I am a blue blood and was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. There is a
wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art donated by a member of my family.
At the time of this story I was a mild
mannered 45-year-old with a wife of twenty years and a daughter finishing high
school. I was a square, monogamous, clean-shaven guy with a 4,500 square foot
house in Pennsylvania and four cars.
Then I got a contract to work as a consultant at a hospital in
New York City.
After work I used to wander around the city. I felt like a guest in the world
until I wandered into the East Village. Suddenly I realized that this was home.
So I
began to sublet places in the neighborhood and would stay there while I was in
town on business. I was trying to break out of my childhood of super achievement
and this seemed like the place to do it. The bloom was off the rose in my marriage. I
felt like I had found my people in the East Village and had started painting my finger
nails and toe nails and had pierced my ear. This new side of me scared my wife and
we had a traumatic break up.
One day I was looking for a place to work on my laptop and wandered into a
bar that had the unusual (for the time) combination of power outlets and free WiFi. I started
hanging out there regularly, learning through the music they played, the tequila they
drank, the stories they told. This bar and the bartenders who worked there became
a family and a home for me as I broke up with my wife. And that’s where I met her.
She was a beautiful bartender in her mid 20s with dirty blonde hair and gorgeous
eyes. She was the girl I always wanted to sleep with in high school. She was a
cheerleader, a California hippie and a ghetto street hustler from New Orleans. She
was a ball player. I wrote my PhD thesis with three Nobel Laureates and they are no
match for her. She was a pro and I didn’t know what I was in for, but I sure as hell wanted in.
I sat at the bar during her shifts and slowly fell in love with her. One rainy
afternoon she played Electric Ladyland. The entire album. I loved it and sang every song to her. After that day I
always called her the Electric Lady. I gave other people at the bar nick names too and it wasn’t long before they gave me one, Hippie Lou. I started using this nick name and it
was like trying on a new persona.
I wanted to take my old self, put it all on a barge
and cut the rope.
One day Electric Lady invited me to a party. I was new to this world so didn’t
fully understand the significance of crossing this line, of seeing a bartender socially.
We met at a bar beforehand and she bought me a drink, then we went to the party
together. We left together. And everyone thought we were together.
Electric Lady
was a risk taker. I studied evolutionary biology and I believe that women are
smarter and more evolved than men. They can sense and smell things. They have
the satellite dish and we men have a bent coat hanger. They have bridge building skills,
they can barter. The one thing they are perhaps a little short on is the risk taking. They have to take care of
the kids so they don’t bet everything on red in Vegas.
But there is a shift happening in the new generation of women and the Electric Lady knew how to take a risk. She was hitting me over the head
with a club and was going to take me back to her cave.
When I realized that she
wanted to get it on with me I went into turtle mode. I’m a romantic, I’m old
fashioned. I was afraid that she was a Siren, in the sense of the Odyssey, and if I slept with her she would sail me
into the rocks. So I didn't close the deal. In fact, I was so petrified, I didn't even open the deal.
There was no room for fear in Electric Lady's world. She put me in a car service and before
the door had even closed she was dialing her boyfriend. She had already moved on.
We did this dance for many years. I loved her, she dangled the carrot, I got
shy and ran away.
It looked like this: I started dating another girl, got
divorced and had to sell everything for spousal support, she broke up with her
boyfriend, I broke up with my girlfriend, she got married to someone else, I got
locked up in the psych ward, she didn’t visit me, I got angry and was kicked out of
the bar, she had a kid, I was diagnosed with manic depression, burned some bridges,
had my house foreclosed on, moved out of the city, she moved out of the city, I
worked my way back in again, she asked me to visit, I got arrested, we made
amends.
We’re still in touch and I’m still in love with her. It’s written in the stars that
we will connect. I know it’s going to happen. I think we’re going to get it on and the
day it does happen I will probably turn into a light beam and ascend into the galaxy.
Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland?
Saturday, July 8, 2017
that hug :) xo
I had this coffee shop bookmarked for a long time and was excited to try it for the first time. This is my first Yelp review, because I've never before felt so strongly about a food place that I felt compelled to review it. This is an unfortunate exception.
The incredibly rude, verbally violent response that the owner, Jaime, gave me and my friend was absolutely uncalled for. We bought coffee and sat down, prepared to drink coffee with some bagels we had brought in from outside to have a nice breakfast. There are no signs that say you cannot eat outside food - we had no idea. But the first thing the owner did without warning was come from behind us, and yell and curse at us angrily. Shaken, we put the bagels back into the bag.
We sat for a while, uncertain what to do, because I get really shaky and light-headed when I drink coffee without food. After sipping some more of our coffee drinks, we tentatively pulled the bagels out of the bag again and put them in front of us. We didn't start eating them, still feeling uneasy about that previous yelling, but didn't know what to do because we still had all this coffee to finish that we couldn't take with us (because they were in nice glass cups) to eat our food outside of the shop. [We were certainly not trying to be bad customers - I even brought my laptop with the intention of doing work, but seeing that no laptops were allowed, I scratched that plan.]
