Moreover, the landlord, in a particular fit of ugliness, had informed Veterans Affairs that he was dead, and so his benefits would no longer be coming and he had no identification. At that moment, he fell through the cracks. All this had happened a couple of years before I’d met him.
I said, “So you’re homeless.” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “What are you doing out here?” And he said, “Just because I’m homeless doesn’t mean I can’t take a vacation.” Solid point. He had already started this particular hitchhiking trip in San Francisco and so I said, “Why didn’t you just stay in San Francisco?” And he said, “I don’t know how to be homeless in San Francisco. I know how to be homeless in New York.” It was hard for me to argue with him on that point.
We kept on talking, and I found him to be lucid and interesting. In Austin, Nevada, I stopped for gas. It was one of those Bagdad Café gas stations with not much around it but tumbleweeds. I got out of the car and went in to pay for the gas and saw my passenger get out of the car, scribble something on a piece of paper, and put it in the coin return slot of the phone booth down in the corner of the lot.
I took a pass by there and grabbed the piece of paper. It was a little note that said, “Love forgives everything.” I got back in the car and drove for a while and then I said, “Why did you put that note in the coin return slot there?” And he said, “I figured somebody would be looking for money and get my note instead.” I said, “Yeah, right, man. But what motivated you to write ‘Love forgives everything’?” And he said, “Well, it does.” I said, “That’s a tall bar for it but yeah, I guess so. But this seems like a prayer or something. Do you have a very religious sense of things?”
He said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “So you have a very personal God?” And he said, “Yup.” And I said, “If you’ll pardon me, the personal God you’re serving in this very humble way seems to be treating you like shit. Whereas I am doing okay and I don’t have one.” And he said, “You know, every soul comes into the world to take a curriculum. Some of us are taking Basket Weaving 101 and some of us are taking Astrophysics 406, and I’m pleased to be taking the harder courses.”
The next time you find yourself in trouble, this is something to think about. Because there is this weird notion of karma that is precisely the opposite of that, and I think he was actually closer to its reality than the image we carry.
I didn’t think about this a lot until some years later when I fell in love with someone like people only ever do in the movies or operas. I was deliriously, insanely, dangerously in love with this woman for a year until I put her on an airplane in Los Angeles two days before her thirtieth birthday and she died on the way to New York. Suddenly, I felt like I was now taking the harder courses. Much harder courses.
The truth is we come into the world from the other side, which is entirely made of love, where it’s all open and could not be more open, into this place of constriction and containment and closure and dogma and terror. We fight with our hearts in the high mountains of the Afghanistan of the soul in order for love to make sense. And we do this by not giving up and by not thinking the worst of ourselves or others, despite the fact that each of us seems to carry around with us for no good reason a terrible inner sense of self-loathing. I think that may be original sin.
Mostly to the extent that we are capable, we do it by learning how to accept love from other people; we win that battle for every soul born and unborn. And that is why we are all here. I think that what it will take to get through this dark time in human history is for us to become focused on allowing ourselves to find ourselves worthy and to make ourselves open to the love that all of us actually deserve.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the best of my knowledge, a completely true work of nonfiction has never been written before. But now at long last it finally has. And while I’m fairly certain that it is vastly less perfect than it could have been, I owe the fact that this even exists to Robert Greenfield, who approached me three years ago to know if I ever wanted to write that book. Bob, you did faithfully well, way beyond my expectations, and somehow managed to capture the interstitial meaning of what I had in mind, as well the rhythm in which I wanted it all to be written.
I would also like to thank my legion of practical support troops. Dr. Beth Kaplan, who has saved my life (and continues to do so) far more times than is humanly possible, and the UCSF resident who jumped on my chest. Jerilyn Brandelius, Alden Bevington, John Gilmore, and Johnny Grace: These Strange Angels have been on the front line to help me move this book forward. Kevin Doughten, my editor at Crown Archetype, and Elisabeth Hartley, who steered this project to the finish line. Bobby Weir, without whom there would have been a lot less interesting material with which to make a book. Jane Metcalfe, Katherine Armor, Lotte Lundell, each of whom has a vision of personal glory stacked within them.
Last, I’d like to thank my family: Elaine, Team Barlow-ettes—Leah, Anna, and Amelia, Elliott Dunwody, and our newest addition, Willah Brave. I love you all so very much.
Beyond this, the list of those who have helped me survive to this point in time—as well as done everything in their power to help me live this wonderful life—is so long that I know I would leave someone out if I tried to thank them all here by name. Since you all know who you are, I just want to express my overwhelming gratitude for your love and never-ending support. Truly, even if this really were a novel about my life, I could not have written it without all of you to populate it.
John Perry Barlow
February 5, 2018
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
On February 7, 2018, John Perry Barlow died in his sleep of natural causes. He was seventy years old.
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Mother American Night Page 24