Zuma Beach Day
I was ten years old in 1981. My parents had just gotten a divorce and now Mom was trying to pick up the pieces. Being the adventurous type, she liked to take my six year old brother and me on hikes in the mountains and day trips to the beach, when she could get the time off work.
Today was one of those days in early autumn. We drove up the scenic coastal Highway 101 from Los Angeles to Malibu in her “Vega Beast”, although the car didn’t seem to embarrass her in the least. She even brought along a first time date (named Mickey) to join the fun. I remember he had wavy blonde hair and a strong chin, although he wasn’t very tall. -Strange to remember a perfect stranger on a day like this.
It was nearing sunset when we arrived at Zuma Beach. A slight breeze blew off the ocean as wispy clouds idled by in the milky blue sky. The beach didn’t have any other visitors for miles around, it seemed. We played some games in the sand. Before long I decided to put my feet in the water. Today the Pacific felt surprisingly like bathwater in contrast to the slight chill from the breeze against my skin. But the surf didn’t crash and roll onto the sand as usual. Oddly enough, there wasn’t any real white water to speak of. I recall it being soupier, like tipping a soup bowl back and forth and swishing it around.
Our little group stayed reasonably close as we frolicked in the shallows, up to our knees in water. It really felt good and I wanted to go in deeper, even if I didn’t have any extra clothes to change into. I was about six or seven feet farther out than the others, now up to my thighs, when I felt an undertow of current pull on me. I didn’t resist and stepped forward, only to find that there wasn’t any ocean floor to steady me! Suddenly, I was swallowed up and sucked down into a vacuum of swirling water where I couldn’t touch the bottom anymore. I rolled upside down, round and round as if I were trapped in a washing machine, before being slammed against the sea bottom face-first. To my utter shock and surprise, Zuma Beach had zoom zoomed, IE crash-landed me into an unseen sandbar! Before I could react, the unimaginable happened.
In a blink of an eye, my whole point of view distinctly changed. As abruptly as I became a dizzy, unfocussed mess of chaos underwater, now I found myself floating calmly above my body, invisible and in a state of hyper-awareness. I was positioned about one story high above my body with remarkable and instantaneous ability to see panoramic, 360 views of the surrounding areas and the horizon. I could see everything all at once, like an all-seeing eye with only the desire needed to focus on any one specific thing. It was as though I could see through dozens of eyes wrapped around my head like a crown. But I had no form, no shape, and no color. I saw through myself like I was just air.
I focused on the body below as it continued to be pummeled by the water rather turbulently, and I realized it was mine. I felt like I owned it as a child owns a novelty toy; to be played with and easily discarded. However, I didn’t remember who the people were standing around the perimeter of the body. And it didn’t matter to me at all. I could care less who they were. In fact, there was no emotional connection to my body, or to my mom and brother. I doubt I would have cared about them even if I had remembered who they were at that moment. I remember feeling such acute amusement towards my body, watching it flap around like a piece of meat being ripped apart by some hungry animal.
I had total and complete amnesia about my ten years of mortal life lived on earth. I couldn’t even recall the language I spoke, nor did I need it to form intelligent thoughts and opinions about what I perceived. I could reason and think using concepts and abstract ideas.
To explain the emotional state I was experiencing outside of my body is most difficult. There was such a “disconnect” from the memories of my life; But truth be known, I felt more alive and energized than ever before. Not only did I exist outside of earth’s gravitational pull, but the freedom from gravity and the emotional buoyancy, the carefree weightlessness of soul was almost indescribable.
-Weightless in more than one way. I was acutely aware of being weightless from all the cares and concerns that living within a linear dimension produces. I was literally “off the grid.”
There were no ties to other people, no promises to be kept, no guilt from “sin” or failing to live up to some standard, no pressure to perform or learn how to conform to a society, no need to go to school or work, no need for acceptance, food or basic human needs for survival. I cannot adequately describe how being separated from those burdens made me feel. Without being yoked to those unspoken worldly weights, my reality was profoundly affected. It brought me such…ELATION!!! I was inflated with elation and wanted to fly away like a balloon up to the clouds. That was my last thought before being slammed back into the body 25 seconds later. (Time according to Mom)
All the colors of the sky, the sunlight as it bathed the Malibu hillside, the clouds reflecting twilight oranges, reds, pinks and purples, gold and dusty browns, the color of the sea in all its wondrous hues of blues and greens, the sand on the beach, the cars on the highway, even the colors of the bushes, palms and trees were all magnified, more crisply acute to me during those timeless moments, more than ever before and even ever since. The audio sensation was a part of the experience, but in a much less dramatic way. It seemed much less important to hear what was going on around me rather than to see it all.
