Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin —- The Early Years Keep this one: up to “chapter 8”

Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin —- The Early Years

This part of my personal writing journey that covers the exploration of my early life brings some unique challenges..  Putting to words the perceptions and experiences around being a youth, from the current perspective of a nearly 64 year old man, is difficult.  My intention is not to resort to “revisionist history” when it comes to presenting the memories and experiences of my childhood.   And, I have used my sister Pam as an advisor whenever there might be a question about my recollections.  I will present elucidations and editorials where I perceive that it might bring insight or enhance or develop the story.  A life without insight, is a life lived in the nightmares of the dark. The most basic of verbal descriptions of myself is the name given to me at my birth.  What is in a name, anyway?  My name had links to family members through both my mother’s and my father’s lineage, thus the two middle names, Oliver and Scott.. The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place-name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning “the willowlands”, or “brushwood thicket”.  The name Bruce came to mean “from out of the brushwood thicket”, to some.  Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been a Scottish surname since medieval times.  The name Oliver comes from an English origin. In English the meaning of the name Oliver is: the olive tree. The biblical olive tree symbolizes fruitfulness and beauty and dignity. ‘Extending an olive branch’ signifies an offer of peace.  The name Scott is from an English and Scottish surname which referred to a person from Scotland or a person who spoke Scottish Gaelic.  It also refers to a geographic description designating one from Scotland; The earlier race of 2nd century invaders from Ireland called Scoti; Blue Men B One who colors the body blue with tattoos; Another meaning is “one not from here.”.  Paullin in Latin has the meaning: small, and/or also of the lineage of Paul (of the New Testament).  “From out of the brushwood thicket, an offering of peace, from a man not from here, tattooed by life, with a small, or humbled status, of the lineage of the mystic, Saint Paul”.

Bruce circa Feb 1956. I did not have an immaculate conception.

I was born at a northwest Portland hospital in November of 1955. There was nearly two feet of snow on the ground the day of my birth.  My mother had to take a taxi to the hospital, because my father was at work at the time of my birth. I have read in the medical reports that I was fed formula from the earliest of ages, as my mother did not nurse me. I was a fussy, crying baby, and caused much distress within our household. My mother was a reader of Dr. Spock, the most successful pediatrician of the day, and she made her best, though, faltering, attempts at mastery with child rearing, assisted by Dr. Spock’s insights. My mother started back to work two weeks after my birth, because of the need of my father to pay off debts. I became a by-product of many baby-sitter relationships, as well as loving family connections with my maternal grandparents.. My father’s employment helped to characterize much of my early years and my relationship with my father.  Many of my own earliest needs were trumped by Dad’s compulsion to work often and hard.  He carried two jobs for many years, and the affairs of the home were arranged to guarantee that Dad could continue that endeavor.  Since I was a crying baby, and my cries kept my dad awake, I was wrapped in a blanket, and stored in the car in our garage at night, until he went to work at 2:15 every morning  Mom would retrieve me, and then try to make things OK with me until her own work preparation began, and then Pam and I would be passed on to a series of baby sitters for all work days for at least the first five years of our life.

My sister preceded me into the primary family by sixteen months.  I will only make a brief references to my sister Pam, and not because I am trying to be disrespectful or unloving towards her.  She was with me through the formative years, and she experienced at a soul level much of the same dysfunctional energies that I did. My sister became my frequent competitor for the attention from the parents, once my childhood sense of me  “figured out” that only limited servings of family love and attention was available.  I was troubled by bed wetting, and my sister sucked her thumb until she was eleven years old, so our childhood had powerful impacts upon our sense of safety and security. We were both considered very smart youngsters, yet we were both pretty messed up in the heads, for sure.

Before I learned how to talk, my sister thought that I was the best. She seemed to enjoy playing with me until I learned how to talk, then her attachment to me lessened somewhat, especially as she developed her own network of friends. I did not develop verbal abilities until relatively late in my childhood  My sister reports that she spoke for me until I developed the capacity, or  inclination, to speak.  I started talking near the age of four years, and then  proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT.  My father frequently wondered if I would ever shut up.

One of my early memories from age four with Pam is that she would be by my side while I played with my favorite “doll” named Percy.  Percy would talk to me, and in later life I realized that Percy provided the loving presence, feedback and acknowledgement that my young self felt that it was not getting enough of from my parents.  One day I picked up the phone, and started talking to Percy.  I swore that Percy talked back to me, while Pam stood next to me.  In retrospect, it may well have been the operator, or purely my imagination. Throughout the younger years, Pam appeared to channel some of my father’s negative energy back to me, becoming an additional voice for my father, especially when she became angry or unhappy with me.  Also, the poor girl had to share a bedroom with me for my first two or three years, which I am sure did not go a long way to making her too happy with me. The intersection of family history and my birth in November of 1955  created some interesting, and, at times, amazing stories for me.  My Uncle Worth died in February of 1955, nine months in advance of my own birth. His photo is included here, along with his wonderful wife, Aunt Effie.  Aunt Effie also died before I had any awareness, when I was less than a year old. My grandparents , as well as my mother and her brother, my uncle Wayne,. all dearly loved their Uncle Worth and Aunt Effie.  I also love and deeply respect my great-great Aunt Effie, and Uncle Worth, though I never knew them.

When I was 4 years old, I saw an old wooden rocking chair in my grandparents’ bedroom. I immediately recognized it, and claimed it as my own. I “remembered fashioning every piece by my own hands, and assembling it together myself”. The actual complete process that was undertaken for making the chair formed as a continuous internal video for me.  How could I have possibly have that memory as a 4-year-old? Of course my mother guffawed, and stated that it was a store-bought chair that my grandfather had owned outright since he was young, and told me that I was “full of shit”. I knew better and to this day, the memory of the chair, and its actual presence in our home, both haunts, and comforts me. It is now known that Uncle Worth was the original owner of the chair, that he was the maker of the chair, and that he passed it down to Grandpa Henry, who then gave it to me.  To this day, I still cling to this chair, and I refuse to even consider giving it away.

I still sit down in the chair on occasion, and I feel a mysterious, beautiful peace and completion while I remain seated Psychometry is the name now given to the ability to touch an object, and to see and feel its history. I had many other experiences of this phenomenon as a youth, and my “knowing meters” went off of the charts whenever we visited historical places, saw old, abandoned roads, or occasional random objects appearing to me in my day to day life. I would be filled with an incredible sense of eerie recognition and mystery. I was to lose this capacity when I was about eight years old.

Looking at my history, love found me a seat in Life’s Mystery.

As a child, it appears that I learned that my personal world could be an unsafe place, especially while I slept.  I remember most nights lying awake at least until midnight, fearing sleep and its dreams, until I fell asleep out of exhaustion, even if I was put to bed at 8:00pm.  I remember using that extra time to rehash my entire day, and everything that I said and did.  I would try to see where I could have behaved better, or differently, for a greater advantage.  I intuited that if I were a “better person” by day, my nightmares at night might not be so severe.  Yet, my day time behavior rarely improved, for I was fairly spontaneous, and I tended towards impulsive activity.

I had terrifying nightmares almost every night until I was 8 years old.  I would be so afraid that I would stay in my bed and pee it quite frequently, which presented some problems over those early years.  I was removed from the top bunk of a bunk bed that my sister and I shared for a while, of course, because of a couple of yellow “waterfalls”, leading to us having separate bedrooms at age 4 for me.

Even after I started sleeping by myself, my mother allowed me into her bedroom at night after my typical nightly nightmare terror sessions, as long as dad had already left for work.  I remember how protected from my demons I felt, as I lay in bed with her.   I also know, now, how in my childhood and later in life that I unconsciously sought out women, MUCH MORE THAN MEN, to bond with, with the hopes that the relationship would bring a measure of safety and acknowledgement into my life, which seemed to be quite lacking in too many of my male to male connections.  Yes, this was to become an unconscious “center” , yet another locus of energy, in addition to other energy’ centers (such as the fear of being ignored), around which all of my future perceptions were to be influenced by.

My sister and I fought frequently through the childhood years, and more than twenty times we got into wrestling matches and knock-out, drag-out fights.  Our last memorable fight when I was twelve years old gathered attention from the neighbors when we were teenagers, when Pam was fourteen, and me twelve years old at the time.  There were lots of screaming, yelling, and cussing, with the occasional body slam and slap to the side of the head.  No one was ever injured, other than any onlookers’ sensibilities.

I have memories of waking up from sleep, and, with my sister, walking over to the garage window, and crawling up onto my rocking horse to look out of the window, to see if our parent’s car was in the garage.  Of course, if the car was gone, we were both distressed by the parent’s absence, and, to this day, we both agree that this event did happen, and it happened several times.

That is me upon my famous rocking horse, given to me by my great-grandfather (mother’s side). That is my Uncle Wayne in the background, with Pam on the left

Mary Lehner was a most beautiful young woman, and a co-worker with my mother at National Hospital. She was our baby sitter several times while we were both under six years of age. She would care for us on weekends when my parents were out of town, and she took us to her family farm in southwest Washington on at least two memorable occasions. She was a most beautiful exception to the rule that baby sitters were bad for me. One of the worst baby-sitters that we had was named Jo Stanley. She was a woman who lived on Old River Road, and she was an unloving presence. She also had an abusive teenage son who terrorized me, and had threatened me with sexual assault on one occasion, pulling my pants down and bullying me.  I had several other decent baby sitters from age 0-5, but the Stanley’s were my living hell experience. My sister began first grade without me, and I experienced loneliness of an incredibly deep, painful nature.  The year that I spent with Jo Stanley without my sister was HELL for me.  My mother especially wanted to help me, thus she attempted to gain advanced entry for me into grade school .  I started 1st grade while I was still 5 years old, having taken an advanced entry exam to qualify me to start earlier.  My mother was starting to sense that I might have some skills, in addition to my talkativeness and expertise in being quite the pain in the ass.

My early entry into school ended up adding stress to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, who had a difficult time accepting me and my “immature” behavior. I was to be introduced to the dunce cap, and being seated in the back corner of a classroom, at a very early age.  To quote her, from my first grade report card:

“Bruce’s main problem is talking to others and to himself.  Some of his behavior problems have disappeared, however, and he is working hard”.

One of our first daily activities in grade school was to perform the “show and tell” ritual.  Students would bring objects of interest to tell stories about, or would relate their experiences with new or fun activities away from school.  Each student would get in front of the class, and have a few minutes to make their presentation.  I would go up every day, whether I had anything new to show off or talk about, or not.  I so much wanted to be the person who had something to say, and to get positive feedback about it.  After a couple of weeks of just standing in front of the class shell-shocked and silent, I was told to weigh and measure my worlds better, which was not part of my tool kit at that age.  The need to be recognized and heard, the fear of public speaking and the appearances of suffering and death  originated at different points in my life, but became part of one big family in my mind as time went on.

In the third grade, Mrs. Tozier had me again, and her final statement about me was the following:

“Bruce is a careful worker and wants very much to do his work correctly.  It has been interesting and rewarding to watch him develop this year.  His main problems are social ones”.

I spent a lot of time under the dunce’s cap in the back corner of the room in her class. Mr. Hill, the school principal and Mrs. Tozier required that I take medicine for my hyperactivity to continue to be allowed in her class. My mother and my doctor conspired together, and I was prescribed sugar pills, which were placed in a methedrine labeled prescription bottle. The “prescription” was given to Mrs. Tozier, who made sure that I took the fake pills daily.  I miraculously improved, though I believe that Mrs. Tozier’s behavior also improved through me taking the placebo!

I had fantasies about friends, of which I had so few, or none, in the early years.  About 2-3 times a year, Dick Jameson, a friend and co-worker with my father, would bring his son Richie over to visit, and each time it felt like I had to reintroduce myself to him, and vice versa, I felt so disconnected with him.  My mind would place internal “periods” placed after meeting people I did not see often, rather than “commas”, so bonding with others that I saw infrequently was an issue for me. One fantasy with remarkable staying power is that the only people who will be attracted to me are those that somehow I miraculously saved their life.  Otherwise, so my internal dialogue went, people would be uninterested in befriending or loving me, which probably helped to lead me into a few real life disastrous situations in early adulthood, and later on.  We lived in an area devoid of children my age and sex prior to 1965, and so I grew up fairly isolated from friendship until we moved to a new neighborhood, where it was a much more mature neighborhood, with more options for childhood friendships located closer to our new home.

There were many moments in the earlier reaches of childhood when I really loved my life.  What I really remember well from my childhood memories are:

My love for my mother, my uncle Wayne, and my maternal grandparents (who provided for me a safe, loving home to stay with them at least one weekend a month for most of my childhood),

My conflicted love for my father,

My love for our pets

My love for exploring Nature and the great outdoors,

My love for playing with and studying animals,

My love for running through the forests on trails, or creating my own trails,

My love for building ground forts out of fallen branches,

My love for climbing trees and making tree forts,

My love for exploring islands on the Willamette River near our home, and ,

My love for playing with friends, which were especially hard for me to find, or to make and to keep while I was young.

Sometimes, I felt uncomfortable around people my age, especially the boys.  I did not always enjoy playing with the boys, who could be too aggressive.  In first through fourth grades, I usually hung out with the girls, and I played kick ball and other non-contact or reduced violence games with them.   I would become quite attached to one or two girls, and I was already trying to figure out how to incorporate a girl into my life quite prematurely.   I preferred girls to boys, becoming overly attached to girls when I was as young as 8 years old.  The girls, by and large, totally lost interest in me by 5th grade, so I had to stick solely with the guys for most of my childhood from that point forward until I was fifteen years old.

I usually liked my father, but i was often angry with him.  Many times dad was my only friend, and I felt betrayed by him whenever I was over-enthusiastically punished for doing something wrong.    I was always guilty of doing something wrong, whether I admitted it or not. If I did not admit it, I was lying, which could lead to yet another swat.  As the Course in Miracles has stated, these were unrecognized calls for love, by both of us.

The day after the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when tree branches and fallen trees were everywhere, including our large backyard, my dad was so controlling as to how I was supposed to pick up the branches that I got angry with him, abandoned him, and walked a mile to help Steve Roth (son of owner of Roth BMW) and his family clear the wreckage around their home.  I liked Steve’s mom, anyway, as she was always so friendly to me.  They were comparatively wealthy, and I remember being told by Steve’s mother that my father was not rich, like they were.  This was the first time that I became conscious that families existed who were better off than we were.

