Life

A dream about grassroots grant-writing (of all things)

I’m grateful for this dream. Jean and I are in the habit of lying in bed in the mornings, having coffee, talking, watching our “today show” (the sky, birds, the SF Bay, the Marin hills, and whatever else we can see from bed), and having a short meditation on what we’re grateful for.

One thing about this dream is that the two themes were so vivid and intertwined – one theme being our surroundings as we walked along and the other theme being what I was saying and thinking. My recall of the details of the dream is far greater than most dreams I can remember.

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The dream: Jean and I were walking in a warehouse district on the edge of downtown Dallas. I was telling her about the grants research and writing process I used beginning in the early 1980s. We were holding hands and walking through vacant lots and deserted buildings and…

I was telling her about the foundation directories I found at the Dallas Public Library, going through these big books page by page writing down information on foundations whose areas of interest matched my own (especially healthcare, refugee, and justice issues). I also kept information on foundations with board members I had some connection with, no matter how small. I was thinking in detail about the area of the library where the foundation books were kept.

We were walking on paths winding through dry, sun-blasted vacant lots and sometimes on concrete floors with broken glass in big empty buildings like old steel mills. There were a few people around – they seemed like about who you’d expect in that sort of environment, many broken, some might be dangerous, and I was greeting people the usual way: “Hey now” and I was talking about …

the proposal-writing area in my office – a ~3×8 plastic table divided up into labeled squares for the documents that had to accompany proposals, like 501 (c)(3) docs, annotated board member lists, budget documents, etc., etc. and telling Jean about sending proposals every few weeks, each one rewritten and better than the previous one. At the same time I was teaching and volunteering and delivering services – building a reputation and I had a reputation.

The environment we were walking in was deteriorating, becoming a little more ominous, a real desolation row. I was glad I’ve been in these sorts of places before. A mentally ill kid, a teenager walked alongside of us for awhile. We walked past a woman with eight Doberman pinschers. I was relieved to see some condos ahead, but when we got to them we realized they were public housing projects and run-down like everything else. A young woman met us as we were walking up to the buildings. She was a little weather-beaten, tanned. She was wearing a green skirt with a fringe on it; she was looking something like some of the people at the Rainbow Gathering, pretty run-down herself. She offered to take us in to one of the apartments to “see Don” – I said “No, but thank you” and she was like a classic case of a shrug and whatever.

I was telling Jean about writing proposals for Vietnam veterans services, refugee health, and drug treatment and prevention. I knew I wouldn’t get funding from my first proposals, but I didn’t care; I was learning how to do it. I started with the most obscure and least likely foundations and worked my way up the ladder to bigger and better-endowed ones.

Everything was pretty desolate and we couldn’t see downtown anymore. I jumped across a ditch and Jean took three steps to her left and got across on a level place. We were both getting tired (but there was no place to stop). I asked Jean if she needed to pee and she said no and then I awoke and got up to pee. That was the end of the dream. I wrote all this down at 0530.

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In most years when I was writing I averaged bringing in around $100,000. I also initiated other means of development as it’s essential for nonprofits to have multiple streams of income. I never saw any of the money personally, but I accomplished most of what I set out to do: a lot of people got help – from broke-down veterans to “jaded, faded junkies” to children impacted by drugs to refugees and immigrants from across the world to children who were abused to people at the end of life. I had a dream of the world as a better place, less suffering, more justice, all that.

Money for changing the world https://ckjournal.com/money-for-changing-the-world

A ceremony at the Medical Examiner’s facility

Khmer Rouge/death coming to a village

Paintings are by children at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Sometime in 1981 I got a call from a friend, Kevin who taught courses in infectious diseases at Southwestern Medical School. He asked if I wanted “to put in some PPDs” (tests for tuberculosis). “Sure,” I said. Leslie wanted to go and we met my friend at a two-story house on Sycamore Street near the corner of Carroll and Live Oak Streets. The house was called the “Welcome House” and there were several newly arrived families from Cambodia. Refugees. They were all thin and traumatized from war, torture, concentration camps, refugee camps (which, by the way, are not nice places), and travel to this foreign land called Dallas.

