N.A.I.L.S. and A.I.M.

Was sitting in a South Dakota restaurant in the '70's with two Lakota A.I.M. men and a lawyer from N.A.I.L.S. (Native American Indian Legal Services). I was listening to accounts of some of the everyday atrocities against folk at Pine Ridge. Wounded Knee was happening. At one point I said, "That makes me just want to throw this chair through that window." Dave, the N.A.I.L.S. attorney, gave me a sharp look and said warningly, "George!" I understood and immediately began to wind down.

Jail Time

Some years ago I did jail time, having been judged by a store detective and then a policeman as an accomplice of another's crime. (I was innocent.) A free ride to the county jail, relinquishing of all possessions, fingerprinting and photo, then placed in a small holding cell with solid walls and one small window in the door, and another prisoner making guttural sounds and grinding his teeth.

After a while, who knows how long, jail time is like no other time, I was taken to a large rectangular cell containing 14 cots, seven on each long wall, with an open toilet at one end and the cell door at the other. Two men were asleep or passed out on two of the bunks. Seven other inmates gazed at me curiously as I claimed a bunk and sat on its folded-back mattress in a semi-lotus position, relaxed and unmoving, as I searched for my options on getting out of jail.

Time went by. One loud-mouthed jerk shifted from his never-ending self-inflating harangue and recounting of his exploits to talking the others into luring a guard inside by one inmate pretending to be sick, then all jumping the guard and pounding the bejesus out of him. All seemed to agree that was a great idea.

O great! I was already nailed as an accomplice to something I had no awareness of. Now I was about to be an unwilling accomplice to something I knew about. I had had enough! I got off my bunk with cold steel deliberateness, already centering firmly from hours of sitting unmoving in deep meditation, and walked down that aisle to the door where the idiot was standing, my line of energy cast ahead of me to infinity, as if I was going to walk right through him and the door, and I was. His only options were to move or get knocked down. He moved. The consciousness state in the cell changed. His plan evaporated.

I reached the door, then turned around. He smiled weakly and said, "Hello, sir. How are you?" I said nothing and went back to my bunk, back into meditation position. The cell went calm.

Making The Most Of Things

Way back yonder in 1959, my Marine buddies and I, young and wild and invulnerable, partied through the Okinawa night, relieved to be in town, away from our Quonset hut camp. We were to ship out the next morning for war games so we were making the best of it while we could. I got back to camp just before dawn and showered and changed to fatigues (appropriate wear for my condition). All of us "smartasses" as we were called (and worse) were assigned to Naval Gunfire where our job was to go into enemy territory as deeply as possible and call in the coordinates of targets for the ship guns to demolish. Every boy's dream. In addition to shooting a .45 and M-1, I shot a ship. The downside was we were totally expendable. If surrounded by enemy, we were supposed to radio "Fire on me!"

So I drove to the Okinawa docks in my radio jeep to find the ship assigned to carry me to Taiwan, the site of the maneuvers. I drove aboard, chained the jeep in a spot I found in the ship's hold, found a top bunk (a piece of canvas suspended within a metal rectangle) and went to sleep. When I awoke, we were out to sea. I walked the ship and found I did not know a single person. Wrong ship.

I followed my General Survival Strategy which almost always works -- I acted like I knew what I was doing. I stood in chow lines when hungry and found a bunk when sleepy, otherwise keeping on the move and making some crucial acquaintances. All other Marines aboard were infantry -- groundpounders, grunts. I found we were going to hit the Taiwan beach in waves of landing barges. I got myself assigned to a wave and made friends with one of the ship's crane operators. He said he would lower my jeep into a landing barge when the right time came.

After a few days (the entire fleet was on the move), we were in sight of the landing beach. The maneuvers were made as real as possible, so there was a whole lot of hell going on, but with dummy ammo. Planes were diving and strafing. Large explosives were going off ashore. Men began to go down the cargo nets draped down the ship's side and fill the landing barges. The Navy dude hoisted my jeep from the hold and swung it over the side into a barge below. I climbed down the net and timed my drop. Due to the movement of the waves and the rocking of the ship and the barge, there were only certain moments to let go. I landed in the barge.

We sped away joining a moving circle of ten or so barges, all filled with men with weapons ready to hit the shore. My jeep and I were the only cargo in my barge. Uncircling into a landing pattern, we bounced full-tilt across the waves to shore. The ramp fell down and off I drove accompanied on all sides by screaming yelling men moving to close combat with other men wearing strange helmets identifying them as enemy. "Oh Yeah!" I thought, taking my camera out of the glove compartment, climbing on the hood of the jeep, snapping pictures.

