I was 21 in 69
Posted on May 2, 2018 by admin
99-12-01

I was 21 in 69, my hair hung down around my shoulders, i had a black mennonite hat, a double vested black coat, black kid leather angle shoes and a pair of black jean bell bottoms with my black shirt. That was the way i dressed, that was my essence of the times. Many dressed with colourful outfits, it was wonderful, everybody did their own thing and we all seemed to appreciate what ever anyone wanted to wear, think, everything was cool. I was a ring leader of sorts in this community, but always in the back edges. I began my quest in to drugs in California in 1965, i was 17 and i took a bus the 3000 miles to visit my best friend Helmut who moved their when we were 15. It was already happening there, the Stones and Beatles had just started smoking grass, Dylan was writing songs no one could understand except for a few lines and the intense meaning that howled thru his lyrics like a hurricane. Frank Zappa just came out with Freak Out and i could only listen to it stoned. In those 4 years the times were exploiting, thousands of kids hit the roads, hitchhiking out west, California, Vancouver, New York, Chicago. I must have put a good 100,000 miles on in those days. I’d be back and forth between California, Vancouver, up the coast, down the coast, the mid west, the south west, freight cars, whatever got me there, but there wasn’t anywhere to get, it was all just to experience the road, see nature, disgusting city slums, beautiful people and not so beautiful people. Drugs was a big thing, we loved to get stoned and watch the world turn, it was a quest into the mind, some didn’t make it, too much for their heads. I look back with great reverence for the psychedelic times that taught me many things….

In 69 i had been fired from a life long career job of construction estimating, they knew that i knew this would never work, i was a marxist at the time, LSD was very much apart of my life and i was only interested in truth, art, love and life…I had been going with Carolyn thru all this time, since i was 17 tho she never did any drugs herself, she accepted my quest into the void but the differences were beginning to reveal themselves. Our tastes were becoming evident that we were going in different directions. By this time she was living up in Ottawa about 300 miles from Kitchener and i didn’t see her as often. She was good friends with my friends and their girl friends and well respected but while she was gone to Ottawa all the girls started doing acid and grass and things began to shift quite radically. It was around this time that Sue came in to the picture. The first time we got stoned together we had such an amazing time, we really were totally in tune to each other. One thing led to the next and before long we were seeing each other all the time, sleeping together and deeply in love. When two people do a psychedelic together the bonding can be very strong, but especially if you are very in tune to each other and already attracted to each other. This went on for about 6 months and then i hitched to California for a few months and wrote to Sue and kept in touch with Carolyn. I was beginning to really feel the dilemma i had allowed myself to enter. I was aware that i truly loved both women and had no idea what to do about it.

When i got back to Canada, Sue had moved in with a bunch of my friends and i just moved in with her, we shared a single bed in a room with a few other friends. We were all communists at the time, but there were only a few of us that really took philosophy serious and the quest for truth was not everybody’s real focus. They were more or less what we called weekend hippies. They liked the drugs and they just could not really be unselfish enough to think of a world where every body may be on more of an equal basis. Most of my childhood friends were polish. There was Les Krynicky, Ted Sajakowski, Stan Mycysic(?).

I could go on and on but what i am getting at to you Ola is something much more serious. My relationship with Sue was great, we had great sex together, we really got along really well. On the other hand was Carolyn, she was like a goddess, an angel from a Leonardo DaVinci painting and i knew her and felt save with her. Carolyn moved back to Kitchener and i told her about Sue and she was very hurt about it. We started to see each other a-lot but i could not get Sue from my mind. Carolyn started to do psychedelics with my friends and i . My better friends were Joe, Don, Bob, and my brother Allyn. Though there were many friends that i hung out with, i was in to film, photography, writing reading tons of literature on many subjects and doing drugs in a fairly good way I did not drink alcohol at all in those times, we all felt drinking to be very archaic and down right stupid. I spent a-lot of time alone thinking and diving into the unconscious like some explorer out in the sea. In many ways i was the strong minded adventurous one of the group.