Kevin and I put in the PPDs via needle just under the skin. I was struck by how quiet everyone was, including the children, even when I slipped the needle in. Meanwhile Leslie was having a good time holding a baby. I remember Leslie was wearing a pink tank-top and afterward she was captivated by the baby scent that clung to the fabric.

Khmer Rouge killing

A day or two later the refugee agency caseworker called me sometime in the early morning. “Kao Ly, he already died” (name changed). I didn’t know what else to do so I drove to Sycamore Street. “Kao Ly” was a middle-aged man with four or five sons and a daughter. He was, in fact, lying dead in a bed he shared with several of his sons.

An ambulance took his body to the medical examiner’s (ME) office where he was held for several days for autopsy. During that time, another Cambodian family took care of the children and the caseworker arranged for them to go to another state to live with their mother. The ME was holding the father’s body I guess because they were waiting on toxicology. We wanted to have a ceremony before the children left.

Someone knew a Korean monk who was willing to hold the ceremony and that’s how we ended up on the loading dock at the ME’s facility, a several story building adjacent to the county hospital. At the time Dallas County had a population of about 1.5 million people which meant a lot of corpses processed through that building. The building smelled of death. There were Christmas lights on the dispatcher’s glass-fronted cubicle and some Pepsi cases stacked along the wall. Someone wheeled the body out, covered in a sheet up to just under the chin.

Running away

There was the body on the gurney, and beside it four desolate children and the monk wearing an orange robe. Over to the side was the refugee caseworker and me. The monk lit incense sticking up from a can with sand in it, he lit a candle, he extended a string from the body to the children with each child holding on to it, he chanted in Pali for awhile, and then he reached into his robe and pulled out a pair of scissors and he cut the string between the body and the children. It was a powerful moment in the midst of all this death and suffering.

The children went to live with their mother. I’m still in contact with several people who passed through the Welcome House when they were children, though I’ve lost touch with the family of the man who died. I know that at least several of the children from that family have done well in life.

Children at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp

Love in the time of cancer

We went to an anniversary party for two of Jean’s long-time friends. It was a celebration of love – the need for love, the beauty of love, the healing power of love, the joys of love, the enduringness of love…

Dinner was with about 30 people at a long table poolside in a garden on a hill sloping down to a vineyard and the weather was perfect. I didn’t take any photographs, alas, but this photo taken a few years ago captures the vibe.

In Big Sur

Among the six people I knew sitting with us were three cancer survivors, three widows or widowers, one person whose spouse has succumbed to dementia, at least one facing significant chronic illness, and all of us in love. Buoyed by love, all of us face to face with ultimate questions and all engaged with the final life stage of integrity vs. despair. All have lost so many, many friends and loves. I imagine just about everyone at the party is in more or less the same circumstances.

Years ago, when I was working mostly with older people I came to realize that I had much to learn from them about love. Love in the time of cancer. Love in the time of dementia. Love in the time of stroke. Love in the time of dying and death. And love in the time of romance. This is it. This is what we are given. This is as good as it gets. This life. This love. This hope. I’m glad to be one of those older people now.

Our friend Peter told me that every morning he and his partner set a timer for 5 minutes and spend those 5 minutes reflecting silently on gratitude. Now we do that.

“And now these three remain (endure): faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

From Blossoms

From Blossoms, A poem by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. 

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

——————–

This poem was on my office wall for many years at Baylor. Now, years later I’m thinking: I live with the awareness that death is
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

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More from Li-Young Lee

 

 

Return to Asia (2005)

Hong Kong Airport

“Why don’t you go?” Leslie said. We were in First Chinese Barbeque in Richardson – Leslie, David, me, and we were talking about how it would be cool for David and me to go to Southeast Asia. And then we talked about Jeff (who fought with me in Vietnam), and then Leslie asked the question and we decided there in First BBQ that David and I would go to SE Asia and Jeff, too, if he wanted to go. I went outside to call Jeff and he said, sure, and so the trip began. Two months in Southeast Asia with my son and my best friend! This would be David’s first trip to his other homeland (Cambodia) and Jeff’s and my first return to Vietnam since the war!

