Mystic by Default
CHAPTER 1
THE DISEASE OF IGNORANCE
I was working
late, doctoring the books, when the phone rang.
“How much?” I shouted.
I could not believe she was still holding out.
”Look Charlie,” I said sucking in my rage like
a fat man his gut in the presence of a babe.
“This won’t do. That...” I was about to say ‘bitch’ proceeded by a
string of unflattering adjectives but thought better of it for fear of
offending him. Everything was going
wrong and I needed more trouble like
On the other
hand, since I had no friends who would listen to me whine I did not want to
miss the opportunity, so I let my wrath escape in constipated little dabs.
“She’s been
jerking my chain for the last six months.
I’ve had it up to here!” I said, gesticulating wildly, my voice rising again.
“Please be
reasonable, James,” he answered.
I hated that calm lawyeresque voice. It reminded me of mother, the judge. And the shrink they sent me to when the
university gave me the boot. What was
his name? Paton, Payton, Penton,
something like that. I will never forget
him. After six months poking around in
my childhood, like a proctologist checking the prostate, constantly asking how
I felt about things...Puddy! Walt Puddy. That’s
it! What a name; we made some typically
sophomoric jokes about that one. In case
you do not know, in those days the ‘pud’ was one of a thousand names for you
know what. I am sure the language has
moved on; I have no idea what they call it now.
Anyhow, I was
tired of the long drives -
Monstrous sharky fins shooting out the back and tons of chrome. Custom colored yellow and black. I bet his wife never forgave the good doctor
those colors. What a machine! A work of art. Especially the big back seat. I would be hard pressed to remember the names
of all the eager young ladies who felt compelled to do the old in-and-out in
it. The cops never bothered it
either. They must have thought it
belonged to some rich stiff. It ruined
me for what was to come: the soulless tight-assed computer-controlled environmentally
sensitive Japanese rigs with plastic bumpers you see these days zipping all
over the highways like water spiders.
The doctor
had it special-ordered, paid ten grand dad said, a
bundle in those days, and then went off and died. It had power seats, power steering, power antenna, power radio dialing, power everything. I could make it from
Actually the
bi-weekly visits to the shrink actually were not so bad. After my fifty minutes I would saunter down
to skid row, quaff a few brews, play pool and rub elbows with some pretty seedy
characters.
Anyhow, I was
getting fed up with the endless chit-chat.
I felt one of my impulses coming on.
The impulses landed me on that silly couch in the first place. The present one was about to get me off.
I was trying
to be on my best behavior at least until they shipped me off to the next Waspy
institution. I was in disgrace, getting
kicked out of a very prestigious school for reasons we will not mention.
“You have all the gifts, James,”
mom who had character and ambition used to say, making me guilty as hell, “with
the right opportunities you’ll be somebody.
And we’re here to see you have the opportunities.”
I asked him
point blank what was wrong with me.
He did a
double take, regained his composure, packed in a nice tidy little pinch of
sweet tobacco, fired up his beloved Meerschaum, which he fondled obscenely when
he was not smoking, and swiveled the armchair around to gaze profoundly out the
window at Spokane’s skyline which was dominated by the Ridpath Hotel, a
Thirties fantasy of Moorish opulence. I
thought he was just being dramatic, carrying his donnish avuncular Ivy League
persona to the max, but I was wrong; he was actually getting ready to be real
after all those months. He sat lost in
thought for eternal minutes, swiveled back, took a tasty little drag, looked me
right in the eye and in a brand new voice, one which I have since come to
recognize as truth, said, “Well, James, at worst you are slightly
maladjusted.” Another
long pause. Then, “But,
considering the times, I would say it is a good sign.”
That blew me
away.
All along I
was thinking that maybe everybody, Mom and the attenuated cue of officialdom that
seemed to have been sent to earth primarily to torment me since day one were
right; maybe there was something seriously wrong with me. But the good doctor did not seem to think so. I heartily concurred. He probably did not realize it, but he had just
given me license to continue my long slide into the pit.
Seriously
though, something was wrong; he just did not know what it was. Or if he knew he could not say. He was a well-meaning liberal intellectual
like mom who thought the world of Dr. Spock and could not very well say I was a
nasty little devil and lay on a few well-deserved whacks; it would not have
been scientific and may have permanently damaged my tender psyche. You would
think a guy getting fifty bucks an hour, a lot of money in those days, would
have been able to figure out that my morals were shot because I did not know
who I was. But even if he had, how would
he have gone about clueing me in?
I had to keep
falling.
Sorry, I am
getting off track, wandering around in antiquity. It is like that when you look back; the
thoughts branch uncontrollably as the mind hunts the kernel, the event meant to
burst radiantly out the gloom of the past and illumine the present.
Where was
I? Oh yes, grousing about the way
so-called professionals speak. I did not
need a lawyer because I was in hot water, at least not yet, but because I could
not talk to
Anyway, I
stuffed my anger because I needed him and because he was not a bad guy. He took his bi-weekly trouncing on the courts
like a champ and I often thought that if I was not who I was, maybe in a more
perfect world we might even be buddies, slop some suds, chase a little tail,
something like that. Not that I am into
that sort of stuff these days.
I apologized
and took my side of the conversation to the level of a righteous whine, “But
Christ Charlie! It’s worth twice
that. I busted ass to build it up to
this level.”
“That may be
true, but it’s only worth what she’s willing to pay. She’s got you by the short hairs. We’ve been through this before. She controls the Board. This is as good as you’re going to get.”
That pissed
me off and I decided to play my ace.
“Wrong, Charlie. The price is two hundred
fifty thou.”
“Christ,
James, are you nuts?
Here’s a solid offer. She thinks
she’s being taken to the cleaners as it is and you want another fifty
grand. You should take it. You know how long it would take me to get
together that kind of money?”
“You’re a lawyer, I own forty nine percent of a successful
corporation. But that’s another
issue. She’ll go for it.”
“You sound
pretty cocky, James. Is there something
I don’t know?”
“That’s
right, Charlie. Tell her this isn’t
going to court.”
We’ve been
through that too. If you don’t go for
this offer it will end up in court. What
you got?”
“I haven’t
been completely straight with you, Charlie.”
“Wait a
minute, James. Think twice about
this. If it’s seriously illegal you’re
putting me in a bind. I can’t represent
you if you’re into something heavy.”
“How’d you
like an expenses paid two week vacation for you and Pam in, say,
“Is this a
bribe, James?”
“Let’s say
you’re a stand-up guy, a great lawyer, and a buddy. I’d just like to show my appreciation.”
“This must be
bad. I’m not sure I want to hear it,” he
replied without conviction.
“You want to
hear it, Charlie. If you don’t like it,
tell me to take a hike. I’ll dig up
someone else.”
“Jesus,
James, take it easy. OK, why will she go
for a quarter of a million when she’s screaming bloody murder about two hundred thou?”
“Because I’ve got the second set of books.”
“You mean...”
“That’s
right. After you guys get through with
us and the IRS shows up and I have a word with a few key people there won’t be
much of a corporation to run. The books
are worth an extra fifty grand. That’s
the deal.”
“God, James,
not only are you bribing me, you’re blackmailing her, not to mention cheating
the government. I don’t like it. It’s wrong.”
But I could tell
by his tone that he was intrigued, which confirmed my hypothesis that most
people are bored to death and are constantly hoping for a titillating off-color
little something to come along and brighten up their shallow virtuous lives.
“Wrong or
not, it’s what’s happening. She broke
her promise and this the only way to fix it.”
“We’ve got a
fighting chance of getting the court to see it our way. I told you that.”
“A fighting chance with five years of my life! That’s not good enough. I’ve got insurance and it’s time to file the
claim.”
I could sense him getting upset so I tried to appeal
to his higher side.
“Don’t think I wouldn’t like to handle it honorably,
Charlie, sit down on the patio and discuss it politely over tea. I come from a good family. I’m no crook.
But this is the only way. I don’t
have it in writing and there’s just too much water under the bridge.”
“In fact
blackmail is eminently reasonable,” I thought to myself. “I should just push her off a
That would have been a
‘civilized,’ as mom used to say, response to her perfidy.
“She’ll go
for it,” I continued. Face is important
to Asians. We’ve a great reputation and
if the word gets out we’re scamming Uncle Sam a lot of those big accounts would
head south. Plus the business is on
fire. You’ve seen the figures. She’ll have it all back in no time.”
“You’ve sure
got chutzpah,” he said.
“I didn’t get
where I am being faint of heart, but if it makes you feel better I don’t enjoy
this any more than you.”
I think that
did it. I meant it. I was sick and tired of the whole mess. It was eating up every minute of my time and
I was not sleeping well. My gut was
hanging over my belt; I was smoking a couple packs of non-filter Camels a day
and socking away a lot of booze. Success
was not working.
“OK, James, I’ll tell her,” he
said,
I felt like kissing him.
Remember, first
class. You coming to
the club Saturday? I got a new
racquet. I’ll cream you.”
“I don’t know,” Charlie.
“Depends on how I feel then. I
don’t feel like socializing that much.
We’re down to the short strokes on this one and I’m almost out of a
job.”
I sounded
confident but hung up wondering if I had done the right thing, involving
him. If things headed south he might
spill the beans.
Until this
point nobody knew what was going on, the corporation just one big happy
family. I wanted to tell her
myself. We were still on speaking terms,
but as I said, everything went wrong when the money issue came up in her
presence - which it did almost as frequently as my Willie.
I nearly ran down a pedestrian on the way out of the parking
garage when my mind flipped into fantasy mode and I saw her shapely nude brown
body, which I had loved to distraction for the last five years, splayed out on
the Sahara, a rough wooden stake driven violently through the heart, a small
erotic rivulet of blood tricking from the wound, gumming up the sand – an
unpleasant image, no doubt, but it did make me feel better.
Driving up the strip I felt like crying. I know, men do not cry. At least in those days they didn’t. Now, I am told, it is all the rage; shows you
are sensitive, have feelings. Women are
meant to love it. I hate self pity. But I had made a royal mess of things, and
life seemed ever-so much more important then than it does now, so I found
myself choking back a string of aching dry sobs trying to work to the surface
like rotten farts oozing through a plugged and putrefying colon. Though I tried, not thinking about her was
impossible, like the fellow who went to the guru for a secret mantra. After the instructions had been given, the
guru said, “Oh, by the way, the mantra won’t work if you think of pink elephants
before you chant.” She was stuck in my
mind and the only way to obliterate her was to get high.
I parked near
I was the problem.
I remember feeling grateful as I rolled the joint, wondering
how I had survived without it so long.
The first time flashed.
I had just come back to Manila from Zamboanga after a buying
trip, island-hopping in dilapidated DC-10's left over from the war, landing on
potholed runways so skimpy the wings narrowly missed coconut palms lining the
sides, occasionally swerving to avoid the hulking black shapes of water buffaloes
wandering lethargically across the pocked tarmac.
What a fop I was, sporting a Panama Hat, Barong Tagalog, and
silk slacks, swaggering through fetid tropical towns spreading greenbacks
around local markets like a whore the clap at a convention of traveling
salesmen, twirling an inlaid baton purchased from an antique shop in Rangoon,
probably scavenged from a British officer who made the supreme sacrifice in the
Burmese campaign. Ridiculous as I was I
do not regret one day spent sitting on those screened verandahs in the heat of
the day, drinking San Miguel and nibbling balut, hard-boiled embryonic duck
with tiny bones and fledgling feathers, making deals with Chinese traders.
I unpacked, went for a swim, and was lounging by the pool drinking
gin and tonic and reading Conrad when Emy appeared, setting the old hormones
vibrating. She was so deliciously
Filipina, a marvelous combination of compliant Malay inscrutability and Spanish
passion. She made me ache all over, but
putting the moves on her was verboten because she was the daughter of Ninoy,
our number one supplier. Sex was sex and
business was business, although I certainly had not followed that rule with
“Hi James!" she
said, enthusiastically dragging a chaise lounge across the tiles, indifferently
depositing her luscious form.
"Where you been? I haven't
seen you for a couple of weeks."
“Buying trip.
"Of course I keep track.
Dad talks about you all the time.
He thinks you're great."
I was too vain not to be flattered. And I was not sure how much of my bullshit
Ninoy had swallowed.
"What about you?
What do you think?"
"Oh, you're OK.
You think you're pretty hot, but you're not a bad guy. You must be smart to have so much money at
twenty five."
In spite of her statement I got the impression she did not
think much of money. Still, I liked her
sassy style, her command of English.
"Just luck," I said. "What's in the bag?"
She leaned over and reached for a large raffia bag, decorated
with straw flowers, her generous breasts nearly falling from a rumpled
partially unbuttoned blouse. She had the
right stuff but her hair was a mess and her bikini mismatched, which takes some
doing. What did she have against bras
and tight skirts, lipstick, perfume and parloured hair?
Emy made me feel like a veritable dinosaur at
twenty-six. I was imprisoned in the
Fifties and here it was sixty-seven. How
much like dad I had become, hopelessly straight and out of it.
She
must have picked up her style at
Ironically,
I recall wondering if Emy believed in free love, was part of the developing
drug subculture that was giving the readers of Time such a start.
She
took a record from the bag and handed it to me.
"The who?" I said, unable to make out the weird wavy
lettering on the cover.
"Not
the Who," she said, "The Beatles, a group from
I
wondered why these popular groups took such strange names. I hated popular music. Yes, I had been a big fan when I was a
teenager growing up in
“They're
very psychedelic," Emy continued.
"Very psychedelic?
What do you mean?"
"Turned on man. Out there. You get
high and everything’s different." she replied smiling enigmatically.
Undoubtedly amused I was so out of it, she was
anticipating turning me on, wondering how it would turn out. Perhaps she was thinking I would have a
bummer and freak out, or worse, not feel a thing. I must have seemed pretty dead. On the other hand she might have been
visualizing me morphing into a wild-eyed hippie, tearing off my clothes,
streaking around the pool, fucking her silly.
“What’s
it like?” I said.
She
did not answer but got up and walked through the sliding glass door to the apartment.
"How
do you turn this on?" she called.
I
got up and went in, miffed she had presumed to enter uninvited. I was used to manners, being able to predict
what was happening.
Nonetheless,
I stuffed my feelings as usual and helped her with the stereo. The sparks flew when our bodies brushed as I
fiddled with the knobs a second before the treacly strains of Strawberry
Fields, a far cry from my beloved Mozart, suddenly oozed from the large black
speakers.
She
flopped down on the couch, one shapely leg thrown casually over the armrest,
the other on the coffee table. I could
see the peach fuzz on her inner thigh.
"You
have to be high," she said, picking up where we’d left off outside.
I
did not get it.
"Psychedelic, man!
High! When you're high you'll
know what out there is,” she replied, taking a small bottle of dark brown
liquid and a couple of strange little cigarettes from her bag.
I
did not like being put on hold and called ‘man,’ but sat down next to her
anyway. I was capable of serious
repression and mind-boggling hypocrisy when it seemed I was about to get laid.
"What's
that?"
"Codeine,"
she replied.
“And those?"
"Dope, man, marijuana, the nasty killer weed. You want to get high?" she said,
snuggling up against me.
A
wave of tingly energy swept over me, the thrill of the forbidden.
“What about
Ninoy?” I said.
“What about Ninoy?”
“If
he finds us sitting here like this it will mess up the whole business thing.”
“Sitting
here like what?”
She
must have known what I meant. There we
were lounging around on the couch half naked in the most compromising position
about to do you know what and she is pretending everything is very normal.
“Like,
well, ... I mean... like... here we are sitting around
in our swimsuits on the couch about to do something illegal. What if Ninoy came looking for you?”
“This
will be good for you. Think of it as
medicine.”
“Medicine? Are you nuts!
What’s medicine have to do with it?”
“You’re
uptight. This will cure you.”
My
desire to punch her did not seem appropriate.
There she was: totally unconcerned, sexy as hell, her pert nipples
quivering with excitement. I felt I
could act out any fantasy.
“What
do you mean, “uptight?” It was the first time I’d heard the
word.
“Worried, man. Worried. Angry. You’re like an
old man, like Ninoy. What’s to worry
about? You’ve got it made, hanging
around over here, taking it easy, making scads of money, messing around with
the local girls.”
“I’m
not messing around,” I lied. “I have a
girlfriend in
“You mean,
I
felt a strange mixture of incredulity and rage.
How did she know
“You
know,
“Of course. They’re
one of the richest families here.
