Kundalini and the Art of Being ... 9to go for it rather than slam on my squeaky brakes, even though the
light was turning from yellow to red. A friendly female cop was at
the front of on-coming traffic to catch me in the act, though not quite
friendly enough to let me off, even though I explained that I would
be getting my brakes fixed soon. When I came home from work that
night, exhausted and frustrated, wondering how I was going to af-
ford to pay for that ticket, I discovered that our house had been bro-
ken into. My housemate Hillary had gotten home just before me and
was sitting in one of the dining room chairs eating a late snack with
her plate in her lap. I walked in and noticed that my stereo was miss-
ing, as well as most of my CDs.
“Uh, do you know if someone borrowed my stereo and CDs, Hill-
ary?” I asked, hoping to hell that I hadn’t just been robbed, once
again. My previous record as a victim of theft was almost sadly, pa-
thetically comical. My backpack had been stolen while I was in Eu-
rope, sleeping on a bridge in Paris. My car had been vandalized at a
trailhead while I was camping with a friend just a few months before
moving to Eugene; and my next car had been stolen six months later
while I was visiting my aunt and uncle in Portland, only to be found
a few weeks later pretty banged up. And as I mentioned before, my
mountain bike had been stolen shortly after I moved to Eugene.
Unfortunately, as Hillary and I started to look around the house,
we realized that it had indeed happened again. We never locked the
back door for the simple reason that it didn’t lock. Apparently some-
one had been aware of this, or else had gotten lucky trying random
doors, and had come into the house sometime during the day while
the four of us were out of the house. Almost everything I owned of
value had been taken. In addition to my stereo and CD collection, the
thief had ripped off my backpack, hiking boots, and Nikon camera.
Over the next few weeks, it hit me that I was definitely going to be
leaving Eugene soon. I had no certain idea of where to go from there,
but I couldn’t easily deny the message of everything manifesting in
my life lately: it was time to make a major shift of some kind.