"What the f**king hell are you doing here?" bellowed in my ear caught my attention. A major and a captain with "Umpire" markings on their uniforms seemed quite enraged. I followed my second General Survival Strategy -- "They told me to." The nuances of the resulting conversation escape me now, but it was definitely profanity-filled. They put a tag on my jeep that said it was out of commission due to a land mine. They put a tag on me that read "Brain Concussion" and made me lie down in the sand. I lay there listening to them talk about their lives. One of them nudged me with his foot and said to call for a medic. "I can't." More profanity. "Why the f**k not?" "I have a brain concussion." Hoo boy! That really set them off. So it's probably the first time in medical history that an unconscious man called for help.

Thin Permeable Membrane

like f w h myers said for some people there is a thin permeable membrane between the supraliminal and the subliminal i have a thin one when i close my eyes i almost immediately see a different world as real as this one this journal is in and when i open my eyes i am right back here again even when my eyes are open i am aware of a vastness beyond what is right in front of me nothing changed for me when i dropped acid back in the 70's i had always been in the place where acid takes you a vast universe of interwhirling flow i already knew it well and that is why i think i am a mutant my brain fluid must be a tripping juice or at least predisposed so that when i was opened up into the cosmos that day when i was 12 and given a look around it didn't seem that strange at all of course if i revert to the baptist language i was brought up in it was that i had received the gift of the holy spirit and was whisked away to the 7th or so heaven like saint paul and that language is fine and comfortable with me i know what it means and i know i am no saint but i do experience things differently than many folk do

Cukes

Back in the '70s, a strong good friend invited me to take over the fecundity of a large cucumber field. It was mid-summer and the cukes were reproducing like crazy. I said ok.

The deal was to pick the cucumbers while they were at a certain small size and sell them to the pickle people.

Every morning at dawn I would make my rounds to pick up my crew. Have you ever tried to round up hippies? Like herding cats. We would eventually get to the field and begin the stooping hours of moving aside the leaves to pick those green phalluses from their Adamic Eden. Some of the women would start picking topless as an aid to us men for zen and yogic attentional training.

At the end of the picking day, the cukes were hauled in an old converted truck bed trailer to Irene, South Dakota and poured into a size sorter. The little ones got the biggest buck bang per pound. Meanwhile those cukes were steadily growing.

And so the summer progressed with hot humid days and afternoon rain storms and double rainbows, the rich smell of earth, laughing camaraderie, and stoop-muscled backs.

Brothers of the Gun

My friend Jerry and I were coming back to South Dakota from a martial arts training camp in California in 1974. Jerry had an old beater of a car with no air conditioning. As we crossed the desert, the temperatures soared. We didn't care. We were pretty happy with our training camp experience, plus we had a bottle of tequila we kept under the seat, sipping on it occasionally to wash down the food we had brought along. Eventually though, our clothes became too much. The heat was stifling, even with the windows down. Soon we were riding along naked, sitting on towels.

We topped a rise and there were two Highway Patrolmen with a speed gun. They pulled us over. One came to my passenger window, the other to Jerry's, as we were pulling on our pants, then shirts. "Are you his father?" the one said to me (I have had white in my hair and beard for some time). "No." Jerry told me later that the other one asked, "Are you his son?" We got out of the car and talked a bit. Soon we were standing on the side of the road and they were showing us how to use the speed gun. No ticket. Just a friendly warning and we were on our way.

The Preacher Warned Me

The preacher warned me that if I kept going to college (Georgia State at night) it would change me. He meant for the worse as far as my belief in Baptist doctrine. And he was right. But I was already changing.

I attended Georgia State for six years -- five of them at night. During that time I held various jobs (driving a cookie truck around Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Tennessee; running a check sorter for a bank; psychiatric aide in a mental ward of a hospital; community coordinator for Head Start; teaching martial arts). My wife at the time was also working to help support us.

At Georgia State, I formed a close relationship with Drs. Irma Shepherd and Joen Fagan -- two strong good folk, both clinical psychologists, who had a light of awareness in their eyes, an open inclusive nonjudgmental manner, and an inner strength which made up a triple combo I had not previously seen in a human. I signed up for an Individual Research course with Joen which led to a couple of publications.

