The Countdown V - The Latest Years (Minus a Few)

My Life and Times
V - The Latest Years
(Minus a Few)


The ‘70s began relatively quiet, for me and the world. Well; from an American’s perspective. There was the Viertnam War still going on, and anti-war protestors still off the front pages, doing their occasional thing on the periphery of events, the big ship of life’s smooth cutting through the waves; but Nixon had come into office with the intention - he said, and which was part of his being elected - to start closing it down, so he was being given the benefit of the doubt. At the beginning. Which was largely why things got so noisy later on. (Child to its parent: ‘You said!” “C'mon. We had to bomb the Cambodian sanctuary.” “But you said!” “Oh, grow up.” “Okay. Dig this, then: Fuck you and the war you rode in on. I ain’t marching anymore.”)

I hear you asking: What did I think of the Vietnam War.

Actually, I was of two minds about it. Space-time mind and time-space mind, as it were. On one side of the matter, from a purely political perspective, I saw the reasoning behind it. America was part of SEATO - the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, created through the auspices of the UN to counter moves by the Soviet Union to support communist revolution in that part of the world. (Same as NATO in its.) It wasn’t a popular position with liberals/leftwingers, but they seemed to be rather naive about communist intentions. To them, it appeared, Mao Tse-Tung was just “an agrarian reformer” ; and the same with Castro. (When he came out later - after his success - and admitted, nay, crowed, that he was in fact a big-c Communist: dead silence from the liberal press. What do you say now, New York Times? Hello? Hello??) I had begun waking up to the fact that a large part of the Left really did want a communist success in the world. I didn’t. I detested totalitarianism, from whichever side of the political aisle. It took away Man’s free will, invested decision-making in the hands of the state. (Which was totally contrary to the whole point of the exercise.) Thanks, no thanks.

On the other hand, I was against war, period. It was part of our childhood, as a race of beings; acting out kindergarten playground stuff. It was time to grow up. So: what to do. Given the moment in time that we were at - with things having gone too far to avert, and apply the principle of prevention - I supported it in principle. Even to the point where, at a particularly bad time in the affair, from a South Vietnam/SEATO nations point of view, and the clamor from the anti-war movement growing louder stateside (with some uncomfortable links with the Vietcong involved there; and even with their controllers, the North Vietnamese. Hi Jane! Over here! To your right!), I volunteered to go over as a non-combatant medic.1

It was around this time that I began finding out, via such authors as Antony Sutton (great research) and publications as the John Birch Society’s, about the appalling treason going on by the ‘capitalists’ (New World Orders, actually; roping in simple free-enterprise capitalists as accessories to the fact; and thereby proving Lenin’s dictum about them and the selling of ropes) who were selling the wherewithal to the Soviet Union to wage war by proxy on its own troops. What a grotesque state of affairs this was turning out to be, at its heart. (Truly, the Heart of Darkness.)2

And then there was the slow leaking of the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident; a set-up in order to make war...there was, in short, something decidedly wrong with - nay; monstrous about - this picture. I made a strong mental note of it, for the future. If I was ever in a position to have anything to say about such matters. To do, about such matters.

All in good time. To say: in God’s time.

***

During this time the middle of my nephews died. it was heartbreaking. The parents (my former sister-in-law had remarried by this time) had gone out for the evening, and the older kids - my eldest nephew and his three new half-brothers; plus my two nieces, and the baby (named after his father/my brother, and me) - were otherwise occupied when litle Rustin, apparently wanting to be like his older brothers, went into a tunnel they had manufactured in the backyard out of wood and cardboard. It was off-limits to him normally, since he was ‘too young’. Quite a pull, for a little kid...They had a candle in there, to see by, and apparently...

Sad stuff. Sad, sad stuff. As I say, it was heartbreaking, for us all.

***


And then the government came back into the picture again, to bite me in the bum, and cause me to pay closer attention to what all was going on, in my/our world, slowly, slowly...It was a pincer movement. On the one hand, the federal government was up to its old tricks again - actually, just continuing; taking its time, was all - with renewed efforts to control the public’s access to alternative health products (this time it was vitamin E in the news, targeted for dosage control; so that people couldn’t access it for therapeutic purposes, would have to go through their pharmaceutical front-men, the allopathic medical profession, whose education hardly covered the likes of nutrition, so they weren’t even trained to use the competition’s products); and on the other, there were new health and safety regulations for businesses being handed down by a new federal agency called OSHA, for Occupational Safety and Health Administration. By then I had worked my way up - nothing really to do with me; more like having been worked up - from ‘the back room’ in a small furniture manufacturing company, receiving and distributing the fabrics for a line of home and office furniture, to Assistant Manager; and it was falling to me to implement new federal regulations on ‘health and safety’ being imposed on all manner of businesses.

No matter that that was properly the business of (a) any unions involved, and/or (b) state regulations regarding same, to my simplistic, American, constitutional-republic way of thinking.3

I saw red. To say, as well, Red.

As in socialism, and its Big Brother. As in so organizing things that the capitalist and the socialist systems could be merged, in the very words of the head at one point of the Ford Foundation; one of many such persons put into their positions of power by the likes of the CFR, and its controlling clique, of New World Order advocates of global government.

Global government their way.

No way.

That was the way of people control. Government from the top down, of the pyramid. And it could be called either socialism, or fascism; but it was the same thing:

Totalitarianism.

What the U.S. and its allies had fought a war against.

So I quit.

And didn’t just quit.

I made a statement.

Letting the Oakland Herald Tribune know ahead of time what I was going to do (by then I had become one of the regulars on their Letters column; on all manner of subjects dear to my heart), I went one Saturday morning (a holy day, in some religions) to what the phone book had said was the local office of the FDA - the administrator-to-be of the new, proposed more draconian regulations on alternative health products - to throw a brick through its window, in protest.

In the event, (a) I was greeted by some policemen, and (b) was informed by them that the FDA had moved, and I should too, son; on.

So I did. I moved on to what I somehow found out was their updated location; and did my good deed for the day there.4

And got arrested for it. (Which I was already for; having cleaned up my flat and moved out, carrying just a few possessions in my small hip bag.)5 And spent the night in jail over in San Francisco for my pains. And was prevented from having my day in court by being released the next day.

So there.


***

After subsequently spending a short whiie living with my former sister-in-law and her new extended family (it does pay to have ‘family’, I can well attest to), and earning my keep there by becoming a Fuller Brush Man (in Oakland and then further east in Dublin, where she and her new husband were living by then with their two broods), I got a chance letter from a former acquaintance in Hollywood (yes, there it was again, on my timeline; was this going to be IT??), who invited me to join him in trying to get some film properties off the ground. He had known that I had been working on a screenplay whllst living in the area those some years before, and had some ideas of his own; could we collaborate?

We could try. Which we did. And though we got nowhere with our mutual ideas,6 it got me back in my old stamping grounds, of Southern California, where I felt most at home. And enjoyed the vibe for a few years - and the continued lifelong habit of reading - until I got called elsewhere. Which came about by my finally getting around to reading a book that I had bought some years previously, and never gotten around to getting into; for whatever reason, having to do with this funny thing we call ‘chance’, or ‘timing’.

The book was entitled ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ (is; although it is undoubtedly out of print by now. But well worth a look), by a couple of Brits who compiled some very intriguing stories about plant life, and energies connected with that realm. I think this was the first public introduction of Cleve Backster’s work to the world (“a polygraph expert best known for his controversial experiments with biocommunication in plant and animal cells”, I see that Google and Wikipedia let us know. A great tool, this, for communication. Well done, folks. It allows mankind a next step). But what interested me most in it was the information, in the last chapter, about a community in the north of Scotland where they ‘talked with their plants’ - that the founders called and primarily designated as a spiritual community, but with their roots deeply embedded in nature.

I sat up, as it were. Tell me more.

‘The universe’ did just that only a few short weeks later, when, on one of my regular haunts of the Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard (and maybe that was all that the Hollywood ‘connection’ in my lifeline was all about, I had begun to consider), I came across the hard copy of a book just out called ‘The Magic of Findhorn’. It was by a young American who had lived at this very community for some months, and wrote of his experiences, and of the founders, and their philosophy. (Paul Hawken - who has gone on to great environmental things - was his name; Peter and Eileen Caddy - an English couple -and their Canadian friend, Dorothy MacLean, and another young American, David Spangler, were theirs. With a character - who reportedly made contact with nature spirits - named ROC, for R. Ogillvie Crombie, thrown in for good measure. And why not.)

This was worth paying attention to.

A bit of background is appropriate at this point. When I had come back to the States from my service stint in Korea, lo those nearly twenty years previously (17, in actual fact; this was now late ‘75), I knew two things: (1) I had to develop my inner listening; to try to recapture that transformative moment back at college that had launched me on my life path, and hopefully could see me through the journey; and (2) I had to connect with some like-minded people, to try to keep sane and supported, through all the potential vicissitudes of the life experience. To the latter end, I began researching communities in the States - or anywhere, for that matter. The closest I was able to come to any sense of compatability in my search was a community in India, called Auroville; and in point of fact had recently joined the East-West Society in L.A. to look into it further. It was close enough of a ‘fit’ (I was impressed with the teachings/writings both of its founder, an East - to my American orientation - Indian educated in the West named Sri Aurobindo, and his main chela, a Frenchwoman known by then as The Mother) that I started planning to visit it, with the possibility of staying on, when a family matter came up, and I had to release the idea.7

And now here was something that spoke to me. On that note: I read in Hawken’s book that Eileen had had published a book called ‘God Spoke To Me’. I didn’t know about that sort of thing, but I was willing to look into it. (It was, after all, close to what I had experienced, in my mind-opening.)8 Just as the book talked about ROC’s purported connection with nature spirits. And Dorothy’s connection with what she called the Devas. It was all Greek to me. But the spirit of what they were about, I could understand, relate to.

And then ‘coincidence’ kicked in again, when Peter and Eileen were quite soon going to be on tour through Southern California, on their way to Australia, and would be speaking at a big week-long New Age event in Santa Monica.

To which I came. I saw. They conquered.

Within a few short weeks I had made the transition to life in the north of Scotland.

It was nice, actually, to get back to living in seasons. The real thing. I felt I had been out of my element for years, of searching.

And now I was home.

***


‘Home’ consisted of an international community of about 150 members, of all ages, and actually all religious beliefs (or at least a number of them, at any given time); but with a common denominator of wanting to live in harmony with the Earth, and create a better world.

And there was that theme again, for me. As strong in the later stages of my lifeline as the theme to the Dragnet TV show of my earlier days. Dum da-dum dum. Curiously satisfying. Says it all, actually.

And - guess what: Eileen’s daily guidance (which the community, and the founders’s spiritual lives together, was built on) as well refers to “the building of a city”.

And not just any old city.

But a City of Light.

And a “vast” City of Light at that.

Which could - get this - also refer to a virtual city. An aspect of ‘light’ not uncovered, or understood yet, at the time of her - and my - intuitive flashes.

To say: a virtual city, as on the Internet.

A ‘city’ of likeminded souls.

Of which you are all potentially a part.

Join the club.



P.S. Oh. Almost forgot. My ‘spiritual experience’, that kicked off this whole thing, in its active phase. (But all in good timing...)

During the winter of ‘54-’55, at the end of the first quarter of my Junior year at Stanford, I applied for and received acceptance into its Medical School, starting in the following school year. (I was in an accelerated program, getting all my pre-med requirements in by the end of my Junior year, thus saving a year in my education.) That major goal accomplished, I relaxed a little in my studies, and, strictly for my own enjoyment, instead of all my study time taken up with my pre-med prerequisites, took a short-story writing course the next quarter. What started out, at one point, as a short-story exercise, began to take on a life of its own; and I took my ballooning Novella, Actually to my instructor - a professional short-story writer in her own right - and asked her to tell me what she thought of it: should I rein back on this piece of inspiration (no qualitative judgment intended; just the facts, ma’am) and return to the specific purpose of the course? She kindly read it, and returned it to me with a notation that said, in effect: Go for it.