Immediately, the owner stormed over, grabbed both our coffee drinks from our table, spilling them on the table and splashing us with drops of latte, and dumped them at the counter. He was screaming at us, "GET OUT. Never show your faces here again. I know your faces. You're banned from here forever." (not that we ever would come back, so that was quite a useless display of power). Then he threw $7 at us, threw my friend's bagel outside, and left. His staff then told us again that we needed to leave, with no apology, as if this kind of behavior is acceptable.
In short, if we were white men, instead of Asian women, this likely would have not occurred. The verbal violence that the owner Jaime displayed towards us could undoubtedly have escalated to physical violence, and left both of us shaken.
The incredibly rude, verbally violent response that the owner, Jaime, gave me and my friend was absolutely uncalled for. We bought coffee and sat down, prepared to drink coffee with some bagels we had brought in from outside to have a nice breakfast. There are no signs that say you cannot eat outside food - we had no idea. But the first thing the owner did without warning was come from behind us, and yell and curse at us angrily. Shaken, we put the bagels back into the bag.
We sat for a while, uncertain what to do, because I get really shaky and light-headed when I drink coffee without food. After sipping some more of our coffee drinks, we tentatively pulled the bagels out of the bag again and put them in front of us. We didn't start eating them, still feeling uneasy about that previous yelling, but didn't know what to do because we still had all this coffee to finish that we couldn't take with us (because they were in nice glass cups) to eat our food outside of the shop. [We were certainly not trying to be bad customers - I even brought my laptop with the intention of doing work, but seeing that no laptops were allowed, I scratched that plan.]
Immediately, the owner stormed over, grabbed both our coffee drinks from our table, spilling them on the table and splashing us with drops of latte, and dumped them at the counter. He was screaming at us, "GET OUT. Never show your faces here again. I know your faces. You're banned from here forever." (not that we ever would come back, so that was quite a useless display of power). Then he threw $7 at us, threw my friend's bagel outside, and left. His staff then told us again that we needed to leave, with no apology, as if this kind of behavior is acceptable.
In short, if we were white men, instead of Asian women, this likely would have not occurred. The verbal violence that the owner Jaime displayed towards us could undoubtedly have escalated to physical violence, and left both of us shaken.
until the exigencies of spring tide come.
Well, the day is finally here. Me, facing pen and paper, tasked with writing the story of my life. Strangely enough, it is something I have been working on ever since 2008; ever since I blew up my life and moved to the east village. Framing it, reframing it; matching it up to the data; the memories of the actions of myself and others; events, facts, scraps, feelings; pain, euphoria, guilt, shame, and pride; my life.
I have worked so hard on the story of my life because I believe it to be the wormhole to my next life; the lily pad on which I can travel from one side of the pond to the other. All I can say is that I think of almost nothing else. How was my story influenced by myself, the people around me, the institutions of my times – my nuclear family, the government, schools, corporations, society and civilization; the constructs, the mores, the social architecture in which I roamed? I believe these questions to be of the utmost importance, and to the extent that I can answer them I can be useful to myself in the years remaining; perhaps be useful to others around me; and perhaps, ever so slightly, I can be useful to the world at large.
I also hope that my story might be a useful aid for loved ones in my life so that they might have a better understanding of the motivations for my actions and my mindset at the time. This improved understanding might be put to use in their own lives, and may encourage a dialogue that improves and deepens our collective understanding; and ultimately our connection to one another and to the world at large.
Principal among these loved ones is my daughter Kaisha, who has suffered greatly from circumstances beyond her control and no fault of her own. The extent to which she can see her suffering in the context of a greater suffering might be a useful key with which she can unlock the secret of life – that life is suffering, but within that suffering is contained meaning, purpose, and ultimately, great joy.
I was dropped off by a stork, or so I was told, on October 18, 1962 in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. It was the dawn of a new age in American society – Camelot, it was called, a reference to the honor and nobility of King Arthur’s court. Led by the youngest person ever elected to the office of the Presidency, it was a time of great hope for the country and the world. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he said – “ask what you can do for your country.” It was a decade of exploring new frontiers, space -- “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” he said.
At the exact moment of my birth, the world was the closest it has ever been – so far as we know – to nuclear holocaust. The Cuban missile crisis was in full swing, and was avoided in large part by Robert Kennedy’s argument that there was no moral justification for a preemptive strike on Cuba. The crisis ended up being solved through peaceful means, through diplomacy.
Eerily enough, I share the birth date – October 18th -- with the man who brought Camelot crashing down. Lee Harvey Oswald, who I believe was an earnest man dissatisfied with the state of the world and his position in it, was seeking a path towards a better tomorrow. It is unclear whether he acted alone or allowed himself to be used by others, but he ultimately expressed himself through violent means, to the detriment of himself, to others, and to the world.
