Growing up

Delayed adolescence: During High School, I experienced my mother’s struggle with divorce and single-parenting more than anything going on in the classroom (or school grounds). Not sure I’d call it depression ..but things sure looked awfully bleak. It felt like I was living in a cave without much light until about my senior year when my head started clearing a little ..although I hadn’t really learned much. I had begun practicing zen although I’m not sure that had anything to do with it. College is where I actually started  growing up (delayed adolescence ..?). I began to realize that things happening to me were the consequence of my own actions. More so than chance ..or the actions of others (karma ..?) I noticed when I put in the effort I succeeded more often than when I didn’t (big revelation). Now I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do ..not only in school but in my life as well. I put in long hours at the library and started getting good grades. I dated like a gentleman and started getting laid (continued ..?).

Paris

1993 ~ I’m in Paris with Anh. We found a cool pensione in the Latin Quarter. Underneath our window four streets the size of alleyways converge on a small corner where a flower market blooms and we can get fresh baguettes in the morning. We watch trekkers with backpacks checking their maps below the street signs. One of those streets takes us to Pont Neuf. We can get from here to the Louvre, Notre Dame and Champs Elysee on foot. !I’m stoked! Our lovemaking is enhanced. Anh says: “when we get back to the States I’m going to go ..lets do it like Paris.”

Romance of the absurd

Writing contest entry:  I was her dance partner at the dances after the high school football game . Her name was Carol. She was dark-haired and devastating. We’d sit with friends in a circle on the dance floor. When the music started she’d look over at me through those dark bangs, rock her head mischievously, take my hands and pull me up. We danced to rock and roll ..our arms clasped around each other’s neck. Head-to-head she’d look at me with an alluring smile that wouldn’t quit. It persisted while I lay in bed at night. This has gotta’ be love I felt. I was fifteen. My friends thought I was crazy “You’re way out of her league, bro.” I didn’t care what they said. I figured they were envious.

At the last dance I took a chance and tried to kiss her. She pulled back. I persisted and offered to walk her home. “I’ve got a ride” she replied. My heart sank. At a party that weekend I managed to make-out with someone else. How I haven’t a clue. I was such a nerd. My heart wasn’t into it though. She did manage to leave a bunch of hickies on my neck.

Monday morning I shared a little ganja with friends, spotted Carol across the quad and, feeling no inhibitions, called her. Then I ran through the quad and managed to trip and fall down right in front of her. She helped me up ..looked at my neck and gasped at the marks I had completely forgotten. “Will you go out with me ..?” I blurted out. “You've got to be kidding” she replied. “Let me explain” I said. She went “look at your eyes ..you must be stoned!” Our relationship, as it was, went no further. Football season was over.

Jason

This morning I go out on the deck to take breakfast and meet someone I don’t think I’ve ever met before. I live off the beaten path and you almost have to know where your going to get here ..so I’m not sure. He’s sitting comfortably with his legs out-stretched looking disarming enough. Mid-twenties, short hair, clean-shaven ..wearing freshly washed Diesel jeans and high-top Nike basketball shoes. He was on his way to stay with his sister and decided to take an alternate route. It narrows into a private road so he ducks into a driveway. The driveway ends at a creek where he sees my deck. His knee hurts so he finds a place to sit. Now he’s apologizing profusely for the intrusion ..and for just about every other word coming out of his mouth. He’s up on his feet but I see he’s favoring the left leg and looks kinda’ disoriented. I invite him to stay and offer him some coffee. He tells me his knee got tweaked in an accident and he was in the hospital. He’s here due to an unfortunate series of events. He lost his job ..lost his apartment ..lost his girlfriend and crashed his truck ..so he walks everywhere he goes. He’s local and I suspect there’s nothing in his background to prepare him for what’s going to happen next. He says his greatest fear is how other people are going to judge him for the situation he’s in. So he keeps walking.

Wicked messenger

“Each person is capable of perceiving infinitely more. The universe is funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system ..what comes out at the other end is a measly trickle.”   The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

I began taking psychoactive substances when I was 14 years old. At first, they gave me a release from the conditioned-fear I was under (living in the custody of a brutal guardian). They made me feel euphoric ..free to fly during rock concerts or while tripping in the desert. After a while however, they started to turn on me. I began receiving a torrent of messages revealing the horror of my circumstances. I felt like a cornered rat. Next they bombarded me with messages telling me what a defective, punk-ass, shit-for-brains adolescent freak I’d become. I felt defeated. However, there was a saving grace. I noticed that these messages went away the next day and I had a choice whether to accept or reject them. I struggled. I chose to study the field of psychology. I wanted to learn more about the nature of this ‘messenger-service’. My senior thesis had to do with the neurological-basis of hallucinogens [ link ]. It helped me understand a little more about the substances I was taking during high school and how they produced the phenomena I experienced. I learned that the ‘indole alkaloids’, which make up mescaline, psilocybin and LSD, work by reducing levels of serotonin in the brain. When this happens, the barriers to sensory-input drop ..and the scope-of-interpretation widens. This accounts for the initial release I experienced ..and the subsequent dread I encountered. Flights of imagination can turn ugly given the freedom to interpret them wildly, and the latitude to plunge my ass into a nightmare abyss. But no matter how euphoric or horrifying, the flight was temporary and I began to accept just how insubstantial mental phenomena can be. I guess that’s why they tell me I’m resilient to depression now. I had an opportunity early in life to experience just what a ‘wicked messenger’ the mind can be.

