When I Was Brave
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The Chicago the wind off Lake Michigan blew tears out of my eyes and sideways across my face where they froze like little diamonds on my sideburns. Dubuque was so cold the temperature stayed below zero for the entire month of February, except for one day when it was ten degrees and sunny and we walked around in T-shirts. There was an ice storm in Dubuque that year followed by snow followed by another ice storm. A heavy layer of ice inches thick covered everything. Roads and driveways had to be sculpted out using axes and ice chisels. The ice coating our driveway was eleven inches deep with a surface so slick it sent my legs above my head far enough to hover briefly in front of my eyes before the crashing descent. When I saw a picture of Albuquerque, New Mexico in a Newsweek magazine spread taken from the top of Sandia Peak, five thousand feet above the Rio Grande my personality changed. A determination alien to me walked over my ingrained hesitations and declared my intention to move to there for no other reason than a desire motivated by photograph. My mother's was thrilled with the idea of going back home, a thought that had occurred to her before. A dormant happiness had sprung to life in her and with an unstoppable glee she gathered our worldly goods together and we stuffed them in our rented U-haul truck.
Andrew decided to stay in Dubuque because, thanks to my persuasive perseverance he had finally grown a beard changing him from a deformed freak to a dignified man. In third grade his face had changed from a normal child's to an almost perfect egg shape because underneath his chin a pouch grew. The growth made his face look like Humpty Dumpty. Because of that he had never had a girl friend, at least not until he finally grew that beard. It had taken years of needling to get him past his baffling resistance to grow one. Almost instantly women were interested in him, opening up romantic possibilities he wanted to explore without his mother hovering around. My mother climbed into the cab of the truck probably much the same way she climbed aboard the buckboard with her father to travel to a new home. The gentile pioneer. |
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My mother had lived on the table rock with her four brothers and three sisters until she was over forty when her travels to other states with my father began. Her four brothers also roamed but only within the twenty mile radius between Lovington, Hobbs, and Tatum where they had firmly planted by their father decades ago. Some spiritual connection must have kept them there that my mother and her sisters did not share. They had moved away either by following their husbands or marring husbands who promised to take them away. My mother wanted to be back in New Mexico but claimed to have no desire to go back to the flat table top of the Llana Estacado with her brothers. She said Albuquerque excited her, tucked as it was below the beautiful Sandia Mountains.
For three days we traveled from the green shades of the north east woods through the lush Iowa farm lands, wheat blond plains of Kansas and Oklahoma to the varied browns of the Chihuahuan Desert surrounding Albuquerque. It was not the first cross country journey she had been on with me having traveled back and forth from the rich greens of Pennsylvania to the dusty table rock when I was a year old. My mother told me the story behind that journey as we stared at the endless motion of the road crawling beneath the cab of the truck. When my mother was pregnant with me, Uncle Charlie and my father started a door and window factory in Artesia, a small town an hour's drive west of the table rock. They built two houses side by side. We lived in one house and Uncle Charlie lived in the other--until he sold it to try another season of cotton farming. Unfortunately for my father, the well that supplied water for both houses was in the new owner's house. According to my mother's telling it was also unfortunate that my father developed an obsession to have a lawn as green as the ones he grew up with in Pennsylvania. He used so much water trying to turn his little patch of desert green that the new owner cut off the water to our house. My father loaded us all in the car and drove across country to his sisters house in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania . Two years later a sheriff came to his sister's door to issue a warrant for his arrest. My father had abandoned his factory, tools, lumber supplies and house without notifying the banks or setting his debt. They considered that illegal. Once again our family wound up driving across country back to New Mexico where my father began working off his loans; a portion of each paycheck deducted in order to pay the bank back . Slightly leaning toward me said with a twitter, "He just had to have that lawn." I was surprised he could have been so passionately irrational but driving to a new town based on a photograph made me feel more like his son. Maybe I would have better luck. |
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We had no friends in Albuquerque, no addresses of churches, no knowledge of the neighborhoods, no job and no car. We found a modest wooden farm house looking house that was mildly disappointing because it was nestled among the more exotic adobe houses on the block that I would have preferred. I did not have much savings and my mother was only getting a small amount of Social Security so we took what we could get. The only option for me was to find any job I could find, a humble process that resulted in changing tires at the Big O tire store. I did not care. I had Sandia Peak, five thousand feet above, on the east and the vast open plains of the Navajo Indian Reservation on the west. I was charmed by magnificence vistas and the living traditions the Native Americans
The grand plan was to create a novel told solely through drawings, a storyboard, stop action concoction that was sure to astound the art world with its revolutionary concept. The plan was a comic delusion of such enormous proportion I am still astounded at the extent of it naiveté. The book that I titled "Weeds" was four hundred sketchy drawings ranging from cartoonish images to quasi life drawing that in mind my told a story when in fact it was just a pile of drawings on typing paper. There is probably a chapter on that kind of condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses. It was a case of delusion of grandeur but it made the grime from hot rubber tires ground in my hands seem tolerable. So grand was the delusion I actually sent copies out to publishing companies. Today, instead the rejection letters, the publishers probably would have just sent laughing emojis to me. None of the drawings are worth reproduction except maybe one which wraps up the disadvantages of working in isolation. |
I eventually wound up in the Pioneer Wear clothing factory where I met Pat Dexter. Happy go lucky is the phrase that defined him perfectly. He was the gentlest and most upbeat man I had ever met and a frisbee evangelist. He preached the spiritual powers of performing with a free floating disc while stoned. He was also a perfectly fit man with the build of a dancer whose grace enhanced his freestyle frisbee routines. I became his disciple.
