𝕻𝖍𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕿𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖘

*An Excerpt from "IT"

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”

– William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

“The Helping Phriendly Book it seems possessed the ancient secrets to eternal joy and never ending splendor. The trick was to surrender to the flow.”

- Trey Anastasio, “Lizards”, from his musical myth Gamehenge

        There I was lone and deserted of my pals. The familiar stomping ground in life that I had known, all of it had boiled down to a parking lot.

         I had to relieve myself so I held it. I had a lot to learn about concert parking lots. I had friends who relieved themselves outside of the bathroom stall door if there was someone occupying it, but I was still a little uptight.

        I had written a journal of my life in that hospital before they released me laughing. I had no reason to believe my education lacking, after all we are all here together, just watching the rose unfold.

        The awe of the sense of it all having left with a nurses advice was hilarious. "You know Phish is in town, " my sweet mistress of distress had proclaimed "you look like the type..."

        Walk about in south Philadelphia to see what I could had been fun. I walked the on ramp to the bridge where I hitched a ride. Thumb out as I had done so many days getting a ride from passing caddies and members on the corner in my hometown, I watched as passing cars noticed. The figure that picked me up was in a Z3 beemer.

        Gay and rich he figured it was worth all of his time to try chasing down my dick I suppose. These things I later learned in L.A streets, with its torrential downpour of "I'll give you fifty bucks if I can suck your dick!?" 

        No thanks.

        There being a bum on the road I truly felt like one of the beats of Blue Sky Mind. A proud writer going to experience it all. I had nothing but a twenty spot I found later after the show from selling my sweater. Just yelling it out in front of the whole crowd spilling forth from the arena. An old High School acquaintance of mine has passed by on her way. I saw another in the lot where I had planned to hitch. The night was far from a failure. The small village of tour people were so open to anything. The earthy smell of the lot with its incense, the vendors tents and tables, the vegan burritos. I was writing my own lease on life.

        Bob Dylan says it best with “Like a Rolling Stone” that sad state just euphoric enough to go with starry glowering eyes. I learned that God makes us naturally high for these days for the reason of not seeing the death next door. Often times literally in my hand. Like a rolling stone. Or in this case in a lot full of Rolling Rock, and “ICEY COLD FAT TIRE! ICE COLD SAMMY SMITHS!”

        The fireworks display lit the night against the night skyline of Philadelphia on the river. Cute dreadlocked girls, nappy guys appearing like those wanderers I had so often dreamed of joining. I was theirs to have.

        Under one such vendors tent while questioning to be someone’s “gas rider” to Rainbow Gathering in Montana I began my first meetings with the underground. A man pulled me aside and gave me some advice. He claimed to be an architect on the run from CIA involvement. A kerosene lamp lit his face in flickering shadow as he spoke of white supremacists and the spies sent already to camp near the grounds where Rainbow would be the following week. The new administration was following in the footsteps of our failed attempts to uncover the truth of our own government by suppressing the freedom fighters. He advised that I find a ride, if I must and stay on the road. Besides, he mused, how the hell did I expect to find a ride to Montana in just one week? Most of the elders had evidently made their way there already.

        I committed myself immediately to trusting this advice. I saw who he knew on the lot, and they were the elders of the lot. He seemed to know everyone, and it seemed that many were now just giving me the cold shoulder to see how I would produce profit for the night before deciding whether to take me on board.

        The time had come to be on the road. Just me and Jack Kerouac. Other kids spent time spent selling “e” or making the balloon fit the horn of the whistling nitrous oxide spilling forth to someone’s eager paw. A self policing lot, we did not just let it all go.

        One am rolled around and it was time to get off of the Camden lot, there would be no camping here. As the cars, trucks and buses lined up to exit the gate, I knew it was time to find my ride. I walked up and down the long lines formed. They led a mile straight down the road I had walked in on to the spot where they all would turn off to their own directions. It seemed most of them were headed for the toll booth to reenter Pennsylvania. Fifteen minutes wound out, and still no ride. Half an hour, forty five minutes, finally I decided to go and camp out with an outstretched thumb to the gas station near the tollbooths on the advice of a passersbye in a Winnebago. 

        I walked the long mile of cars now fully aware that no one else was walking, they were all vehicles bound for home.

        An hour and a half had passed before I began to see that the lot was nearly empty. I gave up hope, and started on foot towards the tolls. The lights of the cars streamed past me at five, ten miles per hour. It felt like they were all staring now, aware of my obvious situation. I had nearly reached the tollbooth, where I was nervous what the reaction of allowing me through on foot would be. 

        Suddenly a passing dark blue VW van pulled to the side of the road. The sliding door slid open with a metal woosh, and someone from the dark interior barked “Need a ride kid? Get IN!”

        As we passed through the ticket booth, the strange driver passed me an empty case of beer full of cans to push to the back of the van. Then he invited me to sit in the front passenger seat. He introduced himself.

        “Mark,” he said “my names Mark,” and he nodded in my direction.

        My first impression was that with his thick short hair and equal length beard, he looked like some kind of monk, or maybe even monkey. Mark had the time in I could tell by his nappy appearance, his time spent on the road talk, his west coast kid lingo. He claimed to be from Humboldt, California.

        He told me that he had lost his “kidz” in Camden and was worried about them. Suddenly I realized that his “kids" were the family I had now. They were not really his birth children, but rather a part of the road “Phamily”, the Harry Hoods.

        He asked how far I intended to go. I told him I was a “gas rider”. He murmured something and then went quiet. We drove in relative silence for about an hour until he decided to turn off into a rest stop area.

        “I would need a vote to decide if we take you on board. I really hope my kids are ok. Tomorrow we’ll find them and we will decide then. You would make five of us.

        But for tonight, you can stay with me. I’ll get you back to lot tomorrow. But we’ve gotta turn OVER! What do you sell?”

        I was struck numb for a minute, but in my sense of freedom in it all I just waited for my head to supply an answer.

        “What’s your trade?” he asked.

        “Trade?”

        “Yeah, my one kid, Star, he makes chain mail, you know? Do you know how to make links?”

        “No,” I replied, coming to the first reasonable notion I had about my limited funds “but I know a dollar store in Philly where we can get cases of water for cheap.”

        “Water?”

        I knew it was time to sell my usefulness or I was going to be in the same spot the following night.

        “Yeah, they sell cases of water. Twenty – five for five bucks. We could buy like fifty with ice and a cheap cooler. Buck or two bucks apiece, should be easy.”

        “How much money you got?”

       “Twenty. That’s two cases of twenty – five, a cooler and ice.”

        He seemed satisfied enough.

        “Yeah, you gotta get me there tomorrow.”

        The dollar store was in the route that I had recently walked to go to Ocean City for my short Mecca.

        Mark pulled out some fajita wraps, some cheese and a blowtorch. Stepping outside of the rest stop parked van, he flicked a lighter, and lit the torch.

        “Cheese fajita?” he asked.

        It dawned on me that I had not eaten since that morning at the hospital.

        “Sure”

        As we stood talking and munching on blowtorch heated fajitas I asked him long he had been on tour. We talked for an hour or so about Phish and Further lots.

        We discussed which was better, and the similarities between them and the Dead. Mark had been to hundreds of shows. It was a way of life. That night after he picked me up, I became a member of the easiest family to join on earth. Policing the lot was a bad enough idea he said for the Rainbow Family of old, that the old timers were all right, but enough said. 

        

        The culture itself felt different. I said we are going to go where we can shine. Shine on. It felt kind of right, but best of all it was freedom. Long last freedom. He agreed as we turned down in the van. He in his stretched out passenger seat, me curled up on the floor. Seconds before drifting off to sleep, he murmured the most meaningful thing said to me.

        “Hey, kid?”

        “Yeah?”

        “Good to know you.”

        In the morning we arose at the same time. Mark went into the restaurant to use the restrooms. I noticed a Saab parked near the entrance with Phish stickers posted on its back windshield. The license plates were Ohio. It was a blonde and a brunette of about twenty years of age, and both cute. The one in the driver side saw me and waved the driver side to get me to come over to the car.

        “Hey stranger,” she winked at him.

        “Whats up, ladies?”

        “My friend wants to know if you need a ride?”

        “You going to the show?” he asked.

        “No, we are headed to the Troy show. Wisconsin.”

       “Oh, no I have a ride, thanks.” I kicked himself immediately for having said it.

        The girl in the passenger seat waved at him “hiii...”

        “So your going to Camden?” The girl in the drivers side asked. I glanced down at her breasts, my God I was an idiot.

        “Yeah, there’s my ride. He was disappointed as he saw Mark approaching and knew he wasn’t going to get a second chance to go with them gracefully. I would have to talk around Mark. I cut it short and headed back toward the VW bus.

        “See ya! Have a good show!”

        “You too!” they said in unison.

        Mark waved at them as he passed by the car exiting the restaurants front doors.

        

        We climbed into the bus, ready to go.

        “Two sisters headed for Wisconsin.”

        “They were sisters? Huh the blonde was good looking, you should have gone with THEM!”

        I gave myself another good hard kick in the ass.

        Mark made a u – turn with the VW bus back towards the city. “At last” I thought I would know a peaceful disconnected moment in Philadelphia. I knew I was leaving my whole notion of home behind. 

     

        We listened to the Allman Brothers Band live from Marks tape deck and took care of business. The cases of water were bought, as well as a cooler to put them in. It was a beautiful summer day in the low seventies and we both got anxious to get on lot. We got there at three when the gates opened.

        Mark turned to me and said “Your names Troy, right?”

        He said it not in the tone one asks a persons name, but rather of an agent giving his willing employee a name.

        "Ok," I said in agreement.

        "Ok Troy, see you back at the Van. Keep an eye out for me if we get totally split up, listen for me, I will call you."

        “Alright.”

        “Later kid.”

        “Later.”

        Troy, one letter separate from Trey Anastasios own name. The letter was truly my battle. Did I want E, ecstasy, or O, universal ness Zen? Troy, the famed ancient city built and rebuilt over and over again on its own ruins.

        We parted ways into the parking lot empty and bright with summer sun.

“Much have I seen and known, - cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor’d of them all- And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”

-Lord Tennyson Alfred, “Ulysses”

“Got to the show around four; Just when the lot began to soar, With Philly behind us and a case in the car; We knew it wouldn’t be too far, We were there to unwind; To meet people and to be kind’...”

– “The Show” , Cosmik Debris

        Troy looked around at his surroundings. This was it, though Philly lay just over the bridge here was home. The parking lot was desolate, but somehow clean of all of the bottles and other assorted trash which had littered just twelve hours ago.

        Across the Delaware River, Philadelphia skyline was hazy in clouds of the midday humidity. Troy remembered the night before sitting in half lotus position, which was as far as he could stretch meditating to the incredible fireworks. There would be bang and boom with lights over the river again tonight. He wondered if tickets were to be found amongst his second show. No matter, the main concern now was to find the necessary ice to fill his cooler with the ten bucks he had left over.

        There were several parking lots in Camden, which would soon be filled with concertgoers and Fourth of July tailgating. With Phish lot, though it was a whole different story. The band toured almost nonstop, and had a following that would be compared to the Grateful Deads own if not for the fact that they were the same people. The night before Troy had found that people were more willing to be touring with both Phish and Further tours to bridge the gaps in the map. That is, there were miles to be traveled and rest to be taken, food to be eaten and this required money. The band in fact had a whole village of gypsy type travelers who toured nonstop with them performing various tasks from stage hands to selling t – shirts.

        In just a few hours the parking lot would be full of the “tour heads” setting up for the night’s business. Of course the business had its benefits, as shows are fun. The main lot it seemed for most of the touring people was set up in the far lot along the river.

        A few of the canvas tents to cover the corner stores on lot were already being set up. There were a few restaurant tents, a few vendors, and then what could only be known as “Shakedown”. The term came from the Grateful Deads song “Shakedown Street” and it was like going downtown to the central heart of the lot. Picture an alley the length of a city block where every two feet another small congregation of people gathered selling different things. A marketplace of sights smells and sounds.

        Bands would come and set up to play in the lot where it was not filled with DJ style music setup. There was water, pita wraps, grills with every type of campground food, tie dyes, and of course other goods not so legal. Drugs could be found on lot, and it was not a disorganized system by which they were sold. One of the kids within a group would carry around a box blaring music to announce where the central spot of dealing would be. This was based on the dozens of heads wandering with digital devices to talk back and forth in code phrases. A key phrase in lot terminology was someone yelling “six up!” meaning that security or a cop was coming, time to six up for five – oh and hide the goods.

        It was heard so often on lot, there were t – shirts made that had a seven up can with “six up” written on it. Beer was generally found in the backs of trucks but also most times right on the storefronts of Shakedown.

        Nitrous oxide was common occurrence as well, though in recent years the lots have been more heavily policed of this damaging substance. Tanks of “laughing gas” were here and there though, usually driven to be on a lot away from the shakedown heads who would not tolerate it. The hippy crack was sold off in five dollar balloons that could be heard whooshing to full and sometimes popping all over the lot. When inhaled the gas makes the user completely numb, and often lose consciousness.

        Cars, trucks, and buses, planes trains and automobiles, and in this case the Camden Ferry were bringing the one day or only partial tour concertgoers to the lot by the thousands.

        Troy set off toward the parking lots further inland to try and ascertain where he could find ice. A small congregation of cars was gathered together in the mid lot near where Mark had parked, and one of the girls sitting next to a Honda leapt to her feet.

        “Hey there! Wanna try some oils?! Great stuff!” she said flirtatiously.

        “Yeah, sure,” he responded a little on the shy side.

        “Where ya headed?” the girl leaned over an orange – red Mandelbrot set looking tapestry spread out on the ground filled with small clear liquid vials of different scents. Some of the bottles were clear liquids, others brownish to black. He wondered if any contained liquid LSD. 

        Troy’s head was spinning as though he had lost his equilibrium. It had seemed to him that since the night before he had learned to simply act and react on his best judgment with no hesitation so as to follow the course of his time wisely. Life here was one big free contact high. Here he saw an obvious opportunity to chill and make headway with what he gauged were weekender show goers. Good to know, but it was time to make some money lest he lose tour on the second date.

        “Yeah, sorry no oil thanks, flat broke. Do you know where I can get some ice around here?”

        She jutted out her hand then and proceeded to introduce herself “Jill.”

        “Troy, yeah, I need to sell some, uh...water.”

        Jill swayed from the touch of his hand as if swooning. The flirtatious look in her eye told him that she was truly also trying to make a sale. He must look a wreck from sleeping his clothes, and not having eaten since the night before.

        “Yeah, try over past that lot your headed for, there is a grocery store a few blocks from there. Be careful, lots of security over there. “

        “Thanks. Right on!”

        “Come back for some oils afterward, there really good!” she sang back persuasively as he moved toward the far lot she had directed him towards.

        The next lot was indeed full of blue jacketed security guards in golf carts. They seemed to be apprehending a mans bubbler glass pipe Troy saw a few feet further on down the row from which he walked. Bubblers are a more expensive variety of glass pipes that hold water and are used to smoke marijuana. As with most pipes, they change color as they become more resonated. The better the weed, the better the color came in from the glassblowing art. This pipe looked dark green and orange.

        “Shame, Troy thought “the guard will probably be smoking it in an hour!”

        The three o’clock sun felt more like a midday blaze now, and he was glad he had only worn his long green Quicksilver trunks. One of the security guards was ahead passing through a horizontal row of cars Troy was passing through. He eyed Troy with suspicion, his eyes not at all shamed at staring him down. Boy, Camden was a rough spot. Suddenly a girl with shoulder length dreadlocks tied back flanked him on his right. She acted as if she had known him, actually like he was a close personal friend though he had never seen her before in his life.

        “Hey, what’s up kid?”

        “Uh nothing! How bout you sister?”

        “Sister, huh.” She said with a disgusted look knocking down what she took to be some kind of rejection.

        “Did you find your kids yet?”

        Suddenly he was aware of just how tight knit the community in which he was living would be.

        She did know who he was; obviously word had already spread via Mark.

        “No, I haven’t even met them yet.” He replied trying to keep the excitement and heartfelt wonder of it all from making him sound lame again.

        “Sure you have, you’ve got me!” she said trying not to be mocking as well as taking the opportunity to hug his shoulders with her left arm.

        She was not at all unattractive, and Troy was suddenly brought to life from the dull existence he was accustomed to. Why hadn’t he done this much earlier in life?

        “Why didn’t I do this much earlier?! he said a loud 

        “Oh, come on the store is only a few blocks from here, I’ll go with you I need to buy some baggies anyway.”

        How in hell did she know so much about him? Troy was also learning how well the Phamily functioned.

        “Huh?!”

        “Don’t you need ice?”

        She figured by now that she had probably spooked him enough and decided to give him a friendly wink, finally confessing “Mark told me I’d see you around HOPEFULLY with Carey and Jim. Said he might need you to pay for gas and you needed ice.”

        “Oh, yeah.” He said dully, not even thinking of one thing to say.

        “Oh yeah.” She mocked him teasingly.

        The sunlit up her tan figure as she squinted and marched forward faster toward the far west corner of the lot. The wind blew, and Troy caught a whiff of her scent, evidently shower had not been in her itinerary since the night prior.

        “Camden is a tough place” he began, quoting Mark from the night prior “I hope they are ok. I heard they got mugged.”

        She agreed, shaking her head to the affirmative. Sweat began to bead down Troy’s forehead and he wiped it off with the back of his hand, which did not do any good as it was equally as sweaty. He wondered he if he himself smelled and resolve to use a restaurant bathroom if he found one.

        Once again his thought turned to the question of getting a ticket.

        “Yeah, Camden sucks. No motels, no campgrounds, lots of fucking pigs.” She darted in front of him grabbing his hand and urging him faster.

        “Speaking of which there’s the fucking one who fucking flirted with me last night, let’s go!”

        He wanted ask if she had tickets, but he did not feel it was time. First there was money to be made. He was jogging now, and the heat was really getting to him and he slowed breaking her hand to hand grip.

        The Camden street they entered reminded him of the desolation row he had walked through the night prior on the way into town. The sidewalk was broken up, and lined with trash that heaped overflowing from corner wastebaskets. A whole Sunday newspaper could probably be collected from the block they were on alone. The grocery store was a small corner store across from a bank. The girl led him across the street and told him to wait, that she had to “tap MAC”. Troy felt primitive and broke not having any more than ten bucks let alone a bank card to draw it from. These tour people were far from behind the times.

        “Wait here.”

        Troy waited, leaning on the one way mirror of glass that made up the banks exterior. Several. minutes later the girl, whose name he still did not know emerged with a scowl on her face.

        “Fucking banks,” She said as she walked with him towards the store “thanks for waiting.”

        “No problem. Hey, what’s your name?”

        Troy extended a hand toward her as if to handshake. She pushed it down, and said in a mocking glare “sister.”

        Must prefer hugs, he blushed to himself. Damn this was going to be a good life.

        She continued to scowl, and he wondered if he had seriously offended her. They got the items they needed from the small store, and walked back to the lot where they had met. There was little more small talk, and he began to have the feeling that he owed her an apology, or that she was questioning if he really was one of them. You had to be one to be one seemed to be the Phamily way, and he imagined doubting himself was the first way en route to a disappointing conclusion. What a wonderful Zen existence. Also proof that he needed to lose the intellectual and gain some “Be Here Now” ness.

        Halfway through the lot while passing a group of guys and one girl with hoodies and patchwork pants, dreadlocks and a passing bowl, one of the guys snagged her. They hugged as a long lost couple who had been reunited. He then began to deep throat her for long enough that Troy decided he was now being ignored as if nonexistent. What a Zen existence. He shrugged and walked on. Ten seconds and twenty five feet later, he turned as he heard her yell “LATER TROY!!”

        A shiver went down his spine as he heard his new name for the first time. It was hope. He had found somewhere where they didn’t care who he was, or where he came from, only that he was and that was enough for some Phun and love.

        The ice was heavy and cold as he shifted it to various ways of carrying. He hoped it would be enough, as it had been expensive and he was now out of cash. Returning to the lot on which Marks van was parked, he saw that it had been moved closer to where shakedown was going to be.

        There was a group of people around the back, and the doors on all sides were open. He had found the others.

        Their words came into range as he approached from the left rear. There was smoke rising from the side, and Troy realized someone was cooking. “Yeah, we had to convince the guy to let us park free. The kid was like yeah, were broke and all. It was kind of dumb.”

        Marks voice wavered as he saw Troy.

        “There he is, HEY! You got the ice.” Mark dropped the burger he was attending back on the grill and came over with his arms spread out to give him a hug. Troy gratefully accepted his first hug.

        That would take care of missing out on the other lot orgy he had just left.

        “Troy, right? “ Mark began introductions.

        A skinny boy of about eighteen wearing chain mail and spikes with a leather jacket and jeans on immediately gave him a warm hug cutting in on Mark “Star” he said with a sparkle in his eye.

        Troy felt one spun again, that dizzy highness he had been experiencing from the night before.

        This kid didn’t look the type, so who was he not to fit in with this punk on board?

        “Wow, am I high.” Troy simply stated referring to his contact high.

        Star looked at him with that same sparkling “figure me out” face he had made a moment ago and said with withheld glee.

    

        “Good. We just got smoked too.”

        Troy was instantly glad he had not gotten smoke as it seemed for the last few years pot had made him paranoid. Now he wondered if he would be able to turn down turning on. Perhaps he just needed to lighten up, wind out a little. Was it possible he had been making himself paranoid by those with which he surrounded himself? Absolutely.

        From the front of the van with a completely cold glaring look a beautiful dirty blonde dreadlocked girl shot him a hello “I’m Carey.”

        She said, then turning to Mark back at work on his burger. “Five kids is way too fucking many.”

        She threw her knapsack back into the van while clutching a yellow hooded sweatshirt with a red dot on its front.

        “This fucking van smells.”

        At first impression she was abrasive. A tough girl. At least she’s honest, Troy thought with a glimmer of hope as Mark smiled at him, shrugging. The other kid Troy notice at the front of the van seemed to drift off in thought, and simply turned away without an attempted introduction. Trotting behind him on a leash was a beautiful black collie mix.

        “That’s Onyx.” Mark said with half a mouth full so it came out “Ats Omix...” then adding after a swallow 

        

        “The dog not the kid.”

        He laughed. They were both his “dogs”.

        So did Troy, recognizing his eye on at Carey. They must be some kind of couple and were having a spat over the previous night. Troy guessed they needed the money he could give.

        Mark pointed his finger past the porta grill further into the vans interior at the cooler and water.

