Fierce Medicine (1973-1975)
High Desert
With school done, I wanted to prove I could work on my own, and landed a spot up north on a ranch in the Mojave Desert. The owner was a retired local sheriff who, not to put too fine a point on it, was used to exploiting people – her ranches were staffed by young delinquents who’d been sentenced to work-farms, but were given the dubious option of working one of her ranches instead. So she was willing to give a kid like me a job. She lived on a range in the San Bernardino mountains; I didn’t want to work anywhere near her, so I went to the one in the desert, all rattlesnakes and sand, outside a little town called Hesperia.
I chose the desert because it was isolated, and because I was scared of it. Though I couldn’t remember why at the time, I had paralyzing fear creeping up on me all the time; it was a continuing challenge not to be overcome by fear. So my response would be to go after the fear – conquer it first, so it wouldn’t conquer me. What better way to deal with fear of the desert than to go live in the middle of it….alone.
That was the thing about the job; I’d be single-handedly responsible for <number tk> Morgan horses (not the thoroughbreds I was used to), <tk> miles from the nearest person or town. I’d train them for show, fix their PVC water pipes when they broke, buck the hay to feed them twice a day, clean the stalls, birth the foals, help them learn how to walk, tend to any of the sick and injured. For this I’d be paid twenty-five dollars a week, and from that I had to feed myself, my dog, and my horse. It wasn’t uncommon for me to skip eating so my animals could be fed.
If I’d wanted to work with horses, I was up to my elbows in it now – literally. Before long, I found myself face-down in shit, my arms up a mare’s vagina, being repeatedly kicked by the foal I was helping birth. There was no one to call to help – no phone even if there had been – just the mare, the foal, and me, learning to feel what’s up in there as best I could. And because the sheriff, for some reason, turned pregnant horses loose, I also learned to birth a foal while standing. One mare had started giving birth while walking around the paddock, the spindly legs of the foal already starting to hang out of her. If the baby fell to the ground, it would be killed, or deformed (which was the same thing – you killed a deformed foal). So there was me, walking behind the mare, holding her tail, trying to find a way to help the foal out. When it came slurping out, dark and purple, it was so heavy, and so slippery, it was all I could do to hold on, and fell to my knees to protect it. I saved her life! That was a huge life-affirming thing for me; up to that point in my life, my self esteem was beyond bad; it was in negative territory, and birthing foals were some of my greatest victories.
Alone, I fell into a rhythm of the days and the animals; in the cool of morning, or sometimes in the evening, I’d practice yoga, as often nude as wearing my ranch gear. I started talking to the horses in their own language (after all, there were more of them than there was of my kind), communicating in knickers, stomps, nose blows, and whacks, just like they spoke to each other. As a result, I gained their trust, and they let me around them when normally they wouldn’t. l’d ride the desert, finding special, beautiful spots where I could sit, and try to find some measure of peace. At night, I’d sit out with the coyotes and howl with them. They must have smelled me as human, even though I smelled more like a horse; but coyotes like a good sing, and will come if you start first. (I was also scared of them. I always kept a pile of rocks next to me.) After some months, I seemed to have lost the ability to talk, or to think in human words.
Soon after the horse show, it rained. Rain is a magical eventin the desert, unlocking all the potential that’s been hiding just under the surface. If you sit still long enough, you can almost see it go green and bloom in front of your eyes, until the entire horizon is carpeted orange, gold, and blue with wildflowers. For me it was a beauty made vibrant by its transience; the imminence of its death making it all that much more poignant. I sat for awhile under a tree by the lower paddock, smelling the rain, gnawing at my anger and fear and loneliness, waiting for the green to come, but something else too, I wasn’t sure what. The clouds shifted, and a rainbow lit up the sky above me, arcing into the near distance, just over the next rise. There it is, I decided, just within reach – not a pot of gold, but something, something good, something different. I knew legends started for a reason, some grain of truth, and there was something there for me. I saddled up my horse and rode, hard and fast, straight towards the end of that rainbow.
What I didn’t know is that rainbows move as you move; I’d get close to where it touched down on the ground, and it would shift – again, and again, dodging me. And the further it moved, the more I leaned into my horse’s neck and dug in my heels, the more I could feel the last spark of hope in me dwindle, until at last the hope flickered out in the desert rain and I reined him in. There it was, still in front of me, the end of the rainbow, this magical gateway: but it was closed to someone as foul as me. Just then, as I had been with school, I was done with the ranch, with the desert, with all of it. Really, really done. Time to go. Time to die.
Though I felt I’d had a meaningless life, I’d at least have a meaningful death, so the next day I rode out among the new flowers to scout the right spot. Thinking of all my special places in the desert, the best candidate for my exit was an area with cliffs above an arroyo; at the top, among the Joshua Trees, was a high space where you could see for miles. Riding up, I tied my horse and walked to the edge – it was a clear drop to the bottom, a dry bed of melon-sized rocks. Then I rode down and investigated the arroyo thoroughly. Some of the rocks were sharp, but most were worn round by the waters that rushed through during storms. This was the place.
