the bolage story

Precious daughter sent me a link to a vampiric-looking guy who foreclosed on Wells Fargo. You may well have seen it. Her comment, however was that he reminded her of folks who used to stay at the house in the late '90s. Which reminded me of Bolage. But first, those vampiric folk who spent so much time in the house.

Actually, it was Vlad Tepes who'd come to stay. But I think I've already written about his visits. Ah, the good old days. But then the Hungarians started coming as well.

Gabor was the more outgoing one. The healer, the shape-shifter. Attila was the quiet introvert. The astrophysicist. He gave a marvelous paper for us at the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness at UC Berkeley that year. I think it was 1997. His paper outlined the parameters of sentience, and by those markers demonstrated how the sun met the requirements for sentience. It made quite a splash. Don't know if he ever published the paper. He didn't publish it in our AOC journal.

What I didn't know, until Jello came over, was that he was also a well known punk singer/musician and that his father was the head of the shamanic church in Hungary. Thus he was also a shamanic practitioner and used shamanic entrainment in his music, which was quite literally out of this world.

But this story isn't about Attila. Or Jello. Or Gabor, really. It's about Bolage.

Gabor and I arranged for my student S to go apprentice with him in Budapest — after he graduated. Although Gabor was anxious to get the help right away. Graduation was only a two months away, so when summer came, off S went promising to return every few months to be sure he didn't get caught by any weirdness. We weren't sure what the weirdness might be, but see — see how careful we were?

About a year or so after this arrangement (which seemed to work out quite well), S sent me a birthday present. He was always such a good boy, knowing exactly what I wanted. Knowing exactly what I needed.

He sent me Bolage.

A carpenter.

For my birthday.

My house was a wreck. Fixer-upper. A carpenter was such a wonderful gift!

Apparently the idea was that Bolage would live in our house with free room and board, and do carpentry around the house. He spoke only one word of English when he arrived.

"Why?" he would say.

Gargoyle cornices in the doorways?

"Why?" he would reply, but he'd put them up for me.

Crown molding?

"WHY?"

He was the master of why. And with his limited English, I couldn't explain restoration to him. Restoration of a ruined Edwardian. Restoration of a house stripped of all its former yummy features.

Slowly, as he learned English, I discovered his motivation for coming to America. He was out to find himself a rich American woman, marry her and move to America. He also wanted to work on Porsches and race cars.

"Why?" I asked.

Eventually, he told me that he was already married and had two kids he left at home. He'd given his business partner the authority to give a subsistence amount to his wife and kids each month. He left his partner in charge of everything.

In San Francisco, he discovered Castro Street, gyms, and protein supplements. He spent a lot of time working out, and complaining about not finding the wife. Eventually, he asked me to find one for him — a nice Christian woman.

"I don't know any nice Christian women," I replied.

"Any woman is okay then," he said. "I make her a Christian."

Bolage began spending a lot of time in the basement. When the second month's phone bill came in I discovered he was on the phone to Hungary for hours at a time. And in those days, landlines, no cell phones. It was a bloody fortune.

My kids and I were impatiently waiting for Bolage to be on his way. He had stopped doing carpentry after about a week. He was still looking to make his fortune. He discovered that he really liked Castro Street, and the gyms. And he discovered too that he wasn't attracting that American wife. I had gotten him a job working on Porsches, but he managed to get fired after a week for demanding more pay than Mexicans because he was a European.

"Why?" his boss asked him. "They speak better English and do better work than you." Bolage didn't understand this at all.

There was something about America — especially San Francisco — that Bolage just didn't get. And when he finally figured out the Castro, he had a breakdown. His world was crumbling — aided by those phone calls from the basement apparently.

Back home, his wife had run off with his business partner and taken the kids with her.

"She's ruined!" he complained. "Dirty. Soiled!" He had learned a lot of English by then.

He cried a lot at that point. He felt terribly betrayed. How could she do this to him?

Suddenly Bolage had to get home, and fast. He bought up as many blue jeans and Goodwill clothes as he could to sell back home, and he flew off to salvage his old life. He confessed that he had failed in absolutely every aspiration he had had. And that he had discovered that America was filled with degenerates, Mexicans, Jews, and homosexuals — and no Christian women at all. His life was in ruins.

When the next phone bill came, it far outstripped my entire monthly salary. I borrowed some money to make sure our phone wouldn't be cut off. When S returned home again, he covered the entire enormous amount.

"How can you do that?" I asked, overwhelmed.

"When he got back, we put Bolage to work and garnered his wages," he said. "Until he earned enough to cover the bill."

