The neighbor who went "off his rocker"

I grew up in Lake Oswego, Oregon, a small, relatively affluent community built around a manmade lake about eight miles south of Portland. We had relocated there in 1960 from north Portland because our home was going to be razed to accommodate an I-84 Freeway overpass. 

My parents had chosen Lake Oswego for our family of six in large part because of its reputation for safety and school quality. The small, one-story house they bought was in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood of other modest, mostly one-story houses inhabited by families with kids of all ages.

The kids in one of these houses, Dan and John, were both adopted. I don't recall whether they were biologically related, but they referred to each other as "my brother." Biological brothers or not, they were both...weird. Maybe even a little scary. And they lived next door to us.

I first became aware of John's weirdness when he was about 14 and he invited my brother Ken and me, ages 10 and 9, respectively, to join him in his "clubhouse," a plywood shed his dad had built in their backyard. During our brief gathering, he told nasty jokes, farted, and tried to get Ken and me to smoke a cigarette. We tolerated the nasty jokes and farting (hey, it was just guys being guys, right?), but—mainly because our ex-smoker mom would have been devastated if we'd chosen otherwise—we refused the cigarette. Shortly afterward, we politely excused ourselves.

A few weeks later, Ken and I spotted John and Dan hitting golf balls into the woods in their backyard. When they noticed us watching, John came up to us and said, "Hey, how would you like to earn some money?" 

Ken and I looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, and replied in unison, "Sure. How?"

"Go into the woods there and find the golf balls we hit," John replied. "We'll pay you a penny for each ball you find. There's probably a hundred of 'em out there already."

Doing the math quickly in my head, I calculated that Ken and I would each earn 50 cents if we found all 100 balls...assuming John and Dan had, in fact, hit that many. Since our allowance at the time was 25 cents a week, 50 cents sounded like a pretty good deal. But first, we would have to find those balls.

Within a few days of searching for golf balls for about an hour per day, we had found a total of maybe 30 balls. Realizing that was too much work for too little pay, we decided to cash in our finds and call it quits. I'm sure we each spent our 15-cent earnings on something ephemeral, like rainbow pops from the ice cream man.

At some point while John and Dan were still in their mid-teens, John was somehow invited into our living room to play our spinet piano. To my utter astonishment, this crude, foul-mouthed, rule-breaking, golfball-wasting weirdo was able to lay down a nearly perfect rendition of—what else?—"There is a Tavern in the Town." But what made it even weirder was that my mom, who seemed to have sanctioned the event, was right there with us, singing along while Weird John played. And when he was done, she applauded.

I didn't know what to think. If my mom was OK with John (or even more than OK...like, interested in him somehow?), what was my problem? Why did he give me the heeby jeebies? Had I misjudged him?

And then there was Dan, who at this time was about three years older than John. One night, not long after John's surprising piano performance, my mom was taking a bath in the master bathroom, the door to which was situated directly across from my bedroom door in the hallway. Suddenly I heard her scream, open the bathroom door, and run down the hallway. I couldn't quite make out what she was screaming, but I later learned that it was "peeping Tom," which apparently meant "creepy guy peering at naked woman through bathroom window." 

Eavesdropping on Mom's breathless conversation with Dad in their bedroom, I heard her repeat "peeping Tom" and add that she thought it might've been...Dan. Trying to calm her down, Dad suggested that she withhold judgment until they knew all the facts, ostensibly meaning "until you're absolutely sure there was a peeping Tom, and that he did, in fact, resemble Dan." Because, you know, relationships with neighbors can be so precarious, I guess.

I never heard whether Mom called the police or confronted Dan's parents at that point (and I understand why such actions might have been kept confidential), but I do remember her arming herself against future violations, by making sure the bathroom window shade was pulled all the way down while she was bathing (or in any state of undress), and by keeping a...plumber's wrench under her pillow at night. 

Things didn't get any less weird. That summer, Dan and John's parents inexplicably left them alone for a weekend, and the boys did what teenage boys do when left alone: They had a party. Complete with loud music, alcohol, rowdy voices, and...guys peeing on the driveway. (Were the toilets out of commission?) And that Halloween, my siblings and I, still somehow oblivious to any potential danger of an alleged peeping (or peeing) Tom, trick-or-treated at John and Dan's house, where we were "treated" with...rolled-up pancakes. Stuffed with jam and black pepper. Had their parents moved out?

Lest you think all this is the "off his rocker" behavior to which the title of this post is referring, fasten your seatbelt. A year or two later, when Dan was about 19, he committed a crime that sent shockwaves through the community: He attacked three schoolkids with a hammer, nearly killing one of them. The kids had been on their way to school, walking on a path through a short stretch of woods—the same path that my siblings and I had traversed many, many times. 

My horrified parents, trying to explain to my siblings and me what had happened, while also trying to comfort us, told us that Dan had "gone off his rocker." I wasn't sure what a rocker had to do with anything, but I caught their drift: Dan had gone crazy. Or crazier. And although he had been arrested, we were henceforth forbidden from taking our nice little shortcut to school through the woods. Instead, we would either have to take the bus or ride our bikes the long way—up a rather steep hill.

Dan was found to be criminally insane and was sentenced to a number of years in a mental hospital. I lost track of what happened to his brother, likely because his family moved away shortly after Dan's trial.

Although my mom was finally able to sleep without a plumber's wrench under her pillow, our little town's image as a relatively safe place to raise a family had been permanently shattered. And maybe that was a good thing, if only to prevent complacency from setting in and calcifying into a false sense of security. I don't know. At the time, all I knew was that I preferred Hershey bars over pancakes filled with jam and black pepper. And, of course, people who stay on their rockers.

That time I fell off a scaffold—onto a concrete floor

In the summer of 1974, my brother Ken and I both worked as general laborers at a metal electro-plating plant in Portland. I had just completed my freshman year of college; Ken, his sophomore year. Our jobs consisted of routine manual labor, doing whatever the foreman told us to do (including painting, masonry, electrical, plumbing, fiberglassing huge wooden vats, welding, and other odd jobs for which we had neither training nor experience).

