The dark days of dilemma dragged on. Adam’s strange, hypnotic curse remained in effect. The common cliche: Can’t live with em, can’t live without em… continued firing in the neurons unabated. Like a laughter-killing, sickening joke. The mysterious riddle of why another self-delusional “I”… choking on the same old apple again… was not… “pleased as punch”… to be rid of the disingenuous, snake charmer, Eve, remained unsolved. I kept pining… against my better judgement. Seemingly, against my will. I tried everything I could think of to rid myself of my broken-hearted, dark mood
Therapy sessions with tried n true, warrior woman, Amini. Therapy sessions with an amazing new lady, Jo Ma. Whom I met working in the grow store. A fine twenty-seven year old Michigan lass with dreads past her ass. Walking, surfing, snapping, working…
I wrote down… with fervent old fashioned ink on paper— The Pros: All of the reasons to try to find a way to make it work, to stay with Jessica. The Cons: All of the reasons to break up. The list of reasons for staying together was short. A couple of lines. The reasons for breaking up went on for many explicit pages.
It’s not like we had been getting along great for the past six months to a year. Since we moved over to the new house, Jessica had been retreating to her room, more and more. She was tired, she said. I talked too much. She wanted to be alone and work on her private journal. She was working 10-12 hours a week… off and on… giving massages over at a spa in Eureka. I had been spending most of my weeks driving back down to Sohum to work like a hired slave for the ganja lords… big pot growers.
Yes. I was horny and lonely. I confess.
After spending 4-5 consecutive days and nights alone in the eternal sweltering hundred degree heat… swinging a screaming weed whacker through ubiquitous poison oak patches to clear a fire perimeter… gunning a bawling chain saw through half dead maple, oak and madrone… running, forward and reverse, a squealing hydraulic wood splitter… hauling and stacking massive piles of weighty green firewood for winter warmth… working beside a crazy, diesel-spewing, grumbling, coughing, fire-spitting, homicidal bobcat… handling a shovel, dragging a rake… to repair washed out muddy, dusty dirt… chain-locked private roads… combination chain
locked… two turns to the left… turn right, one turn, to wine thirty… pushing a wheel barrow up never-ending, steep, winding switchbacks… driving a pick axe into another rocky hillside to split up sleeping underground rocks… heaving split rocks into a metal wheel barrow… swinging left, then right, right to left… downhill with the shin-splitting, tippy wheel barrow now full of… very heavy split rocks… trying not to fall off maniacal mountain switchbacks… driving that broncoing wheel barrow with hard muscle and infinite care… to yonder lowest point in… the winding dirt road… that leads to… on down to… the locked, unlocked, relocked… three to far radical left of 420… click click clack… sqeeeeak…. ker-bonk… private gated, secret entrance… the winding humpbacked… qwazimoto karmakazi… dusty, muddy dirt road to and from the penal colony property… finding the biggest pothole, the deepest puddle… on pot farm USA… and dumping the heavy split rocks into… that biggest rock grave… smoothing over the rocky pile of freshly split rocks… with a wood-handled, iron toothed rock rake…
What is it with these damn rock scenarios, Sisyphus, my old buddy?!
Don’t we ever get tired of this back-breaking labor shit in the hot sun?!
Don’t we ever get tired of this back-breaking labor shit in the hot sun?!
Taking the now empty, heavy metal, blue-painted rusty, trusty contractor’s wheel barrow… over to the hand-built compost pile… to fill up that big blue bucket wheel barrow… shovel full by precious shovel full… with hand-turned black gold compost… from an impressive compost pile that I made with Buzz and his ninety-year-old dad… that I assembled from days after days of… hand-weeded green garden matter… and untold hours of hand-raked, hand piled… and wheel barrow carted brown dead leaf matter… and on and on.
Yeah, I was horny, and lonely as a hellcat in August… full of “I sing the body electric”… big dick swinging… Island Mountain energy. I was definitely in the mood to relate to my beloved… girlfriend. But. She was growing distant.
