This harmonic convergence, I learned from Wikipedia, was a synchronized, worldwide meditation taking advantage of an alignment of the Sun, the Earth, our Moon, and five other planets. I don’t remember being aware of the convergence goals of shifting the earth’s energy from warlike to peaceful, initiating a five-year period of cleansing, and removing false structures of separation, but I was glad to help.

She picked me up in her battered pickup truck––I love battered pick-up trucks with history and adventure written in every dent. The tarp-covered bed of her truck was filled with the stuff a person who is working on more things than she finishes collects.

We drove to a field selected for its convergence and harmonic powers somewhere near Eklutna, Alaska, not far from where I live. It was a 24-hours event from the 16^th to the 17^th of August and participant’s tents were set up along one the edge of the field. I didn’t know this harmonic convergence was a 24-hour event and didn’t bring any camping gear. My guide knew it was a 24-hour event; but she didn’t bring any camping gear either. She did, however, bring three large, heavy suitcases she considered necessary for the event.

We parked in the trees at the edge of a large field near the tents. In the field were perhaps a hundred people walking in a circle, chanting, and banging drums.

I helped carry her suitcases to a rock outcrop at the edge of the field where we had an unobstructed view of the participants––and they of us.

Her suitcases were filled with rocks and crystals and fabrics and the paraphernalia of many mainstream and obscure religions and beliefs.  She created an elaborate alter with the trees for a backdrop and the chanting circle as a congregation. I thought this was pretty cool.

Then she put some feathers in one hand and a smoldering sage smudge in the other and started to dance and wave her hands around and chant loudly in front of the alter. I began feeling a little less cool; but I had my back to the circle of participants and I hadn’t recognized anyone I knew so I didn’t feel too conspicuous. None of the participants seemed to think anything was out of the ordinary and I thought, “Okay, I can do this.” and sat on the grass to watch her incantations. I was quite comfortable.

When she finished, turned to me, and said; “Now you do it.”

In for a penny, in for a pound!

*       *       *

Of course I did it. I don’t know how well. She seemed happy.

Later I walked in the circle, chanted, and occasionally banged on a borrowed drum. I met a lot of interesting people. They shared their time and their food. Later in the evening when it began to rain my partner took a tarp from her truck, folded it in half, and we slept on the ground between the folds.

We were cold and soggy in the morning and decided that since the planets were doing all of the heavy lifting anyway we could safely leave the convergence goals to them and put our efforts elsewhere.

There is a certain mind-set required to travel that road. Over the Copper River Bridge outside Chitna the road becomes single lane as it traverses up a continuously collapsing sand bank. In spite of constant maintenance the collapsing sand leaves deep scallops in the road creating many unstable sections.

Then come eighteen lulling miles of perfectly fine, two-lane dirt road that rejoins the old railroad bed near the Kuskulana River Bridge.

The bridge is a test in itself that until recently most people couldn’t pass. The ore trains rode on top of the box-girder, which was not designed for automobiles. The original upgrades to the bridge to accommodate cars were minimal. The tracks were removed and two, two-foot wide parallel boards were laid tire-width apart across the railroad ties.

The improbably narrow boards stretched several hundred feet ahead with nothing but a person’s driving skill to keep him or her from falling onto the ties and becoming stuck. And if one looked down through the ties it was a disconcerting two hundred and sixty-eight feet to the river below. There were no guardrails, no handrails, and no pedestrian walkway. Anyone walking across stuck to the driving boards or railroad-tie-hopped. Many people couldn’t walk across. Many people couldn’t drive across. Many people couldn’t even ride across with their eyes closed. I drove and walked across several times and it was giddily daunting.

Today the bridge has a proper wooden surface, but still only a low barrier to keep an errant car from going over the edge and a deceptively slack and risky hand wire to protect (I don’t know how) foot passengers who might need to lean on it.

*          *          *

The Kuskulana River Bridge is a bungee jumping venue.

Several years back the Vance twins and a friend sold bungee jumps from the bridge: $50 for one jump, $100 for three jumps, free if you jumped nude (no woman ever took them up on this).

I first learned about jumping of this bridge from my friend Paul. He invited me to go to Chitna with him when he learned his back flip record had been broken. He knew I loved Chitna and McCarthy and he wanted company for the daylong drive from Anchorage. We camped outside Chitna and drove the last forty minutes to the bridge the next morning.

