THE PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER
AND THE ASIAN WARLORD
AND THE ASIAN WARLORD
"For a vast number of young men growing up around the same time I did, after reaching a certain age, they were uprooted from whatever they were doing by the then in place friendly Selective Service System, otherwise known as the draft, and plunked down into the military. And so it was for me. Following a crowded ruckus-filled overnight 400 mile train ride from the induction center in Los Angeles to Fort Ord I, along with several hundred other potential GIs, at 4:00 AM in the morning, was herded into one of a whole line of cattle trucks and taken to what they called the Reception Company Area. Then, after being issued two pairs of too large boots along with several sets of too large olive drab shirts and pants, and having the good fortune of completing eight weeks of basic without incident I was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia to attend the U.S. Army Signal Corps School for what they called Advanced Individual Training, or AIT."
(see)
the Wanderling
Young men of similar ilk as me as described above, apparently smarter than I was, sought avoidance of that same draft I was caught up in by going off to Canada, seeking out college deferments, or, if already having received degrees, going on to graduate school or joining the then newly formed Peace Corps or the National Teacher Corps.(see)
Because the Peace Corps has been in the public consciousness for so long most people have a general idea what it is and does, although the program itself hasn't been around forever, being basically a product of the sixties. Programs similar to the Peace Corps had been advocated on-and-off seemingly forever, but it wasn't until under President John F. Kennedy's watch that on March 1, 1961 the actual government run program was officially established through executive order. It was fully authorized about six months later by Congress on September 21, 1961, with passage of the Peace Corps Act (Pub.L. 87-293). The act declares the Peace Corps purpose as follows:
"To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower."
Within a year of the Peace Corps being established I received my draft notice, shortly thereafter heading off to the good old U.S. Army. I clawed and crawled my way through boot camp (literally) and the AIT training as outlined above --- the former life-long civilian I was --- and then with absolutely no background, preparation, or comprehension of such a happenstance even remotely occurring, I was thrust into a personal situation I was unable to sidestep quick enough, interacting face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, with a couple of major Asian warlords.[1]
In both cases, my arrival at their compounds was transitional in nature --- that is, I was actually in the process of going somewhere else or doing other things and, as far as I was concerned, relative to them, just passing through. For me and the people I was traveling with, the warlord compounds were at least semi or quasi safe harbors carved out of the otherwise surrounding highly hostile environment. Take a shower, get something to eat, maybe an American beer, and possibly a good night sleep.
In that I was transitional, especially compared to the needs, wherefores, and whys of any mission the warlord's military contingents might have, I had upon arrival, no real part to play. The longer I stayed the less I had to do.
At the first warlord's compound, with time on my hands, even though other low-ranking members I was traveling with were off trying to trade cheap hand-mirrors and pocket combs for favors with the local tribeswomen, in that we were all Sheep Dipped and I was in civilian garb, I had gone off on my own volition easily passing myself off like some Peace Corps volunteer rather than a heavily armed GI, to lend a hand in repairing and building an irrigation ditch and fresh water conduit that supplied drinking water to one of the villages. An advisor to the warlord, a shaman, informed the general of my actions and the general invited me join him for dinner.
What is laughable about it all is my youthful naivete. Here I was, being said by others (and possibly thinking so myself) I was like some Peace Corps volunteer lending a hand building a fresh water conduit to supply drinking water for one of the villages --- when actually it came out later that the increased water supply offered by the conduit was just exactly what was needed by the warlord for the successful operation of a rudimentary refinery being put into place and tested for the commercially viable manufacture and production of a highly illicit and addictive drug, including the ability to increase the output level of the product.
A rather interesting part, if one overlooks my youthful naivete, is what happened in the process of working on the water conduit. I did in fact meet an actual real-life Peace Corps Volunteer. Even though I had vaguely heard of the Peace Corps, it was the first time I ever met a PC volunteer, which wasn't unusual considering the Peace Corps had only been founded the year before I was drafted. So this guy had to be one of the very early volunteers and I have to admit there was something about him that deeply impressed me. We were about the same age. He had already gone off to college, graduated, and joined the Peace Corps, an organization I had barely heard of, doing great humanitarian things by teaching barely educated indigenous folk, and here I was standing there with my face hanging out and hadn't done shit with my life.
The volunteer's name was Don Sjostrom, from Washington state and like me, pushing age-wise toward his mid-20's. He taught English somewhere in the center hinterlands of Thailand at a place called Yasothon. He was going to finish his Peace Corps tour of duty soon and was being recruited by USAID. They had brought him up to Laos to show him around a little to see if he might be interested when we crossed paths. Even though he had been in Thailand for many months I'm sure even then the early wild west Terry and the Pirates like beginnings of Long Tieng was a shock.[2]
Several years after receiving my honorable discharge from the Army I was traveling on Highway 41 out of Fresno, California looking to take a ride on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. After spending a good portion of the day doing train stuff I stopped to get a cold drink at a grocery store in a small community not far from the railroad called Fish Camp. Sitting in the shade outside swigging down my drink I met a group of people who invited me to join them for a night or two at a campground they had set up on the floor of Yosemite valley.
On one of the nights a young couple passing through joined us around the campfire. It came up that the man of the couple, although anglo, spoke Spanish fluently and the reason he said was because he had been in the Peace Corps in Bolivia or Peru or some such place and learned the language first under their auspices then by being immersed in the culture of the country. I told him about the volunteer I met from Thailand and asked if the Peace Corps had any system in place that might know were he was now. He said he might be able to find out. I gave him all the relevant info on how to contact me and basically let it go at that.
Then, one day, out of the blue I received a no return address letter from the guy. He started out saying it wasn't good news. Don Sjostrom had in fact gone over to USAID in 1965 and, according to Sjostrom's parents, who he contacted, was killed in Laos sometime in 1967. Other than that, that was it. A blanket of secrecy overshadowed him from finding out anything more. It was years before I became privy to the complete story.
