"Cash, be careful down at the pond!" my mother called after me. Words of wisdom, considering that I couldn't (and still can't) swim.
I didn't care though. It was one of those idyllic Indian-summer days that seems genetically engineered for little golden-haired seven year-old boys. A day for fishing and looking to birds and trees for the keys to the mystery that only reveals itself to the young, the insane or those under the influence of certain psychedelics...and, oh yea, to those in love.
We were visiting the farm of my aunt Valerie and my Uncle Ray. My parents were up at the farmhouse talking about whatever it is that adults talk about. I didn't care. This day, this cow pasture, this pond, were mine; Created for my sweet, devious seven year-old brain alone.
I looked over my shoulder as I skipped down to the pond. I watched the farmhouse getting smaller as the distance between us got larger. I thought about perspective. I thought about vectors and angles and other things that I had read about. I'd been reading since I was four. I had a marvelous thirst for all books, especially ones about science. To me, the world was one big playground of my own creation, or at least of my own interpretation. I was constantly re-inventing my reality based on the combined magics of science, religion, and observation.
When I got to the pond I stood and smiled back at the sun. It was ripe in the late afternoon, and sparkled its golden flakes on my longish (for a seven year-old) golden hair. I thanked my god for the fusion of hydrogen atoms 23 million miles away that produced the warmth on my happy face.
I stretched my arms out to the sun and yawned. Then I took my sneakers and my socks off, sat down at the pond's edge and got ready to kill some fish.
I dipped my little feet in the water. It was cold, but I didn't care. I squished the mud between my toes, thinking of the millions of years of erosion that had turned hard rocks into this soft mud. I took a worm out of the paper bag that contained my Styrofoam cup of bait. I looked at it squirming in the sunlight for a moment. Then without hesitating, I stuck a hook through one of its hearts and plunked my line into the water.
I sat there for some time, watching the sun sink in the sky a little, and thinking lots of thoughts. Little-boy thoughts. Fishing thoughts. Science thoughts. Fun, enchanting thoughts.
I thought, with some glee and pride, and a little shame, about my expulsion from Sunday school. At first I'd liked Sunday school. I'd also liked church. I liked the lessons and stories in Sunday school. I liked hearing about the wise hippie from Bethlehem who tipped the tables of the money changers and turned the world, as a result, on its ear. I liked hearing about his early following of inquisitive (and sometimes treacherous) men, and his inquisitive, Beautiful, and brave women. I liked church for the pageantry of it all, the stained glass, the cadence of the words, the ritual and the music. Oh yes, the glorious music. I loved the choir; that legion of farmers and dentists and mill-workers and their wives. They transcended their lot in life and became angels every Sunday. (It would be years later, at the School of Jesus in the Field, that I would actually sing in a choir, and get expelled from the choir for smoking cigarettes.)
Um...the music. The thunderous organ, with those amazing, throaty bass notes that would rattle the rafters in the church, and shake my lower back and make me squirm in my seat and smile.
I guess I thought too much for my Sunday school teacher. She was some poor old Episcopal marmey matron who looked like a good orgasm would kill her. She was the defender of the Lord's will to me, though, as important to me as any scientist. That is, until one day, when she told us that the world was only a few thousand years old, and that all of the world's critters were created in a few days, not over millions of years. The scientist in me smelled a big white lab-rat. I did my research that week, and the following Sunday, brought her two pieces of evidence as irrefutable to me as the bible was to her. One was an article from Scientific American, about Carbon-14 dating. The other was an Encyclopedia Britanica entry about the theory of evolution. She listened patiently to me, and then, in effect, changed the subject.
That week, I wrote a story that explained, in my mind, how the theory of evolution could co-exist peacefully with the creation theory. The basic synopsis began thus: "Adam and Eve were amoebas."
When I showed it to her, she called the priest, and then my parents. I suddenly found myself the only boy in recent memory to be excommunicated from Sunday school.
It was not the last time I'd loose standing in a group for thinking too much and sticking to my guns. But it was the first time I realized first-hand that knowledge is power and that power scares parroters of other peoples words.
I should have figured this out before. All of my heroes at the time, Jonahs Salk, Albert Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, David Cassidy (I loved the partridge family. They were my earliest favorite group. My mother used to get me to wear clothes I hated by telling me she had seen David Cassidy wearing the same shirt.) were strong, free-thinking men who didn't have the phrase 'You can't do that' in their vocabulary. Either they had edited it themselves through years of empirical thought, or maybe, just maybe, some divine intervention had deleted it. Maybe that's what makes men great, I thought to myself; The absence of that phrase in their neuro-cortex. (It would be years before I would consider the possibility of the existence of great, free-thinking women. I'd have to kiss a few first.)
