Category: Prose

At some point on the ride north, while many on the bus had become friendly and were engaged in various conversations, I noticed a girl towards the back who was keeping to herself. There are a number of ways of keeping to oneself and her way was clearly out of shyness, as she kept looking up and glancing over at others on the bus. It seemed she was yearning to talk with someone but was afraid, so she stayed on the fringes and pretended to read her book. This assessment was merely conjecture on my part but I decided to risk approaching her and introducing myself. She smiled and said a few words in reply, but haltingly. She had a pretty face that had been scarred on one cheek and her upper lip appeared to have been damaged and stitched back together at some point in her past. She wore a hat and her long dark hair cascaded down over her shoulders. I asked her about the book she was reading, and I told her about mine and this broke the ice. I felt an affinity and kinship with her, and she reminded me of the friend I had met when I was interning for the neurologist; the one who had been grateful for his accident because it enabled him to become a better person.

As we became friends, we played a few card games and eventually, as we talked about our lives, her story came to light. Several years earlier she had been in an accident, however, unlike my other friend, her life had been quite wonderful before it, and the accident didn’t leave her feeling happier about her condition. She was on a college volleyball team and on one of their trips to an away game, the van they were in crashed and rolled over; several of her teammates were killed and she was left with some damage to her brain and the scars on her face. It is difficult to know what to say when confronting tragedy. I expressed my sorrow to her, but really it felt shallow and not extremely helpful. As we continued to talk we somehow ended up holding hands which was better than talking. We spent most of the trip to Seattle together, talking, playing cards, and just being silent together. It is difficult to know another person, especially in a short period of time; it can be hard even to know ourselves, with whom we spend all our lives. But there is something comforting when another person takes time to listen and try to discover us and who we are inside, even if their attempts are unsuccessful. I remember trying to do that for her because it seemed the accident had left her feeling very alone, self-conscious and alienated from others. I could relate to these feelings, so I understood how she felt, even if my reasons for feeling these things came about from very different circumstances and causes.

As I write, I can still see her tears as they formed in her deep brown eyes, and the one that ran down her cheek as she told me her story, and I can’t help but feel something inside me that imagines those tears she shed were also my own. As I looked into her eyes, I was also in some way seeing into my own eyes, and discovering something essential about myself. When we reached Seattle we had to say our goodbyes since I had a plane to catch and she had to continue on her journey home. But as with all such meetings, though we say goodbye, we take something of that person with us as we journey on.

Yoni and I met during the break in southern Oregon while swimming. Actually we had spoken a little on the bus the night before but while we were in the river suddenly he exclaimed that something just swam past him, and a few seconds later I saw something swim swiftly between my legs and downstream. I am almost certain it was a river otter, I can’t think what else it could have been; it certainly wasn’t a fish. We started laughing and reenacting what just happened and we became friends over that incident.  It turned out that he was also going to Alaska on the same flight as I was and we decided to stick together once we got to Anchorage.

In the meantime he convinced me not to travel to Dillingham but to Kenai with him instead, since it was closer and less expensive to hitch there by car, rather than take a float plane to Dillingham. So we hitched to Kenai together and set up our tents and waited for fish to arrive at the fishery so we could begin working. But the fish never arrived. After several days of waiting and eating only bread with garlic salt, we decided to hitch across the peninsula over to Seward and try our luck at the fisheries there instead. I wasn’t prepared for the vastness of Alaska, even the little corner of it we began to call home; the mountains, the sky, the wilderness, it was all wild and invigorating just as I had hoped, and so very big. We made several trips back and forth between the fisheries in Kenai and Seward. I really don’t know why I only ate bread with garlic salt during this time, I suppose because it was cheap, and it was before I learned the pleasures of ‘dumpster-diving’ for my meals.

On one of our trips between the two towns Yoni lost his tent, or it was ruined, so we began to share mine. It was a tight fit with all of our gear and it wasn’t very waterproof so there were many mornings we woke up after a night of rain with all of our things soaked. In Seward we were often woken by the local police who didn’t want us camping so close to town. We camped close so we could check in with the fishery and be ready to work if and when the fish arrived.

I had saved $600 for my trip to Alaska and used most of it for my bus and air fares. Eventually my money ran out and I still hadn’t found work. Fortunately the gas station was hiring in Seward and I got a job at the register. The best part about this job was the free chili I could eat while working. This lasted a little more than a week before they realized I wasn’t twenty-one, and since they sold alcohol, I was laid off. I was so sad to lose my source of free chili. The next day the fish arrived, we were hired to work the slime-line, and we could move our tent onto the fishery property and set up in their tent city.  Showers were available too! No more washing in streams, or ponds or just out in the rain. We had finally made it, and things began to look brighter.

Working the slime line isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. When the fish arrive there is little time off, you get up around 3:30am and put on your clothes and raingear, still wet from the night before, and take your place at the stainless steel tables, pick up the metal scraper with the water-hose attached, and start scraping out the blood that runs up the back of the salmon, one after another, as they pass continually past you on a conveyor belt for the next sixteen hours. You get a couple breaks each shift, but you never get away from the smell of fish, or fish guts, or slime. Eventually the flow of fish ends, and you’ll get a few days off until the next ship arrives.

We lived this way for the next six weeks or so; working feverishly for several days and then relaxing for a couple days. During one of my days off I met a very drunk captain of a small fishing boat at the marina in Seward. He had been born in Harbin, China but was Russian. He tried to convince me to join him, and his surly and very creepy shipmate, on a fishing expedition. Even if he wasn’t so drunk that I had to prop him up as we walked down the dock to his boat together, and even if his assistant didn’t look like a serial killer, I wouldn’t have gotten on that boat with them. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to predict the numerous bad outcomes that could happen to me alone with the two of them at sea.

The beginning of August arrived and with it the close of the salmon season just over the horizon. Before I left to begin my own journey home, I splurged and bought two beautiful salmon from the fishery to send home ahead of me. I just needed to smoke them. A friend on the slime-line told me of a guy up the highway a few miles that had a smoker that I might be able to use, so I took my two fish and went to visit him. We struck a deal that I could use his smoker if I painted the side of his barn. He was a follower of the Baha’i faith, and while I was staying with him he tried to teach me their history and beliefs. I didn’t learn much about this, but I did feel like I was playing a part in The Karate Kid as I worked painting his barn.

After I finished painting he taught me how to use the smoker. He showed me how to find the proper diameter alder branches, how to cut them to the correct size, peel the bark, stack them, and prepare the marinade for the salmon. After he showed me the proper use of the smoker, how to tend the fire, and a few other details, he left me for the night to tend to my fish. I still needed to cut and peel quite a bit of wood but this would give me something to do throughout the night, since he estimated I’d be sitting out there, behind his shed, tending the smoker all night until early morning.