Well it was right in the middle of all the excitement happening everywhere with a magic in the air that had never existed in the history of this world as we know it. Many say it lasted a few years, but i say it was really about 9 months. Only a few could really feel the intense vibrations emanating across the land but many were blown along the current like leaves along a river. The songs that came out in that short period of time still ring the bells of LOVE loud and clear, though many of the artists have become sombre, lost and even bitter for what was and never really shone. I could go on and on about the changes that took place from that short moment in history. I can’t deny that yes i believe that LSD and Sacred Mescaline(derivative of peyote) was the catalyst that pushed the last millennium in to awareness. The native american Indians have prophesies that talk about the Rainbow tribe of the ancestors of the white man that slaughter them, that they would come back and show them the way. Now very few Red Men will admit this these days, but there are some elders that know the truth and say that yes the Hippies, the Drug Users of the Sixties led us to retaliate. Wounded Knee take over in 1973 in South Dakota, storming of the parliament buildings in Canada in 1974, led by my friend and teacher Vern Harper.

There are many movements that took place because of the explosion of the sixties, a wave from a smaller group of renegades from the 50’s called the beat generation.

All of this is a part of my story. In the middle of all this i found myself in the middle of being totally in love with two very beautiful women and dealing with the contradiction of communism and the lies of Propaganda to convince the ignorant of what they don’t know, to truth about love and freedom and the mess of capitalism, to the dreams in psychedelic heaven…… I didn’t know what to do , where to go, who to believe, so i did what i thought was my best choice. I went in to the country and i searched for a place not too far from town and yet secluded enough not to be disturbed. I found a place along the Nith river a few miles out of a small town called Ayr. The river flows under an old metal bridge and just down a short distance a small creak flows into the Nith. Just back from the river up the creek many cedar trees form a very secluded camp. This is where i went to solve my dilemma. I have just learned in the last few months 1999 that this is called Cedar Creek. Very appropriate to my path of today.

2nd LOVE

re: Ola…..since these excerpts are letters to you but also have the intentions of evolving into a book, i may overly describe some things that may seem overly evident to you. Also i may decide occasionally to include more to you on any given day, just because i’d rather talk to you in now time, in-fact , i’d rather talk to you most of the time, but then i’d never get any work done. I do have a major teaching in mind that will become increasingly evident as time goes on. Back to “Don’t Mess with the Medicine”, a title for now.

In the Sixties there were many issues and circumstances that let into the space described as the Summer of Love and there were also as many happenings that let us into the Seventies and on to now, the year 2000. Timothy Leary described the Turn on Tune in and Drop out generation in many documented articles, it is too vast to include the many influences that took place in these times, there was an explosion in all the arts, but by far it was music that tuned everybody in. All the other forms of media were dominated by the ‘Establishment’, as we put it in those days. We became Anti-establishment as they labeled us, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, that’s what the media wanted the world to believe about us, they were paranoid, thousands of kids were dropping out and saying Fuck this Shit, this is fucking crazy, the worlds gone mad, ‘we gotta get outa this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do, baby, there’s a better life for me and you'(Eric Burton and the Animals). I could go on and on with lyrics from the Sixties, but i suppose John Lennon said it the simplest, ‘All you need is LOVE, Love is all you Need’ and Sergeant Pepper still stands as the best album ever. It is a master piece of continuity, heart and spirit. All in all there was more magic in the air for more people at one time then this world has ever seen from it’s four corners, since the last time this world was inhabited across the globe, if ever. Now of course, people from other generations may be offended thinking their youth was the big one. Well all youth is the big one, but i truly believe that many that didn’t even come close to the Sixties know that something happened very very big there, deep, very very deep. There is no doubt that my time there was amplified by the facts i am about to reveal.

I can’t express the feelings i was experiencing with my love for Carolyn and Sue. I couldn’t bare the thought of being with one and not the other, i was torn, there was no one i loved more than the other, i loved them both differently and equally. The best advice i had was from an older woman that i worked with in the construction firm. Betty turned me on to Leonard Cohen and a book called Cosmic Consciousness, very rare in those days to find anyone that was into anything along that line in those days..She said go out east, get away, they will still be there, if it is true. I stayed and went down to the river and spent 3 or 4 days there with out so much as seeing another human being. This took me on many trips, i did mescaline or lsd, whatever of the two in those days. It was quite clean, as things deteriorated as time went on in the world of underground drugs was concerned. It is without a doubt that i have forgotten many of the visions, the experiences of those days. What i do remember is the drift of the whole trip and certain traces of visions. My intentions for going there and doing psychedelics was specifically to determine who i loved the most or how i was to decide on whom i should be stay with. Little did i know until about 16 years later that i was performing a ritual with a sacrament and moving into the real underworld of the subconscious, spirits, the medicine world.