        “Betta pwut at ice in da coower...” he said with the last of the char black burger shoved in his mouth. Troy realized his own hunger and Mark seemed to read his mind.

        “Have you eaten?”

        “No.” Troy shot back quickly, assuming Mark was going to offer him food. But he didn’t.

        “I have to sell this stuff, go buy something on shakedown. Better sell that water.

        Oh, yeah and we will take you to Pittsburgh at least, right Star?”

        “Right the fuck on man” Star returned grinning at Troy. Troy guessed there were more hostilities among the crowded van group and that they welcomed a new guy to break it up.

        Troy turned for the first time to Carey.

        “Are you ok? I heard you guys got mugged?”

        She glanced at him as if to accuse him of hitting on her, and he recognized the hint of truth in her gaze through him. It was that look that a taken woman tempted would give in correcting her status with a new guy. “Fine.”

        She replied and walked away toward the now half filled and busy shakedown with grills and Phish lot delicacies.

        “I hope I have enough ice, man. I’m not sure.” Troy said downtrodden as he pulled the Styrofoam cooler from its lodged state in the van with the cases of water.

     

        “Just go down shakedown asking for ice from different people. They’ll give a hand, or at least a handful. Don’t worry man, people help” Mark replied as he tore out sheets of aluminum foil to wrap his food individually for sale.

        His words echoed in Troy’s mind “people help” not “people will help.” As everything else her seemed it was a different breed of humans here, Phamily were not strangers any one. The light in Troy’s spirit began to glow again with hope spreading from this faith based family of people he had found. How was it a parking lot could feel so much more like home than any other he had ever had?

        “Great!” he responded finally with a bit more enthusiasm in his voice.

        This was not a journey to be taken without faith. This was a journey of enlarging his spiritual growth, of identifying with others who took for granted believing the things he had for years loved to bathe himself in. Part of him wanted to see it as west coast culture, but they were all here right now in the east.

        Troy carefully packed the ice around the water bottles in the cooler. He would have to refill the cooler a few times. While he was packing the cooler, a kid dressed in khakis and a white Phish original logo t – shirt stopped by.

        “Hey man, you selling that water, I’m parched!”

        Mark shot him a smile and answered for Troy 

   

        “Yeah!”

        The kid immediately brought forth a knot of bills and asked “How much? Two?”

        He peeled off two bills and thrust them forward toward Troy. He had been intending to sell them for a buck apiece, but why refuse? Beside which Mark piped right in with another answer “Yeah, two. And we’ve got burgers too if you want!” The voice of experience.

        “Wow, those look good. “ He took the water from Troy, who gave an apology “I just popped em in the cooler, so they are a little warm...”

        Cracking it open and taking a swig the kid replied. ”That’s fine. I’ll pass on the food, though it looks great! Have a good show!”

        “Have a good show!!” Mark and Troy piped in together as their first customer walked away from the van.

        Troy smiled to himself and grimacing picked up the full cooler to walk it onto a spot he had reserved on shakedown. It was about fifty pounds, and he looked forward to being off work already. It was time to take charge of his self run business. His first profits had been to the tune of a thousand percent profit.

        Turning on to shakedown he quickly scouted a spot about half way down the length of the marketplace where no one had parked their goods. He heaved the packed cooler across the walkway beginning to become spotted with potential customers and finally put the cooler to rest. The man he was setting up across from was a smiling Jamaican who immediately smiled at his plight and spoke across the walkway “Hey, you made it! Ha ha!”

        The girl standing next to him bowed her head a little, continuing to fold a “rag” or imported prayer rug to display on their six foot long table. The table was an array of price signs taped to the front. She also turned for a brief smile and nod saying “hello”.

        We were neighbors, and respectably would not be in any competition. His shop had no food or drink to speak of, and Troy realized another key to his involvement in the community. Respecting other businesses and working together to increase everyone’s profitability was a must.

       The man next to him seemed to just be enjoying the sun on a lawn chair. He tall and thin with a muscular frame. Both he and his girlfriend seated next to him had long blonde hair. He reached a hand out to introduce himself.

        “Jim, man, and this is Linda.”

        “Hi Jim, hi Linda. Want some water? Free water for my neighbors!”

        “No thanks,” he replied quickly revealing the beer he held on the side of his lawn chair just out of sight “we’ve got beer. But whoa fee, man.”

        “Yeah right.”

        “I’ll take a water, what kind are they?” Linda spoke up.

        “American Pride I think.”

        He handed over semi chilled water to Jim, who passed it on to her. She cracked it open and took a swig.

        “S’warm. I’d wait a little before selling it. I hope you haven’t been selling warm water!”

        What a bitch, Troy thought to himself.

        “Nah, just one and that one I gave you. He didn’t care”

        “I hope not, you know you affect everyone’s business when you sell bad goods!”

        This was insanity. If he had set up shop I downtown Manhattan he wouldn’t have received this much community consciousness. Of course he would need a license if he set up downtown anywhere.

        He decided to ignore her quip and yelled his pitch for the first time.

        “Water, get your water here! Thirsty?”

        Over the course of the next few hours the lot went from a laid back scene of straggling wanderers to an elbow room only buzz of activity. Troy sold the bottles of water for a dollar apiece.

        Several times people offered him more, and he realized if he was inconsistent on his price someone would figure it out and he would hurt business. Overcharge one to make profit, and lose them all. He tried different pitches as the show grew nearer.

        “Ice cold water!”

        “Water here, what the fuck it’s only a buck!”

        By around six thirty he had sold forty five of the waters. The rest had been drank by he, Mark, Carey, and his neighbor in da’ hood Linda. He had run out of ice around five thirty, but had used it as an opportunity to meet other people and had gone around collecting a handful here, a handful there from others as Mark had suggested. They were all so friendly, smiles and nods, no one told him no.. and some even offered him smoke or a beer. It was half an hour to show time and he had doubled his money from the night before. He desperately wanted to get into the show, but was as yet lacking the funds to do so. There would be more shows. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he would find a way. He had heard of getting miracle tickets from a buddy he had met in Ocean City New Jersey.

        Pat had been an old dead head who had toured for several years. He said miracle tickets were free tickets that you got on lot to see the show. Troy walked around with a finger over his head as he saw others doing, indicating that he needed “one ticket”. His heart was not in it. He was ashamed to take a handout in the form of a concert ticket. Deeper in him the knowledge as to why the ticket was a necessity to his betterment shifted toward understanding.

        Troy had yet to understand his status, to see himself with a ticket stub in his hand. He was depressed from the loony bin, but hadn’t Phish told him his dark side Floyd was Dead, nothing but a

        Ripple?

        This was the story of realizing ghostly green paper was not the aim. He was trying to live a life, and that was completely free. One spirit in still water like his soul he had seen vibing outward affected by the wavelengths of others. There need be no proof he was not crazy. If these thousand gathered under the same premise to surrender to the flow, if this band was the largest grossing tour band in the world, didn’t that outweigh the skeptics who had locked him down? He had been surrounding himself with the wrong crowd, but now he was here. Why weigh on a sunny day?

        Fourth of July fireworks lit up the night and he stood watching them in awe. The end of the night came, and he began to watch making sure Mark had not left without him. At eleven forty five when the crowd streamed forth from the arena, he saw a familiar face. It was a guy he had hung out with throughout his entire senior year. He and his girlfriend and her best friend had gone to this guy’s house every night to smoke pot. In fact after graduation when his parents had kicked him out, he had stayed with Bill on his couch temporarily. That was until he came home to find Bills house burned down one night.

        “Hey! Bill!”

        “Yo, Joel! What are you doing here?”

        For a minute it seemed as though he was between worlds. It already felt as though Troy had taken on a from of his own, and he felt as though he stood in limbo within the tribe.

        Then a warm glow filled him and he began to realize that this was to be a healing including his former life, which it would merge with the new where the friendly good book would see it fit to do so.

        “I’m on tour, man. Have you seen Angel at all?”

        Angel was Bills old girlfriend from High School days. She had gone on to Penn State.

        “Nah.”

        “How was your show?”

        “Good. They were, well not as good as the Dead, but...”

        Some kids coming from the arena on the path by the Delaware lit up with hoots and yells. Troy, annoyed by Bills comment lit up with them 

      

        “Wooohooo!” he shouted.

        Bill began to say something, but he was too busy cheering to hear “Yee! Yiyiyiyiyiyi YEEE!” the Independence Day war cry escaped his throat.

        The words of the Dead came to his mind. “Leaving Texas, Fourth day of July. Sun so hot, the clouds so low, the eagles filled the sky...”

        Kind of symbolic in every way.

        From the corner of his eye, he saw Mark strolling across the vacating shakedown toward the van. People were leaving faster this night than the last.

        “Hey, Bill man good to see you, I gotta run!” He gave Bill a quick hug and hurried off toward the van. Arriving at the van, he found Mark looking rather stoned and weary eyed, though with a warm glow of peace about him.

        “So glad we are leaving Camden” he said to the arriving Troy.

        “Have you seen the others?”

        From nowhere Carey, Jim, and Star lagging behind looking rather drunk came bounding onto the scene. Onyx was lagging behind Jim, dragging his leash behind him. Carey opened her waist pouch to reveal something to Mark in private and he grinned. She turned to Troy with a grin and pulled a light green nugget of kine bud part way out of the bag and smiled.

        “Got a bowl?” Star asked.

        Carey shot him a dirty look that said he was too drunk to require response.

        Mark answered instead “We’ll have to hot potato”.

       Then nodding toward the security guard passing them on his way towards a group of kids holding giant nitrous balloons said “Get in, lets go now”.

        “Fucking preps,” Carey said climbing into the passenger seat of the VW van.

        The van was indeed crowded. Mark drove, Carey was in the passenger seat, while Star and Troy in the back tried to make space away from Jim and Onyx who were in and on the one back seat that remained in the bus. Everyone but Mark were soon fast asleep, and Troy decided it would not be a bad idea.

        When he awoke, he saw it was light. Carey was awake and talking to someone on her digicom cell phone device. She seemed to be getting directions to somewhere. Star was awake and working clipping pieces of wire from a coil he had wrapped around a pen. Onyx was fast asleep and partway on Troy’s legs which in turn were pins and needles numb. He saw Carey pass something to Mark, who in turn offered it to Troy without a word.

        It was a smoking potato. The top had been poked by a pencil to its middle where it was attached by a joining hole on the side for an air release and a hole lengthwise to make the pipe tube. It was filled with half lit kine bud marijuana; light green and smelling to be a good batch of outdoor homegrown. Not bad, but only about sixty an eighth of an ounce if you bought it in that quantity on lot. He took a long inhale and relaxed. It had been a long time since he smoked pot, and a few minutes later he was too stoned to be of much company. Carey turned to him and decided to try asking him about his origins.

        Troy decided it best just to hand him the ten page paper he had written to give his mental health lawyer and the judge at the hospital a few days prior. She read it in silence, now and again stopping to remark “wow”.

        Star chimed in from his spot in the back. “Hey , wanna learn mail?”

        Troy didn’t understand and gave him a puzzled look. Star laughed “Your fried aren’t you? Here, I’ll

teach you how to make chain mail to sell. “

        He held up a bracelet of metal links to eye level between them. It was made up small enjoined metal circles linked together in ones and twos horizontally. Star showed him how to wrap the metal around something round. Then he began clipping the coiled wire in pieces that were open ended circles of the wire. He then used pliers to link them together as many as five wide in patterns to create chain mail. Troy was impressed by the amount of time he had invested in various pieces sitting around the van floor.

        “You can sell this for twenty bucks on lot. Took me two hours!”

        “Right on, Star.”

        Moments later they pulled into a Denny’s parking lot. The lot was filled with kids Troy recognized from the show both entering the restaurant and pulling up in cars from behind them. They were a group of about fifteen meeting for lunch planned via cell phone en route to their next show. Troy had overheard Carey saying they were going to a Further Show somewhere near Pittsburgh.

        Though he was impressed by the crowd, Troy was disappointed in himself for having gotten so stoned. He had not smoked pot in months and was too baked to socialize. This was an awkward spot for a kid with no money to eat among fifteen new acquaintances who he depended on. He was way too paranoid and uptight about fitting in still. It sure was taking him time to mellow slow to this lifestyle.

        The waitress seemed to know them, and gave them special service. Ignoring his nervous shyness, the group though saying little to him during the meal taken at two eight foot adjoined tables did feed him. Kids passed a plate down the row, several of them each giving him a little of their food.

       He ordered a coffee and stilled himself in the hope he would sober up enough to be any kind of whit.

        But right now the pot had him dumb.

        About the time he felt himself sobering, they were exiting the building. The meal all in all had lasted about an hour. Two kids had smoked a bowl under the table after the meal, passing it between them under the table. It was easily concealed by the cigarette smoke in the group. They were all discussing sleeping plans, and Troy realized he was going to be asked for cash soon. They got back on the bus and Troy asked where they were going. Mark answered a mono syllabic “Camp”.

       They were in Pennsylvania, and a few quiet hours later began to wind out on smaller country roads. Finally they turned off into a deep woods area in farm country. They stopped by a small barn house apparently to gain permission to camp. Mark got out, and went inside the building. He returned and climbed back into the driver seat saying simply “ten bucks”.

        Carey handed a ten dollar bill to him.

        They stopped the bus on the left hand side of the dirt path a few hundred feet further. It was already growing dusk, and he saw that there were other buses there and a handful of tents from various campers set up on the way down to a small lake at the bottom of the grassy hill they were on. Troy was tired, and it was obvious that Carey wanted nothing to do with him having some business to take care of with Jim and Onyx. They set up a tent on the hill to share. Mark announced that he and Troy and Star could share the van to sleep.

        Troy joined a few other college freshman aged campers that night for a few hours listening to Star flirt expertly with the girls. He wished he could be so outgoing,but he was dreadfully bad at small talk. Star strummed an acoustic guitar as one of the guys in the group joined him on bongos. Troy missed his guitar. The night was clear, and all of the stars were visible in the fresh country air, and he soon relaxed into a peaceful campground mode. That night he and Star and Mark talked and laughed sharing stories until the early morning hours.

        In the morning, Troy removed a bar of soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag and walked toward the lake. The lake was really a very slow moving river it seemed. It was place at the bottom of a grassy knoll a few hundred feet wide.

         The lake was maybe a hundred feet wide and stretched lengthwise off into the distance more than a hundred yards off. As Troy grew close it, he saw a creek source near the far southeastern end with a dirt path leading into the woods beyond sight. He walked that direction. He thanked himself for having the wisdom to wear swim trunks to bathe in.

        The path turned out to be a steep grade made up of large boulders to grip on the way down. At the bottom of the path Troy heard a loud whooshing. He turned the final corner of the path and emerged into an area with a crystal clear twenty foot waterfall which emptied into a clean water pool of about thirty feet wide. He stepped into the water and had a moment.

        Here he was in the middle of nowhere, with friends at every turn, excitement untold and now natural peaceful beauty to bathe in as if in the richest of spa resorts. This was living!! He stepped into the clear cold water and lathered himself. When he was satisfied, he stepped into the falling water. It rushed over his body sending chills and serenely cleansing him of all dirt and soap. Half an hour later, he reluctantly walked back toward the grassy hill to rejoin the group at the van. He tried to tell them of the waterfall, but they were all so busy packing the van. It seemed they had met someone here who had a motel to share and Mark was anxious to be off to it having a sore back from the night before.

        They boarded the bus, and with Carey giving directions from the shotgun seat half an hour later entered a small Red Roof Inn. The digicom bleeped on and off as frustrated, she relayed the directions to the obviously fatigued Mark.

        “I can’t wait. I’m too fucking tired” He piped up.

        They pulled in to the parking lot, and immediately Mark turned to Troy. “Hey I need as much gas as you can give, plus ten for the motel”.

        “How about twenty gas? That enough?”

        Mark smiled at the offer which was in Troy’s unrealistic fog way too much and said “that’ll be fine”.

        He handed over the cash and helped mark to follow the five others into a small room with two queen size beds and a table. There was a new member to the group who was in their room. He had been met at the motel by one of the kids, and had agreed to share reservations with them. He would share the one bed. The other would be shared by Carey and Jim, Onyx, Star, and Troy taking the floor.

       An hour later they lay in silence. The TV was on low, and Troy was watching a for the first time ever a cartoon called “South Park”. Around four in the afternoon he fell asleep to the droning television and the heavy breath of his bus crew. He would not awake until the following morning.

       The clock on the nightstand between the rooms two bed read nine o’clock. Mark was missing, but the others were still asleep in the beds. Troy went outside to smoke his morning cigarette. Walking on to the second floor veranda, he saw Mark bending over the driver side interior seat of the van, throwing trash into a trash bag.

        “Hey, Troy, give me a hand?!”

        Troy was impressed by Mark, realizing how much of a father role he played in taking the driver role of the group. The tape deck announced “Tell you about that driver that lives inside my head. He starts me up and stops me, and puts me into bed...”

        Sure did. Troy assisted Mark for the next half hour in detailing the van which had just come across the country going east and was now headed back. It was filthy. Mark opened up to him “I’m sorry but I don’t think we are going to be able to take you any further. Carey is complaining, and you can see we have limited space.”

        The look on his face was that of sincere worry and regret at having to make this choice. Troy felt sorry for him. He had made his bed, and he would have to lie in it.

        “That’s FINE,” he reassured Mark wiping the dust from the console cup holder in the passenger seat “Thank you for getting me to THIS show!!”

        Mark smiled at him a genuine smile of relief “You are going to do fine, kid. You have respect.

        These guys are lazy, look at me! I’m cleaning this damn bitch all by myself. Someone will give you a ride.”

        “Thanks.”

        It was a bright summer morning and the parking lot was half empty an hour before the groups checkout time of eleven o’clock. According to Mark the show was about an hour and a half from here yet. He had said that they needed only to stop at the grocery store and get the makings for veggie bean burritos to sell.

        Troy would put the rest of his money in with the others and they would make a group effort to turn over the money for the next show. Carey had tickets she had traded for with one of the kids at Denny’s and would be going in to the show. The new guy they had met at the motel had tickets as well.

        Troy watched in dismay as Star traded an eighth of pot he had gotten somewhere the night prior for a ticket. It looked as though Troy and Mark were going to be holding up their own end of things outside in the lot again.

        The group from his room and another group from one of the other rooms formed outside near the parked cars. Dan had brought a few different drums and congas to sell at the show. He made them with woven hemp wraps for straps and stretching tight leather skins over their earthy wooden exteriors.

        A small drum circle session worked for about a half an hour while they got situated in their respective vehicles for the trip to the show.

        The grocery store was a short stop about five blocks down the road, and they were off to the show. The arena turned out to have a dirt parking lot set away from it on an embankment that faced its side entrances. The gates and general admission crowd was visible standing at the edge of the lot on shakedown. It seemed to be a lot more relaxed than Camden had been, and there were a lot more drug dealers.

        Mark parked on the southwest end of shakedown only one row from the center of activity and immediately began to make the burritos from plastic containers he set up in an assembly line from just inside the sliding bus door. Carey and Jim, Star and Onyx almost immediately took off. Mark made a deal with Troy to put together the veggie wraps if he would sell them. They would have about a hundred of them total. Troy agreed.

        “Go ahead and take a walk, check it out! They’ll be ready in about half an hour, “he said licking his fingers of refried bean substance that had spilled.

        One quick survey of the lot showed that it was a younger crowd with a lot less elders than had been at Camden. He wondered where they had all gone when the lights went out the night previous.

        Shakedown was three times longer than at Camden, however stretching about a thousand feet. There were a lot more food vendors, and Troy worried about being able to compete with them. He decided to seek employment with one of the competitors. The old saying “if you can’t beat em, join em” came to mind.

        On the corner where the path lead to the front gates of the arena was a stand that was made up of a square of about eight tables around behind which was parked a box truck. The owner and several other dread locked kids were unloading everything from cases of soda and veggies to whole pizza ovens. Troy watched from a distance for about five minutes, and then made his move. He walked up to the middle eastern man who seemed to be barking orders to the workers. He extended a hand to the man, saying simply “Troy.”

        The man immediately looked at him said simply “pick up that case and move it over here, will you” with a scowl on his face.

        Troy immediately did so. The man then turned and shook his hand. “Russo.” He replied.

        “Russo, good to meet you...”

        “Yeah, yeah, yeah, am busy! What you want?!” the man barked rudely.

        “I am broke and need work, was wondering if you might have the need for help.”

        Without hesitation Russo replied, “Yeah. Pay you five dollars an hour. Pick up that case and bring it here.”

         Troy was startled at just how sharp, commanding and rude the man had been, but once again he followed directions. This barking of orders and shuffling of goods continued for about half an hour when one of the group of dready kids standing on the corner walked up to him.

          “Don’t fucking listen to Russo, he’ll fucking screw you over. He’s a Prick. A real“grade A” asshole.”

        “Really?” Troy responded, a quizzical half believing blank stare crossing his face.

        “Yeah.”

        That decided Troy on the rude man. He acted with the exact same sharpness with which he had been treated. He walked over to Russo and told him he was leaving that he had business to attend to.

        Russo grinned and replied “Yeah, yeah, I owe you five dollars. Come see me later. Move!” and he brushed past with a box of pizza ingredients.

        Troy spat on the ground and walked back into the relieving atmosphere of the bustling shakedown. He walked past the van once to see what was on the southwest end of the lot. It seemed that a lot of stores had set up head shops on that end with everything from counterfeit Oakley’s to Guatemalan handbags. The air everywhere was thick with the rich smell of patchouli, sandalwood and spots of sage. Finally done window shopping, Troy returned to the van.

        “Sell these, and when you’re done, you can keep twenty bucks for yourself. Two bucks a wrap.

        Feed the hungry kids.” He instructed handing over forty wraps in a baggy.

        “No problem.” Troy replied condition grounded, but determined to try. He saw Carey out of the corner of his eye exchanging hugs with their neighbors. He was jealous, and this was going to be a long night without tickets again. Though he began selling them up and down working incredibly hard at his pitch, by eight o ‘clock nightfall was approaching and he still had twenty wraps in the bag.

        Troy was hungry, and stopped and spent ten of the forty he had made on soda and two slices of pizza. Finishing these, he turned back toward the direction of the van. The drug boys’ boom box man was blaring from his shoulder rap in this direction and on the corner was a rare sight of the seediest of the dealers all gathered on one corner. Troy guessed they were worth a hundred thousand easy this night alone. As he passed them he heard one yell out “SIX UP!!”

        Even so, a kid from a few feet across waved to Troy to get his attention. He held in his hand an eye drops bottle, the common way to carry liquid LSD.

