Part V: The Search For Truth (part V and VI may be merged)

• What is Truth?
• Chapter 1: The Circuitry of the Soul; Breaking Free from Cultural Hypnotism: A Journey to Inner Silence and Authentic Truth
• The Search For Truth, Spiritual Evolution, Healing, and Purpose–A Multi-Media Experiment
• Chapter 11: The Abyss and the Plow Horse: A Descent into Darkness and a Search for Truth
• Before the Word: The Eternal Search for Truth and Creation
• Chapter 93: The Voice of Awakening: Navigating the Modern Search for Truth
• The Power of Storytelling and the Search for Truth
• The Launching Pad-Damaged, Grounded, and a Search For Truth (Maybe part of Book #6)

What is Truth?

What is truth?

This is a question posed both by Pilate and billions of other humans since language first began, one that echoes through the corridors of history, inviting reflection, debate, and, for many, bewilderment. Yet, as profound as this question is, the response from Jesus that was received—utter, deliberate silence—might just hold the key to understanding its answer.

When Pilate asked this question, it wasn’t born out of a thirst for wisdom or a genuine search for insight. His words were laced with mockery, skepticism, and the hollow inquiries of a man bound by his worldly concerns. Pilate, vested in the power of the Roman Empire—a man who dealt in politics and cunning rather than spirituality and deeper truths—was incapable of comprehending the magnitude of the concept he toyed with. To him, “truth” was relative, situational, a commodity exchanged within palaces and courtrooms. Thus, he was unprepared for the silence he received in return.

Why did Jesus remain silent? Was it out of resignation, contempt, or the knowledge that no explanation would suffice in such an environment? None of these reasons are satisfying enough, nor do they account for the profound weight of that silence. The silence, to those who have the “ears to hear,” resounds louder than any word could. It transcends language and intellect. It speaks of a truth unbound by the manipulations of rhetoric, the limitations of reason, or the shifting sands of worldly morality.

Jesus’s silence was not an absence of response; it was the response. This silence mirrored the still, infinite depths of truth itself—truth that can neither be articulated in full nor attained through intellectual pursuit alone. Truth, in its highest form, emanates from within, where all words fall short. It lies in the stillness of the soul, the unyielding core of being, the essence of existence itself.

Pilate, like many of us, sought truth externally—searching for it in arguments, doctrines, or declarations. But truth cannot be packaged or handed over, especially to those who are unprepared to receive it. Jesus understood this. His silence was as much an act of wisdom as it was compassion—a refusal to cast pearls before swine, as he had earlier taught. The casting of spiritual truths before those who are unwilling or incapable of appreciating them leads not to enlightenment but to rejection, misunderstanding, or, worse, distortion.

But why does truth seem so elusive, so difficult to pin down? Perhaps it is because truth is not a thing to be grasped, captured, or proven—it is a state to be realized. It is not a doctrine but a way of being. To find it, one must first quiet the noise within themselves, dismantling the false truths entangled in ego, desire, and fear. Only then can one glimpse the silence within, the same silence Christ inhabited as he looked upon Pilate—a silence unmarred by cynicism or the need to justify itself.

The wisdom of Jesus’s silence reminds us that not all questions are answered in words. Often, true understanding requires that we move beyond them altogether. Pilate, despite standing face to face with an embodiment of truth, could not “see” it. Spiritual truth is something that meets us where we are, resonating only as deeply as we are prepared to receive it. To someone blind to deeper realities, truth remains invisible, incomprehensible.

This reflection on truth does not yield a neat, satisfying conclusion. But perhaps that’s the point. Truth—absolute and unchanging—resides in the realm of the infinite, where human language falters. It is simultaneously something we pursue and something already present within us. The silence of Jesus challenges us to stop and ask ourselves a deeper question—not “What is truth?” but “Am I prepared to know it?”

For those willing to enter that silence within, truth awaits—not as an answer, but as a presence, a state of being, a way of seeing the world unclouded by illusion.

Chapter 1: The Circuitry of the Soul; Breaking Free from Cultural Hypnotism: A Journey to Inner Silence and Authentic Truth

The search for truth has become humanity’s most elusive quest. We live in an age where information floods our consciousness from every direction, yet authentic wisdom remains frustratingly out of reach. Like Edgar Mitchell observed from his lunar perch, we need to step outside our earthbound perspectives to see clearly—but most of us never make that journey. Instead, we remain trapped within the labyrinth of our own conditioned minds, dancing to rhythms programmed by forces we’ve never questioned.

The path to genuine freedom requires more than surface-level self-help or weekend meditation retreats. It demands we confront the deeper mechanisms that shape our perception of reality itself. We all must walk through the process of identifying and healing from cultural hypnotism, rediscovering our authentic voice, and cultivating the inner silence where truth actually resides.

Cultural hypnotism operates like a sophisticated form of mass conditioning, so pervasive we mistake it for reality itself. It’s the collective agreement to accept certain narratives about who we are, what we should value, and how we should live—without ever examining their validity or origin.

This conditioning begins early and runs deep. From childhood, we absorb messages about success, relationships, spirituality, and identity from our families, schools, religious institutions, and media. These messages become the lens through which we interpret every experience, creating what feels like an objective reality but is actually a carefully constructed prison of perception.

The most insidious aspect of cultural hypnotism is how it masquerades as choice. We believe we’re making independent decisions when we’re actually selecting from a pre-approved menu of options. Whether we choose conservative or liberal politics, traditional or alternative spirituality, conventional or unconventional careers—we’re still operating within predetermined parameters that serve existing power structures rather than our authentic development.

Consider how patriarchal conditioning affects both men and women, creating rigid roles that disconnect us from our full humanity. Men are taught to suppress emotional intelligence and intuitive wisdom, while women are often encouraged to diminish their power and independence. These patterns persist not because they serve our highest good, but because they maintain familiar structures of control.

The entertainment industry, social media platforms, and consumer culture all function as delivery systems for this hypnotic programming. They offer temporary relief from existential anxiety while simultaneously reinforcing the very beliefs that create that anxiety in the first place. We scroll through curated lives, purchase solutions to manufactured problems, and consume content that keeps us distracted from the deeper questions that might actually liberate us.

Breaking free from cultural hypnotism begins with honest self-examination. This isn’t about blame or victimization—it’s about developing the clarity to see how various influences have shaped your worldview, often in ways that limit your potential for authentic happiness and growth.

Daily journaling practice becomes our primary tool for this investigation. Each morning, spend fifteen minutes writing freely about our beliefs, reactions, and assumptions. We must ask ourselves probing questions: Why do I believe this? Where did this idea come from? Does this belief serve my highest good, or does it serve someone else’s agenda? When we find ourselves having strong emotional reactions to people or situations, trace those reactions back to their origins.

Family patterns often provide the deepest programming. Examine not just what the family explicitly taught, but the unspoken rules and expectations that governed the household. What messages were received about money, relationships, success, and spirituality? How were emotions handled? What behaviors were rewarded or punished? These early experiences create templates that continue operating unconsciously in all adult lives.

Religious and educational institutions also leave lasting imprints. Even if you’ve consciously rejected certain teachings, their influence may persist in subtle ways. Perhaps you absorbed shame around sexuality, fear of questioning authority, or beliefs about human nature that keep you from accessing your full potential. The goal isn’t to reject everything from your past, but to consciously choose what serves your authentic growth.

Media consumption reveals another layer of programming. Notice which news sources you trust, which social media accounts you follow, and which forms of entertainment you prefer. What worldview do these sources promote? How do they make you feel about yourself and others? Are they expanding your consciousness or reinforcing limiting beliefs?

The Healing Journey: Reclaiming the Authentic Self

Once we’ve identified the sources of our conditioning, the healing process can begin. This isn’t about rejecting everything from our past, but about consciously choosing which influences serve our highest good and releasing those that keep us trapped in limiting patterns.

Self-compassion must anchor this entire process. The conditioning you’ve received wasn’t your fault, and the process of breaking free requires patience and gentleness with yourself. You’re essentially rewiring neural pathways that have been strengthened over decades. This takes time and consistent practice.

Begin by acknowledging the damage that certain cultural influences have caused. Perhaps patriarchal conditioning disconnected us from our intuitive wisdom. Maybe religious teachings left us with shame or fear around our natural impulses. Possibly family dynamics created patterns of people-pleasing or self-sacrifice that prevent us from honoring our authentic needs.

This acknowledgment isn’t about dwelling in victimization, but about clearly seeing what needs healing. Just as you would tend to a physical wound, these psychological and spiritual injuries require conscious attention and care. Consider working with a therapist, spiritual advisor, or trusted mentor who can support you through this process.

Forgiveness becomes a crucial element of healing—not as a way of excusing harmful behavior, but as a way of freeing yourself from carrying the energy of resentment. This includes forgiving those who contributed to your conditioning, forgiving the systems that perpetuated harmful messages, and perhaps most importantly, forgiving yourself for any ways you’ve unconsciously passed these patterns on to others.

The healing journey also involves reclaiming parts of yourself that were suppressed or denied. If you learned to hide your sensitivity, practice expressing your emotions authentically. If you were taught to minimize your intelligence or capabilities, begin speaking your truth with confidence. If cultural messages convinced you that your dreams were unrealistic, start taking concrete steps toward manifesting them.

The constant chatter of conditioned thinking creates a kind of mental static that prevents us from accessing deeper wisdom. Beneath this noise lies a profound silence—not the absence of sound, but the presence of pure awareness. This silence is where authentic truth resides, waiting to guide us beyond the limitations of programmed thinking.

Daily meditation practice provides the most direct path to this inner silence. Start with just ten minutes each morning, focusing on your breath and allowing thoughts to arise and pass without attachment. Don’t try to stop thinking—instead, develop the capacity to observe your thoughts without being controlled by them.

As your practice deepens, you’ll begin to notice gaps between thoughts—moments of pure awareness that aren’t colored by conditioning or interpretation. These gaps are doorways to your authentic self, spaces where genuine wisdom can emerge. Pay attention to insights that arise during these quiet moments, as they often carry more truth than hours of mental analysis.

Mindful activities can also cultivate inner silence. Walking in nature without devices or agenda allows your nervous system to settle into its natural rhythm. Creative pursuits like drawing, music, or crafts can quiet the analytical mind and open channels for intuitive expression. Even mundane activities like washing dishes or folding laundry become opportunities for presence when approached with conscious attention.

The key is learning to distinguish between the voice of conditioning and the voice of authentic wisdom. Conditioned thoughts often carry urgency, judgment, or fear. They repeat familiar patterns and reinforce existing beliefs. Authentic wisdom, by contrast, often arrives quietly, with a quality of spaciousness and clarity that feels both completely natural and surprisingly fresh.

Once you’ve developed some capacity for inner silence, you can begin systematically questioning the beliefs that limit your freedom and happiness. This isn’t an intellectual exercise but a form of spiritual medicine—using inquiry to dissolve the mental constructs that keep you trapped in outdated patterns.

Media literacy becomes essential in our information-saturated age. Instead of passively consuming news, entertainment, and social media, approach these sources with conscious discernment. Ask yourself: What perspective is being promoted here? Who benefits from me believing this message? How does consuming this content affect my mental and emotional state? What alternative viewpoints might offer a more complete picture?

Practice seeking out diverse perspectives on issues that matter to you. If you typically read conservative sources, explore progressive viewpoints. If you usually consume Western perspectives, investigate wisdom traditions from other cultures. The goal isn’t to become confused or relativistic, but to develop the capacity to hold multiple viewpoints simultaneously while discerning what resonates with your authentic wisdom.

Question societal expectations around success, relationships, and lifestyle choices. Just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s healthy or beneficial. Perhaps the standard career path doesn’t align with your values. Maybe conventional relationship models don’t serve your authentic expression. Possibly the lifestyle you’ve been pursuing reflects others’ expectations rather than your genuine desires.

This questioning process can be uncomfortable because it threatens the false sense of security that familiar beliefs provide. But this discomfort is often a sign that you’re approaching something important. Stay curious rather than defensive, and allow your inquiry to reveal new possibilities rather than trying to defend old positions.

Embracing Silence: Your Natural Inheritance

The ultimate goal of this entire journey isn’t to acquire new knowledge or achieve some special state, but to return to the silence that is your natural inheritance. This silence isn’t empty or passive—it’s alive with potential, pregnant with wisdom, and inherently peaceful.

Spending time in nature provides one of the most reliable ways to reconnect with this silence. Away from human-made noise and artificial lighting, your nervous system can remember its natural rhythms. Sit by water, walk through forests, or simply observe the sky. Allow yourself to be present without agenda or analysis, letting nature’s intelligence remind you of your own.

Listen to your inner voice with the same attention you might give to a beloved friend. This voice rarely shouts—it whispers, suggests, and invites rather than demands. It might guide you toward certain relationships, creative projects, or life changes that serve your highest good. Learning to trust this guidance is one of the most valuable skills you can develop.

The silence you’re cultivating isn’t separate from activity or engagement—it becomes the foundation from which authentic action arises. When you speak from this silence, your words carry power and healing. When you act from this silence, your choices align with deeper wisdom. When you relate from this silence, your connections become more genuine and meaningful.

The real test of this work comes in daily life—in how you navigate relationships, make decisions, and respond to challenges. Integration means bringing the clarity and wisdom you’ve discovered in silence into every aspect of your existence.

This might mean setting boundaries with people or situations that drain your energy or compromise your integrity. It could involve making career changes that align better with your values, even if they initially provide less financial security. Perhaps it means expressing yourself more authentically in relationships, risking rejection in favor of genuine connection.

The process of living from authentic truth is ongoing. Cultural conditioning doesn’t disappear overnight, and new forms of hypnotism continue to emerge as society evolves. Maintaining your freedom requires constant vigilance—not from a place of paranoia, but from a commitment to truth that transcends convenience or social acceptance.

Remember that your liberation serves not just your own happiness but the collective healing of humanity. Every person who breaks free from limiting conditioning makes it easier for others to do the same. Your authentic expression gives others permission to question their own programming and discover their unique truth.

The path we’ve explored together—from recognizing cultural hypnotism through cultivating inner silence to living from authentic truth—isn’t a destination but a continuous journey of awakening. Each day offers new opportunities to choose truth over conditioning, authentic expression over social conformity, and inner wisdom over external authority.

The silence you’ve begun to discover is not empty space but the very ground of being from which all genuine creativity and love emerge. As you continue deepening this practice, you’ll find that truth doesn’t need to be grasped or defended—it simply is, waiting patiently for you to recognize what you’ve always known.

Your unique voice, emerging from this silence, carries medicine the world desperately needs. The perspectives you’ve gained through questioning conditioning, the healing you’ve achieved through honest self-examination, and the wisdom you’ve accessed through inner silence all contribute to the collective awakening that our species requires for its evolution.

Trust the process, honor your discoveries, and remember that every moment offers a fresh opportunity to choose authenticity over automation, presence over programming, and love over limitation. The truth that will set you free isn’t hiding in some distant teaching or future achievement—it’s alive within you right now, waiting in the silence between your thoughts.

The Circuitry of the Soul

The search for truth has become humanity’s most elusive quest, a high-voltage pursuit in a world insulated by distraction. We live in an age where information floods our consciousness from every direction—a constant, deafening static—yet authentic wisdom remains frustratingly out of reach. We are like devices plugged into a grid we do not understand, consuming energy without knowing its source.

Like the astronaut Edgar Mitchell observed from his lunar perch, seeing the Earth as a fragile, singular sphere, we need to step outside our earthbound perspectives to see clearly. But most of us never make that journey. Instead, we remain trapped within the labyrinth of our own conditioned minds, dancing to rhythms programmed by forces we’ve never questioned. We are wired to a panel we didn’t install, flipping switches we didn’t label.

The path to genuine freedom requires more than surface-level self-help or the occasional weekend meditation retreat. It demands we confront the deeper mechanisms—the hidden wiring—that shape our perception of reality itself. We must walk through the arduous process of identifying and healing from cultural hypnotism, rediscovering our authentic voice, and cultivating the inner silence where truth actually resides.

To understand this, we must look into the engine room of the human psyche. Does consciousness have a self-organizing principle, and if so, what is its nature? Do our lives organize first around biological issues—safety, security, food, sexual needs—and then social and societal issues? And what role does our sense of self play in this grand schematic?

The self-organizing principle of consciousness appears to be an inherent drive toward narrative coherence—a desperate need to stitch the chaos of sensory input into a linear story. While our biological imperatives regarding safety and sustenance undeniably lay the foundation of our existence, it is the social superstructure that erects the walls of our perceived reality. The “self” acts as the curator of this museum, mediating between our primal animal instincts and the complex demands of the collective. Whether this architectural blueprint is divinely inspired, algorithmically generated by a futuristic coder, or merely the accumulated sediment of ancestral habits, the result is remarkably similar: a structured interface that stands between pure consciousness and raw experience, filtering the infinite into the digestible.

The Simulation of Conditioning

Some of the latest speculative theories suggest that our human experience of life might just be a simulation—a grand stage of role-playing and acting, all preprogrammed by advanced beings as part of a computer coding experiment in the future. It is a compelling narrative, one that appeals to our modern fascination with technology and the infinite regress of virtual realities. It offers a tidy explanation for the absurdity of existence, positioning us as mere avatars in a cosmic game.

But what if the simulation is real, yet the architect is not a programmer in a distant future, but the ghosts of our collective past? What if the code is not binary, but woven from the threads of trauma, rigid societal expectation, and unexamined cultural dogma? To awaken from this dream is not to unplug a cable, but to dismantle the very psyche we mistake for our true self.

From the moment we take our first breath, we are inducted into a pre-existing narrative. We are handed a script we did not write, cast in roles we did not choose. This is the primary layer of the simulation: the cultural and religious conditioning that defines the boundaries of our reality.

Cultural hypnotism operates like a sophisticated form of mass conditioning, so pervasive we mistake it for reality itself. It is the collective agreement to accept certain narratives about who we are, what we should value, and how we should live—without ever examining their validity or origin.

This conditioning begins early and runs deep. From childhood, we absorb messages about success, relationships, spirituality, and identity from our families, schools, religious institutions, and media. These messages become the lens through which we interpret every experience, creating what feels like an objective reality but is actually a carefully constructed prison of perception. We are taught what to worship, what to fear, whom to love, and how to measure our worth. These instructions are not merely suggestions; they are the source code of our identity. Like a deep-learning algorithm, our minds absorb these inputs, creating patterns of behavior and thought that feel autonomous but are, in fact, mechanical repetitions of history.

The most insidious aspect of cultural hypnotism is how it masquerades as choice. We believe we are making independent decisions when we are actually selecting from a pre-approved menu of options. Whether we choose conservative or liberal politics, traditional or alternative spirituality, conventional or unconventional careers—we are often still operating within predetermined parameters that serve existing power structures rather than our authentic development.

When a person reacts with visceral hatred toward a stranger based on ideology, are they acting from a place of conscious choice, or are they executing a program installed by their environment? When we chase markers of success—wealth, status, validation—are we following our soul’s desire, or are we simply running the software of societal expectation?

Consider how patriarchal conditioning affects both men and women, creating rigid roles that disconnect us from our full humanity. Men are taught to suppress emotional intelligence and intuitive wisdom—short-circuiting their connection to the heart—while women are often encouraged to diminish their power and independence. These patterns persist not because they serve our highest good, but because they maintain familiar structures of control.

Trauma: The Hardware Firewall

If culture provides the software, trauma often hardwires the hardware. Psychological wounds, especially those inflicted in childhood, create rigid feedback loops in the brain. Trauma acts as a firewall, blocking access to authentic emotion and presence, trapping the individual in a perpetual state of defense or re-enactment.

In this state, the present moment is never truly experienced. Instead, the mind overlays the past onto the now. A partner’s raised voice is not just a raised voice; it is the echo of a punishing parent. A failure at work is not just a mistake; it is a confirmation of inherent worthlessness.

This is the simulation in its most potent form: a hallucination where we interact not with reality as it is, but with our projections of fear and pain. We walk through life seeing monsters where there are shadows and saviors where there are merely mirrors. We are trapped in a loop of stimulus and response, mistaking our trauma responses for our personality.

The entertainment industry, social media platforms, and consumer culture all function as delivery systems for this hypnotic programming. They offer temporary relief from existential anxiety while simultaneously reinforcing the very beliefs that create that anxiety in the first place. We scroll through curated lives, purchase solutions to manufactured problems, and consume content that keeps us distracted from the deeper questions that might actually liberate us.

The computer simulation theory posits that we are powerless, trapped in a box built by superior intellects. The simulation of conditioning, however, offers a path to liberation. Because if the simulation is built within us, then the key to the exit is also within.

Breaking the Circuit

Breaking free from cultural hypnotism begins with honest self-examination. This isn’t about blame or victimization—it is about developing the clarity to see how various influences have shaped your worldview, often in ways that limit your potential for authentic happiness and growth.

Daily journaling practice becomes our primary tool, our voltmeter, for this investigation. Each morning, spend fifteen minutes writing freely about your beliefs, reactions, and assumptions. We must ask ourselves probing questions: Why do I believe this? Where did this idea come from? Does this belief serve my highest good, or does it serve someone else’s agenda? When we find ourselves having strong emotional reactions to people or situations, we must trace those reactions back to their origins.

Family patterns often provide the deepest programming. Examine not just what the family explicitly taught, but the unspoken rules and expectations that governed the household. What messages were received about money, relationships, success, and spirituality? How were emotions handled? What behaviors were rewarded or punished? These early experiences create templates that continue operating unconsciously in all adult lives.

Religious and educational institutions also leave lasting imprints. Even if you’ve consciously rejected certain teachings, their influence may persist in subtle ways. Perhaps you absorbed shame around sexuality, fear of questioning authority, or beliefs about human nature that keep you from accessing your full potential. The goal isn’t to reject everything from your past, but to consciously choose what serves your authentic growth.

The Healing Journey: Reclaiming the Bandwidth

Once we’ve identified the sources of our conditioning, the healing process can begin. This isn’t about rejecting everything from our past, but about consciously choosing which influences serve our highest good and releasing those that keep us trapped in limiting patterns. It is about clearing the line noise so the signal can come through clearly.

Self-compassion must anchor this entire process. The conditioning you’ve received wasn’t your fault, and the process of breaking free requires patience and gentleness with yourself. You are essentially rewiring neural pathways that have been strengthened over decades. This takes time and consistent practice.

Begin by acknowledging the damage that certain cultural influences have caused. Perhaps patriarchal conditioning disconnected us from our intuitive wisdom. Maybe religious teachings left us with shame or fear around our natural impulses. Possibly family dynamics created patterns of people-pleasing or self-sacrifice that prevent us from honoring our authentic needs.

This acknowledgment isn’t about dwelling in victimization, but about clearly seeing what needs healing. Just as you would tend to a physical wound, these psychological and spiritual injuries require conscious attention and care. Forgiveness becomes a crucial element of healing—not as a way of excusing harmful behavior, but as a way of freeing yourself from carrying the energy of resentment. This includes forgiving those who contributed to your conditioning, forgiving the systems that perpetuated harmful messages, and perhaps most importantly, forgiving yourself for any ways you’ve unconsciously passed these patterns on to others.

The constant chatter of conditioned thinking creates a kind of mental static that prevents us from accessing deeper wisdom. Beneath this noise lies a profound silence—not the absence of sound, but the presence of pure awareness. This silence is where authentic truth resides, waiting to guide us beyond the limitations of programmed thinking.

Accessing the Unlimited Bandwidth

Waking up requires a radical act of introspection. It demands that we observe our thoughts not as absolute truths, but as data streams to be analyzed. It requires us to question the sanctity of our beliefs and the origins of our fears. We must ask the uncomfortable questions: Is this thought mine? Is this desire mine? Is this fear mine?

This process of deprogramming is often disorienting. As the layers of conditioning fall away, one may feel a loss of identity, a void where the script used to be. This is the dark night of the soul, the moment the avatar realizes it is not the character on the screen.

To step out of the simulation is to encounter life without the buffer of judgment or the filter of the past. It is to experience the raw immediacy of existence. It is the realization that the “self” we defended so vigorously was merely a construct, a collection of habits and memories held together by fear.

Daily meditation practice provides the most direct path to this inner silence. Start with just ten minutes each morning, focusing on your breath and allowing thoughts to arise and pass without attachment. Don’t try to stop thinking—instead, develop the capacity to observe your thoughts without being controlled by them. As your practice deepens, you’ll begin to notice gaps between thoughts—moments of pure awareness that aren’t colored by conditioning or interpretation. These gaps are doorways to your authentic self, spaces where genuine wisdom can emerge.

Mindful activities can also cultivate inner silence. Walking in nature without devices or agenda allows your nervous system to settle into its natural rhythm. Creative pursuits like drawing, music, or crafts can quiet the analytical mind and open channels for intuitive expression. The key is learning to distinguish between the voice of conditioning and the voice of authentic wisdom. Conditioned thoughts often carry urgency, judgment, or fear. They repeat familiar patterns and reinforce existing beliefs. Authentic wisdom, by contrast, often arrives quietly, with a quality of spaciousness and clarity that feels both completely natural and surprisingly fresh.

Once you’ve developed some capacity for inner silence, you can begin systematically questioning the beliefs that limit your freedom and happiness. This isn’t an intellectual exercise but a form of spiritual medicine—using inquiry to dissolve the mental constructs that keep you trapped in outdated patterns.

This questioning process can be uncomfortable because it threatens the false sense of security that familiar beliefs provide. But this discomfort is often a sign that you’re approaching something important. Stay curious rather than defensive, and allow your inquiry to reveal new possibilities rather than trying to defend old positions.

Your Natural Inheritance

The ultimate goal of this entire journey isn’t to acquire new knowledge or achieve some special state, but to return to the silence that is your natural inheritance. This silence isn’t empty or passive—it’s alive with potential, pregnant with wisdom, and inherently peaceful.

Spending time in nature provides one of the most reliable ways to reconnect with this silence. Away from human-made noise and artificial lighting, your nervous system can remember its natural rhythms. Sit by water, walk through forests, or simply observe the sky. Allow yourself to be present without agenda or analysis, letting nature’s intelligence remind you of your own.

The silence you’re cultivating isn’t separate from activity or engagement—it becomes the foundation from which authentic action arises. When you speak from this silence, your words carry power and healing. When you act from this silence, your choices align with deeper wisdom. When you relate from this silence, your connections become more genuine and meaningful.

The real test of this work comes in daily life—in how you navigate relationships, make decisions, and respond to challenges. Integration means bringing the clarity and wisdom you’ve discovered in silence into every aspect of your existence. It might mean setting boundaries with people or situations that drain your energy or compromise your integrity. It could involve making career changes that align better with your values, even if they initially provide less financial security. Perhaps it means expressing yourself more authentically in relationships, risking rejection in favor of genuine connection.

The process of living from authentic truth is ongoing. Cultural conditioning doesn’t disappear overnight, and new forms of hypnotism continue to emerge as society evolves. Maintaining your freedom requires constant vigilance—not from a place of paranoia, but from a commitment to truth that transcends convenience or social acceptance.

The simulation is not a prison made of code; it is a prison made of concepts. The walls are built of unhealed wounds and unquestioned answers. To crumble them is the work of a lifetime, a journey from the mechanical sleep of the conditioned mind to the awakened state of true consciousness.

Your unique voice, emerging from this silence, carries medicine the world desperately needs. The perspectives you’ve gained through questioning conditioning, the healing you’ve achieved through honest self-examination, and the wisdom you’ve accessed through inner silence all contribute to the collective awakening that our species requires for its evolution.

The question is not whether we are in a simulation. The question is: are you brave enough to stop playing the game? Are you brave enough to cut the wires of the past and plug directly into the unlimited bandwidth of the now?

The truth that will set you free isn’t hiding in some distant teaching or future achievement—it’s alive within you right now, waiting in the silence between your thoughts.

The Search For Truth, Spiritual Evolution, Healing, and Purpose–A Multi-Media Experiment

“He Was Just Waiting For A Better Day”—-Owner of the Punjab Tavern, 1986

Be mindful, oh Mankind, of all those painful secrets that you must keep

From a suffering silence you never awaken, dying without hope in a troubled sleep

Unless the LORD ( Love Ordering Reality Daily) builds the house, they labor in vain that build it—-Psalm 127

If it’s painful for you to hear my story, it’s OK. That’s part of the process because my story includes pain, so don’t stop listening because you are uncomfortable. If you would just move past your discomfort, you might learn something about empathy and compassion and mercy and justice. —-Pastor Gricel Medinas

It is truly amazing and disheartening to witness the continuing blindness of the unconscious and unaware elements of our culture. This spiritual blindness cuts across all income levels, religious affiliations, ethnicities, and races. People with otherwise perfect 20/20 vision, when presented with the mirror of life, choose to look away, and even claim that they never saw themselves in it.  There is no need to question why there is insufficient empathy and compassion in this world, when people continue to refuse to bring their hearts to it.-Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin

This is a multi- media experiment using many memes, songs, poems, photographs, and prayers.  There is some supportive writing from me with a few excerpts from the previous eight books that I have written. My desire to enhance the general public’s interest in my writing has become an extraordinarily expensive proposition for me, and I understand that I may fail in my intentions.

I have personally experienced many of the ills, griefs,  and disappointments available to us as human beings.  I have also experienced many, if not all,  of the eternal truths spoken by the greats of all ages (we all do, if we pay close enough attention), yet I am not a “great”, nor will I ever be considered as such. While I treasure my anonymity,  i cannot avoid the perception that most people would rather read all of the historical spiritual savants’ messages than my own, so this work is my compromise with that understanding.

Yet, creativity and the desire to express myself continues, regardless of other’s interests, or lack thereof, in my own work.

Skin cancer, the inevitability of aging, and other issues, threaten to shorten my days.  As they say, there are a lot more birthdays behind me, than are ahead of me.

Healing, and Spirit, keeps every day imbued with infinite meaning and purpose.

Why on Earth are we here?

1. To see our self more clearly
2. To bring healing to our self so that we may grow and evolve without limitations
3. To then wholeheartedly be our true self

 

1. 

The slowly shifting desert sands of time

Create ever taller hills for all lost thirsty souls to climb

It is in this selfish pain filled world of little reason or rhyme,

That we begin our search for Truth and find healing waters of Love Sublime

(the following is an excerpt from Book #2)

I was asked on my birthday in 2017 what my most “memorable” birthday was, and here, to the best of my recollection, is an account of the near death experience..

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!

Sadly, Dan and I ceased being best friends in 1981, after he assaulted my wife of that time, Donelle, while she was drunk and insane. Dan died of a heart attack around 1997, not even making it to 45 years of age. Many of my other drinking and drugging buddies have also died young, through suicide or disease, or are presently disabled due to the excesses of their young adulthood.

I became “sober” in 1987, after my own suicide attempts led me into an epic underworld journey.  It is the stuff of movies, and of nightmares, and has been documented elsewhere.

I am still “21 years old”, but with 44 years of extra experience! The last 33 years have been pretty sober, however, with a couple of minor slips. The world rests a little easier because of my sobriety, I am sure! I know that I rest easier.

Life can be some kind of fun, huh?  What a long, strange, miraculous, healing and redemptive trip it has been.

The photographs are from my first wedding, which was 22 months after this 21st birthday near-death experience..  Fortunately for those who survived our bacchanalian young adulthood, there are no selfies, or cell-phone photographs to be persecuted with in our “older age”.

(Excerpt from Book #3)

Here are some principles of toxic masculinity that I found live in our collective consciousness, and which also lived in unconscious domains of my own mind and heart. I have exaggerated them, and linked them with common monetary, sexual, and personal power dynamics. And yes, these principles, or variations of these themes, are part of the Common Knowledge Game (CKG) fundamentals for erroneous understanding of self and other. If they appear to mimic some of the values and principle’s underlying Donald Trump’s abhorrent behavior, then you are already paying close attention to our collective consciousness, and its dangerous and sometimes catastrophic influence on the affairs of humanity throughout our history.

