Standing Tree

By Fred Stewart

Standing Tree is the narrative of a sensitive old soul and energy healer. Mr. Stewart includes past-life recollections and historical commentaries with reflections tied back to soul progression. The subject matter includes metaphysics, the psychology of relationships, history, spirit, and early Christianity from the street level. The spiritual insights presented suggest we don't know the entirety of a soul under the labels of life. Fred's story begins in California just after JFK was assassinated. The wildfires had chased his family east to Massachusetts where childhood stress and moving around the country became a pattern. Mr. Stewart suggests his childhood in rural-1960s America created a sensitive reflective side best described as a clairvoyant empath. Written for those on a spiritual quest, readers are introduced to the terms lightworkers and old souls. Their mission is to offer wisdom, encouraging today's sensitives struggling through the corridors of life. Some of them are wounded healers who need to shed the skin of numerous past lives to heal themselves. Mr. Stewart offers his vivid American casualty accounts in the US Navy during WWII and the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. He also shares insightful past-life experiences as a Native American, French cook, and Irish missionary priest, to name a few. Examples of visions and techniques used in energy healing are explained from a natural healer perspective. Within the entirety of Standing Tree, there's an emotional undercurrent of ancient wisdom and vintage rural humor. Fred shares his deepest spiritual perspectives born from the trees of life and iconic vessels of symbolism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649528087

Book preview

Chapter One:

The Beginning

Ilived in Glendale, California, during the fall of 1963. As a first-grade student, I wore stiff Levi blue jeans, cuffs rolled once, sporting a new cranberry polo shirt. One very warm afternoon, I inched my way home from school. An ice cream truck driver fidgeted on the concrete sidewalk ahead, waiting for the parade of noisy kids. I had a piece of fool’s gold burning a hole in my pocket since last Sunday afternoon. Mr. Voss, a neighbor across the street, gave it to me. I placed the rock in the flesh of his cupped hand. Looking down, wearing a new toy grin, Mr. Ice Cream Man respectfully declined what seemed like a solid deal. He insisted on real money for that red and yellow rocket pop pictured on the back of his truck. Truth be said, I had a crumpled dollar bill, which had been my proposed milk money for the week, although I easily justified buying Fritos corn chips instead. How this sailor suit caught me with paper money is still a mystery. My stiff denim pockets jingled with change every step home. I didn’t bother to count it.

In the warm California sun, one must devour ice cold afterschool treats or risk incriminating evidence south of the mouth. In retrospect, this shady sidewalk experience had been a test. Mothers know how polo shirt fabric inhales liquid sugar. The wider course weave collects dribble evidence like a billboard. By the time I got home, I was wearing a juvenile crime scene, which was a tad unfair of Mom’s approach to my attire. My first exercise with both paper money and street side haggling had gone to the dogs. As a result, it crossed the mind that I’d become miserably transparent to grown-ups, totally lacking basic skills in the art of lying and making up believable excuses. I became less trusting of the world after that day. With my reputation well smeared, the eyeball twitch of adult suspicion followed. When company visited, I casually noticed when grown-ups were privately complaining about little rug rats like me. And soon my usual freedoms and trust with paper money disappeared. Clearly, I needed to plan these transgressions better.

Following my roadside haggling fiasco, family would light up the room with my personal history whenever opportunity presented itself, especially after my mother found incriminating evidence in the laundry. A healthy pile of change fell out of my jeans, finding its way under the washing machine. I can recall staring at her index finger wagging an inch from my face, escalating into a delinquent criminal charge. She shouted, "Don’t you even think for a single minute…blah dee blah blah blah, when I was your age…you best to believe. You count your blessings and straighten out if you know what’s good for you! I have never in my whole life!" The next stop was the orphanage. I could visualize the steps in front of a yellow two-story building and crazy kids hanging out the windows with their lifeless tongues dangling.

My outlook upon the world was reset to the five-alarm mode in a few short weeks. Mainly because I realized my dumb little kid days were over at half past six. And my future efforts on the horizon mandated that I get a lot smarter in a hurry. Neither would happen to my satisfaction. Everything would become more convoluted. From this point forward, my reptilian brain went to work automatically. I became the lone deer in the meadow on high alert and the six-year-old planning to pack his bags, tossing in a pack of Dad’s Lucky Strike cigarettes.

If anyone were to ask when I became sensitive, I’d have to say when President Kennedy got shot. The president being assassinated had an effect on kids too. I usually walked to and from school alone, thinking privately about something unusually deep like this, and the possibility of Russian’s suddenly invading my backyard haunted me too. I watched our clothesline carefully from my bedroom window as the possible point of entry.

Compared to today’s walking distances to school, the trek would be deemed inappropriate, as it was a hike for a first grader crossing busy double lane two-way streets. If I was really lucky, I had a tagalong friend. His name was Miguel, who was quick and fearless. He could easily get us sidetracked and me into trouble for being within ten crummy feet. Miguel had absolutely no problem cutting through strangers’ yards, coming or going, with many excursions turning into prolonged real estate tours.