(2023) A few days ago I read an account of someone who experienced a very nice interaction in Hanoi. That inspired me to revise and repost my Vietnam blog from the 2005 trip as several very nice things happened on that trip to Vietnam. This current post is an introduction to the Vietnam repost.

The best airfare deal we found was China Air out of Houston. We flew to Houston, then to Taipei for a few hours, and on to Hong Kong. In HK we stayed in the Cosmic Guesthouse which was in the Mirador Mansions a block up Nathan Road from Chungking Mansions. ~$30 USD for a triple room en suite. Mostly we just walked around being there.

Angkor, behind the main structures

Flew HK to Bangkok. Bus from airport to Khao San Road for 100 baht each ($2.50 USD). Left Jeff in a restaurant & David & I went off looking for a room. Found decent place on a quiet street (Merry V on Soi Buttri a block from KSR) with 3 beds, AC, & bathroom en suite for 600 Baht (about $15.50 US). Again, mostly just being there in Bangkok.

Bus Bangkok to Poipet on Thai-Cambodian border and then car to Battambang, a small city in western Cambodia. We stayed at the Angkor Hotel overlooking a muddy river for about $13. Nice motorcycle rides in countryside. Climbed up to Wat Banon.

From Battambang took a boat up the river to the great lake, Tonle Sap and across top of the lake to landing near Siem Reap. One hour tuk-tuk drive from landing to Siem Reap takes worst road prize – worse than out of Poipet. In SR we stayed at Two Dragons guesthouse ($10 double room for David and me, $8 single for Jeff), run by a man who now lives in Berkeley! Spent a couple of days wandering around Angkor. I got sick, but recovered in a day.

Curry street stand, Bangkok

Backpacker bus Siem Reap to Phnom Penh where we stayed at Narin II guesthouse. Triple room with poor aircon for about $12. Visited Tuol Sleng and mass graves (It had never occurred to me that I would ever visit mass graves or torture chambers!). Phnom Penh was a menacing place at the time.

Bus to Cambodia-Vietnam border, then distinctly better bus from border into Saigon and Happy Tours office in Pham Ngu Lao area where most budget travelers stayed. Found a room at Ly-Ly Hotel on a backpacker alley for two nights ~$12 for a triple. Pham Ngu Lao is now a huge party scene.

Train (soft sleeper bunks in a compartment) Saigon to Danang for ~$30. Taxi from Danang train station to Hoi An for $8 USD. Stayed at Thanh Xuan hotel at edge of old area. Cost about $12 USD for triple room. AC worked okay, hot water good, internet bad, best banana pancakes of the entire trip. Motorcycles to a place where we fought in VN. Bikes around Hoi An. Train back to Saigon. Stayed at Ly-Ly for five nights.

Bus to Phnom Penh. Stayed at Indochine Hotel. Connected with David’s birth father.

Plane (Bangkok Airways) to Bangkok, then Thai International to Chiang Mai (day trip to Burma). Stayed at backpacker hotel for $5 twin, then a nicer place, Roong Ruang for a few nights, and back to Bangkok.

David, Jeff, me on Star Ferry, HK

Flew Bangkok to Hong Kong. Stayed at Cosmic for three nights decompressing. Flew home.

Transportation included 747, airbus, other planes; backpacker bus, tourist bus, people’s bus, motorcycle, bicycle, train, bamboo train, boat, ferry, tuk-tuk, cyclo, taxi, walking.

Dreaming, Hello Kitty Haro Kiti Howaito

I went to a party in Phyllis’s back yard next door in Dallas. All the people there looked so good – all sparkly and happy and friendly. I asked a woman if everyone was on MDMA and she said, “Yes.” The woman and I were really feeling it, the magic – all beautiful and innocent.

I went over to the side in a darker area of the yard next to the house and sat on some steps. A young woman came and sat down beside me, real close, up against me, all warm and soft. We felt comfortable in relation to one another. We sat there for a little while and I asked, “What’s your name?” “Jean,” she said.