1. I am the center of the Universe. The rest of humanity is here either for my pleasure, for my profit, or for my disdain. I may attend a church occasionally, so that I can create the impression that I worship a higher power than myself. But, I already know that there is no higher power but me. HUMILITY IS NOT AN OPTION FOR ME, and is only for the poor and weak among us.
2. Truly loving another human being is a sign of weakness, and thus I must continue to suppress all such impulses so that I can achieve my selfish goals. I will carry on a campaign of hatred, judgement, and condemnation of all people unlike myself, all the while claiming to represent their interests at the highest level of my being (with subtlety, if one is of the passive/aggressive nature) . The ignorant people populating my world will hopefully associate my hateful behavior with their understanding of what love is, thus damaging the hearts and souls of all who may fear, respect, and/or follow me. My schizophrenia will be confusing to others, but may still be normalized, as others that I have influenced model and support my behavior.
3. ::People, and Mother Nature itself, are most valuable if they can be monetized. If I can’t make money from my relationship with people or our natural surroundings, then I don’t necessarily need them. They will have to prove that they belong in my life in some other selfish, self-serving ways. I choose to neglect the long term effects of my short sighted thinking, because now is the only moment to profit from others, and from the Earth.
4. Never admit that I am wrong. Always blame somebody else for my problems. The admission of guilt is a sign of weakness, and only for those who do not have sufficient monetary and legal power. I don’t need your forgiveness for my mistakes, because, as far as you should be concerned, I do not ever make mistakes.
5. I have a right to choose how much drugs and alcohol that I consume.  I do not need feedback from others telling me that I am abusing my medicine and/or alcohol.  I have earned the right to drink as much as I feel like, because I have so much stress in my life, and  I make so many sacrifices that I deserve an extra break and release through excessive alcohol and;/or drug consumption.  I do not have a problem, and if you think that I have a problem with my chemicals, then it is your misunderstanding, and not my own.
6. Never spend any time in self-reflection or meditation. Developing insight is difficult and time-consuming, and I have more important things to do  I am already perfect, I always have been perfect, and everybody else needs to change to accommodate my needs. If I am not “perfect” today, I always have someone, or something, else to blame.
7. I have a right to use my strong emotions to intimidate and threaten anybody that I need to in order to get my way.  My anger is a weapon, to be wielded whenever necessary, and its expression is my first selection from my arsenal of control tools in manipulating and controlling my world.
8. If I can’t get my way with another human being, then I will cajole or bully them into submission, or attack their name and character, and/or impugn their dignity, until they either submit, or are discredited by my allies.
9. Everybody unlike me  should be distrusted. Relationships built through mutual trust and collaboration can be threatening to my short-term goals, and should not be cultivated, as only alliances of hate and distrust are capable of bringing me to my goals.
10. The women in our lives are more suited to be our personal possessions than self-sufficient, independent people, and are not to be treated as equals, and are better suited for exploitation for family support, sexual purposes and/or economic gain.
11. If I can’t get my way through truth-telling, then the telling of lies becomes my most potent weapon. If I am caught in a lie, then it is only your misunderstanding of my point, and not what I said, that is wrong. If I tell the same lie often enough, then people will start to accept the lie as the truth.
12. If there is no conflict currently in progress, then I must start creating the conditions for the next one, and socially position myself so that I can maximize emotional profits and visibility for myself.
13. I never will obtain enough money, power, sex, or attention to keep me happy. I must continue to pursue these needs to extremes in order to keep me from becoming depressed and losing my sense of personal value in this world. If I achieve my goals, and I am still unhappy, I must set new goals to attempt to fill that big hole in my heart and soul.
14. The powers of my penis reigns supreme. When it is erect, it always points me in the right direction, regardless of the people who may be hurt by my wayward sexual desires. My self-esteem is dependent on how many women that I can convince to make love to me, and nobody is immune from my advances. One is too many, and a thousand is not enough, when it comes to sexual conquests.
15. I am the king of my home. I have created my kingdom to serve my selfish needs. If my rules are not honored, and my intentions for the family do not hold up, and family members start to stray, I will coerce, cajole, or threaten all wayward members with violence, if necessary. The family must stay together under my control, no matter what the cost to others might be.
16. Perfectionism and full control of others should not be mutually exclusive propositions. I will judge, criticize, and condemn others, and myself, as needed, to bring all of my world into alignment with how I think that it should be. I will compare and contrast my wealth and success with others to establish the best baseline for my expectations and behavior. My wife and my children are first and foremost my possessions. I will direct and control as necessary, and nobody else has any right to criticize my choices in how I provide and care for them.  My whole sense of self-esteem is derived by how deeply they honor and obey me, without argument or back talk. I do not want or need alternate points of view, as my view is the only view that is relevant.
17. If those closest to me engage in betrayal, and destroy my sacred relationship with my family, I must avenge myself, and destroy all who have threatened my life and values. My wife is my property, and my property alone.  If she should ever have an affair with another man, I reserve the right to punish her and my family, up to, and including, murdering them. If I must die in the process, it is a good death for me.
18. Self sabotage is my unconscious need, as I fail to achieve my goals.  It is my right to destroy my creations even as I destroy myself, so murder-suicide is an acceptable option in the extreme, when my needs have been dishonored, and I feel that I have no more options to achieve my goals, and improve my life situation.  I am that man who just wants to watch my world burn, just like I am now burning up inside.
19. I have been a failure since I never measured up to my father’s, my church’s, or my society’s standards. I will continue to self-sabotage my success at ever bend in life’s road, and I will see life as a self-fulfilling prophesy of incompleteness and loss. I will not even question that my life has other possibilities for it, and I will resign myself to my depressing fate.
20. I reserve the right to murder anybody, when it suits my needs to protect myself. I will justify my possession and use of firearms through quoting the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, as well as pointing to the fear and threats in our world, and our country as my own justification for stockpiling weapons. I will not listen to reason, as my mind is made up, and you can have my weapons after “prying them from my cold, dead hands” (thanks NRA, and the late mega-asshole Charlton Heston).

This list is the abbreviated list, as aspects of our collective selfishness covers the entire range of human darkness.  Men burdened by toxicity tend towards sexism, racism, isolation, poor judgement against all others unlike themselves, and low self-esteem, while men moving towards spiritual healing tend to unite with others in peace and mutual acceptance, and a willingness to share an improving sense of their self with the world.

Far too many men engage in our cultural conspiracy of silence daily, which is a most deadly component of the CKG.  These include the following admonitions:

• don’t talk
• don’t tell
• don’t touch
• don’t feel
• don’t engage
• don’t listen
• don’t change
• don’t heal

Caricature of men working things out between themselves. The conspiracy of silence is inculcated into many males, and females, too.

The abhorrent behavior of Donald Trump, the poster boy and face for toxic male stupidity and darkness, as well as his supporting cast of damaged characters, has become the de-facto leader of the energy of toxic masculinity.. If we as a culture, and me as an individual, don’t speak out, and affirm to ourselves, and to others, what the truth really is to us, then eventually the hypnosis and propaganda of others may become our own collective reality, and continue to overtly influence our personal integrity, community relationships and overall spirituality.

The  historical legacy of the American white man’s ignorance and evil, and his support network of unconscious, disempowered, fearful and/or cowardly family and community members, continues even up till today.  Subservient women, often times religiously inculcated to be that way, continue to follow their husband’s lead, and as a group remain one of the leading populations of unconscious support for continued unhealthy male dominance. There always comes the day when the family of the woman under the husband’s domination needed for her to speak up the most, and the whole family is further damaged because of her own silence and continued powerlessness.

.PAIN (written while in alcoholic recovery unit 1984)

Just a  tree growing without roots with  a trunk that won’t bend

Weathering life’s continuous storms, which never seem to end

Hopelessly waiting for the sun which will never arise,

Knowing now that love’s truth will never show through my eyes.

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

. .

Hurt—Performed by Johnny Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI

• I hurt myself today
• To see if I still feel
• I focus on the pain
• The only thing that’s real
• The needle tears a hole
• That old familiar sting
• I try to kill it all away
• But I remember everything
• What have I become
• my dearest friend
• Everyone I know
• Goes away in the end
• And you can have it all
• My empire of dirt
• I will let you down
• I will make you hurt
• I wear this crown of thorns
• Upon my liars chair
• Full of broken thoughts
• I cannot repair
• Beneath the stains of time
• The feelings disappear
• You are someone else
• I am still right here
• If I could start again
• A million miles away
• I would keep myself
• I would find a way.

( Hurt–by Nine Inch Nails)

I met Donelle in 1972.  We were to be life partners, but mental illness devastated her life, and my own, from 1973-1985, when I finally divorced her.  Her “nervous breakdowns” were the most heartbreaking experience, and sucked all of the spiritual wind out of both of our sails.  I sacrificed all of my childhood hopes and dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot, and, ultimately, an astronaut, for the relationship, quitting the Air Force ROTC in 1974, which had given me a full ride scholarship.  I had to withdraw, because Donelle’s mental health was too fragile, and she needed constant physical and emotional support.  In the end, she manifested multiple personality disorder.  In the end, I manifested the desire to end my life.  Drugs and alcohol just could not keep me from a most distressing truth:   Donelle was a living example of what traumatizing by sick parents can do to an innocent soul.  Her mother exposed her to repeated sexual abuse by sick men from her drunken affairs when she was only 6 years old.  Donelle had an amazing inner light, and a profound darkness which threatened destruction to all who knew her.  LIFE REALLY CAN SUCK, when sanity is not our life’s companion, and we can no longer pursue dreams.

Coldplay—-Fix You

.

.

.Oh seeker of Truth, God’s High Mount you would climb

Though you now stumble through the valley’s shifting sands of time.

Stop confusing your innocent mind with worn out rhyme and reason,

And eternal wisdom will expel all thoughts that are charged with treason

 

God said to me “Love your enemies“

So I learned to love myself.

—-Kahlil Gibran

It’s Going To Get Better—Michael Franti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvuS9xX7sf4

.

.

Oh marionettes dancing image on the  screen of the world’s mind

With unhealed beliefs in control, what freedom can you find?

Release yourself from all your broken heart’s entrapping strings

And prepare for wisdom that a healing heart’s Intelligence brings

THE AMERICAN FOOLS ( written while in Cedar Hills Hospital, 1985)

I know who you are, there is no need for your name

You have many different faces, but inside you are the same

You vacation on ego trips, and play very strange mind games

You always strive for material success, with  its dubious fame

You chase the disguised nightmare called the American Dream,

You never stop listening to those financial touts, who endlessly scheme.

You forget what is important in life, thinking Capitalist dirt is life’s cream.

You wear the Emperor’s New Clothes, naked, and clothed in illusion it seems.

You are yet another graceless soul, blending into life’s darkest mass

You keep affirming your uniqueness, yet you are stuck in the same class

As those with delusions of grandeur, and appearances of an ass

Always steering clear of self-awareness, Oh your transparency of glass!

Spewing questionable words of wisdom, at times with a rabid dogs’ bark

Acting like you have a good life, but on life’s script just leaving another shit mark

You say that you have seen light, so why are your perceptions so dark?

You need more purifying inner flames, but you keep snuffing every divine spark

You think that you have blossomed, yet you do not yet possess Love’s flower,

You want to be carried by the river of sweetness, yet you still wade through the sour

You don’t yet realize that, over life, you hold very little lasting power

You try to avoid the reality of a dark life, often living in a white supremacist tower

You fear bringing up life’s rear, and you think that you should be first

You want all of the best, while making sure others unlike you gets the worst!

You think that your life should be more blessed, making sure others stay quite cursed

You have become an overblown toxic gas bubble, just waiting to be burst!

.

On The Turning Away (Pink Floyd)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojf18wT_Xtk

.On the turning away

From the pale and downtrodden

And the words they say

Which we won’t understand “

Don’t accept that what’s happening

Is just a case of all the suffering

Or you’ll find that you’re joining in

The turning away”

It’s a sin that somehow

Light is changing to shadow

And casting its shroud

Over all, we have known

Unaware how the ranks have grown

Driven on by a heart of stone

We could find that we’re all alone

In the dream of the proud

On the wings of the night

As the daytime is stirring

Where the speechless unite In a silent accord

Using words you will find are strange

Mesmerized as they light the flame

Feel the new wind of change

On the wings of the night

No more turning away

From the weak and the weary

No more turning away

From the coldness inside

Just a world that we all must share

It’s not enough just to stand and stare

Is it only a dream that there’ll be

No more turning away?

 

.Oh mental marathoner, only on Life’s treadmill you now stand

Culture’s secondhand words and thoughts make you just an “also ran”

Forever chasing in vain Love’s All-Knowing Voice

So be still, for with your run’s end, you will find cause to rejoice!

People change for two main reasons:

1. Their hearts have been broken
2. Their eyes have been opened

.

.

Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire?

Tis only champion of a dream world to which you would aspire!

Stop resuscitating those dead illusions with those mental pugilist blows,

To reawaken the peaceful mind of the One, who in the now, Knows!

THE DREAM (from a dream I had when I was eight years old, perhaps a view from another life)

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.

I release my parents from the feeling that they have failed with me.  I release my children from the need to make me proud, so that they can write their own ways according to their own hearts  I release my partner from the obligation to make me feel complete. I lack nothing in myself.

I learn with all beings who surround me through all time.

I thank my grandparents and ancestors who met so today I breathe life.  And I release them from the faults of the past and the wishes they did not fulfill, aware that they did their best to resolve their situations within the consciousness they had at that moment.  I honor them, I love them, I recognize their innocence.  I bare my soul before their eyes, and that is why they know that I do not hide or owe anything more than being faithful to myself and my own existence walking with the wisdom of the heart.

I am aware that I am fulfilling my life project, free from visible and invisible family loyalties that may disturb my peace and happiness, which are my greatest responsibilities.

I renounce the role of savior, of being the one who unites or who fulfills the expectations of others.  And learning through love, I bless my essence and my way of expressing, although there are those who cannot understand me.

I understand myself, because only I lived and experienced my story because I know myself.  I know who I am, what I feel, what I do and why I do it.  I respect and approve of myself

I honor the Diversity in me and in you.

We are free.

A Traditional Nahuati Prayer

.

Fly—Jerry Florence and Alliance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciwlzv6WIRA

.

Please wake up to Love’s Voice, sweet somnambulator

And realize the eternal Truth, that I within every “You” is greater

Than any mental image you could ever form or learn

And then your world will reflect back to you the One for which you yearn.

.

The Turtles—Happy Together (1967)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRCe5L1imxg

People Need People—–Michael Franti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JwI2R8P_-M

Chapter 11: The Abyss and the Plow Horse: A Descent into Darkness and a Search for Truth

This chapter tells the story of a descent I once hoped I’d never live long enough to describe—a plunge into my own personal hell, where I became a broken down horse destined for the glue factory. Yet, it’s also a story of redemption, of someone who stepped into my darkness to try to pull me back, much like Harry deLeyer did for the horse named Snowman in the 1950’s.

It’s no mystery to me why many of us have chosen our culture’s wayward conditioning, addictions, or suicide over healing.  Unconscious influences and unhealthy attitudes, coupled with traumatic wounding and its often-Invisible wounds are the hardest to mend and the easiest to ignore.

We can see the effects of poor adaptation by citizens to our culture, its history, and supporting religions through the rise of addictions, alcoholism, loneliness, depression, mental illness, racism, sexism, and fear of immigrants that are now troubling our land.  We have to treat our pain somehow, and, believe me, this country’s citizens are quite good at self-medication at the expense of self-healing. 

Addiction feels like a twisting maze, built slowly over time, long before you realize you’re lost. I began self-medicating early and often, and when it became a way of life, every path seemed to end in a dead stop. My struggles started in my earliest years, grounded in loneliness and a complicated kind of love. In a world where anxiety feels normal, it’s no wonder so many remain trapped in those dark, tangled corridors.

The effects of toxic masculinity and its branches—whether in religion, politics, or capitalism—are stitched into the fabric of our culture, creating imbalances, suppressing the divine, and demeaning the feminine. It’s not hard to see the madness around us: the commodification of life, mass killings, early deaths, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, abuse of women and children, species extinction, and ecological destruction—all pointing toward a bleak future unless American society awakens and pushes back against the dark norms of a dying world

The Poem of the Lost

THE FOOLS (Poem written in Care Unit, May 1984)

You know who we are, there is no need for our names

We may be outwardly different, but inside are the same

Whether vacationing on chemical trips, or playing strange mind games

We must continue to strive for success, and its most dubious fame

We remain graceless souls blended into life’s darkest mass.

Affirming our uniqueness, though we remain stuck in the same class,

As those parading around like winners, but appearing just like an ass .

Steering clear of self-awareness, Oh our transparency of glass!

Spewing words of wisdom, but with only another dog’s bark.

Seeking to make a good life, but on life’s script leaving a shit mark.

We may eventually see the light, but now life is always so dark.

Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark

Hoping to someday blossom, yet we will never possess Love’s flower,

While swimming in intoxicating sweetness, and then drowning in the sour.

Never realizing that, over life, we don’t hold any real lasting power.

We avoid the dark reality of our lives, by living in a chemical tower.

We bring up life’s rear, though we think that we should be first.

We want all of the best, somebody else deserves the worst!  

Our life should be more blessed, why on earth do we feel cursed?

Trauma creates human toxic gas bubbles, just waiting to be burst!

The Labyrinth of Unseen Wounds

I am a lover of horses.  It is in my blood, it is in my bones.  My late aunt Hazel Ray (mother to the famous singer Johnny Ray) raised horses at their Salem, Oregon ranch, some of which were used for racing.  My mother rode a retired racehorse to school in the 1930’s, and I have admired, mostly from afar, the equine species for much of my life, though I spent several years in in the 1970’s and 1980’s handicapping the horses at Portland Meadows at Delta Park, Lone Oak Racetrack in Salem, Oregon, and Longacres Racetrack in Renton, Washington.

In the lore of equestrian miracles, there is the story of Harry deLeyer and a horse named Snowman. In 1956, deLeyer arrived at an auction late, looking for a cheap horse. The only ones left were the “rejects,” destined for the glue factory. He saw an old, grey plow horse, already loaded onto the slaughter truck, eyes dulled by labor and neglect. Yet, something in the animal’s eyes spoke to him—a spark buried under layers of defeat. For eighty dollars, Harry bought him. He saw value where the world saw waste.

He saw a champion where others saw a corpse.

My journey from 1986 through 1987 was the vessel for my own descent into the furthest reaches of hell, where I became that plow horse on the truck. I was broken, destined for the slaughterhouse of my own making. But just as Harry deLeyer stepped in to pull Snowman off the truck, a figure named Steve stepped into my underworld. Steve became my Harry deLeyer. Unknown to me initially, he saw a soul worth saving when I only saw the end of days. But before the rescue, it is essential to retrace the path I created that led to the slaughterhouse.

I entered this world as a source of distress in November of 1955, amidst nearly two feet of snow in Portland. A “crying baby” who refused to be soothed, I disrupted the sleep of a father working two jobs to keep us afloat. My parents, desperate for rest before Dad’s first job, a 2:30 AM paper route, would bundle me in blankets and leave me in the car in the garage. There, in the dark silence, I learned my first lesson: my calls for love resulted in isolation. My voice had no value.  Love was not to be available when I needed it the most, thus trauma’s impact began very early for me.

My father was a man of immense intellectual curiosity—a student of Theology, Psychology, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Mind at the University of Portland. He sought to understand the human condition, yet the demands of a hyper-busy work and family life forced him to abandon his academic pursuit of truth after over four years of study. Ironically, I would later pick up his mantle, rebelling against spiritual authorities just as he might have, to finish the job he started. But as a child, I did not know him as a philosopher; I knew him as a force of nature, often physically distant, always exuberant, yet sometimes terrifying.

My mother, my “great protector,” returned to work mere weeks after my birth to help pay off debts. Consequently, I was passed between babysitters, some of whom were cruel. One, Jo Stanley, allowed her teenage son to terrorize me, and, at age five, threaten me with sexual abuse. My mother, sensing my misery, pushed for me to start first grade at age five just to escape that childcare hell.

But the escape only led to a new form of struggle.

The Architecture of Pain

School felt like a battlefield I wasn’t ready for. I was physically and emotionally behind my classmates and had only started speaking about eight months before starting school. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, saw my habit of talking to myself as a “problem” and often stuck me under the dunce cap in the corner. There was a family conference initiated by the principal, Mr. Hill, as something had to be done with me. The adults’ answer was chemical—a methedrine prescription for “hyperactivity” that was really just sugar pills in a methedrine bottle, an idea spawned from my mother. Mrs. Tozier personally handed me a pill every morning, thinking it was speed.  To the teacher, I seemed to improve, maybe because she believed she’d “fixed” me. That fake methedrine was a problem dodged as a kid but one I later faced head-on as an adult.

My sister Pam and I grew up in a world that felt both magical and dangerous.  We had vast areas to explore and play near our home, and there was never a shortage of trees to climb or islands to explore. Yet the inner world was where the real danger existed. I remember waking from nightmares—dark, terrifying visions that came almost every night until I was eight years old. 

My parents would sometimes leave home to visit friends on weekend evenings after putting us to bed. I remember climbing onto my rocking horse to peer out the window into our garage when I needed comfort after yet another night terror. And I remember our parents’ car being gone, and the panic that would set in. The fear of abandonment always lingered at the edges of my mind. Even when they were home, nights were thick with anxiety. I’d lie awake replaying the day, dissecting every moment to see where I could have been “better,” hoping that being good in the daylight might buy me peace in my dreams. I wet the bed almost every night until an apocalyptic dream in 1964, and then the night terrors dramatically subsided.

Violence within our home was familiar to me, as I was beat often by my father.  But violence from others was a new language I learned abruptly in third grade. A bullying incident initiated by my sister’s boyfriend left me beaten and humiliated by a younger boy. But as he pulled my hair and ears, a surge of primal energy took over. I fought back, mimicking his violence until I won. I learned then that the world was often unsafe, some boys were untrustworthy, and vulnerability could be dangerous. I retreated to the company of girls until I was in 5th grade, seeking safety in their non-violent games, unconsciously seeking the maternal protection I associated with my mother.

And oh, how I needed protection. My father’s discipline was swift and severe. The image of my mother crying hysterically as my father raised his belt against me remains a “marker memory” of my trauma. I was always guilty, always wrong. If I denied it, I was lying; if I admitted it, I was punished. There was no mercy. One Christmas, when I was 13 years old, I dismantled a broken toy gun to understand how it worked—a metaphor for my future life’s work of deconstructing the human experience—only to be whipped in front of Ann Cook, a daughter of some friends for “destroying” it. The shame I felt was a familiar companion.

Yet, I loved him. He instilled in me a deep love for play, nature, hard work, camping, and dogs, creatures that became my steadfast friends when humans failed me. My first dog Nina, killed by a car when I was 7, and later Heidi, a beautiful Samoyed, taught me the miraculous power of unconditional love. But even that love was fraught with loss.

I grew up feeling like a “sinner” who didn’t fit the mold. Sunday school stories of Jesus dying for my sins felt irrelevant and harsh. I rejected their vague promises, just as I rejected the competitive nature of school where love felt conditional on grades, and the whim of the curve that we were graded upon. I stole from my father’s wallet to buy candy, acting out in a desperate bid for attention, negative or otherwise. I became a bully at times, oppressing shy or awkward girls with ridicule, projecting my own shame onto them—a cycle of trauma I would only recognize and apologize for later in my life.

Shadows of the Past: Randy and Donelle

We moved to a new neighborhood just before I started fifth grade, and that’s when I met Randy Olson—a man who would have a huge impact on my life. He lived about three-quarters of a mile down Oatfield Road from us. Randy was an incredibly outgoing guy with a great sense of humor, though he had grown up a bit awkward, shooting up so quickly in seventh grade that he earned the nickname “Lurch.” We spent countless hours playing pickup basketball, football, and baseball in every season, and shared plenty of sleepovers and camping trips. Randy was a constant in my life, a brother in every way but blood.

Through Randy, I met Donelle.

It was 1971. Randy had a girlfriend named Terri-Lynn Barr, who had a stepsister named Donelle. One day, Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, and I had my first chance to meet her. When I first laid eyes on Donelle, I was hooked. She was gorgeous beyond description, intelligent, and sensitive. I had a sense that I had witnessed my future. But I was sixteen, without a driver’s license, and plagued by low self-esteem. I let her slip away initially, believing I couldn’t compete for her affections.

But persistence is a strange bedfellow to insecurity. Eventually, I commandeered my father’s Honda 50CC motorcycle—a bike intended for fishing trips he never took—and drove that silly little machine up I-205 to Vancouver to see her. We became sweethearts. We were both virgins, but our intimacy was shadowed by her past. Donelle had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Bud Barr. The trauma of that abuse rendered our physical relationship difficult, a harsh disappointment that mirrored the emotional disconnect we struggled to bridge.

Donelle’s life was a tragedy of toxic male energy. Her mother, Marlene, had neglected her children, leaving them vulnerable to predators like Bud. Donelle carried the weight of this abuse, and it manifested in severe mental illness. She suffered her first nervous breakdown late in her senior year, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. I watched the woman I loved crumble.

I had secured a full-ride scholarship from the US Air Force in 1973, joining the ROTC with dreams, since I was nine years old, of becoming a pilot and astronaut. My addiction and relationship to a wounded woman derailed those aspirations. Donelle Mae Flick Paullin, the most beautiful woman I had ever met, would continue to suffer from mental illness her entire life. Our life together was a rollercoaster of her breakdowns, temporary resurrections, and my co-occurring addiction. I went from being a potential astronaut to a guilt-ridden caregiver, and eventually, a broken man who walked away to save his own sanity, only to find he had none left.

We decided not to have children. I worried about Donelle’s unhealed traumatic wounding and recurring mental health struggles and my ability to be a good father while still carrying the dysfunction born from my past trauma. Both Donelle and I held onto our wounded inner child while having no idea how to heal them.

Today, we see in the public sphere—most starkly in deeply corrupt figures like Donald Trump—the devastating result of a society that refuses to mend its wounded inner children. It’s a grim display of unresolved pain projected onto the masses. Trump faces no limits as he inflicts harm on a nation and the world. Unlike him, my trauma-filled childhood ended with me; it would not be passed on to another innocent soul, let alone an entire democracy.

I gave up on my dreams, and committed to support Donelle and myself, taking a swing-shift job with the US Postal Service in 1975. It was supposed to be a temporary gig to help me get by while attending school during the day, but it turned into a decade-long grind after I dropped out of school in 1976, and again in 1983. I had enough credits for two degrees, but my low self-esteem turned those missed opportunities into a spiral of depression and self-destructive habits.

We married in September 1979. Donelle had stabilized, studying to be a Sous Chef. But the stability was a mirage. By July 1980, less than a year into our marriage, she collapsed again. The voices returned. She heard screams from the basement of the police department; she was terrorized by her own mind. She would often exclaim

“I am controlled, I am controlled”,

yet she would not be able to tell me who or what the interior jailer looked like.

I committed her to Dammasch State Hospital. The guilt was crushing. But Donelle was extremely sick.  The mental health support team had no idea how long Donelle would be held, so I filed for a legal separation, in preparation for an eventual divorce if she did not experience recovery.  She was to be released five months into her hospital stay, and we got back together early in 1981.

Our relationship was a cycle of hope and despair. In 1981, during one of her next breakdowns when I moved across the street to another apartment to save myself, my best friend Dan Dietz raped her while she was incapacitated by alcohol. When I confronted him, he claimed no memory, but I broke my hand on the door he stood in. I never saw him alive again.

The violence of the world seemed inescapable.

I finally walked away from the marriage in 1983, forcing her out of our apartment. It was an act of self-preservation that felt like betrayal.  Donelle lived on the streets of Portland for nearly a year afterward, often visiting with me to ask for money and other assistance at the main US Postal Service cafeteria at 3:00 am many mornings when I was on lunch break from my graveyard shift.

The Postal Service Purgatory

My career at the US Postal Service was a backdrop to this personal unraveling. I started as a floor clerk, then a letter sorting machine operator, a maintenance electrician and mechanic, and then an electronic technician trainee. I worked with damaged souls—Vietnam veterans like Larry, who told stories of fragging officers, and conspiracy theorists like Greg, who actually predicted a Donald Trump style presidency. I befriended Bill Y, a black Vietnam veteran, during training in Oklahoma. One night, in a segregated bar, Bill waved a gun to protect our group, teaching me a lesson in brotherhood and protection I had never before experienced.

Despite my intelligence and education—I had aced advanced math and science courses at the University of Portland—I was stuck blowing dust off equipment. My attempts to finish my engineering degree were thwarted two times by my recurring addiction. I was functioning outwardly, but inwardly, I was eroding.

The Descent into Addiction

My descent wasn’t sudden; it was a slow erosion. It began at age five with sips of beer. I was stealing whole beers by age 11, drinking at least one a week.  By 1971, Randy introduced me to marijuana. By 1973, I was drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana almost daily.  This was behavior I attempted to maintain for the next twelve years, with occasional short-term stoppages.

In 1984, after my divorce, I moved into the Panorama Towers with Randy. We were party monsters, using chaos to delay dealing with trauma. It was here that I was reintroduced to Di Di (Diane) McCloud, a beautiful woman who I had admired two years before when she was a steady of another friend. We fell deeply in love.  I wrote my first poem and gave it to her. The relationship was only to last for two weeks, when she had to leave for Las Vegas to take care of family matters. 

Poem Written for Di Di, in 1984.

Though hibernating for oh so long, 

And hiding from the deep pain of winters’ chill, 

Love reawakens to sing its special song, 

So for how much longer can we be still?

With eyes that melt winters’ deepest snow.  

A tender touch that always seem to say, 

That all we will ever need to know, 

Will be learned along Love’s way.

Two minds that were brought together.

Two hearts that seek to share, 

Two bodies that need no tether, 

Two become one, though still a pair.

Heavenly nights and rapturous mornings, 

Love promises through all of our years, 

The sweet, stirring music of love sings, 

For two souls who now have the ears to hear.

True love can be the source of dreams, 

For two hearts continuing to awaken.

I pray that we are all each other seems,

And share in Love’s next journey taken

In April 1984, I checked myself into the Lovejoy Care Unit for alcoholism to save my job. There, I met Claire, a counselor who told me my father was trying to live his life through me. I sobered up, but my spiritual foundation was still rotten. I understood that my father had negatively impacted my life, but that knowledge had no healing capacity at that time.

That June, at the Postal Service training center in Norman, Oklahoma, I missed a crucial test by five points—just enough to lose out on a better position in the maintenance department. The disappointment hit me like a punch. Right then, I decided to relapse. On my way home, with a layover at the Denver airport, I found myself on the same flight as my Care Unit counselor, Claire, who was headed back to Portland. I kept out of sight, already planning my next drink while avoiding what might have been my chance at redemption.

By the summer of 1984, Randy and I moved to Beaverton.  While at a local bar I met Alcindia. She was a cute younger woman, about six years younger than me. I brought her home, and we hooked up. But my life was messy. As I was living with Randy, there was the additional complexities of the relationships he had, such as a girlfriend named Claudia. In a moment of weakness and confusion, after coming home from my graveyard shift, I jumped into bed, but his girlfriend appeared shortly afterward, naked and ready for attention. So I slept with Claudia while Randy was at work. Alcindia later found out through a voice activated recorder she had left under my bed. Yet, we moved in together.

PAIN (written in Cedar Hills Hospital, January, 1985)

Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,

Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.

No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,

How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

escapede rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

Alcindia and I became long term lovers and drug-using friends. I knew that I was “slumming” with her, but hey, I was lonely, and needy. 

I wrote a poem to capture some of my feelings around these kinds of hookups:

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 quite 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.

I realized our lifestyle was killing me. I entered Cedar Hills Hospital in January of 1985, staying three nights to sober up and get a new medication plan addressing my depression.  Dr. Beavers prescribed me some amazing anti-depressants that almost instantaneously righted my listing ship.  I was discharged and lived the best six months of my life up to that point, clean and sober.

On a Fourth of July camping trip with Alcindia I stumbled upon a half smoked joint, and a crazy thought came into my mind.  I could use the joint to be normal, or I could continue on the medication.  Without discussion with anyone, I took a couple drags off of the marijuana joint, and severe mental illness overtook me.  I called in sick to my job, and never returned to work because of the shame I felt at being such a loser.

My frustration and anger with myself for being such an idiot wore on my relationship with Alcindia, who I blamed for sabotaging my sobriety. I broke it off in a rather spectacular fashion in November 1985 and moved to Randy’s new apartment in Beaverton.

January 28, 1986, was to become the turning point in my life. I woke up on Randy’s couch to his screams:

“Bruce, wake up! The Challenger just exploded!”

Watching the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrate in a plume of white and gray smoke, I realized it was not just a national tragedy; it was the external manifestation of my internal reality. I had joined with the ROTC with dreams of becoming a pilot and astronaut. My potential had been vast, but now I had no potential, with no will to live  Watching that disaster, I realized my life was also over. My dreams had disintegrated.

I was 30 years old. I had made a pact with myself at age 15: if I couldn’t shake my addiction by 30, I would end my life. The “conspiracy of silence” I participated in kept my struggles hidden, but the pain was screaming.

PAIN REVISITED (written January, 1986)

Though the dark cloud looms on the horizon, it is also hidden within me.

It hovers in the distance, just beyond my reach, as it patiently waits my most vulnerable moment.

I then feel the initial mist from its clouds; I know that I am its target.

A piercing wind picks up, hugging me with its frozen arms, and I vainly look for protection

As the torrential downpour begins, I feel my tenuous sense of peace and safety eroding beneath my feet.

As it strips back, layer, upon layer, upon layer, upon layer, of my consciousness, exposing a bedrock bereft of sanity and hope.

Exposing long forgotten mental relics, threatening old, unhealed memories, and dangerous old habits,

Stinging, piercing, hurting me at my core, obscuring visions of glorious, yet impossibly distant futures,

Washing away all tenuously held possessions of sanity, and hope.

Uprooting the feeble foundation of a life desperately, but futilely, attempting to, yet again, reconstruct itself,

Carrying a powerless, helpless, desperate soul back into toxic chemical valleys, amid a dark, swirling depression,

Ravaging,

drowning,

then decaying.

Pain,

Why?

I went to the pharmacist with prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication from Dr. Dan Beavers. I intended to swallow them all. I was standing in line when I ran into Alcindia’s sister’s friend, Mike. I tried to share the smallest part of my story, but he shut me down, stating he had no time for other people’s problems. It reaffirmed my belief in the indifference of the world and served as a reminder that I would not be missed too much when I exited this world.

Then, the pharmacist refused to fill the prescriptions. He told me I needed to see the doctor again. Undeterred, I scheduled an emergency visit with Dr. Beavers. He sensed I was in crisis and elicited a promise that I would not kill myself—he was grieving another patient, Scott, who had done just that. I gave him my empty promise that I would do no harm to myself.

I was left with an intense desire to end it all and a proven method to accomplish my erasure, yet the universe conspired to prevent me from taking final action that day.

A revolutionary idea popped into my head:

Now I must begin a search for Truth.

But a search does not begin with answers; it begins with a descent.

