*18*

Sometimes Bob just had to go with the flow. He couldn't quite put it in words ... he felt the old adage of being a spiritual being living a human life; the essence involves flows, leading, following - mental experiences in pictures. So Bob drove where his heart took him. He just followed the ethereal leadership impelling him onward.

The freeway took him toward the beach. To avoid all the traffic near the end of the route, he exited at Fourth street, down the ramp, turned left. The streets were lined with cars and palm trees. A curious mix of expensive and decidedly middle class cars, Volvos, Nissans, Mercedes, Fords. A similar mix of apartments, older run down paint-peeling wood sided two-story apartments, and spanking new steel, stucco and glass townhomes.

Bob could see the beach about a quarter-mile down from the passenger side window. He pulled the car over to park. The street sign said "No Parking without Permit." Hmm. Bob looked in the side-view mirror, pulled out and drove down the block some more. More parking-prohibited signs. He turned up away from the beach. Ahh, there you go, no restrictions. He parked at the top of the hill, across Fourth street.

Bob felt around the floor of the back seat, searching for a hat. There you go. He checked himself in the rear view mirror and exited the car. The salty smell of the ocean mingled with the smell of city asphalt and springtime flowers. The crisp and warm sun playing through the still air revealed a temper both dead and alive at the same time. Bob pushed his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose with his index finger, pushed the lock lever of the door do I have my keys? and closed his car door.

He walked down a steep hill with apartment houses on both sides. While gazing into the passing windows, Bob glimpsed remnants of beach life: small pebble rock sculptures, metal wind chimes, colorful wind socks, wood ducks with twirly-go-round wings. Square dirt areas housing mid-sized trees interrupted the sidewalk. In the distance Bob spotted a handful of scattered white specks on the water ... sailboats meandering in whatever breeze they could charm.

The slope gradually leveled. A vacant lot, whoa, I wonder how much this lot would cost? and then Bob found himself on a busy main street. People sat outside at coffee shop tables. Bob turned left at the main street. A boutique, another boutique, a chic jewelry store, a crazy stationery store. A man sitting on the sidewalk with charcoal and a large pad of drawing paper. Bob glanced down at the artist as he walked past - his pad held a splendid sketch of a passerby. Up ahead, a health food store. Bob turned from the main street onto a serene cross street. He spied a coffee shop with old awnings.

People sat outside at various tables: scruffy people, talking and smoking cigarettes. Apparently not your cut of middle-class businessmen, yuppies, or even regular neighborhood kids. Rather a conglomeration of oddballs - each an exceptionally unique individual with a bizarre past or story to tell, yet all bound together by their common strangeness. The fringe of society, with truly menacing talents. In a world of manufactured Hot Wheel racecar toys and plastic Aerobic Barbies, these were the hand made originals, the one-of-a-kind hand built 1/32 scale lacquered cars with working headlights, the singular hand-painted porcelain-faced dolls with taffeta gowns.

Beards, hair askew, tattoos, odd tatterings of layered clothes, jewelry, single earrings. A large black dog, his leash cherryhooked around the leg of a chair; the dog lying on the ground, chin on the pavement, eyebrows raised. Bob glanced up at the owner, checking the truth of the old saw: does the owner look like his pet? Well yeah, sort of. They both were somewhat scruffy, the owner wearing a dirty black tee-shirt, tennis shoes, no rings or chains. One small ring in his right earlobe.

Bob forced himself to avoid being overly curious - he wanted to look disinterested and part of the crowd, as if this were a regular place of his. The spinning feng-shui drew his soul past the threshold. Inside felt cheerful, eclectic and musty, all at the same time. Books, discards, new, mismatched, friendly, worn, new. Chairs, tables, the smell of coffee. Music. Giant pictures, artwork, a gallery on the walls. Stairs, a banister, tables. People reading and drinking coffee, a small group talking. Spinning future soul pulling past and future loves to standing in line. Alone with other people alone but sharing togetherness of artistic outcast.

He glanced down at the floor... a wood floor, on one side of the building stained dark mahogany, the other side plain oak, both pitted and dirty as if they had not been refinished in forty years. Glancing around, everywhere, on all the walls, bookshelves. Disheveled books. Lots of old books about war and politics. Glancing up, blotchy colorful abstract artworks, ink etchings, wild hallucinogenic faces. A balcony, stairs with a banister. A sagging patched brown painted ceiling. The place was an old shoebox, cardboard top beat-up but still fitting, comfortable old shoes.

Bob approached the counter, reading the menu on a chalkboard. Various coffees, vegetable platters, chili, soup. He looked into the refrigerated display. Muffins, scones, cakes. Mmmm, deadly chocolate-chip double-chocolate muffins.

A twentyish lady stood up behind the counter. "Can I help you?"
"Ummm," Bob hesitated, his mouth and tastebuds fighting his mind. He relented. "A cup of coffee and one of these," Bob said, pointing to the chocolate muffin.

Expressionless, the young lady reached for the muffin with some aluminum tongs, placed it on a small clean white plate, grabbed a green mug from under the counter and poured a cup of coffee. She placed the items on the glass counter and rang them up at the register.

"Three twenty-five," she said.

Bob reached inside his wallet, took out a five and handed it to the lady. She gave him his change, and he put a dollar bill into the tip jar. He grabbed his coffee and muffin and headed up the stairs to inspect the balcony.

The empty balcony drew Bob upstairs, to a small table near the edge, where he set down his coffee and muffin. He went over to a small table near a bookshelf and grabbed two napkins, then returned to his coffee and sat down. He looked around. A mish-mash of fans and lamps, various sizes and shapes, were scattered about. The fans circulated the stuffy, stale warm air. The small wooden tables were cracked and pitted, also desperately crying out to be refinished. No two tables are the same. Heck, no two chairs are the same. In the room diagonally below sprawled two sagging old couches.

From speakers, a Celtic lass sang of sorrow and love, melodies of scenic grassland hills. Three or four people typed on laptop computers. A string of miniature white Christmas lights looped around a rusting bicycle above a doorway vestibule. Knickknacks, old dusty manual typewriters, a foot-tall metal suit of armor, a four-inch bronze head on top of a doorway post. Two cork bulletin boards with flyers: acting seminars, healers, places to rent for the summer, religious seminars. The tone of the place seeped from every crack in the floor, pit in the walls, knot of wood.

Bob sipped his coffee and broke off a piece of his muffin, letting the chocolate linger in his mouth. Mmmm, chocolate. One of the four food groups. Let's see - chocolate, beer, bread, and cheese. That's all a man really needs to survive. I guess an apple every day might be a good idea, just for digestion. He recalled something he had read by a vegetarian: broccoli, beans, and bananas. Lists of foods in his mind gave way to his survival list. Shave, shit, shower, sleep, sex, and stretch.

Bob marshaled the connections of his entire life. Swirling and spinning, spewing lines of chaotic history. Past lovers, future loves, connections to his past and future soul. He forced his connections into this wall: this would be his sacred refuge, forever his anchor to his spirituality. Bob's quintessence spiraled and twisted, locked in. Home.

Bob broke off another piece of muffin and savored the chocolate, washing it down with a sip of coffee. He reconnected to the myriad disheveled bookshelves, the artists' paintings, the fans, the dangling lights. The karmic anchors of hundreds of souls, shoved like mountain pegs into the walls, ceilings, floors, credenzas, tables and chairs.