Jean and Charlie left 14 Village Drive in May 1970 crowding the entire tribe into the Canadian Douglas Border Crossing, British Columbia, home of the Peace Arch .  They had sold out lock, stock and barrel, leaving friend, family and a tribal history that could be traced back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

On May 9, 1970, about 450 Canadian civilians, protesting the recent United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, cross the border at the Peace Arch at Blaine and storm into downtown Blaine, where they tear down American flags and vandalize buildings and other structures. They are confronted by a combination of nightstick-wielding police and enraged American civilians, who repeatedly charge the protestors until they are driven back into Canada. 

In Indiana, I could be drafted to fight in a war, but I could not buy a beer.  Black people did not live near me but were allowed to pick up my garbage and clean my home.  In Canada I could buy a beer, I could sign my own immigration papers.  At 18, I was a fifth-generation escapist, the same way that a leaf in a the river escapes the tree it grew up on.  

Leaving the pastoral ultra conservative farmlands, leaving the child abusing Roman Catholic Church, leaving the affluent enclave of the Village of Mount Carmel, leaving racist America, leaving the intellectual buggery of a Jesuit preparatory, leaving Wayne State University, leaving the Detroit Race Riots, leaving the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam behind only to find that the river had carved it's own path into Canada.  

In theory, a Indiana farm boy learns about oceans and mountains in school, but it was not until I arrived in Vancouver Canada, that I fell in love with The Ocean, The Mountains and three weeks later: Susan.  What a great place to live, what a great time to fall in love, what a great time to escape the monster, to run away and hide.

I found a job framing pictures under the tutelage of "Donny", who started each morning with a big doobie.  We worked for Ernie, a Jewish escapist from New York, who cut pictures out of artbooks.  I made $40/week and Susan and I found a low rent apartment in New Westminster, on 6th and 6th, and got a kitten.  A total dump, we wallpapered, bought a bed and began nesting.  One day I got home to find the door blocked by everything in the apartment, after a physical assault involving a knife occurred, just outside the door.  We moved a lot after that, on occasions planting small gardens but somehow always moving before the harvest.

 I was totally alienated.  Church and State, Education and Culture all denied freedom of expression in a culture of life as physical pain and suffering with a non-physical redemption on the basis of submission to earthly authority as our only hope in the face of eternal damnation in hell.

My parents, brilliant intellectuals and polymaths, who did not believe in birth control, could not speak of child abuse had fled as far as they could from the monster, dropping da big kids off in Canada, before returning to the un-united states, living in different cities until Charlie died in 1980.

The ocean was rolling over itself endlessly...
Dreaming onward!
the image drew up to its reflection.

(I) imagine that (i) am becoming
Do you feel that this is true?
The reflection wavered momentarily,
resolving to focus on the question...

White Laughter

Ever after dawn was breaking
crystal thoughts were for the taking too!
To the place, it does not matter
past the trunk and tree of disaster, who?
Will tarry here, but for a while
to make the sounds, to soothe the child
Who cries when not asleep at night
who makes the sounds that make teeth bite - Who?