At age 12, I had a powerful mystical experience and seemed to have an awareness after that that others did not. The Baptist Church was my life -- we were there every time the doors were open and they were open a lot! -- but I noticed that no one ever spoke of such experiences. Irma and Joen were both acquainted with Abraham Maslow, so through them I became aware of Maslow's work on peak experiences -- which sounded suspiciously like the experience I had and continued to have at varying degrees of intensity. Voila! I had my two variables for my research: peak experiences and degree of belief in fundamentalist Christian doctrine.

My hypothesis was a simple one. It seemed to me that having a consciousness that was locked into one single way of seeing the world and no other was incompatible with having a consciousness that was boundless and oceanic.

First, Joen and I developed a religious dogmatism scale (Fagan, Joen and Breed, George. A Good, Short Measure of Religious Dogmatism. Psychological Reports, 1970, 26, 533–534) which was able to distinguish among religious affiliations -- Baptists and Catholics were highest scorers, Episcopal and No Affiliation were lowest scorers. Then I gave the scale along with a request for the reporting of peak experiences to 110 folk.

My suspicions were confirmed. Persons with low adherence to conventional religious beliefs were more likely to experience peak moments than persons with moderate or high adherence (Breed, George and Fagan, Joen. Religious Dogmatism and Peak Experiences. Psychological Reports, 1972, 31, 866).

This is where my concern with belief systems as virtual reality helmets began. And where I determined to ride through life as helmet-free as possible. 

Just A Jarhead

Let me get some things clear here, especially for you gentlemen concerned with the history of Isshinryu Karate. I was just a jarhead who enjoyed working out and learning and practicing exotic, practical, and interesting ways of dismembering and killing others. Not that I wanted to use these abilities, but to me it was (and is) a lot of fun. Call it a personal problem. Other people collect stamps.

(With the snap kick and fist strike, one not only had the foot or fist out of the reach of the other, but cocked and ready for return. The snap was also a perfect way to “leave the itai (hurt) on them.”)

I had a lot of anger in me and Isshinryu Karate was a wonderful way to work it out. At the dojo in Okinawa, I enjoyed smashing the makiwara. At least once, I broke it. I learned, when striking, to let the power of the earth itself come up through my feet and legs and emerge with a sharp concentrated force.

I found Sensei Shimabuku to be a fun, yet stern man who evidently saw that I was sincere in my love for the martial arts, not as a school, but as a devastating system of active defense. From time to time, especially after a hard workout, I would sit beside him on the tatami mats in his room open to the dojo training area and sip hot green tea while he pounded a nail into a board with his hand. I liked the dude and I still do.

I had no idea I was in some kind of flow of martial art history. Just a jarhead, I worked out not only with "empty hands" but also with no mind. I'll answer all the questions you ask if I can, but I am more like Forrest Gump who showed up at notable events without forethought but with right timing.

Debris

I am looking at the debris that has washed ashore after 78 years of living; yet not so much washed ashore as has clung to me all this time, refusing to be jettisoned. 

Here is my black belt, the designation itself awarded me by Shimabuku Tatsuo Sensei, founder of Isshinryu Karate. “Bree-deh! Black belt no stay?” He said, interrupting my workout in his Agena, Okinawa dojo. “No, Sensei.”  I always wore my original white belt when working out though he had already awarded me green, then brown. Not long after that I received my silk certificates bearing his chop awarding me 5th degree black belt status. 

Here it is, frayed and worn from repeated ties, the Japanese manufacturer’s trademark, Darumu, still affixed to one end. Darumu, the one who always comes back up immediately when being downed, so that down and up are one motion. “Seven times down, eight times up!” -- the ancient practice and principle. 

The belt reminds me that has always been my practice. Down is always an invitation to Up, the one flowing into the other. “Yes!” has always been my practice and will be forever. Thank you, black belt that has stayed with me all these years.

Solvitur Ambulando

December, 2010. Some years ago I gave away my car and moved from Mountainaire to town. I walked. I saw many things. 

I began to feel sorrow for those locked in their mobile boxes seeing little or nothing, not experiencing the transformation of mood, of consciousness, of spirit that comes from direct visceral contact with one’s surrounds. 

I began carrying a camera, recording brief glimpses of what I saw and felt. A blog formed for sharing the photos: Walking Flagstaff. The blog became popular. The car-enclosed began to see. 

Solvitur Ambulando! It is solved by walking around!

