Zen Jesus: My 2020 Silicon Valley Christmas adventure
Editor's note: This is going to be a rather long Christmas
story. You don't have to read the whole thing. I've typed it up mainly
for my own enjoyment. A Christmas story? Perhaps Charles Dickens will
be proud of me. Perhaps he might even say, "Hey Jane, this is a great
idea for a book." Yeah, I could do that. I could combine this story
with all those other stories about my journeys to thirteen major American
cities in a time of COVID. I could call it "2020: My Year of Living Dangerously!" Thanks, Charlie.
December 23, 2020:
And here I am, living in a small motel in Palo Alto for the next five (5)
days. Palo Alto is the very heartbeat of Silicon Valley. But what am I
actually going to do here? Everything's closed. Google, Apple, Yahoo,
FaceBook and YouTube -- all located within a few miles of me, all
closed down due to COVID.
And do you know what is even more ironic about my trip to the heart of
the high-tech industry? I forgot my freaking laptop. Say what! I left
it home, just sitting there inside my front door so that I would be
sure not to forget it.
What!
Five days without a computer? Or e-mail. Or FaceBook? "Stay away
from computers," all the signs have been telling me for months now. And
apparently my subconscious mind has believed them. "But all my
important stuff is in that laptop," I whined. How am I even
going to be able to find out which freaking restaurants are going to be
open on Christmas Day.
Plus the toilet here leaks and the coffee maker doesn't work and there
is no on-demand TV. I can't even watch pay-per-view movies. But the
motel does have basic cable -- and so far I've discovered that basic
cable sucks eggs. I've surfed through 67 channels so far and Sponge Bob
Square Pants is the only thing I've felt compelled to watch for over
two minutes before changing channels.
Most of what's playing is just a hecka lot of ads for a hecka lot of
cheesy stuff for sale on the shopping channels. And people actually pay
money to watch this garbage? But, hey, Xfinity is part of the tech
experience too, right?
Tomorrow I'll go find an Apple store or a library so I can check my
e-mail. The whole Silicon Valley high-tech experience. Living the
dream. Boo-yah.
Maybe I'll spend the next five days learning some meditation skills.
So. While I enjoyed driving over the San Mateo Bridge to get here,
eight long miles of beautiful shimmering winter water beneath me, it was
not beautiful enough to drive all the way back to Berkeley to get my
computer! And my phone charger. Oh well. This is the total high-tech
experience here -- that is, how much I've come to depend on electronics.
Just as long as my little red car doesn't break down too.
Anyway, the famous Fish Market restaurant down the street was closed
due to COVID, but Chipotle was open. Yay, tacos and quac! Plus I met a
doctor there who works at the Stanford Medical Center COVID ward while
we both stood in line. To pass the time, I told here about my various
lock-down adventures -- visiting 13 major US cities since March, working
the census and the elections, having an operation, etc. without even
contracting the sniffles.
She replied, "COVID is a horrible disease. Please take care not to get
it." Her patients were older. Some of them were put on ventilators. I
asked her if she used Ivermectin or Vitamin D procedures. She didn't
answer. Perhaps it was because her order number was called before I
could grill her further. Or perhaps not.
So many questions I wanted to ask her. Too late. She took her
burritos and went back to work on the night shift. Night shift on a
COVID ward? Grim.
But
my tacos ere excellent. Barbacoa. The best. So at least I live right
down the street from Chapotle. That's a definite plus. And does it
really matter if no one can find me for five days? The perfect
meditation retreat just fell in my lap.
No phone.
No computer.
Nothing on TV.
But I'm okay.
Sort of.
December 24, 2020:
I'm so glad that I came here -- if for no other reason than I had a
fabulous sleep last night, snuggled up in my little motel room far away
from my wi-fi, computer, 5G, SmartMeter, electric substation and
router. Hmmm. Interesting. I may have to change my life, go all Resurrection
on my arse. Like in that old Sam Sheppard film where Ellen Burstyn
moves out to the desert. I'd live on cactus and dreams. Get cable and
watch the Hallmark channel all day.