        “Give ya’ a double puddle for four wraps!” he said to Troy “Its great stuff.”

        “Okay!” Troy said without hesitation.

        The top of the eye drops bottle came off in less than a second and the kids grabbed Troy’s hand, holding it palm up and open toward him. Into it he squeezed a small quarter sized amount of purple liquid.

        “Eat up!!” the kid demanded.

        Troy held his wet palm up to his mouth and licked off the liquid acid. It tasted sharp and bitter, and he immediately had butterflies in his stomach. Awkwardly now, he dipped his hand into the bag to retrieve the veggie bean burritos. He counted them into the kids’ outstretched palm.

        “On, two, three, FOUR!”

        They shook hands and as Troy walked away the kid yelled “Have a good show!!!”

        Troy yelled back with verve “Have a good show!! WooooooHoooo!”.

       VA moment later, the question of his profit arose in Troy’s mind. He had thirty of the sixty bucks that Mark expected, fifteen wraps and he was now getting “on” and extremely hungry again. “Fuck it!” he thought, “gotta eat” and stopped at a vendor to order two more slices of pizza and a soda.

        Twenty bucks now.

        The acid began to take effect, and Troy simply walked back and forth with across the lot with the bag hanging from his wrist. People everywhere were gathered and talking and he joined them in groups here and there enjoying tales of other shows and such. He amused himself by watching a group of pink robed Hare Krishna’s handing out pamphlets for a little while. He was starting to relax, he could feel the drug beginning to take its full effect by the time the show let out a few hours later. It had taken its time, but was quickly gaining in intensity.

        Somewhere around eleven thirty he stood in a daze near Russo’s stand, who had blown him off completely as he had been warned. A group of dreadlocked tour kids hung around the front of the stand which he now noticed was only a row toward the arena from the Hare Krishna’s Winnebago. They were getting rowdy, and for some reason Troy had the feeling this night of partying was going to be far different from the others.

        Suddenly out of the dark, approached Mark. He had not seen him all night. He immediately gave him a hug.

        “Hey , kid. Been looking all over for you! Thought you got into the show! Did you?”

        “Naah.. I’m tripping man.”

        Mark looked concerned and said “You shouldn’t do that shit”.

        Troy was surprised at the response.

        “Did you get the wraps sold?”

        He tugged at the bag with the remaining wraps Troy had hanging from his wrist.

        Taking the bag, he opened it and peeked inside, then began to count them. Troy felt like a little kid being caught stealing from the cookie jar.

        “Yeah, man I had a hard time selling them.” He proceeded to hand over the thirty bucks he had to the furry figures outstretched paw.

        “Aww man, we needed to make FIFTY!”

        Surprisingly he did not look angry, just disappointed. Troy was embarrassed and turned bright red. Mark then surprised him and gave him a compassionate hug.

         “That’s ok.” He said as almost an aside. He had the equivalent to fifty in his hand.

        “We can’t take you any further, kid I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll find a ride.” He then gave Troy one last long hug of goodbye and left off toward the van saying “I’ll see you at the next show! Get a ride!”

        Getting a ride turned out to be as hard as it had been in Camden, and he was a bit more panicked due to the acid taking hold of his thought. Car systems blared as they lined up in rows moving five miles an hour to exit the dirt parking lot. Their headlights confused and blinded him as he walked around thumb outstretched toward the gate. He even asked one of the Hare Krishna’s for a ride. “No, sorry” he had said and simply closed the door of the camper.

        After this, he decided to go back to his Camden plan, get off lot first, and then thumb it. He had no more turned to walk this direction when the passenger door of a Saab flew open and nearly hit him.

        An incredibly cute brown haired girl leaned over the passenger seat from the drivers’ and asked “Hey, you need a ride to camp?”

        This girl was smoking hot. He hopped in the car and shut the door, remembering how long it had been since he had gotten laid. Wow, what a break.

        “I’m Liz,” she introduced herself, shaking his hand with a delicate pause. “I saw you a ways back and figured you were headed for camp. I’m glad you decided to come with me.”

        “Me too.”

        They crossed the ten foot high gated entrance boundary and he saw directly across the road something he had missed on the way in. It was a sign for a campground. What a break. The headlights and taillights of the cars in front of them seemed to swell and sway, open and close in their stop and go traffic. It was a light show to his acid puddle eyes. The stars began to connect in webs, what few he could see through the windshield and he noticed he had a hard on. The girl drove them across the road directly into a hundred car line for the gates of the campground. 

        They rounded the right handed curve in the road, and Troy saw what appeared to be a pay booth with a guard issuing passes to enter.

       As they approached the booth, Troy’s hopes were dashed of getting any action with this girl.

        She spoke up. “I don’t know if you are here with somebody else or what, but if you are in the car, they are going to make me pay for both. So if you are here with others, I guess you should get out and walk. “

        Two things entered his mind. He had no money with which to hunt this fresh game, and he did have to get in. He immediately made up his mind.

        “Ok, thanks!” he said and practically leaped from the passenger side and walked to the right of the line cars. The sound of hundreds of drums beating in mixing rhythm filled the air from what seemed to be a short expanse of woods ahead. His heart began to beat rapidly as the air filled with swirling masses of color brought on by the increasing loudness of the drums.

        He began to run for the woods, running free toward sound the size of the concert that night itself. He saw dozens of blazing bonfires like the eyes of giant spirits staring back him through the dense shrubbery. He ran faster and faster, and began yelling at the top of his lungs, ignoring the bushes and tree limbs scratching at him. He just kept echoing the awesome sound of the dancers cries all over the hill of bonfires toward which he sped. The cries were varied; many and it all seemed so ecstatic, so wild.

        Troy had been transported in time to some sort of surreal tribe of gypsies all gathered together in fire and drum, smoke and spirit, dance and shouts, singing and celebrating the glory of the twisting spiral stars and the full moon hanging blood red and immense low on the horizon of the hill.

        He passed through the forest and there they were, campfires stretching off into the distance up a series of hills that seemed to amount to a mountain as far as his eye could see.

        A man seated by the fire nearest to the thicket from which he emerged must have heard him coming and appreciated his spirit. He stood now, and beating his chest began to scream at the top of his lungs.

        “WOOOOOOOOOOYEEE!!!WoooHoooo!”

        Troy broke to a slow trot and was filled with adrenaline. His trip had begun its peak. The throbbing of the drumbeat was an endless series off bass beats and loops, opposing rhythms and answers from various sites. Suddenly the chemicals coursing his veins seemed no more than the natural state. The skyline was a horizon of conical flaming bonfires dotting his upward climb like the stars that seemed to circle and dance around the bloody lunar splotch in a pastel sky.

       

        Ahead and above, there seemed to be a central point to all of this wonderful madness. It glowed with wisdom, with ancient knowledge that these ways had survived through our modern time to now, that they held power and meaning beyond what centuries of scholars could ever describe. We were the beat, the rhythm of the universe ever so small and receiving the wisdom of the gods in our subconscious ancestral genes. These nights brought forth that raw power. Troy walked on up the hill in a daze. Finally he saw the center of the organized chaos. It was a band equipment truck from which had come these dozens of instruments. Fifty strong stood in a circle behind the truck, talking in their rhythmic pounding.

        Troy stood for what seemed hours, his heart pounding with them when it intensified, lulling into still Zen quietness as they echoed talking round the circle. It seemed often the children in the group were the ones to send forth a new rhythm. In their innocence they would play something original, something somehow missing from the dozens of beats already going on, and a wave would pass through all of us as the new rhythm spread and was interpreted.

        Over the next few hours, Troy wandered from sleepy campfire to sleepy campfire when the sky cracked open and began to turn pink. He started toward the east, the top of this hill built on hill campground. For ten minutes he climbed past endless sights, until finally he reached the plateau that was the highest point. There was literally no pun in this as he realized all around him was a constant whoosh. In the corner of the hill was a tent with lights and strobes, dancer gathered around obviously all on “e”. The nitrous tanks were everywhere, and all that could be heard over the music was a loud “whooshing” as if some hundred foot tire was going flat all over the campground. Dozens of balloons were in sight in the hands of partiers. Coolers of beer were strewn everywhere, and there were dozens of loaded guys and girls. This was definitely the high point of the camp.

        Troy walked to the peak of the hill, and watched the sky. To his hallucinating eyes it was a shower of comets among interconnected spider webs amongst the vanishing stars. The dancers and he were being eaten by the god that was the sun, revealing the redness it had given the moon in its nighttime law laying gravitational light source. The redness seemed like a sea of spilled ink creeping down through crazy fingers, splintered sunlight renewing and creating all of them on that high plane in its life giving light.

        It seemed to Troy he could hear in his head the somber tune of a flute calling him to descend the mountainous height. He did so, finding that the embankment on the other side was hundreds more campers all sleeping in their tents now along its gradual grade.

        He reached the bottom of the hill and began to feel somewhat panicked. The high did not seem to be relenting, and his eyes were pasted open to swimming colors and abnormal thoughts of which he could not make sense, and yet was no longer numb enough to escape the pain of his hemorrhaging brain.

        He remembered his Buddhist studies, and now concerned for the state he was in decided for the betterment of his panic to sit and still himself at the pond by the road which led out of this camp. An inner eye relaxed to seeing the drama realizing, yet remaining separate from it all. His inner voice began the experience.

        “From out of the looming dream of the night before I remembered the spiral darkness of stars coming through my thought. You are, all of you, inside what could not be but was now part of everything but my own thought. The thought of this blanketed open the sky of a pond whose reflected interior had turned from ripples and fish to the skyline of New York City now in ruins over the ages as a European city that had reacted favorably only to decay.”

        “This was a wavelength, a band of rotted evolution. The people were there still and the same wavelength from which we had always emanated. I died in my mind and hoped the next second be reborn knowing it was me. Me who had not just created the moment, created it from the minds of the passersby behind me. They were honking the horn at my fresh adolescent scream knowing that I would need a ride off of the lot. As yet I had no way to go there. I seemed to think from other peoples minds.

        Minds that probably had not been transported with me into this strange world. I was on a small dirt path in the middle of a herd of animals who called myself human.”

        “The car stopped, not the one I had been driving the day next door to the minutes in the city in the pond , but another. The minute they stopped I had stopped turning my head to look at them for fear of seeming sinister. I was good and alone in this world and I had no immediate control over my desires.

        I realized that a few hours had passed during which they could no longer be the same people, strange people who seemed to know me like the family we were as they laughed.”

       “They had suddenly disappeared several times into the distance in my sight via the car that never was there but just the dirt road.”

        "I need a ride," Troy thought.

        “It was the ride from one temple I remembered, this ride. The Hare Krishna’s in my mind felt naked in their chemical absence yet had some strange need. They were here too. This was thirst and hunger, no maybe the need to defecate then pee all over the warm substance that jelly like slid over my body. It was like a warm egg yolk erupted, its goo all over me lulling me into a lapse of sight that bolted me upright with a flash of pure white light.”

        “I was only internalizing to spring up from the lotus I had been born into the moment I had sat down in the night before.”

       The pond released Troy, and he sensed a car passing him on the road. His tired mind wondered nonsensically if it were the same people he had seen leave his sight a few observations ago. He realized he was almost down now from the drug, and that he would need sleep.

        Across from him on the dirt road leading alongside the pond a kid of High School age came practically skipping toward him. He stopped to pick a flower, and then approached Troy.

        “Do you need a ride?” he asked.

        “Yeah, I do.” Troy said in a very tired drone.

        “I’m Chris...Follow me!” the kid smiled the brightest of Cheshire grins and began literally this time skipping off in front of him. They began to make their way up the hill Troy now saw was clearing almost entirely of campers. He must have blacked out at the pond. The thought of death crossed his mind, and he felt weak again.

        The girl Chris was talking to nearby and nearly shoving the flower at turned to a guy in the group who pointed directly at him. They both nodded their heads, and Troy realized Chris was asking for him to get a ride. He approached him and said

      “What did you ask them?”

      “For a ride for you. I told them I have one and they said no. Selfish pricks.”

        “The audacity of his comment even being directed toward the betterment of his situation struck Troy numb. There was something about Chris though that was a glowing reminder to him of how naively reliant on a higher force to intervene he had been in Camden, how in blind faith it somehow worked.

        Sure enough, the next couple they came on said they were headed to Deer Creek in Indiana, where they would camp out for the entire week of shows. They took Troy on board into their pickup truck. Never was he so relieved in his life. What a night!

        He waved to Chris as he skipped off into the distance, leaving this new girl friend of Troy’s with the flower. Seated between the homely looking brown haired girl and her volunteer fireman husband, he soon succumbed to his exhaustion.

        He was vaguely aware that the girl found him attractive and wished to talk to him on the trip; however he passed out for almost the entire trip anyhow.

        The following week of shows were being held at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana. Deer creek was a large property which included acres of land to camp on. The property was in the middle of farm country, and surrounded on all sides by cornfields.

        As they arrived, Troy woke to two strange faces and a pangs of hunger the likes of which he could not remember. The girl on his right was shaking him to waking very lightly, and announced to him that they had arrived.

        “Your welcome to hang out and have lunch with us, there is plenty of food.”

        It was just the news he had needed. The campground they were pulling into was huge, even larger he thought than the one from which they had just come. The guard at the gates told him they had better dig into get a spot, as they were expecting about four thousand plus to be camping here this week.

        Josh, the guy driving the truck looked annoyed at Troy’s presence. Josh said to him in an almost mockingly backwoods drawl “don’t ya’ll mind ma’ wife now, y’hear. She be jibing about dis and that awl the goddamn fool time.”

        They were country folk, for sure. Country folk Troy decided to hang onto for all they were worth on getting him a new spot in this campground.

        They set up tents with what seemed to be a group of friends they had planned to meet. Troy could never be sure, though. Amongst the new campers he was meeting while having a ham and turkey sandwiches with fresh lettuce and chips was a kind of plain girl with long brown hair who seemed to be all about having Troy in her tent.

        “Please, share my tent with me, I will be here every night, I have got room for ten in that thang.”

        She seemed to be trying to flirt with him at the same time, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

        Room for ten, huh? Obviously Indiana folk also, and damned kindly they were. Here in a place where they left daylight savings alone for the cows.

        Troy learned that there would be two days of Phish Lesh and Bob Dylan before

        Phish arrived on the scene to play three more shows. It was going to be almost a full week there.

        In the distance a camper’s stereo blasted music “Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it’s been...” their neighbors began shouting and a set of bottle rockets went screaming into the sky, banging to a halt in the midday sun.

        Troy had gone for a walk into the nearby woods to explore after lunch. He intended to gather some firewood for the night to prove his usefulness to his fellow campers. It was a peaceful walk about the forest, and he found on the other side lay a pond where a fishing hippy told him you could fish if you had bought a pass to. He started on his way back with an armful of kindling roughly an hour later.

        He was met on the way out on a trail that ran beside the woods. A security officer asked him if he knew he was trespassing. He asked what number camp he was on. Troy was forced to leave the kindling and climb on board the golf cart beside the man. He drove them to the campsite where Troy’s friends had been. There he asked a blank faced crowd if he indeed was camping there.

        No one amongst them was willing to give him the information, Troy guessed fearing he done something really illegal. The security guard informed Troy he would have to escort him off of the grounds. He drove him to the front gates. There he told him that he would have to leave him, and not to be caught in the woods again.

        Another guard at the gates walked to Troy and told him there was nothing stopping him from walking back onto the grounds. What a senseless ride! He had been thrown out of the grounds to be told that he could now walk back into them. When he reached the truck where Josh and his wife were, he found them packing to move the truck down to shakedown for the show. They had tickets, however were going to tailgate and try to sell some sodas beforehand.

        Moments later Troy was seated on the back of the truck Indian style, watching the concertgoers pass by. He stayed there in silent meditation until the gates were about to open. His fellow campers asked him if he could watch their truck while they were in the show. He said he could, and they were off, leaving him seated on the tailgate.

        A girl dressed in full fairy costume came skipping down the mile long trail that was shakedown toward him. She stopped by Troy, and stopped to give him a kiss, share some of the glitter that covered her whole body. She was cute, and Troy did not resist. She leaned over to him and kissed his cheek, as she did so pulling the wand from the bubble jar hat was hanging from her neck. But rather than blowing bubbles, she put the wet stick on his forehead, leaving several dribbles of liquid there before winking at him and floating away.

        An hour later it was clear that he had been acid dripped on him by the fairy. The shouts of his neighbors selling their beer began to echo in the hollow of his mind. “Icy cold Sammy Smiths! Icy cold New Castle!!” It was as if suddenly there were five of him. The inner space of his head began to swim as he lost his equilibrium.

        He wandered around the campground and found that shakedown here wound through several dirt paths.

        It was more like a town carnival, with hundreds of actual stores represented. He was profoundly happy and at peace with the next few hours just exploring the little community of shops. He stopped here and there to meet the owners, talk to other campers. He saw Chris doing the same all over the camp. Each time he passed by, Chris seemed to have something new on... a bag, stickers, a necklace.

        As he wandered past with an airy expression on his face, he flashed a peace sign with one hand. The next time he passed he was holding a five inch long nugget of marijuana asking for a ticket trade. Troy had seen several other people working trades with nuggets, pot was as good as gold in this little village.

        Troy walked north west down shakedown towards the concert venue. As he grew closer to the venue, food vendors became more and more frequent. The path grew wider and individuals selling beer and things were on this end doing their trade closer to the music. You could hear the show as if you were inside at the end of the path. There at the end of the path was a lawn section sized expanse of grass leading up to the ticket takers for the outdoor arena. People were camped out all over this outside of the arena lawn, listening to the music just as loud as it would have been from a general admission seat. The difference was not being able to see the stage.

        Hours seemed to pass like minutes as he explored all of the avenues the circus had brought to town. At the end of the show, the crowd could be heard roaring over the village. Thousands of people who wanted an encore, thousands of people who even after the encore would flood into the camp to party more. Moments later the crowd let out. As the stream of people coursed onto the arena gate lawn, a walking drum circle broke out. The drummers were leading the way into the first night of camp to the crowd breaking lose from Phil and Dylan.

        It was incredible, and soon Troy was entirely relaxed. The world was spinning and sucking him in with hopes and dreams beyond compare. He followed the crowd of hundreds into the camp, and stood on the outskirts where the circle would beat on well into the early morning. Fireworks were going off everywhere, this continuing as well into the early morning hours. It was a tribal reunion, and Troy wished never to leave these people, this lifestyle. This was home for all he had ever expected it to be.

        Late in the night, he grew dim and so walked back to the tent offered to him the day before by the girl. He climbed inside and found it empty. When he woke in the morning it was still just him.

        On the corner of the campgrounds where the cornfields began there was a breakfast he saw, emerging from his tent. The campers had a huge awning stretched out with a table of fresh coffee, tea, fruits, breads and pastries set out. He heard a girl chime out to passing campers “come on over, make yourself at home, have some breakfast!”

        Troy did just that. After breakfast, he went to the shower area and washed up, brushed his teeth.

        Returning to the tent, the girl was there.

        “Hi! How was your show?”

        “Great! Yours?”

        “Great! Did you get in?”

        “No, I didn’t have a ticket.”

        The girl looked puzzled for a moment and then said “Well, come on, you gotta get yourself inside tonight, you hear?” as if it were as easy as done.

        “See you later.”

        Throughout the rest of the day, Troy visited as many camps as he could. Eating, drinking, talking and hanging around in the beautiful sunny summer day until the dusk came and the show was on. This night he resolved to try for a ticket. For several hours he walked all over with one finger pointing toward the sky, but to no avail he did not get in.

        Before the show was over, he was already very tired from being very drunk in the afternoon and once again retired to the girls’ tent. Once again, he spent the night with a ten man tent to himself.

        When the morning came, he returned to where they had been having a buffet breakfast the day prior, and found that the spread was an open bar. He began to drink. Shortly before noon he blacked out. Later on that evening he crawled into the tent again, this time to find another guy passed out in there on the right half of the tent. He took the left, and passed out.

        When he came to it was evening already. The girl whose tent it was stood outside putting on fresh clothing.

        “We thought you was dead!”

        “I am.” He replied.

        She laughed and told him that she was glad he was feeling better.

        Troy walked on, still in a haze. He no more than reached the next row of tents when someone walked up to him and shoved a five strip of blotter acid into his hand.

        The man was swaying from drunkenness and said “here.”

        Troy smiled to himself about complaining of not being awake, and popped the acid directly into his mouth thinking of Keyes quote “For Gods Sake, Wake...”

        Troy walked down shakedown, faces looming at him from the crowd here and there. The world looked like a house of mirrors; everyone was stretched or distorted in one way or another. The lights from the camp seemed as bright as the sun and the incense smoke like a house fire. A crowd of thousands roared, and he was led to think of Hunters disposition towards the tale of David. He followed a vibe of Dead intuition towards the arena “gate lawn”. He hear the jam and danced.

        The set was incredible. “My Minds Got a Mind of Its Own into Split Open and Melt” during which he did.

        “Sparkle” relieved his pain and he danced off down shakedown during “Funky Bitch.”

        Some kids there fed his munchies with ganga goo, tortillas and lemonade.

        When he returned the second set was just getting underway. Troy danced the entire set through, the first he gotten to hear of the tour, and it was the perfect set in a perfect world. When he danced he saw himself looking like Shiva, many arms flailing all over. “Gotta Jiboo,” left him at ease with his day long party then eased him into “Sand, Twist, and Fee” which felt like his very story being played.

        “Whats the Use” led to “Limb By Limb” by this time he WAS Shiva wildly peaking with the trip. The encore finish of Run Like an Antelope left him hooting the whole way down the path to another drum filled night. One last time he went to the tent, and this time found not only the tent empty, but the sisters’ belongings gone. He wondered drearily if she had found a guy to bunk with elsewhere. He soon worried no longer, and fell into a long dream filled sleep.

        The following morning brought about more beer drinking at an all night rave which he found still going on under one of the nearby tents in the morning. He soon drank himself to a blackout again.

        The afternoon passed, he regained consciousness. It was dark and he was on the lawn listening to Phish again. He must not have gotten a ticket again, he was outside. But once again, he realized he had somehow acquired acid and was getting on. This time he was almost disappointed. Unsure if he could get on, as he would have had to ingested at least ten hits of high grade to be on, he doubted this would be a good night. On his way to its peak he fell in and out of awareness sitting on the grass. Then his inner eye awoke, and he found that spot from which his inner voice was but only an observer.

