A friend I haven’t seen in 14 years turned up in Park Slope on Monday. I was walking down Third Street and saw him standing on my stoop. He just stared at me until I figured out who he was. I knew immediately – he looked exactly the same – and yet it took a moment to register. Then we embraced and laughed. And then embraced some more.

He and his partner moved to Findhorn, a utopian community in Scotland all those years ago. They lived in a trailer for ten years until they got a house on the outskirts of Findhorn. Nine years ago they had a beautiful daughter, who is visually a perfect blend of them both; she attends a Waldorf school there.

My friend is an artist with a remarkable gift for life drawing (see above). At Findhorn, he is developing an arts and exhibition space.  His partner heads up the Foundation’s weaving department.

We used to work together in the corporate media business. I was a video producer and he was a designer at a small, creative company in the West Village called Zacks and Perrier. It wasn’t the most interesting work in the world but the pay was good, the projects were good, and the people were great.

Even then, my friend was visionary: he only freelanced six months a year and spent the rest of the year traveling and painting. But even working just six months a year, it was obvious that he longed for something more in his life. He said that with humor-tinged  seriousness practically every day. So many people do. Few actually do something about it.

When Zacks and Perrier merged with another company a lot of people’s lives changed direction. I know mine did. I hated the new company (it was called: The Partnership Works) and couldn’t wait to be released from working there. Eventually, I was laid off with severance and began to do work that really mattered to me, which eventually led me to writing. My friend hung on for a while but then moved to Scotland. "I never looked back," he said the other day. "But I did think it was strange that I just walked away from all those years at Zacks and Perrier and never saw anyone again."

But he had a great influence on me. For one thing, he was the first person I knew who lived in Park Slope. This was back in the early 1980’s and I was very Manhattan-centered then. But my friend was religious about this neighborhood. He bought a small coop on Garfield Place between Sixth and Seventh Avenues for $9,000, was a member of the Food Coop, and talked up the Brooklyn Museum, the Library, the Botanic Garden, and Prospect Park. He was the first to use the term "stroller gridlock" and he encouraged me to move out here and not, say, Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill. "There’s nothing to do there. In Park Slope we have so much cultcha."

I’m pretty sure he used a thick New Yawk accent to say culture. He’s a funny guy full of Yiddish phrases, with a light, sarcastic, sometimes ironic approach to things. Yet, he is also extremely serious about life – someone you can have long conversations with about spirituality, art, the meaning of life, the silliness of things.

Seeing him the other day brought back a flood of memories, jokes, people I hadn’t thought about in years. And I’m sure my friend rarely thinks about that stuff in Findhorn.
But talking together, these small bits of remembered moments were like tiny gems we were finding on the floor. It felt good to honor that time, that place where we devoted so much energy.

I can see that my friend has found a place to live that truly suits him. His family can exist on  practically no money there (he who used to dabble in day trading). The quality of life is good, the healthcare is free, his daughter’s school is inexpensive, and they can stay where they are for the rest of their lives.

And it’s a very unique place dedicated to to the sacred, deep listening and personal sharing, the spirit of service, and the opportunity to work alongside community members. He said that when he moved there he found out there was another way to exist, another way to look at life and oneself. 

Park Slope seems really foreign to him now. Life is so much more simple where they are. I found myself feeling very conspicuously Park Slope-ish with my iced coffee, my cell phone, my Netflix envelope in my purse, my date book scribbled with too many appointments, my incredibly Brooklyn-centric view of things.

My friend and his family return to Findhorn in a few days. He’s invited me to visit and it’s something I might do. Just to have the chance to see this former Park Sloper in the place he now calls home — the place he is really meant to be.