A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  “The three you gave me, plus two I brought from Arizona. I can pick up a trunk if I need more space. I’ll leave tomorrow night after the Grateful Dead concert in the park.”

  “When can you get back?” Alex asked. Fifteen hundred dollars was a lot of money to have hanging out there.

  “I’ll have to call and see what they have on hand.”

  At a phone booth, Kathy dialed the number. “Hello,” she said softly. “It’s me.

  Larry’s voice held an undercurrent of excitement. “How’s the city?”

  “Fine, but I miss you. And that sweet Mexican corn. I could eat about fifty ears right now.”

  “Well, come on back! I’ll cook some up for you.”

  “The Dead are playing a concert in the park tomorrow afternoon. How’s tomorrow night sound? Can you meet the plane?”

  “Sure. I’ll have the corn cooking in the pot. And Kathy … I’m glad you’re coming back.”

  “I had to return your suitcases, remember?”

  Sunday morning, nine members of the original Ashbury commune gathered at Richard’s flat. The concert with The Dead was to be in Speedway Meadows at 1:00. Everyone decided to drop early, hoping to have it together enough to walk by concert time.

  “How many do you want, Merlin?” Richard asked, holding up a plastic bag of tabs.

  “I’ll have two.”

  “There you go. Five hundred mics is a nice dose. How about you, Kathy?”

  “Give me four.”

  Everyone howled.

  “I know you’re in a hurry to get out there,” Richard laughed, “but if you eat four of these tabs, you will not be walking to any concert. As a matter of fact, you will not be getting up off the floor. You will be the floor. And what about your plane ride later tonight?”

  “Okay. I’d better stick with one.”

  “There you go. That’s still a lot of acid. If you want, take half, wait twenty minutes, then take the other half. It’ll help keep your stomach together.”

  The radio had been moved to the front room. A song was just ending.

  “That’s three in a row,” said the airwave voice. “And now this commercial.”

  Minutes later, Tom Donahue was back again, peevishly explaining to someone in his listening audience who had complained about the commercials why it was necessary to have them. Without commercials, the station would fold, and if that meant being part of a capitalist system, then too bad. Better to be a compromised station than nonexistent.

  Kathy took the first half of the tab and leaned back on the pillows on the floor mattress. The swirl began. Her body tingled with subtle changes. The second half went to her lips. She swallowed. Music played on her, touching her here and there, running up her legs. Her sensitivity increased; her pores opened. Breathing took on a new importance. Each breath took her further into her body. Her eyes grew heavy, closed. Internalized now, she was a sensory being, picking up sound that stimulated her nerve endings, scrambling the sensations into color and rushing energy. Time slipped by, unobserved. She lay as if asleep while other worlds passed through her. Patterns formed on her eyelids, pulsating with her internal rhythm, color filled, flashing, symmetrical. Her hearing became distorted. Somewhere, a hum rushed at her, vibrating fast between two frequencies. Her body disappeared, melted into the bedspread, tingled on a bed of a million nerve endings.

  People began moving about the room, disoriented, smiling at each other.

  “Kathy,” Marcie shook her gently. “It’s time. The concert.”

  Time? Oh, my God, I have to move. Where are my legs?

  She looked up at Marcie and giggled.

  “I’ve got the blankets, okay?” Marcie told her. “Here’s your jacket.” Marcie was smiling, weaving, unsteady on her legs, holding it together until she could get Kathy to her feet. “Tie it around your waist.”

  The walk to Speedway Meadows from Ashbury Street was a long one, but they weren’t alone as they tripped down the sidewalk and into Golden Gate Park, playing off the other groups who walked with them, families with the same stoned smiles, laughing and unsure, timid and outrageous, naked to each other, weaving in an unsteady parade toward the concert grounds.

  The tribes were gathering—hundreds of the young. Some carried banners with peace signs. Others flew newly sewn flags of mandalas and rainbows and doves, the banners waving with the brisk ocean breeze. The sound of Indian bells drifted through the air and became music. Tambourines with flowing ribbons beat a rhythm. Families wore all their colors, beads and feathers, painted faces, long hair flying.

