We are now in 1967, and I think I need to back up a little bit.
In the first part of that year, I was living in an apartment on Valencia Street in the Mission. One incident in particular that I remember was a more or less all-night party in that apartment. My sister, Patricia, was visiting. Elsa (Johanna) was there that night, a college student friend of hers, Miriam, Bob, Miriam's black boyfriend, and myself. I had my guitar out, and Miriam and I were trading songs while we drank rotgut jug wine. That was when I learned the beautiful "Shalom, Chaverim." While it was still light out, we took a walk to get some fresh air (and probably also to get more wine). We saw a man lying in the gutter on Valencia Street, probably just an old wino whose drink had got the better of him. But people were just walking by like there was nothing wrong, which really bothered us. Bob took it upon himself to step into a bar (no cellphones in those days) and call for the paramedics. I mention this for reasons that you will see momentarily.
Back in the apartment, we proceeded to get drunker and louder. We sang every song we knew, and when it was quite late we made up our own, singing "Mountain Castle Wine" as a round, in four-part harmony. At least there were four parts, but I'm not sure how harmonious it was. Finally, we crashed all over the floor. When we got up the next morning, we took turns using the one bathroom in the apartment to empty the contents of our stomachs.
A couple of days later, my landlady, a frowzy, obese redhead from Florida, read me the riot act for having brought a black man into the building. I told her how Bob had called for help for the old wino, while all the white men on the street just walked on by. Her response was, "Don't you talk about white men that way!" I'm not making this up. Nobody tells me who my friends can be, and I decided to get out of there as soon as possible. The opportunity came in May, just as the Summer of Love was about to explode.
My friend Dan showed up in town from Detroit with his one-eyed friend Al and a bag of purple LSD.
For a while they were crashing in my apartment, but I quickly made arrangements with a friend at work to rent their two-story Victorian at 72 Pierce St., near Haight and Steiner. At first it was the three of us, but we quickly grew to six people. We told the landlords that we would pay extra if we could have that many people living in the house, and they agreed to it. That was the beginning of one of the most memorable times of my life.
By August, we had been living in the communal house for three months. The Steve Miller Band also had a communal house on Pierce, a block away from us. Just to the south was Duboce Park. If we walked for twenty minutes, we would be in the "downtown" part of the Haight-Ashbury.
Anyway, Julie showed up there around that time, intending to stay with me. Within a day or two, Kirsten also showed up, telling me that her father had a private detective on her trail. She had again come with Mike and his wife, and my housemates had shown them all up to my bedroom to chill while they waited for me to come home from work. While they were chilling, they saw Julie's clothes hanging in my closet. Since they knew I wasn't a transvestite, they figured there was going to be a problem.
This was the exact "Coming to Meet" that I had glimpsed when Julie and I were doing the I Ching. I told Julie that I needed to talk to Kirsten. Outside, in the back garden, which was inhabited by our pet rabbit, I explained to Kirsten that Julie was there, and that she would have to go. She wasn't happy about it, but took it philosophically. I don't know whether she stayed or went back to SD, but I never saw her again.
(to be continued)
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Journal of a Naked Poet VIII
They say that if you remember the Sixties, you weren't there. I'm having some trouble putting events in their proper order, so I guess I was there.
In 1966 I started work for a stock brokerage firm on Montgomery Street (the "Wall Street of the West") in San Francisco. Once I had proved myself on the job (so well, in fact, that they made me a supervisor), I started growing a beard. This had more to do with Judaism than the Hippie thing, but I guess they were both factors. One day the Assistant Manager of the back office I worked in came over to my desk and asked me about the beard. I said, "it's part of my religion." He said, "I thought you were in a seminary, and all that." I had not anticipated that he would know about that (you had to be bondable in that job, so they investigated you very thoroughly). Thinking at lightning speed, I said,"Oh, you mean the yeshiva. Yeah, I tried that, but decided that it wasn't right for me." He went away and left me alone. But as time went on, two things happened: my beard got longer, and the Vietnam War heated up. The Manager (not his assistant) called me into his office and told me that some of the clients were complaining that, while their son was fighting in Vietnam, the brokerage firm was hiring hippies. I suggested that they move my work space to a spot where the clients coming to the window couldn't see me. That's what they did.
Why wasn't I fighting in Vietnam? I was neither 2-D (Divinity Student) nor 2-S (Student) after December 1964. Technically, I was available to be drafted, and had already been called in for two physicals, which I flunked because (wait for it) I was underweight. In '64 I would have been willing to go, in '66 not so sure, and by the time they called me for the last time, in 1970, they had also invaded Cambodia, and I had burned my draft card, so I don't think so.
