A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  Kathy hesitated. This was more than just the ranch and friends. They both knew that. The attraction that had guided them to the same street corner, that had prompted Larry to ask her to hitch with him, had grown. Kathy felt good with him. There was gentleness in him, a compassion that was not disguised by his gruffness.

  “Alright,” she answered slowly. “It’s time.”

  She reached into her skirt pocket for her wallet. “I have something special. It’s the same acid, but Marcie, my best friend, gave it to me.”

  Digging into her secret compartment, she found the little package of tinfoil, uncovered the two tablets, and placed them in the palm of her hand.

  “You’ve had that with you?” he asked grinning. “You might have told me.”

  He took one and swallowed it in a single motion. Kathy stared at the white tablet for a brief moment, then picked it up and placed it in her mouth.

  The air was hot and still when she lay down on a pool chair in the shade to wait for the acid to take effect. Larry pulled another chair next to hers and looked at the angle of the sun. Hours of daylight were left. Jose walked out onto the patio and knelt beside them, something on his mind.

  “Where’s Miguel and Rosie?” Kathy asked him.

  “Gone to their own room for a while. I’ll see you both later. I have to go into town and talk to someone about taking most of the tabs we brought back.”

  “Aren’t you going to drop?” Larry asked.

  “Not today. I’ll cook late tonight. Kathy,” he put his hand on her shoulder, “have a good time.”

  She smiled up at him but was already disoriented, her body moving, lips tingling.

  “I feel like I’m starting to float,” she mumbled, breathing heavier.

  The bright sparkle of Jose’s eyes ignited again, and he walked away.

  Kathy tried comparing the new feeling to anything she had known before. She couldn’t help smiling, and the more she tried to focus on her thoughts, the more they moved beyond her grasp. Her eyelids were heavy, impossible to lift. In the dimness, patterns were more vivid … vibrant colors, swirling diamonds and paisleys, shaping, dissolving, reforming … her body light, ticklish.

  She laughed aloud, and Larry laughed with her. Sensuality took control of her body. She wanted to touch him but was afraid to move, afraid she would have no control of arms or legs, wanted to tell him how she felt but didn’t know how to put words together.

  The sunlight was dazzling, and she wondered how it would feel on her body. Making a huge effort, she stood to move her chair from the shade, balancing, her body porous, breathing. Pulsating rushes raced through her limbs. Her dark hair was alive, satin rubbing across skin, electrical, crackling, vibrating over her face and eyes. With limbs shaking, she finally pulled the chair to the sun, a beam that moved away from her until she finally caught up with it, and when she threw herself down, she pulled up her skirt, letting her legs catch the full afternoon light … and felt … warmth spread between her legs, to her most private places, aware of a moist wetness, juices flowing, part of her body’s full turn-on.

  Does Larry know?

  He did, because he knew his own body. He pulled pads off two chairs and, laying them on the ground, removed his clothes and held out his arms to her.

  She went to him, secure in his presence, and lay with him. She could not open her eyes and wondered when the visions and feelings would level off. She found herself sinking deeper into this new world, unable to place the sensations as he touched her, the feelings too powerful, all leading back to the space between her legs.

  Where will it all end, she wondered anxiously. How will I find my way back?

  Her stomach tightened, nauseous, and from somewhere, a memory formed of Jim telling her to let go of her ego, flow with the trip. Just breathe.

  A deep breath and colors rushed through her body, gliding with thoughts tangible enough to be touched, until she asked, Why would I want to go back to the place I left?

  When she finally opened her eyes, she was smiling, still lying next to Larry, his hand on her stomach. Gently, he pulled her closer and lifted her blouse over her head, tossed it aside. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  She looked down at herself, surprised, and suddenly regretted all the years she’d feared herself, denying the most basic feelings of her body. Her laugh was bright, sparkling, like water filling a dry brook. She had to move; she stood, held her arms to the sun, knowing its power—its life-giving energy—and began to dance, moving with a flow that was her own, the skirt billowing around her legs, until it became heavy, alien. She let the fabric drop to her feet. Oh, the glory of naked freedom! The sun played with her skin, talked to every part of her body, and she stood, legs apart, letting the afternoon breeze tickle her.

