The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (74 page)

Fulfilling Terence’s directive to bequeath the library to Esalen was the most contentious and stressful challenge I faced. Its resolution turned out to be tragic. The executor of a will has a great deal of power; but that power must be exercised within constraints. The executor’s duty is to carry out the wishes of the deceased as expressed in the will, even if you disagree with those wishes. I felt this tension acutely. I was torn between wanting to do what I felt was right and carrying out the directives of the will that, as the executor, I was bound to do.

I knew there would be problems within a couple of weeks after Terence’s death, when I received a strident and dictatorial document from a lawyer representing the curators Terence had named. The point was to tell me what I was going to do with the library and how the matter would be handled. I thought this was unnecessarily adversarial, as I had every intention of carrying out the directives even though I didn’t agree with them. At the time, the library was under my protection as the executor, along with all assets of the estate. This is standard procedure in probated wills, because if there are liens against the estate, assets may have to be sold to settle the debts. None of the assets of the estate, even those bequeathed to other purposes, are shielded until the obligations are settled. In the case of Terence’s estate, there were liens, primarily because of medical bills, and the possibility existed that some of the more valuable titles in the library would have to be sold off. I had engaged the services of a lawyer by this time, and had instructed her to notify the curators that the library would be released to their curatorship only after probate had been settled. Until then, any and all decisions regarding the assets of the estate were mine to make.

Fate has a way of intervening in unexpected ways, and it did in the case of Terence’s library. As the probate process ground on, I managed to work out an agreement with the curators about when and how to transfer the library to Esalen. The books sat in the house on the Big Island for far too long, but after a time they were packed up and transferred to a storage facility in Kona. The curators and the estate reached an agreement to ship them to the mainland, where they were stored in a space overseen by Esalen in an old building in downtown Monterey. As I’ve noted earlier, the plan had been to store the books there until a new building had been constructed where Terence’s collection, among other works, could be suitably housed.

On the evening of February 7, 2007, a fire broke out in a sub shop on the street level of the building where Terence’s books and personal papers were stored. The flames spread quickly, and Terence’s entire collection was soon lost. I didn’t learn of this tragedy until the next morning when I picked up a voicemail from David Price, who was the son of Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price, and who Terence knew well from his long association with Esalen. Both David and Gordon Wheeler, Esalen’s CEO, were distraught and upset by this disaster, but I assured them that I didn’t consider it their fault. The books were not insured separately from Esalen’s property insurance, so there was no possibility that the family would receive some modest compensation for the loss. The books were stored at the facility on shelves, so technically they were accessible as per the conditions of the bequest. But Terence’s wish, that they be accessible at a site on the Esalen campus in Big Sur, had not been fulfilled.

Although the administrators at Esalen expressed heartfelt regret over this tragedy, I never heard from the curators, a fact that speaks for itself. That Terence lost not one but two irreplaceable and unique libraries to fire—the first in Berkeley in 1970, and the second in 2007—is now part of his life story. It’s a double tragedy. Terence’s friend Erik Davis later posted a moving essay about the loss on his website,
Techgnosis
. So much of Terence’s soul and being was bound up in his library it was almost like a living part of himself. After this fire took that away, irrevocably and forever, I began to feel that he had truly departed this world.

The conflicts that arose over Terence’s will, and the turmoil that created, dragged on for years and caused me great distress. Over the years, and with Betsy’s help, I have achieved a kind of closure with most of those involved. I don’t see any point in nursing old grudges, as they poison mainly the person that holds them, and there is already enough pain associated with Terence’s life, and death, to last the rest of mine. In the end (so I tell myself) we each lived through these difficult times together, and each tried to do the right thing. We differed in our understanding of what that was, but I give those with whom I differed the benefit of the doubt. We may never be close friends, but I will always be grateful for what they did for Terence in his time of need. That makes up for a lot.

