Greensborough is a university town, and I found a nice population of hippies and punks and others I could relate to a bit better than those young people I generally encountered in Virginia Beach, who were mostly the sort that sport sweatshirts with school or popular-brand logos and blue-jeans. Not to stereotype, mind you, but what one chooses to wear is generally meant to convey something about the personality and social intensions of the wearer (though of course inversely, to immediately judge an individual based upon such indicators is clearly and likewise an error, as books are only sometimes to be judged by covers).
I spent a good portion of my time in Greensborough hanging out outside Tate Street Coffee House by a large planter where the hippies and punks and other freaks young and old would often congregate to smoke and sip their cups of black brew, and 12 Steppers would likewise get their nic and caffeine fix. Also often sat to write and sip my dark drink of choice at the Green Bean downtown and at another little bakery/coffee house closer to the tracks. I often laid out my bedroll in a little stretch of forested land on one edge of UNC property in the undergrowth next to a lazy little rivulet that flowed through that part of the campus.
I made a few friends, or at least became relatively well acquainted with a number of the regulars on Tate Street. The further I wandered south, however, the more alienated I began to feel. Perhaps a significant factor was that I was sleeping outside when most of the people I encountered were insulated from nature by right angles, brick and shingles. Perhaps it was the harassment I regularly received from the police. Perhaps it was that begging was my only means of income, where whatever peers I might meet were working or supported by trust funds or college moneys from moms and dads or the government. Maybe it was the preponderance of psychic battles I found myself forced to fight, as well as the dark and foreboding dreams channeled to my mind by whatever malevolent entities or fearful realities of this world. Perhaps it was that I had been endeavoring, to no avail, to find some way back to the Rocky Mountains and my regular stomping grounds out West ever since shortly after I had decided not to work at the Omega Institute and had parted company with Leslie.
Nothing overtly extraordinary occurred during my sojourn in Greensborough, though one instance comes to mind that might have some poetic meaning in relation to the broader aesthetic of my journeys. One day on Tate Street I encountered a fellow trying to avoid the cops who was ranting on about a woman named “Coreena.” As I sat and smoked a cig with said lamenting fellow on the lamb, he continued to rant rather randomly and abstractly, ending his convoluted soliloquy with his oft repeated refrain, “You know, Coreena! Everybody’s got their Coreena.”
After a couple of months or so in Greensborough, I hopped a train that seemed to be heading west, but then ducked south and ended up in Atlanta. Big cities are not my thing, except for brief visits and when I have cash to spend. Nonetheless, I decided to venture into the urban jungle to see what I might find, as I’d never been to the Big Peach before.
In Atlanta I discovered a fairly hip coffee house not too far from the railyard called Octane Coffee Bar & Lounge, which I found served as quite a decent spot to sit and write and smoke and sip. I made my way deep into the city only twice. Once to an area called “Little Five,” a pretty cool hippie/Rasta district where I was able to acquire a small bag of herb—the first I’d had in some time, and a second time to try to find some footwear to replace the pair that were rapidly disintegrating from my road-weary feet.
One phenomenon which has rather vexed me for quite a number of years but was particularly taxing to my already stressed psyche by this point in my travels and travails is randomly overhearing what seem clear references to myself, and even noticing my name spoken in sentences that seem clearly to indicate personal knowledge about my person. This may seem a bit ego-centric (if not further fitted to other, more narrowly definitive psychiatric designations). Nonetheless, after much self-critical analysis of my perceptions pertaining to these particular instances of audible synchronicity, I could not deny such occurrences if I wanted to, and indeed I would often prefer to believe such things are figments of my imagination for the startling implications they might imply.
As I sat on the patio at Octane Coffee, three complete strangers were conversing whilst I was writing and thinking out loud, but without my audible voice being engaged. I overheard a comment which, as I recall, seemed to indicate some direct reference to my immediate thoughts, and which was followed by the response, “Oh, that’s just Jeffrey,” spoken by one of the three as she looked my way. The speaker was a rather short and sexy young African American woman with patterns shaved and died upon closely shorn hair who worked the counter at this coffeehouse. She reminded me rather startlingly of a once upon a time friend and lover, Jessica/Star, and I sat and pondered the meaning of this “coincidence” for some time thereafter.