It was a beautiful clear and cool night. The stars and the moon came out for a while sometime near midnight or thereabouts. There was a full moon, and its silvery light cast down upon me through the bare alder limbs, illuminating my surroundings. The smell of the alder and the fish in the smoker was delightful and I couldn’t help but feel giddy with excitement for the freedom of this place, the wildness of Alaska, and that I was now a part of it.

(to be continued)

~FS

As a backup plan to UC Santa Cruz I also applied and was accepted to a small private liberal arts college only thirty minutes from my home. The following fall, after my summer in Alaska I would attend and study Mandarin Chinese, major in a program called, “Meaning, Culture and Change” and eventually study abroad for six months in Taiwan.

I expect this decision comes out of left field for the reader, based on the progression of my narrative up to this point. Such is the mind and whims of one in their late teen years, as I suspect many of you will remember from your own life history. My six years as an undergraduate will end up taking several more twists and turns, before I actually am awarded my bachelor’s degree.

But first I’d like to share a little about Alaska. They call it ‘The Last Frontier’, and that is an appropriate title. Vast and wild, a lot like one might imagine the wild-west back in the day: untamed land, animals and humans. Alaska is an exciting place, a place to spread your wings and throw caution to the wind. It also is the land of my birth, and it had an allure that called me back, to find my roots, and to create new histories.

My father was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Ketchikan, Alaska when I was born in the late 1960s. We only lived there less than a year before he was transferred to Cleveland, Ohio and then eventually to San Francisco. So I hadn’t lived in Alaska very long, but still I claimed it as my own, being a native. I considered myself on par with any other native Alaskan though I was separated essentially at birth. As a further claim, my family had also lived for a time on Kodiak island, but that was before I was born. Nevertheless this fact further emblazoned Alaska onto my consciousness and instilled in me a burning desire to return and see it for myself.

My plan was to take a bus to Seattle, fly into Anchorage and then take a float-plane out to Dillingham and work at a cannery there, save up money for college and make my way back home, somehow, in the late summer in time for the school year. I had a backpack, some changes of clothing, a tent, ground-pad and sleeping bag, new boots and jacket and a few other odds and ends. For some reason my mom convinced me to bring baking soda with me. I have no idea why, perhaps in case I met a baker stranded in the woods trying to make cookies. She was thoughtful that way. It seemed strange to me, but I packed a few tablespoons into an old film canister and tucked it into a side pocket on my backpack. It remained there throughout the entire trip, unused and forgotten until customs officials found it as I returned into the US, crossing the border from Canada. More on that later, but they didn’t believe my story that it was just baking soda.

My primary goal was to see Alaska but equally important to me was to make money for college and as a by-product of this goal I would get to see what it is like to live on the street, in a tent, without a home, and with very little money. I planned to have all but the smallest amount of money sent directly home so I couldn’t touch it while in Alaska. Our town had plenty of homeless and I grew up feeling badly for them. It seemed so difficult not to have a place to call home, and for many of them not to have a family. I figured this would be a good way to develop some empathy towards their plight, and gain some insight into the details of their way of life, by living like them for a summer. It was a good idea, and in general I did learn a lot of things about life on the streets: terms like ‘dumpster-diving’ which describes how I found many of my meals that summer, intimate experience with rain and mosquitoes with no means of relief, recurring hunger, the joy of finding a means to get clean, and the overwhelming feeling of gratitude to be treated like a human being by others instead of like a piece of garbage. But in the end, after losing everything on a train that I had hopped, a few too many sleepless nights on park benches, in abandoned trailers, or under truck canopies for sale, the novelty wore off and I began to really understand the horrors of life without a home and the toll it takes on a person, as I felt my own grip on reality starting to fray. Thank God the summer was only a few months long. But more on these things later.

I began my Alaskan adventure catching The Green Tortoise bus near the marina in Berkeley, California. This bus line is famous for cheap fares, friendly service and unorthodox seating. In fact, there aren’t any seats in the bus, except for the driver. I handed my backpack to him, he placed it in the compartment under the bus, and then I hopped aboard. All of the seats are removed in a Green Tortoise bus and are replaced with mattresses, front to back and wall to wall. Strewn about on the mattresses were the bodies of my new travel mates. I picked my way in and around my new bedfellows until I found an opening about midway down on the left side where I could sprawl out and relax. That night the bus drove straight through, without stopping, from Berkeley to someplace in southern Oregon while we slept, played cards and the guitar, and sang songs. The next morning we stopped at a campground for a pancake breakfast, spent some time in a sweat lodge, and swam in the nearby river. After a couple hours break we continued on our way to Seattle. On the bus I met two people; a sweet girl with a tragic story who became my partner in a brief two-day romance, and a young Israeli who had just completed his mandatory service in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and was traveling the world to get away from home and enjoy life, who became my summer companion in Alaska.

~FS

Accusation, slander and libel are the weapons of the man without self-control. He wields his tongue wildly, flapping it in all directions, like a sword slicing the air, inflicting wounds without number, without care, like a crazy-man. Anger floods his mind; his thoughts running amok while he seethes with violence, looking for places to spit his venom. What response is there to such a man as this, in the throes of his vicious and slanderous babblings? There is no reasoning with the man without self-control, or the one intent on his own opinion. For he will guard his point of view like a bear guards her cubs, attacking without mercy anything which threatens it, or which casts light upon it, revealing its narrow limits and faulty foundations. No, the best response to the man spitting fire, is silence. Silence is the salve and the remedy, because there is no arguing with a man who lacks self-control. Set reasoning aside, it is useless now. Pick up kindness and gentleness and fill your mind with good wishes for his peace and happiness. Do this, but know that he won’t recognize your love. You will not get any credit for your sacrifice. But do it anyway because it is the best thing to do, and by so doing you will not cause greater harm. In time, you may even help heal a broken man; if not him, perhaps yourself.

~FS

The hillside where I took the bandages off my eyes, the one which I routinely cleaned of garbage, and which was a refuge throughout my childhood and youth, overlooked a small valley on the eastern edge of my hometown. From the vantage point it afforded me, I could see across the valley, and from this height, everything in life seemed smaller and more manageable. The problems I had down below seemed to soften and become muted from up here, while the smells of the grass and the oaks which surrounded me filled my mind with a sense of hope and peace. After spending time on my hill I would usually return to my life with a sense of confidence and courage, with a clear mind and renewed strength. I loved the slopes of this hill almost as if they were members of my own family; I knew in detail the trees, the rocks, the contours of the ground, where it grew steep and where it flattened out, its paths where others trod, and its mysterious clearings hidden from view. My first real adventure took place on my hill, when I was about six or seven, and the two young daughters of our house painter joined me on a perilous journey to the top. They were each a year or two younger than I and I took my role as their guide and protector very seriously. Near the top there is a steep area, from a slide that had occurred many years ago, and this was the most exciting part, as one had to crawl up its face mostly on all fours, and just before it flattens out again, one must maneuver carefully around a large rock face, or fall to one’s certain doom. I explained this to my two young friends so they knew the danger they were facing, and I told them to stay close. We held each other’s hands as we worked our way around the large rock and then finally, relieved to have survived, ran joyfully the last hundred feet or so to the crest of the hill.