Sometimes, I stole from my father’s wallet, which he left in his pants pockets that he hung on his bedroom door.  I would use that money so that I could go to the store and buy candy.  I did all sorts of things that I knew to be wrong, yet I took some delight in going against authority, and boy did I pay the price!  There were too many beatings with the belt.  Most of the behavior that I was accused of I actually committed, so in Dad’s mind I deserved what I got, though mercy sure would have been a nice charitable gesture, had he offered it to me, or my sister.  Looking back at my childhood, I was confused as to the best way to attract attention, and t may have been a subconscious desire to be recognized that motivated me to ’go against the grain’. I remember being in the 3rd grade, and my sister already having a boyfriend of sorts from her 4th grade class. That “boyfriend” had a younger brother, who was in 1st grade, who accompanied him. The older boy was a bully, but instead of pushing me around, he ordered his younger brother to attack me. I had never been in a fight before, and I was overwhelmed by the bellicose energy shown to me. The boy threw my unsuspecting body onto the ground, and he proceeded to punch me, bite me, pull my ears and hair, and yell little kid obscenities at me. Not knowing what to do (of course, my dad never taught me how to defend myself), but finally angry enough to do something, I began to imitate the lad, and overturned him and pulled his ears, and punched at him, and everything else he did to me, all the while being ridiculed and humiliated by my sister and the older boyfriend. Hmmph, this kind of bullying was to happen in several different forms again over the next several years, as my sister seemed to draw young men into her experience that thought picking on me was the way to her attention and affection.

I was taken to Sunday school at a local church, when I was six years old.  I did not like it very much, and I did not nor could not believe that Jesus Christ “died for our sins”.  I was frightened with the story lines of a son being sacrificed to appease a father’s need to heal the sins of his children.  I knew that I was not a “sinner”, at least not the way that they were trying to explain it to me, and that the language of this church was very harsh and confusing. When they tried to tell me that my only hope was to believe all of their scary, vague, and boring stories, I balked, and in my own unique passive/aggressive fashion, I just ignored what they tried to teach me. These Sunday School experiences appeared to show me that the church was promoting a bunch of confusing stories with little relevance to my experience.  I tried bible study only two more times in our new Milwaukie neighborhood, but stopped when a girl that I was interested in at the time stopped attending.  Yes, women were the best reason for going to church.  For me, that would prove to be true at least two more times, at times, beginning when I was twenty six years old. One revealing memory is from a 4th grade science class, where the teacher placed a metal object on a burner, heated It up, and then placed it into water, where it was distorted by the uneven cooling. We were to describe in written form what we witnessed, and I had no clue how to describe it. I had to look at another person’s paper to see what they were seeing, because I did not have the language to communicate what I witnessed. Well, this aspect of me also can be translated into how I experienced my upbringing while still being raised. I did not have the language to communicate what was wrong, though I knew that I was witnessing something that was not right (I believe this phenomenon is directly related to the inability of many abused children to articulate their experience to others). I asked to see what a fellow student had written, so that I could write my own version of what he observed. What I did in this situation is a microcosm for the process that most of humanity engages itself with in the creation of our shared, or Collective Consciousness–if we don’t directly experience something, we rely on others’ interpretations, and, after awhile, mistake their assumptions and judgments for the “truth”. My ability to bring personal experience and insight into language would continue to prove the greatest challenge to me in high school, and in the years to follow, all the way up to the present.

My father loved dogs, and would always try to have a dog available for our friendship. He instilled into me a great love and appreciation for the canine species, which I still hold onto tightly.    I loved my first dog Nina, who died while running with me while I was riding my bicycle along a busy road when I was 7 years old, having been hit by a car (my fault for riding too far from home).  I, of course, was devastated, and my dad and mom knew better than making me wrong for her death, but I knew it was my fault anyway.  Our “replacement” dog was promptly run over by our next door neighbor when he got into his truck and backed over our sleeping dog. One of my classmates, whose name is Nadine Ingersoll, had a beautiful Samoyed dog for a pet, and I told my father about her.  My father went out of his way to find such a dog of that breed for us.  Heidi was our third dog, and she was a beautiful Samoyed.  She became, without a doubt, the most wonderful creature that I had ever met up until that era of my life.  I began to recognize the miraculous power that the ‘love’ for another being has on me.  She became the ultimate canine companion for me, as well as for our entire family.

Heidi became my best friend ever.

My father started disliking cats, even though he had grown up with a house full of them.  He even shot at the occasional stray cat that he encountered on his property to protect his “wildlife”.  Fortunately for the cats, he was a bad shot.  My dad liked to tell the story of refusing to hunt with his father because he deplored killing innocent creatures, yet his awareness did not transfer to wayward cats, and was not automatically adopted by me. I remember capturing a cat during that era, and placing it into a burlap sack so that I could terrorize it.  For a brief moment, I felt some strange excitement at the potential for abusing this innocent creature.  After leaving it hanging on a tree limb in the burlap sack for an hour, I felt really bad, and released it unharmed.  I wondered then WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO HURT ANY CREATURE? My experience with a BB gun reaffirmed that understanding at twelve years of age, when somehow a shot of mine hit and mortally wounded a bird.  I was horrified by the creature’s suffering,  and I suffered with it as I tried to put it out of its misery.   I did not ever want to bring harm to any creature after that, other than the ones served on our dinner plate.

In the early 1960’s my father felt uncomfortable with how the black race had integrated into the local culture.  He would comment on some co-workers who exhibited less conscientiousness than he did while at work, and he referred to at least one black person disparagingly.  He would also offer pretty judgmental comments against the black race in general, especially when the LA Watts riots of 1964 happened.  I could not share in his racism at the time, not knowing any black people, or really understanding what the basis for dad’s occasional prejudice was.

My father had a fixation on people’s appearance.  He was SO JUDGEMENTAL of women who were overweight, and he was hard on my mother for any weight gains, almost from the beginning of my awareness of them as my parents.  I was confused by this as well.  I did not understand why Mom needed to be picked on for this.  To this day, I still retain some measure of extra self-consciousness around my own weight, and general appearance.  Whenever I stray too far from my “ideal” weight, I begin the process to reestablish an approximation of what is acceptable for me.  I remember that Mom and Dad engaged in “Punch and Judy” behavior, where they would trade insults/barbs with each other.  I never saw them hug once, and I was to learn later that neither had ever hugged, until I showed them what a hug was in 1987.

I loved listening to music with my father and sister, and he played songs by Roger Miller, Burl Ives, and Johnny Cash quite frequently, so I grew up to love those performers.  My parents were members of the Oakey Doaks, a square dancing group of at least 18 married couples, many with young children.  This was the group that was to be the source of many of my mother’s and father’s best friends during the period of time from 1958-1973. It was an activity that also took my parents away from our home, and we were left alone several times when they could not arrange baby sitting at the last-minute.  I loved the people that they knew, and I formed many short-term friendships with the children while attending out-of-town weekend events with that group.

I loved playing board games with my family, and roughhouse playing with my dad.  My sister and I would crawl all over dad while he was on the floor and wrestle with him.  Dad really did love his children, and he really spent a lot of his “free” time with us as children.  His problem was integrating the children into his busy agenda.  He would take us to several of the local creeks so that we could collect rocks for his landscaping projects.  Pam and I would earn 25 cents for each filled bucket that we would bring back filled with the smooth rocks of the creek bottom.

I became addicted to fictionalized history books, science fiction books and movies, and I loved the idea of becoming an astronaut, so that I could get off of this fucking rock, and explore the” real” universe. In 1969, my father and I attended the movie, 2001-A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick, and I was convinced that space traveling was in my future, after watching that groundbreaking movie.  When I scored ultra high on my grade school achievement tests, and then virtually aced my PSAT’s and SAT’s in high school, my father finally started believing with me that I had a really good chance at achieving that goal.  He never had quite caught fire with my potential prior to that point in life.  He had been “saving” money for college for my sister and I, yet in 1969, lost it all in a stock market gamble with his friend, Roland Mill.  If my sister and I were to make it to college, we were going to have to do that one on our own.

I loved to climb trees, and the taller that the trees were, the more excited, and fulfilled, I would become.  I fell from trees two different times in my life.  The first time that I fell, it was from a tree that was leaning over a gravel road near our first home on Steamboat Way.  I was eight years old at the time, and when I fell, I landed flat on my back, after a fall of about twenty feet.  I got up from the ground, with all of the wind knocked out of me.  I feared for my life, because I could not draw my first breath.  In a state of panic, I ran for our house several hundred feet before my lungs were to refill again.  Another time, in our new neighborhood on Hampshire Lane, I climbed to the top of a big fir-tree, and pretended I was on the mast of a great sailing ship.  A big wind did actually come up, and I lost my footing on the narrow top branches, and fell almost eighty feet to the ground.  When I awoke on the ground, I had a ten foot length of the top of the tree firmly in the grasp of my hands.  I was bruised all over my body, and sore beyond anything I had ever experienced before, but I had no broken bones.  The examining physician could not believe me when I told him I had tripped while running in the woods, which was the story I needed to tell to keep from getting banned from tree climbing.

I would like to steer a little different direction for a while, and talk about alcohol.   I remember loving beer perhaps a little too much. When I was 5 years old, my father was watching TV with me, and was drinking a beer.  He left the room, and I grabbed the beer and drank the whole thing.  When dad returned, he wondered where the beer went. Twenty minutes later I fell off of the couch because I had passed out, and then he knew.  For the rest of my childhood, dad had to be careful with me to keep me from drinking his beer, of which he usually had 6 or 7 cases stored in the basement.  By the time I was 13 years old, I probably had already stolen several cases of beer out of dad’s supply, but I never drank more than one individual beer at a time until I was fifteen years old.   I never once saw Dad drunk, at least at home, so he really had it under control by the time I started paying attention.  My paternal grandfather’s alcoholism seemed to have had an Impact on the way dad drank as a young man. My father enjoyed drinking, and was quite the social person, as well. But, his memory of his father’s behavior probably served as a good deterrent to abusive drinking, though my father certainly drank heavily after work during his earliest work years.

The childhood feelings of loneliness and abandonment, the frequent whippings with a belt by my father, coupled with whatever fundamental damage that may have been done to my soul through unintentional negligence on the part of my parents during my earliest years, may well have led to the creation (or revelation) of a dramatic story on the dream screen of my mind, which I will now recount.

1964 Dream

At 9 years of age I had a most amazing, realistic dream. This was during a period of time when I slept very little, as I usually got to sleep no earlier than midnight, no matter how early I went to bed. I lay in bed and reviewed the day every night before sleep, and see where I could have done things better, or said something a little differently. My dreams had finally evolved beyond the continuous nightmare phase that I was accustomed to, prior to age 8. But, being so immature, and not too worldly in my knowledge, I did not have the necessary background to know what to think about the dream. I had discussed the dream with my older sister, who seemed to have some partial answers to its mysteries (based on her understanding of reincarnation), but so many mysteries remained to be explained. I waited and watched for further answers, and went on with the all of the important business of being a carefree boy, though at times, I fleetingly experienced “self-awareness”.

Here is the dream:

The priest, having received his directive from “on high”, then returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region. He gathered all of the villagers together, and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake, and never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager that they must each go into their own home, and face the “evil one” without any protection or care from any of their gods or their symbols of the sacred. The priest then returned to his own home, having tossed all of his own idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing, and then began to summon the forces of the dark. He became surrounded by a fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the boundaries of the fog. The priest refocused his energy into his arms, and hands, and the sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, his heart, and his spirit, towards his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and he redoubled his efforts. The priest’s heart began to race out of control, he began to sweat profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began to take hold of his entire being, as he finally understood that his energy could not last forever. Yes, for him to continue this battle, he must sacrifice all of his life force. Yet, he felt that he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued to cut through the fog. Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth– the face of the evil one might be his own!

Being so immature, and not too worldly in my knowledge, I did not have the necessary background to know what to think about the dream at the time.  I discussed the dream with my older sister, who seemed to have some partial answers to its mysteries (based on her understanding of reincarnation), but so many mysteries remained to be explained.  I waited and watched for further answers, and went on with the all of the important business of being a carefree boy, though at times, I fleetingly experienced “self-awareness”. Who was that boy who had that dream? Is this dream message as valid today as it was, perhaps many years ago? What kind of life is there to experience once the forces of darkness within one’s own soul have been overcome? More will be revealed. I have had many more experiences in adulthood, some of a very profound nature. The pieces of the puzzle of my life are being integrated into a bigger picture. As I make sense of my own experience, so I make sense of the whole of life. The dream of the mountain lake community of people, with the priest fighting the force of darkness, is still quite alive in my mind, and remains a major teaching for me as both a child and now, as an adult. Looking at my history, I have witnessed and lived into many dreams inspired by the Mystery

As mentioned previously, I was an isolated boy prior to 1965, and I never clicked well with people outside of my family.  I was small for my age, plus I had advanced placement early in school, which resulting in the insertion of a relatively immature boy into challenging peer situations.  I had a limited number of friends, and I seemed to draw the “outcasts”, be they the eggheads, wimps, crazies, or quiet ones, to my circle of friends.  One can see the kind of person that I was, by the people who were drawn to me.  I would become intensely loyal to whoever would commit to friendship with me, no matter what their limitations or faults were. Usually, it was the girls of my age group that I more readily befriended, until the age of nine years old, when we moved from West Linn to Milwaukie.  Boys were in limited supply in our first neighborhood, and many were prone to be antagonistic towards me.

Our home was flooded by the swollen Willamette River in the great Christmas flood of 1964.  My father was concerned about the potential for future flooding, and decided to build a new home across the river, at one of the higher elevations.  He also acknowledged that I would probably have greater access to new friends there, as well.  Witnessing an electrician wiring our new basement made me excited by the possibilities of working as an electrician.  The desire to be an electrician was not a very close second to my desire to become a jet pilot, and to eventually become an astronaut, however. When I moved to Milwaukie, Oregon in 1965, I met three boys almost immediately.  My next door neighbor was Craig Salter, a quiet, introspective, slight build of a boy, who loved technical  books and fantasy novels.  Tony Mecklem was a small build, private sort of young lad who lived down the road, in a fairly primitive home built by his father out of masonry blocks.  But the main friend was Randy Olson, of whom I will speak extensively about later.

