Bill Tre

Moments in time. Snapshots from the past. Memories barely remembered. And so it is.
Objects come and go in our lives. What do they mean? What are they except guideposts?
Born of experience.

I have spoken to you of Bill Tre.

Bill Tre is in prison. He shot a man in Reno just to watch him die...no that is that Johnny Cash song. Bill knocked over a convience store. He got in a fight with an officer. And he robbed a pizza man. One, two, three strikes.
Bill Tre got a car from his father. It was a blue old thing. It had a Jesus sticker on the bumper. Gary said keep that sticker on there so you will remember wherefrom the gift did come.
Bill Tre had some tattoos. "You know they say the body is a temple. If that is so my tattoos are the stained glass."
Bill Tre would walk. With each step he would say the Senerity Prayer. God, Grant me, The Serenity, to accept, the things, I can not, change, the courage, to change, the things, I can, and the, wisdom, to know, the difference.
Bill Tre would sing, pray, live with full force.
I visited him once in prison. He was locked in solitary.
He started taking classes in prison.
Good man.

Dead Center

I have spoken to you of the dead center.

Perhaps something is put into motion long ago. There is an understanding of that thing at that time and it is considered on occasion. Then that thing returns to us with new understandings and new meanings.

I was out in the country one day. I had gone out to pray and some friends came by to pick me up and return me to the house. I was in the passenger seat. Judy was driving the brown truck. Dave Brush was in the truck bed. Judy Judy was driving at a decent clip for a washed out dirt road. All of the sudden the truck came to a halting stop. The front wheels had come off the road and slide down into a rut. High Center. Everyone in the cab seemed okay. Dave flew forward and hit the cab of the truck dislocating his shoulder. We walked back to the house and sent out a crew after lunch to retrieve the truck. Common occurrence it is in the country to hit high center. One of the many reasons I carry a handyman jack in the back of the truck.

Sitting at breakfast this summer. Bacon, eggs, toast. Delicious. Eggs cooked in the fat of the bacon. Bread soaking up the grease. Plenty of Tabasco. Pine trees also scent the warm morning air. It was a summer of revelation and awakening. Little pieces coming together to paint a picture of life. Things unseen coming out of the shadows and clarity of focus upon those items dulled by constant recognition. Leaves shimmer with a new life of the spirit.

Carl said something about being on dead center. I know what happens to a truck on dead center it stops forward movement. Coming to that place is not bad. Philosophically, I thought that the center was the goal. The middle road. I found the middle road and walked it well. Letting loose of the highs and lows. No emotion. No fear. No questions. No movement. Just centered, right there. The goal. Centered. Seeing now, the center is good but it too requires movement. It requires having emotion and living life. It is a peaceful place but that center I found led me to high center. Dead Center. Right there in the middle but dead. So how to come about being centered, being in the middle but alive? Go through the emotions. Surf the waves of the high and the low. Embrace life and all the offerings. Venture out to the four corners but return to that place of comfort in the middle ready again to move.

Honor Society

I have spoken to you of honor society.

In eighth grade I made Honor Society. I had grades decent enough to earn me this honor. I suppose it was a 4.0 grade point average.

There was going to be a ceremony for those who made it to honor society. I told my mother I did not want to attend but she insisted. I spoke with my school counselor and asked to be excused from the ceremony. She insisted that I attend.

I went to the ceremony. It was in the gym at the school. We were all gathered together. I don’t remember the details.

I never made grades good enough to make it into honor society again.

Today, I am making the Honor Society assembly program. I have to make it every year since I know how to layout Microsoft word in three columns. Irony?

I was working on another story today about waiting. It turned into a pity party so I may/may not return to that one.

Philo

I have spoken to you of Philo.

The first summer of Sundance. I was alone in the truck. Summer free. Sundance had come to its completion and adventure was at hand. My brother let me use his pickup. It was brown. A great truck really. I think it finally died last year. I left out of Mission sometime in July. Heading west across the plains and spiritual places of the Siouan speaking tribes. Close Encounters does no justice to Devils Tower.

Driving on to Seattle. There I met up with an old lover. Time had made the relationship grow apart as with the distance of half a continent. They say to not make a change in the first year of sobriety. I had met her the first week of being clean and it filled a place inside left empty. A year later now and the damage done. Really, I seemed to be a much worse person sober then drunk. The alcohol and drugs served as a buffer on my thinking and actions. Without that blanket of fog in my mind and without the tools of a spiritual life my first year in was destructive to others and to the self.

