Dragonfly
Resist and Survive

In Alaska that year, I was 18. Just barely.

Those were the days of wine and mushrooms. Those are the nights the sun never went down. Those are the hours spent down the river, on that little island---singin', drinkin', and studying nature like we were learning a foreign language.

It was on that island one night, during our usual fiestas, when I met the Leo that would shift my direction and usher me into a new chapter of discovery and adventure. It was her story that lured me in. She mirrored my birth mother's story in some wildly definitive ways. At that time, the idea to search for my mother hadn't even crossed my mind. But, this young woman's mirror, I couldn't shake it. Only 14 years old, an Aquarian baby boy, given up for adoption to a lovely Christian family. Our chapter together would be filled with youthful rage, laughter, and an insatiable desire for escape.

When the season ended, I flew back to Portland, hopped in a friend's car and ventured down the 101. There was an open invitation from her and her friends to visit and stay at their home in Homer, LA. I had about 20 G's stacked from a lucrative summer, a heartstring plucked by my first POC, and a head full of acid, mushrooms, cocaine or whatever else I could get my hands on.

I was transforming, and writing about it. The old archetype was dying and the new was bursting at the seams. I wanted to feel it all and be responsible for nothing. I started living with no limit in search of my edge.

I stayed in that little house with too many people for too few beds. I remember the dry ground. Listening for tornadoes. Regis and Kathy Lee. Risk. Lucy, the pup I found at a Walmart parking lot in Dallas and brought with me. The house we'd get our yay from. I remember our little family. The people that would look at me in bewilderment, like where are you from boy? The people that would look at her and me together and shake their heads. We were outcasts, both in our own ways. We were hippies becoming.

It was an interim period. A dog-earned page that I often go back to and wonder what it was all about. And I learned about resistance in that house. I survived that which could have yielded heavier consequences. But, the ghosts lived on. Finding the courage to seek and confront myself becoming was the single greatest gift I received on the wings of that psychedelic dragonfly.