My hill was a magical place, a simple retreat, and the environment for much of my youthful contemplations. It was the first place I contemplated death, its meaning, and the fact that I would die someday. My own death seemed very remote to me though and it wasn’t easy to think about. I found it more interesting to think about what I would have done with my bodily remains. I devised an elaborate scheme, only slightly grounded in science, but mostly a product of my own fantasy and science fiction. I envisioned I would have my body placed in a glass coffin and placed at the top of my hill and my body would be covered in strips of potassium because I remembered reading someplace or perhaps observing an experiment in which potassium was ignited and that it burned extremely hot, with a great deal of light and energy emitted; so I would have my body covered by these potassium strips and powder and then lit. In this fantasy, all of the energy from the potassium would consume my body and this would be collected in some type of gadget on the end of the glass coffin, and that collector, which was also a transformer, would convert all of this energy from the potassium and my body, and focus it into a laser, which would be shot across the valley. And that’s how I’d end; in a golden potassium explosion condensed into a vibrant red laser shot out across the sky. It was fantastic, and the idea made me smile, and chuckle a little. I wondered if it could be done. That was the extent of my musings on death while in my late teens.

Although I did often think and worry about my own mother’s potential death. This filled me with fear and sorrow. Since her divorce from my father, which occurred at the tail-end of the general timeframe my three older siblings all moved out of the house, my mom was all the family I lived with through my teens. Within a fairly short period of time our family went from six down to two. It was strange, disconcerting and played a role in my desire to keep her close to me. The tendency I had to protect my two little friends on my hill, also manifested as a very strong desire to protect my mom and to make sure we were safe together. I believed that she was the only stability I had in the world, and to some degree, I would carry this belief within me well into my adulthood, long after I had moved out of the house and lived on my own, geographically far away from her.

Professor Reynold’s offer to get me into the neurology department at his former university back east was still in effect, and he periodically inquired about this with me and what I wanted to do about it. I’ve heard it said that in each person’s life there are only a handful of times that big opportunities come, and we need to be ready to act when they come, before they pass and are lost to us forever. Whether or not this is true in a general sense it certainly has been true for me, and this educational opportunity I was not prepared to act upon; I was incapable due to my attachment to my mom and my need to be close to her. I couldn’t conceive of moving to the other side of the country and spending the next four years, perhaps more, perhaps the rest of my life, that far away from her. I lived for adventures and new experiences, but only when they had an end in sight. This opportunity was too open ended and there was no sense of returning home from it. Professor Reynolds and I never really spoke about any of this since I’m not sure I even understood these feeling I had, so over time the plan to help me just petered out naturally. I still helped him with his distribution of materials for the blind and our relationship stayed engaging, but the original purpose for our meeting, and all the promise that entailed, slowly dimmed and eventually vanished.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so do I; new adventures and pursuits took the place of the old. I made plans to work in Alaska the coming summer following my one and only year at the Junior College. I also applied and was accepted to the psycho-biology program at UC Santa Cruz for the following year. Psycho-biology is the study of the biological basis of behavior and mental processes. It seemed like a great fit for me and the campus was only three hours away. But I still wasn’t ready to move even that far away from home. I didn’t even take the short drive to the campus to check it out, I just let the opportunity pass me by once again. I wasn’t ready to take serious steps towards my adult life because I felt unprepared and ungrounded, which was the truth. I had a mind full of ideas and a willingness to try nearly anything but I didn’t have a solid basis within me from which to live. I had fragments of notions about myself, but no cohesive identity or knowledge of myself. The only stable and trustworthy thing I had in my life at this time, in an emotional sense, was my mom, so I needed to stay close, at least for a little longer.

(to be continued)

~FS

Professor Reynolds inspired me by his example, to give of my time and abilities in service to others. His tireless work for the blind also brought to my attention the issues that blind people face every day and made me wonder what it would be like to be blind. So I devised a short three day experiment to cover my eyes and live as a blind person might. I’ve written about this experiment in a short article entitled “Reflections on Three Days of Blindness”, which includes my journal entries and some commentary for anyone interested in greater detail.  I’ll just include here, a few of the main points from that article, as they relate to this narrative.

The means of making myself blind were simple and very effective. First, I covered my eye sockets with cotton balls. Next, I covered over the cotton balls with large gauze pads, and then I used surgical tape to tape down all of the edges of the pads to my face, sealing entirely around the pads which covered my eyes. Lastly, I put on sunglasses. This last step was entirely for cosmetic and reasons of vanity, because, after the first two steps I couldn’t perceive even the tiniest trace of light, shade or shadow, so the sunglasses were completely redundant and superfluous.

During my three day experiment I kept a detailed journal using my typewriter: tracking my activities, my thoughts and feelings, and my conclusions. The portions in italics are from the journal I kept while doing the experiment:

Prelude to Day One of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

“Awaiting blindness, Friday night, February 12, 1988. 11:00pm. is something

            like what I imagine awaiting one’s execution might be like. As I wait, I try

            to indulge my senses as one who was about to die might enjoy and cling to his

            last meal, or his final breath. I’m scared, even though it isn’t permanent. A dark,

            dark prison is what it might be like, or maybe it’s really a doorway to a greater

            consciousness, a larger freedom. Who knows—I don’t. I’m writing this before

            my evening reading and meditation which, when I’m done, will be followed by

            covering my eyes for the duration of three days—a relatively short time but

            enough time, I think, to glimpse into the world of darkness, to somewhat

            feel what it is like not to see. I will uncover my eyes on Monday the 15^th at sun-

            set, on the hill overlooking my home and surrounding neighborhood. Until

            then these pages will be written by a seeing man who doesn’t see. Or does

            he? Goodnight.”

 Day One of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “I am feeling very frustrated. There are so many things I can’t do. I am constantly

            running into things or knocking them over. I’ve broken a glass and spilled a lot

            of water today. Victories include riding my unicycle around the block and walk-

            ing around Safeway to get some whipped cream. In both cases, I was accompan-

            ied by my good friend, Nicole. However, I felt very isolated at the grocery store.

