YOU ARE
HERE

Contents

Preface                                                                    vi

Prologue                                                                  ix

  01  Awakening                                                         01

 02  Groundwork                                                      23

 03  Enter the Bear                                                   36

 04  Dream Worlds                                                    67

 05  Shamans of Old                                                  72

 06  The Apprentice                                                   92

 07  Discoveries                                                        103

 08  The Arrival of Spring                                        118

 09  Šipa·puli·ma Found                                           131

 10  Sacred Offerings                                                153

 11  The Messenger                                                   171

 12  Zuñi Bound                                                       189

 13  Commemorations                                              209

 14  Encounters                                                         225

15  The Pilgrimage                                                   246

16  Powerful Medicine                                             270

17  After the Fact                                                     290

18  Synopsis of the Age of Reality                          302

 Shamans' Genealogy                                              309

"Dancing With Sunsets"

Awakening…

 I was sound asleep in my own bed at San Damiano when I was so abruptly awakened on July 17, 2001 at just about five minutes till nine (I had begrudgingly glanced at my digital clock in the headboard just before picking up the phone) by the most unexpected, unwanted, and certainly annoying ringing of the telephone.  Being the consummate night owl that I had become at that time in my life, I generally slept rather late, and any calls before 10:00 AM seemed to always effectively disengage me in a most untimely fashion from any of those sometimes intriguing dreams that may have been so totally absorbing to the point of realism.  Such an abrupt interruption also seems to wipe the conscious memory essentially clean of any reasonable recollection of those dream’s contents, even with the greatest of effort.  What a bummer it was!  I picked up the receiver in a slightly befuddled and somewhat agitated state of mind and immediately recognized a familiar voice: that of Ellen Raimer.  Ellen was phoning just to inform me that she would be momentarily departing Albuquerque for her parents’ residence in Wisconsin, in order to help them move from their long-time homestead into some retirement quarters, and therefore wouldn’t be able to attend my birthday party that John Howell, my more than faithful housemate of some 12 years, had planned for 1:00 PM that Saturday.  Ellen sort of hesitantly inquired, “Why this year?” postulating as to just why I was celebrating that particular birthday since, according to her own good recollection, it wasn’t yet time for my sixtieth.  You see, I hadn’t had any birthday parties for as long as I could remember, and this was a rather unexpected event to be taking place at San Damiano; I have never really wanted to celebrate any of my birthdays except maybe as a very young child.   Ellen was correct of course; I explained to her that it was my own sixth-sense contention that John had probably planned this particular gala event so that he could have an appropriately orchestrated stage on which to present me with the very special gift that he had apparently purchased some six months prior.  This mystery gift had been staring me in the face every time I entered my walk-in closet, with specific instructions from John that I was to disregard its presence until my birthday.  I had also shared with Ellen that my sister, Barbara, who was visiting Albuquerque from Ft. Lauderdale, had made the suggestion that I should simply tell everyone that might bother to inquire that this was going to simply be the “last” birthday that I ever intended to celebrate since it was the very last one of my fifties: fifty-nine.  After all, who wants to celebrate their sixtieth and beyond?  Just to be alive is often a celebration in and of itself by then.

          Except that Ellen Raimer was a most significant part of this entire story from its earliest inception, there was no other prior cognitive reason for this particular awakening incident to have unexpectedly sparked in me the sudden urgency to finally begin writing this tale that had been in various stages of formation for well over 15 years--perhaps for my entire life considering the very nature of the story at hand?

          I have always been one of those caring individuals that wants to make things just right for another person, whether it was their personal well being or the manner in which they related to their surroundings; specifically an individual’s right to live his or her life in any manner they personally saw fit.  My obsession with trying to make things OK for everyone else, and not always personally experiencing the same success, had as expected left me rather depressed at times and with those most desperate feelings of utter hopelessness.  I suspect that my more recent bouts with nagging ideations of suicide, my dreaded birthday celebration that was so out of sync with the usual, and the mildly redundant conviction that I had accepted an obligation of eventually telling this strange story that was not yet fully materialized, that all combined to prompt my yearning to finally initiate the writing of this book, which I did almost immediately.  I had imagined, after all, that if I were to get the book written, I could probably depart this miserable planet with no unfinished business and therefore a clear conscience.  This was never an undertaking that was exactly of my own voluntary creation, nor did I even have any of those feelings of being completely comfortable with relating certain portions of this story that had such questionable facts and often seemed rather implausible to my own limited and so often conservative understanding of the real world.  On the other hand, the very spiritual and personal nature of much of this tale is so very basic to the highest potential of mankind that it seemed only right to have finally started the process.  I have consistently lived, or at least attempted to live, a rather involved and sometimes overly-complicated life based almost entirely on the principle that while life always reveals the often painful and sometimes unbelievable truth, it happens with the dissemination of unconditional love.  I am often in the role of attempting to practice what I preach.

For the most part I have never been much for telling the intimate details my own story, being essentially modest and a bit shy except where it may be absolutely necessary for the perceived benefit of others; in my professional field of psychopathology we call this “modeling.”  I usually maintain a healthy self-image that I would rather relate to others by way of my actions rather than in any number of words; “Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear your words.”

As I am writing this narrative, I am about to finish another grueling literary project, if I can ever bring myself to complete it: the third book of an epic trilogy tragically but all too appropriately entitled, The Orchid Hell Chronicles.  That entire heart-wrenching saga is all about my overly poignant trials and harsh tribulations with the malicious prejudice and bigotry unexpectedly encountered within the American Orchid Society, and I am most certainly the tragic central character, dealing with falsification, caricature, deceit, betrayal, and the resultant entangled legal quagmire of a Federal lawsuit and other fowl odors of our American legal system.  This hellish tale sucked me into its rather frightening and consuming clutches ever so covertly and unexpectedly as it rapidly developed, commencing some ten years prior to the writing this present tale of Shamans; little did I know at the time just how many other individuals had been so negatively and affectively involved before that terrible experience had finally reached its immoral, illogical, and all too devastating conclusion.  What was even more amazing to me is that this other far more inspiring and certainly more positive tale of Shamans continued to reveal itself, and in some strange fashion was able to maintain its own unique integrity, while I was so unfortunately enmeshed in this other terrible exigency, which was and still is essentially responsible for the above and often mentioned suicidal ideation and the accompanying chronic depression that persistently haunts my entire life on a daily basis.  Perhaps the timely presence of this present narrative was some sort of a cosmic balance that presented itself just when I needed something far more affirmative in my to ground me to this often-troubled earth.  I have always felt that karma plays a significant part in all of our lives, and for all the hideous pain that I had then recently suffered at the hands of some of the most dastardly characters of the American Orchid Society, mostly for what I considered to be for the benefit of others, I certainly and even desperately needed to become involved in some other more life-giving endeavor.  And it would be helpful if that new endeavor didn’t involve orchids.  Thus, the recording of a far more inspiring story that offers a greater promise for the often-sad state of mankind.

In any case, as a clinical psychotherapist my principle orientation was Gestalt, which essentially postulates that there should exist some sort of “wholeness” in each of our sometimes meager and often-fragmented existences.  In more common words, all the various aspects of our lives are connected to one another in some deliberate and purposeful manner, and the totality of these sometimes unknown points of connection becomes the magnificent wholeness of who we are at any given point in our lives.  All too often, and at any given point in our lives, too few of us are ever aware of just how our experiences connect with the rest of our lives.  That is why the idea of hindsight is so much more comforting than our anxieties about the future.  In that sense, I feel that it would best serve the reader to have some basic knowledge of the early biographical background of this contemporary writer that was most serendipitously the genesis and foundation that eventually lead to the initiation of the first and perhaps only Shaman (Medicine Man) of San Damiano in the 20^th Century, the full historical story of which will be disclosed later in this book.  With the revealing of some of this earlier biographical information, it should become quite evident that my personal roots and earliest experiences may have brought me to this very point in my life and aptly served as the impregnated seeds that eventually accounted for a goodly portion of what I have become.

It was my rather righteous maternal grandfather that was most probably the actual beginnings of my own spiritual fate, even though he died before I was a teenager.  And when I use the word “righteous” to describe this man, I mean that in the most positive manner.  He had been seriously disabled with a number of severe strokes when I was about four or five years old, and I have always regretted that I wasn’t able to sit at his feet and benefit directly from the vast wisdom he had gained through being an intelligent, intuitive, and self-instructed Christian theologian.  He was an independent thinker of the highest rank, much in the same intellectual manner as Martin Luther.  And as Martin Luther had aptly obtained his own profound insights and understanding of the flaws that were so dastardly perpetuated by the Catholic Church by simply and intensely studying the Latin gospels of that time, and most certainly apart from and without authoritative church interpretation, my grandfather did much the same with the King James version of the Bible.  But most importantly, he lived his entire life according to the truth that he had uncovered for himself, and I feel that, of all of his children, my mother experienced the greatest benefit of his insightful spiritual wisdom because of her own instinctual intellect and unique perception of the world.

As a child, it was never my position to question the fact that my mother taught Baptist Sunday school while I was attending the First Methodist Church in Pompano Beach, Florida.  This unquestioned conflict of religious loyalties all became evident to me when, at the age of 12, my mother informed me that she had never had me baptized in any particular church because, “I want YOU to choose your own religion.”  What a profoundly liberal position for an otherwise Christian fundamentalist and Baptist Sunday school teacher!  I’m quite sure that I didn’t possess a full appreciation or gratitude of just what an empowerment that unusual pronouncement had meant to me at that early time in my life.  Since then I have gained the greatest respect for my mother’s cognitively motivated actions, now that I more fully understand the debilitating affects of imposing falsely based and narrowly-minded beliefs and mythologies on naturally innocent and impressionable children.  “Except that ye become as little children,” I for one, strongly contend that the most cardinal of all parental sins is the impressing on a child, so mistakenly, that they were somehow born with that burdensome curse of original sin—unworthy of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” unless of course, they blindly and freely give their innocent souls to the “church” and submit themselves to the “moral authority” of its more often than not so ignorant and materially greedy leadership.  My mother saved me from this immoral and unjustified enslavement and honored me with the divine, valuable, and indispensable knowledge that I was somehow sufficient unto myself to choose the direction that I was to take in my life.  In my late teens, I wrote a poem that precisely expressed this spiritual emancipation, even though I am certain that I had little or no actual or deeper understanding of its full implication at the time, or even more importantly just how this loving gift of spiritual freedom and emancipation would eventually affect the entirety of my life as well as those around me:

          MYSELF

  The times have been when needs were great,
   But now there's been a change of late.

     Before and now my God's been first,
       But now I haven't that saintly curse.

