RAVES FOR FLOWER CHILD
“I predict long-term success. May the Force, and the Fates, be with you! Fondly,” Dan Millman – author of The Peaceful Warrior, Instant Enlightenment
“I’m amazed you could remember so much!” Rosemary Woodruff Leary
“I wanted to say thanks for your beautiful book. I just opened it again and felt the corners of my mouth turn north. Hope we meet someday, love,” Daniel Ladinsky – author of Hafiz poetry books
“Flower Child, is a fascinating, nostalgic, inspiring and unforgettable read for every spiritual seeker, pop culture enthusiast, and single parent!” Leading Edge Review – May 2001
“What a marvelous legacy to leave your children and their generation.” Gay Luce
“I know of no book that captures the essence of the sixties as you have done.” Robert Alexander
“Flower Child is a courageous work, gritty and clear-eyed, and true to the funkiness, folly and yet undeniably heady idealism of the time. Farida Sharan does not demonize or romanticize. Her perspective is straight-on and grounded.” Jay Stevens - author of Storming Heaven
“Flower Child is a whirlwind adventure of action, emotion, and spiritual awakening that takes you on a fascinating, psychologically powerful journey through the intriguing and turbulent 1960’s. Her struggle to keep love alive makes for moving and compelling reading with amazing encounters with such 60’s icons as Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, and Iron Butterfly. If you love reading about the 60’s, then you will love Flower Child.” Victor Cantu, Sixties psychedelic poster artist
“I enjoyed Flower Child immensely – especially the beautiful outcome of the woman that triumphed through all the hardships.” Melanie Kaye, North Carolina
“Your book is a true classic. I also think it should appear in a European language, preferably German, as a very significant contribution to the new peace culture that is underway here and that is searching for spiritual anchoring within the context of the new paradigm. I enjoyed it immensely. It is a wonderful and very important book, on so many levels. It is the only book that I know of that presents the Flower Power time so beautifully and fully, so purely. What most people need to realize is that this time was a time of incredible searching, a search that was deeply spiritual at its core, but without guidance. Most of us didn’t even know what spirituality is, for that matter, but knew instinctively that conventional perception was the greatest obstacle and the essence of that time was the ceaseless search for light and love, tragically without the understanding necessary for dealing with the shadow.” Edith C Watts, Germany
“When I read your words, I feel completely transported to a beautiful and loving world.” Audrey
“Your quest for spiritual/soulful insights felt like friendship to me as I struggle with my own path as I flower from a child into a woman. I feel like you have watered my garden. It was so thirsty. I will never be the same.” Susanna Mae Cyrus
“I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I read whenever there was a free moment.” M. Oldenberger, Netherlands
“I loved your book. I could not put it down.” Francesca
“I have emerged from the tumultuous throes of reading Flower Child into the light of rebirth. There is a new consciousness flowering in me. I deeply connected with your very human, archetypal story. Not only have I a better understanding of the Love Generation, but you also articulated many deep moments of self-realization I previously had no words to describe! Flower Child sent fresh breezes of freedom through my being, lighting up my joy, my faith, and my will to be – Me!” S. S.
“I was moved by my daughter’s reaction to your new book. I send a special thanks and an order for my own copy. Your impact on her life has been incredible.” Sylvia R.
“I want to tell you how delighted I was to read your book. I was completely taken away with it. Thank you for your loving efforts and heart.” Georgia Miles
“It was a roller coaster read. Started in the middle read to the end back to the beginning and on to where I came in. Just like the way I went to the movies when I was a kid.” Jerry Alkoff, Canada
“I am LOVING your book. The first couple of sentences pulled me in. I love it so much!” Christy
“Your book is a breath of fresh air written with an open heart.” Michelle, UK
“Aloha Farida~I am so enjoying your book! I especially love the sprinkling of universal truth throughout and how your higher guidance was always lifting you to a transcendental perspective during your trials. I feel that is a unique gift and. I am grateful for your fine refined example of a living teaching. Thank you.” Amira
“This is the only book that I have read backward after I finished reading it from front to back. I am fascinated.” Björn, Reykjavik, Iceland
“Flower Child is wonderful! I can’t believe how involved I got.” Carrie Stevens
“Farida’s archetypal and very human writing style truly makes you feel as if you are a guardian angel watching over her, holding her dear in her struggles and rejoicing at her many successes. You also feel like a fly on the wall witnessing some of the sixties’ most ‘happening scenes’ and most harrowing secrets. This book lifts the shroud of illusions and myths about the fabled sixties, while it also resurrects the deep beauty and universal truth at the root of those evolving times. While I read the author’s treasure trove of innocent insight and sage wisdom, I could literally feel my own spirit and creativity awaken, as though a fresh breeze were fluttering the silken sheets where they slumbered. My own life path, and purpose, and love for life glowed, in my whole being, infusing my life, charging me with the message she delivers so fearlessly and selflessly. It is truly the work of an evolved soul who has a great gift for the world she is giving, and will give entirely, before she returns to the Love she came from.” Summer Kolesar
“Lovely Farida - Finished reading Flower Child two nights ago. It was so beautiful. Your writing, pictures, journey, love for your children and descriptions of the wild times were so powerful. So glad to know more of your amazing story. I can’t wait to share this with others. You are so beloved.”
“I am reading Flower Child and love it!! I am inspired to give LOVE now wherever I am and to whomever I meet. I too am searching for love, knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.” Shanti
“As I read the story of your life, I felt my spirit join the thousands who watched over you in your times of need, lovingly holding you dear during your strife, and rejoicing at your many successes!”
“Flower Child was like a journey home. Thanks for reminding me that feelings I internalized as a sixties’ child were the seeds of real and powerful possibilities of love.” Jody – amazon.com review
“I read your book in three days. I could not put it down. It was like reading my own soul memories or maybe soul stories. I cannot tell you how often it brought me to tears to ready your stories and know your pain, joy, love. I have never had such an experience with a book. I truly know your quest.”
