4 January 2001 My father was born on the birthday of the Virgin Mary, December 12th. I was Joseph--Uzek to them in Polish--born October 1, 1938. My sister JoAnne was called Bollamotz--bad little girl--lovingly, with always a laugh. Judy was quieter, more thoughtful. She married and moved back East. I didn't ever see much of her again, only once at my father's death from cigarettes. He was always happy to see me-never an angry word. I remember he liked to gamble. My life was a gamble. He cooked all day into the night and found time for his art projects-lamps. He also did drawings and paintings of himself as a sad clown or once a blue-eyed monk. Otherwise he liked to try and strengthen his mind with various studies in order to control the luck of the dice. He'd stare at a cork under glass with a needle set to spin on it that he'd try to direct by thought. Things like that. Bending spoons. The only spoons he'd bend were big ones that he'd heave from one end of the restaurant to the other, a big stainless steel wall behind the sink. I worked at scrubbing out the "mother-in-law," a large clam chowder pot so big you had to lean inside of it to reach the bottom with a metal scraper. We'd get $5,000 worth of abalone at a time packed into the big reefers in the '60s-two restaurants he was chef at on the big end of the Santa Cruz Wharf. He'd always be happy to see me on the beach whenever he'd lean out the door to have a cigarette break. I spent most of my time there on the beach, surfing. I'd peddle down from our house by bike up by the city water reservoir with my homemade boogie board out of plywood-more boards to throw and jump onto and slide before I got my Velzie Jacobs 9-foot 10-inch Narrow Rail Long Board. Oh I loved that board--red bottom--hot dog! I'd run up and down the beach in prep for joining the Marine Corps the end of summer after high school, at 17. I drove a '37 Ford blue coupe convertible--white top, '88 flathead, Mercury engine, dual carbs, with a rumble seat in back open for my board. Loved that car too. Where did it all go? Time flickers faster like pages in a well thumbed book as we look back upon it. Same as it ever was. Talking Heads said that. Shiftlessly I moved into second gear, squad leader, cold weather training for fighting in the snow. I went instead to Okinawa, home of something like fifty varieties of poison nut snakes. (I read about it in the library where I used to go to study nights, an old, ivy covered, brick building before the flood.) Surfing Sam Read would be there reading about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and making comparisons whenever he wasn't lifeguard riding his big redwood log of a paddleboard, clearing out everyone in front of him. Friend of the Duke he was--Big Kahuna on the beach he was--white zinc oxide nose, shades, checking the surf out. Me and Johnny Rice would carry down a big hollow plywood paddle board together and take it out off the racks of the little shack there and paddle it back in when it was too full of water. I got a pair of new fins one Christmas. I could hold my breath a good two minutes then underwater. That was before the Corps. "Eat the apple, fuck the corps" they used to say. Semper Fi. I got a problem with my lungs and breathing overseas. Thirty years later at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver they said it was a mold that usually killed people, but I lived. Decided if I lived to get out of this I'd do whatever it was I wanted to for life after that. I remember my Uncle John's party after the war--homecoming navigator of a B-52 with pictures of smoking bombers going down in flak and a German Lugar he kept. Gave the SS gloves to my dad and I had some locks of a concentration camp to toy with. He boxed as the Duke of Poland and ran for Assemblyman, had a bar, moved to Florida with a rumor about some trouble with the mafia. Grandpa Jankowski kept a cat of nine tails, black leather with ball bearings in the end for fights at the mill, Youngstown Street and Tube, where everyone worked before we left in Dad's 1940 Ford four-door, or was it two, across the states. Merimac Caverns for my birthday, hide out of Jessie James they say. I loved caves. Deep recesses. I'd find them and explore them as a kid in Cave Gulch above Santa Cruz, peddle up there on my bike with my dog Tuff and a 10- or 12-gauge and do a little shooting. Nothing much. I'd have to practice with a 22 a lot before I got any good at it. Funny how we change. I wouldn't shoot an animal now. Before that I'd hunt rats at night in the city dump. I still like certain weapons, hand grenades especially. I kept one a long time when I was looking for my *'s boyfriend. They would call up and threaten me and the kids. After they left together--22 years of marriage going on like a cool breeze. Remember him? Cool Breeze, I mean, of the Pranksters. He was fun. Liked to be a Neal Cassady protˇgˇ. He'd go movin' around the dance floor of the "Barn" where I worked doing light shows with Paul Curtis and Saul Mitig of "Magic Theatre." "The price of admission is your mind" is what I remember. The Pranksters all stayed there after Ken had disappeared, leaving the bus parked with a note saying "Ocean, Ocean, you have won" and his shoes left by the water's edge. My partner