Only a dozen people in Albuquerque considered frisbee a serious sport back then. They would meet on weekends in various parks around the city practicing the skills required for free style. All the throws except the standard backhand were new to me. The sidearm, thumper, finger tip and over hand wrist flip took a long time for me gain control. Pat would bring a boom box and we would practice for hours. Everyone in the group requited new members and before long there were enough players to pair off and hold freestyle competitions. We even traveled to the regional freestyle championship in Boulder, Colorado and met players with such skill incomprehensible skills they could have come directly from Mount Olympus. I was like playing Gods.
The number of regular players grew to the point there were enough to start playing Ultimate Frisbee. The game is similar to soccer and required a lot of running. Ever since Coach Thorell forced me to break a sweat I was always trying to achieve it on my own but I needed to be pushed. In high school I played one on one basketball with Dave almost daily and every chance we got in Chicago we played. Over time my body improved but Ultimate Frisbee drove me to a level of fitness I could never have achieved normally. I was part of a team that needed the best of me. They were the hand at my back. We we won New Mexico state championship, the rocky mountain regional championship and flew to Oakland for the national championships. We played a dozen teams and never scored a single point. However, I ran and ran and ran.
Only a dozen people in Albuquerque considered frisbee a serious sport back then. They would meet on weekends in various parks around the city practicing the skills required for free style. All the throws except the standard backhand were new to me. The sidearm, thumper, finger tip and over hand wrist flip took a long time for me gain control. Pat would bring a boom box and we would practice for hours. Everyone in the group requited new members and before long there were enough players to pair off and hold freestyle competitions. We even traveled to the regional freestyle championship in Boulder, Colorado and met players with such skill incomprehensible skills they could have come directly from Mount Olympus. I was like playing Gods.
The number of regular players grew to the point there were enough to start playing Ultimate Frisbee. The game is similar to soccer and required a lot of running. Ever since Coach Thorell forced me to break a sweat I was always trying to achieve it on my own but I needed to be pushed. In high school I played one on one basketball with Dave almost daily and every chance we got in Chicago we played. Over time my body improved but Ultimate Frisbee drove me to a level of fitness I could never have achieved normally. I was part of a team that needed the best of me. They were the hand at my back. We we won New Mexico state championship, the rocky mountain regional championship and flew to Oakland for the national championships. We played a dozen teams and never scored a single point. However, I ran and ran and ran.
After absorbing the judgement from the unanimous rejection of "Weeds" I attempted another version of a book but did not even send it out. The scales were falling from my eyes and the limitations of my skills becoming painfully obvious. The library at the University of New Mexico, Art Forum and Art News was the only source available to educate myself. Vacillating from George Grosz, Francis Bacon to Goya's Los caprichos;, I became fascinated with the realism of Salvador Dali and did several ink washes copying his style. I submitted them when applying to the UNM graduate program. I was rejected.
Looking at them now, I cannot remember or, even imagine, the me that did those strange paintings. I had never been in any kind of relationship, had no sister, knew nothing about marriage, child birth or babies. There is no reason for the subject of these paintings other than it was an attempt to make an anthropocentric intellectualized philosophical statement about the nature of a life I never experienced.
