Can Anyone Go Home Again?

story and photos by Richard Rossner

Life is slippery. Just when I think have it in my grasp, it slithers away like an eel. It twists, writhes and slips from my grip, leaving me empty-handed. And feeling empty in many ways.

That’s when I ache for some place of intense safety and familiarity to regroup.

The house where I grew up as it looks today.

Johnny Mercer wrote, “Any place I hang my hat is home.” I wonder about people who are that comfortable.  Frank Sinatra…George Clooney…the Dalai Lama (if he had a hat). They exude such ease with everything.  

I’m not on that list. I’m on the list of people who never feel at home. And I’m not talking about a geographical place. I’m talking about feeling at home in life.

Sure, I’ve accomplished some wonderful things, but it’s all been hit or miss with no mastery. In quiet moments I’m haunted by my sense of ineptitude at navigating something that seems so simple for others.

I recently had the chance to return to my state of origin. No, not the womb as a zygote. New Jersey.  

First, I went to the town where I was born. It’s been in an economic slide for decades. Sweet memories I knew of bright Christmas lights gaily strung down the main thoroughfare; the heady smell of popcorn and candy wafting through the glorious department store; summers of big-leafed trees and fat, fuzzy caterpillars; the sweet breezes off the Raritan Bay – they’re gone. Downtown is all bargain discount stores now. The place looks like a dump. 

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The Doors (And Not The Ones You Think)

by Richard Rossner

“There’s a disturbance in the Force.”  - Obi-Wan Kenobi 

My uncle died today.  As soon as I heard the news, I felt the depth of Obi-Wan’s statement.  It’s been happening a lot lately.  My mother died last June.   

The disturbance I feel is that small hole…the emptiness…the gap that a person leaves behind when they finish their life’s journey and head for the next adventure in the Hereafter. It seems like a selfish thing, but I didn’t even have to talk to them; I just liked knowing that my uncle and mom were here.  My maneuverings in the world somehow felt safer knowing that we were sharing space, air, the daily happenings…everything.  But the death of someone I love sensitizes me to the rip in the fabric of life.

Even though I believe in the concept of “spirit” and that it survives bodily death, it doesn’t make the loss any easier for me.

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Spiritual GPS: Discovering holiness in every moment

by Richard Rossner

Where can we find holiness?

Sometimes I feel like I am in a grand hide-and-seek game with the Creator.  Just when I think I’ve found the deepest of the deep, He escapes me.  Just when I’ve found the perfect light, the right sound, the special spot for a spiritual experience, a hiccup or sneeze ruins the instant.

Then again, moments in life occasionally arrange themselves to create spontaneous experiences that become life-long memories with deep teachings that touch the soul.  They sneak up on you like the first warm smell of Spring that subtly tickles your nose.  You have to stop to make sure they really happened.  To miss these moments would be to miss the juiciest slices of life.

In 1994, I had just moved from Los Angeles to Scottsdale, Arizona.  The Northridge earthquake shook up more than the foundations of my West L.A. town home.  I was shaken to my very core.  I wanted out.  I had been blinded by too much show biz (I had been a writer on a hit show), too much disappointment (I was off the hit show and didn’t bag another staff position), and I was finally tiring of too much life in and out of the Hollywood fishbowl.

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Close Encounters of the Chopstick Kind

by Richard Rossner

I fell in love with my wife, Rahla, when I realized how much we had in common, including the name George Van Tassel, the grandaddy of UFO-ology.

I remembered hearing him interviewed on a radio show about encountering aliens when I was growing up. But Rahla actually met him in the California desert near Twenty-Nine Palms. He showed her an alien landing site, which included a structure he built called The Integratron where aliens rejuvenated after a long interstellar trip; a UFO library and bookstore carved into the earth under the world’s largest freestanding boulder; and a luncheonette. She learned that Van Tassel had been Howard Hughes's partner, and they were going to build a landing strip for Hughes’s giant Spruce Goose fleet -- until the aliens showed up. They named the site Giant Rock Airport in honor of the aforementioned boulder.

Along with our wedding vows in Los Angeles, Rahla and I promised that one day we would visit the Integratron and Giant Rock Airport. 

We moved to Scottsdale after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but were forever driving back to Los Angeles. On one trip, we decided to leave early and fulfill our Van Tassel vow.

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My Three Worlds

by Richard Rossner

"What a long, strange trip it’s been."- Robert Hunter, The Grateful Dead

Life is a trip.  It the biggest journey anyone ever makes.  And how do you prepare for the journey?  You don’t.  You can’t.  Oh, you may go to life’s Tourist Information Center, a.k.a., school, but it doesn’t really prepare you for what actually happens.  It’s kind of like looking at a Rand McNally map to get an idea of what it is like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon.  It’s not even close to the experience.  In fact, life is such a strange animal, that you may only be able to begin to understand it in retrospect.

I am 60 years of age.  I don’t feel old.  I feel like the same person I was when I was seven, seventeen, or twenty-seven.

Let me amend that comment.  I feel the same, but some things are definitely different.  Uncomfortably different.  Maybe even standing on the cusp of disturbingly different.

When I tried to think my way through this puzzle, I realized a universal truth.  During the course of our life, I decided that we live and take a touring trip through three different worlds.  The Hindus call them Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.  Creation, Maintenance, Destruction.  I call it a hard lesson to learn that requires a lifetime to really understand.

The first world is the world we are born into.  It is the world of our parents. 

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