So I did. To the point where I began cutting Embryology Lab classes to work on it. In my little airless basement cubicle in my men’s dorm (Stern Hall, it was named. Not sure if it’s still there or not. It certainly suited me fine, in my day and age there);9 which began filling dangerously up with the smoke of the too-many cigarettes that I began consuming, in my feverish Creative phase. (The cigarette smoking having started innocently enough by my carrying a pack potentially chivalrously for the occasional dates I managed in my Serious Study phase of life at university, and one thing leading to another. Not, fortunately or not, to Sexual Encounters of the Torrid Kind; meaning, rather, of the beginning of a hated habit , that I only managed to kick many years laler. But that’s another story. Part of.

See - I can control my urges. Insert smiley face here, for the little joke, based on a fotnote leading up to this moment on the main body of this text.

If you’re leaving them out, you don’t know what you’re missing. Well. Duh.)

One night I was restless. The writing wasn’t going well; whatever. I would get up and walk around a bit, swinging my arms, and then try to get back to it. No use. (I won’t go into the plot; it’s not germane to this memoir, except to say that it was about a young doctor who was going through a life-changing experience, without even totally knowing it. Life imitating art, and vice versa, and all that.) So I decided to go out for a walk, get settled down, come back to it fresh.

This was February of the year, as I recall, so it was chilly enough for me to put on my windbreaker, but not uncomfortable. I found myself walking towards the amphitheater on campus, or to say off to one side of the main campus. It would be dark in there - this was about 10:30 at night or so, and it was not a lighted space - but I knew it generally enough to make my way inside. I was needing space, and silence, and nature; that would serve me well...In I went, through the screen of trees - it was totally surrunded by them - and later I was to realize that the feeling was that I was entering into another reality. The lights of the campus buildings disappeared; any movement, of cars or students on their way back to their living quarters, ceased, and I found myself in total silence. I couldn’t see anything, either, until my eyes adjusted; but I could sense about where I was, and sat down on a grassy step, about halfway down to the stage area (the Stanford Amphitheater can hold, I would say, between 7 and 10,000 people; it was/is good-sized).

Silence.

What was I doing here. What was going on. - What was I doing here; as in life??

I looked around, into the total darkness around me (later in life I was to realize that it was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber), and then up, at the sky. And it was bowled-overingly lit up. Wall-to-wall stars; not a cloud. No moon. Nothing, but me and the universe.

And then three things happened to me. The first was that I remember thinking, at that moment: Gee.10 How small and insignificant we are, in the grand scheme of things. (To me, at that moment, it was like being at the bottom of a deep well, cut off from anything remotely resembling life.) The second was that I had some sort of existential crisis thingy. It felt as though something very large from this vastness of space came whooshing at and into me (when I have described this experience these years later to select others, my hands almost involuntarily show ‘it’ as coming into my heart chakra area, and landing with a ‘whoomf’), that knocked me onto my back, spreadeagled on the earth, and starting to sob uncontrollably, from the energy I felt coursing through my entire body. (Maybe it was just the chakra system, I subsequently learned about; and maybe it was something like ‘the kundalini rising’. I wouldn’t know. It hadn’t happened to me before; it hasn‘t happened to me since. Fair dues. Once was enough.)

I don’t know how long I was like that. I would guess about a quarter of an hour. And then ‘it’ passed; and I sat back up, and my pre-med, science-minded brain kicked back in, and I remember thinking immediately, very rationally, and systematically: Okay. Now what was that all about??

As if in reply; the third thing happened to me. It was as though I felt - perceived somehow - a voice, telling me, gently but clearly, that: The universe has purpose, and that purpose is Good.

Ri-i-ight...

Walking back to my dorm, I recall thinking, gently but clearly, that everything had changed; my game plan, as much as I actually had any, was out the window; and I needed to go find capital-T Truth. And my rational brain then said to me: Right. So where’s the largest library in the western world??

Up ‘til then in my life, that was how I had discovered - one discovers - things. Books were where it would all be.

I would find later on that that was not actually true.

Some things you found out from the inside.

Like my ‘spiritual experience’.

But it was all still a search. A process.

Nobody promised us a rose garden.,


P.P.S. Just to mention a curious thing about my instructor’s ‘authorization’ to bend the rules of the course, and its aftermath. When I had decided to leave school and go pursuing windmills, I dropped her a note, telling her of my decision, and thanking her for her role in my getting in touch with what I felt were important parts of myself. Her response was to leave me a simple statement; to wit: “And now your work begins.”

As the psychoanalyst thought after exchanging the pleasantries of the day - what would have seemed the pleasantries of the day to any bystander - with another psychoanalyst: I wonder what she meant by that?...To say, in this context - the context of my particular life: What all she meant by that??

(This is an allusion as well to other incidents in my life, leading up to that time. But all in good time.)



The End...and
the Beginning




Duane ‘Stan’ Stanfield has lived in the Findhorn Foundation community, off and on, since the beginning of ‘76. (That’s 1976. Some folks around here may differ.) He returned to the States in the fall of 1981 to work for an NGO called Planetary Citizens, which had become the secretariat for an international educational and activist project called The Planetary Initiative (the full monty: The Planetary Initiative For the World We Choose), which in turn in some respects was the kick-start of the environmental movement.11 The idea was to help individuals ground in their own communities the recently-mooted theme of ‘Thinking Globally - Acting Locally’. They were linked to each other (in those pre-, just-beginning computer days) through a newspaper that Planetary Citizens developed, called The Initiator. Ultimately the project culminated in an international People’s Congress held in the summer of 1983 in Toronto, addressed by such New Age luminaries as Ram Dass.

Stan had returned to the Findhorn community by then, where he continued to be involved mostly in their educational activities. He left again in early ‘94 to explore a relationship with an Australian citizen - originally Sri Lankan - where they lived in a suburb of Sydney, called Palm Beach. That phase of his life continued until the fall of 2001, when he felt drawn to return to the community, to get back to his primary work; which was, and continues to be - altogether now: to help bring about a better world.

Dum da-dum dum.

Not so incidentally: Some strong-feelinged Christians (I hesitate to call them fundamentalist, because that is a term that some of them don’t identify with, for its negative connotations; they feel quite normal, thank you very much) had made out Planetary Citizens to have been ‘in league with the devil’.12 Not true. Unless you believe that knowledge is of the devil, and want to keep people chained in a particular matrix of belief. Those long-standing edifices are beginning to crumble on their own merits, from not being able to withstand the increasing intensity of Light. And not as in the bearer of Light, Lucifer, he of the cast-down caste; but as in the bringer of Wisdom, Sophia. As in the Statue of Liberty. Liberating us from the Dark, as in mis-identification with the Separation, ie, with our personalities. We are, essentially, sparks of divinity - ‘spiritual beings having a human experience’, as the current cliche has it - and it is that identification that we are being called upon to acknowledge, now; draw closer to, in communion with; and leave the drama (or at least the major role-paying part of it) behind, that has consumed us and our efforts for so long, in a narrative that is beginning to come to an end. It’s time, then, and that is to say, for Ascension; to a higher level of our being.

Everything in its own good time. Or as the Bible puts it...

(And speaking of: to mention that the title of my film was ‘When Seasons Come’. For whatever entire reason.)



The Findhorn Foundation has been referred to, perhaps most notably by Sir George Trevelyn (considered by some as the ‘father’ of adult education in Great Britain; itself considered by some as Brith-ain, ie, the Land of The Covenant; see also B’ney BRIT, ie, the Children of the Covenant. See also Saxons, as in Isaac’s sons; the tribes beginnng to come back together again, after the long sojourn in the wilderness), as the Essene Community of the New Age.

He who has ears to hear...




The Real End Now
(after The False One)
of
The Latest Years
Minus a Few




Footnotes

1 I was turned down, because of my age (I was 37 or -8 at the time), with the suggestion that I could otherwise ‘serve my country’ by volunteering for the domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps at the time. It wasn’t the same thing.



2 While living in the East Bay Area I went to a talk by one Gary Allen, who was the author of a number of books on the New World Order crowd; particularly at that time, I believe, one titled The Rockefeller File. I went up afterwards to ask him some question or other, and it turned out that he had been at Stanford when I had been there; I think the year behind me. He had been challenged by some acquaintance to read up on the claims of the JBS about a powerful cabal of influential people who had a decidedly non-democratic vision for the future on the planet. Not believing the premise, he had an open-enough mind to check the matter out; and that was the beginning of his career, of turning out important source books on the subject. A classic example of the value of a ‘liberal’ education; read, the stimulation of an enquiring mind. R.I.P., Gary. You done good with your life.



3 I have probably said something like this somewhere in this chronicle before. But I’ll say it again. It bears repeating. (Grrr...) There is a perennial question, in the American constitutional republic, about where the line lies between federal power/aulthority and state power/authority. But it shouldn’t be all that difficult to determine. According to the Constitution, the federal government is a government of limited and delegated powers; all powers not so defined remain under the purview of the states. One of the delegated powers to the federal government has to do with ‘regulating interstate commerce’. Centralists see this as a foot in the door, to take over more and more power for themselves, by extending the definition, to do with all manner of matters not directly related to the ‘interstating’ of the commerce. Interstate duties would be one thing; the safety of a product itself, traveling interstate, the same. Saying that the safety factors in a business, like ladders and goggles and hard-toed shoes and lighting and such, ‘affect’ their product and so come under the controlling hand - or fist - of the federal government, is quite another. (It makes of the Constitution something to wrap fish in. As in very fishy.) Hence a constant battle in America, between ‘states’ righters’ and centralists. And especially at a time of major concern about the Powers That Be wanting, and taking more and more steps toward, total control over ‘the people’, I side with ‘the people’. Every time, in point of fact. Because it goes to the very point of the life experience, of self-determination, and -responsibility.
A word here about the third branch of the federal government in the American system, in case anyone is thinking that the states are trumped.
I know that some people feel that the Constitution is totally subject to the interpretation power of the Supreme Court. But that is in itself an erroneous interpretation of the matter. If it were so, the U.S. system would not be one of three federal ‘separate but equal’ branches. No one branch can trump any other. That’s the beauty of the instrument, crafted by artisans in the political arena who knew that people are not angels. (If they were, they wouldn’t need such devices of social order as “to be tied down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution,” in Jefferson’s words - presciently seeing specifically the Supreme Court as potentially becoming what it in fact has, ie, a law unto itself.) The Constitution is not just “a damn piece of paper”, as George Dubya characterized it. It is a contract; entered into in good faith by the states that agreed to it amongst themselves. It can’t be changed except by mutual agreement of the parties to it. The Supreme Court in recent decades has gotten too big for its closely tailored britches; as has the executive branch Answer? Not just the legislative branch. It’s a part of the federal government. Asking any branch of the federal government to rein in the federal government - ie, part of itself - is a big ask. That’s like asking the medical industry to rein in the pharmaceutical industry, or their placemen in government not to vote in their interests. No. The answer lies in the other party to the contract.
I agree totally with those States that are starting to rein in the imbalanced power of both the judiciary and the executive, and reaffirming their role in the compact, by standing up for the explicit wording of the 10th Amendment. Which made it crystal clear, for all generations to come, so that there would be no misunderstandings about the matter, if the Founders of the nation could help it, that the federal government is a creature of the States, not the other way around; that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”. That the federal government had only those powers specifically ceded to it ; specifically enumerated. “Few and defined,” in the clarifying words of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, in the Federalist Papers. So the recent claim by the executive branch of a ‘supremacy clause’ trump card falls at the first hurdle. It is claiming powers that the States did not concede.
But a civil war was fought over this sort of thing?
The Civil War resulted in an amendment to the Constitution - the 14th - that does not alter the basics of the contract, just tells the States that they can’t treat their citizens - now also citizens of the United States - arbitrarily: that they cannot be deprived of their life, liberty, or property, “without due process of law”. (And furthermore, that said dual citizens cannot be deprived of “the equal protection of the laws”. That was to say, in the particular instance, and in effect, that the law had to be color blind: that there could not be one law for blacks and one law for whites. It took awhile for that one to be sorted out. And I happen to agree with the Warren Court on that one. The spirit of the law had been flouted all that time; just the letter of it - “separate but equal” - was being ‘upheld’, in a manner of speaking. So yes, even an activist court gets it right, sometimes.)3a
So, bottom line: Butt out, Washington. D.C. that is. Founding Fathers: thanks. And stick around, energetically.
(And perhaps even literally, that. Since reincarnation is at work in the world - is how ‘it’ works. And we know, eg, of a reincarnation of Edgar Cayce in our current time; to help us with our progress from this point. There’s every good reason to believe that the Foundng Fathers could be ‘back ‘as well, to help see us through this important moment, in the life of this country, and the world. To make it through the portal into a higher-realmed future. Not the one that lesser souls have intended for us, and are trying to herd us towards, with their lack of clearer vision.
But I digress. Although not far. It’s all still connected to de jaw bone.
Meaning? I think I mean that though it’s all germane, in my mind, to the telling of this story, I accept that everything in a supermarket is germane, too, to the subject of eating; but I’ve tried to bring things in here to this particular meal that I feel are germane to the preparation of this particular menu.
Germane. That’s a particular herb, that I use a lot (you will have noticed). And I grant that any herb or other seasoning can be used beyond its palatability. But if you’re still reading this - as you demonstrably are - you must have found it used not overly so.
But you still might want to take a pinch of salt with this meal, or particular portions thereof. Fair enough. Don’t take my ‘take’ for any of it. But be prepared: it’s not as simple as it looks on TV. Any, of it. If you get what I’m laying down.)3b