While driving along Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, I spotted my friend Di Di McCloud, walking on the sidewalk. I had known her since 1981 and had lost touch with her when she had left me in 1984 to visit her family. 

We planned a trip to the beach. I picked her up that next weekend and drove her to the beach, intending to spend the weekend with her there.  She met up with others while down at a Seaside bar.  They had a lot of cocaine, which I had no interest in using, in addition to being generally repulsive people. I announced my decision to leave immediately, leaving Di Di to fend for herself, which she was more than capable of doing. I drove home that evening, in a blackout drunk condition. I crashed my 1974 Dodge Dart near the Elderberry Inn, nearly going over a cliff. I rear-ended another car at freeway speeds in North Plains, but a $471 check written to the other driver prevented a police intervention. I limped the car to a repair shop where I then abandoned it.

I was careening out of control, a hazard to myself and everyone around me. My retirement money from the Postal Service, cashed out in desperation, then fueled my descent into the city’s dark underbelly. I connected with all manners of damaged and dangerous people, seeking a truth I couldn’t name in places it might never be found.

My search for truth, distorted by chemicals and despair, led me into the darkest corners of Portland. I called my old friend Sean Tucker in Spain, telling him I had a fatal brain tumor—a lie to cover the truth of my suicidal intent. I secured a passport to go live with him, but the cost to relocate was too high for my limited budget, and the lure of the underworld kept me local.

I purchased a used Datsun 310 car for $1000 cash at a local dealership.  I filed for bankruptcy in March of 1986. It became official, coincidentally, on my 31st birthday, November 20, 1986. I was severing financial ties just as I planned to sever my mortal ones.

Randy found another girlfriend, and could no longer house me, so my 1977 Datsun 310 became my home by March of 1986.  It was my sanctuary, my bedroom, and my prison. I occasionally squatted in unoccupied homes, distanced myself from my family, and let the current of addiction pull me into its desperate undercurrents.

I connected with all manners of damaged and dangerous people, seeking a truth I couldn’t name in places it might never be found.

The Underworld and The Search for Truth

My search for truth led me into Portland’s underworld. Despite my circumstances, I clung to the spiritual principles of AA, even while avoiding abstinence. I realized I needed to avoid sex and new relationships, and eventually, to quit smoking pot as it dulled the intellect I needed for survival. I committed to befriending those I once judged against—society’s undesirables. I was a dead man walking, a fellow traveler in darkness.

Vignettes of the Damned

Ralph:

I frequented the Punjab, a tavern on Foster Road. There, I met Ralph, a man from Scappoose who was to be a central figure in the local underworld. Through him, I was introduced to a cast of characters that seemed pulled from a noir nightmare: drug chemists, undercover officers, hitmen, homeless people, and prostitutes.

I was an anomaly in their world—I was too healthy, too educated. I was once nearly beaten for using the word “magnanimous.” A patron told me to use a nickel word whenever I was tempted to use a quarter word. My vocabulary was a liability here. I eventually descended to levels that were acceptable to others, and, boy, it was not a good look for me.

I grew to love Ralph, who became my friend and protector.  I became his primary driver for many of his “exchanges”.  Once, I had all four tires of my car slashed while parked overnight for a party with Ralph and his minions. Ralph put the word out on the streets that this was unacceptable behavior, and whoever did the deed would answer to him personally, and to lay off my car. I felt strangely safe, and protected, while with Ralph, even though there were continued threats against my safety and well-being.

While jacking up my car for tire replacements, I had to use my AA book to help with extra elevation, which attracted some strange looks from those who already thought that I was a stranger in this strange land. Hey, I had finally found a constructive use for the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I actually felt a little pleased with myself. Ralph told me to “ditch that evil book”, and I kept it hidden from all sight from that point on, though to this day, I still own that very same book.

Sarah and Jake:

Sarah was Ralph’s long-term girlfriend, a woman I shared many adventures with, though I kept our connection strictly platonic to avoid emotional entanglement. We often visited friends in jail together, and it was on a trip to see our friend Jake that my reality fractured. After snorting designer meth, Sarah casually revealed that the “kind” man we were visiting was actually a hitman for a motorcycle gang.

The cognitive dissonance of this revelation, combined with the drugs, caused me to have a stroke-like episode where I lost the ability to speak. Meeting Jake at the jail, I could only produce animalistic grunts and squawks. It was a terrifying manifestation of the “conspiracy of silence” that ruled our lives—my voice literally stolen by the horror and the chemicals I had consumed.

Steve:

Steve was the big brother I never had, a well-dressed man of mystery who navigated the treacherous landscape of the underworld with an intelligence that matched my own. He often played the role of mentor, criticizing the rate of my drug abuse while often using with me, though he used much less and always seemed to maintain a composure I lacked. He constantly “tested” my resolve by exposing me to desperate situations and broken people, perhaps to see if I would crumble or find the “truth” he urged me to search for.

Through Steve, I was introduced to the darker corners of the city, including the tragic circumstances of runaways like Georgette. He was a guide who didn’t pull me out of the mud but chose to walk into it with me. It was a complex friendship built on shared vices and intellectual sparring, even as he watched me deteriorate into a paranoid, emaciated shadow of myself.  

I was to learn later, much later, that Steve was part of an undercover operation investigating reported corruption within the Portland Police Department, specifically cocaine distribution by an unnamed officer, and several potential accomplices to Steven Kessler, a notorious criminal who had killed a prison guard in 1982, escaped, and broke into the DEA Portland office to steal documents about past and present investigations, among other criminal actions while on the loose.

In a potentially damning connection, I was roommates with Tom Craven at the Care Unit in 1984. Tom was a co-conspirator with Steven in the 1966 Oregon State Prison riots. I also grew up with Wayne Harsh, a neighbor of mine until 1973 and a former Clackamas County Police man who supplied the getaway car to Steven Kessler after he escape from prison after the death of the guard.

Hal:

Hal was a lanky, chain-smoking intellectual who served as my alternate driver when Ralph wasn’t around. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in forestry and possessing a strong work ethic, he had been reduced by mental instability to peddling speed at local strip bars to survive. We spent hours fueled by stimulants, dissecting religion and philosophy; he carried a deep-seated Catholic guilt, often claiming that heaven and hell were not afterlives, but states of existence right here on earth.

He possessed a tragic cynicism, believing that the damage in the world mirrored the damage in his own mind. While I felt oppressed by life, Hal felt oppressed by God and the Church, arguing that he had to sort through layers of hell just to find a piece of heaven. Our conversations never ended on a hopeful note, a fact cemented when he was eventually arrested for drug distribution after being betrayed by an acquaintance, becoming yet another casualty of the game, we were playing.

Barbara:

Barbara was an emotionally unavailable whirlwind who entered my life in the late summer, interested only in a running mate who had no expectations of her. She was petite, outgoing, and treated me like an accessory for her escapades, discarding me whenever the night ended or her mood shifted. Despite her demeaning nature, I felt a strange, fleeting safety with her, perhaps because her loneliness and nihilism matched my own so perfectly.

Our relationship peaked on Halloween, when we roamed downtown Portland costumed as a pimp and his prostitutes. For a few hours, the leather and velvet disguise covered my emaciated frame, earning me the only compliment on my appearance I’d received in years. But true to form, she abandoned me at 2:30 AM, leaving me to realize that we were just two damaged souls crashing into each other in the dark.

Robert:

One challenging night at the Punjab, Robert slid next to me. He was a convicted armed robber who had killed a man in 1975. He was looking for old friends. I bought him a drink and we got on really well for about 20 minutes. When his connection arrived, they went to the bathroom. Robert returned, eyes dull, and slumped off his chair.

He slumped off his chair, having overdosed on heroin right there in the tavern. When I asked the bartender if we should help, I was told,

“Robert is waiting for a better day. Until it arrives, he is right where he wants to be.”

He had me move Robert into a booth where he would be less conspicuous. It was a chilling lesson in the apathy of the underworld—Robert had sought oblivion to get over the hump of a bad stretch of days, and the heroin had simply granted his wish.

Dorothy:

Dorothy was a young mother and heroin user who lived in terror of her incarcerated ex-lover, Jakob, believing he could astrally project from his cell to control her. During a visit to her home, I watched her scrape resin from spoons, desperate for a fix, while she delivered a flat, cynical sermon on human nature. She told me that “good people” didn’t exist—only messed-up people who occasionally made helpful choices for selfish reasons.

Her worldview was bleak, mirroring the darkness I felt closing in on me. She offered to share her incoming supply of heroin with me, a temptation to finally numb the pain completely. Disturbed by the palpable darkness in her home and not yet ready to surrender to that final oblivion, I fled, leaving her to her ghosts and her needle.

Georgette:

Then there was Georgette, who Steve first introduced me to. She was a 15-year-old runaway being groomed by thieves and a handler named Greg. Seeing her innocence broke my heart. I used some of my retirement money to whisk her away, driving her to Outside In for help. I stuffed cash in her pocket and told her never to return to Greg. In protecting her, I was unconsciously learning how to save the child within myself.

Paranoia followed this act of grace. A tape recording of my private conversation with Georgette appeared at the Punjab tavern. I had never been more fearful in my life.  Some of the things I said about two people were very unflattering.

The underworld was watching and listening.

Greg:

Greg was a young man who had been on the streets for years, acting as a handler for runaways and a fence for stolen goods. He was intrigued by my vocabulary and my disinterest in women, mistaking my celibacy and vocabulary for a shared kinship. He attempted to recruit me as a partner, bringing me to a safe house on Duke Avenue to show off his operation—a basement stockpiled with stolen weaponry and appliances, and a hidden meth lab.

He couldn’t understand my cryptic talk of death or my refusal to join his enterprise. Standing in that basement, surrounded by the machinery of crime, I declined his offer of partnership and his offer of a joint, needing to keep my head clear for my own descent. He eventually lost interest in me, and as time passed, I watched him physically deteriorate, a mirror reflecting my own disease back at me. 

Martha:

Martha was the matron of the safe house on Duke Avenue, a woman of unkempt appearance who presided over a basement that looked like a department store of stolen dreams. She managed the logistics of Greg’s operation, hoarding everything from chainsaws to automatic weapons while overseeing a chemist named Dieter who cooked meth behind a closed door. She seemed almost reverential about the lab, eager to show off the beakers and chemical progress.

She offered me a joint to celebrate our “good fortune,” which I declined in favor of a line of crystal to keep my edge. I stayed in her orbit for a sleepless week of manic conversation and chemical fumes before moving on. I never saw her again, but she remained in my memory as a strange, domestic figure in a house built entirely on theft and addiction.

The Wild Card

I continued an incredible downward spiral into addiction, and Steve commented to me, in November, how I looked like I could be the “Aids Poster Boy” because I had become so slight of figure, and so unhealthy looking. I had started “hearing voices”, and paranoia plagued me. Yet, I did not let on to others that I had become so disfigured internally, though the signs had appeared. I “heard” that there was a major undercover operation active in Portland, and that dozens of criminal indictments were immanent. In reality, that was partially the truth, yet I should not have known that, let alone warn a few others of those “facts”.

Steve wanted to know how I knew of these indictments, and I would not tell him. I noted that people were tailing me almost all of the time and I had been overtly warned through my Georgette experience that some of my conversations were being recorded in my car. One day I tore my car apart, searching for the transmitter, or the recorder. I had two different people stop by, and try to interrupt me from the search, which only added to my own paranoia. I did not locate the transmitter, but I really began to fuck with any listeners’ mind, by talking dark shit, and renaming myself “the Wild Card”. I let my world know, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer aligned with anyone, and I was on my way to death.

The Rescue

By March 2, 1987, at a massive party organized by a dealer named Frank, I was ready for my final assignment. I agreed to try a “witches brew” of speed and heroin.

Why not?

I had nothing to lose.

As I followed Frank upstairs to begin a new addiction cycle—and perhaps to die—I spotted Steve. He was talking to a woman who used his real name, and it wasn’t Steve. The masquerade was over.

Steve pulled me aside. I told him that his secret was safe with me, that I had known all along that he was an undercover agent.  Even in my mental illness and paranoia, I had known.  Steve then stated:

“Bruce, I can no longer keep you protected. It is time to make a decision for yourself.”

I told him I was going upstairs to finish it. To die. But Steve didn’t let me go. Steve stated:

“Your search for truth has ended within my world. Now your real search for truth must begin. Your father is the starting point for what must come next. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.”

He acted.

He grabbed my arm and led me outdoors.

He drove me to my father’s house—the house of the man who had traumatized me, but whose love I still sought.

He dropped me off.

Later, he returned my car.

The suicide pills were gone from under the seat.

Steve was my Harry deLeyer. He saw the champion in the plow horse. He unhitched me from the wagon of death just as the ramp to the slaughterhouse was lowering.

The Awakening

My parents were in Arizona until the end of March, so I broke in. 

I was in such bad shape, I was shaking, my skin was broke out all over my body, I was hallucinating, and I heard voices appearing to be the thoughts of others, so I was in no condition to seek out help again from my psychiatrist.  He would have committed me to a hospital,, for sure.

I invited Randy over, and we drank until around 10:00 PM, then he left. Shortly after, I blacked out.

In that blackout, I grabbed my father’s rifle and drove to a drug chemist’s home in Milwaukie. I accidentally shot a hole in his front door. The chemist, Brock, unperturbed, injected me with speed to sober me up. We talked for hours. He injected me again.

And then, something unexpected happened. Clarity struck. I saw the insanity. I looked at Brock and yelled, “We are nuts!” I walked out of his home with five dollars to my name and a choice: buy beer/gas to die, or gas to get to family.

I chose family.

My grandparents—the safe harbor of my childhood—nursed me through five days of detox.

A week later, my childhood friend Craig Salter invited me to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I decided to go. Since God played a big role in AA and I was searching for truth, I thought there might be a connection. I revisited the Twelve Steps of AA and ended up attending 270 meetings in 90 days. With no job at the time, recovery became a compelling new focus for me.

The Revised Twelve Steps

Practicing the Twelve Steps is about knowing oneself.  Living the Twelve Steps is  the realization that we are spiritual beings hypnotized by our  human experience..  What might a man performing a self-examination through internal probing discover about his self?.

To uncover the treasure, we first have to dig through the dirt, and believe me, it can be a toxic waste site., This requires patience, time, experience, and humility, but eventually insight is developed whereby we, as men, can see the forces of corruption within our own heart and soul, and through the seeing, we also facilitate the healing, as well.

In the rooms of AA, and through the teachings of Jack Boland, I began to rewrite the script of my life. I realized that my “Search for Truth” had to evolve into a “Scholarship of the Spirit.”

Based on my journey through the abyss, I revised the Twelve Steps to reflect my spiritual understanding:

1. Through our extended suffering, we finally found the desire to want it to end. We admitted that when we become self-destructively habituated… we lose our freedom of choice.
2. With our newfound hope came the desire to awaken to higher possibilities. We realize we have not been living up to our full potential.
3. We decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our higher interior power, which is our capacity for change. We want to access the power to evolve continuously.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory. We realize that finding blocks to our evolution guides our paths to truth.
5. We admit we were not being truthful. By honestly talking with another, our burdens can be lifted.
6. We become entirely willing to let go of attachments to unhealthy attitudes.
7. We open our hearts through humility. Rejoice, for the old demons are being transformed into new angels!
8. We admit we brought harm to others while unconscious of our higher potential.
9. We make direct amends… Our guilt will not be assuaged at the expense of others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory. We are now more focused on the beauty of the present moment.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the truth of our being… This whole process is a meditation on life.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening… we attempted to carry our message. We have saved the world from ourselves. Our life is now our truest teacher.

The Plow Horse Soars

Harry deLeyer took Snowman, the eighty-dollar plow horse, and washed him, fed him, and loved him. Two years later, Snowman won the Triple Crown of show jumping. He cleared obstacles no one thought possible. He became a legend not because of his pedigree, but because someone saw the truth inside him when he couldn’t see it himself.

Steve saw the truth in me when I was blind with darkness. He removed the suicide pills. He steered me away from the final overdose. He returned me to the place where I could begin to heal. The search for truth didn’t end in the underworld; and it continued in earnest when I walked out of it.

Sandman, the plow horse was never just a plow horse. He was a creature of flight, waiting for the weight to be lifted so he could finally soar.  And I was like Sandman, soaring into a fantastic future I could never have anticipated.

Steve called me one year later to check on me.  I thanked him profusely.  I felt love and appreciation for him. I was awakening to a new, wonderful life.  I can’t help but think that Steve, through his connections, helped secure an apprenticeship for me with the IBEW Local 48 electrician’s union.

To truly transcend the abyss, I had to become more than the passive recipient of rescue. I had to become my own Harry deLeyer. I needed to look past the accumulated grime of my own history, gaze into the mirror of my soul, and recognize the champion hidden beneath the scars. I had to finally see myself as worthy of investing love and life force, transforming from a broken plow horse into a being capable of its own salvation.  I had a story to tell.

My whole life I had believed that I had nothing to say, and that became an essential part of my life story.  In March of 2017 I begged and beseeched my wife, Sharon, to please tell my story for me, as she had already written a great book, and had that capacity.  She compassionately, and authoritatively, reminded me that my story was my own to develop, and to tell, and it will die with me, unless I find the courage, and the willingness to share it. 

I started revisiting my childhood experiences and piecing together the story of my life. I studied some of the family writings and started recalling family stories about the grandparents on my father’s side I never really knew.  And while I was writing and thinking and making sense of it, I was struck with a profound realization. I saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father.

I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents. This can be particularly difficult for men. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in poor collaborative intentions, and dominating, or being dominated, by others while engaging in passive/aggressive coping strategies. Philosophies of oppression and the monetization of reality often emerge from deep wounds. Women, children, and those with gentle or non-confrontational natures are frequently victimized.

We often downplay our inner stories, doubting there’s anything worth telling, or hiding them out of shame. But the truth is, our stories deserve to be told. Make peace with your story, develop your own timeline, develop your own personal story, and be the hero of your own journey. Do whatever it takes. Find and cherish your story no matter how difficult it is initially because as you heal and grow, that story starts to take on significance until it becomes part of the grand story.  It should no longer be “his story”, or “her story”, but instead, the unitive “our story”.

When I recently rewrote this section on my search for truth, a period of time following my 1986 suicide attempt, I was to reenter the consciousness, and the emotional experience, of those most troubling times.  I did not expect or anticipate this, and I reexperienced many of the dark emotions that characterized this most turbulent and disordered time in my life.  I finished the work, and felt sad, and disconnected.  I took my Miata for a long drive, which typically lifts my spirits, no matter what may be going on in my life. 

This time, however, it did not work.  I drove for 65 minutes away from home, and I found no relief.  When I began to slow down, to turn around and come home, a dove flew over my car and seemed to lead me for over twenty seconds to a place to park, and to turn around.  I then remembered what the dove symbolized in my mind, the reassurance that my guiding spirit HAD NOT ABANDONED ME and was continuing to lead me to my own promised land.  Suddenly, a torrent of tears erupted from me, and a huge release of energy overwhelmed my being.  I then felt an amazing forgiveness, love, and compassion for the past version of myself, a form of self-forgiveness that I had never experience before.

Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?

Are you tired of your own suffering, or the needless suffering of others?

Are you tired of being the silent stick figure in the dreams of others who would control and manipulate you like a mindless puppet, and turn you into unholy versions of yourself?

Are you tired of your past wounds controlling your perceptions, and guiding you onto diseased and despairing paths of unconsciousness?

What is your story?

Where is your story hidden?

The world needs to hear it.

Let the healing begin in earnest.

Start looking for the authentic you.

This is the real, eternal search for Truth.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 

note 1: I received a call from Di Di in 1988, and she requested a copy of a poem I had written for her in 1984.  I delivered it to her.  We hugged and cried together.  Di Di died later that year in a drunken driving car accident in Lake Oswego, where she was the unfortunate passenger.

Note 2:  Randy died June 3, 2013 at the age of 58.  We attended his funeral.

Note 3:  Donelle Mae Flick Paullin died on my birthday, November 20, 2022.

Note 4:  I saw Barbara at a restaurant when she was our waitress in 1990.  I was eating with my present wife Sharon and Sharon’s daughter Hayley.  Barbara recognized me and apologized profusely for the way she treated me in 1986.  I accepted her apologies and wished her well for her new clean and sober life.

Note 5:  Steven Kessler died in prison recently, shortly after seeking to be released on probation.  He was regarded by the Feds as the most dangerous criminal Oregon had ever produced.

Note 6:  I had several long stretches of sobriety since 1987, some as long as nineteen years.  I relapsed late in 2006, when I broke my leg training for a road race, and became addicted to pain pills. I now practice a program of conscious sobriety, where I can have an alcohol-based drink.  This mindfulness-based behavior is often referred to as rational recovery, but is frowned upon in AA circles, where complete abstinence is strongly advised.

Before the Word: The Eternal Search for Truth and Creation

Words Create a Sense of Self, But They Are Not the Totality of Who We Are — Who are you? Take a moment to consider these questions deeply: Are you defined by words alone?

How would you answer these questions if there were no words to describe yourself?

Your mind might immediately reach for phrases like, “I’m a teacher,” “I’m creative,” or even one of your roles, like “daughter” or “musician.” These words help shape your identity, offering a sense of self through definitions, labels, and narratives.

But here’s the paradox—while words powerfully shape and affirm our sense of self, they fall short of encompassing everything that we are. We are more than the verbal constructs we use to define ourselves. Words give life to our thoughts, but they also limit them. They create a framework for self-understanding yet fail to capture the boundless totality of human experience.

This post will explore this fascinating tension. Together, we’ll uncover how words build—and confine—our sense of self, and we’ll take steps to go beyond language to discover the deeper, multidimensional truths about who we are.

Language is often described as humanity’s most remarkable tool. It allows us to articulate our thoughts, connect with others, and shape how we experience the world. But perhaps its most profound role is in creating our sense of self. Words are the building blocks of identity, the threads weaving together the tapestry of who we believe we are.

Think about the moment in which Helen Keller, at the age of seven, experienced the breakthrough of understanding language. Upon feeling water on her hand as her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled the word “w-a-t-e-r” into her palm, she discovered that words were not just symbols but bridges to meaning. This awakening marked the birth of her sense of self. She was no longer merely observing the world; she became a participant within it, a knower connected to the known.

Similarly, words shape how we understand and internalize our emotions, roles, and beliefs. We use them to narrate our experiences, translate abstract thoughts into tangible ideas, and construct our worldview. They affect how others perceive us—and, more significantly, how we perceive ourselves.

For example, consider phrases like “I am smart” or “I am not artistic.” Once spoken or thought, these descriptors don’t merely reflect observations; they become woven into the story you tell about yourself.

But what happens when words impose limits?

While language is an extraordinary tool, it also has its boundaries. Not everything in life can be articulated, labeled, or neatly boxed into words.

Have you ever struggled to describe a breathtaking sunset, the deep resonance of music, or the intimacy of shared silence? Language becomes clumsy and incomplete when trying to encapsulate the nuances of such experiences. Words can capture a fragment of the moment but not its full essence.

Similarly, self-identifying exclusively through labels or definitions can be restrictive. Phrases like “I am shy” or “I am ambitious” start as descriptors but risk morphing into rigid narratives. When we become too attached to these words, they can confine us, reducing our multidimensional nature into something far too simple.

This is where the danger of language lies. It translates reality into something smaller, more digestible, but also less expansive. What can’t be spoken often gets forgotten—or ignored altogether.

Consider the ineffable aspects of your life—the emotions, instincts, and insights that exist beyond verbal articulation. How much of your true depth remains untapped because words can’t reach it?

If words are only part of the equation, how can we move beyond them to explore the broader dimensions of who we are? The answer lies in tapping into the rich, multidimensional experiences that exist outside the realm of language.

1. Mindfulness and Present Moment Awareness

Through mindfulness, we can bypass the confines of linguistic thought, grounding ourselves in the present moment. This practice encourages us to set aside mental labels and engage with the “now” directly.

Imagine sitting by the ocean. Instead of immediately labeling what you see (“waves,” “blue water”), you focus on the sound of the waves crashing, the salty scent of the air, and the warmth of the sun on your skin. You’re no longer interpreting the experience through words; you’re immersed in it fully.

Meditating or practicing mindful breathing can help you discover an identity untethered from words—a pure experience of being.

2. Sensory Experiences and Non-Verbal Communication

What can your senses tell you about who you are? Unlike words, sensory experiences transcend categories. They help us connect with our environment—and ourselves—in profound, unspoken ways.

Think about eating a ripe peach. You don’t need words to feel the sweet burst of flavor or the texture of the juice running down your hand. Such sensory moments are as much a part of us as our thoughts or narratives, yet they remain beyond verbal articulation.

Non-verbal communication works similarly. A knowing glance exchanged with a loved one or a supportive hug speaks volumes without needing a single word. These gestures remind us that much of what matters most—connection, authenticity, love—cannot always be spoken.

3. Intuition and Inner Knowing

Finally, there’s the realm of intuition—the instinctual understanding that arises without conscious reasoning or verbal explanation. Our intuition often leads us to truths that words fail to capture.

Have you made a decision simply because “it felt right,” without being able to explain why? Or felt drawn to someone or something inexplicably? Intuition is the quiet voice guiding us beyond reason or language, deeper into personal truths.

When we honor this inner knowing, we allow aspects of our identity to unfold outside of words’ strict confines.

The paradox of language—that it helps shape our identity while simultaneously limiting it—is a profound one. To fully understand ourselves, we must explore both realms.

Reflect on the words you use to describe who you are. Which words empower you? Which might be confining you? By becoming aware of how language shapes your self-perception, you create space to step beyond it.

Practice mindfulness to connect with the present, beyond labels and narratives. Engage in sensory experiences and nurture your intuition—allowing yourself to uncover truths that words can never reach.

Remember, words create the foundation for identity, but they are not its walls. You are far more than the sum of the labels, stories, and descriptors you’ve been given. You are an unbounded self, as complex and limitless as existence itself.

Want to Explore This Further?

Practical Tips:

• Reflect on your “I am” statements. Are they serving and empowering you, or do they box you in?
• Practice mindful breathing or meditation for five minutes each day to shift away from words and into presence.
• Tune into your senses. Spend a day noticing sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch without the need to describe them verbally.

We’d love to hear your reflections! Share your thoughts on the power and limitations of language in the comments below.

For more resources on mindfulness and self-discovery beyond verbal constructs, explore our recommended reading list [link].

Before the Word: The Eternal Search for Truth and Creation

What lies at the root of our quest for truth? Is it the intellectual drive to understand, or something deeper, more elusive—something tied to the very fabric of existence itself? We often search for the essence of life through concepts penned by others, through the words of gurus, philosophers, and scientists. But does chasing the endless trail of words lead us to the truth, or does one word merely chase another in infinite cycles? What remains when we strip away language, the familiar construct through which humanity seeks to comprehend?

Instead of trailing words on their circuitous route, perhaps we must turn inward, asking not just what we are looking for, but who or what is doing the looking. What was before the word? And perhaps more provocatively, does creation—whether internal or external—depend on the word itself?

Our identity is inseparable from the words we use. When Helen Keller first understood the word “water” as booth a symbol and an objective, sensory experience, her identity was born, and she became the linkage of the knower to the known, the linkage of the symbol and the experience it represented.  Consider this irony—we describe ourselves, translate our thoughts, and even experience emotions through verbal constructs. Words do not merely reflect reality; they shape it. How often do we interpret the world through labels, definitions, and narratives that confine us to what can be named?

Language, miraculous in its ability to communicate complex ideas, also serves as a veil. Through it, we articulate the broadness of the human experience, but in doing so, we also impose limits. Words form a structure, a boundary that separates the “known” from the “unknowable.”

And yet, the ancient texts and traditions speak of “the Word” as the powers of creation itself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” says the Gospel of John. This profound declaration presents the Word as something primordial—a force greater than human language, vibrating with life and existence. But where does its power truly originate?

Could the Word be an echo, a ripple of something greater, perhaps predating structure entirely? If we are created through the Word, what preceded it? These are the questions that demand silence—the absence of verbal constructs—if we are to probe their depths.

Does the creator exist apart from the created, or are they born together in one timeless moment? It’s tempting to view creation as a singular act—a beginning that implies separation. We envision a god-like creator standing apart from creation like an artist with a blank canvas. But consider this alternative question: does the creator exist without creation?

The words “creator” and “created” imply duality, a relationship. They cannot stand alone because understanding either concept requires the other. A creator is only such if something arises from its essence. Similarly, creation has no meaning without its source. They arise simultaneously, reflecting back upon one another with perpetual interdependence.

Philosopher Alan Watts often compared this interdependence to the shapes of waves and troughs of the ocean. Just as you cannot have a crest without a trough, the creator and created form one continuous motion. Could we, as conscious beings, be that very flow—a constant interplay of observer and observed, maker and made?

What, then, was before the Word? Here, human constructs fall away, and we are left uncomfortable in silence, without the naming of things to comfort us. Mystics and sages throughout history have pointed to this intangible reality—a space of being “beyond words.”

Rumi, the beloved Sufi poet, wrote, “Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation.” Silence, therefore, is not merely the absence of sound but the state where labels dissolve, and we approach the raw truth of existence.

Buddhist teachings convey a similar notion, emphasizing the emptiness—or Śūnyatā—beneath all forms. This emptiness is not “nothingness” in the nihilistic sense, but rather potential, the fertile space from which all things arise. Before the Word is this presence—silent, unformed, alive. Could this point to the essence of the creator, both internal and external, existing as formless potential before manifesting as “creation”?

Returning to our question: does creation need the Word? Or must the Word, in its vibration, rely on something pre-existing to resonate? Perhaps neither can exist in isolation. Without creation, the Word is meaningless, and without the Word, creation remains unexpressed. Together, they dance in a cycle—an eternal rhythm—that births awareness.

But what is crucial is our inquiry itself. To look for the source of truth requires more than logical analysis or another stack of ideas; it demands courage to trace our questions beyond words and concepts. It calls for peering into the state of “what is,” before definition.

Within each of us lies an innate compass pointing toward this origin. But accessing it requires stillness—listening beyond the noise of words, surrendering to both the mystery outside of ourselves and the one profoundly located within.

You, the seeker, may wonder about this search for truth. The paradox, however, is that seeking often obscures what is already present. If each of us is a reflection of the creator, and if we contain creation within us, then our search outward is mirrored in an inward process.

Could your very act of questioning define creation itself? The answer may reside not in the words you find but in the space between them. At the heart of every question lies silence, and in this silence, the creator and the created arise together in presence.

The search for truth and the nature of creation is eternal. What lies “before the Word” may ultimately transcend what we are equipped to articulate. However, exploring this mystery is more than philosophical pondering—it is a practice of returning to stillness, to silence, to the very essence that makes you both witness and participant in creation itself.

If you feel drawn to continue exploring these profound questions, take a moment each day to experience stillness. Allow the endless chatter of the mind and the words it loves to release their hold.

Turn inward, and look at what is looking.

For it is here, in this quiet beingness, that the eternal truth resides.

Chapter 93: The Voice of Awakening: Navigating the Modern Search for Truth

Part One: The Voice of Awakening: Navigating the Modern Search for Truth

“My kingdom is not of this world.  You can look lo here, and lo there. Nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”–Jesus of Nazareth

What if the very beliefs you hold, the truths you cling to, are the very barriers keeping you from the enlightenment you seek? What if the path to ultimate freedom lies not in accumulating knowledge, but in unlearning what you think you know?

We live in an era of unprecedented access to knowledge—an infinite stream of information at our fingertips. Yet, for many, this abundance offers no solace, no clarity, no meaning. Instead, it becomes a desert of shifting sands, where the more we search, the less we seem to find. This struggle is felt most acutely by those seeking spiritual truth. The restless mind—burdened by desires, fears, and centuries of conditioned beliefs—becomes both the seeker and the obstacle.

The quest for spiritual meaning in a modern world comes with unique challenges:

1. Balancing Ancient and Modern Thought

How do we bridge the timeless wisdom of ancient philosophies with the demands of a fast-paced, achievement-driven world? Spiritual teachings that once thrived in oral traditions or quiet monastic solitude now must compete with Instagram reels and instant gratification.

2. The Mental Health Conundrum

Amid a mental health crisis exacerbated by relentless productivity culture, the pursuit of spirituality often takes a back seat. How do we promote holistic well-being without relegating spiritual growth to a mere self-care trend?

3. Wrestling with Misinformation and Skepticism

The digital era thrives on viral misinformation, often diluting or distorting spiritual truths. On the flip side, skepticism has become a cultural badge of honor, leaving authentic seekers wary of manipulation.

4. Disconnection in a Material World

Material success is championed as the pinnacle of life’s achievements, yet countless “successful” individuals report feelings of emptiness and isolation. How do we reconnect with deeper truths while balancing the demands of an increasingly consumer-driven world?

5. Individuality vs. Community

The spiritual quest often begins within, requiring periods of solitude. But true transformation requires connection and shared growth. How do we foster both individual journeys and collective enlightenment in a world shaped by information overload, mass media driven propaganda, and emotional and physical isolation?

At the heart of humanity’s spiritual crisis lies the voice of awakening—a call not from outside, but from within. The wisdom you seek already rests within your soul, waiting for the clutter to clear. But the mind, shaped by years of conditioning and false beliefs, silences this voice.

Each of us becomes the marionette, moved by the strings of societal expectations, traumatic memories, and misplaced desires. We shadowbox illusions of “evil” or “failure” when, in truth, there’s nothing to conquer. The peace we crave is not an external destination, but a realization that the fight itself is a mirage.

