Quote
tsukimoto
Von, you tease! Here we are, holding our breath waiting to hear what happened in Seattle, and you are leaving us hanging? Please, please, please!
:)
lol no problem:
I am breaking this up in parts because the story needs to be told the right way to be properly understood - it ends up illustrating a lot of what is being discussed here about SGI. Also I dont want to dominate the board with one long post.
Also - dramatic tension is fun!! hahah. (so deal!)
Ok ...
[continued]... and so, sometime toward the end of the summer of (1988?) I handed over my entire paycheck - all of the money I had in the world - the sum of about $400 - 500 or so - to my chapter leaders and got ready to board a plane to participate in this big meeting commemorating "some thing or another to do with world peace" in Seattle.
At the time I was living in Brentwood in West LA near Wilshire and Brentwood Ave - only about a mile and a half from the Santa Monica Community Center. I was living in this house with a rotating cast of characters, students and random young peeps that answered the ad for the place: only one of my roommates was a member as well, this kid Larry who also went to Seattle with us as I recall.
I was working for a florist in the town of Brentwood up the hill from our place at the time, delivering bouquets all around the West Side of LA. I took the time off from work, and got the plane to Seattle with the other members for a few days.
The actual trip was all about the organization; I dont remember all that much about it other than the trip into the city from the airport, seeing Seattle and the Space Needle through the fog and rain from the bus window on the way in ... a hotel room where they served us cheap pre-packaged lunches in paper boxes (I think I remember a sandwich on white bread, an apple, maybe some chips etc).
This was no site seeing trip. I never saw or experienced any of Seattle other than the bus trip, the hotel, the convention center, and travelling back toward LA the same way. I remember being really tired from all the stress in my life at the time ... and the worrying about what happened to me when I got back.
Yes we did this insane huge pyramid on the floor of some huge convention center in front of thousands of members. Yes we pulled it off and no-one got hurt. All I remember from the actual moment is a big dim room with stage lighting around us and the cheering, and me standing on the bottom of a pyramid about 3000 lbs of guys while standing on roller skates; all of that weight bearing down on my arms and shoulder thinking (and chanting) "stay in the moment, stay in the moment, hold up and make sure nobody falls ... it will be over any second hold up!!" lol
And thats it. We went home. And the whole way home on the plane I was wondering what the hell I was supposed to do when I got back ...
Where was my miracle supposed to be coming from? Where was I going to come up with the rent? Was I going to get enough to eat? What was going to happen .... ?
Buddism and the entire SGI machinery had convinced me that I would be protected by the Shoten Zenzin and that natural law would make sure that it all turned out in my favor in the end. But this was putting it to the test far beyond what ordinary common sense would tell a reasonably intelligent person it was wise to.
Well ... I got back to LA and ...
I didnt have the rent. I had no money to eat or do anything at all until my next paycheck, which was about a week away. So ... I could survive one way or another: they could wait a while for the rent, and I had friends or roommates or somehow could get enough to eat.
But it was worse than that. Somehow ... the timing was such that *everyone* in this house I was living in - for one reason or another - was splitting that month. This one was transferring to a new school; that one had found a new place somewhere else; this other one was moving back home with parents ... about 5 other people ... GONE.
Which left me. With no money for the rent. No money to find a new place to live. And with all of my family on the other side of the country, and not long term friends in LA that would take me in ....
I had no place to go.
At 23 years old: all of a sudden I was homeless in LA.
And SGI was just about all I had. How did they respond?
[ ... annnndd... to be continued!]