New Year's Eve 1982/1983
For a good part of the year I had planned to participate in the Ojai Foundation's Christmas to New Years community celebration. For the all night ceremony I intended to finish up and wear my Halloween outfit and had planned the chants I would sing and how I would sing them. All in all, I intended to make a splash.
As the time of the festival drew near, I realized I was running out of time to prepare and I never even got around to reserving space for myself or send a deposit for the fee. Somehow I just couldn't get up any enthusiasm for preparing, and started cutting down the amount of time I planned to be there
When Sheila Moran called me and asked me to come to her little New Year's Eve party. Realizing she really did need me there because she was inviting so few, I used this as an excuse not to attend the all night ceremony at all and accepted the invitation.
The party went as expected. There were six people invited, including Sheila, and all showed up. Two came and left before I arrived at about 8:00. We sat around and talked until about 1:30am, when I left. The woman guest had left just a bit before, and I had escorted her out to prevent muggings or attacks.
When I arrived at home it was my intention to annoy the pigeons and then go directly to bed to catch up on my sleep. I went out and headed for the dove shack, but noticed the Moon was directly overhead and very bright and full. This caused me to turn instead to my circle of stones.
I entered the circle and made one pass around, greeting each stone and patting it firmly a couple of times. I continued a second time around just walking. Then I sat in my customary place and made a brief prayer of thanks to the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. I folded my hands over the fire stones at the very center of the circle. Bowing my head onto my hands I made my confessions for my pompousness, bluffs, and delusions of being important. I asked for forgiveness and accepted my death and dissolution.
Retaining this position I then thought of Joan and the people in their corresponding circle in Ojai and the tiredness Joan would be experiencing guiding all the night ceremony. I called out to her several time and invited her to draw from me and my circle whatever power she could find to sustain herself and the community through the night. At this moment I received an overwhelming impression that I should be there in the ceremony.
I immediately rushed inside and located my keys, locking up and heading for the truck without taking or thinking of taking anything other than what I had on me. With no stop, except for fuel just beyond the San Fernando Valley, I flew through the night as fast as I could go, generally in excess of 70 mph. I noted with interest that my eyes were good enough now to make this trip at night without using my glasses at all, as I had needed to before.
In Fillmore, I had to stop at a light. there was a middle aged man standing at the side with a suitcase trying to hitch a ride. Although it is my practice to always avoid hitchhikers, and although he looked my way and decided I was not a prospect and looked away, I called to him and asked where he wanted to go. He told me he was headed for the coast. I replied that I was going strictly inland, but he said he would like a ride to a better place. I agreed to take him to the outskirts of Santa Paula where the highway to the cost began. He later asked if I would take him to Ojai if he paid for the extra gas, but I told him I was in a great hurry. When I left him off, he told me I should watch my speed or I would attract the police.
I continued my way to the Ojai Foundation at top speed and arrived there after 3:00am. I went directly to the large yurt because it was closer than the Oak Medicine teepee and entered. This proved to be the right place, it was dark there and everyone was finishing preparation to take a 2 hour nap until dawn. I picked my way through the recumbent bodies to where Joan sat. I leaned across the paraphernalia and we kissed briefly. Joan said, "Find your place Andrew, I'll see you in two hours". I found a large vacant spot in the exact center of the yurt and lay down. A woman there who I took to be old offered to lend me a long sweater, but I declined. I felt it was important to be there with just what I had come with. The lady proved to be young and attractive in the morning.
The night was fairly cold, although there was a small heater burning off to one side, so lying on an uninsulated wood floor in a thin shirt was no picnic. I noted the comparison of myself so thinly clothed and all the others around in their down mummybags, blankets, parkas and all. It did seem rather extreme, but I found the cold not intolerable. I could stand it fairly easily with moderate shivering to build heat. It occurred to me that I would have told people I could go the night this way, and it was good that my bluffs were called occasionally, even if I had to call them myself.
Just before the sky started to get light, Joan and here assistants started weaving through the bodies doing the smudging with sage and the healing work. This was not completed until the sky was very light. We then went to the medicine circle and Michele did her pipe ceremony. The sunrise was perfectly timed, the sun appearing over the hills at the very beginning of the pipe ceremony. We did a few chants and returned to the Yurt for the give-away game and a couple more chants. Breakfast was held on the floor of the smaller yurt, which had blown away in the wind.
By this time, I was extremely tired and realized I had invited people over for brunch. It was unlikely they would come, but it could happen, so I left at 9:30 in the morning and headed home without announcing my departure. the trip was exactly as difficult as it had been after the last two all nighters, but I held myself together until I got to the bottom of the Pennsylvania off-ramp. So close to home my attention wavered a moment and I fell asleep at the wheel for about a half second. Four minutes later I was home and made a few necessary phone calls. I then went to bed and slept until about 3:00pm. I decided what I really wanted to eat was sauerkraut soup, so I spent the next few hours making a gallon and a half of it. It is nearly gone now (1-2-1983).
2023 Comments: My relationship with the Ojai Foundation ended some time after this event. Joan Halifax had left and the place was becoming a retreat for wealthy East Side psychologists and the like. All the young people and the mystical people were gone, because they could not afford to be there under these new conditions. I did a little computer work for the couple that had taken over (a couple of psychologists), but never attended an event under their regime.