Memorial Day Greetings...
It's obvious, our "spill in the Gulf of Mexico" is a disaster of epic proportions... and what makes it worse, is many of us saw it coming and happening while those "in charge" insisted it was being taken care of... a "legitimate costs" would be paid.
"Top Hat" is forgotten, and now the one 70% solution "Top Kill" is dead... didn't work... the disaster continues!!! All the greatest scientific minds in the USA have failed - or have not been listened to. Who the F*** knows??? The feds are so busy harassing people wanting to be happy, whatever that may mean - getting fresh air (can't at the moment), getting drunk, getting high, getting spiritual... watching tv... writing a blog post... pursuit of happiness... all I'm saying.
Meanwhile the hill I live on in the White Mountains is inundated with smoke from a forest fire in Quebec, Canada.
Hard to breath... all the smoke. I called 911, and they told me it was a fire in Canada... we have to be 150 - 250 miles from Canada. But like the wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, (well protected by federal gov laws), I'm fine too.
Speaking of breath... wow, that life on that deserted island was great... all 36 hours of it... I came back to life... actually started thinking creatively again... smoked some ganja and got to work... built myself a shelter, cut wood, for a night-time fire...
By the time SWAT arrived to "rescue" me... I already had setup a camp, gone fishing - caught fish, and was successful foraging... smoked some of the good bud, and was relaxed. Had a good nights sleep.
In the morning I got up and ate a great breakfast, smoked a little more bud, and hiked... explored, enjoyed myself.
I said "36-hours"... yeah, well, the Coast gurad arrived, and DDA hellocopters... within seconds I was swept off the island and landed back in the USSR... I meant the USA... sorry.
I was charged with "possession of pirated goods" and "narcotics". I explained I was on vacation - doctors orders, my sail-boat was seized... I escaped, yes, with a ton of cannabis onboard, but I needed a source of rope if I was to survive... did they think I'd get that from tobacco???
Anyway I'm back... charges dropped... I was given a bottle of whiskey, and a pack of cigarettes, courtesy of the federal government when ship-wreaked and a survivor. Geez... I thought I was doing pretty well???
I think it's time we RETHINK our science.
Back to work tomorrow... It's slavery, that's what it is, only under a different name and including many more people. We hardly question it. Sheep in a field with fox to "protect us"!!!
May 29, 2010
UNDER THE RUG... The Water Under a Bridge - by BobKat
Making much ado about nothing may be your opinion about my previous post - "Reflections".
In part, I feel, since it lacks a history. My John Miller series describes some of the crucial points, but as BobKat, I haven't yet disclosed much of what led up to events that night, my response, and why the event traumatized me so much. It's the notion that as people we need to have hard shells, like turtles. But this is my blog, my story, and yes I did the "hard-shelled turtle" routine... but under the right amount of pressure, a turtle's shell can be as fragile as an eggshell. And my shell broke...
The clash was not between my mother and myself, but rather, the culture she lived by, and the culture I grew up in. I don't hate my mother for what she did. I could fault her with several basic flaws - lack of communication, lack of interpersonal boundaries/recognition of them, inability to "think outside the box", prejudice... but it's really not the point, to find fault with her... the point, is given the culture clash I experienced at the most crucial time of my life, I was left devastated and broken, when in truth, I'd discovered my true self, had excelled educationally, discovered untold wonders of life, experienced the best of times, and a once shy, underacheiving, lone introverted youth grew into a dynamic, popular, inspired, twenty something success story. An impossible story, that was in fact true... and the thing that most stunned me was based on the clash of cultures, my mother wouldn't open herself to may discoveries in life - convinced she was that I had left the short road, which is the only road in life, and I'd gone to the dark-side.
My father... he was my best friend during those days, but there was nothing he could do, or was willing to do to open my mother up to the possibility her son was truly happy and prospering. She was stuck in her ways... and that meant, during the best years of my life - the years that could have made me a star for life, my mother became my unfortunate antagonist of the story. And given my dependency on my parents growing up, my mother had a lot of power over me, then, and it became a battle of epic proportions.
It ended when I found what i needed in life, when I found me, myself and I, when i was moving to a new world to use the knowledge I'd gained from a little more than 3 intense years of education and experience. It ended during one phone call home the night before i was to leave on my new journey, a night where over 3 years of battle was put to an end in the method of a curse - a mother's curse to her son.