As sort of an aside, one of the last times I spent time with Star we were at Trinity Coffeehouse in Laramie. As I stood at the counter, a beautiful barista from Montana named Tara handed me my cup, and she commented on how beautiful Star appeared, six or seven months pregnant and sitting at a nearby table (not with mine, mind you). It suddenly occurred to me how the two looked very much alike—both wearing mid-length dark auburn hair and summer dresses and both quite gorgeous—except that Star stood at somewhere around five-feet tall and was pregnant, and Tara only a few inches shy of six-fit tall and quite slender. I have since discovered that the name Tara, Hindu Goddess and consort to Siva, translates simply as “Star.” Tara wore a gold bracelet around her wrist that bore the Devanagari letters spelling “AUM Namah Shivia.”
After a week or two or so in Atlanta, I attempted to hop a train out. Already once caught by a “yard-bull” (hobo-speak for railroad security guards) and cuffed and escorted out of the yard, I was especially cautious as I attempted to board a hopper, first with intentions of Florida, though that train only took me to another yard south of town, where a worker then directed me back to a boxcar that returned me to Atlanta. Second time I got as far as Nashville, where I boarded another train I was told was heading north to Indiana, where I figured I could catch the main line towards the west, but awoke to find I had instead been railroaded back southeast to Atlanta. Third attempt got me only as far as Chattanooga, where I was held seeming captive for over one year by fears channeled from some as yet unascertained source, weariness of the road and rail and general malaise, and because of the fact that the small city was fairly welcoming despite a few unpleasantries.
A number of months before arriving in Chattanooga I had a rather dread-filled dream wherein Zunaka and I rode a train that ascended an exceedingly steep incline. Shortly after unexpectedly arriving in Chattanooga I discovered there is an incline railroad that leads from the valley to the top of Lookout Mountain. I didn’t try out this steep train ride whilst I was in Tennessee, in spite of the curiosity to discover how the dream and the corresponding reality might coincide and the temptation to determine what wonder or terror might await at the top-end-of-the-line.
I should note that I have never felt so much “not myself” as during much of this journey and since, and the more so the further I progressed. Indeed it felt as if some other consciousness or consciousnesses were constantly attempting to psychically influence or usurp my thoughts and dreams and intentions. As already noted, I do not subscribe to the notions of secular psychology that attempt to describe all instances of “hearing voices” or certain other seeming indices of “insanity” to merely physiological factors—nor did I accept APA dictated guidelines as aptly applicable for defining human experience even before such “aberrant” experiences were made personal, mind you.
Even at those moments where I felt most influenced by another and least in control of my immediate thoughts and actions, however, I have nigh always maintained a keen awareness of self, and of Self (Atman), and the ability to discern potentially self-generated delusion from illusions manifest by an entity exterior to my person, and thus to maintain mostly reasonable judgment. And indeed, hearing voices and seeing visions of the ordinarily unbelievable has been a trait of saints, gurus, purported avatars, seers and mystics generally throughout the span of world history. If Jesus or Mohammed or Moses or Mahatma or Yogananda or Joan of Arc can hear voices and have visions, should you not be also given leave to hear voices and have visions? Not that these should always be believed or obeyed, of course.
I am convinced that scientific-rationalism has made a mistake, or at least has omitted veritable factors worthy of consideration by denying what has in recent centuries been delineated, separated/segregated from supposedly rationally discernible, dissectible, and quantifiable “reality” by the term “supernatural.” These attempts to minimalize and cast contempt upon what cannot be controlled in a laboratory setting are in fact clear evidence to the insecurities of much of what has been propped up as “pure science.”
Though I do have respect for much of what has been accomplished by these relatively recent ways of knowing and categorizing or managing knowledge, said attempt to divorce spirit/mind and matter is unmistakably incomplete and wanting, as indeed, too many so called “supernatural” phenomena remain outside the ability of at least the generally assumed premises of “modern science” to explain. Life-lived cannot be reduced to scientific maxims, as this world is too great and variegated to fit entirely into mathematical equations or chemical formulae.
