My kids have been after me to write my autobiography for some time. Well, actually that was some 20 years ago! I’ve procrastinated this long enough. Alas, I’m no storyteller as you’ll see when you read my story. Frankly, I seldom reminisce past experiences; it all feels so indistinct and shadowy, even ‘prehistoric’.
Nevertheless, I’ve decided to try; after all, I wish my parents had done that for me. “Times of Yore” is the tag ( Autobiographical ) I’ve used for posts that refer to something in my past. The memories that seem to come most easily are those that left a philosophical impression on me. Thus, any autobiography may turn out to be more of an auto-bio-philosophi-graphy. We’ll see. For now, I’ll lay down the bare facts as I recall them. First here is a rough map showing my wandering life until I was 35.
Just looking for a homeā¦
1943 and onā¦
I was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1943. Despite having a normal childhood, I never really felt connected to the mainstream culture (music, sports, dating, etc.) around me, for as far back as I can remember. This became even more obvious with the onset of puberty, which is almost certainly why I ended up being drawn to yoga and Buddhism as a teenager, and later in my early 20s to theĀ Tao Te Ching. None of this was a rejection of or rebellion against the American mainstream; I just never really felt the culture around me spoke to me. If I believed in reincarnation, Iād think I had simply been reincarnated from East Asia.
I dropped out of high school and joined the Air National Guard. The Cuban Missile Crisis of the early ā60s changed my destiny. I was plugging away at night college and working full-time at an electronics firm when I was called up. My National Guard unit was to be sent to Germany to be ācannon fodder,ā as people said half-jokingly. I had to drop out of college and pack my bags. However, the situation soon cooled, the mission was called off, and I was left without a āvacationā to Germany or a way to resume college immediately.
My life was up in the air. I felt I had to go somewhere! WWII vets at work talked up Australia as a great place to go. On the other hand, I had adapted the NASA Gemini telemetry technology I was working on for use in consumer productsāa personal pager system for doctors and radio-controlled toys. What should I do? Stay and develop these inventions, which might make me a pile of cash, or go to Australia?
1963 and onā¦
I immigrated to Australia in 1963 and found work at a NASA satellite tracking station in Western Australia. Initially, I planned to work there for a year and then return to America. However, hearing tales from people who had traveled overland to Australia from Europe stirred my urge for adventure. My new plan was to spend six months hitchhiking to Europe and then return home. Plans, plans, plansā¦ I ended up staying many years in Asia, where I spent my time wandering, working, and wonderingāin other words, growing up.
I spent my first three years in Southeast Asia, a region I grew to love dearly. While working for a Chinese electronics firm in Bangkok, I received a telegram informing me of my brotherās death. I spent a few months racking my brain to understand death until āvoilĆ !āāItā knew life and death were the same. Really? Weird, yet perhaps real. (seeĀ Quantum Superposition as the Driver of Insight.) Following this, I moved to Yasothon in Eastern Thailand to open a small bakery. Business was slow. It turned out the locals werenāt fond of my Ć©clairs and pies; they simply wanted my plain sponge cakes.
When the war stepped up in Vietnam, I went back there hoping to find a high-paying job to save money and āup my gameā in Thailand. I found a job working in Chu Lai for RMK-BRJ (an American construction consortium), first as a warehouseman, then as a surveyor, and later as a ātranslator.ā I learned to speak functional āmarketā Vietnamese. Ah, the sponge-like capacity of my young, early-20s brain!
Eventually, I was fired from my RMK-BRJ job for attempting to organize the Filipino and Korean workers to ask for better living conditions that the American workers there enjoyed. This was the third time I had been fired: first, from my job in Los Angeles for coming in late too often (even though I worked late into the night); and second, from my AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd.) job at the tracking station for attempting to organize the workers there to demand better living conditions that AWA had previously promised. These experiences taught me that a successful āleaderā doesnāt actually lead, but rather, must essentially follow the people he āleads.ā
After being fired from my job in Vietnam, I felt the urge to make my way to Japan to learn more Karate (I had taken up Karate while in the military). I guess I felt I was just too young to get tied down in Thailand yet. On the way to Japan, I stopped off in Singapore for six months, where I met and fell in love with an English girl, Muriel, who was stationed at the RAF base in Changi. Her tour of duty would be up in a few years, so we decided to meet back in England at that time. With that settled, it was off to Japan on the classic hitchhikerās way of getting across water, Messageries Maritimes (MM)āalthough I only took it as far as Manila, for I had to check out the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Korea first. By chance, I met a beautiful girl in Korea who nearly enticed me to settle there for a whileā¦ but no, I felt I just had to get to Japan. Perhaps I knew by then āa whileā easily turned into years. Oh, and what about Muriel?