It isn't right, and it isn't fair... and it isn't something someone should carry with them for life! It also isn't physical violence, which many people carry with them through life from growing up. But what it is, is a violence, let any violence, that's unjust, and wrong. There is an age of transition where as children, we become adults. As the child it hard to see the "forest through the trees", but as an adult, it should be clear. My father saw it, and was encouraging... the only reason I survived. But even he had to admit, "the town is too small for your mother and you", and by town he meant the state. Which is why I made plans to move west.
It was the perfect storm, that night on the phone with my mother.
I begin there, in that time, because, it became that point in my life where my future was severed from my past... for all the bad and good that may or might have come from it, there is now what there is. The purpose of my blog, this topic - "Under the Rug", is the one story that needs to be told.
It needs to be told just as the life of many person's need be told... not only because I made the mistake of letting go several very good friends, unintentionally, by moving away, following my "plan" which was more being made for me, as I would have/should have stayed.
Within a month after I returned from AZ to move back in with my parents at age 24, defeated, I was out with my friend's Earl and Joni, at around 11PM we stopped at a coffee shop, and to my surprise my intimate friend Diane was working there. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, and she was a sight for sore eyes... but it didn't last long. The curse was soon to be etched in stone - a tombstone.
In several short-stories I've written about Diane, I call her Germaine. There's actually a story somewhere out there from those days I wrote to a woman bar-tender, that I really liked. I called it "Echo's of Germaine", a 40 page story. I also have my own originally story, in a spiral notebook, also 40-50 pages, titled, "The Story of Germaine Echo".
Diane was 27 when her and I had an intimate connection one night in 1977. I was 23 at the time. It was a Friday night, and on Fridays the Arts Center building was locked down at 7PM. People could still get in, if they had a key, which was seldom, or if they knocked on the door/rang the bell, and one of us custodians authorized there entry. Ahh, power.... But it was true, normally, between 3 and 11PM M-F myself or my half Italian/half Apache co-worker had command of the Fine Arts Center. We had our menial cleaning jobs to do, but we had plenty of free-time too. We also had lots of "projects" we did - both official, and private. It was, for all practical purposes, the end of an era... the end of the period in our current society where "freedom and self-responsibility" were accepted. Where art flourished and the combined power of the 60's hippies and the 70's enlightened brought about enormous changes...
The Viet-Nam war ended... the war that never should have been, but was. The war that defied the voice of the American people. The government coming to terms with racial desegradation, youth, "turned on and tuned out", free-love and recreational drugs... a free for all with Timothy Leary's death being the mantra and the fear... a new age for women, the Equal Rights Era... the origin of tie-dyed clothing, of communes, of Woodstock, Watkin's Glen.... a new age where a twenties somethings person I witnessed the birth of a nation, and the death of a nation.
That night in 1979 when Earl, Joni and I met with Diane at the coffee shop... my life came to an end...
Diane told me that night she was going to kill herself...
This shouldn't have come as a surprise to me... when I met Diane she told me quite frankly the reason she was a nursing student at the college was because she "wanted to learn the correct way to kill herself". Oh, I took her seriously, but I could hardly act on her confiding in me. Lot's of people confided in me. And she wasn't the only person comtemplating suicide. I met her in 1976, and we enjoyed many meetings and shared much.
Myself, I'd understand suicide... but Joni did... and she talked with Diane for awhile...
I pleaded with Diane not to do it... and begged her to come to my apartment after she was done work - we'd work something out.
At 10AM the following morning a mutual friend called. Diane had killed herself in the bathroom at the General Hospital.
Diane was married to a loser, from what she told me. She had two children, Rudy and Mazanna, both between 6 and 8 years old. They lived with their mother, and the husband was mostly gone, which Diane liked... she showed me the 38 revolver she'd kill herself with one day. I tried to understand but couldn't.
I'd met another beautiful young woman during my years as a custodian at the college, the wife of a guy a grew up with. She was model attractive, down to earth, and very smart. She'd never confessed her desire to commit suicide, except to say one day - "it's so awkward being human". She told me she "felt her body was weird", which I listened to, but again didn't understand. She killed herself.
As did Diane. As did several others... and my conclusion - our society and it's rigidity and narrow-minded norms was destructive, and discouraging.
At 25 I was a broken man with a lot of personal power still in reserve. It would take all I had to make it to age 30... I may have felt defeated, but I was still young enough that I could try and be a phoenix... I moved to Boston... it was the beginning of my self-exile. There was no question I had to make my own home somewhere new. That my past was gone, and my future bleak. To make matters worst I came down with a serious urinary tract infection, and chronic fatigue after a really bad flu. I'd be sick for years, and initially lost 20 pounds... which took years to bring back.
