Adano Ley & the Rain

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

At exactly 3:00 a.m. (the beginning of Lung Time) rain hit the roof of my mother’s California mobile home.

I jumped up off the carpet to answer the phone since I “knew” Adano Ley was now in town all the way from Houston, Texas.

I held my hand on the phone and it almost immediately rang.

“Hello, Adano!” I said before he said a word.

Adano visited Carpinteria, California, two or so weeks before every equinox and every solstice at no set time of the day of the week.

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Why was I sleeping on the carpet? My Sufi mentor Adnan Sarhan never slept on a bed in his entire life, and many of his students followed suit.

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Three months later, at exactly 3:00 a.m., rain hit the roof of my mother’s California mobile home.

“Hello, Adano!” I said before he said a word.

Ginger was with him this time. She took me aside and asked, “Are you doing something to get Adano to arrive here at a certain time? He drove like a bat out of Hell to get here, and I’ve never seen him drive like that.”

“Well, I suppose I am,” I said.

Indeed, Adano always drove everywhere he went at 60 miles per hour on Cruise Control to integrate his delta brain waves with the rotational speed of the Earth.

“I don’t think you should be doing that,” Ginger warned, and I agreed.

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Three months later, Adano arrived in Carpinteria under no unusual circumstances.

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My mother, Jennie Bergstrom, was diagnosed with cancer not long after Adano returned to Houston.

To cheer her up, I yearned for Adano to arrive again in a more or less miraculous, or at least synchronous, way.

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Adano phoned to tell us he would be arriving on Saturday.

On Friday, driving to Gold’s Gym while it was still dark, I saw a shooting star exactly when my odometer lined up with three one-one-ones.

The number 111 represented Adano to me. Back in the day, he lived in apartment 111 on Richmond Avenue in Houston.

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I told my mom, “Adano’s arriving tonight, a day early, and he’s going to bring the rain.”

My Mom laughed and said, “No, he said he’s arriving tomorrow.”

“He’ll be here today, just you wait and see,” I persisted.

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I ran an errand just before sunset, and my Mom was home alone.

No rain had been forecast, but a hard rain suddenly hit the roof.

At the same time, there was a knock at the rear door where the driveway was located.

It was Adano, and he had brought the rain.

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