Follow it! 

Gonzo Flyers created by that inimicable artist

GRANT GOODWINE.

If you feel inclined to buy a T-shirt to help us bring the best contributers in the world to New Orleans, go here.

To browse the official website, go here. World-famous composer/musician David Amram is playing with four New Orleans musicians. Panels you won’t want to miss are booked. Old friends will be hanging out.  No Tickets needed, though if you like, there will be a donations option at the door. More here.

THANK YOU. See you there.

Also, in the news . . .

The Hell’s Angels Letters – Hunter S. thompson

This book in hands – IT IS MIND BLOWING JAW DROPPING!!!

I just can’t leave it alone!

I approach it, open it, flip through it, can hardly decide what to read first, enjoy some pages, close it, do something else, and walk back to it, open it…… – for hours now!

Feel like taking two weeks off to just stay IN IT!

All these letters from Hunter asking you to save the situation, etc. ADORABLE!!!!

Wow! Thank you. Remember, it’s 1/4 written by Hunter (his new writing presented in color scans, full size).

The post GonzoFest New Orleans – 2025 – Instagram Page: NEW!! appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Click to read the marvelous interview conducted by John Kennedy.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. He sets the interview up this way:

Never for a moment quail before your antagonists. Your fearlessness will be to them a sure token of impending destruction, but to you it will be a sure token of your salvation—a token coming from God. – Philippians 1:28

She says life has taught her that being spiritually fearless and unapologetically yourself is an essential component of identifying and nourishing the God-given gifts and purpose one is born with. She realized that to achieve that for herself she needed to cast aside crippling self-consciousness. Achieving that easier-said-than-done goal, she remembers, was greatly assisted by some of the notable men in her life. In her memoirs, Harrell illustrates how  Thompson, Klonsky, and Mensaert particularly exhibited the sort of authenticity that was vital to helping her learn how to express her true self.

JWK: You’re latest book is called The Hell’s Angels Letters and is a full-color coffee table book that follows up on your Keep This Quiet! memoir as . . . 

Click on the link to read the article.

A marvelous thank-you to the publisher, John Kennedy.

The post On beliefnet.com – How Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky and Jan Mensaert taught me the power of fearlessness appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

11, 12, 13

Palimpsest

Time with his old face

Death with his skull face

God with his No Face

Under my own face

—Milton Klonsky

What did William Blake have to do with The Hell’s Angels Letters book?

More than you might think. In my mind his artwork was the artbook I didn’t work on in 1971 or so. This was the artbook I did. It all went back to that.

But let’s take the story slowly.

1994. It was an unlikely event for me to be attending – called “Opening to Channel.” Living in Belgium, I had not had much experience personally with this more American practice in 1994. But I had just started taking light body experiential meditation work, which means getting to know the energy around you—your personal field—and from there subtle energy in general: how it works in us (somewhat in line with quantum theory but experientially). That’s where the first signal came that something was up about this book.

But maybe I should earlier, 1978. In the apartment of my close friend, a bit romantically, poet Milton Klonsky, whom Beat-generation author Seymour Krim described as having “an IQ that could stutter your butter.” Krim, by the way was a New Journalist, a “recorder of the scene as filtered through his intellect slanged vision.”  A fabulous author, he  taught writing a Columbia and at Iowa, and received both a Guggenheim and a Fulbright. In this somewhat shabby rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment of Klonsky, a tall bookshelf richly filled almost a wall-to-ceiling of the living room. Among the signed copies, by friends, was one by poet Marianne Moore. There he sat, in his (somewhat shabby too) maroon or gray sweater, surrounded by plates: William Blake printing plates from the Tate Gallery in London. Klonsky and Blake were two deep eccentrics, except for all his mental travels Milton did not talk to spirits the way Blake did. He did, however, get so engrossed in his work it could be almost a trance. Telling me about the illustrated manuscript, Blake’s Dante, he was working on for Harmony Books, he said: “You do the text.”

What??!! Sputter. Sputter.

