Semi-Annual Report 2/19/20

Reading as usual is out of hand, but I suppose that's what I planned for this part of my life, so I should just grin and bare it. My Goodreads list contains 24 unfinished or unstarted books. On my kindle maybe ten or so. Usually, as I'm doing now, I let others lie while reading mainly two and dipping into two others occasionally, and promoting one when one of the top two are finished. Then, I'm supposed to go back to the others, in some kind of order, but what almost always happens is that I buy another, and upset the apple cart. This problem, of course, is not serious. Making a living, falling in or out of love, being sick; those are problems. 

 

I just finished reading Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, a biography by Philip Gefter, about Sam Wagstaff, an art collector.  It covers territory that I lived through, and probably would have been more observant of if I hadn't been so preoccupied with getting sober. I was and still am interested in what happened to the world of art, and the business of art in the seventies and after. As a kid and up to about 30 I was interested in what was happening in the art world although not too comfortable with being on the sidelines, and somewhat self-critical because of that. If I ever get back to work on my project referred to previously under the title Hold Still, I hope to explore that murk.  

As for the murk itself; a for instance; I've always wondered who exactly was, or is, Patty Smith. I suppose she is someone I would have known about if I hadn't stopped reading The Village Voice. 

It's not exactly as if I lost all interest in Bohemia at some point say around 1970 or so, but more that I was just lost in my own weeds. By which I mean that I was smoking too much pot, and allowing myself to be overly entertained by projects that my other pot-head friends were involved in, like young female hippies, old wooden boats, dancing to disco music while stoned on acid, and fraternizing with exceptionally cool people. I do remember that I began to read somewhere about Punk music. [Note to self; why capitalize Punk and not disco?]  But for some reason I didn't think it applied to me. I suppose that's partly because my 'urban period', which only lasted a total of about four years; two years, then a break and a couple more years, not counting San Fran; which happened in my other, sober life; was not particularly rewarding. I did, at some point, want to read Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, but felt unqualified due to my dearth of Punk knowledge. I had read his earlier Rock and Roll book, Mystery Train, which I liked a whole bunch. 

Anyway, as of this moment, I still haven't listened to any of Patty's music, but at least I know she was involved with Mapplethorpe, who I know made a big impression on the art world, and that she has recently written a memoir, which is supposed to be good, though, again, I am not as yet prepared for it.   

Right now I'm reading, The Prentice Mulford Story, Life by Land and Sea, and another book by Mulford, Thoughts are Things. I'm also reading Joseph McMoneagle's Remote Viewing Secrets, and The William Saroyan Reader. And as I've said, there are several other books I've started and put aside and will get back to, part of the ten, rather than the 24, those ones are counting on my longevity.  

Mulford, I stumbled across recently while reading somewhere about New Thought, something I've been dabbling in for half a century. Turns out he was born in my hometown, and is from a family who's current generation I grew up with. Fact is, the Mulford Farm is one of the better historical points of interest available to visitors of that same hometown.  

As for remote viewing, I guess that's sort of part of an info-binge that started with Ingo Swann, about whom I have already written, and who's talent, while still not universally acknowledged, has me fascinated. The mystery of it, remote viewing, I came to with the idea, planted in my head by many over many years, that this thing called non-locality is somehow tied in with consciousness, through universal consciousness, and that if one can navigate that, the world's your oyster, as Prentice Mulford might have put it. [or, perhaps, "Bob's yer uncle!"]*  

 

*Hawkins; circa; 1979

Camp Hero Montauk, Mid-20th c.

My father was among a group of surf casters who had permits to fish the surf inside the gated area known as Camp Hero, an Army Post in Montauk, NY., during a time-frame roughly 1947 till sometime in the early 1950s. This isn't a research project, this post, just a comment, and perhaps a shot across somebody's bow, I'm not sure exactly who or why. Among the other guys were a Real Estate broker from East Hampton, and the president of a roofing company, who drove all the way from Riverhead, several times a week, to fish. They were gentleman fishermen, not rowdy, not heavy drinkers. 

To get right to the point, on many occasions they saw what they began to call flying saucers. As I remember them talking about it at our home, they were saucer shaped glowing things, about the size of a small car, that came in and out of the ocean, flew up, flew back down and under the water, and sometimes skipped along the water like a stone. There was no doubt about it from the point of the three men that I heard talking about it, (I was just a child), that these things were not flares, and not any kind of vehicle known to man. 

After talking to an officer at the camp and getting a "Don't know anything about it.", the guys decided my father, being a nationally known illustrator, should get in touch with some higher up in the government. Ray said he would, but held off, not wanting to get in trouble. Then, while at his club in the city, The Society of Illustrators, he heard from one of his friends about a writer who wrote for True Magazine; Air Force Major Donald Kehoe. Kehoe had written non-fiction and some Science Fiction for Men's magazines and such, and had recently written a book called Flying Saucers are Real which was just then about to become a break-out best seller.  

Ray wrote to Kehoe and they began to write back and forth, and eventually met, and Ray became a true believer in Flying Saucers. That went on for about a year or so, and then.....nothing. He stopped talking about it, and everyone seemed to forget.

A few years later, when I began riding horses on a neighbor's farm, the farmer's wife reported that on numerous occasions she had seen a flying saucer land in her yard and that little green men got out and walked around. The unanimous opinion was that she was sweetly, if female-hysterically, crazy. She went on with these sightings until a psychiatrist got her to begin doing ceramics, making porcelain horses, at which time she ceased seeing things. Perhaps it was the lithium in the clay.  

I have not discussed this topic, now referred to as UFO sightings, since the topic is still subject to derision, and since I am not, exactly, a true believer. I'm a doubting Thomas. 

Even though I've seen one. (Oh, Jesus, there, now I've really blown it.)  What I mean is, once, some years ago, perhaps it was around 1990, (this isn't a research paper so I'm not looking things up, if I decide to do so I'll do some editing), I saw one. 
Anyway; I was single, not seeing anyone in particular, but I had met a willing participant at a party who seemed willing to do what we called in those days Watching the Submarine Races. So we were driving towards the beach from the residence of some literary type who was renting a bungalow between East Hampton Village and Amagansett, which beach happened to be the one called Wyborgs. Information about said beach may appear at some future date in an as yet non-existent index to this blog. As we came toward the corner, called the Kazickas corner, about which same as above, we saw a string of lights low on the horizon over Hook Pond, as we faced West. 

I pulled over on the grass and we both quickly got out of the car and stood watching. It was impressive. Some of the lights were stronger than others. For a minute I thought it was an oddly lit Jumbo Jet coming in for a crash landing on the Maidstone Club Golf Course. But within a split second it started to rise up almost vertically, and took on the shape of an oval, lit all around, and then appeared to be completely circular as it reached directly over us. It was rising at it's constant speed, which didn't seem too fast because it was so big. I would have said that it was at least a couple hundred feet in diameter. Then, the interior of it began to present a light show, different colored lights flashing in abstract pattern like the northern lights. This was the part that made me think it was some sort of gadget. I wondered if it was a giant holograph being put on by a Broadway producer. One happened to live behind the hedges just over there on the other side of the road.  

The thing got smaller, the light show stopped, and the craft, or hologram, or secret weapon, now the size of a quarter, turned Southeast and cruised down along the shoreline, from it's great height, until, after about twenty minutes, it disappeared. 

My date and I were suitably freaked out, but calmed down enough to visit and shmooze with some folks at the beach who had also seen this thing. We accepted a cold drink, and decided that we were all sort of blood brothers now, having seen a UFO.  I never saw her or any of the other people again.