TIME FOLLOWS ME

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE GRASS IS YELLOWER ON THE OTHER SIDE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE GRASS IS YELLOWER ON THE OTHER SIDE

It seemed like I had barely closed my eyes and it was morning.  Bob had his hand on my shoulder and said it's time to get up.

He started in with guitar, "The Red, Red Robin, goes bop, bop bobbin' along."  I grew to really dislike that song cause we were woken up every day with it.   But, the sun was shining through the morning mist and it was quiet and warm.  I liked being away from the highway where I slept in the ditch hearing the truckers goin' by all night long with a low rumble and whoosh, pulling the cool night air along in it's slipstream. 

We all got up and headed to a kind of communal eating area where I saw some of the people from the bus.  I think I had some granola and yogurt.  The leader of the group explained that we were going to do some working in the fields, some gardening, as we needed to clear the weeds so that the vegetables could grow.  There seemed to be two or three women who ran things and a guy or two that people seemed to defer to.

I met a woman named Rebecca who seemed really cool with her long beautiful curly red hair.  She looked to me like Carol King and I trusted her immediately.

The leaders said there would be some introduction lectures in groups or pods as they were called.  This would be in the hills in smaller groups so that we could get to know each other better.  Bob seemed to be always with me and said, "Here, the first person you meet from the group becomes your spiritual brother or sister."  When we walked between the buildings he liked to hold hands and I assumed that everyone was supposed to, as they were all doing it.  You are never alone here on the farm.

The place was really beautiful nestled into some rolling hills with the earth and grass scorched yellow brown by the California sun of 1976.  There was a drought that year so we had to be careful how much water we were drinking as the wells would run dry.  I knew about this from living on a farm.  Our well watered my brother and me, my parents as well as the horses in the stable and the pigs in the barn.  We never ran out of water, so we must have had a very good well.  My Dad would say when we wanted milk which I would gulp down three glasses at a time, "There's water in the tap, drink that," when I him asked for something else.  We were allowed to drink beer when we were working which was most of the time and I remember feeling very grown up drinking beer after digging fencepost holes all day long and building fences to keep the horses in.

A group of about eight of us found a place to sit in a circle under a tree led by Bob.  I sat cross-legged working on my best Siddhartha imitation and listened to them talk.  We were supposed to share a little bit about ourselves; where were from and what were we doing, kinds like that. We went around the group in a circle and I heard from the others who were mostly older.  One said that he was in University and felt lost.  Another was a couple that came to the farm together in their car.  They said, "We are looking for some kind of alternative to the city where everything is so rushed and impersonal."  They said they were living together in San Francisco.  I thought, "Wow it must be nice to live with someone you love and they seemed really sweet, earnest and genuine."

When my turn came I said, "I love to play guitar and I want to learn all I can.  I am just finishing high school.  I live on a farm and I am traveling to find out more about the world.  You need to get off the farm to really find out what is going on," I added, acting like I was wise beyond my years.

Everyone clapped and applauded whenever I said anything, especially when I said I played guitar.  But then, they clapped whenever anyone said anything, but I kind of liked that.  Bob had already shown himself to be an amazing guitar player so I was feeling lucky to be paired with him.  He said he would teach me some songs later.

Everyone seemed to be searching for something was the common thread of the group.  Bob kept repeating the response, "What better thing could you be doing right now, than being here in this place?" Everyone was new in the group.  Each was going to stay a few days and then go back to the city or further on down the road.  The people who were here longer were kept away from the new people and it was stressed that we need to stay positive.

Later Bob promised that there would be a meeting lecture tonight, "That will blow your mind."  But now we would go to the fields to work. I was looking forward to this work, as it was something I was familiar with.  When we got to the fields I noticed that the garden and growth wasn't very big for the number of people that the farm had to feed.  We worked in patches of carrots doing the weeding and in the tomato patch.  I was lucky to be near Rebecca and I asked her a few questions and got to know her a bit more.  She had been here for about a year I learned.  She said, "This lecture tonight will be amazing.  You won't believe what you are going to hear."

I said, "I'm really looking forward to it."

And she said, " It's good that you are asking questions.  You need to find out what the truth is."