Where I Came From and
Why
(An Autobiographical Sketch composed for my daughters.)
Jerome Iglowitz, 1991
When I was a little boy, I lived in a world of nightmares.
The violence and tension between those I loved was excruciating. Perhaps
to another little person, less sensitive, this would have been less damaging.
But it didn't happen to that one, it happened to me.
To a bright, growing little mind, a child's mind,
the parents are the sun and the moon. No, they are of an even larger
contextual significance. More like the laws of physics, the law of
gravity, and the air that we breathe. The disruptions in that world
could be likened to a reversal in the physical laws and happenings in the
world of the adult, to superstitions and occult horror fantasies, or to
earthquakes or tidal waves.
I saw two bright, strong, violent and totally uncompromising
personalities in mortal combat. Of course, both of them lost.
And so did I, and so did my brother, and so did my aunts and uncles, and
so did anyone else near enough to them to come within their circle of violence.
The last words I heard from my mother's sister before she died fifty years
later were to blame my mother for the sterility of her (the sister's) life!
My mother developed into a full-blown clinical paranoid,
(if she hadn't already been one). My father retreated into the unbelievably
hard and bitter shell of loneliness which he carried till he died.
There was always an almost palpable "sterile" quality about him, (as in a
bacteriological "flamed" loop), which repulsed warmth or touching, the
things I think he wanted above all things. But the shell was very sore,
and the least touch provoked waves of pain and bitterness. He was like
a parched and scorched desert, and I shall always associate him with the
old testament God for his righteousness and his unforgiving nature.
My mother methodically drove away anyone who ever loved
her, and there were many, of which I was one. It seems everyone tried
to save her. Perhaps my father didn't, or, if he did, he had stopped
trying by the time I gained any meaningful perception of reality. My
mother, (in the side of her which seemed to conflict with her insanity),
was an amazingly warm and rich nature. She, like my father, was an original,
and not a copy. It was this that made us all so ambivalent about her.
If she had been something less, it would have been easier.
Some of my earliest, and my strongest memories are
of waking, it seems almost every night, to the intense and violent hatred
that filled my universe, (I would hear their violence). My only response
was to pray, to get on my knees by the side of my bed and pray to God to
make them better, - to cure this insanity, (for I equated then, as now, hatred
with insanity). (I have since come to extend the equation to "evil").
And so I stayed for hours on end, for nights on end, with first my simplistic
prayer, and then stretching forth my raw consciousness, (or rather, backward,
inward), trying to reach the mind and will of God. (This probably started
at about seven or eight years of age and lasted until I was about thirteen.)
Typically, I awoke on the floor in the morning.
I never saw God. And I never heard God.
And yet, different powers of introspection and processes of thought, not
totally or even primarily religious, opened for me through those times of
contemplation. There was a profound peace. There were the childish
conceits of goodness which have never in my life been merited. There
was what I still conceive to be a legitimate understanding of the meaning
and substance of life and of death.
I was never in any real sense raised in a religion.
My father was a non-practicing Jew- and he was always on the other side of
the war anyway, so I never really knew him or Judaism. My mother was
an Irish Catholic, who was only nominally practicing- I will not be presumptuous
enough to say why. Maybe because she married my father. Or maybe
because the church refused to bury one of her sisters who had died under
bad circumstances. In any case, my entire religious background consisted
in being brought to mass on Sundays for a few years, a baptism at about
twelve years of age, with a couple of hours, only, of instruction, and the
sporadic accompaniment of my brother to mass when my mother had stopped
going, and sent us on alone.
I can still remember the "trial". (I must have been
about six or seven years old- maybe as young as five, and my brother two
and a half years older than me). My father brought my uncle, my mother's
brother, and his wife over to our house to "prove" to his two children, my
brother and me, that our mother was crazy and that her accusations that he
had been sleeping with our aunt were false, (this was the second or third
of her fantasies).
We were all in the front room of our house, the witnesses,
(my aunt and uncle), the accused, (my aunt and my father), the accuser, (my
mother), the defense attorney, (my father), and the jury, (my brother and
me)! He completed his masterly summary in the best courthouse and
theatrical fashion, (he always fancied his resemblance to Edward G. Robinson
-there was a resemblance), and then asked us, the jury, to find for him.
I don't know if, in fact, I actually said that "I believe my mommy", or if
I simply didn't say I believed him. But I believe he hated me from
that day forever forward -and it showed, bitterly and meanly.
There was more to this war between my father and me-
my mind rejects the pain of the complete picture, so I grab it in little,
hurting bytes. I remember, years later, at their divorce trial, being
told by her divorce lawyer that all his skill, and all his work, and all
his brilliance for all the time he had spent, and all the rightness on the
side of my mother--all this wasn't sufficient and that my mother would be
out on the street with nothing, (read this as starving and freezing), - unless
I perjured myself and lied against my father. I did!
I remember an earlier time when I had just entered
highschool, and was in intense emotional pain and reached out for his help.
No, that's not true, no one in our family ever was so direct or humble as
that. I went to his office and tried to talk to him- and was so "washed"
with the hatred of my reception that we never got started and I had to leave.
Pigheads, all!
My mother switched from mistresses to the Mafia, and
from the Mafia to the communist party, and from the communist party to a
universal "those people". Things got more and more violent, physically
there was a broken finger and flashing butcher knives, -loaded tablecloths
thrown to the floor, but the strongest violence was verbal. It was
unbelievable.
My brother was sent away to a boarding high
school, and I didn't know what to do with those people, my mother and my
father. I'm sorry to say I still didn't want to see my father's side
of the thing then, but I had always gravitated to the warmth that was in
my mother. (I suspect my father married her for it, and I knew he
hated her). I don't know if it was here or later that we came to blows.
She was in his room, (they had slept in different rooms for some years),
and they were into a violent physical or a violent verbal argument.
I went in to "protect" her, either physically or verbally- I honestly don't
remember which- and we came to blows- which I shall forever regret.
It must have taken great self-restraint for this man who had grown up on
the "rough" side of town not to have kicked the shit out of the fat, weak
little twelve year old that I was. Even more significant was the fact
that he never said what he did for me. I can only hope that it was
an act of love on his part- a "seal" between us. For my part, I told
him I would shoot him if he ever hurt my mother again. (He took the
"22" out of my closet that night when I was asleep and hid it in his
car trunk for some time).
I was sent to the same boarding school the next year
for seventh grade. It was far across the city of Chicago, and it was a military
school with all the trappings that go with that -we sang "dirty" marching
songs at the top of our lungs as we marched around the quadrangle in our
uniforms! I stayed there one year, and I believe it was the happiest
and healthiest year of my young life -away from them! It was amazing.
The whole world bloomed, ideas were fun, colors were bright, and life was
a joy. Never had I had such peace in my external life.
Then my mother drove down to see me one day in her
shiny black '49' Pontiac- to tell me how "they" were following her and how
she needed me to come home to protect and help her. (ME- to protect
HER?). It broke my heart, but I told her I would leave that place
of peace and come home with her- I guess I will always regret that.
