Thank you for this, I'm feeling a little better now, lol. I realized that while I had to admit that I couldn't handle the puppy, 99.999% of the rest of the world probably couldn't either. There is a reason that they cost around fifteen hundred dollars and people are giving them away to rescue, they are extremely high maintenance dogs.

An hour before the rescue lady was coming to pick him up he crawled under the front porch and got stuck for awhile, I thought that I was going to have to rip up the porch before he found his way out.

Even weirder, when I was taking a shower, I suddenly heard a man talking out in the bedroom. Of course, I threw a towel on and rushed out to see the puppy laying on the bed with his paw on the computer mouse. He had opened up several tabs and one of them must have been a talking ad for steroids, inviting him to order online. I think it must be a sign...

(He also moved the folder on investing and hid it inside the folder on "Hippies", but I'm not really sure what that means.)

My new dog! She is calmer and I'm sure we will be best friends for life. Her name is TBD soon.

Don't beat yourself up about the dog, at least you tried and he will now be with owners that can accommodate his needs. Would have been unfair on both of you and lots of people of all ages can't handle super needy dogs (I don't think I could even though I'm 20 and love animals).

Cool new dog by the way!

Thanks Chris! I do worry that with his energy he will need something like my property to run around on, but what can you do. I've had quite a few dogs over the years, but Bully puppies are in a class by themselves when it comes to hyper and not minding, lol.

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Untitled For Unknown Reasons
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Confused. Tired. Unrealistic. All encompassing. Making sense. Or not. The distant past. Attempting eventual clarity. A thicket of words becoming real. The fog of war within one's mind leading to some sort of reconciliation. Or, if not a reconciliation at least a coming to terms with what happened.

Like an impressionist painting, when you are standing way too close and all you can see are multicolored blotches on canvas, but no real meaning in the work, this story will make more sense stepping back and observing it from a distance. With every movement away from the work, the whole becomes clearer. First, there is that inaudible gasp inside your head when you realize that, rather than random words, there is an image being drawn, there is something more than first perceived.

As you move further away from those disparate sounds, that delicate parsing if you will, the picture in your head becomes clearer. The irony is, as you step back further and further from the sentences, even from the paragraphs themselves, a clarity of thought races through you and the overall meaning of the story takes precedence over your initial, perhaps irrational, image of what went on. If you attempt to read this story any other way you will never see the truth, but if you can suddenly, at this moment, let the entirety wash over you, the answers will be revealed.

By now you have come to realize that you are being trained, though certainly not against your will, (never suspend that!) at least to a small extent, to be able to understand the "knowing" times. It is with that understanding and following the full and complete disclosure that a story like this requires, perhaps a brief synopsis is in order.

This story will, bizarrely, start with a vision from my past, wind it's way through an untimely accident, meander on the obligatory road trip, fly over the Manson family and end with a conundrum that haunts me still. It begins with my floating down from a brown cloud (The good brown, not the bad brown, made infamous exactly one year before.) and I am lying in bed next to two hundred bottles of wine, all smelling of smoke...

A very, very new song about a very, very long time ago. The Raglans.

Floating on a cloud with my eyes closed, watching the frenetic cartoons passing through my brain, I was contemplating the past and wondering about what should have been my future, had I'd made the decision to leave with my best friend Steve and his family, never to return. The fire, which started in the photography shop and then burned through half the restaurant, meant that I was out of a job for a little while, but the bottles of wine that the insurance company didn't want, lay in votive silence, ever ready to ease my pain.

Within seconds of that first thought, in what had become an almost daily obsessing on how good it could have been, the doorbell rang and I was standing on the porch talking to my friend once again, both of us older, but none the wiser, for the years that had separated our souls. The constant reminders in my head of his family had become my salvation in the dark ages, with his brothers and his mother calling out to me across the universe, people who for the first time in my life made me feel as if I belonged.

He was making the trek to San Francisco with his friends and wanted to know if I would like to go along. This blast from the past came at the most prophetic of times and since the decision had actually been made for me three years before (at least in my dreams), in a cloud of colors and delusion I nodded my excited agreement. This was to be the culmination of an era that I needed for my own sanity to finally leave behind.

It was decided that they would sleep in the basement until we would leave the next day and with it soon to be dark, they went down to hang out on the couches below. I went back to my music and my visions, powerful feelings washing over me as I focused on the memories that seemed to come from so long before.

My slowly drifting back to earth while knowing that my friend was so close, gave me the sense that I had traveled back in time and I was being given the chance to make it all well. I had a million questions to ask him, about his life and his dreams, but I knew that it would be better if I was standing firmly on the ground before we dealt with the past any more.

It was late when I heard the squeal of tires and a loud crash out in the street. When I ran outside, I saw that a motorcyclist had run into my friend's car and then crashed through the window of the car behind that. He was laying there, half in and half out, bleeding profusely and I knew instantly in my hallucinations that I would not be able to handle what I was looking at. It was a dark movie come true, so I moved to protect my psyche by immediately blotting out any further reminders of the real, like any experienced traveler of the mind is trained to do.

The doctor across the street took over, but wasn't able to do much, the injuries were just too serious and the knock on the door from the other side just too loud . Although an ambulance arrived, it drove away slowly, leaving the crowd from the party down the street standing in the roadway crying.

It was a troubled start to a long dreamed of trip, but it was decided that Steve's car would survive with a few more dents and there was nothing that could be done about another young death. The police questioned everybody at the scene, a cursory duty that left us feeling like something inevitable had occurred, one more piece in that inexplicable circle of life. You felt sad for a moment and then you went on.

We left the next morning in a cloud and a rush, setting out on the road to the city on the hill, where everyone always wore flowers in their hair. It was an old car and loaded down with four guys and their backpacks, we quickly found that it could only do forty-five on the highway. We cranked up the music and talked the hours away by hollering over The Who, laughing and planning our way to the Haight, to California, to freedom.