When we arrived at the bridge it was hot and sunny. There were people from all over: Anchorage, Fairbanks, McCarthy, and visitors to the state who had come from farther still. At least a hundred people either camped at the bridge, were there for a day of jumping, or just lucky travelers who happened by.

There is usually little more than two degrees of separation between most Alaskans who ventured this far off the beaten path and when we arrived there was already a carnival of old friends. Everybody became childlike with the rare blue-sky, warm-temperature perfectness of the day. Even strangers felt like family.

But what really brought people together was a sense of shared excitement––bungee jumping! Whether you were a jumper or not the place was electric.

Paul didn’t get a chance to reclaim his record. The line of people waiting to jump was too long to take the time to add extenders to the bungee cords and haul everything up to the top of the box girder to give him the extra time and space he would need to set a record. It didn’t matter. The day was perfect.

Nearly fifty people jumped that day, and more than half of them were first-time jumpers.

The bridge was built with a see-through, grated walkway with handrails running down the bottom center of the box girder. The bungee cords were wrapped around the girders at the outside edge of the box frame. A jumper signed and initialed six pages of releases and was fitted with a waist harness and a chest harness. (Ankle cuffs were available, but I didn’t see anyone use them.) The cords––three for lighter people, four for heavier people––were attached to both harnesses and a three-foot foam sleeve was placed over the cords to keep the jumper from getting tangled between them.

Then he or she climbed over the railing and walked the horizontal diagonal girders to the edge, ducking under the vertically diagonal girders. It would be precarious even without the weight of the cords and the great space below. The jumper was told to put his or her toes over the edge and then, no really, put them over the edge. Then the crowd shouted down from ten and off they went.

The Kuskulana River’s gorge is narrow with steep walls where the bridge crosses and the twang of the bungee cords going taut echoes off the canyon walls.

After the jumper yo-yoed up and down for several minutes a line was lowered, clipped into the harness, and a gang of volunteers pulled the jumper back up. Bungee jumping at Kuskulana required a lot of teamwork and there were eager hands to help. I helped pull jumpers up all morning and noticed that every first time jumper had an expression on his or her face I had never seen before. They didn’t just look like they were surprised and pleased to be alive; they looked like they had been somewhere special––very special. Eventually, I decided I had to see where they had gone and learn what they knew.

I was ready to go. But one cord had just been removed to accommodate lighter people and I had to wait another two hours––and have time to worry.

When my turn came I signed and initialed six pages of releases. (I usually don’t read releases––as a lawyer I have more rights if I don’t––but I went through this one out of curiosity. It was well drafted, but essentially worthless as most of them are.) Malcolm put the waist and chest harness on me.  Then his friend checked each connection. I climbed over the rail and headed for the edge. My heart was pounding (I never know how to evaluate the sliding scale between excitement and fear––or accurately measure the intensity of each when both are happening simultaneously) and I, too, had to be told a second time to get my toes farther over the edge.

Before the countdown began I started to think about what I was doing. I felt the thoughts coming before I could articulate them and I knew that when they arrived I was going to panic or change my mind––so I dove.

The jump was a total mental lock-up, which I only experienced after the fact. I was pleased to learn that someone had videoed my jump. It wasn’t a pretty jump. I had forgotten the proper launch technique: push out parallel from the bridge with an arched back and emulate a swan dive. With proper technique upper body weight will pull the body into a head down dive when the cords engage putting them in a straight line between the jumper and the bridge.

In my hurry I dove down instead of out and did a complete 360 degree flip. The bridge was behind me when the cords engaged and the protective sleeve whacked me in the face when they went taut, popping the lenses out of my glasses. My first memory of the jump is rebounding back up toward the bridge, blind and stunned. On the video someone can be heard saying, “Ewe, that was ugly!”

I was alive! And I was yo-yoing up and down while simultaneously swinging back and forth under the bridge. Pure magic. In the photo of me climbing back onto the bridge (I can’t find it!) I have that same expression I had seen on other jumpers. I have now been there––I can’t describe it––and I have rarely done anything that has benefited more.