3a This modern interpretation of constitutional law - that “words mean what I say they mean,” in the arrogant words of Humpty Dumpty - is on a par with the post-modern ‘movement’ in general, where journalists, eg, make up stories and pass them off as fact; apparently figuring that they are giving voice to something, some ‘reality’, that at heart has as much value as, if not more than, the actual facts of the matter. It’s their choice to think so. And it’s the choice of others to want, and to stick with, a true rendition of the facts of the matter, whether it’s not as ‘arty’ as an individual’s interpretation or not. Such a subjective attitude really has no legitimate role in journalism, or non-fiction reports of events. (Otherwise we can’t trust anything to be the objective truth of the situation.) And it certainly has no legitimate role in the proper functioning of a constitutional republic - in the realm of law. Either law is founded on facts, or it is an ass - a farce, like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I know what I would rather live by, and under.
For how close is this ‘creative’ attitude about the law to the likes of Hitler’s declaration, “I am the law”? If the law is essentially meaningless - just whatever fits the eye of the beholder - a Hitler’s interpretation of it is as good as anyone else’s. Me, I’d prefer to just stick with the facts, ma’am.
Dumb da dumb dumb.


3b The latter comment will come clearer if and when your own personal search for Truth takes you to the website of a couple of ‘forensic economists’ doing major work in uncovering the truth - the whole truth - of 9/11. It’s called hawkscafe. But be prepared: it’s not for the squeamish. Or the easily offended. On many levels. You’ll see what I mean. If you give it a shot. And I’m not going to say anymore about it than that. Just to say: Be prepared for oysters on the menu. For the starter course. With the meal. With the dessert - part of, the dessert. With the coffee afterwards. And in the car on the way home. And just inside the front door...capeche?



4 The fact that I had in fact been in the Boy Scouts for a short time in my young life is actually relevant to my story. But I can’t, in the moment, think of how it can be construed, without too great a twisting and turning of the matter, as being directly relevant to this particular telling of my story. So I’ll pass, on that episode in my life. I’m sure youll be glad to hear. Unless you’ve been smoking dope, and find these constant links in the body of the text to sub-textual material charming.
Which comment also reminds me of the time that I too smoked the stuff. The one and only time. Taking one drag, and being knocked out for a week. Not as in stoned. As in the most horrendous head cold of my life, before and since. But that episode is probably not directly germane to this particular telling either. So I’ll leave the subject at that.
Except to note the exquisite detail of releasing both that episode, and comment on my days as a Boy Scout, at the very same time; in the very same bauble, as it were. Cool.



5 The small bag, previous-incarnation gas mask holder, that I had walked across the country with, lo those 13-some years previously. Not that I had kept it for just such a ‘statement’ purpose again. It was, simply, handy to take out on my occasional forays into mountain country, there living then in northern California, and still feeling a strong pull to Nature. My inner, and Its outer.



6 Do you want to hear what my film script idea was about? Thanks for asking. I’m such a humble soul, I wouldn’t think of imposing it on you without your real, unsolicited interest. (Take another drag. This will take some time. Although, of course, that’s relative...)

It was about this young American gal, just starting into her adulthood, who visits her father down in a small out-of-the-way village in Mexico before taking off for Europe and a look-around Life Experience there before starting her college studies and lifeline in earnest. There she meets a group of art students, taking painting lessons from a strong, Anna Magnani-type Mexican woman, who has a mysterious helper; a youngish American man (‘Get me a Jack Lord type!’) whom she is drawn to begin to flirt with. We’re getting intimations here of a young, Innocent America, somewhat spoiled, about to be seduced by world-weary, jaded old Europe, but still curious about ‘her’ mystery-religion roots, and where is this going to go?? Anyway, that was the idea. It turns out that her father - symbolizing the corruption of the older American generation, wouldn’t you know - is not there just for a holiday with some business mates, but they are actually Up To No Good, in the form of something to do with price-fixing between supposed competitors (those nasty monopoly capitalists, up to their corrupt tricks). And some of the art students aren’t what they would appear to be, either; are up to something fishy themselves. Read: proto-Zapatistas. Oh, but that’s not the half of it.
More?
Girl meets boy. Boy doesn’t want to have anything to do with Girl, at least not at the beginning. So, of course, this piques her curiosity; to the point of her slipping into his room one night., when she has ascertained that he is away (doesn’t spend any time in the local watering-hole cantina, with the students themselves; takes long walks by himself along the beach). And where she discovers that he has painted himself into a universe of his own making. One wall is a dense wall of jungle forest, where a lone leopard is seen trying to get back in . One is a searing desert scene, with bleached bones, including those of a Jeep. (Hint hint.) Another is of - is, in its impact on the senses - a roaring seascape, with the hint of a dolphin riding the wave into the beach. A beach. Wherever, in the universe. Or in another..You get the idea.
Boy surprises her, in flagrante delicto. “Oh! You startled me!” (Hearbeat time.) The best defence being a good offense, she tries to talk her way out of her indiscretion, of intruding into his private domain. Or of introducing something of The Virgin/Female Principle into it. Or whatever...
You get the idea.
Oh - okay. But just a little more.
Instead of getting mad at her, he tells her that he wants to paint her. Oh - well; that’s... okay. Sure. But there’s a look about him, of, like: Are you SURE you want to go there???
So he starts painting her. Sketches at first. Just to get the feel of his subject. In the meantime, life goes on in this little hologram of the world. There’s an old drunken American shipwreck of a man, who does odd jobs, like collecting used bottles for the cantina, in exchange for the filled version. A symbol of the America to come; who is looked down on by everybody, including the Three Wise Guys plotting their capitalist shenanigans, which are going to lead TO the likes of the town drunk?? Who lurks in the background, watching the brown-race students in their happy, self-assured enjoyment of life. The wave of the future; leaving Flotsam in their wake, and brooding menacingly about it...
...and at one point accusing our Boy of hobnobbing with “blacks”...
Our Virgin Americana plays beach volleyball with the students; games that can get very hairy, with all the pent-up energy behind these young developing-country symbols. She finds out that ‘they’ used to play a similar game, in earnest, though a little more like basketball, where the losing team was killed. In earnest indeed. To say: for keeps. No more ‘game’, then...
...and Dad - in between him and his buddy’s going out to sea for deep-sea fishing, and coming back to hole up in their private-space room in their rented villa, doing their mystery thing - begins to worry about his little princess, hanging out with brown guys who might want to make it with innocent little white girl, open to experiencing all that life has to offer, without understanding fully that other people can have agendas...
Sequence speedup: Joyce (for that is her name; Ray is his, whom the Anna Magnani character calls Raymundo; obviously for script reasons. And there is a potential here, of Ray-Joyce; geddit??) arrives for a sitting, and is told, by a more-than-normally quiet Ray, that he doesn’t feel like it. Consternation. Anger. Disappointment. Sexual tension. “What do you mean, you don’t feel like it. What about me. What about when I don’t feel like it?! Where do I fit into all this?! What about my feelings?!”
This can’t end well. It doesn’t. There is a leopard loose in the area, lurking on the edges of the village, and it becomes a symbol of loosed emotions, which end up with the Americana killed by a jealous brown-skinned girl, who had her eye on Ray all this time, and was growing despondent over what she perceived, or assumed, was happening to him because of his connection, still, with his norte Americano roots - that he was not really becoming one of them. One with them.
Dad is devastated. What hath he wrought. If it hadn‘t been for him, going there, as hideaway for his illegal activities...his corruption...Virgin Americana - excuse me; Joyce, with an indivuated personality - would still be alive. Etc. (There’s also a little thing about his wife, Joyce’s mother, having committed suicide; presumably because of his actions in life. Letting the Goddess down; and his potential for Good...) For his part, Ray is wrenched by it all. He had business with this woman. If he had just hidden himself away better - ‘O cursed spite! That ever I was born/ to set it right!’ - none of this would have happened. He could have created an alternate reality; at least for himself. Neutered; but safe. And others would be safe, too. But he was smoked out, by the beauteous promise - the best - of America. And now what.
Oh - okay. But just a little more. (Actually, there’s only a little more left anyway. But seeing’s as how it’s never going to see the light of day, outside of these pages...)
The Three Wise Guys leave, solemnly, with Joyce’s coffin strapped to the top of their SUV; having been interrupted in their plottings by her sacrifice. (Unwitting or not. Who’s to say what choices we have made in life. Perhaps this stands for the positive-potential best of America being thrown, or on some level throwing herself, into the gears of the life machine, to help it ‘change’ gears, so to speak, and come out with a better outcome than the one it is all too dangerously heading for. Something needing to change, that will involve sacrifice. Like, say, smaller carbon footprints?...) Ray starts drinking, in the cantina, with the students looking on, unsettled by it all; uncertain what to do, where to go, from the experience. Deeper into their Art, as a response?? One student in particular (“Get me a young Mexican George Clooney!’), who, when Joyce had arrived on the scene, had seen an Opportunity - which seems to have something to do with Ray having been in the way of his, and a few of the others, in their Zapatista-like plans (Ray commanding too much reverence, or at least respect, still, for ’the American way’) - and schemed, Iago-like, deadly-stealthily, but with a likeable surface, to set her up with Ray, in order hopefully to bring him down a peg or two, looks on with something approaching existential guilt, for what he has wrought; or at least helped in. And doesn’t like what he sees before him, and feels within himself. Ray being, really, a better man than he, and he knows it, in his gut...
And then there’s ‘Anna’, who despairs at what she is seeing happening to Ray; all because of that damn gringa...and evidencing a bit of jealousy about the matter herself; although presuming to be above such things in her life at this stage of it, dedicated wholly to Art.as she is...She finally tries a direct assault, flaring at him to snap out of it, stop hiding his light under a bushel, “and get back to work”. (What does she mean by that? To say: What do the fillmmakers mean by that??...)
Ray, then, apparently goaded into action by hers, makes plans to leave, too. Passes all his paintings over to ‘Anna’. Who appears, to him, glad to see the back of him, or at the least, indifferent; but when he turns to leave; says, to us, in her own agony: “No. Don’t leave...”
But leave he must. He has been ejected out of his Eden, and needs to ‘get back to work’, in the world. (He is Raymundo, afer all, recall.) And as he walks away from the sleepy little Mexican village, with his easel slung on his back (definitely not like an AK47, except in sublimation; and definitely somewhat like a cross), Al - our erstwhile subcomandante Marcos - makes a decision, and, gesturing a shrugging goodbye to his revolutionary mates, joins this gringo, who’s not like many - most? - of them. A seeming Fade Out. But wait - there’s more. (Can’t leave the audience too teased up by now; have to give them some meat, rather than just philosophical food for thought, like a French film-school exercise in ambiguity. Rather, an American-type, brash, hit-’em-over-the-head, spell-it-out, what-the-hell-is-this-all-about ANYWAY?! ending. More - satisfying. Hopefuly.)
On a cliff in the hills above the seaside village, separating it from the ‘outer’ world; this drama having been played out in the narrow band of reality and generation between sea and land (shades of the author’s regenerative time at a key stage of his lifeline, when he was being healed from the conflicting parts of his being having come together and creating an interference pattern, leaving him to wonder: where do I go from here; am I particle or wave; or do I even have to choose in order to be present but still beyond??), Ray and Al stop for a break. Sharing the same canteen, Al asks him what he plans to do. There is a reflective pause, and then Ray says, and I quote: “I’d like to be in on the building of a city...”
Before Al can - possibly - ask him, ‘What kind of city?’, there is a commotion of some sort off camera. Al looks, and, horrified, has only time to pronounce Ray’s name before involuntarily jumping into action, sheltering Ray from -
what we now see as a charge by Flotsam, with a large stone held over his head, very like Charlton Heston with the Stone Tablets, about to crash it onto the despised Ray, for not being a fellow American in the Brown Sea of the Enemy, read heathens, read whatever; for making him feel worthless. Whatever all. Take your pick of possible meanings. (Including just a plot device. This is just a film, remember. Nothing special. Well. Could be...)
Over the edge Al and Flotsam go. Down, down. Into a river, to the sea that has spawned them. Splash.
Ray slumps in despair.
It has started...

