The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Mount Shasta

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Seventeen Thousand Feet High

Mount Shasta, California, Yesterday: At 17,000 feet, the mountain towers above the range, the last of summer’s snows shading its flanks above the treeline.

The roads pass by to the west and south. There are no roads to the north and east.

To the south, McCloud is an old mill town nestling in the trees. The mill bosses paid no attention to the view, and just lined up the smaller houses on a grid, but from all the yards the mountain looms overhead. The managers homes, further up the slope, are reluctantly grand rustic victorians beneath the trees.

If you follow the road around the mountain you come to Mount Shasta City.

Interstate 5 is a broad-flowing river, roaring up from Los Angeles past San Francisco and vanishing in the north, passing a stone’s throw below Mount Shasta City. Jump off the Interstate, and the old highway winds past old-style motels and into town, looking quite swept up. The Nursery, Lily’s Restaurant, Casa Ramos, and Has Beans coffee house appear as the road grows wider.

If you continue past the health food store, you’ll pass Smith street climbing the hill to the right, and the thoroughfare will make a slow curve to the left. The old downtown runs for several blocks, filled with chiropractors, bookstores, and chock-a-block with spiritual healers, city buildings, and real estate offices. You could turn left on Lake street, ride the bridge over the Interstate 5, and wander out to Lake Siskayou. There you can rent a boat or a catamaran.

Or, you can follow the old highway to the north, past the farm implements, mini-storage, and the newspaper office, to rejoin Interstate 5 roaring up into Oregon.

But Adrienne and I will stay. We’ll be on Smith street.

This weekend, son-in-law Joe and I completed the first part of moving. On Friday, we hired two guys standing near Burger King. If you hire the guys near the mall, they are Guatamalan. If you hire the guys near Burger King, they’re Mexican. Joe and I packed, then Luis and Roberto dollied to the truck, and Joe packed. It took all day, and filled up a 25-foot Penske truck.

On Saturday we set off early, and six hours later parked beside Tulip’s new home, where Adrienne and I will also live. A guy named Matt appeared at the back door to help unload. Some things went to storage and the rest into the garage and shop. After a long, hot day, we found beer and food at Casa Ramos, and bid adieu to Matt. Joe and I crashed on air mattresses he inflated from the cigarette lighter socket in the truck.

On Sunday we drove home and returned Mr. Truck. I was exhausto. It was great. Going to sleep a while now.

Enter Ruru the Guru

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San Francisco, 1981: It was actually because of Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

Lonesome Cowboy Tim was the alternate persona of a disk jockey who’d emigrated from Houston to San Francisco, back back in the days of answering machines, before all this voicemail foolishness.

There was a phone number, and when you called it was answered by Lonesome Cowboy Tim, saying “Howdy, Buckaroos!” and then he’d recount some adventure that he and the prairie critters had experienced recently.

Since it was a single line on an answering machine, after some weeks you’d find the line always busy. Then the number would be changed, and you’d have to somehow find it again. This was a challenge, because it was purely word of mouth, yet somehow we always found Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

When Network started up the Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, we’d not intended to have a phone number at all, since the answering service was telepathic, but the phonebook rep insisted we had to list a phone number.

So I set up an answering machine with Ruru the Guru. Here’s what it said …

“Hello! And thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service. I am your host and operator, Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from our Himalaya Hideaway.

“You know, many people have telepathed in recently, asking me, ‘Ruru, just how does one leave a message for Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service?’

“Well, it’s very simple. It’s just like using a telephone. You just lift your little mental receiver, and you listen for your mental dial-tone …

“Awwooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!

“Then you just mentally dial my number — 426 299737 19937 49972 29973 299 503 — and then I’ll answer, any time, any place. Then you just leave your a mental message for anybody, whether you know them or not, and I’ll deliver it right inside their head, immediately!

“Just remember: it’s mental.”

Cajun John

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Henrietta, Texas, 1959: John P. was a thin, wiry guy a year older than me, with a nervous air and a perpetual smile. His family was from Louisiana, with a mild Cajun accent. John signed up for Latin class, and was forever lost. I helped him some, and we became friends, though he was alien and odd.