Overall, my years in Boston were very good... I hadn't planned on continuing being a custodian, but as my father said, you need to use what skills you have, and to move to a new place being a custodian was a good move. I was fortunate - I can't name the place, but I got a job at a prestigious Art School and museum in Boston, which included being a security guard. In 1981 I received my BA degree... while working at the school. For awhile there it seemed like I might make a come-back, but I didn't. I was still physically ill. And doctors could find nothing wrong with me, despite my symptoms. Depression became a familiar feeling. My mother continued to be the antagonist in my life, pointing out all that was "wrong" with me.
Moving to Boston meant for awhile cannabis wasn't available to me... but that didn't last long. It lasted long enough that I started drinking a lot - wine. I also did a lot of writing.
I had new family in Boston also... my father's sister's daughter, the oldest one, Wini... my first cousin 3 years older than me, and a Harvard grad... she was a wild one... and you can say, she was and would be a critical part of my life for over the next 10 - 20 years...
Next time... "The Decadent 70's"...
In part, I feel, since it lacks a history. My John Miller series describes some of the crucial points, but as BobKat, I haven't yet disclosed much of what led up to events that night, my response, and why the event traumatized me so much. It's the notion that as people we need to have hard shells, like turtles. But this is my blog, my story, and yes I did the "hard-shelled turtle" routine... but under the right amount of pressure, a turtle's shell can be as fragile as an eggshell. And my shell broke...
The clash was not between my mother and myself, but rather, the culture she lived by, and the culture I grew up in. I don't hate my mother for what she did. I could fault her with several basic flaws - lack of communication, lack of interpersonal boundaries/recognition of them, inability to "think outside the box", prejudice... but it's really not the point, to find fault with her... the point, is given the culture clash I experienced at the most crucial time of my life, I was left devastated and broken, when in truth, I'd discovered my true self, had excelled educationally, discovered untold wonders of life, experienced the best of times, and a once shy, underacheiving, lone introverted youth grew into a dynamic, popular, inspired, twenty something success story. An impossible story, that was in fact true... and the thing that most stunned me was based on the clash of cultures, my mother wouldn't open herself to may discoveries in life - convinced she was that I had left the short road, which is the only road in life, and I'd gone to the dark-side.
My father... he was my best friend during those days, but there was nothing he could do, or was willing to do to open my mother up to the possibility her son was truly happy and prospering. She was stuck in her ways... and that meant, during the best years of my life - the years that could have made me a star for life, my mother became my unfortunate antagonist of the story. And given my dependency on my parents growing up, my mother had a lot of power over me, then, and it became a battle of epic proportions.
It ended when I found what i needed in life, when I found me, myself and I, when i was moving to a new world to use the knowledge I'd gained from a little more than 3 intense years of education and experience. It ended during one phone call home the night before i was to leave on my new journey, a night where over 3 years of battle was put to an end in the method of a curse - a mother's curse to her son.
It isn't right, and it isn't fair... and it isn't something someone should carry with them for life! It also isn't physical violence, which many people carry with them through life from growing up. But what it is, is a violence, let any violence, that's unjust, and wrong. There is an age of transition where as children, we become adults. As the child it hard to see the "forest through the trees", but as an adult, it should be clear. My father saw it, and was encouraging... the only reason I survived. But even he had to admit, "the town is too small for your mother and you", and by town he meant the state. Which is why I made plans to move west.
It was the perfect storm, that night on the phone with my mother.
I begin there, in that time, because, it became that point in my life where my future was severed from my past... for all the bad and good that may or might have come from it, there is now what there is. The purpose of my blog, this topic - "Under the Rug", is the one story that needs to be told.
It needs to be told just as the life of many person's need be told... not only because I made the mistake of letting go several very good friends, unintentionally, by moving away, following my "plan" which was more being made for me, as I would have/should have stayed.
Within a month after I returned from AZ to move back in with my parents at age 24, defeated, I was out with my friend's Earl and Joni, at around 11PM we stopped at a coffee shop, and to my surprise my intimate friend Diane was working there. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, and she was a sight for sore eyes... but it didn't last long. The curse was soon to be etched in stone - a tombstone.
In several short-stories I've written about Diane, I call her Germaine. There's actually a story somewhere out there from those days I wrote to a woman bar-tender, that I really liked. I called it "Echo's of Germaine", a 40 page story. I also have my own originally story, in a spiral notebook, also 40-50 pages, titled, "The Story of Germaine Echo".
