Category: Religion

Black Rooster in My Kitchen – and Sacrifice

Sacrificial Rooster

“Get a black rooster”, he said. “Keep it 30 days, then after, bring it to me”, he said, his eyes squinted behind thick cigar smoke.

He is big and white with close cropped grey hair that stands on end in a military style crew cut. He has an imposing bearing and a deep voice. His glasses are modern and wire rimmed. His fingers gleam with rings with diamonds and other precious stones and his wrists with bracelets and an expensive watch. Around his neck are strings of beads in black and red and others in pure white. I couldn’t guess his age… maybe 40s or maybe 70s. He exudes a casual sexual energy, a pervading sensuality. He laughs often and with ease, but some how he is serious, serious as a heart attack. When he speaks, you are compelled to listen.

Charles owns Botanica Manuel. In the front window of the storefront, in a seedy part of town, he stocks herbs and incense, oils, statuary of the orishas, and malas of many colors. A life size statue of a black Latino peasant, stands with its feet among paraphernalia. This is Manuel, beside him is a statue of Manuel’s wife. This is Charles’ “dog”, his personal spirit guide, guardian and servant. But in the back, behind a curtain is a different scene, a different world. His shop is small and crowded, though from what I gathered, is not the source of his relative wealth.

Charles is a Santero, a priest in Santeria and a practitioner and priest of Palo. He is not to be messed with. It’s something you just know, you can feel it. There is danger lurking and yet a profound love.

I know as I follow my mentor, Don Cosentino, through a black curtain into a tiny room, that I need to keep my mouth shut. There are chairs in a circle. The space is dark. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust in the darkness. There are others sitting closely together. There’s an air of anticipation.

Today, as I write this post, my memory fails to recall everything in this room. It is cramped with many accoutrement but there is a vision that no amount of time can erase. Next to me appears to be a fire pit. There are railroad spikes, dirt, ashes, bones, a nganga filled with sticks and other things I can’t make out. There’s a chicken’s head that from the bloody neck, appears to have been freshly killed, and a goat’s skull. I see ornately beaded walking sticks and against another wall, drums bedecked with bells and woven shoulder straps.

A nganga is an iron receptacle or a cauldron used for ritual and is used as a source of power. It can contain many things such as sticks, feathers, railroad spikes, graveyard dirt, ashes of humans and animals and animal skulls and they have been known to contain even a more power source, a human skull. It is within this cauldron that the spirit of the dead resides, or as it is known as, the dog. This spirit does the bidding of its owner and assists in divination according to the pact made between them. Manuel is Charles’ “dog” to do his bidding.

About the time it started to feel very close, Charles walks in. He is dressed all in white. He appears to have a crippled foot on which he can barely put any weight. He wears a pained expression. Charles is now inhabited by Manuel, a former slave in his life on earth, who was injured in work and by abuse. He sits and greets us with familiarity and affection but with a certain authority. He is handed a cigar at least 8″ long and 2″ in diameter. An assistant offers a light. He pulls on it until smoke billows into the air, hindering our sight. He appears blind and yet seems to see every detail of each person in the room. We are in the presence of the living dead.

Manuel, once he is settled, begins to call out each person in the room. He tells them about their lives, he chastises them for their faults, he encourages them to do better, at some, he shows disdain and anger. I become worried as he hasn’t called me out yet. He has not made eye contact with me. Perhaps, he has nothing to say to me… but then he turns to me, without any type of expression on his face, and I know he’s looking at me, though his eyes seem blind.

I don’t remember what he said. I didn’t… couldn’t record him. I was paralyzed. I heard the words but couldn’t “hear” them. Even now, when I let myself go, I can remember the gentleness in which my heart was revealed. It was no use to try to obscure secrets buried just under the surface. He called them out… one by one. I remember the rumble, the powerful sounds coming from his throat, his mouth, that caused me to tremble and the tears that came unbidden. Then, his voice became clear like an instructors, “get a black rooster and after 30 days, bring it to me.”

What happened after that, I don’t know, but all I could think was, “where do I get a black rooster”. I knew without a doubt that I was going to do what he asked. I stepped out of the back room behind the curtain, into the sunlit shop. It felt like I had left one world and entered another. I felt slightly disoriented. Charles came behind and others in the shop gathered around him. He was not limping. Amidst the chatter, I made my way to the counter and asked the man standing there where I could find a live black rooster, as if I was asking a clerk at the drug store where to find the dandruff shampoo. Without hesitation, like he got this question all the time, he wrote down an address. I took it.

The bright LA sun was still shining. “I might as well go pick up this chicken while I’m out here”, I thought. Like that wasn’t weird enough, I did it. I found the address in a part of LA I’d never been before. There were blocks of warehouses and delivery trucks. I pulled over in front of a building and parked. Like I knew what I was doing, I entered a large dim and dust filled warehouse. There were cages of poultry of every kind. A man approached me and asked in Spanish, ¿”que quiere”? Luckily, I speak Spanish. Timidly, I asked for a black rooster.

Without hesitation, and within a couple of minutes, the man handed me a cardboard box with a young black rooster in it. I paid a small price and took the box out to my car and set it in my back seat like I did this everyday.

