This is how it begins.

“Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing. …. “

In the book, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions, after the scenes with the Obi Wan Kenobi wiseman character, the protagonist is drawn into a discussion about Climate Change as a form of trauma.  Trauma occurs with a puncture wound, a broken bone, hemorrhage, and so on.  Just as our bodies have to adapt to physical trauma, so does the Earth.  Hence, “Climate Change.”  What the very few are getting now (God Bless Congress) however, is that just as our bodies have to adapt to our own emotions and emotional reactions about and around Trauma, so does the Earth.

Please visit the book, Touch the Ocean, to learn more of this phenomenon in particular and what you can do.

(Everything is connected in more ways than we have previously dared to imagine.  With this book, you can check it out for yourself … provided you take the time.)

For more on Bill McKibbon and 350.0rg, check out the Democracy Now Interview with way cool Amy Goodman.  It’s always been kind of a Hippie show, but the now it’s the best real News show in America now (endorsed by Bill Moyers who wants to see it on PBS) and she is such a dear heart – and somebody please give Amy Goodman her Pulitzer Prize now?

Good news!  The New Audio Book for Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions is available now as a download on Audible.com

Thank you for your visit.

It’s quite an extraordinary experience.  You get into your old car, for instance, and you enter a different World.  It’s not the world of freeways, stop signs and traffic. With Touch the Ocean, resonant waves of sound suddenly appear, harmonies of the body mind and spirit emerge, then engaging relationships between family members, insights of dolphins,  and finally, healing.  This flows out from the spaces of what is not said as much as the words expressed.

The new version of Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions by James Nemec, publisher CraniOcean Media with Emerald Green Sound, and an Ivy League endorsement,  is now available as an Mp3 Download on Apple and Amazon.  In a few short weeks, the new hard copy print of the Audio Book version will be available.  With a lot of great material, highly recommended by the best of friends who are the best of people!

Can one light touch change the world?  … Could our environment be anything other than ourselves?  … Are our bodies oceans in miniature?

Order your copy today and enter a fresh, brand new world.  Some of the information in this Audio Book could change the life of the one you love best.  You might learn a little something of what you didn’t know before.

‘Thank you!’ you will hear, again and again from those you gift this too.  And thanks for checking this singular event out for yourself  now.  Peace and Be well.

Check out the questions posed in Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions and find out for yourself — in your own experience — how this could be considered likely.

Refer, for example, to the chapter entitled, “Sensitive Weather” and … think about it for a while …. you might learn something you never knew before, or happen across a special insight, after all, it couldn’t hurt.

The Final Cut, Spoken Word Audio Book for, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions, by craniosacral facilitator, James Nemec LMT, CST-D will be available from March 2, 2011 at better bookstores and as an Mp3 download, published by CraniOcean Media.

Thanks for your visit.

Meanwhile, the award winning book, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions by James Nemec LMT, CST-D has a video trailer on youtube for the “ocean fresh,” Spoken Word Audio Book and Mp3 versions:

Here is a brief but kindly description of the Spoken Word Audio Book from one of the distributors of the book:

Touch the ocean, Your ocean! The Award Winning, TOUCH THE OCEAN: THE POWER OF OUR COLLECTIVE EMOTIONS, by celebrated craniosacral therapist, James Nemec, narrates compelling stories of heart centered presence and ocean healing. Capturing the moment-by-moment details of actual sessions with dolphins and clients, the author learns how to participate with nature and to ‘touch the ocean.’  Music of Place by Rusty Crutcher from “Ocean Eclipse,” compliments of Emerald Green Sound, with an Ivy League endorsement for Afterward.  The tones of the Audio Book and Mp3 take us into fluid spaces that can open the listener to a very alive Gaia. The  prismatic and visionary Author draws on his theater background as an actor and playwright for “really engaging” listening.  Revised, Unabridged. “Ocean fresh delivery.” – New Leaf Distributing

With additional vocals by Suzanne Catty, Sound Engineering, JC Spradley, and consultant Editor, Alex Earley

(The two women in the video are craniosacral therapists, Deborah Dale McConnell and Athena Zesik.)