“What I enjoyed most about your book was it was from a woman’s point of view and you were vulnerably honest. I have traveled the world as an honest, naive, adventurer. The honesty is what allows us to learn; but, exposes us to the machinations of others. I understood you very well in your book. I enjoyed it very much and will have my daughter read it.” Richard Lombardi, Germany
“I’m loving your book Flower Child, I can’t seem to put it down and I just picked it up yesterday. “ Laura Cuadras, Seattle, Washington
FLOWER CHILD
in the
SUMMER OF LOVE
A spiritual seeker’s sixties psychedelic saga
by Farida Sharan
Published by Wisdome Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Farida Sharan
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
“Were You A Sixties Flower Child?”
BOOK ONE: FLOWER POWER
BOOK TWO: PSYCHEDELIA
BOOK THREE: SUMMER OF LOVE
BOOK FOUR: GARDEN OF LOVE
EMPTY HUSK, POTENT SEED
THE PATH
DEDICATION
To the flower children of the world;
may they find rich soil,
good nourishment,
and the warm sun of the soul,
to flourish,
bloom
and offer
their gifts to
the garden of souls
in this world.
MYTHS AND REALITIES
This is a fictional story of my life
during the sixties
based on some of the events
of my life at that time.
All the characters
are based on fictional
composites
that carry the magic
and the energy
of that amazing time,
except for those
I introduce
with
their first and last names.
WERE YOU A SIXTIES FLOWER CHILD?
When Jerry Garcia, the visionary leader of the Grateful Dead, died in August ‘95, spontaneous communal grief birthed a full-on sixties flashback on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado.
Thousands of Deadheads streamed down the Mall and merged into the dense cacophony of mourning in front of the courthouse between 13th and 14th Streets where candles, pictures, albums, and flowers decorated the stone fountain on the lawn. Fresh college kids, tattooed modern primitives, and 366 skateboarders hung out in whispering, weeping clusters. Silver-haired hippies and sixties old-timers mingled with the grief-stricken youngsters, trying their best to comfort them. The cries of Garcia’s mourners mingled with dozens of boomboxes screeching Dead sets and merged into one unearthly wail that soared toward the heavens. As I wandered among the crowds, tears flowed down my cheeks.
My daughter, a sixties Love-In cherub grown into a beautiful young woman, looked at me with understanding. “I knew you had to see this, Mom,” she said with a wise-woman smile.
These nineties hipsters were hungry. They were searching. They were looking for love. I’d been passing them for years on the Boulder Mall. Although I always smiled at them, tonight was different. Tonight, the distance of years had dissolved. I was one of them again. The sixties and the nineties had merged with a power that had shaken everyone out of their local mindset.
“Were you a sixties flower child?” a young voice called.
The question thrilled through me, my grasshopper mind jumping instantly back to that magic time. Turning, I looked into the softly yearning eyes of a young girl, her lovely face framed by long black wavy hair. Innocent, vulnerable, and wearing a flower-print dress, she was the mirror of myself in the mystical, magical, psychedelic sixties.
“Yes, I was a flower child,” I answered with a surge of poignant pride. “And I believe I still am.”
“Tell us about the sixties,” her dreadlocked boyfriend asked, his glance wavering between respectful curiosity and a distant cool disdain.
“There was an intense energy, like everyone shared the same dream,” I said. “We recognized each other. We wanted out of our families, out of our culture. We wanted love. The rock stars sang our dreams and their music brought us together. Creativity burst free in wild, colorful Be-Ins and Love-Ins. It was a happening,” I bubbled excitedly, the energy of the past returning in the present. Remembering the shadow side I’d been so afraid of in the sixties, I also added, “And then there were the police, the establishment, the media, and the politicians who made sure the dream didn’t happen.”
Slowly a group of young people gathered around us. We sat in a circle on the damp night grass – a still center in a hurricane of sorrow.
“What about the Summer of Love?” a leather-clad girl challenged as she slouched on the grass. Flaunting a snake tattoo that ran around her neck and up her shaved head, and multiple nose and ear rings, she asked, “Was that for real?”
I sighed, “The Summer of Love was real, all right. It changed my life forever.”
The longing that had carried me out of my fearful youth to the flowering richness of my present life surfaced once more in my heart. In the sixties, I was a seed longing for the sun, a flower seeking her garden of love.
“What did it feel like to be a flower child?” a street savvy youth asked, his pierced street-warrior guise a far cry from the bells and flowers of my time.
“Empty. Lonely. Hungry. The world was cold, hard, and harsh. What people called love didn’t feel like love. I was always looking, searching. I was always hungry for love.” He nodded, as if to say we were the same.
Hundreds of candles flamed softly in the misting darkness. Rivers of melting wax flowed down the base of the courthouse fountain. Jerry Garcia may have passed on, but his spirit was profoundly present. The more I talked, the more the sixties feelings flowed, and the more I remembered. When I returned home late that night, I knew the time had come to share my story.
I offer “Flower Child” to the flower children of the past, present, and future in whatever costume they choose to adorn themselves.
If you feel moved when you read “Flower Child”, pass it on with the true spirit of the flower children. Pass it on with love and a blessing, or perhaps a flower or a song. Pass it on.
Free Love
“I’m gonna find love if it’s the last thing I do.”
A surge of confidence pulsed through me as I sped east on the freeway. Cool, windy, fog-bound Santa Monica turned into a rear-view mirror blur as the skyscrapers of Los Angeles loomed ahead. Then the city disappeared like a mirage as I headed east toward the desert. The engine hummed. My foot pressed hard on the accelerator. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I was leaving behind.
I glanced at my infant daughter, Love, asleep on the seat beside me, adoring the beauty of her sweet-sleeping face as the reality of what I had done began to take hold.
A passing car displayed a bumper sticker that shouted in psychedelic neon, “I am a human being. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.”
