Just about to finish a book by Irvin Lazlo with very dense information on the new physics and how it relates to the holistic order of the mystics. Very, very informative if you have the patience to get through stuff that most of us could never understand on the mathematical level. Humbling, too: if you think you're smart, as I often do, this will make you think twice.
More on that when I end vacation. For the last blog until then, I feel I should mention something that happened - or, more exactly, that I found - that is truly amazing. The one book I have published up to now, Dream Weaver (at Amazon and Kindle), is about the life of a certain segment of us baby boomers in the early 70's involving cosmic consciousness and the use of mind expanding (and some other) drugs. In my particular case, I set out, broke, on a hitchhiking trip that altogether lasted about a year, and the adventures I then had and the people I met are the primary subjects of the book. I write in the Foreword that all was on memory, as I had no notebooks, nothing to go on, and that was true when I wrote the book. Many of the adventures probably merge or split characters, and undoubtedly, many of the facts are wrong, although I do believe that the more important aspects are correct. Still, all on memory. Or so I thought.
Not long ago I was looking for college transcripts to apply for some teaching jobs, and I came across a notebook from the U of Colorado. I assumed it was from my U Michigan graduate days, for everything before then has been lost or thrown away in all the moves made since. But when I looked inside, I found it was one of two notebooks I had taken with me on my hitchhiking trip; and not only was it one of the two, but it was the most important one, having the most relevant information.
Too understand my shock, one must realize that I have thought of that notebook many times over the decades, because of the poems, lyrics, and notes inside. I had thought that it had not only been lost, but lost before I even ended my hitchhiking. Until a few weeks ago, I had thought I had left it in one of the cars that had given me a ride. That is, I have not seen it since that hitching adventure. I have since moved, traveled, lost, discarded - done so much that almost nothing is left from my pre-grad student days. What little WAS left has been presumed lost since my parent's house roof collapsed in a rain storm and all books and paper products were ruined. To have this notebook pop up is literally, to me at least, a miracle. I have no idea how it survived nearly 40 years of movement UNKNOWN to me, traveling with me, I suppose, everywhere. As said, I did not even believe it to be in my possession. How?
And why? Why turn up now? There were some things of great interest in it; for instance, there is a section titled "Dream Weaver" where I wrote about the episode (just days after it all went down) that would become the namesake chapter for my book. I had not remembered this at all - it just happened that that particular title came to mind after I wrote the book. And in another section, I wrote, "I just got the feeling that what I am writing is a kind of a time capsule - that it will all be pulled out some day to explain this time." And it now has been.
To finish, though - overall, what I read made me feel embarrassed. I should not be - I was an idealistic 20 year old at the time, and I should give myself slack, but that person reminds me too much of myself to do so. He is almost me, uncomfortably close to being me. I have changed less than I had thought - more in the veneer than in depth. And it is embarrassing.
Perhaps its appearance was meant to show me a miracle of sorts, for it truly is. But also, to ship a little humility my way. Although I believe that I've had enough humbling experiences already, it migh just be that I am wrong. And maybe a little more sympathy towards the self and others of idealistic stripe is called for.
In any case, amazing, and proof - and I feel sometimes that I need it - that what I have written of in the book really happened. That seems almost as much an impossibility to me now as finding the notebook itself. FK
More on that when I end vacation. For the last blog until then, I feel I should mention something that happened - or, more exactly, that I found - that is truly amazing. The one book I have published up to now, Dream Weaver (at Amazon and Kindle), is about the life of a certain segment of us baby boomers in the early 70's involving cosmic consciousness and the use of mind expanding (and some other) drugs. In my particular case, I set out, broke, on a hitchhiking trip that altogether lasted about a year, and the adventures I then had and the people I met are the primary subjects of the book. I write in the Foreword that all was on memory, as I had no notebooks, nothing to go on, and that was true when I wrote the book. Many of the adventures probably merge or split characters, and undoubtedly, many of the facts are wrong, although I do believe that the more important aspects are correct. Still, all on memory. Or so I thought.
Not long ago I was looking for college transcripts to apply for some teaching jobs, and I came across a notebook from the U of Colorado. I assumed it was from my U Michigan graduate days, for everything before then has been lost or thrown away in all the moves made since. But when I looked inside, I found it was one of two notebooks I had taken with me on my hitchhiking trip; and not only was it one of the two, but it was the most important one, having the most relevant information.
Too understand my shock, one must realize that I have thought of that notebook many times over the decades, because of the poems, lyrics, and notes inside. I had thought that it had not only been lost, but lost before I even ended my hitchhiking. Until a few weeks ago, I had thought I had left it in one of the cars that had given me a ride. That is, I have not seen it since that hitching adventure. I have since moved, traveled, lost, discarded - done so much that almost nothing is left from my pre-grad student days. What little WAS left has been presumed lost since my parent's house roof collapsed in a rain storm and all books and paper products were ruined. To have this notebook pop up is literally, to me at least, a miracle. I have no idea how it survived nearly 40 years of movement UNKNOWN to me, traveling with me, I suppose, everywhere. As said, I did not even believe it to be in my possession. How?
And why? Why turn up now? There were some things of great interest in it; for instance, there is a section titled "Dream Weaver" where I wrote about the episode (just days after it all went down) that would become the namesake chapter for my book. I had not remembered this at all - it just happened that that particular title came to mind after I wrote the book. And in another section, I wrote, "I just got the feeling that what I am writing is a kind of a time capsule - that it will all be pulled out some day to explain this time." And it now has been.
To finish, though - overall, what I read made me feel embarrassed. I should not be - I was an idealistic 20 year old at the time, and I should give myself slack, but that person reminds me too much of myself to do so. He is almost me, uncomfortably close to being me. I have changed less than I had thought - more in the veneer than in depth. And it is embarrassing.
Perhaps its appearance was meant to show me a miracle of sorts, for it truly is. But also, to ship a little humility my way. Although I believe that I've had enough humbling experiences already, it migh just be that I am wrong. And maybe a little more sympathy towards the self and others of idealistic stripe is called for.
In any case, amazing, and proof - and I feel sometimes that I need it - that what I have written of in the book really happened. That seems almost as much an impossibility to me now as finding the notebook itself. FK
RSS Feed