It was into this soil that a young David Leslie Webster was planted, and I absorbed both elements -- great potential for creation and positive change but also the potential for life-altering destruction. Those elements are still within me.
One of the two gardeners to which I was entrusted was also a product of the turbulence of her times. My mother, Marion Havas, was 13 years old when Nazi Germany invaded Hungary in March, 1944. Although christened and raised Catholic, she wore the Jewish star and by some miracle – most probably several -- escaped deportation. Almost half of those murdered in Auschwitz were the approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews gassed during a ten week period in 1944. I am here today because my mother somehow missed the most inhumane one-way train in human history.
To add insult to injury, my mother could not attend University after the Russians took control of Hungary, due to the fact that her family had been wealthy. In another harrowing experience, she had to risk life and limb to cross the border and leave the country she loved with all her heart. I don’t think she ever got over the loss.
The second gardener, my father, Henry de Forest Webster, grew up with turbulence of a different sort. His father was a world famous scientist who died suddenly when my father was 16. My father worshiped his father, and spent his entire life trying to measure up to his father’s unreachable professional accomplishments. It would be like Michael Jackson’s children trying to duplicate their father’s achievements – an exercise in futility.
My father also was competing against ghosts of a different sort – his ancestors on his mother’s side of the family. One of them is John Taylor Johnston, the founder of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another is Jesse de Forest, the settler who sought and received permission from the Dutch to establish the colony of New Amsterdam, which is present day New York City. Because of the intermarriage of wealthy and influential members of New York society, the list goes on and on. My father felt a tremendous obligation to his legacy – to act in a manner befitting these “noble” ancestors.
These two gardeners had simple expectations for their five seedlings. We were to be obedient and respectful. We were to be seen and not heard. There would be no back talk, no sass. We had one job, and that was to excel at everything we did. This job was not to be questioned. Most importantly, we would excel at school. We would get excellent grades; get into excellent schools; get excellent jobs. We would work hard, and then we would work harder. We would set unachievable goals, and then we would achieve them. We would accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. We would become valued and esteemed members of the status quo. In a status quo garden with a bunch of other status quo plants just like us. And the garden would be beautiful, and all the gardener’s friends and family would marvel at their skill as gardeners. And the plants would be safe and secure and strong, ready to bear fruit and seeds of the highest quality. And all would be good in the world.
The story of my life is the struggle of being raised in this garden and my search for more suitable ones.
My first clue that the garden of my youth might be suspect was the brutality of the environment in which I was raised. My parents enforced their formula for success primarily through fear and violence. I lived at the end of a long hallway, with my sister’s room at the head of the stairs. I remember hearing the door close as my mother arrived home – she would first go to my sister’s room…I listened intently…if there was one thing out of order – something my sister had forgotten to do, some unsatisfactory result at school, something in her room out of place – anything, I would hear my sister cry out. I knew she had either been slapped or was having her hair pulled. My brother’s room was next. I racked my brain in absolute terror, thinking of every possible thing my mother might use as an excuse to hit me. It was not a good feeling.
School provided little relief as well. In fourth grade I broke my arm falling in the school hallway. I later learned someone had pushed me from behind. Groups of boys often waited for me after school or after class to beat me up, give me a wedgie, or, on one unfortunate occasion, lock me under the stage in the school auditorium. Hearing the bell ring for the end of class was often for me the worst sound in the world.
I caught other early glimpses of the inhumanity of the status quo. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. People in the neighborhood used to hire housekeepers who were predominantly black or Hispanic. The housekeepers used to stand at bus stops, waiting for the bus to take them back to Washington, D.C. after a hard day’s work. Boys on my school bus used to open the windows and spit on them as the bus went by. It was horrible.
At 16 I was off to Amherst College and got my first exposure to drugs. They played an important role in my life – releasing me from the grip of a stultifying, shy, earnest personality that had been the hallmark of my youth. Under enormous pressure to perform, I did not have the balance in my early life to develop the social skills and the social confidence of my peers. I liked psychedelics; I dropped acid and realized I was utilizing only 1/100th of the power of my brain. I heard the bewitching tones of Jerry Garcia’s guitar for the first time. My life was never the same.
At 18 I dropped out of college, telling my parents that a career, any career, was not for me. In my words, “I would be missing out on too much in life.” I became a bicycle messenger, met my future wife Pam, and at the age of 21 ended up in a mental institution, misdiagnosed with drug-induced psychosis. My father went to court and became guardian of my person and property. I chose not to fight him.
Age 22 - I go back to college, then to the University of Chicago’s Ph.D. program in economics. Age 26 - Pam gets pregnant, my daughter Kaisha is born. I call my parents to report the good news; silence on the other end of the line. Pam and I get married. We are excommunicated from my family. Kaisha is never acknowledged by my parents as their grandchild.