Zona locale

“Hey, dude ..wusup? wanna’ smoke ..?” My first reaction to this generous offer is to decline, with gratitude. I’m so wrapped up in my workout at the track; it takes a few seconds to realize it’s over! Perfect timing. I circle back and they laugh and light up the bowl for me. Hey, mis compañeros. I’m good. I continue walking down and around to the lower athletic fields ..then up to the schoolyard where two guys are banging on the back door of the gym. As they walk away, a girl strolls up and yells “Kathleen!!” and the door magically opens and in she goes, followed by the guys ..and I’m like cool ..now I know the secret password. I cross the schoolyard, from where I get a view of the ocean ..the same view I get out my bedroom window if I peak ..and realize it’s only a peak because of these trees ..and those bordering Anapamu, which is either a sudden realization or just poor memory for something I already knew. I go down and around the tennis courts and back up the street to my house where my neighbor Amanda asks how my workout went. I go good, but shake my head and say “I think what I do afterwards is counteracting it tho’ ..competing with my system for oxygen ..” which she immediately gets and starts laughing. Now I’m sitting here writing and wondering if I just blew my cover.

Ecology of mind

I’m asking myself why I just spent the entire f**king day trying to figure out something I read this morning in a psych journal [link]. It’s such an esoteric subject I’m wondering how it captured my attention in the first place. They say they’ve discovered where ‘context-dependent’ learning has advantages not found in modern society. Economists and educators consider context-dependent learning an impediment to optimal decision-making. Now psychologists are finding out that it has adaptive value in nature that you don’t see in a classroom or on the trading floor. Context-dependent learning actually helps people make ‘optimal choices’ about which trail to take and what foods to eat in the wild. 

I guess I’ve always been cursed by my own curiosity ..trying to imagine what the world must have been like for our tribal ancestors. Since so much of our evolution took place then, I’m constantly wondering what is native to our lives and what are the inventions of modern society that we weren’t designed for. I’ve been asking these questions since I was ten. Looking back, I see how they unknowingly led me to my field of study in college ..my career choice ..and a lifelong fascination with the findings of neuroscience.

I remember speeding down an LA freeway one morning on my way to college going “we weren’t designed for this ..sitting in transport vehicles rushing over highways elevated far above the savannah that was once our home ..arriving at destinations in a matter of hours where it would have taken them a lifetime .. making decisions at speeds that would have been mind boggling back then.” I often wonder what challenges this presents our psyche that we’re not even aware of. What tasks routinely disturb the balance of homeostasis and cause things like stress, anxiety and hypertension.

For some reason I feel it’s important to know the difference between nature and man-made conventions. Not that I think one is better than the other ..they each come with their own set of consequences. Perhaps it’s the reason I take an ‘ecological perspective’ to events in life, which drives my father crazy. There’s a reason why we’re tuned to the context of information ..it prepares us for the events most likely to occur in nature. Storing and using contextual information has greater ecological value than most economists and educators give it credit for.

The path

One day, during my sophomore year of college, I was on the 605 freeway with a group of friends heading to a club in Long Beach. I’d been studying for a course in neuro-anatomy that day and bits and pieces of the material were still rattling around my head. Then something occurred that I haven’t forgotten since. Like a bolt of lightening, I was struck by the implications of it all. As clear as the traffic outside, I had visions of sensory signals traveling along neuro-pathways ..animating ..registering and guiding us to move to the beat of the music (we were heading to a dance club). I went speechless so long that my friends were asking if everything was OK. I could see it clearly, like it was happening right in front of me ..but I couldn’t put it into words. I responded with a curt “uh, nothing.” For better or worse ..or for whatever reason I may never know ..it altered the course of my life and set me on a path that I’m still on today. It informs almost two-thirds of what I see and do ..while the rest remains a mystery, which is where it’s likely to stay.

Hwy one

Continued from [link]

San Francisco (1977): The next day Russ and I go for a walk around Lake Temescal ..get stoned in a wooded area ..drive across the Bay Bridge ..stash the car ..and go on a walking tour of The City. He shows me how you can get anywhere in San Francisco by using cable cars, muni, taxicabs and the Bart. The next morning we go for a walk around Lake Temescal ..drive across the Bay Bridge ..stash the car .. hang out at the Mark Hopkins hotel and attend the APA convention .. asking irreverent questions at a symposium on juvenile delinquency. The guy sitting next to us is doing his internship at San Quentin. Says he’s counseling an inmate who threw his co-worker off a telephone pole while they were repairing the line. When he asked him why he threw his co-worker off the telephone pole, the inmate replied “..because I didn’t like the way he looked” as if it were a perfectly legitimate reason. “Now I’m on edge” the intern says “..and you wanna’ know why? Not because I’m sitting there talking to a psychopath, but because I’m sitting there wondering what he thinks about the way I look.” 