Let me tell a happening at that school that made it
special to me. I had continued my practice of "nightly prayer"- no,
there was little supplication in all this, "contemplation" is a more precise
description, for all these years- usually for several hours a night- I would
usually still stay up most of the night.
I had once experienced what now seems to be the standard
religious dream of "flying", -once only. I mention this dream mainly
because it had the curious quality of having really happened, even though
I immediately knew it could not have occurred!
This is not an accurate overall picture though.
During these nightly contemplations, and during their corollaries at church,
my mind moved - how can I say it? It was not a matter of images, but
rather one of concepts! Non-verbal and non-pictorial ideas and concepts
and their interplays- I know of no better way to describe it- it was unbelievably
rich and I don't think its subject matter was primarily religious- at least
in the conventional sense.
But one morning in the spring, something very strange
and very beautiful happened to me. I still remember it vividly and
clearly. My attention turned to some trees I was near and I began to
contemplate one of them. ("Contemplate" had a very distinct and precise meaning
to me- it had to do with my basic method of "thought" -- but I have no proper
words to describe it.) Something happened in my mind! The
best I can describe it and understand it was that I entered a mode of perception
on the common ground BETWEEN perception and understanding. It wasn't
sensory, and it wasn't thinking- it was like both at once in one thing.
I don't know how long this lasted, - it couldn't have been very long, but
it has affected me the rest of my life. It was the most beautiful and most
profound thing that has ever happened to me. I believe the perception
was legitimate- there were no "visions", no "voices", and no self-aggrandizement.
I have come to think that reality, and the means by which we interact with
it fit a more difficult model than my fellows hold, and that that experience
was a "touching" of some of the richer possibilities of that place.
I have since read William James and others and feel comfortable in that company,
(not as a major figure, but as a very minor one). Up to that time
I had no contact nor knowledge of the existence of this body of writing.
The only relevant texts, with which I had only a general experience, would
be found in the "Gospels" and the "Epistles" of the Catholic Daily Missals.
I don't know if my dad was home then. They had
separated and reconciled several times, and I really don't remember about
that time. I know he had moved down to the basement into the "rec"
room, and still she harangued him. Eventually she threw his clothes
out the door, and he left for good. I guess the real question is why
this strong and proud man stood for this humiliating treatment as long as
he did. Some of the worst of it I will not expose to view- it was bad.
I think I know the answer. As his son, I think I know the answer.
He was as empty of life as I am, and he needed her to fill that- he needed
her LIFE to fill his STERILITY. In this he was utterly dependent on
her. I also believe that there was a moral integrity to his family
to do the best he could for us.
I think, maybe, from her side, she came to despise
him for exactly the same reason. The practical sides of life- where he excelled,
she probably thought were only trivially significant, but she was richly
full of an original awareness and contact with life in another sense.
I have no real basis to make this judgement, except to observe that I think
it applies in my own life. To apply it to my Dad probably isn't fair-
he was more of a man than I am.
I think I first became aware of my mother as being
truly and formally insane when I went to high school. Maybe I got
far enough away from her that I could distinguish "insanity" from
just one of the "dirty names" my father would yell at her. I didn't
much like my father at this time either. I remember going into his
office in the laundry and trying to talk to him -he shoved me back to the
place we had always been. No compromise. Admit you're totally
wrong. Admit I'm totally right. Admit your mother is totally
crazy. Do all these things and then maybe I'll talk to you.
I am my father's and my mother's son. I have
the same killing pride they had. I turned and left. During that
period I hated both my father and my mother, and phantasized killing them
both. And yet- I never had the courage to think of actually leaving
- even to think of it!
I remember riding a bus to school one day of my first
year in high school, and watching all the "happy", empty minds of my schoolmates,
and comparing that to the constant torture that was inside of my own head.
(I had always sensed them as "empty"- as they never seemed to respond to
any part of the world of ideas which was so much a part of my world!- I was
a very lonely kid.) I remember the humiliation of returning home with
a friend one evening and hearing them screaming at the top of their lungs.
I prayed a constant prayer then. "God, take away my mind! Take
my mind so that the pain will go away." I think that in some fashion
that prayer was answered. I wish it hadn't been.
I had been considered pretty bright up to that point,
but for the rest of high school, I don't think that was true. I did
passable work, I messed around with a girl- for which I am truly ashamed,
mostly because I had not one particle of compassion for her, nor any knowledge
of who or what she was.
When I entered college, (the University of Chicago),
the choice solely because some of my schoolmates were going there, I was
rudely shocked. The level of work and ideas was so radically different
from what I had experienced before that I didn't know what to do. I
spent long, long hours studying, and in the process discovered a thought
process which resembles what I have come to understand is "TM". I discovered,
(invented for myself- I have never studied it), the process through a sequence
of happenings.
When I entered the university, I was overweight, and
the student health doctor prescribed "diet pills" for me, (amphetamines,
I think). I was taking these during the schoolyear and became so "hyped"
with them as well as the shocking load of work--AND IDEAS-- that I revolted
against the medication and came off of it with a passion. I realized
that the mental state that it put me in was exactly the opposite "place"
to where I should be in understanding, (one of peace and contemplation instead
of "hyper-ness"), and where I did, in fact, find myself when I came to understand
the solution of a given problem. In other words, I reversed the "vector"
and had a usable "roadmap" to a more efficient mental engine. I had
also discovered classical music, (which I had never been truly exposed to
before), and I fell wildly in love with it. Somehow this also became
a tool which associated itself with breathing control, (discovered
in association with the times of success in autodidactical math studies),
and other physical and philosophical developments. I turned the process
onto itself, and cycled it to completion, I thought. I have long since
lost most of these processes, which I will discuss presently- they are losable
as well as learnable, but this has to do with "sin" and with paradox.
I had tried when I first went to the university to
ask for help from the Psychiatry department for my mother. When I
finally got an appointment, I realized that the man was dangerous to me.
He had tremendous power, liked to use it,- and there was no caring in him.
He told me bluntly that he didn't want to discuss my mother, he wanted to
discuss me. But I needed him to discuss her with me too. Maybe he thought
I needed help too, but he could have been gracious enough to start there!
I needed help with her. I also could have used a friend, a confidant.
(Sometime I would like to develop the theme that children from dangerous
parents or surroundings develop the ability to "read" peoples' emotions better
than people from other environments. Also the related notion that children
of paranoid parents become either better than the norm or worse than the
norm at the evaluation of theories of reality- this from continual practice
at it. This is a real practice for those raised in these surroundings-
with a definite survival value!)
When I finished my freshman year I was intrigued with
mathematics. Calculus was a pure joy. I was also perturbed with
a low grade in Modern Algebra- caused by a "T.A." who taught the wrong course
material , (his own rather than the book), -he was young and I think he was
developing his own course materials and they tested solely on the book.
I decided, therefore, to work through the whole book that summer, which I
did, (it was written for a whole years' graduate course according to the
introduction). What a beauty, it was like fine science fiction.
I finished the book, worked all the starred problems to my satisfaction, read
another book on Galois Theory, worked a summer job, (reviewing and contemplating
algebraic concepts while working on the Sears assembly line--it was interesting
--and even productive!!), and retaught myself to play the piano. I had
taken lessons from six to twelve years old but not gotten very far.