The story goes that one day John climbed up onto the Coca Cola truck, with the intent to steal a case of cokes, while the Coke man was inside the A&P grocery store. But the Coke man came wheeling his handtruck out the rear door, and caught John atop of the truck. The Coke man scowled.

“What are you doing on that truck?” he demanded.

John didn’t even blink. “What truck?” he said.

Once John invited me to [Read more…]

How I Became Cronos

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The Glyph of Cronos (Sign of Saturn)Tiny apartment near Carl and Cole, San Francisco, March, 1984: Approaching my 40th birthday, again I began thinking about changing my name.

I’d been born ‘Richard French’, and known that way back in Henrietta Texas, in college, and on my travels, but ever since I was 30 I’d been thinking about changing my name.

My theory was that we humans tend to ‘act out’ our name. The only reason that this is not always so totally obvious is that each person’s idea of what his name means is very personal, quite idiosyncratic, and not always visible to an outsider. I figured that, if this were so, maybe it would be a good idea to consciously choose the name you’d like to act out.

Although I’d had this theory for ten years, I’d never found a good name to choose.

Until now.

Now, my 40th birthday looming, again I thought I’d like a new act, and one day I thought of the name:

Arthur Cronos.

I liked this name because it was after Arthur, Lord of all Brittany, and after Jupiter’s father, Cronos, so it had classical elements. My initials would be ‘AC’, as in electricity, and when I signed my name (‘ACronos’), it would mean ‘outside of time.’

I was delighted, and so I told my then wife Lori that I was going to change my name to Arthur Cronos.

“That’s not a very nice name,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, and went away for awhile. About a week later I came back to her and said, “You know, I’ve decided not to change my name to Arthur Cronos.”

“No?” she said.

“No,” I said, “I’ve decided to change my name to Traktor Topaz instead.”

“Oh,” she said, and she went away for about a week. Then she came up to me.

“You know,” she said, “Arthur Cronos is not so bad.”

Basic Buddhism

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India, Long Ago: Gautama Siddhartha sat beneath the Bo tree, and stubbornly refused to rise until he’d reached enlightenment. (He’d tried many other things in that past.) One day, he reached enlightenment.

The enlightenment he attained permitted him to express the basic problem of living–which is how a person can gain freedom from suffering–and his realization is summarized in four points, which are called “The Four Noble Truths” …

  1.  Our experience of living often consists of suffering. For example, we experience suffering from losses, illness, hunger, and death. The suffering comes from our insistent mental reaction against the “bad” thing. That is, we insistently desire to have a thing that was lost, and so we experience suffering. (As an example, you throw away a piece of paper and it is lost but you do not suffer. But you lose the deed to your home and you insistently desire that the situation be different, and you suffer. But if you give away the deed to your home to your child, then you do not suffer.)
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  2.  The suffering comes from the “grasping desire” for the thing lost. It is demanding that “what is” be different, and then suffering because it is not different.
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  3.  And the answer? To eliminate your suffering, eliminate the grasping desire.
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  4.  To eliminate the grasping desire, follow eight important rules. In these rules (called the Eight-fold Path) are proscriptions against the things that often result in unhappiness (such as killing other folks), and prescriptions to engage in practices such as meditation, to learn to still the mind (and thus still grasping desire).

Want to Stop Suffering? Here’s How …

What this means in more modern language is that suffering comes from RESISTANCE to what is. For example, mentally *grasping* after something that you do not have right now. Or mentally *resisting* something that you don’t like. When you compulsively resist, you create–in your mind and in your experience of life–the thing we call suffering.

If you can relearn the mental habit of resisting what is, grasping after what you don’t have, and resisting things you dislike … the suffering in your life and mind fades away. Often immediately.

And remember, those troublesome mental habits are only habits, and habits can be changed. Presuming that (a) you *want* to change the habit, and (b) you’re willing to put in a little bit of practice.

Now, in truth, sometimes you can simply *decide* to let go and cease resistance.

But for most of us, years or decades of bad habits require us to put in a little effort, to *practice* the new way.

Even Shorter:

Want to stop suffering? If yes, then (a) adopt the basis (grasping causes suffering) as a working theory, (b) make an ongoing attempt to increase your skill at “letting go,” and (c) it helps if you learn how to allow your mind to go still, which helps a lot, and which we usually call “meditation.” The Buddhists describe your new understanding and your attempt at relearning as having “Right Mindfulness,” and it’s one item in the Eightfold Path mentioned above.