  At the sound of a splash, Kathy turned to watch Larry glide effortlessly through clear water. Slowly, she too, sank into the water’s coolness, letting it embrace her, close over her head. In the caress of the water, she danced as she had danced with the sun, turning and swirling, feeling the liquid surge against her. Then Larry was beside her, and they began to swim together, matching their movements, one to the other, more porpoise than human, gliding, floating against each other, under and above, turning circles … until Larry stopped at the steps to sit, and folding her in his arms, took her in his lap. Kathy wrapped her legs around him, giving herself to him and the water and all feeling. For the first time since they’d met, they kissed, a kiss that was the doorway to her body, and, slowly, he entered her, merging, melding, a sense of boundlessness, a rapture of body and mind and emotion, lost in a neurological cosmology, adrift in a primordial sea.

  In the blink of an eye, the day passed, and the sun descended. The desert beyond the house was a glowing red, and the horizon a moving picture of painted colors. The sky slowly settled into purple. The air cooled. Larry and Kathy dressed and shyly went inside to meet Rosie and Miguel near the fireplace. The men gathered logs from the woodpile and built a huge fire against the desert night’s chill. Kathy sat beside it, spellbound by the flames.

  Fire—ancient, the transformation of matter into energy.

  Staring into the blaze, she understood the power of man acquiring heat and light, how it shaped and altered existence. She listened to its language, the crackling and hissing, flames changing, never the same, saw that all things changed, eternally, that life was one tumbling circumstance causing another, the new cause creating a new effect, always, without end.

  She stood to walk around the room, peering, touching. The things that had been new and different in her world just yesterday took on new meaning. The chief’s blanket on the wall pulsed.

  Each human life is the thread of a tapestry, she realized. My thread is one of the many, and all our lives are woven together, entwined. What kind of weave are we humans making? What will be our finished pattern?

  Her vision expanded outward, away from herself. Reaching beyond this place, this earth, beyond this time, this present. Time was immeasurable, boundless—a long continuum extending from an infinite past into an infinite future.

  My mind, my consciousness, flows with the time current. To be human means I have a nervous system, everything sorted by a brain that allows discriminating thought. This body allows the potential to grow in awareness, to expand into the Infinite—evolution toward cosmic knowledge.

  Kathy closed her eyes and with mind-altered clarity, realized the truth. She had been running. But not from Jim, or her parents, or old traditions. Rather, she had been running from the knowledge of God.

  I can feel it, her mind-voice whispered. A life force, an energy, something inherent in all things. Powerful. Holy. Knowledge I’ve always felt, even when others spurned the idea of God. Now that knowledge is returned to me—not as religion, but the very actuality of God.

  Slowly, she turned and looked toward the group. Rosie was stretching on the rug, enjoying the movement of her body; Miguel and Larry were talking on the couch.

  “Have
you ever done any yoga, Kathy?” Rosie asked. “Come sit with me, and I’ll show you some asanas—some postures. Get into your body. Feel the pull. Breathe with it. Each time you stretch, you’ll get a little more flexible.”

  Kathy could feel skin, muscles, bone, and organs, all moving as she moved, stretching, functioning, vital to her life. With body awareness came a new trust. The body had an intelligence of its own. She would learn to listen to its promptings and trust her own responses and instincts. There was nothing to run away from any more—just a running toward an acceptance of life and all it had to offer. At last, she understood.

  Yesterday, I didn’t know what getting high really meant. But now I know. The difference between getting stoned and getting high is the degree of mental clarity.

  One by one, eighteen years of indoctrination dropped from her. She was aware of her own mind, in tune with it. Never again would she accept an idea without asking first whether it was right for her.

  Isn’t that what Jim had proposed?

  Jim.