One of those jobs was spray-painting the facility's ceiling, which was 20 feet high. Which meant that either Ken or I had to work from atop a 14-foot-tall scaffold (Ken says he thinks it was taller). Somehow—I'm not sure how—I was elected to be on the scaffold, while Ken was in charge of rolling the scaffold from place to place across the concrete floor. Inconveniently, the floor had several drainage channels running through it, each about a foot wide and a foot deep. In order to roll the scaffolding across each channel, Ken had to lay heavy iron plates over them, creating a bridge that the scaffold's wheels could cross. Most of the plates had cleats welded to their bottom side to help keep them in place atop the channels, but one did not.

About halfway through the job, one of those metal plates slipped out of place, the scaffold's wheel dropped into the ditch, and the scaffold tipped over. As I was falling, I remember feeling as if time had slowed way down, and I was watching the event unfold like a movie playing frame by frame. While watching this slow-motion movie with a kind of detached bemusement, I eventually realized that I was going down and the concrete floor was coming up, so I had better prepare myself for impact. 

How does one prepare for falling off a 14-foot-tall scaffold onto a concrete floor? One assumes the fetal position, of course. But don't ask me how I figured that out; it just happened, like someone or something else was controlling my body—and I was passively watching it happen. 

In the midst of all this, I heard Ken say, sheepishly and without a hint of irony, "Oops."

When my body hit the floor, I went unconscious for a minute or two. I felt no pain, but I remember being surrounded by activity—people gathering around me, shouting at each other, kneeling next to me, shaking my shoulders gently, asking me questions. By the time I finally started coming to, I could hear a siren in the distance, and the next thing I knew I was being loaded into it on a gurney, while drifting in and out of consciousness.

Then I was lying on a bed in an ER bay, my head in a fog bank from pain meds, and Ken was coming toward me—in a wheelchair. "What happened to you?" my mouth tried to ask.

"Not sure," Ken replied. "They think the scaffold wheel might've broken my nose."

"They put you in a wheelchair for a broken nose?" I slurred. "Do I get a wheelchair, too?"

Ken grinned, despite his chagrin. I could tell he was feeling badly about the ordeal.

"I'm OK," I reassured him. "Or I will be, anyway."

"I hope so," he replied meekly.

The damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. I had broken a bone in my hip, which would require months of physical therapy. I also had a long, scary-looking contusion on my left forearm, and the doctor told me that an X-ray revealed a bone cyst that, if I had landed on my arm just right, would have shattered into a thousand pieces. Which would have left me with a useless left arm—and an end to my burgeoning career (OK, avocation) as a drummer.

What could I do to heal the cyst in my left arm? "Swim...lift weights...keep drumming," the doctor told me. "Eventually it should fill in and not be an issue."

Whew. Even though my hip would hurt for years to come and the scar on my arm would never disappear, I still had a shot at a relatively normal life.

Ken went back to work a few days later (sans wheelchair), but I was off for six weeks, limping around my parents' house in utter boredom while everyone else was at work all day. When I finally did make it back to work, the foreman told me he'd been so stressed out by the incident that he'd had a heart attack. 

We spent the rest of the summer treating each other with kid gloves.

P.S. The plant was forced to close in 2003 due to unsafe conditions and environmental hazards.

Tommy Tsunami and me

I first met graphic designer Tom Weeks when I was working part time as a marketing specialist for Oregon State University's Summer Session. I was setting up a Summer Session window display on the first floor of OSU's Administration Building when Tom ambled by on his way to a morning coffee break and introduced himself. I liked him right away. He was personable, intelligent, easygoing, gracious, and funny. We could be friends, I remember thinking.

Three years later, the office Tom worked for—Extension and Experiment Station Communications (EESC)—hired me as a full-time publications editor and designer. So now Tom and I were colleagues, at least, if not yet friends. That would come soon; Tom and I had a rapport that made friendship inevitable. We had a similar absurdist sense of humor, similar tastes in music, similar values, even similar political leanings. 

I not only liked Tom, but I admired and respected him. He was a gifted artist and graphic designer whose work was in high demand not just within EESC, but across campus. If there was anything I couldn't handle design-wise on a particular publication, after a five-minute consultation with Tom it was a done deal—usually within a day, and usually on the first draft. 

His graphic designs also won a lot of awards, and even helped me win a few on publications I produced. I appreciated that. 

I appreciated the hell out of Tom and his mad skills.

I wasn't alone. Another person who appreciated Tom's mad skills was an OSU Extension Sea Grant scientist named Jim Good. In the early 2000s, when scientists like Jim were becoming increasingly concerned about the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Oregon Coast and the potential for an earthquake and tsunami, they started working on ways not only to make people aware of the threats but to guide them toward safety should such events occur.

When Jim decided some kind of warning/action road sign might be in order, he went to Tom. Together, and with the additional input of some state geologists, Jim and Tom came up with the instantly recognizable designs that now appear not only on the Oregon Coast, but in Thailand (one of the countries most affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami).

Look familiar?

I guess one could say that Tom Weeks is good not only at making waves, but at saving people from them.

About the nickname "Tommy Tsunami": When Tom retired after 30+ years of service to OSU, I created a silly flyer in which I referred to him as Tommy Tsunami—a moniker of my own invention, I thought. Wrong. At Tom's retirement party I learned that OSU Art Director Amy Charron, a longtime colleague and mutual friend, had also come up with the nickname—probably years before I had. Sigh...

In case of humiliation, run for high ground!

Endnote: Sadly, I don't have a photo of Tom to include here (and I couldn't get the Interwebs to cough one up). Fortunately, I do have another example of his work to share: this cartoonish rendering of yours truly eating a pizza box ("Ricardo's," ha ha). The illustration accompanied an article about edible packaging in an issue of EESC's quarterly magazine, Oregon's Agricultural Progress.

Nom nom nom! Did I mention that Tom and I shared an absurdist sense of humor?

That time my dad washed my mouth out with soap

Have you ever wondered what soap tastes like? I did, too—until I had my mouth washed out with it. 

I was eight years old. As I write this, sixty-one years later, I can still taste that bar of Dial soap in my mouth. Along with the equally distinct tastes of confusion, humiliation, and violation. 