At the time, I was a graduate student at UCLA in the fields of folklore and mythology and my focus was Cuban spirituality. I would be writing about my experiences for my thesis. But this was not my 1st rodeo. I had lived with a Santero. I won’t go into my life with him now since I have written about it in other blog posts but suffice it to say, this was not new to me. Animal sacrifice was a natural part of this religion and I knew what I was in for. I knew the destiny of this black rooster.

I was living in Santa Monica, just blocks from the ocean, in a small garage conversion. I took the box out of my back seat and took it in to my small apartment setting the box down in my kitchen. The rooster was quiet and calm. It didn’t make a sound and it didn’t make a sound for the entire month that it lived in my kitchen. Perhaps, he knew his destiny, as well. Perhaps, he felt honored to be a part of this sacrifice.

Over the next 30 or so days, I fed the rooster and I talked to him and cared for him in every way. I was growing attached and began to feel bad for how his life would end. He would look up at me out of the bottom of the box with one eye and his head cocked as if to say, “don’t worry. I know what’s going on”.

After 30 days, I once again put the box with the black rooster in the back seat of my car and headed for Charlie’s botanica.

I don’t know if Charlie had written down on a calendar or in his ritual book that in 30 days I would be coming back but he didn’t seem at all surprised when I walked in the door. Maybe this was a regular occurrence and he knew exactly what was coming in the door. One of the people behind the counter took my box from me and headed through the curtain to the back room. The rooster remained silent.

Just as before, people had gathered in the botanica and had slowly drifted into the back room to sit in a circle to wait for Charlie to arrive as Manuel. Just as before, Charlie arrived. He addressed each and everyone in the circle, just as before. I grew impatient. I looked around for the box but didn’t see it.

Finally, in what seemed like hours, Manuel departed and Charlie sat there in front of us. Slowly, much slower than what I wanted, everyone moved in to the botanica to chat, perhaps to buy things that Charlie had suggested for ritual. Charlie motioned for me to stay seated and he left to say goodbye to the others.

A short middle aged man came to me and motioned for me to follow him through some curtains into a larger room behind the room where we gathered. I don’t remember a lot about this room except that it was more brightly lit and had the air of a kitchen with a sink with running water and tiled floors and I don’t remember what else because, of course, I was getting nervous. I felt cold. I felt a chill run down my spine as I stood there.Where was my rooster?

Charlie came in but didn’t look at me. He was prepared and he was going to do what he was prepared to do. This is what I remember… that I stripped to my underwear. Charlie approached me holding a large knife and my black rooster by its feet. My rooster didn’t make a peep. It hung there as though dead but its eyes were darting about. I was getting colder and began to shake.

Charlie held the rooster by its feet while he rubbed the live rooster all over my body from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. He was speaking but I didn’t understand what he said. He wasn’t speaking in English nor was he speaking in Spanish. When he was done with me, swiftly, with one slash, Charlie cut off the rooster’s head. The rooster bled into a cauldron where its head had landed, still with no objection.

It was clean and swift. The other man said that I could put my clothes back on and Charlie walked out of the room after he placed the rooster back in my box in a bag. I had previously received instruction that after the ritual I would take the rooster’s body to a graveyard and leave it there. I had looked up the address I was given and was prepared to leave the sacrifice among the dead.

After this, I didn’t see Charlie again until my next visit to the botanica. I had heard from other Santeros that after these kind of rituals there is a kind of exhaustion that takes place and I suppose that Charlie had gone to rest.

I guess there’s a certain kind of familiarity among law enforcement and cemetery personnel, because it was explained to me that finding dead roosters or other kinds of accoutrement in graveyards was not so strangely rare. But I was warned to be discreet. There were certain graveyards that were more tolerant.

I arrived at the graveyard sitting on a hill. It was late afternoon and the sun was bright but low in the sky. I walked among the gravestones and thought about what I had just experienced. I wanted this time to be personal and to be meaningful. As I mentioned before, I had experienced many things living among the Cubans but this was the first time I had been the center of this ritual.

I left the rooster next to a gravestone that was the oldest that I could find. I thanked him for what he had sacrificed for me. I walked slowly back to my car enjoying the sunshine and the heat. My body still felt cold. I drove through LA towards the beach and my home away from home.

Though I remember a great deal about this, still much of it is from my memory. Since I didn’t write down the details after they happened, all I have is my memory.

Though this story may seem strange and gruesome to you, my readers, to me these are, yes strange and extraordinary but they make up the person that I am today and I am grateful for that.

I realize that this story of mine leaves a lot that is not explained, But there’s more writing to be done and there are previous blog posts that go into some detail about living with a Santero and among the many Cubans that I met in the late 1990s.

This post is not intended to be instructional or specifically educational but it is true. Truer than true.

Adrian has Passed On

Adrian was an old friend. I knew him from high school. A Swedish boy with white blonde hair and, gleaming, even whiter teeth. When he smiled he lit up a room. He was more than handsome.

Adrian came from a large family. I believe there were 5 boys and one sister. Each of them with the same hair and teeth and confident and charismatic demeanor.

After high school I was searching for life’s meaning. Not finding what I was looking for in LSD and other psychedelics, one day Adrian knocked on our door.