I rushed up the stairs to put on Arthur Rubinstein playing the Chopin polonaises,
ran downstairs, put on my headphones, and played along with him. It
was gorgeous, (the music, not my playing.) Chopin is so gorgeous and
Rubinstein was phenomenal!
I also began to evolve and write a theory of psychology
that summer. I had so far resolved my life at that point that I realized
that I still loved my mother, and decided to try my utmost to cure her- since
they couldn't or wouldn't! The theory was derived from the freshman
level of exposure to Freud, plus my knowledge of my mother, but mostly, it
was the processing of these two through the mechanism I had created mentally
in my math studies. In my arrogance, I thought that there was no problem,
no matter how complex or difficult that I could not solve, as the unsolvability
of problems for me translated to the exclusion of certain "vectors" from
the problem-solving process, --and I thought I had permanently and thoroughly
resolved this. (Somehow it never occurred to me that DATA or the exposure
to other ideas might be a necessity in this process-- somehow I don't think
it occurred to Freud either!)
To put it succinctly, I was totally blown away intellectually
and spiritually and filled with not just a little pride. (I will state
for the record that there were no drugs involved in any of this, nor have
I ever taken any. From what I read, though, some of the states seem
similar.)
When I went back to school, I continued to work on
my PSYCHOLOGY, and thought I could find a mentor. No, that's not honest.
I sought to find someone to appreciate my "genius". (Rueull Denney
was very kind to me here- he was a very decent human being!) I left
school after a quarter to devote full time to what was becoming a full-blown
book, (although I think it did not have some crucial aspects of one).
Its sequence was temporally developmental from front to back instead of logical
-- i.e. I was evolving the ideas as I wrote the book rather than writing
a book to present a finished set of ideas--and I never reworked it!
I presumed in my unbelievable arrogance that it was so good that the reader
would be able and would want to follow along anyway! God, what I would
have given for a word processor- as the thing was totally unintelligible!),
and continued to seek appreciation and support. I finished that book,
and started another equally presumptuous one on philosophy and physics based
on reading Ernst Cassirer's "Einstein's Theory of Relativity". (I cannot
say how much this embarasses me today!)
I continued to seek support at the university,
and submitted innumerable copies of my manuscripts for publication- isn't
that how books are published? I received only polite, nonspecific
refusals. You know, I think it would be kinder to be more specific,
as the other kind only implies you aren't meaningful enough to talk to.
To put it mildly, I was crushed. Put more realistically, I was destroyed.
How much of the ego we put into something we write. And my "engine"!
I thought I could go back to school to get a degree
and develop a better presentation of my "theories" while I continued to work
on them. It didn't work. The knowledge I acquired that year fit
in beautifully with the structure I had erected, (as I saw them crystallized
in the last stages of creation, but not in the writing of them), but something
jammed and locked in my mind. I tried to turn it loose again, and the
harder I tried, the worse it got. I think the answer turns on an antinomy.
Devices like this are central to the mechanism of creativity. Call
it a Koan. Call it a paradox. The critical developmental devices,
(the relaxation and the freedom-- and these are big words in relation to
creativity), hinge on integrity and healthy-mindedness to overcome paradoxes.
They can be overcome, but the process is delicate, and questions of integrity
can become lethal.
I felt that I had betrayed my integrity in returning
to school. I also felt like a fool in not knowing my ground- which
amounts to disbelieving or distrusting the process. I had neither read
extensively nor had I an experimental basis. It was the ultimate "bootstrap"
operation!! (It had a lot to do with the "form" or "shape" of theories
-it had to do with the internal aesthetics of the theoretical process itself
hinged on certain analytic points of entry!) I guess my feeling now
covers both sides. Theoretical knowledge needs testing, I was a young
punk kid, and God, it was the most beautiful place I have ever been.
(These ideas have been in my mind and have been the
driving force of my soul for the past thirty years, but though they have
been under constant refinement through the fire of the pain of those many
years, I have been absolutely restrained from elaborating them until very
recently. Though I have seen absolutely clear (and connected) flashes
of cohesive and valuable thought, I have been "locked" every time I have
attempted to connect or write them down. I think I had to go through
enough pain to wear away the ego whose pain and whose fear it was that blocked
another attempt! When I was finally able to do this, it was at a time
when I thought I had little chance of survival -I thought I would surely
die under the stress and pressure I experienced.)
I got real sick then. I mean in the head.
Somehow I lost about seven or eight years. I think I got lost in the
"engine" somehow. I was morose and crushed. I thought of suicide
often.
I couldn't leave because I thought my mother would
die with no one to care for her- or at least someone would come and put
her into a "snakepit", (people today cannot appreciate the context that
mental illness generated then -before the medications -and the fears I held
for someone I loved).
Finally, my brother had a divorce from his wife, and
asked that he move back home with his two sons so that mom could help with
them. He was very gracious and said that he did not want to push me
out of the home! God! The crushing joy that exploded in me!
I set a date with my mother for the day I would be leaving- I finished fixing
up her house, left my wallet and keys in her desk, put on a warm jacket-
it was winter, and kissed her goodbye. She cried.
I can still remember walking out of that house.
Remember, I was not an adventurous sort. I thought I would be dead-
that I could not survive in that outside world without a safe haven.
But then, I walked a block, and then another block, and I began to smile,
and then to laugh with joy -actually! I stuck out my thumb, and began
to hitch-hike south.
Three days, two rides, and no meals later, I arrived
on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. I got out of the car, thanked
the driver, and thought I would take a hike to see a nearby mountain.
I walked, and I walked, following an irrigation ditch until it got dark,
I never got to the mountain, (- it turned out to be 50 miles away- distances
are deceptive in the desert!). I found a sandy gully and wrapped up
in my coat and went to sleep. I awoke with the breaking dawn, I thought,
and started back to the road following the same irrigation ditch. The
"dawn" was a cloud-covered moon- it's like that in the desert. A voice
shouted some obscenity at me and told me it would shoot me if I came any
nearer. Apparently it was a watchman for a pumping station who thought
I was some dangerous character. With great difficulty, I managed to
get him to tell me which way it was back to the road. (I had gotten turned
around - probably at a branching of the ditch). I think it was a close
thing- I saw him waiving that pistol around, and he was scared.
When I got back to the road, I saw an orange grove
and a farmhouse. I asked the old lady I saw behind her screen-door
if I could have some oranges, as I hadn't eaten in days. She said
I could,- but what I read in her voice, her compassion and caring for the
bearded "bum" in front of her, was a thing of great beauty- I needed to
see compassion then. She was a very beautiful soul. (Wonderful
oranges!)
As I walked down the road toward Phoenix, I again thumbed
a ride, -this time with a Moslem minister. (Doesn't this sound like fiction?
Fielding? It's not, though.). I do not remember if it was now
or later that he introduced me to a Moslem service. I think I confused
him as I was in a place to be absolutely honest with myself and everyone
else. I had no conventions, (G.B.S. and I were very old friends and
I understood his message), and that is very confusing to an ordinary mind.
