People will tell you it's time to take some lessons or get therapy, and they will explain to you what is wrong with your attitude and how you can get through this either by toughing it out or by surrendering to the universe but nothing anyone says takes into account exactly where you are right now, or who you are, or what you want, or what's wrong. People ask what is bothering you as if what is bothering you could be verbalized. But your speechlessness is part of it. Whatever is bothering you has robbed you of the ability to answer the questions of your supposed helpers.
Sure, you can lay out the visible problems. But they are just symptoms.
So you have to set out by yourself looking for a sign. It won't be what others tell you it is. It will take longer than you expect. You will find out that pretty much everything you thought was true wasn't exactly true, or wasn't relevant.
So this is what happens to me. I do not know. I write and I write and I write and I come up against that white wall of mystery. I think about how our childhood experiences continue to wall us off into culs-de-sac of memory, infuriating blank spots like psychic scar tissue, areas that have gone dead for our own protection, images that have been erased, and we encounter what seems like the sludge that remains: stubborn resistance to change, a tendency to do the opposite, fetishes, obsessions, everything and its opposite.
I do this for a day or two. I find I cannot write. Well, that's not true. I can write. But I find that I do not like what I am writing. So am I required to like what I am writing? No, I don't suppose I am. I want to do a good job but I will not always do a good job.
So anyway I have been writing but I have not posted a column yesterday or today. So I do not know what else to do but take a walk.
Not knowing what else to do is a blessing. If only we could get quicker to not knowing what else to do, we would probably quicker do the one thing that matters. But it seems aimless, to take a walk on the beach. What is the point in that?
So I walk on the beach. It is mid-October in San Francisco; the weather is warm and the wind has shifted to the southwest from the northeast and the surf is up and it is just rather spectacular. But I am depressed. Not exactly depressed. More just like blank. I know what depressed is. Depressed hurts. This is not really depressed. Just blank. So I walk along. I will myself to walk. I watch the ground.

Then I see the first sign.

It is a pebble with a cross in it.

At first I see the cross as a cross in the Christian sense, but then I also see it as a crossroads, a cross in the older and broader sense. A crossroads. So I pick up the pebble that is a crossroads and continue. I see a woman and a man with a shaved head kicking a soccer ball. She is athletic and confident and seems to be full of joy. Then farther down the beach I see what looks like two men and one is rotating his hips like a belly dancer. So then I realize it's a woman and a man. The woman is boyish. She has narrow hips and pretty much no breasts. She, too, is athletic. There is some teaching going on. The man, also shaved-headed, muscular, very centered in the sand, very agile, older looking, maybe in his 60s, is instructing the woman in something. They are deep into it, whatever it is. I try not to judge. It is beautiful. They are pursuing something.
Then I see the second sign. It is a pebble.

The pebble is oval; it is charcoal in color except for its tip, which is white quartz. I pick it up. I'm not sure but it definitely speaks to me. I think it means dawn. It is a dawn, a sunrise, a horizon. The darkness could be oppressive or it could be vast and beautiful; I do not think it is pressing down on the white quartz of daylight. It is just about the dawn of something. It is also dog-like: like the white nose of a black dog.
I keep walking. I get to where it is time to turn around and I turn around and walk a bit into the wind, a bit toward the fog which is hanging in the south around Pacifica. Three riders on horseback startle me as they pass. The dog belonging to the woman and the man who are engaged in some kind of teaching, their dog chases the horses. I fear for the dog; I fear one of the horses will kick the dog, as a horse kicked a dog I had as a child in Tallahassee. Tony was the dog's name. The dog came home slowly and died. "Kicked by a horse" is what I remember. "Hit by a car" was also possible. It was unknown. The dog Tony came home slowly and died. His head was hurt.
I keep walking and then I see the third sign. This is a stone with a window in it. I think, aha, a window.
So that's all I have to work with. That is how the world is talking to me today. What else can I do but take a walk on the beach? No one is telling me anything.
But I have a crossroads, a dawn and a window. The window is open. We talk about a window of opportunity. Maybe the window of opportunity is open.
So what can I tell you based on what I have discovered?
I can tell you that it is a good idea to set out and start looking for signs.
As I sit and examine the stone, because I have nothing else to go on, I see that each line of the crossroads encircles the stone, so they intersect twice. The two encircling lines intersect at two points on the stone. No matter which route you take at the crossroads, it is going to bring you back to your starting point. I also notice that no matter which route you take on the stone, you never leave the stone.  
Looking out from a window in the stone. Studying a horizon of brilliant quartz wedded to basalt.
I don't know. All I know is these stones are telling me something.
And here these three stones sit on the arm of the couch, carried up here from the beach just an hour or two ago. The crossroads, the window and the dawn. Very much about opening into the world. There is nothing here about fear, I see. No dark, occluding message. There is just choice, time and space. Crossroads=choice. Dawn=time. Window=space.