With a child-like playfulness of spirit, I made the decision to depart the scene and go upwards. I didn’t see any “tunnel,” nor were there angels beckoning my soul to heaven. In fact there were no other spirits to witness, but then again I hadn’t left this dimension yet either. In the split millisecond before I zoomed away, I heard a terribly shrill scream erupt from my mom. She screamed my name out. And in an instant, I found myself back inside my body. -My drowning body.
My lungs were on fire, my head pounded against the sandbar’s shelf and my body felt like dead weight, anchored to the ocean floor. Instinctively, I dug my fingers into the sand and crawled blindly in the swirling, wet chaos. Then the water seemed to recede enough for my head to surface? My mom screamed again as she saw my head come up and she waded over to help me up. Five minutes later, as I laid on the sand trying to compose myself, I began to weep uncontrollably.
At ten years old, I experienced an epiphany. Now I knew it as a fact that there is life after death. I had already learned and heard about the human spirit through my parents’ religion, Scientology. What a wonder! There is a part of humanity that can live independently of, dare I say thrive outside of the flesh, outside of time, and never die. I made an oath to myself there on that twilighted beach. I would never come back and live inside a body again, IF I had any choice in the matter.
Now I am forty and my life has never been the same. That experience confirmed my eternity. However, it also opened up a “Pandora’s Box” to so many other unanswered questions that I now look to my faith for. I cannot be satisfied with the religious status quo. A belief system, a world-view acquired solely through people, society and literature does not satisfy me. There is too much at stake. My eternity and where I will spend it is just as important to me as my present life here on earth.
-Or perhaps even more so now that I intimately KNOW my consciousness does not just fade away or black out after physical death.
January 18, 2011
February 4, 2010
#6 Child's Play, Willie Day
It was November, 1970. Popcorn’s commune was getting colder than a witch’s breath. Charlie and Annie said their goodbyes and hitched down to Vancouver B.C. Charlie had grown up in Washington State and had kin there but Annie wanted to go further down to Oregon where it felt more familiar to her. Annie was born in Ontario, OR and had an uncle still living there. Maybe they’d get lucky and pass through the town of Willamina on the way. She loved that name. It reminded her of wild mountain strawberries.
Traveling across borders as a broke American had its challenges, especially when you’re WANTED by the CIA and the military police. But Charlie had his million dollar smile and a few tricks up his sleeve to help pull it off. Unquestionably my daddy was a survivor. He had made it through a hellish tour in the sweaty jungles of eastern Asia. In retrospect, everything else was just child’s play. He was always one step ahead of the game. And when it came to feeding their hungry stomachs, he knew just what to do, too.
-Crash the Greyhound bus station!
Who else would think of eating for free there, or anywhere? -Fresh, clean, hot food…all for the taking without foraging in trashcans. My parents were in hog heaven! After ravishing the food left behind from a wave of riders getting back on their buses, they both relaxed. Satisfied, Charlie belched and sipped some warm coffee from a cup with lipstick on the rim.
Annie smiled at how comical the situation seemed. But inside she knew they couldn't’ go on taking all these risks once their baby was born. So far, there were no plans to change their lifestyle. Charlie insisted they continue down only as far as Lacey, W.A. and stay with his sister’s family. Oregon was out of the question.
On the rainy evening of January 19th, 1971, Charlie and Annie Day jumped into the dilapidated truck borrowed from his brother-in-law. Poor mama had gone into a fast, hard labor without any fair warning. Her naturopath doctor was up in the Seattle area, -A far cry from Lacey where they were hiding out. Daddy just couldn't drive the truck fast enough and my head crowned on the bumpy ride north. To their utter shock, Mama delivered a 5lb, 14 oz baby girl on the side of the road at 10:25pm!
-No clean sheets or pillows, no bells or whistles. No drugs and no grandparents to celebrate my birth. -Just the smell of exhaust and the sound of a coyote barking into the lonely night.
