Wichita Falls, Texas, 1961.

When a man is young, and has a car;
And lives at home, and loves afar,
Hooray for the Drive-In! There unseen,
In Winter’s best, when windows steam.

495 Third Avenue #8, San Francisco, 1975: Reading a lot of metaphysical books, I studied astral projection and conscious dreaming. Success was limited, but on this particular night the dream-like experience was clear.

I was lying down and deeply relaxing, in the evening, and mentally I left my body. I rose and floated outside, finding myself now walking the sidewalk. In this vision, it was daytime, and in crossing the street, I found myself wading through a heaving mass of alligators.

When I made it across the street, there was something odd about the door of the house on the corner.

This door was now painted red, and upon it a paper notice fluttered. I climbed their stair to read it, but once there, the door was open, and I stepped into the dim hallway. A dark stair led to the floor above, and to the left an open door revealed a lighted room, with rows of folding chairs, like a classroom.

I took a seat, and perhaps others were there. A monk in a brown robe entered, and at the blackboard he drew a large circle, with a hub and spokes, using many-colored chalk.
As I watched, this diagram began to spin, growing larger in my vision until it became a vast wheel, spinning in space, blurring at incredible speed, and yet ponderous, revolving as slowly as the aeons.

In this vision, I thought, “The Wheel of Dharma.”

At the time, I didn’t know what Dharma was. I still don’t know what Dharma is. But what happened the next week was real enough.

This corner house in my vision was a real house. It was just across the street. From my windows, it looked like any San Francisco flat, meaning no yard around, of two stories and touching the neighbor house to either side. Except, this was a corner house, and the long side faced my windows. Painted white like others on the street, nothing notable; that is, until the moving van began unloading the strange crates.

Some of these were huge, and all were labelled with symbols in a foreign alphabet. Please note, I’m speaking not of any vision, but of what occurred outside my second-floor apartment the following week. Huge wooden crates with strange symbols in some foreign language.

Somehow I was not surprised when, the next day, thin monks in brown robes began to come and go around that house, and a few days later, towards the evening, when lights went on inside, I discovered that my window looked down and directly into a long room in that house.

There, at the end of the room, a huge statue of the seated Buddha, pale white, in the bliss of contemplation.

Near Hurnville, Texas. July 4, 1952. My grandparents farmhouse rose atop a hill, and so, looking south, all the brown fields were stretched out below, and the wandering line of dense green trees showed where the creek wandered across the landscape.

We were just outside the kitchen, by the cistern. This was a well, dug by hard labor into the clay soil, dug by hand down to the water table, and the shaft lined with rock. Above ground, the stone table rose about four feet, and was then topped with wood, and a hatch. Above, a rigging, and a pulley with a bucket on the rope.

Alongside the cistern, we were making ice cream.

The ice-cream maker was green-painted wood, and the inner container rolled through crushed ice and rock salt. We took turns cranking the handle. Many of my cousins were there, all come to visit. The afternoon was hot, and we’d stopped running around.

As we waited for the ice cream to be ready, my grandfather came up from the feedlot, through the garden gate, in his flat-brimmed hat and tall boots.

He was dragging, by the tail, a long black snake.

Oh, it was angry! It hissed and curled, curled and hissed. He seemed fearless to me. At any minute, wouldn’t it bite him? I was the oldest cousin, at age twelve. The younger ones were all frightened. So was I. Grandfather smiled.

“It’s a bullsnake,” he said, releasing it. The black snake, suddenly realizing freedom, began wiggling quickly away, back to safety in the garden. Grandfather nodded, “It’s harmless.”

It looked dangerous. I asked him why he didn’t kill it.

“It’ll kill the mice that eat the crops,” he said. “It’ll kill the rats that steal the eggs. It’s a good thing to have a bullsnake around. I thought you might like to see it.” Grandmother fussed about the snake. He said nothing further.

Now, here is my question. The ice cream was now ready. My mother served it up in thick bowls, startling cold, thick and rich, and sweet. Now, after our brush with danger, why did it seem so exceptionally delicious?

East Grinstead, Sussex. 1968. When I went to study in England, I wore my warm railroad clothing, because I feared to pack my oily boots inside my suitcase. Lucky, as it turned out, because my suitcase went on a two-week vacation to Madagascar, and England was very cold.

With a roommate I had a front room, looking onto the sleepy village lane. My roommate maintained a running battle with the early birds.

In the early morning dark, an invisible milkman left bottles on the step. The quick little birds then swooped down to peck holes in the tin-foil caps, and they siphoned off the cream with their narrow beaks. Each morning, the roommate swore at the holes in the milk caps.

That and the heater.

The heater was a kind of vending machine; you had to feed it with coins when you wanted heat. Of course, they had to be just the right coins. Almost never the ones on hand.

It takes a lot of planning to live in England.

At that time, East Grinstead’s High Street was ringed with shops. Each store a specialty store. One for meat, another for fish, yet another for vegetables. Books? Bookstore. Stationery? Stationery store. I believe that the exhaustion this causes is the main reason for Fish and Chips shops.

Contrary to common belief, Fish and Chips shops offer a wide variety of toothsomes. For example, peas. And sausages, and pasties and steak and kidney pie. All served in a cone of newspaper, and a strong cupper tea with milk. To say “Thank you,” you say, “Ta.”

At the restaurant at the Inn, I had dinner one evening with Karen Black, the actress, but it was an embarrassing mistake, as it turned out. However, that’s another story.

During the year I lived there, I saw three or four sunny days.

It is hard to describe the astounding beauty of English countryside on a sunny day. More pointed as so rare. Most days brought an overcast, slate-gray sky, and the air chill and crisp.

On cold days, a ghost visited our cottage. My roommate and I tried to communicate, but with little result. The ghost came and went; raising hackles and then vanishing. One night, it seemed to pass through the wall to outside. I followed, and walked up the lane. The night was deserted, and the air was clear. A half-moon gave some light when I’d passed the last streetlamp.

I failed to find the ghost, but it seemed as if there were a fog lying upon the ground, a couple of feet thick it felt. Yet no fog was there. I seemed to be walking through it, and felt it swirling around my shins, tugging at me, calling out in words too faint to ken.

I walked along the lane, puzzling, and then a realization came.

It was history, lying thick upon the ground. Living history, flowing from deeds long gone, and fading into forget.