May 27, 2002

• Now, before going on to the first of several things I pecked out on the laptop yesterday, I have some questions to answer and some comments on your comments.

  Nanny, as I see it, we are all ONE and each of us is special and different, no conflict between those two ideas.  I sense some defensiveness in your comment and want to assure you that although I would  not choose to be other than as I am, I do not think others should be like me.  Different…and special:  I like it that way.

  Portia:  No, I’ve not always lived in Alaska.  I came here to protest the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline almost thirty years ago, half my lifetime.  I never again wanted to live anywhere else.  I don’t think cold has any effect on intelligence or verbal ability.  I have observed, however, that a lot of brilliant people are drawn here.  It’s a great place, but forget I said that.  It’s starting to get crowded and californicated.

  My stuff may read like fiction, but everything I’ve written here is either straight out of my memoirs or right from the heart.  No bullshit.

  Regarding our favorite MisFit, you wrote:  “I guess when Sarah went to Alaska, is when she met you, and you have taught her your beliefs.”  Nope, she was my daughter in one of the past lives we shared, but in this life we connected when she found my ad for psychic readings in a magazine.  We first met face to face when I visited her about 9 years ago.    Later, she came to Alaska because I was here.  I have not knowingly taught her anything, but when she seemed to be getting addicted to my readings, I did suggest that she learn how to find her own answers. 

  Beliefs are another matter entirely.  I’m trying to transcend all of mine and trade them in for some real knowledge or just let them go and admit that I don’t know everything.

  Hilde, do I know you from SFWED, or is it just a coincidence of names?  I’m also known as “almost there”.

  Nimue, Todd, Kris, Terry, prophet and all, thank you for the attention.  You know, don’t you, that our focused attention is the most powerful force we possess?  Now here is something else for your attention:

  Loosends

  I came to Xanga a few weeks ago on the theory that a journal would help me make sense of ambivalence about my addictive behavior. The practice of journaling had been highly recommended by one of those enigmatic old crones who visit my dreams sometimes. My kid suggested LiveJournal, but my Anam Cara was here and I’m partial to names beginning with X, like Xocoma and Xanga.

  I wandered around, found my old friend and made a bunch of interesting new contacts. Then you guys started giving me feedback on my dilemmas. It was insightful and useful. Thanks.

  Very soon the subject shifted and I thought I’d found my long-lost middle-aged “little boy”, but his dad never responded to my emails. The shock of the discovery popped my consciousness back to the era when I’d last seen my second husband and elder son, and I related some stories from around that time. 

  I reminisced here about my dopamine addiction–the bubble baths, remember?  Dopamine is just one of the neurotransmitters involved there, and one of my favorites. Endorphins are nice, as well.

  I started a story about a loaf of lettuce and a head of bread… and I told my second-worst prison horror story, but neglected to relate the positive stuff about the slammer. One of the most beneficial things in there was the time… time to study mythology and folklore, uninterrupted time to meditate and travel on other planes.

  Now, all of that strolling down memory lane, plus the insights gained as I reflected on it and on your feedback (thanks again) has allowed me to confront the shadowy fact of my essential ambivalence.

  The full moon approaches, and then Mercury will go direct and I’ll be ready to get back to work. Now’s a good time to tie up some loose ends. First, I must say that you, my regular readers, are either an incurious bunch, painfully polite, or so psychic that you don’t need to ask questions. Is no one interested in why I went to prison or for how long?

  Here’s that story: In ’69, I’d escaped from the Hells Angels with the help of a speed chemist, a wholesale speed dealer, and Page Browning, one of the original Merry Pranksters. I had hepatitis from a dirty needle and could not, would not, quit shooting speed. A couple of young married-just-out-of-high-school newbie speed freaks got busted for dealing and gave up some of their connections in a deal with the DA.

  Getting busted saved my life, dried me out, fattened me back up a bit from my low weight of 95# (I’m 5’7″). Friends said they’d hated that yellow-skin-stretched-on-a-skull look I’d had. I’d always hated the way my hair frizzed, how my skin crawled with speed bugs, and the suicidal depressions if (when) I ran out of crank. Quitting meth in the drunk tank of the Lane County Jail was so horrible that I was able afterward to avoid becoming dependent again–effective aversion therapy.