“Let’s call her Willamina Jane,” mama whispered as my daddy tried to keep calm and steer the truck back onto the interstate. He knew he had to get us to a hospital fast. “Willie. I like Willie,” he said. Charlie couldn't shake how helpless he felt. His baby was alive and breathing. Annie was alive. Sure there was lots of blood but nobody was dead at least. Although his heart raced with fear, the "survival mode" gear had switched on inside his brain and zapped him into auto-pilot.
Nothin' was going to stop him from completing his mission that late night, -To get his family to safety no matter what. After all, he just became a father to Willamina Jane Day. -His Willie. Although it was hard to admit, Charlie had to confess that having a baby was no child's play.
Traveling across borders as a broke American had its challenges, especially when you’re WANTED by the CIA and the military police. But Charlie had his million dollar smile and a few tricks up his sleeve to help pull it off. Unquestionably my daddy was a survivor. He had made it through a hellish tour in the sweaty jungles of eastern Asia. In retrospect, everything else was just child’s play. He was always one step ahead of the game. And when it came to feeding their hungry stomachs, he knew just what to do, too.
-Crash the Greyhound bus station!
Who else would think of eating for free there, or anywhere? -Fresh, clean, hot food…all for the taking without foraging in trashcans. My parents were in hog heaven! After ravishing the food left behind from a wave of riders getting back on their buses, they both relaxed. Satisfied, Charlie belched and sipped some warm coffee from a cup with lipstick on the rim.
Annie smiled at how comical the situation seemed. But inside she knew they couldn't’ go on taking all these risks once their baby was born. So far, there were no plans to change their lifestyle. Charlie insisted they continue down only as far as Lacey, W.A. and stay with his sister’s family. Oregon was out of the question.
On the rainy evening of January 19th, 1971, Charlie and Annie Day jumped into the dilapidated truck borrowed from his brother-in-law. Poor mama had gone into a fast, hard labor without any fair warning. Her naturopath doctor was up in the Seattle area, -A far cry from Lacey where they were hiding out. Daddy just couldn't drive the truck fast enough and my head crowned on the bumpy ride north. To their utter shock, Mama delivered a 5lb, 14 oz baby girl on the side of the road at 10:25pm!
-No clean sheets or pillows, no bells or whistles. No drugs and no grandparents to celebrate my birth. -Just the smell of exhaust and the sound of a coyote barking into the lonely night.
“Let’s call her Willamina Jane,” mama whispered as my daddy tried to keep calm and steer the truck back onto the interstate. He knew he had to get us to a hospital fast. “Willie. I like Willie,” he said. Charlie couldn't shake how helpless he felt. His baby was alive and breathing. Annie was alive. Sure there was lots of blood but nobody was dead at least. Although his heart raced with fear, the "survival mode" gear had switched on inside his brain and zapped him into auto-pilot.
Nothin' was going to stop him from completing his mission that late night, -To get his family to safety no matter what. After all, he just became a father to Willamina Jane Day. -His Willie. Although it was hard to admit, Charlie had to confess that having a baby was no child's play.
February 3, 2010
#5 The Wonderland in Willamina, Oregon
"Willamina" by Reckless Kelly
Corn don't grow around here
Ain't seen a drop all year
But there's one place I know
Where the grass grows free
And the waters flow.
Just knock on the tool-shed door
And you fall straight down through the floor
Unseen by the naked eye
And everybody gets a little piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Well there's a big red dog in the yard
He's always out standing guard
Of the old grey house on the hill
Where you climb right up and you get your fill.
Just knock on the kitchen door
And the 16 cats on the floor
And everybody's getting so high
That the taxman wants a little piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Well the lights went out one day
And the cats all ran away
And the place where I used to go
Where there once was grass there now lays snow.
And the taxman knocked on the door
Then fell straight down through the floor
That everybody getting so high
They lost every little bitty piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Willamina...
Corn don't grow around here
Ain't seen a drop all year
But there's one place I know
Where the grass grows free
And the waters flow.
Just knock on the tool-shed door
And you fall straight down through the floor
Unseen by the naked eye
And everybody gets a little piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Well there's a big red dog in the yard
He's always out standing guard
Of the old grey house on the hill
Where you climb right up and you get your fill.
Just knock on the kitchen door
And the 16 cats on the floor
And everybody's getting so high
That the taxman wants a little piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Well the lights went out one day
And the cats all ran away
And the place where I used to go
Where there once was grass there now lays snow.
