The first fall term of college was, in hind-sight, a veritable
"high water mark" of my life, even though, as the Joni Mitchell
song sings, "don't it always go to show that you don't know
what you've got til it's gone?" This was in part because for
the first time i was truly "on my own" in a place where no one
already "knew me". Thus i was able to discover my own self in
a way never before imagined. i felt very high thru the whole
fall even though i was getting stoned (even tried out "drunk"
but didn't find that very interesting at all) less than half
the time.
The biggest "waves" i "rode" were taking a Survey of English
Literature course by a wonderful teacher, Joseph Crocker, that
went from Beowulf to Milton, and being Steve's best man at
his wedding to Ashley Perdue. Although he was an older man,
Joseph Crocker was very enthusiastic and had an ebullient
manner of talking about all the different writers in a way that
made them come alive for me as never before. Steve was working
on his masters thesis in English at that time and his own
interests also inspired mine.
i bebember getting caught up in my English studies so much that,
when we had a test about half way thru the term and my marks
were good except for one part that showed i was weak in reading
comprehension, i started right then to try and read a lot more
books to better my comprehension skills. i started with
Tolkiens's The Hobbit which i bebembered enjoying so much
when Mah'mon read it at bedtime when i was young. i became
re-enchanted with this world of Bilbo Baggins. When finished, i
immediately got hold of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy
and ate it up. i loved letting my imagination run wild thinking
about dwarves, ents, wizards and the like.
Participation in my oldest brother's wedding on the weekend
before Thanksgiving -- as no less than his best man -- was the
highest the water rose that fall. Everything except
the dinner itself took place in his and Ashley's new home in
Bolinas, the Red House. It was a
very special afternoon and was crescendo'd that evening
downtown at the Gibson house where about 30 of us sat at a long
table while the Champagne and wine flowed freely and everyone
was very, very enlivened. i felt an overwhelming surge
thruout that afternoon and evening that everyone and everything
in my uni verse was right and true and complete. A deeply magical
time that day and night was.
Up in both Corvallis and then Eugene i found it very engaging
inside to get buzzed, and go find a piano in some public
place -- a dorm or an eatery like Mama's Home Fried Truckstop
-- and hammer out boo'ghee, blues, and some rock'a'du. Piano
playing-wise, i'd max'd out with the Beatles, picking out
the piano-rich tunes like "Lovely Rita," "Martha My Dear," and
"Lady Madonna," and music appreciation-wise had gotten heavily
into present-day Frank Zappa thanks to Ok, particularly
Roxy and Elsewhere and One Size Fits All. (i'd
dug Freak Out when it originally came out, but it was
not until this period that i filled in the gaps from then to
the high-water mark of the likes of "Village of the Sun,"
and "Pygmy Twylyte.") But even with that, i still felt a hunger
for something with a richer texture and depth.
The day i discovered Oscar Peterson's singing hands ushered
me into an apprehension of the uni verse of "jazz" appreciation
that has never stopped expanding (altho in the past 3+ years the
current pulse is towards a massive exploration of Mozart,
Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Chopin, Glenn
Gould, Schubert, and Schumann). i found and drank deeply of Duke
Ellington's autobiography Music Is My Mistress (And She
Plays Second Fiddle To No One) which was a fabulous intro to
ALL the people "in the biz" since Duke knew and worked
with everyone. His trio and quartet recordings on
Pablo, some Horace Silver and Monk all were clearly audible
now. My ear had been able to make the jump into aural hyperspace.
Just before i went to Saudi that summer, in his 5-row
"chopped" skool bus, George Hutto and i drove out to
the LONG sand-spit just south of Florence. We engaged
in the "breaking of bread" sacrament with peyote there on the
edge of the world. This sentiment was not without a
heightened literal facet: as far as one cood see
the coast extended north and south in a straight line, the massive
"furrow" of dune behind us mirrored the "180° stretching
to infinity", a powerful, steady, non-gusting wind blew directly
from the west, and the magnificent sky full of clouds and ample
spaces between them for SOL to bless us with its radiance. The
steady, relentless wind complemented the crashing surf on
very fine-grained sand, and we were astonished by Gaia's
sand-painting tapestries employing dark (possibly oil-stained)
and light sand tones to fashion ineffable manifestations of
out-of-time beauty. By evening time, George went inward
inside the bus, while i marched up and down amongst the dunes
thruout the night examining my existence and sentience at
that threshold moment of the journey joined in this human
overcoat on the eve of flying to the other side
of the world. Among other awarenesses i felt as if i was also
simultaneously existent off-world, watching from afar this
dune-traversing being, filled and overflowing with the
illumination and understanding,
This one: so much good in this one; so much to be done with this one.