He and his parishioners were very decent and very gracious to me. I
also intended to follow the "christian" ideal- the wandering monk, (I was
and still am very confused about religion)- which I stated badly to them and
made rather a fool of myself -they were very gracious.
My problem when I got into Phoenix was obvious.
How was I not to starve, not to go to jail, and , in general -to survive.
The answer was equally obvious. I would do physical work. Since
I had no skills, I would do unskilled physical work. I found the nearest
telephone book, looked up the unemployment department, and at one shot had
both the place to find work and cheap rooming. I got to the unemployment
office at five or so in the morning, after spending the night walking so
as not to be arrested as a vagrant, and found the fruit buses getting pickers
for the day.
Delarosa! What a pretty old man. Picture
a fifty year old, five foot tall, white mustached Mexican elf, all bouncy
with sparkling eyes and full of the joy of life. ( I have met perhaps a
half-dozen such souls in my life and I treasure each one- Alan, can you
hear that? You should get to know him!)
"Can you pick fruit?" he asked me. "I've
never done it- but I'm strong and I'll work hard", I answered. He
looked unhappy, looked around for anyone else, and since there was no one
and the bus wasn't full, he took me, (reluctantly). I've heard guys
say almost those exact words many times since then, and I think I know what
went through Delarosa's mind. You see, to the uninitiated, it appears
that any fool can pick fruit if he has even the minimum of co-ordination
and willingness to work.
Well, I got out there in that field, and started working
with a will. After about an hour, after quivering on that ladder that
seemed to have no support in the tree, (you needed both hands to pick fruit),
"Junior", Delarosa's son, came to see how I was doing. He took my precious
half-bag of fruit and dumped it on the ground. "This is garbage", he
said. "You plugged them." By this he meant that I had pulled
the oranges off the stem and literally pulled a plug of the skin off in the
process, making the oranges valueless. He showed me the proper way to
pick one- by "rolling" it end over to snap the stem cleanly, and walked away
disgustedly. The crews said that Junior was older than his father -what
a sour young man. (Delarosa got a percentage on the fruit his crews
picked, so he did have a reason to be concerned.)
At the end of a twelve hour, more or less, day, the
bus dropped me back at the unemployment office. On the bus, one of
the pickers, after sizing me up very carefully, decided I wasn't a cop and
, showing compassion for me, recommended a "hotel", (flop-house), that was
clean. Emphasize clean! We were paid in cash for the fruit we
had picked that long day. For the best effort I could make, I think
I got about three and a half bucks. Small problem. If I was to
go back the next day, I would need to buy gloves, (oranges have nasty thorns),
eat, and get a place to stay. I did first things first. I bought
the cheap cotton gloves from Delarosa, went to the "hotel", and got a cot
for the night, (I don't remember exactly how much- but the weekly rate which
I soon utilized was four dollars/week). With the remainder of this honestly,-
very honestly earned money- it was probably about a dollar and a half or
so, I went downstairs to the local grocery/liquor store and bought--I think
some cottage cheese, some canned beans, and, because I felt as though I wanted
to fit in, some green jalapenos to mix it all up, (I am and have been a strict
vegetarian since I was eighteen).
The result is predictable. My first real meal
in four days, other than the oranges we ate in the fields, had to go into
the garbage can. It was terrible, and it was laughable, and I was happier
than I had been in years.
In the following weeks, I became friends with some
of my coworkers- in particular the Francisco brothers. The smaller
of the two looked a lot like the actor Gilbert Roland, and had more or less
the same personality -vital,- full of life. The taller of the two, I
can't remember their given names, had a classic face- long, lean and noble.
They kind of took me under their wings and taught me the secrets of picking.
I learned to "coyote"--not a nice thing to do, but we did it half-assed in
jest. I learned to "short-sack", and in general learned the science
of fruit picking.
Imagine meeting the fruit bus at four or five in the
morning -making sure you get up because if you miss it you won't work, (nor
eat), that day! You climb on and try to settle down to sleep if you
can on the ride out to the fields. The Mexicans were the best adjusted
at that point- they talked and joked, switching in blocks back and forth
between english and spanish as given words triggered the change, (as multilinguals
often do), and ate huge breakfasts with chile peppers and drank beer.
This was strange for me as I have a hard time eating anything that early.
When we got to the fields, it would not be dawn yet, so we would make fires
of the dead brush to warm up- I used to roast oranges, (you can't really
roast an orange- you heat it).
Then, as the first light begins to break, you take
your fruit-bag, a large canvas sack with a single padded canvas strap, and
two snap-hooks fastening the bottom, and you take your ladder- I think it
was fourteen feet long- aluminum, and you head out to the set of trees assigned
to your crew. The rules are plain. Lets suppose the set is eight
trees wide. The first man to the set of eight trees gets his pick for
the best tree for fruit, and the rest of the crew gets what's left.
But suppose there's a gorgeous tree in the next row. The rules say
that nobody can go to the next row till all the first row have been chosen.
And once you pick a tree, you're stuck with it till its cleaned, (no more
fruit of any kind -at least when I picked).
So obviously if you can get the better trees, the easy
ones with the most fruit, you'll have an easier time and make more money.
As for counting the fruit you pick, there are two methods- I've done both.
In one method, a tractor hauls a fruit-bin up a trail down the middle of
the row of trees. A supervisor, (read Junior), counts the times each
picker runs up, unsnaps the clips on the bottom of his bag, and throws the
contents over the edge of the bin. Yes, I said "runs"! A picker
at that time got from seventeen to twenty cents per bag for picking approximately
sixty pounds of oranges! (We did some picking later at the university agricultural
station- the average bag contained between 120 and 140 oranges.) If
you can extrapolate these numbers, you will begin to have some idea of the
ferocious pace that is maintained. We ran constantly in the freshly
disked dirt, carrying our ladders and full or partial sacks. Science
dictated that you try to get the tree closest to the tractor, that you start
at the beginning side- where the tractor is coming from and work around and
finish where it will be then. You save your "skirts", (bottom fruit),
to top off your bag so you don't have to climb with an almost full bag,
etc...
Incidentally, you don't "pick" an orange, you make
a very rapid arm and hand movement from the bottom to "slap" it- which fractures
the stem and sends it sailing into the bag in one motion- which allows the
quantities that are necessary- your hands and arms should be one continuous
blur!
A top picker at that time got 100 bags per day or more.
This is about 6000 pounds of oranges, or something in excess of twelve thousand
oranges, for which he received twenty dollars- usually tax free.
I also picked grapefruits which follow the same pattern,
except that the bag counts are higher, the prices less, and the final result
about the same.
The other method of picking involves filling boxes
at the base of the trees. Actually, the box method gives the farmer
a more honest count- the crews like it because there is less running.
With the tractor method, the tendency is to "short-sack" -stick your hip into
the bag and never move it- and a two-thirds bag looks like a full one.