I rode back to the ranch, stabled and fed the horse, then headed back out on foot towards the cliffs as the sun set. (Whatever I was willing to do to myself, I wasn’t about to harm a horse by leaving him to the snakes and coyotes after I’d gone). I climbed the cliff, and sat for awhile in the darkness. It was a really beautiful, clear, desert night, with the stars spread above me like a blanket. And because I was done with everything, because I didn’t care anymore, I could finally, fully, feel the preciousness of the moment, like the transient feeling when the rains came, only deeper. The night, the stars, the cliff…all held nothing more or less than pure beauty. And finally, for once in my life, I got to experience a wide-open feeling of peace.
And then I jumped.
And in that jump, I got a chance to fly for a little bit. My arms were spread wide, because in my mind I had wings – not wings trying to keep me up, but Spirit wings, to carry me on…
I may have been unconscious for awhile, I don’t know. I do know I hurt really badly. Looking around, I realized I’d landed in a fucking sandy patch among the rocks. And though I’d bitten my tongue and my cheek, and was scraped and bruised, I didn’t break a thing. Oh, I was fuck-ing furious. There’s no way in hell I could have survived hitting those rocks, and that little patch was not there earlier – I’d investigated everything. (I still don’t understand how that happened. In retrospect, I’d have to say the Sacred Ones weren’t ready to let me end my life. Later, I’d try suicide again – like before, it wasn’t a cry for help, just a way to finally end the suffering, hoping there was no reincarnation. But again, I’d fail in a ridiculous, pathetic way. It just wasn’t meant to happen.)
It’s funny -- on the way out to the cliffs, I didn’t mind the exhaustion and the cold because it was a one-way ticket, and I wasn’t trying to survive. Walking back to the ranch – limping and growling and swearing – was a different story.
* * *
If I hadn’t been successful in ending quite everything at the ranch, I did come out of the desert, quit the ranch, and move back into the barn with Mike. My animals and I were malnourished from our time in Hesperia; this was a place to nurse ourselves back to health. I started practicing again at the Center for Yoga on Larchmont, and before long I’d met Barbara F. on a ranch in Corona.
Barbara was a neglected horse with an oozing, infected wound on her face from a cut that had gone bad. But even with this big blob of infection-cut-yuckapoo on her face, she was an exceptionally beautiful, high-blood horse, and I fell for her immediately. I started treating her with some of the different remedies I’d created for sick and injured horses; for the free vet service and training I was providing, the people at the ranch let me ride her, which to me was a generous exchange. They finally offered to sell her to me for five thousand dollars, which was a very good deal, but also a huge amount of money to me at the time. Still, there it was: the only thing I wanted to do was be a great trainer and rider, and this horse had the potential to take me where I wanted to go. If Barbara healed, if I could get together the money, if, if, if… she had the height and the bloodlines to take us into international competition. And as much as five thousand dollars was, the owners were willing to make it work – take payments, spread it over time, whatever; they really wanted me to have her. And that was the problem.
Because since I’d rejoined Mike and the show crowd, I’d also rejoined the parties, the drinking, the drugs. In the desert I didn’t have the money for too much of that, and besides, there was no one around to party with other than horses and coyotes. On the other hand, I’d started to reconnect with something at the Center for Yoga, and had heard about a month-long teacher training retreat in Mexico. That was $550 – a lot less than five thousand, but still way more than I had. So I was at this really big conflict point. Working horses was dangerous enough, but staying in the show world felt like a death walk in a lot of ways. Then there was this pull to do the teacher training course, only to give up the animals I’d loved and lived with for so long. I was seriously stuck. So stuck, I got sick – mono probably – but didn’t have money for a doctor, so got even sicker.
But finally, with the experience at the cliffs still fresh in me, I knew it was time to take another jump. I was a jumper by trade, but this was bigger – jumping into death had failed, so I’d take a gamble, a last attempt to jump into life. The retreat would mean being completely off drugs, off cigarettes, off alcohol, and being fed vegetarian food (regularly!); if I lived through the month, I’d make a go of it.
So I sold my horse, paid for the course, and bought a one-way train ticket to Guadalajara. I gave the rest of the money to my brother so he could go to school. It was September 28, 1975. I was 18 years old.
* * *
Mexico
I probably should have looked as carefully at my landing on this jump as I had the one before: turns out it was a 3-day trip, and me with no food, water, or money. And at some point in the journey, I had an epileptic fit – which, to the Mexican peasants on the train, meant I’d been possessed by the Devil.
(Up to that point, I didn’t know I was epileptic. When I have a fit, I’m not there, so I don’t know, and I’d had my share of blackouts over the years, so waking up with gaps in my memory and bruises on my body was part of the weirdness I lived with. Going in and out of consciousness…I just thought I had a very strong dream time, stronger than waking time.)