Looking at them now, I cannot remember or, even imagine, the me that did those strange paintings. I had never been in any kind of relationship, had no sister, knew nothing about marriage, child birth or babies. There is no reason for the subject of these paintings other than it was an attempt to make an anthropocentric intellectualized philosophical statement about the nature of a life I never experienced.
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David Bunnell had already lived in the Rosebud Indian Reservation for a year by the time I moved to Albuquerque. He soon came to visit me bringing with him a chess set to introduce me to his latest passion. He won seven torturous games in a row. Chess demands so much concentration and each defeat is so painful that in desperation I concentrated harder than I ever had in my life. I beat him and he lost interest in ever playing again. Instead we played basketball together and hiked five thousand feet up the seven mile trail to the top of Sandia Peak. The trail starts in the yucca strewn sandy desert and ends up in the pine woods, passing through several temperate zones with narrow canyons and cliffs like giant teeth closing in on us. The most beautiful seven mile in the country in my opinion. I ran up the trail once by myself in a mock imitation of the annual race. Not a really a run, by the end I was practically crawling, grabbing trunks of trees to haul myself up. It was a warm autumn day at the base and four feet of snow at the top. I stood on the packed mound in shorts and T shirt looking over the valley thinking that, with the threat of hypothermia, it was a crazy thing to have done alone but recognizing that it was crazy had to mean I was sane. It was one of those breakthrough moments that was comforting to me. The next summer David visited again, this time to look for a house for his family's intended move. David was sick of the even colder South Dakota winters and disgusted with who he thought were arrogant and elitist fellow teachers from the Bureau of Indians affairs. Still dedicated to social justice David befriended his students and defended them against unfair discipline measures. When the American Indian Movement occupied the small community Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre of three hundred Lakota men, women and children, David snuck in with a station wagon full of food. Two Lakota Sioux had been killed during the occupation and violence was breaking out all through the reservation. David and his wife, pregnant with their next child, did not feel safe and were ready to move. David had no job when he came to Albuquerque and had no intention of teaching any longer so, like me, he took whatever job he could get, writing an instruction manual for pocket calculator kits at Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, (MITS). Next he wrote instructions on how to put the together the Altair, the first small computer kit. After the introduction of the Altair, a rapid chain of events rocketed David to the forefront of the personal computer revolution. Bill Gates and Paul Allen moved to Albuquerque to work with the new machine. David, wrote articles about their progress, put ads in national magazines and started one his own that put the term "Personal Computer" into the worlds vocabulary. He would move to San Francisco and create PC, PC World, and MacWorld magazines, and make millions in the process. Nights out we would visit jazz clubs, smoke yards of joints and eat very early morning breakfasts at Denny's while he talked endlessly about the world changing importance of the new small computers. "It takes the power of corporations and puts it in the hands of the people!" he would say. His conversations became obsessed. His basket ball playing became obsessed. His breathing became obsessed, frequently harvesting great swaths of air as if preparing for a title bout. A new age was being launched on the world and he was one of the first to climb on board. I could only be the witness of his blast off. 
Shortly after arriving in Albuquerque David's son, Aaron, was born. Linda was Lebanese so Aaron was blessed with Mediterranean beauty. It was a beauty that was displayed in death Twenty six years later after had been found dead in a New York City hotel room. David had called me with the terrible news from San Francisco. He was flying to New York immediately and asked me to go view the body with him. Fortunately, Linda had arranged for Aaron to be removed from the morgue and sent to a funeral home to be prepared so instead of a slab in a morgue we saw him dressed looking as if he were merely taking a nap. After silently gazing at Aaron I grabbed David tightly in the wood paneled hallway and bawled so uncontrollably I could not tell if David was crying or not. I felt embarrassed and selfish by my outburst.
Aaron was discovered the day after celebrating a multi-million dollar deal for an internet news service he had been working on. He had died of a drug overdose and became the subject of several nasty articles about excesses of the dot.com generation. The headline in the NY Post was " ARE THEY TOO RICH TOO SOON? MANY YOUNG 'NET ENTREPRENEURS FALL TO DRUGS & BOOZE". The article said, " The culprit that night was a heady brew of champagne, Valium, heroin and the instant riches of the new economy. Bunnell was making big money, but just like some his age cashing in on the Internet and Wall Street, he couldn’t handle it." David had suspected drugs as soon as he heard the news. Aaron had fallen prey to cocaine years earlier trying to keep up with the demands of being a successful film editor in LA. David had brought him into his own business to protect him and things well going well. Aaron had been in New York finishing a deal with The Washington Post Company and Yahoo for their venture. David figured he had just slipped up and made a fatal mistake while trying to unwind and celebrate his success. Two years later David's company would declare bankruptcy. Yet he carried on, raised money for new ventures, cared for his family and had me out for yearly visits where we cheered for the Golden State Warriors from his court side seats. 
