Playing the Cat Whistle

My mom, my two brothers, two sisters and myself had made the big time. The oldest of us had good jobs and we even were paying on a little house in Atlanta. We boys were in our late teens, early 20's (as the oldest I had left our little town and gone to work in Atlanta right out of the 11th grade, finishing high school at night, the advance guard of the Breeds who invaded Atlanta). My sisters were around 16 and 10 at the time of this story.

It seems that Ginny, the older of my two sisters, had an unexpected talent. One early evening when she was about to go on a date (and her preparing for a date was always an ordeal with only one bathroom and three brothers in the house -- Hours! Days! Years! she would stay in that bathroom!), she and her new beau were about to go out the door. Like all of us at that tender teen age, extreme self-consciousness was the norm. She had made it safely thus far -- her brothers behaving themselves with reasonable decorum. It was the cat that did her in.

The cat had decided it needed to go out at the exact time that Ginny and her date were making their desperate escape from her family's penetrating gaze. Ginny picked it up wrong-end forward and turned for all three to go. As the cat's butt arc swung round and past Ginny's young man, it let out a loud high toot. Of course, we three boys fell all over ourselves. From then on, we let the news be known far and wide. Our sister had hidden talent -- she was the only one we knew who could play the Cat Whistle. Of course, I would never tell anyone about that today.

The Art of the Empty Hand

My Uncle Jay, a driver for Safety Cabs in our rural Georgia town, ("Ride safely with Safety, dial 3545" went their radio jingle) gave me my first hand weapon: a sap made of a chunk of lead sitting atop a spring all neatly bound in leather and finished with a wrist loop. It was right after my dad deserted our family.

I suppose my being the oldest of the five kids singled me out for this honor. "You might need this," Uncle Jay said, showing me how to use it. I kept it under my pillow at night. My mom found out about it and took it from me. I think she is the only one who could have done that.

Maybe that is part of what prompted me later to learn the art of the empty hand (kara-te) on Okinawa: If you have nothing, nothing can be taken from you. Well, there you have it. Dad. No dad. Sap. No sap. The art of the empty hand. As they taught us in Sunday School: "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

The Fine Art of Rock Sniffing

When I was a boy in a little southern town, Bobby Page, whose Daddy drove a Pepsi-Cola truck, taught me the fine art of rock sniffing. I saw him doing it and asked about it. He said get your own rock. I've been getting my own rock ever since. Nosing around the Grand Canyon helps me sniff deep time. You want to know about this? I utter the words of my teacher: 

Get your own rock.

Dreamy Kid

This story is a joke on myself, but then all our stories might be that if we look at them with the right eyes. I was in the fourth grade at Dawson Street School, just a few blocks from the house where I was staying with my grandmother and grandfather (my father was often between jobs and my grandparents would take us in).

This particular morning, I dressed to go to school. It was a cold morning and we walked to school in those days so I made sure I wore a sweater. I meandered along with the other kids cracking ice in the puddles with my feet and with rocks and sticks as I went. When I entered my class room, I went to the back to the cloak room (that's what we called it in those days though no one I knew wore a cloak) and began to take off my sweater. To my surprised horror, I had forgotten to put on a shirt. I was a dreamy kid and still am. I hastily buttoned my sweater back up and took my seat. Saved! No one had noticed. The bell rang and the school day began.

Then there was the fateful knock at the door. All eyes turned in that direction. The teacher opened it and one of the sixth graders stood there and handed an item to the teacher saying in a loud voice I was sure could be heard all the way over in Alabama, "Richard forgot to put on his shirt!" Laughter everywhere as my true state of consciousness was revealed. No place to hide. The walk back to the cloak room with my shirt helped me later to understand the Stations of the Cross.

Ratatouille

My mother carried a mortal fear of mice since, according to her report, she was chased as a little girl by a little boy with a dead mouse. I heard her scream one pre-dawn morning (she rose early and went to work across town, Atlanta, before her five grown and growing children went to their jobs or to school). I rushed into the kitchen where she stood atop the table. "A rat!" she said, looking fearfully toward the water heater. With me blocking the approach of her nemesis, she left the kitchen and shut its door.

It WAS a rat. A large one, which had to be removed from the kitchen or my mom would never return. I stood there barefoot, in my skivvies. I got a broom and poked the rat huddled in the corner behind the water heater which prompted it to charge straight toward my unprotected feet. I did a flat-footed straight up and back jump for the safety of a kitchen chair seat.