  She thought of him now with fondness and thanked him for the introduction to the person she was becoming, but she no longer wanted or needed him.

  Larry knelt by the women. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested. “It’s almost time for moon rise.”

  Out along a dirt road and into the hills, the four friends witnessed a million stars in a desert sky shot with vibrant flashes of color. Webbed lines connected the stars, one to the other, designs shaping and reshaping. Larry took Kathy’s hand as they walked, tiny beneath the universe. At the top of a rise they waited until the moon crested over the hill, bathing the land in gentle silver. The desert came alive with the glow. On the edge of the little hill, the moon’s magnetic pull hypnotized them with its brilliance. Larry put his arms around her, and she leaned into him, knowing they did not have to speak in the presence of such beauty.

  When at last they returned to the house, Jose was in the kitchen, busy chopping vegetables—zucchini and crookneck squash, carrots and onions. He took ears of corn from a large basket, discarded the husks, and cut off the kernels. Kathy watched him, fascinated with the movement of his hands.

  “Cut so you take a little yin and a little yang in the same slice from the vegetable,” he told her, as he smoothly cut thin slices at an angle.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  “Tofu—soybean curd. When the world runs out of space, this is what people will eat. We choose to do it now for our own political and spiritual reasons. We can feed thousands with soy on the same land it takes to produce one cow for a few. Besides, I don’t like slaughterhouses.” He threw cut squares of the tofu into the vegetables. “I used to hunt with my father in the old ways. But that was different: We tracked the deer, him against us, and if we killed him, we used every part, from horns and flesh to entrails and sinews.”

  “Are you Indian?”

  “My mother’s Mexican; my father, Navajo.” He looked into her large, dilated eyes and smiled. “How do you like the acid?”

  Kathy looked at him through the sparkle of tears. “I feel as if I’ve found myself,” she said softly.

  “Yeah. I need to do a little more finding of myself. Real soon. You can control your trip with your dosage,” he told her. “The more you want to know, the larger the dose. These tabs have about 200 mics of acid. Try 500 or 1,000 mics sometime. That’ll set you back a bit.”

  “I can’t imagine five times what I’ve experienced.”

  “There’s not a whole lot of difference between you and anything else.” Onions and carrots went flying into the pan.

  “Where did you learn to cook this way?” she asked.

  “When I was at Big Sur. Some Zen Buddhist monks stayed with us for a while. They brought their own cook, and he taught me. This pan is called a wok.” Jose poured a dark liquid—a mixture of honey, water, soy sauce, and ginger—over the vegetables, then added lentil sprouts as a garnish. “And this,” he pointed to the sprouts, “is live food. Can you bring those bowls out? And the gomasio. That”—he pointed—“sesame salt.”

  Kathy walked to the living room and sat close to Larry, needing the touch and warmth of his body.

  “Are you getting tired?” he asked. “Would you like to listen to some music?”

  “Yes,” she sighed, “I feel like I’m slowing down.”

  “I have a radio in my room. Will you sleep with me tonight?”

  “Larry,” her eyes fell into the depths of his own. “I love you so much!” and suddenly the tears returned. “I want nothing more than to sleep in your arms.”

  The next afternoon, Kathy was up and ready for anything. The acid bound her to Larry and the family in an extraordinary way. A sense of adventure overwhelmed her, as if she were at the beginning of a remarkable journey. Finally, she understood what Marcie had meant when she’d tried to explain how she could bounce between stars and planets in this new cosmological universe, why it had been so important to Marcie that they trip together. Marcie wanted this special bonding—wanted her to also bond with Richard and the others in the house on Ashbury.

  “You know,” Kathy told Jose as he drove her to the Tucson post office, “you’re right. I’m getting used to this heat. I’m beginning to like it.”

  “You would probably like many things about this area, if you chose to stay.”

  “Why didn’t you trip with us yesterday?”

  “Too many people would have confused the energy, lady. You needed to be able to simply be yourself.”