        “In the night the lizards had come out as us and them. The tall man who blew glass for the estranged bearded one who was all alone. He was with them as they told him and me every few minutes or so, chuckling with a look of recognition that made them seem cold and mocking. They adjusted themselves into an absence of righteousness that breathed the air. Air that a policeman would breathe as the security guard did now on the back of my neck in his striped pants swishing. He was turning back around and going toward the campground I maybe had slept in not so long before. I had noticed he was going to put me in handcuffs. He thought I knew, but didn’t turn away in my mind for the next few minutes. I was now again interrupted by the wizardly old man blowing glass straight toward me with a grin. It appeared he was shushing me with flame leaping from the hot liquid substance near his lips. The bearded boy was falling over in his tallness as he had stood up, and the old mans sparks blew at him from the dragon like beard. The beard consumed his child’s play shushing, transforming it into an elder wizardly sight of wisdom. His lips still and thin held the same silly grin in the still airy night that fondled the cornfield to my right. My rights, my rights, my rights.”

        “The didgeridoo man had sung once and the crowd in front of me had fallen back into the tired slumber as if his playing had been for hours. It seemed there had been hours this minute and there they lay asleep in the night. The clouds came as if in time lapse photography and they rained on us. It was all in good fun for the dancing man with the didgeridoo who played around the sleepy campfire, seemingly unfazed by the cold rain falling from the open sky. He was next to their tents and the smoldering campfire and they were all dead it seemed. Maybe that was just me. They could be the next ones whom I would never know to have been. The thought panicked me as if I had fallen into a place where only the man with the didgeridoo could exist. His deep emanating hum played in the silence of the old man with fire from his lips who now sat silently laughing and pointing at his own slumber. This was of itself an illusion, a deep truthful illusion. I had the thought as he had been standing the moment before behind the circle of people. These campfire strangers were parked next door to his glass Winnebago. They were all now suddenly gone before my eyes. The man too was gone and there I was alone in front of a campfire which had long before been out, smoldering in the twig light of the sun which was now waking me. 

        “A man behind me who asked me if I was alright as he stumbled toward a tent and crashed for the remainder of the day into an eternal morning of headache that engulfed my vision.”

        “I saw a woman carrying food and chips with saltiness that swaggered her staring back at my enveloped eyes. Eyes which said she mistrusted the me that was sitting there for a period that I knew could only be right now. The same different now as minutes before in the moving clock face. I had to find a way to desist in this sight, bow out right now. I had the visions of ram das in my mind and how he said it was in the chopping wood and carrying water. The highness was found in the peaceful simple ness. For them and for me I separated us for the first time in days. Yes, indeed it was in the simple ness of being that we would find the place like in Einstein’s dreams of relativity. In differentiating mirror wisdom that would feel like the time removal. That place in the dreams closer to the truth of loving you. It got slower, the illusion of time it got, until finally the time stopped and became a drag to the senses in which the eventual collapse of your time existence would collapse in itself.”

        “I got up and found that the morning was now in fact a bustling of people surrounding a nearby outdoor wooden open air camp shower. There people were taking there morning waking showers. They looked so sober and happy, many of them.”

       V“I remembered I was not. I needed to find a place to eat. I passed through this temporary village of tents many times. They were strewn as they had been put up with just enough space to allow for the strident walkers of the morning to do their trade. The money which now my stomach pined for the eating of its insides knowing ghostly papyrus could not suffice. In the thought I died and felt the slimy shmegma of the reality check in me realize that some here had actually. 

        How in fact did I know that I was actually alive in this world in front of me? This headache would not stop. I could not stop.”

        “From the corner of my adolescent memory I had remembered my father, of the ripped pain torn in my mother out there thinking of me. I stepped lightly forward now to find relief and her hope of my survival, her job a thousand miles away.”

        “A group of men stood toward the left side of the path leading to the concert arena where the band had played for their ego drowning knights of the audience.

        The concert arena left an air of mass awareness, lent itself to hope of success for me. It hosted the others... the entities known simply as Bob and Phil. Their names seemed to fill me with rights to this land and my right to trespass anywhere. Wherever you go you had better be beware because you can trespass anywhere. The muse formed on the tip of my tongue. Mouth curling into a self marring Cheshire cat grin it came out leaving me grinning and making the stupid grin so wide I thought I saw the gleam from my teeth light up. It reminded me of the wooden Te Statue I had seen, the grinning china man with whale like teeth that seemed to strain golgi apparatus from the air as he sucked it in.”

        The man in front of the stand by the truck where they had been loading equipment it seemed. In front of it one man was cooking. He looked up and nodded recognition and said “hey you need some breakfast?"

    

        Troy quickly nodded and awkwardly said "Yes".

        He had left the front of the pan and Troy now knew that it was just the high that had taken Troy there just the high, not the low. He handed Troy a large five gallon plastic container and asked him to go get it filled with water.

        “I took it without questioning and did the deed of dragging my weary carcass back the direction of the showers about a city block away through the little tribal village. It had to weigh practically nothing I thought as my mind filled it gushing cold water. As I approached the shower a young man of about my age sneered toward my patchwork pants which I had not worn yet. The ones I wasn’t wearing for him were nice and my legs were cold and that the cold water would be bitter, but such was my physical payment.”

        “The night before I did the deed of lighting the match next door to the man who would now smoke my cigarette for me. I shook off the disillusioned thinking and I sneered past the cigarette I so desperately now consumed from his lips in my inner eye. I approached the shower further and he stepped directly into my path, making me aware of how large and short he was in a muscular frame. He sighed and said, hey man... You a camper here?”

        I said "yeahh...uhh no, some guys asked me if I wanted breakfast and I..."

        "and you need water right, yeah, man you gotta pay for it but I won’t tell no one if your are where you are. You may as well just go on down over there to the water faucet with the

        Mexicans and give her a fill.”

        “The thought of the working Mexican water hole made me smile. His simplistic approach I guess was the smile now transforming his sneering character into that of someone else.

        Probably the someone he was talking to now over the water. Me. Damn I needed food. He pointed to a faucet flowing from a well tap fifty feet behind where the water for the shower was splashing. A sexy blondes shapely rear-end I hoped would come into full view as she adjusted her naked breast back into the bikini top as I walked past. The t- shirt nestled what I imagined were pretty firm breasts as she looked at a young dark Italian I assumed was her beaux. He gave me a look that said he wouldn’t care if I did what the dick in my shorts was turning to do. Fill the water and wash my ass.”

        “I blushed in the purity of my poverty and found myself in line to fill the water pail. It was cold and heavy as I carried it back I noticed something else. It was heavy as shit, I mean as hell. If I could get it back. I could ask for help the smiles of people around me said but I would not ask.

        False pride and hidden behaviors overwhelmed me. It would figure its way into the way into the way. I felt the jeering disapproval as I dragged it back into the site of the man who had originally asked for me to fill the pail. He freshly stick out his hand and seemed more rigid than a steel pipe. A pipe dream thatwas now going to remove the pail from me.”

        "You should have asked for help"

        “I felt stupid, and then realized that I did not know "from who?"”

        "Look around, brother, people, people..."

        He extended the cold hand and I shook backward as the hand came so deftly through time toward me in its caring and gentle arc it could not have been unkind. The hand instead gave an instant tug upward on the bucket and on it went in behind the four tables now lined up as a store front in front of the groups van. It was now open and revealing several large open coolers that were filled with ice and vegetables.

        The man who had been cooking looked up at me and said that I looked hungry from the plate of eggs now fired up on his hibachi. I thought for a second he was going to shove it toward me and I swayed in relief as he disappointingly to my selfish ego did not give me his own food. He instead gave me some of the displayed food that seemed to be some kind of egg roll.

        "Here, have a Jerry Roll. Good show?"

        "He’s Dream," the man said.

        From the backward sway of his voice I returned from inside my dreary lit plight of midmorning sun. The shadowy figure turned toward me and said

        "Hi, Dream" leaning forward from the lawn chair to introduce himself with an extended hand.

        The sunlight that held his stick figure frame showed a grin that now stretched across his face. It seemed to hold the secret of truth from my past night without pardon. I could not imagine the wisdom of this elder.”

        Troy spent the day with Larry and Dream and their crew. Larry told stories of how they had toured for more than a quarter century with The Grateful Dead. They taught Troy how to make “Jerry Rolls” and he was doing so all afternoon. “Jerry Rolls” were like egg rolls but five times bigger.

        Nighttime came, and he was having fun. Dream told him that nighttime business was a blast.

        That night Troy stood at the front of the village eats shop, taking orders from dozens of concertgoers, which he handed on to Larry to collect payment. They were quite the team, and with every new customer, Larry made new conversation, or a new joke. He had a wonderful light sense of humor and soon Troy found himself truly laughing away the night. By the time Larry had the dollars and cents in his hand, the patron had a smile and Dream would hand then the food. It was the healthiest time of Troy’s whole tour thus far.

        They worked late into the wee morning hours. Around four am they began to pack the gear into the truck, and Troy realized he was going to need to find a ride once again. Larry said they could not take him on board, however he paid him sixty dollars for his work the day before.

        Troy was more than satisfied. Food, fun, and about six bucks an hour in all with the breaks he had taken.

        Troubled by the notion of finding a ride with someone to the next show, he wondered if he could do so sober. It was decided, he might as well make an adventure of things. He strode down the deconstructing shakedown until he found one of the hood dose dealers. He offered the kid ten bucks for a puddle of liquid from an eye dropper. The kid filled Troy’s entire hand with liquid LSD, probably between fifteen and twenty hits. Troy lifted his hand to his mouth and consumed them.

        The morning sunshine began to splinter and look likes hundreds of separate searchlights shining through the sky to light the world in tiny patches here and there. He wondered if he would step out of one of these rays and find himself in utter blackness of night.

        Chaos consumed shakedown at the corner where he had bought the acid. People were screaming and an ambulance whined to the spot, staying only a few seconds before returning its siren to a scream and fleeing the scene. Cops were all over the area for the next half an hour, and Troy’s mind raced as he walked through the camp.

        Troy walked this way and that, trying to remember where he was going when he realized he didn’t know. Troy needed to go somewhere that did not yet exist. Destination unknown, he laughed at the notion that he was lost. How could he be lost if he didn’t know where he was supposed to be? How was he going to find out who was going to give me a ride if he didn’t know them? If he didn’t know them or where he was going then he must surely be in the right place in order to meet them or he would never get anywhere. Of course he wasn’t getting anywhere now, as he was trying to leave where he was, and so couldn’t really be there, rather leaving.

        It was all highly confusing, and Troy made his way down the far end of shakedown towards the camp gates. There by the side of the trail a mint condition orange VW Westphalia Camper Bus Was boarding its passengers. If this bus was boarding to leave, he might as well ask. He walked up to thedoor.

        “Hey, need a ride! Can you take me for gas money?”

        The long blonde haired guy in the drivers’ seat smiled. “Sure, Hop on in and shut the door.”

        That was it, he was on board officially. Boy was he tripping hard too.

        It turned out Troy was on a bus headed to Athens, Ohio. The driver of the bus was in a jam band named “Llhama” something and they were playing a gig tonight.

        A particularly good looking blonde was seated in the back seat with another guy who had his arm around her. She introduced herself, followed by the rest of the bus. At one point he was feeling like he was telepathically communicating with another VW Bus that passed, remarked “Boy am I tripping!”

        Troy immediately worried what they would all think, but everyone in the group just started laugh really hard. It was a good natured kind of laugh, and suddenly felt good.

 

        They pulled into their driveway a few hours later. It was some kind of a ski lodge, this place! Evidently they shared this place, and also ran a head shop in town nearby. These were kind people. On the inside, the house had a fifty foot ceiling with a spiral staircase leading to the second floor and the bedrooms. Downstairs were a kitchen, and two sitting rooms. It was nicely furnished and skylights lit the cheery cottage with a summer blue sky.

        Troy asked to take a shower and they immediately obliged, showing off a downstairs bathroom in which to change and shower. He climbed into the hot stream trunks and all, and took what felt like the best shower of his life. An hour later, the driver kid who had playing a gig to go to, invited Troy. He turned down the offer disappointed somewhat for passing up an opportunity. He was even offering up one of his guitars with which to get up and jam onstage with the band if he wanted. The acid habit was taking its toll on life.

        The blonde said she was leaving later if Troy changed his mind. She pointed to a sun room couch which he could use to crash, and he immediately did so. He slept the entire night, through the next day and awoke two mornings after. They were happy to see him conscious, remarking they had shaken him awake during the prior afternoon to see if he was dead. One hand, Troy was embarrassed.

        On the other it felt more justified at having missed their gig two nights prior.

        Later in the afternoon he left with one of the kids from the house for Polaris Amphitheatre in Columbus, Ohio. It was their second show there, he had slept through the first the night. When they arrived on lot, the kid did the most unexpected kind thing. He turned to Troy and handed him a two foot by three foot conga with a leather strap which he had made to sell and told me I could have it. Maybe it would get me a better start. Then he handed over a plastic case with a thick foam padded interior filled with crystals of different varieties. He said Troy could sell as many of these as he could, if he would just meet him at some point and return the case to. This was a feat which Troy never achieved, finding him, though he tried for hours at the end of the night. They hugged their goodbyes and headed in separate directions.

        This night Troy was reunited with Mark and Carey. Chris was there, and asked if he wanted to hop the fence to see the show. Chris he later learned successfully snuck in. He found two kids and traded the drum for two tickets. He traded a few more times until he had eaten and had sixty bucks.

        Then he bought a pair of triple thick bell bottom patchwork pants for forty dollars. This left him with twenty dollars and a boxful of crystals.

        Troy decided to hang around with some of the dready kids who he still had not talked to, realizing they were beginning to recognize each other. It was amazing to see how thousands of dollars worth of drugs were being changed hands all of the time for fractions of the cost at street market value.

        Troy had tapped the source.

        Some time spent with a crystal dealer taught Troy some of the facts about his box of rocks. All in all it was a fun filled night for the last summer tour date for Phish until September in Albany. He lot echoed at one point with an amazing second set cover of The Beatles “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

        The end of the night came and he once again needed a ride. The question was “to where?” as there was no next show. There was fall tour in two months.

 

        A few hours later, he was being haggled by a security officer who wanted to know who he had come with. He said if Troy wasn’t with someone he could leave with, Troy was trespassing and he would be arrested. A tall dready kid stepped forward and quickly said “He’s with me” shoving Troy into the back of his bus. He took over talking to the cop as he closed the doors.

        “Boy that was a fucking mess,” he gave up as he sat down in the driver’s seat.

        “You can’t ride with us.” He said sharply, “but I think I know where we can find you a ride. I recognized you from Deer Creek. Fucking Lot Security. Tour is over kid, where ya headed? If I were you I’d head west!”

        He dropped Troy off to his surprise with Chris and a group of four others who were gathered around a van ready to board. They reluctantly agreed to take him on board and introduced themselves.

        Carlos, Jim, Chris, “curios George” and Troy climbed in to the brown luxury van to hit the road. There were two empty nitrous tanks in the back, and the van was nonetheless crowded.

        They next day they were stopped at a rest stop for a stretch when the next coincidence hit Troy.

        The whole crew got at to stretch. Chris took a hat, and went off begging for spare change for gas. He came back with over twenty bucks. George and Troy were talking, about ready to head out again when somebody from outside the van said “Joel, buddy how are you?”

        It was Andy, a member of the Ocean City Oxford House he had lived with years ago. What a small world! Andy had always been a fun guy he thought, filled with stories of being one of the original security crew at Studio Fifty – Four back in the seventies. They talked for a short while. Troy thought then perhaps he should have stopped tour, but soon the van door closed and they were off again.

        The next day the whole crew hopped the fence of an amusement park. They spent the day riding roller coasters and other thrill rides. No one got caught in this thirty dollar per person all day rip-off fiasco. The day following the kids drove George to his grandmothers’ house. There they had lunch and said final goodbyes.

        They slept a night in a motel. One member of the group got the key and checked in. Then the other four would sneak in for the night. The next morning in line at McDonalds Jim and Carlos announced their plans to head out for California and gave Chris and Troy a farewell present of a tent.

        They were in Cleveland. Chris took the news unfazed. While saying goodbye, he turned out the back door of the van to a man coming from the bank next to the restaurant and asked “Hey, mister? Help my friend and I get to California?” Like magic, a twenty came wafting in through the back door of the van.

        “Hey thanks!”

        Chris and Troy walked a while down the road. They talked to some old vets riding cross country on bikes. They visited the hotel where the Military was holding Enlistment Procedures. There was a free buffet at the bar, and a pool full of eighteen year old hotties. They got caught with two of the hotties in their room, and the cops were called by management to throw them out. Meanwhile they were served bag lunches on the way out the door.

        An hour later they were off to Ann Arbor, Michigan via a station wagon we had hitched a ride with. Chris said his sister went to the University of Michigan there. Once in Ann Arbor, Chris and Troy floated all over town staying with various frats and party houses for the next month. Life was fun, and they were partying for free every night. Summer Art Fair came, and Chris and Troy made a small stand by the sidewalk to sell beaded charms. The town was full of heads. One day Chris had lunch with a businessman who was setting up a porn website at a local café.

        After turning the man down, he decided it was time to get a job. The crystals were gone, mostly as gifts to females. Passing by a telephone pole in downtown they saw an ad “Help

        Wanted: Canvassers”. The Public Interest Research Group In Michigan was in need of summer canvassers.

        That night they tripped their minds out while floating at the various parties that overflowed in tothe campus streets. Along the line that night, Chris had lost his shit and called his mom crying and confessing where he was. It was one am and Troy knew he was definitely not going to recover entirely from this breakdown.

        He left him there tripping in the rain on the payphone when he began shouting and losing it. The following day was their first at P.I.R.G.I.M.

        Troy went into the office dressed as he was. We were assigned groups that would cover different neighborhoods in an attempt to get petitioners on the “fight against urban sproul”. Troy spent the day away from Chris with a cute blonde, with whom he hit it off immediately. Her name was Kali, and she was recently divorced. Helped her out of a jam, he guessed, but he used a little too much force.

        In the end they drove her car as far as they could, should’ve abandoned it out west.

        Troy spent the night at the apartment she shared in town with her sister. Kali was his manager at P.I.R.G.I.M. She had taken him home the night before, knowing all about where he came from. She lived in the apartment building of a girl Chris and he had partied at with two other girls. One had wanted to sleep with troy, but he refused. Now here he was with this cute blonde. She set him up on the couch, but late that night, he had gotten up and sneaked into her bedroom. She had made out with him for a time, but then turned over to sleep. They had work.

        “Troy, if you are gonna sleep with me, you had better sleep!”

        He took her advice. The following week passed and they grew closer. They began to have sex, and Troy confessed about Mits death for the first time to someone. He got her a television and radio interview about the office with a local station, the offices first. For him it seemed as simple as it had been being a kid calling his Dad in the newsroom whenever they noticed something newsworthy.

        He dreamed of her at night. She came to him in all white, and he was surrounded by white light.

        They entered a church in the dream and were married. They fell in love, and soon Kali quit her job, announcing she was to go on tour with Troy this Fall. She would waitress to save cash until the time came to leave.

       They moved her out of her apartment a few weeks before tour was to start. They did a variety of different things to pass the time, from downtown Detroit for a baseball game in the new stadium to hanging around together with one of her friends. They double dated to clubs, spent every moment they could together without fight and became a very intense couple.

        For a few weeks Troy and Kali lived on a farm in upstate Michigan. Kali would drive to The Brown Jug every night to waitress. Troy worked for the farmer doing various jobs to pay for their rent.

        They camped at a nearby lake. They slept in their tent, in the farmers “Teepee” on Indian Grounds in the swamps. This was notably the best sex either of them had ever experienced, hours passed with no loss of intensity.

        They slept in the trailers on the property, fed the bears and fish, waiting the day when they would leave for tour. Finally September came, and they decided it was time to pack her car and head for Albany where the first show was to be held.

        They brought Kali’s little black Cocker Spaniel, Ashley, who had been living with them all along and who Troy had fallen in love with as well.

“There are only two roads that lead to something like human happiness. They are marked by the words: love and achievement....In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy....The secret of human happiness is not in self – seeking but in self – forgetting.”

-Theodore Reik, A Psychologist Looks At Love

        The road toward Phall Tour lay ahead. It was September second, leaving Troy and Kali a week to get to Albany for the first show. They had saved only about two hundred bucks to get off their first leg of the journey. It didn’t deter them, they were in love and could conquer all of this together.

        The little red two door car of Kali’s was packed to the gills with clothes, books, food and various toiletries and things she couldn’t leave behind. The whole apartment from which she had come was in the trailer on farmer Johns property.

        He had given her permission to leave behind whatever they did not take to pick up after tour.

        Phish Fall Tour was a twenty – one show series of dates starting on the ninth, ending a month later out west in San Francisco on October seventh. Troy and Kali had no tickets, and both desperately hoped they could make the journey worthwhile.

        Troy had drove the first leg of the journey to Philadelphia, where he had hoped they would stop and visit his family. They indeed reached their destination after one brief rest stop in central Pennsylvania near by where Troy had been born. Troy had been afforded the opportunity to meet Kali’s parents in Michigan, having a rather uneventful dinner at their home. Kalis family had horses, and he been able to ride the older female while there, his first experience on a horse. In the end, for obvious reasons Kali’s parents had decided they were against the relationship. Their only grounds for being together were sex, drugs and rock and roll.

        In the little town of Media Troy got them a room in a cheap motel. It was notorious for housing migrating caddies for his home golf club. Kali was ill and the week before had gone to the hospital with a severe urinary tract infection. She and Ashley stayed behind in the forty dollar motel to rest while

        Troy went out in his hometown for the first time in months to see what he could do.A visit to a member of the garage crews’ parents proved to be worthwhile.

        This was one of the best friends from Troy’s days there. His father was a doctor of there. Troy obtained a full series of antibiotic medications for free from his friends father to cure the ailing Kali.

        Disappointed by his friends absence at the house, he moved on to his parents.

        As Troy pulled into the driveway of his parents house, he was struck with a homesick melancholy, and he became very anxious to see his family. Forgetting where he had left the relationship, he knocked on the door and entered. What happened next was tragically foreseeable. He no more than had said hello to his mother when his adopted father came yelling into the room. “Get the fuck out of my house, NOW!!” he yelled shaking a fist threateningly.

        He shoved Troy towards the door before he could get a word in edgewise. Fear of his father shook through him. Through the door his mother screamed “I’m calling the cops!!”