It was during the drive that I had the first vision, a memory of what had been just a few years before. I saw Steve out in the street with Jeff, the neighbor kid, both of them wearing leather jackets and throwing rocks at the streetlight. An adult comes out and chases them off, but not before I saw what was at the time, a universal truth. Steve had the longest hair on a boy that I had ever seen. Longer even than any one of the Rolling Stones. It was at that moment that I realized that I was looking at freedom for the very first time and it was profound. I was only thirteen, but I became instantly older, indeed, no longer a child.

The length, the style, the color, every tiny wave over your ears defined you in those early days, the time shortly after the Beatles changed reality forever. From the moment that every teenager first heard ,"I want to hold your hand", nothing on earth was ever the same again. Your hair not only defined you, it shouted to the world who you were and who you would become. It was that dream that you would at long last, be "cool".

In the second vision, I was being introduced to him by a mutual friend and I found myself apologizing for the neighbor kids who had called him names when he'd ridden by on his bicycle. They called him a barbarian, probably because of the song, "Are you a boy or are you a girl?", by the group with the same name. He acted like he didn't care and we spent the next few hours riding around like only young people can, on that long Summer evening when you are only thirteen.

The miles rolled slowly by as we shared the driving and the talking about the life we had been living. I told him about the Navy and my trips to Oakland to skate with the stars, while his life had gone in an entirely different direction; he had gone into sports and weightlifting, aligning himself with the "jock" culture. We had had drifted apart like old friends often do.

My next vision came when I was just falling off to sleep, the miles rumbling by and we were in a store trying to get ammo for our pea shooters. Only a few of the clerks would sell to us, no doubt warned that those bags were actual signs that we were at the eve of destruction.

We customized our little guns so they would shoot through skin and the police were constantly trying to catch us with them, so they could prove to themselves that teens were hoodlums, one and all. We laughed and played and shot up the store, perhaps proving to ourselves that maybe the old people were right after all.

A man in the store struck up a conversation with us, having seen us blasting peas off the advertisements hanging from the ceilings. He seemed nice as he laughed and watched us show off our prowess in our aim. How innocent those days were, when kind strangers weren't the monsters in young people's lives, in fact, the monsters were much closer and slept in the Master bedroom just down the hall...

So we kept moving slowly forward in time, the thought of California dreaming pushing us on. We bought strange foods to eat in the car and we were forever trying to find a good radio station, as each little town we passed through tried to protect us from the perils of rock and roll, all while saving our souls by screaming at the top of their lungs about damnation and our eminent demise.

The visions in my head appeared, along with the preaching, as I was pulled back to the moment that I met Steve's mother and brothers for the very first time. Several friends and I were invited to stay over at his house and we stayed up all night and talked about buying Beatle boots and dressing real posh. We struck out in the dark for excitement unknown and we got caught looking in windows, which sent us screaming and laughing down the street, "Catch us if you can" playing over and over again in our heads.

The next moment we were with with our girlfriends in the local dance spot. And years before it became popular, Steve and I had put on some bell bottoms that we'd brought from the girl's homes, an act of unbelievable defiance that caused the leader of the band to come down off the stage and grace us with his presence. Here was an older guy who was asking about us, our friends and our taste, an amazing leap of street cred for a kid who had just come off the very long list of the previously ignored.

He told me they would play any song that I requested, so I chose "Money" by the Kingsman and felt very avant garde, but of course I didn't even know what that meant. Our sartorial choice seemed to infuriate the cop on duty and he began to follow Steve around the hall, all the while calling him names. The bell bottoms and the length of his hair were simply more than his adult mind could accept, he knew that he was witnessing the beginning of the end.

When he grabbed him and tried to throw him out for being too loud, I sprung into action and for the first time in my life, if ever so briefly, I was one of the tough guys. I swung at the cop, but he easily ducked and escorted both of us out of the "High Note" and tossed us out in the street.

We began screaming and saying we were going to cause a riot if he didn't let us back in, but the manager came out and said the police were coming to take us away. Thinking fast and with a determination that I had never felt before, I grabbed Steve and we dove into the back of a Volkswagen bus that was owned by a known hoodlum at school. I told him if he didn't leave quick, he would probably be arrested along with us, so he gunned the motor and we raced away, like Clyde Barrow leaving a bank.

Where did this bravery, this "devil may care" attitude come from in a kid who only a few weeks before was afraid of his own shadow? I had tasted freedom, it was exhilarating and I would never be looking back. The driver of the van was a bit shocked about it all, but I think he knew that a chasm had been crossed and my now being in the "in" crowd was a forgone conclusion.

He dropped us off at the local coffee shop and we walked in like the young lords that we were. Cooler then cool, we laughed and we smirked, as we sauntered (yes, sauntered!) to the table in the back, a table which only one day before existed for some other group that had just been moved down a notch without even knowing it.

To cement our true belonging, a group of cops came over and began hassling us because of the iron crosses drawn on our backs. Now we weren't political, we just thought that they would upset adults (A necessary fashion device at the time), but they started hollering about wars and dying, those deeper meaning things that we cared nothing about and they insisted we take off our jackets as well as the ones that were hanging on chains around our necks.

When I took off my jacket and they saw another cross drawn with a wild monster cartoon (an homage to the Roth style!) on my shirt, they walked away muttering about the youth of today, how the world was changing and nothing good was going to come from my generation. I simply ordered a cup of coffee and put six packets of sugar in, all the while looking at them, the smirk never leaving my mouth.

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Real life intervenes at times, but I will continue the story tomorrow. The search for the answers in life continues at a torrid pace, each day looming more symbolic than the next. As a place holder, I will leave this clip of what may be the most powerful audition of all time for a movie role.

This shows some of what I am feeling, both seen and unseen. The older I get the more complex life becomes, but all of these difficult and deep emotions are expressed easily by this child. (Steven Spielberg gives the final line.)



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Within two minutes of passing the sign that said we were in California, a State Trooper pulled us over and gave the driver a ticket for going too slow. We told him we would try to go faster, but none of us thought that was really going to happen. We made our way as fast as we could to San Francisco, hoping to be ignored by any more guys in blue, pushing on toward the Haight and all he adventures it held.

