Chapter 29 – Home Boy

Back in Berkeley Again

They’re back in Berkeley now – him and Karen, along with Juniper Berry growing in her womb. He’s really into being a father again. He has missed being a father since Pamela left him, taking Jonathan with her. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he’s going to have a daughter this time. He’s looking forward to watching the feminine grow into being.

They’re happy to be back. They’re less into traveling with a baby coming. Karen’s going to work at the VA in Oakland again. She plans to ride her bike to work every day. They’re still speedy from the road and are using this energy to take care of business.

Nancy has moved out of the Grant Street house since they were here last month. They’re going to move back in so \their baby will have a place to live. They went to social services yesterday and got themselves on Medicaid. It pays for the prenatal, the delivery, and some postnatal care too. They’re thinking of having a midwife assist with the birth, thinking of doing it at home too.
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David comes back the same day as they do. They see him next door at his folks’ house. He couldn’t find his friends in Tahoe, but says he had some good rides back anyway. Maybe he also found him and Karen a bit too heavy.

The house is intense. There’s a bunch of folks hanging out here every day, a party almost every day. He’s trying not to get sucked back into it, trying hard to find work. Karen’s into herself, hanging out some with Abby, but otherwise just staying busy “growing a baby,” as she says.

He’s putting flyers up all over town, trying to drum up new clients. He has a lot of thoughts as to what he can do. His dad and his granddad both worked for themselves. He wants to do the same. He’s also open to doing a little business on the side, being open to whatever comes his way. He’ll get by.

He’s still in the shock of transition. Until last fall, he thought he would wander forever, yet here he is, about to be a householder and a father again. He still has some ambivalence about it, mostly because of the way Karen has been treating him lately.

He’s looking forward to being a father. But he’s not looking forward to the need to lower his awareness and join in the collective insanity just to get by. Karen seems to be having an easier time of it than he is, but then she has been afraid of acid for a while now and has wanted to ground herself out. Being pregnant should do that for her.
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Flying

He dreams that he’s with some folks wandering through an unknown land. He’s not enjoying their company at all. In fact, he’s trying to avoid them, wishing that he were alone. After awhile, they come to a house with a swimming pool. The pool is empty of water, with a big pool table in it. He shoots some pool for a while. Then he begins to float off the ground, and soon he is flying at will. As soon as he flies, he becomes more open to the folks he has been with. Now he’s able to be closer with them. He teaches them to fly too.

He wakes out of his dream, humming a tune of Dylan’s. He looks up the words:

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky,
with one arm waving free,
silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
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He decides to drop acid and “forget about today until tomorrow.” He needs a break from reality. He begins again at the Senior Men’s bench on campus. He likes this bench, especially in the early morning sun.

He can see from his dream that he has isolated himself from other folks out of fear, out of not being very high. He has to be careful not to be so concerned with being a father that he forgets to be high.

Flying is being high, acid high. Flying is being completely open and honest. Flying is letting go. Flying is trusting Spirit – yet he keeps losing his faith, keeps being alienated from his friends.

When he does acid and becomes high though, he finds that he enjoys his friends more, even Bobby and Glen and all their friends. When he’s not high, he thinks that these guys aren’t high either. Maybe they aren’t, or maybe his perception of them changes when he’s not high himself. He does know that when he does become high, they do also, maybe from the contact high. Whatever it is, when he’s high, they’re more fun and are more open to what he has to share.

All he has to do is bring back what he has learned in the mountains and the deserts, bring it back, become high as he is now, and share it from here. As his dream says it, all he has to do is fly. Also, he doesn’t see it written in stone anywhere that he can’t fly, that he can’t do acid whenever he wants and be a good father too.
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Nixon

He doesn’t pay much attention to politics. It tends to bring him down, and he’s trying to be high. He doesn’t have a television set, and he doesn’t read the papers. Some of what’s happening in that world comes through to him though, one way or another. For one thing, the folks in the house are always discussing what’s going on.