The following is just about the best commentary on Sjostrom's death I have run across, as found in the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Foreign Assistance Series and written by his best friend in Laos, Ernie Kuhn:
Don Sjostrom's Death, 1967 (Page 42)
It was the morning of January 6, 1967 that we got a call a little after 6:00 in the morning from Long Chieng saying that site 36, Na Khang, was under attack and they had just gotten word that Don Sjostrom had gotten killed in the attack. At Na Khang there was a airstrip with kind of a kidney shaped hill just to the north and the friendly positions and the CIA bunkers and radios were located on the slopes of that little kidney shaped hill ridge line. On top of the ridge line there was a 75 pack howitzer and a 50 caliber machine gun. The 50 caliber machine gun was facing away from the airstrip. Well, when the Vietnamese attacked they came in and got up on top of the ridge line where the 50 caliber machine gun was located and apparently were trying to get it turned around so they had a field of fire to sweep the airstrip and basically sweep the areas where the troops were located and where the CIA radios and bunkers were. In order to prevent that, the forces there...I should at this time say there was a mixed element at Na Khang. There were elements of SGUs but many of the main forces were FAR troops. Colonel Phan Syharat was the governor of Sam Neua and his battalion, I believe, was BV 26. At any rate, there were mixed Meo/ Lao and other tribal troops defending Na Khang.
Apparently in order to try to keep the Vietnamese from getting the 50 caliber machine gun turned around on the runway, they were going to try to hit the position where the gun was. There were three groups of troops involved. One group would come in from the left, one from the right and one right up the center. For some reason, Don, instead of staying in the bunker where he would have been perfectly safe, but also totally keeping in character with him, was in the center group and the reports say he was actually leading the center group up the hill to where the machine gun was when he took one round right between the eyes. All accounts were that he was dead instantly. But that did not deter the friendly groups from coming up. They overran the 50 caliber machine gun position and prevented the Vietnamese from staying on the ridge line.(source)
Don Sjostrom was not a military man or a trained soldier in the art of war or combat. He was a former Peace Corps volunteer and USAID worker and a major inspiration for me joining the Peace Corps.[3] [4]
As is easily learned, the experiences of Peace Corps Volunteers run the gamut. Any internet search will turn up thousands of examples. Sjostrom's and mine are just two and any comparison will find that ours are miles apart, both in time and place and experiences --- although it must be said, as made clear previously, at the time we crossed paths it was only he that was a Peace Corps Volunteer, my service coming many years later.
The same is true of another PCV I make mention of quite readily in my works, Edwin Bernbaum. Bernbaum is the author of THE WAY TO SHAMBHALA: A Search for the Mythical Kingdom Beyond the Himalayas (1980), one of most well-received and influential non-fiction books related to the mysterious hermitage that is said to exist somewhere beyond time in a remote area of the Himalayas known under a variety of names such as Gyanganj, Shambhala or Shangri-la.
Interestingly enough, the strength of Bernbaum's Shambhala related expertise stems initially from his volunteer experience in the Peace Corps serving in Nepal. Although as near as I can tell, in that he and I were both in the Peace Corps and we seemed to have served within a few years of each other, our experiences were worlds apart, yet still similar in some areas. I served in the sultry sea level tropics of the Caribbean --- wherein I ended up apprenticed under a Jamaican man of spells called an Obeah --- while Bernbaum served under almost totally opposite climatic and cultural conditions found in the high altitude and mountains of Nepal. From my own experience unfolding as it did between the Obeahman and myself while I was a volunteer, I can vouch that any number of doors or opportunities could have easily opened or been made available to Bernbaum during his service, adding, at least for me, a depth of credence to what he has to say that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
There is a very well written and informative review of Bernbaum's book that was published in The Daily Lama as so cited below. Re the following:
"Although there are differing opinions as to where Shambhala actually is, the lamas all agree that it is a place of majestic beauty. They are more specific about the kingdom itself and give a remarkably clear and detailed picture of it. According to their descriptions, a great ring of snow mountains glistening with ice completely surrounds Shambhala and keeps out all those not fit to enter. The texts imply that one can cross the snow mountains only by flying over them, but the lamas point out that this must be done through spiritual powers and not by material means."
The first time Shambhala ever came up that I recall circulated around a trip I took with my Uncle as a very young boy to meet with Navajo Code Talkers. While visiting the Zuni tribe, one of the spiritual elders took us to to an ancient Zuni pueblo site known as Kyaki:Ma, considered to be one of the original Seven Cities of Cibola.[5]
UPRIGHT SLABS AT KYAKI-MA CIRCA 1984
(please click image)
THE WAY TO SHAMBHALA
(please click)
MOLLIFYING THE NAYSAYERS
KUAN YIN, SHAMBHALA, AND OM MANI PADME HUM
(please click image)
OPERATION WHITE STAR: LAOS, 1959 - 1962
DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
IN AS A BOY, OUT AS A MAN
THE DRAFT, ACTIVE DUTY, ACTIVE RESERVE
THE SAIGON TEA GIRL
RALPH A. MULTER
GUNNER'S MATE 3rd CLASS, U.S. NAVY
PEACE CORPS ZEN
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS
THE WARLORD:
The above definition of a "Dancer" in military jargon pretty much covers me in the Army, who I was, what I did, and why I was anywhere near Southeast Asian warlords.
Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in March of 1954 and ten years before I showed up in Southeast Asia for the first time, in order to ensure western interests would continue to be maintained in the general greater Southeast Asian sphere, the U.S. and/or allies or closely allied mercenaries or surrogates continued to keep their hands in the pie at some level or the other.
One of those closely allied mercenaries relative to American interest was an otherwise minor Laotian warlord that through his association with the U.S. grew much more powerful than otherwise would have been ordained. Through a series of events I found myself in the court of that same warlord, as so pictured below. The downstream outflow from that encounter, an encounter of which was put into place by others well beyond my control, later found me miles and miles away high in the mountains of the Himalayas outside the confines of any warlord, in one of those ancient monasteries truly beyond the reach of time.