Everyone knows everything: her mad brother, Manuel, Imelda the ice
queen, Juan Ponce who made all the money off the Americans. They’re famous. I even heard about your accident, sneaking
out of the hospital.”
I
felt totally embarrassed. How did anyone
know about the accident? There were so
many thoughts buzzing in my mind I did not know where to start so I decided to
concentrate on Ninoy.
“Does
Ninoy know you take that stuff?”
"You
think I'm stupid? You know how they are
here. I don't tell them anything.
“Aren’t
you worried they’ll find out?”
“What
are they going to do, put me in jail?
Come on, James, take it easy.
It’s only dope. ”
“You
must think I’m pretty screwed up.”
“Let’s
not get into it, James. What do you
say? You want to get high?"
"What's
it like?"
“That’s
not the right answer, man.”
“I
just want to know what to expect, that’s all.”
"Take
it easy,” she said, caressing my neck with her delicate fingers. It's no big deal. You want to go to the movies?"
"I
just want to know what to expect, that's all."
"You
think it's life-threatening?" she asked, a
mischievous grin appearing on her pretty face.
"It's fun. You’ll love
it. I'll be there too."
I
was about to ask where “there” was but realized I would have to take the
plunge.
“You’ll dig it, believe me. You’re ready. ”
She handed me the joint and I took a couple of deep drags. They burned hotter than my Camels.
Then the bottle of codeine.
“That’s cough syrup.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t have a cold.”
“I know you don’t have a cold, James.”
“So what’s it for?”
“It’s a narcotic, works great with the dope and cools the
throat. It’s your medicine, what the
doctor ordered. Take a big swig. It will make you better.”
“You’re having a very nice time teasing me, aren’t you. Am I really that
bad?”
“You’re fine, James. Absolutely fine. But
there’s something important you don’t know, something
you can’t buy.”
She leaned over and kissed me on the neck. I wanted to respond but the thought of
“What’s the matter, James?
Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“It’s
"Do you love
her?"
“I thought I did, but if it's love why
does it hurt so much?"
I could not believe I
said that. It just flowed out on its
own. I always made things out to be
copasetic, even when they stunk.
She snuggled closer and handed me the joint. I took a couple serious drags and handed it
back. I cannot be sure because my mind
was starting to change but think I heard her say, “It’s only love if you know
its love. I’m not looking for a
boyfriend. I just like you. Don’t worry about Ninoy. It’s OK.”
Something like that.
It seemed as if she were speaking in an underwater dream but it
did not matter because I could hear the sweetness in her voice oozing through
time and space, ringing crystal clear in my mind. It seemed terribly real, more important than
anything I had heard for a long time.
Somewhere along the line I seemed to have forgotten about love.
The thought of
We kissed, her tongue delicately, eagerly exploring my mouth
sending waves of pleasure southward, relaxing the paralysis in my lower
extremities.
“Well, what’s this?” she said, lightly
groping my crotch.
“That’s the Willie,” I replied, hungrily kissing her breasts.
“It seems pretty uptight.
Perhaps it needs to smoke some dope, drink some codeine, learn to take it easy.”
“I don’t think it’s ready.
Maybe later.
Let’s just let it be.”
From that point on I cannot remember what we said because we
were well out of the world of words. I
do recall sliding, tumbling, freefalling down a long dark comforting tunnel,
***
“So tell me about the broken leg,” said Emy, after we came down
a bit and were tired of making love.
“I
thought you’d heard it all on the grapevine.
Besides, I don’t come out looking very good.”
“I don’t care how you look.
I’m only interested in who you are.”
“Who I am? I’m me, James.”
“I know that James, but who’s that?”
“I don’t get it. It’s
me.”
“Let’s not get into it now, OK?
Tell me about the accident.”
“But what are you saying, who I really am?
“It’s not important, James.”
“But I want to know.”
“OK, James. The truth. I want to
know the truth.
“The truth?” I replied.
It seemed a novel
concept.
“How it really is with you.
How you see it.”
“See what?”
“See what happened. See
yourself. See the world, other people.”
“I don’t get it? What
are you saying?”
“Tell you what, James,” she said, kissing my neck. Let’s have another smoke and make love and
forget this conversation, the whole broken leg story. You turn me on.”
“An offer I can’t refuse,” I replied, still wondering what she
meant about who I was. So we toked up
and went at it again. And as we lay
there spooning, sweaty and exhausted, the story just spilled out.
“It was a big money day at the shops and I was feeling
fantastic. I collected the receipts
which filled a couple of shopping bags, mostly tens and twenties, and showed up
at her place about eight with a bottle of champagne and a box of
chocolates. Charles was working late as
usual and the kids were tucked in for the night. She was lounging around sexy lingerie
reading.”
“So how did you feel screwing a married woman?” Emy asked.
“How did I feel? OK, I
guess. Well, not good,
actually. I had to skulk around a
bit. But you have to see it from her
point of view. She gets the kids to
school and has the whole day off till after four. And she is not into cleaning, decorating, and
fussing with the yard. In fact, she
could use a few housekeeping lessons.
Anyway, he comes home for dinner at six and is back at the lab by seven,
To top it off she claimed he was not a qualified operator. His idea was once a week between eight and
nine on Saturday morning. At exactly
nine he’d get up, or a little before if the plumbing worked sooner, put on his
running shoes, and go out for a long jog.
That was it. No foreplay, no
afterplay, nothing but the in and out and then off to the races. The first day we met we made love nine times.
So Charles was supposed to come home about eleven,
I was really bombed.
Without thinking, I hopped on one of the kid’s bikes and pedaled madly
into the street and into the path of an oncoming car. Before I knew it I was flying through the air
upside down, watching the taillights recede into the night. Another car squealed to a stop within inches
and in a matter of minutes a crowd of neighbors gathered. Someone went off to call the ambulance. I could not see anyone’s face, must have been
shock, but I heard Charles’ voice clear as a bell above the hushed mumbling of
the onlookers.
“Serves the fucker right!”
“So you couldn’t stay any more and came over here.”
“It’s not forever. It
will all go back to normal before long.”
“How can you be sure?”
“
“You’re incredible,” she said.
“Why?”
“You didn’t learn anything out of all this.”
“What’s to learn? It was
just a bit of bad luck. Things will go
back to normal in no time.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s normal? You
think
“Sure, she’s fixing up this thing with Corazon so we can be
together.”
“God, James, you are thick.
The way for her to fix things up is to either dump you or Charles. A phony marriage is no fix. It’s just more lies. She doesn’t care about you. She cares about having her cake and eating it
too. You think you know people, but you
don’t. She’ll dump you when she’s
finished with you. ”
“No way. She needs me.”
“Needs are not love, James.
“What do you mean?”
“Needs are needs, love’s love.
If she loved you, you wouldn’t be holing up here.”
I was starting to get her drift.
I do not remember how that conversation came out. The point is that Emy introduced me to dope
and got me thinking in another direction.
When it was time to go back to our lives I made a fool of myself. I asked her to marry me.
“God, James, you’re serious, aren’t you!”
“Of course, I love you, Emy.”
“I love you too, but that doesn’t mean we have to get
married. I don’t want to get married, to
you or anyone else.”
“But Emy, we’d be great together. When you love someone it makes sense to get
married.”
“Not any more, James.
That’s the straight world.
There’s a whole new thing going on.
Love is free. You’ve been stuck in
that relationship with
And that was that.
“But I can’t,” I said.
“We don’t love each other.”
“I love you,” she said.
“How can you love me? We
don’t even know each other.”
“But you are very nice when we meet and now we are married I
love you.”
“A unique view,” I
thought.
“But I love
“
“
She looked as if her first-born had just been run over by a
truck. Someone had neglected to tell the
poor woman the whole thing was a sham. Or tell me it was not. Maybe they figured I would go for her and
that would get me out of their hair. She
figured she had just landed a young rich American.
It was pretty dicey for a few minutes. Visions of her running out into the night and
hurling herself off a cliff played.
I do not know where it came from, it certainly was not typical,
but I felt genuinely sorry for her.
After a long heart-to-heart talk I had a friend for life. I fell asleep about four and awoke an hour
later, first light streaming in, to find her snuggled close.
“James,” she whispered, make love with
me.
“But Corazon...”
“Please, James. I won’t
say a word. Let’s pretend we are really
married, just for tonight.”
The way she said it... the childlike purity in her voice... the
idea so romantic it drove me wild... I could not resist. As I lay there afterwards I remember thinking
that I loved the wrong kind of woman, that even if she did spill the beans it
would serve
I should have been overjoyed, but Emy had pricked my fantasy
love balloon and a small hole had opened in my mind through which thought after
thought drained down into a dark and vast cavern of self-loathing.
Oddly, I had the sense that I was only returning to see her
face. Since I left, almost a year
before, whenever I thought of her I would have a perfect picture of everything:
her lovely long hair, her shapely limbs, her sweet breasts. But the face was missing! No matter how hard I tried to conjure it up
I could not get a picture, not even an eye, a lip, an ear or a nose. It was
profoundly troubling.
You need the face.
I wanted her in the story as a real person but, like the
missing face, I can not remember one thing she said that would give me a hint
how she really thought or felt about things, not even enough to come up with a
decent inference. Either she was nothing
more than her lies or I was in complete denial.
So I came back stateside, a crack of self-awareness opening up
within, to witness the last gasps of the dying animal that was our love. That’s where this whole story started, wasn’t
it? I was in the Porsche fumbling
through the jockey box looking for a match to fire up a joint and get over the
rage that surfaced when Charlie informed me of her insulting offer.
I could not find one, further pissed me off, so I got out and
walked through the park to the beach, turning toward
I had not gone a hundred yards when I came across a figure
covered by a shawl sitting cross-legged beneath a tree. The small feet, which is all I could see,
made me think it was a woman, but it had to be a pretty crazy or self-confident
woman what with all the weird people, sex perverts and the like, hanging around
Waikiki.
It was a strange phenomenon, a shrouded human pyramid sitting
there still as death. I wanted to go
over, lift the shawl and have a peek, but that would have been intrusive so I
wandered up the beach into the night, trying to cap my rage and keep the
thoughts from falling into the black hole.
I
walked a little more and sat down on the cool sand, looking out into the ocean,
reassured by the rhythmic pounding of the breakers, charmed by the profound
tranquility of the night, observing the unforgiving thoughts dissolve in the
silence. A mile away, the strip, cranking
itself up for another fun-filled evening, moments
before so real and immediate, seemed far away, lost in darkness, like the
stars. And Diamond Head, which all these
years was nothing more to me than an image on post card even though I lived on
its slopes on the Kahala side, suddenly came alive, looming majestically
behind, a reassuring sacred presence.
The feeling that I was supposed to be there flickered through my
consciousness.
Then,
just when I seemed to have calmed down I was overcome with great convulsive
sobs of grief, as if I had drunk too much of life’s toxic poison and was having
a hearty well-deserved puke. At the very
peak, when I honestly wished I had never been born, I noticed a woman, her
figure silhouetted against the city lights, coming my way. I tried to get a handle on my grief, but it
was no use. As she passed she turned and
looked, breaking her stride just a bit, as if she were thinking of coming over
and offering me something. I strained
through the tears to see her face but it was impossible.
And
then she was gone.
Wave
upon wave of grief washed over the beaches of my soul, obliterating the past,
wiping away all traces of resentment and rancor, transforming five year's
passion, excitement, and turmoil into a pointless fantasy, seemingly dreamt by
a stranger. The sobbing subsided as
mysteriously as it had begun and I felt purified by an inner tropical rain,
like the day about six months before when I nearly ran into a little old man at
the Post Office, just before the relationship with
I’m
getting ahead of myself as usual.
As
I was clearing customs I looked through the windows to see them both on the
other side! Since his angry last words
were still fresh in my mind I had no idea how to react, yet there he was
smiling with
I
decided to act as if nothing had happened.
We shook hands and started right in with the small talk. I had them laughing in a matter of minutes,
but it was all nerves since I had no idea what was happening. In the car, Charles, sounding suspiciously as
if he had been coached, invited me to live in the mother-in-law apartment in
the basement of their new home on Black Point road, a “nice little love nest
for you and Corazon,” he’d said. I could
see
“Well,
that might not be a bad idea,” I replied.
Why don’t I have a look and see if it’s suitable.”
Charles went upstairs to fix drinks and
“Not
now, James,” she said furtively as I embraced her. “You’ll mess up my makeup.” She was one of Elizabeth Arden’s best
accounts.
“So
what’s this all about?”
“I want you here.”
“But what about Charles?
What’s going on?”
“Don’t
worry about Charles. It was his idea.”
“So
what did you have to do to bring him around?” I said.
“You
sound positively jealous.”
I
could see she loved it.
“Oh, I get it. He thinks he can keep an eye on me if I’m
here, right?”
“Something
like that. He
wasn’t as upset as you think. Tell him you’ll
take it.”
“OK, but what about Corazon? I can’t live here with her.”
“Why not? It would be perfect.”
I
was hoping for irony but she meant it.
We were obviously burdened with conflicting views on the meaning of the
word ‘perfect.’
At
that moment I saw that if she continued to call the shots we would end up in a
huge mansion with dozens of relatives clustered like drones around
“Perfect? But what about us?”
“Don’t
worry, everything will work out.”
I
was not convinced, especially when she did not respond to my second kiss. Emy’s words, “She’ll dump you when she
finished with you,” popped into my mind.
After
dinner we sat on the lanai and had a couple of drinks. She disappeared for a few minutes and when
she returned in a low-cut cotton shift I realized she’d gone from a 32B to a
36C in a since I left! She looked
absolutely fabulous but why had she not told me? Was it meant to be a surprise or did she do
it for Charles? Or,
even more likely, someone else?
Tortured
with lust and jet lag I managed to sleep just before sunrise. I awoke in the middle of a dream in which a
voracious
“How
do you like them?” she said once she finished.
“Where’s
Charles?”
“At the lab, where else?
Don’t worry. Everything’s
fine. What do you think?”
“Great!”
I lied.
They were stunning from a distance with clothing on, but they did not
fit the form of her slim body. They
looked exactly like add-ons and they did not feel right either although I gave
them the attention they demanded. One
should not be overly concerned with aesthetics in moments of passion.
I
seemed to have recently been endowed with precognitive powers because I also
saw that within ten years she would undoubtedly become one of those
tummy-tucked, nose-jobbed, well-to-do middle-aged middle-brow mavens one sees
on the society page at gala benefit concerts clutching a champagne glass,
mugging a horsy smile for the camera.
Everything was right except the color of her skin. Evidently they can even manage that nowadays
- bleaching, peeling, whatever.
“So
what did you tell Charles? He’s been
pretty decent, considering.”
“I
told him nothing happened. He didn’t see
anything. I told him you came over drunk
with the money and walked out the back door just as he arrived.”
“So
why let me think he knew?”
“He
was suspicious. I thought it best if you
were gone till he calmed down. We went
through this before with William.”
“Don’t
you think its time you left him?”
“I
have to wait until the kids are older.”
“Sure,
but this isn’t doing them any good, is it?”
“What
are you saying?”
“I’m
saying that seeing us together can’t be building a very good image of holy
matrimony in their impressionable young minds, can it?
“They
don’t know what’s going on and they love their father.”
“Sure,
but what kind of a father is he? I’m
more a father than he is. I spend time
with them, trundle them around. The guy
is never here. He spends a couple of
hours with them Sunday afternoons. What
kind of a father is that?”
“He’s
a good father. He loves them.”
“Fathers
who love their kids spend time with their kids.
He’s more interested in the life cycles of nematodes than human being,
including you.”
“I
find this subject very tedious, James.
We’ve been through it many times.
I’m not getting divorced.
Catholics take marriage seriously.”
“So
this is a serious marriage? What about
me? How do I fit in?”
“Will
you stop, James? You’re not here one day
and we’re arguing.”
“Jesus,
“Oh,
I imagine you had a good time. There are
many willing young girls. What did you
do with your time?”
“Worked
my butt off, read, went to the movies.
You think I’d touch one of those girls?
I love you,
“What
about Corazon?” Mother said you had a
honeymoon at
“That’s
bullshit!”
“Stop shouting,” James.
“I find profanity very upsetting.”
“OK. But you know what that was all about. That was to save face with the
relatives. They had to think it was the
real thing, didn’t they? We were only
there one day.”
“You
mean you didn’t touch her?”