        Nothing had changed. Troy climbed back into Kalis car and sped off down the road, crying silently to himself. When he reached the motel, Kali was asleep. When she woke, Troy was still softly crying to himself over the incident. The following day they left for Albany. It was here that Troy had made his boyhood home for a number of years, and he told stories of his life there the whole way. It was the night before the first show when they arrived.

        Troy guided them to his old boyhood neighborhood. There they visited with his boyhood best friend and his parents for a few hours before moving on. They spent the night camped out in the woods where he had walked his dog years ago. The following day they bought the water and ice to pack the cooler with to make ends meet. Parking was a nightmare, however they finally ended up parked in the Empire State plaza parking structure. Scouting the street, there was not much of a shakedown to work with. Tapers lined the front of the former Knickerbocker Arena, now renamed

        The Pepsi Arena waiting to go inside and set up their recording equipment.

        This was a regular thing, Phish being amongst the league of tour based bands who allow fans to tape their shows with recording equipment and to freely trade shows. Tapers bought tickets in the ”tapers section” in the front row of the audience.

        The Empire State Plaza in Albany was a sparkling hub for the city. There was art all over, and city hall on the corner. Everywhere still statues of pedestrians seemingly caught in time and frozen in their tracks stood on various corners, entrances, and walkways. Citizens preserved in mid stride with open facial expressions that would never change through the years. The capital consisted of two towers which visitors could climb in a high speed elevator to an observatory. An egg shaped stadium that hosted theater and various conferences including Troys middle school acting days in “Shakespeare Fest” stood there in the center of town. Thousands of square feet, the oblong stadium was football shaped rising out of a platform that held it like a giant football trophy at a tilt in the Albany skyline. Thus its name “The Egg”. These buildings were all connected and leading to the Pepsi Arena by a series of glass enclosed breezeways like that of a major airport with its wide staircases and escalators.

        Kali and Troy wandered its various paths and walkways, took the tour to the top of the building to view the city by. They were obvious participants to the show in town, and stuck out like sore thumbs.

        The buildings were filled with business men in suits, themselves dressed in hippy garb. Kali wore a flower print one piece dress she had gotten at her first show at Polaris, Troy in his patchwork pants and a t – shirt. The Public Interest Research Group had spearheaded a drive there in the parking lot. Troy was dressed in the patches he bought the same place. They were not working for The Waterwheel Foundation on this venture, though they hoped to further its cause.

        In each city of tour the groups not – for – profit Waterwheel Foundation set up tables for donation to a select conservation or wildlife preservation cause raising millions over the course of the national tour.

        As the evening stretched on crowds of show goers filled the narrow city street surrounding the arena. Kali and Troy spent from sex in the top floors of the capital building done for the sake of the thrill, tiredly resolved to deal their goods. The water was gone within an hour, and they held no further responsibility to the night. They split up for the time being, for Troy to return the dog and the water cooler to the car.

       BAshley trotted beside him through the indoor breezeways of the capital, happily visiting with people here and there throughout the journey back to the car. The night had soon passed quickly, and without seats in the concert.

        They drove the miles to the next show at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts.

        Together they made an incredible team, selling their goods out within the first few hours of lot. This parking lot was more like the ones Troy had experienced over the summer. Old faces began to stick out in the crowd. He saw Jim and Carlos, Mark and Carey, amongst others.

        As the second set came roaring to a beginning, Kali came screaming to Troy “I got tickets!! Igot tickets!! Lets go!!!”

        

        It was magic. The first miracle of tour, their first show together. They spent the rest of the night dancing, closing with an encore Squirming Coil, the song Troy had performed for her on her parents piano back in Michigan.

        The next show was Darien Center at the Darien Lake Six Flags near Buffalo, New York. They had stopped with fumes to spare at the rest stop a few miles short of the show. There they sat together in the sun and made crafts to sell at the show. A ride was found to the lot, and they rode in beside a school bus conversion made by kids from Alaska. The bus was incredible, complete with a wood burning stove inside, labeled “Home” on the front of it.

        There Troy introduce Kali to Dream, and Larry who was wandering with his parrot on his shoulder. The lot was a tiny one as the show started, and they were approached by Carey and Jim.

        Carey and Jim had resolved to skip this show, and recognizing them gave them two miracle tickets to the show. The payment was done in hugs. After the show they got a ride back to the rest stop, where they gassed the car up. The kid who gave the ride to them had come expecting to trade the full Deer Creek shows on CD's for his ticket, but had gotten in for free, and so he gave them to Troy.

        They went on to the show in Hershey, PA. At Hershey Troy spent some more time with Dream, talking of his years on the road with the Dead. He learned there was a further show in Camden, and it was decided they would go to Camden. Short of Philadelphia Kali and Troy stopped at his families house to visit. The place was a multi million dollar mansion in the country, and Troy hoped to see his family while taking rest for the show the following night. There was no answer to the knock at the door, and Troy resolved to leave a note for them explaining their visit. He and Kali set up a tent in the expanse of grass behind the office converted nineteenth century barn and there spent the night.

        Troy was an aspiring writer, and told stories to Kali late into the night. It was a daydream about a child gone wandering through the countryside. She met many talking animals along the way and soon found herself in a field of sunflowers that brought to life the dreams she now envisioned amongst the talking flowers of the field. Troy called Kali “sunflower” for the rest of their time together. The morning came ,and they went to the site of the beginning of this venture for Troy.

        Camden was filled with the kids and elders who had been in the circus folk of Hershey. Camden became Bryce Jordan Further outside of State College, PA and Troy found himself growing nearer in heart to these people. He dreamed of making it on the crew and never ending this lifestyle. He talked to some of the crew outside of the arena that night. He felt part of this family like never before as they lay outside listening to The Other Ones “China Cat Sunflower” into a revved up “I Know You Rider” beside Ashley playing on the lawn. The mind once filled with tension and drug filled anxiety was replaced with love and affection for the life he had. They drove on that night in silence, Troy listening to his inner thoughts.

        “Of all nights I chose the stormiest to venture forward. It was midday gone and the sun strode through the strides of my eager foot on the gas pedal, its reaching acceleration. The acceleration was reaching overboard to the dreary side view mirror streaking the roadway past my ever changing head. I had taken four tabs sometime back in the years that now were midday sun flashing back the stream of consciousness in the forefront of my frontal lobe now inside of the passenger seat. Her wetness lingered on my fingers, and the phrase on the foreground of the music streamed my finger inward in thought.”

        “It moaned the road did, thinking the right path on the way to the right mind of the still perched policeman clocking us on the way across the border.”

       B“Time had stopped for the night, but Vegas to come would stay with me for the eternity beyond and into the lifetime next. In his righteousness the preacher Buddhas temple aware of itself somewhere in my wrong mind created the journey. The hand thought on its way inward physically. I had the fresh sensation of an area cloudburst coming through the air from the side intent of the passenger window as it seemed to light in the cracked windshield. I screamed.”

        “The windshield cracked and I realized my stifle had begun her moaning "oh put it in Troy, put it in" I did, erotically, maybe timidly... was I uptight? “

        “I was feeling the wetness of the seat behind her my hand sliding off the neutral gear as it went forward. It was good this life in fifth gear.”

        “It thought itself forward for the blackness that loomed from the pristine car interior now filling me as I filled it with my omnipresence. Its semi lit car interior felt good for the sporty lowness of my sexual intent. The thought seemed to make sense.”

        “That's your hand inside of a girl, a woman, back off the gas and pull over."

        “I did it in my mind but instead played a missing chord from the phrase Van Halen screamed from the

        “Twister Soundtrack” into my fingers as they ear tuned two thousand years of “Humans Being” into effect “.

        “oh Troy... mmm.... harder" a sigh escaped her as she stared at the road out the passenger side flying past at fifty. I Forgot the road itself and it had forgotten about that foot pedal and we drove on to toward the show. The show. The show.”

        “The right mind of the leftist wing in the creation of the political minded dweebs behind me at the golf club out there were feeling my wanderlust for death. Some fat old woman who owned an empire thought she was sexy a thousand miles away and I was sweet and not going to carry her clubs for the day. She blushingly put the club in my mind for her caddy whose ass she stared at seeing my own.”

        “It was the road in itself that fought to maintain. The road itself I thought as the gingerly gingering ginger of her gingering the seat cushion gills open and inviting swimming with light fresh lusty scent. Her scent filled free the air from the converted air conditioner, now my toy to put to use as Igot hard.”

        “I laughed at putting it out openly though the thought was not actually audible. The freeness of the occasion put into a gear that was frustratingly not pulling me over to finish. This was it.”

        As if the night had won its right over their eyes, he thought they were yet missing something. It would have been to no cause for the night to search for it. The missing link seemed built on an endless eternity. The nonsense was built on the foundation of the acid he had consumed. It was Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.

        The parking lot had wielded miracle after miracle ticket handed out as if it were candy.

        The secret society of hippies or wannabes, whichever, of met their generations destruction in the midst of this circus. The American political climate now was growing but faltering on its own legs of those fathers and mothers who could by their responsible age made these kids responsible for conscientious objection all too often in overbearing objectivity.

        Members of the society that had followed in the streets of the sixties rather than in the offices of the government, these were those kids reborn. With long hair that they had hid their fortunes to come in dreadlocks and beads that now hung from hundreds of dollars of hair wraps. They were as their parents had been. Too good to follow in light of the conscience of their American spirit whatever hip hop culture had now taken form.

        They flocked around Kali and Troy, handing over drugs and tickets with the careless cheer of youth. Troy had sucked down several hits of LSD on a Sweet Tart.

       Habit forming, the ticket frenzy came and went . They were on to the arena in all of its glory sucking them in with hopes and dreams beyond compare. The night filled with sound inside of the arena. The sound seemed to fill a space much larger than just the arena. The notes themselves were filled mantra, with knowing. A Velvet Sea descended on Kali and Troy in the warm rain. Troy found himself filling with awe and wonder as the lights of the stage weaved themselves in to a pattern over her love lit eyes.

        Climbing into the car after the show, he got in the line to make their exit. The radio lit to life with a flick of her wrist, and suddenly the air filled with sound wave pattern of streaming colors from the car stereo speakers. He looked at her and filled with a knowledge he would take this love of her to his grave. Her hair blew in the breeze, and before his eyes the face wilted and withered and became that of an old woman. It then began to decay and rot before his eyes until moments later she was just a skeleton with glowing eyes, blonde hair streaming back it seemed from Sinatra's glowing voice on the radio.

        “Troy! Go!” she reminded him, and he fell out of this Buddhaverse seeing the line of cars had advanced a hundred feet.

        Several shows later in Chicago they had been car pooling with another girl and the two brothers with her. On the way to replace a tire on Kali’s own car that had blown flat coming out of Darien Lake.

        She got into an accident.

        The incident left her heading home for Atlanta, abandoning the rest of her tour.

        The two kids on board with her wished to go onward, however.

        One of the two kids was the same age as Troy, and had seemed to hit it off with Kali. She announced to Troy that they were going to travel with them to his displeasure. That night after a coursing parking lot they made camp at a motel with the two and an older head with whom they had made camp for the two shows prior. The tents were drenched from rain, and they needed a night indoors.

        It was after the Target Center that several of the kids Troy had fund for them to share a motel room with had shown off a stick of heroin. Troy had been aware of what a bad scene this was, and had taken Kali and left. The show following, sure enough one of the group had turned up dead of an overdose, another in jail. Troy had a bad feeling about these two as well.

        He soon learned the two were traveling with hundreds of hits of acid with which to support themselves. This was a breach of the law which if caught in possession would carry years of imprisonment for attempted manslaughter. Late that night after pulling into the motel Troy took one of the hits, bracing himself to stay awake for the night. He would wake her later, he had to convince Kali to leave in the night without the two.

        As he lay in one of the twin beds with her late in the night the high peaked. The faces of the children on a childrens charity commercial turned into the various face of the Buddha scroll. Little blue Buddhas in the Lotus Position came visually in focus all over the wallpaper of the room. Soon the room was a mesh of vibes in colorful pulses coursing through the Buddhas. It was time to go. He became nervous breaking a cold sweat and pulsed with fear that any minute the cops would come busting through the door, ending life as he knew it. He entered the small bathroom adjacent the room to still himself for their flight. The wallpaper here bloomed with flowers coming to life, growing, and then wilting and dying a few seconds later. It was definitely potent product. He dried his sweating face on one of the white fluffy motel towels.

        He walked back into the room and lifted Kali up off the bed.

“What are you doing?” she protested. He put a finger to his lips and urged her onto her feet and towards the bathroom. There he explained the penalty they would face if caught with these two. He was afraid of the one kid, and she could tell by the familiar look in his eye that his intuition was not going to let this one slide.

       “I am not going to do eleven years in prison so these two can freeload with us. We are leaving, NOW!”

        He gathered their belongings and they silently exited the room, Troy breathing a sigh of relief.

        As they drove away, Kali argued with him over the decision. She asked that he stop at a McDonalds as they drove, so she could use the facilities. He stopped the car, and suddenly it hit him.

        “Will you marry me?” he asked out of the blue.

        It was something he had never said to anyone, ever. But he was sure.

     

        She looked at him for a brief moment and then said simply “Yes.”

       They kissed for a moment across the front seats. Ashley resettled herself in the back seat.

        “On one condition, “ she added “We go back and get my glasses I FORGOT THEM!”

     

        Troy agreed and minutes later they drove through the corporate park outskirts of Chicago to the motel. The sun had come up during his proposal at McDonalds, and the occupants of the room woke when Troy reentered to get the glasses.

       “We are leaving. Alone” he told them.

        In the end, Troy watched in silent hostility as the two removed a few belongings they had forgotten in her car to the motel parking lot. He felt bad, but not bad enough to go to prison. They said a brief emotional goodbye to the older head, who had been awakened as well and was now packing his truck to return home. He handed them a card with his number, and a container of bubbles, saying only

        “Yeah, I think you are making the good choice. I don’t know about those two.”

        They were off to the Midwest section of the tour. After a slow night Sunday show in Minneapolis during which Kali slept in the car they headed for Kansas. The flat lands of Kansas were a symbolic show for Kali. They spent the show discussing Phish and the hidden meaning behind the lyrics, her growing notion of the reason for their tour. She had come to a conclusion of her own, and it was the same Troy had left with months before. There was a reawakening movement. One for peace and for peaceful compassion towards other traditions and lifestyles in the world. It was a moment of truth for them both, and she talked openly of her trip to New York City showing a picture of

        “Imagine” spelled out in Central Park, New York.

        The trip to Kansas had itself had yielded various stops. One of them was at Castle Rock on The Great Plains. Troy had pulled the car over to see the great rock, rising thousands of feet into the air. It jutted high above the plains, the only such obstacle of its kind. It was a beautiful formation, into the back of which a path had been carved to make a park. Visitors could climb the great rock of they wished. Kali and Troy had done so, Troy barely making the climb.

        They had overcome their fears with no restraints, soon stood atop the rock looking miles over the expense beyond. Trucks were the size of ants below, as they embraced looking far out over the country. “Loving Cup” came to mind and Troy began to sing it on their descent. It was to become their song, of sorts.

        “I’m the man on the mountain, won’t you come on up?!”

        The next drive was to Colorado, the Fiddlers Green show. It took them through all of Utah, and the Bryce Canyon National Park. They were a few miles short of this sight when Troy pointed something out to Kali.

        Above, just inside of the canyon were five twisters spinning round each other inside of the confines of the giant stone monuments. They were hundreds of feet high, and red dust and rain could be seen shooting all over the area. Troy did not stop, but continued forward toward the danger.

        They passed, jaws agape at the natural beauty of the canyons. The road wound around giant formations which had taken millions of years to form in the shifting of continental plates. No sign of the storm could be seen. They turned through a massive pass, hundreds of feet high and wide through the delicately carved smooth sandy stones.

       Suddenly the rain came at them from every angle. Dark and menacing clouds moving faster than them floated past. Still Troy drove on to the top of the pass. There a sight seeing lot revealed a mile deep drop into the canyons beyond. It was breathtaking. Red rain pelted the car from all directions, the wind threatening to blow them off the cliff. It was a lifetime memorable sight.

        The Colorado Lot was a sight, more laid back than many of the other lots. Troy sold their goods, while Kali wandered amongst the nomad village searching for tickets. When she returned, she had two tickets and talked of how Dream and Larry had recognized her, given her the best food she had all tour.

       “They called it a Jerry Roll?!”

        Troy smiled to himself. Phish ended the night with an encore of “Loving Cup”.

        They now turned toward the next shows at The Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas , Nevada. Along the way, about a half an hour outside of Mesquite, Troy had opened the car door to adjust the roof rack.

        When they reached Mesquite, he turned to give Ashley some attention, when he noticed little black Cocker was missing. Hours of backtracking later they found the dog out of breath and overheated in the middle of the desert. They resolved to stay the night at a casino in Mesquite, and returned to tour the next day. It was Trey Anastasios birthday gig.

        They arrived on lot early in the afternoon, and spent the remainder selling the water they had bought to turn over their money and socializing with their neighbors. Kali turned up two free tickets somehow from the tour heads who recognized her and they were in again, with floor seats to the show, which was going at a hundred a ticket by the scalpers.

        The show was the most intense of tour, broadcast live from Yahoo around the world. The arena was packed.

        As the band returned to the stage for their second set, the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Trey for his thirty sixth birthday. Trey took the time to thank the people who supported them, including the crew and to talk about the hiatus they would take and how they would use it to write songs and recharge so they could tour another seventeen years.

        He started to talk of a strange dream he had the night before. He was sitting in the middle of a beautiful field on a beautiful day when suddenly he saw from the periphery of his vision people walking towards him. It was an army of people surrounding him before sitting down. One of them took an apple and handed it to him and explained they wanted to eat the apple as a gift, but he realized he had no teeth. Then a giant tooth grew out of his upper gum. But he couldn’t eat the apple with just one tooth. He began to get nervous that the people would wonder why he wasn’t eating the apple and he had a moment of panic. Luckily, at that moment, the sun flew closer to the Earth than it had ever been before in history, and as a result the his first thought was that the Earth would burn up. Instead , the Earth acted in the way that a grape acts, it shriveled up and turned into a raisin version of the Earth.

        The ground wrinkled and became mountains and the people got crushed together into a big pile.

        Only moments before he’d been panicking, but being crushed together, he realized that all of his senses became much more vivid in the way that a raisin is more intense tasting than a grape.

        Sounds, emotions, love...and just as the Earth was becoming a more rich and vivid place, he found himself in a pile of people.

        This pile of people became a groping pile of love and goo and he realized that Gamehenge is a state of mind and you don’t have to get there physically.

        He decided then that everyone needed to know how simple it was to turn yourself into a seething pile of goo, so he called on the famous Mockingbird to spread word about this.

        The band played a Rolling Stones cover that ended with Trey setting a delay loop before he and

        Mike moved to the from of the stage and began a bizarre synchronized duel involving them swinging their guitar and bass at each other and around themselves while wandering across the front of the stage.

        Troy hoisted Kali onto his shoulders so she could see Rock and Roll history in the making. They began putting strange hats on Page an Jon; at one point Trey and Mike put both the guitar and bass down on the stage and kicked the stage beside them to produce more feedback. In the end Trey finally “defeated” Mike before the band walked off stage.

        Troy and Kali somehow made it to the show in Phoenix the next night, and once again got free seats in the back of the first section. All were tired, including noticeably the band who had spent the night before partying with Les Claypool they learned. They got in and slept through most of the show in their seats.

        Their final show turned out to be Chula Vista, California. Tired from the road, and somewhat scared of the end of tour, they made arrangements to stay with Troy’s sister outside of L.A. Kali was sick again, and they did not go into their final show. They would miss the final show at Shoreline, where they later learned Phish was joined by the remaining members of The Grateful Dead on stage.

“There was only one catch, and that was Catch – 22...”

-Joseph Heller, Catch – 22

        The weeks of time spent at my half – sisters in LA were strange ones indeed. They were all too fitting of my life. There has always been a great love between my sister and me, one that seems all too natural, we are comfortable with each other. Kali was not so comfortable, though for the first week she agreed we would settle and live here. There in LA I could chase my acting days gone by.

        It was strange to be called Joel again, especially hearing Kali say it. It was a part of me that I had not yet connected through the past four months events.

        We sat for hours by night looking through photo albums of me I had never known. These were my baby and toddler years, the only ones this part of my family and I had known together really. It was invigorating proof to me of the use for this vast searching I was undergoing to find my origins.

        Two weeks later, however, Kali became homesick and determined that she would return home to Michigan. I would not let her go alone, and decided I would drive her home. Besides, to see the beautiful country we had passed through again was far too much to pass up. Besides which, I still had love for her I could not describe. We had shared things few people ever do with each other in these long months.

        The drive home was beautiful, but a battle. It was not a week after we had arrived “home” to Ann Arbor when she sent me to Philadelphia to tie up loose ends with my family. She said that I had scared her one night when I had set our motel room up while she was waitressing at The Brown Jug for a Halloween celebration with Ashley. I returned unsure of what it was that nagged at me in Philadelphia.

        It was then that I realized in a few short weeks Bush would be elected if all happened the way I saw it. Everything in me screamed of the wrongness of it, and I began to lose my mind. I took the subway to the mental hospital where I had been released from the past July before tour. There I obtained the birth certificate, social security card and license I had left behind. I had driven the entire country without a license in my pocket.

        It was then that I snapped. I visited the news station where my Dad worked as a television news anchor. I tried to gain access to talk to someone of the lies and deceit I had smelled in my paranoia from caddying at my former golf club. They would not hear of it, of course, I was spouting trivial liberal hearsay to the number two news market in the world. They threw me off of the grounds, and I turned toward home.

        My mind was racing of how to approach being accepted by my family; of sewing the tie I needed from them to tie the knot with Kali.

        I called my mother from a downtown pay phone, and told her I was back in town.

        I told her I was coming home to visit, and cutting her off hung up the phone. Reaching my old neighborhood after a short bus ride to the suburbs, I turned on foot to my parent’s house. On the way I stopped at the neighbor’s house that lies directly behind my parent’s backyard. I told the kind people I had returned home from California, and that I didn’t want to stop by unannounced, so could I use their phone?

        They were overjoyed to see me, the retired couple having always had an amicable relationship with me through my High School years. I phoned my mother, who said my father was at the golf club. Then I phoned my father, and left a message with the head pro for him.

        Satisfied, I left the elderly couple and started off walking the short hundred feet to my parent’s house door. Before I reached the door, a cop car came screaming past the house behind me. I walked on to the side door, and tried. It was locked; something my mother would not have done normally. The cop car came pulling onto their street, and it hit me. They were going to have me arrested!