Geezer

Many years ago I came home to an unpleasant surprise thought by the one who bought it to be a great wonderfulness -- a large black recliner that when sat in made me feel as if I were an insect caught on his back with nothing to do but die, legs waving frantically and uselessly in the air. I hated it. To recline in this leathery black coffin was an acceptance of uselessness and death. I said I did not like it and went for a long walk in the forest with my dogs. Even now at age 78 I have no such sarcophagus.

Thin Gray Gruel

I do not trust the state, a loathsome beast which offers a teat for suckling its thin stream of gray gruel in return for our dreams. I do not trust the state, a torture-war machine using every immoral means to justify a glorious end which never comes. I do not trust the state, a monolithic monster which gives the illusion of a voting choice between one of its double-speak mouths.

I trust the LifeForce, that Spirit moving through every flower, through every laughing dancing soul. I trust the LifeForce which sings through our blood and bathes our hearts and brains in fires of burning love. I trust the LifeForce which always bursts asunder the artificial constraints and bounds of puny man and floods the universe with its uncontrollable laughter, grace, and mystery.
To which shall we declare allegiance? Allegiance to the state or allegiance to the visions and dreams of our heart? 

Mister Jesus was asked by some folk always looking to trip him up if they should pay taxes. Jesus said, Give me a coin. They did. He said, Whose image is on this? They said, Caesar. Jesus flipped it back and said, Give it to the sucker (my paraphrase). And give God what belongs to God.

I think that kind of puts it in perspective. God is the dreamer of the heart. Toss the coin back and give the Dreamer of your heart the dreams of your heart. All essential action follows.

Hazards of a Rigid Belief System

The hazards of concrete thinking were still of interest to me when I pursued my master's and then my doctorate in psychology at the University of Florida in the late '60's.

In my research project for my master's degree, I used a Conceptual Systems Test to distinguish between concrete and abstract thinkers. The concrete thinkers showed greater acceptance of control by a divine authority, a need for assurance and certainty, an intolerance of ambiguity, and a strong need for structure and order. Abstract thinkers were at the other end of the spectrum. I then placed the folk in a situation where they were shown three geometric figures at a time that differed in size and asked to say which was the largest of the three.

I found that folk who were more concrete in their thinking were more likely to deny their own perceptions and conform to the (false) opinions of others than were folk who were more abstract in their thinking.

In my undergraduate work, I had found that a more rigid belief system tended to restrict one's awareness of a wider universe. Now I had found that a more rigid belief system could lead one to deny one's own senses and judgment of reality in favor of the false opinions of others.

I was on my way to thinking that holding on to, clinging to, any belief system was not a good thing -- and knowing that getting dogmatic about that would land me right back where I started -- my head firmly stuck up my assumptions. 

Wyoming Night

I grew tired of being a university professor and went to driving truck. I didn't do it long but had some fun. The route was a South Dakota - California round trip.

One wintry night, full moon blazing on snow-covered Wyoming landscape, Harry and I strode full-bellied (the chicken-fried steak special with pie and coffee) toward our 18-wheelers. "Take the lead," he growled.

We climbed up into our rigs and crunched across the parking lot ice on to the open empty road. After shifting upward through the gears and achieving a hefty flow, I heard Harry's voice crackling on the CB:

"Professor, put the pedal to the metal."

Some of the sweetest words I ever heard.

Transmission

Lucid Dream, Sunday, July 11, 1999

His Holiness, The Dalai Lama and I were in a bookstore of a hotel. No one else recognized (or could see) him. He said, George, you must read this book. He was looking for it on the shelves. A book with dark blue cover appeared in my mind. 

He spoke without stopping. Yet slowly, calmly. I listened to him attentively. At one point, I realized I was looking at a double of himself he had created. He was talking with me about this ability. I “created” a double and then myriads. We laughed quietly.

When we first met, we stood facing each other. Our energies merged. Our belly energies, heart energies, head energies, all energies. With the merging, a gentle “bouncing” of energy — ventral to dorsal and back — occurred. We laughed.

We walked down the stairs together to the bookstore.

He invited me to open my energy without his saying a word. I put out both my arms, palms up at 45degree angle in front of me. Bliss!

He showed going-out-of-body to me. I went out, above my body about 6 feet — in energy realm — no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc.  I could still hear him. He invited me to come back into body. I did.

He said, as we stood once again facing each other: George, I would like for you to take the Three Vows. Tonight. 

I said Yes.

I was to come to the hotel later that evening for the ceremony.