Good people out there were sending messages to help me along. I wanted more, so I tuned the dial to the hottest flower power station on the radio waves and sang along with the Cyrkle.
“…got my life to live…”
Just don’t know what that is yet.
“...don’t need you at all...”
Darn right!
“...bought my ticket with my tears...”
Sure did.
“…and that’s all I’m gonna spend…”
Hope I learned my lesson this time.
It was 1966. Everyone out there was saying you could make your dreams come true. The thought that this could be my year to make that happen started my hands shaking on the wheel and soon my whole body was trembling. The fury that had made it possible for me to leave dissipated and shock set in. Fear returned, filling me with the familiar presence that had choked my voice and held me prisoner for years. A couple of hours earlier, anger had burned through me, pure and clear, and given me the strength to leave. Where was I going? What was I going to do? I didn’t know the answer so heading to the desert would have to be good enough for now.
As images of what had happened flashed through my mind, I smiled with a pleasure I wanted to hide from myself even as I was feeling it. I had always thought anger was some horrible thing a nice person never felt. No matter how bad things were, I had always denied the problem, pleased others, and endured anything and everything to keep the peace. No matter what was happening, I always acted sweet and kind, but today I had got mad, really mad.
I
had come upstairs to my husband’s sculpture studio and walked into
a scene. Taz and his assistant, a wild dude who called himself Osi,
and their latest Sunset Strip pick-up chick were coming down off an
acid trip. Taz and Osi were mocking the young girl, pushing her onto
the couch, trying to tempt her into a sexual threesome.
She was pleading, “No,” as she tried to push them away, but they weren’t listening.
When they saw me, Taz smirked guiltily and turned away, but Osi challenged me openly, lifting one eyebrow, slouching as he stood on one leg, his insolent “Yes?” pressuring me to explain why I was there.
Shock, jealousy, and fear wove a painful path through my heart and mind. A flame of intense rage surged through me and I picked up the closest thing to me, a portable sewing machine and threw it at Taz, just missing him as he jumped out of the way.
“What? Are you crazy?” Taz shouted, immediately tensed like a jaguar ready to strike.
Frightened by my unexpected passion and strength, I still could not summon words. The flame of anger and the force of my action had burned through the veil of enchantment that had always clouded my perception of Taz. For once his handsome face did not charm me or weaken my resolve. I’d always made excuses for him, fueling the pretense that he loved me even though he was not kind or loving. My brain was on overload, firing this way and that, trying to make sense of my new perspective on reality.
Osi moved in front of Taz, as though to protect him, his legs wide apart, arms folded and glared. I returned his challenge with cool fire, refusing to be distracted by the wild blond Afro frizzing around his head, seeing the man submerged beneath the multitude of chains and power symbols glittering on his naked torso. The contempt I usually tried to hide was showing on my face and I didn’t care.
Questions I’d never dared ask myself wailed around inside me. Taz, why is he your friend? Don’t you see who he is? Or, worse, if you know who he is, why do you want him here? I couldn’t summon the power to give voice to my questions. I was not only afraid to ask questions, I was afraid to hear the answers.
Taz had met Osi on a night-tripping cruise of the Sunset Strip clubs and invited him to a party, and Osi never left. Crudely arrogant, he dominated Taz’s sculpture studio; cleaning the studio, cooking the meals, doing the laundry, running the errands, and waiting on Taz with worshipful obsequious excess.
The studio had degenerated into a pleasure dome. Taz wasn’t making art. He was burning himself out on drugs, alcohol, parties, and chicks. Night after night, they were hanging out at the cool night spots like Cantor’s or Shelley’s Manne Hole, cruising the Strip, or making the in-party scenes. They brought free love chicks and runaways back to the studio and turned them on under the strobes and black lights, tripping on the psychedelic sculpture, deep into their highs. I plugged my ears against the steps on the stairs, the blatant music and loud voices, but I never went upstairs. When I saw them during the day, I never asked what they were up to. I was afraid to find out.
Then the freckled girl, shyly covered in oversized patchwork jeans and layers of torn, tie-dyed T-shirts, got up and headed for the door. Momentarily pleased that I’d rescued her, I felt a rare sense of satisfaction, but as soon as the door slammed, I was raging mad again.
“You’re animals,” I screamed from a hollow place or rage that burned within me, but they just laughed.
“I finally did something that blew your cool,” Taz boasted, slapping Osi on the shoulder, as if they were in on some macho conspiracy.
Another flame of rage burst free, “I don’t want to be near either of you,” I yelled, my voice cracking. “You’re sick.”
“You want out?” Taz snarled. “Go ahead. I could dig being free to do whatever I want without you hanging around bringing us down.”
“Free? You mean free to destroy yourself. Then take your stupid freedom. I’m want my own trip.”
“Your own trip?” he said scathingly. “And what might that be? File clerk? Bank teller? Waitress? Babysitter? And what happens to your children when you go to work? What kind of life is that?”
“Better than this,” I shouted, letting off steam, but holding back a volcano that wanted to break apart their indulgent cool.
“Then go!” Taz yelled, his eyes narrowing belligerently.
He was getting mean, so I split. Solar plexus churning, tears burning in my eyes, I ran downstairs to the shelter of my room. I paced, trying to calm the raw, powerful energy that was running through me. Now that I knew what was really going on, I had to leave, but what would I do and where would I go? I can’t believe I threw my sewing machine! I can’t believe I got mad and yelled at Taz. What’s happening to me?
Look, there’s your beautiful son and there’s your newborn daughter. Trembling, I lay gently next to her, adoring her soft, relaxed arms open above her face, and the long black lashes brushing against her tender cheeks.
It was hard to imagine Taz as a vulnerable, soft baby. Because I knew what his parents had done to him, I’d always made excuses for him, believing that I’d find the way to help him open to love. I stifled a sob and promised myself that I’d never get hard and mean like Taz. I took my daughter’s tiny hand in mine and whisper promised, “I have to leave for you. I have to be strong for you.”