Time has passed. Anna (I think I named her Madame Rojas, No particular meaning there intended, although I had since realized that ‘rojas’ in Spanish means red. I think. Close enough, to good symbology: a bit of a maverick, revolutionary, not enticed in life by the Yankee dollar in & for itself only, simply to be treated as the means to an end that it was supposed to be, until the Smart Guys took over; whatever) is exhibiting Ray’s work, with that of other of her students, in a gallery in Mexico City. (We come to understand, through comments here, that this is how she raises the bulk of her money to run her school: from wealthy patrons who then get the benefit of - first crack at - her students’ work.) She circulates, listening unobtrusively in to the comments of the potential buyers, for their homes, or wherever. Oh, look; that one is nice. The colors would go with...
Ray’s work is good. It’s obvious that he had talent. And the piece de resistance - after a series of paintings of Joyce, cast in a more and more native state - as she had darkened in the Mexican sun - and in more explorative styles; one looking a lot like an early Picasso, combining her with a bull, and a toreador’s cape prominently displayed, and a single Eye featured, right in the middle of her forehead - was one of ‘her’ as what can be called a Rosy Cross. A solid, brown cross with black shadowing (Joyce was dark-haired) and with a rose entwined - with thorns - at the crux of it all.
If this isn’t of the school of Symbolism I don’t know what is. Anyway. Voila.
Anna listens in to an obviously wealthy couple, regarding this crowning piece of the exhibition. And it’s, like: “Oh. That’s - interesting.” He: “A little religious.” She: “Do you think so? Not necessarily. You just don’t know how to look at these things, dear.” And they pass on, to graze further in the display.
Anna bites her tongue...
During a champagne break, there is talk of rumors of some crazy people building a city out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the country. We CUT TO find that it is no mere rumor. Many young people are engaged in the building of a city. White, brown, black, yellow, red. It is well on in construction. And then something is up, when we see them being called to something. Could it be to daily prayers?...No. At least not this time. What it is, is something going on outside of the city; in a clear space, where they gather from their side of the frame, to watch - a ritual of some sort?
Sort of. As we see, when the CAMERA PANS (OVERHEAD SHOT) to allow us to see -
a small delegation from their city, with one figure out in front of the rest (it’s Ray, but it’s hard to tell; it could be any of us, in essence, who unfold their Christ consciousness), walking over to meet a smaller delegation, with one figure out in front of the rest, from a large flying saucer.
And we are reminded of one of Ray’s paintings, which looked like a stylized Winged Disc, from ancient times; Sumeria, and Egypt, and such (briefly OVERLAiD ON this shot; as if the painting had been premonitory, or at the least, part of his psyche, rather than just from the history of art on the planet).
We are also reminded of an image we had seen back at the beginning of the film, during a Prologue, where we had seen Ray, in military uniform, ‘one amongst many’ - one of a line of American troops about to board a Landing Craft, only this time to take them out to a waiting ship (their uniforms make it as to the Korean War era);6a when the shot then switched to an OVERHEAD SHOT OF the men crammed into the landing craft, as it bobs in the sea; their figures somewhat like chromosomes; as if looking to be split, in order to duplicate; and then the SHOT GOES OUT OF FOCUS AS SOUND OF like a bee, buzzing. As if about to do its thing, in the pollination process. And then SOUND CUTS OFF as if the bee has landed on its mark. Whereupon the SHOT COMES INTO FOCUS ON a rickety bus, in what looks like Mexico; the peasantry jammed in to it, with chicken crates slung alongside, and the SOUND TRANSFORMS INTO THAT OFa fly, and then A MULTITUDE OF flies, obviously associated with the bus and its animal contents. On which we then see Joyce, in the back seat, hemmed in, to her obvious discomfort, forced to be so ‘engaged’ with these people up close, ugh, but trying to do her best. This is Innocent America, remember. No judgment, personally.
Anyway, back to the closing scene; wherein the two figures meet in the middle of the space between their respective ‘camps’. And then merge at
CUT TO BLACK.

Two streams, coming back together. For work to do.
Facilitated by ‘the building of a city’.
A City of Light.
Which I am just about to make reference to in the main body of this story.

Thanks for hanging in there.
I hope it was helpful, to get an idea of what I was trying to do in and with my life.
Oh. One more thing, about the film, and life. A little subplotting had a young boy from the village, named Manuel (Joyce, in her inartful innocence, once referred to him kiddingly as ‘Manuel Labor’), besotted with Ray, who befriends him easily. At one point - towards the end - Ray shows him a demonstration of physics: he has mounted about half-a-dozen large ball bearing weights on wires in a swing-like apparatus, like a swing set (curiously enough like the swing set of my childhood...), where they can each be swung independently of each other. He starts them swinging one at a time; Manuel looks at them, in their seemingly chaotic activity, then up at him, questioningly, then ‘gets it’ to look back at the experiment, when all of a sudden they all swing in unison.
Patience is a virtue.

6a But it could be any war, any time, when individuals break through into Christ consciousness (or are on the verge of doing so), and don’t look back, as it were. Except in wonder, as to how we could ever not have seen our essential Oneness. On a path. Experiencing duality momentarily; in order to grow our Oneness further.



7 My half-sister - whom I had gotten to know later in our lives, from our first meeting at our dad’s when she was still a baby and my brother and I visited - were sent up - one summer. The summer before the fateful summer when Mom had to come up with the sheriff and...you know that story. Or at least, I’ve told it - had just gone through a divorce, and I was glad to commit to help her somewhat financially until she could get on her feet. That may sound a little like deja vu; and it was, to a certain extent, being a reply of my role in my sister-in-law’s circumstances, just a few years earlier. All of which I was glad to engage in. ‘Family’ had certainly helped me out a lot, in life. In this case, it stopped me from trotting off to India; and after discovering Findhorn, as I was about to, I know why.



8 Of which, patience. It doesn’t feel like the right time yet, to go into it. For whatever reason. God knows. (Actually, it’s not that far in the future, here...)



9 This Recollection is opening up fond memories, not only of time in this dorm, where I spent my Sophomore and Junior years, but of the great, raucous, throbbing, billowing beast of a dorm of my Freshman year called Encina Hall. Years and years of Stanford Roughs had called it home in the beginnings of their university days, and where they had left their marks, sometimes even physically, such as burn marks on the study tables in The Lounge which were made with holes for non-existent (by our day) ashtrays; the ashes descending in neat little piles underneath, where who knew what sort of beings would gather them up overnight and turn them into magical disappearing purses, or whatever. Ah, Encina Hall; home of a myriad of memories and hopes and dreams. Where one poor fellow in my class (of ‘56) was reported, by his Wing mates, as having received, at the end of the quarter, five cinch (Failure) notices and a letter from his girlfriend telling him that she was pregnant. His response was to (1) go out and get drunk, and (2) quit school and join the Army. And this was while the Korean War was still going on, too. Desperation incarnate. I’ve often wondered whatever happened to him...
But I digress. But just to finish my memorial, into a eulogy: A terrible thing happened to males deciding to go to Stanford come my (non-inhabited) Senior year: ‘They’ closed it down. Or rather changed its use, from a male freshmen dorm to offices on the ground floor. Besides brooding about how, often, good things come to an end, I have wondered if the employees in those offices have ever, over the years since this desecration, this building of a modern edifice over (as it were) a graveyard, felt the presence of ghosts, inhabiting the space above them . Very noisy ghosts. Sometimes doing the most shocking things to each other...
Enough.
But you get the drift. Inspiration can come in even the most curious, and seemingly sacrilegious, of settings. Consider John Steinbeck; a fellow Stanford rough, and alumnus of the halcyon days of Encina Hall, in the generation before mine there.9a
A toast!
For the day you may be toast.
Will, be.
And may be gathered up, from your little pile, and made into a magical purse, say, from your matter being transmogrified by little imaginary beings whose job it is to re-form what is, after all is said and done, consciousness, into other forms, is all.
So - a toast! To life! And its moments of delight! Including the time your Wing won the Freshman intramural basketball league championship. And you made this amazing move...


9a I’ve often wondered if his description, in his novel Cannery Row, of the cannery buildings at their height of productive life was based at least in part on his experiences of/at Encina. Check it out. Great stuff. Very evocative. The mark of a good writer.
I don’t know about you, in your sublime moments of bibliophilia, but I’ll never forget Steinbeck’s oriental character, in the novel noted above, making his way down to the beach early every morning. Doing something or other. Name escapes me at the moment. But it’s cool.
And obviously a little untranslatable.



10 That was the first three-letter word starting with a G that came to me that night.



11 A brief word dangling from this reference, about ‘the environmental movement’, and the current push for ‘decreasing your carbon footprint,’ and such; just to clarify my position on it all. There is nothing wrong with learning to live/waking up to a life of consciousness, of the effects of our actions (on others; and on ourselves, too, for that matter). What is wrong is when some people attach an agenda to aspects of that attitude and process, and manipulate others - and ‘information’ - to their ends.11a Usually nefarious ends, or they would be more willing to be more open about them.
Case in point: the AGW ‘movement’. (Religion, actually.) I’m not going to go into this matter in detail, here. Suffice it to say for now - and as a vital part of this memoir, at least - that some very powerful people (at the moment) have an agenda to (a) control the world, and (b) cull the populace. They think there are too many of us, for the carrying capacity of the Earth, and for them to control, in a top-down form of government. (One side of the pyramid is composed of those who want socialism; another side of the pyramid is composed of those who want fascism; the third side is made up of those who are supporting the pyramid, whether they realize it or not; and the fourth side is made up of name-your-favourite. At the top is the same bunch of statists, manipulating the process.) So they have hit on the idea of ‘man-made global warming’ to use as the Opportunity to achieve their ends. To get there, they need/want to destroy nation-states as they are, and replace them with more easily controlled regions. They also need/want to destroy the current currency system, and replace it with a system - called a carbon currency - that paints a nice big bull’s-eye on each of us. Because we contribute in a number of ways to the carbon ‘problem’; one of which is exhaling the stuff. The fewer of us, the more the ‘system’ will be able to make money, since it is based on carbon credits. The more carbon credits your country has, the ‘richer’ it is. So, eg, in this system, a steel plant, say, in the UK, say, will be a ‘problem’ because of the CO2 it is creating; so close it down (throwing some more ‘useless eaters’ out of gainful employment, and thus onto the tender or not mercies of the state) and transfer its workings to a developing country - India, say, where it is an upgrade to their production of steel; and they can afford its presence in their country because they have carbon credits to spare. And so forth.
It is, in a word, a scam. It may be a noble scam, in the eyes of some - some - of its promoters. But it is a scam nevertheless.
Go to such ‘denialist’ sites as green-agenda.com and get the lowdown. And while I’m passing out healthy credits, I’d like to credit Lord Monckton, too, for his studious efforts to bring this scam to light.
It is one thing to have good intentions. It is quite another to use them to entice people into paving the way into their own gulag. At best.
But you do realize how much CO2 we humans breathe out, don’t you...so - besides because of our behavior - we are ‘the enemy’, in the words of the Club of Rome. (“The common enemy of humanity is man...The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”) Thus, with that attitude, how long do you think that ‘they’ - our keepers - are going to keep ‘us’ breathing??
I’m sure they have better things to do, than play guard.
And they know it, too.