His had been a similar path but according to him he had found “the way”. He had a Bible under his arm and was ready to show us “where the light was”. He was determined to drag us to church.

After a few determined visits, we acquiesced and followed him to Maranatha Church, where Reverend Wendall Wallace preached and held sway.

In red cords, a red and blue flowered shirt and barefoot, I sat in a pew near the back. Richard Probosco played the piano and the choir sang and rocked back and forth clapping in synchopated rhythm in their black robes.

Wallace was on fire as he preached to a congregation of black and white and the young and the old. The auditorium was packed.

I didn’t really hear his words but I was moved deep inside somewhere, without comprehension. This wasn’t the 1st time I was moved by music and rhythm and I had smoked some weed before leaving home, which increased the warmth and sensuality of the atmosphere.

I was moved but also apprehensive because I knew where this was going. I was in no way naive. And then it came: the invitation to come up front and give one’s life to Jesus. The music and the singing were pleading and Wallace’s voice was trying to draw us in. ” Is there anyone here”, he said, who will come down and give their life to Jesus? Jesus loves you”, he said again and again, with pregnant pauses, while he waited for responses.

A few people responded and began to walk down the aisle towards the altar. “Okay. Why not?”, I thought. “Let’s go.” I walked down the aisle and knelt at the altar and said, ” Jesus, if you are who you say you are then show it to me”.

At that moment I felt that I was flying through the air, through the clouds, at a high rate of speed. I don’t know what that was but it was very real. I stayed there kneeling for I don’t know how long but I eventually stood up and Wallace took my hand and lifted it in the air while he praised God and shouted Hallelujah.

Something really had changed. From that moment I started looking into The Bible like I had looked into Eastern religions previously. Adrian had located a huge house in northeast Portland that had stained glass and beveled glass windows that reflected rainbows on the floors and the walls. He convinced the church to support this house where “hippies” who were being converted to Christianity could live while they were in the process of changing their lives.

I lived there at the House of Rainbows for a time. Food was provided, the utilities and rent were paid and a ride to church was provided every Sunday and Wednesday nights.

Adrian, from that time onwards until his death was a street evangelist. He spent all of his time on the street bringing people out of drug addiction and alcoholism and violence to give their hearts to Jesus. But he not only preached the gospel but but he provided food and housing and clothing.

In spite of Adrian’s well meaning efforts towards me, I was always a skeptic and never a true believer in spite of my experience at the altar at Maranatha church. I tried for years but it just never rang true to me. I haven’t had anything to do with any church since the early 70’s. But I can’t deny the good that Adrian did for many, many people, perhaps hundreds of people.

I haven’t seen Adrian since around 1972-74, but he frequently comes to mind. Many were convinced that Adrian and I would hook up but we didn’t ever have that kind of relationship. The women at Maranatha made me a patchwork quilt of embroidered squares and one of the patches had a picture of Adrian and I as a married couple. In spite of the fact that Jack and I married, we had that quilt on our bed for many years until it was destroyed in a house fire.

Adrian was the witness who signed our marriage license and reverend Wendell Wallace married us out in the forest on a beautiful sunny August day.

Adrian and Wendall Wallace signing the certificate of marriage
Reverend Wendall Wallace. Blessings

I called Jack yesterday and told him that Adrian had passed on. He was only 74, our age, but apparently had been ill and died of an injury. We commiserated and were sad at his passing. Though we are not believers we are certainly appreciative of all the good that Adrian did in his life. Who can fault a man who has spent his life helping so many get off drugs and alcohol and has shown them a way to live that is not harmful to themselves or others.

Good bye, Adrian. You’ve had a good life. We loved you. Many have loved you.

Burning Pepe with Ritual.

A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous… as this story proves out.

I don’t know where to begin because I don’t think that I’ve told you enough about my past with Santeria, Palo and Vodou, but this memory came to mind this afternoon and I wanted to write it down. Perhaps, I’ll even publish it without giving you the proper context. To help a little you could go into some of my blog posts that are tagged with Santeria, Palo and Ramiro and the like… yet it might not help at all. But let’s get right into it, anyway.

Without going into any great detail, suffice it to say that I had been living with a Santero (a practitioner/priest of Santeria. My break with him was tragic. After being with him for several years, to better understand him and the culture of Cuba and its people, I studied Cuban spirituality and simultaneously, Haitian spirituality which, of course, both derive from African roots.

In my studies, I came across primary resources written by priests. Primary resources, of course, are documentation that record first hand experiences. These books or pamphlets or diaries recorded the rituals of their religion. I had watched many rituals performed in the years spent with the Cubans. I always felt though that I was standing at the door with the door just barely cracked open and me, I was peeking inside of a room not truly being able to enter, to participate or to even understand what I was seeing.

This new found knowledge, accompanied by my first hand experiences with Santeros and practitioners of Palo and Vodou, proved to be dangerous weapons in my hands.

After my break with Ramiro, I was left with many accoutrements, but this is another story. My heart had been broken and I had seen too many things. I wanted to relieve my broken heartedness and I also wanted to affect others with what I knew. I didn’t really want to hurt anyone, that was not my intention. But these two things alone are a dangerous combination. I wasn’t looking for revenge but this is how it was perceived.