One morning, we came upon a circular stone water well with a bright brass bell dangling above within the narrow side yard of a white clapboard two-story house. This style architecture was somewhat unique then, as most houses were three-bedroom ranches set like boxed chocolates stacked side by side. We stood extra quiet, leaning over the stone brim of the well, looking deep into the black water to see our reflections. And we could not be more surprised. Large gold fish fins fluttered through bright shards of morning sunlight. Of course, Miguel had no problem reaching in, attempting to grab one out and then leaping up to ring the bell too, catching me by complete surprise. Suddenly, an enraged middle-aged lady in pink hair curlers screamed out the gable end window, "You fuckin’ no good boys, get the hell out of here!"

I scrammed instamatically, just a blurry red streak getting smaller in the distance. Not Miguel. He casually meandered off the property as if strolling home from Sunday church within a divine cloud casting a golden halo over his head. I thought he acted just like a Looney Toon cartoon character on television. Miguel definitely had nerve far beyond mine, and I respected his natural-born courage.

It just so happened the very next week, I popped my fat head into our living room after school, and the very same made-up version of the Fucking Goldfish Lady was basking within my parents’ undivided attention in serious conference, which easily stupefied me. They all turned, focusing on my melting existence with that glance from hell. My father transformed into a one-eyed monster, his eyebrows nicely formed into a chevron tilt. My mother’s dry lips pursed inward. And the lady from down the street…her nose wrinkled, squeezed uptight like a chained dog. I’m in passing-out pain already. And, oh yes, the Nazi war prisoner questioning began next…and it didn’t go well for yours truly. Frozen still, akin to a leaning graveyard hitching post, I totally caved under torturous pressure, pleading for mercy after being accused of the whole escapade. Frankly, it was three Nazis against a little kid. I was going to bloody hang for this, and I knew it.

The old windbag just happened to be the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia salesperson in my area. And oh yes, they heard all about me being in her yard, disturbing her priceless little goldfish and running away like bank robbing thugs. As a result, my parents felt entirely leveraged, purchasing the entire set of books out of morose guilt. We lugged those useless books around for fifteen years. And as a result, I could never really forget the goldfish incident nor my friend.

If it wasn’t for Miguel, I wouldn’t know that it was bad to be a white boy in Southern California. Case in point; one afternoon after school, Miguel brought me home to his house only a block away from mine. As I stood in their small dark living room, his entire family sat around a square table in the kitchen, eating a very early dinner. Miguel introduced me. His mother smiled a polite hello, and then his cranky father said, "What’s that white boy doing in my house? Miguel’s mother quickly shooed us out the door, scolding Miguel. Don’t you bring that white boy here again!" I walked home alone, thinking about all the times we got chased off property and yelled at. I had no idea Miguel was Mexican, nor did I care. He was just a boy like me.

As I walked home, a sense of worry fell over me, and a serious side settled in, an indescribable lament I wasn’t prepared for. I never realized for a solitary minute that people I didn’t know could be mad at me. This social nuance was entirely new. Thereafter, the yellow flag of caution flew inside my heart, and I never really felt comfortable in my own skin again. The white boy incident had been the first time I felt sluggishly tired and emotionally flushed out after school. With each step home, I relived this very odd encounter. I didn’t understand why I lost my good buddy. He was so different yet also controlled by a crowd of angry adults. We were wild-eyed kids within separate cultures, doomed to the wheel of death. That day, I learned about off-center unspoken understandings and how to tread extra lightly in their private worlds of angst, as if hiding in a swampy jungle without permission from a tribe of screaming head-hunting natives, bent on taking their prize.

Not long after I learned about being that unwanted boy from down the street, I was told we were moving east to Massachusetts. I didn’t have a clue where Massachusetts was at the time, although I recalled the word well enough. Meanwhile, just outside our home’s front windows, large cinders had been falling from the sky as fires raged on the surrounding hills just a few miles away on the horizon. It was a fiery light show here at night. And quite possibly because of this fear, the For Sale sign went up at our home in no time flat. After all, it only made sense that we move to the opposite side of the United States if there’s a fire. But little did I know that moving would be a lifelong pattern, and this family upheaval would be one of the easier ones. I don’t recall leaving California.

Back then, the space age had catapulted on the heels of the technology industry. Silicon Valley was just a short drive from our home, and for crying out loud, Disney Land, Knott’s Berry Farm, and a choice of select ocean beaches were only an hour away. In fact, on a clear day, we could see the blue ocean from our front yard. Leaving this neighborhood was a stiff kick in the groin. However, my pod of studious adults had decided to move to the farthest point away from historic prosperity to an area where there was little opportunity among roaming dairy cows and hay fields. I felt like a piece of luggage on a tour to hell. The flight to Boston was a blur. I can recall walking with my grandfather at Logan Airport. On the way to his house, we stopped for Chinese food, where my Uncle Bob fed his brother Donald a good dose of yellow hot sauce, and rightly so.

