Schizophophrenia! Hell, that is just the trailer to my flick. I have a sizeable community of characters in my head, a posse of misfits and do-fits that seem to get along pretty well and pop out whenever they feel like doing so. Want to swap lies with a Caribbean pirate, “you slimy sea dog,” I’m your guy. Want to have tea with a Brit Twit and discuss the demise of the “Em-pire!” I have Sir Percy Dovetonsils at your convenience in Joyce 200, hoping some of you will drop by. Some people believe that enjoying the different mirrors of their mental disco ball of life is not healthy. Well, tell that to my Rick Ekcarts, Caribbean cultural explorer for 40 years.
Of course, Rick would be the first to admit that there are days when life can get a bit grainy, perplexing, and somewhat lonely. That is because we forget all of the “me’s” that reside inside of us. Back in 1997, I had been in the Caribbean for six months, the last five weeks of which were spent on a solo exploration of many fascinating cultures. The problem was that six weeks of being an outsider, isolated from my friends seemed like an eternity. In the uncertainty of my adventures, I had ignored all my “me’s.”
. . . . . . . .
Ladies and gentlemen, in preparation for our take-off would you please make sure that your seat belts are fastened securely, that all carry-on items are stowed in the luggage compartments above you or tucked under the seat in front of you. All seats must be in their full upright and locked position. Caribbean Island Airlines once again thanks you for choosing Caribbean for all your travel needs.
As I squeeze most of the blood from my lower body tightening my seat belt, I turn my head just far enough to the left to make eye contact with what the British might call a “Stunnah.” The professionally primped woman sitting just across the aisle in this tiny hot plane freezes my mind. I smile and give a slight eye roll, implying the multitude of times we have heard the flight attendant mantra. She smiles in response making my head spin. I am unable to speak. Suddenly she breaks the awkward pause, “So, who are you?”
“That depends, “ I reply. (What kind of a dorky reply was that? Am I in 8th grade?)
“On what?” she puzzles.
In my nervousness I blubber, “On who you ask, and when you ask them.”
She squints an eye that I interpret as curiosity. I launch my riff:
“To my neighbor, I am a funny guy,
To a bookstore owner, I am an author,
To a roadside observer, I am a motor scooter sidecar enthusiast,
To a short person, I am a tall guy,
To a macho man, I am a weenie.
To my wife, I am Ali,
To my sister, I am a big dog head,
To my brother-in-law, I’m Big Al,
To one sister-in-law, I am a ton of fun,
To another sister-in-law, I am a jerk.
To the payroll officer at Champlain College, I am a nine-digit number,
To wait staff, I am a good tipper,
To a chef, I am a vegetarian,
To a Burlington, Vermont bike path regular, I am a bicyclist,
To a cancer doctor, I am a miracle man.
To current students, I am Professor Stracke,
To 20,000 former students, I am a Sociologist who thinks 43 years is still a new career,
To a social observer, I am a tad flamboyant,
To a conservative, I am a socialist,
And to myself, I am a bit of an amnesiac.”
“What was the question again?” I ask.
She abruptly turns her head and looks out the window. She doesn’t say another word.
. . . . . . . . .
Upon reflection, two things are obvious; 1) I am a jerk, but I am old enough to enjoy my Jerkatudeness, and 2) All of us are many persons, given the situation. It is a fact that you will become many people as you gain experiences and understanding. Your college years are about many things, not the least of which is to discover your Concept of Self, who you are, what you are, who you are not and what you are not. This is the perfect time in your life to explore how you are going to intertwine in this wacked out world. There are no limits on you except your own. You are your only obstacle.
Reggae music icon, Jimmy Cliff put it straight 35 years ago, “You can get it if you really want it, . . . but you must try, you must try, you must try.” ‘Nuff said.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Brain of Change
“Mr. Alan, wahke up deahr, I need yu blood.”
It is three in the morning and Jeneka, my personal nurse who has held onto her native Jamaican dialect for two decades while working as a nurse in the States, had just drained me around midnight, but that is the way they keep you alive after a Bone Marrow Transplant here at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC.
“Are all of you vampires or do you just like me?” I responded. Jeneka let out a hearty West Indian laugh. Then she sat on the side of my bed.
“I been werkin’ wit cansha patients foh goin’ on twenty yeahs now, ahnd I do declare dat yu gone ta’ make it sweetheahrt, yu is filled wit hope ahn dats’ what it takes. Yu be bahck up dere in Vermont teachin’ like a fool in no time.” We smiled at one another. She soothingly rubbed my left arm as she stood, gathered her samples, instruments and medical waste and went to leave the room.
