The Countdown II- The Middle Years

My Life And Times
II - The Middle Years


Coming up to the end of a year of living frugally in The Big Apple, I got a letter in the mail one day, that opened with: “Greetings”. I was being informed by my local - that is to say, back in southern California (or to say, more accurately, to us inhabitants thereof, Southern California) - draft board that I was now ‘eligible’ for the draft (Gee, thanks; but if it’s all the same to you...). In those days, through and for some time after the ‘end of hostilities’ in Korea (there never was, nor has there ever been, an official declaration of peace after that war; apparently as part of the fig leaf it was dressed up in, as never having been a ‘real’ war, only a ‘police action’. Grownups at their phony business again. Holden Caulfied would have commented on it, had it occurred during his watch), the U.S. had in place a policy of ‘national service’, whereby every able-bodied male adult, not enrolled in school or responsible for a family (or presumably able to pull strings; like during the U.S.’s Civil War, where conscripts could buy themselves out of the pool of pending blood), was required to do two years of service. I say ‘asked’; there were options. He could either accept the invitation, and go into the Army for two years (or volunteer, for his choice of service branch), or apply for ‘conscientious objector’ status, which, it turned out - as I read on in the letter (‘tell me more’) - allowed for further options. As a CO, the able-bodied adult male could, for the similar period of time, either (a) go to prison; (b) serve stateside in a hospital or similar capacity, like a nursing home; or (c) go into the Army as a non-combatant, in the medical corps.

Interesting.

How did I feel about all this sort of thing, I asked myself.

By then, I had spent some months of over ten-hour days in the New York Public Library - walking in between the two guarding lions (at least I think the point of the lions was/is as guards, as in guarding Knowledge, or Wisdom, or both. Enter here all ye who dare) sometime in the mornings and walking back out at 10pm closing time at night - and, when my money ran out, and I had to get a job, it was nearly every evening.1 I read everything I could get my hands on in that library that had anything at all to do with my search for Truth; which search began to branch out from its roots just in religions and spiritual philosophies - like reincarnation, and Theosophy (Madame Blavatsky and her mind-blowing concepts. How do people dream up - or into - these things? Seriously?), and Krishnamurti (“Truth is a pathless land”: Fair enough; but you have to - I had to - start somewhere), and Gurdjieff/Ouspensky, and Wiliam James’s ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, and Edgar ‘The Sleeping Prophet’ Cayce, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a no-nonsense critique of my nominal, base religion (‘No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith’ by Fawn Brodie) - into the likes of UFOs, and the origins of civilization on this planet; and in that latter context, the great gods of the Sumerians. (And why did their deities always have a star depicted over their images imprinted on their cuneiform tablets? - the books of their era. This is pre-Sitchin era, I’m talking about, will clarify here. That exposure comes later on in this story. At this time, when I saw those depictions in a dusty book in the library, and wondered about them, I was totally on my own, with no compass to guide me through, let alone out of the maze I had gotten myself caught up in. Asking myself sometimes, What the hell was I doing here?!)2

Here I was, reading and thinking about all these big cosmic thoughts - root races and precessional Great Rounds and what not - and all of a sudden I was faced with a rather practical, mundane, everyday matter and decision, like going off to war or not. (Well; military service. The Korean War - excuse me; ‘Police Action’ - had concluded, tenuously, in 1953. This was now - quick. Got it? Oh, and also the period of Dr. Tom Dooley, whose first book about his admirable experiences in Vetnam, ‘Deliver Us From Evil’, had just been published, that reminds me.)

My conclusion, by then: I could support the concept of self-defence, and a nation’s right to defend itself and its allies, until we as a race progressed enough to get into each other’s shoes and realize that we were all One; just momentarily experencing the illusion of individuality and separation for a purpose, that seemed to involve our progress on our soul’s evolutionary journey. But I wasn’t about to fire a gun at anybody. That would be to buy into the illusion, play the immature game. And so I decided to go into the Army, but as a CO; for now, until I could help bring about the kind of world that I wanted to live in. Could be comfortable with. At One with.

It reminded me of the time back at university, taking ROTC - Reserve Officer Training Corps; which we were all advised to do - when the class, of a sunny, soporific afternoon, was about machine guns. Air-cooled, 1500 mm, water-tight, rapid-fire, leather-lined stock housing, machine guns; all kinds of machine guns.

I woke up.