The beauty of the nights were miraculous, the horrors of my mind were intriguing, frightening, amazing and i learned many ways to over come my fears. I learned to have faith in the process, i had never come off an experience on a bummer. I always conquered the nightmares with integrity, my will to survive and to face the truth no matter how difficult or scary it was. Most of my experiences for the next 5 months were done alone or with a very few people,, very close friends. I quit the group that i had originally started to talk about the world but because of Martin and his in depth knowledge of philosophy, marxism, art music etc., we were let in to Communism. It really was the best answer at the times. The only philosophy truly written for the people. Well, this is not the place to go into any depth about politics, but i will say this. I could never quite accept the aspect of propaganda necessary to convince the ignorant and or stupid people to do the right thing. Dylan in a song ‘It’s Alright Ma’, said “Propaganda all is phoney”. Well on one of my first trips involved with these new intentions i had some sort of vision telling me to quit this path, this group and that one could never convince anyone of anything, only true example is all we have and who knows how long it may take for the people to follow the right road. Jesus’s images crept in and out of my thoughts and i knew without a doubt that it was time to move on. I need no logic to express that only Love was important, i couldn’t tell my friends, but they did feel and see a major change take place in me. There were a few times that real changes took over me in those 4 to 6 years or so. This was the third great change, and by far the deepest. I have had only glimpses of this world since. I remember one time with Carolyn around this time and we had done acid together and to express how deeply i loved her, and also loved Sue, i put on a record for her. Head phones was a new thing in those days. All the new technology concerning the record industry was totally controlled by the new bands and psychedelic music and the new market it was creating. My friend Joe had the best sound system around and that is where we hung out the most. The song i played was To Love Somebody, an Animals version. There is a part in the music where it is extremely emotional and Eric Burton is singing ‘you don’t know what it’s like(about 3 times) and then ‘too love somebody, to love somebody, like i love you’. Well Carolyn flipped out and was screaming and couldn’t get the head phones off, while i was in the other room. I ran in and got the phones off her head and was realizing all the time that she was just beginning to understand the depth of what i was going thru and the love that existed in this triangle, of her and Sue and myself. I felt terrible, she was pushing me away, crying, and Mary, Joes girlfriend, was trying to calm her down. I don’t think she ever experienced anything so torturous before.

It was hard on all three of us, I was only seeing Sue very rarely. She worked in a bank down town and every once in a while i just had to see her and i would go and see her for lunch. I learned from some of the other girl friends that Sue was fainting, blacking out at work and she was hurting so bad, she was goin nuts. She never really got over this.

It took me years to really understand what happened here. I continued to do acid or mescaline, tho i much preferred mescaline and now i also understand that relationship to the earth. Timothy Leary said that acid was Atomic and mescaline was Organic in vision. I always agreed with him but it wasn’t until i did Peyote years later with Annette in Mexico, Christmas Day, in i believe 1987, that i really began to understand Mescalito, the spirit of Peyote.

As the weeks went on, i was still no closer to the truth than when i began, concerning the two. My mind was expanding into realms i had barely dreamt of. In this period i had many visions, out of the body experiences, messages that i couldn’t understand for years and many i still don’t understand, but i know they are sacred within me, within you, within all of us.

I remember that usually i did a trip on a friday night and stayed up all night and often cleaned myself up in the morning and went to visit my mother. We’d sit in the back yard and she’d take me around and show me all the plants and new flowers blooming and we’d talk about life and pleasant things. It was the first time that we really got to know each other. I know she could tell that i was changing rapidly and something very magical was taking place within me. She might have even suspected that i was stoned. In those days no one knew the depth to these experiences except the users. In a sense, nothing has changed. It may sound arrogant, but the only thing i had to compare my new awareness to, was that i felt that i was seeing a world that was very similar to what i imagined St. Francis of Assisi’s world to be like.