“And
one more thing,
“Well,
I couldn’t very well tell Mama, could I, since I’m a married woman.”
“She
knows what’s going on. We’ve stayed with
her several times. How could she not
know? Every servant in the house knew,
which means the whole Phillipines knows.”
“This
is all very unpleasant, James. I have
these new breasts just for you and the moment you get back you’re suggesting I lied. It’s a very
complicated situation and I didn’t know what to say. ”
About
two the tennis instructor called.
“What’s
that about? You,
playing tennis?”
“I’m
working out these days, have to stay in shape,” she said in her most
businesslike tone.
I
laughed. “Stay in shape? The only exercise you get is the old
in-and-out. God, you even hate the walk
to the mailbox. Who is this bozo?”
“Nobody, James, just my tennis coach.”
Truly,
the woman had a pathological aversion to exercise. To reduce her hips, which were absolutely
perfect, but which she found grossly overweight, she spent hours in bed reading
the literary magazines connected to an electronic briefcase outfitted with
wires and lubricated flat rubber pads strapped to the offending flesh and
allowed to vibrate at any of a dozen settings.
“I’ll
play with you. I’m good, state runner-up
champ in 1958.”
“He’s
a pro, James.”
“At what?”
“You
have nothing to worry about, James, it’s all very legitimate.”
I
wanted to believe her so I let it slide but the thought that she was up to
something would not go away so a couple of days before Corazon showed up with
her Green Card I surreptitiously followed her to the country club.
The
‘instructor,’ a tall good-looking tanned preppy type, with thinning hair and a
snazzy tennis outfit furtively stroked her hand, nudged her shapely brown legs
with his hairy muscular calves, gazed love-struck into her eyes, and, like a
heathen, snapped his fingers at the waiter to refill her glass as they sat on
the patio under a blue and white striped umbrella drinking what appeared to be
gin and tonic. And, wonder of wonders,
no vertical tennis got played that day.
Instead, her white convertible followed his restored red Morgan to a
classy apartment near the beach. I am
certain nothing happened. They just went
up to see his etchings. She was an
ardent art lover and, by her own admission, a good Catholic.
OK,
I was jealous, a detestable emotion. But
I could not enjoy it since I had more or less lost the moral high ground, such
as it was, what with Emy and Corazon and a small army of bar girls.
Admittedly
I am a slow learner, but seeing her enthusiastically disappear through the
chrome and glass doors of that luxury apartment building permanently altered my
view of adultery as a viable lifestyle.
Perhaps I am vain, but I suddenly felt marginally superior. That I was a skunk was undeniable, but at
least I was having doubts. The juvenile
way she sucked up his seductions and eagerly bird-dogged him to the rendezvous
made me realize she was never going to wake up.
The
entry of the tennis coach into my tawdry little drama meant events were
reaching critical mass. When Corazon
arrived they achieved meltdown.
To
keep Charles calm Cory had to stay with me, which naturally caused
In the best of all possible worlds the aunt is
a gawky, homely, graying spinster, the ideal baby-sitter, but Corazon, who was
scarcely five years
It
started with an argument over business late one evening.
“We’re
expanding to the Mainland,” she said, “I bought a five year lease on a
storefront on Telegraph. I knew you
wouldn’t mind.”
I
did mind.
“You what?
“You
were in the
“We
talked on the phone, why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s
nothing, just another store.”
“Nothing? What do you
mean, just another store? You’ve got to
think these things out. What do you
think is going on? You think it’s magic? We put a lot of research into the other
stores and even then we made mistakes.
What are you thinking?”
“I
want a store in
I
stormed out before I said anything I would regret just as Charles turned in the
drive.
Corazon
was sitting on the couch in her dressing gown with her hair down watching a
rerun of “Have Gun Will Travel.” I found
her simple enjoyment of the corny serial very appealing and joined her for the
finale where the hero, a renegade bounty hunter, says good-bye to a
good-hearted lady of the night. When
they kissed tenderly she started to cry so I put my arm around her and gave her
a not-altogether-disinterested hug. She
turned toward me, her dressing gown fell open, and the rest is history.
About
two, still carrying on like mink in heat, I lost concentration when I thought I
heard someone on the stairway, but Corazon, whose mind was fully absorbed,
managed to get it back on track.
However, as the big moment approached I found myself thinking
increasingly about
I
unhooked, rolled over, and switched on the light which illumined a wild-eyed
She
threw herself on me screaming “I’ll kill you!
I’ll kill you!” just as Charles came hurtling into the room.
“You
fucked her! You fucked her! You said you didn’t touch her!”
A
horrified look appeared on Charles’ face when the truth finally penetrated his
thick skull. All her lies and adulteries
must have come flooding back as he sprung forward, seized her, and pulled her
away.
Oddly,
in spite of all the emotion I felt extremely calm, as if I were watching from a
different planet. In fact, it was all I
could do to keep from laughing.
“How
dare you!” she screamed, clearly out of her mind. “How dare you fuck her!”
I
decided to bring her back to reality.
“She’s
my wife, now, isn’t she?”
“She’s no
wife! How dare you! You belong to me! You’re mine!”
Charles,
still holding her firmly from behind, put his hand over her mouth but she bit
him and wiggled loose.
“And
who do you belong to?” I said, playing to Charles.
She glanced around,
uncertain where the conversation was heading.
“To that
tennis instructor you spent Thursday afternoon with in that fancy apartment at
She
let out a scream, as if she had just received news she was HIV positive, and
collapsed in a heap on the floor sobbing, a mass of shame.
“Well,”
I said, putting on my shorts and instructing Cory not to move the knife, “I
have to report this to the police.”
Cory,
God bless her, comforted
As
I lifted the receiver he begged me to stop and I suddenly saw light at the end
of my long dark tunnel.
“If
this gets out I’m finished,” he said.
“Finished?”
“As
you know I’m up for a big promotion. If
this gets out I’m finished. Not just
that, the humiliation; it’s too much.
And what’s going to happen to the business? I’d like to ask you not to go to the police.”
I
put down the receiver.
“What
can I do?” I said. “This is attempted
murder. She’s out of control.”
“But
there must be some other way, something we can work out.”
I
pretended to think about it for a minute.
“OK, Charles,” I’ll make you a deal.”
He
relaxed visibly.
“What
do you want?”
“I
want out.”
“Why
not sell to
“Because she’s holding your two percent over my head. You heard her in there,
she thinks I’m her property. As long as
she can count on your vote she’ll be out to get me, especially after what just
happened. I want a quarter of a million
for my stock. I want you to help her
decide to sell for that price. And I
want your word that if it does come down to a vote, you’ll vote with me. If it works out, I’ll leave town and you’ll
never see me again. If not, I go to the
cops with this assault and give the IRS the second set of books.”
“The IRS?”
“Yes,
we’ve been doing business Philippine style.
We owe Uncle Sam a bundle. If anyone finds out, you’re in a lot of hot
water.”
“My
God, what’s going on here? I can’t
believe it,” he said, recoiling as if he had just fired a high-powered
rifle.
“Look,
Charles, I’ve always liked you. And I’m
very sorry for carrying on with
I
could see he was terrified, afraid of confronting her, as if she were the
aggrieved party. And, in keeping with
recent flashes of insight, I saw that he was really terrified of himself, his
inability to love.
“It’ll
probably never come down to a vote. I’m
sure she’ll be eager to get me out of her hair.”
“OK,”
he said. “I’ll do it.”
***
So
I moved out and Cory stayed.
In
the meantime, faced with the loss of a successful business and the woman who
had been the center of my life, I struggled to find the real me hidden beneath
layers of lies.
It
wasn’t easy.
Sex
and booze were, so I drank and sought love wherever I could and sank deeper and
deeper into despair. One night on the
way home after a night of heavy drinking I staggered into a new nightclub where
I was amazed to find dozens of gorgeous women lounging around socializing with
the patrons. Spying an unattended blonde
in a tight silver lame evening dress sitting at the bar sipping a martini, I
moved in, bought the obligatory drinks, and convinced her to come home for the
night, pulling over in a nearby park on the way to get things started. However, a few exploratory gropes revealed my she to be a he! I
am told that sort of thing is commonplace nowadays, but it pushed me over the
edge. I am lucky no one was around
because I pulled the poor fellow out of the car and beat him to a pulp. The deceit. I could not handle the deceit.
Any
armchair psychologist could see I was really assaulting myself.
***
Since
I am not an accomplished writer and cannot describe my feeling of self-loathing
well, you will have to take it on faith that I finally hit bottom, my
consciousness peppered with thoughts of suicide. Then, on a lovely tropical morning, after a
drunken and debauched night with a woman whose husband was out of town, I was
sluggishly lumbering through the International Market Place on my way to the
Post Office, the pavement glistening from a light morning shower, the sun
playing hide and seek with big billowy clouds, plumerias spraying their erotic
fragrance as gentle trade winds rattled the palm fronds, when I noticed a
jaunty old man, a vacationer or pensioner come to idly pass the sunset years,
appropriately attired in Bermuda shorts, aloha shirt, tennies, and a straw hat,
perusing his mail as he ambled my way.
As he got closer I realized we were on a collision course and sent a
message to my feet to move left, but nothing happened! Panic stricken, I tried to move out of the
way a second time but the body would not respond!
I
had completely lost control.
A
couple of seconds before impact the bodies stopped face to face and I heard a
sweet voice, which was not my own, speaking through me.
"Excuse
me, sir, may I ask you a question?" it said.
Someone
else had taken over!
Since
I had no idea what the voice was about to say, I tried to apologize but the
words would not come.
I
was not connected at the mouth either!
The
old man looked up, unaware of my distress, a kind smile on his wrinkled face.
"Yeah, sure, sonny, shoot."
Then
the voice, flowing like nectar from a deep place within, resumed, "Out of
curiosity, sir, how old do you think I am?"
Since
I already knew the answer and had not the slightest interest in the opinion of
the doddering old codger, I was completely flabbergasted.
Certain I was going mad, I ran frantically around inside my
mind looking for the control panel but reality, a mind of its own, was
completely uninterested.
The old man stepped back, pulled on his pipe, gave me the
once-over, and judiciously replied, "Well, sonny, I'd say you're
forty-three."
A long history of untruth meant I could spot a lie a mile away;
he was deliberately underestimating his age to spare my feelings.
"Well, yes, thank you very much," the voice said
sweetly.
"Don't mention it, sonny," he said, proceeding on his
way.
I seriously considered the possibility I was losing my mind,
but the experience was permeated with such a sense of clarity, I did not
indulge my fear. And then I regained
control and proceed toward my mailbox, the mind settling on the concerns of the
day.
But as I entered the foyer I lost it again! Instead of proceeding into the Post Office
proper as programmed, the body confidently turned left, entered the men's room,
and parked itself in front of a big mirror over the wash basins, the eyes glued
straight ahead, feet welded to the floor.
"Oh shit, not again!
Am I flipping out?" I thought anxiously.
But I was not going mad. I was having a good look, courtesy of God, at
what I had become. I do not know how
long I stood there, unable to move a muscle - perhaps a full five minutes -
aware but unaware of the stares of the men coming and going, the flushing
toilets, the irritating flicker of the neon over the mirror. But it did not matter because a brand new
world had miraculously opened up, a inner world
illumined by a powerful Light in whose presence I saw it all... every last bit
of the sin and corruption that I was.
***
The moment of truth in the Post Office lifted a monstrous
weight, Saul on the road to
And for the first time in my twenty-six years I realized there
was a compassionate God.
No longer a proper University town
crowded with frat rats and cutsy coeds in pleated skirts and bobby socks who
would eventually end up in suburbia with two point two bratty kids named Bill
and Pete,
I deplaned at San Francisco International, rented a car and
pulled into a Denny's at
"Where you headed?" I said rolling down the window.
"
"Get in, I’ll take you, I said.
"Out of sight, man! Far out!"
"So what do you do?" I said as we entered the stream
of traffic.
"Do man?” He seemed
confused. “What do I do?" he
repeated, apparently finding himself.
"I get high man. What do you
do?"
I missed the irony and eagerly launched into an embellished
thumbnail sketch of my life, expecting him to be suitably impressed.
But when I asked what he thought he said, "Not much."
"I tell my life's
story and you say, ‘Not much.’ How many
guys my age have what I've got? Shit, I
make more in a day than you make in a year."
"So? You may have a
lot of stuff but you're still one uptight bozo."
There was that word again.
"Uptight! What do
you mean, uptight!" I shouted.
"Take it easy man," he replied.
My rage inexplicably drained.
The whole improbable scene, fat businessman and scruffy hippie, suddenly
seemed cartoon-like and far away as if it were happening to a stranger.
The Voice from the Post Office, speaking through me said,
“Sorry man. "I don't know what got into me. Go ahead, tell me
what you really think."
In one of those moments when life plays the shrink better than
any one-hundred dollar an hour Ph.D., he turned, looked me in the eye and said,
"Well, man, I'd say you were one of the most fucked up human beings I've
ever met."
A wave of anger arose and miraculously subsided before I could
utter a word. A powerful silence filled
the car and I realized my companion was seeing what I had seen in the restroom
two weeks before. Was I so obviously
messed up?
The thought that I had made a terrible mistake a long time ago,
maybe before I was born, came. But what
was it? Where had I gone wrong? What kind of punishment was in store? I felt a panic coming on but it was vacuumed
by the silence before it could take root.
Then the Voice, whose presence filled the car, as if it already knew the
answer, replied, "Well, all right, then what do you think I should do
about it?"
The hippie, who seemed to be in league with the Voice,
shrugged, glanced sideways, reached in his pocket, extracted and uncapped a
vial, handing me two round orange pills.
"Try these. They might help."
"What are they?" I asked,
examining the small tablets nestling in my palm as the car sped past
Holding them gave me a wild, sexual feeling. They seemed alive, perhaps radioactive, with
short wavy lines emanating from them.
For a moment the car seemed stationary, the skyline speeding past.
When he said "Orange Sunshine" my whole body tingled
and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if I had heard a sublime piece
of music.
"What's that?" I said.
"Acid, man. LSD. Good stuff."
"What's it feel like?" I said. Since my affair with Emy and the experiment
with pot I had read a number of articles about the dangers of
psychedelics. That it was forbidden was
not a problem; I had pushed against the grain all my life.
"Out of sight, man!” he replied.
I had a vague idea what
he meant.
"I did pot in the
"Pot's OK, man, but it's kid
stuff. "This will blow your
mind. And it needs to be blown, believe
me."
"But isn't it dangerous?" I asked. "They say you
can freak out…whatever that means. I
read about this girl that stepped off the tenth floor of an apartment building,
thinking she could walk on air. They
scraped her off the pavement.
"If you're scared, don't take it. I've had a couple of bummers, but it's no big
deal. It's only the mind. The stuff wears off in a few hours and
everything is back to normal.”
I did not know exactly what he meant, but felt reassured. I was excited, powerfully attracted. The perfumed excitement and glamour of the
high life could no longer mask the unmistakable stench of suffering.
I opened my hand and looked at the inviting little pills
again. "What the hell," I
thought. "Probably nothing will
happen ... a couple of stupid pills."
Uncapping the warm watery coffee sitting on the dash, I washed them down
on the spot.
"Far out!" the hippie said enthusiastically.
Within minutes I was overcome with unexplained euphoria. As the car exited the
"Happy trails," he said, giving the peace sign.
The car, driving itself, headed for
the hills, an animal sprung from a trap.
The road and the world, including my body and the automobile, now perfectly
synchronized, were expanding and contracting in unison, a giant lung breathing
in and out, shrinking and swelling, irresistibly, awesomely alive. My body shaking with pure joy, I heard myself
laughing uncontrollably, not the polished business laugh, but a hearty
cascading of uncontrollable mirth.
The hippie was not kidding!
Pot was kid stuff.
Thought lines, like puppet strings, running from my crystal
palace merged into the nervous system, instructing the body to move! Thinking across the ever-expanding body/mind
gulf I directed the machine toward an unknown destiny. Before long, however, I realized I would soon
be incapable of driving. Noticing a
gravel turnout near the crest of the hills, I reigned in the beast,
over-running the perimeter and landing in a field. So much was going on I could not remember how
to put it in reverse so I left it where it was, up to the bumper in thick
grass, and deplaned, a traveler from a distant galaxy stepping for the first
time onto the surface of an ecstatic vibrating earth.