1968 and onā¦
After a year in Japan, I got itchy feet and decided to finally finish that overland trip to Europe Iād planned way back in Australia. I also had a ālove goalā pulling me, which forestalled any detours I might have otherwise made along the way. Actually, I did stop off in Okinawa where, again “by chance” I met a lovely Japanese girlā¦ but no, I was determined to not get distracted. I ākilledā time for the next few years employing a combination of hitchhiking, trains, boats, planes, and buses while traveling through India, the Middle East, Europe, and North and West Africa.
Part of my ākilling timeā period was spent hitchhiking across North Africa and down the East Coast to Tanzania before flying back to England to tie the knot. As it happens, the spark of love had dimmed for us by this time. Distance and time donāt always make the heart grow fonder, it seems. Besides, given my zigzagging history, this was hardly surprising!
Iād enjoyed East Africa a lot, so after we broke up, I headed back down Europe planning to travel down West Africa toward South Africa, where I figured Iād have the best chance to find my next job. I stopped to spend a few months in Mallorca, Spain, where while dancing on a beach there, I āluredā in a young Swedish girl, Ingela, who was there on vacation. We got on well, so I changed course and went to Sweden, where I spent the summer picking 20,000 eggs a day and enjoying life with her in the Swedish countryside. We got on so well that in the fall we left together, first across North Africa, then down through the Sahara Desert, and next along Africaās west coast. I contracted hepatitis A, probably in the Sahara, and after reaching Cameroon, I decided it would be a good time to return to America for a while to recuperate, to finally visit my parents, and to save up some money. Note: my parents were very independent people, who Iām guessing passed on their genes to meā¦ in spades.
By the way, traveling on such a lowā$1 a day in those daysābudget certainly risks exposure to diseases no longer common in the hyper-developed world. Somehow I missed getting malaria and the rest, catching only a few: dysentery while hitchhiking through Vietnam, typhoid fever while traveling in Nepal, and that hepatitis in Africa. Luckily, all were treatable. A Swedish friend I traveled with in Thailand wasnāt so lucky and picked up elephantiasis, probably on his way through India.
1971 and onā¦
Ingela and I spent about six months in California before Ingela had enough of me and went back to Sweden. Clearly, at that age, I wasnāt the best catch in the sea of single males. After a period of mourning, I decided to bicycle down through South America. However, shortly before my departure, she called me and said she wanted to make a go of our relationship after all. Happy meāI was soon on a plane for Sweden.
Ingela and I were married that fall and spent most of the year in Sweden working and saving money for our planned trip to Japan. I worked as a postal worker this time, which was a step up from egg picker. That fall, we took the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia, which was two weeks of ājolly cozyā time indeed. A long train trip like that is very similar to a slow ocean voyage; time has a way of vanishing as you let someone else steer the course of life for a while.
We settled down in Tokyo. I got work teaching English, and Ingela found a great job as a high-class hostess in Ginza, keeping tired Japanese businessmen awake. I went back to the dojo to train in Karate, and Ingela took up pottery. By this time, I had lost interest in Karate but happened to stumble across the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute. I spent the next few years learning to make and play this instrumentāin particular,Ā SuiZenĀ (blowing Zen), which had come to Japan from China around the 6th century. Switching from Karate toĀ SuiZenĀ proved to beĀ aĀ wise moveā¦ especially now in my elder years! Tai Chi has also become a priceless practice for this old man.