Chapter Two:

Lincoln Road

In Massachusetts, Sunday church bells rang aloud for a wide range of sinners. That was obvious to me. And it wasn’t long before I learned about yellow jackets patiently waiting for the opportunity to attack inside tiny holes in the ground. And now, with the benefit of old age and hindsight, there happened to be interesting amenities central Massachusetts had to offer that California didn’t. There were plenty of dumpy antiquated barrooms, stinky package stores, big scary bugs, and a variety of drilling birds savagely pounding at every tree in sight. I was yanked out of Southern California to the farthest possible distance from the Goldfish Lady, which, for a short time, made perfect sense. Yet coming from the Pacific to the Atlantic in 1964 couldn’t be more drastically different. The annual California brush fires had chased us away, and the next page had turned to a much darker side rooted in profound bewilderment. I had no friends. All I had now was outrageous family drama and a very strange damp outdoor environment. Early on, I felt both realms were hostile, unpredictable, and confusing, to say the least.

My first morning, I woke up in a small stone cottage off Lincoln Road, listening to the sound of a pileated woodpecker debark an entire oak tree, pecking with the force of a pneumatic jackhammer at 6:00 a.m., from what appeared to be a lush green forest dripping gallons of morning dew from my second-story window view toward the road. The air outdoors smelled much like one big barn full of cows, horses, and chickens doing what they do best, with the smell of fresh cut hay nicely fermenting in the intense morning sun. I wasn’t used to so much nature happening, and the oppressive humidity was a rude awakening. My first impression: this place might as well be a jungle. And secondly, what am I going to do all day? As things turned out, watching the adults would replace being at the movies. There were times when I expected the Three Stooges to drop by for a morning cocktail at the breakfast table, and in many ways they certainly did.

In comparison to sunny California, the tiny stone cottage sat like an island out at sea, surrounded by mysterious animals from another time. We lived less than a mile from a long red barn with a two-story house tossed onto the lot across Lincoln Road. House settings here had been an afterthought in comparison to barn placement. Barns were often positioned neatly and much closer to the road with care, their doors and windows rationally planned for both daylight and farm equipment access. The houses, not so much. Just dig a cellar hole where you can and go from there. And yes, most roadside houses were painted with white lead paint, which, over the years, had cracked into a nicely weathered antique look. And at times, the paint itself had been the only bond holding an entire house together. In these rural communities, there were only four colors of house paint—black, white, red, and green. After all, there were no tourists to impress, and these colors oddly agreed with the music of the Beatles and Dean Martin floating out kitchen windows. In contrast to the green landscapes and smooth melodic music, the barbed wire fencing and the regular thunderstorms didn’t exactly imply serenity or longevity.

My main job during early kitchen table afternoons was to shut up and color the Flintstones coloring book planted in front of my face. Talking openly while adults were around had been repeatedly frowned upon. So I colored Barney’s head into a solid red waxy mess. The crayon soon disappeared into a stubby bald-headed thing one might find on the basement floor on moving day. Then after a while, I’d just stretch out, yawning aloud while watching captured flies buzz from sticky amber fly trap strips dangling over the kitchen table…zoning out accordingly to their sputtering demise one hour at a time as talky adults had a third cup of coffee. These early formative years were up to me. I could see that and much more. The ritual of coffee was not really about coffee, and the dying flies above had absolutely no influence on any conversation, which I thought was odd. I continued to color Barney’s head, trying to not ask any questions. My goal since the Goldfish Lady encounter had been to rigidly follow instructions, nodding yes and no when addressed.

The house yards were irregular and extra lumpy, flanked by wandering hayfield fingerlings, their edges strewn with mounds of tangled briars huddled by crude stone walls draped with carpets of flourishing poison ivy. Tall lurching spires of poison sumac grew between these quilted hayfields, covering miles of tumbling stone beneath them. The local legend is that the Hessians built the walls, and if that’s the case, they certainly got around.

Rising in the field across the road, an image of beauty stood oddly alone, an elderly Russian ballerina giving her last performance. The lone crab apple tree gently spread its limbs, palms open, hovering head high over a soft golden meadow appearing to be God’s last holy place, among abandoned carriages and iron horse-drawn farm equipment partially concealed by thick sawgrass and thistle weed. Through the toes of my shoes, I felt this place held secrets about lost treasure or stories about horrendous deaths, and I frequently went with the image of horrid scalping deaths over lost gold coins. It’s weird though. Ever since I arrived, I heard war drums beating. In my soul, I knew stories had been lost, and we are living on top of a forgotten world.