Age 35, receive Ph.D. Age 37, start consulting company. Age 43, do the global pricing strategy for Merck’s HPV vaccine. Age 44, process of profound disillusionment with my professional and personal life accelerates. Feel like I’m making no difference in the world. Setting a poor example for Kaisha by not doing what I love to do, not being who I am. Age 45, move out of the family home, move to the east village, close my business. Receive the nickname hippie lou in a bar on 1st avenue. I like the name. I identify with hippies, who I feel are peaceful. Loving. Not materialistic. Experimental. They question things. They are people of conscience. I start using the name.
Age 46. File for divorce. Run out of money. Lose my east village apartment. Begin a six year run living off the kindness of strangers. Pam awarded $7,500 a month in spousal support. I appeal, showing judge I have no money and no income. Appeal denied. Age 47. In arrears for spousal support, called into court on monthly basis. Have a manic episode, hospitalized involuntarily at Bellevue Hospital for 13 days. Given proper diagnosis of manic depression. Appear day after Bellevue discharge in Pennsylvania court. No relief from the judge. Fail to appear the following month. Bench warrant issued for my arrest. Driver’s license revoked.
My former girlfriend Meral educates herself on mental illness and helps me realize that I have manic depression; she cares for me over the next five years as I go through the long process of coming to terms with my condition. At Meral’s invitation, I join the Mood Disorders Support Group. Start attending weekly meetings after hearing the facilitator of the first group meeting say “recovery is possible.”
Age 48. Lose family home to foreclosure. Bank account closed by IRS. Arrested for first time in my life, spend five weeks on Riker’s Island. Age 49. My girlfriend Iraida inspires me by telling me “your heart is generous and your mind is gorgeous. Make something beautiful of your life.”
Age 50. Enter Chemical Dependency Outpatient Program at Bellevue Hospital. Start working with a talented counselor who really gets me, who really puts the care in “health care.” With several friends, start a “Magic Monday” weekly support group, focusing on acknowledging and utilizing the magic in our lives.
Invited to accompany Magic Monday member/Broadway performer Robin Baxter in her one-woman show on the experience of living with manic depression. We are subsequently invited to perform at AIDs benefits, church benefits, and an awards ceremony honoring the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Age 51. Enter the 50th class of the Educational Outreach Program at Catholic Charities, but not without first expressing concerns to the Program Director about what I perceive to be the unpleasant parts of the program. Without batting an eyelash, said Program Director sets up a quandary for me. If offered a plate with two things on it - steak (which I like) and broccoli (which I dislike), would I push the plate away? As you can see by my presence here today, I was no match for Miss K.
I actually wasn’t sure if I was going to be here tonight. Last Friday, a dear friend asked me to come with her to Chicago to help out with her 22 year-old daughter, who is experiencing a good measure of what I’ll generously refer to as “life turbulence.” In so many ways, I could see elements of my life in my friend’s daughter’s life. Also, through my efforts to understand my parent’s experience with me, I believe I also understood what my friend was going through as well. I think my presence in Chicago helped everyone in some small way. Here it was -- my life story in action – I was using it to help others! It was a magical experience and one I hope to have the opportunity to repeat many times.
As I returned home from Chicago last night, I had another experience that I consider to be providential. Sometime around midnight, well after I had fallen asleep, my daughter sent me a text message. She doesn’t send them to me that often. It said, simply, good night with a <3.
It was if somewhere, somehow, she knew that my decision to leave her Mom was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. That if I knew then what I know now I could have been a much more kind and compassionate person. That I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering everyone has experienced over the last eight years. And perhaps somewhere, somehow, Kaisha understands that we’re all still inextricably connected and hopefully one day will all be collectively better off for our respective journeys.
I’m in a new garden now. The old me is dead and planted in new soil, and I feel so humbled and privileged and grateful to be amongst you all. I’m in a garden with my values, not someone else’s values for me. A garden with my goals, not someone else’s goals for me. A garden with my lifestyle, not someone else’s lifestyle for me. The form of my life follows the function of my life. This is not just a nice idea. When form does not follow function in my life, I get sick; both literally and figuratively. I know this now.
A few years ago, I came across a line of poetry from Petofi Sandor, the great Hungarian revolutionary and poet. It reads, “You cannot bid the flower not bloom, it thrives; when, on mild zephyr’s wing, the spring arrives.” After reading this line I had an epiphany. I realized that no matter what the circumstances of my life or the judgments of the people around me, this flower will bloom.
So my life is spring again, and in this garden, I know the harvest will be bountiful, and the seeds enduring.
Thank you very much.
I have worked so hard on the story of my life because I believe it to be the wormhole to my next life; the lily pad on which I can travel from one side of the pond to the other. All I can say is that I think of almost nothing else. How was my story influenced by myself, the people around me, the institutions of my times – my nuclear family, the government, schools, corporations, society and civilization; the constructs, the mores, the social architecture in which I roamed? I believe these questions to be of the utmost importance, and to the extent that I can answer them I can be useful to myself in the years remaining; perhaps be useful to others around me; and perhaps, ever so slightly, I can be useful to the world at large.