Machine guns??

I couldn’t take it in.

No. I refused to take it in.

I remember walking back to my dormitory room, with my head beginning to split, and locking the door, and drawing the curtains, and putting on some Wagner - anything Wagnerian, to pour into my being - and lying down on my bed, and covering my eyes, and being soothed by the music. Before I did something terrible. Like - scream. Or worse.

I hadn’t even gone to war, and I was already having PTSD.3

***

In the event, ‘they’ accepted my rationale. As I recall, I wrote in my application for CO status, based on my studies to that point, something like:

‘The Christ last made manifest on Earth through the disciple Jesus of Nazareth. The element of progression over the earlier teachings, such as those of Buddha, was the active doctrine of Love.

‘Feeling this, I cannot in good conscience carry a weapon. But as part of my national service, I will accept going into the military, to serve as a non-combatant in the medical corps.’

I gave as a reference the name of the former Dean Of Men during my years at Stanford, who had some idea of what I was going through at that time. He must have supported my application; for which I am grateful. As I am grateful that my home country allowed such individual considerations to its citizenry.

I could have been born into a more martial environment, and era; and presume I would have suffered terribly for it. But then, the Plan of reincarnation would appear to allow for a variety of life experiences, as we take various roles, to learn lessons from it all. So I may well have had my share of all that sort of thing, too.

I hope I acquitted myself well.

And don’t ever have to go through the same stage again.

The same stage of unconscious role playing.

Or even just role playing itself, consciously.

I want to move on.

But first things first.4

***

So in I went. Serving two years in Korea.5 First in the Medics (a medical battalion, with features of a health clinic, including minor surgery), and then talking my way into Special Services, as a writer of and helping to produce Soldier Shows, for the entertainment of the service personnel, both of our Division - the 7th Infantry, ‘Bayonet’ Division, stationed some miles north of Seoul - and then as touring shows, both around Korea and over to Japan; and while they were out and about, I administrated and hosted within our Division the appearances of stateside troupes, doing their bit for the morale of the troops. I had, in short, an easy tour of duty.6

And then back to civilian life, and a commitment - still very much alive; and in fact even more so, for having been so close to a war machine, and not liking what I felt - to try to help create the kind of world that I wanted to live in.

That I would be able to live in.


End Part Two




Footnotes

1 My father, who had died while I was at college, had left me some money in his will, available when I turned twenty-one, ‘for my education’. Fortunately he didn’t specify it to be for my ‘formal’ education. I could feel comfortable in how I was spending his $100 a week, for ten weeks.
It covered my bare necessities, living in a cheap hotel a couple of blocks west off of Times Square (Hell’s Kitchen, I found out later, the area was known as; from reading such books then as ‘A Stone for Danny Fisher’, by Harold Robbins. Still a great read, I would imagine, even for the jaded modern generation, who have seen, and done, it all), and eating hot dogs from a corner stand there (the chain name started with an ‘N’; long-time Big Apple denizens will know whereof I speak. Nesbit’s, or something like that. Nathan’s, I think was that cheap eating establishment’s name, was just around the corner, on seedy West 42nd Street itself (my haunt for the year; mostly in cheap movie houses). Scrawnier hot dogs there; but hey, when down and out in Manhattan...);1a and occasionally, just bread, that I kept on my window sill; which was plenty refrigerated that winter, let me tell you. (This is the winter of ‘55-’56, recall. Please keep up. I won’t be able to go over this material again.)

1a This was a branch, I think, of the Original Nathan’s, of Coney Island; an amusement park way out past the Last Exit to Brooklyn. Rode out there on the rickety subway once, that winter, just to see what ‘Coney Island’ - an icon of life in America at the time - was like, in comparison to The Pike of my growing-up days, on the other coast of the continent. It wasn’t much; but then, this was winter. I think all that was open was a hot dog stand. Not sure if it was The Original or not.
And speaking of ‘original’: I may have lost a few readers along the way, with my style, of hanging thoughts on other thoughts before returning to base camp. I tried to learn to write differently, over the years, to make it easier on the reader. But I’ve found that this is me; my authentic voice, as it were. I have taken solace in the development this last generation (whoops - Freudian slip there. Make that this current generation) of the internet, where links are embedded all the time in the main ‘blog’, and so the modern reader is used to this style. I hope. In any event: this is the way I do it. If you’ve gotten this far (well; of course), (a) congratulations, and (b) thanks for humoring me.
A man before my time...
Anyway: glad my natural style (of thinking itself, really) has come into its own. Who-Ra.
(Couldn’t resist it. A portend of something to come. First one to spot it gets a ride on the roller coaster at Coney Island. Oh. It may have been torn down by now. Too late. Or maybe not. There’s always a chance to volunteer at another island - Long Island - and get a ride into the past. Name of Montauk. The line forms - hello?...)



