Nonduality Salon (/ \)

issue number two - October, 2000

Nonduality Salon Magazine

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EAST ROCK SHADOWS

by David Hodges

I just got back from walking up to East Rock with my camera. I wanted to get there before the sun went away. Two nights ago the gloom of early evening deterred me from taking pictures. Tonight I got some good shots of the way East Rock towers over our neighborhood.

East Rock is a massive rock formation left over from when the glaciers pushed through, scraping everything in their path to form Long Island just to our south across the Sound. All that was left were West Rock, East Rock, and Sleeping Giant, all of which are rocks formed of uplifted strata from ancient seabeds. East Rock is a vertical striated reddish-brown formation some 300 feet high, with a War Memorial on top along with benches and picnic tables and those sight-seeing binocular things that you drop a dime into. You can see East rock at the end of all the north/south streets in our neighborhood, towering over everything, and I think I got some good shots of that.

As I walked along East Rock park, a playing field at the base of East Rock, there was a game of Frisbee just getting underway with a group of college-aged kids. They were playing much as we used to play in college. I think the game is called Frisbee football. It is like soccer, it is played by passing the Frisbee from teammate to teammate, with frequent changes of possession when the Frisbee is dropped or intercepted.

I stopped to watch for a while.

I remebered how in college my group of friends often played Frisbee. There was a group of guys a year older who we would play against. My teammates, mostly more athletic than I, were an amazing bunch and frequently we won. In particular, we had the combination of Jon and Jim. Jon was an impossibly good looking boy-man with an impish personality and phenomenal athletic and musical gifts. Jim was taller, less graceful, but very athletic and strong. Frequently during our games Jon would run way downfield. I can just see the way he used to scamper with his cut-off shorts the only clothing he was wearing. Jim would wind up and fire that Frisbee on an impossibly long, looping trajectory way ahead of Jon. But Jon would accelerate, leap, and catch the Frisbee at the last moment, and come down laughing as he did so. We would all clap and holler and celebrate.

Jon was the first of our group to get married and the first to attempt suicide.

Jim died at a young age of leukemia, leaving a wife and several small children.

Jon spent some time in a psychiatric hospital where he received shock treatments. He moved to California where he joined up with some ashram, and he would come into San Francisco (where I lived at the time) to play his violin in the street for money. After a while I refused to let him crash in my apartment because I thought he was demonstrably psychotic.

I remember one of the last things he said to me before I lost touch with him. I ran into him on the street near the Cannery where he had his hat on the pavement while he played his violin. He told me how great things were at the ashram and how happy he was without possessions or attachments. As I turned to leave he shouted after me, "Find God!"

I think I already had though at that time I didn't know it. God was a white Frisbee, spinning through the soft evening sunlight, on a green lawn, into the hands of a leaping angel.

Read David Hodges' journal at www.livejournal.com/users/wandertheearth

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