And none of this, let me be crystal clear, is to denigrate the excellent work being done by so many people and organizations to clean up our act here on our Mother Earth. That includes people like Paul Hawken - who as I have indicated has gone on to be a sterling example in the world of a highly together person (I salute you for being such a shining alumnus of Findhorn, Paul) - and another individual particularly worthy of singling out, one Fred Burk. Go to his website wanttoknow.com and you will find out what I mean.


11a To the appalling, outrageous and arrogant point of airburshing out of their graphs (and computer models based on them) an entire period of history; the so-called Medieval Warming Period (lasting from about 800 to 1300 A.D.). When this was discovered, their fall-back position was to say that Oh, that was just a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon; get back in your cages, folks, it’s all under control. It has turned out, in particular from cave formations in New Zealand, that it was not.
New Zealand? You...do know where New Zealand is; don’t you? On the map?? That thing, that you think you can manipulate to your will???
We may well be able to do that sort of thing in the future. (And not in the very distant future.) But not your way, friend. Your way is not very people friendly.
To say the least.



12 There was one such woman in particular who seemed to have made it something of a crusade to demonize PC. My response: There is more under heaven and earth, Ma’am, than is dreamt of in your philosophy, or encased in amber in your belief system. Read Ralph Ellis, and/or Tony Bushby, for a start, of being released from its eye-smoke.
PC is now defunct.anyway. Served its time and place, and purpose. Time moves on. And sometimes, things roll along with it; experiencing change in the process, within new sets of circumstances.
Most things change. Some things stay the same. The incorruptible verities of life, for example. Everything else is up for grabs.
Or as intimated in the philosophical thought of some South American writer/poet whom my Freshman English instructor quoted to me, upon my letting him know, at the end of my Junior year, what I was about to embark on in life, ie, a search for Truth: “Of all sure things, the surest is to doubt.” Don’t take any wooden nickels, then, in life, was the advice, as I understood it. Check them out. They may not be what they look like, on the surface.
Fair enough advice. Better than Polonius’s to Laertes, I reckon.12a

(As to the reference to my Freshman English instructor being someone I was still in touch with two years later, in my sojourn at Stanford, if it struck an even minor curious note for you: It wasn’t as though we had continued contact in a social context. He had just taken a shine to me, to say my writing, in his class; at the end of which he had given me a book - inscribed to me, “from his English instructor” and the date (this was June, 1953) - of John Donne’s meditations and sonnets and such. I was touched. And many years later still had that particular book, after having gone through many a personal library, as I would pick up sticks and jettison everything overboard (I hope you understand that I jest here, mixing metaphors and such in the context of talking about my college English instructor; I’m not being too subtle for you, am I? Losing the detail? Have another drag) and set off load-lightened on the next chapter of my journey in life.
It held one particular attraction for me, besides that of being a special memento; and besides the obvious, of his For WhomThe Bell Tolls meditation. A favorite thought, indeed, that; but I was also and extremely attracted to his musing leading up to it, where he shared (something like; I finally had to leave behind even that favorite possession in my move to Australia):

‘The bell doth toll for him that thinkes it doth; and though it intermit againe, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought him, hee is united to God.”

For me, it spoke to me of that night in the Stanford amphitheater, when I felt that I had made contact with the Power, and the Glory, behind the universe - behind all universes. Behind the totality of Creation.
And I’ve wanted to get back to it ever since. The feeling; and the place.)


12a “A father’s advice to his son how to conduct himself in the world.” (The Home of Inspiration, White Dove Books.) And I’m definitely glad that I didn’t take that advice, when starting out; either in life, or in my way of communicating:

‘’Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act..”

Glad I didn’t read this, and take it to heart, before starting this narrative. I couldn’t have made it past the first line And how much less rich would your life be, if I had ended it before I began? (And doesn’t your mind work like this? Associations just tumble out, like clowns out of a mini-car?...How have we trod the strictly linear path for so long??) - But hey - he however did go on:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

So maybe I would have pushed on through anyway; to the end of that advice, and to the outcome of my personal story.

Choices...(as I say)

The Countdown IV - The Later Years

My Life and Times
IV - The Later Years


1968: Nearly the end of THE decade. I had, finally, had enough of the big city vibe, needed a change, when the opportunity came calling, in the form of a brother of my brother’s wife, who was co-owner of a building cleaning business in upstate idaho, that had just won the contract for Building Maintenance in the resort complex of Sun Valley, and who offered me a job there, to be a foreman of their crew.

Yes, please.

I arrived just as their summer season was starting. Had a great time. And then it was time to go.

Part of the reason for my decision to leave a bit abruptly was that I had been flirting (wink wink; as in the blink of an eye, & as in on-again off-again) with the Mormon faith, of my brother and his wife’s family, and something, finally, was wrong, there, for me. It just didn’t seem to be responding to the needs of humanity the way I felt that needed to be done. There were elements of it that made sense. But there were elements that didn’t.1 What to do.

What I did, after engaging in my little reconnaissance and research mission in Utah, and returning to Sun Valley for part of the winter season - and watching there the TV shots of the astronauts circling the Moon, reading from Genesis on that very historic occasion - was to head for the East Bay Area, to see if I could be of any support to my sister-in-law in the raising of my nieces and nephews. What had happened on the personal level, behind the scenes of this historical report on my life and times, with its concentration on points of general interest and interfacing, was that my brother had died, in a mining accident - occasioned by his continued assault on his mountain peak, attempt to fulfil his dream - and I and my sister-in-law’s brothers and close relatives were supporting her financially, to go back to school and get a teacher’s degree, in order for her to support herself and her by-then five children. Which she, and I, did.2

So I played hands-on uncle for a while; taking the kids off her hands with Saturday afternoon trips to the likes of the Oakland Zoo, and a Sea World in the vicinity, and MacArthur Park in San Francisco, and across ‘the longest bridge in the world’ to John Muir Woods, and so forth. And continued my research into various issues. Including The Church; which I soon read my way out of totally. (The main sticking point, actually, was the old one of Christian churches not believing in reincarnation, because it conflicted with their belief . So one or the other would have to go. I chose fact - or as close as one needed to get to it, to recognize it - over faith. As I’ve gone into in more detail in a link from above. Just to flag it chronologically here.)

And including, in particular, the growing interference in people’s lives of the federal government. The door opener there for me was in the health field.

A short walk from downtown Oakland is a park and recreation center called Lake Merritt. I used to hang out in it (and listen to the City’s public band, in their outdoor shelter, of a sunny weekend afternoon, with many others lounging on the grass or in chairs for the elderly. Great stuff; and also usually finishing, like the band in downtown Long Beach at The Shell on The Pike, with a rousing rendition of The Stars and Stripes Forever. Hoorah! Or Who Ra. Or something), until I found a job in a nearby town and moved there. Before that move, on the far side of the lake I discovered a bookstore similar to one run by the John Birch Society that I had discovered in the far end of The Valley, when living in North Hollywood with my brother and his family in the earlier years of this decade of the ‘60s, now coming to an end. This one in Oakland was a private operation, but with the same sort of interesting, alternative materials. It was here, on its crammed shelves and cluttered display tables - near some material on the connection between Marilyn Monroe’s death and the Kennedy brothers, as I recall - that I came across some copies of the monthly newsletter of an outfit called The National Health Federation. In one of them I came across the information that the federal government was engaged in hearings over its intention to limit the public’s access to a range of vitamins and other supplements, and their dosage levels. The NHF had raised the money for a medical representative to be there and monitor the proceedings, and give input.

That was the beginning of my connection with this organization, which had its headquarters in southern California, but sponsored major health conferences in other areas, including in San Francisco. I found myself being drawn, fascinated, into the world of alternative/complementary health practices and information; my old instincts for ‘medicine’ coming back to the fore, here years later from my university days. And not being happy with what I was finding out, about the allopathic medical field trying to freeze out the competition, including, besides the efforts of local, county medical boards, enlisting the federal government on its side.

Another area I had to keep an eye on...as an example of the corrupt practices going on during my life and times. Causing me anger. And a growing sense of helplessness, at the size of it all.

How was I going to help turn this ignoble state of affairs around?...

This was liable to take longer than I may have thought, it was so all-pervading and entrenched...

I recalled when I was hitchhiking my way back across the country, after my quixotic mission to try to see the President, and a middleaged, business-man type, giving me a ride to the edge of his town (in Ohio, I think it was) and engaging me in cordial conversation, said, after eliciting from me some bare facts about what I had been up to: “You must hope this change of yours comes soon.” I had found myself replying, “No; not necessarily. I’m interested in education; and that sort of thing could take...thirty years, to turn things around.”

That would make it around the mid-90’s. If things hadn’t happened by then, for the better, in the world: No more Mr. Nice Guy, I growled to myself, there on the shores of Lake Merritt, watching life around me proceeding seemingly mindlessly at its gentle pace. I was going to go hunting for bear.3

***


It’s now 2010. I have learned that patience is a virtue.

But barely.


The End
The Later Years




Footnotes

1 Sense: Besides the caring factor for its ‘community’ - helping them through times of need, etc. etc., in true solidarity and communitarianism; the right spirit - there was, in particular, the Lehi Stone.
This will take a moment. Don’t go ‘way. (If you do, at this point: Sorry. But this is the way I need to tell this story. It’s my story; my choice. You have yours. Tell it, and choose it, too. Fair enough that we’re individuals. For now. For this time and place. And anyway: I’ve harped on this before in here. What’s your problem? Like the man said to his wife, who complained about his constantly leaving the seat up on the toilet: ‘That’s the way I do it. Get used to it.’ They’re still married. I think.)
It has to do with the Book of Mormon. I think Mark Twain referred to it as ‘chloroform in print’. There is that element of it. But it’s also an intriguing story - both within it , and about its creation, or ‘discovery’; whatever. I won’t go into all that here; just to say that it’s purportedly a history of goings-on in Central America from the point of view of immigrants from the pre-Christian-era Holy Land, brought out of that part of the world for a spiritual purpose, and later having been visited by the resurrected Christ. There’s not much historical evidence for the veracity of the story, except for a curious find, reported on in National Geographic in the early ‘40s. This was of a large stone with curious etchings on it, depicting a bearded man sitting with his back to a tree, and some objects around him. The details aren’t important for this report, just the fact that it all fit perfectly with a dream a character had had as reported in the Book of Mormon. Short of some Mormon missionaries having gone out in the dark of night and chiseling themselves an artifact that they could then point to and say ‘Eureka!’ over, it’s hard to know what to think about this bit of evidentia. I know it had me researching my birth religion more, well, religiously, for a time. But it was time now, I was feeling, to get cracking on a really serious investigation of the Church. Which brings me to

Non-sense: Quitting the lovely setting of Sun Valley1a I drove down to Provo, Utah - where I had begun this whole caper, read lifetime (now starting to draw to a close...Light! More Light!) - and spent some time at BYU (my dad’s old alma mater; where he had wanted to better himself, but at my mom’s expense; however momentary), checking out their bookstore, interviewing a couple of professors who had written books about different aspects of The Story, reading some papers in the stacks about the early history of the Church and Joseph Smith himself. They also had a mockup of the Lehi Stone. Intriguing stuff. But the material in the stacks was devastating to the church’s story - very like the books on early Christianity that I had come across in the New York Public Library back at the beginning of my in-earnest quest, over a decade previously (this was now late1968), were to the Christian religion itself. Smith apparently, in his youth, had a reputation for having a ‘peep stone’ that he would look into, in a hat (shades of a pig in a poke), and tell stories from, including a rather tall tale about a salamander. A salamander? What was all this all about?? And getting the followers to put all their money in his bank, with a display container in the entranceway salted with silver dollars to entice them...and its temple rituals simply being from his Masonic roots...I went off to Salt Lake City to find out more.
Where I spent a couple of months continuing my research; and came across enough material - in the public library there, and the Historical Society's Reading Room, and from a source of alternative literature (an ex-Member who had done a lot of good research on original-source materials) - to know that there was something seriously wrong with the story of the Church’s beginnings as handed down to the membership, and our day. There had been a period of a Great Apostasy in its history. I could readily sympathize, if the stuff that I was coming across was anything to go by in relation to what had stated becoming known in their day.
There was also the main sticking point about reincarnation. I was convinced, by then, of its veracity. The Church believed in pre-existence - the soul ready for incarnation - but, as a good Christian school of belief, just couldn’t - or didn’t want to - get their heads around the question of how we got established as individuated souls in the first place, and what all went into our particular personality makeup in incarnation.1b It was all just too much for their belief system to handle. It would crack. Which it would have to, in time. According to my belief system. And that of a lot of other good people, who just look at the facts, ma’am. (A reference there to a very popular TV show of the time, ‘Dragnet’, starring Jack Webb. Dum da-dum dum.)