Scientific explorations have failed, for example, to explain the Tibetan Buddhist practice of tumo, wherein the practitioner can raise surface body temperature to upwards of 117˚ Fahrenheit by means of a particular meditation. Similarly, many yogic feats of “mind-over-matter,” such as the ability of some sadhu to munch enough cyanide to kill an elephant or meditatively manifest other states of seeming superhuman tolerance to extremes of heat or cold or pain have yet to be explained away by so called modern science.
I do understand the want of early modern scientists to escape the often-stultifying nature of what they deemed “superstition.” And yet, has not that science which intended to replace such beliefs become equally stultifying by its endeavor to reduce the variegated experiences of human life to electrical impulses and chemical reactions, thus seemingly devoid of meaning? Indeed it seems, as is so often the case, revolutionaries fall prey to the same faults as that which they sought to replace. Too often the oppressed have become the oppressors.
In America’s colonial history, the Puritan pilgrims seeking religious liberty soon set about persecuting Baptists and Quakers. Many Baptist groups, one of the most persecuted religious sects from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Europe and New England and in fact early proponents of religious liberty, have in the last century or so endeavored to attack nigh any other sect they came across, and often as not in recent times have sought to restrict freedom of religion and speech. The French Revolution ousted one oligarchy only to become more violent and bloody than the oligarchy they ousted. The Bolsheviks likewise matched the severity of their predecessors.
And across much of the world and especially in Europe and America, the scientific revolution has largely replaced diverse mystical worldviews with materialist dogmas that can become as confining to freethinking as any set of religious maxims. Proselytization by both religion and culturally-loaded education and the rigid methodologies and dogmas of modern science have undoubtedly depleted the plentitude of viable and valid ways of knowing, sustainably maintained over eons by so many indigenous peoples. Perhaps before we conclude “science-takes-all,” we should take some time to remember and meditate upon the beauty of our ancestors varied ways, to recall the lore that held true through many, many tellings, and grant a respected voice to others not so much a part of the money driven, materialistically-minded mega-culture and its presumptions and purportedly refined opinions about the nature of things, conveniently called “modern science.”
Where might we find a shift of consciousness and society that matches compassion with transformation? change with mercy and a just integration or at least acknowledgement of what was good from the past? science that recognizes spirit? a state of revolution that welcomes challenges from previous paradigms, acknowledging that these may maintain certain valuable features lacking in the succeeding? This might be described as attending to the oscillations of the socio-cultural vibration manifest in the interactions between those supposed binaries of said dialectic, culturally, economically, socially and ideationally, then responding to tune the vibes through many modes of experiencing, from music to dance to romance, meditation, contemplation and honest discourse scientific and otherwise. “Herein is Yoga: Yoga is the alteration of the range of sense vibration, that therein pure consciousness might abide” (Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra).
I did feel mostly welcome in Chattanooga, with the most notable exception being the treatment I received from the local police. I had grown somewhat accustomed to be randomly asked for my ID, in spite of the unconstitutional nature of such an action. On one particular occasion during this sojourn in Chattanooga, however, I decided I had had enough.
I had just left a coffee house downtown in rather a rage, as I had read an article in the New York Times telling of yet another unconstitutional violation of civil liberties made law by the current criminal regime. As I walked down the sidewalk, a fellow I had met at another of Chattanooga’s quite decent selection of coffeehouses stopped me and asked if I could bum him a buck. I had just been given a twenty, and so gladly obliged. As this transaction transpired, one of Chattanooga’s stocky bald-headed pigs20 stopped his squad car beside the curb, rolled down his window and yelled at the fellow I was handing a dollar.
“You don’t have to give him that! You don’t have to give him that!” he hollered, his face and shiny skull turning bright red.
“No, I asked him for a dollar!” said the fellow I’d handed the green piece of paper with a picture of a pyramid and a dead president who reportedly was want to smoke “Indian Hemp.”