When you dare to step off the treadmill of mental conditioning and listen to love’s voice, the shift begins. The past, with its noisy regrets and pain, begins to dissolve. And for the first time, you exist fully in the present—the only space where truth resides.

_“Cease resuscitating dead illusions with mental pugilist blows,

To reveal the peaceful mind of One who, in the now, knows!”_

While the path to awakening is deeply personal, certain principles can guide collective growth:

1. The Courage to Unlearn

Freedom begins with unlearning—recognizing that much of what you believe has been imposed upon you by others. This includes letting go of your preconceived notions of divinity, success, and truth.

Encourage personal reflection through meditation or journaling. Ask questions like, “What beliefs no longer serve me?” or “What have I accepted as truth without questioning its origins?”

2. Ancient Wisdom, Modern Context

Timeless teachings, like those from Buddhism, Taoism, or mystical Christianity, offer profound insights into self-awareness and the nature of reality. But these teachings must be reframed to resonate with today’s seekers.

Use technology wisely. Follow podcasts or YouTube channels that blend ancient teachings with contemporary life. Communities like Insight Timer offer accessible ways to learn and engage.

3. Balance Individual Growth with Interconnectedness

The spiritual path can be isolating, but humans thrive in community. Shared purpose and support create the fertile ground needed for spiritual growth.

Join or create virtual spiritual communities where members foster collective introspection, uplifting one another. Platforms like Discord or local meetups can build a bridge between solitary practice and collective evolution.

4. Healing Through Silence

True knowing arises only when the mind rests. Sacred silence—intentional, prolonged moments of peace—can allow love’s wisdom to emerge.

Introduce mindful breaks into your routine. For example, dedicate one evening a week to silent reflection, away from devices and external noise. This isn’t about escaping, but reconnecting.

5. Question Material Success

While material pursuits can bring comfort, they rarely fill the soul. True meaning isn’t for sale.

Shift your perspective on success. Realign your goals to focus on experiences and relationships rather than possessions. Volunteer or mentor to feel the joy of giving instead of acquiring.

To the seekers, the weary, and the restless minds—it’s time to wake up. The answers you long for don’t lie in future achievements or past regrets. They don’t reside in religious dogma or spiritual materialism. The answers are here, now, in the stillness of your being.

Material distractions and conditioned beliefs may have taught you otherwise, but listen closely, and you’ll hear the eternal truth:

_“You have realized the Truth, God’s high mount is another illusion to climb,

Created by fearful, desirous minds caught in a loop created by time.”_

This is your invitation. Step away from the treadmill of thought and into the infinite openness of now. Release the strings of false narratives, and reunite with the voice of love that has patiently awaited your return.

Engage in personal reflection. Seek out new communities that challenge you to grow spiritually. Most importantly, unlearn the dogmas and misinformation around “God” and divinity that no longer serve you.

This is the voice of awakening.

Are you ready to listen?

Part Two:

The Awakening Voice: Navigating Truth in a World of Illusions

Are we living in an era where reality bends to the tunes of carefully orchestrated narratives, or has truth become an elusive mirage, floating above the desert sands of distortion? These questions compel us to pause, reflect, and confront a chilling current reality—one marked by cultural confusion, ideological polarization, and the hypnotic allure of misinformation. This is a moment in history where the battle for truth rages not just in the public sphere but within the human mind itself.

To move forward as a society, we must awaken to the complex dynamics at play. We must guide our critical thinking to transcend illusions, resist the comforting pull of propaganda, and illuminate the path toward a just and equitable reality.

But where do we begin?

The rise of divisive figures and ideologies, often mesmerizing through distorted narratives, highlights a critical challenge in modern discourse—the power of storytelling in shaping perception. Stories hold sway over public opinion, weaving seductive yet specious tales that often appeal to fear, confusion, or blind loyalty. These narratives obscure our collective vision, turning individuals into pawns chasing after false promises of salvation or success.

Donald Trump, as a case study, exemplifies this phenomenon. His narratives—a blend of fear, grievance, and grandeur—tap directly into the vulnerabilities of both individuals and society. His words, cloaked in emotional appeal, foster division rather than unity, confusion rather than clarity. The public is baited into emotional reactions, surrendering the reins of reason. What emerges is a culture where illusion reigns, paralyzing critical thought and stymying constructive progress.

This speaks to a broader truth: reality is silent when we fail to question the validity of what we see and hear. Mirages flourish in hearts and minds refusing to seek the quenched waters of wisdom and truth.

The modern media ecosystem—fueled by the constant churn of 24-hour news cycles, social algorithms, and clickbait headlines—propels individuals deeper into the tides of misinformation. Biases are echoed, amplified, and fed back with an urgency designed to hijack attention. We are entrapped by sensationalism, mesmerized by narratives that reinforce our own beliefs while demonizing others.

Social media plays a particularly insidious role here. It thrives on polarizing content that deepens ideological divides. Filter bubbles, personalized algorithms, and disinformation campaigns create echo chambers where false narratives are not only normalized but celebrated. Nuance drowns beneath the thunder of binary opposition. Truth becomes incidental, sacrificed for pre-packaged dopamine hits of outrage or validation.

Adding another layer is the vulnerability of human psychology itself. Belief is deeply personal—it provides comfort, identity, and purpose. Yet it is this same psychological anchor that makes belief susceptible to manipulation. Demagogues exploit these cognitive blind spots, amplifying fears, reinforcing prejudices, and promising simplistic solutions in a world that is anything but simple.

To stem this tide of cultural and intellectual stagnancy, what we need is not just resilience against misinformation but a collective reawakening—a pursuit of Truth with a capital “T.”

1. Critical Thinking as Armor

The first step toward breaking free is cultivating critical thinking. Asking questions, probing deeper into sources of information, and challenging the validity of accepted narratives becomes a lifeline in the desert of rhetoric. Resist the temptation to take stories, claims, and ideologies at face value. What is the agenda? Who benefits from your belief? What is omitted from the conversation?

2. Historical Context as a Compass

Demagoguery is not new; it thrives in cycles throughout history. From Rome’s Caesar to Germany’s Hitler, leaders have ensnared populations through fear-driven propaganda and promises of greatness. Exploring this historical interplay can help contextualize today’s challenges and arm us with insights into recognizing its resurgence.

3. Information Literacy as a Practice

Today, perhaps more than any other time in history, individuals hold immeasurable power in consuming, sharing, and amplifying information. Each click, share, or repost carries consequence. Commit to vetting the information you consume; prioritize credible, balanced sources over those tailored to confirm your biases. And where possible, educate others on the importance of verifying facts in an age of manipulated truth.

4. Engage in Open Dialogue

The antidote to division lies in connection. Engage with your neighbors, peers, and communities in open and respectful dialogue. Challenge ideas, but do so in ways that foster understanding rather than exacerbate divides. Authentic discussions illuminate common ground, breaking the chains of ideological separation and combating echo chambers.

5. Honest Self-Reflection

Beneath lofty debates often lies a simpler challenge—understanding ourselves. Where do our biases lie? What mirages do we chase, and what fears have anchored us to illusions? Seek to dismantle the internal narratives that favor comfort over growth, harmony over justice, or blind allegiance over reason. Only through the cleansing waters of personal honesty can we ripple outward in meaningful change.

Ultimately, the battle for truth is not waged against others—it is fought on the terrain of our own hearts and minds. The illusions of propaganda and cultural distraction can only thrive if we permit them. It is our capacity, individually and collectively, to seek clarity, empathy, and equity that will determine the direction in which our society turns.

Now is not the time for apathy, nor is it the time for complacency. A world of illusions calls for the warriors of courage, intellect, and humanity to rise—those who are willing to question, to grow, to imagine more equitable futures.

If you’ve read this far, consider this an invitation to action.

Engage critically with the narratives that define our time.

Speak where silence foments division.

Share knowledge that nurtures understanding.

Build bridges when others build walls.

The awakening voice is within all of us.

Now, it is time to set it free.

Will you?

THE VOICE OF AWAKENING

(this poem was ‘heard’ in the deep silence of a meditation experience with my wife Sharon in 1990)

As the slowly shifting desert sands of time, Create ever taller dunes for lost souls to climb, It is within this scorched barren world of little reason or rhyme, The search for Truth must begin, to find Love sublime. Oh Seekers of Truth, “God’s high mount” would you climb But you must cease stumbling through the mind’s shifting sands of time. While hypnotized by thoughts devoid of love’s rhyme and truth’s reason Which are forever charged by Truth with treason! As mental marathoners, only on Life’s treadmill do you stand, Its belt rotating through the dark past keeps you life’s ‘also ran’ While forever chasing in vain Love’s all-knowing voice, Just step off of that endless belt and find true Cause to rejoice!” Oh marionette’s dancing image on the screen of the world’s mind, While manipulated by its controlling beliefs, what freedom could you find? Release yourself from all traumatic memories’ imprisoning strings To  prepare for the inner Wisdom that a liberated Intelligence brings!” Oh shadow boxers of evil, when will you ever retire? Tis only champion of dream world to which you aspire! Cease resuscitating dead illusions with mental pugilist blows, To reveal the peaceful mind of One who, in the now, knows!” Oh please wake up to Love’s voice sweet somnambulator, And realize the eternal truth that love’s wisdom is greater, Than the conditioning or knowledge that in love’s absence you learned, In sacred silence the World reflects back the One for whom you always yearned! Oh, you who have realized the Truth, that God’s high mount is an illusion to climb, Created by fearful, desirous minds caught on the merry-go-round of time. Your once dark, restless mind remained bereft of Love’s Rhyme and Truth’s Reason, Chasing after mirages until you awakened from all thoughts guilty of treason!

The Power of Storytelling and the Search for Truth

“It is what it is, but it is not what it seems.” —Paul Hewson

Let us all be the best that we can be.

Let us all ‘lose our minds,’ and find our truth.

We all love a great story. Those who have developed real insight into stories, who can translate the essence of an experience and convey the emotion of all participating characters through words, become the raconteurs of our culture. These honored storytellers may become famous and beloved novelists, musicians and rock stars, ministers, writers of religious texts, comedians, and playwrights. Whether the story is real or fiction, personal or historical, as long as it entertains, it will keep our attention. The best storytellers know this well, often bending the truth to create compelling narratives.

Storytelling is a powerful tool that shapes our culture, identities, and connections with others. It transcends boundaries, bringing people together on a fundamental human level. Stories serve as vehicles for shared experiences, emotions, and values, forging a collective consciousness. They are a mirror often reflecting societal norms and aspirations, while also acting as a catalyst for change.

While authenticity is highly valued, the best stories often manipulate truth to convey deeper, more universal messages. This duality is inherent in storytelling. There are times when embellishing or altering facts can lead to a more profound understanding or a stronger emotional impact. This does not diminish the value of truth but rather enhances its resonance by making it more relatable and impactful.

The concept of “losing our minds” can be seen as a metaphor for breaking free from conventional thinking and finding personal truth. It’s about challenging the status quo and exploring new perspectives that lead to personal growth and societal progress. This process of deconstruction and reconstruction is vital for discovering deeper truths about ourselves and the world around us.

In today’s world, modern raconteurs—whether they are writers, musicians, or digital content creators—play a crucial role beyond entertainment. They are influencers with the power to reshape narratives and challenge established norms. In an era where information is abundant yet superficial, these storytellers help us sift through the noise to find meaning and connection.

Technology has revolutionized storytelling, offering new opportunities for diverse voices to be heard. The convergence of digital media and storytelling has democratized content creation, distribution, and consumption. Platforms like social media, podcasts, and streaming services have expanded the reach of storytellers, allowing them to engage with global audiences. This technological shift has not only amplified stories but also enriched them with multimedia elements that enhance their impact.

We all create stories about our individual lives and our relationships with others and the world. We also listen intently to the stories told to us by our parents, teachers, religions, history, and society about who we are, who others once were or now are, and who we might aspire to become. Many of our stories, both individually and those created by society, are steeped in illusion, ignorance, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Far too many stories are illusory dramas about our attempts to control others and our failed attempts at control over our own lives. Yet, these stories have a hypnotic appeal, especially to those who have not undertaken the process of insight and healing.

At some point in our lives, we must begin a “search for truth,” lest our entire life experience be lived without true integrity, the potential for healing, and alignment with reality. Some aspects of life elude effective communication and never get incorporated into our personal stories, adding to the collective conspiracy of silence. Other people’s stories and garbage fill the empty spaces within our own stories, adding to our internal confusion and chaos.

Life was never an easy journey for me. Had it not been for my deep need to understand my dysfunctional process and find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have long ago been silenced by the disease. Some wounds are so deep and primal that merely pasting new names onto aspects of the disease and creating new stories are not enough. It is each of our responsibilities as conscious human beings to bring our personal truth and stories, no matter how incomplete, to the collective experience.  This has resulted in nearly 1000 blog posts, and 12 large books being written by me, so far.

Names and stories are conveniences for communication, never comprehensive enough to reveal the true natures of what they represent. The process of naming is our consciousness’s way of weighing and measuring new forms of life, ideas, and experiences. Naming attaches a dynamic process to a fixed point in time and space, always with a past frame of reference, thus lodging it permanently in the past.

Creating stories and context and conversing about life’s details do not dislodge the detritus from our consciousness. If we need change, we must find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that float on the mind’s surface. Those who choose to name processes and create stories must have personally explored and experienced movements through consciousness and found the Silence at the foundation of our being. Otherwise, the process of naming and the resulting stories are just more intellectual knowledge and entertainment for a superficial mind and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom.

“Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but instead, he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself.” —Malala Yousafzai

The intellectual and the atheist, though possessing finely tuned minds, can never explore the mystery and depth of the human soul and comprehend that we all have a connection with Infinity. The willing explorer of new paths of consciousness or the mystic both have access to the limitless territory of the Spirit, soaring to new heights and seeing sights rarely seen by the rest of mankind.

In the end, storytelling is not just about conveying facts but about sharing experiences, emotions, and truths—sometimes even those that lie beyond the realm of conventional understanding. It is an invitation to lose our minds, find our truth, and ultimately connect with the infinite tapestry of human existence.

So, What is Truth? A Journey Beyond Simple Explanations

In our quest for understanding and meaning, we often ask ourselves the profound question, “What is truth?” This inquiry is not merely an academic exercise but a deeply personal and existential exploration that varies with each individual’s experiences and cultural narratives. Sometimes, we must remain open to a mystery that far transcends the simple explanations offered by our past and our culture.

Truth is not a fixed destination; it is a continuous, evolving path. My own life has been a testament to this concept. From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, I lost most of my freedom of choice. I was part of a group that lived lives of desperation, addiction, and mental illness—a collective march towards suicide.

During those dark years, I was trapped in self-destructive stories and realities that seemed inescapable. Yet, it was through this labyrinth of suffering that I began to understand that truth is a dynamic, ongoing process. It’s a personal journey where beliefs are continuously challenged and evolved.

The stories we tell ourselves and others significantly shape our understanding of truth. When I was lost in addiction, the narrative I clung to was one of hopelessness and despair. These stories were not just personal; they were reinforced by cultural and societal narratives that kept me in a loop of self-destruction.

However, I also discovered life-affirming truths that transformed my reality. By consciously choosing narratives that empower and heal, we can redefine our understanding of truth. The power of narratives lies in their ability to shape our perceptions and, ultimately, our lives.

The process of recovery from addiction is a powerful metaphor for the pursuit of truth. Both journeys require support, self-awareness, and the courage to embrace change. Just as I needed a support system to overcome my addictions, we all need a community that fosters truth-seeking.

Recovery taught me the importance of honesty and vulnerability. To seek truth, we must be willing to confront our deepest fears and insecurities. It’s a path that demands relentless self-examination and the courage to accept uncomfortable truths.

Cultural and societal narratives play a crucial role in shaping our perception of truth. These stories often lead to division and misunderstanding. For example, the story of Armageddon—both as an individual and collective event—becomes very real to those trapped by illusions of powerlessness and despair.

We are susceptible to political and religious propaganda, seeking tribes that offer a sense of safety and purpose, even if it comes at the expense of others. These narratives keep us disconnected from our true selves and perpetuate a limited view of “our people,” reinforcing stereotypes and division.

Honesty and vulnerability are essential in seeking and sharing truth. My spiritual awakening process, which began in 1987, was marked by a newfound commitment to living authentically. I chose to live life more fully, with enhanced personal awareness, good health, and honest expression of all feelings.

By examining my life to its deepest core, I uncovered the sources of my spiritual disease and despair. This introspection allowed me to break free from the conspiracy of silence that had kept me and many others in bondage.

Another layer of the conspiracy of silence exists around the Divine, Higher Power, God, or Truth. Organized religions, intellectual savants, and political powers often obfuscate the truth that underlies all existence. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. This question was intended as mockery, and that principle continues today. Speaking truth to power is not easy, no matter how enlightened one might appear.

Truth is like continuous rainfall upon rocky mountains. It does not immediately displace all the sharp, dangerous edges of ignorance, but over time, it erodes the roughest terrains and exposes deeper layers of existence. Those who are not patient may find themselves mortally wounded by thrusting too aggressively against the monuments of stupidity and ignorance that often control religious, political, and economic powers within civilization.

Those who touch the Infinite relate back to the world the ineffability of the experience, though they are deeply impacted by that contact. The universe of Spirit defies rationality but will eventually speak intelligently through a healed human mind. First, the mind has to be properly prepared and willing to communicate, despite the struggle to interpret or express its energy.

However, if the mind is overburdened by education, knowledge, and cultural inculcation, the Infinite will speak through distorted measures of reality, creating illusion, deception, and delusion. To seek truth, we must unburden our minds and open ourselves to the profound mysteries that transcend simple explanations.

Truth is not a static concept but an evolving, personal, and collective journey. By examining our narratives, overcoming our addictions, and fostering honesty and vulnerability, we can move closer to understanding the profound mysteries of existence. Cultural and societal stories shape our perception of truth, but we have the power to choose life-affirming narratives that heal and unite.

In this ongoing quest for truth, we must remain open to the ineffable and be willing to confront the deep-seated illusions that hinder our progress. By doing so, we can contribute to a collective awakening that transcends division and fosters a deeper, shared understanding of our existence.

If you are on a similar path of seeking truth and overcoming personal and collective challenges, I invite you to share your story and join a community of like-minded individuals committed to growth and healing. Together, we can unravel the mysteries of truth and build a more enlightened and connected world.

The Launching Pad-Damaged, Grounded, and a Search For Truth (Maybe part of Book #6)

What are our origins? From what location in space, time, and spirit were our lives launched? We all came from somewhere not of our present sense of self. For better or for worse, we all have our family and our ancestors. We have a shared culture and its history, which helps to define for us where we once were, where we are now, and where we hope to be someday. Our definitions are never complete, no matter how thorough we may be in our explorations of our past, for we are so much more than just our ancestors, our history, and even the movement of our self upon the face of this planet. Yet, to not attempt to look at our individual self, and the collective experience of mankind, is to bypass the most important foundational understanding of our humanity that is available to us. If we have no clue about where we came from, how in the HELL can we ever develop a good context for understanding our lives, and then conceive of an accurate representation for where we might want to go?

As I look at my life, and my family’s history, I am amazed by the chaos, the suffering and the love, erupting from The Mystery.

My father, Beryl Donald Paullin, was a product of the Great Depression, having been born in 1927. His Father, also named Beryl, was a Fire Chief, and respected within the North Portland community. He was also a horribly abusive alcoholic in his private life. He lived with his family in a house in North Portland, 7832 N Holmes, until his separation from his wife Elsie after WW II. I know little else about Grandpa Beryl (also known as Bruce), other than he served in the military during World War 1, and is buried in Willamette National Cemetery, as is my father. 

\My father kept my sister Pam and I away from grandpa Beryl until we were teenagers, that is how much my father wanted to protect us from the oppressive presence of his father. While in our early teenage years, Pam and I did visit with Grandpa Beryl at his La Center home twice, and I visited him in the VA hospital prior to his death. In his later years, he was sober, and seemed like a pleasant enough man. I could tell by his stories that he ached to heal a wound, yet he could not find the words to express his remorse, and to make amends with the children that he had so horribly harmed.

Dad’s mother Elsie was the classic abused wife, suffering through physical and emotional problems while married to “that Brute”, as my father referred to him. I also know little about her, either, other than she had kidney disease, and she died of cancer shortly after my birth.  John Edward was dad’s older brother. Ed preceded my father in death, having died in 2015. Uncle Ed was removed from his home and placed at their grandparents’ farm in Oregon City at 6 years of age, after nearly being beaten to death by their father. I later learned that Elsie secretly gave birth to a daughter at age 15, which she gave up for adoption. So my dad had an older sister that he never knew of, until very late in his life.

My father really loved his older brother Ed, through all of the years of his life, though he loved to challenge Ed about the mess that was always present in the yard on Ed’s farm.  Ed loved to collect old and junk cars, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, friends, some family members, and the local police department.  Sharon and I started witnessing their love beginning in 1995, when we all started sharing breakfasts, and family gatherings together for the first time.

Gloria, or Susie as most people now know her, was his younger sister, and both Susie and my father suffered under horrible abusive conditions for most of their childhood, even after their older brother found his own measure of safety. Susie appears to have been under the control of both parents, exhibiting little self awareness or personal empowerment. Susie was demeaned by her mother, and often treated like she had diminished mental capacity, though she hung in with her mother, living with her until her mother’s death.

Even as a young adult, Susie acquiesced to her mother’s demand to hide an out of wedlock pregnancy to a married man, Loren H., teaching her to lie to the world about how the pregnancy occurred. Susie was instructed by her mother to tell the world that she had been gang-raped, just like her mother claimed that she was at 15 years of age. Susie’s out of wedlock daughter, Sharyn, was immediately given up for adoption, and baby Sharyn quickly found a wonderful family to love and care for her.. The horrible gang rape lie was to come back and haunt, and diminish, Sharyn fifty years later when she finally located her natural mother.

Susie, in a most convulsive expression of shared grief, was to marry Vern, her own mother’s alcoholic boyfriend who was over twenty years her senior, after her mother’s death, and bore a daughter Cindy. Vern was to die a mere seven years later due to the cumulative effects of his alcoholism prior to his marriage to Susie. Daughter Cindy still holds her ninety year old mother hostage to her own unique pain, accusing her mother of marrying an old man, and depriving Cindy of a father. They have been alienated for over eight years now.

Both my father and aunt Susie displayed some symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder early in their lives, as well as being products of the age of which they grew up.  Over the years, Dad found a way to manage his life much more successfully than his sister Susie, however. 

In 1943, at 16 years of age, Dad enlisted in the Marines, as he wanted to serve his country, get away from his family of origin, as well as he thought of himself as a “dummy” ,with no faith in his ability to successfully finish high school at Benson Poly Tech. His mother promptly collared the local Marine Corp recruiter, and forced dad’s return home from the service. He re-enlisted in the Navy the moment he turned 18 years of age, and was assigned duty on two different warships, the West Virginia, and the Wisconsin, during his two years in the Navy. Upon his return from active duty in 1947, he returned home, where he threatened his dad with death if his dad ever laid a hand on his mother again. Dad moved on from that relationship with his mother and father, seeing each of them infrequently until their deaths…

He started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him in recent years running up to his death. But he had to delay his search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition.  Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, having to both work full time and go to school, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.

Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.

Dad still had a fire in his heart, and an incredible desire to succeed. He worked harder than anybody around him, the sign of a classic “overachiever”. He endlessly drove himself, and he was going to overcome his upbringing, and prove to the world that he had higher value than the poor self-esteem that his verbally and physically abusive father had inculcated him with. His perfectionism and zealousness for order and efficiency was utilized to its best advantage in his future employment with the US Postal Service. That same attitude tended to, at times, challenge others, especially those that he attempted to help, or manage, as both a general manager with the Postal Service, and as a friend and family member.

A person with a passive/aggressive personality, like me, had the most difficulty with him. Those who were self-assured or had found their own voice, and engaged him directly, had the best relationship with him, and he really enjoyed engaging with others in stimulating, challenging discussions. Those who took the time to get to know Dad, also found a way to love him, in spite of his rough edges. But it was hard to get to know him because too many times he would lead with a derogatory remark, or insult, and bad first impressions rarely get changed.

Dad had several choices in his career, either as a policeman, fireman, or joining with the US Postal Service, of which he ultimately selected. He also began courting my Mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry, who happened to be quite a “looker”, and also quite a hard working young woman, as well. Mom worked at the original Fred Meyer store in downtown Portland, among many other jobs over the course of her own career. Mom’s parents were not impressed with my fathers’ parents for obvious reasons, and Dad had to overcome some real judgements to make inroads into that family. My Grandpa Henry made my father mow his yard before he would even let Dad take Mom out, as part of their desire to prove that Dad really wanted to move forward with her.

Dad married mother in June of 1950, and they lived in NW Portland for several years. Pamela came along in 1954, and Dad knew love in a way he never knew before. Pam was a precious prize, and Dad delighted in her presence, and her life, until his death. I came along in 1955, and Dad initially had trouble embracing who I was, as I had troubled early years, causing much disruption to the family lifestyle, because of health issues (the underlying truth is that Dad had trouble understanding the innate value that I had as a baby, and as a son). Dad had a house built in West Linn in 1955, and spent the next nine years there, investing thousands of hours of work turning his property into his own outdoor temple. He repeated the same process with his next two homes, as well, converting the landscapes into his own unique paradise.

First and foremost, Dad loved his older brother John Edward, his new family, eventually including all of his in-laws, and all the new friends that they developed through the Oakey Doaks square dancing group. These included, among several others, Bob and Dorothy Fero, John and Cleone Edwards (John worked with Dad at the Post Office), Dick and Eunice Jamison (Dick also worked with him at the Post Office), Joyce and Merlin Litson, Joe and Sue Constans, and Bob and Diane West, along with several others.

He carried a lifelong friend, Roland Mills, far into his adulthood, with Mom and Dad sharing many fond memories with Roland, and his first wife, Eloise. They attempted to continue their friendship with both parties after Roland and Eloise’s divorce in 1980. Dad’s dementia late in life kept him from being friendly with Roland, though he still recognized Roland and knew his name, but had lost the willingness or ability to share memories with him.  In the very early years, my sister Pam and I shared some fond memories of staying at Roland and Eloise’s home while being babysat by their daughter Cindy, watching horror, science fiction, and Elvis Presley movies with her, and her brother Gary. Gary and Pam’s first deceased husband Jim Graham actually ended up working together for a while in the early 1990’s in the home real estate industry, resulting in the sale of the house to Sharon and I that we presently live in.

When dad was a young husband and father, he carried two jobs for a number of years because he did not like feeling in debt. Because Mom had to work, too, we spent much of our first years with baby sitters. I never nursed with my mother, and, as a baby, because I cried at night, I was wrapped in a blanket, and placed in the car in the garage in the evening so that my father could get sleep before arising at 2:30am for his first job every day.  My father loved to play hard, and he had many stories of being a top flight beer drinker in the local tavern scene, while also becoming quite the accomplished shuffleboard player. He told a story that the owner of a tavern even served him a beer while he was in the bathroom. Yes, he became friendly with the suds during that time period.

My father’s love of the suds translated directly to me, where I learned, quite early, how wonderful the flavor of beer was, and how wonderfully intoxicating it’s effects were. He told the story of how when I was 5 years old, he left an open beer on the coffee table, and when he left the room for a moment, I lifted the beer up, and drank it all. Within 30 minutes, I fell off of the couch, and dad and I both knew that I had a new, but dangerous, friend. Dad took care to monitor his beer after that, and so did I.  I would steal drinks off of his beer after that, until I learned how to steal whole beers later in childhood.

Dad carried a tarnished understanding of how to discipline his children, though he later claimed that he eventually came to realize that he was repeating his fathers’ abusive behavior, as far as physical discipline was concerned, and thus he stopped (I still got beat with a belt to age 14, though). His rebukes were quite powerful, and, at times, seemed to outnumber his praise and acknowledgement of us. Early on, Pam and I suffered under the abuse of his belt too many times to recall. But through all of that, I never lost my love for my father. He was my hero, albeit a broken one. He loved my mother deeply, though at times unskillfully. Fortunately for mother, dad never lifted a hand against her, though they both traded many barbs over the years. A lot of it was just the way they communicated, thinking that they were being funny, and a lot might have been veiled aggression.

They shared much pride in their children, and being parents brought untold gifts, and meaning, to both of their lives, because of, and in spite of, all of the challenges and lessons that we presented to them as children, and then as adults, over the years.

Dad was an avid reader, but spiritual or religious readings were not a draw for him. The last time that I remember Dad being present in a church was to witness my baptism in 1987, which also corresponds to the last time I was in a fundamentalist church environment, as well. Dad avoided going to church, having never been convinced that church attendance had any relationship to a connection with God. He stated that if he ever walked into a church, it would probably fall onto him. His church was his love for nature, its beauty, the wildlife, hiking through woods and meadows, hiking the deserts in Arizona, the trails of the Columbia River Gorge, or any of thousands of places around America, and the world. His church was also his love of his wife, his family, including his brother and sister, and his in-laws, his love of his dear friends, his love of his dogs, of which he had many. He adored his dogs, and they supplied a constant supply of the unconditional love that his heart, and soul craved, and which his experience of his exterior life sometimes failed to supply him in sufficient amounts. He loved the homes in which he lived, and prepared the grounds of each of them carefully, as if making each one a sacred offering to his creator. His body of life was truly the temple of his living God.

He was the type of guy that, had he ever met Jesus Christ in person, if he noted lettuce in the Christ’s teeth, he would tell him about it. He liked to state that “heaven was not ready for him, and that the devil did not want him either, as he would try to take hell over and run it the way it should be run”. Dad lived his life “outside of the lines” so to speak, and he delighted in challenging other people’s assumptions, sensibilities and understandings.

Dad was an accomplished card player, square dancer, stamp collector, avid fisherman, hiker, camper, traveler, scout troop leader, general outdoors man, adventurer, humorist, wise man, and golfer, but retired early in life from hunting. As a young man he hunted with his father, though he grew to be repulsed by the idea of killing innocent creatures. One time while hiking in the Arizona desert with his dog Misty, they were confronted by a rattlesnake, and he had to draw his pistol and shoot the creature. He regretted having killed it, which shows how his love for all life had taken over his soul. He had a challenged understanding of cats, though, and was quick to punish wayward cats that strayed unto his property to assault and kill birds and squirrels.

Dad’s high point in his career was when he was promoted to Operations Manager of the Main Office of the US Postal Service, in Northwest Portland. His career there spanned 35 years, and he developed many friends, and a few enemies, along the way to his peak. He was respected by the Postmaster, though it was the Postmaster’s dissatisfaction with an aspect of dad’s personal life that encouraged dad to retire at 55 years of age. Dad’s next step would have been to become Postmaster over the entire Portland operation, and succeed Ben Luscher, had he not entered into an affair with Karen,  the office nurse around 1980.  Mother had a lifelong investment in my father staying married to her, and she took charge of a situation that would have discouraged most other people by informing the Postmaster of dad’s indiscretion. So my fathers’ official retirement date was 1982, and a whole new world opened up to mother and dad.

Dad traveled extensively with mother in retirement. They took their verbal “Punch and Judy Show” around the world, and around America. Eventually they settled upon their yearly snowbird excursions to Queens Valley, in Arizona, where they would park their travel trailer, and spend the winter in sunny southern Arizona. He lived the dream, and learned to make mom his best friend, and travel companion. Mother’s health had taken a downturn in 1978, when she learned that she had kidney disease. Dad would admonish her about her weight, thinking that if only she would lose her extra weight, her health would be better. Mom would do her best to comply, but, hey, that chocolate cake was just too hard to resist sometimes, and, anyway, she deserved it because she stayed so active. Dad had a habit of being disrespectful to my mother over the years, and the weight obsession my father had only added to all of our uneasiness with him.

There are some who thought that my father was a horse’s ass, but that is the view one sometimes gets when in second place, having been passed by his race horse of a mind. A man like my father, who lived a full life, could have his own book written about him, and not scratch the surface of all the people that he impacted, positively or negatively, and all of the experiences that he had, all of the humor that he shared, and all of the wisdom that he developed.  My sister, my wife, and I wrote several pages of “Beryl-isms”, which are quotes directly from my father about life in general.  I have presented a few of his “top 50” statements, which he repeated many times over the last few years of his life.  In parenthesis, I have included a few of my replies to his common statements that I used to give back to dad as part of our “conversation”..

1). Don’t wait too long to retire. People think they need to work those extra years, they work that extra one or two years, thinking they need the money, and death takes over, and they never make it to retirement (well, Dad, I retired early, but we will have to wait and see if that has any beneficial effect on my longevity.  Right now, my main goal is to try to outlive you, oh immortal one!).

2). Oh those rich people, all of that money, and they still have to die anyway! (and the rest of us, we have to die too, darn it!)

3). Why do you need to know, are you writing a book? (well, as a matter of fact I am!)

4). I really took the system, didn’t I? (after being retired and on pension for 35 years, contributing $22,742 to your pension, and getting over one million dollars back, I would say that you did!)

5). Come back again when you can’t stay so long (well, I am working on that one!)

6). Don’t you have something better to be doing? (yes, but you are the priority of the moment, so try to enjoy it with me)

7). Sure am glad that I am retired, or is it retarded? (um, I won’t touch that one)

8). I might be here, but I am not all here (then where is the rest of you?)

9). You know, having a dog like Rocky adds 7 years to my life (yes, but your dog took 7 years off of mine!)

10). (to any waitress) Say, you sure are looking good this evening. Would you like to come home with me and serve me my favorite meal? (argh! So embarrassing!)