The text was brief or long blocks of commentary on Blake’s engravings of Dante’s Divine Comedy. About the most erudite thing I could imagine. Certainly not housed in my brain. Plus translated excerpts. Whoo. That meant having at my fingertips all of Dante’s Comedy, plus getting into Blake’s mind at the intersections. And I didn’t know Italian. I was awed. How could he think me capable of such expertise put together wittily? He said, “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the publisher of Harmony Books. I’ll get him to give you $1,000.” $4,821 today!  Temporarily, I said yes, though I backed out when we returned from midtown, but I kept the memory. Including the awe.

Entering his apartment that afternoon now seems a kind of replica in astonishment of the opening pages of his American Review essay Art & Life: A Mennippean Paean to the Flea; or, Did Dostoevsky Kill Trotsky?—in which the natural philosopher Robert Hooke stared, in his dungeon laboratory in April 1663, as “out of the surrounding darkness” under his just-invented compound microscope he looked at a flea—“for the first time truly seen.” The flea was the carrier of the bubonic plague at the time, which he didn’t know.

Dazzled, my mind returned to Klonsky’s first Blake book: The Seer and His Visions. The erudition, the mix with street-talk, the brilliant colors and text-plus-image layout. It seered my awareness.

How does this connect to The Hell’s Angels Letters? It is one of the models underneath the book, a template peeping through, a palimpsest that started there. Or the start might have been—no, the pickup—my visit to Rome, to the da Vinci-inventions museum and the purchase of a book of illustrations/text of his imagined machines I stumbled on. Or my book of Michaelangelo’s paintings, or of my friend pop artist John (Jack) Wesley in New York. Or even, as while living in Belgium, I helped set up an exhibit for a museum, encountering their book Mozart in Belgium (in French).

Just as I began my first book by sitting in a Paris Montparnasse restaurant, Le Dôme, frequented in the past by Hemingway and Sartre, great writers and thinkers, painters, you name it, here was another, older flock of artists, this time visual, with texts digging into their great works. Sitting in that pond of art of the past ties in to The Hell’s Angels Letters, how? Underlying it in palimpsest mode. “Palimpsest,” a word I learned from Milton.

So let’s get down to it. At the channeling workshop in Ghent, Belgium, in 1994, I casually asked—in an exercise in twos—would my book be published? That is, Love in Transition: Voyage of Ulysses—Letters to Penelope, which I had worked on for nineteen years, unfinished because—what else?—of the death of Milton Klonsky (after whom my protagonist was named), after which he seemed to “come back from the dead” to initiate me. Are you following? There are a lot of winding trails like this leading up to the Letters.

The male in my Ghent channeling workshop answered, “I see a book by you in a bookstore window.” Wow.

A year later at the one hundredth-birthday celebration of the famous laboratory parapsychologist J. B. Rhine at the Parapsychology  Association convention in Durham, NC, in 1995, I had been asked to contribute, as I had known and corresponded with Rhine—letters again—and while at an evening event there I asked a parapsychologist, who said she looked for lost children for the New York City police sometimes, the same question. “Will my book be published?” SAME ANSWER. Twice now: “I see a book by you in a bookstore window.” 1995.

Fast forward to 2014. It takes patience to follow how the Universe plants. The players are getting ready in the wings as I enter Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville and a friend says, “Look, Margaret, your book is in the window!” Not just one book, but my two memoirs, just published in 2011, 2012, with Hunter S. Thompson as a key character, at last. In Love in Transition it had been Milton whose strange embodiments I had “memorialized.” But here came Hunter.

There, before a sparse audience on a Sunday morning (!) with most all the Gonzo Fest attendees in bed, I gave my presentation of his letters to me, the originals carried inside the plane from NC to Louisville, Kentucky. Spreading the collection, worth tens of thousands of dollars, out, I enthusiastically elaborated, letter by letter. In the audience Jinn Bug, a poet/photographer/graphic artist and importantly for our story, one who could receive energy messages, sat transfixed.

“Remember the spaces,” Hunter had written me: it meant tell the Random House production crew of Hell’s Angels (the printer worked from the manuscript hard copy) to reproduce the space around his newspaper-width quotations. Exactly. That’s an order. In the talented Jinn Bug’s mind, a vision of an artbook, formed. First of all, it was unlikely she would even be there, not often stepping into the Gonzo world. But she did. And that proved vital.