I sat at the pond watching the nibbles on my line and thinking these and many other thoughts. I was more watching the thoughts float by then actually thinking them, as actual thought requires work, and goddamnit, this was my day off.
The bobber was jumping at the end of my line, playfully taunting the place where the water threatens to join the sky, held in place only by the crushing air pressure that I knew to average 29.35 pounds per square inch. Finally it dove under the skin of the water. I had a bite! I was busy daydreaming though, and was barely aware of my luck. I was busy watching my (?) thoughts float by on the imaginary screen in my head. At the exact instant, more or less, that the fish struck, the screen went blank, then was filled with blinding white light. Not so much white, but every colour at once, including some I'd never seen before (Perhaps infra-red and ultra violet? Perhaps even further to the left and to the right of the dial; Microwaves and sound and radio waves? Regardless, it was blazing and Beautiful. )
Then, words began to form on the screen. Well, not really words, and not really images, but a completely formed thought expressed in some sort of endoceptual binary code that somehow fit my DNA. Actual elapsed time was close to nil, and in less time then it took my fishing bobber to go under the surface, return and dive again, I suddenly had a complete understanding of the true nature of God, put into terms that a mortal seven year-old scientist could understand. and it was thus;
The universe is a dream created for my benefit. And the dream exists only in the minds of three giants who have no bodies and live in the sky. And they spend most of their time playing poker and smoking cigars.
I was so knocked out be this revelation that I forgot where I was. No, that's an understatement. I was more altered in consciousness that early-autumn day then I would ever be again in my life. I momentarily forgot not only where I was and what my name was, and what my species was, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what kind of energy form I was. I was a single cell organism, or perhaps all single celled organisms, at once. Or maybe I was a rock. Or a small village of lichens on a moon of Saturn. Or my grandfather. And I was (We were?) squashed down to about two dimensions (Or maybe five, but I didn't understand tesseraction yet. It would be at least two years before I would read "A Wrinkle In Time.) This sensation lasted an eternity of frozen seconds in my mind, and perhaps five seconds in "real" time. Somehow my neuro-fishing brain function went into auto-pilot. About the time I was recovering from the down-loading of this glaring knowledge, I was landing a Beautiful , shimmering, rainbow-opalescent, 12-inch, blue-gill fishy, all flopping and drowning in air at the end of my line.
I felt a certain empathy for it, as I was, and still am, about as home in the water as this fish was in the air. My whole life, whenever I get into water up to my neck or deeper, I panic. I experience a sensation similar to being strangled. (I think, but can't be sure, that someone held me down and strangled me as a child. To this day, I hate hands on my neck, even in a lover's caress.) I panic and begin to have an asthma attack. (I have asthma, and am allergic to smoke, and I smoke a pack of cigarettes or more a day and have for 15 years. Somehow I can still sing like an angel...)
This feeling of aqua-phobia is almost identical to the sinking, drowning feeling I used to get whenever a doctor or nurse would stick a needle in my perfect body.
I looked at the fish flopping on my line. Was it sent by the three discorpereal giants in the sky as an affirmation of their existence? I couldn't tell, it had all happened so fast. I took the fish in my hands and removed it from my hook. I held it and petted it a little, loving the feel of his slime in my hands. I saw his powerful mouth gasping for air, watched his primitive gills opening and closing. suddenly I got an impulse to throw him back as an offering and affirmation to the giants that now equaled GOD in my head. Sometimes when I didn't keep a fish to eat, I would throw it as hard as I could at the skin of the water, where it would lie stunned for a few minutes on the surface, then regain consciousness and swim back down to his watery world. This time however, I simply let go gently at my feet and watched it swim happily back to his family. I'm sure he had a great story to tell the other fishes, and was probably received either as a hero or a liar (do fish lie? hmmm...) Regardless, it must, I thought to myself, be quite an amazing thing to a fish to spend a few moments, however painful, in the other world above the sky.
I had fished and learned enough for one day. The sun was going down. I decided to go back to the farmhouse and see my aunt, uncle, mother and father. I decided not to tell them about God reveling themselves to me. I knew that my family would consider it a flight of fantasy, a product of my very developed imagination. And I knew it to be much bigger and more real than that. I knew it was the truth, and I wasn't about to have the truth tainted by the disbelief of others, even if those others were people who loved me.