1976 and onā¦
We saved up quite a batch of money during our stay in Japan, mostly because we lived exceptionally frugal livesāan easy thing forĀ aĀ hitchhiker to do. We headed back overland (and some water) to Europe, basically retracing my route from a decade earlier. We stopped off in Pune, India, to study yoga at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute. We had been diligently following Mr. Iyengarās book Light on Yoga for the previous three years, so we were well-prepared for hands-on training.
We spent the winter in Sweden, where I tore a leg ligament while skiing for the first and last time! Once Iād healed up enough, we left for America and settled for a year in California, teaching yoga and shakuhachi. We moved up to Bellingham, Washington, where I began welding airtight stoves while Ingela taught yoga. We soonāand I should say finallyāreached a point of irreconcilable differences. She stayed in Washington state and I moved back to California, where I began teaching yoga again and struggled to āfigure my life out.ā
1979 and onā¦
I finally settled on a āplanā: move to Brazil and work on a farm there for a while and see where it would go. As it happened, my yoga student introduced me to a young lady who would become my current (and finally last) wife, Leslie. Success at last; I just needed time to truly grow up. Ingela leaving me was a real catalyst for that growth.
I still planned on Brazil, but now with Leslie to share the adventure. We set off in the fall, flying to Ecuador and then hitching and camping our way down the West Coast of South America, over to Brazil, and eventually Rio. The plan was to work on that farm there and then make our way over to South Africa to save money for a return trip to Japan. Clearly, I really feel at home in Japan. I should have known by now the futility of making plans. Of course, without expectations, there is no real downside to making plans, is there?
Well, Leslie found herself very homesick and wanted to return to the U.S.A. That was actually fine by meāsurprisingly so, at first. By this time, everywhere on the planet was the sameā¦ deep down where I was looking. āProfound Samenessā had taken firm hold of my mind.
1981 and on to the presentā¦
We settled in Santa Cruz, raised children, and founded Center Tao. Now, at 83, I am finally outlining my history. So many detailsāodd, interesting, dangerous, harrowing, exciting, and boringācould be included in a full autobiography, if only I possessed the storytelling gift for such a project. But for now, this will have to do.
Having largely finished putting my insights onto paper, perhaps Iāll see if I can tap into some latent storytelling ability; certainly, effort and sweat should help compensate for what I lack. Yet, the prospect of filling in such immense detail into a readable story remains overwhelming. Iāll just have to take it step by step.
Looking back on those early years from 1943 to 1981āespecially the era from ā63 to ā81āeverything feels so chock-full of experience. As I wrote, scores of memories crossed my mind. Curiously, the period from ā81 to now, 2026, covers more time than this entire biography, yet my memories of these years are a fuzzy blend. Where has the time gone? These settled years have been marked only by the milestones of my childrenās lives, my motherās death, and inevitable health issues: skin cancer, a hernia, prostate cancer, and total knee replacements (it seems all that hitchhiking caught up with me at last).
First up, Iāll just try to recall and record the details of these last 40 years. Being settled in one place seems to smooth over the passage of time. Itās not a fog of war; itās a fog of constancy. It reminds me of that two-week Trans-Siberian train journey, or the time I hitched a ride on a timber boat from Taiwan to Borneo. The boat traveled at a walking speed; time stood still as I sat on the bow every day, watching the waves go by. Indeed, I had brought a stack of books to read, but I never cracked even one.
In retrospect
The latter half of the 20th century was a Goldilocks zone for a āhitchhiking-and-sleeping-whereverā manner of travel. Prior to the 20th century, such a journey would have taken a whole lifetime to finish: the world was too disconnected and dangerous for laid-back wandering. You werenāt a hitchhiker; you were an explorer, and the stakes were much more life and death.
On the other hand, the instability and exponential explosion of technology in the 21st century would make such a journey much less āorganicā and invitingāfor me anyway. The internet homogenizes so much, and the rising civil strife doesnāt help matters. In some ways, modern circumstancesāhyper-civilizationāwould make such a journey too easy, and paradoxically more difficult. Of course, perhaps thatās just my ātimes were better back whenā old-man mind speaking.
One thing is for sure, life is a true novel that takes a whole lifetime to āreadāāand if one is lucky enough, to remain fully awake to āreadā to the very end. Fascinating!