Prologue (excerpt)

After almost 60 years of trying, I'd finally had enough! Enough of other humans — and most of all, enough of myself and my endlessly frustrating habits that weren't getting me anywhere I wanted to be. I decided to “drop out” and take myself on a virtual retreat to an imaginary mountaintop for as long as it took.

That experience changed my life.

The mountaintop of my imagination was a vast plateau of bare, grey rock, with nothing but a small hut and a camp fire set a little way back from the top of a cliff. When I would stand at the edge, I was looking out over the treetops of an ancient forest which stretched as far as the eye could see. It felt like somewhere in South America, even though I've never been there and had no particular affinity for the place. Perhaps I'd seen something like it in a documentary. With no other human habitation and not even any wildlife in sight, it likely represented the most remote and isolated place I could imagine myself being.

At first I was there on my own, which was exactly what I wanted. A short while later, though, a cat suddenly appeared in the hut, curled up comfortably on the narrow bed where I slept, as if he'd been there all along. He was one of those svelte, lavender-point Siamese cats, which was incongruous and a little amusing because I've never owned such a cat; I'm not sure I've even met one! This cat, whom I still think of as just Cat, taught me perhaps the most important thing I've ever learned about the art of being.

After several days, we ventured down the mountain to get some supplies from the little town that I somehow knew was in the valley below, hidden from my mountaintop view. I still wanted to have as little as possible to do with other people, so it was simply a grocery run. Cat came with me, riding along in my backpack when he didn't want to walk any further. (He really was a “precious” sort of cat. Funny that he's entirely a work of my imagination…)

On the way back out of the town, a young dog joined us. He was a skinny, flea-infested stray, probably only a few months old. Unlike Cat, he was a mutt, mostly white with brown patches. I suppose I could have given him a cool name, but I called him Dog. I loved him from the moment he joined us, but it just didn't feel important to give either of these wonderful companions a name. I didn't use my name with them, either. It simply wasn't important, as it was always clear who was who, without the need for name tags. In fact, we communicated everything without words — simple, direct, and clear.

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Prologue (in full), read by the author

I most often appreciate

my (our) source as

the space between

thoughts and things