SANTA CRUZ CENTER SHINES

Me and Nirba worked hard and were focused on growing our little center. In the center was Joel my long time abalone diver buddy. His friend Teresa who was a short super cute black haired pure Sicilian woman. She was the center Italian Mom and had 2 great kids. There was Beate who was in her mid 20's. She was a strong German woman who worked as a nannie in Soquel. There was Jim who I still see and is a fixture in Santa Cruz. He looked like a Tibetan monk and was as simple. He was slow but there was a spirituality about it; a steadiness. He would also have great spiritual dreams and visions. Our gemstone was Cliona who was an Irish university student. She had long straight black hair, sharp eye-teeth and a definite occult facet. A dead ringer for the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. She was a cute and fun! We loved her. She was also a friend of to Eileen and was an employee at Hobbies at one point.
Nirbachita and I gave meditation classes at UCSC and at The Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz. Also we put on a number of concerts with the SF singers and Anuraga; the S.F. Center male ensemble group. Our joy days were simply the best at that point in the Center. They were modled on the early La Jolla Center joy days I had attended. Well organized, good food, unique activities and above all fun. If someone is going to brave Hwy 5 up Cali we wanted to make Joy Days very, very, fun for them. The crowning achievement was the the very professional biathlon we put on and the subsequent joy days that followed. Sundari, singing group leader from S.F. Center always made stellar pies and fruit baskets for the top 7 in each category. A race club innovation that made top finishers very pleased. The Biathlon was a chilly swim around the wharf and a 10k run on the hard pack low tide sand in front of the Boardwalk. The first joy day was blessed by a huge group of New Yorkers returning from Japan, laid over a few days to go to our joy days. Seeing these New Yorkers happy and smiling, lounging under impromptu sari tents, or sunning on the beach or swimming was an honor to say the least. It made Santa Cruz Center legendary.
Just a side note, Alot of the long time disciple women had "Center Regulation" one piece bathing suits. These crazy-modest retro numbers had double padded bras, sewed on skirts made of a thick stretchy poliester is a sight to behold.
We also had a steady flow of visiting disciples from S.F. Center or abroad. San Fran Disciple we would come down early on our appointed center meeting night to get some of Santa Cruz's stellar weather for a run. I always loved new running partners or beach companions I always knew a new trail or beach. I figured if it was fun they would come back possibly move there. It was a philosophy that had worked for me in San Francisco. I aggressively head hunted young fun new happy disciples from other centers and built the joint into a thriving creative center. Brought it back from the dead.
After Center Mediation there was always stellar food from Ananda Fuara or made by Teresa.( Her Garlic bread was Bombastic!) Or we would all descend on some restaurant en mass. Very happy days.
The vagabond disciples were often sweat suit wearing Germans seeing California. California has an irreversible effect on the Gerries. It's an awakening that shatters some rigid cultural framework. We blew one member of the Zurich Centers mind with an out of the ordinary center meditation at a beautiful mountain top home that a female disciple was house sitting. Dee was her name, new disciple friend of Joel's and a blond bombshell. It was mid-summer and after meditation we ate a great meal and then capped it all by piling ( boys and girls )into a hugh hot tub located in a garden. Though the tub thing wasn't exactly kosher with the center guidelines but we were like a big family and it was about joy. I was still high out of my mind from the meditation when the German disciple turned to me in wonder and said : " Ve Vould nevah do zis in Zuyich!" I could tell by his eyes he would now never be a pillar of the Zurich Center.
Damn straight!

