Over thirty years ago, shortly after Ariana’s mother Karen left me, I had a dream that has puzzled me for many years. It spoke of a distant future in my life and suggested that, after a long span of time, my life would be somehow different. I would have different goals and values then and would have finally actualized my potential. I couldn’t relate to any of this in those days. I couldn’t see how my life would ever be other than what it was.

Shortly after this dream, I did acid alone in the Oregon mountains. From that perspective, I looked ahead to this distant future. Doing so, I foresaw that I would be living in Boulder, Colorado. I would still be with Ariana. I would not be in touch with most of the folks who were still important in my life at that time. And I would finally finish Wanderer’s Notebook and have it published.

Today, over thirty years later, I do live in Boulder. Ariana has followed me here, and I have raised her. Although she is now on her own, she is still part of my family here. I am also married again, this time to someone who is loving and faithful. I have more children too, my three boys that I am busy raising now.

And I’m definitely a writer now. I am writing here in my blog. I have taken the notes from Wanderer’s Notebook and have divided them into two books, The Birth of Wanderer, which is now appearing in The Caldron’s Weekly Reader, and The Life and Death of Wanderer that will be finished sometime next year.

I did lose touch with many of my old family, but I am part of another one here in Boulder now. It’s the kind of family I like too – very loose and unstructured, held together only by love.

I still am and always will be a secret agent for Acid Rescue.

The Prophetic Dream

I dream that I’m told to stand in this line for an airplane flight. I’m to present my dark blue ID card. I’m told that the woman ahead of me in the line will be carrying a notebook among her other things and will leave it on the ticket counter when she leaves. I’m to say, “I’ll take care of this” and then take it on the airplane with me
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I stand in line behind the woman as I am told to, patiently waiting my turn. She does leave a notebook on the counter. I pick it up, while the airline person behind the counter is looking at my ID card and preparing my ticket. I say to her as I’m supposed to, “I’ll take care of this.” She asks me if I have ever been to Denver. I say I was born there. This blows her mind. I flash on the fact that my ID card showed no birth information. I wonder how she knew?

I take the notebook and leave. It’s now this very book that I have been writing in all these years, that I‘m writing in now. I enter a classroom where everyone is awaiting the teacher. All the other students are nice looking women. I see my place towards the front of the class and walk towards it.

There’s a weird and powerful feeling with this dream, a feeling of a very long span of time, as if this airplane flight is going to take me into a distant future, to a time in my life when I’ll be Wanderer again but somehow different.

I’m still writing here in my notebook, not trying to be creative now, merely chronicling the inner and outer events of my life as they occur. I can’t see from here how my life will ever become other than it is now.

I wonder too about Denver. I was born there. When I was there recently, it felt familiar, as if I had lived there before. I really liked the nearby town of Boulder too. Maybe in some distant future of my life, I’ll be living in Denver or Boulder, probably Boulder. I really like the mountains there. Maybe someday, I’ll be writing seriously again. Maybe someday, I’ll even be the teacher that everyone is waiting for.

Future Tripping on Acid in the Oregon Mountains

As I look ahead, I’m astounded by what I see coming in my life. I find much of it difficult to believe:

I’ll be married again, maybe more than once, and I’ll have more children. I’m not surprised. I love women and children. I can’t see a life without them.

I see that I’ll raise Ariana, without Karen’s help, for most of my next twenty years. This I find exciting but hard to believe from here. I want it to be true though. I see that I’ll raise her alone until she’s almost grown up. I’ll be her mother when Karen is unable to be that for her.

I see that someday I’ll be living in Boulder, Colorado, and Ariana will be with me. I’ll be a writer then. I won’t finish this book until then. I won’t even be able to reread these notes until then. They’re too charged with what I have been through and would throw me off if I were to read them too soon. Before I can finish them, I’ll have to become completely grounded and centered in who I am. I see though, that I will finally publish this book. It is worthy.

I see that Karen will let me have Ariana – without really knowing why. I see, in the years to come, that both Ariana and Jonathan, especially Jonathan at first, will help me to stay grounded and centered, so that I won’t become a desert hermit like Ron or run away with Barbara and join the Indians.

I see that I’ll keep very few friends from these days. Pamela and Al and Mary and Richard and Franz and Bernice and Steve and Simone, all my old friends from LA, will soon be gone from my life, either by death or by us losing our connections. My folks will die. Bobby and Chuck and Cheno and Edie and Sallie and all the others from Berkeley will be gone too. Jim and Abby and even Joe Shaker will be back for more though. Of all the folks from Swisshome and Deadwood, I’ll see only Doc Webb after this, and only rarely. I’ll lose touch with most of my road family too. I also see myself building up new family – always medicine brothers and sisters, always changing as we move along the Tao.