            I can’t help but feel that people with handicaps aren’t liked by those without them.”

Looking at this entry and remembering back to that grocery store visit, I can still recall a sense that I had of being looked at in a way that felt like unkindness, and even though I couldn’t see them, I felt that people were uncomfortable with my presence.

           “Vision. It is important to imagine and to create images to compensate in a

            way for what I can’t see. To be able to picture in my mind what my surround-

            ings look like is crucial. I wonder what people who were born blind can picture?

            I bet a lot of their imaginings, their images, are better than our reality. I wonder

            if they would be let down to really see. To get a good look at the pollution in the

            air above Santa Rosa and the disgusting trash that lines every road and even

            invades the innocence of my hill. No, I bet they would love to see even that.”

           “Memory also plays an important role in my blindness. It goes hand in hand

            with visualization. Remembering where things are and how they are organized.

            In the kitchen I visualize the counter, set down my glass, walk to the stove, turn

            the knob one-quarter turn to the right, crack the eggs and cut the tofu…do I

            remember where the seasoning is located? Yes, it is in the front of the rotating

            dolly on the shelf above me. Add it to the eggs and tofu already cooking, return

            to the counter…remember, and save the glass that I left there…forget, and break

            it. I’ve done both today.

           Visualize the toothpaste going onto the toothbrush. Good. Do I remember what

            my mom looks like? Yes, of course, it hasn’t been that long, but if I was blind

            for a long time I would wish that someone would care, and understand enough

            to ask me to tell them what she looks like. Or ask me to describe a banana, and

            to explain what green is and where it is found. I mustn’t forget and neither

            should anyone else.”

Day Two of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

“I try to smell the flowers I got for Valentine’sDay today but I can’t smell either; I’ve got a cold. I try covering my ears for a moment—complete darkness and silence. No way! That is intense, I don’t want to try that. I’m glad I can hear, the music gives me power. I can feel powerful listening to the music. It fills me with some kind of reality—communication. Not with eye contact, but through the voice. Music is the same whether you can see or not.”

This entry reminds me how important communication and sharing together is to our mental and emotional health. It is easy to take for granted, while we have it so available to us, but when we are deprived of the opportunity to communicate and share, even silently perhaps as we sit together in a room listening to music, the isolation we can feel is very intense and demoralizing. I expect we all know someone in an isolated place, in a convalescent home hoping for a visitor, or shut-in at home for health reasons, or just socially unable to relate with others very well. There are so many cases and so many opportunities for those of us who are enjoying our healthy lives to reach out and communicate with those who aren’t enjoying the same state of wholeness and who need our communication.

Now it is their need, but it will likely be us someday, in the future, that will be in need, and I can assure you, when that time comes, we will hope that somebody cares enough, and has thought enough about this, to reach out and communicate with us when we are alone, or blind, or shut in. The truth is we are all in this together, we are all of the same fabric, the same blood, two sides of the same coin, and we need to care for one another with the same concern we give ourselves.

Day Three of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “I’m still blind. This is the last day. Tonight I take the bandages off. I’ve been having

            the most beautiful images in my head. They are so colorful and vivid. Pictures of

            skies drawn along by the tails of eagles. Illuminated rock walls, shimmering golden

            alongside the deep reds of fallen leaves. An eagles head stares me in the eyes, a

            faint vision before me. A translucent image but strong and full; it comforts me

            and calms me. Another eagle swoops down out of the sky. Full, thick cumulous

            clouds in pastel colors, things I’ve never seen in this way before. I hope I still

            see these things after I regain my other sight. These new visions are wonderful

            although I still run into walls.

            Yesterday I went to the beach with mom. We drove up to Goat Rock near Jenner.

            It was a great day. The sun was warm and the kids of the beach were having fun.

            The sounds of the beach travelled so well, I could hear things a hundred feet

            away as if they were right beside me. The crackling of a plastic bag, the shuffling

            of the sand by a walking seagull, and the roar of the ocean. The birds are chirping

            right now outside my window and a plane is flying overhead. It is still morning. My

            breath is calm and rhythmic like you might expect your breath to be on a morning

            with no worries. There were planes at the beach also, four of them.

            They flew low, I think they were searching for something. The faint roar of their

            engines slowly closing in over me and flooding my ears, then subsiding, allowing

            the crashing of the waves to once again take center stage. The yell of a Frisbee or

            beach ball player explodes from my left. Mom and I eat yogurt and bananas and

            enjoy the warmth of the sun. Before leaving we walk to the edge of the sea. I hear

            it in front of me. It starts with a soft but full-bodied gush which builds up to a

            crackle, something like the static on a radio, and grows into an entity all its own—

            the powerful roar of the ocean and the crashing of the water as the waves pound

            against the sand. Then the fizzling of the foam as it sneaks its way up to my feet.

            It sounds like hamburgers cooking on the grill and I see this in all its red glory,

            the grease bubbling and frying in my mind, sizzle, the meat redder than the red-

            dest red of the sighted world. What accounts for this extra color in my minds-eye?”

Day Three: Final Evening, on my hill, removing my bandages and seeing again:

           “What a drug sight can be; I just took the bandages off. I indulge in the visual

            now and almost fry my brain! Taking them off and seeing the sunset was some-

            thing I couldn’t have foreseen. It was more real and vivid and wonderful than

            anything I’ve ever seen. It was the ultimate in perception! I know that I won’t

            be able to aptly describe it on these pages but this is my best attempt. At first

            everything before me was blurred but only for a short time, and then I saw

            the tree against the background of the sky. Each small branch shimmered

            with its own life, an entity of its own. Deep, dark, blackness, so rich and deep

            like nothing I’ve seen before. Every twig, every limb, burnt savagely into the

            soft blue sky. And then the sun…the sun ducked down behind the trees and the

            bright halo arose from the dark mountain and filled the sky. It then began to

            shrink and as it shrunk it gained intensity until it burst and spurt brilliant

            light across the sky, across the valley, filling my vision with brilliance. What

            remained was a pastel yellow globe of light just above the horizon. To either

            side of the globe, just above the treeline, shot out a bright red line of light; it

            flickered and suddenly vanished. The blue and orange of the sky turned pas-

            tel. The air gained new life from the light of the sinking sun. A bird arose from