I grab the ferry to Lopez Island. Stephen White is living in a tree house on the island. I do not know where it is really. I drive and drive. Hitting all the sights on this little place, reminiscent of a small cape town. I picked up a hitchhiker going to the communal house on the island. A place that looked tempting to get lost for a while. There was a beautiful summer camp there, on a small inlet. Teepees lined the shore and artwork hung on the walls of the longhouse. There was an AA meeting in a small white church or community building. Three or four old guys were gathered. Talking about what I don’t remember but kind in letting a strange traveler join them for an hour. I had posted a note at the service station on the far side of the island and the next day Stephen had answered with directions to his tree house.

When I arrived there it was in need of some repair. Stephen had taken to Tequila by this time and was hitting a half empty bottle pretty hard. Never having known him to drink before, his mood was ill and his astute control of the universe somewhat shaky. He dried out over the next couple of days as we patched holes in the floor and roof of this abode. We set out for Seattle again and said goodbye to that city for what would be twelve more years.

I would be heading back to Oklahoma to start fall classes and the White Man was heading back to the Cape or Guatemala or South Carolina or New Orleans or Hawaii or somewhere in-between. I would get him to somewhere along the way. Highway 101 down the coast and my nerves were nearly shot. Close proximity with this dude and no substances to take the edge off was nearly to much for me. I had known Stephen Temple when I was deep into the sacrament of ganja and the elusive effects of psychotropics. With a mind barely a year above the haze I was still most difficult to interact with (the past use of was is not appropriate, am).

We cruised down the coast. California, the golden shore. Remember events and times and small glimpses of that journey. Sleeping in the truck under bridges, Stephen in the bed and I in the cab; police waking us early one morning.

Through the redwood forests. Black birds shimmery blue. Trees too large for the land around them.

Over hills and the coast.

Philo, between Ft. Bragg and San Francisco. A non descript town. Up a mountain. Around a dirt road. Through a broken gate. The home of the commune of Spinners. This place is strange. A setting of what a commune of hippy kids following a spiritual path should be. A stereotypical place. A large building for gathering and eating and working. Smaller buildings with segregated sleep quarters. A smallish temple for prayer. The Spinners took a myriad of beliefs and infused them together. A basis of Krishna and Sufism, guided by the lyrics and music of the Grateful Dead, and partaking in the sacrament of the Rastafarians.

Joseph led the Spinners and gave them a place to be. Something to believe in. Purpose. They made clothing to sell. They kept a garden. They sang, danced, chanted, prayed, and dined together in relative harmony. They would travel around the country side and get things unwanted and unneeded; being castoffs of society they created everything from the castoffs of society. They came to this piece of land somehow and developed it and it fit their lifestyle and philosophy.

Morning prayer was always a delight. Gathering in the temple and chanting and drums and dancing. Praise. Jia Jia, Hare Hare, Jia Jia Hare Hare, hare Hare St. Francisco, Jai jai, Hare hare. I did not partake in the sacrament any longer and that did not seem to be a problem. I left them a copy of the big book for their fairly extensive library of spiritual books. They were interested in sweating and the Lakota rituals from which I had just returned. I did not feel like an outsider being with them. They were open and accepting. They would have been a great group to study on communal/spiritual living in the early 1990’s.

A hill. Someone had driven a bus off the road and down this hill. Wedged it into a tree. It was an odd thing to see. Why they did not get it towed out, I will never know. Anyway, down the hill a way, through the trees there was a pond not really a pond but a natural pool of water. It was fed by a fairly large waterfall. Surrounded by trees. Sun splotched in and lit this place well and the trees provided cool shade on warm rocks. Large blackish boulders at the edge of the pool. Climb into the fresh cool water. Clear. Flowing. This water beautiful. Crawling out of the water and spread out on a warm boulder. Sun drying skin and hair. Cool breeze raising flesh bumps. Sitting up on this stone. Feet over the side barely touching the water.

The moment shifts. I am sitting on this rock but not sitting on this rock. I am above me and turning. Up traveling to the tops to trees. Looking down at myself and this pool of water and the water fall and the green leaves, and the black boulders and I know how small I am in this universe. I know how large the spirit is truly.