To document the feeling inside of me i washed up one Saturday morning after being stoned all night and i went and had a portrait of myself done by a local established photographer. I give that blow up print to my mother. I forgot all about it for 25 years and when i was going thru all the photo’s that had been left to me in my mothers will, there it was. I didn’t recognize myself at first but felt a very strong connection to a past, still so close within me. I will post this print later.

By now Carolyn moved out from Joe’s where we were both living and moved into an apartment by herself. She could now see the dilemma i was in and in-fact was extremely compassionate towards me, but felt helpless within herself.

Soon after this, within a few weeks i was alone at Joe’s on an acid trip and i was very into the world of magic, the molecules of the air were visible, all exterior objects were in a state of eternal melting, everything was melting like a candle, but without growing smaller, it was eternal. Light danced across the room in speeds of light itself, atoms were shooting into my eyes like a 2001 Space Oddessy. Science and art had melted into spirit, electricity, waves, words floated across the room, everything was alive, imagination, and the world outside became one, nothing was not of me; i was everything, i was all that existed, everything was made of me.

It was then that I was given a way to an answer, this was the only way out of my situation, accept suicide itself, so it seemed. I had to promise to take the answer and live by it. I was told to focus all my energy into following the way i would be given. I had to make up my mind between the two and live by it. Either one could make me happy but i knew i could not make up my mind myself so i asked for help, an answer, a way to make a decision. I was given a very simple answer. Flip this coin and have Carolyn as heads and Sue as tails. It felt like the truth to my problem, it felt right, it felt sacred. I flipped the coin. Within a week or so i moved in with Carolyn. I never told anyone about this and i knew it’s depth, but i could never have known what was to take place in the very near future.

I had a very good understanding with both Sue and Carolyn, they both loved me dearly. Sue and i had a freer relationship, a better sex life, but Carolyn was like a pure angel, Sue was more magical.

I continued to use psychedelics and i was writing alot of poetry, listening to the latest from the best. Dylan’s new Nashville Skyline just came out, which was his most romantic album ever and to quote a verse from one of those songs which epitomizes my feelings and obviously his also of the times.

“Love is all there is, it makes the world go round

Love and only love, it can’t be denied

no matter what you think about it

you won’t be able to do without it

take a tip from one who’s tried.”

Shortly after i moved in with Carolyn i was up all night on acid. She was sleeping and i slipped in beside her. I was lying there when all of a sudden an energy came into the room that transformed her in to the ugliest creature i had ever seen. Still to this day i have never seen or felt anything so terrifying, demented, evil. I freaked out so bad that i literally jumped out of bed and crossed the room in a flash of a second and i could not look at her. Carolyn awoke immediately and realized that something very strange had taken place. She talked to me and i eventually told her a little of what had happened. She was great, she kept talking to me, but every time i glanced over towards her she started to emanate this terrifying entity. It was the freakiest presence imaginable, but little by little i could look at her longer and within an hour i finally felt ok to see her. She asked if i wanted a hot chocolate. We huddled in the small kitchen and she prepared it. While we were sitting there and i felt this immense love and caring for her, something very astonishing took place. She began to illuminate like a perfectly pure angel glowing with a softness and blended colours on her face that i have never seen the likes of to this day.

Within a few hours i had felt and seen and smelt and tasted the worst horrors of my life and also the most pure and beautiful. Somehow there was a message that was very strong that is difficult to express in words. This awareness appeared to be that beauty lies within what is visible, a gift from the great spirit, that to see clear is to see the truth, that beauty is what is before your judgement enters, to see what is, not what you would prefer. Evil, is the karma of control, manipulation, it enters to teach. I may never understand or be able to express the lesson within me of that experience, but i know inside how to feel this seeing, this clarity, this beauty.

After this experience i began to feel more and more like a vision of a saint. Everything was sacred, every life was there for a purpose, there was beauty everywhere. I had no problem relating to anyone, or anything, i was in a dream that no one could move me away from. I was within total confidence that i was living within the truth of the most holy, the most sacred the most pure.

I suppose this lasted for about two weeks or so. This was a very long time to be transformed into something that i had no idea could ever exist. It felt like the most purest state of mind that a human being could achieve. It has been many years since this headspace and i have thought about it many times. I have not mentioned it more than a few times and i have always been careful of whom i would share this with.