My first days outdoors, I strolled along the rusted barbed wire fencing strung along wooden posts on the edge of the road, which occasionally kept most Holstein cows from wandering undulating pastures following the twist and turns in Lincoln Road. But there had been one unusual geological fact bearing weight to mention. There were so many large rocks, stones, and round boulders in the fields, very similar to freestanding gravestones isolated by violent circumstance. They felt like marker pieces on a dusty board game in a complicated grassy panorama, complemented by angular ledges poking through brushy topsoil. Where grassy earth buckles appeared to wedge taller outcroppings in place as if intentionally by design, and I marveled at its mystery.

To me, the farm fields off Lincoln Road appeared fluid, similar to tidal currents of sod escorting glacial stones and mystery to a spiritual place guided by rules within a secret book. I felt like God had been watching me concoct these ridiculous theories while laughing in hysterics too. Being a seven-year-old kid imported from the suburbs of Los Angeles, I wondered about what happened in this strange wonderful place, as if an epic saga from long ago was neatly folded inward, hidden from casual passersby. I didn’t know why, but eerie feelings took root here, creeping quietly below an ever-present AM radio mumble.

Lincoln Road was a surreal protected place, yet it also housed suppressed family secrets tunneling well below a hunter’s silence. Homeowners may have feared an unspoken truth, and this whispering made me feel uncomfortable. Even in 1964, I suspected Native American history had been neatly swept away. Though I’m not sure I ever grasped the point of its omission. Lincoln Road is now a landholder’s property. However, I knew inside it was a trail swooned by indigenous people, and their spirit energy remained active from long ago. I could sense penalties had been paid by generations of economic failure too. This heated subliminal ire spoke of war, tangling the anklebones of those attempting to tame the land to grow food. A slow fermenting angst regularly permeated a chain of hayfields nearest my new home, where I felt uneasy and ever watchful.

We stayed at the stone cottage a couple weeks at the most, until a huge family fight broke out with a little help from Mr. Alcohol. The combatants would be no surprise to those within. In the middle of the night, my only sober uncle arranged for us to stay across from the long red barn on Lincoln Road. My father was in California, closing on the home sale and making arrangements with the movers. In a matter of a few hours, I was sleeping in a stranger’s house. The uncle who typically got away with warring late-night drama, Uncle Donald, did again without penalty, which would become a longtime pattern in our family.

Many more raging battles were to come, all branded deeply by Uncle Donald’s signature finger-wagging chaos. It’s important to relate that this upheaval never occurred with the same regularity in California. My experiences with my mother’s side of the family took a hard left turn on Lincoln Road. I suppose it might be fair to say that there are places in the world where we live best, given our personal sensitivity to a variety of invisible energies. I always felt fear, and like I was being watched living on Lincoln Road. There were places I wouldn’t walk. For example, a narrow logging road trailing from the far edge of a field. I’d cautiously walk down an alluring carriage-sized path and then chicken out, turning slowly to leave, never looking back. I felt encroachment on a particular space wasn’t allowed, and although many lands were beautiful, I respected these inklings enough to stay away. In short, I believe there are levels of spirit energy present. For a number of reasons, parts of Lincoln Road are sacred Native American lands. Even as a young boy, I could sense certain places pushing back. Personally, I never experienced the energy of love here, just hotheaded family drama. While I respected my fear inclinations, I also felt like I belonged to an indescribable history, similar to viewing very old pictures of family members I never knew. Lincoln Road embraced an unknown, and I was okay with it.

Chapter Three:

Family

Over a year or so, I learned to adjust well enough, taking on an unfamiliar liking to serene woodland surroundings in Oakham, Massachusetts. Although a dark menacing embedded most dilapidated manmade farm features, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the gamey roadkill stink dedicated to the appetites of black crows and insects badgering profiles of radiant green. Roadkill was much more common in the 1960s. It was a matter of brake repair economics and the fragile durability of balding tires and ever loosening ball joint wobble. Even in the 1990s, my father would brag about hitting squirrels. But for the most part, I’m referring to the larger road crossing varmints, such as woodchucks and porcupines, and an occasional car-chasing dog too. Those unfortunate animals slowly melted into the pavement when the ants took over. Of course, this imagery is included for scented realism, because I doubt younger readers can appreciate the old days without accurately including the odors we regularly entertained. Imagine if you will that the dog you reluctantly let up on the couch just dragged a dead woodchuck up on the lawn to rot, and when the wind blows the wrong way, you have second thoughts about being close.

All this old geezer drama aside, in a short time, Lincoln Road had transitioned into kind of a turtle shell for the timid adventurous side inspired by Miguel. I felt its bellowing breath cycling, slowly showing evidence of distant camaraderie I couldn’t explain. Notwithstanding the cast of uninhibited adults in my family, that was another matter altogether, as they became more belligerent and rambunctious. The starting gate to hell had been decorated and perfected given their drunken nighttime festivities. Quality family arguments enjoyed a new peak of dysfunctional perfection here. You even might think I’m living with a gaggle of Major League managers and umpires, constantly kicking dirt and spitting at each other at home plate over a called third strike.

