There is an old gas station out on a highway that goes through vineyards and apple orchards near here. It's on my commute route to the gym and espresso and wifi hang outs that are just five minutes further down the road.

There are no curbs on this corner with just a two way stop sign and the highway taking a fast curve past a couple of Christmas tree farms, a berry farm and Mom's Apple Pie which is supposed to be great, at least that's what my barber says. The corner is the intersection of Apple Hill Road and Gravenstein Highway but these days it would be more appropriate to be the corner of Bordeaux and Zinfindel or some such winey sounding names. The corner with it's abandoned yards and an old trailer park hidden away behind a hedge of Junipers is far from the sleek bustle of strip malls and planned communities.

I don't remember how it happened but one day standing around the propane tank in the corner of the lot with the station owner, the subject of spirituality came up. It turns out that he and I had both been studying the same guru. So we fell into a conversation about what that guru was trying to communicate and something very subtle came to pass there on the corner with the cars whizzing by and people wanting to buy $20.00 on pump #4.

If I tried to say exactly what we were talking about, I wouldn't get it right. I just can't remember and even if I could, it wouldn't make sense. What did made sense was that the guru's message was as good right there 50 feet away from the stop sign as it was when I had last seen him give a talk in San Francisco, and that was his last public appearance. The gas station guy and I didn't realize that we were both there in that audience at the same time at that last talk, and I don't even remember how long ago that was.

What I do remember was the stunned hush in that auditorium when the guru finished speaking. There was nothing anyone could do or say or even think about at that moment. It made no difference where we were or that the guru had finished his talk or that the stage was there or that there were croissants and coffee and sushi to be had in the neighborhood just outside. Whatever was outside just didn't make any difference and also whatever was inside my head and my soul didn't make any difference either at that moment.

I can't really tell you what the guru said, but I don't think it makes any difference anyway. Now I know that sounds contradictory. How could anyone go to hear what someone has to say and then whatever was said had a profound effect on them and then say that whatever he said didn't make any difference? That just doesn't add up and maybe that's the whole point.

It simply doesn't add up. There isn't any reason or method or message or goal in what he said. It was just said and I heard it. What I thought about it or what anyone in the room thought about it just didn't make any difference. Maybe the guru said things that were true beyond any possible comprehension or maybe he asked questions that will never have any answers but also were questions that can never be ignored.

It reminds me of the last time I visited my sister on the Mendocino coast in Northern California. She is a photographer from the old school and she had a couple of walls of photographs of things that I can't describe but I would like to describe. In the end, that was the message of her photographs.

I say, "In the end," but that is actually wrong. The trick was that the photographs didn't allow me to come to the end. I couldn't understand what I was looking at and eventually decided that it didn't make any difference and all I could do was just take in the images for what they were without knowing what they were images of. That's the end of it, or so I thought.

I turned away to talk with her and I was satisfied that I didn't know what the images were about. Or at least I thought I was satisfied, but I wasn't. I just couldn't look away from that wall of images and give up on knowing what they were. I tried but I couldn't do it. I was forced to look again and determine once and for all what she had taken pictures of. And the same thing repeated. I just couldn't figure out what was in the photos and had to look away in frustration. The photos were alive and bare-faced and just hanging on the wall but they were also hiding secrets that no amount of inspection would reveal.

Back to the corner gas station on a March day, with scattered showers and neon-green grass coming up around the grape arbors under an intense blue and billowing clouded sky. The remains of an old wood fence going from nowhere to nowhere stood in the middle of a grassy side yard. Maybe that fence divided left from right or front from back at one time but now there was nothing remaining that needed dividing. The scene was too magical, or too intense, or filled with too much beauty to take in.

"I have to start a gas pump. Please excuse me for just a moment," the gas station owner said as he went back into the tiny store and left me standing next to the white and rusty propane pump as voiceless and thoughtless as we were when the guru stopped talking in that auditorium in San Francisco.

Somehow I knew that there was a secret message right there on the corner of Apple Hill and Gravenstein just like there was a secret message in my sister's art. It was right there in plain sight, on the grass and in the faded and cracked double yellow line where nothing is hidden. Yet there still is a mystery. I will never know what it is, and I will never be able to look away.