Pepe was a friend of Ramiro’s and appeared on the scene to “soothe my pain”. I didn’t want a boyfriend, I wanted Ramiro back but I wasn’t getting him back, so Pepe became a friend. But this was not how Pepe saw it.

Pepe would not go away. He tattooed my name on his arm. He led his friends to believe we were lovers. That, we never were. My mistake was to allow him to continue to be my friend even when I realized that he was unreasonable.

My reasoning was that Pepe was nice enough. Pepe cared for me. He was willing to tolerate that I was still in love with Ramiro and that I didn’t love him. In a selfish way, Pepe was my connection to the Cuban community and vicariously to Ramiro. In some odd way this helped to ease the pain, to have somebody familiar around.

This is how the problem started and I am the only one to blame. Pepe was insistent and I suppose you could say that I allowed it, I left the door open, I was too tolerant. But as he became demanding, I became frustrated at first and then afraid. I didn’t believe he would hurt me but he had become frustrated, too. There was an element of him being out of control. Here again, I won’t go into unnecessary detail about his fits of frustration. He was refusing to just be my friend. Though I would lose my connection to him, to the Cubans and to Ramiro, it was time for him to go.

I wanted him to know that I was serious. I wanted him to know that I could make him go away. I knew in no uncertain terms that it had to be final and permanent. I thought that my most powerful ability was to use his own beliefs against him.

I knew too much and yet I knew too little. I never should have done this but I did. This wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last that I used what I had learned, that I used ways that I had no business using.

Whether you believe this or not is neither here nor there to me. I don’t care. But this is what witnesses have reported. These are the consequences of my actions. I followed the directions to the letter. There are times that I regret what I did, but they had the results I was looking for. I never heard from Pepe again.

I wrote Pepe a letter simply asking him to leave me alone. I sprinked into the envelope, powders and ashes of certain and specific animal bones, crushed plants, rocks and metals procribed in the books of priests. I carefully copied, by hand, certain ancient symbols drawn in the books. I sealed the envelope and drew certain other symbols that crossed over the seal, so that when opened, the symbols would be torn in two.

Pepe recieved the letter. According to witnesses, when he tore open the seal, a cloud of dust rose into the air covering his face and flew into his eyes. He was blinded momentarily and had trouble breathing. The dust caused sores on his face and neck that lasted for weeks.

Pepe was out of my life for good. I haven’t heard from him or about him for years. I hope he’s OK.

Does This Alarm You?

I was talking today to another about a conversation I was having with a friend about the meaning of dreams, of spirituality. She thinks that I should not be talking about spirituality because my perspective is not spiritual. She thinks my friend would be better talking to someone who is spiritual. Perhaps she is right.

It’s not that I do not acknowledge spirituality, it’s that I stand there, face to face with it and am not afraid to ask questions of something that, to me, does not exist. Why do I need something to believe in?

I see only the stories made by men. I acknowledge the stories. Yes, I acknowledge that others put faith in them. I can acknowledge the creative beauty of the stories but I also recognize their sinister intentions, their dark, shadow side. I put faith in nothing. I believe in nothing.

This is a great comfort to me… that I can live in this world, with a beating heart and understand, that my courage consists of this: I know, only, that I am. I know nothing for sure, not even that and that is OK for me. I know that I am vulnerable and that I will not be here for long. I know that my existence consists of both joy and sorrow and that I have no control over my experiences and that is terrifying but true.

I will talk to you about anything but know for sure, that I do not live with belief or faith in belief. My perspective might frighten you. You would not be the first to be alarmed.

A Story of Possession

I stood trembling in front of the double doors in the living room, shaking not from cold but for reasons I could not understand.

I was dripping with water that had been generously sweetened with honey and had been poured over my head. I really did not want to hear anything more but I knew that I had to keep my ears and eyes open even though right then, I had them firmly shut.

Oshun was standing on the other side of the room and I knew she was not through with with me yet. At any rate, I was assuming it was she.

The singing continued and so did the beat of the drums. The room was dark except for the evening light that shone through the trees and in through the open doors. The light of the candles added little to dispel the dimness.

Ramiro was speaking but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. His head fell back as he laughed and when he opened his eyes to look at me it was as though I had never seen him before.

He stood up from where he had been sitting, petitioning the deities, barefoot and shirtless in a pair of khaki shorts. He stood very close to me as he pulled his pants up high around his waist, lifted his head and looked down his nose at me.

“Do you know who I am?” He appeared very feminine as he began to move around the room, sashaying and swaying his hips sensuously and moving his shoulders very coquettishly. He held his head high, pushing his chest out, then he asked again, “Do you know who I am? I said yes, thinking I was standing in the presence of Oshun.

“Who told you to light candles to Chango? I did not tell you to. He does not like putas and you are very puta. I am his and he is mine.” He collapsed on the floor with his legs wide apart and demanded loudly “Please, bring me water and honey.”

I brought him water in a glass and the plastic bear containing honey that I used for tea. He dismissed them with disgust, waving his arms arrogantly and laughed loudly saying, “No, I want water, water, lots of water…

Make it sweet and set it here in front of me.” At this I found the biggest container I could find and filled it to the brim, emptying all of the honey into the water.