So, I begrudgingly accepted her growing need for restful solitude and self-reflection. She had had a big week with three massages and all. In fact, one of my big reasons for being with her in the first place was to help her get her professional massage therapist career off the ground. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time. As a dubious excuse for getting intimately involved with a classmate decades younger than my self. I
certainly knew nothing of Che, or, the great escape worm-tunnel to Istanbul at that time. The first year and a half or so of our relationship, traveling across country to re-visit the once beloved, now turned albatross, homestead in New Hampshire, to burn up all of my prior decades of artwork and writing, going to visit Craig and Polly on their big horse farm in northern Vermont, the terrific trip to Long Island, NY (the Hamptons) to visit her old stomping grounds, where she had apprenticed on a certified organic farm for the previous two summers, the weekend “ritual to feed the mother ocean” retreat with shaman, writer Martin Prechtel in Caspar, CA… had definitely been a blast. But. She had been shutting me out for a while.
I started down the ignoble path with Jessica on a light-hearted lark. We drove for two timeless hours from Heartwood to Eureka together. Through the trance-dancing veils of fog… through wispy shrouds of morning mist… laced with radiant rainbows… as scintillating shots of sun… penetrated the “purple haze” skirt that conceals Kali’s Fiery Emerald Triangle… through magical, mystical southern Humboldt… a lotus eater’s dream realm of endless pot plantations… the sickly sweet skunk scent of weed ever-wafting… through an airy-fairy, narcotizing… drippy, verdant landscape… with Arvo Part tolling on the Alpine stereo in the already ancient Toyota van. It was my fiftieth birthday—
That’s right! January 25, 2005. And, one of my other classmates in Paul’s Asian Healing Arts Class. Melanie. Melanie said. Dude. It’s your fiftieth birthday. We have to celebrate! Let’s go to Eureka. To eat sushi and party.
While I said. Sounds great. But. I don’t want to drive the long two hours and then some back to Heartwood in the pitch dark on these treacherous winding dirt roads… after downing my share of… a large bottle of saki!!
And that’s when Jessica chimed in. With the weird Arvo Part Tabula Rasa bell chimes… I’ll drive there with you, and help drive back in your van, dude. Let’s go. And the rest is history… her story… his-n-her story… their story
The unfoldings of a timeless rose. “I never promised you anything, pal!” With many… porn movie loving moments… and timeless thorns.
A garden bed seeded with dragon’s teeth. Hey there, Jason.
A tragic, comic modern… Romeo and Juliet… not… hot, cold romance with many exhilarating twists and… head-banging maniacal turns—
It really didn’t make sense. It seemed as though my attachment to Jessica was in a place so deep that I could not reach it. Not through any slow and deeply aware… or, intentional fast-breathing technique… not through any conscious exercise… meditation or yoga techniques that I tried. Not by careful prayer, with stated intention, by asking for help from god, gods, higher powers… not by wishing, pushing, pulling, begging… thinking
Not even with the pricey help of highly skilled angels of mercy… what I call them… these modern massage and subtle energy therapists for hire… working with the multi-faceted traumas… conscious and unconscious charges… lodged deeply within our physical and psychic bodies… hard to get at stuck places… blockages within our collective unconscious… issues recorded and not forgotten within the cellular matrix of our connective protoplasm
“tissue that connects, supports, binds, or separates other tissues or organs, typically having relatively few cells embedded in an amorphous matrix, often with collagen or other fibers, and including cartilaginous, fatty, and elastic tissues”
These expensive, expressive angels of compassion… working in many energetic modalities… cranio-sacral therapy, polarity therapy, hot and cold water hydrotherapy… floating around in a slimy, birth-sack warm, mineral pool, naked at the hot springs therapy… hypnotherapy for hipsters
“In upstate New York, there is an author and healer who teaches classes at a wellness retreat center. He says that he has been in contact with the living energy spirit of the ancient Merlin and that Merlin gave him the gift of a energy healing technique that works like a sort of nonverbal psychotherapy. He can help his clients to overcome mental barriers, childhood issues and habits, and empower them to improve their life. He has been teaching this method to small groups of students for over 10 years. This is another face of the Cult of Merlin”
And then there were… and always are… and shall be… so-called wiccan witches, warlocks and wizards… witch doctors, shamans and local psychics… apprentice magicians… not to be overlooked, shunned or despised
Who knows, right?! Who knows who has the hidden miracle key that unlocks the recalcitrant, secret padlock of the heart? To set the imprisoned soul free…
Or, the working combination to the meat locker?