But one night, he dreams of President Nixon walking behind a jeep through a battlefield. Nixon is Christ, really is. He’s even carrying a cross on his back. He’s putting himself in danger. Either he’s going to get shelled, as he makes his way across the battlefield, or else he’s going to get nailed when he gets to where he’s going.
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He has been interested in Nixon ever since Jonathan had his dream of him defeating Nixon in a sword fight and making him promise to be a good President. When he traveled back East, he decided that he would be the President’s analyst, in the Zen sense. Ever since then, he has tried to put himself in Nixon’s place, tried to see how he was like him. His friends have been calling Nixon a pig, like they call the police, so he guesses that Nixon is his inner pig, that side of himself that likes to be boss and tell others what to do.

He figures that, by being connected in his mind with Nixon, if he can change the inner pig in himself, maybe he can change the outer one too. He started, when he was back East, by paying attention to the pig in himself, his bossy and having to have his way side. At first, he couldn’t catch himself until after he had acted it out; but after awhile, he got to where he could see when he was about to be a pig and let go of it.
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Looking around, he sees that everyone else is bossy too. He figures if he can help them to see that they are like Nixon, they can be part of his healing. At first, his friends don’t want to hear that they’re like Nixon in any way. When he tries, they either won’t listen to him or else they get pissed at him.

After awhile though, he begins to get through. Glenn and Bobby are sitting at the table with him, both bitching about all these industries polluting the air and getting away with it, bitching at the Nixon administration for letting it happen. Glenn is smoking a cigarette.

He tells Glen that he’s polluting his air now and wishes he would stop. Besides not understanding what he’s saying, Glen become upset and won’t stop smoking. He continues smoking, until Bobby finally catches his drift and tells Glen what’s going on – how he’s being like Nixon and all his cohorts, polluting their air and not giving a damn. Glenn finally sees it himself – a beginning.
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Acid Run

Karen has been gone for a week now. She won’t be back for another week or so. She’s seeing her advisor at UCLA about working at the VA up here. In spite of all their traveling, she's still working on her PhD. She’s also visiting some of her friends down there.

He’s going to do an acid run while she’s gone, as he did last year at this time. He always trips better when she isn't around.

As he’s coming on, he feels afraid, and his body is very tight. He does some yoga and feels some better, but he’s still freaked and his body still really hurts, his neck especially.

In the house, Bobby and Glenn really bring him down when he tries to hang out with them. He needs to stay away from them until he’s really high, until he can help them to fly too. He’s discouraged too, thinking maybe this isn't the time for an acid run.

He’s going to do it though, and he’s going to do it alone. No one is going to run with him anyway. He wastes tons of energy trying to get folks to trip with him because he’s afraid to do it alone. He should either give in to his fear and not run at all or else just go ahead and do it.
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The next morning, he gets up and does acid again. It's a lazy day, and later he bakes bread and does some dream work with Sallie and Rita and Joe. Sharon and Chuck got back from their trip together earlier today. He’s glad to see them. He tells Glenn off for being such a bummer.
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The third day, after dropping, he feels even sicker. He was beginning to feel better yesterday and thought he was getting well. He feels as if he’s being sucked back into the Grant Street gang, into their trips, and it's scares him some, especially seeing as how Karen isn't part of it at all.

The only way he sees to stay above it here is to make his work the most important thing of all, more important than the gang here, more important even than Karen. He’s already receiving good energy for his work. His class is full and people are still wanting into it. People are attracted to him now. How do they know?
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On his fourth day, he still feels sick, and he knows now that it's from fear. He has been losing to fear all week. It's breaking down his body. He hurts and feels really bad. He has lots of anger too. Why? The I Ching doesn’t answer why he’s afraid and angry, but tells him, when he asks, that he’s in the Hexagram Deliverance that speaks of moving out of fear. He decides to continue on for yet another day.

He thinks about his dream of the empty swimming pool and flying above it. Maybe all his waters have run dry, maybe he’s exhausted and has to rise above it – reason enough to continue flying with acid.