Diane was 27 when her and I had an intimate connection one night in 1977. I was 23 at the time. It was a Friday night, and on Fridays the Arts Center building was locked down at 7PM. People could still get in, if they had a key, which was seldom, or if they knocked on the door/rang the bell, and one of us custodians authorized there entry. Ahh, power.... But it was true, normally, between 3 and 11PM M-F myself or my half Italian/half Apache co-worker had command of the Fine Arts Center. We had our menial cleaning jobs to do, but we had plenty of free-time too. We also had lots of "projects" we did - both official, and private. It was, for all practical purposes, the end of an era... the end of the period in our current society where "freedom and self-responsibility" were accepted. Where art flourished and the combined power of the 60's hippies and the 70's enlightened brought about enormous changes...
The Viet-Nam war ended... the war that never should have been, but was. The war that defied the voice of the American people. The government coming to terms with racial desegradation, youth, "turned on and tuned out", free-love and recreational drugs... a free for all with Timothy Leary's death being the mantra and the fear... a new age for women, the Equal Rights Era... the origin of tie-dyed clothing, of communes, of Woodstock, Watkin's Glen.... a new age where a twenties somethings person I witnessed the birth of a nation, and the death of a nation.
That night in 1979 when Earl, Joni and I met with Diane at the coffee shop... my life came to an end...
Diane told me that night she was going to kill herself...
This shouldn't have come as a surprise to me... when I met Diane she told me quite frankly the reason she was a nursing student at the college was because she "wanted to learn the correct way to kill herself". Oh, I took her seriously, but I could hardly act on her confiding in me. Lot's of people confided in me. And she wasn't the only person comtemplating suicide. I met her in 1976, and we enjoyed many meetings and shared much.
Myself, I'd understand suicide... but Joni did... and she talked with Diane for awhile...
I pleaded with Diane not to do it... and begged her to come to my apartment after she was done work - we'd work something out.
At 10AM the following morning a mutual friend called. Diane had killed herself in the bathroom at the General Hospital.
Diane was married to a loser, from what she told me. She had two children, Rudy and Mazanna, both between 6 and 8 years old. They lived with their mother, and the husband was mostly gone, which Diane liked... she showed me the 38 revolver she'd kill herself with one day. I tried to understand but couldn't.
I'd met another beautiful young woman during my years as a custodian at the college, the wife of a guy a grew up with. She was model attractive, down to earth, and very smart. She'd never confessed her desire to commit suicide, except to say one day - "it's so awkward being human". She told me she "felt her body was weird", which I listened to, but again didn't understand. She killed herself.
As did Diane. As did several others... and my conclusion - our society and it's rigidity and narrow-minded norms was destructive, and discouraging.
At 25 I was a broken man with a lot of personal power still in reserve. It would take all I had to make it to age 30... I may have felt defeated, but I was still young enough that I could try and be a phoenix... I moved to Boston... it was the beginning of my self-exile. There was no question I had to make my own home somewhere new. That my past was gone, and my future bleak. To make matters worst I came down with a serious urinary tract infection, and chronic fatigue after a really bad flu. I'd be sick for years, and initially lost 20 pounds... which took years to bring back.
Overall, my years in Boston were very good... I hadn't planned on continuing being a custodian, but as my father said, you need to use what skills you have, and to move to a new place being a custodian was a good move. I was fortunate - I can't name the place, but I got a job at a prestigious Art School and museum in Boston, which included being a security guard. In 1981 I received my BA degree... while working at the school. For awhile there it seemed like I might make a come-back, but I didn't. I was still physically ill. And doctors could find nothing wrong with me, despite my symptoms. Depression became a familiar feeling. My mother continued to be the antagonist in my life, pointing out all that was "wrong" with me.
Moving to Boston meant for awhile cannabis wasn't available to me... but that didn't last long. It lasted long enough that I started drinking a lot - wine. I also did a lot of writing.
I had new family in Boston also... my father's sister's daughter, the oldest one, Wini... my first cousin 3 years older than me, and a Harvard grad... she was a wild one... and you can say, she was and would be a critical part of my life for over the next 10 - 20 years...
Next time... "The Decadent 70's"...
May 28, 2010
UNDER THE RUG... Reflections - by BobKat
My vacation is over! The Memorial day weekend starts. So how was my vacation? I ask myself that question.