Oaks and madrones danced, their branches swaying, striving to
touch the sky like the tentacles of gigantic sea anemones. Earth and sky melted erotically into each
other, lovers tenderly sharing an erotic moment. Transfixed by the ineffable beauty of a world
endlessly creating and destroying itself before my inner eye, I wandered down a
small gully and sat on a rock under an ancient oak whose wrinkled, gnarly,
hieroglyphic skin like a cosmic slate, seemed to form and dissolve the rune ‘seek
within.’ I looked through the body’s
translucent shell and saw an infinitely expanding self-generating radiant Light
of indescribable purity pouring the sweet ecstasy of life into each and every
cell.
For the first time I noticed that everything here had a
purpose, objects nestling into one another like pieces in a puzzle. I saw that total was greater than the sum of
its parts, a living whole vibrating to a wondrous all-pervading sound
spontaneously arising from the emptiness between the atoms. Though inseparable from this indefinable
Sound, every blade of grass and humble pebble, containing universes within
itself, unselfconsciously displayed its uniqueness. My fractured and lonely life suddenly seemed
meaningful, fitting as it did snugly into the total, a guileless child nestled
in its mother's arms.
Gulping
fresh air with the relish my former self had guzzled champagne, the healing
draughts flooded my worn and damaged body, shocking it to life, I ran down the grassy gully and gracefully leapt over a
barbed wire fence.
Until
that leap, which seemed a symbol of something profound, the trip was ordered
and purposeful, an ever-expanding spiral of unbelievable experiences strung one
after another, lustrous pearls on a string, way stations at which my soul
briefly stopped, took instruction, and then moved on. But as I approached the brow of the hills,
the warm summer sun, a ripe golden fruit slowly dropping into the graceful
mouth of the
Not
that I did not exist. But I ceased to
exist as a fat, rich, unhappy businessman.
That person, a sort of distorting and concretizing lens, had somehow
fallen from the camera and shattered into bits, left behind on the other side
of the fence. And the
I, the real I, a limitless vision hidden within the body, apparently
asleep for centuries, began seeing things as they actually were.
Transfixed,
frail and delicate as a spring flower, stunned by the intricate beauty of the
creation, I realized there were two parallel realities: the eternally living
reality of God and the frozen world of conditioned perceptions, LSD just one of
many possible tunnels between the two.
These strange little orange pills were not creating their own
reality. They were showing me Reality,
sprucing up the view with a bit of wavy chemical weirdness.
Meanwhile
back in the trip, its rays pulsating atoms of light, the sun raced toward an
ocean swelling to receive it as gulls labored through the supercharged evening
sky leaving trails, feathery footprints in the air. I looked into the body and saw the whole
nervous system, circulating an unbroken carousel of light, the synapses,
microcosmic exploding stars, glowing bright as the energy leaped from terminal
to terminal.
Journeying
into finer and finer worlds, I experienced a tremendous rush, which I would
later recognize as Love, when I came upon the place within where God dwells,
giving and taking life. Overcome with a
feeling of deep sanctity, tears of repentance dripping from the sides of my
eyes, I fell to my knees to thank the Great Spirit as day turned to night in an
awesome and unforgettable display of transcendental beauty.
Consciousness
of my former life returned and for a moment I wondered how I could reclaim it
but something told me not to worry. Sure
enough, when the time was right, the body, marvelously wise, turned and walked
up the hill, every sense heightened, taking in and processing stimuli, driven
by a precise impersonal memory. The car
was as I left it, one door hanging carelessly open.
The
attaché on the back seat, cigarettes and the Denny's hamburger still sitting on
the dash seemed like archaeological objects which I examined with interest. I reached for a cigarette and lit up. As the fire seared the lungs and the toxic
sludge dumped into the blood stream the mind slowed, the high began to fade,
and I was unceremoniously sucked into the meat tube. A wave of nausea, which seemed to symbolize
my whole life, overcame me and I hurled the cigarette out the window, the end
of an eight year habit. In a few minutes
the smoke purified and the high returned.
I
started the engine and pulled out onto the road which was shrinking up into a
constipated little mass and spronging out again. A muscle car came into view snorting and
pawing its way up the hill, vibing like an angry buffalo. X-raying the occupants, teenagers chock full
of testosterone on the way to the woods to guzzle brew and rub genitals, I
vibed pure power and the beast shrank meekly away giving me a wide berth. I whipped down the road enjoying life in
microseconds, the machine an extension of the mind, thought taking form.
It
happened to park itself on Telegraph about a block from my old haunt, the
Mediterraneum, and before I realized what was happening I found myself sitting
at my old table, wondering if anyone could tell I was stoned.
Ordering
had gone off without a hitch. When asked
what I wanted ‘cappuccino,’ my usual, came out as usual. When I opened my wallet the bills were alive,
glowing and changing like radium. Wading
through the patron’s mind stuff was a bit of a chore, but I acquitted myself
well, arriving at the table, island in a storm, without incident. I felt protected by an invisible energy
bubble, an exotic plant growing in a hermetically sealed vessel.
My
wild eyes reflected from the window and I noticed my tie was missing. That seemed right. I straightened the collar of my sport jacket
and ran a comb through electric hair floating two inches above my skull.
No
one seemed to be paying the slightest attention, yet a persistent feeling of
transparency, as if anyone could tune in, kept arising as the cafe filled with
a motley crew of featherless bipeds.
At
some point I realized I was sharing a table with a glowing hippie.
"Tom. Tom Williams," he said
nonchalantly. "Sappeningbro?"
I
tried to interpret the lingo. How could
I know "Sappeningbro?" was a contraction for "What's happening,
brother?"
"Oh, too high to talk, eh? What you on?" he said conspiratorially,
making me a little paranoid.
"Getting
a little paranoid, eh?" Tom said. "First trip?"
I
nodded.
"First
trip and a bit freaked out, eh? Know the
feeling. Don't worry about me. It's no biggie. Just thought you might like
to score some purple Owls."
"Purple owls? Score?" I asked.
"Owlsley's man. Acid, man. What you
on?"
"I
don't know...
"Sunshine, man. Sunshine. Not bad stuff,
but you need some for next time."
In
my state there did not seem to be a ‘next time.’ Things came when needed and were not needed
till they came. And oddly, a vague
feeling the trip was going to last forever kept passing through my mind.
What you thinking about man?
We're only talking two bucks. Two
lousy bucks a hit."
He went into his spiel.
"Purple Owsleys, the finest acid ever made. Great dope, man, Great dope. Pure. Really Pure. Better than Sandoz. Since this is your first time, three for five
bucks. Judging from that watch, five is
peanuts to you."
I reached for my wallet.
"Hey, man, be cool!
Not here. Come on up the block
and we'll do business. I go out first
and you come on in a couple of minutes.
Meet you down the block.
We met down the block.
"Hey, man, you don't know nothing,
do you?" he said in a kind voice.
"Here, gimme the five.
Here's your stuff. Sit down
man," he said motioning to a nearby stoop.
"Let's toke up. I got to
tell you some things."
We sat down and Tom fumbled through his pockets looking for his
Rizla papers.
"Hey man, why don't you run over to that liquor store and
pick up a bottle of Ripple while I fix up this here doobie. It sure puts a nice head on you."
Grimacing at the thought of Ripple, I walked to the liquor
store, and returned with a bottle of Mumm’s Extra Dry.
"Hey, man, what's this stuff? This looks like bullshit, man. Wow, twelve bucks! What we got here liquid gold?"
"Beats the hell out of Ripple," I said mimicking his
style.
"Hey, man I like you.
You got class. Who are you
anyway?"
"Nobody, just a fat businessman," I replied. “I can’t stand bad wine.”
"I'm just like you only dopewise. Can't stand bad dope. Think I'm turning you onto some ragweed, some
cheap homegrown shit, eh?" he asked rhetorically. "No way, man. No way.
I got class too. Know what this
is," he says flourishing a fat joint.
"Nope. What?"
"Acapulco Gold, man, best fucking grass they make. 'Cept maybe Panama Red."
He fired up, took a deep drag, his eyes bugging out, and passed
it to me.”
I took a couple of drags.
"No way, man" he said. "No way. You're wasting that shit. Got to smoke it like
this."
He demonstrated.
I could not have cared less.
My mind suddenly went into a wild tailspin, a riot of lights and colors
blowing off in the brain, so beautiful it took my breath away, my own private
Fourth of July.
"Here, man, take a swig of this," said Tom who seemed
to know just what was happening, handing me the bottle. "Kind of mellows things out a bit."
I followed instructions.
The lights were on, no doubt, but the champagne strung them out,
softened them up a bit, making them eminently viewable.
"Wow!" I said. "Unbelievable!"
"Far out, man, "said the dealer,
picking up on my excitement! “You
look like a real jerk but you're a real head, ain't you now."
I heard myself laughing from a million
miles away.
***
I woke up the following morning in a motel
somewhere in the flats on a sunny warm
A bright young man instead of a debauched,
cynical, geriatric adult appeared when I looked in the mirror. I smiled and noticed I liked myself for a
change. When I turned on the radio the
lyrics "Be who you are," accompanied by a saccharine psychedelic
instrumental, played over and over, etching the mantra
in my brain. Emerging from the shower I
seemed lighter, as if I had washed off a bit of my cruddy old self. I opened the suitcase but the clothing seemed
to belong to a stranger. Significantly,
I could not find my watch, a five hundred dollar Omega, but it did not
matter. I managed to force it all on,
but was unable to don the tie, which seemed vaguely sinister, more dog collar
than adornment, a perfect symbol of my enslavement, the jewel in the crown of
the capitalist uniform.
I walked up the block to a mom and pop
cafe and ordered a hearty breakfast.
When it arrived I took one look and nearly vomited, leaving it
untouched. For the life of me I could
not figure out why for twenty some years I had enjoyed consuming dead pig
bodies and slimy eggs from chicken rectums.
And when I finally found my latest stock at the bottom of a long column,
its two-point drop did not faze me in the slightest.
As the cafe filled I studied the
patrons. The middle-aged woman at the
corner table by the window, surgically slicing her sausage, her napkin neatly
folded in her lap, seemed interesting. I
wondered what she did and why she was eating alone. She was not bad looking, still had her shape
and seemed intelligent. I thought of
mother and wondered if I should tell her about the trip just to wind her
up. I could just imagine her face when I
said, "Oh, by the way, Mom, I've been doing a bit of LSD
lately." Of course it would not fly
because I was already in the dog house; she was still mortified I had lied
about leaving school and running off with a married woman. I did not know how to fix it. The acid must have done something to my
feelings because she seemed more like a real person than a mom. For a moment I experienced something akin to
remorse. How I had disappointed her and
messed everything up.
My attention wandered back to the paper
and I noticed an article about the
"Sounds promising," I
thought. Life as I knew it had been hell
for a long time…since the accident really…and before.
Suddenly
everything turned weird and wavy and I was back on a scaled down version of the
trip. The smell of pot oozed from
windows adorned with Indian tie dies, peace signs, pictures of the nasty killer
weed, and psychedelic posters advertising a plethora of acid rock bands. Nearly everyone I passed was loaded.
For a moment I feared becoming one of them, but the way they
looked at me, glancing contemptuously at my narky black shoes, short hair, and
tailored suit told me I was ‘straight,’ an uptight, capitalistic, plastic
person.
In short, the enemy.
Until that defining moment in the Post Office and the first
trip, which was really part of the same change, life had been so painfully full
of me and my impulses I had no idea of the vast inner world of the mind and the
limitless Spirit beyond. And even though
most of my thoughts were still angry and unforgiving, storm troopers
goose-stepping through my consciousness, others, a growing minority, were
ironic and detached, floating lazily by like puffy summer clouds. Some hidden part of me was coming forward, a
spring crocus breaking through earth’s crust, lighting up winter's bleak
leavings with freshness and color.
Anyhow, I wished I had seen the face of the mystery woman who
had just passed but she was to remain an inviting presence, like the mountain,
on which to project hidden desire. I
thought of running down the beach to find her but it was useless.
I
should have headed home, but the apartment reminded me of
The
first stripper was a young willowy blonde with vacant eyes, long legs and pendulous
breasts which she mechanically fondled as she haphazardly roamed the stage
shedding her costume to a slow Fifties tune, ‘The Great Pretender.’ I remembered dancing slow to it at the
The
next dancer, a redhead, was about the same age but shorter and marginally cuter
than the blonde. Her routine was equally
lame, a cowgirl act. She pranced around
the stage like a high-stepping quarter horse letting out "whoopees"
and "yip-ee-ii-aays," as she divested herself of chaps embroidered
with penis-shaped sequined cacti, a fringed white leather vest, and ten gallon
hat. The grand finale involved cliché
intercourse with a six-gun.
By
this time, well into my second Mai Tai, it was happy trails; the memories had
stopped.
The
third dancer was a humorous Filipina whose gymnastic act involved a number of
extremely vulgar and erotic poses.
Orientals did not seem to have the same sense of shame as Occidentals. At the end she front-loaded her vagina with a
hard-boiled egg and sent it rocketing directly at me with a wild gyration of
the pelvis.
The
lights dimmed for the first act of the final set. Expecting either the horsy girl or the
Filipina I was blown away when a classy statuesque woman in her thirties, regal
and self-contained, appeared dressed like a belly dancer wearing a white turban
decorated with a huge diamond. Her
elegantly designed costume conjured up images of gypsies, crystal balls and
oriental harems. She was in a class by
herself, regal and self-contained.
Though the club was nearly deserted, she performed earnestly, as if her
set was a sacred ritual, feeding her soul.
Her skin and features made me think she was a mulatto, but her race was
hard to determine. I watched with
complete attention; she seemed familiar.
I wondered if I had seen her before but was too stoned to remember. The moment before she left the stage she
turned and looked directly at me. It was
the woman from the beach!
I
hurried out, jumped in the Porsche, drove around the block and parked about
fifty feet from the entrance, thinking she’d probably go out for a bite before
going home. I figured I would follow her
and accidentally bump into her at the restaurant. I sat for half an hour, my heart racing,
practicing my lines, but she did not show.
Suddenly I realized what a silly fantasy I had concocted. She would have thought I was a john, anyway. In fact, when I came down I was not even sure
it was the same woman, so I turned the key and drove home; it was well past
three and I had a meeting with the accountant at nine.
On
one trip I got a reasonably clear picture of where I was going. I checked in at the Coco Palms and walked up
the beach wondering what the trip had to offer.
I came upon a deserted cove ringed with palms, sat on the warm sand,
removed my shirt, and opened my daypack, extracting a small jade box with an
intricately-carved lotus on the top, a souvenir from Hong Kong. I removed and unfolded a square packet of
aluminum foil wrapped in yellow silk, revealing several small blue squares of
blotter paper in the center of which were printed the Hindu symbol of Spirit,
OM. Bob said it meant, Truth.
I
religiously, took a square from the packet, closed it in the palm of my hand,
bowed my head and put my fist to my chest.
Immediately an electric current sent a chill wave of excitement through
the body. I asked Great Spirit for
guidance, carefully chewed the blotter and waited.
Time,
radiating from the center of the mind, rearranged itself, spreading out in
ever-expanding concentric rings, merging into the horizon. The thoughts of
Suddenly
the fog lifted, my vehicle dissolved, and I melted into a
radiance greater than scores of suns, a place I would soon come to call
the
The
thought "who am I" filled my consciousness. In answer I saw myself sitting in full lotus,
a fully awakened infinitely blissful supremely wise being with all virtues:
purity, forbearance, fearlessness, compassion, wisdom, discrimination,
straightforwardness, peace, patience, and truth.
Hours
later I returned to earth and walked slowly down the beach toward the hotel and
my messy life, wondering how to close the chasm between who I really was and my
present self. For a moment I dismissed
the vision as a drug-induced hallucination, a perverse divine taunt, and lost
heart. When the depression lifted I
realized I had been blessed with an unshakable conviction of my divinity and
knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I could not stop until I made it real.
What
I did not know, however, was that the sinner could not become the saint; the
self I saw could not be created by wanting it or through any therapy. Had I been able to accept the disgusting,
dishonest parts I would have saved a lot of time, but I believed I had to pay
for all the suffering I had inflicted on myself and others.
The
following Monday there was still no word from
I
woke up late to Charlie’s call.
“Got
to hand it to you, James,” he said enthusiastically. "She went for it. You're out of business! Remember, a trip for two to
Thursday
evening, with less than twenty four hours to go, I took a walk on the beach to
calm my nerves. I was about to turn
around near the rocks at the foot of
Monday’s
dream flashed and she invited me to sit.