The inner voice that wanted to “talk” to me when my toes went over the edge was my critical voice. My your-not-good-enough, who-do-you-think-you-are, you-will-not-succeed, you-shouldn’t-be-doing-this voice. I didn’t always obey this voice, but it was always hectoring me. This time when it started in on me I dragged it, against its will, over the edge toward what it thought was certain death.

In a sense there was a death––my critical voice’s death. The moment I jumped––against its screaming warning––and survived, my critical voice lost its power. It no longer had much influence over me. It got humility. Now if it wants to talk to me and I am busy it has to wait. There are no more ultimata. No more scolding. It talks. I consider what it said. Period. What a relief.

*       *       *

I went back later in the summer with two other friends to jump again. It was a nice day, but there were very few jumpers. I jumped three times. On my first jump I corrected my previous error and my form was perfect––except that even though I was in a proper head down position one of the cords wrapped around my left leg. I had only a second to wonder what this might do before the cord engaged. When it snicked taut it pulled my shoe off. There was no mental melt down on this jump and as I began to slow my shoe continued to fall and I reached out to grab it, but it was just out of reach. I also heard someone on the bridge ask, “What did he lose this time?”

My second jump that day was magic. I pushed off backwards, spread eagle, and watched the bridge recede and the cords go from a “U” shaped to and “S” shaped to straight. I felt so much faith that everything would be fine it was like falling into the arms of God. I did a forward flip as I was tossed into the air on the rebound. I lay back in the harnesses and enjoyed the up and down, yo-yoing swings under the bridge between the canyon walls until the retrieval rope was lowered.

*       *       *

Bungee jumping boosted my adrenalin to the max and gave me hours of residual energy. When the energy faded I felt exhausted and got an unpleasant headache. I also saw, as I was falling asleep and the headache was fading, a bright flash of orange light that was the same saffron color as a Buddhist monk’s robe.

At the end of the lecture our little old lady said, “You are wrong, young man. The world [being flat] is supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

The lecturer asked her what, then, was the tortoise standing on.

Unfazed, she replied, “You think you are very clever young man, but it is turtles all the way down.”

This, arguably, is a cosmological system with more aesthetic appeal than spinning spheres.

I love this story because it speaks to my ability to have unshakable beliefs that make no sense to anyone else––beliefs, I hope, that are less radical than turtles. And, of course, it speaks to beliefs that others hold that make no sense to me. I’ll let you come up with your own examples.

I recently watched a television news piece about Saul Perlmutter, one of the 2011 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics, which caused me to re-evaluate our English friend. Before he described his discovery that the expansion of the universe was accelerating he backed up to explain that the universe is infinite. He said to imagine going out from the Earth in any direction (in fact in every direction) and you would find a galaxy, and then another one farther still, and another, and so on forever, without end!

Our Lady may have got the flat Earth assumption wrong, and we can safely say that she was off the mark about the turtles, but she appears to have nailed the “all the way down” concept of infinity.

I know about infinity, and yet I failed to see that she was one-third correct. I dismissed everything she said out-of-hand, in a lump, because I found parts of it fanciful.

I’ve got to stop doing that. I need to guard against ignoring everything someone says because I don’t agree with some part of what they say.

In 1972 I attend the University of Oregon. Near where I lived in Eugene, at the edge of town, was a small park, Bodenberg Butte. It was a popular overlook with a parking lot on the back side away from the city lights and a steep, switchback trail up through large spruce to its summit. The year before I moved to Eugene I lived in a log cabin on a ridge above Fairbanks, Alaska and I hadn’t re-acclimated to cities well. I liked to climb to the top of the butte late at night when no one was there and sip hot tea that I brewed on a backpacking stove. I would sit with the woods at my back, look out over the city––often hazy through the typical Eugene drizzle––and enjoy the solitude.

One night the clouds lowered, the view disappeared, and it became pitch dark when it was time to descend. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, let alone the trail. The butte was steep and slippery and I worked my way straight down across the switchback trail in a crab walk on my hands, feet, and butt. It was slow, tedious, slippery, blind work.