The chair went out from under me and I fell on my back on the rat. We both let out a yell, both scrambling wildly to make our escape. We each did.

My mom caught the trolley to her job. I resumed my early morning action as older brother, part of which was to play John Phillip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever at high volume so as to gently and tenderly awaken my brothers and sisters to the dewy morn.

If Blame Be Needed

You can blame this, if blame be needed, on my sister Ginny who put it in my head that I should write an autobiography. For the family if no one else. She seems to think I have led an interesting life. I’ll say this: I never allowed myself to get bored for longer than a few minutes. Life is full of opportunity for exploration.

Eufaula

It was 1949. I was eleven. Mama got on the bus with us five children, the youngest a baby in her arms. We left Georgia, went across the time-zone Chattahoochee River which at that time ran free, undammed. Into the future, an hour and a lifetime ahead. Daddy was trying again at a new job as a bread truck driver in a little Alabama town. He would try for three more years at which point he would desert us, leaving us in a slum house with broken windows back in Georgia from whence we came. The new-to-us Alabama rental had no furniture when we arrived. A fire was built in the grate of the chimney in the living room. That first night we slept on pallets on the floor. Bit-by-bit we put a new life together in that town.

Time Travel

When I was a kid, the Chattahoochee River (not yet dammed) served as a time zone boundary between Georgia and Alabama. I would go to the bridge between Eufaula, Alabama, where I lived, and Georgetown, Georgia and move back and forth at the bridge middle -- one hour ahead then one hour behind. A time traveler experiencing relativity. 

Granny Birdsong

Granny Birdsong had a salve, a healing sweet-smelling ointment she made from pine resin and other ingredients that helped wounds heal. My maternal grandmother’s mother, her lengthy hair woven into a bun, she gave me pecans she shelled herself and fried in butter. I thought she was born old. Her house was cool and quiet. A mantle clock ticking time and sounding on the hour. She was herself a healingness, a “salve unto the nations” so when the preacher spoke of salve-ation, I understood the meaning.

What I Didn't Like About My Childhood

-- My father being mean, mentally and physically, to my mother-- My mother taking dives into “nerves” and staying in bed in a darkened room-- Hiding under my desk at school so a bomb wouldn’t kill me-- Marching Nazis in the newsreels-- A man pinching me on my nipple, his face in a grotesque leer-- Chiggers all over my balls and pecker and my having to go to school and help my father on his bread route without scratching while itching like hell-- A male cousin from the Alabama side of the family who drowned a kitten and who would attack me physically-- Working after school all the time from seventh grade on-- Stepping barefoot on a stinging bee-- And a bunch of other stuff

This Body

My journey as this particular formation of the Cosmos has centered around attempts to reconcile an experience at age 12 with being a member of human society. At that early age I found myself in space looking at the Earth. Startled, I thought I could not breathe. A reassuring voice said yes you can. And I could. After gazing at the harmony and beauty of Earth for a while, I looked “down” and saw I had no body other than that of the Cosmos Itself.

The society in which I lived was that of the small town South with the widely accepted worldview of Protestant faith -- love God, accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord, work hard, don’t talk back, do good. No one spoke of being an embodying of the Cosmos.

My life has been spent in resolving this dilemma (di-lemma: caught between two lemmas, two premises). On the one hand, human society taught that I was an isolated protoplasmic blob needing salvation that must move through life in a prescribed manner: job, marriage, kids, grandkids, retire, die. I was not expected to have any education beyond high school. 

On the other hand, the cosmic hand, I knew that this societal prescription was not the whole story. Not even close. I learned, as they say, to “pass for white” and survived those early years without too much difficulty.

After completing the 11th grade, I left small town life for a job in Atlanta, working in the day and finishing high school at night. The company also helped pay college tuition so I began taking night college courses. 

Marine recruiters visited our house one day (my mother, my two younger brothers and two younger sisters had all moved to Atlanta by then). I was home alone, as I had been with the cosmic experience, and I signed up. With one condition, that I be sent to Japan (an inner urge which my rational mind did not comprehend but I knew I had to follow).

After basic training at Parris Island and a stint with the 2nd Marine Air Wing, I was sent to Okinawa. Close enough. The experience there changed my life. (We did perform maneuvers in Japan near Mount Fuji, so the Corps did not lie.)