  Just getting busted was a lucky break for me. Then we really got lucky. The only drug in the house was about ten grams of cannabis. No speed or anything harder, no pills or paraphernalia, just a bag of weed in an otherwise empty old purse. My old purse. I got probation on a three year sentence by pleading guilty.

  I ended up having to do the sentence anyway, because I violated my probation by getting married. I got out on parole after fifteen months.  In prison, I’d learned to program in Fortran II. My parole plan involved going to college in a strange town and avoiding contact with all my old friends. I took a heavy load of classes in math, electronics, and both hard and soft sciences.

  Then I met Stony, a heavy-drinking Vietnam vet with PTSD. We shoplifted a chainsaw and I made it out of town ahead of the cops when one of the people who lived with us let me know they had busted Stony.

  After the trip to Galveston and back to California on freight trains with Robbie and Rocky, two of the people who had been living with us before the unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, I holed up with Aunt Goldie in Morro Bay until Stony got out of jail by showing the cops where he’d buried the chainsaw.

  Then we hitchhiked to Oklahoma with a different Rocky and a guy named Jim like the one who had been traveling with Stony and the other Rocky when I met them (just one of a series of weird synchronicities happening at the time) and this is where the loaf of lettuce and head of bread come in.

  
  

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  With the spiritual upliftment from the peak experience in the San Antonio freight yard, I glowed. I had the look and psychic feel of one who has been touched by an angel. I could hold my head up, shoulders back and pull off a good impression of a normal decent citizen. I had enough confidence to walk into any big supermarket or K-Mart and boost the bare necessities of life for myself and my traveling companions, without drawing to myself any unwanted attention.

  As we hitchhiked across country, Jim and Rocky stayed out of the stores. They looked too suspicious. Stony and I would panhandle if there were enough people around for that, or just walk around picking up coins off the ground, then go into a store and buy a head of lettuce and a loaf of bread. I would conceal on and about my person various meats, cheeses, fruit, vegies, beverages and such, and we would feed four and often more for the price of a loaf of lettuce and a head of bread (somewhere between twenty and fifty cents at the time). Often, I was able to trade foodstuffs for a place to crash. It was nice having a roof over my head once in a while.

  Then, after Jim II and Rocky II had gone their own ways, and Stony and I were heading for Boulder, Colorado, I got picked up on the parole violation warrant. I spent about a month in the Boulder City-County Jail, awaiting extradition. By this time, I was con-wise enough not to sign away my rights… let them come after me if they wanted me that bad.

  And it turned out they didn’t want me that bad. Although simple possession of marijuana had been a felony when I was busted in Oregon, the law changed while I was incarcerated and it became something nearer the level of a traffic ticket. The amount of weed I’d had was never considered a big deal in Colorado.

  The staffs of the two governors got together. A letter went from Gov. Love to Gov. Lamb (or other way ’round: Liz Dexia strikes again!) suggesting that keeping me at Colorado’s expense, for violation of parole on an offense that neither state then considered felonious, was not such a good idea. The Oregon governor granted me a full pardon, and I got out of jail free.

  
  

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  I’ve left out many of the most interesting details, and I’ve probably brought up a few questions in some of your minds. I never, for example, even touched on how I became such an expert shoplifter in the first place, or how I rationalized it.  For that, I’d have to go back about ten more years.  Do feel free to ask any questions, but be aware that I intend to reserve some of the details for publication in my memoirs, and for them you’ll just have to wait until I’m done. Anyone know a good literary agent?

  **Aw, geez! One of my neighbors just fired four or five fairly long bursts with some kind of automatic weapon. Not my favorite sound, that’s just about the only serious drawback to living in this neighborhood.

  Aargh! There he goes again. The old fart just said the guy at the end of the block told him he planned to take out a few trees and set up a shooting range. Then he added, “…and he’s the only one I know of around here with an AK-47.” One thing I can say for the old fox, he has a good ear.

  • 1:23 pm
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