2 When it all got too much, and I needed some grounding, I would, usually, either (a) go down to the entranceway to the 42nd Street subway, where, tucked away behind some daytime shops, there was an alcove of some time-killing and coin-eating devices: an instant photo booth, a table game of hockey, some other amusement-park object d’arts against the back wall - and a jukebox. But not just any old jukebox. It was totally stocked with operatic selections. What a magnificent find, and treat. Three plays for twenty-five cents, I think it was. Priceless. Che gelida manina...
or (b) walk all the way down to the Battery Park, at the south end of Manhattan, and catch the Staten Island ferry; over and immediately back. I think it was twenty-five cents, too. For a fresh spray in your face, standing at the bow...
Who says we need things?

P.S. Another pastime - America’s favorite (using American spelling here for the occasion) - not engaged in very much because of the cost: I picked my days to go up to Yankee Stadium for home games for the Yankees. I can say I have had the great privilege in my life of seeing in action in person both Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle. (I think Ted got 1 for 4 that day - they would have put on the Ted Williams shift to the right, having the shortstop over on that side - and Mickey batted lefthanded.) Great stuff. I even had me some Crackerjacks. Not sure about the peanuts. Don’t think I did, that. Would surely have had a (product placement), though.2a
Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter. Met him briefly in my home town of Long Beach as a kid, when I was in the main City Park for some reason or other, and there were some men there for a fly-fishing contest - one of his other champion hobbies - and someone told me, “That’s Ted Williams”. Standing right next to me. What do you do? Burble out something stupid? “Ted Williams. .406 in ‘41. Wow. Would you sign my - “ what. The back of my hand? Which I wouldn’t wash for a week?? All I could do was look up at him, and smile.
And he knew.
What a man. What a man’s man.
Reminds me of the comment, recorded in the pages of the Reader’s Digest - about ‘Life in These United States’ - of a little kid who came into the Men’s of a movie theater for a leak, and stood shocked at the sight of Gary Cooper, ahead of him at the urinals. When the kid took his turn, he looked up at the man next to him - who passed on this bit of Americana to the RD readers - and smiled, beaming, and said: “Right on top of his.”
Ted Williams. You made being an American - and a young boy - a proud thing. Well done.

2a I’m going to risk something here; just speaking of peanuts, and before that, of Montauk on Long Island. The latter gets into the subject of time travel; and - he has decided, in part because of the reference - I’m going to risk ‘traveling’ forward in time here to ‘play’ a little with the subject of peanuts, in relation to one of my pet interests in life. In for a penny...
...in life, which, according to such investigators as Michael Talbot, physicist David Bohm, and Stanford (‘Go Indians!’) neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, is a projection, and not just any old projection, but a ‘whole in every part’ hologram. (See Lynne McTaggart’s ’The Field’ for a good explication of all this. Published in 2001, you can access it directly.) So, as a ‘projection’, it’s not fixed; it’s virtual. And I’m virtually ready now to take you on a little journey, into the future, pulling together and conjoining an interference pattern - a prefiguration, as it were - between it and the subject of the eating of peanuts. Are you ready. Ready or not...
The subject is, in general, vaccines, and the various ramifications thereof. The specific one in this point in time is that of their causation of allergies and outright anaphylaxis, including death. Come with me as the young man at Yankee Stadium in the summer of 1956 is about to eat a peanut (either directly or in his Crackerjacks), and
W-H-O-O-O-S-H
here we are at a computer on 26 July 2008 as he types an email to one Joelle Buck of the Food Standards Agency in the UK; thusly:

“Dear Ms Buck,

“I got your name & email address from the Food Standards Agency website, under Allergy and Food Intolerance Research. I write in regards to an article in The (Glasgow) Herald on 21 July (inst.) in their Wellbeing section under the title: ‘Are nuts good for you?’ wherein it is queried if nuts or nut products can raise the risk of a child developing asthma or other allergies, either during pregnancy or through breastfeeding. Under a section of the article titled ‘So what does the government say now?’ it says: ‘The Food Standards Agency says it is: “carrying out a thorough review of all the research that has been done on this subject and will use this to decide whether our advice needs to be updated”.’ I wish to draw your attention to some research on this matter, to help in your updating of information to the public (and to the medical profession, for that matter).
“It is contained in a letter from one Rita Hoffman, of Anaphylaxis Action in Ontario, Canada to the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. dated November 6, 2001. In this detailed letter (with numerous journal references) there is a section titled ‘Can Vaccines Cause Food Allergies?’ which I would like to quote from:
“’Journal of the American Medical Association 2001 Apr 4;285(13):1746-8 “Detection of peanut allergens in breast milk of lactating women” states, ‘Most individuals who react to peanuts do so on their first known exposure’...and concluded ‘Peanut protein is secreted into breast milk of lactating women following maternal dietary ingestion. Exposure to peanut protein during breastfeeding is a route of occult exposure that may result in sensitization of at-risk infants.’ PMID 112277829
“’Women have been ingesting protein while breasfeeding for decades. What has changed in the last 15 years to cause infants to develop life-threatening allergies to this legume? One change has been the vaccination schedule.
“’The International Archives of Allergy Immunol 1999 July; 119(3):205-11 “Pertussis adjuvant prolongs intestinal hypersensitivity” concludes: ‘Our findings indicate nanogram quantities of PT (pertussis toxin), when administered with a food protein, result in long-term sensitization to the antigen, and altered intestinal neuroimmune function. These data suggest that exposure to bacterial pathogens may prolong the normally transient immune responsiveness to inert food antigens.’ PMID 10436392
“’Does this study explain why babies and toddlers react on their first exposure to the peanuts or other antigens? The babies may have been sensitized by the vaccines to the proteins through breast milk or formula ingested at the time of vaccination. This would also explain why children are anaphylactic to a variety of proteins, such as different tree nuts, peanuts, egg, legumes, milk, seeds, etc., depending on what proteins the mother ate at the time of vaccination.’
“The letter goes on, looking at many factors regarding the relationship of the sensitization of vaccines (and their adjuvants) to proteins ingested at the same time as breastfeeding takes place, OR at proteins with similar molecular weights to those ingested, resulting in the infant’s body ‘thinking that food eaten at the same time as the vaccine is an invader worthy of a greatly enhanced antibody response’. This is an important area of research that I wish strongly to recommend that your ‘thorough review of all the research that has been done on this subject’ will include.
“This letter incidentally is carried on:
“http://vaccinationnews.com/dailynews/March2002/Anaphylaxis&Vaccines.htm
“and a more detailed (and extensively footnoted) follow-on article by Ms Hoffman titled ‘Anaphylactic children - canaries in the public health mine shaft?’ is carried on:
“http://www.whale.to/vaccines/hoffman.html
“Her website incidentally is: vran.org, and her email address is:
“pancakehill@sympatico.ca
“At the very least, breastfeeding mothers should be made aware of and warned about the possibility of proteins ingested at the time of their infant’s vaccinations being mis-recognised by the infant’s immature/developing immune system as ‘foreign’, and thus subject to allergic attack - especially in children with a tendency toward allergy.
“I hope you will follow up on this information of great importance to this subject. It is, in short, not the protein itself that is the problem. It is the sensitization involved.
“Yours sincerely,” (etc.)
My reply? Email of 29 July 2008:
“Dear Mr Stanfield
“Thank you for your email of 26 July, to Joelle Buck concerning research information about food intolerance from nuts and nut products. We are grateful to you for drawing this to our attention.
“Yours sincerely,
“Linda Whyberd
“Food Allergy Branch
“Labelling, Standards and Allergy Division
“Food Standards Agency”
Any indication of subsequent action? Perhaps. There was an article in The Herald last year (2009) indicating that some researcher is experimenting with giving peanut-allergy children minute doses of the offending protein, to try to wean their immune systems off reacting to it. So: Deal with anything but the cause.
There’s more. Ms Hoffman had gone on in her letter to the IOM of the NAS in the US, after referring to a “sudden surge in highly allergic children entering school systems across the province” catching the educators there (in Canada; same can be said of the States) off guard:
“Why the ‘surge’ in anaphylactic children entering school a decade ago? [Ie, ab. 1990] These children were among the first to receive an additional vaccination, Hib meningitis. Is it possible that the Pertussis and Hib vaccine, both shown below to cause allergic responses, are creating a hypersensitive immune system in some children? Has any study looked into what happens to atopy incidence and IgE levels when 5 vaccines are given concurrently in infants?”
She received no reply to her letter or queries from the ISRC, the NAS, or the IOM, although she had been afforded the “opporlunity” to submit her information for their review “of the possible association between multiple immunizations in newborns and infants and immune system dysfunction”. So they wre looking at the matter.
And, apparently, still are, for all the response there has been.
Or to the autism community in the U.S., who have drawn attention to the “huge increase” in numbers of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) starting in the same time period - ie, the increase in the vaccine schedule, from around 10 to well over 30.
And incidentally, it’s worse than Ms Hoffman realized. It has been not only a matter of such proteins being ingested at the same time as the vaccines. Those food proteins have actually been put in the vaccines themselves. Peanut oil, eg, has been used as an adjuvant; a substance to make the immune system respond ‘better’ to the vaccine, and its ingredients.
So the body’s immune system has just been doing what it is supposed to do.
And all the allergies and asthma and anaphylaxis going on? And autoimmune disorders, like arthritis/arthralgia and type 1 diabetes and lupus and ALS and MS? And adverse neurological outcomes, like ADD & ADHD & dyslexia & dyspraxia & 'PDD-NOS' including ASD, and convulsions/seizures, and...??
Well; if you want scrambled eggs...
and I’ll have some scrambled brains with that order.
Not.
But all of this was still in my future.
Fortunately. Or I might have done something that I would regret. Not having matured sufficienty at the time to handle such a load. And be able to accept that ‘they’ are not ‘other...out there’. But that we are all a part of the same projection, co-creating the same reality.
And so any man’s death - and stupidity - diminishes me as well. Since I am involved in mankind. And have to take on the responsibility, too, for all that ‘we’ get up to.
But sometimes...as Jackie Gleason, in The Honeymooners skit, was wont to say: Pow. Right on the kisser.
(And if you don't know whereof I speak in that reference, you missed The Golden Age of TV Comedy. Sorry about that. Can't help you there. Now if you want to try your chances with the boys down at Montauk...
....not to be confused with the tables down at Mory's...
...or the boys down at Skull and Bones...
...well; maybe some of the same gang, there, in that reference...)