I'd been there many times before, so I looked forward to impressing Steve and his friends with my worldly airs. As we labored along, I talked about the music, the people and how everything we needed would be completely free. I had friends in the city that would take us in and make us one with the tribe. I envisioned it being like the years before he moved away and life could carry on again without the huge gap that had, for those few years, swallowed my reason for being.

It reminded me of the time, for a very short while, where the two of us owned the whole world; it was laid out at our feet, ready to be grasped up and shook, releasing everything it held. It was freedom at it's finest and like that first time for anything, it tasted extra sweet.

Probably most thirteen year old kids don't have the use of a fully furnished custom home, where no adults ever lived and we could be The Wild Ones all on our own. But we had five of them, each one different from the other and late at night the whole world of adventure opened up and took us all in.

They were the show homes for a brand new development and we decided that until they sold, they might as well be ours. We would go in the daytime and hang out for awhile, but eventually some adult would ask us to move along. We quickly learned to unlock a random window in the basement of our desired haunt that day, so we could go back and sneak in after dark.

Late that night, we would head back to the house with a small group of friends and we would enter another world. We would sword fight on the balconies using sticks as our weapons, we imagined the dragons and evil demons to be slain. Sometimes we would wear our old Army jackets in protest against the "man", as we protected our castles from that evil encroachment that threatened our existence.

We didn't need to travel halfway around the Earth to know that oppression was rampant and could come knocking at any time; we fought the good fight in the hallways and the kitchens, ever ready to die for our right to remain. We never hurt the houses and we were always careful to leave nothing that would give us away, but we spent many hours in ecstasy, far and away from anything real.

We acted plays in our heads, each one more involved than the next, Romeo and Juliet in the closets, with the pairings ever liquid, ever morphing in the night. Of course, we couldn't turn on the lights, so my memories are forever dimmed in the past, but we ate and we laughed, we played and we yelled, enclosed in a perfect cocoon of youthfulness, forever lost to the outside and the seriousness of the "olds". In our hearts we knew we were envied by adults, they could complain all they wanted, we alone held the very meaning of life in the palm of our hands.

But, those few years later, as our small band of weary travelers entered the Haight Ashbury district, I became completely aware that those times were inexorably gone. The culture, that I so adored, meant nothing to Steve. He was no longer the wild child of my past and instead he had settled in, quite comfortably, with the world as it was. Unimpressed, they wanted to head on to San Jose to see a cousin, so I was left to deal with how our lives had gone in such completely different directions.

When I met his cousin, I decided to move in with her, because they wanted to keep traveling and I wanted to hang out with my Digger friends for a few more weeks. She offered to hire me to watch her son in the day and I could hitch around and meet cool people whenever she wasn't working.

I knew that it was the end of an era in my life and I wasn't really sure where to go next. I'd held this dream that we would hook up and go out and take on the world once again, but that was not to be. It was the day after Steve drove offf with his friends that I met the second Steve in this story and things began to get very strange.

This second Steve had a sister named Sadie Mae Glutz and she had been arrested a couple of weeks before. And even though we held very different beliefs, the adult world was beginning to question the lifestyle of my generation and the two worlds were poised to collide.

I'd met some people in Topanga Canyon a year before who were supposed to to be in the Manson family, but I didn't remember much about them. Most of us were in cosmic groups of friends at the time, groups that often had unusual names and strange practices, so they didn't really stand out at the time. I heard a little bit about the murders when I was in the Navy lockup, but the Altamont concert was a bigger deal, because the violence involved bikers who we thought were on our side in their quest for freedom against authority.

It was later, when they arrested the people responsible for the Tate murders and we found out they were part of the hip lifestyle; it was then that the known universe began to quiver. It was believed at the time that you could trust all young people who were living alternatively, that they would be honest and kind, always looking out for others on their way to Nirvana.

Our clothes, our hair, our speech and our music all shouted to the world that we were different. A difference that was impossible to understand if you were old, but kept us in what we considered perfect moral rightness at all times. We might be expanding our minds, but those were our minds and no one but us had a right to control that. Our journeys were ethereal, we were marching forward with humanity on our shoulders.

A part of that difference was nonviolence, we may have been naive, but we felt that we were the ones that had been given the gift of knowledge of that tree, a knowledge that was forever hidden from everyone else. We were the ones who were bringing a new reality to the world. But, with Altamont and the Manson killings screaming out that the the hippy culture was something to be feared, we began to accept that maybe a small part of us, could really be human after all.

Steve Atkins didn't have a clue why his sister did the things she did, but people around town would shout out mean things when we walked around. He seemed like an okay guy, but there was a deep sadness in what he was dealing with that none of us could really understand. His father, a difficult man, would cause grief with his friends and we would complain about him, which probably didn't help.

We would get high and talk about life and how everything that was held sacred was falling apart. We were those aimless youths, so derided in the press, whose opinions meant nothing to the course of the world. Our protests, the changes we pushed for, were all lumped together and written off as the crazed ramblings of violent long hairs. We were all suddenly being tarred with the same brush.

The truth was that we just wanted to stay young forever, it was nothing more nefarious than that. Our generation was the first to live with the idea that the world could end at any moment, so you should just live for today and never worry about tomorrow. It was expressed in our supposed lack of maturity, our failure to accept the dictates of society and even in our rebellious music. We had gone from "Love Me Do" through "The Eve Of Destruction" and on to "Sympathy For The Devil" in a few short years, never to return.

I went back to the Haight a few weeks later and the sense of sadness was palpable, the world had altered in the blink of an eye., I would never again believe that we were lords of the earth or that we could stay forever young, it was at that second that I began to grow old in my mind.

Steve's cousin, Carol and I decided that we would take a short road trip with her son, we would travel to Paso Robles to meet up with a guru, someone who could help us make sense of it all. I told Steve that I would bring back answers that only a deep thinker could give, I would push this man of expanded dreams for the reasons that all we had believed to be true appeared to be falling apart.

So, we loaded up the car and with the crosses of white leading us forward, we set out to meet up with a man whose sole job in life had always been to just stare at grapes.