Slowly, as the trembling subsided, I thought about Love’s birth. She had to pass through pain to come into this world. She didn’t know where she was going, what she would find, or even if she would make it, but the forces around her were making her go. Maybe she even pushed with her little feet. She must have felt trapped as she endured the struggle and surrender of her passage. Love’s birth wasn’t just about me birthing her. She had birthed herself too.
It was time for me to birth myself out of Taz’s scene. Living with him was like being imprisoned in an underworld. I never saw friends. I never went anywhere even though there was a beach a couple of miles away and a park down the street. I felt like I was living the Greek myth about the young girl who got dragged into the underworld by the husband from hell. I had allowed myself to become a prisoner in a shadow-land that was the opposite of everything I loved. I always felt like he had power over me but I was beginning to see it was me who had given him that power. Sure, I was scared to leave, but when you can’t stay, you have no choice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you’re going. The important thing is to go when you feel strong and clear.
“Love, we’re getting out of here,” I said as I pulled my suitcase out of the closet.
When I turned around, Taz was hovering in the doorway, watching me pack, nervously uncertain before my fury. He’d never seen me angry before. I was raised to be sweet and kind and to wash the dishes and say nice things, but clearly that didn’t work. My outburst of anger had done more for me than years of trying to please Taz.
“You’re really going? It’s not easy out there, you know. If you go, I won’t take you back,” Taz wheedled, trying to scare me into changing my mind. Ignoring him, I folded Love’s clothes into my suitcase.
“Look. Why freak out over free love? It’s the happening thing,” he coaxed with a sly look that made him look as if he were the devil of temptation.
“It’s not free love when you’re hurting someone,” I protested, telling him my true feelings for the first time. “Sure, I want love but your free love isn’t free. Your free love is nothing more than free sex. I don’t see love anywhere.”
“It’s how people get to know each other. No hangups. It’s cool,” he urged seductively.
“It’s not how I want to get to know someone,” I stated with a force that still carried the clear, clean power of anger.
“You want someone all to yourself. Selfish. Possessive. Boring,” he ridiculed, hitting the door with his fist. “That’s old-fashioned.”
“That’s love. That’s commitment. That’s marriage,” I asserted stubbornly as I closed my suitcase, “and we don’t have a marriage. In fact, we haven’t had a marriage for a long time. It’s over. I’m leaving.”
Just then, our three-year-old son, Choo, woke up whimpering. I picked him up and snuggled him close to my heart.
Taz stopped raving and changed tactics. “You gonna tell your son you’re leaving him?” he challenged.
I wanted to cry like I usually did when he pressured me with his will, but there was a new energy swirling inside me. Rage had taken me to a new place. I wasn’t stuck in fear anymore. I was willing to take a chance. Nothing could be worse than staying with Taz.
Beautiful Choo clung to me, his sleep-dampened golden curls brushing softly against my face. Love started crying, so I picked her up too and sat down on the bed. Holding an angel child in each arm, I wondered why, with such beautiful children, I had to have Taz for a husband. How could I have been so blind? I had no one to blame but my self.
“Choo, darling, Love and I have to go away for a while.”
Choo rubbed his eyes sleepily and asked, “Why?”
“I have to find my own place,” I explained, my voice catching.
“Why?” he said again, looking like he was going to cry.
Mutually inarticulate, my son and I mirrored confused despair.
“We’ll come back soon, and then you can come and visit me,” I promised Choo before I surrendered him to his father. I didn’t have it in me to fight Taz for our son. That would have to wait for another day.
Fighting back tears, I picked up Love in one arm, lifted the suitcase with the other, and headed downstairs. As I turned on the ignition in my old yellow Ford station wagon, I felt a wrench of pain in my heart and mind as the reality of leaving set in. Maybe it would make our scene easier if I could be like him, but I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted to be myself. I had a world of love within me and I wanted to find a way to make that world happen for me and for my children.
“I’ll find good, loving people if it’s the last thing I ever do,” I promised myself, “and if I don’t find them, I’d rather be alone.”
I took one last look in the rear view mirror as I peeled out of the parking lot. Taz and Choo were crazy-waving from the rooftop, like I was going away on a holiday. God, that guy knew just what to do to make me mad. As I revved the gas, I let out a yell that sounded like one of the war whoops I screamed when I was a child. Yeah, I’m a warrior. That’s me. I’ve fought myself free.
“Free, Love. We made it. We’re free. We’re on our way,” I sang to my daughter as we sped away.
Shifting
gears and memories, I wondered who’d been doing the driving while
I’d been head-tripping on my escape from Taz. The city was far
behind. Lush, spring-green hills and snow-white blossoming orange
groves spread out on either side of the freeway. Captivated by a
beauty that was in such intense contrast to the scene I’d left
behind, I pulled over to the side of the road and rolled down the
window. The scent of orange blossoms wafted through the air,
tantalizingly, intoxicatingly beautiful.
“Oh Love, you have to see this,” I said, turning to my daughter.
Her eyes opened as I lifted her up to the window. She immediately breathed several, quick gasps, and waved her arms and legs with excitement. “You like orange blossoms, do you? Well, my darling, let’s go closer.”
Feeling as though I was entering a sacred shrine, I carried Love into the orange grove and sank to my knees on a soft carpet of grass. I closed my eyes for a moment, then lifted them to the sun and the deep blue sky beyond the breezing leaves. Orange blossoms danced above us, bursting fragrance into the warm, dry air as white petals drifted slowly down. My relief, grief, and gratitude for the gift of the beauty of the grove overflowed into tears. Crying made me feel soft and sweet again. Anger may have given me the power to break free, but it was a relief to return to my more natural self.
I watched Love stare at the canopy of flowers above her with newborn eyes, her little arms waving excitedly as she breathed quickly. Instinctively wanting to see nature as if I were looking through Love’s eyes, I narrowed my eyelids, looked off-center and discovered swirls of pure light, soft, diffused colors, and an undefined radiance glowing around the trees.