I thought these highly opinionated adult squads of rehearsed actors were performing a classic theatrical play, with odd stage entrances and far too many bows and curtain calls to count. Their emotional performances often escalating to riot rage, causing widening cracks in the foundation of all families attempting to win these countrified kitchen games. Over time, they diligently continued to rant out of sight of each other with absolute perfection, spewing endless lines of predisposed rhetoric for what appeared to be opening night rehearsal reasons only. I could also see that my mother and her bawdy finger-pointing brother were like fire and water. During more astonishing holiday orations, it even crossed my mind that their stage podiums were completely missing, and this small New England town wasn’t much of a venue considering their electable tenacity.

But these onerous observations didn’t lessen the reality factor for me, as every day had been a dramatic challenge among dueling family interactions, securely latching together years of periodic maniacal torture. By the 1964 summer vacation break from first grade, I desperately needed a stiff drink myself. Which might not work, as drinking didn’t seem to solve their arsenal of callow problems. I might require something a mite stronger, like earplugs and greater distance from dancing hostiles. I didn’t need a zoo animal handbook to know what wild anger sounds like. It became much easier to not have a voice.

In this new emotionally labored Massachusetts life, I quickly learned about the rural French culture who decided to settle here, and how animated they can crow their indelible songs, often speaking completely butchered French…all hours of the day. And for this reason alone, I required a steady emotional anchoring method as a way to endure their distinctive canny episodes without going absolutely bonkers myself. I felt like a whipping post most of the time, waiting patiently to be properly criticized. And if I didn’t find a way to deal with this warring abusive family, my rickety skiff might sail into the dank dead-end swamp of depression, just a short walk away, conveniently located across from an old cemetery just up Lincoln Road heading toward town.

As it was, there were many days when I was a full boat of fear and anger. A stormy riptide twisted constantly through my insides. I can recall when cantankerous family members fought violently over the last Pall Mall cigarette in the house! During these all too common superfluous scenes, I actually thought of hitting the pavement for any greasy carnival peeling through the area, and in some cases looking forward to dangling from a rope tossed over a sturdy oak limb in the woods out back. The one thought that kept my feet planted was having a habitually reflective mind, prone to discerning whether life would have been any different in sunny California. I really never forgot my friend Miguel, as he would have made a decision quickly, possibly jumping ship altogether after the first family battle. Though I doubt Miguel would have survived here, as he had too much caged energy, and the lack of spontaneous adventure might kill him.

So why tell this story? In one very small Central Massachusetts town, I had literally lived in ten locations upon a half dozen roads over ten school years, of which a few were partial. In my adult life, I’ve lived in six other towns in Massachusetts, also Florida, Illinois, and Oregon as well. Yet there was an unexplainable attraction toward rural Massachusetts. When I had a choice to reside anywhere I wanted, I chose Central Massachusetts. This is odd, since my memories of childhood reflect emotional times about conflict, alcoholism, and destitute welfare level poverty. This means we had no car, no lunch money, one set of clothes, no washing machine, and an unstable confrontational mother. Life was as fragile as it could possibly get. We had been lined up for the final drive to the orphanage more times than I care to count. The night before school, I had been repeatedly told we would be moving to my father’s house, which would mean changing schools again, and I hated changing schools.

My absolute best times were always spent with neighborhood friends, away from chronic bullying adults, preferably near a pond or a secluded woodland fishing spot where we felt free and safe. These places were our healing sanctuaries and the reason why I still favor Central Massachusetts. Our memories existed privately, filed away in a secret dimension parents couldn’t get to. I still treasure our fishing excursions to Foley Pond, the Five Mile River, Brooks Pond, Browning Pond, and many others. These memorable experiences were all slices of celestial freedom. However, the elder French continued to be too much work for a seven-year-old kid without a venerable voice. I was rotting away inside, sort of melting into an autumn vegetable after an icy killing frost. In a spiritual way, Lincoln Road became my revered security blanket, with pristine blackberry patches perfectly content to never be ravished by traveling chain-smokers. I could easily imagine basking in green moss where teaberry scent steeped from leafy soil under an oak tree. Blessings of peace had risen for a few long ago, their survival fears and joy had somehow surrendered to God within this pristine woodland sun-scape.