A shifting occurred. He was standing, back to me, on my feet, our energies merging. I was standing, my back to that one, on that one’s feet, energies merging.  Three Energy Bodies. We stayed that way for a while, with chanting –like sounds.

We went back into physical bodies.

Yes

Back long ago, before meditation and mindfulness became our paths to salvation, when living in the now was regarded as the of course thing to do, when most folk would have bought Eckhart Tolle a beer and invited him home for supper and a stay, just another brother on the move, I faced down demons.

They were tiny at first, wisps of distortion in the clarity. I had been and was sitting quietly. That's what we called it way back then, if we called it anything at all. Sitting quietly. No posture. No cushion. No straight spine extending through all the chakras into the cosmos. No chakras. No effervescent doctrine of auric splendor. Sitting quietly. In some kind of chair. Didn't matter. Just sitting.

Then they came. Hideous faces contorting, aimed in my direction, growing larger. Some with bodies. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. They were outside of me and coming toward me, their numbers increasing. I was teaching martial arts at the time, working out most every day, so did what was and still is natural. I deepened. Settling more deeply into my center, I heard a whisper at its core. Rather than just listening to the whisper, I became it. "Yes."

It grew in size, doubling, then doubling again in its quiet unassailable strength. Soon the Yes expressed itself in voice, singing aloud in strong sweetness. The demonic energies with faces and bodies began shrinking in size, then disappeared out the window.

The Yes sits with me still.

Instant Heaven Instantly

He was a large African-American man, at least half again as big as me. I was a psychiatric aide on the locked ward of a high rise hospital in downtown Atlanta working my way to an undergraduate degree in psychology at Georgia State – going to night school and happy to do so.

I was supervising his unpacking and saw a nylon stocking in his bag. "I will have to take that," I said, knowing it could be used for sui- or homi-cide. He looked unhappy. "I need to roll that up and put it on my head before I go to bed or my hair will be spronged all over in the morning." I could see he was right. His hair had a mind of its own. "I have to take it anyway," I said, "but I will ask if you can have it back."

Later, after I got to know him, he told me of a plan he had for striking it rich. Instant Heaven Instantly, he called it. He said he would arrange for people's corpses to be shot into space where they would be in heaven instantly and forever. I liked that man. He and I laughed a lot.

The head nurse caught me talking with him and with others and gave me a stern lecture that I was not supposed to talk with the patients. Only the psychiatrists could do so. Many years later, when I saw Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", I thought of her. I talked with everyone anyway. Now I had two reasons to do so.

The Nets of Heaven

As a child I had a choice: submit to the world of humans or open to the cosmos. The choice was simple since I instinctively knew I was choosing between death and life. At that moment I became a rogue, a ronin, outside the bounds, courteous but unconstrained, except by the forces of heaven, as Lao Tzu might say. I only held jobs until their or my completion, whichever came first and then moved on, no job lasting longer than five years, until joining up with that bunch in Flagstaff where the job description was to be myself. Went 12 years on that one. Now out ranging around again, no one calling the shots but the nets of heaven, and hey, that's the way it has always been.

Getting Loaded

One of my many jobs while putting myself through school (Georgia State) and helping support my young family was working at the Atlanta bus station as a baggage handler. I liked the checking in of customer bags and loading them on the correct bus. But every so often I had to open unclaimed suitcases to see if I could find identifying information.

I found bus riders, at least at that time, to be a fairly unhygienic bunch. It was as if some folk decided to load a suitcase with their unwanted junk including unwashed clothes and leave it all behind as someone else's responsibility. Maybe they started afresh, which is more than I can say for their gifts to Atlanta Baggage Claim. It was this part of the job that prompted me to resign and get a job loading semi trailers.

It was strong good work. I remember coming home so tired and dirty (2 a.m.) that I would run a hot bath, fall asleep in it, and wake up to the stimulus of the cooling water. 

Before long, I accepted a job driving a cookie truck and unloading its contents at various warehouse sites in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina. I kept attending college at night, steadily working toward an undergraduate degree in psychology. Loading up with info at night, unloading cookies during the day.

Long Johns, A Tractor, And A Buzz Cut

Where would one be without one's friends? I am convinced that two grade school buddies, Dion and James, are responsible for my early balding head. The three of us were inseparable, though also subject to each other's torments, like the time they made unmerciful fun of me when after a cold Georgia winter my grandmother sent me to school with my long johns rolled up under my new spring shorts and my running around on the playground made the long johns roll down.

