The Point

Into everyone’s life come significant messages that mostly go unheeded. Either we are not in tune with the events or greater forces around us or we choose to dismiss such signals as unimportant: mere coincidences, flukes, accidents. Sometimes a special channel opens up that allows one to tap into a current of energy, an insight — call it what you will — which creates a new awareness never before experienced. These signals may not even be experienced on a conscious level — in fact, most often they are recorded in the subconscious. Since most of us operate unconsciously, these messages cannot be heard. Those currents are always there, all around us, accessible 24 hours a day, yet most of us are deaf and blind to them. In “discovering” electricity, Benjamin Franklin merely perceived what was there all the time. He acknowledged its existence, translated it into somewhat understandable terms, and the rest of the world took it from there.

The following is an account of a personal experience of heightened awareness. These events took place on two separate days a decade apart, but are so intrinsically intertwined that they resulted in the most profound experience of my life.

My mother has always been an avid collector of stones of all shapes, colors, and sizes. In 1988 she and my father were beachcombing at Point No Point, across Puget Sound from Seattle, Washington. She found an unusual broken stone about three inches long, that looked as though it had been cut off at a slight angle with a knife, exposing a dark, reddish-brown color inside. To her it looked like a piece of liverwurst, and she wittily displayed the stone at home on a cutting board with a knife. I had always admired it as a humorous objet d’art and would casually look for something similar each time I would visit rocky beaches in different parts of the world.

In August of 1998 my wife and I went to Washington State to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. This year also marked my mother’s 70th birthday, and it had been 30 years since they moved there from New Mexico. I thought that this time held great significance because of all the round numbers, each twenty years apart. With my sister and her young daughter, we planned an anniversary brunch at a delightful bed-and-breakfast called the Manor Farm Inn, located in a beautiful valley on the Kitsap peninsula. We would end the day with a visit to Point No Point.

When we arrived at the Inn, a woman was in the process of training a sheep dog in a large field. With the skillful use of a special whistle she signaled the dog to divide the flock of sheep, move one group to a corner of the field, and then have the dog herd the other sheep to join the rest. We knew that the Manor Farm was for sale and were sad that all of this might someday end. We also fantasized about the prospect of buying it ourselves. After the meal we asked for a tour of the property, which further enhanced the fantasy. We saw the barn, the stables, the animals, and the trout pond. We knew it was a stretch of the imagination, but hmmm . . . if we could possibly pool our resources . . . .

It was hard to tear ourselves away from that beautiful setting, but we had more to do that day. Even though I had lived in the Northwest for three years and returned many times to visit since, I had never been to Point No Point, so it was significant for me to finally visit it on this day. On the way to the beach we passed a llama farm. We turned around and parked on the side of the road so my niece could admire the animals. After about twenty minutes we continued on our way north.

My father had turned on the van’s emergency flashers while parked, but now was unable to turn them off, so we stopped for about ten minutes at a gas station for help. When we finally arrived at Point No Point, we thought we were lucky to find a shady place to park; but it turned out to be for overnight campers only, and we were asked by the caretaker to move. I remember feeling a little frustrated at all the delays because I was anxious to get to the beach and didn’t want to lose any more of the afternoon. After a friendly discussion between my father and the caretaker, we found another spot and then proceeded to walk to the shore.

The sandy beach turns to stones at the point about halfway from low to high tide, and is just the kind of place for rock collectors such as us. We all began to spread out as each of us got absorbed in different aspects of the seaside. I focused on finding perfectly round white stones for my mother, of which there were many. I was walking exactly at the water’s edge, with the incoming tide slowly inching its way higher up the beach. I then spotted what looked like a similar liverwurst-style rock and thought, “Oh good, now I have one of my own.” It would be fun to display it as my mother did hers, on a cutting board with a knife. I put it in my pocket and continued on. When I caught up with my mother I showed her my stone. She was amused with my find.

On the way back home we decided to stop at a bookstore to look for a book on bird illustration that we had been trying to find for my mother. As is our style, we all went our separate ways browsing the bookshelves, and eventually I caught up with my wife in the art section. She showed me two books by the naturalist artist Andy Goldsworthy, who uses reassembled broken stones in ingenious ways. We spent quite a long time looking through his books. My wife then went to get my mother so she could introduce her to Goldsworthy’s artwork.

After more browsing we finally got back in the van and drove to my parents’ home. I unpacked my beach treasures and showed my “liverwurst” stone again to my mother. She went to get hers from the living room so that we could compare the stones, and when we put the two side-by-side we suddenly realized that they were two halves of the same stone!

It seemed impossible, but the coloring of each was identical, all the markings around the outside matched, and the two broken sides fit together perfectly. I had found the other half of a stone my mother had picked up on a beach ten years earlier. We all screamed in disbelief. For a moment my wife thought we were fooling around by pulling an “Andy Goldsworthy” on her. We were completely stunned! We felt the hair rising on our necks as we began to realize just what had happened. I still get chills thinking about it. The chances of a friend of my mother’s finding the other half are infinitesimal, but her own son! Not a single soul I tell can believe the story.

