Bless you, teacher!

Terence McKenna & Mark Pesce – Techno-Pagans at the End of History. This is a picture I took of Terence, the only time I saw him up close, at Esalen in August 1998. He had not yet discovered the tumor that was at that moment growing in his brain, the tumor that would take his life, after experimental cancer treatment, and a shitload of hashish, in April 2000. I had just discovered him a couple of months before, shelving BLs (mostly gorgeous books in Hebrew with color splashed, dappled edges, far too many to fit on the shelves) in a library at Stanford University, when I espied a strangely hued paperback with a wacky cover, The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (a collection of essays from various publications), a book that completely changed my life, and goes on changing it every day. Miss you, Terence!

Because of you, I've made so many friends, and grown so much professionally. I've gotten to know your lovely family. Because of you, I got tenure as a librarian, and collected over a 1,000 books on psychedelics and cannabis. Because of you, I've started on a quest that has already taken me very far, and is still gathering momentum. Bless you, teacher! 

Of course, I also miss Mark, but that's a different story. He's alive and well and living on the other side of the Equator and the Date Line, and even when he's here, I don't see him any more.

Lovers in the garden

My parents, Bibi and John, almost swallowed by the foliage on the larger of two bridges over the pond in Claude Monet's fabulous garden. A bridge depicted in so many paintings, paintings of which my parents were, who isn't?, very fond. 

All those water lilies, colors, reflections, light. All the dreamy, nameless, but very specific, sensations available in that garden, that Monet has planted in so many imaginations, forever. And there they were, on their last voyage together in France, in August 2000. 

They've both left this garden, in two different Augusts, since then, but their ashes are side by side at home in Malibu, and if there's any justice for lovers, their spirits are still side by side, in a garden, filled with light, to which we'll all return

Somewhere behind California Street

Here's me, in my work uniform as a student at UCSC in the very late 1970s, in my busy, ramshackle, noisy/noisome, student-infested, off-street love nest ostensibly addressed "California Street." Many memories made here, as I moved from apartment to apartment, bed to bed, affair to affair, and still wound up being lonely and depressed most of the time, before I dropped out. Totally my own fault for not grabbing (both literally and metaphorically) all the drugs, good times, gusto and ass flung my way. Not that I didn't make friends (one to this day), make love and waste time with the best of them, just on a smaller scale.

Irritated all, disappointed many, ignored some, impressed a couple, and got to know too few of the other inmates. Heard everyone do everything at all times of day or night, there being naught but black plastic sheeting between ill-fitting planks lining the halls full of terrarium carpeting. The building was perfectly sprung for amplifying the weakest temblor, and I felt them all, rocking me to sleep, rocking me awake, and just rocking us in flagrante delicto. Salad days, and most of that from the dumpsters downtown. I'd only trade these memories for better ones of things I never tried.

Portrait of the artist

Here's a portrait of the artist as a young man, visible only as the shadow of the photographer on a bright autumn day. I vaguely remember the Brownie style camera, its airy heft, looking through the viewfinder, the plastic clicks of cocking the shutter, of taking a photo.

Here are Mark and Matthew, comrades in arms, guns at the ready, taking a break from patrolling the 3600 block of S Street, N.W., Washington D.C., a neighborhood I later learned was called Burleith, just uphill from Georgetown, and a short walk west of Dumbarton Oaks and the Naval Observatory. I was only two blocks from Kindergarten, and I came back across town years later to attend Gordon Junior High, another block east.

I remember the alley behind the houses where I searched for treasure in the cracks, a natural occupation for a child who always kept his head down. Washers, bolts, springs, and other wayward hardware, the occasional penny. Potential untapped. Mine to keep.

I remember the fragrant wisteria climbing a tree high into the cloud-strewn welkin, distant and cerulean. The shining realm to which I longed to escape, eyes straining to glimpse the path to safety, to glory, to my real home. The mourning doves who, alone, knew my sadness in exile, and returned my plaintive whistle.

Just out of the frame, up the walk, the sturdy wooden door, locked, the pyracanthas standing mute sentry before the bricks. The house, silent and dark. And I, keyless and home too soon, sink into despair at this, the emblem of my young life.