Ignoring this explanation, the cop got out of his car and swiftly approached me, demanding to see my identification. My acquaintance once again extolled my innocence of any crime, but as I was the one with the backpack and unshaven face, he continued with his illegal course of action. At first I tried to explain to the enraged officer that my passport and license had been stolen and lost, respectively. As he continued his rant, I decided I had had enough, briefly explaining to Herr Gestapo that he had no reason to see my ID, and that his actions were unconstitutional. I then turned and started to swiftly walk away through a small passage lined with shops and restaurants that is called “Jack’s Alley.”
As I reached the end of this alleyway, I decided the wisdom of my actions was questionable, and thus thought I might try to reason with this unreasonable man. As I turned and started back down the alley, the approaching officer yelled out, “Tie up your dog, I’m gonna taze you! Tie up your dog! I’m gonna shoot you with my tazer!”
Now of course I did what was instinctual when faced with such an imperative and threatened with a potentially deadly projectile with no means of defense or retaliation: I turned and I ran. Across the busy downtown street I ran, and as luck would have it, a female city cop followed by a sheriff’s deputy were rolling down the hill from the direction of the courthouse. At first thinking to evade, I instead turned to speak with the female officer as she stepped out of her car, hoping for a just exchange. I assumed that she might be a bit more reasonable, as female law enforcement officers often are, and that the added presence of the deputy might afford me a better chance at fair-dealings. In Chattanooga, it is the city cops who are most often the perpetrators of unjust practices, or so I had been told by a number of locals.
After briefly explaining my stance, the skinheaded pig showed up (an epithet I do not use to describe the cops generally, mind you. So long as they are protecting and serving and not harassing or violating I got no problem with the police). Shaking with a scarcely controlled rage, he proceeded to handcuff me, barely refraining from slamming my face into the hood of his car as he pushed me down to place shackles on my wrists. I continued with my correct assertions that this action was illegal and unconstitutional, and I suppose he may have realized the truth of my statements as I was soon released without charge.
On two or three other instances I was unconstitutionally harassed by the police in Chattanooga, who were probably the least civil cadre of cops I have encountered in all of my travels. Indeed, I was told that said department is among few in the nation that, at least at the time, had no external oversight.
In addition to these instances with the police I had one other overtly negative experience with some semblance of “authorities” during my stay in Chattanooga that I want to mention. Whilst walking through a parking lot on the North Shore side of the river, I was interviewed by a television reporter regarding the issue of homelessness in Chattanooga. I proceeded to offer an intelligent critique of the socio-economic factors that leave people homeless, and then explained that many who have no home are indeed living closer to the example of the man who a majority in the southeastern United States claim as their teacher and god. When the interview aired, every bit of this social critique was cut, and the remaining interview framed myself and the homeless in general as nothing but a bunch of worthless social undesirables and dangerous criminals. Oh yeah, and the mayor was rather a creep when once we met in the same parking lot.
I ought to also mention that I awoke early one morning, whilst sleeping face down on a hill, to what felt quite like a shotgun or high-powered rifle blast in the upper-middle portion of my back. Not the first time I have been murdered—if that’s the correct term to use when I seem to yet live—so I decided, based on experience, that the best thing to do would be to go back to sleep, thinking that chances were I’d have no injuries upon reawakening. Sure enough, I awoke a few hours later, not necessarily feeling so great, but alive(?) and with no gaping hole blown in my back.
Think me insane if you will, but at least take the time to read the account of my initial realization of having been murdered before you think me worthy of institutionalization.21 Incidentally, I later concluded that this incident probably relates rather directly (or backwardly) to the account Sarah (“Soulo”) in Ithaca told me of her boyfriend Charles having been murdered by a shotgun blast to his chest. Synchronicities such as these leave me longing for the (at least seemingly) innocent magic of my earlier journeys.