Aren't you glad you use Dial...to wash your kid's filthy mouth out?

The infraction that led to this "spiritual cleansing"? I had uttered the evidently blasphemous epithet "Gol." Which, back then, was short for "Golly." Which, as everyone knew except for eight-year-old me, was a euphemism for "God."

I don't remember to whom I was talking when I said the allegedly blasphemous thing, but whomever it was, he/she told one of my siblings (again, no recollection), and that sibling told my dad. Who was, unfortunately for me, a Christian conservative who still believed in the 19th-century practice of washing allegedly blasphemous mouths out with soap.

Oddly, it wasn't my dad who initially informed me that my mouth was going to be washed out with soap. It was his dad...my grandpa. Who was not only a Christian conservative, but a minister. He delivered the bad news by quietly taking me aside, leading me into the bathroom, and sharing this weird allegory about washing one's hands to cleanse them of dirt, segueing into the weird notion that "mouths full of dirt" also needed washing. He then gently informed me that, because the word "Gol" had emerged from my mouth and it was blasphemous to take the Lord's name in vain (or even a euphemism for the Lord's name, apparently), my mouth was full of dirt—and my dad was going to have to wash it out.

An unspoken irony here is that my dad was notorious for his use of such euphemisms in his frequent outbursts of anger and frustration, including "Dadgummit" (a spoonerism of goddammit), "For crying out loud" (for Christ's sake), and "Gosh oh dear" (God damn). But yeah, be a hypocrite and wash my mouth out with soap for saying Gol.

I was horrified. Not only was I too young to understand any of the religious ramifications of my misdeed, but I was a pretty good kid who strove arduously to avoid getting in trouble or causing problems. I earned high marks in school, got along well with kids and adults alike, and cultivated a sincere desire to please everyone. How in hell had I fucked up so goddamn badly? 

The next day, things got even weirder. My dad informed me, solemnly, that we needed to plan a date for the dreaded mouth washing, and that he was not happy to have to do it. Have to? I thought. Who is making you do it? Grandpa? Then he added, "It's going to hurt me more than it hurts you." Uh huh. Even to my nascent, eight-year-old brain, this was just a cliché that had been rendered meaningless due to its overuse in movies and TV shows.

Despite his reticence to inflict such grievous self-harm, my dad decided to do the dirty deed—er, I mean cleansing deed—the next Saturday morning, right after breakfast. I understood the logic of doing it on a Saturday (it was neither a school day nor a church day), but I wasn't sure about the after-breakfast timing. Maybe it was because I was supposed to brush my teeth after breakfast anyway, and this way I would be brushing after eating soap? I don't know. I was too scared to ask, and I thought that if I simply avoided talking about it, the whole thing might just blow over. 

Speaking of church, I loathed it. Not just because it consumed nearly half of my precious weekend, every weekend, but because none of my friends went to church; I had to dress up in clothes that didn't fit me right and looked ridiculous on me; the mood at church was like that of a funeral; the youth minister who ran the Sunday school creeped me out; and I hated the stupid songs they made us sing.

I didn't understand church; I didn't understand the things they wanted us to believe; I didn't understand how a bleak, humorless book written thousands of years ago could have anything to do with my life; and I didn't understand why any of it was more important than my having an actual weekend. I wanted to be outside playing with my friends, riding my bike, building things, hunting for snakes and lizards, getting dirty...anything but sitting in a circle of bewildered kids in folding steel chairs, looking vacant while singing "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."

In fact, I suspect it was largely because of my blatant and unapologetic contempt for church, religion, the bible, and prayer that I had been so unjustly charged with blasphemy and sentenced to a mouth-washing. In my mind, the punishment far exceeded the "crime," unless the actual crime was something else, something more...overarching. Like my being a church-hating, snake-loving demon seed.

Nevertheless, I probably should've at least tried believing in prayer, just this once. The whole thing didn't blow over, and the next Saturday morning after breakfast (the Last Breakfast?), my dad solemnly led me into the bathroom, solemnly grabbed the bar of soap, solemnly got the soap wet, solemnly told me to say "Ah," and solemnly rubbed the bar of soap around in my mouth until all past and future indiscretions were completely and utterly vanquished. 

My dad was so solemn about the whole thing that I almost believed it hurt him more than it hurt me.

Almost.

As you might suspect, Dial soap is not made for inserting into one's mouth. Ever. Under any circumstances. Not even if your mouth if full of bacteria and you can't find your Costco-sized bottle of Listerine. Dial soap not only feels completely wrong in the mouth, but it tastes like fucking hell. If it doesn't say that somewhere on the label, it should. It should also say CAUTION: THIS SOAP IS NOT TO BE USED FOR WASHING KIDS' MOUTHS OUT, ESPECIALLY FOR UTTERING INNOCUOUS, TOTALLY UNBLASPHEMOUS EUPHEMISMS FOR "GOD." WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF SOAP NAZI? GOL! 

So yeah, it sucked. And even if it did hurt my dad more than it hurt me, it hurt me plenty. As I mentioned earlier, I felt confused, humiliated, and violated. And to top it all off, I felt angry. Angry at my dad, angry at my grandpa, angry at religion. Angry at an alleged God who would even allow, let alone supposedly condone, such a punishment. 

But most of all, I was angry at Dad.

Could I ever forgive him? It would be weeks before the thought would even occur to me—and then only because it was a topic broached in...Sunday school. So the thought eventually did occur to me, but it would be decades before I got around to actually forgiving my dad—and then it was only because of a dream I had when I was in my early thirties. 

I dreamt I was punching my dad in the face. 

Never before—and never since—had I dreamt of being physically violent with anyone. So this dream, I thought at the time, must have some significance. And eventually I figured out that the dream meant I needed to forgive my dad. After all, I reasoned, the soap incident was a single, momentary transgression committed by a man who had shown me in a million different ways that he loved me. Besides, since my dad had treated me more or less with kid gloves ever since the soap incident, I believed that he truly was remorseful, even though he never came right out and said it.

In turn, I never came right out and told my dad that I forgave him. I did it silently. And I can't really say why, except that my dad seemed to have an unspoken need first to forgive himself. 

