An Alcoholic’s Journey from Near-death to Nirvana.

This little sketch is by Esteban Villa, an original founder of the famed Royal Chicano Air Force (some have said Air Farce and there was no shortage of surrealism nor absurdity … Chicano Air Force, indeed!) Dr. Villa was also a muralist, printmaker, and a dedicated activist for Cesar Chavez' United Farm Workers Union. What a nice little gift from this kind and kreative vato as we sat reminiscing about political art, beautiful women, and the old days in The Valley. He was from Tulare, a stone’s throw from Fresburg.

These are the memoirs of a life-long “seeker” (a term meaning one who searches for Ultimate Truth…whatever that means), a hardcore yet grateful alcoholic, and a forever finger-popping beatnik. Like cool, daddy-o!

By grateful alcoholic I mean that my addiction, in spite of all the damage caused by my excessive drinking (Mea culpa, mea culpa!), has also been a major factor in many of the positive aspects of my life. You might call it unintelligent design.

Good things happened now and then regardless of my derelict ways, my reckless bohemian persona, and just maybe because of them…I’ll never know. My outrageous style often brought me into serendipitous contact with wonderful friends, great ideas, amazing support, and even intimate experience with that which jazz giant John Coltrane called A Love Supreme.

I am grateful to be alive, grateful for a handful of marvelous friends, and grateful to the Big Guy for going out of His way to love me in spite of my countless shortcomings and trespasses. It appears He’s not such an uptight cat after all (I know, “He” could well be a “She” or an “It”…but more like all of the above. Hey, go with the flow, dude…or dudette.) And He, from a Zen standpoint, might well be a moot point in a seemingly pointless process… ellipses ad infinitum…

Oedipus Mex, 1948

The very first event that I can recall was when I was about four. It took place on the porch of our home at one of the Mosesian orchards where we were pickers and packers. This very old but reasonably well-kempt house, with wooden floors that curved from decades of many a wet mop, had a back porch without glass windows, just screens to keep out the countless fruit flies.

I was playing outside in a puddle of mud when I decided that a very fine thing to do would be to go and kiss my mother, my newly acquired foster mother. I quickly found her. She was doing the wash, by hand, using a washboard in a cement sink. I pulled at her dress and asked for a kiss. She picked me up and kissed me. She didn’t even mind my muddy hands all over her clean white dress.

But I must say, it is Spirit that has so often lifted me out of the unmindful and deadly morass while languishing in the lush life, Spirit who has come to my rescue. Years ago Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, insightfully pointed out the irony that the way to overcome alcoholism (alcohol being dubbed “spirits”) is through the Holy Spirit, “Spiritus contra spiritum.” In essence, to conquer our addictions we need our higher power—a transcendent intervention—to lovingly swoop us up and fly us out of our downward spiral. We need to humbly ask, though sometimes She just gracefully embraces us.

You must understand that in my hey-daze, the ’60s and ’70s, it was thoroughly in vogue to be loaded on some damned thing—acid, mescaline, pot, shrooms, and a plethora of mind-melting morsels—at work, at play, ubiquitously blasted, totally toasted. Psychedelics, though, were never the choice of lazy brains. So it is not the least bit surprising that arguably the most dangerous and devastating of them all—plain ol’ booze—was and still is the most popular.

That’s because folks just wanna have fun, just wanna escape from whatever’s bugging ’em, want that wild fermented sugar high. I really get that, but brews do not make Bud wiser, just stupider. That crap is pumped into the brains of unborn children, lonely and feeble old folks, and everyone in between by billions of advertising dollars and a lobby that has the morals of a jiving, conniving, street-corner pimp.

But to be clear, regardless of my philosophical flippancy, it is my mystical meandering that remains a token of my devotion to The Love Supreme. (An atheist, I eventually concluded, is a person who doesn’t believe in himself).

This book is also a shout out to the basic goodness in the world, dismissing the dismal daily dose of what’s wrong with everything. If you say the cup is half empty, man, that sucker is bone dry. But if you see it as half full, then indeed your cup runneth over.

Hey, and let’s smile a bit. As my lanky, countrified friend HL Moore, with a wry smile—as in rye whiskey—and a whiny Appalachian twang, used to say, “God looks at things through your eyes—are you showing Him a good time?” In those way wild days HL and I had a hell of a good time, all of course to please God.

Ticket from Alleys of the Valley, a music and poetry event I produced in 1972 in the iconic Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco…but of course!

Impressario Tomasso

Producer of hick town poetry readings, to the biggest damn Poetry Festival in the Nation, to the largest Environmental Expo in the World!

Event production was a big part of how I met so many wonderful people along the winding way! (See page 277)

Here’s a poem i wrote about that astoundingly beatific period

A Thousand Years Ago

I lived in the wilds of the city lights
when hipsters howled throughout the nights
wrote naked poems on Vesuvio’s walls
protested in the Berkeley halls
painted old buses with neon blasts
synaptic zaps on tie-dye grass
I hitchhiked to heaven and left my past
a thousand years ago.

Here’s a Zen piece using eight consecutive haikus

The Concrete Buddha

The concrete Buddha
wet and cold the moss grows old
at his lotus feet.

The concrete Buddha
quiet in my busy mind
sits just sits and sits.

The concrete Buddha
sounds of city in his ears
spiders spin their webs.