  “You mean … you left to give me some space?”

  “And because I wanted you to have time with Larry.”

  “You set me up!” she laughed. “Well, thank you. Larry … well … what can I say? He blows me away. Do you think Carolyn will still come back?”

  “She’ll be back. It’s better that you stay anyway.”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “How do you know I’m any good for him?”

  “I know. Larry told me you danced.”

  “Danced? When?”

  “Around the pool, when you were first coming onto the L.”

  “Yes … yes, I guess I did. I do it all the time. It just flows out of me. Unplanned.”

  “You’re in touch with your spirits. When my people dance in ceremony, they become the spirits within. It was your spirit helper that danced, your ally. You have power that you are unaware of. I knew the first evening when you didn’t simply walk in, but looked, really looked at everything. You touched the kachina dolls. You really saw. I knew then that you will always search for what is real and true. Whatever the cost.”

  At the post office, the money was there, divided into four separate money orders, and when she returned to the ranch, the stash was already packed in the suitcases. But she wasn’t ready to leave just yet. There was so much she wanted to learn about being a vegetarian, about yoga, about this whole new way of life. About Larry.

  That evening, they drove into Tucson for a sauna. “Cleaning yourself inside out,” Larry explained. In the dim steam room, they burned incense and smoked from a pipe, chanting om, listening to the sound resonate against the stucco walls. For the first time, Kathy heard the breath sound, starting deep at the base of her stomach, vibrating upward, sounding like the electric hum of the acid, filling the small room until she was lost in the meditation.

  Then, five days later, Carolyn finally called to say she’d be there the next afternoon. The house was quiet as everyone waited to see what Kathy would do. She started packing. Jose watched her preparations but said nothing.

  “So, you’re really leaving,” Larry said sadly, driving her to the airport. “You’re willing to give me up to Carolyn?”

  Kathy thought about Carolyn. Her time with Larry couldn’t be wrong. Love couldn’t be wrong. “At the moment, I’m into nonattachment” she answered. “What if I share you?”

  Parking a good distance from the terminal, Larry stepp
ed from the car and walked around to where Kathy waited. A breeze caught his hair so that it blew across his face.

  “If you have any problems, here’s a safe number to call.” He passed her a piece of paper. “It’s a non-dealing friend of mine who works in the peace movement.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Lady, you’re carrying a bunch of weed—anything could happen. Just remember to follow the path of ahimsa in all your undertakings. If your energy’s righteous, everything should be okay.”

  “What does ahimsa mean?”

  “It’s the path of nonviolence, care and concern for living things, a way of life.”

  “Ahimsa,” Kathy breathed the sound. “It’s a beautiful word, like a gentle whisper.”

  “Then use it. Take it for your own.”

  Larry wrapped his arms around her, kissing her passionately, holding her close.

  Slowly releasing his hands, Kathy picked up the suitcases, turned, and walked alone toward the terminal. If she were busted, she didn’t want Larry around.

  CHRISTIAN AND DAVID

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 1967

  On a clear autumn afternoon in mid-September, Christian made his way to David’s home in Corte Madera, a short ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, but a long way from the street scene of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Many of his Haight Street brothers were beginning to move out of the city at the end of the Summer of Love, and several had found their way to Marin County. Life was becoming more complex. Some of the men and women with whom he’d shared journeys found that they were going to be new parents and were settling into something away from the meanderings on Haight Street, smoking pot on Hippie Hill, the ballroom scene, and tripping whenever the mood struck.

  David had come from Chicago at the beginning of 1967 and was a hard-nosed businessman when it came to dealing. At first, Christian had found him to be a brother who liked to trip, attend outdoor concerts in the park, and share ideas. But with David, Christian soon realized, the party never stopped. He wasn’t too sure he could handle David’s vision of himself either—one filled with ego and self-importance. Although Christian was wise enough to realize they all made money and had egos, there was something else going on with David, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Tiny things, all leading to a sense that David’s primary motivation was not community, but himself.