But Dion and James were not exactly fashion plates themselves with their overalls and clodhoppers (which they ditched whenever possible preferring bare feet). That day, that fateful day, we had a new toy -- a little green tractor made of metal (you remember metal, don't you?) with a wind-up spring that made it go. The school day had just ended and we were outside experiencing FREEDOM and preparing for the journey home. I always walked while those two rode the bus being as they were country boys.

One or both of them got the idea to place the wound-up tractor atop my head where the spring immediately caught itself in my at-that-time thick mop. They boarded their bus with whoops and tears of laughter while I suffered great agony on the long walk home with the eyes of the entire community if not greater Georgia on me with a green tractor atop my head. After dying on that cross, I did have a resurrection. Among other things, my grandfather was a barber, part of the house being his shop. The next day I joined the trend toward buzz cuts in the school.

My First Cannon

He cruised the desktop with his newly found tank, not letting it fall into the inkwell and bumping hurriedly over the grooves cut in as pencil holders. He made tank sounds he had heard on Movietone News and fired the little cannon from time to time --"Peww! Poww!"

"STOP THAT!" The teacher seemed horrified. "See me after school!" He had never been in trouble before. He sat at his desk later while the teacher graded papers, saying nothing but glancing at him angrily from time to time.

When he got home his mother said where have you been, knowing that he liked to dawdle on the walk home. "Teacher made me stay after school." "What did you do?" "Nothing. I was playing tank and cannon. At recess I saw some other boys make one so I made one too. See?" And he gave his mother the finger. Innocence still unspoiled.

Piece Of Cake

As the oldest child, and at my father's ongoing request, I accompanied him on his job picking up bread in the wee morning hours along with other "bread men" from the 18-wheeler truck bringing bakery goods from the city. We loaded our smaller truck with the various types of bread, cinnamon rolls, and cakes and then began the journey to all the local stores.

At one point we were living in Eufaula, Alabama (we moved around a lot). I settled in to the local school, having grown accustomed to "the new kid" process, and of course, was immediately assisting my father on his bread route. On the day he was struck with appendicitis resulting in a prolonged hospital stay, I entered the adult world. No one knew his bread route except me, a twelve-year-old.

I guided the man the bread company sent with meticulous and exacting instruction. I could have done it in my sleep (and no doubt sometimes did). All of a sudden I became aware, except for driving the truck, I could do my father's job. I knew the route, the people, their orders. The external reward I received for my labors that day, a 25 cent milkshake, though delicious, was small in comparison.

Service Station

I was caught in that kid's nightmare, removing a too-tight long-sleeved wool sweater, pulling it over my head and getting stuck, my head and arms firmly encased in its smothering embrace. Staggering around the room, I called to my brothers for help.

We were home from the Sunday church service and I wanted to be free of all encumbrances, both theological and physical. Ben grabbed the sweater and pulled. When I popped free, I fell backwards and cracked my head on the windowsill. Blood. Dizziness. Emergency room. Stitches.

I wore this small plaster dome on my head for a few days dreading the time the stitches would have to be taken out. When assisting my father on his bread route, we were leaving a few cake snacks at a service station. You remember service stations, don't you? They would wash your windshield, check your oil, pump your gas, take your money, get your change, while you sat inside your car. Well, this day I got an added service.

Doc Lee pulled up for gas and we said hello. He had delivered me and probably about half or more of the kids in Troup County. I'm not sure how it happened but the next thing I knew I was sitting inside the service station having my stitches taken out. Doc finished the job, paid for his gas, and drove on. No one seemed to think anything of it. A common service.

Spiritual Harassment

The Alabama Sunday School teacher kept saying to me every Sunday without fail -- "When are you gonnacceptjesusasyourlordandsavior" (all run together as one long word). I guess he wanted to ring up one more twelve-year-old toward a star in his crown of glory. Finally, my mom approached him at church and said "I have a bone to pick with you." After her little talk, he never tried to "get me saved" again. Thanks, Mom.

My First Encounter With The Penal System

I was just a little kid. We had a community center in our neighborhood. I wandered into a locker room one afternoon when almost no one was around. A teenage boy was lying on his back on a bench, his pants unzipped. A girl was giving him a hand with his situation. He never looked my way but she sure did. The next day, a pair of white tennis shoes appeared before me. She had tracked me down. "Little boy! Don't you tell! Don't you ever tell!" I looked up. Her eyes were blazing. Well, I'm telling. I'm telling now.