3 That was the end of my career as an ROTC candidate. I got some advice from somebody or other, about whether I actually HAD to take it, and the answer was no; so I stopped going to the classes. I applied at the same time to drop it officially, but didn’t wait for them to catch up with me. I knew what the answer was, for me.
In the event -some weeks later - ‘they’ turned down my request. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle, until they - reluctantly - accepted my excuse, of having received some advice on the subject, and so was not simply being arrogant, or irresponsible. It mattered. I was worried that the ‘F’ they were going to give me for the course would put my scholarship in jeopardy. (I had to maintain a certain grade level to retain it.) Fortunately, some kind soul among ‘them’ intervened, and I was let off the hook.
In its place I had to take Phys Ed. Which was fine by me. I enjoyed sports - had been into track and basketball in high school. (All City in the latter; albeit in the “B” category, based primarily on size.) But I must confess, that fairly early on I discovered a trick that others used, for their own purposes: One could go to the gym, and change, and sign in on the roster on the wall of the basketball court, and then just waltz away back to the changing room. My purpose was at least honorable: I went back to my room to study.
I was ‘shooting’ - double meaning, there. Triple, actually - for med school. It wasn’t going to be easy; there was a lot of competition. But in the event: (a) I made it; and (b) I released it.
By then I had other fish to fry, as I have already indicated in this memoir. But first things first.



4 All I can say, if you don’t believe in reincarnation, is that, with all due respect, I think you just haven’t read enough in the subject area. It’s not, really, a matter merely of belief. It’s a matter of fact. Of facts like numerous case studies of children who have come up with information about a past life that they couldn’t possibly have read about, or overheard their parents talking about, the detail is so overwhelming, and in many cases corroborated.
My reading in the field, in that book-filled year of 1956 in New York City (Manhattan, to those in the know), included the recently-published book by Morey Bernstein titled ‘The Search for Bridey Murphy’ (which came out in a film that same year; causing not many ripples that I ever heard of). He had used hypnotic regression, which is a questionable technique, can result in coloration by unconscious information, stored from childhood. So: No smoking gun there. But the best evidence comes from the mouths of babes. Shortly after my research beginnings, Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist out of the University of Virginia, published a paper entitled ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation’, an exhaustive account of the phenomenon by a true seeker, who traveled the world seeking out case studies, many of them children reporting strange ‘facts’ to their parents. He found them, and reported with scientific acumen on them. And there is more. But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. And realize, that your life may never be the same afterwards. After thinking about it; and considering the ramifications.
For if there is a Plan....