I wished beauty could be more than an ephemeral high, but I knew that this spring blossoming was only one part of the life cycle of the orange trees. Soon, the perfumed petals would blow away or disappear into the golden grasses. Then the oranges would ripen through the hot summer. In the autumn, the leaves would fall, and the retreat into winter would leave only tree skeletons in this perfumed spring grove.
I felt as if I’d been submerged in a long, harsh winter and it was my time to burst into spring. to I couldn’t hold back anymore. I had to find out who I was. I had to find where I belonged.
Just then, a beautiful memory returned of my beloved grandmother taking me into her garden when I was a little girl. She showed me the crocuses, violets and daffodils peeking out of the snow and told me that the early spring flowers were very special because they had to be very brave to flower so early in the season and cheer people after the long, dark winter. If only my grandmother hadn’t died when I was a child, I wouldn’t have been so lonely. She would have taught me what I needed to know. She would have cared about me. She would have wanted to know what I was thinking and feeling and doing. She would have asked me to tell her what had happened to me at school.
I once asked my mother why she never paid me any attention, and she looked surprised for a moment before she said, “Why, you always do fine. You don’t need my attention.” I guess she never understood that a relationship wasn’t necessarily about need. For me, parenting was more about opening to the opportunity of knowing another person and enjoying being close to them. Perhaps if my mother had been able to do that, she wouldn’t have been so unhappy.
“Oh, Love, I called you into my life and here you are, my friend,” I said, giving thanks in my heart for my beloved daughter. At last, I had the opportunity to give and receive love in the way I had always longed for. Taz had taken away Choo, but he wasn’t going to take away Love.
I lifted Love’s tender body toward the pure white blossoms.
“Flower child of a flower child, we will find our garden of love,” I promised gently. “Hmmm. That sounds nice. I think I’ll call myself Flower Child from now on.”
Then, holding my infant in my arms, I closed my eyes and savored the living fragrance surrounding us.
“Free, Love. We’re free at last, free to be, you and me.”
Oceano Genesis
In May of the previous year, spring had felt like winter in my heart. I was living in the back of our La Cienega art gallery, an exile from my own family, while Taz and Choo lived up the coast in Oceano, near Pismo Beach. All Taz ever talked about was freedom – to create art, to take lovers, to do what he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it. He gave me the same freedom, but I didn’t want it. I wanted him. I loved him. I could not imagine loving another.
Unable to overcome my loneliness and my jealousy, I focused my mind on the one goal I believed would ease my pain. Against all reason, I would ask my husband for another child. Even though it didn’t make sense, considering the state of our marriage, he had to be the father. In the early dawn, my longing erupted, melting my inarticulate fear. Desperately nervous and excited, I paced around the gallery, my courage increasing with the morning sun. Outside, the streets were quiet and empty, like a beach at low tide.
Unable to hold myself back, I jumped in my station wagon and headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Action eased my tension as I sped through the early dawn. Whizzing past Santa Barbara and the spring-green California hills, I sang along with the Stones.
“I try and I try and I try and I try,...I can’t get no…satisfaction...”
Three hours later, I pulled off the freeway at the Pismo Beach exit and headed toward the Oceano Airport. Glad to slow down, I opened the car windows and breathed in the fresh sea air, trying to ease the fear and excitement churning in my stomach. I turned into the airport, drove through the gate and along the runway to Taz’s corrugated-metal, aircraft-hangar studio. Taz’s car was gone. The studio and the trailer were locked. Only the beach buggy and the Cessna were parked in the drive.
I sighed with relief, got out of the car, stretched, then sat on the hood of my station wagon. A few minutes later, I lay back, arms wide behind my head, listening to the boom of the distant surf. The sun’s warmth gradually eased the tension in my belly.
As a child, I had been fearless, bursting with enthusiastic chatter and energetic joy. I had lost myself trying to please Taz and no longer had the strength to resist his will. Afraid to stand up to him, I had become silent and submissive, enduring a life that was nothing like I wanted it to be. I felt that if I lost him I would lose everything. His loving always turned to hurting. He pulled me toward him and then pushed me away. Gradually, I let my thoughts whirl away into the cloud dancing sky. The sound of the rhythmic booming surf and the caresses of the gentle, warm sea breezes lulled me into a drifting, dreaming sleep.
An hour or so later, a horn blared. Startled from my slumber, I slid off the hood to stand uncertainly on the ground. Taz swooped up in his yellow Lincoln convertible, the top down, Choo standing proudly beside his father on the front seat. Taz’s assistants, Yoni and Day Glo, huddled windblown in the back, shopping bags piled high around them.
My son jumped out of the car and threw himself into my arms with wild joy. I drank in the love from his merry smile and soft brown eyes and ran my fingers through his golden curls, rejoicing in his sweet, affectionate clinging. Just as quickly, he wriggled out of my arms and ran away, giggling, teasing me to chase him, but I wasn’t ready to play games.
“Later, Choo. Let me talk to your dad first,” I called.
As I turned toward Taz, I encountered Yoni’s desperate blue eyes peering out of a mass of straw-blonde hair, blown wild by the wind. Jealousy flamed between us more articulately than words. She turned away immediately. Unable to handle my unexpected arrival, she muttered angrily, “Bummer, bummer,” as she lifted a couple of grocery bags out of the Lincoln. Refusing to look at me, she stomped over to the Airstream.
Day Glo offered a shaded, drugged nod, and I answered with a wave. Hidden behind mirrored sunglasses and an unruly, unwashed mop of tobacco-colored dreadlocks, he presented a dusty, wrinkled, shabby appearance. Except for the fluorescent paint spills on his ragged sneakers, he was about as far away from looking like Day Glo as you could get. Hippies usually gave themselves new names to create new personalities, but he had never made Day Glo happen. I figured he should call himself Wishful Thinking instead. Even though he’d been in Taz’s scene for nearly two years, I had no idea who he really was. I’d never even seen his eyes.