My Dad

He took me fishing once. He taught me to make a banana sandwich. He taught me not to rely on him but to fend for myself. He showed me what anger is like. He never saw my heart, my soul, my mind. He showed me how not to be. Because of him I learned the gift of toughness: how to stop the bleeding of the heart and move on. He was who he was and that's the way it is.

My Mom

My mom used to sing to us when we were kids, sing us to sleep. That was before the horrors and tribulations of life began to gnaw at her soul. She taught me the difference between a "d" and a "b " when I was learning to read (on which side of the "l" the "c" went confused me for a while). I remember her hanging clothes and my playing with the wooden clothespins as I sat in the grass under the warm sun with the wind billowing the clothes.

My dad and granddad were working in the shipyard building ships to help kick Hitler's ass. My mom made do at home with rationed sugar and margarine like playdough in a bag with a red dye spot to knead until it turned the goop to a more butter-like color. She made biscuits and my brothers and I liked to count them as she placed the raw dough in the pan, leaving our fingerprints on their surface. Sometimes she would add some "baby" biscuits just for us.

She was a very tender person with the fierceness of a taloned eagle if she or hers is threatened. The tender and the tough did a dance at her core.

Calf Rope

My two brothers and I liked to tie each other up and see how to get out. I think it came from watching those serials and cowboy movies on Saturdays (price: 10 cents). We would bring sandwiches and watch a double-header, staggering out into the bright light of a Saturday afternoon, minds filled with rescue and adventure.

Our favorite tie-up method was "hog-tieing." The two would get the one flat on his stomach (voluntarily or involuntarily depending on the mood of the moment), loop the rope around his pulled-back neck, and tie the other ends to his lifted-up ankles. Hands were tied behind the back with a short rope.

In those days, yes kids, even before television and way before fritter and twitter, we always had a supply of rope and sticks and rubber inner tubes of tires and string and tongues cut out of old shoes and rubber bands and homemade glue and so on, the simple materials of life from which so much could be fashioned: sling shots, kites, bow and arrows, cudgels, poison sticks (remind me to tell you about poison sticks).

We would sit and watch the tied-one struggle until he either got out or said the shameful words of surrender: "calf rope." We got better at both tying and freeing ourselves, ever-escalating arts. Ah, the simple pleasures of a Georgia boyhood!

My Mom the Alchemist

When I was a young teen suffering from heartfelt pain, my mom said that my heart throughout life would be placed within the hottest fire, heated white-hot, removed and hammered hard, then plunged into the coldest of water. She said this process would be repeated, that I was being tempered. She said I had only two choices: to keep my heart open or to slam it shut.

The Cosmos Squeezes Me

Somewhere in the archives of memory arises the felt experience and imagery of being Uncle Sam in one grade school play and Father Time in another. The roles appeared suitable as my consciousness opened to the nation as a whole and to the cosmos. This awareness continued its growth and continues its expansion and depth even now. I remember that my Mama sewed red stripes down the leg sides of a pair of blue pants for the Uncle Sam outfit. She was an avid seamstress, pedaling away on her Singer sewing machine, replacing bobbins of thread with dexterity. For my Father Time beard, she cut a sheet of paper into long strips attached at one end, curling the strips by pulling her closed scissors down each strip. My costume was a white sheet formed into a gown.

Further grade school memories include the third grade Mrs. Bland who tolerated no dissent. She wanted no part of my insistence that "a quarter until the hour" was 25 until (since a quarter was 25 cents). No recognition of my poetic genius! 

Fourth grade was another matter. My reading skills were excellent by then. I had no hesitance at reading aloud in class when called upon. As a result, I was taken to the 6th grade class, pushed into the front of the staring older kids, and commanded to read. I did, all the while feeling like a trained monkey. It seemed to go well. No one tried to beat me up on the playground.

By sixth grade, my performance career was enhanced through my learning a synopsis of the history of Georgia ("In 1732, James Oglethorpe …") for a school focus on the glories of our state (Georgia was originally founded as a non-slavery state. Oglethorpe wanted no part of that.) My performance was evidently enough of a success to warrant my being called out of class unexpectedly, taken downtown to the radio station, thrust in front of a microphone, and asked to do my do. Though startled and more than a little shy, I managed to recite my way through it.

You ask how it is that I became a professor, workshop leader, expounder of esoteric doctrine? The clues are all there, my dear. The cosmos squeezed me into that form, that continuous forming.