As I set it on the floor, he first bathed himself starting with his head, splashing it on his body and taking large mouthfuls of it and spraying it into the four corners of the house and then out both of the doors.

Then finally, he came over to me and washed me roughly with the sweet water from head to foot, splashing it all over. He sprayed it from his mouth in my face and all over my body, washing my arms and my breasts and stomach. He turned me around as he washed my buttocks and my legs and feet. “I will cleanse you”, she said. “You have not been living clean. You say that you love your man, but you are very puta. Why? answer me”, she demanded.

I began to cry and said, “Only to take away my loneliness.” With his hands on his hips, he sashayed over to the farthest corner of the room.

As he walked, his movements, though feminine were somewhat stiff. He lurched, nearly knocking over the table and lamp. As I reached out to grab the table he whirled around and snapped, magically as though he had eyes in the back of his head, “Do not touch me. You are an angel but you are dark. I can hardly see you. Stand over there.”

I moved to the farthest corner, next to the double doors. “You need to buy new clothes. Do not wear black anymore. Come here.” I walked over to him and he clamped his hand over my ears, pounding them with his open palms. She said, “I’m going to cleanse you.”

As he spoke words that I couldn’t understand, he rubbed my body, my arms, my legs in forceful downwards movements. He then told me to sit on the floor.

“There’s a woman that you hate. Yes? No? She has the man that you love. So you know who I am? Yes or no? Papijim, he is mine. I have taken him from you. You do not have what he needs. He does not want to dance with you. I have taken him from you. He does not want sex with you, papijim. I have what he needs”, she says, pulling his pants up and he begins to sway his hips sensually. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes and turned his head from side to side mockingly. “You have committed many errors and now, papijim, he is mine. You do not know how to live. You do not know how to enjoy life.”

He was snorting and scoffing. She was so sure of herself as she so cruelly mocked me. She laughed out loud and I knew she was right. I was alone. I was broken. Chastised.

Several minutes later, another orisha arrived. He looked as though he saw another person in the room. He dropped his pants and grabbed his genitals. “You have preferred this. You must change.

“Buy girasoles (sunflowers). Buy white flowers that have no pink or yellow. Put the petals in a bucket of clear water. Wash your hands and arms in the water as you crush the petals in your fingers. When you are done, throw the water out the door of your house.” He left me reeling.

Before he left, he sprayed rum into the four corners of the house and around the doors to keep evil away. He moved my image of Eleggua to face the front door to guard against whatever might wish to pass to do me harm.

Post script:

This is just a small example of what I witnessed while I lived with the Cubans. I learned so much about the way they think and about the way they view sickness and ways that they heal. Because they were refugees and lived in a city where items that they needed to perform certain rituals were not readily available, I saw a great deal of adaptation, accommodation and ingenuity. This lack did not affect how they lived any more than the slaves were disabled because they arrived in the new world without the necessary paraphernalia to carry on.

I will not go into descriptions of the orishas (gods), in this instance, Oshun and Chango, or what this experience was all about. I will let it stand but I will tell you more as these stories emerge on this blog.

I lived with Ramiro, a santero (priest in Santeria), for three years and was immersed in his religion. Later, I studied Cuban folklore and spirituality with other priests in both Santeria and Palo and at UCLA.

This story took place when we were no longer together but still very close.

This is one story of many that I will share with you.

I’ve Never Lived Any Place Long… Part I

…at least since I have been on my own. As a child, I lived in the same house, except for two years, until I left home at 18 years.

From the age of 18 years old until I was 21, I lived in many places while letting myself marinate into a form of maturity or immaturity. I lived in two different apartments downtown that were lovely vintage brickers with oriental carpets, built-ins with pull out Murphy beds, small kitchens with high ceilings and gas stoves and tiled bathrooms with clawfoot bathtubs and flocks of resident cockroaches. I reached my apartment on elevators like cages that climbed their way up to the 3rd floor.

This is where I started to never smoke. As a young teenager, I looked forward to staying up late to watch Johnny Carson and to smoke when and if I wanted. These represented to me the symbols of adult freedom. So, the first thing I did when I left home was to buy cigarettes. They made me feel sick but I tried to ignore the nausea, and I tried and tried to be grown up. My boyfriend, on one of his visits, threw my whole carton of cigs out the window. I was saved from a life of addiction by him and a stranger who picked up this gift that fell from the sky before I could reach the street. Apparently, there were no other cigarettes to buy in the whole city.

It was here that I began to smoke a lot of weed and I dropped my first acid. This was a major turning point in my life from which I have never regretted nor have I returned from whence I came. It was this that blew my mind and I have never been able to see the world without realizing that there is much more than meets the eye. It was this that set me on a path of self-discovery. Mind you, I have yet to fully discover myself, but I was well on my way from this moment.

While living here, I worked at Import Plaza. The Nieto Brothers were wonderful to me. Shortly after I was hired, they began to groom me as a buyer and they entrusted me with the keys to open the store each morning. I violated that trust as I began to steal from them, both merchandise and money. “It is grand larceny”, said the detectives as they walked around my small but lovely apartment on 14th avenue. They ignored my marijuana stash, as they rummaged through my drawers, as I pointed out the stolen goods: smoked imported oysters, a rattan king chair from Indonesia, candles, and tapestries.