Dream report: I was working at a hotel. It was the year 1850. Each
room had several trees in it. My job was to rake up the constant supply
of leaves that fell from the trees. "But they are so charming," I said
to my boss.
"I don't
care. I hate them! Hate to constantly rake up these leaves," she
replied. And on the ground floor of the hotel was a courthouse, ruled
over by a Black judge. She was strict but fair. Her petitioners,
dressed in morning coats and top hats, all gathered around the desk in
her chambers. Me? I just kept raking the leaves. End of dream.
So. What should I do today? Go buy eggnog and pumpkin pie? And
whipped cream? And Jack Daniel's! Sounds like the perfect Christmas to
me. A Whole Foods Merry Christmas. A gift to myself. Big smile.
I've broken the Christmas curse!
All those years when my father had to work in the post office from
before dawn to almost midnight -- from Thanksgiving to Boxing Day. And
how my parents hated each other. Remembering all that was like being
haunted by the Ghost of Christmas past. How could my mother hate my
wonderful father that much? She said, "He was always bossing me
around."
He said, "She
never enjoyed making love." Eeuw. Too much information. No wonder I
ended up being a wanton sex-fiend trollop during the 1960s. Living my
parents' dream.
Boy,
this really is a meditative stay-cation. I'm loving it here. No reason
at all to get out of bed. Except to pee. And eat leftover tacos from
Chipotle. And search for the remote to watch cable TV. The Hallmark
channel!
5:30 pm:
Spent the day exploring Palo Alto. Got a phone charger at the AT&T
store. Ordered a salmon Christmas dinner for tomorrow -- with pumpkin
cheesecake for dessert. Walked by the Homer Street garage where Hewlett
and Packard got their first start back in 1938. Wow. That makes my
own HP desktop computer at home a great-great-great-great-great
granddaughter of the very first HP oscillator. Seeing that garage was
like going to computer Bethlehem or something. It's a big freaking deal
for nerds.
In the end, however, it was only a garage -- although a nice one.
Then on to the library. Closed. The Apple Store? Closed. No
computers anywhere that I could borrow even for a few minutes. Thank
you (or curse you) outrageous fate. Probably thanks. I needed a
five-day break from 5G.
Then on to Whole Foods where I waited in line for an hour with at least
100 other hopeful shoppers, bought grapes and saki and hot dogs and
pumpkin pie. Ate the whole pumpkin pie. Gluten-free crust? Meck.
Back to the Hallmark channel. And also sat outside a locked-up
Catholic church for a while, contemplating its nativity display and
thinking about Christmas Past, always painful. But Christmas Present?
More like the Zen Jesus than the usual Consumer Jesus or the Family Feud
Jesus. Thank you, Zen Jesus.
And thanks to the Hallmark channel too. Sometimes a little romantic kitsch fills some primitive need.
Then I took a walk past all those darkened restaurants with the "Closed
due to COVID" signs -- except for some Chinese restaurants where the
waiters stood around hoping and praying for a customer, any customer at
all. Some Chinese immigrants are used to working long and hard hours,
struggling to make ends meet.
Most Americans are just not used to being desperate economically. Most
Silicon Valley residents surely are not. This economic devastation has
been a definite eye-opener for them -- but in a bad way.
Then I went back to my motel and switched to the BRAVO channel.
I'm certainly not in any way prepared for hard times. What made me
think of that? Because there's a whole line of beat-up old
camper-trucks and RVs lining about a mile of El Camino Real, the main
drag running along the east side of Stanford University and across from
my motel. Hard times indeed. Still I had to smile. Only in Silicon
Valley. Even the homeless here are living the life, upgraded from
tents.
But that could
be any one of us Americans stuck in one of those broken-down RVs and
camper-trucks now that the American economy is in free-fall.
December 25, 2020:
Christmas Day. Half of me feels embarrassed and lonely to be spending
Christmas all by myself. The other half of me, however, is dancing
around my motel room and shouting "Hurray!" I've got no strings on me,
to quote Pinocchio.