This was in the long ago… pre-tweet... primitive 3D marketplace… non-digital networking miracle… days… mind you. The Jesus walking upon Sag Harbor Bay… the Bay Watch days… before Youtube really got rolling.
The quest for proper deliverance was an epic journey before amazon.com second-day air delivery.
Hell. For all we know. Donald Trump could be the starry-eyed Fool in the tarot deck. Appearing to step off a stock market crashing cliff of… tariff wars… into a melee of world economic collapse… kicking off the final battles of Armageddon… triggering the highly sought-after Apocalypse… of them god bespoken verses… New Testament Biblical Revelations!… what all good, god-fearing evangelicals and Isis believers… is hopin and prayin for… dark final day and eternal darker nights… followed by crowd-pleasing, redemptive fire and glory… with all their tiny hearts, hands and guns
Or. He could just be the same-said blissful, ignorant, Fool whom, without a clue…
Is. Come to usher in the Golden Age of Aquarius.
Whatever.
“When the Moon is in the (eagle) house”…
So. You see. I went down the growing, spontaneously arising, word of mouth, list of inspired healers with an open heart, an open mind and an open pot grower's somewhat cash-stuffed wallet. I’m not really a prescription kind of
modern scientific lad. Therefore. I did not consult a licensed psychic pill-pusher… a psychiatrist… Oh no. Not my style.
Anti-depressant takee-outee… at a hundred dollars a pop!? And a bloody, mumbo-jumbo certified shrink for double-talkee to go with?!
Not for this all natural, pre-med science stuffed, college drop out, art and guru believer, frolicking freak on acid, back to the lander, mystic
Out there lost baba… ramming away with won hung lo… his dangling dingo… doo wop doo wop…diamond-hard vajra… into the clam circuit a la kundalini… come on baby come on… jade pussy palace… O! O! ooo… adhd nut case… “ fucking a bipolar Valkyrie”… at twenty-seven miles per hour… wet pedal to the wave… clitoris in the barrel
Oh no. Look out!!
“WIIIIIIPE OOOOUT!!!
Dananananananananananananana…. nananana… danananaana….”
.… “Get your kicks… on route 666
Yeah. Right.
Where the fuck were we?!
The shit show… on Upper Bay? Or, the sushi bar in Eureka?
That’s right. What was that damn place called? Gonna take me all morning to remember the name of that over-rated sushi joint. With that damned fool waiter who told the repetitive political jokes. Who thought he was so damn clever. That idiotic bastard who tried to pass off Cheez Whiz for uni. Sea urchin. On me. Ye olde Benihana teki hama maestro. He thought it was hysterically funny. As he placed it in front of me with a dramatic flourish and a conspiratorial smile. I took one look at that day glow colored corporate shit. Then glared back at him. With my best, highly-insulted “get that toxic shit out of my face” glare. Then the smug, obvious fool. He had to go off
with. Don’t you get it? Don’t you get my clever joke? My humorous prank?! Aren’t I the funniest man in all of Old Town, downtown Eureka, CA!? It’s Cheez Whiz!! Not uni like you ordered. Isn’t that just the funniest darn thing you ever saw, folks?!
Fucking moron!! I would know ugly, unnaturally bright, “screaming yellow zonkers” Cheez Whiz on sight wasn’t… a soft, buttery gold tongue of uni goddess… with one eye closed. And a hungry fruit fly in the other one.
Fucking moron!! I would know ugly, unnaturally bright, “screaming yellow zonkers” Cheez Whiz on sight wasn’t… a soft, buttery gold tongue of uni goddess… with one eye closed. And a hungry fruit fly in the other one.
The ten-million dollar question is. Why didn’t I see what Chuck e Cheese… da suburban gangsta moll… Jessica, would be up to in the Many Hands Gallery some day… and, over in yonder rat-infested, Bayshore shopping mall?
There!! She said. Let’s go there!!
Huh? What?!
Without prior notice. Suddenly. Without warning. On the 101 even. A few blocks before the County Jail.
Take your next left turn. We’re going over there to the Eagle House.
Whu… what?
That tall iguana-green Victorian building with the turret on the corner of Second Street over there. Turn left again.
