The Hermit in Mass

friday morning i left my house, leaving my shit home behind knowing i was about to go somewhere very pretty in rural mass. when i arrived i was a bit early as i was told to arrive by evening and it was about 4. i suppose i was worrying too much, but i stopped in at the town dunkin donuts and took a nasty crap. i had way too much ribs that morning and i swear i thought i saw a worm in my food, out it came anyway!

i spent the next hour in my car writhing around with my stomach hurting, trying not to look at my phone and paying some attention to the rain hitting my windshield. about an hour later as the rain was dying down i noticed steam rolling off of the hood of the car, the thing has been making some funky noises lately and i wondered if it should still be hot after that long? an hour meant my rain watching was over and it was now evening and time to face some of my fears, what i once thought was a reddit zen monster, zuchinnipants/chopwater/somethingelsewhoknowswhat?

arriving at daves i parked my car to the side of his narrow driveway and stared up to a tiny house on a hill tucked away behind some trees. i saw his black pickup that he had not too long ago posted a picture of and called "black buddha". i was a bit scared walking up, but i had a smile on the whole time

he heard me walking alongside his house and opened the door.. a second of silence that felt longer and then "hello!" reaching out our hands for a handshake. i was let inside and probably thought that this has been the way with zen for centuries, two zen practitioners meeting somewhere in the woods!

his house had a strange sort of minty smell, and a bell that let people in sort of like a small town shop. there was a lot of random shit and he told me it was his girlfriend who decorated some of it. for the next hour or so we talked about reddit zen, zen centers, the 7thzenpatriarchblog, ewk, and andrew. it was sort of uplifting to finally be able to talk to someone about andrew, someone who understood him a bit more than most people

dave said he would show me down the hill to where i was staying in a small structure called the "oval", it was actually cozy even though the insulation wasn't completely put in, and was pretty well made, nice job dave! i asked him what time it was and i thought i heard him say it was 10:15, i must've heard wrong because it was really something like 7. i sat around with my red headlamp, finally noticed the time, laughed, and was soon asleep. i must've slept 9 or 10 hours, probably something to do with the lack of cars, trains, planes, and general stupidity that i'm used to on long island

6 am dave was knocking two wooden sticks together to wake me up, meditation time! but first some tea, god damn hot, burned my tongue! down the property some more to a small meditation shack something i hadn't seen in the quiet darkness of the night before. half hour sitting, 15 mins walking, half hour sitting

later in the morning we decided to walk to one of the retreat centers down the road from dave, he had three established centers around him! we went to the most buddhist center of the area to meet a man Mu Soeng. unfortunately he wasn't there when we got there, dave left his number or email with a pretty girl, nice too, so that mu soeng might contact him when he saw it. we decided to walk to the other centers, one called the Insight Meditation Center where dave said a bunch of pacifists lived, lol! three months people retreated there and the rules were to not talk, read, or write! what bologna. dave said they walked around like zombies and it sort of seemed that way. he also met a friend there, i thought how lucky he was to be surrounded by nice people, people on long island can suck it! we visited the other center too but they had a retreat going on and we walked away before disturbing anyone

we went home, made some 'hippie slop' (stir fried vegetables put in a bowl), and rested for a while from what i can remember. meditated some more later


next morning i was expecting dave but he came around at 8 or 9 or so and told me he was under the weather, oh well! he wanted to go to the diner and i thought sure. i ordered the farmers market omelette, subpar piece of crap.. undercooked peppers spinach and some cheddar cheese. of course it came with home fries, can't say i didn't have a couple bites. dave ordered the french toast and tea, poured some syrup on his toast.

during breakfast we got a call from a farm dave had been working at, but they hadn't called him in months he told me. they were having a harvest festival and needed extra workers, dave said he was with a friend and so the guy on the line said i could come too and i could work 'security' at the hay maze.. i thought 'oh boy..' this guy is probably a douchebag like the rest of them!

