Knowledge and Beliefs

By late 1968 mom had been into yoga and meditation for years. Her belief system also included reincarnation, astrology (which she learned as a child in Transylvania), extraterrestrials, vibrations, auras and a bunch of other stuff (including the Catholicism she grew up with)...

She had always made a big deal of how special we were - and that "specialness" evolved with her beliefs... Yes - in addition to being the progeny of generations of highly refined intellectuals and artists - my mom, sister and I (having been reincarnated thousands of times - including some well known historical figures) were now on our "last lives". We were ready to move up to the next plane of existence (whatever that might be) and it was our responsibility - as enlightened souls - to educate the less evolved among us...

I guess I more or less believed it at the time. (As much as I've ever believed anything... Oh - me of little faith...) It just made it harder to figure out why I couldn't handle the trivial things that most people dealt with on a daily basis... I guess I must have been too evolved... Yeah - that must have been it :-)

I know it all sounds a bit silly in retrospect... But it's no sillier than the idea that a bunch of matter got together one day and decided to spontaneously burst into a universe that somehow managed to produce life on (at least) a single planet - all at random, yet still guided by a wondrously balanced set of mathematical principles... Not to mention the alternate explanation that all of this was deliberately created by some higher intelligence for some incomprehensible purpose...
Sigh - I still haven't come across an explanation for our existence that makes a lick of sense... If only we didn't exist then all of these "explanations" would be mere hypotheses and we could all have a good laugh over how stupid they sound... But noo - we had to go and exist ... Silly us :-)

I know I'm going a bit deep here... I just want to point out that knowledge is a moving target... You can have an awful lot of it and still not understand a darn thing... And that's totally OK - just as long as you don't fool yourself into thinking knowledge and understanding are the same thing :-) But I totally digress...

I spent those months on Mission Beach friendless, clueless and confused - despondent over a relationship that never was - with a girl I never knew... At some point I stopped caring about very much of anything...

On school days I'd stay in bed after the alarm went off - and if I was still awake 15 minutes later I'd get up and go to school... Otherwise mom would just write a note saying I was sick...

Sometimes I would sneak out late at night and dive into the ocean - fully clothed - swim out past the breakers - and just float there - letting the tide have its way with me... It was awesome :-) ... I always drifted back toward shore (eventually). I'm not really sure what I would have done if I hadn't. (I never peeked to see which way I was headed - that would have defeated the whole purpose...) But I guess (in retrospect) I'm glad I didn't have to find out :-)

I still had my Vox electric guitar - but without an amp playing wasn't very satisfying... Still - that was around the time when "Classical Gas" was getting a lot of air time. That inspired me to expand my musical horizons: In addition to Clapton and Hendrix I started playing stuff like Classical Gas - and Malaguena - Girl From Ipanema - a bit of Bach - even some Beatles ballads ("If I fell", "Yesterday", "Michelle") ... Pretty much anything that could be worked out solo on a guitar... That was about the only thing that kept me sane :-)

And I can't close the book on Mission Beach with mentioning the Jefferson Airplane "Surrealistic Pillow" album... A couple of the songs ("Today" and "Coming Back to Me") meshed exquisitely with my mood. For example: "The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long. The winter looked the same, as if it never had gone." That's some excellent music to be depressed to... I swear - Airplane never really got the credit they deserved. The oldie's stations don't play anything but "White Rabbit"... That was far from their best material...

So yeah - leave it to me to not have a good time in paradise... Somehow I just didn't belong there... I didn't think like they did - I didn't act like they did - I simply wasn't one of them... But it was only for a few months... Then it got worse :-)