We were speeding through the dark on a two lane highway, our only guides a multitude of rabbits, standing as silent sentinels along the roadside. As we would pass by each one, their eyes would glow bright in the headlights and they seemed to be leading us on. They had placed themselves about ten feet apart and I worried that one of them might jump out in front of the car, but they were like statues, unwavering little beacons, not moving and alone.

The miles and the eyes lulled me slowly inward until I noticed a single rabbit staring at me from a distance and I fell deep into his gaze. I drifted away from the night and lapsed into a worried sleep, dreaming about tangled vines when suddenly, I was on a motorcycle with Steve sitting on the back.

What is it about the dark, on a warm Summer night, that becomes so powerful when you are only thirteen? The nighttime leaves memories that you know, even at that moment, you will never forget for the rest of your life. Memories, so imprinted on your conscience, that all thoughts afterwards must be filtered through them for anything to even exist.

Our gang is riding our little motorcycles, breakneck into the dark, carrying our friends and our existence, toward fate itself. Our long blonde hair whipping in the wind, the dog chains on our necks clacking in time to every bit of the eight horsepower that was under our command. Were the streets completely deserted as we careened around town? I don't remember a single other person being alive; we were alone in the world, there was no need to share life with anyone, we owned it all.

Racing and yelling as we planned our next move, it was decided that we needed gum and tobacco, those life giving staples of youth, to continue our travels. We pulled up on the sidewalk under the "No Parking" sign, got off our steeds (Ducati and Dihatsu and Suzuki, oh my!) and did our best James Dean impression for any "impressionable" adults, those we consider not really alive, who might happen to be in our store as we walked sullenly in.

We split up as we entered, one small group to buy the gum, an even smaller group to not buy the cigarettes, while Steve and I walked off to check out the rest of that brightly lit grocery. We were laughing and arguing over the relative merits of various Rolling Stone's songs, when we suddenly entered a third dimension where only the young are allowed.

To the strains of the soundtrack of the old movie, "Shane", which I can still hear clearly today, we both saw at once our destiny laying on the racks of cucumbers, awaiting our presence to become real. I glanced up at him and saw the same hardened look in his eye. It was the final gunfight in the OK Corral and we had been transported back in time to fulfill the climax once again.

We slowly turned toward each other, never letting our left eye waver, our right eyes being blocked by the ultimate badge of honor, a thick shock of blonde hair, hair which will only have this unique ability for an extremely limited teenage flash in time, as our hands slowly reached out and our fingers wrapped around the nozzles of the water sprayers sitting, so temptingly, in the lush green produce.

Our look was cold, never giving our intentions away. Was it a portent of what lie ahead? Would we really dare complete this act, so banal and yet so profound? Was the universe watching with baited breath? Yes, the universe was poised to end that night, under the watchful eyes of two young boys, two boys who held life in the palm of their hands.

A stranger, watching this dramatic production play out before them, would have marveled at the coolness, the control, the laughing in the face of death, that we evidenced on that long ago Summer night. We wore black and we wore white, owing more to Milton than Pascal, slipping in and out of the eternal good.

We stood, facing each other for several seconds, (or was it hours?) when suddenly we both drew at once. The water was more powerful than we expected, both of us looked shocked as it sprayed all over us and the rest of the aisle. We kept spraying as our epic western played out in the bright lights of reality. We began screaming and chasing each other around as far as those red hoses would permit. We were alive, we would live forever.

It was then that we heard that disembodied voice of God from the Heavens that froze us in our tracks. It was loud and threatening, that voice that the young come to fear.

"Would somebody go to the produce aisle and chase those kids out of here?'

And with that, we dropped our weapons and ran laughing back into the night.

The rabbits had done a fine job of pointing us to the truth, because by very early morning we were passing through Paso Robles and heading to a tiny one room house on the edge of town. It was placed in the middle of what seemed like a million grape vines, all lined in rows and starting to bake in the rising sun.

As we pulled up to the house, a tiny man, who looked to be designed perfectly for the doorway, walked out and greeted us with the peace sign on his fingers and waved us inside. Oddly lyrical sitar music was emanating from the walls as we sat down on small pillows on the floor. The entire place was covered with ornate cloth that hung from the ceiling and flowed down the walls, a hookah and a bowl of artichokes sat like shrines in the middle of the room.

The kid ran around the room playing as we lofted a tiny blase, what better way to start the first day, that special day, than with our heads being carried ever upward on a slowly drifting cloud. Whether it was the landing from the drive or the lasting hypnosis from the rabbits gaze, I fell head first into the now, mentally lifted by our having arrived.

His job, as he explained it, was to walk outside at the break of day, climb into the hammock that was tied to two big old trees in the yard and watch the grapes grow. He had been doing that job since he was just a child and it was assumed that he would do it forever more. Sitting on top of a hill he could watch the innumerable acres, protecting his beloved grapes which he loved more than anything in the world.

He didn't own them, not even a single vine, but they were his in that most powerful spirit way, a bond that was fused in the history and the watching, the uncounted hours of gazing over the unchanging view had undeniably altered him. He had become almost feral in his watching, leading him to become more and more introspective, perhaps even a bit distrustful of humans, with the passing of the years.

As the weather changed, his view from the hammock altered not only his perception, but also his reality, the storm clouds leaving him visibly saddened while he awaited the return of the warmth of the sun. The clouds would roll over, pushing the blue completely off the canvas, a reminder to this one little man that what he had so long foretold was coming true. He had a foreboding that the end times were very near and he was witnessing a final act of greatness.

If he spied anyone stopping near his grapes from way up on the hill, he would make a single phone call and he could watch in his lofty seclusion as someone unknown to him would drive out and move them along. It was an idyllic existence, an almost godlike existence, in that he could look down on his charges in a completely benevolent manner, ensuring their tranquility, their security and at least to his mind, their unyielding love.

As we sat around the hookah, with the raucous laughter of the young toddler in the background, I told him about the problem that Steve and I were having addressing the dichotomy of good and evil in our previously perfect world. We knew that there were bad people out there, but could they actually intrude on us if we consciously worked on keeping them away? Were we not protected somehow, our opened minds holding out alone against the world?