“Remember the spaces” opened up before her into—what else in our scenario?—an ART book, say, like, The Gorgeous Nothings (Emily Dickinson’s scribblings on envelopes, surrounded by barrels of space). Now, Jinn and her husband, Ron Whitehead, the founder/organizer of the Gonzo Fest, who had invited me to speak, together approached me. I had sometime back decided to write no more books without being asked, so as to get readers, not just good critical reviews. Jinn conveyed her vision, intending her role to be then complete. I stood still, rooted to the spot, captured by the image of the artbooks of the past.

A couple of years passed. I did nothing. How could I without my layout templates? Jim Bug had no interest in creating any templates, even one. But reluctantly, one day, hurrying down the airport corridor with me, she relented. (Probably to keep me interested.)

Now the winding trail wound into new corners. Keeping the waning project alive, investing it with dynamite, though so far not a single step in it had been taken, one day Jinn Bug got the idea of inviing in in Ron and Juan Thompson. She broached the idea. I said yes. They said yes. Juan’s entry miraculously guaranteed that the reprint permissions from the Estate.

Without Juan’s nod and generosity, no book.

And everyone felt the book was Hunter’s wish!

The ducks were in a row. But another year passed. I was still in that living room of Blake’s plates from the Tate Museum, or in Leonardo’s book of drawings with text, waiting for my template, the palimpsest of art books in the past standing with me. My stuck brain thought of no one to ask for templates, not yet even thinking of going to a designer. That would have been the obvious act. But I knew no Gonzo-inspired designer.  And I wanted text and template to go hand in hand.

Finally, Jinn and Ron said it was time for the editing—in the form of questions. That meant I had to write text, which was actually easy, given the familiarity I now had with the topic. Immediately, Jinn began drawing my own personal story into the book, where I had not planned on including it much. To bring me in, to widen the audience outside Gonzo, was her idea. Also, that I answer questions in written form in back-of-the-book Notes. Notes to be deleted later.

Then Ron announced he had a narrow opening to read the manuscript in six weeks. Could I be ready? Jinn added: forget waiting for the templates, she and Ron would drag text from my manuscript under and beside each illustration. All they needed was the text to drag, let them choose which. Wow. My heart dropped to the floor. My first reaction was, what a lot of trust that required of me, introvert that I was (extrovert in some ways too). But trust I had (the extroverted me) and in fact wasn’t this a collaboration? I said yes.

Also, they both insisted I leave excess material in for them to see. This required to restrain me in chains, as it were. I, of all people, identified myself by my ability to cut. One author I edited called me “scizzors lady.” How ironic. Because 1) I am an expert in cutting. It was like a trademark, my TM. A footprint of me.

I remember (painfully but gratefully) a lesson—shortcut—from Alan Rinzler, one of Hunter’s editors, who around 2009 read my memoir Keep This Quiet! in manuscript when what would become the first two volumes were still one long text. He berated the excess “ephemera.” Yes! My intuition had already told me that. So I raced through the book, cut one third, slashing away as in an overgrown vacant lot, without a glance backward, with nary a pittance of regret. This sealed the deal for me to always listen to my own intuition at a certain point—siding with it, as it nodded vigorously, if needed.

Now, with trust, trepidation, gratitude and curiosity as well, I turned in the text—at the very same time the Universe granted Ron an artist-in-residence assignment in Estonia, alone! No sooner had I turned it in than off he went.

Well, he would not back out, he soon informed me. He would edit it there, but what would happen to the plan? Unbeknownst to me he knew nothing about the plan.

So he received a text with no chapters, thus no chapter openings and closings. Now, those are  a fabulous tool I refresh myself on in bedtime mystery novels nightly. But this manuscript had no chapters, because (I thought) he was now to “place” portions of text under and around and in between the illustrations! Ron didn’t know! And I didn’t know he didn’t know. As I had only seen him a few times in person and found him rather intimidating (I admit), we had had no long phone conversations (a difficult feat in itself, as he is like a fire hydrant, the words pouring over each other).

I said, “Ron, cut anything—a paragraph, a page, a section—move paragraphs around. But please just do no line editing.