As I previously mentioned, I got sick with a virus Sat. night, a week ago. The sore throat was brief, the coughing, congestion, fatigue, quite serious. I did call the doc on wed... the nurse there said it sounded like "a virus that was going around". "Let it run it's course", the nurse said.
It's just as well... it gave me time to ponder the mysteries of life... especially my own life. It also gave me a good reason to rest, and do nothing but think. The whole reason I have a blog is to share my life with others. I want to share because somehow I got caught up in the era of "Who Am I"? And I took it to heart.
For those new to my blog there were three major influences to who I became... by age 24.
1) A conservative, conventional, middle-class, Depression era aware, post WW ll, family, who believed in the "one road" through life, theory, which I challenged. To make things a bit more confusing, my father was a atheist, my mother devout Christian. I grew up going to Sunday school, then confirmation studies that were two or three summers, and eventually I said "no" to organized religion, and decided to find my own truth in life. It was the 1970's... and although to my family it was still the 1950's, I somehow managed to flourish during the 1970's, and education, sex, and self-awareness were my mantras.
2) None of this would have been possible without my introduction to cannabis, though I don't remember the exact year it happened, it was after I'd graduated HS.I was over 18, and a virgin too. I'd nearly died at age 16 experimenting with alcohol... never could hold my drink, until I turned 50. Cannabis brought my mind into focus... in a way that's nearly impossible to explain. I can simply say I became aware of myself.
3) Books. Need I say more? I was a voracious reader most of my life... sci-fi, mysteries, true-crime, fantasy... but the book that really did me in was a book I have listed in my "Media List", Ray Bradbury's, "Frost and Fire". The story perhaps should be obliterated from our society, as well as others that give us the means to become self-aware. One of my other most influential writers was Henry Miller, whom you may know from the "Tropic of Cancer" novel. Well, he wrote a lot more novels than that, and if I was to nominate the best writer to represent America, it would be Henry Miller!
May 1979... I quit my job as the custodian at the college where I worked. I was 24 years old. My plan from the beginning, around 1971 when I got the job was to do it for 3 years. In hindsight it was my first BIG mistake. And I realized my motivation was influenced by my family and expectations. It was a great job. Good pay, great benefits, great environment... in fact, a friend at the time who really envied me, got my job, got married, had over 6 kids, and as far as I last knew, lived a happy life, retired with a great pension and is still a good life. But in my family, the job was - lets just spell it out - a DISGRACE.
So I had the plan... yeah, a plan... that got completely scrambled, with a crescendo the night before I was off on my "new life in Arizona". It wasn't odd, that part... many friends were going west, to AZ, CA, CO, TX... anywhere but NY. It's just... I had no reason to truly leave... I had a good life... and what happened the night before I was to give it all up, hell-fire on an already doomed man...
All of it came down to the fact that at 24 I still hadn't been able to break the family-umbilical cord... as independent and self-aware as I was, felt I was, my family had enormous power over me still. The part that made it so vital was the sincere concern... the problem was they we're me. And the simple fact they couldn't get over the idea of me cleaning toilets, made it tragedy. Cleaning toilets was a minor part of my job... and a humbling one. You'd think a Christian could accept a job where cleaning toilets was okay.
I hadn't said much to my parents about my leaving for AZ. But they were pretty curious. My father remember, he really was interested in my ideas, though some even he found odd. It was my mother with the rule-book to the "shortest road".
The night before I was to leave with my friend Earl for AZ... I phoned my parents from an office in the ARTS building where I worked, where so many memories were around... very good memories. I spoke to my father briefly, then he handed the phone to my mother. I told her, "well, just calling to say I'm on my way tomorrow... off to AZ".
It was a long-shot... a subtle good-bye... it didn't work.
"You haven't told me anything about where you're going or where you're living".
Fair enough... "Flagstaff, mom, and I'm going to be living with a good friend who moved there a year ago and is very well settled, a friend from college."
"What friend", my mother asked?
I have to pause here to explain, during the past 5 years, since I moved away from home at 18, my mother hardly ever approved of my friends... and we'r talking white, middle class people... too bad I got to know so few minorities, but in the 70's, minorities were still feared. And apparently so were my friends... and it happened the friend I was going to stay with was a woman who I adored, but had never had sex with, and we accepted that. Friends, End of story.
Well, back to my mother... she insisted on knowing who I was going to stay wit... you'd think it simple to just tell her; truth is, I should have hung up the phone. But I didn't.