The quote below is found at the source so cited. It is actually an almost direct follow-up paragraph to the opening quote at the top of the page:
"Following completion of Basic Training and then Advanced Individual Training (AIT), except for a short detour to Fort Benning, Georgia, I was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas. From Riley, on TDY, I continued participating in an never ending series of so-called covert related training activities. During Christmas of 1963 I was enjoying my first two weeks of well earned leave, intended to last thru to New Years and beyond, staying mostly at my grandmother's in Redondo Beach, California. Not long into my time off than my First Sergeant called and told me to get my ass back to base. I told the Top that I had a roundtrip ticket and it would be days before I could use it. He said, 'Fuck the ticket, there will be a guy at the door any minute with a new one.' After my return to Riley and basically being kept in isolation for four to six weeks, sometime into the second month of 1964, traveling light and wearing my Class A uniform per verbal orders, I boarded a train to Needles, California, with the luxury of my own sleeping compartment and eating in the dining car before the hoi polloi got to. From Needles, in the dark of the early morning hours, after shedding my uniform, I was taken by civilians as a civilian to Norton AFB near San Bernardino and from there flew to Travis AFB. A short time later, after rout-stepping around Tan Son Nhut Air Base for awhile and visiting Saigon a few times, nearly always by myself and never having been officially assigned to a unit, found me in Long Tieng, Laos, thanks to my puppet master Richard M. Bissell, Jr., with nobody knowing I was there and having bypassed basically all military paperwork and protocol --- albeit at first in the early days at least, sometimes, depending on the situation, in fully sheep-dipped fatigues with no patches, names or identifying marks. "
(source)
Although Special Forces are sometimes a special animal when it comes to things clandestine, being fairly routine and all, becoming a civilian while still in the military does happen to others as well, and not always so routine. In relation to the above and found in Sheep Dipped, records are pulled from Army Personnel Files and transferred to a special Army Intelligence File. Substitute but nonetheless real-appearing records are then processed, and the man 'leaves' the service. He is encouraged to write to friends and give a cover reason why he got out. He goes to his bank and charge card services and changes his status to civilian, and does the hundreds of other official and personal things that any man would do if he really had gotten out of the service.
Sometimes records pulled from Army Personnel Files and transferred to a special Army Intelligence File are never transferred back, being conveniently misplaced if not lost in the shuffle --- oftentimes with a look the other way official sanction. For sure, the special Army Intelligence File is nearly always found to be missing or, if not, scrubbed clean. The thing is, even when a person's regular personnel records are in fact transferred back as they are supposed to be, in that they had been held in limbo all during the time the secret operations were in place, when they are returned nothing is in them reflecting any participation thereof.
A man using the name James E. Sutton, also known as James E. Files, who claims on occasion as having connections back to my ex-stepmother's longtime acquaintance, big-time mob heavyweight Johnny Roselli, also claims being a onetime White Star operative. Robert Clayton Buick, in his book Taking Out the Garbage (2010), in a Chapter titled "Who Is Jimmy Sutton," presents the following:
"Jimmy Sutton joined the United States Army in 1959, entered the Eighty-second Airborne Division, and was sent to Laos as part of the Operation White Star. Sutton did intelligence work and was among the first U.S. covert troops sent into Laos in 1959.
"There is much debate and confusion about the Sutton/Files military service record. Jimmy has stated that his military service records have been erased by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and that this is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and private investigative agencies have been unable to find any trace of military records.
"However, in 1995, John C. Grady, the official historian of the Eighty-second Airborne and the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, located Sutton's Army serial number and a Veterans Administration claim number in an 'inactive' file in a remote region VA office and through the VA computer in St. Louis. After an eighteen-month search Grady verified that Sutton had indeed entered the U.S. Army in 1959 and went into the Eighty-second Airborne before being sent to Laos on July 10, 1959. One year later, in early 1996, Grady checked the service records on Sutton/Files again. No records were found, and all the files under the name James E. Files were marked 'no further information available.'"
(source)
The question is, in the overall scheme of things, why the big deal relative to me specifically and the Army's need for my code making ability? In other words, throughout forever there has had to have been hundreds if not thousands of G.I. radio operators and code senders that have been trained and could send and receive Morse code quite adequately if not more so, so why me? Re the following regarding my skills as found in the link just below the quote:
"I was at one time in the military a notorious code sender of some repute, thought by some of my superiors to have been on par with the infamous Confederate guerilla telegrapher
George A. Ellsworth or, just as equally if not more so, thought by the Army Security Agency as ready for the stockade. So said, on par or ready for the stockade, after hearing about the Morse code being heard I wanted to spend a night on the plane, an idea that was easier said than done."
Not many days following my meeting with Sjostrom, and unrelated to him or any efforts in building the conduit, found me arriving in the then wide-open railhead city of Chiang Mai located in the far northern reaches of Thailand and, because of extenuating circumstances, having armed members of the warlord's military contingent on my trail not far behind in full pursuit.
Somehow after arriving in Chiang Mai I ended up separated from my comrades and, unable to execute a viable escape because of the previously mentioned extenuating circumstances and not knowing the city, I inadvertently met a Buddhist monk from China who immediately grasped my predicament. Without words passing between us he, along with a few of his fellow travelers, secreted me out of the city just footsteps ahead of the warlord's contingent. Then the two of us, on foot and sure of not being followed, continued north high into the mountains through Laos, Burma, and on into the even higher mountainous regions beyond that nobody knows who they belong to.
After days and days of walking, we ended up going our separate ways, he turning toward wherever he was going, me being left outside the ruins of a somewhat ancient dilapidated monastery perched precariously high up on the side of some steep Chinese mountain situated somewhere along the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. To continue, return to the main text.
