Chapter 29 – LA Revisited

His Writings

He’s back in LA for a short visit. He’s at Kent’s house now. He saw Mary Nunn earlier today. He has missed her. Both Kent and Mary have been encouraging him to publish his writings. Kent has been writing a book himself, his private views on psychology – an introduction to psychology for acidheads, so to speak. If Kent can share from his high, then he can share from his.

He could start his book back at the beginning of his quest for awareness – back ten years ago when he began writing, began Jungian analysis, and first began to return to his true self. He’s thinking, however, of starting it with his first acid trip.

He’s really excited about his book. He’s going to call it Wanderer’s Notebook. He feels good about putting out the time and effort to edit it. He may even use his typewriter this time, although he’ll probably rewrite it first with his pen. He imagines himself as a writer sitting at his writing table, perhaps in a cabin on some private land somewhere, on some wonderful sunny day still to come. Maybe Edie is finding this place for him even now.

He’s realizing now that he may not leave the city for the mountains as soon as he had planned, especially not if he’s going to be editing his older notes and writing new ones. This will give him something to do and will take any hurry pressure off of Karen.
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He has his notes with him. He always has them with him. He has already started working on them. He knows there will be more to write too. The story is definitely not finished. He has spent most of today just deciding where to start.

He had a dream recently that told him that he had written a book that was twelve hundred pages long, so he went back that many pages in his writings, to his first acid trip and his dream of dying. He’ll start his book from there,
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He figures rewriting the book will help free him. Its ending will come when he has defeated fear, what Don Juan calls “the first enemy of man.” It’s already happening, although it has been a long and scary road. When he began, way back then, he thought it would be quick and easy. Instead it has been years of pain and suffering.
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Looking back over his notes, he can see that the death experience he had as a young boy has had a profound effect upon his life and has changed him forever. Looking back, he can also see that if he hadn’t been so overwhelmed by his parents’ fears, he might still have grown up naturally, in spite of the death experience.
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Karen Has a Miscarriage

They’re at Steve and Simone’s in Venice now. For once, there’s just the four of them. He and Karen are leaving for Berkeley soon, the next day or the day after.
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After awhile, it seems to him that Karen’s been in the bathroom too long. He calls out, but she doesn’t answer. Worried, he opens the door and sees her lying on the floor, passed out and looking very pale.

He hollers for Simone. She’s the nurse. She and Steve both rush into the bathroom, and, with all of them in here with her, Karen finally regains consciousness. She tells them that she had bad cramps and really needed to lie down. That’s all she can remember. Right now, she’s bleeding out of her cunt, a fair amount. Simone’s worried, thinks that Karen has had a miscarriage and they ought to go to the emergency room. Karen agrees so they all pile in Steve and Simone’s van. Steve drives them there.

He and Karen have been into making animal sounds together. It has always helped them connect to their bodies. He suggests that she make sounds now that express the pain she’s feeling. And so she begins this weird and wonderful and very powerful song, a song without words or sense that lets him into her pain. She sings from her cunt and her uterus. And he sings along with her, as Steve drives on.

When they arrive at the hospital, Steve parks the van and hurries inside with Simone to see about getting them help. While they’re waiting, he and Karen continue their sounds, wild and animal like, passionate and definitely lower chakras. Suddenly she stops, says the pain is gone. She says she’s all right now, that she doesn’t need to see a doctor. She says it was a miscarriage and they’ve lost their child.

When Steve and Simone come back, they find Karen and him crying together in each other’s arms. At first, when Karen tells them that she doesn’t need to see a doctor, Steve and Simone want to argue with her, but Karen is finally able to convince Simone, especially after she tells her that the bleeding has stopped completely.
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Karen’s miscarriage seems somehow to have healed the rift that had grown between the four of them. They’re all feeling close again. Someone suggests ice cream, and so they head to the 31 Flavors place. He wants the same as Karen’s having. Seems weird that he has to have something this heavy happen before he realizes how much he loves her.

