Some Guy Says

Manifesting Moonlight among the Mountains

This summer I went away on a marvelous adventure. I had a wonderful time, but I had assured myself of a terrible return.

And so that’s what happened.

See, my social media is...vile. Most of you know. It’s not a secret. You’ve seen it. I am angry and loud and caustic and critical about my country. I have tried to moderate myself, but as soon as I became convinced that my posts were part of the resistance, there’s been no stopping me.

And further, I became certain that my posts were going to get me detained and deported at some point along my joyful journey.

That didn’t happen.

Nevertheless, that return was – by far and away – the worst travel experience of my life, and I am sure I created it via the expectations that I held…aka my attitude.

I had been invited to officiate the wedding of Sonja and Little Bobby in her home – and now their hometown – of Kilsund, Norway.

You probably recall that Bobby has been my best pal for more than 40 years. And Sonja is the bright and shining star to grace his life and now ours as well.

The island of Kilsund is placed where the Oslo Fjord meets the Black Sea. It’s pretty remote – you can’t just, you know, show up! – but even so, it functions as a kind of resort for fancy people in the early to mid-summer months. I was there in July and August, and it was beyond astonishing for its natural beauty, generous people, and simple living.

It has a store, a gas station, and one really nice restaurant where the wedding was staged. Maybe it had a stop sign here or there, but I don’t recall as much as a single stoplight other than the one governing the one lane bridge that allowed cars onto and off of the island.

It’s the kind of place where kids get boats before they get bikes.

Everything about being there was just exactly perfect: the people, the food, the weather, and most especially the wedding!

Getting there and back were different stories.

Getting there would have been bad enough all on its own – there were snafus with connections and flight times — I lost a full-on day of just being there! I even left my laptop with all my wedding notes at home (how does that even happen...???!!!?!?).

But coming back was…Just So Bad.

It started when I couldn’t manage an online check-in the night before my flight. I even called the airline which couldn’t confirm my check-in either, but not to worry, they said, I could just do it at the airport the next morning.

Fortunately, I didn’t trust this counsel; instead, I went immediately and directly to the airport.

It took an hour and a half to get things sorted and the flight confirmed. Thank goodness I did this early. An hour and a half the next morning would have caused me to miss the flight which, in retrospect, may have been its own kind of blessing.

Anyways...

The problem evidently stemmed from one of the mishaps of traveling in to Norway. My arrival had not been documented properly by the airline and so now I could not leave the country because there was no record of my having ever been in it. Imagine: there you are, standing right in front of some “official person” in a foreign country, and they can see you, and they are talking to you, but they cannot verify that you are there.

It’s like the exact opposite of what is happening in America today where, if you are undocumented, they will not see you or talk to you, and they cannot detain and deport you fast enough.

You see now why this thought of deportation rested in and wrestled with my mind. Right?

And that was the least of it. I won’t go into every single thing that happened because that would just make for some long and lousy reading.

But!

I will tell you this part –

When I finally made it to the States, the flight to Asheville from Atlanta was, after many delays, cancelled at 11:15p, and I was stuck overnight in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

At about two in the morning, I lay down on the hard floor. Ten minutes in, my body was like, “Oh...um...no. You are way too old for this shit.” So I stumbled all over that goddam airport for the rest of the night. By “all over,” I mean I covered every concourse except for E all the while listening to recorded messages from the airport director and the Mayor of the City of Atlanta and the president of United Airlines telling me how lucky I was to be in the most efficient, most well-run, most welcoming airport in the world.

Har-rumph!

At about five o’clock in the morning when things started to open up, I found a coffee shop and got me a hot black cuppa to go, turned around and straightway fell down the escalator in Concourse D.

As will sometimes happen when things go awry like this, I felt myself to be tumbling in slow-slow-oh-so-slow motion. So slowly, in fact, that I clearly remember having these three distinct thoughts:

One: You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Two: Bob White, if you spill a drop of this coffee, I swear to god...

Three: Dude! Get UP!

Needless to say, at five o’clock in the morning, at the most efficient, most well-run, most welcoming airport in the world, there was no one to talk to. No one to check in with. No one to whom you might report an accident. No one to point you to Red Cross or whatever the Safety First Office is. And probably no Safety First Office in any case.

No one to pat your little head and tell you, “Aw honey, there there...”

Wanh.

At nine o’clock, I got to my gate where I met and made friends with a woman who is a hospice nurse and who, among other things, wanted to know what had happened to my knee. She pointed to my pants leg which was covered in bloody patches. I told her my story, and she cleaned me up and bandaged me right there, and together we got on the plane to Asheville.

All told, from arriving at the airport in Oslo to landing in Asheville was 38 hours. I was awake the entire time plus 8 more hours for a Personal Best of 46 hours straight.

[You know...on this point, I just want to say that I don’t think Keith Richards gets enough credit for this kind of thing.]

Today, I am convinced that all of this happened because I expected it to. Granted, I was thinking more along the lines of Gestapo Intervention, but that’s mainly because that’s what’s in the news. Short of that, this was nothing like I would have ever imagined for myself...except...I had imagined something bad.