He said, “Thanks. Good to know. OK.” End of instructions.

That was the extent of the communication, except he repeated I was not to cut excess material, as he needed to see it to decide if it belonged in or not (not, definitely!).

So over in Estonia he weighed, wrestled, wondering how the text could be made “conversational,” he later said. I now know he must have meant to deemphasize any hint of anything academic. That was fine with me. A good idea.

I didn’t mention the plan that he and Jinn—now himself alone—were to drag and cut and paste my text under and beside and between illustrations. I mistakenly just assumed he had been told. Possibly Jinn thought I told him. Or that, no matter, it would all fall into place. (Which it did.)

Regardless, he sweated, then returned the manuscript with no markings. Just the finished product. A clean text. No questions.  I looked. YES.  As if my mind had been glued to his (and perhaps it was), he 100 percent agreed. Eye to eye. He deleted everything I’d shuddered at leaving in. And left in what I loved. Talk about mind meld.

But Ron was now emailing out the text for early reading. Ye gods! I hastily made chapters – with openings and closings created for dramatic effect. And by luck found designer Deborah Purdue to do Sample Pages. She just fell out of the sky. Deborah happened to live in Medford, Oregon, I soon realized—the headquarters of my light body work, from whence the Opening to Channel workshop had stemmed.

So now we entered the Art Book arena—layout, color, design fantasia. And lo and behold, as the self-organizing Universe would have it, it fell to me to drag and place the text! We were off to the races.

In the next year, in combing through agent options, I butted against my karma. I reached the spot where with earlier books I would give up. Was it karma? I began to think so. A stone wall I had to blast through. Ron masterfully pushed me, always upbeat, past every rejection letter.

Ron said, “No, keep going.” Jinn: “I think there’s a publisher out there.” What? I believed in her hunches.

And lurking in San Francisco, a needle in a haystack, he was.

(If you do not understand why the book was noncommercial, just imagine the cost of color printing. For sure, traditional publishers would, cost effectively, destroy the whole purpose of the project, by retyping, in black and white, excerpts of letters. Excerpts only. No scans. No primary documents on display, no doodles, no color. No coffee table book. Keep This Quiet! all over again. Why bother? No dice. Imagine the yawning of the Gonzo community!)

Grant Goodwine, the perfect illustrator, came in.

One year later in a phone call magic happened. I thought I was dialing a printing house to test what the color printing fee (in any case unaffordable by me; still, it didn’t hurt to ask) would be.

But the printer had a publishing arm. I’d dialed that by accident; by chance he himself picked up. He interrupted: “I’m the publisher of Norfolk Press. I want to publish your book. Do you have a manuscript?” And that was it. Next day, a contract waited. The book would come home to roost in San Francisco. Ah ha. Home to where Hunter typed the very first letter to me.  Closing the circle.

But that wasn’t the last hurdle. I signed in March 2020. COVID lurked. Frowning and forbidding. We got the book out July 18, 2020—no launch allowed.

However, then another hurdle, another karmic stop, as it were, remained. This one still in effect. Will this roadblock get lightly lifted as well? A proud, open highway? The hurdle now is how readers can get the book—available on just the publisher’s website. Ever mindful of dropping hints, the Universe showed its hand here too. An Amazon distribution center popped up right outside the Norfolk Press window—in 2021, saying: See how accessible I am. Take the leap! Charles Cunningham, the insightful, risk-taking publisher, noted the “hint.” But didn’t budge. Yet. Then one day Fat City Gallery, run by DJ Watkins out of Aspen, offered to put the book up on its site for sale. Ah ha. Another surprise in store. Moving now to Aspen, just miles from Hunter’s Woody Creek home. Are we tracing a trajectory on a map?

As we started with Blake, I think of the plots of the Universe: After his exile from Florence, “poet and politician Dante Alighieri . . . wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, as a virtual wanderer, seeking protection for his family in town after town.”

The Gospel of Thomas: (29) “Jesus says: “If the flesh was produced for the sake of the spirit, it is a miracle. But if the spirit . . . for the sake of the body, it is a miracle of a miracle.”