I have no clue what happened to the buff little carpenter. But what I hope is that he went back to church.

"Why?" you ask?

I'm hoping that some good solid prayer and soul-searching made him rethink his world view, his bigotry and his sexuality. I'm hoping that he'll ask himself some really big whys?

I'm not sure any of this is my business at all — but it all played out in our little house, and I know, at least, what I learned from it.

My birthday's right around the corner.

Please, no carpenters.

throwing a freudian punch

I cannot (with any consistency) see into someone else's subjective experience, whether it be a dreamscape, a mystical encounter, or a schizophrenic nightmare. And my rational mind tells me that spirits do not and cannot exist outside our imagination. Never mind that I too (like everyone else I know) encounter them on a fairly regular basis.

No djinns, No dybbuks. No haouka. No angels. No God. No Holy Spirit. Even if I feel it's there. Can touch it, taste it, merge with it. Hold the conversation. I just don't believe it. I have no empirical evidence of its existence — ie, no independent verification, no replicable methodology...

But people do get dispirited. So the question arises— do people become psychologically demoralized and dejected or have they quite literally, lost their spirit, their soul? The work of Michael Harner and others leads us to ponder this one.

The scientist insists on the former answer: the psycho-dynamic interpretation. The psychological reality. The shamanic practitioner holds to the latter, the ethereal conclusion. The spirit hypothesis, if you will.

The debate is epitomized by the fight that Fritz Perls got into with Carlos Castaneda and Pomo shaman, Essie Parish.

Both Michael Harner and Michael Murphy told me this story on separate occasions. Both of them were there. Murphy set up the whole debate. He thought a forum on the question might lead to a resolution of the matter, once and for all. So he invited them all to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur to discuss whether or not the spirit world really existed or whether it was all in your head.

Fritz Perls, as you probably know, was a big, hostile, son of a bitch at times. Founder of Gestalt Therapy, but before that, a Freudian (and Reichian) psychoanalyst. On the one side, Fritz Perls insisted that all this spirit crap was simply the work of the very talented and ingenious unconscious. Good metaphor, if you will, but not objective reality. On the other side, Essie Parish insisted that the spirit world was out there, independent of her, her desire, her will, or her unconscious. Harner, I can imagine, chuckled through the whole encounter. Castaneda, according to Murphy, kept floating away quite literally to the other world, thereby frequently exiting the debate. Perls became more and more frustrated. The debate became more and more heated. When Castaneda got up to speak, he rambled on and on. You know: Don Juan this, don Juan that... Story weaving, which is his forte.

Finally, Perls couldn't stand it anymore. He stood up, strode over, hauled off and punched Castaneda full force, smack in the face.

"IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD!" he boomed, to really sock it in.

Castaneda, who was maybe half Perls' size, stopped only for a moment, then went back to his tale, unchanged by the force of Perls' argument. Essie Parish too remained unmoved. Harner chuckled his shamanic chuckle. Murphy shut the forum down. Perls was spitting fire with rational indignation. These people just didn't get it.

So this was the Esalen attempt to settle the matter of spiritual vs psychological reality once and for all.

What it demonstrated was the degree of irreconcilable differences between the two camps. So much for trying to solve the big problems of the nature of the universe before or after soaking one's brains in those infamous moonlit hotsprings on the rocky Big Sur coast. I wonder if they might have made more progress in a conference room with florescent lighting? Would Fritz Perls' point have gotten through if they'd been overlooking the Atlantic instead of the Pacific?

Nobody published what went on at Esalen that day, not for a long long time. Then a couple years ago, Kripal finally recounted an abridged version of what happened in the book he called, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. Not even a paragraph's worth. According to Kripal, Claudio Naranjo was present as well, though neither Harner nor Murphy mentioned him in their telling of the tale. The incident was to have been documented for posterity by a local television station that filmed the debate and that final blow that ended the argument between science and religion. And the station (either KRON or KQED, depending on who you ask) managed to lose the film.

Harner laughed his head off when he spoke of the incident. Better to just teach people to go to the Other World to find the answers for themselves.

"Spirits? Unconscious? Who cares what you call it?" says Harner. "As long as it gets the job done."

And Perls? What did a slap in the face or sock in the jaw mean to him?

It was as tangible a piece of objective reality as he was capable of conveying in that moment. A graphic and reasonable contribution to the question, 'what is consensual or socially constructed reality, after all?'

Kripal recounts a part of the tale that I had not heard. Naranjo, he says, was deeply moved not by Harner or Castaneda or Essie Parish at the time — but by Perls. For Naranjo, it was Perls who was the powerful shaman, albeit from the Germanic persuasion.