And the taxman knocked on the door
Then fell straight down through the floor
That everybody getting so high
They lost every little bitty piece of the pie.
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina
Out in Willamina.
Willamina...
February 1, 2010
#4 "Me and You and a Surfboard named Boo"
In the Summer of ’69, The Woodstock Festival -which was billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" rocked every American hippy’s worldview. My mama, Annie, was no exception even though she never made it back east to attend. Nearly half a million people (filled with possibilities of disaster, riots, looting and catastrophe) spent three muddy days with music, magic mushrooms and peace on their minds instead.
“Only the Age of Aquarius could be responsible for this kind of shift in mass consciousness,” she thought. Annie was smitten with the astrology sign, Aquarius. She had a dream one night where she saw her future husband who turned out to be...you guessed it! -A charismatic Aquarius.
Even though Annie was filled with regret for missing Woodstock’s historic line-up, she thanked her lucky stars and flung her long sun-streaked hair around when she found out the cute soldier she met that summer was…an Aquarius! That fact alone was confirmation she needed to be convinced he was THE One she saw in her dream. And Annie went after him in hot pursuit. After all, she was young, footloose and fancy free! As things go, just a year later she'd soon realize that being a married, pregnant surfer-hippy was NOT a groovy combo. It was no longer, “Me and you and a surfboard named Boo.”
Soon, Annie would find herself voyaging with her Aquarian husband to a new frontier, far away from her parents, siblings and childhood friends. It might have really been a hoot and holler IF she didn't have a little life growing inside her belly. On the road she and Charlie didn't eat, sometimes for days. Money was as elusive as a candy wrapper blowing in the wind. The people they ran into weren't always very sympathetic. I mean, both my parents were stereo-typed; Many "30 something" and older Americans thought hippies were LOSERS for "turning on, tuning in and dropping out."
I guess following a pied piper personality (ruled by the planet Uranus) really didn't seem to be a big deal at first since Annie's sun sign was in congenial Libra. Compatible enough. Airy. And Venus was her ruling planet. If only mama had a magic mirror that could have foretold her future. It might have prepared her better for what was in store. -Whoever said following your dreams always culminated in a grand finale of "Happily Ever After?"
Yeah, it was going to take a whole lot of Venus Vibes to stay in love with a real Uranus.
Mama didn't really show her pregnancy. It wasn't obvious. But I was in there, no doubt. Annie had recently turned 21 years old and her nesting instincts were kicking into overdrive while living so far away from the only security she had ever known. The strangers at the Canadian hippy commune were friendly enough but they had their own problems to worry about. This was not the place she wanted to have her baby. When Charlie ran to her that day she came back from Vancouver and grabbed her in his arms, she was relieved to hear he wanted to go back to America.
-Even if the journey meant facing a long and winding road.
“Only the Age of Aquarius could be responsible for this kind of shift in mass consciousness,” she thought. Annie was smitten with the astrology sign, Aquarius. She had a dream one night where she saw her future husband who turned out to be...you guessed it! -A charismatic Aquarius.
Even though Annie was filled with regret for missing Woodstock’s historic line-up, she thanked her lucky stars and flung her long sun-streaked hair around when she found out the cute soldier she met that summer was…an Aquarius! That fact alone was confirmation she needed to be convinced he was THE One she saw in her dream. And Annie went after him in hot pursuit. After all, she was young, footloose and fancy free! As things go, just a year later she'd soon realize that being a married, pregnant surfer-hippy was NOT a groovy combo. It was no longer, “Me and you and a surfboard named Boo.”
Soon, Annie would find herself voyaging with her Aquarian husband to a new frontier, far away from her parents, siblings and childhood friends. It might have really been a hoot and holler IF she didn't have a little life growing inside her belly. On the road she and Charlie didn't eat, sometimes for days. Money was as elusive as a candy wrapper blowing in the wind. The people they ran into weren't always very sympathetic. I mean, both my parents were stereo-typed; Many "30 something" and older Americans thought hippies were LOSERS for "turning on, tuning in and dropping out."
I guess following a pied piper personality (ruled by the planet Uranus) really didn't seem to be a big deal at first since Annie's sun sign was in congenial Libra. Compatible enough. Airy. And Venus was her ruling planet. If only mama had a magic mirror that could have foretold her future. It might have prepared her better for what was in store. -Whoever said following your dreams always culminated in a grand finale of "Happily Ever After?"