“Now yu git a little sleep dahlin’,” she suggested as she silently left my Sterile Room. I touched my arm, still warm from her unstated compassion.
. . . . . . . . . .
As many of you may know I am now in my 14th month of my post-Bone Marrow Transplant, and except for numerous weird physical conditions brought on by the freight car loads of meds, toxic and otherwise, the specialists have pumped, pricked, and plunged into me in the past two years, I am on a very respectable trek to recovery. I have a certainty of hope that I will return to the classroom in the fall to play with many more young adult minds. Through forty years of college teaching I have bumbled and stumbled my way to the key of teaching. You teach what you need to learn. And what I have learned is that hope and perseverance will lead to whatever goal you set for yourself.
I would say that 50% of such a recovery is mental. I would also say that most of the legions of Doc’s, nurses, and techies I have met in one circumstance or another would agree. Anyone working directly with cancer patients for any length of time will tell you that the patient’s attitude has an enormous effect on whether they walk out the front door of the cancer hospital, or if they are carried out the back door, largely depends on the patient’s attitude and expectations. Even the most gifted oncology specialists will agree, but for years they have not known why this is the case. They had no way of quantifying one’s attitude, thus they were caught in their “Scientific Method,” with a mystery. Cancer professionals intuitively and anecdotally know attitude has a great deal to do with recovery and /or survival, but their methods of “knowing the truth” are solemnly wed to their belief in the Scientific Method.
Finally, finally, we have the technology to scientifically prove what many of us cancer survivors know. Let me explain, and I promise you that you will not be bored. And if you are bored with what I have to say, well, certain Aboriginal groups in the Australian outback have a saying, “Not all breathing people are alive.”
Let’s make this real for you. Think about where our world and nation are at this present moment in time. We are toxic, twisted, tangled, confused, confounded and scared. However, and let me shout out a huge however, that we also have hope. The election has given us all hope. We have, for the second time in my lifetime, a nation of hope, a community of hope. Granted, the dreams of the Boomers did not work out as planned in the 1960’s, but that does not diminish or isn’t even relevant to the present massive outpouring of hope that is evident, not just in the States, but throughout the world. And remember that the U.S. is a nation of hope. The U.S. has always been power-driven by communities of hope. It is a major element of our Cultural Ethos. This is the American Dream.
Now, let’s make this even more real and applicable for you by integrating these current events with my own personal story.
With my beloved wife Lynda off at work or on her Mac Book most of the time, my defense against my mind turning into over-cooked spinach, mid-western style, is to learn new things, spend time in self-reflection and meditation, and to constantly remind myself of the fact that nothing stays the same, nothing. Not the slightest of which are our own brains, bodies, feelings, emotions, interactions and what we perceive as being reality.
I have spent a huge amount of time during my “cancer era” studying the human brain. We all know our brains are literally incomprehensibly amazing and complex. However, you may not know that research in brain science is making giant steps in putting together some nearly unbelievable findings. The most exciting part is that these findings are so hard for us to imagine because we have been trapped in a paradigm of the brain as just another organ in the body. We now know that the brain is an integral part of the entire package, and that we, the user of that brain, have the power to control and even change our own brain in the way that it functions, produces emotions, and learns. Within the very recent past, experts have empirically proven a person’s ability to change the path and patterns of neural transmissions within one’s own brain. To me, this knowledge has unbounded potential. I am over the moon with hope and “irie vibes” as Jeneka might say, and you should be as well.
Think about it. Is your cup ½ empty or ½ full? Is the world a joyous and wondrous place, or is bickering, hatred, brutality, and war a given? Will you have a “good” life, or are you just another bio-carbon unit mucking around for a few decades only to decompose into a small pile of organic matter? You know what is even more exciting than the new First Family and our community of hope for a different way of living in this world? Given what science now knows about the brain, we have the power to construct the reality of the rest of our lives. We have the potential to be whatever we want to be and the scientific community, for the first time since empirical proof for seeking reality came into existence; the skeptical hard scientists believe it as well.