In the ten years that separated the two finds, any number of factors could have made this reunion impossible: a storm could have rolled the stone below low tide level; someone could have picked it up and thrown it out into the water; whatever force that had originally broken the stone could have smashed the other half into tiny shards. Had we not dawdled at the Manor Farm, or stopped to see the llamas, or had the problem with the emergency flashers and parking the van, we would have arrived much earlier at the beach. The tide would have been lower and I may have walked a different path in my quest for stones. I could have missed the stone altogether.

Something had separated me from the others on the beach that day, allowing me to follow an inner focus and find the other half of a stone my mother had found years before. Subconsciously I had heeded an inner message. The stone had been there all the time, waiting for me to tune-in to it. Had I walked that same beach five years ago, treaded that same spot, perhaps I would have been blind to the stone. The time would not have been right. A friend of mine said that the gods were screaming at me that day. My wife, who has always encouraged me to “make a date” with myself, now asks me, “Do you get the Point!?”

For the past decade I have been working on a novel about alchemy. In the medieval quest the alchemist sought the Philosopher’s Stone, a substance which would turn lead into gold. It was believed that the Philosopher’s Stone is all around us, but invisible to the foolish, the unlearned. The alchemist also believed that the lead first must “die” before it can be reborn into a new form. It took me a decade of bitter experiences, including a terrible divorce from a previous marriage, a period of estrangement from my son, dissatisfaction with my job, and financial crises, to come to this place in my life—this new awareness. I had to suffer an “alchemical death” before experiencing the rebirth of a new life, the one I’m leading now. In the stone I have found my gold. I get the point. By implementing the gold in my life I follow my bliss and create and live a life I truly love.

After relating the event to some friends a few days later I was asked, “If you had a wish, what would you want to do with your life?” I’m sure I surprised them by not choosing something in music, which is my profession. I said that I would like to start by finishing my novel. A newer significance of my find at Point No Point suddenly hit all of us because the title of my book is “The Book of the Stone.”

The original half, found by the author’s mother.

Ten years later, the other half—found by the author.

The two halves together again.

Do you get the Point?

© 2001 Stuart Vail

Instant Gratification

I grew up with a fairly good idea of the value of money. It didn’t grow on trees — that much I knew, or if it did, certainly not on my parents’ trees. I had an allowance for which I performed many chores: cutting the lawn, watering the yard, cleaning my room, washing dishes, and sometimes ironing my own shirts and pants. Working was not foreign to me. Having a paper route, doing other peoples’ yards, and selling Christmas cards door-to-door earned me money to buy records, a bicycle, a basketball, and a Heath Kit radio. For the most part, if I wanted it, I had to earn it. And earn it I did.

The work ethic instilled in me by my parents helped to develop a healthy perspective of things financial, things earned. I wasn’t the type to try to shake their tree, hoping that maybe a dollar or two did linger in the branches. In the case of my basketball, I saw it in a catalog, ordered the Christmas cards I would have to sell to earn it, waited for the cards to arrive, sold the cards door-to-door in my neighborhood, sent the money back to the company, and awaited the arrival of my hard-earned prize. That involved 100% my participation. An invaluable part of the process of earning anything is the anticipation of attaining one’s goal. I didn’t think of the ball, snap my fingers, and instantaneously have it in my hands. The anticipation in every step of the way, consciously living each moment of purpose, made the basketball’s eventual arrival all the more meaningful.

The only time I can remember really complaining about not having something was in my junior year of high school. I was carless, with no prospect in sight. The cost of such was beyond my teenage capabilities, and I was inconsolable because most of my friends had cars. By then I had a job working in a music store every day after school and on weekends, and had already saved for and purchased a new set of drums, but in no way could I possibly earn enough for a car. Finally, after hearing just so much of my moaning and complaining, my father showed me the title to a 1962 English Ford Anglia. I remember being completely confused because our family used to own just such a vehicle when I was younger. My father explained that what I held in my hand was the title to my first car. He was the Head of the Albuquerque High School Vocational Department and had arranged for the auto shop, as a class project, to rebuild an old car from the ground up, and when it was in running order my folks were going to present it to me as a gift. I was floored, speechless. I didn’t know what to say. My father had spilled the beans only to finally shut me up. It was perhaps one of the most profound experiences of humility in my life. After all the crabbing I had done I felt about two feet tall.