in sculpture, Ron Boise, drove him down to * in the potato chip truck and rolled him up in a rug across the border to avoid going to jail for smoking' a joint with Mountain Girl. Ken had a fun house up in La Honda, "Sky Londa," where people used to like to inhale nitrous oxide, "laughing gas," up in the redwood grove outside. They talked real funny and would fall down having such a good time. Oh yeah, I meant to tell you about my family leaving for California. I was only 7. They all only spoke English to me so I wouldn't have an accent. My grandmother belonged to a Russian Orthodox church but we were all Catholic except for my father who didn't even sin and got out of going to church because of it. My grandfather came out and gave my dad a blackjack as we were ready to leave and for me he had a pipe wrench he made himself at the Mills. He drove a neat Model A that he made into a truck himself, putting the bed into where the rumble seat went. Grandma said there were black widow spiders in California and we'd be back soon. There weren't and we never were. My mother's father was raised by the Polish Cavalry as a kid when his parents were killed in some sort of a war. His name was Steve Smur and his wife Susie Urich had died of pneumonia while my mom and her sisters were kids. He never allowed pillows to sleep on so we'd have a straight back. They were both from Austria I found out years later. Lapus Poteck and ________. He never talked much and never spoke English He raised the girls in a house by a cemetery they had a lot of neat stories about. But Mom and her two sisters, Mary and Aunt Peg, were all good cooks because of it. He came out once to visit us when we had a nice house in Santa Cruz up by where the university went in. We walked all the way down to the beach because he didn't drive, saw my father, then walked a mile more out to the end of the wharf and back up again to the house. He out walked me and he was an old man then. He liked to go to dances when he was young, my mother said, but never remarried. My dad's real father died when he was 14 of a heart attack. I only saw a picture of him in a suit once, looking kind of like a gangster. They never mentioned him. We came out to Santa Cruz where I first saw the ocean by the Boardwalk. We all ran out into the sand together and loved it. My dad had all kinds of jobs at first. We'd pick fruit everywhere, my dad and I, apples in the mountains. I'd climb the long ladders and he'd hand the buckets down to me to dump in the box. Whatever work he could do building stone walls or putting up fences and painting houses. Until he met his friend that had a catering business and they cooked together. Then my dad got a small cafe to work for at an old bar called Mac's Place in Boulder Creek. We'd drive up there early and he'd make a hundred chicken pot pies every weekend for a lot of bikers that would stop in to eat. After that he got into the Santa Cruz restaurants and I grew up there and in Scotts Valley out where I'd dig up sharks' teeth and send to a guy that gave me ten cents each for them. Once when I went out to dig in the old sand quarry I followed mountain lion's tracks down to the creek and back up and we both stepped out into the road at the same time, different places, and stood looking at each other until luckily a car came by and he snarled at me and left. I did a lot of hiking around up there near some old sand hills and a church camp no one was around much so I'd drop trees down onto their trails to make them stronger for Jesus in having to climb over them. A lot of fun having a dog, an axe, and a BB gun as a kid. There were a lot of old horse buggies around the house there they were saving. Our neighbors were four ladies that had an Arabian stallion named Cola that was a stud.they'd get paid to bring mares to. Sent me up to my room, but I could see out the window. They'd lift his dick up with a stick and help him get it in right and there'd be a lot of noise in my sex ed class there. I'd chase deer out of the yard and once even picked up a baby fawn that stood still looking at me from some bushes. He kicked the shit out of me and I dropped him back to his mom. I'd practice riding horses but didn't like it much with this old cowboy named Nick, 'cause mine used to make a run for the barn after we'd head back in and I'd hang on going across the highway at full speed. Funny, years later I'd end up working at a large barn for Lithuanian therapist Leon Tabore. He wanted the Barn to become a living theatre to enrich people's lives and strengthen their growth through dance, drama, music, the arts. Leon was a man of the future whose parents were put into a concentration camp by the Nazis. How he escaped and made his way to America is a long story. But Peter Demma of Santa Cruz Hip Pocket Bookstore introduced us. Leon told me of his dream of expanding the Barn to show man's future, his evolution from the ocean to become what he is today and or to further help him up the ladder of consciousness. I tried to help him with this dream. The entire downstairs of the Barn was done in an antique fashion but upstairs what had been a gymnasium and basketball court became our theatre. To get the effect of a living ocean I painted the walls with a solid yellow background and over