My biography after that can be seen in the contents of my four major books. The first (“The Inner Work of the Warrior: A Manual For Embodying Spirit”) teaches a practical framework for incorporating martial arts principles in daily life. I adapted what I learned on Okinawa while studying hand to hand fighting with Isshinryu Karate Master and Founder, Sensei Tatsuo Shimabuku, to methods for embodying the Life Force (Spirit) that could be learned by non-martial-artists. I taught those nine principles with their practices for several decades to a variety of groups. They work.

This first book was an attempt to assist folk in developing their capacity to be an open vessel for cosmic energy and wisdom. Most appeared to use the practices for stress relief but that was okay too.

With the second book (“The World’s First Ever Baptist Crime Novel”) I invaded, with the help of one of my sisters, the conceptual system of Protestant Christianity. A small town Baptist church in the South received the help of a spiritual criminologist, a Creek shaman, a sweat lodge, and the town’s bad boy to resolve serious problems brought on by the church’s minister. The church even had a “preach-off” with various entries including Gregor the Demon. (He preached a pretty powerful sermon.) Inclusiveness was the theme, as you can see.

The third book (“The Hidden Words of the Living Jesus: A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas”) allowed me to go beyond the conventional Christian framework, to step “outside” and express the consciousness of Jesus as best I could. The 114 sayings of the Gospel of Thomas are presented with no or little context. I sat quietly for 114 mornings with each saying and wrote what unfolded out of this extended contemplation. I had to enter the consciousness of the one speaking the saying to be able to write a commentary. I am happy to say that it received the endorsement of Father Richard Rohr -- something of a validity check.

Along the way, over the years, I had also been studying the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching (the Book of the Way and Its Virtue) attributed to Lao Tzu (the Old Dude) as its author. 

In my fourth book (“Jesus and Lao Tzu: Adventures With the Tao Te Ching”), Jesus, Lao Tzu, and I have an adventure in Flagstaff, Arizona associated with each of the 81 chapters. For each of 81 mornings, I read a chapter and sat quietly until Jesus and Lao Tzu appeared and invited me out to wander around the town and the mountainside. They were a riot. I missed them when the book was done.

As you can see, I have stepped outside the conventional frame of Christian religiosity. I have done so in accord with the cosmic experience at age 12. It is with me still. We are all the cosmos embodying. It is just that some of us don’t know it.

The Dental Corpse

Back in the olden days when I was growing up (being raised, as they used to say), the focus was on keeping food on the table and clothes on the back. Doctors were seen in extreme emergency (blood that kept bleeding). Dentists were not even in the picture.

The same for eye doctors. I asked my fourth grade teacher if I could bring a cheap little telescope I bought at the five-and-dime to class. She must have been puzzled but she said okay. When I used it to peer at what she wrote on the board (seeing it clearly for the first time), it wasn't long before I was scheduled to visit the eye dude. I walked out of there with glasses and the trees actually had leaves and the daytime moon was not doubled. I love my teacher -- she might have paid for that out of her own pocket, there were no federal programs like that back then.

I'm still getting accustomed to the modern ways. Like I said, a dentist was not even in the scenario, much less a tooth cleaner person. I went to have my teeth cleaned this morning thinking I was in pretty good shape since I did not have large chunks of food caught in my teeth and I brushed regularly. Nope. Now I have a Treatment Plan and several Cleaning Appointments. That old Zen question comes to mind: Who is it dragging this corpse around? And is he going to leave behind a set of redeemed born-again teeth?

How It Was

It was 1943. I was 5 years old. World War II was in full rage. We were fighting Hitler and the Germans on one side and Hirohito and Japan on the other. 

We lived in Prichard, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile. My father and my grandfather worked in the shipyards helping build ships to kick Hitler's ass.

We kids were on the alert to spot enemy planes, memorizing their silhouettes. Everyone had blackout cloths for their windows so no light could be seen at night. Air raid sirens would sometimes go off to give us practice in the blackout drill.

The atomic bomb was being built but we did not know it.

Much was rationed. We had stamps that allowed us to buy only so much gas and sugar. Butter was not butter but was a colorless glop requiring the breaking of a red pill into it and kneading it into a more butterlike color.

We kids were involved at school in assembling packages for "the boys overseas." As I recall, these packages at times included bandages.