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I’m walking on the side of a hill leading down into the Pacific. In the distance I can see what seems to be a body floating in the water. I walk down to the water and start wading toward it. The water is shallow. It is a body, face down in the water. I didn’t touch it. I waded back toward the shore, toward a tiny, deserted town. Just a couple of empty streets, empty buildings. Now I see a few people, but I don’t want them to see me, so I crouch down behind an old phone booth. Of course the people see me through the glass and I stand and walk away. At the end of one street is what I think is a large bank with a waterfall on the front of the building with sheets of water coursing down the whole front. I wonder how an empty bank would be here and how can the waterfall be. There are a few more people on the next street over. One man is walking toward me. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and is a danger to me. I’m walking away up a slope with unstable footing. The ground is increasingly unstable and the man is getting closer. All I can see to resist the man is a plastic bucket with stones in it. I throw it at the man, but I think it has no effect on him. I awaken.

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(I think that to understand dreams one should include looking at the whole gestalt of the dream. In the case of the below dream, that gestalt includes the thoughts and conversation at the end. That conversation adds another person to the dream and gives a good look at that person’s character and insight.)

I was in a huge toy store with many rooms – unlike any toy store I’ve ever seen. I was wandering around with some people from Atrium Obscurum or AO, the psychedelic trance crew I’d been with from about 2010-2015 (https://ckjournal.com/psytrance-trance-trance-culture). In particular I remember Jessica, Tyson, and Luis in the store. I found a display of Hello Kitty! refrigerator magnets. (Hello Kitty was Leslie’s avatar – a perfect one because while Hello Kitty doesn’t show much emotion, you know she’s really good, maybe even transcendentally good, like Leslie.) I couldn’t find a Kitty, so was looking for Kathy (a bunny friend of Hello Kitty) but couldn’t find her, either. I realized

Beautiful Leslie

most of the characters were a little off, like AI characters, but I found some I liked. I collected them in a little brown paper bag and went to pay for them.

The check-out person finished with the person ahead of me and walked away. I was looking for the AO crew, but couldn’t find them. Leslie appeared and we were walking around, feeling good, but not touching. She was middle-aged, very pretty and we were happy, loving. We went into a large room with a floor covered in groundcover/plants. Then it was outside the store. I didn’t want to be involved in any shoplifting accusations scene and I threw the bag aside, saying, “Fuck it.” The dream ended.

I awoke wishing I’d spent more time with Leslie. I first interpreted it as the idea that the past is past – Leslie, AO, toys… But when I told Jean about the dream she said, “You got what you needed – to see Leslie.”

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Who is Hello Kitty, really? Her real name is Kitty White and she is a 3rd grader in London. She is also known in Japan (where she comes from) as Haro Kiti Howaito. As noted earlier, she doesn’t appear to show much emotion, in part because she gives people the opportunity to project their own feelings or even selves into the character. The character? Is she a cartoon character or a 3rd grader in London (with a sister named Mimmy who looks exactly like Kitty, except she has a yellow bow)? Or is she a little cat? Or is she Japanese? Or British? Who knows, really?

The black Hello Kitty in the photo is an unusual Kitty based on Edgar Allen Poe’s story, The Telltale Heart. She was given away in Bangkok one time only at midnight at the MacDonald’s on Sukhumvit Road not far from the Soi 20 alley where we were staying. It was a crowd of Thai teens and me. Hello Kitty!

It’s a Hard Road, Daddy-O

It is commonly thought that as we grow older we become less flexible in mind and body, less able to adapt to change, less resilient. There is truth in that. And falsity as well.Near Saratoga Springs

First, some truths: with aging, skin becomes less supple and eventually begins to wrinkle. Our bodies change and seldom for the better. Mortality becomes more and more real.

As we age, times change, but we have difficulty changing with them as we once did. Music moves on as we stay put somewhere in the past, stuck in the Beatles, Johnny Cash, maybe even the Five Satins (Shoo-doop un shoo-be-doo). Fashion changes and we fall further behind what’s happening today. Indeed, if we were to try to be really up-to-date in our clothes we might begin to look a little foolish.

And yet, how much change can a person deal with? How much change have we already dealt with? Most of us still alive have dealt with unimaginable grief, terrible physical and emotional pain, wars and rumors of waNorthern Californiars, being fired from a job, divorce, childbirth… the list goes on and on.