The brothers didn’t prosecute. I was released on my own recognizance. I was certain it was because I sent them a small card with Jesus ascending into heaven on gold-rimmed clouds. I wrote on the back, “If I have any debts to pay, I’ll pay them to God”. They called, just to say that they would not recommend me for a job working with money, but that I could use them as a reference. I didn’t work again for many years

From here, the chronology gets foggy, though I remember the houses well. Perhaps, it doesn’t really matter the order in which I moved from house to house but the interest might lie in the number of houses in which I lived in three short years. As I have looked back on this time in my life, it is hard to believe that it was only three years from the time that I left home, to the time when I was married and things slowed down considerably but not all together.

For a time I lived in a small Victorian House on NW Thurman St. with a couple that I had known since high school. We smoked weed and cooked and watched the two raise their little son. The house was dilapidated but like many old Portland houses, it was charming with lead glass windows, hardwood floors, and wooden gingerbread decorating the exterior. The story goes that as I was taking a bath when a part of the exterior wall in the bathroom collapsed exposing me to the elements. I don’t remember the incident but it seems that others do. I didn’t stay long at this house.

For a bit, I lived in an apartment just down the street on Thurman Street. Greg Brand, a local musician, while visiting, commented that the appliances lined up against one wall looked like an appliance store. It was true and though the apartment was in a refurbished Victorian, the owners had violated its integrity. Nevertheless, I was terribly embarrassed and Greg didn’t get what he had come for and I didn’t stay there long, as I couldn’t get comfortable with the fact that I was living in an appliance display.

From there, Laurel Lee, the prolific author, whom I met while working at Import Plaza, suggested that I could possibly stay with Jim Wilkins and Roger McKay in SW just across Babur Blvd. from Lair Hill Park. Listening to Jim play his giant 12 string guitar was magical but I couldn’t love him. Roger, an artist, had suspended his bed so it swung 6 feet from the floor of his bedroom. I cooked for us on a wood stove and we heated with wood. We lived in a lovely but funky little Victorian type house in the Lair Hill district. Lots of hippies had moved into this neighborhood and a local artist, Mike Dewade, was our neighbor. Art and music were being made everywhere. Bob Dylan’s first album with the Band blew our minds. 

Here, I contracted, first, a major case of the crabs. Then, after a night of eating with friends while sitting in a ritual circle and drinking peyote tea at a neighbor’s house, I came down with a bad case of hepatitis. I was carried home where I lay unconscious on a mattress on the floor while friends brought me tea and soup. Eventually, I woke up in great pain, I crawled to a pay phone and called Mom, who sent a taxi to take me to the hospital. As it turns out, I had the worse case of hepatitis that St. Vincent had ever seen to date. My liver did not recover for decades.

I soon moved out to an apartment in a house in NW Portland where two friends were living. We slept in one bed in a small bedroom. While smoking from a hookah, the feds came to the door looking for another friend who was dodging the draft. They’d heard he was living at this address. While the hookah belched smoke in the middle of the table, I threw my bell-bottomed clad legs over the pile of freshly cleaned marijuana on the table in front of me. The feds barged in the open door and came in the back door, looking for the draft dodger. If they noticed the weed stashed everywhere they seemed not to care. Mind you, this was probably 1967-68. Weed was a 1st class narcotic at this time. We were lucky that they didn’t have a search warrant for drugs or we might have all gone to jail.

Then together with several other people, I moved to a very large house, still in NW on Hoyt St. It wasn’t long that I stayed here. This was not a place for the living but rather a place where there was a death wish, it seemed, in every heart. Serious drug folks lived here. I remember seeing a friend tie off with the toaster cord. The upstairs bathroom leaked into the once elegant front door entrance way. One of the residents mounted a flag made of his own underwear on the roof and would stand and salute his homemade flag every morning. There was no sense in buying groceries. People weren’t eating and anyone who wanted my food would eat it. I got a German Shepard while I lived here. It was hit by a car and died.

From here, I moved to a small house in SW Portland, on Corbett Street, where two friends lived. I don’t remember much about this house and I didn’t stay here long but I do remember that here a strange man came into the kitchen handing out pills. He was no hippie. He was a drug pusher. He handed me some pink pills saying, “May the bird of paradise fly up your nose”. Why I dropped one, I’ll never know, but once I came down, I flushed those pills down the toilet. I was not looking to get high. I was looking to get clear. I thought we would stay here, but it was not to be.

The Vietnam war was in full swing and we hated it. I knew a classmate from high school who shot off his toes to stay out of the draft. Others were fleeing to Canada, while still others were hiding out in Portland, getting high, protesting, making art and music, trying to find meaning and trying not to be scared.

Next was a move to a very large house of four apartments perched high above the city on SW Montgomery St. Large windows gave us panoramic views of all Portland. The house is now gone, demolished to make room for highways 405 and 26. What a shame.