          My life so far has sought ideal,
            But now I've found a fertile field;

                                                         Myself
         March 20, 1961

  Sounds pretty egotistical, doesn’t it!  It is nothing other than a self-proclaimed feeling of personal freedom that I wish everyone could experience to the same degree that I have.  It was during my last year of high school that my own spiritual emancipation was beginning to manifest itself, not only in the feelings that I had aptly expressed in several poems including the one above, but most dramatically in a literary project that was required of each senior in order to graduate from Miami Senior High.  Impartial English teachers were assigned to grade these papers, and the particular teacher that graded mine insisted that I meet with her so that she could explain to me just why she had given me the very lowest passing grade of C-minus.  She apologetically yet very authoritatively insisted that I must have plagiarized the various arguments of my senior paper, since no high school student in her obviously biased opinion could have possibly written the contents of such a profound thesis.  She confessed that since she could not actually “prove” her most wrongly conceived assertion of plagiarism, she wasn’t going to give me a failing grade, but that she would instead assign the paper the lowest passing grade.  My paper, titled, “The Reformation As Viewed from Both the Protestant and Catholic Points of View,” was probably as far above her limited and narrow-minded ability to comprehend as it was over my own profound understanding of the negative ramifications of blindly accepting a religion as the basis of all reality, and most sadly of all, the absolute basis of all moral issues and morality.

The other significant part of my childhood was my early fascination and involvement with orchids.  Mrs. Cusec (I really don’t recall the correct spelling), my fourth-grade teacher, loved field trips, and one of those fortuitous outings was to a local orchid grower and popular Florida tourist attraction, Fennell’s-- The Orchid Jungle.  I was fascinated with the whole adventure, and most particularly intrigued with a laboratory at this facility.  Fennell’s was apparently amongst the first orchid hybridizers to become actively engaged in the “cloning” of orchids.  For those earlier times, this cloning process was something right out of a science fiction book, and from that point forward, I was mysteriously and firmly hooked on orchids and their rather unique and scientific cultivation.  Adding to the overall drama of this adventure was a particular classmate, Malcolm Wisehart.  His father was a rather prominent judge in Miami, and the man grew orchids just as a hobby.  It was interesting that this man, in a most fatherly manner, told me to “enjoy these wonderful orchids, but never permit yourself to become involved with the American Orchid Society!”  I had the best of intentions of following this fatherly advice, having somehow arrived at the intuitive belief that this sacred-cow organization must have been some kind of exclusive, snobby group that was totally and inherently unsuitable for the more common folk like me.

I really got into the spirit of these mysterious and fascinating orchids; I built my own slat house at the age of twelve, scavenged the garbage cans of local orchid growers for throw-a-ways, and set up my own little makeshift laboratory for sowing the microscopic single-cell seeds of orchids in my family’s small kitchen.  The eighth grade found me entering the science fair with an elaborate, self-constructed display depicting the “Life Cycle of the Orchid,” and besides the local recognition, I even won a national honorable mention.  Then, in high school, I was certainly a big hit with all the girls because they all received arrangements of orchids from the local florist to whom I supplied cut blooms, often in exchange for delivering these auspicious arrangements on my behalf.  All of this enthusiasm for orchids came to an abrupt close when going off to the University of Florida, which required my getting rid of the collection in its entirety.  I had the very best of intentions for some day returning home to Miami after four years of higher education and rescuing that collection—it just never came about.

          The undertaking of college created not only a temporary but also a long separation from this very passionate love affair with orchids.  Eventually I moved to New Mexico in 1967, and because I had the unfounded and misconceived notion that orchids just could not be successfully cultivated in a desert environment, it wasn't until sometime around 1990 that those marvelous orchids once again became an integral part of my lifestyle.  I then constructed two modest greenhouses at my home in Cedar Crest, New Mexico, where I could concentrate on the cool-growing varieties.  My favorite genus is Odontoglossum, common to the higher altitudes of the Los Andes Mountains of Columbia, as well as their numerous inter-generic hybrids.  At the time of writing this present tale, I am in the process of converting the smaller of my greenhouses into a laboratory where I can once again be germinating and propagating those microscopic seeds of orchids and their various hybrids.  Significant to this very story and the cover of this book, which also contains an orchid, is the fact that all but one of my some 72 quality and recognition awards from the AOS have the intentionally designated clonal name of ‘San Damiano.’  This clonal name is assigned to the particular plant that is awarded in order to distinguish it from its siblings. I will naturally be developing many of my own unique hybrids, employing many of the plants that had been so serendipitously awarded by that infamous and politically corrupted American Orchid Society.

It was this eventual move to the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, in 1967, and ultimately in very large part my re-involvement with the avid cultivation of orchids, that set into motion the fertile background and events that were so unexpectedly necessary for this present narrative as well as the presentation of a rather strange and bizarre set of circumstances that made this whole story seem inevitable.  The combination of these circumstances is another spiritual tale in and of itself, as you will soon discover.

My mother had always been a spiritual individual, and she was even preaching the Gospel as a young child.  Later, she had a period of her adult life where she made public appearances as a “Spiritual Healer,” holding large meetings in such noted places as the Miami/Dade County Auditorium as well as public meetings in other larger cities mostly throughout the eastern coast of the United States.  It was my second stepfather, Dr. Gilbert Holloway, who had encouraged her to make use of her special “gift” of healing, even though she was rather hesitant in light of all the perceived charlatans that often occupied this rather questionable stage.  She eventually became, to a certain extent, totally unnerved at these public presentations and eventually ceased her gifted ministry of healing rather unexpectedly.  It was sometime in the early sixties that my mother had a most prophetic dream in which she claimed that Jesus said that she and her ministering husband were going to be moved to the “Members Valley.”  My mother searched world atlases to try and locate this prophetic location.  Not having any initial success as to the actual name or geographic location of this “Members Valley,” she was never able to make any true sense of the dream, and the idea of moving from Miami was put on the backburner “until further notice from Jesus.”

It was sometime around 1964 or ‘65 that she and her husband were in Houston, Texas on a religious speaking campaign and counseling tour.  A very kind and elderly woman, previously unknown to them, had made an appointment with Gilbert, perceivably for counseling.  When this lady had arrived for her appointment, it wasn’t to receive any spiritual counseling, but rather to deliver an executed deed to some property in Deming, New Mexico--some undeveloped acreage that her maternal grandmother had homesteaded sometime in the late 19^th Century.  This kind lady claimed that she had had a dream in which she was divinely instructed to bequeath this parcel of inherited property to “the Holloway’s.”  My stepfather, in his usually modest manner, very tactfully and kindly refused her generous offer, initially stating that he was in no position to except such a gift in their personal names, as was stated on the deed.  The kind lady promptly left by taxi and apparently went straight to her lawyer’s office and had him re-execute the deed into the name of my parents’ church, The New Age Church of Truth.  She then returned the very same afternoon to the hotel where my parents were residing and re-presented Gilbert with the newly executed deed, now in the name of the church.

Just as Gilbert was about to once again tactfully decline the woman’s kind offer, my mother called Gilbert out of the room and explained that she “believed” in these prophetic dreams and that they should honor the inspirational guidance that this woman had apparently received.  She suggested that they only postpone accepting the deed until that parcel of land could be properly researched.  My mother volunteered to make a quick and immediate trip to Deming and actually take a “feel” of the land for herself and make the final decision as to whether they should actually take possession of the property.

          It was the very next day that my mother took a flight to El Paso, Texas, which at the time was the nearest airport to Deming.  She rented a car and drove the 100 interstate miles west from El Paso to Deming.  She had acquired directions to the property from a local water-well drilling man named Rudy Little.  It might be noted that my mother’s maiden name was Little, and she believed that this Rudy Little was probably related, since his physical features were so liken to that of her own family. 

This parcel of vacant land was northeast of this small town, and my mother had a bit of what I’m sure must have been a cultural/geological shock to observe such a sandy, desert-like terrain; certainly it was in dramatic contrast to the semi-tropical landscape of southern Florida.  When she returned to the rather small business-center of Deming, which was less than two miles from the land, to take a further survey of the town’s offerings, she passed directly by the local bank with its name displayed in bold print—Mimbres Valley Bank.

She immediately placed a call to Gilbert and related her unexpected but welcomed observation, and suggested that they were definitely to accept the property because this was indeed the fulfillment of her own visionary dream in which Jesus had promise to move them to  “Mimbres” Valley.  It was always my mother’s profound belief and contention that when God had a plan, He would also provide the necessary means of manifesting that plan. Less than one year from receiving this unexpected but welcomed gift of a deed to desert land, my mother began the construction of what was to become the New Age Church of Truth’s sanctuary and manse in this mysterious and strange Land of Enchantment, finally moving there in 1966 They called the whole of this project the Christ Light Community (CLC), and they later added some small apartment units so that some of their members not from the local area could actually live on the premises.    What a wonderfully amazing universe that we all live in, that we are all sometimes the unexpected recipients of so many wonderments of unexplained events.

          In the fall of 1967, I left Atlanta, Georgia, where I was living with my natural father and my wife, Anne, and headed west.  Anne had never really wanted to be married in the first place; our rather short-termed marriage ended on a very friendly note and we have remained good friends to this date.   Our brief nuptial arrangement was essentially Anne’s way of “beating her only sibling, a sister, to the altar,” and in fact she has never remarried. In any case, my rather extensive trip that covered all the western states had a two-fold purpose in my own mind at that time.  First, I was searching the possibilities for a graduate school to continue my academic studies in sociology and/or religion, and secondly; I had decided to pay a personal visit to every chapter in the west of my college fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega (ATΩ).  It was towards the end of this adventurous journey throughout the west, and while in Denver, Colorado, that my ultimate fate was sort of set into real-time motion.  I had attended a regional conclave of ATΩ the weekend just before Thanksgiving, and it was at this regional conclave that the local Province Chief and several other ATΩ brothers approached me and asked if I would be interested in helping them establish a chapter of our beloved fraternity at the University of New Mexico.  I had previously established a rather favorable reputation within the fraternity because I had the dubious distinction of having founded the first chapter of ATΩ in the state of Georgia in the 20^th Century; all four of the previously existing Georgia chapters had been established during the late 1800’s and they were at the more notable universities like the University of Georgia, Emory and Georgia Tech.  There had been some local resistance at establishing a chapter at the less-notable Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, because it just wasn’t considered as equally prestigious as the other four notable Georgia universities where ATΩ then existed.  But of course I was always playing the consummate devil’s advocate for just about any reasonable cause in the spirit of always “doing the right thing.”  These Denver based brothers had indicated that there was already a transferred ATΩ brother, Dana Wright, attending UNM at that time, but that he was having some difficulty in getting anything off the ground.  They were all confident that with my previous experience and success, I should have far less difficulty establishing a chapter of ATΩ.

          I agreed without much hesitation that I would at least seriously investigate the situation for myself and meet with this Dana Wright upon arrival in Albuquerque, which was conveniently on my way to Deming to pay a visit to my parent’s new home.  It was an interesting, unexpected, but timely offer in that the only potential connection that I might have had anywhere in the western part of the United States was in fact in that perceived desert-like state of New Mexico.  I arrived in Albuquerque late in the day on the following Wednesday, and the very next day will always be remembered well since it was the only time in my entire life that I have ever had to eat a Thanksgiving Dinner alone, sitting at a rather sterile Formica counter in a café of a motel on the famous Route 66 (East Central Avenue in Albuquerque). I met with this fraternity brother, Dana Wright, the very next day and we became instant friends, and I immediately committed myself to this unanticipated but certainly familiar mission.  I then made my expected visit to Deming, and after several weeks at my parents’ new home and church, I returned to Albuquerque for the beginning of the spring academic semester.  I even attended some classes that spring while laying the initial groundwork for the new ATΩ chapter.