Later, talking in bed, he and Karen decide that, after she has healed, they won’t use any protection. They will just see what happens, see if they really are supposed to have a baby together.
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Reconciliation

He and Karen began fighting early this morning, just as soon as they woke up, and they’ve been fighting ever since. They’re both very angry.
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It’s been weeks since they were down in LA. He’s done with his writing for now. He wants to leave the city and spend the rest of the summer in the mountains. She wants to stay and finish her work in the city. She’s really getting freaked. She scares him when she says that she wants to die. He tells her to get into her feelings, to go ahead and flip out. She does so, and the energy becomes very powerful between them.

Out of this, they drop acid together, wanting to see where this energy is coming from and where it wants them to go with it. Before they even come on, he knows that his wanting to leave the city so soon is really upsetting to her. She wants to be with him, but she also wants to finish her own work. He’s feeling really bad now that he has been laying his fear of being alone onto her.
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Then somehow, he’s back to the time of his childhood operations. He’s feeling again that terrible fear of being mutilated that he had had then, when he had first noticed the bandages covering his head. He’s terrified now. He’s really glad Karen is here with him. He has been afraid to face this and has been using both Karen and Edie to avoid dealing with it.

He feels very sorry for the little boy he had been then who had endured all this pain and terror. He goes back in time now and calms the boy, tells him that he’ll be all right, that he’ll grow up to be a man. The boy hears him and calms out.

Now he becomes the little boy himself, remembering again how he had been inside everyone’s head back then and how he had always been afraid of being found out, afraid of being different, like a hearing man among the deaf.

He realizes that he has been looking all of his life for someone with whom he could share what he went through then as that little boy. Karen has never been able relate to this side of himself. This is why Edie became so important to him. A major part of himself, badly needing healing, wasn’t included in his relationship with Karen. He tells Karen this now – and how important it is for him to be in touch with the hurt and scared child within himself and how he still believes Edie could really help him.
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The anger is gone between them. Love is filling its space. Connected again, they begin to feel their horns. He wants them to make love by sharing awarenesses, by riding together the telepathic sexual feelings. Karen wants them to make love with their bodies. She wants a good fuck. They end up doing both – a new beginning.
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Chapter 30 – Death and Beyond

Death Signs

Later that night, after their powerful and healing trip, he dreams that he finds a dead bird in the garage. Karen’s cat Sylvie has killed it. He picks it up….

Even later in the night, he wakes again, feeling strongly that this time he’s going to be busted for drugs. He knows that this is what has been scaring him. He also knows that it’s really speaking of his inner life, not that of the outer world.
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The next night, after a lazy, loving day, he’s in their bedroom in the garage, stoned on grass and just floating on the sea of awareness, listening to the sounds of the world, when a voice says to him, “you’ll be dead in two weeks.” This really scares him. He’ll be at Dinky then, alone.

Early the next morning, just before dawn, he has a vision of himself and a man smoking grass together somewhere, outside in the woods, maybe at Dinky. He knows that somehow he’s going to smoke with this man in the outer world. He’s looking forward to smoking with his old friend Wanderer.
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His dream of Sylvie and the dead bird is talking about his relationship with Karen and Edie. Sylvie, the animal connection between himself and Karen, has killed the bird, his more spiritual relationship with Edie. He has lost her. He knows this now. Their relationship is dead. Maybe by themselves, they would have had a chance, but he was already married to Karen.

Waking up with the thought that he’s going to be busted for drugs hits him hard. Actually, he doesn’t really expect to be busted by the outer world cops, not here in Berkeley. However, he does understand the message. He has been misusing medicines again. In particular, he has been using acid to gain personal power so that he might have a love relationship with both Karen and Edie at the same time, attempting even a three people marriage.
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When he first met Karen, she had just had a powerful experience in which she was sure she was going to die. Instead of dwelling upon the sadness of her life ending then, she had put herself and her life in order. She had straightened up her effects, wrote her will, talked with everyone she loved, and then she had waited.

After awhile though, she had realized that the real intention behind her feeling of impending death had been to get her to dance with it, to let go of her old life, so that she might be able to live righteously in the here and now.

He knows that whatever sort of death comes to him in two weeks time, he’ll be spending his time until then, as Karen did, cleaning up his act and preparing for his end.
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Gypsy’s Dead!