My dad died in 2013 at age 85. By then I had long since forgiven him for the soap incident, but I never knew whether he finally forgave himself. I hope so, because in the grand scheme (whatever that is), it wasn't that heinous. Certainly not as heinous as, say, his insisting that I wear a crewcut until I was in my mid-teens—and that he be my barber. But that's a different story.

Me at age eight...with my pristine mouth
and fresh crewcut

The Emissaries of Divine Light and me

The Manson Family. Jim Jones. Rajneeshpuram. Heaven's Gate. Scientology. The Unification Church. Branch Davidians. Nxivm. Bikram hot yoga. MAGA.

You've probably heard of one or more of these infamous cults. Each of them has been in the news for various nefarious reasons, and several have been the subject of one or more documentaries or docudramas. Each also fits at least the base definition of "cult," which is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object." Other definitions are...less forgiving.

Many cults, however, have never made the news, likely because none of their members ever committed a serious crime such as murder, rape, sex abuse, polygamy, kidnapping, extortion, or insurrection. 

One such cult was the Emissaries of Divine Light, or EDL. The Wikipedia description of EDL reads, "An intentional community initiated by Lloyd Arthur Meeker in 1932. The foundational premise of the network is that human beings' true qualities can only be known as they are expressed in practical daily living." Unlike most of the other cults mentioned above, EDL is still active, albeit in a new incarnation. Its current vision statement begins, "Our vision is of humanity becoming a sun—for all human beings to become on the outside what we already are on the inside: a radiant, individualized aspect of the reality of the Divine."

EDL founder Lloyd Arthur Meeker, aka "Uranda"

Pretty benign, right? And as much as I'd like to offer a contrary perspective, I'd have to say that EDL was, in fact, pretty benign. Or at least I thought so then.

I was involved with EDL for several years. And as far as I know, no one in the cult ever committed murder, rape, polygamy, kidnapping, extortion, or insurrection. This is not to say, of course, that they never committed the occasional garden-variety transgression, like human beings are wont to do—within or without a cult (more on that later). But to my knowledge, no one in EDL ever committed a serious crime.

I was first introduced to EDL by a friend, who joined the cult in his senior year of college, around 1974. I don't think he knew at the time that it was a cult, or that it had the potential of becoming one; to him, I believe it was just a cadre of smart, kind, generous people with a different take on spirituality than the one he and I grew up with (mostly traditional Protestantism). Back then, it was common practice for such cults to recruit on college campuses, typically via intimate "sales" presentations advertised on flyers, and that's how EDL found my friend.

At first I didn't pay much attention to what was happening with my friend and EDL; I was too busy navigating my own freshman year in college, going to classes full time, working off campus five hours a day, playing in three bands, and, um, socializing. But thanks to my friend's mom, who was growing increasingly concerned with my friend's burgeoning interest in EDL, I was unable to keep his activities entirely off my radar. Even then, I just assumed my friend knew what he was doing—he was no dummy—and that his mom was maybe overreacting just a bit.

As I became more aware of my friend's involvement in EDL and his mom's concomitant concern, I became intrigued. What was this organization all about? Was it a cult? Who was its leader? Why was my friend interested in it? At the time, I was a fledgling staff writer for the college newspaper, so naturally I began to wonder if EDL merited an article. Investigative journalism!

I asked the managing editor if he thought an article about EDL would appeal to our readers. He said yes. So I started doing some background research on the organization, consisting mostly of perusing the few written materials I somehow managed to get my hands on. Sensing that this wouldn't be nearly enough to even begin composing an exposé, I decided to ask my friend if I could visit the communal house where the local EDL chapter held its meetings. After conferring with what I assumed was the head of the house, he said yes...on the condition that I attend a meeting, not just mingle casually with the residents.

So I attended a meeting. And it was...kind of nice. From my vastly limited 18-year-old perspective, the tone seemed genuinely spiritual, and the people both intelligent and kind. I didn't see, hear, nor feel any of the causes for concern that my friend's mom harbored. My friend was not in any danger that I could detect.

And yet...I couldn't keep my skeptical brain from thinking that something had to be wrong. There had to be something awry with this apparently harmless organization and its superficially altruistic doctrines and practices. Was it the communal aspect? Was it the fact that most of its adherents were young, like my friend? Was there something about the organization's financial practices? I decided to do a bit more digging and see if I could find out.

So I asked my friend for the house head's—or "focalizer's"—phone number, which he was happy to provide, and gave him a call. It was a terse conversation. After I briefed him on who I was, the name of my "employer" (the Pioneer Log), and what I was looking for, he paused for a moment, took a breath, and said, "While I appreciate your interest in who we are and what we do, it sounds like what you're after is an exposé, and I just don't want to go there."

I couldn't argue with him; I was planning to do an exposé. And judging by the way the guy shut me down, there likely was something to expose. However, because I had virtually zero spare time and energy to devote to such an in-depth project, and because anything I wrote would inevitably affect my friend, I decided against pursuing the story.

Flash forward a few years. My friend and I are both out of college and working in the "real world." I'm living alone in an apartment. He, however, is still living in an EDL commune. And my dad, whose dad and mom were both ordained Christian ministers and who himself earned a degree in theology from Texas Christian University, has started attending EDL services. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

My interest in EDL is re-piqued. What is it about EDL that appeals to my friend and my dad, both of whom I regarded as intelligent people and critical thinkers? Is EDL's approach to spirituality a useful or helpful one? Could it be useful or helpful to me?

Partly to satisfy my own nagging curiosity, partly to fill both a spiritual and social void in my life (I was living alone for the first time and feeling a little...lonely), I decided to start attending an occasional EDL service—some with my dad—at my friend's commune. However, as an inveterate skeptic, I was determined to remain on the periphery of this relatively unknown and unproven quantity. I would not become a card-carrying member. 

The services consisted mostly of the house focalizer delivering a kind of extemporaneous sermon to attendees, who sat in folding chairs in a circle. The sermons themselves were insightful, thought-provoking, pertinent, and...vaguely unsettling. I couldn't quite put my finger on what, exactly, was unsettling about them, but something wasn't right. It would be a few years before I learned what it was.