          This ATΩ college fraternity is part and parcel to this story.  Very interestingly, the fraternity’s principal founder, Otis Allan Glazebrook, who later became an Episcopal minister, had suggested the “ATΩ” name based on a biblical phrase,  “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” And the “T” in ATΩ is one of the original symbols of the cross.  So you might say that ATΩ is just about as Christian in its origins as one can get when it comes to college fraternities.  My particular involvement was rather significant since I was sort of a rebel within this supposedly Christian fraternity that I found wasn’t always practicing the loving teachings of Jesus.  I was the first brother to my knowledge to have openly initiated a Jew (while I was still an undergraduate brother at the University of Miami).  And sometime later, I was no doubt the pivotal orator in a rather heated debate at the very ATΩ congress where our odorous “black” clause was finally eliminated from the fraternity’s rather antiquated constitution.

This second event occurred after I had visited all of the chapters in the west.  It was at Occidental University in the Los Angeles area that I first encountered a situation where the ATΩ chapter had had its chapter’s charter revoked because they had initiated some brothers of color without the national fraternity’s astute blessings.  My next eye-opening experience was at Stanford University, the alma mater of Gilbert Holloway, where the national fraternity had likewise revoked the local fraternity’s charter because they had initiated an Oriental man that wasn’t of the Christian faith.  Both of these unexpected encounters with racial/religious bigotry within my own “loving” fraternity certainly didn’t sit very well with me, and it would only be a matter of time before I was able to justly rectify the awkward situation and assist in those long overdue and much-needed changes that would eventually bring my most beloved ATΩ fraternity into the 20^th Century.  I participated in all of these needed changes in ATΩ with the very tactful employment of their own key words of “virtue, truth, and love.”  One should always practice what they preach; that’s what I was taught!

          Just a bit of trivia and historical fact:  the main campus library at the University of New Mexico, located in the eastern section of Albuquerque, is named “Zimmerman,” and it was so named for one of its earlier and more prominent presidents.  It was this Zimmerman who had previously prevented ATΩ from ever establishing a chapter at UNM, principally because this ‘southern gentleman’ who had graduated from the University of the South didn’t wish to display any partiality for his own college fraternity, which just happened to have been ATΩ.  Somewhere in the midst of my ATΩ fraternity involvement, the presence of my parents in Deming, and the innate allure of this Land of Enchantment, I fell in love with New Mexico and decided to make it my homeland of choice.  I guess I became as intrigued with its strange and mesmerizing allure as so many others that are drawn here.

          As a means of paying bills each month and sustaining some sort of reasonable existence, I most naturally fell back on the invaluable training I had received from my natural father in Atlanta as a building contractor.  As fate would have it, my parents had developed a particularly good friendship with an Ike Smalley of Deming, New Mexico who was also the President Pro-tem of the New Mexico State Senate.  It was this man that had actually written and sponsored the Construction Industries Laws, and he encouraged me to take the state exams for my contractor’s license.  “The best way to learn what the exam contains is to take it.  If you don’t pass, you can always take it again and the next time, you’ll know exactly what is going to be asked.”  I passed the exam on my first try, a testament to all the guidance given to me by my natural father back in Georgia, where I had first been involved with contracting by the age of 19. 

My first construction adventure in New Mexico was the construction of some apartments that I then maintained for income.  It was another ATΩ brother and real estate broker, Harold Lukens, who helped me acquire my first piece of real estate through a foreclosure procedure.  It was this land that I used for the site of this eight-plex unit.  I remained rather active in the construction business for several years, until I realized that the unusually excessive stress of such a demanding and intense business would probably deliver me to an earlier grave than I ever cared to encounter.  I then applied for a position with UNM around 1975, and when I was rejected in part for a lack of sufficient academic credentials, I attended West Texas State University (WTSU).  I received a Master of Education in Community Counseling in August of 1977.  The academic experience at WTSU was so intellectually rewarding that, along with the specific encouragement of my major professor at WTSU to continue with my education, I entered the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, Oklahoma as a doctoral student in the Department of Student Personnel that very fall of 77. 

It was during my first semester at OU that I fortuitously switched my major area of study to the Administration of Higher Education.  It isn’t usually prudent for doctoral students to change majors, but I later found out that I had been accepted in the program specifically because of my real-world business and administrative background. “We were all taking bets as to when you were going to switch majors.  We expected it, but not necessarily this soon,” is what my major professor said to me when I cautiously approached him with my proposal to switch majors halfway through my first semester at OU.  After the completion of an award-winning dissertation, I received my PhD in December of 1982 at that pivotal age of 40. 

By the way, it was while I was serving as an intern at the Student Mental Health center at WTSU and counseling some of those closeted gay cowboys of West Texas that I came out of that proverbial gay closet myself.  If I were to be helping others deal with their personal struggles about sexual identity, I felt that I had to deal more honestly and realistically with my own denied and suppressed feelings, again “practicing what you preach.”

          When I finally returned to Albuquerque after receiving my doctorate at the University of Oklahoma, I took a little time off and later that spring made a three-week tour of Russia.  This trip, which was a Smithsonian sponsored event, was a gracious graduation gift given to me by one of my maternal aunts, Vivian Little.  She had received her own PhD in Romantic Languages from John Hopkins University at a time when women were still discouraged from seeking higher education.  She was so proud that another member of the family had gone on to seek a higher degree that she wanted to reward the effort.  She actually gave me a choice of either China or the Soviet Union, and then pragmatically suggested that China would probably become more liberated in the future and would likely become more accessible for travel while the future of Russia was uncertain.  Vivian’s rather significant relationship to San Damiano will be revealed later in this narrative.

                    
                              The Groundwork

          There is nothing particularly significant to the order of certain events that took place while I was serving as a psychotherapist at UNM, first as a volunteer and then as a half-time paid staff member (even though I was continually carrying the largest caseload and putting in more than the usual 40 hours).  It was during this period of professional employment that I connected with one of the medical staff members, Dr. Ellen Raimer.  We both shared a very altruistic and humanistic approach to our respective professions.  She had even served for a brief period in the Peace Corps in Africa as a medical doctor.  Ellen dragged me off to the Sandia Mountains one weekend and insisted that I hike with her up to a “very special spot.”  I’ve never been all that excited about hiking, but because she had become such a special and loyal friend, I went along with her request. 

The spot that she wanted to show me was just short of the top of a particular portion of the Sandia Mountains, and it turned out to be an actively flowing spring that fed a small creek and finally ran east all the way to the bottom of the mountain.  It was particularly peaceful and serene, and after getting there I was grateful for having taken Ellen’s recommendation.  I usually avoided any form of exercise that taxed my feet due to the fact that I suffer from gout.  At that time, I had no idea that this adventurous outing in the wilderness of the Sandia Mountains would later be such an integral and mystical part of this tale.

          Early on during my UNM tenure, I met another gentleman working for UNM in the student personnel area, John Crampton.   One evening he gave me a call at my Chelwood Park apartment and suggested that we watch a video that he thought I would particularly enjoy.  It was a film directed by Franco Zeffirelli entitled, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.  The film focused on the early years of Saint Francis of Assisi, who had sought a unique communion with the natural world by renouncing his family’s riches in order to seek his own destiny unencumbered by all those material possessions.  Francis was, in a sense, history’s first Christian “drop-out”; he left a life of opulent comfort to seek a spiritual union with the world at large.  Many claim that Saint Frances probably came the closest to living the life of Jesus. 

It was somewhere in the middle of this film that some of Francis’ friends inquired as to where ‘Francesco’ had disappeared to following his untimely return from the Crusades, and the resounding answer was, “San Damiano.”  San Damiano was a church that had been abandoned and was in serious ruin.  San Damiano is also the Italian name for Saint Damian, who, along with his twin brother, Saint Cosmos, were both canonized as patron saints of physicians.  They were crucified around the 3^rd Century for having “given away” (in the spirit of Christian charity--agape) their medical services to anyone in need, which apparently offended the officials of the eastern Roman Empire.  I was so taken with the spoken melodic sound of San Damiano that I instantly proclaimed at that very moment that if I were ever to have a home of my own, it would be called “San Damiano!”

The primary motivation for my wanting to work as the first openly gay therapist at Student Heath Services at the University of New Mexico; was to be doing my best to insure that disenfranchised gays had unbiased mental health services available.  The healing of the spirit/psyche has always been as important to me as the good health of one’s body.  It is often postulated that the majority of physical illnesses are due in large part to our own mental health.  There are those who claim that as much as 90 percent of all physical illnesses are often psychosomatic in origin.  My mother often said that her own gift of healing was more a tribute to her ability to inspire the recipient to have enough faith to discover their own healing than any miraculous healing magic on her part.   

It was sometime around the end of 1983, and while I was still working at UNM, that I had a phone call from a friend of mine living on the east side of the Sandia Mountains.  Ken Stegemiller was looking at some vacant land in a subdivision just south of where he was presently living.  He wanted me to take a look at this prospective piece of property and give him my professional opinion as a licensed contractor as to whether I thought it might be a desirable location for the construction of a new subdivision.  On the very next Monday I went to the real estate office of Dick Holben, the realtor who was overseeing the development and sales of this new subdivision known as Sierra Vista South.  I guess my voice must have carried a bit when I was talking with Dick, because there came the voice of a woman inquiring, “Is that the voice of Joe Walker I hear?  This is Liz McGuire, do you remember me?”  Liz had dated and married one of my ATΩ fraternity brothers, Don McGuire, from the University of New Mexico.  It never ceases to amaze me just how small this world is.  Even more interesting is the fact that Don and Liz McGuire eventually bought one of the lots in this same subdivision and became one of my neighbors just down Boulder Lane.

While inquiring of Dick Holben as to the availability of a plat, I specifically asked whether there were any lots available in the range of five acres, and he said that there was one that was 4.6 acres.  I decided that 4.6 was close enough to five acres and had Dick point it our on the plat.  I left his office on Route 14, better know as the Turquoise Trail, located not too far from the targeted subdivision.  I was able to reach the subdivision by driving eastwardly up a rather steep and winding road named Sangre de Cristo, where I first proceeded to survey the lot that Ken had inquired about.  It only required the most minimal amount of time before I quickly decided that it was quite acceptable for meeting his personal requirements.  I was sure that at the top of his list of principal concerns was the existing rough terrain, as this geography can be rather severe in places, being in the immediate foothills of the Sandia Mountains.  The vegetation was principally that of alligator juniper, piñon, and scrub oak, along with a variety of wildflowers, cactus and indigenous herbs.