Years later I was at my friend Stan’s graphic design studio when a woman and her four-year-old child came in with a job. While the woman was talking to Stan about the specifications of the project, her son kept nagging her for a treat. She repeatedly told him that he would get one when they got back to the car. He became more belligerent as time went on, to the point where he was jumping, trampoline-style, on Stan’s black leather couch screaming at the top of his lungs, “I want a treat, I want a treat!” His overtures were so deafening that work in the entire suite of offices came to a standstill. The poor woman had to finally apologize and leave with her little tornado screaming all the way to the car. Poorer still was Stan, who eventually emerged from his office ashen-faced, eyes bulging, and catatonic. When he was finally able to speak he instructed his staff to lock the door and turn off the lights if they ever saw her return.

The woman obviously had never taught her child the virtue of patience. The boy was a classic case of one who expects and demands instant gratification. He was used to having his every wish immediately granted. It was evident who wore the pants in that family. There could not possibly have been any regard on the parents’ part for instilling in the child a very crucial building block of character development, and unfortunately it remains absent in too much of today’s generation.

In raising my son, who is now in his twenties, I do not recall ever seeing an example of any of his friends having had to work for something, much less develop a savings plan toward the purchase of a desired item. The parents usually bought the child the toy, the video game, or the movie-on-tape. In most cases it was purchased either the day of the request or the next. Those children were not made to be financially responsible for any part of the purchase, and, as a result, the true value of the item lost all significance. If something is so easily attained, then how can it be of any value? Some kids of today want a free ride: they’re reluctant to apply for college student loans because they don’t want to be saddled with debt upon graduation. (My generation did it, and we survived somehow.) They expect their parents to foot the entire bill. How valuable will their education truly be to them in the long run?

Some toy stores now issue scan guns to little shoppers who can walk through the aisles and “point ’n’ shoot” each item they wish to add to their birthday or Christmas list. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents around the country can consult the “registry” and then buy something the child wants without duplication. A mother who was interviewed about this new feature was thrilled that finally her son would not be disappointed at Christmas either by getting something he didn’t want or by not getting the toys he did want. Where has the element of surprise gone? When our children know ahead of time what they will receive, why bother to wrap the gifts? And how dare we risk disappointing them by not giving them everything they ask for!

We can’t really blame our kids entirely for this sad state of affairs. They are merely emulating their elders with their “I want it now” attitude, possessing the same false sense of need. Credit cards, mail-order catalogs, telemarketing, home shopping channels, and on-line services have fueled the sense of immediacy by which it is possible to order something at five-o’clock in the evening and have it on one’s doorstep by breakfast the next morning. I did just that in the purchase of a new scanner. From the time I placed the order to my first full-color scan, the earth had barely completed two-thirds of a turn. It seemed as close to immediate materialization as it could be. I want it — POOF! — I have it. Because we can obtain something so quickly we feel that we also need that something — whatever it is. Effort of any kind has been removed. We no longer have to wrestle with our conscience whether or not we should purchase a product because the credit card in our pocket — which only postpones the inevitable — and the overnight delivery services make it too easy to justify our amassing material things, items that the process, by its very nature, persuades us we need.

I heard of a father trying to convince his little son that he couldn’t afford a certain toy. The boy asked to see his father’s wallet. Upon seeing no cash the boy suggested writing a check. The father said that even though there was some money in the bank, there wasn’t enough for the toy and the bills he had to pay. The boy then told him to use the ATM because he always saw Mommy get all the cash she needed from that machine. Aside from the ridiculous situation of allowing the little one to even question his father’s “No” and submit to an examination of the wallet (another case of who’s really wearing the pants in the family), there had been no education whatsoever in the basics of money. That father is forever doomed to financial servitude to the son. I can just imagine Junior’s future lawyers demanding to see Senior’s tax forms to determine ability to pay for whatever Junior wants. Similarly, in a letter to Ann Landers, a young man complained that as he had reached the age of eighteen, his father’s child-support payments had terminated, as per divorce decree. Financing his college education was very tough on his poor mother, and he felt that Congress should pass a law dictating that fathers continue to pay until their children graduate from college. Ann Landers asked if the boy had ever heard of getting a job.

In spite of their wonderful availability of instant cash, ATM’s are actually the devil in disguise. They provide us with the means to satisfy our immediate cravings without stopping to consider the ramifications of such an expenditure. No longer do we take pause to consider if we can really afford to buy X, Y, and Z. We also no longer plan a purchase by putting aside fifty dollars per month until next September, a buffer that could also allow us to change our minds over time and realize that maybe X, Y, and Z were not that important after all. If we can’t control our own styles of spending, we shouldn’t be surprised when our children think of ATM’s and credit cards as the answer.

Gone are the days of earning the build-your-own Heath Kit radio. Not only will an aunt, uncle, or grandparent buy the item for the child, it will already be assembled and painted. No muss, no fuss. If it breaks, so what? There are always plenty more where it came from. And if not, one can always jump up and down on someone’s black leather couch and scream, “I want it, I want it!”

©2002 Stuart Vail