So
I ate the last Christmas cookie from a gift bag that my friend Marilyn
had given me a few days ago, made some hot herbal tea and snuggled back
under my warm motel-room blankets. "Merry Christmas!" Now I'm back on
the Hallmark channel.
But then I finally felt guilty enough to drag my arse out of bed and go
off to visit the nearby Google campus. The Google campus is enormous.
It went on and on for at least a square mile. Probably more. "You
can't go there," said a nice Google guard in a blue windbreaker.
"But I brought my Christmas dinner and I want to eat it here in
Google's famous Android Park!" I answered, waving my carry-out bag with
the salmon dinner I'd purchased from a nice restaurant inside of an old
Julia Morgan train station. How Palo Alto is that!
"This isn't the Park," the guard replied politely. "It's two
stoplights down and then make a right for four more blocks. You can't
miss it."
"Thanks."
And I found it too -- giant plaster eclairs, cupcakes and gingerbread
boys, sort of weathered and falling apart but still.... I sat on a
bench next to the plaster cupcake and ate salmon, drank wine and toasted
my Zen Jesus.
The
whole Google complex was totally deserted. Me and the guard were the
only ones there for at least 12 square blocks -- except for about 30 or
40 shabby RVs and camper-trucks. "Why do they have campers here and not
tents," I had asked the guard. He just shrugged. Perhaps they are
Google techies working from home? Yeah, right. Or perhaps the good
people of Palo Alto are too upper-toff posh for just tents?
Then I turned in the wrong direction on El Camino Real and ended up
driving through five miles of strip malls in Mountain View. Then back
to the motel, the Hallmark channel. Ate the last of the salmon -- and
definitely the last of the pumpkin cheesecake. Gone in 30 seconds.
It's still Christmas Day.
4:15 pm:
I still have time to go out and do more touristy stuff. But what?
Drive through more high-tech campuses? Drive past even more miles and
mils of strip malls? Drive past more shabby RVs? Is this the future of
high-tech America right here?
No thank you.
Maybe I should go drive around Stanford University. But if I do that,
what will be left for me to do tomorrow? I'd go to the movies like I
usually do on Christmas Day -- but no theaters are open. I'd lose
myself in FaceBook and FreeCell if I had a computer but that's not gonna
happen either. I have no life. No Christmas Spirit to be found in
Silicon Valley. Perhaps at the Stanford Chapel?
Twilight is the magical hour to take photos. And Stanford is so freaking big. The whole Google complex could fit easily inside. I only took a windshield tour but the lighting was perfect for photos.
Back to the Hallmark channel.
New Resolution: Tomorrow I will go without television also. Why
replace one addiction with another. Computer vs. TV. Same thing --
just passively sitting around, watching. It's time I learned to enjoy
my own freaking company. But do books count as an addiction as well?
If so, I'm gonna mainline some books tomorrow.
Damn it, I'm such an ordinary person. So freaking ordinary.
December 26, 2020:
Now I get it. Now I can see what my secret mission to Silicon Valley
is all about. Cabin fever! I'm suddenly experiencing for five days
what most Americans have been suffering from for the last 289 days.
The Lock-down! Existential crisis, existential angst. And this
experience truly sucks eggs. Scientific researcher Andrew Huberman says
that neuroplasticity is a result of action, action preceding thought.
And I am so inactive right now. America is losing its neuroplasticity. Damn. And so am I.
Screw the lock-down. I need some neuroplasticity! So I called a
friend of mine who lives in Palo Alto and she googled the location of
the local Goodwill store for me. Score! And I also found Dr.
Huberman's phone number. And I also wrote a new article entitled
"Existential crisis: My low-tech lock-down in Silicon Valley". This
won't be a wasted day after all. Now if I can only find some low-tech
pumpkin pie....
Then
things got a little bit more interesting when I bought a used 1953
Mercedes-Benz -- at the the Goodwill store. It was a toy, sure, but
I've always wanted to own a Mercedes. "No you didn't," says my
conscience. Okay. So I lied. Lie to my own subconscious? That's
cold.
Left a message
on Dr. Huberman's answering machine. "How has the lock-down affected
America's neuroplasticity?" He never called back. But popped over to
Stanford University anyway. The visitor's center was closed. Of course
it was. Hoover Tower next. That road was blocked off.
