A TANK IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

The sinking of the dove will have to wait until tomorrow. Today I am compelled to write of a trip from many years ago. It's the story of a tank, a wife and a car thief.The year was 1974, I had just been run out of Sulphur, La. by the local constable. I had long hair, a leather jacket and a leather satchel, not appropriate dress for SE LA. in the seventies. I hit an entrance ramp on I 10 headed east. Maryland was calling. One of the first cars to pas was a beat up VW Thing. It's entire front end was caved in but it had headlights so in I went. The driver was clean cut,short hair, polo shirt. The back was loaded with camping gear. We talked about destinations and it appeared I had a right to central Fla. The only problem was that something about this young man made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Nothing I could put my finger on but his body language and conversation didn't match his purpose, an extended visit to wherever the road took him. Over the course of the next few hours, two things became apparent-one, He didn,t want to talk much about himself, two, every time I light a cigarette, he light a joint. I does nearly all of the talking for the next few hours while we smoked and smoked. I did find out that he had just returned from a stint in the army stationed in Germany, that was it. We drove until late in the night, thick fog set in and gas became a problem, we had none. As the VW began to sputter, we spotted an exit, at least we were off the Interstate. By now we were both wiped out and immediately fell asleep. At day break, we both woke up to see a truck pull off in front of us. The driver came back and asked if we needed help, yes can you fill this can for us. No problem, be right back. An hour latter, no help, no gas can. The fog lifted and we were about 100 yards from a gas station. We filled up on munchies and gas and hit the road. At the first rest stop, Dave, the driver sat at a picnic table and rolled about 20 more joints. On the road again and he pulls out a couple of hits of acid. I didn't have to drive so....After about an hour of this state of mind, Dave begins to talk. The rest of the Story....while he was stationed in Germany, his wife in Texas had her car stolen, the VW. The next day, his wife and her sister were driving and say the VW. They gave chase for many miles and finally rammed the stolen car and caused it to crash. The car thief's got out and shot them both dead. Dave had been notified and flown back for the funeral. Dave drove from the funeral to his mother-in-laws, dropped of his 10 year old daughter and told the army he would be back in a month. The only problem with the plan was that Dave had been teaching tank driving while in Germany and he had been hallucinating that he was still driving a tank. He was feeling guilty because he had been teaching others to kill with a machine but killing had come home to his front door. Maybe it was wrong to kill. Maybe he should take his VW TANK and run over some army people. I let him get out the entire story, then jumped out at 70. No, I listened for hours and somehow was able to talk through the haze of acid and non-stop joints. I had but a few hours to talk him back to a better place. What do you saw to a sad, sad maniac? I'm sorry? No. You must take him out of his head and put him into the beauty of what you have at hand. at the time it was the road, the acid, the trees, life. Life could still be beautiful, it was nothing to be ashamed of. He had a daughter to raise, a part of his wife lived on. The tank driving was another matter. It was definitely time to say good bye to the army. He and a tank were no longer buddies. He would have a lot of grieve to deal with, but he was strong, he would manage. He had a daughter that needed him, the sooner the better. By now we had reached his turn off to head south, we had not spoken for maybe an hour. As he pulled over to drop me off, there were tears in his eyes, but peace on his face. He thanked me for the ride (I was supposed to thank him) dropped me off, crossed under the over pass and got back on I 10 headed west for Texas. I looked around for a rock to crawl under so I could sleep for at least three days. Alas, the rules of the road do not allow for sleep when their is still daylight and a road. My thumb was out and I was soon on my way.