Stopping in Santa Cruz to see the devastation of the Earthquake of 1989. There was a great Hindi restaurant there that would open on Sunday morning and serve free breakfast to anyone who came. San Francisco, we wandered the city for a few days. Based out of an old Cape Cod’ders home. This dude was like a nuclear physicist or something. He was it great speakers and loud sounds. He had this pendulum hanging in the living room and when the earth would move it would trace in the sand.

I went to Lyle Tuttle’s Tattoo museum and hung out down by the wharf. Some place there would put plastic alligators in the drinks and a friend of a friend worked there. Golden Gate Park and memories or the trippy days we spent in the city just a couple of years before.

We went on down to Lompoc. We called upon Bob and Marilyn Tate. They fed us dinner and gave us beds for a couple of nights. Bob got a kick out of Stephen. He was wearing a coon skin cap. We went to the beach with Ben Tate and tried to surf but to no avail. The Tate’s house had not changed in many years since I was last there. Very pretty place, lush with plants, dark brown paneling on the walls in the den. I remember getting along with Rachael Tate for the first time on this trip. Being adults made a difference because seeing the Tate’s in the summers growing up she and I were always aloof and adversarial. Marilyn passed away a little over a year ago. Seeing Bob, a retired school teacher, this summer was sad and his loneliness was palatable it coupled poorly with my loneliness. The kids are both married with children and seem to be doing well.

It is back to Oklahoma then. I don’t really remember from the coast back home. Being home I am not even sure what came next.

Strange. Stephen and I stopped in Cordell. We went to the swimming pool and cooled off and sat in the sun. It was a lovely day and I imagine that people were wondering where two long haired hippie freaks had come from to end up in this pool in this little town. We went to the Methodist Church and I saw Florence Edwards. For some reason it was a calling to go see her at that time. Necessary. Mary, her daughter, had passed away the year before. I do not think I really said anything but just needed to be there. I don’t know what Florence would have thought about my life and the way I was who it was I had grown up to be. I wonder that now. What would she think of this life she helped direct for those few years of youth that made the most permeate impact upon the psyche. I believe that is why ice cream and coffee are my comfort foods. The memories of growing up and the feelings of joy at the Edward’s home. One day I will write a book about Florence, or the idea that Florence embodied. She was the cookie lady. I think every child growing needs to have a cookie lady.

The Couch

I have spoken to you before about the couch.

I wish I could remember who said it but when it comes to relationships “you always lose the couch.”

My folks got a new couch. They moved the old one out to the garage and it was sitting there for what seemed a very long while. I was hanging out over at the apartment of my new girlfriend and she needed a couch so I asked about taking the one from my folks. They said okay so I loaded this mutli-sectional beast into my brother’s truck with the help of a friend. Now going twenty miles in not really a big deal in the city and thinking back I should have used more rope. We lost one of the chair sections along the highway. I did not know it until we were there and set up. I had to drive back and scour the highway. There it was sitting upright beside a post. Someone was kind enough to move it out of the highway.

It was a orange striped couch. It could form a nice U shape. It was comfortable and really had not been used all that long. I think change was happening and a new couch was in order. This thing was huge anyway for their living room. Zack did not really have a place for it either.

And so. The couch was in this apartment. Really it fit. It was nice to have something of home there as well. Stranger in a strange land kind of thing and comfort was important.

Needless to say we split up. The couch stayed behind. I thought of going up there at some point and asking for it back but never did. I wonder what happened to that couch sometimes.

Great Island at Night

I have spoken to you of Great Island.

Samuel Smith, he has good flip; the greeting on the sign of the entrance of Great Island, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

I arrived near dusk, I think to this place. Walking the trail. Over the dunes. The sea before me. This place is on the interior of the cape. So it is not really the ocean but the bay. The tide is quite. Buffered I supposed. The ocean side of the cape has the huge rolling waves and white caps and surf fishing. Tourists all around. Few come to Great Island. It is a private place. Seemingly unknown to all except seekers and those with friends who share. Stephen White took us to this place the first time.

I am here alone this evening. No shoes. Light jacket. Pants rolled up. Wandering through the trees in the forest of this Island. The smell of the hummus from stepping where no one goes. No trail to follow in these trees. The salt air. Drawn to the beach. Wander down the shoreline. The sun is setting. Not remarkable I think. I do not remember the setting sun.

I climb the dune behind me. A natural indention there. I lay back and settle in. The warmth of the sand. I can feel the coming chill of night on my face and arms and my back is warmed by the sand releasing the absorbed heat of the day.

