Was I guilty of having been derelict in the performance of my duties? Indeed I was, for I’d left my soul to drown in a sea of unconscious behavior. Having performed a minor miracle, staying on top of all this instinctive behavior, I had yet to rescue her from the clutches of the Great Gray Mother of Instinct. In other words, I had yet to find my way in real life. Because the way I should go remained so unclear to me at the time, I couldn’t hold onto it for very long without its vanishing from my grasp. I had a choice, either I played with my self, that is, I played along with the Navy’s program for me or I played, once again, with my old imaginary or real—depending on how one viewed the matter—childhood playmate, my soul. Whereas I’d made the right choice when I rescued her from the sea in the metaphysical realm, at the same time, I had offended the Great Gray Whore on the physical plane. Indeed, I was beginning to see just how difficult it is to serve two masters.

By means of a simple torpedo had my soul brought home to me not only the threat of death ’n’ destruction, but also the promise of new life. In her own way, had she forced me to rise above my feelings of powerlessness, to stand tall against the raw power of Nature. In other words, she had tricked me into momentarily embracing a whole new approach to life, one in which I could indeed walk on water or at least overcome the severe limitations of a purely instinctive existence.

I saw too, how both my fathers’ spirits had been broken before me. When my real father unwittingly traded his soul to the Great Gray Bitch, she broke him in two, stole his mind, and carried it off to the metaphysical realm where he roams in madness, to this very day, unconsciously trying to find his way out. In the case of my stepfather, who had offered his body to her as cannon fodder in an earnest attempt to die to himself, she snatched up his soul and imprisoned it in a bottle with the spirits of alcohol, who eventually granted him his wish. And though they both found soul in my mother, such solace came as too little, too late, to stave off the fate they had inadvertently bought from the Great Gray Mother with their souls.

So had I inherited from them this tendency to cash in on the same terrible fate. Having given the Great Gray Bitch my body but not my soul, I still had a chance to change my fate before it was signed, sealed and delivered to me in an even more despicable form. For I was not about to live ’n’ die as half a man, or some soulless beast, as had my fathers before me.

Since the physical and the metaphysical were no longer in proper relationship to each other, I started drinking and compulsively having sex with my self. When confronted about my drinking, thank God, I had the fortitude to quit. But I wasn’t able to quit the other as easily, as the solution to this problem alluded my grasp yet.

The problem became so acute only because I’d never been taught by my fathers, or by the religion of my fathers, how to communicate with the metaphysical side of my nature. O, I’d learned how to ask God for things, as if the Almighty were some genie who could grant my every wish. But I was never taught how to listen or what to listen for. In other words, I’d never learned how God communicated with me.

Were the screams I heard, a last ditch effort by the inhabitants of the metaphysical realm to reach me? If so, who were they? What did they want? And did I really wanna know? I did ’n’ I didn’t, because I so greatly feared getting caught up in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo that’d ultimately lead to my own self-destruction.

Just because these experiences take place within the realm of the imaginable doesn’t mean they are any less real than those of the material world. They appear less real only because the truth transcends all dualities such as inner and outer or real and imaginary. In the end, they are no more absurd than our own perceptions of reality to which, of course, they only allude. In that sense, they are much closer to the truth than we realize, for is it not the unstated goal of the experiences of both worlds, to assist us in finding the imaginable hidden within the real, and vice versa, the real hidden within the imaginable?

Instead of finding the fire that burned within, I somehow ignited a small brush fire at my genitals, which threatened to burn out of control, if I didn’t do something quick.

Panicking, I only succeeded in fanning the flames that swiftly consumed me.

“Let go!” commanded the old Indian, from across the void.

“Let go of what?” I demanded to know.

“Let go of the illusion that holds on to you as tightly as you hold on to it,” he replied.

“I don’t know how to do that,” I shouted back.

“You must stand emotionally aloof from the illusion until it begins to dissipate of its own accord,” he responded, “for it is nothing without your participation. Your imagination will then show you the way to go.”

“It’s not working,” I cried out, after I had tried to close my eyes to the illusion instead of trying to disentangle my emotions from it.