With a hard edge and a sneer, Taz asked, “Can’t stay away, eh? What’s up?” No welcome there.
I took refuge in my son’s mischievous laughter as he threw himself once more into my arms. A humming sigh escaped my heart as I realized he was the only one of us who was not afraid to love.
“Nothing. I had to get out of L.A.,” I lied.
“Any sales?”
“Yeah, one, and another coming through next week.”
“Cool. Just in time for the rent,” he said approvingly.
Yoni passed by, head down, ignoring us as she carried the last two bags of groceries to the trailer.
Day Glo shambled between the studio and the car, unloading studio supplies in his downbeat, shuffling style.
My stomach eased. Taz was mellow.
Suddenly, I blurted out, “I want another child.”
Immediately furious, Taz yelled, “You must be crazy!”
“No. I’m not crazy. You took Choo away from me,” I said, pain surging as my helpless longing welled into tears. “I don’t have anyone to love. I want a daughter, a friend. I want somebody to love.”
“Get a cat or a boyfriend,” he jeered.
“Please,” I pleaded, “be serious. I want a daughter.”
“Why do you need me to get pregnant? There are a million guys out there waiting to get laid,” Taz dared, struggling against the forces that imprisoned his love.
I plunged into my truth. “I’m not like you. I can’t be with anyone else. You have to be the father,” I stated simply, touching his hand, resisting a desire to kneel at his feet and beg him to give me what I wanted.
Taz took his hand away and lit a cigarette.
“We already have our own lives,” I continued. “I can’t bear being away from Choo. If I had a daughter, I’d be okay. I am a person who has to love. I want to bring love into the world. I want to love.”
As my sense of desperation increased, conflict played over his face, hardening his beauty and narrowing his eyes. Locked under his skin were his rage at his parents and his fear of love.
“All this – you, the marriage, Choo – stops me from concentrating. I want to be free to focus on my work,” he said impatiently, clearly bugged at my unexpected insistence.
“I’m not stopping you from focusing on your work,” I defended.
“Hah! You’re trouble. Nothing but trouble,” he complained.
“You forget how much I help you,” I said, my heart hurting again. “You couldn’t be here if I wasn’t running the gallery on LaCienega.”
“I want to forget. I just want to work,” he stated angrily.
“Work isn’t everything. We need to love and be loved. We need family,” I pleaded, searching for a way to melt him down.
“I don’t want a family,” Taz protested stubbornly as he took a drag off his cigarette. “A family is nothing but pain.”
“Maybe your parents’ family was nothing but pain, but you could enjoy your own loving family and have the love you never had. You’re the one who’s creating the pain by pushing us away.”
“Damn right I push you away. I want my scene, my way,” he said, crossing his arms as if to protect himself.
Even though I was discouraged, I refused to give up. “Why does it have to be this way? Why can’t we share love?” I cried passionately.
“I don’t want to share love. Love doesn’t feel good. Love hurts,” he spat out. As if the truth of those words were something he had to run away from, Taz stalked into the aircraft hangar.
I followed into the dark, cold building. The wind that had been so fresh outside rattled the tin roof like an enemy and blasted through the jagged cracks in the metal walls and broken windowpanes. I shivered and rubbed my arms with my hands. Trembling, I waited, breathing deeply as I listened to the boom of the distant breakers. For a moment I retreated, then my courage resurfaced.
“I want a daughter,” I repeated with stubborn determination.
Taz turned away from me, absently picking up a screwdriver and a wrench, then putting them down again. Moving like an ebony panther through his forest of incandescent bronze sculptures and translucent psychedelic plastic fountains, his voice pulsed out of his incessant pacing.
“I want you to have your own trip. I don’t want you to hang around, waiting on my every move, being dependent. I want you to do your own thing.”
“How am I dependent?” I argued. “I run the gallery. I’ve always earned my own way. Taz, I need someone to love.”
“If we had another child, you’d want me to take care of her,” he protested.
“No, I wouldn’t,” I insisted, intense desire surging through me.
At that moment I tuned into another level of what was happening with Taz. Instinctively, I knew he was going to say yes. Certainty added to my power and I felt my will penetrate his defenses. He relaxed, stopped pacing, lit another cigarette, and turned toward me.
“Okay. Have your own way if it’ll keep you away from me.”
He laughed when I jumped all over him, hugging and kissing him. I didn’t even care that he thought another child would keep me away from him.
“Okay. Okay. Cool it,” he said, trying not to smile as he pushed me away. Let me get used to the idea. Hang out. Play with Choo. I need to work.”
A
couple of days later, a perfect June morning shone California clear.
Excited and impatient, I walked up the circular staircase to Taz’s
tower room in the ramshackle Victorian house he called home. Once a
grand mansion surrounded by farms, it stood like a lonely artifact in
a sea of trailers and motor homes.
Brilliant sunshine poured through arched windows onto a cocoon of wrinkled white sheets. Glimpsing his tousled black hair among the tangled bedding, I jumped on the bed and shook him awake with unaccustomed courage.
“Taz. It’s a beautiful day, Taz.”
He rolled over, groaning and shading his eyes against the light.
“Come on. It’s time to make a baby,” I said.
A smile dawned when he realized what I was saying.
“You mean I’m going to get my piece of tail today?” he said with a lazy smile, lifting the sheets, inviting me into his drowsy sexuality.
I shook my head, insisting, “I want to do it in the dunes.”
“God, give you one thing and you want it all your way,” he complained, but the idea must have captured his imagination, because he leapt out of bed, stepping out of his world and coming into mine.
A short while later, after leaving Choo with Yoni, we revved up the beach buggy and roared toward the Oceano pier. The wind and the waves were all-powerful here. Driving down the beach, the vista opened to sand, sea, and sky. Twenty miles of seashore contained thousands of acres of tawny sand dunes that looked like they belonged in the Sahara. Coming out onto the beach, our eyes were drawn to a scarlet line edging the foaming shore. Hearing a tumultuous sound, we lifted our heads to the sky where thousands of seagulls screeched and hovered above the breakers. The only human observers of this cosmic phenomenon, we climbed out of the dune buggy to take a closer look.
