Through dreams and moments of awakening, Jack continues his journal.

Man is an incomplete being. The fourth way is a system that gives instruction for his further development.






Moments of Awakening Chapter Two




It’s Christmas day, 2004. I’m walking though a large stadium complex with my video camera. Filming as I walk, I focus on faces in the crowded hallways and try to film the side rooms. Through a window, I get a peek at a high mountain and think that I’d rather be outside. I walk down a hallway and film a couple of good-looking women who smile for the camera. Passing them, I shut off the camera and walk through a side door. I find that I’m near the top level of the stadium. I think that I ought to climb to the top, but go back inside to continue filming.

I’m in a middle school cafeteria, a fourteen year old. I look around at all the beautiful girls and try to focus on the prettiest one. A boy my age come up and pours me a cup of coffee. I thank him and continue to look at the girls thinking how great it is to have my pick of the lot.

It’s next to the last day of 2004. I’m walking down Tombs Road with my dog. The dog is part of my disguise as a middle class retiree. To the West of Tombs Road, the whole San Joaquin Valley rolls all the way to the inner costal mountain range. To the East, the clouds climb over the tiny housing developments, soar over millions, and millions of acres of almond and walnut orchards, and rise over the cattle dotted foothills to meet the mighty Seirra. I’m walking through the middle of the largest agriculture valley in the world. Blue sky and a burst of sunlight peeks through parting clouds that soar thousand of feet above the valley.

South of Tombs, I spot a dozen or so migrant workers spread out across a field. They are too far away for me to see what they are doing. They’re wearing yellow rain pants and most still have their yellow rain slickers on. Looking like tiny toy chessmen in the distant field, they help me to see how tiny I stand in the depth of the Valley.

This morning walking between January storms toward Tombs Road, the Valley Sky opens up all the way to the inner coastal mountain range. The tiny peaks of Mt. Oslo shine blackness below a band of white cumulus clouds. I shrink to my true proportion, as I turn right on Tombs and step into the farmland. And, I ask myself; Can we prove that there is not other conscious life in the universe? Have we lived a billion years and explored every level of reality? Is there nothing above and beyond time-thought? Gurdjieff says, "You must remember that there is nothing dead, or inanimate in nature. Everything in its own way is alive; everything in its own way is intelligent and conscious. Only this consciousness and intelligence is expressed in a different way on different levels of being-that is, on different scales."

It’s a couple days later. I’m in some kind of large arcade with an illegal immigrant girl. I’m thinking that I can help her find a job here. We walk past a stand where several women are selling used clothing and ask if they need any help. They tell us no.

At the far end of the building we see a large vinyl pool. There’s a man and his teenage assistant that are setting up a movie camera and screen for a show. The man is yelling at the boy, telling him that he is doing everything wrong. “You’re fired. Get out of here,” he tells the boy.

“You would be able to hook up these wires wouldn’t you?” the man asks me pointing to some electrical equipment.

“I can do it. I can do it,” the boy says.

“I told you you’re fired. Get out of here,” the man tells him.

“Yea, I think so,” I answer.

“O.K. you start tomorrow. Your hours will be from ten A. M. to ten P.M.”

“My friend here needs a job too,” I say.

“Good. She can start tomorrow too.”

Next morning, I report to work at ten, but instead of going to the arcade, I go to a middle school. They tell me I have to put the records in order. I begin looking through report cards and cum folders and settle down at a desk.

It’s a day later; I ‘m substituting in a high school classroom. There are only a few students in the room waiting for class to begin. Several of them are playing cards. I check them out and discover that the deck is marked, the student that owns the cards can cheat at will. I take the boy to the office and explain that the boy has marked cards. He is very up set that he is in trouble.

Back in the classroom with the boy, I discover that he has several more marked decks in his possession. I tell him he must give me all of the marked cards immediately or I’ll send him back to the office. He hands over the cards with tears in his eyes.

