Wayne finally discovered the key to his life, and he wasn’t exactly happy with it. The answer should have been obvious. His family moved 32 times by the time he graduated high school. Restless came naturally to him, as did impatience. He could get annoyed over the slightest things. And being upset, he could make snap decisions, travel about the world looking for romance and material as a poet.
This last did drive him for many years. In the 60’s to New York, a Greek island, Berlin, Oxford, and eventually to Asia: India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Thailand. Luckily, his addictions didn’t include drugs. Brief experiences with magic mushrooms and pot were enough. He did have to worry about alcohol and around age fifty fell off the wagon for a couple years. Fortunately, the desire to live overcame it.
On the other hand, a fear of suicide and a desire for it arose too often, part of the impatience pattern, aroused on cliffs and bridges. In the end he made a list of all the things he wouldn’t have to do when dead. Here’s a sample.
Tying my shoes
Wearing a hat
Washing my clothes
Taking a shower
Cooking breakfast
Starting my car
Driving to coffee
My heart
My kidneys
My teeth
My bank account
Rent
Catching a bus
Global warming
Aging
And so on, for six pages!
So even simple things like making his bed could become a chore. For better or worse, his mother taught him how to tie his shoes and encouraged him to be a great man. For starters, she thought he might be genius engineer. Even quite young, he took things like hoses and telephone boxes apart. He did try engineering his first year in college, but couldn’t cut the mechanical drawing. In high school he’d been sports editor on the paper. Alas, he became bored with journalism and turned to his first love, literature.
Luckily, he found a job made romantic by Beat poets, by whom at seventeen in San Francisco he was surrounded by. Wandering in and out of the Co-existence Bagel Shop and Mike’s Place, he often walked the city where his father stationed as a chaplain on The Presidio. A very young Allen Ginsburg read from Kaddish in a UC Berkeley writing class. He studied with Josephine Miles who encouraged him. A reading by all the Beats at Columbus Hall in North Beach rather bizarre. The audience occupied the ground floor, while the poets read from a balcony, a odd group of bedraggled angels.
Only in the recent days, did Wayne realize how this set the tone for his life. Yes, he did have a facebook page called The Youngest Beatnik. So even a couple years ago he did take this as his public role. True, he did get sidetracked by theater. Again, his mother’s influence. She acted in small productions and suggested he write for it, since there were so few great playwrights. Now, he always competed with his father’s sermons, basically saying , “Look at me!” And for many years he had he urge to stand up in the middle of a forum or lecture, “Hey, I’m the great one here.”
He did return to New York for acting classes at The New School, a play done off-off broadway, GRANDMA, later plays done in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Chico. Alas, he didn’t have the self-promotion gene. And his mother (again) said he played so much alone as a kid she never thought he’d have any friends. His adventures in drama an attempt of join with he world. It never worked the way it needed too. Eventually, he turned to photography and sent 15 years taking pictures of landscapes, parades, theater productions, and dancers.
He felt bereft when the photographing wore off. The best he could do was travel - Australia and Mexico twice - and take photos to post on Facebook. The travels did help, as they had in the past, to give him a sense of seven-league boots, something new every day. That said, after seven years in Santa Cruz, he floated for five years - New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Tokyo - and he realized he needed a community. That lead to forty years in Chico, California, a logical choice since grandfather and grandmother were married here.
His earliest memories are from Chico, he spent a year here as a three year old, when his father worked for the USO during WWII. He remembered, for example, cutting off his younger sister’s hair. Her curls were getting too much attention! And he was fit to be tied when his sister was born, deposing him from parental regard. Evidently, by hear-say, he became a little devil. Though he regarded childhood highly, evidently his own had kinks. He berated himself for never overcoming childish responses.
He sends good wishes from beyond the grave. In truth a few good friends are a treasure. The last time his mother visited Chico she was surprised he had any. She often controlled her children through sarcasm, so along with the positive comments she mixed some rather dangerous emotional cocktails. His father existed in the background with a preference for his sister. He could recall very few instances with is father alone. That said, they provided for his upbringing, which probably not the worst.
He first visited a lookout at age 11, impressed by the view and the lookout’s amateur radio. It stuck in his romantically inclined mind. He first applied at 17, and at 22 fell into one called Bunker Hill. The die was set. Never wanting children or a house, his family in debt their whole life, he made the choice for having most of his time for himself, Coast Guard boot camp the worst experience he ever had. At least he didn’t end dead in Vietnam. He ended his life amazed at his luck. Three psychics said the had so much responsibility in past lives, he’d be free to play in this one. Creative projects, though always time limited, certainly gave him the feeling this prognostication true.
True, the memories and adventures of the past did make for a painful nostalgia, and he missed those times. He couldn’t believe they could be matched, no matter how he tried, and he wrote a note for himself, “Don’t outlive your life.” In the end he felt he had. Turning 80 an unexpected transition. He never expected to live so long and wondered how it had happened.
