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!’...)