SANTA BARBARA

This is a continuation of the post ‘Reborn in America’.
I was asked how I met my friend Reggie and moved to Santa Barbara:

I first met Reggie one clear morning at Vajrapani by a blazing fire. It was like a volcano erupting through a big hollow stump of a first growth redwood standing in a clearing, in front of an empty house.
He came from the creek carrying a ridiculously small container with water. It was clear that he was the one that had set the fire, and I inquired about it. He told me how, last night, he had build a small fire inside the burnt out stump and how he had put it out with water and gone to sleep in the house.
I felt he was sincere and I told him not to feel bad about it. Soon other people from Vajrapani arrived. A water-run was organized and eventually the fire was put out.
I did not see more of him that day, but next morning I went early to the creek, wondering whether he was still around. I passed the house; nobody was there. But at the creek I found him. It was like a dream-vision: a young naked faun bathing, lighted by the sun that shone into the deep shady coolness of the valley. There he was, alert and amused by the meeting.
This dream feeling lasted all day and when the full moon rose we took mescaline and went up on top of the mountain. Painfully intense - beyond happiness and suffering - I felt my “madness flashing all over he place”. When he decided to leave next morning it was perfect. I had to get a breath. But when he said he might come back, it was perfect too!
And suddenly one day he was there, outside the kitchen, when I went out to investigate a noise. The boy of my dreams with bare, brown legs and shoulders and a glittering flash of eyes and smile.


We passed three days together. The last evening his girlfriend came with her little sister, and I liked them. We all had food and tea and sat and talked in the kitchen, and my mind was in peaceful balance. This was in August of 78. I did not believe that there would be a continuation of this adventure, did not even long for one. I let it sink into the forgotten.
When a letter arrived months later with an invitation to a party in Santa Barbara, I did not want to go, but it wetted my appetite to the point that I decided to visit when I was passing on my way to Topanga for Christmas.
Before I left I had a vivid dream: I am in the ocean with someone at my side. An extraordinary wave begins to rise further out and I feel: this one is too big, better gain firm ground. I turn - but also there a huge wave is rising. As I realize that I must negotiate a wave I feel elated and ready.
When I came to Reggie's house I freaked out; I was too emotional, and after one day, I left.
In Topanga I had another dream: I am at a party and is shown a photo of “Ellen”. There are many persons, all women, on the photo and I don’t see Ellen until in the lower left corner, behind a lace curtain, I discover her. The photo becomes reality and I am looking in the window with the curtain. Ellen is there, naked. She looks like Mary Erwin, Reggie’s friend whom I had just met. She is in the act of slipping her pants on; she sees me and is apparently not pleased. Behind her I see couples having sex. I look in another window and see two men passionately caressing each other and I look at a friend, who is sitting next to me, and we both smile indulgent, but I feel that this is not a quite genuine expression of my feelings, since I am strongly affected by the sight, both attracted and repelled.


The dream photo


Next in the dream, I walk away from the party, barefoot and feeling liberated, like I once felt when I walked back from an acid trip in the king’s garden in Marrakesh. Next to the street where I walk is a park with flowerbeds, benches and ponds. It is a Nordic summer night; the sky is rosy over the row of houses on the far side of the park. I cross the street with cobblestones and pass in front of an approaching car, model nineteen forties. I want to cross through the park, but as I turn the corner of the massive gates I come upon a scene: Under a retaining wall, half into a niche, sits a young blond singer with a guitar. Around him, on benches and on the ground, many people sit. He is singing the last notes of a song with utter sweetness and softness, and I think: now I must stay here the rest of the night and listen. Then he turns towards me and smiles warmly, and it is Thorkild, a boy that I was in love with and whose rejection of me was a bitter experience.
The following night I had third dream: I jump off a streetcar (named “Desire”) and start walking with my companion along a busy street. Suddenly I realize that I have forgotten my two bags in the streetcar. I stop and ask my companion: “What shall I do?” He says: “Catch the tram at Rådhuspladsen (Town Hall Square in Copenhagen),” and he jumps on his bicycle. I run after him but cannot keep up. Then, suddenly, I have my foot in a plate of the old English china from my home and it is sliding along like a skateboard. People on the street laugh and try to grip me, but I slide in and out and arrive at Kongens Nytorv (King’s New Market) in Copenhagen just as the streetcar pulls in from Bredgade (Broadway). I know it is the streetcar because it is wrapped up in brown paper!
The first dream was like a premonition. When finally the wave raised and I turned to escape, the two other dreams occurred and forced me to go back to Santa Barbara and come to terms with my emotions. The foot in the plate comes from the French expression ‘Mettre le pied au plat’ meaning ‘Putting your foot in it’. The dreams gave me the courage of desperation; I knew I had to act. I went back and stayed two weeks.
During my stay I painted a mandala for Reggie, and I decided to come and live in his house when I had tied up lose ends at Vajrapani.