With some anticipation and excitement I immediately visited that larger lot suggested to me by Dick.  As soon as I walked on the property, I experienced the most unexpected and spine-chilling feeling that I was walking on consecrated ground, and I immediately and intuitively proclaimed that this bit of rough and rocky terrain as “a place of healing.”  I proceeded to the very rear of the property, and there discovered a majestic view that rather took me by surprise, since this lot was notably situated not only at the end of the subdivision, but most conspicuously at its lowest elevation.  I suspect that this most exceptional and totally unexpectedly good location had been unintentionally overlooked simply because it wasn’t amongst those “top-of-the-pile” lots that occupied the higher elevations in the subdivision-- lined along a rather dramatic ridge of brightly-colored lichen-incrusted rocks with a spectacular view of the southern portion of the Sandia Mountains.  Also visible from these lots is Tijeras Canyon, wherein Interstate 40 runs east and west.  This beautiful and rather dramatic canyon serves to divide the Sandia Mountains from the Manzano Mountains that lie just to the south and could also be seen from the rear of the property I was surveying.

As I continued exploring to the very end of the property as I could best estimate it from viewing the plat, I came upon a most intriguing rock formation. It was essentially flat on top and partially exposed on its westerly side.  It was situated just about 10 feet back from the edge of that dramatic rocky-cliff formation, and it had an old piñon tree growing out of the rocks between it and the edge of the cliff.  The positioning of the old piñon tree would have easily shaded this interesting rock from the hot, western setting sun.  This rock formation was larger than a standard-sized card table and had a distinctive indentation close to its upper center, where I could easily ascertain that water had obviously collected and remained during infrequent periods of precipitation.  The instantaneous feeling that came over me upon discovering this rather awe-inspiring site was that this rock had probably been sat upon, most imaginably by a Native American, as a place where deep contemplation had been repeatedly experienced.  I readily and without any cognitive thought or hesitation designated this rather unique site as “Meditation Rock.”  The initial discovery of this rock was one of those unique experiences that   began to signal that this particular piece of property was destined to become part of my future.

Returning from this lower portion of the land, I had the strangest thought come to mind: “even though I may never own this place, I will certainly become its consummate and faithful caretaker.”  The word “caretaker” had a certain ominous feeling of burden and in some small respect diminished some of those initial feeling of elation.  But the whole experience was definitely mystical, and I pretty much decided right then and there that I was going to be living on this sacred ground, probably for the rest of my life.  Just to confirm the unusual and unexpected veracity of these unanticipated yet very certainly inspirational feelings, I immediately called my niece, Julie Good, who had moved to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico.  The very next day I brought Julie out to Cedar Crest to inspect the property and, as was probably expected, she warmly confirmed my unusual feelings about the spiritual and healing nature of this piece of land. 

That Tuesday evening I called Dick Holben to inquire the price of the land, and upon hearing its already modest cost, further inquired as to whether the developers would entertain an offer.  Dick was professionally adamant in his opinion that the prices set on the various lots were considered rather firm.  The very next day I presented Dick with an offer, despite his cautions, that was some $5,000 less than the “firm” original asking price, and got his added firm reassurance that the developers would not be likely to accept any offers below those already established.  I instructed Dick to make the offer in any case. I was intuitively confidant that if this land was truly to be part of my future, that they wouldn’t hesitate to accept the offer.  The very next morning Dick gave me a call and, with a surprisingly astonished tone, informed me that the developers had indeed accepted my initial offer and did so without any counter-offer or the usual wavering.  Just ask me if I was at all surprised at this speedy acceptance?  We closed on the property that very Friday, and the die was then duly cast as to the yet unforeseen future of this enchanting place that was to become my most beloved and cherished San Damiano.

For just short of two years following the impromptu purchase of the sacred ground, I regularly meditated on what I had come to call Meditation Rock, planted some fruit trees and a rather large number of tulip bulbs, and waited patiently for this magical land to speak to my inner consciousness and instruct me as to its particular needs.  I knew that when the time was right I would be inspired as to what kind of structure this land would dictate and support. 

During the end of my short tenure with the University of New Mexico I had a week’s vacation, which I had planned on using to visit with a good friend of mine that had recently moved to Colorado Springs.  His name was Farron Hurst, and we had first met at the University of Oklahoma when we were both enrolled as doctoral students.  I had taken a pad of paper with me to scratch on, should I have any ideas pop into my head about the future of San Damiano.  It was upon retiring the second night of my visit that I instantaneously set up in bed and within seconds roughed out a sketch of the basic structural design for the residence that now exists on this sacred land.  I got up the very next morning and cheerfully announced to Farron and his partner that I was immediately returning home to Albuquerque to ascertain if this bit of inspirational and instantaneous design for a structure was going to actually fit, and just where it would be aptly situated on the bit of land that I had been patiently meditating on for so many months.  I left Colorado Springs first thing that morning, drove straight to Cedar Crest, and walked off my initially proposed measurements.  It was almost as I had envisioned it with one minor exception; the proposed side entrance to the garages was an obvious structural impossibility since there was an estimated 23-foot drop.   But the remainder of the projected structure and basic internal designed remained entirely intact, just as it had been so instantaneously designed in those few brief seconds of pure inspiration.

Within just a few months I had managed to locate a qualified draftsperson, Laura Sanchez of Las Lunas, New Mexico, to actually draw the working plans.    This kind and appropriately sensitive lady was very excited about the unusual project, and within just a few weeks I had the working drawings completed and was beginning to get rather excited about initiating construction.  At just about this time I voluntarily but unwontedly departed my psychotherapy position with the University, mostly due to some of those usual political matters that seemed far less important at that particular time than the exhilarating prospect of actually creating my beloved San Damiano.  With my time-consuming job clearly out of the picture, I focused my full attentions on the exciting future of San Damiano.  The permit for the construction of the residence was for a total of some 7,200 square feet of roofed construction.  This sounded like an enormously extensive project that was probably far beyond my financial ability at the time, but I was quite confident that there was some good reason that the universe had handed me this large and unforeseen project.

It was on February 20, 1985 that I finally obtained the County of Bernalillo building permit for this monumental project that I was about to undertake.  If someone had taken the time to seriously question me on just how I thought that I was going to be able to afford such an undertaking, I’m confident I would have simply said something to the effect of, “This project is simply meant to be!”  I have always maintained this rather adamant sentiment that if plans are thoughtfully laid out with the specific input and intentions of that invisible universe, the execution to fruition is an immutable given.  My mother always proclaimed in the context of her own brand of fundamental Christian upbringing, “The Lord will provide.”  I would possibly add to my mother’s often-stated contention that “the Lord will more likely help those who display the ability to help themselves.”  I had usually achieved anything that I had set my mind to, and even though I didn’t have all of the apparent financial means readily available for such an extensive undertaking, nor the desire or justification to possibly acquire the necessary financing, I was still confident that I could easily employ my own labor and skills to make up any of those unforeseen minor deficits.  Of course, there was nothing “minor” about any portion of this undertaking, especially since my name wasn’t likened to that of a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller.

There was hardly any stage of this project that wasn’t accompanied by some significant degree of totally unsolicited abatements, and this often repeated as well as indispensable phenomena manifested itself from the very beginning, starting with that considerably lower than original asking price for the land itself.  In contrast to its frugal beginnings, San Damiano today enjoys that grand opulent appearance along with all those necessary amenities that would aptly qualify it as one of those featured homes in a design magazine like Architectural Digest, except that the home wasn’t actually designed by an excessively expensive AIA-registered architect. The design is entirely unique unto itself.   Even the physical placement of the residence on the property reflects a recognized Frank Lloyd Wright credo of creating a pleasing and complimentary interplay between the home’s natural environment and the actual structure itself.  For a lack of any specifically recognized scheme to the overall design, I usually retort with the word “eclectic” when friends query as to its architectural theme. 

San Damiano also reflects my own spiritual and personal nature of trust and openness to all peoples and ideas.  Most noticeable of the residence’s inner design features is that there are intentionally no doors that would in any way interfere with the free flow of human activity except where absolutely necessary, for example the dark-room and the sauna.  Most storage areas likewise have the necessary closures simply to hide the usual clutter, as these rooms are not designed for any human habitation!  I had intentionally added a door to the one toilet-enclosure in the guest powder room for those rightfully sensitive day-guests, mostly women that just aren’t disposed to sharing my own liberal degree of openness.  And when asked about privacy, I consistently suggest and kindly offer to my various visitors the repartee that, “privacy, after all is said and done, is really just a matter of respect.”  On the more personal/romantic level, I further suggest that, “I will never lock you out nor ever hope to lock you in.  You are entirely free to come and go as you will.”  I point out to visitors that the intentional architectural design of entries and hallways to those traditionally private areas more than adequately provide sufficient privacy without traditional placements of more securable physical barriers—doors being perhaps the most noticeable implement of choice.

          It was just about midsummer, when the footings and foundations of the San Damiano residence were nearing their completion, that I was enthusiastically introduced to a gentleman, Terry Brown.  Very close life-long friends of mine, Richard and Anne Whiteside, made the initial introduction.  Richard was another New Mexico ATΩ fraternity brother and Anne had been one of those more caring female friends who had always wanted to be the one to introduce me to that special woman before I had eventually come out of that notorious gay closet.  Terry Brown had previously served in the U.S. Navy with Richard and had only recently moved to the Albuquerque area from Washington, D.C., where he had been serving as a detective with the Washington D.C. Police Department.  One of Terry’s foremost attractions to this Land of Enchantment was his total intrigue with and popular romantic ideation of the Native Americans in this particular region of the United States, and that intriguing spiritual milieu for which New Mexico is so well known.  We became romantically involved almost immediately after being introduced by the Whitesides, and Terry actually pitched in and helped with the construction of the house with the exception of a few short trips back to the D.C. area.  Terry was also most helpful in a financial sense, in that he had arrived in New Mexico with a bit of a state derived from the sale of his residence in Washington.  He was more than generous with his monies, for which I maintained good records with the full intention of eventually repaying any and all of his investments.

Almost as soon as the residence was finished it became a popular meeting place for all sorts of activities, principally those activities that were aimed at the new disease that first most affected the gay community.  This was a natural thing to occur, since I had considered this sacred land as “a place of healing.”  Besides providing all sorts of physical support for the gay community, I naturally saw it as a center for spiritual healing and enhancement.  It was this spiritual perception of San Damiano that gave rise to one of the more persistent and annoying conflicts that Terry and I had experienced.  Terry had desperately wanted to employ the residence for some of his own interpretation of Native Indian ceremonies.  Terry had gotten himself involved with the local and popular Native culture and had even gone so far as to purchase his own medicine bag from a local crystal shop.  He tried to get me involved with this Native American passion of his, and my response was consistently, “this is not your thing. You should practice your own white man's medicine.  You’re not one of these natives!”  I had felt as though Terry was very possibly intruding on sacred practices of these Native Indians that a “white man” had no right to trespass. 

We also had some disagreements about the house having no interior doors.  He once asked how we might deal with guests having privacy in the event that they would want to sleep while we were still up watching TV, “how can we block out the noise without doors?”  I suggested that should that situation ever arise, we would simply yield to our guests’ needs and shut the TV off.  This postulated explanation didn’t seem to satisfy Terry’s rather pointed and sarcastic inquiry.  I most poignantly reminded him that this sacred and entrusted dwelling was really here for the benefit of those that may have greater needs of peace and quiet as part of their physical or spiritual healing.  After all, I really don’t own this place; I’m only the recruited and appointed caretaker!