This was the most significant period of my life and yet somehow it has only been allowed to reawaken within me in the last few years. It was up in Kopka, which is north of Thunder Bay above Lake Superior Ontario, which for the first time about three years ago that i mentioned a few of my visions of this past period to an Ojibway medicine man, Oliver who is my teacher as i speak. I follow what is called the Red Road, which i will be explaining as time goes on.

Ola, i need a break, i just want to talk to you. This writing is bringing many thoughts back to me, but the way i feel right now is that if i could i would forsake all of my past to be with you right here now…..this is a novel that i am writing, that has become evident and it is totally wrapped around you. I will be pouring my life out like a bucket of water, cool cool water. It is odd, but i suppose if one truly feels deep as they travel thru this life, the one ever present is the one that receives more love than any in the past. That is how i feel towards you, yes Chrys is fading, but she is not gone.

Carolyn is by the way still my friend, she lives out west and we have kept in touch and have been together many times. Since we left each other, we have never slept together, somehow that was never a desire for me. I can not speak for her.

I am surprised that i have written as much as i have and i hope i can keep this up. I know that i am motivated to tell you my story because there is some very important lessons entangled within this web for you. There are also some very important messages that will unfold into lessons for both of us. This is a living piece of work as all pieces of art must be. I best send this now.

Slodkich marzen from Patryku

#3 insects

Dzie dobry Ola

so nice to think of you first thing in the morning. this world is so crazy, hollow headed people everywhere, computerized memory response, videots in every scene; so nice to fantasize about you, to be anywhere with you, just away from this grey madness…a blanket over our shoulders, waves crashing against the rocks, a wind, a sun, a sky, grass green, you with silent eyes.

I know it is frustrating for you not to be able to write in your mother tongue, take this hug full of sympathy, this gift of empathy, this love of mine. I walk on thin ice, my truth, a ghost from the past, suffers with all honesty, i have walked as i have, one foot on the road and the other free, stumbling, flying.

There is so much more that could be said about this period of time, so many stories. I remember thinking about so many of the other so called hippies. I never considered myself a hippy, there were also yippies, which were intellectual hippies, i never related to any of that stuff. There were so many hippies wanderin around talkin about this and that, tripin out along the streets, visions, a dime a dozen. I never bothered too much with other groups, tho i knew many people and was always apart of the scene, somehow i stayed in the background. One thing that definitely separated me from the many was my respect for Bob Dylan. Even though Bob was well respected by many, not many really listened to him. Most street hippies were in to all the rock and roll of the day, there was Morison, Joplin, Henricks, the Kinks, we could make a list a mile long. There were ones that influenced others, but never really hit the lime light, there were others monopolizing on the flavour of the scene. But for the most part it was that little pill called LSD that distinguished the phoney shit from the good stuff. There are many theories about why this chemical came on to the scene as it did. Albert Hoffman discovered this substance in the early 40’s, but it wasn’t until after the bomb in Hiroshima of 1945, that his very accurate experiments this time revealed this extraordinary substance that altered his life for ever. It wasn’t until the late 50’s when Leary, Ralph Metzner, and the future Ram Dass experimented with LSD at Harvard University. There is tons of literature about these times. Leary believed that it was the bomb that altered the atmosphere or the intercellular relationship with mother earth that allowed this creation to take place. There is evidence thru people like Terrance McKenna, an Ethno Botanist, that animals threatened against their regular migratory routine will find hallucigenics as in Psylosibin Cubensis, a mushroom found on many continents, and they will eat quantities of these mushrooms. I have the same theory about humans, that when we get closed in we need some way to expand in our inner self. Hallucigenics is one way of traveling into the unconscious mind, this has been practiced by Shamans for centuries. There is also numerous sources on the subject of drug use, but i kinda like William Borroughs quote that he doesn’t like drugs that make you ‘twitch all over’. In a sense what he is describing is the difference between the Barbituates and the Psychedelics.