Time, in its way, just keeps flowing, no matter how much we might wish it would stop for a moment and let us catch our breath and gaze back along the distance we have traveled. In my story, at least, I have arrived at such a point, and I think I’m going to leave it here. Terence’s departure from the realm of the living on that early April morning of the year 2000 was not really the end of his story, or the end of mine, or the end of our intertwined destinies. A tale such as ours never really ends, any more than it ever really begins; it is a frozen snapshot of an infinitesimal slice of time, pressed between the pages of an expired past and indeterminate future like a dried flower in a weighty tome. We behold it for an instant highlighted by the strobe flash of scrutiny, reflection, and recollection; and then the light moves on, leaving only a fading afterimage in the mind. Finally, even that vanishes into darkness and is gone.

A lot has happened since Terence took his leave just over twelve years ago. During that period, our collective experience of historical time has accelerated in a cascade of staggering events: the hijacked elections of 2000, the attacks on 9/11, wars in the Middle East, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, global financial meltdown, looming environmental collapse, exploding technological change. Terence didn’t live to witness these events, but they would not have surprised him, as a prophet of his times. We are gripped by the intuition that we are heading toward some sort of unimaginable historical singularity; Terence articulated this intuition for us. He envisioned the future in all its terror and promise, and made that vision real for the rest of us. He made us reflect on our existential, cosmic, and historical dilemma; he made us think, he made us laugh, and, most importantly, he gave us hope. It’s for that reason, I believe, that he speaks to us from the past in a voice that rings so true and timely today.

An important part of me died with Terence; nevertheless I soldier on, diminished and damaged but still standing, for how much longer I do not know. At times, my intuition tells me it won’t be that long; at other moments, I feel I could live for decades. If I’ve learned anything from being granted a relatively long life, it’s that the whole point of the exercise is to live and cherish each day as if it were our last. As trite as that sounds, it is a profound truth that requires a lifetime to realize. As a milestone marking a finished leg in life’s journey, the completion of this book is an important one for me. Whether other works will follow I cannot say. But this story is one I have wanted and needed to tell for some time. I know it will be reviled and praised, criticized and mocked, loved and condemned. Trust me; no one is more acutely aware than I am of its serious imperfections. Yet, it’s the best I can manage. It’s a tale told as well as I am able to tell it. Make of it what you will. It’s the tale I set out to tell, and now it is done.

Epilogue

Following Terence’s cremation, his ashes were divided among the important people in his life. Christy and I each got some, and a portion went to Terence’s children. Over the years, those ashes have been scattered in many places, including the Big Island, the Black Canyon, and in Sonoma near where Terence had lived with his wife and children. I had the mortuary send my portion to Aunt Mayme in Paonia for safekeeping, until we could have a memorial there for Terence. That finally took place in the summer of 2001. In a family gathering, we buried most of those ashes alongside our mother and father in Cedar Hill Cemetery, overlooking the valley. I kept a few ounces back, and after the memorial a few of us went camping in Lead King Basin near the headwaters of the Crystal River. I took the mason jar that held the ashes and walked alone along the trail beside the stream a short distance above our camp. I knelt beside the stream in a spot where the current flowed swiftly. I meditated for a few minutes, then removed the lid and poured the ashes into the rushing water.

“Goodbye, Terry,” I said, “now you are free.”

I liked the thought of Terence’s ashes, the last remnants of his mortal substance, mixing with the water and soil and trees of the place where we had spent our childhood. His molecules and atoms will diffuse out into the world from there. Eventually, they might mingle with parts of himself deposited in different places. Eventually, he will be everywhere.

Acknowledgments

The writing of this memoir has consumed more than a year of my life, and it has been an intensely personal, at times emotionally taxing experience. I will always remain grateful for the confluence of circumstances and support from the broad community of friends, family, and fellow travelers that gave me the opportunity to manifest this work in the real world. To borrow a phrase from one of our favorite philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead, the book has now undergone “the formality of actually occurring.” Now that the formality is past, it’s clear that the book never would have happened were it not for a good deal of luck, and the assistance and encouragement of many who participated in the birthing process. It may be my story, but telling that story to the wider world has been a team effort.