In all the years I lived in Oakham, I’ve only seen one large majestic deer. It was in the summer of 1964. An eight-point buck crossed Lincoln Road well below the long red barn hill area. Other than cows, squirrels, and woodchucks, we only heard stories about great bucks. And this is what made me think later on in life that this area had been a sacred Native American hunting ground. There were ancient spirits in these woods. Weapon artifacts are still lying around. Game and wildlife are super sensitive and easily spooked by spirit energies. I believe the local deer population stuck close to the cows nearest the long red barn, sort of using beef as a buffer. Not that it mattered much to me anyway, as I wasn’t comfortable with the sound of guns blasting bullets at Bambi. If I did ever kill an innocent deer, I’m not sure I’d be excited to slaughter it. Eating game was never a personal goal of mine. Fishing was my enjoyment, and finding peace outdoors. The sound of a slow trickling stream and the possibility of trout swimming by was my holistic medicine.

Chapter Four:

Changes

As one might be able to tell by now, moving from one place to another had created a shift and initiated complex confrontational family patterns. Even in Southern California, we lived in three towns over six years. To move so many times does something to a young person’s developing brain. There’s upheaval and emotional chaos loosely tumbling around inside. This transient element of roaming uncertainty is responsible for my thought processing inclinations. With the reptilian brain always active, a shadow of fear had followed me around like a mongrel puppy dog wandering deserted streets, searching for the next meal from discarded paper sacks. We were never completely secure inside.

However, today these never-ending seasonal migrations impart notions of fluidity, rivers, wind, and clouds rolling in patchy blue skies. Deep down, my turbulent family had always felt somewhat temporary, like the cast from a canceled television series, where my viewership had dropped with age as the cast disappeared one by one. Even so, my childhood lunacy felt like a predetermined prison sentence I had to tough out whether I wanted to or not. I usually watched the seasons pass out my imagined prison cell window, hoping for a clean quick death on the gallows.

Toxic parental mania completely submarined every single school year I ever had. I often felt like an old leaking wooden ship stuck on a cruel sandbar with absolutely no prospects for help, just waiting for the next hurricane or circling hammerhead sharks to finish me off. And frequently, the new unexplored worlds we trampled through, quite literally on a flimsy shoestring, state after state, town after town, street after street, we did so without any kind of a financial plan, place to settle, job, or reliable income whatsoever. As an unappreciated kid earnestly praying to spontaneously combust, I was far more concerned than our precious lifestyle navigator. None of these early days were remotely merciful, and there definitely wasn’t a spiritual upside searching for that idealized Promised Land. Yet these sporadic experiences of exile from Glendale, California, would change me for life. I would never be that independent kid from California with a dollar to spend…ever again. Although I coped using a state of cerebral wandering, I had no controls in life, and really, I couldn’t even imagine what the word even meant, as I had been surrounded by the complete lack. My early childhood circumstances were much like watching foreign black-and-white horror movies with subtitles roughly scrawled and misspelled in French. I knew my death was imminent, just around the brick-house corner in scene two. There will be lots of blood, and it will be mine.

Perhaps more importantly since arriving at Lincoln Road, I developed deeper spiritual thoughts, such as longing for a little luck, wishing to know a state of hope, and trying to understand what faith really means, because frankly… I’m confused. As far as I could tell, being surrounded by raging alcoholic Catholics toting around their precious version of faith, I was doomed to a horrifying death in the colosseum, just another screaming Christian thrown to ravenous lions. I didn’t notice how faith and religion had improved their ethics or behavior one iota, so it was hard for me to understand what religion had ever accomplished. It’s true there are mysteries I didn’t comprehend while hiding from head-hunting adults. But all things aside, I don’t think words in the Bible influenced their lives too much. And I doubted their true intentions 100 percent of the time, more so on Sundays.

More imagery follows, which sets up a good old drenching of hard found wisdom. It’s important to relate the intense stink of road kill varmints in another way. Lincoln Road had proven to be a good source for my imagination. Granted, not everyone needs rank odors penetrating these baffling stories, and yet farm roads tend to collect an array of tones similar to that of an upright piano. And my daily life had been playing various tunes all at once. It’s okay to laugh. We have laughed about stories containing so much impossible pain…but I think the applause has died down in my elder years. The flags honoring the survivors of youth has never risen, and the empty jail cells which should have been occupied, never used by legitimate criminals.

Chapter Five:

Shifting Gears

As the years stacked up, I simply existed like wafting patches of ocean foam, gently slipping into the port dock with each rolling wave. In this insanely repetitive process, I learned how to endure dysfunctional family tides. I assimilated among the energy drain of complete chaos during full moons and foreboding holiday dread. I survived a game show in hell, punctuated by infamous celebrity appearances. Life became a mental weeknight TV show with strange gay boyfriends and warring divorcees, followed by the usual late-night fights and crying jags about extreme poverty, as well as bare-fisted family fights after Thanksgiving dinner over something outrageously unbelievable. My home life was similar to living in a Wild West saloon with a cast of older soap opera actors studying their script for next week’s chaos designed to attract dysfunctional audience ratings. I absolutely friggin’ hated my life. Both Lincoln Road and Foley Road were the only reliable comforts I had when young. Nature had accomplished my healing, and by walking through miles of inspiring energy, I was able to slow down the crazy adult drama in my mind, taking great pains to really observe the natural details surrounding me as a way to cope.