I’m getting the grandkids ready for school. We are in a motel in a strange city. I yell at them to hurry and be sure to gather up all of the things they have to take to the classroom. While they getting their things together, I go out into a large underground complex. I’m looking for a government building where I intend to apply for a job. Then it strikes me that I have to leave for school in ten minutes and that I don’t have enough time to apply for the job. I tell myself that I have to take the day off. I’ll drop the kids off at school and come back afterwards, I think.

Back in the motel room, the kids still aren’t ready. I tell them I’ll be back in five minutes and we’ll have to go. I reenter the underground complex to try and find the government building. I notice an information stand. Walking up to it I ask the man behind the counter where the employment office is. Then, I think that I’ve been there already and couldn’t find a job. “Not the employment office, the Federal Building. I want to apply for a Federal job.”

“It’ a couple blocks up the street,” he tells me pointing to a street above the complex.

I’m thinking that I’ll have to find the street from the exit where I’m parked, and tell myself I can do it.

It’s a couple days later. I ‘m standing at a high mountain creek with Anne and a guide. He tells us that we have to catch our breakfast fish from the creek. I explain that we don’t have any fishing gear. He tells me that I can just reach in and catch them by hand. He points at a couple of fish under the wooden footpath bridge. I reach into the water and pull out a silvery fish about a foot long. It wiggles out of my hands and jumps back into the water.

I reach in again and pull out another fish. It’s a little larger than the first one. I put it up on the bank away from the water. The guide tells me that to kill the fish I have to put a fork in its nose and pull upward. “It will die instantly and feel less pain,” he says. I reach in and pull out another fish, and give it to Anne. “Ohhh,” she screams as it fights to get out of her hands.

“Hold tight, that’s our breakfast,” I tell her. I take the first fish, put the fork in its nostrils and pull upward. I can hear the spinal cord snap. Anne hands me the second fish. It wiggles so much that I can’t get the fork into its nostrils. I hit it with a rock and it quiets down. I stick in the fork and give it an upward thrust. The fish dies.

I carry a whitened animal skull to the edge of the mountain and look down over a wide valley thousands of feet below. A bird swoops by and takes the skull from my hand. I return to the creek and find that the guide is gone and Anne is cooking our fish.

A couple days go by. I’m walking into crowded restaurant lobby with Stoke and a friend of his. I figure we are just going to have a beer and then go eat dinner at my house. Instead, Stoke and his friend take seats in the lobby. There is not room for me to sit. I walk into the next room and find an empty chair. “I’m gonna borrow this for a minute,” I tell a waitress and carry the chair into the lobby. I set the chair next to Stoke and his friend and tell them that I’ll buy the first round. Stoke hands me a five-dollar bill. I figure that five bucks won’t be enough for three beers in this place, and slip the money into my Levi’s pocket.

“When are you ever going to learn how to handle yourself in a place like this?” Stoke’s friend asks. He hands a hundred dollar bill to a waiter and tells him to bring us three beers. He hands a fifty-dollar bill to the hostess and tells her that we’d like good seats as quickly as possible.

Some time goes by. Stoke’s friend has a small calculator in his hand. “You’ve lost one thousand eighty five dollars,” he tells me. I read the numbers and figure we must have been playing cards or something.

“Oh, well, the night is still young. I have time to win it back,” I say feeling really bad that I’ve lost so much money. I look at Stoke and his friend and see that they are both sound asleep. I guess the night is not as young as I thought, I tell myself.

I’m dressed in an Air Force flight suit sitting in a flight simulator with an instructor and a fellow pilot. The instructor tells us that when we are flying with a partner it is as if we are one person. “Everything you do you do together. You do nothing without first thinking of the effect that it will have on your partner,” the instructor says. My partner looks pretty bored with the instruction, and like me, he wants to get on with the flying.

“Remember, when you go on a mission, your wing man and you are spiritually joined together. Nothing can separate you. You are joined together until death.”

