Still thinking about children and personhood, I remembered how Henry Miller, in his book Tropic of Capricorn, talked about the difference between children and adults. In Miller’s opinion, once one becomes an adult, one loses one’s personhood and instead becomes a frightened and calculating being. In his life, Miller says he watched sadly as his friends grew up and stopped being real, stopped being persons.

In Miller’s book, he says: “At seven years, we knew with dead certainty, for example, that such a fellow would end up in prison, that another would be a drudge, and another a good for nothing, and so on. We were absolutely correct in our diagnoses, much more correct, for example, than our parents, or our teachers, more correct, indeed, than the so-called psychologists … The learning we received only tended to obscure our vision, From the day we went to school, we learning nothing; on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions.”

He goes on to say, “What I am thinking of, with a certain amount of regret and longing, is that this thoroughly restricted life of early boyhood seems like a limitless universe, and the life that followed upon it, the life of an adult, a constantly diminishing realm. From the moment when one is put in school one is lost, one has a feeling of having a halter put around his neck. The taste goes out of the bread as it goes out of life. Getting the bread becomes more important than the eating of it. Everything is calculated, and everything has a price on it.”
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Still thinking about the difference between children and adults, I also remembered what Tim Leary once said, lecturing to a crowd of us at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He told us that we should never become grownups, never become adults. He said that we should just keep on growing and reminded us that the word adult is the past participle of the Latin verb adulescere, meaning to grow up.
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In my life, I have continued to live as I lived as a boy. I am the same person I have always been. I have not left behind the honesty and awareness of my childhood. I have not finished growing. and I have not and never will become one of those uptight and frightened adults.

In my life, I don’t see myself as old. I’m still me, still the same person I’ve always been, just older than I was before And I must say, I’m proud of the seventy-eight trips around the sun that I’ve made so far. It’s been quite a ride, and I’m not done yet.

I just read Orson Scott Card’s introduction to his book Ender’s Game, one of my most favorite stories. Now I’m reading the story itself once again. At first, I though that Jake might want to read it to himself. But he and I have decided that it’s a bit over his head for now. So I’m reading it aloud to the entire family every night.

I have read Card’s wonderful story many times, but this was the first time I have read his introduction. It was beautiful, moving. Orson Scott Card is a beautiful person. In his introduction, in response to critics who said that children don’t talk and think like they do in Ender’s Game, Card wrote:–

“Yet I knew – I knew – that this was one of the truest things about Ender’s Game. In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me … to write a story in which gifted children are trained to fight in adult wars. Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along – the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective – the perspective in which their feeling and decisions are just as real and important as any adult’s.”
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I have always known that children are persons. Like Card, I was a person myself as a boy. So were all my friends. However, since I have grown up, I have been criticized by many adults who say that I shouldn’t talk to children as I do – as I did with the other children when I was still a child myself. They say I shouldn’t talk to them as if they were persons. They argue that children are not yet really persons. They are wrong.

Certainly, none of my children have ever criticized me for treating them as persons, for being real with them. They appreciate my respect and my honesty. I think it helps them to be more respectful and honest themselves.
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The public school system certainly does not treat children as persons. They definitely don’t want to see who my boys really are. And, because of that, they don’t encourage them to be real persons.

We have sent our son Callahan to a middle school noted for its artistic focus. But Callahan still has to take all the typical academic courses, none of which really interest him, except perhaps for science. He has to take these academic courses just because they insist he does so. And they have offered him only one course, a course in beginning art, that speaks to who he is as a creative person.

I watch the school system fill my boys with collective bullshit – as if they were empty and needed filling – trying to make them fit into the system’s way of thinking about the world. I watch them judge my boys negatively if they don’t conform to the system’s collective way. It’s obvious that they don’t want to know anything about, let alone further, the person who already exists in each one of them.

Aspen and I met in late January of 1985. We were engaged by the middle of March and married by late June. We have never looked back, have always loved one another and have never thought of ending our marriage.