I also hope that my story might be a useful aid for loved ones in my life so that they might have a better understanding of the motivations for my actions and my mindset at the time. This improved understanding might be put to use in their own lives, and may encourage a dialogue that improves and deepens our collective understanding; and ultimately our connection to one another and to the world at large.
Principal among these loved ones is my daughter Kaisha, who has suffered greatly from circumstances beyond her control and no fault of her own. The extent to which she can see her suffering in the context of a greater suffering might be a useful key with which she can unlock the secret of life – that life is suffering, but within that suffering is contained meaning, purpose, and ultimately, great joy.
I was dropped off by a stork, or so I was told, on October 18, 1962 in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. It was the dawn of a new age in American society – Camelot, it was called, a reference to the honor and nobility of King Arthur’s court. Led by the youngest person ever elected to the office of the Presidency, it was a time of great hope for the country and the world. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he said – “ask what you can do for your country.” It was a decade of exploring new frontiers, space -- “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” he said.
At the exact moment of my birth, the world was the closest it has ever been – so far as we know – to nuclear holocaust. The Cuban missile crisis was in full swing, and was avoided in large part by Robert Kennedy’s argument that there was no moral justification for a preemptive strike on Cuba. The crisis ended up being solved through peaceful means, through diplomacy.
Eerily enough, I share the birth date – October 18th -- with the man who brought Camelot crashing down. Lee Harvey Oswald, who I believe was an earnest man dissatisfied with the state of the world and his position in it, was seeking a path towards a better tomorrow. It is unclear whether he acted alone or allowed himself to be used by others, but he ultimately expressed himself through violent means, to the detriment of himself, to others, and to the world.
It was into this soil that a young David Leslie Webster was planted, and I absorbed both elements -- great potential for creation and positive change but also the potential for life-altering destruction. Those elements are still within me.
One of the two gardeners to which I was entrusted was also a product of the turbulence of her times. My mother, Marion Havas, was 13 years old when Nazi Germany invaded Hungary in March, 1944. Although christened and raised Catholic, she wore the Jewish star and by some miracle – most probably several -- escaped deportation. Almost half of those murdered in Auschwitz were the approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews gassed during a ten week period in 1944. I am here today because my mother somehow missed the most inhumane one-way train in human history.
To add insult to injury, my mother could not attend University after the Russians took control of Hungary, due to the fact that her family had been wealthy. In another harrowing experience, she had to risk life and limb to cross the border and leave the country she loved with all her heart. I don’t think she ever got over the loss.
The second gardener, my father, Henry de Forest Webster, grew up with turbulence of a different sort. His father was a world famous scientist who died suddenly when my father was 16. My father worshiped his father, and spent his entire life trying to measure up to his father’s unreachable professional accomplishments. It would be like Michael Jackson’s children trying to duplicate their father’s achievements – an exercise in futility.
My father also was competing against ghosts of a different sort – his ancestors on his mother’s side of the family. One of them is John Taylor Johnston, the founder of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another is Jesse de Forest, the settler who sought and received permission from the Dutch to establish the colony of New Amsterdam, which is present day New York City. Because of the intermarriage of wealthy and influential members of New York society, the list goes on and on. My father felt a tremendous obligation to his legacy – to act in a manner befitting these “noble” ancestors.
These two gardeners had simple expectations for their five seedlings. We were to be obedient and respectful. We were to be seen and not heard. There would be no back talk, no sass. We had one job, and that was to excel at everything we did. This job was not to be questioned. Most importantly, we would excel at school. We would get excellent grades; get into excellent schools; get excellent jobs. We would work hard, and then we would work harder. We would set unachievable goals, and then we would achieve them. We would accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. We would become valued and esteemed members of the status quo. In a status quo garden with a bunch of other status quo plants just like us. And the garden would be beautiful, and all the gardener’s friends and family would marvel at their skill as gardeners. And the plants would be safe and secure and strong, ready to bear fruit and seeds of the highest quality. And all would be good in the world.
The story of my life is the struggle of being raised in this garden and my search for more suitable ones.
My first clue that the garden of my youth might be suspect was the brutality of the environment in which I was raised. My parents enforced their formula for success primarily through fear and violence. I lived at the end of a long hallway, with my sister’s room at the head of the stairs. I remember hearing the door close as my mother arrived home – she would first go to my sister’s room…I listened intently…if there was one thing out of order – something my sister had forgotten to do, some unsatisfactory result at school, something in her room out of place – anything, I would hear my sister cry out. I knew she had either been slapped or was having her hair pulled. My brother’s room was next. I racked my brain in absolute terror, thinking of every possible thing my mother might use as an excuse to hit me. It was not a good feeling.
School provided little relief as well. In fourth grade I broke my arm falling in the school hallway. I later learned someone had pushed me from behind. Groups of boys often waited for me after school or after class to beat me up, give me a wedgie, or, on one unfortunate occasion, lock me under the stage in the school auditorium. Hearing the bell ring for the end of class was often for me the worst sound in the world.