For more regarding the results and outcome of the above, please come back or go to:
I went to see Sjostrom's parents twice. The first time was about ten years after their son's death and within days of having learned I had been accepted into the Peace Corps, albeit some months before I was deployed.
At the time I had a friend who lived in Spokane, Washington, of which she and I had been very close at one time --- but had since long gone our separate ways. There was however a special date between the two of us that on the 15th anniversary of that date, out of the blue, she called leaving a message with my brother to pass on to me as having done so. Some days later I caught up with her by phone and told her among other things that I had been accepted into the Peace Corps and would be leaving soon. She expressed an interest in the two of us crossing paths prior to my departure, so I co-joined a trip to see her with a trip to see Sjostrom's parents in Bothell, Washington, Spokane being some 200 miles almost directly due east from Bothell on highway or route 2. During the meeting with his parents I told them how and what I knew of their son and how it was that it was he who inspired me to join the Peace Corps.
Sometime in 1997, twenty years after having met with Sjostrom's parents, I was given the chance to slip in on the sly and observe the 9000 year old remains of the Kennewick Man. In that the location for doing so was not far from the Sjostrom home and, even though so many years had elapsed, I still made the effort to see them. Unfortunately, both parents had since died, Sjostrom's mother Lilly having passed away only a few years before. I went by the cemetery to pay my due respects to both as well as to their son who is buried close by.
AND NOW THIS: As for the Kennewick Man, those of you who follow my works know there is no way I would have passed up the opportunity to see him once offered. Those who know may recall my visit to the so-called Ice Man site as found in Footnote [3] of the Maya Shaman and Chicxulub or as found in Critical Concerns With Awakening 101 going to see the 3.2 million year old skeletal remains of the Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy. So too, the same in accepting and going when offered the chance to observe in an undisturbed prehistoric setting the Caucasoid-like elongated skulls and red ochre painted bones of the original inhabitants of the Baja Peninsula the Pericu' while working on a marlin boat operating out of Cabo San Lucas owned by David J. Halliburton Sr.
However, although quite a bit off topic here and with absolutely no connection through to Sjostrom other than my second attempt to see his parents as mentioned above, there is more to the Kennewick man for me personally than might otherwise meet the eye. Although not directly related specifically, the existence of the Kennewick Man and those similar such as the Peron Woman, leans heavily toward the quote below from the rather unusual source so cited at the end of the last paragraph:
"(I)n a remote section of the desert southwest, bordering along the upper reaches of the northern mountains, an artifact of deep concern and value to certain segments of the long established indigenous population had been stumbled upon by a ragtag group of grave-robbers and, inturn, stolen from a heretofore unknown to outsiders sacred site. The artifact, although nondescript under almost any layperson's observation, was said to be a potential mind-changer in Native American lore if it surfaced among the general public."
Without the knowledge of the object having any major significance, it, along with most of the other spoils it was intermingled with, passed quickly from the hands of the looters into the hands of a more professional retailer of stolen relics. Shortly thereafter, interested parties, hearing some of the loot surfaced and wanting the return of the specific object without creating undue attention or raising suspicion as to the relic's value, sent a person posing as a spokesperson for a collector to negotiate with the retailer for possible purchase. A bottom-line figure was agreed upon. When the spokesperson for the collector returned with the money the retailer said he had since received offers from two other interested parties and the price was now doubled.
A month later the retailer was found rotting at the bottom of a deep ravine with his eyes poked out with sticks. The missing object was said to have been returned to it's original resting place without the needed exchange of any money, only to be sealed to the outside world forever. It is not clear if any members of the ragtag group of grave-robbers ever made it to the point they would be able to collect social security.(source)
For those who may be so interested, an archeological dig of some significance located in San Diego, California called the Cerutti Mastodon Site and linked below, is directly related to the artifact said to have such deep concern and value to certain segments of the long established indigenous population.
PREMONITION TO THE PEACE CORPS In Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery I write about how I was brought before the presence of a very old and ancient man of Zen who had come down out of the even more rarefied atmosphere of the high Himalaya mountains and asked to see the monk who was said to be under the protection of the Lord Buddha.
Because of respect paid him by all, plus the serenity he seemed to abide in, it was clear the old man was Enlightened. After meeting him, there was something about him that would just not let go and it continued to gnaw at me for the longest time. Months went by. Finally, when the weather turned such that I could, I sought out the old man, visiting him at what was not much more than a stone-pile hut along the edge of a stream.
In Zen Monastery, other than saying that I went to see the old man I do not elaborate on any travails I may have encountered getting to his hut or on my return. In Hope Savage I relate to the readers basically the same story except that I interject more ordeal-like aspects encountered during my journey. To wit:
"Going to and from his abode was a very arduous several day trek, much of it through rugged and steep very high altitude territory. A good portion of the trail followed along side a series of streams that may or may not have been the same one, that was sometimes rushing and other times placid depending on the steepness or flatness of the terrain."
Even though the Zen-man and I were not able to communicate verbally in the standard way because neither of us had command of each other's languages, he as a man of Zen as were my leanings, for all practical purposes the two of us were quite comfortable in how we had established a working relationship of understanding between us. However, not operating at his level, for me there remained many more unanswered questions than answered ones.
In the mountains generally it was out-and-out cold, but in the rarified higher elevation where we were it was even more so. Even so, considering the usual outside nighttime temperature drop, with the tiny almost candle-like fire in his stone hut, it was typically bearable.
The day before I was to leave we spent a good part of the daylight hours scrounging around for burnable material. To me the amount we gathered seemed much more than would otherwise be necessary, but what I found even more odd was that we left nearly half or more of what we collected neatly stacked at the long abandoned stone hut he had shown me a few days before.
After returning to his hut and leaving the rest of the material we gathered, we put a little food, a few utensils and tea in a shoulder bag then went back to the abandoned hut before sundown for reasons to me unclear. After arrival we ate, then in the declining if not all but gone sunlight he searched around and found what at one time appeared to have been a fire pit. Following his lead the two of us put together a fairly good sized, considering what his fires were usually like, almost pyre-like pile of combustibles. With the sunlight gone and total darkness having fully encroached on us by the time we finished the Zen-man lit the fire.