With half of all marriages in the United States ending in divorce, we have decided to share our love story and how and why it has lasted for more than 26 years. So, if you are at all interested in a serious relationship with another person, especially if you want to have children some day, it will certainly be worth your while to read about how we have done it.
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The other day, while Aspen and I were out walking, we came upon a man we knew. He saw us and blurted out, “You’re holding hands.” Yes, we were. We do so whenever we can. We snuggle together every night too, and we make wonderful love. We’re still loving, after all these years. It has always come natural to us.

How did this happen, when it is so rare in the world? Well, when we met that fateful January, we were medicine folks. Every Friday night, we did Ecstasy and acid, first the Ecstasy and then several hours later high dose acid. We did this every Friday night for several months. Doing so, we opened up to each other completely. We came to know each other more deeply in that short time than most couples do in a lifetime of marriage.

The night we decided to get married, we were doing medicines. I asked Aspen if she wanted all of me. She said yes, and she has had all of me, all of my love and support and understanding ever since.
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After our courtship and our marriage, we began to spend more and more time backpacking and traveling. We did some climbing with a friend here in Boulder and in Joshua Tree. We went to more than one Rainbow Gathering too. We lived outside the law, and we were honest. We started in Boulder, of course, but we also lived briefly in California, in Mammoth Lakes, and in Arizona, in and around Tucson. We lived on the West Slope of the Rockies too, in Paonia, on an organic fruit farm.

When we were still living in Tucson, before we moved to Paonia, we wondered what else we could do with our love. We had been married for over 14 years. We had done almost everything we had wanted to do. What else could we do? The decision seemed to be made for us. Aspen was in her mid-thirties and was beginning to realize that she would have to have children soon if she wanted to be a mother.
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Although I had thought that I was done raising children, I was more than okay with us being parents together. I knew she would be a great mom. And I have always enjoyed being a dad. Being parents together would be our new life adventure. I certainly enjoyed actualizing her desire for children, and soon the babies began to come.

When they started coming, with Callahan being the first, we moved back to Boulder, and we now live just two blocks from where we started out 26 years ago, back when we first realized that we loved each other and wanted to share a life together. Since then we have come full circle in our life and our love. And now our love is actually stronger now than it was when we left Boulder all those years ago – way more than enough to nourish our three young boys.

The boys are 5, 8, and 11 years old now. They are more than a handful. They are all high maintenance, extremely loud, and overwhelming argumentative. They are also heartwarmingly loving and extremely interesting. It’s awesome watching them grow up and become people. They are my sons. God! What an obligation! What a responsibility! I love it.

Like all families, we all have our various ailments and disabilities. Because of this, I ask every day for healing for each and every member of my family – for Aspen, Zane, Jake, Callahan, and myself too.
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For Aspen, I ask every day that she have no more migraines, never again, and no more debilitating colds either.

Lately however, she has shown a marked improvement with her health, thanks in large part to our doctor. He has gotten her to focus more on the health and strength of her immune system. For one thing, she is finally taking all the vitamin and mineral supplements that she needs.
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For Zane, I ask every day that his peanut allergy go away. Thank God that it’s mild and causes him to throw up instead of not breathing. But still! I also ask that his lungs and his immune system keep growing stronger, as he grows older, so he’s no longer so vulnerable to asthma and chest colds. He’s already growing stronger. He only had one asthma attack this year and fewer colds too.

Next fall, we’re going to start him in gymnastics at CATS, here in Boulder. He’s pretty tough and very strong for a five year old. He may be the one to follow in Ariana’s footsteps. She was awesome. She competed and went on to the regionals. If you’ve ever seen and appreciated her dancing, know that she learned to dance while she was at the gym called CATS.
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For Jake, I ask every day for a miracle, for no more Duchene Muscular Dystrophy at all, along with no more of its side effects – especially his depression, and his school problems. I want his DMD to go into remission, a miracle that is possible. It just needs another cosmic particle to pass through his dystrophin gene and set things to rights this time.