“Aren’t
you worried, sitting here alone at night?” I said.
“No.”
“What
about me?”
“You
wouldn’t hurt a fly. What do you want? ”
“You
were in my dream Monday night.”
“In
my business all the men have dreams."
"Not
like that. Would you like to hear
it?"
"OK."
I
described the dream and asked what she thought.
"
"What
knowledge are you talking about?" I interrupted.
"Knowledge of yourself."
I
felt a thrill, wild excitement.
"What
self are you talking about?" I asked.
I wanted to talk to her forever.
"It's
a long story and time for my next set," she replied getting up.
"You're
leaving? We just got started. I want to know more about this
business."
"Think
about what I said," she replied, as I followed her to the parking lot.
"We'll meet again."
"How
about phoning in sick? Get one of the
girls to cover for you. I'll give you a
hundred bucks if you'll talk to me."
"Take
it easy, man." she said. "I
want to go. I have my job. It's my duty.
I'm not interested in your money."
"When
will we meet? How
about after your set?"
"After
my set I go home and go to bed. I'm
tired. It's been a
long
day."
“Thanks
for talking with me. I needed that.”
"OK,
Bye," she replied unsentimentally.
“See you around."
***
"Mrs.
Taylor would like to ask you a question,” Charlie said, pulling me out of my
thoughts. I nodded.
"What
guarantee do I have you won't contact the IRS?"
"I’m
sick and tired of the whole thing,” I replied.
“I just want to get on with my life.
Very good things are happening for me and I don't want to think about
the past. I'm sure you realize that if
the Feds are involved they'll come after me too."
She
nodded at the lawyer who said, "Mrs. Taylor is satisfied. Let's sign the papers."
On
the way out I saw her standing on the curb, waiting for a ride.
"I'm
sorry I had to do it that way," I said. "It really wasn't
personal."
"It's
OK, James," she said. "I'm glad it's over."
"Can
I ask you a question?" I said.
"Why not?" she replied in her inscrutable way.
"Why
did you believe me?"
"It
sounded like the truth." she said as her Mercedes pulled up and she got
in. "Good-bye James."
I
stood expressionless as she drove off, thinking what might have been.
***
When I showed up at the club for the last set the horsy girl
was down to her g-string, getting ready for a little fun with her six gun. Madame Zora came
on a few minutes later and went through her artistic routine. Her subtle, suggestive, movements were
tastefully erotic, not blatantly sexual, like the others. I noticed a satirical slant to her last act,
a subtle spoof of the whole sex business.
I went backstage and invited her for a drink.
“I just want to ask you about what you said last time," I
said when she sat down.
"What did I say? I
can't remember," she replied.
"You said I was searching Self-Knowledge. I want to know what you mean by that. And the dream. How did you get in my dream? Something's going on. First I saw God in the Post Office, then I got turned on to acid, have this dream and meet
you. This is not how I had it
figured. What's going on?"
"I told you.
You're waking up."
"From what?"
"From your sleep."
"You're not making this easy," I said, "Please
trust me. I just want to know. I'm not after you. I can get plenty of women, believe me."
"OK, I'll meet you tomorrow."
"What's the matter with now? I'll take you out for breakfast. "
"I told you I'm a working girl, not a rich playboy. I have my routine. I go home after my set and sleep. I don't go out with the customers after
work. Here's my number, call me tomorrow
about
"By
the way," I said, “I’m James.
What’s your name?"
"For now I'm Madame Zora," she said smiling.
"If you're a good boy maybe I'll tell you tomorrow."
We met on the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian at four.
"Sorry I'm such a pest," I said after we settled in
under a large striped umbrella, "but I have the feeling you can help
me."
"So
what's wrong with you? You look OK to
me," she said unsentimentally.
"Yeah,
I'm OK moneywise, but my life's a mess otherwise. You want to hear about it?"
"OK,
but make it short. I can’t handle much
misery on days off."
I
told her about the affair with
"So
what's the doubt? What do you want to
know?" she said.
"I'd
like to know what you make of it."
She
sat quietly, looking out at the ocean, observing the sunburned tourists playing
in the shallow surf.
"Well,
it bears out what I said the other night.
You don't know
who you
are."
“You’re
the second woman who told me this. I
don’t get it.”
"I'm
not trying to be difficult,” she said. It's just that I can't tell you in so many
words. It's not a verbal thing."
"So
what kind of thing is it?"
"A spiritual thing."
"Are
you saying I'm spiritual?"
"Not exactly.
Spiritual's not an act, not something you do to make yourself feel
good."
"So
what is it?"
"It's
what you are."
"What
do you mean?"
"Remember
how you felt on your first trip when you stepped out on the edge of the hills
and the sun was setting and you felt as if you were dissolving in light?"
"You
bet! How could I forget?"
And
you said you felt like you didn't exist, as if you had died, but you didn't
die?"
"Yes."
"Well,
that light you dissolved into was you.
The one who dissolved and died was James, your ego."
I
still did not get it but it did not- matter.
I could see what an unselfish and compassionate person she was. A great love for her arose.
"When
I hear you talk I have the feeling that you're saying something very important,
but it’s as if your words are filtering through cotton. I'm only understanding
part of them."
"As
time goes by you'll understand," she said.
"Spirit unfolds in its own time.
You can't force it."
"What
about you? I've been pretty rude,
talking only about myself."
"Me,
I'm nobody, just a stripper at a second-rate Mafia joint,"
she replied.
We
spent the rest of the afternoon together and met the following day. I went to her flat near the club to pick her
up and asked her about a small black boxlike object nestled in the center of a
group of plants on an antique parlor table.
"An
orgone energy accumulator," she said.
"A what?"
"Orgone energy accumulator."
"God,
Linda, are you all right? What the hell is that?"
"It
collects orgone energy."
"What's
orgone energy?"
"The cosmic energy.
It's spread evenly throughout the universe but
this box concentrates it here."
"The
box concentrates it? How do you
know?"
"I
can feel it. It's like the pyramids only
more powerful."
"The pyramids?
What do the pyramids have to do with energy?" I thought they were tombs.”
They
are but they also play an occult role.”
“Occult?”
“Hidden. They had
secret spiritual knowledge and made the pyramids according to certain occult
principles that take into account the fact that the universe is a spiritual
entity, not just a material one.
"That
box acts on the same principle, focusing cosmic energy."
"How
do you know this Linda? All due respect,
but it sounds pretty far-fetched to me."
"There's
a lot you don't know, James," she replied. "I know it because I know
it."
"But how, Linda?
How?"
"I
feel it."
"I
don't get it, Linda. I don't feel
anything coming from that box."
" You're just not that sensitive, James. You think too much."
"Yeah,
but Linda, are we talking about the same energy I experience when I take
acid?"
"There's
only one energy," James.
"Only one energy?"
"Yes."
"Tell
me about it."
"What's
to tell? Either you experience it or you
don't."
"So
we're talking cosmic energy here?"
"Right."
"OK,
Linda, then how does the acid release the cosmic energy? That whole trip is happening inside my mind,
not out there in the universe."
"That's
right, James, but the whole universe is inside you."
"Jesus, Linda, some of this stuff is
pretty hard to swallow."
"Well, you don't have to swallow it. I'm not trying to convince you of anything,
believe me. The way it works is I say
certain things and you either get it or you don't. If you don't get it, it doesn't matter. It will make sense someday when you’ve had
certain experiences.”
"I'll
take your word for it, Linda. Now back
to the box. If it puts out the same
energy I get when I take acid, why have the box?"
"Look,
James, you can't take acid all your life, can you? You'll end up a space case. You've got to figure out how to get it
naturally. This box brings it in naturally.
It's better than dope because it's healing all the time."
"Healing
what, Linda? You sick?"
"We're
all sick, James. It's nothing
physical. The soul's sick. It's suffering the disease of ignorance and
needs healing."
"So how does a box heal the soul?"
"It's
not the box, James. It's the
energy. Energy heals."
"Who
invented that box, Linda?"
"Wilhelm
Reich."
"Who's
that?
"A great man, James.
A great man who was locked up by the government and
died in a nut house because of his ideas. He said the universe is made up of orgone
energy and sold these boxes to collect it.
The government said he was a quack and persecuted him. He's a saint.
Let's go to the beach. I can't
handle too much of the spiritual stuff so early in the day."
The
conversation continued a couple of days later.
I
had a chance to think about what you said last time," I said. "Remember we were talking about the
orgone energy and how it healed the soul?"
"Yes."
"So
what's this disease of ignorance you're talking about?"
"It's
a long story. You sure you're up for
it?"
"Sure
Linda, I don't work. I've got time on my
hands."
"A
long time ago," she began, "all souls were one with the energy. And everything was fine,
each soul knew that it was pure energy.
But then somehow they got cut off and forgot who they were. And the forgetting made them choose to live in physical bodies and suffer pleasure and
pain. But there was a deep longing to go
back to where they came from. And that's
what we're doing, going back."
"You
believe that Linda?"
"Yes. More than that, James, I know it."
"How
do you know it, Linda?"
"We've
been through that with the pyramids. You
know it when you know it. Something has
to happen."
"OK,
Linda, so were does the disease of ignorance come in?"
"When
the souls forget who they are, then they're ignorant. They want to know because that is the only
thing that makes them happy."
"I
hate to say this, Linda, but that sounds very simple-minded, like a fairy
tale."
"It
sounds like a fairy tale, James, because of your state of mind. If I told it to you the day the energy turned
your life around or during your first acid trip you wouldn't have had a problem
with it. As long as you're in the dream the
truth seems false. When you wake up it
makes sense."
"But..."
"No
"buts" James. I don't
argue. Either you get it or you
don’t. If you don't it's OK with me. But there's no argument."
Linda
was right, I couldn't see the connection between the powerful experience of
God, the inner energy, and this balmy doctrine.
At the same time her ideas touched something in me I couldn't
explain. She had been sent to plant a
seed.
CHAPTER 2
A DANGEROUS PATH TO FREEDOM
“Better living through chemistry”
Fifties
Slogan of
Westinghouse Corporation
I think I may have unconsciously seen
dropping out of school, taking up with a married woman, and doing business as a
rebellion against my parent’s conventional and decent ambitions for me. Yet even after I realized that rebellion is
immature and futile, a deeper impulse pushed me down a dangerous path to
freedom.
I would have preferred a painless
rosy-cheeked born-again awakening, an enthusiastic acceptance of the hair shirt
and the mind-numbing certainty of church doctrine, but the path laid out was
more complex and subtle, a patient gleaning of the intention of the total as it
unfolded through the events of my life.
The day
In
In about an hour another cliché, a
beady-eyed plain-clothes cop with greasy slicked back hair, entered and with
cheerful sarcasm spoke the following obviously well rehearsed lines. "Ah, senor, welcome to the Mazatlan
Hilton. I hope you enjoy your
stay."
I forced a smile at his witticism.
"Perhaps you are wondering why you
are here, senor," he said nonchalantly with a hint of menace.
"Yes, I am," I said with
forced humility.
"Well, senor," he said eyeing
my Omega, "You have committed a serious crime."
"Oh? What did I do?" I replied
dispassionately, trying to keep my anxiety under control.
"You do not know, senor?"
"No, I was just taking a walk when
you picked me up."
"Oh, senor, it is such a shame that
you do not remember. You have violated
the sacred laws of
He led me out of the cell and down a
corridor into a room that had obviously witnessed its share of human
depravity. He pushed a button next to an
electric cord whose bare ends were dangling near a metal bucket half-filled
with water. A gargantuan man with
rippling muscles, a protruding jaw and vacant stare lumbered into the room.
"Ah senor, this is my assistant,
Pedro. I hope I will not need his
services.”
Pedro moved a step closer.
"What work do you do in your
country, senor?"
"I'm a businessman, sir, the
executive vice-president of a retail corporation," I said, handing him my
card.
"Ah, the senor is an important
person," he said, turning to Pedro who nodded like a robot.
"But I think the senor is not
telling the truth," he said with menace.
"He breaks our laws and tells lies.
How can a man like you wear such long hair?" he said contemptuously. "Perhaps the senor is a rock star?"
"Just a businessman on vacation
with my wife," I said.
"Oh, senor has a senora?" he
replied, obviously unhappy I was not alone.
"Yes, she's the daughter of the
ambassador to
I could see him thinking, so I decided
to do business.
"I think there is some way we can
make things right, Senor. Perhaps I was
making a violation of your law, but I am just foolish gringo, senor. I did not know what I was doing. I am sorry I made a mistake. Perhaps I can give you this nice Omega to pay
my fine."
"Ah, I can see the senor is a
reasonable man. It is important to
confess your crimes. But the watch is
not enough, senor. These are serious
charges against you.
“Perhaps the watch and twenty dollars
would be correct,” I said.
"Now the senor understands the
importance of the situation. But there
is one more thing you must give me, senor."
"Yes, what's that?" I replied,
amazed at his greed.
"Your hair,
senor. Such hair is in violation
of the laws of
I was shown a seat in an nearby room
where a barber humorlessly
removed every hair - except the mustache.
The detective appeared and laughed
uproariously at what could only have been a well-worn joke, "Ah Senor, you
look just like Pancho Villa!"
When I got back to the hotel Cindy burst
into tears; she wanted a flower child, not a Pancho Villa look-a-like.
That the police were not in the business
of guaranteeing the safety of the citizenry was a tad unsettling, but the
knowledge that the greased palm neutralized a host of crimes and misdemeanors
made it possible to continue our hedonistic extravaganza. We hit all the mandatory tourist spots and
ingested copious quantities of controlled substances too numerous to
catalogue. Weeks later we crossed the
border at
THE HOLY
MAN JAM
I flew to
I went wherever the flow carried me,
marveling at the weirdness of the straight and psychedelic worlds. One day, walking down
Often I would be tripping and suddenly
someone would enter my energy bubble, or I theirs, and for however long, a few
minutes or days, two lives would be welded together by the intimacy that comes
from sharing a common vision. When it
ended it ended; each unemotionally wandered off into an unknown future.
I never knew where I would sleep or what
I would do from one day to the next: head off into the Sierras with a sleeping
bag and ten pounds of brown rice or spend a week making love with a beautiful
woman in an elegant apartment on Telegraph Hill. Whatever it was, each experience was pervaded
by an infinite sense of richness and promise, a feeling of abundance and
adventure.
But reality, which I preferred to think
of as unreality seemed to enjoy raining on my parade. One day, dressed in an expensive fringed
leather jacket, striped pants and tie-die T-shirt, I was sitting on the fender of
my rig in a posh
"No way.
You're under arrest, buddy. Spread ‘em!”
the officer said gleefully spinning me around and pushing me toward their
vehicle.
My mind entered a state of hyper anxiety because a tiny bag
of grass, two hits of mescaline, a tab of acid, a piece of hash, a pack of Zig
Zag rolling papers and a stone hash pipe were hidden in the breast pocket of
the jacket!
By the grace of God, however, the lining containing the
pocket, had pulled loose from the seams by virtue of excessive use, so when I
leaned against the car it hung in the space between my body and the jacket and
the officer to missed it when he patted me down.
The search completed, I was handcuffed by one officer while
the other opened the back door.
"Watch your head," he said, as he violently kicked
me in the backside sending me crashing headfirst into the steel screen
separating the front from the back of the car.
I was meant to rant
and rave and accuse them of a great injustice to provide them with an opportunity
for further abuse, but I remained silent.
I think my non-response caused them to become aware of their own guilt
because they seemed almost subdued when we arrived at the station.
We entered the building and took the
elevator up to the jail. A light blinked on above a steel door, a buzzer
sounded, and the door swung open. On the
right I noticed a glassed area housing jail
personnel. In a large holding cell on
the left my cuffs were removed and I was left to cool my heels in the company
of a couple of fellow miscreants as the cops sauntered off to start the paper
work.
While contemplating how to rid myself of
the offending items, two burly deputies deposited a huge, wild-eyed, tattooed,
jackbooted Hell's Angel, the type for whom jails are intended, in the holding
cell. Judging by the vibes, he had
probably just murdered his girlfriend, shot a cop, or robbed a bank.
He stood trancelike, staring into some
private hell for a few minutes and then, without warning, ran into the glass
separating the holding from the common area, beating it with his fists,
screaming with rage at the top of his lungs.