Perhaps the most interesting part of an EDL service was something they called an "attunement," which is a mostly no-touch variation on the traditional Judeo-Christian "laying on of hands." In this case, the  focalizer positioned his or her hands on an attendee's shoulders, then slowly turned and raised the hands to just next to the subject's ears, then raised the hands to just above the subject's head, and finally placed his/her hands on the subject's shoulders again and squeezed gently, to let the subject know the attunement was over. The duration of each attunement was just a few minutes, and only those who requested one received one, so only a few attendees received one during any given service. Otherwise, the services would have doubled in length.

I never experienced anything particularly memorable during these attunements, except for pleasant sensations of warmth and electricity. However, on one occasion I received a much longer individual attunement, separate from the regular service, that resulted in my having an out-of body experience. I described this experience years later in my master's thesis on "contemporary mystical experiences":

I sat in a recliner, not reclined but straight up, feet flat on the floor, hands on knees, eyes closed. Ron [a pseudonym] stood silently behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. We remained in this position for perhaps two minutes, and then Ron removed his hands from my shoulders and slowly began to move them upward, following the contour of my neck, maintaining a distance of an inch or so from my skin. I could feel the warmth of his hands and was aware of his breathing—whether I felt it or heard it, I don't recall. My own breathing had slowed considerably, and my body was becoming increasingly relaxed. My thinking also was slowing and relaxing, becoming increasingly focused on my physical being.

Ron continued to move his hands up my neck and around my head, and when he finally reached the top of my head, he paused for a minute or so, holding his hands steady just above my hair. Now, perhaps because of the insulating quality of my hair, I could feel not the warmth of his hands but instead a kind of energy emanating from them, and this was my last awareness of Ron's presence before I slipped into a state I can only attempt to describe.

I was no longer in my body, but I was floating, weightless, above myself, against the ceiling. I was looking down and could see my body in the chair, with Ron standing beside me. I felt nothing and knew nothing but an amazing contentment, a sensation of absolute perfection.  There was no anxiety, no apprehension, no fear—only awe. Thee was no doubt of my worthiness, no question of the purpose of my existence. I just was, and just being was enough.

I didn't now whether the experience lasted a fraction of a second or several minutes, because time had disappeared (a common experience during mystical experiences, I later learned). I was aware of eventually returning to my body, but even after I returned, the experience was not quite over. I felt a oneness with the universe that included my physical being, rather than excluding it as I had expected. I must have thought I could be one with the universe only spiritually, that my body was somehow uninvited—that I was a kind of clumsy, grotesque vehicle necessary only for carrying me to the party ("It's ugly, but it gets me there"). Now I felt that my body was not just a vehicle but a mate, an equal and integral part of my being. Even though my spirit could leave my body, it could not reach its ultimate destination without my body. This analysis is entirely retrospective; during the experience I was aware only of the sensations of warmth and energy from Ron's hands, and of my own unified spiritual and physical presence.

The attunement lasted about an hour, and Ron concluded it by placing his hands again on my shoulders and squeezing gently. I came out of my "trance" slowly and somewhat reluctantly; it had been a nice vacation. As I regained my senses, I gradually became conscious of what I had experienced during the attunement, and following a brief recapitulation with Ron, decided to try describing it in writing. This is the result:

  I Was One 

            Just now
            I was one 
            with 
            the uni-
            verse.

            Weightless,

            unencumbered,

            I floated

            like vapor,

            I danced

            like light...

            But

            I had to come

            back

            to tell you

            about it.

This poem, like the narrative preceding it, was a vain effort. The words barely reveal the outline of the shadow of the experience itself, and disclose nothing of the residual feelings. I have experienced similar frustration when trying to describe it orally. Even when sharing my story with someone who has "been there," I find the experience compromised by words. I would not try to describe the experience at all except for the understanding I seem to gain in the process.

Fast-forward a few more years. I'm married to my first wife, and we attend EDL services together at a commune in rural Oregon called The Farm. The head of the Oregon chapter of EDL lives there and conducts the services. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. My friend has moved to an EDL commune in Washington, but my dad still attends some services here. In addition to the in-person services, my wife and I are on the EDL mailing list, and we receive paper copies of each week's international sermon, delivered extemporaneously by Bishop Martin Cecil in a service at Sunrise Ranch, EDL's headquarters in Loveland, Colorado. We are expected to respond in writing to each mailing, and we are strongly encouraged to include a check for a minimum of $10 with our response. "Encouraged" is the operative word here; if donations had been required I would've bailed on EDL in a heartbeat, despite feeling I was getting something worthwhile from the services and sermons. 

Bishop Martin Cecil

So yeah, still not a card-carrying member.

About a year later, however, I came perilously close to becoming a member—by attending a thing called One-Week Class, at an EDL commune in Vancouver, BC. Tuition was something like $450, which covered room and board plus "class," which consisted of twice-daily EDL catechisms (similar to standard EDL services, but with a para-educational slant). In addition, participants were expected to contribute to the household workload, and for me that meant helping to re-roof the house. Yep: working up high on a pitched roof as an unpaid, semiskilled laborer (I had previously helped re-roof two other houses)—sans license, bonding, or insurance. 

Even though I found myself helping to install a roof for free and easily could have gotten hurt or killed doing it, that wasn't what finally turned my head around. It was the way the house leaders required women to wear skirts and work in the kitchen (while men had to wear pants and work on the roof); the insulting, micro-aggressive tactics they used to compel compliance; the nonblinking, pseudo-beatific gaze of some adherents; the desperately concealed yet still obvious mental health issues of a few longtime members; and, yes, the organization's questionable financial practices. It wasn't so much that I felt the $450 tuition fee was unreasonable; it was that there was no accountability or transparency for how any of the money they took in—from people like me or those who lived in the communes—was used.

In addition, I couldn't help feeling that there was something else, something maybe a little creepy, going on behind closed doors. Maybe those mental health issues I mentioned had something to do with it? As I learned later, from accounts provided by my friend and others after they left the cult, those feelings unfortunately were not unfounded. 

