Proof of Time-Travel

My first college year, regularly, would find me late night walking across Bellingham to visit who, now, are very old friends indeed. Up and out of bed by 5pm, I'd head out from the track-side apartment in The Letters, wander through downtown, hike up the hill to campus, and wind up over with friends in Fairhaven, where one day I would live. 

On this night, later than usual and already far into the wee hours of the morning, I had made it up to the first half of downtown, past the Old Town Café. Next to a shuttered building just short of Woolworth's, an old man with grey, short-cropped hair, approached me, keeping eye contact the whole way. Only a foot short, he quickly stopped, offered me a drag of his cigarette, thought better of it and proffered up an unlit one from his pack. It was my brand. He lit the smoke for me. I said, 'Hey, thanks', as he abruptly passed me by, vanishing into the darkness. 

I'm sure I had no smokes at the time as I wasn't smoking one then, which in those years I rarely did. He knew I was out of cigarettes, he carried my favorite brand, and he looked, I thought, as I would look, years and years from then. I'm still not quite that old, but I'm getting closer, and I'm looking forward to it. 

Maybe this time I'll say more...

The Coolest Hippies on Earth

Not only was I fed, protected and cared for by the Three Hippies when I lived homeless in the park, I was educated in the finer forms of music as well.  It was the second of December, 1979. For days Dawn, Pete and Clint had been planning the trip to Santa Cruz.  They all agreed that his music was superior, unparalleled in that way that only hippies can understand.  Clint had a real VW micro bus we would take for the trip. My high-school tassel in an earlier moment, had been hung inside. And of course this bus was the very one Clint had driven all the way to Woodstock. Woodstock...
So the road to Santa Cruz is well wound with curves and tapestried on all sides by pine and twisted cypress trees.  And it was no surprise that the van broke down and we had to push it over the top of a hill to get the jump start happening. The state patrol driving by without notice as we pushed was a little unanticipated. But, given that between the four of us we had over six feet of hair I guess it was no surprise. 
   The trip wound on as we neared the outskirts of Santa Cruz, jewel beside the endless Sea.  I said at that moment, for the forty-seventh sixteen year old time, 'Why do we have to go see this Bob Marley guy?' "Shut up, Kid, you'll see..." they said. 
   Now, that was a good ironic moment. But the best moment, the most beautiful moment of the trip was after spending two hours in the motivating smokes of the greatest Marley mantra mania I've ever, ever heard, we all staggered over to a rooftop parking garage and sat in a guitar circle and sang Ghost riders in the sky.  Like transcendental meditation I was at the centre of my grooving universe.
Oh man.  Good times....
 

The First Draft Was Too Much to Take.

Time has streamed on enough through me that, some moments, I can no longer recall how they began...or even ended; I try to remember as much as I can, but at this dimming distance from youth I just treasure know they happened.
One moment here: sitting at the north shore of the island where we lived; sitting in the warmth of summer. A moment there, crosslegged on the grass together by the cyclone fence smoking shared clove cigarrettes.
And tonight, some thirty-two years past, we sit in your basement with the TV on as an excuse to be there alone. Maybe there was music, was it beautiful? Did my emotions shape it beautiful, even if it was just a show? There was a chair. We were in a chair...a round, warm, beanbag chair on the floor in a quiet corner of a so happily alone and empty room...with an excuse granting television, and quiet, and you, and I, together.  And this much I'll say: we were kissing, so slowly, so wrapt, we were kissing; and do you remember how it felt and how we felt and all that happened in that brief elysian? I remember just that part, just that briefness. And I know that you do too. So, what matter to put it down here for outsiders to read? The moment that happened then. Just imagine if I wrote it, what stirrings the next passage would bring...