Over the past 2½ years, the 1,000’s of meds choked, poked and dripped into me sent me to wander around many playgrounds of reality. Hoping not to insult or marginalize my band of iridescent bright blue monkeys that sometime keep me company by running at top speed around the top of my room endlessly chattering away in one such reality, I have come to realize what indigenous peoples have based their cultural components on for tons of time, one irrefutable fact: the universe is not “out there.” Reality lies between your ears. However you want to live, whatever you want to do, is limited only by the “mental cage,” that culture fervently attempts to embed in our brain’s neural transmissions, through myths and rhetoric, and perpetuates through ethnocentric and myopic visions of the rest of the world. But this is a process that ignores what we now know to be true. The truth of how you will live, create, and be ~ in your life ~ is in your brain. What you do to construct your reality is totally up to you. Think about it. Think about the community of hope that is taking place. And most importantly, think about your role and where you want to be in the community.
Buddha, in the 6th Century, cast the idea as follows: “ Be a light unto yourself.” What I take from all of this is what my late father unendingly screeched at me, “Damnit’ boy, (my dad always called me boy), how many times you got ta’ get hit upside the head with a 2x4 before you get it?” Obviously, considering my 62 years on the planet, it took me a while.
It is three in the morning and Jeneka, my personal nurse who has held onto her native Jamaican dialect for two decades while working as a nurse in the States, had just drained me around midnight, but that is the way they keep you alive after a Bone Marrow Transplant here at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC.
“Are all of you vampires or do you just like me?” I responded. Jeneka let out a hearty West Indian laugh. Then she sat on the side of my bed.
“I been werkin’ wit cansha patients foh goin’ on twenty yeahs now, ahnd I do declare dat yu gone ta’ make it sweetheahrt, yu is filled wit hope ahn dats’ what it takes. Yu be bahck up dere in Vermont teachin’ like a fool in no time.” We smiled at one another. She soothingly rubbed my left arm as she stood, gathered her samples, instruments and medical waste and went to leave the room.
“Now yu git a little sleep dahlin’,” she suggested as she silently left my Sterile Room. I touched my arm, still warm from her unstated compassion.
. . . . . . . . . .
As many of you may know I am now in my 14th month of my post-Bone Marrow Transplant, and except for numerous weird physical conditions brought on by the freight car loads of meds, toxic and otherwise, the specialists have pumped, pricked, and plunged into me in the past two years, I am on a very respectable trek to recovery. I have a certainty of hope that I will return to the classroom in the fall to play with many more young adult minds. Through forty years of college teaching I have bumbled and stumbled my way to the key of teaching. You teach what you need to learn. And what I have learned is that hope and perseverance will lead to whatever goal you set for yourself.
I would say that 50% of such a recovery is mental. I would also say that most of the legions of Doc’s, nurses, and techies I have met in one circumstance or another would agree. Anyone working directly with cancer patients for any length of time will tell you that the patient’s attitude has an enormous effect on whether they walk out the front door of the cancer hospital, or if they are carried out the back door, largely depends on the patient’s attitude and expectations. Even the most gifted oncology specialists will agree, but for years they have not known why this is the case. They had no way of quantifying one’s attitude, thus they were caught in their “Scientific Method,” with a mystery. Cancer professionals intuitively and anecdotally know attitude has a great deal to do with recovery and /or survival, but their methods of “knowing the truth” are solemnly wed to their belief in the Scientific Method.
Finally, finally, we have the technology to scientifically prove what many of us cancer survivors know. Let me explain, and I promise you that you will not be bored. And if you are bored with what I have to say, well, certain Aboriginal groups in the Australian outback have a saying, “Not all breathing people are alive.”
Let’s make this real for you. Think about where our world and nation are at this present moment in time. We are toxic, twisted, tangled, confused, confounded and scared. However, and let me shout out a huge however, that we also have hope. The election has given us all hope. We have, for the second time in my lifetime, a nation of hope, a community of hope. Granted, the dreams of the Boomers did not work out as planned in the 1960’s, but that does not diminish or isn’t even relevant to the present massive outpouring of hope that is evident, not just in the States, but throughout the world. And remember that the U.S. is a nation of hope. The U.S. has always been power-driven by communities of hope. It is a major element of our Cultural Ethos. This is the American Dream.
Now, let’s make this even more real and applicable for you by integrating these current events with my own personal story.
With my beloved wife Lynda off at work or on her Mac Book most of the time, my defense against my mind turning into over-cooked spinach, mid-western style, is to learn new things, spend time in self-reflection and meditation, and to constantly remind myself of the fact that nothing stays the same, nothing. Not the slightest of which are our own brains, bodies, feelings, emotions, interactions and what we perceive as being reality.