That train ride was my journey through the Bardo in a way, enhanced by the fasting and dehydration I’d unwittingly signed myself up for. But it was also a seriously magical trip, because I did something really strange for me: I made two friends. Understand: I was a really mean kid. I wouldn’t bark, I’d just bite you. I’d perfected an attitude so effectively abrasive it kept people far, far away. And still, somehow, I made two friends. There was Lupe, a Mexican woman going back home, and ‘the Blonde’ an All-American, voted-most-popular, straight-toothed athlete who I normally would never have even spoken to. They became important companions.
The Blonde stood guard over me while I had my seizure, and explained to me what happened afterward. I leaned my face against the window and told him he was nuts; I’d had headaches and spells like this before. He’d shrug, leave, then come back and make his case again, until I started to piece things together and believe him. There actually was something different about waking up from these blackouts; my brain felt storm-damaged, like electricity had run through my head, and burnt out the neurons. Working back to before the blackout, I realized I’d get stupid, slow, and clumsy. If I was talking, I’d start to stutter. If someone were talking to me, I’d study the sentence and try to milk some meaning from it, though by then they’d have spoken a paragraph. And I knew I wasn’t stupid. Now, thanks to the Blonde, it all made sense.
Lupe took care of me once we arrived in Guadalajara. Getting off the train, fried from the fit and the fasting, I realized I had no idea how I was going to get from the station, up the mountain, to the retreat center. (At that point in my life, I was completely incapable of planning. I could look after the horses -- heal them, feed them, train them – but I couldn’t do any of that for myself.) Lupe put me in a taxi, spoke to the driver, paid him, and told me what to look for when I got out. Then she shut the door, and I never saw her again.
It was night when I got there. I wandered around and somehow ended up in a bed. I’d arrived.
The retreat was at Rancho Rio Caliente, a hot springs spa and sometime fat-farm that also rented its facilities to yoga schools and other groups. The training itself wasn’t that important; I was eating daily (a change for me), I got to do yoga everyday, and I liked my roommate, Diane. But otherwise, teacher training consisted of lots and lots of talk – none of which I was paying any attention to.
Soon, I started flipping out, because I wanted to be a teacher, and we weren’t doing any teaching... of course, I was also flipping out because I was detoxing. While others sat blithely through another lecture about the sutras, or some other totally useless thing, I’d be in the back, locked in full lotus position, hands fastened to my knees, watching hairy, bird-sized tarantulas make their way up my chest. While others focused on their chakras, or third eyes, or whatever, I’d be dealing with snakes winding up my arms, or vines strangling me. I wasn’t sleeping nights – besides the creepy-crawlies, I was breaking out a lot, and was always itchy; my skin felt like it needed to split so I could emerge from it. Still, secretly, I was proud – proud that I could sit stock still while all that shit was going on. The critters started to take on a certain fascination for me; at one point, back in the room with Diane, I looked down to see a small white scorpion, his tail in tight bow, crawling across the back of my hand. Here’s how far into dream time I thought I’d gone: when Diane screamed (the scorpion was real, apparently), I looked up at her wondering how she’d found her way into my delusions. (And here’s how far I’ve come since: I think that’s a pretty funny story.)
So slowly, the filth worked (or crawled) its way out of my body; I’d spend nights wandering around, and a lot of time during the day in the hot springs, which felt like bathing the filth in my soul. And because we still weren’t doing any teaching in this teacher training, I started up a yoga class for some of the obese people who were at the spa. And it was a blast.
The challenge with teaching really fat people is that you’re trying to get them to connect with their bodies, and their awareness of their bodies is not good. There’s lots of self-loathing and terror packed in there. No matter how smart or successful they are with their minds or careers, they’re convinced they’re the greatest failures on earth when it comes to body things. But as I taught them poses they could do, and they found they could do others too, they started having fun. They’d get really proud to be able to do a pose. And when they started to show off for me and each other…I’d just stand up and give applause, it was so great. The class also helped me deal with my fear of fat people, which to me meant my mother and my brother, with all the trauma and drama associated with them. And then I was finding I could teach people, and help them start to heal… and I enjoyed it.
* * *
When the month had passed and I’d finished the training, I was clean, but nowhere near together yet. I’d bought a one-way ticket to get there, and was now facing the prospect of leaving without any money. Maybe it had been the jump from one world to the other that had shifted things, I don’t know, but the miracles that had started on the train continued: for the first time in my life, humans were helping me. Some people in the course had found out I was broke, and pulled together enough cash for a plane ticket (!) with them to LAX. I didn’t have anywhere to go once we arrived, so I asked them to drop me at the Yoga Center at 115 Larchmont. By the time I got there, I had my rap down: I knew Ganga and Lilly hadn’t gotten back yet, and figured the people left running the studio would be stressed, and tired, and stretched thin. Fresh from training, I would be the solution, and I would make myself irreplaceable by the time they’d gotten back. No one knew me, or any of my history – only the facet of me being the teacher and helper who cleaned up and slept on the floor. By the time the owners got back, so far as the staff was concerned, I was absolutely necessary. I’d landed. I was now officially a yoga teacher.