1a This is northern Idaho mountain country, and the natural setting is magnificent. I would take off on my days off and go exploring, sleeping in my American Rambler seat-reclinable car on the cool nights. I even made it eastward over to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming; part of the Rocky Mountain range. As I say: Magnificent. If you ever want a vacation from it all, and reattune to your nature roots, and our natural environment. Which I highly recommend. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming merely robots, programmed by our erstwhile masters. Sit up. Lie down. Roll over. Eat my shorts.


1b The annals of reincarnation literature were filled with examples of people whose phobias and attitudes and birthmarks and such were explained by past-life experiences still imprinted on/recorded in their unconscious. And how - eg, as chronicled in Dr. Morris Netherton’s ‘Past Lives Therapy’ (to come out in another decade, but well-prefigured in the literature of the time. The same with Gina Cerminara’s ‘Many Mansions’ and ‘Many Lives, Many Loves’. And Dr. Helen Wambach’s ‘Life Before Life’. And...) - upon accessing ‘directly’ a past -life experience, through a vivid awakened state (guided by a gentle, non-hypnotic process), a person could be freed from the energy of it, and thus be released from its controlling grasp on their psyche, to move further on their path, less fettered from the past.



2 It was a little more complicated than that, in actuality. The night before his funeral I offered, to my sister-in-law’s family, to marry her, for the sake of the kids. It was in part because I was already, to a fair extent, a surrogate father to them anyway, having been a live-in uncle and baby-sitter for most of their lives before they had moved back up north while my brother figured out his next steps (and as one of the girls said to me at this time: “Will you come up and be our daddy?”). It was also in part because I felt a bit guilty, about how my brother could leave them in such a situation; and as a friend of the family had said earlier, when my brother was getting further out on a very precarious limb, he wouldn’t have been able to press his luck so far if I hadn’t been paying the daily bills for them; was that wise? (Maybe not; but I was a ‘dreamer’ too, could sympathize with his ambition.) It was also because our mother was horrified at how “irresponsible” he could be, to have such a large family without a proper means of support for them, and was embarrassed for our side of the family, with her very responsible outlook on life (conveniently forgetting how she had left her own kids to follow her dream). But cooler heads prevailed: (a) They asssured me that they would help financiallly until she could get on her feet; and (b) I was in a quandary about it anyway, because of the religion factor. I was already seriously questioning it; and they were all so involved with The Church in their lives (the Mormons are very social in their belief, with all manner of activities taking up most of their time. Idle hands, and all that) that it would be an awkward situation. I had nothing to offer them on that front, as an alternative, was still a truthseeker. Not conducive to a stable family situation. In the event, after going back to school and teaching for awhile, she met a nice Mormon man; and though they didn’t live totally happily ever after - his own kids from his previous marriage were going through difficult times emotionally, and the mix between the two sets of offspring didn’t always work well - at least they were compatible in their religious attitudes, and that’s a major piece of such a picture.
Which is a way, too, for me to answer any possible question there may be in the reader’s mind as to how I feel about religions. Short answer: They serve a purpose. But I feel that we are now faced with the need to move beyond them, and just relate to Source, with all due respect. That may be a bit of an ask. Religions - or at least rituals - fill a role, in our human evolution. Just so long as they don’t impinge on others. And that’s a bigger ask.



3 Which is an interesting expression, and especially in the context of this story, with a double meaning, at least for me: since as part of my search for Truth, I was drawn to uncover - try to - the real story behind King Arthur. The reality behind the legend. And here I note that I almost wrote ‘the legend behind the myth’. My mind perhaps playing tricks on me; inasmuch as I had been referred to once as ‘a legend in his own time’, so I know how these things can work. Myth possibly overlaying legend, or vice versa, and legend very possiby overlaying some basic reality underneath...
What am I talking about. I’m talking about how King Arthur has been referred to as The Bear, apparently the name deriving from the Celtic word Art or arto-, meaning ‘bear’. But there are quite possibly astrological references in this story as well. And with twelve knights/twelve disciples, dedicated to doing good (and twelve zodiacal houses; with the zodiac figuring prominently in many ancient religions)? The Round Table/the Last Supper table, which there is some evidence to believe was in fact a round table?? If it ever really existed in reality. And what about the references to dragons, as in Uther Pendragon - where did that idea originate from??? And the ‘wounded’ Fisher King, of Grail legend, with his ‘barren’ kingdom - and on and on. There were mysteries upon mysteries here, buried in our literal history.
I was determined to get to the bottom of it. All. At some point.
But all in good timing, I was learning.
Trying, to.
But - grrr, sometimes...

The Countdown III - The Mid-Late Years

My Life and Times
III - The Mid-Late Years

of this ersatz archeological dig
or geological period -
the Middle Pleistocene Period
as it were; or mid-den


While at Stanford, I happened, via chance encounters1 in The Cellar - a coffee shop-cum-gathering place (watering hole, really, in the terms of my evocation above of an anthropological-like look at ML&T) half-buried in the heart of the campus - to meet a couple of times a couple of students from a somewhat neighboring college campus (San Jose State; that area somewhat soon to be known, even around the world, as Silicon Valley. But I’m getting a bit ahead of my story, to go there, and that immeasurable influence on all our lives; which will allow us to flash into Oneness sooner than we might have thought, if we had been thinking at all about the potential ramifications of the Internet) who were attending some sort of courses at our center of learning about all things important in life. (Well; as was understood at the time.) It was through these exchanges of tiny pieces of our life stories that I found out that their school had a well-reputed drama school in its midst. Ergo, when I returned from my military tour of duty in Korea - this was in ‘58; I presume you’re still sort of with me, as to at least a general ‘take’ on the chronological thread of this report - and left that world behind (the military one, not the Far East one. For all I knew, I still had unfinished business there. It’s a small world, after all, in the great scheme of things) at the Leaving Center, or whatever it was called officially, in the East Bay city of Oakland, my first stop on the path of the rest of my life was down to San Jose (yes, yes; you’re entitled to hum a few bars, or even break out loud into song; just catch up as soon as you can. It could all get a little complicated for you otherwise. He said, a bit mischievously), and a hastily-arranged appointment with the Dean of said school. I explained, briefly, my interest: wanting to help change the world, and figuring that the best way to do that was through the arts, via either playwrighting or film-making; would he recommend his school for this chance for them to be directly involved in measures of earth-changing proportions?

A far cry from the little kid who slunk off stage from his embarassing inability to remember even the first note of La Paloma, I’m sure you’re thinking by now. Well; maybe a little. And speaking of little: it may go without saying, but I’ll mention it anyway, that my spiel wasn’t of quite that magnitude. But that was the gist of it. And he must have caught that gist, because he immediately excused his modest little non-mainstream department from any opportunity to be a part of any such major accomplishment, by recommending that I should check out the equivalent department at UCLA, where within it they had an even more well-reputed film school.

So I went there.2 To say: I returned to my home stamping grounds of southern California, and started checking out the arts scene there.

My first step was to secure lodgings, which I accomplished easily enough courtesy of my brother and a couple of his friends, who were all trying to Make It in Hollywood; he in TV- and film-making and the others variously in acting and stand-up comedy/writing. From that base I ventured forth to UCLA, to reconnoiter the lay of the land there. Which afforded me little room for maneuver, in my planned assault on the world, since it was rather expensive. I settled for an evening class on film-making, and getting my brother to bring me samples of scripts from his fledgling attempts in The Business. I also bought a couple of books on film scriptwriting, and began analyzing/outlining the drama shows I would watch closely on the small TV.3 Soon change came, in the form of the others moving out (in part because of the smoke I was exuding into our cramped quarters, from the bad habit I had acquired in the military. I exaggerate; but it seemed a convenient way to bring in a bit of personal color to this drab recital of events, before Big Things happened in my life. Or not), each on their separate paths; my brother into marriage, and continued attempts to get a career started in Hollywood. They were all Mormons, and he had a Big Dream, too: wanting to make a major film about his/their religion.4

My interests soon extended to novel writing - which actually had first surfaced at university, and was part of what propelled me onto the next phase of my life - and I started working on both a novel and its film form. But then a funny thing happened to me on my way to work one day.5

There I was, on the bus one morning (the first of two, to get to my place of work), when, out of An Orange-Colored Sky - no. Very simply, and quietly: the thought came to me, that money was funny. In a manner of speaking. (Well; it was ‘funny money’ too. But that awareness came later.) Was somewhat weird.

What was it, really?

It was ‘a medium of exchange’. A way for people to exchange goods and services, without having to barter. Instead, to exchange pieces of paper, which stood for something of value; more: which had value backing it. But -

Why did we need it anyway?

And here’s where all my cutesy little comments like We’re All One and such comes into play, for real. Because

If it’s true that we’re all One...that we’re all of a piece, just having an experience of separateness, split off into individual personalities - over and over again - for, most probably, and according to many commentators on the spiritual scene far more advanced in their thinking and understanding than I, our growth and development (and thus the growth and development of the Whole of which we were/are a part) - what more do we need in the way of a motivation TO exchange goods and sevices with each other?

With each other of US? We, the sparks of divinity that we are in essence?

Years later I worked for a year for an NGO called Planetary Citizens, associated with the UN (with offices right across the street from its main building, in lower East Side Manhattan), whose motto was: One Planet - One Humanity - One Destiny. That was, essentially, it.

And there I was, on a bus in the L.A. area, on a warm summer's day, in the early ‘60s, getting 'it'.

You - we - didn’t need money. All you needed was a motive to give of your best to one another, in our common experience on Spaceship Earth. And thus, all you need is (all together now) -

Really.

‘Money’ was what stood in the way of our inheriting our Oneness. Kept us separated from our essential Selves. Kept us locked up in a matrix (what a great film-to-be, years later). A matrix of our own making. Like that of the monkey with his fist trapped in the cookie jar.

Kept us believing in the illusion of separateness. Was WHAT kept us, there.

As if we wouldn’t treat each other as brothers and sisters, freely exchanging our best with one another, WITHOUT the lure of money. Of making a ‘profit’.

Of treating money like an end in itself, instead of simply as the means to an end that it, by nature, is. Was. Until some smart guys got into the picture, and stole the Grinch, as it were.

To say: We were being had.

And the way out of our dilemma - our matrix - was to release our hold on the very thing that was keeping us trapped in it.

Money.

Interest-bearing, fractional-reserve-banking money, with all its super-dooper califragilistic expialidocious ‘financial instruments’ and such; plonk being packaged as pinot noir. (Schemes to create ‘value’ in figures on paper. How absurd.)

There was only one thing.

People had to grok that they - we - were all One. Engaged in a process of discovering our essential nature; and thus moving further on our common path, through such stages of the journey as life on Earth.

That was the message that I was committed to trying to get people to wake up to, in my desire to create a film, or play, or something wherein to capture their attention. But, until that moment, on a bus to my daily-life work, I hadn’t realized the key - the essential key - to the process.

That the world of the future wasn’t going to function on money.

It was going to function on, in a word: Love.

The Love of the Creator for His/Her/(Their?) Creation. And thus our reciprocation; and respect; in resonance.

Of course, that was the next step, to the two-step dance of life without money.

First to declare it (to concentrate attention; like a smack upside the head). And then to get people to believe it. ‘It’: That the universe has purpose, and that purpose is Good.6

So. What was my role in that mission?

The first step came to me at that same time, on that same bus to my daily-life work.

I needed to make a statement. And the statement that came to me, was a letter to the President (recently-elected JFK). It read - would read, in its actual form, down from just the Idea level:

“I am a young man walking on his way to Washington, to see the President and draw to his attention that the way to rid ourselves of all our aches and evils is to do away with money.

“If after considering the matter thoroughly you agree, I suggest you write a letter saying so to Mr. Kennedy.”

To be dropped off at newspaper offices all along the way.

***

So off I went. Across the country, walking and hitchhiking (I gave up shortly into the Mojave Desert with my intention to walk the whole way), delivering my message along the way. And got as far as the Secret Service duty guy at the White House gatehouse; to whom I passed on my message to and for the president. And came back, to get on with the rest of my life.