            the shimmering tree and shot past me. Then I turned to my left and saw the

            deepest, most crisp shades of purples and blues of the distant and not so dis-

            tant hills. And the hill I was on was pure also; it was green but it was also

            blue. It was both at the same time but it wasn’t confused or muddy; it was

            clarity. I had the feeling about my eyes as if the sights I was should be out of

            focus but all that I saw was crisper and richer than it had ever been. My eyes

            hurt but I kept looking. It struck be that everything I saw was alive and had

            just been born—the world was starting over, afresh! I then turned and looked

            behind me. There I saw my hill, the one I sit on all the time. The trees were

            black and green, all shades and hues, full and real; I was drunk with what

            I saw. Everything reached out and touched me, nothing stayed still, it all

            reached out to me: the purple hills, the dark green trees, my hill, the burnt

            black tree, the sky, and the light of the disappearing sun. All these reached

            out and stung my eyes. I turned to my right and there was a girl. She was

            so small it seemed but also so big. She was beautiful. Her eyes light blue,

            dark blue rimmed, and happy. She was so close but she also seemed very

            far away. I couldn’t touch her but I was glad she was there and I know I

            talked to her but I don’t know what I said, something about the beauty

            around us. This feeling didn’t go away as it seems it would, like so many ter-

            rific things do, but it stayed with me and surrounded me and caressed me

            for a long time. I saw in this way and I felt complete.”

 Conclusion of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “It was an overwhelming experience. I am so glad I got to ‘see’ it. I feel very

            lucky. Now I can see and I don’t know if I care. Sure I don’t run into walls

            or trucks anymore, and I think that’s a good thing, but I feel as if I’ve lost

            something important….

            Now I’m in the harried world of sight where we are way overstimulated.

            We must rush off to school or to work, I have work to get done, I must be

            in certain places at certain times, and there is television and newspapers

            and books to read, shows to see, and sports to enjoy. I think that there is

            too much to think about, too much stimulation. I’m not entirely glad to

            have my sight back. It means jumping back into this whirlwind that we’ve

            all been spinning around in so long. A whirlwind that’s got us dizzy and

            confused, and that stirs up the dust and leaves us with tears in our eyes.

            The tears of our souls crying to escape this tormenting tempest….

 

            What satisfaction I felt from making my meals or making some cookies.

            It seems it would be the same, the feeling of fulfillment, if I had a plot of

            land somewhere and I could wake in the morning and build maybe a part

            of my home, maybe the bathroom today or a windmill for energy. What

            satisfaction that would be, and to plant the seeds that would sometime

            later be my food, and to write and paint and cook—how simple. How

            meaningless and wasteful…but it isn’t. It is simple and it is pure, and whole

            and unscattered, and unhurried, and easy to keep everything in front of

           me. Not confusing; just peaceful…

 

            It was a wonderful experiment and a great ‘vacationland’. Instead of

            travelling far away I travelled within and found a whole world of mir-

            aculous sights and breathtaking beauty—a land that reached farther

            than the eye can see, and that holds more to do than the greatest family

            amusement park. It is a land whose limits exceed infinity and whose

            treasures I’ve only just begun to dig up. This land of wonder is my mind.”

(to be continued)

 

~FS

Blessed Sister Hunger why should I thank you for the ache within me?  Oh, but I do thank you, for clearing the way for me.  You mow down the weeds of passion that block my way and impede my steps, as I strive in search of Father God.  You knock down the brush and make a clearing for me to pray, beneath the trees of aspiration, wherein Brother Jesus dwells with me.  Holy Sister Hunger, I bless you, for your sufferings are simple and pure, and they goad me forward on the path.  Sweet Sister, you carry me when I am lazy, you put your arm in mine and walk with me when I would stop and take a seat.  Much maligned and misunderstood, Sister Hunger, I am sorry that I have scorned you, when in my desires I have rushed to cover you quickly by other means of satisfaction.  I promise now that I will not rush to fill you with worldly food, but rather, let you fill me with spiritual bread.  With you, dear sister, I feel a lightness in my being, so that my prayers and I are carried like feathers upon the wind more speedily to God.

~FS

How wise was your silence, Lord Jesus, when Pilate was ready to lead you down a rabbit hole of arguments and contentions. What is Truth? But you spoke just enough to teach us so many things. Masterful silence, beautiful silence. Quiet in speech and in soul. I see your example in this and follow you. Unprovoked, allowing insults and blows to assail you, you didn’t argue or cast words into the cauldron of debate, you didn’t add fuel to the fire of foolishness which the mind wants to kindle to protect its position, nor did you add pressure to the vents of vanity which rush up like so much hot steam from a turbulent mind intent on argument and justification. You showed us the way of tranquility; still waters in reply to ripples and waves. May we be like you, wellspring of silent waters, rising clear and holy within us, washing through our hearts and minds, leaving traces of divinity to lead us in your way.

Thank you.

 

 

(continued)

I also considered myself something of an advocate and spokesperson for those without a voice. However, in reality I was mostly advocating for myself in these cases. My advocacy in actuality bordered on vigilantism. My last year in high school I determined to defend the rights of my poor fellow students, the ones who drove to school and parked in the school parking lot. In my opinion they were being abused in two ways.

The first was a severe shortage of parking spaces in the lot which made students have to find parking far away and walk to the school. This seemed very inefficient to me and irrational because there were many potential additional spaces in the lot if the curbs weren’t painted red. Of course, there was a good reason they were painted red, for firetruck access. However, the way I figured it the driving lanes through the lot were plenty wide for truck access even if cars were parked along the curbs. So I convinced a friend to join me one night in repainting all of the curbs white to increase parking. The next day was a success, all the curbs were filled with parked cars and it was much more pleasant for my friends and me. I had stuck it to the bourgeoisie on behalf of the workers. It wasn’t long before the curbs were repainted red; but then it wasn’t long after that we had repainted them white again. And then they were painted red again. This time I thought to have a little fun, so we painted them purple to see what would happen. That next morning the announcement over the loudspeaker made it clear that “regardless of what color the curbs are in the student parking lot, parking is not allowed along the curbs.”

The second way my fellow student drivers were being maligned, was in that the parking lot was locked during school hours, so students couldn’t leave. This was a safety risk in my opinion for “what if a student had to leave quickly for a family emergency?” Fortunately it was only locked with a simple chain across the entrance which was simple to cut. Then it was replaced; then it was cut again. Then it was replaced again; and cut once more. Then they installed heavy steel gates with 2″ square bars top and bottom and framed like a large rectangular truss, connected to very strong posts, embedded in concrete. So one night I convinced a different friend to join me with hacksaws and we cut our way through all of the bar and threw the gates into the nearby ivy. My cohorts were liberated once more! Vive la revolution!

At the time I viewed these activities as jokes, in part, and as good deeds. I suppose I knew, in the back of my mind, they would be considered by others as crimes, not as gags. But I certainly didn’t see myself as a criminal, and if I was, it would be of the Robin Hood variety; justified and more than a little endearing. I said earlier that I was very prideful at this age. In addition, I was more than a little arrogant and self-satisfied as well.