when we got there my predictions were true, bunch of townies in camo clothing, some dumbass girls running around. i exchanged some nasty glares with the townies and some nicer ones with the girls. dave got an exceptionally long stare from one of the girls! we were told to collect some firewood with one of the nicer invisble-camo-guys until things started picking up for the festival. then i was told i would be working the main attraction, the pumpkin catapult, i was furious, like shit i wanted to work the main fucking attraction! i wanted to work some god damn hay maze security! that's what i was told! you know there's no arguing with idiots though

we dropped off dave at the hay maze where he'd be collecting money all day and i was dropped off at the main part of the farm as we still had some time to dick around before the festivities. the farm workers were hanging around the apple cider press but there was no way i was hanging out with them. the sun was picking up so i decided to walk over to my car and drop off my sweater, and while i was doing that i ran over to dave just to hang out some more, i was a bit upset i wouldn't be hanging with him for 6 hours or so

i told him i'd be fired if i kept hanging around and ran to the catapult, i was pleased to see security tape lining some distance between us and the catapult watchers. for the next 6 hours i was in charge of the trigger and hammer, launching these pumpkins some 200 feet into the air, entertaining the idiots as they went "ooh, ahh" "HAHAHHAHAHHA" "did you see how far that went?!" jesus fucking christ. by the end dave and i were told we'd be paid 15 bucks an hour and i thought well at least there's some sort of redemption. we grabbed a chocolate milkshake each on the way out and drove back to dave's tiny home

when we got back i told dave i'd like to walk some more, i had fun the day before, and that evening we walked the other direction of the road where most of the land was owned by a private land conservation company. dave had two neighbors, one living old guy to his left, and to his right a nonliving private entity who preserved nature. i thought it was a pretty sweet deal that dave lived next to a nature preserve

when we got back dave went to his house and i decided to take a crap in the outhouse, i was a bit scared when i saw i'd be shitting in a bucket, but it ended up being a high-class bucket with a toilet seat and everything. i took a decent crap, sprinkled some wood chips on it, and decided to walk some more in another direction of daves house. it was getting dark but i walked as far as the trail went and ended up at a nice rock that seemed nice to sit on. i imagined the old zen masters that spent time in the woods sitting on rocks, what made the present so different? well i'm not a zen master, but i did sit on the rock for a bit before i thought it was getting quite dark and i ought to get back!

when i got back dave and i had already decided that we'd go out to eat around 7. when i met him we decided on some place in who knows where, i just told him i wanted some eggplant parmigiana (to please that veggie loving freakazoid). we took a nice drive over there, no radio, talking about his past relationships, about his 20s where he went, how he lived and all of that. there were a bunch of very interesting stories that i'm glad he shared with me.

when we got to the place it was pretty busy and we sat next to the bar. there were a couple of obnoxious drunks, but i ignored them as best as i could. it wasn't too difficult because dave kept telling interesting stories. when we met our waitress dave commented on the fact that she looked tired and she agreed, when she walked away dave said that it seemed like she didn't like him, the rest of the dinner proved him right because she was awfully hushed to us

the food was decent besides all the bread stuffs, and dave and i shared many interesting conversations! i was having a blast really, it was a good time. we drove back home and even though i was tired i wanted to keep talking and so we went into dave's house and talked some more.. this time more in depth of the denizens of r/zen and 7thzenpatriarchblog. dave read aloud to me a talk by george bowman, he told it quite well and i was enjoying the story. we talked some about george and then dave told me he was tired and so was i

next morning we woke up early for meditation,  2 30 minute sits split up by some walking. after we shared some 'egg slop', self explanatory, some tea, and some more conversation. i helped clean up a bit, made my bed, set aside some money for dave to thank him for hosting me. i shut the door to the oval and walked up with dave to his house, put my plastic bag of supplements down and exchanged a hug with dave. i felt like crying a bit but i also knew that i'd be back some day to share the woods with this crazy hermit

thanks for the good times dave