That is, this winding road is the path of the art of old. Hunter won fame. Celebrity. Notoriety. But for a taste of the “old way,” this might round out the picture. Michaelangelo was enormously wealthy. But most artists were not.

I cannot thank Ron enough for pushing and pushing, never washing his hands of this project. Ron always available to give his suggestions, out of years of experience. Quick, unhesitant. If I would doubt, the solution was: Ask Ron. Quick, snap of the finger, he fired back. And I would go back now to nod at my first publisher, Didi Cenuser, in Romania, as he appreciates being remembered. Who could forget him? Jinn Bug, of course, for capturing several Universe messages during this long journey, without which I don’t think the book would exist.  Thanx, one and all.

To Be Continued.

https://www.beatsupernovarasa.com/thebeats/thebeats.htm
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dante-is-exiled-from-florence

The post A Palimpsest of Thanks appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

which recently celebrated its 50th birthday, is hosting the Launch of the hard cover deluxe edition of The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic all during the month of July! Coming soon! If you are in San Francisco, drop by and see the exhibit. The live events I will participate in, and Ron Whitehead and Grant Goodwine will occur during the week of July 15 – 19, with a grand crescendo, I expect, on July 18, Hunter’s birthday. We just picked up the plan from 2020 and moved it – expanded – to 2021. More details as they open up. If you want an invitation, please let us know, as room is limited. If you have any Hunter Thompson memorabilia you want us to exhibit on the walls, let us know. I will pass that to the curator of the exhibit, Charles Cunningham, man of many hats (he is also the publisher, with a strong artistic bent). If you happen to have anything you want to let us exhibit on loan or anything we can include in the hard cover that is rare HST memorabilia, we will be ecstatic.

The post Hunter Thompson at Canessa Gallery San Francisco July 2021 appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Harrell and Denevi – McNally Jackson event

It’s official. I joined George Mason MFA professor Tim Denevi and journalist Jonny Diamond (writer for Rolling Stone, etc.; editor in chief of The Literary Hub) at a McNally Jackson Bookstore event in Brooklyn in November. It’s part of Denevi’s book tour for Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism, on sale October 30.

Chrysler Building from hotel room

Partnering with Little Brown, The Paris Review, Soho Press, The Melville House, Harper Perennial, the National Book Critics Circle, Random House, Feminist Pres, and many more in the publishing world, The Literary Hub  has Tim Denevi on the masthead as well as Diamond. Fortunately, Tim has me in the panel because of my firsthand experience with Hunter and the Sixties. Otherwise, I’d be the odd person out, in that these two are young, dynamic, political Opinion and Editorial specialists.

Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism, which I went through in manuscript, is a very interesting book:

The story of Hunter S. Thompson’s crusade against Richard Nixon and the threat of fascism in America–and the devastating price he paid for it

Hunter S. Thompson is often misremembered as a wise-cracking, drug-addled cartoon character. This book reclaims him for what he truly was: a fearless opponent of corruption and fascism, one who sacrificed his future well-being to fight against it, rewriting the rules of journalism and political satire in the process. This skillfully told and dramatic story shows how Thompson saw the danger of Richard Nixon early

Harrell and Denevi event Brooklyn

and embarked on a life-defining campaign to stop it. In his fevered effort to expose institutional injustice, Thompson pushed himself far beyond his natural limits, sustained by drugs, mania, and little else. For ten years, he cast aside his old ambitions, troubled his family, and likely hastened his own decline, along the way producing some of the best political writing in our history.

This timely biography recalls a period of anger and derangement in American politics, and one writer with the guts to tell the truth.

The post Margaret at the McNally Jackson Bookstore (Brooklyn) appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

I don’t pretend to solve the thorny, tricky problems of QM, but it intersects with issues in Keep This Quiet!—in particular that the Knokke light body meditation raised—so I didn’t duck but headed into the mysterious waters.

Two positions will fight it out. In one, the physical world (of atoms) is primary, and for many consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, though no one claims to know how the brain might have produced it. In the other, in reverse, consciousness is primary, the ground of being—out of which comes matter. But matter is waves of possibility until a wave “collapses.” I was eager to see Walker lay out the argument in favor of consciousness as the Ground. He waxes lyrical in describing consciousness (human and other). He says, let’s resolve this.