One of the members of A Toda Madre was Kris Ferris. Broad shouldered and trim waisted he did not have an ounce of fat on him, a feature that stood out when we were playing shirts vs skins in Ultimate games. His face, haloed by flowing curly hair, was almost identical to Roger Daltery, the lead singer of The Who. Kris rebuffed those comparisons with a joke, quipping "Roger Daltery looks like me." His witty response quickly established him as not only handsome but witty, likable and somewhat superior than the rest of us. Kris's relaxed manner could also be attributed to his stumbling into the business of manufacturing silver beads for Navajo jewelry, which was making him a lot of money. He and his wife Beverly had purchased a four acer property close to the Rio Grande River with a large modernized adobe house featuring a wall of glass sliding doors opening onto a terra cotta patio with a large adobe fire place. Behind the house was a small hut with a closet sized wire cage attached to it that housed two small monkeys who were constantly sodomizing each other, one monkey behind the other like a backpack, hips thrusting like a tiny jackhammer, all while while staring directly at me. Next to the hut was a pit with canvas stretched over it attached by springs creating a ground level trampoline. Beyond those was a house sized fenced in garden and a small wooden shed housing two goats and a milking ramp. Further on was a scattering of peach and apples trees and then an open field of brown grasses where the goats grazed during the day. A dozen cats roamed throughout their property like caretakers. In front of the house, surrounded by a scattering of short scrubby mesquite trees was a small adobe hut that housed his silver bead manufacturing business with a labor forced that included his wife's brother and brother-in-law. Both of them were also on the frisbee team. Kris's wife, Beverly, had been in my class in Alliance High School, a significant coincidence which helped our initial friendship and, perhaps, the reason he hired me to solder beads. A tall slim woman with long straight hair who walked the halls like a model gliding over a walkway, she was one of the unattainable girls that yanked the backbone right out of me. Kris and Beverly had cast off all vestiges of traditional beliefs of the corrupted materialistic Western culture years ago during the LSD tour of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Open to all the spiritual possibilities previously unknown to her, and me and anyone else from Alliance, Beverly navigated through the New Age hallucinogenic journey of metaphysical mysticism, UFO cults, Eastern religions and utopian communities before settling on Wiccan spells, astrology and herbal medicines.She had developed friendships with several local villagers from the nearby Pueblos of Santa Ana, Isleta and Laguna to learn about their farming methods and spiritual connection to the land . She studied all the available literature on natural healing and was developing a line of herbs to be used keep domestic animals healthy.. Kris believed in mind alteration and at one our first meetings handed me an especially strong joint created by one of his workers in a homemade green house in his back yard and pressed me to read The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. I was soon searching for my spot. Astrology had always appeared to me to be a parlor game requiring knowledge of the personality traits of the twelve signs of the Zodiac so people could tell me who I was instead of the other way around. Astrology, to Beverly, was serious, based on millennials of observations of the heavens and notations on human behavior that were cross referenced into charts complex as the equations of quantum physics and the periodic table. I was not one to judge since I had been in therapy sessions beating a pillow and trying to find the original hurt by staring at the back of my eyelids so long I was temporarily blind when I opened them. Beverly, and Kris, followed the astrologer and metaphysician Ed Steinbrecher who was teaching how to navigate the world outside of human sense perception through Inner Guide Meditation from his house near Sante Fe. As someone obviously in desperate need of a personal transformation to a higher plain, they suggested I come with them. |
Beverly prepared me for my first astral journey in advance. Knowing I was a Scorpio was not enough, exact time of my birth was required. The information was sent to an astrological center where my rising sign could be calculated and a chart plotted out noting the position of every planet, celestial body and galactic coordinate the minute I was born. When the package came Beverly and her friends, members of the local coven who were also interested in the reveal, gathered around. All my stars were in the bottom half of the chart like sediment settled in a glass, a curiosity that caused both serious and humorous reactions. They pronounced that I would never have money. The calculations also stated that my Ascendent sign was Gemini and my ninth house was Aquarius, important information for determining who my guide would be.