Readers of the CraniOcean.Calm News, might consider ordering the Audio Hard copy here at Amazon International for supplies will be quite limited.

Thanks for considering your purchase — a refreshing mental health break for you in your car!

AudioBook/Mp3 for "Touch the Ocean"- Body, Mind & Spirit

CraniOcean Media – An Interdependent Publisher – announces that the long awaited ‘final edition’ Audio Book for, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions by James Nemec LMT, CST-D is available to order from March 2, 2011 as an AudioBook and Mp3 Download.

[If you are seeking actual relief and treatment-headaches, lower back pain, anxiety, pre and post op, and more, go to this page by Author/Facilitator, James Nemec, on CraniOcean.Com -- Contact Us!]

Thanks for your visit!

It happened the day after the event at the Harvard Coop in Cambridge for the book, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions. I’d just returned from the book events in beautiful Ireland and the readings there.  My friend from L.A, (and friend of the book! Christine, and I felt inspired to pay our respects to the legendary, Henry David Thoreau.  I’d forgotten that Thoreau had grown up in nearby Concord, Mass,and  about Thoreau’s association with Harvard and that he had graduated college there.  Seemed appropriate now.

James Nemec Reads at Harvard Coop

We drove out to Concord and found Walden Pond maintained as part of the Park Service.  There was a likeness of Thoreau’s one-room wooden cabin near the parking lot and outside the cabin was a likeness of Thoreau himself in pressed metal, walking.  Just for fun, I grabbed a copy of the book out of the rental car, opened it, and placed it between his hands.

We placed a copy in his hands

We wondered if someone would steal the book, but let it go.  If anyone would steal a book from Thoreau’s hands, they needed it more.  “Why not?”

Christine and I then went off walking along the crusty edges of the pond.  We found the historic stone foundations of Thoreau’s original cabin.  We jumped in the cold water and Christine learned to swim, right there next to Thoreau’s place!

As the sun began to go down, we sauntered back to the parking lot, and the book was still between Thoreau’s hands.  But something had changed. There was a thin streak of light brown mud along the outside of the book cover. We went around and looked at the open pages and there was a smudge of dust there.  It seemed that the book had dropped from his hands and that someone else had picked up the book from the ground and placed back into his hands.

“Look at this,” I said to Christine.  “Look at what page it’s on.”

“Wow, ” she said, “Incredible.”

I could not believe it, although it was right in front of my eyes.

The Sun Began to Go Down — Walden Pond

If you have ever read Walking by Thoreau, or Walden Pond, you will very much appreciate this most extraordinary coincidence.  The book was wide open to two pages that Thoreau had helped to inspire. Here is a brief excerpt from what he … seemed to be ‘reading’ and quite intently.

It’s from one of the chapter’s around working with clients and dolphins in the Bahamas and doing craniosacral theapy in the water.  The chapter is titled, Trinidad and Tobago. It describes what happened when we first began working with the dolphins, or perhaps, when they first began working with us … !

Reading Along With Thoreau

On the first day, they [the dolphins] spent time at the bottoms of each patient’s feet and it was the only area of the body they would contact.  On the second day, they avoided the feet almost entirely and made contact with the patients’ heads.  It was peculiarly similar to the way a craniosacral therapist would work.  First, very respectfully at the feet, and then later at the head, but only with permission.  The dolphins were not trained for this behavior and were learning on the job.  This was the first day the dolphins would begin, of their own behest, to make contact with the whole body of each patient that was being floated.  They were learning, day by day, just as we were learning because this was new to us too.  I said silently to this large woman’s body in front of me, “Show me what you need,” but now I also directed this request to include the two dolphins we were working with, Tobago and Trinidad, so that it would be as one body.  “Show us.”  The dolphins continued to keep their distance.