        I began to run through my parent’s backyard toward the neighbor’s house where I could seek safety, but it was no use, a running officer ordered me to “stop! Freeze NOW!!” flanking me from the right in a full sprint.

        I panicked. My muscles flung me forward to toward the street and a nearby park across the way through which I might lose them. The whole country toured to end here? I would not have it.

       Suddenly cops were coming from all sides, pulling night clubs and other things I feared. They began screaming at me “Get down, now! Get down now!”

        One of them finally caught up to me as I passed the elderly couples house from which I had just telephoned. I felt a short rap on the top of my head; a hard stun blow with a nightclub sent me crashing to the ground. The cops then pounced on me beating me to the ground as they ripped my arms near from their sockets and put me in cuffs.

        “Fucking little faggit!” one of them started in on me.

        I spit in his face, and he picked me up and threw me down the hill towards the patrol car parked in front of the yard.

        “Your gonna fucking get it, you little faggit!” he taunted. I was screaming at the top of my lungs at them, now.

        “Fucking pigs, I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking pigs!!”

        The taller one calmly opened the car door, and shoved me into the back seat. Plexi glass separated me from the front of the car, and I began to bash my head against it in frustration.”

        The shorter cop ducked his head into the car and began to taunt me with a chipmunk high voice.

        “Oh , I’m gonna get you! Oh , please, fuck my mommy! My mommy! Hey kid, I fucked your mother!

        What do you think about that? Yeah, she was ugly. She’s doing it with another cop at your house right now, that’s what we’re waiting for. What do you think about that?”

        I began screaming at him again, banging my head in rage against the plexi glass.

        He smiled and gave a chuckle, shutting his door. He had gotten what he wanted.

        When they both climbed in, I was told I was being 302’d. They were to commit me at St Josephs Hospital.

       “What are you tripping?” the short pig asked from the passenger seat.

        “Yeah.” I answered in short, though the kind of tripping I was referring to was the kind that I would have his ass shot if I ever got him alone. I spit on the window in front of me.

        “Yeah, I thought so, LSD huh? Aww, cant handle your acid, huh, little boy?” he taunted.

        By the end of it all I was involuntarily committed to a hospital to await yet another mental health Judges decision. Wasn’t this some kind of double jeopardy?

        I was to be stuck in the hospital , forced to succumb to doctors and medications for the next month. I watched my Dad on television every day of the weeks it took for them to verify Bush’s election. Kali came from Michigan for my court date and I was forced even so to submit myself to the commitment. They promised to get me into a respite bed, to get me disability income, and that I would be living for free under good care. They simply thought I was nuts. It proved to be the sane choice for me to take the path of least resistance.

        I will never forget the day of the elections. I had been hanging around with the people on the ward. There was the guy who walked around singing “almost paranoid, we’re knocking on heavens door...” to the old eighties tune “Almost Paradise”.

        He was permanently disabled and given shock treatments. There was a Penn Professor whose divorce had led his sister to try and take his kids from him, perfectly sane and hilariously funny rich guy. There was a female artist who was a bit flighty who let me use her guitar. I talked to Kali nightly by phone. I picked up the phone at the nurses station and got an outside line.

        I then dialed into the front desk of the hospital and requested the director of the hospital, stating only my name and that it had to do with the hospitals role in the elections. The operator downstairs put me through, and I was talking to the director of the hospital whose nut ward I was in. A brief conversation ensued in which, I actually got a request in to have a bus transport myself and others from the hospital to the local booth to vote.

        It wasn’t until the end of the conversation that he realized I was not an employee of the fifth floor, but a patient. It had been worth a try. New Years came and went, and I was living in an apartment community near the sixty ninth street bus and subway terminal in Philadelphia in a respite bed. Things were working out with my family, as long as I conceded that I was a complete schizophrenic to them and others. I had begun to accept this mundane existence when a credit card came in the mail. I left that day in the beginning of January for “the library” downtown to use my e – mail and wound up on a bus to Ann Arbor.

        There I was reunited with Kali. I learned that Ashley had been run over by her Dad in a freak accident at her parent’s ranch home. They bought her a new Cocker Spaniel shortly after for her birthday, and we named her “Punkin Patches”. I proposed to Kali near every day, saying simply “every minute of every second of every day, I do.”

        I was doing fine without medications, and by the end of the summer had a group of friends and an apartment with some students of U of M. I worked full time at two restaurants, one fine dining and helped to open a nearby Starbucks. Ann Arbor was the best home I had ever known on my own, and I was in love with the town. My jazz drummer roommate and I spent time together watching back episodes of The Sopranos.

        My neighbors held parties, and Kali and I went. I was thinking about attending college. My mother and I were talking regularly, as well as she and Kali talking a lot. We were getting along fine, though things at home were on the rocks. Shortly into that summer of 2001, my parents surprised all by getting a divorce.

        Kali spent time with her ex – husband for a few weeks during that summer, cheating on me. For some reason I still took her back. I believed in my commitment to her, and I was still so blinded that when she propose we move to Tennessee for her schooling and to be closer to her brother, I agreed. It was in my hope that perhaps if her brother liked me, we could gain acceptance with her parents that route. Kali and I had even done a joint session with her Christian counselor. She herself had completed a semester at a nearby school with a major in psychology.

Shot:

Nashville Tennessee Overhead Cam of city. Pans to show a highway.

Car following a U -haul closely on the highway.

Country music is playing in the car, the driver, male swerves to stay with the truck as it skips onto an on ramp through several lanes. Near accident, he makes it.

Credits end.

Truck turns down a side street off of the Nashville Highway, making towards the sign that reads Middle State Tennessee University. The car follows the turn maneuver.

The driver of the truck, female is shown shoving a pet off of her lap, annoyed at the small black poodle type dog. She flicks the radio off and squints ahead at the road. Grinning, switches the left turn signal on.

Narrator: We had been together for about a year, Kali and I.

Young and in love, the sky was the limit. Now we had decided to move to

Tennessee to get close to her brother. Plus she said she wanted to go to school here.

Shot of the dog, panting.

Narrator: We had a new six month old puppy named "Punkin Patches". I had proposed marriage for the first time from my heart a few months into the relationship, and she said yes. I was 23, Kali 24 and we were in love, or so I thought.

Truck and car in line turn onto "Spring Street" (sign). It is a small lower middle class neighborhood. The shot from the cab of the truck shows her slowly pulling next to a curb behind an old Ford Mustang, at an older row home.

The house is small, but in the driveway are two older vehicles, a Ford van and an older make rusted out Chevy. There is a front porch.

The car pulls up beside Kali, now exiting the cab and the driver rolls down the passenger side window to ask...

Troy: Where should I park?

Kali: How should I know? Park somewhere.

Troy: Wha....

Kali turns away, the dog leaping out of the truck cab after her, the door left ajar.

A man, enormous in size emerges from the front door of the house onto the front porch. Kali walks onto the porch with a swagger in her step.

Shot of Troy in the car, still staring out the rolled down window.

Kali turns to her brother Norm: Hi.

Norm: You made it. Dad was afraid you would have to call for directions for Troy.

Troy: (half yelling out the window) Hey, hi. I'm Troy.

Norm (interrupting): I KNOW.

Kali: hahaha

Troy: Yeah, where should I PARK?

The dog runs off of the porch and onto the sidewalk, now looking at Troy.

Norm: I don’t know, park ANYWHERE.

Kali: That’s what I told him.

Troy (to himself)She sticks her tongue out at Troy... he smiles back, puts the car in reverse and begins to pull back. He looks up a second time while reversing, and is met by a wink from Kali. : Here we go...

Kali: Yeah, Norm you should have SEEN the traffic in Nashville, oh my God....

Troy approaches from the car, now parked across the street. Norman and Kali walk inside of the house, taking no notice of him at all. Troy pauses on the front porch steps.

Kali (yelling from the door): Troy are you going to COME IN?

Troy: Yeah, I’m on my way.

Kali: Oh, well I didn’t know what you wanted to do. You know, you cant STAY HERE. And get the dog too, will you? (turning back inside) Before she gets run over....

Narrator: I had always had a bad case of nerves on special occasions, and to me this was one. Kali’s father hated me, and made it well known. He once told her when we went over there, that if I showed up on the front porch he would come out with his shotgun. Little did he know, I was in the car, waiting for the go ahead. I waited for an hour, while she told little lies about why she hadn’t pulled the car in to her parents house. She apologized when she got back and told me she was just going to go back inside for a few minutes to have dinner with them, but only if that was ok with me? What was I going to say? I said yes.

Troy: Come here Punkin...

Gets the dog, picks her up, petting her.

Troy: Come on girl, lets go see what’s up inside. (petting) You ok...

Narrator: I was nervous about this. She had said her brother was her best friend growing up though, that it would "get me in" maybe with her Dad. On the way she had forced her nervous anorexia on the dog, refusing to feed her or let her drink.

I found her near passed out in the cab in Kentucky from heat and thirst. Kali just got mad and said Punkin would shit and piss in the truck. I fed her anyway.

Kali: Troy!

Troy: Im comin, I'm comin.

She kisses him on the mouth.

Kali: My brother said you can sleep in his van tonight if you want, or there is a motel if you have the money...

Norman: Hi (shaking Troys hand)

Troy: Good to meet you.

Norm: Trip ok?

Troy: Ok, except for her race car driving. Never let this woman drive a truck.

Norm: (smiling at Kali) Pretty good huh?

Troy: (butting in) Good isn’t the word for it... NASCAR training more like.

Norman: Hey, I'm sorry you cant stay here tonight.

Kali: Did Dad call yet?

Norman: Yeah, just called, he said for you to call when you got the truck here.

Yeah I figure we'll have dinner and then we have room in our basement if you want me to unload the truck for you.

Kali: Perfect, yeah check this out.

Walks them out to the truck, opens the truck door. It is a sixteen foot truck, filled about halfway with various boxes and furniture.

Norm: Wow. Looks like you needed a smaller truck. How much did this cost?

Troy: About five hundred

Norman : Whistles

Kali: We did.

Norm: Troy did?

Kali: Yeah, he paid half.

Troy: Yeah, she insisted on the big truck.

Kali: Thought I had a lot more stuff.

Troy: I only had about ten or fifteen boxes....

Kali: Troy where did you pack the chain to lock up the truck?

Troy: Why, do we need it?

Kali: Norman says they have been having problems with their neighbors and I

don’t want any of my stuff to get stolen.

Troy: Yeah, I guess I put it in the car.

Kali: My car?

Troy: Yeah, before we left, remember we were going to take it back to Matt and you said we would just keep it that we didn’t have time.

Norman: Matt?

Kali: DIFFERENT Matt. He runs the Brown Jug and Troy went over last night and borrowed it from him to lock it up in front of his apartment last night to protect from the frat guys. Not MY Matt.

Narrator: Kali had eloped with some 35 year old named Matt years before. Hewas a loser, so she left him. Two weeks after the wedding in fact. They stillweren’t divorced for lack of money to get it done, or so she had said.

She hops down from the truck. Norman reaches up, closes the truck door with a slam.

Narrator: She said all this is after she went back to fuck him two months before we moved. Over and over again.

Fade to black...

Narrator: Should have left her then in retrospect.

The living room is shown, where Norman absentmindedly shovels food into his mouth in front of the TV with two boys, five and nine sit next to him on the couch. Punkin is running back and forth from kitchen to living room (adjoined).

The kitchen is a small one with an old fashioned sink, and a small desk crammed into the side near the rotting basement door.

Kali is shown coming in from the kitchen, eating as she walks. Troy is sitting on a chair just inside of the kitchen opening.

Kali: Troy, there’s food in there if you want to eat.

Normans wife: (yelling from the kitchen) Troy, come and get it, we HAVE PLENTY!

Norman: What’s HIS PROBLEM?

Kali: Yeah, I don’t know ever since we left Kentucky he’s been like MOODY or something.

Norman: No, HIM. (pointing at the Television screen)

Kali: Oh. (aside) Troy, just eat, stop acting like a baby. I don’t know HOW your not hungry.(going back to eating ) I'm starving.

Shot of Troy, sitting in chair.

Troy: You look like it.

Narrator: They say people change when you marry them. Maybe the rule just applies to meeting their family. Later that night we moved our stuff in.

Shot of Norman handing Troy a box. He walks through a door into the basement to find the boxes piling up in a tight fit basement. The skinny five year old, appears from around the corner.

Tommy: You aren’t gonna hit me are you?

Troy: What would make you say a thing like that?

Tommy: My Dad.

Troy: No way, big guy... you look like someone I wouldn’t want to tackle.

Tommy: Yeah. My Dad is a BIG guy.

There is a heavyweight punching bag hung in the basement ceiling in the middle of the room.

There was a certain look in his eye when he said it. Like he was afraid of something.

Norm: You down there?

Tommy: Yep, Troy was showing how hard he punch YOUR bag.

Troy: Yeah, nice punching bag (hitting the bag as Norm appears coming down the stairs.

Norm: Now you be nice and stay out of my the way, don’t go messing around with

Uncle Troy.

Kali: Troy will you be a dear, and pick up this nice five thousand dollar oriental coffee table with Norman to show him where to put it. I said they could put it in their living room for now so that he could have it to show off their...

Troy: Ok hon, be right up, hon.

Norm: Hon? (groping up the stairs) Where did you find THIS guy?

Troy: Toooommy, does Norm ever...

Kali: Troy!!!

Troy: Coming!!!

Narrator: I need the strength to tell you where I ended up the night we moved. I think it is better off being told from the beginning.

Norman is shown piling a pillow, two blankets and a key on Troy’s outstretched arms.

Norm: I am really sorry, like I said, you know how my father is.. and with the kids and all...

Troy: Don't worry. I said it was ok, it was. It will be I mean.

Kali: I like it this way. Its kind of like when he left home for me the first time. I will make him WORK for my love.

Troy: Knew it. You aren’t coming with me.

Kali: With you, you mean I have to sleep in my brothers van WITH you just because you cant get over the fact that I have a nice warm bed I called ahead for and planned on? I have to work tomorrow, and you have to get a job.

Troy: I sent out forty plus resumes in the mail, I should have one tomorrow.

Kali: Talk all you want, you still aren’t gettin any tonight.

Troy: That’s ok, you let me have it before we came. Besides which, I have two places for us to look at for our new apartment this time tomorrow guaranteed.

Kali: Troy I’m not so sure its a good idea we get a place together here now.

Troy: What do you mean?

Kali: Troy, I don’t have to explain it to you, you know how I am when I get tired and cranky. I get tonight off to sleep, so I am.

Kisses him on the cheek.

Kali: Now get out of here before I have Norm put you out for good.

Troy laughs.

There is a glint from the corner of her eye. The light across the room explodes in light, and it takes over the whole room for a second.

Troy: Are you alright?

The light returns to normal.

Kali: Yes, I just don’t want to live with you anymore. I talked to my Dad, and he takes it right on that as Christians we should be living separate until marriage.

Like Pat, my sister did. We'll just fake it and sleep over at each others every time I get horny.

Troy: Goodnight.

Kali: Troy, don’t do this.

Troy: What?

Kali: Don’t be an asshole. We just got here. I told you you were going to have to be the STRONG one.

Troy: I don’t know. But I know this. You need sleep.

Kisses her on the lips for the goodnight.

Kali: Goodnight.

Norm calls out from the kitchen

Norm: Hey, can you take this outside, Its getting all teary eyed and mushy in here

and Holly is trying to sleep.

Kali: No, he was just leaving.

Norman is shown in the daylight hours giving the grand tour of his van parked inn the driveway. He folds the seat down, stretches out for an uncomfortable She pushes him out the door a second, bounces up, fakes a smile....

Troy is shown outside of the front door at night, the door closed. The outside light beside the door goes off. Kali peeks through the curtain for a second. She locks the door.

Troy walks around the rosebush on the side of the front porch, tripping half over it. He looks around warily at the van in front of him, goes around to the side door and unlocks it. He climbs inside and places the blankets and pillows on the back seat of the van.

Inside of his mind, thoughts are racing. Several flashes of the day go by in fast forward. The drive, the dog, Kali at her brothers with his family, the kids, then it turns to see the driveway in a long shot of the cars parked in back of the van.

Voices begin in a flurry in his mind. He is lying straightaway now in the van

beside an open window, tossing and turning unable to sleep. The voices prod his insomnia.

There is a shot of female face in his mind, blurry to symbolize his brain pattern.

Heather(the female in the picture): Go to the way it was before Troy, she wont marry you. You don’t see it?

Troy (out loud): NO. I don’t believe it.

There are a crowd of people around her now, and she points at one of them.

Voice: Ask her sister, even.

The crowd laughs, and light waves pulse in his vision we see in the camera angle of the van roof, the window. He is hallucinating mildly.

Heather: Get out of the van, go meditate.

Troy bolts straight up in bed.

Troy: I'll meditate on it.

He is shown getting out of the van, quietly closing the door. The backyard of the house is fairly sizeable, and next door is a small southern Baptist church. The backyard is foggy and dim.

Troy: New Moon. Something is big here.

The voices laugh in his mind in a demented delay with chorus like effect. Troy shakes his head.

Troy: I know something I cant see is here.

He sits placing himself on the back bumper of the van. A flash of light explodes like the light from inside the house. He stands up and whirls around to see the plate gleaming. It is a Michigan plate.

Troy: Michigan? The bastard is scamming with his Dad? I'll be damned bankruptcy, now this.

Narrator: Kali had told me of her fathers’ bankruptcy earlier this summer. He had worked for Reagan himself, they had pictures of the ex prez hanging out at their house, and had their fill of success. He had a million dollar ranch, and the kids were out of the house. He had sunk the business and out everything in his wife’s name to conceal the funds. I knew it was thievery, but he felt it was due him. I had studied some tax law myself, but had no idea if what he had done was ethical.

Troy is shown sitting down now behind the van looking up at the stars in the dark

Tennessee sky. They number in the thousands though there is no moon; the sky is lit behind by the town of Murfreesboro.

Troy: Aren’t as many as I thought.

He looks up at the sky. Then at the window where Kali is to be sleeping. We hear the phone ringing inside. The waves of light shimmer across the backyard and it contorts. We hear the voices from inside. Troy is shown gazing at the house windows, and the camera angle is waving in, panning and zooming slowly in on his eye until it is nothing but a shimmer and pupil shown. There is an abrupt bump, and he falls, the camera splayed out beside, cockeyed from the ground showing his face dimly lit by the widows of the house shown and the house itself at an angle across the screen.

We hear him begin to murmur Ommmm......

Ommmm....

The voices:

Kali: I heard Dad say

Norm: You CANT MOVE in with him

Kali: I told him I wasn’t going to get an apartment

Shannon: Where’s Uncle Troy?

Mr. Keller: Kali, I will not have him around he’s TRASH

Heather: She isn’t going to do it. Don’t do it Troy, don’t get married. Stay here

They grow and interplay over each other repeating the same things until they mesh in an incessant babble. Troy suddenly bolts upright from the ground and sits Indian style.

Troy: Ommm ahhh huuumOmmmmm

The camera shows Troy from above. It tilts and lowers to a position from behind him showing the stars above. They web together and merge in a spider web like pattern. The camera shows him from the side and pans to above as his chanting raises and the web creeps down on him.

Troy: Ommm

The sky is shown. It clears of the web and a lightning bolt flashes in the Tennessee night striking Troy directly on the crown of his head. His face is shown, eyes clenched shut as if in some desperate fear.

The image flashes to a bright light shot of the bolt. It his the ground in front of him. We are repeatedly shown him being struck and what appears to be an old spoked tire in his mind. The image of the lightning striking him and the tire become one and suddenly we are shown Troy, his eyes open wide suddenly, his mouth agape. He is shivering in fear, out of his mind.

Troy: Have I lost my mind? What does it mean?

He looks around the dark yard. His grows dim, and he begins to cry.

Troy: I’m scared.

The camera pans and widens out showing him against the van, now hugging his knees and rocking. It time lapses to the same shot in the early dawn, the first rays of light coming into the sky. He is shown, now in the early light getting up, going around to the side of the van climbing in and lying down. There is a close up of the side of his face lying on the seat.

Troy: (whispering) I'll find out. Be here now.

He murmurs to himself as the picture fades to black.

Troy: Sleep, sleep.

The picture fades to black. There is a loud "clack" and we are zoomed out from the black stripe on the van to show the door, now swinging open, Troy looking tired and unshaven stumbling out.

The open is the street where he started off parking the car, Troy alone watching Kali take off to work. He is fate ridden tired eyes and getting off in his hand like a sugar crazed poodle toy dog is Punkin.

Troy: Punkin, Daddy has to get a job. Get up and find a job, off his butt for the first time in Tennessee. Know?

Punkin eyes him curiously, then begins to wiggle and hop up and down all over again.

Punkin: YIP!

Troy: Oh get over it, I made sure you got fed by Holly this morning.

He takes the leash off, and the darting dog runs off into the backyard.

Troy: Shit!

There is a sequence during which Troy is shown in several dozen backyards around the neighborhood trying to catch the irate dog, who averts him out from under tackles, flying leaps, other peoples kids in their yards petting her and other scenarios. Finally, he is shown "dog - eared" and tired too dragging her by the collar onto the front porch of the brothers house. He picks up the leash on the way into the house and grins to himself.

Troy: Shit.

He closes the door behind the dog, now in tie and white collar shirt with a resume in hand, he descends the porch stairs and walks off into the town. He is shown at various restaurants talking and filling out applications. We are given glimpses of the town from here and there. He is shown getting frustrated, getting happy at food served to him on a tray. One restaurant shows a manager hanging on him, her breasts nearly falling out of her blouse. He peers down the shirt, wide eyed.

Her husband appears in ten gallon hat and spurs to the front, and she introduces a wary man, now backing out the door.

Troy: God damn this southern hospitality.

A phone booth is shown down the road. He picks up the receiver as he enters it.

Picking a quarter from his pocket, inserts it into the phone.

Narrator: I was always resourceful with finding a job.

Troy is shown seated at a table with an owner sitting in his restaurant talking behind the banner uncut across the front of the restaurant which reads grand opening. He is handed a time sheet with his name on it. The owner shuffles cards in front of him at the bar with employees drinking from the water like flowing supply of booze coming from the bottles to their glasses by the manager behind the bar.

We hear the telephone ringing. A voice answers.

Voice: Franklin Imports, this is Mandy, can I help you?

Troy: Yeah, can I get Kali please?

Voice: Yeah, hold on.

Kali: Hello?

Troy: Hello. I got it.

Kali: Got what?

Troy: Well, how’s your day going?

Kali: Its ok I guess... got what?