Yesterday, walking home from Telegraph Avenue with Gypsy, he freaked out. He didn’t know why then, but he called Gypsy to him and had her stay close. He was really frightened for both of them.
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Today, he’s sitting in their room at home. He sees Gypsy across the street. He stands up to bring her into the house, but before he can even get outside, he hears a scream of brakes and a heavy thud. She’s been hit!

He runs outside. She’s dead! He’s really freaked now. He should have been warned by his feelings yesterday. He should have kept her in the house. A neighbor tells him that she was playing with Hooch, with Bobby’s dog, chasing him across the street.

Suddenly he notices the guy who was driving. The man is scared and being very apologetic. Enraged, he starts to draw his knife. He wants to kill this man who killed Gypsy. His friends grab him before he gets his knife free of its sheath. He struggles against them, yelling at the man, telling him what he did by driving so fast, just so he could get home a few minutes early.

He curses him. He curses God. He doesn’t care. He loved Gypsy more than anyone and now she’s gone. In just over a week, they would have left this city together and gone into the mountains to play together for the summer. It’s like being a soldier and your best buddy getting killed in the last days of the war.

They bury Gypsy in the backyard. They all say goodbye to her. Bobby cries, but he can’t, not yet, not here anyway. Before they even have her lifeless body covered, the ants are crawling all over her, preparing to do their work. He has never suffered such a loss. He’s dead inside.
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It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense now. The meaning trip is a waste of his time. It’s just a response to the fear trip. A man asks for meaning out of fear, out of the need for clarity.

He remembers telling Edie up on Mt. Tamalpais how he had gotten to where he was by figuring out the why of everything. He remembers also telling her how he had come to realize that clarity wouldn’t be able to help him any more along his way. He had already begun to outgrow the need for understanding, even then.

He can really see the truth of this now. He’s finished with trying to figure out who he is and why. From now on, he’s just going to live his life one day at a time, without worrying about the why of things. He’s also going to be much more open to that hunting and gathering consciousness called Wanderer.

He remembers being told he would be dead in two weeks. Maybe Gypsy sacrificed herself to save him.
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Death and Detachment

He’s at Dinky now. On the drive up, he kept feeling that Gypsy was in the back seat. But when he turned to look, she was never there. It really hurt of see the empty seat.
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He’s realizing from all that has been going on in his life lately that he needs to become more detached – in the Buddhist or Taoist sense of the word – in order to grow and no longer act out the hurt and frightened child. He needs to let go of his ego trips, his need trips, his fear trips, and all of his old and favorite but unproductive patterns. He needs to let go of people too. He especially needs to let go of worrying about what people might think of him. He definitely needs to let go of his attachments to Karen and Edie.

Don Juan tells Carlos that death is at the central core of each piece of knowledge. Don Juan tells Carlos that, when a man embarks upon the path of sorcery, he faces death at every instant, and that the only way such a man can survive is by becoming detached from everything, by accepting death as coming at any moment, and by living fully in the here and now.

Remembering this, he thinks that when he becomes such a man, he’ll be truly Wanderer. He’s not sure how to get to there yet. He does know one thing, that the simpler his life is, the higher he is. When he’s here at Dinky, living his simple daily life of ritual and play, it’s easy for him to stay high and conscious. However, in the city with its complexities and demands, he’s rarely very high or even conscious at all.

The simple life is the beginning of detachment.
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He’s concerned for his body. He’s scared. He’s very tired. He has no energy at all. He has almost passed out twice today. The first time, he became very dizzy and didn’t know where he was, thought maybe he was inside a boiler room. He doesn’t know if his body is reflecting his inner turmoil or if something is wrong with body itself. He’s going to be very slow and cautious physically, especially when he’s alone here, as he soon will be.
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Detachment is not taking sides in a conflict, and a conflict is merely two possible futures stirring up the present. Today, one possible future is that Larry, his friend who arrived yesterday, will trip with him. Another is that he won’t. Because he realizes this, he has been able to stay detached from either future. The future will come as God intends, not as he wishes.

On his way back to camp, after being alone up Cow Creek, he stops and asks the Old One two questions. How he may become completely detached? And is there anything wrong with his body? He’s answered with, “Live as if you are going to be dead by Friday.” He remembers that he was told this when he was still back in Berkeley, told then by a voice in the air that he would be dead in two weeks – which just happens to be this coming Friday! He’ll be alone then.
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