This is a story about Milarepa, Toni, me, and North Beach.

North Beach has a lot of sidewalks but no sand. There are almost no trees, but it’s as easy to get lost there as in a forest. It’s a confused place, one where people who don’t really fit in fit in quite naturally. And so a place for Toni and for me.

As for Milarepa, the great medieval Tibetan Buddhist saint, his apparent reappearance right after the 9/11 terrorist attack didn’t fit in either. It made a disturbing wave in the great world that also splashed over into North Beach.

The regular way to tell a story is to start at the beginning, go to the end, and stop. But in reality life is always in the middle so that’s where I start – with Milarepa’s reappearance, then back and forth. Back from how Toni died in my arms, our bumpy life with each other, to how out of nowhere we became tied together. Forth to how Toni, who after her death had been wandering in the bardo of becoming, came to Milarepa and how he transformed her into a dakini with a sort of indefinite purpose to save the people of North Beach. About the Limbo Shift, an off and on after hours shift at the Saloon. Bill Quack, a bartender around North Beach who put out energy all over the place, had founded the shift, continued it after his death, then turned it over to Toni the dakini. Finally how Toni grew the Limbo Shift and all the waves that made.

Who doesn’t love to listen to the waves? Even when they’re just washing up on the shore, you can feel the depth from which they come. There is surely a deep meaning there, but it hypnotizes your concentration beyond explanation.