“They’re ladybugs!” Taz whispered incredulously.
We dipped our hands into the fluttering ladybug stream. They crawled over our fingers and flew onto our clothes. We knelt on the sand, looking down the scarlet line curving south along miles of beach. Where had they come from? Where were they going? Had anyone seen a giant red cloud?
“Ladybugs, billions of them. It’s a miracle!” Taz said, shaking his head in wonder.
I looked from the ladybugs to the seagull sky. “It’s a miracle of wings,” I whispered, trembling with awe.
Unable to penetrate the mystery, stunned and altered by the vast play of nature around us, we hiked into the dunes. Descending into a sand valley, we sheltered ourselves under windswept bushes. I spread my brilliant Guatemalan blanket over us – magenta, yellow, and green striping our presence upon the golden sand. Shaking, I clung to Taz, uncertain and shy.
Unaware of any change in me, he pulled a folded paper out of his shirt pocket and announced, “I brought acid for us,” before placing one white tab on his tongue and offering the other to me.
Fear struck like a pain. I didn’t want to follow him into an acid trip. I wanted my daughter’s conception to be on my terms. Desire burned in his eyes as he waited. My resistance melted as I reluctantly accepted his unspoken condition that if I were to have my way, he must also have his. I nodded in acquiescence and he placed the tab on my tongue.
Saliva welled in my mouth as the tab dissolved. The familiar chemical dance surged in me as I relaxed into an unbounded interior space. My body yearned for touch, for comfort. Huddling under the blanket, we slipped out of our clothes. I sighed with relief and pleasure as my body touched his. Holding back was hard. Living love was good.
Cuddling shifted to desire as we shared gentle kisses, touches, licking, and tender caresses. A thought surfaced like a balloon in my mind – what was love for me was sex for him – but then I let even that thought fly into the sky. All that mattered was that it was love for me. Pulsing, blood-muscular-hardness entered yearning, blood-muscular-moistness, undulations returning undulations. Vibrational ripples blessed us with oneness as desire’s rhythms throbbed an elemental wave resonance with the sand, sea, sun, and sky. Coupled, our fluid molecules merged into a juicy stream while sand traced a microscopic geometry of rainbow crystals upon our naked bodies. Separation awakened realization.
“She hasn’t come,” I said, seeking the love in his eyes.
“Let’s try again,” he replied, opening his love into mine.
“Yes, let’s go to my favorite dune valley,” I said, shading my eyes against the increasing sun.
“Sure,” he agreed, in that moment being all I had ever wanted.
At ease with each other, we brushed the sand off our skin and dressed. The acid was coming on strong. Shift: microscopic vision glimpsed infinitely small consciousness contraction while telescopic vision grasped infinitely vast expansion. Enchanted, I observed with total focus how the movement of one grain of sand shifted the construction of a dune and thus, the entire universe. Everything was important in this vast oceanic expanse of energetic creation.
Like explorers in a raw, untouched land, we strode over the crest of the sand dunes into a merging, misting blue of sea and sky that offered great white breakers roaring an Odyssian cry of surrender to the shore. Looking back, we could see the ladybugs fluttering burning fire above the bubbling sea foam. A hovering winged cloud, the gulls shrieked and darted through shining mandalas dancing in the vast sky of wind. Whistling, groaning waves disappeared into a grinding, foaming cascade of bleached wood, seaweed, shells, coral, pebbles and sand at our feet.
We climbed into the dune buggy and Taz started the engine. Ridiculously rigid, the buggy growled like a monster of steel and grime, resisting the living energy surging around us. The roar of the engine drowned the roar of the sea as, gasping for breath, we hurtled through living rhythms that pulsed wind waves into oceanic waves into sand waves, Godward, into waves of golden love on the field of creation.
A stream that flowed from the dunes signaled the threshold to my sanctuary. We jumped down from the buggy and pressed our way upward through the rustling, golden grasses clinging to the sand hills. Descending from the crest of the highest dune, sheltered from the winds, we removed our shoes and padded over softer, sifting, powdered grains into my favorite dune valley.
Tearing off my clothes, I tumbled onto the warm sand, shouting to the vibration web weaving the world, “I want to make love to the universe!”
God was all around me, dissolving me, becoming me. Spirit molecules merging with cellular molecules, I opened my petal self to the sun, the wind, and Taz, naked, perched like a panther ready to spring.
“Don’t hold on. Come,” I cried.
He slid down the dune and fell on his knees.
“Come to me,” I called as if he were a child.
Opening to him, I felt vast and infinitely powerful.
“Come into me,” I commanded like a goddess.
Compassion rolled out of me in billowing clouds.
Taz crawled into me, sensuous-hardness entering yearning-softness, pulsing-searching against undulating-responding. Celebrating joy spiraling into infinity, rainbow bubbles foamed on my spiritual seashore. My essence surged upward in light-love expansion as my spirit merged with my soul daughter. Taz seemed far way, immersed, lost in his thrusting. Suddenly, pulled by Taz’s urgent coming, my tenderness descended, welcoming his sperm flash into my interior womb juices. Laughing tears, my body savored his offering.
“She’s here. I feel her inside me,” I marveled, aware of the new energy of my daughter’s soul that was now a part of me. My womb felt warm and glowing as if the light that had beamed her into me was still radiating the heat of creation.
When I took his hand and placed it on my belly, conflict distorted his face, wonderment warring with resistance. As I glimpsed the fear that held him back from love and captured him in conflict, a living fog seemed to swirl around him, dulling and imprisoning his potential. In that moment, he was both the perfect husband and father of my dreams and a vulnerable, imperfect, wounded man.