The sun was hot on the still water and I looked out at the other therapists floating their patients, each group being careful to keep the patients’ noses above water.  There was a salty breeze, and a gull landed on the platform behind me and began its calls.  After some minutes of this it seemed the calls of the seagull were somehow working in concert with the clicks and whistles of the dolphins.  I let my imagination drift with the sounds and the exceedingly rare harmonies of their dissonances.  Squawk, squawk, squawk!  Click, click!  Hadn’t the ocean been fine tuned over millions of years, not just hundreds of years, with its inhabitants all working together as predators, parasites, prey, all as an interdependent whole?  There are times in the silence of working with dolphins when wisdom arises.

Touching the Ocean at Walden Pond

Now I wondered, was there really such a thing as independence?  We humans were a recent arrival on the planet and perhaps had not yet perceived the delicate balance of the sea creatures in their great water homes.  I wondered if anything in the sea was truly independent of anything else in the sea.  Even above the sea…!  Independence does not occur in nature, if we bother to look, only in our own overworked and addled brains.  It doesn’t occur in the human body.  How could we as a species have become so tragically wrong, so deluded? What organ in the human body is independent of any other organ?  What could the heart do without the liver, the liver without the blood, the blood without the body?  If any one of our organs declared its independence from the others, we would have a major disorder.

I thought of an archeological finding in Pakistan in the summer of 2001 and how whale fossils from 50 million years ago were discovered and the whales had legs!1 I thought of other stories, myths, theories, of whales and dolphins as once having been land mammals and then going back to the sea.  They went from the sea to the land and back again! 2 Click, click!  Squawk, squawk, squawk! Who was I to say there couldn’t be a kind of connection between the dolphins and the seagulls?  Or with us, for that matter? ….

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, JAMES NEMEC LMT, CST-D

Note that what you have read, and hopefully enjoyed, is not only published and copywrighted material, but the names of the two dolphins were changed for the book, not without very good reasons. The actual names of these two dolphins were, Abaco and Coral. I’m sure that there are some good people out there who would appreciate knowing that!  And for Thoreau’s lovers, who happen to be in Concord, check out the flap on the surface of the satchel he wears … see what appears!

x

Thanks for your visit — why not subscribe to something harmless?  You can do it and here.  ciao.

With Touch the Ocean, these lovely books have been cultivated and grown over time, perhaps to plant the seeds, and to make the books available, as book gardens … gardens that we might happen to discover, enjoy, and rest within.  Very much like the small, hidden gardens in London or New York.

Why not make quiet gardens ?  If they are to be found beyond our small pod, represented by this newsletter, the CraniOcean.Calm News, I think it’s also up to you now, as you feel inspired.

Share the inspiration? Contribute a 5 star Review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble online – if that is fun for you.  Generate energy?  Discover your purpose in doing anything and in not doing anything.

I’ve other books to write, seeds to plant, book and play gardens to cultivate, plays for the stage, clients to attend to and work with,

Yes, Book Gardens!

Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions

Book

Blend (These are blends, not blogs – you have arrived at one now

The Complete AudioBook/Mp3 for, Touch the Ocean – read by the author with environmental music by Rusty Crutcher from his, Ocean Eclipse.

Forthcoming! March 2, 2011 (yay!) Pre-order your copy now.

Journeys: Stories Our Bodies Can Tell

Book

Blend

CraniOcean.Calm

Books

Blend

(And more being cultivated now!)

Cranio-What? A CranioSacral Therapy Primer

Available Now! Purchase your copy today.

Awake and Asleep: ( More Stories Our Bodies Tell), or (Loving the Art in Yourself) or (The Dawn of Awareness) ….

Book – Forthcoming! Maybe in 3 years or so.  What will be the subtitle?

CraniOcean Channel on You Tube

Video More videos recently added – from the Archive.

And if you do enjoy this newsletter or blend, please click on Forward, to forward it to others of like-mind.  Your interest lets these book gardens grow!

Thank you.

It happened.