"Mom, I'm going to stay with Michelle for awhile". I said.
I don't know how many people out there can understand why what happened next was so traumatic to me... but it was.
A simple phone call the night before a move in life I really didn't want to make... but the town was too small for me to stay, and everyone was "going west" back then. Or so it seemed.
My mother, upon realizing I was going to live with yet another (#2) woman, short-circuited - she damned me to hell, cursed me and told me that happiness would never me in my future, etc...it was pretty sick. But you know... I know now it wasn't as much her, as the culture believed in. It would take many years to understand that. The immediate effect was one of total defeat - instantaneous childhood regression...
I had a job interview and the University of Northern Arizona, I had written to them, got a reply based on my submitted resume, and encouraged to meet with them...
I had two close friends in neighboring Phoenix, AZ, that if things required, I could move down there.
But I never made it to the job interview... although I did visit my friends in Phoenix; never made it to the Grand Canyon, though I was in Flagstaff a month... my friend Michelle had a boyfriend by then, and we got along fine. My cat Pyramus liked it there. Everything I owned was then, dropped off by my friend Earl who I'd lived with most of my early 20's... while he continued a western adventure in his Ford 250... years of preparation...
It evaporated in a cloud of chaos...
Within the month I'd boarded a Grey-hound bus, leaving much behind... including Pryamus since he wasn't allowed on a bus or plane. I'd begged my parents to let me come home. I needed money. And I went home. I lived there with my parents a few months... they felt they'd been "right", about many things they had no idea about... I was 25 by then an had lived on my own almost 7 years... what happened was a catastrophic clash of parent/child boundaries. A year or so later i wrote a letter describing the whole issue. I was told by my father "the letter would be destroyed and forgotten". Ironically, I have the letter - it was in his belongings after he passed away. I haven't had the nerve to read it. Suffice it to say, I moved out as quickly as I could. At 26, I had a lot of personal power, but a huge personal weight.
What followed were years using the energy to find myself again... this time in Boston, MA.
Next time... never make plans!
As I previously mentioned, I got sick with a virus Sat. night, a week ago. The sore throat was brief, the coughing, congestion, fatigue, quite serious. I did call the doc on wed... the nurse there said it sounded like "a virus that was going around". "Let it run it's course", the nurse said.
It's just as well... it gave me time to ponder the mysteries of life... especially my own life. It also gave me a good reason to rest, and do nothing but think. The whole reason I have a blog is to share my life with others. I want to share because somehow I got caught up in the era of "Who Am I"? And I took it to heart.
For those new to my blog there were three major influences to who I became... by age 24.
1) A conservative, conventional, middle-class, Depression era aware, post WW ll, family, who believed in the "one road" through life, theory, which I challenged. To make things a bit more confusing, my father was a atheist, my mother devout Christian. I grew up going to Sunday school, then confirmation studies that were two or three summers, and eventually I said "no" to organized religion, and decided to find my own truth in life. It was the 1970's... and although to my family it was still the 1950's, I somehow managed to flourish during the 1970's, and education, sex, and self-awareness were my mantras.
2) None of this would have been possible without my introduction to cannabis, though I don't remember the exact year it happened, it was after I'd graduated HS.I was over 18, and a virgin too. I'd nearly died at age 16 experimenting with alcohol... never could hold my drink, until I turned 50. Cannabis brought my mind into focus... in a way that's nearly impossible to explain. I can simply say I became aware of myself.
3) Books. Need I say more? I was a voracious reader most of my life... sci-fi, mysteries, true-crime, fantasy... but the book that really did me in was a book I have listed in my "Media List", Ray Bradbury's, "Frost and Fire". The story perhaps should be obliterated from our society, as well as others that give us the means to become self-aware. One of my other most influential writers was Henry Miller, whom you may know from the "Tropic of Cancer" novel. Well, he wrote a lot more novels than that, and if I was to nominate the best writer to represent America, it would be Henry Miller!
***
May 1979... I quit my job as the custodian at the college where I worked. I was 24 years old. My plan from the beginning, around 1971 when I got the job was to do it for 3 years. In hindsight it was my first BIG mistake. And I realized my motivation was influenced by my family and expectations. It was a great job. Good pay, great benefits, great environment... in fact, a friend at the time who really envied me, got my job, got married, had over 6 kids, and as far as I last knew, lived a happy life, retired with a great pension and is still a good life. But in my family, the job was - lets just spell it out - a DISGRACE.