11). I am not trying to be pretty, and I never will win any beauty contests (I can’t argue with you on that one)

12). The doctor needed a urine, stool, and semen sample, so I just left him my underwear (oh, boy, what a bad joke!)

13). You couldn’t hit a beach ball with a banjo! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn! (comments made to me both as a youth when pitching or batting on little league baseball teams, and while playing golf with him as a child and as an adult)

14). When I get to Heaven, I am going to have a talk with the “Old Man” about my wife dying before me.  Wives are supposed to outlive the husbands.  Either I should have died first or we should have died at the same time (Maybe mom finished her work before you did.  In what form would you have wanted a simultaneous death, like in a murder/suicide, or in a car wreck?)

15). Son will we all meet again in heaven? (are you sure that you really want to hang out with the same crowd for eternity?)

16). Heaven is not ready for me yet, and Hell is afraid that I will take it over, so that is why I am still here (maybe you are still here to provide a few more lessons for the living.  I know that I sure am getting a crash course!).

17).  I am in no hurry to die.  Nobody I know has ever come back from the dead and told me what a great time that they are having after death. (yes, and wayward religions continue to capitalize on that mortal fear, ignore the fact that heaven is here and now, and do not effectively teach us how to die to ourselves and our fears and suffering to experience heaven in advance of bodily death)

18). I provided care for you all of those years when you were young, now its your turn to take care of this old man (I should have read the contract more carefully before my birth!)

19).  You should always be best friends with your sister.  Never let anything get in the way of that friendship, because she will find a way to love you to your death, as you should love her as well (Well, Dad, you sure have shown commitment to both your brother and your sister, especially over the last twenty years.  Somehow you all endeared yourselves to each other.  Thank you for being a success in that aspect of family love, and overcoming the chaos created by your parent’s relationship.  I think that Pam and I are on a good course right now)

And on and on it could go. My dad was a great story teller, and fountainhead of wisdom, one-liners, humor, self and other deprecation, and sarcasm.

It was tough watching my father deteriorate, which began in earnest after his radiation treatment for prostate cancer in 2005. After mom died in 2009, Sharon and I had him over for dinner every evening. He was anxious, and suffered horribly from grief, and deteriorating cognitive health. I took him to the doctor’s office for treatment for depression, and the doctor ending up prescribing anti-depressants for me instead. He continued to threaten to kill himself, and I had to locate all of his guns, and empty them. In the process of emptying his rifle, I almost shot myself in the foot, sending a bullet through his bedroom floor.

Within three more years, late in 2012, Sharon insisted that Dad have his driving competency evaluated, as he appeared to no longer be capable of driving safely. When the doctor confirmed that Dad should no longer drive, my life as I knew it came to an end. The loss of his independence also became my own loss, as well. I became responsible for 100 percent of Dad’s life, health, nutrition, meals, baths, finances, home and lawn care, and spiritual support. Dad no longer managed his life, other than dressing himself, going to the bathroom (mostly), smoking his cigars, and eating the food placed in front of him

I found a way to love that man on deeper and more profound levels, as I continued to release my own expectations of how he should be, and how he should live. His sole concerns became his love for his dog, Rocky, and maintaining residence in his own home until his own death. He had lost all short term memory, and was basically unteachable the last 5 years of his life, though he maintained his dignity, his sense of self, his recognition of his family, and his love for his children, including my wife Sharon. At the beginning of 2016, I finally hired a support person to help me with Dad’s care, a loving young woman by the name of Madison. She helped for about 15 hours per week, which went a long way to take some of the burden off of Sharon and me.

When Rocky died in June of 2016, ten days after our own dog Ginger’s death, Dad’s final thread of love and companionship with his past was snapped. He asked me over 5000 times where Rocky had disappeared to, after his dog’s death. I watch my father call out 30 times or more, Every Day, to his deceased dog, Rocky, who died. We made up a sign for him, so that he can see, in writing, that his dog is dead, that it died of old age, and that he is ‘in heaven’. But, he never truly got it, because his short term memory was gone. At times, I felt compelled to set him straight, and tell him he is neglecting this moment, where Sharon White and i lived, and instead he was worshiping the dead,, where all of his grief and losses reside, but of course he quickly lost that. My heart broke for him, and for all of us

Our presences were just not quite enough to make all OK with Dad. But, we made him as comfortable as we could until his last days. He never took one medication, nor was I about to force one onto him. Dad’s final four years were a real labor of love for me, forcing me into early retirement from work, and the experience almost tanked me. But I learned how to love another human being unconditionally and completely, though the lesson plan exacted a price from me. I am only just now coming out from under the spells of anxiety and stress around the experience of care giving for my Dad, as well as being fully present for my friend Marty for the several months prior to his own death, which occurred five days prior to Dad’s death.

The last conversation that I had with my father was 6 hours before his death.

This is what we exchanged with each other:

Dad, you are still in bed, and its 2:30 in the afternoon, what’s up, it’s such a beautiful day outside.

You know son, I am always tired now, but I am about to get up.

Well, Dad, this might be the last sunny day in a long time, so why don’t you get up, and go out on the porch and have a cigar? I’ll put a chocolate bar on your table, and a drink for you.

I’ll get right up son. By the way, who is caring for me this evening?

Well, Dad, Madison is caring for you this evening.

Oh, poor Madison!

Dad, Madison benefits by being with you, as you do with her.

I will be with you beginning this Sunday morning, and I will be with you for the next three weeks as usual. You know we are planning one final trip to Hawaii with you, right?

Oh son, I am happy just staying at home. I have everything that I need here.

Well, OK dad. I am going to leave now, as I need to prepare for Marty’s funeral tomorrow.

When will I see you again, son?

Dad, it will be Sunday morning, OK?

OK, son, you know that I am dependent on you. Please take care of yourself.

Oh, dad, you know that I am dependent on you, too. You be careful too!

I love you, son.

I love you too, Dad.

I leave his room, not knowing this is to be our last exchange.

The next day, at 10:58am, as I stand in back of the hearse, as a pall bearer in Marty Crouch’s funeral, I prepare to receive Marty’s body to place into the hearse. I receive a call from Madison, which I cannot take, so I hand the phone to Sharon. Sharon is informed that my father is deceased. Sharon has to leave the service for our friend, and tend to my fathers’ body.

Oh, father, you really knew how to place your unique stamp on my life, didn’t you?

My father died on a Friday evening on September 15, 2017. Dad died in his own bedroom and when I saw his body late Saturday morning, he had the look of awe and wonder in his eyes and on his face. He had found his promised land, where loneliness, depression, and dementia disappears, and where ‘bums’ are converted back into the saints and angels that they always were, but were rarely recognized by others as having been so. It took nearly my entire life to release my own misunderstanding and judgement towards my father, and allow for him to express himself in the only way that he knew how to, while still providing a loving protection for him in his time of greatest need.

I know all too well the effects of getting the “bum’s rush”, which is the cultural response to my own social insecurities. I now try to celebrate the saint and angel that lives within me, and within all of humanity’s children, which continues to be released from within me as I release my past, looking for its own unique new expression in this strange new world. I thought that my life’s work was over when I became sober and had a series of spiritual healing experiences beginning in 1987, and continuing for six years afterward. Now I know that my real life’s work has only just begun.

Through my relationship with my parents, I witnessed very early in life how passive women such as my mother remain oppressed, and how dominating, ignorant men will attempt to exert excessive control over their wives. It took many years before my mother was able to stand up to my sometimes loud- mouthed, judgmental, aggressive, harsh, and insensitive father. It took me 61 years to face down completely my own internalized image of what a man is, as well. To finally see how completely that negative ‘male’ internal structure permeates human consciousness in general, and in my own unconscious mind, in all of its diverse, obvious and subtle forms, finally transformed me. My own repressed nature found the ability to communicate its message to me, and rather remarkably it has revealed itself in the form of the “divine feminine” and I refer to that activity as my second birth as a human being.

We who knew and loved you in all phases of your lives miss you both, Mom and Dad. Now being an “orphan” with no children of my own has opened new vistas of understanding for me. The self that I fashioned as a response to my upbringing has no value now. I unconsciously chose a less colorful persona as a direct response to my fathers’ flamboyance, and now I release that choice, to open the door to a new, more conscious way of being in this world.  Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what  I thought I was to who I am predestined to become can create anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of that which is now is the new story of my life. If there is only One Mind, it can only be experienced by a journey through the Unknown.

In retrospect, My father only appeared to cast a shadow over my life. It was up to me to find my own unique voice, in my search for my own truth, so that I could arise from my own self-imposed shadows, and be with him as a partner on love’s endless journey. Those who did not learn to love my father, missed out on one of my life’s most precious gifts, yet there are many other opportunities to bring light into our own lives. The healing journey that I had with my father could be considered miraculous by some, yet it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yes, that healing will die with me, as I have no heirs. Yet, the love that we shared, as a family, will live forever in the mind and heart, of God.  Happy Father’s Life, Dad, I will love you until the final day.

Corinne Beatrice Henry Paullin

I would like to write a bit about my mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry Paullin.  She was one of the finest, most loving and reliable persons in my life.  I never doubted her love or caring for me, or for our family.  She loved her younger brother, Wayne, as much or more than any other sister.  She was treasured by her own grandparents, who were relatively prosperous, as well as by her parents, who were lower in income.  Mom’s grandpa was the first really old guy that I had ever met.  I remember visiting him and his “new” wife (a nurse who married him and took all of his money) in Salem, and Mom requesting that I go over and kiss the old man, who was seated upon some sort of chair with a potty built into it.  It is a kiss that I will never forget, the kiss  of foreboding death.  His funeral was to be the first that I attended, as well.

She worked at many jobs over the course of her working career.  She started at the original Fred Meyer store in downtown Portland.  She worked at National Insurance, General Tool, Grandma’s Cookies, The Oak Lodge Fire Department, and Murphy Logging, and a couple of other companies that I do not remember.

She usually defined for me what God’s love must look like, the unconditional love that a mother has for her newborn child, which was the love mom had for me. Mom offered nourishment of all varieties when I was young, feeding me, telling me stories, healing my childhood wounds by kissing them and applying bandages to them, holding me after horrible nightmares, and protecting me from over exuberant punishment when it was meted out. She always had her wisdom and knowledge of life, which she freely shared with me my entire  life. I did not always follow her advice, at my own peril, because she was usually right about most things that were important enough for her to talk to me about.  Mom was always mom to me, from birth until the day she died. I honor her for that and I respected and loved her presence in my life.

I took her for granted for all of my childhood, and into adulthood until the age of 31 for me.  She always wanted the best for me, she tried to be a motivator, she tried to help me right my ship whenever it listed too severely and I will forever be grateful to her.  We did not talk much over the years, even though we spent so much time together, especially from the year 1995 on, when Sharon and I moved into my parent’s neighborhood.  Beginning with Mom and Dad’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2000, and extending through 2009, Sharon, Pam, Aunt Susie, and I shared in most of the vacations that were taken, due to the need for Sharon and I to be more present for our aging parents.

Suffice it to say, my mother was severely overshadowed by my father’s exuberance and outrageous nature, though she did not seem to mind most of the time.  My lack of elucidation on my mother’s story shows aspects of my own poor communication style, and aspects of Toxic Masculinity that directed me to not pay more conscious attention to her as a human being, and create better stories about her and her life.

I was never really very clear about mothers’ religious persuasions, as she did not speak too much on those matters. She wanted me to take her to New Hope Christian Church fairly late in her life, but I was so done with that perspective that I never volunteered to take her there. She did watch and listen with interest as i wandered through the years on my own search for life’s meaning and significance. I think that she was almost entertained and amused by some of my relationships with the various teachings, teachers, ministers, and spiritual advisors. It was apparent that she was most impressed by my relationship with the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous, however, as that is where she saw I gained the most understanding and stability in life.

Going through all of the photographs of my mother has caused me to think also about many aspects of my own life: what a great gift that life is, what a great debt of gratitude I owe my mother, and father, for what is the greatest opportunity in our known universe, which is to live on this planet. I am so fortunate to have been born into a family with a mother who always tried her hardest to do the best job she could do, whether it be raising children, working in any of her numerous jobs, enjoying friendships, or just living life to its fullest.

By hearing some of the talk of friends who have called since mom’s death, I have heard some wonderful, funny, and fascinating things about my mother that I never got to experience personally. She was, at times, an enigma to me, but I could always count on her to be there for me, no matter what was going on in my life. I tried to return the favor later in life, but I could never repay her for all the good she brought me.

I just enjoyed sitting with her, talking or quiet, and sharing time. My mother always seemed to need to be on the move, however, so those shared periods were short in time, though frequent in later years.  Every time we sat down, and the conversation started to turn “serious”, especially about death, dying, or emotionally laden issues, she would just pop up from the chair, and state:

“Macy’s is having a great sale today.  I gotta go now!”

And, with a smile, off she would go.

I still feel inadequate, and not up to the task, of fully representing the beauty and the humanity of the person I called mom, and that the rest of the world called Corinne. I do know that she loved life, and her friends and family, and always sought the best for all that she knew. She loved the outdoors, and that was reflected by many years of camping and travel trailering. She loved hiking, and logged thousands of miles hiking and Volkswalking through the years, through many states and countries. She loved to dance when younger, and enjoyed many years of square dancing, and many friendships that ensued from that activity. She also loved her golfing, and had many friendships that she enjoyed from that activity.

She loved her children, though, and that is what I remember the most, and will for the rest of my life miss the most, about mom. I made the mistake of assuming that Mom was always going to be with me, and I delayed some important conversations with her, and missed opportunities to truly get to know her better. It is the curse of being a child that we never get to know our parents as well as we could. My parents”friends had a much greater opportunity for that privilege. Mom certainly had many great friendships over the years, and some of the longest would be perhaps, with Eloise Mills. She loved so many of her friendships that were developed through square dancing.  The loss to death of a long-time friend Betty Rolf late in Mother’s life was particularly hard, and I know that the parade of death of so many of her friends was harsh for her, prior to her own passing.

Mom tried hard, though, at everything that .she attempted. It was tough watching her in the later years, as she gradually lost so much to the ravages of her disease process. Losing her knees, losing her smile when her face was tore open from a fall, losing her balance frequently and falling, bruising herself horribly, yet she was a determined woman, and was not defined by those limitations, but instead by what she continued to accomplish in life. She played golf almost to the end.

Her continued participation in water aerobics, though,  may well have been the source of the MERSA infection that cost her her life, taking an unhealed wound to the pool.  On her last healthy day she still made it to her volunteer job with the Portland Visitor’s Center, a job that she had worked at for years and enjoyed immensely, along with the friendships she developed there. It was an amazing, excruciatingly rapid decent unto death from that Monday afternoon return from her job.  I so wanted to be a better son, and help her towards healing, if possible, her last week, but my insouciance around her dying process humbled me, and left me grieving at levels I have never even before touched. Being part of the family decision making process around turning off my mother’s life support machines left me devastated and depressed.

I will only make a brief reference to my sister Pam.  Before I learned how to talk, she thought that I was the best.  She is eighteen months older than I am, and seemed to enjoy playing with me until I learned how to talk, then her attachment to me lessened somewhat. One of my early memories with Pam is that I had a doll named Percy.  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.  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.

We 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 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.  She and I were both considered very smart youngsters, yet we were both pretty messed up in the heads, for sure.

Beatrice and Wayne Kenneth Henry

I would now like to speak about my maternal grandparents, who were my second set of parents.   My first memory is of being at my grandparents’ home, and probably dates around the summer of 1957.  And, it was my Uncle Wayne talking to me that I remembered.  I was still in a diaper at the time (my mother said that I wore diapers until I was at least 2 years old).  Of course, I was not speaking then (yes, I was an extremely late developer), but I still remember having some vague thoughts, and I understood the verbal question given to me in this memory, though no words seemed to form in my mind, just “picture impressions” .  I actually remember my uncle asking me if I had messed up in my diaper, while I walked/staggered up a path to the porch of my grandparents’ home.

My maternal grandparents were the most important people, spiritually, in my life, while also being my second set of parents.   My first memory is of being at my grandparent’s home, and it probably dates to around the summer of 1957.  My Uncle Wayne was talking to me, and I was still in a diaper (my mother said that I wore diapers until I was at least 2 years old).  I was not speaking yet, as I was an extremely late developer. I still remember having some vague thoughts, and I understood the verbal question given to me in this memory, though no words seemed to form in my mind, just “picture impressions” .  I remember my uncle asking if I had messed up in my diaper, while I walked/staggered up a path to the porch of my grandparent’s home.

I spent many a weekend at my grandparents’ home over the years (and when I turned 15 I lived there for 3 straight months painting their home, and hanging out with local teenage girls).  My parents were very liberal in allowing me to spend as much time with my grandparents as they could tolerate.  The biggest issue in the early years was that my sister and I fought quite a bit, so Grandma would try to keep the peace where possible, and sometimes limit our time at their house accordingly, or just allow one of us at a time to stay.

Grandma was a fine seamstress, and she would make us pajamas every Christmas.  When my cousin Brian finally came of age 3 (he was 5 years younger than I), Grandma would make Brian and I pajamas of the same material.  I loved my cousin Brian, and found myself being rather protective of him, especially when playing outside with my grandmothers’ neighbors’ kids.  Brian seemed a little slow, and too gentle of spirit, and I somehow perceived that he might need my extra protection while engaging with the neighbor kids.  Even in adulthood, where he experiences life threatening alcoholism, I feel as though he could use a little extra help, but he has had no interest in my style of sobriety.  He nearly died of the complications of the delirium tremors while undergoing a colonoscopy in February of 2018, and quit drinking alcohol for a brief period, only to resume drinking at the same rate as before his near death experience.

Grandma had a record player in her living room.  It was the old style console type player, and she would occasionally play some of her music while we were there.  I think that her favorite musician was Johnny Ray, the world famous singer of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, who was Grandma’s beloved nephew and her sister Hazel’s number one son.  Grandma had a picture of Johnny in her living room, and I don’t think that there was anybody in the world that Grandma admired more.  And, Johnny is directly responsible for my life, as he saved my mother from drowning when mom was eleven years old.

Around 1980, just prior to Johnny’s death, we all went to a club in northwest Portland, called Darcelles, where Johnny performed (yes, Johnny was gay).  I do not remember too much about Johnny, or his performance, but his show was well attended, and I had to try to look through a ceiling support column in order to see him.  Grandma did not see Johnny much, because he had chosen to live in England after he became famous in the 1950’s.  But, Johnny made a point of visiting with Grandma whenever he came to town, and we have some nice photographs of his family visits.

My grandmother belonged to the Order Of the Eastern Star, Daughters Of the American Revolution, and was an active church goer, as well.  I remember when she was elected the Grand Matron, and of course Grandpa became the Grand Patron, and attending “installment” ceremonies and other events that she was required to attend.  She was so respected and loved (and my Grandpa, as well) that I was quite impressed, having never seen such love exchanged between non family members before.  She never proselytized, nor did my grandpa.

My grandparents, and my mother and uncle, lived in Salem until around 1940, when they then moved up to Portland.  They were both descendants of the great pioneer movements of the 1800’s, with Grandma being a direct descendant of George Gay.  Gay participated in the Champoeg Meetings that created a provisional government in what would become the U.S. state of Oregon. George was one of the first settlers in the Willamette Valley near Salem.  He arrived in the Willamette Valley in1830, after a shipwreck on the northern California coast in 1829, and surviving a challenging journey north from the wreck. His name is on the obelisk monument at Champoeg Park.  Much of our family’s ancestral possessions are on display in museums on the premises of Champoeg Park, as well.

Grandma showed to me that she  had some serious identity issues.  She was ashamed of her Native American heritage, and recoiled whenever somebody hinted that she might have some ancestry there (she did, of course, as she was the granddaughter of George Gay and an Indian bride).  A side story to this is that in 1995, Sharon and I brought Grandma to our house to die, after she was discharged from the hospital for lymphoma.  While in an altered state, she found herself surrounded by Indians doing a ceremony around her.  She was quite upset about it, even though it showed to us a probable internal healing action by her true self.

Grandpa had quite a challenging life, as far as his physical health went.  While in the military he contracted malaria, while accompanying the troops on an exercise in Cuba.  He is said to have developed sleeping sickness as a result, as well, and carried symptoms of this throughout his life.  He had vision problems as well, and he went through a period of his life when he was almost blind.  He contracted diabetes fairly late in life, and I remember him injecting insulin near mealtimes.  I also remember him describing in great detail the tests that were run for diabetes.  He would have to drink a quart of syrupy liquid, and then another a short time later, and have his blood sugar checked.  This would occur a couple more times.  The diagnosis as a result of these “distasteful” tests was that he had diabetes, and he would have to change his food choices in order to protect his health, in addition to injecting insulin into his body a couple times a day.  But, the damage had already begun, and Grandpa was starting to have some of the blood circulation problems typical of a diabetic.

I do not remember much of Grandpa’s work career, other than he was a security guard at Safeway for a period of time.  Grandpa was not the big communicator, but when he did speak, he usually spoke very lovingly, gently, and encouragingly, towards all of the grandchildren.  I really grew to love my grandpa’s style over the years, and I deeply respected him.  He had his quirks, like all of us do.  He had quite a habit of being a smoker, especially later in life.   His shirts and his favorite chair were decorated with burn holes from the cinders that dropped from his burning cigarettes, which seemed to happen quite regularly.  He was usually napping at the time when it happened, so the cinders would burn nice sized holes in his chair before he would become aware of the situation.  My father would razz him about it, accusing him of attempting to prematurely cremate himself.

My grandpa was a proud Mason, and would eventually introduce me into the movement after I became sober in 1987.  Grandpa’s health was poor once he was into his seventies.  One time, he was hospitalized, and died on the operating table during a surgical procedure.  Grandpa told me that the “Hand Of The Lord” was just being extended to him, and he was reaching back to it, with a newfound incredible peace of mind, and all of his body pain dissolved, when he was jerked back into his body on the operating table.  He was SO DISAPPOINTED to have to come back into this world.  When we got together to visit with each other, we would give each other hope because of each of our unique spiritual experiences, his of the “greeting with the Lord” and me with my opening to the spiritual energies of the universe subsequent to my recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism.

When grandpa’s health continued to deteriorate, he wanted me to “give him a pill” so that he could leave this world, as he had no fear of death, knowing that peace and perfection and love awaited him.  It broke my heart when our family could not support his dying days in his own home.  Late in 1989 the family placed him in a disgusting nursing home, as my grandmother was not strong enough to help him with his wheelchair existence, which came in the end days.  My parents and aunt and uncle did not have the time or money to provide home support, so he languished in the nursing home.  It is because of my distress and heartbreak around these issues that my wife Sharon and I stepped up and provided care for my grandmother at the end of her life in 1995, until her final placement at the Hopewell House her final week of life.  My father also directly benefited from my desire to help deteriorating and dying family members, and I was able to help my father finish his life in his own home.

Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin —- The Early Years

This is the part of the journey of exploration and personal writing that I don’t feel too comfortable about, which is the foundational information about my childhood.  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 will only resort to editorials where I perceive that it might enhance or develop the story in a way that could not be done so otherwise.

The most basic of verbal descriptions of myself is my name.  What is in a name, anyway?  I was given a name that 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”.

I have read in the medical reports that I was fed formula from the earliest of ages, as Mom did not nurse me.  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 of child rearing.  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.  I was a fussy, crying baby, and caused much distress within our household.

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.

When I was 4 years old, my grandfather showed me his wooden rocking chair. 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. I “knew better” and to this day, the memory of the chair, and its actual presence in our home, both haunts, and comforts me. 

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 was to lose this capacity when I was about eight years old.

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, 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

Looking at my history, I have found my seat in Life’s Mystery.

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.  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 baby sitter for the day for our first five years of 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. Yet, my sister became my
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.

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. 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.  Once I started talking (close to age 4) I proved that I had the
capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT.  My father wondered, at times, 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.  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
years, Pam appeared to channel some of my father’s negative energy back to me, becoming the “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.

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,
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 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.  She and I were both considered very smart youngsters,
yet we were both pretty messed up in the heads, for sure.

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.

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 arranged for this because I was so unhappy with the baby sitters that my parents had arranged to care for me. One of the worst baby-sitters 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 threatening me.  I had several other decent baby sitters from age 0-5, but the Stanley’s were my living hell experience.  My mother especially wanted to help me, thus advanced entry into grade school for me was arranged..

This ended up adding stress to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, who had a difficult time accepting me and my “immature” behavior.  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.  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 people would be uninterested in befriending or loving me, which led 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 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.

I stole from my father’s wallet sometimes, 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 mychildhood, 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 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 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
vague, 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 eight years old.

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 riding my bicycle
along a busy road while 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.  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 ahouse full of cats.  He even shot at the occasional stray cats that he
encountered on his property to protect his “wildlife”.   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.  I wondered then WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO HURT ANY CREATURE?  My experience with a BB gun reaffirmed that understanding, 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.  My dad liked to tell the story of refusing to hunt with his father because he deplored killing,
yet here he was, killing ‘innocent’ creatures, so it was certainly a
mixed message for me.   I was starting to question my behavior and its
source, yet was too ignorant to proceed on that line of reasoning too
thoroughly.

In the early 1960’s my father felt uncomfortable with how the black
race had integrated into the local culture.  He would comment on
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 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 learned to hug, until I showed them what a hug was, and felt like, first in 1988.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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”.

Iwas 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.

I have read in the medical reports that I was fed formula from the earliest of ages, as Mom did not nurse me.  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.  I was a fussy, crying baby, and caused much distress within our household.  A story about my early childhood was shared with me from a US postal clerk, who sought me out when I started working at the USPS in 1975.  He had been an acquaintance of my father since my father started working at the postal service.  Apparently, when my father was much younger and working two jobs , both for the Oregonian, and for the USPS, he only had limited time for sleep. Because I was a “crying baby” that kept him awake at nights, mom and dad would bundle me up into blankets and leave me in the garage, in the car, at night, until he left at 3:00am for his first job of the day. He first delivered newspapers for the Oregonian, then he would go to his regular day job at the US Postal Service.  When asked, my mother and father both confirmed that this actually happened, though they could see no harm could have been done to me through this isolation..

My father took my sister and I fishing many places when we were young.  One of our trips was up on the Clackamas River when I was 5 years old. My sister and I just explored around while he fished.  I saw some fishing line with a hook on it, so I retrieved it, stuck it on the end of a stick, hung a piece of a worm on it, and placed it into the water.  Within seconds a huge trout grabbed the bait, and I caught my first fish, THE BIGGEST FISH I EVER CAUGHT, EVEN TO THIS DAY!  Of course dad bought me a fishing pole right after that, but I never quite developed the same enthusiasm for fishing that my father had.

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 arranged for this because I was so unhappy with the baby sitters that my parents had arranged to care for me (one, Jo Stanley, was an unloving presence who also had an abusive teenage son who terrorized me).  My mother especially wanted to help me get out of my baby sitting hell. This ended up adding stress to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, who had a difficult time accepting me and my behavior.  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”.

In the third grade, she 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 dunces 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!

My mother was a constant presence of love and respect for me.  She was a great supporter for me throughout all of my years until her death.  My mother, in case in it is not obvious elsewhere in this story, was my “great protector” from the over-extension of male punitive technology and methodology.  I had to draw her into a couple of the discipline efforts that my dad extended to me, especially when his belt hit my ass especially hard and often.  But the image of my mother crying hysterically as my father raised his belt into the air remains one of those “marker memories” of life.  My basic discomfort with aggressive male energy probably started here, and this “fear” informed and guided me through all of my relationships to follow.

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

Other memories include 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).

I had fantasies about friends, of which I had so few (or none) in the early years.  One fantasy with remarkable staying power is that the only people that will be attracted to me are those that somehow I miraculously saved their life, otherwise people would be uninterested in befriending or loving me, which led 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.

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, 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.

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  the 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 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 with the guys for most of my childhood from that point forward.

I usually like my father, but i was often being 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).

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 there existed people who were better off than we were.

I stole from my father’s wallet sometimes, 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 it may have been a subconscious desire to be recognized that motivated me to ’go against the grain’.

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 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 vague, 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 eight years old.

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 riding my bicycle along a busy road while 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.  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.

My father started disliking cats, even though he had grown up with a house full of cats.  He even shot at the occasional stray cats that he encountered on his property to protect his “wildlife”.   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.  I wondered then WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO HURT ANY CREATURE?  My experience with a BB gun reaffirmed that understanding, 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.  My dad liked to tell the story of refusing to hunt with his father because he deplored killing, yet here he was, killing ‘innocent’ creatures, so it was certainly a mixed message for me.   I was starting to question my behavior and its source, yet was too ignorant to proceed on that line of reasoning too thoroughly.

In the early 1960’s my father felt uncomfortable with how the black race had integrated into the local culture.  He would comment on 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 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 learned to hug, until I showed them what a hug was, and felt like, first in 1988.

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 mothers’ and fathers’ 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. 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.

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 at a time until later in my teens.   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.

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 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.

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.  The following dream is still quite alive in my mind, and remains a major teaching for me as both a child and as an adult.

In 1964, 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 laid 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.

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.  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”.

Three years later, while taking World Geography as a class in the 7th grade, I was introduced to the Incan civilization, 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 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.

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.

Looking at my history, I have witnessed 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.

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.

Here is a telling memory about how some members of my family saw me in public, as represented by my older sister in the public school system.  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.

Another aspect of “family shaming” was evident whenever my father came to sports events that I was involved with from 6th through 8th grade.  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.

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, so I was already a bit 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.  A little secret that I carried is that many times, I could “access” certain information that I had never officially learned before, and use it to 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 have to 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 as 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 somebody ever reads this obscure document.

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.

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.

Randy Richard Olson

This story is a thumbnail sketch of my relationship with Randy, and with the recovery process from the human condition, including my suffering, isolation, insanity, loneliness, and ALCOHOLISM AND DRUG ADDICTION). Friends and family, there is nothing new here, so please do not feel obligated to read this again, I have only posted this to honor my deceased friend, and my own unique relationship to him and our shared disease.

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 extra 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 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 the rest is history. He 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.

Terri-Lynn had a step sister named Donelle, and one day Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, where I had my first chance to meet her. This was not a date (it was far from a date) 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 sensitive, 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.

Since I was still not driving at the time, there was no way to go up to meet with her on my own, 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 knew I could not compete for her affections.

Well, Randy did bring Donelle down again our junior year (Rex Putnam High), and I made my move. Eventually, Donelle and I, and Randy and Terry, became couples that shared much time and love together. I did not always get along with Terry, which was a trend that was to continue through most of Randy’s relationships with women that were to follow. For some reason, Randy’s girlfriends always eventually saw me as some sort of impediment to their relationship with Randy. One time 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.

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 to try to keep her independent. 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. 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 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.

Randy stayed in contact with me, and, in fact, I lived with him after walking away from Donelle, and, then, two years later, after walking away from yet another losing relationship with a woman named 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.

I only needed to refill a prescription for some antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication that I already had from a psychiatrist that I had been seeing, and I was going to take them all, and call it a life. I went to the pharmacist, with the intention of seeing the deed completed immediately. At the pharmacist’s office, I saw a person that also knew the fiance’ that I had just broken off with, and I started to tell my story.

He just held up his hands, said “STOP”, and told me that he had no time for my problems, and that I had better work them out on my own. THE NERVE OF HIM TO SAY THAT! So, I took my empty pill bottles up to the pharmacist, and asked for a refill.

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.

Well, during my search for TRUTH, in which I traveled the darkest, most desperate roads that our city had to offer. I used up all of my retirement money (from working at the US Postal Service, where I had worked close to ten years) to support me as I wandered through the city’s dark side, basically living out of my 1976 Datsun 310. I hooked up with addicts, murderers, robbers, prostitutes, drug dealers, DEA agents, teenage runaways, and you name it, I was acquainted with all of the darkness of the city (though I did so in a celibate manner-I did not want sex to cloud my vision). It is a funny thing, I was already dead, or so I thought, so I had no fear as I related to all of these human beings. These were people who I never would have associated with in my more ordered past, but in this phase of my life, I had no fear of them at all. My only intention was to find the truth of living, and of being. I engaged every one of these types of individuals, and I had conversations with them about what life meant to them, and what they felt about God, Good, Evil, Darkness, LIght, and human relationships. 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 that I entered into a blackout, and picked up one of my father’s loaded guns, and drove, quite drunk, to an acquaintances home in the Milwaukie area. This person was an associate of one of the drug chemists in the underworld culture that I had just emerged from. I have no idea why I went down there, but I awoke from my blackout when the gun discharged in my hands, shooting a hole in the front door of his apartment. He had two sleeping children on one room, and a sleeping wife in another room, and I was fortunate to have not brought harm to anyone. He then brought a hypodermic needle out, and injected me with crank/methedrine (I cannot, nor will not , inject myself, as I hate needles.) I immediately snapped out of my drunkenness, and proceeded to talk with this guy for 24 hours. I got one more injection, and then clarity finally hit me. Literally, a light went on in my mind, and I saw the utter insanity of the person I was with, and the insanity of my life. I stood up, laughed at the guy, called him, and myself, nuts, and walked out of the front door, got into my car, and drove back to my parents’ home. I was changed, though I just didn’t know how much at the time.