In addition to acts like these, of liberation and freedom-fighting; I also used the pen as my weapon. One summer I wrote a letter on behalf of my fellow workers at our summer job arguing that we should all be given the afternoon off for an educational opportunity of a lifetime, and since our employer was all about success in the world, they should afford us this opportunity to contribute to our future success and feel good about themselves for doing so. My employer was The Bohemian Club of San Francisco and I was working at the fabled Bohemian Grove during the summer encampment. Our educational opportunity was to listen to Ronald Reagan give the keynote address. He was one year out of office, and coming to The Grove, and I wanted to hear him speak.

For two summers I worked at The Grove and it was eye opening, and a great job for a kid. The first summer I got to work valet parking at the entrance gate. As a seventeen year old driving Maseratis, Ferraris, Porches and an occasional Bentley it was a pretty good gig. Of course, we couldn’t drive them very fast and we only took them a few hundred feet into the dirt parking area to the right of the gatehouse, but it was still a lot of fun.

Before I go on with the story, perhaps I should backtrack for anyone unfamiliar with The Bohemian Grove, and explain a little bit about it. The Club is very exclusive and difficult to become a member, reserved for the political and financial elite. If you are of the political variety you must be out of office in order to attend The Grove but other than that I don’t remember many rules. The camp runs for two weeks every summer, only men can attend, and the grounds are rustic but really incredible.

My first summer was fairly uneventful since I worked at the main gate and didn’t get in to see very much of the grounds. It was exciting though when a motorcade would approach and helicopters would hover overhead. I remember former Secretary of State George Schultz coming in this manner.

My second summer was much more interesting, as I moved up to be a chauffeur on one of several open-topped shuttle buses that crisscross the entire grounds, carrying members from the front gate to the common areas and on up a myriad of small dirt roads to the individual encampments. These encampments are like camps within the camp, clubs within the club, or like fraternities, with their own rules of membership and exclusivity. Set amidst the redwoods these camps were designed in many styles, there were: clusters of teepees, wooden forts, castles, primitive hut villages, and many other types of structures, all magnificently and colorfully lit at night. Imagine it a little like Disneyland under the redwood trees. They had a rustic veneer but they had many of the comforts of a luxury hotel. Some of the camps were for political leaders, some for certain financial magnates, and others for lesser businessmen or entertainers. I never learned all the details but one learned from hearsay who was a member of which encampment. There were many stories and fables at The Grove.

For all of the crassness, juvenile foolishness and drunken stupidity that occurred at the camp, and there was quite a bit of this, (I can’t recall how many times that first year I saw men urinating on each other’s cars and finding it somehow hilarious, but it was many more times than I wish I had seen) there were also elements of sublime beauty.  My favorite part of the camp was every evening at about 6pm, in the middle of a small grove of redwoods near the commons building, just up from the main gate, a man in full Scottish regalia would stand and play the bagpipes, while the golden sunlight filtered down through the trees and filled the grove with radiant light. The air above him, lightly misted with sunlit dust stirred up from the tires of our shuttle buses, would come alive with the sound of “Amazing Grace” and I would stop my bus and sit and watch him as he played and listen to the sound of the pipes as they echoed among the trees, and lilted up through their canopies.

One such evening I had just finished listening to his serenade, which lasted about twenty minutes or so, and I drove around to the front gate just as Henry Kissinger was getting out of a vehicle. Several men around him hailed me and I waited. The group came to me, spoke a few things just out of earshot and then the rest of the men walked on up to the commons while Mr Kissinger got on my shuttle. Earlier that year I had studied his involvement in opening China, and many other exploits. I’m generally not a political person but I admired his achievements and here we were, just he and I, driving together through The Grove. He was polite, but didn’t say much after our initial greetings and after he had told me where he wanted to go. I generally can start up a conversation but found myself tongue-tied this time. So I just savored the warm summer air, the beauty of the trees, my simple life and the strange incongruity of my little life with driving our former Secretary of State to his destination.

Following this encounter, I also saw George HW Bush, Casper Weinberger, George Schultz again and Ronald Reagan; the place was hopping! But I didn’t get to drive any of them. I did in the end however, get to hear Mr Reagan’s speech. My written request had been denied but it so happened that I had to drive by the meadow where the speech was being given, since practically everyone attending wanted to hear him, and during the course of my business was able to stop and listen to him. My letter hadn’t gone over as planned with my higher ups; in fact, my direct supervisor was very angry towards me, because I had undermined him by going over his head to the top of the club at the offices in San Francisco. The folks at the main offices also didn’t see things my way and I wasn’t invited to work there again the following year. I was disappointed but had moved on as well myself and was ready for different challenges.

(to be continued)

(continued)

A few years earlier, after my parents divorced, my mom went back to school for job training and then back to work to support the two of us throughout my junior high and senior high school years. In addition to her work, we rented a room or two in our home to help supplement our income. A wide range of interesting characters made their way through our home over these years and one of them was a self-proclaimed ski bum who had spent most of his life on the slopes. In the off-season he practiced and taught Yoga, and he moved in with us for a year or so while I was in high school. He gave me a very interesting book on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar which was filled with fantastic photos of this elderly yogi in masterfully contorted positions. I was very intrigued and I studied this book, working at imitating the positions and memorizing one routine in particular known as “The Sun Salutation”, which combines breathing techniques coordinated with the progression of various poses. Over time I became quite adept at this routine, and it helped me to stay limber in both mind and body. I believe there was a philosophical component to Iyengar Yoga but I wasn’t interested in that, I was mainly inspired and challenged by the contorted positions he could work himself into and that was my focus; to learn and practice some bodily self-control.

The book also had a whole section on body cleansing techniques which were amusing, baffling and unlike anything I’d ever seen before. One was called the Vastra Dauti and for this Mr Iyengar showed himself in a series of photos feeding a long strip of moist cloth down his throat and into his stomach; he was sure to keep a firm grip on one end so that he could then pull it back up and out again. As a high school student growing up in northern California, I had never seen anyone attempt something like this. I couldn’t understand how it would cleanse any better than merely drinking a few glasses of water but nothing is better than experience, I decided, if you want to understand something better, so I cut up an old sheet and made myself a long strip, moistened it, and tried to swallow it. This was a bad idea. I didn’t hurt myself but I gagged an awful lot as I tried to swallow it down.

