The Mysterious Mission of Almost Dead Already
The Work, so-called, practices intended to reach higher consciousness by keeping the mind awake by various means including dancing and singing to special compositions, subconsciously motivated me.
Tourists told me to never leave Hawaii, but I returned to New York in 1985 in search of my true self, to dance, sing, act and stop reading books; that is, except books of account on a part-time basis to pay for classes and rent because returning the bottles of an alcoholic roommate in Brooklyn before I fled to Manhattan did not suffice to that end. I had loved New York in ‘71 for the opportunities to live my dreams although I hated the traffic between workplaces and saloons. Things had changed Uptown on the West Side since then.
“Where are the black people?” I asked an old friend from the Sixties who was still hanging at the same old saloon on West 72nd Street (Tweeds, renamed All State Café).
“Gentrification.”
“What?”
“Gentrification.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you have sky-high rent and expensive food in Hawaii?”
“Yes.”
“How many black people are there?”
“Three I know of on Big Island, I knew a few more in Honolulu.”
“That explains it.”
“Discrimination in Hawaii is mainly against haoles.”
“Haoles?”
“People whose skin is pinkish like some pigs. They are called ‘dumb haoles’.”
“Pigs are smart. Do you have any Kona Gold?”
“Nope. I quit smoking except for a couple of times on the North Shore. That is why I got out of here.”
“I thought you wanted to join up with Gurdjieff’s people somewhere, or was that Blavatsky?”
“Gurdjieff.”
My friend wished me luck and left me to reminisce about The Good Old Days, so-called. Come to think of it, The Work, so-called, practices intended to reach higher consciousness by keeping the mind awake by various means including dancing and singing to special compositions, subconsciously motivated me in those days to eventually abandon my easy life in Kona. I woke up one beautiful morning in my swell oceanside apartment with a start, and shouted:
“I am Almost Dead Already!”
So I had received my wake up call. I abandoned everybody, dumped everything except a suitcase of clothes at the dump, returned my car and fled paradise.
The New York version of reality was quite a shock, to say the least, especially after I expended my savings and was attacked by my roommate’s crazed best friend, who was wielding a combat knife from his tour in Nam. I wanted to take my jazz and modern dance classes; rather than kill him, I took the No. 2 to Manhattan and wound up standing on the street in my old hood off Needle Park with $50 to my name.
Deja vu, as that is where I had originally landed with the same sum in my pocket, then worth a lot more in current dollars.
Why I survived that and what came many years before and after, I cannot say except I am beginning to believe I am on a mission yet to be revealed before I drop dead somewhere.
Almost Dead Already