It is another funny thing, two days later Craig Salter called me (a childhood friend that both Randy and I had known since the 5th grade), and asked me if I wanted to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with him. He was required to attend meetings due to the conditions of the court that had prosecuted him for a DUI. Of course, Craig was not an alcoholic, at least he thought that he wasn’t. I knew that he was, though. I, in fact, was the person that got him drunk the first time in High School, when Craig was 16 years old. I actually started him on his decline into his own alcoholism, just like Randy Olson had started me on my first drug, which was marijuana (I was a scholar, a nerd, etc, with no intention of ever using drugs in high school, but Randy and Tony talked me into it when I was 15 years old. That was the single worst decision of my life.)

Anyway, I went to that AA meeting, because the way I figured it, since God was such a big part of AA, and since I was searching for TRUTH, there must be a relationship between those two forces, and AA must have an angle on that. I proceeded to attend over 270 meetings in my first 90 days, since I had nothing else to do, having lost my job, and, basically, my life, to my disease. Craig eventually stopped going to meetings, after his court ordered attendance ended. I continued to attend them, feeling like I had finally found my spiritual home. I did fall into a temporary trap at the Hinson Baptist Church, thinking that TRUTH must somehow be hidden in the church system, and that I could unearth some more by attending church, and being baptised. I was quickly enlightened by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic by the name of Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. I was given one of his tape series of recovery by a co-worker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, John Johnson, of whom I will be eternally grateful to, on May18, 1987. I then listened to these tapes over and over, during the Memorial Day weekend, and something miraculous happened afterwards, probably as a result of my openness to the experience brought about by listening to these tapes, and practicing some simple steps.

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.

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.

Jan 21, 1955 – June 3, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1970-1971, during my sophomore year, I started smoking pot, as related in another section of this manuscript.  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.

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.

Alcoholics Anonymous Step One:  We admitted that we are powerless over alcohol (drugs) and that our lives have become unmanageable

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.

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)

Chapter about Donelle

I would like to speak at length about Donelle, and aspects of her life that do not neatly fit into a linear time frame  I have really edited it down to keep it as short as possible, though that makes it a painfully disjointed story. I have not heard from Donelle for over 20 years now, since the death of her father, Don Flick, in 1996. She may be dead, or she may be institutionalized yet again, or she may still be living in a halfway house for the mentally ill attempting to make a transition back into the community. If she is still alive, she remains irreparably damaged psychologically, and that condition will not be changing, regardless of the medication administered by ‘professionals’ or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life (outside of some sort of “miraculous intervention”). Where she is now is a direct result of her relationship to our damaged male dominated culture, as well as (theoretically) some unknown genetic predisposition.

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.

Phase 1:

She 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.

Hell is For Children, Pat Benatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxYsi5Y-xOQ

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.

(Note 1: there was a time when I was 24 years old that I wanted to hurt both Bud and Marlene very badly, for mistreating and abusing Donelle. I broke my collarbone fighting with her older 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 jumped me too).

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 PCC 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.

By April of 1980, she collapsed once again into another ‘nervous breakdown’ which included “hearing voices”, talking to herself, and generally experiencing the ravages of her paranoid schizophrenia. 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.

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 “incarnated” in 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.  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.

Note 3: 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-judgemental 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 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.

(end of focused Donelle monologue)

It is now no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide over recovery.

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!

AIN’T IT FUN by Guns & Roses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX4A2osFQsg

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.

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.

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

I will now return to 1971, and I will try to develop my relationship with Donelle more fully.  Randy Olson 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 of 1971. Terri had a friend named Sharon Denman, who befriended Tony Mecklem, 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.  It was quite an awkward time for me, however, as I was still physically immature, but growing fast.

Terri-Lynn had a step sister named Donelle, and one day Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, where I had my first chance to meet her. This was not a date (it was far from a date) 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 sensitive, 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.

Since I was still not driving at the time, there was no way to go up to meet with her on my own, 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 knew I could not compete for her affections.

Randy brought Donelle down again our junior year (Rex Putnam High), and I made my move. Eventually, Donelle and I, and Randy and Terry, became couples that shared much time and love together. I did not always get along with Terry, which was a trend that was to continue through most of Randy’s relationships with women that were to follow. For some reason, Randy’s girlfriends always eventually saw me as some sort of impediment to their relationship with Randy. One time 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.

My life experience with Donelle ended 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 to try to keep her independent. 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. 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.

Donelle and my relationship to her, and aspects of her life that I would now like to highlight.  Her life does not neatly fit into a linear time frame, and my edits make her story painfully disjointed.

I have not heard from Donelle for over 20 years now, since the death of her father, Don Flick, in 1996. She may be dead, or she may be institutionalized yet again, or she may still be living in a halfway house for the mentally ill attempting to make a transition back into the community. If she is still alive, she remains irreparably damaged psychologically, and that condition will not be changing, regardless of the medication administered by ‘professionals’ or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life (outside of some sort of “miraculous intervention”). Where she is now is a direct result of her relationship to our damaged male dominated culture, as well as (theoretically) some unknown genetic predisposition.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

Phase 1:

She 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.

Hell is For Children, Pat Benatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxYsi5Y-xOQ

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.

(Note 1: there was a time when I was 24 years old 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 jumped me too).

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 PCC 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.

By April of 1980, she collapsed once again into another ‘nervous breakdown’ which included “hearing voices”, talking to herself, and generally experiencing the ravages of her paranoid schizophrenia. 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.

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.

Chapter Eight

I will try to cover my employment  with the US Postal Service, as well as my attempts at “higher education”.  I worked as a floor clerk, a letter sorting machine operator, and finally as a maintenance mechanic/electronic technician for a total of ten years, beginning in 1975, when I took a summer job with the US Postal Service during my summer break between my sophomore and junior years.  This was the same office that my father worked out of, and it certainly was not my dream job.  I was supposed to quit work when fall term for my junior year began, but instead I continued full time swing shift work, while going to school full time during the day. Add to that time management challenge was trying to manage my alcoholism and drug addiction, and a mentally ill significant other, and it was pretty easy to see that this story was not to have a happy conclusion.

I ended up dropping out of college my senior year, with few credits left to secure to get a degree, and even fewer units of personal desire to do so. School had the potential to become all-consuming, and I probably needed sobriety to have any hope in the first place.  So the best decision for a practicing alcoholic/addict is to keep the job I already had, and give up on the degree for a while.  That was the second major life goal that I literally smoked and pissed away, after resigning from the ROTC my sophomore year.  .

I met some really interesting characters while working at the main office of the US Postal Service.  Some were incredibly damaged human beings.  Larry was a Vietnam veteran from the Marine Corps, and he would tell stories from the front lines of the war.  He was involved in the fragging of an American Lieutenant, and that story disgusts me to this day.  Paul and I spent a lot of time together after work, drinking and video gaming until all hours of the morning after work.  But he had a dark side as well, and I suspected him of being the arsonist who set fire to his disabled Uncle’s home, which resulted in his uncle’s death. But I met some good people, as well, including David Valdivia, who I still am in contact with, mainly with him being my late father’s and my insurance agent.  He left his postal career before the idea that he could do nothing else imprisoned him.

In Part Two, I will talk at length about the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), which is a form of mutually destructive prayer used in collective consciousness.  The CKG informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use it’s twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives. The following statements are some of the pre-conditions that set up the Common Knowledge Game.  Many of my co-workers were there because they felt that they could do no other work, that they did not either have the skills, qualification, competency, or motivation to try anything else, and everybody knew that truth not only about themselves, but also about all of their co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well.

Many also shared a common foe, chemical dependency.  Those two factors helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well.  I really enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, however, as the fast pace of the job, and the fact that it was a lifetime guaranteed job,  kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions.  Even though I was “trapped”, I found a way to sing in my cage often enough to delay the inevitable crush of despair that was to follow in earnest later on in my career.

I was eventually promoted onto the maintenance team, where I started as a maintenance mechanic in 1980.  What I had hoped to become was an electronic technician trainee.  I did work on some older mechanical or electrical-mechanical mail sorting gear for a couple of years, which was quite boring.  Because I was the new low guy on the totem pole, I was last in line for all promotions, no matter how qualified, or unqualified, I was for any new or more favorable positions that opened up.

About one year before the start of the maintenance position, I again I applied at the University of Portland Engineering Department for readmission, but they were still unimpressed with me because of my meteoric fall from academic grace 3 years earlier.  I went from a being a scholarship student, with a strong B+ average in college, with advanced math placement, to a student who no longer showed up in class.  I apparently did not show the right initial interest, because I was told to attend a community college for a year, to prove that I was really interested in going to school.  So I attended Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus, for the 1979-1980 school year, to see if I still “had it in me”, getting straight A’s in the most difficult science and math courses offered.  I also took some philosophy and religion based courses, knowing that they would help me with the University of Portland readmission project that I was undertaking.  So now I get word that I am readmitted to U of P, at about the same time that my new maintenance position begins.  Will this new marriage work?

Since I was a new hire into the Maintenance Department, headed by John Zimpleman, I was relegated to performing the least favorable duties that the Main Post Office had to offer.  I was usually blowing dust off of equipment, tightening conveyor belts, replacing motors, resetting photocells, adjusting timing on the parcel sorting machine, or other sundry and mundane tasks that my precedents had dutifully performed prior to my “advancement” into their ranks. Right after I started, I was referred to the Employee Assistance Program, which was run internally to the US Postal Service.  My attendance had been fairly poor up to this point while I was a clerk, so this was a carryover from those days, too.  Larry and Mike tried to befriend me, and tried to get me to admit that drinking and/or drugging had something to do with the poor attendance, but I stood unaffected by their suggestions.  I had to go to 5 AA meeting to meet the requirements of the EAP, which I did, but I had a quart of beer stashed under my car seat for immediate consumption after each meeting, so the “message” fell on carbonated ears.

Well, after I worked for less than a month on graveyard shift I KNEW THAT I NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.   So, once again I combined work and school, and this time I knew that I was going to succeed, since Donelle was no longer in the picture, at least at this point (she was to return in the latter part of 1981), and I thus would be able to retain my focus, and not collapse into the confusing quagmire that I fell into after from trying to maintain a marriage with a troubled person, work and go to school at the same time, like I attempted 3-6 years previously.

From 1981-1983 I attended the University of Portland while working graveyard shift at the US Postal Service.  I did not have time to drink alcohol excessively, except for on weekends.  For the first year, I had great grades, perfect attendance, and a lot of hope for myself until I hit the last semester of my junior year. During the same period, Donelle came back into my life, after I found her hitchhiking along a busy road near my parents’ home.  She had been released from Dammasch State Hospital, and placed in an apartment complex on Roethe Rd. near my parent’s old home near Rex Putnam High School.  She was on Social Security Disability, and was receiving outpatient care as needed for her mental illness.  I did not immediately resume my marriage with Donelle, however, and we were still legally separated since the original commitment to Dammasch.

Eventually, after several weeks of contact with Donelle, I was encouraged enough by her progress to want to resume our marriage.  On the night before I was to move back in with her, my friend Paul, from the letter sorting machine gig, and I went out and really tied one on.  While in a bar near his home in northeast Portland, we came upon two female co-workers from the LSM’s, Candy and Lorna.  Candy was six foot tall, attractive, but outweighed me by forty pounds.  Lorna was a redhead, of reasonable dimensions, but very plain looking.  Paul had partied with both of them in the past, so he knew them quite well.  I had no idea what was about to ensue, however.

In a near blackout state, I accompanied Paul, and the two women, over to Paul’s house, where we continued drinking, smoking pot, and playing some video games.  I was ready to go to sleep, when Paul took off into the kitchen with the two women.  When he returned, I asked him if I could sleep on his bean bag chair.  With a big grin he proclaimed

“Why hell yes, you can.  But first, you get to pick which woman you are sleeping with tonight!”

“Umm, Paul, I am not really prepared for this one.  Uh, uh, uh, Candy, would you like to stay and talk with me until I fall asleep?”

The truth be known is that I had no desire for either woman.  They were not appealing to me in the least, yet I selected Candy out of some sort of need to protect the woman’s feelings.   Candy was quite pleased to join with me in Paul’s living room, where the bean bag chair was located.  Lorna accompanied Paul into his bedroom, and they closed the door behind them.  I was still quite drunk, yet I felt a little self-conscious.  We could hear laughter and raucous activity coming from Paul’s room, and we figured out what must be going  on.  Somehow, without me remembering exactly how, my pants disappeared off of my body, as well as all of Candy’s clothes.

I awoke the next day, naked, and laying beside Candy, who was still asleep.  I got up, wrote a note apologizing to Candy, and stated that I had made a mistake, and to please accept my forgiveness for having sex with her while drunk (while sober, I NEVER WOULD HAVE CONSIDERED SUCH A PARTNER FOR LOVEMAKING). I felt diminished somehow, for having sex with her.  For the next two months, she chased after me at work, called me at home, and eventually gave up, when I never returned her calls, and continued to spurn her.  Some disparaging writing ended up on the walls of the bathroom stalls in the Post Office women’s bathrooms about me and my penis, which brought huge laughs to the janitorial core, and, eventually, to the maintenance core, who shared the same locker room.  The joke was that Candy might be better suited to maintaining the Postal Service’s equipment, where blowing the dust off of equipment was a nightly endeavor.  Ouch, emotionally, for both of us.  I felt quite embarrassed, and it took way too long to live that one down.  I also felt bad, because even though I did not technically cheat on my wife, I was feeling like I had.

My self-destruct cycle resumed, and I restarted my active party mode, with my attendance at work tanking.  My attitude at even being there was in the dumps, as well.  I moved Donelle into the apartment in Milwaukie, and I joined her there, much to the disappointment of my parents, who continued to warn me about the potential for another horrible outcome.  She, of course, had that breakdown, resulting in the rape by Dan Dietz alluded to earlier.

While living across the street from Donelle’s apartment on Harrison in Milwaukie, after her breakdown, my father came to live with me for about three months.  He had been kicked out of his house by my mother, after she found out about his ongoing affair with the company nurse.  I was not too impressed with my life and my family, having an insane wife, and my parents marriage in a state of collapse, and now  my own father spending time in my own apartment, when he wasn’t sleeping at his girlfriends’ home.  My new normal was anything but normal, yet I seemed to have few choices.  Dad eventually had to end his relationship with the nurse, and moved back to his own home.  I had warned him that I would not be too friendly with him if he left my mother, so it would be best if he could work things out with her.  Donelle was kicked out of her apartment across the street, for being too disruptive during her breakdown.  Her neighbors did not appreciate her talking loudly to herself at all hours of the day and night, as well as her bizarre behavior.  I took her in, but it was really difficult for me, as well.  Her middle of the night screams and crying and carrying on were too much for me, as well.  I was finally able to force her to go back to her psychiatrist, and get on the latest medications for schizophrenia, which helped her immensely.

We decided to move to Cedar Hills Apartments, the same apartment complex that Randy Olson was living in.  I quit going to school once again, this time leaving the Electronic Engineering/Computer Engineering degree on the garbage pile, with just one year to completion.  My addictions resumed in earnest, with my introduction to Gary Graham, a local cocaine dealer and serious party monster and new friend.  Donelle was becoming too burdensome, demanding to go out almost every night to “party” and listen to live rock and roll music, and she eventually collapsed into yet another “nervous breakdown” by early 1983, so I was between a “rock” and a hard place.  I finally attempted to “kick her out” of our apartment, which she initially agreed to go, to hang out with her new “rock and roll” friends.  I was already finished with enabling and supporting her mental illness, and I was extracting myself from years of guilt and shame around my relationship with her and her illness.

One day, when she came back to the apartment after a night of partying with her new friends, I insisted that she get all of her clothes, and leave my unit for good.  She balked, and a yelling match ensued.  I opened the door, and pushed her out of the door, after she started pushing at me.  She called the police, and we were both arrested for Class C felonious assault.  Randy picked me up within two hours of incarceration, but Donelle had no one to bail her out, so she sat in the jail overnight.  We both had to appear in court the next week, and the charges against both of us were dropped, but she was advised to not step foot into my apartment again without permission.

I met Cindy Dahl, a letter sorting machine clerk, in 1983.  I was invited out to Lung Fungs near 82nd avenue, and another letter sorting machine clerk introduced us one night.  This was during the period of time during the final nervous breakdown that I could tolerate of Donelle’s.  It is a funny thing, I had no intention of going to bed with Cindy, but that night, we hit it off so well that she came home with me that evening, and we had a wildly great time together.  We slept in the same bed, and bedroom, that I shared with my estranged wife, who was now going out on her own, and not coming back some evenings.  I never asked where she was, because I did not want to face one of my Toxic masculine internal stories that I told myself, that if my wife ever cheated on me, I would kill her.  Well, Donelle walked through the door that very next morning, while we were still in bed, and grabbed some clean panties out of the top drawer of her dresser, smiled, said hello, and left.  That old toxic need to punish a cheating wife just miraculously disappeared, when I saw that we both appeared happier by our final separation from each other.

My relationship with Cindy did not last long, however  She tried to get me to hook up with both her and her very attractive female roommate, but I was too insecure to even consider threesomes and the complex possibilities of interrelationship.   After getting an assignment to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for three weeks more of training, Cindy told me that she was getting her breasts enhanced during the period of time that I was gone.  She was warm to me before I left, but when I came back, she wanted nothing to do with me, and I did not even get a chance to look at, let alone feel, her new chest ornaments.

All I Can Do Is Cry, by Savoy Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2T3IyFShfs

I had learned a lot about computer and electronic engineering up to this point, and my new education placed me well ahead of most of my peers, and caused some concern among some co-workers who thought that I might try to parlay this education into a pogo stick to jump over their place on the seniority roster.  Shortly after joining ranks with the maintenance department, I was sent to Normal Oklahoma for training on troubleshooting and repairing some of their letter sorting equipment.  This was the first time that I had ever flown on an airplane, and it was my first great adventure by myself away from home.  I stayed in the University of Oklahoma’s student dormitory, which was shared with the USPS during the summer months for all students.  My roommate was Bill Y of New York City, who also was a maintenance mechanic/electrician from that area.  He happened to be a black man, and he is the first black person I ever had any relationship with, other than through basketball adventures throughout Portland that I used to engage in.  Bill was damaged goods, being a veteran of Vietnam, and still suffering from some very concerning aggressive tendencies and attitudes.  But, somehow, he held himself together.

One Saturday evening, six of us Post Office Maintenance Trainees drove a substantial distance from Norman to a bar in Oklahoma City.  There were five African-Americans, including my roommate Bill, and Jermaine, from New Jersey (who had a huge bag of weed that he just grabbed into and freely distributed to all who liked to partake) and me, the one pale faced party warrior.  I loved being with these guys, and I have never experienced more camaraderie and mutual respect than running with this group of men.  There was a bonding that I just did not understand, but I later learned one of the fundamental tenets of their group energy.

When we arrived, the parking lot was nearly full.  It was a huge club, with all sorts of action going on outside, and, I was to see, inside as well.  We found a decent parking spot, and all walked up to the door together.  Bill led the way, and the greeter held us all up, because of me.  They did not allow “white people” into their place.  Bill explained to the man that I was part of their team, and I was not a “white person”.  The door man told Bill that he would have to register me with the club, and so I was signed into the club, with the other five people with me signing the same paper, vouching for me.  I was told that I was not to dance with any of the black girls, and to keep with my group so as to keep the peace.  The place had several hundred black people partying and carrying on, and I got more than my share of searching, and many times, dirty looks.  Somehow I kept my cool, and paranoia would not have helped me that evening.  I settled in eventually, and enjoyed a couple of strong drinks.  Bill went outside, to share a joint with Jermaine, while the rest of us hung out to one side of the dance floor.

Suddenly, Bill came back in, with Jermaine in tow, and started waving his gun around in the air.  He started yelling very loudly, proclaiming

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”

and authoritatively stated that someone had blocked our car in, and unless they moved their car immediately, someone was going to get hurt.  My other three friends surrounded me, and we all started walking to the door, with the express intention of leaving without anybody slowing us down.  A parting of the crowd, like Moses with the Red Sea, occurred, and we made it outside, awaiting the offending driver to move his vehicle.  Two tough looking dudes came outside, with a following entourage of onlookers, and moved the car, all the while with Bill still waving his firearm in  the air.

The offending car was moved, we all piled into the rental car, and Bill assumed the driver seat, laying the gun in his lap.  We tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell, and we all watched to make sure that we were not followed.  Bill later expressed one of his fundamental values, which was that we have to be willing to lay our lives on the line for our friends, and make whatever sacrifice that is necessary to protect each other from danger.  I began to really understand why I had never felt so safe and protected while with this group of men.  This was the civilian equivalent of a small military squad in a war zone, which, apparently, Bill still felt that he was in.  I have never felt this way with any other group of people in my life.  It was exhilarating, fun, bonding, challenging, hair raising, and enlightening to run with this group for three solid weeks.  I was someone I had never been before, respected, accepted, and honored as being a part of a family, where we were accountable for each others’ success and safety.  I was accepted into the field of human energy where I was unconditionally accepted as a brother, and a friend.

Well, I returned back to the everyday, boring world that I had left from after the training.  I still worked graveyard shift, and I continued to drink heavily every morning after work until around noon.   And my life entered full collapse mode with myself, and with my employer.  My employer was fed up with my poor attendance at work, and I had already lapsed into the severe depression and anxiety, and alcohol and pot were just not getting the job done.  It was suggested that I try the Physicians and Surgeons Hospital Care Unit for alcoholic recovery by our EAP (employee assistance program).  After weighing my options, which I really did not have any, I accepted alcoholic recovery as a good option, and checked into the unit in April of 1984.  The first two days, I basically spent in bed, while they detoxed me from any physical addiction symptoms through the use of the drug Librium.  That first day I was, basically, unconscious, by the request of the attending physician.

I spent thirty days in the unit.  I met many other people who were also attempting recovery.  My roommate was Tom Cravens, a man who had spent more than his share of time in trouble with the law, and with his drinking.  He became like a big brother to me while I was there.  Tom told me about his relationship with Steven Kessler and the 1968 Oregon State Prison riot.  That information seemed inconsequential at the time, but Kessler’s life wreckage would subsequently impact my life directly, in 1986-1987.  I befriended an ex-Hell’s Angel’s motorcycle gang member by the name of Scott.  Herm Gilliam (now deceased) of the 1977 Portland Trailblazer championship team was there.  So I was not alone in recovery, and it eventually became a unique, healing experience.  I almost came to regard the group therapy, talking sessions, and attempts at personal inventory to be like taking a vacation from life. My personal inventories were pretty weak, and appeared to be only people pleasing efforts, which was the best that I could do at the time.  My favorite past time was smoking cigarettes, and I was up to four packs a day of smoking Player menthol 100’s, probably the most toxic kind of cigarette on the market.

Claire was my personal counselor, and she also happened to be a Four Square Church minister, so I sure got a lot of Christian slanted recovery information, as well.  I was not too big on Christianity when I got in there. Claire was an attractive woman, and that alone helped to keep my attention focused on the good messages that she was trying to communicate to the groups, and to me as an individual.  I was not very fertile ground, with fairly shallow soil at the time. I had spent about a month in intensive study of Christianity in December of 1980, spurred by the course work of a University of Portland Theology class that I was required to attend. which somehow had kept me sober for close to a month, as well. But as has been already mentioned in another section, I met three drug worshiping rich brothers in January of 1981 whose access to the alternative “higher powers” of highest quality drugs captivated me, and that first adult Christian leaning quickly dissolved.

Yes-Changes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omhNnvX3Sx0

The last three days I was at the Care Unit, I started to feel the stress of impending release.  It was easy stay clean and sober in the hospital, but the thought of carrying a new attitude towards sobriety that had not yet really taken root into the real world was quite threatening.  We were set up with phone numbers of fellow graduates, and the internal counselors, just in case we were to need any support.  We had a family meeting the night before release, where the patients all had their family members attend, so they could get a little crash course in how to live with the recovering alcoholic.  My parents attended, and I learned something about my father that was pretty disturbing.  My father had internalized my struggle so much, that he thought that he needed to stop alcohol, that somehow I was in the Care Unit because of his drinking.  It took the therapist a long time to  explain to my father that the drinking problem was my own, and not his. My therapist noted to me later that she saw that my father showed characteristics of a man attempting to live his life through his son, which was why my addictions and alcoholism impacted him so severely.

I was discharged back to my home that I shared with Randy Olson, I was regularly attending Hinson Baptist Church at the encouragement of another Care Unit graduate.  I started attending AA meetings yet again at the Alano Club on Lovejoy, as a direct result of my attendance at the Care Unit.  Since I live only 500 yards from the Alano Club, I did not have too many excuses for not attending meetings, but I found a few, anyway.  Randy continued his beer drinking behavior undeterred by my sobriety, which suited me just fine.

Alas, I had to return back to work, which I loathed, but went ahead and gave it my best shot.  After repeatedly being denied an opportunity to take the same training that my peers in the electronic tech core were receiving, I applied directly to the training facility in Norman Oklahoma to challenge one of the preliminary courses in computer logic that the technicians were required to pass in order to move forward.  My local employer decided I needed some training in maintaining the manual letter sorting machine, so they sent me back to Norman in May of 1984, which is a significant date because I also had just one month of sobriety at this point, having just “graduated” from the Care Unit.

The national US Postal Service Training Center was located, adjacent to the University of Oklahoma campus, and we had full access to their campus and sports facilities, which was awesome.  I passed the regular training with flying colors, and on the last day was my test scheduled for the class challenge.  I breezed through the written portion of the test, on computer logic and electronic design, by scoring 70 out of 70 correct.  The practical portion of the exam I was quite concerned about, as it referred to equipment that I had no training or background on.  I only needed to answer one question out of the last 6 correctly to successfully challenge this course, and I could not do it.  It was right there that I decided that when I got home to Portland, I was going to get drunk.  I called my friend Craig, and requested that he meet me at the airport to pick me up.  I WAS BUYING!!  As Spirit would have it, my Care Unit counselor Claire Z got onto our airplane on our layover in Denver, and she rode the trip back to Portland on my plane.  I avoided her like she had the plague, and I never let her know that I was on the airplane.  The problem here is that I had already said YES to relapse, NO to sobriety, and  to talk with Claire would have helped me stay sober, which was not what I wanted.

Looking at my history, I saw that I often resisted its healing Mystery

I had started living with Randy Olson beginning in early 1984, until late fall of 1984, after walking away from 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.

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 people that 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 were living near downtown Portland at the time  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.  Somehow, we hooked up after that, 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.

I was to see her two more times in April of 1986.  I saw her at a bar in Beaverton, and we traveled to the beach together to Seaside to spend the following evening.  She was somewhat distracted, and in the intervening eighteen months since I seen her last she had deteriorated in her appearance, looking a little worn.  We drank at the local Seaside bars, until I no longer had any desire to drink anymore.  I told her that I was going back to the hotel room, and left her the extra key.  She stated that she wanted to keep the party going, and continued drinking and carrying on with some of the local folks.  She returned to the hotel room at two in the morning, all excited about some new “friends” that she had made, and the great cocaine that they had shared together.  She wanted to bring the two guys back into the hotel room to continue the party.

“No thanks, this is where I take my leave!” I announced in a rather angry tone of voice.  I grabbed my overnight bag, and headed towards home, even though I was drunk, almost to the point of being in a blackout.  Somewhere along Highway 26, beyond the Elderberry Inn, I crashed my car into a guardrail, nearly going over a cliff in the process.  I could not get out of the drivers side door, it was so crashed in.  I quickly got the car back onto the road, in my attempt to get home before any more trouble befell me.  When I finally reached North Plains, I fell asleep at the wheel again, stepped on the accelerator, and rammed into the back of another car at freeway speeds.  We both pulled over, and I was able to bribe the owner of the car not to call the police, since I was DRUNK, by writing him a check for $471, which was every last penny that I had in my checking account.  My car was totaled, but somehow I was able to make it home, miraculously escaping death or a DUI citation.

Di DI called me a month later, wanting to talk, and wanting a copy of the love poem that I had given her two years before.  When we met, she told me that the poem was the most beautiful gift that anybody had ever given her, and that she was sorry that she did not find the spot in her life for me.  We both cried, and parted company on rather sad terms.  She eventually died one year later, when she was killed in a drunken driving related automobile wreck in Lake Oswego.

Ozzy Osbourne–I Will See You On The Other Side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9yYJ6ZAYns

Di Di became a part of myself and my consciousness, and I had one profound dream with her in it, shortly after her death.  In the dream, I am confronted by a man exhibiting aggressive, unkind, abusive behavior.  In the dream, I am appalled, disgusted, and threatened by his manner.  I call out to a policeman, imploring him to arrest that man, and protect all of us from his violence.  Di Di then walks up to me in the dream, taking the policeman’s place, and states quite plainly that for love to reappear in my life, in all of its fullness, I must first “arrest” all of these negative qualities within myself, and rehabilitate my own passions, then love will reappear.  The dream ends, but the journey continues.

Though hibernating for oh so long

And hiding from the deep pain of winters’ chill

Love reawakens to sing its special song

So for how much longer can we be still?

With eyes that melt winters’ deepest snow

A tender touch that always seem to say

That all we will ever need to know

Will be learned along Love’s way

Two minds that were brought together

Two hearts that seek to share,

Two bodies that need no tether

Two become one, though still a pair

Heavenly nights and rapturous mornings,

Love promises through all of our years,

The sweet, stirring music of love sings

For two souls who now have the ears to hear.

True love can be the source of dreams

For two hearts continuing to awaken.

I pray that we are all each other seems

And share in Love’s next journey taken.

Written for Di Di, in 1984.

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.

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.

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 quite 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.

(poem found on a napkin that I had written upon while in the Care Unit)

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 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.

As fate would have it, Alcindia also had sexual abuse issues in her background, which definitely impacted our 16 month relationship in various ways.  But, these issues did not lead her into the psychosis like it probably did with my ex-wife.   Unlike my sexually unresponsive first wife Donelle, Alcindia at least found a way to experience an orgasm, and she brought the fruitage of that exploration into our shared sexuality.  On a physical level, she was a small step up. On an emotional level, it remained an often times confusing, stimulating, sometimes happy, but mostly challenging relationship.

When we hit an early “rough patch” in our new relationship, In a shameful moment of weakness, I gave to Alcindia a copy of Di Di’s poem.  I did not ever tell her that I had not really written the poem for her, and that I did not even love her.  I tried to fool myself from the very start that this woman was worth my time and effort, but we were BAD for each other.  Have you ever heard of the term “slumming”?  It was an unholy match, compounded by my own selfishness, loneliness, lack of integrity and honesty, and drug addiction and alcoholism.

On a spiritual and emotional level, our relationship did nothing to enhance a shared vision of wholeness, instead, gradually becoming a source of pain and suffering for the two of us.  How a one night stand turned into a dark 16 month relationship is anybody’s guess, but my poor self-esteem, loneliness and need for female friendship sure played into it.  Baby, and her boyfriend, both were to become quite prominent in our shared story, but I will keep their story at a minimum.  Suffice it to say that Baby’s boyfriend, who belonged to a motorcycle gang in Hillsboro, had access to pure rock crank/speed, which, at that time, I had never experienced before.  This is a very significant event, and I became an immediate, ardent fan of the drug.  This “friendship” would later accompany me into my underworld experience.

Our relationship of 14 months cemented my unconscious determination to self-destruct through continued drug abuse.  After becoming sober yet again in January of 1985, after having a toxic event around drinking and using anti-anxiety medication prescribed for help with depression, I was yet again hospitalized, this time at the Cedar Hills Hospital, for recovery from mental illness and alcoholism. I profoundly disliked the atmosphere in this place.  I witnessed the abuse of mentally ill people, and it was disturbing and heartbreaking.  I  watched three male attendants rough up a woman about my age who did not immediately respond positively to one of the attendants requests.  The three of them ganged up on the unfortunate women, and proceeded to forcefully remove her from the room, and attempt to tie her down unto a bed.  She screamed and cried, and was subjected to quite a beating.  The only way they would later release her from her bondage was by getting her to apologize for her “indiscretion” to the attendants and the other witnessing patients.  The victim was apologizing for having to get beat, and this is how it really was.

Cedar Hills did have a recovery team on site for treatment of substance abuse issues, and they treated me with respect while I was there.  I was expelled after only three days because my health insurance had run out, and I did not want to pay close to $1000 a day out of my empty pockets,   Dr. Beavers prescribed me a high-powered antidepressant called Nortriptyline, which suddenly turned my whole understanding around. It was like a light went on in my mind, and for the first time in my life I was happy.  I happily stayed clean and sober for over six months, and found a renewed passion for life, my job at the US Postal Service, and even for the highly dysfunctional girlfriend that I had in Alcindia.

I began to work out in our local fitness center where we lived, and I started developing some serious leg muscles.  I also gained about thirty pounds, ballooning up to 208 pounds, from eating a half gallon of ice cream almost daily.  Food in general tasted almost too good, while taking this wonder medication.  But, I did not feel comfortable attending AA meetings, because my integrity misinformed me that taking this anti-depressant was somehow part of a relapse process, and that by being on medication that made me feel that good I could not honestly practice the program, and I felt some shame around that.  During this period of time, Alcindia’s mother moved in with us.  She suffered from severe depression, and psychosomatic ailments, and she became a disruptive, though friendly, presence in our apartment for the rest of our relationship.

Things went well until Alcindia and I took a week-long vacation around the July 4th holiday in Bend.  In the middle of the week, I happened to see a partially smoked marijuana joint spill out of Alcindia’s purse.  Rather than replacing it, I somehow justified in my mind that it would be better to smoke pot and get high than take anti-depressants.  This messed up reasoning caused me to experience extreme shame, guilt, and self-consciousness, to the point that I would not return to work after our  vacation.  I called in sick for several weeks afterward, and I never returned to my “lifetime guaranteed job” of working for the US Postal Service.  After ten years, I sacrificed that career so that I could smoke a joint.  It was a fast downhill slide into depression, alcohol and further drug abuse.

