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The Original ZENLAND: My New (Old) Place |
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Tabula Rasa
NEVER GO BACK.** That’s what I always preach. I left a good life here in Los Angeles in the Spring of 2000. There were many good reasons I left that spring: My little sister had a baby. I was in debt. There was a crazy lady living two doors down from me threatening to kill me and calling the police, telling them I bugged her place... (More on this story very soon I PROMISE). Putting my entire studio apartment in storage and heading back East for the summer didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. I would work in the restaurant industry and pay off my debt (which I did), then head back to California (which I didn’t). According to life—that wasn’t quite the plan.
**Two disclaimers on that one: 1) Unless you have been trying to GET back. 2) NEVER SAY NEVER.
For years I tried to return to the life I once led. The memories of my idyllic existence haunted me: farmer’s markets, brilliant autistic children, yoga, cooking, being outdoors, writing, taking pictures, singing and dancing. Basically exercising every aspect of my personality. I felt disconnected from my true nature living on the East Coast. I longed to be my Self again and at times it seemed I would never recapture what I had lost. My old way of life was quickly becoming a myth.
Fast-forward SEVEN YEARS. I’m back. And I’m pretty sure I’ve entered some kind of cosmic vortex. I’m living in the same building, but not the same apartment. I’m working with the same autistic child, but he’s older. I even have the same doctor. In Chinese medicine, women are thought to develop in seven-year cycles. I was skeptical about this theory until almost 7 years to the day found me driving back the same way I came from 7 years earlier.
Sometimes, when I come home at night, from the same job I used to have here, and put my key in the same gate--it’s like opening a time portal. I flash back to being in my body seven years prior with the same thoughts, insecurities and dreams. There is no current word in the English language to describe such coincidental, overlapping twists of fate. So I made one up. This situation is the perfect demonstration of a PHETASY.
The truth is, living in the same apartment building is weird, but given the overall weirdness of my life (and the fact that I’ve based an entire WORD, company and philosophy around the bizarre combination of irony and reality that seem to collide in front of me on a daily basis), I’m really not that surprised at all.
It’s gets even weirder when you hear the full story. I called my old landlord the week before I left Utah and left him a message; this was the third time in seven years I called and threatened to return. I didn’t hear back and completely forgot I ever made the call. My friend found a place in Venice for me that was a “sure thing”. I packed up my car and headed to the Big City. As I drove through Vegas en route to L.A the “sure thing” I had on lock-down fell through. After hanging up the phone from hearing the bad news I turned to the ever infallible, seemingly naïve, and yet completely foolproof belief: “Well, everything happens for a reason.” No sooner did I have that thought than my phone rang. It was my old landlord. “Funny that you should call, we just had a 1-bedroom open up…”
The Old Faithful of Philosophies proves itself reliable yet again. Everything does happen for a reason. As foolishly optimistic as that might sometimes seem in cynical times like these, I live my life by that creed. The universe always provides me with exactly what I need even if it's not exactly the way I want it. In fact, I usually feel like the butt of God's cosmic joke. Life is always right and it my case, life is always a PHETASY. Instead of fighting that fact, I have decided to embrace it and live my life on life’s terms rather than on my own.
Rilke says it best-- Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is always in the right, always.
I am madly in love with my home. After being virtually and sometimes quite literally homeless for the past two years, my apartment is the sanctuary I crave and the stability I need to manifest my creative endeavors. As I finally put down some roots, ZENLAND is starting to slowly take shape. The apartment is beginning to reveal its personality, the blank slate becoming a collage—but as it matures I hope it will always retain the serenity that comes from emptiness and the humbleness that is innate to simplicity. Posting these photos is my attempt to forever preserve ZENLAND in its purest form.
Article Series
This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
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The Original ZENLAND: My New (Old) Place
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One For All
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