I caught other early glimpses of the inhumanity of the status quo. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. People in the neighborhood used to hire housekeepers who were predominantly black or Hispanic. The housekeepers used to stand at bus stops, waiting for the bus to take them back to Washington, D.C. after a hard day’s work. Boys on my school bus used to open the windows and spit on them as the bus went by. It was horrible.
At 16 I was off to Amherst College and got my first exposure to drugs. They played an important role in my life – releasing me from the grip of a stultifying, shy, earnest personality that had been the hallmark of my youth. Under enormous pressure to perform, I did not have the balance in my early life to develop the social skills and the social confidence of my peers. I liked psychedelics; I dropped acid and realized I was utilizing only 1/100th of the power of my brain. I heard the bewitching tones of Jerry Garcia’s guitar for the first time. My life was never the same.
At 18 I dropped out of college, telling my parents that a career, any career, was not for me. In my words, “I would be missing out on too much in life.” I became a bicycle messenger, met my future wife Pam, and at the age of 21 ended up in a mental institution, misdiagnosed with drug-induced psychosis. My father went to court and became guardian of my person and property. I chose not to fight him.
Age 22 - I go back to college, then to the University of Chicago’s Ph.D. program in economics. Age 26 - Pam gets pregnant, my daughter Kaisha is born. I call my parents to report the good news; silence on the other end of the line. Pam and I get married. We are excommunicated from my family. Kaisha is never acknowledged by my parents as their grandchild.
Age 35, receive Ph.D. Age 37, start consulting company. Age 43, do the global pricing strategy for Merck’s HPV vaccine. Age 44, process of profound disillusionment with my professional and personal life accelerates. Feel like I’m making no difference in the world. Setting a poor example for Kaisha by not doing what I love to do, not being who I am. Age 45, move out of the family home, move to the east village, close my business. Receive the nickname hippie lou in a bar on 1st avenue. I like the name. I identify with hippies, who I feel are peaceful. Loving. Not materialistic. Experimental. They question things. They are people of conscience. I start using the name.
Age 46. File for divorce. Run out of money. Lose my east village apartment. Begin a six year run living off the kindness of strangers. Pam awarded $7,500 a month in spousal support. I appeal, showing judge I have no money and no income. Appeal denied. Age 47. In arrears for spousal support, called into court on monthly basis. Have a manic episode, hospitalized involuntarily at Bellevue Hospital for 13 days. Given proper diagnosis of manic depression. Appear day after Bellevue discharge in Pennsylvania court. No relief from the judge. Fail to appear the following month. Bench warrant issued for my arrest. Driver’s license revoked.
My former girlfriend Meral educates herself on mental illness and helps me realize that I have manic depression; she cares for me over the next five years as I go through the long process of coming to terms with my condition. At Meral’s invitation, I join the Mood Disorders Support Group. Start attending weekly meetings after hearing the facilitator of the first group meeting say “recovery is possible.”
Age 48. Lose family home to foreclosure. Bank account closed by IRS. Arrested for first time in my life, spend five weeks on Riker’s Island. Age 49. My girlfriend Iraida inspires me by telling me “your heart is generous and your mind is gorgeous. Make something beautiful of your life.”
Age 50. Enter Chemical Dependency Outpatient Program at Bellevue Hospital. Start working with a talented counselor who really gets me, who really puts the care in “health care.” With several friends, start a “Magic Monday” weekly support group, focusing on acknowledging and utilizing the magic in our lives.
Invited to accompany Magic Monday member/Broadway performer Robin Baxter in her one-woman show on the experience of living with manic depression. We are subsequently invited to perform at AIDs benefits, church benefits, and an awards ceremony honoring the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Age 51. Enter the 50th class of the Educational Outreach Program at Catholic Charities, but not without first expressing concerns to the Program Director about what I perceive to be the unpleasant parts of the program. Without batting an eyelash, said Program Director sets up a quandary for me. If offered a plate with two things on it - steak (which I like) and broccoli (which I dislike), would I push the plate away? As you can see by my presence here today, I was no match for Miss K.
I actually wasn’t sure if I was going to be here tonight. Last Friday, a dear friend asked me to come with her to Chicago to help out with her 22 year-old daughter, who is experiencing a good measure of what I’ll generously refer to as “life turbulence.” In so many ways, I could see elements of my life in my friend’s daughter’s life. Also, through my efforts to understand my parent’s experience with me, I believe I also understood what my friend was going through as well. I think my presence in Chicago helped everyone in some small way. Here it was -- my life story in action – I was using it to help others! It was a magical experience and one I hope to have the opportunity to repeat many times.
As I returned home from Chicago last night, I had another experience that I consider to be providential. Sometime around midnight, well after I had fallen asleep, my daughter sent me a text message. She doesn’t send them to me that often. It said, simply, good night with a <3.