I slowly worked up my skill and endurance. I
was able to get on the weekly rate at my "hotel" , I went to the Salvation
Army store to get used jeans and sweatshirts., I bought some usable boots
and leather picking gloves, - and became "Barbasul", (bluebeard, the mexicans
named me that -actually, I had a full, black beard). Eventually I got
up to the 100 bag level.
I survived on skid row not because I was either brave
or smart or tough, but rather, I think , because I was ignorant and naive.
I liked those people, I did not judge them, and I had never really "seen"
people before. I learned to play pool downstairs in the bar in the
evenings, (I never drank), with its tears and holes in the tables. It
was funny to watch the "quarter hustlers" "break"- they'd seen Paul Newman,
I guess.. God, what a show. I figured out some of the angles,
and learned to do some oddball shots with "english" which scared some of them.
I also never played for money- which also confused them.
There is a funny fact about me, I believe. I
think most people misread me. In general, crooks read me as a cop,
and cops read me as a crook. I don't know why. I consider myself
gentle, and others consider me violent. I have heard myself described
as the "most dangerous man" in that company. Mostly, I guess, because
someone that open and unprotected would have to be dangerous enough to sustain
it. I think there's a reference in Dante's Inferno to something similar-
of an angel, (not me!), - walking through hell, protected by his innocence,
(read ignorance)- never seeing, never touched. In general, I was never
bothered, though there were shootings and stabbings routinely on "our block".
The prostitutes never approached me either- innocence again?? Those
prostitutes were something else - they used to play games with the pool cues!
Once I was awakened from sleep by a Mexican guy who
had a knife at my throat. Have you ever seen the kind with the little
hook at the end? It seems he was a homosexual with ideas about me.
I don't remember being scared- I guess I was too sleepy. I simply told
him I had to go to the bathroom, which I did. He thought that was
a good idea and followed me there. "Which one", he asked. "You
go in that one, and I go in this one" I answered, upon which I went in and
closed the door. He went into the other one, and I never saw him again.
I remember being awakened many times in the night by
the screams of the prostitutes being abused in the few private rooms in
the place. I can also remember awakening to see the manager, a young
stocky redheaded guy with a southern accent,- naked and pimply to the waist,
chasing another man with a baseball bat. Can you imagine the sound
of a real baseball bat hitting a real man? (I'm not talking about
a fake situation on T.V.). The other man went down a long flight of
stairs!
I remember playing chess, (being beaten as one would
a child), with an old man in the park, (I think I might know who that was--many
years later -recently- I saw a Sammy something-or-other on TV as a world
rated chess champion from Phoenix commenting on a championship playoff--I'm
not really sure, but he sure looked familiar) -and trying to learn to high-dive
at the public pool.
When the citrus was through for the season, I tried
bucking hay, picking grapes, and picking watermelons- but there wasn't enough
work at any of those to be worth while.
Watermelon picking was kind of funny, though, and is
worth telling. Imagine a truck driving along a path through the field.
The sides of the truck are about ten feet high. In the back of the
truck are two men, one stacking, and the other catching the watermelons as
they are thrown up over the side of the truck. The truck is moving slowly,
at walking speed. Alongside of it are about eight men, spread out in
a wide line. As each man comes upon a watermelon, he calls out "hold",
which stops the next man from throwing one to him, reaches down and tosses
it to the next man closer to the truck. Now obviously the outside
man has the easiest job. He has only to pick up and throw his own watermelons.
The next man has to toss his own plus the outside mans'. The next man
has to toss both theirs and his own, and so forth. It all piles up
then on the man closest to the truck- the man on the "down" row. He
doesn't just toss the watermelons on a level toss either, but has to throw
each and every watermelon that is picked by the whole crew ten feet in the
air!
Normally, the crew that is not in the truck rotates
regularly, with the man on the "downrow" going to the outside, and everyone
else moving inward. Occasionally, however, some "bad" m.f., (guy),
will insist that he can "handle it" , and this is the fun part. It's
impossible! The going rate when I worked there was twenty cents per
ton per man! For each man to make twenty dollars in a day,( the benchmark),
the crew would have to pick one hundred tons of watermelons! If you
can imagine throwing that total poundage ten feet high, you can get the idea.
You can also get some notion of the phenomenal physical strength of people
working in the fields- there is no comparable in ordinary society!
I met some very straight people on those crews- and
some that weren't. None worse than I had met anywhere else. I
remember an old black guy whose pride made him stuff every bag to the limit-
I think he made himself do twice the work of anybody else. He got
ten or fifteen dollars a day- but they were damned honest dollars.
I wish I could remember his name- he was a man I respected and who had honestly
earned that respect. I met some hotshots who I think cheated- they skirted
trees, and jumped rows.
I remember changing my shirt after work one day
and going off the fruit bus to buy some buttermilk and listening to the locals
talk about the "scum" on that bus- the same ones that put the food on their
tables! I didn't comment- I didn't know how to!
In the end it went sour. I don't know why.
I picked fruit for about six months, and then I had to leave. I gave
my coat to some pathetic guy I had met in the flophouse, sent what
money I had accrued to my mother and set out hitch-hiking to Los Angeles.
I did pretty good until I got a ticket from the California Highway Patrol
for hitch-hiking on the freeway. They were very polite about it, but
still gave me the ticket.
When I got to Los Angeles, I followed the same pattern.
I got a room this time at the YMCA, and believe it, there were bedbugs!
The room was immaculately clean, and the clerk thought I was trying to hustle
him out of the price of the room- he didn't believe me. In all the
time in that flophouse, I had never been bitten once. I signed up at
the day labor places, and went there at five or so in the mornings to get
work. I also tried to get on in the farmer's markets in the mornings,
(before the other job!) and almost made it, but never found anyone willing
to give me the chance Delarosa had. Try running with a handtruck piled
eight feet high with produce in that hectic place at three thirty in the morning
without having done it before! I lasted five seconds before they took
it away from me.
This lasted for some time, several months, but just
wasn't right, so I decided to enlist in the army. Actually, I tried
the marines first, but since I insisted on going as a non-combatant field
medic, the only service open was the army. My enlistment contract stated
I was to go as a field medic, be guaranteed non-combatant status, and that
I was to go to Vietnam -these were the options I insisted upon- and was guaranteed
though they told me I could have any MOS I wanted.
I had several reasons for this. For one, I had
actively worked at avoiding military service when I was with my mother,
and I felt guilty for the ones who had gone, and maybe died in my place.
Also, I wanted to know just how real the non-violent philosophy I espoused
was to me. Also, maybe I was depressed and just wanted to die.
I don't know why I or anyone does anything. I don't think anyone else
does either.
Anyhow, I signed up in Los Angeles, listed my home
address as the flophouse I'd lived at in Phoenix, and was bused up to Fort
Ord.
So here we have this non-violent vegetarian, non-pot-smoking,
non-hip, bearded character going to fight in the war, (doesn't this remind
you of Joseph Fielding again?), -riding the chartered bus up from the recruitment
station in Los Angeles to Fort Ord. We were "inprocessed" in the old
barracks in the usual way, were given the usual "how-would-you-like-it" skincut,
(I was handed a safety razor and given five minutes to demolish my beard),
and came to consciousness standing "firewatches" at the wee hours of the
morning. It seems it was all we did for the first days
and nights was be up at three or four in the morning drinking coffee and
smoking cigarettes, (I took up smoking again in Los Angeles, I think - also
went to a few topless bars with an acquaintance -funny). I guess the
idea was to get us used to our uniforms and being in an organization.
