Hey, so... sometime I iz a lazy mofo. Sorry, but living life is sometime more interesting than writing about it. My meditation has gotten real strange.

I rode with an old friend to Wilmington. He was taking his son down to some music convention. The boy plays in a coupla bands. He's been playing a long time. I have been attempting to get both of them to meditate for a long time. It's like talking to a fence post. They don't seem to understand how important it is to do something for themselves that nobody else can do for them.

Jack Kornfield, who teaches meditation and writes books and produces audio tapes on the subject called meditation the "art of arts." It makes sense to me, because what a meditation practice does is to create an overview. What I used as an example yesterday in my futile attempt to communicate what meditation accomplishes, was about how to get to that overview. The overview is important because it allows one to have the mental acuity to perceive opportunity when it arises. There exists certain moments in life where one can do miraculous things if the timing is right. A moment too soon or too late and the opportunity vanishes. I don't gnow why things work this way. I don't care. These moments don't appear to exist as a creative effort, but are doors that open where creativity does the most good. They don't appear to exist as something that one has control over, but definitely something one can be-co-me with, and go along for the ride.

I know both of these guys are going to read this, so this entry is somewhat redundant for what I talked about yesterday, and intentionally redundant.

When I sit down to practice my meditation I start by thinking about my perineum. Every time I sit, I have to find it all over again. I find where it is by feeling for it. I use my imagination to place my conscious mind at that location. I attempt to feel where the base of my penis ends and my rectum begins. I feel for it. I seek to place my consciousness as exactly as I can on that particular spot, and then decide to direct my breathing from there. The next thing I do is to make sure when I exhale that there is no more tension in my lower belly. At the beginning there always is. Optimally, I let my belly flop as much as possible. When I have let my abdomen relax as much as possible I find that I can inhale from as deep in my belly as is possible.

I'm particular aware when I'm doing it right. I can feel that when my belly is as relaxed as possible, then I am going to be able to draw the next breath from the deepest part of my being, and simultaneously realize that when I do that, the air I draw into my lungs is automagically going to stimulate the right sensitive areas at the top of my nostrils where the air turns down toward my lungs. When I begin to feel this happening then I begin to actually feel the perineum area where that holy spot exists. That holy spot has a direct connection with the crown chakra, and activates it without having to pay any attention to it at all. Helen Palmer, from whose audio tapes on Enneagrams I learned this method, states that energy follows the attention. Pay attention to that holy spot at the perineum and it empowers it. It begins to buzz. Then, what happens when it begins to buzz will lead you to the next thing to do. Nobody can tell you that.

One of the things that happens that is easy to describe is that my breathing goes on autopilot when the holy spot begins to buzz. I no longer have to pay attention to the holy spot or my breathing. The crown chakra starts acting up, I feel it buzzing, and my attention goes there. That's how the overview comes into being. It's almost like my body has an autonomous reaction to the buzz. It goes into a sort of catatonia. This catatonia happens at the alpha-theta transition when the sleep state approaches. It takes some getting use to because it exist as a state of paralysis that prevents the body from reacting to the dream sequences that follow. It prevents your body from responding like it does when you're awake in the normal beta state. For example, if you dream of being chased by monsters, this catatonia/paralysis of your body keeps your arms and legs from responding to the dream activity, and your body stays in your bed during the sleep state. Sleep walking is a an exception to the rule.

This paralysis is sometime associated with a phyical vibration, and also exist as an indicator of when you can leave your body to do astral travel. When you are trying to get out of your body to astral travel, this paralysis is what tells you when to perform the ritual used to get out. I do that constantly during the beta state, so that isn't all that interesting to me. What is interesting to me is the next step in my meditation.

The paralysis indicates to me that I'm shifting into warp drive. Sometime there is a loud pop similar to a crack of electricity discharging across my brain. I'm free of concern with my body, and it's fixing to get numb and disappear from interfering with my released conscious awareness. Once that happens, I do seem intellectually aware my body exists, but for all practically purposes, I can no long feel it. I attain to a somewhat disembodied state that allows me to "see" these cyclic opportunities where I can allow myself to get pulled into situations that would not ordinarily be there for me in a "normal" state of consciousness that is attached to identifying with my persona and physical being. This exists as a state of "is-ness". The normal state of consciousness only works in an ex-is state of being, where consciousness is shuttle-cocked back and forth between polarities in such a way that one gets caught up in either the future or the past. No opportunities there. Opportunity happens cyclically, and it ain't no good to you as an afterthought. What you shoulda done and second guessing only brings suffering.

David, Eric, I done my best by you. Have a good life. Your exquisitely crafted personalities may not show up on my radar much longer. I'll only see in you what you ignore, and my speaking to that will only convince you were right about me from the gitgo. No blame.

The red Peterbilt pulled up the on ramp to I-10 at Wilcox, Arizona. I halfheartedly stuck out my thumb not expecting to catch a ride with an eighteen wheeler. Most of the drivers are not allowed to pick up hitch-hikers for insurance reasons or company policies. I looked up at the driver to wave at him as he drove by. It was an older man. Instead of passing me by he stopped the big rig right beside me. I opened the door and he told me to get in. I grabbed my pack and jumped in the truck, and he continued up the ramp and into the traffic of the Interstate.

We rolled along without talking for a coupla minutes, and then he turned to me and told me that God had told him to pick me up. I kinda knew what that meant, I was going to get saved again. I waited for the sermon to begin.

Instead he began to tell me about how hard it was to get a load outta California when he went out there, but that he was lucky and got a load of frozen fish to haul back to Mobile, Alabama, which was his home. He told me that the contractors in California drive a hard bargain when bartering with the truckers because they know how expensive it is to go back toward the east coast empty and pay for their own fuel. There isn't much manufacturing going on in the plains states and there isn't much of a chance to pick up a load on the way until they get near the Mid West. I could feel him checking me out as he talked.

As I listened to him, I realized he was older than I was, so I asked him how long he had been driving trucks. He told me he was 74 years old and had been driving trucks since he was 18. He told me a little bit about how he had gotten into it and what kind of trucks he had driven in the early days before diesels had become dominant. He still had fond memories of the huge gas engines that had been a lot more powerful as far as torque is concerned, and how he used to be able to pass slow traffic a lot quicker than with the diesel engines. But now, the diesels were a lot better than in the old days.

He was proud of how he had started his own trucking business. At one time he had over a 100 trucks on the road and was making a lot of money. He told me that his daughter run the company now, and that they only had about 40 trucks, but that he wasn't involved in managing the company now. When they had gotten into tax trouble a while back, it proved to be too much for him, and he bought himself this truck and was running independent. Just doing what he wanted to now, and only used the company to arrange for his loads.

We rolled through New Mexico pretty quickly. This old man had a lead foot. He must have averaged about 75mph hour. As we approached El Paso and the long stretch of west Texas he said he was going to stop and fuel up at a truck stop soon, and asked me how long it had been since I had eaten. I just told him it had been a while cause I thought that was what he wanted to hear, and it turned out it was. He told me they had a good buffet line at the truck stop and that he was going to buy my dinner. At that he picked up his cell phone, told me he was going to tell his wife he had picked up a hitch-hiker, and he called home.

I only heard his end of the conversation, but it sounded like his wife was worried about him picking me up. He kept telling her that he knew she had warned him about picking up hitch-hikers, but God had told him to pick me up, and that he was going to be the Good Samaritan and feed me. He seemed to take a lotta pride in this. Just after he finished his call, we came to an intersection that had several truck stops and we pulled in to one of them and went inside.

I followed him around in the truck stop to let him lead me into whatever it was that we were going to do about food. As I walked behind him, I noticed that he had this bent over way of walking that didn't seem much different than the way he sat in the truck. I guessed that he had been driving a truck so long it had shaped his body to fit the seat. He walked with his shoulder hunched forward, his knees bent, and the only real difference in his posture was that his head was held straight up. From the side he was shaped like an "S".

The food didn't look that good. It had been sitting on the steam line for a long time under those heat lamps. There was a separate salad bar that looked a little better, and I decided to each mostly from it. When I finished what I could he encouraged me to eat all I wanted. He reminded me I could go back as many times as I wanted. I ended up eating more than I wanted to show my appreciation, but the food was really lousy.

Soon, we were back on the road and through El Paso and headed through Texas. We didn't talk much. I did ask him if he was going to stop anywhere to sleep. I vaguely knew that truckers can only drive so long before they have to take a rest break. He said he didn't pay any attention to that, because he knew how to keep his logs in such a way that the cops couldn't prove he hadn't stopped. He intended to drive straight through.

I knew he must have felt some of the same fatigue I was feeling, but he didn't act like it. Maybe that fatigue is what got him to talking about his family. I can't remember all the details, but it was a strange tale. He had been married several times. His first wife was from Baltimore. She proved to be a no good bitch, and he had left her after their first child. He had gotten married again to a good woman by whom he had a couple of boys. They were pretty good boys, but he didn't trust them to take over the company. Somehow he was contacted by his daughter from the first marriage. He had not seen her for years. She wanted to come to see him and get to know her father, and he paid for her to come down to Alabama to visit. His wife had died, he and his sons didn't get along, and he was lonely. When she came down to Alabama to visit he hadn't told his children about her, and they thought she was a young girlfriend. Turned out he fell in love with her at first sight. He wanted her to have everything, so he married his own daughter. This was the woman he had talked to on the phone.