this ran a blue glaze, which I'd run along with my fingers pressed to the walls to make seaweed forms and images stand out with large-scale finger painting techniques. A dream of mine was reflected within one part, "Where are you silver love" of a goddess-like figure of shining silver. From the ceiling I hung large butterfly mannequins that Carl Speyer brought me and I made wings of fiberglass for, and outside a large iridescent sun symbol to match the giant shell symbol for gasoline that was on the local freeway. I cast it with the help of the boat building Denson brothers of Maui over a mound of sand shaped upon a giant telephone pole. We packed the sand down and then laid strips of fiberglass over it all. Then lifted it up off the sand and I painted the front two ways: first to look like a normal sun with the light behind; then that light would go out and a black light would make it glow with our future direction. The local church groups couldn't see it that way and called it works of the devil. Petitions were raised to shut down the Barn as a theatre and deny it use permits. The local church claimed trash such as beer cans and condoms had been left in the parking lot at night and somehow they felt that they were our used condoms and not of their congregation. I went to a meeting and spoke in favor of Leon, who had been also speaking to women's clubs in Santa Cruz advocating the use of marijuana and LSD in psychotherapy. Afterwards a newspaper wrote up a negative report on the Barn activities and my dad said, "You ought to get out of town Jog. They're going to try and tar and feather your group with gossip and slander." Later while I was teaching life drawing classes in my studio, I spoke to Vic Towers, owner of the Sticky Wicket, with concern. He'd been coming to my drawing classes along with the head of the local Sierra Club president. He said he'd been in the D.A.'s office and saw a list with my name ninth of the list of people no longer needed in the community. No, my time of teaching there was soon over. We did have a fun show of the drawings and paintings the Sierra Club president had created over the years. He was an old guy with knee-high boots laced on and drove up in a Land Rover. He built a clubhouse for himself to sing and perform a German opera and in between sets he'd show his artwork for everyone to vote upon--even the mayor of Santa Cruz was there and I was very proud. The class itself was unusual. I'd mix model couples together. My friend and fellow artist, soon to become "Minister Bob Casey," was a strong, good-looking guy and he loved to go up to the new University of California and choose the model to pose with that night. I'd put one of my spinning fiberglass wheels, designed by inventor artist D___ Richard Smith into action behind them--looking like a Persian rug powered by a variable speed motor and variable speed strobe light, turn up the music, serve wine and we'd draw and paint for hours, all for $2 a person. What fun! Art and motion, alive. Artist Al Johnson had quit hanging paper walls for a living and turned to doing pottery at his Scotts Creek Pottery. He had a strong vocalist's belief in mankind's work. Hoye Parton and Manny Santana opened up Manny's restaurant in Aptos and we'd take the ** there for late dinners. He who became a colorful artist with his son, Luis, loved by all. These were my friends in powerful times, changing times, "for the winds they are a changing" le B.D. times. Futzy Nutzle, a.k.a. Bruce Kleinsmith, started a newspaper with Spinney Walker and Harry Humble to parody these times and the flavor of Santa Cruz, caught in the winds of change some say, it was like a vortex of energy. Ralph Abraham, mathematician at UCSC, brought many leaders to speak on campus, like Richard Alpert, soon to be Baba Ram Dass in India. I had the same urge to go on to the land of Gandhi, Krishna Murti and while reading The Upanishads, the Bagavad Gita became my religious inspirational source and I found myself heading to the Hindu holy lands with the lady that became my wife of 22 years, Wendy. I felt the powerful draw of Hindu philosophy and science. This land of the Book of the Dead and the Bardo Thopal to be explored. We landed in Delhi and caught a bus up to Rishikesh, 16 hours away. The man in the hotel we stayed at had to get his mother to speak with the ticket salesperson because they spoke different dialects. This was such a large and different country. (I'll finish this later. Suddenly I'm awake at night in this body that's gotten old and it seems so quickly now. I've been losing friends all my life, men that should have been alive died before me, seeing Baba Ram Das again in a San Rafael bookstore this year all caught up in a wheelchair like the big vehicle they roll into the ocean on a certain day in India. Where are our celebrations? Those that we believe in? Some people have Rainbow Festivals, hippies from past lives. Aleck, Aleck (Awake, Awake), Bum Shiva. Patiraja Ne Kalishas--Maha Deva Shamboli Shiva Shiva Shamboli, walking in my mind new in Rishikesh again, path of Sadus, holy hermits in caves smoking ganja. Life is just one big cloud of smoke. Pushkar holy lake, holy brahmen now tourist center. Have your prayers changed? Let me describe Pushkar. It's already becoming