I have spent a huge amount of time during my “cancer era” studying the human brain. We all know our brains are literally incomprehensibly amazing and complex. However, you may not know that research in brain science is making giant steps in putting together some nearly unbelievable findings. The most exciting part is that these findings are so hard for us to imagine because we have been trapped in a paradigm of the brain as just another organ in the body. We now know that the brain is an integral part of the entire package, and that we, the user of that brain, have the power to control and even change our own brain in the way that it functions, produces emotions, and learns. Within the very recent past, experts have empirically proven a person’s ability to change the path and patterns of neural transmissions within one’s own brain. To me, this knowledge has unbounded potential. I am over the moon with hope and “irie vibes” as Jeneka might say, and you should be as well.
Think about it. Is your cup ½ empty or ½ full? Is the world a joyous and wondrous place, or is bickering, hatred, brutality, and war a given? Will you have a “good” life, or are you just another bio-carbon unit mucking around for a few decades only to decompose into a small pile of organic matter? You know what is even more exciting than the new First Family and our community of hope for a different way of living in this world? Given what science now knows about the brain, we have the power to construct the reality of the rest of our lives. We have the potential to be whatever we want to be and the scientific community, for the first time since empirical proof for seeking reality came into existence; the skeptical hard scientists believe it as well.
Over the past 2½ years, the 1,000’s of meds choked, poked and dripped into me sent me to wander around many playgrounds of reality. Hoping not to insult or marginalize my band of iridescent bright blue monkeys that sometime keep me company by running at top speed around the top of my room endlessly chattering away in one such reality, I have come to realize what indigenous peoples have based their cultural components on for tons of time, one irrefutable fact: the universe is not “out there.” Reality lies between your ears. However you want to live, whatever you want to do, is limited only by the “mental cage,” that culture fervently attempts to embed in our brain’s neural transmissions, through myths and rhetoric, and perpetuates through ethnocentric and myopic visions of the rest of the world. But this is a process that ignores what we now know to be true. The truth of how you will live, create, and be ~ in your life ~ is in your brain. What you do to construct your reality is totally up to you. Think about it. Think about the community of hope that is taking place. And most importantly, think about your role and where you want to be in the community.
Buddha, in the 6th Century, cast the idea as follows: “ Be a light unto yourself.” What I take from all of this is what my late father unendingly screeched at me, “Damnit’ boy, (my dad always called me boy), how many times you got ta’ get hit upside the head with a 2x4 before you get it?” Obviously, considering my 62 years on the planet, it took me a while.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
We Are All Wanderers
Not all those that wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolkien
Greetings One and All
“Who in Hades is that,” I question as I gaze at the cover of the fall 2008 edition of the Champlain View. And who is the “wanderer?” Good lord … it’s me!
I never thought of myself as a wanderer, a meanderer, a restless soul. To me, a wanderer is a tad pathetic, about half lost and about half nuts as my late father would have it put it. I have never felt either … or have I?
As I read the thoughtful, articulate piece by Jenica Norrish, I experience a “self-paradigm shift.” I think of myself as an increasingly sedentary teenage geezer, teaching cultural sociology through storytelling. I thought I do it that way because for 40-years it has worked quite well. In my yet to be completed Circle of Life, I have taught between 16,000 and 18,000 students at three institutions. My Adult Circle began in 1968 at Northern Michigan University, a school of 10,000 student “penguins” just south of the North Pole in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. After three years of scraping the windshield from October to May, I did a 180 and moved to “tepid” Tucson, Arizona (where the “dry” heat of 110° is still 110°), to work on my doctorate in cultural sociology and to teach. I taught Western Civilization, mostly by using personal stories of “old dead white men” rather than requiring students to simply memorize names and dates in case they ever faced the always-condescending Alex Trebek on Jeopardy.
A phone call from a friend in Burlington, Vermont in the spring of 1973 sent me to the Tucson phone book to rent a monster U-Haul trailer and move 3,000 miles on a whim and a “why not.” Ignoring that a dissertation was the only hurdle remaining before completing a Ph.D. in Cultural Sociology, I let personal relations dictate the next arc in my Circle. I had finished all my coursework and taken two days of feared and exhaustive exams for my doctorate. I had two faculty advisors to choose from to guide my dissertation, I couldn’t stand one of them and the other was getting divorced and in the midst of your classic, run of the mill mental crack-up. Thus moving to New England, where I had never been, seemed like a reasonable choice. Besides, I was curious about their different way of living. In addition to their strange accents, they didn’t even wear Bolo ties!