I can't remember which Basic Training company I was
assigned to-- it seems like it was "B"- something or other. It was
in one of the newer concrete dormitories. I remember being screamed
out of bed for assemblies outside in the middle of the night. I remember
running in a pack before dawn-- that was kind of fun.
I remember "walking" the "monkey bars" in the early
morning dew before breakfast and the huge blisters I and everybody else had.
I also remember trying to live on standard army food- I neither asked, nor
expected anyone to make any concessions to my being a vegetarian. (I
did not eat eggs then, which left me in pretty poor shape for nourishment!)
Shooting on the range was always fun to me as I had
been on a target team in my first year of high school -I did pretty well
-I got to ride home from the range one day. But there was this one
sergeant I can only describe as a "son of a bitch"- this has nothing to do
with his ancestry, as any man would realize, but rather, defines him as
a member of the class of all the other people properly described as "sons
of bitches". (Profanity seems to have two entirely separate genders
-whether used by men or used by women.) I had defined my status as
non-combatant when I joined, but did consent to carry a rifle in training.
When we did bayonet training, he wanted us to whirl
and yell: "KILL". Since I had volunteered as a combat medic and non-combatant,
it seemed appropriate to whirl and yell: "APPENDECTOMY" He didn't seem
to agree with me- which he displayed in various subtle ways. (Looking back,
he was righter than me.)
On a more serious level, I saw this same sergeant come
from behind and knock down and tackle a heavily loaded, exhausted G.I. after
a long march- he could have seriously hurt him, and it was totally malicious-
there was no preamble.
Anyhow, after my work in the fields, I was pretty strong
insofar as my lower body was concerned, (I could actually RUN- not trot-
with a 200 pound man on my back), but I had never worked much with my upper
body. I struggled through basic training, and was actually beating it.
And then we came to the "CONFIDENCE COURSE". We had to do all
these things that looked hard and dangerous, and then find out that we could
and that they weren't really dangerous and that we were much better men than
we thought we were!! Well, they had this ten or twelve foot, (I think
it was ten), jump down from this wall onto packed earth, (packed from all
the other people who had jumped down there). Everybody else did it,
so I tried too!
The shock in my ankle felt like a literal explosion.
A Phillipino lieutenant told me to get on my feet, but I "respectfully refused"
until I had an X-ray of my ankle. A corpsman did a beautiful job of
splinting my ankle, and I rode a jolting ride to the hospital there at Fort
Ord- a huge, sprawling collection of one-storied halls left from World War
Two. At the hospital they exchanged the beautiful home-made splint
of the corpsman for a fancy, inflatable plastic one that had to be deflated,
and then re-inflated at intervals so as not to cut off the circulation.
If you've ever had a broken limb, you will realize what a tremendous muscular
exertion it is to attempt to substitute overall muscular contractions to
replace a totally rigid bone which is no longer there!! It was very,
very tiring.
They were very thorough and very kind. The skin
was not broken as the bone had not come through. I was X-rayed and
told that the Medial Malleolus, (the inner part of my ankle), was almost totally
disintegrated, and that they would attempt by surgery to screw together the
largest remaining fragments to form a new joint. I was asked whether
I wanted to be put to sleep or have a local anaesthetic, and I told them
I didn't want to see them cutting on me. Accordingly, I was wheeled
into the operating room, injected, and counted from "ten" to "nine" and woke
up in ward C-15. I remember the guy in the next bed trying to talk to
me, and my telling him as politely as possible that I hadn't properly slept
since Basic Training had begun. I asked the corpsmen to draw the curtains
around my bed, and I think I slept, almost continuously, for three or four
days.
The guy in the next bed- Mike, (I don't remember his
last name, and feel bad about it as both he and his wife were very kind
to me, both then and later), was a both a sergeant and a drill instructor,
and a very decent person, which did something to counter the effect of the
drill instructor referred to previously. He had hurt himself in a
motorcycle accident, I think- he had tried to put his head through
somebody's radiator, and he won.
I remember the "Airborne" kid who was going the next day to have
both legs amputated because of a motorcycle accident. His "Airborne"
buddies came in to do a macho "ra-ra". I didn't particularly like
the kid, but this was truly heartbreaking.
Life on the ward was distinct in itself. The
head nurse for C-15 was a man, a Major, I don't remember his name.
He was very decent, very proper, and prided himself on the quality-care
he provided for his patients. In other words, he was goodness itself
when it came to his patients, and terrible to the people under him when
they neglected that duty. The patients were predominantly "Nam" evacuees.
The ward was a "clean orthopedic" ward, meaning that it was for bone problems
without infection. I heard a lot of stories from the "kids"- none of
them were blatant or violent- they mostly seemed glad to be out of the war.
My leg began to hurt more and more- it wasn't supposed
to -, I came down with high fevers, with the upshot being that my ankle had
been infected during surgery with "hospital staph". When they cut
the cast off to find it, two doctors came at my ankle- scalpels in hand,
- no anaesthetic-, one from each side, (one was a Colonel Malloy, I think),
told me this "shouldn't hurt"- and went to work on me. I nearly bit
my cigarette in half. They put me on heavy doses of Chloromycetin and
I think I was delirious for a few weeks. I think I had a reaction to
the drug also, as I lost about half of my R.B.C.'s during that time.
I was in a coma for three weeks, I think.
I was doing a staggering recovery, (translate shaky),
when I went off of my nut! I remember talking kind of weirdly, but
most of all I remember the phenomenon of sensing my mind as RACING at high
speed, faster than I could translate it, and the "jamming effect" of trying
to speak! Literally, it felt as though I were jamming a bar into a set
of moving gears! Disengage the mouth, and the system seemed to gain
momentum and to move smoothly, albeit too fast, engage the mouth, and
the "jam" occurred! STRANGE! (This lasted a couple of days, I
think.) I don't know if this was a phenomenon of the enforced "solitary
confinement", (I was in "Bacterial Isolation" at the time- they said I had
Hepatitis -I had turned a bright orange color), or of the lower oxygen levels
of my blood, (I think I was running a hematocrit of about twenty then -because
of the chloromycetin), or just because it decided to happen to me. I
tend to think it was because of the first two factors. It lasted a couple
of days. In any case, they stuck me into the "Psych Ward" for a couple
of months! Nifty!
Needless to say, given my history and parentage, it
scared me badly. They didn't ever have to let me out of there!
I became super meticulous- I made sure I showered every morning and kept
my room neater than anyone ever did, as these seemed to be my "keepers" measures
of sanity.
