1ST MARRIAGE FLOPs, AQUARIUS FLYS

MY first(only legal) marriage to Gwen was a hi-stress afair from start to end, lasting from Nov 64 to June 71. After heavy dating(began JFKs deathday) many parties, going steady, hot sex almost a year, she got pregnant & we had to get married. OK, good reason to move out of parents home chains into our place. But it started & finished in hypocracy, a white church wedding, so fony i should’ve puked, but faked our way thru it, as massive unconscious deniel ruled the nation. Our parents supported us coupling up to settle down & start a family. We lamedly wanted freedom to create something new, in the home - made American dream.

The peaks & pits of U$ illusions - i totalled my car(neat old Ford) driving to rent our new home a duplex, at the edege of black neighborhood. Gwens brother gave us a car(an older Plymouth) thanks! & i got $300 cash for a arm injury in accident. I worked at UP RR on wenjekends, attending college seemed ideal, untill..... Our first(& only)home Keg party ended up in drunken fights. So we dropped the party animal crowd for a more homey life, baby coming, work, school & new stereo. She worked at a bank a few months & i became hyperesponsible for supporting family, so i dropped from the wrestling team,not good enuf anyway. Our main college goal was me to graduate & teach PE in schools. As PE(jock)major i excelled at aerobic science & injured my low-back in weight-lifting class, which ached for years later, till chiropractic & yoga cleared it up in ‘71.

In ‘65 Gwen had Tony, our 1st boy, in a hospital in hi-stress, which i feared, but acted brave, drank & smoked anxiously. It secretly reminded me of my war-time orphane birth & no bonding with mother. Gwen was wounded by the delivery spinal-pain-block, bedridden for weeks in pain & nursed a couple months. She slowly recovered & stayed home mothering. I was still smoking & drinking some chronically, instead of partying out on weekends. Our sex fizzeled out, from hot ‘love’ to fantasy frustrations in our kingsize bed.

Portland St. College was becoming big hip urbane & even a hippy was elected Pres. of our S.B. ‘65-66. The anti Vietnam war peace movement was growing hot & I ignored it to keep my competitive illusions going. But silently it touched my cold hard heart. In spring of ‘67 i began seeking the Aquarian ways as my distant renegade brother turned me onto strong grass, The Beatles Sgt. Pepper, Rolling Stones, Surrealistic Pillow J.A. The Byrds, Moody Blues, Doors, etc, all sounded like angels of liberation i desperately needed to experience on our big stereo & in my heart. I finally graduated from PSU in Spring ‘67 & we moved out to a bigger house. My pot smoking was a secret from Gwen at first, later she smoked but didn’t really get hi like i did, WOW!

Gwen knew 100x what i knew about parenting(her little sister), so i trusted her to raise out 2 boys, knowing nothing about natural systems. But both our baby boys had a rare affliction, ‘pyloric stenosis’ blockage of stomach, soon after birth they puked up most food, lost weight & got dehydrated. They both required surgery to save them from starving. A decade later i learned that many babies reject bottle formula(allergies) as Gwen weaned them soon (1-2 mons), they puked up the formula we fed them. This tragedy is typical of feeding junk to hospital babies who are circumsized as i was, considering it normal, why? i didn’t question.

In many ways this was the darkest stress, that began my deeper seeking of Aquarian ways when graduating from college was ‘success’. We planned a new life, me teaching PE in school somewhere, a puppit of the system, sneeking pot on weakends, music turn-ons, waterskiing in summer, how ideal, lies. I kept on taking grad. school courses at PSU in advanced PE, the new ‘aerobics’ a hip trend. The fitness sciences was easy for me learning exersize physiology & anatomy from 3 top national experts that came to PSU to teach. But it left me heady, strong & stressed out, needing nature, love & freedom, i vaguely craved.

So 2 new programs helped me grow: the MDS Medical Diet Service providing hi-protein ‘scienctic’ foods i worked for physical fitness programs. The real turnn-on was the underground Gestalt encounter groups up from Esalen Inst. in Cali. Both were experimental, into self-discovery, more natural human potentials & new awareness, which i really wanted & leaped into. Maybe real love does exist somewhere on earth, in secret hippy groups i hope. Reading JOY - Expanding Human Awareness about open encounter group work & play, excited me more than all my college course had ever done. So joined a few groups doing encounters on weekends in 68-69 sponsored by our liberal school principle Bill Moore & run by George Saslow, Lee Fine & others.

My 2nd yr. teaching PE i tried more democratic, giving kids exercise & sports choices. In ‘69 i attended 3 groups: a weekend psychodrama training; an ongoing liberal sensitivity group & a 12 weekly evening multi-family psychodrama groups. Thru them i learned about family emotions & that my ciggy smoking habit was to belong, that i didn’t need the nasty, stinky & unhealthy(deadly) habit. So i quit tobacco on JUne 1 ‘69. Teaching PE was so stressful, conflicting with rebel kids & conservative teachers i had to quiet after 2 yrs. getting fat, sick & needing a whole new life. So i got $1,200 severance pay, ya hu! So we moved to the suburbs, a duplex with swimming pool & yard, got a better stereo. We went summer camping at Detroit lake state park with my old hi-school pals young family with our waterski boat. But i wanted cosmic love more than fun at a picnic on the lake. Joy could be full time & free? not just on weekends at groups, vacations or outdoor rock concerts. But i had a family to support, thus big responsibilities. So i took another job at survey as ‘chainman’ & got a small motorcycle to commute on. That lasted 2 mons.

