Travelled a lot back then, writing stories and songs, sold a few and lost a few and one day I was told I should meet the man. ‘Say the right words’ I was told ‘bow and scrape and he’ll maybe help you along the way,’ but I never did get around to that. Just couldn’t do it don’t you know, like I was prostituting myself, though it would seem there’s not too many around these days who have a problem with that.
Finding the Red Sun
Travelled a lot back then, writing stories and songs, sold a few and lost a few and one day I was told I should meet the man. ‘Say the right words’ I was told ‘bow and scrape and he’ll maybe help you along the way,’ but I never did get around to that. Just couldn’t do it don’t you know, like I was prostituting myself, though it would seem there’s not too many around these days who have a problem with that. I wrote stories and songs and moved on. Joined the Merchant Marines ferrying oil from Baytown Texas to some place I can’t recall in Nam. It got pretty rugged after a while and when unfriendlies blew a hole in the hull and the ship sank I called it a day and moved on peddling stories and songs. I sold a few and lost a few and pretty soon I was broke but hey, what else was new.
I traveled a lot back then worked in the diamond mines and the gold fields too, worked out in the empty places where no one really wants to be. I liked it though, all that hushed emptiness spoke to me the way the sea seemed to do. Just a restless kid I guess, and in between times I wrote stories and songs and three act plays that I doubt were much good. Sold a few and lost a few and pretty soon I was broke again.
Signed on with a steel erecting team spent a few months doing that but finally I had to admit heights just didn’t agree with me, got sunstroke too first day on the job, 39ºC and I’m up in the air eight hours without even a hat. You wouldn’t get away with that today. Worked in music selling albums and tapes, wholesale and retail. I wrote a novel or two and penned a few songs and when the crows gathered I moved on. I started up a small business but I wasn’t wise and an associate robbed me blind, broke again. Wrote a novel or two and penned a song because in between trying to earn a living that’s really what I do. I write because I can’t not write, but on the business side I’m just not wise. Too trusting I’m told that’s why you’re always broke but damn, you write a good story and pen a catchy song.
Travelled a lot back then I just couldn’t stay in one place for long. I always wanted to see what was round the next bend. I rode an old BSA Gold Star and I can say I just about rode that bike until the metal gave way. I bought a Triumph Tiger after that and later an AJS gleaming black.
Back then I traveled a lot; climbed a pyramid in Egypt until I was forced down at gunpoint; explored all the nooks and crannies of the Fort of the Knights of St John on the island of Malta; watched the sunset over the Bay of Bengal and the way the light sometimes flicker shifts on the Mesa Verde. I watched the sunrise at Stonehenge and tracked down more than just a few ancient mysteries. I wrote about the Temple of the Rose in Valencia and the hidden Fraternity of the Rose that exists to this day. I wrote about the Chalk Poet and different planes of reality. I wrote stories and books and penned a few songs. I wrote about gunfighters and outlaws and the romance of the Grail. I wrote about love and mystery, secrets and shadows and the indomitable spirit and light in us all.
Back then I traveled a lot wrote a few stories and penned an odd song, now it seems a lot of writers need an army just to get along and write a book, and when the crows gathered in the shadows I moved on. I wasn’t wise, just a restless kid and I didn’t know some people out there circle like sharks before moving in for the kill. It makes me sound dumb I know but it took me quite a while to figure that out. You’re too trusting I was told. Around that time Roger Daltry released a song titled Giving it all Away and some years prior to that Bobby Darin recorded Darling Be Home Soon. I tried to imagine what that would be like, to know love so deep. Those two songs said it all no matter what I wrote, and when the crows gathered, when the sharks moved in, I moved on. There’s a lot I could say that in the cold light of day probably doesn’t make too much sense, unless you just happen to view something or our world in a slightly different way, a sort of interlinked reality so to speak.
Back then I thought meeting the old man was just chance, later I wasn’t so sure. Back then I was just a restless kid, I’d never heard of the Red Sun or knew anything about the Red Sun’s implicate, spiritual cognition.
Travelled a lot, writing stories and songs, I was in Magdalena when I met the Indian or maybe he met me I really couldn’t say, it changed my life but I didn’t know that back then, just a restless kid moving on. I was riding a Triumph at the time, which was about as close as I could come to the notion of saddling up and riding free.
It was sundown, I was taking a walk and suddenly he was there in front of me. I assumed he must have been standing in the shadow of a nearby alley. “You return,” he said without any preamble and then launched straight into a mumble jumble story about the Red Sun. I had no clear idea of what exactly he was talking about. He said he was an Old Desert Indian. He said, “You return,” then he just stopped talking turned around and shuffled off pointing towards the hills. Why not, I thought, why not, I’d seen southern Utah, Texas and Nevada, why not Old Mexico.
I got lost in the Sierra Madre in a tangle of hills when the trail petered out. Why I’d turned off the main road, such as it was, to follow a gut feeling I will never know. I got lost and the Triumph was having a hard time of it. It wasn’t exactly built to tackle sand and dry wash hills; even so I gunned the engine and kept on moving. Come the next day I was beginning to worry that I might have to abandon the bike and walk out. There was an odd feel to the hills on that second day, as though time was somehow stretched out and thin. I thought I saw movement out the corner of my eye but nothing came of it. It was hot and dusty, incredibly silent and still. Heat rose in shimmering waves. I was good for water but not much else and the bike was running on fumes. There is much I could say that makes no sense in the cold light of day.
Travelled a lot back then writing stories and songs, I sold a few and lost a few and when the Dark River rose high I moved on.
I topped a rise walking the bike and there it was spread out before me; a small enclosed valley, surrounded by sere rolling hills, behind the hills I could see a range of hazy blue mountains. A hidden place, I thought, hard to find for all a winding, white dust road, I’d missed completely, snaked through the hills leading to the valley. I could see a cluster of adobe buildings, horses and people who seemed to be looking in my direction though it was too far to be sure. Spluttering on the last dregs of fuel, I rode in, just as the engine died.
He said it was called Valle Pervdido de Rio, the Lost River Valley, I stayed for a while. He told me about the Red Sun, about the Nurmaná Road and the Woman-Who-Sings-In-The-Summer-Valley and much else besides. I had trouble taking it all in but it smoothed out after awhile. It seemed important to him that I should know. He looked deep in my eyes, he said it was there shining through but he never said what.
When I left the valley I had no trouble finding my way back across the border. Odd as it may seem, I’d met two complete strangers miles apart who, when we met, said much the same thing, “You return”: and then started in talking about the Red Sun as if they expected me to know, and about all they were doing was reminding me, just in case it had slipped my mind. And it wasn’t until I crossed the border that I felt time was as it should be and the familiarity of the walk around world was back in place again.
Finding the Red Sun, one day, I told myself, I’ll write about that. Never did, not in detail that is. Back then I was just a restless kid wrote a few stories and penned a few songs and when the crows gathered I moved on. I have gained much and I have lost much and I believe there is balance in all this somewhere, for all at times I am hard pressed to find it, the weighted measure so to speak.
There is much I could say that makes no sense in the cold light of day; I don’t believe I met that old man in Magdalena by chance.
To be continued — sometime!
Poetry. Various urgent, lively, and sometimes haunting poems appear here alongside stark black and white photos of Jones' homeless subjects. Jones takes on the plight of the homeless in different voices, echoing the thoughts of people on the streets,
This second revised edition describes, from Onlinesss Self Awakening perspective, the major Truth-consciousness realm-waves of transcendent Self Awakening