I decided to just tell them about the fish I had caught, the blue heron I had seen. (They were an endangered species that frequented the pond.) I told them about the flock of geese that had flown over my head and squawked their odd song at me. My favorite Grampa, Lyle, called them Canadian honkers. An avid hunter, he loved the 'honkers' and would never shoot them. He would tell me stories about their habits and games, in between playing reels and jigs on his fiddle and quoting bible verse to me as my amazed self sat cross-legged at his feet, loving every enchanted moment. He was the first in a long series of friends who've died on me. I was ten. I cried for three days, and will never forget him for living.
On my way up the gentle hill through the cow pasture that separates the pond from my aunt's house, I heard a rustling in the grass. The scientist in me (Or perhaps the little boy; maybe they are the same person.) decided to investigate. I walked slowly over to the clump of wild wheat that seemed to be the source of the sound. I peered into the tall grass and saw a small garter snake. Naturally, I reached down to pick it up, first gingerly setting my fishing rod and paper bait sack on the ground. The snake detected my movements and took flight, eventually resting in another clump of wheat. As I reached down to pluck him up in my hands, I noticed the purple rust of ergot mold growing on some of the wheat. I knew from reading that ergot was the precursor to the drug LSD, as well as being a powerful poison, medicine, and psychedelic in its own right. I also knew that bread from ergot infested wheat and rye was the source of the hallucinations that caused erratic behavior and visions in many of the women burned as suspected witches during the middle ages.
I gently picked the snake up in my little hands, and marveled at his (To me, all reptiles, insects and fish were male. Cats were all female. Dogs could be either, depending on what was between their rear legs.) majesty. He shimmered a thousand colors in the setting sun. He looked at me with his cool, mysterious, black, translucent, cataract eyeholes. We looked at each other for some time, and I decided to keep him as a pet. I explained this to him, speaking earnestly and supplicativly, and he seemed to agree. He at least seemed resigned to the idea, even though he was secreting the milky substance that snakes squirt from their neither-regions when frightened. Perhaps this is why people think that snakes are slimly. They are not. Anyone who has ever beheld one knows that they are glassy, cool to the touch, and seem wiser, in some ancient way, than we. They have been around a lot longer than people, and like cockroaches, will probably be here long after we blow this place up. That seems fitting and right to me. Who better to inherit the earth than insect and snakes. I have always felt that man, and especially men, are silly in a lot of ways. War is, or at least most wars are, a good example of this silliness. Maybe that graffiti I saw when I was squatting an abandoned factory in DC was right. Maybe "War Is menstrual envy."
I put the snake in the paper bag that had held my bait, and walked the rest of the way up the hill to the farmhouse, being careful to dodge the landmines the cows had littered the field with.("Cow patties," my cigarette-smoking, delinquent cousins called them.)
When I got to the top of the hill, I decided to put the bag with the snake in it in my dad's car. I would have brought it inside to proudly display to my parents and relatives, but didn't, as my mother had a general abhorrence of all things that creep, especially spiders and snakes. Pretty strange for someone who had grown up on a farm (Both my parents had, and also had a farm of their own before I was born.) but I guess it made sense in light of the fact that my parents had left farming behind. They'd moved to Welchton, the bustling metropolis of 3000, and set up life in a big house with a teenage son, a nine year old girl, and their darling baby-boy, Cash. Dad was a real estate agent, Mother was a happy housewife. That was 6 years ago, and they were still going strong.)
I put the snake-bag in the backseat of the sleek, black, large sedan, and shut the door. Then I went into the house, saying, in a loud voice, "Hi honey, I'm back from the club," which is how I always announced my arrive.
My mother was pouring tea, and offered me a glass. I took it. They wouldn't let me drink coffee, and I enjoyed tea. It was relaxing and stimulating at the same time.
"How was the fishing, son?" My Uncle Ray inquired.
"It was fun. I caught a pretty big one, but I threw him back. I also saw a flock of honkers."
"Grandpa Lyle and I saw a huge flock of them yesterday," offered Aunt Valerie.
"It's that time of year, all right," said my mother.
This degenerated from here even further, into the sort of small talk that adults use to whittle away the time left in their limited spans. For Christ's sake, I'd just seen God, and these folks were talking about the weather!
"I'm gonna go outside and watch the sunset," Said I, turning on my heel and spinning around.
"We'll be ready to leave soon. Enjoy yourself.'
"O.K. mother. I will."
"Of course I will," I thought to myself. How could I not, I now held another key to the understanding of the universe.