About a year after attending one-week class, I found myself back in college, working toward a secondary English teaching certification. Among the few electives I enrolled in was a fascinating course on Utopias. The course required a lot of reading and writing, and one of the books I read and reported on was Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. The gist of my report was that both the book and the "religion" it spawned were massive scams, and that adherents of Scientology had to be among the most gullible people on Earth. Having myself been involved peripherally in a cult for a number of years, the irony of my bias was not entirely lost on me.

Another assignment required us to conduct research on a Utopian or paraUtopian organization and present our findings to the class. I chose EDL, and interviewed several members as part of my research. Because I personally liked the people I knew in EDL and sincerely appreciated the graciousness of those I interviewed, I asked them what real investigative journalists would consider softball questions, such as, "How did you learn about EDL? What attracted you to it? How long have you been involved? What do you like/dislike about it? Describe EDL in a nutshell." 

In retrospect, I should have at least asked, "Do you consider EDL a cult? Why or why not?" But I didn't, and the resulting presentation, unlike my report on Scientology, was commensurately...soft-hitting.

Interestingly, my professor liked my presentation just fine. And while the class followup discussions on other presentations were rife with critical analyses of the "Utopia" in question, the response to my presentation on EDL ranged from politely indifferent to curious. The professor's summation of the discussion amounted to his furrowing his brow, scratching his head, and muttering, "I'll have to look into this group further." I couldn't discern whether he was stumped by EDL's apparent innocuousness or by its stealth—its ability to keep its inherently nefarious cultish activities off the radar.

I never heard whether the professor looked into the group further, but at this point I had looked into it enough to know it wasn't for me. Still, I remained on good terms with some of its members (one of whom I even worked for a few times as a house painter), and loosely tracked my friend's continued involvement, despite his mother's continued vehement objections. My dad, meanwhile, lost interest in EDL rather abruptly when the Oregon faction put on a wine-tasting fundraiser dubbed "Wine Extravaganza." Dad was inexplicably annoyed by the word "Extravaganza," which I guess was too...extravagant for him? He wasn't opposed to wine or wine tastings, a far as I knew, but he did harbor a semi-moralistic antipathy toward alcohol in general (and the word "extravaganza" in particular, apparently). So he suddenly quit going to meetings, cold turkey, and never looked back.

A few years later my friend also left EDL, for reasons unbeknownst to me at the time. Subsequent conversations over the next several years revealed the reasons why he left. Among them: an ever-increasing, overarching patriarchy, accompanied by increasingly restrictive edicts. And, yes, alleged sexual improprieties, including but not limited to certain male leaders of certain households taking advantage of certain female members. The alleged justification provided by these leaders for their alleged behaviors? "Having sex with me brings you closer to the Lord." 

These revelations marked the end of my association with anyone and anything having to do with EDL. I later learned that one of EDL's former leaders was heavily involved with a new organization (cult?) called the ManKind Project, which has also been fraught with controversy. Other leaders found themselves jobs and lives in the "real world" (finally letting their "true qualities...be known as they are expressed in practical daily living," per EDL's foundational premise). Some also embarked on "apology tours" in an attempt to atone for their behaviors.

I don't regret having been involved with EDL, because it did expose me to some interesting and, I think, important perspectives on life, spirituality, and mystical experiences that I might otherwise have missed out on. However, I suspect that if my involvement had more deeply penetrated the cult's periphery, I might've had more regrets. I might even have had to embark on my own apology tour... 

This image and text came to me in a dream
during the time I was composing this post.
It seemed fitting to include here.

 

 

How strawberry picking traumatized me—and made me

"With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good."

I used to cringe reflexively whenever I heard that slogan in a TV or radio ad.

I'd cringe because, when I was a kid, I had to pick strawberries that went into Smucker's jams and preserves. 

"Had to?" you ask.

Yes, had to. By parental decree.

My siblings and I all had to pick strawberries. Every summer. Starting at age 10. And continuing until we found something else to do—something constructive and productive that would keep us busy when school was out. 

"Busy," as in "out of Mom's hair." 

I picked those damned strawberries from age 10 to age 14, when I finally found something else to do (summer school).

Do I sound traumatized?

I am. I was. "It was hell," recalls former child.

What was hell about it? 

First, it was supposed to be summer...that all-too-brief and intermittent time in a kid's life when school was out and we were relatively footloose and carefree until school was...ugh...back in again. 

...or, from my parents' perspective, that all-too-frequent period in their life when the kids were out of school for three unbearably long months and had nothing to do but get in the way and cause more trouble than usual until school was...hooray!...back in again.

So. I had to pick strawberries. And picking strawberries traumatized me.

What was so traumatic about picking a sweet little innocent fruit?

Hmmm...where do I start? 

• Having to think about and prepare for each day of berrypicking the night before by making and packing my own lunch? Having to go to bed early enough—i.e., when it was still LIGHT OUT, for God's sake, and all the other kids in the neighborhood were still running around, yelling and laughing and having way too much fun—so I could get up at 5:00 the next morning, eat my cereal, grab my lunch, run four blocks down to the bus stop, and catch the bus at 5:30, when it was still DARK OUT? 
• Having to ride in a rickety old arthritic former school bus driven by a rickety old arthritic former school bus driver who may or may not know what to do if either one broke down? 
• Having to listen to the moaning and complaining and pathetic, cringeworthy attempts at humor emitting from the orifices of my fellow inmates? OK, coming from me, mainly, but still? 
• Having to kneel in the dirt between rows of strawberry plants, bare-kneed, reaching for often microscopic berries and plunking them one by one, berry after berry after berry after berry, into a flat that took 147 years to fill, for eight hours a day, five days a week, in the blazing summer sun that burned the hell out of my face, neck, arms, and legs and probably gave me melanoma? 
• Having a field boss—named Mrs. WEED, not kidding—stroll by every 20 minutes and check on my progress, assess how "clean" I was picking (was I leaving any ripe berries behind? picking green ones?), examine the contents of my flat to make sure I wasn't "padding" the bottom with dirt clods, and all too frequently making me go back to the beginning of the row to start over and pick "clean"? 
• Finally filling a crate and wheeling it back on a rusty metal cart to the pay station (not to be confused with a PlayStation), where the paymaster would check the ripeness of my berries, inspect the crate to make sure I hadn't padded the bottom with dirt clods, and finally, assuming everything was cool, hand me a paper token which, if I somehow managed to hang onto it until payday and not accidentally tear it in half or run it through the wash or lose it or have it stolen, was worth a whopping FIFTY CENTS? 
• Thinking about all my friends who didn't have to pick strawberries getting to goof off all day, play ball, go hiking or swimming or fishing or picnicking, and generally enjoy the sunny summer day LIKE KIDS ARE SUPPOSED TO?
• Finally reaching the end of the day, exhausted, burnt to a crisp, caked in dirt and sweat, demoralized because I had earned only $2.50, climbing back onto the rickety old arthritic former school bus driven by a rickety old arthritic former school bus driver, riding 45 minutes back to the bus stop, where I would tumble off and proceed to trudge, feeling as rickety, old, and arthritic as the bus and its driver, UP A HILL THAT WAS ONLY FOUR BLOCKS LONG THAT MORNING BUT I SWEAR TO GOD WAS NOW 4,639 BLOCKS LONG?