Craig Salter 1970 yearbook photo

Tony Mecklem 1970 yearbook photograph

School was not a problem for me in the new neighborhood, as the quality of the North Clackamas School District, at least in the grades schools, was substantially lower than that of the West Linn area from which we had moved from.  I was already far ahead of my peers, at least in math and English.  And, if the truth be known, I was starting to really get a handle as to how to succeed in school, by watching others who were doing well.  Also, a little secret that I carried is that many times, I could “access” certain information that I had never officially learned before, use my “intuition” and succeed scholastically.  What does this mean?  Well, in addition to a nearly photographic memory that I had when I was young, which I lost shortly after I started smoking pot, from time to time, especially during the stress of testing, information would just start appearing in my mind, and I would just fly through whatever academic challenge was presented to me.  It felt like I was cheating at times, and I did not understand it, or question it too much.  I was probably recalling information that I had already stored, albeit unconsciously, but when I re-read more of my story, I now wonder if consciousness can be much more shared than we normally experience, at levels both “above and below” verbal levels.  After examining my awakening to the “reality” created by words, I could see that embedded into each word that we are able to understand is the whole of human verbal experience.  Each word is a hologram of the wholeness of our verbal reality.  If we truly understand ONE word, in its wholeness, we can perceive other aspects of the whole, as well. I was to later see that this insight also applies to the human being, as well.  If I can truly see the one, I can see the All.   I am sure that this will open up or continue some discussion somewhere, if this obscure document is ever read by others.

I started to become a bully to some girls around the age of 10 years old.  If they were not attractive to me, they were susceptible to gentle, and not so gentle, ribbing and ridicule.  I found a behavior where I could get support from other boys, but it was damaging behavior on my part, and was to bring shame to me when confronted at a later time by victims of my abhorrent communication style.  One time when I was 15 years old, and waiting for a bus in downtown Portland, a young woman walked up to me, asked my name, and then asked if I knew who she was.  I had no idea.  She then told me how I victimized her with my poor humor, and made her pee her pants once.  I told her that I was sorry, that was not who I was now, but I felt ashamed.  I met another of my victims when I was close to 40 years old in an Oak Grove Fred Meyers store, and I sought her out, introduced myself, and apologized for what I had wrought upon her.  She had long ago forgave and forgotten, but I had not.  It felt good seeing her living a successful life in adulthood, complete with a happy family.  Yes, I was part of the oppression of the feminine spirit, until I became conscious. Beginning with my first participation with organized sports in sixth grade, I found that my father had no clue as to how to provide emotional support, instead supplying ample doses of shame and ridicule when I did not measure up to his standards. He never took the time or effort to teach me or coach me on sports, but he was overly critical of me and my level of play on athletic teams. One of his famous public humiliations of me was when I was pitching on the mound one day, and dad yelled out “you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!” That is just an extension of the same “blanket party” behavior that he adhered to whenever he felt the need to garage my baby body. I won’t go into the details of the discipline that was administered to me over the years of my childhood, but one little story is quite telling. A machine gun toy was donated to the Oak Lodge Fire Department during their toy and joy drive one Christmas in 1969 (that was where my mother worked then, with me being 13 years old at the time). The gun had some damage to it, which is probably the reason why it was donated. My mother brought it home for me to mess with. I tried to get it to work, but could not. I began dismantling it, trying to understand how it worked so that I could attempt to repair it. Ann Cook, a daughter of some friends of my parents, was over visiting me at the time. Dad came downstairs and saw the gun parts spread all over the basement floor, accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt, and whip the hell out of me, right in front of Ann. That one hurt a lot of different ways, for sure. I was horribly shamed, but it did not feel too unusual, at the time. Little did I know at that time that for me to disassemble and examine, and then to attempt to reassemble, my own life experience was to become my life’s greatest challenge, and then passion, at a much later point in time. I was required to take a World Geography class in the 7th grade, Mr. Vaught was the teacher, and also a Milwaukie Elks lodge member, as was my father. Mr. Vaught would report to my father during Elks club meeting about my wayward behavior and attitudes, and of my insufficiency, probably in an attempt to goad my father. Mr. Vaught was very rude to me, and considered me to be obnoxious, and dull, as reported to me by my father. It was through Mr. Vaught’s class that I was introduced to the Incan civilization, though, and Lake Titicaca, which is on the border between Peru and Bolivia. This was, and still is, a very sacred lake, and, according to the lore of the Incan people, it was where the origins of the human race began. I had an eerie sense of familiarity with the lake, and with the people of the area. I actually felt like Lake Titicaca was the lake in my dream from three years earlier. I proceeded to consume every book on the Incan civilization that I could find. I became hooked on the idea of traveling to Peru someday, to seek out some answers, and to experience its culture, perhaps for a second time? I eventually traveled to Peru in 2014, having a remarkable experience that has been documented elsewhere.

Craig Salter

It is time to talk about some childhood friends.  Craig Salter was my next-door neighbor in our new Milwaukie neighborhood.  He was of slight build, and he was a slow talker.   He may well have been a creative genius, but his “dreamy” state of existence was indicative of some fundamental issues going on inside of him.  I suspected from the beginning that his mother was mentally ill, as she was quite peculiar, and apparently quite a hypochondriac.  What concerned me was Craig’s similarity to his mother, as far as his mannerisms.  And I also suspected that Craig was bonkers too, but, hey, he was my neighbor, and as far as friends go, I could not be too choosy, eh?  I still wondered why I deserved to have such strange friends.  He was smarter than most people, yet he did not consistently apply his smarts to school, which was too restrictive for him.  On his own, before he was age 15, he had already designed a sophisticated internal combustion engine totally unlike what we use in today’s world.  He also designed and built his own models, FROM SCRATCH, of supersonic  jet airplanes, complete with spiral staircases made of pins and tiny pieces of paper glued in a spiral fashion.  He was also already designing transistor circuits by age 14, which just blew me away at the time.   HE WAS AMAZING!   I wanted his creativity so bad, as I felt that I had none.

My abilities appeared to be quite mechanical, which left me having the sense that I was just another boring automaton,  that I was just parroting/repeating others’ thoughts and behaviors.   I enjoyed building model airplanes and ships from the WWI and WWII eras, and building sailing ships from kits that were based on sailing ships of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.  I enjoyed building them, but then I would be so critical of my efforts, usually by comparing them to the “perfect” models that Craig could produce.  I would become so unhappy with my projects, and an unusual perfectionist phenomenon would occur where I would feel pleasure at destroying my great works because they did not measure up to some (presently) unattainable standard that I had set for myself.  This is huge, as it reflects something “fundamental” about an aspect of darkness of my human soul (see “He just wanted to watch the world burn”).

There were many nights when I slept outside and gazed into the night sky with either binoculars or one of many telescopes that I, or my friend Craig, owned over the years, searching for flying saucers, or other interesting otherworldly objects.  I needed to know that there were other options for life, life away from the trauma of this planet.  Craig and I became obsessed with building rocket ships and developing our own rocket fuel.  We were both quite impacted when between 7th and 8th grades, a friend of ours (Charley Davalos) died when his fuel cell exploded, sending shrapnel to cut his jugular vein.  Undeterred, I still became an avid rocketeer, building rocket ships and installing manufactured solid fuel booster cells into them, and then launching them thousands of feet into the sky.  Craig was stay in my life until 1987, though I only infrequently saw him after my first college years of 1973-1976.  The last time I spoke with Craig was in 1992, when he called me while he was in a horribly distressed state, apparently suffering from delirium tremens.  I told him that he was an alcoholic, and needed hospital care immediately, but he did not agree.  Recently, I heard that he has been institutionalized in a care facility in Canby, Oregon.

Danny Beauvais

Danny Beauvais was my neighbor from just down the street, who moved there during my seventh grade. I did not hang around him much, because he was quite aggressive, and had a “hair trigger” when it came to his emotions. He behavior frequently got him into trouble, His father was a paratrooper in the war, and had lost a testicle for his efforts during a mishap He had a very attractive mother, who garnered more attention from other men than his father cared to experience. I will just share one story about Danny, which involved a private conversation that my father had with Danny’s father. In that conversation, Danny’s father noted that his marriage was failing, and that his wife was not faithful. One day, in casual conversation, I noted that Danny’s mother had more interests than just his father, and Danny proceeded to get me into a body lock with his legs, and tried to squeeze me to death, until I took back what I said. I kept asking him, in between painful grunts, why he wanted for me to take the truth back. It did not matter to Danny, he just did not want to hear “the truth” from anybody, but himself. I would not take back what I said either, and I paid a very painful price for that “stubbornness”, so what played out here is classic male communication around “painful truths”. We did not associate with each other after that He ended up in prison a few short years later for assault, and many other crimes during the intervening period of time. Danny is on the left

Randy Richard Olson

I first met Randy Olson when I was in fifth grade, after he moved up to Oregon from California. He lived about 3/4 of a mile down Oatfield Road from us, and we rode the same bus to school together, for grades 5-8. He had many friends, with me becoming an important friend to him, but, by no means, not his only friend. He was an extremely gregarious fellow, with a great sense of humor. He grew up awkwardly, at least physically, with his legs being too long, and out of proportion with the rest of his body. He shot up so fast in 7th grade, and became so much taller than his peers, that he was given the nickname “Lurch”, with which he was named after an extremely tall character in the 60’s TV series called “The Addams Family”. We all played pickup basketball, football, and baseball games every spring, summer, and fall together, as well as shared all of the normal sleep-overs, camping trips, bicycle rides, pool and ping-pong games and activities that others our age would engage in, through our freshman year in high school. Then, in his sophomore year, Randy got his first car, and that car opened up all sorts of new vistas for all of us.

Randy Olson (left), and Dan Dietz at my wedding to Donelle in 1979

Randy immediately found his first long-term girlfriend, a young woman by the name of Terri-Lynn Barr, a person that he met at the Portland Rose Festival. Terri had a friend named Sharon Denman, who befriended Tony Mecklem, another of our mutual pals, and they both had their first “almost adult” relationships starting at about the same time. I felt a bit left out during this period of time, though I did finally get a couple of friendships going with some girls in the same approximate North Portland area that Terri and Sharon lived in.  Randy was to eventually introduce me to my childhood sweetheart, Donelle Mae Flick, during my sophomore year. She was to eventually become my first wife. For some reason, Randy’s girlfriends always eventually saw me as some sort of impediment to their relationship with Randy. One time while in our senior year in high school, we were all camping at Short Sands Beach campground at the Oregon Coast, and Terry became so irritated with me that she pulled the tent stakes out of the tent that I was sleeping in. That is only one of many stories that show that I did not always have the best connections with Randy’s girlfriends, though there were a couple of times to follow, in later years, where my connections became a little bit too close with some of his ex-girlfriends, which brought me some additional learning experiences.

I had started living with Randy Olson beginning in early 1984, until late fall of 1984, after walking away from my first wife, Donelle in the fall of 1983. Randy was always there to offer a helping hand, and always counseled me to look ahead.  He knew that I could find another direction for my life, and that it was important for me to enjoy the present moment as much as he did. Randy could never offer the sobriety direction, however, as he enjoyed his beer more than the next guy, and, I am sure, could not envision a life without the support of the spirits of the beer keg. Randy and I had roamed the Cities of Beaverton and Portland for many hundreds of nights, enjoying the music, the people, the temporary friendships of others, and the support of a multitude of friends that Randy had developed over the years, including his many girlfriends.

Di Di (Diane) Mccloud

I wrote my first love poem in 1984, when I became lovers with a woman by the name of Diane (Di Di) McCloud.  I had first met Di Di while she was running with Gary, a cocaine dealer and friend to both me and Randy Olson.  Gary and I became friends, and Gary eventually stored his money and cocaine in a safe house, which happened to be the home that I lived in.  How unlucky was that for me!  I got the privilege of running with the same important local people who Gary did, including prominent local rock and roll DJ’s, as well as the best local rock and roll bands.  And, during this time, I started to fantasize about someday hooking up with his sweetie, but I never had any intention of having an affair with her.  Somehow, she stayed with Gary for over two years.  Di Di was quite the free spirit, as well as a drug addict, so Gary’s appeal may have been enhanced by his constant supply of drugs. Randy and I began living together near downtown Portland in February of 1984  We lived on the 22nd floor of the Panorama Tower, and it was at this home that Randy first brought Di Di, who had recently broken up with Gary, into our shared lives.  She hung out with Randy for a few days, then lost interest in him.  Randy and I partied together only on the weekends, because of my shift work.  But, my partying got the better of me, and in April, I was placed in the Lovejoy Care Unit for thirty days, to recover from drug addiction and alcoholism. Upon my exit from the Care Unit, Di Di came back into my life.  Somehow, we hooked up, early in the summer of 1984, and this most beautiful woman professed her love and willingness to stay connected with me shortly after that.  I was blown away, as she was the most attractive, sexy woman I had ever seen.  I was so inspired by my relationship with Di Di, that I wrote my first love poem in 1984.  She treasured the poem, and actually sought another copy of it shortly before her own death early in 1987.  She was to become the first person that I felt I had ever truly loved, but we had to let each other go after a short period of time.

