Thirty years ago I moved to Seattle, sight unseen. I was living in Philadelphia with my girlfriend in an artist loft in a bad part of town. That winter in Philadelphia was the worst one in years, as was the previous summer. My mom and stepdad gave us roundtrip tickets to Europe for Christmas, my first time. Coming back in the spring our lease was up for renewal and we figured it was time to move on. Seeing Europe opened my eyes to how beautiful the world could be and how ugly Philadelphia was by comparison.

The winter before, we’d lived in the top half of a house on a steep hill overlooking downtown Pittsburgh. In the rental below us were two hippies named Marv and Melissa. They were older, Marv considerably so, and part of some group of Buddhist types who wore robes and practiced meditation Tuesday nights in Marv and Melissa’s apartment. Marv said if either of us were ever interested we could join them, so I did.

Melissa wasn’t much to look at but neither was Marv. I don’t think either of them worked as they were always home. With my underdeveloped mind then, I assumed “Tuesday night meditation group” was code for drug-taking but I was wrong. To join their group officially I needed to renounce chemicals of all sorts including coffee, even meat. Something about it affecting the limberness in your organs or soft tissue. I gave it all up except for the coffee. My girlfriend was already vegetarian and came from a broken home with alcoholic parents, and hated me drinking anyway. I couldn’t find weed if I wanted to; the only people I knew who smoked it worked for me at the coffee shop and I couldn’t ask them to help me score. That was unsavory even for my low standards. So instead I practiced meditating in the dark every morning in that cold house with the windows covered in cheap plastic sheeting to keep the drafts down.

If I did this long enough they said I could meet the head guru who’d give me a personal mantra the next time he was in town. They said this like it was a rite of initiation, some real achievement. And I fell for it.

After roughly a month of waiting I finally met the guru but was surprised when he entered the room he looked Italian, with long dark hair and a pointed goatee beard, almost like Jesus in one of those old paintings. I guess I assumed he’d be Indian. When he spoke his accent was so thick I could hardly understand him, like the way he said the word develop (which he said often): he pronounced it “devil-up,” with the enunciation on the last syllable. This was really distracting. (For x, y, z you have to devil–up; in order to devil–up you have to x, y, z, etc.) And since he was in a robe with his hair tied back and a waxed goatee it was giving Jonestown. Something about the guy seemed off.

We sat together alone in Marv and Melissa’s crappy bedroom in a cross-legged pose as the guru lit a candle and unveiled my personal mantra. As I gazed into the flame at his urging he whispered it softly, this precious thing, how it left his lips and traveled to my ear. But when he said the word I was surprised how banal it sounded. Surely this couldn’t be just my special word? It was way too commonplace for only me. It had the weight of a Chinese cookie fortune, mass produced. Suddenly it all felt a sham.

I imagined the word as I sat alone in meditation breathing in, breathing out. Always the first part on the inhale, followed by the second. Up and down, in and out. Ba-ba.

Brian Eno had just put out his Shutov Assembly record, a collection of ten ambient, rhythmless soundscapes dedicated to a Russian artist Sergei Shutov, and one day Marv came by (he had some weed) and asked with a glow, what is this? I offered he could borrow the CD but then after many weeks I had to ask for it back more than once, which I didn’t find very kind or yoga-like.

Marv had long curly hair that was thinning up top and graying and said when he took showers in the morning he always ended by turning the handle all the way to the right (all cold) for the last minute, something about a chakra. He closed his eyes and smiled as he said this, nodding slowly. I still think of that scene more than I like. He looked like Chong, of Cheech and Chong, the taller one. He was often drinking tea or smoothies.

I edged my way into the practice a bit more before losing interest and going back to my carnivore diet. There would have been some sacred text involved too, something like the Bhagavad Gita but more splintered and abstract, with a goofy picture of their guru on the back of the binder, the whole thing printed at Kinko’s. I would have left it on the door mat outside Marv and Melissa’s when we moved out, that shared spot in the hallway where we all got the mail, some greeting in Sanskrit on their door.

We moved to Philadelphia after Pittsburgh and then Seattle after that, sight unseen. Crossing the floating bridge over Lake Washington, passing through the tunnel into the city, it said “SEATTLE / PORTAL TO THE PACIFIC.” I had a feeling I’d never leave. The water, the sky were so blue. People were nice and decent here. If I never saw Philadelphia again I didn’t care. If life was like a deck of cards I still had a lot to play.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Humor, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, humor, Memoir, pacific northwest, Seattle