Then another spirit blessing came. The opening thru The Covenant Players, a traveling hip Christian theater group from LA played our stuffy old church, instantly exciting me to join. So we had them over for dinner & party. They invited me/us to Belfare, Wash. to a show at the Mission creek youth camp(teen boys prison). WE loved the natural area of Hoods canal & took a rural sauna was ecstatic. I like it all so much & the ‘camp’ people, i aimed to work as a ‘camp counselor’ they needed. So in Sept. of ‘69 we moved whole family, U-Haul trucking to a neat house overlooking the canal/fiorde. But it was a glorified teen jail, with us guarding them. The old social-worker model was more like a hip prisoncamp than a school. Then i took mescaline, tripping on space dimensions, feelings, & paisly visions for hours WOW! Then i took a weekend workshop on ‘cosmic rays & auras’ in Seattle with psychic Jack Shwartz, who learned to meditate with in Portland months before. He saw my ‘first, red, white & blue ray’ with too much red in it, thank-you, its true, i’m mad inside. We all need to raise our vibrations, yes, but how?

So i quit the CC job & returned to Eugene, Ore. to attend the Un. of Ore grad.school of Interdisciplinary studies’ the dept. of Ed. psych in Dreikurs cooperative family counseling program under Ray Lowe who began it in 1958. Moving to Eugene was very inspiring generally, but into a small duplex on busy street on welfare stressed Gwen, new place, stangers & hippies i liked more now. I took out a student loan & took the most radical classes in the social science college. The peace movement was peaking, shut down the campus a while & 1,000s marching in the streets, i didn’t joined. But in 70 i sent in my draft-card with a letter refusing to cooperate with them. We got a old remodeled VW van to travel in hip family style in.

Meanwhile i meditated while stoned on pot, a candle & cosmic music on headphones, which Gwen didn’t like. It was a matter of timing, mystery & new freedom to come?! Making all new friends was easy for me & hard for Gwen the super mom. As i bicycled to college, deliting in learning new ways of cooperative parenting, tried sharing them with our boys who helped be. But Gwen resisted than change too. I couldn’t really tell anyone about the needs, bliss & fears inside, expanding my awareness. In fall ‘70 i attended a unique conference in Portland with the MDS(i worked partime for in Eugene) of liberal MD shrinks learning about small open encounter group process with live video tape feedback, we watched from outside the group, called ‘fishbowl’ system. A hippy commune came the last day to share with all of us 50 or so seekers, & i drove them back to Eugene to their home, out west at Crow farm. Their very cooperative hippy life enchanted me to stay for dinner, attend a long deep ‘all member’ meeting about conflict resolution by self choosen member mediation, that i listened to intensly observing their communications. After that i got a massage & slept over, driving home the next morning. It was the first rural hippy family I’d ever met or visited, vastly opening me to new hippy potentials, my family couldn’t imagine. Gwen wasn’t interested in that, psychedelics, freedom or country living. So we psychically seperated at home, as i got more turned on daily in Eugene & meditating. In 2 desperate moves to revive our sex-life we both had sex surgery, me a vascectomy & she a vagina tightening operation, OW! They both hurt & didn’t help our dying lovelife. So we became more distant than ever, & our parents supported her old goals & not my new needs & feelings.

Beside all the hippies & new parenting ways i was trying with kids, 5 radicals opened me deeper: Bucky Fuller Synergetic evolution & dome systems, M.McLuhans Understanding Media - effect on people & Ralph Nader who came to Eugene to speek words of fire & start a new PIRG, PUblic INterest Research Group. I attended, loved it, & had his 2 hip lawyers helping him, to dinner at our home & assisted them to organize it on campus with much student support. It flew from the start & is also on dozens of campuses into the 70 & 80s, & ‘90s? THe other 2 instigators were Ray Lowe, my master(Adlerian) adviser & Art Pearl, who designed the Now Poverty solutions program, which became the CETA program under Pres.Carter ‘77-’80. Both dazzeled me in lectures & work. I was the most skilled counselor in the family counseling program.

In fall of ‘70 i co-produced a live local public service TV show on local peaceful & cooperate social services. Then we took mescaline with John Cutler & his lover, & saw Fantasia movie, wow! So in winter of ‘71 i flew to Phila. to stay with him & visit NYC & meet a big mag editor about an article i wrote on MDS. It didn’t fly, but i learned seeing the HUGE city & a little Phila. Back in Eugene i took LSD seeing rainbows all over outside. Gwen was more like my old fat mom, than my lover now. But then i failed to ‘oral exam’ for the MS degree, as didn’t want to be a school counselor in the future, where cosmic mysteries, called me & I couldn’t tell them about. So then i wrote a good paper, to complete the MS degree. Gwen & i got counseling with Ray, but it didn’t solve our radical differences, i hid under depression & discouragment.

Meanwhile deepening my meditation, started to date other, more open women & trip into nature. So Gwen moved out with our 2 boys leaving our home & VW van & me to cry, meditate, dance, love, learn yoga by TV & heal stress in. In spring of ‘71 i planned to hitchike to So.Ill.Uni. to study World (peace)Game with Bucky Fuller, which was more enlitening than LSD! I continued trusting the spirit will fill my needs in the mystery of Libra love i still am. My first self-publishing project came out just before leaving Eugene to hitch east,camping on the way. It was Learning & Communication” a 16 pg booklet of 21 principles of honest encounter I’d grown to love & share bits & peaces with people in last from ‘68, striving to live them on the moment of Gestalt presense.