The next Thursday evening I rode with them to the outskirts of Sante Fe turning off the thruway onto a small dirt road winding through a forest of gnarly Mesquite trees barely ten feet tall. Tucked inside them was a large adobe house topped with low dome made from interlaced branches of mahogany mesquite giving it the look of a temple. There were multiple cars parked among the mesquites and people were filing into the open double doorway where Steinbrecher was greeting them. He was tall, shiny bald and dressed in a straight white gown reaching all the way down to his sandaled feet. He had a powerful voice that was very soothing at low volume. He gave Beverly an enthusiastic hug, Kris a formal embrace and a handshake for me as he ushered us inside.
The main room of the house was large with a sunken area in the middle about fifteen feet in diameter. Scattered across the floor were soft pads covered with fabric of different designs. About two dozen people who had been milling around settled down on the pads or sat on the edge of the sunken circle when Steinbrecher began to speak, using charts to explain the complex effect of the stars and the astral world, Steinbrecher believed that we were projections of our astral world and the way to align our lives to the cosmos was inside that world. Gaining entrance into that world required a astra guide.
After Steinbrecher's astral lesson for the week, the lights were turned down and he instructed us all in a soft voice to close our eyes and visualize ourselves walking down ten steps. He emphasized the importance of staying and not visualize ourselves from above or anywhere else. With my eyes closed I forced my self to imagine my feet stepping down on a surface I could not quite see until the ten steps were done. Then, as instructed, I turned to my left and walked through a doorway. The best I could do was conjure up a cloudy curtain but I did have a sensation of passing through it. The next step was to call an animal to come up to me. I did that mentally, without imagining myself actually speaking. To my surprise, a form did approach me that could have been a goat, a deer, any midsized animal or just a cloud. As instructed, I asked the animal to take me to my guide and the animal took off in a sprint. I ran behind it through a foggy landscape whipping past either fuzzy trees or power line poles until a foggy shape of a man appeared on the right side of the road. I mentally asked the shape if he was my guide and in tornado like whirl he disappeared. Shape after shape appeared and then dissolved during the whole meditation and I never found my guide that day.
The inability to see anything with any clarity was frustrating and exhausting but I was amazed that a person could talk to a daydream and the daydream would respond. Up until that time I had no idea such a thing was possible. Even more oddly, when I described what I had seen, the images that had been so vague during the meditation appeared clear as a real memory in my mind. I had manipulated a daydream and the daydream responded to my commands and questions as if depicted in it were a separate people. I had been shown the existence of two minds who could talk to each other. It was a profound discovery for a twenty eight year old.
The next Thursday evening I rode with them to the outskirts of Sante Fe turning off the thruway onto a small dirt road winding through a forest of gnarly Mesquite trees barely ten feet tall. Tucked inside them was a large adobe house topped with low dome made from interlaced branches of mahogany mesquite giving it the look of a temple. There were multiple cars parked among the mesquites and people were filing into the open double doorway where Steinbrecher was greeting them. He was tall, shiny bald and dressed in a straight white gown reaching all the way down to his sandaled feet. He had a powerful voice that was very soothing at low volume. He gave Beverly an enthusiastic hug, Kris a formal embrace and a handshake for me as he ushered us inside.
The main room of the house was large with a sunken area in the middle about fifteen feet in diameter. Scattered across the floor were soft pads covered with fabric of different designs. About two dozen people who had been milling around settled down on the pads or sat on the edge of the sunken circle when Steinbrecher began to speak, using charts to explain the complex effect of the stars and the astral world, Steinbrecher believed that we were projections of our astral world and the way to align our lives to the cosmos was inside that world. Gaining entrance into that world required a astra guide.
After Steinbrecher's astral lesson for the week, the lights were turned down and he instructed us all in a soft voice to close our eyes and visualize ourselves walking down ten steps. He emphasized the importance of staying and not visualize ourselves from above or anywhere else. With my eyes closed I forced my self to imagine my feet stepping down on a surface I could not quite see until the ten steps were done. Then, as instructed, I turned to my left and walked through a doorway. The best I could do was conjure up a cloudy curtain but I did have a sensation of passing through it. The next step was to call an animal to come up to me. I did that mentally, without imagining myself actually speaking. To my surprise, a form did approach me that could have been a goat, a deer, any midsized animal or just a cloud. As instructed, I asked the animal to take me to my guide and the animal took off in a sprint. I ran behind it through a foggy landscape whipping past either fuzzy trees or power line poles until a foggy shape of a man appeared on the right side of the road. I mentally asked the shape if he was my guide and in tornado like whirl he disappeared. Shape after shape appeared and then dissolved during the whole meditation and I never found my guide that day.
