Reply #11: I remember 35 years ago climbing the mountains and seeing the big brown bubble of LA smog [View All]

[struggle4progress]

from 200 miles away. That was not far from Charlie Manson's old hideout, though he was in jail by then. There was a story in the papers somewhere around that time about a guy who, stopped by the cops, said "I have a problem: I'm a cannibal" and pulled some gnawed fingers from his pocket

And perhaps the "Oh shit I'll never do this again" moment of my life was a hitched ride in a car through the Sierra, along a high twisting road with sheer drop-offs and no guardrails, in which the driver suddenly started to tell me about his failed love-life and his despair and desire to end it all, as I cheerfully bubbled back about the gorgeous natural world all around us and how beautiful the sunrise was every morning

From there, I ended up in Berkeley where a friend of mine and I sat in bar, listening to a stranger tell us he planned to jump off the Golden Gate and we responded with our best adolescent absurdist/Zen chitchat, trying to talk him out off it. My friend and I were leathery-tanned field workers then, and my friend finally snuffed out his handrolled cigarette on one of the calluses on my hand; he'd probably done it plenty enough times experimentally to himself; it didn't hurt, and I never got even a blister; but the poor would-be jumper was terribly alarmed by this; his eyes opened wide in disbelief and horror, and he scurried off for saner company

I always thought it was a bit of a crazy place. But perhaps I saw it through crazy eyes