By November of 1985, which also corresponded to when I finally was terminated from the Post Office for failure to appear back at work, I also abandoned my now nightmare relationship with Alcindia, and left her for good.

It remains no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide over recovery.  I was starting to see the end of my own road, with the dead-end sign fast approaching my out-of-control- car of life.

PAIN (more post-Care Unit poetry, circa 1985)

Dark clouds looming on the horizon

Waiting,

Advancing

Hovering,

Thundering,

Misting,

Then breaking into torrential downpours

Eroding,

Stripping back,

Layer,

Upon Layer,

Upon Layer

Of consciousness.

Exposing

Long forgotten mental relics

Dangerous old memories

Self-destructive habits

And tendencies

Stinging,

Hurting,

Piercing to my core

Obscuring visions of glorious futures

With the suffering spawned from the

Darkest past

Washing away

Tenuously held possessions of

Sanity and hope

Uprooting new foundations of a life

Desperately

But futilely

Trying to reconstruct itself

Carrying a

Helpless,

Hopeless,

Powerless soul

Into a chemical valley

Amid a swirling depression

Ravaging,

Drowning,

Decaying

Pain,

Why?

Part II

Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,

Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.

No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,

How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Sound of Silence (Original Version from 1964) (musical interlude)

It remains no mystery to me as to why many people choose continued addiction, or suicide over recovery and healing. Invisible wounds are the hardest to heal and the easiest to stay in denial about their life-threatening potentials. I was starting to see the end of my own road, with my out-of-control car crashing through all of the safety guardrails and continuing the race towards the finish line of my dead-end life.  I knew that my problems could not be solved, at least not on my level, and I knew of no other levels that were accessible, or available to me.  The time period of January of 1986, through March of 1987, was to become the time container for my descent into the furthest reaches of hell and darkness.

I moved back in with Randy in December of 1985, after ending my relationship with Alcindia in a rather dramatic fashion,  and I continued to stay with him until March of 1986. He had relocated into a smaller apartment in Beaverton, from the apartment that we had shared in 1984, after my divorce from my first wife, Donelle.  (note:  at this point, Donelle, though still quite mentally ill,  was no longer living on the streets of Portland as a homeless person).  On January 26th, 1986, after yet another night of fighting depression with the hops and yeast antidepressants, I woke up upon Randy’s living room couch at 8:45am, with him emerging from his bedroom, screaming 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 had the crushing realization that my life was also over. Of course, to me, the explosion of the Challenger represented the final destruction of my childhood dreams of becoming a US Air Force pilot, and, ultimately, a NASA Astronaut. I saw mirrored in the Challenger disaster the total destruction of all of my hopes of realizing my life’s potential, and I made the decision right then and there to end it all, and fulfill a 15 year pledge that I had made to myself when I was just 15 years old. I had known since then that I was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict, and if I could not shake the disease by age 30 (and if the disease itself had not already killed me) I would take matters into my own hands. I just held on as best that I could for the intervening years, and I tried my best to adapt to my self-destructive life situation. I never told another soul of my self-imposed 15 year “pull date”, should I fail at sobering up.

I only needed to refill a prescription for some antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication that I already had secured from Dr. Dan Beavers, a psychiatrist that I had been seeing since 1985, and I was going to take them all at once, and call it a life. I went to the pharmacist, with the intention of seeing the deed completed immediately.  While standing in line,  I was to see Mike L. who also was at the same Fred Meyer pharmacy.  Mike was Alcindia’s sister’s friend, who I had known through a few parties organized by Alcindia, and I started to share the smallest part of my story with him.  He immediately shut me down, stating that he had no time for other people’s problems, which reaffirmed my understanding of the other people’s tendencies towards indifference to each other..

The pharmacist would not fill the prescriptions, however, even though I had one refill left on each one, and he told me that I needed to see the shrink again.  I was not to be deterred. I  scheduled an emergency visit to my psychiatrist for that afternoon.  He perceived what might be happening within me, and he elicited a promise from me that I would not kill myself with the medication. Dr. Dan had just had another patient, Scott M. kill himself using the same medication that I had prescribed to me, and Dan was still grieving mightily, and could not tolerate another such event from a patient of his. So, he got the empty promise from me that I would not commit suicide.   I immediately placed those pills under the front seat of my car, for easy access and immediate use, should the conditions of my life prove that it needed immediate termination.   I never intended to take those pills as prescribed, instead telling myself that unless I found a reason to live, that I was leaving this planet, without a rocket ship.  Thus, began my official “search for truth”.

I called my old friend, Sean, who was still stationed in Madrid, Spain for the US Air Force.  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 a while.  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.

I also filed for unemployment benefits, to help with my immediate income needs. I filed for bankruptcy, as I had no intention of meeting my financial obligations, which were immense.  I had student loans, credit card debts, credit union loan debts, personal debts to my father, and other debts that totaled close to forty thousand dollars.  I wanted the slate to be clear by the time I was gone, and bankruptcy seemed like the right process to engage in. The bankruptcy was to eventually become official on the exact day of my thirty-first birthday, November 20, 1986, the final day of the expiration year that I had long ago accepted to be my own.

I happened to run into DiDi again, in early February. when I was driving back to Randy’s apartment.  I saw her walking near her own apartment near the infamous Facet Tavern. I was see her again two weeks later at a bar in Beaverton, and we then decided to travel to the beach together to Seaside the next day to spend a few days together.  She was somewhat distracted, and in the intervening eighteen months since I seen her last she had deteriorated in her appearance, looking a little worn.

We traveled to Seaside together the following day, and I did not really know what to expect, other than there would probably be some more partying, and maybe some connecting on a more personal level. We drank at several local Seaside bars until late in the evening, until I no longer had any desire to drink anymore.  I told her that I was going back to the hotel room, and left her the extra key.  She stated that she wanted to keep the party going, and continued drinking and carrying on with some of the local folks.  She returned to the hotel room at two in the morning, all excited about some new “friends” that she had made, and the great cocaine that they had shared together.  She wanted to bring the two guys back into the hotel room to continue the party.

“No thanks, this is where I take my leave!”

I announced in a rather angry tone of voice.  I grabbed my overnight bag, and headed towards home, even though I was drunk, almost to the point of being in a blackout.  Somewhere along Highway 26, beyond the Elderberry Inn, I crashed my car into a guard rail, nearly going over a cliff in the process.  I could not get out of the driver’s side door, it was so crashed in.  I quickly got the car back onto the road, in my attempt to get home before any more trouble befell me.  When I finally reached North Plains, I fell asleep at the wheel again, stepped on the accelerator, and rammed into the back of another car at freeway speeds.  We both pulled over, and I was able to bribe the owner of the car not to call the police, since I was DRUNK, by writing him a check for $471, which was every last penny that I had in my checking account.  My car was totaled, but somehow I was able to make it home, miraculously escaping death or a DUI citation.

Di DI called me a month later, wanting to talk, and wanting a copy of the love poem that I had given her two years before.  When we met, she told me that the poem was the most beautiful gift that anybody had ever given her, and that she was sorry that she did not find the spot in her life for me.  We both cried, and parted company on rather sad terms.  We were never to see each other again.  She died one year later, when she was killed in a drunken driving related automobile wreck in Lake Oswego.

I was to receive the retirement money by the end of March.  By this time, my immersion into the Portland underworld was about to get underway.  I felt under incredible obligation to repay my father what I owed to him, which was nearly $3,000.  I no longer had enough money to give me sufficient support for a final trip to Spain, so I was stuck at home.  I then began to travel the darkest, most desperate roads that our city had to offer.  I needed every bit of my retirement money from working at the US Postal Service, where I had worked for close to ten years.  This money supported me as I wandered through the city’s dark underbelly.  I lived out of my 1977 Datsun 310, when I was not crashing in abandoned or empty homes with other homeless people,  while connecting with all manners and types of damaged, and dangerous, people..

It is a funny thing, I was nearly dead, or so I thought, so I had little fear as I met new people and befriended them. Most were people who I never would have associated with in my more ordered past, but in this phase of my life,  I did have a strong curiosity to get to know those who I would have avoided in the past. My only intention was to find the truth of living and of being , IF THERE WAS SUCH A THING, and I intuited that the Truth might be hidden somewhere in this darkness and unknown.   I engaged will all types of individuals, and I had conversations with them about what life meant to them, and what they felt about God, Good, Evil, Darkness, Light, and human relationships.

I carried my suicide drugs under my car seat, so that when the pain got too real again, I would make my departure from my world of little or no meaning, no peace of mind, and extreme personal suffering. My Datsun sedan was to become my main home for the next year, having eschewed all associations with family, and friends from my past.  This vehicle served me well.

I then began to undertake my own unique journey, which took me into Portland’s underworld community of drug manufacturing and distribution, homelessness, witnessing of crimes against self and other, associating with and befriending homeless teenage victims of sexual predators and child abuse, friendships with members of motorcycle gangs and their hit men, felons, murderers, and undercover federal agents, some of whom were still investigating the criminal tentacles remaining from the Stephen Kessler, Wayne Harsh era when in 1982 a prison guard was murdered during the famous prison escape from Rocky Butte Jail, and, also, when DEA records were stolen from a federal facility by the same, infamous, Stephen Kessler..

I ran with my new “friends”, and my only intention was to be the best person that I could be, while living out the final moments, days, or weeks of my life. My intention was to bring harm to no one, and to practice the 12 steps of AA, even while still avoiding recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism, which I had totally given up on ever successfully completing. My AA book, which I carried in my car wherever I went, would later come in handy, but not in the way Bill Wilson, the originator of AA, ever had in mind when he co-wrote it..

My first “realization” was that I needed to avoid sex. I committed to no new relationships with women, including no sexual encounters (pretty easy decision for me, as I was so beat up by my history of misadventures with women over the previous 14 years).

My second “realization” was that I could no longer smoke pot, because it made me feel paranoid, and wanting to keep isolated, and in my need to find ‘truth”, those characteristics were counterproductive. Pot also dulled my emotions, intellect, resourcefulness, and curiosity, and I needed those qualities of being to survive in my new world, with all of the new people who I was to associate with. I made a commitment to hang with the type of people who, in the past, I never would have befriended. The way I saw it, the people who I had judged against may well have had some of the answers that I was searching for. In my mind, I was already a dead man walking, so past fear of society’s undesirables receded into the background, and I now considered myself a fellow traveler in darkness.

I met well over a hundred new acquaintances over the next year. I spent hundreds of hours in conversations with all manners and types of emotionally disfigured human beings, the same human beings, that while living my life of “white middle class privilege”, I never would have associated with. Yet in my “final journey through life”, these oppressed, maligned, and misrepresented human beings became my best, and only friends. I was to later realize that the same spiritual disease that afflicted my underworld friends also terrorized my privileged white middle class friends, only the privileged had better ways to mask their disease from themselves and others.

Methedrine, crank, speed, go-juice, or one of any number of other street names of the same street stimulant became my primary drug of choice, as it made me feel “social”, connected and conversational with all others. I would not sleep for up to one week at a time, while running with my peer group. The Punjab tavern on Foster Road became my main hub or center for social contact with many of the social branches of the tree of death that I was now climbing. Many a night, and after hours’ parties, were spent with a revolving group of my new friends there, with a main core group of people who had mutual interests.

I don’t know how to tell the rest of this phase of the story, except for inserting a series of “vignettes”, where I am able to document and describe some of my major interactions with others. The following descriptions will, once again, appear fragmented and incomplete, which is a great descriptor for my life during this same period of time.

I will begin my story of the underworld with Ralph. Ralph was from Scappoose, Oregon, or so he said. He was the center point for much underworld activity, and I quickly became his friend, and driver, through many underworld adventures. Through him I met drug chemists, motorcycle gang members, hit men, armed robbers, practicing felons in possession of firearms, prostitutes, homeless victims of child abuse, heroin addicts, and Steve (not his real name), who was an undercover federal agent, and who would figure strongly in my future release from personal HELL. Steve deserves a story devoted all to his self, as he saved my life when I stood at the final brink, early in March of 1987.

I learned to really love Ralph, who was an incredibly damaged soul, and his excessive drug use would sometimes cause concern for me. I noticed that paranoia was creeping into his mind, and we would joke about it, but he became my first living example of the damage that excess meth use causes. He was one of my “protectors” in the underworld, and would redirect others who were tempted to bring harm to me, because I did not fit in too well at times with Portland’s dark underbelly, being too healthy looking, too educated, and too well spoken. My appearance would quickly change, however, as I lost 70 pounds, receding to 136 pounds by November. My big vocabulary betrayed me on several occasions, and I was counseled to use smaller words wherever possible. One time I was “busted” for using the word “magnanimous” while sitting at the bar, and I was told that people who use “quarter words” where a “nickel word” is enough were not welcome there.

One quick little story about Ralph before I leave him for now. Once, I had all four tires of my car slashed while parked overnight for a party with Ralph and his minions. Ralph put the word out on the streets that this was unacceptable behavior, and whoever did the deed would answer to him personally, and to lay off of that car. I felt strangely safe, and protected, while with Ralph, even though there were continue threats against my safety and well-being. While jacking up my car for tire replacements, I had to use my AA book to help with extra elevation, which attracted some strange looks from those who already thought that I was a stranger in this strange land. Hey, I had finally found a constructive use for the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I actually felt a little pleased with myself. Ralph told me to “ditch that evil book”, and I kept it hidden from all sight from that point on, though to this day, I still own that very same book.

In his appreciation for me, Ralph also offered to me Sarah, his long-term girlfriend, who he had an “open relationship” with. But I had already eschewed all connections with women, other than platonic ones, because I feared that they would distract me from achieving my goal of either killing myself, or finding some new truth that would sustain my will to carry on. But I did share many adventures with Sarah.

While hanging out with Sarah, we would occasionally visit incarcerated friends at the local jails. One day, she decided that we needed to visit Jake, who was being held in Clackamas County Jail until his transfer was completed to a federal penitentiary. I knew Jake on the outside, and he was always so kind and friendly towards me. I wanted so much to express my sorrow at his long-term imprisonment. It was on the way there that I learned that our “friend” was a “hit man” for a regional motorcycle gang that distributed drugs, and one ”hit” went horribly wrong for him, apparently.

Sarah and I snorted some of the latest designer meth creations from our favorite local chemist just before arriving at the jail. It was just after that I had either a stroke, a prolonged seizure, or I was struck dumb, and speechless, for two full days, perhaps by the realization of the potential danger that I was in. When we met Jake at the reception area for the jail, all that would come out of my mouth were awkward grunts and squawks. Yes, the stress created by the meeting, coupled with the drug interactions, probably caused my loss of the ability to speak, thus contributing to the “conspiracy of silence” that my own drug use and addiction enabled.

I cannot comment at length on Wayne Harsh (this is his real name) right now, as it would be inappropriate.  I met Wayne one day while with Sarah, and he actually seemed to remember me from our childhood.  The last time that I had seen Wayne was in the late 1970″s, when he was a Clackamas County Sheriff.  I had seen him driving his police car, and I had thought, at the time, what a great coup it was for him to become a sheriff, based upon my limited understanding of who he was as a person.  He and my childhood neighbor Jack Brownlee actually took a chainsaw to one of the fir trees supporting my tree house, causing it to fall in the woods.  This was the same tree that I had fallen out of when I was in fifth grade, while waving to Jack’s younger sister, Marcia, who I could see in the next cul-de-sac from my elevated vantage point.  Wayne and I  talked briefly, yet I was not to befriend him under these conditions.  I wish Wayne nothing but the best, and I remain unconvinced that he is the “bad person” that the press made him out to be, for supplying the getaway car to Stephen Kessler..

Hal was a tall, lanky fellow, who wore black rim glasses. He had always seemed to have a cigarette going, which was common with the crowd that I was now running with. Hal was the alternate transportation for Ralph, when I was unavailable. Hal lived in downtown Portland, near the Scientology office. We became friends for a while, and spent a lot of time processing information together about the insane people and situations that we were experiencing while hanging with Ralph and Sarah. There was never a dull moment, that was for sure.

Hal was from a devout Catholic family background. His family was economically disadvantaged (POOR), and Hal had to work even while in high school to help his mother make ends meet financially. He had taken four years of college, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in forestry, and he was no dummy, that was for sure. He had a strong work ethic, when he was employable, but now he was suffering from the after effects of some sort of emotional breakdown. To support his income stream, he peddled speed at some of the local strip bars and taverns. It was a high risk proposition, as he had to make exchanges with some really damaged people, as well as potential exposure to informants and snitches.

He tried to present a happy face, though whenever I saw him. I felt a strange, sad feeling. One time, while visiting him at his home, I saw a copy of his college degree from Oregon State University. His photograph was next to it, and it was only from six years previous. yet, he looked twenty-five years older now. I was a little surprised that I could feel my own heartbreak around the loss of human potential for somebody else, yet not even feel it for myself.

From time to time, we would get involved in discussions about religion, philosophy, psychology, and society, in between snorting lines of our latest shipments. He was the best person for animated discussions, which were accentuated by the stimulants that we liberally used together. Hal loved to make extensive commentary about the Pope, or about the state of American Catholicism. I would usually just listen to him after he got all “fired up” because I just did not share the same sense of oppression that he experienced because of his religion while he was growing up. I certainly was oppressed, no doubt, but at this point I did not have a really good clue as to why I felt that way.

He would always end his religious take downs by stating, unequivocally, that heaven and hell are right here on earth, nobody has to die to get there. Just look around, he would say, the evidence is obvious.

“I carry heaven and hell in my own mind, Bruce. I don’t need the Church to tell me how to feel, behave, or believe, for they just add more layers of hell for me to sort through to find my own little piece of heaven”.

“Hal, I don’t really follow the Christian religion, or Catholicism too much. I only know that I carry more than a nodding familiarity with Hell. Since I do not experience anything resembling heaven on earth, I guess that is why the church people hope that it exists after we die, because we sure aren’t drinking from its fountains right now!”

“Bruce, there was a time when I occasionally knew peace of mind, and that is when I first knew that I did not need any God, any Jesus and his crucifix, or any Pope to lead me into my own greater good. But after walking through this world for the piece of time that I have, I have somehow lost all hope that it will return anytime soon. The damage in the world is becoming the damage in my own mind. I despair that the world will ever change, and I doubt that any change is even possible for myself”

“Hal, wow, I actually might be your long-lost brother from another mother. I don’t have any answers. I stopped using pot because I wanted to see if it was preventing me from accessing important parts of myself. I use speed now, because it helps keep me engaged with the world in a more social way, yet I am no happier than I was before. I stopped using antidepressants last year, and now I am just riding this bucking bronco until I get tossed for the last time. I am not planning on picking myself up again, when I hit the dirt the next time.”

Yes, our discussions never ended on a positive, life-affirming note, but how could they? Hal was to get arrested, and charged with drug distribution, when another “friend” of ours, Cowboy Ron, snitched on Hal to save his own, sorry ass.

I won’t give Cowboy Ron the honor of much comment. No, I did not change Cowboy Ron’s name here. I only hope that he sees himself here someday, if he survived his own private hell. Cowboy Ron hurt a lot of people, including his wife and children, but that is another story, for another day. Sometimes the predator becomes the prey, and maybe that was what he was really looking for, in the end. People do bad things to hurt themselves, and other people sometimes just become collateral damage. I did not enter the underworld to judge anyone, including Cowboy Ron. I sometimes ran with the wolves, but this rabid dog challenged me in ways that made my flesh crawl.

Robert was a convicted armed robber, who was recently released from prison in May of 1986. One night, fate gathered us both together to sit at the bar in the Punjab tavern. The bar was a long, semi-circular arc, which seated up to 14 souls. The bar had two pool tables, and several tables and booths where people could be comfortably seated. And, there were several video games, which drew my attention at “after hours’ parties” where I was usually quite wired, and needing extra entertainment.

I was sitting at the bar yet again one evening, conversing with the owner Jack, who was to become another friend to me, when Robert slid in, and sat right next to me. He was dressed in a leather jacket, which was popular at that time, and fairly new jeans. He was about my age, 30 years old, and looked like he wanted to talk. Let us “tune in” to a conversation that we engaged in that evening:

Robert: Hey, I have a plan for this seat, is it OK for me to sit next to you for while?

Me: Why, of course! Where are you coming from, you appear to be already having a good time.

Robert: Well, tonight is the night for good times, for sure. I just needed to get out, and get some “fresh air” and hook up with some old friends. I have been out of the neighborhood for a long time, and I am hoping to find some old friends.

Me: Well, maybe a new friend might show up, say, right next to you this evening?!

Robert: That would sure be nice.

Me: My only requirements are that you are not a murderer, because if my life has to end tonight, I want it to be by my own hands (I said this half-jokingly)

Robert: Hmm, I was just released from prison, having spent ten years behind bars for a pretty famous robbery committed in 1975.

Me: Oh, really? You really made the news, eh? I think that your notoriety won’t get in the way.

Robert: Umm, I killed a man while committing the robbery.

Me: (gulping, I am feeling rather uncomfortable and stupid now, and my thoughts began racing). Robert, everybody deserves a second chance, let me buy you another beer, and let’s turn our attention to the present.

Robert: Sounds good!

We clink our glasses together, and each take a big drink. An ‘old friend’ of Robert’s comes up to the bar, and accompanies Robert into the restroom, leaving me at the bar. I ask the bartender for a shot of whiskey, which I quickly down, and then wash the bitter flavor away with a big drink of beer.

Robert returns to the bar, sans his “old friend”.

Me: Well, what is up for the rest of the evening?

Robert: (slurring his words noticeably, and his eyes had lost their luster) I think that I will just hang out here for as long as I can, then move on down the road a piece.

He then closes his eyes, and slumps down, face onto the bar. Then, he falls off of the chair, and tries to right himself on the floor.

Me: Bartender, I think that my friend here just got sick, should we call an ambulance?

Jack: Heck no, Bruce, he is right where he wants to be. If you could, please help him over to a booth in the corner where he can try to get his shit back together.

Me: Jack, did he just shoot heroin, or something? Why would he do that to himself? I just don’t understand, because I want and need to talk to people now, and that would be so counterproductive.

Jack: Bruce, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST WAITING FOR A BETTER DAY. Today is not the better day for Robert, and it may never arrive for him.

The Needle And The Damage Done, by Neil Young

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0t0EW6z8a0

Me: Wow, thanks for that, Jack, I did not really understand, but I think that I do now. Let me get him out of view before we all get into trouble.

The Conspiracy Of Silence claims yet another human being. The heroin completely shut him down to his humanity, and left me wondering what my own fate might be,.

This story goes on, through an almost endless array of struggling, spiritually darkened humanity. I will continue this story with many other human beings that I had the privilege, honor, and distress to meet and converse with. Each one of them helped me to find the next step on my own path to recovery, and to finally embracing the path to truth and love within my own heart.

Dorothy was a young woman in her early 20’s, who had two young children. I was invited over to her house one evening, and was privileged to have a fairly intense discussion with her about our life’s issues. She was a heroin user, becoming dominated by the needs to use, and she was also “shadowed” by a former lover, Jakob, who was incarcerated in jail at the time of our connection. While I was there, I noted her “scraping” used spoons, so that she could get together enough heroin residues to give her a fix. Her supply was out, and she was waiting for her next delivery, so things were getting a little “tense” for her We spoke of what we thought the real powers of this world were, and it got a little interesting.

She did not believe in the power of “God” or “Jesus”, having long eschewed any connection with such concepts. She lived for the moment, and knew all too well that “shit happened” regardless of how “good” or “bad” a person was. She believed that her criminal boyfriend, Jakob, had extraordinary powers, and could “astrally project himself” out of prison at night. As long as she had company (friends, or heroin), Jakob could not materialize into her home, and threaten her and dominate her, as he did when he was not imprisoned.

“There is only darkness, Bruce, and all of the people who attempt to use it. Those who use to help others are considered “good people” yet, these same people will turn against others in a heartbeat, should the need arise. Good people do not really exist, just fucked-up people who occasionally make helpful choices for themselves or, inadvertently, for others, usually while they are really just trying to selfishly take care of themselves”.

“Dorothy, I believe that we all have both energies, and it may only be that if we stumble upon the right understanding, we can act more from a not-so-dark, not so selfish position, and occasionally help ourselves and each other to have better lives”

“Well, how much time and energy do you put into having a better understanding of yourself, and being more helpful to others?”

“Good point, Dorothy. But I actually try to look at the forces of darkness within myself, to see where I might also be negatively impacting myself and others through a lifetime of not fearlessly confronting those energies. I have no idea what will be revealed, if anything, if I ever successfully overcome my own darkness.

I continue to search for the reasons to stay around here, and see if there is any real value to staying alive. My old way of seeing life sure has not brought any lasting happiness or social responsibility to me. If there is no Truth to stumble upon to keep me going, then I may as well allow the darkness that I already know to finish swallowing me up, and take me away from my own suffering”.

“Heroin is quite helpful for me, Bruce, have you considered trying it? My supplier will be here shortly, and I can give you a little bit.”

“Dorothy, thanks for talking with me, and making the offer to share with me, but I have to return to some other business that I am attending to, so time for me to leave”.

My search for Truth would have ended that day, had I stuck around Dorothy’s home. I was only minimally tempted to try heroin that day, as I felt quite disturbed by the darkness that I felt coming through Dorothy. I never saw her again.

Steve belongs in a special story all to himself, but I will include him here because he had ultimate importance in my “search for truth”. I met Steve at the same time that I met Ralph. Steve was a very intelligent, well-dressed man, about 8 years older than me. He drove a nice 1982 Chevrolet, which somebody had tricked out (I did not think that he did it, however). Shortly after becoming a “peripheral person” in our rotating community of characters, his car became impounded by the police, and he could not get it released back into his care (or so he said). That is where I first became “suspicious” of Steve, because I sensed that he was looking for somebody who might have an “inside track” into our Portland Police Department, and its inner workings.

Steve and I shared a lot of time together over the 12 months that I wandered over the underworld landscape. I could always count on him to give me good insight into others, though he held the truths about himself close to his chest. He became a ‘big brother” to me, at times, and would not spare me criticism, if I appeared out-of-place, or out of touch. He would criticize Ralph’s excessive drug use, all the while using extremely small amounts of the same stuff, which he poured from a very tiny vile. He initially could not understand why I thought it necessary to be where I was, either, though he was the only person that I ever told that I was on a “search for truth”, while continuing to use speed, and alcohol. I did not understand, at the time, how he could “get by” with so little use of drugs.

From time to time, Steve would seem to “test” me, by exposing me to new situations and people who required some sort of help or intervention. Through Steve I met Georgette, a 15-year-old runaway girl, who was escaping a sexually abusive father by being homeless in the southeast Portland area. She was hanging out with another sexually abused homeless young man, named Greg, who was three years her senior, and already skilled in the art and science of locating abandoned or temporarily vacated homes, for their own temporary residences. Greg was always accompanied by five to ten other “friends”, who would be his assistants in illicitly securing property or goods for resale, and, I was to learn, help distribute freshly manufactured methamphetamine. Greg, I would learn, was also about to “peddle” Georgette, for added income.

Georgette was a tiny young woman, no more than five foot two inches, and ninety-five pounds. When I first met her, I noted her innocence, and my heart almost broke, and I felt helpless, though I wanted so much to protect her from her fate. She had developed “pink eye”, and I saw an opportunity to break her free from this group of itinerant thieves and junkies. I had her grab her meager belongings, and I placed her in my car, and we talked for hours. She was the younger sister, or daughter that I never had, and I wanted to keep her safe. I finally whisked her away from the gang, and drove her to Outside In, where she could get necessary medical help and counseling. I had recently received a retirement payout from my 10 years working at the Postal Service, and so I had some extra money, which I stuffed into her pocket. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that I never wanted to see her again with her “friends”, or there would be serious hell to pay. I never saw her again, though a tape recorded message of my conversation with her would mysteriously show up a few days later.

One evening the next week, I was sitting at the bar in the Punjab tavern, which was my second home, talking with Jack and a couple of acquaintances when a cassette tape was thrust across the floor, originating from a table on the other side of the tavern.  There were four men seated at the table, and none would maintain eye contact with me when I looked their way.  I got off of my bar stool, leaned over and picked up the cassette tape, and looked at it with Jack and the two men sitting on either side of me.  We discussed what it might be, and none of us wanted to confront the table where the tape originated from, for we all had our own paranoia and suspicions of strangers.  Jack walked to the back of the bar, and grabbed a cassette recorder, and inserted the tape into the player.  My voice started speaking from the machine, and a fear took over me like I had never felt before.  When I saw what the subject matter was about, I asked Jack to please stop playing the tape, as it was making me extremely uncomfortable.  I asked Jack for the tape, which he gave to me.  The other people at the bar started regarding me suspiciously, as well, and all that I could offer to the listeners was that Georgette must have been miked, and that somebody in the bar wanted to “out me” for having befriended her.

Greg (Georgette’s ‘handler’) was to later engage me, and asked to speak to me in private.

“Bruce, I hear that you might be able to help in my situation. I have a friend who has set up a trailer near 82nd avenue, and we can hang out there, and use it as our base of operations”

“Greg, I am not sure what you are asking of me. My time is quickly running out, I am afraid, and whatever “help” that you are seeking, I probably do have sufficient assets to draw from”.

“Well, we have a pretty good operation going right now. I am getting lots of merchandise stockpiled, and, in fact, we have filled an entire basement near 52nd avenue. Before you say no to anything, let’s go over and check it out”.

“OK, but I can’t be tied down to any one place, any one situation, or any one person. I certainly do not have any interest in buying or selling stolen items. I will go over with you and have a look at the house, though.”

We drove over together to the home on Duke Ave. near Brentwood City Park in my Datsun 310, talking about a wide range of subjects. Greg appeared to be only about 17 years old, yet he told me that he had been on the street for over six years. I could tell that he was “feeling me out”, asking me many leading questions. My paranoia, which was a gradually increasing inner experience for me over the last several weeks, was barking at me, the closer we got to the safe house. As we entered the driveway to the home, Greg then asked me

“Bruce, you sure don’t talk like anybody that I have ever met. You talk about things that I don’t like to think about, or would normally not even consider. You are so different, and you sound a little strange at times, I think.

I think that we should be partners. I can tell that you do not like women by the way you have ignored all the girls we hang out with, and you should know that I have little attraction for women, as well. I only feel a strong bond to men”.

I think that I then swallowed a golf ball sized lump in my throat

“Greg, I don’t think that you understand. I am not sexually attracted to ANYBODY. I want to meet people and make friends with no ties, sexual or otherwise to anyone. I have to travel light, because I am going to be leaving very soon.”

“I have heard you say that before. Where the hell do you think that you are going to go”?

“I got a passport earlier this year, with the intent to travel to Spain, to start a new life, or maybe to die. I think that my journey will not be taking me too far from home now, though”.

“I don’t understand. Why do you talk of death? Are you dying?”

“I am really not sure what I mean anymore. I know that something feels like it is dying inside of me. I won’t know until more time passes, and I meet more people. I will then know for sure what I mean”

“You don’t make any sense. Maybe when you see what we have in the basement, it will be easier to make up your mind whether to stay or to go”.

We exited the car, and walked up to the front door together. Greg knocked on the door, and a nearly fifty year old woman of unkempt appearance answered.

“Greg, come on it! I have missed you! Umm, I have not been able to organize everything yet.”

“Martha, this is Bruce. He is OK, don’t be afraid of him, I’ve known him forever Don’t worry about the mess, we can take care of that later”

There was some more small talk, and then we walked downstairs. Martha had merchandise almost stacked to the ceiling covering almost the entire basement, of which I estimated it was 1500 square feet. There were brand new boxes of retail merchandise, as well as some “used” items of very good condition. It was like an unofficial hardware section of Home Depot, and the clothing section of Fred Meyer. I saw chain saws, table saws, drill motors, hand guns, shotguns, military style guns like an HK 91, toys, kitchen pots and pans, appliances, car parts, lawn mowers, bicycles, clothes, shoes, and just about anything one could imagine.

We walked into a closed off section of the basement, with Martha becoming quiet, and almost reverential.

“I want to show you how the lab is progressing. Dieter has made great progress, and has secured all of the hardware and chemicals necessary to get started. We have not been able to get Jeff bailed out of jail yet, so we may have to kidnap one of our other chemists for a week to run a test batch or two”

She opened the door, and there were three tables filled with Erlenmeyer flasks, beakers of various sizes, Bunson burners, propane tanks and fittings, glass cookware, coffee filters, some sort of automatic stirring or mixing device, stainless steel pressure cookers, and a host of other tools that I did not immediately recognize, even though I had taken chemistry lab several years before. There were also several Mason jars and mayonnaise jars filled with substances of various colors, some of which were liquid in nature. I do not remember if they had made provisions for ventilation, though there was a window that looked north located near the ceiling that would have been adequate. I made sure not to offer up to them the fact that I had some background in chemistry, as the thought of being trapped in a lab as an assistant for a week or more sounded a bit like imprisonment to me, no matter how much free drugs might be made available to me.

“Well, let’s smoke a joint, and celebrate the good fortune that we are about to have!”

Martha then pulled out a stick and lit it up. When it got to me, I declined.

“Aren’t you a partaker of the wacky tobacky?”

“Not today. I’ll stick to my crank now. I need to keep my head clear, and the joint just gets in the way of what I am trying to do”.

“I don’t get it. Pot is the best stress relief available, save for the brown or black holiday”.