I didn't realize that this old man didn't know he had told me what he had told me. I don't know whether he thought I wasn't listening or that he hadn't realized what he was telling me. I was listening, and so as we cruised through Louisiana I begin to ask him so questions about why he had married his own daughter. I was extremely curious. For some reason I didn't really care, it wasn't any of my business, I just found the whole situation very odd, and even weirder that he had actually admitted this to a total stranger. My questions seem to startle him out of his fugue, and when he realized what he had told me, he got very hostile and angry at me, and denied vehemenently that he had said what he said. He told me he was a good Christian now, and that he and his wife went to church regularly, and that he had said no such thing. It didn't surprise me at all. People tell their most personal stuff to strangers they think will never come into contact with anyone they know. After all, who would listen to a bum? No blame.

The rest of the trip to Meridian, Mississippi was driven in silence for the most part. It seemed like the closer we got to where he was going to let me out, the madder he got with me. I knew he was just angry at himself for blabbering out stuff that he knew could be turned against him, but he didn't know how I am, and that people had been safely telling me their secrets most of my life. He was just scared because he seemed to have betrayed his own confidence. No blame.

I was born about 20 miles from Meridian. We moved to North Carolina when I was two years old, but we had come back to visit my parent's families who lived in this area all my early years. I had moved back there for almost a year once before, and I knew this place pretty good. The problem for this old man was that where he lived in Mobile was less than ninety miles away, and I had family there too.

When the old man got to Meridian and pulled into the place where he would fuel up, I got my stuff, and then followed him inside to buy a candy bar and a coke. He hadn't spoken to me since he realized what he told me, and he didn't speak to me again. I had followed him inside just to see what his response would be if I acted friendly with the people inside the store. He literally turned pale and could barely sign the credit slip for his fuel. I deliberately left the store before he did so he could see me walking away. I guess I will never know why God had told him to pick me up.

The next morning I got up and started hitch-hiking again. Practically all the traffic came from the Reservation Casino. It was interesting looking at the faces of the people leaving there. I tried to decide whether they had won or lost. That proved impossible. Some seemed to express some sort of tension, others didn't. Many of the cars had more than one person in the car. I knew from experience that there wasn't much chance of me getting a ride with them. Most of my rides came with single men.

I don't know what the real percentages are, but I suspect about half of the rides I got over the years was from men wanting to counsel with me about religion. It seemed as if it made them feel good to save a soul for Christ. I didn't argue with them, but rather accepted what they had to say. Many prayed for me in my hour of need. Sometime I would get saved 3-4 times a day. Many others were drinking. Some seemed so drunk I just wouldn't ride with them, but not often. Other time homosexuals would pick me up hoping for a little action. Most of them were married with children. I don't know how many times I got picked up during my sojourns by men who had left their wives and families and were just riding around the country. They were usually pretty sad and just wanted someone to talk to. Others were looking to party, but after having lived the domestic life for a while, they didn't know how. At least a coupla times this has happened and I would suggest we go to Mexico, and off we'd go. Well, they had been told what to do all their lives by somebody including their wives, most people have been, so they were happy to see me.

It seems difficult for regular people to realize how many people live in the United States, and that kinda stuff is going on all around them. It's not just their neighbors. The roads are full of lost people. They have been led to think that life is a certain way, and that if they do what they have been told, then things will work out. For most people it does. If things come up that don't fit the plan they deal with it somehow, but some never really get their act together. Maybe I'm one of those people. I don't really believe that, but I have to accept it as a probability. I wanted to live a life of adventure from the time I was very young.

I don't really remember much about the next ride I got, but I do remember he took me to an intersection about 25 mile west of Phoenix, Arizona, gave me some money to get something to eat, and I went inside the truckstop that had been a stagecoach station at one time. They had a restaurant and a big souvenir shop. It was a fairly interesting place with lots of antiques from the ranches around the area. I sat down in a booth designed for 6-8 people and ordered some food. Not long after I sat down an older man approached and asked if he could sit across the table. He soon told me that he had been a horse wrangler most of his life, and that he still rode in rodeos. He was 84 years old. He had on one of those shiny-looking jackets that had horses embroidered on it and the name of some rodeo he where he had won the senior title. He said he had bought a small ranch to break horses for the local ranchers that he came to in the winter time, but when it warmed back up in Wyoming, he went up there to work. He had spent his life going back and forth wrangling horses.


The next ride I got was with a trucker. He was driving a flat bed that had four huge tires on the back. They were so big they stuck out over the side of the trailer. They were used on some huge mining machine. Pretty amazing sight.

This guy drove out of California, and told me all about how he had just built a new home up north of San Francisco somewhere. He was a gun nut and liked hunting. He told me all about his guns and how pissed off he was that somebody has stolen his four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle in broad daylight. When we got to the weight station leaving California they told him he couldn't drive at night with a wide-load, and so he pulled into a small independent truck stop just up the road.

We went inside, and he asked me if he could pay for me getting a shower. I hadn't had a bath for a week or so, and my clothes hadn't been washed since Texas. I guess I was smelling kinda ripe. He bought a coupla six-packs and said he'd wait for me at the truck. So, I took a shower. When I went back out to the truck he offered me a beer. He told me he would give me a ride the next day if I wanted to spend the night there, but there was no room for me in the truck. I asked him if I could sleep up on the trailer between those huge tires. Too many rattlesnakes in Arizona to sleep on the ground. He said that would be fine, so I crawled up on the trailer and was soon out like a light.

The next morning bright and early, for some reason this guy didn't like me. Maybe he had a little hangover. I didn't drink but one of the beers. I was a little worried, him being a gun nut and all, that he would pull a gun out and rid the world of one more bum, but he didn't. He did start lecturing me on the Christian work ethic. He told me his boss had a fuel contract with a station that was a coupla blocks off I-10 and when we got there I had to get out. Fine with me.

He pulled into this fuel depot that looked like it was a regular service station for cars. It was a tight squeeze for him to get into. When he stopped I got out of the truck, walked around to thank him for the ride and be on my way. As I approached him, he told me I oughta think about getting a job. Right then, one of the tires blew out on his trailer. Pow!He glared at me and got out his phone to call his boss. I started walking away, and another tire blew out. Pow! He started yelling at me because I was laughing. I walked off looking for an entrance ramp.

I asked a Mexican fellow where the next ramp was. He told me it was about a mile futher east. I had to zigzag around the streets of downtown Phoenix to find it. When I did get near I found that the best way to get to the entrance ramp was to walk down the exit ramp leading to it. It led down to a city street and the entrance ramp was on the other side of the street.

As I walked down the ramp I saw a bum with a sign at the bottom of the exit ramp. He was bearded and wore fatigues, I figured he was a 'Nam vet down on his luck. I watched him work the traffic as I got closer to him. He hit up a coupla cars with a big grin and both of them gave him some money. He seemed to be doing alright. I crossed over the ramp to show him I wasn't invading his territory, and threw up my hand and waved at him. He gave me a big smile, and called out, "Hey bo, going to Carolina... eh?" I nodded and then made my way across the street to the entrance ramp. Just as I got on the shoulder of the ramp I thought about what he said. I looked at my gear to see if there was a sign or something that would tell him I was headed for Carolina. There was nothing. I turned to look at him and he was staring at me. He waved again and turned back to the off ramp traffic. There's a lotta strange people on the road.

The guy who picked me up next was a drunk. He had a cooler on the floorboard of the back seat where he could reach it. He asked me if I wanted a beer and I took one. I hadn't had any coffee and I was in the desert. It tasted pretty good although I don't really like beer.

This guy was all over the road. He wasn't speeding, but he did wander off on the shoulder of the road occasionally. He told me he was going home outside Wilcox, Arizona. It was the hometown of Rex Allen, a cowboy who became a movie actor. He lived outside of town on a ranch he and his wife owned. Said she was gonna kill him for being drunk again. I didn't say much. I just wanted to get to the next town to see if I could get in a little better place to get a ride.

All of a sudden this guy decided that he really liked me. He said he was going to "adopt" me and take me to his home where I could clean up and spend the night. I had been through this before. What he really wanted was somebody to be with him when he came face to face with his wife, and then maybe she would act a little different with a stranger in the house. I wasn't about to let this happen. When he stopped to get another six-pack I got out of the car and disappeared. He actually drove around a while looking for me, and eventually left.

An old trucker gave me my next ride. He was going all the way to Meridian, Mississippi, only twenty miles from where I was born.

One of the most unbelievable events of my life happened when I took a hike in Yosemite National Park one summer morning in July. I climbed up an asphalt trail to the top of one of the lesser peaks there to have a look from what was described as a wonderful vista of the beauty of the park. I got to the top without too much effort. The top of the mountain had a fairly flat area and one could walk around it with ease and see the entire surrounding area just by going to different viewing points scattered around the top of the mountain.

After an hour or so it started drizzling rain and most of the tourists left. When the drizzle changed to snow, all of them left. I felt great about being on top of the mountain all by myself.

What I didn't think about was that the snow would cover the trail up and I might not be able to find it to get off the mountain. I thought it would stop snowing at any moment, and didn't worry about it. After all, it was July. It was summer. This freak storm could not stand.

