  It could only expand my possibilities, if anything.

                On a sunny afternoon, September 2010, we sat in a canoe and floated on the waves for a while, as I have done with so many friends and will continue to do as much as I can share with my fellow humans.  Then we sat on the porch by the lake as the sun sparkled and all of the other great friends had already headed south, back to New York City and Ithaca and points nearby.  I was giving him a ride back to my parents’ farm, and then a ride to his friend’s in Amsterdam, a city in the capital region of upstate New York.  I wasn’t going to see Jack again for at least two years.  He was going to Tonga within the month, and this was his big visit.  I’d seen him once before since traveling the world, at my friend;s wedding earlier that summer, the first wedding of the college friends.

                He told me the great benefits of hitchhiking.  He said it’s the most freeing feeling he’s ever experienced, and the best experience was spreading it to someone else who had never thought of even trying.  We had also both separately come across this great Old Crow Medicine Show song about hitchhiking, originally written by Dylan.  Jack had already lived the reality when he heard the song, in China actually, when he was teaching English, the first year out of college.  I heard it the week I graduated from college, performed live by a beautiful bluegrass duet, and it filled me with the romance of such a magical musical journey through a beautiful part of the country I had just seen during a spring break road adventure with my friends.  We’d driven through many of the towns named in the song too.  Jack and I both saw it performed live at Bonnaroo 2007, my second Bonnaroo and his first, which he got the idea to go to because he’d heard the song in China and wanted to know where that band would be playing it live that summer.  I was already completely in love with the music circus in Tennessee from my first experience the year before with two other great friends, Glenn and Greg.  Greg and Jack were roommates for much of college, and Greg lived with Joe and me for a while in New York.  He lives in Ithaca now, and had gone home earlier when Jack was coaching me on hitchhiking.  “You have two seconds to sell yourself.  It’s like that book ‘Blink’.  They’re going by fast, and you need to catch their eye and make them want to let you into their car and trust you and not only that, but want to have a worthwhile experience with you in their car.  Be patient, and if you do make eye contact with someone, don’t let go and approach slowly and start dancing and make them feel like it will be a fun concert or something like that.”  Besides, that’s the whole reason you’re doing it, right?  You don’t need the ride, it’s about the fun and the romance and getting to know people you couldn’t possibly know otherwise.  It’s one less thing to fear, and one more reason to believe. 

I said good bye to Jack after the lake.  We’d driven down through the Adirondack Mountains, and the next day he bought me a ticket from San Francisco to Mexico City with his Delta Dollars left over from a canceled flight, which he said “they’re going to expire anyway, it’s nothing, don’t mention it.”  He was going to the Peace Corps. for two years, so he wouldn’t need them.  He couldn’t guarantee it at the time, but he called me a week later to confirm my ticket to the pyramids, from San Francisco to Mexico City on 12/15.  Then he told me all I had to do was get there without getting arrested.  Good advice.  Different states have different laws regarding making strangers aware that you’d be willing to share an adventure in their vehicle with them if they freely choose to agree to. 

                After that I spent a week catching up with friends in New York City, some of whom I hadn’t seen since my strange journey from India through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and China to Egypt, with some European familiarity in Germany, Ireland, and exploring northeast America over the summer.  Then I visited Philadelphia and Washington D.C.  I got very inspired by the monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and so on.  They symbolized bravery, independence and the power of language to bring peace and justice to the world through action.  I got on a bus overnight to North Carolina, and sat next to a guy who told me that he had to get out of Charlotte or “somebody was gonna get they ass killed”, but “this city got a lot of love, this city, it’s a good place,” and then waved good bye at the bus stop and told me he was going to go smoke a blunt.  Then my couch surfing host showed up and showed me around the city and let me sleep in his house for free.  He was 61 and had never lived alone before, recently separated after 37 years of marriage.  The next day he gave me a ride to the Blue Ridge Parkway visitor center, about an hour’s ride from Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River in America.  I walked across the road and gave the world a thumb’s up.  I listened to the song Wagon Wheel on my headphones,  

“Headin’ down south the land of the pines, I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline, starin’ at the road, pray to God I see headlights…”   

Don’t we all pray to God we see some headlights coming our way, another potential unexpected ride further up the path, to better points of view, to more beautiful experiences?  Then I took off my headphones so I wouldn’t give the impression that I was just going to tune them out, and I turned around to see the mostly full moon still out down the road.  I just had to convince one awesome stranger, the right stranger, to give me a ride, and something good would happen because of it.  Finally that stranger pulled out of the visitor center, made eye contact, hesitated, and then said waved me in as I approached waving and dancing like Jack told me to.  He had Carolina plates but a Vermont sticker on his car, and he had never picked up a hitchhiker before.  He told me he was a middle-aged insurance salesman who had driven all over the country on his own and done business in China, and loved reading the classics, like Tolstoy, Melville and Whitman, and had even read Tom Robbins, my favorite writer, hitchhiker (besides Jack), inspirational guide and child of North Carolina.  He gave me a ride all the way to the top of the mountain, where I camped for a small fee and hiked the remaining few hundred feet of elevation to get to the top, through the woods and the storm.  It rained hard, but I was ecstatic with energy and had an umbrella and rain coat and warm army surplus hat which my dad insisted I wear, based on his many experiences outdoors, especially camping up near the Arctic Circle in northern Canada.  At the top there was an extra winding stairway to a panoramic vista, although the panorama extended only about ten feet into thick clouds of fog and horizontal rain and fierce winds.  I held the umbrella to my side to fight off the bullets of rain, and read the map showing the surrounding area.  My eyes landed upon Johnson City, Tennessee, immediately.  I screamed, “Johnson City, Tennessee!” at the storm and then ran back down to the forest and slowly moved through the mud and the puddles on the rocks until I was back in my tent and my warm sleeping bag which I didn’t know how to use correctly yet.  You’re not supposed to wear any clothes in the sleeping bag so it can recirculate your own body heat, but instead I had on all of my layers and subsequently froze in the twenty degree night.  But I had a warm hat on.  Also, after an hour the moon and stars came out, and I met my awesome neighbors, fellow campers from Texas.  One of them had ridden his bike across America, just like Jack had done the summer before I went to India.

