Traveloque Part Two; I meet The Man on the Beach.

The D.C. Jail is what passes for state prison anywhere else. The peculiar nature of The District of Columbia makes it so. People were doing life in there. Before I was transported to D.C., I was in a Maryland jail where “The White Rabbit” (the moniker of the Narcotics agent who tracked me down) laughed and made fun of me with his lugheaded henchmen as they shaved my head. Actually, this is not nearly as bad as it might have been if I’d gone into the D.C. Jail with long hair.

My first time in I did not have the degree of skill at certain things which I acquired later. But there is no question that I had the protection of the divine. That can’t be argued. As uncertain as I was of myself and as dark and corrupt as this particular dungeon was; a hotbed of jailhouse rapes and terrible beatings with the complicity of the guards, there is no question I was looked after because I passed through it unscathed.

I had a girlfriend, Darren Jennings. Her father owned Springfield Firestone in Springfield Virginia. He was an old school dad but his daughter must have prevailed upon him, or something did. Six months into my first stay he bailed me out sight unseen. I spent three of those months at St. Elizabeth’s’ John Howard Building for the Criminally Insane undergoing mental evaluation.

I played the game through the grinding boot of the court ritual and the probation system until the bail had been returned. As far as I was concerned I had done nothing wrong, nor has my mind changed, so I promptly sent a postcard to the P.O. detailing this and bid him farewell. I then took off for San Francisco, CA.

In Haight Asbury I hooked up with some teenage junkies from D.C. at their apartment on Filmore St. One of them was just 14 years old. I knew them from before where the periphery of our circles overlapped. After a few days there it seemed like a good idea to me to take them down to Big Sur and do some acid on the beach with the intention that they might get off of junk. I had a run in with Charlie Manson during this time, either just before or after the event that follows. Some out of this world adventures worked as a prelude to this but space once again forbids further details.

We piled into a VW bus and drove down to Big Sur. We wound up at a place called Lime Kiln Creek and paid the son of the owner 3 bucks for the carload. There were a few other people there, a number of guys and one solitary lady with child who didn’t appear to be with anyone. The greatest music of the last century played from a state of the art system in one of the cars. I disbursed the acid and then went my solitary way for initial reflection. In my hand was a copy of the I Ching which I had obtained during one of the aforementioned adventures. Later down the road, everything made sense. But while I was there, on this day, I had little opportunity for objective thought. I was never allowed to step outside the thing and analyze it. Neither can I remember all of the details but I can relate much of it and the general overview. All of what occurred was responsible for what took place a few months later in a very private house in the Virginia woods.

There was a man sitting cross-legged off by himself on the beach. When I first saw him I thought he was an Oriental. Indeed, I asked him if he was Chinese. He said no. For some reason I asked him if he was twenty eight or so. He seemed some years older than me. He said no. I sat down before him and asked him if he knew who had written this book. I didn’t display the book. It was just in my hand. He said, “I think a king and his son.” He expelled air forcefully from his nostrils as he spoke and his head would cock to the side. His voice was clipped. His face was arranged along visible lines of force. I would say, think of the figurines of Japanese and Chinese sages. He was exactly that in appearance.

He was wearing desert boots, they looked like those Clark models, a pair of pressed brown chino’s and a white t-shirt. He looked immaculate except for his nails and that he needed a shave. His nails as I remember, some of them were broken and there was dirt under them. His hair was short and bristly. His body was just like that of the bodies you see on the statures of Shiva and the various bodhisattva statues- exactly, powerful, symmetrical. He moved with an undulating grace and deceptive speed. I know now that the cobra hood was realized above his head. I knew nothing of these things at the time. The way he moved and walked cannot be accurately described by me; like a cat, like a serpent.

He held his hands, all the time I was with him, in just the way a carriage driver would hold the reins of the horses, between thumb and forefinger. The Saturn and Apollo fingers were drawn in against the palm and the little finger mimicked the forefinger. Here is our conversation as I remember it.

“God is a serpent. God is sleeping and this is his dream.”
Me: “But God’s going to wake up right?”
Him: “I don’t know.” (he said this frequently and later I was saying it all the time myself and really knowing, with visceral conviction, that I did not know)
He rises to his feet, seeming almost to just materialize there and says-
“Everything is under control, take the reins.” He gestures forward and I see two seagulls flying off and yet connected to lines of force extended from his hands.

I asked him why he wasn’t in the city where people might profit from his wisdom. He said, “I don’t like being pushed around.”

Then he said, “I like to fuck but I despise deals.”
I said, “but you don’t have to make any deals. “ He replied, “Deals have been made.” There was a sense of sorrow that I got from him at times, but it was more than that. It was more like the far reach of many years.

We walked a ways back toward the creek and ran into this fellow Donovan and his girlfriend. This Donovan wanted to string a huge bell across the valley. This is one of the sorts of things you ran into during these times. Heh heh. Later a close associate of mine ran into the fellow and he confirmed all of what happened that day. It is interesting to note that in most every case there have been witnesses to what might be considered unbelievable events. This would not qualify as such- except in respect of what follows.
I forget a lot of what got said here but something was said about how there was nothing to ever be worried or concerned about. For some reason I said, “What about the Chinese?” meaning the communists. The girlfriend laughed and said to me, “Don’t you know you’re God?” I didn’t know how to integrate such a thing but she in speaking had drawn close to The Man on the Beach and he rose up quickly just as you would imagine a cobra might, angling away from her and saying- it didn’t seem to anyone in particular, “Yes, you’re God.”

I can’t remember anything else except when we were walking back and while crossing the creek he spun around and said to me, “You’re a celebrity here you know.” I still don’t get that. Anyway, we gravitated over to the music and I stood next to him- joints were passed around, occasionally he would share in one. He danced in a close to the body timeless rotating way, his hands before him. I remember thinking how beautiful it was the way he handled his disability. I thought he was crippled. I noticed at some point that he was tumescent. His cock pressed against his trousers. But there was no sense of sexual strangeness. Everything was not only fine but beyond fine. I could see into the skin of everyone there and there was a sense of brotherhood moving through the music that I have since experienced very few times.

As it got dark, the junkies were in sad shape. The acid hadn’t done anything and truthfully I never spent any time with them. That wasn’t why I was there, although I suppose it was a good intention on my part. They wanted to go, soonest. Several people said to me, “You should stay.” The Junkies said I should stay and The Man on the Beach said, “Yes, you should stay. I didn’t stay. I thought it was my duty to shepherd these fellows home. I regret this more than anything else in my life. So we left.

Even seeking brevity I see this will still run several more posts, sorry about that. Next up we follow the events that lead me to the house in the woods and what happened there.

I should add that this man was fully realized and one of the immortals. There is no question of this in my mind considering what followed. I don't know what progress I've made in respect of this. I often feel I was much closer before and have only deteriorated since or barely treaded water. At least I'm on the other side of the firestorm that engulfed my life the last couple of decades. It would be nice to come up for some of that rarified air I used to breathe.