I should have left right then, because it started snowing harder, it got deeper, the trail head was made indistinguishable from all the other snow covered objects of the area, and I soon found myself marooned there wearing only shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of canvas deck shoes with no socks.

I desperately searched for a way to get off the mountain, but the sides of the mountain were sheer drop offs and the trail the park service had cut was the only safe way down.

It continued to snow and by dark it was up to a foot deep. I got frightfully cold, and my extremities were turning blue from that cold. I knew that if I did not get off the mountain before dark I would die.

With the additional snow my chance of finding the trail was negated, and when it got close to dark I concluded that I was going to die for my foolish decisions.

Just as the Sun was disappearing over the horizon I saw one last-hope area at the edge of the mountain that might have been the trail head. It was fairly clear of trees and brush and had a little slope down to the edge of the precipice. But the deep snow had blanketed any sure indication that the trail was beneath it.

I sat down on my butt and scooted my way down toward the edge to see if the trail went down and beyond my view in that direction. But as I came to the edge I could see nothing that resembled a trail, and just over the edge was a sheer drop down the face of a cliff for what I estimated to be around 700-800 feet.

I sat there weeping for a while, as my hope of surviving left me in despair. For some reason, I kept visualizing the Park Rangers coming up on the mountain the next day and finding my dead body. I imagined them speculating among themselves what kind of idiot would let himself be entangled in such a stupid situation.

Suddenly, I started scooting back up to flatter ground as fast as I could, and then when I could stand up easily I started running back toward the center of the recreational area in a big loop and then ran as hard as I could toward the edge of the cliff... and leaped out and over it as far as I could. I could not bear the thought of them finding me dead on top of that mountain.

As I took that final leap over the edge of the cliff I lost consciousness. When awareness returned I found myself walking toward a light, I assumed it was the light at the end of the tunnel I had read so much about and I seemed quite happy to be dead.

The light I saw in front of me was not that ethereal tunnel light, but a very earthly one. As I approached it and drew nearer, the light turned out to be a camping area light next to the bathhouse of an unused tent camping area. The door to the bathhouse was open, the inside was heated and the showers had hot water.

I was not dead... yet.

When I looked at my perfectly cobalt-blue body in the mirrors along the wall above the hand sinks, there was not a scratch on me, and my clothes were no more torn than when I jumped.

As I left the park on a bus down to Bakersfield and the warm desert, I suddenly realized I was about to forget the entire incident. I had to struggle to recall the event, and as I thought about what had happened I began to realize the implications of what had transpired. But, if I had not made a extreme effort to remember.. it would have faded away into the oblivion of the unconscious as if waking from a dream.

The next morning I set out to go to Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. I thought to just go there and stick my toes in it. That was not to be.

I looked on my map to chart a course to there from Ontario, California. There was a big throughway nearby that would take me straight downtown. I walked to the entrance ramp and put my thumb out. I was there for a while before I got a ride with a truck driver going home in his car. He took me all the way through L.A. to a place just south of downtown. He told me what a favor he was doing to get me through the central area. I believed him. Just as we passed by the center part of town where all the tall buildings were we passed a little grove of trees at one of the intersections. A middle-aged man sat on the ground waving carelessly to the passerbys. He seemed pretty doped up. For a moment I saw myself in him, and I didn't want to be there. That feeling stayed with me the entire time I was in the area.

I saw the LA County jail in the distance. I spent some time there when I was stationed at San Diego in the Navy. Thirty-seven days! I had gotten mixed up with the wrong kind of people. I wasn't innocent of what they put me there for, but it wasn't something I would have done on my own. This kid from L.A. saw me coming, and inadvertantly got me involved in attempting to prove I wasn't a yokel. My trying to prove to him I wasn't only proved I was. Hard times. I saw my first murder in that jail. In fact, I saw two of them, and I was supposed to be next. I didn't even have enough sense or experience to be afraid.

Things got mixed up around L.A., and I kept getting short rides that didn't get me anywhere. I finally figured out that I didn't have a place I really wanted to go except to the ocean, and that wasn't happening easily. I decided to turn back and return to North Carolina. I finally got a ride west back toward I-10. One of the places I found myself was in Southeastern L.A. in the same area where the Watts Riots took place. This was not a place I wanted to be. I felt very nervous there. I found myself at an intersection in what seemed to be a very desperate part of town with a lot of desperate people giving me the eye. I wasn't sure why, but I had the distinct feeling their intent wasn't congruent with my well being. I started walking east to another intersection that might be a little safer place to be. I must have walked about 10 miles until I reached an entrance ramp in a little better neighborhood. There, it didn't take me long to catch a ride.

The guy who picked me up was on his way out to an Indian Reservation that owned the closest full casino to Los Angeles. He was a member of that tribe, but had married a white woman and lived off the Reservation. He told me that he was in charge of the maintenance of the Reservation, but he didn't have anything to do with the Casino part of it. As we rode along, he told me a little bit of the history of the tribe. What he told me was pretty interesting. In general the land granted to the Indians was the most undesirable land around, but fortunately for this tribe, the land had a large canyon that was covered with peat moss. This allowed water to collect there and survive the desert conditions during the hot months. During WWII, however, the government came and removed the peat moss claiming they needed it for the war effort, and this left the tribe destitute. Only when they built the Casino did their fortunes improve.

This Indian guy told me that he had been an athlete in his younger days. He had almost made the Olympic team in one of the track events. That's when he became a Christian. As soon as he asked me if I had been saved I understood why he had given me a ride. This was not an unusual situation at any time during my hitch-hiking days. I began to wonder what I could bargain for to let him save me. I was hungry, so I started working a food mojo. It didn't take much. I asked him if they had restaurants at the Casino, and if they were expensive. He asked me if I was hungry. I told him I was, and he said he would buy me a good breakfast. When we got to the Reservation he drove me around a little bit so I could see how much better the Indians lived now by comparing some of the old huts that were still around with the more modern houses and double-wide trailers. Then we went to this upscale franchise restaurant to eat. He recommended the potato pancakes, and they were delicious. As good as I've ever eaten. I don't know whether they were really that good or I was just so hungry it seemed that way.

After we left the restaurant he drove me back to the intersection of I-10. But when we got there he pulled over to the side of the road and asked me if he could pray for me. I knew the best thing to do was just to go along with him. He grasped my left hand in his and began a long prayer for my soul. At the end of his prayer he asked me if I would accept Jesus as my savior. I said I would. I didn't tell him this same thing had happened four or five times in the last week. It seem to make him so happy he reached into his pocket and gave me a wad of bills. He counted it out first so I would know just how generous he was being with me. It amounted to $17. I took the money and acted like I was putting it in my right hand pants pocket. He talked to a little more about how happy I would be about my decision for Christ, and then he let me go. His eyes followed me as I crossed the road to the entrance ramp, and then he looked down and saw that I had left his money in the car seat. He screamed at me to come and get the money. I refused as nicely as I could . He got out of the car with the money in his hand, waving it at me like it was a victory cup. I still refused his money and walked a little further up the ramp. Finally, he drove off. I don't know if he ever figured out that my soul wasn't for sell or not. I sure haven't. I may have already sold it. Who knows?

This intersection was an interesting place. There was a railroad running parallel to the Interstate. A coupla long trains passed by while I was standing there, so I kinda figured it was one of the main tracks coming out of L.A. toward the east. Across the tracks and down in a little valley was a concrete mixing plant. Beyond the buildings that made that plant up was some low hills that had a little vegetation popping up here and there. This was part of the Mojave Desert and it seemed a little unique in the way the colors, mostly various shades of brown, fit together to form a pattern. It must have been the background for a lot of the western movies filmed around Hollywood. There were a couple of good sized trees on the corners of the intersection. After I had stood waiting for a ride for a while in the hot sun watching the faces of the people leaving the casino I decided to take a break in the shade of those trees. The tension I had experienced by being in the city for the last coupla days caught up with me, and I decided to spend the night there. I found a little niche in some bushes just behind the trees and laid me down to sleep.

A person asked me directly if I was the living personification of the I Ching. I don't gnow his intent in asking me this question, but I do gnow how it affected me. My answer to him was that I don't use the book I studied through using it for over thirty years.

I do think the voice that told me not to use the book as an oracle anymore came directly from the I Ching entity I installed in myself. My use and study of it did install it in my psyche in such a way that it acts in my psyche of it's own volitions, and my querent's question appeared to be about whether or not I was it's stooge or not. The answer is yes, I am strongly influenced by the wisdom I found in myself as a result of subjecting myself to it's influence. I am influenced to an even greater degree by other systems of thinking.

Mainly, I am influenced in thought and action by the King James Version of the Bible. I was raised to adulthood where it was the chief resource of the people around me in my family and community, and still is. It was everywhere. In every media I was exposed to both at home and in the public venue. To even question it's veracity was to invite social disaster upon my person. And yet, as I matriculated into puberty, I did just that. Quietly, with some subterfuge at first, then all out rebellion. I defied the God of the Bible in the most direct fashion I could muster. But, by the time I did that, it was too late, it was already a part of me, and simply became the standard by which I sought other influences. I was at war with myself. At war with an invisible enemy that was not really an enemy at all, but which existed as my conscience that made me consider my words and actions with a particular bias that led to predictable results. It stratified the way I ideated my point of view.

