Monday, August 29, 2005

No Net at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: No Safety Net

I previously explained that I have a psychological “glitch,” a tendency to stay too long with things, situations, watching, waiting to see what happens, collecting data, analyzing, hypothesizing possible explanations.

For example I stayed with Marlene for 19 years when arguably we should never have been together in the first place.

Or, for example, I went back to see Yvonne a second time, (a 2nd time!), after she had conspired with her “friends” at KQED, had betrayed Marlene and me, had continued to lie to me for months afterwards, how stupid is that, encouraging me to listen to Garrison Keillor’s program and his little messages . . .

And after the Red Comedian made his little witticism I continued, about my sister Susan and what . . .? Something about Zen. Zen? Allan Watts lived in Marin . . . what could that mean? Analyze, analyze,

Counselor: (Anal.)

How is that? Yvonne! Please you are not allowed . . .

Counselor: Oh, . . . I forgot.

It is your parentheticals that caused all of this ----

Counselor: Yes, yes it is all my fault.

I am too patient.

You see I have to be very careful. Mustn’t jump to conclusions . . .

Being an insurance adjuster was very agreeable. Collecting information, analyzing the data, preparing reports, offering considered judgments . . . and I got to meet people. And I met people under the most extraordinary circumstances. I would often check them into a motel ---

Counselor: . . .

Ah, after their homes burned down, or something . . . or in the hospital . . .

I met people from all walks of life. The doctor who had just rear ended someone----

Counselor: See!

Please Yvonne. People hit crossing the street. Or people who had just hit someone crossing the street. In Oakland. At 2 am. Drunk.

I met people all across the country . . . but I digress . . . so I thought to go to a Zen center in Marin where I thought Allan Watts may have visited, Green Gulch Farm. After I went back to see Yvonne the second time after a year, one Sunday morning five different people came up to me and made some reference to something I had said to Yvonne.

I wrote a letter to Reb Anderson the Abbot. Then a few days later attending a class at Green Gulch it occurred to me that the class was strangely quiet. Reb Anderson entered the room and sat down, a moment of silent meditation, then looking around, commented: “I sense some tension in the room . . .?”

Oh, no, I didn’t jump to any conclusions! I never do! Collected more data, test the hypothesis.

In the letter I quoted Yvonne’s comment about Green Gulch during its period of “trouble.” Mr. Baker the then “Abbot” had in Yvonne’s words been “fucking all his dominant females.” Monkey consciousness. I also pointed out the stories about Green Gulch as described in Zen in America. For example, there was the story about Jerry Brown, then the Governor of California having drinking parties at Green Gulch and the “Head of Practice” being tasked to pick up the Mumm’s champagne bottles that were strewn about the place.

This was my thinking: Some of the inmates of Green Gulch seemed to know what I had said to Yvonne, yet they were not willing to come forward. Why? I know, I’ll write to Reb Anderson, the Abbot, and see what happens. Collect more data. . . . Sounds like a good idea?

There was dead silence in the class. Reb Anderson looked around.

This was before, years before, David Horowitz wrote his biography where he mentions the Bay Area and Green Gulch Farm, and describes how Mr. Brown the “Abbot” “gave refuge” to Huey P. Newton and aided his flight to Cuba to avoid drug charges. Horowitz reveals in Radical Son that Newton, in route to Green Gulch Farm, stopped on the Bay Bridge and dropped a revolver into the bay which he had just used to kill an 17 year old prostitute, the same gun which had earlier been used to kill a police officer.

In other words the Green Gulch Farm inmates gave “refuge” to a cop killer, who ‘ran’ prostitutes, and had recently killed one, just a few hours before, dropping the gun in the bay before joining them in his flight to Cuba; they also had sponsored Jerry’s drinking parties; they covered up Mr. Browns sexual troupe, his malfeasance, betrayal of the Dharma; and thus his betrayal was their betrayal for they kept silent, covered up, acquiesced in the abuse. (Rule one of all cults: never criticize the cult.)