My ankle was still healing , and casted, (I had a
full-leg cast for over four months). I had put on a lot of weight
in the hospital- so when I found out they were thinking about discharging
me, I went on a four or six week fast to lose enough weight to fit my uniforms,
(I have done this several times in my life, and it doesn't seem to damage
my health.). I think they realized that I was more delirious than
psychotic right away- I'm not sure, as nobody ever told me. I also
think they were rather embarrassed about the whole comedy of errors-- I
almost died from a broken ankle! All in all, though, I respect those
people- they were caring and decent. Mainly I had bad luck! (Hospitals
are not sure things!)
So here I was, fresh out of the hospital, skinny enough
to fit into my uniform, barely able to walk, (it wasn't supposed to hurt--
they keep saying that, and it still does). I "hopped" back to Chicago
to see my family, saw my brother remarried, and then went to Fort Sam Houston,
Texas to continue my military training-- as a field medic at "M.T.C."
The First Sergeant took one look at me hobbling around and had me sent back
to personnel for reassignment somewhere else -preferably as a clerk!
I was lucky enough to run into a really decent personnel
officer who pulled several strings to get me assigned to a "Basic Laboratory
Technician" school at the post- which had already started a week or so before.
I got into the fourteen week course, worked really hard, (mostly against
my forgetful nature- I had to develope systems so as not to kill anyone),
and graduated as "Honor Graduate". The people at that school also pulled
some strings and got me into the advanced, fifty week school which started
two weeks before the other one ended- so for two weeks I was taking both
concurrently.
The courses were O.K.- some parts were interesting-
e.g. Parasitology, and the rest were routines to be perfected so as not to
hurt the patients who would depend upon me. (The actual theories of the rest,
e.g. bacteriology, chemistry, etc.- which could have been interesting, are
not covered in such a course except in a very pragmatic way.)
Oh, yeah. I fell madly in love for the first
time in my life! Her name was Sandy, she was beautiful, and she passed the
word through a friend of hers to a friend of mine that she was interested
in me! In ME! I did not know who, (translate "what"), she was,
in fact, I never did know anything real about her! I never laid a hand
on her, either. I think she opened the possibility of love in me who
had never had the potential before. I think the possibility flattered
my ego, and also it seemed as if God were about to salvage the wreck that
my life had become.
I won't speculate on her motives, as I really don't
have enough information- but as soon as I wanted her, (honorably), and told
her so, , she distanced herself completely from me. Maybe I was in
love with her eyes! Isn't that silly? But, in a way, not so silly-
they were a focus for a world I had never imagined before -I would have
died for her!
I also found a manual and spiritual capability for
music in me at this time that I had never had before- I played Chopin for
her as I had never played it before. How young I was- probably comparable
to the average 13 or 14 year old. Maybe she knew this! I won't
make excuses for her,- and I won't praise her, nor will I fault her-- I just
really never knew her.
It hurt horribly! My spirit was torn in ways
I didn't know were possible. I walked the streets of San Antonio in
the early hours of the morning screaming my anguish and my pain to God.
I had looked at her as my resurrection, but she was more in the nature of
a crucifixion! In a strange way, certain ideas and understandings
came to me in my pain- and I gained some compassion for my fellows, and
I think I saw some universals. There came to me certain clear places,
(small ones), of understanding about life.
I tried, though, actually,- to commit suicide.
I took what I thought to be a potent poison, and sat down by a riverbank
to die, peacefully and lucidly, I hoped.
Guess what? I sat there for a while trying to
compose myself. My mind became lucid and calm as it hadn't been in years.
The compelling logic came to me that if I died then, I would never have
a chance to serve, to help or to try to complete what I had started.
The exact crystallization wasn't quite like that-- more like-- if I didn't
die, I might never accomplish my grand scheme, but if I did die, I surely
wouldn't. The purely logical quality of the thought is hard to tell-
it wasn't so much a thought as it was a "flavor"!
I wasn't afraid at all- strange. I did go back
to the barracks and got the help of a friend there, (it's more complicated
than that but that's the gist of it). Strange thing here- when I could
see that she wasn't aware of my agony and my risk and my danger, (how could
she have known)- then I was freer! Somehow my chosen one should have
known! (There was a large feeling of predestination in all this.)
I finished the school, (honor graduate again), lost
my virginity (mostly in anger at her) in a Mexican brothel, (she was very
plain, but she also taught me something about reality and honesty),
went home on leave, and went off to Denver for a year at Fitzsimmons Hospital.
The tone of this isn't completely real, though. I never really got
over Sandy, I guess no one really does, and I didn't (ever) become a "man
of the world". But what was it I never really got over? I think
it had more to do with pride and faith and egocentricity rather than anything
to do with her--as I said I never really knew anything about her. I
will not put her down- there is more I could say here, but it really isn't
fair or relevant.
I bought a little green Fiat 850 convertible, (the
"green hornet"), the first new car I'd ever owned, and drove first to Chicago,
and then to Denver where I worked in Fitzsimmons hospital. I still
hurt a lot, but I met a woman, Ruth, and we had a casual relationship which
seemed to help me somewhat. I won't talk about this much except to
say that she was a decent human being. I learned to ski in the mountains
around Denver and almost got an "Article 15" from an idiot Commanding Officer
who didn't like mustaches wider than Hitler's! This was all part of
the nonsense going on in the service at the time of Viet Nam.
I was transferred out- and assigned to JAPAN!!
This was considered one of the best of all possible stations. We flew
for sixteen or seventeen hours I think. On the way over, I began studying
the pocket English/Japanese dictionary I'd bought.
I was assigned to the 406th Med. Lab. at Camp Zama,
just outside of Tokyo. I worked daily with Japanese civilian employees,
and began immediately to try to master some level of the language-- they were
very helpful, (if incredulous- they don't think foreigners are smart enough!).
I used to build word lists-- of the most useful words to know - in english,
and then to match them from my dictionary or from my fellow workers.
It seemed to work pretty well. I listened to a few hours of instruction
in an informal course, but it mostly came from the former.
When I was there for about two months, "Bampagu", the
world's fair, took place in Osaka, about 350 miles away. I had asked
if any of the other GI's wanted to bicycle there with me. After a lot
of hedging, it was clear that no one did, so I got onto my $35.00 PX three
speed bicycle, (it must have weighed 40 pounds), with homemade saddlebags
and no water bottle, (boy, was I ignorant), wearing my cutoff fatigue pants
and a teeshirt and set off for Osaka- following "koko do ichi go", (route
1 to you- this is a very famous and historical route). Now you have
to realize that I had never ridden a bicycle for any distance before, so
this was a very "iffy" thing. I figured that if I could so much as sit
on the bicycle the third day-- that I would have it licked. I thought
it might take me six or seven days.
God, that felt good! I think I covered about
eighty miles the first day- this through the mountains of Hakone, (by Mt.
Fuji), and more every day thereafter. Coming down from Hakone was
a real "ball" - doing nothing but riding the brakes downhill for several
hours on a winding mountain road! My ankle never bothered me on the
bicycle as I discovered that by pedaling from the heel, rather than the
ball of my foot, I developed more power with less strain. I admit
I did a lot of walking that first day though.
My language skills were at about the four or five year
old level, but they got me around. (I knew about 100 kanji, and could
read the kana-- or rather, sound them). A young man I met in ///////?
invited me to stay with his family that night- and I did.