I could continue on about my captivity in Chattanooga, but I have tired of telling this tale, so I will merely say that I found the riverfront area and its coffee houses and cafes and parks pleasant, that I met some nice kids at one of the coffeehouses, and had a very difficult time leaving. I was forced to leave Zunaka in the care of some kind women I met at a coffeehouse there, as his hind-quarters had become paralyzed, apparently due to eating macadamia nuts from the sprouted fruit and nut bread I would eat almost daily. It was later reported to me they put ol’ Zunaka (formerly known as Zeus) down. May he find rest and peace and happiness in whatever doggy afterlife or rebirth.
Despite what some folks back west might contend, the experiences I had in over two-and-a-half years out east left me with a decent impression of most easterners. Though my psychic life became increasingly characterized by constant battles with subtleties of samsara, mixed-up maya, twisted karma-dharma and psychic crap from who knows what ill source, my experiences with people were generally pleasant. I suppose there were a few overtly unpleasant instances involving embodied humans—mostly with the police in Tennessee.
I certainly presented rather a poor and pitiful sight, most the time not dressed like a hippie so much as a hobo, and was thus without the benefit of even that layer of partial respectability—depending upon who you ask, of course. And yet most folks were still kind, and even generous. A 6’2” big-bearded un-bathed “hobo” (if that term properly applies to all who hop trains) wearing a well-worn backpack with bedroll attached and accompanied by a large wolf-dog is going to draw some sort of attention in all but a few locales—perhaps excepting certain mountain towns and the northern-half of the West Coast—and the majority of the consideration I received was overtly positive.
I never quite fully got used to being arbitrarily asked for my ID by the cops, despite the fact this seems to have become a customary greeting granted many who arrive to any given town on their own two feet, and who are then seen wandering the streets without an apparent home or hotel room. This despite the purported “freedom” of this land. The Fourth Amendment is still law, if any of you weren’t sure, and even applies to homeless vagabonds, to tie-die clad freaks who almost certainly have some weed amongst their effects, to black leather jacket wearing punks or protesters with anarchy symbols freshly spray-painted in black on their hoodies, and even (gasp) to folks of obvious Middle-Eastern or Arab descent, regardless of religion.
Just a few closing statements about my experiences east of the Mississippi. This might be called an “overview” of personal signification, both literally and figuratively.
I realize that despite my explication towards the beginning of this tale regarding geography and sacred (or at least symbolic) significances, I have scarcely touched on said subject since. So just to catch you up to the particular point where I am now narrating, allow me to offer a few interesting observations that came to my attention whilst wandering about in the eastern states, whether you find these worthy of pondering or no.
The Adirondacks and Appalachians were the only significant mountain ranges I encountered during this journey, and of these elevated places I’ve only a few limited observations to make. First, the names given these two aged and worn gatherings of peaks, promontories and weathered hills among the oldest on earth, seem to hold clues that at least in the context of this journey seem to make some sense, if only by some rather odd associations.
The Adirondacks and the name “Adi” is the first association that stands out to my personally opined esoteric analysis. “Adi” in Sanskrit means “ancient one,” and refers in myth, as previously mentioned, to either Sakti, the feminine source of life energy and consort to Siva, or else is found in reference to the story of the penis munching demoness with sharp teeth where one would expect soft labia. Though the actual mountains of the Adirondacks are relatively young, the rocks recently made to rise to make these mountains are indeed quite ancient. As to which of the metaphoric analogies I might surmise the Adi-rondacks might aptly be poetically or metaphorically associated, I shant decide within this writ work. Recall also that Dan, one of my hosts in Montreal, had a girlfriend named Adi.
The actual name comes from the Mohawk word ratirontaks, a derogatory name said tribe used to refer to the Algonquin tribes which means “they eat trees,” referring to the practice of eating buds and bark in times of hunger. Though I’ve some personal and complicated if not nigh inexplicable esoteric associations which might meet with the meaning of the native term, I shall leave those unwritten.
The Appalachians, obviously not a far step or leap etymologically from “appellations”—names. Indeed, many names I learned or encountered as signs during this journey seemed to hold no small significance in the mixtures of meanings informing my appraisals, and as clues to the confused constructions of this “play.” Though indeed I’ve yet to draw any succinct conclusions even with the sum of so many coincidences of names and faces and places—sometimes even lining up perfectly on a map when plotting people I’ve known to the places I knew them in an endeavor to make sense of the greater story’s plot—I have noted that some strange order or other often underlies the arrayals of people, names and places.