Alcindia represents an era with great overall darkness in my life.  I met Alcindia at “Bannisters”, a bar in Beaverton, after Randy and I moved into an apartment near 117th avenue late in the summer of 1984.  I danced with her one evening at the bar, then I brought her back home to the apartment that I shared with Randy.  She was a cute younger woman, who worked at the Aloha Intel Fab as a chip maker.  I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, other than I was a lonely man, and Alcindia might be a good short-term friend.  We hooked up that first night, and there were no strings attached, at least not initially. (the following is a poem found on a napkin that I had written upon while in the Care Unit) Oh, those ephemeral loves, I wish we had never started, Just vacant wayside stops in life, from which I soon departed. Standing alone, though seemingly surrounded by others, Desiring just one, wondering who would be my next lover. Searching for that one, to share in a new life’s dream, Disgusted by the many, who were not quite what they seemed. Needing attention, and wanting to share love, That’s what all of my dreams seemed to be made of. My life has become empty with only darkness looming ahead Without an inner change of heart, quite soon I will be dead. Running on life’s mysterious road, one final journey to start, With no maps to follow, save those presented by my empty heart. (end of poem, but not the end of the nightmare) I continued to live with Randy, while still working the graveyard shift as a maintenance mechanic.  Randy had a live-in girlfriend at the time, by the name of Claudia.  Randy thought that she might have psychological issues, noticing that she might be manic/depressive, or something along those lines.  She had come from another relationship where she lived with three guys, at least one of who was bi-sexual, and, according to Randy, she may have had relations with all three men over a period of time.  I rarely talked with Claudia, not knowing exactly what to think of her, and my schedule kept me away from Randy and her the vast majority of the time. The week following Alcindia spending the night at our apartment, Claudia became “interested” in me and my life for some reason.  I did not think much of it initially.  One morning, I came home from work, showered and went to bed at about 8:30.  Randy had already left for work, so it was just sleepy me and Claudia.  I was just falling asleep when my bed bounced, and a naked Claudia appeared next to me in bed.  Not knowing what to think or what to do about it, nature somehow knew what to do, and did so three times, and left me wondering how the hell I was going to explain this one to Randy. I did not tell Randy right away, feeling shame and remorse.  I continued to see Alcindia, who came over on my weekend and spent one more night with me at our apartment.  Since we were just “friends” there was no need to tell her about my indiscretions.  The next day I was visiting with her and her friend Baby at their apartment, trying to get to know Alcindia better.  Out of the blue, she starts telling a story to Baby about another girlfriend’s boyfriend who slept with his best friends’ girlfriend while his best friend went to work.  As she told her story, she repeated back to Baby, and to me, some of the language that was used during my soiree with Claudia, even recalling that there were three sexual interludes.  I was to learn, at a much later time, that she had placed a voice activated recorder under my bed.  I had my suspicions, but never confronted her about her “story” to Baby.  I subsequently moved in with Alcindia and her mother, at an apartment complex in Aloha, where I stayed until November of 1985, Randy stayed in contact with me, and, in fact, I lived with him both after walking away from Donelle, and, then, two years later, after walking away from my relationship with Alcindia. Randy was always there to offer a helping hand, and though he felt bad about what had happened to me, always counseled me to look ahead and find another direction for my life, and to try to enjoy the present moment as much as he did. Randy could never offer the sobriety direction, however, as he enjoyed his beer as much as the next guy, and, I am sure, could not envision a life without the support of the spirits of the beer keg. Randy and I had roamed the Cities of Beaverton and Portland for many hundreds of nights in the past, enjoying the music, the people, the temporary friendships of others, and the support of a multitude of friends that Randy had developed over the years, including his many girlfriends. On January 26th, 1986, after yet another night of fighting depression with the hops and yeast anti-depressants, I woke up upon Randy’s living room couch at 8:45am, with him emerging from his bedroom, exclaiming to my clouded mind: “BRUCE, WAKE UP AND TURN ON THE TV!! THE CHALLENGER JUST EXPLODED!!!” After watching that horrific event over and over, I realized that my life was also over. I saw mirrored in the Challenger disaster the total destruction of all of my hopes and dreams, and I made the decision right then and there to end it all. This was going to be it, because I knew that my problems could not be solved, at least not on my level. The pharmacist REFUSED to fill the prescription, even though I had one refill left on each one, and told me that I needed to see the shrink again. Hmmph! I saw the psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Beavers, and he perceived what might be happening within me, and elicited a promise from me that I would not kill myself. Dr. Dan had just had another patient kill himself using the same medication that I had, and he could not live through another such event (nor could I, I guessed so astutely). So, he got the promise from me, but I kept those pills under the front seat of my car. I told myself that unless I found the truth about my life, about all of life in general too, that I was going to leave the planet, as I thought that only the absolute truth would give my life any meaning at all, a meaning that I could live for. Randy’s apartment was quite small, and it was time to move on, in more ways than one.  I heard a message within myself asking that I begin a “search for truth”.  I moved out of Randy’s home, dumped my belongings at my parent’s home, and began living out of my car for the next year.  During my search for TRUTH, in which I traveled the darkest, most desperate roads that our city had to offer. The most amazing thing happened at the end of the journey, however, when a DEA agent literally pickup me up, and drove me to my parents’ home. He told me “Bruce, your search here has ended, You must begin again with your father, and restart your search with him. We can’t protect or support you any longer, it is too dangerous”. So, I landed in my parents’ home in late 1986. I was still a mess, strung out from months of drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling, and I had also lost 70 pounds, weighing a mere 136 pounds. My face was all broke out, and I had the most horrific shakes, and I “heard voices”. I had experienced convulsions several times. I had lost my capacity for speech for two days as a result of what must have been a stroke. I was still drinking, but I was no longer using drugs very much. I invited Randy Olson over on March 13 of 1987. He came over, and he, and his girlfriend and I proceeded to down an inordinate amount of my fathers’ booze and wine. My parents were still “snow birding” in Arizona, and would not be home until the end of the month, so I was still able to keep my dysfunctional momentum going. Well, after partying with Randy until about 10:00 PM, Randy had to go home, so I was left alone with my horrible problems. It was then, during a blackout, that I almost killed some innocent people, though through the experience, I had an amazing realization:  That I was insane, that the people that I had been associating with were insane, and that there might be a different way to live life to potentially restore my sanity and bring a sense of well-being to me, perhaps for the first time in my life.  After bouncing around almost two hundred AA and NA meetings over the next two months, I found a nationally known and revered speaker on AA recovery named Jack Boland, who helped facilitate a spiritual awakening with me, through a new interpretation of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I was so excited about the new possibilities for my life, that I decided to go visit Randy and tell him all about it, in May of 1987. On May 22, 1987, as I was driving toward Beaverton to visit Randy, a wonderful vision came to me. It was the vision of a loving mother, holding a baby, and I felt the love of this wonderful UNIVERSE for the first time in my lifetime. There is the love we have for each other, for our friends, our pets, our children, our families, but this love that I felt flow into me, and though me, transported me into a heightened awareness, and an awe. The beauty was too great to talk about, the feeling so overwhelming, so healing, so resurrecting. I had to stop my car on Canyon Blvd, and I got down on my knees and prayed my thankfulness to a CREATIVE FORCE that finally had found me receptive, and open, to its presence. I made it to Randy’s house, and I met with him for the first time since my blackout experience. Randy could not believe his eyes, he said “Bruce, what has happened to you? You look different, you look happy. You look at peace. You have changed!!!” Yes, I had changed. I started talking to Randy about my experience, and Randy started to get tingling sensations up and down his spine. The hairs on his arms starting sticking up straight off of his arms! Randy exclaimed “Bruce, what is going on. When you talk, I start to tingle all over. What has happened?” “Well, I think that I am having an experience with God, Randy.”, I said. Randy then said that such an experience was not for him right now, but he sure was happy that I was having it, because I needed something different in my life really bad, and really quick. How right he was! So, Randy was there at the beginning of so much of the important/ significant events in my life. And, he was there at their end, as well. I could not take Randy into my new-found world of love and happiness, I could only share, ever so briefly, my personal experience of it. My future conversations with Randy became increasingly less productive, and I found that I was losing touch with Randy spiritually, emotionally, and, finally, physically. I did not see Randy at all , the last 8 years of his life. The last time that I saw Randy, he was placing a 12 pack of beer into his car at a Fred Meyer’s store. He was hesitant to acknowledge me, and I felt as if he was trying to avoid me. He appeared sick, and bloated, and I wanted to say something to him about it. But I did not, thinking that it was not my right to intrude upon his life now. I had phone conversations with him three more times over the last eight years, with the last time being over three years ago. Our friendship on the “outer plane” of life apparently was already dead. And then, my wife Sharon reads his obituary in last Friday’s paper, shocking me to my core. My lifelong friend, Randy, was dead, apparently dead of a heart attack.  His body was discovered in his car in his driveway, having just returned from a Subway sandwich shop. And yet, he lives within me. I am so grateful to have known Randy. I now know that I could not take him to the spiritual places that I was to visit. It would have been the least that I could do for Randy, if it were only possible. He only needed a little willingness to join with me, to experience some of the joys of being on the path of recovery, healing, and love.. Yet that willingness was something that none of us can give to another human being. I had pointed to the new direction, but he chose to look the other way. His funeral was a shock to me, it was poorly attended (I only found out about it through chance, when Sharon happened to read the obituaries, and saw a listing for his funeral the day before). The most popular and friendly person that I had ever known died almost anonymously. He had, literally, thousands of friends and acquaintances through the years, but in the end, he was nearly forgotten. He died in isolation, but he deserved so much better than that. You are still loved, my friend. I am grateful to have known you, and to have experienced the thousands of hours of life with you, the 48 years of life that we partially shared. May you be at peace my dear friend, at the center of it all, from where you started, and to where you have finally returned. Save a place on your couch for me, will you please? I will know that I will be welcome in the Kingdom to come, if I see your apartment there.

Jeff Tobin (1955-2010)

Jeff Tobin was a boy that I had met in the 5th grade.  We were not neighbors, but we were friends at school, and we were both quite energetic lads.  Both of us had excessive energy, and this did lead to both of us getting into trouble both alone, and together once or twice.  I was elected class president in sixth grade, which was not to last long.  I walked into the boys restroom, and Jeff and several other boys were flooding the urinals.  I did not have the common sense to leave immediately, and in a need to “fit in” I continued to flush one of flooding urinals, just as the principal walked in.  Well, I was immediately removed from my symbolic position, and I felt considerable shame.

Jeff Tobin 1970 Yearbook photograph

One time I was beat with a tennis shoe by health teacher John Pavlichek, after being accused of making farting noises in class.  It was actually Jeff who made the noises.  Jeff was not so significant to me at this level of relationship, where his significance increased was 11 years later when I resumed by friendship with him and worked with him in the PAMS (Portland Area Mailing System-an experimental locally developed electronic mailing system implemented in the Portland Main Post Office).  I worked with Jeff in the PAMS unit for about one year.  He resigned after his first suicide attempt.  He successfully committed suicide when he turned 55 years of age, in 2010.

Dan Dietz and Bruce Chapman

I first met Dan Dietz in 1969, when I saw him as a freshman in high school.  He came from Oak Grove grade school, and I came from Concord grade school, to join the freshman class.  We did not associate with each other, at least initially, and rarely acknowledged each other until the sophomore year.  An associate of his, Mark Anderson, was in my PE class, so that is where I first made contact with the “greaser” group that they all belonged to.  There was Bruce Chapman, Dan Dietz, Mark Anderson, Barry South, and the many drop-ins that associated with them throughout high school.  Bruce Chapman had a garage outside of his home, where he perpetually worked on his 1955 Chevy race car.  Bruce’s Garage took on an almost sacred connotation in all who knew him over the next few years, as it became THE GATHERING PLACE many weekend evenings.  Lots and lots of suds were consumed there, and soon I was to join them in their weekly celebrations of hops, marijuana, and fairly close friendship, it seemed.

Dan Dietz 1970 yearbook photo

Bruce Chapman 1970 yearbook photo

In 1970-1971, during my sophomore year, I started smoking pot.  I felt really uncomfortable in my body at the time, and I was experiencing maximum anxiety around my self-image, and how I was failing to fit in with the high school community.  I was already trying to find my group, who to hang out with, because I just did not seem to fit in anywhere.  My friends from grade school were finding their own way, though we still stayed quite connected even during the turbulent high school years.  I was still having “social issues”, as a telling public rebuke from Mr. Griffith in my sophomore class of social science would indicate.  He berated me for appearing “haughty and distracted” and accused me of being a “pseudo-intellectual”, and laughed when he stated that I would not know what that meant.  I proceeded to give him the correct definition, much to his chagrin, and to the amusement of my classmates..

Having been rejected by every girl I showed an interest in, and bullied a few times by the more mature freshman and sophomores, I finally figured out that my physical immaturity had finally caught up with me.  Being 13 years old, weighing 92 pounds, being a freshman in high school, and not even having had puberty yet, made things really uncomfortable for me in the locker room, though at long last I got my first whisker somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year.  I gave up on the girls for a while and continued trying to establish who might be my “core group”.

I tried out for the cross-country team, because I was in great running shape from training throughout my eighth grade with Craig’s older Mark (who ended up designing the sophisticated software for the US Defense Department to use in the computers of their top secret spy planes).  Mark was 3 years older than Craig, but he was much more athletic and was incredibly involved in the community.  He was an inspiration to me, and I trained with him because he was so smart and motivated, and I wanted to hang with him.  I ended up running 3 miles a day for a whole year while in 8th grade, so I thought that this would be a good fit for me.  Craig and I attempted to run cross country, but I quickly became discouraged by the “faster” runners who were already on the team, so I dropped out.  I joined the chess club and the golf team my freshman and sophomore years, then dropped both of those options when I started using pot.

At this point, I had no idea who “my people” were, though I had still had 3 or 4 quite socially compromised fellow travelers who had been my friends since 5th grade. I was truly a “stranger in a strange land”, and the anxiety around this social adjustment was quite high.  Looking back, it is easy to see that I was in a vulnerable state of mind.

Marijuana and Alcohol

I had no desire to use drugs at the time, as I still was repulsed by the behavior of my sister, who, through her own drug use had become an outsider within our own home family structure. She still hung around, when she was not running with her other friends, or hanging onto her latest boyfriend. But her resistance to and fighting with my parents disrupted my own distorted sense of what a healthy family setting should look, and feel, like.

One late fall Friday night in 1970, my friends Tony M and Randy O found me at a football game, and said that I needed to try something with them. I went with them, and when we drove off of the campus, Randy brought out a couple of “joints” and told me what they were. Well, I wanted nothing to do with it at the time, but the peer pressure was high, so I went along with it. I did not get “high”, though they did, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves, though I could not understand how.

I tried the stuff three more times, because I became curious how a substance could change somebody so profoundly that they appeared to be enjoying themselves in public, which was an unknown concept to me. Then, the damage began. I actually became “high”, and nothing was ever to be the same again. For the first time in my life, it did not matter that I did not “fit in”, and my sense of social dis-ease left, and my own poor sense of self-esteem evaporated in a cloud of intoxicating smoke. Thus, the oppression of my human heart and soul became normalized in my own life, through the continued usage of the drug.

The drug brought an artificial sense of peace of mind and kept me from being so hyperactive mentally (yes, I was quite the precocious person, with an almost photographic memory).  Over the course of the many years of use, I lost many of my basic abilities to feel my emotional heritage and draw from my internal intellectual resources. Through the process of normalizing the oppressive qualities of this drug, I became almost immune to the distress going on around me, let along to remain consciously aware of the distress building up within my mind, and body.  But that is a story for later.