It was if somewhere, somehow, she knew that my decision to leave her Mom was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. That if I knew then what I know now I could have been a much more kind and compassionate person. That I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering everyone has experienced over the last eight years. And perhaps somewhere, somehow, Kaisha understands that we’re all still inextricably connected and hopefully one day will all be collectively better off for our respective journeys.
I’m in a new garden now. The old me is dead and planted in new soil, and I feel so humbled and privileged and grateful to be amongst you all. I’m in a garden with my values, not someone else’s values for me. A garden with my goals, not someone else’s goals for me. A garden with my lifestyle, not someone else’s lifestyle for me. The form of my life follows the function of my life. This is not just a nice idea. When form does not follow function in my life, I get sick; both literally and figuratively. I know this now.
A few years ago, I came across a line of poetry from Petofi Sandor, the great Hungarian revolutionary and poet. It reads, “You cannot bid the flower not bloom, it thrives; when, on mild zephyr’s wing, the spring arrives.” After reading this line I had an epiphany. I realized that no matter what the circumstances of my life or the judgments of the people around me, this flower will bloom.
So my life is spring again, and in this garden, I know the harvest will be bountiful, and the seeds enduring.
Thank you very much.
about dr. {robert} london.
Robert London MD is a renowned psychiatrist, educator, and writer known for his ability to translate complex medical concepts into accessible information and practical strategies for general audiences and mental health professionals alike. Through his appearances on television, radio, in print, and online, he aims to push the door to the psychiatrist’s office wide open so people can talk freely about their mental health concerns—without shame or fear. Dr. London delivers a message of hope and optimism to the thousands of people he’s treated, and passionately believes that many people with mental health conditions can achieve significant improvement or total relief. What’s more, it doesn’t have to take years in therapy.
Dr. London has been a practicing physician/psychiatrist for more than three decades. For 20 years he developed and ran the short-term psychotherapy unit at the NYU Langone Medical Center, where he specialized and developed a number of short term cognitive therapy techniques. He also offers his expertise as a consulting psychiatrist at the Institute for Family Health. A specialist in behavior modification and the various cognitive psychotherapies, Dr. London is widely known for an innovative approach he developed, the Learning, Philosophizing, and Action (LPA) technique.
A prolific writer, Dr. London has penned dozens of articles and columns and has appeared in many publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American Medical Association; Glamour; and On the Avenue, the late NYC cultural magazine, for which he wrote a regular medical column during the 1980s. Throughout the ‘80s he was also medical editor for Long Island’s Boulevard magazine and wrote its popular “In Your Health” column. Dr. London is best known as the long-time author of “The Psychiatrist’s Toolbox,” a nationally distributed monthly column in Clinical Psychiatry News, which is now circulated online and sold around the globe by Elsevier wire service. He continues to be an editorial contributor to Clinical Psychiatry News.
Dr. London is a media veteran who was host of his own consumer-oriented health care radio program during the 1970s, which was syndicated nationally. In the 1980s he created “Evening with the Doctors,” a three-hour town hall–style meeting for nonmedical audiences—the forerunner to today’s TV show The Doctors. Over the years he has appeared on Good Morning America, Live At Five, Eyewitness News, Good Day New York, the Cable Health Network, and has been quoted extensively in The New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Business Week, and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
He’s an engaging and lively speaker whose presentations feature helpful strategies for patients as well as their therapists. Apart from being the creator of the LPA technique, Dr. London is a leading expert in both hypnosis and short-term therapy. A sought-after lecturer, keynote speaker, and seminar leader, he sheds new light on a myriad of short-term therapies for conquering fears and phobias (e.g., fear of flying, dentists, elevators); managing PTSD, OCD, and other anxiety disorders; overcoming Peter Pan complex and other personality disorders; and improving depression.
His newest work in progress is Feel Better Fast, a self-help book for people seeking practical, short-term, therapeutic strategies to deal with stress, anxiety, phobias, and obsessions and compulsions that interfere with successful living and happiness. Drawing on three decades of clinical experience, Dr. London’s forthcoming book introduces the Learning, Philosophizing, and Action (LPA) method to readers and shows them how to avoid wasting precious time and money on talk therapy that often takes too long to work—or may not work at all.
He lives in New York City and has two adult sons, one a product liability attorney and the other a director of client service at an International phamaceutic advertising firm.
Dr. London has been a practicing physician/psychiatrist for more than three decades. For 20 years he developed and ran the short-term psychotherapy unit at the NYU Langone Medical Center, where he specialized and developed a number of short term cognitive therapy techniques. He also offers his expertise as a consulting psychiatrist at the Institute for Family Health. A specialist in behavior modification and the various cognitive psychotherapies, Dr. London is widely known for an innovative approach he developed, the Learning, Philosophizing, and Action (LPA) technique.