Score one point then, for the Freudian punch. But only one point. And a subjective one at that.

peter pan and the indian

It's probably the nature of Peter Pan to be an asshole who thinks he's a hero — the excuse being that he's so thoroughly adorable, how could anyone fail to appreciate his preciousness, or not fall for the twinkle in his eye? It is (unfortunately) undeniable that he is also pretty good at what he does.

I happen to know Peter...

At the time, Peter was playing shaman. As you know, he flies around a lot, and so he had taken bits and pieces of the rituals, practices, music and songs of indigenous folk around the world, and put them all together into a powerful experience he could give others. He lit his feathered pipe. He warbled. He drummed. He was a digiridude, and a good one too. In the dark, and with your eyes closed, he could make you feel the forest. The dangerous four-leggeds brushed past you. The birds whisked past your head. you could smell the humidity, feel the leaves and feathers close in on you. Pretty neat, huh? He could turn a classroom into a full-blown vision quest in very little time. Sprinkle a little fairy dust and fly the whole lot of you off to Never-Never Land. Very effective. What matter that Peter was not a real Indian?

Until one night there was an Indian in the circle. He stood up tall, shaking with rage and said only, "I can't be here!" as he stormed out.

And Peter stopped. The spell was broken. Peter then gave a lecture on how he was given the pipe, given the digiridu, given the songs, the drums. That he was a Sun-Dancer. That he was allowed to do all this. He had permission. But the spell was broken. And everyone went home more than a bit down from the experience. All I could think of, was I wanted the Indian to come back again so we could talk it out.

And the next week he returned. And I turned to him, and this is what he said:

"That boy was singing my song."

And he told the story of the song, and how it is used in the Sun-Dance, and what a Sun-Dance really is, and what the song was for. For three hours. And as he spoke, he poured out the lore and practice of his people, and it became clear that singing that song in a university classroom was wrong, as was the display of his pipe.

And then he turned to me and said, "You wanted that to happen, didn't you?"

"Yes," I whispered. "If it was there, I wanted it to happen." And this revelation took me by surprise. Somehow, I knew exactly what he meant. And he understood me as well.

He had taken off the previous week and headed up to his People, up to his Land and his own Shaman (who, he explained, stayed on the Land, and didn't run off to play pretend in university classrooms. This was serious business.

Peter Pan flew off to Europe to play digiridude-shaman over there, build sweat lodges, give workshops, make some bucks, see the sights.

When he got back I got a call. He had been evicted. Lost his job. Car was wrecked.

"Did he do that?" he wanted to know.

So I emailed the Indian and asked. And this is what he wrote:

"I believe in IT. If you do wrong, IT'll get you." I gave Peter the message. He didn't like it.

I mean, in shamanism shouldn't you take these things as a sign? Cease and desist? But no, this was Peter. And Peter never takes no for an answer.

Maybe a year later, emails from the Indian. A picnic? A waterfall? We started hiking together. He poured out his lore at me.

"I'm the enemy, aren't I? Evil anthropologist! Stop telling me your tales! Watch me," I protested, "I'm not gonna write any of this down!"

"That's why I can tell you," he said. "Because you know who you are. Because you have your own People, Land, Identity — and you won't go out trying to steal mine."

His shaman had told him that the Peter Incident meant that he was supposed to give the talks. That he was gonna have to learn how to tell the tale himself. Properly. He wasn't thrilled. He became a spokesman. An advocate. An Elder.

More waterfalls...

Another call from Peter. This time his wife had been killed in an accident. (Yes, Peter had had a wife!)

More hikes...

I never saw Peter again. He's still out there doing what he did. Maybe he saw the suffering as what he has to endure to achieve authenticity, I don't know. Maybe he still blames the Indian for his terrible misfortune. But he still flies, he still crows... Nothing stops him. And I keep thinking, how strange that just maybe Peter changed the Indian. Peter. The hero? I asked my friend, the Voudou Priestess. She said, "Hell no!" He's just a fraud.

The Indian began to speak. Publicly. He's still pissed about it, to tell the truth.

And I still keep my silence about Indians. Their tales are just not my tales to tell. But I do like the waterfalls.

chimpanzees in space

This isn't the way I tell it in MSR.

I think it started this way: M was putting drops in his eyes, passed the little bottle around for anyone who might also like to indulge. I think he was the only brave one that night. As usual. M was always one step ahead of the curve. Then again, he was skipping the nights 'entertainment.' Been there, done that. Again and again. He was still flying when we came out of our trance.