  When they arrived at the Meadows, Marcie and Kathy, laughing contagiously, spent a great deal of time trying to find the corners of the blanket, then laid it out on the grass and collapsed on it. Once sitting again, Kathy realized how really stoned she was. The patterns picked up, her body swayed in and out. Breathing became important once more. Her vision became screen-like, the sense of depth lost. The world pressed flat against her eyelids.

  The illusion, she thought, regarding the flat screen of pattern and color. The screen’s made of millions of tiny electrical impulses. They shimmer and glow, changing themselves. The patterns can be changed. I can change them. All illusion.

  Honey came to touch her shoulder. “The Dead are about to play. Want to go on up there and listen?”

  Shakily, they worked their way among the crowd. The first note sounded, pulsed out over the meadow. The speakers weren’t large, but Kathy felt the vibration move through her body.

  “Jerry Garcia,” shouted Honey, pointing to the dark-haired man smiling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “And Bobby Weir … Pig Pen … Phil Lesh … Bill’s the drummer …”

  Kathy had never heard the Grateful Dead live before. The music wasn’t rock and roll, folk, blues, jazz, or classical, but something in between. Up and down the scale Jerry played, picking everyone up, guiding them, touching them with one clear note after another, bringing them higher, higher. She felt her spirit lift and soar, gliding from note to note, barely able to keep up with the next sound as the last slipped slowly away. She started to sway, wanted to move, slowly at first, listening, becoming the notes, traveling up and down the scales. Turning her face to the sun, she held out her arms, while her heart beat the rhythm of the drums. She stepped out of time and space, walking on the black notes, careful to miss none. Sound became rushes of color, mixed with sunlight. Her dance was her yoga, her salute to the sun. She danced with her fingertips, her hair, her lips, her toes, every part of her body. Around her were Marcie and Richard, Merlin and Greta, Alex and Honey. David and his lady, Michelle, appeared. Kevin and Debbie. Mary Ann and Keith and their children. Others she knew and didn’t know. They touched and held hands and moved to the music in a wide circle.

  On this special day of flowers and friends, of music in the park and acid in the sunshine, of exquisite visions and fathomless depths of emotion, of unity with all creation, Kathy fulfilled Marcie’s deepest wish of bonding with the Ashbury family. More, Kathy found new purpose to her life. In this gathering, all were united—young and old, men and women, every race and religious background and different place of origin. If the world were to trip and know the living humanity in each individual, if all the illusion of differences were stripped away as in this moment, where only joy and love motivated thought and action, then the world would truly move into a new age. Everyone … everyone … needed a dose of acid.

  The light in the Good Karma Cafe was dim, its windows fogged from steaming dishes. Kathy, Richard, and Marcie sat at a table near the counter, drinking warm miso soup with chunks of tofu. Kathy had already come to recognize this as the sweetest time of the trip—lying back, talking, and sharing the sacramental experiences while they were still strong.

  “I’m glad we’re eating before you go,” Richard said to her. “I’d hate to have you spacing in the middle of the Tucson airport. The food should bring you down some. That was quite a dose you took.”

  “How’s Alex doing?” Kathy aske
d. “Still mad at me?”

  Richard chuckled and leaned comfortably forward, elbows on the table. “I don’t think he expected the hard line business deal he got from you. Thought he’d come away smelling a little sweeter, maybe even get together with you in the bargain. But it’s a fair deal. Do you have the money and your ticket?”

  Kathy felt in the front pouch of her purse. “It’s right here. God, Richard, I’m so stoned. Maybe I’d better go tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow will only bring something else. Besides, you have someone waiting for you at the other end. No matter how stoned you are, you have to be responsible for your commitments.”

  The check came, but there was no way Richard could possibly read the symbols on it. Instead, he took several bills from his wallet and placed them on the small tray, knowing someone else could make the change.