Cocaine, speed, even ecstasy and numerous of the counter pharmaceuticals are classified as the twitching type, they can make you grind your teeth, all in all they are a dulling of the senses, a narrowing in on a few areas of awareness. Psychedelics on the other hand are a totally opening up of the senses, and an awareness across the gamut. There is no doubt that our society prefers the barbituates, the legal drug industry has made billions and billions on the anxieties, and stress that is so common with the american way of life.

The main influence for myself in the sixties were a very few things, Psychedelics, Bob Dylan, and my love for two women that took me on a trip that altered my life forever. Sure there was many other things that altered, influenced and changed my life but in one way or another they were interrelated to these three. Bob Dylan turned on the Beatles literally, literally, with weed and words, we could say weed words. Dylan influenced just about every rock and folk song writer of the day and is still standing on the foundation of post modern times. There is no doubt in my mind that he took the world, shook it up, woke it up, wound it up and no body has come close to his magnitude. A few minds come to mind of artist with similar intensity, Shakespeare, Arthur Rimbaud, that’s it, i can’t think of any other in the last millennium. Anyways, i can honestly say that Dylan’s songs helped me out enormously and possibly even more than him himself in areas and times of need.

I have had numerous dreams with Dylan and we have become good acquaintances in these dreams. Lennon has been around, along with the other beatles and surprisingly enough, it was Paul who really treated me with respect in these dreams. Neil Young visited me a few times also, but all in all these dreams always had the reality of really existing somewhere in that other world. Who knows, you can believe what you want to believe, i just leave it open, who am i to know.

So like it could have been foreseen, things started to change. This was the beginning of my dream coming to an end. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a terrible nightmare. I haven’t found anything quite like this to compare with these nitemares. At first i had no idea what i was terrified about. This all evolved quite rapidly, within a few days i was waking up a few times a night with these terrible dreams that insects were trying to devour me. They were tall sizes. From a creature the size of an ant to the ugliest insects 60 feet long. They looked like a microscopic close up of insects from this world but uglier, more terrifying and with the strangest sharp loud piercing screeches imaginable. Sure, i had had flashes of nitemarish activity while i was on acid or whatever, but this was different. Specifically designed to scare the hell out of me, for me alone, and realer than reality. It took about a week, if i remember correctly before i could hardly close my eyes and there they were, huge insects walking over me, on me starting to suck on me, gooey, slimy, grossly coloured guck dripping from their fangs, mouths, eyes. Hair sharp and singular, long and scratching my neck, my chest my body. And more coming, the glue, the deafening high pitch screech of insect world, fuckin terror, man get me outa here, wake up, open my eyes, oh my god what the fuck is happening with me. Carolyn couldn’t understand, she didn’t know what to do, i didn’t know what to do. The doctor didn’t even come in to my mind. I thought they were all nuts, they didn’t know what the fuck was going on anyways. They’d probably shoot me up with drugs, bad drugs, i didn’t trust their drugs, and for the most part i still don’t, nothin much has changed. So i was stuck, i’d get up write some words, listen to some music, go for a walk, have a herbal tea, get my mind off them, the bugs. I was getting to the point that as soon as i would think of them i could almost see them coming in the open space of my awakening mind. It was getting scary and i had no where to turn. I didn’t trust any doctors of any kind. I had already had my experiences with their narrow views, shallow medicines. Friends had been thru that walk. I didn’t believe in the establishment. There was absolutely no one older than myself that i trusted. No one had ventured into this territory before. I was a pioneer, an explorer and there was no turning back, but how could i continue on. I thought of suicide, but i had only really entertained the idea of taking my life because i had no reason to live, never because i found things too tuff to deal with; well maybe a few times. I can’t remember exactly how long this went on for but i remember that i was just about nuts, couldn’t close my eyes without insects attracting me, was so tired, i had been up for days. I couldn’t continue, physically, my body was giving up, i wasn’t eating, i was in real bad shape.

I remember as if it was yesterday. I lied down and i said to myself, to them, alright, take me, eat me, devour me, i surrender and i closed my eyes. I remember the sounds of insects having a feast, a feast of me. They all had there different techniques, some pierced me with long tubular mosquito like needles, in my neck, in my eye and sucked out my inner juices. Some slobbered all over me with their stinky, sticky, gooey, slimy coloured syrup and took hunks of my skin in their slurpy mouths. Larger insects came and pulled my arms right out of their sockets and others shared in on the feast of eating my body parts.