too busy, a circle of water in the desert of time. Oasis. Place of rest. End here until later.) February 19, 2001 The Ashram We are artists, our lives melted in art, to carry this * and sensitivity in life is painful at times. A loneliness transpires within. Myself, I haven't painted at all these past four years, perhaps a little piece now and then. I'm lonely for a soul mate, someone caring and happy to be with me. I've noticed in Hawaii that I'm not so lonely being out in nature camping. Houses seem to make it worse. And thoughts like this morning of my parents now gone are saddening. The birds out my window bring me joy--there's not much other wildlife out there now that we can see so (easily?) I feel like the Steppenwolf Lone Man from the Steppes. I've been here in California raised without relatives or any other support group except the friends here I've had for some years. Going to India in the late '60s was an experience. We landed in BKK on the way there and I'd wanted to go on to Angkor Wat but there was too much unrest there at that time. So I'd wait almost 30 years to return. We flew into Vietnam, then the beginning of the Tet Offensive looking down I'd thought that they were burning the rice fields, but it was the still smoking mortar craters I'd seen. The airport in Da Nang had a twenty-foot hole in the ceiling and Marines at the ready behind sandbags as we waited for a refueling. Delhi was an experience. Very British at that time. All big old buildings with white columns and shared walkways with streets around a circular park. I'd heard that Richard Alpert was somewhere nearby at a Hanuman ashram. And we caught a bus 16 hours up to Rishikesh, place of the seers. Every time the bus stopped we'd all get out to push it into starting. I can still vividly recall Rishikesh, the ashrams were all across the river in the wild forest side. We'd walk up to Lakiman Jewha. Through the Upu colony there. People would crawl out of huts onto the road banging their metal dinner plates on the tarmac crying out Bac Shish, Bac shish, Baba and we'd empty our pockets of coins and cross a long suspension bridge. Into the small group of holy men in a forest of buildings. Sidding sadus were it was also expected to (ignite?) somewhere along these paths. I think it was back in Rishikesh where we found a place to stay at the home of a man that had a rock quarry nearby and was driving a Jeep. We'd met and he offered us a room to stay in and to tour around with him. * we'd met Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Mike took us up to the Maharishi Mahesh yogi's ashram, where a select group of people were meeting and I thought that these vibrado were going to change the world through meditation. Mike took us up to his cottage where we slept out on the roof together and he introduced us to the Maharishi who gave us jobs to do in return for our mantras, Hindu holy words of vibration. I was to help as a painter on the portraits of his guru, known as Guru Dev, that were being painted by his uncle the Dr. Raj Varma. I believe he was called an old man that talked about Ayervedic medicine and well-being. I can remember that when we went back to town to get our things we were walking along the path that a holy sadu dressed in sack cloth that looked like hair was on. His eyes were blood red and he was powder white with ashes from the funerary fires of bodies burning. He held a long silver spike with a ring on the end of it that sadus used to stir the fire with, but to me at that time I thought perhaps it was to be impaled upon. In front of him a man was going along like an inchworm, rising and falling in the path and moving along towards the river where a boat was waiting for pilgrims to cross. He hurried on ahead and got into the small rowboat and the man in the boat waited until the sadu stepped in. he sat facing us, holding his silver scepter and as we started crossing onto the stairs across the river, monks came down and all started blowing on conch shells. I looked over to the stairs which were behind me as we paddled to see what looked like hundreds of holy men waiting for the boat arrival. I was thinking, "What are they going to do with this guy?" carrying a long spike and not saying a word. As we came ashore they all came down the stairs to greet him and we stepped quickly down river to the path Mike had shown us up the hill and into the ashram. Wow, I was glad we'd escaped alive, I thought. It was pretty scary for a while. I didn't know or see what happened with the holy man. But I had visions of Christ on a cross flashing before me. We were given a large paisley tent to stay in and went to have meals in the small cafe above the Ganges. Often I'd meet with Donovan, a British singer, and he'd tell his tales of Atlantis and the lost lands there to me. It was the first I'd ever heard of this place and it was the inspiration for a theatre piece we were to do later in London on Dury Lane. So I spent days painting with the doctor and Wendy would be tinting photos for Amuled of the Maharishi to be given to the guests of the ashram who were there at that time the Beatles, George, Paul and John. Ringo had already returned back to London. There were also several British ladies that had been witches in London, as I recall, and a