We sat in meditation facing each other across the fire on an east-west axis with me facing east toward what would eventually be the location of the rising sun. At some point into our meditation, and non-Siddhi related, there was somehow a coalescing of our mind processes forming a single mental entity where we both able to understand each other's thoughts.
For the record, in an other example of a similar or like-type thought exchange, Ram Dass, in an article in Yoga Journal, November 1976 (pp 6-11), related that once he found himself in a very close similar situation between himself and his spiritual mentor, the venerated Indian holy man Neem Karoli Baba:
"He laughed and spoke to me. It's interesting --- he had always spoke to me in Hindi, and my Hindi was very bad. In India there was always somebody translating. But on these other levels the transmission is in thought form, and then it comes out in whatever language you think in"
In the thoughts he was willing to share he revealed he had spent many, many years as a young man on the other side of time in Gyanganj, but one day he passed through the monastery portals to the outside world and when he did, he became an old man. Before the full abilities of the thought exchange phenomenon faded into oblivion I brought up, considering his age, about the arduous trip back and forth through the mountains to and from the monastery for example, and how, even for me in my somewhat comparable youth and the physical condition that accompanies it, how difficult it was. What I garnered as a response was that I travel my way and he travels his way.
The next morning the Zen-man was gone. So too, neither was he to be found when I returned to his hut, although I did find a rolled up piece of cloth tied to the strap of my shoulder bag. Marked on the cloth, most likely done so from the burnt end of a wooden stick, were four Chinese cuneiform characters, one in each corner and, filling most of the center, the outline of some sort of a shape I didn't recognize.
The first part was answered right after leaving the airport to the train station. Almost immediately I saw a giant map of Jamaica and instantly I recognized the shape of the island as being the exact same shape the Zen-man drew on the cloth some 15 years before, an island or place he probably never saw or heard of in his life. Secondly, on my train ride through the cities and hinterland I saw all over, again and again the dominant colors of red, yellow, green and black in the graffiti adopted from the country of Africa and used by the Rastafarians in the graffiti that was plastered all over on almost every available open space. Those two eye-openers along with my experience high in the mountains with a Jamaican man of spells called an Obeah led to the meaning behind how the Zen-man traveled those so many years earlier.
Except for an incident that happened in the desert southwest in the early to mid 1940s that involved me and a tribal spiritual elder as found in The Spiritual Elder and the Santa Fe Chief, it was, for the most part right after the war with me still a very young boy that I started traveling around the desert southwest with my uncle and began interacting with Native Americans --- with more than one of those interactions ending up being highly spiritual in nature. It was during those same early travels that I first heard about and actually met Navajo code talkers. As the nearly ten year old boy I was I thought it was the coolest thing, Native Americans, the Navajo, being placed on the war front and speaking their own language back and forth between themselves and the whole of the Japanese war machine from Hirohito and Tojo to the lowest private not being able to decode or make heads or tails out of what was being said.
On one of our trips a tribal elder took us to one of the Seven Cities of Cibola. Like the majority of the early pueblo sites we visited, at least for me as a kid with no background or knowledge of pueblos or such places at the time, it was pretty much a dump of a place, that is, fallen down walls, piles of rocks, covered outlines of rooms. While I was out exploring and finding things that captured my interest which is what my uncle and the elder had been wanting, they kept widening the distance between myself and them. What caught my interest for the most part was not in the ruins itself per se' but a series of five or six upright stone slabs all set in a row at least as high as I, a ten-year old boy was tall, showing no apparent connection the ruins.
It was then I noticed my uncle and the elder, some distance off and not in the pueblo proper, after brushing the ground with their feet in several areas then kneeling and bending down as though they were digging up or removing something from the ground they stood up looking at whatever the elder took my uncle to see. Wanting to know what was so captivating but not being revealed to me, I start heading their way, but was stopped with a hand gesture from my uncle. In the meantime the object of their attention, which seemed to be wrapped in some kind of animal skin almost like ancient mummified leather, appearing all the same from where I stood as a book --- although as far as I knew the none of the Native Americans in the area had any legacy of a written tradition, ancient or otherwise. After my uncle carefully looked it over the object was placed as near as I could tell back in the same location it was taken from and covered up in the sand as though nothing ever happened.
When I asked him what all those secretive events were about he answered with a four word phrase that I easily recognized as a Tibetan mantra. I had become aware of and learned the mantra only a year or so before when I was introduced to a comic book hero called the Green Lama. Because his Tibetan background ordained his super skills he quickly rose to the top of being one of my favorites. The following is found in the opening paragraph of the Green Lama link so cited:
"Like Superman and Captain Marvel, the Green Lama was a 1940s superhero. Sporting an everyday guise as Jethro Dumont, a rich New York City resident and man about town, if necessity demanded it and he recited the Jewel in the Lotus Mantra Dumont underwent a startling and dramatic change, becoming the Green Lama, gaining super strength, invulnerability, and the ability to fly."
In an amazing set of timing, karma, and coincidences, as trite as it may sound, if I hadn't just learned of the Green Lama through comic books over the year previous I would have had no clue as to the cryptic remark given my by my uncle:
Although I was able to recognize and understand the mantra and that it's originating source was Tibetan, what I didn't know was how any of what I had seen or heard tied into anything we had been participating in, especially the larger environment of the desert southwest. That would come many years later following the death of my uncle and the rise of the internet. In the late 1990s to at least 2012 or so, bits and pieces of information began to bubble up scattered around the net regarding the potentiality of a sandstone slab found in Zuni territory that had, it was said, unmistakable Tibetan script carved on it's surface, of which, one of the inscriptions was said to clearly be the Om Mani Padme Hum mantra. I have linked the two most memorable internet sites remaining on the subject below, although not necessarily to be taken as an endorsement by me here of their content, because both sites have their critics and of which a good portion is highly valid on the surface, although many critical aspects put forth do loose a lot of their strength when meshed together with what I've presented.