As a result, I became kind of a neutral battlefield observer and a war analyst too, contemplating ideas and making sense of this life. At other times, I became the nerdy bird-watcher type hiding in the trees from everything. Following whatever inevitable carnage that came along, I would somehow escape mentally, slipping away from reality altogether. I could become the distant blue moon quietly arcing across starry sky. I survived family life by being different. I believe adapting within stubborn chaos of lunacy had been my spiritual destiny all along. I’m not saying thanks for the really awful memories, but I’m saying I made the best of a very tough journey surviving intentionally created chaos every day of the week. And I loathe generated chaos and those who stir the pot.

Because of my persisting unusual encounters, I had inadvertently developed a cavernous reflective side with hidden places to take time out from reality, learning how to observe anyone or anything from a safe distance, listening intently for tokens of wisdom while evaluating information and interpreting the merit of another’s life. I just plain digested aimless wonder for hours on end for no practical reason other than to discover what it was like to not be in my mentally disturbed family. This was an emotional relief in comparison to the reality. Subsequently, I created unassuming safety zones where I could hide in plain sight most of the time, which isn’t easy among degrading bullies who think they know best about absolutely everything. What I learned from hindsight was they really didn’t know everything, but they’ll never admit it even with a razor-sharp dagger at their necks. The French flag of misery flew at my house.

So what’s the point of confronting adults who bully children for daily jollies and ritualistic sport? There isn’t one. It’s a useless conversation. A kid has no power other than to escape within. It was easier and more productive to avoid contact with certain individuals at all cost. Call it antisocial if you will. It’s a legit way for a kid to cope with the predacious insanity of ignorant alcoholics. If I hadn’t escaped physically or mentally, I’d be dead by my own devise. There isn’t a day that went by I didn’t consider removing myself.

Despite feeling vulnerable and helpless, a highly creative sensitive side continued to develop, becoming a private religion and steady rock too. I was able to think about running away less often. And those self-conjured memories of boulders drifting in currents through green pastures held my thoughts together when home life went completely off the rails. To me, these picturesque country scenes in rural Massachusetts embodied much more depth, generating celestial medicine for the soul. I manifested a true appreciation for the unknown too, originated by pause while asking lucent questions. This state of providence brought explanations, insight, wisdom, anxiety relief, and profound healing. In very natural esoteric ways, I found pristine levels of peace. I became more intuitively aware, contemplative, and omniscient…leveraged by an indescribable spiritual cord tugging my pace forward out of the callous fray of the marauding French Army. Whatever was to happen in the future, I’d try to become an unused Christmas ornament, tucked away in Grandma’s taped-together box inside the back-hall closet. One can’t argue about the future of nothing, so I became very fond of nothingness. I was never a fan of witnessing pugnacious neuroticism. Slowly, I gathered hope in the sunlit web of morning silence.

The next imagery off Lincoln Road reminds me of an old vacant house at the end of a tree-lined dirt road. This is the house one can see from a half mile away but never visit. For a long time, my feet had been glued to a car parking plateau at the end of the long red barn where heavy cars hobbled in and out during the 1960s. An iron handrail provided safety from the considerable height difference to the pasture below. We used to dangle off the handrail and watch the cows graze as if we were at the San Diego zoo. Many times we hurled toys like balsam wood gliders and army parachute soldiers off the heights. But way down below, as the pasture titled, spilling downward toward the edge, a familiar mysterious place existed. I’d just watch it and wonder. Granted, I felt nervous about unfamiliar places, but I had no problem trekking through woods to go fishing, which tells me that there’s an energy aspect in play.

During reflective hours, I would sometimes contemplate mysterious woods beyond the cow pastures on Lincoln Road. They were shrouded by a hard fact or my vivid imagination. A very real clandestine secret embodied the pasture’s lowland perimeter, which felt very much like that old vacant house mystery suggested above. When I finally found the courage to walk alone, probing the thorn tree grove below, its needling trees bearing bundles of red berries stood in crowded rows. And within this oddly quiet and precarious place, massive trees split ledge outcroppings completely in two, as if cracked fresh eggs, while indifferent cows slowly lumbered through treacherous thorny pikes unharmed, rubbing their long curled horns against tree trunks, seemingly waiting for them to pass by. I can still recall the glowing silhouette of a bright yellow morning sun boring a clean hole through crowns of green bushy limbs reaching skyward, and the dank musty country breeze that told a story of skunk cabbage, last fall’s leaves, and fresh manure.