Also of note regarding said mountain range, I noticed from a satellite photograph that the “leg” of the southern Appalachians which extends to the edge of Chattanooga seems to end in what suspiciously—even startlingly—resembles a foot. The other leg, rather swollen and misshapen, extends through the Carolinas and into north Georgia. I couldn’t really make out any succinct torso, arms or a head above the waist of this behemoth body, but the foot is unmistakable. The Shawangunk Formation which sits just east of New Paltz is a northern extension of this aged mountain chain.
Of inland waters I encountered, the most obviously significant in a general sense and perhaps in my personal associations regarding this journey is the Mississippi. This river is the largest and longest in North America, and as already mentioned, divides this land on the order of no other geographic feature, except for the Continental Divide. I crossed this great river (which bears a name which actually means “Great River,” from the Ojibwa words misi-ziibi) twice on this journey, once traveling east and once upon returning west, once on foot and once in a Greyhound bus.
This crossing is a well noted symbolic passage, and indeed seems the most significant geographic demarcation noting the transition from my usual stomping grounds to an “other side” and back again. The source of the Mighty Mississippi is a body of water named Lake Itasca in Clearwater County, Minnesota. This starting place for the mighty Mississippi purportedly derives its appellation from the last four letters of the Latin word for “truth,” veritas, and the first two letters of the Latin word for “head,” caput. Though perhaps a spurious etymology, in many respects this journey to the other side of this nation-dividing waterway proved a trial of the truths in my own head, as well as heart, as both beliefs and devotions were tested as I embarked on adventures beyond its eastern banks. Indeed, the relative clarity of my intensions at the first crossing, from Iowa to Illinois, had given way to a sullied mind and wearied heart by the second crossing, far downriver and after both the Mississippi River and myself had become rather more polluted than was the case just after I’d hit the rails and road, and as I walked over the waters from Dubuque to East Dubuque.
The Saint Laurence River (or perhaps more properly, le fleuve Saint-Laurent; or more proper still, Kaniatarowanenneh, Mohawk for “big waterway”) encompasses Île de Montréal. Indeed, I was an island dweller for the duration of my stay in Canada, and whilst I was with Leslie on this isle very little on the mainland mattered to me at all.
St. Laurence was one of seven deacons of Rome martyred during the reign of Emperor Valerian, and was purportedly a custodian of the Holy Grail. Once again, myths of King Arthur are referenced. Indeed, my quest was to find something not unlike a holy grail as I sought source of life and wellspring of feminine perfection, like unto the yoni chalice of Devi worshipped (along with linga-stones) on Sivaratri, wedding anniversary of the Divine Couple in Hindu myth. I sought nothing less in this quest than the company of the Feminine Divine source of beauty and love and bliss, in and as the beatified Leslie—even if only to share her company for a cup of coffee or tea—and on the North American continent few places would seem more fitting by at least one mythological lens than this island amidst a river named for a caretaker of a sacred chalice.
The Hudson River, Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk (Iroquois), River Mauritius (“River of Mountains”), the North River. This river and its valley was central to my stay in New York upon departing Montréal, and correspondingly it’s crossing might be seen as symbolic of the dissolution of my relationship with Leslie. The Hudson’s source is a lake in the Adirondacks called Lake Tear of the Clouds, and the waterway leading from this lake to the Hudson River proper is the Opalescent River.
The next river that comes to mind on this journey is the Wallkill, named the Palse River by early European settlers (after the town of New Paltz through which it flows), and known to Native Americans as Twischsawkin, which means “the land where plums abound.” This river idiosyncratically flows to the north, where it idiosyncratically flows into a creek, called Rondout, before meeting with the waters of the Hudson. Oddly to an English speaker, quite a few place names in New York have “kill” as suffix. “-kill” is a Dutch suffix for creek, and does not designate homicide. Of not quite random associations I might make, whilst often sleeping on the shores of the Wallkill in New Paltz I felt as if my heart, rather broken upon my parting with Leslie, was starting to beat once again. In actuality Paltz is derived from the German word for place and not pulse, though the proper denotation does imply new beginnings. Indeed, in the midst of seeming loss, finding meaning, however spurious, is often vital for getting one’s bearings and back on one’s feet.