The next day, I bicycled along the coast- into the
tail end of a typhoon- I was in low gear on the dead flat, but still made
good time overall. I left my fully loaded bicycle on the beach while
I swam-- that's the way Japan is, (thievery is almost unheard of)!
I remember "racing" with this old, grey-haired, distinguished gentleman
in a suit on one of those enormous old steel japanese bikes, (it must have
weighed fifty or sixty pounds)-- he was moving pretty good and was very proud!
I stayed at a Ryokan that night.
One of these days, since I had already covered so many
miles, and was still feeling very strong, - I thought I'd take a lunch break.
I had a basket of noodles, ("saru soba"), and one of those enormous japanese
beers. I would not recommend this for any bicyclist! I don't
think I covered more than ten miles after this when I had to find a
place to stay- I had absolutely no more strenth!
I got to Kyoto, (very near to Osaka), in about three
and a half days, and was able to find accomodations with a japanese family
through an agency of the world's fair. I saw the fair and the family
took me to see Osaka castle and I returned home on the "Bullet". All
in all, I had not spoken any english for two weeks- an interesting experience.
I did a lot of traveling around Japan. I worked
as a "loaner" with the blood bank team in the lab- and we used to go all
over Japan drawing units from the G.I.'s stationed there. I would then
take conjunctive leave, and take off on my own to see more of the country
-Sapporo, Nagasaki, etc.
My language skills improved rapidly for about six months,
but then I lost interest in the realization that my totally irrational hope
that I might find a people more decent, more human than my own-- just didn't
make sense. This had been the real basis of my motivation. Nor
had my observation supported it. I can't really fault the japanese:
they have some very strong points, but they have some very petty ones as
well.
I returned to the states in the summer of 1971 and
"ETS'd" from the army in Oakland, California. I flew to Denver to
retrieve the "hornet", drove to Chicago to see my Mom, and then drove back
to Berkeley, California where I intended to pick up my college education.
I got a part time, night job in a medical laboratory,
rented an "apartment", (converted motel), right across the street from the
university-- and I met Chris!
She worked in one of the hospitals where I picked up
specimens. I had absolutely no money left so that I couldn't ask her
out. (One month's rent, security deposit, car insurance, etc.- totally
wiped out the "ETS money" from the army!). So I hit up my supervisor
for a week's advance, and found out how much the Van Cliburn concert tickets
would be.
I looked kind of weird at this time- I was trying to
grow back my beard, and had only a few weeks invested in it, but she consented
to come -brave girl. Afterwards, we had dinner and drove high into
the Berkeley hills - and TALKED! We must have talked till three in the
morning. It was as if two aliens living on a strange planet had finally
located each other and could truly communicate for the first time - it was
a ferocious interchange. ("Chinese girls don't kiss!?")
I brought her home at some ungodly hour in the morning
and got the "death look" from her grandma, (a wonderful lady, it turned out.)
My sequence is probably out on some of this, but I
think I invested the rest of my money, (all of it), in some yellow roses
and a card to tell her what I thought of her. I was very much in love.
She was and is the most loving and the most compassionate human being I have
ever met in my life! In some ways she is also the most real. She
is an actual genius in reality. She may also be a saint in the real
sense, (Shaw would have understood this -saints usually don't have peaceful
lives, and are not easy to live with), but a very insecure, confused one.
On our second date, we drove up route one. I
will not anywhere here attempt to describe Chris, as I am not capable of
doing that- nor do I want to as this is personal between us. This
is an illustrative situation, though. She packed this ENORMOUS picnic
basket - five or six kinds of exotic cheese, special loaves of bread, wines,
etc. - only a Berkeleyite could appreciate this! (She told me later
that she would have packed more but a friend advised her "not to overwhelm
me"). We had a wonderful day, (the hornet didn't want to start that
night- "uh huh" she said), and at the end she gave me that basket to take
home. She didn't know till much later that I actually lived on it
for weeks as I was nearly flat broke.
The problem, though, was that I had no way of asking
her out again until I got paid-- and that was weeks away. Chris solved
that, however, by calling me and, upon my admitting the situation, she took
me out for coffee.
I will not talk much more about Chris and me at this
point. For one, it is the private and very special life between us.
For another, it is still evolving. We were married that Christmas
Eve- though we kept it a secret for several months to develope our own ground.
(We finally had to get married again so that the family would believe us!)
Her dad, (a wonderful man -Chris got some of her compassion from him), once
came to visit her in "her" apartment and, finding me there, almost had an
"apoplectic fit"!
I have never felt this way about any human being in
my entire life. I feel very blessed to have found her-- we have had
an unbelievably wonderful life, at least I think so. We have had truly
terrible times also, but maybe that is the balance of life. I would
not trade it for any other existence at all.
On other fronts, I "bombed" out of Cal when Chris had
a miscarriage. I worked as a med tech for about twelve years and then
went into real estate developement. That is not an accurate description--
we took a small inheritance and first built a small set of condos, and then
rolled that into a dilapidated, 68 unit apartment complex. We physically
did most of the renovation and management- I personally replumbed and tiled
about 63 showers, painted, did drainage, carpentry, etc. Chris handled
the management. On paper we made a lot of money, a couple of million
dollars, -but then we sold it and got into about five lawsuits with people
I will not describe -which just about bankrupted and destroyed us.
I had thought to work hard to gain the peace and free time to go back to school
or to my writing. This was a truly terrible time- it almost destroyed
our marriage and our sanity. My daughter also had extreme difficulties,
but I will not go into that either as I will respect her privacy.
We have just now, 1991, emerged from that time.
We are basically on a marginal level now, but we have a chance to put our
lives back together. I have, for the last year, almost, begun writing
down the ideas I have formulated over the years. I think it is the
best work I have ever done. I am submitting them for publication, now,
- a very risky thing for me, and we will see what comes of it. I want
to clear the enormous "knots" deep in my soul and put my life on a productive
basis. I want to live in a simple and free correspondence to life.
On final thoughts, I believe that my creative processes
come not, as I stated earlier, from the "TM-like" process I evolved, but
rather, from the religious contemplative processes I developed young in my
life. I would hope to free those faculties and be able to fly as I once
did. This is my place of joy, and my place of fulfillment.
It is not a betrayal of my life to try to work out
my ideas outside the educational system-- as they are essentially outside
of it already. Whether I can truly do them justice or whether I can
ever find any acceptance for them, I do not know-- but I will surely try.
Whether I am truly a crazy man, or whether I possess a truth that is truly
valuable, I cannot assess-- but pragmatically, I must proceed under
the assumption of the latter.
They say that philosophers bloom late in life. Perhaps this is a
philosophy.
One last note: do not get me wrong. I have
no illusions that I have ever been "good". I respect goodness, and
I value it, but I am not it. Every time I have tried to become that,
I have become worse. Every time I have attempted bravery, I have become
a bully. I truly understand Paul's words: "that which I desire not,
that do I do, that which I desire, that do I not do...." This is an
honest humility- as I truly believe it.
Perhaps, instead of being good, I can do good!
This breaks the koan of “goodness" and egotism!