You have to remember I am citing an incident over 60 years ago in the mid to late 1940s when I was a mere yet-to-be ten year old boy. Please note in text of the second link, the author, although nowhere is the name of the pueblo ever brought up he clearly makes reference to the same stone slabs that so enthralled me at Kyaki:Ma. The author writes, and I quote, "a line of large sandstone slabs that had been planted upright deep in the sand. 'Looks kind of like a Zuni Stonehenge,'" which pretty much puts the nail in the coffin as to which site is being talked about. My uncle took his secret to the grave with him, my remembrance of the events leading up to and surrounding the secret only staying alive through me to this day because of an early childhood fascination of comic book super heroes. Not much to go on, but something.
MY TAKE ON THE ZUNI/TIBETAN TABLET Not one credible archaeologist or scientist with strong undisputed credentials in the field has come forward substantiating the authenticity of the Zuni/Tibetan stone tablet so described in the above two links, nor can I vouch for it myself. For one thing no scientific archaeological backup documentation exists as to when, where, and how it was actually discovered, in other words, a la Carlos Castaneda, who I am totally familiar with, no field notes. The quote below is taken from the second link:
"The former pueblo site at the base of the mesa is where the archaeological dig was being conducted at the time of Dan's of the enigmatic tablets discovery by Dan. I asked them why the discovery wasn't mentioned to the other archaeologists and Clifford made the comment, 'Why show it to them, they'd just steal it like everything else.'"
The quote clearly indicates a discussion of an archaeological dig and archaeologists, but of who or of what affiliation they represent isn't mentioned. As well, one could if so aligned, side with Clifford to some extent, however what he does say carries within it's contents the scent of archaeologists within the group other than Zuni --- possibly untrustworthy in some fashion. Why he would be working with such a group is not known. The thing is, you just can't put together a high profile ragtag group of pothunters and go jackbooting ramshackle through a bunch sacred Zuni archaeological sites whenever a whim comes up, Zuni or otherwise. If the so mentioned Dan, said to have found the tablet, was a Zuni archaeologist of some repute, then most likely the digging team was duly registered and authorized to be operating on the location. If such is the case, knowing how sacred the tribal lands and artifacts are to the Zuni, it can be ensured that records exist on who, what, when, and where the team whence came.
In my much younger days I would have made a road trip to at least see the stone for myself, so at this point I am taking the graphics of the stone as the stone being real, although for all I know it might not even exist. The credibility I give to the Zuni slab actually existing is the incredible coincidence of where and how it was said to have been found and my experience with my uncle at the same Zuni site 60 years or more ago, especially so the mention of the upright slabs. The following is also from the second link above describing the location of the discovery of the stone:
"The ancient pueblo site was located north of a dirt road that snaked east from the present day pueblo. We parked and began to walk up a sandy hill that was covered in prickly pear and rabbit-ear cactus. We wound our way up and over the hill headed toward the base of the beautiful mesa that towered over the site. We took a break as Dan showed us the exact spot where he found the tablet. I looked around and marveled that I was standing on such a historic spot and I wondered if this was the exact spot where Coronado got beaned off his horse. The view to the south was spectacular in the late afternoon light that graced the ancient site. Majestic clouds dotted the sky and a pair of soaring ravens eyed us from high above as we headed over to a line of large sandstone slabs that had been planted upright deep in the sand. 'Looks kind of like a Zuni Stonehenge,' I joked as we scratched our heads and tried to figure out why this unusual arrangement of large stone slabs had been placed there."
One of the complaints lodged against the the object is that it didn't seem old enough, that is, it did not have an ancient quality about it, the carvings looking as though they had been done fairly recently --- although I must say I've seen shards of painted pots at various archaeological sites that have been exposed to the weather for centuries and you would never know it. However, the author does have a valid point. Nowhere in anything I have read about the Zuni/Tibetan stone has it been brought up that it was wrapped in anything, leather or otherwise. I'm the only one that says anything about such a probability. It was quite clear even at the distance I was from my uncle and the elder that whatever they dug out of the ground and were looking at was wrapped in what appeared to be leather.
If the object the elder and my uncle were looking at was indeed the same stone depicted in the graphics, then being wrapped as it was would most certainly have shielded it from the ravages of time, allowing from whenever it was made to the present day to have remained relatively unharmed. One thing that can be surmised is that the stone was carved in America on sandstone and not transported from Tibet in some manner. When the tablet was carved and who carved it is another thing. It certainly isn't representative of typical Zuni handiwork. The day I was at the pueblo with my uncle, from a distance I saw what looked like a book, although truth be said leather wrapped around a piece of sandstone could easily take on all the semblance of book from a distance. If what the elder revealed that day to my uncle was NOT the stone but instead a parchment of some sort with the same Tibetan writing on it that appears on the alleged stone, then what's not to say that someone in more recent times didn't simply copy the inscriptions onto the sandstone to ensure it's longevity, with the book, if it was a book, secreted away for posterity.
DRAFT DODGERS, DRAFT DODGING: The following is from an article that appeared in The New Yorker dated July 20, 1968 Page 56:
There are several ways of deferment and exemption legally open to college graduates. The surest is to be a medical student. The Peace Corps, VISTA and the Teacher Corps are other means by which seniors may salve their consciences without breaking the law. They earn a man a deferment for a year. Teaching leads to deferment in most cases. Two other major paths out of the armed services are conscientious objection and physical disqualification. There is the possibility of emigration to Canada or other countries The latter is not popular. It means the young man cannot come home for a visit without risking arrest or perhaps 5 years in jail. Few want to cut themselves off forever from American girls and American jobs and their families.