My real war was about wanting options to this predictability. I hated being predictable. As I got away from my natal family and the communities I was associated with due to my family, it became even more apparent that others were aware of my predictable nature. They could easily manipulate the way I responded to them because they knew that people who had been taught to think of themselves in this particular mode would respond to the stimuli they provided in ways they could take advantage of. And not only that, but in ways totally unbeknownst to me. I absolutely hated thinking that I had taken some unique path to another way of seeing the world, only to find them waiting for me on the front porch of my destination, sitting there patiently waiting with a smug smile on their face. What seemed even worse, they seduced me into doing and saying things that contradicted everything that I valued and held sacrasanct whether I was consciously aware of such values or not, and left me praying for relief from a God I had arduously denied as a possible savior.

I needed systems of thinking about things that was at least unpredictable to people working run-of-the-mill mojos. I began to look at the very systems people of this ilk found objectionable.
I wanted to box outside the Queensbury's Rules. I wanted to learn to be street smart in a way that allowed me to cut the crap, and if not win the good fight, to at least find strategies of retreat that would allow me to fight again another day. Total capitulation to my childish vulnerabilities of predictability would not satify. I needed... the occult! Or, so I thought, and so I did.

Over the years, I found that rejection of the system I had been raised to rely on was not enough. Even my great war with myself was not enough to declaw my detractors, because even this rejection was predictable, and led to the same end.

I met a guy during my various sojourns into the world outside the familiar who read Tarot cards. I followed him around like a puppy for about a year to learn how to do this system. This lead me to a person who indoctrinated me into the 'mother of all the occult systems', astrology. Then, about the same time I was given a copy of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes in a very odd manner, and I became aware of the subtleties of reading palms. I became deeply involved with learning these devices, and over the next thirty years they became the weapons with which I fought the mediocrity of my early years. I certainly became more unpredictable, and I was certainly left alone to stew in my own juices while following this path. It did lead me into communion with others who were at war with themselves, but it did not satisfy a deep and abiding need to be at one with the other.It did lead me to understand that the other was not "out there" beyond all the noble rhetoric I had become a professor of. It lead me to my own person, and to the acknowledgement of what I needed to do to be at home with myself.

Ontario, California is somewhat of a Mecca for truckers plying their trade around Los Angeles. It has two big truck stops just off I-10 that many of them use when doing business in that area. The truck stops used to belong to competitors, but the big chain bought the other one up and now it's just one megatruckstop on different sides of the same road. Hundreds if not thousands of trucks moving through there every day. All day, all night, they never stop coming and going. Most of the trucks, although they do park there for a while leave their big diesel engines idling, and so there is a giant dull thud of a noise that permeates everything in the surrounding area.

The place is well lit at night. There is a modicum of security, but most of it serves the interests of the truck stop rather than the truckers. Those lights and the exhaust from all those diesels belching smoke and rising in the desert air looks eerie from a distance. The ground trembles with the constant vibration of the idling trucks. I had been riding in one of these rumbling, grumbling big trucks for two days. I wanted to get away from the noise.

I didn't really know where I was, but since I wasn't going anywhere in particular, it didn't really matter where I went. I started walking. I began thinking about how, when I was a young person before I had joined the Navy, there was no television sets around much. The most viewing I had ever done was seeing the glare of the round, greenish-looking pictures through a neighbor's window. The only outside entertainment up to then was the family radio. We listened. If there was some program on the radio we wanted to hear we would sit close to the radio that we could hear well enough to pounce on every word, every strain of music. There weren't that many diesels around in those days. I walked a little faster.

As I walked the noise made me think of the big Naval destroyers I had lived on. There was always noise there. I could practically hear the thump of the big propellers turning and feel the vibration under my feet. I thought of the shrimp boats I had worked on the the Gulf of Mexico. The diesels never stopping from the time we left the dock until we returned, day and night, night and day. Noise and vibration without surcease, and my heartbeat entraining to their rhythms. The interpreter becomes the interpreted.

Off to my left I saw the familiar shapes and textures of a plowed field. Even that field was lit by street lights. I thought it might be the gateway to some quiet space among some bushes that I might stretch my body out full length without have to curl it among seats and gear shift sticks and listen to the silence. Maybe even hears some crickets or frogs. Anything not man-made would do. I walked along the road along the edge of the field until the big diesels were just a hum in the distance. It was better, but I still couldn't hear myself think.

It felt good to walk after being cooped up with a nelly driver for two days. I was alone again. Sure, I was somewhere in the outskirts of one of the biggest cities in the world, but it was getting quieter. I could smell the fresh plowed dirt. It was like an old friend that was comforting me as I sought refuge in the dark. I became almost desperate to become unhooked and unconnected from the implements of civilization. Enough! No mas! I just had to find a place I could hide away, sit and wait with great expectations. I gnew it was waiting for me. I walked a little faster.

Suddenly, I remembered I was walking; left, right, left, right... I changed my breathing so that I was inhaling on the left step and exhaling with the right step with two steps in between. I pressed my tongue up against the top of my mouth so the earthy aroma in the air would go straight to the bottom of my lungs. There was no traffic at all on the road, and as I walked and paid attention to my breathing and letting my legs stretch out into a more natural pace I began to relax a little and felt the smoothness enter my gait. I wondered from one side of the road to the other as I ambled along feeling myself. I was alone again.

Up ahead, in the ever present dimness of the never dark road I saw a bridge ahead. As I came to it I could see it was an irrigation ditch. The ditch was paved with concrete. Not unusual in California. It was empty. I stopped at the edge of the bridge and listened for the trucks. I could barely hear them. Probably as good as it was going to get.

Carefully, I edged my way around the guard rails to explore the underside of the bridge. The slope down to the ditch was concrete slabbed too. It was darker under the bridge. I tried to see if there were any people there. I stopped and listened to see if I heard any talking. Nothing. I creeped along the slope away from the buttresses where the big steel beams lay anchored on their pads to see if anybody was there from one side of the bridge to the other. I saw no one, and then went up to the buttresses to see if there was a flat spot I could lay down. There was, and there was enough space between the beams to lay down full length. Without hesitation I put my bag down and sat down to be alone with myself since it seemed like it had been... forever.

I uttered my road chant over and over again, waiting for the time to come when the chance was gone. The paralysis came slowly. I questioned whether it was really there a coupla times and it went away. I started again, and again, and the third time it came over me completely, and I was home.

Recently, I read an article on the BBC site that said that Einstein and Newton both had a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. I read the article out of curiosity. By the time I finished it I was convinced that I did too. I have thought I have epilepsy too. Something is just a little off the beaten path about me.

Sometime, I just don't get it. Like a lot of people I have been given a series of IQ tests by people who were professionals and ought to know the proper way of administering these tests. I have always made some pretty good scores, and have been assured that a lack of intelligence is not a problem with me. I don't believe it is either. Admittedly, my intelligence quotient is sort of specilized in a way. I only seem to have it when I'm really interested in the stuff I like to study about. Otherwise I can be pretty much of a dummy. As I wrote in an earlier entry, I suspect that what is really going on in this arena is that, when I'm interested in a particular subject, I appear to have the ability to explore things related to that subject with an intensity of purpose that goes beyond where many others lose interest. I have an unusual type of memory system that allowed me, in the past, to retain things critical to the integration of stuff I learned a long time ago with my current interests. Again, this only applies to the stuff I'm really intrigued by.

My ability to concentrate on a given subject has it's drawbacks though. I seem to be able to get more deeply involved in my interests at the expense of ordinary events that are going on around me during these times. Many times I have been told that I don't have common sense. My response to statements of this kind is that I have no real need of common sense because I am not common. I'm special, just like everybody else.

I seem to go into some sort of trance when I'm concentrating on my interests. Being in this trance allows me to ignore events that can be distracting. The root word of ignorance is "to ignore". So, as far as concentration is concerned, ignorance is my best friend. It also exists as my worst enemy as far as social affairs are concerned. When I ignore stuff my significant others feel is important, it always gets me in the doghouse. It seems like in relationship with the other, I find myself constantly apologizing for not paying attention to their interests, as if I don't, they can't maintain that interest.

Even worse, it seems, ignoring stuff that gets in the way of what I am concentrating on allows me the discovery that if I can ignore those things that distract me, then the stuff I ignore seems not so useful to me. If I can live my life without cluttering my mind with what the other considers important, and find a way not to insult them in the process, then bully for me.I find it easy to be around people who don't depend on me to keep their own interest alive and kicking. I can pretend I'm interested in stuff that is not important to me for only so long, and usually they find out that my pretense is a sham, and then I have to apologize even more to get back into the good graces of the other. Many times, much more often than suits me, I come to the place that not only are the personal interests of the other not important to me, and according to how much they require of me to live their own life, I can lose interest in the other along with their need for enabling. That may have a lot to do with my staying by myself most of the time. This seems to be just fine with me, I've lived alone for much of my life. I seem to have problems in relationship, very similar to what I read in the article on Asperger's Syndrome. When people start yelling at me for not paying attention to them when I'm caught up in my interests, it's time for a change in my habitat.