Yeah, it was going to take a whole lot of Venus Vibes to stay in love with a real Uranus.
Mama didn't really show her pregnancy. It wasn't obvious. But I was in there, no doubt. Annie had recently turned 21 years old and her nesting instincts were kicking into overdrive while living so far away from the only security she had ever known. The strangers at the Canadian hippy commune were friendly enough but they had their own problems to worry about. This was not the place she wanted to have her baby. When Charlie ran to her that day she came back from Vancouver and grabbed her in his arms, she was relieved to hear he wanted to go back to America.
-Even if the journey meant facing a long and winding road.
January 27, 2010
#3 The Hippy Hitchhikers' Guide to the Canadian Rockies
As I think about it, I know I'm lucky to have made it through gestation! About a year ago, my Dad published a work of fiction loosely based on his own life during the Vietnam war era. During the early 1970's, there was a mass exodus of Army deserters and draft dodgers who fled to Canada so they could avoid being shipped overseas to fight a war they didn't believe in. After I read his book, I suddenly realized my time spent baking in mama's womb -all warm and cozy inside- wasn't all "fun in the sun" for either of them. Mama and me, well we were lucky to be alive, actually.
To make a long story short, daddy refused a second tour to Vietnam as a CIA covert operative and skipped town with his bride in tow. They hadn't been married more than two years when daddy got reassigned, especially since his track record as a drill sergeant left his superiors suspicious of his behavior -both on and off duty. And thus began their life on the run.
Picture this: My young mama (Annie Day) -six months pregnant but barely showing, and my proud daddy (Charlie Day) gone AWOL, poor and paranoid; Both mapping out a new course for their lives called, "The Hippy Hitchhikers' Guide to the Canadian Rockies."
So, Charlie and Annie found themselves laying low at a vegetarian, hippy commune high up in the mountains of British Columbia. The "communists" there were peaceful but hungry, trying to live off the land. Daddy was cravin' some meat and butted heads about it with "Popcorn," the frizzy-haired hippy leader. A day before mama was due to return from hitching a ride on a Volkswagen bus to Vancouver, (for a pregnancy check up) daddy and a fellow Vietnam vet buddy took off hiking on a quest for blood and protein.
They headed up a nearby cliff which overlooked the community campground. And from what I gather, the guys dropped acid up there and made a stake out, forgetting all about where they really were. The powerful drugs induced flashbacks from their war experiences and caused them to mass hallucinate that they were back in the jungles, spying on the Viet Cong. They both had loaded weapons and somehow mistook the Canadian hippy commune for the enemy. At sunrise the next morning, daddy was about to do the unthinkable when he saw mama (and me) walking up the long gravel road toward the campground below.
He realized he and his buddy were just about to open fire on a whole bunch of innocent people when he saw his pregnant wife approaching. This shocked him back into his right mind and he freaked out, jolting the other guy out of the violent mind trip they both were on.
I can't help but think, What IF? What if they had shot everyone down there? Would I be here today? Would mama? Thankfully, my parents' personal "Hippy Hitchhikers' Guide" was about to direct them back to America where I could be born in peace.
Sort of.
To make a long story short, daddy refused a second tour to Vietnam as a CIA covert operative and skipped town with his bride in tow. They hadn't been married more than two years when daddy got reassigned, especially since his track record as a drill sergeant left his superiors suspicious of his behavior -both on and off duty. And thus began their life on the run.
Picture this: My young mama (Annie Day) -six months pregnant but barely showing, and my proud daddy (Charlie Day) gone AWOL, poor and paranoid; Both mapping out a new course for their lives called, "The Hippy Hitchhikers' Guide to the Canadian Rockies."
So, Charlie and Annie found themselves laying low at a vegetarian, hippy commune high up in the mountains of British Columbia. The "communists" there were peaceful but hungry, trying to live off the land. Daddy was cravin' some meat and butted heads about it with "Popcorn," the frizzy-haired hippy leader. A day before mama was due to return from hitching a ride on a Volkswagen bus to Vancouver, (for a pregnancy check up) daddy and a fellow Vietnam vet buddy took off hiking on a quest for blood and protein.