If you understand the cause and the cure (given here) … if you will attempt to change the grasping … then your suffering will fade away.

And it feels really, really good.

Get it? (Got it.) Good!

 

 

Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service

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San Francisco, 1981: Every year, to the office of Network Answering Service in the big corner flat on the second story above Geary Boulevard, came Mark Bell, the Pacific Bell Directory salesman. And yes, his name really was Mark Bell.

This was back before Pacific Bell splintered into forty or fifty companies so as to serve you better and save you so much money which is why your phone bill is so much lower these days. This was back before Pacific Bell changed personnel every fifteen minutes. In fact, the same guy came every year. Mark Bell.

He was accustomed to my odd phone book listings.

The first year I opened the answering service, 1976, I didn’t know which name would work the best, so I put five different business names under answering bureaus, to see which one people would call.

Getting the names had been easy. I’d hauled a pony keg of beer up the stairs to my third-floor studio apartment, invited Richard W. and Phil Groves and about thirty other people, and that evening we drank beer and thought up names for answering services. A lot of these names were real stupid.

But I’d settled on five — A Budget Answering Service, Network Answering Service, Sundial, Western Eclectic, and Xanadu Answering Service. As it turned out, people called “A Budget” the most, probably because it came first in the list, but that sounded too cheap so we mainly used the Network Answering Service name.

We did put up posters around town picturing a duck and saying A Budget Answering Service, with little yellow take-one cards. Little yellow ducky cards continued to surface for many years after the posters. People would call to sign up. We’d ask them how they heard of us. “I’ve got this little yellow card with a duck,” they’d say.

After the first year, in the yellow pages we dropped the names except A Budget and Network, but this year I had a new idea, so I gave Mark Bell an additional name.

“It should say Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service,” I told Mark, “and with an extra line that says: We use no phones.”

Mark Bell didn’t even blink; he just filled out the form. “And what phone number do you want to list?” he asked.

“None,” I said, “It won’t have a phone number at all.”

He stopped, raised his head to stare. “I can’t do that,” he said. “It’s got to have a phone number.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because it’s a phone book!”

Hmmm. He had me there. That was a stumper. So I fetched from our records an unused number, and gave it to him.

In September, the phone book came out, and there under Answering Bureaus was Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service. We use no phones. 221-3333.

On that line, I installed a message-only answering machine, and every few weeks I’d change the recording. The phone was apparently answered by Ruru the Guru, who lived in a Himalaya Hideaway, and from the astral plane provided telepathic answering service as a free public service for anybody who wished to send or receive a telepathic message.

We don’t have any real statistics on how much the telepathic answering service was actually used. I mean, just given all the daily work, it’s just so hard to keep accurate statistics, you know?

Leaving

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Summer, 2003, Mount Shasta: Adrienne’s daughter Layla came visiting this last weekend. Layla is a pretty young woman, early 30’s, an avid athlete, who climbs a mountain every morning when she’s not biking for miles and miles.

Adrienne has returned today, tired, saddened, and weeping.

As it happens, Layla, though a good driver, has never driven more than a few miles. So last week Adrienne, ever the doting mother, drove down to Marin County to pick Layla up, and yesterday Adrienne drove Layla back home.

And after her two trips to the Bay Area, Adrienne has returned today, tired, saddened, and weeping. Suddenly, she realizes — for the first time — that she has left Marin. “I’ve been looking forward to Layla visiting,” she sobs, “Now what will I look forward to?”

Everywhere she looks, she sees sadness. She’s closed her business; she’s left the dogs she walked; some of them she’s known for years. She’s received phone calls from many of the dog owners; she thinks of these phone calls now. “Jazzie still waits by the front door every day,” she sobs. “I just can’t bear it.” The tears subside, then return.

“I didn’t know it would be so hard,” she cries. “I miss my daughters. I want to be near them. Lots of families live near each other.” She pauses. The tears come again.

“I’m a mother!” she cries. “I miss my daughters.”