Already, Jake is very low on the severity scale. Most boys with
DMD are already in wheelchairs by his age. He’s still running around, sometimes he just can’t sit still. We thought we’d have to move into a one-level house by now because of his DMD, but he still runs up and down the stairs like they weren’t there.
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For Callahan, I ask that he overcome his fear and insecurity that were born of his very heavy, very dangerous, and very scary birth. He was stuck part way through the birth canal for six or seven hours. We finally realized that the midwife was a flake and was bullshitting us. So we called for the ambulance that we had reserved and had it carry us to the hospital where he was finally born.

His fear manifests today mostly in his inability to go to sleep at night. He sometimes lies in bed for hours, with wiggly legs, a nervous energy symptom that probably comes from the incredible fear he came into this world with. He’s still quite insecure and says “I can’t” way too much for an eleven-year old boy. However, in spite of his fear, he’s an awesome boy, soon becoming a man.
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For me, I ask that I be more compassionate, with no more anger left in me at all. It just brings me and everyone around me down. I also pray for no more pain. My shoulders have been damaged by all the military presses I’ve done at the gym. Oh well! But the pain does make it more difficult for me to have a good night’s sleep.

I’d also like to remain as healthy as I am now for the rest of my hopefully long and prosperous life. I wasn’t sick at all this past winter. “Knock on wood.” Meditation really helps.

Tonight I’m home alone. I just smoked a bowl of the good. Now I’m listening to Pianoscapes by Michael Jones. He’s awesome. I’m really enjoying this peaceful space. I love being dad, but the boys are not at all peaceful. They fight non-stop with one another, yelling, screaming even, and mostly arguing over toys, “that’s mine!” sort of thing

I told them they should copy the Merry Pranksters, that acid family from the 60’s, and put all of their things in a pile in the playroom. Then when one of them wants something, he can go get it out of the pile. And then, when he’s done with it, he can return it to the pile. They didn’t buy this at all.
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For now I’m alone and it’s peaceful. And when they do come home from the YMCA and Karate tonight, they’ll be going right to bed. I usually play Pianoscapes or maybe Ecstasy by Deuter for them when they go to bed to calm them out for sleep. I like to end their day in calmness and love.

I’m reading a book now by Scott Westerfeld, a science fiction space opera sort of story, a hard to put down sort of story too. Tonight I’ve read more than I can usually read in several days. Most of my reading, if any, is at night after the boys are asleep.

Sometimes I read when the boys are around too, mostly to distract myself from their energies, but still be there when they need me – with homework or a new drawing by Callahan or something on the computer that Jake wants me to see or listening to Zane tell me that he’s the other dad, that he and I are the dads here.
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So, every day I pray that I will continue to find this peace in my heart. So far, ever since the late sixties, I’ve always been able to find it. I first found it back then when I was alone for weeks at Dinky Creek, in the High Sierras. I found it then when I was vision questing with the help of acid and peyote.

Now I can find it by just turning my head off, by stopping my world, as Don Juan would say. Although, sometimes these days, I do have to isolate myself, maybe going upstairs to meditate or taking a walk or a hike in the nearby woods. But whatever I have to do, I have always been able to find the peace in my heart.
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However, finding the peace in my life has always been much more difficult for me. What I really need now for peace in my life is more money for my family. We’re living on the edge. And it’s scary, and it’s certainly not at all conducive to peace. I have always done poor well, Aspen has too, but I can’t ask this of the boys, not until they’re old enough to make their own choices.

And come to think of it, maybe having more than enough money would be interesting too, as interesting perhaps as it was traveling on the fly, finding work in one town in order to buy enough food and gasoline to move on to the next.

So yes, I do need more money. I also need more medicine for my work of exploring consciousness. I need more friends too, friends with whom I can share my life and my work, friends like Ramon and Paul and the many others I’ve had in the past. When these very real and important personal needs are met, then I’ll have peace in my life as well.
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Of course, I wish that there would be peace in the world too. But I don’t expect it. After all, look at what’s happening right now in the world these days, in the United States too, what with the right wing Christians and the mega-corporations at war with the rest of us and trying basically to enslave us in their subtle webs as they overthrow our democracy.