        Enter the Bear

                          

And speaking of this sacred place of healing, when you first cross the threshold of the San Damiano residence, there are three recessed glass-covered cases prominently placed in the brick wall.  One of these embedded glass-covered cases, the largest one that is situated in the center of the brick-veneered wall, contains a large Bear Kachina, carved and decorated in what is often considered the Navajo style.  The oldest Kachinas are usually all wood, painted in pastel colors and carved in a style that was established by the Hopi Indians.  The Navajo, on the other hand, often decorated their carved images with real feathers, leather, and sometimes silver and turquoise jewelry to further enhance the carved images.  Kachinas are too often mistaken to represent gods; they are carved images representing participants in many of the ceremonial dances of the Pueblo Indians.  Traditionally the dancers themselves most often carve these Kachinas in order to visually represent some vital lesson about life, not too unlike the Greek gods of old  (i.e.: Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom). For example, one of the lessons accompanying the Bear Kachina is survival.  A child is instructed that should they become lost in the wilderness and happen upon a bear, they should follow that bear at a safe distance.  The bear must drink water every day, and man can eat whatever the bear eats.  In other words, if one follows and imitates a bear in the wild, they are far more apt to survive.

Shortly after I had moved into the nearly completed home in the late spring of 1986, I had paid a visit to The Turquoise Lady, a popular Southwestern specialty shop that occupied what is so well-known as the Old Town Plaza of Albuquerque.  This shop specialized in the sale of authentic, Native-crafted and mostly carved Kachinas.  The proprietor of the shop was a very kind lady by the name of Cathren Harris.  I asked Cathren which of the Kachinas most represented the art of healing, and she proceeded to instruct me that there were essentially three principal characters that were each considered the “healers:” the Badger the Owl and the Bear.  I later learned that some Pueblo Indians also consider the Mountain Ram as having healing powers, but I have not confirmed that to be factual as of yet.  I quickly decided from all that I was told by Cathren that the White Bear, known by its Indian name as the Hon, was my Kachina of choice for some intuitive reason, and Cathren Harris then suggested that I might seriously consider purchasing one that had been carved by a member of the Jemez Pueblo named Johnny Burgess.  She said that she had some good examples of his craftsmanship upstairs, and proceeded to take me up steep and old wooden stairs to a sort of a work area as well as a storage room.  She actually had about six unusually large, beautifully carved cottonwood Kachinas, all appropriately decorated in the Navajo style with feathers and some silver and turquoise jewelry.  They had all been previously commissioned by and were being held for a later delivery date for a northern New Mexico rancher, Albert Mitchell.  Mr. Mitchell had special-ordered these Kachinas to be used as trophies at that year’s New Mexico State Fair rodeo.  She cautiously added that it might be some time before Johnny Burgess would making any additional Kachinas, as he had recently become quite preoccupied with the politics of the Jemez Pueblo.  In any case, I had decided then and there that this healing Bear Kachina was just what this Medicine Man of San Damiano had intuitively ordered, and I prepared myself for that unspecified wait.

          Several months passed, and I eventually received a phone call from Cathren Harris asking whether I still had interest in purchasing that Bear Kachina carved by Johnny Burgess.  I didn’t hesitate to say, “You bet!” and immediately headed off for the Old Town Plaza to give her a modest deposit until I could come up with the full purchase price of $700.  When I arrived, she proceeded to tell me the rest of the story.  It seemed that shortly after she had initially shown me those Kachinas that had been sold to Albert Mitchell, there was a most tragic turn of events.  Mr. Mitchell and one of his sons were flying down to Albuquerque specifically to retrieve the Kachinas.  They were making this trip in their own private airplane when it crashed, killing both of them.  Cathren waited for three or four months, what she had considered a respectable period of time, and when there was no apparent effort made by the surviving Mitchell family to retrieve the order, she decided to go ahead and let me have that original Bear Kachina, if I still wanted it.  I thanked Cathren for having remembered that I specifically wanted to acquire that particular Bear, and I gave her my modest deposit with the stated assurance that I would have the remainder in very short order.

It was within a week that I gathered the remainder due on the Bear Kachina and anxiously headed for Old Town.  When I entered the shop, Cathren told me that Albert Mitchell’s wife had actually showed up in the meantime and picked up the initial order.  Cathren explained that she had told Mitchell’s widow that she had no idea if the order was ever to be honored, and took it upon herself to sell one of the Kachinas to a gentleman that was particularly interested in having a Bear Kachina carved by Johnny Burgess.  That most kind widow gave her after-the-fact approval and said that it presented absolutely no problem; she was only honoring her husband’s prior commitments, and the rodeo for which the Kachinas were initially intended had long since passed.  I later learned that the widow died of cancer about six months after her husband. 

These very strange circumstances surrounding my ultimate acquisition of one of Johnny Burgess’ Bear Kachinas gave me serious pause, and it all mysteriously added to and reconfirmed for me that San Damiano was indeed “a mystical place of healing” that had a mind and direction of its own, and that I was, after all was said and done, only that consummate “caretaker” and possibly recipient of the spirit of that Bear Kachina.

While I was still at the University of New Mexico, I was invited to a doctor’s home where we had been assembled specifically to discuss this new and devastating disease that was apparently affecting only gay men.  I was the only non-medical professional present of the six individuals, and I am confidant that I was included simply because I was openly gay and affiliated with UNM at the time.  This was in the latter part of 1983, and to our knowledge there was only one known case of this strange sickness in New Mexico-- a young man that had just returned from New York City to Santa Fe to be cared for by his family in his final “dying days.”  The conclusion of our quite impromptu meeting was the conspicuous fact that we needed to take note of the seriousness of the situation and get ourselves into a ready-mode for what we all agreed was inevitably going to have a significant impact on New Mexico’s gay residents.  What came out of this meeting was the groundwork for what is presently known as New Mexico AIDS Services (NMAS).

While I had been working at the Student Health center, I received a call from a Dr. Perls who was at that time the head of the Psychiatric Residency Program at UNM Hospital.  Dr. Perls asked if I would consider serving on a session of “grand rounds” at one of their regularly scheduled times.  I immediately responded in the affirmative.  There was a brief moment of silence, and then Dr. Perls continued and further reported that I was the tenth professional in the mental health field to whom he had made this special request, and that none of the other psychologists and psychiatrists had consented to participate.  The subject of this particular grand rounds was the anticipated need to address particulars about needed “bed-side manners” when dealing with gays that may have contracted this new deadly disease.  Dr. Perls went on to explain that the other gentlemen that he had contacted were known to him to also be gay, and he was quite flabbergasted that they still went out of their ways to remain “in their closets,” especially considering that they were all professionals.  I later learned that Dr. Perls was the son of Dr. Fritz Perls, who is well known throughout the mental health field as the father of Gestalt therapy.  And even more interesting, I had once attended a weekend seminar on counseling in Dallas where I felt honored to have actually met Fritz Perls personally. 

All of this unforeseen involvement with what eventually became know as the HIV/AIDS community lead me to become one of the first volunteer psychotherapists with the New Mexico AIDS Services.  There existed in the very beginning of NMAS a “buddy” program under the name of Animas, which means soul or spirit in Spanish.  To become part of this care-giving program (that had been a California creation) required several intensive training sessions that presented specific instructions to the proposed “buddies” as to how one might meet the various needs of these gay men that were dying at the beginning of this tragic epidemic.  I went through this Animas program myself, and a most meaningful part of the program was the projected ideation of contracting the disease oneself, and just what one would do or how one might react should such a reality actually occur.  I remember with such vividness deciding that if I should ever contract the disease, I would simply “live” until I was no longer able to have what we called a good “quality of life.”  In the most simply terms, I would live life as normally as was possible, and when the quality of my life was seriously compromised by this awful disease, I would “walk off into the ocean and die,” in other words, unassisted suicide!   I just didn’t want to waste away like so many of the earliest victims that didn’t have the benefit of the “cocktail” medications that were to be later discovered.

Meanwhile, back at San Damiano, I had met a new potential romantic partner.  He was a younger man that I had met through a personal ad that I had placed in what was then known as the “Pink Pages” of the Advocate, a gay rag sheet that was published in California and distributed to the gay community throughout the United States.  Michael Castillion, who was residing in Key West, Florida at the time, responded to my ad.  The geography of this response was rather convenient at that particular time, because my mother was visiting with my sister and wanted me to come to Fort Lauderdale to drive a car back to New Mexico for her.  I made my courtesy visit to my sister’s, and upon departing drove down to Key West to pick up Michael and bring him back to New Mexico.

It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Michael and I weren’t going to be a love-match. First off he smoked cigarettes, which he had not initially disclosed.  I simply don’t like smoking, which was amongst a few other traits that Michael likewise failed to have disclosed!  In any case, we did become exceptionally good friends, and he had, after all, really wanted to get away from that wilder gay lifestyle present in Key West and make a new start of things.

It was one of those warm evenings in 1986 that I had, out of the blue, suggested to Michael that we might have a séance and make an earnest attempt to “contact” the strange entity that I felt was such an integral part of San Damiano from the very first time that I had set foot on its sacred ground.  I suggested a séance for two specific reasons: First, my maternal grandmother, Jessie Eugenia Slaughter Little, had become involved in spiritualism when I was just a young child, and I had actually been to some of these Spiritualist séances quite early in my life.  In fact, I had even attended a rather popular and well-known Spiritualist camp on Cassadaga Lake in Chautauqua County, New York known as Lily Dale when I was just 11 years old.  So this idea of contacting departed spirits wasn’t at all foreign to me, even thought I am quite confident that the actual presence of a disembodied spirit is highly unlikely given the state of our current scientific knowledge.  I do contend that there is some form of genetic memory that exists somewhere within those enormously elongated strands of the human DNA.  When scientists finally unravel the full extent to which our DNA is a universal memory bank, they will likely discover a recorded history that extends far back into our mutually unique and shared existence and history, very possibly even before the introduction of the human being, as we all know it today.  Secondly, Michael had been born and spent many of his early years in New Orleans, and we are all likely familiar with that most integral part of these Cajuns’ indigenous religious culture that certainly possesses a strong and intensely “departed spirits” ideology.  Need I add anymore?

It was early in the evening after the sun had fully set, leaving the house quite dark on this moonless night.  San Damiano lies in an area where the lights of Albuquerque are blocked by the Sandia Mountains, and our particular subdivision has no annoying streetlights, permitting the night skies to be lit only by the moon and that marvelous multitude of stars.  I placed one of my Navajo rugs in front of one of the three glass sliding doors in the large and then mostly empty grand room.  The three adjacent doors were angled slightly from each other so that one looked out to the southeast (sort of in the direction of that discovered Meditation Rock), the central one faced directly south, and the remaining one looked in a southwestern direction.  The Navajo rug was randomly placed in front of the glass sliding door that faced Meditation Rock.  Just to add to the atmosphere and drama of the situation, I lit several wax candles and placed them on the rug, which was our only source of light.  Michael and I sat at opposite ends of the Navajo rug and we simply remained quiet and waited for something to happen on its own.  And after some period of time, something strange did eventually begin to transpire.