Lake Erie—well, the name speaks for itself, except that in the case of my experiences, it mostly did not. Erie is the fourth largest and fourth in sequence of drainage of five Great Lakes, is the tenth largest freshwater lake globally, and is named for the Erie tribe. The conglomeration of these five massive lakes is unique in the world, and my time spent with Erie gave me a bit of time for reflection whilst gazing over its waters. My summer along this Great Lake’s shore was a time of pleasant respite, a time of healing before once again—if not according to plans—resuming a clockwise journey ‘round the eastern United States. I should note, Buffalo and Sandusky were both a tad “eerie,” but Port Clinton was a very pleasant and welcoming place, and my slumber and dreams on Erie’s beaches were quite peaceful.
Though I stayed in Maryland not far from the Potomac for a few months, I saw this capital river only fleetingly. The Rappahannock was next in a series of flows upon whose shores I lingered. In Fredericksburg whilst sleeping by this now tranquil river’s banks, I dreamt of the soldiers of two wars whose blood had in fact fallen and flowed so heavy as to turn the waters of this river red. The Rappahannock was more or less a boundary between North and South during the Civil War, and similarly served as something of a dividing line between my wanderings North and South. The hippie crew I came to know in this colonial town sometimes called themselves the Rappahannock River Rats, and it was here I first considered constructing a bamboo boat to drift down to the big waters, to float away from cares and sorrows and to the Ocean’s healing waves crashing, though sailing away was not yet to be.
My first and thus far only encounter with the open Atlantic’s waters was a bit of a disappointment, as a statue of Poseidon—misappropriator of three-pronged spears and Greek deity generally represented as amongst the meanest—and kitschy commercialism characterized my experience of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Though the Ocean is beautiful from almost any venue, military jets and tourism did more than moderately detract from my first ever encounter with this Ocean named for a lost Mediterranean civilization. Virginia Beach was rather different than the idyllic visions of the Atlantic’s shores I’d held of quaint New England coastal villages or of those grand and flowered Southern cities that survived the civil war intact.
The Tennessee River, once known as the Cherokee River, was the last great river of the east I was to see on this adventure (I don’t recall noticing crossing the Mississippi on my way back west whilst on the bus), and I spent more time with these waters than any other on this journey. The name possibly translates as “meeting place” or “the bends”—as in bends of the river. Both banks of this broad river in Chattanooga are beautifully arrayed with monuments both natural and manmade. High above the flow on the south shore is Chattanooga’s Bluff View Art District, where modern, Victorian and classical structures sit atop a cliff, and on the other side of the river is the North Shore District, where large parks and a strip of coffeehouses and cafes and boutiques offered pleasant distractions and places to sit during my stay. Some of my ancestors, both Cherokee and Choctaw, lived in this region before force marched to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, and I feel as if my long sojourn here was somehow related to my long deceased relatives, some ancestral homing beacon that held me along the banks of these waters longer than anywhere else during my wanderings out east.
Insofar as any esoteric significances related to this place, the only myth or story or construct that comes to mind is reading a tale of a waterfall not far from Chattanooga where a Cherokee princess purportedly leapt off the falls to follow her Choctaw lover, who her family had summarily thrown off to perish on the rocks below. Whilst visiting Niagara Falls with Sarah when I was in Buffalo, I similarly considered the lovers’ leap theme (though I should note, Sarah and I never attained any such intimacy).
Waters are both life and death, love and loathing. Without water, we perish. Too much and we drown. Goddess Ganga is the Goddess of Rivers, and Her love with Siva is a source of conflict with Parvati in various myths. In perhaps the most well-known Hindu myth regarding the mighty waters of the Ganges, and thus of the whole world, fall upon the jata (dreadlocks) of Mahadeva so that the planet is not destroyed by such an unimaginable deluge. With so much time spent along so many rivers during this epic journey, I have to ponder whether devotions to both of these Devis may have led to some of my angst and internal discord whilst endeavoring this quixotic quest for love,22 else that I am both part Cherokee and part Choctaw.