The inability to see anything with any clarity was frustrating and exhausting but I was amazed that a person could talk to a daydream and the daydream would respond. Up until that time I had no idea such a thing was possible. Even more oddly, when I described what I had seen, the images that had been so vague during the meditation appeared clear as a real memory in my mind. I had manipulated a daydream and the daydream responded to my commands and questions as if depicted in it were a separate people. I had been shown the existence of two minds who could talk to each other. It was a profound discovery for a twenty eight year old.
Kris and I began hanging out together more often. I would hang out during his band's rehearsals and visited several clubs with him to see the what was happening in the rock and roll scene in the bars around town and hoping to find a place where his band could play. We chewed raw peyote and slept on a mesa and discussed my thoughts on Christ and the New Testament. I was still attending church with my mother, a church ten times the size of the ones we attended in the north. The preacher had been a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Pepperdine University so I was trying to impress him with my interpretations of the verses during the Sunday morning adult bible studies. An interest that finally getting an opportunity to give the evening sermon to a large congregation. To have someone come forward to confess their sins and be baptized because they were touched by the sermon would have been extraordinary but that could never happen. It is the voice, the musical instrument that kills pain and inspires love, that give power to a sermon. A voice I did not have but I appreciated the microphone. Can a drunk go to heaven was the theme of my sermon. If, according to Paul, if the Greeks still attending an orgy during the week and services on Sunday can just be considered weak but not condemned then a drunk and go to heaven. Kris liked discussing those topics and the radical nature of Christ and the writings of Paul, however, he was mostly fascinated by my hypocrisy.
We came to be close over time, buddies almost, but he was hard person to pin point. I was never sure he believed in Astrology and the astral world or just going along for the ride, vacillating from new age gardener to hard parting drugs and rock and roll to owner of a jewelry manufacturing business. He was totally closed and equally open to everything. I made a portrait of him, putting his head in a box that opened into a cross. My attempt to capture the soul of a person that artists aspire to.
We came to be close over time, buddies almost, but he was hard person to pin point. I was never sure he believed in Astrology and the astral world or just going along for the ride, vacillating from new age gardener to hard parting drugs and rock and roll to owner of a jewelry manufacturing business. He was totally closed and equally open to everything. I made a portrait of him, putting his head in a box that opened into a cross. My attempt to capture the soul of a person that artists aspire to.
I made a similar box of myself although mine was not so spiritually calm
The blazing red evening sky dramatized the weekly drive up to Steinbreche's where I had still not found my guide. Steinbreche treated the situation with urgency because he believed it was not safe to be in the astral world without him. He took me into his kitchen and sat me at a long heavy wooden table. He motion me to sit at the near end of the table and he sat catty-corner to me. Putting one hand on my shoulder and the other on my forearm as if to secure me down he quietly talked me down the steps and through the door. A zebra stripped goat took me to my guide. He was naked accept for a belt made from four narrow bands of sliver clasped around his waist like a bracelet below which hung a deep alizarin red loincloth. Behind the belt was a silver post with a bouquet of soft feathers sticking out of it. On top of his head was a silver skull cap with an eagle’s beak sculpted in the front. He was tall, trim and olive skinned. He looked like a Peruvian Prince from the time of the Incas. When I asked if he was my guide he reached out and tickled my nose with a feather and said. “What do you think darling”.
The journeys into the astral world began with an assignment from Steinbrecher based on the astrology lesson he had just taught. The room would go silent for five, fifteen maybe thirty minutes, hard to tell. After we opened our eyes those who wanted to told what they had seen. Their stories astounded me. One story in particular that stuck with me was told by a woman about sitting on top of a mountain made of short knotted ropes untying them one at a time.
