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05/14/2002 Archived Entry: "4/12/02 – Haight-Ashbury Elders"

One day, when I was still Executive Director of the War Resister’s League-west, I was walking through the hall at Venture House, on my way to my office, when I heard someone say: "Artaud said, ‘that the creation of the stage was the destruction of the theater’."

It stopped me in my tracks, as it was such a provocative and interesting statement. I entered the main conference room, which was quite packed, and began my relationship with "the diggers." Amongst them was Emmett Grogan, Bill Fritch (became a Hell’s Angel), Peter Berg, Peter Cohan (now Peter Coyote), Ron Thelin (founder of the first San Francisco Psychedelic Shop), and many others.

It was a founding meeting for what we initially called the "Haight-Ashbury Elders," and which we later changed to "Kiva." Out of that initial involvement, and shortly after I left the WRL, I was requested to be treasurer, chief cook and bottle washer for "Kiva". I was given an office at 715 Ashbury (the Grateful Dead office building), across the street from 710 Ashbury, which was the home of the Grateful Dead. It was so packed with different activities that my office was in the kitchen, which was virtually never used as a kitchen, except once to prepare peyote. Stanley Mouse, the famous graphics artist (famous now, not then) had an office upstairs.

I used to start my day quite early in comparison to every one else. I would meet Jay Thelin (Ron Thelin’s brother) outside the Psychedelic Shop, where he would be sweeping the sidewalk each morning, prior to opening the shop. He and I would retire to the meditation room, where we would smoke a joint, listen to the music, sit in silence, or talk. We enjoyed each other’s company, and the preciousness of the morning, when the day was just beginning. Then I would head up to my office and begin my day’s activities, which were mostly organizing a celebration of one kind or another.

What a delicious time it was. I knew it was ephemeral and that it would not last. Nevertheless it still resides in my memory like a precious jewel. I asked Jerry (Garcia) sometime in the middle 1980’s what his view of that time was. I first said: That for me that time, 1967-1969, stands out more vividly than almost any other time; but that I had completely changed my lifestyle since then. Whereas for Jerry, his lifestyle was pretty much the same as it was back then; that I had been thinking it was so vivid for me because of the subsequent profound change in how I lived my life. Jerry said, however, that he had the same experience of the time, and that he remembers that time much more vividly than any time in more recent years.

In the midst of the darkness of the time and the ravages of the war on Vietnam, hope was born, beauty was perceived, and the door was opened to a transformation of our consciousness, which is still unfolding.