It was here that my brother drugged up to appear before the induction center officers. He was rejected, as were many other of my friends. (How they got their 4F classification is a story for another time). Here I sold marijuana making trips to San Francisco to score. Here I learned that dealing was not for the faint of heart and that those big dealers knew nothing of peace and love. But back in Portland, life for me was gentle. I sat on a couch one night looking over the city. We had dropped some acid and there were times when high that all of the answers to life’s questions were clear. The problem was that when one comes down, one can rarely remember the revelations, the insights.  The key then might have been to have someone recording the thoughts and epiphanies that those that are high are having. I can recall clearly a thought that on this night, I announced to all that were within earshot, “Loud tomato raisin”. If only I had a clue. After 50 years, nothing of any consequence comes to me from this message given to me on that night.

But things were changing or I was getting a hint that life was not all roses or it never was. Reality came to my doorstep. We were sorely aware of the inequalities; we saw clearly that oligarchs were running not only our country but the world and that those who own the resources are in charge and it had always been so. I was falling into a pit of despair. I was waking up and I was not happy with what I was seeing and there didn’t seem to be any way to change things. People were trying but the expectation that anything would change was dying inside of me and I could see that others were losing hope, as well. If I was unable to effect change, then what am I doing? What should I be doing? So what if I was searching for “truth”. So what if many sages had asked the same questions for millennia? What changes had they been able to effect?

I walked all over Portland’s streets, and through its parks, went to concerts by Barefoot John Henry, The Great Pumpkin, the US Credenza, the Grateful Dead that were held in the Masonic Temple and the Pittock Building and the Crystal Ballroom and in the Folksinger Coffee House. I was introduced to psychedelic music and light shows. I walked barefoot and read, smoked weed and made and shared food with friends. I was looking for answers but so was everyone else. The Vietnam war raged on. People were dying everywhere to see civil rights instituted and honored. Women were seeking equality. The war machine could not be stopped. It fed our economy; we needed war to survive, and fossil fuels fueled the wars. The ugliness of Manifest Destiny was alive and well. I was giving up the pipe dream of a world where peace and harmony and responsibility towards one another and our planet existed.

We cried and we marched and we tried to live differently. I cleaned the weed from the plastic wrapped kilos I brought home from San Francisco, measuring it generously into baggies called lids, while hand rolling fat doobies to turn on my friends. I put the lids into a large, Oriental vase by the front door where people could come and grab a lid and leave me $10.00. I stopped selling when on a run, I had to meet the dealers on the docks of the bay. It felt criminal, it felt dangerous. I stayed in a dirty crash pad in Haight Ashbury, sleeping on the floor beside a man with a gun. Someone had died there the night before. On the way home, the car died and we threw the kilos off the side of the road while we slept in the car waiting two days for a part to arrive at a small podunk town gas station without a motel in the middle of nowhere. When I got home and broke open the weed, it was nothing but stems, seeds and shake. That was it. No more. Not for me. This was not getting high. This was about crime. Things were changing.

Where did I go from there? It’s vague but I remember living in North Plains for a bit. This was not for me and I got out of there pretty quickly even though there were animals and a lovely organic garden. It just never felt like home. So far, nothing had ever felt like home. I remember as a child feeling the same way. I have never felt like I knew where home was.

Then there was a place in Estacada, a small house on a creek in the country. What stands out to me there was a wildly ornate wood cook stove decorated in bright chrome and polished to a jet black, where I made fresh bread and my friend made pies. It was here I began to eat a macrobiotic diet… just brown rice and onions. I would lay down by the gentle creek, breathing in the fresh air and watching the clouds scuttle by overhead.

We made a huge mistake here. I’m not sure I can or should even relate this story here. Perhaps I will save it for another time and another place.

We had an old car and a Vespa. The car had a back seat like a living room couch and I would lay back in the lap of luxury while my friends drove us to and fro along the country roads. Gas was 25 cents a gallon in those days and we could drive for miles and miles on pennies. We would ride the Vespa to pick up bottles and cans to be able to fill the gas tank.

From here, I don’t know how or why, I moved to Grandma’s for a short while. While living here, we heard that the producers of the movie, Paint Your Wagon, with Lee Marvin, was hiring hippies as extras. So off we went to Baker City where we followed the roads to the movie location. I left Portland wearing a short flowered skirt, a t-shirt and a sued leather jacket and a pair of sandals and carrying not a lot more than that but perhaps a sleeping bag.

We hitchhiked over the Cascades and into the Oregon steppes. The landscape flattened out and you could see for miles. A local rancher in a pickup dropped us off in the middle of nowhere where ranches of thousands of acres stretched out forever. We stuck out our thumbs. Suddenly, you could feel the temperature and the barometric pressure drop and black clouds gathered on the horizon. There was nothing we could do but hope for our next ride. Lightning and thunder crashed from the clouds and rain was fast approaching. The late afternoon light turned rapidly into an ominous sky.

I was suddenly cold in my measly clothes. I wished out loud that I had a pair of pants and a bandana. A car was approaching but going in the wrong direction. As it got closer, we could see that it was a long black limousine with blacked out windows. As it approached, it drew up next to us. A little old woman stepped from the back seat of the car and said, “Here, I thought you could use these”, as she handed me a small packet. I took it from her and she got back in the car and drove off again disappearing down that long stretch of empty road. You guessed it. It was a pair of pants that fit me perfectly and a bandana. I had those pants and bandana for many years. I don’t remember what happened to them.