lady opera singer and various other people about. Two young Brits were the cooks for the Western group and meals were very bland, veggies with rice or dal, and later at tea in the afternoons we'd meet for tea and Paul McCartney would often be there with his guitar to sing some of the new songs they'd been writing. I can remember one called Happy Restaurant and another called Jai Guru Deva which went like this: "We want to thank you, Guru Dev, for being so kind to us. Jai Guru Dev, Jai Guru Dev, we want to thank you Guru Dev. It went on and on! I had a bit of it recorded once, with Bob from George's birthday party where Paul gave him a tambura? that played a melodic background sound sort of like a droning aum, and looked like a sitar. John kept mostly to himself, occasionally sitting out on the stairs to his pattis(?) cottage. Brushing his wet hair in the sun and making funny comments. I keep thinking about the first time we met Paul. It was after walking down a long path to the river, where we could sit nude and not be seen and swim in the river. I dove down off a rock into the icy Ganges water and saw a rope floating up toward me. "Wow," I thought, "what luck." I can pull myself down to the river's bottom there. And as I went down deeper I saw what I was pulling on. It was fastened to the neck of a cow that must have gotten caught in the river, and as I pulled his head came up to meet me. Bloody hell, what a sight, I thought. Returning to the surface, there was Paul and his wife sitting on the rocks. I didn't know his name or even that he was one of the Beatles, as I didn't pay much attention to any rock stars, thinking that we were all on the same level of being--except that the only thing that separated them from us was money. He told us all about his farm in Scotland and invited us to come stay with them in London whenever we were out there. It was a fine afternoon in the sun. The meals were so bad we were always hungry and Paul would get out his stash of peanut butter and cookies whenever we'd meet again at the cafe to have chai (tea). Often we'd go back to Rishikesh to the chai shop there to sit and have Indian snacks and walk along to see the tailors and get India style clothes made--baggy pants without pockets and long, Hindu- style shirts and vests, and a shoulder Sadu-style bag to carry extras in. A soldier once in town pointed his swagger stick at me and asked, "Why do you dress like that?" and I replied, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Abandoning Western wear for the looser, cooler Hindu-style clothes--Wendy would wear a Sari or a piece of cloth around herself or Neru-style pants and jacket that women wore, while others had to stay at the ashram we were allowed to come and go into town as we pleased. It was high times. There then, after the Brits would come down to our tent to smoke hash from a big block of it they carried about, and we'd walk in the forest along Trails, always saying "Ram, Ram" when we'd meet others on the path. Just saying God's name (Ram) in Hindu was enough. You needn't be polite like in English society and inquire, "How are you?" No--just saying God's name and folding your hands in prayer were enough. a good replacement in thought for the questions often uncaringly answered in the West. George Harrison and Paul were telling me all about the far-out movie they made with the group called "Help" and asked what I'd been doing. I told them of the thunder machine made by my partner, Ron Boise--large musical instruments made to help musicians develop new ways and sounds of music, a way to break traditional habits; and what it was like in America, California in the '60s, the politics and political scene going on there and my wanting peace so bad for Viet Nam. What would it take for peace on Earth? Could we make any changes? I'd hoped our just being there in India would help--a country where I felt the foundation of religion had started. I didn't feel ties to the Judeo-Christian notion of God centering in Israel. I loved the Krishna stories, like when his mother went to spank him once for stealing butter, he opened his mouth to cry and she saw the whole universe inside and realized that he was God also. And the time when he was to bathe in the River Ganges with the Gopies and while swimming he made love to each one as she saw fit and hundreds of women were pleased. Sort of different than breaking the bread to feed the group, but same thought. I'd worked on painting the large thunder machines for a show at Anchor Steam Beer in San Francisco. Before taking them on to Dallas "fucking" Texas. The show was on the roof and we made the Chronicle with a picture or at least talking with a lady reporter there. Before leaving on the long drive to Texas in a potato chip van and long old flatbed truck lashed down with psychedelic painted sculpture I'd worked on with Ron. We were stopped 23 times on that drive. The police just couldn't believe us. They'd pass, their jaws would drop, and they'd wheel around on the highways of life to stop and talk to us. Like the time I remember we came down in Ray's old VW primered matt black, all packed into it to do a light show in Foster City for the Art League there. February 24, 2001 Wind me back, wind me back like some clock to an earlier time, to