I gave this up and moved on to the next cleansing technique in his book called the Sutra Neti. This one looked equally gross and unbelievable to me, but I had to give it a try. In this series of old photos BKS Iyengar showed me the proper technique for feeding a cotton string up one nostril, through the sinuses, and down the throat where you proceed to grab the end and pull it out through your mouth; then you work both ends back and forth like dental floss, to clean the sinuses. I gave it a go, but it is a lot more difficult than it looked in his photos. Feeding it through the sinuses and down the throat isn’t so hard but reaching in and pulling it back out your mouth is really tricky. And why would you want to anyway? After a few failed attempts and further gagging, I asked myself this question; and I couldn’t come up with a good, or satisfying answer, so I gave this one up too.

But I stuck with the “Salutation to the Sun”. I really liked doing this stretching in the morning every day after I woke up so I made it a regular routine for many years, far into my adulthood. In fact, I still do it on occasion even now. It is great for the back and with the addition of the breathing techniques it is also supposed to help the lymphatic system and assist in the elimination of toxins from the body.

As I mentioned earlier I did not know God. I had my own ideas of God: a collection of ideas pieced together from what I had read from this religion and that one, a little that I had been taught in Sunday school, and fragments one hears here and there. From these I cobbled together my own God, made in my own image.

I also didn’t know real Love, which from a Christian perspective, in a deep and true sense, is God. I devised my own ideas on love as well, not grounded in the reality of scripture or tradition; but in effect, it was self-love with many variations and permutations. It was my own sense of right and wrong that amounted to self-righteousness or a defense of my rights, that when trampled, would amount to a wrong.  My love amounted to feeding my need to be loved, gratifying myself in various ways and expressing anger at anything that seemed to me unfair about the world.

When reading the famous passage on love from First Corinthians I am struck by the difference between the definition of love it gives us from a Christian perspective, and my own definition and how I practiced it on my own. My love didn’t know how to suffer or how to remain unprovoked when someone wronged me. It didn’t refrain from evil thoughts, or endure all things. No, I was easily provoked and if I felt wronged I was quick to defend myself or those I loved. In many way there wasn’t anything overtly wrong with my behavior and by the ethical standards of my society I acted rather well, but I don’t think that standard is very good. Jesus commands us to ‘be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect’; we can’t be satisfied comparing ourselves only with those we know to be ‘worse’ than us. We should compare ourselves with He whom we are to be like, and measure ourselves against His standard. Then we can begin to see things as they really are, including who we really are.

I had empathy towards whatever or whoever I perceived to be the underdog; homeless people, small animals, the hills behind my house or streets of my town, both strewn with litter. I spent some of my free time picking up trash from various empty lots in town, hoping to make a difference. At the very least it made me feel a little better about life, and I enjoyed seeing a small area clean of debris. I especially made it my business to clean the hillside up the street from my home because it was such a special place to me, where I had climbed to escape the world and find adventure and peace ever since I was a little boy of around five. This slope was an extension of my home and it hurt me personally to see people leave trash on it.

Hitchhikers and homeless people also really touched my heart. I wasn’t too concerned for my personal safety, feeling the invincibility of youth, so there was seldom a time I wouldn’t stop for whoever was on the side of the street looking for a ride. I met many interesting people this way. One man claimed to be a prisoner of war who had been lost in Vietnam for over a decade before escaping. I took him to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and heard his tragic story while he sat cautiously in a corner, with his back safely against a wall to prevent attack from behind. He story seemed plausible and I was surprised to hear that men were still held over there even so many years after the war. Another hitchhiker was a self-taught tattoo artist who convinced two of my friends to let him give them tattoos. So we all spent an evening in a hotel room while he gave them tattoos, until he began to act erratically and we had to leave him before somebody got hurt. The real cautionary tale regarding picking up hitchhikers came for me late one night when I picked up a young guy near our local jail. It turns out he had just been released and needed a ride south towards San Francisco. I was heading that way and could take him as far as San Rafael. Things started out fine, he discussed his time in jail, we had some light conversation and then around the midpoint of our journey he pulled out a rather large knife and began cleaning it in a haphazard sort of way. I tried to ignore this and keep him engaged in whatever we were talking about while I began to form a plan to drop him off someplace safe. We were approaching San Rafael so I asked him where he’d like to be let off to catch his next ride. He said he preferred to have me take him to San Francisco. I reminded him that I was only going to San Rafael and then he replied that he thought it would be better if I took him all the way into the city.

“I really can’t take you. I have to stop here in San Rafael,” I said.

“No, I think you’d better take me to San Francisco,” he said while turning the knife over in his hands.

Thankfully I noticed that my gas tank was almost empty and I pointed this out to him and said we had to stop to get more. I pulled into a well-lit and busy station and drove right up to the front door of the mini-market and quickly got out of my truck.

“This is where you get out. Now. I’m not taking you to San Francisco.”

He looked very surprised, scanned the gas station, looked menacingly at me and reluctantly slouched off of his seat and out of my truck. After that incident I resolved to be a little more judicious about the hitchhikers I picked up.

(to be continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(continued, first part in archives from last week)

This same summer I volunteered as an intern for a neurologist at a rehabilitation center in town which specialized in work with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries. How the mind works fascinated me and I thought this would be a great way to learn more about the mind first-hand. Actually the idea to volunteer came to me from a relatively new friend and mentor who I had met the previous fall named Professor Reynolds.

Everyone called him Monti. He was a retired professor of microbiology who had taught at Harvard and then chaired the department at UC Davis for many years; he also held a patent on a common antibiotic. He was one of the first larger than life kind of people I’ve been fortunate to meet in my life and he used his charismatic skills and personality to serve others in ways that inspired me.  Following my trip to South Africa the local paper had done an article on my time there and through this article Monti found me and called my home one evening. He introduced himself to my mom and asked to speak with me. He said he had been impressed with the article and by my motivation, empathy and courage to learn and build bridges with others. He asked that I come meet him, that he intended to help me in my education, and if I intended to pursue international relations of some kind he would pull strings for me to get into a good program, preferably at Harvard he suggested. This obviously intrigued me, so with my mom, I went to visit him.

I was completely unprepared for what he was doing at his home in his retirement. He lived not far from us, in a modest one-story home in an older development on a quiet residential street. However, as my mom and I approached there was a steady stream of USPS trucks coming and going from his home, and his driveway was lined on both sides with pallets of boxes. As we walked up the driveway, this opened onto a large parking area and backyard also practically filled with pallets of boxes. His garage doors were opened and we could see that his garage was also filled with boxes of all sizes, many opened, and books were strewn all over the garage, on every possible surface. This didn’t look like a home, but rather, it looked like a distribution center of some kind. From the dark of the garage came a bellowing welcome and a moment later Professor Reynolds emerged. He was probably in his late-sixties or early-seventies, a little overweight but in good and vigorous health, fairly tall but slightly hunched over. He wore very thick glasses and his head was covered in very short gray stubble.