5 After catching both kinds of measles at boot camp. I may have had vaccinations for them in my childhood, but they rather obviously had not conferred lifelong immunity.
This was well before the MMR shot, and that kerfuffle; which also figures into my story, too. But more on that, anon, in its time and place, of this memoir of my time and place.

And speaking of boot camp, and time and place: I think it only fair, to be totally truthful about this account of my life line, that I admit that I began having reservations about my claimed CO status. My ‘basic eight’ (weeks, of basic training) passed with me clearly in that category - at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, a medical training base, and home base for COs like me, taking classes in medic training rather than engaging in combat training. But during my Christmas break before my second eight (the break spent back home; after a straight-through drive back to southern California in a carful of my new buddies; who were mostly Seventh-Day Adventists, with only one or two oddballs like me in the mix), I found myself questioning the legitimacy of my position. Could I really support being a pacifist? Was I being silly, to think that it made any real sense?? What would I do, if someone was threatening to kill me and my (non-existent at the time, but potential) family??? Etc etc. The gist of my second thinking on the matter resulted in my applying, upon my return to Sam Houston, to release my CO status and join the 82nd Airborne, as a medic. In for a penny...
My gesture, towards being thrown in the deep end, came to nought when I failed the physical. (My eyes. All those books...) And nobody got back to me about my request - offer? - to drop the CO thing. It seemed to be simply being accepted that I would be a medic; and, even though - especially as? - not all medics were COs (that was what the ‘second eight’ weeks of medic training consisted of in part: to blend the two streams), the PTB seemed happy enough to let me continue on my not-so-merry way.
How did I feel about that? After having made the decision to release my CO position, it didn’t seem to be landing with The System; should I just let it go at that??
Perhaps a bit foolhardily (lookiing a certain horse in the mouth comes to mind), I didn’t, and when arriving at my duty station in Korea - the Medical Battalion of the 7th Infantry Division - I told them of my intention. I guess I presented them with a problem they didn’t want to make much about: a sergeant in the battalion, who was a Seventh-Day Adventist, but straddled both worlds, somewhat like me (carried a weapon, but Never On Saturday. What a hard time he must have had, trying to reconcile both his sides), came by fairly early on in my time there and talked with me about my submission; but nothing ever came of it. And I, simply, let it go.
So my matriculation into a weapon-bearing soldier of misfortune never happened (for whatever ultimate reason). And I’m glad that it didn’t. If our reach has so far exceeded our grasp, at least it has been worth reaching for a better world, than the one as depicted, say, on ancient Assyrian reliefs, brought up to date - differing only in degree - by the modern-day obscenity of the likes of chemical and biological, let alone nuclear, warfare. And actually, contrary to a fair amount of evidence, I feel that we are getting there; with the admirable likes of Gandhi, lighting our way to a better outcome than the same old, same old - than that depicted in the book and film of the Planet of the Apes (to come out in a decade as a grim, and creative, reminder of our potential). And the same with On the Beach (even sooner on our mutual timeline, that one, at the 1959 mark). And. And...whatever I might be able to come up with, as my way of making a difference, I was already thinking of, back then, in both my personal timeline and the world’s.
How to make a difference. Ah, that is the question, haunting many of us.
And because of the question, an answer will arrive. Due to the very posing of the question.
So, yes. Each of us, in our individual aspirations, does make a difference.
Advice? Stay with your intentions. Even if doubts come into play. If it’s for the highest, and best: go for it. Even an individual failure has energized an ultimate win. Because of the try. Without which, there is a vacuum; just waiting - by its nature - to be filled. Life being a seamless Whole.
And a bitch, sometimes. But it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
You know. That sort of hokey thing.
Cliches. They’ll be the death - and life - of us yet.
Like: helping to bring about ‘a better world’.
Coming up.



