Beyond the Beyond

It's Here Now (Are You?) 
by Bhagavan Das 
Bhagavan Das is back. The 1970's guru of egregiousness, who inspired the title of Ram Dass' Be Here Now, has penned a spiritual memoir that is stranger than fiction, farther out than the Oort Cloud. We last saw our hero when he was a spiritual rock star touring the hippie circuit with Allen Ginsberg. Soon thereafter he dropped out of the scene and took a job at a Dodge dealership to support his second family. Peyote beckoned him to the desert, then he raised magic mushrooms, sold encyclopedias to Marines, dabbled in solar power, attended Bible college, and ended up selling overpriced car insurance to poor people--until his latest 18-year-old girlfriend flipped out on acid and ended his career.

Bhagavan Das's writing is guileless. He neither boasts nor apologizes. He describes the manic ride he has been on since he left California after high school. For seven years he wandered around India and Nepal, practicing austerities, sitting at the feet of gurus, studying Buddhist scriptures, and getting laid. The common denominator in his pursuits seems to be a search for the ultimate high. Whether he is kissed on the forehead by a saint, standing at the foot of a 20-foot stone statue of Vishnu, lost in meditation, dropping acid, or being initiated into tantric sex, his descriptions are in the same terms: "mind-blowing," "out-of-body," "ultimate bliss," "beyond the beyond." It's Here Now (Are You?) is an entertaining, vicarious journey through a life that you don't mind visiting, but you wouldn't want to live. 

Let's not speak any language

What I want shouldn't be confused with final inactivity

heart

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still

Afghani Temple Ball hashish is known for its sticky, resiny, color and texture, its sweet, tangy taste, and its narcotic, dream-inducing high. Super-potent Temple Ball Hashish was available at teahouses inside Afghanistan, and as exported fingers, sticks, hooves, half moons, slabs and bricks that had a wide array of colors, tastes, and profiles. It is now becoming a rare item. 

Rob the jewelry store and tell'em make me a grill

My dog needs $600 of dental work. 

Momma's going to make me an architect and I will build my house in the grass

Living is easy with eyes closed

Leaving in two weeks.  

Oracular Spectacular

It's easy to be a traveler when your home does not exist

I hate small talk

I was hoping you would come here

Big Sur I' ve got plans for you - The Beach Boys

let's take it all the way back, back into time

Damn I loved those glasses but I stepped on them.

She loves Company

Le Chien

"A young person without an arrest record has been living his life in a closet." - Jerry Rubin

Chicago Seven photographed by Richard Avedon

I've been thinking about those things you said

You make me feel so blue

It's the original version, check out Buddy Guy in the back on guitar.

Maybe...

100 days, 100 nights to know a man's heart

Il me faut une transfusion

In her book a "Scream in the Silence" Brigitte Bardot wrote that gays were “fairground freaks who jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and, with their little castrato voices, moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through.” In a letter to a French gay magazine, wrote in her defense, Bardot said: 'Apart from my husband - who maybe will cross over one day as well - I am entirely surrounded by homos.' She was convicted by a French court of 'inciting racial hatred' and fined, it was her fourth such conviction.

Why don't you come on over, stop making a fool out of me

Had a friend, she once told me, you got love, you ain't lonely

Sue will be in Rabat 2 weeks after I get there.

I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray

Hunter S. Thompson, Big Sur 1961

I was so going to do this in Morocco. I even found a vintage Hermes portable typewriter with a beautiful leather case. But then a wise man pointed out that I would have to carry all the paper around.

"Dead as Dillinger" - Mr. Blue, Reservoir Dogs

One of the rumors that followed John Dillinger's death was that he had a very large penis (which Hoover later kept in a jar). This legend is the result of the photograph of his corpse; the bulge caused by his arm, stiff from rigor mortis, covered with a sheet; some who saw grainy newsprint copies of the photo mistakenly believed it to be his unnaturally large erect penis.

stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why

Junkie walking through the twilight, I'm on my way home - Gil Scott-Heron

I left three days ago, but noone seems to know i'm gone

I can't even begin to explain how much I love this song. And surprisingly I like Esther Philips version better than Gil Scott-Heron's original.