L.A. PLAYWRIGHT CREATES AN ENORMOUS WAVE WITH THE RELEASE OF HIS BOOK, “TOUCH THE OCEAN: THE POWER OF OUR COLLECTIVE EMOTIONS”

James Nemec, LMT, CST-D, pioneers the power of touch and collective emotions in the release  (September 2007) of his first book in a three book series, “TOUCH THE OCEAN: THE POWER OF OUR COLLECTIVE EMOTIONS.”

“One Light Touch Can Change the World” is a theme that runs throughout this intriguing look at the power of light touch and the possible effects of positive and negative energy that is released in to the world.

Have you ever wondered what happens to the energy of our emotions when we release them into the universe? What if our collective emotions can actually affect weather or cause catastrophic events? And what if one person’s light touch can heal another, or ultimately affect the world?

From the introduction:

“Touch the Ocean” is about a way of being with ourselves and others, being with the ocean and the sky in a healing context, even with the weather and weather patterns, and it is also about a new way of light touch, largely unknown, which is proven to relieve and treat an array of symptoms…. and above all, …. discover old story patterns long held within our bodies and to harmlessly release them.

The author, in a lyrical style, shares an intimate account of his own life experiences and emotions and in doing so compels the reader to consider different ways to experience life.   He recounts stories of healing touch in the ocean with his fascinating hands-on work with dolphins and humans in the Bahamas under the auspices of The Upledger Institute of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and also shows how each dolphin can have an entirely unique approach to healing.  He acknowledges the learning legacy of his teacher and the developer of craniosacral therapy, Dr. John E. Upledger.

James Nemec, a poet and L.A. playwright,  has worked as a craniosacral therapist and massage therapist for more than 15 years. Regarded as an expert in his field, his unique intuitive, yet clinical approach—CraniOcean–has been known to relieve and treat various “unsolvable” neurological disorders.  CranioSacral Therapy is also for those that seek the sheer pleasure of it!

Published by: CraniOcean Media

Publication date: September 2007

[Update- this was the first ever Press Release for Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions, by James Nemec LMT, CST-D, with this PR written by Kayla Wilson.  Now, a walk down memory lane through craniosacral therapy! Thanks for your visit. - JN]

Is this the Home page for this blog?  I think I’m the only one that reads this blog.  Small wonder.  I’ve never promoted it.  I can’t recall having invited a list of Friends to read it.  I’m not really sure what an RSS feed is, anyway.

The posts are spread out and random because I use it mainly to post things for my newsletter, the CraniOcean.Calm News. You can sign up for it here. I guess that’s what I’m supposed to say at this point.  The herd does.

I also use this, and other blogs, to work things out in words so it can be kind of private here. It’s hard sometimes to find all the unpublishable files on my computer.  And I have at least six blogs set up on WordPress alone, as Book Gardens!  So it’s been a whole lot of garden to cultivate, however beautiful.

“Simplify, simplify” – Henry David Thoreau

Evolve Magazine, 2010. This is really quite an honor for such a small press book.  Touch the Ocean did sell out of it’s first printing and was reprinted, then sold 600 copies before we posted it to Lightening Source as a POD. Anyhow, this is kind of amazing to have such a beautiful 4 page spread in New Leaf’s EVOLVE magazine. If you would like to link to it, you can go the CraniOcean Media display page, or simply to my site, CraniOcean and see it at the top right.  With much appreciation to the learning legacy of Dr. John E. Upledger, developer of CranioSacral Therapy.  I’m grateful to say that most of “Dr. John’s” books are published by Random House.

Maybe at one point, after the series of books are completed and contributed, I’ll be able to submit them to other interested publishers for second editions.  Don’t get me wrong.  Deborah Tyner and small press, CraniOcean Media, does continue to offer a real freedom that few to zero authors can experience, and I’m so very grateful to this.

Everything is alright, for now.

Thanks for your visit!

Be well, Work hard, Have fun,

CraniOcean

Although Dr. John E. Upledger, developer of craniosacral therapy, and many others, had long ago asked that these books be made, the books would not have been finally completed and this tour made if not for your stories being in them.  Consider: After the deep and heart centered work represented here, it was as if the stories had their own energy and desired to be offered to others.  Now, it wouldn’t feel complete after my return to Florida, if some kind of an appreciation wasn’t expressed.