Don’t take my word for it. As Michael Moore says, ”Today just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined.” He goes on, “Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined.”

When I was a young boy, Christmas was my favorite time of year. I could hardly wait for it to come around again. We always had a family gathering, with me and my brother Ned and Granny Bird and Granny Marks and Uncle Ken and my mom and dad. Uncle Ken was always Santa Claus. Being our only uncle, he was easily our favorite.

We all always had a great time together too, with plenty of presents for all. Later in the day, we always had a special and wonderful family dinner, with more than enough homemade cookies and candy for afterwards. We usually ended the evening with some sort of card game. Sometimes we even got serious and played bridge. Granny Marks was really good at it. She played in tournaments and always did well.
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But I haven’t been into Christmas for a long while now, not since my Berkeley days in the early seventies. The last great Christmas that I remember was from those days. In the Grant Street house, we had a tree with Karen’s candles for lights and rolled joints for decorations, maybe a hundred or so of them. We didn’t do acid together that night, as we had done at Thanksgiving, but we sure smoked a lot of those joints.
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I still celebrate Christmas. After all, I’m a dad and I have three young boys. They are greedy little Christmas monsters, but remembering how I was as a young boy, I cater to their greed. I got over it. They will too.

This year, Callahan will be getting a laptop and some toys, and Zane will get Callahan’s old computer. Zane will also be getting a kid-sized kitchen and some toys too. He really likes to help with the cooking. Jake has a list. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I know that he likes to make things out of Legos. He’ll probably get some LEGO City sets. He was really into transformers a while back, and probably will be again after Transformers 3 comes out this summer. Right now though, he’s more into playing games on his school computer, the one he has because he’s being home schooled this year. Maybe he’ll get a game or two for his computer.

I do tell the boys that Christmas is supposed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, not be a day of getting. I also tell them that it’s just another version of the Winter Solstice, a time of death and rebirth, a time that is celebrated by nearly all cultures. I tell them that it marks a time when the light has almost left us. After all, the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. I also tell them that, after the Solstice has come and gone, the light will begin to return – in the northern hemisphere anyway.
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Aspen and I aren’t much into Christmas ourselves except for the boys. I usually do make a list of things to buy for myself this time of year, probably a holdover from when I used to receive gifts. This year, I’m going to buy myself a pair of socks and an astrological calendar. I’d also buy myself new shoes and some good acid if I had the money.

If it were just me – and thank god, it isn’t – I probably wouldn’t even notice Christmas. I think it’s a really fucked holiday. For one thing, it’s all about greed, very little about Spirit anymore. For another, it’s the wrong time of year to celebrate as we do with Christmas. The I Ching calls this time the resting time of year. We should all be hibernating.

I do celebrate the Winter Solstice. I usually do it alone and with consciousness. I always ask the I Ching what my situation is going to be for the year that is coming. I stand on the cusp. I say goodby to the year that has just passed, and I welcome the one that is just beginning.

We take Jake to Children’s Hospital in Aurora twice a year. This is our third year. It’s always on a Friday, and we have to be there by 9 in the morning. It usually takes us an hour to get there.

It’s intense on the freeway today; everyone is in a hurry, as we all hurtle through space in our metal boxes. Fortunately the traffic is light this morning. We actually arrive at the Hospital in 45 minutes.

Usually all of us go with Jake. We make a day of it somewhere in Denver. This time we’re going to visit the 16th Street Mall and eat at Johnny Rockets.
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We park and walk into the hospital. It feels really good being here. We’ll be here for several hours. We elevate up to the 4th floor and wait to be called into the Muscle Clinic. Once there, we see the main rehab doctor, a Neurologist, and a Neuro-Psychologist. We also see a Social Worker, a Physical Therapist, and a representative of MDA. On the way out, we stop at the lab downstairs, and Jake has his blood drawn to check for his vitamin D level and his thyroid functioning.