Overview

I sit here typing at 3 a.m., an hour I have always found compelling. The whole world, at least in this neighborhood, is asleep. No other human consciousness to telepathically intrude. Flagstaff is a dark sky city. The observatory is just up the mesa from here, a short walk. Moon and stars blaze outside and I sit here cocooned in the light of my own awareness.

Where shall I begin? Ah yes. I was told that when my Daddy held me as a baby, I shit in his shirt pocket. I do not remember who told me that. Must have been either my Mama or her mother, my wonderful grandmother, Momee (Lena Birdsong Lane). Perhaps that shit drop slide was my comment on his physical absence in our future relationship.

My earliest memory is of the smell of fresh rain on hot pavement. I was being given a ride in what must have been a stroller. All I remember is the lovely smell and a large figure or figures behind and towering over me. No doubt my Mama and perhaps someone else walking with her. My Daddy? Momee?

My experience (not my belief, my experience) is that I come from “out there,” from the infinite Cosmos. I was born in human form, this form. I opened into the world of Earth matter and, in doing so, the realm of human society. Determining to burst beyond the realm of societal form, I quickly learned that anti-conformity is shaped by conformity. My goal was neither of the two, but independence. I did not wish to merely re-bell (thus striking the same old notes) but to re-volt (to open to new voltage).

As a result, I sank deep into matter, into darkness. I let go. I let go of everything society holds dear (a promising career, a stable marriage, salvation through conformity to church doctrine, the search for security through money and property, the quest to look good in other people’s eyes, etc.) and opened to the immediacy of Now. I fell into the Ground of existence and died. 

Over time, I opened more and more to the Light. A new “plant” began to grow from the seed that fell into the Ground and died. I learned the ways of science, of experimental testing of formed hypotheses, of examination of the data, and discussion of its meaning. I read widely and digested the core writings of the cultures of East and West, of the so-called “primitive” and the so-called “civilized.” I pushed the understandings of the energetic realms of the martial arts as far and as deeply as I was capable. As a psychologist, I sat with hundreds of people over time as they recounted their spiritual, emotional, and relationship problems and I searched with them for resolution.

I have lived in and as this ever-changing material form for 78 years now. I know how to exercise the soul I am in this light-dark arena of human life.  I continue to fall into the dark and bounce out. I continue to open to the light and radiate. I will exercise in this gym of fluctuating energy until I leave this physical body. The Light has brought me here and the Light will see me home.

Kudzu World

He came to earth,

was born to a jealous man and a believing woman,

and opened his eyes to a kudzu world

choked with tension, strife, vain imaginings,

hounds, chickens, eggs, and gardens,

yes-sirs and no-ma'ams, yelling preachers,

snuff-dipping and can spitting,

barely concealed cruelty and violence

which could erupt at any odd moment,,

calm and singing and laughter,

one-cent sales downtown,

and the strangely-accented voices on the radio.

A kudzu world, where even the strongest tree

could be smothered by surrounding creeping intimacy,

slowly moving in to maim and destroy.

He came to earth with a burning in his heart.

Awe-Spicious

Yes. Superman and I were born the same month and year: June 1938. 

It is true that he and I have never been seen in the same location at the same time.

Introduction

I came to Earth the conventional way, diving into and becoming the interplay between a sperm and egg, staying with and following that dance of unfolding until vaginal compression pushed me down the exit ramp to entry into the human world. 

It did not take long before I realized that I am an investigative reporter, a not-so-secret agent of the Life Force, transmitting Awareness of the subtlest nature at all times. I became, not an anthropologist, a studier of one subset of humans by another subset, but a humanologist, a studier of ALL varieties of the two-legged members of the Navel Tribe.

I learned sociology, the study of human society. I learned social psychology, the study of humans in groups. I learned psychology, the study of human consciousness. I earned advance degrees in these endeavors. I taught at universities, performed and published experimental studies, was recognized as a competent force in academia. 

That was not enough. I had to mingle. So I did. I held no job longer than five years, ranging from providing sacks of potatoes to five women cutting out potato eyes for seedlings in a basement with the radio blaring country-western to helping develop a criminal justice data system in South Dakota. I left each job at its completion or when I had learned all I could in my pursuit of humanology. 

In human societal terms, which teaches one to seek financial security, I was and am a fool. But as I said to myself so long ago, it is better to be a fool than aloof.