                The next day I ate a beautiful chocolate and felt a lot of love for everyone and everything as I walked through the woods in the crystal clear autumn red and yellow foliage.  I saw the greatest sunset of my life, and I didn’t have camera battery, so I’m the only one who gets that memory, kind of like looking at the stars.  A picture can never replace being there.  The stars came out, and after some calm contemplation and ecstatic dancing on top of the East, my half of America, I walked down the mountain to a fire with friends, including two more campers.  The next day I tried to hitchhike out, but none of the southern license plates were having it.  I had to walk five miles to the highway before a Kentucky woman who used to hitchhike up and down I-87 through the Adirondack Mountains in New York stopped her car at the intersection with the Blue Ridge Parkway where I was standing with my thumb up.  She scowled and waved me in like she was my worried but tough grandmother.  “Get in here!” she yelled, with her quiet brother sitting in the passenger’s seat.  She told me about her life, asked me about mine, the brother never said a word, and she was very talkative and friendly by the time we said good bye.  She gave me a ride to the visitor’s center, and my couchsurfing host picked me up and showed me around town before taking me to the bus station the next day, where I got on a Greyhound to Atlanta to my next couchsurfing experience: a Halloween party.  Then Birmingham, Alabama, New Orleans, Austin, El Paso, Juarez... and onward...

                I did it.  I hitchhiked.  I gave the world the thumbs up, and the world rewarded me with a ride to a beautiful place to be.  I lived the song.  Every time I hear that song, I can see the beautiful sunset, and the colors of the leaves, and the moon down the road at the beginning of a brand new day, and the surprise of finding another traveler who loved the power of stories told by words, and the music, and people I met, and crystal stars flying like jewels through heaven, and the thrill of living it all.

                I hitchhiked eleven more rides, in Utah, Nevada and California, and met strangers in Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon in Arizona to give me rides.  There were many more 3 am waits inside and outside the sketchiest Greyhound stations (which are always in the worst part of town), sometimes seventeen hours overnight, next to the craziest characters, of which I am clearly worthy of the title by now, all so I could find God during sunset in the Grand Canyon on Thanksgiving Day: the most beautiful place in America on the most American holiday. 

That’s why I planted some beautiful magic beans in my brain and tuned in to the beautiful music above the river from my perch at sunset.  I had a supremely beautiful, peaceful, ecstatic, wonderful time of my life, one of many lucky peak experiences granted by some mystery whose mission is to make me seek it extensively and experience its joy of love and beauty in as many new ways as possible.  It was the best possible experience I could have without other humans around.  But they were around, in my ears and my heart and my memories.  They were why I was there, and I’d love them even more the next time I saw them because I remember we all were the light of the sun and the flowing water of the river of life, flowing through endless time and space, propelled by invisible grace.  After that I made it to San Francisco, and caught my plane right on time, to fly down to Mexico and stand atop the pyramids.

                This weekend Jack became my first guest in San Francisco, at the completion of my first week as a teacher in this new place to be.  It felt like I’d just seen him, and it made no sense that I hadn’t seen him since all of these experiences had happened.  He told me all about Tonga and how different it was from everything I knew, although it was somewhat comforting that I could semi-understand based on my somewhat similar experiences in Southeast Asia.  He met a great Australian woman while working there, and he was on his way to join her on that enormous island continent I’ve always wanted to explore.  He’s on a plane right now.  He’ll be there in a very long time. I really wish he has an incredible time there, as he did when he lived there, but in a whole new way.  I also really wish that it’s not another two and a half years before I see him again.  Although, at the least, it’s a relief to know that I’ve got some extra time to add to the journey resume between now and then.  It’s healthy competition, although it had been so long since we’d last shared and compared our respective personal dares, all of this activity had become natural, and it seemed like such a bonus to meet someone who really knew what I was talking about and reminded me that people can learn somehow if you trust them and learn from them too.

                The journeys themselves always change.  On top of that, as we grow and learn new ways of applying the lessons of our journeys, the style of the journey transforms as well.  These past two days I listened to Jack talk about how he was working to improve the lives of people, but work his way up to directing projects that improve the quality of life for as many people as possible.  He’s going to study at Penn to get his masters in that discipline after living in Australia for his love.  I never would have thought I’d see Jack, the ultimate rambler, in a beautiful long-term relationship so soon.  I am so happy for him, and he gives me hope.  Then again, he’s always been adored by most women who have seen him.

                I love stories, and I feel honored to retell the timeless classic of Jack and the Beanstalk, which I was lucky to teach to enthusiastic Japanese kindergartners every morning for a year.  I don't know if Jack taught it himself when he did the same thing in China six years ago.  

            The story is Jack is offered these magic beans in an interesting trade.  Jack makes the trade, plants the beans, the beanstalk grows, he climbs up the vine like Super Mario to the clouds, finds the beautiful music of woman, and brings it back to Happy Valley so everyone can enjoy it.

            Thank you, Jack, for teaching all of us the meaning of the story by living it.

“He’s got no words to tell ya, just some magic beans to sell ya.  Plant them and in time the tracks will grow.  Your cup is cracked, it’s broken by the tracks, but your passport has been kissed by the holy fool.”

           

                   -Jason Webley, Train Tracks