Waking up in the middle of the night, it was dark for a long time, before a faint light began to nudge at the walls of the camper.  There’d been a dream about my sister and her daughters, and a room that was crowded with junk.  For some odd reason the mornings had been quiet lately, without the usual bustle of sounds.  What had happened to the crows?  Where were all the nerve-shattering caws that typically greet the arrival of the day? 

I looked at my phone on the table and frowned.  I’d rush-ordered a new charger for it and had been able to charge it, but the pictures still weren’t transferring to my laptop, which meant the phone was broken.  That’s the way it goes every time I’m in Huntington Beach; my phone breaks down, my laptop breaks down, my bike breaks down, my life breaks down, everything breaks down.

When I got to the pier, the sea was a roiling, boiling mess.  The waves were enormous, but offered little to work with, outside of annihilation.  I saw a surfer try to crouch into a tube and disappear, as if a hand had reached up from the bottom of the sea and pulled him down.  Thanks to Hurricane Frank, the US Open had waves this year.  The next few days would be some kind of rodeo.

I’d staked out a bench that would remain mine for the rest of the contest, beyond the bathrooms, perched right above the break, which on this day was thumping with such force that the whole pier shuddered.  It had originally been my intention to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my record Ghost on the Roam, by playing ukulele and handing out postcards.  In truth, all I was really doing by this point was playing my songs to the waves.

After the first heat of the day commenced, I made way down to the Gathering at Tower 7, and right away recognized the profile of Santos, with his lean figure, baseball hat, and walking stick, standing there talking to a few other ghosts. 

Santos has made it his mission to save all the hungry ghosts in the world, and approaches it with an evangelical fervor.  He regularly travels up and down the ghost, reaching out to the troubled souls he meets, but had made a headquarters down in the riverbed during the pandemic, and at one point had taken me through the 12 Steps of Hungry Ghosts Anonymous.  It had been more of a crash course than anything.  My plan was to revisit them later.

Raised in an extremely Christian household, I recognized the 12 steps for what they are, a distillation of the religious process:  the belief in a higher power, the surrendering of one’s will to that higher power, an inventory of character defects, asking that higher power to remove them. an attempt to make amends where wrong has been done, and finally, a commitment to be of service to others. 

Santos claims the Holy Ghost as his higher power and encourages other ghosts to do the same. The Holy Ghost is the most elusive figure in the Trinity, wide open to personal interpretation and representing the best qualities that a spirit is capable of.  The goal is spiritual evolution.  Only humans can be saved, so a ghost needs to not only have their humanity restored to them, they need to get to the level of a good human if they have any hope of escaping from this purgatory.

When the Gathering began, I sat just outside of the circle and listened to Santos share about his latest adventures and trials on the road.  He is the John of the Baptist of the Hungry Ghost movement, one who has gotten a glimpse of the bliss that is our potential destiny and wants to inject that promise into us all.  When he speaks, you get a sliver of that vision, and it can be enough to brighten a dark day and give you hope. 

As Santos stood there with his arms extended, two motorized parachutes were making their way down the coast.  It is a sport I have witnessed before, but never fully understood.  With nothing but parachutes and motors strapped to their backs, the parachutists were ascending and descending, going way up into the sky before dropping back down, only feet above the breaking waves. 

Their flight seemed to be charting my progress, either too high or too low, either too happy or too sad, rarely in the moment, almost never fully content.  Every morning I surrender my will, then five minutes later, snatch it right back.  I wonder if I’ve managed to change at all, or am just biding my time like the Joker in Arkham Asylum.  I’ve been told how to set myself free, but still want what I want.