THE DOVE FILLS UP

Holding on by our toenails while the Dove bucked was bad enough but now we had to hold on and bring up the end of a large line and attach it to the mast underneath the crows nest. Once we were in place and everyone had stopped puking, we tried to talk through what was to be done. We decided that it was time to climb back down and go get a beer. Really we did. We knew though that this was not an option, the boat and crew where in danger, especially the three idiots trying to hold on to the mast. W just had to do it. I backed up in my approach and tried to tackle it one part at a time. First the end of the line needed to come up, for that we had brought along a long piece of small stuff to use as a messenger. We fed them our line and they tied on the fore stay and we began hauling away. It was heavy and we each could only afford one hand for the task so two would haul while one got lower handhold. This went on for eternity. The movement of the mast was not even or steady so we had to constantly stop concentrate on holding on for a moment, then go back to hauling. By the time we got our end up we were exhausted and still had no plan as to how we were going to get the fore stay back in place. We had to tie off our messenger, rest and try to figure it out. I realized that one of us (me) was going to have to go back down and work while trying to hold on to the ratline. The hard part was that the lower end of the fore stay was still attached so we only had enough line on our end to wrap- around the mast and come back to itself. The line had failed because it was not tied to begin with, the line had been lead around the mast, laid beside itself and then lashed together with a type of twine. Originally this was done while the other end was loose and the boat was tied up at the dock. I climbed down and realized that we needed to manhandle the end of the fore stay around the mast then pass down the messenger to the crew on deck. The fore stay sat in a cradle so once we had everything in place , the crew on deck could pull down and tighten the fore stay while I reached out and began to lash the intersection. That was the theory. We were just barley able to get enough tension back into the fore stay to begin to lash them. The problem was that the mast was still swaying back and forth. Just as we would get some tension, the mast would jerk away and pull out a bunch of slack. After a few attempts, I had to regroup and tie a slip not of sorts over the larger lines, then wait for the mast to sway forward while the crew on deck pulled for all they where worth, at that moment I closed up my knot and it held. The mast was surprisingly tight. Now I frantically lashed the two together using only one hand. It held. The mast was no longer banging like a telephone pole falling and in fact it was very stable. The three of us wasted no time hustling down the ratlines. We were exhausted, we could barely stand. I was ready for some medicinal brandy and was about to ask the captain if there was any on board, I knew for a fact there was some on the towboat, when suddenly one of the crew yells from below "I think we're sinking" with more then a touch of panic in his voice. This did not overly concern me at first. This was a wooden vessel and wooden vessel often leak. I thought I would find two inches sloshing in the bilge. What I found was two feet and rising quickly, I could see it flowing in and it looked a bit like whitewater rapids. The water was coming in many places. I was flabbergasted. One leak is a leak, you plug, you bung it, you even have a junior member of the crew hold a rag against it. You slow it down and pump. We had two pumps, one electric and one manual. But this was not a leak, it was a disaster and I could not imagine what had gone wrong so quickly. We were sinking and quick. I have been aboard one other vessel as it sank and it is not a good feeling. We were sinking and I was afraid for my crew. Shore was close and we had a tow boat along side yet I knew that man and mice panic when they see the water coming up. Instincts kick it and the noblest of man turns into a jello head. All logic, all thought, all reason can leave a man at the sight of a hull filling up and men can become crying children in search of their mother at the drop of a hat. We were sinking damn it.

A SEA STORY

Enough of the heavy, heavy talk of the universe. It's time for a good old fashioned sea story. This sea story begins as good sea stories should, on top of a mountain. I was working as an iron worker at plant construction site on top of a mountain, 40 miles outside Evanston, WY. The season was over and I returned to Maryland to my wife at the time, Susan. She was attending college at St. Mary's College and I was unemployed. I answered a want ad for a first mate aboard the Md. "Dove", an historical replica of one of the vessels used to first colonize Md. I not only got the job but was offered a place for us to live as well. The Dove was docked on a beautiful cove on the St. Mary's River. It was situated at the base of a tall bank which led to a replica of the first statehouse for Md. The Statehouse was surrounded by the campus of St. Mary's College. Right beside the Statehouse was the last of the private homes in the complex, a rambling old house called the Brohm-Howard House. This was soon to me moved off campus and I was given the honor of being the last resident before the house was moved and turned into a restaurant. Now my wife had a two minute walk to class, I had a one minute commute to work and my dog came to work with me each day. Life was sweet. The purpose of the Dove was to provide an educational tool as well as a promotional tool for St. Mary's. We had almost daily bus loads of school children and trips to festivals and the like up and down the Chesapeake Bay. As first mate, I was responsible for seeing that all the captains orders were fulfilled, quite an responsibility for a young man. This was a true square rigger that carried 7 sails and took a crew of 12 to operate. When I first stepped on board, there was a new hire already there. A salty old dog, Abe, who was to operate a rather small chase boat that would accompany us on trips. Abe was not a sailor, he actually had more sea time at a nautical theme gift shop his wife had owned, then he had on the wheel of a vessel. I must say though, he proved himself he fine handler of a boat and his experience was to save us more then once, besides he wore that captains hat so well that no one questioned his post. We had no captain for the Dove and we had no crew. A major shake-up in personnel had happened just before my arrival and we were starting from scratch. The first task was to take the Dove around to the yard for maintenance, about a 20 mile tow, really an easy task. For a captain, the head of the St. Mary's City Commission was standing in. We drafted some college students as line handlers and we were ready. Her I must mention that up until this day, my experience on a square rigger was...well none. I had skippered a 40 footer for a living on these very waters and thought the conversion to the Dove would be seamless. I was wrong, the Dove was 90 feet at the waterline and built of solid oak. Trying to stop the Dove was like trying to stop freight train. Handling her was a whole new world for me, well for both of us, me and the stand-in captain, Mr Evers. We left the dock with high hopes, a beautiful spring day, a fresh breeze and a crew with a couple of Quick training sails. We were towed a few miles and Mr. Evers decided that conditions were right to sail. Just as we were preparing to drop our towline, the mainmast began to move violently and the fore stay, a line nearly as large around as my arm, a line that held up the mast, came loose and one end dropped on deck from a height of about 40 - 50 feet. The mast was now beating back and forth so that the top swayed some 20 feet and threatened to topple all together. The easy tow became a life or death situation in the blink of an eye. Someone had to go up to the crows nest and reattach the fore stay, not a pleasant thing while the mast was bucking like a horse, but it had to be done, the law of the sea is that you must risk live and limb to save the ship, and a dismasting on this scale can be devastating. I picked two volunteers and up the ratlines we went. By the time we had reached the crows nest, it took all of our strength to hold on. Crossing over from the ratlines to the crows nest was the worst, we had to reach up and leave the relative safety of the ratlines for a platform , the edge of which was above and behind you. You had to wait for the right time and heave yourself up and over. As soon as all three of us were up, the volunteers began to puke and seeing how there was nowhere else to puke but down, the crew below was treated to a shower of barf. About now the crew below was distracted by something else and no one was looking up. All we could do was laugh and puke as those on deck were covered by lunch. Finally someone on deck noticed a piece of green pineapple on their shoulder, looked up, took notice of our laughter and puking. Suddenly everyone was running for cover. We were safe in the crows nest but had yet to even try to reattach the fore stay and little did we know that we were sinking at the same time. It was going to be a long day. More tomorrow.