Momentarily at peace with the painful paradox of our marriage, we played within the vibrational hallucinations surrounding us. Explorers in a visionary world of glowing geometric patterns, we discovered an enchanted world of infinitesimal insects, watching their shifting, intricate movements until the burning midday sun reminded us to put our clothes back on.
Hiking back, we inhaled the buffeting wind, leaning against it as we pressed down the sand dunes toward the shifting shore. How I longed to dissolve into this vast dance of cosmic energy, but it was not the time for release. It was the time for life.
What was empty was now full. I carried love within me. I would birth love into the world and make it mine. Millions of ecstatic cells opened into millions of eyes. I had become a transparent woman, awake with living love and my new soul-daughter. I had become my Self!
Roaring down the beach at high speed, happy, hungry, and thirsty, burned by the sun and wind, we returned to Taz’s sharp, hard metal hangar submerged in the swaying, wind-breathing grasses beside the Oceano Airport runway. Wandering through Taz’s junkyard of materials and circling his sculptures, I paid homage to his burnt symbols wrestled from tortured mind and torched metal. From piles of plastic, shining sheets of stainless steel, and welding rods, his creativity had forged opalescent, petal fountains; ravaged iron skeletons stretching toward an unobtainable heaven; bronze sunbursts; lacquered metal landscapes containing opaque, plastic jewels; and delicate wire sconces. Usually entranced by their visionary beauty, I found myself shrinking from their metallic hardness. Luminous and open, I hugged my abdomen containing my treasure, my daughter. The intensity of Taz’s mind-visions invaded my vulnerable reality. I longed for safety and escape.
Yoni approached, cautiously curious, sensing our primal energy. Even though I knew she was sleeping with my husband and that she wanted everything that was rightfully mine – my husband, my child, my home – I felt only love for her in that moment. What had been hurtful didn’t seem to matter. Like the sun, I couldn’t stop myself from shining love. I gazed openly at my shadow sister, who defied all grooming, absorbing her reality instead of reacting against it. I observed her muddy sneakers and torn jeans, the man’s shirt knotted above her bare midriff, and her ragged hair. I saw her hunger and accepted it. Openly indulgent with her desire for smoking, eating, talking, chewing gum, and sex, her lips licked at everything; her mouth was her main groove. I knew I was tripping on her, but I wanted to understand her voracious oral appetites. The only thing I could think of giving her was my news.
“We took an acid trip in the dunes. We’re going to have a daughter,” I rejoiced, fully expecting her to share my joy.
Yoni’s face grimaced in shocked surprise, then hardened to hold back the anger, jealousy and fear that sprang to the surface.
She grunted, “Can’t believe you guys,” and lit a cigarette.
Her huge, watery blue eyes flickered uncertainly between Taz and me, waiting to see if Taz would say anything, but he was lost in contemplation of his latest sculpture and ignored her. Shaking, she inhaled deeply, licked her lips, and flicked non-existent ashes off the end of her cigarette. Abruptly, she dropped it and ground it under her heel. Out of sync with our ecstasy, unable to look at me, she turned and left. For a year she’d stood her ground, outlasting our fights, my jealousy, and Taz’s domination, determined to remain a part of our scene. Pain tore through me. Why must love for one create pain for another?
Shifting my attention, I worshipped Taz, panther-pacing among his creations. Looking intensely at one sculpture, then another, his lean, muscular body moved like a dancer in his tight black pants and turtleneck sweater. My eyes caressed his aristocratic features and savored his olive-skinned charisma that evoked images of the leafy crowns and togas of ancient times. As thought patterns recreated my mind prison, the power that had awakened in the dunes flowed out of me and into him, my love once again imprisoned by a bond that took away my reason, my freedom, and my strength. Even though I allowed him to dominate my heart, my brain, and my womb, I was caught in conflict. Unable to say no or to let go, I believed my love would rescue him, not understanding that blind loyalty, slavish devotion, and illusory projection were not love. I had not yet realized I needed to rescue myself.
Our marriage was not a merging of worlds, a melting of waves on a mutual shore. My every effort to create love was rebuffed and my every advance caused him to retreat. I lived in a quicksand of fear. Never knowing what Taz would be like from moment to moment and lost in my need for him, I didn’t know I deserved anything better. I tried to please him, but nothing I did was ever enough.
He pushed me away, just like the lyrics in Dylan’s song:
“...it ain’t me babe, it ain’t me you’re looking for...”
But whenever I tried to leave, he pulled me back.
I looked at my hands. The lines on them undulated like waves. What did these lines mean? What was I going to do with these hands?
Choo ran into the studio and threw himself into my arms, offering a squiggling, giggling, energetic embrace.
“Oh, dear Choo, you’re going to have a sister,” I whispered.
Laughing, he invited me to play. We walked hand in hand in the lush grasses and among the bushes bursting with radiant flowers. The powerful rush of acid over, dissolving ecstasy floated like sweet sadness among magenta-leaf mandalas and visually vibrating bird song. Messages of love burst like day-stars all around me. Light, color, sweetness, and beauty drifted over me, covering me, blessing me.
My son’s mischievously joyful laughter sparkled like rainbow snowflakes in the luminous landscape. Enjoying the feeling of the warm, moist dirt on my bare feet, I followed Choo down the path beside the brook, through a tunnel of flowering bushes, to the back of the dunes. After climbing a coarse sand hill, we lay down and peered over the top. Foaming breakers rolled thunderously out of advancing fog banks that eclipsed the sun. Cold wind tore at us as the ghostly mist crept threateningly toward us. Suddenly tired and irritable, Choo demanded to go home. I carried him down the dune and past the flowering bushes whipping madly in the increasing winds. At home, playing in his bath, his good spirits returned, and I marveled at his boundless resilience.
For the next couple of days, I drifted down from the acid trip, my soul daughter blossoming like a great light of joy within. Taz hovered near, seemingly moved by the conception and our shared ecstasy. Then, he pulled back abruptly, breaking the warm connection. Openly taking up with Yoni, he told me to split.