The sea is calm. Undulating. The sun is gone and the sky is taking on the color of night. Darker and deeper blue the sky turns black. A solid color against the darkness of the water. The water whose color is broken by silver reflections in the waves.

The water began to change color. The sky dark. Already. The ocean blue and black. There was a line a distinct line separating the color of the blue and the color of the black. Like a strange strait distinction of the yin and yang. A deep rich blue and black. Really indescribable this scene. I do not remember stars or the moon. Just that color. The black of the sky on the horizon melding with the black side of the water and offsetting the blue on the left.

Coffee in the Morning

I will speak to you often of coffee to be sure.

I wake in the morning to the sound of a flute. Gentle melodic tones cresting over the hill and trees to settle in dreams and fitful rest. No real sleep it seems just quite darkness between the light. A distinct voice in the night hollering out familiar refrains. Five minutes, just five minutes.

Clothes laid out from the night before makes getting dressed for the day much easier. Impossible to see in a tent in the pre morning light. Amazing though is the times the tent is filled with light in the darkness. Waking to full light. Strait up and out and then stumbling in the darkness a good full hour before the flute even begins to play.

Up and out. Brushing teeth and relieve the bladder over the side of the hill. Toes and shoulders cold in the early morning chill. To the truck and slide out of camp without stirring those who can afford the luxury of sleep.

The cook shack is quite. Empty in the pre morning light. The headlights of the truck reflect back into my eyes and I shut them off. Wishing there was no need to such a beast. This truck who is a friend and gallant steed. We all have our ponies it seems. Gary gave one away once a thanksgiving. Really knowing that we own nothing. Our possessions just transfer. Impermanent.

Routine. Four days of routine. Not enough time to get it down. Just a start. Struggle again. New order to things and manner of setup. Everything ready the night before works best. Coffee from overnight still warm but stale. Firemen need warm coffee throughout the night.

Now nobody really likes the way I make coffee. Coffee is meant to be dark. Black. The Turkish saying, “strong as death, sweet as love, black as night.” Res coffee is typically a light brown. Really if you were to spill a cup on the front of a white silk shirt it would be okay the coffee is so light it would not stain the shirt. So my dark supped up sauce is hardly the thing. However, the coinsurers amongst us kind of like it. These coffee pots are old. They have the old glass tubes showing the depth of the coffee left in the pot. There is no way to clean those tubes. So they sit with caked on coffee from the year before. I wonder how that works. Maybe it just adds a bit of flavor. Twenty year old coffee melding with today’s brew. A memory of coffee the occurrences and events from years and days pasted stored there, Waiting for the heat to release that essence once again.

So the coffee is on. Folgers. People bring coffee. I think it is that Dances with Wolves thing. Hey lets bring a gift. What do you think is needed? Coffee. Easy. Pick up a five or 10 lbs. plastic can of the cheapest bean available. Now the dudes from Salida know coffee. Too bad we can’t get the Bongo Billy’s contract for providing coffee to the Res. So there is coffee. The grounds basket filled about half way with beans ground for a paper filter. Water. Plug. Relax.

Watching the events unfold in front of me now. Perhaps the only time I have to myself in connection with this whole place. Just me in the early morning dawn standing on my hill with my cookshack behind me. The possessor of my is important here. Not for me but for others it seems. It is not mine. This place belongs to a family. They have been gracious in allowing me to enter into their circle and providing for me. I will say that nearly the only requirement I have for doing anything is to feed me. The first time Madonna gave me a piece of fry bread strait from the fryer she had my allegiance for life and I am dutifully bound to her and this place.

The dancers are lining up. Silhouettes really, black figures against a blueing sky. Vast distance, really between us and yet like a weird Hollywood film scene I am pulled right next to them. The Chiefs with headdresses flowing. Men standing in line holding wings of eagles and the Chanunpa (a pipe of peace). Movement. Warmth found only in movement. The cold of the morning against my thick canvas jacket and jeans and boots hardly a bother except at the neck. These people standing in but a piece of cloth wrapped around the waist. Naked really. Sacrificing in pre dawn air. Firekeepers moving around the fire. Larger now. They have added stones and wood and the heat there is building for the day of sweats that is to come. Dancers uncertain of the cold huddle close together sharing a blanket by that fire. My fire has not yet started. A couple hours still before it is time to begin the cooking the evening dinner. Firekeepers, an interesting lot. Kindred spirits. Next to Madonna the reason I stand alone on this hill. I needed a fire. I could come here and help Vine and Sidney and Pete. I could through wood on and stir the meat. Provide a service and in exchange no ego. No conversation. No judgment. No questions. Just do as I am told. Do the next right thing that I know it to be. Just men sitting around the fire doing this thing. And so I found this fire. Halfway across the camp. Few willing to make this sacrifice necessary to keep this fire burning. That sound conceded now. And that is not my intent. I love that sacrifice. I did not at first. And did not understand it at first but now. I love it. I live for it. These few days.