First a little summary: The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life asserts that “consciousness is real but nonphysical.” Consciousness, writes physicist E. H. Walker, is “not so many atoms. It does not consist of photons or quarks. Neither is it molecules spinning about in the brain. Consciousness is something that exists in its own right.” 176 Foundational to Walker’s investigations are the role of the observer and of quantum mechanical tunneling in the brain. His experience of satori, or enlightenment, permitted him to understand consciousness and his task is to make “enlightenment” scientific. I look at his book from my experience with ancient Eastern teachings and the Ground state.

The post Evan Harris Walker and “The Physics of Consciousness” appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

From Paul Krassner – Realist

Diving into my garage boxes, I found a follow-up note from Paul Krassner that confirms what I remembered: he explains that in my absence (I was in Las Angeles with Hunter during a quick weekend visit) he sent me a letter but addressed it to the wrong person at Random House. So here is how I found out about that and – yes – I hurried down to the Obscene Letters area to rescue it and read it. True, such a section existed at Random House down in the basement. It made for amusing reading, and I kept both letters as souvenirs.

Read excerpts from the original, funny – mash – letter here.

The post Paul Krassner’s Second Letter appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Because of illness, Jef Crab has postponed his June 2017 trip to the U.S. but will reschedule it for spring 2018 in Raleigh, NC. In the meantime, he intends to set up several online FREE discussion events. Stay tuned for updates.

Jef Crab, Raleigh Classes June 2017

Energetic Awareness, Sensitivity & Transformation (E.A.S.T.) is based on the concept that every human being has purpose— a life-dream, so to speak. Fulfilment in life comes from following this dream, literally realizing this purpose. 

But how to know if we are following the right direction? Where to look? Wouldn’t it be great to know the indicators?

Although signals, signs and indications might originate from subtle layers of existence and consciousness, they will always become manifest in the physical world and our own body. The ability to connect to these subtle levels and simultaneously be aware of the indicators is actively accessible to us as soon as we connect to our own energetic space.

How big is this space anyway? Does it really exist or is it just an abstraction?  At E.A.S.T. Institute we know that our space is tangible and that deep authenticity is the mindset that connects us to our full potential.

During day 1, participants will discover their own inner sensors and indicators connecting them to these subtle levels. This will be done by exploring our own awareness, feelings and impressions during specific E.A.S.T. exercises, some of them in nature.

In the morning of day 2, we reach “coherence,” i.e., consciously align the physical, energetic and causal body with the Umbrella Life Field to experience Authenticity. The rest of that morning, we will look into which indicators tell us we are reaching this alignment in daily life. So why do we lose this state of mind? What happened that caused us to go astray?

In the afternoon through exercises we will explore our own energetic and causal space—our parabola antenna, so to speak— and discover how this increases vitality, creativity and flexibility. Reconnecting to our life dream is being authentic and results in Healing Presence.

Learn more at his brand-new website

Jef Crab (Louvain, Belgium 1957) had the privilege to study under close guidance of Masters in various disciplines and spiritual paths. Amongst them Jóska Soós de Sóvar, the well-known Hungarian shaman with roots to Siberian Shamanism, and Akira Tasumura, Zen master and world-famous painter and Ikebana teacher. At Yeunten Ling, the European Centre for Tibetan Buddhism at Huy, Belgium, Jef also received three initiations from the Dalai Lama, amongst which two personal/individual. To this day Jef also continues the study of inner movement and spiritual development as taught by the nowadays 113-year-old Taoist sage, Hua-Ching Ni.

In his search for easy to learn, yet efficient techniques, applicable in daily life he finally developed a universal method not bound by any one tradition. For more than 15 years he researched and experimented with these techniques around the world, from Israel to Belgium, to South America. Today E.A.S.T. Institute is a partner organization of UNICEF (Suriname).

When not teaching in Europe or elsewhere, Jef lives and works in the La Rencontre Training Centre, cradle for many Earth Restore Programs at the rim of the Amazon Rainforest in close cooperation with tribal people, taking frequent treks into the interior.