When he is able to rise above his fears, he becomes the Caldron, the holy man and magician that he is. He realizes now that he has to stop worrying about his body, has to stop his empty fear fantasies, and instead become the Zen teacher, helping others to fly. He needs to start by healing his body of its pain. He knows how to do this. Healing will come just from being high.
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The next day, the fifth day, He drops again. He spends a lazy, not-doing sort of day. He has done well this week. From here, he can see that he started in a hole (the empty pool) and is still rising above it, above his fears and his exhaustion and his need to avoid the people he’s living with.
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It’s two days later now. He has done acid seven days in a row. He did it yesterday and again today. He’s tired and unsure whether to continue on or not. He’s being very creative, having really good ideas about therapy – about turning people on as opposed to healing them and about being healing all the time instead of just when he’s seeing a client. He has done really well, this past week, but he wonders now if he can keep it up without the acid.
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He did it one more day, making it eight days in a row, and then he took yesterday off to rest. Instead he had all this energy and had a good workday. So he’s tripping again today. He’s seeing that he has stayed with his program. He has focused upon his work and staying away from the unconscious social life of the house here. He’s feeling very high now, and he’s more open to his friends again, although no one wants to learn to fly with him yet.

He’s realizing that work is the important thing in his life now, seeing as how he’s going to be a father again soon. He needs to stop wasting his mind worrying about whether he’s on the right path – whether; for example, he’s using grass and acid wisely. He is.

Later, after riding his bike down from the top of the Berkeley hills, almost flying really, he realizes that he’s well and strong again. He understands himself better now too. He sees that he needs to be alone more or else with folks more sympathetic to the process he’s going through. It’s as if he’s also pregnant and needs a quiet and contained space to let the new life within him grow safely.
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Coming Down

He dreams that he and Jonathan are on top of this high hill. It’s time to come down. They plan a dirt path down and around the hill. They’ll make it on their way down. They’ll use their hands. He has a brief image of them working now on a small clay model, kneading it with their fingers, making the steps for the path in the clay. They’ll do the same with the hill, pressing down each step into the path with their hands, starting here at the top. They decide to put a guide rope along the outside of the path too. They’ll need it whenever the path becomes muddy and slippery. They don’t want to fall.

The main thing he understands from his dream is that he has to come down from acid the right way. He has to prepare the way first, making it safe, and then descend from the top to below. He has to remember that coming down is tricky and that he needs to prepare the way carefully with his own hands.

This is especially relevant now, as he’s just finishing his ten-day acid run. He gets way up there when he’s flying. He needs to come down slowly now, and with care. He could still slip and fall. He could become unconscious, losing all the insights and wisdom that he has gained.

He remembers what Leary said about coming down, that it’s the most important time of a trip, determining who and how he will be afterwards. He can’t just jump into life again. There is need of a transition, a time when he can still be high, yet coming down. Grass helps here, helps to smooth the coming down.

When he does an acid run, even before it ends, he needs to begin his descent, needs to reenter life slowly, letting ordinary reality have a say again. Also, when he has flown for days, he needs more time afterwards before he can start up his daily life again.
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Chapter 30 – Fighting Free

Caged

He dreams that he’s taking care of a Scotch Terrier with a bad leg. In the dream, he has a hurt leg himself. He’s tired of being a cripple, tired of being caged. The dog feels the same. The dog makes a fantastic leap and, using his teeth, grabs his leash from its hook on the wall. Then he brings it to him. They run outside to play together now. He puts the leash in his pocket. They won’t need it. He and the dog are limping some, but they don’t really care. It feels good to be out and running again.

He dreams afterwards that the coyotes come to visit him, and he follows them back to their lair. They’re all here now, and they sing for him.
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He’s crippled in his life now in the sense of not being able to trust to both of his legs, not being able to stand on his own two feet, as they say. One of his legs is okay, but the other isn’t. His okay leg represents him as body, as Wanderer, as wild and wandering, as magician and Zen teacher. He knows how to do all this well. However his crippled leg is his parent side, especially him as a provider.