"Any mention by me of Terry and the Pirates is typically made to draw an analogy to whatever I am writing about and the exotic-like underbelly-type milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere Terry and his companions, pirates or otherwise, operated in. I have always carried a certain fondness for that type of milieu and because of that fondness have been drawn to such odd-ball fictional characters and stories like Dan Duryea in China Smith and of course Terry and the Pirates as well as real life places such as Rangoon, Burma; Bangkok, Thailand; and Chiang Mai."
While I was in high school, the cypher I was, I don't think anyone ever noticed me. Being somebody or not was low on the totem pole for me because I had another life. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year at Redondo Union High School while staying on my stepmother's ranch I had flown in a private plane with her to a casino called the El Rey Club in Searchlight, Nevada for some business she had with the owner. While there and totally unprovoked, a working girl, otherwise known as a "hostess," who apparently knew my stepmother somehow from the past, threw the contents of a half empty glass of ice water toward her, albeit missing her totally. When it appeared the woman was about to lunge toward my stepmother following the water mishap, Willie Martello, the casino owner, seeing my stepmother was pulling a nickel plated .25 semi-automatic Baby Browning out of her purse and with me ducking for cover, maintained the distance between the two by slightly nudging my stepmother around before she got close enough to use the pistol, saying he would take care of it. When summer was over I was back in school like nothing ever happened.
To me, the high school boy that I was, the El Rey Club was everything a casino should be. Noisy, low ceilings, smoke, friendly atmosphere with a slight need to watch your step, satisfying pay offs, and an ever present bevy of hostesses. It was also hard to squeeze through making it perfect for pickpockets and their like, dark, and owned and operated by a person who was a relatively cool dude. Pickpockets or similar preying types were not tolerated. If caught they could easily find themselves face down in the dirt someplace out of town with a broken leg or worse. Searchlight itself was a weird sort of a burg, a tiny little dump, sort of dead, but once you stepped into the El Rey it was another thing. Less wild west and more Terry and the Pirates.
At the end of the summer of 1953, roughly the same period of time as the above water-hostess-stepmother confrontation was going down at the El Rey Club and just as I was about to start the 10th grade or so, the August - September #6 issue of the comic book Mad came out. Inside #6 was a story, drawn by my all time favorite non-animator cartoonist Wallace Wood, that spoofed or satired big-time the long running comic strip Terry and the Pirates, with Wood in his spoofing, calling it Teddy and the Pirates.
Although I had followed Terry and the Pirates a good portion of my life, and knew how Milton Caniff, the artist-cartoonist of the strip, presented Terry's world that he and his so-called Pirates lived in, Wood's top-half opening drawing below, showing his version of an underbelly far east like milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere along with the rest of the story hit me like a hammer, with me, the teenager that I was, sucking up his version as my version and as my version, the real version. Ten years later, thanks to Uncle Sam and his friendly Selective Service, found me in Rangoon, Saigon, and Chiang Mai, as well as other such places, even meeting warlords. Those ten years after high school, especially in and where I traveled, having gone from a teenager to an almost mid-twenties GI, my vision not only didn't wane, but was bolstered and grew. Notice the tommy guns, stabbings, hand grenades and exotic women. So too in the second panel, i.e., lower left hand corner, the two crashed P-40 Flying Tigers.
The biggest draw for me to Terry and the Pirates besides the milieu and perhaps being in love with the Dragon Lady, was that the characters were eventually drawn into the events surrounding the China-Burma-India theater during World War II --- and especially so Milton Caniff's use of U.S. Army Air Force Curtiss-Wright P-40's carrying markings similar to the Flying Tigers, as found, for example, in the following Terry and the Pirates story:
Long Tieng (Long Cheng), also known as LS-20A (Lima Site 20 Alternate) in Laos, albeit almost operational immediately, it was only part way into the early stages of being hewed out of the valley floor when Don Sjostrom and I were there. The majority of the support buildings and infrastructure that grew up around the airstrip in the photo were just beginning to be put into place. For all practical purposes Long Tieng was the operational headquarters for the Secret War in Laos.
One of the most notorious operatives of the whole Secret War in Laos was a man by the name of Anthony Poshepny, also known as Tony Poe. He was there from the very beginning of Long Tieng circa 1961, training Hmong troops and going into the field with them. As the years went by, being there for such a long time and deepely immersed in the culture, even marrying a Hmong 'princess' and having children, he almost forgot who he was. The following is from the link below the paragraphs and recollects a time only a few years into Tony Poe's deployment in Laos:
"Almost the very second Poe and I made eye contact we recognized each other, Poe asking, 'What the hell are you doing here?,' with my response at nearly the exact same instant being, 'I thought you were in Tibet.'
"The last I saw Poe was in 1959 or 1960. He was in Colorado at an old onetime World War II U.S. Army facility called Camp Hale, training covertly off the books, a bunch of Tibetans to fight the Chinese. At the time I was a real civilian yet to be drafted, working instead for a small offshoot of a a major aerospace company involved with the then super-secret U-2 project. The person I worked for directly, called Harry the Man, was the top high altitude breathing equipment person in the world.
"Apparently in October of 1959 it was confirmed that China, with Soviet assistance, had established a nuclear test base at Lop Nor with all intentions of testing a nuclear device. U-2 flights over China were becoming extremely dangerous, so powers that be thought if they could put a monitoring station on top of some Himalayan mountain with a clear shot towards Lop Nor they could gather all the information they needed. Before a decision was made as to what mountain would be selected, it was a given it would be at a very high altitude. The same powers wanted to ensure that already existent equipment necessary to accomplish the mission could be modified, if need be, to operate in the rarified atmosphere OR if equipment could be designed to allow it to do so without modification. Enter Harry the Man. We were both at Sometime around I think, June of 2000 or so, and with me not knowing he was edging towards the end of his days, I drove to Northern California to see Tony Poe --- for no other reason than to just offer him my overall well wishes and thank him for some advice he had given me once many, many years before. To say the least I was a tad set aback from the robust young man he had been when I saw him last and how he was. How he was, was in bad shape, although holding on. A compound of aggregate conditions caused by heavy drinking and diabetes began to add up and to take their toll, even to the point he had to have a leg amputated. Toward the end it got to the point he was scheduled to have his remaining leg amputated as well, but died just prior. Even though we talked and he was cordial I know he didn't remember me, just another faceless G.I. that had passed through his life at one time or the other and I felt a sort of emptiness about it because I listened to the advice he gave me and always felt a great sense of gratitude. Yet, when I sat there across from the old warrior looking into his eyes, talking to him and expressing my appreciation for what he had done, I knew he had no idea who I was or how once upon a time, however briefly, I fit into his life. It was a long drive home.