Mostly, when I future trip, I sees myself both as father and as secret agent for Acid Rescue – raising my kids and trying to save the world. I see finally that I will mature and fulfill my destiny.

Raising our three young boys, Aspen and I have had to relearn how to be on clock time. For our first fourteen or so years together, we were able to follow the flow. We were able to wander in the Tao. We were able to forget all about clocks and time. But now that we have these little boys, we are having to relearn how to relate to schedules and other people’s time.

The school requires that our boys be there by 7:55 AM. The bus comes for them at 7:25 PM. To get them on the bus on time, we have to get up (in the dark now) by 6:30 AM. Aspen and I are night people and find it very difficult to wake up so early.

Later in the day, the bus brings them home at 3 PM. But school isn’t over even then. It continues on, ruining our family’s afternoons and evenings by asking the boys to do homework. Weird that. I never had homework in elementary school when I was a boy. And I went on to earn my PhD.

In addition to the school, Callahan and Aspen are in Karate. They train three nights a week. Jake is doing therapeutic horseback riding. He rides once a week. He’s also in physical therapy, sees his therapist once a week. Zane hasn’t figured out his thing yet. He will soon. He just started Head Start and already knows that he likes school.

Except for the weekends, there isn’t another day of the week when we can really flow. There are regular, ongoing appointments for the boys on Monday, Thursday, and Friday. There is Karate on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. And, of course, there’s school five days a week.

Also, whenever Aspen has something to do by herself, unless the boys are in school, I’m the one who stays with the boys – makes sure that they have something to eat, makes sure that they use the potty when they need to, and makes sure that they don’t kill one another. They’re good kids though, and I enjoy their company. I read them stories every night too. (We killed the TV!) I’m reading The Hobbit to them now.

The boys have lots of energy and need lots of exercise too. They need to go to the nearby parks. They need to go on walks and hikes and bike rides. Callahan is learning to skateboard, Soon he, and probably Jake too, will want to go to the local skate park as often as they can. They need their play dates with their friends too (no more just letting the boys out into the neighborhood – no other kids around.)

Also, each of the boys has at least one serious health problem. Callahan has a fairly serious attention deficit. He’s really smart but his brain is moving too fast. Because of this he has trouble processing. He’s scattered and forgetful, always losing things. Very sensitive too. I have heard though, that when boys like him grow up, they usually turn out to be really smart and creative. Callahan also has trouble going to sleep sometimes. He’s what we used to call high-strung.

Jake has Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, the most severe kind. However, he’s apparently on the low end of the severity scale. But he is showing the signs. He takes steroids to slow down the muscle degeneration, has been for over two years now. But then, because of the steroids, he has trouble controlling himself and his emotions. Jake is really smart and wants to know everything about everything and is going to be a serious student, perhaps a scholar in his later years.

And Zane has a peanut allergy. Although he has had several obvious peanut allergy reactions, we still took him to an allergist for testing recently. And sure enough, the doctor said, Zane is allergic to peanuts. We have to be very careful and make sure that he eats nothing that has peanuts in it, not even a little.

Most of our time is spent being mom and dad. We start at 6:30 in the early morning and don’t get off duty until 8:30 at night when the boys are finally in bed, going to sleep. (If Callahan is able to go to sleep!) Most of the time between the early morning rush to get them on the bus and the nighttime rituals, those that end with hugs and kisses in their beds, is spent cooking, shopping, cleaning, doctoring, transporting, refereeing, wrestling, and giving them lots attention. Kids really need a lot of attention.

Writing this, I glance at the here and now and realize that the fall carnival over at the boys’ school is starting now. The boys really want to go. I hear them. I get us all ready, and we head on over. It’s a short ten-minute walk. On the way, it hits me that I am in the flow now, the dad flow of helping my boys to have a good time.

I see that I have to learn to differentiate and then mediate between my own flow and my flow as dad. When I see it this way, I see that, for most of the time, I am flowing. When I see it this way, I see how I can better put the two together in order to stay even more in the Tao.

I also see that I do need more space to follow my own flow. In addition to being dad, I am also a writer, a kitchen table holy man, and a medicine man. I love acid and the wisdom that I can access with it. I want to do it more often than I have recently. I am trying to be Wanderer while accepting the limitations imposed upon my energy flow by our boys and their school and other schedules.

It’s starting to happen. I can feel it coming. When I am in the flow, magic happens around me. Gifts from the universe begin to come my way. Everything becomes easy.

Eugene Marks