All hell broke loose when the officers
returned to subdue him. Secretly hoping
he would bust a couple of heads, I swallowed the dope, quite a feat without
water, ripped the bottom off one of the attorney/visitor phones, stashed the
paraphernalia inside, and sat patiently in the corner hoping the booking would
end before coming on to what promised to be, in the jargon of the times, a
‘bummer.’
Mercifully, twenty minutes later I was
booked, searched, fingerprinted, allowed to pay my fine, and released. When the drugs wore off the following
afternoon I began to think seriously about cleaning up my act.
A couple of weeks later I met a fellow
in a cafe in the Haight who turned me on to two hits of mescaline and told me
about a rock concert at the Family Dog on the Great Highway across from Seal
Rock, next to Playland. "Don't miss
it," he said, "The Dead and Eric Clapton are on the bill."
The parking lot was jammed when I pulled
up just after sunset. I walked across
the highway, sat on the beach, snorted both caps, one in each nostril, and
waited for the explosion.
Expecting to be entertained by the Dead's
weird, happy, psychedelic vibes when I opened the door, I was treated instead
to the sight of Alan Ginsburg French kissing a young man in the
entranceway. The main room was crawling
with spiritual types: ochre-clad Hare Krishnas with drums and cymbals chanting
the maha-mantra, turbaned Sikhs, and healthy granola-fed women with sparkling
eyes, dressed mostly in white, wearing Birkenstocks. On one wall a movie showing Satya Sai Baba
vomiting a huge stone Shiva lingam from his innards played, viewed by a crowd
of otherworldly types.
I noticed Steve Gaskin, former
The vibes were...well, good. A little strange, but good. Along the wall blonde
After wandering around in a daze for a few
minutes an attractive young woman, dressed in white, came up bearing a tray
with fruit juice and banana bread.
"Electric
kool-aid?" I queried cleverly.
She looked at me with adoring eyes,
missing the joke.
"Wow," she said, "are you
beautiful! Your energy is
incredible. What meditation are you
doing?"
"Two hits of mescaline," I said,
her look of devotion changing to one of horror.
"You mean you're high," she said
in disbelief.
"Sure. They told me the Grateful Dead was
playing. I snorted a couple of caps of
mescaline and came to dance. But it's
clear even to me that this isn't a rock concert."
"You're really high on drugs,"
she said. "Really?"
"Sure, why not?"
"You poor dear, don't you know?"
"Don't I know what?' I replied.
"Drugs aren't where it's at."
"OK.
So what's were it's at?"
God. It's the
highest high."
Something in me believed her.
"OK, God. That’s fine,” I said, “So where's God?"
"
"
Yes, my guru is in
"Come on, you don't believe that, do
you?" I replied. "God's a kind of energy, a power, a force. It's not a person."
"It's a person too," she
replied. "But we're not supposed to
argue
with people who don't believe."
"Who's
we?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.
"The devotees," she said
enigmatically.
"What devotees?"
"The devotees of my
guru."
"So who's your guru?"
"Guru Marharaji. Want to see his picture? It's full of shakti."
"What's shakti?"
"Boy you don't know anything, do you! Shakti's energy, divine energy. Here."
She showed me a picture of a teen-age
boy dressed in silks sitting on a throne.”
"That's God?"
“You have to have darshan and get
shaktipat before you can see it," she replied.
"What are these words you're
talking? This isn't English."
"Sanskrit. The language of God."
"God has a special language?"
"That's right, Sanskrit. It comes from
Cynical as I was, some part of me was
fascinated by this young woman and what she had to say.
"So what's this dar...shat?" I asked.
"Darshan," she said.
"OK, darshan.
What is it?"
"Darshan's when the guru gives you the experience of
God."
"You're kidding.
Nobody can do that. It just
happens," I countered.
"I don't argue," she said. "You have to come and see for
yourself.
“Here," she said giving me a card with an address and
telephone number, "come and meditate with us. See for yourself."
A few minutes later I made the acquaintance of a tall
skinny fellow with a turban.
"So what's your trip?" I asked.
"Kundalini, man. Breath of fire."
"Breath of
fire?"
"Yeah, it's like this." He started what seemed like hyperventilating,
his eyes glassing over, the veins in his forehead
popping out.
"So what's that
do?" I asked after he'd finished.
"Wakes up the kundalini," he replied sincerely.
"OK, so what's the kundalini?
"It's like a snake energy in
the spine. It gets waked up and blows
your mind. That's enlightenment."
It was news to me.
"So you enlightened?" I said.
"No," he said sadly, "I'm
not ready yet. I'm still too
impure."
I wandered
off wondering if the poor fellow hadn't done a bit too much acid.
The movie of Sai Baba, a meaty
weird-looking guy with orange clothes and an Afro, started replaying. He was walking in front of hundreds of people
who were reaching out to touch him as if he were a rock star. He stopped in front of someone, waved his
hand several times in a circular motion and a little shower of ‘sacred ash’
poured into the devotee's hand seemingly out of thin air. A picture of one of the Hindu Gods, Ram,
blessed by the avatar continuously generated ash. He produced watches and jewelry from nowhere
like a magician.
"That's pretty weird," I said
to the fellow standing next to me, his hands folded in a prayerful
attitude."
"It's not weird," he said,
offended. "Not if you know who he is."
"So who is he?" I asked.
"He's an avatar," the man
replied.
"So what's an avatar?"
"He's God."
"How can he be God?" I said,
"I just met a woman who said that her guru was God."
"Oh, a lot of people think their
gurus are God," he said with certainty, "but they're deluded. Sai Baba is the one true God. Who can do that?" he said, as the part
where God vomited up a huge phallic stone object started rerunning.
"I don't know," I said,
"probably God."
"There is no God," said a
small clean-shaven fellow with a bald head wearing a purple caftan and carrying
an odd oriental rosary when I asked him about Sai Baba. "There is no God
and there is no self. There is nothing
but bodhi, the suchness. The Hindus are
deluded.”
"What's bodhi?"
"Enlightenment."
"OK, what's enlightenment?"
"He who says doesn't know and he
who knows doesn't say," he replied inscrutably, his hands fairly zipping
around the beads.
"There is one God and his name is
Allah," said a scruffy long-haired hippie who purported to be a Sufi.
"What's a Sufi?" I asked.
A lover of God. God is the Beloved and we are his
lovers."
"You mean sex?
How can you have sex with God?"
"Everyone's God, so when you're having sex, it's with
God," he said employing an irrefutable logic.
"So what you into, man?" I
said to an emaciated young man with sunken eyes who looked like he'd just been
released from
"Macrobiotics," he replied.
"Oh, what's that?"
"Balancing the
yin and yang in your food."
"The yin and
yang?" I replied.
"Do you eat meat," he said
changing the subject.
"Some, why not?"
"If
you don't know, you're beyond help," he replied walking off.
I
must have talked to fifty people about God, gurus, buddhas,
avatars, kundalini, chakras, yin-yang, acupuncture, and meditation before the
event wound down around
A SETBACK
I swore off drugs and decided head for
"Meatballs," she said unable
to conceal her scorn. "Look at them.
Beef on the hoof. This is not spiritual. This is gymnastics."
On a subsequent occasion she showed me a
book with pictures of a different type of yogi. "Look at them," she
said, "the grace, the poise. See
how they aren't really here."
"Aren't here?" I said
bewildered.
"In meditation. They're looking inward at the light
within. This is yoga. It has nothing to do with the body."
It was news to me.
A day later I came across a book
entitled “The Yoga of Knowledge” by an Indian, Swami Vivekananda, who visited
the States around the turn of the century.
As I read, each consciousness-soaked word gave form to the vision I’d
had on the Kuai beach. And, like Linda,
it spoke of the disease of ignorance.
When I put it down I realized with renewed conviction I had to know who
I was.
So I made up my mind to go to
I hunkered down in the row of dealers
and started selling while Inez wandered around looking at the freaks. Within minutes I was surrounded by dozens of
hands thrusting greenbacks in my direction.
As the supply dwindled and my pockets filled with money, I noticed two
young blacks worming their way to the front of the crowd. Suddenly one lunged at me, his knife slashing
my jacket pocket, sending a flurry of greenbacks into the air. I swung the nearly empty bag at the second
whose blade cut it open spilling the dope.
As the crowd groped for the bonanza I took off at full speed, powered by
adrenaline and a tab of acid. When I got
to the corner of the grandstand I took the twenty-five foot leap onto the
freeway into the path of an oncoming taxi which squealed to a stop inches
away. I climbed in, thrust a twenty in
the face of the driver and gave my assailants the finger as we sped off to the
Village where I changed, stashed the money, and returned to the concert just as
Jimi Hendrix was bashing a flaming guitar to bits on the stage.
We went to a party after the concert and
just as Inez climbed into bed the cops showed up. I was barely able to get dressed before being
cuffed and tossed in a paddy wagon with my fellow revelers. I plead guilty to disorderly conduct, paid
the fine, and when I walked out into the early morning air, I realized that I
was on the wrong path.
I gave Inez ten thousand, kissed her goodbye
and flew to
I woke up, grabbed my stash, and walked
down the river. Slowly, ceremoniously, I
threw my dope into the river. As the
last bit passed from view I saw a wriggling snakelike bluish light emerge from
the depths, hover over the surface for what seemed an eternity, and rise up
glimmering and winking until it merged into the first glow of dawn suffusing
the top of
Within a week I walked into Icelandic
Air's
THE THRILL IS GONE
Though treated to faint glimmerings, I
did not know that life was not about being different from who I was, but about
understanding why I was as I was. So
when I had the dream, threw away the dope, and saw the mystic snake rise out of
the river, I resolved to pursue a purer style of life. If I had to do it all over, I would not do it
differently because disillusionment and broken resolutions are as important as
inspiration and kept ones…if they teach the why.
An improved and subtler version of the
alcoholic, the druggie, though a kinder, gentler fool was doomed to
extinction. Yes, I went to a rock
concert on the Isle of Wight, a wet miserable typically English affair, hit the
clubs in Amsterdam, Paradiso's and the like, smoked a bit of hash, the European
equivalent of pot, had a couple of hot little episodes with the ladies, but the
not high days started to outnumber the high days and I noticed a curious fact:
the not high days were sometimes higher than the high days…which made me
suspect that something other than dope was making me feel good. Before long I would have to face the
blasphemous prospect that dope was bringing me down.
I bought a bicycle in Paris and worked
my way down the French coast to Spain, stopped off in Madrid where I initiated
a bizarre bit of karma of involving the President of the United States, of
which more will be said later, and ended up in Malaga where I caught the ferry
for Morocco, surrendering my hair at the border.
IT IS NOT HERE ON EARTH I AM
SEEKING
After another love affair in Tangiers, I
shucked my hippie rags, bought a jellabia and caught the Marrakech
Express. In Marrakech I discreetly
smoked hash in the cafes, drank opium tea made from poppies readily available
in the souks, traded books with travelers, rode camels in the desert, and
socialized with consumer society’s flotsam and jetsam, an assortment of crazy
and incurable romantics in search of pleasure and adventure: a pair of lipstick
lesbians from New York on vacation from the modeling trade, a diminutive bald
dealer from California named Jason who walked through the streets wildly
banging on a drum, a born-again Cherokee from Muskogee, Oklahoma on the lam
from a bank robbery in New York who whiled away his days spouting scripture, a
merchant seaman from San Francisco who appeared later at critical points in my
life, and a fellow whose presence in Morocco was probably a consequence of
reading Dune on Acid, a tall rich upper middle-class WASP from LA who spoke
Arabic, wore a blue burnoose and turban, and tried to encourage me to join a
camel-riding band of revolutionary guerrillas who hung out in the desert to the
south.
Exotic as it all was, the more I played
the less meaningful it was. As the
libertine extravaganza slowly wound down I found myself turning down nights of
love for the silence of the desert where, in sacred moments I became acutely
aware of a wonderful seed sprouting in the depths, the spiritual force striving
to articulate itself. Because it had
saved me from myself so many times I started to think of It
as a friend and guide. And one day,
sitting alone on a rock in the desert at dawn, the Friend called me Ram, the
one who revels in the Heart.
This power, the exquisitely beautiful
"thumb-sized Person sitting in the Heart" as the Upanishad says,
attracted me like nothing else and set in motion a new way of thinking which
would slowly transform me into an ascetic and a mystic. A power longing to be known, it created a
restlessness no earthly experience could satisfy, an immense longing for
liberation.
Bored with Marrakech, I took a bus to a
small village of simple domed whitewashed houses tucked away in the Atlas
Mountains, checked into a tourist hotel and visited one of the local cafes
where a skinny frizzy blonde astrologer from Philadelphia, who must have
intuited my soft spot for eccentrics, made a bee-line for my table.
George, a walking talking guide to the
galaxies, had the whole planetary system and beyond wired. As we sipped our tea I was informed that
Venus conjunct mars in the something house had decreed our meeting. The stars also insisted we take a trip into
the mountains to search the remains of a lost civilization. Always one for a bit of a hike, I agreed to
go and met her the next morning after breakfast.
As we climbed she revealed the startling cosmic information
that we were fated to take acid and make love.
There was a time, in the not terribly distant past, when such a
prospect, even with a skinny girl like George, might have proved an interesting
proposition, but I found myself remarkably disinterested. George, and indeed the whole world, seemed a
million miles away. I politely made my
excuses, further endearing me to her.
Perhaps she figured I was playing hard to get, a critical planet gone
retrograde for a few minutes. Arriving
at the crest of a peak with an awesome view of the mountains and the desert
beyond, we sat down to take a break and, in a well-choreographed move, George
broke out her stash.
"OK, man," she said with
complete authority, "At exactly nine-forty three we're supposed to take
this dope."
"George, I've got something to tell
you."
"OK, Jim, let it fly."
"With all due respect to the
planets, I don't feel much like taking any more acid."
Her face dropped.
"Suit yourself, Jim," she said
coldly, "but you have to take responsibility."
"For what George? Responsibility for
what?"
"For fucking up
the karma, man. This is supposed
to happen. You take the karma."
"What karma, George?"
"Look, Jim, can I level with
you?" she said, the wheels spinning.
She was not going to give up without a fight.
"Sure, George, let me have it."
"Everything in this whole fucking cosmos is connected to
everything else. Dig? And that means if one little thing doesn't do
what it's supposed to do it causes all kinds of problems for everything
else."
"What you're saying, George,"
I interrupted, "is that you'll be bummed out if I don't trip with you,
right?"
"It's not just me, Jim, it's the whole cosmos that suffers in many ways. You can't fight the stars. You fight the stars and you come out a
loser. That's the way it is. Now, we've got ten minutes until exactly nine
forty three and I want you to think long and hard about your decision and I'll
be back to get your reply after I take a pee."
She got up and wandered off behind some
boulders.
I did not think very long or very hard
because it really did not matter if I tripped or not. I was inclined against it because I objected
to the way she tried to work the guilt angle.
"Well, you've got two
minutes," she said appearing from behind the rock, "did you make up
your mind?"
"No, George, I haven't. On one hand I don't want to fuck up the
cosmos and on the other I don't feel that much like tripping. I've tripped enough for ten people in the
last couple of years and I can't see it's going to change me that much."
"One minute, Jim, you've got one minute. Don't blow it."
I decided to let the deadline pass, just
to see what she would do next when the Voice said, "Take the dope,
Jim."
So I said, "OK" and George
handed me a tab of acid with a big smile.
I made her day. And I did not
know when I popped George's tab at exactly
I do not pretend to be an authority, but
here is the short version of my theory on the psychology of drugs: in the
beginning there is the you that wants to be different
from it is. Then you ingest the stuff
that makes you different, ‘high’ in drug vernacular. Finally, the drug wears off and the different
you changes back to the original you.
However if you are not the boring you in the first place, you will not
mind if the boring you stays bored.
Therefore, you will have no need for drugs.
As George's acid coursed through my veins I discovered I was
not whoever or whatever was getting high.
Within minutes telltale changes occurred and the doors of perception
opened on the rich inner world, where the waving, pulsating, Life Force
strained against the thin film of matter struggling to contain its energy.
But I did not change at all!
As the drug generated the standard hallucinations,
I observed the mind expanding like a rapid-fill helium balloon, pervading
subtler layers of existence, producing an indescribable lightness of being,
until it dissolved entirely in the Emptiness, creating delicious ecstasy.
But it did not get close to me!
Suddenly I realized I was seated on an
infinitely high inner mountain, one so high it was not high at all,
indifferently watching an insignificant display of psychedelic
pyrotechnics.