Look. The only reason I agreed to drive you home from your birthday party. Is because. I’m having my period.
Whu… what?
I told you that I have really bad monthly menstrual…
Ooooohhh. Stop here.
Go inside and get us a room. I need a room with a large Victorian claw foot tub.
Whu… what?
There is only one thing that helps my monthly moons. And that is… long, long soaks in a clawfoot bathtub of really hot water.
Get the room. I need to soak. Now!!!!
Uh… yes, mam.
Right away, imperiled princess. Your… knight in white satin… your, uhhhh… shining Sir Gawain… night nurse in green armor… your good old Heartwoodie Asian Healing Arts… kung fu ninja not… classmate… dragon slaying champion… shall not fail ye—
I hear your urgent command. And. I shall enter the snake-green Victorian tower, secure a private room, pay for it… naturally, and… fill a vast clawfooted, ceramic-coated cast iron tub… to the brim with steaming hot… healing, moon-waxing… waining water
Whilst I await… await thy further orders. Your majesty.... Nokomissy, dang daughter of the devil...
Here. She said.
Here’s a book for you to read while I soak.
A book?! Oh, thanks. Really? A skinny paperback book to read? Huh?
A Jap book. By a Jap author. About an old Jap man who goes to a mysterious house on the edge of a cliff by the sea. On some faraway, wave-crashing island in Japan. To lie next to sleeping, young maidens. Gorgeous, scantily-clad youthful virgins. Who have been given heavy doses of narcotizing, deep sleeping potions.
Lookee lookee. Undress and touchee, maybe. But. No suckee fuckee!
Exotic hothouse buds. Angelic Asian virgins.
No suckee fuckee?! Lucky ducky? Well. How bout a lil kissy missy?
No kissy missy, mister!!
I’ll be darned.
Imagine that, my surf-pumping, stoked cowboys? Not like any of the dozen an more whore house saloons what used to litter First, Second and Third Streets! Not like anywhere I ever heard of here in downtown Eureka. Whore house capital of Humboldt County!
How curious.
Well. This is an… interesting position for a fifty-year old Camel jockey… gentle merman… to find himself in. On his half-century birthday, no less. In an all-clean white, frilly Victorian period, newly-renovated, elegantly antique furnished, sweet-smelling like roses room… with one big, comfy… purest snow white on white king bed… in a fairyland round, four-five story phallic tower… on a quiet, discrete… almost empty third floor… above the noisy riff raff… and the stinking diesel traffic
In a white room… me… like some lucky dwarf in a fairy tale with a virgin princess. Yes. Like ole Rumplesnakeskin hisself… bone dry at the waterin hole… bendin down for a lil lickee lickee… drink o coconut and lichee. In a virgin, pure white room… with a true, live Victoria’s Secret angel… unwinding her silk panties. Jess imagin…
Dang. But, not “with black curtains near the station”
Hit it boys—
“In the white room with (Liz Claiborne sheers) near the (airport)
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired (ravens)
Silver (dollars) (rolled) down moonbeams in your dark eyes
(Nitelite) smiles on you (breathing), my contentment
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
You said no strings could secure you at the (airport)
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
I walked into such a sad time at the (airport)
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
I walked into such a sad time at the (airport)
As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning
I'll wait in the queue when the (planes) come back
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves
At the party she was kindness in the hard crowd
Consolation for the old wound now forgotten
(Hidden) tigers crouched in (temples) in her dark eyes
She's just (undressing), goodbye (scruples), tired (ravens)
Consolation for the old wound now forgotten
(Hidden) tigers crouched in (temples) in her dark eyes
She's just (undressing), goodbye (scruples), tired (ravens)
I'll sleep in this place (in the lonely, snake-eyed tower)
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves
In the white room with (white) curtains near the (wharf)
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired (street bums)
Silver (dollars) (fell from ceilings) in your dark eyes
(Fraudulent) smiles on you leaving, my (discontent)
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves
In the white room with (white) curtains near the (wharf)
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired (street bums)
Silver (dollars) (fell from ceilings) in your dark eyes
(Fraudulent) smiles on you leaving, my (discontent)
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
You (did not exactly say) no strings could secure you at the (airport)”…
Cream, re-visited… cold cream
