How Many Miles

I remember standing on the highway, having somehow traveled as far as the outskirts of Vancouver, realizing that I did not want to head back east, that I in fact did not want to go anywhere. I walked back and forth from side to side of the highway, totally confused, first hitching one direction and then the other in hopes that I would just go with the first ride that happened. But, miraculously, no one stopped. Slowly, it dawned on me that I did not have to leave the province just because my relationship was over.

I made my way back to Victoria and throwing my fate to the winds, although I was totally broke, I rented a room downtown at the Fairfield Hotel.  The setting did not do much to improve my sense of isolation and failure, for the hotel was populated largely by old men teetering on the brink of poverty and loneliness.  I applied for and received my first welfare cheque but the money was barely enough for rent with a little left over for food and I existed for the first month by buying an order of toast and jam each morning at a local coffee shop and eating a yogurt and a scone each afternoon for my main meal.  After some time I guess my dilemma became apparent to the hotel manager, who offered me a job painting rooms to cover some of my expenses.

During this time I found a second hand copy of Lama Govinda's "Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism" and I began reading it in earnest and renewing my efforts at long meditation periods.  Someone had made a felt-pen drawing inside the front cover of an androgynous figure seated in full lotus position, with a halo of light around the head and the caption "awareness of breath in belly, the fourth way."  This tallied with my own practice and seemed to be a symbol of my present intention.  Sitting cross-legged on my bed I could see my whole body reflected in the dressing table mirror which was just opposite the bed and so I developed a method of focusing on this image while "watching" the breath.  I was also continuing to keep a journal.

One day, as I was meditating on my image in the mirror an extraordinary occurrence took place. My body became luminous, as though it was subtly lit from behind and within and in place of my face,  first my mother's face,  then my father's face and finally a succession of faces appeared. These faces were totally lifelike, alive and very present, not at all like figments of my imagination. I was stunned to see this procession of faces slowly revealing themselves to me. They seemed to go back in time revealing something of myself in each of them. They seemed also to belong to different nationalities and the thought came to me that I was seeing pictures of myself in past incarnations going back finally to a shaman-like face of an old man sitting in a cave. The experience lasted no more than a few minutes but it shocked and dazed me. I had taken no drugs for a long time now and the "realness" of this insight affected me deeply.  I felt I was being shown something of significance to help me in my growth and to this day I feel the same.  I came out of this with the understanding that my path for self-discovery was not just the product of this lifetime but went back for generations before me.  I do not know if the being I saw was myself or my "relations" but I do know that somehow what I saw was and is intimately connected with who I am.

And who am I, after all?  This, of course, is the question.  Paul Reps, who I was soon to meet,  put it in this way, "Who is?",  from which I extracted the idea that the one who is asking, the questioner at least, exists.

During this time I tried to renew my relationship with my son Chad by visiting him in Mill Bay. There was the possibility of a reconciliation between Veronica and me, at least in my mind, but over time it became apparent that this would never be.  I realized I had to get on with my own life, as painful as this whole experience was to me.  I even did a concert with Veronica and another local singer, Maury Stanley, which was a minor tour de force for us as artists and friends. But Veronica was now in another relationship, determined to do her own thing and so the best thing I could do was to struggle onward on my own in the best way I knew how.

Eventually I found a cabin outside Duncan on the Maple Bay Road where I spent a winter writing music, trying to write a book, drinking too much and wrestling with my personal demons.  I fell for a young lass named Sue Torrance who was already in a confusing relationship and who asked me to help her out of it.  I was very lonely for female company and so I forgive myself for not being too clear-headed about my priorities. Yet because her lover was my best friend Robert James, to whom I already owed a great debt of gratitude, I was in for a solid dose of good old-fashioned self-punishment over the next couple of years, trying to establish a relationship with Sue.

To top it off, the house was freezing that winter, despite a fireplace and I spent most of my time in the kitchen with the electric oven turned on trying to stay warm. It was either there or the pub where I spent too many long days and finally paid the price of getting my nose broken in a fight, which woke me up I suppose and moved me out of that scene.