First of all, I want to thank those who are closest to my heart, and who have the not always pleasant task of putting up with me from day to day: my wife, Sheila, and my daughter, Caitlin. Their support in this endeavor has been unflagging, and their tolerance of my moods and preoccupations has been more than I have any right to expect. I thank them for generously giving me the space, and time, that writing this book has demanded, and for asking for so little in return. Beyond that, both have contributed to the outcome by reading the manuscript as it has taken form with careful and critical eyes, always making astute suggestions for edits and improvements. Likewise, I want to acknowledge Terence’s family: his ex-wife Kat Harrison, son Finn, and daughter Klea. Their honest feedback and suggestions have made this a better book than it would have been without their valued input. Other members of my family have also been generous in sharing their time, memories, and family treasures, especially old photographs and documents. Memory is such an ephemeral and fragile thing, as I have learned, and their help has been invaluable in my attempts to reconstruct the specifics of names and places, dates and events, of a misty past that is now a bit less so, thanks to them.

In particular, I want to thank my beloved Aunt Tress, my mother’s youngest sister, for those wonderful interviews at her kitchen table in the summer of 2011. I learned so much that I had never known, and it gave me a chance to renew bonds with a favorite aunt that I will always cherish. My other favorite, my dear Aunt Mayme, Mom’s other younger sister, passed away at age ninety-seven while this book was in progress., and I will always love her and remember all that she did for Mom and “the boys” during our long and problematic childhood. I’m so sorry that she did not live to see the outcome of this work; but she has been an inspiration for it nonetheless, and I am grateful to her. I also want to thank her daughters, Judy and Jody, and Judy’s husband, Laddie, for the rich conversations we had in the course of my research, and for the photos and documents that helped me reconstruct the backstory to my account. I thank them also for their hospitality and for always extending a warm welcome to this wayward traveler on my rare visits back to the old hometown. They are the ones who have made this story real, by providing me with a window to the past, and a connection to the family clan that is very much a part of the present and future as well as the past. They remind me that I do have a family on my mother’s side, quite an extensive one, and I am proud to be a part of it.

On my father’s side of the family, I want to thank and acknowledge my Uncle Aut (Austin), or “Mack” as he’s now known, and his wife, Fran. They are my living connection to our father’s family, and all the more beloved and cherished because of that. Aut freely shared his time, recollections, documents, and photos, and helped me to reconstruct our father’s childhood, the life that he shared with his brothers and sister and our paternal grandparents. He also painted a vivid picture of our parents’ lives before and after World War II, a reminder that they were all young once, too, and led rich, full lives long before “Terry and Denny” were anywhere to be seen. Of course, I must acknowledge our parents, Joe and “Hadie” (Hazelle) McKenna, to whom this book is dedicated. They have both been gone for many years now, but I cherish their memory and thank them for providing Terence and me with a loving home and an environment that allowed us to flourish. We gave them fits, more than any parent should have to tolerate, and yet they loved us through it all. It took many years before I fully came to appreciate what extraordinary people they were.

I also want to acknowledge those old friends who knew Terence and me back in the day, and who were kind enough to share their reminiscences. Some are mentioned under pseudonyms in the book, a small gesture to preserve their privacy, but you know who you are. You were there from the early days, and we lived through some crazy times together. Thank you for sharing your stories and more. I am especially grateful to Sara Hartley for kindly allowing the use of her photographs. Thanks also to Terence’s good friend William Patrick Watson for permission to reprint his “shamanic talismanic” poem “Pursuing to Peru the G’nostic Guru” as an appendix to this book. It was the perfect incantation for our quixotic quest then, and it remains so to this day. Thanks also to Jill Wagner for sharing her recollections.