So I had the plan... yeah, a plan... that got completely scrambled, with a crescendo the night before I was off on my "new life in Arizona". It wasn't odd, that part... many friends were going west, to AZ, CA, CO, TX... anywhere but NY. It's just... I had no reason to truly leave... I had a good life... and what happened the night before I was to give it all up, hell-fire on an already doomed man...
All of it came down to the fact that at 24 I still hadn't been able to break the family-umbilical cord... as independent and self-aware as I was, felt I was, my family had enormous power over me still. The part that made it so vital was the sincere concern... the problem was they we're me. And the simple fact they couldn't get over the idea of me cleaning toilets, made it tragedy. Cleaning toilets was a minor part of my job... and a humbling one. You'd think a Christian could accept a job where cleaning toilets was okay.
I hadn't said much to my parents about my leaving for AZ. But they were pretty curious. My father remember, he really was interested in my ideas, though some even he found odd. It was my mother with the rule-book to the "shortest road".
The night before I was to leave with my friend Earl for AZ... I phoned my parents from an office in the ARTS building where I worked, where so many memories were around... very good memories. I spoke to my father briefly, then he handed the phone to my mother. I told her, "well, just calling to say I'm on my way tomorrow... off to AZ".
It was a long-shot... a subtle good-bye... it didn't work.
"You haven't told me anything about where you're going or where you're living".
Fair enough... "Flagstaff, mom, and I'm going to be living with a good friend who moved there a year ago and is very well settled, a friend from college."
"What friend", my mother asked?
I have to pause here to explain, during the past 5 years, since I moved away from home at 18, my mother hardly ever approved of my friends... and we'r talking white, middle class people... too bad I got to know so few minorities, but in the 70's, minorities were still feared. And apparently so were my friends... and it happened the friend I was going to stay with was a woman who I adored, but had never had sex with, and we accepted that. Friends, End of story.
Well, back to my mother... she insisted on knowing who I was going to stay wit... you'd think it simple to just tell her; truth is, I should have hung up the phone. But I didn't.
"Mom, I'm going to stay with Michelle for awhile". I said.
I don't know how many people out there can understand why what happened next was so traumatic to me... but it was.
A simple phone call the night before a move in life I really didn't want to make... but the town was too small for me to stay, and everyone was "going west" back then. Or so it seemed.
My mother, upon realizing I was going to live with yet another (#2) woman, short-circuited - she damned me to hell, cursed me and told me that happiness would never me in my future, etc...it was pretty sick. But you know... I know now it wasn't as much her, as the culture believed in. It would take many years to understand that. The immediate effect was one of total defeat - instantaneous childhood regression...
I had a job interview and the University of Northern Arizona, I had written to them, got a reply based on my submitted resume, and encouraged to meet with them...
I had two close friends in neighboring Phoenix, AZ, that if things required, I could move down there.
But I never made it to the job interview... although I did visit my friends in Phoenix; never made it to the Grand Canyon, though I was in Flagstaff a month... my friend Michelle had a boyfriend by then, and we got along fine. My cat Pyramus liked it there. Everything I owned was then, dropped off by my friend Earl who I'd lived with most of my early 20's... while he continued a western adventure in his Ford 250... years of preparation...
It evaporated in a cloud of chaos...
Within the month I'd boarded a Grey-hound bus, leaving much behind... including Pryamus since he wasn't allowed on a bus or plane. I'd begged my parents to let me come home. I needed money. And I went home. I lived there with my parents a few months... they felt they'd been "right", about many things they had no idea about... I was 25 by then an had lived on my own almost 7 years... what happened was a catastrophic clash of parent/child boundaries. A year or so later i wrote a letter describing the whole issue. I was told by my father "the letter would be destroyed and forgotten". Ironically, I have the letter - it was in his belongings after he passed away. I haven't had the nerve to read it. Suffice it to say, I moved out as quickly as I could. At 26, I had a lot of personal power, but a huge personal weight.
What followed were years using the energy to find myself again... this time in Boston, MA.
Next time... never make plans!
May 26, 2010
UNDER THE RUG... My Summer Vacation - "The Desert Island"
Greetings on Wednesday, May 26, 2010...
Feeling better... had a virus and the doctor recommended a sea-voyage... he cautioned against the Gulf of Mexico - there were issues, like illegal drugs, ie, marijuana and such... oh, and a minor oil spill...
So I headed to - ah, sorry, my GPS is malfunctional... but I'm out here on the open ocean, taking in the fresh sea air... I'm on a sale-boat... I meant sail-boat, lol!