She is shown standing behind the counter of one of those yuppie type import furniture stores with candles and things around her. A bimbo'ed out blonde register girl flirts with a customer behind her.

Troy: A new job. Its a Steak and Seafood House that opens tomorrow. I got on the ground floor as a waiter, he said we will talk about moving up later... for now I ...

She glances at her watch. It shows four thirty PM.

Kali: What are you, a manager?

Troy: No, I'm wait staff.

Kali: Oh.

The girl behind her tugs on her shirt, pointing at the two college guys coming in the door. The girl brushes her nails on her shirt, and blows them off to say "hot stuff". Kali smiles at her, and then the guys.

Kali: Well that’s good, I can drop you off before I come into work. Listen I gotta go. Where are you going to sleep tonight?

Troy: I don’t know yet, I have been job hunting all day, but I applied at a bar near the college here. The owner has a one bedroom up for rent, and he may need a bartender part time to help pay the rent. He made a time to meet us tomorrow morning to see the place.

Kali: Is it nice?

One of the guys stops in front of the counter and smiles at her. She turns aside.

Troy: I don’t know, well find out. Told you I was going to be alright.

Kali: I told you I don’t want to live with you anymore. I guess we will check it out. Tonight I have to go over our budget with you.

Troy: OUR? You mean you did it already...

Kali: Yeah, I made a savings plan for us as well so we can stop living this way. I have to go, Troy, I will talk to you later. Just go to Norms, I will see you there after I get done.

Troy: Sure. Hey, Kali?

Kali: I have to go NOW, Troy. I will talk to you later. I love you.

We hear the phone hang up from the other end.

Troy: I love you too.

Narrator: I had gotten a job from a retired blackjack dealer back from Kentucky.

He had gotten a backer somehow and opened the restaurant. He seemed nice enough, and he had agreed I could make money under the table. Now it seemed I had to get a new place to stay tonight.

Troy: Hello?

He hangs up the phone and walks away, past a sign that reads "This way to the best Sun Belt Basketball anywhere.."

Troy is shown in the basement of the house, removing items from a box. He places one of the shirts on, pulls a bra out of the box. A flowing Celtic tapestry comes from it. He clenches it with one hand. We are shown a scene of Kali and he making love to each other in an apartment. They are on a queen sized mattress spread out on the floor with a dozen pillows.

Troy: Damn I need some.

Shannon appears from out of nowhere, seeing him in the basement.

Shannon: Whatcha’ doin’?

Troy: I’m finding some clothes to wear to work tonight for tomorrow. Hey, need something for your wall?

He hands her the tapestry. She smiles a grin immediately and receives the gift from him, running up the stairs already...

Shannon (from upstairs) Mom!! Can I have this? Troy...

Troy’s memory is shown now of him taking the tapestry off of the wall in the apartment and placing it on the now sleeping Kali for a blanket. He turns and walks up the stairs.

Turning off of the living room there is a door, he peers in. There are two beds.

Holly points at the one across from her.

Shannon: That is where Kali sleeps. This is my room. You like? Mom, can I hang it up here?

She holds the tapestry over her bed. Troy walks over and smells the tapestry, getting embarrassed.

Troy: You may want to wash it first, I mean...

Kali walks in the room.

Shannon: Why?

Norm says from the living room.

Norman: What’s this about a present? Holly, don’t be bugging them now.

He is shown placing a drink on the ornate coffee table now in the living room.

Kali: Troy are you sure?

Kali: Uhh yeah, I guess just wash it first...

Kali looks into the living room and sees Norman placing the drink on the table.

Kali: Norm, PUT SOMETHING UNDER THAT!! Its a five thousand dollar table!!

Norm: It has GLASS top, its fine.

Kali: (whispering to Troy) come here.

She pulls him aside into the other room.

Kali: I think we HAVE TO GET that out of here soon. Where is that place you got for us to look at?

She kisses him on the lips.

Troy: Its on the other side of town by the college...

Kali: What bar?

Troy: The Cave...

Kali: I have heard of that. Yeah, I told my Dad about letting them use the coffee table, but I have to get it out of here. When he and Christine; moved out of my parents place, they had to do fifty thousand dollars in repairs to stuff

Troy: Really?

He acts surprised. A kid runs by them at full speed into the kitchen.

Christine (from the of camera bedroom): Justin SLOW DOWN!!

Kali: LOOK AT THIS PLACE.

The floor leading in from the living room is shown buried ankle deep in dirty laundry and trash. The kitchen has something on every counter, a dish, a mop stand useless in the corner. It is shown to be dripping into Punkin’s food dish on the corner. Troy goes over and picks up the dish.

Troy: It will be ok....

Norm(walking into the kitchen) : What will be?

Both Kali n Troy: Nothing.

Kali: Her food is in the car.

Troy: Where?

Norman: I put it out there because the landlord came by earlier. He said that the dog cant stay. Our neighbor called and had the balls to complain about her running off this morning or something. I have to keep her well hid. I told him she is just here when you are. I have to tell him if Kali is staying more than two weeks because it is on the lease...

Troy: Sounds like a lot of shit.

Norm: Yeah, well we have new neighbors next door. The girl is a bitch. You saw her on the way in? She has this kind of attitude like she owns the place now or something because the landlord is her brother in law.

Troy: Your neighbors got arrested the other night?

Norm: Yeah their a bad lot.

Kali: Yeah, generally speaking

Troy: Good to meet you Mr. Lee

Kali: Huh?

"Spasm waiter dropping to his knees sees

Slander on wrapped paper ties

Sleeping in his bed at night he’ll dream until he dies...”

- Phish, “The Mango Song”

        It was a late summer’s day in Middle Tennessee. Kali and I had just moved there a few days prior and I felt that she was still the love of my life. There was something terrible in the breeze, though, and my mind began a solemn form of meditation psychotic in its delusional intensity. I had to work at Rick’s Steak and Seafood as a waiter for my second night this night. Kali was at work so Norman her brother and his friend Roger and I agreed they should drive me. 

        That night something miraculous began to transcend before my eyes. Two afternoons prior to this, we had gone shopping with her brother’s whole family. Something radiated in Kalis eye. Literally. I began to see flashes of light as if from some internal supernatural force that I began to believe was connected fate. How true this turned out to be. 

        At one point just as the song we fell in love to in "In Your Eyes" says, I saw the light that could only be described as that of a thousand churches glaring from what seemed to be her very soul. Later that night, expected to sleep outside in her brothers van, I sat outside in the cold backyard and meditated under the starry TN sky. The stars mingled, and the thoughts it seemed on wavelengths fluttering through my mind intensified until I had a vision. Lightning struck it seemed the very crown of my head, and the whole meditation ended leaving me surprisingly uneasy... as if I was to find out what this enlightening strike was to be soon and that just as in life... it would not be easy.

        At work at Randy’s, the meditation awoke in my mind, and began seemingly with a will of its own. I started to notice something, as if in my peripheral vision at first. It seemed that in my peripheral, everything had stopped, yet if I disbelieved it had, and looked... it began again.

        One of my co- workers turned to me and said something mid night to me about "everything is possible, if you believe it in your mind..." And from his eyes traveling to the corner of his face the light erupted like the fire of the sun, illuminating him as the figures in the Buddha scroll from my Art Museum days so long before. Suddenly I believed. Time slowed to a crawl before my very eyes... everything was moving as if in a frame by frame picture for what seemed a full ten seconds of frames. And then began.

  

        I consciously made an instant decision on why this siddhi was leaving my grasp... because I had yet to alter my belief in the nature of physics itself.

        Physical was the first thought and like an echo it flooded the large dark space which somehow houses our thoughts from which they come. "Physical... physical...physical..."

        Having experienced phenomena completely physical in nature before, however not inclusive of the now new inclusion of the CONCEPT OF TIME... I immediately did what first felt natural.

        They began as quarter twists, turns of my body as if by turning to the right fast would shake the disbelief that I could create a supernatural event by doing it in all of its silliness... and just believe.

        I left the back of the kitchen, and went back out to the floor of the restaurant. It was filled with patrons, and yet as I turned from my table, I was moved to do a full ballerina style spin. I did, and to my surprise, no one batted an eye... not the slightest notice. Passing through the corridor, I saw a waiter give me the strangest look. He turned to leave the kitchen through the exit on his right, and I turned to go to the terminal 180 degrees from him to the left. In mid stride, I broke the train of thought as the thought of him elated me, and I spun one and a half turns coming to a halt facing him. The entire kitchen stopped, cooks frozen with plates in midair, waitresses one foot on the floor, words hung in mid phrase, the waiter I had turned to face however vanished from site momentarily, and then with a supernatural twist, his head turned to face me with a demonic grin. My mind raced. Then it registered the thought of a minor vision brought forth of a fierce deity. 

        I realized I was more afraid of time stopping than him, however new now that to face him would take me further. Afraid of what further meant, the kitchen reanimated, and I found myself in awe. I was then overtaken by the expanse of time that had just seemed to pass, and yet none at all. I had to work within the realm of this meditation, and yet when back on physical terms now, continue my job.

        I turned toward the computer terminal again immediately and began to fill out the order screen for my table to be sent to the cook staff via the system. As I punched the table button, the onscreen clock caught my eye, and I had the strangest thought that If I deliberated it, the world was like this screen, the table windows like my own window to the world. The notion of this being so grandiose was but a speck of sand in the grand scheme of the thing. As mundane as watching the seconds tick byon the...

        I glanced at the clock....this time I froze too.... The seconds stopped. The people around me stopped. It read 10:19 for what seemed about four to five minutes. Then like that the world began. The vision was not to repeat itself until much later that night.

        Once off work, I was given a ride by one of my coworkers. I got home at about midnight. Kali was there. We went outside of her brother’s house for her to smoke a cigarette and for us to talk. There,

        I tried it again, the spinning ballerinas move. It didn’t prove anything but to get her to pose the question... "Did you ever take dance lessons?"

        There it was. There I was. This night, it was decided that her brother was uncomfortable with me sleeping in their van outside. Kali parents really did not like me, it was not that they wanted me to sleep inside, rather I was to find another place until the apartment came through. I had given Kali enough money to get gas to go to work the following day, and her paycheck was coming, so it was decided that I could drive her car, the Red Neon we had used for Phish Tour to a safe spot for the night, and crash out in the car as we done for so many nights.

        This first night I drove to The Wal-Mart parking lot to camp out as we had done in unfortunate circumstances during the end of tour in Los Angeles. That night as I lay in the blankets and pillows in the back of the car, I could feel Kali out there sleeping, and for some reason I knew she was disturbed by something. It later came out that she was having a dream about my mob involvement, that a hit man came to her brothers, and surrounded her to kill her. The intense feeling emitting from her heart in that bedroom at her brothers house I believe became so intense, that I felt it in my own. I climbed out of the car, and lit a candle as I proceeded to sit in the full lotus position in parking lot.

        I didn’t care if I was asked to leave, and felt proud even to the thought of the parked limo behind me, its driver having left the engine running. I could feel him watching me. The meditation involved the things I had seen, releasing the anger I had felt at witnessing the corrupt politics in Philadelphia prior to Bush running. I began to remember things I had thought about my own clean views and how proud I was of our love together in devoting this to peace and justice in the American way.

        For some reason I saw myself in a courtroom, raising my hand and taking the oath for something. I felt the vision to be prophetic, but knew not why. I felt that my beliefs were to be tested was the message. My knowledge of Yoga bid me to silence to the bragging am yoga girl herself. Kali grew proud inside of me. I saw her Buddhism and my own, and now knew in my heart of hearts it was us, that we would slowly learn more about how natural our beliefs fit. She had little knowledge of my Buddhism. I began to do the yoga, and for some reason this time it seemed to have different quality.

        That night was the beginning of my own awareness of how yogic awareness can evolve. The forms become sets, and when practiced moving became Tai Chi. The meditation ended, and I grew sleepy in the backseat. I told Kali aloud that I missed her as I set my battery powered alarm for seven AM. It was about three.

        For some reason, when Kali looked into my eyes the next night she asked me:

        "please, don’t meditate. My immediate thought was that of the Buddha and his love for Kali, and how giving her up and maintaining his meditation was the force that enabled him to realize obstacles in furthering his enlightenment. I kissed her goodbye, our last kiss ever.

        "Bye... "She said with sad eyes, beating puppy dog eyelashes at me...

        And then with her natural poise and demeanor as she turned away a very cold

        "See you in the morning, IM GOING TO BED..."

        This was nothing like I had pictured things for us in Tennessee.

        Two nights prior after watching the movie "The Devils Advocate", I had gone onto her brother’s porch in the darkness to smoke a cigarette. The light had returned as a fog in my mind, and suddenly I had an intense warning vision that seemed to emanate from one of my road Phamily from tour.... Dream... his name was rather prophetic.

        The vision was a recurrence from the same that had came to me a few days prior.

        It had warned of war coming, that the days I had spent on the road were soon to come to good meaning, and that I had to rejoin my family. In retrospect I believe that my spiritual family was feeling the things surrounding me, that I was being warned in this fashion in hopes that I could avoid coming fate.

        This night came around quite a bit more dramatically. Just as in my moth days in the

        Philadelphia flat, "in and out the window like a moth before the flame" came to mind again.

        Then it happened. Out of the darkness, a HUGE moth appeared and as if it were emerging into some mysterious light source flew directly in to my head. I screamed in horror, desperately shoving the yet unlit cigarette into my ear to get it out. It was futile, it had flown all the way to the drum, and I could feel it, hear it like thunder against my the flap of skin perceiving the sound of its delicate wings as they batted as if trying to get in further.

        Kali had come running out, and it seemed as though I was in pain, torturously so.

       BI was so panicked by all of the events coming to me, she assumed it to be so, and the whole house immediately took notice of us trying in every way to get the moth removed. I was in the sink, washing it out, with tweezers, with a cue tip. It was hopeless. The thing was lodged into my head, some preeminent warning of how close fate would run with me for the next period in time.

        The following day we had gone to try and get it removed, but without insurance it was going to have to stay until we raised the sixty bucks or so to have it flushed out, or take me to the emergency room. In the meantime Kali had to go to work. It was that night, with the moth in my head at Randy's these things had come to me. As if the moth whispered to me through my ear of the other side. I climbed into her car reluctantly, wondering if I should go to the hospital to have it removed. I was shaken by all of the events surrounding me, missing my old friends and job, and these wonderfully strange new visions. I drove to the hospital in strange temperament, feeling as though there was something at hand I still was not seeing. When I got there, something stopped me. It was as if I saw this shadowed figure there outside of the car. For some reason I started to crack, get desperate about the whole thing and rather than going into the emergency room at the hospital, climbed back into the car to go the campus where Kali was now a student at Middle State Tennessee University to park for now.

        College campuses had always proved to be good refuges for me in time of need for just that.

        I parked the little red car and got out. I locked the door, and placed the key into my pocket. I decided to take a walk to get these things off of my mind. I figure I would find a spot to sit and meditate the night through until about five am, only five hours away to kill the time and assuage my anxiety ridden state.

        After about an hour of walking around campus, I came to realize that it being summer, there was no one about. It was a huge deserted place. I knew from past experience to follow my instincts, and began a random pattern of walking to find a good spot to rest, tired and frustrated that I could not get comfortable anywhere. I remembered my meditation the night before and how it had brought about that look of fear from Kali tonight.

        I felt her out there sleeping. I felt the eyes of someone on the road watching me. I became afraid. I knew it was the law, instinctively. I knew that ugly feeling of raw power perched for use in its whim. The next thought process was that of my problems. I thought about my old roommate Sam, and his entrance into CIA training. His personality invaded me, and I felt it somehow connect with my political affiliations in Philadelphia. I felt the two of loose ends out there recognize each other and panic further. There was a loose and on a bigger trail in the CIA, that I unknowingly was close to something big, and secret that I could not put my finger on. I felt that it was all coming to a head all at once. I felt that someone out there knew that I knew something they were unsure in my whit I could connect. I knew from the nature of my affiliations, many unwanted, that it would be big. As big as the presidency. As big as war.

        These thoughts in the back of my mind then merged with my ongoing awareness that I was being watched by the police there on campus. With no notion of what to think now of any scenario in my life but with resolve to simply move forward in the morning, I begun to find that spot to sit down. I decided on a spot in the middle of the sidewalk.

        Suddenly everything came to a head, and my observation of the world became what seemed just a feeling in the back of my mind. I thought of Ram Das in his talk of "super CIA paranoia" I knew I wanted to avoid it.

        My next thought was that he perhaps was just flaking, and had avoided mortal heat of politics that way. Then it happened. The small tree in front of me turned into a miniature Gamesh. I knew something with raw power was in my hands now, something I had connected to unknowingly on an international level.

        Buddha and his sit under the tree of life for wisdom came to me. I began to get scared. I knew if

        I knew something bad was going to happen.

          My mind raced, I turned toward the sidewalk to meditate in a well lit public area. I thought of

        Kali, and now too feared something approaching for us both. My thought erupted suddenly as if the linear mathematical mass of time began within my thoughts themselves. I thought to release even this thought. I saw a linear line erupt in white light from the crown of my skull upwards, and I laughed at the sheer silliness of the thought "beam me up Scotty" I then took off my shoes and socks to go and sit. On the way, I flung the keys on the sidewalk with the thought of releasing attachment to Kali Ma. I sat a few feet from these both, and assumed partial lotus.

        The experience was slow at first. I began to observe my thoughts as others voices almost it seemed, my imagination filled with the opinions of others in their compacted and sent personality "vibe" of sorts. Then it happened.

        I had a vision of an airfield, and an airplane. Of a coming war, put I couldn't put faces or names on it. I wanted to walk to the nearest buddhist temple and get some peace, but it was too far. I took my shoes off and sat on the concrete of the Middle State Tennessee University Campus.

        I began to hear the voices of partygoers around me too, I felt opinions from other people I desired for them to have tugging at my consciousness. I released them as well. The babble of tugging consciousness increased in force until I had the vision of a Yogi. It was the same as whose shadowed face I had seen so many years prior in the confines of that Media apartment. He put a finger to his lips and urged me “shhhh...”

      B I had a vision of a cop coming to me sitting. He threw me up against a wall, and I saw my heart in the vision begin to glow and then explode. I gave up the thought of fighting the cop when he would inevitably come, and went deeper in. The Yogi again said “shhh...” I began seeing very fast fighting forms in my mind and moving my arms in time to them. Here I reached a funeral in my mind. It was me in the coffin, my family surrounded me there. The voices talked all around my dead corpse, and I thought of how silly it all was.

        Then it happened. A cop car pulled up and two uniformed patrollers got out. I sat very still and quiet, meditating. One male, one female they came at me from my place on the sidewalk. They pulled me to my feet from my lotus position and told me that I was obviously on some kind of drug, and they were taking me to the hospital. I remained silent through the entire ordeal.

       When we reached the hospital there were more than half a dozen police there. I refused to speak, and they put me on the gurney. They removed my clothing all the while the guru in my mind saying “shhh...”

        They shoved a catheter up in me to remove a urine sample. I was doing things with my muscles that made the nurse look at me in astonishment and exclaim “How did you? You cant...”

        Of course they soon found that I had no drugs or alcohol in me. It was then that the police put me in cuffs and told me that I was going to the jail. They had spent hours of their time on me, and now to let me go would be an embarrassment to the department, I guess they figured.

       There at the jail, I was read my rights and told I was under arrest for public intoxication even with the tests on record at the hospital. On arrival at the jail, I began talking.

        I told them they were violating my rights, and I was told “we can arrest you for anything we

want”.

        I sat in a holding cell for the entire day and another night before Kali finally found me, and then her keys. My bail bond was twenty dollars, and she paid it.

        Kali’s story was much different than the truth. The cop at the front desk told her that I had been found drunk and on the town with some college girl, and had been apprehended. They told her I had been with this female all night and that I had been sighted all over town with her over the course of the night before being apprehended for severe public intoxication. They had lied to her, and she had believed them. I noticed a guard at the desk flirting with her as they released me.

        I read his name tag, and in the car, Kali told me it was he who had spoken with her. This guy had the hots for my girl and the keys to my demise hiding behind his badge.

        That afternoon I went all over town. I got payment from the restaurant I had been working at in cash. I then bought a few new white shirts and a tie for interviews. I secured my job as a caddy at a local golf club for the weekends. I found the replacement rear taillight for Kali’s car, and bought it.

        After lunch I went to one of the dozens of restaurants to which I had forwarded my resume and cover letter to from Ann Arbor. It was the nicest one to which I had applied, and I got the job as a waiter and management trainee at a Steak and Spaghetti house to start the following morning for cash tips. The motel room I had gotten was directly across the street. I had solved all of the problems in one day. All but the misunderstanding caused by the violation of my rights by those southern cops.

        I walked the mile and a half down the road to Kali’s brothers, where all of my belongings were.

        I needed to retrieve my wallet from her car to start my job, and to get some clothing from the basement.

  

        I reached the front porch and walked up to the front door. I knocked. Norman answered, and shaking a fist at me said “you had better get out of here!”

        He proceeded to try and slam the door in my face, but I stopped it with my hand.

        He yelled again, and successfully slammed the door. I was in agony. I had to get my wallet from the car.

        I found the car locked, and frustrated decided to open it the way we had figured for when the keys were locked inside. Pulling the window out a little to flex it and reach inside to pop the lock, I was almost to the lock lever when the window shattered.

        Now I was nervous about what the reaction would be. I left the rear tail light fixture on her front driver side seat. I hoped she would get the message, as I tucked a note under it saying I would call her.

        The light was wrapped in a box to look like a ring box, as I felt we had news for celebration.

        When I reached the motel, I called her and apologized for the window. I told her all about how the police had lied, and asked that she and Punkin come to the motel where I would clean up the glass and we could talk. She agreed, taking down the address and said “I will be there in five minutes.”

        Five minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I opened it. Two uniformed police officers busted through the door, throwing me to the ground. As they placed me in cuffs behind my back, I calmly told them that they had no warrant.

        “ We are revoking a bail bond issued.”

        I was placed in the car which then drove to Normans house, where the cops were given a fake account of what had happened. In front of my eyes they watched all of my belongings taken from the house, while planning to charge me with trespassing. Simple assault for an assault that never happened, and destruction of property for the window.

        By the end of the night, my bail bond for a false charge was revoked and I was charged.. This while I was in cuffs in the car. Norman said I had assaulted him. I didn’t know getting a door slammed in your face was assault on the other man.

