Departure

     Dennis wasn’t around the fire-pit at the parking lot all that much. His bailiwick was mostly at the Kiva where he spoke of Jamaica and how one could go to the mountains there and hang out with the growers of Jamaican weed. He had a good grasp of the history of the country and seemed to know a lot about the people. Not too many of us had smoked what would become known as the “bud” of the plant so Dennis was able to intrigue a few of us about his experience. He told us about how these people in the mountains held onto the “bud” and exported only the “shake”. He knew some of them and was welcome in their homes.

     We sat and listened intently as he told us a bit of the history of the island: how the Spanish exploited the natives there from Columbus on; how they had fled the Spanish to the Cockpit Country in the mountains; how after that the British brought the slave trade, big time, to the island that some of the slaves escaped to the Cock-pit Country too; how these people mixed with the natives to become what is known as Rastafarians. Furthermore, what sealed the deal was what he told us about how some Rastas believed that white hippies were the reincarnation of the Indians who were wiped out by the Spaniards. Therefore, for the most part, we would be welcome in the Cockpit Country even though not so much in Kingston where mountain myths hold less sway. Rasta culture and Reggie music wasn’t heard off yet, so these people with marijuana spliffs tucked into the weave of hair matted into dreadlocks sounded exotic enough to be discovered for ourselves. I wanted to go and had visions of myself settling down in the mountains with a beautiful black Rasta woman to make babies and smoke the bud from marijuana grown off the wild land of my front porch.

We had not yet heard of Reggie Music

     During this period of making plans for departure we got a strange visit from a man at the dome. I remember that dried fruit and nuts were all he ate. That didn't seem so strange to me then as almost everyone I'd met in those days was on some sort of esoteric diet. It wasn't strange either that he carried with him a set of Tarot cards. Several times people had done things like throw coins, or sticks, reading I-Ching or cards for us, but this was different. The guy said he wanted to do a reading for me... just one reading... but for me. He fasted a day and then sat down in the dome and laid out the cards. His reading said I would be imprisoned by the end of July for three months and that I would go through a very dark period for several months after that. However, he said that I would come through it all well enough. I don't remember much more about the reading but it turned out to be more than prescient... his reading was absolutely on target... down to the details of months and the depth of the journey. I disregarded it at the time but I would be able to digest his reading since then and am in awe of it. The tribulations of those times can be read about in A Time Ago and Then from the chapters following our experiences in Jamaica and the curse of Hoss Baz.

     I talked with Byron about leaving; about how my drinking was getting out of hand and that I felt I was being called to go to Jamaica. Byron agreed that I should go where the spirit takes me and that there was only so much room in New Mexico. I began planning with Stanley and Dennis to figure out how we were going to get there. I had applied for unemployment benefits when I first arrived at the mesa but I never followed through. It turned out that it was probably a good thing because, with those back checks, we had plenty to get us to Jamaica.

     There were five of us… Dennis would need no help because he would sell his little Hillman in Miami that we’d all crammed ourselves into for the trip across America. My checks paid the airfare for the rest of us. Two were turned back at customs so that made for three getting through to another adventure free wheeling through the mountains and seashores of what was then an island paradise. That was how we left Taos, New Mexico and, though I’d always planned on going back, I never returned. Dennis stayed in Jamaica while Stan and I made it back to Miami where my troubles had just begun. This was the place I entered under a mountain of despair described in Gilgamesh… the oldest account of suffering on record.

     This adventure took me through a couple of years wandering until I lit in Santa Barbara, California. Santa Brabara has been my home since then (except for a couple of years when I took a job facilitating prison arts at Vacaville for the Arts in Corrections Program) but I have found a spiritual vortex in this place almost equal to what I experienced in Taos.