Oh, Oh... pirates...
Strayed too close to somewhere... the captain can't explain it...
We're captured... the good news... tons of cannabis on board; the bad news, I'm American, and my captives think I'm working for the DEA. I attempt, am attempting to explain I don't... "read my blog", I plead...
Next up... while my fate is being decided, a transport ship is sighted... the pirates quickly overtake it... it's full of Turkish tobacco!
I'm being held in the bowels of the ship - a wooden vessel I figure is a ghost ship from the 1600's. I've been here six hours now... been fed some gruel I don't dare ask what it is, and am awaiting my interrogation.
I don't have to wait long... the commandant of the pirates comes down to meet with me personally... I swear she looks like Daryl Hannah, the "Kill Bill" movie star... eye-patch and all...
She tells me I read your "BLOG"... but points a Desert eagle, 50 c pistol at me, nonetheless... she asks: "Why should I trust you?"
I say: " because I'm on vacation and I'm really not feeling very well... and as a matter of fact, death here and now would be better then next Tuesday when I have to go back to work!"
She stares at me with her one beautiful eye... "admit it, you work for the DEA?"
"No, no", I say... just out here on doctors orders...
She says "prove it".
I don't know how... instead I simply ask "if I'm going to die, could I at least have some of the cannabis on-board?"
"That all you want", she asks?
"And you... sorry, yeah, a joint would be great... then you can kill me".
She says... "you're clear"... "It's obvious you're not DEA... I'll see you tonight in my captains quarters,"... and she left.
Well, I never saw her later... the ship was attacked by drones... hell-fire missiles... the ship is sinking... the attack opens my cage... I go on deck and see a ton of ganja and a ton of tobacco... and my sail-boat... no one else is around... all smoke and dead... I have moments to act... and my GPS starts working again and I see I'm in the middle of the Atlantic ocean... and there's an uncharted island off about a mile away...
Being as I'm on a ship about to sink... what do I do???
Next time, on BobKat's Island... doing the best thing when expecting to be Robinson Caruso for the next 30 years...
Feeling better... had a virus and the doctor recommended a sea-voyage... he cautioned against the Gulf of Mexico - there were issues, like illegal drugs, ie, marijuana and such... oh, and a minor oil spill...
So I headed to - ah, sorry, my GPS is malfunctional... but I'm out here on the open ocean, taking in the fresh sea air... I'm on a sale-boat... I meant sail-boat, lol!
Oh, Oh... pirates...
Strayed too close to somewhere... the captain can't explain it...
We're captured... the good news... tons of cannabis on board; the bad news, I'm American, and my captives think I'm working for the DEA. I attempt, am attempting to explain I don't... "read my blog", I plead...
Next up... while my fate is being decided, a transport ship is sighted... the pirates quickly overtake it... it's full of Turkish tobacco!
I'm being held in the bowels of the ship - a wooden vessel I figure is a ghost ship from the 1600's. I've been here six hours now... been fed some gruel I don't dare ask what it is, and am awaiting my interrogation.
I don't have to wait long... the commandant of the pirates comes down to meet with me personally... I swear she looks like Daryl Hannah, the "Kill Bill" movie star... eye-patch and all...
She tells me I read your "BLOG"... but points a Desert eagle, 50 c pistol at me, nonetheless... she asks: "Why should I trust you?"
I say: " because I'm on vacation and I'm really not feeling very well... and as a matter of fact, death here and now would be better then next Tuesday when I have to go back to work!"
She stares at me with her one beautiful eye... "admit it, you work for the DEA?"
"No, no", I say... just out here on doctors orders...
She says "prove it".
I don't know how... instead I simply ask "if I'm going to die, could I at least have some of the cannabis on-board?"
"That all you want", she asks?
"And you... sorry, yeah, a joint would be great... then you can kill me".
She says... "you're clear"... "It's obvious you're not DEA... I'll see you tonight in my captains quarters,"... and she left.
Well, I never saw her later... the ship was attacked by drones... hell-fire missiles... the ship is sinking... the attack opens my cage... I go on deck and see a ton of ganja and a ton of tobacco... and my sail-boat... no one else is around... all smoke and dead... I have moments to act... and my GPS starts working again and I see I'm in the middle of the Atlantic ocean... and there's an uncharted island off about a mile away...
Being as I'm on a ship about to sink... what do I do???
Next time, on BobKat's Island... doing the best thing when expecting to be Robinson Caruso for the next 30 years...
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