  Then, picking up the cup of tea, looking into his own vision, he asked, “Did you ever stop to think that there are other men and women around the world who seek the Infinite though psychedelic experience? Just like we did today. They might be anywhere—on a holy river in India, maybe a small village or a desert in Mexico, a jungle in South America. Did you ever think that LSD unites us to those brothers and sisters of the same vision? Helps us to remember what we forgot long ago?”

  “I finally understand what the whole trip’s about,” Kathy said quietly. “It’s about turning people on, isn’t it? It’s about giving them the acid vision.”

  Marcie took her hand. “The best part is that acid teaches with love. In the deepest part of reasoning, we know that the only permanent source of change is nonviolence.”

  Richard checked his watch, stared at it for a long time. “Are we ready? As far as I can figure, it’s getting late, and we still have to check in the suitcases.”

  “Kathy, don’t smoke before you get on the airplane,” Marcie warned. “It’ll start you tripping again, lots more colors and patterns. Wait until you get in Larry’s arms.”

  The flight to Tucson wasn’t so bad. Each time Kathy was asked a question, she just shook her head and stared out the window. But walking from the airplane, she felt unsure, self-conscious, and was right to do so, she realized, because she was outrageous in her colorful concert clothes, bells jingling as she moved, her lips bright red from biting them to ease her smile. Following the crowd from the plane, she drifted with it, searching through the faces for Larry.

  “Hey!” he surprised her, picking her up and twirling her around. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again!” He set her down and looked deep into her eyes. “Oh, my God,” he cried quietly, staring at her dilated pupils. “I should have known. You went to hear the Grateful Dead today.”

  Kathy felt as if she’d come home. He gave her a sense of caring beyond measure. Wrapping her arms tighter around his neck, she pressed against him, looking back into his eyes. “Oh, Larry! I love you!”

  His eyes flashed, his smile broadened. She felt a shudder run through his body.

  The ride back to the ranch was a dream in soft moonlight cast over the desert. Rolling down the window, Kathy breathed deeply. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “So stay,” he answered. “I’m really asking you, Kathy. I want you to be with me.”

  “What about Carolyn?”

  “She’s at the ranch. If you want to stay, I’ll talk it out with her.”

  Kathy weighed his words. “I have a lot of feelings,” she finally answered. “But I can’t get into them with you tonight. I’m too spacey. Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Then sleep with me tonight.”

  “Larry … it would be … hurtful. Not unless the three of us slept together.”

  “We can do that, too.” He held out his arm and she slid into it, letting the breeze from the open window play through her hair.

  LISA

  ANANDA SHIVA ASHRAM, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 1967

  At the ashram in Santa Monica, Lisa shared a bedroom with another sister. The room was spacious, with high ceilings and elaborate carved trim. Tall French doors led to a balcony that admitted the perfumes of the garden. On some nights, she would stand outside on that upper terrace, gazing at the moon. The trouble was, she was spending more of her free time leaning on the balcony rail, staring aimlessly at the sky.

  Lisa had been with the commune a year and a half. Recently, thoughts of the past, the world beyond the one she had chosen, stirred a creeping restlessness and tempted her. Sexual desire sometimes overwhelmed her, and she would fantasize, most often about Christian and the passion that had always surged between them. Frustrated, she couldn’t understand why she was dissatisfied. Surely, it had nothing to do with the ashram. But she felt as if she’d peaked. Days had to be more than waiting tables and meditation and the karma yoga inherent in performing tasks around the ashram. And as loving as her housemates were, she was … well, lonely.

  This morning, Lisa finished her meditation, slowly opened her eyes, and looked toward the picture of the Master on her altar, remembering last evening’s lessons on the five abstentions—violence, lying, covetousness, possessiveness, and sensuality. As she dressed, the calmness of moments before was already gone, and she found herself lost again to daydream. With a great deal of anxious longing, she awaited the arrival of the Master’s disciple from India. Once he was at the ashram with all the blessings of the Master, she was certain she’d become more centered.