So he began a strange and ennobling story that I was to carry back to San Jose and enlighten my new group of friends. A tale of intrigue, honor and what it means to survive in this dangerous and scary new world.

A symbolic interlude on the essence of the fusion of disparate themes. The blending of the real with the unreal, leaving one to merely shake their head in wonder.

As the little man began his tale, he explained that his name was Steve (Yes, the third Steve in this story...) and explained that the event had happened to him many years before. As a child, he had shown to his family that he had the necessary nature to be able to happily watch the fields without ever growing bored. He could daydream all day long while watching closely for strangers who might be up to no good.

One day, while fulfilling his purpose in life, he saw a car stop out on the road about a mile below his house. He waited a few minutes, hoping they would just drive along, but when they dawdled, he picked up the phone to call the people in charge. Strangely, there was no answer, so he figured he would just ride his bicycle down to the car and tell them that no one was allowed around the vines.

As he began riding down to the parked car, he saw them suddenly start up and drive off, leaving something in white behind. He decided that he would pedal the rest of the way down and see what they had forgotten, thinking it was an adventure most fitting for the "Emperor" of the fields.

Even from a distance, he thought that he saw it move, but it wasn't until he had ridden all the way down to the road, that he realized that it was a little girl wearing a bright white dress. She had wandered into one of the rows, but when she saw him ride up she walked out to stare up at him in fear.

She was about three years old and the adults in the car, hurrying away, obviously forgot her out in the middle of that lonely road. She looked scared and had both fists bunched up in what Steve thought was a cute, but futile attempt to protect herself from this stranger in her midst. Being that he was only a teenager at the time, he wasn't quite sure what to do, so the two of them just stood there staring at each other for about ten minutes in the presence of the vines.

He decided that he would need to get her back to his house somehow and try to call the police from there. He wished that there were adults at home, but they had long before turned over the entire grand and immensely important security task to him and this was a problem that he would have to figure out on his own. (The final product of his labors had stolen the minds of every adult he had ever known, leaving him alone against the world, somewhat shaken, but still unafraid.)

He talked to her quietly, hoping to convince her to ride with him on the bike, but he knew, because of the difficulty, he would be walking, pushing her back up the hill. She eventually got on the seat and held on, while they made the trek back to the civilization of the house. She held on with only one hand, but Steve could tell that in the other hand she clutched something tightly. To pass the time, he kept asking her what she had that she prized so greatly, but no matter how much he pleaded, she would never open up her hand and show him what she held.

It was at this part of the story that my mind wandered, just for a minute, while I was pulled back to another time, another Steve and the two of us being locked in the trunk of a car. We were sneaking into the drive-in to see "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World", when I pulled the trunk latch to see if it would open when we got there. It did pop open and I remember the look on the people in the car behind us, surprise wrapped in amazement, as I quickly pulled the lid down when the light changed to green.

Unfortunately, when we got to the movie, the trunk would not open again and we were stuck in there listening to the picture until our friend drove us home and pried open the back seat to let us out. There was no reason to waste the money and leave the show early, and I'm pretty sure that Steve and I had more fun than the rest of our friends combined, as we made up wild visions to go with the dialogue being pumped into the trunk. Why this memory popped into my head at that particular time makes no sense at all, even to this day. I am eagerly awaiting that final clarity that supposedly comes to us all and I will understand these mysteries at long last.

As Steve made it to the top of the hill, he could tell that the little girl was tired, so he quickly called the police and waited for them to arrive. He gave her some bread with artichoke dressing and tried to get her to tell him who she was. He told her about his job and why he had noticed her out in the road, but she would barely look at him and never made an effort to talk.

When the police arrived, they couldn't get her to speak either, so it was decided that they would take her down to the station and hope that somebody would return to claim her there. They hadn't received any message of a lost child at that point, so it was assumed that her family hadn't noticed her missing. It's when they tried to take her away that the problem started, she did not want to leave Steve and accompany these uniformed strangers anywhere.

She cried and threw a fit, clutching onto Steve with her one free hand, in an effort to remain in his care. It was decided, rather than traumatize her even more, to call for a female officer. The little group waited in the tiny living room as the teenager, a person that she seemed to have bonded with, tried to get her to at least give a small bit of information that could be used to reunite her with her family.

After about a half an hour, the lady officer arrived and while the little girl never completely gave in to the idea of leaving her only friend left in the world, it seems she realized that she would eventually have to go with the police. She had stopped crying at that point, but the fear in her eyes was still there. The unknowing scared her and as she was being taken to the car she suddenly broke away from the officer and ran back to Steve.

She looked up at him and at that moment he knew that everything would be just fine. Her eyes filled with innocence as she reached out her hand to return to him what she knew had become the very essence of his life. He gazed down at this tiny child and watched as she slowly opened her hand, which contained a single purple grape.

How was I to know that a Pontiac Station Wagon didn't drive like a go kart, I had only just turned fourteen! Steve and I were walking around the streets late on a Saturday night, feeling like characters out of an S E Hinton novel, only two weeks after attending the Sonny and Cher concert downtown, when a younger, less famous Cher pulls up in her daddy's car.

Because she was only twelve, it was decided that Steve and I would be the designated drivers on our latest round of adventure, a decision that seemed completely rational in our young minds. I moved the seat all the way up as far as it would go, but I wasn't the tallest kid around, so I couldn't completely reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel at the same time.

With Steve helping me push the gas and brakes, that big boat took off with a lurch, but then it began floating around the road as if it had a mind of it's own. Just when I thought that I was getting the hang of it, that beast would swerve for the curb and we would be driving in a field next to the road, the entire time laughing uproariously and hollering that we were all going to die.

But we wanted to live, so we careened through the night, with Steve on the floor helping with the pedals when we wanted to go super fast. Looking back on it now, I'm pretty sure that I never saw anyone else on the road as I weaved around cones and stop signs and parked cars, but I'm not sure that I would remember it even if I had.

As respectable teens with our very first car, it was decided that we would drive to the pizza hangout and make all our friends jealous, the obligatory mantra to prove you were cool. On the trip to that restaurant (with the long suffering manager), we would pull over every few minutes and trade off the driving, as Steve and I shared being race car drivers in real life. The only sadness (and that was buried deep in our sub conscience) was the knowing of the strange power that cars had on our young lives, power that we were coming to realize transcended our divine right to be alive.

