Waiting for Autumn

Printed in the United States of America

I hope you will enjoy reading my truth and will soon be inspired to listen to your own.

As I carried my groceries across the Co-op parking lot, I read the hand-lettered cardboard sign he was holding:

His smile widened knowingly as I walked past, and when I looked down, I noticed a small black puppy asleep at his feet. Once I was nearly past him, I whispered to myself, “That’s ironic.”

“What’s ironic?” he asked.

Startled, I took another step, hoping to act like I didn’t hear him.

“What’s ironic?” he repeated.

I stopped and slowly turned around. Embarrassed, I said, “It’s ironic that you’re giving advice on how to receive, when you’re asking for money.”

“I’m not asking for anything,” he smirked. “Right now I’m giving.”

“I already have, but you wouldn’t accept it in the manner it was offered.”

“Oh, I think you’re mistaken—you definitely haven’t given me anything. Perhaps you confused me with someone else.”

“No, I didn’t confuse you with anyone else!” He was clearly annoyed. “Please leave now; I’m very busy.”

I looked around and there wasn’t anyone within 100 yards of us.

“Please leave now,” he repeated and turned away from me.

Embarrassed, I carried my groceries up the hill to my apartment. I didn’t know what I’d said to offend him, but he clearly wasn’t happy with the way I had handled myself.

When I returned to the apartment, I was still profoundly disturbed by what had happened. I tried to shake it off and convince myself that he was probably just confusing me with someone else. I wanted to forget about it and go on with my day, but I simply couldn’t. I didn’t usually care what other people thought of me, but I had a strange connection to him and didn’t want to let it go.

I was relieved to see his matted red hair and his small black puppy as I approached the Co-op. As I got closer, I saw that he had a new sign that read:

I smiled and thought that this was a good idea for a peace offering. I went into the store and bought the best navel I could find and picked up a few odds and ends I hadn’t had room to carry before.

As I passed through the glass double doors, I tossed him the orange and decided to give it another shot. “Here you go,” I said as the orange left my hand.

“Thanks.” He smiled, and genuinely seemed grateful for the orange. “That’s the best thing that happened to me all day.”

His words instantly made me feel much better, and I decided to be a bit playful.

“So you can help me get what I want?” I smirked.

“Of course I can.”

“How can you do that?”

“You can manifest anything you want.”

“I do, every day.”

“Then why are you still homeless?”

“Why do you think I’m homeless?”

“What do you manifest?” I asked, trying my best to change the subject.

“Today I manifested an orange.”

I laughed. “All you did was write a sign that said you wanted an orange.”

“And you gave me one. So clearly I was successful at manifesting.” He smiled proudly.

“So if I want a million dollars, all I have to do is make a sign that says ‘Give me a million dollars’ and someone will just give it to me?”

“Do you believe that will happen?”

“Of course not! There’s no way some guy is going to see a sign and give me a million bucks!”

“Then you answered your own question.”

“So you agree—you can’t just make anything you want appear out of nowhere.”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have an orange, and it doesn’t look like you have anywhere near a million dollars in your pocket.”

Perhaps he had a point.

“To be happy,” I answered after a long pause.

“I’m Robert,” he said with his hand outstretched.

“I’m Scott.” I shook his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Scott. And this is my puppy, Don. Come back here tomorrow around the same time, and I’ll have something for you.”

As I walked away, I was both intrigued by and afraid of how drawn to Robert I was. There was something foreign to me about how open and warm people in Ashland were, and I was still getting used to it. Back in Los Angeles, I had grown comfortable with the blanket of anonymity provided by the city crowds. And when I first discovered how friendly the people were in this small mountain town of southern Oregon, I felt ashamed by how closed off I had become over the years and vowed to open back up. In this town, nobody knew how jaded and distrusting I’d been in L.A., and I wanted to reinvent myself as a friendly person who only saw the good in others. It was a great mental exercise and almost immediately began to give me back some of the optimism of my childhood. I decided to hold on to that ideal as I made my way back up the hill and continued to unpack more boxes.

A few days earlier I had been on my way to Portland to start my life over after once again losing my job in the coldhearted entertainment industry. Ever since I moved to Los Angeles, a string of bad luck prevented me from keeping a job for more than a few months at a time. There were always budget reasons, but the truth was, I never found a niche in any of the companies I worked at and was always the first to go if times got tough. And because I had a knack for always picking the wrong employer, I would be out of work more often than not.

Finally, I promised myself that if I lost my job again, I would leave the city before my savings dwindled to the point where I would never be able to do so. Luckily, one of the first people I’d met in Los Angeles was a young, ambitious band manager named Clark. He worked at the same record label I did when I first arrived in L.A., and he was always working on a get-rich-quick scheme. We hit it off pretty quickly, but when we met, he was already on his way out. He’d had his fill of the Hollywood scene and decided to move to Portland to start an independent record label to take advantage of the city’s burgeoning music scene. He had offered me a job as soon as he got his new company set up in Oregon, and I finally decided to take him up on it after I received my most recent two weeks’ notice. I just threw everything I could fit into a U-Haul trailer and started driving north. I was gone within a day of losing my job, without even bothering to say goodbye to anyone I knew.

After driving twelve hours straight, I crossed the California-Oregon border, and my old Volvo dramatically died on the Siskiyou mountain pass after a loud explosion and a huge plume of thick black smoke. I should have stopped at a gas station to check my car before starting up the summit, as I was already familiar with how hard the Siskiyous were on old cars. I’d grown up in a small town in Northern California about fifty miles south of the Oregon border, so I had scaled that very mountain pass many times. However, my family had moved to the Midwest several years before, and all of my old friends were long gone, so there was no reason to stop on my way through. Although in retrospect, double-checking the oil in Yreka would have been a good idea.

Luckily, a highway patrol was just a few miles behind me when my car exploded, and he blocked off the narrow lane it was in until the tow truck arrived. I had my car and trailer towed to the first available mechanic, who was in Ashland. And when I found out how much it was going to cost to fix the car, I needed to decide if I was going to get a bus ticket to Portland or spend all of my savings to resuscitate my Volvo.

I nearly bought a bus ticket out of Ashland, but something told me I should put off the decision for a few days and just stay put. I hadn’t really been attached to Portland as much as I just wanted to get out of L.A. Although I technically already had a job waiting for me up there, I had enough money to support myself for a few months while I tried to find work.

After I found myself stranded in Ashland for a few days, life instantly seemed much easier, and I quickly abandoned my original plan and decided to stay in southern Oregon. I was already much happier than I had ever been in L.A., and soon I even got used to the idea of living without a car. I’d been on foot the entire time since I had arrived, and it was liberating to be car free after being bound for so many years.