Grief. Many of us have lost our life partner. The pain of that is close to unbearable. Yet we bore it and kept on in life. A few have lost a child. We have all lost our parents, grandparents, and many friends. Each death is a reminder that we, too will pass from this earth. As time passes, the pace of loss picks up. People get sick, friends die, beloved family members die, pets die. Our bodies run down, our minds run down, we get sick…

The times we’ve lived through boggles the mind: the end and aftermath of WWll, Korea, the 1950s, rock & roll, Berlin Wall goes up, civil rights (the endless struggle), women’s liberation (another endless struggle), outer space, sexual revolution, drugs/inner space, assassinations, Vietnam War, Berlin Wall goes down, Watergate, gay liberation (another endless struggle), computers, internet, Afghanistan War, Iraq War, terrorism, gun violence, Trump/Jan 6, War in Ukraine, and so much more!

We know a lot about resilience. We laugh, we cry, we love, we hope, we experience beauty, we enjoy. It is a hard road, and here we are.

Giving thanks

Photos: I’m having difficulty posting photos. From the top, these are taken in upstate NY, Northern California, Oakland

Aging and the end of life

Van nap time in a church parking lot in Berkeley Hills; SF Bay/Oakland in far distance; simple pleasures

Recently, a friend of a friend decided to voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED). It was not a matter of advanced disease, but rather a long life, ever-increasing disabilities, and ever-decreasing capabilities. Overall, it was an apparently positive experience except for a brief period at the very end, during which his wife reported that he seemed agitated (but not necessarily distressed – she was distressed, though). A detailed and positive account of a death from VSED is found at ~19:00 in the below YouTube video from Ashby Village.

Ashby Village – Charting your end-of-life journey (includes a comprehensive update on current medical, legal, and other issues)

Concurrently Jean and I have been working on issues related to aging and enjoying life, including staying in our home as long as possible and what to do when things go wrong, as they inevitably will. AARP and other sources have resources/ideas for structuring such planning. The exploration and documentation of issues and resources is a lengthy and detailed process!

Those we leave behind will appreciate the documented work done. Excerpts from what we’re working on:

“The money conversation”

Point Reyes. Taken from van; nap time; living the good life

Access to information
General – log-ins phone, computer, business, household, etc.
Money – bank, savings, investments account #s
Health – Advance Directives, Medical Power of Atty, health provider log-ins, medications taking with dosing and frequencies, other
Legal – wills, medical

Emergency Basics
Essential contacts
Important contacts
Alarm, keypads, extra keys
Medications, other important items location

Near Bodega Bay; about to take a nap with soft wind blowing over the mighty Pacific

Team
Who will do what such as open mail, pay bills

Local resources
Medical, caregiving providers
Funeral, related
Community groups

Things I need to do

“Shrink and disappear, little wretch!”

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Third and last radiation treatment…

“Shrink and disappear, little wretch!!!” Message to the tumor from my niece, Mary.

The way it went for me: Jean drove us in the van to Dublin where the Kaiser radiation oncology unit is. The first time in Dublin we got there early, had a snack, hung out in the van, and went to the cancer center. The second time we took a sandwich and went to a park that Jean found via google and had a picnic and a nap with a cool breeze playing over us. The third time was like the second. I love it so much that Jean likes picnics and naps together like this. ♥

I’m on the tray

At the cancer center I check in, wait a short while (meanwhile, Jean was running errands, walking), and they take me back, through the corridors, through the massively heavy 4” thick door into the room. I lie down on the plastic mold of my shoulders/torso (made on the previous planning visit) on the plastic tray and grasp the handles over my head. The radiation therapists move me in small increments until several bony landmarks of my body are aligned with the machine that will beam the radiation into my body, into the tumor. They leave the room and it’s just the machine and me. The plastic tray and I slide into the machine and I’m lying still, breathing however it is I’m breathing (it seems a little fast to me) and there are beams of light (red and blue? I’m not sure) and some things like appendages – to my left a flat thing, a blank plastic rectangle about 24” x 14” and to my right, a round thing, maybe 22” across with a ~8” glass square in the center like a window and there’s a third thing like a rectangular box and those three things slowly, silently rotate around me, sometimes it seems on different axes. So I lie there, very still and after about 15 minutes the machine powers down and the plastic tray and mold and I slide out. The RT is there. “Do you need help sitting up?” “Yes, thank you.” Experientially, it seemed like nothing happened except a little discomfort. Actually a lot happened. Beams of seriously high energy that breaks the DNA of the cancer cells and thus their ability to replicate/grow/spread.