He introduced himself with the charm and manners of a diplomat and had us sit down with him in the garage amongst the books and packing materials. We exchanged pleasantries and then he got to business, reiterating his offer to help me. He gave us his full attention and responded appropriately to everything we said. I could clearly see that his mind was able to do this while simultaneously doing quite a lot else as well. While we conversed he continued to sort books, and open letters, of which he had a table full as well as bags filled with more letters at his feet near the small table that seemed to serve as his mission control center. He clearly had some grand mission going on here but I couldn’t tell yet what exactly the mission was. If I believed in Santa I guess I would have to say he must be Santa Claus, since this seemed to fit with the observable data.

It turned out he wasn’t Santa but something even better. Rather than giving toys to good little boys and girls around the globe, he was packing and sending braille books to blind people in nearly every nation throughout the world. The US postal service will deliver braille books and equipment for the blind free of charge anywhere in the world. So Monti started what he called, The World Blind Foundation, and became the distribution point for used braille materials to one hundred forty eight countries at that time by his count. He created relationships with schools for the blind throughout the United States and arranged to have all of their old books, braille machines, canes etc that they would otherwise discard, sent for free to his home, where he would repackage and send, again for free, all over the world to schools and individuals who needed them. This is what all the letters were; requests for braille books, hundreds, perhaps thousands of requests flooding in asking him to please send them this particular book, or that series, or a braille making machine, or canes or a set of encyclopedias. Often he couldn’t find the exact book requested and would have to send whatever he could, but in a surprising number of instances, after reading a letter, often addressed to “Uncle Monti” or some other endearing epithet, he would recall seeing that specific book in some area of the garage, or out in the yard someplace, so he would amble off to find it, eventually returning with it in his hands and a big smile on his face.

This enterprise of his was a great deal of work and he worked tirelessly at it, putting in very long hours, working almost entirely alone, with some help from volunteers. I became one of his volunteers and over the next couple years I would often drop by his house after school or over vacations, to help box books, sort newly dropped off pallets, and read or organize request letters with him. During our time together I learned a great deal from him, about almost any topic, which his mind seemed to have a full grasp of and could explain in detail and accurately, but mainly I saw how he used his gifts, his talents and abilities almost exclusively in service to others and I took this as vital inspiration. He embodied selflessness to a large degree, using a lot of his own money for things the USPS didn’t provide, he lived very frugally, and dedicated nearly all of his time to this venture. It was inspiring but it was also a lot of fun to be with him, he told funny and interesting stories about all sorts of things including his classmate George HW Bush, who happened to be president at the time and who attended Phillips Academy with Monti as a youth. He said George wasn’t a very good student and would try to copy Monti’s homework.

I enjoyed these stories but I also was fascinated to watch Monti in action; he seemed to be able to talk anyone into helping his cause, he was very persuasive. One afternoon he called a businessman in Texas, a very wealthy man who owned businesses around the country. Monti was in need of a new forklift to help load and unload pallets and he had done some research and found a business in New York that had bought several new forklifts and were getting rid of their old ones. This business was owned by the man in Texas so Monti called him up to ask him to donate the old forklifts. He was having difficulty getting through to actually talk with the man since he had multiple levels of security and assistants protecting his time.

Monti finally traced his location to the country club where the man was playing golf. He called the club and asked to speak with this businessman and as you would suspect the club staff weren’t going to bother his golf game.

So Monti told the person on the other line, “Now you tell so and so that his parole officer is fed up with all this monkey business and I’m not going to wait any longer. You get him on the line right now or you let him know I will be sending a squad car out this minute to bring him in, and I don’t think he is going to want a scene.”

Within a few minutes a very irate Texan was on the other line, swearing and demanding to know who the … was calling and why the … are they saying they are his parole officer

Immediately Monti struck a conciliatory tone and humbly asked his forgiveness; on a dime Monti was able to change tone and play the part needed to calm the man down, and then actually make him laugh, and finally ask how he could be of help.

Monti told him about the company in New York, which the man owned, that was giving away the old forklifts, and could he find it in his heart to donate them to help the blind children of the world, he would be doing such a great service to help others in need, and it would help so much. Within a few minutes the Texan had called his company in New York and made the arrangements to ship the forklifts to Monti. A week or so later they arrived at Monti’s house and were immediately put to use helping the blind children of the world, just as Monti had said.

Over the course of our time together I explained to Monti that my career interests weren’t really in international relations but more along the lines of neurology or writing. It turned out he still had quite a few friends and connections at Harvard and he could get me into the neurology program if that is what I wanted. I didn’t doubt it, after seeing how masterfully he could manipulate people and pull strings, but as our talk turned more serious about the matter and the plan began to take shape, with action items and tasks to make it happen, I grew nervous. I couldn’t imagine leaving home, leaving my mom, to go to school on the east coast. The idea was wonderful, but frightening, and I felt lonely again just thinking about it.

One of the action items was to intern with a neurologist over the summer after high school and this is what I began doing, as planned. Mainly I did filing, and flirted a bit with his cute assistant. But I did also get to join him on his rounds with patients and get a feeling for the work. I really enjoyed the people in the rehab center, particularly one young man, my own age, who had a serious motorcycle accident the previous year which left him with some lasting and likely permanent brain damage. By the time we met he had recovered most of his motor skills and also was able to walk again and use his hands, but he had difficulty with speech and, as he told me, his mental processes in some ways were like those of a young child. He had to relearn many things and it was difficult and frustrating sometimes but he said that he was so happy that he had his accident and it changed his life entirely for the better.

I was so surprised to hear that and asked him why, and in what way did he mean this; because he had lost so much mentally and may never recover much of it, and he knew this was a fact. He explained that before his accident he was an angry person, and he couldn’t control his anger; he would explode at people and act in a mean way and hurt people that he cared about. But after the accident all of that went away, he wasn’t angry anymore and he felt happy most of the time. He loved life now whereas before he hated life. Now he loved people and could share that with them whereas before he couldn’t express love much at all. He had been given a new life in the accident and while he couldn’t do or understand things the way he had before, he had a much better life and was much happier in it now.

If I learned nothing else from that summer internship, this conversation with the young man was everything I needed to gain from my time there. Knowing things doesn’t necessarily make us happy; being smart is helpful, and being intelligent can help us get ahead in the world, but more important than this, is knowing ourselves and finding the way to inner peace, joy and love. I determined at that time that my goal in life wouldn’t be to be smart, or to get ahead in the world, but would be to find how to be joyful, to live with peace inside and to do it intentionally; and to understand myself so I wouldn’t require an accident to bring me to this state of mind.

~FS