        They charged me with the simple assault anyway, and then for the broken window on a car which I had been paying the car payments on as destruction of property. That's three false charges and one that could be debated. I landed hard on the cold cement floor. It was enough to hobble my senses, as I realized there was no way to cheer me of this bump. This was the ultimate drop. Here I was cold and alone rights to freedom gone, the love of my life gone, my dreams interrupted.

        I had never been in jail really before, and it now became apparent that they intended on taking me to the regular population momentarily.

        The worst was getting on the floor of the regular prison. The inmates crowded around me asking what offense I had committed to what I treason, I told them I was not guilty of a misdemeanor, though I had broken my fiancées car window.

        They looked on, some of them having been there for a year or more as if I was stupid. I was mingling with hard core criminals for what? FOR WHAT? They told me “your guilty, plead out when they take you to court in a week and you'll be free.”

        I wish a had taken their advice.

        I wasn’t guilty, I told myself, I wasn’t guilty of anything more than loving the girl of my dreams. I had been caught succeeding, it was unfair.

        The days of life with my lover were gone. I had yet to understand that she cared not for me in the way I had imagined. It was a manic panic blown out of proportion into a nightmare. I had been given a prison uniform to wear downstairs, they asked me to strip, two male guards.

        They did the anal cavity search and the bend over and cough to make sure I hadn’t put any drugs or a

        Swiss army knife up my butt for the fun of it, and handed over my state issued goods. It was a six ounce plastic coffee cup, an eight ounce hard translucent plastic drinking glass, plastic issue silverware, and an indigent pack not including much but shower goods. I remember my bright uniform glowing at me from the safety mirrors of that room I grew later on to dread and loathe to see. Day after day in this ironic one way out realm it seemed all was decided for me. My disease had struck a finalizing blow undermining my half measures of success.

        Seems I just couldn’t go out the door. Southerners.

        They did not understand my fancy writers talk, my flowery hippy jargon. They could not understand that I had my dreams in hand and a very good idea so I thought of the American judicial system.

        Kali had told them I was schizophrenic, her family was afraid for my well being and that had affected them. It never crossed my mind that they saw my disease to their own “dis ease”. I felt Kali’s families’ prior endeavors with me were inclusive of prejudice against my own beliefs in the system of faith I subscribed to. They had it in for me now.

        The cell I was given was a single cell for fear I could harm one of my cellmates. The irony of this, a peaceful dropout writer anti violent to the very seams of my consciousness, here I was being feared by the staff. I caused a problem. I immediately sensed the danger I was put in if I was not to live down the reputation I was being given. I was nuts, so they said. Others on the block had to go three to a cell, and I had a cell of my own in the most overcrowded time the prison had ever known. Guards leaked stories that I had flipped out on them on the way on the first booking, and the inmates, particularly the BIG ones felt it was their duty to have a fun time of it. What was better than actually acting nuts to protect me?

        Soon it became a daily issue on the block. One guy took notice of me, and offered to share the cell with me if I would just put in a request. I could not pull punches, what if I asked the wrong guy into my cell, not knowing who they were? What trouble they would run into themselves in the inside political game. The prisoners within these walls were not all minor offenses, some of these guys had twenty years to life coming to them and were in wait to move on to another facility. It became a game.

        A deadly one I soon realized when I heard the sawing noises late at night of other inmates sharpening things on their air vent grill to be used as weapons.

        I decided to play it as evenly as I could, I began to work out with the big guys. My paranoid mind could not wake to consciousness of its own paranoia. I was creating my own prison. 

        I talked evenly with the black crowd. I asked nothing of anyone, and tried to get hold of reading and writing materials to begin my attempt for help. The phone was near impossible to use, the line fierce, and the phone being only collect. I decided this would come to an end on my court date two weeks hence and called no one to prove my own now desperate point.

        I felt I was completely innocent. My bail bond was only four hundred dollars. My hesitation proved to be a mistake as Kali contacted and tainted the story to everyone I knew before I could reach them.

        The day came I was told I could get a haircut. I decided to go along with it, the guy who was doing them was one of the unprejudiced and more outgoing and friendly members of the colored population.

        We were standing by the phone when it happened. I took the razor clippers, and gave them to the barber to say, yes it was indeed ok if he used them without a clip, if he knew what he was doing.

        There was tension in the air. I told him that I wanted him to do the whole head bald, to save both him and me the trouble. He took the razor, and with a nod began the simple deed. He was doing it in strange stripes, that of an auspicious artist of his work making a begrudging statement of his trade skill going to waste when something happened. Something that would increase my fear.

        There was a roar from across the room of a dozen men screaming out, and the immediate sounds of jaw to hand bone slapping repeatedly as loud as a bull whip sounds from the supersonic leather "snap, crack..."

        Then a boom as one participant in the fight fell into the metal table.

        The razor stopped from the top of my head. In his cautious poise, the barber stopped as well. I felt the razor move, a pause unsure of what to do with itself, the hand said. Then quietly, he slipped it down the side of my face, gently firming the grip on my half bald skullcap. He let the rotating blades fall to the side of my chin as I closed my eyes briefly knowing this may be it. His firm grip on my skull increased to a commanding one, and the razor rested now barely touching me at the jugular with each breathe he inhaled.

 

        Sharply, I knew that I could not move, only wait with patience and hope the fight would not move toward me. If the opponents, as I noticed now indeed one black, one white, made any motion toward me their motive would be to win a weapon. It may be instantly used as the black population side defense against their own mans death. I could indeed be cut from ear to grinning ear to stop the black man from meeting the same possible fate.

        I felt the thought itself, chilling me to the core pass through my "barber".... I felt his reluctance to keep it at my throat, then he released it. All of five seconds it had taken for this to happen.

  

        I heard the buzzer of the watch tower announcing the guards arrival go off. My barber dropped the razor completely to the floor abruptly. It became like one of those scenes from a nature show, we were animals. The flock of prisoners split the room dancing unsure of what to do , what was coming with the guards. Would this be an all out riot?

        The two fighters encircled each other, the metal table separating the two of them, vibrating as the middle aged bald white guy who was about two hundred fifty pounds in strength knocked on it with an open hand to make a loud booming. He screamed at the other man, also middle aged, though much more youthful in appearance and attacked again.

        The door flung open and armed guards ran yelling into the room. The scene became a pandemonium "LOCK DOWN NOW!!"

        My door on the lower floor of the block was directly behind the fight ensuing. I saw my middle aged friend, the ex seal, and we caught each others thought. He was caught between them in trying to get to the stairs, I was caught on the other side of the crowd now frantic and at a full roar of delighted and confused yelling.

        As if in slow time, he nodded. I returned the nod with a firm step forward and yelled like a banshee at the top of lungs, shoving the prisoner in front of me out of the way. I had escaped death.

        Would I escape being crushed by the crowd?

        We were two lone wolves in the pack, and he raised his jaws up to where the sky would be with its crescent moon and howled, a grin creeping a cross his face. We dashed directly toward each other in that instant through the guards. One was now being hit by the onslaught of blows still flying from the fighting two. The guard caught a subtle right as it glimpsed off one fighter and he now pinned him to the wall toward my cell blocking the view of my door. My friend sprinted toward me, toward the stairs as I continued myself toward the scene. Meeting in the middle of the room, we exchanged the look one last time.

        One of knowing. One that said “No matter what happens I am going to fight at your back until this is up...”

        It was then blood curdling yells resounded from both of our throats as we made the final dashes into our opening cell doors.

        I heard my own slam as I brushed past the guards. I heard his slam also, and knew it was over.

        For now. For now.

        It was a few weeks later. Court had come and gone. The endless nights dreading the look on

        Kalis face, her brother, the judge. They had pressed the charges further, now to my dismay opening up a Protection Order, which I had been forced to sign. I had decided to remain silent. Not even taking the oath, I stood in the courtroom after the two hour stay in the holding cell all of two minutes for what seemed to be the end of all I had perceived important in my life. The judge asked for my plea, and

        I had pleaded not guilty. He turned to me, and asked if this was truly my plea, to which I returned thinking this was the first thing worthy of me responding verbally to. "Yes your honor."

        I had knew my plea would enter, and I had been told I would be given a new date to fight it out in court. I was not aware of exactly how much time it would take to get back to court. The judge looked at me and sneered as if to say, “I knew you for a criminal, guess you can go back home.”

        These people did not know me. They did not know the injustice being served.

        They did not know the irony that I had been in fact probably the clean one in the situation with her brother’s drugs, fraudulent disability and probable abuse of his children.

        I was given a date to be summoned back to court for a hearing. It was on this day, September 10th, 2001... the court settled for October 14th... a whole month and more away. I was dismissed stunned. A whole month in that zoo to come.

        Kali sneered in satisfaction, unaware of exactly what she was doing.

        “Bitch," I thought, and remembered how close I had come to marrying that shallow petty girl now playing the victim. She was deserving of an academy award.

        I bowed on the way out of the courtroom, the deepest bow I could, in my own mind betraying the deepest vow I had connected her to . I had always likened my marriage to come being that of like my own grandmother and grandfathers love, a vow. I wanted to be able to undermine her little sneer, delve as far into dismantling her trust in the world as I could. I wanted to defeat her lies, make her pay in the public eye. She had been instilled to see this as a pact of honor and love?

        This bow was deep in my own mind. In my shackles and cuffs I bowed out for my own starving lone honor. A curtsy to say to those conscious of me out there that she had been simultaneously judged unfit for my family.

        I then held my head high on the way down the hall to the holding cell. It slammed shut.

        That was near the last I would see of her, that day. Only twice since have I had the displeasure of seeing her scarred face to my eyes themselves.

        I was taken back to the prison. I told them at the jail what had happened. The inmates themselves told me how stupid I was. It was the classic case of “I fought the law and the law won”.

        How little I knew, and now for some apparent reason, they were asking me if I wanted to be here. I told them I was not guilty. They said it didn’t matter. I told them it was my moral belief, that it did.

       They said, I could have been out of there in no time. The softer hearted ones looked at me, the ones learning their lesson in their stay, and they told me they were happy to have me there... that we maybe could hang out. I recognized them.

       But I did not hear. My altruistic sense of well being told me to never give up. Giving up had not been what had taken me across the country with no food or money or transportation, it was not what had brought about these revelations in myself.

        I had a lot to learn about the size of these battles, and how to win the war in the long haul you often must admit defeat. Sometimes it takes a retreat to win the battle coming, and the war altogether.

        Such was not my thinking then.

        That night in my cell I had an experience to shatter my concept of this all indeed. I had seen the taking of my own life. I had fought for peace with this woman, for the taking of the American way back to the people. I had toured the country, obeyed my grass roots, we had taken vows.

        I had the feeling something more was coming to an end with all of this. That night as I stared at the floor, and felt the family out there accepting all of this in their ways. I felt my own family out there finding out about it. I felt the conscience of those I had been around in the days back at home. I remembered the night of my meditation at the MTSU campus and it became clear that the meaning had been arranged and that I had not yet seen the full scale of what was coming. As I stared at solid block of cement that was my cell floor, it began to shift slightly in my vision.

        The swirling brush marks that gave it that slight grain turned pastel, and then deepened in to a grinning carpet of oriental flair. I felt the sadness of Kali, and tied to it the deepest loves I had felt ever returning. I felt them mold together, wrench through a series of endless cyclic emotions ever deeper in despair. The hues of the carpet of fractal before me deepened . I began to point at the fragments appearing with disbelief, I had rare ever seen this intense of vision in the deepest of my LSD trips.

        The fractal shimmered and became alive with all with energy points resembling the brightness of the people in my mind for whom I cared. The connected points of light were like stars in a shimmering paisley background connected instantaneously into a web which intricacies emerged intermingling in its complexity. It was a three dimensional quality like that of the night sky.

        "Oni" I thought aloud, or the Native American name for well of souls.

        Behind the webbed well, the warm tan oriental rug stain stopped its drifting warm glow and began to stain black. It was as if some invisible hand had opened the holographic chamber before me and begun to pour iodine symbolic of a deeper harsher wisdom into the pattern.

 

        The darkness absorbed into the pattern as ink spreading into a cloth, the veins of the web shining crystalline white, glowing with more intense flaring and moving while adding the glow of other souls forces or energies. It was thoughts, fates connected. Fates I would know be able to grasp the full meaning of, their complex individuality just barely being represented here.

        I was a sharing this vision with an important people. They were dead or openly living their dying moments before me in their unknowing. My own energy was shown in the mix, as I thought of my need for growth and compassion, to see it in relation to this reflective mirror wisdom pool. Its faint shimmer shifted in my emotional reaction. It gave the affect of deepening roots.

        The darkness grew colder and it seemed as though a wormhole into outer space was now simply opening in the middle of the room. I became afraid of this thought, and the whole mass began to swirl looking sort of like the depiction I had seen as a child of a pole star taken with time lapse photography.

        Deeper the colors, the energies, the voices, the beings themselves swirled being sucked in to the floor that led into unknown blackness.

        The mass bubbled and frothed with torn emotion that of a thousand souls anguish. My head swam, and I wondered if I was indeed of my right mind. I thought of my studies, and of Buddha and of that final thought, where it would end. "Buddha..." echoed in my mind... and I heard a laughing of sorts as it all became a cloud, and disappeared echoing in my mind "Buddha, dha, dha, ha,a..."

        "Om..." I chanted for a brief moment.

        My face turned bright red, and wondered if anyone else had felt it. I felt like a tiny voice chanting this Ommm.... and realized how true this was, that I was only one small, ever so tiny role in the universe. The next morning was 9-11-2001.

        By the end of the month of September I was so scared of the guys in the regular population, I did not know what to do. I made matters worse by attracting attention to myself. I wanted out of there, maybe out in the sick unit, anywhere. I wrote several crazy messages to the doctors, and requested psychiatric help.

        None came.

        The detention center guards decided I was definitely loony however after I proceeded to shave not only all of my hair off with my beard, but my eyebrows too. I was charged with several small offenses, rules and codes of the prison I had broken and taken to solitary confinement and placed on a suicide watch.

        I once read in a psyche textbook about an experiment conducted by a researcher on the human mind and its ability to adjust the very neurons it is composed of in order to survive the things it is going through. The researcher had made a device that I imagine looked somewhat very similar to a cross between a periscope and ski goggles.

        The device when worn would take the visual image of the world in front of you and turn it upside down. You appeared to be standing on the ceiling. Kind of reminds me of the times when I was a small child standing on my head while waving my legs about imagining what it would be like to be spider man and to walk around on the ceiling.

 

        I was kind of fascinated by the whole thing when I read that the researcher learned that the actual neurons in the brain rearrange themselves after a period of over seventy hours. They rearranged themselves so that the picture with the goggles on would now appear right side up so that the test subject could function once again. The very neurons arranged themselves to gain the right picture.

  

        Then on removing the goggles the observer now would see the world upside down for and from his own brain and eyes. They had to wait for a good period of time before they would return to normal sight.

        Over the four months Tennessee detained me in that cell in violation of nearly every right I can think of, I learned how powerful these attributes of the mind truly were, and how to use them. I held yogic positions for hours on end, and practiced T’ai Chi nonstop until the forms themselves were visually appearing in my head as I did them.

        I had nothing else to do, and so I spent time in all manner of ways. The guards did not like me, and so I never received indigent packs. Some of the prisoners bought more commissary in a week than

        I needed to bail out. The deepest thing I did while in there was to get to know what the others prisoners had done. The cell floor was dirty like cement that had gotten skin flints on it for a month.

       Maybe longer, I had never cleaned it nor was given the opportunity to get the stuff directed by schedule to do so. They never came, never offered, it never happened.

        It was a cell like all of the others. The one difference was a pad locked "mail slot" looking window about knee height in the only door in or out. The metal door was two inches too thick to break.

        Painted metallic blue, grey underneath where prior residents had scratched the paint. There was a window at shoulder height on the right hand side. It was a hands width wide, and barely over a foot tall looking into the functioning "prisoner" area where four massive tables stood bolted, their blue iron sides bolted to the floor in a fantasy picnic arrangement that would never occur.

        On the solitary ward, you only came out of your cell twice a week if that. The tower buzzed open your electric door lock for different reasons. Lucky prisoners come out twelve times a week. The ones who couldn’t handle being in, such unfortunates wasted their time to only getting out once or twice in two weeks sometimes. A trap door placed in the cell door was used at mealtime for food trays.

        The thoughts that had crossed my mind to pass the time had begun to ring in my ears as the time itself unsure spread out before me. I had not before gone to jail, and I had not committed a crime to speak of with the guys around me. Percy Palmer, visible through my cell door clearest of all of them is now standing trial for what is being termed as the most heinous crime in Tennessee history. They want the death penalty for his alleged triple homicide. Me, I broke a car window. Go figure.

        The light came on and I opened the paper which had been brought to me. The front page was my treasure for the first time in a week or so... it looked so good to me, not having any commissary to write with or any books having been brought to me for a significant amount of time.

        I began looking at the picture on the front. The Captain D’s Murder it read. The trustee came to my cell door and asked for the paper. Foggy in my dreams of the outside world out there beyond my window overlooking the somber town brought me down. I was imprisoned by the very one I had love best. This had brought me to choking tears of such force one day at times I could barely breathe.

        A pale face floated momentarily outside of my cell door. He looked tired and as if he maybe was worried about my state of being. But he simply nodded, shook his head while picking up the carefully folded page I had slid under the door and walked on, his sandals making that hollow echoing

        “flap, flap, flap” on the concrete floor of the yard.

        He walked to the left of my cell door and dropped out of site. I heard the paper being slid under another door. The tower above emitted its small beep warning of the yard time on the other side coming to end. The light overhead shifted down in luminescence and the cell fell to evening shadow.

        I felt the tears there still, but the well had weeks before run dry.

   

        I lay down on my bunk, and fell to sleep.

        Morning came and the lights went on. I heard the door that held the space between us and the adjacent cell block slam shut behind the guards. I leaped to my feet, hopeful... wondering...

        The sight that fell before me left me speechless. I was in shock, devastated in my own lack of humility. There he was, the very man I just tucked myself in with thoughts of to comfort me. My stay I had thought must be sheltered from that man, from his alleged deeds. For Gods sake, I had only broken a window!

        There he was, bright red jumper a size too big for him, long black braided hair falling over his neck that now turned about this way and that like that of someone looking for friends or familiar people.

        Percy Palmer, charged with triple homicide was lead to the door directly across from my cell, the one I had best view of...cell twelve.

        They opened the door, I heard the chinking of the chains being removed, the guards re emerged and they shut the door.

        I shuddered in the presence of my own locked steel door. Time to get to the better end of dealing with this new arrival. I leaned hard on the door, moving it the small space it had between its metal frame and the door itself, it shuddered with a light low hollow “booming “ sound like that of a bass drum on a stage. It echoed..

        I repeated the tap at as softly as I could.

        A guard in the control tower released the latch of the trustees’ door by pressing the small button on his control screen. It made the infernal buzzing sound of freeing another man from his space in the cell. Immediately the trustee sprang forth from into jailhouse yard and there he was walking directly for the cell block door...I tapped harder at my door three times.

        “boom, b..boom..boom” it echoed in the vast yard beyond. The trustee turned with out hesitation with a kind of cocksureness that was unlike any kind of intelligence I had ever known twinkling in his eye.

        It was then I knew what was to come was the ride of my life, he was grinning and heading directly for me like he had known for a long time that we might have to match wits on this one.

        I have time and time again fought the urge to remember him as a non – criminal and that he would have been had it not been for charges like my own. I felt sure it was the failure of the system which simply taught him how to relive the drama by learning better ways and means to survive. This man, the trustee was innocent too. Perhaps I was too guilty of being abused.

        “Who is that?” I asked though the thin crack on the side of the door.

        He seemed puzzled at first, making that screwed up grin suddenly the trustee had when he readied himself for what could come next from his own mouth. I saw in him that he astounded himself with his skills in an environment that he had never expected to become adept at. That deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.

        “That is Lowdown.” He responded in after clearing his throat, turning toward the crack in the door slightly with a nod of his head back toward the cell. His eyes glowed.

        “Who?”

        Quickly he acknowledged the unnecessary question with a nod immediately saying “lowdown.”

        He tugged at the cell door once as the guards did nightly to check their securement and the fled toward the now buzzing block door to get our lunch trays.

        I felt the eyes of the tower on me, knowing now I was in question as well for these alleged murders. I was involved in the case of this “Lowdown” guy if I cared to make up a snitch. A creeping chill crawled over me as I sensed, imagined the man lying in his cell feeling us out there watching all eyes on the block doors. I shivered and fell in four short backpedals to sit on my buck, the rumpled wool army blanket lying in a heap on its rough green plastic surface. That night the irony dawned on me, and I began to sing the Phish tune ACDC bag loudly.

        “Mr. Palmer is concerned with a thousand dollar question, just like Roger he’s a crazy little kid. I’ve got the time, if you’ve got the inclination, so, cheer up Palmer you’ll soon be dead! The noose is hanging, at least you won’t die wondering, situp and take notice! Tell it like it is! If I were near you, I wouldn’t be far from you.I’ve got a feeling, you KNOW WHAT YOU DID!! ACDC BAG!!!"

        I got the feeling Lowdown had no comment on it.

        Several times during my elongated stay at the prison I was tortured by the guards. One night when the outdoor chill brought the temperature to only sixty degrees in the cell, they took from me all of the cells contents. I was left with no blanket, and no uniforms for the entire night. I jogged naked around the cell for hours trying to keep warm to no avail.

        They beat me a few times, and once or twice came with a nurse to stab me with a needle. She did so on one occasion missing my butt entirely, and I wear a scar still today from where her needle stuck in my hip bone.

        In January, almost five months after my initial arrest, I was released before the jealous eyes of the lifers. I had pleaded guilty to the misdemeanors, and even with five months served was given a year’s probation and three thousand in fines. The system had raped me thoroughly.

  

      When I left, my legs and feet swelled to three times their normal size. I visited the hospital several times over the following months to try and relieve them of the horrible pain I was suffering. I was utterly defeated and left with no faith in the system.

  

      Several guards came and escorted me to the room which I had been brought in and searched over four months prior. I was given my street clothes, and allowed to change back into them. After this,

  

       I was handed my wallet which Kali had given them, and my belt from a plastic bag in which they had been stored. I signed for all of the belongings, and the uniformed guard at the desk told me I was free to go. I had dreamed of this day.

 

       Immediately I removed the pictures of Kali from my wallet and threw them away.

        I then left the grounds. Never before had the sky seemed so blue, and so big. As I walked off into the distance towards town, I realized I had no idea where I was going to go.

 

       But one thing was for certain, many worlds I'd come since I first left home. I would get by.