The first time I was irradiated one of the radiation therapists and I talked for awhile. She told me that school for radiation techs takes about two years. School for radiation therapists is an additional 1.5 years, so 3.5 years to be there, getting it all right every time. I used to teach that part of being a patient was literally giving your body to another person/people and that trust was essential. True. The therapist was helpful to me – moving me a little farther along in the process of integrating these new realities, becoming little more connected. I felt like she was a truth-teller. Can’t do any better than that.

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For about 6 or 8 months I took Phana for weekly chemotherapy infusions and related at Presbyterian and MD Anderson. At Presbyterian when someone finished a course of chemo they rang a bell and everyone clapped. “They’ll never ring that bell for me,” she said.

——————-

Phana and me, 30 years before she passed. Sigh.

Even caught early, with good odds of surviving it’s still realistically pretty heavy shit to have lung cancer. I feel almost dramatic when I say that, but you know, it is pretty heavy.

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Route 66

Many years ago I had a patient who had triplegia as a result of a radiation injury. He walked into the hospital and came home paralyzed in three of his four limbs. He lived with a prostitute and some other people in a shotgun house on the frontage road of a freeway. (A shotgun house is a cheaply built house, narrow, one room after another so that a shotgun fired through the front door would clear the whole house.). There was a bedpan and they put him on it and because the people in the house didn’t know anything and he couldn’t feel anything they left him on it for a couple of days. I got there and we got him off, but the blood supply to the tissue at his sacrum had been cut off for several days and over the next week or so, he developed a large, deep decubitus ulcer at his sacrum. I kept it as clean as I could with some help from the woman. She was a heavy drinker (they all were) and that and the nature of her work meant that she was gone or indisposed a lot. She was a nice person and I dug her, but she wasn’t dependable.

Several times when I was there the man was watching a TV program about sewing called Sew What’s New, which seemed odd since the program was hosted by a man all tricked out in pastels and lace and the live TV audience was all older white women and the patient was from streets, maybe pimping the woman, who brought her tricks through his room and on into her room. The ulcer/infection went into his bone and he became septic and died.

Way up into the alpine… rock, snow, ice, air.

A year or so later I saw the woman on the street. We talked for awhile. She still seemed nice and she still had that unpleasantly sweet alcoholic smell.

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My friend Joyce had 10 radiation treatments a year or so ago. Plus some other stuff. She’s doing fine. No evidence of recurrence. I know I’m getting off lightly, so far.

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David and me backpacking in Grand Canyon

When I was in my early 60s I began to look around, thinking about what I would do with the rest of my life. One answer was already clear: I would continue backpacking as long as I was able. The more time I could spend in the wilderness, the better. Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains became my place. I was in the Titcomb Basin four times, along the lakes, to the foot of the glaciers, in the alpine. The alpine, higher than any tree can grow, like magic to me. The Cirque of the Towers, the Highline Trail, Jean Lakes, Knapsack Col, Twin Glacier, snow, ice, rock, milky glacier run-off water, air, tiny alpine flowers, on and on. Also Big Bend, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico, and more.

Another answer was to keep on traveling as long as we could. A typical trip was tickets from Dallas to San Francisco to see David to Hong Kong to Hanoi and 6 weeks later return from Bangkok to HK, SF, and home to Dallas. During that 6 weeks we’d ride buses, trains, and planes to Sapa, Hue, Saigon, Phnom Penh, Luang Prabang, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, etc. After Leslie passed away, Jean and I traveled to NYC, Barcelona, Granada, all over Wyoming, Colorado, and of course, California.