I could continue but i believe i have painted a picture to make you aware that it was the best horror show i have ever seen. On another level i was realizing that no matter how much they killed me and devoured me that i was still in existence, my spirit was of another nature, life is spirit first, the body is a gift.

To this day i have great reverence for insects, and generally they don’t bother me, i welcome their life.

Ola, i need to go out…well i hope you like this writing that i am sharing with you…..it gets better, or worse…anyways , tell me something, anything, i’m cold…..

maybe a hug would work much better.

talk later

patryku

\

4th messin with magic

It is all somewhat vague around this time period, there were a number of experiences that i have never had since. It was a vortex of psychedelia, magic was everywhere, i hesitate to write certain things in respect for the people involved. Carolyn got pregnant, we were planning on getting married. We were going to my child hood church to see a priest for premarital teachings. The priest became quite confused dealing with me, he couldn’t understand that someone could exist without believing in a god or not believing in a god. I simply had no true knowing inside of me so i chose to be honest and claim ignorance. He could not marry us without me believing in Jesus, so i told him, well, i don’t disbelieve in him. Through frustration he just left me alone. He was pissed off because we were having John Veltri (the Jesuit in the Documentary about me) perform the ceremony and of course then another priest is coming into his territory and politics and money become the issue. Anyways, it was announced in the church bulletin a few weeks before and the priest was furious when i called him and told him we had decided to cancel the wedding. Carolyn got an abortion, it was 3 months old and it was a boy. Yes there are regrets i have, i don’t believe i had the right to take this little life from this earth. I know that Carolyn also regrets that decision. I pray to this day for the spirit of that child, i feel fine about it now, i have been forgiven.

My nitemares were gone but i began to get terrible headaches. We decided to split up for awhile and i left and moved in with Wayne Masters. Now there was and i presume still is a real character. I met Wayne a few years earlier buying some hash from him. We started to hang out here and there. Wayne started the first Coffee house that this city had ever known. It was called The Fog, it was off on an alley way down by the railroad station. We’d go there and smoke dope and listen to bands from the city’s in the south of Ontario, blues and heavy underground rock. I don’t think we even had a name for alot of the music that was happening. Wayne never grew long hair, always had a moustache and was more hip then the hippest around. He was totally into anything, electronics, film, optics, colour science, making wild clothes, growing marijuana. At the end of 69 i moved into a student residence of all engineering students except for myself and Wayne. We had one large room and we’d work on electronic amplifiers, colour organs, speaker cabinets and what ever else we thought was cool. In those days the hi fi equipment was behind the quality needed to satisfy this new generation of music lovers. It wasn’t likely that we were going to all grow up and become what the last generation became. I learned alot hanging out with Wayne and it was good to get me away from my childhood friends, family and of course Carolyn and Sue. I remember getting a call once from Mary that Sue was over there, so i talked to her and we decided to get together. That was the last time i saw her. People would ask me years later why i didn’t go to her. She has never loved anyone like me, i know that, she told me a few years back on a phone conversation. I wanted to see her, just see how she looked, how she was, but it became apparent that she was afraid she would not be able to control herself. I caused her so much pain and it took me years to really understand what happened there. I never truly understood why i didn’t just go to her, it was only a few years gone by. Carolyn and i hung on to each other for another 4 or 5 years before she finally just went out, with infact a close friend of mine, and that ended it for good with us.

I have never told Carolyn or Sue this. I have never had the opportunity to express my thoughts to Susan, i have wanted to for years. Carolyn had often told me, go to Sue, you love her. Somehow she was taken from me, i had no right to her, i had forsaken the medicine. I never knew any of this, i never knew the seriousness of medicine in relation to the spirit world. It has only been in the last few years that i have become increasingly aware of the workings of the medicine world.

When i took LSD and Mescaline with the intention to find an answer about Carolyn and Sue, no one knew this but myself. I asked to understand LOVE, to know love, to know who i should be with, Carolyn or Sue. Now, i understand that many in the world would and will find this odd and even ridiculous, but i have learned that Mishomis( the word i use to depict the great mystery, god, nothingness, whatever that web is) acts in incredibly mysterious ways. I can only know what i feel i know, I know that i promised to be honest with the answer, to follow the path that the flipping of that coin would state. I tried to hide the answer, i don’t know why, we all needed to learn these lessons i suppose. The flip came up tails, i was supposed to forget Carolyn and go to Sue. That is why Sue flipped out so much, her spirit knew the answer, she knew we were destined to be together, her whole being could not understand how something so perfect could go so wrong.