Yeah, yeah, I know: your parents and mine had to walk 60 miles to school and back, in the snow, uphill both ways, while carrying 112 pounds of books, on a breakfast of roadkill and a glass of leaded gasoline. So I have nothing to complain about. Snowflake!

And, truth be told, it wasn't all bad: I did get to drink an ice-cold Shasta Black Cherry soda with my lunch (frozen overnight in newspaper and aluminum foil so it wouldn't explode), and I got to listen to all the hits of the mid-'60s (Wayne Newton, anyone?) on my portable transistor radio, and if I found a particularly large and juicy berry, it went directly into my mouth. So, there's that. 

And there may be just a little more: in a perverse sort of way, berry picking made me stronger and more resilient than I might otherwise have been. By sticking it out and persevering day after day, summer after summer, I proved to myself that I could endure something awful and not perish. It also made me more careful, patient, observant, and persistent—if only to make sure I had picked all the ripe berries in the row so Mrs. Weed wouldn't arrest and torture me. Carefulness, patience, observation, and persistence also happen to come in very handy when one's chosen career is editing. 

One other good thing berry picking did for me: It made me acutely, painfully, exquisitely aware of the value of a dollar. Having to pick two crates of berries to earn one dollar will do that to you. So it was not without a significant measure of respect and trepidation that, after five summers of berry picking, I chose to spend the entirety of my earnings—a whopping $250—on my very first drumset. And eventually, through the same carefulness, patience, observation, and persistence that berry picking taught me, I became a good enough drummer that I was able to earn all of that $250 back and then some—many times over.

Oh, and I also became a good enough editor that I was able to make a pretty decent living at it for 31 years.

How do you like them berries, Mrs. Weed?

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and me

From August 2022 to August 2023 I worked part-time as a grocery stocker at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op in Vermont. It was a physically demanding job, especially for someone my age (I turned 68 in May of '23), but for the most part I enjoyed the work and the people I worked with. I even liked most of the customers, who, as Vermonters, were evidently required by law to be unnervingly pleasant.

Two such customers were the film actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, a couple who, besides having double "a's" in their surnames, owned a vacation home just up the hill from Middlebury. So, at certain times of the year, they were frequent shoppers at the co-op.

I first met them one day when I was grabbing some cereal backstock from the shelves above the beer aisle, which was situated directly across from the deli bar. "Would you happen to know where I could find the raspberry vinaigrette dressing you used to have here?" said a voice from behind me.

Unsure of whom the voice was directed toward, I turned around...and there, standing directly in front of me now, was a woman whose eyes would be unmistakable in any situation, in any location in the known universe: Maggie Gyllenhaal. 

Maggie Gyllenhaal

I was so startled, all I could think of to say was, "I know you!" Which of course I didn't, but...I knew those eyes...that face...that voice...from all the movies I'd seen her in. "I've seen several of your movies and liked 'em all," I blurted. "And coincidentally, just last night my wife and I watched your brother Jake in The Day After Tomorrow."

Her brother? What did he have to do with this conversation? Was I a total idiot? (Don't answer that.) And oh, by the way, what movies had I seen Ms. Gyllenhaal in? Umm...hold on a minute...

Oh, yeah: A Dangerous Woman, Donnie Darko, Secretary, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Mona Lisa Smile, World Trade Center, White House Down, The Honorable Woman, The Kindergarten Teacher...and maybe a few others I can't recall. In fact, I couldn't recall most of these until just now, when I looked up Ms. Gyllenhaal's bio on IMDB. But in that moment when her eyes met mine, I recognized her instantly.

(Yeah, yeah, I know: she was also in Dark Knight and a bunch of other awesome films that I haven't yet seen. Just give me some time, OK?)

"Um, so, uh..." I stammered, "you're looking for the raspberry vinaigrette?"

She nodded. 

"Um, there might be some bottles of it back in the cooler in the produce section," I offered.

"No," she replied, smiling her gazillion-watt smile, "I need to put some on my salad for lunch." And then she abruptly turned away from me and said, "Never mind; I'll ask someone here in the deli."

I wasn't sure what to make of this. We were getting along so well, and she gives me the cold shoulder! Had I said the wrong thing? Did my leering make her uncomfortable? Was there garlic in my scrambled eggs this morning? Or was she just being polite and trying not to bother me with questions I couldn't answer?

Then I noticed another famous person standing off to the side, watching the saga of the movie star and the blithering idiot unfold. It was Peter Sarsgaard. Standing next to him were two teenage girls—his and Ms. Gyllenhaal's daughters, perhaps? 

Peter Sarsgaard

Having totally blown my chance to have a meaningful conversation with Ms. Gyllenhaal, I bravely decided to risk a similar debacle with Mr. Sarsgaard. So I strode up to him and said, as nonchalantly as I could, "I've seen most of your movies [an unwitting lie, as it turns out], but my favorite is Dopesick. I thought you were really good in that." I wish I'd had the presence of mind to add, "I also liked that your name in Dopesick was Rick," but it's probably best that I just shut the hell up at this point.