Midnight Dancing

I didn't see too much that was beautiful in the Army. Mostly, it was being away from home, working till I collapsed, and doing things I still think about at night when the house is too quiet. On occasion though, I was in just the right place at the right time.
There was a night I pulled advance scout duty on an air-dropped resupply. We were in a forest clearing far from any roads. It was my job to watch the lead edge of the field while we waited for a pallet of rations that, when it came, burned into the ground after the parachute failed.   So here I was at the centre of the lead edge of an open grassland. I felt exposed and not ready to be found.  Crawling on my hands and knees, I worked my way beneath a scrub bush no more than two feet high. The air was warm but still that night and stars shown through the miniature gnarled branches that had themselves seen better days. 
I laid there waiting for the plane.  I was hungry and willing it to come.  As the night quietened, I noticed strange patterns in the sand. Tiny prints had been laid down upon the earth between my hands. The prints curved and curled around, no bigger than a match heard.  They disappeared down a tiny burrow less than the cylinder of a cigarette. As I watched, a beetle slowly climbed out and onto the silvery ground. It scuttered up the branches of the shrub, soon joined by it's mate, slowly creeping in line from the tiny underground lair.  They buzzed as they climbed and soon were up to the plant's highest surmountings. In a flash they leapt into the night air to ballet around the shrub in softly buzzing, circular slow motion. The dark stars overhead flowed slowly on with the beetle's circle dance in queue beneath, for all the night to enjoy.

A Year Later

So almost a year later to the day, I'm finally getting ready to rise to college.  I was the last guest to leave an all nighter for me and had gotten good and drunk so I'd look and feel my best for the first day at university. I remember spending the rest of the night packing my belongings, talking quietly about the future and change with my friend Brian Warner as he passed out in a chair. As daylight dragged I was dragging my bags up to the driveway to wait for Ann.
Ann, my friend whom I had met on my way to the jungles of Honduras.  We were inseperable in those days and when it came time to travel away to school, there she was, in the infamous 60's Dodge Dart, pulling into my driveway for us to head to Bellingham together.  I can remember at some point she decided that it was my turn to drive. I had never bothered to get a license then, or learn to drive for that matter. Never needed one; never needed to. But, if Ann wanted me to drive then drive I would. She pulled over and we switched places and I drove us all the to our new home.  I remember her being so excited to sit in the passenger seat for once. We laughed and talked all the way up. 
Finally, at the end of the trip, we pulled into my parking lot where Brian Warner's older brother Jay and I would be sharing a flat. I saw Ann almost every day that year and was friends with her for years after that; but, the moment I always remember was the laughter on the drive.

Happy Talk

My first best friend was Jimmy Spence.  We were only six years old, in the first grade, and lived in the same neighborhood of Oakland, just by College and Clairmont.  Now six, six is a long way off when you're staring down a very short barrel at fifty. But from what I remember we were the best of friends.  At school Jimmy was first to get to class because his mother dropped him off so early to make it on time to her job at the Opportunity shop. The two of them lived by themselves in a stucco rented house on Agamemnon Court; just past Baskin-Robbins and the bank. 
One day in my back yard Jimmy gave me a big button that said Happy Talk, in half-green, half-purple psychedelic colors. Somehow I managed to hold on to it all these years. It sticks out proudly amidst my collage of family/friend artifacts I keep on my wall as I learned from Jenny Jo. But that's another moment. This moment is the surprise secret Jimmy had in his basement. We went down there once to see what he and his mother kept. Two ancient cement sinks for washing lanundry still stood against the wall down there; the type you may remember if you had grown up in a home from before the age of washing machines. When we got up close I leaned over, looked in, and to my six year old happy surprise, saw with a smile the two grey mice Jimmy and his mom had caught in the house and made a soft home for there. Beautiful little house mice...

Night Lights

Rocky and I snuck out of the dorms and off campus every chance we got. Boarding School worked on the hornor system and security consisted of a clipboard hanging on the wall where we'd sign in and out with towns as destinations, as long as we were back by ten.  After ten was another situation entirely.  Since noone ever checked the beds after lights out we'd just wait a few moments and slip out the door into the night. On one such night, we borrowed the Moto-men's bikes and rode across Spyglass and down to the edge of the Sea.  We had several adventures and run-ins that night; but the part I like best was the furthest distance we got.  Just before turning back for the night we stopped at an abandoned Carmel Beach. Not even the surfers were up and we could walk all the way until we stood in the shallow crest of waves with blackness above us, below us, and far out to sea.
Except for the lights.  In the waves as they died and dried into the sand, here and there were cold little fainting stars of bright blue. Phosphorescence it must have been. And though we searched the sand we brought back in a bag to find the little sources we never did.  All there was to prove they had been there at all was the memory of the moment of silent blue stars on the beach.