Another area of relationship I have encountered in the past few years has to do with love and jealousy. Many people seem to like to say that if you don't love yourself, then it might appear impossible to love others. With the question being, if we can only see ourselves in others, and we love ourselves, how can we not love others as we do ourselves. Some people don't find this to fit with their agenda. They seem to expect exclusivity in regard to love, and loving anyone but them upsets their apple cart. I do seem prepared to offer exclusivity, but only in regard to fidelity. I'm ready to promise not to sleep around, but I am not ready to promise not to love others. The process of aging and satisfying my curiousity has finally prepared me to pledge fidelity, and yet I intentionally remain alone. This may change, because I feel I have finally come to the point where I trust myself in this regard.

I seem particularly attracted to studying systems of thought. The systems of thought that interest me are generally not considered by many people as worth the effort it takes to learn them. Most of them have been developed to facilitate an intuitive response rather that proofs that such and such are so and so. I don't seem to require proof of things that my more scientific friends find valuable. Most things obtained by the scientific method have been proven wrong eventually, and only have temporary value. So do intuitive results, but intuitive results are not considered by many people to be written in stone anyway, so why go to all the trouble to prove them. The only thing I have ever encountered that has remained the same during my brief sojourn on earth in this particular body is that I have always been me. Me doing this, me doing that, me saying such and such, and so and so. These things have value for the moment they are useful, and easily discarded if they lose their value. I attempt to live in the flow of the specious present as often as I can, and hanging on to things that will eventually be proven wrong seems to interfere with my focusing on the flow.

The next morning we got up and used the facilities of the truck stop to straighten up a little, got some coffee, and continued on our way to Los Angeles. I have always been partial to Flagstaff, Arizona. I have approached this city from all sides at various times in my life, approaching it from the east produces a very odd sensation in me. I was raised in the coastal plains of North Carolina where the geophysical nature of the area consists of really flat ridges between swamps.

There are not many high places there. What we call hills are really just places in the road where one dips into the swamps and then climb back out of the swamp when the road returns to the flat land. The only place where you can see for any distance at all is where the forest has been cleared for farming, or you climb up to the top of the city water tanks and fire towers. Otherwise, even to see the sky you have to look up.

The odd sensation I felt as we approached Flagstaff is that when we went up a hill, we never went down again on the other side. There is no other side. It is a continual climb. Some special places I could look ahead and see the road in front of us going up and up until it disappear into the horizon.

There are not many trees, as such, until you get within about fifty miles of Flagstaff, but as the mountains Flagstaff is located on comes into view, the Ponderosa pines start appearing, and there is something to look at besides the flat plateus that appear as steps leading up to Flagstaff.

As we closed in on the city, the driver started pointing things out to me he thought interesting. He was a veritable tour guide. His constant chatter about his family life now changed into a conversation about his interests about the land. He had already told me to be on the lookout for various animals. Deer, antelopes, bears, jackrabbits loved the high country and the trees that seem to come outta nowhere just like the humans who lived there.

He pointed out some pretty high hills on the outskirts of town and asked me if I knew what they were. They appeared to have a cone-like shape, and I wondered outloud if they were extinct volcanoes. He told me they were the same material, but actually were the slag and refuse from coal mines. People used the stuff to pave their driveways and farm roads. The color of the stuff seemed familiar to me, so I asked him if that was the same stuff Texas used to pave their highways before asphalt come along. He said it was. When he realized my interest in volcanoes, which didn't exist near my home, he started pointing out little ridges of lava that had popped up in jagged lines all the rest of the trip. Even though I had seen these ridges in various locations out west, I hadn't realized they were real lava before.

The Ponderosas around Flagstaff were interesting to me because as we climbed in elevation they were grouped closer together and there was more underbrush amongst them. The driver pointed out that the higher one got, the more snow there was to feed them. When they first appeared they seemed spaced pretty far apart compared to the forests east of the Mississippi River, and I could see pretty deep into the woods through them, but as we climbed in altitude they were closer together and it became more difficult to see very far into the woods. After we got past the actual city of Flagstaff there were lots of other kinds of trees and wildlife there, and it seemed like a lot more water and streams about. The drop out of the high country and mountains around the city was much more abrupt than on the eastern side and sooner than wanted we were in the salt flats and the everpresent brown of the basin and range country.

The driver started talking about his intention to visit his brother in San Diego when he delivered his load to Los Angeles. He told me told me a lot more about his family and his relationship with them as we breezed through Nevada and eastern California. I had seen this country a hundred times before, so I listened and nodded in and out of a series of naps as we drove along. The little dog had appeared to adjust to my presence and sat in my lap much of the time now. The driver told me that he was going to spend the night at a big truckstop about fifty miles east of LA, and that's where he would let me out. We got there about dark, and he gave me five bucks to get something to eat. I got out of the big Red Ranger, waved goodbye, and wandered off to get some food and find a safe place to sleep for the night.

I tripped the light fantastic into town and found the busiest intersection of the Interstate. There was a big truck stop located just across the street from the on-ramp. I had just enough money to buy a cup of coffee, so I went inside, found a safe looking place to place my stuff, just across from the restaurant cash register, and found myself a seat at the counter.

I gnow waitresses. They have been my only friends in many desperate situations. I gnew just by looking at the one who waited on me was a single mom. She also gnew me. We didn't talk much, she was busy, but she kept my coffee cup filled until I had no excuse to sit there any longer and my poor belly could not stomach any more acid. I left her my widow's mite for a tip, paid for my coffee, and went near the driver's lounge where I found a stool at the noisy video machines near the door the drivers used to come inside and return to their big trucks.

As I sat there, all the fatigue from the previous night and the trip crept up on me. I kept nodding off, nearly falling off the stool several times. Occasionally, I got up and went to the restroom to relieve myself from all that coffee I drank. Eventually, a grizzled trucker came up to me and told me that I should go inside the TV room and sit in there or the management people would run me off for loitering. I hadn't realized I would be allowed in that room or I would have gone in there first. My fatigue plagued me even worse there because the seats were fairly comfortable like those in a movie theater. I kept falling asleep. After an hour or so, I decided to get back on the road.

The on-ramp to the Interstate sloped downhill. It wasn't very long, and there was a semi parked on the shoulder of the ramp so that it would have difficult or even impossible for someone who might stop for me to pull over. But, the traffic there was pretty good. A couple of cop cars passed me without stopping or hassling me, so I knew I would eventually get a ride if I just stood there long enough. I didn't stand there very long at all. A big red Road Ranger stopped right in front of me without pulling over. A dark-haired driver in his mid-thirties motioned for me to hurry up and jump in, and I grabbed my pack and got in the truck. He took off and entered the Interstate traffic before he turned to me and said, " I didn't know if you would still be there. I watched you inside the truck stop for a while, and figured you was alright, and hoped I could pick you up to have somebody to talk to." I thanked him.

After that, for a good long way I didn't even have the chance to talk much. He did the talking. That was fine with me. He told me he was going to Los Angeles, and that if I behaved myself I could ride with him as far as he was going. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by behaving myself, but not to worry, I soon found out that all I had to do was sit there, and everything that had ever crossed his mind would eventually be revealed. This boy needed somebody to talk to in the worst way. Since he was going to give me a thousand mile ride, I was glad to oblige.

He told me he was a Mormon. He had been raised in Utah and followed his father to Arkansa after he had moved there for a job. He was married and had two kids. He had worked as a diesel mechanic before he bought his own truck and started driving. His wife stayed in Fort Smith, Arkansa and kept the books and arranged all his loads through the internet. He used to have a satellite hookup in the truck, but since he had cosigned for his father to buy his own truck he didn't have the money to keep it up. He was worried about his father, who was a year older than me. Him and his wife had bought a coupla acres of land just outside Fort Smith about ten years ago, and built a house that wasn't finished yet. He had two big dogs around the house that protected his family, but they eat a lot of food.

He went on to explain exactly why he had bought the Road Ranger instead of a Freightliner. He had wanted the 'Cadillac of all trucks', one of them big ol' Peterbilts with everything on it, but with a family, he just couldn't afford it. But, one of these days when he got the kids through school, it was a done deal. Course, he didn't aim to drive trucks all his life. Up until two years ago he had two trucks, but the ol' boy he had driving the other one went to sleep at the wheel one night and tore the damn thing up. He had told him not to take them damn pills and drive day in and day out, but noooo, did I think he had listened? Damn rednecks, you can't tell 'em nothing. Since then, he decided to wait awhile, and since his Daddy come hitting on him for some help to buy a truck for himself, things had been kinda tight. He couldn't really afford to help his Daddy buy that truck, but then again, he was his Daddy, and he couldn't just let him sit there after he broke his arm and got layed off. The damned thing hadn't healed right. He told him not to go to that quack, but he went anyway. If he had just listened to him he wouldn't have had all that trouble.

We rolled on down the road. We got through El Paso a few hours later without much hassle. As we turned north up toward New Mexico I noticed how much El Paso had grown in that direction since the last time I had passed through. Surprisingly, it was the area on the eastern side of the Interstate that had grown the most. The Rio Grande pretty much controlled what happened on the other side of the road. The dairy farms with the thousands of Holsteins seemed to have gotten bigger, but it was hard to tell. Seeing a dairy in the middle of a desert had always been a strange sight, but after seeing all those irrigated fields of alfalfa it made sense. The smell hadn't changed a bit. It always made me remember those before-daylight forays I made to milk our family cows when I was a kid. I had to tote warm water to the cowbarn to wash the manure off the cow's udders. They liked to lay down in their own droppings in cold weather because it was warm. I knew the smell of cow manure from a long time back. so did the kids I went to school with. I only had one pair of shoes back then.