One last note on waters, few are aware that Laramie sits on one of the, if not the largest island in the United States. I discovered this some years ago when reading James Galvin’s The Meadow, wherein he tells that the waters of the Laramie River and the South Platte both begin in the same lake, high in Colorado’s mountains, and meet again hundreds of miles downstream on Nebraska’s plains. This unassuming island that is my current home—shared with more pronghorn antelope than people—encompasses many, many thousands of square miles of sagebrush plains and pine and aspen covered mountains and alpine peaks, lakes, and creeks, and despite not looking very much like an island, definitely fits the technical parameters. I suppose my anxious return to this island hideaway on the high plains was to find certain harbor from the Ocean of Worldly existence and the uncertainties, the gamble of love and romance and the road.
A while after completing this journey, I decided to trace the paths of my meanderings to the east coast and back on a map of North America, and upon gazing at the lines drawn realized that the dot-to-dot created by this most odd of journeys I’ve endeavored created a rough outline corresponding quite startlingly to the shape of the continental United States! What this doth mean, I cannot yet say with certainty, though more than a slight symbolism was obviously at work, and perhaps a mystical meaning far beyond the scope of a simple journey of a man from place to place to place . . .
Disheartened and nigh broken after somewhere near three years mostly on the road, I boarded a bus to escape back to the Western U.S. and the high mountains. After a long ride through the south with a long layover in Dallas and on to Santa Fe, a hitchhiking trek to Taos and a much needed respite at some hot springs deep in the Gorge and next to the rushing waters of the Rio Grande, I continued up through Colorado and on to the closest place to any I have known as “home” over the span of this lifetime, the high plains and mountains of Wyoming, and to this great island between the South Platte and the Big Laramie Rivers’ flows.
Today I am sitting on the back patio of the very coffee house where I first encountered the woman who was the inspiration for this insane journey to Montreal and back, and for much of my searching and practice and devotions over the ten years preceding. Here I sit, wearily and warily typing an abbreviated conclusion to this epic adventure, with so many subtler implications and interpretations and long occulted secrets and esoteric fragments recently revealed spinning round my conscious and unconscious mind, mythemes and memes madly meandering my neurological and spiritual pathways. And with yet some slim hope of some reasonable conclusion or culmination of events and memories recent and ancient, with some semblance of trust in the certain transformations or the destruction of darknesses and confusions sown by some as yet undisclosed source, and with faith there is still some mode to manifest a healthy integration of information derived from historic and esoteric studies and dreams and odd experiences, all whilst yet maintaining the stubborn intention to do whatever I might in this world to help and heal, and to maintain proper devotions, divine and human and otherwise.
Despite the trialsome times and psychic assaults I increasingly experienced after parting company with Leslie, and the rather soured sensibilities I’ve been left to digest and injuries I’ve yet a need to heal from events and experiences mostly manifesting thereafter, I do not regret embarking on this quixotic quest to find the beautiful belly-dancing barista and yogini who had so entranced and inspired me years before. Indeed, I might well read the resistance and subtle and psychic treacheries faced as an indication that my absurd heroism and extremes of devotion have had some certain effect, if perhaps not to bear overt fruition for now or at least not in the precise manner I might have imagined.
I still think about Leslie, though we have not maintained communication, save perhaps at some subtle or psychic level. I hope she is happy and healthy and fulfilling her good potentials, delivered from whatever sorrows and suffering, dancing and doing yoga and continuing to be an inspiration to those who happen to cross her path. I doubt I shall ever fully abandon my visions of this beatific dancer as inspiration to my own personal growth and practices embraced since my first pilgrimage on the road, as envisioned object of whatever appropriate degree of devotion in practices of bhakti yoga, and at least remembered as a near approximation of an avatar of Devi, the Divine Feminine incarnate, the Beloved.
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