EPIPHANY

I had an Epiphany. It changed my life. It is a fact that this was a drug enhanced experience, it is a fact that this none the less happened to me. I do not claim that this was an experience that only I have had, actually it is just the opposite. This is a very common experience, one that is shared by millions of people everywhere all the time, although it usually occurs for others on a daily basis while praying or meditating, usually with the aid of an organized religion. I do not claim that my experience was special or with a higher meaning or calling, only that it occurred. It has given me absolutely no new knowledge or insights. It has given me the desire to seek higher truths. It has given me the glimmer of a peace, a beauty that I did not know existed. This experience has forced me to look inside my soul, to reevaluate all of my preconceived ideals and standards. No longer can I assume that the world is limited to only what I see before me. I must look for the truth in all aspects of my life and in the entire universe, what is usually called the "The Theory of Everything". It can be an over whelming task. So far I have discovered that light travels in a three part beam, that I know nothing else for sure. This may sound somewhat cynical but you must admit, it is a cynical world us humans live in. I have at times thought that with the insights I have experienced that I could figure out how energy travels, how life forms, how emotions drive humans, how..... the list goes on for a long while. I have in fact got a lot of good ideas about how such things as color, what is the true nature of color? Some of my ideas are in fact proven out by physist. They do a better job of expressing their ideas, I do a better job of feeling the answer. One of the truths that I have come to realize is the answers that so many scientist seek must be felt as much as proven. The answers are wrwped in a sphere of spirtuality that can not be denied. There exist in this universe a force that we can experience but not show on paper, computer, film or shadow puppets. I am sure this force has something to due with all the matter that astrophysist are missing. I am also sure that as astrophysist narrow down the nature of the missing matter they will find that the more they find out, the less they know. The answers they seek will never be quantified in numbers or absolute theories. This I know because light travels in such a way that although it follows the rules of physics as we know them, it also does things that will never be explained by a "Theory of Everything". As light travels, it creates. This is impossible under the rules of basic physics, and yet it seems to create form on an infinte level. Not only does this energy travel but it creates concentric circles of form, one after another after another. The missing matter I spoke of before is part of the answer to this riddle but not the entire answer. Life is part of the answer. The absolute ability to create something from nothing, life.