One month before on the local teen grapevine, we had heard about the car, "the ghost car" and it called out to us from another world. We heard that it was sitting out in the middle of a field nearby, stuck in the mud, a strange vision of both great beauty and abiding dread. It was a brand new Jaguar XKE, a metallic green hardtop, buried up to the wheel wells, awaiting the end of the Summer rains, so a tow truck could go in and pull it out.

It had been owned by an otherworldly person, an older teenager who was so cool that it seemed he was literally existing in the same sphere as the Beatles. He was sitting on the pinnacle of teen spirit that only a few can even dream of. I remember seeing him passing by with his collar turned up and his hair pushed way back, riding his custom motorcycle down the street with a beautiful girl on the back. A rich father who was never around (the best kind of father to have, we thought at the time!), who plied him with toys and a reputation that preceded him where ever he went, it was said that he had the perfect life.

One time, he nodded to me when he floated by on his way to perfection and I can still feel that shiver to this day. I was noticed, I was someone, I am alive and I matter! What more did I need to feel I had accomplished it all, perhaps someday I will truly be him?

But, the car out in that field held a scary secret that I was not to really understand for many years. He had driven out there as far as he could in the rain and then run a tube inside from the exhaust. The car became a tomb, unbelievably beautiful, but in the end just a sad ending to something grand.

As we walked out there and stood in front of that car (a car that was the very first plastic model that I ever made as a boy), I knew that I was getting a taste of the complexity that was life as an adult. Here was someone who had everything that I ever dreamed of and even that was not enough. If he didn't have it, was there really any hope for me?

It was with that sadness deeply buried in the back of our minds that we flew through the town on that late night carouse, when I swerved a few inches too far and we hit a post on the side of the road. The car wouldn't move either forward or back and the three of us certainly weren't strong enough to push it out.

Suddenly, we heard sirens coming out of the dark and we knew exactly what we had to do. We winked at Cher, who of course understood, because there is only one reality when you are that age. After we explained to her that we would make it up to her somehow, Steve and I ran off to his house, one more wild story to tell and left Cher to deal with the police.

(Don't worry about Cher, because everyday that she was grounded after that, we would sneak over to her house while her parents were gone and do her the unbelievable honor of having wild parties in her rec room. We were princes of the highest order...)

A little necessary practice before the story continues, just move away from the screen and squint real hard...

We were cruising through the dark without our beacons of light, who were hiding in their burrows awaiting the dawn. The long haul trucker's friend enveloped us and helped push us on, as the toddler in the backseat slept the sleep of the innocent, we talked and we talked about cabbages and kings.

We questioned the seer, the stories, the grape; we had been given the answers, but the questions eluded us still. Hurtling through the night on rushes alone, Carol and I spoke in solemn tones about all we had heard. We discussed the mysteries in the vines that held secrets untold and we talked about the intricate combinations of the wild and the man-made that we would take in the future to unlock all of those clues.

We knew that we stood on the cusp of the universe, daring each other to make that leap into the abyss. We alone carried the meaning of good and evil back to San Jose and to Steve, standing in the glare of a thousand bright lights.

Suddenly, Steve and I were jumping on the trampoline, laughing and pushing each other off, making crude jokes and teasing his little brother, who was too little to make the climb up to that bouncing joy. We were over at a friend's house playing on their new toy, when suddenly his mother comes out and starts hollering at us.

"I don't want you to let my husband get drunk today!"

"Well okay," and I laughed a little, "What are we supposed to do? We are only teenagers and he's old!"

"You just follow him around and don't let him get drunk. If he tries to drink anything, you come back here and get me."

"Okay, I suppose..."

And with that, another scene in this grand play unfolds. The minute we were out of sight of his wife, he pulls out a five dollar bill and tells us that we haven't seen a thing and of course, we instantly agree. As we watch him start throwing down drinks, we thought it was hilarious how he kept getting funnier and funnier, at least to himself. He tried to get us to drink with him, but a single taste left us shaking our heads, it tasted more like poison than any nectar of the gods.

After he'd had a few too many, he looked at us and asked if we knew how to ride a motorcycle. Since my little Ducati was parked out in front of his house, I assured him that I had ridden one many times before and I was probably the best fourteen year old rider in the world. (those dreams die hard...)

He told us that he'd always wanted to ride his neighbor's Harley, so we were going to go over there and take it for a spin. I assumed he meant with his neighbor's permission, but he explained that he was sure that he wouldn't care and everything would be just fine.

I knew that I couldn't hold up a Harley, I'd crashed (slightly!) the Cushman Eagle that I'd tried to ride a few weeks before and it was probably half the weight of a hog. But this all knowing adult was undeterred, so he convinced us it would be wild fun and off to the thrill we went.

My friend's father, by this time quite tipsy, explained that he would do the holding up part, I would do the riding and using the controls part and together, we would make a great team out on the street. In hindsight, perhaps many would second guess some (if not most) of my decisions back then, but you are only young once and I figured if I could get all of my mistakes out of the way early, my life would be better later on. That philosophy has worked out to a greater or lesser degree many times since then.

Wow, it was big! I could reach the gear shift and the brakes okay, but I wasn't sure that I was strong enough to pull back the clutch. We had troubling getting that monster out of the garage and I thought that he would never get it kicked over and running, but finally it roared to life.

With drunk dad holding me up, it actually felt pretty much like my 125, so I gave the command for the two of them to hop on the back and we started out into the street. The shift into second was exciting, because the movement was much further than any thing I was used to, so we were rolling along, clanking and lurching as I tried to find the right gear.

I was a bit concerned that the person responsible for the staying upright part might shirk his duty and drop us all into the road, but at the first stop sign all went well, so my sense of worry floated away and I began to really enjoy the ride. Even with three of us on there, it had all the power in the world. It was the culminating event that had begun when I was a five year old sitting on the machine of the motorcycle cop who lived next door.