KATIE

"You must be the new girl" I said warmly as I stared into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. She smiled and damn if she wasn't the Cheshire cat. I like her fresh sparkliness immediately. I was assigned the job to train her in the ways of Hobies. She didn't stay a bus person long with me as her lobbyist. I always tipped her fat and helped her when I could. One day she asked me to coffee after shift.
Katie had been Magna Cum Laude and phi beta kappa at Occidental ( Occey ) college. It was an all girls college in Los Angeles. She had created her own major and upon graduation immediately signed up to dance on a cruz ship in the Caribbean. She had a fantastic dancer body; Beautiful and alive, I discovered on one of our several trips to the beach as it was mid-summer. I remember her powerful looking Sacrum.
At the outdoor cafe where we sat that day proved to be the beginning of a long friendship that served me well. I loved her happy life force and her intelligence. Her boy friend at the time was all absorbed in pre-med. She was new to Santa Cruz and it was a bitchen summer and just wanted to have fun. Always looking for a person to do fun things with( libra ) we were a great match as friends.
I took her swimming in the kelp beds, and sunning on some of my favorite beaches. We ate at interesting places, went to work and work parties, went to movies, yoga. Above all we talked like kids. I was into body work and was looking to get into massage school possibly. She had powerful opinions and was from a heavy feminist background as was I.
She was from a family of therapists and had what I mistook for an introspective tendency. It was more a mental review of emotions and actions, a reflection, which is different as it is confined to the mind. An introspective capacity can get confused with the tendency, almost compulsion to process and over process. I've seen people create process to avoid dealing with an authentic process trying to happen. An intuitive and developed introspective capacity is a psychic capacity and has depth and truth in it. It steps below the mind and stands behind observing, not only the mind but all facets of the this complex being.
Katie could hold her own in a conversation and offered me new perspectives on alot of topics. And I loved these new perspectives and sure needed them.
We were kids just having a load of fun. About a month into our endless fun having I could feel the energy between us getting a sweet and a definite emotional flavor to it. At work a friend of mine said after he looked at the schedule at work: " Fuck, I work with you and Katie. You two are boring, You flirt the whole shift." He was right. After work that night I told Katie that I was lovin her company but that we should cool it as I could feel where it was going. She said: "But I don't want it to stop." What could I say I sure didn't want that either. I let it ride.
I remember one night I had just finished my evening meditation in my new apartment. All was candle light and incense and a knock rolled across my door. Katia came in kind of wild eyed and wanted to walk out to light house field at Steamer Lane and watch an electrical storm out at sea. It was raining intermittently, the wind was all storm gusts. I loved the spur of the nocturnal moment visit by her.
She felt things begin to heat up between us and mentioned to me what a first kiss might be like. I resisted the topic, which seemed to make her more forward. One day at the end of shift as we were doing our closing work, she came into the mens restroom that I was cleaning. She locked the door and slid down to a sitting position with her face in her hands frustrated. I was clue less and kept cleaning.
She hugged me and didn't let go. After my nose traced a pattern around her neck and ears a few times we shared a sweet soft kiss.
Things heated up and we talked about them as they did. One night we had been out and Katie dropped me off at the center as I was late for center meditation,I leaned into hug her and she turned to kiss me and we just macked! It was a full on Kundalini fire passion kiss. I was a little disoriented as I got out of the car and and as I walked into the cozy meditation room. A few friends had come down from San Francisco, I felt so exposed; I was a ball of fire, I felt like I stood out a mile.
Katie said she went to the beach and cried intensely as she was moved.