When I Started Walking

I drove the car the several miles out of town and left it, gave the keys to a neighbor to give to her. Might as well. Already gave her the house, the furniture, the land, chunk of money. Took my bicycle, clothes, books, computer, coffee pot, a cup, a dish, a bowl, a glass, a knife, a fork, a spoon. What more does a man need? 

As I walked down the two-lane forest road to town, a Babe-Angel in a pickup pulled up, smiled, said “You want a ride?” No fool, I said yes and climbed in. A pleasant ride into town. Never saw her before nor have seen her since. Babe-Angels pop up in my life when needed and when least expected. I am thankful.

Got out of the pickup and started walking. No car for 14 years now. Walking Flagstaff.

The Ice Man Cometh

As a boy I never heard the word "refrigerator" even from the Yankee voices speaking strange accent over the radio. We had an icebox. Robert the iceman came by with his horse-pulled ice wagon, canvas flap pulled down in back, and looked to see from our front porch sign how many pounds we wanted today. A muscular man, he would chip off the amount, heist it on his padded shoulder with his ice tongs, carry it into the house, and put it in our ice box.

Our "air conditioner" (again a word unheard) was a chunk of chipped off ice (every house had an ice pick) from the block brought by Robert set in a pan. An oscillating electric fan (yes, we had electricity) blew its coolness across the room. It was a blessing when the fan finally turned back one's way.

We boys would follow Robert's ice wagon when we saw it on the street and get little slivers from his ice pick work. He did not seem to mind at all, nor did the horse who walked slowly enough to allow such shenanigans.

Why do these remembrances from long ago pop in my mind when I scarcely remember what happened two days ago? I know the gerontologists have theories based upon social psychological, neurological, and brain function understandings and at one point I would have made much of them. Not now. I simply find these memories to be moments of pleasure -- memories of a time when life seemed much simpler, when a chunk of ice was a marvel that brought people together in many ways.

How The Martial Arts Got Into Me

Well, yes, it's time for another re- collection, or this one might best be termed a wreck-o-lection. Today I want to tell you how I got into the martial arts. This here boy when I was maybe 14 or so invited me to his house. It was a setup but like all setups the dupe doesn't know and guess who was the dupe? This boy, let's call him Biff as in Biff-Bam cause that's what happened, had a dad who taught him how to box. Now I didn't have a dad and didn't know nothing about nothing. Biff says wanna box? I says sure. Next thing I know I got these gloves tied on my hands where I can't throw any dirt clods which is my favored form of defense and he's beating the holy hell out of me. He must have gotten worn out in there somewhere because mercy was not in his catechism. I went home with a stinging face and a determination -- you can guess what it was. It took a while though -- I had some things to do first. Years later I joined the Marines and went to Okinawa. Fast forward. I was teaching karate and jujutsu in Atlanta with a bunch of fight fanatics. A boxer came over -- it was a large open gym -- and asked if he could try out his boxing against what I was doing. I said sure. Poor guy. He knew nothing of Biff. This time I didn't put on any gloves. Every time he jabbed I went in low and gave him a spear hand in the armpit. He stopped jabbing pretty soon. We departed on friendly terms. And I had come full circle. He had given me a gift. So there you have it. How I got into the martial arts. Or rather how the martial arts got into me. I guess if there's a moral it's that getting whupped up on in life can cause one to blossom in unexpected ways.

Belt

I am looking at the debris that has washed ashore after 78 years of living; yet not so much washed ashore as has clung to me all this time, refusing to be jettisoned. 

Here is my black belt, the designation itself awarded me by Shimabuku Tatsuo Sensei, founder of Isshinryu Karate. “Bree-deh! Black belt no stay?” He said, interrupting my workout in his Agena, Okinawa dojo. “No, Sensei.”  I always wore my original white belt when working out though he had already awarded me green, then brown. Not long after that I received my silk certificates bearing his chop awarding me 5th degree black belt status. 

Here it is, frayed and worn from repeated ties, the Japanese manufacturer’s trademark, Darumu, still affixed to one end. Darumu, the one who always comes back up immediately when being downed, so that down and up are one motion. “Seven times down, eight times up!” -- the ancient practice and principle. 

The belt reminds me that has always been my practice. Down is always an invitation to Up, the one flowing into the other. “Yes!” has always been my practice and will be forever. Thank you, black belt that has stayed with me all these years.