I walked through the dimly lit hallway, marveling at the fresh smells of the farm house...hanging herbs, food cooking, my uncle's pipe. Even the scent of cow-dung encrusted work boots by the door contributed to the formation of that heady perfume.
I opened the front door and was amazed. The sun had slunk even lower in the sky in the few moments I'd spent inside. The sky was awash with a million colours, made just for me by the giants in the sky. It was perdition-orange, jade-blue, frozen lake hell-violet, and a color I would later come to call 'lysergic purple.'
I sat on the front porch and contemplated my good luck. Sometimes I couldn't believe how amazing the world was, and how it was all created just for my benefit.
By the time the sun was down, I found myself in the backseat of my dad's car. I didn't recall getting up and walking there. That sort of thing happens to me a lot. Later in life, when I was playing in a rock band, sometimes I would step off stage and not recall any of it. It would be a blur that seemed to have only lasted about two minutes. I would call this 'Out-of-body bass playing.'
I looked around my feet and found the brown-paper snake-bag. I picked it up and peered inside. He was not there! He must have crawled out while I was out drinking the sunset.
I felt horrible. My little pal was gone. I also felt bad because I was horrified at the possibility of the snake crawling across my mothers foot and giving her a heart attack.
My mother and dad came out to the car, all happy and chattering about banal things. They got in the car. My stomach was sinking into my feet, but I attempted to maintain composure.
Later, I told my dad. We never found the snake...I think it crawled out a vent. My mother, however, refused to get into the car ever again, and made my dad sell the car soon after.
I was 5 years old when the first man landed on the moon. I have very vivid memories of watching the landing on the television. The images I witnessed that day on the enchanted box transformed me forever. I decided then that I wanted to be a scientist.
Even today, I still want to be a scientist. and in some sense I am a scientist, and I am going to continue to be one. I have only ever wanted to be three things. Age 0-5, I wanted to be a railroad engineer. From age 5 to age 12, I wanted to be a scientist. Since age 12, I have wanted to be a Rockstar.
("Say it. say it. The universe is composed of stories, not atoms."-graffiti in San Francisco, 1994.)
Another image that burned into my young mind via the enchanted box and changed me everlastingly was the Vietnam war. Age 3-6, I would watch it on the news every night. Each evening, the carefully poised talking-heads would relate the atrocity with stoic slate-gray detachment. They would flash still photos and pre-steadycam video tapes filmed by running camera men who were being shot at while they filmed. These images of 25 years ago are as fresh as yesterday. Even fresher. I don't have a very visual mind. I cannot close my eyes and picture what is in front of me at this moment, but I can close my eyes and picture the young men dying on exotic soil while their lovers and families grieved 10,000 kilometers away.
I have been since to the Vietnam memorial wall in Washington DC and cried my silly little eyes out. I have met some of the men who fought, and made it back, if not in one piece, at least alive. You can often meet them at methadone clinics, rehab facilities or the welfare line.
I felt, even at age 5, that war wasn't for me. I would nightly watch the football-style scoreboard of "our" dead vs. "their" dead, and gnash my little teeth at the TV set.
One morning, I hid behind the couch and refused to go to kindergarten. I liked excuses not to go to school. I would threaten to have an asthma attack to get out of some task at school. the teacher said "go ahead." and quelled that. I learned early to milk sympathy for physical ills.
Hiding behind the couch and refusing to go to school, however, felt real. My logic went thus; "If I go to school, I'll have to grow up. If I grow up, they'll make me a soldier: I'm not going to school."
We had a very cool foreign exchange student from Belgium living with us. Her name was Hilda. She talked me into going to school that day. She told me of her two brothers who were solders. She told me how brave they were. She told me how handsome they looked in their uniforms. She told me how proud of them she was. How proud her family, nay, even her country, was of them. I went to school that day because I liked Hilda...but I didn't buy her story, and I still knew that something wasn't right about kids dying in Vietnam.
(Maybe it was because one of the songs that my beloved sister, Felicity often lulled me to sleep with was, "Where have all the flowers gone?" (The other song was "Puff the magic dragon.") Maybe not. I felt that war was bad more than I felt anything...and I loved my sister and still do. My dad used to take me and my best friend and bath-buddy, Pepper, down to watch the trains. I used to bring my toy tool kit filled with plastic tools to "fix the train in case it broke". Later in the day dad would often take us down to Lake Erie to watch the sunset. After that fireball steamed 93 million miles into the water, we would jump into Dad's car, drive 9 miles up the hill, and watch the sun set again. I love my dad.
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