  By the time she completed her seva in the ashram, it was afternoon, and Lisa carried a book toward her favorite spot in the garden, underneath the rose trellis. Near the bench, she stopped abruptly, disbelieving. Christian sat waiting for her in the exact spot where they had sat once before.

  “Christian! What are you doing here?”

  He stood and walked toward her. “Waiting for you. I thought you might come out to the garden sometime this afternoon. A habit, yes?”

  His eyes were blue fire, and his happiness to see her so obvious, she felt her own eyes fill with light. “Why didn’t you come to the door?”

  “I didn’t feel like being scrutinized by the house guardian. What’s his name—Krishna?”

  “You don’t have to worry about Krishna.”

  “I’d rather not have my comings and goings observed,” he grinned.

  Almost a year had passed since she’d seen him. She noted the confidence in his stance, his relaxed posture. His smile was soft, and he was undoubtedly stoned.

  “You’re still at it?” she asked. “Working in the biz?”

  “Except I’m doing a little more than the last time we met.”

  She paused at his tone, wondering where this information was going, then ventured, “Bob said you were doing well.”

  “Thanks to you. You did me a tremendous favor.”

  “I … I’m glad things worked out for you.”

  “They worked out for both of us. We’re partners, remember?”

  “No,” her smile faded, and she shook her head. “I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Come on. Sit down with me.”

  She took a seat on the bench and looked at him more closely now. Longer hair. A bit more weight in his body. Not so boyish any longer. Self-assurance mixed with a bit of arrogance—not good.

  “Don’t you ever worry about getting busted?”

  “Not really,” he answered. “I don’t call that kind of energy to myself. I keep a low profile, watch the cars on my street and who’s following me. I’m careful about the people I do business with.” He leaned back, stretched out his legs, easy in the garden with her.

  “Are you still in Berkeley?”

  He nodded. “A special house up in the hills, lots of trees and a private backyard. Allen and his old lady, Linda, have a room. I don’t think you know him. He’s my runner. Other brothers and sisters pass through. Bob spends a good deal of time with me when he comes up.”

  “Don’t you have an old lady?”

  “I did. But she left to join a commune,” he sh
rugged and raised a meaningful eyebrow. “Seems to be a way of life with me.”

  Lisa looked at him carefully. “When did she leave?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  So you’ve come to see if there’s still energy between us, she thought, somewhat sullenly. You’re looking for someone to fill her space. If she can’t be there for you, then you’ll give me a try. What a fool I am, daydreaming about you! Thinking I could have you any time I wanted. What am I to you? What are you to me that you so disturb the peace I’m trying to find here?

  “I want to give you my phone number.”

  “Why? I don’t need it,” she answered irritably. “There’s no reason for me to ever call you.”

  For a long moment, he said nothing. Now it was his turn to look closely at her.

  “What’s troubling you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s troubling me.”

  “I saw it in your face when you were walking down the path, before you knew I was here. Are things working out for you?”

  “I’m perfectly happy here,” she answered testily. “My … concerns … have nothing to do with the Teachings.”

  “Lisa, do you want to come back to Berkeley with me? I have an empty room in the house, good friends, and family. You don’t even have to live with me. But if you want to leave … get on your feet … well, then, I’m offering you a place to stay until you can figure out what you want to do.”

  Because that was exactly what she had daydreamed of doing, she cried, “No! Don’t ask me. I … I can’t. I’ve given months of commitment to the ashram.” She lowered her voice and added, “I wish you could know the kind of love the Master inspires. I’ve just reached a hurdle, but I’ll get over it. The Master’s disciple will be here soon.” Then as a second thought, she added, “Why don’t you come? Give him your own questions. Sometimes, there’s a great sadness in you. If you had a place to put it …”

  “You know how I feel about religion,” he answered. “It’s … impossible.”