​​On Ivinson street between 6th and 7th streets there is a large multistory house that occupies the entire block, along with the carriage house and servants quarters.  As I walked past the house I was distracted by the sound of quiet weeping.  A woman's weeping. 

 

 

I stopped.  I looked around and saw no one.  Then I noticed that I didn't hear the weeping as much as I felt it.  I looked up.  It was the house.  The house was weeping.  Standing there in broad daylight I proceeded to “talk'” to the “house”. 

 

 

“Why do you cry?” I asked 

 

 

“I'm going to die.” the house said. 

 

 

“Die? Why?”  How can a house die?” I asked.  It never occurred to me that I was talking to a house.  To me I was talking to a person.  A person whose pain made my own heart ache.  I only wanted to help.  To comfort. 

 

 

“I can die because I have known life.  I have the memories of all those who lived in me and of those who have lived in this town.  I have watched them live their lives from birth to death.  I have watched this town grow.  Now I am empty.  No one walks through my rooms or looks through my windows.  There are no voices, no laughter, no life.  Yet I remember every soul who ever walked through my doors.  Now they have forgotten me.  In a month I will be destroyed.  I am afraid.  I do not want to die.” 

 

 

Never had I felt such sadness from another.  I really didn't know what to say.  Feebly I said. “But all creatures die.  We must die.” 

 

 

“Yes, but you are a living soul.  I am only a living house.  You are a fragment of life itself.  That fragment is the Will.  The Will of all creation.  You are a creature.  Life is contained within you.  It's part of you.  It comes directly from God.  My life is merely the residue of yours.  In my walls, floors and ceilings, in every board, wire and pipe, in every fiber of my structure I have absorbed the radiance of that soul that lives in you.  All the emotions, the love, the hate, the ideas.  All those feelings and thoughts are in every atom of my structure.  And as long as I am a structure... I am.  But if the structure is destroyed... I am not.  For I do not have a soul.  I draw my life from you.  From people.  From love.  You have a soul.  For you life is eternal...regardless of form.  However I thank you for your concern. And it pleases me that you care.”  The house paused.  Then it quietly started to weep. 

 

 

I felt so helpless.  What does one say to a house or to someone who is about to die?  So I said the first thing that came into my head. 

 

 

“Have Faith!  You're not going to die.  Something will happen.  You wait.  So don't be sad.” 

 

 

Groping, I continued.  “Look don't ask me how I know.  I just know.  They're not going to tear you down.  I don't know how or why but it's not going to happen.  Believe me.” 

 

 

By the time I finished I felt it was true.  All true.  That God was going to save this house and strangely the house must have believed me.  Somehow it saw through my act and felt my sincerity because the sadness seemed to leave.  At least lesson enough for me to “feel” a smile from the Ivinson Mansion.   

 

 

At that point I knew this conversation was over.  I looked around.  I suddenly realized how weird this all was.  Some dude in the middle of the sidewalk talking to a house barefoot and shirtless.  Lucky there were no cops around even though I was about three blocks from the police station.  I looked around.  The sun had gone down and I immediately plunged back into my internal philosophical dialogue.  I put my hands in my pockets and started walking.  For some reason I don't know, I didn't turn around and go home.  Instead I continued to walk east toward the University campus. 

 

 

I wish to add at this point, that exactly one month later when Ivinson Mansion was scheduled to be razed, a last minute reprieve was granted.  This gave time for a local organization to buy the house and convert it into a museum.  The house was restored with a modern sculpture added.  It still stands to this day as a historical museum loved and cared for by the city it watch grow up. 

 

 

Once again I was walking blindly lost in my thoughts.  I was thinking about love.  Not physical love but logos love.  God love.  I thought how each and every problem could be resolved through love.  Love was a metaphysical vehicle that could take us to every resolution to every problem man creates and has to face.  How unnecessary was so much of the suffering we all go through. 

 

 

As I was walking along, I looked up and noticed these huge tree stumps that were sitting in this field next to the cemetery.  I had walked past the University campus and was at the gates of the cemetery east of the campus.  These stumps were more than four or five feet in diameter.  They had been ripped from the ground roots and all.  There was huge pile of them like a tree stump cemetery.  I went over to one of the larger ones and sat on it.   

 

 

As I sat there, I realized I had a string of Buddhist beads in my pocket.  Although I can't remember for sure as they could have been hippie beads or Rosary beads.  But in any case I pulled them from my pocket and wrapped them around my hands Buddhist style.  I began to pray and chant.  I prayed the Lord's prayer and I prayed for man to find love.  I chanted nam myoho rengo keo, a common chant while I rubbed the beads together and rocked back and forth.  I prayed and chanted.  Prayed and chanted.  And I cried.  My eyes filled with tears as I wept for mankind. 

 

 

As my emotions grew, and though blinded by my tears, I got up off that tree stump and stumbled blindly into the dark.  Not knowing where I was going yet walking a quick pace as if I were being pulled by some invisible rope deep within the void.  I walked into the cemetery. 

 

 

Every now and then, my vision cleared enough to see I had entered the cemetery.  Although I seemed to be totally lost in my emotionalism I remember thinking at the back of my head...what the hell are you doing?!  You're in the middle of a cemetery and it's pitch black!  That is not something I would do in broad daylight much less in the middle of the night.  But I just kept walking.  Then I was there. There in front of the cross. 

 

 

All of a sudden I was calm.  Totally calm. 

