The Call

Watco, the mountain was breathing hard; panting and blowing out the dust from its internal walls. When a mountain is breathing this hard, the vibration can be felt within and all around. All the creatures living on and in the mountain stopped their scurrying and paused, they waited. They were frightened and they felt a strange sensation - one that they had never felt before. They felt visible and naked – seen, and this made them feel self-conscious. Something strange was happening to the mountain and they didn’t know what to do. The mountain was their home. They always took for granted that their home would be as it always is – here – a place to burrow in and a place to find delicious weeds and bugs and rodents to eat. The presence of the mountain was always with them and they loved their home but didn’t realize that the mountain they lived on had an urge all its own. It was in a struggle of self remembering. Something or someone was calling it to remember a promise – a promise that it made a long, long time ago.

Avadhoot Joe opened his can of beans and scooped out the tasty molasses morsels and swallowed it without chewing. He never chewed any of his food, just swallowed like he was taking his medicine or medication. Avadhoot Joe was considered crazy by our standards of acceptable behavior. The locals accepted him and didn’t interfere with his crazy ways because he never caused any harm as far as they could see. He was considered an ‘eccentric’. A few locals had the feeling that somehow Avadhoot Joe was on the job for them. They felt he had dropped out of the norm to look after everything. He had his own magic of tending to life. They felt taken care of by him. He was felt as a good luck talisman by many of the local people. Puma, a local artist, always waved to him when he drove by. Puma wondered what Avadhoot was up to on any given day. He had tried on several occasions to take Avadhoot Joe’s picture but Joe never let him. Puma, being as stealth as the mountain lion, snuck up on Joe but the pictures were always over-exposed – just showing a blur of white light. Several times, he tried to draw him from memory but always drew a blank. Why can’t I remember what he looks like when I want to draw him? He felt that was because Avadhoot Joe was some kind of mystic or something like that and that he must be some high, really high being. If Joe didn’t want to have his picture drawn or taken, it wasn’t going to happen. Puma noticed that Avadhoot Joe had been hanging around the mountain for the last few weeks. This was unusual because Joe could always be seen around the area but he usually was always on the move. He had an intense restlessness to him. He never stayed still. He was always gathering things such as rubbish, old soda cans and even natural objects like rocks, seeds, scat from different animals. What he did with his collection of odd stuff, no one knew or probably really cared.

Avadhoot Joe was singing his favorite song. It had only one line and he sang it over and over like a pilgrim reciting a mantra. “It’s not that God doesn’t exist, you don’t exist.” His voice was very low, like a hoarse whisper. Who was he singing to? Did he have anyone in mind? Or was he ranting on and on about a problem he was trying to solve? Avadhoot had other songs he sang. All his songs only had a line or two to them and he sang them loudly and repeatedly and he sang them when no one was around. Today, he wasn’t singing or collecting his ‘precious’ stuff, he was listening; very intently. The mountain was breathing loudly and its breaths were composing a mantra of its own.

Avadhoot rolled into the clay of the streambed. Every inch of his body was covered with mud. He laid down on a bed of rocks he had gathered. The sun was warm and the mud dried and stuck to all the pores on his body. He could feel the mountain quivering and he attended to the mountain like a mid-wife tending to an expectant mother. The mountain was giving birth, a strange idea to most of us. What was the mountain giving birth to?

The mountain quivered and rumbled. The animals that lived on the mountain were nervous and knew something was occurring to their home but none of the locals were aware of its contractions. Fishermen sipped their beers and caught fish. Kayakers negotiated their small boats down the currents of the river. Cows munched on the hillside enjoying the green grass of spring. The appearance of the day presented an idyllic picture of a pleasurable spring day in a picturesque foothill town. Only Avadhoot Joe was aware of a miracle taking place. He alone was attending to a momentous occasion that the world had never seen before.

“This birth will kill me,” Avadhoot Joe sang out. He swooned and swayed. The feeling of body sensation was disappearing. This was not unusual for Joe, he was often slipping into a mystical trance. He would always come around in an hour or two. He did go out for a couple of days, returning to bodily consciousness in the middle of a heavy rain storm. It didn’t phase Avadhoot Joe, he was outside in all kinds of weather and always stayed robust in health. Lucky guy, he was oblivious to the conditions of bad weather, bad diet, strange sleeping patterns or lack of and his body never suffered deterioration from such bad conditions. What was his secret? Puma often wondered but was unable to figure out why Avadhoot Joe could get away with such things. He, himself, was hyper sensitive – he had allergies to food, animals, flowers and if he didn’t get his eight hours every night he was a basket case for the rest of the day. Puma had his theories about Joe. Joe was a fascinating character but very elusive and didn’t share any of his secrets. Puma had tried, Avadhoot Joe always gave him the slip and answered any of his questions with bizarre chants or even more bizarre behavior like throwing scat in his face. He did tell him something that Puma thought was interesting (strange and bizarre, yes) but interesting. He told him that to really give birth you have to die and repeated over and over, “Watco will die! Watco will die!” Who or what Watco was, Puma had no idea. He had never heard that name before. He googled all over the internet and found no clue. What’s a Watco? He searched through all the avenues of knowledge man had devised. It didn’t occur to him to just ask himself. Avadhoot Joe knew that all the answers to all questions lived in every living thing. He was a mystic, a devotee of the mystery – the mystery wherein all is understood. He was into a different kind of knowledge that made him appear mad to the world. He only appeared mad, he was actually free of any illness including the illness of being ignorant of real insight. Joe was very useful to the world but it was his part to appear insane and useless. Puma didn’t feel that Avadhoot Joe was just a harmless, homeless madman but getting close to Avadhoot Joe’s secrets was a puzzle Puma didn’t know how to solve. Puma didn’t understand how he was connected to Avadhoot Joe and that he was part of a very interesting play that involved a great death, and lo and behold a great birth. Puma had no real access to how the mystery of All That Is operates. He was driven by an insatiable curiosity and an attraction to Avadhoot Joe that didn’t leave him. Armed with his curiosity and attraction, Puma would learn all he needed to know. Knowledge would be gained through instinctual jumps and intuitive flights. In other words, Puma was a puppet on a string and he was unaware of this. He thought he knew what he was doing while Avadhoot Joe was aware that no one was doing anything, that is why he always sang, “It’s not that God doesn’t exist, you don’t exist.” One man thought he had control and the other knew there was no control. Who was crazy? Who is sane?