By the time we leave, four hours and some minutes later we have heard that his muscles are still doing much better than expected. And everything else is okay too – except for the DMD of course. Jake’s a healthy little guy. We also began the process of hooking him up with other boys with DMD. He needs friends who are going through what he’s going through. They also gave us a script for a new lightweight stroller for when he gets tired walking.

The people we saw at the Muscle Clinic must be really frustrated. There is nothing they can do about the DMD, nothing at all. All they can do is make it more comfortable for the boys who have it and slow down its progress so that it takes longer to kill them.
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After we leave, we drive all the way into Denver on Colfax, the longest city street in the world. We don’t start at its eastern beginning, and we don’t go all the day to its ending in the west. We just take it from the hospital to the center of town and the mall. Colfax is not your typical city street. On the way, we see lots of naked dancing places, lots of pot shops, lots of tattoo parlors, and lots of darkness. I wouldn’t want to be there at night, not with my family.

The 16th Street Mall, on the other hand, is full of light and fun. The boys love the free buses that take us from one end of the mall to the other and back. When we get tired of riding the buses, we eat at Johnny Rockets. We all have burgers and fries. Good food, although no one sings to us this time. The food is bit expensive, but what the heck.

Back in our box, on the freeway again. I think we all feel the same. We just want to make it home safely. Hurtling through space again, we keep going, thankfully watching the traffic thin out as folks turned off into their own little cities on the way to ours.

Finally we leave the freeway, drive down Table Mesa, and then turn into our street and park in front of our house. We’re home.

As I wander down the page, I leap from rock to rock, from thought to thought – from ‘tonight I finally have some time to myself’ – to ‘I’m up so early every school day, getting the boys up and off to school, and it never lets up until late at night.’

By the time we have fed and entertained them, have hung out with them, have helped them with their homework, and have finally got them into bed, it’s 8:30 or 9 at night, later if it’s not a school night. By then all I want to do is read for a while and then go to sleep.

So, as I said before, tonight I finally have some time to myself – and it’s not late at night either. I’m alone this night because Aspen and Callahan are in their Karate class at the Y, and Jake and Zane are in the nursery there.
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The path down the page forks here. Should I take this fork and say that my body is finally beginning to wear out, finally beginning to die? It’s interesting, watching it happen. I don’t mind leaving my body. I’m not afraid to die. I know that I’m not my body. I have left it twice before, and, both times it has been blissful.

However, I plan on staying here for another twenty or more years. I want to be here to see my boys become men. I want to be here for Jake at the end. Once, I said that I wanted to leave with him. Maybe I still will.

Or should I take the other fork and say that I really want some good acid, preferably liquid. I really do want some, and soon. I want to fly free once more before I leave this body. I want to dance on the edge of life once again.

I want my boys to see who I am at my best. So far, all they have seen is a mommy-daddy who sits around much of the day, either here at the computer or else with a good book in his hands. I have really been much more fun and potent and out there when I have had good acid. I’d like them to see that side of me too.

The two paths converged. Did you see that? It’s the urgency of my body’s aging that compels me to set off on this admittedly dangerous endeavor. I want to become Wanderer again while I still have my energy, while I can still walk the trails of life, and still enjoy the ride.

Also, acid has always been good for my body. Acid would really help me actualize my goal of living another twenty or so healthy and strong years. Twenty-five would be best. This way, Aspen and I would be able to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Callahan would be thirty-six then. Jake would be thirty-three. And Zane would be thirty. They will be men, beginning to mature, men I know I’m going to be proud of. I want to be there for them then. I can do it. I will do it!

Halloween is very important to our three boys. Callahan will be a large, black, scary demon with widespread wings and a hideous red mask. He’ll look awesome.

Jake will be Mario of the Mario Brothers. He’s going to look great. He has the overalls, the red hat with a big white M on it, the mustache, and Mario’s white gloves. He tried to get Zane to be Luigi, Mario’s brother, but Zane insisted on his first choice.