6 Which also included traveling down to Seoul once a month for a long weekend to be part of the judging team rating Korean floor shows, which also toured our units. Some of them were very good, some not so; but it was all a part of the post-war scene. Including some fraternizing. Including moi.
I was invited by one of the floor show producers - who ran a stable of them - for ‘a night out’ one of those weekends. I was a little leery about the matter - conflicts of interest, and all that - but a sergeant on the judging team encouraged me to join him in the invite, saying we could alwlays take up the offers of other producers another time, if I was worried about what it might look like. I was, indeed; but what the hell. When in Rome.
We went to a night club, with some ‘invited ladies’ at our table. Oh-oh, I wondered. What’s going on here. What’s expected of me. What am I getting myself into. This was all new to me. I was still wet behind the ears. Was I about to enter the world of the adults?...
I somehow got paired off with one of ‘the ladies’, but another one further down the table caught my eye. Though I’m not sure, really, who caught whose, first . All I know is, someone else at the table - our host? - must have noticed the subtle transaction, because suddenly I was being invited to dance with the eyecatcher.
We did. And it was like - a perfect fit.
We danced with our partners in those days. Much more enjoyable than just doing your own thing.
What’s the song? ‘She moves...’
She moved well. We, moved well.
I could have danced all night, with her.
The music - the moment - ended. We went back to the table. The evening broke up shortly after. People started disappearing. The sergeant disappeared. I...asked to be taken back to the base.
What else was I going to do.
I’m not sure if it was the next month, precisely; in any event, soonish after, back down to Seoul for the ratings, I was asked by another of the producers to join them for a night out. Oh-oh, I thought. The word is out. I can be bought. I declined. Instead, I would go to the NCO Club on the base, for dinner, and a drink, and to watch the entertainment. (Sometimes it was one of our groups; a C&W group calling themselves ‘The Far East Jamboree’. They were good, and well received by the troops, and in Korean clubs as well. The Special Services officer in charge in our Division, a major, once asked me why so many troops turned out for their gigs, and not so many for the jazz band that we - I - also ran. “Because there are more hillbillys in the Army than there are jazz buffs,” I replied, reasonably enough, I thought...I earned their undying gratitude for organizing a tour of Japan for them. I’m not sure why that was so important to them. Prestige, possibly. A change of females, more probably.) On one of those nights, as I was leaving, early, a non-com called to me and asked me to escort a Korean gal, who had been at the bar, out to the gate. The base - smack in the middle of the city - was rather fluid (just as the NCO Club was for more than just NCOs), but they did have some regulations, and one was that females had to be escorted on and off the premises. Somewhat lost in my thoughts - I think at that point I was wondering, for whatever reason that escapes me now, into the wording ‘lapis lazuli’. I thought it meant a form of blue, but it may also have meant some sort of precious stone (later I was to find that it has a special meaning to the pharaohnic dynasties of Egypt) - I said sure, and let the gal tag along with me as I made my way to the gate, on my way to the Temporary barracks a short walk away, where I stayed when down on those ‘duty’ weekends. Out on the street, I turned to the gal to say, politely, goodnight.
And saw that it was her.
There’s a novel in here, or at least a novella. The theme - or at least a similar theme - was somewhat touched on in a production of ‘Playhouse 90’ that I saw a couple of years later, I think it was; in my Hollywood Period, when one of the main TV stations was experimenting with live drama, for 90 minutes. (That was interesting, to sit there scribbling away, to analyze the scene changes later, and the pacing in the acts, etc., and almost lose the story in the process. One can get too close up to things, in life.) The story was about a young, newly-fledged American soldier, from an upper-class family, who tells his fiancee that he will meet her under ‘The Clock’ (a major meeting point in Philadelphia or somewhere upmarket like that) at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a date, when he gets back from his tour of duty in Japan, I think it was. Boy meets girl in far-away country; from a different social class; and, torn, opts for the good life. So-called. Because - who knows.
All I know is that a lot of thoughts and feelings flashed through me at that point.
She just stood there, waiting (for me to make up my mind, I presume).
I tried to ask her if she wanted me to call her a taxi.
She just stood there, waiting.
And then I gave a little bow, and turned, and walked away.
And I think, yes, lapis lazuli must also mean a precious stone.

It took me nearly twenty-five years later, while living in a spiritual community, to come close to those sorts of feelings again.
But that’s another story.