They headed up a nearby cliff which overlooked the community campground. And from what I gather, the guys dropped acid up there and made a stake out, forgetting all about where they really were. The powerful drugs induced flashbacks from their war experiences and caused them to mass hallucinate that they were back in the jungles, spying on the Viet Cong. They both had loaded weapons and somehow mistook the Canadian hippy commune for the enemy. At sunrise the next morning, daddy was about to do the unthinkable when he saw mama (and me) walking up the long gravel road toward the campground below.
He realized he and his buddy were just about to open fire on a whole bunch of innocent people when he saw his pregnant wife approaching. This shocked him back into his right mind and he freaked out, jolting the other guy out of the violent mind trip they both were on.
I can't help but think, What IF? What if they had shot everyone down there? Would I be here today? Would mama? Thankfully, my parents' personal "Hippy Hitchhikers' Guide" was about to direct them back to America where I could be born in peace.
Sort of.
#2 Horrible Headaches, UFOs and Timothy Leary
I am not a geneticist or have any special knowledge about the formation of our human DNA but I can't help wondering about my own.
The results from testing done on the long term effects of "d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" are not conclusive about it (or available to the public) but I became suspicious about the intense headaches I started having in my late teens. Were they somehow linked to my parents' drug use, particularly at my conception?
So when I turned 18, I found myself requesting a CATSCAN at an area hospital to rule out any brain tumors, or what have you -that could've been causing the migraines. The test results came back showing nothing malignant. However a foreign piece of organic? matter was spotted smack in the center of my brain! The doctors could not identify it but reassured me that it was benign, at least for the moment. Oh goody.
I walked away feeling...even more perplexed than before the damn test! How can a foreign ANYTHING get inside my brain? All kinds of crazy ideas were floating around in my head, like when I saw that strange gray disk floating silently over the Los Angeles Observatory as a 9 year old kid hiking the Hollywood Hills' trails. All alone on a rocky precipice, (my mom was up ahead on the trail) -in broad daylight this small metallic, oblong-shaped disk flew towards me. It hovered a moment as I was looking out over the skyline. I blinked and it whisked away, disappearing in the sun. I figured it was just the light playing tricks on my eyes.
Well, I wasn't wearing a time-piece or anything and Mom didn't seem to think I'd been gone too long when I caught up to her. -I just forgot about the incident. But now that I was confronted with this foreign object scenario, organic or not, in the center of my brain, I couldn't help but wonder if it was some strange implant...
-NAW! No way, CRAZY. Maybe I was watching too many Sci-Fi shows or something. Really? Who am I kidding? I didn't watch too much TV or go to movies during those years...
Okay, a more probable theory might be I was just born an Acid Baby. When daddy's stoned sperm connected with mama's fried egg, their "marmalade" chemistry shot down the rabbit's hole into a wonderland of skewed genes, resulting in an embryo that would forever be influenced by...The Beatles? Pink Floyd? Funny, I don't even have to listen to those bands to get on the same 8 track. Some days, I wake up on the dark side of the moon!
Who knows? Maybe the foreign object in my brain was a permanent reminder of a generation marked by the 1960's revolution and Timothy Leary. And my childhood would experience the consequences, for better or worse.
-As an afterthought.
The results from testing done on the long term effects of "d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" are not conclusive about it (or available to the public) but I became suspicious about the intense headaches I started having in my late teens. Were they somehow linked to my parents' drug use, particularly at my conception?
So when I turned 18, I found myself requesting a CATSCAN at an area hospital to rule out any brain tumors, or what have you -that could've been causing the migraines. The test results came back showing nothing malignant. However a foreign piece of organic? matter was spotted smack in the center of my brain! The doctors could not identify it but reassured me that it was benign, at least for the moment. Oh goody.
I walked away feeling...even more perplexed than before the damn test! How can a foreign ANYTHING get inside my brain? All kinds of crazy ideas were floating around in my head, like when I saw that strange gray disk floating silently over the Los Angeles Observatory as a 9 year old kid hiking the Hollywood Hills' trails. All alone on a rocky precipice, (my mom was up ahead on the trail) -in broad daylight this small metallic, oblong-shaped disk flew towards me. It hovered a moment as I was looking out over the skyline. I blinked and it whisked away, disappearing in the sun. I figured it was just the light playing tricks on my eyes.
Well, I wasn't wearing a time-piece or anything and Mom didn't seem to think I'd been gone too long when I caught up to her. -I just forgot about the incident. But now that I was confronted with this foreign object scenario, organic or not, in the center of my brain, I couldn't help but wonder if it was some strange implant...