When I was part way down the path and the trees lit up. I looked to the light’s source expecting to see a car’s headlights in the parking lot. Instead, I saw a giant, white, glowing bird soaring, on un-flapping wings, through the trees below me, lighting up the entire woods. It was at least 20 feet long with an even greater wingspan. It sent bursts of colored sparks from different parts of its glowing body like miniature, silent fireworks. It had a huge mouth and teeth; its feet, tucked up in flight, weren’t visible.

“Soaring” and “flight” are not descriptively accurate. The bird was only several feet off the ground and it was moving very slowly; only several miles an hour. It wasn’t aerodynamic flight.

“Through the trees”, though, is descriptively accurate. The bird’s wings passed right through some trees. Other times it disappeared entirely behind a tree and did not reappear until it came out on the far side of the next tree over, showing nothing between the two trees!

It was slowly turning it head––searching for me. I was scared and froze in place. After a minute or so the bird just faded out and I was left alone in the dark.

I didn’t learn that the bird I saw on the butte was a Garuda until a decade later at the Tillum Gallery. That was when I learned what a Garuda was and that they are transportation for Hindu Gods.

In Eugene, ten years earlier, I didn’t know the bird I stared at frozen in fear was a means of travel. I don’t profess to be a God, but I sometimes wonder if I had been summoned by One––and missed an important invitation.

If I ever see a Garuda again I am going to risk those teeth and climb on.

The Spot is a great walk-up burger joint two blocks off the beach on Linden Avenue in Carpenteria, California. I eat there every time I visit my father. The people at The Spot don’t know me from Adam, but if I lived in Carpinteria I would be a regular.

I don’t believe I ever saw David Winneguth, the man in the photograph. I only eat at The Spot once a year (ortega chili burger, fries, diet Coke no ice). I will probably never know any more about him other than the information posted at The Spot.

But he was known to the people there, who honored him by placing his celebration of life notice prominently and surrounding it with how they knew him: “hot dog/must, choc shake”.

I think of David as a well-loved regular who’s consistent smile was one the order-takers could rely on amidst the hit and miss of sometimes grumpy customers.

What an accolade to be remembered because of a smile and, I am sure from his smile, a kind disposition.

A smile is such a simple act––one that has such a pleasant effect on people.

Years ago I decided to smile all of the time. The first week was hard and I had to constantly remind myself to keep smiling––and then it became a habit. People who didn’t know me referred to me as the guy who smiled all the time. Almost every person I met smiled in return. I was like the Johnny Appleseed of smiles––for awhile. I don’t remember why I stopped.

I like to think that David Winneguth never stopped smiling.

I recently listened to Teri Gross, of Fresh Air on NPR, interviewing Robert Stone about his memoir prime green: remembering the sixties and decided to read his book and re-read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I had forgotten how good Kerouac’s writing is and how well Wolfe described experiences for which words rarely suffice.

I was a teenager and young adult in New York and California in the 60’s and car-toured much of the rest of the US on vacations with my family in the 50’s. My experiences tell me that what these guys wrote is accurate.

I wanted to be on the Ken Kesey’s bus. Fortunately, I had neither the courage nor the tolerance for drugs. Drinking was what I did best. I never became very hip. Weird was within my abilities; occasionally inappropriate.

But I did get the sense. I felt the slipstream of what Kesey was trying to do and I trailed along in my own way, at my own speed, to my benefit.

There is a stupid (and fun) saying “If you can remember the 60s, you probably weren’t there”. More accurate, I think, is that if you weren’t there the 60s can’t be explained to you. Certainly not the feeling of it.

But the goals can be explained––my goals, my friend’s goals, the merry prankster’s goals (according to Tom Wolfe). I was looking for meaning and reason and God and things I couldn’t articulate. The way my parents made sense of––everything––didn’t work for me and I struck out for the same destination by a different path.

This-way-be-dragons only added to my excitement. (I think my daughter did about 15% of the “things” I did and she scared the Hell out of me.) I am proud that I survived––and that I made about as much sense of life as I think possible.

I looked hard for the answers. For a long time I thought I would find them in places like high mountains, on the other side of the earth, in a language I didn’t understand. I was wrong. When I gave up searching, answers, tailored for me, became obvious. My path, to which I am happily committed, is in storefronts and church basements with other ex-drinkers.

I now know what I am doing and what I can do.

I am on the bus!