His father wasn’t a good father. He took care of their physical needs, but he wasn’t at all loving. Because of this, he grew up without an image of a loving father. Seeing his father’s lack of love, he resisted learning from him how to be a good provider. His dad made him sick of men and work.

Those aspects of himself that he should have learned from his father have always lagged behind the rest of himself. At first, being married to Pamela was healing for the father in himself. He was really close and loving with Jonathan while they were together and still is as close as he can be now, living as he does so far away. He also worked hard in school those days and was learning to be a good provider. When they divorced, and he couldn’t live with his son, except part-time, he lost what he had gained as a father. Why try?
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His wanderer side feels caged now by the limitations created by his parent side. Wanderer wants to stay outside, doesn’t want to come into a city and live in a house just because the father side of him is untogether still. Wanderer is afraid he’ll be forgotten when Juniper Berry comes – forgotten except maybe by the coyotes.

He understands this. He can feel both sides. He is both sides. He wants to be both Wanderer and daddy. He also wants the high resulting from not giving in to one side or the other. He hears from his dream though, that Wanderer is tired now of being crippled by the parent side of himself, tired of being caged. He needs time now to run wild as body with the coyotes.
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The Last Battle

Falling asleep, he has a clear vision of arming himself with a beautiful and concave copper shield and his vampire slaying knife. He’s getting ready to join the last battle before the gates of Mordor.

He dreams then that he’s preparing for the acid world, for what the world will be like when everyone does acid. It’s time. His father is here in the dream with him. His father agrees that it’s time.

He’s together now. He has his shield and his knife. He’s ready for the last battle. His father side is with him too, ready to be part of this battle and yet still take care of his daughter when she comes. He’s ready to fight in the last battle against the evil in the world, both inner and outer. He’ll win too. It’s going to be an acid world – for him and, if for him, maybe for others too.
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He’s coming to realize that his personal confrontation with fear and with being different from everyone else has, at the same time, been enacted by others in the world. As he has come to accept his differences, others have come to accept theirs too. Although he has often felt alone, he hasn’t been really.

By necessity, he may have had to be more conscious than many. But he’s not the only one going through this inner process of separating out from the collective and then having to deal with being different, with being able to think and feel and live as good Christians and Jews and Muslims aren’t supposed to think and feel and live.

When he was a little boy he had a great deal of trouble being different. He tried to hide his true self from the world. Now he’s learning to be unafraid and accepting of his differences. Now that he has conquered his fear and stopped it from running him, instead accepting and living out his uniqueness, he has become who he truly is.

He’s very fortunate to have gotten this far. As a young boy, he almost became like Lynda in Doris Lessing’s, Four-Gated City. If he hadn’t hidden himself when he was that young boy from everyone, even from his parents, he would have been locked up and given drugs to dull his mind and spirit as Lynda was. He would have been encouraged to see himself as damaged in some way.
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“Magic is alive,” as Buffy St. Marie sings. It’s everywhere and in everyone. This in spite of having been repressed by all the religions. They have always hunted down and tried to lock up magic.

Magic is growing though, nearing the surface even of the collective’s consciousness. Magic is breaking through in more and more folks each and every day. Acid has helped, not just him, but a whole generation of folks. Magic is coming back into the world no matter what is done to try to stop it. The collective has tried for centuries to stop it, calling those who were into it witches or lunatics or deluded acid hippies. The collective is losing though. Mordor is going down. The forces of light are winning the last battle, leading to the Return of the Light.

Karen says she’s not very good at any of this – at hearing other’s thoughts, at seeing and willing, in Don Juan’s sense. He’s better at it, maybe because he has had to deal with it for so many years. But it’s in everybody, kept from consciousness only by fear.

He no longer feels afraid now. He feels only angry; and he’s going to keep hold of this anger and turn it into determination to be himself – different from all the stereotypes maybe, but so what. His anger will be his knife, his love will be his shield. The last battle will be fought against evil and soul-destroying fear.