Facing in a northeasterly direction, I began to experience the strangest intuitive feelings that something or someone was just outside and hovering towards the top of this door.  There was this extraordinary sense of psychic heaviness in the atmosphere and I began to experience a feeling of unexplained dire sadness and loss that suspended itself over me and engulfed my whole upper body.  I started crying with and in response to this “presence” that was just outside the door.  I kept crying and crying and at the same time I mentally addressed this strange presence and asked why I was crying.  I got no direct response to my psychic inquiry, but I had the distinct intuition that this spiritual presence was a Native American Shaman.  What was confusing for me at that very instant was my definite impression that this was also the spirit of a woman. I had always pictured that men were the only ones to have ever practiced the craft of healing and spiritual counseling in that Native American tradition of Medicine practitioners, and this present experience clearly contradicted everything that I had previously known to be true.  I continued crying profusely, and the atmosphere became so impelling that Michael left the house altogether, only to return some hours later when he felt assured that “the coast was clear.” 

This turned out to be only the first of several mystical and mental contacts with this initially very tearful and sad “Medicine Woman.”  That most eventful and certainly unforgettable evening had made a most indelible impression on my psyche.  It was definitely something that I had had no idea whatsoever was going to have occurred, and it was only later that I learned that there are no “Shamans” as such in the Western Hemisphere.  Native Americans refer to their spiritual healers as Medicine Men; the word Shaman is European in origin and usage, and my being of that Anglo bent had translated this experience with this alternative word.

It was at one of the Animas training sessions, held at the local Catholic campus of Pius X High School, where I first encountered Father Jerome Martinez y Alire.  He was then assigned to the Chancery as one of the Bishop’s personal assistants, and Jerome also acted as the Catholic Church Diocese’s liaison to the ailing AIDS community.  Father Jerome, since he wasn’t affiliated with any particular Catholic parish, resided at the rather large rectory of Albuquerque’s historical Old Town Plaza Catholic Church, first started in 1706 under the direction of Fray Manuel Moreno, a Franciscan priest who came to the village of Albuquerque with some 30 families from Bernalillo in 1704 or 1705.  The church was originally named San Francisco Xavier by Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdez, who founded the village of Albuquerque.  Just for your information, Albuquerque was named after the Viceroy of New Spain.  The Duke of Albuquerque ordered that the titular saint of this church be changed to San Felipe Neri in honor of King Philip of Spain. 

At the time that Jerome was residing in the rectory, the pastor of the church was a Father Lambert Luna.  One evening following one of our Animas training sessions, Father Jerome invited me back to the rectory to introduce me to his housemates and show me his modest living quarters.  There were several other priests living there, and for whatever reason I was encouraged to share with them this mystifying story, as it stood at that point, of the then singularly known Shaman of San Damiano.

Many of the priests of this southwestern part of the country are still part of the Order of Saint Frances.  The foremost Catholic Church in New Mexico, and the original seat of this diocese, is situated in our capitol city of Santa Fe and is designated as the Cathedral of Saint Francis.  An interesting fact is the full name of Santa Fe: La Ciudad de Santa Fe de San Francisco.  So the fact that this particular story has as an integral part stemming from oral tradition, the name of the Mother Church of the Franciscans, San Damiano, was of some special fascination to the priests of the historic Franciscan church now known as the Church of San Felipe de Neri.  As part of my story, I indicated that I wanted to hang a replica of the original cross that had miraculously remained in the inner nave of the ruined church of San Damiano, that Francesco had lovingly restored at the onset of establishing his religious order.  After I had related my mystical experience, in which I specifically titled myself only as “the caretaker” of this home and the land on which it sat, they informed me that Saint Frances of Assisi was affectionately known as “The Caretaker” to many of his faithful followers.  Father Lambert Luna was particularly taken with my unprompted accounts, and when I had finished my tale, he proceeded in a most sincere and reverent manner to offer a relic from his church to be hung at San Damiano until I could eventually procure the San Damiano cross.  The priests also informed me that there were Catholics clerics in Italy somewhere near Assisi who were part of the Franciscan Order that had dedicated themselves to the replication of the “Cross of San Damiano” to the identical specifications of the original, which was more of a Renaissance style inspired painting of a living Jesus on the cross with his eyes opened rather than that of some typical crucifix usually bearing the dead body of Jesus with his head hanging downward and eyes closed.  One of the more dramatically illustrated and pivotal revelations dramatized in Zeffirelli’s historically based movie about the early life of Saint Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, was the focalized depiction of the opened eyes of the crucified Jesus.

As modest as I am, I just couldn’t see fit to accept some sacred relic from the Old Town Plaza Church.  First of all, I wasn’t Catholic, and I had never had any significant affiliation with the Church except my friendly and close association with Father Jerome.  I was seriously taken with and certainly flattered by this spontaneous and generous offer, thought, and to sort of bow out gracefully, I offered to cook a Cuban dinner for Father Luna and the others and share my San Damiano sanctuary, if for no other reason than to see if they still had the same impression after actually visiting the site.  I inquired with one last curious point of concern as to whether it might have seemed a bit offensive for someone outside the Church to have assigned the name of “San Damiano” to a “non-Catholic, non-religious and essentially secular home?”  The priests unanimously assured me that I had done no wrong and that taking the name of San Damiano should offend no one.  Having been reassured of my not violating any spiritual protocol of the Catholic Church, I rather tentatively suggested that I would possibly accept their kind offer of that religious relic at the Cuban dinner, but that proposed dinner never manifested itself—I just didn’t follow up on either of our generous offers.  Coincidentally, this very special and old historic Catholic Church just happens to be situated across the Old Town Plaza from The Turquoise Lady, where I had acquired that very unique and special Bear Kachina created by the Jemez Indian named Johnny Burgess.

It was at just about this time that this deadly disease, Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), was finally identified as being caused by the virus “HIV,” an appropriate acronym for Human Immunodeficiency Virus.  An activist group of concerned professionals obtained an educational grant from the Federal government to present a comprehensive seminar throughout the country about AIDS, and it was initially proposed to make this distinctive and timely presentation in 12 different cities from coast to coast.  Naturally the larger cities that had immense populations of infected gays were targeted first, and for some undisclosed and certainly welcomed reason our own modest southwest community also got incorporated into this limited group of proposed sites.

Our own weekend presentation of this HIV/AIDS program took place in one of Albuquerque’s newer hotels and meeting centers called the “Pyramid,” just north of town on I-25 in the direction of Santa Fe.  The program covered almost every known aspect of this disease, and one of the most unusual and certainly popular of the various offerings was a presentation by a Native American Medicine Man.  I remember everyone who could possibly attend this particular session crammed themselves into the small meeting room.  I would guess that there were possibly 120 individuals in a room that was supposed to only comfortably hold 100.  The Land of Enchantment gets so much of its aura of spirituality and mystique from the rather large representation of indigenous populations of Native Americans, particularly the Pueblo Indians with their fascinating seasonal ceremonies.  This Native Medicine Man proceeded to explain how mankind has methodologically mistreated and abused our lovely Mother Earth, and has, by seriously over-taxing its natural resources, caused a grave imbalance in nature; when this occurs to such an extreme, it naturally incurs dire consequences for all.  He felt that this raging epidemic of AIDS was just one of the many tragic symptoms of our unwarranted exploitation of the environment, which at that time for no apparent reason only affected a particular portion of the human inhabitants of this earth:  Africans in general and gay men in much of the rest of the world.  His suggested and articulated answer to this ominous problem was a much-needed return to a more balanced and humane treatment of not only the physical and ecological earth itself but also of its varied inhabitants; equal respect for nature as well as the varied human inhabitants is considered most essential for universal balance.   At the conclusion of his presentation, this warm and loving Medicine Man explained that he had come prepared to perform a special ceremony for which he required a willing volunteer from the audience.

Of the some 120 attendees in the room, there must have been at least a 140 anxious hands raised, indicating everyone’s eagerness to participate.  At the very instant of his announcement of needing a volunteer, I already had an intuitive sense that I was going to be the willing victim, and without any ado or even the slightest hesitation I was immediately selected from where I was seated in the fourth row. 

I was asked to take a seat with my back to the rest of the audience, and this Medicine Man explained to those present that before he could continue with the formal procedure, the appointed initiate was to have some pertinent instructions.  He expressed that these special “instructions” came from “the Bear,” and the very essence of these directives was to, “Always practice your own medicine.”  I remember being rather pleasantly astonished with a feeling of déjà vu; first that it was the Bear that had been invoked to postulate these pertinent instructions, and that the Bear’s very specific instructions were so precisely analogous to what I had always preached to Terry Brown concerning his fascination and obsession with Native American traditions and wanting to “practice” their sacred rituals.  I was instantly drawn into the whole quintessence of what was about to take place, and intuitively knew with absolute confidence that this very special event that was about to transpire had been a preordained happening just waiting for that appointed time and place to occur.

After those meaningful instructions from the Bear, the Medicine Man went over to the side of the room to retrieve something, and when he returned I recognized that he had in his possession an animal-skin Medicine Bag.  He proceeded to explain that he was about to perform “an initiation” of a Medicine Man, which I had always been led to believe was a ceremony reserved for Native American eyes only.  Since I was that elected candidate and certainly the predestined initiate, I assumed that what was going to be taking place would have some special meaning known only to me.  I have no doubt that this very spiritual man came to this conference knowing that an appropriate individual would be in that audience.  I had once refused Terry’s more than kind offer to buy me my own Medicine Bag, and now I was to actually receive one in the only truly justifiable manner.  Coming from an authentic and practicing Medicine Man, I had absolutely no further objections to receiving one; it was as though I had had a subliminal expectation that this extraordinary and singular event was going to eventually happen.  For me it was more of a confirmation than an initiation. 

          It was a Tuesday following this special event that I received a phone call from a longtime friend living in Las Cruces, Patrina DesGeorge.  I had met Patrina in Deming shortly after my parents moved there from Miami.  Patrina had originally seen my folks on a TV talk show in New York City, and as a result attended some of their public meetings that were held in Manhattan.  It was shortly after that initial contact that Patrina had moved to New Mexico from her home in New York to be close to her then spiritual mentor, my dear mother.   My mother really liked this rather spiritual individual, and mom was responsible for Patrina and I also forming a rather close bond ourselves that has remained even until this very day.  Patrina eventually graduated from New Mexico State University and took up the practice of social work in Las Cruces.  Patrina asked me what was on my agenda for that ensuing weekend.  Having made no previous plans, I suggested that we ought to get together since it had already been far too long since we had last had the chance to exchange our current take on the awkward state of the universe.  I enthusiastically suggested to Patrina that she consider coming to Albuquerque that very weekend and pay that long overdue visit to San Damiano, which she had not yet had the opportunity to visit since its completion.

