--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> 
wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" <dhamiltony2k5@> wrote:
> 
> > Turqb, what a fabulous opportunity in life that you had, 
> > to have been there at that very pivotal moment of world 
> > consciousness in the 20th Century.  That Merv Griffen show.  
> > Would be like having witnessed the moments of Eckhart Tolle 
> > on Oprah, a moment of broad change in world consciousness.
> > 
> > You, should just shake off this faint-heartedness of yours 
> > and be with us here in Fairfield again.  It would do the 
> > world some good also. Bring CurtisDB along too. I pray for you.
> > 
> > Jai Adi Shankara, -Buck
> 
> So if this is the non-schtick level of your belief system, 
> why not use your name Doug? Why maintain the level of 
> insincerity conveyed by this alias?  Are you afraid to 
> stand behind your convictions?  I think it may be you 
> who is faint of heart.  
> 
> And since I am a meditator like you, what you are really 
> focusing on is my lack of shared beliefs, a level of life 
> that Maharishi himself poo-pooed as superficial.

Curtis, I think that what "Buck" is focusing on is
not the lack of a shared "level of life" but the lack
of a shared *lifestyle*. One that he himself cannot
even live, because he was kicked out of the domes 
long ago, and can't get back in. Some part of him 
really, really *misses* that shared TMO TB life-
style; he *longs* for it, and glorifies it and the
"meaning" he assigns to it in his mind. And on some 
level -- as you suggest more fundamental and real 
than the level of his schtick -- he thinks we long 
for it, too. 

What this mindset is reminding me of, strangely, 
are experiences I had back in the early 70s, while
living in Toronto. Just out of college, with an 
English degree that prepared me for nothing :-),
I wound up working at Sam The Record Man on Yonge
Street, at the time one of the largest record 
stores in the world. Its owner, Sam Sniderman,
soon recognized that I was a little brighter than
the clerks he normally hired, and so he made me 
a manager. As such, sometimes I had to open the
store at 8:00 AM. 

This was usually a thankless task, because no one
was actually shopping for records at that time, 
and I was pretty much alone in the store. Except
sometimes, when I'd get a glimpse of a mindset 
that Buck's reminds me of. 

The store was around the corner from the nearby
Territorial Prison. When it was time for a prisoner
to be released, for some reason they let them go 
at 8:00 in the morning. There they'd be, on the
street again, with fifty dollars in their pockets
and nowhere to go, because nothing else was open.
So they'd come into Sam's and wander around, look-
ing at all the records in the stacks as if they
were things of wonder. And I guess they were, 
compared to where they'd been.

The thing is, you could always tell these guys.
They stood out, because they were always dressed
in the same clothes that they went to prison in,
five years or ten years or fifteen years earlier.
Shiny shirts, pegged trousers, and ankle-high 
Beatle boots with pointy toes...stuff like that.
These were the only clothes they had, so that's
what they were wearing. And they'd wander around 
the stacks, browsing the albums, but always the 
old ones, the ones they remembered from before 
they went to prison. They'd heard no new music
in the years since, so those were the only 
musicians they knew. It was a very poignant
experience, watching them try to reintegrate
themselves into a world that had passed them 
by. They were literally anachronisms, people
wandering around in our time, but themselves
stuck in a previous era.

That's what Buck's "Come back here and join us
in Fairfield" raps remind me of. Part of him
really believes that everyone who was once a 
part of the TMO and all its cult craziness
"really" wants to be part of it again, the
way he does. 

Some of us don't. I would go so far as to say
that most of us on this forum don't.


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