I hold her, and let the tears flow. And I remember a time

One year, long ago, returning to college …

I lived at home when I started college, but after a semester wanted to move to another school, further away, where I’d not be living at home. Any young man wants that.

And I moved to the further school, and lived with roommates and had adventures, and then moved into an apartment of my own. I met girls and bought a fancy sportscar. And then one weekend I visited at home, until the Sunday.

As I drove away from our house, my little brother Paul, who was perhaps nine, ran on the sidewalk behind me, waving and calling goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

I watched him in the round mirror.

Although he was running toward me, in the round mirror he grew smaller and smaller, calling goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Smaller and smaller. Calling goodbye, goodbye.

My little brother grew smaller and further away, and I realized that, for the first time, I was driving away, because I was going home.

A Photograph of the Future

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Denton, Texas, Winter 1964: Living in my one-room cool apartment at 1308 1/2 West Hickory, across from the English Building, somewhere, somehow I came across a book of photographs about San Francisco.
Intellectuals Drink Coffee!Taken in the Beatnik heyday, late 50’s, the photos show Chinese children playing hide-and-seek up and down the narrow, hilly streets, show the intellectuals drinking espresso in stark coffeehouses, show women dressed as models shopping grandly, and much more.

Lefevre and I had visited San Francisco while returning from the Seattle World’s Fair in Summer two years ago when I graduated high school. My senior year in study hall, I’d read about the fair in Life Magazine. Then, in San Francisco, I’d become enamored of the beautiful Victorians, the views, the exotic sights of Chinatown and Little Italy, oops I mean North Beach. So this photograph book reminds me of the strangeness and the beauty.

And, oddly, one of the photographs shows my apartment, where I will live ten years from now.

Ten years from now, I’ll be rooming with Pat Q. the photographer off Clement street. As his marriage grows near, one day he will tell me that I’ll need to find another place to live. When I complain, he will say, “It was always there.”

He will be meaning that it was always obvious that someday he’d marry Andrea and that I’d have to go. So accept this I will, and I’ll begin to search the paper for apartments. This will be in the days of writing my novel of Texas, when I am beginning to study the Tarot.

I took up the Tarot when living in an eyrie room atop Mrs. Douglas’s house in view of the ocean. I meant it to provide a way to generate plots for stories and novels. I found much more. When living with Pat Q., I started studying magic and Tarot. I became disgusted one day, and said, “If there is anything to this Tarot, then let the next card be the Page of Cups!” I cut the cards.

Yup. Page of Cup.

Whooah! So, given my mystical frame of mind, perhaps it’s not surprising that one day, I say, “I’m going out right now and find my apartment!” I walk from the house, and catch the first bus I find, which takes me to North Beach. From the bus I walk up Grant street, and there, on a window above the Hawaiian Bar on the corner, the red and white sign says, “Apartment for Rent.”

Quickly, I ran back down the hill to City Lights Bookstore, where I grabbed a copy of the I Ching, and picked a page at random. “Supreme Success!” is the name of the Hexigram.

I rented the apartment immediately, from the lady manager of the Hawaiian Bar, and moved in. The apartment was a vast success in one way, because my neighbor was giving up his kitty whom he called Gish. He said he had two cats and only needed one, and he was taking Gish to the Humane Society.

At the time, I believed they killed the cats there. Later I discovered that most cats at the San Francisco Humane Society get placed with new homes, but at the time I thought it was a death sentence. I’d not had a cat because I thought life in an apartment wasn’t much compared to wandering free.

But I figured life in an apartment would be better than being killed, so I took young Gish and named her Rosie the Cat, and we spent the rest of her life together, but that’s another story.

As regards living in the apartment, Rosie liked it because there was a mouse to chase, and cockroaches to eat. There was also plenty of late-night Hawaiian music from the apartment, and a number of other unique features. In fact, thinky back, it was The Apartment From Hell.

But getting back to this photograph book in my college years. In this one photograph are shown a bunch of bums drinking wine, standing around the street sign for Grant and Green. In the upper left you see the bay window of the apartment on the next floor.

This was to be my window. From that window, had I been there for the photo, I could have leaned out and, with a yardstick, smacked the bums on the head.

Too bad I wasn’t there, until ten years later.

Though oddly, when I arrived ten years later, the bums were still there.

 
 

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