But.
There was a sign near the blocked-off road that read, "COVID-19
testing. Park here." What else could I do? Disobey a direct command?
I parked my car, went into some kind of converted gymnasium structure
and got tested. "Your results will be ready in five days." But it
wasn't the results I was interested in. It was the process. "This is
only a mid-nose swabbing," said the nurse. "It's not going to hurt." She lied. Humph. It hurt a lot.
They had a whole production line going -- mainly geared up for students
and the Stanford Medical Center's pre-op patients. There were five or
six intake stations and five or six testing stations set up. Twenty
victims waited patiently in line to take the PCR test -- which has been
found to have up to 94% false-positive results. Does PCR stand for
"Propaganda Controls Reality?" I didn't dare ask.
"I got my first vaccine shot yesterday," said my nurse.
"Any reaction?"
"My arm swelled a bit and I got a headache. That was about it."
I didn't tell her about the latest wasting-away-disease research. Who
needs to know that their so-called "vaccine" shot can now make them
susceptible to future cases of cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimers or MS
within the next decade as their newly-fine-tuned autoimmune system revs
out of control and starts bumping off cells like some crazy serial
killer -- and that Pfizer has no legal liability either so if anything
happens to them because of this experimental drug, there will be no one
but themselves to pay their medical bills. You don't tell people that,
even though it's true. People will stop liking you if you do. I kept
my mouth shut.
Then I
drove off to Town & Country Village to buy wine and eggnog at Trader
Joe's. And fresh spinach, Swiss cheese and tamales. Now I'm all set
to lock down for the night. Another well-spent day in Silicon Valley. I
go home tomorrow. Job well done.
Back to the Hallmark channel.
December 27, 2020:
What the freak happened last night? I only got four hours' sleep at
the most. Just stared at the ceiling through my eyelids for eight
hours. Maybe only six hours. But it felt like ten. Probably just too
much eggnog. I'd polished off half a quart. Boo-yah!
Dream report: When I finally did get to sleep, I dreamed that me and
my friend Vonetta had entered a rap-music songwriting contest. My
lyrics were excellent. We won!
Today's Silicon Valley project? To get out to East Palo Alto, what
used to be the other side of the Silicon Valley coin -- prejudice and
poverty and police and housing projects. I wonder what it is like now?
Gentrification and Google and Genentech and GlobalCap? MREs gone
wild? Morally Repugnant Elites? Nah. They all live up in
ten-million-dollar estates in the Atherton hills, their summer homes
after Manhattan and Paris and Montana -- and Davos.
Time to pack up my little red car and leave my motel, my sweet
lock-down home in Silicon Valley. Off to East Palo Alto -- and just in
time too. As I was driving around there, guess what I saw? A Catholic
church! Holding Mass on the sidewalk! Tires screeched and brakes
hissed as I jerked my car into the parking lot, slammed open the door
and literally ran to the liturgy.
Sitting through the Mass. Tears running down my cheeks. "Churches are
essential businesses too," read a big sign on the rectory fence. "Free
the Mass!" There were no communion wafers involved and no shaking of
hands -- but so what. "God, I missed this!" I said to an altar boy in
the parking lot afterward.
On the drive home, I had planned to stop by the graveyard where my
parents are buried but there was too much traffic on Highway 92 in the
direction of Skylawn. But that was okay. I was close enough to their
graves (about five miles) to express my intentions and pour out my heart
to them anyway, to tell Mom and Pop what I've been up to during this
past year or so. I assume that no one up in Heaven knows what is going
on down here with regard to COVID -- but perhaps they do.
Then for the rest of the 70-mile drive home, I invented a really fun
game. I kept my electromagnetic field meter on and every time it beeped
loudly and flashed red, I'd try to spot the 5G cell tower that was
causing the EMF meter to go bananas. 90% of the time I could find it.
And now I'm home, back to wasting my time on the computer. And none of
my internet buddies even noticed I was gone. And in some sick
masochistic way, I miss the Hallmark channel.
