2 July
Medford, Oregon


I am thirty-two years old today.

Or, as my good friend and ACF brother Jesse Banks said, I am one year away from my crucifixion.  (Oh, one can only hope!)

Aubray arranged a small gathering of many of our closest ACF friends at the Upper Room this morning, yummy carrot cake and all.  
To call her my best friend does not do my feelings for her justice.  Bray is my deepest soulfriend, and I don’t see any possible way
that could change, with our relationship having taken this necessary turn.  We talked a lot about our mutual freedom, and what that
entails.  I don’t feel the slightest thread of jealousy about her seeing other people or falling in love someday.  I don’t need to –nothing
in the future could invalidate the good times of our past, and our present is innocent enough to be non-threatening to future mates.  I
will never have to wonder what I did wrong that the New Guy In Her Life does right, for I know exactly what I did wrong, and it
was all something that I could control as well as one controls a natural hair color: I could dye it, and the color would be suitable for
a time, but my natural colors always returned.  And we both knew that we each deserved better than what the end results of that
antagonism brought us.

I’ve known for a long time that Aubray, for one reason or another, was not going to “grow old along with me,” to use the words of
a Robert Browning line, one of our favorites.  Many times I was petrified that it would be her death that would do us part –only a
few times did I think it was going to be life.  It is such a joy and a relief to know that this is how it happened, through that great,
God-given will to life.  She is going to have a beautiful one in Ashland; I already can’t wait to visit her in August, a trip that I’ll
coordinate to fall on her birthday, the 21st.

And what about me?  My God, where do I start?!  I have Camerado, I have these Chronicles, I have everyone who has so lovingly
shared parts of their lives with me, including reading these words.  I am blessed beyond belief.

There was a foreshadowing to this moment in a journal I kept last year, inappropriately titled “The Alcan Journal.”  This was the
first entry, just before we decided to depart for Alaska together, at a time when there was much acrimony and a bitter separation
seemed eminent.  There was, to me, a haunting parallel in picking this up and reading it the other night –having forgotten what the
first entry was about—and a resonance that will need no explanation:

“Somehow during this whole process I have walked out numbly onto a psychological plank, taken a graceless plunking
dive into the cold waters of misery, sank, fallen through the waters, below everything emotional into a cloudy realm of
acceptance, a thin blue air of calm, and now, falling yet, the formless empty space of peace.  That peace is the
recognition that there is nothing in or outside this world that I cannot do, and if God wills that I be unattached to
anybody or anything –whether it is death or life that do Aubray and I part—I will finally be free to do it.  I can look out at
the infinite sky of possibilities, find the biggest and brightest star, hitch myself to it and go for a ride.  That is where I am
today.

‘Everything belongs to me because I am poor.’ –Kerouac”

Amen.

*                  *                   *                    *
I have decided to call it a wrap on Part One.  My intention, the big song-and-dance number toward which I was working back there
with the diatribe about denominational infighting, was to put forth what I believe is a solution, an idea of such stunning simplicity
that it would put all the complex issues to rest.  At least within the Christian fold; I know I am way far away from the point where I
can argue for the unity of all theistic religions.  

But this too would be premature.  For one thing, if you read it now and become enlightened, you won’t bother to read Parts Two
and Three, and that would be a cryin’ shame.  Also, as I mentally scanned the background material for it, I realized I was at a point
of near-infinite regression, with root sources backing up root sources etc.  It is not infinite of course –it only seemed that way as I
tried to cram the writing of it into a couple days—and it will fit nicely into any pre-existing plans for Part Three, which I envision as
a complete immersion into the root sources of my belief in what I’ve been calling Christotheism, which is really just a Christian
mysticism that has been around for the whole 2000 years, nothing new.  The part that is relatively new is the cross-pollination of
other corroborative mystical traditions, the underpinning of every major world religion –the “chief cornerstone,” shall we say?—
under the united assemblage of ideas called the Perennial Philosophy.  So that’s what we have to look forward to in Part Three.

Part Two I intend to be more personal.  I will delve into issues that I’ve brushed over lightly regarding my personal faith and how it
grew, evolved (that’s a nasty word for some, but it’s true here).  It will include the same kind of brutal, cleansing honesty that I’ve
been sponge-bathing in for the past three weeks, only now I’ll jump in the tub and soak it all up.  In a sense, just an extended written
personal testimony of my love of God and Christ.  I hope it will manage to be engaging and entertaining; run-on memoirs have a
knack for being neither.  You will have my implicit permission to cease with them at any time and move on to Part Three if you just
want the real goods; I’m not pretending to be as important as any of the broader material.  I think I need to write Part Two a lot
more than anyone else needs to read it.

As background scenery for Part Two’s beginning pages, I have a trucking assignment of such uncanny synchronicity that it is
almost scary: I am heading for Massachusetts, the place of my birth, and less than an hour away from the Merrimack Valley of New
Hampshire, where I spent almost all of my pre-collegiate formative years.  Since I am now a West Coast resident by lease agreement
only (Aubray and I are legally co-tenants in the new apartment), I can say without reservation and the old twisted heartstrings
feelings of a bi-coastal existence, that New England is where I feel most at home.  Aubray, my dear cherished friend, is no longer a
second pole around which I feel compelled to wrap my sense of self.  She is a glorious star out there in my sky, a Western star, and
I’ll be watching her sparkle from many different vantage points over the next few years.  When it’s all done, when the roaming
phase is truly over and this lost child is finally ready to lay down roots –or be the seed that goes into the ground and dies-- God
willing, it will be in New England soil.

Or Canada.  I haven’t decided yet.  There is time.

Hermit Crab
Gordy’s Truck Stop
LaPine, Oregon


© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

Next-- Part Two Chapter 1

to the Synopsis page for Part Two