A prolific writer, Dr. London has penned dozens of articles and columns and has appeared in many publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American Medical Association; Glamour; and On the Avenue, the late NYC cultural magazine, for which he wrote a regular medical column during the 1980s. Throughout the ‘80s he was also medical editor for Long Island’s Boulevard magazine and wrote its popular “In Your Health” column. Dr. London is best known as the long-time author of “The Psychiatrist’s Toolbox,” a nationally distributed monthly column in Clinical Psychiatry News, which is now circulated online and sold around the globe by Elsevier wire service. He continues to be an editorial contributor to Clinical Psychiatry News.
Dr. London is a media veteran who was host of his own consumer-oriented health care radio program during the 1970s, which was syndicated nationally. In the 1980s he created “Evening with the Doctors,” a three-hour town hall–style meeting for nonmedical audiences—the forerunner to today’s TV show The Doctors. Over the years he has appeared on Good Morning America, Live At Five, Eyewitness News, Good Day New York, the Cable Health Network, and has been quoted extensively in The New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Business Week, and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
He’s an engaging and lively speaker whose presentations feature helpful strategies for patients as well as their therapists. Apart from being the creator of the LPA technique, Dr. London is a leading expert in both hypnosis and short-term therapy. A sought-after lecturer, keynote speaker, and seminar leader, he sheds new light on a myriad of short-term therapies for conquering fears and phobias (e.g., fear of flying, dentists, elevators); managing PTSD, OCD, and other anxiety disorders; overcoming Peter Pan complex and other personality disorders; and improving depression.
His newest work in progress is Feel Better Fast, a self-help book for people seeking practical, short-term, therapeutic strategies to deal with stress, anxiety, phobias, and obsessions and compulsions that interfere with successful living and happiness. Drawing on three decades of clinical experience, Dr. London’s forthcoming book introduces the Learning, Philosophizing, and Action (LPA) method to readers and shows them how to avoid wasting precious time and money on talk therapy that often takes too long to work—or may not work at all.
He lives in New York City and has two adult sons, one a product liability attorney and the other a director of client service at an International phamaceutic advertising firm.
Friday, July 7, 2017
okcupid - hippielou
hippielou
54•Manhattan, NY
My self-summary
half of my life
i spent doin' time
for some other fucker's crime.
What I’m doing with my life
trying to figure out what to do with the four million dollars and the horse farm my uncle left me. what do i know about horses?
I’m really good at
finding the poem in people.
Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food
whatever you're reading, watching, listening to, or eating.
Six things I could never do without
the streets of new york, connections, the kindness of strangers.
I spend a lot of time thinking about
that whooshing sound in my head.
On a typical Friday night I am
avoiding the cops.
You should message me if
the moon turns your tides gently, gently away.
Match Questions
See all
What is the longest you've traveled to meet up with someone from a dating app?
Answer Skip
Show off those cute pet or travel pics
Upload or add an Instagram feed.
Upload photos Connect to Instagram
Personality
Personality traits are based on answers to match questions as compared to the OkCupid population.
More Ambitious More Trusting Less Old-fashioned More Polite More Compassionate Less Conservative More Good-natured
See graph
Straight, Man, Single, Non-monogamous, 5’ 8”, Average build
White, Speaks English and some Spanish, Attended Post grad
Add: Religion
Smokes sometimes, Doesn’t drink, Doesn’t do drugs, Has kid(s), Libra
Add: Diet, Pets
Looking for
women, within 25 miles, ages 18‑99, short & long term dating and new friends.
Browse invisibly
54•Manhattan, NY
My self-summary
half of my life
i spent doin' time
for some other fucker's crime.
What I’m doing with my life
trying to figure out what to do with the four million dollars and the horse farm my uncle left me. what do i know about horses?
I’m really good at
finding the poem in people.
Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food
whatever you're reading, watching, listening to, or eating.
Six things I could never do without
the streets of new york, connections, the kindness of strangers.
I spend a lot of time thinking about
that whooshing sound in my head.
On a typical Friday night I am
avoiding the cops.
You should message me if
the moon turns your tides gently, gently away.
Match Questions
See all
What is the longest you've traveled to meet up with someone from a dating app?
Answer Skip
Show off those cute pet or travel pics
Upload or add an Instagram feed.
Upload photos Connect to Instagram
Personality
Personality traits are based on answers to match questions as compared to the OkCupid population.
More Ambitious More Trusting Less Old-fashioned More Polite More Compassionate Less Conservative More Good-natured
See graph
Straight, Man, Single, Non-monogamous, 5’ 8”, Average build
White, Speaks English and some Spanish, Attended Post grad
Add: Religion
Smokes sometimes, Doesn’t drink, Doesn’t do drugs, Has kid(s), Libra
Add: Diet, Pets
Looking for
women, within 25 miles, ages 18‑99, short & long term dating and new friends.
Browse invisibly
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
things i notice while walking around.
some parents [mostly mothers]
hold their babies
on their chest
facing in
others
hold their babies
on their chest
facing out.
hold their babies
on their chest
facing in
others
hold their babies
on their chest
facing out.
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