Was it a man who invented the rationalization  “It’s the thought that counts” to cover his failure to do something important? Or was it a woman who invented it to cover for a man’s failure?

Either way what’s important is that thoughts are worthless––they don’t exist outside of the thinker’s mind and they don’t count for anything––unless they lead to actions. Actions (and inactions) are what count because they are what people experience.

Let’s run some scenarios:

He says, “I meant to get you a gift.”

She thinks, “He didn’t just forget. He knew what was expected and still didn’t follow through.”

He says, “I tried to get you a gift.”

She thinks, “How hard can it be?” and “How important am I anyway?”

He says, “It’s the thought that counts, dear.”

She thinks, “Why didn’t he follow through?”

Better to say you screwed up and are sorry and you will do your best to see that it doesn’t happen again. Fallen on your sword with an apology is required; but the whole mess leaves a hollow place in the love.

And if you have really tried and failed, make your failed effort the gift. One of my father’s best friends tried for years to get him some Tompkins County King apples––his favorite from his childhood fifty years earlier. Several Christmases in a row his gift was the correspondence (pre-internet) of her attempts to find those apples. That showed effort and that equaled caring and love and respect for the friendship.

I have failed. The only time my mother ever yelled at me with real anger was when I returned home for Christmas without any gifts. The memory always hurts.

Now, I usually cover with something less adequate until I can make it right. In a pinch I have drawn a picture of a gift with an explanation of my efforts and when I expect those efforts to produce results.

Offering nothing where something is supposed to be leaves a gaping hole!

It is the effort that counts only when the effort produces results!

Thinking, no matter how well intentioned, will only get you in trouble if that is all you did.

The thought, unpursued, is an insult.

I found the international travelers at Heathrow exotic and the airport food great. I stayed and watched and ate at the airport all afternoon. It could have looked, to someone who was trained to look, like I was waiting to be met by someone who didn’t show up.

When I got bored with the airport I took the Tube to a youth hostel, checked in, and started to wander around London on foot.

When I stopped in a pub for a pint of ale a young guy in a suit asked if he could join me. He struck up a conversation about my travels, but he wouldn’t respond to any of my questions. Guessing he needed a formal introduction I stuck out my hand and gave him my name. He wouldn’t shake my hand or tell me his name. He said he was from some government agency and that they knew I was in England. It was all slightly menacing, but he was young and not very good at it.

After that night in London I decided to visit family friends in Bristol. Sir Charles and Lady Frank spent every other summer in Schenectady, New York, where I grew up, often staying on the third floor of my home. Maita Frank became one of my mother’s best friends. Sir Charles was a visiting physicist at the General Electric Research Laboratory where my father worked.

The Frank’s are the first of several family connections that make me somewhat unique. Sir Charles worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War. My father’s best friend, Thomas Paine, was a vice-president at General Electric, NASA’s administrator, and president of Northrup Aviation and must have had knowledge, if not direct participation, in secret projects for the government. Jack Lubahn, the husband in the family my parents shared child-rearing with, to facilitate adult-only vacations and create seven children multi-family outings, worked at the Knowles, the US Navy’s nuclear research facility.

Down the shore from our summer cottage on Drummond Island were the Beldons. Tom was an analyst for the CIA. There was at least one future Noble Laureate around, Ivar Giaever, and my father’s other best friend, Ed Schmidt, seemed like a James Bond without the “00” certification.

I knew some, but not all, of this at the time I went walkabout. I can understand how if someone was already concerned about my behavior, challenged me about it, and I ran to see an ex-intelligence person, that I could peek their interest.

After three days in Bristol I went back to London, decided that I didn’t want to spend another night in the youth hostel, and took a 1 AM night bus to Lion, France. I arrived at 6 AM in the morning and caught an 8 AM train to San Sebastian, Spain. I had no agenda, remember, except my four goals, and moved as the spirit directed me.

I spent the day in San Sebastian and took the overnight train to Barcelona where I got a cheap room ($2.35/night – very nice!) and began to explore the city. I am a fan of Gaudi’s architecture and I walked all over the city to look at his buildings, his parks, and his Sagrada Família.

I also walked in neighborhoods looking in people’s trashcans and vestibules. The climbing boots I was taking to hike with in Nepal were too big and heavy and I needed a box to mail them home in. Boxes, apparently, were rare and it took me several days of rooting to find one.