I started smoking pot before attending mathematics classes, and before doing my most difficult homework.  I was in the most advanced science and math classes already, and Rex Putnam High had even introduced a college level calculus class for our senior year because there were several people who had the same advanced capabilities as with me. Even calculus was too easy for me, so pot made boring homework more of a challenge to finish.   I enjoyed creating the extra level of difficulty for my work, and for my life, apparently.  Of course, the fun of using pot while trying to succeed in school ultimately backfired, when I hit college. It was disheartening to lose my nearly photographic memory to the damaging effects of pot, a memory capacity which had enabled me to slide through most of school without doing much homework.  Once I hit college, I can remember many, many hours of just staring at my homework, unable to comprehend what I was looking at, near the end of my academic road in 1976 at the University of Portland, but this is getting ahead of myself.

Note:  In recent years it has been established that the use of marijuana by human beings under the age of 25 are at risk for stunting their emotional growth and development. It has also been shown that discontinuing use does enable the repressed nervous/emotional systems to unfold in more natural ways that promote continued growth, into a delayed maturation, but it is a maturation, nonetheless. My personal experience is that using pot as an intoxicant is one of our society’s newest ways to normalize oppression and support the repression of our emotional natures.

In my search for another source of pot, Dan Dietz came into my awareness, and, thus, we were to begin a deep, though at times troubled, friendship.  Dan was a big young man, with little athletic inclination.  He found me some pot and invited me to smoke it with him.  I then was introduced to the “gang”, and the rest is history.  We hit it off fabulously, and I found my mission in life, which apparently was to drink and use until I died.  I got drunk for the first time in my conscious life with Dan, at age 15. And I knew that I was an alcoholic from the very beginning.  After a couple weekends of drinking, I admitted to myself that I was an alcoholic already.  I got so “high” off of alcohol, it was like a narcotic.  And I always drank until I was drunk, as there was no middle ground here.

Bruce Chapman (lower left), Tony Mecklem, Randy Olson, and myself, clockwise

It was here that I had the realization that I would die from alcoholism, that there was nothing that I could do about it but hold on tight and ride it out to its self-destructive conclusion.  My statement to myself was that I would either quit alcohol and drugs by age 30, or I would die, perhaps by the destructive effects of the disease itself, or by my own hand.  Yes, hopelessness came early, but there was still a lot of fun and experiences to be gained through its use while my ship of life sank over the next 16 years, and I did not go easy on it.  There were several nights my senior year in high school when my mother would have to hold a bucket under my head while I released extra beer from the stomach reservoir, which I would always overfill.  She investigated Alcoholics Anonymous for me, but I had no desire to connect with a bunch of boring old people, and I steered WAY CLEAR of anything approaching sobriety in high school, or in the two attempts for Bachelor’s Degrees at  the University of Portland that were to follow over the next 10 years.

Bruce with his freak flag flying, circa 1972

One profound experience around group energy temporarily “enlightened me” in 1972, when I attended my first rock concert.  There were three groups, The Grease Band, Rod Steward and the Faces, and Savoy Brown.  A group of us smoked some weed, and we all attended the $3.00 event.  It was Tony Mecklem, Sonny Graham, and myself, with Sonny supplying the Panama Red pot.  I did not know what to expect, but I knew that I liked the artists, so I was pretty excited about attending.  But, when we got to the Memorial Coliseum, I was amazed at the number of people who were there.  This was by far and away the biggest event that I had ever attended in my life.  We walked through the ticket line, and proceeded to try to find our seats.  But when I opened the door into the arena, it was like an explosion went off in my mind.  I went from carrying just my normal sense of self, with a marijuana “high” component attached to it, to a Cosmic/Group  mind experience.  I Was The Crowd, and it was like I was spread all over the Coliseum, and I was carried by the music, and I was the music.  A form of Cosmic Consciousness had hit me for the first time in my life, and I Was Blown Away.

Looking at my history, I have rocked with the Mystery

Donelle Mae Flick (Paullin)

My relationship with Donelle, and aspects of her own personal journey, is a most challenging of stories for me to tell. My experience with Donelle through twenty four years of a broken relationship contains enough information to be a book in itself.  I will make major edits in my attempts to contain this material in as concise a manner as is possible. Her life does not neatly fit into a linear time frame, and her story, just like her life was painfully disjointed, a quality that characterized both of our lives through at least 1987. Mental illness has left her in a permanently broken state, regardless of the medication administered by ‘professionals’ or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life. I first met Donelle in 1971 when I was a sophomore in high school.  I married her in 1979, I legally separated from her in 1980, and I divorced her in 1984. I have not heard from Donelle for over 23 years now, since the death of her father, Don Flick, in 1996. She may be dead, she may be institutionalized yet again, or she may still be living in a halfway house for the mentally ill while yet again attempting to make a transition back into the community.  Wherever she is now is a direct result of her relationship to traumatic abuse at the hands of a perverted man, our damaged male dominated culture, poor professional mental health care and options, as well as any unknown genetic predispositions. My story with Donelle begins with my best friend, Randy Olson.  Randy’s first long term girlfriend, Terri-Lynn Barr, had a step sister named Donelle, and one day early in our sophomore year in high school Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, where I had my first chance to meet her. This was not a date for me, but when I first laid eyes on Donelle, I was hooked. She was the most beautiful young woman I had ever met, gorgeous beyond all description, and she was incredibly intelligent, and a very caring person, too. I had a sense that I had witnessed my future, when I first saw her. I did not see her again for several months, but she had left an indelible mark upon my soul, and I just could not forget her.

I was still not driving at the time, so I just let all thoughts of re-connecting with her just slip away. She already had a boyfriend in Vancouver, Washington at Evergreen High School anyway, according to Randy, and I had such a low self-esteem that I felt that I could not compete for her affections, anyway. Randy did bring Donelle down again during our junior year at Rex Putnam High, and I made my move.  Donelle and I became sweethearts while I was still 16 years old, and she was 17. Eventually, Donelle and I, and Randy and Terry-Lynn, became couples that shared much time and love together.  I did not always get along with Terry-Lynn, which was a trend that was to continue through most of Randy’s relationships with women that were to follow. x-girlfriends, which brought me some additional learning experiences. I did not have a drivers’ license, or a car, but I knew if I wanted to keep this relationship going I had to do something. My father had a Honda 50CC motorcycle that he was going to use for fishing (he never did), so I commandeered the bike, grabbed a helmet, and drove that silly little thing up I205 into Vancouver where she lived (or to Camas, if she was staying there with her father). One time an Oregon State policeman tried to pull me over, and I attempted to elude him by driving off of McLoughlin Blvd into a field near Eastmoreland Golf Course.  When I attempted to fly through a ditch, the bike landed upon me, and the cop got me.  I was charged with eluding an officer and driving without a license.  The court allowed me to get a driver’s license so that they could suspend it for three months, and I also had to volunteer at the Veteran’s Administration hospital to work off my penalty for being an idiot. The transportation eventually improved a bit, but I always drove older cars, cars that we affectionately referred to as “beaters”., which were easy to repair or discard as required. Whatever the cost, I was going to keep pursuing Donelle, that was for sure!  I could not afford the car insurance premiums, so I kept cheap insurance on the motorcycle, which kept my drivers license from becoming suspended, while driving the cheap wrecks uninsured. We both were virgins, and our first sexual encounter was anything but satisfying. I began to wonder if this was all there was to sex, what was the point? Donelle was very cold, and unresponsive, and I was later to learn that she was non-orgasmic because of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. Yes, childhood trauma is the gift that keeps on giving, the trauma created by predators that sexually abuse our babies. Don’t ask me what should be done with those people. Life has a way of punishing them, but it is always too late to save the victim. Many of these victims are so traumatized that they never recover, so prevention is really our only hope here, at least for now. Donelle was never to recover from this, and she could not even “touch herself” without having an incredible guilt and discomfort. Sex was anything but fulfilling for either of us, and it was a harsh disappointment for me. My life experience with Donelle ending up becoming some of the most compelling, heartbreaking, depressing experiences that I could never have envisioned for myself, or for her. She had a nervous breakdown late in her senior year, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She was briefly hospitalized, and was placed on some powerful, experimental medications such as mellaril, artane, novane, haldol, Clozaril/Clozapine, and many others, to try to keep her independent. These medications are used to treat certain mental/mood disorders, or side-effects from other anti-psychotic drugs.. Clozapine is a psychiatric medication that works by helping to restore the balance of certain natural substances in the brain. Clozapine decreases hallucinations and helps prevent suicide in people who are likely to try to harm themselves. She was able to graduate from high school, but her spirit was crushed by her disease, and so was mine. I went from being a potential lifelong friend and partner, to a guilt ridden care giver, and care taker, boyfriend, and, eventually, husband to her. Donelle was not a pot smoker, but she did enjoy drinking a beer or two when it was offered. She developed a taste for hashish, but I only had access to hash only four times over the course of the 1970’s. Our relationship was never based around sharing drugs, but in 1982, when a cocaine dealer used our home to store his drugs, she found the occasional use of cocaine to be fun and exciting. She was pretty accepting of me when it came to my own drug use, as she did not try to discourage me from using, but instead found a way to fit in while our friends and family used drugs together. At this point, the damage that drugs were doing to me was overshadowed by the thrill and rush of their effects, and the socially connective activity around their procurement and use.  She thoroughly enjoyed the local rock and roll scene, which she became immersed within with our reintroduction back into Randy Olson’s life in 1982, when we moved into the Cedar Hills Apartments that Randy live in. I left all of my boyhood dreams behind in the process, walking away from a full scholarship with the Air Force ROTC, so that I could be close to Donelle, and give her the support that she would require for the rest of her life. I secured a lifetime guaranteed job with the US Postal Service the summer between my sophomore and junior years in 1975, with the intention of being able to provide short term economic support for Donelle, and myself. I was hesitant to marry Donelle, fearing that she would yet again destabilize, and collapse into psychosis yet again. She had several “mini breakdowns” during the period from 1973-1979 that were controlled through new medications, or additions to her old regimens of drugs (she took up to 4 different pills at a time, several just for side-effect mitigation of other medications!). After dropping out of college the first time, in 1976, I began to spend some real time with her again, just working the swing swift at the Post Office during that time period. It was a relatively stress free period of time, though I was quite the party animal with Donelle’s younger brother Terry, whom I had become great friends with. Terry and I dealt some drugs together, and I used my connections to secure high quality pot. One day, Terry got popped in school for drug sales, and his arrest made the local news. I was scared, and took all of our stash back to Portland, and hid it in my parents’ new condominium. As he was a minor, nothing permanent stuck to his record, but it changed how we used drugs together. Eventually, Donelle improved enough that she applied for the Sus Chef training at PCC Sylvania campus, and was accepted into the training. She did great for two years, nearing graduation, and we were married in September of 1979, after having lived together for 4 years. Donelle was making great progress, and she only needed to finish her last term to graduate in great academic and practical standing. Well, it was too good to be true, because she had her worst breakdown of her life to that point, resulting in my need to have her committed to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem (Dammasch) in July of 1980, less than ten months after our marriage. I left all of my boyhood dreams behind in the process, walking away from a full scholarship with the Air Force ROTC, so that I could be close to Donelle, and give her the support that she would require for the rest of her life. Before I met Donelle, and before I was introduced to drugs and alcohol, I was to first become an Air Force fighter pilot, and then become an astronaut, but instead I was permanently grounded, and resigned myself to a life of mediocrity. I absorbed more than my share of alcohol and other chemicals to help me cope with my own dysfunction, while I watched my lover disintegrate, and then, occasionally, resurrect herself, from the effects of her disease through the latest medications introduced by the drug companies. Yes, we both had lifelong diseases to fight, and we both fought losing battles. She eventually became a homeless street person, and the State of Washington finally accepted responsibility for her care, after I walked out on the whole process. I proceeded to begin my own search for the truth of my being, though I was working with very few clues about which direction to head in. To continue to witness the way far too many men abuse their physical privilege, and take advantage of their positions of power and influence to hurt and control women sexually who have little or no access to legal or social support systems is a demoralizing proposition. And, members of my own male sex have also suffered under its toxic influence, as well. My heart goes out to all women and men, past and present, who have been abused by this darkened energy. I am going to attempt to present a story about some of that male energy which victimized and traumatized my first wife, and some of the lasting effects that it had upon her and upon me through my relationship to her and her resultant mental illness.