The sound begins. Like a ghost in time with the events unfolding in front of me. A soft gentle howl. Low and far away. Steady. Soft low pitch. No one here but me. A question to something or an answer? Bernard just checking in on how things are going over here? Chills up and down the spine with that thought. It would not be beyond him I think. Louder it is becoming. The drum beats. Movement in the line. That howl. That howl. Drum beats louder and stronger. Matched by the howl.

Where is it coming from, but the coffee pot.

Waves

Waves

I spoke of waves on a beach in California.

I remember a few times at the beach.

In LA after a weekend concert, Bob Dylan was playing with the Dead that weekend. It was an incredible weekend. The weekend we dumpster dove and the manager brought us a cart load of broken cookies. Same parking lot there was a shooting, everyone hit the deck and I was just standing there oblivious waiting to get plugged.

Dylan was awesome. They called him Spike. It did not see too long since the Traveling Wilburys and everyone had a sort of alter personality on stage. I vaguely remember Clarence Clemmons for some reason but I am not sure if he was playing that weekend or not.

After the show we were heading back up the coast to Santa Cruz. We had picked up a couple and their dog and they had a bunch of high test LSD. Since they had no cash we all got dosed. We were not long up the coast, just out of LA traffic really when it came on. Starting to peak and the rock of the road was starting to set a peaceful tone. We had to stop for gas. It was a cool little station. Old time feeling place with white trim and stucco walls. Maybe a Texaco or something. Like a little old surfer gasso. We pulled in and piled out. Fresh air. The dog barking. Light. The sounds of the highway strong but not overpowering. The ringing of the music of the weekend still in the ears.

There was this beach. Strange now to think but it seemed to be on the wrong side of highway. A beach none the less. Stephen White and I started to trapse off to the beach. Big beach comber was Stephen Temple White. Grand Island days on the Cape. He lived on any given beach given enough time. Tar paper shacks filled with treasures of temples. Mile Marker 108 on the big island on the way to Hilo.

This beach was small. A roadside nook. Unknown it seemed to all but weary travelers wanting to strech legs and walk dogs. Railroad tie posts and steps. Warm large grained brown sand. Down this small hill so not to be visible from the street and the noise of the road continued overhead instead of down to the water. Warm ocean water with waves hardly coming to the shore. Standing in the surf. The water would come in and coat the feet in tiny white fizzy bubbles. The waves, not really waves as they were small would come in and gently roll away. When the water came up the sand around the feet would lift. Individual grains rising up. Floating, Effortless. Movement then away. The outward pull of the moon would swirl those grains of sand. Like small whirling dervishes, twisting the peaking opposite directions on each side of both feet.

Silence broken by horns honking and yelling now. The White man standing beside me saying something about they are going to leave us behind if we don’t get there. A bus load of long hair freaks concerned about the coming of night and travel on the highways and the couples baby back at home and the colors coming in and the big spliefs rolled and waiting and barking dogs, and almost dread moving from warm winter sun of the south to the fog covered hills and cool days to the north. That may be it the beach in Santa Cruz a grey dark place. Filled with beauty, sand thicker and cold. Warm fires on the shore while practicing for the polar bear club. A Beach where grandfathers take their charges to mine the morning shore for round agate rocks waiting to be split open to reveal the inner treasure of quartz. Return to Santa Cruz where hippy kids aren’t hassled just for hanging out on the corner. Santa Cruz where citizens toss you spare change to fee the dog and wine in gallon bottles serves as a meal.

Return to that place. Waking out of the universe of sand swirling at my feet. Waking to the fact I am a rider on a trip that is not my own. The hollow reverberation of the sea leaving my ears to now be filled with tires and road and laughter and bootleg tapes reliving of a show just witnessed.

Welcome to Story Time

In an effort to change I began writing as per the suggestion of a friend. Thank you.
Here you will be able to find some of the stories I have written.