The alternative was for these stories to remain buried in the hard drive of this computer. And if so, for what purpose?

Recall, the story of the ten talents, and what happened to the fellow with the last talent who buried it for safe keeping.  That fellow was thrown into the outer darkness where there was a wailing and knashing of teeth, decidedly, a state of inner conflict.  Well, that talent was perhaps buried out of fear.

We need to be true to our talents.

The first event in the Bay Area was packed – a full house!  Then, each book event grew smaller and smaller, but the conversation deepened.  Finally, in the small town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, it was only a few people talking about the ideas in the books around a table with coffee.  And it occurred to me that this is what a book is all about.  A book is something we can hold in our hands and talk about with friends.  And right after this event, around the table, the hired cleaning lady from the place where I was staying said that just that day, playwright Sam Shepard helped her to put air in her tires at a “T or C” gas station nearby.

(I had been following Sam Shepard around or he had been following me …)

The book tour was to honor real people and real places, perhaps as an offering to each person and the energies and effort that went into the writing of the books.  The tour visited the real places where these real stories actually happened.  It was also an invitation to the real people in the stories, now  just people living their lives. It felt a duty to do this, not as a “good man,” but as a somewhat responsible therapeutic facilitator, and to make this special journey with thanks to Deborah Tyner of CraniOcean Media, and to YOU.

Now, a resonance has been set up.  I don’t know how it happens.  A soft, quiet resonance like a pebble dropped in water.  Or a splash of a brown pelican on the ocean.  Or the leap of a dolphin, coursing through the waves.

As a poet and playwright, I felt it a duty to write these stories down, to describe the truth, as it happened.  And as each story was written, it was as if the sessions began again, with the full cast of characters beyond my writing desk appearing.  In the quiet, every word spoken in the sessions, within and without, was remembered and written down.  This can happen at these expanded levels of health and well being.  This is also what is possible.

The exquisite realization of Health  -
O I say these are not the parts and poems
of the Body only, but of   the Soul, O I say now these are the Soul!

Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric

Thank you to the better bookstores for hosting these events.  Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions was also discussed, and the newest book, a handy, brief, illustrated supplement to the series, “Cranio-What?” A Craniosacral Therapy Primer was introduced.  Other fine bookstores on the overall tour include (let’s see if i can recall them all!) …

• Book Soup, Los Angeles
• Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Los Angeles
• Books and Books, Coral Gables
• Rainbow Bridge, West Palm Beach
• Changing Time Books and Gifts, West Palm Beach
• Sheelanagig, County, Meath, Ireland
• Oxfam, Dublin, Ireland
• Harvard COOP, Cambridge Mass.
• Barnes and Noble, Cambridge Mass
• Unity Churches, Chicago IL
• Phoenix and Dragon, Atlanta
• Borders Books, Cobb Parkway, Atlanta
• Malaprop Books, Asheville, NC
• Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Los Angeles
• East/West Books, Bay Area
• Awakening Heart, White Rock, BC
• Banyen Books and Sound, BC
• Book Soup, Los Angeles
• Garcia Street Books, Santa Fe, NM
• Integrative Intentions and Black Cat Books, Truth or Consequences, NM

And thanks to each person who supported this tour along the way of each journey! You know who you are!

What’s astonishing are the many high profile bookstores around the country that continue to offer to host events for these books, from Books and Books in Coral Gables, to the Harvard Coop, to Garcia Street Books in Santa Fe, and Book Soup in L.A.  And just the other good energy places like, Awakening Heart, in White Rock, BC and the beloved Bodhi Tree Bookstore in West Hollywood, with thanks to owners, Stan and Phil there.

With this last tour, it feels as if the stories and the books have eased off some, so that I can rest some and work on other projects … maybe the plays again?  Or dating again?