***

Mostly, at the beginning, it consisted of cultivating the art, as well as the virtue, of patience. I read. (A book on meditation/contemplation, by ‘The Seven Storey Mountain’ author and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, was a particular one at that time that I recall. It helped.) Living with my brother and his begining family at the time, I baby sat. I walked.

Within walking distance of where my brother lived at that time in Hollywood was Griffith Park, a substantial public park with, among other attractions, an observatory. I would walk up to it, first through a pleasant nature area called Fern Dell, and then on up to the hill behind, where I would look back down on the greater Los Angeles basin, and regret having to go back down into that sea of smog. Of all sorts.

When my brother moved across the hills to North Hollywood in The Valley (you’ve heard of Valley Girls? That’s the one), I went with them, as a built-in babysitter, and resident uncle, to a rapidly growing number of nieces and nephews (one each, to start with). I continued to do my thing, of reading, and some writing - continuing to analyze TV scripts, and do some original work in that medium, as practice7 - and then the day came when my brother mentioned a job he had heard about, and I took it.

It was as a delivery truck driver for an auto body paint and supply company. My ‘beat’ was the Valley in the mornings (from its base in Hollywood; there’s that recurring theme again) and then - ta-da - Hollywood in the afternoons, delivering mostly paint to auto repair businesses. (And learning to mix them.)8 This is where I saw the ‘60s in from, as events like Love-ins started happening in parks in L.A. and San Francisco, attracting the attention of a bemused media, and populace. The question, in straight society, was: Who were these people?

I looked on them as the vanguard of a new wave.

And kept my peace. Man.


Time passed. I continued my voracious reading habit. A fitting word, that latter one: When I changed jobs, to drive a delivery truck for a bumper repair company (there were bumpers in the Earth in those days) - to some of the same businesses, in The Valley, that I had formerly delivered paint supplies to - I got in the habit (with time on my hands, including lunch time) of spending considerable time stopping off at various outdoor book stalls along the way; guys making a living providing the public with easy access to paperbacks and magazines. (Thanks, gentlemen. You provide a good service.)

This was also how I happened to come across an interesting selection of books of a political nature, from a right-wing point of view, about how the U.S., and the western world, was being ‘sold out’ by a cabal of powerful people with an agenda to rule the world, their way. It was material published by an organization beginning to be heard of at that time, called the John Birch Society; staunch ‘patriots’ who believed in ‘less government, more responsibility, and, with God’s help, a better world’.9 Anti-communists, and -socialists, then. I had heard about it (it was founded in 1958, a decade earlier), but I had been too busy with my other interests to pay it much attention, other than notice the occasional ‘expose’ about it in the papers. (Almost completely negative in treatment. Which was certainly a tip-off to their political leanings.) But a few events began to float into view in my neck of the universe, at the same time, and to begin to form a coherent whole picture.

One was the assassination of JFK. Something really smelled about that.10 Another was the education picture in California. An election was being held about this time for the state’s Education administrator, and the battlelines between parts of America were beginning to be more clearly drawn: this particular battle of that war was being fought between a staunch ‘liberal’ and a staunch ‘conservative’, the latter of whom had written a book, gaining popularity, entitled ‘Suffer, the Little Children’: purportedly an expose of ‘liberal’ teaching methods that were causing our children to be (a) dumbed down, and (b) indoctrinated. I didn’t know too much about that battle, at that time. But I was interested enough to keep an eye on it. And thus the chance encounter with a paperback display rack (this was, in point of fact, inside a mini supermarket; thank you, too, folks. But especially to the sidewalk vendors, with their quick-food takeaways) of JBS publications gave me the opportunity to go deeper into the subject. The subject of what all was going on in America, and the world, at that point in time.

I was not totally devoid of knowledge about the matter. I have indicated earlier in this memoir, this snapshot, that I came across Whittaker Chambers’s autobiography ‘Witness’ during my later high school or early university days; and there was some info of a political nature at university.11 But I wanted to know more. Who was really running things? And why?

For the moment, I could support the conservative’s concerns, especially after having come across the book ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’, in my college bookstore, just as I was leaving school, to go exploring the larger picture of things.12

There was, clearly, more - much more - going on in the world than was dreamt of in my philosophy, at the time.

But I was, hopefully, being a quick learner.

With my eyes wide open. But beginning to narrow, in anger, at what I was seeing, and learning.

And learning patience at the same time.

But the growling had begun. Deep inside. Me; and, I was sure, in others.

Because we are all One.

Just have different roles to play, is all.

In this drama; part farce, part serious; ‘fast’ approaching its end.

Or at least, one act.

The penultimate one, at the very least.


Shakespeare had it right...13



The End
The Mid-Late Years




Footnotes

1 aka Close Encounters; for aren’t we, really, like UFOs to each other? Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, and buzzing around each other, and sometimes colliding - colluding? - for whatever period of time - and sometimes experiencing, like, missing time; wondering what had happened - what was that all about? - before just simply moving on, on our (again: seemingly) erratic paths in life?? But really, there would seem essentially to be some sort of rhyme or reason to it all???
Curious stuff, this life material. Including its moving between particle and wave. Space and time. Time and space. Telepathy. Clairvoyance...malleable stuff.


2 Before leaving the Bay Area, just to note that I visited in San Francisco (yes, another humming interlude; go ahead. Briefly)2a a buddy from high school and college who had gone on into Stanford Medical School as the next stop on his life journey, and used (while he was away for a few days, chasing some tail) his cheap hotel room as a base from which to check out the ‘beat generation’ scene, as recently chronicled by Jack Kerouac, whose novel On the Road I had read whilst in Korea (through a link I had forged with a bookstore in Seattle, before embarking on my psychically-seen trip across the Pacific. Not by me, that was. By a medium my mother had visited, when wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Me, I was beyond wondering, usually. Was - similar to many experiences of my childhood - just along for the ride). (Don’t these periods - full stops, they’re called, in the UK, from where I’m penning this memoir, as part of the Latest Period chapter coming up. Soon! Soon! - end up, sometimes, in the strangest places? That was a long one away from its antecedent...antecedent...whatever.) A trip to the North Beach, and the City Lights Bookstore - home as well to Ginsberg and his ‘Howl’ days - was a bit of a let-down. A bookstore. Of which I had seen many in my short, troubled life, by then. But then I was simply paying homage. Fair enough. Worth checking it out. The On the Road gang, of course, had long gone by then. That is, of course, the nature of people On the Road.2b
Of which I was now one. On my way to southern California. Next paragraph. This same one, actually, I see. As I navigate my way back to base camp.
Some ride so far? Kind of like a roller coaster ride, from one’s childhood ??...

2a Although I have somewhat belatedly realized that I straddle two eras with that reference, with some of you, I further realize, not knowing about the Tony Bennett link further down in this historo-cultural dig. There was life before the ‘60s, you know. Maybe not as you know it. Jimmy.
Whoops - two continental relics, there. However, for a generation that can get its head around Sudoku...or a tad earlier on: the Rubik’s cube...(The latter not to be confused with the Orion’s Cube. That came later on in this story. Mine and the world’s.)

2b The hippie era, and Flower Power and all that, was still to come, on the linear, conventional timeline; though well precursed, here. And only a very few years away. But then what’s a year, in the measurement of such things. Change can come in the blinking of an eye.
And note that I said ‘blinking’. Some change can come in the blink of an eye, meaning very quickly. But other change can come in the blinking of an eye, meaning, like, flirting. Including marriage, and all that major detour, or main thoroughfare; one.
Which brings up the subject of, in a word, sex. And I realize that I haven’t mentioned much of that aspect of my life, in this historo-cultural record . There was some of that. But it was only of an interlude nature; not of the main thrust of my unfolding, as a person, at this time in Life on Earth. So it has been relegated to the midden pile; perhaps to be picked over a bit, if and when it seems relevant to do so.
Some of us being rather single-minded in life, as we are.
Can be.
Can get.



3 ‘Avidly’ would be perhaps a more accurate word here, but a little play on words is hard for a writer to pass up. Besides, it captures a bit of the cultural ‘mood’ of the period. This was well before the big screens of our day. And plasma - phshhh. Small change.



4 A tentative first step was to try to secure funding for a film production of the book ‘Papa Married a Mormon’, about life in the early days in Utah. He was hoping to capitalize on the then-recent success of a film about the Quakers, ‘Friendly Persuasion’. In the event, his sincere powers of persuasion came to nought. He died some years later, in a quixotic mining-venture accident, still trying to follow his dream. (Cue Man of La Mancha.) I give him credit. More power to such people. They make change, however small.
It all adds up.



5 My meager savings from my military ‘Brown Period’ were soon used up (a replay of my Down-And-Out Period the few years previously in New York City; where in extremis I secured a typing job in the back room of a play publishing company, and the beginning of a post-schooling CV that would hardly get me anywhere in the ‘real’ world. Lucky I wasn‘t interested in that one. Was only interested in the World To Come; in part because of my seemingly small efforts.
But who knows how these things happen. Maybe my puny attempts at Making a Difference did help, in some way, to catalyze the larger movement to such a world, and outcome??
My reading hadn’t caused me to come across anything along those lines. Yet. Just the sense that we are all part of The Whole...5a
...and then there was the Hundreth Monkey syndrome, soon to become part of the psychic picture, and makeup of the consciousness of humanity...
How malleable WAS the stuff of life, anyway???
To dream, perchance to see...
- a close-parenthesis on the above musings, and continuing with the initial thought:)
, and I got a job, again as a typist,5b in an insurance company; or rather, as an Assistant Fire Underwriter. Which I enjoyed, especially when I started getting cute with my letters to agents who owed us money, or paperwork, or some such - making my points with humor - and I didn’t get slapped down for it. (‘This is a serious business, son.’ ‘I know! I know!’) And in point of fact , was offered a raise in position, to write for a mooted newsletter for the company (New Zealand Fire & Life Insurance. Good folks, from my experience). But that change came just after another change was happening to me. Of such close encounters is life made up...

5a It’s probably just that simple: One’s thoughts radiate out and connect with others, because we are all, on some level, One. In essence; ‘momentarily’ experiencing separation, for growth purposes.
But try to tell that to somebody just starting out on the path.

5b Little had I known, back at the summer break between my eighth and ninth grades, how important a decision would be for me when I decided to take in summer school a typing course. Nobody I knew went to summer school. That was for kids who needed to make up failing grades, or that sort of thing. But a friend mentioned he was going to do it - to be better prepared for college, I think he even remarked on. And that idea seemed to make good sense to me. All that reading, and note-taking, and stuff. That serious stuff. When we REALLY got into it, in school...In the event, (a) it didn’t make that much difference to me at university; but (b) it sure did in my life.
Listen to your intuition. Which can come through others as well. Because we’re - you know - all One. Sort of. Like.
Where was I. Oneness. No; before. Something still niggling at my mind. Typing class. Great invention. It sure beats writing. People tell me I missed my calling as a doctor. I think I’m touched with the magic wand of a time and space still to come on our lifeline where you don’t need to write things down. You just think things, and they’re there. It’s all a part the Oneness. (That’s it. The two thoughts merged.) So I find it very difficult to function down here on the physical level, having to communicate through the likes of writing. It’s just squiggles, for heaven’s sake. This means, and this means, and that means...5c We can do better than this. We have to do better than this. I can’t read my own writing half the time. Scrawling away with a tight hand on a little piece of paper - this is murder. Morte. Merde.5d
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. (Literally too.) But...big sigh. Frowny face. I don’t want to play anymore. I want to take my ball and go home.
My ball...that reminds me of someting...
No. Better not go there. Too soon. Back to current reality. Except just to say: I think that certain autistics, who apprehend things more directly, are trying to tell us something. It would pay to listen.5e
Just not write.
Same with this ‘style’ of mine. I don’t think linearly. I think - spatially, for lack of a better word. And I think most people do, too. The brain cells fire, and resonate with associated memory files, and we’re off and running, down many ‘files’at once. But we’re forced to ‘tone it down’, in order to communicate on this level. Through words. On lines. Read left to right. Unless you live in Australia.
I jest. But barely.
Anyway. My little rant for the moment. They come up when they come up. You know.
And speaking of rants, and thinking spatially (just a quickie): Another little rant of mine is how the allopathic medical profession thinks that they’re doing anything really substantive for people’s depression by just putting them on antidepressants indefinitely. Depression is a symptom, with an underlying cause in the particular case. There are a number, that I know of; but rather than going into all that here, I want to keep it to this idea of how the brain works, and why the bulk of allopaths, with their cozy relationships with the drug companies, are a menace to society.
The main class of antidepressants are called SSRIs, for ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor’. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, known as the ‘feel good’ one. If serotonin levels are low, the neurons can’t do their thing properly. Rather than look at why the serotonin levels may be low (e.g., if it’s just a matter of diet, there’s nothing in the matter for the drug industry, so forget it - unless they can figure out a drug angle to run with...) the pharmaceutical house boffins said to their paymasters, ‘We could come up with a drug to keep the brain from reabsorbing the serotonin after it has done its thing in the synapses, and thus keep the synapses flooded with the stuff...’ ‘Got it!’ said such a money man, instantly trying to think of how he could take credit for the idea. ‘Go for it! Wow! You’ve made my day! I feel better already!’ The problem with that approach to the matter - the scientific part of this anecdote - is a little matter about how the brain works. It doesn‘t work in a simple linear way; it works like ripples on a lake. A thought with its associated feeling enters, and it spreads out. So yes, a positive thought may be enhanced by more serotonin in the synapses; but a negative thought can be enhanced as well. It’s called entrainment. That’s why SSRIs can produce violent feelings, and suicidal feelings, and so forth; the mind is being entrained by the given thought or feeling, and enhancing it Bad news.