The Center Of Life

I have been avoiding one part of this story for weeks, even to the point of recalling Whale Dreams rather than facing it head on. What exactly did I see, experience, that has had such a profound effect on my life? It was the simplest of sights which makes it all the more difficult to describe. I must try! Laying on the ground staring at this star, I became aware of patterns appearing before me but they were extremely subtle and there were many of them that were over lapping. This scarred me at first. I thought the acid was sneaking up on me and I was suddenly going to enter La La Land. Next would be monsters or butterflies. My concentration was broken and the patterns disappeared. I liked what I had seen and now made a conscious effort to relax, meditate and try and see them again. Again nothing. Now I began to draw my self into a true state of meditation, I stopped looking for anything and let the acid take me where it would. Suddenly the patterns I had seen before returned with a clarity and beauty that not only took my breath away but stopped my breathing entirely. I laid there for a long time, my breath began again all on its own at some point. By now I had entered the deepest meditative state I had ever known. I was now part of this beam of light. It was actually not until the second time that I came out and looked at this star that I was able to actually look at what I was seeing. The first I only felt it. The second time I looked at this star I observed a shaft of light that started at this star, travelled a long long ways and as it got closer to me, it looked wider just as a long straight roadway looks bigger as your eye follows it closer to yourself. The difference here was that My perspective of this beam was enormous. I could see this beam all the way from my eye to this star as a three dimensional thing. I was in the middle of a shaft that was about six feet across. It was hollow and made of three sets of very very thin lines, somewhat like a spider web. If I moved my eye even the slightest, I what see that this shaft was only one of millions of shafts, each a separate being. If I moved, these shafts became indistinct and quickly disappeared. I was finally learning to slowly shift my gaze so that I could distinguish separate parts of this shaft. The lines where illuminated somewhat like a drop of dew would travel down a string on a spider web. A pulse travelled down the string and as it did it went through the colors of the rainbow over and over. Once the pulse pasted by, the string remained as a kind of ghost, barely visible. These pulses travelled through all of the lines or stings. As I focused on the shaft beside me,I saw a set of boxes formed by the radiating lines and the horizontal circles and a diagonal line going from bottom left corner to top right corner of each box. The proportion of the boxes where the same as artist use ( golden mean, I believe ).This description is inadequate but the best I can do. I have tried to draw and sculpt it many times, I burnt the sculptures. The reason that all descriptions are inadequate are because the true form of this vision was felt rather then seen. I have spent enough time trying to research this that my wife suspects it to be an obsession. It is. What I have learned is that this was a beam of light, this is how light travels. What I know is that this light is life, this is how we know it.

The Night of the Whale

Today I must take you the reader on a small side trip. I had a dream last night that goes a long ways in illustrating the frustrations of living with a vision. I dreamt that I was looking down on the sea and in that sea was a large gathering of sharks and dolphins and one rather large Blue whale. Next thing I knew, I was under the water surrounded by many large sea creatures but threatened by none. A path open until only the whale and I were in the area. The whale stayed some distance away and began to communicate with me by a voice that travelled from his mind to mine. The whale began to explain that he and his species where direct descendants of the being that had brought life to earth. His story was one more of memories more then words. He explained that his ancestors had brought life to earth just as they had to thousands of other planets over millions and millions of years. A seed had been planted that would later lead to millions of species. This was done just at the right moment in earths history when life could flourish and continue. His ancestors could not control the direction that life had followed. Their role was only to pass on their essence to the next generation and hope that eventually it would land in a being that could survive and thrive. This had lead to the blue whale. My friend, the whale explained that the memories of countless worlds and forms all resided in his mind. The vision that he showed me of his past had no meaning to me though since I could not grasp the enormity of forever. I asked him now "why me?". Instead he answered "Why now". He was coming to me because man was threatening not only his species or his world, but because man had become a virus that was threatening the entire universe. He went on to explain that his species could tolerate an attack to himself. the killing of a whale was a battle between one form of life and another, an old and acceptable struggle. He could accept the threat of a spread of death to all of life, everywhere, forever. He went on to explain that all he could to was show us,the humans, what a threat we were and even that would cost his life if not the life of all whales. Man was polluting and abusing a planet to the point that the entire planet would become a virus. This virus of destruction would spread to all of life all of space through processes we did not begin to understand. He asked only that we stop. With this he turned and swam away and my dream ended. Such are the dreams of one who has seen a vision of absolute beauty but must wake up to world everyday that contains pain and hunger and tears.

Tears

After all the years, after all the tears, what remains is a conviction that what I saw was not an illusion. I experienced light in it's pure form. It reached in and grabbed my soul and has had a firm grip on it ever since. This was not an experience of my senses or thoughts. This was an experience of my soul, my parents souls, my ancestors souls and yes the souls of all humans . This experience was one that touched the entire universe. I am sure of it, I feel it now; I felt it that cold October night so long ago. I had fought with myself since that night, refusing to believe that it was anything more then an illusion. Always I have lost the argument. The night that I saw this light, I fought to accept it. There has not been one moment since that this light, this vision has not been there before my eyes as if it were a shroud that shaped the world as I see it. This has not been an easy world to live in with such a weight. I doubted from the first minute the clarity, the absolute nature, the truth of what I say, yet I had no choice but to believe, such was the power of what I had felt in my soul. This vision was not to be denied. I have believed from the moment my eye travelled to the core of that star, so far away, until this very moment that what I say was divine and true. Since this day I have struggled with the knowledge that what I saw was a universal truth, for one and all, yet it was a vision that I could not actually share with any other soul, not really. Hoe do you share beauty, how do you take this vision from my soul and put it into someone else's soul and heart. I have tried, I have researched and found others that have seen the exact vision, I have tried to express what I saw and felt, but I have failed. This blog is an effort to record what I saw, not to profit not to convert, not to convince, only to record, only to record.