Curiously, in this odd part of the planet called Southern New Mexico, and the day after that last book event, I happened to be introduced to one of the men who the movie, Men Who Stare At Goats was based.  His name was L _____nn.  He said the movie was all true but that Hollywood had to spoof it up a little.  He said those guys in the movie lived all around in the hills here.  And he pointed to one of the hills, over there.  He said that the Apaches were really good at “cloud busting,” and that they lived that way, out there.  He wore a wide straw hat and his beard was small and square, kind of like a g___t.  But that’s another story, LOL.  I only know a few clients that would appreciate that story, really.  And I didn’t particularly like that movie, at least, couldn’t figure it out.

Ours, however, was a different book and purpose.  Some of you in the books showed up at the events, and there were many new faces at each new location bright with authentic interest.  What is wonderful is that the events were offered to you and others and to the well, the All and the Everything!  It just felt karmically PC to do all of this. It felt, well, like being what, to me, is a Good Guest.  And on purpose.

Again, thank you to each one of you who continue to read this newsletter, who plan to read the forthcoming books, and for your contribution of interest and care. Your reading this now is active in a mutually shared presence with others you might never know or meet, and it matters.

Why not create and contribute a high and delightful vibration, right where you are?  If just a good mood … and we have!

“Stand by for Updates!”

 
]]> http://touchtheocean.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/an-appreciation-touching-the-ocean/feed/ 0 craniocean The Facilitator, circa 1999 http://touchtheocean.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/happy-birthday-john-lennon-one-from-palm-beach-island/ http://touchtheocean.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/happy-birthday-john-lennon-one-from-palm-beach-island/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:13:25 +0000 JJ http://touchtheocean.wordpress.com/?p=957 ]]> UPDATE: Whoa, just skimmed this and it reads like a chapter in a book!

UPDATE: November 12, 2010. Rode by John and Yoko’s old house here on the Harley Davidson the other day.  (Name of the Harley is, LUCKY!)  There is new construction going on there now that is covering over the old driveway entrance.  The construction is right next to A1A.  So if you go there expecting a gentle contact from John Lennon, just know that that particular access point is closed right now.

Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.

- Anonymous

Today is John Lennon’s Birthday.  The island of Palm Beach forms part of the background of the stories in Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions, but I don’t think that John and Yoko are mentioned, although the Kennedy’s are.  The Kennedys’ were up on the North End of Palm Beach, but John and Yoko were on the South End.  Anyway, as an artist and a visionary prismatic person, I was driving by John and Yoko’s old house on South Ocean Boulevard today after finding out that I didn’t need to replace the battery on my Hybrid.  I’d been to the Old Key Lime house in Lantana and was feeling pretty good after a few beers and local caught fish.  I was headed up toward the Breakers Hotel beach for a dip in the ocean.  I waved to the house and it seemed to vibrate for a second and then glow.  I thought, “Cool, the place is blessed.”

It was only later that I turned on Garrison Keillor who said that it was John Lennon’s Birthday today. I feel that Keillor’s gift is that he can impart comfort to people.  And people need comfort during these interesting times. Keillor also sang one of William Blake’s poems, one of my favorite poems of all time.  In his elder years, Blake, the great pre-romantic poet, had a long white beard and shaggy white hair.  He would dress in a robe like one of the Prophets. The poem ends with these few lines, “Man was made for joy and woe.  When this ye rightly know.  Safely through this world ye go.”

(Think about that for a while … )

I went for a dip in the ocean. Then I went back to the cottage and took a nap on the couch in the Bahama Room.  The couch is from the blue room in the house on the ocean described in Touch the Ocean.  It’s a great couch for a nap and still smells like salt air and sunlight.

I don’t know why but after I woke up, I began to get excited about today’s being John Lennon’s birthday.  Keillor said that if Lennon would have lived, he would be 70 years old today. No one on my FaceBook was saying anything about it, having been preempted by “10-10-10,” so I searched some sites and just got into the swing of it.  And I felt kind of bad because when I’d passed by his old house here, I’d just waved.  I didn’t place a flower for peace or get out of the car or anything.  I went out to the Publix and did some food gathering, and since I didn’t have any plans for after dinner, I thought I’d drive by John and Yoko’s house again, just for the fun of it.