Fascinated with all the imagery I started self hypnotizing myself. Following instruction from a book I had checked out of the local library I lay down and held by arm perpendicular to my body. Counting from one to ten I lowered my arm until at the last count it lay limply on the bed. In my imagination I started lowering myself through separate levels as if I was in a glass elevator. The author of the book claimed he and a friend had counted down levels together until the fiftieth where they shared the same dream, walked in the same landscape and saw the same animals. I never made it that far. After tiring out from trying to bring fuzzy images into focus I just zipped back up to my bed. Knowing I could call the astra version of people I know, I asked for Kris one evening and a big happy dog appeared.
During my sessions with Steinbrecher the meditations were fascinating and my guide came into shaper focus with each trip. However he was a tease, I mean a real tease; ruffling my hair, dancing around like an ancient Incan drag queen and declaring with a laugh “Just look at you!". I could not understand where in my head such a character could have come from since, to my knowledge, I had never met anyone like him before, especially not in my childhood.
Writing this story down now, forty five years later, I realized where the guide came from. During one of my several job searches that took place in Albuquerque I decided I would like to be a detective, a fantasy most likely born from movies and television. In Dubuque, before applying to John Deere I had applied to become a policeman, the opposite side of the picket lines I was in the year before. The chief got the results and wanted to hire me because I had the highest score on the writing exam in the departments history. However, I had failed the eye exam so I lost my chance to don the blue and, out of the blue, the fantasy hit me again.
I looked up detective agencies and applied telling the interviewer that I wanted to become an investigator. He assured me that would be possible and then said, "You have a gun?". I said yes. He said, "Bring it.". I said, "I am not going to shoot anyone." With a slight laugh, he said, "No, no, no. It's just for protection."
The journeys into the astral world began with an assignment from Steinbrecher based on the astrology lesson he had just taught. The room would go silent for five, fifteen maybe thirty minutes, hard to tell. After we opened our eyes those who wanted to told what they had seen. Their stories astounded me. One story in particular that stuck with me was told by a woman about sitting on top of a mountain made of short knotted ropes untying them one at a time.
Fascinated with all the imagery I started self hypnotizing myself. Following instruction from a book I had checked out of the local library I lay down and held by arm perpendicular to my body. Counting from one to ten I lowered my arm until at the last count it lay limply on the bed. In my imagination I started lowering myself through separate levels as if I was in a glass elevator. The author of the book claimed he and a friend had counted down levels together until the fiftieth where they shared the same dream, walked in the same landscape and saw the same animals. I never made it that far. After tiring out from trying to bring fuzzy images into focus I just zipped back up to my bed. Knowing I could call the astra version of people I know, I asked for Kris one evening and a big happy dog appeared.
During my sessions with Steinbrecher the meditations were fascinating and my guide came into shaper focus with each trip. However he was a tease, I mean a real tease; ruffling my hair, dancing around like an ancient Incan drag queen and declaring with a laugh “Just look at you!". I could not understand where in my head such a character could have come from since, to my knowledge, I had never met anyone like him before, especially not in my childhood.
Writing this story down now, forty five years later, I realized where the guide came from. During one of my several job searches that took place in Albuquerque I decided I would like to be a detective, a fantasy most likely born from movies and television. In Dubuque, before applying to John Deere I had applied to become a policeman, the opposite side of the picket lines I was in the year before. The chief got the results and wanted to hire me because I had the highest score on the writing exam in the departments history. However, I had failed the eye exam so I lost my chance to don the blue and, out of the blue, the fantasy hit me again.
I looked up detective agencies and applied telling the interviewer that I wanted to become an investigator. He assured me that would be possible and then said, "You have a gun?". I said yes. He said, "Bring it.". I said, "I am not going to shoot anyone." With a slight laugh, he said, "No, no, no. It's just for protection."
My favorite gun was my 38 special, snub nosed revolver. When shooting bottles and cans for fun I liked to shoot it from the hip. Putting it the new black holster strapped to my belt felt transformative, actually, just a little tickle of the brain but a tickle none the less. The detective agency required that I have a uniform, not the film noir detective suit I was envisioning, but considered it necessary as part of the step up the ladder. I bought a grey shirt with black straps on the shoulders, black pants with a thin silver strip down the side and a police hat with a hard plastic brim. All dressed up they sent me to guard a parking lot all night. Soon I was standing by doorways in public meetings, weddings, and catered parties wondering if I had made an astronomical mistake when I was assigned to guard a door at bar. Upon entering the bar I was greeting with laughter. I was just beginning to realize that was I dressed up like kids version of The Village People when a tall thin black man saschayed up to me and said "Just look at you".
Then he stole my hat.
Then he stole my hat.