It was almost morning when Carol and I drove into San Jose, feeling wired, but illuminated, ready to share our secrets with the crew. We put the boy to sleep and we talked our way into sunshine, waiting to call our friends in from the cold.

Carol had to go to work, so I entertained the little boy until Steve and our new group of friends arrived and we lit up some smoke. We turned on Hendrix and talked about my trip to the house in the fields, while we mused on the fact that the people in San Jose seemed to have gotten even worse in the couple of days that I had been gone.

They acted like he had fault in what happened, that somehow evil had followed him in his genes and it was waiting to come out on them all. My hair was still fairly short, having left the Navy so recently and I think people treated me differently, assuming that I was a "straight" and not one of those terrible hippies. The media had so colored their thinking toward the look of a person, that my marginally clean cut persona meant that I could be trusted to not murder them in their sleep.

Those acts of horror in LA, along with the disturbing concert by the Rolling Stones, were felt by some as harbingers of some cataclysmic event being foretold for a future yet to come. The riots in the streets over the war and civil rights made the adults at the time believe that the world had gone mad, with the music and the drugs and unrestrained freedom at the very root of it all.

It wasn't really a battle between good and evil that was at the core of the problems during those times, but merely prophetic change that caused the unrest, a powerful wind that encompassed and enveloped us all. You either grabbed a hold of those tornadoes of change and embraced them or you were left behind; those left behind and looking in from the outside latched onto fear for something to fill that immeasurable void.

We didn't get very far on that Harley, I stalled it about two blocks from the neighbor's house and it wouldn't start back up no matter how hard we tried. So, we left it on the side of the road and my friend's father walked back to tell the owner where it was. Steve and I walked back with him to jump on the tramp some more, but when we saw the wife standing there in the driveway, we decided we would take off and live to fight another day.

We went back to Steve's house and sat with his brothers, listening to "The Sounds of Silence" on the radio, combing our hair and going through a shoe catalog, looking for boots that came clear up to our knees. It was a radical brochure that came from far off California, a place so exotic it existed only in dreams.

In our next adventure we were going to be pirates, out on the street late at night. We pictured ourselves in bright purple shirts with big puffy sleeves and sashes around our waists as belts. It was our plan to go out at the stroke of midnight and fight injustice, taking our own personal battle with wrong to the next level.

We talked on as the boy rode around on the secrets we sought with such fervor. It was understood that our grand experiential movement, our calling, was perhaps flawed, but we would carry on nonetheless. Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll might not be the great culmination that we searched for, but at least it was a promising start to a changing of the times. Regardless of the intentions of the young, the universal truth is that we would indeed inherit the earth, whether we wanted to or not.

As we argued over the nature of man, I realized that I wanted to be back in Colorado, surrounded by my clan, reading and studying, listening to my records once again. When the child heard me say that I wanted to return to my roots, he came over, stared up at me and tried to reach in my pocket. I assumed that he was trying to find spare change to play with, but I told him that I wasn't carrying anything of value that day, so he left me in silence and went back to his seemingly inconsequential play.

He went back to prancing around the room, singing to himself, a song I had never heard before. It was as if his melodic chants were destined to be forced on us, even if we were too old to hear. He was shouting the truth in his head to people he viewed as well past their prime, even though we were all just in our teens. So, our hazy group broke up, still floating around in the air we had decided that the world was still good, that we would prevail in the end.

Maybe it was the vision of the child that secured us and wrapped us in benevolence, cloaked like a thief as he worked his way into our minds. I told Carol that I would be leaving the next day, so we had a special dinner just for the three of us. I knew that I would miss them both, but I was a traveler, a wanderer and nothing would keep me from moving on.

It was at the airport the next day that a very strange thing happened. I was standing at the counter when I discovered that I didn't have enough money to purchase the ticket. When I reached in my pants to check for any loose change, I discovered that the little boy had placed something in my pocket when he was playing around the day before.

Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder and when I turned around a man in a suit was holding up fifty cents, the amount that I needed to make the fare. It was profound, this man reaching out across the unknown to help me out and at first I didn't know quite what to say. But, then I started thanking him profusely and he just held up his hand and said it was nothing.

Nothing? He was in the middle of a monumental play of epic proportions and my head was reeling with the possibilities of the final act. I shook my head in wonder as I walked to the plane in silence, amazed at the power of it all. To add to my confusion, when I reached in my pocket for the boy's little gift, I pulled out a raisin and chuckling to myself I tossed it right into the trash.

We never became pirates, it was a vision that was not meant to be. Steve's mom announced that they would be moving back to their hometown and I would forever be left on my own. I rode down to the train station with a friend and watched them all get on the train, sadness on their faces.

I waved real hard and put on my very best smile, but the loss was more than I could stand. I was sure that I would never see any of them in this sad life, which was true until Steve showed up on my doorstep years later and the cycle in the search for the truth about good and evil began that infinite loop once again.

I'm sorry that it became a bit confusing, but as I said it is training for the story yet to come. I'm am days from writing about the unbelievable that I hinted at several months before. (Yes, I have pics, lol.)

Some hints on the last story -
"the boy riding on secrets" There is an old oriental saying, that the man looking for (the Tao, God, truth, etc.) is like a man riding a horse, looking for the horse.

Then, I go into a second level of symbolism (or third if counting Melville) when I allude to parts of Revelations and Leviticus that mention either pressing grapes or throwing them before war horses. The grapes turn to raisins, ferment and cause the horses to stampede and the war (between good and evil if you are not a literalist)) is lost. (Melville also uses this when discussing the whale, that unfathomable mystery of life.) Some of the passages talk about the grapes being pressed and blood coming out, an equally distressing vision, lol.

I have attempted to not get too strange in these "delving into my head" pieces, although one of these days I am going to let loose completely and revel in the bizarre.

A "little" one -

"The Greatest Race..."

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As I walked down the steps of that huge Stealth Bomber I could hear the roar of the crowd on the other side of the tarmac. The day was so hot that I stayed under that big black wing for as long as I could before I stepped into the sun and headed toward the stadium. I chose the nearest random gate and proceeded toward the sounds of chanting, followed closely by others eager to watch the hundreds of athletes compete for the ribbons given out on that day.