Harner was giving a workshop that night. Journey to the Lower World. A number of indigenous shamans had come to watch him do his magic (so to speak). They brought their drums. This part, I generally tell. I'll skip the details. Everyone knows how this works, right? But I'll start with my usual disclaimer:

I don't do this. It's not my thing. I've got this denial thing going really well. I'm really convincing, right?

My journey to the so-called Lower World had me flying in a spacecraft with joker chimpanzees in spacesuits, with helmets with decals (of chimpanzees with helmets with decals...). Four of them, like there ought to be, apparently. And they were not strapped down, but floating around having a grand old time, playing with the controls. I'd like to invent zero-grav bananas for them to play with, but no — there was nothing floating around but the four chimpanzees. Goofing off. In space suits. With helmets. With decals. I mean, how embarrassing is that for a shamanic vision?

And after they drummed us back, Harner said, "Well, of course that's not how it works. Because shamanism is about helping someone. Healing. Helping them solve something. So partner up with someone you don't know, and have them ask a question, and go back down and see if you can get an answer for them..."

This was at a conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, of course. One of the years that I was organizing the conference. On campus at the Faculty Club, surrounded by redwoods, streams, hills and Maybeck architecture. And I'm the one who had invited Harner (again).

Partner up with someone you don't know.

But I know everyone. Then the door opens, and there's now one person I don't know — so he's my guy, right? So I call him over. He asks his question, I ask mine. bla bla bla. We go back down to the Lower World. Nothing.

He says he doesn't know the answer to my question, of course. But the answer is there. I recognize it in his accent, I know it well. Working-class Manchester, with a touch of Sherwood Forest. But he plays the game and tells me what he sees in the Other World. And there's my answer. And he cuts me to the core. And I know that he's nailed it.

He's put his suitcase down in the corner of the room. Literally, he's right off a trans-Atlantic flight into ... the Lower World. His question:

"When can I settle down?" he asks. "Where can I live?" He glances at his suitcases for emphasis.

I tell him what he doesn't want to hear:

"The chimpanzees are having way too much fun. They're not coming down." I mean, what else can I say?

Silence. Then rage.

"Those damned chimpanzees!" he just about screams.

"Huh?"

"You know. Those chimpanzees," he says by way of explanation. But I don't know those chimpanzees.

He tells me that in the early 1960s we (they?) put chimpanzees up in space. And he's been worrying ever since what happened to them. Obsessing about them.

And I got his chimpanzees. Pre-cognitively. Before he asked his question. Before I called him over. Before we started our second Journey. I didn't have my own vision, I had his, just as he had mine.

That's how it's supposed to work, right? He got his answer, and boy did he not like it: Suitcase in hand, he's not settling down till the chimpanzees come down. And that's not bloody likely, is it?

That's somewhat how I tell it, more or less. With a a lot of academic stuff about different Worlds, sensory shifts, drums (did I mention the drums?), journeying rhythms, dismemberment, you know the drill...

But here's what I really remember about that night. What stands out more than anything else. M putting drops in his eyes. And he's the powerful shaman. And that night — long after Harner's sampler Journey to the Lower World — everything changed. M put drops in his eyes, and suddenly there were people making music in the bathtub of my room. Good music too — exotic and soulful. Fully dressed, I might add, including dress shoes, under water. Water music. And there were six people staying in my room playing musical chairs (so to speak). Everyone changed places — and their lives changed. Everyone present shifted gears and by morning our destinies had changed.

So who's the shaman? Or does it matter? Or is it the power of collectivity? Or a contact high off those powerful drops? Or the beautiful long-haired dog, or chimpanzees in space? Or just coincidence.

I don't believe in shamanism, of course. Just like I don't believe in anything else. But we have experiences. And those experiences are powerful. We know they happened. And things change afterwards. And we follow the new trajectory.

Today was one of those days.

One of those days where everything shifts and will be different ever after. No shamanism. No collectivity. Just paperwork. In our culture it's paperwork that brings about radical change and confers new status. And maybe it solves a problem and maybe it heals us, if we're lucky. But we've got a paper to notarize or stick an official stamp on for just about any major transition we collectively acknowledge. For me — with the completion of this one last piece of paper — that transition is called: retirement. And maybe it's healing. Don't know.

But the one after that — well, we know what that one's called. And I'm hoping for drums. A shaman or two. Four chimpanzees in space. Water music. A long-haired northern shepherd by my side. And maybe a couple drops in my eyes to facilitate the Journey.