Patrina arrived in the late morning on that very next Saturday and we immediately retired to the master bedroom, where we seated ourselves in front of the fireplace to catch up on recent as well as not so recent events.  When she had questioned as to just what I had been up to most recently, I shared with her those unusual experiences and that most unexpected yet welcomed initiation the previous weekend while attending the HIV/AIDS seminar at the Pyramid.  I shared all the details with her, and to my pleasant astonishment she then reported what had vicariously taken place within her own world on that very same day.  Patrina said that she had called into the office that last Saturday morning and cancelled all of her client appointments.  Patrina then told her son that she would probably be out most of the day, and proceeded to intuitively drive her car to the foothills of the Organ Mountains just east of Las Cruces where she had, just by chance, picked up a piece of rock that she had been particularly drawn to.  She then drove down to the Rio Grande River where she spent some time meditating on a patch of grass.  While sitting there near the water, she heard a bit of rustling in the underbrush.  When she inspected to see what had made the noise, she found a feather that she also intuitively retrieved.  Patrina and I concluded that there must have been some sort of spiritual connection between the two of us on that eventful day, since her intuitive gathering of those several items seemed to have so paralleled my own initiation as a Medicine Man some 240 miles to the north.  At that time we hadn’t seen each other in over four years, and it was certainly most uncanny that we both were either drawn back or lead to those most basic of all elements at almost the precise time of the same day; what a wonderful and mysterious coincidence!

Another bit of pertinent trivia:  the name of my mystical setting in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains.  You may remember that I had become involved with Terry Brown at the beginning of the construction of San Damiano.  Well, on one of those trips back to the D.C. area, Terry had shared with a long-time friend of his the essence of my story of San Damiano and just how I had come by this melodic name by having watched the movie, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.  His friend, as it turned out, had been an English actor who had retired to the D.C. area to live with a sister that had previously migrated to the United States some years earlier.  This actor friend of Terry’s had grown up in the theater with Alec Guinness and had even roomed with him early on in their acting careers while living in London.  It was Alec Guinness who had so dramatically portrayed the role of Pope Innocent III, the Catholic Pope that had blessed Saint Francis and thus empowered him to establish his religious order.

It wasn't too long after the construction of San Damiano was completed that Terry contacted me and said that his friend had died and that he bequeathed $50 in his will to cover the cost of planting a tree at San Damiano in memory of his life-long actor friend, Alec Guinness.  An oak tree was purchased to fulfill this thoughtful request and planted at San Damiano--apparently in a rather rocky and inhabitable location because it eventually died for lack of establishing a sufficient root system.  It was later replaced as well as intentionally relocated to another more prominent location where a most generous supply of rich topsoil was added to improve the tree’s chances for survival.  An oak was specifically chosen for its character of strength and endurance as well as the fact that several varieties of oak are indigenous to the Sandia Mountains.  My mother once told me that if I ever felt depressed and sensed a lack of energy, “Find an old oak tree and lean up against it.  They’re just full of energy and you’ll be able to draw upon it and very aptly restore your well-being.”

While I was still involved as a volunteer at NMAS in 1985/86, there was a test finally developed that detected for the presence of HIV antibodies in the blood, and it became the expressed policy of the New Mexico AIDS Services to try and encourage everyone that might be at any risk of contracting the disease to participate in what was then designed as an anonymous testing program. This testing, which required drawing a sample of one’s blood, initially operated out of the offices of the New Mexico AIDS Services.  George Kelly, a rather brief romantic liaison, joined me in participating in this testing program and much to our mutual surprise I tested positive on the initial testing.  George tested positive as well, and we were both quite shocked at the unexpected outcome since neither of us had been practicing what were then considered the most vulnerable types of sexual encounters that were thought to account for the vast majority of HIV infections.  Having already rehearsed my projected response to such startling news as part of my Animas “buddy-support” trainings, I don’t believe that the initial hearing of the results had quite the same dramatic impact on me as it definitely had for George.  It certainly wasn’t welcomed news in either case.  Because I had already decided to simply go on “living until I died,” I didn’t share this bit of disquieting information with anyone except for Ellen Raimer.  I felt that since she was a medical doctor, she could probably handle this “medical” information dispassionately without it affecting our otherwise close relationship.  I had already experienced far too many individuals taking on that most tragic role of victim; their whole lives becoming centered exclusively on the diseases associated with HIV/AIDS.  Their then evitable deaths, in those tragic times and when AIDS had such an awfully ugly face placed on it, only added to the overall drama of life as victim.  As for me, I wanted to continue living as though nothing had changed, in the usual manner that appeared as normal as possible, and I did just that in every portion of my life.  I didn’t share this then potentially tragic news with anyone outside my immediate family because I just didn’t want the existing nature of any of my relationships to change.

One of my initial responses to the awful knowledge that I had been infected with this deadly HIV virus was a self-prescribed visualization program.  I had had a number of classes in my academic counseling program that prescribed this self-help approach for any number of specified conditions, in conjunction with various therapeutic modalities.  As for my own particular approach, I would picture myself sitting on Meditation Rock and watch my own natural defenses set into motion, fending off this destructive virus successfully.  Because I fully understood and had always most strongly supported Gandhi’s position of “passive resistance,” I never approached this mode of visualization in an aggressive or even assertive manner; I sort of saw myself as only giving that needed permission to the immune properties of my own body’s natural defense system to ward off and resist the potentially awful effects of this dreaded disease, and in the process, not forge any attempt to unduly agitate this most unwanted virus in any fashion. 

It was sometime in the latter part of 1988 that I visited my ailing mother in Deming while she had been hospitalized with what turned out later to be a fatal case of pneumonia.  The Deming hospital had simply failed to diagnose her lung x-rays properly, and going undetected, her pneumonia unfortunately progressed totally unchecked to the point that she never did fully recover.  My otherwise healthy mother had probably contracted this particular strain of pneumonia just several months prior, while in an operation room during a rather routine anal aneurysm procedure.  In effect, she was then dying.  On this particular occasion of visiting my mother in the Deming Hospital, she sat up in bed and proclaimed in a very affirmative manner, “Don’t let this thing ( HIV) get you down.  You’re not going to die from it.” 

She then went on to ask me if I knew the “one Commandment that carried with it a promise?”  I couldn’t recall at that given moment, and like so many other professed Christians I always considered those noxious Ten Commandments as a precise list of divinely proclaimed prohibitions; “Don’t do this, don’t do that, thou shall not, etc.”  My mother went on to paraphrase that “one: Commandment: “Honor thy mother and father, so that thy years upon this earth shall be long.”  Affirmatively, she went on to vehemently proclaim that I had indeed always honored both of my parents, most particularly her, and for that very reason alone I had absolutely nothing to fear from this dreadful disease.  “You’re going to live a long time, as promised.”  I still get tears in my eyes every time I share this story with anyone.  Little did she know!

Despite the unyielding faith expressed by my mother, I still felt that my days were probably numbered.  After all, everyone else that I knew that had contracted that terrible disease was either dead or in some advanced stage of dying.  It was towards the end of January 1989 that I decided to leave Cedar Crest and my most-beloved San Damiano.  I sincerely thought I was leaving not only the home but also my life as I had known it.  My projection at that time of my perceived imminent demise was that I would go to Mendocino, California and spend the remainder of my limited days on earth just recording my various memoirs.  I had an exceptionally close friend from junior high back in Miami, Denis Henn, who then had a rather comfortable vacation home just outside Mendocino.  Denis had once generously offered me its unlimited use anytime I might want or have the need to get away. 

The only thing that really bothered me about my rather impetuous decision was some nagging unfinished business that had to do with that disembodied Medicine Woman that haunted San Damiano, but the writing of her story wasn’t on my agenda at that time. With only a couple of brief experiences at making some informative connections with this spiritual entity, I did learn a little more about the identity and ultimate purpose that this Medicine Woman had in mind for me.  She was a Native American who had become a noteworthy Medicine Woman of her time as the direct result of a lifetime association with a powerful Medicine Man.  This Medicine Man had prophetically provided for her the ultimate source of what was to become her strongest medicine, which she gratefully and routinely employed during the last ten years of her modest but fruitful life.  She was so appreciative for this Medicine Man’s loving gift that she felt eternally committed to having his life’s story told.  Because of my own life-long encounters with spiritual healing, and my having a loving nature that has been persistently manifested through service to others, this earthbound spirit had recruited what modest talents I might possess to record and publish this story.  When I had inquired as to this woman’s name, it was only initially disclosed that the “Christian” name that had been assigned to her by a Catholic priest was Raquel (Rachel to my own interpretation), taken from the Lamentations of Rachel in the 18^th verse of the second chapter of Matthew.  The idea of my untimely departure from the living before I had in any way honored this Raquel’s most compassionate request left me with distinctively anxious feelings of possibly leaving behind some important and pressing “unfinished business.”  But those nagging thoughts and feelings of guilt didn’t take precedence over the more pressing issue of my health and my then perceived imminent mortality.

Well, I didn’t have to worry too long.  On my way to Mendocino, I stopped off in San Francisco to visit with George Kelley, who had moved there from Albuquerque just one year prior.  It was my second day in the city when my Toyota pickup’s camper shell was broken into and all of my earthly belongings that I had brought with me for my “final departure” had been stolen with the singular exception of my computer.  I was fortunate to have left those sacred items like the medicine bag back at San Damiano where I believed that they belonged.  I had to remain for some time in the San Francisco area so that I could deal with all that menacing red tape of settling with the insurance company, and during that chaotic period of time I decided to take a small apartment and accomplish my writing in the Bay area.  I wasn’t even completely settled in that small studio apartment just off Army Street before I received a call from my sister, Barbara Good, informing me that our mother had just died on April 5.  Barbara explained that she would attend the funeral services in Miami on my behalf, and that I could join her in Deming for the “second” funeral and mother’s internment on the 15^th of the month. 

While waiting to depart San Francisco, I met John Howell on the 10^th of April and made one of those instantaneous connections. We immediately had gold wedding bands engraved that very night and exchanged them at the Moonraker Restaurant in Pacifica, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  John even joined me in New Mexico just following my mother’s funeral in Deming.  Of an amusing note: when John called his mother in Indiana to inform her about his new boyfriend, she caringly suggested, “You don’t even know this man.  He might take you off in the New Mexico desert and kill you!”  To which John replied, “Well, Mom, here’s his telephone number in Albuquerque just in case you should want to reach me and find out if I’m OK.”

John and I mutually decided to give our newfound relationship a try while remaining in San Francisco, and we ended up living in a Twin Peaks area apartment that had a great view of the downtown area as well as the Bay Bridge.  It was there that I reintroduced myself to the wonderful world of orchids and bought a modest number from both the well-known San Francisco Flower Market and a couple of orchid dealers in the Bay area.  We fell short of finishing our year’s lease because of the extremely high costs of both renting and feeding ourselves.  And, after all, I already had this beautiful home that I had so serendipitously abandoned back in the Land of Enchantment. Fortunately, my family hadn’t sold off San Damiano as I had intended upon my initial departure.  I still hadn’t fully abandoned the notion that I was probably going to be dead in short order and thus, my personal and romantic commitment to John was to sort of to enjoy what time I had left with a wonderful man that I highly respected for his artistic talents, accompanied by the fact that he didn’t smoke and lead a totally non-substance abuse lifestyle--a most exceptional find in the gay community!

And of course, the real concentration for that period of time, then imagined to be rather short in nature, was the total enjoyment of my childhood passion for orchids, and one purchase simply led to another.  To my astonishment I wasn’t getting sick at all, and there were no obvious signs that my health was failing in any manner.  I had focused most of my attentions on the orchids as an appropriate “swan song” to my life, and before I knew it, I was getting quite overly involved with the American Orchid Society (AOS), and this is where that final passion was joined with the company of the most beautiful soul, Diann O’Neill. 