The Atrium Obscurum crew, meeting before the gathering

Sonic Bloom in Colorado

I also reconnected to my hippie roots through connecting to psychedelic medicine and to the psytrance scene. Talk about blessings! Try taking this in: I’m sitting with Jeff, my best friend since the war in Vietnam – we’re by a dirt dance floor somewhere deep in a forest in East Texas. We’re rolling very, very strong, I’m sitting next to a man I’ve loved since 1966, the music is loud, people dancing, dancing, I’m dancing, the stars above, pounding music through the night, into the day, and into the next night, and along the way I took the music in and was experientially connected to the psychedelic trance scene. The connection deepened over time and I joined Atrium Obscurum, a crew that was putting on forest gatherings in Texas. I went to gatherings in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arkansas. Sometimes I taught classes on the end of life, PTSD, and psychedelic medicine. It was an amazing time in the reality of the global underground.

https://ckjournal.com/psytrance-trance-trance-culture

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When I finished my course of radiation, the nurse asked if I wanted to ring the bell. I said, no thanks – in tribute to Phana and because (so far) I’m getting off very lightly.

From our deck – Mt. Tam in the distance

Like a Rolling Stone

When I was in high school there was a small record store in the little strip shopping center near my home off Walnut Hill and Marsh Lane. In those days record stores had little listening booths for people to check out records. Somehow, maybe through the woman who owned the store guiding me, I found the first Bob Dylan album. It was a whole new dimension from the “baby, I love you” that was the only popular music option at the time and it had a profound, but indefinable effect on me.

A year or so later I left home, hitchhiking first to Grand Saline, then to Baton Rouge, where I ended up in jail for “investigation” – described in another unposted document and then working for months as a cook in a Toddle House at the bottom of the bridge that people would take going from Baton Rouge across the Mississippi River to the honky-tonks on the other side and coming back drunk, “Yeah, let’s stop at the Toddle House.” From Baton Rouge I went to Colorado where I moved around among Estes Park, Boulder, Fort Collins, Georgetown, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Utah for about a year and a half over two years. I was rock-climbing and hanging around with other climbers and various drifters. I recall being in a bar on the main street in Estes and hearing Like a Rolling Stone on the jukebox. Once again it was a completely new thing that spoke directly to me – in terms of my general and specific situation and circumstances at the time …
hanging out
… scrounging your next meal

How does it feel
To be on your own
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
Whew! All those things were happening with me – hanging out, scrounging meals, on my own, anonymous, Like a Rolling Stone. And it was fine.

Some of my friends and I had long hair before very many people had long hair – other than the slackers hanging out at The Sink in Boulder. One of my climbing partners, Bob B. and I were called, “Buffalo Bill (Bob) and his Indian Friend (me)” because of our long hair and general appearance. There was a documentary on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home) that came out a year or so ago. Looking at him singing Like a Rolling Stone I was amazed at just how hip we really were.

For a few months one winter Bob and I lived in a tiny cabin on the edge of Georgetown. The cabin had no electricity or running water and was heated with a coal-burning stove that the one time we used it, produced terrible noxious smoke, so that we never lit it again. There was a permanent “glacier” we called it on the floor between the bunks where we slept in our sleeping bags. The ice was about an inch thick in the middle.

Bob’s girlfriend was Toby T., who had gone to my high school in Dallas. She was a year or two older than I and I think had been popular in high school. In Colorado she was hip, kind of a drifter herself and probably drank too much. She was really sweet and kind. Sometimes she would stay with us in the cabin or sleeping in the place where we worked.

We worked in a restaurant called the Holy Cat. Bob was the bartender and I was the waiter. The owner was a fairly nice guy and I’m sure we were a burden to him – but we were who was available to work in his restaurant. I think we got maybe a dollar an hour, if that, tips, lift tickets for Loveland Basin, and room and board. Sometimes we would just sleep on the floor of the bar in front of the huge fireplace. Climbers and others passing through would stay there with us. Judy C., later a famous singer stayed with us one night and we sang the night away. It was a good winter, but we lost our jobs when Layton K. came up from Boulder and said, “Come on, we’re going to climb in the desert” – and away we went to Arches National Monument and Fisher Towers. That was the first time I’d slept in the desert – in the winter, cold, stars in billions. Photo: Me, Kor, Bradley on the summit (first ascent) of the Argon Tower in Arches National Monument – we’re perched in the tiniest space imaginable with 400-500 vertical feet falling away on all sides.

Only a few years after I left Colorado I learned that Toby had died – so young.