By August, I decided to stay in funky Burlington, no pedestrian Church Street, just bars, locally owned retail stores and a head shop on every block. Even though I had no job, I never thought of myself as a wanderer; I was more of a cultural explorer.
“Do you need anyone to teach a few courses?” I asked former Champlain President Bob Skiff on a humid, hot August afternoon.
“What do you teach?” asked then Vice-President Skiff, as he stood directly in front of a huge floor fan in Bader Hall (Champlain’s Administration building at the time).
“Whatever you need,” I replied as sweat saturated my rayon disco shirt, flared synthetic pants and brown 9” high Frye square-toed cowboy boots.
“I like your attitude,” Skiff said. Two guys, two different cultures toasting together on a Friday afternoon. I thought I might stay a year. My Circle inched forward.
I think another element of my Circle passage needs explanation, for our life experiences are definitely not a matter of happen stance. Consciously or sub- consciously we play a big role in what the Circle looks like and where it goes. The fact is that most of us are not conscious (in the Buddhists sense). I am certainly as prone to this reality as the next person, and it was not until I read Jenica Norrish’s article that I realized the truth. As an adolescent and young adult, mass media had a profound impact on my sub-conscious of who I was and what I wanted.
My story began being written by my boyhood best buddy Buzzy. His bi-ethnic family fascinated me. With a Mexican/Pima Native American mom and a “very” Irish dad, I frequently witnessed a variety of distinct cultural expressions and huge differences. I wanted desperately to go to Mexico and Ireland; I had to know more. Why was my family so astonishingly boring by comparison?
In the early 60’s, a television program, I Spy, put a crack in the blatant mass racism in the U.S. by starring a popular African-American comedian, Bill Cosby, in a major mainstream evening program. As Scotty and Kelly travelled the world from Istanbul to Tokyo to the French Riviera as secret agents thwarting the “Commies” at every turn, I was totally entranced by the exotic locations around the globe. I dressed like Scotty and used quips from the show whenever possible. Every single moment of the show pumped adrenaline into my Illinois-imprisoned body.
The early 60’s also blessed us with Sean Connery as James Bond in the movie “Dr. No.” Again, different cultures and sexy locations made the film an immediate depiction of the way life could be lived. Any hetero male in my age grouping and beyond will never, ever forget the spectacular image of actress Ursula Andress walking out the aqua blue Bahamian waters in her white bikini. The image on the screen wasn’t a fantasy; it was a spiritual experience. The image, the locales of I Spy and the inter-cultural experiences at Buzzy’s house were all wedged into my sub-conscious, guiding my continuing Circle of Life, and I did not have a clue, at least not until Ms. Norrish’s article was published.
As stated earlier, I have not left Champlain, but Vermont winters are too frigid, so I began taking every opportunity to head south. Like Christopher Columbus, I stumbled into a lifetime of exploring the islands of the Caribbean. Little did I suspect that these explorations on nearly 50 islands, countless interviews with local folks, two books of anecdotes used to teach, an endowment for students, and a bevy of the dearest friends in the world was the product of my own self that had been largely shaped by the contents of my own sub-conscious. I had become my own Scotty, my own Bond, James Bond (sorry), and I found my own Ursula (see page 15 of article).
As in my life, your life is your story to write, and you can bet that your script will become a circle and your circle will be connected to all the elements of your life. You never have to be stuck. Be conscious.
P.S. Just as our lives intersected in the past, I cordially invite you to use my blog to reconnect. Let’s continue our stories. “As they say in the Caribbean, “Ahl de bes’.”
Greetings One and All
“Who in Hades is that,” I question as I gaze at the cover of the fall 2008 edition of the Champlain View. And who is the “wanderer?” Good lord … it’s me!
I never thought of myself as a wanderer, a meanderer, a restless soul. To me, a wanderer is a tad pathetic, about half lost and about half nuts as my late father would have it put it. I have never felt either … or have I?
As I read the thoughtful, articulate piece by Jenica Norrish, I experience a “self-paradigm shift.” I think of myself as an increasingly sedentary teenage geezer, teaching cultural sociology through storytelling. I thought I do it that way because for 40-years it has worked quite well. In my yet to be completed Circle of Life, I have taught between 16,000 and 18,000 students at three institutions. My Adult Circle began in 1968 at Northern Michigan University, a school of 10,000 student “penguins” just south of the North Pole in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. After three years of scraping the windshield from October to May, I did a 180 and moved to “tepid” Tucson, Arizona (where the “dry” heat of 110° is still 110°), to work on my doctorate in cultural sociology and to teach. I taught Western Civilization, mostly by using personal stories of “old dead white men” rather than requiring students to simply memorize names and dates in case they ever faced the always-condescending Alex Trebek on Jeopardy.