I’m walking outside with my dog on a foggy California night. The fog is at about three hundred feet, no stars are visible, but I can see the approach of headlights on the other side of the fields about a mile or more away. My moving center is really into the night, each footfall echoes through out my entire body. I sense the warm dampness of the evening air to my very bones. And my emotional center feels very deeply the silence of the surrounding fields and orchards. I catch my thinking center planning a reply to the last post at round table on the subject of our machine. As soon as I catch the thinking center at work, it shuts off and experiences the splendor of this winter night.

Another moment of Self Observation: My moving center is really into scrubbing the bathroom sink. I can sense the increase in pressure deep in my gut as I come to a dirty spot and rub harder. My thinking center and emotional center are listening to Simon and Gurfunkle. Is it the thinking center or the emotional center that sings along? “I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told. I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles….” The emotional center goes deeper into the guitar and background music. And through that center, I hear the beat of punches hitting a light bag. The thinking center picks up more lyrics. “All lies and jest. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Lie La Le. Lie la lie lie lie lie lie lie. Lie la lie. Lie lie lie ….” All three centers grove on words and music as the moving center drops the sponge and lets the body dance….

It’s a late Sunday afternoon in January. A flight of several hundred wild geese scramble back into formation and cut a path from east to west across the Valley sky. Rain falls pitter-patter in little drops into the backyard puddles. Swallows flit from tree to tree and disappear into the rain. Several small birds dive into an evergreen in the neighbor’s back yard.

Earlier in the day as I get caught in a shower, I see how conditioned we are to avoid the winter rain. A burst of panic sets my feet going into a near run as the wind cuts into my face and lifts the hood of my jacket. I think how Anne going to tell me how stupid I look coming home all wet. Seeing my mechanical reaction, I slow down and savor the burst of tiny raindrops that brush my hair and face. I feel the wind caress my body and enjoy the vigorous sting on my cheeks. Several thousand feet above, a pair of winter crows wing their way southward. It is so great to be a man, to be conscious of this winter night, I tell myself.

Are you saying that man is the only conscious being in the Universe? Isn't that a little arrogant. There are some who believe that the Earth is conscious, that the stars too have a consciousness higher than man's. Wasn't the creation a conscious act? Are there no beings with a higher level of consciousness than man? an I asks as I continue to savor the night.

How very difficult it is to teach the truth. How very difficult to tell the truth in my writing. “Everything they tell you is a lie. Everything….” Rambauid wrote. But, I learned it first from Henry Miller and then from experience. Earning near a hundred thousand a year and still broke….

I’m in a sixth grade classroom. The light blows out on the overhead projector on which sits three pages of history notes that the students are suppose to copy. I tell the kids to read pages 61-70 and take notes on their own. “Miss May doesn’t make us copy from the book,” a couple students tell me. “We don’t know what to copy,” says another. “You can get a new bulb in the library,” a third volunteers.

“Open your books to page sixty one and start reading,” I tell the students.

“We always take notes first, then we read,” a student whines.

“We already read this lesson,” another tells me.

“Good. It will be easier the second time. Read!” I tell them. Several bow their heads and pretend to read while I write a pass and send a kid to get the replacement bulb.

“Miss May never makes us read silently,” Jennifer screams.

“Do I look like Miss May?” I yell back.

“Read! You guys do understand English don’t you!” I yell at the class.
Several more heads bow. The boy returns with the light bulb.

“Don’t touch it with your bare hands. You have to put on a glove,” Jennifer yells at me.

Screw you. I tell myself and squeeze the bulb with my bare hand. I slide it into the slot, twist the metal wire that holds it in place and close the lid. When I turn on the machine it light ups up for a minute and then goes out with a flash.

“I told the dude not to touch it,” Jennifer says in a stage whisper.

“Alright, you guys win. I’ll copy it on the white board,” I tell the class as I go for a blue marker.

I begin writing the first page of notes that are taken word for word from the textbook. “Can you write a little bigger?” several students ask. “You spelled Constantinople wrong,” a student tells me. “I told him not to touch the bulb,” Jennifer repeats.