I’d found Lennon Legend and loaded into the hybrid’s CD player.  I drove south over the South End bridge toward Donald Trump’s MarALago.  The South End or “Southern Boulevard” bridge is one of the oldest but finest bridges here and was built by the Cleary Brothers back in the day.  I noticed that the light wasn’t on the tower of MarALago.  MarALago, which means, the Ocean to Lake, was originally the home of Majorie Merriweather Post, of Post Cereal.  She was like about, the, Social Matron of Palm Beach in her day and whenever she was in town, she would have the light lit on her tower.  The place was deserted when we were kids, and we’d sneak in there and scare each other.  Huge baroque objects were covered in dusty sheets and the place was in tatters.  It smelled of whoever was in there last and of dank mold.  It was quite ghostly but not in a super bad way — just eerie and no place that anybody wanted to really live, especially not us kids. It was strangely appropriate that the Trump would be attracted to that odd place.

Lennon Honors Google

Anyway, tonight was about John and Yoko.  So around the curve I went past MarALago heading south on South Ocean Boulevard.  I turned the music up.  I’d never had the music so loud in my car.  “Power to the People” came on and was just blasting.  The speed limit is 25 miles per hour on that road in some places and there was only one car far behind me.  I thought it might be a cop and slowed down.  Cops are everywhere in Palm Beach and they can be super mean to anyone who is not a resident of Palm Beach.  On the other hand, if you are resident here, they will do about anything for you, but that’s another story.  I thought about the ceremony they’d had today in Central Park at Strawberry Fields. I’d read about it online.  And I thought about how Yoko had gone to Iceland and dedicated a statue or something that had a blue light pointed into the sky.

And I thought about the color blue.

So I’m headed north on South Ocean Boulevard with “Power to the People” blasting away, and it was as if I could see the glow of John and Yoko’s place from this distance, beyond the row of same-same mansions facing the ocean.  It felt so nice that there was some authentic light shining somewhere in this town tonight.

My plan was just to drive by the house and maybe give a wave. Then I’d drive on and walk down Clematis in West Palm Beach or something, because the only other “John Lennon” type place I know here is Legacy Art Gallery on Clematis which is owned by my friend, Larry Schwartz.  Larry has worked with Yoko and carries a lot of John Lennon’s artwork, also artwork by Miles Davis and Grace Slick.  So that would sort of be my pilgrimage for the day.

There was a sign that said Men at Work and a sign that said, Detour.  This was odd.  I passed through there that afternoon, no problem.  Signs like that can make even the stout hearted fail if no a resident of Palm Beach.  I wondered if  the town had placed those signs in case anyone from out of town wanted to place flowers, like at Princess Di’s funeral or something. I slowed even more, but then, feeling some mischief, cranked the volume louder.

It was after 11:30 PM when I drove by.  I didn’t have a flower to place, and besides I was worried if that car way behind me was an official.  And so I just drove by with “Power to the People” blasting and I was singing and saying, “right on, right on.”  But as a I passed the driveway to their old home on the northernmost end of the property, I wondered if this was the former estate of heiress Brownie McLean, and I barely remembered to make a peace sign.  So I made a couple of peace signs in a rush, and that kind of bothered me.

How could I have a song like “Power to the People” on at full blast and be thinking of the the super rich and what’s more, oddly afraid of an imagined official?  I didn’t even know if it was a copy … I mean, a copy copy copy copy copy cop. It was as if thought forms and crystalized-leylines of invisible fear had been placed along the road.  These lines were not exclusive to this area, but seemed to stretch everywhere.  They are however fragile now and will shatter into pieces since this is now the way that Nature is going.  The Planet Earth simply cannot tolerate another Empire.  Perhaps our next journeys will be into the the populating of our star system, for the children are showing that they are rather restless.  When will there be another venture to the Moon, at least, to help blow off the collective emotional steam?