“O yea of little faith,” he muttered. “Look around you.”

Opening my eyes, I watched with amazement as the last of the fire died out, for I’d inadvertently allowed the old Indian to distract me from the fire of my desires, long enough, to keep me from fueling it with my emotions. The more I let go of the illusion and refocused my attention elsewhere, the faster the whole scene changed of its own accord, exactly as he had said it would. So did I, with the climax of yet another daydream, suddenly find my self seated at a table in a small European-type cafe, opposite my soul who had just ordered tea for the two of us, from a waiter whom I immediately recognized as the old Indian.

As I cringed with embarrassment over my handling of this last affair, she laughed. “I see you’ve already met my father,” she concluded.

“Good morning,” said the old Indian.

And for lack of anything better to say, I wished ‘m the same.

“You’re late,” booms out a voice from somewhere across the threshold of consciousness as I step forth from the looking-glass world of my soul to greet the only defense I have, a legal adviser of my own ilk willing to take on Uncle Sam’s lieutenants for the sake of the soul alone.

“Have you rewritten your statement?” he asks as I enter the courtroom to be judged, this time around, on the grounds of my own being instead of theirs.

“I have,” I respond with a big grin on my face, “to more accurately reflect what has taken place inside me over the past two years.”

“Good,” he replies.

With that, in bursts the recorder–or lawyer for the Navy–like a steam engine from the judge’s chamber. As the five officers, who will decide my fate, file past ‘m, like empty boxcars, to take up their predisposed positions on this lonesome freight, he commands the real E. J. Drury to please stand up.

Not until the only ear on the whole damn train, the court reporter in the caboose, has set herself up to record all this gibberish, am I told to be seated by the senior member of the board, a throwback to prehistoric times named Fitzgibbons.

As he swings from one limb to another in my mind’s eye, like some great tailless ape does he convene the hearing.

SENIOR MEMBER: This hearing will come to order. This hearing convened in the General Court Martial Room of the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District, U.S. Naval Station, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in accordance with the Commanding Officer, USS Goldsborough DDG-20, appointing order serial 603 dated 4 November 1968. The appointed members of the board are all present.

The board convened at 0927 hours, 7 November 1968.

FR Drury is the respondent in this hearing and will be referred to as such throughout these proceedings.

Mr. Brook Hart will represent the respondent.

As this great ape swung past the court reporter to introduce us all to the recorder, another tailless ape of less rank named Gleason, I fell victim to my own thoughts about my defense.

An attorney admitted to practice before the Bar of New York and Hawaii, this young and impeccably dressed upstart had been retained by the Hawaii Resistance to defend me, one among a growing clientele of young revolutionaries refusing to cooperate with either the military or the draft. Even though he, himself, had not evolved that far, he adamantly defended those who like myself had. For he still believed that the legal system protected such rights as conscientious objection, or at least afforded redress when these rights were trampled upon by the old evolutionary order. And because he believed that the law could change the attitudes of these Neanderthals, that courtroom drama could transform their hearts, he was forever encouraging me to operate within the framework of the law.

As I begin to wonder what effect, if any, I will have on these Neanderthals today, I am pulled back into this charade by way of an inquiry from the leader of this pack of tailless apes.

I saw to, how both my fathers’ spirits had been broken before me. When my real father unwittingly traded his soul to the Great Gray Bitch, she broke him in two, stole his mind, and carried it off to the metaphysical realm where he roamed in madness, until the day he died, unconsciously trying to find his way out. In the case of my stepfather, who had offered his body to her as cannon fodder in an earnest attempt to die to himself, she snatched up his soul and imprisoned it in a bottle with the spirits of alcohol, who eventually granted him his wish. And though they both found soul in my mother, such solace came as too little, too late, to stave off the fate they had inadvertently bought from the Great Gray Mother with their souls.

Were the screams I heard, a last ditch effort by the inhabitants of the metaphysical realm to reach me? If so, who were they? What did they want? And did I really want to know? I did and I didn’t, because I so greatly feared getting caught up in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo that would ultimately lead to my own self-destruction.