Remember When the Peace Began?

Remember when the Peace began? It was the first day of the week -- my mind comepletely wasted, I became a total freak.

Friend Ravenheart send me an amazing letter y'day -- you can read something about where he's coming from now here at his "Bipolar Shaman" site. The letter inspired me to pull out something I wrote oh, maybe ten years ago and dust it off a bit.

Here's the story, such as it is: On Friday, January 25, 1973, I lost my mind. Well, I didn't lose it so much as, it being overheated and spinning around madly, some gears and springs sort of popped and flew off on their own in various directions...

For three days I was in living partly in an alternate reality: the world had been destroyed by the atomic and hydrogen bombs; all that we thought was reality was nothing more than the collective memories of the public mind -- and they were slowly fading into a restless night, cold, dark and ugly.

I found my mind again, but it wasn't it very good shape: rather ragged around the edges, cut and bruised -- I've sometimes wonder why I bothered to get it back. In fact, when I think about it, I've spent not a little of these past decades trying to lose it again...

Some of my best song poems, Deep Water, Lay Down, Take a Lesson from Mary and, of course, Crazy Bird are responses to that experience and, surprising to some I suppose, they are full of faith, hope and love.

At the end, I had an odd conversation of sorts with what I thought of as a flaming mandala that told me, among other things, that all that is holy and sacred, all the saints, both hidden and unknown are contained within its scintillating patterns.

Having tried too hard to find answers to questions of Hope and Truth and Love, I went into my hell and there, in hell, I found love -- my Love...

On Friday afternoon, as the door closed behind me, I realized I had forgotten my key; even as I heard the click of the lock, I realised the mistake I had made...

Well: there was nothing to do about it; who could say I would ever return, and if I returned, as what would I return?

My Love is a dancer, light on her toes -- my Love is a rainbow, completely unclothed, my Love is a diamond both polished and uncut.

My Love gives me the world in one rain-drop, a drowning flood flowing forever, the ground slowly sucks it up.

Before my journey was over, I would end up telling a couple of LDS misionaries that they could go into town and "...become traffic lights if they wanted to", but, as for me, I was going to go "...out into the fields and become a bush"... Recalling that incident, I have to laugh a bit. Being at the center of my mental hurricane, the internal logic was crystal clear to me, if to no one else.

The delusion that the bombs had fallen -- that was also quite logical, the newspaper headlines were screaming that "Peace would come on Sunday" That the papers were referring to Vietnam completely escaped my notice as I had, so to speak, bigger fish to fry...

I say there was a internal logic of sorts to the delusions I experienced during those days. But that does not mean to say that my thoughts were cogent, or even coherent -- in fact, as I began stepping the flights of stairs down, down, down to the streets of that grey, winter afternoon, I had already forgotten about the key. When I returned a few hours later I was surprised to find that the door was locked. So, I smashed the window with a big stick I had found in the Wilderness.

With every eye blink: hypnogogic images flashed behind my eyelids; when I opened my eyes, yet another world, strange, unknown...alien...was revealed. My mind was in a constant turmoil of desire and dread, constantly permutating. I embodied thesis and antithesis, fascination and fear; and hovering over it all, like some crazy bird -- a flaming wish to know the "Truth".

Truth? What is "truth"?

A good question, or maybe meaningless: I suppose it all depends on how you ask it! That was Pilate's question you know, and the bible says that the accused man before him gave no answer -- or, was the answer in the silence? There is a legend, you know, that Pilate died a christian martyr's death. Like as not the story is only legend. But if true, or even partly true, then Pilate perhaps, like so many other, found the Answer to the Question: "...eli, eli, lama sabachtani?(!)"

It's hard to be a hero and it's hard to hold your breath, it's hard to face the fact that you are facing death, but once you've faced it all, you can surely face the rest!

Take a lesson from Mary, take a lesson for free, take a lesson from every living thing you see.