 

Along the way I remember eating at fish restaurants in North Beach .. giggling while watching a floorshow at Sutter’s Mill ..another one on Broadway .. going to see ‘Beach Blanket Babylon goes Bananas’ at Club Savoy ..and falling in love with San Francisco. A few days later Russ drops me off on highway 101 near the airport and, in spite of his objections ..I begin my hitchhiking expedition back to LA. 

 

Continued ..

Hwy one

Rusty: One of the more memorable events of my life occurred during the summer of 1977, between college and grad school. I rode up to San Francisco with my friend Russ ..then hitchhiked back down the coast, on my own, camping-out along the way. But first we were going to spend a week in San Francisco. Russ is from the Bay area, and since this was my first visit ..he was thrilled about having me there to show around. Our first destination ..as well as where we were going to stay ..was his father’s place in Berkeley. On the way up, Russ told me that he had planted marijuana in the garden during spring, so he was rubbing his hands in anticipation of ‘the harvest’ ..unless his dad had mistakenly ripped them out while weeding (he told me his dad wouldn’t know the difference). This did not turn out to be the case, however ..and we were in for our first surprise. When we arrived, his dad was in the kitchen ..trimming and cleaning freshly dried marijuana like a pro. The aroma hit us the moment we walked through the front door. Stunned, Russ rushes in screaming “Dad, what are you doing ..?!” He shows us the other packages in the freezer and tells us how his girlfriend had turned him on ..and how they found them growing in the backyard ..and how it was helping him with deal with his anxiety (Russ’ dad was an executive for an energy company). Now Russ’ biggest concern is how to divvy up the ‘bounty’ between him and his father ..who was like “Oh, those were yours ..?”

 

Continued [link]

Future shock

During a 70’s era college course in social psychology, we were each given the assignment of predicting possible future events in society and presenting them next time we met. I predicted technology would make fixed workplaces obsolete. I’d be able to do my job while at the beach or in a coffee shop and transmit it over telephone lines to an employer at another beach or coffee shop anywhere around the world. I predicted fixed residences would also become obsolete. I figured if I weren’t tied to a workplace I would become geographically un-tethered. I could travel on motorcycle, or recumbent bicycle across the US and either camp or stay at youth hostels along the way. I predicted the same would be true of relationships ..I would form them as I went. Everyone would. The idea of marriage or monogamy wasn’t in the cards ..and I considered the possibility that they may not even be compatible with who we are as a species. I admit, I got a lot of my ideas from the book ‘future shock’, the ‘whole earth catalog’ and a broken home. I remember the girl sitting beside me going “Man, ain’t no way you got a girlfriend, cuz if you do I sure feel sorry for her..!” However, the guy sitting on the other side was in shock. He looked like ‘preppie’ from the movie Love Story. He started out by saying his forecast was definitely more reality-based than mine ..and went on to talk about marrying his high school sweetheart and making partner at a precedent-setting law firm. Senator Edward Kennedy would be president. Decency and Christianity would prevail ..student protest wouldn’t be tolerated ..we’d win the war in Vietnam ..and defeat communism wherever it appeared. The standard of living would soar in the US ..Monsanto would make life better through advances in chemistry (making me think of Tomorrowland at Disneyland). And they’d live in a Mediterranean-style house in Benedict Canyon where his wife would stay home raising their two and a half children. He got a laugh out of that and for a moment I thought I had misunderstood the assignment. Looking back, I admit ..my ideas may have been offbeat ..but I was only eighteen years old. Now I’m not so sure they were any more or less ‘reality-based’ than preppie’s.

Grace

Grace left and I thought I was losing my mind.. I couldn’t sleep unless I passed-out on the balcony after several bottles of Chardonnay. Sitting in the house was torture, so I walked in circles around town. Some days I’d walk down 2nd street to the Bay ..where I’d visit Claudia, who was deaf ..but a good listener. Other days I’d head up to Broadway and Cherry, and sit in Benny’s costume jewelry shop just to listen to him talk. I even read his complete college dissertation on ‘Myrna Loy’. Then there was 4th street to Orizaba ..where I’d visit the funky art stores and antique mart. Behind them were like miles of alleyways with garages loaded with antiques. They’d take me walking out back, opening one door after another ..and we never reached the end. Then I’d duck into Phil Yeh’s hand-drawn comic book shop, where I’d sit and read for hours. He didn’t seem to mind and I found it comforting there ..I don’t know why. Sometimes I’d duck into the Art theater, have popcorn for dinner and watch a movie. Saw a string of French films I’ll never forget: ‘Betty Blue’ ‘Vagabond’ and ‘Return of Martin Guerre’. Often I’d head up Broadway to Orizaba ..where I’d visit Dr. Russell, who could immediately detect pain. He explained to me how pain sends messages to the brain telling it to flee possible injury, and energizes you for flight. He helped me understand that I was not losing my mind. So, I kept walking in giant circles around town all day .. for months.