The storm bore down turning the sky as black as night, drenching us in a flash until we looked like two drowned rats. Why hadn’t I wished for a car? There was nothing to do but to stick out our thumbs again and hope for our next ride.

Before long the storm passed overhead and the air cleared and it was crystal clear as dusk fell. We saw the lights of an old pickup truck slowly approaching going in our direction. When it pulled over we were surprised to see an elderly man at the wheel. We asked him where he was going and he said, “home”.

We had hoped to get as far as Baker City but we were not willing to turn down his offer to take us home to feed us dinner. When we saw the small ranch house, we thought we had stepped into a fairytale. He invited us in and his wife, a perfect salt and pepper shaker match if we ever saw one, welcomed us to sit at the table, “dinner is ready”, she said with a gentle smile on her face, as if she was expecting us. We had fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans and we ate until sleepy eyes told them we needed a place to sleep.

We had been on the road a long time and had been soaking wet way too long. We washed up and she showed us to our bedroom. There was a feather bed, with feather pillows and a feather handmade quilt to cover up with. Really… she tucked us in and said sleep well and we will see you in the morning. We woke to the smell of fresh biscuits and eggs and bacon. I wonder who these people were. Were they real or had we really stepped into a fairytale? The old man took us to Baker City where we made our way into the woods where the movie was being filmed. What happened on site is a tale for another time.

When we returned to Portland, I stayed with Grandma for another short while until I moved into the House of Rainbows. What is the House of Rainbows? How in the world did I get there? I had seen enough at the movie site to make me want to change directions but where was I to go? What was next? Enlightenment and not even personal peace or satisfaction were in weed or in LSD or in the music or in activism or in study or in denouncing my parent’s lifestyle or in any of the other avenues I had been down. I felt like I was at a dead end. I needed an open door.

The House of Rainbows was in NE Portland, one of the many houses that were eventually torn down to the ground and what a shame it was to have the many beautiful houses in the Albina District destroyed to make way for the Memorial Coliseum, Emanuel Hospital, and the I5 freeway. For a long time, as the city and private investors displaced hundreds of families, many houses sat abandoned. We salvaged several stain glass windows from these houses, which we have to this day.

Obviously, it was called the House of Rainbows because of the many stained glass windows that reflected a myriad of colors throughout the house. Many young people lived here as did I for a short time. We were one of the many “hippies” invited to go to Maranatha Church by a young man who felt it was his mission to proselytize the “flower children”, the lost generation. Since I had been a spiritual seeker for years. I say spiritual seekers meaning that I wanted something different than what the American dream promised. We didn’t want a 9-5 or a materialist existence. We didn’t want war, we didn’t want exploitation, we wanted to see justice and fairness and love in the world. We weren’t necessarily seeing any of what we hoped for materialize so, when Adrian asked us to go to a church service, over and over again, we decided to go… why not? Let’s try the next thing.

Reverend Wendall Wallace was a fiery preacher and the music was really out of this world. When Rev. Wallace said, “Anyone who wants to come forward and accept Jesus as your personal savior, come on up.” I had smoked some pot and I was, as was customary for me, barefoot, in red corduroy pants and a beautiful red and blue button-up cotton shirt. I felt like I had tried everything else, why not this? I walked to the front, knelt at the altar and had an out of body experience. I was flying in the clouds so fast. I said, “Jesus if you are who you say you are, do something for me.” Something did happen. I don’t know what but I had been high enough that this was pretty much the same thing. When I finally stood, a rush of people hugged me including hippies and black church folk, everyone crying and laughing and shouting and singing. I was taken into a community that included a room in the House of Rainbows.

Staying in that house was not for me nor was staying in that church… or any church for that matter. But we had food and a roof over our heads until we figured out our next move. While there, I got married. I’m not saying that was a mistake but it was not my idea nor was it Jack’s. In fact, we probably never would have married. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t have stayed in a relationship, or that we wouldn’t have had more children. We just would have been on a different trajectory of our own choosing.

Church put us on a difficult path for the next decade. And here is the place of divergence for this story. Yes, we continued to move about from house to house and from place to place but we were forced into a mold that we could never fit into. We could have left Christianity earlier but guilt is a devious and dangerous power.

The End of Part I

Part II upcoming…

 

If I Were to Make God 

If I Were to Make God 

If I were to make god, he would be terrifying, his eyes would be red and glowing like embers.

If I were to make god, his hands would be claws, his hair would be flowing out behind him against a rabid wind, his feet would be cloven, his teeth would be sharp and pointed and he would go after evil and evil doers in every corner of the universe.

If I were to make god, he would not be tolerant, would not be full of love and compassion or be patient with evil. No, not for a moment.

If I were to make god, he would tear faces, arms and legs off, he would create havoc, he would scare even the most callous of men.

If I were to make god, and he was all seeing, all knowing, all present, all powerful, he would not allow for children to be pent up in closets, shaken, slapped, burned, nor dogs to be on chains, people to be starving, and our species to be so hateful.

If I were to make god, he would be too busy cleaning out the temples, the churches, the synagogues to have time to count every hair on every person’s head.

If I were to make god, he would to be too busy getting rid of the money changers, the whoremongers, the warmongers to see every bird that fell from the sky.

If I were to make god, then you would know what love is.