MEMORY –
Aug. 4, 2026 – As I approach turning 32 years clean and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, I am reminded of a very special afternoon many years ago when I was Reading Alan Watts in Emily Dickinson’s Front Yard. I was probably high even though I was at a Macrobiotic retreat in Amherst, and my sensei Michio Kushi was adamantly not in favor of smoking pot or hashish. Yet, what a great feeling that magical plant gave me every time I inhaled it into my lungs. Every time! One time in a hotel room in Israel, with my friend Joe Brodsky, we didn’t have a pipe, but we did have a lighter, so we just lit a 200 gram brick of Red Lebanese on fire, and breathed in the smoldering embers after we blew out the flame. We could not not get high, no matter what. Eventually that brick plus two more, ended up in my girdle wrapped in holy land Saran Wrap, under the slacks I was wearing when we flew into Kennedy Airport a week later.