I write the notes on the board turning every sentence or two to stare down the students who are still talking. After I’ve copied two pages on the board, I turn and spy Jason sitting back staring at the ceiling. I walk to his desk and see a piece of blank paper. “What? I’m working my tail off copying these notes on the board and you sit back doing nothing!!!!” I scream at him.

“Well, you don’t have to yell at me,” Jason says picking up his pencil.

“I don’ t have to yell at you? I don’t have to yell at you?” I ask and then it strikes me that he’s right. I don’t have to yell at him. What does it matter if he copies the notes or not? Why am I so identified?” I ask myself, as a smile likes up my face.

It’s a week or two later. I’m sorting through a number of tags that I want to use to mark something. I’m not sure how to use the tags or what I want to mark with them, but I know that it is very important that I use them correctly.

I take one of the tags that says, “F=HxF” and write the formula on the chalkboard. There is a sticker with a yellow sports car next to the tag. I draw the sports car on the board in a very accurate reproduction. I wonder that I can draw so well. I ask several students to solve the formula.

“You can’t solve it. You can’t use the same unknown on both sides of the equation,” one of the students tells me.

“Yea, and the unknown cannot equal itself,” another student says.

I look at the tags and think I have to pull up another one. Again, I think that it is crucial that I learn what the tags mean and where they should go. When I wake up, I’m still thinking that I have to learn what the tags represent.

It’s the next evening. I’m at home with Alex just finishing up dinner. I tell him that we’re thinking of buying a new house. “I want to get one that’s at least fifty years old, one with old plants and trees that are at least fifty years old. I like to take care of old stuff like that…”

Alex asks if I’d like to take an after dinner walk, and motions with his hand to his lips that we could smoke a J. He has my sweatshirt in his other hand. I tell him I’ll have to go into the bedroom to get my shoes.

I’m back in a Philadelphia apartment house, a young kid again. There is a beautiful young blonde girl with me. We’re trying to get out of the building. We go down one hallway and see that it leads to dirty alley where several drunks are lounging. We go back the other way and see that we will have to climb down into a cellar window box and squeeze through an iron gate to get out. We go back to the hallway and crack the door. There are several more drunks in the alley. We decide to squeeze through the cellar window. The landlord looks out at us and yells that we should not be going through his window.

I’m really excited to be on the streets in Philly and can’t wait to see what Columbia Avenue is like. I think how great it will be to walk down 13th Street. The girl tells me that she is supposed to go to work at the corner store. “The store owner told me I can have all the candy I want if I work for him,” she says.

I’m sure that the owner has a sexual interest in the girl and tell her that she shouldn’t be working for him.

“But, I promised,” she tells me.

We turn on to 13th Street and I see Vance in the middle of the block. He holds up my sweatshirt and starts towards us. He eyes light up when I introduce him to the girl. He pulls out a hand full of joints and asks if we want to light up. The J’s are rolled in a way that I’ve never seen before. They look like figs, about three inches wide and a couple inches long. I take a long hit and pass the J to the girl. “Looks like I won’t be going to work tonight,” the girl says and sucks in her breath.

“The difference between the Dylan and Rage Against the Machine renditions of Maggie’s Farm is that Dylan is loose and happy. Rage is up tight and mad about the whole thing,” I tell Alex next evening as we sit at my dinner table. “Dylan ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s Pa no mo, ‘cause he’s tired of working for nickels and dimes. He’s happy to be free and poor and enjoying life. He doesn’t need their money, advice, or morals. He doesn’t believe their lies. But, he’s happy about it. He’s glad to be free.

Rage is mad about the whole situation. He hasn’t changed Dylan’s lyrics and he spits them out in a hard mechanical way. He’s stiff and unhappy like he still wants the nickels and dimes, but he doesn’t want to work for them. He’s mad at the machine, but hasn’t freed himself from the conditioned violence.

A major difference between the sixties and right now, some sixties people, Dylan included, saw the conditioning and were able to jump clear of the clockwork, at least for the moment. Today, we can’t see that we too are conditioned and anger will not help us to awaken and free ourselves from our imprisonment.