-NAW! No way, CRAZY. Maybe I was watching too many Sci-Fi shows or something. Really? Who am I kidding? I didn't watch too much TV or go to movies during those years...
Okay, a more probable theory might be I was just born an Acid Baby. When daddy's stoned sperm connected with mama's fried egg, their "marmalade" chemistry shot down the rabbit's hole into a wonderland of skewed genes, resulting in an embryo that would forever be influenced by...The Beatles? Pink Floyd? Funny, I don't even have to listen to those bands to get on the same 8 track. Some days, I wake up on the dark side of the moon!
Who knows? Maybe the foreign object in my brain was a permanent reminder of a generation marked by the 1960's revolution and Timothy Leary. And my childhood would experience the consequences, for better or worse.
-As an afterthought.
January 26, 2010
#1 Conceived on the California Coast
My daddy told me a story once. It was about how he met my mama, Annie -that adventure lovin' surfer girl in the Summer of '69. Daddy was a rootin' tootin' Drill Sergeant back then, stationed at Fort Ord -an Army base in Salinas, California.
Sergeant Sunshine is what they used to call him. I suppose it was an appropriate name. He knew how to bring the laughs to his platoon, even if it meant pissing off the powers that be. Daddy had already served in Vietnam. He'd gone Airborne in 1965, one of the very first troops that were deployed and by 1969, he was pretty disillusioned with the whole dang thing.
He was ready for something new. And in surfed my mama, Annie at just the right moment to turn his world upside down.
Oh, they had so much fun! She was an expert in Astrology and had a lot of friends that introduced him to a new way of thinking, doing and playing. More and more, Daddy felt pulled away from his duties at the base and wanted to embrace a more "peaceful, loving" lifestyle.
Charlie (my daddy) and Annie got hitched not long after. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Soldier Boy and Surfer Girl were destined to morph into full blown, classic hippies.
Daddy began to live two different lives; a hard ass drill Sergeant (whipping peace-loving hippy recruits into killers) by day and getting stoned, singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by night. He started to let his hair grow out and take his platoon into the bushes and get them stoned too! It didn't take long for the Army to see Sergeant Sunshine was a loose cannon.
Annie and Charlie were so in love for the first year of their kaleidoscope marriage. Although my daddy couldn't swim, he enjoyed doing the camp-fire and guitar thing on the beach with mama, while she loved to swim and frolic in the waves. -Both high as kites at every opportunity they got. In fact, it was my daddy who confessed that my beginnings took place under a diamond filled, inky black sky one night as Annie and Charlie finished their LSD laced, "heavy" conversation to make kinky love in the cold, hard sand.
And wallah! I was begat.
Sergeant Sunshine is what they used to call him. I suppose it was an appropriate name. He knew how to bring the laughs to his platoon, even if it meant pissing off the powers that be. Daddy had already served in Vietnam. He'd gone Airborne in 1965, one of the very first troops that were deployed and by 1969, he was pretty disillusioned with the whole dang thing.
He was ready for something new. And in surfed my mama, Annie at just the right moment to turn his world upside down.
Oh, they had so much fun! She was an expert in Astrology and had a lot of friends that introduced him to a new way of thinking, doing and playing. More and more, Daddy felt pulled away from his duties at the base and wanted to embrace a more "peaceful, loving" lifestyle.
Charlie (my daddy) and Annie got hitched not long after. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Soldier Boy and Surfer Girl were destined to morph into full blown, classic hippies.
Daddy began to live two different lives; a hard ass drill Sergeant (whipping peace-loving hippy recruits into killers) by day and getting stoned, singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by night. He started to let his hair grow out and take his platoon into the bushes and get them stoned too! It didn't take long for the Army to see Sergeant Sunshine was a loose cannon.
Annie and Charlie were so in love for the first year of their kaleidoscope marriage. Although my daddy couldn't swim, he enjoyed doing the camp-fire and guitar thing on the beach with mama, while she loved to swim and frolic in the waves. -Both high as kites at every opportunity they got. In fact, it was my daddy who confessed that my beginnings took place under a diamond filled, inky black sky one night as Annie and Charlie finished their LSD laced, "heavy" conversation to make kinky love in the cold, hard sand.
And wallah! I was begat.
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