On Friday I wanted to go somewhere new, but wasn't sure where. I thought about visiting Golden Gate Recreational Area, but I missed the turn and found myself crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. I decided to take in the vista from the other side for the first time and get a spectacular view of San Francisco from across the bay.
After that I kept going, and happened to see the sign for Mt. Tamalpais just in time. Mt. Tamalpais is one of the highest points in the bay area, and is renowned for providing the best view of the entire bay and its surrounding metropolitan area, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
My interest in this spot piqued a few weeks ago when I started reading Alan Watts, a British meditative philosopher from the 50s-70s who made his home on a houseboat in Sausalito and then eventually a cabin on Mt. Tamalpais, which is where he died.
When I finished the circuit of requisite windy mountain roads to get to the top, I got out to take pictures. Soon I heard a British voice asking me if I'd like my picture taken. The ghost of Alan Watts, perhaps?
No, but it was a middle-aged British man. He'd lived in the area for about forty years. He took a great picture of me and then introduced me to his wife, a Bay Area native. They moved around a lot, and were actually on their way up to Washington, but they currently lived in Sebastopol, which is the same town where I worked the wine harvest last autumn. When I asked what they did for a living, they laughed and said lots of things. Eventually his wife got specific and said she was a mythologist. I'd never met a mythologist before!
Four years ago I read a mythologist named Joseph Campbell, and he's pretty much the only one most people know, if that. It changed my life forever, and convinced me to give up the familiar for something new. I decided to seek my own mystery within the world's mystery, to find the right symbols for me to meditate on and help me read the signs as to what to do and where to go, and to use this path as a way to pursue and live my highest "bliss". If you're a cynical guy and the word "bliss" makes you weary of the course and makes it sound a little too flowery for you, just think of it as your highest joy, or excitement, or enthusiasm.
I'd already been pondering the significance of this event before I met the mythologist. I left home in New York a year ago this Wednesday, and I haven't seen any family members since. I have seen a few close friends who visited me on the way or happened to be in the bay area very briefly, but for the most part I've been on my own in the unknown, even if it is my home country. I thought about everything I'd gone through to get to that point. Most of all, I was thinking about my "system" of thinking, and how unconventional and strange it appeared to the uninitiated. If I wanted to bring the treasure back from my journey and share it with the world in a way that improved the world and continued to propel my life into joy, I was going to have to find a way to communicate it to a wide audience. I'd been working on it for ages, but the example of Alan Watts was very inspiring to me. This man found a way to say intelligent, humorous and comforting words to people to get them to enjoy life more, even if they were the types of things you didn't hear talked about on TV or often in normal group conversation. But he did it. Times were different back then, but there's always got to be an audience for the big questions.
You can imagine my excitement at the synchronicity of meeting my first credentialed mythologist at that moment. It was amazing to meet someone who understood the poetic connectivity of the cosmos as played out in human life stories.
After a long chat we parted ways, and I saw the full moon rise over San Francisco Bay.
Then I drove home to the city lights across the Golden Gate Bridge at night, always an excellent feeling, and wondered where my myth would take me next.
My interest in this spot piqued a few weeks ago when I started reading Alan Watts, a British meditative philosopher from the 50s-70s who made his home on a houseboat in Sausalito and then eventually a cabin on Mt. Tamalpais, which is where he died.
When I finished the circuit of requisite windy mountain roads to get to the top, I got out to take pictures. Soon I heard a British voice asking me if I'd like my picture taken. The ghost of Alan Watts, perhaps?
No, but it was a middle-aged British man. He'd lived in the area for about forty years. He took a great picture of me and then introduced me to his wife, a Bay Area native. They moved around a lot, and were actually on their way up to Washington, but they currently lived in Sebastopol, which is the same town where I worked the wine harvest last autumn. When I asked what they did for a living, they laughed and said lots of things. Eventually his wife got specific and said she was a mythologist. I'd never met a mythologist before!
Four years ago I read a mythologist named Joseph Campbell, and he's pretty much the only one most people know, if that. It changed my life forever, and convinced me to give up the familiar for something new. I decided to seek my own mystery within the world's mystery, to find the right symbols for me to meditate on and help me read the signs as to what to do and where to go, and to use this path as a way to pursue and live my highest "bliss". If you're a cynical guy and the word "bliss" makes you weary of the course and makes it sound a little too flowery for you, just think of it as your highest joy, or excitement, or enthusiasm.
I'd already been pondering the significance of this event before I met the mythologist. I left home in New York a year ago this Wednesday, and I haven't seen any family members since. I have seen a few close friends who visited me on the way or happened to be in the bay area very briefly, but for the most part I've been on my own in the unknown, even if it is my home country. I thought about everything I'd gone through to get to that point. Most of all, I was thinking about my "system" of thinking, and how unconventional and strange it appeared to the uninitiated. If I wanted to bring the treasure back from my journey and share it with the world in a way that improved the world and continued to propel my life into joy, I was going to have to find a way to communicate it to a wide audience. I'd been working on it for ages, but the example of Alan Watts was very inspiring to me. This man found a way to say intelligent, humorous and comforting words to people to get them to enjoy life more, even if they were the types of things you didn't hear talked about on TV or often in normal group conversation. But he did it. Times were different back then, but there's always got to be an audience for the big questions.
You can imagine my excitement at the synchronicity of meeting my first credentialed mythologist at that moment. It was amazing to meet someone who understood the poetic connectivity of the cosmos as played out in human life stories.
After a long chat we parted ways, and I saw the full moon rise over San Francisco Bay.
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