 

 

There it was.  Towering there before me was the most beautiful cross I'd ever seen.  It was gold.  Shining gleaming gold.  I noticed that it had become foggy all around the cross yet the face of Jesus seemed to glow in the cool mist.  I looked around and the mist was all about me.  Yet there was no chill.  The cross was in the middle of a small island where four roads crossed.  It was surrounded by a small chain fence that was about a foot high.  At the bottom of the cross on the ground was a kneeling praying angel.  I looked at the chain.  Then at Jesus and I said... 

 

 

“Well, here I am.”  and I stepped over the chain and into the circle. 

 

 

I prayed.  I looked down as I prayed and I noticed the angel at the foot of the cross.  First I noticed how new it looked.  How the gold looked clean with no weathering.  It seemed to have a glow, a radiance in the mist.  How exquisite the craftsmanship! The artist in me at that point seemed to interrupt the event I was going through to examine this incredible sculpture there before me. 

 

 

I put my hand on the wing.  I raised my glasses to examine the workmanship up close.  As I looked at the wings I noticed each feather had every single rib lines that radiated from the center of each and every feather on both wings.  The angels hand were together in a position of prayer.  I could see every line and wrinkle in his skin and fingers.  Every pore and hair on a beautiful face.  I was overwhelmed.  The more I looked at this miraculous sculpture the more awestruck I became.  As my gaze moved up the cross, that same incredible detail I saw and touched on the wings was consistent throughout the whole sculpture.  Then I saw the face of Jesus.  So lifelike.  So real.  As I looked deep into his beautiful countenance I noticed the tears.  Tears ran out of his eyes.  The tears were real.  They moved down his face.  For a moment I was afraid.  Tears.  Why tears? 

 

 

I put aside that momentary fear, and went to embrace him.  I said “Thy will be done.”  At that moment I felt as though something went into me.  A gurgling and guttural noise emerged from my throat.  It felt as though something reached down into my throat and rearranged organs in my throat and chest.  I stood with my arms outstretched, head thrown back, mouth open with noises coming out.  I shook all over while dangling on my tiptoes.  How long I stood going through this standing convulsion, I don't know.  But all of a sudden I realized I was in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of the night. 

 

 

I realized the fog was gone, and that anybody could be out there watching me doing this bizarre dance in front of this huge cross.  I stuck my hands in my pockets and began my long walk home.  I had walked from one end of town to the other to talk to a house and a cross. 

 

 

When I got home, the sun was starting to come up.  I sat on my front step contemplating what I had just gone through.  As I was getting up to go into the house I saw a sign on a caboose of a train going by.  It said,  “Don't be Curt.... Be Curious.” 

 

 

I smiled and said “Groovy” and went inside, and wrote a poem or rather a “lyric meditation” I called Birth.  Then I went to bed.  It went like this: 

 

 

BIRTH 

Sitting on my step 

watchin' the train go by 

DON'T BE CURT...BE COURTEOUS 

said the caboose, 

as it went by. 

"Groovy"  

said I 

"What next" 

said the step 

which went one higher 

Why not? 

It felt good 

and I felt better 

late than never 

to understand 

So I turned up  

but I couldn't hear 

a thought 

to quit thinking 

and then 

I...was  

born. 

 

@SPL 5/70 

 

 

The next day I went to visit two of my friends, Don Y. and Jay Dee A., to talk about what had happened to me.  One of them thought I had a vision from God.  They wanted to go to the cemetery to pay homage to the cross.  I really wasn't enthused about going back.  I didn't actually know where it was and that if it might not be there.  Or that was all a fantasy or dream or worse yet a psychotic event.  But they talked me into it. 

 

 

We went to the cemetery.  After a bit of looking we found the cross.  It was at that time we realized that this was the famous (local legend) “disappearing” cross.  Supposedly at night if you sit and look at this cross for a while it disappears.  When you blink it reappears.  This illusion is created by the positioning of the street light near the cross.  Or so it is believed.  During the day it's just a cross. 

 

 

Just a cross.  A big weathered dark brownish bronze cross with a kneeling figure at the foot of the cross who is presumably Mary.  Not an angel, no wings.  Just a woman, Mary, kneeling.  She has her left hand on her head as she looks up (The cross itself is behind her back) and her right hand is on her left shoulder.  No praying hands,  No Gold.  No details. 

 

 

I was stunned.  And it terrified me. 

 

 

Now for those who wish to dismiss this story, and say I was just “High” from my friends “Dope”.  During this time in my life (the 60's and early 70's) I was quite experienced in the psychedelic culture.  The drug experience is erratic, chaotic, and totally lacking in any logical continuity.  But in this case all I can say is although I may have been in an altered state of consciousness you should have been there.  I don't care how good the smoke is you don't hallucinate things with that kind of clarity and solidity or detail.  I do believe though that it can open up circuits to energies we normally don't perceive which are just as real as those we do perceive. 

 

 

Alan Watts once said that the reason drugs are taboo, is to prevent us from trespassing into the spiritual world before an individual has the emotional maturity and intelligence to earn the right to do so.  I also once read, that a medicine man said, the purpose of mind altering drugs is to serve as medicine for the spirit, for the soul, to heal the wounds of life.  A gift from the creator.  To be clear when I say drugs I mean the “Hippie” drugs like pot, mushrooms, mescaline, and acid.  Not narcotics and the myriad of street drugs that flood the streets today.  Who am I to argue with a medicine man, right?  Like I said...you should have been there.