I find it interesting that no matter how many times I pass through an area there is always something it seems like I missed seeing in the previous trips. This time it was noticing the huge pecan and walnut orchards along the Rio Grande. They obviously had to irrigate them. I don't think I have ever been through there when it was raining. The old familiar pecan trees, so prevalent in the South where I grew up, seemed to conjure a wave of nostalgia from me. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why I had not seen those orchards before. The trees were not that young. But, neither was I. I had passed this way at least a hundred times or more and never noticed them.

Meanwhile, ol' Motormouth was telling me why he didn't go to church anymore. Didn't see any sense in it. Sure, the Mormons would help you, but they extracted a price for all that neighborliness. They wanted you to do this, they wanted you to do that, ya just didn't have any privacy. That's why he liked moving to Arkansa. A man could get away from all that, buy a little place of his own, and mind his own business. Did I like Mexican food?

I told him I did, generally, it depended on the cook. He told me that he had a favorite Mexican restaurant. It was located on a shortcut that connected I-10/20 to I-40. He hadn't been there for a good while, but was thinking about shifting north up to I-40 to go to Ontario, California instead of the way he had intended on I-20, just so he could get hisself some of that Mexican food. Would I mind if he went that way?

That's when I began to wonder what he meant when he had told me earlier that I had a ride as long as I behaved myself. Still remembering that it was late March, and I didn't have any warm clothes with me, and I-40 was just far enough north that I had to consider what weather conditions might arise, I decided to ask him what he meant by "behaving myself"?

He started talking about homosexuals, he said, "You ain't gone start none of that stuff are you? I mean, we gone have to stop and sleep somewhere, and the restaurant is at a truck stop, and I'm sleeping on my bunk in the back, and you ain't gone try none of that stuff are you? Because, if you are, then you gone have to get the hell out of my truck. You ain't... are you?" I assured him I wasn't. "Well, there ain't enough room in the back for two of us. Do you mind sleeping up here on the floorboard? It's got a rug on it, and you'll have to sort of curl around the seats, but it's better than being outside." Again, I assured him that would be perfectly okay, much better than where I tried to sleep last night. "Well, the dog pees there sometime. I try to stop him, but it don't always work. Sometime I just can't get off the road in time for him."

I forgot to mention the dog. He traveled with a small dog. Made sense to me. Kept him company, he just couldn't talk. The dog was jealous of me being in his seat, but after a while he got used to me being in the truck and got up into my lap. When he did that, it seemed like the ol' boy was jealous of the dog accepting me. Most of the trip, however, the dog stayed on the bunk in back.

The emphasis he placed on me not starting "none of that stuff" made me wonder if he knew why he really picked me up, but as long as my not being put out in cold weather depended on my actions, I figured I'd be okay heading north, and since the Mexican food would be my first chance to eat in a coupla days, I'd worry about what he did at the truck stop later.

We headed up through New Mexico on the shortcut to I-40. I hadn't been on this road before, so it was new territory for me. We passed through little towns I had never seen before, so I liked that. The small towns were about like any of the other small towns out west. Motels, filling stations, farm implement dealers, cotton gins, bars, and restaurants. The every present churches and county courthouses here and there. After a while we got to the town where the truck stop/restaurant was, and he found a spot to park the truck.

The Mexican food was okay, not much different than much of the Mexican food I had eaten all over the Southwest, but since it was the first food I'd had to eat for a while I was happy to get it.

When we'd finished eating, and he had told the waitresses all the jokes he'd heard since his last visit, we went back out to the truck to sleep. He warned me again about "starting some of that stuff", and when he finally shut up, I tried to find a comfortable way of arranging my body on the floor to try to sleep with the smell of dog piss wafting up to my nose. But after not getting much sleep for two days I crashed fast and hard. He...didn't "start none of that stuff" either, or if he did, I was so far gone I wouldn't have noticed.

After spending that night deeply enlodged in my insanity and then discovering I had lost my glasses I decided there was no sense in spending any more time at this intersection. I sure wasn't going to leave there via hitch-hiking, and so I gathered my stuff to make the two mile walk to town.

The service road that run alongside the Interstate made for easy walking. There was hardly any traffic at all. That was probably a good thing, because I was so exhausted I could hardly walk in a straight line.

As I stumbled along past the store/restaurant with it's gas pumps and the house trailers I imagined the owners or managers living in, I wondered briefly what they might have thought of what they saw in me that morning. I had been inside the store a coupla times the previous afternoon to go to the bathroom and to buy a single cup of coffee with what little money I had. What difference they would see in the old man that had come into their domain with some amount of pride, and the creature they saw this fine Texa's morning. It was a fine morning. There was no evidence of the storm that had descended with so much havoc on my person in the twilight of the evening before. I wondered if it was coincident that I had been born at twilight within a coupla weeks of sixty-one years previous, and how I got to be in Texas on the bum instead of living in the fine house my people had intended for me to be living comfortably instead.

That wondering, that comparison started my thinking about my insanity. I had been accused of being an insane person most of my life, including my childhood. "Are you crazy boy?" was the mantra my parents and siblings adopted at an early age. I always answered no. Well, most of the time I answered no, but there were times when I wondered if they were right. As I got older the mantra only changed from boy to man. "Man, are you crazy?" Many time I considered that remark occasion for a fight. Only twice in my whole life did I ever lose a fight, so the mantra went underground for the most part. From the perphery sometime I would hear the remark, "Hey, you better watch out, crazy or not, that mofo will whip yo' ass."

After I left my first wife in the middle of the night after her lover had the arrogance to come and knock on my front door and ask to see her, I spent some time traveling, ended up in Reno, Nevada where I wrote:

"Weep and moan, weep and moan,
and cry for one's own pity.
To live this life in such a way
is just a little shitty.
It clings like putty to the soul
and begs for understanding,
but no one hears with glued up ears,
the pleas of silent ranting."

I left Reno in the middle of the night also, and on my way back to North Carolina I stopped to see an old friend, a fellow poet, who told me it was probably time to check myself in to the insane asylum. He asked me if I would like for him to call my mother. I thought about it. I thought of Ezra Pound and other poets who were considered crazy... and agreed. My mother told him she had been expecting this call most of my life, and agreed to make the arrangements for me to commit myself. I hoped I was going to my real home this time. It was only there I realized what crazy was, and for the first time in my life came to gnow I wasn't crazy. The Lifers there inside, one of whom was a childhood friend, told me so, and them, I believed.

The road to town was empty after I passed the store. I began thinking about the insanity I retreated to that allowed me to pass the night. The term insane seemed appropriate that fine morning. I am a word freak, if nothing else, and I started thinking about it's true meaning. In-sane. The storm drove me inside. There was no other place of comfort I could go on the outside. I had to endure what the storm brought; wind, water, cold, lightening. It penetrated my retreat to the overpass bridge and seem to seek me out to drench me with it's anger. There is no blame in the Chinese calling such a storm a dragon. The storm had all the attributes of a dragon I had ever read about. It was certainly as powerful as a dragon. The only sword I had to fight the dragon was the two-edged sword of discrimination, otherwise I was empty-handed.

As I plodded along on that Texas side road, I began to think of my original purpose in my hitch-hiking sojourns. This purpose came from my childhood, and the visions of that childhood that told me to obey the command of Jesus to "go ye therefore into all the world." I didn't realize the implications of going empty-handed, or not taking any money or extra clothing, but to just go, and if I found myself in some hostile place, to stamp the dust of that place off my feet, and continue on. Even though I could barely lift my feet to walk, I stamped the dust of that intersection off my feet. Of course, there was no dust on my feet. Like the rest of me, my shoes were wet.

Suddenly, I was filled with light! All my woes fell away from me. The light was that of understanding. I suddenly gnew why I was supposed to do this crazy traveling. It was to create within myself this "in-sane-ness". To create an inner sanctum to which I could retreat to weather life's storms. I gnew in that moment that I had done it, and that I had been doing it all along. Even though I didn't gnow what I was doing. I had done it!

I practically skipped my way to that little Texas town filled with great joy!

I was dropped off a mile or two outside this town in Texas. I don't remember the name of the town and I'm too lazy to look it up. This intersection is a hitch-hiker's nightmare. It is not as bad as some intersections, there was a commercial establishment there. This place was like a general store with gas and a restaurant. They had a bathroom. It was a clean upbeat place with nice people inside, but it didn't do me much good because I didn't have any money to buy anything much.

There was a service road that ran along side I-10 that went to town, but this service road stopped not far past the store at a construction company's headquarters. On the other side of I-10 was a residential area. This residential area was the target of most of the local traffic that came out to the intersection and was apparently the reason the overpass was there. Interesting enough, the overpass had two bridges that carried traffic over the Interstate. There didn't appear to be enough traffic from that residential area, but this was Texas, and Texas is renown for doing things in a big way.

Outside of a couple of building and trailer houses around the store there was nothing but open plains behind the store to the north and west. For those of you who have traveled in West Texas, you know there is not much vegetation, almost no trees except along the creek banks and around houses where people have planted trees around the ranch houses. Lots of visual freedom, and with the humidity ususally less than 20% year round, you can see stuff a long way away.