That is why i never when back to her, because the spirits took her memory from me, they gave me headaches that were so bad, i was in pain all day long for about 9 months. I was a mail man thru out that winter and everyday i would practice breathing exercises and little by little i conquered the migraines. I refused to go to a doctor, i refused offers to take legal drugs. Somehow i knew that i had to conquer this myself and i did. That summer i went to California with Carolyn and started film school in the fall of 1970. I moved in with 3 other guys after i returned from California and we became known by some as the Doon Crazy’s. Doon was the small town that the college was in, just a few miles from Kitchener. We did some ‘acid tests’ there where we had almost a hundred people all stoned on acid. We had 3 or 4 film projectors going, with loops that we’d paint as they flew thru the projectors, we had hand manipulated slides of amazing colours going on a few walls, and a life band. We lived in a huge older hotel, one huge room with a separate kitchen at the end. We served rice putting and our famous balls of molasses. All in all it was a great time. My headaches were gone, i was emotionally unhappy with Carolyn, but i never seemed to really understand that for a few more years. I did alot of really creative stuff back then.

It was just before the end of the semester when i packed my school days in. I didn’t like the prof, he was a Chec with some Documentary to his name from his home land. He couldn’t understand that things were changing rapidly, there was a new breed of colour coming in to view.

Anyways, i started playing guitar around that time. My friend Don who i had known since grade 7 was playing and so was his younger brother Mike. They kept bugging me to come around, they had started shooting speed in the spring of 71. It’s a wonder some of us have survived from the sixties. I suppose when i think of it, some didn’t survive, at least with all of there faculties. I started playing guitar the first time i shot speed. I knew one chord and i literally played for almost 24 hours. Speed was fantastic for feeling the music, i can’t denign that. That is why so many in all those bands did speed, cocaine, and then morphine, heroin. It was for the music. But all good things have there price. We know enough stories of the many that have ruined their life’s because of the use of drugs. I shot speed for about 3 months or so and then that was it, never touched it again.

When we grew up in the sixties we didn’t have any mentors to give us the dope, so to speak, on the dope. So we had to figure it out for ourselves. Do you think that for one slice of a moment that we in our wildest imaginations ever thought this world would end up here. No fucking way, it’s worse than it was, everybody is misusing everything, mistrusting, mistreating anything and everything. Yea, it’s worse, there are more divisions. Divide and Conquer, that is the basic principle that has been used for eons. There is less and less unity in the hands of the good guys, us, me and you. Money rules, media serves money, money owns media. The greatest freedom right now is pornography. The best selling drugs these days is sex, it’s sold legally to minors, it predominates every media mankind has invented.

Anyways, back to my story. What happened to me that became much more clear years later is two things. I did something that is common within the teachings of any medicine path. There was no one i know that had even an inkling of any of this. I had no idea why i was chosen to learn these lessons. This is, only now, becoming evident of my destiny.

The first shamanic practice i did was to use a medicine with intentions. I have payed dearly for not listening to what my heart had told me. The second shamanic quest was to allow the insects to devour me. This is called dismembering, which is not something that one can decide to do. It has to be presented to you. This has now happened to me again, since i have walked the red road.

Ever since the insects started to come into my dreams, i had started to become paranoid in the world around me. I would smoke a few tokes from a joint and i be like i was on acid, and i knew that none of my friends could or would understand. I had gone way further then where any of them would go in their complete lifetimes. I did know and yet i did not know all of this at that time. I couldn’t play all the games that were played any longer and yet i was not within the grace of the medicine, because i had gone too far and then i abused it. I lied to myself, i hurt others, i was tortured by my own failure to do the right thing.

I was not aware of all this because i was in pain, i was paranoid, and yet i had to struggle on, life would not wait for me to get it together. So i continued to hang out with my friends, i continued to be creative, i began playing guitar for hour and hours.

to be continued