I suppose these countryside experiences shifted my inner essence in a way, quieting the mind’s traffic pattern toward a slow-motion state, just idling down low in routine observations like this, yet the thorny spikes would have their way with me. Unlike the foraging cows, I managed to impale the top of my head with the spine, and the damned thing wouldn’t come out. A darkened needle cut deep in the suture bone of my skull. Of course, I got in trouble for having carved out by a rude snickering wise ass doctor, which back then cost money we surely didn’t have. Thus, my days walking in the thorn tree grove abruptly ended, and a careless learning impression was made the hardest way. Yet I always wondered afterward who the heck planted thorn trees, because the cows weren’t deterred or controlled by such obstacles. Only I had been the indigent juvenile casualty suspecting of wolves long ago.

During the summer school vacation months, we’d go with my father to his brother’s house in Kentucky or Oklahoma. My father had remarried and had a newborn daughter. Years later, we found out that he had really married a pregnant woman twelve years younger than himself, and the baby wasn’t his. In Kentucky, we hoed tobacco in ninety-degree heat. Farm life was hard in the hills of Kentucky. My mother threw us on a Delta flight from Chicago, Illinois. She made me wear brand-new wingtip shoes, and they hurt something awful. Farmers don’t wear wingtip shoes, and nothing Mom ever did made any sense at all. There were several trips to Oklahoma, and over the years, my father would typically drive straight through from Worcester, Massachusetts. Life in Oklahoma was desperately hard as well. Poverty meant paycheck to paycheck, if any. As children, we were again like old luggage, not knowing what to do or how to act in these new environments. At dinner, my father deliberately tried to control what parts of the chicken we ate, preferring that we chose the chicken backs. I thought this suggestion very telling. In retrospect, I can see that my father was scrounging a family vacation at his brother’s expense. Of course…on the noble premise of visiting with his aged mother who lived with his oldest brother, Leo. I guess this experience was typical for those stark days in the late 1960s, as well as the sacrificial reasoning. But the crux of it all was to visit family who were definitely poorer. And this didn’t go unnoticed. I couldn’t imagine how this arrangement worked for anyone. I just knew as a young kid that life in Kentucky was financially stressed, and that people drove their pickup trucks around at night without the headlights on to conserve battery power. Although there were other grim oddities that struck me much harder.

One Sunday, we visited people who were so poor that anyone, even the most insensitive soul, would notice. While greeting the host family, my father gravitated toward an elder seated by the fireplace. He wore a white short-sleeve shirt two sizes too large and hadn’t shaved in a few sweltering days. The look of a retired farmer would describe him best. In casual conversation with my father, he pulled out a pouch of tobacco with rolling papers and proceeded to attempt rolling a cigarette. His hands shook so badly that tobacco spilled, and the fine paper crease gave way. My father offered him a Lucky Strike cigarette, and the old man took it. I never forgot this vivid snapshot of vacation life.

Chapter Six:

Spiritual Wonder

Although an obvious New England transplant to the natives, I easily identified with the soul of rural Massachusetts, automatically engaging in spiritual thoughts without a mentor or teacher, reflecting frequently about the meaning of life as a way to transmute the bloodstain residue of constant anxiety, speculating freely just how these isolated places felt so oddly familiar. I wondered if living on Lincoln Road had been for a reason, possibly an east-west zigzag journey designed by God? There were days when I felt like a toy receiver of messages waiting for an epiphany reborn from an ancient wilderness. And it regularly crossed my mind whether these experiences would ever be useful as well, and today I can say yes. This old farmland spoke in several languages, emulating divine pleasures and solace while encouraging the simple idea of an idea, relaxing calmly in the meaning everything, somehow steering the way toward the virtues of nothing itself.

I didn’t know the deeper secrets about the pre-Columbian history of Lincoln Road, having just casual impressions. However, I’ll admit while walking alone, my mind would open to the calls of the wilderness, listening intently for drumming in the woods, bird calls, or distant tires howling. When I ventured down well-worn paths connecting the stone cottage to a dim evergreen woodland, what I found there totally surprised me. Isolated by decades were early rusty automobiles, fenced-in animal pens, cock-eyed chicken coups, and horse-drawn farm equipment slowly sinking in sod, all decorated by tufts of dry pine needles beneath a canopy of large green limbs sweeping low moaning breezes overhead. I realized then that people struggled beyond today’s wood lines, cuddling the outskirts of hayfields plotted along the pitch and yaw of Lincoln Road. One day, their bellyache and motivation to stay abruptly ended, and now a new green forest had grown, slowly healing the wounds left behind. Clearly these long-forgotten farmers had no time to think about personal interests. I was the lucky one gawking with time to wonder.

I thought it would be prudent for an explanation, perhaps an engraved plaque commemorating these deserted places hiding in the woods, much like the battlefield markers at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Yet there was only a hushed silence and distant wind rhythmically brushing higher needle tips, and my wandering eyes latched on to a chest full of anxiety. Inside I felt death, failure, sullen loneliness, hunger, and economic hardship. I thought about things like when was the last chicken killed? And where did they go next?

These isolated people places were emotionally