On the northwestern segment of this intersection there were some fairly large piles of dirt that looked like it was stored there by the Highway Department. I never could figure out what they used this dirt for. During the night I was there I tried to find a place to sleep between the several piles of dirt, but I couldn't find a comfortable place to lay my head.

I couldn't find a good level place to sleep under the overpass bridges either. They just weren't set up the way most overpass bridges are.

I'm writing about a place to sleep here because in the day and a half I spent at this intersection there was practically no traffic entering the Interstate here. I think there were less than five cars that used the onramp the entire time I was there. I got to that intersection about three in the afternoon, and it became fairly obvious I wasn't going to get a ride during the night. The store closed around 6pm, and there was no reason for anybody to get off the Interstate at this intersection and get back on.

As it got dark I moved out to see if I could find a good spot to lay down under a couple of trees the state had planted. The ground was gravelly and bare of grass, the best I could hope for was a somewhat level place to lay down and use my small day pack for a pillow. I laid down and tried to adjust to the small rocks beneath me. It wasn't working too well. I found myself just laying there wondering where the hell I got the idea to go on this trip in the first place. Finally, I gave it up and attempted to read my copy of the I Ching I had brought with me as a way of occupying my mind.

These types of sojourns have a tendency to bring out the worst in one's mental life. I guess that's the reason Jesus commanded his disciples to go ye therefore empty-handed. Depending on the kindness of strangers can bring one to realize that there ain't much kindness there to depend on.

I gave up on reading, tried to meditate, but that didn't yield the desired results either. I sat up, and found myself getting morose and feeling sorry for myself. I knew this was not a good thing, and could not lead to an attitude that would serve to get me out of this situation, but it had been a long day, I was tired, couldn't really rest, and that's when I saw the lightening out to the northwest. As soon as I became aware of the lightening I felt the breeze pick up.

I could see the storm coming a long way away out there in West Texas. In the mood I was in I knew damn well it was going to hit right on top of me, and it didn't make me feel prophetic to realize that. I knew the storm was going to be a while before it got to me, so I sit there a while just to watch it coming. When the wind started howling louder and louder I knew I was in for a rough time. I started picking up my stuff and ran for the cover of the overpass bridges.

The wind grew cold. It was coming out of the northwest. I scrambled to lodge myself under the wee space up under the bridge and tried to find a spot to get away from the wind. I didn't have any warm clothes with me, and I knew if I got wet then that cold wind was going to really put me in danger.

The rains came, and with the wind blowing at about 40mph there was not way to get away from it's dampness. Under the bridge I wasn't getting hit directly, but the swirl of the wind was bringing moisture with it and I was dank to the bone. Water started dripping through the sections of the bridge above me and starting running down the slope under the bridge and there was no dry place to sit, so my butt was completely wet, while the rest of my clothes, while not saturated, were damp through and through. With the wind howling through the underside of the bridge I just got colder and colder.

The storm, with it's wind and rain lasted about an hour. I was already in a bad mood when it struck, and now I was really feeling sorry for myself, and there was another ten hours before sunrise. There was no level place under the bridge to lay down comfortably, so I just lay there with my feet pointed down the slope leading down to the Interstate at a thirty degree angle. I kept slipping down the slope in such a way that the crotch of my pants kept creeping up between my legs and pinching me in entirely the wrong places. I had to shift myself up ever twenty minutes or so to keep my pants from cutting the circulation off in my crotch.

I cursed myself, I cursed the storm, I cursed the wind, the rain, the cold, and even God constantly for the next ten hours waiting for the Sun to come up and lift my spirits. Being in a tough spot like this was bad enough when I was young and more physically able, but sixty years and a lifetime of learning better than to let myself get into these situations, really brought my insanity, always lurking, to the fore. I was alone with my insanity for a long dark night.

When the daylight finally did come, I gathered my stuff together to start the long hike into town. I discovered I left my glasses out under the trees when I had attempted to read, so I went back down there to look for them. I looked for about an hour and never found them. I was 1500+ miles away from the comfort of home without good sight. I was dirty, wet, disenchanted to the extreme, and nobody to even turn to and say "Goddammit!". What a way to go.

I watched a TV show call 20/20 where they showed an experiment they did with young children about 6 years old. The purpose of the experiment was to show how males and females are raised differently. To conduct the experiment they made some lemonade, but rather than using sugar they used salt.

They served the salty lemonade first to the boys and then to the girls, and then interviewed them afterward. When they talked to the boys about how they liked the lemonade they were very forthright about how bad it tasted. "Ugh! It's terrible! It taste lousy. Don't you people know how to make lemonade?"

When they served the lemonade to the girls, every single one of them said it taste okay. Even though the camera had been on their faces showed otherwise. One sweet little girl went so far as to say it was delicious and asked for more.

Next, they gave the children presents. They had told them ahead of time they were going to receive presents and got the children excited about it first. All of them were looking forward to getting their present. All the presents were pretty disappointing stuff. Socks, pencils, notebook paper, etc.

After a little hoopla they gave out the presents and interviewed the children. The boys expressed disappointment and bewilderment that they had been led to have high hopes. But, all the little girls acted nice and polite, and said it was just what they needed. Not one of them expressed disappointment.

These experiments helped me to understand something that has befuddled me all my life. I guess this frustration I've felt was best expressed in the play My Fair Lady by the lead male careactor in song when he pondered, "Why can't a woman be like a man?" Now I finally am beginning to see the light.

In the Gnostic Gospels found in Egypt in 1945, the Gospel of Thomas contains only the sayings of Jesus. Two of these sayings seem germaine to these experiments. Saying #114 talks about how a woman can enter the Kingdom of God, whatever that is.

114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Saying #6 contains a real clue as to how a woman can become male, the admonition, "Do not tell lies..."

(6) His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?" Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered."

Females seem to be taught from birth to be nice and polite, and to tell little white lies if necessary to reach that end.

Interestingly, in the story of Percival's quest to find the Holy Grail, he meets a fisherman who directs him to a castle. Once in the castle he is treated like royalty and then brought before the Grail King, who he discovers is the fisherman he met previously. The Grail King is brought into his presence on a stretcher. He is obviously a sick man. He has been wounded and is in constant pain. Percival doesn't realize his behavior at this moment is the test to see if he will be given the Grail. He should respond to his natural empathy and ask the Grail King about his pain. Instead he reverts to his knightly code, ignores the King's condition, and says something polite. He fails the test. Wakes up the next morning to find the entire castle empty, and then humiliated on his way out of the castle.

I think this story is synonymous with what Jesus says women have to do to become male to enter the Kingdom. They have to abandon the pretense of being "nice" and quit lying about how they really feel.

How ironic it is that women constantly complain about how men will not talk about their personal feelings. They seem to be projecting their own faults on to the men they accuse. The experiments with children mentioned above demonstrates this is not exactly their fault. I guess that's why it is so difficult for them. They have been honed from birth to be consummate and polite liars, and to say the proper thing instead of telling the truth of how they feel. It seems so instilled in them that can't bring this into a conscious realization and deal with it for what it is. No blame.

Now... about putting the toilet seat down. LOL

I've been notified that I don't update my blog in a timely fashion. Good. At least somebody is reading. It would be difficult for me to put up the front that I don't care. I do. Probably some personality flaw. But, if I didn't care, I probably wouldn't have a blog.

I had an acquaintance once who played the bass guitar most of his life, and then decided he wanted to play lead guitar. I played the tuba in the high school band and feel a deep affinity with keeping a bass line going, so when he asked if I would like for him to teach me how to play bass guitar to allow him to practice playing lead I was delighted. I played guitar for a long time, but only strummed chords to accompany myself while singing. Still, that did give me familiarization with the fingerings needed to play bass, so I didn't really start out cold and learn everything from the gitgo.

John and I had another connection besides music that helped our friendship along. We both like to smoke pot while playing music. He seemed to have an ample supply of some very good stuff, and so our practice sessions became an interesting time for both of us.

We got together a coupla times a week to get stoned and play. I was having a difficult time learning all the bass runs he had accumulated over the years, but he was a patient man, and even though I didn't play with the kind of precision he would have liked, what I did do allowed him to practice playing lead mo' bettah than he would have alone.

We didn't really have any ambitions to play in public, John and I, it was just an excuse to spend time together and have a good time. Things were going along fine until a woman friend of ours heard about what we were doing and wanted to get involved. We both knew this woman through different channels, but we both liked her as a friend, and thought it might be okay for this to happen.

We worked up a few songs that she liked mostly, and she began to talk about getting some gigs that might pay a little money, and suggested that exposure to the public would kinda force us to work harder at getting the music right. In other words, she took over the reins of us as a group, and soon enough it was not a casual gathering to socialize and enjoy each other's company, but had a purpose that went beyond individual wants and needs.

I guess John and I went along to get along. John had worked as a musician on a part-time basis in high school and college, and I had worked solo gigs during my travels on a pass-the-hat basis to pick up a little cash occasionally. Besides, she was making all the efforts to get the gigs and make it happen, so there was not much to complain about. She didn't smoke pot, and that came in as a big help in dealing with the public.