To my surprise, Mr. Sarsgaard smiled broadly and replied, "Oh, thanks a lot for saying so! Yeah, it was nice to do something substantial and meaningful for a change, and not just entertainment. In fact, before Dopesick I worked on a documentary about the opioid problem, so it was kind of a natural tie-in." 

"Oh, really?" I said, "I'll have to check that out. Well, I'd better let you get back to your shopping." 

"Yeah, nice chatting with you, man," he said, making me feel just a bit taller than I'd felt a moment ago.

At this point, Ms. Gyllenhaal had apparently gotten what she needed from the folks in the deli, and she was now checking out the meat cooler. Knowing that she had been a participant (and award recipient) in the previous summer's Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, I asked if she was going to be a part of it again this year.

"Oh, maybe," she replied with a smile. "I hear Alexander Payne is going to be there, and he would be fun to see. Are you going?"

Whoa. Maggie Gyllenhaal asked me a question. Did the Earth's poles just switch places or something?

"Oh, cool," I replied, despite the fact that I had no idea who Alexander Payne was. "I plan to attend most of the festival, so maybe I'll see you there?" In reality, I had no solid plans to attend the festival—just the desire. Also, Jules and I were talking about moving back to Oregon, so it wasn't certain that we would even be in Middlebury in late August when the festival was scheduled to happen.

At this point, Ms. Gyllenhaal turned to her eldest daughter, who looked to be about 14, and asked her to go find something for her. Her daughter then turned to me and asked, "Do you know where the rosewater is?"

"I think I can help you find that," I said, which was literally true, since I was only kind of sure where it was. As I was leading her toward the "international aisle," I said to her, "It must drive you crazy having people thronging your parents everywhere you go."

"No, it's not so bad," she replied with a smile. 

Maybe not in Vermont, I thought, knowing how Vermonters tend to value their privacy and respect others' privacy equally. Or maybe not anywhere else, for that matter, since Ms. Gyllenhaal and Mr. Sarsgaard aren't mega-stars, and aren't readily recognizable to many.

We located the rosewater, she said thanks, and that was the last I saw of the family—until a couple of weeks later, when I spotted Ms. Gyllenhaal standing in front of the bread display, looking forlorn.

"Let me know if there's anything I can help you with," I offered.

"Oh, hi," she replied, smiling, apparently having actually recognized me from our previous encounter (yet another ego boost). I was determined not to be quite so awkward this time, if at all possible. "Can you tell me when this bread is going to be restocked?" she asked, pointing to an empty space on the shelf.

"Sure, let me go check with the bread person and get back to you." I walked briskly, but not too obviously briskly, over to the deli, where the bread person was working, got the needed information, and walked briskly, but not too briskly, back to where Ms. Gyllenhaal was still standing. "It'll be here on Tuesday around 10 a.m.," I informed her, with an absurdly exaggerated sense of pride and gratification.

"Oh, great—thanks," she said, smiling.

My day was made.

A couple of weeks later, I spotted Ms. Gyllenhaal in the produce section, said hello, and kept walking as nonchalantly as I could so as to reduce the chances that she would take out a restraining order on me. A few minutes later, while I was working in the breakfast aisle, she came up to me and asked, "Do you know where I might find the marshmallows?"

Marshmallows? I thought. She eats marshmallows and looks like that? Just kidding. I started to think that, but then stopped myself when I remembered that she and Mr. Sarsgaard had two kids. But yeah, maybe they all ate marshmallows and still looked like that, who knows?

"Right over here," I pointed. "Top shelf, totally hidden so no one can find 'em."

"Oh, thanks," she said, graciously smiling at my attempt at humor.

Trying to come up with some more small talk to keep the conversation going, I asked her, "Have you been affected by the flooding where you are?" (Pretty much the entire state of Vermont had been deluged that summer—30 inches of rain over a span of three months.) 

"No," she replied, grabbing a bag of marshmallows. "We're up pretty high in Ripton, so it hasn't been too bad. But a neighbor's house, which was downhill from a clearcut, was washed down the hill."

"Yikes," I said. "Well, glad to hear you were safe. Have you had any trouble getting into town and back?" I was shamelessly milking this conversation for all it was worth, while trying to appear not to be milking the conversation.

Nevertheless, Ms. Gyllenhaal managed to conceal her undoubtedly rabid indignation by replying kindly, "Yeah, Highway 125 was flooded out for a couple of days, but it's open now. How about you? Any flooding where you live?"

Whoa again. This famous person, this well-known and beloved actress who owed nobody anything except perhaps her parents and children, was actually giving me, an unknown and, on a good day, maybe beliked grocery stocker at the local food co-op, the proverbial time of day. 

I was in shock. But I had to haul myself out of my shock and say something, so I replied, "Uh, do you know where the Marble Works condos are, down by the falls?"

"Oh, yeah...I think so."

"My wife and I are renting a condo there, and so far the flooding hasn't affected us, either. Knock on...marble?" (OK, I made that last silly bit up, but you know how in retrospect you always come up with things you wish you'd said? Yeah, that's me. Every. Single. Time.) And then I added, for some unknown reason, "But we just learned that our daughter in Oregon is sick, so we're planning to move back there at the end of August."

"Oh, sorry to hear about your daughter," she replied, with a look of genuine concern. "But Oregon is beautiful."

"You've been there?"

"Yes, many times. I love it." What was she doing in Oregon, of all places? Making a movie, perhaps? I later Googled "Maggie Gyllenhaal movies made in Oregon," but the results were inconclusive.

"I lived there most of my life before we moved here two years ago," I replied. "We were hoping to find a place to buy here, but didn't have any luck." Sensing that I had now not only overshared but also overstayed my welcome, I said, "Well, it was very nice meeting you and talking to you. Have a good day, and maybe our paths will cross again before I leave."

"Yes, nice meeting you too," she said. "Take care."

Near the end of August, two days before I was set to move, our paths did cross once more—in the same spot where we had originally met: the deli. This time, however, we were both shopping. So, a level playing field, of sorts (ha ha).

"Well, hello there," I ventured. "I'm off to Oregon in two days."

"Oh, really? Well, the best of luck to you."

No worries on that score: I felt like I'd already had the best of luck.