us 41 happy hippies in a commune with nature. Not as far back as the Corps at 17. I was too young for that. I wasn't ready to kill or even those I think of now that is passed by in life. The Ron Boises, Neal Cassadys, Gerry Garcias of a time past, dim in review to being there. When we were younger and face to face with reality and our changes in it. Past the times picking fruit in the valleys of California with Father. Somewhere between the hospitals of the military and times I almost died in New Delhi, feverish from hepatitis and the doc there saying I'd be lucky to leave alive. Take me to the happy times: a first marriage, thinking this was it, church and all. Grand Baroque silverware place settings, we were there in heaven's hands. Past lobsters I wouldn't kill but took them to the oceans return, past spiders I'd let go--perhaps I was a predetermined Buddhist. Given some hard shakes to stir up compassion, gratitude for life. I love it--being here--every day breathing, just breathing, what others take for granted. Movies packed with Tibetan refugees pass my mind. The women all seemed to know when some sexy scene would come on and they would pack in for it. I'm dreaming of a tight mistress now, one like I always used to have, with boobs that glistened and ears that listen. Fun is paycheck that always seemed to roll. Oh Goddess within my heart, compassionate one, loving kindness one, love who sees me as I am and it's okay, who sees me as I'm not and it's okay. This isn't a rehearsal. This world is full of tragedies and happiness is short lived. Don't desire too much. March 12, 2001 Annie and Art I drove over to Berkeley today to see the show of art prints done by Annie sprinkle. She used to work in the film industry of porno movies and had now a studio in San Rafael and stayed with my friend Dr. Betty. I'd seen her one day working on a 20x30-inch sheet of watercolor paper, painting black onto a Polaroid print she'd transferred onto the paper somehow. It was a picture of one of her friends in a negligee that she was coloring lightly. I would like to have seen more paint used onto the backgrounds so that it gave the piece more of a painterly artist quality instead of the appearance of a colorful photograph. But she'd gotten them displayed at the Good Vibrations store that sells vibrations and all kinds of sex toys, the perfect place to put the art. But it was displayed on the walls well above eye level and secondary to the products on display. I much preferred her tit prints that she did of herself, having the right equipment for the job, she simply applies water-base paint into herself and then presses them onto watercolor paper. Viola! That tit is painted in a variety of colors and shapes, sometimes even in a perfect smaller circle by using a stencil. Back in the '80s, some time ago, I'd been doing body prints out in the desert while staying in a trailer at Sam's Family Spa. I'd paint Wendy and myself with acrylics and then we'd press down onto dark blue denim cloth. The colors would show up nicely and I'd work back into them, adjusting shapes and putting in colorful hearts and bright gold lines like I'd do in a painting. I'd even fantasized about doing them in Hollywood where I'd been doing some sidewalk art shows on weekends. Body prints, your body on canvas, $1 a pound. I'd even wanted to do them on surfboards, so that surfers could have their soul mates under themselves as they rode the waves. Ashore, I'd mentioned it to Doug Haut of Haut Surfboards, but he said "No way! Parents buy these boards for their kids and I can't have any nudity around them." So I gave up body art. Vitality Balthazar Lysowski - extra Watching a movie on the '60s I saw a film clip of Allen Ginsberg in a white robe dancing and chanting Hindu mantras. And I thought, "I was there" at the place Bill Graham(?) ran. I saw some of my slides of the thunder machines of Ron Boise being projected up on the theatre walls of the Family Dog in those days. My mind slips back dimly reflecting the essence of the verbal sounds that illuminate these times. How old I seem to myself but the memories appear like yesterday and even music from the Grateful Dead fills my ears. What a great time it was, it felt free to be in San Francisco, the great Love-in at the Golden Gate Park, riding to L.A. with Neal Cassady driving the Kesey bus, a tube from the back porch tank of nitrous oxide hanging from his mouth, his hand on the leg of J.B. sitting on the engine like being with Boise going out to Texas to show our sculpture show overgrown by rednecks. We moved it over to Fort Worth. Happy happy times--all the communes--I saw them all. Drop with Libre, the Lama Foundation. How strange, I thought, you pay people to let you work on their property. That must be how religions get started. Painting the Last Supper as a picnic table at Libre with Steve? Everyone seemed to have a horse but I had the Boise van. Content to exist on wheels on the road to nowhere. But being somewhere--ever present in this past moment even as I speak of it. I was pure, full of love for being alive. Camping eating, brown rice in trailer parks in national camprounds and smelling the bacon and coffee others were cooking and knowing the different that I was with a wife and small son child along.