I was much more than the paltry body
sitting on the earthy mountain top, or the expanding pleasure-filled mind.
I was the unblinking all-seeing Eye of
Knowledge, the unchanging Center around which the mind and the world, like
far-away planets, spin.
George had her day too. We did not make love but she stumbled on a monstrous fossilized vertebrae, perhaps a dinosaur
part, which she lovingly lugged down the mountain, her interest in astrology
vindicated. After all, had not the
planets said we would uncover lost treasures from the past?
Apart from the pleasure, I think I
strove to possess and enjoy things to find out what they were. And I discovered a fact that should turn off
everyone rushing around out there in the world looking for happiness: once an
object or activity is understood for what it is, it looses its power. It was like that with money and sex. And then drugs. Everything here is limited, but the human
heart is unlimited. It will not rest
until it has discovered itself.
To say I gave up those things misses the
point. I lived through them, like a
needle passing through many layers of fabric, emerging on the other side. All resolutions are ultimately futile because
will power is not enough. Vanity made me
think I could overcome these things, but live it to the fullest and life will
take everything in its own time.
It is not up to us.
Though I would take a few more trips,
more or less out of habit, the experience on the mountain provided such a clear
and powerful affirmation of who I really was I could no longer take drugs
seriously. So I decided to make life my
drug and hitchhike alone to
A week after the trip with George I
was sitting cross-legged in the courtyard of an old
Catholic church warmed by the slanting rays of the autumnal sun in a small town
on the edge of the desert. The shadows
deepened, the sky glowed electric blue, and an orange aura appeared over the
mountains as the sun dipped below the horizon.
My consciousness emptied and an unearthly silence descended. Suddenly the mind began spinning like a top,
picking up momentum, compacting itself into a tiny point of consciousness. Then, as if it knew exactly what it was
doing, it left the body through the left eye and hovered in front of my face a
few inches away!
Like a space ship, it took off at
astronomical speed propelled by an unknown force. Try as I might I cannot find words to
describe what happened as it traveled through myriad worlds gathering
experience. All I can say is that I was
left with a strong conviction that our little planet is only one of many worlds
evolving in a sea of transcendental consciousness.
After
a while it returned and I saw it hovering in front of a bearded man sleeping in
the back of a local cafe, as if trying to enter his body. My awareness caused it to appear in front of
my left eye, hover like a hummingbird, pierce the center of the eye, expand to
the size of the body, and come to rest, its mission completed.
Tanned and fit, wearing a jellabia and
sandals, looking every inch the later day mystic, I hiked to the edge of town
and stuck out my thumb, a small French W.W.I. army pack on my back, a large
bamboo flute adorned with zodiacal signs slung over my shoulder. I would like to report adventure, intrigue,
and romance, but the
Different cultures view the same symbols
differently. In the West for example, a
cloudy day symbolizes unhappiness, confusion, and depression. But in
The Saharan air burned away the
heaviness and meatiness in the body, cleansed the breath, working its way
inward to gently purify the cells. I
felt radiant, alive, like never before, as toxins began to purify. One day in a small town near the Algerian
border I took my first hammam, Turkish bath.
Sitting in the tub I noticed a greenish film collecting on the surface
and called the attendant. "Monsieur, what is this?" I said in French.
"Monsieur is a smoker. That is the nicotine," he replied.
"I haven't smoked for two
years," I replied.
"It does not matter," he
replied trundling out a well-worn story.
"I have been the attendant in these
baths for many years, Monsieur. One day
a man came in and, like you, saw the green film and he became very angry. He said the tubs are filthy, that we do not
keep our bath clean. I said "You
are a smoker, Monsieur," as I said to you.
But he denied it. Then he
remembered that he had smoked twenty years before. The nicotine was still in his body."
The vast expanse and the endless horizon
exert a magical effect on the mind.
There are moments when outward and inward blend, the mind empties,
sublime emotions come into play and an overwhelming sense of reality informs
every perception.
The words "Inshallah," Lord
Willing, appear frequently in the speech of the locals. A statement is made and the Lord
remembered. Life cannot proceed without
the blessing. Uninclined to pray at
regular intervals like my Muslim brothers, my soul prayed when it felt the urge
- which was often.
One day a man driving a camel cart
picked me up and called me ‘Sufi.’ I nod
and smile because I understand. I am here, I belong to the inner desert. I am a mystic by default.
At the Algerian border the police
smiled, said "LSD! LSD!" and gave a big thumbs up. I continued on, day after day, making
respectable progress, a persistent current of joy running through my being.
About three weeks into the trip, I
caught a ride in eastern
Then I realized that my body, squeezed
between these two forces was hovering a full six inches off the ground! The mind raced, fracturing the spell, and the
body dropped to earth and broke the silence which jiggled the ring of eyes, a
herd of goats intently staring in my direction. Hoping to repeat the experience, I lay totally
still for a long time but nothing happened.
A visitor from another world, I walked
for several days through the countryside until the mind gradually merged into
physical reality. I made my way to Tunis
where I hung out for a few days and moved on, working my way across Libya to
Bhenghazi where a young blonde Englishwoman, working in her father's oil firm,
spied me walking through the market, and invited me for tea. Love, a gift, came easily and we spent two
idyllic weeks together, our tearful departure one of the most tender and
romantic moments of my life.
CHAPTER 3
LAND OF
THE PHARAOHS
THE TRICK FROM
People in Islamic countries often find
it difficult to get along with each other, their list of hatreds stretching
back to the beginning of time. A British
post-war politician, Clement Atlee, once perceptively and humorously remarked
that politics (he might have included religion) was the ‘organization of
hatred.’ Perhaps hatred keeps you on
your toes so somebody does not sneak up and snitch your camel or your
wife. I found it peculiar that in a land
where the name of Allah the Merciful is on every set of lips, hatred, cruelty
and brutality have evolved to the level of fine arts.
My desire to continue overland to the
Much to my surprise, at the entrance
to the plane I was warmly greeted by a rolly-polly Babushka type with the
calves of a front lineman who might well have been recently recruited from a
Ukrainian potato collective. Two
disheveled pilots, sitting in the cockpit of their aging
inattentively-maintained Illyushin jet, were laughing and joking with an
attractive blonde stewardess, the unmistakable smell of distilled spirits
wafting out of the cabin. We taxied down
the runway, the plane straining mightily into Ghadaffi's none-to-friendly
skies, vibrating like an overloaded washing machine on spin cycle. Scarcely had the seat-belt light been turned
off than the vodka started flowing.
Wishing to keep a clear head in the land of the pharaohs, I refrained.
My heart leapt to my throat as the
Emerging from the
dinghy terminal, contemplating the interface between the first and third
worlds, the embarrassing moment when haves and have-nots cease to be ideas and
actually touch, my state changes.
Does a five dollar taxi ride actually mean life or death to the children
of this emaciated hawk-eyed fellow pulling so frantically at my sleeve? I sympathize with the tourist's propensity to
throw money at the problem, the insistence on being met inside the terminal by
a well-dressed well-spoken young man from the travel agency, the desire to be
ceremoniously whisked from the airport in an air-conditioned limousine,
deposited safely on the steps of a luxury hotel.
I could have ridden the limo, but it
was the incorrect path, not out of mawkish liberal sympathy with the struggling
and dispossessed, but because somewhere along the line, incrementally and
imperceptibly, an island of awareness had opened in the mind, a point from
which to dispassionately view the world.
To nurture that awareness and redeem myself it was important not to
insulate against unpleasantness, mandatory that I rub the soul raw on life's
realities - hands and knees over cobblestones to
I did not wade into that angry mass to
lose myself in an
I cautiously stepped off the curb and
picked my way through the army of touts like a soldier gingerly crossing a
mine-field, anger and paranoia seeping in.
Taxis are not the ticket when you are paranoid; one imagines every turn
seemingly leading to a disreputable section of town where worst fears become
realities.
So I caught the bus and sat in
silence, looking out the window at the unaesthetic grayness of the slummy
polluted city, contemplating the sheer volume of unfortunate humanity. I had no need for further information after
the scene at the terminal, but the bus was a good read of the nation's psyche;
what I saw was little cause for optimism, every eighth or ninth person a
soldier, fully armed.
I got down near the Nile Hilton and
began searching a traveler’s hotel but drew a blank. Spying a park on the other side of the river,
I set out to cross a bridge a quarter of a mile downstream. At the bridge approach, challenged by sullen
soldiers sporting automatic weapons, I showed my visa, and was allowed to pass. Shaken, I retreated to the deserted park and
sat a bench facing the river lost in thought as traffic ground humorously along
the other side. Based on recent evidence
I faced the possibility that my romantic sojourn in the land of the Pharaohs
was going to be a wash.
Coming out of my thoughts I found the
sun setting and myself homeless.
Cautiously exploring the park, I discovered a secluded and secure spot,
stashed my valuables under a rock, spread the mat, and slept without incident,
awakening rested and refreshed shortly after dawn.
After bundling the mat, I sat in the morning
sun on the riverbank near the bridge watching the city come to life, the
flute's full rich tones eliciting no response from occasional passersby. Finally a lovely woman, balancing a woven
reed tray full of oranges on her head, came up, smiled, placed two on my bench,
and proceeded on her way.
As the sun labored above the skyline,
I gave thanks to Allah, ate the oranges, and wandered up the road wondering
what the day would bring, entering, twenty minutes later, the courtyard of a
shabby complex of low-income high-rise tenements where I sat on a bench under a
huge tree, hoping to strike up conversation and pick up hotel information.
A group of small children
gathered. I played a happy tune as they
inched closer and was soon encircled by a ring of appreciative onlookers. Sporting wavy blonding hair, beard, jellabia,
and bamboo flute, I must have seemed more an apparition than flesh and
blood. Against a backdrop of military
vehicles, soldiers, anti-aircraft-gun-adorned rooftops and sandbagged buildings,
perhaps they viewed me as comic relief.
Sucking images from the air, a new
musical style emerged: Saharan psychedelic.
The crowd swelled and I wondered how it would end, not knowing I should
have polished off the tune, bowed, and beat a hasty retreat. Welded to the spot, my destiny drew near.
Suddenly, as if conjured by a malevolent
djin, the vibes about-faced and from the back of the crowd I heard the strident
voice of poverty, injustice and sexual frustration yelling, "Passaport! Passaport!"
"Passaport!
Passaport!”
A shower of pebbles
from the kids, like telltales, indicate a storm. A memory of the
The music stops. Surrounded by a wild, excited crowd, two
nasty young men are in my face, menacing, pulling my jellabia and shouting,
"Passaport! Passaport!"
"No way man, no way. Fuck you!" I think, stepping back, my
strength waning.
Then...hope! Four battered blue-black police vans race
into the courtyard and brake abruptly, vomiting bodies. Long leather straps flailing, the boys in
khaki disperse the crowd.
Inshallah, someone called the cops!
Bumping through the streets in the back of the van, the
hostile stares of my fellow detainees suggest I am responsible for the sudden
change in fortune. Deposited on stationhouse
steps, I am ushered into the cavernous interior and find my self at the end of
the cue, blessed with ample time to contemplate an uncertain future.
A humorless pen-wielding scribe stands at a tall desk at the
head of the line entering the accused’s particulars in large dog-eared
ledger. The paperwork completed, the
hapless subject is ushered down a long hall and disappears. The clank of steel sends shudders down my
spine. The line shrinks,
images of
"English, English! Speaking English!"
I say frantically.
He looks around uneasily, unsure of the
next move.
"English, English!" I repeat.
Dead silence, and time expands into
eternity.
A door opens and a well-dressed cop, an
officer, fills the corridor with his presence.
"What's the matter?" he says
in excellent English, sauntering over. "There's been a mistake, sir,"
I say, verging on obsequious. "I've been arrested for playing the flute in
public."
He looks at me as if I were mad, says something to the scribe and ushers me into
his office.
Contemplating his amused countenance, I
relax.
The captain seemed supremely
uninterested as I recounted the morning's events in self-serving detail.
"You see the people are very
unhappy these days," he said "They think every foreigner is a
Jewish spy. You are German?"
"No American. My grandfather was German."
"And what will happen to
them," I said, amazed at my concern.
"Nothing. We will leave them for a few hours and send
them home. Public demonstrations are
forbidden," he replied. "And where do you stay?"
"Nile Hilton," I said
jokingly.
"Seriously," he said.
"I just got in and have been unable
to find a hotel. I was looking for one
when this business happened."
"Perhaps you are poor and can't
afford a proper hotel."
"No, it's not that," I said showing him my money
pouch, "I could stay at the Hilton.
I'm looking for a small clean hotel in a neighborhood where I can
experience a bit of your culture. I hate
tourist hotels.”
He smiled. "You
are in the wrong area," he replied helpfully, directing me to a group of
local hotels on the other side of the river about half-an-hour's walk.
"Thank-you," I said. "I assume I'm free to go."
"Why not have a
cup of tea?" he said.
"I have always wanted to know about
So we spent the next half-hour talking
sports, politics, religion, and women.
Convinced someone up there loved me but
obviously shaken, I followed instructions which took me to a group of small
hotels catering to locals, one of which sported a neon sign with a palm tree
and the sentimentally appealing name ‘Hotel Hawaii.’ Within minutes I was ensconced in a small,
clean, reasonably-priced room on the third floor with a verandah looking out
over a souk which provided ample local color.
I deposited the pack, showered, grabbed the flute and hit the
streets. Things were looking up.
Having come up with the short end of the
stick in the Sinai the previous year, Egyptians were angry. I walked in the crowded downtown area for
nearly an hour before I saw a smile, a little boy whose father treated him to a
hot buttered sweet potato from a street vendor.
About
After wandering aimlessly for about
thirty minutes I ascended a small hill offering an excellent vista of the city,
an easy trek up a gentle incline. In a few
minutes, about two hundred feet from the top, I encountered a barbed wire fence
hung with signs in Arabic placed at regular intervals, certain they said, ‘Keep
out!’
Though denied the all around views the
top provided, memory of the morning's folly suggesting discretion the better
part of valor, I pulled up twenty yards short of the fence, parked my bottom on
a rock, and took in a city stretching as far as the eye could see, melting
mysteriously into the Sahara at the horizon.
The maternal domes and phallic minarets of many mosques added an air of
old world inscrutability to the picture, inflaming my romantic soul, inspiring
a haunting melody.
I played for a few minutes when suddenly
the mind's eye saw my bullet-riddled body rolling down the hill! Trying to grasp the full significance of this
disturbing image, I stopped playing and heard the metallic sound of a round of
ammunition being injected into the chamber of a gun. Turning around, I found myself confronting a
soldier with his rifle trained on me!
With great deliberation I put the flute on the ground and raised my
hands, signal for three or four heavily-armed soldiers to emerge from the brush
along the fence. Two climbed over,
covered by their companions, one picking up the flute, the other herding me up
the hill, the tip of his rifle jabbing the small of my back.
Experiencing a fairly
serious case of anxiety, unable to figure our destination because there was no
sign of life as we approached the summit, and suffering the reason-distorting
effects of a powerful surge of adrenaline, for a moment I foolishly thought of
bolting, but wisely reigned in the overtaxed mind.
About fifty feet short
of the summit we approached an artfully camouflaged entrance near a couple of
large boulders in a clump of brush, which, activated by an electronic device,
opened automatically.
Ushered into the bowels of the earth, I
was confronted with a reasonably large room filled with communications
equipment manned by half-a-dozen soldiers.
After a rough strip-search and examination of my documents, I was shown
a wooden chair under a bare bulb. It
was like a scene out of a bad movie and I half expected to hear the hackneyed
line, "Where were you on the night of...?"
Sporting a button-down shirt, polyester
slacks, baseball cap, and carrying a snappie, my story might have carried a
little more weight: tourist wanders off the beaten track. But, minus the flute, to the untrained eye I
could have easily passed as a rank and file camel jock.
Discounting their justifiable paranoia,
my story, at least on the surface did not make sense because I was not real,
camel jock just the latest in a long line of honestly-come-by
inauthenticities. People do not change
identities like a chameleon unless there is something to hide. I was not hiding the obvious, an identity as
a Jewish spy, but I was hiding none-the-less.
From my self.
Somehow I garnered the impression that
the niceties of our legal system, Miranda, habeus corpus, and a free call to an
attorney of one's choice, sensible as they are, were not excessively popular in
Egyptian legal circles. This was war and
they had just snagged a scumbag Jew.