I had protested various situations since the SNCC (Students' Non-violent Coordinating Committee) time in 1964. In '66 I marched in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, carrying a tambourine. It must have been a major demonstration, because my friend Mike and his then wife, Maureen, drove up from San Diego for it, with a young woman named Kirsten. She was an artist, and kind of dreamy and way out there. For some reason, I caught her imagination. Fortunately, they all had to go back to SD. Kirsten and I exchanged addresses. We even wrote to each other, using our artwork as a kind of code, because her father was extremely protective and suspicious. He also had some bucks, as the owner of an electronics firm.
The next year, on a visit to San Diego in July, I sat with Julie on the floor of her parents' home in Lemon Grove, as she taught me how to throw the I Ching. It was quite amazing, and when I got the hexagram Kou - Coming to Meet, I knew with certainty what was going to happen. It did.
Text © 2020 by Donald C.Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
In 1966 I started work for a stock brokerage firm on Montgomery Street (the "Wall Street of the West") in San Francisco. Once I had proved myself on the job (so well, in fact, that they made me a supervisor), I started growing a beard. This had more to do with Judaism than the Hippie thing, but I guess they were both factors. One day the Assistant Manager of the back office I worked in came over to my desk and asked me about the beard. I said, "it's part of my religion." He said, "I thought you were in a seminary, and all that." I had not anticipated that he would know about that (you had to be bondable in that job, so they investigated you very thoroughly). Thinking at lightning speed, I said,"Oh, you mean the yeshiva. Yeah, I tried that, but decided that it wasn't right for me." He went away and left me alone. But as time went on, two things happened: my beard got longer, and the Vietnam War heated up. The Manager (not his assistant) called me into his office and told me that some of the clients were complaining that, while their son was fighting in Vietnam, the brokerage firm was hiring hippies. I suggested that they move my work space to a spot where the clients coming to the window couldn't see me. That's what they did.
Why wasn't I fighting in Vietnam? I was neither 2-D (Divinity Student) nor 2-S (Student) after December 1964. Technically, I was available to be drafted, and had already been called in for two physicals, which I flunked because (wait for it) I was underweight. In '64 I would have been willing to go, in '66 not so sure, and by the time they called me for the last time, in 1970, they had also invaded Cambodia, and I had burned my draft card, so I don't think so.
I had protested various situations since the SNCC (Students' Non-violent Coordinating Committee) time in 1964. In '66 I marched in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, carrying a tambourine. It must have been a major demonstration, because my friend Mike and his then wife, Maureen, drove up from San Diego for it, with a young woman named Kirsten. She was an artist, and kind of dreamy and way out there. For some reason, I caught her imagination. Fortunately, they all had to go back to SD. Kirsten and I exchanged addresses. We even wrote to each other, using our artwork as a kind of code, because her father was extremely protective and suspicious. He also had some bucks, as the owner of an electronics firm.
The next year, on a visit to San Diego in July, I sat with Julie on the floor of her parents' home in Lemon Grove, as she taught me how to throw the I Ching. It was quite amazing, and when I got the hexagram Kou - Coming to Meet, I knew with certainty what was going to happen. It did.
Text © 2020 by Donald C.Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
The Body Is the Garment / Le corps est le vêtement / El cuerpo es la prenda / O corpo é a roupa
The body is the garment,
why put clothes on clothes?
Until the body is gone,
we are not really naked.
Le corps est le vêtement,
pourquoi mettre des vêtements sur les vêtements?
Jusqu'à ce que le corps soit parti,
nous ne sommes pas vraiment nus.
El cuerpo es la prenda,
¿Por qué poner ropa en la ropa?
Hasta que el cuerpo se haya ido
No estamos realmente desnudos.
O corpo é a roupa,
por que colocar roupas sobre roupas?
Até que o corpo se vá,
nós não estamos realmente nus.
Text and image © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
why put clothes on clothes?
Until the body is gone,
we are not really naked.
Le corps est le vêtement,
pourquoi mettre des vêtements sur les vêtements?
Jusqu'à ce que le corps soit parti,
nous ne sommes pas vraiment nus.
El cuerpo es la prenda,
¿Por qué poner ropa en la ropa?
Hasta que el cuerpo se haya ido
No estamos realmente desnudos.
O corpo é a roupa,
por que colocar roupas sobre roupas?
Até que o corpo se vá,
nós não estamos realmente nus.
Text and image © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.