“I am trying to figure some things out. It is hard for me to function at the level I need to while high on pot”.

“Are you sure you are OK?”

“Oh yes. By the way, I could use a line of crystal, can you send me a life line?”

“Now you are talking! Let’s get the party started.”

And with this group, another one week run starts, with no sleep, little food, and too much conversation. I was never quite sure what to make of Martha. I never saw her again.

Greg lost interest in me, and found himself a “friend” to hang out with him at his trailer. I saw him from time to time after that. He looked worse and worse every time that I saw him, and I think that he reflected back to me my own disease and disfigurement.

I continued an incredible downward spiral into addiction, and Steve commented to me, in November, how I looked like I could be the “Aids Poster Boy” because I had become so slight of figure, and so unhealthy looking. I had started “hearing voices”, and I had become paranoid, as well. Yet, I did not let on to others that I had become so disfigured internally, though the signs were starting to appear. I “heard” that there was a major undercover operation active in Portland, and that dozens of criminal indictments were immanent. In reality, that was partially the truth, yet I should not have known that, let alone warn a few others of those “facts”.

Steve wanted to know how I knew of these indictments, and I would not tell him. I noted that people were tailing me almost all of the time now, and that some of my conversations were being recorded in my car. One day I tore my car apart, searching for the transmitter, or the recorder. I had two different people stop by, and try to interrupt me from the search, which only added to my own paranoia. I did not locate the transmitter, but I really began to fuck with any listeners’ mind, by talking dark shit, and renaming myself “the Wild Card”. I let my world know, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer aligned with anyone, as I was on my way to my own death.

I will fast forward through three months more of Hell. My main core group had collapsed, with Ralph relocating himself to protect himself. I had lost touch with Steve, my last connection with sanity. I was running with a new group, and most were intravenous drug users. I met Doctor Dave, a short, friendly man, with a severely pockmarked face, a man who also recently was released from jail. He introduced me to intravenous drug use. He ever so carefully shot me up with speed, for my first time of ever using the needle, and most subsequent times, as well. I could not shoot up by myself, as I feared needles so much. But the incredible rush I received from intravenous drug use made me want to use this hastened path to Death frequently for the final two months of my drug abusing life.

I will share a story of Frank, and Steve’s providential return to my life. Another house had been commandeered near the intersection of Holgate and McLoughlin Blvd, and that became our new hangout. Our new leader, Frank, organized a big party, and we had over 70 people show up. This was in early March of 1987, and I was ready for my swan song. My mental health was irreparably damaged, and my “search for truth” had apparently only uncovered a hastened path to Death for me. Frank had just secured a fresh batch of speed, and heroin (which I had never used before), and he was mixing up his renowned “witches brew”, and invited me to join him. Sure, why not? I had nothing to lose, but a life that was already dead. I started to accompany Frank to an upstairs room, when I spotted Steve talking with a healthy looking 30-year-old woman, a person that I might have been attracted to, had i been healthy. I overheard her calling his name, and it was NOT Steve. “Steve” saw that I heard his real name, and he then knew that I knew.

Steve took me aside, and tried to explain. I instead stopped him, and told him that I had suspected him all along of being undercover. I also told him that his secret was safe with me. I told him my journey was about to end, that I was going upstairs with Frank, and if I survived that experience, I was going to return to my car, and grab the pills under my front seat, and finish business, once and for all. Yes, I was finished.

“Steve” grabbed my arm, excused himself from his ‘girlfriend’, and took me outside to his car. We then drove to my father’s house, and “Steve” then commanded to me “Bruce, I can no longer keep you protected and safe. Your search for truth has to end within this dangerous world. Now your real search for truth must begin, starting with your relationship with your father. I never want to see you again, but believe me, I am going to try to help you, any way I can. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.”

We arrived at my father’s house, and he let me out. He and his partner drove my car to my dad’s house later that evening, and I never saw him again. The pills had disappeared from under the driver’s seat, as well. There was no way that I was going to go back to Dr. Beavers, as I was too ashamed to have anybody see me in the state that I was in.

Note 1: One year later, he called me, to check and see how I was doing. I was a year clean and sober, and, in tears, I gushed with my love and gratitude for “Steve”. He was the best friend that I never knew I had.

Randy Olson was to return to my life, yet again. I was still a mess, strung out from months of drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling, and I still only weighed a mere 135 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 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.

HURT, Sung by Johnny Cash written by Nine Inch Nails

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc

It was then that I entered into a blackout, and picked up one of my father’s loaded guns, and drove, quite drunk, to Brock’s home in the Milwaukie area. This person was an associate of one of the drug chemists in the underworld culture that I had just emerged from. I have no idea why I went down there, but I awoke from my blackout when the gun in my lap discharged, shooting a hole in the front door of his apartment. He had two sleeping children on one room, and a sleeping wife in another room, and I was fortunate to have not brought harm to anyone.

He then brought a hypodermic needle out, and injected me with crank/speed (I still would not inject myself.) I immediately snapped out of my drunkenness, and proceeded to talk with this guy for 24 hours. I got one more injection, and then clarity finally hit me.

Literally, a light went on in my mind, and I saw the utter insanity of the person I was with, and the insanity of my life. I stood up, laughed at the guy, called him, and myself, nuts, and walked out of the front door, got into my car, and drove back to my parents’ home. I was changed, though I just didn’t know how much at the time. As I had only five dollars left to my name, I needed to make a decision. Either I needed to buy more beer and cigarettes, or I needed to get some gasoline for my car, and go visit my grandparents in north Portland. I kept the five dollars, and drove to family. My grandparents were happy to see me, but were concerned for my appearance. I claimed to have the flu, and grandmother nursed me back to some semblance of health over the next five days, while I detoxified and had withdrawals from cessation of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, all at the same time.

I returned home to my parents’ home after a week at the grandparents. It is another funny thing, two days later, out of the blue, Craig Salter called me, for the first connection in three years (he was a childhood friend that both Randy and I had known since the 5th grade, and the same person that I chose to have my relapse with after my Care Unit experience), and asked me if I wanted to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with him. He was required to attend meetings due to the conditions of the court that had prosecuted him for a DUI. Of course, Craig was not an alcoholic; at least he thought that he wasn’t. I knew that he was, though. I, in fact, was the person that got him drunk the first time in High School, when Craig was 17 years old. I actually may have started him on his own horrific decline into his own alcoholism, just like Randy Olson had started me on my first drug, which was marijuana, and may have indirectly contributed to my own eventual decline.

Anyway, I went to that AA meeting, because the way I figured it, since God was such a big part of AA, and since I was searching for TRUTH, there must be a relationship between those two forces, and AA must have an angle on that. I proceeded to attend over 270 meetings in my first 90 days, since I had nothing else to do, having lost my job, and, basically, my life, to my disease. Craig eventually stopped going to meetings, after his court ordered attendance ended. I continued to attend them, feeling like I had finally found my spiritual home. I did fall into a temporary trap at the HInson Baptist Church, thinking that my personal TRUTH must somehow be hidden in the church system, and that I could unearth some more by attending church, and being baptized.

I then literally spent thousands of hours over the next several years in AA meetings, communication, investigation, reading, writing, meditation, associating with all types and manners of people, and, eventually, healing my relationship with my parents (especially my father).

I was enlightened by a new teacher, a recovering alcoholic by the name of Jack Boland, who had released to the world many series of tapes on recovery and spirituality. I was given one of his tape series of recovery by a co-worker at the Fred Meyer warehouse, John Johnson, of whom I will be eternally grateful to, on May 16, 1987. I then listened to these tapes over and over, during the Memorial Day weekend, and something miraculous happened afterwards, probably as a result of my openness to the experience brought about by listening to these tapes, and practicing some simple steps from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholic Anonymous Twelve Steps

1). We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2). Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3). Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4). Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5). Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6). Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7). Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8). Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9). Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10). Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11). Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12). Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My search for Truth, which had taken me through the darkest regions of hell, was about to give me wings, and enable me to fly to the sun, and beyond.

Yet, the prison guard with one of the primary keys to release me from my own spiritual imprisonment was my own unhealed relationship with my father. Overcoming a lifetime of oppression and control by others is no easy task. It also must be done clean and sober, for the true depth and healing of the experience to permanently take hold. I began a new relationship with my father, starting with my new-found sobriety. The real fruitage of healing from the relationship was not to become apparent until many, many years later.  That is another story, for later.

Note: Stephen Kessler was recently denied parole, and will spend the rest of his life in prison. He was regarded as the most dangerous criminal ever encountered, by several federal agents.

Wayne Harsh was a friend of my neighbor while I grew up near Rex Putnam High School, and he eventually became a Clackamas County Sheriff prior to his own fall. We knew of each other, and he was well-known for his connections with automobiles, and, in fact, either intentionally or inadvertently supplied the getaway vehicle to Stephen Kessler during his prison escape.

Coincidentally, I was roommates with Tom Cravens in the Physicians and Surgeons Hospital Care Unit in 1984, when we both sought sobriety (Tom was successful, but I was not). Tom was one of six co-conspirators with Stephen Kessler during the 1968 prison riot, where a lot of the Oregon State Prison in Salem was burnt down,, and shame was brought to our Oregon Governor, Tom McCall. While growing up into the beast that he became, Stephen Kessler also shared the same school as my present wife, Sharon White, and, in fact, beat up a teacher while in the same classroom that he shared with my wife (end note)

My “search for Truth” would take a long detour through my relationship with my father.  I never had much desire to write about the “search for truth” that I had undertaken in the 1980’s, let alone the rest of my oft-times irrelevant,  isolated life. Why on earth would I want to write about important elements of my family, or of my personal life? The answer to that question is that I never did, up until around five years ago. When I had to retire early from my career as an electrician to provide extra care for my father, I finally had the time to consider where I was, where I had been, and where I might want to be, for the limited time that I had left on this planet. I saw how my life’s foundation was that which was provided for by the works and processes established through our family’s history, and through the history of all fathers who had ever lived.

My sister has always been quite the family historian, and in the past, I would defer to her, to let her develop the elements of the family history that might be the most interesting or important in nature.  Yet, my sister could not fully develop the emotional heritage of those ancestors, due to the limitations of the availability of letters written by them, or by the deaths of too many of the carriers of the family history.  Since my father was so available to me, I took advantage of my direct, almost continuous engagement with my father and his memories, as well as some family records,  to help me develop the first part of my story.

My father, Beryl Donald Paullin, was a product of the Great Depression, having been born in 1927. His Father, also named Beryl, was a Fire Chief who was respected within the community, and also feared in his home because of his  abusive nature and alcoholism. I know little else about Grandpa Beryl (also known as Bruce), other he also served in the military, during World War 1, and is buried in Willamette National Cemetery, as is my father.  My father kept my sister Pam and I away from grandpa Beryl until we were teenagers, that is how much my father wanted to protect us from the oppressive presence of his father. While in our early teenage years, Pam and I did visit with Grandpa Beryl at his La Center home twice, and I visited him in the VA hospital prior to his death. In his later years, he was sober, and seemed like a pleasant enough man.

Dad’s mother Elsie was the classic abused wife, suffering also through physical and emotional problems while married to “that Brute”, as my father referred to him. I also know little about her, either, other than she had kidney disease, was one of the first Oregonians to receive a kidney transplant, and that she died shortly after my birth.  John Edward was dad’s older brother (Ed preceded him in death) and Ed was removed from his home and placed at their grandparents’ farm in Oregon City at 6 years of age, after nearly being beaten to death by their father. I later learned that Elsie secretly gave birth to a daughter at age 15, which she gave up for adoption. So my dad and his brother and sister had an older sister that they never knew of, until very late in their lives.

Gloria (or Susie) as most people now know her, was his younger sister, and both Susie and my father suffered under abusive conditions for most of their childhood. Both my father and my aunt displayed some symptoms of PTSD for most of their lives, as well as both being products of the age of which they grew up.  Over the years, Dad found a way to manage his life much more successfully than his sister Susie, for sure.  Susie carried a most unfortunate and hurtful story about my father all the way to the end of my father’s life, which was that it was my father’s fault that Edward was almost beat to death, because my father, at  four years of age, tipped over a lamp, and broke it.  Edward’s near fatal beating supposedly arose from that event.

My father really loved his older brother Ed, through all of the years of his life, though he loved to challenge Ed about the mess that was always present in the yard on Ed’s farm.  Ed loved to collect old and junk cars, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, friends, some family members, and the local police department.  Sharon and I started sharing in their love beginning in 1995, when we all started sharing breakfasts, and family gatherings together for the first time.  My Uncle Ed was a masterful story teller, and I always enjoyed it when he grabbed my ear, for his epic tales about family, friends, and his work at the Crown Zellerbach paper mill, where he was the lead electrician for over forty years.

In 1943, at 16 years of age, Dad enlisted in the Marines, as he wanted to serve his country, get away from his family of origin, as well as he thought of himself as a “dummy” ,with no faith in his ability to successfully finish high school at Benson PolyTech. His mother promptly collared the local Marine Corp recruiter, and forced dad’s return home from the service. He re-enlisted in the Navy the moment he turned 18 years of age, and was assigned duty on two different warships, the West Virginia, and the Wisconsin, during his two years in the Navy. Upon his return from active duty in 1947, he returned home, where he threatened his dad with death if his dad ever laid a hand on his mother again. Dad moved on from that relationship with his mother and father, not seeing either of them again for quite some time.

He started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him after my mother’s death in 2009. But he had to delay his search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition.  Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.

Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.

Dad still had a fire in his heart, and an incredible desire to succeed. He worked harder than anybody around him, the sign of a classic “overachiever”. He endlessly drove himself, and he was going to overcome his upbringing, and prove to the world that he had higher value than the poor self-esteem that his verbally and physically abusive father had inculcated him with. His perfectionism and zealousness for order and efficiency was utilized to its best advantage in his future employment with the US Postal Service. That same attitude tended to, at times, challenge others, especially those that he attempted to help, or manage, as both a general manager with the Postal Service, and as a friend and family member. A person with a passive/aggressive personality, like me, had the most difficulty with him. Those who were self-assured or had found their own voice, and engaged him directly, had the best relationship with him, and he really enjoyed engaging with others in stimulating, challenging discussions. Those who took the time to get to know Dad, also found a way to love him, in spite of his rough edges. But it was hard to get to know him because too many times he would lead with a derogatory remark, or insult, and bad first impressions rarely get changed.

He had several choices in his career, either as a policeman, fireman, or joining with the US Postal Service, of which he ultimately selected. He also began courting my Mother, Corinne Beatrice Henry, who happened to be quite a “looker”, and also quite a hard working young woman, as well. Mom worked at the original Fred Meyer store in downtown Portland, among many other jobs over the course of her own career. Mom’s parents were not impressed with my fathers’ parents for obvious reasons, and Dad had to overcome some real judgements to make inroads into that family. My Grandpa Henry made my father mow his yard before he would even let Dad take Mom out, as part of their desire to prove that Dad really wanted to move forward with her.

Dad married mother in June of 1950, and they lived in NW Portland for several years. Pamela came along in 1954, and Dad knew love in a way he never knew before. Pam was a precious prize, and Dad delighted in her presence, and her life, until his death. I came along in 1955, and Dad initially had trouble embracing who I was, as I had troubled early years, causing much disruption to the family lifestyle, because of health issues (the underlying truth is that Dad had trouble understanding the innate value that I had as a baby, and as a son). Dad had a house built in West Linn in 1955, and spent the next nine years there, investing thousands of hours of work turning his property into his own outdoor temple. He repeated the same process with his next two homes, as well, converting the landscapes into his own unique paradise.

First and foremost, Dad loved his wife, Corinne, his children, his older brother John Edward, his new family, eventually including all of his in-laws, and all the new friends that they developed through the Oakey Doaks square dancing group. These included, among several others, Bob and Dorothy Fero, John and Cleone Edwards (John worked with Dad at the Post Office), Dick and Eunice Jamison (Dick also worked with him at the Post Office), Joyce and Merlin Litson, Joe and Sue Constans, and Bob and Diane West, along with several others.

He carried a lifelong friend, Roland Mills, far into his adulthood, with Mom and Dad sharing many fond memories with Roland, and his first wife, Eloise. They attempted to continue their friendship with both parties after Roland and Eloise’s divorce in 1980. Dad’s dementia late in life kept him from being friendly with Roland, though he still recognized Roland and knew his name, but had lost the willingness or ability to share memories with him.  In the very early years, my sister Pam and I shared some fond memories of staying at Roland and Eloise’s home while being babysat by their daughter Cindy, watching horror, science fiction, and Elvis Presley movies with her, and her brother Gary. Gary and Pam’s first deceased husband Jim Graham actually ended up working together for a while in the early 1990’s in the home real estate industry, resulting in the sale of the house to Sharon and I that we presently live in.

When dad was a young husband and father, he carried two jobs for a number of years because he did not like feeling in debt. Because Mom had to work, too, we spent much of our first years with baby sitters. I never nursed with my mother, and, as a baby, because I cried at night, I was wrapped in a blanket, and placed in the car in the garage in the evening so that my father could get sleep before arising at 2:30am for his first job every day.

My father loved to play hard, and he had many stories of being a top flight beer drinker in the local tavern scene, while also becoming quite the accomplished shuffleboard player. He told a story that the owner of a tavern even served him a beer while he was in the bathroom. Yes, he became friendly with the suds during that time period.  My father’s love of the suds translated directly to me, where I learned, quite early, how wonderful the flavor of beer was, and how wonderfully intoxicating it’s effects were. He told the story of how when I was 5 years old, he left an open beer on the coffee table, and when he left the room for a moment, I lifted the beer up, and drank it all. Within 30 minutes, I fell off of the couch, and dad and I both knew that I had a new, but dangerous, friend. Dad took care to monitor his beer after that, and so did I.  I would steal drinks off of his beer after that, until I learned how to steal whole beers later in childhood.

Dad carried a tarnished understanding of how to discipline his children, though he later claimed that he eventually came to realize that he was repeating his fathers’ abusive behavior, as far as physical discipline was concerned, and thus he stopped (I still got beat with a belt up to age 14, though). His rebukes were quite powerful, and seemed to outnumber his praise and acknowledgement of us. Early on, Pam and I suffered under the abuse of his belt too many times to recall. But through all of that, I never lost my love for my father. He was my hero, albeit a broken one. He loved my mother deeply, though at times unskillfully. Fortunately for mother, dad never lifted a hand against her, though they both traded many barbs over the years. A lot of it was just the way they communicated, thinking that they were being funny, and a lot might have been not-so-veiled aggression. They shared much pride in their children, and being parents brought untold gifts, and meaning, to both of their lives, because of, and in spite of, all of the challenges and lessons that we presented to them as children, and then as adults, over the years.

Dad was an avid reader, but spiritual or religious readings were not a draw for him. The last time that I remember Dad being present in a church was to witness my baptism in 1987, which also corresponds to the last time I was in a fundamentalist church environment, as well. Dad avoided going to church, having never been convinced that church attendance had any relationship to a connection with God. He stated that if he ever walked into a church, it would probably fall onto him. His church was his love for nature, its beauty, the wildlife, hiking through woods and meadows, hiking the deserts in Arizona, the trails of the Columbia River Gorge, or any of thousands of places around America, and the world. His church was also his love of his wife, his family, including his brother and sister, and his in-laws, his love of his dear friends, his love of his dogs, of which he had many. He adored his dogs, and they supplied a constant supply of the unconditional love that his heart, and soul craved, and which his experience of his exterior life sometimes failed to supply him in sufficient amounts. He loved the homes in which he lived, and prepared the grounds of each of them carefully, as if making each one a sacred offering to his creator. His body of life was truly the temple of his living God.

He was the type of guy that, had he ever met Jesus Christ in person, if he noted lettuce in the Christ’s teeth, he would tell him about it. He liked to state that “heaven was not ready for him, and that the devil did not want him either, as he would try to take hell over and run it the way it should be run”. Dad lived his life “outside of the lines” so to speak, and he delighted in challenging other people’s assumptions, sensibilities and understandings.

Dad was an accomplished card player, square dancer, stamp collector, avid fisherman, hiker, camper, traveler, scout troop leader, general outdoors man, adventurer, humorist, wise man, and golfer, but retired early in life from hunting. As a young man he hunted with his father, though he grew to be repulsed by the idea of killing innocent creatures. One time while hiking in the Arizona desert with his dog Misty, they were confronted by a rattlesnake, and he had to draw his pistol and shoot the creature. He regretted having killed it, which shows how his love for all life had taken over his soul. He had a challenged understanding of cats, though, and was quick to punish wayward cats that strayed unto his property to assault and kill birds and squirrels.

Dad’s high point in his career was when he was promoted to Operations Manager of the Main Office of the US Postal Service, in Northwest Portland. His career there spanned over 35 years, and he developed many friends, and a few enemies, along the way to his peak. He was respected by the Postmaster, though it was the Postmaster’s dissatisfaction with an aspect of dad’s personal life that encouraged dad to retire at 55 years of age. Dad’s next step would have been to become Postmaster over the entire Portland operation, and succeed Ben Luscher, had he not entered into an affair with Karen,  the office nurse around 1980.  Mother had a lifelong investment in my father staying married to her, and she took charge of a situation that would have discouraged most other people by informing the Postmaster of dad’s indiscretion. So my fathers’ official retirement date was 1982, and a whole new world opened up to mother and dad.

Dad traveled extensively with mother in retirement. They took their verbal “Punch and Judy Show” around the world, and around America. Eventually they settled upon their yearly snowbird excursions to Queens Valley, in Arizona, where they would park their travel trailer, and spend the winter in sunny southern Arizona. He lived the dream, and learned to make mom his best friend, and travel companion. Mother’s health had taken a downturn in 1978, when she learned that she had kidney disease. Dad would admonish her about her weight, thinking that if only she would lose her extra weight, her health would be better. Mom would do her best to comply, but, hey, that chocolate cake was just too hard to resist sometimes, and, anyway, she deserved it because she stayed so active. Dad had a habit of being disrespectful to my mother over the years, and the weight obsession my father had only added to all of our uneasiness with him.

There are some who thought that my father was a horse’s ass, but that is the view one sometimes gets when in second place, having been passed by his race horse of a mind. A man like my father, who lived a full life, could have his own book written about him, and not scratch the surface of all the people that he impacted, positively or negatively, and all of the experiences that he had, all of the humor that he shared, and all of the wisdom that he developed.  My sister, my wife, and I wrote several pages of “Beryl-isms”, which are quotes directly from my father about life in general.  I have presented a few of his “top 50” statements, which he repeated many times over the last few years of his life.  In parenthesis, I have included a few of my replies to his common statements that I used to give back to dad as part of our “conversation”..

1). Don’t wait too long to retire. People think they need to work those extra years, they work that extra one or two years, thinking they need the money, and death takes over, and they never make it to retirement (well, Dad, I retired early, but we will have to wait and see if that has any beneficial effect on my longevity.  Right now, my main goal is to try to outlive you, oh immortal one!).

2). Oh those rich people, all of that money, and they still have to die anyway! (and the rest of us, we have to die too, darn it!)

3). Why do you need to know, are you writing a book? (well, as a matter of fact I am!)

4). I really took the system, didn’t I? (after being retired and on pension for 35 years, contributing $22,742 to your pension, and getting over one million dollars back, I would say that you did!)

5). Come back again when you can’t stay so long (well, I am working on that one!)

6). Don’t you have something better to be doing? (yes, but you are the priority of the moment, so try to enjoy it while I try not to suffer too much)

7). Sure am glad that I am retired, or is it retarded? (um, I won’t touch that one)

8). I might be here, but I am not all here (then where is the rest of you?)

9). You know, having a dog like Rocky adds 7 years to my life (yes, but your dog took 7 years off of mine!)

10). (to any waitress) Say, you sure are looking good this evening. Would you like to come home with me and serve me my favorite meal? (argh! So embarrassing!)

11). I am not trying to be pretty, and I never will win any beauty contests (I can’t argue with you on that one)

12). The doctor needed a urine, stool, and semen sample, so I just left him my underwear (oh, boy, what a bad joke!)

13). You couldn’t hit a beach ball with a banjo! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn! (comments made to me both as a youth when pitching or batting on little league baseball teams, and while playing golf with him as a child and as an adult)

14). When I get to Heaven, I am going to have a talk with the “Old Man” about my wife dying before me.  Wives are supposed to outlive the husbands.  Either I should have died first or we should have died at the same time (Maybe mom finished her work before you did.  In what form would you have wanted a simultaneous death, like in a murder/suicide, or in a car wreck?)

15). Son will we all meet again in heaven? (are you sure that you really want to hang out with the same crowd for eternity?)

16). Heaven is not ready for me yet, and Hell is afraid that I will take it over, so that is why I am still here (maybe you are still here to provide a few more lessons for the living.  I know that I sure am getting a crash course!).

17).  I am in no hurry to die.  Nobody I know has ever come back from the dead and told me what a great time that they are having after death. (yes, and wayward religions continue to capitalize on that mortal fear, ignore the fact that heaven is here and now, and do not effectively teach us how to die to ourselves and our fears and suffering to experience heaven in advance of bodily death)

18). I provided care for you all of those years when you were young, now its your turn to take care of this old man (I should have read the contract more carefully before my birth!)

19).  You should always be best friends with your sister.  Never let anything get in the way of that friendship, because she will find a way to love you to your death, as you should love her as well (Well, Dad, you sure have shown commitment to both your brother and your sister, especially over the last twenty years.  Somehow you all endeared yourselves to each other.  Thank you for being a success in that aspect of family love, and overcoming the chaos created by your parent’s relationship.  I think that Pam and I are on a good course right now)

And on and on it could go. My dad was a great story teller, and fountainhead of wisdom, one-liners, humor, self and other deprecation, and sarcasm.  My personality was so much less colorful than my father’s, yet, it is easy to see that I truly am my father’s son.  I have many of his same attitudes, and I replicated many of some of the same deficiencies in my own life that my father also experienced.

It was tough watching my father deteriorate, which began in earnest after his radiation treatment for prostate cancer in 2005. After mom died in 2009, Sharon and I had him over for dinner every evening. He was anxious, and suffered horribly from grief, and deteriorating cognitive health. I took him to the doctor’s office for treatment for depression in late 2009, and the doctor ending up prescribing anti-depressants for me instead. He continued to threaten to kill himself, and I had to locate all of his guns, and empty them. In the process of emptying his rifle, I almost shot myself in the foot, sending a bullet through his bedroom floor.

Within three more years, late in 2012, Sharon insisted that Dad have his driving competency evaluated, as he appeared to no longer be capable of driving safely. When the doctor confirmed that Dad should no longer drive, my life as I knew it came to an end. The loss of his independence also became my own loss, as well. I became responsible for 100 percent of Dad’s life, health, nutrition, meals, baths, finances, home and lawn care, and spiritual support. Dad no longer managed his life, other than dressing himself, going to the bathroom (mostly), smoking his cigars, and eating the food placed in front of him

I found a way to love that man on deeper and more profound levels, as I continued to release my own expectations of how he should be, and how he should live. His sole concerns became his love for his dog, Rocky, and maintaining residence in his own home until his own death. He had lost all short term memory, and was basically unteachable the last 5 years of his life, though he maintained his dignity, his sense of self, his recognition of his family, and his love for his children, including my wife Sharon. At the beginning of 2016, I finally hired a support person to help me with Dad’s care, a loving young woman by the name of Madison. She helped for about 15 hours per week, which went a long way to take some of the burden off of Sharon and me.

When Rocky died in June of 2016, ten days after our own dog Ginger’s death, Dad’s final thread of love and companionship with his past was snapped. He asked me over 5000 times where Rocky had disappeared to, after his dog’s death. I watch my father call out 30 times or more, Every Day, to his deceased dog, Rocky. We made up a sign for him, so that he can see, in writing, that his dog is dead, that it died of old age, and that he is ‘in heaven’. But, he never truly got it, because his short term memory was gone. At times, I felt compelled to set him straight, and tell him he is neglecting this moment, where Sharon White and i lived, and instead he was worshiping the dead,, where all of his grief and losses reside, but of course he quickly lost that. My heart broke for him, and for all of us

Our presences were just not quite enough to make all OK with Dad. But, we made him as comfortable as we could until his last days. He never took one medication, nor was I about to force one onto him. Dad’s final four years were a real labor of love for me, forcing me into early retirement from work, and the experience almost tanked me. But I learned how to love another human being unconditionally and completely, though the lesson plan exacted a price from me. I am only just now coming out from under the spells of anxiety and stress around the experience of care giving for my Dad, as well as being fully present for my friend Marty for the several months prior to his own death, which occurred five days prior to Dad’s death.

The last conversation that I had with my father was 6 hours before his death.

This is what we exchanged with each other:

Dad, you are still in bed, and its 2:30 in the afternoon, what’s up, it’s such a beautiful day outside.

You know son, I am always tired now, but I am about to get up.

Well, Dad, this might be the last sunny day in a long time, so why don’t you get up, and go out on the porch and have a cigar? I’ll put a chocolate bar on your table, and a drink for you.

I’ll get right up son. By the way, who is caring for me this evening?

Well, Dad, Madison is caring for you this evening.

Oh, poor Madison!

Dad, Madison benefits by being with you, as you do with her.

I will be with you beginning this Sunday morning, and I will be with you for the next three weeks as usual. You know we are planning one final trip to Hawaii with you, right?

Oh son, I am happy just staying at home. I have everything that I need here.

Well, OK dad. I am going to leave now, as I need to prepare for Marty’s funeral tomorrow.

When will I see you again, son?

Dad, it will be Sunday morning, OK?

OK, son, you know that I am dependent on you. Please take care of yourself.

Oh, dad, you know that I am dependent on you, too. You be careful too!

I love you, son.

I love you too, Dad.

I leave his room, not knowing this is to be our last exchange.

The next day, at 10:58am, as I stand in back of the hearse, as a pall bearer in Marty Crouch’s funeral, I prepare to receive Marty’s body to place into the hearse. I receive a call from Madison, which I cannot take, so I hand the phone to Sharon. Sharon is informed that my father is deceased. Sharon has to leave the service for our friend, and tend to my fathers’ body.

Oh, father, you really knew how to place your unique stamp on my life, didn’t you?

Through my relationship with my parents, I witnessed very early in life how women are oppressed, and how ignorant men try to dominate and control anyone or anything, including those that appear “unlike themselves and their own expectations”. It took many years before my mother was able to stand up to my sometimes loud- mouthed, judgmental, aggressive, harsh, and insensitive father. It took me 61 years to face down completely my own internalized image of what a man is, as well. To finally see how completely that negative ‘male’ internal structure permeates human consciousness in general, and in my own unconscious mind, in all of its diverse, obvious and subtle forms, finally transformed me. My own repressed nature found the ability to communicate its message to me, and rather remarkably it has revealed itself in the form of the “divine feminine” and I refer to that activity as my “second birth” as a human being.

My father died on September 15, 2017. Dad died in his own bedroom on a Friday evening, and had the look of awe and wonder in his eyes and face. He had found his promised land, where loneliness, depression, and dementia disappears, and where ‘bums’ are converted back into the saints and angels that they always were, but were rarely recognized by others as being so. It took nearly my entire life to release my own misunderstanding and judgement towards my father, and allow for him to express himself in the only way that he knew how to, while still providing a loving protection for him in his time of greatest need.

I know all too well the effects of getting the “bum’s rush”, which is the cultural response to my own social insecurities. I now try to celebrate the saint and angel that lives within me, and within all of humanity’s children, which continues to be released from within me as I release my past, looking for its own unique new expression in this strange new world. I thought that my life’s work was over when I became sober and had a series of spiritual healing experiences beginning in 1987, and continuing for six years afterward. Now I know that my real life’s work has only just begun.

Note:  The Clackamas Country Police and Medical Examiner made life hell for Sharon and I, upon viewing my father’s death bed.  Sharon had cleaned up the bed sheets because father emptied his bowels after death.  Because Dad had a slight wound on the back of his head from a fall earlier in the week (he fell off of a chair when the leg broke) the police treated his bedroom like it was a crime scene.  We were forced to sit through SIX HOURS of investigation and interrogation, all because Sharon wanted to make dad’s death bed a more sacred setting for all of us.  Sharon wanted to make sure that I did not have to witness the fecal mess upon arrival, since I was already traumatized by having to leave a funeral, where I was a pallbearer for a best friend, to attend to my father’s body.  I don’t think that I have ever been more traumatized by any combination of events in my life.  The second injury caused by the ignorance and insensitivity of the police department is understandable, yet very painful.

We who knew and loved you in all phases of your lives miss you both, Mom and Dad. Now being an “orphan” with no children of my own has opened new vistas of understanding for me. The self that I fashioned as a response to my upbringing has no value now. I unconsciously chose a less colorful persona as a direct response to my fathers’ flamboyance, and now I release that choice, to open the door to a new, more conscious way of being in this world.  Who, or what, am I now? I am a mystery, even to myself. I need not be anxious, though the transition times from what  I thought I was to who I am predestined to become can create anxiety. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the Truth of that which is now is the new story of my life. If there is only One Mind, it can only be experienced by a journey through the Unknown.

In retrospect, My father only appeared to cast a shadow over my life. It was up to me to find my own unique voice, in my search for my own truth, so that I could arise from my own self-imposed shadows, and be with him as a partner on love’s endless journey. Those who did not learn to love my father, missed out on one of my life’s most precious gifts, yet there are many other opportunities to bring light into our own lives. The healing journey that I had with my father could be considered miraculous by some, yet it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yes, that healing will die with me, as I have no heirs. Yet, the love that we shared, as a family, will live forever in the mind and heart, of God. 

Dad, I will love you until the final day.