Phase 2: Phase 3:

I visited Donelle several times at Ft. Steilacoom mental hospital near Tacoma, Washington over the years that she was committed to that horrible place (1988-1992). Donelle would tell me stories about the male attendants raping the patients, and the necessity of locking her door at night to prevent both the patients, and attendants, from raping or assaulting her during the night. I have written before about my visits here, and I will not comment further in this piece. (end) Note 2: In 1987, I visited Donelle at her apartment near Camas Washington. We had been divorced since 1984, but I still kept in touch with her on occasion, because of my concern for her. I had just gotten sober, and I wanted to make amends to her, as part of the program of working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (total sobriety was to last for me for over 20 years, until I developed a pain killer addiction in 2007). This time, she was in the middle of a complete MPD (multiple personality disorder) type of nervous breakdown. She had candles lit throughout her apartment, and the setting was quite eerie. I sat down with her to talk, and I noted that she looked so young and innocent, and I was struck by the change in her appearance and countenance. As she spoke to me, I felt like I was witnessing a 6 or 7 year old girl, with the new persona that was now speaking through her. For some reason, I was inspired to give her feedback about her “six year old self” that I was witnessing. I told her that she was not responsible for the sexual abuse that she experienced from Bud (and perhaps one or two unnamed others during Marlene’s drunken soirees). I tried to be as forgiving and compassionate as my heart would allow to the naive, innocent child making its presentation before me. We both cried together, and my heart was broken, and I hurt like I had never before hurt as a human being. I can only imagine her own terror and fear around her own abuse at the hands of her elders. Later in this visit, another “personality” appeared. A calm, composed mature person then “incarnated” into Donelle. I asked who I was talking with. She told me that she was “God”, and proceeded to give me the wisest, most loving feedback that I had ever received as a human being up to that point in my life. “You have reached the point of being able to accept my sacred beauty in your life. You have made peace with your past, but the peace will not last forever. You have much work to do, but your work will have love guiding it, and protecting you.” As I was open to “God” at that point in my life, it was a miracle that “God” could use the vehicle of a damaged human being to talk with me. That is how “God” works sometimes. Looking at my history, I remained open to the revelations from the Mystery Who can say with certainty what reality truly is? Those who cling too tightly to what they think that they know, can unintentionally exclude a “whisper from God” that might be experienced and revealed in the newness of each moment, no matter what or who the source may be. Donelle’s reality was a most challenging one. I am distressed by the abuse that men over the course of her life heaped upon her. She was the most loving, kind person that I had every known, and she got bulldozed by our culture and community, and her diseased response to it. Nature, or nurture? Had Donelle been lovingly nurtured since birth through her adulthood, I would only hope that the disease would not have erupted. Traumatization of our most innocent cannot lead to happy outcomes. Over the many years that i knew her, i tried to be the best support person that I could be, but I was damaged goods, as well, so I failed in my mission, too. She deserved better that what I could give her, because I suffered under my own limitations of selfishness, addiction, and sense of personal powerlessness. With mental illness, we all tend to fail together as a family, as a culture, and as a human race. Those who can bring forgiveness, insight, compassion, and a sense of the Spirit are the true blessings for the sick within our society. I am not so sure about the ones who distribute the medications, however. They may help in the short term, but they tend to deliver a mixed bag of goods, that is for sure. The great gift we can give is a non-judgmental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are told. Many days, I am not a proud member of the human race. Sometimes, I am appalled and disgusted by my male peers, and most times I want nothing to do with oversexed and over aggressive men. Men are the serial killers, they are the rapists, they are the ones wielding assault rifles, they are the ones terrorizing innocent people. There was a time when I would have lifted my fists against the aggressors, but a broken hand and broken collarbone proved to me that my structure could not support the war on Patriarchy and its ugly spawn, the damaged male ego and its addiction to its “penis power”. I continue to write about the vile, damaged parts of consciousness of the American male, much to the distress and consternation of some of my readers, past and present. I also know that there is a tender, loving, compassionate component to the male consciousness, and that is the part the I celebrate with all people seeking healing from our sometimes evil world, the world created by dark men and their twisted fantasies of domination and control. I will no longer remain silent. I confront darkness wherever it lies, even if it is within my own soul. For men, the big problem is not that we get erections, it is that we unskillfully manage ourselves in self-destructive and other destructive manners. Too many men live in a dark world dominated by their own genitals, the fantasies entertained in the privacy of their dark minds, and their own unskilled relationship to their own sexuality. I will not idly stand by while my peers abuse their family members, their female friends or acquaintances, or their world, because my heart will not allow it. Abuse in any form is unacceptable behavior, and the issues behind it must continue to be addressed by our awakening culture. I have left several male friendships because of spousal abuse or significant other abuse, and abandoning these friendships were some of the most excruciating, difficult actions that I have undertaken in my life. I have literally felt my heart tear from its moorings as I severed loving relationships with two men from my men’s group experience who either were active abusers or enablers. I want to thank my present wife (of 25 years) Sharon White, who has provided constant compassionate support for both me, and for Donelle, while she was still present and active in my life up to 1996. Her understanding and love for me, and open heart response to my first wife, helped me immensely in my own healing. Before I met Donelle, and before I was introduced to drugs and alcohol, I was to become an astronaut, but instead I was permanently grounded, and resigned myself to a life of mediocrity. I absorbed more than my share of alcohol and other chemicals to help me cope with my own dysfunction, while I watched my lover disintegrate, and then, occasionally, resurrect herself, from the effects of her disease through the latest medications introduced by the drug companies. Yes, we both had lifelong diseases to fight, and we both fought losing battles. She eventually became a homeless street person, and she would frequently show up in the 4th floor cafeteria at the Main Post Office on nights that I worked, and would sit at a table for hours, crying, and waiting for me to take a lunch break. I would pass whatever money I had on to her. She would recount her stories of horror of being out on the streets of Portland as a homeless person. Eventually, the State of Washington accepted responsibility for her care. I proceeded to begin my own search for the truth of my being, though I was working with very few clues about which direction to head in.

Donelle and I became sweethearts when I was still 16 years old, and she was 17.  I did not have a drivers’ license, or a car, but I knew if I wanted to keep this relationship going I had to do something.  My father had a Honda 50CC motorcycle that he was going to use for fishing (he never did), so I commandeered the bike, grabbed a helmet, and drove that silly little thing up I205 into Vancouver where she lived (or to Camas, if she was staying there with her father).   The transportation eventually improved a bit, but I always drove older cars, cars that were easy to repair or discard as required.  Whatever the cost, I was going to keep pursuing Donelle, that was for sure!

We both were virgins, and our first sexual encounter was anything but satisfying.  I began to wonder if this was all there was to sex, what was the point?  Donelle was very cold, and unresponsive, and I was later to learn that she was non-orgasmic because of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.  Yes, the gift that keeps on giving, the trauma created by predators that sexually abuse of our babies.  Don’t ask me what should be done with those people.  Life has a way of punishing them, but it is always too late to save the victim.  Many of these victims are so traumatized that they never recover, so prevention is really our only hope here, at least for now.   Donelle was never to recover from this, and she could not even “touch herself” without having an incredible guilt and discomfort.

I was hesitant to marry Donelle, fearing that she would yet again destabilize, and collapse into psychosis yet again.  She had several “mini breakdowns” during the period from 1973-1979 that were controlled through new medications, or additions to her old regimens of drugs (she took up to 4 different pills at a time, several just for side-effect mitigation of other medications!).  After dropping out of college the first time, in 1976, I began to spend some real time with her again, just working the swing swift at the Post Office during that time period.  It was a relatively stress-free period of time, though I was quite the party animal with Donelle’s younger brother Terry, whom I had become great friends with.  Eventually, Donelle improved enough that she applied for the Sus Chef training at PCC Sylvania campus and was accepted into the training.  She did great for two years, nearing graduation, and we were married in September of 1979, after having lived together for 4 years.  Donelle was making great progress, and she only needed to finish her last term to graduate in great academic and practical standing.  Well, it was too good to be true, because she had her worst breakdown of her life to that point, resulting in my need to have her committed to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem (Dammasch) in early 1980.

This is a most challenging of stories for me to continue to tell. To continue to witness the way far too many men abuse their physical privilege and take advantage of their positions of power and influence to hurt and control women sexually who have little or no access to legal or social support systems is a demoralizing proposition. And, members of my own male sex have also suffered under its toxic influence, as well. My heart goes out to all women and men, past and present, who have been abused by this darkened energy. I am going to attempt to present a story about some of that male energy which victimized and traumatized my first wife, and some of the lasting effects that it had upon her and upon me through my relationship to her and her resultant mental illness.

Mental health has become an issue of national concern. I share in that concern at the deepest level. Throughout my life I have witnessed the oppression of our citizenry, and our collective mental illness, and to this day it continues to distress me. The repression of powerful aspects of the basic human spirit is encouraged by our culture. Our political, religious, and economic enforcers, and those whose practice resides within the domain shared by all mental health professions, have found that they have limited options for dealing with the disease, resulting in feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and even institutionalized indifference. On that down side, there are those within our culture who misunderstand or ignore, over-medicate, ostracize and marginalize, Isolate and imprison, abuse and punish, degrade and dispose, and just plain “give up on” the mentally ill. On the up side, there are many family members, therapists, psychologists, spiritual advisors, and psychiatrists who have given their lives, hearts, and souls to the care and healing of our mentally ill, and my heart sometimes breaks FOR ALL OF US, as we struggle to manage both our own lives, while also being of service to these fallen fellow members of our family and society. The psychiatric profession would do itself wonders to finally gain the necessary insight to understand the underlying message here, for we are all being impacted by our cultural INSANITY, and far too many American citizens will continue their own unconscious descent into darkness and mental illness. The mentally ill need better guidance, and our sick society needs better guidance, before it is too late for all of us. Chemicals can carry a disabled personality only so far, and then the river of spirit, with healing and insight, must carry the diseased human being the rest of the way to sanity. Yet, better than treatment is a plan for prevention, which a resistant society will not take the necessary measures to enact. Donelle’s story points to a problem with professional bias. Each patient is trying to tell the world a secret, yet presently cannot reveal it. The mentally ill, like all semi-conscious human beings, do not yet have a safe container for their troubled feelings around whatever has traumatized their lives. It takes each patient a unique period of time to connect with the willingness to access the source of their pain and suffering. And it takes a specially trained listening ear to hear the broken person’s deepest meaning, as it can be buried among ancient pain relics from far distant places and times, and, in the extreme, disassociated personalities. Many patients in need of healing may well head for the door, figuratively or literally speaking, if there is a perception that they are not being listened to with compassion and empathy. That is the primary reason many never even reach a professional’s doorstep, for the isolation and fear informs the broken person that there is nobody alive who will understand them, and embrace them with love anyway. My first wife, Donelle Mae Flick Paullin, suffered from what psychiatric professionals labeled as paranoid schizophrenia. She developed this disease near the end of her senior year in high school. We had known each other for two years at this point, having dated for the last eighteen months. I struggled mightily to both help and understand her, over the many years that I stayed in relationship with her. I gained insight not only into her “disease”, which also devolved into multiple personality disorder, but also into the very mind of mankind. Mankind suffers from aspects of this disease in a collective sense, and the oppressed and victimized, and most innocent and sensitive people in our society are most vulnerable to developing such mental illnesses. ALWAYS REMEMBER, our mentally ill population, including the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the mine”. We will all die of spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable, and damaged, family members. I will now develop Donelle’s story of mental illness, by delineating five phases of her life. These phases are fairly arbitrary, and are useful only for breaking the her story into descriptive segments. I have made references to other friends from my youth, I have editorialized in places, and I have revealed some dark secrets from within my own life, as well. We are only as sick as our secrets” is an aphorisms frequently heard in recovery meetings. My present understanding is that we are as sick as our secrets, while being victimized by society’s secrets, as well.

Phase 1:

Donelle was never able to speak out against the abuse that she experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased family, where the mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of her young children, and the mother’s poor relationship choices that resulted from her own brokenness, led to the conditions of sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old. Her mother Marlene was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954. Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed and leased out, as well as being a full time worker at the Camas Washington Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that period of time. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage. Marlene and Don’s marriage collapsed, and they were divorced. But Marlene married the abuser Bud, and they moved in together near Five Corners in Vancouver, Washington. Donelle lived with her mother the majority of the time, due to the conditions of the divorce decree. Donelle had to face the threat of sexual attack from this criminal for the next ten years of her life, though her brothers told me that Bud was not allowed to be alone with Donelle, after Marlene and Bud moved in with each other. Yet, the damage was already done, and the little girl knew trauma intimately. Donelle’s mother, Marlene, divorced from Bud Barr in 1973, after she found a new boyfriend from her work at Parker Furniture in Vancouver Tom was the new lover’s name, and he tolerated both Donelle, and me, for a little while. But after Donelle graduated, Marlene and Tom insisted that Donelle leave home, trying to foist her onto her father, who lived in Camas.  Don Flick accepted Donelle conditionally for awhile.  Don had remarried, to a woman named Alice, who also worked at the Camas Crown Zellerbach paper mill.  Alice was kind of quiet, slow and dull, and was not too expressive, at least initially, of Donelle coming to live with them.  But after eighteen months, Alice was ready to have children, and her patience with Donelle, and with me visiting them at their Camas home, ran out.  Now, Donelle was still being treated for schizophrenia, and she remained quite brittle, psychologically.  Donelle pleaded with her mother to let her stay at their home, and Marlene relented for a little while. But after three months, Marlene and Tom insisted that Donelle move out, and she had nowhere to go.  Donelle’s family was ready to put her out on the street, literally, so in my need to protect Donelle, I was forced to move out of my parent’s home, and find residence in Vancouver, near where she still received psychiatric treatment at the Columbia River Mental Health Center.  My parents were aghast, as was the rest of my family. How was I going to provide for myself, my wife, and continue with college?

Phase 2:

Donelle and I got married in September of 1979, and she was doing quite well at the time. Her mental illness was being well-managed by the latest anti-psychotic ‘miracle drugs’ by all appearances, and she was studying to be a Sous Chef at Portland Community College Sylvania campus.. She was getting good reviews and grades there, and because she had stabilized so well, I finally felt comfortable enough to marry her, having delayed marriage since 1973 because of our tumultuous experiences around her variable mental health. My relationship with her family was usually civil, but I had serious issues with the poor family support Donelle had always been the recipient of. There was a time several months before our marriage that I wanted to hurt both Bud and Marlene very badly, for mistreating and abusing Donelle. Under the right set of conditions, I had the will, and the potential, to bring the greatest harm to Bud, but I never acted upon my disgust and hatred.  I broke my collarbone fighting with her oldest brother Keith once, when I made confrontational statements against Marlene, and Keith felt obliged to defend her. Keith later apologized, and told me I had every right to be upset, but not until I wrestled with both him AND his wife, who had jumped me too. Our marriage started off well. Yet, one weekend near New Years, 1980 our step sister (Keith’s wife) had promised that Donelle could baby sit their two children over the weekend. Donelle loved their children, and felt honored and really looked forward to caring for her niece and nephew. One of her challenges was that she could not be a mother right now, and it hurt her knowing that we could not have any children until she showed at least two years of good mental health. Her sister-in-law reneged on the baby-sitting offer, making horribly erroneous judgements against Donelle, and broke her heart. Donelle had the most devastating nervous breakdown of her life three days later. By January of 1980, she had collapsed once again into another ‘nervous breakdown’ which included “hearing voices”, talking to herself, and generally experiencing the ravages of her paranoid schizophrenia. She would repeatedly exclaim: “I am controlled! I am controlled!” yet be incapable of communicating with me who or what was controlling her inside. I moved out of our shared apartment on Harrison St. in Milwaukie, and moved across the street into another apartment, so that I could stay in close contact with her. I needed to stay in other quarters because she was so disruptive because of her horrible disease. She would not sleep at night many times, and she would hear screams from the basement of the Milwaukie Police department, where she claimed they were torturing civilians, and she would cry out in anguish because of what she was “hearing”. Dan Dietz was my best friend up to that point in time, and he was also the co-best man at our wedding. Dan had known Donelle almost as long as I did, and he knew all too well her limitations while she was in her “breakdown mode”. Dan was quite the drinker and party animal still, and Donelle, even in her diseased state, still liked to go out and listen to live music, and drink liberally. I demanded that Dan stay away from Donelle while she was in her breakdown phase, but he instead took her out one night, and they both drank to extreme drunkenness together. When I came over to Donelle’s place the next morning, I noted that her panties were on the floor, and that she was partially dressed, and still woozy on the couch. She told me that she awoke to Dan raping her after she had passed out. When I confronted Dan about it, He said that he did not remember anything, but I went ahead and broke my hand on a door that he stood in. I told him to leave, and i never saw Dan alive again. Donelle was to eventually receive new medications, which stabilized her enough for us to resume our marriage, which lasted for just two more years until early 1984. We divorced, and Donelle eventually became a frequently victimized homeless street person in Portland, Oregon. I first met Sean Tucker in 1972, when he moved into our area from his mother’s home in Colorado.  His father was estranged from his mother.  His father was a manager with the Bureau Of Indian Affairs, and Sean had chosen to live with him.  He drove a perfect four door baby blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, which was his distinctive chariot for most of the time that I knew him as a youth.  Sean had long hair, and always wore it in a pony tail.  We met at the Owen Sabin Occupational Skills Center, where I was learning Electrical Construction, and he was learning Printing.  Sean was a handsome young man, and he really had an easy time with dating women. We both liked to smoke pot and to drink.  But Sean’s favorite drink was wine, which I did not develop a real love for.  We used to visit the Henry Endre’s Winery along Clackamas River Drive, and purchase half gallons of Mead, Rhubard, or whatever the seasonal wine choice was.  The winery did not ask for age identification, so we took advantage of that laxity frequently. Sean became my best, best friend.  We did so much together, and I looked forward to having adventures with him, all the way until he joined the Air Force in 1978. We took long drives out into the country, we played pinball at all of the local bowling alleys and arcades, we partied with all of the other local party animals on weekends, and we shared many family events and meals at my parents’ home.  Sean did not include me in his family events, however.  I had many drinking and using friends, but Sean seemed to exist in another realm for me, where spirit joined with love and friendship and shared values and meaning.  We would listen to Alan Watts on Saturday night, and while “high” sometimes laugh and giggle together at Alan’s wisdom and insight, though we might catch an occasional AHA! from our listening efforts. We talked a lot about what God might be, and how we might encounter it in our journeys.  Sean was not a church goer, nor was I, so we were not limited by structured understandings at that time.  We would play with meditation sometimes, after hearing that a more prolonged “high” could be experienced through meditation than could be obtained through the use of drugs and alcohol.  One time I was meditating in a full lotus position on the pool table in my parents’ home basement, and my mother saw me, and was surprised and shocked by what she witnessed.  I was embarrassed by her discomfort with me, and shortly after that, ceased all attempts at meditation. Late in 1977, when Donelle was in the middle of another relapse into schizophrenia, Sean, Donelle, and I undertook a road trip through much of Oregon in my 1962 Buick Skylark. We traveled through much of the Oregon Coast, into Crater Lake, where we illegally camped along the lake rim, and Eastern Oregon around the Bend area.  Sean and I had our normal complement of pot and alcohol, as well as a couple of doses of powerful psychedelics, and Donelle had her mental illness, and all of the sometimes bizarre manifestations of it.  Sean had known my wife almost since the beginning of my relationship with her, and he was always a kind, supportive presence for her.  But, Donelle’s symptoms were hard to understand, and we were both quite helpless and felt out of control in the face of her disease of the mind. One evening, we all sat around the campfire, and Donelle continued her sometimes bizarre behavior.  She was hearing some sort of collection of voices, and she would talk to herself, and sometimes confuse what we were talking about with what was going on in the secrecy of her own mind.  Sean and I would cast uncomfortable facial expressions to each other, and try to engage in conversation with each other solely, especially in the moments when Donelle became overly detached and unresponsive.  In a moment of insight, I spoke of my helplessness in the face of managing Donelle’s disease and treatment, and the futility of all of my attempts at understanding her mental illness. I remembered that I had a form of LSD with me, which was a powerful mind expanding drug, also known for creating temporary symptoms resembling a form of mental illness.  It was then that I wanted to take the drug, and see if it would provide any insights into Donelle’s mindset, as well as how I might manage my relationship with Donelle; Sean thought that I should give up on that thought, and stick to the pot and alcohol. But I insisted, and I took the psychedelic. I did not receive the desired illumination, but it showed that my deepest desire was to be of help to Donelle, as well as to try to understand the nature of mental illness, and how to bring a measure of healing to a most difficult life situation. Sean went into the Air Force in 1978, and married a woman named Natty who owned a bar in the Philippines.  She was of Christian orientation, and Sean adopted the fundamentalist mentality through the course of his relationship with that woman; A deep, spiritual brotherhood was to be gradually, over many years fade into nothing but memories, as his work, family, and Christian orientation took him far, far away from the possibility of a shared heart and friendship; When I got married in 1979, my first choice for best man would have been Sean, had he been available.; I settled on Dan Dietz and Randy Olson, my other best friends, but these two just did not share quite the same spirit with me as Sean did during this era of my life. Phase 4:

In 1987, I visited Donelle at her apartment near Camas Washington. We had been divorced since 1984, but I still kept in touch with her on occasion, because of my concern for her. I had just gotten sober, and I wanted to make amends to her, as part of the program of working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (total sobriety was to last for me for over 20 years, until I developed a pain killer addiction in 2007). This time, she was in the middle of a complete MPD (multiple personality disorder) type of nervous breakdown. She had candles lit throughout her apartment, and the setting was quite eerie. I sat down with her to talk, and I noted that she looked so young and innocent, and I was struck by the change in her appearance and countenance. As she spoke to me, I felt like I was witnessing a 6 or 7 year old girl, with the new persona that was now speaking through her. For some reason, I was inspired to give her feedback about her “six year old self” that I was witnessing. I told her that she was not responsible for the sexual abuse that she experienced from Bud (and perhaps one or two unnamed others during Marlene’s drunken soirees). I tried to be as forgiving and compassionate as my heart would allow to the naive, innocent child making its presentation before me. We both cried together, and my heart was broken, and I hurt like I had never before hurt as a human being. I can only imagine her own terror and fear around her own abuse at the hands of her elders. Later in this visit, another “personality” appeared. A calm, composed mature person then “incarnated” into Donelle. I asked who I was talking with. She told me that she was “God”, and proceeded to give me the wisest, most loving feedback that I had ever received as a human being up to that point in my life. I have many faces, but you have recognized mine, and you have reached the point of being able to accept beauty in your life.; You have made peace with your past, but peace does not last forever.  You have much work to do, but your work will have love guiding it, and protecting you.” As I was open to “God” at that point in my life, it was a miracle that “God” could use the vehicle of a damaged human being to talk with me. I speculate that this how “God” has to work sometimes.. Looking at my history, I remained open to the revelations from the Mystery

---

Donelle’s reality was a most challenging one. I am distressed by the abuse that men over the course of her life heaped upon her. She was the most loving, kind person that I had every known, and she got bulldozed by our culture and community, and her diseased response to it. Nature, or nurture? Had Donelle been lovingly nurtured since birth through her adulthood, I would only hope that the disease would not have erupted. Traumatization of our most innocent cannot lead to happy outcomes. Over the many years that i knew her, i tried to be the best support person that I could be, but I was damaged goods, as well, so I failed in my mission, too. She deserved better that what I could give her, because I suffered under my own limitations of selfishness, addiction, and sense of personal powerlessness. With mental illness, we all tend to fail together as a family, as a culture, and as a human race. Those who can bring forgiveness, insight, compassion, and a sense of the Spirit are the true blessings for the sick within our society. I am not so sure about the ones who distribute the medications, however. They may help in the short term, but they tend to deliver a mixed bag of goods, that is for sure. The great gift we can give is a non-judgmental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are told.

Phase 5

In 1992, I was still in communication with my ex-wife, Donelle.  At this point, she was in the mental hospital at Fort Steilacoom, Washington.  She was committed yet again in 1990, and was languishing in there when I visited her.  This was the 3rd time I had visited her there.  She always had a shopping list for me to fill, invariably with some types of makeup. She still liked to make herself look as pretty as possible, but the effects of the medication over the years on her had taken a horrible toll.  She was twice her normal weight, and she could not keep her food down consistently. The most beautiful woman I had ever met was no longer that, and I was quite saddened, once again, to have to connect with her while she was so diseased. The medication was quite the “double edged sword”, and had been for all of her adult life.  I don’t know what drug cocktails they were giving her this time, but they had the same conflicted end results; (I now have little respect for the drug industry, or for a system that prescribes these drugs to people, rather than treating people in a more holistic manner). This particular weekend, my wife Sharon was running in the annual Hood to Coast relay race.  At this point in my life, I was not a runner, having hung up my running shoes in high school, and also having retired from recreational basketball in 1985 due to back problems. My only responsibility was to drive to Seaside to pick Sharon up at the end of her adventure, after my visit with Donelle.  I was quite down after my visit, and the drive to Seaside from Ft. Steilacoom was very dark, and subdued. When I started to enter the outskirts of Seaside, without even seeing one H2C (Hoot To Coast) participant, I picked up on a new energy that just started “vibrating in the ethers”. In the past, at the attendance of my first rock concert, I experienced a transcendent energy associated with a large group of people, and this would be the return of that energy in earnest.  I came to name this energy “TEAMWORK” after the fact, not knowing what else to call it.  It was the energy of collective support, love, companionship, and goal achieving, and I had never known that as a youth, as I had never experienced that on grade or high school sports teams, of which I never qualified for. It was like a beautiful “spell” had come over me, and I was totally captured by it! Running through my life’s history, I seem to have stumbled over a greater Mystery. Donelle, and the mentally ill in general, suffer from extreme isolation, and are insulated from emotionally satisfying and connecting relationships.  Donelle desired such connections intensely, yet did not  have the capacity to make them happen due to the chaos and distress that her mental illness brought to her.  A person will never know a greater heartbreak, than to know and love a mentally ill human being who cannot or will not respond to therapy, medication, and treatment. Yet, there are some who are considered extremely mentally ill, who have actually connected with the higher truth of life, creativity, self-expression, and spiritual awareness.  It is a dangerous road to travel, the one where insanity and mental illness is one of the fog lines, and spiritual enlightenment is the other. To bounce back and forth between those lines creates a turbulence unknown to ninety-eight percent of humanity. Enlightenment does not come to the “fat and happy” people of our world. People who do not feel the pain of their own lives, and of their own poor choices, are not ripe for the experience of change.  And, enlightenment is NOT a gentle process, merely attained through reading books, practicing affirmations, talking with our friendly therapists, and attending a few workshops and conferences. To find true enlightenment, a path through personal, and collective, insanity is REQUIRED. Watch out for the so-called ‘professionals’ of our culture, or those latest pseudo-spiritual gurus, who continue to try to oppress this movement, and repress those impulses within themselves, and others under their ‘spell’ or control Many of our children are destined to journeys through abuse, darkness, isolation, abandonment, and insanity, because those are the qualities that permeate the minds of our unconscious parents.  We can all quote from the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, or the sayings of the “enlightened masters” such as the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, or more recently Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, OR ALL OTHERS, for the rest of eternity, but until we face ourselves and our diseased minds directly and honestly, NO TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE WILL OCCUR. The same is true for our country, and for our world.  I will see you, and be with you for as long as necessary, on the “Dark Side Of The Moon”, until Light is brought to our world, and our children cease to be the victims of our oppressive, abusive natures. Our children deserve much better love, care, and concern than the vast majority of the parents with culturally conditioned insanity can attempt to give.  While incarnated into human form, with our poorly illuminated human minds, we can only witness the projections of our minds.  All that we will ever see, unto whatever eternity that we can possibly conceive of, is our self, so the most important question for each day is “how will I see myself today?”  The answer to that question determines whether I can see through the eyes of the truth of this moment, or just the limited eyes of the past. Our children pay a horrible price for our dark, ignorant projections of our selves, and our unfulfilled needs.  Each child deserves ultimate respect and love, or they eventually become just another dead illusion of our culture’s aging, decaying, conditioned mind.  The insight gained through mindful self-examination can erase the blocks to Love’s awareness, and imbue all life with a new meaning.  And our children can be seen for the Spirit that they really are, and be allowed to grow into the magnificent beings that they were meant to be, without the detours to greatness that poor parenting introduces Not everybody appears to have equal access to our infinite spiritual potentials. Had my first wife Donelle, a most beautiful human being, not been severely traumatized as a youth, a much different life experience might have occurred, and many, many people would have benefited by Donelle’s conscious presence in her own unique, spiritual experience of life, healing, and humanity. Traumatic experiences keep us chained to our launching pads. Healing is not so certain for those whose psychological damage is so profound. I have both witnessed and experienced great benefit from many people who have meditated upon their own unique illness and suffering, and we have had, literally, our trauma points reveal themselves to us, sometimes taking the form of actual ‘beings” who have taken residence within the body/mind of the sufferer. Most mentally ill people would benefit greatly from trauma therapy. I remain hopeful that all mentally ill people will find a measure of healing for themselves, once the conditions for the application of that miracle are better supported within our society, or are mastered by individual healers within consciousness, and integrated within our collective experience.. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. —-Nelson Mandela

(end of focused Donelle monologue)

Chapter Six

In the last two years, there has been several articles posted in Psychology Today, and in other scientific, spiritual and healing newsletters, about the possibility of some forms of psychedelics being useful in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders.  I won’t necessarily be directly addressing those articles here, but modern research may be confirming what has already been witnessed by many users of these mind-altering substances over the last fifty years.  Psychedelics, and their use, could take a whole volume, if I were to describe and define all of my experiences with them over the period 1972-1980.  I used LSD and mescaline during my high school years over twenty times, from early 1972 through the summer of 1973.  In college, I did not use them hardly at all, nor did I use them much after that, perhaps using them once or twice a year until 1980, when I ceased using them altogether.

Psychedelia comes under a different class of experience than alcohol, pot, amphetamines, or downers.  They were referred to as “mind expanding drugs” during the period of time when they were most popular, which began in the 1960’s and extending through the 1970’s period of time.  I found psychedelics to be extremely challenging to use, yet they brought into my awareness some amazing and logic-defying experiences.  I would even say that I even  had exotic, supra-normal type of personal events, on several occasions.