Diann and I had met at the New Mexico Orchid Society after I had been encouraged to attend by a young man that I had met while shopping for orchids at a nursery in Santa Fe.  Even though I initially had no intentions of becoming involved, after meeting this rather enthusiastic individual with purple hair, I let my guard down and got extremely involved with the local society.  Diann was so full of piss and vinegar, and came across as so totally sincere in her love for orchids, that I decided under her caring leadership it would probably be quite safe to get involved with an organization that I had once been seriously warned to avoid.  Together we became an unbeatable team, and very soon thereafter totally preoccupied with the student-judging program; we started showing orchids and we even won an unprecedented number of show trophies.  The resultant association with the American Orchid Society turned out to be a most unexpected and terribly horrific experience, a I have previously alluded to and expanded on in my trilogy, The Orchid Hell Chronicles.  The first book of this trilogy, Unwritten Rules: A Factual Case of White-Collar Bigotry, begins with the line: “This literary piece could no doubt qualify for the Guinness Book of Records as the longest suicide note ever written.”

One of the more interesting aspects of this rather emotionally disruptive AOS connection was the name of “San Damiano.”  ”San Damiano” had most fortuitously and routinely been given as the “clonal” name of choice to the some 70 or so awarded plants that had received recognition from the AOS during my rather brief and tumultuous tenure.  An individual “clonal” name is assigned to a specific singular plant, usually an awarded plant, in order to distinguish it from other siblings of the same hybrid.  I had personally helped in the organization of a new group of orchid enthusiasts that was to be a viable alternative to the local AOS society.  One of the first meetings of this new orchid group was held at John’s place of business, Uptown Framing and Fine Art Studio, in the summer of 1994.  One time I was casually browsing through one of John’s art print catalogues when I had come across the very print that is now the source of this book’s cover.  John had always made it a point to show me anything in his catalogues that had to do with orchids, but in this particular case he had assumed, in light of the fact that I am usually a purist in the matter of orchids, that I probably wouldn’t be at all interested in a print of a Native Indian pictured with an unconventional long-stemmed Cymbidium flower.  First off, why select a “Chinese” orchid to have superimposed over an “American” Native Indian, and secondly, Cymbidiums just don’t grow that way naturally.  I had not ever really told John the entire story of the Shamans of San Damiano and just how meaningful this story was to me, so there was no way that he would have appreciated the dramatic impact of the unusual imagery of this print by Lawrence W. Lee. 

After the excitement of my discovery, John ordered several copies of the print from the Joan Cawley Gallery and framed one of them that has, ever since that time, hung beneath the skylight at the end of the main hallway; its rightful place is central to the whole household.  I am pleasantly reminded, on a daily basis, of this unique and inspiring story every time I’m on the way to the master bedroom.  The Native Indian fortunately appears so androgynous that I have always imagined that the image is that of the Medicine Woman of San Damiano.  This imagined Raquel with her singular long-stemmed Cymbidium orchid is a reassuring sight, even in the most troubled of times.

From the time that this print was first hung, I had the greatest desire to meet with the artist and inquire as to where he had come up with his rather unconventional concept for this particular painting.  A good friend of ours and another well-known southwest artist, Pat Dalton, had once shared with me that he had met Lawrence at a perennial artist event, Indian Market, which is held in Santa Fe each fall.  I expressed my particular interest in meeting this man and even fantasized that perhaps one day I might acquire the original to hang in place of the print.  Several years passed, and I never seemed to have been able to make it to another Indian Market ever since John’s tainted participation in a framing competition in August of ‘92.  What ultimately triggered my writing this book--that awakening call from Ellen Raimer--also got me off my duff, and I went on the web that same day to try and finally connect with Lawrence W. Lee.

It didn’t take me more than a few minuets to find what I thought might be a likely e-mail address, and I immediately sent off the following:

(7/17/2001, 8:29 PM)
To whom it may concern,

     I got this e-mail address from "google.com" search.

     I would like very much to contact Lawrence Lee, by whom I have a very special print--especially to me.  It is an androgynous Indian (Tribe?) with a single (long-stem) orchid in front.  I have used the image as an icon on my "orchid website" (non-commercial) as a link to a section about a book which I have recent begun to write. "The Shamans of San Damiano" Check out http://SanDamiano.net

     I would like to talk with Mr. Lee about the use of this image as a book cover?

     I live in Cedar Crest---about 40 miles south of Santa Fe and a good friend, Pat Dalton (Another fine artist) sez that he has met Lawrence at Indian Market on several occasions.  I have intended to attend Indian Market for the  past several years and each of those years something has prevented me....

     I'm wondering if this "lawrence" portion of the e-mail address means that this will reach Lawrence Lee????     The story that I am about to write is very interesting and the combination of an Asian orchid and an American Indian is particularly interesting...........

     If this reaches YOU, Lawrence,  I really would be honored to talk to you........   My dime if you will provide me with a telephone number????

            Joe Walker

            I sent this email that very evening of July 17^th with the hopes that someone would receive it that would at least be able to put me in touch with Lawrence.  Low and behold, the very next morning I was very pleasantly surprised to receive:

(7/18/2001, 8:38 AM)

Joseph,

You have indeed reached the correct Lawrence W. Lee.  The poster you refer to was published by Joan Cawley many years ago, but I remember it well.

I am currently at my second home (in Belize), so I'd advise against calling.  The rates are unbelievably high.  I plan to be back at my ranch in Arizona sometime during the second week in September, so perhaps we could talk then.  My home number there is 520-▒▒-▒▒▒▒.  My other haunt during my trips back to the States is a new Gallery I opened a few months ago: Gallery 299, in Tucson.  I'm also part owner of Tohono Kih Gallery in Tubac, Arizona.

I'd love to see "The Orchid" on your book cover.  All I'd request is that you include proper credits and references to my galleries.  I'll not be wanting money.  The greatest challenge will be to locate the original painting in case you need a good 4x5 transparency for reproduction, though it may be that Joan Cawley has archived a transparency of the piece.  At any rate, I'm sure that we can work something out.

Meanwhile, best of luck in your endeavor.  Feel free to contact me by phone when I return to the States.

Sincerely,

Lawrence W. Lee                
President, Cirrus Arts Corporation

Lawrence Lee’s unexpectedly prompt response was just the magical catalyst I needed to get my butt in gear; it was a sign that gave me the green light to finally start writing a book for which a cover had been so serendipitously designed many years before its ultimate purpose was actually realized. 

        Dream Worlds

          I awoke with the rising of the sun on the first day of February in the new millennium.  I remember having been intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually excited because I had just experienced a rather stirring dream in which it finally became clear to me the parallels between the perceived reality of this intriguing story and my own particular and hopefully enlightened view of the world.  I have never placed myself in the ideological position that would allow for what I consider to being a naïve acceptance of the intentionally contrived and certainly unsubstantiated fantasies of so many who all too enthusiastically delve into the world of metaphysics and believe in some ridiculous form of an afterlife for which there is no realistic evidence.  I was repeatedly relating in a traditional oral fashion this strange story of my pseudo communications with some semi-ghostly figure of a Medicine Woman that had apparently bound herself to the very land where my most beloved San Damiano was so prophetically situated.  This intellectually perceived and certainly realistic incoherence, and my stubborn refusal to compromise, were responsible in large part for my not having commenced writing this tale any sooner.  But now the floodgates had opened wide, not that there was some sort of potential torrential flood as the rather succinct length of this book so testifies.  My sister says that we share the same modus operandi, in that neither of us go out of our way to employ more words than are actually necessary to relate any given anecdote.  So I might just inform you that there is probably far more that could have been said/added just to enlarge this story that I will simply leave to your own imagination and creation.

          In the dramatically revealing dream that I refer to above, I had imagined myself positioned on the front end and center of a balcony in a theater setting; theaters just don’t have these balconies today, so apparently this was an older theater setting, probably from my own childhood.  In fact, I have even been in that famous theater, The Roxy in Atlanta, where Gone With the Wind was premiered in 1947.  In this dream, there was initially an indistinguishable speaker on the stage, standing behind a dark-colored podium designed for one speaker, and this rather imposing figure had the crowded audience entirely mesmerized and fixated.  Upon closer examination, I discovered to my astonishment that this compelling speaker was none other than that of Raquel, my imaginary spiritual Medicine Woman of San Damiano.  In this emotionally wrenching early morning dream, I had become most intellectually as well as emotionally agitated at her apparently realistic as well as certainly commanding charismatic presence, and mentally challenged on just how it was possible for a woman who possibly never existed, or at the very least, had been dead for over 140 years, to suddenly appear in person in such a convincing and realistic form.  In this dream state the answer came to me almost immediately, and was accompanied with the most profound feeling of authority, “Why? Don’t you understand? You are the anointed and consummate projector.”  I had the feeling that this God, that I also don’t believe in, had spoken to me and explained the deeper meaning of reality, a reality that I had not previously considered.

          Much of the rest of this story that I am about to share with you came to me in bits and pieces, usually while I was sitting in my hot tub off of my bedroom at San Damiano.  My creative imagination would all too often wonder off to the subject matter of Raquel and this rather mystifying tale, and I would always seem to have some pertinent question of fact or need for further clarification on some previously revealed bit of information.  It seemed that every time I had proposed a question in my mind, I would intuitively get the answer.  Nothing that I learned from these impromptus exchanges ever seemed unrealistic to me; in fact, everything that was so mysteriously revealed to me over time was later confirmed by various authoritative sources. 

          There were images in my mind of an interesting range of characters and sometimes I avoided asking for their actual names, knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t even understand their strange language.  One case in particular was the name of the Medicine Man that had shared so much of his life and healing skills with Raquel, whom I had initially thought would be the central figure of this story.  As it turned out, he had also been given a Christian name and when I learned that it was José (Spanish for Joseph—my name), this only gave greater rise to my already mounting anxiety about writing this story.  I suppose that I had always known this bit of fact, but avoided inquiring and so confirming it most likely because I didn’t want this story to have the appearance of some sort of unconscious projection of my own ego.  But of course, the reality is that Joseph is a very common name and not at all unusual as a given Christian name.  It has always been my consummate resolve to demonstrate and deal with only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that resolve helped me get past this personal and ego-based blockage.

There is no question that the progressive theology of these 19^th Century characters is in total sync with my own take of the universe, and I was hesitant to tell a story about other characters that were too closely akin to my own personality.  This additional concern was softened by my dream, as I understood that being the “projector” meant that what was to be shared had to come from my own understanding of our mysterious world.  If there is some form of ultimate reality, then what is true for me should have been true for anybody, whether they lived sometime in the past, are present in this world today, or perhaps haven’t even been born.  These unusual characters courageously dared to explore beyond the socially, politically, and spiritually limiting confines of their own tight-knit worlds, and on some level, I have seen that as my own struggle or perhaps reaching for the stars.

         And now, with all of this having been said and done, I want to take you on a mystical journey that began somewhere before the latter days of the 18^th Century, in that most intriguing and mesmerizing Land of Enchantment…