"I don't do it. It would hurt me. I would die from it, I'm afraid." - Christian Lacroix on exercise

Moments of Being

The Bloomsbury Group was comprised of Artists, Writers, Economists, Art Critics. A group of English intellectuals active from the early 1900's until the 1930's, who met for discussion in the Bloomsbury area of London in the early 20th century.

The romantic record of the group's members is noteworthy, because they demonstrated a sexual freedom that was ahead of their time. Beginning in 1925, Virginia Woolf had a passionate affair with Vita Sackville-West. In the first flush of romance, Woolf wrote what has become a classic of gay fiction, the experimental fantasy Orlando (1927), which argued that love and passion ignore gender.

Others in the Bloomsbury group exhibited similar bisexual tendencies. Although Vanessa Stephen married Clive Bell, the great love of her life was Duncan Grant, who was primarily gay and had been sexually involved with her brother Adrian. During World War I, they lived together at a country estate with David "Bunny" Garnett, who was a lover of both.

Triangular relationships with a gay twist were common within the Bloomsbury circle. Strachey was gay, but in the early days of Bloomsbury, he proposed marriage to Virginia Stephen (Woolf). In the 1920s, he lived in platonic bliss with surrealist painter Dora Carrington. When they both fell in love with the same man, Carrington married the object of their mutual desire, and the three set up housekeeping together. The cross-dressing Carrington had affairs with women, confiding to a friend that she had "more ecstasy" with female lovers than with men - "and no shame."

You know you're doing me wrong baby

So every night I hear this wild pack of coyotes screaming. I guess their howling, but it sounds like a woman being murdered. Bloodcurdling sreams. So I 'm kind of not feeling coyotes, then I found out all these yahoos in the middle of the country actually hunt them. They wear combat fatigues and have rifles with scopes and night vision. That's a bit much, no? They are after all like stray dogs.

Love, can it hit one without hitting two, and leave the one lost and groping? - Carl Sandburg

I saw 2046 again last night.

I found a photo of you and it made me sad

The Last Words of Dutch Schultz

After being shot from behind in a urinal, Dutch Schultz's last words, influenced by a high fever and large quantities of morphine, were a strange stream of consciousness babble. They were taken down by a police stenographer. The surreal nature of his last words influenced William S. Burroughs to write a novel titled The Last Words of Dutch Schultz in 1969.

That is what caused the trouble. Look out. Please let me up. If you do this, you can go on and jump right here in the lake. I know who they are. They are French people. All right. Look out, look out. Oh, my memory is gone. A work relief police. Who gets it? I don't know and I don't want to know, but look out. It can be traced. He changed for the worse. Please look out; my fortunes have changed and come back and went back since that. It was desperate. I am wobbly. You ain't got nothing on him but you got it on his helper. - Dutch Schultz

I'm waiting for my man. Here he comes, he's all dressed in black. Beat up shoes and a big straw hat. He's never early, he's always late.

Je t'aime Melvil Poupaud

Do you love me Mary Jane?

So yeah L.A. has pretty much legalized marijuana. There are over 1,000 clinics serving you your medicine, some 24/7, and with generous discounts and special offers. Here are some of the ads you can find in almost every local L.A. paper.

My wife and my kids, they are packed up and leave me. Darling, she said, I was yours to be seen.

I'm Goin' Away

Love me two times, baby
Love me twice today
Love me two times, baby
I'm goin' away
Love me two times, baby
One for tomorrow
One just for today

Lemonade pie with a brand new car

Judy in disguise, well that's what you are
Lemonade pie with a brand new car.
Cantalope eyes come to me tonight
Judy in disguise with glasses.

Keep a-wearing your bracelets and your new rara.
Cross your heart with your living bra.
Chimney sweep sparrow with guise.
Judy in disguise with glasses

Come to me tonight, come to me tonight,
Taking everything in sight,
Except for the strings on my kite.

Judy in disguise, well what you aiming for,
A circus of horrors, yeah, well that's what you are.
You made me a life of ashes, I guess I'll just take your glasses.

Thank you for letting me be myself again

Tangerine, Tangerine, I was her love, she was my queen, and now a thousand years between - Led Zeppelin

I smell like tangerines.

It's dark outside

To dream of crabs, indicates that you will have many complicated affairs. This dream portends to lovers a long and difficult courtship.

What would I do if we were perfect