My first time that I used LSD, I was a sophomore in high school.  I had no desire to ever use the drug, as I was afraid of the potential effects on me.  But, Pam’s friend, Terry Potter, gave me a small pill that had been saturated with LSD liquid to give to Pam.  Pam, at this point of her life had no desire for the drug, so she gave it back to me and told me to return it to Terry.  Well, I kept it, and then decided to try an ever so small amount of it, in case I had a dangerous reaction to it.  I grabbed a razor blade, and scraped about one fourth off of the pill, and ingested it, and then took a bus to downtown Portland, to hang out at the city library.  Well, an amazing feeling overtook me about one hour later.  I became euphoric, and I had never felt so good in my life!  I felt peace, and love for everybody and everything, and being only fifteen years old and having never experienced such an energy before, I thought that I had found the “promised land”.  There were no visual or auditory hallucinations, because the dose was so low, and that was just fine with me.  It took longer than usual to sleep that night, as my mind remained on “high alert” well into the early morning hours.  There was no hangover, nor did I regret taking the risk using the drug.

Another time, when I went to attend a concert at Washington Park, a man sold me something called DMT, which he called the businessman’s LSD, because its effects only lasted 2-3 hours, versus the 10-13 hours LSD’s effects may cause.  This drug is similar to the drug Ecstacy as it is now being sold in the US.  I became euphoric on this drug, and I had a fascinating experience.  Every person that I would encounter for the next two hours, I felt an incredible kinship with.  I also felt as if I could understand them at some level way beyond my normal capacity.  It was as if I was able to feel all of their good thoughts, so to speak.  So, it was an experience of the elimination of fear for me when dealing with strangers, and giving me the sense of being connected with everybody at a level impossible to achieve while in normal states.  A more sedate and sane variation of this experience was to come to me more “naturally” fifteen years later, after recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism.

There is another LSD experience worth commenting upon.  Marc Anderson, Mike Kelsey and myself had taken LSD together in my senior year at Rex Putnam.  Mike had already dropped out of high school, and had his own “rat castle” so we enjoyed LSD’s effects at Mike’s place.  One amazing effect was that somehow Marc and I became entrained, so that we would “see” the same hallucinations at the same time.  Yes, I was taking the drug in high enough doses that hallucinations were now quite prominent.  One of the biggest prolonged laughs that we all had together was when Mike turned into the Devil himself, with red horns, a tail,  and a red face.  Of course, Mike could not see it, but Marc and I saw him transform Exactly at the same time, and we could not stop laughing for ten minutes!!

One final experience that seems to have significance is one time I had secured a variation of LSD called Orange Sunshine, while attending a summer concert at Delta Park in north Portland.  The pill itself was a small phosphorescent orange color, and boy did it pack a wallop!  Any kind of visual image or scene had the likelihood of changing into almost anything else, seemingly spontaneously.  When I say that the “walls were melting” at times, if I was in a room, the walls did melt with the most wonderful blending of color and sounds together.  My psychological set was eliminated as well (meaning all of my personality was no longer accessible, so I was witnessing and experiencing the moment without my normal ways of experiencing reality through my conditioning).  It was incredible, disorienting, wild, and transformative while under LSD’s influence.  I was to have a drug induced “awakening” where I realized that I was the one controlling my very reality, and through the focus of my will and my heart I could change what I was witnessing in  the world.  This took on rather bizarre manifestations, with colors swirling through new images, sometimes appearing as if some sort of internal kaleidoscope were projecting images out into my visual field, ALL UNDER MY CONTROL.

When I saw how I could also experience people in a thousand different ways, depending on the position of my internal “kaleidoscope”, I came to realize that I had a lot more say in how I experienced my fellow man than I ever realized.  I can understand why Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Timothy Leary and so many other pioneers in the modern day exploration of human consciousness have used LSD.  LSD, under the right conditions, can reveal the awesome powers, and potential, of the unconditioned human mind.  It can be temporarily transformational, and potentially quite beautiful, and dangerous, as well.  I found that the older that I got, the less of a positive experience that I got, so I stopped using LSD in 1980.  It took two days to recover from my last experience, which I shared with Dan Dietz.  I feared that I might not return to “my normal”, the place where I am comfortable in my “psychological set”, and I never wanted to use it again.  But, the positive aspects of mind expansion without drugs did occur for me much later in adulthood, having similar sort of mind altering experiences, in a much more natural, permanent, and less disruptive way.

One more story about Dan Dietz, and then I will move on

I was 21 years old, and my best friend at that time, Dan Dietz (RIP), and John Durkin, went with me to the Faucet Tavern. I was already a “seasoned drunk” by the time I had arrived at the age of 21, but being able to “legally” enter taverns and bars seemed like a big deal at the time (I had been getting into bars since I was 16 years old, usually accompanied by Dan). The southwest Portland Faucet tavern seemed like a great place to visit, as it was famous for its turtle races, and its all-around “party hardy” atmosphere.

Dan and I bought a bottle of booze, and we kept it in the trunk of his car, to “sip” from, in between beers at the tavern. I started out my birthday evening by playing several games of pool, gambling $5 a game with some “locals”. At that time of my life, I was a very good pool player, and I removed a few bucks from some very unhappy patrons. One unhappy patron followed me out to Dan’s car, where I was grabbing a swig off of a whisky bottle. He let me know that he did not like me having so much fun at his expense, and tried to fight with me. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but somehow the fight got “postponed”.

I walked back into the tavern, and enjoyed a couple more beers with Dan and John, and played some more pool. I was quite the “happy drunk”, though my behavior did not make the outraged individual I had already taken $20 from feel any better about me. The next time I walked out to Dan’s car, that unhappy man grabbed two of his friends, and they all tried to “teach me a lesson”. Dan looked out from the tavern door at his car, and saw that I was in trouble, and secured the bar manager. But it was too late, one guy pulled a knife, and the fight was on. There were a few lunges at me with the knife, and a couple of punches thrown (none quite hit me). There was a lot of loud voices, and some yelling and screaming. The manager called the police, but at that same moment, the guy with the knife took a final stab at me. According to the reports from Dan, I spun kicked the knife out of his hand (which was an act of pure, unadulterated luck on my part), and then I threatened to take his head off with the next kick. The sirens of the police cars about to arrive there scared the three attackers away, and it also scared Dan and John, who quickly threw me into the car, and we drove off up Beaverton Hillsdale Highway towards Wilson High School.

I got angry with Dan for not coming out to help me with the attackers, and he told me that calling the police was the best that he could do. He then not so politely, invited me to walk home from close to Wilson HIgh, to Milwaukie, about 7 miles or so. I was fortunate to make it home in one piece, and not be arrested for being drunk in public, or for drunken walking. I visited Dan the next day, and apologized to him. He was in really bad shape, and he was still pretty hung over. And he was the designated driver!

I want to return back to my sophomore year, to fill in a couple of gaps in the story.  I will present two timelines of important people from my past.  First, I will refer to my best friend from the years 1973-1978, Sean Tucker.  Then I will bring back into focus my first wife, Donelle Mae Flick (Paullin).

I first met Sean Tucker in 1972, when he moved into our area from his mother’s home in Colorado.  His father was estranged from his mother.  His father was a manager with the Bureau Of Indian Affairs, and Sean had chosen to live with him.  He drove a perfect four door baby blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, which was his distinctive chariot for most of the time that I knew him as a youth.  Sean had long hair, and always wore it in a pony tail.  We met at the Owen Sabin Occupational Skills Center, where I was learning Electrical Construction, and he was learning Printing.   Sean was a handsome young man, and he really had an easy time with dating women.

We both liked to smoke pot and to drink.  But Sean’s favorite drink was wine, which I did not develop a real love for.  We used to visit the Henry Endre’s Winery along Clackamas River Drive, and purchase half gallons of Mead, Rhubard, or whatever the seasonal wine choice was.  The winery did not ask for age identification, so we took advantage of that laxity frequently.

Sean became my best, best friend.  We did so much together, and I looked forward to having adventures with him, all the way until he joined the Air Force in 1978.  We took long drives out into the country, we played pinball at all of the local bowling alleys and arcades, we partied with all of the other local party animals on weekends, and we shared many family events and meals at my parents’ home.  Sean did not include me in his family events, however.  I had many drinking and using friends, but Sean seemed to exist in another realm for me, where spirit joined with love and friendship and shared values and meaning.  We would listen to Alan Watts on Saturday night, and while “high” sometimes laugh and giggle together at Alan’s wisdom and insight, though we might catch an occasional AHA! from our listening efforts.

We talked a lot about what God might be, and how we might encounter it in our journeys.  Sean was not a church goer, nor was I, so we were not limited by structured understandings at that time.  We would play with meditation sometimes, after hearing that a more prolonged “high” could be experienced through meditation than could be obtained through the use of drugs and alcohol.  One time I was meditating in a full lotus position on the pool table in my parents’ home basement, and my mother saw me, and was surprised and shocked by what she witnessed.  I was embarrassed by her discomfort with me, and shortly after that, ceased all attempts at meditation.

Sean went into the Air Force in 1978, and married a woman named Natty who owned a bar in the Philippines.  She was of Christian orientation, and Sean adopted the fundamentalist mentality through the course of his relationship with that woman.  A deep, spiritual brotherhood was to be gradually, over many years fade into nothing but memories, as his work, family, and Christian orientation took him far, far away from the possibility of a shared heart and friendship.  When I got married in 1979, my first choice for best man would have been Sean, had he been available.  I settled on Dan Dietz and Randy Olson, my other best friends, but these two just did not share quite the same spirit with me as Sean did during this era of my life.

I had one amazing experience around Sean, and it revolves around the time the rock group Heart was to come to town in 1984, to play an outdoor concert at Delta Park.  I had not heard from Sean for over four years at this point, as we  both had become quite busy in our respective lives.  Sean was stationed in Madrid, Spain at the time, and he did not ever write or telephone me, nor did I back to him.  I awoke one Saturday morning, in August of 1984, and I JUST KNEW THAT SEAN WAS ABOUT TO CALL ME.  No sooner than I had the thought, Sean called me, and told me that he was going on leave, and would be coming to Portland, during the same week that Heart was to play.  We were both quite excited about the prospects.

As I looked at my life’s history, at times I listened to the call from its Mystery.

It was hard to reestablish our connection when he arrived, however, as he seemed to have a lot of agendas that did not include me.  We did attend the Heart performance together, yet he got so drunk on Henry Endre’s wine that he became almost insane, and out of touch with me.  When it was time for Sean to fly back to Madrid, we promised each other that we would stay better in touch, but we both reneged over the years.

In 1986, after the Challenger disaster, and after my failed suicide attempt, I called Sean, who was still in Madrid.  I was still suicidal, and told him that I had a fatal brain tumor, and that I was going to die soon.  He offered for me to stay with him in Madrid for awhile.  The thought of a geographic change brought a little hope to me, so I secured my passport, and applied for my pension from the US Postal Service.  I was going to take that money, and use it for airfare and support to get me to Spain.  But, alas, by the time I received the money, my immersion into the Portland underworld was fully undertaken, and I could not extricate myself from my “search for Truth”.

We rarely contacted each other again, except through an occasional phone call, or, with the advent of the internet, an email.  In 2010, Sharon and I were car traveling through the southwest of America, and I contacted Sean to see if he could receive company for a day.  He could, and we drove 800 miles out of our way to travel up to Colorado Springs to visit with Sean, Natty, and their boys.  Sean immediately took me aside, and warned me not to talk about our past, or anything we had done together in the presence of his family.  I was left with nothing to talk about with Sean, except his religious beliefs, my spiritual beliefs, and superficial matters around employment and family.

They belonged to that nationally famous “super church” New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, the same one that was wracked with scandal when the minister, Ted Haggard was found to be using speed and paying to have sex with gay men.  I already had my suspicions about organized religion in the first place, even before all of the modern scandals around big churches and organized religion started erupting around our country.. Sharon and I had belonged to a local “super church” that had collapsed because of legal problems, and we knew firsthand that the marriage of congregation size and spirituality was a potentially fatal bond. Natty and Sean took us on a nice sightseeing tour for the afternoon, and talk of religion arose again.  This time,  Sharon and I rebuffed all attempts by the two of them to share our beliefs with them, for we intuited that they were enmeshed in this fundamentalist understanding, and that our experiences and beliefs would be considered blasphemy to them.  I sensed that the friendship was over, and I was very sad.  We only stayed the night, and in the morning, left for home.  I then realized that I may never see Sean again.

Here is the last message that I ever sent to Sean, which happened right after my father’s death

(from email of 10/02/2017)

Sean, Thank you for your heart felt sentiments.  I have been my father’s primary caregiver since 2009, when my mother died.  My father suffered from dementia, and depression and loneliness, since then (my mother thought that he was developing Alzheimer’s two years prior to her death, but he never forgot Pam’s and my name, though he did forget my wife’s name the last week of his life).

I went to the doctor with my father in January, trying to qualify Dad for hospice, but, incredibly, his physical health was not poor enough to qualify, even though he was deteriorating.  My biggest concern in January was that my father was going to outlive me, and that my sister would put him in a nursing home, as she had not explored or developed the “caregiver mentality”.  Anyway, with several of my peers already having died from brain cancer or heart disease, or suicide, I have been dealing with what is most true and important to maintaining the highest quality of life for myself, and for those I share love and friendship with.

It all comes down to this, Sean.  Do you want to continue to be a dying voice from my past, or part of a living, loving presence in the Now?  That is a decision we both must make.  Phone messages and email messages cannot resurrect a dying relationship, only a truly shared journey together can.  This Requires sharing both space and time together, and a commitment to sharing truth, values, and Spirit. I loved you and valued you as a friend when you were willing and  able to be present in my life. Almost 35 years have passed since that has happened.  I am in the home stretch of life, and gathering those together who are ready, willing, and able to truly share in these precious few moments we all have left.

Thanks for the time shared.  Memories cannot sustain me now. Presence, and the loving of others in the present moment gives me life, and renews my heart daily.  It is just too painful for me to pretend that we can continue being friends under these circumstances.  Either we have a lot to talk about, and find a new way to connect, and be real friends, or the grave site for our friendship for has already been dug, awaiting more time for the dirt to be thrown over our memories. With love, and sorrow, Bruce

Relationships sometimes end well before the body dies, or before the last time we say goodbye to each other.  I have experienced this sad fact several times over the course of my life.

Chapter Seven