God Knows, how he came up with it, but Zane has decided that he will be Freddy Krueger – the youngest Freddy Krueger I know of. Maybe Freddy as a five year old. Zane even magicked a great Freddy Krueger costume from a family friend, complete with Freddy’s metal-clawed brown leather glove. He’ll be styling. They all will.
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Halloween is important to them for another reason. They like candy. Usually we get enough from trick or treating to last the entire year, from one Halloween to the next. This year we ran out a month ago. Terrible tragedy! We all suffered,

To remedy this misfortune, we are going onto the Boulder mall this year, Ideal Market and the various stores around it, as well as the various King Supers. And, of course, we will cruise the neighborhood for our final candy collection.

We also want to show off their costumes and scare lots of folks.
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A late bulletin, just in – Zane is now considering being a ghost pirate. He does look great in his pirate hat. Maybe he will be both, depending on the venue.

Home schooling has turned out to be more work than we first thought. Aspen and Jake are at it 3 to 4 hours a day, five days a week. But that’s instead of over 6 hours a day in the public schools.

Jake is styling. He has his own computer. It’s his to use as long as he’s enrolled in COVA, the Colorado Virtual Academy. He also has workbooks, reading books, and various other tools for learning. He even has workbooks for art and for music. He has time set aside for physical education too.

The main thing though, is that every day, for those 3 to 4 hours, Jake is getting individual attention, both from Aspen and from the computer. Jake likes this. He’s very much a one-on-one person. And he really likes computers too.

When I saw all this happening with Jake, I felt sorry for all the kids in the public schools that have to figure out what the teacher is saying (if they are even listening.) They always have to interpret what is being said and what is expected of them. This is so because the teacher is talking to – take your pick – the brightest kids, the slowest kids, or the mystical average kids. Some of the kids just won’t get the message.
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At first, I felt sorry for Callahan still being in the public school system. But after I had thought about it, I became very proud of him for making it all the way through the system to the 5th grade. And not just making it there, but doing it very well. For awhile, he was struggling, especially with reading, but he persevered and has ended up a fine student. He’s very creative too and wants to focus on this side of himself in middle school next year.

Callahan is also very social. He has many friends. He might have had an easier time with learning if he had been home schooled, but he would have missed out on the social side of it. And that is very important to Callahan; it’s who he is. He has a gift. Everyone likes him – and he likes everyone too.

We’re excited! We’re home schooling Jake now. Before the boys were born, I wanted to home school all the kids we would have. But somehow we ended up in the Boulder Valley School System.

But then Jake started having more and more trouble in school. It was never easy for him there. Over time, he became very unhappy.

He’s out now though, and is enrolled in COVA (Colorado Virtual Academy.) He likes it a lot. He did three days worth of schoolwork today in just a few hours. The lessons are on the computer, and COVA has just sent him his own computer to use.

Aspen has done a tremendous amount of work setting all this up. She had to learn a lot of new stuff about her computer and the Internet. It has taken her days and has been very stressful. But she did it. And now, along with the computer’s help, she’s Jake’s teacher.

Jake has been happy these first few days of home schooling, happy for the first time since the public school started eight weeks ago. I wish we hadn’t taken so long to decide on home schooling, but we’re doing it now.

At first, when Jake was having so much trouble at school, I thought that he was bummed by his dawning realization that he has muscular dystrophy and what it’s going to mean for him. Now I’m thinking that he was more bummed than we knew by his school. Since we pulled him out, he has been so much happier and certainly less angry.

However, muscular dystrophy is still a major issue for Jake, He is just beginning to deal with it. But it’s hard for him to get a handle on what’s happening. After all, he’s only eight years old, really more like six years old emotionally because of the muscular dystrophy.

Jake needs help with this. In particular, he needs to be around more boys with MD. He’s so isolated now. We almost sent him to the MD camp last summer. I wish we had. He will go next summer. We’re also going to plug into the MD community in and around Boulder. There are a several MD boys living nearby, demonstrating the various stages of the illness.