A phone call from a friend in Burlington, Vermont in the spring of 1973 sent me to the Tucson phone book to rent a monster U-Haul trailer and move 3,000 miles on a whim and a “why not.” Ignoring that a dissertation was the only hurdle remaining before completing a Ph.D. in Cultural Sociology, I let personal relations dictate the next arc in my Circle. I had finished all my coursework and taken two days of feared and exhaustive exams for my doctorate. I had two faculty advisors to choose from to guide my dissertation, I couldn’t stand one of them and the other was getting divorced and in the midst of your classic, run of the mill mental crack-up. Thus moving to New England, where I had never been, seemed like a reasonable choice. Besides, I was curious about their different way of living. In addition to their strange accents, they didn’t even wear Bolo ties!
By August, I decided to stay in funky Burlington, no pedestrian Church Street, just bars, locally owned retail stores and a head shop on every block. Even though I had no job, I never thought of myself as a wanderer; I was more of a cultural explorer.
“Do you need anyone to teach a few courses?” I asked former Champlain President Bob Skiff on a humid, hot August afternoon.
“What do you teach?” asked then Vice-President Skiff, as he stood directly in front of a huge floor fan in Bader Hall (Champlain’s Administration building at the time).
“Whatever you need,” I replied as sweat saturated my rayon disco shirt, flared synthetic pants and brown 9” high Frye square-toed cowboy boots.
“I like your attitude,” Skiff said. Two guys, two different cultures toasting together on a Friday afternoon. I thought I might stay a year. My Circle inched forward.
I think another element of my Circle passage needs explanation, for our life experiences are definitely not a matter of happen stance. Consciously or sub- consciously we play a big role in what the Circle looks like and where it goes. The fact is that most of us are not conscious (in the Buddhists sense). I am certainly as prone to this reality as the next person, and it was not until I read Jenica Norrish’s article that I realized the truth. As an adolescent and young adult, mass media had a profound impact on my sub-conscious of who I was and what I wanted.
My story began being written by my boyhood best buddy Buzzy. His bi-ethnic family fascinated me. With a Mexican/Pima Native American mom and a “very” Irish dad, I frequently witnessed a variety of distinct cultural expressions and huge differences. I wanted desperately to go to Mexico and Ireland; I had to know more. Why was my family so astonishingly boring by comparison?
In the early 60’s, a television program, I Spy, put a crack in the blatant mass racism in the U.S. by starring a popular African-American comedian, Bill Cosby, in a major mainstream evening program. As Scotty and Kelly travelled the world from Istanbul to Tokyo to the French Riviera as secret agents thwarting the “Commies” at every turn, I was totally entranced by the exotic locations around the globe. I dressed like Scotty and used quips from the show whenever possible. Every single moment of the show pumped adrenaline into my Illinois-imprisoned body.
The early 60’s also blessed us with Sean Connery as James Bond in the movie “Dr. No.” Again, different cultures and sexy locations made the film an immediate depiction of the way life could be lived. Any hetero male in my age grouping and beyond will never, ever forget the spectacular image of actress Ursula Andress walking out the aqua blue Bahamian waters in her white bikini. The image on the screen wasn’t a fantasy; it was a spiritual experience. The image, the locales of I Spy and the inter-cultural experiences at Buzzy’s house were all wedged into my sub-conscious, guiding my continuing Circle of Life, and I did not have a clue, at least not until Ms. Norrish’s article was published.
As stated earlier, I have not left Champlain, but Vermont winters are too frigid, so I began taking every opportunity to head south. Like Christopher Columbus, I stumbled into a lifetime of exploring the islands of the Caribbean. Little did I suspect that these explorations on nearly 50 islands, countless interviews with local folks, two books of anecdotes used to teach, an endowment for students, and a bevy of the dearest friends in the world was the product of my own self that had been largely shaped by the contents of my own sub-conscious. I had become my own Scotty, my own Bond, James Bond (sorry), and I found my own Ursula (see page 15 of article).
As in my life, your life is your story to write, and you can bet that your script will become a circle and your circle will be connected to all the elements of your life. You never have to be stuck. Be conscious.
P.S. Just as our lives intersected in the past, I cordially invite you to use my blog to reconnect. Let’s continue our stories. “As they say in the Caribbean, “Ahl de bes’.”
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