The Bumpy Road: A Memoir of Culture Clash Including Woodstock, Mental Hospitals, and Living In Mexico

By Don Karp

Reading The Bumpy Road promotes self-examination and encourages transformation. Everyone lives a personal “hero’s journey”. The Bumpy Road shows how culture clash is a muse for creative transformation. It tells the story of childhood followed by adolescent confusion. A boy struggles to become a man by buying into institutions that did not work for him--a marriage to a woman, whose entire self-concept was tied to “the relationship”, and as a science student in academia where success is about publish or perish: lies, back-stabbing, and the old boys' club. The 60’s culture came and personal chaos ensued. Relying on mental institutions to correct the evils of the aforementioned institutions created new problems instead. But the human spirit is resilient. The Bumpy Road details how the habit of going to the hospital for help was broken, and a new artistic identity replaced the old one. Primed for seizing cultural diversity opportunities, new struggles and successes were encountered in Mexico.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304559821

Book preview

The Bumpy Road: A Memoir of Culture Clash Including Woodstock, Mental Hospitals, and Living In Mexico

The Bumpy Road: A Memoir of culture Clash Including Woodstock, Mental Hospitals, and Living In Mexico

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A compelling and bravely honest memoir of Don Karp's unusual life, beginning with his life in Syracuse and following his path to present day Mexico, where his life has bloomed, despite the hardships and financial challenges.  I was so absorbed in the story I forgot to go to my yoga class!

Maria Espinosa

Recipient of the 1996 American Book Award for Longing

Recipient of the 2009 PEN Oakland Award for Literary Excellence for Dying Unfinished

By Don Karp

Published by www.lulu.com

2013

First Edition, March 2013.

Copyright © Don Karp, 2013. All rights reserved.

ISBN:  978-1-304-02286-8

Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by information storage and retrieval systems, without contacting the author ([e-mail]) and the publisher:

www.lulu.com.

Author’s Note

Since this is a memoir, it consists of my remembered life experiences. Others may have experienced what I wrote in a different manner. I apologize for any discrepancies, projections, or judgments.

Cover design by Tina Winterlik and Adrian Carrasco Zanini. Cover art by Jean-Pascal Giraldi.

Preface

Why did I choose to write this? How did I get started?

For some reason I can’t remember the specific impetus.  I began writing this book around 1995, from journal entries and memories.  My original running title was: Revolution and the Revolving Door- How I Beat the High Recidivism Rate for Mental Hospital Patients.  I was going to describe my experiences in and out of hospitals that lasted about a month a year for ten years.  I carried the label paranoid schizophrenic during that decade.  I described my full healing from the condition, without the need for drugs or institutions. 

But why write about it? At first I thought that my experiences might benefit others going through similar hells.  Maybe it would bring some new understanding to mental health professionals.  And who knows, maybe I would become rich and famous on the best seller list.  But mostly, I realized my greatest motive was about gaining some closure by writing it down. 

For various reasons, the writing has gone slowly.  Ten years after I began writing, I sent some of the material to a published writer friend.  He suggested that since there was already a lot out on this topic, why not synthesize this with my more current experiences of living in Mexico, to create a truly unique blend.  I liked this idea and for a short time struggled with just how to weave these two strands together.  Then it hit me, the book was to be about my personal growth resulting from exposure to different life styles.  Experiencing the alternative cultures of the 60’s eventually led me to

living in a Third World country.  During my life’s journey, I embraced group living, personal growth workshops, and teaching and leadership experiences.  And, I had the opportunity to work at an African-American

summer camp.

In 2003, shortly after moving to central Mexico, I started writing a sort of Internet blog as a way of

keeping in touch with friends and family back in the US.  This expanded proportionately with my wider travel sphere.  Although I never envisioned myself as a writer, I received a good measure of encouragement and carried on.  During the summer of 2009, I attended a very short writing workshop, read some excellent memoirs, and began to focus more on my writing, a task both daunting and humbling.  One might think that it takes a huge ego to offer up one’s personal history in this way.  The need to appeal to my readers creates a new reality.  I can’t just write the story.  I need to open my dark places to the light of the world.  Now retired, I have the leisure to do what I want, within some financial and other constraints. The role of memoir writer is one that I have chosen.

Introduction

It’s a new day...

It’s a new day, and I’m feelin’ ...!!!

So went the lyrics from the band, Traffic, at the Woodstock Music Festival, during the summer of ’68.  Those were high times, but also there were low ones.  For me, as well as for many others, these were times of big changes in our world views.

It was my seventh year of college.  I was pursing a PhD in microbiology, following the dream I had since high school.  Then I experienced Woodstock, radical politics, communes, alternative schools and inner travels.  I was experimenting with psychedelics, which superseded my laboratory experiments with bacteria.

Now, three decades later, I sit on a lovely mountainside in central Mexico, listening to the sounds of nature during sunset.  First, I hear a multitude of birds.  As they become quiet, crickets and frogs take over.  Dusk approaches with the barking of a fox.  In the background is the steady sound of water flowing gently in the ancient canal beside my cabaña.

This is my story of spiritual emergence.  It’s a journey progressing from a love for nature as a youth, forming questions out of curiosity from observations, and then growing into adulthood acquiring the tools of science to find answers to them.  And finally maturing, looking within, as a mystic, to discover a new landscape of reality.  During the ten years subsequent to Woodstock,  I was engaged in a fierce battle with my demons. I was labeled a paranoid schizophrenic, a handle acquired during multiple mental hospitalizations.

In this book, I tell of how, against the odds of recidivism, I was able to free myself, and transform those demons, integrating my spiritual emergence towards a new life.  Some of these demons still remain with me.  My current growth, and dealing with my old shadows, forms the remainder of my story.  The theme is spiritual and personal growth stimulated by culture clash.  I describe my experiences during the 60’s and how they differ from earlier ones.  Then I tell about moving to Mexico in 2003, and experiencing a fuller life with less materialism along with other positive cultural differences, and my encounters working in an African-American community in the US.

This book is dedicated to the mountains surrounding Tepoztlan, and to the chain of being that led to my life, got me this far, and propels me into the future.

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photo by Adrian Carrasco Zanini

The Bumpy Road

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Part One: Development

The Bumpy Road Phenomenon

Imagine that you are driving along the road in Central Mexico,