East of San Diego's expansive Pacific beaches, expensive mansions, palm-tree lined streets, cutting-edge biotech facilities, bustling interlocking freeways, and over-top of the wooded Laguna Mountains lies the Sonoran desert. As our motorcycles descend into the sand-covered plains, we feel like we’re landing in a Saharan country.
In the middle of this barren landscape lies the Salton Sea, once a water wonderland popular with celebrities, but now a dank lake strangled with agricultural runoff. In the scorching summertime, it's skunky from dead and dying fish, which provides a feast for migratory birds — but they soon succumb to the same fate.
In winter, when the summer kill is over and the temperatures are moderate, the forest of planted palms in the state park on its shores provides a pleasant place to camp, so long as you stay out of the water. It was a popular destination for our motorcycle club during three-day weekends.
The Salton Sea. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Dicklyon.
At night, we enjoyed each other’s company around the campfire, but during the day, we’d visit interesting local sites like East Jesus – a Texas term for a place so remote, even God doesn’t know where it is. Scenically situated adjacent to an abandoned military base’s trash dump, it’s populated by a group of transitory misfits who’ve either rejected society or been rejected by it. Most of the residents live in tents or RVs which look to have been abandoned along with the base. Some were ingeniously converted into a communal kitchen, dining room, library, storage facilities, solar-powered battery storage facility, etc.
East Jesus is popular with weekend visitors for its functional and artistic creativity. The tourists enjoy seeing what counterculture people can do with lots of junk and time. The residents enjoy the company, the appreciation for their creativity, and the few dollars offered in exchange for the experience.
There’s even a resident host, an old guy who sits at the gate welcoming and waving like a Walmart greeter.
One quiet afternoon, I noticed him sitting by himself. “Mind if I join you?” He held his hand out as if to say, help yourself. I grabbed a couple of beers from my cooler and handed one over. He called himself Rocky, asked about our motorcycle club, and started telling me stories about his life.
The author and Rocky enjoying the sunshine in East Jesus (also pictured in header image).
“As a baby, I was adopted by a religious family in a small, mountain town in Idaho, but always longed to escape,” he said. “I envied the lives of rock stars on TV, so I labored on a farm for a whole summer in order to buy an electric guitar. After that, I spent more time accompanying the record player than I did in school.
In high school, I joined a band. We must have been pretty good because we were invited to play the state fair. We met a manager there who asked if we’d like to tour as an opening act for several big names. That was the end of our academic careers and the start of our rock and roll lifestyle. The rest is history.”
“The rest is history? Come on Rocky, tell me the rest of the story!”
“OK, I was invited to play in a few popular bands, made several albums, got hooked on cocaine, lost my house in Topanga Canyon, my wife, everything else I valued, and almost killed myself. That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Montana; I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. The rock and roll subculture turned out to be toxic. Despite what I once thought, the celebrity lifestyle does not contribute to happiness, it inspires self-destruction. That’s why so many rock stars die young.
I didn’t want to be among them, so I bought a motorhome and disappeared. Since then, I've been spending the winters here and the summers in the mountains of Idaho. I no longer have to impress people who were just as fauked-up as me, and nobody can tell me what to do or when to do it. That's what real freedom is about.”
“I’ve seen several TV interviews of celebrities who told a similar story.”
“You spend years devoting all your time, talents and energy slaving to attain fame and fortune only to find yourself entombed in a gilded cage which you have to work just as hard to maintain, so you're still a slave to vanity. The irony is, you never really possess any of that, you just rent it till you die.”
“I guess that’s why Jesus urged us not to build up treasure on Earth.”
“Right, you can’t climb a mountain with 100 pounds of gold on your back, so you’re stuck at the base. Once I dropped that burden, I was able to optimize the quality of my life. Now I live every moment in the moment, because once it’s gone, it can never be recovered.”
“That’s what Baba Ram Dass promoted in his book Be Here Now.
“That’s also what the Buddha was talking about when he urged mindfulness.
Life is like one of your camp-outs, Montana; if you and the people in your club don’t enjoy it, there’s no point to it. Looking back, my most treasured memories are always about the folks I was with, regardless of the activities, places, or lavish accessories involved.”
“Our club focusses on camaraderie, Rocky – with the help of a few beverages. In fact, it often feels like an extended family, albeit not a religious one.”
Members of the Airheads Motorcycle Club enjoying camaraderie.
He smiled, “Just as every loving father enjoys watching his children at play, I’m sure it pleases the Creator to see your club members enjoying each other’s company. Camaraderie is the only thing He cannot experience except through us. Think about that!”
“He needs us!” I blurted out, “I’ve never considered that.”
“I believe that camaraderie is the purpose of life, Montana. That’s why people who are focused on others seem to be so much happier than those focused on themselves – even if they have to make sacrifices to do so. They are fulfilling their life's purpose.”
The Buddhist text, Upaddha Sutta, instructs that a life lived serving others constitutes a holy life, that camaraderie supports ethical conduct, concentration, and wisdom. All the other major religious texts enjoin us to do something similar, albeit in different words.”
I pondered, “So the more selfish people are, the less fulfilled their lives. Perhaps that’s why rock stars are so miserable?”
“ If they feel they’ve sold their souls to the devil, their addiction, anxiety, and depression is probably rooted in the fear of death. Fame and fortune doesn’t ameliorate that; it exacerbates it because now they’ve got more to lose.”
“So how’d you get over it?”
“While studying the world’s major religions, I found that they all view death not as an end, but as a transition from one stage to another. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, and out of respect for their prophets, I accept that as fact.
However, none of them agree on the nature of the afterlife, so one guess is as good as another. I choose to believe that death is like a transition from the kiddie pool to the lap pool. Nothing really changes, it's just time to move on – like you did from public school to junior high. The prophet Rumi said, ‘As below, so above.’”
“I’ve never thought of it that way. You’re not afraid of some kind of eternal punishment for getting it wrong?”
“There's a scripture in Ecclesiastes which answered that for me:
‘Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.’
The Creator knows who you are before you were born, just as you know what a new puppy is like before you adopt it. You do so anyway not because you approve of everything it’ll do, but because you want to love it.
Once I understood that the Creator approves of us for the same reason, I no longer felt I had to be a saint in order to be blessed.
It’s ironic – my egocentric nature dissolved not as a result of the fear-based, guilt-generating religion of my youth, but because I felt compelled to behave in a manner worthy of the Creator's love.”
“So that’s what inspired you to focus your attention on camaraderie?”
“I don’t know who or what the Creator is, Montana, but I know that if he created me, he also created those around me, so I choose to serve Him by serving them. If everyone did that, we’d have heaven on earth.”
“Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’”
“Right, he urged us to cease trying to change our outer world and focus instead on our inner world. Once we become mindful of the higher self within us, we can observe our autonomic behavior patterns from a third-party perspective.
That’s when I realized that most of my desires and goals were ego-centered, petty, and meaningless. As a result, I refocused my attention on what I already had: my health, the people around me, the rich and varied experiences of life; they are infinitely more satisfying. These days, I can’t help but wake every morning with a smile on my face."
“Maybe that’s the way to measure success, Rocky; not by fame or fortune, but by how many days we wake up smiling.”
“Thankfully, that was revealed to me before it was too late.”
The San Diego Airheads at a memorial for a deceased member.
Images courtesy of B. Jan Montana except where noted.
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