While I walked form one neighborhood to another, from ritzy to slum, from commercial to residential, looking at Gaudi architecture and in trashcans, I noticed I was being followed. I had recently read a spy novel where I learned that the weak link in multi-costume, close surveillance was a person’s shoes. Other items of clothing were easier to change on the fly, but shoes too often stayed the same.

I didn’t need to know this, however, to spot my tail. I was working this poor woman to death. She didn’t have time to change her clothing, let alone her shoes, and I was moving her into such diverse neighborhoods that she was often wildly, inappropriately dressed. Her “cover” had no reason to be in many of the places she had to follow me.

After three days in Barcelona I took the train to Nice, spent one night and then went on to Rome. I arrived at 6 AM in Rome and had two “cardboard girls”[1] try to pickpocket me under the approving gaze of a policeman. Pissed off, I left Rome at 1 PM the same day for Greece.

In Athens I followed my usual wandering habits. After a week of exploring and random contacts with interesting people in cheap hotels I took the night ferry to Crete. I met a New Zealander, Mark Crosley on the ferry and we hiked together on Crete for a week. He had been traveling and working around the world for three years and had given himself eight months to get home.

Mark was only one of a number of people I hooked up with on this trip. I was a shy person then and yet the guy I sat next to on the bus to Lion chatted me up about my travels. A German backpacker hooked up with me on the train to San Sebastian and we spent the day sight-seeing together. Mark spent a whole week with me. There were too many other meetings before and after Mark to be normal for me.

I had become quite a popular guy––people wanted to meet me, travel with me, keep track of me! I began to wonder why. Why would people be interested enough in me to commit sizable resources to keep track of me; a middle-aged drunk (at the time) living out a mid-life crisis?

The only thing that makes sense to me is that I was a “Straw Man”; and a particularly effective one at that. Every government has spies that it works hard to protect. One way to protect a spy is to hide him or her within a much larger group of fake spies––Straw Men. Straw Men are ordinary, unsuspecting people that spies and their handlers have regular contact with to throw off the opposition who can’t tell whether the contacts are important or not until they invest the resources to check them out. Until they do so they have to assume any contact could also be a spy. This misdirection stretches the opposition’s resources and takes focus off of the real spies.

This is a clever, efficient, and inexpensive way to confuse an enemy. There must be thousands of Straw Men; unaware of the role they play. I am sure I was one.

My theory about Straw Men is obviously conjecture, I don’t have any inside knowledge; but I would be embarrassed if the United States weren’t using this ploy. By luck of birth I was a particularly effective Straw Man. I could easily have been up to something––why else would I abandon family and career?  I had many contacts with people of interest to other countries and . . . who knows?

The problem is what we don’t do!

Would you rather be promised . . . whatever . . . and end up receiving more than you were promised? Or would you rather be promised a bigger . . . whatever . . . and get less than what you were promised?

Your partner is the same.

It is always better to be pleasantly surprised when a partner exceeds the expectation he or she created than to be disappointed by their failure to do what was promised.

Don’t create expectations you can’t, or aren’t, going to meet. Don’t set yourself up to be a failure and disappoint your partner. You are only going to do as much as you are going to do anyway.

Unmet expectations can ruin anything––and sometimes everything. Always do more than you promise, never less.

Speak modestly––

Act extravagantly––

Let’s say, for example, I believe there are two kinds of people and you don’t. So what! Or the opposite, you believe there are two kinds of people and I don’t. Ditto!

I believe there have always been two kinds of people––where never the twain shall meet.

And it never can meet because each person’s certainty about what-is (and how-things-should-be-done) is, at bottom, a belief.  And a belief, any belief, e.g., religious, political, moral, what–is, how-things-should-be-done, can’t be changed by rational argument. There is no argument that will convince a person who already believes there is no argument that can challenge what they believe to change his or her mind.

When I try to convince someone of my superior reasoning, or save them from an obvious (to me) error, I am tilting at windmills, wasting my time, and being rude. I have never gotten along with know-it-alls and I cringe when I find myself explaining to someone else why my way of thinking is best.

So in the end, for me, there really are only two kinds of people: me and you.

––and I just love you for your nutty ideas.