5c Although not according to Dan WInter. To this researcher, the letters ot the alphabet are manifestations - rotations - of Light. But fair warning: you’d better take a really healthy drag before trying to follow him down his rather private rabbit hole. And play out a string behind yourself, to help you try to find your way back. While you’re doing that, I’ll get on with my point, on this physical level, about what we should start aiming for; so so many things can’t be lost in the translation, as it were.


5d I’ve just tried it, to feel into the emotional impact of it, to me, to try to describe it better, perhaps. ‘A tight hand’ is a fair description, but isn’t the fulll monty. My hand feels cramped, like a bird in a cage. I crave Freedom! Like Mel Gibson’s character in Braveheart. Or like the Alec Guinness character in the film version of Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth, contemplating, with his thumb oustretched before him at arm’s length, while passing by on a motorboat, the painting of the ‘canvas’ of the entire side of an actual ship. That’s for me. And make it the very ship of state, of our time.


5e Not to be confused with others who are trying to tell us, more primarily, something else. The same, but different. That there is an epidemic of brain damage going on in our time and place. And we need to do something about it - more, than we are doing at present. Which is, primarily, to ignore it, as best ‘we’ - mostly the PTB - can; because it brings up an inconvenient truth.
I’ll be referring to this subject, briefly, in f/note 11 below. It needs more exegesis than I can give it in this particular narrative (at least at this stage of it; you never know...). But it’s certainly on our mutual plate. Affects us all, potentially. And the more, that we put off that day of reckoning.
I reckon.
(Hint: It’s just like not paying attention to the cause - ie, the causal level - of depression in just treating it on the symptomatic level . For that’s all that it is: a symptom. And so it’ll just keep getting worse under the Band-aid approach to treatment. Nothing really substantive there.
The canaries in the coal mine on our shift are singing their pretty, but frantic, little heads off. We need to stop with business as usual; or pay the price.)



6 Later, for a more definitive treatment of this thought, and its origin, for me.
But just to add something to my ‘argument’ at this point: I could see why money had played such a major role in the world to date, to reflect a time/development stage of relative scarcity. When there is not enough of something for all, it develops a value, and that value needed to be denominated somehow. But what happens when you reach a stage of development wherein you can manipulate (more nicely put: play with) matter more readily - this matter that we are a part of? So there are two main points of awareness here. (1) The Muslim world didn’t/doesn’t need interest-bearing money to engage in ‘transactions’, ie, sharing. Neither did the early Christian community. (It was/is called koinonia.) So on the one hand, it was a matter of creating a sense of community, to simplify the processes of social life. And (2) We now had the technological ability, as an entire race of beings, to move into abundance.
If we will let it happen. Release it, to happen.



7 A little tributary, and tribute, here: Along with a couple of original scripts - one for a Dr. Kildare segment, and one for a non-existent series about a high school counselor (the idea shortly to be ‘covered’ somewhat by the high school teacher series ‘Mr. Novak’, well done with James Franciscus and Dean Jagger) - I was inspired, by some of the short stories I read, from the local library, in the collections ‘Best American Short Stories Of [Year]’, to come up with a proposal for an anthology series based on those publications. I adapted a number of those stories into TV script form, as a taster of the potential, and submitted the idea through my brother to a couple of sources in the industry. Alas, the idea foundered on a couple of rocks: (1) ‘Anthologies don’t do well on TV’; and (2) cost. The producer would have to pay the original author besides his scriptwriters. Not economical. So much for a good idea. But the experience gave me an appreciation of Americana (in particular), as painted in short-story form. A largely unappreciated art form.
Thus I enjoyed coming across recently, in the Saturday’s Guardian ‘Review’ section, a homage review by author Annie Proulx of a short-story collection by an American named Tim Gautreaux; the collection titled ‘Waiting for the Evening News: Stories of the Deep South’. They sound extremely readable (one with a section “which had this reader laughing for 10 minutes”. You can’t get much better than that). And it put me to mind of that walking and hitchhiking trip I took, lo those many years ago now, across that country rich in such stories - and at one point, through that very territory, not only the South but Louisiana in particular - captured so well by the likes of Gautreaux.
On my trip I didn’t have time to explore the ‘country’, meaning the people, in any depth. It was just my rite of passage to my maturity as a man. (And interestingly, the Guardian’s Review editor headed Annie’s review ‘The family of man’, based on a comment in her review that, though Gautreaux is often tagged by reviewers as “a regional Southern writer”7a, “(t)he family of man is [his] natural reader”. As it is my natural family; though through the prism of America.) But I met some interesting people along the way, in just passing through.
Oh, okay. A couple of them. One was a little ferret of a man who did bugger-all for a living but lived really to play in a shit-kickin’ band. On his way to a gig rat now. His stage name was ‘Juan Juan de Hijo’, and while driving he kept a can of beer tucked down by his right side (this is America, remember, with the driver on the left) and felt it periodically, like checking occasionally to see if he was in the right gear. He was. A great hitch. Another was a barber who was going to apply for a patent on a device he had created to vacuum up the hair as it was cut. The list goes on. (It doesn’t seem as though his invention ever made it. Too bad. Nice idea. Americans are full of’em. Not ‘of them’ as in of themselves. Well, many other nationalities may think so. But take it from me: They’re good folks at heart. Just a little subject to being manipulated, because they’re so good-hearted, basically. My govmint created wars jist to go to war? Naw. Git yer ass in gear, man, yer spinnin’ yer wheels. My country, right or wrong. If you don’t love it, leave it. Cost you no dime at the door. Best country they ever was.
Actually, that’s true. And that’s why it has so much to have to live up to.)

7a I have cheated here, with the cap. The Guardian’s house style is to keep from capitalizing proper nouns at all possible cost. I suppose they think that just because they don’t capitalize the name of their own broadsheet, it makes it all right. It don’t. Give me proper caps when it’s clearly called for, or I’ll exercise me a little prosaic license.




8 I was fascinated by the beautiful images that would roil up to the top especially of the gallon cans from the mixture of colors going into them from the recipe book; like galaxies in an expanding universe. I was struck enough by the phenomenon to try to find a photographer who would experiment with overhead shots of these moveable feasts of color and shape, to come up with a product line, capable of suiting a client’s color desires, for big ‘canvases’ of them for offices or living rooms; but I was never able to get the idea off the ground. My idea was met by the likes of reference to puny ittle multi-color etches made by a spinning squirt gun at amusement parks. Couldn’t people see the bigger picture??
My frustration, and irritation, feeding into the larger likes of: Why is everybody so limited in their visions? And: How can one live without knowing what life is really all about? And...
And returning to: patience. Patience is a virtue. It is also an art. You can learn something from this.
And in my darker moods, I would think: Yeah, right...



9 There was that expression again! I knew it would come back in my life. It had a certain, ring to it, that I could relate to; a je ne sais quoi that spoke to me. Perhaps that was why I ended up connecting with both the John Birch Society and the NGO Planetary Citizens in my upcoming life; even though they came to it from different political angles.



10 And it still does. Even after all this time of, like, the Internet, providing the public with a huge range of information about everything. But, of course, the downside of that is that it (a) is overload, and (b) can’t all be believed. So how do you know what to believe? My technique is to: read at least three takes on something, and then believe a third of each. No; i jest. But it feels like that, sometimes. But seriously, it is good practice in developing the art of discernment. Take something in, and see how it ‘fits’, inside; preferably with other information intake to match it to. Ultimately, that’s how we’re going to get our information anyway. From the inside. Directly. With no filters. Sort of like telepathy. Connecting with Source.



11 Including a history course by a young professor who had just gained some notoreity by publishing a book claiming that FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor before it took place. It was not a greatly popular subject in general - Stanford having something of a reputation for being a ‘liberal’ institution11a - but he was nevertheless inundated with students, including me, wanting to know more. He quickly separated the sheep from the goats by promising a hard course that quarter. That was enough to cause me to join the goats. I needed an easier time of it, with my concentration on my pre-med courses, and needing to get good grades there. So I took a course in French history instead. It had a reputation of being at least easier than ”hard”.
In the event, what I gained on the swings I lost on the roundabouts, as it were; to say: I did well in that series of courses, but did it really benefit me??
Time would tell. At least it gave me insights into the ongoing historical animosity between England and France. That might be of importance, in my unfolding life.

11a I realize that I need to clarify this point a bit more. Long story short: ‘liberals’ liked institutions like the UN, and socialism - structures that looked after ‘the little guy’ - and it was the ‘conservatives’ that ran things like the Institute for War, Revolution and Peace out of the Hoover Tower on campus, which seemed to be frowned on by the average Stanford professor; apparently because it analyzed the likes of communism, and critically drew attention to its workings, when the ‘liberals’ often heralded it as the wave of the future, like a good fellow traveler should. In point of fact, as I was to find out later, that Institute helped uncover the capitalist roots to communism, with the excellent research by the likes of Antony Sutton exposing the role of nominally capitalist bankers in bankrolling not only Lenin but Hitler, in an agenda for world takeover, as confirmed in the heavy-duty tome ‘Tragedy and Hope’ by Professor Carroll Quigley; who was to turn out to be a major, and publicly acknowleged, influence in the life and thinking of one of his students at Georgetown University, one William J. Clinton.11b But all in good time...

11b During his inaugural address to Congress, in fact. You can’t get much more publicly acknowledged than that. Including, obviously, to the Powers that Be, as a signal, of his understanding of, and loyalty to, The Cause. Their Cause, that is.
A word of caution. I encourage you to not think of stringing these people up when the truth outs. Remember that they are playing roles. Just like you. Let them have their say. And then - no. To say: We have much to learn from each other. Have all been part of the drama. And have even played various parts, over the centuries. The life you deplore may end up having been - and being - your own.



12 I have since read more in the matter. And it appears that ‘the matter’ isn’t just about the form of teaching reading, ie, the difference between phonics and the ‘whole-word’, ‘look-say’ methods. That can be some of it. But people are not paying enough attention to another factor, that has crept into the picture from the ‘50s. That is the effect of vaccines on a growing child’s brain.
This medical technique hasn‘t been studied as sufficiently as it should have, for long-term potential outcomes. It is an incredibly invasive procedure, with the intentional inducing of ‘inflammation’ at the heart of it , which can also include the brain itself.
Suffer, the Little Children, indeed.
I’ll have more to say on this subject. And it won’t be nice, for some. But the chips willl need to fall where they may.
The whole picture includes as well the side effects of fluoridation, and of pesticides. But the common denominator is the same: the role of corporations, and their pure allegiance to ‘the bottom line’, in the conditions of life in our time. The good, of that. And the bad.
The extremely bad.
In many ways.
Grrrr....



13 Whoever he was, really.
Quite a theme, in our history...with its layers upon layers. And wheels within wheels...
(‘Look out, Zeke! Here comes another one!’...)