That’s on me.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. I am with a friend who is walking me through the business he is in the process of selling. He points out a wall sconce with a burned-out bulb.

“In the 20 years, I have owned this place, I’ve never seen anyone else change a light bulb. It always and only comes down to me. I may as well just sell the whole damn thing broken and busted and dark.”

Hey hey hey, I thought, If it’s trouble you’re looking for, you will find it.

Even the Bible teaches: “Seek and ye shall find.” Right?

Honestly, I think most people think that verse means something else, but I am here to tell you that you are going to find – for better or worse –just exactly what you are looking for.

I suspect my friend had a lot more going on than simply a burned-out bulb: licensing and financing issues, mortality issues, existential dark night of the soul kind of issues. Living in the world today issues.

But...I mean...at the end of the day...the bulb got changed, the business got sold, it all worked out.

Just like I got home with a patched knee and a nurse for a new friend. Everything worked out.

I am reminded of my old friend Lenny. Once in my twenties, I was whining to him about something. I don’t remember what. But I definitely remember what he said: “You have never been in a situation in your life that did not work out.”

In that moment, I thought, “Yes I have!” and I started to list one tragic event, unfulfilled dream and frustrated expectation after another. But…you know…if all the things I had yearned for as a young man had come to be, I would probably be dead or in jail.

In fact, the worst things that ever happened to me have yielded my very best blessings.

So?

Were they the worst things?

Ah well. Things are what they are. I think we assign values of “good” and “bad” to things to help us navigate the illusion that we are managing it all. At the end of the day we do what we can with what we have and who we are at any given moment in life, right?

All these stories harken me back to the real test for me, The Storm.

I was so glib about that Storm. But in fairness to myself, I’d been in plenty of storms in Florida, so it never occurred to me that the most devastating hurricane of my life would find me in the mountains of western North Carolina.

On that Friday, as I was leaving to go home from work, I listened while everyone talked about their hurricane plans. How very cute, I thought. Just adorable.

I sat up all night and watched from my upstairs window while the thing blew through town. The next day we had no electricity. Yeah? So? That’s what happens when you have a gullywasher like that, the lights go out. No big deal.

The next day, Saturday, Bella and I explored our neighborhood. Things looked bad for sure, but – hey! – wasn’t that a mighty storm!

The next day, Sunday, I shot straight out of bed at 4am – Wait! I don’t have water! That’s fine for me – I have wine! – but what about Bella? If you read my last post, then you know that Bella is not given to suffering. Ever. Not for herself and certainly not for the likes of fools like me. She’s disdainful and dismissive, and that curt and impatient way she has of stamping her big fat foot to mark her displeasure is a terror all its own.

I remember calling out to the cosmos, I need water for Bella!!

Within an hour, my downstairs neighbor Karla had determined to evacuate. Unlike me, she had filled every pot, every pan, every vase, every vessel she had with potable water the night before. Together we lugged it all up to my place, and I had plenty for me and Bella and pretty much everyone on our floor.

Later on, my pals from the Little Jumbo came looking for me. They had grabbed all the big glass bottles of water from all the tabletops in that place and brought me six of them.

How about that? More than enough!

The next day, Monday, I shot straight up in bed again, this time wailing, “I got water, but I ain’t got no coffee! I need coffee!!”

There was no phone, there was no internet, but two hours later, there was an urgent voice calling me up from outside my window: “Bobby! Bobby White! We have your coffee! We brought you coffee!!” It was my sweet friend Jennifer and her tribe come to save me with a veritable vat of coffee!

More than enough!

The next day, Tuesday, I was feeling peckish – to say the least. I need food! That’s when I heard that World Central Kitchen had come to town!

So much food!

The next day, Wednesday, I talked to Ginny who – 40 minutes away – had lost nothing: not power or water or internet. “Come over here and get cleaned up.”

I joked with Ginny that I’d been so good at manifesting – water! coffee! food! – that I should get to work manifesting something real and special and useful. Something like...seven million dollars!

The next day when I got up, she asked, “How did you sleep?”

“Like a million bucks!” says I.

“Good! Only six million more to go,” says she.

Now when I tell this story in a RAWTalk, I ask the audience to join hands and chant with me:

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

– and Ima tell you the same thing I tell them: If you will chant this with me — even if it’s just inside your own head — and if I get six million dollars, I will split it with you!

I will. Honor Bright! (IYKYK)

It’s a cheery joke to think about all this, but the truth is...

I got to officiate my best friend’s wedding in a beautiful place with lots of luscious people. It was the honor of a lifetime, and you can’t put a price on that.

I made a commitment to the community where I now live. That commitment required me to serve it through The Storm and beyond in some of the worst days of its history, and I was rewarded with experiences I wouldn’t trade for...well...six million dollars.

Sometimes, I think that the fact that I am even here in the mountains at all is its own kind of miracle because...

...if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion, as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life....You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet had worn a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight among the mountains.

I do not wish to go below now.

– Henry David Thoreau

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month!