Poe had dropped out of high school to join the Marines when World War II started. He finished high school via a correspondence course and after the war graduated from San Jose State in 1950 with a degree in history and English, although in how he presented himself you would never know it. We crossed paths at Camp Hale, but it was later in Long Tieng --- and I have been told Poe never offered sage advice to anybody --- he told me to get out of this shit while I still had a chance and never look back. Go to college, make something of yourself, don't fuck up your life like I have. Your'e a cartoonist. Draw pictures. Make people laugh. Within four months of my discharge I started college and the following happened, of which I have always attributed to Tony:
"I settled in using Redondo as a central base of operations while commuting back and forth to college attempting to grab off an undergraduate degree on the G.I. Bill, and of which I was eventually able to do.
"After receiving a B.A. along with a California Secondary Teaching Credential, which required an additional fifth year beyond a bachelors as well as student teaching, I matriculated into graduate school."
PHYLLIS DAVIS In writing about the movie and TV actress Phyllis Davis and the two of us being in Thailand together, I make reference to that same city, Mong La. I visited Mong La along the Chinese Myanmar border, comparing it to the wretchedness of the Star Wars city of Mos Eisley. I do so by including a section on her page titled MONG LA: Mos Eisley Spaceport or Mayberry, R.F.D.?. That same section also shows up on my Khun Sa page. Although I don't give specific dates as to when the events in the section actually occurred, it is implied quite clearly that they happened after Hurricane Ike, i.e., September 1, 2008 - September 15, 2008, but before Ms Davis' death September 27, 2013, many years after the mid-60s encounters between Khun Sa and myself. In the section I write:
"Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the whole galaxy than Mos Eisley spaceport."
Then I write that I guess neither of them ever heard of Mong La. Later, after leaving Mong La I go on to say:
"Not long after that we were in Panghsang with me introducing myself to Wei Hsueh-kang. He asked if I had the 'item.' I opened my phone and handed him the SIM card. He praised me for a job well done, saying everything he heard about me was true. Then he asked how it was I knew Khun Sa. I quickly explained to him the whole story saying I felt he was instrumental in saving my life."
Wei Hsueh-kang is probably the most notorious Southeast Asian warlord and drug kingpin around, with a $2M dollar FBI bounty on his head. Yet I sat there on a veranda with him along the Chinese-Burma border sipping drinks together. Next thing I know I am at the 140-million-baht Casino Club operating under the flagship of the Myawaddy Riverside Resort Complex on the Thai-Burma border meeting with Khun Sa's son.
Footnote [2]
"Within the members of the relatively small search team, Chinese all, was a Buddhist or Zen Buddhist. When they came across me, not knowing if I was the one they were searching for or not, the Buddhist amongst them noticed the small Chinese symbol hanging around my neck. The team was just going to abandon me, but the Buddhist, after seeing what I had around my neck told them I was under protection of the Lord Buddha and to leave me in such a state and in such surroundings would be bad Karma --- that nothing but bad fortune and and bad luck would follow them if they did not take me with them."(source)
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN
Footnote [3]
THE AINU PEOPLE, NOW THOUGHT TO BE THE
CLOSEST RELATIVE TO THE KENNEWICK MAN
------------------------(please click)
PENON WOMAN
HUMANS IN NORTH AMERICA 130,000 YEARS AGO
PALEOLITHIC CRO-MAGNONS IN AMERICA
Footnote [4]
When the four Chinese characters were deciphered they turned out to mean nothing more than colors: red, yellow, green and black. The outlined shape in the center remained a mystery and meant nothing to anybody who saw it. The mystery however, was solved on its own some 15 years later, a period of time that found me living in the Caribbean island country of Jamaica, and was solved almost on the first day I arrived for what turned out to be a two year stay. So too was answered, before I left the island, my comment regarding how arduous the trip back and forth through the mountains was and his response that I travel my way and he travels his way.
(please click)
Footnote [5]
OM MANI PADME HUM
THE ZUNI/TIBETAN CONNECTION
TIBETAN INSCRIBED TABLET FOUND AT ANCIENT ZUNI SITE
(please click image)
-----
DRAFT DODGER 1944--------------------------DRAFT DODGER 1960s
(click image for respective year)
UNDER THE PROTECTION OF
THE LORD BUDDHA
A lot of people who read the paragraph-quote just before the above graphic referencing Terry and the Pirates, say I hold not much more than a standard stereotypical romanticized westerner's view of the Asian atmosphere and the milieu that I imply exists. To them I say they most likely have never been to Mong La or read my account on me going to or being in Mong La as found in the Phyllis Davis link. However, for me, real or not to other people, I started early on in my fondness for and becoming accustomed to being in and around what I call a Terry and the Pirates type milieu, re the experiences at the El Rey club, linked below, while I was still in high school.
THE EL REY CLUB: RESORT, CASINO, BROTHEL
WANDERLING AND THE PIRATES
(again, if you haven't done so please click image)
TERRY AND THE PIRATES
(please click image)
THE CIAs SECRET WAR IN TIBET
(please click image)
THE CIA IN TIBET AND THE HIMALAYAS
NAM YU: CIA LIMA SITE 118-A
PHYLLIS DAVIS