As I walked through the tunnel and came out on the other side, I realized that I had chosen the entrance gate nearest the finish line, so I stepped over for a closer look before I headed up into the stands. It was a standard running track and off in the distance, I could see the field athletes jumping over barriers and hurling things into the sand.

It was then that that I noticed a dark blue van had pulled out onto the track and began to drive slowly past the crowd, which became silent with the journey, sort of like one of those fan waves, but of a quiet one, as we all wondered what was going on. It pulled up about ten feet in front of the finish line and slowly the door opened and a ramp was electrically pushed out from the side.

When the ramp was completely extended, a small boy in a wheelchair was rolled out onto the edge by an adult and both the boy and his caretaker waited patiently for the ramp to be lowered to the ground. He sat there insignificant before what was probably the largest group of people that he had ever seen in his life, his head lowered slightly, as if in contemplation of what was about to come.

The crowd, watching this strange display, sat in heated tension as this tiny figure was placed before us like some sort of fragile doll. He was rolled out to sit alone on the track, as the van pulled away and the adult in his care reluctantly walked off to the side. A small, seemingly tragic figure, whose arms were so tiny he couldn't push himself forward more than a couple of feet, he sat alone in the middle of his known universe, watched by five thousand hushed Romans.

Seated ten feet before his grand prize, a line in the sand that appeared to be a thousand miles away, he looked determined, not daunted as he searched within his soul for the strength to carry him on. It was then that the miracle occurred before the eyes of a hoard of disbelievers, because instead of pushing himself forward in what would have been a monumentally laborious journey, he began to rise, phoenix like, right out of his chair.

Using his frail arms, he pushed himself into a standing position, steadied himself and took a tiny faltering step forward toward his ultimate goal. At the finish of that single step, he caught himself and willed his legs to be steady as the crowd suddenly went wild.

We cheered, we laughed, we cried tears of joy, as this small being pressed forward on the bravest journey that any of us had ever seen. It was an all consuming celebration of life, an event that each of us were profoundly humbled to be able to witness. A monumental reckoning of what it means to compete in life.

I can truly say that I have never cheered more, indeed never felt more moved at the wonders of the human spirit than I did watching that, previously a boy, but now instantly becoming a young man in every sense of the word, take those slow, methodical and wavering steps toward the ultimate finish. We were privy to greatness, a perfect blessing on a perfect day, playing out like a symphony in front of our eyes. He moved forward slowly, but with more character, more defiance, more ultimate courage than I will ever have, striving onward, his spirit never allowing him even the hint of failure.

As he stepped over the finish line, all of us knew we had just witnessed the ultimate race. If races are to be won by the most determined, then I had seen the determination of legion. He fell into the arms of his trusted adult, who had run out to be at his side. He was weeping, but ecstatic, as he was lowered back into his chair, the crowd on their feet cheering and crying in unison, as he was rolled back to his van. As he passed me I looked in his eyes and I saw that he understood that I had just witnessed the greatest race that I would ever see and that I stood before him in awe.

Thank you YB, I really appreciate it, plus, I've missed you. (and I haven't forgotten our talk on Imgur, I'm just old and slow, lol)
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I've been letting the next story roll around in my head for a few days, because while I didn't really want it to get too long, I still wanted to give it the full credit that it holds in my life. It deals with my attaining what I had dreamed about since I was very young, an epic bittersweet journey that lasted many years.

I can't find the CD-ROM that has the digital pictures, so I will scan analog pictures in just to get started and post the others later. (The story spans the analog/digital divide, lol)

The story is called "Building Valhalla" (the great hall) and I will post the first part later today...

Building Valhalla

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It didn't begin as a single vision, it began as a multitude of visions spanning the course of half a century. My dreams of houses started in childhood, meandered through my adolescence and came to rest on my adult life with the weight of heavy stone. When I returned from living in England, I decided that I would finally build a house that reflected the very depth of my soul.

I am not going to write an opus on the construction of my monumental journey, because I could easily pen five thousand pages about my search for my own personal white whale. With fifty years of obsession, I had accrued an unimaginable number of pictures and articles on houses all over the world; two huge stacks, each more than ten feet high, precious piles of ephemera, that I would go through periodically and dream the dream of the real.

I had only my absolute belief that I could accomplish this one thing in life, not because I was any great constructionist, (I had never used a power tool before and had only hammered a few nails in the wall to hang pictures.) but because I had desired to bring forth this singular act for so long, I felt that sheer willpower would enable me to reach my goal.

For the sake of brevity, I am going to focus on the finish work, the locus of the spirit, for that is where most of my uniquely creative ideas bore fruit, not necessarily in the fabric of the shell, but in the deeper images that sprang forth from my sub-conscience, my over-reaching desire to give credence to the vision that had held my thinking captive for so long.

I wanted to build a castle-like structure with a single room of larger than life dimensions. If I was going to let go of all my inhibitions and actually put my plans into action, I wanted to do it without compromise. I decided that I would build the most unusual house in the world and I would start with one grand room. I had visited the Palace at Versailles and in a fit of misplaced delusions of grandeur, I envisioned not a warren of huge rooms, but only one hall befitting a young prince. (certainly not one who would be king)

I bought the appropriate lot in an area that would tolerate my eccentric dreaming (barely, as it worked out) and drew up the plans for a house that began with that one room, a "great room", whose dimensions were just over thirty by sixty-five feet, with high ceilings that would make a person feel as if they entered a Xanadu; yes, a pleasure dome did I decree.

Not knowing about the work involved in the actually construction of what I had longed for for so long, I hired a couple of twelve-year-old boys to help me reach my long desired nirvana. Some might call me naive, but I call it possessed, my desire to achieve was undaunted, what could possibly go wrong?

I realized quickly, that I would need even more help in building my fortress, so I hired two more rowdy high school students to help rip out the ceiling and walls and throw the junk in a roll-off dumpster sitting out in the yard. Having no idea about what was actually inside of walls, I had every hope that gremlins would appear in the night and construct the framing while I slept.



And so the journey begins...