And Reb Anderson looked around the stony silence of the room, left right, (he also has a photographic memory, (memorizes everyone’s name so he can call on any of the 50 or 100 students, by name)), “ . . . what’s going on . . .? . . . is there some tension . . . ?”

Silence.

And Reb Anderson had himself made some references to what I had said to Yvonne; which I had made supposedly in private to her alone. For example, months earlier two inmates had been talking to each other but in my presence, for me to hear (?), “I think it is so pathetic to have to pay someone to listen to you . . .”

Next I saw Yvonne I related their conversation and admitted the truth, it is pathetic isn’t it?

Then the next week Reb Anderson speaking to the group at Green Gulch commented that “every relationship costs something.”

I was very enthusiastic. Ah! We have a relationship, Yvonne and I! A “relationship.”

But this is what I mean. I collect data. I watch. Don’t want to jump to conclusions.

Everyone was silent. No one had anything to say.

How could I have supposed that anyone would come forward? The first time I visited Green Gulch I attended a “meeting” of the ‘Alan Watts Society’ with two Zen “priests” or a “priest” and his butt boy. (see Lecture Notes: 07-06-05 Mill Valley ) They were from the “Hartford Street Zen Center” in “the Castro” of San Francisco.

Because they are “Gay” they have a right to lie, organize harassment, torment, destroy another’s life. Or if one is “radical” or if one has seen the “truth” or Dharma, or if one is a member of any other subject class, Jew, Woman, Black, or Green, Third World, any of the aggrieved, one has the privilege, permission, “right” to twist justice to his aims, his ego’s satisfaction.

Indeed, all you really have to do is get angry. Consider for example the anger against AIDS and the demand that the scientific method of double blind experiments be abandoned and the “treatments” be given directly to those in need. This policy, enacted in anger and frustration, has now been dropped.

Why? Has the anger all gone?

Some day we will return to “contact tracing” for contagious diseases, or rather for AIDS, the only contagious disease we do not use contact tracing to fight. Why the only disease? Oh, righteous anger.

Next consider, dear reader, how many have died for want of a scientifically tested treatment, in want of contact tracing? How many have you killed? What? Oh, you object to that pronoun? Your silence does not make you complicit in those deaths either. Oh. How very lucky you are. It seems you can never be held to account for anything. How I envy you your rationalizations, . . . of course, I mean I envy your reasons! Yes, yes of course. Have it your way.

So yes I have this glitch. I spent too much time collecting data, making sure, I didn’t want to accuse Yvonne wrongly. Or Marlene. Or any of you, sitting there in stony silence.

Then too I was mistaken from the first. I thought this was just happening to me. I imagined that there was some justice elsewhere. That you were treating each other differently, possibly when I was out of the room.

There was “refuge” for Huey P. Newton, who had, just hours before killed a 17 year old prostitute in Oakland, the place where I had helped people whose houses had just burned down or who had just been in a car accident, but there was no refuge for me. Huey P. Newton was aided by the Zen Center, the cop killer was helped to escape justice, but not one person came forward to tell me what they knew about Yvonne or the others.

They let me know that they knew. Not unlike so many in the media who have over the years let it be known that they knew about the burglary, the many times my employers were persuaded to let me go. I concluded that at Green Gulch the motivation may have been to tell me that they thought it was ok, that they had considered it and did not think it wrong for Yvonne to betray me, or for Michael Weiner to burgle my notebook (see Stolen Notebook at the Moynihan).

They had considered it all and they thought it was fine. (And this may also have been my sister’s motivation. The San Francisco painter wanted me to know she too thought it just.) And the class at Green Gulch, the stony silence, they too thought it just.

No one came forward. And even then I hypothesized that it was still just me! I conjectured that I was caught between the Leftists, like the friends of Huey P., on the one side and the Rush Limbaughs on the Right. But this too has been shown to be false. Null. No, not just me.

This is the world. There is no net.


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