MY CENTER LIFE ENDS

Sex for the first time since high school was very anticlimactic. Improved dramatically as I trusted myself and relaxed. Eileen and I had alot of fun for a short period of time before her fiancee came back. Then she was off and married in Carmel. I was half heartedly invited but as Eileen was in the habit of full disclosure and honesty and had informed her fiancee all about our time spent. He was not super happy but loved and trusted her. Out of respect for him I declined the invite, but I was sad and missed her.
I was still in the Sri Chinmoy Center and I was doing all my duties: holding center meditations twice weekly, giving public meditations, driving up to the city twice a week for center meditations, printing posters at Krishna Copy and postering. etc. I was also running alot and had recently started surfing. Joel and I were regularly going on on long ocean swims in the kelp bed in front of his place on West Cliff Dr. He would lend me a shorty wetsuit and swim way out for about an hour deep into the kelp beds. Swimming through kelp if your not wearing a shortie was a scratchy affair. But Joel use to rub it on his face and chew a bit of it. He said that the skin absorbed some vitamin or mineral on contact with the kelp and that it was super good for you. I had swum a bit in Aquatic park in San Francisco where the water was always well below nipply, and started to favor just board-shorts. From August through the famous Santa Cruz indian summer the top foot of water is sometimes 5 degrees warmer than the water below. In the kelp bed as the current is more restricted and the temp is even more choice.
Kelp beds in Santa Cruz are always teeming with life; otter, dolphin, gulls and frolicking fish. Sometimes a nice omen would come as a snowy egret walking like a sage across the kelp or a powerful osprey flying over us with a wiggling fish in it's "sharp talons." The otter are always fun. The don't have much natural fear of humans in the water. As the kelp strands would grow more than a foot a day by mid summer the kelp forest would be thick and buoyant. Joel and I would would sometimes get close to them and wrap up on a Kelp raft and watch them frolic. They would be chewing on a clam or be using a rock to smash a shellfish. Often they would have babies on their tummies or floating near and would dive with them. Otters are ridiculous when they sleep. They lye on their back with their flippy-feet in the air like a cartoon, then just pass out cold. I tried to pat a sleeping one as it just looked like a little shitzu dog. When I got about a yard away it turned its furry head and whiskers and just looked at me for a second as if to say nonchalantly: "May I help you?" Then I swear it barked at my and dove. Me and joel shrieked as we swam away with thoughts of it bitting my toes. The thick summer kelp made for great swim unders; dark and shady like big slow swaying trees in the soft current.
I moved into the apartment behind the center when the hippy guy inhabiting it moved on. He had no furniture except a professional looking home beer still. When I moved in it wasnt much more decorated. It was a one roomed sunken studio with a great garden view. I spent about a month peeling paint and repainting. I painted the old wood trim lavender, white walls and carpeted it a thick forest green. I loved it. I furnished the place with a dark blue futon Eileen gave me, and a white laced shrine. On it was my brass framed Transcendental photo of Sri Chinmoy and a photo of the Mother Kali statue at Dakshineshwar. It was a temple and I always had a stick of Red Sandalwood burning. It was simplicity itself and I loved it.
I had been in Santa Cruz more than a year or so. After a Center meditation on a night when Nirbachita was out of town, a new seeker Andrea who had meditated with us for a few months asked me to the movies with her. She was cute, cool in a nerdie hip UCSC Creskie college sort of way. She wanted to see a French film that I wanted to see so I was like: "Sure." Not really a good disciple choice but I tried not to think about it as I wanted to see the movie. It was a late show and after she wanted to see my new apartment. After about an hour of her staring me in the eyes with all the green lights I just kissed her. Not a lot of forethought in the action. Just an in the moment inspiration. Not a whole lot happened after that but she was all questions about the apparent discrepancy in philosophies. I did'nt have any answers. It was my first lesson on the complexities of women in the dating world. The "Double speak." Where the energy says one thing and the mouth says the opposite. Gets even weirder when the body says one thing and the mental says another and the mouth says yet something else.
I had crossed a boundary and made something personal. It was the sweet forbidden fruit! This was a choice of mine and I accept that, However Andrea's emotional and physical energy was all about it. The next day she called me and was all mixed up. I didn't really understand at the time but I told her that if she needed too she could call my sister and talk to her about it. I knew it would mean I would be kicked out of the center in no time but She seemed quite mixed up about it and I felt guilty. I knew I could have talked her out of it or started a secret romance but I guess I was confused by my actions apparent lack of fore thought. It felt weird to tell her how to feel or taint her perspective in a way to make it easier on me. In short it felt like an insincere act.
Also I have to address a part of my personality that I think is the Chinese Fire Horse in me. There was something in me that wanted to just take a heroic, defiant and rebellious charge into the forbidden. It is a spirit I have defined more clearly as The years have past. Almost the prompting of the soul to Shiva-like charge forward with reckless abandon.
I got a call at work the next day and it was Ashrita telling me I was out. I knew it was coming as my sister had called me the evening previous and asked me what happened. Poor Nirba, I felt bad for her as I was shouldering her with everything.
I walked out of Hobbies loosened my tie and sat in the sun for a few breaths. It was a great hot day in August. I remember I could smell the ocean which meant it was flat and a glassy swimming day. I mounted my loyal rusty steed and creeked towards the sea and home with a heavy heart.