As I drove on for several blocks, I remembered that the Big Song of the day that they had sung at Strawberry Fields was “Give Peace a Chance.” Man!  Maybe I needed to drive by John and Yoko’s house again with that song playing ..!  Maybe I’d done it all wrong.  I turned left into a quiet Palm Beach neighborhood, the mansions silent, dark, without physical light, and I’m pushing the scan button over and over to get to “Give Peace a Chance,” and my scan is sticking sometimes and I don’t I get there to that song.  I just make a U-turn and head back up to the ocean road.  I head South on South Ocean Boulevard.

So this is going to be my third pass of the day, including the casual pass of their home I’d made that afternoon – when I’d noticed the glow, recall — and the really good loudspeakers are blaring and I don’t know what song is playing but it’s not “Give Peace a Chance.”  And nobody is opening their windows and there is virtually nobody on the road and I’m thinking, whoah, doesn’t anybody else know it’s John Lennon’s birthday around here?  I mean, some of the man’s artwork was even on the Google logos today.  So I just sort of give a peace sign and call the pilgrimage off for the evening.

So I’m driving along the ocean and I know that the third time is the charm and all that, but something was missing.  I’d needed to stop the car.  There was no one else on the road.  I had to go up against the imagined authorities and officials.  If not me, who?  I’d rushed it again.  The poet Rumi says, Don’t move the way fear makes you move.

I swing the small hybrid into another U Turn at the Lake road turn-off,  right where the Detour signs are, and head back onto South Ocean Boulevard, I’m going north again, and relieved that I caught the Uturn just right so I would pass John and Yoko’s former residence again. This would be the fourth pass, perhaps a balance of events.

OK

So this time, I slowed and slowed.  And I had, “Give Peace a Chance” on full.

I passed their house and I actually slowed to a stop.  With that stop, I turned up “Give Peace a Chance” even louder and I sang it out loud! Then I realized it wasn’t a cop or an official that I was worried about or that had prevented me from concentrating enough to stop before, but the fact that a car could come rushing around that curve at any moment and clobber the back of my car!  It was only for a moment, but sometimes a moment is all that chance requires.  For me, it was an opening for the chance of peace in the midst of  hazard.

In that space, less than a minute, I could see the blue glow above their former home, radiant.  And I blessed the witnessing of this event.  Remembering common sense, I pressed on the accelerator, unlocking the battery charge of the hybrid and moved forward. As i moved past the driveway, someone was there, waving.  Two people were there.  It was John and Yoko, waving with smiling, welcoming faces.  John was dressed in white, the Abbey Road cover, with hair and beard long, and Yoko was dressed somewhat in dark clothes, but there they were.  I turned to look again as I made the curve, going North.  They were still there.

Wow.

Then.  I continued to drive past the metered parking spaces at the public beach.  I didn’t notice when “Give Peace a Chance” stopped playing.  I pulled over to a place we once called, “Flagpole.”  It was a favorite surfing hang out when we were kids and we’d always get hassled by the copys there … I mean, the copy oppy cops.  It was one of those forbidden places from my teens that once mystified me and that I’d long since dis-identified with and discharged any negative associations.  There was silence.  Then Frank Sinatra came on full blast.  I heard a couple laugh.  There was a couple seated on a bench.  I turned the Frank Sinatra off, and set the CD back to Lennon Legend.

“Imagine” began to play. I turned it down some, just to downplay it a bit in case the couple didn’t like Lennon, and got out of the car.  I walked down the sidewalk, past the Flagpole, and turned to the seawall and the ocean.  I could still hear “Imagine” playing faintly from my car.  I lifted my arms and let my hands move over the waters.

Before I got back into the car, I checked my watch and saw that it was now midnight.  I pressed the accelerator, turned, and drove silently toward the West.  I pushed up the last words of “Imagine” ever so slightly in case the couple had been listening intently, as I had. It was just that sliver of chance that they might have been listening.  And chance is very real.

And the world will be as one ….

Happy Birthday John Lennon.  Love, Love, Love and I Love.

Thank you Yoko.  Thanks to all who remember and Legacy Productions too!

Peace and Be Well,