Though family stock on both sides for
several generations is pure WASP, I had occasionally been told by close friends
that my features, particularly in the nasal area, could pass for Semitic. This, coupled with tanned skin, jellabia, and
insensitive choice of location for an afternoon stroll, lent justifiable
credence to their suspicions. Tourists
sit in air-conditioned bars, take group tours to the pyramids, squander their
hard-earned capital in the souks, dine in fancy restaurants, and wallow in the
brothels.
An officer who spoke good English
interrogated me. I told him that I was a
businessman on holiday, omitting the story of the morning brush with the law,
but including the stop in the cafe for a smoke, figuring the truth might play
well: stoned hippie stumbles on sensitive military installation.
"What are you doing here?" he
asked.
"I was taking a walk, saw this
little hill, thought I'd get a view of the city."
"But did you not know that this was
a military base?"
"No. I didn't. I saw the signs on the fence and figured they
said ‘keep out’ so I did not cross. If
your man hadn't showed himself I wouldn't have known anything. I rested a few minutes, played the flute, and
was about to leave."
In the background an examination of the
flute was in progress.
Then out of the blue he
said, "So what do you think of President Nixon?"
Dumfounded, I replied, “I don't have any politics, sir."
"Everyone has politics," he said menacingly.
I was too frightened to see what he was getting at:
He nodded to a soldier standing behind me and I felt a
searing pain as the butt of a rifle crashed into the back of my neck. When I regained my seat and my composure, he
said, "Everyone has an opinion about Nixon."
It seemed reasonable to develop an opinion.
"Well," I said picking my way cautiously, "I
don't think he's an honest man."
He seemed interested. ”People say, "Would you by a used
car from this man?" He missed the
joke so I tried again.
"People ask, ‘Would you by an old
camel from this man?’"
The hint of a smile crossed his face.
"Honestly, I don't know that
much. I live in
"So what do you think about
"I don't know anything about
Suddenly I found myself sitting on the
floor, the chair kicked out from under me.
"I do not believe you," he said,
his voice quivering with anger as he loomed menacingly over me. It suddenly dawned on me what was going on in
his head.
I started to get up but he viciously
kicked me down.
"Are you a Jew?"
“No way."
"You look like a Jew."
"I am not a Jew. I was born in
"So what do you think of Jews?"
At this point he gestured to another
soldier who came over, received instructions and left the room with a companion
and my passport, giving me time to think about my reply.
The energy changed and it seemed I’d been
through the worst.
"So what do you think of Jews?"
"Not much," I said meaning I
didn't have an opinion - which I didn't. "You mean you don't like
Jews?"
"You see, sir, I don't know any
Jews. Where I come from there are no
Jews. But people in
He seemed familiar with this view.
"They are pigs," he said with
complete contempt, violently hitting the table with a baton. "Pigs!"
Nearby several
clearly-baffled men speaking in low tones clustered around the flute, tapping
it on a table, carefully examining the inside, holding it up to the light,
poking it with a knife, looking for my transmitter, secret codes, and cyanide
capsules.
"And what about that?" said my
interrogator, indicating the flute.
"It's only a flute. Shall I show you how it works?"
"He nodded and gestured toward the
men, one of whom brought the flute.
The sweet full tones of ‘Row, Row, Row
your Boat’ oozed from the big bamboo flute and the bunker went silent.
"It's an old folk song from my
country. Would you
like to hear the words?’’
To my surprise, he nodded.
When I said, “Life is just a dream,” I distinctly
noticed a softening around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
The interrogation abruptly stopped and I
sat alone in the center of the room as the men went about their business. For the next two hours I was treated to a
practical demonstration in the relativity of time, seconds stretching to eons
while battalions of angry and fearful thoughts goose-stepped across my
consciousness.
Eventually the two men returned, said a
few words to the captain, and went to their stations.
The captain approached.
"It is as you say. We have checked with the CIA and you are not
a spy. I am sorry for the inconvenience,
but war is war. Perhaps you should not
smoke the hashish. My driver will take
you to your hotel. Do not mention this
place to anyone, do you understand?" he said, handing back my
passport.
I nodded.
I followed the driver down the hill to a
jeep parked on a nearby side street.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of the hotel. Oddly, it seemed to carry a sleazy, almost
sinister, vibe. I was glad to see it
none-the-less, chalked the perception up to lingering paranoia from the day's
events, and dragged my exhausted and aching body up the stairs to the quiet
sanctuary of my room.
I sat on the verandah as the sun set,
watching the activity in the bazaar, listening to a bad recording of call to
prayers crackling from a faulty loudspeaker wired to the minaret of the local
mosque, musing on the old days when the muezzin sang in his own voice. A crow landed on the railing of an adjacent
verandah mindlessly cawing. Unconscious
and hectic as it all was, I took great solace in the noise of the city winding
down. At last the day was over!
Exhausted, I stumbled into the room and
fell into a deep sleep, only to be awakened a few minutes later by insistent
pounding on the door. Thinking the army
had changed its mind, I jumped up, grabbed my pack and headed for the verandah
and a quick exit over the rooftops when the Voice, on vacation all day, said,
"Open the door, Jim."
I dropped the pack and opened the door.
An obese man with beady eyes, three days
stubble on slack jowls and food-stained jellabia, the kind of person only a
mother could love, lumbered carelessly into the room, stopped in front of me,
reached into the hood of his jellabia, extracted a small wad of money, and
offered it to me. As I inched back to
put myself out range of his decaying breath, he grabbed me in a bear hug and
planted a sloppy kiss on my lips.
The cops, OK, the
military, maybe, but this? Full
of rage, I wiggled free, stepped back, and threw a blow that connected solidly,
sending him careening out the door and across the hall where he collapsed in a
heap against the wall. Letting fly a
stream of invective, I slammed the door, locked it, and lay on the bed shaking.
No sooner had I regained my composure
than another barrage of knocking shook the door. Thinking it might be the lover boy with the
cops, I again contemplated the alternative exit, but the Voice repeated
"Open the door, Jim."
I reluctantly followed advice and was
confronted with a second man, not quite as disgusting as the first, but with
similar intentions. Before he could make
any moves I slammed the door hard in his face.
Seems I'm a slow learner. After the third episode bells started ringing. The Hotel Hawaii, so innocent and peaceful
during the day, transformed itself into a male whorehouse when the sun
set. And, in a realization that put me
in such a state I did not know whether to laugh or cry I was the trick from
Judging the situation not
life-threatening and too weary to dig up alternative accommodations, I jammed
the couch and a chest of drawers between the door and a wall, reducing the
possibility of forcible entry to manageable odds and fell into a deep sleep,
awaking early to a real life nightmare, one that had me longing for the
relative pleasures of a military interrogation or life in the slammer. The body, barely moveable, was on fire,
molten sand coursing through the veins!
I dragged myself up and looked in the mirror to discover I was covered
from head to toe with ugly red welts.
The bedbug is a pernicious insect, the
bite not particularly serious unless he is diseased, a
distinct possibility in rat-infested
Once in
As one would imagine, life is cheap in
My luck seemed to be running out;
perhaps it was time to bag it. But the
Voice, which had been working overtime recently, said, "Hang in there
Jim."
"OK," I thought, "It
can't get any worse."
But I was so wrong.
While my straight clothes, reserved for visas
and special events, were getting a proper pressing at a little tailor shop
around the corner, I ran down the local dealer, purchased enough opium to kill
a horse, and had my hair trimmed.
Returning to the hotel, I showered and changed - Bedouin to businessman
in the blink of an eye.
When I stopped at the desk to drop off
the key, the clerk exhibited signs of what could only be called awe. Whether it was my makeover, the story of the
night's events, or a combination of both, I will never know.
Next I checked into a posh
colonial-style hotel with hardwood floors, immaculate tiled baths, high ceilings with brass-fitted fans and dark mahogany
blades, tall generous windows with louvered shutters, huge four poster beds, a
snooty staff, and spendy prices.
A scientist obtaining chemicals for an
experiment, a doctor supplying a prescription, not a low-life junkie,
knowledge, not depravity, sent me to the street to score. So when I undressed and lay on the cool clean
white sheets under the ceiling fan, the soft light and sounds of the city
filtering in through thick wooden shutters, and ingested the opium, I was not
blindly and unconsciously groping for nirvana.
I knew exactly where it was and how to get there. With the help of the poppy my consciousness
lifted out of the body to the point where the bites were too distant to
scratch. Within minutes I rediscovered
that inner dimension where pleasure bubbles up in endless self-generating
waves, wiping away even the memory of pain.
A couple of days later, I re-entered the
body. The bites, still ugly as sin, had
lost their sting, the wad of opium reduced to the size of a raisin. I was eager to get on with my life, such as
it was, but was not feeling well; I had not eaten for two days and was
experiencing a hard pain in my bowels.
When I examined it, my stool, ordinarily inert waste product, proved to
be an orgy of life, host to hundreds of wiggling maggot-like white worms!
As one might suspect, the third world
takes a reasonably casual approach to public health. In Rajasthan, India's western desert, the
dentist squats by the side of the road on a small mat surrounded by the tools
of his trade: a little hand-painted sign showing red lips and white teeth, a
couple of pairs of dusty dentures which he will graciously consent to wipe with
his shirttail should you wish to fit them, a few metal picks, and several pairs
of pliers. For a pittance, upwards of a
dollar, you can relieve yourself of an offending molar, an unpleasant
incisor. You squat, mouth open; he peers
in, identifies the culprit, grabs the pliers and yanks.
In those days
As I suffered the cure and parasites
by the score met their untimely fate, I contemplated my options: plan ‘a’ had
me on the next available flight to New York , a
cop-out; plan ‘b’ saw me booking the next available flight to Bombay, an
eminently reasonable idea, and plan ‘c,’ would take me up the Nile into the
Sudan, down to Uganda, over to Kenya, and across the Indian Ocean to Bombay -
total folly. And my
heart's desire.
Though I have since changed my
philosophy and learned to cut my losses, I just could not see heading back to
the States, tail between my legs. The
flights to
In my rush to get out I took the milk
run, a boxcar without window panes featuring tightly packed rows of straight
backed wooden benches. As the train inched out of the station I wondered if it was
truly more sensible to put my life in jeopardy in the land of the pharaohs than
to subject it to the vacuous world of TV, Kleenex, and Lycra Spandex? Had my hatred of plastic, which mocks a
psyche weaned on millions of years of organic life, been the ultimate cause of
my present torture, rubbing elbows with the most humorless sullen God-forsaken
human beings I had ever encountered? After about twenty seconds I definitely
wished I were back in mom's Formica kitchen drinking a coke.
For two hours nobody spoke. Hostility, so thick you could cut it with a
knife, gave lie to the liberal notion of a stalwart, simple, fun-loving
peasantry; I had obviously read too much Marxist propaganda in college. These people were as hard as the benches on
which they sat, as unfeeling as the desert that sent its stinging sand raining
into our faces. Yet, in spite of it all
I was happy to be leaving a city that seemed to have only ill will for a
good-hearted but naive traveler.
Traveling a game played with
time. You find yourself in a time bound
world, your destiny rolling out like a ribbon in front, the past receding into
the distance behind. The trick is to
find the still point, the here and now moment when everything is in perfect
balance. Get ahead of yourself and you
suffer. Fall into the past, you
suffer. Like the pole a tightrope walker
uses to maintain balance, you carefully adjust the past and the future to keep
the mind awake and centered. Then things
are known as they are, the simple profundity of existence fully appreciated.
For a few hours I achieved that state
in spite of the ache in my guts and the torturous conditions. The memory of the ugly city receded into the
past balanced by the vision of ancient
Things seemed to be picking up when I
found a seat in a second-class compartment next to a window with a pane, but my
bliss was short-lived. After about an
hour I noticed everyone in the compartment staring suspiciously at me,
awakening much-too-recent memories. I
tried to ignore them, but to no avail.
When the tension reached a certain pitch, as if under orders, a soldier,
clutching a rifle, sitting near the door on the opposite side of the
compartment came over and demanded to see the pack wedged between my feet. Had I been driven by a hidden force to
purchase this World War I French army pack several months ago in a
I undid the straps and gently snapped my
blanket like a carpet merchant, all eyes tracking my movements. Next I removed the velvet cover from my I
Ching, scrolled through the pages, and lifted it heavenward, saying
"Allah" to indicate that it was a holy book.
The moment I spoke the Lord's name a
well-dressed man passing in the aisle stopped to observe.
I modeled the dress shirt and tie. No smiles, but the energy was not getting worse. Finally I dry brushed my teeth with a yellow
toothbrush. Just as I ran out of
possessions and ideas the man in the aisle said, "Well, done! Bravo!
An excellent performance!" in perfect English
English.
He stepped through the door, filling the
compartment with his presence, speaking Arabic and chiding, perhaps scolding
the passengers, rendering them docile as lambs.
I breathed a sigh of relief and joined him for tea in the dining car.
"What did you tell them," I
asked, once we were sitting comfortably in the diner.
"I told them they should behave as
if you were a guest. It is our tradition
that strangers are to be treated as guests."
"I'm very pleased you happened
along," I said. “I don't know how
to thank you. It seems everywhere I turn
I find myself in a tight situation. The
people are very angry."
“It is the war. They cannot forget the humiliation. One cannot blame them."
"But how do you feel? Are you Egyptian?"
"Well, yes and no," he said enigmatically.
"How do you mean?"
"Here we have two
"And the real
"The reason I intervened for the real
"You mean the Pharaohs, the pyramids, the
"Yes."
Something in me stirred and my head spun as if I were coming
on to a psychedelic. For a moment it
seemed as if the train were stationary and the desert
moving.
"Spiritual
"Yes,” he said, and my cells tingled with bliss.
Some part of me had been waiting for this conversation for a
very long time.
I heard his voice speaking out a blaze of radiance say, “I
intervened because I owe you a favor.”
Barely able to keep it together, I heard myself
reply, "A favor? But I don't know
you," realizing it was not true as soon as I said it.
"As far as this life is concerned," he replied.
"This life?"
"A long time ago not far from here," he said
motioned upstream, "we were best of friends. You helped me. Today it was my turn to repay my debt."
"But how do you know this? You're talking reincarnation, aren't
you?"
"It is hard to say how I know
it. Something in me told me to get up
and walk through the train. When I saw
you standing there entertaining those fools I remembered something. I do no know what it was, exactly. I recognized you. I knew you."
"You knew me?"
"Yes, not your
body, but you, the real you, your soul.
I knew you and I knew why you had returned."
I told him about the first few days in
"No, that's not what I mean,"
he said. "You will suffer, no doubt, but that is not the reason you are
here.
When he said "here" I had the
feeling he meant ‘on earth’ or ‘in this life.’
"You are looking for something and
a piece of the puzzle is here."
In a flash of illumination I saw that
nothing in my life had worked like I thought it should because God had His own
ideas about what was good for me. I was
not running away or rebelling for the reasons I thought. The granola girl's words, "God is where
it’s at," flashed in my mind.
I was searching Him, all this a
necessary part of that.
I heard the voice of God speaking
through him.
"You have forgotten who you
are. That is all," he said with
compassion. "Before long you will
remember."
"Just who am I then?"
"That's for you to discover,"
he said smiling, his eyes pools of
light.
SECOND
TIME AROUND
Because they were footing the bill for
the dam, Russians called the shots in
I booked through to
I sat down and waited until he opened
his eyes.
"What's happening, man?"
"Not much, just hanging out,"
he replied.
"I take it you're not working on
your tan," I said.
He smiled.
"So, what's going on?
"Meditation, man. Meditation."
"OK, but what's it all about? What you meditating on?"
"It's a long story, man."
"Tell me, I've got time. I'll buy you a beer."
He perked up.
"It's a long walk to the nearest beer. Let's have a smoke."
OK.
So we hunkered down in the shade of a
ruined temple, toked up, and he began.
"I was working in a Savings and
Loan in LA. It was nothing much, just a
job to pay the rent. One day during
lunch break I went to the library and was thumbing through a big art book on
"From that point on I couldn't stand my job. Something told me it was time to bag it, but I didn't have anything to fall back on. I was living hand to mouth, really, like a slave, even though I wore a coat and tie. I couldn't get the picture of the goddess out of my mind. It was like an obsession. There were times when I would work myself up into such a state that I'd journey back and relive past lives. It was all very real, but I couldn't tell anyone. The crowd I ran with would have la