• Place: Raleigh NC 27612
• Investment: $279–single workshop or $250 each–if also taking the “Just relax!” workshop June 17-18 at Lake Wheeler Park, Shelter 7, the weekend before
• Contact: Margaret A. Harrell, marharrell@nc.rr.com, 919/782-9257
• Also explore Jef’s new website
• Space is limited to 25 participants. To secure your place, sign up early and leave a deposit. You can do that right on this site. Please come in comfortable clothing and footwear.

** Bring water (stay hydrated) and a picnic lunch.

The post RESCHEDULED FOR 2018: Authenticity & Healing Presence, aka Making Space for Your Self appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Superbly physical, Willy lifted his heavy barbell over his head with one hand in the apartment. Lacking backing, he’d foregone his ambition to be a Formula One driver—or boxer. Now, to get their wings, young men tried to provoke him into fights. He had a kind of masculinity I wasn’t used to.

After his father died in a motorcycle accident, he’d left school, at fourteen. Financially, his mother needed him. When I first walked into his apartment he was at the sink, washing plastic grocery sacks. I asked why. He said to reuse them.

Though no one suspected it, he didn’t know the alphabet (he spelled by ear). He spoke excellent English—learned from pop music and TV-film subtitles. On TV we watched every kind of sport: dart tournaments (he played darts in bars), snooker, soccer, Wimbledon matches, Formula One racing. We attended dirt bike competitions. I loved watching the riders go airborne over mounds. The way I’d loved slalom waterskiing.

Willy often stood before his tape deck, volume full blast—light on his feet, dancing in double time, 8/8, whereas my tempo was 4/4.

Willy was on an extra-fast track. I see him listening to Joe Cocker, which he pronounced “coke-r” (“I just wanna be the one you run to” or “If you want a partner for a ride . . . I’m your man”). Willy was grainy, passionate, muscular, but not knottily unlike a body builder. He played Dire Straits and oldies, “Get Ready” with long sax solo. Saxophonist was another career he’d have preferred. Or swimmer. He’d have been lost in the car without his music.

Often battling a dead battery, he pushed the auto downhill in front of the apartment. With the engine sputtering, we hopped in. Later he had a charger in the kitchen.

He coasted to the last drop of gas—perhaps, miscalculating, hitting empty. He carried a gas can in the trunk and would walk or hitchhike down the road a ways to fill it. Once, while he was tinkering underneath his jacked-up auto it fell on his chest. The next-door neighbor’s eyes bulged as Willy lifted it and continued tinkering. He was occasionally a bouncer at a disco.

Willy seemed to work the world like a room. He connected people. No matter what, if the doorbell rang he answered. He loved nature. And took me on picnics where—with cows in the distance—we lay in the grass to feel the blades. Or wearing a bright orange workout jacket, he drove us to a woods to jog together down a trail.

We’d bicycle forty kilometers, then drink water from a natural spring. I’d not known such things were masculine, but with ultramale Willy they were. He might find a private outdoor nook near a lake to make love in after the bike ride, or in the ocean. He was all in all a breed I was glad to hook up with. We could not marry, because in Catholic Belgium without paying a lot of money for a divorce you had to wait out five years’ separation.

Willy always wore his Cross: it was “the Man,” he said, adding enigmatically—no explanation—that if he ever lost it, our relationship was over. He also said that after one accident (not his fault) he woke from a coma with amnesia. He’d let on to no one; finally his memory returned.

However, the amnesia left him a budding psychic. He demonstrated how he could use a pendulum. I challenged him and he asked it if I had ever had children. The pendulum said yes, and he remained horrified when I explained I held a “yes” in mind, thinking of my manuscripts. So, he thought, I was overriding his will. That didn’t go down well, but I found it amusing. I reveled in how freeing it was to relate like this, where I could express any emotion, in fact was encouraged to. Willy was up for it. The meeting between us was significant, dramatic, downright odd if you put the experience into its beginning and end.

After he died I for the second time dived into “afterlife” questions, in that he seemed to be still around in the apartment. Read more on this in Keep This Quiet! III and IV. It was yet another quirky, jarring, page-turning, consciousness-creating transformative initiation.

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