Chapter 1 

"Playfulness exists to fend off a society that doesn't want the mind to get too far out of hand; so it doesn't divulge too much. And the rest is a sorry tale!" The wonderful Ull told me that. He thought I was the most naive person in the world. He had, so he said, bummed his way through India for two years seeking out dope and masters. "I became a philospher because of scary visions I had that I refuse to believe." At that time there was a flood of refugees, young people, leaving America for distant lands: Marakesh, Katmandu, Bombay, Kyoto and all over Europe. The war and corruption had driven them out, they would return. Ull didn't talk much about his experiences, they folded back into his brain somewhere and waited to be lit up. He was always trying to prove something.

"Look how the women compete! It is a hard thing to watch." He had returned to the US with a belief that American women were as corrupt as the political system, no matter how they feigned shock at its misdeeds. His theory was that woman were pent up power seekers and liberated for the first time their brains licked up the whole structure of power and made it their own. That was the first step, so his theory went.

"You see, there's no wisdom here. In America only the well-made thing is wise. This country is a giant, rolling an inflated ball around in an enormous field grinning madly and childishly at all the intricacies crushed below. And then it sulks and goes mad another way. Wisdom can retract the claws of the animal; the politics in things. Well don't give up on America. It is just something "in you," and you either find out what it is "in you" or else surrender the beauty of it to the sighing thugs. Or else throw ones loyalty in the direction of a rather heinous sort of authoritative state.

"And don't call it soul. That is a discredited word thrown around by nineteen year old singers. It is a mysterious word. What is important are the visions and dreams generated spontaneously within the whats-its-name. It is not a room where items enter identified by desire. What-it-is doesn't like sentimentality and is explicit. In speaking ambiguously about this-thing we defer to its infinite variety. But here is a problem. What-it-is has a long history, it has attained an identity now in service to a will in love with technique and power. The identity sports with that-thing. Ah, the intellect sees its own death and forms images of itself where it can! The other-thing understands eternity and so forms images of past and future!

Men are nuts in this way too: They look down a narrow tunnel when viewing the accomplishments of their ancestors. They repeat mistakes until something rears up out of control like a scientific monster. And once the monster is out there is re-awakened within human beings the "choice that wasn't made." Evil pursues."

Ull always got my attention with some of the things he'd say. We would be in a narrow alley between Telegraph and Haste and he'd blurt something out. We'd watch the kite flyers down on the Marina and he'd pump his theories away at me.

I later discovered he had written a book on how to beat Las Vegas at black jack and had parlayed that into an investment in the porn industry where, according to some, he had made a fortune.

David Eide
January 24, 2014