She came in one day and told us that she had arranged for us to play as the entertainment for an honors banquet for the local community college. There wasn't any money involved, but she thought it would be good experience for us, and maybe set the stage for more work down the line. We went along with her. It wasn't a big deal because we were only there to provide entertainment until the awards ceremonies started.

A somewhat startling, enlightening thing happened at that banquet. We set up early and played our small repetoire of songs we had prepared. John is not a singer, and was happy to play lead guitar in public for the first time. He got some applause and felt good about that. I played bass awkwardly and sang a coupla songs that got a little applause. And then the woman sang. The songs she chose to sing did not seem very appropriate for the situation to either John or I, but if that was what she wanted to sing there didn't seem to be much sense in trying to change her mind. The problem arose when the students at the banquet didn't stop their chatter and drool at her grand dame/bel canto efforts.

I could tell she was getting upset during the second piece. She got louder and louder, and she had totally lost her professional smile. Suddenly, she stopped singing, turned around and told John and I to stop playing, and marched right up to the head table and demanded that the community college officials shush the students down, that they were not being respectful of her talent. A red-faced college president acquised to her haughty demands, stood up, and explained to the students that they should calm down and listen to her sing.

She flounced back over to the bandstand, glared at John and I as if we were responsible for her tragedy, gave us an upbeat, and she began to sing the song from the beginning.

The students did quieten down for a while, but by the middle of the song they forgot about her being there, and if anything, got louder than before. This did not bode well. The woman stopped singing and it was time to go home. Talent seems to exist as a gift that must command respect rather than demand it, otherwise satisfaction is hardly ever guaranteed.

Needless to say this was our one and only gig. John and I tried to get together once or twice more as we had before the woman come along, but things just weren't the same. Then, he got a job outta town and we haven't seen each other since.

The woman? She's still around. Just the other day she stopped by my table at the local restaurant to feign the appearance that she was suddenly delighted to see me again. Then, she introduced me to the retired doctor she hoped would get her on the "A" list. He seemed very uncomfortable. Some things never seem to change.

I still try to remember the guy who picked me up in Louisiana the next morning. I remember him stopping to pick me up. I was standing at the end of the ramp leading on to I-10 where it melded into the Interstate. I had started the morning at the bottom of the ramp entrance for a while, but there wasn't much traffic there, and it seemed like mostly local people using the ramp going to work somewhere nearby. Since I was going to California I felt like I needed to go up to the end of the ramp where the main traffic on the Interstate could see me. Although the traffic was going pretty fast and I knew from experience that not many people will slow down from 65-70 mph to pick up a hitch-hiker, moving up to where they would at least see me would be my best bet.

The guy who did pick me up had a small, light green car, and when he did slow down to pick me up he finally stopped a coupla hundred yards down the Interstate and then backed up on the shoulder of the road. When I got into the car I asked him how far he was going. When he told me he was going just past Fort Worth, Texas it made me feel pretty good. That would put me more than half-way through Texas, and more importantly, into West Texas, which has always been my favorite part of the country.

I don't remember much about what we talked about on the way there. Maybe because as we crossed the Sabine River and all the memories it contained for me, I was beginning to feel better and better that I had decided to turn West from Florida and head to California instead of going home to North Carolina. Texas itself, as a political entity is not what thrills me about this area. It's just that the land changes. The vegetation especially. There is less of it, and without the trees blocking my view I experience a visual freedom that doesn't exist in the jungle-like ambiance of the coastal plains where I grew up. There is less humidity in the air, and I can see stuff a longer distance away. This is where hitch-hiking has a distinct advantage over driving. I'm always the passenger, and don't have to worry about negotiating traffic. I can take all the time I like to take in the sights along the road.

The open prairie land of West Texas is only the start of this kind of freedom. As the land opened itself up for my viewing pleasure it stirred old feelings in me of all the times I had been through here before. This was my favorite route to cross the country.

It takes a good long time to get to Dallas from the swamp country of southern Louisiana. It's a long, gradual climb from sea level to the hill and range country surrounding Dallas. When I think about this area I always think Dallas, although Fort Worth is not that far away and the two cities are often mentioned in one breath as the same entity. I've spent some small time in Dallas and not much at all in Fort Worth. It's a prominent part of my travel history. When I see the outline of the city, either day or night, my memories of what happened to me there flood my imagination. It was no different on this day.

I do remember the guy I was riding with wanted to help me. I have learned to be very leary of drivers who want to help me. It's not that they are less than sincere, it's just that they don't have the experience of being on the road to know what will help, and often, their effort to help is not helpful.

I also remember the look of that town he was going to. He was going to see his sister, and only had her address, and so we drove around that town a bit looking for where she lived. There was a big railroad depot and lots of switching tracks. The tallest building in town was no more than four stories high. The town was famous for being a big stop on cattle drives and had a coupla national heros that came from that place. I don't remember the name of the town. We finally found his sister's place. He wanted me to meet her, and had offered her bathroom for me to shower and clean up some. She washed the few clothes I had while I showered. It was the only bath I was to have for the next two weeks. This part of the driver's helpfulness was the good part. The next part of his helpfulness was not. He took me out to the western edge of town where he said there was a truck stop. This intersection was at least a mile and a half from the downtown area, and there was hardly any traffic at all. I ended up spending the night under the overpass bridge that crossed over Interstate, but hanging around that intersection is another story all in itself.

The next day, after I had slept on that rougn concrete all night, I got a ride with a man who had earned his living as a tug boat captain. He had got hurt on the job and was drawing disabiltity. He talked pretty freely about his life. He had been a tough guy, rode Harley's and intimated that he had been a Hell's Angel and involved in some of ther rougher stuff like drugs and murder. Now, however, he had undergone a conversion to Christianity and lived as a Jehovah's Witness. He was headed for Louisiana to visit his brother, who hadn't quite made the transition to a better life. We rode most of the day talking about what had happened to him. I asked him about being a Jehovah's Witness and how that affected his life. He was kinda quiet about it and I had to accept that. As we approached Louisiana, he asked me if I would like to go with him to his brother's house to meet him. I got the impression he wanted me to witness the big difference between the two of them. I asked him if it was a safe thing for me to do,and he assured me that as long as I was with him that I'd be okay. So, I agreed to go if he would get me back to the highway where I could catch a ride. He said he would do that.

His brother's house was actually a trailer house set back off the road. Real junky place with old cars and old motorcycles that looked like they were there for used parts. I forget how many people lived there, but there wasn't enough room for each of them to have their own bedroom. The woman had teen-aged children from other marriages, he had a couple of older children, and they had smaller children together. The youngest one was less than a year old. The mood changed from a sweet lovingness to screaming bloody murder to a Mexican Standoff constantly. Most of the time they acted like I didn't exist, but the woman made sure my coffee cup was full, even when I didn't want any more. The brothers really seemed to like each other, and they danced around the big change in the older brother I had come there with. I never witnessed him coming on to his younger brother proselysing his religious views, but it seemed quite obvious that both of them were steering clear of the subject. I was impressed with the difference in their personalities. The older brother calm and serene, and the younger brother prone to violent reactions to anything that did not please him. There was one moment that appeared explosive. That was when the older brother offered them some money. The younger brother screamed as if in pain and left the trailer swearing to high heaven. He wouldn't take the money, but after he left in such an abrupt fashion, the woman took the money and thanked him profusely. We stayed there longer than was comfortable for me, but after a few hours my driver took me to a crossroads where I could get back on the road.

I don't remember the town in Louisiana he put me out at. It was at an intersection of I-10. The roadbed was built up to keep the swamps from flooding it, so it was truly a "highway". There was a river passing through this little town. It was hard to tell whether it was a natural river or one of the many canals networked all through southern Louisiana. Since it was late in the day, and it didn't look like I was gonna get a ride before dark, I eased my way down by the riverside to look for a hideout to spend the night.

My approach to the river bank was exposed to the little town on the other side of the river. I tried to get there without attracting any more attention than was necessary, so I just sort of ambled down there slowly so it might seem as if I was just sight-seeing without a plan to stay the night. As I got down to the river I was kinda surprised that it ran with a fast current. This seemed a little unusual this close to the ocean where rivers ususally spread out and run deep. Maybe it was a canal instead of a river. There was a small path that followed the water, but it didn't look like many people used it. I had to dodge my way through lots of bushes and tree branches that crossed the little path. That made me feel safer. The problem for me, as I moved into this thicket was that the bank sloped sharply toward the water, and there wasn't many level places for me to lay down. I walked further in the thicket than I intended to looking for a place that was a little more level. I had to settle for the best I could do. Even then I had to clear out a place to get comfortable, and still it sloped down toward the water.

By the time I got a sleeping place laid out and some soft leaves to lay on, twilight was approaching. I sat and looked out on the water. It looked like a good place to fish, because I saw several fairly large fish jump out of the water. Suddenly, while I was looking at a spot where one of those fish had last jumped, I saw the fish hawk circling over the same area, and sure enough, just as I saw it, it swooped down and caught a fish in it's beak and then swerved over to a big stump on the other side of the water and began it's feast.

As darkness settled in, the rotting, steaming smell of the swamp pervaded the place, and I could hear the night creatures calling each other as the gathering began. A fairly large number of bats were flittering above the trees lining the banks of the water. I watched them until it got too dark, and then went to sleep. It had been a long day.