Cast of Characters

If you were into paranormal stuff and mysticism (like my mom) the San Diego area was a great place to be in the late 1960s.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that when we lived in Philadelphia mom had become a follower of the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. His organization was based just up the coast in Encinitas - we used to visit there from time to time...

Then - there was Mark Probert. He was a medium who channeled an entity named Yada di Shi'te who purportedly lived 500,000 years ago... Mark was elderly and in poor health when we first encountered him - he passed away not long afterward... It was fascinating watching him channel because (unlike many of his ilk) he was not an obvious fraud and didn't seem to be making any money off of it. Personally, I'm highly skeptical of the whole "channeling" thing but what Mark was doing had no simple explanation - he had some very profound insights for someone with so little formal education. Whether he was connecting to something deep in his psyche or what - I have no clue... But if there's one thing I learned growing up it's that our grasp of "reality" is incomplete, arbitrary and deeply flawed :-)

Then there was the condo owner's son (who my sister Karina had the relationship with). He was also into mysticism and was being trained as a healer by a Hawaiian kahuna named Richard. He claimed to be able to improve the synchronization of your heartbeat by pointing a finger at your nose. (I swear I'm not making this up.)

Aside: It was in those days that I discovered I could pass my hand over someone (without touching them) and tell if they were injured or feeling pain anywhere... I found out later that anyone can do it (and I thought I was special)... Apparently the palm of the hand is exquisitely sensitive to radiant heat. You can easily train yourself to pinpoint the exact location of even something as mundane as a headache or backache... People are quite impressed by it - makes a great party trick... But I digress :-)

Then there were the Scientologists from La Jolla... I have to be careful what I say here or they'll threaten to sue me :-) Karina was being "audited" for free because she was seen as someone who could influence others... She made it all the way to OT-4 before bailing out... We used to hang out with a lot of people from that group...
OK - this is funny: To shield herself from negative energies Karina used to take a small paper bag, cut a hole in one side and stick it under her blouse.. She started wearing one to the Scientology meetings when she was planning on splitting from the group... Yeah - that kind of thing that seemed perfectly normal in the context of my childhood :-)

Another aside: I am also reminded of how much I hate running errands for other people:
One evening the head of the La Jolla Scientology center handed me a teapot and told me to go to the Chinese restaurant next door to get it filled with tea. I said "Don't I need some money?" and was told "No - we keep a running tab - just tell them that XXX sent you."...
So I went to the restaurant and told them XXX sent me and the response was "We have no idea who XXX is and we don't carry tabs." I still managed to talk them out of the tea - but that's not the point.
I can't tell you how many times during my early working years I got sent on errands with no instructions other than "Find Fred and tell him Joe sent you. He'll know exactly what's going on". And the outcome was almost always the same. Either nobody had heard of Fred or Fred had no idea what I was talking about... That used to really piss me off... But I digress again :-)

On the "non-mystical" side there was the biker known as Saint Paul. He'd had a rough childhood and mom kind of "adopted" him... I know that he was wanted in connection with a variety of crimes but the police didn't know his real name... When he visited his buddies in jail he was always afraid that someone would slip up and use his street name - he still visited anyway... At one point Karina had a relationship with him too...

There were lots of other interesting characters who drifted in and out of our lives on Mission Beach - mom always seemed to need an entourage - but those are the ones who stand out the most.

Sigh - I realize that these blog entries are getting few and far between... It's really hard to organize my thoughts about what went on during that period of time... I wasn't in a very happy place back then...