August 14, 2015

And the adventure continues. I just arrived “home,” if one can call it that. I haven’t been any place I could call home in four months. That’s a very long time. And now I have a new home to put together. I don’t even have a bed.

Since I got back from Europe into the US my life has been kind of a blur. I connected with my son and daughter and granddaughter, which was very nice. I picked up my last remaining stuff from Amy’s house and saw her very briefly, which was a bit awkward for me. My car got repaired while I was gone, except my brakes still shudder, but I got it inspected and I headed south. I knew I was going to tackle the 1500+ drive miles in small chunks.

My first stop: Nantasket Beach. This was the first house I was brought to when I was born. It sets two houses away from the ocean. When my mother died she left it to us three kids, and last year my sister bought out my brother and me. Now my sister, Joanne invited us down there to be with her, so we had a very nice family reunion. Then everybody left and I stayed on for a few days by myself. It was really good for me to cool down for a while.

The best thing that happened during this time was I started writing again, and when that happens I don’t want anything to interfere. That’s when I know I’ve got the writing bug again; I don’t want to be doing anything else—the exception being lying reading on the beach (I read, Breakfast with Buddha, which I found exceptionally enjoyable, very well written and a scattering of deep wisdom; I highly recommend it) and taking 4-6 mile run-walks every morning. There is no better beach to walk on than Nantasket beach at low tide. This was a rejuvenating time for me, and I needed it.

I did a few coaching sessions over Skype, and a woman named Paula arranged a radio show with me and came up to meet me—she lived on the base of the Cape, so it was not a long drive for her. When she got out of the car I was kind of taken aback by how attractive she was. But the radio show didn’t work out because we got stood up by the woman in Colorado who ran it. But I did enjoy Paula a lot, except she kind of freaked me out a little because she “sees” entities, and she told me how some of them were up to no good. Then when she left she told me to lock my doors. In the middle of the night I woke up hearing weird noises, and I got chills up and down my spine. Freaked me out! But I may have been making it all up.

After a wonderful time being on the beach in the greatest weather the whole time I was there, I went to visit my old friend, Susan who had become a Five Element Acupuncturist, and when she was learning her trade she practiced on me. I hadn’t seen Susan in about 10 years because she had moved to Connecticut from Vermont, and we picked up right where we left off. We have come in and out of each other’s lives for possibly 30 years. You just can’t beat the connection of old friends. I traded her a massage for a Zero Balancing (ZB) treatment, which is so relaxing!

And then it was on to Charlottesville, Virginia and Divine Play for my one and only scheduled training in the United States, called LISTEN, and it turned out to be a great success. It never ceases to amaze me how much more deeply we all could listen than we do now, no matter how deeply we listen now, which is what many of the participants who attended the three days discovered. Most people’s listening deepened and deepened throughout the three days. It culminated in a radio show with participants being a live audience and contributing to Jeanne Catherine’s program. This was the first session I had done in the States for quite a while, and one of the things that became obvious to me again is how much people are the same, and how you put almost any group together from anywhere in the world to examine the three principles together, and they invariably go deeper together and become a wonderful group.

On my way to Charlottesville I drove by a lot of Civil War battlefields and almost stopped, but then I saw a sign to James Madison’s estate. I had recently read a book about James Madison, who was the major craftsman of the U.S. Constitution. So I decided on the spot to turn up to his house. What a spread! The Virginia gentry sure knew how to live (unfortunately they kept slaves to help them do it, and although both Madison and Jefferson felt guilty for having slaves and treated them well, they were slave owners nonetheless, and could not have kept up their places without them). The grounds were absolutely gorgeous. I took a little hike through some old growth forest, the way it was when the settlers first arrived in Virginia before the Revolutionary war. It was a great experience.

So, the next day, once I got to Charlottesville, I was inspired to visit Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. Besides being a great man, Jefferson was amazingly creative, and Monticello displays his creativity. The mountain on which Monticello was built is absolutely beautiful. It’s well worth seeing. So I immersed myself in early American history for two days. After being in Europe so often lately and loving it there, it was very grounding to give myself a dose of America.

In Charlottesville I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, in a pretty tiny room that was sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, but it was generally a nice place, and every day I walked the mile or two to the training. I didn’t hang out with the trainees very much as I had done in Europe, though they were really nice people. Mostly when I wasn’t doing the training I just wanted to chill out and write some.

So with another very successful training behind me, I scooted off to Wilmington, North Carolina, for a stopover with another displaced Vermont friend, Christie Binzen, who was also featured in the new 3P history book, Paradigm Shift, as she built inside-out prevention into the formal curriculum of Woodbury College in Montpelier, Vermont as director of the Woodbury College Prevention and Community Development Program, the first college degree prevention program in the country. Besides all that, she is also a really good friend whom I haven’t gotten to see very much since she moved to North Carolina. I had stopped to see her and stay over when I drove my belongings down in the truck to Florida. It’s a little bit out of the way to go to see her but worth it, not only to have a stopover point at a crucial time in the trip, but also to bask in the glow of good friendship.

The only way I am able to find time to continue to write this blog while writing my book is via the DragonSpeak program, which allows me to talk it right into my laptop as I’m driving along. I correct mistakes later when I stop—but this way it doesn’t take me any extra time. I won’t have the same luxury once I arrive in my new home in Florida, because I’ll either be buying furniture or writing on my book.

I got to my condo, dumped my stuff, slept on a folded over memory foam mattress topper, didn’t get a chance to put very much away before hooking up with a meet-up group that took me to a Boston Red Sox game in Miami against the Florida Marlins. I also met my son at the game. Beautiful stadium. And it was an enjoyable game, although the Red Sox got routed—boy is their pitching the absolute worst this year!

So that was a lot of fun but when the guys I was with dropped me off at my condo, I discovered, much to my great chagrin, that I had taken the wrong key out of my house. So I was locked out! I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I tried every door and window in the place to no avail. I ended up sleeping in my car that night. Woke up stiff. It was really early, still dark, so I figured I would drive down to the beach to catch the sunrise. I took a nice walk along the beach, which was very peaceful. Then when I got back I couldn’t find anyone who could help me get in. I wasn’t about to spend another night not in my place, so I slit a screen window and managed to crawl in; I figured it was cheaper to repair a screen then to call a locksmith. In fact, the only reason I was able to get in the window was because earlier the day before I had somehow knocked the sliding window out of its grooves and I couldn’t get it back in. That turned out to be the best move! Good thing!

Now that I’m here I probably won’t be writing this blog again for a while. I don’t go back to Europe until the end of September. Hopefully no hurricanes will come before I leave.